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  <row Id="1" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="180" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:23:40.127" Score="20" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;As from title. What kind of visa class do I have to apply for, in order to work as an academic in Japan ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T09:14:11.633" LastActivityDate="2020-01-06T22:44:41.020" Title="What kind of Visa is required to work in Academia in Japan?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;visa&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="246" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:26:22.683" Score="11" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which online resources are available for job search at the Ph.D. level in the computational chemistry field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:02:01.180" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:02:01.180" Title="As a computational chemist, which online resources are available for Ph.D. level jobs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-29T20:06:49.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:27:41.980" Score="48" ViewCount="4968" Body="&lt;p&gt;As from title. Not all journals provide the impact factor on their homepage. For those who don't where can I find their impact factor ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="38446" LastEditDate="2016-03-11T14:56:14.233" LastActivityDate="2020-05-24T10:17:56.643" Title="Where can I find the Impact Factor for a given journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="145" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:29:04.737" Score="13" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many engineering departments want professional engineer registration. Why do they care? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:02:31.710" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:02:31.710" Title="In U.S., why do many engineering departments care about professional engineer registration?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:30:26.703" Score="35" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the h-index, and how does it work ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="99421" LastEditDate="2019-01-24T15:18:25.270" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T15:18:25.270" Title="What is the h-index exactly and how does it work?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:30:29.917" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your institution has a subscription to Journal Citation Reports (JCR), you can check it there. Try this URL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jcr.clarivate.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://jcr.clarivate.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="18" LastEditDate="2020-05-23T19:03:29.120" LastActivityDate="2020-05-23T19:03:29.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:32:12.333" Score="85" ViewCount="20419" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I publish a pre-print paper on arXiv, how can I guarantee exclusive rights to the publisher afterwards? Am I unable to publish on non-open access journals after I publish a pre-print on arXiv ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:17:40.567" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T11:03:25.473" Title="Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:34:32.130" Score="22" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;An increasing number of funding organizations require publications on the research that they fund to be open access, i.e. available to the public without having to subscribe to a journal or pay a fee. Does anybody know where I can find a list of journals/publishers that do not allow material that they publish to be published this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T13:26:21.987" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T13:26:21.987" Title="What journals do not allow open access to published material?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:39:18.063" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The h-index is a measure of the impact of someone's publication list. An h-index of 10 for example means that the person has published 10 papers with at least 10 citations. The total number of papers published may be higher, but only 10 will have 10 or more citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critics argue that this measure disadvantages young researchers who did not have time to publish a lot and whose work has not been published for long and thus may not have attracted many citations. Other criticisms include that it makes a researcher focus on how to increase the citation count for a paper that may be not that good but would increase the h-index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more explanation, see for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:39:18.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:39:46.567" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, but this is to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. You can have an idea of which policies have been adopted by which publishers/journals by having a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the webpage of Sherpa/Romeo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2019-09-16T11:03:25.473" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T11:03:25.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:40:32.307" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a list at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencegateway.org/rank/index.html&quot;&gt;Science Gateway&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:40:32.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1116" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:42:28.417" Score="26" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether we like it or not, modern academia is increasingly being measured, in some vain attempt to get objective measures.  Although it is unwise to fight 'being measured', it is at least possible to steer the measures away from meaningless ones, backed by peer-reviewed research that establishes this unrefutably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different metrics that have been defined - I am not looking for those.  What I want is pointers to the research behind the scientific validity of those metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: where should I look for scientific assessments of bibliometrics?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:02:09.207" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T10:57:47.400" Title="Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="44" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:43:23.893" Score="13" ViewCount="1506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who are the evaluators of the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship proposals? Other academics ? How are they selected ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="651" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T13:05:01.473" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T13:05:01.473" Title="Who evaluates Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship proposals?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:45:55.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is because, in the U.S. as in many other countries (like Canada), Engineering is a regulated profession, like medicine and law.  To call yourself an engineer, or to perform certain 'engineering' tasks, you need to be accredited (or registered or ..., name changes by country) to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They care for the same reason that they want lawyers that have passed their bar exam to teach law, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:45:55.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="94" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:45:57.213" Score="10" ViewCount="1354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked for a year in Switzerland, but I have been given an L visa, even as a European. This has strong limitations in terms of rentals and bank services. Other people got a B visa for the same contract. Was this a mistake, and how can my university enforce a request for a B visa ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T22:20:18.300" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T22:20:18.300" Title="As a postdoc with a one-year contract in Switzerland, am I allowed for a B visa?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;visa&gt;&lt;switzerland&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:49:07.940" Score="14" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've applied to several graduate (MSc) programs overseas, and I've received several acceptance letters. Now I have the problem to select one of those programs. How should I do it? What should I look into each program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No program offers funding, and some programs are elegible for a local scholarship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can fund some programs with my own money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T21:42:39.600" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T18:00:59.920" Title="How do I select a graduate program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:50:04.957" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are generally allowed to publish even in a non-open access journal even if a pre-print is on the arXiv.  Most journal copyright agreements explicitly allow the authors to post the article online.  Here's an example of a fairly generous one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ASL hereby grants to the Author the non-exclusive right to reproduce the Article, to create&#xA;  derivative works based upon the Article, and to distribute and display the Article and any such derivative&#xA;  work by any means and in any media, provided the provisions of clause (3) below are met. The Author may&#xA;  sub-license any publisher or other third party to exercise those rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a less generous one which still allows the author to post a copy online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I understand that I retain or am hereby granted (without the need to obtain further permission) rights to use certain versions of the Article for certain &#xA;  scholarly purposes, as described and defined below (“Retained Rights”), and that no rights in patents, trademarks or other intellectual property rights &#xA;  are transferred to the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Retained Rights include the right to use the Pre-print or  Accepted Authors Manuscript for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and for &#xA;  Scholarly Posting; and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen examples where the journal actually did some genuine copyediting beyond what the referee did where the author wasn't allowed to post the version that benefited from the copyediting, but could still post the earlier version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for most journals, the answer is that you're allowed to post the article online because it's specifically allowed by the document they ask you to sign.  But it is possible that posting on the arxiv will rule out particular journals that have more restrictive policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:50:04.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:53:58.670" Score="18" ViewCount="2011" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I publish a book on my research topics while employed for an academic institution, can they claim part of the revenues I get from royalties ? My question is relative to Europe, but if someone knows also for other countries, I will welcome additional answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T04:56:19.693" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T04:56:19.693" Title="Does publishing a book while employed by an academic institution grant them legal claim on the royalties?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:54:44.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on which country you are talking about, there may be league tables for the universities in that country. While the total ranking can be misleading, they provide useful information such as staff to student ratios -- the higher the ratio, the more opportunity you will have to ask questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also look at the reputation of the universities in the specific field that you want to do your MSc in, e.g. how many people work in that area and are they well-known (involved in many conferences/journals and similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it might boil down to money though, so you should probably look at what you can afford first (not only in terms of tuition, but also living expenses in that area).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:54:44.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:55:35.107" Score="15" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;The National Institues of Health (NIH) funds Medical Scientist Training Programs (MSTPs) also known as MD/PhD programs to create a group of researchers whose work more rapidly effects medical practice. For example, they would help to develop new diagnostic tools, drugs, or surgical procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds good, but how many of the students actually pursue this track? Does anyone know of data about the NIH's return on investment besides the somewhat dated data about three New York programs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your time, &#xA;Mike&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T07:41:34.073" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T07:41:34.073" Title="How many physician-scientists pursue academic tracks?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:59:43.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I ask why you chose an MSc instead of a PhD? What is your career goal? I don't mean to imply one is better than the other. If you are going to spend a lot of money and time, it should be well-spent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some places, like the UK, not much more time is needed to get a PhD beyond an MSc. In the U.S., PhD's in the sciences are usually completely funded.  Per badp this seems not to be the case in Italy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For either an MSc or PHD I suggest looking at the career paths of former graduates of that lab. This is something I wish someone had told me when I entered &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; lab. &lt;strong&gt;The charisma of the lab boss or excellence of the equipment are meaningless if, after 2-3 years, you can't move on as you hoped.&lt;/strong&gt; Trace the career path of the last few graduates - from MSc all the way to how many wanted to and got faculty positions and how long it took them. In my experience what you do is much less important that who you know, which comes from getting into the right environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T18:00:59.920" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T18:00:59.920" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:59:45.467" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published a book myself, and know many collegues who published books, and the academic institution never claimed any part from the royalties. This is for sure the case in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:59:45.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:00:25.253" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10/12&quot;&gt;This answer to a related question&lt;/a&gt; points to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&lt;/a&gt;, which allows you to look up the policy of specific journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T21:00:25.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:14:00.067" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although just a start, we had a &quot;journal club&quot; over at the stats.se site on such bibliometrics, and had a chat over this particular article;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arnold, Douglas N. &amp;amp; Kristine K. Fowler. 2011. Nefarious Numbers.&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Notices of the AMS&lt;/em&gt; 58(3): 434-437. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201103/rtx110300434p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF link from publisher&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract from initial &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0278&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ArXiv print&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigate the journal impact factor, focusing on the applied&#xA;  mathematics category. We discuss impact factor manipulation and&#xA;  demonstrate that the impact factor gives an inaccurate view of journal&#xA;  quality, which is poorly correlated with expert opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as scientific assessments the authors in the above article are pretty negative of such rankings, and give a few examples of editors having citation practices that intentionally inflate their journals rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure more literature on the topic exists than this though (so I look forward to any other suggestions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the transcript from the chat is currently not linked to in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/836/1036&quot;&gt;applicable thread&lt;/a&gt; on meta stats. But I will update here if it becomes available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:02:09.727" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:42:52.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:22:16.793" Score="20" ViewCount="7146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a good source to compare academic salaries at European universities? For example, what are the salaries of full professors in different countries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would particularly welcome a possible source, a link pointing to a page where this information is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T15:24:19.990" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T17:56:34.030" Title="Academic salaries at European universities" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:23:58.697" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, no. (This is based on my experience in the US.) One's employing institution does not have any claim on royalties from books written while a student or faculty member. However, it's possible that there might be exceptions: for example, sometimes a university may help financially in the publication of a book, and this might be reflected in the publication contract. Of course, in such circumstances the book is not expected to make any money, which is why the university is helping out in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related and very common phenomenon is for the publisher to hold the copyright on an academic title. My own book is like this. I am entitled to royalties, but the press holds the copyright for some defined period. Again, this is due to the terrible economics of publishing academic monographs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been cases where universities have tried to assert very broad rights over the intellectual property of their faculty employees (e.g., lecture notes as well as books, etc), but I think these have generally failed. It does still happen: &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Faculty-Cry-Foul-Over/130800/?key=HG13cFRsbXIVN35gZGlFZzkBbHM/NUp6ZHdOY30ibl1WEA==&quot;&gt;here's an example&lt;/a&gt; where the University of Louisiana is trying to broadly claim rights to scholarly output, including royalties from books. These sweeping assertions of rights have sometimes been motivated by the desire of administrators to claim a share of some of the genuinely lucrative things now produced by some university researchers, such as patentable biotechnologies, with books caught up in the net but not really directly targeted. Patents are an area with real money at stake, where the university's investment (in laboratory space and so on) is much higher, and where university claims on income from work done while employed are strongly and successfully asserted. Books, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="39" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T23:05:52.087" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:05:52.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="30" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:29:44.743" Score="13" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just finished my Erasmus period in the Netherlands. I'm still waiting for one result from my guest academy, then the Transcript of Record will reach my home university and, somehow, the results will be translated from Netherlands marks to Italian marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an Erasmus standard on how to predictably translate results between ranking systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:57:50.423" LastActivityDate="2020-03-25T20:48:18.740" Title="Is there a standard for translating grades across Erasmus universities?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="31" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:32:23.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to get information about different countries, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gehaltsvergleich.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this webpage&lt;/a&gt; allows you to query the information on salaries in different parts of Germany. If you query for &quot;professor&quot; you will find several categories depending upon the status of the academic institution (University, University of applied sciences (Fachhochschule) etc.). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gehaltsvergleich.com/gehalt/Professor-Professorin-Wissenschaftliche-Hochschulen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the link to the salaries of full professor in normal universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T21:32:23.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="32" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:33:49.277" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/CareerComparisons/SalaryComparisons.aspx&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; has what you are looking for. As far as I can tell (e.g. for France) the numbers are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we should keep in mind that the comparison can be made difficult. For instance, &quot;full professor&quot; is not an actual rank in french academia. You are either a &quot;maitre de conférences&quot; (roughly equivalent to assistant prof. position to &quot;junior&quot; associate prof.), then &quot;professeur des universités&quot; (roughly from more senior associate prof. to full prof.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T02:25:14.307" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:25:14.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="37" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:45:27.360" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glassdoor.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.glassdoor.com/&lt;/a&gt; works by getting anonymous information from users and sharing it. It is really vast and accurate as far as I am aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&#xA;TA: Brigham Young University $10.41/hour&#xA;Professor: University of Warwick: £103/year-£112/year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must only Select Salaries on the dropdown menu, add a description or phrase of the position and/or location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T21:45:27.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="38" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:46:20.977" Score="16" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the European Union we have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages&quot;&gt;&quot;Common European Framework of Reference for Languages&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. In practice all language certification programmes have one of those levels associated to them (ranging from A1, the most basic, to C2, the most advanced), so that it is possible to establish equivalences between common tests. This allows me to, say, determine if my A in the (life-time valid) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Certificate_in_English&quot;&gt;FCE&lt;/a&gt; exam is worth more or less than a 8.0 in the (short-lived) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IELTS&quot;&gt;IELTS&lt;/a&gt; exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This however doesn't help the student that wants to have an exchange program &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the European Union. I heave heard &lt;em&gt;rumours&lt;/em&gt; that, e.g., the Cambridge exams in English aren't accepted in the states, but that could very well be FUD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most universally accepted certifications in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:33:41.963" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:33:41.963" Title="English certifications: which ones are recognized overseas?" Tags="&lt;student-exchange&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="39" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="64" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:53:38.490" Score="45" ViewCount="2698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student in the Earth Sciences.  The breadth of my departments runs the gamut from geobiology to geophysics and everything in between.  As a result, a large number of the department seminars that get hosted are on topics that I have little or no background in and do not relate to my research field in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expectation seems to be that everyone should go to these type of events to stay abreast of major events and gain some breadth of knowledge, but whenever I go to one that is far outside my sphere of knowledge I end up resenting the wasted time.  To me, it seems like a huge waste to sit through a 60 minute talk on something I don't have the background knowledge necessary to understand in even a rudimentary way.  Sometimes this is the fault of the presenter for not preparing a talk for a broad enough audience, but with biology talks I know that the fault is my own.  Don't ask me the difference between a protein and an amino acid; I have no idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So lately I've felt a strong temptation to blow off some of these events reasoning that it would be vastly better to get in another experiment that day than go sit through a lecture I'm not equipped to understand.  But I'm worried that other people will think I'm being a slacker as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you look down on colleagues who sometimes skip out on talks far outside their expertise?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, &lt;strong&gt;Is skipping an event like this better or worse than showing up but discreetly reclaiming time during bad talks by studying on a smartphone?&lt;/strong&gt;  Obviously, whipping out a laptop during a lecture would be very rude, but flipping through flashcards on my ipod while sitting in the back of the hall would be a low-key way to reclaim some of that time during talks when I have no idea what they are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T03:57:07.433" Title="Will people judge me negatively for skipping department seminars?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="40" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="80" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:00:53.470" Score="19" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking of publishing a subset of my work in fluid dynamics to arXiv. I realize the following about arXiv:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArXiv isn't a journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would need to be endorsed to submit an article on arXiv&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons I would like to submit a subset of my work to arXiv are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would only be a subset of my work thereby NOT negating my chances of publishing work in a regular journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would like to disseminate information to the society as soon as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any thoughts or comments about this? Is there something that I'd need to feel uneasy about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that there has been another question regarding submission of work to arXiv and I read it &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7/does-publishing-a-paper-on-arxiv-prevent-me-to-submit-it-to-a-non-open-access-jo&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T12:56:30.480" Title="Submitting a subset of my work to ArXiv" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="42" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:07:37.457" Score="16" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-is-the-h-index-exactly-and-how-does-it-work&quot;&gt;h-index&lt;/a&gt;. I was wondering what other types of scores are both widely and rarely used to measure the impact of a scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="59" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:01:40.563" Title="What are the common productivity measures of a scientist, like h-index?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="44" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:20:38.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will find details on the evaluation process in the Guide for Applicants. The evaluators are experts (=researchers) in the field. They will be matched to the proposal according to their profile and to the abstract and keywords. They will for sure be in the general research area, but might not be in the exact same field of the proposal. It is (at least, officially) not possible to find out who evaluated the proposal afterwards, but you can find a list of former evaluators here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/experts_en.html&quot;&gt;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/experts_en.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:20:38.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="46" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:27:58.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is no universal advice. In general, you should adopt the local policy. If it is really the expectation, then you should go. Try to ask your younger colleagues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is an other aspect: usually you never know in advance whether the talk will be good and inspiring or not. Usually it is not, but sometimes there is a surprise. Most of us go to these seminars hoping for a miracle. Unfortunately, in most cases the talks are simply bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is also the argument that later you will be also giving talks on similar seminars. It is somehow sad if nobody except your fellow buddy listens to your talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:27:58.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="47" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11764" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:56:13.430" Score="27" ViewCount="8227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering joining the recent boycott of Elsevier, however I work with biologists on theoretical/mathematical biology (in particular, evolutionary game theory and population biology). However, It seems like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-theoretical-biology/&quot;&gt;Journal of Theoretical Biology&lt;/a&gt;  is the premier journal for technical work in this field, and my co-authors often suggest it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some (preferably, open-access) alternatives to JTB?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T11:34:57.160" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T11:34:57.160" Title="What are alternatives to Journal of Theoretical Biology?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-28T17:44:36.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="48" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:57:44.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concenrning mathematics as in the answer of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3/andy-w&quot;&gt;Andy W&lt;/a&gt;, the International Mathematical Union has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Report/WG_JRP_Report_01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; on possible policies to measure and rank journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:57:44.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="50" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="67" CreationDate="2012-02-14T23:58:38.160" Score="90" ViewCount="12636" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ever since starting graduate school I've tried to make scientific reading a part of my daily ritual; I track pages read using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.beeminder.com/&quot;&gt;Beeminder&lt;/a&gt;, and the graph doesn't lie.  It keeps me honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I aim to closely read and summarize 5 pages per day and skim a few other abstracts besides that.  I spend about half my time looking at data and figures which doesn't contribute to my daily &quot;page count.&quot;  When I'm reading about a new topic these five pages can take several hours, but on topics I have more background in five pages might only take an hour per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess since everybody defines &quot;read&quot; in a different way it's hard to get an objective answer about how much reading is enough.  How much people read seems like a bit of a sensitive topic among real-life colleagues because everyone has a bit of anxiety that they aren't reading enough.  But for those further along in their academic path, I'd like to hear how you approached the literature early in your graduate school career and what you think is a sufficient amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this all distills down into two main topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When deciding what to read each day, should I focus on depth or breadth?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is five pages of close reading per day enough?&lt;/strong&gt;  I know it doesn't sound like much, but it takes significant mental energy to meet that goal.  And consistently reading 5 pages per day adds up to a lot over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt; I mostly read about petrology, volcanology, structural geology, and tectonics if that makes a difference.  By &quot;page&quot; I mean &quot;page of text&quot; so if I'm reading a structural geology paper with lots of maps and figures I discount for those and a &quot;ten page&quot; paper becomes a 5 page paper for my purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="66" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:27:23.043" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T13:00:58.007" Title="Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="84" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="51" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="54" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:09:35.677" Score="40" ViewCount="24859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that it's a violation of terms for most publishers to submit the same article to more than one journal, but I frequently see authors whose papers seem very similar, particularly papers released in a single year. In my field, neuroscience, this is particularly true about conference papers; one researcher will often have numerous posters/conference papers about seemingly the same topic. What are the guidelines for acceptability regarding this type of behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T15:23:07.077" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T05:51:55.130" Title="Submitting the same research to multiple conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="52" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:22:10.787" Score="15" ViewCount="1258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious to know the kinds of obstacles a US citizen would come across when trying to find work in academia outside the US and/or those that a non-US-citizen faces when trying to get an academic job inside the US.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem that, logistically, it would be easier on the department to hire a citizen over a non-citizen. Is there any advice applicants can follow that would greater their chances?  Do you have to be extraordinary for a department to hire you over an equally qualified citizen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:20:10.477" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:20:10.477" Title="Obstacles in job hunting for US citizens in non-US nations" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="53" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="79" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:22:52.677" Score="19" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received conflicting advice as to whether I should choose my coursework based on my research topic or not. The main pro usually is that I'll quickly be able to get up to speed on my research. The con is usually that there are so many other courses that I could take, in which I could learn topics I may not ever have a chance to formally learn, and given the constant need to hunt for funding, I may never have a chance to put aside and study in-depth again. Any definitive answers to this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:26:33.687" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T23:36:48.167" Title="Should I take courses that are not directly part of my research topic?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="54" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="51" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:24:09.490" Score="31" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/static/1999/1999pdf13.pdf&quot;&gt;Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines on Good Publication Practice&lt;/a&gt;, the term &quot;redundant publication&quot; is defined this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Redundant publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions.&quot;  In addition, it states:  &quot;(1) Published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required.  (2) Previous publication of an abstract during the proceedings of meetings does not preclude subsequent submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made at the time of submission.  (3) Re-publication of a paper in another language is acceptable, provided that there is full and prominent disclosure of its original source at the time of submission.  (4) At the time of submission, authors should disclose details of related papers, even if in a different language, and similar papers in press.&quot;  Note that (2) states that it is generally acceptable to present a paper in a conference and then later publish exactly the same paper in a journal, as long &#xA;  as you mention to the editor that the paper has been publicly presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://jme.bmj.com/content/35/6/348.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Science journal editors’ views on publication ethics:&#xA;Results of an international survey&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Breaches of publication ethics such as plagiarism, data fabrication and redundant publication are recognised as forms of research misconduct that can undermine the scientific literature.&quot;  It also stated that redundant publication is an unethical practice.  Of 16 ethical issues studied, redundant publication had the highest severity (that is, it caused editors the most concern---more than plagiarism or data fabrication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T13:12:18.077" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:12:18.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="55" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:27:08.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond the h-index, I don't think there's any definitive parameters used in practice. However, some other common factors used to evaluate research faculty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publication count&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quantity of funding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of invited talks &amp;amp; invited journal articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lab size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these apply to the fields I'm familiar with, neuroscience and engineering. I suspect that these answers will vary according to field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T00:27:08.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="57" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:45:56.133" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This post refers to research in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot;&gt;STEM fields&lt;/a&gt;, and may not be applicable to other research topics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my biggest epiphanies in research came when I learned how to read a paper. Reading scientific publications is completely different from reading literature or news. At the beginning of your research career, you can expect to spend a full day (if not more) reading through a single 8-page paper. Some tips follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most papers are divided into &quot;Intro&quot;, &quot;Methods&quot;, &quot;Results&quot;, &quot;Discussion&quot;. These are roughly broken down as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intro&lt;/strong&gt; - Read this for background. There will be nothing &quot;new&quot; in this section. You will find it &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; useful to read the intro section to as many papers as you can get your hands on. While you do this, you will become fairly depressed that so much research has already been done, and you will wonder what you can do to add to the field. Speak with your advisor, he has many good ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt; - This will take you a VERY long time to read initially, because they go into ridiculous detail. They do this so that you, the researcher reading and interested in replicating their results, can do so. If you don't understand everything here at first, don't worry.  NOTE: If you finish reading the methods section and still want to know how something worked, email the author! This is research; the guy who wrote the paper is likely another grad student/postdoc like you. He'd love to hear from you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt; - This is the meat of the paper. Read this very carefully to find out what they found. Between this section and the methods section you will determine what went right, what went wrong, what is new, and what they should have done that they didn't that you can now research and publish and become a superstar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you cite a paper, you will be citing from this section. If you find yourself citing a paper based on something in the Intro, you're just citing another citation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt; - This is &lt;em&gt;the author's thoughts&lt;/em&gt; on what the results mean. Take note of this; the author is using his or her expertise to interpret the results. If you disagree with something he or she says here, and you can back up your findings, more power to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most accomplished researchers don't actually read papers; they just read figures. A good paper will be completely in the figures. (This is particularly true in some biological sciences fields, less so elsewhere.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take notes on the papers you read. Keep those notes. My method was to keep my notes in a 3-ring binder, put a little post-it tab with the author's name, and then put the paper in there as well with the notes, so each &quot;tab&quot; is my notes and the paper. You will read hundreds of papers during your academic career. You will want to remember what you've read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a very arduous process, and the learning curve is steep. Don't be discouraged! Reading papers is a skill, and the more you read the more proficient at understanding them you'll become.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T15:47:20.493" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T15:47:20.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="58" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="65" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:47:55.850" Score="15" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a TA now, and I've found that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on my TA-ship. Is this normal? Furthermore, is this expected? I'm worried that my research career will suffer because of my lack of research productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:47:01.763" Title="Teaching Assistantships and research" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="59" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:56:07.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are presumably pursuing this degree so you can eventually work in industry, I would consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out which programs are more highly regarded in industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider the success rates of each university in helping their graduates find employment; this can vary significantly from institution to institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider the extra-curricular aspects; what does each program's city have to offer? Programs with ties to local industry may help you obtain some useful internship experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T15:25:15.037" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T15:25:15.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="60" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:58:44.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you'll find hard data on this, but from experience working at a hospital/university center (University of Pittsburgh, a subset of which is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), very few MD/PhDs end up doing full-time, or even half-time, research. Being a clinician is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; demanding on one's time, and doing meaningful research requires a significant time commitment. Many of the MD/PhDs I know ended up dropping their research work due to a combined lack of progress and time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T00:58:44.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="63" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:25:28.860" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the beginning read anything and everything (and take notes). You should always be reading something and writing something. The hardest part for most students in the sciences to get past is embracing the unknown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably feel the need to understand everything, right from the start. Unless you are exceptional, you probably will have to read the important papers several times. You are looking to develop a broad-scale understanding of your field. To know where your research fits in, you have to develop an understanding of where your field in. This takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As time goes on, you'll pick and choose more carefully the papers you read closely. Often you can get the idea from just the abstract. If it sounds promising, then read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:25:28.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="64" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:32:10.647" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you should always go to seminar, unless you have some very compelling reason not to go (you are away, you are working on an experiment, you are trying to finish writing your thesis, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific courtesy. To travel somewhere and give a talk to the 10 people who show up (5 of whom you already knew) is really irritating. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good or bad -- you learn something about presentation. Even if you say &quot;wow, I should never do that in a talk&quot; your hour has been well spent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get perspective. You never know when something that someone says will make you see your own work in a different context. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The speaker may someday be interviewing you for a job. It's better to be able to say &quot;I heard your seminar&quot; than &quot;Oh, sorry, I missed your seminar when you visited.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:32:10.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="65" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="58" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:37:50.297" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose it depends on the factors that are causing you to spend more time teaching than you think you should. You should talk to (1) the other TAs and (2) the course leader/director. Find out what is expected and what others are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a relatively new graduate student, then I think it's normal to spend more time teaching and preparing for your teaching. As you start teaching the same courses repeatedly, the time you have to spend in preparation will decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think of the time you are teaching as working on a craft that you will use for the rest of your career, then it is time well spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:37:50.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="66" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="58" CreationDate="2012-02-15T02:47:06.183" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada, TA's usually have a contract that specifies how many hours they should be working per week / TA term.  If you are going way over that you could talk to the course coordinator.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor may also get upset if you are spending a large proportion away from you research project, which his / her grant is paying you to work on.  This is especially true if you are approaching your reclassification exam -- assuming you are going that route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="41" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:47:06.183" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="67" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-02-15T03:23:51.053" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My experience is almost exclusively with mathematics papers, and applies little or not at all to other fields.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of eykanal's post applies to math as well, but one big difference is that math papers are much more varied in their structure, not having an actual experiment to tie them together.  A good paper will generally explain its organization in the introduction, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point worth emphasizing is that reading a paper from front to back, trying to understand everything at each step, is usually inefficient.  The most common instance is that a paper often starts with definitions which may be hard to make sense of without understanding the theorems they're used in.  It's generally more effective to skim the paper several times, trying to understand more and more with each pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relatedly, you'll eventually pick up the skill of picking out the most interesting ideas from a paper without reading the whole thing.  Early on, though, it's probably better to read things carefully; it's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you've understood something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your main question, about breadth versus depth, your first priority has to be depth, because that's what you'll ultimately need to be able to do your own research and get your degree.  But if you're learning enough to do that, you want as much breadth as possible.  It actually gets harder and harder to learn completely new things as you get on in your career, even when there may be direct benefits to your research to do doing so.  Laying the foundations of a broad understanding of your field while in graduate school will pay off later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T03:23:51.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="68" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-15T03:37:21.243" Score="32" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try to always go.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a first/second year grad student, go because you have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a third/fourth year grad student, go to learn about disciplines and topics other than yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a fifth+ year grad student, go to network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T03:37:21.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="69" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="72" CreationDate="2012-02-15T04:01:27.693" Score="16" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;All graduate programs have committees such as the &quot;social committee&quot; and &quot;speaker series committees&quot;, as well as Graduate Student Organizations and other organizations to work on behalf of these programs. Is there any concrete career benefit to being an officer on one of these committees/organizations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T08:20:05.263" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T09:50:17.777" Title="Usefulness of graduate school extracurriculars" Tags="&lt;community&gt;&lt;extracurricular&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="70" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="77" CreationDate="2012-02-15T04:31:56.473" Score="11" ViewCount="1708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering going back to graduate school, but I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach. Is that the case? I have no teaching experience at all. Will that negatively affect my chances of getting in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T11:47:03.597" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:38:13.083" Title="Do I need to have teaching experience before entering grad school?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="72" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="69" CreationDate="2012-02-15T04:48:05.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those volunteer positions may help boost your chances of getting a major award.  For example, one of the most prestigious graduate scholarships you can get in Canada is the Vanier Scholarship and the selection board uses your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanier.gc.ca/eng/selection_criteria-criteres_de_selection.aspx&quot;&gt;leadership experience&lt;/a&gt; as criteria for the award.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to scholarships, it's always nice to have additional things to add to your CV to make you stand out.  These skills can show a number of traits that employers may look for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="41" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T04:48:05.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="73" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="81" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:22:56.637" Score="24" ViewCount="1579" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important challenges that academics will face is group management. Although this takes many forms for graduate students, undergraduate assistants, and so on, I believe postdocs are a fairly &quot;universal&quot;—a professor hires a postdoc specifically for his group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not necessarily clear what qualities to look for in a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it make a difference if it's your group's first or second postdoc, versus the n'th postdoc?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much weight should one give to letters of recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you analyze a publication record, especially when towards the end of the PhD, many papers are often still unpublished and therefore &quot;embargoed?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any criteria that applies specifically to postdocs that might not be considered in, say, hiring for industry or business?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T08:39:28.163" Title="What are the most important criteria to consider when hiring postdocs for a research group?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="74" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="69" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:28:04.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit of a mixed bag. While there is certainly a lot of benefit to performing service activities—you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; giving back to your community, and that is both admirable and expected to advance at all levels of academia—you need to strike a balance. No activities at all makes you look too single-minded (can be a concern for employers). Too many activities and it will look like you're not committed enough to research (again a concern). You need to strike a balance between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T06:28:04.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="75" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="52" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:36:13.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have to be extraordinary for a department to hire you over an equally qualified citizen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That really depends on the search criteria. If the criteria specifically calls for international experience—and many jobs around the world now do exactly that—you might not be disadvantaged at all, and in some cases even have the upper hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; true that hiring a citizen is generally easier than hiring a non-citizen, and in the EU, it's easier to hire a non-citizen who lives in the EU than a non-citizen who lives outside the EU. The result will be a lot more bureaucracy. Whether or not the hiring unit wants to go through the extra trouble will make a lot of the difference, and it's not something you have much control over. (The same principle applies in the US for non-citizens!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T06:36:13.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="76" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="51" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:44:43.163" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have no qualms with submitting the same &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; to multiple conferences; however, in my field (Chemical Engineering), we don't really do conference proceedings. Therefore, it's not such a big deal to present a work more than once; it's being given to different audiences that might not otherwise see the work, and it's not going into the publication record multiple times, so there really aren't any ethical violations going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in a field where conference papers are required to give a talk, then ethical rules demand that you disclose if a paper has been accepted previously. If you've changed the material enough, or introduced enough new material, then it's a little bit more of a grey area. But it's still better to err on the side of caution than to get caught out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T06:44:43.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="77" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="70" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:48:29.320" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, no, it won't. Having teaching experience might weigh in your favor in exceptional circumstances (a graduate department that needs a lot of teaching assistants, and you're &quot;on the bubble&quot;; you're going into an education program or something similar; or the application specifically asks for teaching experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most graduate schools don't expect that students have prior teaching experience, and provide training to smooth the transition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching load also varies widely from program to program: some science and engineering students TA for one semester over a five-year program, while humanities graduate students may have to TA every semester to pay for their studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T06:48:29.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="78" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="51" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:52:10.497" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than asking what's acceptable, I think it's worthwhile to step back and think about the purpose of scientific publication.  Your goal in publishing should be to disseminate useful ideas, not to create a publication record.  If you have ten papers that are all very similar, it's hard for people to learn about your ideas because they won't have time to read all those papers.  Just write one good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T06:52:10.497" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="79" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-15T07:02:24.023" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a &quot;definitive&quot; answer is possible, but the following is based on personal experience and observation of many other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is okay with it, take as many courses as you can in things that interest you and are in the realm of your discipline.  As an applied math grad student, one of the best things I did was to take a graduate course in optimization from the CS department, even though I thought it had nothing to do with my thesis (in numerical discretization of PDEs).  It ended up being crucial and allowing me to publish at least one paper that I never would have written if I hadn't taken that course.  I also took courses in things like astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and turbulence; I don't use those things much but I can converse with scientists in those fields, which is often useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I didn't take, say, philosophy or Italian or business management courses -- stick to courses related to your field.  And make sure that whoever is paying you is okay with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T07:02:24.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="80" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="40" CreationDate="2012-02-15T07:11:57.040" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opinions on when to submit things to arXiv vary both between and within fields.  See&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astrobetter.com/to-post-or-not-to-post-publishing-to-the-arxiv-before-acceptance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;To Post or Not to Post: Publishing to the arXiv Before Acceptance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/73526/how-to-use-arxiv&quot;&gt;How to use arXiv?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for lots of opinions.  You should talk to your advisor/colleagues who can give you a better sense of how people in your field think about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T12:56:30.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="81" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2012-02-15T08:39:28.163" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer, item by item:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think that there is a difference if this is yet another postdoc or your only postdoc. But most important, we should pay attention to the ratio postdoc/permanent researchers. If the ratio is low (few postdoc, lot of permanent researchers), you can choose to work with &quot;junior&quot; postdoc (=someone not completely capable for working alone), while if the ratio is high, you need postdoc that are in fact already at the level of an assistant prof.&#xA;But at some point I think we must ask ourselves if we always need one more postdoc. I guess this will depend on the field. In theoretical fields, when we hire a postdoc, this is to work with him. In some more practical fields, we tend to hire postdoc to make them working for us. The two cases are different : in the first case we need someone that will have ultimately an academic position, in the latter we need someone for coding, experimenting, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personally, I am not interested in the letters. I ask for references and I take my phone to know more about the candidate. Letters are always telling that the candidate is great, even if this is not completely true. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I ask the candidate his/her papers, even those unpublished, and I read them. Then I contact some of the other authors to know more about who done what.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly yes. A postdoc is a researcher, I think that the way of working is very different : you can spend a lot of time without being &quot;productive&quot; when you are a postdoc, which is not the case in industry. This can be depressing, so we have to make sure that a postdoc (which has less guidance than a PhD student) can handle that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T08:39:28.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="82" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2012-02-15T08:58:36.337" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few journals where you can publish theoretical work in this area. Here are a few suggestions (the distinction is based on my perception and knowledge of what they've published, I'll let others chip in if they disagree):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more theoretical work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tcbb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liebertpub.com/CMB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Computational Biology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+%28default%29/journal/285&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Mathematical Biology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+%28default%29/journal/11538&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bulletin of Mathematical Biology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more applied work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bioinformatics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMC Bioinformatics&lt;/a&gt;. (open access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.almob.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Algorithms for Molecular Biology&lt;/a&gt;. (open access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/home.action&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS Computational Biology&lt;/a&gt;. (open access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not exhaustive of course, and I suggest you discuss these &quot;candidates&quot; with your collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I marked some of them &quot;open access&quot; because they advertise(d) so. This does not mean that the others do not offer that option, you'll have to check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T13:11:32.057" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T13:11:32.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="83" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T10:35:05.727" Score="48" ViewCount="12500" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student I generate a lot of pages with calculations, ideas and lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of them are useful only for a short amount of time, but some may be important for much longer (when writing a paper, or when having new ideas to continue a once abandoned project). Typically I work on a few project simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, what is a good practice of taking and keeping notes? (With or without computer apps.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing on single sheets (even if adding date and title) makes it easy to organize by topic, but also easy to loose. Keeping in one notepad makes it harder to collect useful things of one topic in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T14:58:51.817" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T06:05:38.890" Title="Good practices for organizing notes" Tags="&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="50" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="84" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T10:40:02.707" Score="80" ViewCount="12087" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; is great, it covers only topics in physics, mathematics and computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good preprint storage places for other scientific disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2020-12-22T18:54:12.727" Title="Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="34" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="85" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T10:41:05.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have Microsoft Windows Office 2010, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt; as a really handy way of tracking your notes, images, miscellaneous ideas etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a non-MS cross-platform app, you can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; - it is similar to OneNote, with the added advantage of syncing your notes over multiple computers/tablets etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T11:06:15.863" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T11:06:15.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="86" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T10:53:44.050" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should keep a &lt;a href=&quot;http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/labnotebooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;research notebook&lt;/a&gt;, regardless of whatever other system you have for notes. The format of the notebook is up to you; it can even be public (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carlboettiger.info/research/lab-notebook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carl Boettiger's&lt;/a&gt; as an example of an electronic lab notebook). it can be created in programs such as an iPython or Jupyter notebook, or even a more specialized program such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://findingsapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Findings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose the pen-and-paper route for your research notes, and want to have the added flexibility/security of taking your notes with you (and also because it's good practice to do so), you should consider getting a scanner and making regular backups. You can then import these into a product like Evernote, Onenote, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://marinersoftware.com/macjournal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MacJournal&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;If you are using LaTeX, your options are somewhat limited, as most of the major tools for notebooking really don't support &quot;live&quot; LaTeX. Then you'd be better off using something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://aquamacs.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aquamacs&lt;/a&gt; as a holder for your &quot;notebooks&quot; (LaTeX documents), and then using one of the above packages (or something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mekentosj.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.marinersoftware.com/products/paperless/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paperless&lt;/a&gt; to organize the resulting PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T06:05:38.890" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T06:05:38.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="87" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:10:46.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some pretty well-thought suggestions about organizing your notes (without being specific to any application, and dealing with both electronic and paper notes), you can refer to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~jason/advice/how-to-organize-your-files.html&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of what methods are discussed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping Track of Information Online: How to organize your notes in a sensible directory structure on your computer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version Control: Using the power of SCS packages (Mercurial happens to be my favorite due to its ease of use) to store multiple revisions of your notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping Track of Paper: Finally, how to keep your office clutter-free. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that the link is a bit dated, so it doesn't refer to online services like Google Docs which can be effectively used to keep a back-up of your notes online!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T11:49:43.810" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T11:49:43.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="88" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:31:54.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to keep the paper option, since most initial ideas are usually a waste of time to typeset using LaTeX or any other computer system. I really hope that does not sound like advertising, but I find the combination of &lt;a href=&quot;http://atoma.be/en/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atoma&lt;/a&gt; notebooks (picture below) and sticker tabs quite efficient. You don't lose sheets, and you reorganise them as you wish, as many times as you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZdnhI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T11:31:54.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="89" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:37:01.500" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely recommend a research notebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several different ways you can go about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The old school method of just using a paper notebook, where you enter data and computations sequentially by date. One is often encouraged to start a new page if one is moving to a new topic (and label the topic at the top of the page); but another possibility is to make use of the margins for noting the topic at hand. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An electronic notebook would be more searchable. On the other end of the spectrum from a paper notebook is a lab wiki. Some universities even have a university-wide Wiki platform available (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.epfl.ch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's EPFL's wiki portal&lt;/a&gt;). In those cases you won't have to worry about administration issues, and many of those services are regularly backed up, and come with access control system so that you can limit your lab notebook to be only viewable by those in your research group. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An intermediate method is to just keep a private electronic notebook. I use a customised document class that I wrote for this specific purpose. If you use a good indexing package in LaTeX and make the effort to keep good indices, such a notebook can be very easily searchable. It also has the advantage that when preparing lecture notes or papers for submission, you can just copy and paste directly from your notebook. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer not to have a single notebook, what you'd need then is a sophisticated document managing system. For paper documents this will generally involve a filing cabinet, folders, and sticky labels. For electronic documents (say you digitize all your notes either by typing them up or scanning them), a lot of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/36/94&quot;&gt;citation managers&lt;/a&gt;, especially those that support multiple databases, can easily be co-opted for organising notes. On the even fancier side, you may want to use some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mind-mapping software&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option if you do not mind &quot;showing how the sausage is made&quot; is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openscience.org/blog/?page_id=44&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;follow the initiative of the Open Science Project&lt;/a&gt; and blog about your research as you go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T11:37:01.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="90" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="154" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:40:09.583" Score="204" ViewCount="38621" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to understand is, to what degree does the status/rank of the University (where one completes his/her Ph.D) matter while shaping his/her career after graduation? I would like to know the weight given to one's school in both the following cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While applying for post-docs/faculty positions in academia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While applying to industrial research labs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I've read on some forums (I can't locate the link now) that while considering prospective applications for tenure-track faculty positions, very few Universities accept a candidate who has completed his/her Ph.D from a lower ranked school having a lesser &quot;brand&quot; value, irrespective of the fact whether he/she has published equally original work as his/her counterpart from an Ivy league college. How much truth is in this statement? It would be really great if someone already in academia, either as a newly-accepted faculty or someone on the Faculty Hiring committee could share their experiences/statistics on this regard. I'm simply interested to know the answer, without commenting at all on whether such a practice is justifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, what about recruitment to internationally acclaimed research labs (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.watson.ibm.com/overview.shtml&quot;&gt;IBM T.J.Watson lab&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/default.aspx&quot;&gt;Microsoft research lab&lt;/a&gt;) - what importance do they place on the pedigree of a candidate's college, before taking into consideration what they published ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm personally interested in answers related to the field of Computer Science (theory), but the question is applicable to any prospective grad student in any discipline in my opinion. Feel free to share your personal experiences post-Ph.D in detail, as that would give me (and future viewers of this question) about what its like to carve a career once you are out of school!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T10:05:26.267" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T10:05:26.267" Title="University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="91" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:50:11.517" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems that neither option presented below are taking new submissions. I keep the answer here for historical interest.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philica.com/faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Philica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; which occupies a bit of a strange place. It is a free, open-access journal that publishes immediately and in any discipline. The website comes with a non-traditional review system. It is in between what one may call a pre-print server and what one would call an electronic open access journal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nature Precedings used to take submissions, but no longer does:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://precedings.nature.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature Precedings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: a pre-print repository run by Nature Publishing Group that focuses on chemistry, biological sciences, and earth sciences. &lt;em&gt;Edit: As bobthejoe noted below in the comments, Nature Precedings is no longer taking new submissions; though it will for the foreseeable future remain a repository for the pre-prints already submitted.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2018-03-13T14:52:38.587" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T14:52:38.587" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="92" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="90" CreationDate="2012-02-15T11:51:32.857" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that it can matter fairly significantly in where you get your post-doctoral fellowship and eventual professorship, and it will matter &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; significantly if you choose to follow a career outside of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a job &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; academia, potential employers will look at many factors, including publication record, research success, research track, who your advisor was, etc. The school is important but other factors are involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a job &lt;em&gt;outside of&lt;/em&gt; academia, they will look at your GPA and the name of the university from which you graduated. In this case, your university could easily be a &quot;make it or break it&quot; part of the deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T11:51:32.857" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="94" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:04:56.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When did you graduate? A new law came into effect in 2010 which requires that all &lt;strong&gt;new postdoc hires&lt;/strong&gt; of individuals who &lt;strong&gt;held a PhD for more than 2 years&lt;/strong&gt; at the start of the contract be only given L permits. (I only found out after I had a similar discussion with human resources a few weeks ago.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have had your degree for less than 2 years, it is possible your university can sort it out for you. If you have had your degree for more than 2 years, there's pretty much nothing the universities can do (aside for lobbying for a change of the law). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to bank services: for a place to put your money, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postfinance.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PostFinance&lt;/a&gt; for which you can open an account at most post offices. They care a bit less about the issue with the permits. The main problem with having an L instead of a B permit, with regards to banking in general, is that they may be unwilling to give you a credit card or extend you a loan; you shouldn't have problem getting a place to put your money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T12:04:56.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="96" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="157" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:51:04.227" Score="19" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious to know what kind of choices does someone with a recent Ph.D in theoretical CS have, in the industrial research labs, and how to find out about existing opportunities. In particular, I'm looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Links to sites where such opportunities are listed, if something like that exists. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information regarding the scope of working on pure theoretical topics in industrial labs, which tend to be product-oriented IMHO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be really great if anyone working in an industrial lab would share his experience (which lab, what kind of work you do etc), even if he/she may not be working on theoretical CS (or CS at all!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T10:43:59.637" Title="What kind of opportunities exist in the industry for someone with a Ph.D in theoretical CS?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="97" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:58:35.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of my answer in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/57/73&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; applies here as well; when reading papers, I've found it useful to write down notes on paper, and then put the notes in a 3-ring binder, along with the paper itself. A similar technique can be used electronically using either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;... take notes on each paper and attach the notes to the paper (or the to paper if using Evernote). Personally, I found it much better to take notes by hand, as you can scribble in margins, write equations, draw out plots, MUCH faster than if done by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also made it a point to keep all notes from classes I took. I've found numerous instances where I referred to notes from a course I took a while back. It's much easier to re-read your own notes (assuming you take good notes) than to learn it from a book where you're unfamiliar with the layout and presentation style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T12:58:35.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="98" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:10:42.850" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ones more aimed at social sciences (that I am aware of) are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social Science Research Network (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssrn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SSRN&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The National Bureau of Economic Research (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/new.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NBER&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The recently-founded &lt;a href=&quot;https://socopen.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SocArXiv&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link to search and upload preprints&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SSRN is dominated by economic and legal research (and NBER is obviously focused on economics). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another I recently became aware of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;, although this appears to me more like a personal website that has the option to upload working papers than an organized repository like SSRN or arXiv (here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://unm.academia.edu/KellySocia/Papers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example profile page&lt;/a&gt; on Academia.edu).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T02:12:11.963" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T02:12:11.963" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="99" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="90" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:54:56.917" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, when looking for a job outside of Academia it's only that first job where your school really matters. Even in that case, it's just the most recent school, or post-doc position, or fellowship, or... that makes the difference. As your career progresses after your first job your more recent activities and experience outweigh earlier schooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:54:56.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="104" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:08:48.843" Score="158" ViewCount="29635" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague and I recently submitted a paper to a journal with an impressive-sounding name, the &quot;International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Research&quot;. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=224&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IJAICR is a referred [sic] journal in the field of computer science, artificial intelligence and soft computing methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was accepted two days after we submitted it. That's too fast. We were suspicious. Although the journal said that all papers are peer-reviewed, we could not see how that was done in two days. Plus, we received no comments from the reviewers. Also, the submission guidelines didn't ask for a &quot;blind&quot; copy (without our names or any references to who we were). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, there's more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance letter asked us to send them US$300 to publish it. We did not. We've withdrawn our submission and will submit a new version of the paper to a more reputable journal in the coming months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How might we make a better choice of respectable journals before we submit next time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T19:43:36.377" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T13:48:49.027" Title="How do you judge the quality of a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="50" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:43:30.130" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is by word-of-mouth: ask around the department, ask your PhD advisor, ask people you've worked with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a specialist journal, and you are a specialist, then the next best way is to look at the previously published issues of the journal and see what kinds of articles they accept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, the Australian Government's Research Council puts out a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm&quot;&gt;ranking of journals and conferences&lt;/a&gt; every now and then. It is not perfect, but should give a rough idea of where a journal places in the eyes of the bureaucrats &lt;code&gt;:-)&lt;/code&gt;. Note that &quot;new&quot; journals (journals that have not been active for more than X years) are not ranked, so omission from the list does not necessarily mean that the journal itself is not worthwhile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T14:43:30.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:44:14.903" Score="18" ViewCount="1066" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience with hosting reading groups/journals clubs in an off-line setting. Usually we meet every week in a room and discuss the paper for that week. However, recently some colleagues and I (~7 people) are trying to catch up on a specific topic quickly, and we want to hold a short reading group/journal club. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues are at other universities, and cannot physically attend meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have any advice or suggestions for tools to hold an online reading group?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first instinct was G+ Hangout (especially with the new beta features they are making available right now). Skype is also an option, but last I checked required a fee for group video chat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preferred features are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to (and preferably see) each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have access to some sort of shared whiteboard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to use and set up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T18:15:53.650" Title="Advice and tools for hosting an online journal club" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:49:03.493" Score="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I usually choose journals is by looking at where people I trust/follow publish, and where previous work was published. It is usually not too hard to compare the quality your work to the quality of the work you are citing, and chose a target based on that. Unless your field is highly mutli-disciplinary, you will see the same journals/conferences popping up again and again in your references; submit to one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before submitting, however, it is always important to look at a few articles from previous issues. This will give you a second gauge of quality for the journal and also let you pick up on any formatting and presentations quirks that might be present in the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T14:49:03.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:49:21.167" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I look at the publisher. If you don' find a lot of references to the publisher on the web, it is suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I look at the editor in chief, and at the board of editors. If you don't find many big names here, this is again very suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, google the journal name and look who is publishing in the journal. Most of the time it becomes clear if the journal is serious or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T14:49:21.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:56:03.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find many softwares or online services for that purpose : blackboard IM, tinychat, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T14:56:03.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="96" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:04:07.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what is the &quot;frontier&quot; of theoretical computer science, but some companies, such as IBM Research or Microsoft Research, also make money by applying to some public funded research project, and as such, can work on rather theoretical work. For instance, I was involved in a project with some guys from IBM TJ Watson on security, and I can assure you that the work was rather abstract, and not at all IBM product oriented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for sites where such opportunities are listed, I'm not sure there are many, I'd say (but that's just my impression) that's it's usually by &quot;networking&quot; (i.e. you need to be involved with some guys from a company in some project, and then they might hire you). However, a good technique could be to apply for an internship first (if you're still doing your PhD), although it might a bit too late now, or even for a postdoc (if you've finished it). And in order to find the labs, I'd suggest to go to your favourite conferences, get the accepted papers, and scan for some big companies :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Concerning the sites where you can find job offers, I'd actually suggest to look for specialised sites in your topic of interest, where it can be possible to find offers from industry, rather than on larger sites. I guess most companies prefer to focus their search rather than dropping an ad on Monster, and receiving tons of irrelevant CVs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance (although most ads will be from public academy, some are from industry, it can give you some pointers as to which companies can recruit, even if the ads are out of date): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurosys.org/jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EuroSys&lt;/a&gt;, for Computer Systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iacr.org/jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IACR&lt;/a&gt;, for Crypto&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:58:58.167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:58:58.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:09:10.050" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's ask another question: is there at least one good reason not to go at the seminars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time consumption: except if you have a 1 hour seminar each day, you can probably afford the time loss due to the seminar. BTW, it it a time loss only if you go and don't speak to anybody, don't ask questions and don't try to understand a little piece of what is presented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not profitable: really? A lot of research results start with ideas from elsewhere. Of course, it can be different for earth sciences. Even if you don't see something directly useful, you will probably be confronted to different ways of thinking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I am going to the seminars with my laptop/smartphone, people will think I am rude&quot;: and they will be right if you use your laptop for other things that taking notes about the talk. To be fair, this can be considered OK to go with your laptop for working during the talk if your the dean, or the head of the department...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in fact I cannot see good reasons not to go, except if it takes you 5+ hours a week...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T15:09:10.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="132" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:50:35.713" Score="79" ViewCount="22366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested in tools helping to organize thoughts and ideas, especially in a non-linear way (i.e. not as most existing note taking tools, working with lists and bullets, but rather as a post-it application). Ideally, something like the tool they use in Minority Reports would be cool (without the fancy-touch thingy), but an important point would be the ability to visually connect different ideas/notes together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Maybe to make things more explicit, I have a visual memory, and it helps me a lot having a graphical disposition to classify things (like important things at the top-right, urgent ones on the middle-left, etc). Basically, I'd like to find my messy desk on my screen :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T10:14:31.717" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T13:40:19.227" Title="Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="60" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:58:25.420" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in a teaching job, my answer is yes, definitely.  You may be asked to teach some courses that are not in your field, or even before it happens, the search committee may want someone who can teach a wide range of courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="18" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:33:54.190" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:33:54.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:13:13.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opinions on others may depend on many factors. Some people may not care at all (or even does not notice), but generally not attending seminars may be viewed as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of commitment,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of genuine interest in research by other people and in other fields,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general laziness,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of respect for work by other people,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you not feeling being a part of the department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while you may care less about the opinion of your colleagues, the opinion of your advisor may matter a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone knows that a certain seminar is of very poor quality, perhaps the reaction may be not so severe. However, I guess here it is not the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't ask me the difference between a protein and an amino acid; I have no idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a sign that even more that you should the seminar. Not knowing sth simple - check wikipedia or ask your friends. Not knowing something more advanced - ask the lecturer (as (s)he is there exactly to explain you, among the others, a certain topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for some reason other answers do not cover the question, which was spelled out three times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will people judge me negatively for skipping department seminars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you look down on colleagues who sometimes skip out on talks far outside their expertise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is skipping an event like this better or worse than showing up but discreetly reclaiming time during bad talks by studying on a smartphone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:13:13.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:20:05.987" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;For non-linear note-taking and also collaboration I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com/&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt;. It is one file that stores all your notes as an interactive wiki. Through a plug-in it support LaTeX-math. If you throw it on a shared &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/&quot;&gt;dropbox&lt;/a&gt; then it can even be a quick way to share ideas with colleagues. If you want something more formal than dropbox, then there are hosted options like &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiddlyspace.com/&quot;&gt;TiddlySpace&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:20:05.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:59:05.000" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot;&gt;Mind maps&lt;/a&gt; might be what you're looking for.  From the Wikipedia page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea... Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept_mapping_and_mind_mapping_software&quot;&gt;mind mapping tools&lt;/a&gt; out there.  I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xmind.net/&quot;&gt;XMind&lt;/a&gt; before.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One drawback is that it's hard to put longer thoughts into a mindmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:59:05.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-02-15T17:08:09.247" Score="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to check that the publisher is not on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, the publisher in question is not.  I've found Beall's list to be fairly comprehensive, but the vanity press industry seems to be booming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: that list is just one guy's opinion.  But it resonates with my own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: As of late January 2017, Beall's list has been taken down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T19:14:54.343" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T19:14:54.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:48:36.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've heard, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOEFL&quot;&gt;TOEFL&lt;/a&gt; is well recognised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, once you get your PhD, I don't think people ask for some English certifications (at least, I've never been asked to, and I'm not a native speaker). I guess your publications and the interview in English should be enough to see if you're able to communicate in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT List of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/toefl/ibt/about/who_accepts_scores&quot;&gt;who accepts the TOEFL&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T22:59:35.483" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:59:35.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="69" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:57:13.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than being useful on my resume, being part of a student organization in a leadership role gave me new perspective. It allowed me to exercise my mind in a different way and allowed me to hone my administrative skills, people skills and time management skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It actually had a positive impact on my research because I was more focused as a result of having a &quot;lot more on my plate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:57:13.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:00:06.403" Score="49" ViewCount="31417" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many countries an application for a PhD position includes a written research proposal, so my questions is &lt;strong&gt;what are some advises/strategies to come up with a good topic/idea for a PhD research proposal and how can one assess the quality/fruitfulness of an idea&lt;/strong&gt;? As an undergraduate student one just doesn't have the experience to foresee which ideas might have promising research results and which probably won't have. (And I doubt that potential supervisors have the time to comment on every idea of every potential applicant in cases where it is possible to establish some kind of contact before the actual application.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T20:51:55.303" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T00:27:14.843" Title="How to find a good topic for a PhD research proposal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="58" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:02:33.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know what you feel like. When I was a fresh TA, I spent an &quot;inordinate&quot; amount of time with my TA-ship. I came to understand that both my research and my teaching assignments did have equal priority and I couldn't neglect one and give preference to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were always weeks when my teaching load was more manageable and I could progress my research and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, how the dynamics of your advisor affect this have a major implication on what &quot;inordinate&quot; would mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here was my experience as a TA the first time I did it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taught two sections of a lab, each requiring about 2 hours of lecture (4hrs total), 5 hours of preparation (5 hours total), 1 office hour each (2 hours total) and 2 hours grading each (3-4 hours total as I graded the same thing for both sections)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Graded 200 homework assignments a week for a course what was out of my specialization (8-10 hours a week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total TA time per week ~ 25.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also had to do research and that time commitment was highly variable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that generally gives you perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background about me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Been in grad school since Fall 2006.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T19:13:49.837" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:13:49.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="117" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:05:33.810" Score="25" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jot down your interests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Future goals (long term and short term). Doesn't have to be accurate but just to give you the &quot;big picture&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak with your PhD advisor (if you already have one).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Align his/her interests with yours and see if you have common ground (you may need to lean towards his interests or find another advisor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you have a list of topics that you could explore, do a literature review and figure out for what topics you'd have a taste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each person has his own formula on what to choose as their PhD proposal. This was the way I went about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD (Mechanical Engineering Expected Fall 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:05:33.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="139" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:12:15.750" Score="20" ViewCount="9796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what impact does prior industry experience (by which I mean 2+ years in a non-trivial functional role in any established organization) lend to the profile of someone who is entering grad school for a Ph.D. (in my case, its Computer Science, but I expect the question to be applicable to other areas as well) ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do admission committees look upon it as a bonus point, seeing that the applicant has managed real-world responsibilities successfully in the past, thereby improving the chances of acquiring funding (in terms of TA/RA) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More importantly, does it help the candidate during (and post Ph.D), when he is looking for research internships/post-docs ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, assuming the position the applicant held is in a completely different area from his/her research, what other factors become important in the both the above cases? Is it the difficulty of projects the candidate undertook (which, frankly, very few people outside the organization are equipped to judge), or the level of success (promotions, accolades acquired during the stint in industry) that matter, or are there other parameters as well ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in case it is deemed that such a profile offer limited/no advantage to the grad student, it would be nice to know why that may be the case - after all, most (if not all!) organizations are run for profit, and they would tend to have very little use for someone who is not productive or capable of learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T12:07:21.893" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T08:01:56.483" Title="Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:17:44.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the translation is up to the universities who do the conversion. I think that it is unlikely that there are is one set of guidelines as even within a country not all universities have necessarily the same ranking systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.sowi.rub.de/mam/images/auslandsstudium/umrechnungstabelle_noten.pdf&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;sa=U&amp;amp;ei=lQM8T82XBOnJ0QW7neVs&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQFjAE&amp;amp;q=erasmus+grade+translation&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF1ed-eRBTDXIhteYRf-tD1dSnkIw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this table&lt;/a&gt; on Google though that gives some idea on what grades are roughly equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:17:44.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="120" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:27:23.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that having industry experience is going to help with a PhD application unless you have actually worked on the project that you want to do your PhD in. It's certainly not going to help if you worked in a completely different area. Also note that PhD students don't usually apply for funding. I'm farily certain that the answer to your first point is &quot;no&quot; in almost all cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I believe it would be more help when looking for internships or a (non-academic) job after finishing the PhD. Again it depends what exactly it is you've done and what you're applying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working at a company and doing PhD-level research are two (very) different things (unless you're doing industrial research) and being good at one doesn't imply that you're equally good at the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:27:23.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:34:55.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index&quot;&gt;g-index&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-b_index&quot;&gt;h-b-index&lt;/a&gt;. Another thing is (in conjunction with the number of publications) the number of coauthors, i.e. has somebody only worked with one group (perhaps at the same university) or have they collaborated with lots of people from different institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:34:55.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="135" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:27:37.327" Score="13" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that an applicant does his research and applies to a bunch of schools for a PhD. He gets accepted by a few of them with full aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the research and faculty at all places is more or less of the same quality, what factors come into play when deciding where to go?&#xA;(Also assume that the student is an international student)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How important are the following factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location (Urban/Rural) of School&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Country of School &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rankings (For instace, U Tennessee Knoxville has awesome Supercomputing Research but a not-so-good overall Ranking)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of Department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diversity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student Faculty Ratio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="99421" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2019-01-23T08:51:07.643" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T17:34:22.917" Title="Evaluating Grad Schools on grounds other than research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:32:44.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A strong factor for most people will be the financial impact, i.e. how much is it going to cost and are there scholarships available. I would also have a look at the specific field (or subfield) that I'm interested in and compare the faculty and research according to that criteria. In particular the prospective advisor, not so much the rest of the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:32:44.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:36:43.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often one publishes in the most prestigious general journals (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/&quot;&gt;Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;) and most prestigious journals in their field (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/&quot;&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:36:43.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="120" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:37:01.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry experience cannot hurt. While it may not help in every case, in many it will. One of the things PhD application committees consider is their mix of students. In my experience (in Computer Science) a typical PhD program consists of students of many ages from many backgrounds. A good program has a diverse mix, including those with &quot;real world&quot; experience. So I bet it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:37:01.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="129" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:37:34.823" Score="17" ViewCount="2212" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a postdoc, I'm considering to apply to research-only positions (for instance in a research institute, and not a university), and I know that one of the responsibilities of being a researcher is to recruit PhD students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally only know people (including me) who have been &quot;recruited&quot; for a PhD by one of their teacher (usually at Master level), and so I wouldn't be sure of how to proceed in order to recruit a PhD student as a young researcher: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there some specialized websites where to post ads? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it better to contact some teachers to see if they have good students to recommend? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in this case, which criteria can one use? If I were to teach, I would have a whole semester to know a student, and to decide whether it would make a good fit for a PhD, but how to do that during a one-hour interview? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T00:26:28.993" Title="How to recruit a PhD student without a strong connection to teaching?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:45:29.367" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD studentships are quite often advertised like &quot;normal&quot; jobs, i.e. on general job boards/recruting websites. If you have contacts, by all means use them. As for evaluating the candidates, similar guidelines as for evaluating applicants for any jobs apply. I don't think there's a one-fits-all answer. Note that the hiring process may also depend on what institution you'd be working for. They might have an HR department that screens/selects the candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:45:29.367" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="58" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:47:01.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the course, you may have to invest up to two days of your working week to TA. If the course involves homework assignment, you will have to prepare them, grade them, and give them feedback for every mistake they do (they are learning). Be extremely careful when such tasks are requested, they are a potential career killer. I don't know if there are legal requirement to respect on this regard, but you are not going to have any friend if the professor has to grade two hundred students tests a week instead of delegating the task to his minions (postdocs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T20:47:01.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:58:46.507" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this does depend a lot on the kind of person you are/ the way of job you like to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied IT, but I visited a broad variety of courses. Even history, chinese for beginners, and some other stuff which you might think is not related to my field of work. I don't regret it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a Software Engineer it's actually &lt;strong&gt;important to understand a lot of different fields&lt;/strong&gt;. As you can be on projects that differ a lof from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you propably can &lt;strong&gt;widen your personal network of contacts&lt;/strong&gt;, if you go to class with students that you didn't know before!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would stick to the topics you are interrested in&lt;/strong&gt;, instead of ending up as an unhappy person after your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="108" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T18:59:37.297" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T18:59:37.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-02-15T21:02:24.413" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For nice graphical note editing/drawing:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get the hang on it, you probably could &lt;strong&gt;use &lt;a href=&quot;http://prezi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://prezi.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your notes would look great, and you can always &lt;strong&gt;zoom in and out&lt;/strong&gt;, if you want to add details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="126634" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T05:50:51.933" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T05:50:51.933" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2012-02-15T21:19:44.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other factors might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Association with an industrial research lab, due to to proximity or high-density of alumni in that lab. That'll make things a lot easier when looking for summer internships!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The climate of the place. A Ph.D is a 4+ years commitment, and whether you'd be spending 6 months every year in freezing cold or not does make a difference once you are actually there!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add more factors you might want to look at as they occur to me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T21:19:44.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:01:42.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of other options for mind-mapping software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Curio&lt;/a&gt;, which is a very powerful program that can do mind-mapping, as well as a whole lot of other activities. The problem I had with it was that it was, if anything, &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; stuffed with features: I couldn't really figure out how to get simple tasks done, because there was so much work to do just to learn how to do anything at all. However, I'm certain you wouldn't run out of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you're looking for is something a little less complicated, but still in the sense of mind-mapping, you can try something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OmniGraffle Professional&lt;/a&gt;, which produces diagrams and organizational charts of almost any shape or complexity. It doesn't try to be the &quot;all things to all people&quot; that Curio is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &quot;out of the box&quot; solution is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, which might be a little too text-based for your needs, but is a great tool for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T22:49:19.363" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T22:49:19.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:08:04.487" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to six graduate schools in my field, and was accepted at all of them. The criteria I used to whittle down the choices were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did I like the people in the department I was visiting?  (This surprisingly &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; eliminate one school.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did I want to go to live in the city where the school was for five or so years? (One more down, four left.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could I find &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; people I was interested in working for, so that if I didn't get my top choice, I'd still be happy with the projects I'd be taking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I financially afford to live in the city? (One more down, two left.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, however, the remaining criteria were all competing with one another: one school offered me &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; more money, the other had &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; better location. Both offered plenty of research, and both had excellent reputations in their field. Ultimately, for me, the location, combined with the slightly higher general profile of the school I attended, swayed the balance for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that you're looking for individual groups or faculty members as well as entire departments. Students and faculty will both be considerations for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:08:04.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:12:11.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer for a specific case: if you are looking to hire PhDs in Theoretical Computer Science, join the THEORYNT mailing list, where you can both send and receive mails about such vacancies. I'm giving an &lt;a href=&quot;https://listserv.nodak.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind1202a&amp;amp;L=theorynt&amp;amp;T=0&amp;amp;P=367&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example link&lt;/a&gt; that would show you the typical format of such a mail, you can browse through the rest from the website itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look around, I'm sure there's be a mailing alias for your research specialty as well (if not, maybe you can start one!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:12:11.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:12:31.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am presuming by your question that you are talking about working in Europe; in North America, scientists at non-academic research labs generally are not generally expected to recruit PhD students. Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy method for applying for positions outside of posting announcements on sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://brightrecruits.com/tiptop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TIPTOP&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you will need to make sure that you are clear on your future workplace's requirements and regulations regarding the recruiting of graduate students. Many such institutes do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have PhD-granting programs of their own; in that case, you would need to make sure you were affiliated with a program that does grant doctoral degrees &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you begin recruitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:12:31.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="90" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:17:22.260" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The larger the workplace, and the more applicants they're responsible for screening, the more important a role the academic pedigree will end up playing. A small business with a handful of applicants—or a professor hiring a single postdoc—probably doesn't need to screen out candidates as efficiently or as ruthlessly as someone that gets dozens or hundreds of applications for an opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To point out specific data points, my previous employer had a &quot;preferred&quot; list of schools for its technical hires; if you went to a school that wasn't on the list, it was a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; harder to get hired, and some hiring managers wouldn't even try to go through the work needed to get around this ruling. In some cases, this even applied to people who had been out of school for decades!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your pedigree is almost never a disadvantage; and as I have been told by many an academic, it can be of enormous benefit to you, particularly if you make the most of your opportunities at a big-name school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:17:22.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="120" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:22:44.967" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who sits on an admissions committee, this isn't idle speculation, but it is a personal perspective. I agree with the other responders that industrial experience probably isn't of much interest to an admissions committee, unless you get a strong letter of recommendation from a supervisor who can make a convincing case for admission to the graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that while you are in industry, unless you're in a position where your actively doing things related to your graduate school education, your knowledge of the &quot;basics&quot; is atrophying, so it will actually be somewhat more difficult to get back up to speed for the coursework typically required for a PhD program. The longer you're in industry, the harder it typically is to play catchup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, industrial experience may be of interest to an individual professor within a department, and would certainly help with employment following the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:22:44.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:42:10.450" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know in advance what's going to be useful later?  The wider a net you cast, the more tools you have at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:42:10.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2012-02-16T00:26:28.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of ways to determine whether a particular graduate student is a good candidate for your lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subject knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;. While this is often unfair to the student, I know many researchers who will only accept students who are familiar with their area of research. This saves time in getting the student up to speed, which can take many months, as you probably know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple personality matches&lt;/strong&gt;. By the time they're looking into your lab, they've already been accepted into the graduate program and kept their grades up high enough to be applying to labs, which means that (assuming you agree with the standards of the program) they are fairly smart. Your job is determine whether the student would be a good match for your lab in particular, and whether you want to work with them on a daily basis for the next 5+ years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rotations&lt;/strong&gt;. Many programs have graduate student rotations, which will give you an opportunity to interact with many students, and get the chance to know them better than the one-hour interview you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from this, read up on general interviewing tips. Almost all the articles you'll find discussing general hiring advice is applicable to recruiting graduate students/postdocs as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T00:26:28.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="117" CreationDate="2012-02-16T00:34:07.203" Score="14" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would find scientific publications aimed at the student/general population in your field, and read the articles written for the public. Both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; will have numerous articles in each issue that can be read and understood by the general public. Some subfields have publications directed specifically at the student/enthusiast population (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Spectrum&lt;/a&gt; for Engineering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading through these publications, you will get a sense for what the current major research focus is in a wide variety of fields, and you'll get a feel for what's interesting to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to professors in fields that interest you! You'd be surprised at how many professors (admittedly, not all of them) would be willing to spend 15 minutes talking to you about their research, and their field in general. I'm not going to say &amp;quot;showing initiative is key to making progress&amp;quot;, because it's not, but it can help, and you'll learn a tremendous amount this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T12:52:08.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="172" CreationDate="2012-02-16T02:12:32.057" Score="24" ViewCount="1181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first-year graduate student, and I just joined a computational chemistry laboratory. I have three tasks now: pass all my courses, fulfill my TA duties, and start research. I'm finding that I'm spending all my time doing the first two, and very little doing actual research. I'm worried that my advisor will be upset that I'm not getting up to speed quickly enough on my research (currently, learning the python programming language and reading a whole bunch of papers). &lt;strong&gt;Are first-year graduate students typically expected to do a lot of research, while still managing their grades and TA duties?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T22:42:46.527" Title="Balancing coursework, research, and teaching" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-16T03:16:32.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In graduate school, you have to maintain a higher GPA than an undergrad. In some schools I've been to, a &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; lands you on probation, and a second &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; gets you dismissed. In my view, this means that courses too far away from your core research will be excessively risky. I dislike this, as it means that I can't afford to learn things that stretch my boundaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T03:16:32.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-16T03:48:35.557" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 major theories about credentials: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital&quot;&gt;human capital theory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory&quot;&gt;signaling theory&lt;/a&gt;. Under HCT, a license (such as a PE) shows that you have accumulated a credible amount of knowledge (you must graduate from an accredited engineering school) and experience (you need to have worked for 4 years after your bachelors to sit for the PE exam). Under signalling theory, the PE shows that you have done what it takes to legally call yourself an engineer.  One interesting comparison of the differences of HCT and ST is &lt;a href=&quot;http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/the_career_cons.html&quot;&gt;The Career Consequences of Failing versus Forgetting&lt;/a&gt;. You may know just as much as another person, but the one of you that passes some hurdle signals to prospective employers that the hurdle passer is the better candidate. This is because hiring a person is trying to predict future behavior/success with limited information, and many people use signals as heuristics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find out that universities hire people who have degrees. A cynical view is that they have a vested interest in maintaining the supply of people who get degrees. A signalling theory viewpoint is that universities think degrees are important enough that they only hire teachers who have them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many fields of engineering, your working career will be very short if you do not pass your PE. Civil is one such. Other engineering fields, such as Electrical (which is mine), typically have state exemptions for manufacturing, so very few EEs take their PE. When I was younger, I was quite opposed to licensure. Now, I see it as a way to distinguish myself from other candidates. One interesting blog post that inspired me to sit for my PE exam is &lt;a href=&quot;http://brucefwebster.com/2008/11/18/is-it-work-true-engineering-or-just-plumbing/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. Another is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx&quot;&gt;dissertation&lt;/a&gt; (which is not online) titled &lt;em&gt;&quot;Hiring and Inequality in Elite Professional Service Firms&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to take your EIT and PE exams as soon as practical. Some US universities require you to take your EIT exam during your senior year (as in they won't issue your diploma without passing it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am registered to take the PE exam this April. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T03:48:35.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="39" CreationDate="2012-02-16T03:57:07.433" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of being a grad student is politics. Skipping out on seminars signals to the presenter that you are not interested (which is probably true). Depending on the personality of the person, it may make them an enemy. In academic politics, revenge is a dish served cold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is skipping an event like this better or worse than showing up but discreetly reclaiming time during bad talks by studying on a smartphone?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the presenter is an older person, screwing around with your cell phone will be perceived as terribly disrespectful, and much worse than not showing up at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But I'm worried that other people will think I'm being a slacker as a result.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The perception will come across more as &quot;he is not one of us&quot;. That sort of attitude is the kiss of death when it comes to recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to suck it up and go to them. It is part of the cost of being a grad student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T03:57:07.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="70" CreationDate="2012-02-16T04:06:13.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually a requirement for doctoral students, and only because most doctoral students are having their education paid for by the university or grants. If you are terrified about teaching, my advice would be to visit your local &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toastmasters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toastmasters&lt;/a&gt; chapter. While there is far more to teaching than being able to speak in front of others, the fear of public speaking is the largest (in the sense of provoking fear) hurdle that I've heard folks mention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T04:06:13.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="151" CreationDate="2012-02-16T04:06:56.863" Score="22" ViewCount="16909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking into PhD programs in the Engineering field, and I have found different types of programs, such as some with coursework, and others without any coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the practical difference between them? (Besides the obvious coursework) What kind of student is expected for each of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To be more specific, I have been looking into Robotics PhD programs, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=321&quot;&gt;CMU Robotics PhD&lt;/a&gt; (Coursework + Research).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kcl.ac.uk/prospectus/research/robotics&quot;&gt;KCL Robotics PhD&lt;/a&gt; (Only research).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T12:17:16.393" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T13:07:01.347" Title="What is the difference between Ph. D programs with coursework and those without it?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="150" CreationDate="2012-02-16T04:12:30.100" Score="105" ViewCount="18592" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Internet, I have found that some people have graduated with a PhD by means of a “sandwich thesis”. Could anyone explain what it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-06-27T11:49:57.040" LastActivityDate="2021-02-23T14:43:16.587" Title="What is a “sandwich thesis”?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2012-02-16T04:43:51.553" Score="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that a sandwich thesis (sometimes called an integrated thesis / stapler thesis) consists of a collection of published or in-press articles (some schools also allow submitted articles). These articles are included in the thesis verbatim.  The publications are usually preceded by an elaborate introduction that sets the context for the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Willie Wong pointed out,  there is also usually a final discussion / conclusion after the integrated papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="41" LastEditorUserId="41" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T14:13:50.527" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:13:50.527" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-16T07:03:50.880" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that there are several advantages; none of these are suitable for every student. It's up to you whether enough of them apply to you, to make it worth doing a taught PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A PhD with a bit of coursework in the first year will help those who&#xA;are crossing over into a discipline that they're not already deeply&#xA;embedded in: it will give you some hand-holding through the things&#xA;you'll need to know but don't yet;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should (if taught well) also teach you some extra research skills;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it will give you some indication as you progress as to how well you're doing, compared to how well you should be doing if you're going to finish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it will allow you to explore different aspects of the field, to help you finalise your thesis topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it may, depending on the country and institution, give you an intermediate degree at the end of the taught section, such as an MRes, which will count for something even if you then don't go on to do the full PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it lessens the culture-shock for those going straight from fully-taught study to a research degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T07:03:50.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="52" CreationDate="2012-02-16T07:12:16.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a multiple levels on which this problem operates. This is especially true for places saturated with immigrants. (For instance, USA with Indians/Chinese)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting the Job&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem itself has a million subdivisions. Firstly, it is fairly difficult for immigrants (who studied in that country) to get jobs without exhibiting something really outstanding. The problem is not so bad for sectors such as computer science and electrical engineering wherein professionals are required by the dozen. The problem, however, is really bad in areas such as Theoretical Physics or Chemistry (or basic sciences). With limited vacancies and a million outstanding candidates, it is really difficult to crack that &quot;top job&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working in Sensitive Sectors&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't even want to get started on sectors like Aerospace. More often than not, graduates from the top universities in USA and Europe have returned to their homelands because all companies stress on citizenship. For EU, it is fairly difficult for a Non-EU resident to get a job in the first place, add to that defense and secrecy and you have a useless degree. In USA, it's even better, if you graduate with a PhD in Aerospace Control Systems from say, Stanford, you are still worthless for US companies because they don't ask just for citizenship anymore but also &lt;a href=&quot;https://owa.jhuapl.edu/psp/cg89prod_cg/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_HM_PRE&amp;amp;Action=A&amp;amp;SiteId=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Secret (or Lower) Security Clearance&lt;/a&gt;! That's at least 10 years for a foreign citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immigration and Visa&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a job is one part, getting the necessary immigration documents cleared is another. I mentioned about Aerospace engineering being a potential problem as far as jobs are concerned. But thats not all! USA has published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/isso/forms/tal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; called the technology alert list which requires screening of candidates before granting a visa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The immigration laws in the Europe aren't very friendly for Non-European to begin with but as far as I know, they don't maintain a strict segregation between &quot;things non-citizens can't do&quot; and &quot;things they can&quot;. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/8839006/Swiss-far-right-party-on-course-for-record-breaking-election-win.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rising&lt;/a&gt; far-right politics, things don't seem to get any better in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T18:31:06.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T18:31:06.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="117" CreationDate="2012-02-16T07:42:30.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a subject that you really really are passionately interested in, and care about finding out more about it. This subject is going to become almost your entire life for a few years, and you will need huge dedication to it, in order to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk, ideally over a coffee, but by phone or (worst-case) email if you can't meet in person, with people who recently completed their PhDs and are now actively researching in this field; discuss your ideas and recent developments in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find an area that your intended supervisor is up-to-date in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do it right, your PhD will lead you to knowing more than anyone else in the world about this very very specific subject: so it will really help if you're going to be keen to pursue it as a career after completing your PhD, even after writing several papers and making plenty of conference presentations on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T07:42:30.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="90" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:20:09.040" Score="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer as a theoretical computer scientist with former PhD students in tenure-track academic positions and many years of experience on faculty hiring committees.  (However, my understanding is that the selection process at industrial research labs like IBM T.J. Watson, Microsoft Research, Google Research, AT&amp;amp;T Research, etc., is really not that different from academic recruiting.)  As always, take my advice with a grain of salt; I'm as guilty of confirmation bias as any other human being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody in theoretical computer science cares where you got your degree.  Really.  We.  Do.  Not.  Care.  We only care about the quality and visibility of your results.  Publish strong papers and give brilliant talks at top conferences.  Convince well-known active researchers to write letters raving about your work.  Make a good product and get superstars to sell it for you.  Do all that, and we'll definitely want to hire you, no matter where you got your degree.  On the other hand, without a strong and visible research record, &lt;em&gt;independent from your advisor&lt;/em&gt;, you are much less likely to get a good academic job, no matter where you got your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is less true in more applied areas of CS, in my experience, mostly because it's significantly harder for PhD students in those areas to work independently from their advisors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But.&lt;/strong&gt;  Faculty candidates are necessarily judged by people who are not experts in their field.  Without the expertise to judge whether your work is really good, those people &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; look at secondary data that correlate strongly with successful researchers.  One of those secondary characteristics is &quot;pedigree&quot;.  Did you get your degree at MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, another top-10 department, or somewhere else?  (What's an &quot;Ivy League&quot;?)  How good/famous is your advisor?  If they're really paying attention: Where did your advisor's other PhD students get jobs, and how well are they doing now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, most &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; departments do make a serious effort to understand the quality and impact of applicants' results, instead of relying &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; on secondary data.  Also, secondary data matters considerably less once you actually have an interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And.&lt;/strong&gt; In my experience, where you get your degree is strongly correlated with successful research.  I got my Master's degree at UC Irvine in 1992 and my PhD at UC Berkeley in 1996.  The biggest difference I saw between the two departments was the graduate-student research culture.  &lt;strong&gt;Every&lt;/strong&gt; theory student at Berkeley regularly produced good results and published them at top conferences.  When the FOCS deadline rolled around each year, the question I heard in the hallways &lt;em&gt;from other students&lt;/em&gt; was not &quot;You know the deadline is coming up?&quot; or &quot;Are you submitting anything?&quot; but &quot;What are you submitting?&quot;, because &quot;nothing&quot; was the &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; likely answer.  Everyone simply assumed that if you were there, you were ready and able to do publishable research.  Publishing a paper wasn't exceptional, it was just what you did.  That cloud of free-floating confidence/arrogance had a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; impact on my own development as a researcher.  I've seen similar research cultures at a few other top CS departments, especially MIT, Stanford, and CMU.  (Caveat: This is an incomplete list, and there are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; departments that I've never visited.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, getting a PhD from a top department definitely helps, but more by helping you become a better researcher than by making you look better on paper.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T08:37:28.940" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:37:28.940" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="120" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:35:03.280" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school.  I agree with others: Industry experience &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study.  (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it depends on what you do while you're in industry.  Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw &quot;wattage&quot;, intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, &lt;em&gt;real results&lt;/em&gt;.  Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission.  If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:35:03.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:52:26.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that there are international differences as well. In Germany, for instance, doctoral programs almost &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; require coursework as part of the research program requirements (although it may be mandated for purposes off establishing degree equivalency, if you come from a foreign country or have a degree from another field). This is because it is assumed that you have taken all the necessary courses as part of your Master's program, which is considered the follow up to the bachelor's rather than the precursor to the doctorate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reverse is true in the US: I don't know of any PhD programs there that &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; require courses, for the reverse reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:52:26.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="96" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:57:09.837" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.att.com/misc/search.jsp?q=%22Algorithms%22&amp;amp;fbid=OgMv-Nx-vPx#&quot;&gt;AT&amp;amp;T&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.google.com/pubs/AlgorithmsandTheory.html&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://researcher.ibm.com/view_pic.php?id=134&quot;&gt;IBM&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/theory/&quot;&gt;Microsoft&lt;/a&gt; all have thriving basic research labs that regularly hire PhDs in theoretical computer science, and whose members regularly publish in theoretical computer science conferences and journals.  Yes, research at those labs is colored by the needs of their parent companies, but not as much as you might think.  All four companies (and several others) have thriving internship programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any other research job, your best bet in finding opportunities is to talk personally with people at the labs.  Go to FOCS/STOC/SODA, sit at the same lunch table as David Johnson or Muthu or Ken Clarkson or Yuval Peres, and just talk to them.  (It obviously helps if you have some research results that they care about.)  Ask your advisor to introduce you if you don't feel comfortable just introducing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm about to get some angry emails from David, Muthu, Ken, and Yuval, aren't I?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:57:09.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="189" CreationDate="2012-02-16T09:06:01.787" Score="61" ViewCount="4813" Body="&lt;p&gt;While accepting an offer to grad school, one is basically entering into a lasting relationship with one's adviser - most likely, someone whom the applicant has never met before, and the only exposure has been through the potential adviser's website/publications. It is in the interest of both parties to ensure (to the greatest possible extent) that there are no personal/professional traits of either that hamper the formation of a pleasant working relationship - no-one would want to go through the ordeal of having to change advisers midway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the faculty has a chance to have a good look at the applicant's profile as well as his motivations (through his grades and SOP), the applicant doesn't have a similar opportunity. So, I'm interested to know what parameters can be used to gauge a potential fit. I've thought of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Past students:&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did anyone ever drop out/change advisers midway, and if so, for what reasons? These would be a bit hard to find though, as I don't expect the faculty concerned would list them on their website. It would be great if anyone could let me know how to find out the list of incoming students to a department for any year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publication rate, taking into account the venues where they were accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time taken to graduate - though I accept this is more dependent on the student, a median figure should be telling ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What they did post Ph.D. - did anyone get tenure if they went into academia, or is almost everyone unable to break out of being a post-doc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tenure status: I'm a bit unsure about this, so wanted the community's opinions about it. Just so that I'm clear, I'm only trying to calibrate the applicant's expectations about the working style of his potential adviser - and hence need to know to what extent are the following &quot;typical&quot; assumptions valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tenured professor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full professor is more likely to get grant funding, hence less time spent on TAship - but could also mean less time/effort spent on interactions with students (either being busy with other projects/talks, or due to more commitments to family at that age).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tenure-track faculty (Assistant profs)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely to be young and energetic, and could translate to more time spent on one-to-one discussions with grad students - but funding may prove to be an issue, and may have to be on TA for a longer period.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other factors would be relevant in this matter, and to what extent am I correct/incorrect in either the factors considered, or for undertaking this exercise at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T15:18:27.593" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T01:48:24.273" Title="How to evaluate potential advisers on grounds other than their research/publications?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="35" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="167" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:04:40.587" Score="24" ViewCount="2697" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/149/96&quot;&gt;What is a &amp;quot;Sandwich thesis&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt; , is there an easy way to find out which departments at which universities will allow a sandwich thesis (aka a &lt;em&gt;stapler thesis&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;portfolio thesis&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;three-paper thesis&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;thesis by portfolio of publications&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;thesis by publication&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;article thesis&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;compilation thesis&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, universities that explicitly allow PhDs theses that consist of a collection of published or in-press articles, possibly topped and tailed by an introduction and summary? It is, to my knowledge, quite rare in the UK - does it perhaps tend to be a country-specific thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accept that it will depend on the supervisor's approval too, but that's a secondary issue: the supervisor can't allow a stapler thesis if the university/department does not. My question is about identifying eligible departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T16:54:43.107" Title="How can I find out which universities allow a sandwich (stapler) PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="120" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:18:56.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry experience will often hinder you, because it is a signal (a &lt;strong&gt;reliable&lt;/strong&gt; signal in most situations) that you are not up-to-date with the cutting edge of research; and that your academic skills have atrophied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect to work much harder in the time up to application, and at interview, in getting up-to-date in the field, and demonstrating that you are up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will vary by subject: for maths, it's often going to be a deal-breaker, as the analytic skills tend to atrophy very very quickly, and also tend to diminish with age. For more engineering-type subjects, it might be easier, particularly if you have been doing cutting-edge industrial research. Nevertheless, your academic skills may be rusty, and the people deciding on your admissions will expect that they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be going in without a (recent) publication record; that can impair the funding position of the institute to which you're applying, so you may have to offer something a little bit extra to compensate for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your industrial experience may well bring value to your future department: but you may or may not get any recognition of that at the time of your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I write as someone who entered academia after ~20 years industrial experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T11:18:56.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="158" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:42:43.757" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can get any information, don't underestimate the importance of simple personality factors---do you expect to be able to get along personally with your potential advisor?  This is hard to gauge if you don't have the chance to meet the person, but talking to current or former students may give you some idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd add to your list how your advisor is viewed in the rest of the field.  Not just on the quality of research (though that's important too), but again, how much people like your advisor personally. Again, a small factor, but having other people in your field like your advisor can make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a very close decision and need a tie-breaker, I'm not sure it's worth trying to read the tea leaves about what tenure status implies, since I suspect the person-by-person variation is greater than the between group variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T11:42:43.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="159" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:56:57.273" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's a &quot;personal&quot; answer, but I don't think it depends only on the university, but also on the department. For instance, I did my PhD in Computer Science at Paris 6, in France, and the thesis had to be an original document (although it's clearly possible to use content from published papers, but not in a copy/paste way). But I knew someone who did his PhD in Physics at Paris 6, and his PhD was a sandwich/stapler thesis. So there doesn't seem to be a global rule across the University, at least not for Paris 6. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T11:56:57.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="159" CreationDate="2012-02-16T12:46:26.683" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's essentially impossible to know if you'll be able to do a stapler thesis or not, because the decision also lies with the thesis supervisor, who may not allow you to do that, &lt;em&gt;even if&lt;/em&gt; it is allowed by the rules of your university or department. I was co-advised, and one thought a stapler thesis was an inherently logical way to write the thesis, while the other thought it was a really bad way to write a thesis, and didn't allow his students to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T12:46:26.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="170" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:08:37.677" Score="19" ViewCount="2636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my undergrad last year and have since been working in the private sector.  I'm about to submit a paper with my senior thesis results.  Two questions about corresponding author information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm listing my current affiliation in the private sector for various reasons.  We are moving offices, and our address will be changing in about 3 months.  &lt;strong&gt;Should I use the new mailing address or the old mailing address?&lt;/strong&gt;  I know it's kind of silly since nobody sends mail anymore, but I'm curious either way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will probably be going to grad school in a couple of years, and my private sector e-mail will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be accessible if I leave.  &lt;strong&gt;Would it be passé for me to list my @gmail.com address for correspondence to ensure I'm always reachable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="37" LastEditorUserId="70561" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T00:01:56.000" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T00:01:56.000" Title="Changing mailing and e-mail addresses as corresponding author--which to include?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="168" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:10:10.897" Score="28" ViewCount="19873" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the distinction between the following scientific events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conference,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;congress,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;symposium,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have some idea about differences (e.g. congress - large and serious, meeting - by a certain organization, ...) I have an impression that sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it safe to assume that the three later are variants of a scientific conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:21:36.733" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T03:52:10.440" Title="Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="164" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:39:12.830" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, the postal address does not matter - but in any case, I'd lean towards the newer address!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Its definitely OK to do so - I submitted my Masters thesis with my gmail.com account, due to the exact same scenario as outlined by you (currently working, am hoping to go to grad school this fall).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T13:39:12.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="159" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:54:06.980" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The department where you are going to submit the thesis probably has a document of &lt;strong&gt;PhD/thesis regulations&lt;/strong&gt; that specify if such a thesis is allowed. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.et-inf.uni-hannover.de/fileadmin/institut/promotion/englisch/Promo_DrRerNat_Engl.pdf&quot;&gt;my department's regulations&lt;/a&gt; have the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Scientific publications may form a part of a doctoral thesis. If the doctoral thesis consists of several scientific papers, a presentation of the guidelines of the papers submitted has to be added in an appropriate extent. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. a sandwich thesis is possible here. So you should find out if your favored departments have similar regulations and have a look in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T13:54:06.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="165" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:55:40.573" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certain (informal) nuances I believe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symposium&lt;/strong&gt; - Prestigious conferences, generally leading venues in their respective fields. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/da12/&quot;&gt;Symposium on Discrete Algorithms&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ets2012.imag.fr/&quot;&gt;European Test Symposium&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/FOCS11/&quot;&gt;Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)&lt;/a&gt; etc&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conference&lt;/strong&gt; - Regular venues for publications, may range from established venues to the archaic. I understand the bulk of publications of most researchers are in one conference or other, as symposiums tend to have a very low acceptance rate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Meeting&lt;/strong&gt; - I'm not so sure there are many of these, but I understand that it is more of a forum for interaction/surveys/posters than for publication of full papers. (I based my answer on the description for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/an12/&quot;&gt;SIAM Annual Meeting 2012&lt;/a&gt;, which describes itself as providing &quot;a broad view of the state of the art in applied mathematics, computational science, and their applications through invited presentation, prize lectures, minisymposia, and contributed papers and posters&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Congress&lt;/strong&gt; - This would typically be held once a year per discipline, highlighting the achievements, notable results in that field. These are typically attended by leaders in that field, and feature a series of invited talks (for example, look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/calendar.php?id=1065&quot;&gt;Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2013&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T12:32:43.003" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T12:32:43.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:11:43.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, a coursework PhD program is very useful for someone (like me) who took a break from academia to work for a couple of years - it would be invaluable in refreshing those basics that have atrophied during the time spent at industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:11:43.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="164" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:28:55.993" Score="12" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I agree with you and shan23, it doesn't really matter, but the newer is probably better. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, to be bluntly honest, I tend to have a negative a-priori when I see an author of a paper with a gmail address (especially when I review it, when it's not double-blind). I know it's stupid, because it should only be about the quality of the work, but I can't really help it. Mostly because I know that there is no authentication with gmail address (I potentially could get an alan.turing@gmail.com address). I think it's ok to give an address that will change, after all, few people spend their entire career in the same institution. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:28:55.993" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="158" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:18:41.363" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You listed it in your question, but just to state it as an answer, you will &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; want to look into any professor before joining their lab. This includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking up their publications and becoming familiar with their research &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;; do you agree with how he performs research? Does his thinking style seem similar to yours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speaking with current and past students from that lab and getting their sense of what it's like working for that professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking with the professor yourself and seeing whether there's a personality match&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply looking up their name online and seeing what comes up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that tenure status is not as important when deciding what lab to join, unless the professor is having difficulty securing continuous funding. You can ask about funding sources when speaking face to face. Most professors are equally dedicated to their job whether they have tenure or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you will be spending numerous years with this person, and there's a very high cost of switching professors as the years add up. Make sure that you not only like their research but you also get along with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T15:18:41.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:21:52.717" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer lies in what your PI thinks you should be doing and how well you can, at least, appear to be doing it while doing things other than research.  Even if your PI doesn't enforce a certain allocation it's in your interest to do as much research and little else as possible. &lt;strong&gt;You won't get a PhD by teaching or taking classes.&lt;/strong&gt; An overload, in my experience, is unavoidable first year. Is is possible to take electives that your PI teaches? That's about the only coursework he or she won't begrudge you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T16:44:21.637" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T16:44:21.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="175" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:29:29.397" Score="56" ViewCount="63639" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking to the faculty in my program, I've noticed that they seem to evaluate themselves and others using two criterion: (1) publication quality and quantity, and (2) ability to obtain grant money. No one discusses grades or performance in graduate school classes. Even when potential faculty candidates come around, this doesn't seem to be emphasized at all. &lt;strong&gt;What role do grades play in my PhD career?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="763" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T10:03:14.777" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T13:50:11.697" Title="How important are my grades to the rest of my PhD career?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="176" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:39:07.360" Score="26" ViewCount="2384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having the problem that my advisor isn't providing me with any real guidance. To avoid making this a rant post, I'll just state the facts: my advisor is an MD/PhD, working almost full-time as an MD. He comes to the lab once a week for lab meetings, and often doesn't have time to meet. He seems to have lost interest in doing research, and isn't being helpful at all regarding how I should proceed with my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, here's what I've tried and how well it worked out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking to department graduate chair: marginally useful, scheduled a useless meeting with me and my advisor. Nice meeting, but no results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to other members of my committee: pretty useful, gave me some very good advice about my research, but I wonder how often I can use them as a resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other suggestions on how I can handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T16:02:58.757" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T13:52:31.907" Title="Advisor isn't advising" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:41:37.357" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as your research stature is concerned, grades would matter &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; of all, below other non-academic stuff as your soft-skills, your personality etc. There are a number of reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No one cares about your GPA once you are a researcher! While it certainly looks nice to have a stellar GPA, it's the work that you do and where you publish that would matter. Look up some resumes of notable faculty in your field - how many even list their MS/BS grades?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I might even say that your adviser would not be too happy if you have a 4.0 GPA - as it means you are spending time on perfecting your grades which is more profitably spent on research! I actually have read this on a faculty/university webpage - would post the link once I dig it up. &lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Haven't found the faculty website link yet, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=469&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;'s a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=470&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; from an established source, phdcomics - enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm actually waiting for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65/jeffe&quot;&gt;JeffE&lt;/a&gt; to comment on this: His credentials are such that I'm not even qualified to state them, and he himself claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://compgeom.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he had the lowest undergraduate GPA&lt;/a&gt; amongst any professor he's ever met! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm talking about grades in subjects that you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to take as part of requirements of grad school - you would be expected to master the subjects that are directly required in your Ph.D research thesis, so your adviser would expect great grades in them naturally!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; - They don't matter (as long as you clear all your subjects!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T07:21:26.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="174" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:08:05.863" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer depends on how far along you are in your research and whether you are in PhD or MD?PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a PhD program and you are less than a year in leave the lab. If you are more than a year in at you next Thesis Committee meeting, if it's scientifically reasonable, try to either set a date for graduating or ask for a co-PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in the MD/PhD program, you will have to consider your PI's position and whether a lukewarm letter from someone in his position is worth your staying in the lab. If you plan to go into a competitive surgicial or medical subspecialty, it just might be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, sadly, think that checked-out PIs- even those without the excuse of having to go see patients- are increasingly the norm. Getting to be a professor is a great way to age rapidly and burn out, especially in the biomedical sciences. Also, professors aren't selected for their mentoring skills so much as scientific productivity. Often scientific productivity means exploitation or disregard because of self-involvement rather than nurturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T16:38:25.407" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T16:38:25.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T18:43:23.173" Score="22" ViewCount="9364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student currently pursuing my masters in computer science. &#xA;My present area of research is computational algrebraic geometry (theory of grobner bases and tropical geometry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, I'm interested in pursuing my PhD in pure mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like know if I'll be elligible for applying to pure math PhD programs? &#xA;And if yes, do I have any realistic chance of getting into one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do to improve my chances of being accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T12:56:30.490" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T12:56:30.490" Title="PhD in pure mathematics for a student in computer science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-02-16T18:52:25.250" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some graduate schools I've been to (I've worked at a few and tried working on a masters at one), a &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; lands you on probation, and a second &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; gets you dismissed. Other than this, you're correct, they're irrelevant as the important measures involve funding and publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T18:52:25.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="177" CreationDate="2012-02-16T19:50:55.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rate your chances as very high, but the following factors might help nevertheless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your credentials (where you did your BS/MS from), and what balance of mathematics courses did you take - were there any electives, and of course, how you fared in them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you didn't mention it, I'm assuming you haven't published in any decent mathematical venues - it helps your chances a lot if you had publishable results prior to your application. If you find it difficult to get published, post (interesting and useful) results to arxiv - that would boost your case in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics is a vast field - it would help a lot if you were to continue along the directions to which you've already had some research background in (and maybe published on), and could get an interested faculty to have a look at your profile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T19:50:55.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T20:10:34.163" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/process/long.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; might help or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/long/visa1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this.&lt;/a&gt; Here is the crux of the information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The period of stay is quoted as 3 years/1 year with the following documents needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Passport&#xA;One visa application form (nationals of Russia or NIS countries need to submit two visa application forms)&#xA;One photograph (nationals of Russia or NIS countries need to submit two photographs)&#xA;Certificate of Eligibility (Note) - the original and one copy&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This visa applied for &lt;strong&gt;Long-term stay&lt;/strong&gt; for the following occupations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working visa: professor, artist, religious activities, journalist, investor/business manager, legal/accounting services, medical services, researcher, instructor, engineer, specialist in humanities/International Services&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The algorithm for obtaining the visa is given on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/process/long.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first link I added&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/31niR.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Algorithm&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T13:09:50.630" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:09:50.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="177" CreationDate="2012-02-16T20:16:24.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I speak from limited experience, and none on the &quot;reading applications and deciding&quot; side.  Technically my undergraduate degree was in a program somewhere between math and CS, but I'd taken a fairly math-oriented slant on it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a masters degree in a related field certainly doesn't make you ineligible to pursue a PhD in math.  The only disadvantage I can see for taking time to do a masters degree in a slightly different area, as opposed to, say, working in industry, is that you may need to work harder to explain why you're changing areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also you'll have some record of doing research, and you might be judged in part on the quality of that research where an undergrad might be given the benefit of the doubt.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to continue working in a closely related area that's a bit more in the mathematical direction, it shouldn't be very hard to explain why you've decided to continue that work in mathematics rather than CS.  It's a bigger issue if you want to do something very different in math---the worry would be that whatever caused you to lose interest in computational algebraic geometry will happen again.  That's not insurmountable, but it will be more of a hurdle to convince the faculty you're really interested enough in the new area to stick out a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T20:16:24.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-02-16T20:42:39.280" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be a bit blithe about it, grades matter until they don't. When you are a PhD student, the grades will matter until after you've completed your &quot;qualification&quot; process, in whatever form that takes. If you do well on the exams, then your grades don't matter much; if you're &quot;on the bubble,&quot; you might be helped by solid performance in your graduate coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where grades continue to matter are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you decide to apply for a graduate fellowship, in which case review committees will usually want to see evidence of strong academic performance at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you apply for jobs, as employers will similarly want to see evidence that you took coursework somewhat seriously. (Some employers may—wrongly, in my view—have GPA cutoffs for graduate students!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T20:42:39.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="184" CreationDate="2012-02-16T20:52:46.363" Score="25" ViewCount="2249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that there is a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; paper, in page 15, point 3.6), but i have not found any references or studies about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any know if there is really such correlation, or have studies to confirm or deny it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T21:09:09.757" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T22:21:33.890" Title="Is there a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2012-02-16T21:03:32.180" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there can be any studies to confirm or deny something like that, simply because neither &quot;good teacher&quot; nor &quot;good researcher&quot; can be quantified objectively without bias, and in the absence of that, how can you compare? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But qualitatively, I think the conclusion naturally follows in most cases - both require one to be enthusiastic about their subject in the first place, and require a certain depth of comprehension before they can either publish their results or interact with inquisitive students successfully!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T21:03:32.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="186" CreationDate="2012-02-16T21:05:58.133" Score="67" ViewCount="12708" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from France, where any official academic position (i.e. associate professor or full professor, or equivalent positions at public research institutes) is a civil-servant one, and therefore automatically for life, I've been always intrigued by the &quot;tenure&quot; system in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, I spotted the following paragraph:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While tenure protects the occupant of an academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this kind of elimination/downsizing occur a lot in practice? Is it possible to &quot;cheat&quot; and to pretend to cut a position in order to save money just to get rid of a tenured professor? Are there some laws stating that if a position is cut, then another equivalent one cannot be created right after? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:05:13.967" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T18:07:23.257" Title="In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="185" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:02:02.540" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen any statistics on how many tenure professors have been fired, but most articles on the topic treat tenure as though it's a lifetime position (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5931/1147.summary?sid=a7d9043f-a59f-499d-b610-d4092920493c&quot;&gt;this Science article, &quot;Tenure and the Future of the University&quot;&lt;/a&gt;). Anecdotally, you will likely never meet someone who &lt;em&gt;knows someone else&lt;/em&gt; who was fired from a tenure position; it simply doesn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that the number of tenure track positions made available over the past decade been trending downward fairly significantly (see the same article, and simply do a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+tenure+positions&quot;&gt;google search on the topic&lt;/a&gt; to see more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:02:02.540" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="207" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:19:35.240" Score="22" ViewCount="5707" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, are there good &quot;milestones&quot; to suggest that a graduate student should initiate their job search? Roughly a year from completion? More? Less? Is there a particular time of year a job search should be kicked off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically: The job search, how do I time it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T07:26:36.880" Title="How early should a graduate student begin their job search?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:19:49.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any formal evidence, but I can tell you that at my university there are people who are only doing teaching (and are good at it). If being a good teacher implied being a good researcher, these people would be at least involved in research as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there are many people who are good teachers at high school level and not involved in research in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:19:49.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="158" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:29:52.787" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things I would generally look at in a potential advisor beyond just their research/publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who were the co-authors on their papers?&lt;/strong&gt; Are they actively collaborating with people in your field - people who could be potentially useful for post-doc posts, etc.? Do their students often show up as primary authors on publications, or are they invariably buried in the middle of a long list of authors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personality.&lt;/strong&gt; This goes beyond just do you like the person. Do they prefer frequent updates, meetings and the like, or is the occasional check-in enough? Are they a morning person and you prefer working nights, or the other way around? If you send a long email, would it get answered, or do they not often fail to answer emails? I've had some professors who I'm very fond of nevertheless would make poor advisors because of wildly disparate working styles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How are their students funded?&lt;/strong&gt; Your funding stream can have serious impact on your completion time and productivity. If every semester, its a desperate Pick-N-Mix of funded side projects, TAships, etc. you're going to have a lot on your plate that, while potentially an interesting experience, will slow down your progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where do their students end up?&lt;/strong&gt; Do they have decent career trajectories? Are they supportive of alternative paths like industry or government?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rank and age.&lt;/strong&gt; A young professor might be more aggressive and eager, on the other hand they're less established, don't necessarily have the same level of institutional support, and if they're not yet tenured, its possible they'll disappear. An older professor may be more established and stable, but might not use &quot;cutting edge&quot; techniques, or feel less of an internal drive to publish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T12:32:53.480" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T12:32:53.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="174" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:35:38.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the department chair, is there a head of graduate studies or the like (e.g., an ombudsman)? You may want to consider talking to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking though, unless it will &lt;em&gt;severely&lt;/em&gt; derail your progress, I'd consider changing advisors, and starting to talk to your committee members about shifting who is your chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T13:52:31.907" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T13:52:31.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="70" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:38:13.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For doctoral students, you may very well be expected to teach - rare is the department with sufficient faculty and graduate student funding that using TAs is unnecessary. That being said, learning to teach in those institutions is considered part of your training - not something you're expected to have in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a small shred of teaching experience before entering grad school, but many of my fellow students did not, and it mattered not even a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:38:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="51" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:46:11.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitted talks vs. invited talks. Many researchers will have given many talks on a subject, but if most of them are invited talks, the reason they're duplicates is because conference organizers have essentially &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt; for duplicates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd argue it isn't ethical to submit the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; presentation, but a topic is a wide ranging thing. Heck, even a single study has a lot of aspects to it, and many conference presentations have less content than a single paper. For example, you might have a presentation at one conference that's highly technical, another for a different audience that's more practical/applied, etc. Those are different talks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider what you want to get out of it. Unless your field is one of those where presentations trump papers or themselves generate papers (CS comes to mind), presentations aren't that big of a deal on a CV such that an extra one or two will really put you over the edge. In my field for example, everyone knows there's certain conferences that will essentially accept as many talks as they have spaces to fill (and they have &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; spaces to fill), so as long as your science isn't egregiously wrong, you're probably going to get in. What you do get out of that is good contacts, and good advice. If you keep repeating the same thing over and over, your return on &quot;investment&quot; starts to dive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your talk is going to be spun into a paper via conference proceedings or the like, be doubly cautious, and make sure if you are double-dipping in an experiment or the like that the resulting &lt;em&gt;papers&lt;/em&gt; are clearly different as well. I don't know anyone who doesn't frown on duplicated papers, and more than one venue that will smack you down hard for trying to play a game like that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T18:45:22.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T18:45:22.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:49:13.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two that struck me while I was applying for schools of similar rank:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location. You're talking about living in this place for close to a decade in some cases, and at least several years. Is this someplace you want to live? I haven't found that people living in someplace they hate and are miserable are more productive because they just hide in the lab. I've mostly found them miserable and apt to burn out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attitude. Is the department somewhat more &quot;relaxed&quot; and supportive of its students? Will they pull out all the stops to make sure you can make ends meet if something goes wrong in your funding? Or do they consider graduate school to be a fiery crucible upon which researchers are forged? Which environment would you rather work in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aid. Advice I got frequently was don't go somewhere that isn't paying you - you don't want them, and when it comes down to it, they don't really want you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:49:13.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:55:49.860" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with David Ketcheson, I don't think a definitive answer is possible, but here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on the attitude of your program. Are they trying to ramrod you through your coursework as swiftly as possible? Do they support &quot;dabbling&quot; in other aspects of your graduate career - side projects, practicums, etc.? The answer will likely change wildly depending on those answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How set is your &quot;research topic&quot;? I've bounced around several in my time - I think picking up skills that might be useful trumps &quot;Is it directly relevant to Thesis Aim #1&quot;. After all, the moment you get out of your PhD program, your research agenda changes again. If all you have is a hammer, and what you'd really like to do is research screws, you're in trouble. If on the other hand, you took 'Seminar in Advanced Screwdriver Theory'...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it comes down to it, do you need to &quot;take&quot; the course, or do you just want to learn the material? I've sat in on several classes (my university doesn't have a formal auditing system) because I wanted to hear what they had to say. That's a nice, low risk way of expanding one's horizons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found if nothing else it widens your contacts in the university, gives you a better feel for &quot;Surely someone in Department X knows how to deal with that...&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:55:49.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23" CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:17:16.720" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no idea how you'd find hard data on the program itself and its results, but as an idle musing I checked how many full time faculty members in the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health's Dept. of Epidemiology held an MD/PhD or DrPH. The department was chosen as a very good department in a very good school with a strong medical school that I'm not affiliated with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ten of the 94 listed faculty members were MD/PhD or DrPH's. Little under 11% of the faculty. And that's not including other possible &quot;physician scientists&quot; like MD/MPH degree holders...if you do that the number rises to 23 faculty members with an MD degree in a related, but non-clinical research department. Nearly a quarter of the faculty total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is only a very crude proxy for how many physician-scientists pursue academic tracks, and even the representation of clinician-scientists in research departments will likely vary wildly by said department. That being said, I've met a considerable number of them in my graduate school career, either entirely in academic settings, or balancing research with practice. It's absolutely a viable path, though not an easy one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another data point, here is the list of alumni for the UNC School of Medicine's MD/PhD program: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.unc.edu/mdphd/fps/alumni-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.med.unc.edu/mdphd/fps/alumni-1&lt;/a&gt; . That should give you a decent glimpse at where those particular graduates go - it looks like a fair number ended up in research or hybrid positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T08:18:16.677" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T08:18:16.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="215" CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:52:48.880" Score="12" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an online resources that lists all summer schools of the actual year in a specific domain. Are there any sites? I just found one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.summerschoolsineurope.eu/&quot;&gt;Summer Schools in Europe&lt;/a&gt;, but this site seems to be a little bit outdated and doesn't have a lot of summer schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I'm focused on software engineering and Europe. But if it is a world-wide source I wouldn't mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:04:25.140" LastActivityDate="2020-03-23T18:12:47.530" Title="Online resources for summer schools in software engineering?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:02:41.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to evaluate, but from my experience I don't think such correlation exist, or if it exists, it is not extremely evident. Age can certainly be a discriminant, but assumed equivalence in age, a good teacher spends a lot of time in teaching activities, such as preparation, testing, and student nurturing. This leaves very little time for research. Also, most brilliant minds are too involved in their own projects (at the limit of being asocial) and don't make good communicators. The great advantage of a teacher is that he must be &quot;not that smart&quot;, that is, he must understand where a difficulty may lie, and come up with a brilliant example to make it clear. Not everyone is Feynman..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T00:08:37.090" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T00:08:37.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="201" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:36:22.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; is a pre-publication archive for academic papers, in the following major disciplines: Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Systems Science, and Economics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2020-06-25T04:05:15.660" LastActivityDate="2020-06-25T04:05:15.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="202" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:36:22.807" Score="0" Body="arXiv is a pre-publication archive for academic papers." OwnerUserId="109" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T13:55:10.657" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T13:55:10.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="203" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:37:54.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions Appropriate For This Tag:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about the process of applying, graduating and everything in between for Ph.D. programs in the United States and other countries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about publishing as a Ph.D. student including dissertation requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about funding and grants specific to Ph.D. and postdoc researchers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about careers and career paths with Ph.D. as one of the major requirements (postdoc researcher, tenure-track professor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subject Matter of Questions tagged:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, we read about the term &lt;em&gt;doctor of philosophy:&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doctor of Philosophy&lt;/strong&gt;, abbreviated as &lt;strong&gt;PhD&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Ph.D.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;D.Phil.&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;DPhil&lt;/strong&gt; in English-speaking countries and originally as &lt;strong&gt;Dr.Philos.&lt;/strong&gt; (for the Latin philosophiae doctor or doctor philosophiae), is in many countries a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities. The academic level known as a Doctorate of philosophy varies considerably according to the country, institution, and time period, from entry-level research degrees to higher doctorates. A person who attains a doctorate of philosophy is automatically awarded the academic title of &lt;strong&gt;doctor&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-09-19T11:40:03.270" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T11:40:03.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="204" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:37:54.600" Score="0" Body="Questions about the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree, including requirements such as dissertations and university programs leading to a Ph.D." OwnerUserId="109" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T20:03:12.177" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T20:03:12.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2012-02-17T01:15:22.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For software engineering maybe you can find sth &lt;a href=&quot;http://lanyrd.com/search/?q=summer+school&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T17:49:22.597" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T17:49:22.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="208" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:03:25.633" Score="21" ViewCount="2369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Canadian undergraduate student intending to get a master's degree, but not intending to get a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Canadian graduate student told me that master's degree in the US are really only designed for people desiring to get a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this statement? Do masters degrees in the US put significantly more emphasis on preparation for a Ph.D than in other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:03:36.470" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:03:36.470" Title="Are master's degrees in the US mostly meant to prepare you for a Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="187" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:14:44.553" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is condensed from advice for academic job hunts that I've read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/gradstudy/node12.html#SECTION000124000000000000000&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/advice-for-academic-job-hunt/#timing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; - I imagine it should be somewhat applicable for jobs in industry as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you would be applying for a position at Fall, begin applying from summer the previous year - applications tend to be sorted during committee meets, and the earlier you apply, the fewer applications are there, so there are higher chances of getting your application noticed. Hence, you'll want to draft your research statement, teaching statement and curriculum vitæ (CV) the summer before your search. If you are applying for industrial as well as academic positions, you probably want more than one resume, since achievement, skills, and goal-oriented resumes can be more effective in the industrial setting. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The middle of January is when most schools stop accepting applications. Even then, keep submitting to any position you find through February, particularly if someone there recommends you apply. You will probably hear back with invitations for interviews in January and February, but sometimes even March and April. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get your letter writers primed as early as possible. You'll need at most six letter writers, but no less than three, and you'll want to ask them at least a month in advance with all your documents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T03:14:44.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:23:40.873" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a partial representation of the truth. On the one hand, departments are always looking to retain masters students as PhD students; it's better for the department (better numbers), it's better for the professors (more research from PhD relative to masters), and it's better for the university. On the other hand, simply looking at the numbers you'll see that most masters students do not go on to become a PhD student &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_009.asp&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;. I think it's safe to say that most students who go through masters programs enter with a goal in mind (academia or industry) and finish with that same goal in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how it works in other countries, so I can't compare that. Also, regarding whether they put more emphasis on PhD &lt;em&gt;preparation&lt;/em&gt; than in other countries, I don't know how to quantify that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T03:23:40.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:34:28.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at the description for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cornell.edu/grad/MEngProgram/index.htm&quot;&gt;Cornell M.Eng program in computer science&lt;/a&gt;, you'd find it describes itself as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The M.Eng. program in Computer Science is a one-year (two semester) professional development program designed to enhance professional skills in practical computer science. &lt;strong&gt;The program is particularly suited to students seeking advanced credentials for employment in industry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would have said it depends from program to program, but I won't - most MS programs in computer science in US have the same (unstated) goals, and while candidates entering the PhD program find it convenient to have already had a MS degree (reduces course credit requirements), the majority of the graduates take up jobs in the industry. Some MS programs have a &lt;em&gt;thesis&lt;/em&gt; option, wherein it takes an extra semester to graduate but provides a platform for tasting research - if you opt for that, then you may consider this as a preparatory semester for a doctoral program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T03:44:20.367" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T03:44:20.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="185" CreationDate="2012-02-17T06:38:40.697" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does happen occasionally that entire departments are shut down.  An example I remember being in the news a lot was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/04/albany&quot;&gt;several language departments at SUNY Albany&lt;/a&gt;.  But it's an extreme measure and even with the current severe economic situation it did not happen very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T06:38:40.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-02-17T06:46:10.530" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some hard data I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt;, because I think there methodology makes a lot of sense.  The default settings are a bit odd, you want the AI score not EF score.  I also like the &quot;eigenfactor category&quot; under advanced search better than the &quot;ISI category&quot; that you can get on the main page.  Certainly it's better to have a more in-depth understanding, but also sometimes you just want a quick ballpark guesstimate of how good the journal is, and eigenfactor does that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T06:46:10.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="185" CreationDate="2012-02-17T07:20:16.840" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;In practice, a tenured appointment is one of the safest job positions out there. Essentially, the number of things which can get a tenured professor &quot;sacked&quot; are exceedingly small, and most of these involve criminal actions. (Even in such cases, the university tends to pressure resignations rather than try to fire them, as has happened, for instance, in high-profile cases at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Hauser&quot;&gt;Harvard&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://yaleherald.com/archive/xxvi/11.13.98/front.html&quot;&gt;Yale&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of that, you need the aforementioned budget catastrophes that lead to elimination of entire departments. Even then, sometimes departments are allowed to &quot;decay&quot; rather than get eliminated—current staff stays as the department gets wound down, without new hires and additional support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T07:20:16.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="220" CreationDate="2012-02-17T07:21:21.860" Score="23" ViewCount="2144" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'm primarily interested in answers relevant to Computer Science (Theory), but answers in different areas in CS / totally other disciplines are equally welcome.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most (if not all) PhD programs, incoming grad students are supposed to take relevant courses and fulfill their TA-ship duties (I'm assuming not everyone gets a RA from the 1st semester itself). During that time, they are also expected (and highly encouraged) to keep reading on their chosen research field, to have a concrete idea of where all the focus in that field is at that moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I would consider that attending important conferences and interacting with leading researchers in their field would play a very important role in the development of a young researcher, as he/she would have the chance to get motivated by the best brains in the business! But, it is unlikely that he/she would have publishable results at such venues within such a short time, and if he/she doesn't have a fellowship/travel scholarship, it is unlikely that he'd be able to afford the registration/travel/accommodation expenses from his own stipend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are the options in front of such a student to make attending such events possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do advisers cover the expenses for their incoming grad students, for&#xA;attending such talks/conferences, or is there a provision for such&#xA;funds from the department ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much does the answer to the above question vary between different colleges - I've heard (unconfirmed) reports that&#xA;higher-ranked institutions have more funds to burn, and as such&#xA;students in such departments can afford to attend talks without&#xA;publishing in them (at least for the first 2 semesters) ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there specific scholarships/fellowships that exist to primarily cater to conference related expenses for students? If so,&#xA;it would be great to get some leads on where to look, and what are&#xA;the primary qualifications (&gt;90% of fellowships in US require the&#xA;applicant to be an US citizen, making it extremely difficult for&#xA;international students to get one!) ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T07:37:56.687" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T19:38:57.273" Title="Is it possible for a student in first year of Ph.D to secure funding for attending conferences?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="187" CreationDate="2012-02-17T07:26:36.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about job searches in general, it's &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; too early to start making contacts with potential future employers. Getting on their &quot;radar screen&quot; early can only help you when it comes time to apply formally for jobs; in addition, if you are their &quot;preferred&quot; candidate, you may find a job posting &quot;stressing&quot; your particular research direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes time for the actual submission of applications, academic positions typically operate on an annual cycle that depends on the field, and you should plan accordingly, as given in the response by shan23. The timing for other jobs varies, in particular depending upon the state of the economy. However, at the absolute minimum, you should start applying six months before your anticipated graduation; in the current circumstances, I think twelve months ' advance lead is also acceptable. Further out, the crystal ball is probably too cloudy for both employer and applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T07:26:36.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2012-02-17T08:08:49.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that one of the best online resources for Software Engineering is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigsoft.org/seworld/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SEWORLD&lt;/a&gt;. You can browse their archives and look for summer schools there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that their search engine is a bit weird, if you go through &quot;search the archive&quot;, put Summer school in the subject and &quot;2010-1-1&quot; in the starting date (when I leave it blank, I don't get recent results). For future references, here is the result of this query: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISSSE 2012 - 9th International Summer School on Software Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer School Marktoberdorf 2012] &lt;em&gt;Call for Application&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LASER Summer School 2012: Innovative Languages for Software Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - 4th RiSE International Summer School (RISS) - Next Generation of Software Product Lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;summer school VTSA 2011&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer School on Technologies for Realizing Social Networks and Applications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CFP: 1st Insubria International Summer School on Open Source Software (IISSOSS 2011)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer School on Mechanized Logic for High Assurance Software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canadian Summer School on Practical Analyses of Software Engineering Data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UPCRC Illinois Offers Summer School on Multicore Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3rd International CASE Summer School on Practical Experimentation in Software Engineering - July 11-15, 2011 - Free University of Bolzano-Bozen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer School on Programming Languages for Concurrent and Parallel Computing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8th International Summer School on Software Engineering (ISSSE 2011)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Summer School Marktoberdorf 2011] &lt;em&gt;Call for Application&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LASER Summer School 2011: Tools for Practical Software Verification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[CFA] Summer School on Programming Languages PL2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - 3rd RiSE International Summer School (RiSS) - Generative Reuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call for participation to the 3rd International Summer School on Adaptive Socio-Technical Pervasive Systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CfP ADAPT Summer School&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DSM-TP 2010: 1st International Summer School on Domain Specific Modeling - Theory and Practice - Call for participation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call for participation: VTSA 2010 Summer School on Verification Technology, Systems &amp;amp; Applications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6th REASONING WEB Summer School &quot;Semantic Technologies for Software Engineering&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer School on Mining Software Repositories - June 2010, Kingston, Canada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CfP: UPCRC Illinois Summer School on Multicore Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LASER Summer School on Software Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TiC'10: Third International Summer School on Trends in Concurrency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call for Part: CASE Summer School, Bolzano, Italy, 19-23 July 2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CfPart: 6th TAROT Summer School on Software Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7th International Summer School on Software Engineering &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T09:56:06.687" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T09:56:06.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="117" CreationDate="2012-02-17T08:45:09.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect of a PhD is pursuing original research in your given field. I believe it is hard for an undergraduate to know what research has / hasn't been in covered in all of the topics they may be interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would advise that you consider the topics you are interested in, and find out which Researchers / Professors are working in those fields, in the universities that you are considering. Then, you should ask them what they are working on at the moment, and what potential projects they would have in mind for a new PhD student joining them. This will give you a feel for the kind of research that you could be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T08:45:09.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="218" CreationDate="2012-02-17T08:52:43.027" Score="34" ViewCount="5292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that it would be a bad idea to take up a post-doctoral position, if your ultimate goal is to work in industry. The basis of this maybe that it is harder to be hired for an opening at a company, maybe because you would seem unsure of your direction, or would be over qualified for a junior role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no ideal jobs available at present, should I take up a post-doctoral position as a safe option, or easy way out, in the meantime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:44:41.757" Title="Does doing a postdoc mean a commitment to an academic career?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="217" CreationDate="2012-02-17T09:41:59.213" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, clearly, it depends on many factors (my answer is probably strongly influenced by the Computer Science field). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to apply for a non-research industry position, then clearly, the postdoc might not appear as a strong point, unless you can travel, attend conferences, manage a budget, develop an application/software/experiment, apply for patents, etc, in general any transversal skill that you can justify. But if the postdoc is just sitting in an office writing theoretical papers for a couple of years, then it's probably not the best choice. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to apply for a research industry position, then a postdoc can be a good point, although of course, the closer you can be connected to industry, the better it will be. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you could do a postdoc in industry (in CS, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, and many others offer this possibility). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T09:41:59.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="213" CreationDate="2012-02-17T10:19:56.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions 1 and 2: it &lt;strong&gt;depends&lt;/strong&gt;: you have to find out from your individual advisor/department/university. Furthermore, you characterisation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most (if not all) PhD programs, incoming grad students are supposed to take relevant courses...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is certainly not true internationally. Many PhD positions in Europe, for example, expect the student to already have had a Masters degree and to start doing research the minute they arrive. For those positions attending conferences starting in the first year is almost a must. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Question 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best place to look is the conference organisation itself. Often funding is given to students to encourage participation. A lot of professional organisations also offer funding for full time graduate students to travel. (But note that preferences for grants maybe given to those individuals presenting [either orally or at a poster session] at the conference.) Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/student-travel&quot;&gt;American Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt; offers travel grants for any full time graduate student in mathematics to go to one of their sectional meetings, and for any last year graduate student in mathematics to go to the Joint Mathematics Meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/education/grants/travel.shtml&quot;&gt;American Geophysical Union&lt;/a&gt; has a host of various travel grants available. And I want to especially outline their Lloyd V. Berkner Travel Fellowship which is &lt;em&gt;designed&lt;/em&gt; to be given only to 'AGU members under the age of 35 who are residents of countries designated by the World Bank as “low” or “lower-middle&quot;  income per capita.' In particular, the &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; of the US citizen requirement you quoted. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conferences like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2011/stgrant.shtml&quot;&gt;Association for Computing Machinery's CCS&lt;/a&gt; also offer student travel grants. The website states: &quot;Any graduate student in good standing, regardless of nationality, or any other criteria, except as noted, may apply.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, aside from actual full graduate student fellowships, and some scholarships directly sponsored by the US government, many &lt;strong&gt;travel funding&lt;/strong&gt; opportunities do not have the US residency requirement. (What they may have, however, is a pesky requirement for you to travel on US flag airlines.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T10:19:56.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="213" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:02:05.817" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Willie Wong says, it depends on your school and your advisor.  As an obvious general rule, departments and advisors with more research funding are more willing to spend it.  (As a reference point, my department does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; offer such funding, because individual faculty generally have enough money to support their students' travel.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A significant number of CS theory conferences have external support for student travel; see, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/da12/tsupport.php&quot;&gt;SODA 2012&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.nyu.edu/~stoc2012/travel-support.htm&quot;&gt;STOC 2012&lt;/a&gt;.  These grants usually require a letter of support from your advisor, so you at least need an advisor.  (In many PhD programs, including mine, PhD students do not necessarily have formal advisors for the first year; students are admitted to the PhD program, not to any particular research group.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T12:02:05.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="234" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:02:30.817" Score="24" ViewCount="22708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a job announcement where the salary was said to be comparable to the assistant/associate professor level W1/W2 in the German system, and I was wondering how much it would exactly make in terms of net income (i.e. after ALL taxes). &#xA;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Germany.aspx&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; that states that for Western provinces, it was in 2007 between 3400 and 3900 euros gross per month. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myscience.de/en/jobs_and_careers/salary&quot;&gt;other link&lt;/a&gt; states that in Hessen (which is where the position is based), the gross monthly salary is &#xA;5386 for W2 and 3901 for W1. Then, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.connectingindians.com/index.php?name=extraModule&amp;amp;file=GermanTaxCalculator&quot;&gt;this calculator&lt;/a&gt;, a 3900 gross salary means 2167 euros net, after all taxes. So my questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do these numbers make sense? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there intermediary ranks between W1 and W2? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How negotiable is the starting rank in general?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there bonuses to take into account when you're single with no child? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the tax system identical for german and non-german? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T08:55:14.303" Title="What's the net income of a W1/W2 german professor?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:17:10.977" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two very different kinds of computer science master's degrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professional master programs involve taking lots of classes, but have no research requirement.  These are almost universally considered (academically) terminal degrees.  The actual degree is usually &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;M.S.&quot;, but something similar like &quot;M.Eng.&quot; (Cornell) or &quot;M.C.S.&quot; (UIUC).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research masters programs require at least a modicum of original research, usually leading to a thesis.  These are generally (but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; universally) considered preparation for a PhD program, because of the research component.  The actual degree is usually &quot;M.S.&quot;  In some departments, the MS program is equivalent to MCS + thesis; in other programs, the MS program has different (usually smaller but more advanced) course requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;strong&gt;very important&lt;/strong&gt; to know which type of master's program you are applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T12:17:10.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="226" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:28:09.510" Score="61" ViewCount="2386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently attended a very large conference in my field (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfn.org/am2011/&quot;&gt;SfN&lt;/a&gt;, ~30,000 attendees), and after I got back I was thinking about what I had gained from the trip, and I realized not that much. I listened to a few different talks, and I saw a whole bunch of relevant posters, but on reflection I don't think anything I did progressed my knowledge/career that much. &lt;strong&gt;What should I do in the future to ensure that I make the most out of conferences?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T22:07:24.213" Title="How can I get the most out of conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="46" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="229" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:30:55.530" Score="29" ViewCount="67173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told by numerous people that (1) my undergraduate university will be disinclined to bring me on as a graduate student, and that (2) it's a bad idea to attend grad school where you completed your undergraduate degree, anyway.  Is that true? If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T20:58:21.210" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:58:21.210" Title="Attending graduate school at my undergraduate university" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="217" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:35:49.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. There are many reasons you may want to do a postdoc; gain experience in a particular subfield, get to know the research of a particular advisor, work with a particular research group or department, or even to work with a industry group, in the case of industry-sponsored postdocs. You may be asked why you chose to go the postdoc route when you are eventually interviewing for industry positions, but it is by no means a declaration that you are going &quot;academia-only&quot;. Note that this is particularly true during recession periods; it's much easier to get a postdoc than a &quot;real job&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T12:35:49.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2012-02-17T12:58:59.897" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/how-to-to-network-at-conferences&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Network-at-a-Conference&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor put forth 3 simple rules for networking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the guy beside you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to top 3 (sort by relevance or whatever you prefer) presenters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mail them 5 days after the conference with some follow up content (questions/comments/invites for talks etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to make this post &quot;dead-link&quot; proof, I present a gist of the content in the above links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start Early.&lt;/strong&gt; You should begin preparing before the conference starts. Start reading on who will be there, emailing people you want to meet, and determining which events you will attend. You may want to contact the speakers whose talks you will be attending before the conference; try to set up a meeting, or if they are too busy, at least meet them and give them your business card.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bring Business Cards&lt;/strong&gt;. Make sure they're up-to-date and details your preferred mode of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research people and get involved in their networks.&lt;/strong&gt; If a certain professor is giving a talk; read his previous research papers, frame interesting questions and get an excuse to meet him. If you do meet him, exploit the opportunity to interact with his peers and try to enter their network. Sometimes, this is the only way of getting to network with someone. I know of professors who refuse to take students for PhD or internships or Postdocs without a recommendation from someone in his network. A good impression might just get you that recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note people with similar interests to yours.&lt;/strong&gt; These people will be attending all the same presentations as you, talking to the same people, discussing similar topics. They are the potential spots for networking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare the elevator speech&lt;/strong&gt;. A common question will be &quot;So, what is your research about?&quot; Make sure you have an answer for every audience. For e.g. If you are in Computational Science, the answer may vary depending on who you are talking with. Plus, make it interesting and digestible. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organize an event of your own.&lt;/strong&gt; This is especially useful is forming &quot;lower&quot; networks i.e. networks of people who lag in terms of age or experience such as graduate students. If not more, they could notify you of openings or interesting papers or whatever. They could be useful. (Plus it helps us :P )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385512058&quot;&gt;Never Eat Alone&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow Up&lt;/strong&gt;. Prepare for this even before you leave for the conference. Have different modes of follow up ready. Will you have anything to say that is worth writing an email for? If not, think of something which will. If nothing works, make sure you click a photo of yourself with him and send it to him a few days after the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T15:17:15.803" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T15:17:15.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:00:44.353" Score="16" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know why you're going in the first place: only go to conferences where you can get something useful out of it. You can usually get access to the proceedings (and at lower cost) without going to the conference. So just access to the proceedings is usually not enough. You're there to present your stuff and get feedback on it, and/or for networking, and/or to hear specific speakers talk insightfully on a subject important to you, whre you've got an opportunity to ask clarifying questions directly of them, and to participate in a discussion with others, afterwards, on the content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be the first after a presentation to ask an insightful, relevant, informed question. Catch the speaker's eye as you ask the question. Go up to them after the session ends, thank them in person, exchange business cards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network like crazy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a big stack of business cards. Give them away liberally to anyone vaguely connected to your field. Get some more printed. Repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect business cards of anyone vaguely connected, voraciously. Add their email addresses to your database of interesting contacts. Follow them on your networking sites of choice. (Twitter, CiteULike, Academia.edu, etc). And when one of your papers gets published, email them a link to it, and let them know that it may be of use to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:00:44.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:06:50.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will address the two points separately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a strong application, then your undergrad university will be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; inclined to take you as a graduate student. The reason is that to have a strong application, you need very good reference letters. The reference letters are probably from professors &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; your undergrad school, and thus they will carry a lot of weight there (compared to other schools where your former supervisors are less known). Thus, it is often easiest to get into the school you graduated from.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've heard the second point myself, and I actually advice it/try to follow that advice, too. The reasoning behind it as that at the school you graduated from, you already know everybody. Thus, if you stay you will continue to work with the same people and won't meet new collaborators. If you go to a new school, you will have to meet new people and expand your network.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:06:50.323" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:08:27.747" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you stay at the same school (this applies even more when you join grad school immediately out of your undergrads), it'll be a matter of remaining in your comfort zone - same department, a faculty who know you, even the same apartment/neighborhood! This can be a major factor, depending on the person concerned - the pros of staying at your Alma mater are all about convenience IMO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your UG department has an influential professor with whom you've worked before and are planning to continue as well, that can be very advantageous -  as having such a faculty get to know a student's work as an undergraduate can lead to a very strong recommendation (since he has accepted you in the grad program, it is reasonable to assume your work had impressed him during your undergrads).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important advantage of going to another school is that you will be exposed to a completely different department, with faculty who may have diverse research ideas for you to work on. The department, in turn, will benefit as well as a new student from another school will cross-pollinate their department with fresh ideas. This is so important that some top universities have a strong bias against accepting their own undergraduate students into their graduate programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:08:27.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="177" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:17:13.853" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.  Absolutely.  You are already doing mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few bits of advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your advisor and other references to specifically address your mathematical depth and maturity in their recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include a &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; summary of your past research, including pointers to ArXiv preprints if possible, in your statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply to math departments that employ computational algebraic geometers.  Three that come to mind immediately are Saugatu Basu at Purdue, Frank Sottile at Texas A&amp;amp;M, and Bernd Sturmfels at Berkeley. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know at least half a dozen former CS grad students who successfully switched into mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:17:13.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="165" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:21:40.057" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing.  They're synonyms.  See also &quot;Workshop&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:21:40.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:47:54.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Henry points out in the response to Artem's answer, many graduate departments—especially at top schools in the US—have a &quot;no undergrads admitted from our department&quot; policy. Both my undergraduate and graduate schools have adopted such policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, unless you have a very strong reason for staying at your undergraduate school—either a personal situation, such as a spouse who has a job in the area, or the opportunity to work on the world's only &quot;X&quot; (whatever &quot;X&quot; is)—then you are much better served by going somewhere else for graduate school. You will have the advantage of working with new people, plus you avoid the very strong stigma attached to having all of your educational pedigree at a single location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T23:07:09.380" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T23:07:09.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="165" CreationDate="2012-02-17T13:51:05.837" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Conference&quot; or &quot;meeting&quot; are catch-all terms that can refer to any scientific gathering. However, I'd argue that a &quot;Symposium&quot; tends to be smaller than the others, and more narrowly focused. &quot;Conferences,&quot; &quot;Congresses,&quot; and &quot;Meetings&quot; can all be huge affairs, but it's hard to think of many &quot;Symposium&quot; with a similar size. A &quot;workshop&quot; is also an event of somewhat smaller size than a &quot;congress&quot; (which generally implies a huge attending audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T13:51:05.837" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2012-02-17T14:01:34.843" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules for a German professor are quite different than for a typical German employee. The first thing to note is that you will be a &lt;em&gt;Beamter&lt;/em&gt;, which is a very special class of government employees. In particular, you are automatically exempted from the public healthcare system, as well as having to make direct payments into the social security system out of your paycheck. Instead, the pension payments are covered by your employer (the government of the &lt;em&gt;Land&lt;/em&gt; in which you work), while the &lt;em&gt;Beihilfe&lt;/em&gt; system helps to defray part of your insurance costs (the rest of which you pay for through a private insurance contract). In other words: you get billed for your health care; your private insurance reimburses you for 50 percent of your costs, and 30 percent of the costs for other family members. You submit the remainder of the bill to the university, which reimburses the remaining 50 percent (70 percent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net result of this is that you get a much higher percentage of your income as take-home pay relative to a traditional government employee. Your tax status depends on your marital status, so as a W1, you can expect to take home somewhere between 2800 and 3200 euros per month, as reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/beamte/&quot;&gt;Öffentlicher Dienst&lt;/a&gt; website. There are some differences due to cost of living in different states. However, expect to pay about 200 € per month for health care, or more if you have a family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I should also note that just this week came down a new &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/young-german-profs-underpaid-court-says.html&quot;&gt;ruling&lt;/a&gt; from the German Federal Constitutional Court stating that the salaries for professors hired since 2005 are too low, and need to be adjusted. This has the potential to adjust salaries upwards somewhat—although it is not yet clear by how much. (The state of Hesse, against whom the ruling was made, has until January to adjust its salaries upwards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your other questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no ranks between W1 and W2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The base salary is nonnegotiable, as it's set by the state government for which you will work; however, you can negotiate some terms of your &quot;package&quot; (support for students and other workers), and you may be able to get some &quot;performance bonuses&quot; negotiated into the contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching duties are set by federal law, and are similarly nonnegotiable (although you can negotiate the ability, for instance, to teach in English rather than German)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bonuses are not available for single people with no children; instead, according to German law, they're actually taxed at a &lt;em&gt;higher&lt;/em&gt; rate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no difference in salary based on nationality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T14:30:44.323" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T14:30:44.323" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="217" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:02:25.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently involved in a Marie Curie financed Academia-Industry collaboration. I am doing one year in industry (hired as a software developer) then two years in academia (hired as a postdoc) then one final year back in industry (again hired as a software developer). I have no interest in an academic career path for a plethora of reasons that I won't delve in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that academia has no alternative contractual access for project-oriented hiring (I call them &quot;disposable scientists&quot;) hence the &quot;postdoc&quot; is basically a catch-all contract type to get someone to work on an academic project within academia. It can be intended as a professional step to establish yourself on an academic career path, but by no means it must be intended only as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T16:02:25.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:12:14.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's fair to expect a first-year student who has course obligations to spend &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; time on course work, but along the same lines as if it were another course—and by no means the majority of time. When the department requires coursework, it's kind of unfair for a faculty advisor to complain about you having to spend your time taking the required classwork. Particularly in a department like chemistry, which tends to have comprehensive qualification requirements, expecting a first-year student to devote more than a modest amount of time to research is rather unreasonable. If you spend too much time on research, and not enough on classes, you could end up failing your qualfiers. If you don't pass those, you won't get your Ph.D., either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T17:12:14.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="217" CreationDate="2012-02-17T18:47:43.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does doing a postdoc mean a commitment to an academic career?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. However, if your goal is to work in industry, that is where you should be looking for work. A post-doc would be better than a stretch of unemployment. This is because many companies treat recruiting like dating in high school: you are desirable if you already have a date/job and you have cooties (or something else is wrong with you) if you are single/unemployed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T18:47:43.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-02-17T19:34:53.777" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is about my experience in computer engineering&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that reading for breadth was the more important approach. The area of research I was interested in was pretty fluffly and ill-defined (I thought I could make a difference by organizing it better), so that many relevant articles were categorized in totally different areas. This meant I had to have a hummingbird approach: flittering around, but drilling down when I found an important vein of data. I also kept a journal where I'd put a citation and a very brief summary of the article, so that I could come back and say &quot;I think I read something about this last September&quot; and then go look in an older journal. Today, I'd have my own wiki at home to keep track of this. I used to have my own &quot;library&quot; of PDFs that I got through university access, but that removable hard drive was stolen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is five pages of close reading per day enough?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can stay consistently at 5 pages (or 1 article) every day, you will end up far ahead of other people who study only in spurts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T19:34:53.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="213" CreationDate="2012-02-17T19:38:57.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it depends on your school, department and advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple ways a first-year student might be able to secure funding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're already tied to a project with an advisor, they may have travel funds as part of their grant support for some of their graduate students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some conferences have small amounts of awards for graduate students to help pay for the conference - you can apply to these, in hopes of getting them. Some of these do require you be presenting a presentation there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some universities have one-time or (in rare cases) multiple-time travel scholarships for graduate students. In my experience, these tend to be enough to soften the blow of paying for a conference out of pocket, but not enough to pay for it entirely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is I think the pressure you might be feeling to &lt;em&gt;go&lt;/em&gt; to a conference your first year is a little off. I got very little out of conferences (including the all-important networking) until much later in my program, when I both understood what was going on better, and had more interesting things to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T19:38:57.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2012-02-17T20:27:38.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France coursework is anecdotal since PhD students are supposed to follow only one course a year, and the validation is decided (without grades) by the professor giving the lecture (and attendance generally means validation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question of balancing research and teaching is of importance. Those that are TA during their PhD have typically 3 to 4 hours a week on average of presence in front of the students during 6/7 months, and most colleagues agree on the fact that 2 to 3 times this amount is spent in preparing/grading (for beginners). So it is on average between 1 and 2 days a week for teaching. I strongly advised my own students not to cross that line: you don't improve significantly your lectures by working more than that, but you clearly decrease the quality of your research work (again, this is for newcomers in academia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T20:27:38.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="244" CreationDate="2012-02-17T20:50:50.940" Score="21" ViewCount="35963" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is exactly the difference between a reference letter and a recommendation letter in Academia? According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommendation_letter&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Letters of recommendation are very specific in nature and normally requested/required and are always addressed to an individual, whereas letters of reference are more general in nature and are usually addressed &quot;To Whom It May Concern&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've often seen applications where it was asked to provide letters, without being explicit about whether it should be recommendation or reference letters (according to the previous definition). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only ask letters from persons with whom I have worked closely (typically my former advisors), because I believe they are the best persons to ask about me, but it seems that some people also include letters from persons they just know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, what exactly is expected when a job application asks to &quot;give references who can provide recommendation letters&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T03:17:40.430" Title="Difference between reference/recommendation" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="241" CreationDate="2012-02-17T21:24:24.970" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;With due deference to Wikipedia, colloquially, the two terms are used interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T21:24:24.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="241" CreationDate="2012-02-17T21:33:30.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a person can &lt;strong&gt;serve as a reference&lt;/strong&gt; and be contacted by the potential employer/school, usually by phone.  Alternatively, a person can &lt;strong&gt;write a letter of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt; which they mail themselves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when a job application asks to &quot;give references who can provide recommendation letters,&quot; they most likely want their contact information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="37" LastEditorUserId="37" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T22:00:49.527" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T22:00:49.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="241" CreationDate="2012-02-18T06:14:55.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the definition given on the webpage of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcgill.ca/caps/students/graduate-studies/references/&quot;&gt;McGill University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &quot;&lt;strong&gt;letter of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is one that is specifically requested by someone for a determined/defined employment position, academic program or award application. Generally, these letters are sent directly to the requester and not seen by the student. They can be categorized as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Employment Related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Academic Admission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Commendation or Recognition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Performance Evaluation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &quot;&lt;strong&gt;letter of reference&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is normally more general in nature and not addressed to a specific requestor. Often you will see these letters addressed as &quot;To Whom it may Concern&quot; or &quot;Dear Sir/Madam&quot;. These letters are most often given directly to the student and kept for future use. Situations where they are used tend to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Character Assessment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Academic Related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Employment Related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;General Purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://examplereferenceletter.com/what-is-the-difference-between-recommendation-letters-and-reference-letters/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; also explains, a recommendation letter is more specifically related to skills and qualifications of a person with respect to a definite position/program, whereas a reference letter is usually more general in nature and refers more to the overall character of a person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T03:17:40.430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T03:17:40.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2012-02-18T20:59:46.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience: You &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; have to make it work. You &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; have to balance all that is thrown at you. Believe me, it is a character building exercise, getting a PhD is. It's not just about publishing journal papers. A PhD degree is also about time management, people skills (which can be tested when trying to appease your advisor!) and learning how to communicate effectively (even if you get only 10 hours work done in a week while the expectation was 15 hours, it is &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you communicate your results during research meetings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a year or so and once you have your qualifiers out of the way you will emerge a stronger person who would suddenly even have downtime! Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T20:59:46.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2012-02-18T21:00:40.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best resources for jobs in computational chemistry (not limited to PhD level positions) is the job section of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/a/jobs/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computational Chemistry List&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place where I've regularly seen relevant postings is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Computational-Chemists-94648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Computational Chemists&quot; group on LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T12:01:27.093" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T12:01:27.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2012-02-18T22:42:46.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lack of time for research in the first year is pretty common in programs with heavy course requirements, and your supervisor will usually know this especially if she or he has other students. I used to tell my supervisor that I was pretty busy with courses and this was no problem, and I doubt your advisor will get upset if you also have this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I like the comment of DNA. You'd be surprised that even with a busy schedule there is a lot of room for improvement in how you manage your time. If you take a bit of time to examine your schedule, possibly with the aide of a spreadsheet, often you can find ways to improve your efficiency. Courses and TA duties are tiring and it is difficult to work after them. If this is your case you could try getting up earlier to have the best part of your day for a bit of research. Even three hours per week per semester will be around 40 hours in a semester, depending on the semester length, and you can accomplish much in this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user136" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T22:42:46.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="249" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:14:56.727" Score="15" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;As examples, the lab executive assistant at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.klab.caltech.edu/people.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.klab.caltech.edu/people.shtml&lt;/a&gt; or the lab administrative assistant over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/people.html#admins&quot;&gt;http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/people.html#admins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T06:14:25.980" Title="How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="248" CreationDate="2012-02-19T01:40:59.497" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funding for non-research positions comes from either direct or indirect sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct sources means writing a proposal that includes funding for personnel such as a lab technician or an administrator for a research center. In this case, the funding is obtained directly through grants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, however, the funding is &lt;em&gt;indirect&lt;/em&gt;: the salary is paid by the department, rather than an individual research group. This funding is paid for through the &quot;overhead&quot; charges that are included in research grants. (In some cases, such as public universities in Germany, this funding is also indirect, coming from a grant by the state or federal government given to each professorship.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T12:41:35.757" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T12:41:35.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-02-19T04:10:47.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an intermediate step that some of my friends took: they stayed on to do their Masters in the same lab where they did their undergraduate study, then moved college (and country) to do their PhDs. That way, they got more research experience in an excellent lab in their home country (keeping costs down a bit), then used their PhD stipends to offset the cost of living abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T04:10:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="284" CreationDate="2012-02-19T07:38:41.473" Score="16" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for fellowships that an international grad student can apply for, to support him/her while working towards a Ph.D. (additional to whatever funding that may be available as TA). So far, I've been able to identify the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceandtech.fulbrightonline.org/eligibility&quot;&gt;Fulbright Scholarships for International Students&lt;/a&gt; (applications have to be done more than a year before, and they've suspended 2013-14 grants, so not really an option for me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akdn.org/akf_scholarships.asp&quot;&gt;Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship Programme&lt;/a&gt;, which has the following selection criteria:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main criteria for selecting award winners are: l) excellent academic records, 2) genuine financial need, 3) admission to a reputable institution of higher learning and 4) thoughtful and coherent educational and career plans. Candidates are also evaluated on their extra-curricular interests and achievements, potential to achieve their goals and likelihood to succeed in a foreign academic environment. Applicants are expected to have some years of work experience in their field of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if I could get to know of similar fellowships that an incoming student can apply to, &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; starting grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T14:33:48.257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T08:07:53.717" Title="What are the options for fellowships for international grad students in USA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="255" CreationDate="2012-02-19T13:21:38.807" Score="38" ViewCount="8257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for graduate school (PhD in computer science), and I'm considering writing to faculty whose research areas match with what I intend to pursue, to understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether they'd be looking for new students at all in the coming year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they did, would they be potentially interested in my profile (I know no-one would guarantee an acceptance without me going through the process of application), but it would help to know if they &lt;em&gt;would not be interested at all in me&lt;/em&gt; - which would leave me  free apply to other schools in which I get a neutral/positive response.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the above in mind, what would be the best way to introduce myself in the first mail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should be the salutation - I know &quot;Respected Sir&quot; sounds archaic, but was wondering if &quot;Dear Professor X&quot; sounded too informal or not!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I state my credentials (details of where I did my undergrads/masters) first, or do I state my purpose in writing to him/her?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to mention my background concisely, without giving too much details, while at the same time not &quot;underselling&quot; myself as a potential grad student?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to give a link to my resume/profile hosted on my website - should I embed the hyperlink, or is it better to write the link in plain text?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I end such a letter - the obvious ones (such as &quot;see you soon&quot; or &quot;till we meet again&quot;) being not quite suitable in this case)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basically afraid of saying too much (causing vexation) or too little (resulting in no response to my missive). I understand that the faculty are accustomed to seeing their inbox flooded with such mails each year, few of which ever get a positive response - which may not always be due to lack of an interesting profile, but the manner in which the mail is worded (&lt;em&gt;Many&lt;/em&gt; professors have explicitly mentioned on their websites that they would not respond to generic &lt;em&gt;&quot;Do you have funding&quot;&lt;/em&gt; type of queries no matter what the credentials of the student are!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though my interest is specific to CS, I believe it would apply to other fields as well. Also, I would be interested in the opinions of both present faculty members (who have to sort through such mails), and past applicants to grad-school (who have the experience of successfully writing to their advisers before applying)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T18:07:48.463" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T11:22:26.233" Title="Details an applicant should include/exclude in an introductory letter to a prospective grad school adviser?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2012-02-19T14:07:14.243" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal experience relies more on postdoc application rather than PhD application, but here my answers to your questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Salutations: I think that &quot;Dear Professor X&quot; is the usual salutation, although if the person is using a different title on their website, it's better to use this one. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd start with the purpose of writing, and more particularly, with a &quot;personal&quot; context, in order to clarify that it's not some kind of generic email. For instance: &quot;Dear Professor X., I have read with much interest your papers Y and Z, (or I attended your invited talk at this conference, etc), and I would be very interested in applying for PhD under your supervision. Indeed, I believe that the idea you have developed is ... (very good) and intersects strongly with my own research interests.&quot; At this point, you can start putting your credentials, and to emphasize on the points that are the most relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In order to be concise, I would insist on the points that make you potentially different from other applicants. For instance, if you have a regular MSc in CS (i.e. not from a top Ivy Uni), then just mention it, because it won't be the &quot;selling point&quot;, since pretty much any other applicants for a PhD got something equivalent. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For your CV, if it's light enough (i.e. less than 1MB), I would actually include it in the mail. And I would also put the link in plain text (because personally, I like to know what kind of link I'm clicking on :)). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I usually finish my emails with something along the lines &quot;I'm at your disposal for any further information you might need. Best regards&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a general advice, I would contact the Asst./Assoc. Professors rather than directly the Professor in charge, at least for an informal query. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T14:28:24.117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T14:28:24.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2012-02-19T14:45:15.490" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is another example where internationalization of programs makes an answer more difficult. If the program in question is in the US, for instance, you should probably &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; contact the professor directly until &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you've been admitted into the program in question. Since admissions decisions are handled centrally, it's just a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For foreign professors, however, I believe you should again exercise caution before making contact, and also keep expectations low. For instance, I'm in the role of Assistant/Associate Professor that Charles mentions in his response. However, I will probably not take the time to respond to a request asking for positions in my group &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; I think a candidate is an exceptional match, and would be one I would actively consider for the group if I had an available opening. Otherwise, I don't reply, just because it takes too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the question of salutation, I would &lt;strong&gt;absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; use &quot;Dear Professor X,&quot; or some other salutation that includes the name of the person you're addressing. Otherwise, it doesn't look like you're doing other than sending out an email blast to a bunch of email addresses—another move which almost guarantees that your email is going to be consigned to the &quot;ignore&quot; pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T14:45:15.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2012-02-19T15:02:19.293" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a list of things you should do from my seniors (Some might disagree):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try not to over-sell yourself. There is a fine line between stating facts about yourself and boasting. Stay on the former side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try not to mention things and leave them abruptly or incompletely. For e.g., Don't say &quot;I was involved with a project in the University of X where we studied Cancer Treatment.&quot; (Thats it). What did you do? Where did it lead? What is the status now? Thats the crux of the information and sadly, that is left out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have an interesting question or comment in the mail. Merely stating that you read a paper or attended his talk is not enough. Billions of other students will be stating the same. What made you like it? Why was it relevant to you?&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Side note: Surprisingly, many professors who I mailed have been interested on &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; I stumbled on his paper.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never ask direct questions that the professor wouldn't like answering (At least in the first mail). Asking him about his funding status isn't the best idea in the first mail. This is true for many reasons: For one, most profs wouldn't like telling you such details without you proving you are worth it (Why would they?). Secondly, your intentions are getting obfuscated. Are you really interested in the professor ( &amp;amp; his research) or his money? If his research was interesting but he couldn't fund you for X years, would you still go?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this wasn't obvious, don't mass mail/mail merge. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be honest about what you say. This includes no exaggeration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it short. No one likes reading a billion lines to find out who you are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasize your work and what differentiates you from the rest rather than your grades and scores. Grades and scores (GRE/AGRE) are bonuses (or deal breakers) but they are secondary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T11:22:26.233" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T11:22:26.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2012-02-19T15:28:41.393" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an adviser in TCS, I don't want &lt;em&gt;new students&lt;/em&gt;, I want to work/advise someone &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;who is in my opinion very promising&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the email must be concise (not necessarily short, but concise): be respectful, don't ask abruptly if the person needs students. Present shortly yourself: &quot;I am XXXX, currently studying YYY at university ZZZZ&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, present your work interest, and more, show that you are aware of the work of the person you target: &quot;this year, I educated myself on the problem of finding an algorithm of complexity XXX for solving YYY. During this process, I analysed in details the method for finding a lower bound that you present in paper ZZZ&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for a short scientific discussion, you can either ask for clarification on the aforementioned lower bound, or explicitly mention that you have some ideas about the problem, or that you need some guidance on further reading about the problem. Anyway, make sure that you worked hard before coming to the meeting. If you cannot afford the travel (too far, too expansive, etc.), ask kindly if you can ask a few scientific questions in another mail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you're known to the person, everything is easier. Then you can ask about your future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is to make yourself known for something different than job request. For instance, you target TCS, if you are known on TCS.SE, it will be easier to have guidance/advice from TCS researchers that are also on TCS.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning some of the points you mention, don't hesitate to join a resume to your mail or (better) a link your (serious) homepage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T15:28:41.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="259" CreationDate="2012-02-19T16:55:51.940" Score="22" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean, I really &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be glad when they ask me this question. But inevitably, different people will ask me the same question many different times (over many different interviews), understandably so, and response fatigue does start to set in. I just wonder how other people can manage to be so patient when I ask them the same exact question (that they've probably answered hundreds of times by now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess one of the things that has always driven me (despite an initially subpar educational background) was that I was always extremely averse to any form of redundant stimuli or repetitiveness. This helped carry me from a crappy middle school into UChicago/Brown. But I do need to get used to it a bit more as my role changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:48:02.530" Title="How do I not get impatient when other people ask me to describe my research?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="257" CreationDate="2012-02-19T17:28:54.887" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; have an &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch&quot;&gt;elevator pitch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; version of your research i.e. a description of your work that you can concisely explain to an incoming grad student within the time taken to ride a few floors in an elevator. I know that can be pretty hard to think up on the spot, which is why I'm suggesting you have the basic points at the top of your mind. With time, you can reel it off without even thinking for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why I emphasized on why you should do it, there can be enormous benefits of having such a version ready (say your adviser introduces you to someone with whom you'd like to work with in future in the hallway one morning, and he asks the same question out of courtesy - it might really look bad on both you and your adviser if you start hemming and hawing!) for when you really need it. Also, it would keep you grounded to what you started working on while deep inside the technicalities of a paper...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T17:54:08.513" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T17:54:08.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="257" CreationDate="2012-02-19T17:40:59.213" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your job, as an academic, is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do amazing research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write it up and convey your results to other people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you view (2) to apply only to others who are already in your field and are completely familiar with everything you've done. You will find that, in the entirety of your field, there are probably just a few dozen people who are intimately familiar with every details of your field, and only a few hundred who are really familiar with what you do. Everyone else — academic, layperson, village idiot — will require an explanation, and you should do them the favor of explaining it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To more directly answer your question, you should always have two answers ready to the question &quot;what do you do?&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An elevator pitch, as described elsewhere. This should take ~15-30 seconds to say and would give a very high-level overview of your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A more in-depth explanation, which would take about 3-5 minutes, which conveys what you do in more detail. Generally speaking, less time than that and you can't convey any useful information, more time than that and you're giving too many details. After your in-depth explanation, either the person will say, &quot;oh&quot;, and move on, or they'll ask questions and you can have an intellectual discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Note: the following point is somewhat debatable.)&lt;/em&gt; I've found for myself that it helps to visualize the person you're talking to as paying your salary; if you're on a publicly-funded research grant (i.e., any governmental grant), their taxes are funding your research. It gives some perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T20:07:49.540" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T20:07:49.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="270" CreationDate="2012-02-19T17:47:14.323" Score="18" ViewCount="1307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a rather difficult quandary. I'm a first-year student, and I joined my lab group to work on a clinical psychiatry/neuroscience grant. I've been making slow progress towards familiarizing myself with the grant. However, my advisor (actually, one of my two-advisors... they both run the lab together) has been having me work on a separate project of his, completely unrelated to my work. From what I can tell, this project would take a few months to work out, and the result would be my co-authoring on a small paper with another graduate student in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My worry is, I receive a stipend from the university every month, and that stipend is paid for my the psych/neurosci grant. By working on the second project, I have the feeling that I'm &quot;stealing&quot; from the first grant. I was told by my advisor that this sort of time-sharing between grants is normal within the research world. My question is, is that true? If it is a problem, how should I deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T18:09:23.500" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T06:06:20.837" Title="Advisor asking me to work on research not covered by my grant" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="257" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:03:08.530" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The previous answers are all good and I strongly recommend having something prepared in advance. However, I think some people are more prone to fatigue from repetition than others, and if you get tired easily from answering this question like me, you could challenge yourself to come up with something different to say every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is definitely true that each person you talk to will have a different background, and in general how you inform somebody of your research should be not just a function of what you know about it, but also of their personality and their knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good practice because it will make you more aware of the subtleties in communication, which is important especially when you are applying for a job. A fellow colleague won't react in the same way as a potential employer for instance. In other words, you should practice finding some common ground which will inspire your questioner, and in this case every time someone asks you what your research is about, you will always have something new to think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user136" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:03:08.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="273" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:18:29.887" Score="8" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished an undergraduate degree in psychology, with a focus in biological sciences and pre-medicine courses. In looking at my options for graduate school, I've taken an interest in biomedical engineering; tissue engineering, medical devices, medical imaging, etc. My biology is pretty solid, but I'm not much of an engineer, aside from a few math courses. My question is, are students entering a PhD program typically very well-versed in the field, or is there a lot of &quot;learning on the job&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T18:23:37.793" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T20:42:38.717" Title="Beginning PhD in related field without subject area expertise, will that be a problem?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="266" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:38:36.770" Score="10" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will people look down on me if I say that I plan on doing research that I end up not doing due to various reasons, especially if I'm a PhD student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it's somewhat expected, and that experienced professors don't always believe that I'll end up doing what I say (because unexpected bugs and events happen all the time). And sometimes you also end up going on detours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, and professors always say that they do things on smaller timeframes than what it really takes them to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess if I always meet my commitments, then people might believe me more. But on the other hand, it always helps to get more feedback on ambitious projects that I don't necessarily believe that I will finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T08:11:36.057" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T08:11:36.057" Title="Failing to deliver promised research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="267" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:45:15.357" Score="15" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;An incoming graduate student is typically required to help out as a TA, take courses both related to their research and required by the program, as well as to start reading up on the research topics in his field. Unless he has worked in the same research area prior to joining grad school, it is unlikely he would get any publishable results very soon after joining grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid being depressed by this apparent lack of results in the first few semesters, it would be helpful to know what the adviser/admissions committee expects out of him in that time, and by when he would be expected to start having publishable results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the answers related to Theoretical CS, but as always, I believe it would be applicable to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; grad  student as well - so it should not be specific to this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:57:42.837" Title="What is the typical time period after which an incoming grad student is expected to start publishing?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="263" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:50:21.317" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge difference between saying that you will do a given research effort, and saying that you will obtain a particular result. If you have guaranteed the latter, you made a mistake, it's research, there is no guarantee on a result !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you give a work planning to your adviser, you have to stick to it. Of course, you can have (once, not twice) a real problem that ruins your effort (house on fire, a relative at the hospital, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, you can promise that you will work, but not that it will work ;) If you always fail on your commitments, you will never be seen as reliable, and people won't work with you, it's that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:50:21.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="263" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:52:01.420" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is subjective in nature, but the answer is almost certainly &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. Academicians are always applying for funding, looking into collaborations, reading research articles in different fields, and generally taking an interest in new research venues. It's expected that you'll occasionally (maybe even regularly) expand your research interests, and it's the nature of the game that some of your attempts will not pan out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, my graduate research advisor completed a whopping 10 grants a year for a very wide variety of research projects. Each grant entailed a good deal of preparatory research, in which we would explore a new field and try to find some preliminary results strong enough to drive the grant through. Some of my (and my colleagues) most interesting work (medical ontologies, intelligent systems, lung-powered electricity generators) came from these failed grant attempts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:52:01.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="264" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:55:58.797" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This wil vary significantly according to advisor, but I'd say a typical plan is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Years 1-2: coursework, begin research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer of year 2: Small research publications (in my field, 2-4 page conference proceedings, small steps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year 3: Get some real research done, more small papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year 4+: ~1/2 paper a year, ish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the variance may be too great for this to be meaningful. I have a friend who published 17 papers during his 6 year graduate student tenure, and I have a number of friends who published zero peer-reviewed papers during my grad school tenure. Take the numbers with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:55:58.797" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="264" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:57:42.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France, the PhD is funded for 3 years generally. In our university (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris-Sud_11_University&quot;&gt;Paris-Sud university&lt;/a&gt;), PhD students meet a committee composed of the adviser, the head of the lab and the head of the doctoral school each year. In TCS, if you have not published (or have a paper close to be published - that is submitted) during the second year; this yields a big red flag. So, it means that it is expected that some results are ready for publication during the third semester of the thesis (even in a small workshop).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit : PhD students are doing a 6 months internship before entering the PhD, with their PhD advisor mostly, so in fact the research is done on 3,5 years, and often 4 without much troubles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:57:42.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="262" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:58:46.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had asked the same question related to CS in TCS.SE (found &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/8339/4119&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) - from that, I'm summarizing the answers I got w.r.t your field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before grad school is a very early stage to change fields. Many people shift then. It's acceptable and expected. In your application, explain your changing fields (so the readers understand why the letter writers are not from psychology, why you took lots of biology courses, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have research experience (especially if there's some angle towards biological subjects in them), it still counts for you, even if it's in a different field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have good grades, it still counts for you, even if they are for courses from a different field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Admissions committees are generally looking for &quot;strong&quot; students where &quot;strong&quot; is largely defined via prior research experience. i.e. they especially want to know if you've had the experience of doing research, were successful at it and have a good idea if this is something you really want. The letters are important as experienced researchers' evaluation of your research ability and potential and grades give some indication of overall academic aptitude. Thus, if you have strong letters from your supervisors, it still counts for you, even if they are from a different field (strong = from a professor who knows you well and has great things to say about you).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:58:46.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2012-02-19T19:10:02.933" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's true that the time-sharing between grants is quite normal within the research world, at least, I've observed it a lot, and in any case, you shouldn't have to worry about that, because it's under the responsibility of your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, one of the problems when it comes to funding is that in order to make a grant proposal, you somehow need to know precisely enough where you're going, otherwise you have the risk not to be able to achieve what you promised. Hence, I know that it's quite normal that when applying for a grant, some parts of the results promised at the end of the grant are already done, although maybe not finalized. So, you can use the time you would have spent doing the research you promised (but already done) to do some other research on another topic, so that you can apply for another grant on this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why in the end, the main question is whether it benefits you, as a first-year student, to work on the other project. Clearly, working on a different topic is always a good experience, especially when there is a potential publication at the end. I don't know how long is your grant, but if it's 3 years, then spending a few months on working on something different will not really impact it. Of course, if you have a grant of only 6 months, then maybe you can't really spend half of it working on something different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize: don't feel guilty about it, I believe this kind of things is pretty common, and just consider whether it can be good/interesting for you or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T19:10:02.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="272" CreationDate="2012-02-19T19:28:06.263" Score="66" ViewCount="2539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite often, at conferences or while attending seminars, I will start an interesting discussion with the speaker, first on-site, then later by email, and even though at some point there seems to be some mutual interest, it almost never gives an actual collaboration (i.e. working on an actual paper). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no particular problem of working with different people, so I was wondering if it was quite usual to have this huge ratio of &quot;collaboration failure&quot;? In particular, my problem is that, although it's quite simple to have an idea, it seems quite hard to do the next step, that is to actually work with someone you have no connection, and who might even live in a different country. Are there some techniques to make a &quot;temporary&quot; collaboration work, or at least to detect those which are unlikely to work?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="38446" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-02-25T13:14:41.100" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T13:14:41.100" Title="How to achieve successful collaborations?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="271" CreationDate="2012-02-19T20:38:02.013" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, starting a collaboration is incredibly easy: you use your network of contacts to identify someone who'd be willing and interested in solving a problem. You talk at a conference or meeting, or arrange a visit to their laboratory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Maintaining&lt;/em&gt; a collaboration, however, is next to impossible. It only works if you have a history of successful results early on, or if you have already had a long history of acquaintance with one another before the collaboration began. (In other words, were you friends or colleagues before the work started?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I would recommend making sure that you start off with &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot;: problems that can be solved mutually within the framework of existing funding on both of your parts, with value for both of you. This is important because one of the challenges of getting grants is that reviewers for funding agencies typically want to see an existing record of collaboration—mutual publications and effort—before they're ready to award money to a new collaborative proposal. There are exceptions to this, but they're by no means common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you have a track record of working together which will let you grow the collaboration into something further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T09:58:23.723" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T09:58:23.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="262" CreationDate="2012-02-19T20:42:38.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While shan23's answer is good, it is also somewhat incomplete. There are a few things to watch out for when you're coming in to a field from another department:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will need to keep in mind the qualifying procedures for your new department. Will they expect you to pass exams in undergraduate coursework in the new discipline? If so, then you'll need to do a lot more &quot;catch-up&quot; work early on to make up for the potential shortfall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unless the new area is an interdisciplinary one—such as biomedical engineering—they're probably going to want to see some track record in the area. You're going to find it a lot easier to move into biomedical engineering from mechanical engineering than from economics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may find it helpful to try to find a position as a lab assistant or something similar to this in the new field before you try to start the graduate coursework. However, this is by no means required. (But it would help to prove the &quot;dedication&quot; aspect, which is what you'd need to convince a graduate school admissions committee about in order to have a successful application).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T20:42:38.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="263" CreationDate="2012-02-19T20:51:20.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lean towards agreeing with eykanal and disagreeing with Sylvain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD project is inherently a somewhat fungible plan—what you do depends on the results that you've obtained. And obviously equipment failures, unexpected obstacles and delays, and other unforeseen circumstances are a natural part of research. So I wouldn't be too concerned about failing, as a graduate student, to reach the long-term destination of your research project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, with my own students, I try to sketch out as little as possible the actual outline of the projects they are going to pursue. That way, there is much more flexibility in the future development of their projects, as I plan to tailor them based on the students' expertise and interests. (Moreover, I would suggest that if you know everything you need to do to reach your goal, and you accomplish exactly that, you haven't done any research at all!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is the issue of meeting &lt;em&gt;short-term&lt;/em&gt; goals as well as long-term goals. You shouldn't promise your advisor something will be done in 1 to 2 weeks if you don't intend on having it ready for 2 months. (I would also argue the reverse is a dangerous situation, too, because you could fall into the &quot;competency trap,&quot; whereby the advisor thinks you really know what you're doing, and continues to expect you to know what you're doing for the remainder of your time in the advisor's group!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T20:51:20.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="271" CreationDate="2012-02-19T20:58:58.157" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I had e-mail conversations but they never went into a serious collaboration (i.e. ending with a paper). All papers I have are with persons I know from a frequent face-to-face contact (plus with the people they know from frequent face-to-face contact).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it has to do with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;psychological barriers (as also it is easy to have a conversation with a big name on a conference, but much harder to engage in a distant correspondence),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;funding/time issues,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that collaboration usually requires a lot of contact (sometimes very hand-waving), &lt;em&gt;especially in the beginning&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with a frequent face-to-face contact it is much easier to gauge others' interest and choose the right persons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Entirely anecdotally, as a PhD student with only 7 papers so far. It may not apply to other situations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T01:09:53.317" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T01:09:53.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="280" CreationDate="2012-02-20T01:17:45.633" Score="19" ViewCount="2985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been attending my lab's journal club for a while, and I'm wondering whether there are better ways out there of conducting a journal club. To make the question more generic, our club seems to have two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the students in the lab are reading papers in the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss the latest research findings in the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding goal (1), that's kinda what I'm spending all my time doing; I'm doing research, and much of that involves little more than reading a ridiculous number of papers. Insofar as accomplishing goal (2), I'm not sure we do it the best way possible. The journal club I'm currently attending is run by a professor. In general, one person prepares a presentation, and the professor grills that person on the paper. Other people chime in if they're interested, but more often than not it's an hour of watching the prof duel with the student. If the student is well prepared, I'll learn a lot, but when the kid has clearly not read the paper well, it's just a waste of everyone's time. &lt;strong&gt;What successful journal club formats have you encountered?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T16:14:02.680" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:13:04.437" Title="How to format for a useful journal club?" Tags="&lt;lab-meeting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2012-02-20T05:59:37.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on my experience being in some highly unsuccessful journals clubs, and some very successful ones - at least in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have faculty involvement. I've seen more than one journal club that either didn't have faculty members, or had a faculty member or two who just kind of sat back and didn't say anything. That's bad. Faculty members who can contribute, answer questions, and generally provide some context for papers are excellent. They're good for pointed questions we might have missed - I've had faculty members ask a question about a figure that got into an interesting discussion of research ethics, one that led insight into some politics (&quot;The reason that commentary appeared in this journal is Y&quot;), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I prefer to have them separate from lab meetings, and drawing from a wider audience than my specific research group. I find the breadth of experience, diversity of papers, and keeping up with things taking place beyond my narrow little laser-like focus to be both refreshing and more useful than going over a paper half of us already read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving the journal club a greater context. Yes, keeping track of the literature is important. But its importance seems to slide if you know your analysis should be done soon, or something needs to come out of the water bath, or midterms need to be graded. One semester we framed ours as qualifying exam preparation, and another as professional development - the people presenting wrote their critiques like responses to requests for peer review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I've found journal clubs to be most useful for mid-level graduate students - they need enough experience to have thoughts, insights and feelings about the paper, but if a JC succeeds, eventually they should need it less and less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T05:59:37.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2012-02-20T06:06:20.837" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time sharing between grants is extremely common - I've often been asked to work on projects unrelated to what I am formally being funded for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @CharlesMorisset mentioned, many grants are now written with a sufficiently robust idea of where they're going, how they'll get there and that they'll work that a considerable part of the research is already done. Additionally, since grants &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; fairly strong preliminary results sections these days, one is essentially forced to use current funding to do the research for &quot;future&quot; projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wouldn't feel bad about it for the reason you've mentioned. I would consider asking your advisor &quot;why this project?&quot; Do they just need a warm body to do the work? Would they like to give you a shot at an early, modest publication? Is there a particular skill they are hoping you'll develop working on this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T06:06:20.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="248" CreationDate="2012-02-20T06:14:25.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen three common ways of funding staff - undoubtedly there are more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For staff directly related to the running of a research lab, for example senior technicians, lab managers, dedicated programmers for computational research, etc. there may be funding written into the direct salary costs of the research grants their faculty member submits. For example, many of the grants in the field I'm in have direct funding for data managers and the like for the duration of a research grant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a faculty member anticipates needing a particular type of help - most often a lab technician or programmer in my experience - they may ask for their salary to be part of the faculty member's startup package for some small number of years before (hopefully) the faculty member can support them through mechanism #1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other staff members, such as personal assistants, some research staff etc. are theoretically things that are supposed to be paid for by the rather sizable chunk of a grant budget that goes to indirect costs to the university. Whether or not this occurs in practice is another question all together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T06:14:25.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="251" CreationDate="2012-02-20T08:07:53.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Smithsonian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.si.edu/ofg/fell.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;offers fellowships for international grad students&lt;/a&gt;, specifically a ten-week summer internship for pre-dissertation grad students and 3-12 months of funding for post-dissertation grad students. Also, you get to work at the Smithsonian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T08:07:53.717" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-20T08:07:53.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="286" CreationDate="2012-02-20T08:21:18.667" Score="20" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a divide between the scientific community about involvement in popular science. I would define it as involvement in NatGeo/Discovery type documentaries, writing columns for newspapers/magazines, blogging about articles of popular nature (Like End of the World, Tsunami or whatever). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does involvement in such issues harm one's reputation in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have frequently seen grad students shy away from such opportunities because they think they will be made fun of or won't be taken seriously when they go and speak about &quot;actual&quot; research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although I am talking about grad students, the scenario isn't very different for faculty as well IMO)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people like Stephen Hawking or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wiseman&quot;&gt;Richard Wiseman&lt;/a&gt; have actually authored best selling books. Whereas a majority of people in academia stay in the confines of the journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T14:51:59.407" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T00:47:04.193" Title="Does Pop-Science involvement hurt one's reputation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="285" CreationDate="2012-02-20T09:35:49.540" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If certain fields of academia do in fact frown upon &quot;popularizing&quot; science, then they are shooting themselves in the foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important ways of securing funding in different disciplines is through getting support by the federal governments in which they are working. Convincing politician X that you should fund research on doohickey X and widget Y to solve problem Z rather than funding their new shopping mall or football stadium requires convincing them that your research is important and worthwhile. The key to doing this is having a message to sell—something that the lobbyists and staff persons working for the government officials can take to them and say &quot;this is what you need to know about why this is important.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excellent way of doing this is to take part in writing columns, producing features for television, and other &quot;popular&quot; methods of outreach. You'll have to figure out how to distill your message in a way that's exciting for the viewer or reader, and that will help no only you but your peers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T14:13:15.113" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T14:13:15.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="285" CreationDate="2012-02-20T13:29:55.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One situation I have come across in which it can potentially make the academic look negative would be when one is interviewed by a journalist, and the journalist is the one writing the article. Hence, one can be quoted out of context (twisting your words to mean something entirely different) or more frequently just being quoted in a silly way (since the journalist only has a fairly superficial understanding of what you are talking about). Especially if you are involved in something that is controversial (e.g. global warming, racial bias) one should be more aware of this potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that I have seen &lt;em&gt;slight&lt;/em&gt; negative sentiment towards when an author writes a piece that is sensationalist in some ways (which aren't seen as science, or unethical). Examples I have come across are the &lt;em&gt;Freakonomics&lt;/em&gt; books (or one of the sub-stories from the initial book titled &lt;em&gt;Gang leader for a day&lt;/em&gt;). I suspect the benifit of exposure outweighed any negative sentiment though in those examples. This probably isn't pertinent to many scholars though (how many people write whole books that could be possibly construed in such a negative light before they are well established?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never encountered negative sentiment for smaller articles (like short peices in the newspaper or blogs). Most people I know are really happy to get an article/editorial in the paper (or other widely read magazine like NatGeo).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T14:32:41.797" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T14:32:41.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="456" CreationDate="2012-02-20T13:48:54.987" Score="12" ViewCount="1556" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the online tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/user/apwheele&quot;&gt;citeulike&lt;/a&gt; to manage my bibliography. The main tool to organize the library is tags (functionally equivalent to tags here on this site). One problem I seem to be having is I do a very poor job of initially choosing tags, so I need to continually re-tag my library to keep it organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any advice on choosing an intitial set of tags? Or will it be necessary for me to continually maintain my library to keep it organized/updated as much as I would like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T22:33:00.910" Title="How do I effectively use tags to organize my bibliography?" Tags="&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="288" CreationDate="2012-02-20T14:01:50.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't use citeulike myself, but I think it's important to make a difference between tags and keywords. Indeed, keywords are usually already included in the paper or at least in the abstract, so you don't need to retag them with duplicate information. Instead, it's better to use tags to give some personal context, such as why did you read this paper in the first place, or which general idea can you connect it to, or for which of your papers you used it, etc. In this case, there is no &quot;wrong&quot; or &quot;right&quot; tag, just some facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T14:01:50.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T14:12:47.437" Score="18" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been recently introduced to the idea of teaching portfolios, that is a collection of teaching experiences and references made by peer educators. Their supposed purpose is to go along a researcher CV when applying for a position in academia, i.e. assistant/associate professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any first hand experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="138" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T04:26:20.867" Title="How important are teaching portfolios in obtaining an academic position?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="290" CreationDate="2012-02-20T15:47:04.773" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be useful for someone considering a career at a teaching-first school, but I've never seen such portfolios asked for or even considered at research universities in the US and the larger European countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T00:55:26.983" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T00:55:26.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="285" CreationDate="2012-02-20T16:28:48.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is, if its done in balance, no. I've had experience as a graduate student with two projects that could be considered &quot;popular science&quot;, and they've done...interesting things, career wise. Good as ice breakers (&quot;Oh, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; did that!?&quot; - in a generally positive tone) and one yielded some interesting professional contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are two critical elements that need to be there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It needs to be popular &lt;em&gt;science&lt;/em&gt; - it needs a rigorous scientific backing behind it. The popular, fun, Discovery Channel part of my work is backed by peer reviewed publications and conference talks to scientific audiences. That's a good way to reflect criticism of the work as being &quot;soft&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a graduate student, you need to do other things as well. It's dangerously easy, I've found, to make that your &quot;thing&quot; - but if you're going to be a one trick pony in grad school, that pony probably needs to be serious research. &quot;So what are you working on now?&quot; probably needs to have a straight research answer, rather than another popular science project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T16:28:48.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="296" CreationDate="2012-02-21T00:46:37.730" Score="10" ViewCount="1904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just wondering what rules of etiquette guide whether an academic puts qualifications on a business card. I'm assuming that either &quot;Dr&quot; at the start or &quot;PhD&quot; at the end is important to include where applicable, perhaps with the exception that higher titles such as &quot;Prof&quot; would take precedence over &quot;Dr&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what about beyond that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T01:28:48.440" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T04:07:19.703" Title="What rules guide whether to put qualifications on an academic business card?" Tags="&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2012-02-21T02:36:50.307" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OSF provides a general open preprint infrastructure that is connected to a range of preprint services. Importantly, it is not owned by a commercial publisher.  It supports a number of discipline-specific preprint services many of which use the ArXiv name under licence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of preprint services is growing over time. &#xA;For further information go to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, no matter what the discipline you can post to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OSF preprints&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the OSF supports the following discipline-specific preprint services. Presumably, if your preprint aligns with any of these disciplines, then you would be better off posting to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Psychological Sciences.&lt;/strong&gt;  PsyArXiv &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social Sciences.&lt;/strong&gt; SocARXIV &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Engineering.&lt;/strong&gt; engrXiV &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/engrxiv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints/engrxiv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agriculture and Allied Sciences.&lt;/strong&gt; AgriXiv &lt;a href=&quot;https://osf.io/preprints/agrixiv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://osf.io/preprints/agrixiv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More discipline-specific preprint services using the OSF framework are being added on a regular basis: &lt;a href=&quot;https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Useful features of OSF-based preprint services&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strategy for long term archiving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration with Google Scholar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration with OSF projects which allows you to link other materials such as data, code, and materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OSF is a not for profit entity run by academic researchers (contrast this with SSRN, Figshare, ResearchGate; i.e., no ads and goals aligned with academic community)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The functionality of OSF preprints is improving on a regular basis. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SocElbBjc_Nhme4-SJv2_zytBd1ys8R5aZDb3POe94c/edit#gid=1340026270&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;features road map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can choose a licence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can link to the doi of the subsequently published manuscript.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T00:26:32.843" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T00:26:32.843" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="293" CreationDate="2012-02-21T04:01:10.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The accepted conventions also depend strongly on country. As a general rule, though, I'd avoid anything &quot;cute&quot; unless you happen to be your own boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the US, I'd expect to see doctoral-level degrees listed. I'd also expect to see high-level professional qualifications, such as &quot;PE&quot; for &quot;Professional Engineers.&quot; Similarly, if a master's degree carries sufficient professional weight in one's discipline, I'd list that, too. You are also correct in assuming that Prof. &quot;overwrites&quot; Dr. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, by contrast, one is &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to list all degrees of equivalent standing, including honorary degrees. This can lead to rather unwieldy titles such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. h.c. Dr. rer. nat. E.h. Johannes Schmidt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I've seen substantially longer, too!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, two additional points are worth mentioning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, any degree at the master's or diploma level is considered significant enough to list as part of one's title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dipl.-Ing. Michael Mustermann&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would be expected for someone with a &quot;Diplom&quot; in engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, until recently, non-German degrees were not considered the equivalent of German degrees. An American doctorate holder was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joanna Doe, Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and was legally &lt;strong&gt;not allowed&lt;/strong&gt; to call herself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Joanna Doe &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this has been somewhat relaxed recently, although only for degree holders from certain countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T04:07:19.703" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T04:07:19.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="304" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:47:53.187" Score="26" ViewCount="2010" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate school has a reputation for being a tremendous time-sink. I'm currently married with kids, and I have a fairly busy extracurricular schedule. Is it common for married people - or anyone, actually, with significant external time constraints - to not finish their graduate work, specifically due to conflicting obligations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T05:47:52.323" Title="Doing a PhD with significant external time obligations (e.g., marriage)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="303" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:55:54.660" Score="22" ViewCount="10267" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many years, I've used Latex to create my presentations, because I need to include mathematical formulae and symbols. However, it's sometimes quite cumbersome to use, and it's much harder to do &quot;visual&quot; effects (I'm not talking about animations, but for instance about arrows emphasizing a particular word, or connecting two words together, etc) compared to, say powerpoint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now trying to keep the maths to a minimum in my presentation (that was actually a really good advice given by a good speaker I talked to), but I still need them a bit, so my question is: what good (combined?) solution exist to create nice presentation that involve mathematical symbols? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2020-06-16T20:33:43.130" Title="How to make a presentation that includes math symbols?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2012-02-21T18:15:37.793" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're on OS X, then a great solution is to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chachatelier.fr/latexit/&quot;&gt;LaTeXiT&lt;/a&gt; package, which allows you to create graphics files for individual LaTeX equations, which can then be copy-and-pasted into your favorite presentations program (Keynote, LibreOffice, Powerpoint, or even LaTeX Beamer if you have a suitable penchant for irony).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other systems, options include &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/klatexformula/&quot;&gt;KLatexFormula&lt;/a&gt;, and of course the well-known (but also not free) &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/mathtype/&quot;&gt;MathType&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I prefer LaTeXiT, as it gives you the classic LaTeX look and precision control, while also making it very easy to cut and paste your work. (You can even save equations if you want to use them later.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T19:23:57.320" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T19:23:57.320" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2012-02-21T18:16:43.717" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that the secret is (1) good tools to create equations, plus (2) liberal use of arrows and text, plus (3) animations linking the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the following two programs to be indispensable for writing talks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chachatelier.fr/latexit/&quot;&gt;LateXiT&lt;/a&gt; for the Mac&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://klatexformula.sourceforge.net/download/&quot;&gt;KLaTeXFormula&lt;/a&gt; for a number of OSs, similar to latexit but less functional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to make the math (1) visually distinctive, so that the reader can easily tell when you're discussing an equation, and (2) easy to interpret. Remember, in a paper, you have text such as  &quot;...where n is the number of...&quot; after the equation is shown. This typically isn't done in research talks, and even worse, once you're off the slide, the reader has to simply remember what the equation was; they can't flip back a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My technique (you can see it in action in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt;) is to put equations in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing/73&quot;&gt;unique font&lt;/a&gt; (I use Times New Roman, with bolding and italics), and using the above tools to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing/25&quot;&gt;typeset equations in latex&lt;/a&gt; and insert them as images as necessary. As you introduce each equation, explain all the variables using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing/29&quot;&gt;text and arrows&lt;/a&gt;. Every variable should be explained... yes, this is slow, but learning is slow. If you're going to re-use the same equation multiple times, put it in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing/85&quot;&gt;top-right corner of the slide&lt;/a&gt; - with arrows and text sometimes included - so that (1) they remember what you're talking about, and (2) so you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/eykanal/meg-preprocessing/90&quot;&gt;refer back to those equations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T18:16:43.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="300" CreationDate="2012-02-21T18:20:59.143" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it work both ways: some people realize that they have a limited amount of time to work as a result of their external commitments, and therefore make themselves super-productive during the hours they are able to do research. I think, to some extent, that most of the people with severe external obligations fall into this class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a sizable minority, however, the balancing act proves too difficult—although this is often a function of a mismatch in expectations between the advisor and the graduate student. If you believe this could be a problem for you, you should definitely talk with your advisor; if the outcome is unsatisfactory, you should also consider speaking with your thesis committee and the &quot;graduate officer&quot; of your department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think that if you are a productive graduate student, your advisor would be willing to work out suitable accommodations for your schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T18:20:59.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="312" CreationDate="2012-02-21T20:39:12.070" Score="67" ViewCount="8520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a Masters of Engineering, concentrating in digital signal processing, in particular medical and audio, almost two years ago. I've always been interested in research, but due to personal circumstances I could never commit a lot of time to working on a research project with a professor, and obviously didn't get a chance to publish anything. Now that I'm more settled and have much more time on my hands, I started getting involved in some open source projects and reading some technical literature (engineering, mathematics) that I couldn't get to before. However, I'd still like to find someone to to collaborate with on a research project who is already established in the field and publishes papers. Part of the reason I want to do that is to be able to eventually apply for a Ph.D. program in a good school, and having publications would be a great thing on my resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to find out is how I can work on a research project similar to those graduate students work on as a part of their studies if I'm not a student anymore? Should I contact my old professors from the university? Is it possible to find some &quot;open research&quot; team that accepts collaborators from outside? Do I have to do it on my own (quite frankly I'm not sure I can give myself a good enough quick-start)? In short, I'm willing to volunteer my time in exchange for a possibility of publication in the future. Can I do it, and if yes then how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastEditorUserId="54347" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T18:03:43.477" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T18:03:43.477" Title="Is it possible take take part in a research project if I'm not a part of a university?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="290" CreationDate="2012-02-21T20:41:28.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating a &quot;portfolio&quot; for teaching used to be the norm for those entering the teaching career on the secondary (high school) level and below.  My portfolio is HUGE (a 3-inch binder stuffed full of lesson plans, my philosophy of education, professional development, letters of recommendation, photos of my students, etc.), but I've only had one administrator ever actually LOOK at my portfolio and that was when I was interviewing for my first teaching position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The move I've seen from many universities is to have their teaching students create virtual or online portfolios.  If I were you and I were considering applying for a higher-ed. position, I certainly wouldn't create anything that was a step backwards in technology.  If you choose to create a portfolio, spend the time and create a virtual one.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="153" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T20:41:28.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:05:50.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes, you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need to be in a university, a research lab to work on a research project. There is also no need to have a PhD or any other specific degree/position.&#xA;This is however somehow unusual. But, there is a bunch of people in industry that publish on a regular basis some serious research work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no idea of the problem you want to address, or at least a broad domain, this will be even harder. I can only advice you to offer your manpower to people who are established researchers. For that purpose, you can go to seminars, you can maybe, if this is possible where you live, lurk into some graduate lectures, etc. After a while you will be able to talk with people and offer your services.&#xA;However, the simple way is to work with relatives. For instance, my brother is an entrepreneur, and he wrotes two papers with me (one is published, the other will be soon I hope). Of course, it was simple: I described one of my problem on a sunday lunch at the parents house, He had some ideas, we worked on it...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:05:50.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:07:42.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to take part in a research project, but your situation is not that common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many labs have paid positions for Research Assistants, where you will assist with managing all aspects of the research except for defining the problem to be solved. Details of the position will vary from lab to lab, but you will often be very involved in the research. Usually research assistants are not authors on publications, so you would need to discuss the details with the professor managing whatever lab you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many labs will take on undergraduate student volunteers to assist them with their research. Your having completed an undergraduate degree may make you eligible for these positions, on a case-by-case basis. You would want to speak with individual labs to see whether they would be amenable to this sort of arrangement. Note that position would almost certainly not be paid. Also, note additionally that there may be insurance issues which would preclude you from following this path... you'll have to look into this for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:07:42.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:26:24.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing for you to do is almost certainly to just start emailing professors who do things you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if you mention that you're interested in eventually pursuing a PhD, they may be sympathetic.  Most researchers have a sizable number of problems on their personal back burner that they'd be willing to share, but in my experience, it's better to just go ahead and email a number of professors who do work that interests you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared for a number of rejections, or even just to have your email ignored -- so you may want to email many different professors -- but it's not unlikely you'll find a professor interested in working with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:26:24.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:28:22.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear, based on your letter, what discipline you're working in, but I would assume that it's something somewhat &quot;portable,&quot; since you don't make any mention of moving to the site of the collaborator's laboratory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main obstacle I would see would be how to credit your work. Technically, unless you're funded with or directly affiliated with a research group (for instance, with a university ID, etc.), there may be liability issues associated with your claiming their affiliation. Also, the collaborators in question may be leery of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are still options. One possibility is that you create a startup-like business  that allows you to represent yourself as &quot;Company X&quot;; coupled with an academic or research affiliation or two, this should be enough to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:28:22.240" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:30:02.443" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible, though admittedly somewhat harder outside the framework of a university. Some potential avenues, answering generally - not all of them might apply to your particular circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic/Business partnerships. These are a new hot topic, and in some fields quite active. Universities love them because they're a revenue stream. Businesses like them because its harder to get closer to the cutting edge than at a major university. Look for companies that do this as potential employers? They're good for both dabbling in research, and also as a springboard into the research side of things - I've met several &quot;private sector refugees&quot; in my time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research-oriented companies. Quintiles, RTI, Westat, RAND, etc. all come to mind. There are &lt;em&gt;tons&lt;/em&gt; of these companies, and many of them both pay quite well and actively publish. Are there any that serve your particular field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consulting. Research groups occasionally have funding for outside contractors of one sort or another - and if someone really wants to work with you, they may write such a position into a grant with you in mind. For example, I have some grant support for a freelance programmer. I've known other people hired for a particular expertise, or just &quot;a warm body who isn't a student&quot;. This is probably the path you'd end up going down if you both contact your ex-professors and want to get paid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteering. Academics are cheap. It never hurts to ask if they've got some side project you might be suited for collecting dust in the back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:30:02.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:34:43.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer involving &quot;not LaTex&quot; based on both finding it utterly unnecessary in my field (which &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; involve a fair amount of math) and finding an endless stream of LaTeX-based presentations to feel very boring and same-y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered MathType? I've found it far stronger for equation layout than the default Microsoft tools, and it plays pretty well with both Powerpoint and Keynote, which lets you work in the strengths of actual dedicated presentation software. It is admittedly not free, but I've had fairly strong success with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:34:43.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="300" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:39:22.303" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The people who I've seen with considerable external commitments who have still gotten through in a reasonable amount of time all boil down to one thing: They treat grad-school like a job. From 9 to 5 (or 10 to 6, 11 to 7, whatever works for their schedule) they're &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt;. No, they're not available for the infinitely many distractions of life, any more than someone at an office is. They pack a tremendous amount of productivity into that time, and then when they need to be with their family, they're with their family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those at least are the people who got through it sane. I think the other major trait is to recognize that, because you have a life, this might take a little longer, and not burn yourself out trying to hammer things through to the point of exhaustion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:39:22.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="217" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:44:41.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing in from the biotech industry. I hold an MSc, but obviously I work with a lot of PhDs and have observed many PhD hires. Most PhD level industry positions REQUIRE time spend at a post-doc position. This would be either in academia or industry, but academic post-docs are infinitely more common. If you are being hired at a company straight out of a PhD program, that position will (9 times out of 10) be a temporary post-doc position itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that there have not been nearly enough PhD positions in industry to go around for the last 5 years at least. And many companies have strict policies against hiring PhDs for non-scientist positions. I've seen many times a research associate (BS/MS) position post, and we receive up to 100 applications from PhDs that go straight to the trash. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation for a transition into industry would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your PhD and post-doc research in the most prestigious labs possible and publish in the most prestigious journals possible. This is because other PhDs will hire you and be impressed by your boss' name and publication record - so it's the same idea that holds if you were to stay in academia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skill set is important, but in most cases is not what gets you hired. It is assumed that you can be trained to use any protocols or equipment in house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintain contacts with everyone you know who is or moves into industry, including people at the BS/MS level. Referrals are extremely important and sometimes the only way to get in. Seek out projects that are collaborations with industry labs and go to every industry-sponsored event on your campus. Ask the professors in your department if any graduates or former post-docs moved into industry and try to get in contact with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And bottom line: no hiring manager will blink if they see a post-doc on your resume, as long as it lasted less than 5 years and you have results to show from it. And in many cases, managers expect or require some type of post-doc experience for a career position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:44:41.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="263" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:46:00.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the answer to this is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. Projects die for various reasons all the time - the funding vanishes and there's no one to work on it, it turns out to not to be a particularly productive line of thought, or as a graduate student, your interests shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, the important thing is that you have put in as much effort as is expected of you. If you've told your advisor you've had a random musing you'd like to pursue, then come back a month later having not gotten very far but decided upon poking around a bit that it's not worth doing, then no harm, no foul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have to agree with aeismail that it depends on what you're framing as &quot;research&quot;. Not being wedded to X, Y, Z things must be done, come hell or high water means if thing Q turns out to be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; interesting, you're free to pursue that instead. But that's a long-term question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you've said &quot;Sure, I'll make a figure for that data by next week&quot; and you consistently fail to do things like that? That is going to have an impact on your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:46:00.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="321" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:53:17.827" Score="9" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing different things from different people and it seems there is no clear policy laid out at my institution regarding the definition of graduate student vacation days; I'm curious how PIs and students handle this issue at other places.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At your institution, do University-wide holidays (such as &quot;Spring Break&quot; or &quot;Winter Recess / Christmas holiday&quot;) count towards a graduate student's two weeks vacation?&lt;/strong&gt;  I always thought the expectation was just that you should be working most of the time, regardless of what day it is, and that seems reasonable to me as long as students have flexibility to take leave when they want/need to without somebody nagging them about the specifics of when/how much time off.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recently there's been the assertion by certain bean-counting PIs in my department that students should be working 6 days a week (including nights) and only taking 2 weeks of leave in total (including major holidays).  Most people probably work about this much anyway, but being told that it's required leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  If people want to get really specific about the &quot;number&quot; of days worked/not-worked, there should be a more standard definition of what comprises a work day (i.e. 9-5, not 9am-12pm).  &lt;strong&gt;Am I way out of line here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T23:23:48.403" Title="Do school-wide holidays count against personal vacation time?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="317" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:57:40.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would answer with a definite &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, but check with your graduate student handbook or university's graduate student policy documentation to verify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T21:57:40.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2012-02-21T22:46:35.450" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind that this is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; field-dependent as well as program dependent. There are no hard-and-fast rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of fields in the natural sciences, an M.S. is the standard working degree, and so in many fields people traditionally do a stand-alone M.S. regardless of whether they plan on going on to a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, in geoscience, M.S. degrees are one of two types: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those handed out automatically en route to a PhD (usually after passing quals/prelims).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those that consist of a stand-alone project/degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big difference with other fields is that the stand-alone, industry-oriented M.S. is the one that requires a thesis.  The other is rather meaningless unless you get a PhD from the same program as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are common precursors to a PhD (it's very common in geoscience to do an M.S. on a fairly different project than your PhD).  However, the first type isn't seen as its own degree, and is often looked down upon (e.g. &quot;he/she dropped out with an M.S.&quot; vs. &quot;he/she got their M.S. at XYZ&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="169" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T22:46:35.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="300" CreationDate="2012-02-21T22:50:22.253" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answers given by aeismail and EpiGrad are correct, however, I just want to add one particular point, the one of traveling. Indeed, if it's true that many jobs from 9 to 5 can also include some traveling duties, it's particularly true when doing a PhD (and later on during the whole academic life). In this case, I don't think that marriage is a problem, but other external time obligations, such as a baby or an activity requiring some presence can pose problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known a case of a PhD student who couldn't attend a conference overseas in its entirety due to religious reasons: the conference was ending on a Friday, and this student needed to be home every Saturday. He couldn't attend entirely for the same reason a PhD school, and I think it's a real problem, because these kind of events are also there to socialize with peers, and going there just for a limited time window does not help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I've known a case where a speaker could only attend one day at a conference, the one where he was giving his talk, as he couldn't be far from home more than that, because he had to take care of his baby. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that an academic life means no private life, but in some cases, it can require some flexibility, and an external time obligation might imply to limit oneself, for instance by considering only &quot;local&quot; conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T22:50:22.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="317" CreationDate="2012-02-21T23:23:48.403" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not meant to be an official opinion, since obviously the rules depend on the local labor laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We should distinguish school holidays—days on which classes are cancelled—from official holidays, on which the university offices are closed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A graduate student not working on a school holiday would be counted as taking leave; however, when the university is closed, that is not normally expected to be a working day for anyone, and thus students would not use a vacation day in such a case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisors should not have policies in place that &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; students to be regularly working six days a week, particularly since that would mean that they are potentially in violation of a whole bunch of labor rules.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that information, my personal opinion is that research cannot be done according to a timecard. There will be days when you go into the office and figuratively spin your wheels all day, and there are days where you are firing on all cylinders and getting tons done. In my own group, so long as someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is prompt in answering requests, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attends group functions, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lets me know if he or she will be out of the office for extended periods, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is getting his or her work done,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then I will let that person work in whatever manner is most conducive to getting the job done. That's more important to me than knowing they clocked in 8 hours per workday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T23:23:48.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2012-02-22T00:05:46.880" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its extremely field and program dependent. For example, in my field, Epidemiology, there are (I'd argue) actually three types of Masters degrees. Annoyingly, they're not named consistently, so you have to read a program's description to figure out which is which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparation for PhD degrees (MSPH, MPH): These degrees are intended to be stepping stones towards a PhD in the field. Emphasis is on advanced classwork and research, they may actually be joint admissions (get your MSPH and then your PhD), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post-doctoral terminal degrees (usually MPH): So you already &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a doctorate degree of some sort. PhD, MD, JD...and find yourself doing public health work, and in need of a somewhat more formalized treatment of the subject. These are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; classwork heavy, often with classes that don't entirely overlap with the PhD-type classes, depending on the audience. They often don't have as heavy a research component to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters-as-Final-Degree (MSPH, MPH): &lt;em&gt;Tons&lt;/em&gt; of public health work doesn't need a doctorate, and everyone knows it. Data manager or statistical analyst for the government, industry or academia? That's a Master's level position. Most local/state public health work can and is done by people with Master's degrees as well. These often emphasize more practical experiences - internships, practicums, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So many master's degree programs are oriented toward the PhD track, but there's a considerable number in some fields that are designed for people who don't want to head into academia, but need an advanced degree for one reason or another - going into industry, government service, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T00:05:46.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T02:31:08.483" Score="120" ViewCount="162163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master's degree in International Studies, and a double major with Computer Science from undergrad.  My transcripts suck.  There's no other way to dress it up.  I have pretty good teaching experience, and my GRE scores are awesome, and I suspect my recommendations are as bland as everyone else's.  Basically, to an admissions committee, I suspect I'm the model of a student who is probably smart enough but didn't work hard enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to do a Ph.D. in Political Science, but the response from my applications is looking pretty grim.  Am I permanently out of the running, or is there something I can do for the next few years which will help to counterbalance my unfavorable GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user179" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T12:25:00.557" Title="How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="111" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:11:33.620" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on where your weaknesses are. If they're in both the master's and the bachelor's degrees, you're in a lot of hot water, because it says, as you suggest, &quot;student not serious enough about studies.&quot; (As someone on an admissions committee, I can tell you I need a heck of a lot of convincing to overlook a weak grade in a &quot;core&quot; subject, let alone an overall mediocre transcript.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;best&quot; way to get a weak transcript through an admissions committee is to have somebody who can vouch for you to the committee &lt;em&gt;whose judgment the committee will respect&lt;/em&gt;. So, that means working either for a Very Big Name in the field, or working for someone at a particular institution which you'd later be interested in attending. If they can see that you're someone worth having around, that can sway an admissions committee a lot more than a good package from a complete unknown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your field, this may not be the easiest task to pull off, but I don't see many other options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T03:11:33.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:37:52.140" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer as far as Computer Science(CS) is concerned - don't know how applicable that might be in your scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In CS, you can make up for your transcripts being less-than-average by undertaking research projects/internships in the next few years, ideally in the area you want to pursue you Ph.D. in. Once you have some good results that are published, you can use them to bolster your application - indeed, if they are good enough, they might even trump a candidate with stellar grades and no research experience! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, such an endeavor would remedy another aspect of your applications that you don't seem too concerned about - your Letters of Recommendations. &quot;Bland&quot;, &quot;did well in class&quot; letters would kill your application a lot faster than your grades, and I don't see how you would make up for it unless you involve yourself in research projects before the next admissions cycle!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T07:28:56.000" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T07:28:56.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="290" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:38:59.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to agree with Meg Coates answer, they don't seem to be as important and they are made out to be by the powers to be. I created a &quot;portfolio&quot; and the only person who ever looked at it was a colleague who was part of an interview process. They don't appear to be looked when you go in for interviews. I like that I can look back on my portfolio and see past achievement and progress over the years but to be honest I quit updating mine about 4 or 5 years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final message would be go for and create the portfolio but don't be disappointed if it does not get reviewed during your hiring process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="182" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T03:38:59.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="290" CreationDate="2012-02-22T04:26:20.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's going to depend wildly on the position and very unpredictable factors.  In my extremely limited experience in one discipline (mathematics) at one level (research university), a portfolio would probably only be useful if the committee had already decided to hire you, and higher-ups (chairs, deans, provosti) expressed concern about your teaching.  In the right situation, they could be very useful, but it's not the most common in the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T04:26:20.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-02-22T05:00:29.430" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities impose a minimum undergraduate GPA requirement for all incoming PhD students.  For example, the University of Illinois &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grad.illinois.edu/admission-faqs/domestic/requirements-deadlines&quot;&gt;requires a GPA of at least 3.0 (out of 4.0) for the last two years of undergraduate study&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; PhD programs.  Applicants that fall below this line are usually culled from the applicant pool before any faculty see their application.  Departments can petition for a waiver for individual applicants, but the case has to be pretty compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, every university is different.  Choose your targets wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My undergrad GPA was well under 3.0.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T19:28:03.707" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T19:28:03.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="334" CreationDate="2012-02-22T05:27:48.243" Score="13" ViewCount="1358" Body="&lt;p&gt;My graduate training is in an interdisciplinary field (bioinformatics). I am affiliated both with a genetics department and an interdepartmental program that encompasses everything from genetics to computer science to evolution to statistics to engineering. The life-science-oriented fields seem to place a lot of value in publishing papers in high-profile journals, whereas some of the more quantitative and technical fields (comp sci and engineering especially) seem to be focused on getting accepted to high-profile conferences with low acceptance rate. So far in graduate school, I have focused completely on publishing papers in journals and have not worried about getting into competitive conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is twofold: first, is my assessment of the life sciences vs the quantitative sciences accurate? and second, should I consider submitting my research to competitive conferences in addition to journals? Will this make me more marketable as an interdisciplinary scientist down the road? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="154" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T05:36:42.117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:29:37.350" Title="Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="337" CreationDate="2012-02-22T05:28:37.897" Score="17" ViewCount="3792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the U.S. and have always written in American English. I will be submitting a paper to a U.K. journal for the first time. To conform to British spelling, I've changed the Microsoft Word dictionary to U.K. English, which has caught most of the obvious differences . Even so, I'm worried that it will miss some of the differences listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;Is this even worth worrying about? Will being lazier about spelling hurt the chances for my paper's acceptance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="37" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T13:54:53.393" Title="How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2012-02-22T05:34:59.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of US spellings have come to become accepted internationally - at best, some of the reviewers might point out the words which they don't feel are spelled correctly in their review. But, I strongly believe it would not affect the chances for your paper's acceptance in the least - its the content/idea that matters most in journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T05:34:59.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="331" CreationDate="2012-02-22T06:34:37.283" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll give you my own opinion, as something of an interdisciplinary scientist in a nearby field (I work in mathematical epidemiology) with publications in both places (the conference paper frankly by accident):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, your impression is indeed correct. CS and related fields very heavily weight conference presentations and proceedings papers in ways the life sciences really don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, there's two things you should be considering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The opportunity to double-dip a bit. We had a question about this recently, but I think it applies to you as well. If your project has &quot;Life science spin-offs&quot; and &quot;Computational science spin-offs&quot;, you can submit to both places. For example, I have a project that will end up living in both applied math journals and clinical journals. There's no reason you can't do both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;This part is purely my opinion&lt;/em&gt;. When in doubt, I'd go for journal publications, for a few reasons. I've found most CS and technical people recognize that outside their field, its papers or nothing, better than the other way around. Journal papers are also more likely to get on the radar of people you want seeing your work, get indexed in PubMed (LNCS for example is not indexed in PubMed) etc. Those departments will also probably recognize your technical chops either via talking to you, the technical bent of your publications, or a few conference presentations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sympathize with your problem - it's sadly familiar. Generally, I'd try to figure out which audience you want to sell yourself to &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;, and do as they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T06:34:37.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2012-02-22T06:48:22.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in Windows, you can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://elevatorlady.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aurora&lt;/a&gt;, although it's not free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing about Aurora is it fits perfectly with Microsoft Word, you can insert inline equation or numbered equation and when you update the equations, the numbers can be altered easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you insert an equation using Aurora, other people who don't have Aurora can still open the file seeing the perfect equation since it's embedded as a picture to non-Aurora user. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best part is when you insert an equation with Aurora, it won't mess up the line margin or other typesettings, which is quite often when using MathType. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="191" LastEditorUserId="191" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T07:55:17.377" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T07:55:17.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="331" CreationDate="2012-02-22T07:10:36.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a &quot;classically-trained&quot; engineer who's moved into interdisciplinary work, I would argue that the weighting of conference papers seems to be restricted to computer science, rather than being generally true for &quot;quantitative sciences.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I don't see any such strong preferences in mathematics, chemistry, or physics, and there's definitely no such bias in chemical engineering (my &quot;home turf&quot;). In engineering, perhaps this is because there aren't as many &quot;prestigious&quot; meetings, and because we don't submit anything more than abstracts in order to be considered for a presentation slot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T07:10:36.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2012-02-22T07:14:03.117" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends very much on the journal. Some expect UK spellings; others will permit either American or British spellings. You should check with the journal in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the other option that you have is the following. Since you know what the major differences between the two sets of spellings are, and you have a sense of which one's won't be caught by your spell checker, you could always do a final search-and-replace after you've completed work on the paper to make sure you've switched everything over. (Or at least, everything you know should be switched over.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should satisfy most journals, and as shan23 said, I don't think a journal will reject your paper for writing &quot;meters&quot; instead of &quot;metres&quot;; the most you'll get is a referee report telling you to switch spellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T07:14:03.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2012-02-22T08:50:05.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should also check &lt;a href=&quot;http://user.it.uu.se/~bengt/Info/summer-schools.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T17:49:19.307" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T17:49:19.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2012-02-22T10:48:19.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that using Endnote (or a similar reference software) kills two birds with one stone. I find typing up references correctly very very tedious, but absolutely essential. You can import a lot of the references from databases (less typing needed) and then add your own notes, keeping it all in one place. You can add files or scan your paper notes or photos. It is also easily searchable. Plus when it comes to collating your reference list or bibliography, it automatically inserts and formats the articles in the style you selected. That alone can save days when finalising papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endnote works on both macs and pcs and also has an online version. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endnote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.endnote.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found that universities usually buy a site licence for Endnote or another similar reference software that both staff and students can use for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T10:48:19.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T11:00:23.557" Score="5" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is changing research methods/ methodologies in the middle of running a research project a good thing? Are there any best practices for doing so?&#xA;Links to projects that document a methodological shift mid-project would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T13:15:30.997" Title="Changing methods/ methodologies mid-project" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21" CreationDate="2012-02-22T11:23:57.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should check with your own institution as some universities (at least in the UK) have a policy on this issue. Also your employment contract might already cover this. For example, in several UK universities the copyright of course notes and lecture notes lecturers create often belong to the institution, not the individual lecturer. And the same might apply to books they write unless individually negotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T11:23:57.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:09:15.900" Score="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know what area you want to work in and be fluent with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Construct an honest, compelling narrative illustrating your strengths, how you've learned from mistakes or pitfalls, and why you're a good candidate for your chosen PhD programs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to as many professors as you can about their interests and yours, especially those you'd like to work with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More details:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/If-I-contact-a-professor-for-research-graduate-school-and-he-asks-for-my-resume-transcript-what-should-I-do-if-my-transcript-is-embarrassing&quot;&gt;excellent advice here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Graduate-School-Admissions/If-I-have-good-research-projects-and-publications-but-a-low-GPA-will-top-grad-schools-accept-me&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Basically, Bradley Voytek (who is now a professor in neuroscience at UCSD) managed to get into UCSF (a top school for neuroscience) with an overall GPA that hovered around 2.5. As Bradley Voytek said, your ultimate goal is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do everything in your power to leave a paper trail of excellence to&#xA;  overcome your grades. Your goal is to make those grades look&#xA;  meaningless. &lt;strong&gt;Your goal is to have your work speak for you so strongly&#xA;  that, when people look at your grades, they feel silly for even giving&#xA;  them a second thought.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was precisely why I was willing to give my unofficial transcript to professors at my school who asked for them (when I needed letters of recommendation). They already knew me well enough to know that my GPA doesn't reflect my true ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another suggestion, if you're applying for a school that puts a lot of weight on a subject GRE exam (like the Physics GRE), you can do your utmost to score obscenely high on the test and still get in. As an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&amp;amp;t=4274&amp;amp;start=50#p39860&quot;&gt;see this guy who managed to get into Harvard with a 3.1 GPA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I'm an undergrad with a 3.16 GPA (with 3 grades of 0.0s and 3-4 courses I retook with grades of 3.0-3.1 on the retake because I didn't even bother going to class on either class attempt). Despite all this, I managed to get into both the University of Chicago and Brown University - both with fellowships for being one of the top applicants. I also almost got into Yale in a year that was unusually competitive for them (they paid for me to visit+interview there) - but there were research fit issues involved at the end (actually - what ended up happening was that I had such intensely-defined research interests - exoplanet climate modelling - that it would have been hard for anyone there to take me individually, and everyone felt that I would be going to Chicago anyways). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&amp;amp;t=4274#p38595&quot;&gt;Click here&lt;/a&gt; for a rough profile of my &quot;stats&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also try schools that do interviews (especially in-person interviews) before they do acceptances, since the interview is where you have the opportunity to shine (and where they can at least give you a chance). Yale is one of those schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also look into very interdisciplinary graduate programs that are expanding faster than what their textbooks (and courses) can keep up with. Newer fields also tend to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2012-2013/Simonton/2010BVSRcombmodPoLR.pdf&quot;&gt;low-consensus&lt;/a&gt; fields, which also tend to be more tolerant to those with low GPAs. The geosciences is one of the few areas where plenty of people with sub-3.5 GPAs often do get into top schools. As the geosciences aren't taught in high school, it's often said that the Geosciences is something that you &quot;stumble&quot; into, and it's actually very common for people to enter the geosciences only after finding that they didn't like another major (this is often true for geoscience professors as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Graduate-School-Admissions/If-I-have-good-research-projects-and-publications-but-a-low-GPA-will-top-grad-schools-accept-me/answer/Alex-K-Chen/comment/1524987&quot;&gt;Biology is another area that's often tolerant of those with low GPAs&lt;/a&gt;, from what I've heard. In both Biology and the Geosciences, research fit often matters a lot more than &quot;being one of the top applicants&quot;, so if you have a &lt;em&gt;focused&lt;/em&gt; interest that you've demonstrated through research (and that matches the interests of faculty members who are willing to take new students), then yes, they can be willing to take you over people with better GPAs and test scores. The thing in common with the two is that they're so broad that it's impossible to put every applicant through a common set of required courses (or through paper-based qualifying exams), so their quals cannot be based on coursework. In that case, performance in prior courses doesn't matter as much. In fact, some geoscience programs (like Berkeley EPS) don't even have admission committees because the interests of faculty members are so diverse that applicants often only have research fit with a single faculty member - so it then often becomes a single faculty member who decides between applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MIT Media Lab &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-important-tips-for-getting-accepted-in-MIT-Media-Lab/answer/Drew-Harry&quot;&gt;is the perfect example of this&lt;/a&gt;, in fact (though most geoscience/biology programs will have more of a committee than the MIT Media Lab). The tips in this link can be quite helpful to anyone with a low GPA who wants to work with a particular adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also look for fields with very low people-to-problems ratios. Many of these fields don't offer courses that are part of the core requirements of numerous majors, so there won't be hordes of undergrads who take their courses. Fields like atmospheric science and various areas of biology are particularly known for their low people-to-problem ratios, and the professors in them can be incredibly accessible (and are more willing to closely look at unusual applicants). More &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Graduate-School-Admissions/If-I-have-good-research-projects-and-publications-but-a-low-GPA-will-top-grad-schools-accept-me/answer/Alex-K-Chen&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just write 2000-word personal statements. I wrote 2000-word personal statements for all the schools I applied for (they were &lt;strong&gt;necessary&lt;/strong&gt; since I had to do some explaining), and they didn't prevent me from getting in. They can annoy some schools, but that's going to be a matter of fact if you're a highly unusual applicant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can always stay somewhat longer. My GPA would never recover from the early mistakes I made, but I managed to recover by staying longer and by taking a huge number of grad-lvl courses in my last 2 years. When writing your personal statement, you should always put in statistics like last-2-year GPA and last-X-year major GPA in whatever field of study you're in (I put in post-(freshman year) physics GPA of 3.77 in). Be careful not to sound like you're cherry-picking though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need some extra inspiration, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Smale&quot;&gt;you should read about Stephen Smale too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He entered the University of Michigan in 1948. Initially, Smale was a&#xA;  good student, placing into an honors calculus sequence taught by Bob&#xA;  Thrall and earning himself A's. However, his sophomore and junior&#xA;  years were marred with mediocre grades, mostly Bs, Cs and even an F in&#xA;  nuclear physics. However, with some luck, Smale was accepted as a&#xA;  graduate student at the University of Michigan's mathematics&#xA;  department. Yet again, Smale performed poorly his first years, earning&#xA;  a C average as a graduate student. It was only when the department&#xA;  chair, Hildebrant, threatened to kick out Smale, that he began to work&#xA;  hard. Smale finally earned his Ph.D. in 1957, under Raoul Bott.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word of caution: Graduate programs have gotten a lot more competitive in the last few years, so what applied 5 years ago (or 40 years ago, for that matter), may not necessarily apply today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, elite private schools (for whatever reason) tend not to have GPA cutoffs. If you're a student with a low GPA applying for an elite private school, you probably have something else in you that's extremely unusual, since very few students with low GPAs apply to them. In fact, when I emailed professors, those at elite private schools seemed to be more responsive to my emails (low student to faculty ratio could be a reason behind that). That said, they're not necessarily more forgiving of unusual applicants. It's often the programs that have some &quot;weakness&quot; in their applicant pool that tend to be more forgiving of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - I would definitely look for areas where the department is trying to expand into, but where the department has no reputation for as of yet (visits/contacting professors can help you learn more about that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to academic conferences can also &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; help as well - but only when you can make sure that you have useful things to say. The same is also true for visiting schools before applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T20:11:01.717" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T20:11:01.717" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-24T22:39:55.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:17:19.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read your journal's guide for authors. That will usually tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything that makes the paper look unlike the papers in recent issues, will hinder acceptance. It may be blatant, it may be subtle, but it's there.  Dialect of English is one of those things that may or may not matter. Skim through three or four recent issues: are there a mix of US English and UK English articles in there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's only a small part of the consistency-checking you should be doing before submission. Indeed, it's part of the checks you should be doing before you sit down to write. Along with: what sort of breakdown of sections do your target journal's papers have, typically? Do article titles include a colon (always, usually, rarely, never)? How many paragraphs per section, words per section, how any words in the title, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors are usually very very busy. Anything you can do to make their life easier, will help your article get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T22:08:51.380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T22:08:51.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:29:18.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice between publishers (and indeed, between individual journals put out by the same publisher) would be different. It is best to consult the &lt;strong&gt;Author Guidlines&lt;/strong&gt; for the journal you will be submitting to. Occasionally there will also be certain idiosyncrasies that do not agree with the dictionary included in Microsoft Word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take a look at the publishing guidelines for &lt;a href=&quot;http://authors.iop.org/atom/usermgmt.nsf/AuthorServices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Institute of Physics&lt;/a&gt; which is based in London. It stipulates that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;ize&lt;/code&gt; endings should be used instead of &lt;code&gt;ise&lt;/code&gt; endings. (I know a lot of spell checking software will tell you that 'colourise' is perfectly fine British English, so be careful there!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;British spelling is compulsory ... with the exception of a list of journals where both American and British spellings may be used. (So if you submit to one of the journals in the list of exceptions, you should just aim to be internally consistent with your choice of spelling.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part: if there is anything specifically listed in the author guidelines, make sure to follow them. For everything else, especially since &quot;British English&quot; is a bit of a moving target (as evidenced by the second link you provided in the question), that's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copy-editors&lt;/a&gt; are for. (And unless you have a very good reason, don't fight with them. House style almost always trump your personal preferences.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T12:29:18.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="288" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:30:08.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the great things about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CiteULike&lt;/a&gt; is that you can see what papers you have in common with other people, and what they're tagging them as. That can give you a good clue when you're starting tagging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whatever you choose, it will evolve as you aggregate a larger and larger library of references, so don't be afraid to keep it flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, your tagging system will be unique to you, because your interests are unique. For example, in my library, I've got a medical-epidemiology tag, because that covers around 1% of my library. If I had no such papers, it would be a useless tag. If I were doing medical epidemiology research, it would also be a useless tag, because I'd have to apply it to 90+% of my library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn by your own experience: how do you use tags? Which tags have helped you find things? Which tags have you used to try to find things, that turned out to be dead ends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T12:30:08.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:41:57.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt; comes with great communication tools called Hangout. Shared documents and even presentations can be achieved with. There is no real setup process involved but getting an account at Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://moodle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moodle&lt;/a&gt; which has more features on relevant for teaching courses online and maybe less emphasis on direct communication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="206" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T12:41:57.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="331" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:12:22.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @EpiGrad 's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/334/204&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also add that the lack of a deadlines for journals can reduce unnecessary stress and allows for a better revision process with reviewers. I've found that journal papers are consequently more polished and thorough compared with conference papers on similar topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="204" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T13:12:22.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="341" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:15:30.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you keep a methodology notebook? If not, it is high time you start now.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important in the experimental sciences to always document exactly how the experiment is performed, and it is often recommended to keep a methodology notebook aside from your data notebook. All current and past/obsolete methodologies should be documented and dated (so it is clear exactly when your lab switched to a new methodology). All data on experiments should include reference to the correct methodology. (A &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/112/94&quot;&gt;lab wiki&lt;/a&gt; may be a good way to manage this.) For a bit more discussion you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://neurosurgery.ucsf.edu/index.php/research_guidelines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this guideline from the neurosurgery department of UCSF&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes in methodology may or may not be a good thing. A change of methodology obviously introduces a new variable into your research. And depending on the research outcome, the data pre and post methodology change may or may not be compatible, and it may or may not be ethical to present the data as one single dataset. So if your experiment only has limited number of runs for which systematic bias that may be introduced by the new methodology cannot be statistically ruled out, you may be better off not switching. (Unless, of course, you are in the biomedical sciences where sometimes methodological shifts are compulsory, even though it means essentially aborting the experiment.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodological shifts are not &lt;em&gt;forbidden&lt;/em&gt; per se, as long as all the methodology are clearly documented. The issue is more with how you interpret the data afterwards: it maybe necessary to present your data as two separate experiments instead of one single experiment. (Depending on your field there are different culturally accepted level of &quot;fudging&quot; when it comes to the methodology section of a paper; you should always have an argument handy as to why changing the methodology does not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; change the experiment.) As long as each data point can be clearly referenced to the method that was used to obtain that data point, your experiment is reproducible and ethically you've covered your behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This, of course, does not address the &lt;em&gt;bureaucratic&lt;/em&gt; issue of whether your funding agency and such would frown on deviating from the funding proposal, and whether your research institution have specific guidelines concerning methodology shifts.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T13:15:30.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:23:56.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an online &lt;a href=&quot;http://astrojournalclub.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Astronomy Journal Club&lt;/a&gt; hosted on Wordpress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my main advice: make the process as &lt;strong&gt;frictionless&lt;/strong&gt; as possible. Grad students tend to have very busy lives, and journal clubs will inevitably have high dropout rates unless they have some motivation (even through guilt) to stay in and to continue participating. Keep them updated through some service that they'll constantly check even if they aren't doing science (emails end up annoying people, but Facebook, Reddit, and Google Plus might work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also probably easier to convince people to set an online journal club when the journal club is about some specialized subject that only a small number of people at any particular university know about (and if they have a strong urge to talk about the subject with people from other universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if there's an academic conference for grad students (for my area, for example, it would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://abgradcon.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AbGradCon&lt;/a&gt;), discuss it with people there! Journal clubs are an excellent way to keep in touch with grad students at other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T01:21:35.377" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T01:21:35.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:39:11.200" Score="17" ViewCount="12301" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the record, I'd like something to replace notebooks. I'm accumulating more and more notebooks, and they're a pain to tug around everywhere. Plus, notebooks are easy to get lost (I've lost notebooks by accidentally leaving them in restrooms), not easily-backup-able, and non-searchable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd like a tablet that allows me to read PDFs heavy on math/physics, that allows me to easily annotate notes, and that has a thin stylus that allows me to write subscripts and superscripts with ease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T20:47:18.250" Title="What are some good writing tablets for taking notes that are heavy on math/physics?" Tags="&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ClosedDate="2019-10-21T06:39:55.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="306" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:41:25.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes - totally. Just think about this: a lot of professors even allow high school students to take part in research. Since you have some more experience, they won't have to spend as much time training you, so they are often totally willing to let you join in (after all, it's free labor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have to be somewhat flexible (and to be prepared to accept unpaid work), but it can work if you're living with family/flexible friends [1]/relatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Basically, some friends are willing to let you stay with them for free as long as you make their life more interesting (I'm willing to grant this favor to others since my life is rather bland at the moment), or if you can share in with the cooking/other chores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T13:46:30.117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T13:46:30.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="360" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:49:51.453" Score="25" ViewCount="43853" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the record, I'm visiting the University of Chicago as an accepted PhD student (in the geophysical sciences) next week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'd especially appreciate creative questions that few other visiting students ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T07:57:50.023" Title="What are some good questions to ask current graduate students when visiting schools?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="429" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:53:26.440" Score="22" ViewCount="21125" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases, they (understandably) don't reply (or they are uncomfortable with sharing them, as they often contain unpublished material). Also, I do this often, and don't want to be known as &quot;the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time though, it's simply far easier to remember the content of a presentation/talk when you actually have access to the stuff inside (and I do discover that I learn faster from talks than from any other source). Most of the time, I request the slides as a reference for learning the material (since I'm still new to the area, and they are quite helpful for that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(though I do wonder - what are the underlying circumstances when most people ask for them?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T14:25:50.817" LastActivityDate="2020-10-07T15:41:20.373" Title="What are some good practices when asking people to share their PowerPoint presentations from a conference/talk?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:55:12.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the limitation is more on the software that you are using, rather than the tablet itself. So, if you are using an iPad, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/upad/id401643317?mt=8&quot;&gt;UPad&lt;/a&gt;, whereas android tablets users should be looking at something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://market.android.com/details?id=com.cerience.reader.app&quot;&gt;Repligo&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://market.android.com/details?id=udk.android.reader&quot;&gt;ezPdf Reader&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T13:55:12.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="356" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T13:59:49.617" Score="44" ViewCount="1981" Body="&lt;p&gt;Matthew Might &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-email/&quot;&gt;has an excellent article on his website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what are some other good suggestions? One important thing is identification (some professors are simply happier to reply to emails than others). Surprisingly enough, I find that famous scientists in my field (for whatever reason) tend to be more responsive to emails than non-famous scientists. I don't know why this is the case, but maybe it could be that they simply know more, so it doesn't take them as much effort to give information/advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I even go as far as to look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/&quot;&gt;Rate my Professors site&lt;/a&gt; ratings, since the ones with exceptional ratings often tend to be happy replying to emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: maybe taking a class with the professor (in which case they may feel a bit more obligated to reply to them?) Or maybe simply distributing one's emails in such a way that one wouldn't have to email each professor more than an interval of once every few weeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T13:51:43.307" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T14:51:42.657" Title="When asking research-based questions, what are some good practices to maximize the rates at which people reply to emails?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="354" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:02:00.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be very clear on what you want it for, particularly whether you will be sharing it further (even within your group, with your advisor, &amp;amp;c).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often post edited version of the slides online, but I always want to have control on the contents that are public, semi-public, or private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T14:02:00.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:07:33.130" Score="20" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to current graduate students in your lab (even better, working with your potential adviser!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask about their opinion about how the working environment is - what is the working style of your adviser, what is the average time take for a PhD student to graduate from the lab, and where do most of them land up (as eternal postdocs, or tenure-track faculty positions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the funding scenario - do most people have to be TA's for an extended period/all throughout, or whether RA grants are available? What about conferences - do students get funding for traveling to important venues?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What kind of a social life exists in and around the campus, and what is the cost of living - a Ph.D is a long commitment, and you should remember these &quot;soft&quot; criteria as well, so that you are at least prepared mentally when you enter grad school&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll expand on my answer as and when other points come to my mind!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T14:07:33.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="356" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:11:46.623" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the points in the linked article are very true in academia as well. Some points which may be specific to academia which he didn't mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're referencing a specific article or talk, reference it very specifically (&quot;In your presentation at SfN 2012 entitled 'The Amygdala and You', ...&quot;). If you can quote a specific slide/paragraph, all the better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention (concisely, one sentence or less) why you're interested in knowing. Your problem may very well be something which the researcher is interested in, and s/he may be more interested in responding and following up later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're working for someone in the field, mention it at the beginning (&quot;I'm a postdoc working for &amp;lt;Mr. Bigshot Fancypants whom the professor likely knows&amp;gt;, and...&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that researchers are more often than not interested in talking about their work, so the very first point from the article (&quot;Don't email&quot;) is likely bad advice here. Definitely try to get in touch and talk about your mutual interests (if you have a valid question, of course).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2019-07-02T14:51:42.657" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T14:51:42.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:13:22.147" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll want to get a sense of their feelings for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The graduate program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Easy to work with regarding customizing the program to their specific needs (i.e., taking courses outside their specific area if necessary)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How easy/difficult was the process for joining a lab?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have they found the staff easy/hard to work with?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The advisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attitude towards students (respectful/distant/slavedriver)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presence in the lab (micromanager/occasional presence/absentee)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How organized is the research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The university as a research institution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Easy collaboration between departments (in their opinion)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Availability of course offerings (from their experience)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The city as a place to live&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T13:48:37.143" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T13:48:37.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="354" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:23:09.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can ask for a redacted version of the slides, without new data. Do note that this will require extra work from the presenter; in my experience, I've found that most people do not go this route. I would follow the route you're currently taking; ask for them, and if they don't wish to share, then drop the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T14:23:09.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:27:43.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the stylus, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macworld.com/article/156560/2011/05/touchscreen_stylus_roundup.html&quot;&gt;this review from MacWorld&lt;/a&gt; strongly recommends the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wacom.com/en/Products/Bamboo/BambooStylus.aspx&quot;&gt;Wacom Bamboo stylus&lt;/a&gt; for writing notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T14:27:43.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="377" CreationDate="2012-02-22T15:39:02.423" Score="1" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a background in Psychology and Fine Arts. My passion lies with doing scientific research and making art. So ideally I would be able to do both, or use one to support the other. However, I've found that finding a job in the social sciences is pretty difficult, if not impossible without work experience (pretty much a vicious cycle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since finding a steady income with a degree in fine arts is even more difficult, I would very much like to provide a steady income for myself by working in the social sciences. I've had countless bad jobs to support myself through both of my degrees, and I don't see myself becoming very happy doing that my whole life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At this point, I have several options, and I would like some advice on what you think would be the best way of proceeding (the points are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and if you have a better idea, please, do suggest it):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could further specialize myself: do a masters (or even a PhD) in a field which aligns with my academic and research background. However, this could risk another worthless degree with no job and waste of time and money&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could move to another geographic location, where a degree in my field is in higher demand, get a job and support my other passions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could freelance to build experience but this is usually as taxing as a normal job minus job security and pay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user216" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:59:53.500" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T04:10:37.257" Title="What is the best career choice for a social psychology graduate?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:09:58.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The apps suggested by others for iPad and Android with the necessary stylus-es are not bad. However, if you are looking for something &lt;strong&gt;ONLY&lt;/strong&gt; to take notes I would suggest looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.improvelectronics.com/boogie-board-LCD-writing-tablet/boogie-board-rip-LCD-writing-tablet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Boogie Board&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't tried it out myself but I hear its good. Plus, its dirt cheap as compared to tablets. Also, the battery life is insanely high and since it doesn't use a touch interface, you can practically write anything and it will store it as that. There are downsides though, it can't save many PDFs and it can tend to be slow. You might want to check them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T17:09:58.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="383" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:12:21.317" Score="12" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages of Mendeley over Bibsonomy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it easy to migrate from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Mendeley offer equally powerful bibliography exportation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In detail, the following disadvantages of Bibsonomy  are crucial for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can not modify all your bibliographies at once, e.g. exchange in every URL field each &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt; with &lt;code&gt;\#&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many references are not present, so I have to import the bibtex myself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search functionality could be better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Mendeley solve these disadvantages? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="224" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T00:47:15.660" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T01:34:42.750" Title="Is it worth to switch from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:18:59.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/280/5674&quot;&gt;Fomite's answer&lt;/a&gt; is great. Along the lines of &quot;greater context&quot; - you could form a journal club around a topic, rather than around your laboratory. When I was in grad school for plant biology, a friend of mine in Ag Chemistry formed a photosynthesis journal club. He was able to get his supervisor (photosynth bacteria) and another PI (plant focused) on board as regular attendees, while the student himself proctored the meetings. I participated not because I was studying photosynthesis myself, but because I wanted to learn more about biophysics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attendees (including the professors) took turns selecting papers and leading discussions. It ended up being good study for my qualifying exam - and a good way to get face time with others in the department that I wouldn't normally interact with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one way to get around the &quot;students take turns getting grilled by one professor.&quot; Take the initiative or find another student who wants to run a club, and find professors who want to participate but not lead. The environment will be different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:13:04.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1047" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:48:08.987" Score="11" ViewCount="13729" Body="&lt;p&gt;E.g. as shown in the example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/aos/people/graduate_students/persad/G_PersadCV2011.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Centennial Fellowship, Princeton University Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences  (accepted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Top Student Award, University of Washington (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Program in Climate Change Fellowship, University of Washington (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Faculty Fellowship, Columbia University (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Charney Prize, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Regents Fellowship, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2011—Chair’s Award, Stanford University Department of Earth and Environmental System Science (declined)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T18:27:40.093" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T20:47:29.410" Title="Is it a good or bad idea to list declined fellowships (for a PhD program) on one's curriculum vitae?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="52" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:19:37.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, if you're employed by a university or a government research lab, then you're exempt from the H1B visa cap. Thus the visa is not usually a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="149" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:19:37.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:24:49.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few of my favorites are 1) Did anything regarding the school surprise them? 2) Things they wish they had been told when they had visited/started grad school at that school. 3) In retrospect, would they still make the decision to come to that particular school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="149" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:24:49.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="331" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:29:37.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can confirm the much heavier weight on conference publications in Computer Science. You should certainly consider publishing in high-profile conferences unless you want to shift your focus away from Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing I would add is that often conference publications become journal publications. This is mostly because of the page limits imposed by conferences -- short papers are often only 2 pages. There is also a fair number of Computer Science conferences that offer fast-track or special issue journal publication for the best papers. I think a lot of people in Computer Science do not consider publication at a conference &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a journal, but rather conference first and then journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:29:37.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="368" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:35:26.890" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's one answer to this question.  Different people react to different things on CVs in different ways.  The level of listing above is silly; if the candidate in the example had asked me for my advice I would have told them not to (they're basically listing jobs they were offered; interpreted generously, it looks like CV padding), but occasionally it can make sense to list a prestigious fellowship you declined due to circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:35:26.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="368" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:45:00.760" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bad idea. If you turn down an award (or an acceptance to a univeristy, etc), you don't get to reap the benefits of that award. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one cares about the universities you &lt;em&gt;could have gone to&lt;/em&gt; or the fellowship programs you &lt;em&gt;could have worked for&lt;/em&gt;, they care about what you have actually done and that is all you should include on your CV/resume. Period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the resume linked to above reads &quot;I had no one else edit or evaluate my resume before I posted it online.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T18:45:00.760" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="368" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:01:40.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like so many other matters, your location plays a role in what is considered accepted or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, I would limit listing &quot;declined&quot; awards to &lt;em&gt;national&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;competitive&lt;/em&gt; fellowships which had to be declined because of the fact that you're not allowed to accept multiple fellowships. However, the awarding of multiple such fellowships shows that you are a &quot;hot commodity,&quot; and therefore does confer some benefit to you. (As an example of other countries' practices, here in Germany, it is &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; that you would list offers of faculty positions that you have declined, for exactly the same reason.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would agree with Amy and Ben that in the present case, those awards should not have been listed on a CV. On the other hand, &quot;DOD Fellow&quot; and &quot;Offered NSF fellowship&quot; would be a different scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T19:01:40.640" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="376" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:13:38.630" Score="16" ViewCount="2167" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of my MSc I have to produce a Thesis/Dissertation which forms an integral part of the program and classification (roughly 1/4 - I imagine the subject can make a difference, so I should say that my MSc is in Mathematics in the UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering to what extend I should expect to be completely on my own in this endeavor. I have a supervisor who has a pretty good research reputation as far as I can tell from his publications and collaborations, so I'm quite happy in that sense, however it s becoming increasingly evident, that he will not provide much guidance when it comes to specific topic selection or anything else for that matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal and to be expected for an MSc Dissertation, or is it a bad sign that should make me think whether it may be better to switch? (I was under the impression that at such a junior level one could still expect quite a bit of hand-holding when it comes to the selection of a feasible topic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="52" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T21:12:44.847" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T03:59:59.710" Title="How much guidance should I reasonably expect from an MSc Thesis Supervisor" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="375" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:25:41.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how much of your issue is related to the specific field—mathematicians are known for being somewhat more independent than graduate students in, say, engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, your advisor should at least show signs of being interested in your research. If you feel like you need help, and aren't getting any, then you need to make arrangements to get it. At first, I'd recommend talking to other graduate students and postdocs under your advisor. Next, I'd talk to other students outside the group; finally, I'd move on to other faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on how easy or difficult it is to change advisors. If it's relatively easy, then in the end, it might be necessary as a last resort. If not, you'll need to make do with a rather unfortunate situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is a case-by-case kind of situation: you'll need to talk to more people in your department and find out how widespread this is. Some advisors are completely hands-off, and expect their students to be self-motivating. Others are hands-on to the point of micromanagement. In math, my impression from conversations with colleagues is that the tendency is towards being hands-off, but it's impossible to say what will be the case in your specific department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T19:35:20.580" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T19:35:20.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="363" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:43:06.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question you have to ask yourself is what is the &quot;opportunity cost&quot; of the different options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can apply for jobs without first relocating to the new area, if you're willing to spend some money on travel for the interviews before accepting a job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the costs of getting a new degree, versus the improved likelihood (if any) of employment with the advanced degree, compared to the lost income while acquiring the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Could you make enough money freelancing that you can keep yourself &lt;em&gt;relatively&lt;/em&gt; financially stable while you're organizing something else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd certainly think that starting out freelancing while you figure out a &quot;Plan B&quot; would be the logical, low-entry-cost route. After you've done that for a while, you can decide if either of the other routes make more sense for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T19:43:06.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="375" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:47:01.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Staff at my department have to propose specific projects for MSc theses (possibly together with the student). Even if your university doesn't require that, I would expect your supervisor to help you significantly with selecting the topic of your thesis. For the thesis itself the help will be less, but I wouldn't think it reasonable to expect an MSc student to essentially come up with their thesis topic unless they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T19:47:01.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="380" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:43:00.243" Score="8" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my academic career, I have found that it is pretty difficult to assess the quality of a degree before enrolling. Usually only during the course of your study do you learn what the actual quality of the degree is, which are the best schools, and what your chances in the job market are going to be like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting in touch with students studying at the university is usually pretty difficult if you're not enrolled, and i don't really trust the responses of the professors (who have a vested interest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good way to judge the usefulness of a degree? And how can you reliably assess the chances of getting a job with that degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user216" LastEditorDisplayName="user216" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T21:07:20.573" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T21:07:20.573" Title="How to assess the quality of a degree?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:53:57.030" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities will publish statistics on how many of their graduates are employed or in further education within X months after graduating. If you're only concerned about getting a job, then that's probably your best source of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in the end it depends on you. People get jobs with crappy degrees and fail to get jobs with really good degrees. Whether you'll be able to get a job in your chosen field will depend on what exactly you do for your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good opportunity for improving your chances of getting a job after you graduate is to do an internship while you're at university. Many universities have job centres or similar that can help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T20:53:57.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2012-02-23T08:02:46.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't got the chance to use Bibsonomy, since I use Mendeley since the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have to import bibtex files in Mendeley(although you can), you just simply drag and drop a pdf file to Mendeley, and Mendely will grab the title, user, publication details for you, which is the best thing about Mendeley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search function in Mendeley is quite satisfactory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As for modification, I don't have the experience in doing that. Since Mendeley grab the things for you, I guess there is no need to do that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also after you registered in Mendely, your references will be uploaded to your account. So when you reinstall your system or something, all your references will come back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mendeley is quite great and has other great functions, totally worth trying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="191" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T08:02:46.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:34:42.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Mendeley does offer export - BibTex, RIS, and EndNote XML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search is pretty decent, though I often find I use Acrobat search instead - its word-stemming seems better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Batch replacement is very weak - the only way to do it is to go into the database yourself and tweak it. Very unsatisfactory. There is some batch update, in that you can select several papers, and add the same metadata to all in one go: but that's not the same as a batch search &amp;amp; replace. The one batch search &amp;amp; replace it does do very well is that when  you get two versions of an author's name, you can drag one name onto the other, and all the papers will get updated accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also found the technical support to be very slow, and often unsatisfactory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The auto-grab of references from the web is patchy, and you may find you're often correcting it. Often, its guesses seem utterly bonkers, like it's just grabbed a few general words from the title, and gone off to find the closest match for those, in some subject that's completely alien to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interface is klutzy, though I've yet to find a reference manager that had an interface I &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier versions of Mendeley did occasionally corrupt the metadata, doing things like swapping round the lead and second author - unbelievably frustrating. This may have stopped now - I don't use Mendeley so much any more, because of this and other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mendeley does have its evangelists, and it seems to have been very slick at cultivating its fanbase - more resources seem to have been spent there than on the software. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedback.mendeley.com/f&quot;&gt;feedback forum&lt;/a&gt; has now become pretty much unusable - there are plenty of important things in there that have been &quot;planned&quot; or awaiting assessment for 2 or 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T09:34:42.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="363" CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:28:25.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I would counsel against further study. I have seen many people finish an undergraduate degree, look for a job they like/a job, and when they have no luck go back to study. This has almost always ended badly. In most cases they have no understanding of how a further degree will allow them to get the jobs they are interested in, and are merely spending a lot of money to prolong (or make worse) the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are incredibly passionate in an area go for it. However the fact that you are posting this/reading this suggests that you are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="243" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T10:28:25.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="386" CreationDate="2012-02-23T11:43:35.293" Score="43" ViewCount="5644" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that there are no ethical or legal concerns involved, in general, how would academic journals handle research submitted from the general public (e.g., if a carpenter were to perform a study on memory)? Would it be published if it held to the same standard as other research, or is it rejected without review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: A lot of people are commenting on the fact that a person outside of academia probably wouldn't be able to write in a way that was required or have the sufficient training for carrying out a proper experiment. Not my point. I just want to know if there is a general rejection of articles &lt;strong&gt;purely based on the fact that the person doesn't have any affiliation to a proper research organization&lt;/strong&gt;. We could for example imagine a former Nobel prize winner who has a lot of money and prefers to work alone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="22213" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T17:20:18.877" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T15:21:27.867" Title="Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2012-02-23T12:00:29.757" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals implement a double-blind reviewing process, meaning that the reviewers are not aware that the authors are from academia or not, and only the scientific content is judged. That being said, it's worth mentioning that it would be hard for someone without a proper &quot;paper-writing&quot; training (such as the one one can acquire in academia), to produce a paper that would be accepted by reviewers. Some general structure is expected, such as related Works, critical discussion, rigorous methodology, and I would say that without that, it would be hard to get the paper published (I have myself rejected papers from graduate students, not because the idea itself was bad, but because the structure and the presentation were not meeting the standards one could expect for a scientific publication). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After reformulation of the question, assuming that the quality of the paper makes it indistinguishable from any other paper, then, no, as far as I know, there is no general policy regarding the official affiliation of the author(s). For instance, in Computer Science, it's not rare to see papers published by people working in a &quot;normal&quot; company (i.e. not a research company), typically on some concrete problems/solutions they have found. Some people even keep publishing after starting their own startup, and therefore the affiliation is something like &quot;MyCompanyWeb2.0&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T15:22:42.357" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:22:42.357" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2012-02-23T12:15:11.920" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, there's nothing stopping a paper from being published by a private individual. However, in many fields, the bar to realizing a publishable &amp;quot;quantum&amp;quot; of work is so large in terms of equipment or other resources required that there's virtually no chance of anyone without exceptional means could afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there's also nothing that &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; a journal to accept a paper from a private individual, either. Journals regularly return papers without review; one criterion for accepting a paper could very easily be that the authors have affiliations witbh &amp;quot;verifiable&amp;quot; organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once a paper has been forwarded for review, it should absolutely be reviewed on an equal basis to any other paper in the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="56594" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T15:21:27.867" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T15:21:27.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="390" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:01:15.860" Score="8" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe in Mathematics and Computer Science journals usually accept LaTeX documents. In fact, the AMS has a number of packages and document classes for just this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about other disciplines? I'm not particularly familiar with the humanities. Would a Microsoft Word document be unacceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it vary from subject to subject, or even journal to journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="247" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T15:26:51.593" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T15:26:51.593" Title="Is there a generally accepted format for submitting papers to journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:28:35.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The policies vary entirely from journal to journal about what is considered acceptable. APS journals, for instance, will accept both MS Word-based documents as well as documents formatted with RevTeX, their modified template system. ACS journals and a number of other publishers also offer their own LaTeX- and Word-specific templates for authors to use. Whether the use of the template is required or merely recommended is also a function of the journal. So, as a general rule, you should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; check the homepage of a journal &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you start preparing an article for submission to that journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To some extent, I prefer working with LaTeX in preparing manuscripts, for the simple reason that their plain-text document format makes it a lot less painful to switch back and forth between different templates, compared to a word-processing format like Word or LibreOffice or Pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:28:35.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:50:23.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies a lot between journals, and probably even more between different disciplines. In the life sciences Latex is rather rare, MS Word seems to me to be the most common format in my subjective observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the actual document format, be it Latex or Word, is only part of the difference between journals. The exact rules on how to format a paper vary so much that you'll have to put significant effort into adapting the same manuscript for different journals anyway. Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Author submission guidelines for Nature&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/jacsat/jacsat_authguide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;those from JACS&lt;/a&gt; as an example. They often regulate details like how the axis labelling in graphs has to look like. The journals also often have different length requirements, so you might have to shorten your manuscript if you decide to switch to a different journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="201" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:50:23.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2012-02-23T15:06:01.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, in just about every field it would be considered wrong to reject a paper merely because the author doesn't have a university affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as other answers have pointed out, a paper from a non-academic may have difficulty complying with the usual norms of the field for writing, and might be summarily rejected (or sent to a referee but quickly turned down after a cursory reading) on those ground.  Mathematics probably gets more amateur submissions than most fields, many of them downright crankery---although now that I think of it, it's been several months now since someone e-mailed me a one-page proof of Fermat's Last Theorem---and coping with them is a problem, in part because there is a culture that says formal journal submissions need an actual reason to be rejected, just in case this is really the one time a genius from outside academia has solved a problem.  But the converse is that as soon as such a paper does fail to comply with ordinary norms of writing and argument, there's grounds to reject it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, your example is an interesting one because a study on memory presumably involves research on humans, or at least animals, which might have compliance issues---a carpenter has presumably not gone through the usual process of having research with human subjects checked by a board for ethical compliance, and I'm not sure journals would publish research which requires ethics review but didn't get it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:06:01.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-02-23T15:09:45.790" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does indeed vary from subject to subject, and journal to journal. I once got in a short argument with some math students who had asserted &quot;If its going to be published, it needs to be in LaTeX&quot;, a disagreement that only ended when I went and found some submission guidelines. For three fairly good journals in my field (Epidemiology), you have some considerable differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;American Journal of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; wants everything in either Word or PDF format - LaTeX documents are compatible with this, but its certainly not doing anyone any favors in terms of already being formatted. &lt;em&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; will accept LaTeX documents, but warns that the odds of typesetting and other erros increases in formats besides &lt;em&gt;Word&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Clinical Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; only requires that an editable version be available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the de-facto standard in my field is Word, though of course there are ways around that. And then, as mentioned, there are formatting issues beyond just &quot;what's the file extension?&quot; How references, the text, and figures are reported - must odds ratios be graphed on a log scale or not?. How p-values are treated. What format graphics are allowed to be in, etc. As Fabian said, submitting to a new journal often involves combing through the same content to subtly tweak formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:09:45.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="416" CreationDate="2012-02-23T15:44:25.877" Score="22" ViewCount="30534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm coming from a biomedical engineering background, and I'm noticing that almost all job postings ask for either an MS or a PhD, and from speaking with my friends with masters it seems that masters are often favored, because they demand less pay. In fact, the only positions that specifically seek out PhDs seem to be research positions in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on that, I'm curious to see if this exists beyond just engineering. &lt;strong&gt;Are there any non-research industry positions that actively seek to hire PhDs over masters students?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T14:19:14.803" Title="What types of industry positions favor PhD over a masters?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-23T15:58:04.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have hard numbers to support this statement, but I've been told that many investment banks are quite interested in PhD (although mostly in hard sciences) for quantitative analyst jobs. These positions are not research positions, but it seems that the rigor and the experience of research, in terms for instance of modelling data, acquired during the PhD is appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:58:04.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:07:47.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the only positions where it makes sense to hire a PhD over a master's degree holder are those which require a lot of analytical skills, plus the ability to be &quot;laterally&quot; flexible. That is, you want to hire someone who can do many different tasks over time, rather than just lead one project or group. These occupations would include quantitative analysis, but would also include more non-traditional jobs such as a journal editor or a consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an industrial perspective, though, for anything outside of research, it's probably more economical and practical to hire someone with direct or relevant experience at the master's level and train them to do the job you need them to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T16:07:47.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="405" CreationDate="2012-02-23T17:10:46.223" Score="24" ViewCount="11968" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a converse to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/353/what-are-some-good-questions-to-ask-current-graduate-students-when-visiting-scho&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, as a professor, I find it difficult to conduct a useful interview. &lt;strong&gt;What types of questions should I ask which would give me a good idea as to how (1) productive and (2) self-sustaining of a student the interviewee may be?&lt;/strong&gt; If different questions are required for each parameter, please mention that in your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T13:19:12.750" Title="What style questions should I ask potential graduate students interviewing for positions in my lab?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="407" CreationDate="2012-02-23T17:19:03.640" Score="11" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this question is to attempt to generate a concise but comprehensive answer to the question, &lt;strong&gt;what happens to the researcher after fraud is discovered?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm familiar with some consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listing on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ori.dhhs.gov/case_summary&quot;&gt;NIH Office of Research Integrity&lt;/a&gt; website&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retraction of relevant publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prevention from publication in journals for &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt; years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other are some other typical (and atypical) outcomes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T20:28:06.257" Title="What are the consequences to the researcher in cases of academic fraud?" Tags="&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="404" CreationDate="2012-02-23T17:50:30.507" Score="12" ViewCount="1189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it feasible for an engineering student from Germany to get into a Ph.D. program in the UK/Ireland? Specifically, what should one keep in mind/try to accomplish in the last two years before finishing the &quot;Diplom&quot;? How would one apply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this question can be extended to other combinations of countries, but I didn’t want it to be too broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T11:42:18.710" Title="Ph.D. in UK/Ireland as &quot;Dipl.-Ing.&quot; from Germany" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="398" CreationDate="2012-02-23T17:53:58.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You would probably find it very hard to find a job or may even get fired from your job, depending on the severeness of the fraud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your employer might start a formal investigation into your behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The party you defrauded might sue you for damages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your reputation in your community would be at least severely damanged. Other researchers might refuse to collaborate with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might be banned from applying for grants and/or have trouble getting grants you apply for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are lots of other things. Basically, unless you have a very good explanation for it, you're done for (at least in your particular area of research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T20:28:06.257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T20:28:06.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-23T17:58:28.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've heard, some companies prefer hiring PhDs over Masters not because of their additional knowledge because people who have done a PhD will in general be more mature and reliable. Some companies also count having a PhD as work experience which will reflect on your salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I'm not aware of any specific positions for which this is done, but depending on what the actual job is, recruiters may prefer candidates with a PhD (even if it's not in exactly what the work is going to be) for the reason mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T17:58:28.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2012-02-23T18:00:54.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good general question to ask is what motivates them to do their research. The answer should give you a good idea at least for the latter and depending on the level of detail maybe also for the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T18:00:54.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2012-02-23T18:04:04.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, yes. If you're talking about the &quot;traditional&quot; 5 year Diplom, it's essentially equivalent to an MSc, which is what most universities require to start a PhD (although some only require a Bachelor's degree). I don't think you need to keep anything in particular in mind when finishing, apart from making sure that you get good grades for your transcript :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application procedure wouldn't be any different from other students, although you may have to explain in some detail what your degree is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T18:04:04.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2012-02-23T18:22:20.813" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I underwent an interview recently from a prospective adviser, and I found the questions he asked of me to be pretty insightful - hence I'm sharing them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to pursue research in this specific area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would highlight the candidate's motivation in wanting to do research in a particular field - and would also tell the professor more about the candidate's exposure to this area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What made you apply to this lab/university, as a continuation of the previous question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer would tell you whether the applicant had simply browsed the rankings list of universities, or did he/she actually go through the research publications of the lab - and the application was done due to an intersection of the two!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would you like to be doing post Ph.D.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;right&quot; answer to this, but it also tells a lot about the candidate's motivation in pursuing a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can ask the candidate to discuss any problem that he is familiar with in that field - doesn't have to be anything fancy/complicated, but that would serve to highlight the clarity of the applicant's reasoning, communication skills, and level of exposure to the field. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T18:22:20.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-23T19:16:06.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently employed in the biotech industry. Hopefully this is helpful but it may all just be obvious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning &lt;strong&gt;research industry positions&lt;/strong&gt;, jobs are generally classified as PhD (scientist) or non-PhD (research assistant/associate). For scientists positions, sometimes someone without a PhD will be considered if they have significant experience - e.g. Masters plus 5-8 years, Bachelors plus 10+ years. However, PhDs are generally favored over non-PhDs for outside hires. For research asst/assoc positions, non-PhDs are favored over PhD holders, and many companies have policies that prohibit hiring PhDs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning &lt;strong&gt;non-research industry positions&lt;/strong&gt;, holding a PhD will give you an edge over BS/MS holders, but you have to compete with other specialized degrees. For business developement and upper management positions, you'd have to compete with MBA holders (along with internal hires from research/scientific management). For legal positions, you'd compete with JDs and certified patent agents. For project management, there are certifications as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to hold MBA/JD/additional certification AND a PhD, you would be extremely marketable for these types of positions. It's a lot of work to add something like that on after finishing a PhD program, but companies often love to have PhDs on staff in those types of positions - but generally you need to have the other qualifications as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Also, the best people to talk to are professors from your current/old department who are on any company's board of directors. They will know exactly what kind of people a company wants to hire, and will be able to tell you how to target your job search, or what kind of experience/credentials matter most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T19:23:04.327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T19:23:04.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="398" CreationDate="2012-02-23T19:33:35.920" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I posted in answer to another comment, more often than not, schools want to avoid the dramas associated with plagiarism scandals. That is why schools like Harvard will prompt researchers accused of fraudulent behavior, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/9/9/professor-faculty-misconduct-tenure/&quot;&gt;Marc Hauser&lt;/a&gt;, to resign, rather than go through tenure revocation procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But losing one's job is fairly likely, and an unofficial blacklisting is almost certain to result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other consequence, though, is often forgotten: the peripheral damage of academic fraud cases. Sensationalized results, such as those in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n&quot;&gt;Jan Hendrik Schön&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk&quot;&gt;Hwang Woo-Suk&lt;/a&gt; cases, led many graduate students to embark on projects in those disciplines trying to reproduce and expand upon the promises implied by those projects. When those projects collapsed, a lot of graduate students were left in the lurch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T19:33:35.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2012-02-23T19:40:31.420" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the questions that shan23 has mentioned, I ask candidates for my group a few other questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What kind of advising style do they like? How &quot;hands-on&quot; or &quot;hands-off&quot; do they want me to be?&lt;/em&gt; If they want someone whose style is vastly different from mine, that's going to be a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is your preferred working environment? (When?, Where?, etc.)&lt;/em&gt; I just want to get a sense of what they're going to be like to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What kinds of projects do they like?&lt;/em&gt; Do they want a methodology-driven project, or are they more interested in applications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Have you spoken with members of my group?&lt;/em&gt; I want future group members to have an interest in who they'll be working with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T19:40:31.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="411" CreationDate="2012-02-23T19:55:56.513" Score="8" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a good source to get my hands on some pre PhD level maths papers/dissertations, because I want to get a better feeling what is expected. (i.e. BSc and MSc Dissertations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department is unfortunately not at liberty to make MSc Dissertations available for copyright reasons, so I am stuck with asking individual people. In order to get a good overview I'd really like to get my hands on a much bigger selection of papers though, so I'm looking for a good online sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T23:28:13.403" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T23:28:13.403" Title="Good source for pre PhD level papers/dissertations in Mathematics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2012-02-23T20:00:00.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my favorite question to ask in interviews:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can you tell me about a problem you encountered in the laboratory, and the process you went through to troubleshoot it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T20:00:00.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="409" CreationDate="2012-02-23T20:13:34.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best source of such information would be to look for electronic repositories that are at least partially &quot;open.&quot; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openthesis.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;openThesis&lt;/em&gt; repository&lt;/a&gt; offers one such source, and you might find some information on sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternate source would be to look at individual school's repositories. For instance, MIT's &lt;a href=&quot;http://dspace.mit.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSpace&lt;/a&gt; offers copies of many recent MIT thesis and dissertations, which can be previewed by anyone, although you need to be a member of the MIT community in order to be able to download and print documents from the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T20:13:34.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="415" CreationDate="2012-02-23T20:40:48.113" Score="14" ViewCount="929" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of years back I did some research at a company in a field (Computational chemistry) that I am no longer interested in pursuing (To be blunt: I discovered that I dislike computational chemistry, and lack a certain numerical intuition needed to interpret the results). As I have this and a number of computer science classes on my CV several jobs I have applied for have added computational chemistry to my duties, which leaves me in the unpleasant position of explaining that I'd rather not do that type of research. (See edit below for an explanation of the process) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd rather not take that experience off my CV, as it explains why my undergraduate degree is taking so long (I was working for a semester instead of taking classes), and my supervisor did offer me a good reference letter, since I was a good worker, despite the fact I didn't get great results. Also, to be frank, I'm an undergrad and would like to list it to stand out from the crowd a bit: Relevant work experience is much rarer then good marks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can include that position on my CV, but specify that I'd rather not peruse that field of research? Perhaps as a footnote or a comment intside that description of the job that 'This is a field of research I am no longer interested in perusing'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: An explanation of how applying for summer jobs tends to work in my experience:&#xA;I'm an undergraduate chemistry major applying to be a research assistant over the summer. The general process for this is you find a professor doing the type of research you want, and email them your coverletter and CV. If they like you then they either hire you, or apply for a grant to get funding to hire you. Formal or informal interviews can take place at any time during this process, depending on how the professor likes to operate. Formal job descriptions are usually only placed on the grant after the student applies, it isn't listed on the profs website beforehand. Therefore I've applied to several synthetic chemistry groups then been either told I'll be expected to do some modelling as part of my job, or asked if I would be willing to do such research: The second option isn't so bad, but the first is rather awarded to explain, doubly so if I'm not told of this until after the grant is already awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="242" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T17:42:11.433" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T17:42:11.433" Title="How do I specify I do not want to perform a specific type of research on my CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="412" CreationDate="2012-02-23T20:46:18.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't sound like you want to make that explicit on your CV. You could certainly include something in your cover letter though that mentions that you'd prefer not to do work in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T20:46:18.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="412" CreationDate="2012-02-23T21:03:22.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, the way you would state that sort of preference is by noticeably not including it in the list of interests. Given your experience with the technique, not including it on a cover letter, or in your &quot;Objectives&quot; statement on your CV, should be enough to prompt someone to ask about it during the interview process. If it does not come up during discussion, you will definitely want to proactively mention it at some point during your interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the best way is to not apply to labs which do that sort of work, and focus your search on areas that do interest you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T21:03:22.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="412" CreationDate="2012-02-23T21:04:19.147" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, in an academic CV, you can distinguish between &quot;Research Activities&quot;, which consist of all the research you've done in the past, and &quot;Research Interest&quot;, which consist of all the research you want to do in the future. So, someone who would include a topic that you don't list in your research activities without asking you first would be a bit rude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in order to avoid this kind of cases, and not to be too explicit (that is, not saying &quot;I don't to work on Computational Chemistry&quot;), you can try, in your cover letter or your research interests to put a sentence like &quot;Although I have a good background in Computational Chemistry, my research interests rather lie in ...&quot; or &quot;My background in Computational Chemistry taught me to [...], and I'm now interested in broadening/focusing my interest on [...]&quot;. That's a bit more subtle, but I guess the message should pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T21:04:19.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-23T22:17:06.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;High-tech engineering companies, for one. A friend of mine works at a small system-on-a-chip designer company, and they supply highly specialized chip designs to other businesses which utilize embedded systems -- think leading automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics OEMs. The company is small and every engineering employee has at least a MSc, most of them have PhDs or higher (that would be associate professors and professors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is automotive R&amp;amp;D -- mechanical engineering. Companies are financing new development of new methodologies in product development -- particularly structural optimization, design automation, manufacturing process simulations. Virtual prototyping is the name of the game for top manufacturers currently, and the demand for highly-skilled experts is great, even in these uncertain economic times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the country where I study, PhD projects are financed jointly by interested private companies as well as research organizations, and the companies have a vested interest to receive not only the direct results from the research, but also trained individuals that can integrate the research outcomes into their product development or manufacturing process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously YMMV by country and research field. PhDs in in mostly theoretical projects might have harder time finding a good position after graduating, while hands-on graduates whose projects were conducted in collaboration with industrial partners are much more likely to secure a senior technical position even before their dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="255" LastEditorUserId="255" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T14:19:14.803" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T14:19:14.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:28:08.210" Score="12" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is hypothetical, but it came up in a conversation and I'd like to see if we can come up with a logical analysis and conclusion. For various reasons, &lt;em&gt;graduate students&lt;/em&gt; might not be inclined to apply for funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;em&gt;funding&lt;/em&gt; I mean grants or scholarships intended to support graduate students directly in the form of money given &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; to the student. That is, I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; talking about applying for research scholarships intended to fund an experiment, buy equipment, etc. Here are a few (made up) examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 1 (Differential)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I get 20000 of internal departmental funding but be encouraged by the department to apply for external funding. If I then get 5000 scholarship, then the departmental policy might be to drop the internal funding to 15000, so I don't apply for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 2 (Rich Student)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I am very wealthy and I have no need for funding. I am a brilliant student and could probably get many different scholarships but I chose not to because I feel other students with less money need the money more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Rich Student&quot; scenario is slightly different than the &quot;Differential&quot; scenario. If I am rich then for sure some other poorer student could have gotten the money, whereas in the &quot;Differential&quot; scenario, I am now only getting 15000 so another student will get the 5000 anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with not applying for scholarships is that I don't get scholarships, and in many fields winning scholarships is good for your academic career. Perhaps in some fields this is more important than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overwhelmingly I've heard that one should always apply for scholarships regardless of circumstances because of this. Of course theoretically, I could bypass my &quot;rich student morality&quot; by using it to do something useful for the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, although I am not in these situations, I feel that it is most beneficial to always apply for scholarships, I would just like to have some kind of evidence that support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So to put this in a definitive question: for graduate students, is there ever a reason not to apply for at least a few available scholarships?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user136" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T08:51:43.967" Title="Any reason not to apply for funding as a grad student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2012-02-24T02:03:45.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Differential&quot; argument doesn't really even hold as much weight as you'd think, because many departments will reward you with a bonus for bringing in an outside fellowship. Then it becomes even more of an incentive to obtain an outside fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, external awards make you more attractive to potential advisors, since you don't cost them as much in the long run to support you. In some cases, this even makes the difference between being able to work on a project of one's own choosing, versus a project for which the advisor has funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the only reasons I can think of why one wouldn't want to apply for at least some sort of fellowship support are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being a fantastically rich student, who can pay his own tuition and stipend support for the full duration of the program, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being a student of extremely limited means, who can't afford the costs of reporting GRE or scores or transcripts to the various funding agencies. (In many cases, though, &quot;hardship waivers&quot; are available that renders even this point moot.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T23:09:48.653" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T23:09:48.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2012-02-24T02:42:00.607" Score="18" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reward to ratio of the application. If you already have some funding, and the additional funding is small compared to the time required to apply for it. For example, you have an NSF fellowship at ~$30k/yr, so it might not be worth applying to $2k scholarships which take a week or two of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reward to ratio of the work. You don't want to take on a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project isn't relevant to your line of work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You aren't qualified (GPA, citizenship, or status limitations)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T03:25:24.703" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T03:25:24.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2012-02-24T03:18:31.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond @mankoff's answer of it not being worth it (I've chosen not to apply for fellowships with a poor reward:effort ratio), you might not be &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to. For example, many fellowships, NIH training grants etc. have rules about what other funding you can get (especially for the same project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T03:18:31.507" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2012-02-24T04:37:44.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD is all about getting qualifications for becoming a scientist/researcher. You learn how to do the research independently, how to present your work, you meet people who might be helpful in your further career, and incidentally you get some hands-on experience in an obscure area of science. These are &quot;hard&quot; skills you get along the way. This means that the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; type of work PhD is required for, or gives you a real benefit, is a job of a researcher, either in academia or in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally you might be lucky to work on something truly useful and job will be a natural extension of your PhD. But since getting a PhD degree is really a learning process, the topics are necessarily moderately ambitious and niche - you have the rest of your scientific career to &quot;make an impact&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside the research the only thing PhD gives you is a bit of &quot;prestige&quot;. This might be a hindrance, or, at best, make no difference when you search for a job. But in a long term you'll likely find that the ceiling is a bit higher. The good thing is that any job you end up doing will be good - the title automatically &quot;filters out&quot; positions that you would later find unsuitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="259" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T04:37:44.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="425" CreationDate="2012-02-24T11:13:58.700" Score="14" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than once, I have had (graduate school admissions) orientation sessions where the faculty of the institute introduce their fields, their research and what they expect from potential students (Among other things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At places I am interested in, this is a useful exercise. However, there are often places which I don't wish to study at but have a few good professors doing some really good work with great knowledge of the field and awesome intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one fully exploit an opportunity to interact with good professors from institutes you are not interested in attending?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very different from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/223/how-can-i-get-the-most-out-of-conferences&quot;&gt;research conference&lt;/a&gt; for obvious reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am not interested in &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; institute but wanted the opinion of one of the professors about another institute/lab (the ones I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; interested in attending), is that a taboo?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one stay in touch with such contacts where your only excuse to mail is to ask a question? I really want to be on email terms.&lt;/strong&gt; I have read and understood their work but what is it that should be the content of mails written to them? It doesn't make sense to simply send them emails saying that I read your paper or I attended your talk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please feel free to edit this question in any amount if necessary)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T17:56:13.203" Title="How to fruitfully utilize faculty-student orientation sessions at institutes you don't want to attend?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="409" CreationDate="2012-02-24T11:37:18.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=partial+fulfillment+master+of+science+mathematics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;partial fulfillment master science mathematics&lt;/a&gt;&quot; finds hundreds of MS theses in several branches of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T11:37:18.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2012-02-24T11:42:18.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is certainly possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that practically all PhD programs in the UK require some evidence of an acceptable standard of English (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/governance/policies/admissions/language-requirements.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an example), usually IELTS or TOEFL tests, and depending on your English skills, this might warrant some preparation during the last year of your Diplom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many PhD programs also require at least two letters of recommendation, so the sooner you have an idea who might provide these for you, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T11:42:18.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="422" CreationDate="2012-02-24T12:55:20.397" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can expect to get the opinion of a professor about another institute/lab. You can probably get some facts (like this other institute has more/less money, they are more/less active in this area), but nothing subjective. Academia is pretty small world, and people try as much as possible not to say anything negative publicly (and since everything said is positive, it can be hard to distinguish the real positive from the fake one). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to have a real interest in their work. As mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/271/how-to-achieve-successful-collaborations&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it's already pretty hard to maintain collaboration between people interested, so if there is no clear interest, it will very hard to be on email terms. But, the question is: why do you want to be on email terms? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See the previous point. You need to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; interested, meaning you've read and understood their papers, and are able to ask questions that go beyond &quot;what are the possible usage of your approach?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general remark, professors are usually already very busy dealing with their own research/teaching/students. Of course, they usually are open to new collaborations, but they might lack the time to work with a student who is not theirs. A good solution could to try to visit them, academically speaking, for a month or so, to work on a very specific topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T12:55:20.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="422" CreationDate="2012-02-24T13:44:06.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your stated question, you need to tread carefully. The nature of the environment at those presentations is one where the professors are looking for potential graduate students, not collaborators. Even more so, if you're a potential graduate student, you likely haven't done any real research yet, so you can't work out &quot;collaborations&quot; or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it's perfectly acceptable to simply walk over to them and ask to hear more about their research and interests. They know that you're looking at many labs and many not choose theirs. Just make sure your request to remain in contact comes across as a &quot;Do you mind if I contact you later to discuss your research?&quot; and not &quot;Can we talk later even though I have no interest in joining your lab?&quot; Now is not the setting for that; wait until after having joined a lab to initiate that conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T13:44:06.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="354" CreationDate="2012-02-24T14:29:16.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't mind sharing my presentations, but I make sure that I provide a read-only format only (PDF) with slides scaled to e.g.  1/4 of actual size, in raster format (so that more than one would fit on a page). When people ask for presentations, I expect they'd like to have the material handy for further reading and reference, not to present it or use it themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One would go even further and restrict the PDF printing, copying and modifications, although these can be circumvented with a reasonable effort if you know what you are doing. I don't do this as a matter of principle, but I can see how some people might want to have such kind of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="255" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T14:29:16.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-24T16:18:46.103" Score="19" ViewCount="1078" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks&quot;&gt;list of academic ranks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia shows that the same academic rank/title can mean quite different things in different countries. For instant, a &quot;research assistant&quot; in the US can stand for an undergrad student doing an internship, while in the UK it can stand for a postdoc. Similarly, the term &quot;lecturer&quot; might stand for a permanent position (e.g. in the UK) or for a teaching assistant position, open to graduate students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when thinking about it, there are not so many kind of possible positions (permanent or not, with teaching or not, with research or not, with PhD supervision or not, with team responsibility or not, etc), and having a clear title could help a lot (for instance, in my case, I've been working in four different countries, with a different job title each time!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some kind of official taxonomy that one could refer to? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, who could be in charge to create it? (the EU, if only for intra-Europe mobility?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:36:01.113" LastActivityDate="2021-01-18T13:21:46.987" Title="Is there an international taxonomy of academic titles/ranks?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="354" CreationDate="2012-02-24T16:48:54.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no magic when it comes to asking for presentations. And there is nothing wrong with being &lt;em&gt;the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides&lt;/em&gt; (at least you show that are interested and it may result in them being cited; and it shows that they got their job done - though a presentation they interested others in their idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't reply (or don't sent it), it is usually of one of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are busy and missed your mail,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would take their time to find the presentation and send it (it may be big so it is not just sending an e-mail),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They would prefer not to make it public as:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not polished enough for anything but a presentation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may contain things that they would prefer not to share publicly (e.g. plots form other papers, preliminary data which may later proven to be wrong or incomplete, pictures or video they don't have right to share further, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't want to share it - they have right to it. However, usually they have nothing against (and actually are happy to do so) as long as you make it quick and easy for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is a good idea to ask for slides just after their talk - they may have it on their computer (so you can copy it to your stick) or on a stick (o you can copy it to your computer) or send it right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send your e-mail at most a week after the presentation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be short and concise (what exactly you want, what do you want with do with it),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is no response try writing the same e-mail a week later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="62255" LastEditDate="2018-10-03T13:48:41.013" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T13:48:41.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:54:27.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why didn't I apply to the NSF pre-doctoral scholarship during my second year of grad school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt; - I didn't have any. And since I was doing a different project from what I proposed when I applied my previous year, I would have had to write my application over from scratch. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feedback from previous year&lt;/strong&gt; - my subject GRE score was not high enough. Even though I could have re-taken the exam for free, I didn't have time to study for it all over again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I had a stipend&lt;/strong&gt; - Even though  the award would have increased my yearly stipend by about $6k, the chances seemed slim and I felt my time was better spent being on top of my course work, studying for my qualifying exam, and getting a good start on my thesis project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Full disclosure: after passing my quals I opted to leave grad school with a MS instead of finishing the PhD. I've been employed full-time at academic or industry labs since.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T17:54:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="422" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:27:44.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take the long view. Don't try to go fishing for collaborations for &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, or even in the near future. Faculty-student sessions, meet-and-greets, etc. aren't completely a waste of time in places you don't think you want to attend however. A few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will have met them. Yes, by the time you're actually something resembling a peer it will have been some time, but being able to say &quot;We spoke once when I was looking at University X&quot; is never a bad thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get a feel for them as people. This isn't just &quot;would I like to collaborate with this person?&quot; The academic landscape is made up of people, and if this is your field, these people will come up. Paper reviewers, journal editors, session chairs at conferences. All of those things are impacted by personality - something you can start to get a feel for while you're there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get the birds-eye-view of some of the cutting edge research in your field. That can suggest things like where the field is headed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's essentially an excuse to meet some people years before you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to meet them. I also had some of the best shrimp-and-grits I've ever eaten at one, so there's that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T19:27:44.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="375" CreationDate="2012-02-24T21:06:43.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can vary a lot by advisor.  You should always talk to current (and former if possible) students of an advisor before committing to one.  Some questions you might ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do you meet with your advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did your advisor help you come up with a thesis topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your advisor answer your emails quickly/at all?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you feel comfortable asking your advisor for help?  Does he/she give it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your advisor know and care about your career goals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your advisor expected to stay around this school for long?  (An advisor could be pre-tenure and expected not to get it or could be up for sabbatical soon.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you thought you were done, did your advisor agree or want you to do more?  How long did it take to get the advisor to read the thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T21:06:43.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="409" CreationDate="2012-02-24T23:13:44.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm now a PhD candidate mathematician, working towards understanding what really constitutes a paper as well. If you are considering going after a math PhD, I recommend finding an area you're interested in, finding papers in that field, and backtracking enough until you understand what's going on. I think math is very-well suited to this style of behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm interested in number theory, and I've recently been hearing a lot about automorphic forms and multiple Dirichlet Series. So I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.4868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Hoffstein. Some of it is understandable, some of it isn't. Going through it, I isolate 3 potential sources that might help me understand - the first references are frequently on background material, and here he references Selberg's work. Conveniently, my institution has access to electronic archives of his work, so that's great. It also references an Analytic Number Theory textbook by Iwaniec. Finally, I realize that this is largely built on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0110092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this previous paper&lt;/a&gt;, with Dr. Hoffstein as one of the authors, from years before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I can rinse, wash, and repeat. In this way, I both get an idea of what papers are like, how far removed they are from current material, and how advanced the math that goes into them are. A key aspect of this idea is that it's easier to go after particular research papers, theses, and dissertations than it is to find whole repositories that you can go through. So perhaps you should try a similar approach, suited to your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, a good place to start is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it sounds like you're preparing to write a bachelors thesis, and that's of a different calibre. I suspect that your school has its own standards, and the best way to prepare for that is to simply do your best and ask your advisor lots of questions along the way. Ultimately, your school can't demand from an undergrad much more than it prepares you for (a vast difference from the life of overgrads, in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last note, Harvey Mudd has a large archive of their undergrad math senior's theses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.hmc.edu/seniorthesis/archives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and they might be what you're looking for if you don't like my previous idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T23:13:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="428" CreationDate="2012-02-25T00:33:43.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the answer is negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only there are different systems in different countries (and same-spelled degrees may have different requirements), but even if a degree seems to be the same, it is not necessary  considered equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often universities and institutes have some freedom in the interpretation of degrees earned in other countries. Common sense can be a good guide but in case of doubt you need to check if university (or institute) X accepts a foreign academic title Y instead of their Z. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when I obtained degrees &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licentiate#Poland&quot;&gt;licencjat&lt;/a&gt; (3 years undergraduate, 180ECTS) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magister_%28degree%29#Central_Europe_and_Eastern_Europe&quot;&gt;magister&lt;/a&gt; (5 years undergraduate, 300ECTS) from a Polish university, they refused to translate it into anything else (stating explicitly that it is not equivalent to anything else). However, some other Polish universities do translate it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Science&quot;&gt;Bachelor of Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Science&quot;&gt;Master of Science&lt;/a&gt;, respectively. Nevertheless, my new institute didn't have problem to find them qualifying me for their PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T01:10:37.110" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T01:10:37.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="440" CreationDate="2012-02-25T01:04:32.900" Score="30" ViewCount="12103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using git for a while and now &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. I'm starting to write a master's thesis. Would it be a good idea to upload all the files to online public repositories? Does anyone have any experience with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. I consulted with my adviser about this, and he said that latex sources were ok, as the document will be open access anyway. My source code however was not, primarily because the collaboration already has a protected wiki for such things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="54237" LastEditDate="2020-09-10T16:47:27.407" LastActivityDate="2020-09-15T12:39:38.593" Title="Is it advisable to put entire source of my thesis up on GitHub?" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-25T01:19:22.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code&lt;/strong&gt; - yes, it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PDF&lt;/strong&gt; (perhaps with LaTeX source) - you can (why not? but rather as a place to store it and point to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However (for finished), there are more dedicated places, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openthesis.org/&quot;&gt;opentheis&lt;/a&gt; - repository of theses,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; - reference manager allowing to upload your publications (including theses),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; - base of preprints (but only for theses in English and from a list of topics; there you need to put source as well),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you intend to actually write your thesis in the public - well, it is mostly up to you ( i.e. if you fill comfortable with it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T01:56:12.810" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T01:56:12.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-02-25T01:23:58.290" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I needed the same functionality for myself. I was looking for a powerful note-taking system and after considerable search concluded that the &lt;strong&gt;wiki&lt;/strong&gt; format was best for dynamic unpublished notes and scribblings. I started by using desktop applications but needed some way to render math better so I shifted to web applications (running them locally you'll need an XAMP server). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Desktop Applications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zim-wiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zim Desktop Wiki&lt;/a&gt; - A wiki notebook. Really good imo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikidPad&lt;/a&gt; - Described as an IDE for your thoughts. Offers same functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Server Based&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mediawiki&lt;/a&gt; - If you're going to end up with thousands of documents being edited by thousands of users then it is the best. For personal use it is a bit of an overkill, and the spaghetti php code doesnt help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instiki&lt;/a&gt; - currently using this. Compact and simple. You can easily back it up to an USB disk. Or export all pages to html. Needs ruby to compile though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="21793" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T19:14:50.930" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T19:14:50.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-25T02:41:42.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a universal right answer to this. Some factors to consider, during the thesis &lt;em&gt;preparation&lt;/em&gt; stage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there intellectual property issues to consider in your thesis work? If so, that would mitigate &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; having a public repository.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does your school or institution have rules against such behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does your school offer its own service, which may offer better security for your data?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the thesis is completed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you hold intellectual property rights to the original materials, so that you can publish it to a repository?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will publishing to a repository conflict with your ability to publish the work in journals (you'll need to check the journals in question)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does your institution offer an archival service that will allow such access? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T02:41:42.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-25T03:10:21.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be very careful. As usual, this depends on your field. Mine is mathematics and it is not uncommon for a graduate student's thesis question to be solved much more quickly by someone far more advanced. If your thesis is publicly available then you increase the chances of this. This is more relevant for those working on original research, which is not always the case for a masters thesis, but keep this in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user136" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T03:10:21.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-25T04:39:09.540" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm told for your field that the answer might be yes, because you're slightly less threatened in terms of being scooped than most, with physics (apparently) going largely by who submits first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would be extremely cautious publishing the source of my thesis in its entirety on a public repository. I'm all for repeatable science and open access, but the public should only have access to your code when this condition is met:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You have no further use of the exclusive access to your code. All the questions you've programmed have been answered, the papers and presentations that emerge from them are in press, and at this point, it is a question of reproducible research.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that's true, sure. Until that point? You're running the profound risk of your research being stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T04:39:09.540" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-25T09:54:34.943" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is in two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's a very good idea to use an online repository with a versioning system to write your Masters thesis. It offers a nice automatic backup, you can easily sync from different locations (office, home), and (this is mostly true for papers rather than a thesis) you can easily collaborate with people outside of your university (i.e. who wouldn't have an account on your university server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not a good idea at to make it public. Plagiarism is real, online versioning systems do not offer any real protection, and you don't want to make it too easy to copy, especially when you're not finished yet. I'm all for the open-access of &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; documents, that you can put on arXiv, but in this case, there is a real timestamp, and your work can be indexed (for instance, in Computer Science, arXiv is indexed on DBLP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons, I've been personally using for my papers &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/plans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt;, that offers academics a free unlimited plan (unlimited public/private repositories, unlimited collaborators). In this way, I create a private repository for each of my papers, give access rights to my co-author(s). It seems that GitHub also provides a way to have private repositories for academics: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/edu&lt;/a&gt;, so you can keep using it for sharing your open-source code (for instance) and use it with a private repository for your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="100642" LastEditDate="2020-09-15T12:39:38.593" LastActivityDate="2020-09-15T12:39:38.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="444" CreationDate="2012-02-25T22:45:42.000" Score="8" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was planning to use mdpi.com to submit a paper to &quot;Entropy&quot; journal. The journal perfectly matches the area that my paper covers. However, they require a cover letter to five reviewers selected by myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/instructions&quot;&gt;http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/instructions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the standard procedure? Can you propose other similar journal? I am getting afraid that receiving feedback is not an easy task, and I can wander with the paper for a year or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="280" LastEditorUserId="280" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T14:15:24.717" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T10:17:25.367" Title="Selecting journal reviewers through cover letter" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2012-02-25T22:54:23.387" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;They don't require you to send a cover letter to five referees, but just to indicate in your cover letter the names and contact info of 5 potential reviewers. It's just to help them finding reviewers for your paper (as they say, they might not use those you provided). But I don't think you need to contact the reviewers first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, it's a pretty common procedure, I've seen it for several other journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T10:17:25.367" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T10:17:25.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="445" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2012-02-26T03:03:53.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site is for &lt;em&gt;academics&lt;/em&gt; of all levels—from aspiring graduate and professional students to senior researchers—as well as &lt;em&gt;anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent&lt;/em&gt; fields. If you have a question about...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inner workings of research departments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements and expectations of academicians&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... then you're in the right place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help people answer your question, please recognize that this forum is frequented by academicians from across the globe, from across diverse fields research, and with a wide range of experience, from first-year graduate student to tenured professor. State your question as much context as you can to help ensure that you'll receive a directed, relevant answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Can I ask questions about my specific situation?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not ask &quot;a question that will help only me,&quot; but rather &quot;a question that will help people like me.&quot; If your question is so limited as to be useful only to you, consider broadening the scope so others can learn from your question as well. As a general rule, if you're asking about a particular institution, course, or journal, it's likely your question is too limited in scope. Try to extract the fundamental question from the specific problem at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T04:52:07.200" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T04:52:07.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2012-02-26T03:26:53.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that a journal asking for reviewers is &quot;standard&quot; practice, but it is by no means rare. For instance, nearly all &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org&quot;&gt;ACS journals&lt;/a&gt; require that the paper submitter provide the names of between three and six potential referees. Other journals that I've submitted to, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://jcp.aip.org&quot;&gt;J. Chem. Phys.&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://prola.aps.org&quot;&gt;Physical Review&lt;/a&gt; series do not require referee lists of any kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that the choice of referees is entirely discretionary on the part of the editor. The editor is free to pick from any or all of the names on your list—or none of them, if it's an area the editor knows well enough to assign referees independently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T03:26:53.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="288" CreationDate="2012-02-26T08:14:00.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best solution of my is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; from mekentosj. I should also mention that using tags is not an efficient solution for me; at the tagging moment I could not think about relevant tags and later I would not be able to find the paper. In my system I organized papers in collections (like folders) and search for them using keywords (like one would on in Web of Science) or authors or any other usual field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="284" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T16:19:07.637" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T16:19:07.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="455" CreationDate="2012-02-26T13:08:24.737" Score="27" ViewCount="3633" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to go about to find a certain research group that do work in a specific field (e.g research groups doing empirical brain investigations but working from a dualistic perspective, or research groups doing eyetracker work on infants)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="213" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T14:14:48.380" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:53:15.813" Title="How do I find research groups that do work in field X?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="449" CreationDate="2012-02-26T13:41:34.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequently formalized groups of academics hold &lt;em&gt;conferences&lt;/em&gt;, or if it is a more specialized field they are frequently part of a broader conference but have special panels/proceedings/meetings within the larger conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So possibilities of finding such groups are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking at the &lt;em&gt;CV&lt;/em&gt; of authors in the field to see if they are members of such organizations or have presentations at said conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking for conferences in the broader field, and seeing if they host research on specific topics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possibilities include email list-serves and forums. I'm not sure if I have any better advice to find such groups than besides doing regular internet searches though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T13:41:34.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="449" CreationDate="2012-02-26T13:43:59.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know specific search terms you're looking for, you could begin by searching &lt;a href=&quot;http://isiknowledge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; for the specific combinations you're looking for, and then following up on the specific groups that are returned by such a search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to use some creativity in narrowing down the search criteria to avoid getting 5000 hits that you need to sift through, but there are a large number of possible &quot;narrowing&quot; options on Web of Science (year of publication, location, sorting by citations, etc.) that can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; or even a more generic engine like &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scholar Google&lt;/a&gt; may be able to assist you in this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T13:43:59.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="449" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:47:28.490" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try the following, in order of &quot;how useful the results will be&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you know someone - anyone - in the field, have them recommend names of labs/professors to you. The names they give you will likely be people relevant to their research who have done solid research, and have really established their names in the field. This is the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to journal articles, find a good journal in field X and look for a recent paper. There are two ways to do this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look in a couple of articles that seem interesting and see which authors are cited most often in the &quot;introduction&quot; section. Chances are, those authors have completed some recent seminal work, which all these other papers are using as their research springboard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for a review paper, and see who is cited often. This isn't such a good method, as I've found that many review articles will be fairly biased towards themselves/their collaborators, but it still can be useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to any big-name university's department web page for field X and browse the faculty listings. This is a total crapshoot; you'll find lots of labs, but there's no surefire way to tell quality of lab from their department web page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T20:47:28.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="449" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:08:23.093" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I find &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=30&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=1&amp;amp;prmdo=1&amp;amp;q=eyetrack%2a+infant+%7C+baby+research+%7C+forschung++inurl%3Aedu+%7C+inurl%3Auni+-filetype%3Apdf+-filetype%3Adoc+-filetype%3Appt+-filetype%3Aps+2011..2012&amp;amp;oq=eyetrack%2a+infant+%7C+baby+research+%7C+forschung++inurl%3Aedu+%7C+inurl%3Auni+-filetype%3Apdf+-filetype%3Adoc+-filetype%3Appt+-filetype%3Aps+2011..2012&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_sm=12&amp;amp;gs_upl=21080l24324l0l29693l12l10l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&quot;&gt;reasonable numbers for research groups&lt;/a&gt; focusing on &lt;em&gt;eyetracking&lt;/em&gt; by using Google and search operators. Of course, you should add some redundant similar terms (eye-movement, baby,...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice, there are some patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;american universities nearly always have &lt;strong&gt;edu&lt;/strong&gt; (actually it's even a domain) in their URL, german univ. &lt;strong&gt;uni&lt;/strong&gt;. So using &lt;code&gt;inurl:edu&lt;/code&gt; in google filters out a lot. Non-university institutes like german Max-Planck often have URL patterns too. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;further add  &lt;code&gt;-filetype:pdf -filetype:doc -filetype:ppt -filetype:ps&lt;/code&gt; to filter out more useless results&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;add &lt;code&gt;2010..2012&lt;/code&gt; to be sure the site/group is still active and the topic on their agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;add &lt;code&gt;research | forschung&lt;/code&gt; (latter being german translation, but afaik nowadays most natural sciences groups in Germany have a english (&amp;amp; german) page)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some research branches also have a online directory, there exist also internet directories like dmoz (not sure if this stuff is up to date, probably some dead links):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurosys.org/directory/&quot;&gt;http://www.eurosys.org/directory/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Biology/Neurobiology/Research_Groups_and_Centers/&quot;&gt;http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Biology/Neurobiology/Research_Groups_and_Centers/&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/actions/colloq/groups.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/actions/colloq/groups.html&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least I can say that most research groups in Germany will have a english home page and short summary/research topics/open positions on it. So there should be no general problem to find them by some &quot;serious&quot; googling. But &lt;strong&gt;don't use too specific keywords&lt;/strong&gt;, &quot;eyetracking on infants&quot;, &quot;dualistic view&quot; is too special imho, use keywords being specific rather to the topic than the exact methodology. They are probably mainly interested in how the visual recognition system adapts and learns over time, this is the bigger thematic picture. You attract master and phd students not by naming a special experimental method, so you will not find these type of keywords often on a group page, where they often try to put in a minimum of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="213" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T13:55:27.437" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T13:55:27.437" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="288" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:33:00.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tagging is only useful if you use it with discipline. Look at Wikipedia or Stackexchange, most articles can be determined by 5-6 categories (science - math - geometry - euclidean geometry - metric). Stackexchange has a max. of 5 tags, often you only see 1-2 on questions, which is often pointless, as those tags will appear often in the question/paper title and abstract too. Wasted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you decide to create a tagging system, &lt;strong&gt;use at least 4-6 tags&lt;/strong&gt; depending on how interdisciplinary and specialized your paper/link collection is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider to &lt;strong&gt;not only tag by topic but also kind&lt;/strong&gt; (review, letter, peer-reviewed, experimental results, theoretical analysis, explanation of new measurement method, meta-discussion...), &lt;strong&gt;year, personal rating&lt;/strong&gt; (very interesting article you learned a lot from and should read again from time to time), &lt;strong&gt;rarely/often/top cited, new theory/model, strongly discussed in the research community&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last note. I use myself &lt;strong&gt;Copernic Desktop Search as a supplementary tool&lt;/strong&gt;, I download all papers of possible interest (disk space is cheap ;) ), papers I read, will read or maybe will never take a look at. The point is that &lt;strong&gt;Desktop Search software often has more powerful search operators and sorting mechanisms than Google Scholar &amp;amp; Co&lt;/strong&gt;. If you know how to use them, you can save a lot reading and tagging time or tagging at all. You know, if you are smart in using Google &amp;amp; search operators and have a good vocabulary, you don't have to ask a lot questions on internet boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use tagging for creating a pure thematic and linear directory structure&lt;/strong&gt;, if finding again your papers or bits of information can be done by learning a good Desktop Search software. Use your tags in a personal way and remember, the point is not to structure your bibliography like a folder directory for categorized files, the point is to find again the bits of knowledge and most memorable papers, which will rather look like a strongly interconnected nonlinear tag cloud. If you look how people tag sites on del.ic.ious, often only 2 or 3 tags, sometimes using up to 10 pure thematic redundant tags, they are doing it imho wrong and waste a lot of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T22:33:00.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2012-02-27T04:07:09.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered this before - as aeismail has said, it might not be &quot;standard&quot; practice (implying most journals do it) but its certainly at the very least common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often intended to provide focus and speed for journal editors to get papers out. Finding appropriate reviewers is a long and tedious task, and if editor's come to rely too much on &quot;their&quot; expert reviewers, they're likely to burn them out. The approach of recommending peer-reviewers gives you, the author - and presumably an expert in your field - an opportunity to weight in on who is &lt;em&gt;qualified&lt;/em&gt; to review your paper, while avoiding people who would have to abstain due to a conflict of interest, or who you feel might not judge your paper fairly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you should be considering people in your specific field who aren't your direct collaborators, but who might be disposed to look on you and your work in a positive or at least neutral light - avoiding people who don't like &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, or who think &quot;Paper Topic is a waste of time and research dollars, and should never be published&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T04:07:09.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-27T19:02:29.227" Score="18" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any publicly accessible information regarding the success rate of grant/project applications for science/technology and other research grant programs (e.g. NSF grants) and its variation over time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in an exhaustive list but some illustrative examples would be much appreciated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="52721" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T00:42:10.537" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T00:42:10.537" Title="Historical data for success rate of grant/project applications?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="458" CreationDate="2012-02-27T19:39:22.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's surprisingly hard to find that information, I was expecting to get it more easily, in particular when public funding is involved. I've found for the European Union FP7-ICT call 1, there were 1836 proposals for only 318 accepted, with a total 1.2 billion euros funded (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/downloads/enlargement/infodays/jrc_20080506_infoday_tirana_cindy_vd_boogert.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source, slide 18&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess a good strategy could be to contact the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=contacts&amp;amp;lg=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Division&lt;/a&gt; of the European Commission, I'm sure they have this information somewhere, and they are probably able to provide it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T19:39:22.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="458" CreationDate="2012-02-27T20:36:34.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://report.nih.gov/success_rates/index.aspx&quot;&gt;NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools&lt;/a&gt;. It may take you some time to find exactly what you're looking for, but there are numerous reports available, with a good deal of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T20:36:34.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="462" CreationDate="2012-02-28T01:28:41.107" Score="11" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often fantasize that when I will get my work to successful end, then I will have new possibilities open – and that maybe I will even receive scientific job offers. The work is obtaining new important results in computational sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I get to the ground, think that giving someone job is rather a necessity for the employer – and not an act of appreciation or even not an act of support. Then, my results are important and useful, so someone may need them. However, the results can be understood, used and further developed by some other scientist. So it will not be necessarily me, who will get the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One related example that comes to my mind is Stephen Wolfram, who is independent because he is earning money himself. So he was not appreciated by someone, instead he won his share in software market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="280" LastEditorUserId="280" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T03:08:28.187" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T05:28:48.130" Title="Publishing a creative, important result – does it create any real finance opportunities (jobs, etc.)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="461" CreationDate="2012-02-28T01:44:51.287" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, there is not a strict correlation between doing good science and being financially successful. It is entirely possible to do &quot;creative, important work&quot; and still not be well rewarded for it. For instance, one could have published these results in an obscure journal that very few people will read. Or, as another example, the researcher might be a poor &quot;salesman,&quot; unable to convince readers and fellow scientists of the merit of his work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you need a combination of both networking and technical skills to forge a successful career as a researcher: the contacts will help you get interviews for jobs; your technical knowledge will get you the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T01:44:51.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="461" CreationDate="2012-02-28T02:48:38.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;aeismail's response is on target, and just to extend it a bit more, you will find few researchers who make money directly from their research. All your work is owned by the university and patents you file are owned by the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is fairly common for a researcher to found his or her own company based on their work. There are numerous examples of this, but just to give two examples from my own experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pstnet.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychology Software Tools&lt;/a&gt;, the company behind E-Prime, a popular psychology paradigm programming language, is owned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://schneiderlab.lrdc.pitt.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Walter Schneider&lt;/a&gt;, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cdi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computational Diagnostics, Inc.&lt;/a&gt;, a company offering neurological monitoring services, is run by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurosurgery.pitt.edu/faculty/sclabassi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Robert Sclabassi&lt;/a&gt; (recently retired), who has numerous publications in the field of EEG signal processing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from creating a startup, some professors will consult externally for a fee. Anecdotally, depending on how well-connected the professor is, I know a number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who did consulting work on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, if researchers have business acumen and interest, they will follow one of these two paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T02:48:38.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T03:05:48.963" Score="40" ViewCount="26549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been considering applying to graduate school of some form or another in Mathematics. During my undergraduate years, I did decently on my undergraduate coursework (mostly A-s, some As, a B) but not stellar, and it wasn't until I started taking graduate courses as a senior that I started buckling down and getting solid As or higher. I also had no research experience at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I eventually want to apply to a Ph. D program in pure mathematics. Since I didn't really click until later in undergraduate years, so I was considering applying to 2-year masters programs in mathematics, and then based on my performance there, decide whether I'm fit to work towards a Ph. D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages to completing a master's program before applying to a separate Ph. D program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know masters degrees are sometimes considered terminal degrees. Would doing well in masters coursework be advantageous in applying to Ph. D programs later on as opposed to immediately after undergrad years? Does strong performance as a masters student make one a more attractive candidate, or do programs have less interest in applicants who already have a masters? Is it wiser to apply for a Ph. D directly? I'm sorry if this question is considered too much of a soft question. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T14:49:27.340" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T04:30:42.040" Title="What are the advantages and disadvantages to completing a Masters program before applying to a Ph. D program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-28T03:28:18.797" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many PhD programs require you to do a masters on your way to a PhD, so the point in many cases is moot. That being said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll get a chance to see whether research is something you like before committing to the PhD process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll complete most of the coursework, so when you get to the PhD work you'll be able to more quickly focus on research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the masters, you may be spending money on your degree. Many PhD programs will fund your way (in exchange for you doing awesome research).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be required to do a master thesis, which can be comprehensive, and you may come to view it as a waste to do it twice (one for masters, one for PhD).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T03:28:18.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-28T04:54:47.763" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than what eykanal mentioned, you might want to consider the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have lackluster UG grades with little/no research experience (in terms of publications/term papers/internships), few top PhD programs would be even willing to look at your application, not matter what are your scores in the GREs. I assume your letters of recommendations (LORs) from faculty would be average at best as well, which would really, really hurt your admission chances. So, a Masters degree would help you rectify that - you can aggressively start pursuing research-based projects with the faculty, and work at a publishable thesis. This would both give you something added to your profile (a publication), and you can get much better LORs from your masters faculty - something that may get you into that top school where your dream adviser works!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can get (some of) your Master's course credit transferred to your PhD program, so that you can start working on your thesis much early, and may even finish faster! However, this &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; varies from department to department, so make sure you inquire about this before applying!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are really, really sure of what field you want to research in, you can find the top people in your field (whom you'd want to be advised by during your PhD) - and start corresponding with them during your Masters, asking queries/having discussions about their most recent papers, and using them in your Masters thesis (assuming you'd be working in the same field). That way, when you finally apply, you would stand out in their mind from the other applicants, as someone who is genuinely interested in their research. Mind you, I'm not asking you to fake anything! Be sincere about your passion to work in the same research areas, and they just might be convinced to bat for you during applications review!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, if you do not fare well in Masters program, most admission committees (ad-coms) would take it as a red flag - as it would bolster the less-than-stellar impression your undergrads created, and hence they might deem you not fit for PhD at all. This might be the case with even the ad-coms that might've been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when only presented with your undergrad records - so, tread carefully if you happen to embark on a Masters, as your performance there would undergo even greater scrutiny!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T04:54:47.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-28T12:13:01.320" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for my (computer science) department.  Students who apply to our PhD program with MS degrees are held to a higher standard than applicants who apply as undergraduates.  What we look for in PhD applicants is &lt;em&gt;strong evidence of research potential&lt;/em&gt;.  Most undergraduates don't have an opportunity to undertake a real research project, but MS students do have that opportunity, &lt;em&gt;by definition&lt;/em&gt;.  It's &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; harder for MS applicants without publishable results to be admitted than an undergraduate in the same situation, all else being equal.  Grades are much less important (unless they suck, which yours don't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the fact that your already decent grades improved when you started taking graduate classes is a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; point in your favor.  Be sure to get recommendation letters from your instructors in those courses, and hit them up for research opportunities.  I recommend applying to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; MS &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; PhD programs; some departments will even let you apply for both simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar effect in NSF's evaluations of graduate fellowship applications.  NSF splits the applicant pool into three piles based on the number of years of graduate education: still an undergrad, less than 12 months, and more than 12 months.  Expectations are higher for applicants in later piles.  In particular, publications are a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; requirement for students in the more-than-one-year pile, &lt;em&gt;even if their one year of graduate education was in a non-research masters program&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T16:12:23.197" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T16:12:23.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T16:18:32.393" Score="8" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;My department is looking for a CRM tool to manage its relationship with graduated students (either on BSc, MSc or PhD level). What we want to achieve: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show our candidates that you can get a well paid work after graduating Physics in Poland (they don't believe such positions exist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow our department to track careers of out students and possibly change study program to better fulfill their needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain input from former students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow current and former students to view/apply for job opportunities (people from our department who start a company often look for people with similar education level)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these use cases are more or less practiced now, but mainly using emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what are established practices, particularly in Western Universities (since Polish ones tend to lag somewhat, especially when it comes to such problems). &lt;strong&gt;Do your departments do any kind of alumni tracking?&lt;/strong&gt; If yes, what tools do you use?  If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-08T10:42:57.813" LastActivityDate="2021-03-02T08:36:17.683" Title="Software for managing departmental alumni relations" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;alumni&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2021-03-14T19:11:49.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-28T17:23:43.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is speaking only from my experience in Public Health and Epidemiology, so its slightly more general, but hopefully it will be helpful. Some of these have already been mentioned by other posters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the potential to establish your &quot;research chops&quot;, or shore up your grades. If you don't think you have a strong application coming directly out of undergrad, this is probably a plus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you move programs between your MS and your PhD, you get to see two schools. That's good for both perspective on research (rather than only being exposed to &quot;The University X way of doing things&quot;), and it means an extra set of contacts, though admittedly your network from the Masters university will probably end up being somewhat weaker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get the &quot;feel&quot; for your potential research topic. Which means that if you don't like it, you can switch. Getting an MS and a PhD in two different but related topics (like say Pure Math and Applied Math/Operations Research/CS, etc.) is pretty run-of-the-mill. Switching PhD programs mid-stream is a much less pleasant experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In contrast to some of the answers here, in my field at least I'd argue that undergraduate applicants are judged more harshly than their MS-weilding colleagues. Several major programs simply &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; accept folks directly from undergrad into their PhD programs, and several others say they do, but in practice without someone pulling for you or an act of God they're not going to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will probably add time. If you're coming straight from undergraduate, a university's combined MS/PhD track (wherein essentially you get an MS by way of your PhD coursework + a thesis) is likely the &quot;least time&quot; path to a doctorate. While you'll be able to transfer some of your credits from your Masters into a PhD program, some will almost certainly not transfer, and the university may have a core set of courses that they'll want you to take over again. For example, in my program, I'd say having a Masters trims about a year from your time in the PhD program. But most Masters degrees take 2 years...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to move again. The flip side to getting to see two places worth of stuff is you're going to find yourself hopping across the country not once by twice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are potentially some cultural problems. Some places view Masters students (not necessarily incorrectly) as transient, so its hard to command a professor's attention as someone worth investing tons of time into, compared to a doctoral student who is going to be around for 5, 6 or more years. This is especially true for professors outside your thesis advisor and maybe the professor who taught a class you did particularly well in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money. In contrast to @JeffE's assertion (which is absolutely true for doctoral programs) my field doesn't necessarily fund Masters degrees that aren't part of a combined MS/PhD track. It's hard to get faculty to use their limited RA positions on Masters students instead of doctoral students, and because in the field there's actually a very small number of undergraduate programs, there are few TAships available to people who haven't passed through at least some of the coursework. Because the MPH is also heavily used in my field as a terminal/practitioners degree, it's treated somewhat like a professional school - you pay for your degree. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T17:23:43.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="422" CreationDate="2012-02-28T17:56:13.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you visiting programs that you know you don't want to attend? (I want to go further and ask, why even apply to programs you know you don't want to attend?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If I am not interested in that institute but wanted the opinion of one of the professors about another institute/lab (the ones I am interested in attending), is that a taboo?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. For a handful of reasons - the most critical being that you are basically telling the professor that &lt;strong&gt;the department wasted their money bringing you out there&lt;/strong&gt;. You are also wasting that professor's time by talking about another university when she's there to talk about her lab and her institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's also worth saying that most professors don't bother to get to know or remember most students who actually enter the program! This is not the time to get on &quot;email terms,&quot; she's not going to remember you. The time to do that is once you are established in a lab and have your own project to talk about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T17:56:13.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="461" CreationDate="2012-02-28T18:48:42.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I worked for HP (in the storage area network division), much of the published research articles were for things that it still took several years to bring to market. Generally, it was about 5 years between the first papers and the time a product made it to market. Even things used everywhere - SQL - took 9 years to go from research paper (Codd's paper was in 1969) to first commercial product (Relational [now called Oracle] was released in 1978) with several large companies (including IBM) trying to bring a product to market. In software development, academic research runs 5 to 30+ years ahead of in-the-field practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Wolfram, I don't think he's a good model to emulate, as he fits the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Book review of A New Kind of Science by someone I respect in the industry&quot;&gt;model of a crank&lt;/a&gt; more than the model I would attribute to a good scientist. Despite that, I bought his book and use his software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example I can think of where creative important results don't translate to success is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Long Term Capital Management&lt;/a&gt;. Founded by 2 Nobel Prize winners in economics, it was the first massive Wall Street bailout in the 1990s after the Russian financial crisis resulted in Soviet/Russian bonds going belly up. One of the founders was &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; Scholes in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black-Scholes model&lt;/a&gt;, which is one of the most important equations in finanace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovering something great and/or important takes a different set of skills than bringing that discovery to market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T05:28:48.130" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T05:28:48.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:17:02.703" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to your adviser about this. &lt;strong&gt;Do not make anything that is unpublished publicly available without their knowledge.&lt;/strong&gt; Any other people who might be co-authors on your papers might also have a say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, a &lt;em&gt;private&lt;/em&gt; github repository is a great idea (I used one myself for my PhD dissertation &amp;amp; papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:17:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:55:42.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak for Mathematics but for Computer Science the importance of getting Maters degree first is multi-fold which of many have been stated above but one which I feel is also very important. Sometimes in the middle of the PhD program you might feel like taking a break for couple of years and consider doing a job either for relaxing or to get a hands on experience in the industry. Having your Masters degree then will help you find a better job than with undergraduate or god forbid you quit your PhD, you will have Masters degree in your hand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:55:42.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="475" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:14:16.273" Score="19" ViewCount="1381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the details for one of my schools so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At UChicago, my prospective adviser said that I should expect to have around a month off per year (probably 2 weeks in winter and 2 weeks in summer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably fairly reasonabl, though it came as a bit of a shock at first but that was because I was used to being an undergrad where I had at least 2 months off EVEN if I included courses during summer quarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm on a fellowship for my first two years, but I'll still be pushed to produce results (I'm basically being trusted to do a highly ambitious project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T08:47:06.203" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T15:05:27.337" Title="How many weeks of break (per year) should a graduate student reasonably expect to have?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="474" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:28:23.157" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official answer depends on where you are located, and the applicable laws in your jurisdiction. For instance, in Germany, graduate students are almost always employees of the government, and are therefore accorded vacation benefits commensurate to that (between 23 and 29 days per year, depending upon age). In contrast, the United States technically does not have any requirements on annual paid leave, so the answer in principle could be as little as zero, but normally is two weeks per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unofficially, that's a matter to be worked out between you and your advisor. Some advisors will be willing to let you take days off here and there as needed, so long as they don't interfere with either your long-term progress or meeting your day-to-day responsibilities. Most advisors will be rightfully displeased if you ask to take two months of leave all at once, but most will not mind a three-day weekend here and there as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T03:28:23.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="474" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:58:02.463" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;aeismail's answer is very good. Just to extend it a little, you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; expect to take breaks with the undergraduate schedule; spring/summer/winter break does not apply to graduate students. Almost all (US) graduate students will take off the week of 12/25-1/1 or thereabouts. At the end of the day, it really depends on your advisor's dispositions towards your taking time off from lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T03:58:02.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-02-29T04:05:53.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm a first year math PhD student. I did not get my masters before entering university, but I don't think that had a big role either for or against me. I didn't end up applying to any masters programs actually, and I had two major reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the primary reason for me was money. None of the programs that I was interested in funded masters math programs. I'm sure that there are such programs, but school is expensive. And I'm poor. So it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the secondary reason was inspiration. I'm going to do original research, right? That's the goal. And I'm impatient ad ready for it (at least in spirit). It happens to be the case that we spend our first year here doing a lot of work, quals, etc. It's the second year where things kick into gear, and I'm already straining for it. (However, if I already knew everything, I would have already passed my quals, so it's not unfair treatment or anything). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to give you my personal recommendation, knowing that you wanted to get a math PhD eventually, then I would say apply to both if you are in doubt. What's the worst that can happen? If you are a strong enough candidate to go straight to PhD, then great. Why not, right? And if not, then a little graduate coursework can't hurt your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to mention that, at least in my program, there is no transferral of credits. You come in, pass qualifying exams, and write a dissertation. The transferral of credits would come in the form of you already knowing enough to pass the quals immediately (I did not know them all, for instance - some people knew more and some less). In all likelihood, you'd still burn at least a semester, more likely a year, just like all of us do. So a masters would likely lengthen your studies (at least at my uni).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is possible that you don't have a big idea of what area of math, or what field of math in particular, you want to work in. This would be a big issue, perhaps. I knew I wanted to do number theory, and I was interested in the work of some of the number theorists at Brown. But a combinatorialist, graph theorist, or many other people would be hopelessly alone here (there is little love for combinatorics here). I suspect this sort of problem could be true in many schools. But if you know what you want to do, then this is no issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To end, I wanted to note that it's fine to test the waters, i.e. to see if you're fit for a math PhD, in a math PhD program. I've known people who have gotten a masters a year or two in, decided that was enough, and left the program. I suspect this isn't uncommon (although it would be uncommon where I am), and you'd get paid to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T04:05:53.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="480" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:05:02.030" Score="11" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United Nations University (UNU) is an academic arm of the United Nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understood well, it is doing only research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any people who are actually enrolled as &quot;students&quot; there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;References appreciated&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="307" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:50:21.753" Title="Are there any students at the United Nations University?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="479" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:50:21.753" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United Nations University does not really work as a normal university, but rather as a research center. The difference is that they recruit students from developing countries as for a period that can go from several months to a year, in order to make them work on concrete research projects, so that they can gain experience (which can help them to apply for a Master of PhD program somewhere else). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, this a &lt;a href=&quot;http://iist.unu.edu/announcement/two-fellow-positions-evolution-and-verification-event-based-gui-systems&quot;&gt;job position&lt;/a&gt; for students at the UNU-IIST (International Institute for Software Technology). Note that the UNU-IIST also plan to offer a joint &lt;a href=&quot;http://iist.unu.edu/academic-programs/phd-program&quot;&gt;PhD program&lt;/a&gt; with the University of Pisa. Note also that it seems that each institute of the UNU is to some extent independent, so maybe other institutes provide more academic programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your questions, technically speaking there are students at the UNU (when I was working at the UNU-IIST, there were something between 10 and 20 students), but they are not &quot;enrolled&quot; by the UNU, it's more like some kind of internship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:50:21.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="484" CreationDate="2012-02-29T12:38:10.083" Score="11" ViewCount="2287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelor's degree in computer science. I am looking for an appropriate master program. I am interested in algorithms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is not about where I should continue my education. My question is about how exactly should I search for the place to study for my master's degree. I simply don't know where should I start. I don't know what my first step should be. I don't have any experience living abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now in order to choose the place I consider just few parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in algorithms, almost every university that offers master degree in computer science would be an appropriate choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fee. It's really a problem. I didn't find universities in Europe that offer master's degree study for free, few of them offer applying for scholarship. But I am not sure I have a good chance to get one, and obviously it doesn't cover all fee. I don't have citizenship in a European country so I assume it's going to be harder to apply. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's your experience? Did you try to apply to scholarship? What's your opinion? Can I start doing research and hope for funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Canada there are few places without fee, therefore it should be very competitive, but at least there is a chance. Usually they ask for GRE in mathematics and computer science; sometimes for IELTS. What's your opinion? I assume you should be really perfect in your field in order to get applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In China, very interesting option, without fee or with minimal fee plus one year to get a new language. It looks very attractive, especially with approach of Chinese government to education, as I know there are many programs for free. The only problem is to get the minimal communication in Chinese which may take up to a year according to experience of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to responses I decided to update my post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I earned my bachelor degree 3 years ago, I have a good job, and I work as a programmer. Throughout the last year I am taking courses of master degree in my domestic university. I have one day off in week for studies. Three years is a long break but I feel the power is back. In my place it's not common that employer will pay for studies, of course I have some savings but this is not going to cover fee, and all spendings for at least two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to go to research master. Right now I am not ready to get good grade at GRE, but I am working on it. I am not fluent in English, but in my opinion more important to be good in my field of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="312" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-11T15:32:22.483" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T15:32:22.483" Title="Where to continue my research-oriented studies after Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="481" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:10:19.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can only be answered backwards, by asking what you hope to get out of the study. You state you want a masters degree... masters are typically used to get a job in industry, and scholarships can be difficult to obtain. You will typically have to pay in order to go this route. There are some graduate programs that offer research masters (at least in engineering), but (1) I'm not sure how prevalent this is in comp sci, and (2) you'll be adding on at least a year to your degree in order for you to complete the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a masters so that you can move to industry, your best bet would probably be to look for jobs now, work a year or two, and then have your work pay for your masters. Many workplaces offer education benefits, and this can be a very nice way to further your education while not paying for the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for research, consider going the PhD route, which would open up possibilities for stipends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:10:19.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="481" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:12:08.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no such thing as free lunch.&lt;/strong&gt; If some university is offerring ou free tuition they want something from you. Mostly in the form of research. So PhD has a very high chance of getting a scholarship unlike Masters just because they know you are going to just study and not primarily do research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:12:08.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="481" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:25:52.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason why you're not seeing scholarships for study at the master's level &lt;em&gt;in Europe&lt;/em&gt; is that the master's degree is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; viewed as the prerequisite for PhD study, but instead as the direct continuation of the bachelor's degree. As a result, you're expected to move on to the master's program, and usually at the same location you did your bachelor's degree. That means there really isn't a call for a lot of scholarship to fund master's study. However, it is possible to finance one's stay in a European university, as many schools offer part-time positions for master's students working in a research group for some number of hours per week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the US and several other countries, gaining admission to a PhD program is a good way to get your master's studies funded, as the funding is normally provided for the entirety of your graduate tenure, rather than just the PhD portion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get in to most programs in English-speaking countries, you will need to show evidence of a good scholastic record as well as good English skills, as evidenced by the IELTS or TOEFL. If those aren't in place, it's going to be very difficult for you to be competitive, and almost impossible to be competitive for a scholarship or fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:25:52.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="490" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:51:12.360" Score="8" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing with PhDs is that it often takes someone who knows the politics and people of the field in order to really understand (or help) a PhD student's troubles (if any arise). At the same time, there are many similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't, who are the other best people to talk to in case issues arise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T05:15:10.113" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T05:15:10.113" Title="Are university counseling services usually able to help with the professional troubles that PhD students face?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="485" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:10:04.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, university counseling should be aware of how to deal with PhD student affairs as well as undergraduate issues. (Perhaps different staff or the two groups, perhaps not.) However, I'll focus on the &quot;if they don't&quot; part of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is usually a graduate &quot;officer&quot; in most departments, who is tasked with making sure that graduate students complete the requirements of their studies, and that departmental regulations and policies are being followed. This officer should be the first person to talk to if something goes wrong, and the problem can't be resolved between the parties directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, the members of the thesis committee have an obligation to intervene in the case of severe conflicts that could disrupt the program. Ultimately, though, the chair of the department would be the last &quot;internal&quot; stop before you would have to go to the university-level administration (the office of the dean of graduate students, or a similar position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for advice from fellow students, perhaps you can get information from the student committee that is present in most departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:10:04.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="485" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:19:17.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, you'll get the best advice from one of the following, in order of usefulness &amp;amp; availability to help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Postdocs in your lab/field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other graduate students in your lab/field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close collaborators&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your committee members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University departmental staff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I have spoken with departmental staff for issues, including my department chair, but often they're pretty limited in what they can offer. Your most useful advice will often come from the top three in the above list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:19:17.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:48:03.130" Score="7" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many disciplines where collaborative learning is the norm; group projects in engineering, working in pairs in bio &amp;amp; chem laboratories, writing papers in a variety of fields, and Team-Based Learning in medical schools (among other areas). &lt;strong&gt;Are there any software tools available that are specifically intended to augment collaborative learning?&lt;/strong&gt; In my head, this would include capabilities such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking questions of the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enabling real-time group discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharing attachments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="313" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T16:05:52.217" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T14:55:39.963" Title="Are there any online tools for student collaborative learning?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2012-02-29T17:16:52.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There aren't many popular ones specific to students. Many universities use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackboard.com/&quot;&gt;BlackBoard&lt;/a&gt;, but despite having been in many classes where it was used, I've never seen students use it to collaborate. Students use the same tools everyone else uses... Skype, Github, Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T17:16:52.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="485" CreationDate="2012-02-29T19:11:28.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many university mental health centers have PhD-only group therapy programs. These often focus on stress and anxiety. They will be proctored by a professional counselor but are designed to be a space where graduate students can help each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit is two-fold - you get to talk to people who are in grad school in your university, perhaps in a similar field or program. You'd be surprised how similar some issues are regardless of field of study (research falling behind, concern about funding, conflicts with PIs/advisers, etc.). But in group therapy you are able to work through issues in an explicitly private space. If you are having a serious issue, it may be good to start here rather than within your department. I'd say that is any grievance you air to someone within your department has the chance to spread. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T19:22:17.290" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T19:22:17.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="435" CreationDate="2012-02-29T21:10:18.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bitbucket offers unlimited private repositories for academic accounts that you can get by using your uni email id. I'm writing my PhD dissertation using Lyx and use Mercurial for version control, so I store my code in a &lt;strong&gt;private&lt;/strong&gt; repo on bitbucket. I think version control is indispensable for large research projects that are completed over a long time frame, so using a repository would obviously fit right in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But making your stuff public serves no useful purpose, neither for you, nor for the academic community that would be interested in your research. You make something public when it is ready to see the light of the day. Till then, you receive feedback from your supervisor and colleagues, and improve the quality of your work until it is &lt;strong&gt;good enough to be of use to others&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making half-assed research public is a crime against academia, can reflect poorly on you, and in any case conferences are the best venue for discussing work in progress &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; for getting your work time-stamped by a large gathering of people in your field who know each other, and this can prevent &quot;scooping&quot;. However I must say I'm sceptical that such a thing even exists in academia, your research can only be done by &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journalists search for novelty, and can therefore be scooped. We academics, on the other hand, search for credibility, which only comes from knowing &quot;your&quot; idea inside out. If somebody else can do more credible work with your idea, then they get the Nobel, you get the citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T21:10:18.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="494" CreationDate="2012-03-01T02:18:33.000" Score="22" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tonight I was scrolling through my RSS aggregator (which includes subscriptions for several journals I follow) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://genomebiology.com/2012/13/2/R13/abstract&quot;&gt;this abstract&lt;/a&gt; caught my attention. The article's title, as well as the name of the software it describes, includes a subtle reference to &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-your-base-are-belong-to-us&quot;&gt;this popular internet meme&lt;/a&gt;. This gave me a good laugh, and an excuse to watch that ridiculously silly video again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a more serious note, this is not the first time I have seen the use of subtle (or not-so-subtle) humor in the title of a scientific journal article, conference abstract, or poster presentation. Sometimes the humor is even injected into the body of the publication itself. But in general, we as scientists are expected to write in such a way that our findings are easily communicated and easily reproducible. The focus is on clarity, objectivity, and reproducibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course no formal rules about the use of humor in scientific literature, but are there any &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; rules? Do these &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; rules depend on the field (computer science vs genetics) or the publisher (Oxford Univ. Press vs BioMed Central) or the journal's impact factor (Nature vs Frontiers in Genetics)? Does humor even have a place in scientific literature, or would we be better off without it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T18:17:49.417" Title="Subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor in scientific literature" Tags="&lt;science&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="492" CreationDate="2012-03-01T05:54:59.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The brief answer is that, yes, humor has its place, but&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should never be used at the expense of the integrity of the results;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even when used, it is often only used sparsely; &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author typically is somewhat known in the field. (You rarely find a very young professor publishing something like that.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T18:17:49.417" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T18:17:49.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="492" CreationDate="2012-03-01T06:24:56.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see humorous titles in scientific articles now and again, like the &quot;Wizard of Odds&quot; joke in a recent commentary in &lt;em&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;. One should however be somewhat cautious. The general use of &quot;marketing gimmicks&quot; like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/a366660464t0m4x6/&quot;&gt;questions in the title&lt;/a&gt; have been suggested to increase &lt;em&gt;downloads&lt;/em&gt; but not actual citations - which flawed or not flawed form the basis for how both the paper and you as the author are evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://jis.sagepub.com/content/34/5/680.short&quot;&gt;this finding&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the current study indicate that in two prestigious scientific journals in psychology the use of exceptionally amusing titles (2 standard deviations above the average rated amusement) was associated with a substantiate ‘penalty’ of around 33% of the total number of citations. The present results were found in both of the examined journals and cannot be attributed to potential moderating effects of the title length and pleasantness, the number of authors, the year of publica- tion, and the article type (regular article vs comment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that might not be perfectly generalizable, I think it's pretty easy to say that being overly clever is hazardous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T06:24:56.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="492" CreationDate="2012-03-01T11:58:47.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be careful with humour in publications mostly because the reviewers might not appreciate it, especially if it's something they might not understand because their native language is not English. Having a paper rejected because a reviewer didn't appreciate your attempt at humour is not something I'd be very keen on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T11:58:47.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="468" CreationDate="2012-03-01T14:58:52.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; is a fine resource for this sort of thing, especially for keeping track of alums' careers and contact data. I encourage my students to link to me for exactly this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T14:58:52.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="492" CreationDate="2012-03-01T15:44:27.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/category/ncbi-rofl/&quot;&gt;NCBI ROFL&lt;/a&gt; blog is a good source of intentional and unintentional humour in the scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I think we can get a little too po-faced about the &quot;importance&quot; of the scientific literature, and a little humour now and then (used wisely) can help to make a point. It is an easy thing to misjudge, however, and I think it is true that no humour at all is vastly preferable to bad humour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T15:44:27.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="502" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:16:30.317" Score="38" ViewCount="1982" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a young scholar I frequently struggle with knowing the extent to which I should be critical of particular components of papers I am reviewing. I can formulate a rough hierarchy between major concerns (things that need to be changed or this shouldn't be published) and relatively minor concerns (things I think would improve the manuscript, but aren't substantive enough to affect whether the paper is publishable or not).The question here concerns the latter, in essence I don't know where the cut-off in reasonableness should be for minor concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one example, being curmudgeonly I would say bad graphics are the norm rather than the exception in my field, although they aren't frequently &lt;em&gt;so bad&lt;/em&gt; I can't figure out what the author is trying to say. Are minor critques of graphs appropriate (e.g. your gridlines are very obtrusive, the aspect ratio of your chart isn't appropriate, your colors/patterns are hard to distinguish, you should use a dot plot instead of a stacked bar graph, etc.) Frequently my suggested improvements would be somewhat arbitrary though, so I frequently hesitate to give such advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any advice to guide the role of the peer-reviewer? Another side question too, does the scope change if I'm doing this for a colleague versus as an anonymous reviewer for a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T04:52:59.827" Title="Scope for the role of peer reviewer" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-01T18:15:04.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these are suggestions rather than mandates (as you suggest) and if you are willing to commit the time to providing such feedback, I'd say go for it. It could only help, as long as you're not so picky that the authors end up with a list that is too overwhelming to deal with (not sure where the bar is for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI: I'm a &quot;young&quot; scholar, too, not a journal editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="315" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T18:15:04.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:06:19.140" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certain things I look for when reviewing papers that are &quot;show stoppers&quot;, i.e. if I find one of these, I usually recommend rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Things that don't add up, e.g. fractions that don't add up to 1, unreasonable large performance improvements such as orders of magnitude when the proposed method would save 50% of the work in the best case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major omissions, i.e. something that would be required to reproduce the results/implement the method is not described adequately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wrong or unjustified statements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that don't fall into this category (e.g. graphs that are hard to read) are usually not a reason for me to recommend rejection, unless they occur several times throughout the paper. The same goes for bad spelling/grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would always point out things like you mention as example (one particular thing I don't like is graphs with different scales next to each other to compare two approaches) if you think that changing them would make the paper better. In the end, everything is subjective and may seem arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use the same diligence regardless of whether looking something over for a colleague or reviewing for conference/journal because even in the former case the paper will presumably be submitted somewhere where it will be peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I think that there need to be a number of minor concerns throughout the paper to recommend its rejection. One or two graphs that look odd would for me not be a reason to do so, unless of course there are other, more serious problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T20:06:19.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-01T21:25:48.623" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please see &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/1902/111&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/1893/111&quot;&gt;a similar question&lt;/a&gt; on the theoretical computer science SE site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At @David's suggestion, I'm copy-pasting my answer here, but keep in mind that the question is slightly different, and my answer is aimed at theoretical computer science.  The bold questions are quoted from the original post.  Point 5 is probably the most relevant for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short version: &lt;strong&gt;Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the main criteria for determining the significance of a paper's results?&lt;/strong&gt;  To the best of your knowledge, does the paper make a significant, well-presented, and correct contribution to the state of the art?  If the paper fails any of the three criteria, it's fair to reject it for that reason alone, regardless of the other two.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the main elements of a referee report, and which parts are most important?&lt;/strong&gt;  Here's what I think a report should contain.  Everything should be visible to the author, except &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; for serious accusations of misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. A quick summary of the paper, to help the editor judge the quality of the results, and to help convince both the author and the editor that you actually read and understood the paper.  Place the result in its larger context.  Include a history of prior versions, even if the authors include it in the submission.  Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. A discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, in terms of correctness, novelty, clarity, importance, generality, potential impact, elegance, technical depth, robustness, etc.  If you suspect unethical behavior (plagiarism, parallel submission, cooked data), describe your suspicions.  Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. A recommendation to the editor for further action — accept, accept with minor revision, ask for a second round of reviewing, or reject outright.  Keep in mind that you are making a recommendation, not a decision; if you can't make up your mind, just say so.  Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. More detailed feedback to the author — more detailed justification for your recommendation, requests for clarification in the final version, missing references, bugs in the proofs, simplifications, generalizations, typos, etc.  Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does assessment for conferences differ from that in journals?&lt;/strong&gt; Conference reports should be shorter; program committees have hundreds of papers to consider at once.  Whether there should be a difference between conference and journal papers is up to the journal (and indirectly, up to the community).  Most theoretical computer science journals do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; insist on a significant difference; it is quite common for the conference and journal versions of a theory paper to be essentially identical.  When in doubt, ask the editor!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if I don't understand the paper? ...the proof? (Is it my fault or theirs?)&lt;/strong&gt; If you still don't understand the paper after making a good-faith effort, it's the author's fault, or possibly the editor's, but &lt;em&gt;certainly not&lt;/em&gt; yours.  The author's primary responsibility is to effectively communicate their result to their audience, and a good editor will send you a paper to referee only if they think you're a good representative of the paper's intended audience.  But you do have to make a good-faith effort; do not expect to immediately understand everything (anything?) immediately on your first reading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about typographical/grammatical mistakes?&lt;/strong&gt; If there are a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of errors, don't even read the paper; just recommend rejection on the grounds that the paper is not professionally written.  Otherwise, if you really want to be thorough, include a &lt;em&gt;representative&lt;/em&gt; list of grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, but don't knock yourself out finding every last bug.  Be respectful, but brutally honest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much time should I spend on a report?&lt;/strong&gt;  Expect to spend about an hour per page, mostly on internalizing the paper's results and techniques.  Be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't actually take that long.  (If it takes significantly less time than that, either the paper is either exceedingly elegant and well-written, you know the area extremely well, or the paper is technically shallow.  Don't confuse these three possibilities.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many reports a year am I expected to write?&lt;/strong&gt;  You should write at least as many referee reports as other people write for you.  If this takes more time than writing your own papers, you're not spending enough time on your own papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T04:52:59.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:04:40.907" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think everything you're asking about is within the scope of the reviewer's role. Generally speaking, I divide my review up into three sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: A summary and free-form critique. Here I communicate what I think the &quot;gist&quot; of the paper is about, its strengths, and offer some weaknesses that might exist in the paper as a whole. For example, if I think the authors were slightly too timid in not offering a interpretation of the data, or if they've missed or glossed over some major point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Major criticisms&lt;/strong&gt;: These are things that &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be fixed in order for me to consider it a publishable paper, and if I have the chance to review the revisions (some journals do this), things I expect to either see changed, or have &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; good arguments for why they're not. Stuff in this category includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flawed or inappropriate methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major intuitive leaps that aren't supported by the data or analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Study design problems that need attention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major failings of interpretation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal specific problems, like failing to properly report your protocol to established standards for a clinical trial, or the inappropriate use of p-values in some journals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minor criticisms&lt;/strong&gt;: These are all things that are essentially &quot;The advice of someone reading your draft with a critical eye&quot;. Importantly, these are things where, if they all made it in, while I would possibly be annoyed, I wouldn't be upset that the paper hit the press. This &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; include things like advice on graphics (my pet peeve is graphics that are unintelligible when printed), missing citations, etc. Things that are above the level of a copy editor, but aren't going to move my decision on the paper one way or another, unless there are &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I'll put in one or two small copy editing notes if something jumps out at me (insure vs. assure vs. ensure, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cut-off I use is &quot;Will this irk me when I see it in print, and will I think less of the authors that produced it?&quot; To use your example of bad graphs, yes, this would annoy me, and it results in a less usable finding than one with the appropriate graphs - just like garbled language in the Results section might. If its minor stuff, like a turn of phrase I wouldn't have used, or a slight fondness for run-on sentences? That falls below the radar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for friends vs. anonymous reviews, I think the scope does change slightly. For a friend, you're helping them polish a paper - I think a great many more things fall under that umbrella, including things like &quot;That's really not what a semi-colon is for&quot; or fiddling with the graphics parameters on a plot. For a reviewer, you're one of the last gatekeepers before this goes out into the world - but you &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; an editor. Your focus should be on the research, and the appropriate presentation of it, unless the errors are so bad as to impede one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you should be polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T22:04:40.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1418" CreationDate="2012-03-01T23:13:23.423" Score="11" ViewCount="1128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year PhD student. I'm just reading background papers trying to find a topic for my thesis: my subject is turning around tree different elements (XML (as a tool), complex data, and the cloud computing (as an environment)). So I find that is a large subject with many materials that treat this subject, whether each element individually, or two elements at most at a time, but not all three together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I choose the most worthy materials so that I could find a good topic which uses these three elements together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any information, insights, or propositions are welcome. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="90" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T20:07:44.057" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T20:07:44.057" Title="How to choose the most worthwhile research papers to define my thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="503" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:09:08.953" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer this from the perspective of someone who did it poorly in retrospect, but from a different field (engineering). You will want to make sure that any papers you begin with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accepted findings in the field&lt;/strong&gt;. I made the mistake of basing much of my thesis work on a paper which was used a one-off paradigm, and was not replicated by anyone other than myself. This resulted in my needing to spend much more time validating my results than I otherwise would have needed to, because there was no other validation in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simplicity over novelty&lt;/strong&gt;. You're a graduate student, at the beginning of your career. You'll have tons of time to do awesome things as your career progresses. Unless you're working for Dr. Awesome BigName Researcher whose lab is known for doing cutting-edge work on X, be conservative... choose the less exciting but more likely to work research over the more exciting but very complex and/or more likely to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this post is completely irrelevant to anyone whose advisor effectively tells them what their thesis project is, as your criterion will be (1) the papers your advisor hands you. You have my sympathies :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T03:09:08.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="507" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:45:13.453" Score="15" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title sums it up: At what point during the interview/negotiations do you let a potential academic employer about  spousal accommodations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T04:12:00.717" Title="When should I tell a potential employer about a spousal accommodation?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-02T04:03:31.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you decide that a particular paper you're reviewing is acceptable, then your job as a referee of the paper becomes to suggest improvements that you think will &lt;em&gt;substantively&lt;/em&gt; help the presentation of the scientific content. Even minor corrections like the ones you've listed can be considered substantive when they lead to &quot;real&quot; improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'd argue that suggesting a comment that axes labels should be 12 pt instead of 7 pt would be appropriate, as it would substantially improve legibility; however, arguing for 12 pt instead of 13 pt is not significant enough to make a real difference. Similarly, I would point out grammatical or spelling mistakes if they are relatively few in number, but make a general comment if there are many, because I'm not being paid to be a copy editor. (As another example, Oxford commas wouldn't rise to that level, unless it's an &quot;Eats, shoots, and leaves&quot; issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, there isn't anything that is really &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; nitpicking in nature unless all you're doing is expressing a personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T04:03:31.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="505" CreationDate="2012-03-02T04:12:00.717" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there's a universal right answer for this question. I think it depends on the level of accommodation required, as well as the particulars of your own situation. In general, if you're not being considered for a tenure-track or permanent-level position, there often isn't a lot you can do in terms of getting spousal accommodations, unless you have a very generous employer. In that case, I wouldn't think there's ever a good time to bring up the matter, because there won't be much in the way of possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a tenure-track or equivalent position, on the other hand, I think that I would wait at least until the level of having secured an interview before bringing up these issues. Any earlier, and some employers may (perhaps illegally, depending on jurisdiction) wash their hands of the issue by skipping you in making the list of finalists. Once you've gotten the interview, though, that's no longer a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether to mention it during or after the interview depends on the ability of the school to do something about it. I would lean towards mentioning at the interview, and particularly so f the school has a &quot;dual-career&quot; office in place. If you wait, then you may spend your time negotiating and having to accept or decline the offer without a firm commitment of help in hand at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T04:12:00.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="510" CreationDate="2012-03-02T06:06:10.157" Score="8" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person studies and/or does experiments at his/her own home or laboratory because of some reasons, is he/she still allowed to compete with others to get a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More precisely, from the beginning he/she never gets educations from formal institutions (schools, colleges, universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="320" LastEditorUserId="31" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T07:13:10.570" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:42:31.617" Title="Is a self-taught person allowed to compete with other in a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="503" CreationDate="2012-03-02T09:00:50.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question depends on the aims you want to pursue with your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start a career in academia.&lt;/strong&gt; In this case I agree with eykanal. Use something that enables you to build a solid foundation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start a career in industry.&lt;/strong&gt; Look at the particular industry/company you're interested in and decide what's going to be most important to them and hence most important in facilitating you getting a job there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neither of the above.&lt;/strong&gt; If you don't really know what you want to do after you've finished your PhD, I'd say go for the thing that interests you most, even if the results you're basing your research on is novel and you're not sure if it's the right direction to go in. That's why it's called research after all :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case you should make sure that you're comfortable doing the research. The best papers are no good for you if there's no scope for you to extend the work or you can't build on it for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular situtation I would probably focus on papers that bring the different subjects you've mentioned together, as this gives you the option of shifting the focus of your PhD slightly in one direction later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T09:00:50.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="508" CreationDate="2012-03-02T10:44:47.353" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allowed - yes. Have any reasonable chance to compete - no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But to learn university-level things, given the determination - yes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two separate issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you won't learn stuff abut the current research lines and you won't be able to attract others to your results,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in academia things like degrees and university/advisor name do matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you can learn a lot of stuff by yourself. However, it is hard to get to research-level. Moreover, now most research requires a lot of collaboration. A century ago it may be still possible to invent something in one's private workshop (but still a lot of knowledge and infusion was required). Now it is not true anymore. Also, you need to know the tools and which problems are open, solved or seems to be dead-end. Moreover, you may end up solving problems which are difficult but not of the interest of other academicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html&quot;&gt;Gerard't Hooft, How to become a good theoretical physicist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics. If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws - and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! - there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it. All necessary science courses are taught at Universities, so, naturally, the first thing you should do is have yourself admitted at a University and absorb everything you can. But what if you are still young, at School, and before being admitted at a University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that they call science there? What if you are older, and you are not at all looking forward to join those noisy crowds of young students ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: almost all Nobel prize winners had advisors, which were also well-know and are from first league universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the academia is less meritocratic than it seems to be. While certain skills and knowledge are essential, they are not the only factor. It does matter if you have a certain degree*), from which university you are and who is/was you advisor. Many contacts are within a clique, were you need to have a recommendation by people they know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) In science no matter how smart you are, you won't have chance without a certain degree, while in programming your skills and experience are more important than if you have a PhD degree or not even a BSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, finding enough skill and determination to do experiments in one's own home may be a good predictor of later success in science or engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T11:17:27.443" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:17:27.443" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="300" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:33:12.643" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar dilemma (mine was whether to become a parent during grad school), and what solved it for me is the realization that, if all goes according to plan, my post-PhD life won't be too different from my grad student life. I'd like to stay in academia, and all the current difficulties will remain (e.g. short-term contracts/grants, traveling, unevenly distributed workload throughout the year, etc.). This realization was one of those: &quot;Aha!&quot; moments for me. If it doesn't work out now, it won't be a viable option for the future either. That being said, I do try to keep a 9-5 schedule, and I don't think it would have worked out well if my partner wasn't as involved in parenting as I am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps working in industry is different, and it really is easier to have kids. In any case it might be an idea to ask yourself whether you think your obligations in grad school would really be all that different from what they are at your current job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T14:33:12.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-02T15:11:15.963" Score="15" ViewCount="1637" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a similar thing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Is-Jay-Wackers-real-first-name-Jacob-or-Jay&quot;&gt;see this thread&lt;/a&gt;, where Jay Wacker managed to get people to call him by the name Jay even though he didn't need to get a legal name change. I'm not sure how to go about this though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with me is that I have such a frustratingly common name that &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of people cannot find me when they google me. So many of them simply don't notice the middle initial that I always use in between my first and last names, and this could actually become a major issue in academia, since people have little time and are prone to giving up quickly if they want to look for me (or for my papers) and can't find me at all (I know this having seen how several academics use the Internet and how they look for people's names). This, in turn, could easily ruin my citation count in the future (it's not just that - it's helpful to others when I have a less common name so that they can more easily locate my stuff). I already know at least several people who specifically told me that they tried to find my email but that they couldn't find it (and this isn't limited to just them - there are many, many more - including long-lost friends who have wanted to talk to me for a long time, but who couldn't find me due to said ultra-common name). Of course, people can go through the respective university directories, but how many people really do that? From my observations (when I've seen people look for someone else), very very few do it. Hell, there are even several people at my OWN university who share the same exact first+last name as me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Academia, this is even a bigger problem because the vast majority of your connections will be people who only vaguely recognize/know you, so they may know most of the search clues. Even a &quot;full name&quot; + university won't solve all the problems, because I may switch universities and people may only remember the old university that I was in. I'm also very very interdisciplinary, so I want to be searchable to people outside my field as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if I fix the issue for Google with a massive SEO operation or whatever (that may even be impossible for my ridiculously common name), it's still not going to fix the problem for all of the other ways that people use search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently transitioning between undergrad and grad school, so now may be the perfect time for a name change? But I don't know what to do. Is it better for me to change my first name or my last name? The problem is that a citation like &quot;Chen 2011&quot; is going to produce so many entries that &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; will ever find them, even though they frequently do google things like that (and I simply cannot prevent people from googling something like that). Chen is so frustratingly common that even a &quot;Chen and Name2 2011&quot; paper could come from some random medical paper rather than from something I wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional complication, the % of Chinese people using the English Internet is exponentially rising, and I can only expect the problem to get worse in the future because of that (and not just for my first name, but even variants of my first name too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T19:56:23.840" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T05:09:55.787" Title="What are some practices for getting a name change so that people can find me more easily?" Tags="&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2012-03-02T17:24:10.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to be very practical, you're right, you should change Chen. But there might be emotional reasons against that, of course. It's a personal choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll note that you need to be very consistent, professionally; but you can still use whatever else personally/legally. You can choose a professional name like an artist chooses a stage name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start now, always referring to yourself professionally using whatever you choose, and publishing &amp;amp;c under that name, people will know you like that. It's really that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always spell out both my first names in print, but I never insist that people treat me like that in person. My Portuguese friends tend to, but more random encounters sometimes do, sometimes don't and it's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T17:24:10.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2012-03-02T18:24:12.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Name changes are a significant and sensitive issue for many people—particularly female academics who get married, and then have to determine whether to change their name professionally, or to use one name for legal purposes and another for professional publicity purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extremely common last name is certainly a difficulty in finding you; however, changing your first name won't necessarily improve your visibility, because, as you mentioned in your question, first names aren't normally included in citation searches. Therefore, whatever you do will need to be done to your last name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could add a hyphenated extension to your last name; whether this would be a legal action (requiring a visit to a court, in most venues) or just unofficially for your profession is for you to decide. (However, it should be pointed out that a legal name change can have major implications on your everyday life, and should not be entered into lightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T18:24:12.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:57:27.947" Score="28" ViewCount="1713" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Asperger's, the trick is always when to explain it (in a non-awkward situation). I'd like to avoid mentioning it if possible, but it has gotten to the point that I only mention it after committing a major social faux pas, in which case it might be seen as an excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With ADD, this is an issue that happens when people explain things to me. I often don't parse things very well when they're communicated to me verbally since I do have attention lapses. That's the major issue, anyways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, I do (indirectly) imply that I have both diagnoses on my personal website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T02:56:13.300" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T02:56:13.300" Title="When is it a good idea to let an academic department (or a professor) know that I have Asperger's (or ADD)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="523" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:18:32.047" Score="23" ViewCount="19858" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to make corrections to a published paper? Should I amend the original paper and mention in a footnote (or similar) what was changed and why or prepare a completely separate document and put that on my website/append it to the original paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so much worried about how to get it to the publishers that handle the paper, but rather about how to go about it. I would especially like to hear from people who have done something like that or know someone who did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T20:57:32.297" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T17:04:03.650" Title="How do you make corrections to a published paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="520" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:54:54.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals oftentimes make their procedures regarding varying types of corrections available on their website (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/corrections.html&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;). I would speak with the journal and see what their preferred methodology is. This way, you can have the correction listed alongside the original publication, which would maximize the visibility of the correction. Almost no one reading your paper will check your personal website to see if corrections have been posted there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T20:54:54.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="520" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:23:13.580" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what the error is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the error is the publisher's fault—for instance, if they failed to make a correction you specified in the proofs—then they have an obligation to correct the error. In that case, an email to the editors alerting them of the problem, along with some documentation of the original list of corrections, usually suffices to get the problem fixed. (This will usually be accompanied by a &quot;publisher's note&quot; alerting the reader to the correction, although the original article will usually be updated to provide the correct information.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the error is something discovered after publication, then the best way to fix this is to prepare a short comment detailing the error, the correction, and its implications on your work. The resulting item is then submitted to the journal as a &quot;comment&quot; (or, in some cases, an &quot;erratum,&quot; if the journal offers that as a submission option). In this sense, it is like any other comment on a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:23:13.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:29:20.993" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult situation. If you believe that you will be placed in situations where a someone in question will need to know that you have Asperger's, lest he or she misread your actions in that situation, then you should inform him or her before it becomes a problem. As you said, informing them afterwards can make it seem like an excuse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your diagnosis affects your &quot;job&quot; performance (academic or research or otherwise), then you should let them know as soon as possible. If there is the possibility to make appropriate accommodations for your condition(s), then you should have this entered into your official records, so that it's available in case it becomes necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:29:20.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:47:11.757" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with aeismail's answer, however I would just add that you might need be careful about the perception of your condition(s), especially the negative aspects. For instance, with the ADD, it's better to ask people to send written copies because you have a visual memory, because it's a constructive remark, rather than saying that you don't fully understand verbal explanation. Myself, I ask people to send emails about important things, and I clearly state that it's due to my great visual memory and my terrible auditive memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I think it's a good idea to inform people that you have Asperger or ADD, especially those you work closely with, but it's more important to explain the positive aspects rather than just stating your condition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:47:11.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2012-03-02T23:05:52.460" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think people stress too much about the &quot;what if people can't find my papers?&quot; problem. That's what CVs are for. Don't overestimate how often people will actually try to find all of your papers outside of hiring situations. It won't be often. By the time you are established enough to accumulate a significant number of publications, you will be connected to a research university or institute which will make it easy to link you to your publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;&quot;the vast majority of your connections will be people who only vaguely recognize/know you&quot;&lt;/em&gt; you've got a problem that changing your name will not solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd especially like to hear from someone who have had this cause a career problem. My (legal) first name is one of 10 most common, and my last name is in the top 20 (within the US). While this is annoying, it has not caused me any career issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T01:01:01.100" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T01:01:01.100" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="520" CreationDate="2012-03-03T00:52:17.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the best way to make corrections to a published paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it isn't clear what the &quot;best way&quot; is, I am fairly certain that it is not the standard approaches that are currently used (e.g. as described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/523/258&quot;&gt;aesmail's answer&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PLOS&lt;/a&gt; enables authors and readers to post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/static/commentGuidelines.action&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;notes, comments, and corrections&lt;/a&gt; on published articles. Corrections can be either minor or major corrections, and are reviewed by PLOS staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is a step in the right direction, and by lowering the bar for publishing a correction will hopefully promote better science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T08:16:30.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="300" CreationDate="2012-03-03T05:07:23.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with previous answers: graduate school is a &lt;em&gt;full-time&lt;/em&gt; job, and should be treated as such. I think it is possible to do so while keeping a healthy marriage life, though it might take more time than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to complete the perspective, let me give my personal experience. I have completed my M.Sc. in parallel of working a full-time job (which was really a 24/7 kind of work). Although it was M.Sc and not PhD, it was research-based rather than classes-based and same rules apply: school is a full-time job. Graduating took me 6 years rather than the common 2-year program, but I did it! Don't get me wrong - it wasn't easy at all: I was working on weekdays and studying on weekends, with very little time to do other stuff (if at all). However, I know quite a few people who did the same. The key to success is only to have a strong will. Kids and marriage are a large time-consuming, but certainly not as much as another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T05:47:52.323" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T05:47:52.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="534" CreationDate="2012-03-03T05:30:22.783" Score="15" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the questions about teaching assistantship portray TA'ing as a waste of time that only damages research. Although I am not TA'ing this year I consider applying for a TA position next year, because I feel I kind of missing it and it actually helps me to focus on my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any clear benefits of TA'ing for one's studies and research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:36:42.927" Title="Can teaching help one's studies?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T06:20:15.327" Score="57" ViewCount="38801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love learning and solving problems (I'm in math/ computer science) and I'm also very motivated. However, I don't have fantastic grades and so I don't expect to get into any top graduate program. This may seem like a discrepancy, but I think it is partly a personal issue (which I'm working on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to conduct research and therefore further any field without being in academia? This post is primarily targeting people who are doing their PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to get the opinions of as many people as possible, so let me know if there's another place (forum) where I can ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="325" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T17:48:48.163" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T07:11:21.113" Title="Doing research outside of academia, without a PhD?" Tags="&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-03-03T07:40:55.060" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I love learning and solving problems (I'm in math/ computer science) and I'm also very motivated. However, I don't have fantastic grades and so I don't expect to get into any top graduate program. This may seem like a discrepancy, but I think it is partly a personal issue (which I'm working on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrong assumption. If you like solving problems and love learning, it won't be difficult for you to convince others that this is true and usually, that is one of the most important factors contributing to success of PhD students. As far as your grades are concerned, bad grades does not necessarily imply rejection at universities. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; post regarding how to get bad transcripts across. Good GRE scores (with AGRE maybe), recommendations and past research will probably negate the bad grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to conduct research and therefore further any field without being in academia? This post is primarily targeting people who are doing their PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can but it depends highly on where you work. If you work at a corporation which &quot;implements&quot; rather than &quot;innovates&quot;. Chances of getting a job involving research is pretty slim. Having said that, it is always possible to work around or find other jobs which will allow you to work on something new. Also, &lt;em&gt;is it possible to conduct research without being in academia&lt;/em&gt; is somewhat misleading. A large portion of research &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; take place out of academia. IBM, Intel, AMD and many other companies work actively in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to get the opinions of as many people as possible, so let me know if there's another place (forum) where I can ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No offence but taking opinions from many people won't necessarily give you a clearer answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T07:40:55.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-03-03T10:32:03.610" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Nunoxic noted, doing research as a part of your job is possible. Also, doing research at a graduate program that isn't at a top school is possible. But doing research on your own, and hoping to bring innovations to a field... is highly unlikely to work, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is based on experience with a bad schooling system (undergrad and Masters in Serbia) where publication is mostly irrelevant to survival of the teaching staff. Access to research journals is also severely limited, and, as a consequence, access to international conferences, international collaboration and all that. Essentially, supervisors would offer minimal guidance, and students are always free to choose their research topic. This is still more guidance than you would have on your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I got myself into good schooling system (a second Masters - to catch up - and now my PhD studies), in The Netherlands. Neither of the two Dutch universities I've been studying at are top schools in the Shanghai sense: their rankings fall between 100 and 150. Still, in comparison with Serbia, the difference in what I've learned and achieved since being at these universities is &lt;strong&gt;staggering&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't spend months of my time sifting through articles in order to slowly begin comprehending which papers/names are the most relevant ones in the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have someone to immediately tell me if a research question is worth pursuing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have someone to immediately point out similar research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have someone to immediately correct small mistakes that would prove important at the end of data collection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I meet important people in the field, and get feedback from them, with no cost to myself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work with technology that costs a great deal of money, with no cost to myself &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence boils down to having access to people who know what my work is about. This speeds up my understanding of the subject matter by an order of &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt;. Science is so fast-paced nowadays that it's very difficult to make breakthroughs without collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, my advice for someone in your position would be to give priority to non-top graduate schools, if it doesn't work put with top ones, instead of trying to be a solo researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T11:11:00.193" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T11:11:00.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="530" CreationDate="2012-03-03T11:03:43.713" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it depends on how much teaching you would be doing, and how many hours a week it would take you, but generally, I would consider the following pros/cons points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching might allow you to meet other people than those you are doing research with, and interaction with different people can be useful in terms of research (for instance, you can find a nice collaboration idea with a prof or another TA). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching brings more immediate rewards (positive and negative) than research. When I was doing my PhD, I was also teaching (about 60 hours per year), and sometimes, when I was stuck with some research problems, it was a nice feeling to interact with students and to feel &quot;productive&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching is a good training to clearly explain ideas and concepts, which an important skill to write good papers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching provides you a different activity aside from research, and can help you focus (as you said yourself). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching is good on a CV, and if you consider applying at some point to a lectureship/professorship position, then having done some teaching during your PhD can allow you to do some more research-oriented postdocs after (and thus get potentially more papers), so it's somehow a good time investment to do it when you're not expected to produce a huge amount of papers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching takes some time, especially if you are teaching in a field where you are not an expert. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The downside of the immediate rewards is that sometimes, you can get frustrated because of the teaching, and that can have an impact on your research production. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I would say that being a TA has really clear and acknowledged benefits, as long as it does not take too much time on the research activity (I would say no more than a day per week during the official periods of teaching). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T11:03:43.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="537" CreationDate="2012-03-03T12:09:58.870" Score="51" ViewCount="21874" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you look at a paper, what order to you assume the authors are in? Most important/most work done first or alphabetical? In my group we usually use alphabetic order, but I've been wondering if that might create a misleading impression with lots of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, would you expect the name of a PhD student to be always first on publications related to her/his work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T12:10:56.073" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T00:59:53.847" Title="What does author order indicate?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-03-03T12:41:19.410" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can get a CS support job in a research lab. I worked as a programmer at various government and edu labs for a decade between bad grades and phd. I got my name on papers as a coauthor and helped do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can be a great gig. You get to help solve problems, but don't need to worry about writing it up or worry much about funding, something PhDs do constantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T12:41:19.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2012-03-03T12:43:36.663" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is strongly conditional on discipline and, to a lesser extent, country of origin. Conventions vary widely, as does the degree to which they are institutionalized. For instance, in some fields (e.g., Philosophy), co-authorship is not common and there is no convention about attribution, so absent an explicit note people are are likely to think the more senior author is the primary one. In Sociology, co-authorship is common and the convention is that the first author is the lead author unless there is a note indicating equal authorship. In Economics, co-authorship has become increasingly common over the past few decades but the convention is to list authors alphabetically, regardless of degree of contribution. In some fields the primary author may be determined by looking to see if there's a note specifying to whom correspondence should be directed, regardless of order of authorship on the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile in many lab-based science disciplines, where it's sole authorship that's rare, author order is governed by different norms. In some fields,  the first author is the one who is primarily responsible for the paper (what that means can vary, too), the last author is the lab head or primary grant-holder, and the order of authors in between is sometimes influenced by other norms. But other conventions exist, too. Knowing what they are and how to interpret them is part of one's socialization into a discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things more complicated, some fields—or some journals, or some labs, or some individual authors—may have their own rules or conventions designed to clarify things by listing credit more explicitly. Even worse, there may be a kind of hermeneutics of author-order where people parcel out credit to different contributors regardless of order of authorship, as when someone says &quot;Sure, X is the first author and Y helped him write it up but it's obvious the paper was Z's idea&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, if your lab or unit is using a convention that's not standard in your field the most straightforward solution is to make a note of this in your articles. This isn't an &lt;em&gt;ideal&lt;/em&gt; solution because papers will still be cited or referenced without people paying attention to your clarifying note, but there isn't much you can do about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="39" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T13:29:14.383" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T13:29:14.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-03-03T15:05:16.150" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;On some universities there are programmes to encourage more people to join the research. You might want to check them and ask (They might be called UROP, research internship etc.). In such way you can work a bit with research to try if it is for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your work and findings you might be coauthor of paper. At least 2 of my friends coauthored the paper in such way before they finished their undergraduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS&lt;/strong&gt;. I am not a PhD student (and I do not have PhD) but I participated in such programme. I would recommend you to search for one as it allows you to try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I heard it also helps getting onto PhD programme as you have shown that you have an experience with research (and know what you are doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="327" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T15:05:16.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2012-03-03T18:54:14.897" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kieran's answer is correct, it really depends on the field, but I couldn't resist the temptation to link to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/science.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(funny) paper by Andrew W. Appel&lt;/a&gt;, which tries to study which Computer Science conferences are Maths and which ones are Science, based on the assumption that Math researchers publish using alphabetical order while Science (i.e. more applied research) researchers do not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that these are hard facts, but at least, that's quite interesting to read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For info, it was referenced from this question on CS Theoretical SE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/3126/8030&quot;&gt;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/3126/8030&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T18:54:14.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:47:08.867" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the ones already mentioned there are two excellent open access options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;Eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt; is quite authoritative, and depending on field its metrics may carry the same weight as the Reuters stuff. They also offer the ISI metric (impact factor)using the exact same formula. You can search by ISSN, journal names, discipline etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However when I make my own decision on an appropriate journal to target for publishing my articles, then I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php&quot;&gt;SCImago Journal &amp;amp; Country Rank&lt;/a&gt;. They have a wide variety of metrics, which include upcoming ones like H-index, the traditional impact factor, and other tweaked versions of the same. One of most useful functions on Scimago is the ability to compare a set of journals using a graph format and any metric that you desire. This can be exceptionally helpful in identifying the prestigious dinosaurs and the new but cutting edge journals. Placing your article is half the game, so this is incredibly useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this site does not appear to have the same level of authority. So, while it is good for one to get a good feel of the quality of a journal, it doesn't carry the same authority in a formal evaluation as Eigenfactor or ISI. Plus, if I understand correctly, their database goes back only up to 1996, though their coverage of even lesser known journals is comprehensive. This would make it difficult to judge the impact of an article published way back (but for older articles, citations are the standard measure anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also feel it is a shame to be paying to access impact factor statistics. Even if you cannot publish open access, at least the rent seeking involved in paying for the ISI rankings can be avoided by using the open access rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:47:08.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2012-03-03T22:17:57.533" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doaj.org/&quot;&gt;Directory of open access journals&lt;/a&gt; is the most comprehensive listing for the open access ones, so if you find a journal there, it's open. If not, then you need further research. Though usually clicking on an article link should be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="314" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T22:31:06.657" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T22:31:06.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T00:56:55.650" Score="14" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are they almost always kept confidential? Or is there protocol for sharing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T11:17:29.917" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:50:36.517" Title="What happens to the reviews that people write for journal articles after they're sent back to the author?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2012-03-04T01:11:29.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies substantially by field and journal. (As I keep saying, this is true of pretty much every question on this board.) Often they are shared not just with the author but the other reviewers, too. The author can show them to whomever they like. Beyond that, there's no formal sharing mechanism, and no real demand for one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T01:11:29.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2012-03-04T05:36:09.223" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the contents of the comments of other referee reports are only made &lt;em&gt;indirectly&lt;/em&gt; available. Since the authors are normally expected to provide a response to the reviews, the relevant criticisms and comments of the other referees are typically mentioned or discussed in that document. Outside of that, however, there's often little &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; sharing of referee reports. None of the eight or nine journals for which I've reviewed (physics, chemistry, chemical engineering) have allowed me to see directly the reviews submitted by the other referees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, the results are almost always kept confidential, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; it is an &quot;open&quot; referee process by design. (There are a few journals now that make the refereeing process a part of the publication record for a given paper; an example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-cryosphere.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Cryosphere&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T17:25:05.890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T17:25:05.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T07:28:57.060" Score="5" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that a couple of UChicago professors told me that, especially if a graduate student ends up co-advised with two professors. Maybe there's an additional factor too: maybe students actually have the time and flexibility to communicate with other professors, which could possibly help initiate collaborations between them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T16:52:01.200" Title="How often do graduate students help connect professors with each other?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="559" CreationDate="2012-03-04T09:44:39.827" Score="12" ViewCount="27795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often faced with questions in areas which cross my boundaries of knowledge. For instance, as an engineer, sometimes I am needed to study the basics of Anatomy or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be a temporary interest or might be permanent (There is no way of telling beforehand)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During such times, there is an option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go for the &quot;proper&quot; textbooks used by the students in that field. (Say &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0073378097&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; one :: 960 pages) and study them well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get a Schaum's series, Demystified or For Dummies sort of book and get over with it. (Say &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0070668876&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; one :: 450 pages). Alternately, use this as an entry point for the &quot;better&quot; books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professors have always suggested against such books because they provide no motivation for the development of a certain concept but I see that as a valid point only it is your primary field of interest. If an engineer wants to know Statistics or Anatomy, I am slightly skeptical whether such grinding is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are such books a good resource/entry point for a new subject?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: All of this is under the assumption that the student is within the confines of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:15:50.103" Title="How good are &quot;For Dummies&quot; books in Academic Study?" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2012-03-04T12:13:54.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals/conferences have explicit guidelines that tell you to treat the reviews confidential. I'm not aware of any journal that makes the reviews and authors' response publically available when a paper is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think publishing reviews for your papers would in general be frowned upon, even if there's no explicit rule saying that you can't. That said, I've been wondering about that myself and we had discussions about it at our school because the quality of some reviews is very bad and making them public might help improve the quality of peer reviewing in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally try to write reviews in a way that I wouldn't object to them being published with my name on it (although all the reviews I've done so far have been anonymous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T12:13:54.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2012-03-04T12:18:54.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, this is not the case. I was co-advised by a professor from another university, but no collaborations resulted from this. You could probably facilitate such collaborations if you really wanted to and put in lots of work though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T12:18:54.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="549" CreationDate="2012-03-04T12:24:31.523" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those books are not only very useful, I would argue they are the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; option in many cases, as they represent the best use of your time. You will find that, throughout your graduate studies, you will have to learn aspects of many different fields. In most cases, while it would be possible for you to embark on a thorough study I some other discipline, that would take weeks, if not months. These books allow you to quickly learn the basics, giving you a solid foundation of knowledge that you can expand with further study if necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; this applies to topics only ancillary to your main field of research; you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use this book on your research topic itself, for the reasons outlined by your professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T13:00:40.340" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T13:00:40.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2012-03-04T13:35:45.787" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens, but rarely through co-advising.  In my experience, co-advisors usually know each other before the student enters the picture, and the student has little effect on how much the faculty collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More often, students create new connections by becoming active independent researchers and working with a diverse set of collaborators.  The various actors' roles as &quot;student&quot; and &quot;professor&quot; are simply irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm speaking for theoretical computer science, where PhD students are &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to become full-fledged independent researchers before they graduate.  Your mileage may vary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T13:35:45.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2012-03-04T13:35:53.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some fields (this is true in my own experience for some humanities and social science disciplines), there are departments whose terminal MA programs are recognized as being &quot;feeders&quot; for more competitive Ph.D programs. So applicants who go through those are not necessarily at a disadvantage—possibly the reverse, especially if one's undergraduate grades or training are lacking in some respect. You will need to find out, though, what is true of the field you are working in, and of course &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; MA programs, if any, have this reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T13:35:53.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="556" CreationDate="2012-03-04T16:38:29.903" Score="13" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dargan/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is what I would call a particularly informative and clear professor webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's not the most important thing (for me, personally, I mostly discovered professors through asking current professors whom to contact). But a lot of PhD students do discover professors to contact through Internet searches, which may be especially relevant for PhD students who might not have as many connections (especially international ones). And maybe a strong professor webpage could also increase the &quot;fit&quot; of the applicants who do decide to contact the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T19:54:39.277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T19:54:39.277" Title="Does a informative and clear professor webpage often increase the number of prospective PhD students who apply to work for the professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="555" CreationDate="2012-03-04T17:40:41.543" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an international student who is (was?) looking for potential advisors, I'd say yes (As far as I know)! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The algorithm for me worked as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact the obvious ones. These were authors of papers I read recently (&amp;amp; liked), editors of journals etc. Basically, the ones with good &quot;academic presence&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at professors who have written textbooks or survey papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at strong departments for professors. (By strong I mean : Reputation, Rankings and Star Power/Infrastructure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a professor has a good webpage (Updated recently with list of current/past projects, list of graduate students and alumni), Shoof! Time saved!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a professor has a bad webpage (Last updated in 2001 or with minimal content or whatever), then run him on google scholar. Read his papers and try to find out what his students are upto.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once a professor has been selected, run youtube and ratemyprofessor on him. This is usually worthless but it did yield some awesome results once in a while. It did help get a virtual lab tour at times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintaining a good website does help students (especially international) get to know the professor better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does save us a lot of time by having access to all relevant information at one place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is most irritating is webpages with very old content. I would prefer limited recent content to old obsolete content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T17:40:41.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="562" CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:56:45.743" Score="7" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;(A followup for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/535/order-of-authors-on-publications&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say your field's convention is to have alphabetical-ordered author list. What should you do when your work is accepted to a (multidisciplinary) journal in which the convention is to order the author by contribution (e.g. Nature)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:46:49.793" Title="Alphabetical author list in non-alphabetical journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2012-03-04T20:59:00.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a well-known journal like Nature, then I would follow their convention. Everybody who reads the article will assume that you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T20:59:00.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="549" CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:51:24.897" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise against the use of &quot;for dummies&quot; books, firstly because they are not of academic quality, second they are too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2 strategies that I myself use for rapid acquisition of quality knowledge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a) Start with Wikipedia, identify the basic strands, but most importantly the correct terms for what you want to learn about. So for instance, you probably don't need to study all of anatomy, but from Wikipedia, you would discover that what you need to brush up on, is anatomy of tissues- histology. &#xA;b) Now that you have the correct term and a narrow focus, put it into google scholar, and read the abstracts of the top 10 cited journal articles. The oldest articles with 3000 citations are the classics, the newest ones with 500 are the review articles with ideas for further reading and useful summaries. You can read more than the abstracts if it seems relevant, otherwise go with the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An even quicker way of cramming in quality information is to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Annual review&lt;/a&gt; series of journals, provided you have institutional access to the journals. These are a comprehensive set of journals in all major fields which have reviews by invited experts on those topics. Not only do you get high quality disciplinary summaries, but also excellent interdisciplinary articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of either of these strategies is focused and quick acquisition of relevant knowledge without having to run around trying to figure out what you need to know in a non-academic book that wasn't written for this purpose. We're talking 50 pages of in-depth reading versus 500 pages of broad but shallow references of minor interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disciplinary dictionaries, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1405132884&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;,are also a good place to start, provided they have been around for at least 2 editions, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="314" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T20:48:00.737" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T20:48:00.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="530" CreationDate="2012-03-04T22:08:19.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely say that teaching helps you to understand better your teaching subject. Learning something is very different than learning something so that you are able to explain it to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Einstein said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach, I see different viewpoints while I am explaining.&#xA;When you see, students do not understand your example, you are forced to think about it.&#xA;A question force you to see other parts of subject.&#xA;These things always help me to understand my subject better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should be picky about your subjects. A subject which is completely different from your research topic is not suitable. But a subject which is helpful to your research subject will be better for you. For example I am studying Machine Learning, a lot of courses are offered which will be helpful in this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Mining&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the same token, web programming may not be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T22:08:19.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="530" CreationDate="2012-03-05T03:36:42.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that teaching is something that invariably and inexorably damages ones research and study prospects to be entirely opposed to my actual experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; teaching experiences are nothing but time sinks that devour otherwise productive periods and leave you no closer to having finished, or produced interesting work. But the same can be said for some research experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some definitive pros I found to teaching. First, it provided a second pass at material I thought I &quot;knew&quot;, but now had to know inside and out. That was eye opening, to say the least. It afforded me more time to interact with the professor who was teaching the class, and gave me a framework where I was immersed in a topic - said immersion ended up in me adapting some things about my dissertation to a particular class topic I now knew &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also teaches you to teach, and while generally an undervalued skill in academia compared to research, it's both something you should probably know, and does train you for some research oriented problems - how to give a new grad student in your lab a rundown of the topic, how to answer questions off the cuff during talks. How to give talks meant to convey &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt; instead of a summary of results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:36:42.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2012-03-05T03:46:49.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first stop would be checking if the journal has any particular authorship policies. If it does, follow them - if its not the way your field does it, welcome to the perils of interdisciplinary research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, in my mind, it splits into two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a field-specific paper that &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; to be going in an interdisciplinary journal. For example, are all the authors from Alphabetical Author List Field? Then put it in that field's ordering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it &lt;em&gt;genuinely&lt;/em&gt; interdisciplinary (multiple fields with different traditions)? I'd probably default to the non-alphabetical ordering scheme, as &lt;em&gt;among people I work with&lt;/em&gt; its the more common ordering scheme, and those who come from other fields that don't do that are generally pretty understanding. Or, if the authorship list is small enough, see if there's a clever ordering of author names that gets everyone what they need (it happens).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:46:49.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2012-03-05T03:50:37.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (Epidemiology) I would always assume that the authorship is appearing in the &quot;Most important work first, PI/major senior contributor last, others in the middle&quot; authorship scheme, but it varies dramatically based on field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under that scheme, I would expect the papers that emerge from a PhD students dissertation to have them as the first author. Ancillary papers, those where their results/data are published as part a compendium of findings from a larger study, etc. are where I wouldn't necessarily expect their names to show up first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:50:37.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2012-03-05T03:53:06.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few journals I've encountered where the written reviews are published alongside the paper itself (the BMJ's new open access journal comes to mind). Other than that, generally I've only seen them sent to the other reviewers (usually because they're BCC'd on the decision/review email sent from the journal editor) or kept entirely confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most common thing that happens? The authors complaining about idiot reviewers to their colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T03:53:06.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2012-03-05T04:08:39.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My main criterion for such concerns over clarity and presentation is&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;reader time&lt;/strong&gt;: is the time it takes the authors to address your concern comparable to the (cumulative) time gained by the paper's readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also means: the larger the expected audience, the more you can nitpick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="335" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T04:08:39.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="569" CreationDate="2012-03-05T04:44:22.330" Score="18" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do they discuss the graduate student in meetings with each other? Or do they have any obligations to interact with the graduate student in other ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:22:46.140" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:22:46.140" Title="What role do professors on a graduate student's PhD committee serve?" Tags="&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T04:50:15.787" Score="8" ViewCount="2178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that the time greatly varies from professor to professor, but what are some good 25th percentile to 75th percentile estimates? And does the time spent reading/replying to emails generally increase when the professor is teaching a class?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other factors that influence the number of emails a professor receives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T18:19:33.813" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T18:19:33.813" Title="How many minutes per day do most professors spend reading and replying to emails?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="577" CreationDate="2012-03-05T04:58:04.030" Score="15" ViewCount="5894" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are new assistant professors more likely to receive tenure in an expanding field, like biology? And are they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Does-Harvards-faculty-hiring-process-consist-largely-of-poaching-faculty-from-other-universities/answers/1057158&quot;&gt;less likely (percentage-wise) to receive tenure at elite schools&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T14:54:59.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:54:59.730" Title="What percent of assistant professors generally receive tenure, and how does this percent vary depending on both school and field?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:02:54.320" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the variations here are national rather than by discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., the thesis committee's primary role is that of a review panel when all is going well, and as a neutral arbiter between student and advisor when it isn't. Again, there is no formal obligation on the part of the committee—except when convened by the student or advisor, but this typically occurs on a more frequent basis (every one to two years or so). As individuals, however, committee members may be consulted with on various topics (job placement and career strategies, suggestions for future research directions, and so on); however, this is voluntary and, again, not very frequent—probably one or two times per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, by comparison, the primary obligation occurs at the time of the thesis defense, when they serve as evaluators. Outside of this, you might never meet with the professors on your committee, other  than your primary advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T14:17:20.357" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:17:20.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:09:33.133" Score="3" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2010/09/nrc_the_rankings.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; argues so, but I have my doubts since the author works at a graduate program whose S-rankings are much better than its R-rankings. I have a feeling that R-rankings do capture some things that S-rankings don't capture. Professors who are far ahead of their time, for example, might be recognized as such, but I would expect that their papers probably won't get very high citation counts for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T15:47:59.947" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T21:02:09.127" Title="Are the Survey rankings for the National Research Council really more objective than the Regression rankings?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="567" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:10:42.797" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what the exact percentiles are, but I'd estimate that most faculty members who handle their own emails (more on this below) probably spend on the order of an hour a day or more dealing with emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that emails don't necessarily increase when one is teaching as opposed to other times of the year—unless there are no TA's for the course. In that case, since the professor is the only contact point, emails will rise, although this depends on the course enrollment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other determining factors are more or less obvious: the more active and senior a professor is, the more emails they will get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professors with larger research groups will have more email traffic associated with group management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professors in larger departments will have more email originating at the department and committee level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As professors move up the ladder, they are asked to participate in more reviews and external programs, which increases the burden still further.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, one advantage that many senior faculty have is that they may have dedicated administrative assistants, whose responsibilities can include filtering out the unimportant messages for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T05:10:42.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:16:19.870" Score="12" ViewCount="1895" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Graduate-Advisors-Advising/What-are-the-primary-causes-of-conflict-between-PhD-advisors-and-their-students&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; a very interesting analysis from a professor's point of view on the primary causes of conflict between PhD advisors and their students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my experience, incompatible personalities account for a large&#xA;  fraction of the conflicts that I have run across over my 13 years&#xA;  since college.  Basically, the student has the wrong advisor.  No one&#xA;  is at fault – it's like a marriage that doesn't work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to get some more perspectives on this question though, as graduate students may perceive this question differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T17:38:25.727" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T18:56:25.257" Title="What are the primary causes of conflict between PhD advisors and their students?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-03-05T06:04:54.323" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on my math PhD. I think that it's incredibly unlikely that someone without graduate work in math could do much math research (I don't know about the computer-science side, however).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I have put myself out there, I should clarify my point. Is it actually impossible? Well, no. In particular, there are many combinatorial or graph theoretic problems that don't really rely on previous work to be done. Some fields of math aren't as profoundly cumulative as others (on the other side of the spectrum, I might place something like algebraic number theory or elliptic curves, both of which I find highly removed from pregraduate work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what I'm really saying is that it's prohibitively difficult, not impossible. It's time-consuming no matter what, and I think the greatest advantage an academic has is that research is what we're paid to do. But it is possible to get 'research-style' jobs without a PhD. But they are limited in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T06:04:54.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="580" CreationDate="2012-03-05T07:18:26.723" Score="13" ViewCount="2083" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always refrained from making notes from my childhood. But now, my adviser wants me to make notes of what I study saying that it would be very beneficial for me in future. So, following his advice, I started making notes. But it turns out that it is quite boring and time consuming. And I feel that even if I want to look into something later, I can look it directly from a book. So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does making notes help you in your research or possibly teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What other pros/cons are there?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user336" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T10:27:22.747" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T06:26:50.330" Title="How does making notes of what you read help you in research/teaching?" Tags="&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-05T08:16:24.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what kind of answer you are expecting, but it should not be surprising for you to learn that people assimilate information in different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself, I have a good visual memory and remember a lot by looking at the board/presentation when at a lecture. When the presenter is only speaking without showing anything, I have much harder time remembering everything, and am distracted easier. Note-taking definitely helps, but only when I know I won't be getting any other study materials, or the materials themselves are deficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on, when I study and read on my own, I can recreate mentally how the board looked like and quickly relate terms and phenomena that I'm reading about with what I heard earlier. This speeds up learning significantly for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what works for me -- other people have completely different ways of studying. I'd suggest you do it in a way that's comfortable for you. If you don't see the value of taking notes, just don't do it, period. Present your case to your supervisor and explain that you have your own way of organizing information, and you should be able to do so in a way that's comfortable to you. The supervisor should be trusting you enough to let you do so -- in graduate studies, students should have much more freedom to explore their ideas and work on their own without much hand-holding. Otherwise you have a much more important problem to solve -- how to avoid being micromanaged by your superiors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="255" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T08:16:24.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:08:42.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To complement aeismail's answer, I would add that in France, there is a committee that evaluates every year or so the progress of your PhD (but it's rather high-level, they are just looking for problems, like someone who would have stopped working), and this committee is chosen by the grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final PhD committee, who evaluates scientifically the PhD, is decided only at the final stage of the PhD, and it is proposed by the PhD advisor and then validated by the grad school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T10:39:28.830" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T10:39:28.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="568" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:06:56.200" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually quite a difficult question to answer specifically. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psu.edu/president/pia/planning_research/reports/AIR_Tenure_Flow_Paper_06.pdf&quot;&gt;Here is a brief paper&lt;/a&gt; reviewing some of the reasons why good data is unavailable on even very basic questions, together with some references to what is available. In the U.S. case, everyone agrees that, in general, the higher-ranked one's university, the more difficult it is to get tenure. Departments at some elite schools are notorious for their unwillingness or inability to grant tenure to their junior faculty over a very long period—in some cases, decades. (Just last year in my own field, for example, one of the leading departments tenured one of its junior faculty for the first time in more than twenty years. This is an extreme example, but you get the point.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the well-known general patterns and the (sometimes widely-reported) particular horror stories, though, many very interesting questions remain difficult to address systematically—including your one about expanding versus stable fields. The question is complicated by the fact that the institution of tenure itself is changing, as is its role within the university. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure_%28academic%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia notes&lt;/a&gt;, in the United States &quot;The period since 1972 has seen a steady decline in the percentage of college and university teaching positions in the US that are either tenured or tenure-track. United States Department of Education statistics put the combined tenured/tenure-track rate at 56% for 1975, 46.8% for 1989, and 31.9% for 2005. That is to say, by the year 2005, 68.1% of US college teachers were neither tenured nor eligible for tenure; a full 48% of teachers that year were part-time employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="39" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T14:17:32.040" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:17:32.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="570" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:53:53.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, both rankings are basically &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Too-Big-to-Fail/127212/&quot;&gt;nonsense&lt;/a&gt;.  Even if you agree with the NRC's choice of a single &quot;quality&quot; model across all intellectual disciplines, the rankings are based on horrendously incomplete and incorrect data.  This is especially true in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=466&quot;&gt;computer&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/12/142542-doctoral-program-rankings-for-us-computing-programs/fulltext&quot;&gt;science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the claim in the blog post is an obvious joke.  The S-rankings are &quot;better&quot; because  writer's home department's S-ranking was better than its R-ranking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T13:53:53.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="572" CreationDate="2012-03-05T14:08:57.630" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest causes of conflict, beyond personality-related issues, I believe stems from a point made in the linked article—lack of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When advisors and advisees are not on the same wavelength, either because goals have not been clearly communicated, or because the frequency or quality of contact and correspondence between the two has broken down, conflicts can result. This is especially true when it comes time to graduate: the advisor may have specific expectations on what the student is required to provide; however, unless this is directly communicated to the student, there will potentially be a lot of conflict in getting to a point where both are satisfied with the final results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, this can be solved by having a direct discussion about the unresolved issues. However, if there is a pathological problem—in other words, one that can't be resolved through communication between the student and advisor—it may become necessary to invoke the thesis committee, graduate officer, department chair, or other authority who can help to resolve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:08:57.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-05T17:23:31.357" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an old adage that &quot;You don't truly understand something unless you can explain it completely to someone else&quot;. Writing notes effectively forces you to explain the topic to yourself. Oftentimes, when writing over notes from a class or from what you've read, the simple process of re-explaining it to yourself will clarify points that may have been confusing earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this purpose, I try not to write notes as I'm reading, but rather I'll read a section and them summarize that in my notes. Having read the full picture, I can then ensure that my understanding of the topic is more complete, and my notes should reflect that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a different note entirely, repetition enhances retention, and writing notes is at the very least doubles the number of times you'll see it (once in the book, and once as you write it), which should help your remember it that much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T17:23:31.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="584" CreationDate="2012-03-05T19:39:41.510" Score="11" ViewCount="1574" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems I'm about to have a bad application season, as all schools I'm waiting to hear from have given out offers of admissions to other applicants. I'm trying to come up with a viable plan to turn my application into a successful one for next year's season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some important things to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I come from an unknown school, but my reference writers earned their Ph.Ds from well-known schools in the U.S. (top 25 via NRC ranking). They all encouraged me to apply to top 30 programs in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am an international applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in pure mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fall-back plans I have is to actually get involved in research during the summer and fall, and I'm hoping I can get a serious publication out of doing this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the people who have served on admissions committees in the past, what else can I do? Should I not bother to apply to the same programs I applied to this year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastEditorUserId="342" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T21:01:27.567" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T22:18:48.610" Title="How can a graduate school applicant improve his application for next year's season?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2012-03-05T20:58:05.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of helpful advice on this front in the thread &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions/325#325&quot;&gt;How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, your situation really isn't all that different from the one discussed in that thread—your credentials don't seem to qualify you for international study. However, you may have some additional possibilities to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were your IELTS/TOEFL scores below par?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How strong were your letters of recommendation? Do they actually attest to personal attributes, or is it merely a recitation of your performance in class? The latter do you essentially no good in admissions to a US-style graduate program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have the opportunity to take more classes before you apply in an attempt to improve your standing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some possibilities, but without knowing more about your situation, it's hard to comment further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T20:58:05.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:01:04.993" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish.&lt;/strong&gt;  I have seen the following pattern more than once.  (1) Applicant X applies to my department's PhD program and is rejected, not for any major flaws, but just for not standing out from the crowd.  (2) X joins a MS program at a different university.  (3) As a master's student, X publishes one paper and has two more in submission (or at least preparation).  (4) X reapplies to my department's PhD program, with a detailed technical discussion of his results in his statement of purpose and stellar letters from his new department.  (5) X is admitted in the first round, with a fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done so already, show your complete application to the people who wrote your rec letters, and ask for their &lt;strong&gt;brutally honest&lt;/strong&gt; feedback, especially on your statement.  Often students who write statements without some faculty feedback write them to the wrong audience. (&quot;I'm smart; hire me.&quot; makes a bad statement of purpose.   &quot;Here is the mathematics I've worked on and what I'm interested in looking at next.&quot; is much better.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a long shot, but if your recommenders know faculty at the schools you applied to, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to get some second-hand feedback through them.  Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T21:01:04.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="570" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:02:09.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any ranking that tries to distill a large bunch of heterogeneous statistics into a single number should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. There is no inherent reason why a particular set of statistics should be weighted with one set of weights instead of another—and the two different weights could lead to widely divergent results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you see a large number of rankings, and they all tend to have fairly similar results, there can be some predictive power in the &lt;em&gt;collective&lt;/em&gt; set of rankings. And I would say it's a &quot;loose&quot; scheme at best: the difference between #1 and #2 on such lists is probably not indicative of much; the difference between #10 and #30 or #50 is much more meaningful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T21:02:09.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:14:40.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take lots of notes — when I'm reading papers, listening to presentations, preparing for class, writing a paper, preparing a presentation, attending committee meetings, etc.  I rarely look at the notes later (in fact, I often take notes on papers I'm reading on a whiteboard), but the act writing them forces a certain kind of organization in my brain that reading/watching/listening/thinking alone doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a graduate student, I was religious about keeping the notes I took in class.  20 years later, I still consult those notes occasionally when I teach the same material.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T21:14:40.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2012-03-05T22:18:48.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To steal a phrase from real estate, &quot;Network, network, and network&quot;. At this point, you can't really improve your GPA, you can't write a senior thesis, and you can't do undergraduate research. Your best bet is to talk to as many people as you can in order to (1) improve your letters of recommendation and (2) network with researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would recommend against taking more undergraduate classes, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; there's a specific deficiency in your academic record.  Simply taking a course to raise your GPA will likely not have a large impact or be a good use of your time and money. However, if you're missing a subject area, this is the time to fix it. For example, I graduated as a psychology major, and needed some math courses when applying to biomedical engineering graduate programs, so I took a course on diff eq's and linear algebra. That course ended up being very helpful later on, both on my application and when joining research labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that you hope to do research over the summer. Adding publications to your record will significantly help your chances, as it makes your academic record less important... the reviewing committee will often consider publications as proof that you can &quot;do it&quot;. You should expect, though, that you will be grilled extremely thoroughly on your work during the interview process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T22:18:48.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="599" CreationDate="2012-03-06T00:14:28.563" Score="9" ViewCount="1824" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an academic is invited to give a talk at another university, are their food and travel expenses usually fully reimbursed by the university that invited the professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T01:14:38.807" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T14:53:30.823" Title="Who pays travel &amp; per diem costs for invited lecturers?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="590" CreationDate="2012-03-06T00:29:07.417" Score="13" ViewCount="42998" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for research and faculty positions. After an initial phone interview, how can I politely ask for feedback on the status of my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the necessary, optional, and unwise topics of such a letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a concrete example, here is a quick draft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing to follow up on our discussion a few weeks ago about the position in (My Field) at (Your Institution).  I remain very interested in the position and would appreciate the opportunity to work with you and the (XYZ) group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, have you been able to narrow the list of candidates, and am I included? Is there any additional information that I could provide to support my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also appreciate that you sent me a copy of your unpublished manuscript. It promises to make an important contribution to the field by providing the type of robust approach to (The Method) that is required. I would like to learn more - would you be willing to share the supplementary information with me as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T16:26:36.233" Title="What should be included when inquiring about the status of my application?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="589" CreationDate="2012-03-06T01:11:17.203" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; component is the line &quot;I was wondering about the status of my application&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking whether you can provide additional information is unlikely to help, as the question is too open-ended. It would be an excellent question to ask at the end of the interview phone call, as well as in the follow-up &quot;thank you&quot; email, but beyond that it appears desperate, which is typically not a good characteristic of an applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment about the unpublished manuscript is unrelated, and therefore pretty neutral. It just as well could be sent in a second email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth mentioning that inquiring about the status of your application is pretty similar to habanero sauce; use judiciously, and very sparingly, and it's often best not to use it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T01:11:17.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="596" CreationDate="2012-03-06T01:15:29.563" Score="14" ViewCount="1584" Body="&lt;p&gt;And does it depend on the type of field? Undergrads in biology can do the menial work, but what about undergrads in the computational sciences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they more or less likely to benefit from undergraduate research in schools/fields where the undergrads tend to be especially self-motivated? (I don't know much about the ratio of self-motivated undergrads to non-self-motivated undergrads, but the professors I talked to at Brown and UChicago said that working with the undergrads at those schools was incredibly rewarding since they tended to be very self-motivated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T17:41:38.173" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T17:41:38.173" Title="Do professors benefit from undergraduate research?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2012-03-06T01:35:47.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that it depends (no surprise there).  If it's to give a talk in a department colloquium or seminar, travel cost are usually covered (at least, that's been my experience in mathematics), though that can vary a bit, especially since smaller departments may have very limited budgets for that kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food expenses vary even more wildly, and they depend heavily on the source of funding.  I've been at places that had a standard per diem for visitors, places that did nothing, and places where the faculty would take the speaker to dinner and split the cost among them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T01:35:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="592" CreationDate="2012-03-06T01:59:37.953" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you suggest in your question, this likely will vary from both field to field, and from lab to lab. In the two research labs I've worked in, one engineering and one neuroscience, undergraduates did a tremendous amount of useful work. In engineering, they would help with circuit design and fabrication, as well as doing background research and presenting their findings to the group as a whole. In the neuroscience lab, they would do cellular recordings and prepare cell cultures, as well as participate in paper writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the undergraduates benefitted tremendously from the experience in a number of ways; they experienced the life of a researcher, they got to perform actual research work, they published articles and conference papers, and they received excellent letters of recommendation. The lab also benefitted, in that they had a (most of the time) highly motivated student who was interested in doing work performing research, the grad students/professors had more time either prepare other experiments or write papers, and all the benefits of simply having someone else around to bounce ideas off of. All in all, if the lab is organized enough to handle the logistics of providing the students with regular (non-busywork) tasks to perform, it's a win-win situation for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T01:59:37.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="601" CreationDate="2012-03-06T02:00:40.300" Score="25" ViewCount="11815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never written a verbatim script for a talk. I have at times written notes or outlines, but I never read from them when presenting (and rarely when  practicing). With enough (weeks) of practice, I can give a pretty good talk. With less practice, I sometimes digress and sometimes omit an important detail. But what I am most interested in is improving my presentation by removing awkward pauses (e.g. while I remember what to say about a slide) and by using appropriate intonation, phrasing, and cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, a friend of mine who is a writing studies doctoral candidate suggested that the first step toward accomplishing these goals is to write out a script for each slide. This is a difficult task, but one that I plan to experiment with. I do not plan to actually read the script during the talk, but to memorize it while practicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How common is it to write a script for a talk?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does having a script help?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How early in the preparation should I have a &quot;final&quot; version?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T10:59:37.333" Title="How common is it to write out a script for a talk? What are the benefits?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-06T03:21:19.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, notes help some individuals remember things even if they never reference them again. So I won't stress that point anymore, although I agree with it, especially for class notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for notes on your reading, notes on papers are extremely useful. Depending on your field, you might end up reading lots of papers from which the details of methodology don't matter, but the key results do. If you make note of the results, then you can reference them without having to reread the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when I am doing modeling work and doing background reading on experimental results I will take this to the extreme. As I read the paper, I will takes notes (in Mendeley or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/112/66&quot;&gt;a personal wiki&lt;/a&gt;) and at the end include a section called &quot;cite this paper in the following contexts&quot; in which I will proceed to write down contexts where I expect these results to matter in my future work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am writing my own paper, I might remember &quot;there was something I read about the involvement of this in the amygdala&quot;. I do a quick search on my wiki, and from my notes have access to the relevant papers in a much faster way than going through the countless papers I might have read looking for the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note taking makes my research (especially writing) more time efficient down the road&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:21:19.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2012-03-06T03:36:14.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (as a visiting guest lecturer while a grad student elsewhere) the travel expense and accommodation were covered not by the university that hosted me, but by grant money from the professor that invited me. That being said, these visits were for a few days and included both the guest lecture, and some research/discussion on ongoing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not claim a per diem for food, but I am sure that if I had it would have been covered, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:36:14.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T04:05:46.550" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a script is actually more harmful than good. It tends to produce very rigid talks, and it often forces you to concentrate on the &lt;em&gt;script&lt;/em&gt; instead of the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;audience&lt;/em&gt;. Usually, you know what you are talking about well enough to not need a script, and just pointers. Below are the tricks I use for different kinds of talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Research talks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technical talks on my research or guest lectures on topics I am intimately familiar with (these two have been the overwhelming majority of my talks), I do not make scripts or notes and just concentrate on making good slides. In the process of making slides, I produce an outline which I use to mentally check my timing. The day of the talk, I look through my slides carefully (hunting for typos and other minor mistakes), this reminds me of the exact details I was going to discuss. Since I tend to repeat similar talks, I have become very proficient at estimating my timing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some big conferences, I practice talks in my lab before heading to the conference. This greatly improves the talk, especially timing issues and comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that this is easy to do because you are usually intimately familiar with your own research and unlikely to forget something. It also allows a relatively fluid and natural talk, and lets you answer questions during the talk without fear of losing your pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, &lt;strong&gt;I have my final version the day before&lt;/strong&gt; unless I rehearse in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Teaching talks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a number of talks as reviews for large bodies of students (50 to 300) to prep them for exams, and smaller groups (20 to 30) during weekly tutorial sections. Here I was talking not about my research, but course material that I had taken years ago. The topics were physics/math and my style was one of interactive problem solving at the board of hand-picked problems that illustrated key concepts. To prepare I had to invest time to carefully come up with good questions and I quickly checked that I could solve the questions as I generated them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write down the questions one per page with a few bullet points of the main concept/technique I want to show in the question. However, I do not write down solutions and solve the questions on the spot at the board. This puts a certain amount of stress on me (especially if you are teaching first year engineers) but I find it produces much better pacing for the students (since I naturally slow down a little at the harder parts) and actually solving the questions as you present them instead of copying a solution from your notes to the board keeps you in the zone and actually reduces errors. Not having notes in your hand (except to write down the problem statement) also lets you worry about just two things: the board and the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat is that you have to very comfortable with the material (but why are you teaching it if you are not?!) and you need to have the confidence to laugh at yourself and recover from occasional mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, &lt;strong&gt;I have the final questions and plan a few days ahead of time&lt;/strong&gt;. However, there is no 'final version' of the actual talk, since it depends completely on the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Popular talks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only opportunity to give a popular talk was at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRuE3oP-JT8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TEDx McGill 2009&lt;/a&gt;. This was incredibly different from other talks I am used to. Thankfully, all of the speakers were coached by the organizing committee ahead of time (including a full dry run through). The key message was to treat this not as a presentation, but as a performance. I did not prepare a script (and were were advised against preparing one), but I did make notes on cue-cards that I held during the performance. Except for the very beginning (where I was unusually nervous) I never looked at the cue cards, and mostly held them for comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I had my final version about a week before the talk&lt;/strong&gt; and my ready-for-dry-run version about two weeks before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T04:05:46.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T08:50:40.797" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have a similar process to the one described by Artem (apart from the popular talk, which I never had the opportunity to do). In any case, I never write a script. Actually, for my first talk in English, during my first year of PhD, I learned the talk by heart, which was terrible, and made me finish the talk in 12 minutes instead of the 20 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I try to carefully prepare my transitions, especially between different parts of the talk. I find it particularly annoying when a speaker finishes a part with a blank, moves to the next slide, and says something like &quot;OK, next section now&quot;.  Moreover, I usually include in a transition a brief summary of the key points of the previous section, and the motivation to go to the next section, which ensures that I don't forget any important point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About how early should the preparation be ready, it depends on the kind of talks. For a 20/25 minutes conference talk presenting a paper, I usually already have a pretty clear idea of what I want to present and how to structure it (since I wrote the paper), so I start the slides about a week before the conference, have a decent draft 2 or 3 days before (i.e. the final number of slides, the correct titles), and the final version the day before. As Artem's said, after a while, you can project pretty accurately the duration of a talk from your slides, so there is no need to repeat to make sure you are in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a 45/50 minutes seminar-kind talk,  it's a bit trickier, because usually the audience is not the same as the one at a conference, and it's harder not to bore them. So I start preparing the slides about a month before, but only to get the outline, and I start working on the talking part, not so much the slides, to try to find nice ways to present the ideas (such as nice examples, nice analogies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, to answer your questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not very common (I actually don't know anyone who does it). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can help if the speaker is very nervous, and tends to forget a lot of important things (which often disappears with experience). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on the experience, and the ability to evaluate your presentation. If you feel very confident, you can start preparing the presentation the night before. But in general, I'd say that something between a week before and the day before is good.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As aeismail mentioned, my answer is quite subjective, and just describe what works for me and for some people I know. However, just one point I would add, concerning the &quot;awkward pauses&quot;: I think that the quality of my presentations has tremendously increased when I stopped preparing my presentation around my slides, but the other way around. So I dropped all sentences like &quot;this slide presents ...&quot;, &quot;on this slide, we have the definition ...&quot;, etc. Actually, I even try not to say the words that are on the slides. I don't know if my presentation are better for the audience, but at least, I feel much more comfortable with them.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T15:30:17.653" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T15:30:17.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="592" CreationDate="2012-03-06T08:58:37.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two major benefits I've encountered for professors sponsoring/hosting undergraduate researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grunt work.Yes it extends outside laboratory sciences - everyone has work that, while it needs to be handled with attention, doesn't necessarily need doctoral-level expertise. Parameter searches. Literature pulling. Programming implementation. All of these are valuable experiences for undergrads, give them exposure not only to the field they're interested in but the &quot;act&quot; of research itself, and save time for grad students, post-docs and faculty who &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do these things, but instead are able to focus on the tasks undergraduates can't do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recruitment. Promising undergraduate researchers make for decent graduate student recruits. If they're not terribly interested in pursuing graduate education, but have a knack for research tasks and mesh well with a lab, they're also prime material for lab techs, programmers, and other technical support staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T08:58:37.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-06T09:49:05.867" Score="11" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest sources of online graduate-level education, as well as some criticism of them? Both free and paid are valid. I'm familiar with these sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academicearth.org/&quot;&gt;Academic Earth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm&quot;&gt;MIT OpenCourseWare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khanacademy.org/&quot;&gt;Kahn Academy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyu.edu/academics/open-education.html&quot;&gt;NYU Open Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I'm curious to know what other resources are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T13:57:36.847" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T17:02:58.393" Title="Looking for sources of online graduate-level education" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="603" CreationDate="2012-03-06T10:07:41.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What subject are you looking at? The answer varies significantly if you are not looking at science/math/engineering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define 'graduate level' because the Khan Academy (Not Kahn) is far from graduate level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infocobuild.com/education/education.html&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a very good link. I'll paste an excerpt here:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MIT OpenCourseWare&lt;/strong&gt; : undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open Yale&lt;/strong&gt; Courses : astronomy, biomedical engineering, history, economics, English, philosophy, physics, political science, and&#xA;  psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UC Berkeley Webcast&lt;/strong&gt; : biology, computer science, electrical engineering, physics, political science, and psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stanford Engineering Everywhere&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NPTEL&lt;/strong&gt; basic undergraduate science and engineering courses. The courses include biotechnology, civil engineering, computer science,&#xA;  electrical engineering, electronics and communication, and mechanical&#xA;  engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;McGill Univ. COurses OnLine (COOL)&lt;/strong&gt; : chemistry, biology and computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UCLA BruinCast&lt;/strong&gt; offers some free audio/video lectures for certain undergraduate courses from the University of California, Los Angeles&#xA;  (UCLA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open Learning Initiative | Harvard University Extension School&lt;/strong&gt; brings free audio/video lectures on topics in computer science,&#xA;  English literature, history, and mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Video &amp;amp; Audio | University of Cambridge&lt;/strong&gt; offers free access to audio and video lectures from the University's institutions including&#xA;  the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the&#xA;  Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Podcasts from the University of Oxford&lt;/strong&gt; provides free access to certain course materials and audio/video lectures on a variety of&#xA;  subjects, including chemistry, engineering, humanities, life science,&#xA;  medical sciences, physics, and social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YouTube - UHouston's Channel (University of Houston)&lt;/strong&gt; contains lots of video lectures on various subjects: anthropology, chemistry,&#xA;  English literature, history, philosophy, and psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;nanoHUB&lt;/strong&gt; Courses contains free educational materials about nanotechnology. The courses cover the following subjects:&#xA;  nanoelectronics, NEMS/nanofluidics, nanomedicine/biology, and&#xA;  nanophotonics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI)&lt;/strong&gt; provides a large number of free video lectures on a variety of subjects in mathematics&#xA;  and mathematical sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CERN Document Server&lt;/strong&gt; provides a huge collection of text documents and video lectures in particle physics and related areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Department of Mathematics, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs&lt;/strong&gt; offers free video lectures on mathematics including&#xA;  calculus, discrete mathematics, linear algebra, differential equations&#xA;  and mathematical statistics. Registration is required to access the&#xA;  lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Indiana Multimedia Distribution System&lt;/strong&gt; offers free audio/video courses and lectures in business and management from Kelley School of&#xA;  Business, Indiana University Bloomington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pasted website has links to all the places, alternately, you could simply google the words in bold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T12:59:13.773" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T12:59:13.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T10:33:02.880" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most important factor to keep in mind is the personal comfort level of the speaker with respect to giving presentations. For some people—particularly people working in a non-native language—having a prepared script allows them to relax sufficiently and be able to get through the talk. For other people, having a prepared script acts more as an encumbrance than an aide. I've seen people rehearse talks to the point of practically being memorized—and then get completely flustered when they accidentally skip past a slide or are faced with a small technical glitch in the presentation itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would disagree with Charles and Artem and say that you should find whichever method is most effective &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt;. Personally, I am not able to rehearse talks beyond going over what are the key points I want to address on a slide. If I go through a talk like that more than twice or thrice, I start getting &quot;locked&quot; into certain words and phrases, and then I start falling into the problems that the other posters mentioned regarding the pitfalls of a memorized talk. You may find a memorized speech is the most helpful possibility; if that's the case, then our opinions of what is the &quot;best&quot; approach don't really apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T10:33:02.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2012-03-06T10:37:01.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are an invited guest of a university department, in most cases you will have your travel costs paid by the department, or in the case of an individual institute or professor extending the invitation, by the specific people involved. In the case of a short visit (less than a day, for instance), when a per diem becomes impractical, the cost of the meal after the conference might be split among the attendees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have been an invited lecturer at conferences that were organized at various schools. In those cases, the conferences were operating on a very limited budget, and the &quot;compensation&quot; was essentially a free registration to the conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T10:37:01.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T11:07:44.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Script only the introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only echo what Artem said about the disadvantages of a script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I often advise to write out the &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; of the talk beforehand in full detail. This way, you have a backup. So far, I have never ended up using the prepared introduction, I’ve always had at least slight variations. But if – for whatever reason – you get stuck, you can recourse to the prepared script. If nothing else, this is extremely comforting and reduces anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A talk should not feel like a performance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the talks that I’ve heard (instead of given), those that were obviously based on a script were among the worst. They were bad performances rather than good talks. A talk (in general) isn’t meant to be a performance – it’s meant to convey information; like you would do in a discussion with friends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The “chat with friends” should be archetype after which to model a talk, not the “theatre performance”.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use cue cards&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sometimes digress and sometimes omit an important detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be helped by notes (cue cards). But you have to train yourself to look at these from time to time (I can never remember doing this). I usually end up plastering my slides with huge sticky notes that only show up on the presenter’s display (supported at least by Keynote). Not elegant but effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A word on slides&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said that you want to remove awkward pauses “… while [you] remember what to say about a slide …”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be an indication that your talk needs revising for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you cannot remember a detail, is it really important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should have &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to say “about a slide”. Slides are there to visually support your talk, not the other way round. If you don’t remember what to say about a slide, cut the slide. This sounds like a harsh judgement but it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; improve the talk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Except when it isn’t, of course. TED talks were mentioned. But even here, all the best talks &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; like a friendly chat rather than a performance, even if they are in reality a well-rehearsed performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="348" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T16:05:24.693" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T16:05:24.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="603" CreationDate="2012-03-06T14:03:45.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found many interesting &amp;amp; diverse lectures in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/apple-education/id334296685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Education section of Apple's podcast directory&lt;/a&gt; (I can't verify that link at work, I hope it's correct). While most are undergraduate, some are taught at a higher level, and they're a good resource for when you need to learn a new discipline in grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T14:03:45.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="592" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:56:44.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One other (minor) benefit that eykanal and EpiGrad didn't mention is internal brownie points.  Faculty in my department are encouraged to collaborate with undergrads, in part because graduate admissions is highly correlated with undergraduate research experience, and in part so that the department can attract a larger pool of potential majors.  Working with undergrads makes my chair/dean happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not a major reason for me, though.  As your Brown and UC profs suggest, the enthusiasm that motivated undergrads bring to research can be very refreshing.  And (in my experience, in theoretical CS) there's comparatively little pressure for the research to lead to publication, compared to work with graduate students (where unsuccessful research means they don't graduate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T15:56:44.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="603" CreationDate="2012-03-06T17:02:58.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the graduate level there is less and less 'standardized' material like in undergrad. You might take a few introductory graduate courses that are pretty similar across universities, but then you tend to take very specialized courses (at least in my experiences with fields like math, computer science, and physics; and my answer should be taken as only relevant to those fields). Further, the number one skill you are suppose to learn in grad school seems to be &lt;strong&gt;independence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some specialized course is not offered at your university then the standard procedure is to look for good lecture notes on the websites of experts in that field. These experts usually teach relevant graduate level courses and post their lecture notes online. In fact, some of these lecture note become rather famous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/4074/1037&quot;&gt;What Lecture Notes (in theoretical computer science) Should Everyone Read?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to do what &lt;em&gt;every graduate student has to do&lt;/em&gt;, and that is to &lt;em&gt;motivate and teach yourself&lt;/em&gt; with the guidance of those lecture notes (and maybe Q&amp;amp;A sites like SE or emails to the relevant experts). Some tricks to make this is easier is to form groups with other graduate students and learn the material together through regular meetings and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T17:02:58.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="612" CreationDate="2012-03-06T17:37:42.563" Score="24" ViewCount="3284" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most conferences in my field it seems to be invitation-only, i.e. somebody has to suggest you/remember you. Are there any conferences that have open calls for applications to the programme committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T22:04:19.010" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T17:02:46.447" Title="How do you join programme committees for conferences?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2012-03-06T18:02:07.683" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rare. I know of one conference though (in theoretical computer science) where the steering committee actively maintains a list of &quot;qualified but has never served&quot;, and strongly encourages PC chairs to look over that list when selecting names. Your best strategy might be to approach the steering committee and suggest that they do something like this, so as not to sound like you're shilling for yourself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T18:02:07.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T18:57:57.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also tend to write out notes, but at an early part of the preparation, I tend to write out something very much like a script. I use this to make sure I'm covering what needs covering, and cut down where I tend to ramble on. This also helps me determine if I'm going to fit inside the time budget, and if not, what to cut down on. A couple practice runs with the polished script and then I reduce it to a single page of notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my most memorable professors appeared much smarter because she eliminated all those &quot;err&quot; and &quot;umm&quot; from her speech. Instead of an &quot;umm&quot;, she'd be silent. I'm not successful in replicating this as most of my coworkers take that pause to be a sign that I am done speaking, so they can now start their turn speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T18:57:57.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:03:17.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep notebooks with short notes and references so that I am not stuck saying &quot;umm, I remember reading something close to that several months ago&quot;. Instead, I've got them in notebooks with a brief summary of what the article was about. These notebooks are more of my own index of research, yes, you can always look up in &quot;the book&quot; or &quot;the article&quot;, but what you need is a memory aid that helps you remember where to look them up. You could probably use something like delicious or mandelay; I'll probably set up my own wiki. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:03:17.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:04:07.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student enrolled in a MD/PhD program in Canada. I don't know about NIH very well, but our experience here is that it is very difficult to continue research. I agree with eykanal: it takes a lot to be a great clinician (and being a mediocre clinician is very hard on one's conscience). 50%+ of students rethink their decision during their first year of medicine and do not begin the PhD portion of the program. Only those who begin 80/20 in terms of devolution (80 research, 20 clinician) seem to be able to continue the research path, with considerable sacrifice of their clinical skills (fewer clinical elective during both medical school and residency), as well as many more years of education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once done, however, the career path in academic medicine is relatively good. The PhD really helps with those jobs and their attendant excitement and opportunities, although they often pay significantly lower than a pure clinican job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in the States, the culture of MD/PhD's is more pronounced than in Canada, since there's a massive amount of NIH funds. I heard that nearly a quarter of the class in U of Pennsylvania at least begin as MD/PhD's (don't quote me). Dropping out of the PhD is harder, because you have to give up your funding. I expect that many of them are able to complete the program, but few manage to continue in the research path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the professors who are MD and PhD's often complete their PhD separately from the MD - they either had it before the MD or got it afterwards. Materially, it's a more difficult path, with less funding and guarantees, but there's less room to regret and it's easier to cut one's losses, since it's 2 big decisions, not 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="353" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:04:07.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="623" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:10:22.480" Score="96" ViewCount="7875" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is web-presence to researchers? How does its importance vary by fields? (My interest is STEM, theory in particular)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that there is a pretty large variation in amount of web-presence even within a single field (I will use theoretical computer science/related math as an example). There seems to be 3 different levels of web-presence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;High&lt;/strong&gt;] Very active member of various internet tools (MathOverflow, cstheory, blogs, G+, etc) usually accompanied by a clear homepage with all the [Medium] info.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Medium&lt;/strong&gt;] A clear up-to date website that provides a clean bibliography/CV (usually with links to self-hosted pdfs), a repository of course-notes and teaching information, and list of students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Low&lt;/strong&gt;] No personal website (or extremely outdated website).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasing your web-presence usually requires effort. Should you invest this effort? Or are you just wasting research time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy being active on the internet (so it is not a cost for you, but maybe a time-sync) is there any danger to having a high web presence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T17:56:08.307" Title="Is web-presence important for researchers?" Tags="&lt;community&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="51" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="549" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:15:50.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're a decent starting point. They are aimed at folks who are newbies to the subject and are good at an overview of the subject. From this starting point, you'll get a better idea of where to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one rare case, the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470137444&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google SketchUp For Dummies&lt;/a&gt; is also the author of most of the other books on the same product, and the dummies book is the one that covers the lastest version of the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If an engineer wants to know Statistics&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probablistic methods were an important part of electrical engineering when I studied it. Several courses in statistics/probability were part of the required curriculum. In such a case, the &quot;for dummies&quot; series would only be useful as something to read before starting the semester, so that the first week wouldn't be a total surprise/shock. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:15:50.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:55:31.083" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion having an up-to-date website is very important. This way people will find out about your papers and what you are working on. It can also help to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/555/does-a-informative-and-clear-professor-webpage-often-increase-the-number-of-pros&quot;&gt;attract students&lt;/a&gt;. It also helps when you're teaching as you can put frequently requested information there and save yourself the hassle of having to reply to hundreds of emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, maintaing a website is not that much effort either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:55:31.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="481" CreationDate="2012-03-06T20:15:05.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment on the solution posted by @Sunil. I disagree with him. You should never do that. You are depriving others of &lt;code&gt;a position who really want to do Ph.D.&lt;/code&gt; You should follow that Ph.D. route only if you &lt;code&gt;really want and absolutely positive&lt;/code&gt; that you want to do the research, otherwise, you should not do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user354" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T20:15:05.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-06T20:25:54.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only presence that the vast majority of researchers give significant thought to is their presence in the literature. Most labs view web presence as a way to inform the community about their work, and as a way to attract new students, but that's about it. This purpose is served by a pretty simple site, which includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic info (name, broad research interests, contact info)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recent research projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Names of lab members (graduate students, postdocs, undergraduates, technicians, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recent publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For professors who teach often, having a &quot;teaching&quot; section is very helpful, but remember to pull down things like answer keys and test solutions after the semester is over, unless you want future students to see those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do more and it will look nice, but investing in any site more complex than that has a pretty low payoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T20:25:54.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-06T20:58:12.583" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it also depends on the position of the researcher. For instance, a computer scientist who has a permanent research position, publishes one paper a year in a top conference, and doesn't care about the publicity does not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to have an important web presence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a postdoc who is looking for a job knows that every time he sends his CV somewhere, one of the first reflex from the recruiter is to Google his name. So, in this case, it's quite important to have a good presence, and to have an updated webpage, in particular with papers accepted but not published yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the maintenance, as mentioned the other answers, maintaining a website is not particularly demanding, especially if it's quite simple. However, maintaining a blog can be quite complicated, especially because having an non updated blog is probably worse than not having any blog at all. As for G+/SE, I guess the investment is worth the return from the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the danger of a high web-presence, well, obviously there is the risk that some &quot;private&quot; information might be connected to a public profile. For instance, I have a flickr account with pictures that, although not particularly shameful, I wouldn't like a potential employer or a student to see. Of course, my account is under a pseudonym, but that's the same pseudonym that I can use on other services (such as twitter), and maybe at some point I will refer to my twitter account from my G+ account, that maybe I will refer from my SE account, where I use my real name. But I guess that's the risk with the Internet in general: if it's out there, it has to be considered as public. There is a similar argument for opinions or ideas you could have a site such as Academia SE and that could be later on taken out of context and used against you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T20:58:12.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-06T21:43:52.680" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scripting is &lt;strong&gt;great&lt;/strong&gt;. Do it. Write out every single word. And then redraft and edit it, just as you would if it were a journal article ...  &lt;strong&gt;except&lt;/strong&gt;, remember that the audience is completely different. So redraft and edit it, with the real audience in mind. You are scripting a performance; so redraft and edit it as a script for a performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then rehearse it. Over and over. Until you know about 70%+ off by heart (i.e. word-for-word); and you've got a really strong opening and really strong close, each of which you know 100% off by heart. With each run-through, you'll find yourself doing a bit more editing, re-ordering words, shuffling sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now put your script away, and do a couple of dress-rehearsal run-throughs without the script at all, so that your performance is close-ish to the script, but by now, it's getting a bit looser, more natural. So you can concentrate on timing, breathing, pitch variations, body language, and saving some resources for picking up continuous feedback from your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now you're ready to go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YMMV. It works sometimes for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it out, at least once, and see if it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T04:55:08.097" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T04:55:08.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-06T22:05:28.220" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer, at least in theoretical computer science, is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.  Especially pre-tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Coin of the Realm in academia is fame.  Hiring and promotion decisions are based primarily on the perceptions of your impact by leaders in the research community.  Those intellectual leaders must know who you are, they must know what you do, and they must think that what you do is excellent.  This is precisely why it's so important to network, network, network — go to conferences, visit other departments, talk to visitors, ask questions, answer questions, go to lunch, drink beer, play pool/golf/frisbee/Settlers of Catan, race go-karts, exchange business cards, all that stuff.  Having a visible online presence is just another form of networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you want to attract good students, they have to know who you are, they have to know what you do, and they have to think what you do is interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if your work is not freely and easily accessible on the web, it is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; less likely to be cited than freely accessible work of comparable quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give some personal examples, I have good reason to believe that &lt;a href=&quot;https://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/compgeom/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these web pages&lt;/a&gt; were a significant factor in my academic job search and even my tenure case, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this stuff&lt;/a&gt; definitely helped me get promoted.  I expect that &lt;a href=&quot;http://robotics.stanford.edu/%7Esuresh/theory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these pages&lt;/a&gt; similarly helped Suresh, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ics.uci.edu/%7Eeppstein/geom.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these pages&lt;/a&gt; similarly helped David.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T17:56:08.307" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T17:56:08.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2012-03-07T08:58:01.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Suresh, it's rare, I've never seen a call for invitation to a PC in my field (Computer Science). I have actually seen people making fun of emails asking to be in a PC (i.e. if you ask the PC Chair to join the PC, it could be negatively perceived). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, there are at least five possibilities to get a PC chair to invite you to join a PC (of course, none of them are automatic, they can just be helpful. In the end, the PC Chair makes his own choices, in order to have a PC that is attractive enough for authors to submit a paper, and serious enough so that the reviewing process can be done effectively):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you were in the PC of the previous editions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you know the PC Chair, so that he can trust you to do your job,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you already are in other PCs of conferences in a related area (i.e. other PC Chairs trusted you)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you have published several papers in previous editions of a conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if someone you know is invited to join the PC, but he can't and suggests you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's a cycle: the higher reputation you have, the higher are your chances to be invited to join a PC, and the more PC you join, the higher is your reputation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T08:58:01.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="628" CreationDate="2012-03-07T09:21:51.503" Score="35" ViewCount="1113" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question I have been wondering for a while is if there exists an actual proof that a blind reviewing process (i.e. where the reviewers are anonymous, and the reviews not published) is better than an open one (i.e. where the reviewers are not anonymous and/or the reviews are published along with the accepted papers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, whenever I question the fact that having a blind reviewing process does not guarantee any quality (which, somehow, usually coincides with receiving a poor review for a paper ...), I'm told that anonymity is crucial for the reviewing process. But is there any proof of that? I don't believe there exists any perfect system, but I'm just not sure why does the blind (or even double-blind) one is considered as the best (or the &quot;least worst&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T15:59:34.540" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T10:58:05.170" Title="Open versus Blind reviewing process" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2012-03-07T09:34:45.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to members of the current organizing committee? It's tough work, and scientists are always busy, so they'll usually be receptive to having someone else to split the work with, and there's always a chance that somebody is too busy to help with next year's committee, and they're looking for a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T09:34:45.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-03-07T10:06:32.767" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One answer is already known to you:  Submit a paper to it and see how it responds.  I once submitted a few papers to an online journal (no print equivalent) and the referee reports that I got clearly showed that they read and understood the paper and that they knew the subject well.  They even suggested ways how the paper could be improved.  The quality of the referees reflect the quality of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T10:06:32.767" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="625" CreationDate="2012-03-07T10:51:10.347" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2008 study entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishingresearch.net/PeerReview.htm&quot;&gt;Peer Review in Scholarly Journals - Perspective of the Scholarly Community:  An International Study&lt;/a&gt; aimed &quot;to measure the attitudes and behaviour of the academic community with regard to peer review.&quot;  Some quotes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/PRCsummary4Warefinal.pdf&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Double-blind review was preferred. Although the normal experience of researchers in most fields was of single-blind review, when asked which was their preferred option, there was a preference for double-blind review, with 56% selecting this, followed by 25% for single-blind, 13% for open and 5% for post-publication review. Open peer review was an active discouragement for many reviewers, with 49% saying that disclosing their name to the author would make them less likely to review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Double-blind review was seen as the most effective. Double-blind review had the most respondents (71%) who perceived it to be effective, followed (in declining order) by single-blind (52%), post-publication (37%) and open peer review (27%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/full/451605b.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; (and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080604/full/453711c.html&quot;&gt;correction&lt;/a&gt;) discusses the above study but the article is about double-blind review versus single-blind review, and not about blind review versus open review.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T00:27:08.760" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:27:08.760" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="625" CreationDate="2012-03-07T11:09:30.793" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more is revealed about the identity of authors and reviewers, the less honest the review process may be. Such openness may favour already-established scientists over newcomers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the ideal world a reviewer would raise the same concerns when reviewing papers from a Nobel-prize winner or from an undergraduate student. But as people are even afraid of asking possibly dumb questions in public, I would be really surprised if they could apply the same scrutiny regardless of who they are reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with the standard (single)-blind process, I heard that an already-famous scientist submitted papers under made-up names to receive honest reviews (just can't recall who).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dek.pdf&quot;&gt;Herbert S. Wilf on a birthday speech for  Donald E. Knuth&lt;/a&gt; (pointed out by Joel Reyes Noche):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1980's, in the early days of the Journal of Algorithms, I was an Editor-in-Chief, and Don [Donald Knuth] submitted a paper to me, authored by himself under the pseudonym of Ursula N. Owens, ostensibly from some small college in some small nonexistent town in Kansas. The reason was that he really wanted to get a tough and substantive referee's report on the paper, and &lt;strong&gt;he had been finding that sometimes referees had pulled their punches because of his name at the top of a paper&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Double-blind process may be even more beneficial, but at the same time illusory (as topic, references and style may reveal the author). Moreover, the identity of the author may sometimes be beneficial (e.g., to compare if the new submission has something new).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of it is a proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But instead of counting of lines of reviews, one can try to compare how softly (or harshly) are treated contributors, depending on their status (academic title, university name, fame/recognizability). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T08:01:00.473" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T08:01:00.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-07T12:16:44.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find some interesting answers to this question on Brian Kelly's UK Web Focus blog — for example one recent post talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/how-researchers-can-use-inbound-linking-strategies-to-enhance-access-to-their-papers/&quot;&gt;how links on the web can enhance access to your published papers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place to look is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/&quot;&gt;altmetrics&lt;/a&gt; movement, which is developing new ways to measure the quality of a researcher's work other than just citation counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T12:16:44.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="641" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:20:51.070" Score="34" ViewCount="3828" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to reading, there are literally thousands of methods from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Speed Reading&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SQ3R&lt;/a&gt; to Sequential(Word by Word till the end). My question is regarding reading mathematically/theoretically dense books as a graduate student. My question is primarily targeted to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/50/am-i-reading-enough-of-the-scientific-literature-should-i-read-for-breadth-or-d&quot;&gt;the other question&lt;/a&gt; on SE and this is designed to act as a question on similar lines but for books (&gt; 400 pages) typically found on Reading Lists for Quals. I believe how one reads a book differs significantly from how one reads a paper.&#xA;(This could be a question as well but IMO, the length, intention and structure are sufficient to cause the difference)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make this an objective question rather than a vague and open ended one, I wish to concentrate on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should a book be read from start to finish word by word or through iterations (Skim, Analyse, Summarize)? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I am interested in a particular chapter with a lot of dependencies, is it in my interest to read everything till that chapter or read that chapter &gt; google unknown terms &gt; read chapter again and loop? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If one gets stuck for over a certain threshold at something is it wise to continue assuming it as true or to persevere till the end and figure it out. &lt;strong&gt;This is true for research papers, is it true for books?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much time per (mathematically dense) page is ideal? This will vary a lot with field but not so much with person as it would with fiction (IMO). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:54:38.773" Title="How to efficiently read mathematically and theoretically dense books in STEM fields?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="508" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:44:15.097" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important factor here is that these prizes are awarded for making a significant contribution to knowledge. This cannot generally be assessed at the point at which you had the idea, and it is for this reason that prizes are usually awarded for contributions which are decades old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.&quot;&gt;John Forbes Nash, Jr.&lt;/a&gt; was awarded a Nobel prize in 1994 for work done as a graduate student in the late 1940s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only after many years of further research, by the originating researcher and the community as a whole, that the importance of an individual idea can be understood in that context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A corollary of this is that only research which is published, presented at conferences and generally publicised in the research community is likely to attract sufficient attention and further development to be considered for such a prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T14:44:15.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:21:29.760" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The types of books you refer to are unlike publications, in that they typically detail the results of research that occurred 5+ years ago. As such, if you're reading such a book, it's typically for one of two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be brought up to speed on a topic with which you're unfamiliar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To learn a specific technique which is discussed in the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you'll want to typically be interested in only a subset of the book. I would recommend reading through that section slowly, section by section, as you would a paper. It will probably take a while. I have never read an academic book cover-to-cover. Do note that your speed-reading skills will likely be less useful here, as STEM literature typically does not lend itself to speed reading. There is no &quot;ideal time&quot; that can be stated. When you begin, a single page may take you hours. There was one paper I read where a &lt;em&gt;single equation&lt;/em&gt; took my lab mate four months to work through. As you get more experience, you'll speed up. Time is a commodity, but information is a more precious one. Spend the time necessary to learn the topic, and especially at the beginning, measure your progress over days, not hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I am interested in a particular chapter with a lot of dependencies, is it in my interest to read everything till that chapter or read that chapter &gt; google unknown terms &gt; read chapter again and loop? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches here. The one you mention - google unfamiliar concepts - can work well. However, oftentimes the author of the book will mention exactly where the dependency is (e.g., &quot;As we discussed in the previous chapter, ...&quot;), so you can identify which parts of the book you need to read through. That may be more useful, as any terminology will be consistent within the same book. For some topics (math &amp;amp; engineering in particular), other papers will often use different terminology, needlessly complicating the learning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If one gets stuck for over a certain threshold at something is it wise to continue assuming it as true or to persevere till the end and figure it out. This is true for research papers, is it true for books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is simply a function of how necessary the topic is. When you get stuck, figure out what concept is confusing you, read up on that topic, and then continue. This process can take weeks, or even months. If you really want to learn the topic, persevere. If you can continue without that bit of clarity, move on to something more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T15:26:40.410" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:26:40.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="643" CreationDate="2012-03-07T16:21:22.117" Score="54" ViewCount="19976" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received my PhD in 2009 and my adviser will not provide a good recommendation for me. This is mostly because we have fundamentally different approaches to science, and in retrospect I see that I could have avoided a breakdown in our relationship if I had been more deferential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I leave his name off of my list of references, but I suspect that a diligent potential employer might call him anyway. I would be willing to discuss any concerns that were brought up in such a call - indeed I think that doing so will help me to find a good fit in a new position - but I do not know if I should, or how to state this fact in my job applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently finishing my post doc, and one recommendation has been to take another post-doc so that I at least have two supportive references from postdoc advisers - and that the additional publications will place less weight on recommendations. Still, others have told me that not having a good reference from my adviser is a kiss of death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I most effectively handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T01:42:39.297" LastActivityDate="2019-10-12T06:41:49.887" Title="How to handle not having my PhD advisor as a reference?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:04:01.073" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you read an academic book depends heavily on what you want from it, but one thing that I think is almost universally true is that you generally don't want to bog down on one page/argument/theorem/definition/whatever on a first read.  Later content often adds context and motivation to something that may seem mysterious, so if you get stuck for a while on something, it's a good idea to move on and then come back to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My usual experience reading mathematically dense content, which I think is relatively typical, is that as I go along, the level of my understanding steadily decreases, and eventually it gets to the point that I'm learning very little, so I go back to the parts I understood well and start reading again from there, this time understanding a bit more, and I iterate this until I've learned what I set out to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T17:04:01.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="635" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:27:23.510" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany, this wouldn't be a problem, as the PhD adviser is normally &lt;em&gt;excluded&lt;/em&gt; from providing references for hiring processes in academia, since it's assumed the advisor would support the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while there is reason to be concerned about your advisor not giving you a good letter of recommendation, all is not lost. Since this is not your previous position (you're coming from a postdoc), the PhD advisor's weight will not be as significant. It's still important, and you better have a very good &quot;elevator speech&quot; explanation why he might not support you. But the fact that you have a postdoctoral advisor means that you do have some credentials; if he can write a strong letter in support, it might further give credence to the idea that your there was just dysfunction between you and your PhD advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2016-08-02T14:16:42.717" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T14:16:42.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="625" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:39:28.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One ofhe most convincing argument I have heard in favour of blind reviewing is that it prevents people whose paper has been rejected from taking &quot;revenge&quot; on the reviewer (conciously or unconciously). Consider for example a senior academic who has a paper rejected because of the review of a junior academic. It would be quite easy for the senior academic to hinder the progress of the junior one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to the point that Piotr raised about it being a more &quot;honest&quot; process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any specific examples of this though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T17:39:28.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2012-03-07T21:13:10.907" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never (as far as I can remember) read a technical book cover to cover from start to end.  Most of the time, I have a problem in mind that I want to solve, and I'm looking for tools to solve it; more often than not, if I'm trying to learn out of a book, I'm actually reading three or four books at once.  I dive into the middle of a book that seems most relevant; if I don't understand something, I'll back up, and if I don't understand that, I'll back up again, and if I get really stuck I'll put the first book down and pick up a more elementary book, and so on until I'm on firm ground again.  (&quot;Getting really stuck&quot; only happens after relying to work through/reconstruct details on my own, in addition to trying to understand them from the book's presentation.  I have taken months to read through one page, always feeling just close enough to understanding that I never felt &quot;really stuck&quot;.)  Whenever possible I pop back up the reading stack with my target problem in mind, skipping entire chapters if they don't seem relevant (but backtracking if I discover later than I'm wrong), working forward again until I either find the tool that I'm looking for, conclude that I've been on a wild goose chase, or give up on the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I miss a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; this way.  Yes, I get a lot of weird ideas that I later have to kill off.  But I just don't have the patience to read large volumes of technical material that doesn't seem at least remotely relevant to some problem at hand, and prioritizing often leads me fairly quickly to tools that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary.  Caveat lector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T21:13:10.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="625" CreationDate="2012-03-07T23:42:25.173" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The funny thing is that on this issue, most people mention immediately the &quot;honesty&quot; side of the problem, not the &quot;quality&quot; side.&#xA;For the latter, I think that this not blind/open reviews which is the pertinent question, but rather the public/private question. If reviews are always public, then my guess is that the quality will increase, because the general chair/editor in chief will push that way to ensure its conference/journal to have excellent reputation.&#xA;Personally, I don't want/need to know who is reviewing my papers, but I want AND need quality reviews, and they are unusual those days. We all know why : too many papers, too many reviews to make, not that much time... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T23:42:25.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="635" CreationDate="2012-03-08T00:47:53.243" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've personally seen a few careers survive this exact problem (caveat: I don't necessarily see the ones that don't), but it isn't easy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to surmount this problem is to be referred into a job in an industry/government/NGO lab - and have someone within the organization pulling for you. If you're doing an academic post-doc right now, that's fine, but you need to start connecting to people who work in the kinds of places you want to work. If you do another post-doc, do one for a company or a government lab. If you've got someone who can pull you into the fold at a company or lab, you've got no issue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my advice if you are sending out cold-call applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue won't come up in the application stage (don't mention anything negative about your experience in your cover letter, or your application will get trashed). The trick will be how to handle yourself during the interview stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;in retrospect I see that I could have avoided a breakdown in our&#xA;  relationship if I had been more deferential.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're going to need a much better story than that. Because you are going to have to explain it at some point (probably when someone asks why you haven't listed your old PI as a reference), and that line will throw up red flags about your ability to handle being managed. You'll have to be prepared to talk about it in some detail, but focus everything on &lt;em&gt;what you learned from it&lt;/em&gt;. How do you handle conflict better now? Have recent examples ready of your excellent interpersonal skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid talking about this problem for more than a few minutes in an interview, but don't hide the fact that you've have this issue in the past. Employers will call your references, and chances are good that it will come up. Even if one of your references mentions it with you in the best possible light, if it's the first time the employer has heard of it they will feel like you've withheld information. While companies will generally not call someone you haven't listed as a reference, they will get in touch with everyone they know who may have also worked for your old boss, gotten a degree from your old department, collaborated with your old group. This may be an issue if your field of study is small. If you've changed your research focus somewhat since then, this is less likely to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can overcome this, but BE PREPARED. And once you get your first non-postdoc job, it'll all be downhill from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:47:53.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="651" CreationDate="2012-03-08T02:03:52.677" Score="95" ViewCount="19049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that in a lot of big-lab fields it is common for the principal investigator to append their name to a paper even if they did not write the paper, design the experiment, or collect data since they spend energy securing funding, and managing the whole lab. What about for small labs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the requirements for a supervisor to be included as an author on a paper, as opposed to just appearing in the acknowledgements? If you are working on your own projects independently of your supervisor, but using funding provided by your supervisor (how does this change when the funding provides resources versus just your salary), are you suppose to add them as authors or just acknowledge the source of funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-08-08T18:54:45.907" LastActivityDate="2021-03-16T15:21:43.470" Title="When should a supervisor be an author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="644" CreationDate="2012-03-08T02:18:05.240" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following answer is based on my experience in the fields of Neuroscience, Biology, and to a lesser extent, Electrical Engineering.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often an unnecessarily touchy subject amongst graduate students. To be clear: &lt;strong&gt;As a graduate student, you can expect that your advisor will appear as an author on all of your papers.&lt;/strong&gt; He is providing your funding, your resources, and (ostensibly) is the Primary Investigator on whatever project you happen to be working on. Even if he does not contribute, you are working on &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; project, and he wrote the grant for it, not you. There may be situations where you will be the sole author of a paper you published during your graduate career, but those will be unusual circumstances, indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you can read through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on the subject&lt;/a&gt;, which discusses conflict. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764586/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;This Canadian Medical Association Journal article&lt;/a&gt; (thanks, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship#cite_note-Reliability_of_disclosure_forms_of_authors.27_contributions-25&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) states that authorship ordering conflicts occurred in over 60% of published papers. To help with things, there's a good chance your university has it's own authorship guidelines (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://hms.harvard.edu/public/coi/policy/integritypolicy.html&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rio.msu.edu/authorshipguidelines.htm&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;); speak with your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, speak with your advisor. Clear communication early on can help to stave off future problems, or sometimes communication will alert you to the fact that there may be future problems that you should address early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T11:52:07.773" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T11:52:07.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="644" CreationDate="2012-03-08T05:13:13.227" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, as @eykanal has said, the easiest thing to do with this is to speak with your advisor ahead of time and establish a clear policy you both understand and agree to. You should do this even in cases where there doesn't seem to be any clear conflict, everyone's roles are perfectly predictable, and contributions to the paper seem obvious. It's one of those things, like frequent backups, that spares heartache later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways such a policy might be made. Your department or university might have rules, your &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt; might have rules, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking however, here are things that have happened in my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major papers that make heavy use of a lab's resources (including you, a grad student funded by the lab) will likely have your supervisors name on the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More important than does/does not your supervisor's name appear on your papers is (if you field follows the non-alphabetical author ordering scheme) where they appear. They may most often appear in the senior author position, but on a paper where you had a great deal of help and advice from another faculty member? It may be more appropriate to place them in the middle. Again, this should be settled ahead of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If its truly an independent effort that doesn't draw from lab resources, it may be appropriate for your supervisor not to be on the paper. But before you press that, consider whether or not it's particularly &lt;em&gt;worth&lt;/em&gt; not having them on. Your answer may vary, and if you think you'd benefit particularly from a solo paper, you might wish to bring it up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While collaborators who provided data, technical expertise, etc. may be appropriate for authorship, if you can, try your hardest to avoid having &quot;co-authors&quot; who are only distantly connected with the paper. I have never, ever had anything but trouble getting things like draft approval or copyright transfer agreements from people with no stake in the paper other than their name buried in the middle of the authorship list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T05:13:13.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="654" CreationDate="2012-03-08T08:28:46.133" Score="45" ViewCount="3294" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow-up question to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/625/open-versus-blind-reviewing-process&quot;&gt;Open versus Blind reviewing process&lt;/a&gt;, and is somehow related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/545/102&quot;&gt;What happens to the reviews that people write for journal articles after they&amp;#39;re sent back to the author?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my question does not concern the reviews I receive for the papers I submit, but concerns the reviews I write for papers I have been assigned. Since the whole process is done under confidentiality, it is not clear who owns the copyright on a review I wrote, and what does the review include. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, let us assume that X is member of a PC of a conference Y, and assigns to me a review of a paper Z, written by A and B (assuming it's not a double-blind). Can I publish on my blog: &quot;Here is my review for Y, asked by X, on the paper Z, written by A and B&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that there are two points here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it legal? (for instance, publishing the camera-ready version of a paper might be illegal due to the copyright transfer, would it be also the care here?). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it ethical? (who should I ask in order to do so? X? Y? A and B? everybody?). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; There is been several comments/answer wondering &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; I would like to publish a review I wrote. To give a bit of background of this question, I believe that the current reviewing system, created when the academic community was small and there was no Internet (i.e. no easy access to information), might not be the best, although clearly working. This is for me a very interesting debate, but somehow out of the scope the Q&amp;amp;A format of Academia SE, which is why I tried to focus on my question on whether it was possible to do so, not if it was the best thing to do in the current system (and just to be clear, I don't plan to do it, but I just like to know what are my options). Anyway, thanks for the answers bringing a different light on this debate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2:&lt;/strong&gt; After seeing the update in Jeff's answer, I just realised that I didn't make it explicit that I was talking about reviews &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the reviewing process. Jeff says that it's ok if the paper is accepted, and although I clearly understand the argument of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I shouldn't publish a review of a rejected paper, the question still holds: by publishing a review of a rejected paper, I publish the information that these authors submitted this paper to this conf/journal, which is supposed to be confidential between the authors and the editors. Would I break any rule by doing so?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2018-01-23T03:43:43.743" Title="Can I publish the reviews I write?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-08T08:47:17.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences/journals say on their website that reviews should be treated confidentially, although I'm not sure if you're legally obliged to follow this. I would certainly ask everybody involved (i.e. PC and the authors of the paper) before publishing the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also possible that (part of) the review isn't valid anymore if you're raised concerns that the authors have addressed in the final version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T08:47:17.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="644" CreationDate="2012-03-08T08:53:35.977" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will address only the last questions (just to add to the other answers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are working on your own projects independently of your supervisor, but using funding provided by your supervisor, are you suppose to add them as authors or just acknowledge the source of funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding is to be mentioned in acknowledgements, not in co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In experimental projects often you are supposed to add your supervisor as an author. Actually, I does make sense as setting up lab, collecting equipment and gathering know-how is a (scientific) resource you base on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless it is a completely independent project, you may be expected to add your supervisor (or rather: (s)he may expect you to add him/her) for relatively small contributions, e.g. comments or revisions of the manuscript. But this may be very discipline- and group-dependent (better discuss it with your supervisor in advance).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T14:51:25.320" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T14:51:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-08T09:46:32.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, there are no copyright issues related to reviews you write, and I don't see who would own rights on them save you should those be applicable. To be fair though, I would ask at least X and Y whether they have a problem with you making the review public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I fail to see the point of making them public. Those reviews are of extremely restricted scope; if the paper was rejected, no need to rub it in by letting the rest of the world know how bad it was. Otherwise, as pointed out by Lars, your comments may not be valid anymore if they were addressed by the authors, but even if they weren't, I don't see the point in publishing the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... unless you want as many people as possible to know how thorough a reviewer you are so that they can send you more papers to referee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T09:46:32.777" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="644" CreationDate="2012-03-08T13:03:55.997" Score="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to strongly disagree with eykanal's answer.  &lt;strong&gt;There is no universal standard.&lt;/strong&gt;  You must ask your advisor in advance what her coauthorship policy is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science (and mathematics), it is generally considered &lt;em&gt;unethical&lt;/em&gt; to list someone as a co-author who has not made a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the paper.  In particular, merely funding the research is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; considered an intellectual contribution.  Adding a supervisor's name to a paper to which they have not directly, intellectually contributed is &lt;strong&gt;lying&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, writing a good grant proposal requires at least as much intellectual novelty as writing a good paper.  Most of the good ideas that PIs pour into their proposals also appear in papers; as long as those ideas constitute &lt;em&gt;novel&lt;/em&gt; intellectual contributions, the PI merits co-authorship.  But that only works once per idea; once an idea has been published, it's no longer novel, by definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be specific and personal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not a coauthor on all of my PhD students' papers.  (Of course, I still report my students' independent work back to NSF as outcomes on whatever grants supported them.  So I still get credit from NSF for having the foresight to fund the student.)  The same is true of all the other theoretical computer science faculty in my department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor is a co-author on only one of the papers I published as a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor doesn't have a single co-authored paper with &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T13:03:55.997" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="589" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:04:10.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who has been participating in more of these hiring discussions recently, and been responsible for filling some of them myself, I would encourage you to use &lt;em&gt;extreme&lt;/em&gt; caution before sending out such emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty search committees usually consist of faculty members who are already quite overworked, and who have to deal with potentially many candidates who may all want to pester them with questions. If somebody starts acting like a nuisance, they might consider that person &quot;not a team player&quot; and reject the application on those grounds alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a few times when it is appropriate to ask about such deadlines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When you have received an offer from another institution, but the institution you're writing to is a higher-perference choice&lt;/em&gt;. Then you are doing two things: you're making sure that you get an informed decision, plus you're also letting the other guys know that if they're interested in you, they'll need to make a move quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you have a major update to announce.&lt;/em&gt; This might include a change in location (new position, new mailing address, etc.) as well as status updates—you've earned a promotion or a major award. Then it would be OK to mention this in an email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is well past the &quot;standard&quot; deadline, or a promised deadline.&lt;/em&gt; Then you're just following up on an arrangement, and it's hard to argue against this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; ask if you are included on the list of finalists. That's considered both rude, as well as unfair to everybody else involved. Like eykanal, I think the last paragraph in your excerpt is always superfluous, and should not be included in an email requesting a status update. (You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; and perhaps &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; send it as part of a thank-you note to the interviewer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T16:26:36.233" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T16:26:36.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="589" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:06:18.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They'll call you if they want to call you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the only appropriate times to contact a potential employer following an interview are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Immediately afterwards, to thank the interviewer for their time (and reiterate your interest in the position). &lt;strong&gt;Do this within 24 hours of the interview&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have another offer somewhere else. In that case, it's appropriate to ask the status of your application so that you can have the opportunity to consider both. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T16:06:18.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-08T17:27:36.283" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard rule in my community is that once I finish reviewing a paper, I'm supposed to pretend that I don't know the paper exists.  In particular, I am not supposed to use any insights I gained by reading that paper in my own research.  I am not supposed to reveal the results to my colleagues.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://s2012.siggraph.org/art-papers/ethics-art-papers-review-process&quot;&gt;Some venues&lt;/a&gt; ask that I destroy any copies of the paper I'm reviewing, along with any programs or data I used to verify the paper's results.  This embargo lifts only when the paper is finally published, but I am never supposed to reveal my identity to the authors, even indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under those rules, publishing reviews is completely unethical.&lt;/strong&gt;  Maybe it would be okay if I had the explicit permission of both the authors and the editor, but I would expect most authors and reviewers to vehemently object.  I would feel weird even asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even under less stringent reviewing rules, I think posting reviews is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; bad idea.  &lt;strong&gt;Criticism is best given privately.&lt;/strong&gt;  One of the purposes of anonymous reviewing is to give authors brutally honest feedback on their work.  Referees can offer direct criticism without worrying that it will harm the authors, and authors are more willing to hear that criticism because they know it will never be public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that means authors sometimes get credit for ideas that I suggest in referee reports.  (Most authors are nice and thank the anonymous referee.)  On the other hand, several referees have offered suggestions that have significantly improved my papers, so it all comes out in the wash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I should add that these ethical constraints attach only to reviews of unpublished papers being considered for publication.  Once a paper is actually published, everyone is free, if not encouraged, to publish their own reviews &lt;em&gt;of the published version&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T08:20:51.243" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T08:20:51.243" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:27:40.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that everyone is entitled to their opinions and their right to share them, and I agree that openly discussing published work is good for the scientific community. But I would tread lightly when it comes to papers you have personally reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a serious issue with a publication, or have important comments to make after publication, the venue to do that is in letters directly to the journal, which they may choose to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're thinking about publishing comments on your blog, consider what the goal of your blog is and who your audience is. Are you trying to open up a dialog about the work? Keep a collection of everything you've done? Advertise your expertise as a reviewer to editors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the goal of your blog is discussion of current work in your field, consider writing about papers that you have no connection to (groups you don't collaborate with, papers you haven't reviewed). Then you'll avoid any sense of bias or potential liability/ethical issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to keep a collection of your work, you can do so privately and share in instances when you are trying to demonstrate your critical thinking skills (editors, job applications, maybe elsewhere?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that overall the review process exists mainly, if not solely, for the benefit of the authors - not for the benefit of the reviewer or the scientific community at large. In the end, everyone gets the benefit of (hopefully) a better paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T19:27:40.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2012-03-09T01:51:49.913" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementing GWW's excellent answer somewhat, the &quot;sandwich thesis&quot; or similar concepts, seem to be rising in popularity. For example, in my University, they're afforded equal standing to the more traditional &quot;book&quot;-style thesis, and in my Department, they're the &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; form of a dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning for this is fairly straightforward. In many fields that don't rely on book publishing as the primary means of publication (most of the sciences), the production of a large manuscript-style work is likely a one time event. One can have an extremely successful career without publishing another book, and the mechanisms to publish books on research findings (rather than say methods) may not actually exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, requiring doctoral students to produce something like that is counter-productive - they gain no experience in the future requirement to publish journal articles, and leave graduate school with a body of work that isn't represented in the journal literature. The idea of the sandwich thesis is to get around this by layering several journal-style publications (either submitted or unsubmitted) as the meat of the sandwich, with an introduction, perhaps a joint high-level methods section and a conclusion section weaving them into a coherent narrative as the bread. This allows the student's work to flow nicely into the literature in a way that's useful to all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T01:51:49.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="658" CreationDate="2012-03-09T03:43:12.807" Score="29" ViewCount="24859" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some clear reasons to decline a review request, such as conflict-of-interests or not enough free time (e.g., going on a vacation..).&#xA;But what if you are just not interested in the paper you got (i.e., it is loosely related to what you do, but not entirely irrelevant)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On which occasions is it appropriate to decline a review request?&#xA;Does it matter if the review is for conference vs journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T12:17:13.320" Title="When is it appropriate to decline a review request?" Tags="&lt;community&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="657" CreationDate="2012-03-09T05:45:57.827" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few clear reasons to decline a review request, although in complete honesty, I've never actually declined to review a paper yet, so these are all at least &quot;in theory&quot; for me. Some of them are one's you've mentioned, but there are some others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict of interest. This one's pretty clear, though with the way some reviews are handled - based on recommendations, closely related expertise, etc. what actually constitutes a conflict of interest can get a little vague.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of time. This is one that people seem to ignore or discount, but it's a big one. If you can't give a paper the attention it deserves, or your review is going to be late (predictably, not because of unforeseen things), then you should probably decline to review it. You're not doing you, the authors, or the editor any favors by making them chase you down for months to get a review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of expertise. If you read the methods section of a paper and your primary thought is &quot;Huh?&quot; not because the paper is unclear, but because its far afield from your expertise, I'd strongly consider contacting the editor for advice and asking &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to be a reviewer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't necessarily not be a reviewer due to a failure to find the paper sufficiently interesting. If your expertise is indeed appropriate and the work is not of sufficiently compelling interest, that is a review finding all its own. Additionally, one would hope that you can evaluate the scientific merit of things that - while you are capable of understanding - you might not find directly interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it matters if its a conference or a paper likely depends on your field (how important are conferences?) and the &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; conference or paper. For example, I might make a special effort to &quot;find the time&quot; for a journal I submit to (or would like to submit to) or a conference I frequently attend, but might not for a journal or conference I've never heard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T05:45:57.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="657" CreationDate="2012-03-09T08:52:07.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it's ok to decline a review request because you don't find the paper interesting if it's a colleague or somebody similarly close who asks you to do it. If they're the one on the PC/editorial board and have already agreed to do the review, it is, put simply, their problem. Of course, that might not be possible if you're a PhD student and your supervisor asks you to do the review :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are approached directly by a member of the PC/editorial board because of your expertise in the area and not because you happen to be working in the same building, I would certainly do the review even if I don't find the paper interesting. The same goes for bidding processes some conferences use where you commit to reviewing a paper based sometimes only on the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T08:52:07.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="657" CreationDate="2012-03-09T08:56:14.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had to refuse several reviews in the past, and it was either because I didn't have the time to write a proper review, or because the topic of the paper was beyond my scope of expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found myself in the position where I should have refused a review, because there was a conflict-of-interest that, at the time, I didn't perceive. I didn't know the authors, but I had submitted a paper on a similar topic to the same conference, and after a while, I realised that unconsciously, I was thinking that if I reject the paper (I was hesitating between reject and accept), it increases the chances of my paper to be accepted. I still managed to review the paper objectively (and for the record, I accepted the paper, and mine was accepted too). Clearly, this line of thoughts was not correct, and I'm not particularly proud of it, but once you got it, it's hard to understand how objective you will be able to be, since you could actually over compensate and accept the paper just because you're afraid of the bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer precisely your question, the situation where you don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to review is different than the one where you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt;. If you can't (because you don't understand, you don't have time, etc), then just say why, and it's fine. If you don't want to, then it's just a matter of how much you want to please the person who asked you to review the paper, compared with how much time it will take you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T08:56:14.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="663" CreationDate="2012-03-09T11:34:08.820" Score="8" ViewCount="4844" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This question was written by a friend of mine. I'm helping them by posting it here, with permission.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I use the name-year referencing system (loosely speaking, the Harvard system) in such cases where there are multiple works that have the same first author but a different set of coauthors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases where the maximum number of authors among all articles sharing the same first author is not more than three, or perhaps four, the solution is very simple. Just mention them all inline and use the reference list as usual. E.g. the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;... the complex formation was observed by Miller and Nelson (1991)&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;... cf. Miller, Nelson and Byrne (1993)&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there are more authors in any of the articles, this gets quite tricky, since listing a huge number of authors inline is definitely not an option to me. I'd rather change to number references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, making the references unambiguous is not a problem. For instance, the following references could be addressed to inline as &amp;quot;Barton et al.&amp;quot; without in any way losing the one-to-one relation between inline citations and reference list entries. That is, the articles are differentiated, as the other is &amp;quot;Barton et al. (1980)&amp;quot; and the other &amp;quot;Barton et al. (1985)&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Crich, D.; Potier, P. (1985). &amp;quot;On the mechanism of the decarboxylative rearrangement of thiohydroxamic esters&amp;quot;. Tetrahedron Lett. 26, 5943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Dowlatshahi, H. A.; Motherwell, W. B.; Villemin, D. V. (1980). &amp;quot;A New Radical Decarboxylation Reaction for the Conversion of Carboxylic Acids into Hydrocarbons&amp;quot;. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun., p. 732.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the problem is the alphabetical order in which the references should be sorted in the reference list. If the articles listed above are referred to just as &amp;quot;Barton et al.&amp;quot;, the reader does not know the exact position in the reference list where to find the articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution might be just ignoring this slight complication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other solution is to use &amp;quot;et al&amp;quot; in the reference list, too, if absolutely necessary. Thus, in the example above, the first article would be referred to as &amp;quot;Barton, Crich and Potier (1985)&amp;quot; inline, and the latter as &amp;quot;Barton et al. (1980)&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the reference list, they would be expressed &lt;em&gt;and arranged&lt;/em&gt; according to the inline cites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Crich, D.; Potier, P. (1985). &amp;quot;On the mechanism of the decarboxylative rearrangement of thiohydroxamic esters&amp;quot;. Tetrahedron Lett. 26, 5943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R. et al. (1980). &amp;quot;A New Radical Decarboxylation Reaction for the Conversion of Carboxylic Acids into Hydrocarbons&amp;quot;. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun., p. 732.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't suggest Google, since I did not find an answer after 30 minutes of search. There are perhaps hundreds of &amp;quot;Harvard citation guides&amp;quot; available, but I found none that addressed this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="377" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:52:36.633" Title="How should multiple Harvard references with same first author but different coauthors be made?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="661" CreationDate="2012-03-09T12:48:15.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will typically be dictated on a journal-by-journal basis. As you suggested, some journals use first mention, some go alphabetically. It varies significantly by journal (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/neuro/authors/submit/index.html#manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature Neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;, seventh paragraph in linked section; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/info_authors_kit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt; (pdf), fourth page). Check with the specific journal of interest to see what their guidelines are for article submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T12:48:15.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="661" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:19:19.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As eykanal said, journals usually provide their own formatting, and personally, I use latex/bibtex, so I tend to assume this kind of problems will be solved automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, in the case you describe, I would expect the ordering to be (first name, year), and in the case where there are multiple references with the same first author for the same year, then to use (Barton et al., 1980a) (Barton et al. 1980b). So your example would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Dowlatshahi, H. A.; Motherwell, W. B.; Villemin, D. V. (1980). &amp;quot;A New Radical Decarboxylation Reaction for the Conversion of Carboxylic Acids into Hydrocarbons&amp;quot;. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun., p. 732.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Crich, D.; Potier, P. (1985). &amp;quot;On the mechanism of the decarboxylative rearrangement of thiohydroxamic esters&amp;quot;. Tetrahedron Lett. 26, 5943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the two references (Barton et al. 1980) and (Barton et al. 1985). That way, when I know I need to look first for the first name, and then to the year. Now, if let's assume that there is another reference by Barton and Alice in 1980, then you would have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Alice (1980a). &amp;quot;Bla bla&amp;quot;, p2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Dowlatshahi, H. A.; Motherwell, W. B.; Villemin, D. V. (1980b). &amp;quot;A New Radical Decarboxylation Reaction for the Conversion of Carboxylic Acids into Hydrocarbons&amp;quot;. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun., p. 732.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barton, D. H. R.; Crich, D.; Potier, P. (1985). &amp;quot;On the mechanism of the decarboxylative rearrangement of thiohydroxamic esters&amp;quot;. Tetrahedron Lett. 26, 5943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the references would be (Barton et al., 1980a) and (Barton et al., 1980b).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the question whether you should put the one with Alice first or second, it does not really matter, since the reference is unique anyway, but in this case, I would go for the month of publication if you have it, otherwise with the alphabetical order of the second author (and of the third one if the first two authors are the same, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T13:19:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-09T19:14:14.560" Score="23" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/09/scientists-are-unhappy-their-work-life-balance&quot;&gt;a recent international study on work-life balance within academia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;a majority of researchers and scientists had conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives at least two to three times a week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;about 60 percent of scientists were happy with their work-life balance. The rates for women were lower, at 52 percent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what differentiates these 60 percent 'happy people' from the remaining 40 percent. What do you think are good strategies for a healthy work-life balance? How do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; balance your academic work/life with your personal life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="382" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T11:18:11.747" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T11:18:11.747" Title="Ways to manage something like a 'work-life balance'?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="664" CreationDate="2012-03-09T19:53:58.823" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there's less distinction between work life and personal life than in other jobs. If you're teaching, you'll get emails from students on the weekend and late at night. A paper deadline at midnight doesn't care that you're supposed to finish at 5. If you're working on an interesting problem, you're going to think about it at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the way to be happy with that is to simply accept it. If you're counting on having a 9-5 job if you're paid for working 9-5, then you're not going to be happy in academia. If you're uncomfortable with the line between work and personal life being blurred, you should perhaps consider a different job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T19:53:58.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="664" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:13:32.973" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academia, despite talk of positions being &quot;full-time&quot; or &quot;part-time,&quot; really doesn't work according to a fixed schedule. It's one of the &quot;perks&quot; of academia—the ability to maintain your own schedule, so long as you get approval from your bosses (if you're a student or postdoc) or from your institute (if you're a professor or higher up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the downside is that not everybody is on the same schedule as you are—or cares what your schedule is supposed to be. (Grant agency deadlines, for instance, don't pay any attention to what's going on in your life at the same time!) So, that might mean there will be times when you have to really put the nose to the grindstone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to having a successful balance is to make sure that everybody involves knows what's going on, and so appropriate accommodations can be made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T21:13:32.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="669" CreationDate="2012-03-10T05:59:01.513" Score="5" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or is this the exception to the norm? I know that it's allowed at Brown - but I wonder if it's unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T07:15:56.740" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T11:27:53.897" Title="Is it the norm to allow professors from different departments on a PhD committee?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="668" CreationDate="2012-03-10T06:53:13.317" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;At many (most? all?) universities, a committee is &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to have at least one professor from outside the department (other than the chair, if the chair holds a joint position). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other requirements are to have at least one professor at rank higher or equal to the rank of the chair (the advisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T07:06:40.057" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T07:06:40.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="671" CreationDate="2012-03-10T09:02:46.510" Score="11" ViewCount="1003" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an M.Sc. student in mathematics. I was recently invited by some Ph.D. students and Post-Docs (a group of 5 people, including myself) to join their study group. We are reading a specific text, which should get us ready to read some more advanced work. This work is relevant to the research of some of the other people in the group, but my main goal is to experience this learning methodology with the added advantage of getting to know a few aesthetic results in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We met around 6 times, and it is not what I'm used to from courses in the sense that we don't completely understand all the details. Nevertheless, we go on reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We encounter a definition and we can't find out its exact meaning. In this case we usually know of an example of a mathematical object satisfying this definition (because it's mentioned in the text) and we just try to see how the propositions in the text apply to the specific example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A proof is given with very few details - we manage to fill in some of the gaps, but not all of them, so we just take an example again and simply accept the statement of the theorem so we can use it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An excercise is given in the text and we only solve part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We allow ourselves to skip some details because this text is only meant to get us ready for some more advanced, but more specific, material. My question is how we can find out whether or not we are gaining anything, and how we can gain more given the fact that we are all busy and don't want to invest much more time in this specific reading (we have a 3 hours meeting every week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that I'm &amp;quot;getting used&amp;quot; to some ideas and facts while reading this text (in contrast with &amp;quot;completely understanding&amp;quot;), but I'm not sure if I'm really gaining anything or whether it's just an illusion and I'm not sure how to test my gain of knowledge. The exercises in the text allow us to test our understanding of the details, but not of the general ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I will clarify what the question is, in response to aeismail's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Charles and Nunoxic say, the question of whether shallow-reading is useful is separate from the fact that we are studying in a group. So, the 2 separate questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When reading without understanding all the details, how can I find out whether or not I'm gaining anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can we make the process of studying in a group for 3 hours a week most efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These 2 may have better been asked as 2 separate questions, but I did not  notice that (in my mind they were related because the group study was the first time I encountered shallow-reading).&#xA;To summarize the answers I got so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; possible, for some people, to gain knowledge from shallow-reading and one way to test it is to see if you understand &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; each topic is being developed and &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; the text is structured the way it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When studying in a group, one should test his ability to work out the details himself after the group sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer I got for (1) is excellent and the answer for (2) is somewhat lacking so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T13:36:57.930" Title="Skimming through a math paper with a group" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="670" CreationDate="2012-03-10T09:59:01.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer may not be completely relevant but I still thought it was worth putting in. I have had a few such sessions and I realized a few things. Not all of them could be true in general and I might have been a bit extreme with what I treat as knowledge. Here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your level of understanding is directly proportional to a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your ability to frame and ask grammatically correct sentences as an individual. This also encompasses communication of ideas/questions to experts of the field. For instance, suppose you are learning Linear Algebra in a group. You have a few gaps which are filled by others in the group. However, unless &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; can form sentences using Linear Algebra &quot;handles&quot;, its unlikely you'll get far in research. Literature is way to dense in keywords. Unless you can talk in terms of Column Space, Rank and Eigenvectors (Rather than Linear Combo of all column or &lt;em&gt;the vector which only scales&lt;/em&gt;) you are far from knowledgeable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your ability to participate in discussions. Its not difficult to lag and be left behind in a group of impatient, overachieving academics. Further, it can be a bit demotivating at times when the senior students who read the same content (owing to their heightened intuition) seem to grasp more. As junior students, it is often necessary to substitute the lack of intuition by more work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your ability to appreciate the nuances of the field. I cannot stress this enough from my experience. If you cannot appreciate the subtleties yourself, you didn't learn much. It doesn't take much to learn Elementary Fluid Mechanics per se. But, IMO, you actually &quot;learn&quot; when you go &lt;strong&gt;OMG&lt;/strong&gt; when you see the transport equation and play with it till you are satisfied. An extension of this is motivation. When some concept is developed by an author, he doesn't write in random order. One of the most important aspects is to be able to understand &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; something is being developed. For instance, most Aerodynamics books start off with Euler Angles and then move on to Quaternions. Its simple to understand what Quaternions do and how to solve equations based on them. However, unless you know that they are used to prevent gimbal locks, there is no point of knowing about them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The usual: Your ability to write alternate proofs, write codes (if possible), interpret the results of these codes and the usual &lt;em&gt;other-than-textbook&lt;/em&gt; stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One ending comment : Your level of knowledge is a function of how good you are in the group and how good you are without them. If you are able to develop proofs in those 3 hours together but aren't able to get started on your own later, you need to investigate whats wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you want to know how good these group sessions are, find out how good you are getting at that field as an individual&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T09:59:01.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="668" CreationDate="2012-03-10T11:06:03.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no international guideline on what is a correct PhD committee, so it might be hard to answer your question, because each university might have different rules. &#xA;For instance, the rule of the EDITE (the CS grad school shared by several universities in Paris) for defending a PhD at Paris 6 are (&lt;a href=&quot;http://edite-de-paris.fr/spip/spip.php?article34&amp;amp;lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source, in french&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the reviewers of the PhD (i.e. those who read and approve or not the manuscript, which is the most crucial part of the process) must have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;habilitation&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. they could apply to full professor positions, even if they don't have one) and must be related to a different grad school and university. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the PhD jury (or defense committee) should:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contain between 3 and 8 members (the reviewers might not be included, although they usually are)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contain at least one professor from Paris 6, who must be different from the PhD advisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contain at least half of people not related to the grad school or university. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contain at least half of professors (or academics with an HDR). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, in order to defend a PhD in CS at Paris 6, you need to have reviewers not coming from your university, and half of the members of your defense committee needs can't be from your university (although technically, they don't have to be full professor, so you can have Associate professors from another university, or even someone working in a company). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; After reading Jeff's comment, I realized that I understood &quot;department&quot; as in &quot;university&quot;, and not as in &quot;physics department&quot; if you're doing a PhD in the &quot;CS department&quot;. Then, in this case, there is no rule at the EDITE, in favor or against, but I have never seen it or heard of it, apart in the case of an interdisciplinary PhD (e.g. bioinformatics). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T11:27:53.897" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T11:27:53.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="670" CreationDate="2012-03-10T11:23:24.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, you're asking whether skimming through papers and getting only a &quot;shallow&quot; understanding can be useful? Well, I think the answer depends very much on you, and actually finding it out is an important step for you to understand how you process information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a global best way to read papers. Some people need to completely a paper, to understand fully, do all the proofs, and then, somehow, they don't need to go back to this paper. I've seen a friend spending several days on the same 10-pages paper, until every tiny detail was clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, other people (such as myself) prefer to have a global view of many papers, and to process several papers at the same time, which usually implies a lot of go-back-and-forth, and which also means to accept not to understand everything (although of course, sometimes it's needed to go into the details of a proof in order to keep the process going on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would go with Nunoxic's advice and try to find out how good you are getting as an individual (for instance, try to read another related paper on your own, and see how much you can get). But if you're not getting better, it does not necessarily mean that this group is not working, it could also be because you're not working in this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T11:23:24.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2012-03-10T11:59:19.600" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Internet presence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;facilitates collaboration (via Google), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attracts prospective student attention (Google, Twitter), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;informs their decision about whether to come (Web page.  be sure to say where your lab alumni have gone &amp;amp; to give lots of hat tips to everyone who has passed through), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;informs funding agencies / grant reviewers about how well you disseminate, both scientifically and to voters / your community, how many careers you've assisted with your previous grants, etc. (Web page)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;social media lets you share the papers you think are important &amp;amp; to learn what your peers are reading (Twitter is especially good for this.)  If you are in a small university this is like extending the size of your group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;certainly takes time and trades off with research and scientific publication productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T05:33:16.600" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T05:33:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="657" CreationDate="2012-03-10T12:17:13.320" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the obvious &quot;conflict of interest&quot;, the main reason is time.  Being an academic requires finding a balance on all the demands on your time.  My policy is to accept no more than one major reviewing obligation (e.g. journal article, grant, 3-ish conference papers) per two-week period.  When I'm asked, I look at my schedule &amp;amp; tell the solicitor when the next available slot is.  Sometimes they take it, sometimes they don't, it depends on their policy, urgency &amp;amp; my schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I have this right:  I still sometimes miss review deadlines I've committed to &amp;amp; I don't publish new results as quickly as I think I should.  But as I said, it's a matter of trying to find a balance, and I do get quite a lot of reviewing done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T12:17:13.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-10T12:30:02.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would never publish a review as a review. I agree with other the other comments that the ethical standard is that you are meant to flush your brain of any insight resulting from what you have reviewed until / if it is published.  However, this is certainly not what happens in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've certainly seen and heard about people who actually published on the topic of a paper they reviewed before that paper was accepted anywhere.  Some people just cheat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brains are not something you can flush.  In fact, your mind is an academic's primary asset.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that if you have learned something or realised something as the result of the reviewing process, you should probably put it in the bottom drawer for a little while to give the author a chance to get it out and for you to be able to cite them, but ultimately it's an academic duty for ideas to be shared, not lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually some famous stories of established academics reaching out to bright newbies and helping them publish ideas after seeing a paper in review, e.g. John Maynard Smith and George Price.  These are sometimes seen as scandals, but provided that the original paper wasn't rejected specifically for the purpose of bagging an authorship, I think that is actually a lot more ethical than going away and doing the work without the author who inspired you, which sadly I think is more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T12:30:02.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2012-03-10T12:30:13.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know answering my own question is a bit weird, but I just came across the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reviews.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.reviews.com/&lt;/a&gt;, and since I wasn't aware such sites existed, I thought it would be good to mention it for future references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't gone through the entire website, but it seems that anybody can register and submit reviews to papers (including conference/journal papers, and not only books), and these reviews are then available. I've just noticed (it's probably not new though) that for instance the ACM Digital Library has a tab &quot;reviews&quot;, which references the corresponding reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I try to sum up the other answers, technically, it seems to be legal to publish a review, unless the editor made clear that all reviews must be treated as confidential, but as long as the article is under submission, it's clearly non-ethical, and would be quite damageable. However, once the paper is published, it's perfectly possible to publish a non-anonymous review (for instance using the website I mention above, but I'm sure other solutions must exist), that can of course be based on the actual reviewing process, but it should not be stated that the author of the review was an anonymous reviewer. &#xA;Note that it's possible to publish &quot;negative&quot; reviews (for instance: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1063979.1064005&amp;amp;coll=DL&amp;amp;dl=GUIDE&amp;amp;CFID=69872432&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=93207039&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which might be behind a paywall).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for to all the answers and comments!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T12:30:13.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="664" CreationDate="2012-03-10T18:05:29.710" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer 1: I know the two worlds : academia and the outside world ;) I worked in public and private universities, and in a consulting firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer 2: I can only speak about life for people involved in theoretical areas, I know that science involving living things / big experiments has &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard a lot of people in academia complaining about the conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives (me included, because I'm grumpy). But we have to face it, most of the time there is nothing to complain about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I have a deadline today at midnight&quot; : I do that all the time, but the calls for papers are out several months before the deadlines, so the problem here is planning, not the nature of the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I have to finish this grant application before midnight&quot; : hum, grant applications and conferences deadlines seems to be of the same kind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;It's 3 AM, I just got that email that needs an answer&quot; : I don't think this email is &lt;strong&gt;that urgent&lt;/strong&gt;. An BTW, if something is really urgent, phone still exists for that matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Someone (supervisor, head of the team, dean, etc.) wants me to work more/at night/etc.&quot; : Slavery has been abolished. If you have good results, the thing is that in academia you are master of your schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I cannot stop thinking about that problem&quot; : yep, here this is true, we bring our work everywhere. If a researcher cannot live with that aspect of the work (which can be quite stressful), then he should probably consider finding an other job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that working in academia is working in one of the most flexible field. &#xA;This is where there is a big difference with the &quot;outside world&quot;. &#xA;This flexibility is the problem: many people have difficulty dealing with it, and thus are giving themselves very strong constraints, so strong that they cannot handle them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="43" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T18:23:17.083" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T18:23:17.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="682" CreationDate="2012-03-10T19:02:02.403" Score="12" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in, it's certainly not a standard 8-5 job of 40-50 hours per week. Is it common (and expected) for them to sometimes put in 80 hours a week, and to occasionally put in 10 hours? (say, during times of personal crisis or of particularly intense coursework?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T04:06:58.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T04:06:58.013" Title="Is there generally a high amount of variability in the number of hours grad students put to work each week?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="679" CreationDate="2012-03-10T20:50:56.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on you. If you really want to, you could probably have quite regular working hours (except for the odd deadline). I would say that 80 hours a week is excessive and if your advisor expects you to do that, then you should think about changing your advisor/course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T20:50:56.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="481" CreationDate="2012-03-10T21:37:07.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider France. The second year of the master program is roughly the 1st (or 2nd ?) year of a PhD program in the US. You are not paid during this year, but you are during the next step : the PhD, and it is so during 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you are already a skilled programmer, you can apply for a short term (1 year) contractual position in a research project in a french university. During this same year you graduate from the master program, then you go straight into the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this requires that you are attractive (scientifically speaking) since this is not the usual way of entering into a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS : I said France, but you can probably do that in many others countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T21:37:07.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="679" CreationDate="2012-03-11T03:50:38.357" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that most of the students are event-driven. That is, if they have an important deadline, meeting, exam, TA section (agghh...), then they spend more time to prepare and be ready for that event. Whereas &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; an important deadline, (or finals week, etc.) they allow themselves to be more relaxed and spend less time &quot;working&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is quite strange to define how much time one spends on &quot;research&quot;. Many people get very nice ideas just before the go to sleep, or while taking a shower... The mind is running 24/7..  Even though those people are not &quot;in office&quot; they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; work on their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree also with the answer of Lars that it really depends on the student's personality and preferences. I've known students who really need their schedule to be well defined. They showed up to office daily at 9:00 and left at a fixed time (I guess that being married with kids kind of forces you to have a fixed schedule). So there are no fixed rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T03:50:38.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="688" CreationDate="2012-03-11T20:54:06.580" Score="12" ViewCount="1760" Body="&lt;p&gt;And are there differences in average income between different types of fields, or different types of schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagram below says that the average income for grad students is $17k/year. But I'm more commonly seeing incomes in the range of $25k-$30k/year on PhysicsGRE.com...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DeGZz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T21:05:39.017" LastActivityDate="2020-06-26T19:17:47.223" Title="What are the 25th-75th percentile ranges for the annual income for graduate students in the United States?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2012-03-11T23:36:09.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that those statistics are often averaged over all possible disciplines, and therefore, since there is such a wide disparity of stipend levels between different schools, and between different disciplines at the same school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the institution I attended for graduate school, engineers had stipends approximately 30% higher than the science majors (chemistry, physics, math, etc.). Similarly, at the undergraduate institution I attended, a similar disparity existed between science and humanities graduate students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to ask if master's students, who often don't receive a salary at all, are included in that average. (And, since humanities students tend to stay longer, they may skew the statistics even more than one might expect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One final note to directly address the question: competitive national fellowships in the US currently pay between $30,000 and $35,000 per year as a stipend. I would estimate, then, that most stipends are significantly below that amount. I'd say something in the range of $20,000-$30,000 would be appropriate in STEM fields, and probably $15,000-$20,000 for full-time humanities PhD's.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T23:36:09.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="670" CreationDate="2012-03-12T13:36:57.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two positive points of group reading and shallow reading that I feel were not stressed enough by the existing answers: acclimatization and motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By acclimatization I mean gradually learning as to what is interesting and what to pay attention to in a particular field. When you read by yourself (shallow or deep) you only have your own knowledge and intuition to guide you. As a junior student, you might not know what is considered interesting in a given field. If you read by yourself, it is very difficult to spot what is new and what is interesting, especially for some of the less-than-stellar papers that often comprise the bulk of your reading (sure, if you only read the greats they might make things clear, but usually if you can just stick to the greats you are probably reading something old). This was mentioned in @Nunoxic's answer, by attending the group are you learning how to ask questions? How to use the lingo of the field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By motivation I mean having the extra commitment that helps you to read more. As graduate students we are highly self-motivated, but that doesn't mean we can't benefit from external motivation. By committing to a group, you force yourself to keep up with your reading and work. Some people can replace group meetings by an equal (or even greater) amount of individual work, but I doubt those are the norm. I always schedule a certain number of group meetings and projects to keep myself committed. This makes sure that even on slow weeks where every proof I try fails, and every idea I have is derivative, I still have something to motivate me: the commitment to the group. Further, when I am the junior student in a group, I usually feel the extra pressure to not &quot;be dumb&quot; and tend to invest more time and effort into understanding the material better. The pressure helps me, but it is definitely not for everyone and you should see what works best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this shouldn't be taken to the extreme. If it is clear that you can accomplish more in those 3 hours (and associated preparation time) by yourself, then you should stop attending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T13:36:57.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="698" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:27:10.513" Score="6" ViewCount="2122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I did not know where to post this sort of question as it is very ambiguous. So I figured the Academia forum was the best place to ask, but feel free to point me to another direction. That said, this question is more about getting inspiration, rather than getting answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my story: I'm currently studying computer science at college, and finally being top of my class in a particular course has given me the confidence to strive for greater things than I originally thought possible for myself. I want to pursue a job in research, because I would rather help mankind with technological/innovative progress than financial/social progress... So my dream is to acquire myself a well-earned Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's the thing: I've studied computer security most of my life (leisure-study), and always imagined that this would be my main field of research because I'm very good at this specific area of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recently i've started to rethink this career path. My realization was that this field, albeit obviously not wasteful, was not going to prove beneficial for mankind in general/long-term. Unless we could use these defensive information technologies against a synthetic alien invasion, who's &lt;em&gt;plan A&lt;/em&gt; was to destroy our Internet, hindering communications. But somehow I still think they would succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have started to look into other areas of computer science. I kinda always had a dream of working with quantum computers (probably more a physics/engineering field at the moment), but i'm not really one of those extremely hardcore nerd types (God bless you guys.), so I suppose that's out of reach for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning towards artificial intelligence, because I imagine that the two most prominent areas of research that will cause significiant improvements on our way of life will be either quantum computers, for their theoretical astonomical computational powers, and self-aware &quot;strong AIs&quot; that can help our race with all our physical, philosophical and economical problems (to name a few).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would still like to know if you guys think I should try to pursue something different. I'm not all that great at mathematics, but i'm extremely committed to my work once I begin, so I wouldn't mind becoming one of those &quot;hardcore nerd types&quot;. I looked abit on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science&lt;/a&gt; , and skimmed the theoretical computer science section, but nothing really sticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Please do not provide an answer such as &quot;just learn what you love to learn&quot;, but it's not that simple in this case. I love just about everything that has to do with computers, both theory and applied, and computer science isn't a small genre to pick from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you most sincerely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T13:25:27.627" Title="At loss about CS specialization/sub-field" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-25T21:28:17.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:26:50.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a comparison with other jobs that uses current data on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-college+graduate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simply hired&lt;/a&gt;. You might be able to drill down to what you would be looking at specifically using their search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T18:26:50.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="694" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:34:31.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really have an answer for you as it is ultimately your decision, but I think that choosing a subject based on its perceived potential being beneficial to mankind is not a good starting point. I would argue that you cannot judge the benefits society will have from your research until after it has happened. You can have all the best intentions and fail, or do something just for the fun of it and happen to invent something hugely useful. Many of the elements of modern computer interfaces for example were pioneered at Xerox PARC decades ago when nobody was really thinking about the impact their research would ultimately have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore it will depend more on your individual contribution than on the field as a whole. Finally, even the most promising research might be not suitable for you because you don't enjoy it/find it too hard/don't like the people you're working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T18:34:31.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="699" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:58:13.117" Score="7" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some perks that would increase the amount of dollars that people spend on a venture? And what level of transparency would be useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petridish.org/projects/all&quot;&gt;Petridish&lt;/a&gt; is a recent KickStarter-like startup for crowdfunding science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T21:12:56.370" Title="What are some tips for crowdfunding science off websites like PetriDish?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="694" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:13:24.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a researcher in computer security myself, I guess I can try to provide bits of answers to your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would tend to disagree with your assumption that computer security won't &quot;prove beneficial for mankind in general/long-term&quot;. Clearly, you might not find the cure for cancer by working on security, but that's probably true with anything in CS. However, there is  a clear increase in global information sharing, that is beneficial to mankind in so many different ways (healthcare, increased scientific communication, reduce travel, etc), and clearly, this information sharing comes with security issues. I'd say that it's the usual deal with research: you might not be the one who makes the huge life-changing discovery, but you contribute to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as a general remark, if you're interested in doing research, then you're starting a 45/50 years career in research. If you don't have a clear &quot;passion&quot; (e.g. you want to work exclusively on provable cryptography), then you might as well consider your PhD as the stepping stone to an academic career. So you can just find a subject that you like enough to dedicate the next 3 to 5 years of your life, active enough so that you can get funding and publish, and later on, once you have a PhD (and a bit more of theoretical background), then you can start finding a subject that is more beneficial to mankind (it's even possible that such a subject does not even exist yet, things are moving fast in research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm not saying &quot;learn what you love to learn&quot;, but rather find a good PhD advisor on a topic that you're interested in &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;, get some research experience, and then you'll be in a much better position to understand what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can do to help mankind. Of course, I'm not saying that you can't be helpful right now, but it's much easier to start your own projects when you have some credentials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T20:13:24.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:33:18.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;These funding mechanisms are in their very infancy, so I don't know if there will &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; &quot;tried and true&quot; techniques for a few months, assuming the funding model proves to work at all. That being said, it will be very similar to that on Kickstarter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advertise in numerous channels. People can only support you if they know about you. Getting the word out is the primary goal in the beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide an engaging, easy-to-understand description of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you want to research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why you want to research it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How humanity will benefit from your having researched it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What success will look like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: This last point is often ignored, but it's crucial for the lay-audience. They may expect a particular cancer research project to end with a cancer cure, whereas in reality it will end with the identification of a particular protein responsible for a particular mutation. Stating this will avoid making you as an individual and scientists as a whole from looking stupid in the eyes of the public.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Offer a constant (strictly defined, e.g. &quot;weekly&quot; or &quot;biweekly&quot;) updates to backers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding useful perks, I've noticed that a few of the successful drives offered things such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engrave the name of the backer or a loved on the instruments being used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paintings of the organisms/landscape/imagery being studied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Naming a star/organism after the backer/loved one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final topic, transparency, is more difficult. On the one hand, you will need complete transparency. On the other hand, there is such a thing as &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; transparency. In brief, your updates should serve to inform the backers about your work, while simultaneously and more subtly serving two other goals as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convince your backers that you're actually doing work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain their confidence in your ability to do the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make everything  - &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; - about your proposed project crystal clear for the layperson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the prizes cutesy and attractive, but not too lavish; they're investing for science, and secondarily maybe a little gift&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your updates should, in order: (1) inform about your research, (2) convince the reader of your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=081027&quot;&gt;scienceness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T20:33:18.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:12:56.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a blog post looking at the results of #SciFund! that might be of interest to you: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1156&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks, to me, like the predictors of success are probably having a robust social network presence, etc. and modest funding expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T21:12:56.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="694" CreationDate="2012-03-12T23:27:08.400" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, you sound like someone who is looking for a Magic Bullet to Save The World, not someone who is really informed about or interested in computer science.  You sound like someone in love with the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; of computer science research, but with no real idea what computer science research &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.  Computer security against aliens?  Quantum computing?  Artificial intelligence?  These are all dangerously close to science fiction.  There's &lt;strong&gt;tons&lt;/strong&gt; of good research in all those areas, but nothing — in any of those areas — is close to &quot;saving the world&quot;, and everything interesting — in all of those areas — requires a fair bit of mathematical maturity.  Sorry, but if you don't like math, you won't like real AI research, or real security research, or real quantum computing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do research, and really do it well, you have to love your tools.  You have to love the math; you have to love the code; you have to love the nights in the lab; you have to love the balky experimental equipment.  &lt;strong&gt;You have to love feeling stupid&lt;/strong&gt;, because researchers spend 99% of their time feeling stupid; they're at the bleeding edge of what mankind understands about Reality, so &lt;strong&gt;of course&lt;/strong&gt; they don't really know what they're doing.  You have to love to work in the face of almost certain failure.  You have to take the world's ignorance, especially your own personal ignorance, as &lt;em&gt;motivation&lt;/em&gt;, not frustration.  You have to get over the idea that you are going to Save to World, because you aren't, but you do the work anyway, because you can't &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do the work; it's in your blood; it's who you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not you, don't bother.  There are much better ways to make money.  There are much better ways to help people.  There are much better ways to be happy than to do something you don't really love because you think it's Cool and Important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you really &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; live without doing it, then you really have no choice—do it, and do it well.  And who knows; you may save the world after all!  (But probably not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T23:27:08.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="644" CreationDate="2012-03-13T05:58:24.413" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons that authorship is a difficult area for students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Power dynamics make students suspicious of being exploited, but&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attribution of ideas is very difficult. Supervisors can spend months or years describing an idea to a student, and when the student finally understands the idea they get the &quot;ah ha!&quot; sensation of discovery and think it's their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one thinks less of you for having your supervisor's name on a paper since everyone knows this is tricky, so I think it makes sense to be generous – at least so long as your supervisor has &lt;em&gt;agreed&lt;/em&gt; to have their name on the paper.  If they feel they have made enough of an investment to deserve to have their name associated with your work, then I would give them the benefit of the doubt.  If you can't even trust them on this, why are you taking their academic advice at all?  But if your supervisor has specifically asked that you keep their name &lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt; your paper, you should respect that (and be sure that you understand why!)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, authorship on any article with any group of people should be agreed well in advance of submission by all involved parties, in writing (email or recorded chat sessions).  The generosity principle works so long as whoever did the most work &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the most writing is the first author, and efforts by the team should be made to ensure where possible that that is the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2015-12-12T15:21:02.433" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T15:21:02.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="635" CreationDate="2012-03-13T06:15:26.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Falling out with your supervisor is bad, but it's not insurmountable so long as there are other people who like your work and will recommend you.  Remember: even if your former supervisor is the leader of their field, there will always be some people that disagree with them!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK you can only list two references anyway, so your postdoctoral supervisor and another committee member other than your supervisor would probably be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue is actually the interview.  You need to be &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; you have a good understanding of where any of your professional relationships have broken down and how you would address similar situations in the future.  This may be too scary, but one good person to discuss this with and get ideas from is your former supervisor!  Even if you know you will never use them as a reference, both of you will be in the same field for much of your remaining careers, so it's worth burying the hatchet if possible and finding a new, more adult relationship.  Students often think their supervisors feel more strongly about them than they do, since students have only one supervisor and obsess about that relationship, but supervisors have many students and other responsibilities and basically just need everything to go as smoothly as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If communication really is no longer possible, it still isn't necessarily the end of your career, but if communication is possible that would be my advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:05:39.993" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:05:39.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2012-03-13T06:26:50.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking notes helps me focus attention on a talk or paper.  I seldom go back to notes, but &lt;strong&gt;when I do it's very important&lt;/strong&gt;, and you can't guess in advance when something you'll need to remember will come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently keep notes in three different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Written notes in chronological order.  This was my original mechanism (lab notebooks) and was very useful for me as a graduate student.  Currently I do this rarely, mostly at meetings, but have found binding the notes in order is still useful and helps me remember and organise my thoughts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My bibliography file.  At meetings &amp;amp; talks where possible I have my laptop out and download citations in real time as they are mentioned &amp;amp; write down keywords &amp;amp; ideas &amp;amp; who recommended what paper.  I also do this when browsing social media.  I use bibtex so including annotations is easy, and getting the full citation only has to be done once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electronic notes on my laptop.  This lets me search for the notes if I can remember a few key phrases.  It also lets me edit papers directly when I have ideas.  I have a lot of paper &amp;amp; grant outlines filed neatly on my hard disk in folders with papers related to them.  This can be very handy.  Again I use latex and make comments cross-referencing between note files, papers/grants under construction &amp;amp; citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T06:26:50.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="706" CreationDate="2012-03-13T08:45:11.937" Score="24" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that there is no real workshop or conference in my particular field of research, that tends to be across different fields (for instance, security and risk). There are of course general conferences where I can submit a paper, but they are very general (i.e. either security, or risk), and somehow, I'd sometimes rather gather at the same place and the same time the small community who is working on this particular topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: how do I create a workshop/conference? In particular, how to define the steering committee/general chair/PC chair/PC Committee? Is it better to be attached with a major conference? (I know some conferences have &quot;call for workshops&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested both in technical answers and in useful advices (for instance, I guess that technically, you could create PC with only postdocs, but I can imagine that in practice, you need a good ratio of established researchers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T07:18:33.690" Title="How do I create a workshop/conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="705" CreationDate="2012-03-13T09:16:22.023" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating a conference is a very worthwhile activity—however, even organizing a two-day workshop can be a logistical nightmare that requires a dedicated support staff to pull off efficiently. If you don't have it, you can still get it done, but it still requires a lot of planning and a lot of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was invited to participate in the scientific committee for a workshop to be held here on campus and hosted by my institute. Even though we had the administrative staff taking care of organizing room reservations, hotel blocks, catering, name badges, preparation of the formal program, and so on, there's still a lot of work involved, particularly if you're the chair. You'll need to contact (and sometimes harass) speakers, look for funding, recruit attendees, advertise like crazy, and so much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can make your workshop a part of someone else's existing conference, then you can remedy many of these problems—the existing conference's infrastructure goes a long way in supporting your workshop and its goals. Frankly, if I was going to try to start a new workshop that would take on its own independent existence, that's the route I'd choose. If the workshop inside of another conference received good feedback, only then would I try to make it an independent event in the future. In that time, you'd also have figured out who the other &quot;major players&quot; are who could serve on future scientific committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference we started was created by our institute, so dividing up the responsibilities was relatively natural: the head of the institute was the head of the conference, and we divided up the work of programming the sessions among the members of the committee.&#xA;If you don't have that option available—if, for instance, you're the primary mover and shaker behind the workshop—that puts more work on your plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a workshop under the aegis of a larger program, then I would think you would be the chair of the program. You could select other people to be on the organizing committee, but as the person doing the recruiting, you're going to be the one the others look to for guidance and decision-making—at least at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the &quot;founder&quot; is going to be the general chair or the organizational chair, at least the first time around. Should the conference survive to have a second iteration, then at that point establishing some sort of successorship makes a lot of sense, because nobody really wants to go through the process of organizing all of those details every other year; it's too much work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you want to know, the order did go something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering committee of institute decided to hold conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering committee appointed emeritus faculty member as program committee leader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering committee appointed junior faculty as committee members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program committee came up with several tentative plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering committee decided on final overall structure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program committee scrambled to find speakers to fit new structure decided on by SC.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program committee puts together advertising, recruits speakers, organizes poster session, organizes conference structure, and performs other duties as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizing team handles payments, attendance and registration issues, travel and accommodation issues, operation of conference, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing to consider is that the planning for something like this typically requires on the order of 12 to 18 months, even if you're just doing an event locally hosted at your university (like ours was). For something more complicated, you may need even more lead time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T05:48:51.813" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T05:48:51.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="705" CreationDate="2012-03-13T14:39:56.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your field, sources of funding and/or professional organisations can provide a lot of logistic support to organising a workshop. In mathematics for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mfo.de/scientific-programme/meetings/proposal-guidelines&quot;&gt;mathematics institute of Oberwolfach&lt;/a&gt; runs workshops and miniworkshops in all subfields. The organiser propose a workshop, and if it gets approved, the institute takes care of most of the logistics. Other similar opportunities in mathematics include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/programs/research-communities/mrc&quot;&gt;Mathematical research communities&lt;/a&gt; program of American Mathematical Society, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aimath.org/research/squares.html&quot;&gt;SQuaRes&lt;/a&gt; program of the American Institute of Mathematics, as well as workshops organised by the Clay Mathematical Institute or the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley CA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T14:39:56.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="713" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:01:05.147" Score="20" ViewCount="5606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to get my bachelor degree in computer science. I have applied PhD programs of US universities to earn doctorate degree in computer architecture subject. I kept my hopes high and applied the most of top US schools, but rejected from the most of them (mostly because my GRE, TOEFL grades are not top for these schools, I think). Hopefully I will be admitted some of the schools that I applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know pursuing a PhD and conducting research is not easy, but it is a serious process that requires the one to devote himself or herself to. Luckily I like working on computer architecture and learn about new innovations, techniques, ideas proposed by researchers. I think computer architecture is a field fully open to innovation, research and development. However, at the same time I love spending time on web technologies. I have been developing new applications related with web services, mobile services, social media, content management systems etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think would it be really possible to pursue a PhD and simultaneously work on a start-up project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not looking for answers saying that it would be possible as long as you manage your time to work on them both or it is up to your advisor or program etc. I know after some point everything up to you, but I don't know the PhD experience and that's why I am asking this question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I hope this question would help others in the sense that it is about the possibility of serious extra activities during PhD process, rather than being an personal issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="399" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T21:03:22.690" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T18:39:22.680" Title="Is it possible to work on extra activities (start-up project) during PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:10:09.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the answer you don't want to hear is the most plausible one in my opinion. There are plenty of cases where people even start companies while doing a PhD and then never finish their PhD (Google being a notable example). People also do both at the same time, or change to a part-time PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are serious about getting a PhD, this is only really an option in the later years of your studies. If you start working on a project that is not related to your PhD right away you will probably run into difficulties with your studies, the project or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T19:10:09.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:44:29.113" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, my instinct is &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both startups and PhD advance in the same way - the massive influx of effort. And that effort is often unpredictable. Both settings have &quot;crunch time&quot; wherein for the next few weeks, you might as well have dropped off the face of the Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Balancing that is, imo, a very tall order for a human being and will probably result in one of them suffering, falling to the side and getting triaged if you try to split the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are paths you can try, particularly if you can manage to either consult for a startup in a way that has structured limits on your time, or manage to link your dissertation to the startup's work enough that your effort counts for double. But as entirely unrelated projects? Its begging to have one fall apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T19:44:29.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:49:47.847" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends the most on how much time and effort you need to pursue your start-up project. If you were able to do it and have a normal job - then probably yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, time management is an issue - both PhD and start-up are things with unbounded times - so always competing with each other. The thing with devoting oneself may be psychologically harder, as you need constantly to switch attention and evaluate priorities (but sometimes it may be beneficial - serving as an 'intellectual crop rotation').&#xA;Moreover, dealing with the pressure from two opposite sites at once may be difficult. And don't underestimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For US, note that first 1-2 years is the coursework, so it may be not the easiest/possible to start your project then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it may be the best not to start both PhD and star-up exactly at the same time - better to learn how much time &amp;amp; effort is needed for one activity and e.g. what is approach of your professor / graduate school to your other project(s) (actually, sometimes they may be supportive, including in the financial aspect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student running a sort of a start-up project (Confrenzy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Now failed, or frozen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T18:39:22.680" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T18:39:22.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1180" CreationDate="2012-03-13T21:54:24.333" Score="27" ViewCount="4127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently discovered that several of my papers have been plagiarized in order to create one paper, and that this paper has been published at a conference. I informed the organizers of the conference and the editor, and there is now notice of violation attached to the online version of this paper, so this problem has been solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I came to know this paper only by accident (someone contacted my co-author, and told him that this paper looked a lot like ours), and potentially, we could have missed it. So my question is: are there some techniques I could use to detect such cases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that it's possible to detect all cases in general (because sometimes, it can be hard to distinguish between inspiration and plagiarism, and I would actually be quite glad with being a source of inspiration) but can I at least detect the most blatant ones? (in this particular example, 3/4 of the paper was actually a copy/paste from ours, and they were citing some of our other papers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that as a completely childish and probably useless reaction, I've actually stopped putting my papers on my webpage. I doubt it can solve the problem though, but at least I felt like doing something :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T07:24:09.603" Title="How to prevent plagiarism of my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2012-03-13T22:55:21.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Yes and absolutely Yes! Yes, you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to manage and balance your time well and make sure you devote the time to your Ph.D first, if your startup kicks off and you start raking in millions, you may again decide how to distribute your attention :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what are the benefits of doing a start-up-like project (notice 'like')? You don't really know how/what this project will turn into. So first pursue it as 'passion' or have 'will to do it' to solve a 'pain point' and NOT for &lt;em&gt;'it's fun to start my company, let's do it!'&lt;/em&gt; kinda attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, find a pain point and talk it out with your peers, friends etc. Basically anyone whose pain you will relieve :) Get a pulse of the solution and its possible acceptability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Is this in line with your PhD focus area? Can you 'put it line' with it? The reason I ask is that'll be all the more worthwhile and you'd be 2x willing to work your a** off :) and time devoted to either will be beneficial to both!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if it's not in line and a totally different project here are some benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strong honing of skills with a focus on 'value' - you'll HAVE to prioritize the requirements with a focus on the most valuable/risky items first (and not necessarily the easiest ones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understanding who will be your success critical stakeholders and how/what will satisfy their needs (i.e. what are the pain points, whose feeling it and how to relieve it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What it takes to run a business or bring an idea to fruition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How painful is quick and dirty in the long run i.e. if you sacrifice maintainability/readability/adaptability the business will teach a lesson ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a techno-business mindset i.e. along with the development skills you'll also (hopefully) develop some valuation skills. These are those that help you 'sell' your idea to someone (VCs, Angels etc.) to invest in your business - you'll learn to speak the language of 'business' to help them understand the value of your idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to do risk/return tradeoffs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make you a 'System Engineer' in a sense - you'll be able to look at a broader picture along with your particular skill set (computer architecture)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, assuming your PhD is purely technical, you will develop (and appreciate) business understanding, complexity and communicability! In the future it'll help you communicate well with the 'other folks' (i.e. marketing, managers, CEOs, bosses, customers etc. etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These skills ARE EXTREMELY VALUABLE in the long run. Working on your start-up project may help you at least get an inkling if not the entire understanding but you WILL definitely have a better understanding of technical + business oriented aspects and I think that's a skill all PhDs ought to have!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I am in your shoes :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="407" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T22:55:21.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2012-03-13T23:19:18.053" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is not really a problem you can solve yourself. There are simply too many journals behind individual paywalls (sometimes even in different languages) for you to be able to monitor this sort of thing by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On more of a philosophical note, I would argue that it's the responsibility of the journal editors to ensure that the papers they choose to publish are not plagarized from other works. They are the only ones who can really prevent it, as they are the ones who actually publish the papers; you, the author, reader, and sometimes reviewer, are just a consumer of their publication. Teachers and professors have access to resources such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://turnitin.com/en_us/home&quot;&gt;TurnItIn.com&lt;/a&gt;; I'm not familiar with such a resource for academics, but I would definitely argue that it is the &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt; of the journals to ensure that every paper they publish is genuinely novel research. (This is not to say that the author has no responsibility; of course every researcher should publish ethically.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T23:19:18.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2012-03-14T03:47:18.910" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would even say post your work on some kind of arXiv as soon as you can. My reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might be lucky, and the reviewer will actually find it, and catch the dishonesty early (I always try to google related works when I get a review request). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if your work is there for a while, it has more chance that people saw it and affiliate  that result with you, thus recognizing the plagiarizing work as such.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a date-stamp. With such a time-stamp it'd be easier to claim that your work (publicly) appeared before the time that the other work was submitted/conceived. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting question is, whether you should cite the other work in your &quot;related work&quot; segment, and claim it to be plagiarism?!  (:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-08-11T07:24:09.603" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T07:24:09.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2012-03-14T08:18:12.763" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've handled the conference plagiarism very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then you say you've stopped putting your papers on your website: and I'm afraid that that is completely counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be far more helpful for editors, reviewers and publishers to have your papers on your website, indexed by all the usual search bots, and clearly copyrighted and time-stamped. That makes it easier for them to spot duplicate content, early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of publishing your work is to get it disseminated. Very many journals allow authors to host preprints or similar on their own university web pages: do so. Get your stuff circulated as widely as possible. That gives you the best chance of other plagiarism of your work being spotted early on, in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T08:18:12.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="724" CreationDate="2012-03-14T08:34:41.037" Score="4" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how willing would staff in CS department of reputed universities would be to hire doctorates from relevant non-CS departments, for example, say, management science or operations research students. I see a dilemma for the recruiters here: research-wise the new member may be probably better-equipped to span a newer vista of problems that are currently not tackled in the department, but academically, the faculty may not be trained to teach usual CS courses at undergrad level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few specific cases, in either case you can assume the applicant is interested in CS research, but does not have publications in top CS journals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The applicant is a CS-graduate and a PhD in MS but has no CS teaching experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The applicant is NOT a CS-graduate but a PhD in MS who has worked on CS-related problems for his doctorate. Will he be excused for not teaching undergrad? Or will he have the liberty to formulate interdisciplinary courses himself and teach them?   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T18:30:11.153" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T18:30:11.153" Title="PhD in Management Science and a faculty position in CS" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;interdisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1143" CreationDate="2012-03-14T08:53:32.213" Score="16" ViewCount="4191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw a listing of professor salaries at various departments in Stanford. I found that the folks at GSB earn significantly more than what other Dept. people do. This is the motivation for my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How different are B-school professors? Many of them work on areas that lie on the intersection of Operations/CS/Economics/Applied Math. But why do they enjoy a greater pay (if at all they do)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are industry contacts available easier for B-school faculty when compared with engineering or science department professors? What sort of projects do B-school professors work on in collaboration with the industry? How is the pay-sharing deal between the industry, the prof and the university worked out?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How different is teaching MBA students from engg. or science undergrad students? Does teaching MBA eat up more time or is more demanding than usual?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T07:49:42.800" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T07:49:35.167" Title="Business School professors - how different are they?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="720" CreationDate="2012-03-14T09:01:12.487" Score="39" ViewCount="9493" Body="&lt;p&gt;This some kind of follow up question to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/712/102&quot;&gt;How to prevent plagiarism of my papers?&lt;/a&gt;, since I've been clearly convinced that it was in my best interest to put my own papers on my webpage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, since I need to make the effort to put them, I might as well try to do it in a nice way. Right now, I'm using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr/bibtex2html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bibtex2html&lt;/a&gt;, which is a tool I can run locally, taking a bibtex file with my publications (that I create manually), and that outputs the resulting HTML, that I can copy/paste to my webpage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like it, but it can sometimes be complicated to use, so I was wondering if there exist some other tools? My ideal tool would be some tool where I could put the bibtex (one for each publication) and the pdf, and that would create a kind of database, such that I could sort my publications easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: Right now, my webpage is hosted directly on Wordpress, so I can't host directly a PhP script, but if there were a really good tool, I could try to host my webpage myself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2020-06-28T19:22:42.533" Title="Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web? " Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-14T09:48:36.877" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider hosting it via one of the reference / citation managers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://CiteULike.org/&quot;&gt;CiteULike&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.Mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;, which can take imports of Bibtex files. Your own university may (should!) have such a &lt;a href=&quot;https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/research/publication/index?upi=APSMI28&quot;&gt;web-front plus publication database available, for you to embed into your university home page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Wordpress&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your webpage is hosted directly on wordpress.com, then no, you can't host your own PHP script. If it's Wordpress hosted elsewhere, then you should be able to add your own PHP script, by incorporating into your plugin. There are skeleton plugins available to get you started. It may be that asking on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Wordpress.SE&lt;/a&gt; will give you some useful pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mendeley&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Mendeley: there is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mendeleyplugin/&quot;&gt;embedding plugin for Wordpress&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't used it, but it might be worth looking into. Or, on your Mendeley profile web page, select edit, then embed. Or Share &gt; Embed elsewhere on Mendeley pages (groups or whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://betascience.blogspot.com/2010/05/use-mendeley-to-list-your-publications.html&quot;&gt;article on Beta Science on embedding Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; that may be useful. It uses the same Share &gt; Embed as above, but recommends creating a &quot;Publications&quot; group in the desktop client first, putting your own papers into that, (in order, from oldest to newest). &#xA;Then right-click -&gt; Edit Settings, then under &quot;Collection Access&quot; choose &quot;Public - visible to everyone&quot;. Then click &quot;Apply and Sync&quot;. Then, from the collection web page, select &quot;embed&quot; to get the appropriate html.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;CiteULike&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer CiteULike, they have an excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.citeulike.org/index.php/Importing_and_Exporting#How_can_I_access_my_library_from_application_X.3F&quot;&gt;API&lt;/a&gt;, allowing you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/groupforum/2394&quot;&gt;customise&lt;/a&gt; your own tools. And the staff on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/groupfunc/3124/home&quot;&gt;discussion forum&lt;/a&gt; are very responsive (a marked contrast with Mendeley).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer &lt;a href=&quot;http://Academia.edu&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;, you could always embed your &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucl.academia.edu/AndrewSmith/Papers&quot;&gt;publications page&lt;/a&gt; (and maybe your talks page too) in an iframe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T10:49:02.207" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T10:49:02.207" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-14T10:23:55.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm super lazy and I just use Mendeley's group widget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a group for your publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dump all of your publications into the group. Hopefully all of the metadata is determined for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the widget to generate the code for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Result looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;iframe src=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1281613/_/widget/27/3/&quot; &#xA;frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowTransparency=&quot;true&quot; style=&quot;width:260px;&#xA;height:550px;&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/iframe&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;p style=&quot;width:260px&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1281613/swartz-lab/&quot;&#xA;title=&quot;Swartz Lab on Mendeley&quot;&amp;gt;Swartz Lab&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="319" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T17:23:48.653" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T17:23:48.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-14T11:31:37.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your paper are on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/myarticles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;myarticles widget&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires obtaining an &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/author_identifiers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv author identifier&lt;/a&gt;, which allows you to display your preprints by typing &lt;code&gt;http://arxiv.org/a/[user]&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the widget below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SJYw6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T11:40:46.787" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T11:40:46.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2012-03-14T12:38:32.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reviewing a paper via the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edas.info&quot;&gt;EDAS&lt;/a&gt; portal, you can always look at the similarity score with other papers. in order to compute this similarity score, the use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/&quot;&gt;iThenticate&lt;/a&gt; software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html&quot;&gt;CrossCheck&lt;/a&gt; software, but I cannot remember where or when (note that it is also powered by iThenticate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess all these softwares can be used for individuals. As long as you pay...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T12:38:32.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:12:21.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least three faculty in my department (including our current head) have PhDs in electrical engineering, at least one has a PhD in mathematics, and at least one has a PhD in operations research.  If a faculty candidate is actively publishing good research in computer science conferences and journals, which department gave them their PhD really doesn't matter.  (And if they're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; actively publishing good &lt;strike&gt;research in computer science conferences and journals&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;computer science research&lt;/strong&gt;, they won't get hired, period.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most junior faculty candidates don't have significant teaching experience anyway, so that aspect really doesn't matter much either.  Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to find courses for new faculty with non-standard backgrounds to teach, but if they're really doing CS research, something always fits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T21:46:38.093" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T21:46:38.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:13:38.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within research universities, departments are generally interested in hiring faculty who will improve the department's research standing, both within the university and within their research field. The people who are most eligible in this regard typically have extensive research publications in a given field, and will have a clear path down which they plan on doing research for the next 5+ years. If you wish to compete with these indidivuals, you'll have to provide a good argument to the university as to how you will be able to advance their standing through your research. Depending on your experience and publication history, this may not be hard to do, but you'll still need to put forth the argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, within teaching universities, they want people who can (1) teach, and (2) teach the subject at hand, in that order. If you're a great teacher but aren't that knowledgeable about some particular CS subject - but have a broad CS knowledge base in other regards, and are willing to learn - then you're a great candidate. That's my experience, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's worth asking why you want to join a CS department without the relevant CS experience. You can always join another department and simply get listed as faculty in a different department; again, from my experience, this happens quite often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T15:13:38.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="727" CreationDate="2012-03-14T16:02:08.657" Score="90" ViewCount="6638" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is mainly about building useful contacts during the course of the doctorate. How does one keep the relevant community in other universities informed about his/her research work? One way is obviously to publish the work in reputable journals, but the volume of work that people do these days means there is every chance that others miss out on your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So consider giving talks in other university departments about your work. What is the best way to approach this task? Who will take care of the travel and other expenses? This especially applies to departments which focus mainly on journal publications and do not spend time on conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the other ways to popularise or create recognition for oneself in the relevant academic community (read prospective employers)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T08:47:46.627" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T16:26:52.280" Title="How to become well-known in the research community while being a PhD student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="52" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2012-03-14T16:48:45.083" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is to be highly active in your field. (Note: this will take work.) Here are my suggestions for accomplishing this, and I hope others will post more in the comments or other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do awesome work.&lt;/strong&gt; It all starts here. As a PhD student, this typically requires being in an awesome lab under an awesome professor, but it is possible to achieve awesome work without that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish in respected journals &lt;em&gt;in your field&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Network within your field.&lt;/strong&gt; This includes attending field-specific conferences, talking to other PhD students and professors in other labs, and forming collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T16:48:45.083" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-14T20:48:59.550" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try out &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Citations&lt;/a&gt;, which is a new service for showing the citation count for all your papers. As an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NHu36_oAAAAJ&quot;&gt;here's my small list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T00:00:47.377" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T00:00:47.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2012-03-15T03:08:55.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I would be surprised if it were $30000$. I, for one, get much closer to $20000$, though it is pretty easy to do a little here or there and get a little extra if I wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I do work all day, and I don't spend any of it ever. So in a sense, I get too much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, my school is very willing to fund our grads visits to conferences, so that's not (always or completely, but rather sometimes and/or partially) out-of-pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:08:55.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="742" CreationDate="2012-03-15T04:04:10.343" Score="32" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I write an article, I feel the result is not good enough. Although every theorem is solid and correctly proven, something is always &quot;squeaky&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main evidence for my feeling shows itself when my co-authors revise theorem I've written. Suddenly everything becomes compact, precise and clear. Properties that were used several times get a name; modular parts of the proof become lemmas; etc. The math remains the same, but the presentation is way more efficient and easy to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve my technical writing skills? &#xA;Any tips and resources would be appreciated. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Comment: I'm not a native English speaker, which is an additional factor.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2019-08-19T06:45:18.667" Title="How to improve technical writing" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="741" CreationDate="2012-03-15T05:01:04.790" Score="166" ViewCount="11914" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following might be a slight generalization for all fields but something I've noticed especially in the field of Scientific Computing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why don't people publish failures? I mean, if they tried some experiment and realized at the end that they tried everything and nothing worked. Why don't they publish this? Is it because such content won't get published or is it because it is shameful to have a failed experiment in a journal alongside prize-winning papers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I spent a better part of a year working on, what now looks like, a dead problem. However, most papers that I read initially took you to the point of feeling optimistic. Now that I re-read the papers, I realize that I can say (with much confidence) that the author is hiding something. For instance, one of the authors who was comparing two systems, gave an excellent theoretical foundation but when he tried to validate the theory with experiments, there were horrible discrepancies in the experiments (which I now realize). If the theory wasn't satisfied by the experiments, why not publish that (clearly pointing out parts of the theory which worked and which didn't) and save the future researchers some time? If not in a journal, why not ArXiv or their own websites?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="16049" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T01:01:34.940" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T01:01:34.940" Title="Why don't researchers publish failed experiments?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;negative-results&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="58" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-15T05:19:53.453" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not completely true that failures are not published. Lack of signals, or lack of correlation are published. The point is that everything that pushes knowledge forward is worthy of publication. That said, there are other factors you have to keep into account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some failures are methodological, that is, you are doing something wrong. That is not a scientific signal. it's something you have to solve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knowing what doesn't work gives you a competitive advantage against other research groups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;negative signals almost never open new fields. If they do, it's because they steered attention to find a positive signal somewhere else. You don't open a new cancer drug development if a substance is found not to have an effect. You close one. For this reason, negative papers generally don't receive a lot of attention, and attention from peers is a lot in academia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T05:19:53.453" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-15T06:24:31.347" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes some failures give rise to new theories themselves. For example, there are impossibility theorems in mechanism design (Arrow's or Gibbard-Satterthwaite's) which establish the limitations of implementable mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that sense, failures alone may not be useful in a publication. People are interested to know why things failed or rather what category of experiments/theories would fail. But proceeding in this direction is often fraught with risk: it is easier to state a problem and solve it rather than to derive conditions on when the problem cannot be solved. The former is interesting to a wider class of audience than the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the bottom line: try to formalise or theorise your failures and see if a result looms; else move on to try and solve a worthier problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T06:24:31.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="743" CreationDate="2012-03-15T06:37:34.547" Score="28" ViewCount="2744" Body="&lt;p&gt;When does a PhD end? I know this is a very general question on this forum, but let us consider a CS-engineering group. What is the usual and primary consideration for letting the student finish officially? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the number of years spent, when the professor feels nothing more useful will come out of working on the problem (or of the student!)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the logical conclusion of the problem and the thesis? A student works to complete a problem in 3 years and publishes a couple of journal papers, and finds there is no more to the problem. Will he be allowed to finish or forced to work on some tangential problem simply to prolong his PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T16:26:00.550" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T16:26:00.550" Title="When does a PhD end?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="735" CreationDate="2012-03-15T06:43:07.877" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, there are well established &quot;mile stones&quot; for the completion of a PhD. This typically comes in the form of writing a dissertation - either in book form or a series of papers - and the presentation (and defense) of those results to a committee of professors (and sometimes a general audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually not &quot;years spent&quot; or exhausting a project's potential (or the students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are however often some established timelines to prevent students from defending their dissertation too fast - required coursework, certain timing restrictions etc. This is usually intended to keep a student from rushing their studies and meeting the letter of the graduation requirements, but not the spirit - that they be well trained in their field and capable of doing independent work. But if they meet that, and defend their dissertation, no one is going to make them &quot;run out the clock&quot; or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T06:43:07.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-15T06:53:00.283" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Null results are hard to publish. They just are. Interestingly enough however, in my field they are not the &lt;em&gt;hardest&lt;/em&gt; thing to publish. The general order goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well powered (big) studies that find what people expect&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poorly powered (small) studies that find what people expect&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poorly powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect or null findings&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Well powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those middle two categories are where you'll find most &quot;failures&quot;, at least in terms of finding a statistically meaningful effect. That being said, there's an increasing push to see these types of studies published, because they're an important part of the literature, and several medical journals have made fairly remarkable steps in that direction - for example, if they accept a paper on the &lt;em&gt;protocol&lt;/em&gt; for an upcoming clinical trial, they also commit to publishing the results of the trial (if they pass peer review) regardless of the finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes down to it, I think there's three reasons negative results aren't published more beyond &quot;it's hard&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of pay off. It takes time and thought to get a paper into the literature, and effort. And money, by way of time and effort. Most null findings/failures are dead ends - they're not going to be used for new grant proposals, they're not going to be where you make your name. The best you can hope for is they get cited a few times in commentaries or meta-analysis papers. So, in a universe of finite time, why would you chase those results more?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of polish. Just finding the result is a middle-step in publishing results, not the &quot;and thus it appears in a journal&quot; step. Often, its easy to tell when something isn't shaping up to be successful well before its ready for publication - those projects tend to get abandoned. So while there are &quot;failed&quot; results, they're not publication ready results, even if we cared about failures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many failures are methodological. This study design can't really get at the question you want to ask. Your data isn't good enough. This whole line of reasoning is flawed. Its &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard to spin that into a paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful papers can be published on their own success - that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; interesting. Failed papers have the dual burden of being both hard to publish &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; having had to fail interestingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T16:15:25.517" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:15:25.517" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="731" CreationDate="2012-03-15T07:09:21.400" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;only way to improve writing (technical or non-technical) is by &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and submitting your work to the criticism of peers. Thankfully, in mathematics there is a culture of blogs. When you learn something new, write it up on your blog and share it with your friends. This will help you better understand what you wrote AND let you practice writing. At first, you won't get much feedback, but as your audience grows you will naturally learn from the feedback they provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great tool is &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;math.SE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;mathoverflow&lt;/a&gt;; on these sites you are guaranteed feedback. Ask and answer technical questions, this will let you practice your writing. As your writing and clarity improves you will also notice an average increase in number of up-votes, etc. This will give you useful positive reinforcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T07:09:21.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="735" CreationDate="2012-03-15T08:46:28.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intuitively, I would say there are two &quot;extreme&quot; ways of seeing a PhD (at least that I know of): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The point of a PhD is to solve a particular problem (e.g. show that P ≠ NP), and in this case, the PhD ends when the problem is solved, and the dissertation explaining the solution is written. I have known some (brilliant) people who solved some problem hard enough to be considered worth a PhD in 2 years, and who spent the rest of their PhD funding publishing more papers. But technically speaking, the PhD was finished after 2 years, the rest was more like a pre-postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The point of a PhD is to train a young scientist to become a (hopefully brilliant) researcher. The topic could then be a just an excuse to work on a sub-field, and as any other training experience, the PhD is over when the advisor believes the young scientist is ready to move on. Of course, writing a dissertation is a good way to convince your advisor, but it could be the case that you have a rather &quot;weak&quot; dissertation (i.e. that won't dramatically change mankind), but a good publication record, external collaborations, etc. In this case, it's even possible to consider writing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/149/102&quot;&gt;Sandwich/stapler thesis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that most PhD are a mix of the two approaches (and it probably varies from a field to another, from a university to another, from an advisor to another, etc), and the vision can actually be different between the advisor and the student. Personally, I know that I was seeing my PhD more like in the first case (i.e. I wanted to solve hard problems), while my advisor was encouraging me to be more diverse, saying that I would have my entire career to solve hard problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T08:46:28.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="731" CreationDate="2012-03-15T09:09:59.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read all of them but may I suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226823377&quot;&gt;Manual for research paper/thesis writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1591477433&quot;&gt;How to Write&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1579223133&quot;&gt;Demystifying Dissertation Writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/091350713X&quot;&gt;Professors as writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T09:09:59.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-15T09:18:50.523" Score="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't people publish failures?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr&quot;&gt;Journal of Negative Results&lt;/a&gt; (ecology and evolutionary biology)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jnrbm.com/&quot;&gt;Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnrjournal.com/addresses.asp&quot;&gt;Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jinr.site.uottawa.ca/&quot;&gt;Journal of Interesting Negative Results&lt;/a&gt; (natural language processing and machine learning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jnres.org/&quot;&gt;Journal of Negative Results in Environmental Science&lt;/a&gt; (no issues yet?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bioflukes.com/JoE&quot;&gt;Journal of Errology&lt;/a&gt; (no issues yet?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You might also want to see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v30/n7/full/jcbfm201051a.html&quot;&gt;Negative Results section&lt;/a&gt; of the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow &amp;amp; Metabolism.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T09:18:50.523" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="731" CreationDate="2012-03-15T09:52:47.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in similar situation than yours during my PhD: my proofs were correct, but tedious to read, and every time one my co-author rewrote them, they looked so much clearer! I wouldn't say that now my proofs are perfect, but they have definitely improved. I would associate this improvement with the following factors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my english has improved with time, and I can now use more variations of the &quot;proof vocabulary&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have been working with different authors, so I've been exposed to different proof styles. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have been writing more proofs, and as Artem's perfectly said, the more you write, the more you get feedback, the better you get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have read and given feedback to other people proofs, so I've started to noticed what I like/don't like on a proof that I haven't written. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I know it sounds like a dull advice, but I think that it's some skill you acquire with time and experience. Also, there is a wonderful paper from Leslie Lamport: &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-how-to-write.pdf&quot;&gt;How to write a proof&lt;/a&gt;. This paper is not so much about how to write an elegant proof, but rather how to structure your proof. However, once you have a nice structure, I believe it's much easier to make it more elegant. Also, I try now as much as possible to encode my proofs in a theorem-prover (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/hvg/isabelle/&quot;&gt;Isabelle/Isar&lt;/a&gt;), as it helps me understanding for instance what proof steps I can extract and generalize as lemmas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T09:52:47.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="735" CreationDate="2012-03-15T10:29:46.350" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, my PhD students need to do two things to get a PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish 3-4 papers on a coherent topic, mostly in top-tier theoretical computer science conferences, including at least one paper without me as a co-author (and preferably at least one paper that was previously rejected).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jump a bunch of administrative hurdles: don't screw up classes, don't screw up TAing, pass quals, gather a committee, propose a thesis, write a thesis, defend a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.  In my experience, most PhD students do way more than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of comments on the original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Very few students &quot;finish&quot; their thesis topic.  Equivalently: If a research question can be closed in just one or two papers, it's probably not a good thesis topic.  Good research opens as many new problems as it solves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reaching the point where further collaboration with a student is unproductive means the student-advisor relationship has &lt;strong&gt;failed&lt;/strong&gt;.  Sometimes students really do exhaust their research potential, despite their advisors' efforts; in my experience, those students usually don't get PhDs.  (Most successful students reach &quot;critical mass&quot; long before they finish.)  More often, this happens because the advisor isn't giving the student enough appropriate guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T10:29:46.350" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2012-03-15T11:01:25.290" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;One minor point to add to eykanal's awesome answer:  &lt;strong&gt;One of your advisor's jobs is to help you publicize your work.&lt;/strong&gt;  Take every possible advantage of their existing research network.  Ask them to introduce you to people at conferences, workshops, and other meetings; ask them for help arranging invitations at other departments/labs.  (Ideally, you shouldn't have to ask, but ask anyway.)  Until you're comfortable walking up to or emailing random people and introducing yourself, name-drop your advisor liberally; their names will (or should) open doors that yours won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T11:01:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-15T13:26:27.550" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the consequences of not reporting failures is publication bias. It is a widely described phenomenon that is usually dealt with using meta-analysis. That is if the research concerns some quantifiable results, say some (linear) regression, usually statistical significance is desirable. If such results are not met, researchers sometimes try to adjust their methodology, models, data or whatever else in order to have more &quot;publishable&quot; results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem of either adjusting of models, or complete withdrawal of the paper (the so called file drawer problem) was (and to a certain extent still is) a problem in medicine, as @Artem Kaznatcheev notes in the comment and resulted, as he adds, in registering of trials before publication. His sources may differ, but a paper describing it is e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15597973&quot;&gt;Krakovsky (2004)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0950-0804.2005.00250.x/full&quot;&gt;Stanley (2005)&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2007.00487.x/full&quot;&gt;Stanley (2008)&lt;/a&gt; for more information on publication bias and meta-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="422" LastEditorUserId="422" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T15:27:54.780" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T15:27:54.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:55:36.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the major driver of differential graduate student incomes is the varying sources of funding for different research areas. Some funding agencies list the amounts they fund explicitly on their website (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIH NRSA grants&lt;/a&gt; gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-12-033.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;$22,032 for graduate students&lt;/a&gt;, other numbers available on their site), while others require the amounts to be listed by the PI in the grant proposal (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpafb.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=8981&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Air Force Office of Scientific Research grants&lt;/a&gt; do not list any specific amounts in the call for proposals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the large number of funding sources across all disciplines, finding actual numbers (beyond anecdotal reporting) would be a major undertaking. If you do research and publish the numbers, though, I'd love to see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T14:55:36.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-15T16:43:47.313" Score="11" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any commercial or free products that assist professors with grading students? I've seen many K-12 solutions, but these are generally without robust curve options. I've seen a lot of professors that have created their own Excel spreadsheets, but I'd like to offer something a little more standardized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://easygradepro.com/&quot;&gt;Easy Grade Pro&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gradekeeper.com/&quot;&gt;Gradekeeper&lt;/a&gt; are time-tested K-12 tools, but lack extensive curve-based grading options, like weighting, adjustments for curve compliance (ability to bump grades up but only if you're still within the curve), midterm grades only counting if they help the student, and the ability to switch to P/NP if the student is in a program that isn't included on a curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these may be very specific to my institution, but I'm looking for a starting point at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="434" LastEditorUserId="434" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T22:32:24.407" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T23:09:51.963" Title="Tools to assist with upper-division grading?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-15T19:03:53.580" Score="6" ViewCount="480" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago for every fresh PhD graduate in Management Information System (MIS), there were three open faculty positions. Then the ratio of graduates to positions dwindled to 1: 2, then to 1:1.5, later to 4:1. Finally MIS departments all over started shutting down or being merged into Management, Operations or other departments and today hardly any schools offer a PhD in MIS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that there are still many fields where for every PhD graduate there are 2, 3 or more open faculty positions. Are there any areas with faculty shortages these days? Animal Sciences? Genetics? Psychology? Sociology? Wildlife Sciences? Mechanical Engineering? Computer Science? Statistics? Any field at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T19:19:07.927" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T21:47:59.533" Title="Ratio of faculty positions to applicants" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2012-03-15T20:29:37.260" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will matter. The brits will think you are misspelling if you don’t do it their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use this to help me get it right.  I would look at the “don’ts section”. I think it applies.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawre035/SocSci/Writing%20Journal%20Entries.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawre035/SocSci/Writing%20Journal%20Entries.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again you can just browse through the many online dictionaries.  My favorite one is thefreedictionary.  It has so many ways to choose.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cognitiveanomalies.com/my-quest-for-the-best-online-dictionary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cognitiveanomalies.com/my-quest-for-the-best-online-dictionary/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="441" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T20:29:37.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2012-03-15T21:18:43.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, I can't think of very many fields where there are shortages of applicants for available faculty positions, especially in this day and age with the current economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when times were booming back in the mid-90's and in the 2000's, you'd still have dozens or even hundreds of applicants for any available faculty position. With the economy still somewhat depressed, you still have lots of people chasing after an even smaller number of positions than before. So I still think that in any viable field of academia, you'll still see applicants outnumbering vacancies. It's only in subdisciplines or departments that probably should not have been separated out in the first place that would end up having gluts of available positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T21:18:43.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2012-03-15T21:47:59.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've heard the situtation is really good for statistics in the UK. If you get a PhD and want to stay in academia, you're basically guaranteed a faculty position. This is certainly not the case in general though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T21:47:59.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="758" CreationDate="2012-03-15T21:53:59.730" Score="19" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;When advising students performing research in one's group, what's the best way to make sure that they keep on top of the literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it best to forward any article of interest to the student?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we keep a list of journals the student should follow independently of me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there other practices (reading journal, etc.) to make sure they stay up to date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this something that can be pursued at a group level instead of on a one-on-one level?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:47:10.430" Title="Keeping advisees aware of literature" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="754" CreationDate="2012-03-15T22:16:26.417" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the structure of the group, and the research area. I'm in computer science, in a specific subfield, and so I know when the main conference paper lists come out. I try to publicize these lists, and have meetings where we discuss papers that sound interesting - I also point out papers that have done something significant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only works well though when the research group is relatively homogeneous. If different students are working in different areas, then the basic principle is the same as above, but the sets of conferences tracked might vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same could be done for journals that tend to release issues on a regular timeline. Or even with the arxiv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the goal is to instill some good habits, rather than actually keeping the students aware of the literature. They have to learn to do it on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T22:16:26.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="754" CreationDate="2012-03-15T22:25:27.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really want them to keep up to date, just forwarding things will not be sufficient. You could organise something like a reading group where people present advances in the field. This would make sure that they not only know of new literature, but have also read and understood it to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What actually works will depend on your group though. If people can't be persuaded to take part in a reading group, you'll have to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T22:25:27.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2012-03-16T00:59:52.907" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PhD students I remember the most are the ones who came up to me and made meaningful comments or suggestions regarding my work. They get extra bonus points if in the middle of the night the next week they offer more meaningful comments or suggestions. This can happen in the context of a faculty visit, a conference, or even online. The most powerful setting is at a &lt;strong&gt;poster session&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The habit is to camp near your own poster until important people come and ask you questions. Much more effective for becoming a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;well-known&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; scholar is when you find someone else, have a good conversation, and then follow up on the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also effective and meaningful ways to make a name online. As @Artem suggested, an online presence does a lot. Being an constant contributor to scientific wikis, a curator of archives, and a resource on places like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Academia SE&lt;/a&gt; builds your profile. (It also helps if you don't have a psuedoname like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319/bobthejoe&quot;&gt;bobthejoe&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T01:57:19.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="754" CreationDate="2012-03-16T01:08:25.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a current student, I find that the constant barrage of requests makes it very hard for me to keep up with the literature unless it is very pertinent to my staying afloat. Thus, reading should be tied to my staying afloat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective way seems to be a journal club with the advisor with the duty of presenting rotating between the advisees. As a side note, a journal club without the advisor falls apart rather quickly. There should be mechanisms to make sure that attendees actually read the papers as well as the presenter doing a good job with reviewing the prior literature. I've personally learned quite a lot in this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other method would be to set up a system to share papers. Using an RSS feed is pretty effective along with using NCBI's email updates. Internally, Mendeley groups or Google+ work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T01:08:25.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="762" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:22:53.313" Score="21" ViewCount="14254" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose there is an engineering PhD student who is unsure whether to join academia or the industry after his PhD. He does not want to take chances and applies for internship positions during the course of his PhD. Here is a dilemma: the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could otherwise spend thinking about his research problem. OTOH, when he is not fully into research, he is unlikely to get attractive research-based internship positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should a PhD candidate time his internship in a way that it does not affect his research and is also a very valuable experience on his PhD resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:46:17.420" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T02:13:35.293" Title="Timing an internship during PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="96" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:43:59.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly suggest you to join &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM (Association of Computing Machinery)&lt;/a&gt;. The organization focuses on the advancment of Computer Science both as a Science and profession. Join the community and mingle with experts, share your knowledge and skills with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find a lot of opportuites on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.acm.org/home/index.cfm?site_id=1603&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jobs page&lt;/a&gt; as well. Wish you all the best in your career! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="447" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T10:43:59.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2012-03-16T11:38:47.387" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &quot;Goldilocks&quot; problem—you should try to schedule an internship late enough that you have enough experience to be of interest to a potential internship sponsor, but early enough so that it can have an effect on your long-term development (if you feel it was a sufficiently positive or negative experience to sway your sentiments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, I would say that you should typically do this in the middle of your PhD—probably around your third year or so (assuming that you're in a typical US graduate program that runs five to six years for a PhD). If you're in a European-style system, where the coursework has been done before the PhD starts, then it should be done somewhat earlier—perhaps from the middle of the second year on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T11:38:47.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2012-03-16T15:06:59.117" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're creating a false dichotomy by saying &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could&#xA;  otherwise spend thinking about research problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internships are places where sometimes REALLY interesting problems come up. Especially in engineering, while it's not critical, it's very important to keep a finger on what's happening in industry - the industry/academia divide is a matter of time-horizon rather than fundamental nature of the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you need to have enough experience to recognize interesting problems, which goes back to @aeismail's answer. I will also say that doing it late in your career isn't that bad either, because then you get a three-month interview for a job. That's how I got my first one :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T20:51:48.850" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:51:48.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="770" CreationDate="2012-03-16T17:38:15.013" Score="11" ViewCount="1404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a student applies for PhD at a university and his application is replete with problems: average academic record, poor SOP, so-so recommendations, etc and he is rejected outright. He gets an admit at another university, does very good work and completes his doctorate successfully. Now he deems himself to be a fit for a faculty position at the university which rejected his PhD candidature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will his past mistakes come back to haunt him? Will the university dig up his PhD application and count this against his faculty application? Or will he be judged by his work during the course of the doctorate alone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T02:48:25.330" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:48:25.330" Title="Will PhD rejection return to haunt later?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="766" CreationDate="2012-03-16T17:53:16.240" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of this happening at all. Most people don't have that kind of memory, and even if they did, it's irrelevant. I know of at least one person who was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rejected from high rank school X for UG&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rejected from X for grad school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;got a faculty offer from X (and turned it down) :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T17:53:16.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:11:31.760" Score="11" ViewCount="3784" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: I have the opportunity to pursue a Computer Science graduate degree at a well respected program (around top 20). I spoke with the professors at the university and I feel like I am a good fit with their research program. My ultimate pursuits are to complete a PhD in CS. I've done research as an undergraduate and it has only confirmed my notion that I want to pursue a research track career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More background: I applied to jobs (in case I was rejected to all the programs I applied for) prior to hearing back from my respective graduate programs. I accepted a position for an industry job (this was to secure I wouldn't be both unemployed &amp;amp; not in school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dilemma: Turns out my top graduate school is very interested in me, and I'm very interested in them. I would rather go to graduate school than work in industry forever. The industry job pays very well. I am split between A) working for a maximum of 1 year(It would only be 1 year, seriously I do not care about the money enough to work past a year) and B) going straight to graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concerns are as follows, if I choose A): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could I potentially defer my admissions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am not allowed to defer my admissions, would I have a good chance of re-applying and being accepted a year later?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would my potential advisers look &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; on me for deciding to work a year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already made my mind up it would be a 1 year gig if I decide A). I know some people say once you make money, you may not be able to readjust to the graduate salary pay. But I don't think that will apply to because I'm going to live very frugally with or without industry pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="455" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2016-06-18T08:59:15.620" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T08:59:15.620" Title="Deferring admission to a computer science graduate program" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;deferral&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="768" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:17:40.720" Score="9" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could defer admission, but it's a little unusual to defer for a year. Check with the departmental grad advisor and make sure everything is absolutely clear on this front&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a risk: admissions pools vary from year to year, and maybe the professor who wanted to take you on doesn't have funding, or already hired another student and doesn't have room for more. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I doubt any advisor would look down on you for working a year. I don't see why, especially in computer science. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other questions to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will the job make your application look stronger next time ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are you ok with not being able to get into this university and having to reapply and get in elsewhere ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T18:17:40.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="766" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:19:16.250" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;What was written down on an application years ago will generally not come back to haunt a faculty candidate later. However, actions that might have been taken on a faculty visit—or in later interactions with faculty members at a department—could have repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reputation that someone builds is being a person who &quot;doesn't play well with others,&quot; that will be a tag that follows that individual for the rest of the career. It can make life a lot more difficult, because that person will have to work &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; harder and be a lot more successful than someone who is able to interact with current and potential future departmental colleagues in a civil and cordial manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what's written in an application? Unless it's fraudulent, it shouldn't have a bearing on future ability to get hired somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T18:19:16.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="768" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:40:46.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were to make an opinion out of whatever you have said in this post, I will say go for B without further thought :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons: 1) A one year industry job is hardly helpful as an experience anywhere, let alone for a prospective PhD. There is another question on this forum analysing the worth of job before PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You have said you are not too much into money and also live frugally. Bravo, you are tailor-made for the academia! You could surely earn more in the one year after PhD, and ensure you begin graduate coursework at the earliest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T05:50:03.143" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T05:50:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="766" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:58:06.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applicants who apply with poor credentials (low grades, no experience, etc.) are judged at the time of application based on their &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; credentials. Unless either them or the admissions committee does something exceptionally stupid during the interview process, the subsequent rejection/admission is simply a sign of how good of a fit the person is &lt;em&gt;at that time&lt;/em&gt;. In the same way that a grad school application does not &quot;guarantee&quot; a future professorship post, a grad school rejection does not automatically imply automatic future rejection for other positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T18:58:06.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="768" CreationDate="2012-03-16T19:50:32.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will advise exactly the contrary of what bravo just said in another answer : go for A ! If you don't, there is a good probability that you will ask yourself continuously &quot;was my choice to go for a PhD the best one?&quot;. With this year of experience, you will know for sure what you want, this is priceless. And this is the best way to be really focused on your thesis, if you finally decide to go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T19:50:32.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="794" CreationDate="2012-03-16T22:07:44.350" Score="62" ViewCount="15874" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my advisors suddenly passed away while I was in graduate school.  We had some discussions and ideas about future publications, but he passed away before any of the work was completed.  When the work was finally completed and published, I and my co-authors were therefore presented with an ethical dilemma about how best to acknowledge his contributions to the ideas behind the paper.  Should we list him as a co-author?  Put him in the acknowledgements?  Listing him as an author would give credit for the original idea, however, we would have no way of knowing if he actually approved of—and would want his name attached to—our methods and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end my co-authors and I decided to list him as a co-author with a footnote stating that he passed away before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m interested to hear from others who have been in similar situations and/or suggestions on what constitutes “co-authorship” when one of one’s collaborators passes away before the publication or work is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-12-11T19:13:06.997" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T19:13:06.997" Title="How to acknowledge a deceased advisor’s contributions to a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;death&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="766" CreationDate="2012-03-16T23:37:02.270" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from direct, personal experience: &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.  Once you're admitted to a PhD program, your undergraduate record effectively ceases to exist.(*)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, professors' memories are just not that good.  It's been five years since you were rejected, and we reject many hundreds of applicants every year.  Why would we remember your application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, at least in the US, rejected applications are probably destroyed/deleted a few months after all the decisions are made, to conform with federal privacy laws.  So it's unlikely that anyone could dig up your old rejected application even if they wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, hiring decisions are being made by a different committee than admissions decisions, using very different standards.  Graduate admissions committees are looking for strong research potential.  Faculty recruiting committees are looking for strong research, with the potential for worldwide impact.  If you've actually done good research, why should we care whether you looked like you might not have been ready to do good research five years ago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) With one exception: Since I hit the job market, it's become much more common for deans to request undergraduate transcripts, presumably to check whether the candidate has the right academic experience for teaching.  But I've never heard of a faculty candidate being rejected because they had a weak transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T06:54:54.317" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T06:54:54.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="779" CreationDate="2012-03-17T00:03:00.400" Score="44" ViewCount="2508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am most of the way through my freshman year at Washington State University, pursuing a BS in  Computer Science. Going away to school has been rough, and I have been pretty depressed for most of the time there. Right now, I am leaning towards not wanting to continue my education, but my parents are strongly opposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why I don't think I need college&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main factors that is pushing me away from school is the fact that I already spend plenty of time working on my own software projects. On my own, I have gained extensive knowledge and experience with web application development, using platforms that are far too new to have a undergraduate class that teaches them. These are platforms used in real workplaces and production software, and I would not gain these skills in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I have lost a lot of faith in my school after seeing so much incompetency from people who are meant to be educating me. The professors outsource a majority of their work to their TA's, who I feel I know more than. My Computer Science class is really just an entourage of TA's parroting the words of the professor, with embarrassingly little of their own understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another big reason is that for 10 weeks this summer, I will be travelling to Silicon Valley to take part in a 'startup accelerator program'. This is a program where already-established tech entrepreneurs and investors help people who are new to the game with building their product and starting their company. At the end of the 10 weeks, investors decide how much they want to put into each company, in exchange for some equity. Of the companies that go through these kinds of programs, a very high amount succeed. I feel that if the developers I am working with and I do well here (no, it is not guaranteed that we will make money), college is pointless for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What college is like for me now&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;College has been hard for me. Not because I am not capable of understanding the material, and not because I don't have enough time to get all my work done. I have been suffering in my classes because instead of going to class or finishing assignments, I work on my own projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if I forced myself to put time and effort into this work, I would achieve satisfactorily. However, that is much easier said than done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to start caring about school, I would need to drop all my other software side-projects (or at least greatly limit the time I spend on them). Essentially, this is a choice, and right now I will always pick my own projects over school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do I really need school?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all that I have seen about the limited job market (even for degree-holders) and all that I have experienced in school, I am really questioning whether I need to stay in school. Convince me whether or not I really need a BS, or any other advice you can give about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so much for taking the time to read and answer this. I normally feel bad taking time away from other people for my own benefit, but this is a major life-decision, and I cannot properly come to consensus on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T16:36:25.583" Title="Should I stay in school?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T01:26:52.690" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know from all too personal experience that it the easiest thing in the world to say &quot;I could totally ace these assignments if I tried, but I can't be bothered to try.&quot; Talk is cheap. You may be different, but when I said stuff like that I was completely deluding myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be being too hard on your profs and TAs. CS departments generally don't cover specific development platforms in their classes because platforms come and go, sometimes in a shockingly short period of time. A good CS department is going to try to educate you in the foundations of CS and software engineering. Stuff that is not in the tech headlines now, but is more likely to still be relevant 10 years from now. Still, it may be that they aren't very good, in which case the solution is not necessarily to drop out, but to find a better department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you aren't applying yourself in school, and aren't getting much out of it, then you probably should't be in school. However, if you are not going to be in school, you still have to move forward with your life. You can't just hop on the bus back home and let your parents support you. The accelerator sounds great, but it's a roll of the dice, so you need a backup plan. The obvious choices are joining the military and finding a job. I've never been in the military so I can't advise you about that. If you find a job that pays all your expenses, then your parents may be upset, but they can't really stop you. They probably will be less upset with you if you have a job in hand as you announce that you are leaving school. If you can't find a job that will support you, then that's a pretty critical piece of information, and it means you've either got to suck it up in school or join the military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to completely put aside your personal projects for the rest of the year. Focus on your schoolwork, and prove you aren't just blowing smoke, when you say you could excel at it. Prove it. At the end of the school year, start looking for a job. If you find a job that will pay all your living expenses, or if your accelerator works out, then take a leave of absence. If you prosper in your job or startup, great. If it doesn't work out or seems like a dead end you can go back to school. If you really want to pursue your projects as an entrepreneur, then live on Ramen, save every penny, and bankroll yourself for a couple of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="464" LastEditorUserId="464" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T01:37:01.937" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T01:37:01.937" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T06:13:36.660" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I stay in school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're a big boy now and can make your own decisions. As condescending as that sounds, it's the simple truth. If you get a job and find a place to live, you will be just like the majority of people in the world who don't have a college degree, but are self sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American high schools tend to bully students into applying to college because it's The Right Thing To Do&amp;trade;, whether or not you have any interest in learning something that can actually be taught at college. We have a serious lack of skilled labor, and learning to weld is better done as an internship/apprenticeship than as an Associates where you only focus on the &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; of welders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programming can be the same; having a mentor instead of a professor can get you on track to making money sooner, without the large bills associated with a 4-year program. Long term, however, your salary will probably be lower than someone who has a college degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;But don't quit either&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your parents are encouraging you to continue college, and are helping you through it financially they should be receptive to the idea of you taking a moment to step back from academia to reassess your abilities, life goals, and options. If they're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; helping you through it financially, then they don't have the right to decide how you spend your money (beyond paying for rent if you're living with them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To most graduating highschoolers, I recommend taking some time off from learning. One year flipping burgers turns out to be a really strong motivator to get back into academia, and also gives a sense of perspective that most college freshman tend to lack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide &lt;em&gt;yes, I need a degree&lt;/em&gt; you should then focus on finding a college that suits your personality. Don't just go for the big college because they have expensive new equipment; if you can connect with an experienced professor early on in your academic career, you will find yourself on stronger footing. If you don't like your classes, professors and TAs, continuing your college education at that particular school only serves to give away free money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Unless you want to&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide &lt;em&gt;no, I don't need a degree&lt;/em&gt; you should then focus on building up your skill set while you still have a strong family safety-net. Join a company that's working on stuff that you find interesting. You might need to start as a part-time unpaid intern working 60 hours a week between a job that pays and a job that teaches. Either way, success isn't easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it costs &lt;code&gt;$20,000/year&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;code&gt;4&lt;/code&gt; years to earn a BS, you're spending &lt;code&gt;$80,000&lt;/code&gt;, assuming you complete the degree in 4 years. If you've got the drive, you could start a small business with a small portion of those funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember that failure is always an option. It's ok to fail. You don't learn from getting things right, you learn from getting them wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="466" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T14:38:50.413" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T14:38:50.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="766" CreationDate="2012-03-17T07:23:12.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could - if they learned that you committed fraud on your application, which could potentially reveal character problems down the road (and which is not easily forgivable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I had some pretty painful rejections from programs that had openly courted me pre-application, and they really hurt not only because I'm in a small field, but also particularly because I'm not the type of person who people easily forget - I was very possibly one of the most unusual applicants in the entire history of earth &amp;amp; planetary science graduate school admissions, and I intentionally made each of my applications extremely risky (stuffing as much information as I could humanely stuff into them, and taking great care to link them to &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; of my social media profiles), because I knew that I was fighting an uphill battle (due to my GPA and Attention Deficit Disorder). While it turned out to really help with Brown (where I got a top student fellowship too), it probably annoyed the hell out of most of the other schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, I think it will all be fine, because at worst - everything I did can be attributed to immaturity or poor judgment - all of which can be improved with time and with actual publications in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T07:28:32.833" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T07:28:32.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="787" CreationDate="2012-03-17T07:48:25.430" Score="15" ViewCount="3732" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a student applies to a few good graduate programmes, but for some reasons, gains an admit in one great school and rejects in a couple of equally good ones. How necessary is it for the student to be truthful about his rejects? There are a couple of circumstances that arise here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student is invited to an interview at a school, where he is asked about his applications and decisions. Is it okay to lie that the results are pending? Or that he has been offered admits at a couple of places? It is likely that the student will face a dilemma if he feels the other decisions may affect this one as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it vital to be truthful at the graduate school you have joined? Is there any mutual communication between administrative sections of all top colleges, which may leave bluffing in bad taste?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T06:57:43.037" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T06:57:43.037" Title="Should I be truthful about graduate school rejections?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T08:45:35.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal education is more and more overrated in the current fast-paced world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And especially in IT, were they are less traditional and more meritocratic than virtually anywhere else. They care more for you experience that your academic degree (or lack of it). And more years doing coursework means less years gaining real experience (unless the courses are really great &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;  you can benefit from them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg may be only a few stellar examples. There are many programmers at any levels who dropped out because of their start-ups... or even regular jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are good and bad reasons for leaving studies (there was a list somewhere but someone clearly more competent than me). Good when you see that the university is stealing your valuable time from your job/start-up. When you currently have no, then it may be not the best idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some random links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.good.is/post/turn-on-code-in-drop-out/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Turn On, Code In, Drop Out: Tech Programmers Don’t Need College Diplomas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2010/07/higher-education-is-highly-ove.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren't&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T08:45:35.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="782" CreationDate="2012-03-17T15:28:04.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One goes to graduate school to work in a field or with a certain researcher. That person, accordingly should have specific enough goals before applying that tweaking a scattershot approach shouldn't apply. In the extreme, you are trying to get into only one place and so the focus is more on developing a relationship with the &quot;target&quot; there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, at least I have found my self in similar situations. As to bluffing. I think the best advice, if you feel the admissions officers are plumbing for advice is to say that you haven't found out yet. The advantage to bluffing is that it makes you look better inasmuch as one school will want another school's candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T15:28:04.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T15:32:21.110" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;(From my iPhone, please excuse typos)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears from my position that getting a BS is becoming more important as time goes on.  Many large/midsized companies won't even look at candidates without a degree.  (I have been around over 30 years working in startups to multinationals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that you aren't mature enough yet for college.  Maturity can manifest itself in many ways.   One in particular is the idea that something long and difficult is not needed.  This kind of rationalization needs to be studied long and hard before acting on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest staying in school and getting that degree.  If you decide otherwise, then get a leave of absence from school for one year.  This saves your place without having to reapply.  You should also check a number of companies to determine their entrance criteria.   You will see that the industry is maturing and that your competition is jumping through the hoops in order to sustain their careers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, do as others have suggested, put the side projects away and start getting a good deal of As on tests/homework to be sure that you aren't just competent in CS.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and keep the faith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="469" LastEditorUserId="469" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T17:07:56.543" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:07:56.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="782" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:05:48.573" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a first very generic rule, academia is very small world, and it's not unlikely at all that the members of the committee responsible for the interview know if the results for another school have been given or not. They might not know the results, but they might know that you know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a second generic rule, lying is extremely badly perceived in academia, where the probity of a scientist is very important. If I were to interview a student, and if I suspect that the student is bluffing or lying, that would be an immediate no-go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a third generic rule, competition is normal and welcome in Academia. When you apply for a school, or even later for a position, it's normal and even expected that you will apply to other places. If no-one asks, you don't necessarily have to put on your CV the list of schools from which you've been accepted/rejected, but if the question is asked, there is no shame in telling the truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, long story short, you don't have much to gain by lying or bluffing, but you have a lot to lose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T17:37:24.863" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:37:24.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="782" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:31:17.323" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone involved in graduate admissions decisions, I can say unequivocally that knowing a student has been denied admission at another program does not negatively influence my admissions decisions.  I have all of the application materials from the student, and (assuming the applicant is strong) the decision is sufficiently important that I will certainly look at and evaluate all those materials.  The decision of another school is not a useful indicator of whether I should admit you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, if you tell me you have an offer from another top program, I might even be more cautious about offering you admission.  Why?  If I make all my initial offers to students who end up going to other schools, then I have to go back and dig through the applications and find the ones that didn't already accept an offer, which by that time will be lower quality applicants.  I know of one program where this happened last year and they resolved to make more strong offers to the second tier of (still quite strong) applicants this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T17:40:33.507" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:40:33.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-17T17:37:06.890" Score="10" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Bibbase&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibbase.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BibBase&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; would be a perfect solution if you can at least run CGI scripts; instructions can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibbase.org/help/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on this page&lt;/a&gt; (if you can run PHP then it's even simpler).  You need to feed it a Bibtex file, but if you use Mendeley then it can automatically grab it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: Bibbase now allows you to use just javascript.  (h/t ChristianF)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BibBase makes it easy for scientists to maintain their publications pages. As a scientist, you simply maintain a BibTeX-file of your publications, including links to the papers, and BibBase does the rest. When a web user visits your publications page, &lt;strong&gt;BibBase dynamically generates an always up-to-date HTML page from the BibTeX file, and even allows the user to sort the publications&lt;/strong&gt; by other than the default ordering (e.g. year, author, keywords, research area, publication type).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Efritz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an example of the output.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A custom alternative&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happen to have a departmental server that doesn't allow PHP or CGI; you can read about what I do to solve this problem &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/10/managing-publication-lists-in-html.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on my blog&lt;/a&gt; and see the kind of output generated &lt;a href=&quot;http://numerics.kaust.edu.sa/publications.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on my group's site&lt;/a&gt;.  An even more jazzed-up version, which is searchable and filterable, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidketcheson.info/publications.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on my own site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T18:21:00.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-03-17T17:44:56.267" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to note one place where they do matter: they may help you find a willing advisor.  I am not inclined to take on students who don't do outstanding work in the first-year graduate course that I teach.  On the other hand, students who are at the top of the class may find faculty trying to attract &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:44:56.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="754" CreationDate="2012-03-17T17:47:10.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the beginning, I require the student to read certain papers and explain them to me, as preparation before starting any research.  Afterward, I consider it the student's responsibility to keep up (and even to help me keep up) with the literature related to the thesis topic.  To make it easy, we usually establish a Mendeley group and each of us posts relevant papers there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T17:47:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T19:01:58.060" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as a software engineer for a number of years before I decided to pursue a full-time BS in CS.  Getting a degree is one of the best decisions I ever made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that it sounds like you already have a fair grasp on the principles of programming, it's not surprising that you haven't learned much in your first year. But that will quickly change! More advanced classes like Artificial Intelligence, Formal Language Theory, and Datastructures &amp;amp; Algorithms are very interesting.  In retrospect, the things I learned in those classes would have been immensely useful in both my side projects and my previous professional work as a software engineer.  They're also the types of things that would be incredibly hard to teach one's self outside of a classroom setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that your professors are experts in very deep and specific areas in their sub-disciplines.  They're about as interested in teaching intro.-level CS classes as you are in taking them.  But once you start taking more advanced classes, you'll notice a much greater interest from the professors because they're teaching the state-of-the-art on the area in which they're specifically interested and expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have already noted, it also depends on what type of job you ultimately want.  If you want to start your own company and you already have all of the skills you need to do that, then a degree might be a waste of time.  If your dream is to work at a company like Google or Facebook, though, that will definitely not be the case.  I interviewed at a number of companies—including Google—after I graduated, and I can tell you that I would have never passed the technical interviews without what I learned at University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd say give it at least another year.  Talk to your academic advisors first and explain your situation.  Talk to some professors who are teaching more advanced classes and see if you can get them to waive the prerequisites so you can take them earlier.  Alternatively, universities often let you audit classes (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, sit in on the lectures for little or no credit without having to do the homework or take the exams).  I'd recommend sitting in on some of the more advanced classes to get a taste of the light at the end of the tunnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T19:01:58.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="796" CreationDate="2012-03-17T19:48:50.560" Score="18" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How easy is it for faculty members working at a reputable university to become entrepreneurs? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the faculty member sees an opportunity for a great product and wants to set up a small office with a few engineers working with one or two students, will the university sponsor such a venture? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How enthusiastic or forthcoming will the industry and VCs in general be towards this? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, how common are such professor-run companies for, say engineering faculty in top US schools?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T10:13:48.370" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T00:18:36.020" Title="How good are entrepreneurial opportunities for faculty members?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:00:16.540" Score="34" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am most of the way through my freshman year.... Going away to school has been rough, and I have been pretty depressed for most of the time there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as the most important part of your question.  I strongly encourage you to find help with your depression before you make a decision.  Talk with your faculty mentors, with friends, and with family.  Take advantage of your university's student counseling services.  Transitioning into adulthood is &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt;, whether you do it in school or out; you don't have do it alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:00:16.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="776" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:11:42.360" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar situation. In this case, we did exactly what you did: we indicated that the participant (not a team leader, but a team member in this case) was a co-author, but that he was deceased. I think this is the only fair way to recognize substantial contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the difficult comes if there is a challenge to the work of the deceased. In our case, however, we had a very substantial paper trail which was audited and reviewed, so the individual work could have been sorted out and dealt with appropriately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the best defense is generally to keep good working notes and use version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:11:42.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="782" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:19:27.327" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I make it a point &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to ask about alternate schools and programs that a candidate might be applying to in addition to my group. In this way, there is no bias on my part. If the candidate freely offers that information, I will of course take it into consideration, but I have not solicited it, and therefore there should be no compulsion on the part of the candidate to admit to things, one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's not in general a good idea to lie openly to academic institutions. As several other respondees have pointed out, it can be easily caught—particularly if you're in a small field. Moreover, there have been a number of high-profile cases in recent years of academics losing their jobs over misrepresentations of their credentials. So anything that even hints at dishonesty can get you into trouble. (Moreover, many schools do have an &quot;ethics&quot; clause in their admissions policies—and &lt;em&gt;intentionally&lt;/em&gt; lying, either in the application or during interviews or a visit, can be construed in some cases as sufficient to lead to a retraction of an offer of admission!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:19:27.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="792" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:22:14.233" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite common in American universities, and there are probably thousands of start-ups that have arisen out of university-based research. The question of financing such a venture is of course a challenging one to answer, but with the right contacts, is usually available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of at least four or five such start-ups in the department I attended for graduate school, and I imagine there are several more in the planning stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how enthusiastic industry and VC's are, well, I think it depends entirely on the strength of the idea, and how &quot;market-ready&quot; the concept is. The sooner it's ready to go, the more enthusiastically people will flock to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:22:14.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-18T06:34:55.257" Score="26" ViewCount="5670" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is related to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/670/skimming-through-a-math-paper-with-a-group&quot;&gt;Skimming through a math paper with a group&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/689/what-do-professors-gain-out-of-teaching-reading-courses-with-individual-phd-stud&quot;&gt;What do professors gain out of teaching reading courses with individual Ph.D students&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but from the other side :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've experimented with various ways to run my advanced Ph.D seminar, ranging from almost-lectures to &quot;students present papers&quot; to &quot;students present textbook-level material&quot; to &quot;let's all work on a problem together&quot;. I don't think any of them have really worked to my satisfaction in the sense of ending the semester feeling that students have a command (as opposed to knowledge) of the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been reading about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford tutorial style&lt;/a&gt; approach, which can crudely be approximated by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professor assigns reading material once a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students form pairs and meet with professor once a week for about 1-1.5 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students run the meeting (maybe one person presents and the other critiques, or they work out shared portions of the material on the board). Professor keeps quiet as far as possible except to unblock. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This format sounds tempting, as something that might work with a small group (at most 10 people). Does anyone have experience with this format and would it be suitable for advanced material at the graduate level ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm hoping it doesn't matter too much for this discussion, the topics for the seminar would be in theoretical computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T23:49:54.787" Title="How can one successfully run a reading group?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="768" CreationDate="2012-03-18T11:57:14.507" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I have contradictory advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you've been offered a funded place, there is no guarantee the funding will still be there in a year.  What you know is that you are good enough to get into a grad school, but there is a luck component too.  The school I went to told us that 1 in 10 applicants was good enough to get in, but less than 1 of 3 of those &quot;good enough&quot; could have places any particular year.  This is both because of funding constraints &amp;amp; because supervisors can only supervise so many people well at one time.  So you are very likely really deciding whether to work before going through the application process again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nevertheless, I agree with Sylvain that it is not a good idea to do a PhD always wondering whether you would have liked industry better.  I worked for 5 years before doing my PhD, and now I'm an associate professor.  Two things make this route hard though: 1) getting used to making money (I addressed this by putting most of my salary in savings) and 2) getting used to being treated as an adult.  But there is a big win when you hit the hard parts of your PhD &amp;amp; think &quot;would I be happier in industry?  Nah, that was boring.&quot;  Friends that were academically stronger than but lacked that certainty had a tougher time during the troughs than I did.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T11:57:14.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2012-03-18T12:01:40.463" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to ekaynal's answer, you can also &lt;strong&gt;run a conference or workshop&lt;/strong&gt;. But be careful that this doesn't detract from the quality of your research!   &lt;strong&gt;Running department seminars&lt;/strong&gt; can help too because you will get to invite &amp;amp; host speakers who will therefore learn your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T12:01:40.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="806" CreationDate="2012-03-18T13:20:38.430" Score="35" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computational scientist and I often find myself much more productive when working with others with resonating mind. When working alone, my motivation level is lower, distracted more easily, and I feel the progress is slower. However, in academic jobs, I often hear that it is important to show that you are an independent researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q1. What are the defining properties of an independent researcher?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q2. How can I show that I am independent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q3. I like working in&#xA;teams, is academia (esp faculty in research university) not a good&#xA;career path for me? (I could think independently, but I could do&#xA;better with others, so why be independent?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T23:57:57.370" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T23:57:57.370" Title="How independent should an academic be?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="800" CreationDate="2012-03-18T14:29:57.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in my field (mathematics), there are people who do almost all their work collaboratively.  Academia &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a good place for such people, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It varies a lot, not only by field, but by subfield, so you'll want to take that into account when choosing a specialty.  (Math has a lot of single authored papers, while the lab sciences have very few.  I gather CS is somewhere in between, and that it depends on the area.  Even within math, it depends on the particular subfield, sometimes for reasons that have more to do with culture than anything intrinsic to the subject.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're in an area where single authored papers are common, you'll eventually be expected to produce some, just to demonstrate that you're not be carried along by your co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T14:29:57.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="803" CreationDate="2012-03-18T16:56:19.317" Score="10" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am a student in the Netherlands following a bachelor program in computer science. I am currently considering applying for a master's program in the United States. It is hard to asses my chances, because of the large difference between the systems in the Netherlands and the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few factors which probably affect my chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I cannot directly compare my grades with grades used in the United States. In the Netherlands we use a 1-10 absolute grading system. I currently have a grade average of 8.0, only had 7s, 8s and 9s.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One thing I noticed is that in the United States a bachelor program is not naturally followed by a master's program, unlike in the Netherlands where this is the default.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The duration of a bachelor program in the Netherlands is three instead of four years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Currently I do not plan on applying for a Ph.D position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these factors significantly effect chances to be admitted to a master's program in the United States and how do I asses my chance to get accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-18T20:10:09.700" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T20:10:09.700" Title="How to assess the chance to get accepted to a master's program in the United States?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="802" CreationDate="2012-03-18T17:35:59.317" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there's a huge enough discrepancy between the technical content of the European three-year bachelor's and the four-year American bachelor's to make that a big concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, where you may run into problems is that your GPA might not be considered competitive for a top program, if it's only in the 8.0's out of 10. (It might get translated to a 3.3 or so, which would be problematic.) What will make up for this is some statement that you're near the top of your CS cohort, and good letters of recommendation will also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you'll also need to do some research is on whether the departments you want to apply to offer &lt;em&gt;terminal&lt;/em&gt; master's programs; if not, it will make it a little more difficult, as the expectation would be that if you are admitted to the master's program, you will then continue on to the PhD program thereafter. (At such schools, a stipend is typically offered during the master's phase of the program; at schools that offer a terminal master's, the funding sources for the master's degree-only candidates is usually quite distinct, if it is available at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T17:35:59.317" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="800" CreationDate="2012-03-18T17:41:17.417" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of independence is an important one, but it doesn't obligate you to work in isolation. Instead, what it means is that you are capable of generating and pursuing your own research ideas. This can be done in collaboration with others, but there's still needs to be some evidence that you can lead the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways to show independence are to have some collaborative efforts where you are in the &quot;leadership&quot; positions—first or last author. If you can do this across multiple independent collaborations, preferably in multiple disciplinary areas, that will show that you have some lateral flexibility, which is among the hallmarks of an independent researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see, in this day and age, the desire to work in teams as ruling out a career in academia. I might not lean towards it as a first choice—instead, I'd probably steer such a person into a research institute like a Max-Planck-Institut here in Germany, or a DOE lab in the U.S. Those offer more collaborative environments which would be a better &quot;fit&quot; for someone who prefers to be a team player than a team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T17:41:17.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="800" CreationDate="2012-03-18T20:02:36.753" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have a similar mindset. I like independent work, but I find that I am more motivated when working with others. However, I don't think that will hinder your ability to show that you are an independent researcher. As mentioned by @aeismail, the defining point of &lt;strong&gt;independence is that you are able to generate and pursue your own research ideas and agenda&lt;/strong&gt;. If you do it alone or with others is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of cases, like when you applying for positions, etc. You will have &lt;strong&gt;reference letters&lt;/strong&gt; to accompany your CV. Thus, the author-list is not the only place to show your independence. In the letters your coauthors and mentors can attest to your independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;research statement&lt;/strong&gt; or cover letter also is a great place to highlight your independence. If you work with lots of different people, then you can show how all these projects tie into a broader theme which is distinctly your own. In computational science it could very well be a theme like &quot;I like developing information theoretic explanations for neural and multi-agent activity&quot; and then work with an auditory group, a cognitive group, and a population biologists can be great supporting evidence of the fact that your ideas and approach are unique and independent, not to mention widely applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a &lt;strong&gt;leadership and organizational role&lt;/strong&gt; is another clear way to show your independence. A personal example: I prefer to read and discuss papers with others, so I organized a reading group that meets weekly (ideally). A bit of my time gets consumed in organizing and managing this group, but it is more than made up for by the extra motivation I get to stay on top of the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the atmosphere; &lt;strong&gt;group-work is not an antithesis to academia&lt;/strong&gt;. It is very important to show that you 'play well with others' and frequent collaboration is a great way to do so. Especially with the large push for multi-disciplinary work, being able to work with people of various background is a great asset. Further, as a faculty in a research university, one of the things you will be expected to do is supervise and teach students. This means you need experience in sharing and developing your ideas with others, something that working in isolation does not nurture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T20:02:36.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="800" CreationDate="2012-03-18T20:17:50.053" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Collaboration is generally seen as a major strength in computer science and computational science, not a weakness.  One of the biggest questions we ask about any faculty candidate in my department is &quot;Who in the department/college will they work with?&quot;  We do occasionally hire faculty that work alone in their cave and occasionally emit theorems, but they're rare exceptions (and even they still work with their students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to &lt;strong&gt;establish a reputation as a leader&lt;/strong&gt; in your collaborations, rather than a follower.  You need to establish your own research agenda, instead of just following someone else's.  More importantly, you need to be &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; to have your own research agenda, instead of just following someone else's.  Your agenda must be visible in your publication record, in your recommendation letters, and (eventually) in your funding record.  To this end, it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important to do a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit your collaborations with more senior researchers, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; your advisor, &lt;em&gt;especially between getting your PhD and getting tenure&lt;/em&gt;.  As I've suggested elsewhere, publishing at least one paper without your advisor before you graduate is a strong signal of independence, even if you have other coauthors.  Once you have your PhD, &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT&lt;/strong&gt; publish with your advisor for at least a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not always publish with the same set of coauthors.  It's fine to have two or three different groups of people that you always work with, as long as you can wind a consistent story that ties most of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work in those different groups together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Once you have a permanent job:) Get at least one grant as a principal investigator, not just as a co-PI.  Definitely join other grants as a co-PI, too, but you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have at least one grant with your name on top to get tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T22:19:34.920" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T22:19:34.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="797" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:01:11.377" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen reading seminars done like this: in the beginning of the semester, professor publishes a full list of papers + a little extra that (s)he wants to cover. Each student then picks a paper or two and the date when they will present it. Then the student reads the paper, prepares a presentation on it, and speaks about it to the rest of the group. Presentation can be formal or informal (depending on the size of the class) and encourage other students to ask questions about the material. What I like about this approach is that 1) students get to pick a paper that will engage them 2) they have to read it and understand it so that they could present it to the group and be able to answer questions about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="476" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T21:01:11.377" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="768" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:10:13.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This decision strongly depends on your character and goals, so you should ask yourself what you will gain and loose while working in the industry for a year / going to grad school right away. What skills will you learn while working that will help you with PhD later? Will you have enough motivation to complete your PhD if you do not take a year off school? Will your college wait for you / defer acceptance? Are you a kind of person for who it takes a while to get into a routine (of a job - or of taking classes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess these are just more questions rather than answers, but I do not think anyone can (or should) give you a definite &quot;A&quot; or &quot;B&quot; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="476" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T21:10:13.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:12:45.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have read a lot of literature and then realized that you are in a dead end, you can at least publish a review on all the methods and techniques you've learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="476" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T21:12:45.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="811" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:39:02.230" Score="14" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I was searching for materials for my research topic, I found a research paper which is signed as copyright by &quot;Some organization&quot;. Does that mean that I could not use the content of this paper nor the ideas it presents until the paper owner gives me permissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="90" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T09:09:19.873" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T09:09:19.873" Title="What does it mean when a paper is copyrighted by an organization?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="810" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:53:25.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. Copyright prohibits you from presenting the work as yours under any circumstances. In addition, it prohibits you from publishing or recopying large segments of the work, without securing the permission of the owner of the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the existence of copyright does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; exclude you from citing the work of others, nor mentioning what their key ideas are. Such use of copyright is covered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html&quot;&gt;fair-use guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. Under these circumstances, though, you are still responsible for following the proper citation procedures of your university or the journal to which you are submitting the work under question. Note, however, that this is a tricky balance, and you should be careful to directly quote only the material you absolutely need to duplicate, as fair use is not an absolute guideline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-19T13:06:41.417" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T13:06:41.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="818" CreationDate="2012-03-19T01:33:35.163" Score="16" ViewCount="1870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international student in a master program in applied math department in the United States. There are two ways that I have known in which the person like me can find the research opportunities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent research: do it on your own. Is it common for most math students to do research in this way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research for the master thesis: As I know, the credits for the master program in applied math in my school are mainly for courses. You will not do research until you are writing thesis. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else opportunities can a math student like me have for doing research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-03-19T04:47:14.570" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T08:10:23.123" Title="How can a master student get research opportunities?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="817" CreationDate="2012-03-19T05:16:08.847" Score="36" ViewCount="2256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there is nothing preventing me from publishing an article in a different research field, but is it beneficial other than for satisfying my own interest/curiosity? Presumably these may be added to my CV, and possibly included for funding applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T11:57:08.160" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T11:57:08.160" Title="Is it beneficial to publish papers not related to your primary research field?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;self-promotion&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2012-03-19T05:16:27.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the structures for funding mathematics research to comment directly. However, there could be the possibility of doing research as a part-time &quot;job&quot; to help earn some money. Since it's part of the university, it's normally allowed under the immigration rules (although you should check this for yourself, and this does not constitute legal advice!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suspect, however, that in mathematics, this would be primarily the applied mathematics groups who would need such work, as they are more likely to have computer codes or experimental apparati to prepare and use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T05:16:27.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2012-03-19T06:08:25.190" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it depends, on how tangential the research field is from your primary focus, and how you came to work on that field. Researchers working on interdisciplinary fields often have this kind of a scenario (which I would label as an advantageous one) - it would help you in case you ever wanted to change your research focus, as the grant agencies could see from your publication track record that you have done publishable research on more than one research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it might not be a very good idea to use funds/grants from your primary research focus for working on a different field. You should be able to show that these publications were &lt;em&gt;in addition to&lt;/em&gt; the work that you published in your principal research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T06:08:25.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:39:30.453" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm honestly surprised at the question.  &quot;Primary&quot; does not mean &quot;only&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a good paper, then &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt; you should publish it.  Aside from the obvious personal benefits of making you look more diverse, increasing your visibility in another field, and possibly creating opportunities for future collaboration, you're doing what research is for: expanding human knowledge.  And if it's not a good paper, then &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt; you shouldn't publish it, even if it is in your primary field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to echo shan23's comment: Don't use grants in area X to fund research in area Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="56688" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T09:21:52.743" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T09:21:52.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:42:26.017" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find the hallway where your department's faculty have their offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knock on the first door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the professor answers, say &quot;Hi, I'm [name].  I'm a master's student, and I'm interested in doing research.  Do you have some time to talk?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat for the remaining doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It also helps to have some idea what &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of research you want to do, and to do some background reading on the professors' research before you talk to them.  We like it when students say &quot;I read your paper on X, and I have a few questions.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T09:42:26.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="810" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:47:29.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  Copyright covers the verbatim text and figures, not the ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T09:47:29.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="810" CreationDate="2012-03-19T10:41:51.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: unless the document is marked &quot;confidential&quot; you can probably quote short passages verbatim and you can certainly make use of the &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on some of the other responses given here: In most jurisdictions, copyright allows the protection of the &lt;em&gt;expression&lt;/em&gt; of an idea (e.g. as written down in a book or article) but not the idea itself. Legal protection of ideas is covered by patent law, which is much more restrictive than copyright, with much shorter periods of protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth knowing that phrases like &quot;All rights reserved&quot; are partly redundant these days in most countries – all works are copyrighted automatically, whether or not they include this phrase or similar. However, it's still useful to know who owns the copyright to a particular work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is referred to as &quot;Fair Use&quot; under US copyright law may not exist or may be very different in other jurisdictions. For example, in the United Kingdom there is a rather more restrictive version called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://copyrighttoolkit.com/fair.html&quot;&gt;Fair Dealing&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some time to kill, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php&quot;&gt;Bound by Law&lt;/a&gt; is a useful comicbook-style introduction to copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T10:41:51.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="823" CreationDate="2012-03-19T14:32:17.653" Score="10" ViewCount="2467" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a conference publishing papers related to any EC/CS engineering field. What is the exact difference between different types of papers published in such a conference, i.e., main conference paper, mini-conference paper and workshop paper? Is it inferior to have one's work published in a mini-conference or workshop as opposed to a full conference? Are there any other such sessions within usual conferences for these areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T08:43:17.370" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T12:15:42.880" Title="Different types of conference publications" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:11:36.320" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Miniconferences and workshops are usually considered to be satellite events to a main conference. Often, these are on specialized topics, and often what starts as a workshop becomes a spin off conference of its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's tricky to say that it's inferior, but depending on the workshop/miniconference it might certainly be more specialized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T17:11:36.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2012-03-19T18:05:33.080" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the value of the publication, it will matter more how it is published than whether it's a workshop or conference. If the proceedings are published by a well-known publisher (i.e. with ISBN/ISSN), a workshop paper might be as &quot;valuable&quot; as a conference paper. If on the other hand there are no formal proceedings or just something like a folder, it would be less &quot;valuable&quot;. That usually leaves the opportunity to publish the same paper elsewhere though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most workshops in CS don't have formal proceedings, so in general it would be better to publish at a conference. That said, in some cases the reviewing process for a workshop/symposium might be more stringent. As smaller events are more specialised, the feedback you get on your work might be better than at a bigger event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally would always go for publication at a conference if I thought the content of the paper to be good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T18:05:33.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="826" CreationDate="2012-03-20T04:14:22.110" Score="19" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;What steps must an educational institution wanting to recruit good faculty take? There is a cycle in the academia: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good doctorates from top universities invariably join other top universities as faculty members. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good students aspire to study in top universities under excellent faculty members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose a new educational institution or department springs up and desires to set up a top-quality group, how does it break into this cycle? I suppose this could take some years, but is money-power the only thing that could be wielded by the institute to achieve its end? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T00:18:36.317" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T00:18:36.317" Title="How should an educational institute woo good faculty?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2012-03-20T05:47:32.133" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most effective way to shoot up the rankings is to &lt;strong&gt;focus&lt;/strong&gt; on a few areas, make a number of high-profile hires in those areas, and aggressively publicize the institute and recruit students. This is exactly what places like IST Vienna and KAUST in Saudi Arabia are trying to do, and is also what various departments have done in the past to boost their profile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, this takes a lot of money power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T05:47:32.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2012-03-20T06:58:36.537" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Money&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there's very little way - I think - for a university to improve its standing across the board. Institutional reputation on the level of say, an Ivy League school, where everyone assumes each department must be excellent because they're at &lt;em&gt;Ivy&lt;/em&gt; is a tall order, and one that I suspect is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in a particular field (or a particular School)? Money. And the willingness to take risks. A few ways to help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a few key faculty members. Established researchers with very solid reputations, and see if you can poach them. This might not just be a question of &quot;how big of a check do we need to write&quot;? There are other factors. A considerable bump in prestige. Quality of living perks. The chance to shape a promising new department in ways that you rarely get in established departments - a chance to be the formative voice in something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be looking for promising potential new hires. Maybe they're coming out of the universities you hired these key faculty members from. Maybe they're coming from top schools generally. A generous start-up package, extra lab space and internal funding, a generous tenure process - these are things that might lure top candidates away from a harder path at a more prestigious institution. It represents a risk for both parties - you might get a dud researcher with a good degree, and they might get a department languishing in obscurity. But if it works, it works very well for both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy something big. Are there no Expensive Piece of Equipment equipped centers in the region? Become the people who have one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T00:13:45.720" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T00:13:45.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2012-03-20T11:16:08.683" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries, faculty members are public servants, since the state cannot give them more money, others ways have to be found to make positions attractive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra funding for PhD students and postdocs. The state gives &quot;free&quot; funding to universities (=outside grants), it is conceivable that, to be attractive, a university decides to give this funding to a freshly arrived faculty member.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less lectures/responsibilities. This is more touchy, but again, we can imagine that a new faculty member will have less lecture hours for a few years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring in the same field. When you arrive in a lab where your field is not represented, it can be depressing. If your field become a priority, then the position become attractive (better to be with &quot;friends&quot; in a challenger university than alone in a top one).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preservation from bureaucracy. In some countries (France for instance), the administrative burden is heavy and a lot of faculty members are ready to sign up in any place that guarantees &quot;zero&quot; administrative tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T11:16:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2012-03-20T15:01:34.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Sylvian raised many good intangible benefits, and I just wanted to add another one: &lt;strong&gt;Lab relocation.&lt;/strong&gt; Labs take a while to set up, and training new techs takes a lot of time and effort, which translates into lost productivity. Offer to sponsor bringing over everyone from the old lab, including techs and large equipment, to speed up time to productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T15:01:34.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-20T18:00:25.170" Score="3" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got &lt;em&gt;a pretty awesome CV&lt;/em&gt; (I think), through hours of trailing through websites and reading tips. However that was back when I'd just finished University and now it needs updating!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm 25 and I am into my 3rd job since university and so have quite a bit of experience about these roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seems my job experience now out weighs my education. Should I move my Work Experience to page one and my education to page two?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I still need my GCSE's on my CV? They don't seem very relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much detail about my education do I actually need?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people still care what A levels I did?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people want to know my dissertaiton title and what key subject I learnt, or is my degree title now enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moving onto my work experience. I have had two jobs that are really relevant to what I'm aiming at and the third is less so. What is the minimum I should put for the third job, it's title?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's hope someone can help, everything I normally find is for new graduates CV's, bless them but I need some help too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Looking for UK or European answers, the US is too crazy. I don't have a GDP ;-)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="41207" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T05:27:40.537" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T05:27:40.537" Title="Updating my CV post-Academia ( UK )" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2012-03-20T18:56:45.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer some of your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While there's no set guideline, education often comes first. You should include the university where you earned your BS/BA (list major, GPA, and any honors), masters university (field, GPA, and thesis title if applicable), and doctorate university (field, GPA, thesis title). High school and similar degrees (including A-levels) should not be listed. Note that a brief (one to three sentence) explanation of your masters and thesis work may be useful here; most people in industry won't have any idea what &quot;Detailed Sprockification of Remonstrantized Grommits in Hypernormalized Framistans&quot; means, so a short layperson description will show (1) that you can communicate and (2) that you did cool stuff that they can understand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work experience should include company, position title, responsibilities. You can summarize responsibilities in bullet points or short (two to three sentence) paragraphs, it makes no difference either way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer some things you left out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strongly consider adding an Objective Statement to the beginning of your resume. It should summarize your career goals in a sentence. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.broward.edu/career/GetJobReady/Resumes/ObjectiveStatements/page5456.html&quot;&gt;this website which I found on Google&lt;/a&gt; for some discussion of what this is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include publications, teaching experience, grants awarded, trainees mentored, and notable community service (awards received, board memberships, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T18:56:45.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2012-03-20T20:47:15.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're living in the US or Canada, an important question to ask yourself is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a résumé for industry and business, or is this a CV for a research-oriented field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much all of the differences between the two boil down to this key difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for jobs in industry or business—essentially, any non-research-oriented field—your CV should be converted into a résumé format. This format will generally put work experience before education, and will be in general much briefer. A résumé should in general not exceed two pages in length; a CV can be as long as needed. With respect to your questions, you would need to list your high school diploma, although you wouldn't need to go into a whole lot of detail (list the type of degree, plus any major awards). I would list dissertation title if it's relevant to your work. For your job descriptions, I would include key duties and accomplishments in bullet form with active verbs (&quot;Directed X project.&quot; &quot;Completed milestone Y.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for further jobs in academia, then you need to maintain the CV format, so education should remain first. Your high school credentials don't really matter anymore, but the dissertation information remains important, and should be in the information section. Your job section doesn't need to be very detailed, even for the previous jobs: just the major areas worked on, and the major skills and accomplishments could be briefly summarized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you might go in both directions, you should keep versions of both up-to-date; if you're staying in one side or the other for the foreseeable future, then you can focus on that. But in general, I would recommend keeping it up-to-date at all times!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: if you're living or working in Europe, then as Blundell comments below, and is corroborated &lt;a href=&quot;http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/cv-vs-resume-difference-and-when-use-which&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by some web sites&lt;/a&gt;, you probably only need a CV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-20T22:34:52.167" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T22:34:52.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="834" CreationDate="2012-03-21T01:31:55.453" Score="17" ViewCount="5213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the department determine it, or does the president determine tenure after the department recommends it? Or does the process go through both ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how does this vary from institution to institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T16:02:29.723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T16:02:29.723" Title="Who determines whether or not a professor receives tenure?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="832" CreationDate="2012-03-21T01:56:45.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process varies from place to place but in most places the technical determination is made by the department and to some extent the college. Higher levels of approval focus mostly on whether proper procedures have been followed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, when things go wrong they could go wrong at any level. Usually it's politics that derails cases at the higher levels rather than straight technical merits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T01:56:45.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="832" CreationDate="2012-03-21T02:46:54.160" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how it works at my university.  There are several layers of votes; I've seen faculty turned down at almost every level.  Once a negative vote is taken at any level, it is essentially impossible for the candidate to recover without an official appeal.  (The appeals process is complicated.)  On the other hand, I know of negative decisions that were successfully appealed at almost every level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;April: the candidate submits their CV and other supporting materials.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;May: The department's promotion committee makes a go/no-go decision about whether to pursue the tenure case.  &lt;strong&gt;A very small number of negative decisions are made here&lt;/strong&gt;, but only in truly egregious cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;May: The department head chooses a subcommittee of three or four faculty from the promotions and tenure committee to shepherd the case through the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;June: The department solicits recommendation letters, some from people proposed by the candidate, but a majority from people chosen independently by the subcommittee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;August: The subcommittee writes an internal evaluation of the candidate's research/teaching/service accomplishments/potential.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;September: The subcommittee presents the complete case (candidate's CV and statements, internal evaluations, and recommendation letters) to the complete departmental committee.  The committee votes whether to recommend tenure.  &lt;strong&gt;Most negative decisions are made here.&lt;/strong&gt;  Having a positive recommendation turned down at a higher level is fairly embarrassing for the department; it indicates that either the department did not do a thorough evaluation or (worse) tried to hide or excuse an obvious gap in the candidate's record.  So this level tends to be the most stringent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;October: The department head writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the department's vote, and forwards the complete package to the dean.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;November-December: The college promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate and votes whether to recommend tenure.  Evaluations are more likely to be based on measures of reputation and impact (reflected in publication record, citation patterns, funding history, and recommendation letters) than on actual quality of research.  Faculty in the candidate's department are recused from any discussion.  &lt;strong&gt;Some negative decisions are made here.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;January: The dean writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's vote, and forwards the complete package to the provost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;February-April: The campus promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate (mostly, but not entirely, focusing on whether proper procedures have been followed) and votes whether to recommend tenure.  Faculty in the candidate's college are recused from any discussion.    &lt;strong&gt;A very small number of negative decisions are made here.&lt;/strong&gt;  Negative decisions at this level are more likely to involve problems with teaching (or raw politics) than with research, since measures of research quality and impact vary so wildly across campus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;May: The provost writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's recommendation and forwards the complete package to the chancellor and university president.  The provost also informs the candidate of the committee's recommendation.  Officially, this is the first news that the candidate receives about their case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;July: The chancellor and the president rubber-stamp the provost's recommendations, and then pass them up to the board of trustees, who rubber-stamp them again.  (Officially, I think any of these three can overrule any recommendation for promotion, but I've never seen it happen, and it would probably cause a faculty &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-16/news/ct-met-u-of-i-letter-20120316_1_senator-in-anonymous-emails-faculty-chancellor-phyllis-wise&quot;&gt;revolt&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the whole process really takes 15 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T08:20:47.187" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T08:20:47.187" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="836" CreationDate="2012-03-21T19:40:27.583" Score="10" ViewCount="1324" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems very common for them to normally prefer being addressed by their first names (since Mr./Ms. seems to be very rarely used in Academia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T08:51:28.830" Title="When addressing academic departmental assistants via email, should I use their first name or just Mr./Ms. X?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2012-03-21T19:53:41.077" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;My policy : the first time you contact the person, go with Mr. Doe (or Ms. Doe), but sign with your first name. The latter is a signal that you are OK with a &quot;first name email relationship&quot;, from this point it will be so most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T19:53:41.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-21T20:00:28.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just for completeness, I would also mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/a&gt;, a service similar to (but older than) Google Scholar citations, courtesy of Thompson Reuters. They've got badges and similar fancy links that you can put on your homepage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just use it as a convenient list and tool for anybody obsessed with h-indices and impact factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T20:00:28.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2012-03-21T21:59:30.613" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should follow the traditions in the region where the recipient is located. For an American or Canadian, I would probably follow @sylvain's advice, as that is the usual standard in the US—formal at first, but becoming less so as time and familiarity grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, here in Germany, I would continue to use the greeting &quot;Dear Mr./Mrs.&quot; until such time as I was &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; invited to use their first name (this would be the same as the &quot;Sie&quot; to &quot;Du&quot; switch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T21:59:30.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-03-22T02:02:32.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An even easier solution that doesn't require anything except the ability to upload a BibTeX file is &lt;a href=&quot;http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/For_Authors&quot;&gt;Exhibit&lt;/a&gt;. It takes your bibtex, does some javascripting on it, and renders the result. It seems CSS-stylable, and even allows for faceted search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T02:02:32.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2012-03-22T08:44:22.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden, and I believe other Scandinavian countries, email communication is very informal, and communication is mostly on a first-name basis, even if you haven't met in person previously. I can call anybody by first name, even the CEO or an esteemed professor, and nobody would frown upon. Even students address (or at least should, nothing makes me feel older than somebody calling me Mr T., or worse, Sir) their tutors by their first name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd almost never use Mr/Mrs in an email when writing in Swedish, but I would do it more often if the recipient is foreigner and is not familiar with the small power distance in Swedish companies and universities. However, I'd usually be more formal when the circumstances require it -- applying for a job/grant, or sending official documents, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pro tip&lt;/strong&gt;: -- &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;ever&lt;/strong&gt; call a Professor &quot;Mr. Smith&quot;, if you are adressing them by family name. Always use appropriate academic titles, when applicable. I'd spare this for associate professors or below, but some academics in the country where I'm from are pretty prissy about this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some academics are prideful, and you need to play to their weakness. Gain favour of such people by addressing them with a higher title than they currently have. A certain (then associate) professor which some would describe as &quot;a cerberus in a skirt&quot; was very friendly to me and helped me with administrative matters on a few occasions since I consistently addressed her as &quot;Prof. S.&quot;, especially in front of other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="255" LastEditorUserId="255" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T08:51:28.830" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T08:51:28.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="852" CreationDate="2012-03-22T16:57:31.460" Score="13" ViewCount="3841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a number of résumés of doctoral students, but only a few of them listed their evaluation scores when presenting their teaching experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important are these scores in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case a professor does a slipshod work of a course, not teaching in depth or cramming a lot of syllabus in a short time, there is only so much a TA could do to salvage the course for the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the TA make the best of a bad job in such a situation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T21:42:57.540" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:42:57.540" Title="As a teaching assistant, how important are student evaluations?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;course-evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="846" CreationDate="2012-03-22T17:16:42.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I don't place much weight on an isolated number; it doesn't tell me much in practice about a student's teaching abilities. That would have to be judged via direct interaction—watching them teach or otherwise interact with students. It's really impossible to expect students to be honest in their evaluation, unless they've provided comments; then you can at least see how much they've written; the more extensive the comment, the more likely it is to be sincere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what to do when a professor does a bad job, I don't think that it really makes that much of a difference in the nature of the TA's responsibilities; the main change is in the intensity of the work required. The TA, &lt;em&gt;along with the professor&lt;/em&gt;, is responsible for helping students learn the material. If the professor isn't doing an adequate job, then that means the TA will probably need to work a bit harder and dedicate more time to achieve that goal. However, the TA should make sure she is taking care of her other requirements and needs at the same time. The TA position shouldn't consume someone's entire life (unless they are paid accordingly!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility for how to do things, though, might be to prepare review sheets and guides based on the lecture material (or what the lecture material should have been). This will be good review, both for the TA and for the students!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T17:16:42.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-03-22T22:31:56.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will actually take a strong opinion that my subpar grades from undergrad and graduate school are a large factor in why my PhD is going to take a long time. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81/david-ketcheson&quot;&gt;David Ketcheson&lt;/a&gt; mentioned, quality grades and GRE scores are important denominators for Graduate fellowships. So far the NSF, NIH, and DOE have all denied me fellowships because I have a lowish GPA according to my reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, once you are an established researcher with a paper track record, the grades really shouldn't matter asides being a bragging point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T22:31:56.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-23T07:24:02.437" Score="15" ViewCount="14222" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm applying for jobs as an instructor/lecturer.  They explicitly only require a master's degree, which I have, in addition to some valuable industry experience.  It's plausible that I could get one of these jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I get one of the jobs, I would be hoping to potentially stay in academia for longer, so logically it would help me to have the PhD I currently lack.  Ideally, I'd like to pursue my PhD part-time while working as an instructor.  My thought is that this would give me the opportunity to eventually get a professor position, later in my career, once I complete the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this something that universities are okay with their instructors doing?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or is it not okay for someone to be teaching undergrads while simultaneously doing graduate research?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I wanted to do this, would it be more appropriate to pursue the PhD at the same institution as or a different institution from the one that I'd be working at?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional helpful info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the schools that I'm applying at have part-time PhD programs, so I have no reason to believe that the part-time study schedule is an issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not in the U.S., so the specific rules of American academia don't necessarily apply.  For example, here, we rarely have grad students teach classes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user499" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T02:58:39.970" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T02:58:39.970" Title="Can I pursue a PhD while working as an Instructor/Lecturer?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="849" CreationDate="2012-03-23T08:07:54.900" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities are fine with having PhD students working as instructors/lecturer/teaching assistant at the same time, and it's actually quite common. I have personally been teaching at undergrads level while doing my PhD, and most of my friend who did a PhD were in the same situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it depends on the amount of hours you are spending a week with teaching: if it's taking all of your time, you might not be able to do research in good conditions, and it might be hard to find a professor that would agree to supervise you if you're not available to work on your PhD. Basically, if you combine a part-time teaching/part-time PhD, that should be fine, but if you combine a full-time teaching with a part-time PhD, that might not reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning where you should apply for the PhD, in general, you can do it in a different university than the one where you're teaching. However, in some cases, it might be more interesting to do it at the same place because you might not have to pay the tuition fees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T08:07:54.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="849" CreationDate="2012-03-23T10:23:25.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following up on Charles's answer, I think the situation depends strongly on what discipline you are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working as an instructor or lecturer as a &lt;em&gt;primary&lt;/em&gt; instructor in a course suggests to me that you are working in the humanities; in general, such positions do not exist in the sciences and engineering (with the exception of courses taught by &quot;visiting&quot; or &quot;adjunct&quot; industrial lecturers, who may have work experience but not the normal Ph.D.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, in the humanities, it is, as Charles said, quite common for people with master's degrees to teach courses, although again it is, in my experience, more common for them to teach &quot;seminar&quot;-style courses, rather than large lectures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may or may not be the case that the instructor of such a course is enrolled in the department to study for a Ph.D.; it depends on the specific policies of the department, and you should ask if this possible at the time of application.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(These are my observations on what is &quot;standard&quot;; of course, there are exceptions to every rule!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T10:23:25.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="846" CreationDate="2012-03-23T10:45:39.700" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; question, for faculty as well as students!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;How important are these points in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this varies significantly in different departments and institutions, but in my experience, the scores themselves are not that important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department does pay attention to these numbers when allocating future TAships, but definitely not in isolation.  Narrative reviews from the instructors carry significant weight.  The people doing the assignments also know which courses are unpopular, and which instructors are irresponsible, and adjust the evaluation accordingly, at least in principle.  In practice, there are only three evaluations: (1) truly outstanding TAs, who are considered for teaching awards; (2) truly abysmal TAs, who are not rehired, at least without retraining (and since we have a TAship requirement, this has teeth); and (3) everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we evaluate tenure-track faculty candidates, teaching ability is usually a second-order concern, but it is a concern.  Poor evaluations on an applicant's CV are a red flag—why didn't they just omit them?  Good evaluations are mostly a signal to look further.  Teaching awards carry more weight.  Recommendation letters that directly praise the applicant's teaching ability — with concrete and credible details — are even better.  Similar issues arise when evaluating faculty for tenure, with one big difference: omitting the teaching scores is not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluation?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't.  Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; you can increase the fraction of sincere (and positive) responses by consistently treating your students with respect.  Make your expectations clear from day one, and enforce them consistently.  Invite feedback throughout the semester, and respond to it quickly and appropriately.  Apologize quickly for mistakes, thank students publicly for useful suggestions, but do not buckle on high standards.  Give timely, consistent, and useful feedback on coursework.  Above all, &lt;strong&gt;do not waste your students' time&lt;/strong&gt;; the correlation between hard work and low evaluations is much higher if the students don't see any benefit to doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;Insert standard confirmation bias warning here.&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;How does the TA make the best of a bad job [if the instructor is irresponsible]?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, do your own job as best as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, raise your concerns with the instructor; be respectful but brutally honest.  If the instructor is unresponsive, raise your concerns with your instructor's boss; be respectful but brutally honest.  (Note: Disagreement is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as being unresponsive.)  If your instructor's boss is also unresponsive, your department doesn't really care about poor teaching; they're likely to ignore your evaluations, even if they are low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more things that TAs &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do.  At a minimum, hold office hours that the students actually find useful; don't just show up.  Distribute practice problems, and offer feedback on the students' solutions.  Hold weekly review/discussion/problem-solving sessions.  As aeismail suggests, write review notes.  If the instructor covered too much, distill down their main points; if the instructor didn't cover enough, expand on the key ideas they missed.  Offer to give a few guest lectures, and then give &lt;em&gt;fantastic&lt;/em&gt; guest lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More self-servingly: &lt;strong&gt;Make sure the students see you working to overcome your instructor's shortcomings.&lt;/strong&gt;  If the students &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; see you fighting on their behalf (even if you are), they'll write you off as yet another useless academic, like your instructor.  But if you can make them believe you're on their side, they'll reward you.  I think this is why students often reward &quot;lenient grading&quot;; if the students think the coursework is a waste of time, they'll see lenient graders as their allies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this all takes time.  As aeismail says, TAs usually have many other responsibilities, especially to their own classes, projects, research, families, and sanity.  It is frighteningly easy for committed and caring TAs to find themselves being abused by less committed instructors (or even departments).  &lt;strong&gt;Set limits.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T20:44:30.083" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T20:44:30.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="846" CreationDate="2012-03-23T12:35:34.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, student evaluations are simply a measure of how well the &lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt; think you are doing in teaching them. Keeping in mind the phrase attributed to Henry Ford,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said &quot;a faster horse&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note that the students can often give feedback on your current teaching methods, but they rarely suggest &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; teaching methods. From my experience, the evaluations are not viewed as important, but are meant more for the TA to improve their teaching skills. You can ensuring sincerity by being sincere in your teaching. If you're appropriately enthusiastic about teaching the material, the students will notice and appreciate it. Beyond that, some students will be cynical and apathetic to the process, and there's really not much you an do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to make use of the situation is to use it as a learning experience, as it's intended! Chances are, you'll be asked to teach in the future, may as well use this opportunity to try out different teaching methods to see what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T12:35:34.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="858" CreationDate="2012-03-23T15:28:03.657" Score="29" ViewCount="2751" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a related question to my previous one about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/754/keeping-advisees-aware-of-literature&quot;&gt;keeping advisees aware of literature&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the relatively large number of papers that are out there, it's inadvisable to force every student to start from ground zero in building up a reference library. To me, this suggests that there should be some centralized ways of keeping track of bibliography references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The low-cost but high-maintenance route to me would be to have an SVN repository to which people can update their own personal bibliography files. Are there other more time-efficient routes to manage this process when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people have different computing platforms and workflows (Windows with Office, OS X with iWork, Linux with TeX, etc.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working with collaborators at other institutes? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's important (according to university/workplace regulations) not to have data stored &quot;in the cloud&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2020-11-28T17:15:17.903" Title="Keeping track of bibliography references for an entire research group" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;research-group&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T16:44:19.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to sync refs across multiple users but don't want to host in the cloud, you should check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://sparkleshare.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sparkleshare&lt;/a&gt;. You'd set up a git repo on a local server to host a bibtex file, then have your users install sparkleshare on their computers and connect to the git repo. You would then use Mendeley, which has a bibtex syncing option. This will achieve a system that will distribute new refs added by any user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="139" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T16:44:19.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T16:58:12.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For small scale projects, such as you and a few other authors working on paper(s), I would just consider plain text file (with standardized fields) in a location you can all access (plus version control). Bibtext would be an obvious solution (and most reference software that I know of can import bibtext files). Easy and minamalist to implement and update. Mike's answer seems like a better solution than this, but this is dependent upon all the members of the group utilizing such software, which sometimes isn't worth the effort to get people to convert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For large scale operations (like you need to enter in over 1,000 papers for a lab) I would consider rolling your own database + user forms to enter in data. Fields you want from papers are fairly easy to delineate, so setting up the initial database is not too dificult. Here are a few other reasons this is nice;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have flexibility to put what you want in the database. For instance if you were conducting a meta analysis you may want to extend forms to include relevant statistics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Querying on a variety of characteristics becomes trivially easy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are saavy enough with the database, you can write some scripts to export the data in whatever format you want. For instance, I use the one statistical software I am most proficient in (so not a true database, but several seperate tables) to write my bibtext library, plain text citations in approximate APA format, and VBA code to find-and-replace latex like citations in word documents. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alot of flexibility with your own database, and if you are doing a very large project it might be worth the upfront effort to develop and customize to suit your own needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T16:58:12.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T18:34:21.500" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I accomplish this using the groups feature of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  It works on all three major OS's, allows you to share bibliographies easily with both your group and external collaborators.  It also allows something that I think is very important -- lots of bibliographies on particular topics within the realm of what my group does.  See, for example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should mention that Mendeley's web interface to bibliographies is awful.  But the desktop interface is quite nice and (most importantly) can export Bibtex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mendeley does store your data in the cloud (if you consider a bibliography to be &quot;your data&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;: I stopped using Mendeley when it was bought by Elsevier.  I haven't found a satisfactory replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T19:39:25.180" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T19:39:25.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T19:31:13.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just use vanilla git ? Everyone sets up their private repo and you can use github for shared syncing as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T19:31:13.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T19:57:20.470" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using LaTeX, you can set up a .bib file on a shared drive and everyone can reference and add to it as necessary using whatever program they like. I'm a fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;BibDesk&lt;/a&gt;, personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T19:57:20.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="864" CreationDate="2012-03-23T22:13:24.847" Score="23" ViewCount="2201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a way, tool or technology that allows me to define keywords and/or authors and/or conferences for which I want to be notified if a new paper is published on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/index.html&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;. I couldn't yet find a way to achieve that. What are my possibilities? It shouldn't cost any money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="5644" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T13:04:31.520" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T09:09:03.680" Title="Free ways to automatically get notified if new papers are published on ACM or IEEE?" Tags="&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-03-23T23:24:49.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a PHP server running somewhere, I would definitely recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://aigaion.de/about&quot;&gt;Aigaion&lt;/a&gt;. From the website, they say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aigaion provides a bibliography management environment that supports a user in just this: Organizing and managing a complete bibliography, from small personal bibliographies to bibliographies for e.g. a complete research department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been using it in the past on a project, and it's really helpful to manage a bibliography for an entire group: you can define collections, you  can annotate each entry, and you can export easily the bibliography at least to Bibtex and RIS (probably more, but I don't remember exactly, as I was using only Bibtex). You can at the same time manage references to be read by students, and publications generated by the group. Plus, it's open source :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T11:02:13.383" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T11:02:13.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="865" CreationDate="2012-03-24T01:10:57.393" Score="39" ViewCount="2584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently an undergraduate student taking an Honours Pure Mathematics degree with an additional major in Astrophysics and I plan to go to a good graduate school (as good as I can get into) for Pure Mathematics to research either Geometric Topology or Convex Geometry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that academia is a cut-throat world where only &quot;the best&quot; end up on top and the ability to get a professorship is becoming harder and harder as time goes on. I enjoy Pure Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and would not want to do anything else with my life just because I could not do anything else since I find them too damn interesting. What I do not enjoy is the grade-driven-here-is-the-next-thing-for-the-exam learning that doesn't give anyone the big picture. I have been working non-stop to make sure I perform in my courses, undergraduate research, etc. and I am just wondering if there is any way to learn about these topics at a slower pace or just have more time to think about the topics eventually. I understand I will have to at least get through graduate school and get a PhD (otherwise there would be a chance I'd turn out as a crackpot), but I'm just really tired of having so much information crammed into me without having the time to think about what I am learning. I want to do my own additional research on topics I see connections between, and think more about the big picture of how the different fields of Pure Mathematics and Theoretical Physics are related. There are so many unfinished papers that I have started throughout my undergraduate on embeddings of low-dimensional manifolds, determining knot invariants by unique methods, etc. but I just have no time to think about what I want to think about when there's that Real Analysis assignment due the day after my midterm in E&amp;amp;M which I had to stay up all night studying for because I had three quizzes the previous week in blah blah blah blah... for years on end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, my question is this: &lt;strong&gt;Is there any other way that someone (after getting a PhD or a few post-docs) can do research at their own pace and just completely go after their interests without having to justify what they are doing to funding agencies, being swamped with administrative work (such as marking exams and writing grants), etc.?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that is asking a lot out for a life style, but I would even be interested in leaving academia altogether to just do my own independent study somewhere and travel around to different universities to collaborate whenever I have new findings or need some new inspiration or ideas. Are there any easy part-time jobs one could do to support such a lifestyle? Julian Barbour would be someone who I look up to in that respect, I believe he did this exact thing by making a living translating Russian academic papers into English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any comments, helpful suggestions, about how it would be possible to live an non-traditional academic lifestyle where people still take you to be credible and you can publish your work in journals. I just want to avoid working working working my entire life without a chance to reflect and then just die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="505" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T16:39:06.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T14:16:30.460" Title="Question regarding how to slow down and enjoy academic life" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="861" CreationDate="2012-03-24T03:17:16.320" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had great experience with Google Scholar Alerts. To use them, go to scholar.google.com and search for any term. In the results page, you will see a link to &lt;code&gt;Create Email Alert&lt;/code&gt;. Click on that and create the alert to send you notifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One very good use of this is to follow specific papers. For example, I have a star paper of mine that I'm currently extending and I like to keep track of who is citing this paper. So, I search for the paper on scholar. In the results page (just under the result for the paper I'm concerned with), there's a link &lt;code&gt;Cited by 'n'&lt;/code&gt;. Click on that and you get results for only those papers that cite this article. Now, create an alert on this page. This way, whenever someone refers to this paper (and Google finds out about it), you get an email. Do this for all the important literature in your field and Alerts will make sure you are kept abreast of your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never miss out on an important finding! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T03:17:16.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="863" CreationDate="2012-03-24T19:49:34.973" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may not be necessary to wait until you've reached the end stages of your career to have time to explore your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to get fellowships to fund your graduate career—or to find a suitably understanding advisor—then it may be possible to &quot;slow down&quot; your graduate career. In such a case, you'd be able to handle things at your own pace (within reason). That's how I managed to take my time doing my Ph.D., and it allowed me to work on problems I was interested in, rather than other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar funding does exist at the professional level, such as &quot;named&quot; fellowships at the US Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and through grants like the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the &quot;genius grant&quot;). It is certainly not easy and straightforward to do, but it could be a way to get the freedom to work without additional responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of academia, I don't think the situation improves much. For instance, at the DOE laboratories, you're only able to pursue your own research if you're able to secure your own funding to do so (or have moved so far up the chain that you are a laboratory &quot;fellow,&quot; and can do what you want). Similarly, in industrial research institutes, I suspect similar issues apply (you might not have to worry about writing grants the same way you do in academia, but you'll still be expected to &quot;justify your existence&quot; on a fairly regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T19:49:34.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="867" CreationDate="2012-03-24T20:00:35.947" Score="9" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;A doctorate involves plumbing the depths of a problem and often this involves a lot of knowledge breadth-wise in related areas. Though the latter is provided by coursework, education about a precise &quot;tool&quot; that a doctorate may need during solving his problem is unlikely to have been provided by the courses. Often the PhD may run into huge tomes of material which he has been introduced to by Wikipedia. Intuitively he/she may feel that somewhere in those volumes lies a theorem or an idea which can provide vital keys to solving his own problem. So I come to my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should a student do to get the best out of a book-reading exercise? The question in turn assumes the student has arrived by some means at the best book for serving his purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a trade-off involved in reading books tangential to your field: you may spend a lot of time groping in the dark looking for a bounty which may never be there. How does one gauge the potential applicability of a book to his work? When does a student decide to pull the plug on such an effort?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Related Question&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/670/skimming-through-a-math-paper-with-a-group&quot;&gt;Skimming through a paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T20:40:14.350" Title="Getting the best out of a book-reading exercise" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="866" CreationDate="2012-03-24T20:40:14.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I would like to comment on some of your sentences. Then I will answer to your 2 questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Often the PhD may run into huge tomes of material which he has been introduced to by Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;: I am not sure that I understand this sentence well. Are you using Wikipedia for bootstrapping and then proceed from page to page in wikipedia, hoping to find something useful, or do you use another source of idea, but jump to wikipedia to understand in a faster way the entities/concepts you find in the first place ? BTW, in most cases I am not sure Wikipedia is something we should use at the research level. The quality is clearly increasing, but this is far from perfect, and some essential intuitions are missing sometimes (almost always ?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Intuitively he/she may feel that somewhere in those volumes lies a theorem or an idea which can provide vital keys to solving his own problem.&lt;/em&gt; This sentence makes me think that you maybe focus too much on a specific problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my answers :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I read a paper or a book, I proceed the same way: First I quickly go through the whole thing (for a book, the whole thing is generally a chapter). Then I try to understand the key intuitions and results. At that point I don't try to understand how they are proven. Then I switch to other things. When I am thinking of a problem, or when I am on other concepts, sometimes a flash occurs and I have the intuition that something I have read can be useful, then I go back to the paper/book and try to totally understand the result. Here, this means more or less homework like in the old days ;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reading tangential materials is a necessity. I proceed as stated above, and to make sure that I will not spend all my time on this, I decided to always spend the same amount of time reading on other fields. For me this is roughly 1 day a week, which is 1/3 to 1/2 of the time I can use for research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T20:40:14.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-03-24T23:33:45.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When evaluating graduate applications, I weight recent evidence more than stale evidence.  One way to recover from bad undergraduate grades is to take classes through a community college or extension program and get great grades or recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T23:33:45.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="861" CreationDate="2012-03-25T00:21:08.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I found out that Microsoft Research can be really helpful for people in academia. You can subscribe to conferences, journals, institutions or even authors by the subscription at the right top for the page. For example, check &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Conference/40/icse-international-conference-on-software-engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; for ICSE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/c/1043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Publications&lt;/a&gt; section you can sort/filter publication in various ways. &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; section gives significant information about professors and even colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="399" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T12:11:48.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T12:11:48.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-25T03:50:03.990" Score="26" ViewCount="2671" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some bad experiences in a master's program, I decided to become a PhD student in the same program. My plan was to finish a paper and leave as soon as possible, meanwhile earning the recommendations that my bad early experiences prevented. That's basically been the situation for a couple years now - longer than I ever expected. At this point, I'm finally finish my projects and I've presented at a couple conferences. I genuinely like the professor I'm working with now. However, I never intended to specialize in this research area; the idea of doing my PhD in this area is very disappointing to me. And (selfishly?), I very much want to move to a new institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I'm not sure what to do. My ideal situation would be to finish my current projects and move to a new institution to work in a field I was more excited about. However, I'm afraid that if I reveal my desires the professor I'm working with will try to sabotage me. I'm also concerned that leaving now will look strange on a graduate application: why admit a quitter? I'm also starting to feel a little old to be starting a new program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to just be done with all this, but the question I keep asking myself is, &quot;Why get a PhD in something you're not interested in?&quot; Maybe, though, there are good reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate any advice you may have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="514" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T00:24:30.190" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T07:57:20.757" Title="If I abandon my PhD program, will it prevent me from continuing elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="870" CreationDate="2012-03-25T07:22:58.753" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I could glean from this story, one thing is clear: you are confusing yourself a lot and your thinking is quite muddled possibly because of a few adverse experiences. Think on these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the 'new' area to which you want to move to? Do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; love the challenges it poses? &#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes, find some nice professors to work with, mail them asking about positions. Forget about your age, the number of years it will take and a host of other details: if you are passionate, the passion will carry you through the doctorate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If no, ask yourself if you are passionate about the one you are working on. From what you have written you do not seem to be so. Even your publications seem to carry this 'ulterior' motive of getting a better grad school. If you do not love your PhD, then you should seriously consider moving to the industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have publications under your name, so it is unlikely that a professor &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; &quot;sabotage&quot; your application and more unlikely that he &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt;. Get over the bad experiences with your first professors soon! Don't call yourself a &quot;quitter&quot;, instead admit you have been working on a few research problems but do not want to work on them for a doctorate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T07:22:58.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="870" CreationDate="2012-03-25T08:58:57.137" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;That might depend on the field, but you don't have to &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; your topic to get your PhD. You are not defined by your PhD topic, and it is usually possible to change topic later in your career. For instance, the topic of my first postdoc was quite different to the topic of my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, of course, it's better to do a PhD on a topic you love with an advisor you love, in a university you love, but it's not always possible, and since you already have some papers in your current topic (which somehow says that you have at least some interest in it), and you appreciate your current advisor, then you can consider doing your PhD on this topic, and once you got it, then you can move on. You can also try to establish collaborations during your PhD with professors working on the topic you love, for instance by attending summer/winter schools on this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a PhD is not like taking an oath to work on the same topic for the rest of your life, it's simply getting a degree stating that you're able to do research. That being said, if you are accepted to a program that is exactly what you love, then there shouldn't be any harm in going for it, but it might not be worth to jeopardize your current situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To illustrate that a postdoc can be indeed on a different topic than the PhD, I can for instance refer to aeismail's answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/844/102&quot;&gt;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/844/102&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T08:58:57.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-25T21:15:20.700" Score="7" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really fascinated by ancient civilizations and cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know what subjects one has to take up to study Archaeology (like what subjects in A Levels or High School) at an academic level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just like to know in general but would appreciate any details about United States and India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="447" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T11:54:19.357" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T11:54:19.357" Title="What is the academic route to study Archaeology?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="877" CreationDate="2012-03-25T21:41:33.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be potentially interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anthropology&lt;/a&gt; programs. Although anthropology can be a very diverse field, all I am familiar with (not many FWIW) have a devoted concentration for archaeology related studies/methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T21:41:33.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="880" CreationDate="2012-03-25T22:58:07.733" Score="10" ViewCount="1591" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple and short question: as a postdoc (or a senior grad student), is it a good idea to mentor an undergrad?&#xA;How much edge will it provide perhaps for a future (NSF) grant, or a job application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T06:00:19.137" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T07:32:44.257" Title="Does mentoring an undergrad give an edge on job or grant applications?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="879" CreationDate="2012-03-26T01:05:31.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the mentoring has a measurable successful outcome (student goes to grad school, student writes paper), the NSF would definitely look kindly on such mentoring. Whether the time spent doing this will (minute for minute) be a better value than writing an impactful paper - probably not. But that reasoning is of course flawed - you don't know ahead of time whether the time you spend writing that paper will pay off :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with most other things, do it if you care about the mentoring process and enjoy working with undergraduates. Don't do it if the primary goal is to get the bullet on your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T01:05:31.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="879" CreationDate="2012-03-26T02:10:07.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether your grant or job applications will benefit from the experience. However, it will provide you with some immeasurably useful management experience, which you may not be able to gain otherwise. I know that my experience managing undergraduates during my graduate career - directing their research project with them, helping them design and put together experiments, and helping them write papers (or, more likely, having them help you write papers) - was an excellent first experience for me in dealing with issues that professors managing a lab have to deal with on a regular basis. For that alone I would strongly recommend mentoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T02:10:07.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="870" CreationDate="2012-03-26T02:35:08.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your direct question, I can only think of two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You began your research thinking you'd be interested in a particular topic, but as the research progressed and you became more familiar with the field your interest waned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have an end goal which requires familiarity with a particular area, and there are a number of ways you can approach that goal. You pursue a PhD in a field where you think it would be easiest to become familiar with that goal, despite the fact that you're less interested in the PhD than the ultimate goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first reason, from my educated guess, is very common. The second probably much less so. Do note, though, that as Charles said, your degree is often very portable; someone with a math degree can likely successfully apply for positions in other related fields (engineering, statistics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T02:35:08.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="887" CreationDate="2012-03-26T06:04:29.407" Score="15" ViewCount="873" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors use &quot;her&quot; whenever they employ a pronoun referring to a noun whose gender is immaterial to the discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any rule (university or journal or conference-specific) which dictates this? Is it good practice to stick to the same pronoun throughout a paper? Or is it better to get rid of the issue by using the gender-neutral 'one'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-30T08:29:02.980" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T08:29:02.980" Title="Is there a rule or style guide on use of gender-specific pronouns in academic papers?" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="879" CreationDate="2012-03-26T06:08:41.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to take a middle road between Suresh and eykanal's answers: mentoring of undergraduates will most likely help you in job applications; I'd believe this to be true whether you're applying to academia or industry or to non-traditional jobs. The reason is that supervising students provides you with direct &lt;em&gt;management experience&lt;/em&gt;, which is almost always beneficial when being considered for employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is less clear that mentoring an undergraduate would help you in a meaningful way on a grant application. The reason for this is that, in general, there's no logical place to bring such information up in the grant application! In a standard CV, you could list &quot;students supervised&quot; as a normal part of the document; however, according to the current guidelines &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for the NSF reduced CV format&lt;/a&gt;, the only real way that they can be counted is if they wrote a thesis under you, and perhaps as an aggregate count. In the long run, though, the NSF is really interested in graduate students and postdocs supervised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T06:08:41.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="885" CreationDate="2012-03-26T06:20:02.433" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for using &quot;her&quot; more frequently nowadays is to correct an ongoing imbalance: in general, for a long time, &quot;his&quot; has been used, even where a more neutral pronoun (&quot;one&quot;) should have been used instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammatically, however, any of the recipes you suggest would be appropriate: it is only the matter of the particular taste of the author. I would recommend, though, that when using both &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she,&quot; that you use one consistently throughout a particular usage. Don't write &quot;she/her&quot; in one sentence, and then &quot;he/his&quot; in the one after. A few paragraphs later won't be a problem, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason &quot;one&quot; is not nearly as popular is that it is somewhat awkward-sounding; too many &quot;one&quot; and &quot;one's&quot; in the same sentence makes it feel too stiff and impersonal. (It's a bit of a catch-22, I know, but that's the way it is!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other option that you did not mention, though, may be the simplest route of all: simply use collective plural pronouns: use &quot;they,&quot; &quot;their,&quot; and &quot;theirs.&quot; It gives you the benefit of including everybody, without having to contort your writing to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would also comment that some books go out of their way to be gender-neutral, particularly through the use of &quot;gender-neutral&quot; names: Chris, Sam, Pat, Jean, and so on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T16:11:42.830" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T16:11:42.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="877" CreationDate="2012-03-26T07:21:48.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least at American universities, there are very few majors that require specific preparation beyond the &quot;standard&quot; high school diploma program. That would generally mean something like: four years of English, three years of math and science, two or three years of social sciences, and other courses as needed to round out the curriculum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schools in other countries may (and generally do) have different requirements. So you'll need to look up the specifics of the departments and programs you're interested in to find out what courses you'll want to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T07:21:48.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="877" CreationDate="2012-03-26T10:53:50.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to answer with very little information. Archaeology is a very vast transversal field. It can be decomposed by techniques, by periods or by the targeted cultures. So the first question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to be an archaeologist (expertise in techniques) or a specialist of a period or culture (egyptologist for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, scientific majors in high school is probably better than others, but this is not very important after all. However, be advise that excavation techniques are related to &quot;dirt on the hands&quot; techniques, but also to some top notch scientific techniques (specially for the analysis, where you may need knowledge of stats, paleontology, zoology, botany, chemistry, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, I would advise to start quickly to acquire a strong background in art history and ancient languages (starting with greek and latin). I will be easier to learn linguistic and semiology afterwards. I guess that both art history and ancient languages can be learned at the high school level in most countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university, students usually progress concurrently in archaeology techniques and culture specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T10:53:50.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="891" CreationDate="2012-03-26T11:54:00.143" Score="38" ViewCount="3379" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say an undergraduate student does some research in his/her free time and wants to write a paper about the findings. What are the rules regarding affiliation when the student tries to publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student is &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is enrolled in a program at the university&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student is &lt;strong&gt;not allowed&lt;/strong&gt; to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is not officially hired/approved to do research under the name of the university&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;no rules&lt;/strong&gt;, the student can choose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess for graduate students / postdocs / professors it is mandatory to include the university as affiliation, as they get paid by the university to do the research they are doing!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T23:07:20.297" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T23:22:23.360" Title="Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2012-03-26T12:40:24.200" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are any &quot;official rules&quot;.  (I can't even find a clause in my employment contract that officially requires me to list my university on my papers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as long as you are a student, it's a good idea to list your university as an affiliation.  Even if the university isn't paying you, you do benefit indirectly from the intellectual environment and resources that the university provides: professors, fellow students, library, internet, health insurance, nearby coffee shops, and so on.  It costs you nothing to be generous.  Also, for better or worse, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/306/is-it-possible-take-take-part-in-a-research-project-if-im-not-a-part-of-a-unive&quot;&gt;readers will take your paper more seriously&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T12:40:24.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="893" CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:47:27.320" Score="25" ViewCount="3025" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go to school at a University in the US.  We use a competitive grading system where teachers give grades based on how you do relative to other students.  This type of grading system doesn't encourage students to work together or help each other because we are all competing against one another.  I'm wondering if there is another non-competative grading system that major universities are using to eliminate this competition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="522" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T13:25:21.287" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T03:14:58.033" Title="Non competitive grading system" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="892" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:01:44.433" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student I had to grade exams for the courses my supervisor taught. We had a very intricate system of establishing what would be a passing grade:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a set of questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let all the Teaching Assistants (TAs) solve the problems, keeping track of how long they took for each question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distribute an arbitrary number of points over the questions relative to how much time, on average, was spent on each question by the TAs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the students take the exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me be very explicit that until this point, &lt;em&gt;no grading scale has been established&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark the exams. This just consisted of going through the questions and assigning points for correct solutions, partially correct solutions, etc... Every question was marked by a different TA and this TA was free to distribute points as he/she saw best. Usually we would go through a pile of 10-20 exams, see how the problems were solved, e.g. what pitfalls were encountered or how far most people got, and then establish a scheme we would use for the rest of the exams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every TA hands in an exact description of how they marked their question, i.e. how points were assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With this list, go through the questions one by one and decide what constituted the minimum requirement in each question. This decision was signed-off by my supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the marking schemes written by the TAs, calculate how many points the minimum requirements would have given if they had been handed in as an exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of points for the minimum requirements constitute a passing grade. Anything below that fails, anything above that passes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my university, grades were on a scale from 1 (fail), over 4 (pass), to 6 (perfect) in steps of 0.25 grade points. This gives us three grades to map zero, the minimum requirement, and the maximum number of points to respectively. This can be fitted to a function $G(p) = ap^2 + bp + c$ which maps points $p$ to a grade $G(p)$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is that it is, in principle, independent of the TAs specific style of marking, as the marking is taken into account when computing the minimum requirement points. It is also completely non-competitive in that it's independent of the students' actual performance during the exam. To make sure our decisions were sound, my supervisor and I would go through the 10 exams just below and just above the passing grade and see if they were all clear pass/fails. They usually all were. When not, it was usually just a matter of tweaking the rounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an open question regarding the amount of time given to the students, e.g. is it possible for them to solve all the questions, and thus is the mapping of maximum points to maximum grade justified? Here we played it safe by choosing only a few questions to make sure nobody would run out of time. The point is that if you do or don't know how to solve a problem, time won't be an issue. We also had two-hour exams, which gave the students ample time to show what they could, and what they couldn't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system also works if you're the only person marking all the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very interested if anybody could suggest improvements or detect amendable flaws in this scheme, as it is what I plan to use myself, now that I'm a lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T18:29:19.717" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T18:29:19.717" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="892" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:02:10.733" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to assign grades based on non-curved performance, with cutoffs for each letter grade. That's pretty standard in many universities. The problem is you may have to wait a few semesters to optimize what the cutoffs should be, as you'll be failing or passing too many students in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T16:02:10.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="885" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:48:51.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors alternate sexes between chapters or sections in an attempt to sound more gender balanced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &quot;they&quot; has historically been the correct pronoun to use when sex is unknown or irrelevant, some grammarians took offence to the usage of &quot;they&quot; as it is also a plural pronoun while he/she/it are singular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T16:48:51.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7414" CreationDate="2012-03-26T23:58:44.887" Score="16" ViewCount="1423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student in the United States (originally from India) and have been here for my PhD in Mechanical engineering since Fall ’06. I've attended a bunch of conferences all in the US and Canada and mainly the ASME or APS DFD (division of fluid dynamics) meetings. As I get close to finishing my PhD, my source of funding (NSF) is running low!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an international student, I find it difficult to find institutions that provide travel grants for conferences in the USA conducted by organizations such as the APS, ASME, AIAA etc. It is also unfortunate that India doesn't have travel grant opportunities for Indians students &lt;strong&gt;outside&lt;/strong&gt; India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have an idea on where I might look? I have two conferences coming up: the ASME Fluids engineering conference in July 2012 and the APS DFD in November 2012 that I'd like to get travel grants for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T16:06:32.340" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:04:17.937" Title="Travel grants for International students in the US?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="870" CreationDate="2012-03-27T00:23:19.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it won't prevent you from continuing elsewhere but from personal experience it would be easier to move laterally perhaps in your own university. However there are some questions that you must ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How far into your PhD program are you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about the current topic don't you like and is there anything you can do to develop an interest in this? Very often, the more time you spend with a topic, a better sense of the same you have which can help in looking at it from a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it your subject area that is bothering you or do you really want to move to an other university?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving schools has it's downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course requirements would need a reboot for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may have to take your qualifiers again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building new relationships and networking will be a challenge (not impossible, just challenging)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you talk to your current adviser about your quandary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T00:23:19.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="877" CreationDate="2012-03-27T02:09:35.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything skill can be used in archeology from comp sci to law to anthropology to zoology. Cross boundary is good. Pick something you like (mobile phones and CS from your bio?) and tie it in. If I wanted to work in archeology I would use my CS and Kinect hacking skills to make 3D models of sites, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T02:09:35.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="903" CreationDate="2012-03-27T03:42:25.983" Score="48" ViewCount="93289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a manuscript that has been in review for 60 days. The journal asks for reviews within four weeks. At what point is it acceptable (and not detrimental) to contact the editor for an update? How should I phrase the request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:23:15.567" LastActivityDate="2020-01-28T05:53:11.937" Title="When / how should I ask about a manuscript's status in review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T03:46:34.953" Score="14" ViewCount="5909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally posted this on math.stackexchange but was recommended to post here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been admitted to two Master's Programs in math (both with funding). One is 1 year long and the other is 2 years long. I plan on obtaining a PhD directly afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1 year option lets me save one year. But I would have to apply to PhD programs within the first semester and it seems I would not have time to get good recommendation letters or make a strong impression from my Master's Program. The 2 years option would give me more chance to demonstrate what I've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are comparable programs, which would be the better choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T06:42:29.697" Title="1 or 2 Year Master's Program" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T06:43:55.903" Score="56" ViewCount="8187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 33. I live in the US. I am a neither a US citizen, nor a green card holder. I have worked in various jobs as a research assistant (physics, biology, economics) usually involving programming, mathematics or statistics.  As a newly minted undergraduate, I didn't really have much confidence in myself and I completely ruled out graduate school as pointless.  I didn't think of myself as smart enough.  I drifted into working in labs, because those are some of the easiest ones for which one can get a work permit in the US as a non-American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having worked in academia for a while now, I've had a chance to leap into various fields and help build solutions to complex problems.  I think I have literally gone as far as I can go researching in academia with no higher degree.  I work at one of the top universities in the world.  (If you looked at US News rankings or the Academic Ranking of World Universities, it's in the top 5.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, I've been thinking about applying for graduate school.  I do have a few papers in various fields.  I'm thinking of a PhD in either pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics or computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two big minuses to applying to graduate school:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most people applying are more than a decade younger than I am.  (Alas, more than a few gray hairs have made an appearance in recent years.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps my achievements would look good for someone younger, but partially my achievements are the result of a long career rather than any special brilliance. So, I wonder how my record will be perceived.  I did take GRE and I scored 800 quantitative, 800 verbal and a 5 on the essay.  (I would most likely have to do a GRE subject test depending on what field I ultimately decided.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise on how accomplished, but older candidates, are viewed in the graduate school application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="528" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T07:51:33.373" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T15:32:17.160" Title="Age and Graduate school" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="900" CreationDate="2012-03-27T07:13:52.463" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t know your field, but in mine (theoretical computer science), you have to get used to long review processes. My personal rule is to contact the journal six months after submission. Given recent events, my new, additional rule is to also state upon submission that I can suggest referees if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As EpiGrad commented, the four weeks time certainly refers to the time allowed to the referee. But additional stages take longer: a first quick scan of your paper to decide whether it’s worth troubling an editor with it; then the editor has to find referees; and, assuming they all complete their reviews in time, the editor also needs a little bit of time to reach a decision based on the reviews. Moreover, your paper might not be their top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the “how”, something like this would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Editor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that you must be extremely busy, but I was wondering about the status of my manuscript [title, reference number] that I submitted on [date]. Have you heard back from the referees yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards,&#xA;[name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:09:56.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="900" CreationDate="2012-03-27T07:17:22.427" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think an answer to this really depends on a lot of things: at least on the journal and the field you are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am from mathematics and there I usually ask after 6 month. Only for journals which are known for long refereeing times I sometimes wait for 9 month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: The American Mathematical Society publishes a list of expected waiting times and backlogs for some mathematical journals (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201010/rtx101001331p.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or google &quot;AMS journal backlog&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T07:17:22.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-03-27T09:12:22.987" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal, but: I was 31 when I started my PhD, and it wasn't an obstacle at all. There were more than 80 applicants for two places. I have the impression that what matters a lot (at least in neuroscience, at least at my institute) is how much training the supervisor would have to invest in you. I've seen many times that the applicant who already did some similar research gets the position, even though there might have been someone else who is in principle just as good. Previous research experience carries a lot of weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you write, it seems to me that you would have a very good chance in getting into a program - publications and good GRE scores are both a big plus. Recommendation letters are also important. I would be surprised if your age would be an obstacle. But beware that it might be an obstacle for some sources of funding! I don't know if it is the case in the US, but I'd guess that's the only potential problem with your age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...And now we wait for someone on the other side of the application process to give their answer :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T11:11:28.860" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T11:11:28.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="910" CreationDate="2012-03-27T10:05:54.190" Score="21" ViewCount="9030" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one question that has been bugging me for a long time now. Why do universities consider GRE/TOEFL scores at all? Perhaps it is fine for master's degrees, where there will be an enormous number of applicants whose language abilities cannot be otherwise established. But what is the necessity for a PhD degree? Why not zero in on a small group of candidates based on their profiles and then conduct a Skype interview? That way the professor gets to know both the verbal and the research potential of the student. Why isn't this the case for PhD admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T17:44:26.880" Title="Why do universities place a weight on GRE/TOEFL scores?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="900" CreationDate="2012-03-27T12:04:05.697" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If done respectfully, it is never unreasonable to request the status of your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:04:05.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="906" CreationDate="2012-03-27T12:08:19.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, not all schools place weight on GRE/TOEFL for PhD admissions. Some do, Some don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publication and good grades but bad GREs/TOEFL does not immediately guarantee rejection. Nevertheless, I had done some research on this and here is what I learnt :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GRE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE (I talk about the old pattern, I have no clue about the new one) tested both Quantitative and Verbal aptitude along with the ability to write and analyze arguments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quant&lt;/strong&gt; section is essentially a sanity check. A 780/800 or above indicated that the student has well founded basics and he is able to solve &lt;em&gt;everyday math problems&lt;/em&gt;. This was meant to test only those parts of mathematics which everyone applying to graduate school does encounter. Thus, no Calculus or Linear Algebra. Universities find this score useful since it is a good indication of the mathematical basics of the student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Verbal&lt;/strong&gt;. This initially irritated me since I saw no benefit in testing my vocubalary for a technical PhD. But later, I learnt that the verbal section actually varies with IQ. There were numerous high IQ societies which gave out invitations on the basis of GREV marks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/criteria.aspx&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a comparison of the different high IQ socities with their GRE marks requirement. The GRE (together with Quant) was an instrument for checking IQ without making it too blatant.&#xA;Here are a few citations:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.am.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm&quot;&gt;Mensa&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;from 5/94 to 9/30/01&#xA; (quantitative + verbal + analytic)     1875&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.triplenine.org/main/admission.asp&quot;&gt;Triple 9 Society&lt;/a&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Graduate Record Exam (GRE), combined verbal, quantitative, analytical (June 1994 through Sept 2001)    : 2180&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oathsociety.com/membership.html&quot;&gt;One in a Thousand Society&lt;/a&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;GRE (verbal + math + analytical scores) 2180 (6/94 till 9/01)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prometheussociety.org/&quot;&gt;Prometheus&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;GRE (“old”): a score of 1610 on the “old” GRE (taken before October 1, 1981)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personally, I think of all this as pseudo-nonsense but c'est la vi&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;argument&lt;/strong&gt; section is (arguably) the most useful for PhD admissions. The 2 parts (writing and analyzing) are along the lines of how one writes research papers. The writing sections teaches/tests for rigor in ones' arguments and requires that each statement be backed up appropriately. The analysis section tests the students ability to read &quot;actively&quot; just as how one would read a research paper. The question requires the student to point out flaws in the argument presented and the more the number of (realistic and nontrivial) flaws you find, the more you score. GRE tests students for critiquing general arguments such as building a new library since &quot;the old one is far away from campus&quot; and similar flawed arguments while in research a paper could state something similarly inane in that field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TOEFL&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing, I think none of them are useful. Reading gets covered in the Comprehension questions in GRE (with a notch higher difficulty). Listening and Speaking are almost useless since it is fairly simple to memorize generic things to say and still get above the 24/30 marks threshold. Writing gets covered in the GRE as well (At higher difficulty). If the university needs to know if the candidate can speak good english, I think an interview is a good alternative or (as some universities seem to be tending to) IELTS is a good option since you actually interact with a examiner rather than recording answers for &quot;The city you love most&quot; to be evaluated later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I Think TOEFL does filter out students with extremely poor English skills (beyond repair for the university), so it does help in spite of having overlaps with GRE and being inherently flawed (IMO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:08:19.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-03-27T12:48:06.547" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, anecdotally: age is simply not a factor in applications. That being said, you'll also be expected to do all the things grad students would do; put in the hard work, write the papers, be available for conferences and such, take courses, act as a TA, and put in the necessary hours to get the work done. Given your description above, though, you're familiar with what the requirements are, so that shouldn't be a problem; if anything, you can put it to your advantage that you're more familiar with the experience than all those inexperienced undergraduates. Good luck with the application process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:48:06.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="906" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:10:27.213" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;GRE/TOEFL scores are used in a number of different ways (some of which are alluded to above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE scores are sometimes used as a university-level filter (if your GRE score is &amp;lt; X, then you'll need a strong support letter from your department to get admitted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TOEFL scores are used as a filter for giving people TA funding (if your TOEFL score is too low, you can't be assigned to be a TA, and if it's lower, you can't even get RA funding)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More informally, the GRE/TOEFL scores are used as a &quot;do you even care' filter: for a CS program, a quantitative score less than 600 might be considered to be a warning that the candidate doesn't even care enough to prep for it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for Ph.D programs, the GRE/TOEFL are either used as a high-bar disqualification filters to prune applications (in top schools), or as low-bar disqualification filters to prune the non-serious applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T13:10:27.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:29:00.717" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Age is something we might notice, but is rarely an issue. In fact, there are many schools where the added maturity you'd have would be a major plus, because you'd be able to articulate some clear research directions and would be able to get into research directly. If so, then you should be clear to say so in your statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is unlikely to come up in the application process, it might also be helpful to think about what your post-Ph.D career plans would be. Would you want to move into a research job (in academia or elsewhere) or is a Ph.D just something you'd like to do for the purpose of research exploration ? Because this age discrepancy issue will come up again and again in the academic line of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T13:29:00.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="906" CreationDate="2012-03-27T15:42:47.020" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My (computer science) department does not require GRE scores at all.  A few faculty still use them to evaluate applicants—there's no accounting for taste—but there is certainly no official cutoff (as Suresh suggests).  In practice, they're only useful if they're really low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, by state law, an international student at my university cannot be hired as a teaching assistant if their TOEFL spoken English score is below 24.  (Too many courses were being taught by foreign students with thick accents.)  Since my PhD program has a TAship requirement, we &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; filter out applicants with low TOEFL scores.  We can still admit applicants with scores below 24 if someone offers them an RAship, but they have to bring their score up to 24 by the end of their first year.  So in practice, you have to have at least a 20 to be considered at all.  (And we do conduct phone interviews with borderline cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T15:42:47.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-03-27T18:58:14.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who worked in the automotive industry (all the bigwigs in the US) for about 7-8 years after his Bachelors degree. He joined a university for a PhD at 31 about 2 years and he is well on his way now having finished his qualifiers etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although he isn't working in mathematics, I think it's fine to start your PhD in your 30s. You might actually have an advantage because you have several years of practical/research experience and also maturity that 20 year olds &lt;em&gt;may not&lt;/em&gt; have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T18:58:14.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="901" CreationDate="2012-03-27T20:00:20.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would normally choose the two-year program, for exactly the reasons that you cite. One of the few reasons why I would consider the one-year program is if there is a particular individual you want to work with, or if it is your first-choice school for the PhD program &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; it offers a path of lower resistance to already be a student there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, as JeffE points out, you won't really save much time by going to the one-year program over the two-year program. (Besides, if it's a coursework-based program, you'll probably get more out of the two-year deal!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T20:00:20.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-03-27T21:42:39.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have to say that I have seen the age issue work both ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do know of programs that are biased &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; older applicants, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; they have remained &quot;active&quot; in research-related fields; these tend to be &quot;cutting-edge technology&quot;-type programs where out-of-date knowledge is essentially useless for research purposes. These locations have also been international, where the funding situation is quite different in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the US, I do not know of any age-specific bias; technically, it's probably against the law in most states. On a personal level, I have known many students who have returned to academia after extensive careers outside of it, and some of them in fields quite far removed from anything of a traditional &quot;academic&quot; nature. The ones who returned to academia with a clear sense of purpose have thrived, and many of them have even won prestigious fellowships. On the other hand, I've also known people who have been unable to hack the rigors of a graduate education and essentially gave up within a few weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, if you know what you want to do, and can convince someone to give you a shot, you have an excellent shot at getting a good PhD and having a fruitful career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T21:42:39.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T00:57:38.887" Score="19" ViewCount="5701" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a student is applying to a graduate school. Who is typically on the admissions committee? Is the chair of the department on the admissions committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T00:53:56.050" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T03:53:40.313" Title="Who typically serves on a graduate school admissions committee?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="953" CreationDate="2012-03-28T02:15:53.370" Score="15" ViewCount="966" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a graduate student, who will (hopefully!) graduate in the next year (or two . . .).  I have slowly come to realize that I enjoy teaching, and consequently want to do more of it!  My main reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to gain experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to bolster my CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to learn to be a better teacher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last point is particularly important to me, because I feel I have received insufficient training in how to teach mathematics well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have done the usual TA thing.  For the past year, I have also been an adjunct instructor at a local four-year college, so I pretty much know what it's like to be &quot;fully responsible&quot; for a course.  What I am looking for are challenging opportunities which allow me to do some–or all–of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teach fairly sophisticated math to bright high school students / undergraduates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;engage them in innovative thinking/research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be consistently mentored/evaluated throughout the duration of this experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the last point is rather important to me.  So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do such programs exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure they do, but when Googling, I invariably come up with graduate summer schools, or &quot;local&quot; opportunities. (By &quot;local&quot; here, I mean those which are only eligible to students in that particular school's graduate program.) So I am hoping someone (or several people) here know more about it than Google does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that most opportunities for this summer have probably already expired, but I want to stress I am not only focused on summer sessions.  In particular, I would gladly forego my usual TA appointment for a semester, to be a part of a more difficult and rewarding experience somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - This is my first question here, so feel free to edit my tags appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="536" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T18:21:28.033" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:27:39.873" Title="&quot;Challenging&quot; Teaching Experiences for Math Grad Students?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="917" CreationDate="2012-03-28T03:47:53.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's highly unlikely that the chair of a department serves on a graduate admissions committee. The committee is usually composed of some set of faculty who represent the different areas in the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T03:47:53.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="921" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:24:34.680" Score="7" ViewCount="4041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my GPA in the 100 point system,&#xA;how could I calculate it in 4.0 point system?&#xA;I searched, and I didn't find a good answer,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="537" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T13:24:26.110" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T13:24:26.110" Title="How could I calculate my GPA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="920" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:40:08.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask your university if they could provide a mapping to a 4-point system. If they don't, you simply have to calculate GPA*4/100! In case you feel this undermines your prospects, ask your university for a rank certificate which will give the admissions committee a good idea of where you stood in your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T04:40:08.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:50:01.763" Score="7" ViewCount="695" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is as stated in the title and to elaborate more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there are any standardized international exams to enter a masters course in pure mathematics (besides GRE Math) and available for a scholarship simultaneously? (I'm a graduate in Automotive engineering, 23 years old and don't have a math degree yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have completed 5 courses related to engineering mathematics during my tenure as a engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been prepping only on math (topology, differential geometry, advanced calculus, real analysis, etc.) for the past 6 months and am almost ready for an entrance exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone offer me alternate options or solutions on how to go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="539" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T14:58:13.487" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T14:58:13.487" Title="How do I get into a masters course in pure mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="901" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:50:26.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I originally posted the following as an answer to your post on stackexchange, and since you're posting it here, I'm posting my answer here as well in hopes of it being helpful to a wider audience (not everyone on this site is necessarily a frequent visitor of stackexchange--especially *math.*stackexchange). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting as an answer, because it is too long for a comment; however, treat what follows as a 'comment', please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only say what I'd do. I would go for the two year program, would try to impress people to obtain good recommendations, would learn as much as I could, would explore my interests, would try to work on some projects with some faculty member(s) (which would also help with exploring interests and obtaining good recommendations), and, assuming good academic standing, would try to apply to top schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the process, I would also explore my strengths and weaknesses on the emotional side. Let me clarify... We all work differently, are most productive under different circumstances and see our place in life differently. When you go for a PhD, as was mentioned above, you'll be on the clock, you'll be under pressure to write a dissertation and, if you're planning a career in academia, to write papers (and try to publish them), make connections with professionals in the field (mostly by attending conferences and dissipating your research results through talks), you'll be trying to impress people and so on. I would use my time in the masters program to explore my strengths and weaknesses in regards to all of the above (as much as possible, at least). For example: 'is mathematics really my thing?'; 'what kind of environment is best for me - a big, top ranking school or a smaller department?'; 'what can I do to be more productive?'; 'what inspires me (especially about math or some special field in math)?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By working with a faculty member on a project, you can also ask and (more importantly!) try to answer questions like 'what kind of a relationship with my adviser should I expect in a 5 year program, and what should I look for in my adviser?' By developing closer ties with faculty members, you can have some of your questions answered by the faculty members, such as: 'what should I expect in a PhD program?'; 'given my interests, how should I choose the school for the PhD program?'; 'are there any faculty members in potential PhD departments that I can communicate with before I actually apply to the program (this can really help sometimes with your application and chance of acceptance)?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but certainly not least, you'll be gaining a solid knowledge base (but, as implicitly implied above, you can only learn as much as you want to learn). You shouldn't look at it as &quot;losing a year&quot;, since it may very well compensate for the first year or two in graduate school when you're studying to pass the qualifying exams. Speaking from personal experience: a year and a half in the masters program helped me to get done with all the formalities (qualifying exams, identifying field of interest, choosing adviser) by the beginning of my second year, and from the middle of my second year in the program I was actively reading papers and thinking about potential research problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with whatever you eventually choose to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user538" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T04:50:26.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="925" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:55:08.567" Score="54" ViewCount="27761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many master's students who get an opportunity to talk to their potential PhD advisors well before applying. In most cases this opportunity is available by the professors with whom they worked for their master's. Moreover, there are many others who establish a contact with professors by mailing them and enquiring about PhD vacancies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is knowing an advisor prior to applying for PhD? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does an email interaction play a vital role when the department makes its admit decisions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If email contact &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important, can a student send out mails to 2-3 professors (working in the same area) in case one of them does not bother to reply?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To sum up, is applying of any use (especially in top universities) when you have no contacts and only your credentials to bank on? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T10:14:01.793" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T01:53:42.517" Title="How to contact professors for PhD vacancies?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="39" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="924" CreationDate="2012-03-28T05:35:11.060" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the answer depends upon what admissions system a department uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you need to obtain admission to a group at the same time as (or instead of) the department as a whole, then it is of course absolutely critical that you make contacts ahead of time! In general, I'd even start contacting people well before the time of application. However, make sure that your contact is substantial. When it becomes time to apply, you will have a better shot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many departments, you apply for admission to the department as a whole. After your admission, you select an advisor to work for. In such cases, it's not really critical for you to have a direct contact within the department, since it's not necessarily a given that the professor you want to work for sits on the admissions committee. In such cases, you'll have an indirect connection at best. That said, it's still a good idea to have a contact in a department during the admissions process. You don't lose anything by it—unless the professor has a bad reputation amongst his colleagues (and then you might not want to work for him or her, anyways!). By the way, I would caution &lt;strong&gt;strongly&lt;/strong&gt; against going to such a school if there's only one professor at the department you'd be interested in working for. You're taking a very large risk under such circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer some of the other issues raised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Email or other forms of contact.&lt;/strong&gt; Face-to-face or phone interactions rank above email interactions. There's no doubt about that. However, an email interaction—if actually substantial—can also be viable. However, a quick emil telling someone you're applying and interested in working for them won't really get you anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of people to contact.&lt;/strong&gt; There is of course no limit to the number of potential advisors you can contact. To some extent, they're competing for you just as much as you're competing for them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I apply on credentials alone?&lt;/strong&gt; At most top departments (where application is done at the department level), I think it's entirely possible to apply on credentials &lt;em&gt;and recommendations&lt;/em&gt; alone. Having the contacts can obviously help, but not having it won't ruin your chances for admissions, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T21:17:08.480" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:17:08.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="920" CreationDate="2012-03-28T09:08:27.747" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless it is specifically requested, do not do it. Some school even urge you not to do it. It is highly probable, that they know your scale and understand what level means you are smart and hard working. Be sure to include thing like &lt;em&gt;cum laude&lt;/em&gt;, merit scholarships, ranking within the cohort, ... These things are easier for them to understand and help them to compare you to the other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miscalculating your GPA may result in unintentional deception or undermining your actual achievements. Be careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="422" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T09:08:27.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="920" CreationDate="2012-03-28T09:24:15.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following conversion for Syria, 100 point systems differ so generally the conversion is not always the same. I would use this only as an indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;| Scale          | Grade Description   | US Grade | Notes&#xA;| 95.00 - 100.00 | الشرف‎       (Honor) | A+       | Arabic: Sharaf&#xA;|  85.00 - 94.99 | امتياز‎  (Excellent) | A        | Arabic: Imtiyaz&#xA;|  75.00 - 84.99 | جيد جداً‎ (Very Good) | B+       | Arabic: Jayed Jeddan&#xA;|  65.00 - 74.99 | جيد‎          (Good) | B        | Arabic: Jayed&#xA;|  60.00 - 64.99 | مقبول‎   (Aceptable) | C        | Arabic: Maqboul&#xA;|   0.00 - 59.99 | راسب‎         (Fail) | F        | Arabic: Raseb; Lowest passing grade&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classbase.com/Countries/Syria/Grading-System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.classbase.com/Countries/Syria/Grading-System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T09:24:15.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="924" CreationDate="2012-03-28T11:33:45.100" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to aeismail's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can send an e-mail that demonstrates that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a strong candidate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You wrote an e-mail specifically for that professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are familiar with some of that professor's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then it &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; have an important positive effect.  Ideally, you would be able to suggest how things you know or have done could contribute to that professor's research agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sending a generic e-mail to multiple professors will not help your case and will probably hurt it.  I mention this because a large fraction of the e-mails I receive from potential students are obviously part of a mass-mailing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T11:33:45.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="917" CreationDate="2012-03-28T12:58:42.790" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my (large CS) department, the graduate admissions committee officially consists of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The director of the graduate program.  This is a ~3-year rotating position among the senior faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About a dozen faculty members, distributed roughly uniformly across topic areas and faculty rank.  The department head is not a member; he's way too busy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About a dozen graduate student volunteers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, our graduate admissions database is open to the entire faculty.  Each faculty member is expected to help review applications, and in particular, to identify applicants that they would be willing to advise, offer an RAship, help recruit, and/or recommend for fellowships.  We ask each applicant to name a few faculty they'd be interested in working with, so I usually start by reading the applications that mention my name.  I haven't been on the admissions committee since 2000, but I still read a few dozen applications every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each round of admissions, each research area (theory, graphics, architecture, etc.) provides a ranked list of applicants for their area to the committee, along with estimates of advising/funding capacity.  This usually requires discussion among the area faculty, coordinated by the area chair, who may or may not be a committee member.  (I was the theory area chair for several years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final admissions decisions are made by the official committee, but positive reviews from extra-curricular faculty carry a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of weight.  In particular, nobody is admitted without at least three positive faculty reviews, including at least one potential advisor.  Decisions are folded back into the database so that faculty can track their favorite applicants' progress, and if necessary, drum up more faculty reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in practice, &lt;strong&gt;everyone&lt;/strong&gt; is on the committee, including the department head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T12:58:42.790" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="924" CreationDate="2012-03-28T17:41:07.487" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;To supplement the other answers, here are some do's and don'ts for email contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The worst thing you can do is make it seem like you're trying to cast&#xA;  a wide net and don't have a clear focus. That's a guaranteed delete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Narrow your search to the people whose work you're really interested in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read their papers (especially recent ones - I've had people email me about stuff I did 5 year ago - I've moved on :))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about their work. Find something intelligent to say (even a question).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Email the professor and focus on those questions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's most likely to get my (their) attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T17:41:07.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="257" CreationDate="2012-03-28T19:33:45.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if repetition does annoy you: I usually hear this question as &quot;What kind of research did you do &lt;em&gt;recently&lt;/em&gt;?&quot; If you research evolves a bit, this will help to avoid too much repetition. Also it helps to keep you explanations fresh and if you like your recent results you may probably like to share your enthusiasm...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T19:33:45.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="901" CreationDate="2012-03-29T00:52:09.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would choose the two year program as a Master's program is just that: You'd want to MASTER a certain topic and two years or so is generally a decent amount of time in which you could hone your skills and defend your research (if you would opt for a thesis option).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T00:52:09.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="937" CreationDate="2012-03-29T03:56:03.213" Score="31" ViewCount="2533" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is citation count for fresh doctorates? Is this number more important for joining the academia than the industry? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the importance of citations for someone seeking tenure? Does this depend on the field, as papers in an esoteric area can be expected to have few citations? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T15:10:43.807" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T07:33:57.040" Title="How important are citations when applying for jobs or promotions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="901" CreationDate="2012-03-29T06:42:29.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are certain that you will continue on PhD program after you obtain your master degree, then you should choose the 2 year program. Others already explain why. I am not going to repeat the reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are not 100% sure about obtaining PhD after you get a master, I would take the 1 year program if I were you. A plan is just a plan after all. How do you know what will happen 1 year from now? Why not get a master degree first? You will have other options after that, such as teaching at a high school, get a job in industry, etc. A master degree may be worth 10% more of the salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the bottom line is your desire to have a PhD in math. You are the only one who knows the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T06:42:29.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T07:32:26.547" Score="24" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on both the author and the referee sides, but I was wondering how editors approach their task. In particular, to what level of detail do you read the paper you assign to referees, and when (i.e. before or after receiving the reviews)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T00:54:34.717" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T00:54:34.717" Title="How to act as an editor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="879" CreationDate="2012-03-29T07:32:44.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've sat on graduate student committees that have met with faculty candidates for our department in a research university with a sizeable undergraduate population. The mentorship track record and the result of that mentorship are probably the most important factors that we considered after the intellectual capacity of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, dealing with whiny grade-obsessed premeds who don't understand basic concepts is part of the job description. There is also a noticeable volume of undergrads who do research. A future PI who doesn't want to be in a teaching environment is already in the wrong place. A future PI who hasn't considered the fact that they would be in a teaching environment doesn't have a clear vision of where they want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a potential faculty mentor, they are a potential mentor to a graduate student like yourself. An ability to mentor undergrads without a high attrition rate tells you that they are able to create an environment that doesn't scare the student away as well as an environment that keeps the student to come back. Sounds like a faculty advisor that I would want to have available for future students like me. Conversely, an inability to mentor suggests that they mentor either drove their student into pieces or wasn't able to or weren't patient enough to design suitable experiments to teach difficult concepts to a young mind. If one wasn't able to do this with an undergrad, what would happen with a 1st year PhD student who may be stuck with them for the next 6 years? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentoring undergrads provides a solid and universal metric of a candidate's ability to mentor. They are probably the most difficult type of advisee to mentor and the past history of mentorship does provide a nice projection to one's path as an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T07:32:44.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="933" CreationDate="2012-03-29T08:24:36.220" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, citation counts are considerably less important than recommendation letters, but they still matter, especially for tenure.  For fresh PhDs, high citation counts are definitely helpful, but they're not a hiring requirement for most fields in CS.  But for tenure, it's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard to build a successful case without at least one high-impact (post-thesis) publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart committees know to gather citation counts, publication counts, acceptance rates, impact factors, h-indices, and other quasi-objective numerical data from reasonable sources and to compare them with peers in the applicant's field.  (For my promotion cases, for example, my citation counts were mined from Google Scholar, not ISI, and I was compared against other theoretical computer scientists, not other computational-geometers-who-play-with-surface-graphs.)  Alas, not every committee is smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T08:24:36.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="933" CreationDate="2012-03-29T10:39:07.547" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the part of the question about freshly-minted doctorates, citation counts are not normally considered as a critical component, either for academia or for industry. Or perhaps I should state that the &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of citations for recently published literature is not a major obstacle, particularly in fields with long &quot;half-lives&quot; for research papers. (Some of my papers only got cited after a year or more following publication.) However, a &lt;em&gt;high&lt;/em&gt; citation count for a paper indicates that the student is doing potentially impactful work, and that can carry weight with a professor or manager doing hiring in either academia or industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T10:39:07.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="935" CreationDate="2012-03-29T10:43:06.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From conversations with a mentor who was the editor-in-chief for a major journal, if you take the responsibility seriously, you need to have enough of an understanding of the papers assigned to you to figure out which referees will be suitable for a paper, while not taking so much time to read it that you can't process all of them for lack of time. As mentioned above, you need to at least a &quot;high-level&quot; read of the paper before assigning it to the referees. If the paper comes back with mixed reviews, it probably requires a careful re-read; if the reviews are uniform in recommending for or against publication, then it may not be as critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the editor will want to read papers when revisions come in, so that may mean going through a paper several times during the course of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T10:43:06.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="920" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:11:59.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this already has an accepted answer but still:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you need it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need it for grad school, chances are that the university would want &quot;untouched&quot; grades. In other words, they want to see your grades &quot;as is&quot; without any modifications, conversions or other such activities. I had my GPA on a 10 pt scale and most universities asked me to enter it as it is and that the job of conversion would be their headache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the university provided you with a conversion algorithm?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a university needs converted GPA, chances are that it provides a conversion algorithm. For instance, University of Washington provided &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grad.washington.edu/fac-staff/gpa-gpc/converting_gpas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (Warning! PDF) to international students. I've seen Berkeley, PSU and a few other universities do something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you willing to spend money?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Columbia University provided the reference for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wes.org/calculator/login.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WES, a GPA Conversion tool.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citatation : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/pages/admissions/FAQs/index.html#N100EF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEOR Dept.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt of the passage (In case the link dies):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For the online application, though, you can enter an approximate conversion of your percentage grade. There are many websites that help you with grade conversion, and one of them is available through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WES&lt;/a&gt;. Please note that we do not recommend this site over other ones.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your university's guidelines. For instance, some universities give students a rough conversion from their scales to US and ECTS scales. See if your university does so. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning: Do not use random GPA conversion schemes from blogs or &lt;em&gt;shady&lt;/em&gt; websites. While it might not cause much difference, don't risk it.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T13:18:09.667" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T13:18:09.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T05:59:10.757" Score="34" ViewCount="1958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to embark on a research project in complex systems on my own spare time. It seems like the idea I have is a good one. However, it would be better, for obvious reasons, to have an experienced person guide me. What are the chances that a university professor would agree to guide me while I try and churn this out? (Obviously, I want it to be as professional as possible). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't get anyone on board, what are my chances of publishing, or at least getting a pat on the back from admissions committees when I apply for graduate school? Do they appreciate this kind of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8104" OwnerDisplayName="Joebevo" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-09-11T08:33:11.093" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T08:33:11.093" Title="How to get an advisor for my amateur research?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="941" CreationDate="2012-03-29T08:26:14.560" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've mentioned that you intend to apply to grad school.  It would be helpful to know where you are in the academic process: high school, started university, finished university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding asking for help, I see two distinct phases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have not yet started the project (and you are not currently a student somewhere), then I think most professors and professional researchers would be very wary to spend any time helping you.  Complex systems, is, in particular, a field that attracts a lot of crackpots, and even the most well-intentioned projects of interested amateurs usually fizzle.  I think the best bet would be to find someone you already know to provide early consultation, rather than cold-calling a professional at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are enrolled in a university of some kind, then the story is different: the faculty has something of an obligation to talk to eager students. (-:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have already made significant progress and have &lt;em&gt;specific technical questions&lt;/em&gt;, I think almost anyone would be wiling to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other piece of advice: don't worry too much about talking about your idea.  Many 'amateurs' get obsessed with the secrecy of their amazing idea -- this is the road to crackpotdom.  I think it would be quite reasonable to state your idea on a site such as mathoverflow and ask whether it is a credible research proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can cite recent publications in refereed journals that indicate active interest in the area of your proposed work, then this is a good sign that you have both done your homework and identified an interesting subject of investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, even if the thing you are investigating turns out to be interesting only to you, it could still be worth continuing.  It might lead somewhere more interesting later, and you would certainly develop useful skills in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't get anyone on board, what are my chances of publishing, or at least getting a pat on the back from admissions committees when I apply for graduate school? Do they appreciate this kind of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful independent project, especially one resulting in a publication, would be great material for your grad school app.   If your project does have interesting results, it should not be too hard to publish, regardless of your credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it turns out that your work is not publishable in a refereed journal, it might find a home in your school's &amp;quot;journal of undergraduate research&amp;quot; (or something similar), which would also be a nice resume bullet during the grad school application procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's probably best to simply avoid the word &amp;quot;amateur&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" OwnerDisplayName="nibot" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T08:32:05.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T14:52:37.317" Score="18" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last decades, many international scientific associations have been created. Organizations such as AAAS, IEEE, ACM, involve thousands of scientists and professors that have similar scientific backgrounds and objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, besides technical and resource taks (such as providing documentation, articles, books, and organizing conferences) their aim is to push scientists closer, and let them connect with each other and network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning this last point, I've always wondered: yes, but how? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm member of several scientific societies, and I think I should take more advantage of my membership to connect with other scientists.&#xA;But, anyway, except for conferences where we meet in person, how could I use my membership to get more connections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you do?&#xA;What's your experience?&#xA;Are you member of some scientific associations? How do you take advantage of your membership in professional connections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T21:18:53.783" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T15:40:36.093" Title="How to take advantage of scientific international association membership for career?" Tags="&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="924" CreationDate="2012-03-29T17:23:53.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How important is knowing an advisor prior to applying for PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Super important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does an email interaction play a vital role when the department makes its admit decisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes yes. An email + an visit in person to the university could surely increase your probabilities to get accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If email contact is important, can a student send out mails to 2-3 professors (working in the same area) in case one of them does not bother to reply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sure, mandatory! Send as emails as you can!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To sum up, is applying of any use (especially in top universities) when you have no contacts and only your credentials to bank on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, try to contact and visit the professor you want to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-04T16:04:54.647" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T16:04:54.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T18:36:07.420" Score="20" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the best approach for talking to faculty that are in distant/unrelated areas during a campus visit for a faculty position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it preferable to show that you are interested in their research and open-minded about learning new things by asking them about their research, or to try to focus on your own research and the expertise that you offer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="550" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T16:27:46.323" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T16:27:46.323" Title="Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="946" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:44:05.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll typically have between a half-hour and an hour to talk with them. In that time, you should be able to cover a number of different topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your background (briefly)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your academic experience, if any&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why you're interested in working in their department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their research focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their ideas for future research focuses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ways you could fit into their department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of all those, the only ones you could probably skip is 1. Everything else is pretty crucial to getting a good idea of what the department's research agenda (if they have one) is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T20:07:05.580" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:07:05.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="949" CreationDate="2012-03-29T20:02:16.007" Score="8" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got two papers accepted and I am just wondering how to know their policy towards publishing my papers also on CoRR. is it fine to publish the same paper in CoRR and in the conference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T21:08:36.277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:08:56.073" Title="Publishing policies for conference papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="948" CreationDate="2012-03-29T20:10:59.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, it's fine, as long as you submit a pre-print and not the camera ready of the conf proceedings. You can also check these questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7/102&quot;&gt;Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/40/102&quot;&gt;Submitting a subset of my work to ArXiv&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:10:59.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="948" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:08:56.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Charles's answer, it depends on how the conference papers are published. If they're published as a special issue of a journal, then it may very well depend on the policies of the journal, as well as those of the conference. (And some conferences may have special restrictions on publications; in those cases, you should check with the conference organizers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:08:56.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="946" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:12:31.013" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a meeting with a &quot;distant&quot; potential colleague, you should let the interviewer determine the initial flow of the interview. The important thing is to not spend too much time trying to figure out if this is just for information, or if you're being &quot;tested&quot; in some way. (The answer is, yes, you're probably being tested.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the interviewer will want to talk about his research, to see if you are willing to think about new ideas, and how to fit them into your work. Sometimes, they will want to talk about your research, to see how well you can explain your ideas and work to people outside of your field. And other times it will fall somewhere in between these two extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:12:31.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:22:02.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to take advantage of memberships in professional societies—beyond attending conferences—is helping to &lt;em&gt;organize&lt;/em&gt; them. This will get you in touch with the other people in your field who are at an early-career phase. (Older faculty typically don't need to, or are higher up on the food chain.) Organizing sessions is also a good way to learn your specialty better, and to keep abreast of who's working on what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, it can also bolster your career by providing you with &quot;synergistic&quot; (or &quot;service&quot;) activities that show you to be a good member of the research community, which is important for getting job offers and promotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:22:02.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="918" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:27:39.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to get involved with a program like &lt;a href=&quot;http://learningu.org/about/what-we-do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Learning Unlimited&lt;/a&gt; (full disclosure: a few of my friends are heavily involved in running it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard (through the grapevine) that a short while back &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AoPS&lt;/a&gt; may be looking for instructors. I don't know whether the position is still/was ever available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:27:39.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2012-03-30T04:20:43.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will say though that early in your academic career (and you shouldn't really get involved in such activities BEFORE you have a PhD), you have to seriously weigh doing such organizational work against the corresponding amount of time spent working at your research. It's good to maybe do one or two things, but I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T04:20:43.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="956" CreationDate="2012-03-30T06:11:35.103" Score="27" ViewCount="19475" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are good practices (does and don'ts) when writing a rebuttal for a conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for a journal rebuttal letter you can make changes to your paper, and resubmit it for another revision. However, for conferences (and for the tough ones) you cannot make changes to your paper (as far as I know). So you can only address the reviewers comments', don't you? In that case, what are good things to do and what things you should avoid to get a good rebuttal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T00:40:59.040" LastActivityDate="2020-12-01T12:56:59.543" Title="How to write a rebuttal for a conference" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2012-03-30T07:09:08.397" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even for conference papers you can still perform (relatively small) changes after the notification. When trying to rebuttal, it makes much sense to address the main issues raised by the reviewer (and not to pick on the minor changes they suggest). Some good practices include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge good suggestions made by the reviewer. If those suggestions are easy to fix, say they are fixable and will be fixed in the final-version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the reviewers suggestion makes no sense or is not valid - explain why their review is invalid. However, you should acknowledge the fact that if the reviewers did not get it right, there might be a problem in your paper. Promise to clarify those issues for the final version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the review raise up a valid point that makes your result significantly weaker than you claim, I don't think there is a reason to rebuttal, but other might think differently (trying to justify why it is still a strong result).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't claim that the reviewer has no idea what s/he is talking about (even if that is indeed the case..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottomline, you should be respectful and polite to the reviewers. Thank them for their suggestions and suggest to fix whatever is fixable even if you think nothing is wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T16:59:05.513" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T16:59:05.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2012-03-30T09:10:41.383" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, a conference enforcing a rebuttal process will also define what kind of rebuttal an author can write. For instance, the conference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigsac.org/ccs.html&quot;&gt;ACM CCS&lt;/a&gt; (considered as one of the best conferences in security) enforces a rebuttal phase. Let me quote what they wrote during last year edition: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You now have the opportunity to view the preliminary reviews of your&#xA;  submission and, if you wish, enter a response limited to 500 words.&#xA;  This response is completely optional and there is no requirement to&#xA;  respond.  If you do, the deadline is [3 days after receiving this message]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your response must focus on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Answers to specific questions raised by reviewers (if any).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Factual errors in the reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We stress that your paper is being evaluated as submitted.  You may&#xA;  NOT use your response to provide new research results or reformulate&#xA;  the presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another conference, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~guttman/post12/&quot;&gt;POST&lt;/a&gt;, uses a similar process with similar requirements, with an extra suggestion that I think it's worth mentioning: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Your response will be seen by all PC members who have&#xA;  access to the discussion of your paper.  Please be polite&#xA;  and constructive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the bottom line is: keep it factual, polite and constructive. If a reviewer doesn't like your paper, then it's unlikely you can change his mind during the rebuttal phase. However, it's just a good opportunity to address some very specific point. For instance, if a reviewer asks: &quot;Isn't your approach undecidable?&quot;, then you can answer &quot;yes/no, and we can include the proof in the final version of the paper&quot; (and ideally, link to a research report where the proof is already written). Or if a reviewer wrote &quot;this problem has been already solved 20 years ago by X&quot;, then you can answer &quot;We released one of X's assumption, that we believed was too strong for this particular context&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the rebuttal might be unlikely to change a particular review (unless there was an obvious mistake), but can encourage the PC Chair to ask for another review of your paper. And Jeff's remark is very good, don't write the rebuttal the same day than you receive it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T09:10:41.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="961" CreationDate="2012-03-30T09:59:07.560" Score="26" ViewCount="3622" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've already saw, many people here are related to admission process. And I want to ask their opinion on what is priority of all stuff from application: what is the most important (letters of recommendation or personal statement, GPA or maybe test scores), what is less important for admission and what is the least important? Would admission committee prefer applicant with good scores, high GPA, but with not outstanding personal statement and without letters from famous or well-known professors (for example, my scientific advisor in undergraduate school get his PhD only a couple years ago), or student with less GPA, test scores, but with letter from university's prof?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some graduate schools require General GRE (Graduate Record Examinations). Would it better to send GRE scores (general or subject or both) even if it's not required (in case of relatively good result), or them wouldn't be considered at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="552" LastEditorUserId="379" LastEditDate="2012-04-23T19:47:50.870" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T19:47:50.870" Title="Priority of application materials for admission decision" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="958" CreationDate="2012-03-30T10:58:51.667" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we're talking about a PhD candidate, the most relevant factors, for me, are those that demonstrate the applicant's capability to be a productive researcher. That means a compelling statement of purpose (why the applicant wants to be a PhD student, with ideas for potential areas of exploration, if not necessarily an entirely thought-out project) counts for quite a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally valuable are letters of recommendation that &lt;em&gt;actually talk about the candidate&lt;/em&gt;. I don't care for a letter that regurgitates the student's academic performance, or that reads like a template in which the name of the applicant was swapped in for somebody else's. That does me no good in evaluating a candidate, and to some extent can work as a mark &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; a candidate, since it indicates a lapse in decision-making (why get a letter from someone who doesn't know you well?). A really good letter of recommendation, however, can sometimes make the difference between somebody who's on the bubble and somebody who gets an offer of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transcripts and test scores do matter, but for me are less valuable, because they don't give me a lot to go on—it's not easy to tell what's a &quot;good&quot; performance and what isn't, particularly when schools use &quot;nonstandard&quot; scales (such as reporting scores out of 100 without telling me what the average score is!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other factor that we do here that not all programs do is an interview (in person or via Skype). This is perhaps the most important part of the process for us, because we can see if the paper record matches the &quot;actual&quot; applicant. Sometimes candidates look good in writing, but can't really talk knowledgeably about what they have studied. That's usually a clear sign that someone really won't be a good fit as a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T10:58:51.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2012-03-30T10:59:37.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really dislike memorising anything word for word as most of that effort will only be useful only for a single occasion. That said - I have to admit that sometimes a talk is important enough to be worth that effort - especially if the talk is one the you will be giving on many occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the disadvantage of memorising a talk is that it is hard to sound natural. It's difficult, but not impossible. Actors demonstrate this. Generally it is much better to just us a script as a guide. Practise individual chunks from memory a number of times and play around with the various ways of wording it. Instead of having to remember the exact words, you now only have to remember one out of a number of options. You will become much better at discussing the topic and your ability to improvise will improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="270" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T10:59:37.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="958" CreationDate="2012-03-30T11:24:23.710" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;As aeismail says, what we are looking for is &lt;strong&gt;concrete evidence of research potential.&lt;/strong&gt;  So, in decreasing order of importance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decent grades and (if required) test scores; otherwise, no one will read your application at all.  Here, &quot;decent grades&quot; means three-point-something from a good undergraduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research publications, if you have any.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters.  You &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; have at least one (and preferably three) strong recommendation letter from a faculty member who praises your research potential in specific and credible detail.  Letters that draw specific comparisons to other successful PhD students are best.  Letters from junior faculty are perfectly fine; they can draw comparisons to their recent graduate school peers.  Letters that say only &quot;He got an A+ in my class&quot; are useless; we can read your transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research statement.  Your statement &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; discuss your research experience and interests in specific and credible detail.  A statement that only describes your sources of inspiration (&quot;Ever since man walked on the moon...&quot;) and/or brags about coursework is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other concrete evidence of independent research/scholarship/creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No red flags.  Potential red flags include low grades in classes central to your proposed research area, missing key classes entirely, abysmal test scores, negative (or overly delicate) recommendation letters, recommendation letters obviously written by the applicant, spelling and grammar mistakes in the research statement, any evidence of immaturity or personality issues, and any evidence that the applicant is not prepared/informed/serious about research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice what's not listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T11:24:23.710" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2012-03-30T11:45:00.347" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; role that membership in professional societies plays in connecting researchers is &lt;strong&gt;slightly lower registration fees for conferences&lt;/strong&gt;.  That's it.  Conferences and workshops in my field are organized almost entirely by volunteers form the research community.  Some are affiliated with professional societies (specifically, ACM, SIAM, and IEEE), but some aren't, and the success of a conference or workshop in bringing colleagues together appears to be independent of any sponsoring organization.  But since I'm an ACM member, my registration fees for ACM conferences are &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; lower, so I'm &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; more likely to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other that that, I got nothin'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T11:45:00.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1227" CreationDate="2012-03-31T01:14:28.520" Score="16" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a postdoc at an American university, and have been offered a promotion to something between postdoc and faculty (there is not a specific title, yet, but something like &quot;soft-money academic staff researcher&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any job-related benefits (other than standard health and retirement) that I could request when negotiating this position? Are there any requests that I should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; make?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the following come to mind - are all of these appropriate requests, and what should I consider when making such requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;authorship on project-related publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research support&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;undergraduate assistants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;misc research &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;private office&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professional development&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;opportunities to teach courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;money to attend conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adjunct faculty status (so that I can advise students, apply for grants)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other opportunities to support later advancement?    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some projected timeline of raises and advancement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my role (and degree of autonomy, or lack thereof) when managing students and postdocs. Although part of my position, these folks are are working for multiple PI's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T21:29:20.240" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T21:29:20.240" Title="Considerations when negotiating a promotion from postdoc to researcher?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="920" CreationDate="2012-03-31T15:09:37.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had to deal with this situation when applying. My University did not have an A/B/C... system and would not provide a GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the application forms that I filled out provided instructions for international students, eg: no not enter a GPA. So I would start by reading the application forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those that do not, my strongest recommendation is to contact the person in charge of applications at the department that you are applying to. Ask them what you should do in your specific circumstance. There is usually an email address on the department website for application enquiries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately a few universities never replied to my emails. For their applications I left the GPA field blank if the form allowed. For forms that required a GPA for submission I simply made up what I thought was an appropriate system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this didn't seem to hurt my chances, I would only recommend this as a last resort if you can't get a straight answer from the department you are applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="559" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T15:09:37.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="968" CreationDate="2012-03-31T20:37:19.167" Score="17" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before diving into &quot;real research&quot;, there are some students who prefer to learn bare minimum prerequisite courses/material and then start off reading survey papers and develop their skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are others who prefer to go through courses from Introduction to Advanced to Independent Study before finally diving in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former would probably face problems of fundamentals while the latter spends too much time learning things which might not be completely useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At what point should one (Assume, if necessary, that I am talking about STEM) decide to dive into research while making sure that one is neither being too hasty nor slow?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take for e.g. that a person wishes to code a software in Python which does engineering calculations. He would either read something like Intro to Python and then directly start coding or he could also read documentations of other Math libraries, similar libraries in C/Fortran, study coding efficiency and thumb rules and then start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you prevent yourself from taking up too little or too much time to begin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-03-31T21:02:11.710" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T08:36:06.790" Title="At what point do you decide to jump into research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2012-03-31T20:47:08.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a one-size-fits-all problem. People should move into research when they're ready to do so, and in consultation with their advisors, when appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the approach I'd tend to advocate is to ramp down classwork while ramping up research. In that sense, the student controls the pace at which she learns, and can adjust the selection of coursework as time goes on to support or to complement the research work. Moreover, there's generally the assumption on the part of the advisor that the first few months aren't going to feature a lot of useful scientific results; they'll mainly be spent learning techniques and tools and basic concepts and understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the way to figure out if one is ready to start research is by doing some &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot; problems: if the student can handle the basics, then she can start moving on to the rest. If not, then at least she has a better handle on what she needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T06:39:30.190" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T06:39:30.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2012-03-31T21:14:50.853" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As aeismail says, there's no single answer. As with most things in life, it's hard to know when you're &quot;ready&quot; to do something. The best way is to jump in when you &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; like you don't need to prep any more, and then be prepared to shore up weaknesses as you spot them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, you'll learn how to prepare yourself to embark on a new research topic: some people like to start solving a problem first, and then return to the literature when they get stuck. Some people like to read a few key papers to get a sense of the main open problems and techniques, and then go off and play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only important thing is that you do &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, and not just wait on the sidelines for a mythical feeling of &quot;readiness&quot; to emerge. Be fearless, like a 2 year old who doesn't know enough to be afraid :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T21:14:50.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2012-04-01T08:36:06.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never understood the dichotomy between “preparing to do research” and actually doing research.  I have always learned best with a target problem in mind.  I always have to learn new fundamentals to solve any new problem.  Most of the time I spend on research is &quot;wasted&quot;, and most of what I learn is &quot;useless&quot;, and that's okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between just solving interesting problems and doing &quot;real research&quot; is pretty small.  In both cases, you're completely ignorant at the beginning; what distinguishes &quot;real research&quot; is that everyone else in the world is ignorant, too.  As long as you're comfortable working with no hope of finding your answers in the back of a book, you're as ready as you'll ever be.  Jump in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T08:36:06.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-01T18:56:22.533" Score="23" ViewCount="7203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am expected to finish my Ph.D in mathematics (if relevant, more specifically - in commutative/homological algebra) by the end of this academic year. I am studying in a somewhat minor university, although my supervisor is a well know figure in his field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following my supervisor's advice, I submitted applications for postdoctoral positions in about 20 top level universities in the US. As most of these universities already finished hiring for this year, I suspect I made the mistake aiming too high, and would probably get negative answers from all the different employers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this is the case, I am now wondering what should be the next step in my academic career. One option is to stay at my current university for another year (but with a much lower salary, as my scholarship will come to an end). I should mention that my supervisor highly discourages this option, as he thinks that I should get more involved in the research community of my field, and my current university is a poor place to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I am wondering if there are any other opportunities for postdocs in Europe or the US for the 2013 academic year, in my relevant field, of which the deadline still did not pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice or idea for my situation would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="562" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T19:06:24.063" Title="Postdoc opportunities in mathematics" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-04-01T20:34:11.117" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several major websites on which jobs in mathematics, including postdocs, tend to be posted.  Most importantly (in the US) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjobs.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mathjobs.org&lt;/a&gt;, but also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AMS's service&lt;/a&gt; and others.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/952/where-are-mathematics-jobs-advertised-if-not-on-mathjobs-e-g-in-europe-and-else&quot;&gt;this mathoverflow question&lt;/a&gt; for many more.)  Postdoc positions can take a while to sort out, since many of them are filled (or even created) in response to what happened earlier in the hiring season, so there may still be opportunities, especially if you're willing to look outside the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T20:34:11.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-04-01T22:18:18.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to AMS, you can also have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://dmatheorynet.blogspot.it/&quot;&gt;DMANET&lt;/a&gt;, they have many different positions in maths/TCS, but it's quite active, so it might worth browsing the announcements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you see a job announcement that you really like, don't hesitate to contact informally the responsible, even if the deadline is passed (and even if the deadline is quite old). It's possible that the position was not filled-in, and that they still have the budget. It's also possible that they are preparing another, similar position. You can also contact directly some professors you might interested in working with, even if they haven't advertised anything, you never know :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T22:18:18.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="974" CreationDate="2012-04-02T03:39:59.833" Score="26" ViewCount="10802" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question in some sense, complements &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt; this question&lt;/a&gt;. Suppose a good student completes his master's degree in a less-than-top-ranked university. He has excellent academic grades both in his bachelor's and master's, but unfortunately has not experienced the best research 'atmosphere' in his post-grad and so does not have any publications thus far in his career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a hugely relevant practical issue: low-ranked universities woo good students by providing them full funding plus scholarships for their master's, so there are many cases where students prefer them to top colleges where funding is not assured. After completion of graduation, these students desire to go for a PhD in top universities. So the question is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does a bright student with excellent grades but lacking in publications secure an admit in a top school? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One obvious answer is to formulate an excellent research problem and to convince professors of his research ideas pertaining to the problem. Any other useful suggestions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T17:45:22.990" Title="PhD opportunities when lacking publications" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="973" CreationDate="2012-04-02T07:26:54.690" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to make the case that your research potential outweighs your lack of research output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only places to make that case are your research statement and your letters.  Both your statement and your letters should make it clear that &lt;em&gt;you are an active researcher,&lt;/em&gt; even though you are not &lt;strong&gt;yet&lt;/strong&gt; published.  Your statement should describe the specific research problem(s) that you are pursuing, promising and specific partial results, and a specific and well-informed plan of attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, letters from faculty at your MS department should describe your independence, stubbornness, intellectual maturity, and so on, in specific and credible detail.  &lt;strong&gt;When you ask for letters, ask your references specifically if they can write a strong letter about your research potential.&lt;/strong&gt;  Ideally, your references should admit that their department doesn't provide you with the environment that you need to thrive as a researcher.  And it really hurts to write “[Bravo] can do better than us,” so it better be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees (at least the ones I've been on) do take applicants' previous institutions into account when judging research records.  We know that  applicants from most 4-year liberal arts colleges don't have as many opportunities for computer science research as applicants from (say) MIT, so our expectations for MIT applicants are higher.  So your lack of publications may not hurt you as much if your MS department is &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; to have a weak research atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: &lt;strong&gt;Do not suggest in your application that your lack of publications is your MS department's fault.&lt;/strong&gt;  You may believe it's their fault, and you might even be right.  But if you actually &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; that it's their fault, you'll come across as someone eager to blame others for your weaknesses.  No matter how good you are at research, nobody will admit you if they think you're a jerk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T07:26:54.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="991" CreationDate="2012-04-02T08:06:56.997" Score="52" ViewCount="11909" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research paper was stolen by the co-author and published as his own. What do I do? All the  data the paper is based on is my own work. I got it accepted in another journal but now I cannot get it published according to the copyright terms and conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="565" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T09:09:24.380" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T00:34:08.623" Title="My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="975" CreationDate="2012-04-02T08:45:04.423" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing would be to contact the editor of the journal that published your co-author's work, and to explain the problem to them. If the proofs that it is your own research are sufficient, they might consider the previously published paper as plagiarism, which should unblock your own publication. In this process, it might be worth contacting also the journal to which you submitted, so that they can confirm the date at which they received your submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I would say that the best move is to contact the two journals editors with the proofs, and see if they can sort things out. You can also consider in the mean time publishing your paper to an open repository (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;), if it does not interfere with the copyright policy of the journal you want to publish to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T08:45:04.423" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T12:39:19.917" Score="10" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, here is the deal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a computer science student in Turkey graduating this June. I have applied to PhD programs in the US to work in computer architecture. I have a decent bachelor's degree, and my college is reasonably respected. Before admissions, I contacted some professors, and they seemed very interested in my background. During admissions, I was interviewed by some other professors. However, it turned out that there was only one offer with a scholarship, which I decided not to accept. (You may ask why I didn't opt for that one, the response may make the issue personal. But at least I can say that I didn't waste a resource that can be used by someone more enthusiastic about it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am in the middle of nowhere. The opportunity to work in computer architecture in my country is really small. During my bachelor's studies, I took all computer architecture related courses, even graduate ones. Plus, I almost missed all the graduate program admissions in Europe (with scholarships).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think are my options? My idea is to get into a graduate program and be an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may start a master's degree in my country, but the area most professors teach that most relates to my studies is embedded systems. In fact, I doubt whether this may take me away from my intentions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can reapply during spring term admissions. (I have been told that these admissions are way more selective than during the fall term and this brings extra financial cost.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may work in the industry for a year, then reapply. (But how about my new profile for admissions? Plus, who wants someone, who is probably leaving soon, to hire?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I need some serious advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some information about me: I have 3.6 overall and 3.85 major GPA. 6 different people have written references for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="564" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T02:08:11.337" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T20:33:35.987" Title="What to do when graduate admissions haven't gone well?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-04-02T13:47:13.077" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to give you some advices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Strong reccomandation&lt;/strong&gt;: do not choose an university where to apply by focusing only on its excellence, but choose it only if there is a research group that studies your research stuff.&#xA;Working for some years in a research group that does not match with your scientific objective could be a very dangerous error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) After identifying which universities have a research group focused on your fields, try to apply for the best, basing on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/engineering-and-IT.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Times Higher Education Ranking&lt;/a&gt;, or another indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T13:47:13.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="977" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:40:39.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to go to industry or academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning down a scholarship to reserve the money for someone more &quot;enthusiastic about it&quot; sounds at odds with &quot;my idea was to ... be academician [sic]&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to work in industry, unless it's for some deep part of, for example, Google or AT&amp;amp;T, I would recommend getting a Master's wherever and begin getting real-world experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be an academic (and so almost absolutely need a PhD) then you should find people from Turkey who did something like what you are trying to do and get in contact with/ emulate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the risk of being provocative and with the caveat that I doubt this is the main issue, your message gives the sense that money is an issue. It is for many of us- but consider if you conveyed that in an unproductive way as you tried to get admissions to graduate school. Some in academia are touchy about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T14:40:39.797" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T15:04:14.213" Score="18" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;By reading the very intersting question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Priority of application materials for admission decision&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; about which material is most important to be admitted as PhD candidate, or PostDoc or researcher, in a university, I started wondering on how and how much soft skills count, for the same objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you know, besides academic degrees, grades, publications, reference letters, technical skills, project proposals, and etc., there are also &lt;strong&gt;soft skills&lt;/strong&gt; that are considered by talent scouts to choose who engage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;em&gt;soft skills&lt;/em&gt;, I mean competence like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;public speaking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;active listening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to manage relationships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to show interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific admission procedures, e.g. for PhD or PostDoc admission, &lt;strong&gt;how much do soft skills count?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T17:44:45.487" Title="How much do soft skills matter for admission decision?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="980" CreationDate="2012-04-02T15:16:16.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really know for PhD, but for Postdocs, from what I've seen and heard, these skills count &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;, especially when the recruitment process is well structured, as I experienced it in the UK and in Germany. Basically, the recruitment process consists of three steps: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sending the CV, application, reference letters, etc. At this point, soft-skill do not really count, although knowing how to write a good cover letter can help. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seminar/Public talk: the applicant is invited to give a presentation of his research work to a public audience (usually including the committee, and the staff from the department). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interview: the recruitment committee interviews the applicant. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the steps 2 and 3, the soft-skills are very important. Basically, all applicants reaching step 2 have good credentials, so it's somehow already established that they can write papers and solve research problems, so the quality of the talk and the attitude during the interview are crucial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T15:16:16.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="992" CreationDate="2012-04-02T16:07:44.400" Score="3" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a exchange student that just arrived in the US. The professor is asking us to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please write and submit brief synopses of each paper before class which include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the title and authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a one paragraph summary of the paper (do not copy the abstract - how would you summarize the paper?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1-3 things you found most interesting (at most one paragraph)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1-3 questions that arose for you while reading the paper (at most one paragraph)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never did this before, specially in English. How should this look like ? You have rules to do (spacing, font, etc.) ? And are the &quot;Title and authors&quot; for my text or the authors of the papers ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="570" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T11:27:30.443" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T12:19:20.477" Title="How should a &quot;brief synopses of each paper&quot; look like?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2012-04-02T17:08:37.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless your professor specified something, you can basically use whatever format you want. Make sure that it looks professional though (i.e. don't use Comic Sans). The titles and authors would be those of the paper you are summarising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, the structure is already given. I would probably put each synopsis on a separate page with something like &quot;Summary of ...&quot; and the title of the paper as heading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T17:08:37.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="985" CreationDate="2012-04-02T17:48:00.540" Score="20" ViewCount="924" Body="&lt;p&gt;In May, I'll be visiting a department at Columbia University in the US for a few days. What's the etiquette on visiting (answers relevant to US in general are welcome, to prevent this question getting too localised)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to spend some time with quite a few of the researchers, and compare notes on ongoing work. I'll read their recent publications in advance. Should I be inviting staff out for a coffee and a chat; or dinner; or a talk in the lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context: I'm a faculty researcher, and would be looking to spend a bit of time with postdoc researchers, and those professors whose jobs are primarily research, rather than admin or teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T05:29:54.570" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T05:29:54.570" Title="What's the etiquette for a short visit to a US university department by a faculty member from another university?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2012-04-02T18:45:02.297" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are the person who would be invited out to lunch, dinner etc. as you are the guest &lt;code&gt;:)&lt;/code&gt; ! However, there is nothing wrong with inviting your opposite number to talk in an informal setting. The only consideration is that you know the lay of the land! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how many days you would be spending at the US university, you might want to make a strategy on conversations and prospective collaborations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you would have results to show and tell and with a punchline at that. That generally helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T18:45:02.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="996" CreationDate="2012-04-02T19:45:07.137" Score="32" ViewCount="2748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a finishing doctoral student (graduation in ~7-9 months) and I would love to get an year or so of postdoctoral experience. I've come to understand that a postdoc is generally paid by funds created for the project (s)he is a postdoc for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I go about &quot;growing my own&quot; postdoc opportunity? In other words, how should I go about soliciting for funds for research ideas? I know it is a rather daunting task. Although I have participated in writing several proposals (some of which were accepted), I have never been the PI or co-PI for any of those projects -- generally just one of the grad students working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at a US university and have already taken at look at NSF's website.. Being an international student, I don't have all the options available to domestic candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I've thought of so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Come up with feasible research idea and approach advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss idea and possible collaborations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to categorize it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/browse_all_funding.jsp&quot;&gt;NSF's&lt;/a&gt; or any other funding agencies categories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a proposal in the summer and submit it during the next window of opportunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any pointers, tips or funding agencies I might also look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background:&#xA;I am a PhD candidate in Mechanical engineering with emphasis on fluid dynamics, applied mathematics, energy systems and space systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T21:04:39.317" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T12:11:18.983" Title="How do you &quot;grow your own&quot; post doc opportunity?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1001" CreationDate="2012-04-03T01:17:02.620" Score="31" ViewCount="1589" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many researchers have unpublished data. Some of this data may never be published as a manuscript. But I would like to make scholarly contributions of data that I have no intent on publishing, e.g. by publishing a &quot;data paper&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;data paper&quot; may be too new to be familiar, so here is a description from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://esapubs.org/archive/default.htm&quot;&gt;Ecological Archives&lt;/a&gt; website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data Papers are compilations and syntheses of data sets and associated&#xA;  metadata deemed to be of significant interest to the ESA membership&#xA;  and the scholarly community. Data papers are peer reviewed and are&#xA;  announced in abstract form in the appropriate print journal as a Data&#xA;  Paper. Data papers differ from review or synthesis papers published in&#xA;  other ESA journals in that data papers normally will not test or&#xA;  refine ecological theory. Data Papers can facilitate the rapid&#xA;  advancement of ecological knowledge and theory at the same time that&#xA;  they disseminate information. In addition, Ecological Archives&#xA;  provides a reward mechanism (in the form of peer-reviewed, citable&#xA;  objects) for the substantial effort required to compile and adequately&#xA;  document large data sets of ecological interest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings up the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a good data repository?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which data repositories provide a doi: for raw data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should published data be separate from articles on a CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T20:25:35.373" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T09:47:46.400" Title="Data publication basics - where, why, how, and when should I publish my unpublished data?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2012-04-03T01:31:49.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your host has a responsibility to make your schedule in such a way that it will be full and engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it can be difficult to fill the schedule - it requires that people respond to the hosts invitations to meet with you. Your input can be helpful both in filling out the schedule and making sure that your visit is productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can request to meet with specific people and ask for feedback from your host on who you might want to speak to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be a good idea to request to meet with graduate students in addition to postdocs and senior scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T01:31:49.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-03T03:42:30.473" Score="9" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelor degree and work for a marketing research company as a senior research analyst in Morris County in NJ. Having this day-time job, my options for further education remain part-time programs only. However, I do want to get a formal degree from reputable part-time programs, such as part-time MBAs/Master degree. Not just some random courses or certification training offered by community colleges or education institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work till 5:30 everyday so I am only available after that or on weekends. And the place of lecture has to be close enough to my office/home. Not some place too far away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there are any programs meeting these criteria. I am not sure where to find, who to ask or which website I should look at to search for these kind of programs. Where should I start? What are the other things I should consider when I plan my further education and choose the programs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="571" LastEditorUserId="571" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T13:58:15.260" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T14:49:16.573" Title="How to find a good part-time programs by reputable business schools?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="975" CreationDate="2012-04-03T05:05:52.677" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first advice is to calm down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question and your comments sound emotional to me. The more emotional you are, the worse situation you would be in. Since the other party is your prof, the burden of proof is on your shoulder. You need to deal with it carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not even sure you have a problem. From what you have said in the question and comments, your prof submitted a paper with only his name on the paper to a journal without your prior knowledge. Then he gave you his approval to submit another paper of probably the same contents to another journal with both your name and his name on it(you said he is the co-author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is what I understood from your question and your comments. If all are true, the issue is his problem, not yours. Because he is the one who did the double submission, not you. All you have to do to clear up this issue is to present evidence which shows that you got his approval before you submitted the paper to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T05:40:53.693" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T05:40:53.693" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="975" CreationDate="2012-04-03T07:53:49.130" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me echo scaaahu's excellent advice: Calm down.  Obviously you're scared, and with good reason, but you need to approach the situation calmly and professionally.  Otherwise, &lt;em&gt;even if you are in the right&lt;/em&gt; it will be difficult for other people to take your concerns seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your comments suggest (to me) that the situation is not as straightforward as your initial post describes.  Without considerably more detail about what  happened — &lt;strong&gt;which would be inappropriate for you to post here&lt;/strong&gt; — it's difficult to make specific suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to discuss the situation with someone who understands both the politics in your department and the publication culture in your field.  Find another senior faculty member in your department (or in a different department, or in the dean's office) who you can trust to keep confidence.  (Yes, this can be difficult, but ask around.)  Write up a timeline of events in advance, and make copies of documentation for each event in the timeline.  Calmly and carefully describe the situation.  Just present the facts; don't panic, and don't accuse.  (One of the facts is &quot;I'm scared&quot;; that's okay.)  Ask your confidant how to proceed.  &lt;strong&gt;Listen to them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the best case, this is a simple misunderstanding, and talking to an informed but neutral third party is the best way to convince you to relax.  In the worst case, your department chair is being egregiously unethical, and in particular threatening your chances at graduation, in which case you absolutely need a senior faculty advocate to help you navigate the resulting political mine field.  (Your primary goal in this case should be to graduate and get out, not to optimize your grade or to punish your department chair.)  Most likely, the actual situation is somewhere in between those two extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T07:53:49.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:36:31.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a fairly simple assignment. To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously your name and class information should appear at the top of the assignment (unless otherwise instructed by the professor).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;title and authors&quot; referred to by the professor are in reference to the paper that you are discussing, not you!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are told to write in complete paragraphs. That means no bullet lists, so write everything as complete, well-structured sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spacing and font are up to you, but in general, I'd use at least 1.5 times normal spacing and 11 pt or larger font (unless you're working with LaTeX, in which case the formatting is handled for you).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T08:36:31.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="986" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:42:09.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few programs, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newtonfellowships.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Newton Fellowships&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/humboldt-fellowship-postdoc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Humboldt Fellowship&lt;/a&gt; which are designed expressly for international researchers; however, those programs are based out of the UK and Germany, respectively. There is also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fulbright.state.gov/grants/which-grant-is-right-for-me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fulbright Program&lt;/a&gt; which offers opportunities for students and scholars to come to the US. These may or may not be applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is largely a &quot;chicken-and-egg&quot; problem; coming from abroad, you won't be able to apply for your own money at US agencies (except ones sponsoring programs like the Fulbright). So the logistics of this might be very challenging to coordinate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T08:42:09.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="973" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:48:17.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is another one of those questions that defies easy categorization. If you are applying, for instance, to a &quot;hard&quot; engineering discipline, it's not normally expected that a MSc would have any &quot;external&quot; publication record of any kind, and, as such, not having one would not weight against the candidate in admissions considerations. (All things being equal, of course, the candidate with a publication record might be prioritized over one without.) Similarly, any student coming from a European bachelor's/master's system, where the expected output is a master's thesis, but not necessarily journal publications, I would weight accordingly. (I might ask for a copy of the master's thesis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the degree is coursework-only, then this should be clearly stated as part of the application. The challenge will then be to get some support from the letters of reference of your capability to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fields where some publication record is expected, I'd follow JeffE's advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T08:48:17.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="980" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:56:21.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a graduate student, soft skills matter only in as much as they pertain to good writing and to having good interview skills (if interviews are conducted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a poor statement of purpose with an otherwise solid application, it can severely hurt your chances of admission. Similarly, in a department that does interviews, a good interview can significantly improve your chances—raising you from &quot;on the bubble&quot; to &quot;admit.&quot; Of course, the converse could be true—if you come off as arrogant or incompetent in your interview, that can completely kill your chances at admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those are skills that can be worked on via practice, and most universities offer workshops and training on how to improve writing and handle job interviews. Students should take advantage of those opportunities when they're available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T08:56:21.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="986" CreationDate="2012-04-03T12:11:18.983" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen, you've just described perfectly what many professors would view as the &quot;ideal postdoc&quot;. As one of the main goals of your postdoctoral training is to gain experience writing your own grant proposals, your four steps are very close to what you should be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most crucial part for you will be finding a postdoctoral advisor with whom you get along. As is typical in research settings, look for someone with significant research experience who has a successful record of getting proposals funded. Given that this is your goal, this is possibly more important now than their publication record. You should be able to find this out by asking around the department and speaking to graduate students, and even just asking the advisor directly about their recently funded grant applications. Once you find someone, everything else should go fairly smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Come up with feasible research idea and approach advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Discuss idea and possible collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do this both on your own and through talking to your advisor. Remember that one of the main factors driving whether a postdoctoral grant is accepted is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2j&quot;&gt;previous experience of both the postdoctoral fellow himself and the advisor&lt;/a&gt;; consider ideas in areas where you have experience doing research &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your advisor has experience mentoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you can consider collaborations, my postdoc advisor told me that at &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; I should consider one other collaborator, other my advisor himself, as collaborative proposals are more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IID4&quot;&gt;complicated&lt;/a&gt;, both from a submission and administrative standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Try to categorize it into NSF's or any other funding agencies categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor should already be aware of relevant funding opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) Write a proposal in the summer and submit it during the next window of opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you wrote &quot;summer&quot; because you were thinking of a particular grant, but different opportunities have different grant submission deadlines. Again, talk to your advisor to see which grants the thinks would be a good fit for you, and check out their respective deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T12:11:18.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="999" CreationDate="2012-04-03T12:51:08.307" Score="12" ViewCount="1323" Body="&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are there universites offering a B.Sc. in computer science aimed solely at giving the best training to future theoretical computer science researchers?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (in the universities I checked, the programs are a combination of training people for research and training people to be programmers in the industry).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As it seems not to be the case in most universities, is there a reason not to offer such programs? (financial maybe)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation for the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematics M.Sc. student.&#xA;I had several conversations with researchers (full/associate professors) in theoretical computer science when I was looking for a thesis advisor. Three of them mentioned to me that they wish they would have learnt more mathematics in their basic training (two of them had a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science and said they wished they did an M.Sc. in mathematics as well and one of them studied computer science only for a B.Sc.).&#xA;Their comments referred to funtional analysis (by a researcher in metric embeddings), to group theoretic constructions of expander graphs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led me to check the program in computer science and here is what I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student really tries to get as much cs-theory and mathmematics in his B.Sc, he can study: 38% theoretical computer science, 40% mathematics with mathematics students, 6% mathematics with cs-students only, 16% technical courses. This amounts to 16% waste of time (for a future theoertical cs researchers) and 6% non-optimal use of time (as these math courses with cs-students feel a bit like high-school math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I included the basic programming courses under theoretical cs because I believe they are essential in order to &quot;know what you're talking about&quot; when studying algorithms, computability, etc.&#xA;The situation is even a little worse from the perspective of this student because I included all the graduate courses in theoretical cs offered to undergrads, so he will have less theoretical cs courses to take during the M.Sc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like a much better choice for a future cs theory researcher is to study mathematics and take the cs theory courses (together with the most basic programming courses) as the &quot;free choice&quot; courses. I feel lucky to have done that as it seems that I would not have received such an excellent training if I had gone for the university's fixed cs+math program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the cs world could benefit alot if universities offered both B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs in &quot;mathematics and theoretical computer science&quot;. This can be good both in giving a better training and in encouraging future colloboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's another question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you agree that such programs (&quot;mathematics and theoretical computer science&quot;) are a better alternative to cs-only programs or math+cs program which include many technical courses, as far as future theoretical cs researchers are concerned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T13:55:51.703" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T16:19:37.223" Title="A better way to train future Theoretical Computer Science researchers" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;theory&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2012-04-03T15:41:17.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One downside is the &quot;all eggs in one basket&quot; problem. If you're sure you want to go into theoryCS, then this is great. But if you want to hedge your bets, then some more programming and general CS courses at the undergrad level would be helpful. Also, even within theoryCS, a solid understanding of computer science at large helps with asking &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; questions about other models of computation, or evaluating the value of theoretical questions motivated by some practical applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T15:41:17.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2012-04-03T16:19:37.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Suresh points out, most majors aren't narrowly focused towards exactly one career track, because many people don't end up in the career they expect to.  (The exception I know of is that some schools offer things like pre-med and pre-business majors, but note that 1) there are a lot more spots in medical schools than in graduate CS programs, and 2) many schools &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; offer these programs, precisely because they're so narrow.)  That 16% of time is only wasted, at worst, for the very few people who are absolutely sure of what they want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of an undergraduate degree is to give someone broad knowledge of a field, not to make a bee-line for academic research.  This is the same reason most schools require some level of &quot;general education&quot; requirements, under some name or another---they want their graduates to have a broad overview of academia in general, partially because some people end up being inspired by something they hadn't expected to, and partially because having a broader base of knowledge makes it easier to answer unexpected questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, many schools offer some sort of &quot;make your own major&quot; program, which would be a way for the student who is actually sure they want to study CS theory to focus on that earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T16:19:37.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="987" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:41:07.467" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things that I would consider when choosing a data repository:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it let you release your data under a license you're happy with?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applying too restrictive a license can prevent anyone from doing anything useful with the data, so think about what you're prepared to allow. In particular, remember that most of the research done in academia could be considered &quot;commercial&quot; from a legal perspective. On the other hand, you may wish to choose a license that ensures you get credit for your work. You may or may not agree with them, but reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pantonprinciples.org/&quot;&gt;Panton Principles&lt;/a&gt; will give you some idea of the issues here. Also take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://opendefinition.org/licenses#Data&quot;&gt;list of licenses written with data in mind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How easy will your data be to find?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People will only use your data if they can find it. I recommend Googling (other search engines are available) for some datasets you know of in your field and see if they come up — those repositories which are indexed by the major search engines will put you at a big advantage when it comes to attracting citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What repositories are well known in your field?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your institution may have a repository which you can easily deposit in, but it won't be the first place colleagues in your field will think of to look. If there are well-established repositories I would prefer those, or make sure your data is indexed by a well-established aggregator (I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ands.org.au&quot;&gt;ANDS&lt;/a&gt; runs a national aggregator in Australia).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does your institution allow?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many cases, your institution will own (or otherwise have a claim to) the data you generate as part of your research, so check what your local policies are and if need be ask your supervisor, head of department, legal team, etc. This will particularly affect your choice of license.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other parts of your question can probably be answered better by others here (or maybe it should be split into several?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastEditorUserId="358" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T19:56:55.790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T19:56:55.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="977" CreationDate="2012-04-03T20:33:35.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always the path of a one-year research assistant-ship at an European University of your choosing. This won't give you any degrees but at least you'll get paid (little) and you'll have the chance to build up some momentum in computer architecture. An added plus will be that you won't waste any time getting a MS education in a field you're not interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only tricky thing is finding a group that you mesh well with and that will have funding to take you for a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T20:33:35.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="987" CreationDate="2012-04-03T21:12:33.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.figshare.com&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; provides online hosting and a permalink to your dataset, though it does not provide a DOI. I've been posting some figures there, but not data, and I quite like the service. They allow the option of keeping the data private as well, so you can use to store the data and later release it when you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="460" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T21:12:33.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1692" CreationDate="2012-04-04T07:39:31.643" Score="11" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in creating with some colleagues a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-open/ye_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FET Young Explorers&lt;/a&gt; project, in which I would be Work Package leader.&#xA;I've been involved in several european projects, but always as a postdoc recruited by a PI (or WP leader), and I don't have a permanent position yet. So basically, the idea of applying to this project would be to get my full salary paid by the EU project, but I don't know if it's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in the FAQ, they say that the applicants need to have a position somewhere. I don't think getting a position would be a problem, but only if I come with my own salary. The question in this case is whether the hosting institution still needs to pay some part of my salary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A precision on the question. From the &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/calls/cooperation/ict/c-gfastrep-201103_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guide for Applicants&lt;/a&gt;, Section A3/Budget, p. 47, the part about the requested European Commission contribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requested EC contribution shall be determined by applying the upper funding limits indicated below, per activity and per participant to the costs accepted by the Commission, or to the flat rates or lump sums.&#xA;Maximum reimbursement rates of eligible costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research and technological development = 50% or 75%*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstration activities = 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other activities (including management) = 100%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) For participants that are non profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the salary of a researcher is included in the Research and Technological development, then does that mean that it's possible to only ask for 75% of it to the EC? (assuming the researcher is employed by a university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T08:31:43.370" Title="Can a researcher get his full salary from a European Project?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2012-04-04T07:50:42.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a function of the EU country in question, and perhaps even the specific institution that you want to work for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a particular institution in mind, then you should contact them directly to ask about the specific procedures that apply there. Otherwise, you should take a look at the national-level funding agency or agencies that provide the funding that is comparable to the EU-level program. For instance, in Germany, that would mean looking at what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DFG&lt;/a&gt; permits as part of their internal practices. [In Germany, this usually shouldn't be a problem, but it might in other countries, depending on their appointment procedures.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the other thing is that most likely a &lt;em&gt;temporary worker&lt;/em&gt; can get a full-time salary from an EU-level grant, but a &lt;em&gt;permanent&lt;/em&gt; employee cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T08:03:22.740" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T08:03:22.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1007" CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:42:31.700" Score="19" ViewCount="5018" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities (at least in North America) have the concept of &quot;Qualification Exams&quot; taken one year after the student joins the graduate course. These usually encompass all that was done in the first year and as undergraduate and might also test some other (research abilities) of the student by asking him to present papers (s)he found interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities treat this as a formality and everyone who attempts usually gets through while some universities take quals very seriously and won't allow the student to continue if he fails the quals (maybe, they will allow for 2nd attempt). These universities might subscribe reading lists consisting of textbooks and papers which comprises of &quot;must-have&quot; knowledge of the field. The latter might constitute as a difficult phase for students who find themselves ill prepared in a certain portion of the exam. (For instance, a pure math undergrad moving to a PhD in Fluid Mechanics and asked to attempt an exam on Fluid Machines)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming STEM graduate course in a university which takes quals seriously (with a structure of written test &gt;   oral exam &gt; interview/research proposal presentation), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should a student approach these exams?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Specifically,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is it any different from the undergraduate exams that students give? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you really &quot;prepare&quot; for these exams or should you bank on the courses you have taken and the homework you solved to get you through?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeatedly, I have been told by students (across departments and across institutes) that the faculty is only interested in the oral section of quals as a sanity check and to see whether you have the urge for learning something new; is this universally true? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T05:00:54.130" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T05:00:54.130" Title="How should students approach quals?" Tags="&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1006" CreationDate="2012-04-04T17:52:05.873" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university (in the US), the quals are a big deal -- both written and oral. The written quals are the tough ones because the oral quals, here, deal only with your research and as you should be reasonably well read in the literature in your field of research, no one really fails the orals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The written quals need substantial preparation. For my quals (Fluids/Thermodyanics/Heat transfer) back in 2008, I had to work and study hard for about 10-12 hours a day for 3 months straight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were several students who didn't make it through the first attempt and had to go through it all over again the next year. Some (miniscule number) didn't make it the second time around and were discharged with a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very university and area of specialization, the difficulty level and importance given to written qualifiers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be safe, study up hard like you never have before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may have other responsibilities like grants, classes to teach, assignments to do and research but you just have to balance all these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! It is just a matter of hard work, thats all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Will be getting my PhD in mechanical engineering at the end of Fall 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T17:52:05.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1006" CreationDate="2012-04-04T22:48:24.367" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Qualifying exams are &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; to be taken lightly. Even when they prove to be a surreal experience, they need to be given the attention appropriate to their seriousness. These are exams that you typically only have one or at most two chances to pass. As a result, you want to get through them on the first try, so that you don't have to worry about them again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How hard you have to work does depend a lot on the structure of the exam, and based on your previous preparation. If there are a lot of subjects to be tested with which you are not familiar, you may have to work harder than if you're getting A's in all of the classes that will be tested on the exam. (Even then, you'll still want to work through some practice problems to get a feel for the kinds of questions that are asked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the original questioner mentions, in many cases the oral exam can be a &quot;sanity check&quot;—in more ways than one. If the decision has been largely made on the basis of the previous coursework and written quals, then the oral exam can act either to confirm the decisions of the panel, or as an effective psychological exam. One of my panels turned things into what amounted to a carnival side-show, with everybody acting completely out of character, and in a manner I found entirely unbefitting an oral qualifying exam. However, it made sense to see if there was any way to make me &quot;snap&quot; and lose my cool. (I was too busy trying to figure out why everybody was acting so oddly to really snap.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T22:48:24.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1016" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:04:30.803" Score="13" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me, looking over all the various regulations and requirements, how (or even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt;) it is possible for students holding a four-year or five-year bachelor's degree from the US can work at a university as a part-time or full-time researcher. Is this possible? If so, are there specific programs to help set this up? Does it matter which EU country the institution is located? Is there a specific type of visa involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Effectively, I guess this question could be boiled down to: what is the equivalent EU mechanism for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://j1visa.state.gov/&quot;&gt;J-1 visa&lt;/a&gt;, when the student will be engaged in research rather than coursework?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T09:37:39.600" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T11:20:30.300" Title="Can American students do research in Europe with only a bachelor's degree?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1509" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:25:19.533" Score="10" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been maintaining a great GPA in a specialization undergraduate program, am planning on taking the MCAT this summer, and have been looking into some volunteering/internship opportunities. Are there any other special precautions that I should be taking to increase the likelihood of my acceptance into med school? Are med schools looking for anything in particular for admissions? An all-encompassing, comprehensive answer would be appreciated, but any advice or tips are appreciated :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="581" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T14:22:24.907" Title="What preparatory steps should I be taking for admission into med school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="987" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:44:47.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best place for data is in a subject-focused data repository, but in the absence of that, there are repositories such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://datadryad.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dryad&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biomed Central just announced a partnership with a site called LabArchives to host data of BMC authors, including DOIs for the data and the re-use promoting CC0 license, but I don't have any experience with the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T23:44:47.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T06:46:55.890" Score="18" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to present some classic computer science papers in a class I am teaching.  I know teachers usually assign papers before the lecture, but I can't figure out how to present material they've already read and likely understood.  In the case of a highly technical paper, I'd go over the more technical portions, perhaps letting them know beforehand not to struggle with the proofs, programming examples, etc., but I'm thinking of less technical papers, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html&quot;&gt;Reflections on Trusting Trust&lt;/a&gt; by Ken Thompson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/&quot;&gt;The Cathedral and the Bazaar&lt;/a&gt; by Eric S. Raymond&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html&quot;&gt;No Silver Bullet&lt;/a&gt; by Fred Brooks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't need to use pure lecture format, I am not sure that discussion would work well, since some of the papers (such as &quot;Reflections on Trusting Trust&quot;) aren't really discussable, and my students lack the experience to discuss others (such as &quot;No Silver Bullet&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I was hoping not to task the students with extra prep, since they already have a lot of assignments to do, but, as some of you suggest, that may be the best way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="586" LastEditorUserId="586" LastEditDate="2012-04-06T15:27:57.970" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T23:34:33.970" Title="How to present in lecture a paper that students have read (or should I not have them read it)?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-04-05T08:38:49.320" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the journals responsible for the references you cite in your own manuscript. Upside, these are the journals publishing relevant and credible work in your area.  Downside, there are plenty perfectly good journals that are newer, or less specialized, and so might be missed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, a very fast review time with no reviews is suspicious.  But charging an article processing charge (APC) is not, in itself, a reason for worry.  That said, do look to see that you are getting the full open access you pay for if there is an APC (i.e. no transfer of copyright to the publisher and the article is released under a CC-BY license).  You can search for copyright policies by journal or publisher here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="587" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T08:38:49.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T08:41:00.517" Score="19" ViewCount="7729" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume one or more undergraduate students are given a topic by an academic supervsior to use for their undergraduate honors thesis. The task is designed, programmed and set-up by the supervisor, who shows the students how to use the equipment and to conduct rudimentary data analysis/summaries. The students then collect the data and report them in a written, submitted thesis. Later, the academic supervisor analyses the data (from the summaries obtained), writes a manuscript in conjunction with his/her colleagues, and wishes to submit for publication. My question is: should the undergraduates who collected the data, and who did not contribute to the writing of the manuscript at all, be listed as authors? It seems that this decision is often left to personal preference. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="588" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T04:46:47.447" Title="Should undergraduate students be included on papers containing data they collected?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="987" CreationDate="2012-04-05T08:45:42.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like it might be appropriate for Pangaea: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pangaea.de/submit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pangaea.de/submit/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="587" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T08:45:42.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2012-04-05T09:09:24.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two parts in your question: can someone with a Bachelor from the US get a job from a university or research lab, and what kind of visa such a person would need. For the first question, it's really depending on the university. As for the visa, it depends if it would be for a PhD student, or for a &quot;regular&quot; researcher (i.e. not a student). However, in both cases, the visa application depends on the country, as far as I know, there is no Schengen Research Visa. For instance, for France, there are two types of Visa the person could apply to (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?rubrique98&quot;&gt;Visa section of the french consulate in Washington&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article519&quot;&gt;The “Skills and Talent” Card visa (Carte Compétences &amp;amp; Talents)&lt;/a&gt;. However, for this one, they say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;University graduates should be PhD. Lower graduates will be required to add proof of profesionnal experience in the same field for a minimum of 1 to 3 years (the lower the degree, the longer profesionnal experience expected) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article398&quot;&gt;Visas for professors and researchers holders of a &quot;convention d’accueil&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fnak.fr/dn_Formalites/ES_criteres_eligibilite.html&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; (in French, I couldn't find an English version), a &quot;convention d'accueil&quot; would basically be the work contract with the university/lab, and the eligibility requirement seems to be a Master degree or equivalent (but it could be the case that a 5-years US Bachelor degree counts as an equivalent to a 5-year French Master degree). As far as I understand, that would be the best option for someone who wants to do her PhD in France. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be possible to apply for a student visa, but I think it's not possible to get a work contract with such a visa. Another solution could be to apply to a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article500&quot;&gt; Employer Sponsored visa / OFII&lt;/a&gt;. There does not seem to be anything specific to research in this case. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum it up, I don't think there is a unified process to apply for a visa in Europe as a researcher, and each country has its own rules. Note that these visas are not automatically Schengen visa, and I've known the case of some extra-EU students, who obtained a visa in one Schengen country, and were not allowed to travel in other Schengen countries before becoming officially resident of the country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T09:09:24.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1012" CreationDate="2012-04-05T09:42:36.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to ask the &lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt; to present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives an opportunity for the students to practice presenting &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sitting from the audience point-of-view with (I expect) expert knowledge, you will be at a great vantage point for judging whether the students fully comprehend the paper and whether they are focusing on the &quot;correct things&quot;. Sometimes students spend too much time tracking down irrelevant details and miss the big picture. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes (depend on local culture etc.) students are more likely to engage in discussion and ask detailed questions if it is their peer doing the presentation. (The &quot;intimidated by the professor effect&quot;.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T09:42:36.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T11:09:14.610" Score="26" ViewCount="1252" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people complain about Elsevier and over eight thousand are &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com&quot;&gt;boycotting it&lt;/a&gt;, but actual solutions seem hard to find for certain fields- I'm thinking of research areas for which an Elsevier journal is very important and funds are not available to subsidize an open-access journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we move an Elsevier-dependent research community to a less objectionable, more open publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll post a partial possible answer myself; I'm asking because I think we need more/better answers than mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T12:20:16.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T18:52:17.927" Title="A major journal in my field is published by Elsevier. How can we move the field to a less objectionable, more open publisher?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2012-04-05T11:50:15.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First one must assess whether researchers in the area agree that the community should leave Elsevier. If there isn't strong support for leaving Elsevier, then any move is likely to fail, as it will probably involve a new venture (such as a new journal) requiring the support of many, many researchers in the area, perhaps as authors, editors, or readers pressuring their university to subscribe to the new journal. If the research community is not supportive, this may because they have very good reasons or it may be out of ignorance / lack of imagination of the alternatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussion of the possibilities in your researcher community serves to explore the options, educate, and potentially build support. You may be able to start a discussion of the issues on mailing lists, social media, or run a &lt;a href=&quot;http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenVisionScience&quot;&gt;conference symposium/satellite&lt;/a&gt; related to this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is community support, there are a few possibilities for actually making the move. In most (all?) cases, Elsevier owns the journal and its name, therefore one cannot simply switch publishers and keep the same journal name. As a work-around, moves have occurred when all or most of the members of editorial boards of Elsevier journals &lt;a href=&quot;http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Journal_declarations_of_independence&quot;&gt;resigned and started a new journal&lt;/a&gt;, usually issuing an open letter explaining their action and encouraging the community to submit to and subscribe to the new journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new journal can use the traditional subscription model or be open access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a subscription model, one can use a traditional publisher- a non-profit university press may be less objectionable than Elsevier or one of the other mega-profitable corporate publishers. I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenVisionScience#Publishing_Solutions-_subscription_model&quot;&gt;started a list of possible publishers&lt;/a&gt;. To get started with a new publisher, one must convince them that they will make enough from subscriptions for the new journal to be worth their while. This may be difficult, as new journals are frequently risky. It takes a few years for a journal to receive an impact factor, and may also take years to be indexed by the major databases, and many authors will only submit to journals that have already achieved these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An open-access journal can use the author-pays model, in which case a large publisher can provide all the traditional services (manuscript submission software system and reviewing workflow management, layout, copyediting, production, webhosting, accounting, exporting to databases, DOI registration, proper metadata, etc.)  or it can be run on a shoestring, with academics handling everything perhaps with a few administrative staff. For research communities willing to submit all their manuscripts in LateX, this is quite feasible but for communities that demand layout (figures and text arranged to fit a standard page appearance and possibly typesetting) be done, this is more labor-intensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several open-source software tools assist in publishing journals. Open Journal Systems is most like a traditional journal publishing platform but I hear it may be difficult for academics to use. Annotum is based on Wordpress and I believe it works by having authors write their manuscript directly in its software, so that it can guarantee that the paper will look exactly as you expect it (WYSIWYG). It is used by PLoS Currents and other journals. All of these tools could probably use more skilled programmmers contributing to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am only a researcher, not a publisher, so perhaps not everything I have written here is correct. I think we researchers are in particular need of estimates of the person-hours needed to publish and manage a journal by various methods, so that a research community considering a move can budget appropriately / be comfortable knowing what they're getting into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T11:50:15.617" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T01:21:38.833" Score="15" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote Thomsons &quot;a journal's &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/academic/impact_factor/&quot;&gt;Impact factor&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that disciplines vary in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;average number of citations per paper&lt;/strong&gt;: Disciplines with fewer citations per paper will appear to have less impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;citation half-life&lt;/strong&gt;: Longer half-lives means under-estimation of impact relative to journals with shorter half-lives. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on impact factors&lt;/a&gt; summarises a study that found that &quot;the percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly among disciplines from 1-3 percent in the mathematical and physical sciences to 5-8 percent in the biological sciences.&quot; (Nierop, 2009).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar uses the five year &lt;strong&gt;h-index&lt;/strong&gt;. See this listing of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&amp;amp;view_op=search_venues&amp;amp;vq=psychology+OR+psychological+OR+cognitive+OR+cognition&quot;&gt;top ranked journals with various psychology related keywords in their title&lt;/a&gt;. The five year h-index indicates the number of papers with an equivalent number of citations. E.g., a value of 20 indicates that 20 articles published in the last five years have received 20 or more citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while the h-index might reduce the issue of different citation half-lives, it does not resolve it. And it does not address the issue of differential citation patterns across disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What index provides both a reliable and unbiased assessment of the citation based impact of a journal when comparisons are being performed across disciplines?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reference&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Erjen van Nierop (2009). &quot;Why do statistics journals have low impact factors?&quot;. Statistica Neerlandica 63 (1): 52–62. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9574.2008.00408.x.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" OwnerDisplayName="Jeromy Anglim" LastEditorUserId="66" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T13:29:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T22:03:28.797" Title="What is a fair metric for assessing the citation impact of journals across disciplines?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1020" CreationDate="2012-04-05T12:39:06.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving from comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining field boundaries is an extremely difficult problem. Once those boundaries are defined (or as they are being defined) it is also difficult to judge which field individual journals belong to. The technical problem is one of &quot;community-structure&quot; or cluster detection, and is a big problem in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the specific case of journals and citations, there is some cool work on this via statistical properties of random walks that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/map/maps.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;makes nice definitions using the map-equation&lt;/a&gt;. However, these statistical methods sometimes produce oddities (I think I remember seeing Phys. Rev. Letters being classified as Chemistry based on the stats). It also doesn't always produce the fine-gaining desired, for instance eigenfactor seems to not have a Cognitive Science category, just a general Psychology category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I recommend taking a look around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt;. Note that the website claims eigenfactor and article influence scores adjust for different fields, already (take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/whyeigenfactor.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;point #4&lt;/a&gt;). I am not sure how accurate this claim is, but I personally find their metric more reliable (not to mention more accessible!) than ISI Web of Science. I also think their approach is more developed than the freshly-pressed Google Scholar journal rankings based on h5-index. However, I would love to see eigenfactor and Google Scholar together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsatisfied with eigenfactor's rankings, then a naive metric might be: classify journals into their fields and then assign each a ranking p, meaning the journal is in top p% of its field by some standard metric.  This should give you a rough idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T12:39:06.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2012-04-05T13:01:42.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the student (or anybody else for that matter) did not make a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the project, then they should not be included on the author list of the paper. In your question, it seems like all the intellectual contribution was by the professor (and colleagues) and the students just carried out tasks assigned to them or made very minor contributions. As such, the students should be mentioned in the &lt;strong&gt;acknowledgement section&lt;/strong&gt; but not given authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if your supervisor is only using you for drill work, then maybe you should seek a better supervisor. A good supervisor should encourage their students to take an active role of novel intellectual contribution. If your supervisor is not encouraging you to do this, then they are not training you to be a researcher, they are training you to be a lab-hand (although I guess in some fields you have to be a lab-hand before you are can be trained as a researcher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/644/66&quot;&gt;flip side of this question&lt;/a&gt;, in particular my answer is inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/651/66&quot;&gt;@JeffE's answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T13:01:42.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1027" CreationDate="2012-04-05T13:16:45.510" Score="10" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that the student (during his PhD) is faced with a problem which he and his advisor are both completely new to. The advisor is &lt;strong&gt;trying to&lt;/strong&gt; help the student but owing to his lack of experience/knowledge/intuition in the field, is unable to help much. What is the etiquette for the student to seek external help (particularly professors who have dealt with such problems and maybe their grad students)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to inform your advisor before going to other professors for help?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should one introduce the subject of external help when the advisor is clearly interested in tackling the problem without any help? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T08:42:38.287" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T08:42:38.287" Title="Etiquette to take external help" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1012" CreationDate="2012-04-05T13:35:44.527" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the discussion format. The two downsides of it you list can be overcome by using a &lt;strong&gt;guided discussion&lt;/strong&gt;. When you assign the paper, also include a list of questions that you expect the students to be able to answer after having read the paper. When the class meets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select students at random (or through a random permutation).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the student answer an assigned question as a discussion seed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open up the floor to other students to make comments and pitch in their ideas (thus starting a discussion). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the topic dies down, move to the next question on the assigned list and repeat from step 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This format has several advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It ensures that the students have read the paper (since they might get randomly selected)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It encourages them to think of their own answers and participate in discussions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It eliminates the intimidating factor of the professor having tight control of the discussion (since you only moderate who speaks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It lets you address the key points of the paper (through your initial selection of questions) without having to go over the whole paper in class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experienced this format in upper level undergrad/grad courses during my undergrad and enjoyed it greatly. It really encouraged me to read papers and reflect on them carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T13:35:44.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2012-04-05T13:45:26.860" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a publisher who has launched an OA journal and seen what it takes to do so, I see the biggest problem for starting any journal being lack of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor&quot;&gt;Impact Factor&lt;/a&gt; (IF). I've polled authors at ECVP and about 90% said IF is what determined where they submitted. Everyone knows why this is, so why don't academics turn inward and try to undermine this reliance on IFs? Doing so would insert true competition into the journals market. Maybe academics have tried to do this, though I've never read of any real substantial attempts. I could be wrong. The second problem after IF and before funding is loyalty. Ed board members are often tied to multiple journals and in those first few years you really need those big names on your board to commission for the journal. Big names often care more about another journal or just don't care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a publisher, be it nonprofit or profit, that can put in the work to promote the journal and help commission. Financially, OA journals are very easy to start. Subscription journals require more financial backing, which perhaps could be gotten through grants if you don't want to be tied to a commercial publisher. The answer is long and requires lots of discussion and more important, commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T14:35:37.720" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T14:35:37.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:23:09.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that the students did not participate in writing the paper, I agree with Artem Kaznatcheev that they should not be named as authors. &#xA;It is good scientific practice to only put an author's name on a paper if she or he has at least read the complete paper before publication and can judge its correctness. After all, each author is responsible for any misrepresentations in the paper. &#xA;However, they definitely should appear in the acknowledgement section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Our lab has the informal policy that we ask students who contributed somehow to a research project if they want to take part in the paper-writing process. In this case, they are named as authors, otherwise mentioned in the acknowledgements section.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="592" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T17:23:09.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1023" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:48:57.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You absolutely should inform your advisor that you are going to seek external help, even if they are against it. They are partly responsible for your studies and should know what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try introducing the subject as a collaboration rather than seeking help. If the person you want to approach has written a paper on the subject for example, you could say that it would be beneficial for your work to collaborate with them. As long as you at least create the impression that you're looking for interaction on the same level rather than just getting advice, I don't think you would have too much trouble convincing your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T17:48:57.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2012-04-05T18:52:17.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It occurs to me that in our field (vision science), Journal of Vision already is an open access alternative to Vision Research. I haven't noticed a big difference in quality or acceptance rates between the two journals, they publish at a similar rate (JoV=270, VR=252 articles in 2011) and their impact factors are within 0.5 of each other. Also, around a third of the VR editorial board are also on the JoV board, and Denis Levi is about to transition from VR editor in chief to JoV editor in chief. Given these similarities, I guess the fact that the whole field hasn't abandoned VR suggests that people still feel there is a place for it. Or, from the other perspective, the success of JoV shows that lots of people wanted an open access alternative, and it's great that they now have one. {reposted from Google+}&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="594" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T18:52:17.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2012-04-05T18:52:21.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading your original question, the scenario you describe makes this situation a little more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is written in such a way as to draw significantly on the work reported in the thesis—to the extent of using figures and data prepared by the student, then one could very well make the argument that the student should be cited as an author. This is especially true if the supervisor uses any of the text in the construction of his paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, I try to use the criterion that my postdoc advisor gave me: if someone believes that their contributions to the research are significant enough to merit co-authorship, then they should contribute to the writing and revising of the manuscript. At that point, they become fully entitled to co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T18:52:21.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1020" CreationDate="2012-04-05T20:11:45.330" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publication and citation standards vary significantly between disciplines and even sub-disciplines.  Without direct, deep knowledge of the standards in each community, it is simply impossible to compare impact of a journal in field X with the impact of a journal in field Y.  (Eigenfactor's extraordinary claims to the contrary require extraordinary evidence, which they don't provide.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it's not clear why you should even try.  Any judgement about the relative importance of Journal of X versus Journal of Y necessarily requires a &lt;strong&gt;prior&lt;/strong&gt; judgement about the relative importance of &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt; X versus &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt; Y.  HC SVNT DRACONES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-04-06T07:15:34.763" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T07:15:34.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:18:52.943" Score="15" ViewCount="3443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the presence of a senate suggests that universities nominally are governed somewhat by their faculty, it is frequently stated that there has been a trend towards greater managerialism, which has perhaps undermined the powers of faculty regarding university governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What current powers does a faculty senate typically have, or is it mostly a rubber-stamp for the administrators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:14:31.137" Title="What is the usual role of a faculty senate? Does it typically have any real power, or is it a rubber-stamp for the administrators?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2012-04-06T12:34:26.933" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Ingelfinger rule is generally disregarded now by scientific publishers. F1000 has done a lot of research into this for their poster repository. Of the few notable publishers who do suggest they do not allow preprints, blood was singled out as apparently they said they wouldn't allow it but appeared to have no way of checking this and so do allow it, albeit by default. The following 2 links from the embargo watch blog describe the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/faculty-of-1000-strikes-a-blow-against-the-ingelfinger-rule/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Faculty of 1000 strikes a blow against the Ingelfinger Rule&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/f1000-vs-ingelfinger-part-two-blood-and-the-journal-of-proteome-research-respond/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;F1000 vs. Ingelfinger, part two: Blood and The Journal of Proteome Research respond&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="575" LastEditorUserId="113947" LastEditDate="2019-09-15T15:07:55.097" LastActivityDate="2019-09-15T15:07:55.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T13:18:20.610" Score="8" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a modest undergraduate in Information Systems (3/4) and good master's in CS (3.4/4). I've PhD acceptance from a good school in Canada. However, I still need to go to top school , or at least a well-known school, in US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply to top schools in CS next year (since deadlines already passed). I have done some research and got some papers accepted at good conferences. Beside getting good scores in GRE, what should I do to be well-prepared for the next year? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fully sponsored student by my government, how will this affect the admit decision? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-05T14:15:40.683" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:43:47.537" Title="Maximizing opportunities to be admitted in top schools" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1063" CreationDate="2012-04-06T23:35:56.260" Score="14" ViewCount="2430" Body="&lt;p&gt;A student asked me to write a letter of recommendation for graduate school admission in London and the student insisted that I include a short biography describing my job title and qualifications. I find this information is a little out of place. First, my degree is in progress, so I do not have any impressive qualifications. Second, I think such letters are intended to introduce the applicant, not the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this common practice to include a biography of the writer in letters of recommendation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where does this information typically appear in the document? In the opening paragraph? As a separate, attached document?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T14:28:01.693" Title="Do letters of recommendation typically include a biography of the writer?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1012" CreationDate="2012-04-06T23:36:04.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose the presentation format as well but rather than have the students present from anything, maybe have a pool they can choose from or assign topics? With regards to the discussion format, sometimes it can devolve into only a few of the students talking spiritedly while the rest are confused or bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="601" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T23:36:04.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-04-07T04:26:46.987" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the editorial / advisory board. They've gotta be from the top schools or they've gotta be top researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T04:26:46.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-07T04:47:05.447" Score="25" ViewCount="8275" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you cope when a department chair is all out to cause you problems? Especially when he is doing it for personal reasons that I have no control over (e.g. gender, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, accent, etc). My chair hates me, so he harasses me with bad teaching loads, too many preps, assigning me one class at 8am on one campus and another class at 8pm on a separate campus three hours away, making me teach every day when others teach only twice a week, denying me funding to go to conferences, not permitting me to go on a sabbatical, etc etc etc. He is highly unethical. I suspect he discards good teaching ratings I get and pencils in bad teaching ratings but I have no way to prove it. He makes up untrue anonymous complaints from anonymous students and anonymous complaints from anonymous faculty / staff. When a particular person is not hired and everyone wanted to hire that person, he whispers to everyone that I am the one who voted against hiring. He tries to turn everyone against me. When anything even remotely goes wrong, he blames me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has the Dean in his pocket. He is also the chair of the faculty senate, childhood friends with the university president, brother-in-law of the provost. He is not the research type - he has one of those Ed.D. degrees and is a career administrator who has been the department chair for 17 years now. When I was hired, he was on medical leave, so he had no say in my hiring decision. He is also the only person in the department who does not teach or do research related to the department. He is a politician - former mayor of a small city - so much more astute and politically shrewd than I can ever be. He is dishonest, a blatant cheat and a frequent liar, so sitting down with him definitely never helped. He has superb contacts within the town and in state politics. Short of finding a new job, is there anything I can do? I cannot leave this university for personal reasons relating to the two-body problem, family whose help I need to take care of a severely handicapped child and other personal reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T19:22:11.310" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T00:28:03.697" Title="Being harassed by a department chair" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2012-04-07T05:30:22.413" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is relatively common. (In my opinion, not common enough.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters carry more weight if he reader knows the writer's qualifications.  In particular, letters about qualification for graduate school carry more weight if the reader has some sense of the writer's track record for judging students' research ability.  (This is why letters from senior faculty are more valued — not because of their vast research experience, but because they've presumably seen and evaluated more students.)  The best way for the reader to understand your track record is to &lt;em&gt;tell them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But briefly, because as you suggest, the letter isn't about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a standard way to do this.  Some people put their bio early in the letter, say in the second paragraph (because the first paragraph is the actual recommendation).  I put mine in a footnote on the last page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T05:30:22.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2012-04-07T09:00:15.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes PhD graduates from top schools join very low-ranked schools because their spouse or partner have tenure there or work in that region. Find a way to accommodate both of them and you have a winner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="607" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T20:38:32.160" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T20:38:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2012-04-07T13:34:04.963" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Were they asked to contribute to the paper or was the paper written without their knowledge? If they refused to contribute, then they shouldn't be a named author. If they weren't asked, then it's not their fault they didn't contribute ;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the word &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; is a red herring. Substitute it with the word &lt;em&gt;PhD student&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;RA&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Prof from the lab next door&lt;/em&gt;, does this change your view? A person's title shouldn't influence their inclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much work are we talking about here? When I provide statistical advice, I'm happy to give up a few hours of my time for free. But once I'm spending days on the project, then I expect (and make it clear) to be am named author. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If data collection was &quot;trivial&quot;, then I would suggest it shouldn't be used as an undergraduate project. Also, I presume that there was some skill in collecting the data?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T13:34:04.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-07T14:41:06.670" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with JeffE that leaving is the best solution, but it may not be an option.  One key question is whether you have tenure: if not, you're presumably doomed (if the chair's behavior is as bad as you fear) and you will need to find another job anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have reasonable job security, I'd sit down with the chair and ask what he envisions.  Don't complain, argue, or try to present your side.  Instead, you could start by acknowledging that the two of you have unfortunately gotten off to a rough start in your working relationship, and that because of his stature and leadership role it's important for you to earn his respect, so you'd like his advice on how to improve the situation.  Your goal is to learn, not to debate.  Don't explicitly agree to any facts that aren't true, but you don't have to fact check everything he says, and you shouldn't dispute his perspective or opinions in this conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is that he is an insecure jerk who wants you to submit to his power and authority.  If you do so, and let him boss you around a little without complaining, then he may treat you somewhat better.  [This is assuming he can't treat you any worse than he already is.  If you fear things could get worse, then be careful, but your question suggests you don't have a lot to lose.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is that he just doesn't want you around, and there's simply nothing you can do to get on his good side.  In that case, maybe he could help you transfer to another related department, for example.  Of course, you can't even bring this up unless you have some job security, since otherwise you have no leverage at all.  And it's important to do it in a face-saving way.  There's no way it will happen if it looks like he is getting rid of a problem employee (the administration and the other department will not accept that as a valid reason for such a transfer), and obviously he won't cooperate if the stated reason is getting you out from the control of an irresponsible chair.  Instead, you'd have to give it a positive spin: helping your career by giving you a chance to develop in a slightly different research direction, building ties between departments and fostering interdisciplinary connections, etc.  It may be galling, but you need to set this up in a way that makes it look like your chair is doing something valuable for the university by helping to arrange it.  If you can get your chair enthusiastic about this, and if there's another plausible department, then the chair's influence within the university might really help you.  And don't be too restrictive in ruling out possible departments: there might not be any appropriate match, but I know of a couple of cases in which people have successfully resolved personality conflicts by moving to departments that were a bit further afield than one might expect (engineering vs. science, for example).  If you've got tenure, then the university has a powerful incentive to fix this conflict, even if it means letting you sit in an odd department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving the university is radically different from switching departments, and you should not ask the chair for help in doing that.  Within the university, your chair's standing with the administration will play a major role in what opportunities are available.  Outside the university, your chair probably can't help you very much, but could certainly hurt you, so it's not worth the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst case scenario is that your chair hates you and wants to hurt your career, regardless of which department you are in.  In that case, there's nothing you can do if your chair has the full support of the administration, and you'll have to either leave the university or wait for the chair to retire.  However, you shouldn't give up all hope until you've exhausted options like submitting or transferring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T14:41:06.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2012-04-07T15:25:45.240" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask senior people in your field, or look at the polies and publishing agreements of journals you care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In math, every major journal will accept submissions of papers that have previously been posted to the arXiv.  (I'm pretty sure that &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; journal will, but I suppose I can't rule out some obscure exception.  If any journal tried to enforce a policy against submitting papers that were on the arXiv, there would be a big uproar and they would have no choice but to allow it.)  I believe the same is true in physics and CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keep in mind that this may vary between fields.  For example, my understanding is that the American Chemical Society has particularly draconian copyright and dissemination policies, and that they may object to arXiv posting.  They are on the wrong side of history, but it doesn't mean they can't still cause trouble.  And then there are journals like Science, with embargo policies and corresponding rules about what constitutes prior distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is that this is very simple if you're in a field in which the arXiv has become widespread, but much more subtle otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T15:25:45.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2012-04-07T18:31:17.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would regard a separate biography as a bit odd; it's normal to sign with your current title (so I sign &quot;Ben Webster, Assistant Professor of Mathematics&quot;) and of course, write on letterhead, so your current position is clear. In terms of context on how many students you've evaluated, you can slip that into various points in the letter.  I would just stick a sentence into the second paragraph; one can unobtrusively give a short explanation of who you are mixed with the standard explanation of how you know the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T14:28:01.693" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T14:28:01.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="368" CreationDate="2012-04-07T20:47:29.410" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aeismail makes an important point about location: what's standard in Germany differs from what's standard in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a US context, I would strongly recommend against listing things like declined graduate fellowships.  It will look strange, and even beyond that it can work to your disadvantage: everybody will already assume you declined several attractive offers, so giving an explicit list will do nothing but focus attention on what isn't on the list.  (If the list of declined offers is short, readers will be disappointed, and if it's long, they'll spend more time speculating about what's missing than being impressed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time I'd recommend highlighting this sort of information is if for some reason you had to turn down a vastly more prestigious offer than the one you accepted.  For example, maybe you were offered a tenure-track job at a top department, but ended up working as an adjunct in the middle of nowhere so you could take care of a relative.  You should then make sure everybody knows this the next time you are able to apply for jobs.  However, you should be very careful when doing this, because if the prestige difference isn't absolutely universally acknowledged, then you run the risk of offending people who feel you are unfairly denigrating a perfectly fine career path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T20:47:29.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1023" CreationDate="2012-04-07T21:49:39.597" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cardinal rule of interacting with advisors is that if you don't generally trust your advisor's advice, then you need a new advisor.  So you should start with the idea that your advisor's approach to any given situation is probably worth trying, and only give up on it if it's clearly not working out or seems contrary to what everyone else is saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I'm sure it varies between fields.  I wouldn't presume to offer advice to someone in a biology lab on how to sort this issue out, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing, which you absolutely must do no matter what, is to inform your advisor in detail of any help you receive.  This is a matter of intellectual honesty, while everything else is a matter of convention or wise strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want to avoid is the following scenario: you meet with X, then meet with Y and explain what X said, then meet with X and convey Y's response to X's ideas, then meet with Y again and relay information back from X, etc.  If you try this and are a little vague about the line between your own ideas and what you learned in your last meeting, then you can pull it off for a while, but eventually you'll be in big trouble when X and Y talk.  Even if you never actually lied, but just let people assume you were contributing more than you actually did, they'll be very unhappy if they decide you weren't contributing enough.  [And this can be a particular danger for students: if someone says something cryptic and then you figure it out later, is that because you are adding new ideas and insights, or because you are catching up to where the expert already was?  It can be hard for a beginner to judge, and this potential for confusion is a valid worry for advisors.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how to introduce the idea to an advisor who resists getting outside help, the main thing is to understand why.  Is it because your advisor feels this is an important learning experience for you?  Is the advisor convinced that the problem is not as difficult as you fear?  (And, if so, can you make a compelling case that it is?)  There are also more worrisome scenarios.  For example, maybe the local expert in this area is notorious for competing with or undermining students, or has a bad relationship with your advisor.  Your advisor may be reluctant to say this explicitly, so if he/she seems to be ruling out a natural collaborator for unclear reasons, then you should ask about other people you might talk with instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T21:49:39.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-04-07T22:23:22.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I'm afraid your supervisor gave you very risky advice.  For anyone other than a real star (at the level of the top students at the top schools), applying to just 20 top departments is likely to lead to disappointment.  You may be at that level - of course I have no idea - but coming from a less famous university also puts you at a disadvantage, even with a well-known advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As several people have pointed out here, there are still some jobs available for next year, but many of the most attractive possibilities will be gone.  At this point, you should look for advertisements but also explore other possibilities.  Write to departments to see whether they have any last-minute openings (e.g., a sabbatical replacement), write to faculty members to see if they have postdoc funding from recent grants, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a trusted mentor should inquire about these possibilities, not you, although of course this depends on whether you have someone who is willing to do this, such as your advisor.  A mentor can explain that you only ended up in this situation because of following questionable advice, and your application was excellent otherwise, so a department that gets you now will be seizing a great opportunity rather than hiring someone nobody else wanted.  (Of course, your advisor may feel uncomfortable loudly announcing that he gave you bad advice.)  A mentor can also contact friends in other departments, collaborators, etc. in ways you probably can't.  But it's much better for you to inquire than for nobody to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for staying at your current university, I'd recommend remaining a graduate student rather than getting your Ph.D. and becoming an intructor, unless there's a huge funding difference or you have already spent an unusually long time in grad school.  Continuing with a one-year position at the university you attended for grad school is tantamount to announcing &quot;I didn't get a job last year&quot; on your CV, and that can hurt your job search compared with simply graduating a year later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stay in grad school, perhaps your advisor could help arrange for you to spend a semester or even year visiting another university, which could help take care of the &quot;getting involved in the research community&quot; side of things.  However, the funding situation for that can be complicated, so it may require luck or someone who can call in some favors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T22:23:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2012-04-08T02:24:37.733" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that there's some nonzero correlation.  Certainly, there are factors that should lead to positive correlation; for example, some personality traits (like conscientiousness) should lead to both better research and better teaching.  There are also factors that should lead to negative correlation; for example, teaching and research are activities that are competing for a limited amount of time.  It would be strange if all these factors nearly cancelled each other out, so we should expect some net correlation.  Here's an argument for positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's distinguish between two aspects of teaching, namely exposition and psychology.  Exposition means finding simple explanations, coming up with illuminating examples and analogies, mapping out the most important topics and the relationships between them, etc.  Psychology means understanding where students are coming from and what they do or don't understand, empathizing and bonding with them, arousing their interest and inspiring them to achieve great things, etc.  Both of these are important factors in good teaching, although neither is absolutely essential.  A master of exposition without a good understanding of psychology may be clear but dull, and someone who understands psychology but isn't good at exposition may have to follow a textbook closely, but either one will be much better than some teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expository ability is almost certainly correlated with research ability, since they both rely on a deep, creative understanding of the subject matter.  In mathematics, the standard example is Jean-Pierre Serre, who is both a brilliant mathematician and the author of several amazing graduate textbooks, and one can see similar characteristics in his research papers and textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the psychology side of teaching is probably not closely connected with research ability.  There may be some correlation, just because smart people tend to be better than average at all kinds of thinking, but I'd bet the correlation is small.  Certainly, there are wonderful researchers who have a terrible understanding of psychology, and vice versa, in a far more dramatic way than for exposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this split as perhaps explaining why there's so much debate about whether good research and good teaching are correlated, with some people saying obviously yes and others obviously no.  The answer depends on which aspects of teaching you view as most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T02:24:37.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1051" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1055" CreationDate="2012-04-08T04:00:44.947" Score="15" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wondered if PIs look for a perfect fit for their projects. For instance, a post doc vacancy is advertised as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must have completed PhD with 3 peer reviewed journal articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must have x,y and z skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must have had some exposure to a,b and c skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what if the applicant has only 1 journal article and is working on a 2nd manuscript. Has x and z skills and has had exposure to a and b skills but not c but some other skills that might be useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would this applicant want to apply for said post doc? &#xA;If so does how does the hiring dynamic work? &#xA;Would this dynamic be the same whether it is an engineering/science post doc or otherwise?&#xA;Would the applicant be overlooked because he/she isn't a 100% fit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that each situation would need to be judged differently but there has got to be a general thumb rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T04:08:39.947" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T19:15:19.727" Title="What do principal investigators (PIs) look for in prospective post docs?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1056" CreationDate="2012-04-08T04:10:29.010" Score="0" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to take courses in Mathematics, Computer Science from a US University. I am not in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I generally go about it? Is it an online degree that I am looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I would like to get a degree for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T08:38:12.450" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T08:38:12.450" Title="Any chance for an overseas student to pursue online courses and get a degree?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2012-04-08T04:46:47.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The consensus (of course no such thing exists) that I have heard in the biological science goes, if your data resulted in a figure, you get your name on the paper. However, if the person wrote the paper and contributed immensely, they then get the first authorship,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think part of the question is based on whether or not the ideas of the thesis were influential in the interpretation of the data and if the data had to be recollected. In the situation described our field would be very comfortable with having the undergrad in the middle, the least important position of authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very important to acknowledge @JeffE's comment which is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;the correct answer depends on the standard publication culture in the supervisor's field&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T04:46:47.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1051" CreationDate="2012-04-08T07:42:38.197" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, I hire two types of postdocs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is the &quot;zero expectation&quot; postdoc, this is the postdoc that I hire when I already have the manpower to complete the project, and when the project is clearly on the good tracks. For this one, I just look at the research work he has done (I don't care about numbers/publications, only about the quality of the work) and make sure that he will be able to work alone (mmm, this means that I look for someone that should already be a faculty member somewhere, but which is not for various reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is interesting you I guess is the second type. In any project the most important thing is to make sure that we will be able to complete it in time. If I hire a postdoc for that purpose and if the postdoc don't do the job, I will have to do it myself, I don't want this to happen. So, the only thing that interests me is the ability to complete the goals of the project. Publications? except if the goal of the project is to produce papers I don't care. Skills? this is what I am looking for, and more precisly I am looking for confirmed skills, not exposure (too risky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T07:42:38.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1052" CreationDate="2012-04-08T12:27:20.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, some graduate degrees are offered online, but you should be careful.  There are real advantages to doing it in person, and most of the schools offering online degrees are not well respected, so if you select a program based on internet advertising, you will probably waste your money without learning very much or ending up with a valuable credential.  (It's depressing how many businesspeople view distance education as just a money making opportunity, without any serious commitment to doing a good job.  When you investigate online education, please keep in mind that many web sites are trying to sell you something of questionable value.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One respectable example is the University of Washington, which offers an online M.S. in applied mathematics, and there are some others like this.  They could be viable options if attending in person is impossible.  I do not know of any well respected math graduate program from a 100% distance education university in the US, so you should be very suspicious of such programs, although perhaps they exist in other countries (Open University?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no worthwhile online Ph.D. program in mathematics.  If your only goal is to get the degree itself, for example to move up in a salary scale for a job you already have, then it might be possible, but you would have to look carefully to make sure the program is accredited, and even so it won't be an impressive addition to your CV.  If you are hoping for a career in academia or industrial research, don't even think about an online Ph.D.  If an institution offers an online Ph.D. in mathematics, and presents it as being just as good and respected as a traditional Ph.D., then you should be extremely suspicious of the entire institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for computer science, I don't know as much about online master's programs, but the issues are similar and I imagine the conclusions are as well.  The online Ph.D. situation is definitely the same as in math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T12:27:20.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="177" CreationDate="2012-04-08T13:22:35.167" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've served on graduate admissions committees for a math department in a research university.  It really won't matter what your degrees are in, as long as the substance is there, but you need to be careful of several points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need recommendations from people the committee is familiar with, preferably at least one or two mathematicians.  The more they committee knows about your letter writers, the better.  (For example, if someone says you are one of the best students in recent years, is that because you are great or because they give inflated praise to everyone?  There's no way of knowing if the committee hasn't seen previous recommendations from this person.)  It's also important for your recommenders to have enough of a feeling for math grad school that they can confidently address whether you will be successful; for example, theoretical computer scientists can probably do this better than people in more applied areas of CS.  Finally, many people believe recommenders are a little less selective about recommending people for things outside of their own area, so recommendations from other fields are often given less weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to demonstrate that you have mastered the undergraduate material that is less relevant for computer science.  For example, mathematical analysis along the lines of Rudin's &lt;em&gt;Principles of Mathematical Analysis&lt;/em&gt;.  Even if you know a lot about algebra and discrete math, you might still not be in a position to pass some first-year graduate courses in pure math, or you might discover that you don't enjoy them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need a compelling story for why you are changing departments.  If you focus on not liking what you are currently doing, or on wanting a fresh start, then it will not go over well.  There are much more positive stories, about gradually coming to appreciate that pure math is your real interest, but you should write carefully.  This is tantamount to admitting that the last time you entered a graduate program, you didn't really know what you were interested in, and you don't want to leave the committee with any worries that this might still be true.  If you can say this honestly, then it might help to say something along these lines: when you finished your undergraduate degree, you were unsure about pure math vs. CS, so you decided to write an extremely mathematical CS master's thesis, and this experience has helped you decide where your real interests are.  (Being unsure in the past comes across better than having thought you were sure and then realizing you were wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T13:22:35.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1051" CreationDate="2012-04-08T18:03:16.523" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Sylvain implies, the freedom in selecting a postdoc depends strongly on the nature of the project. If I have a position for which on-going funding is available (because it's part of a long-term center, for instance), the &quot;must haves&quot; or more like &quot;would like to haves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I have a limited-term position (one funded through something like an NIH, NSF, or DFG grant which has a time-limit attached), then I need to be much more strict in selecting my candidates. Then I want one with as close a match as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, however, if the clock is already running, then I can't necessarily wait for a postdoc who has &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the qualifications to come along. In that case, I will pick someone who satisfies most of the criteria, and do extra due diligence to make sure that the postdoc is &lt;em&gt;teachable&lt;/em&gt;: that is, that she is willing to learn the extra skills that she needs to complete the project in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T18:03:16.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-04-08T18:51:47.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is scads of postdoc money available both inside the U.S. and worldwide for people interested in doing research, really money exists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are not however faculty positions for all those postdocs, at least not in countries that pay anywhere near U.S. wages.  I know French people working as professors in South America, Americans working in Asia and the Middle East, etc.  It's certainly a grand adventure which you should consider, but it's effectively a one way trip because if you stay then you'd never earn enough to retire in the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American universities will look down upon your time abroad if you try coming back as an academic too.  Even very low ranked universities will realize you've taught in much more traditional systems that probably don't coddle the students nearly so much, meaning they won't trust your teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Europe does not follow the U.S.'s job calendar, meaning you may apply whenever you wish, but you must watch the job sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math-jobs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;math-jobs.com&lt;/a&gt; year round, which is annoying.  I believe many asian countries have schedules, but not necessarily the same ones, watch the job sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an issue that the further you travel from the U.S. the more your school's standing hurts you.  I'd expect you can find postdoc money, references, etc. from Europeans or Asians who know your advisor, but this support counts for very little when you apply for a permanent faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should imho simply take an industry job if you wish to remain in the U.S. long term, but if you want an adventure there is one to be had.  Adventure isn't for everyone but you only live once.  ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s.  Don't limit yourself too much when applying, retool into computational homological algebra if an opportunity presents itself (and you can program well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T18:51:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1051" CreationDate="2012-04-08T19:15:19.727" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postdocs have an absolutely critical and unique role in a research group.  They have more research potential than anyone else in academia, because they are both full time on research and yet experienced, not students.  They are also very expensive and a rare luxury that comes only with heavy investment from a funder or university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I look for therefore is demonstrated proof that the candidate will take good advantage of the expensive opportunity they are being offered.  Forms of evidence:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;existing publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publications in prep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;letters of reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These should show that the candidate has skills in what needs to be done, and the determination and internal motivation to be a successful academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing I look for is evidence that the candidate is very likely to employ those skills in the area that I am funded for them to research.  This is done through open and frank conversations with the candidate about their research and career goals, what &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; need, what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; need, where they intend to go next, etc.  A postdoc is at a critical time in their career, and everyone should know that they need to produce papers out of their PhD and that they may leave early if the right lifetime opportunity comes along.  I try to negotiate in advance about what research I absolutely need them to complete, what further I'd like them to complete, and to discuss writing and research schedules such that they can meet both of our needs and wants, preferably through some synergy (e.g. of the possible outcomes of this project, which would best suit both of our goals?)  I then try to agree a schedule about what research will be done when, what is the earliest date they'll start looking for their next position, when will they or we start writing the next grant or fellowship bid etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These negotiations give me not only a sense of how much I can expect us to accomplish if I make this hire, but also how well we can work together and how similarly we understand our responsibilities as academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally of course there is a luck element:  if there is more than one viable candidate, the one who seems likely to be the best fit wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T19:15:19.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2012-04-08T19:41:00.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are any number of reasons that teaching and research might be correlated, or be anti correlated. These reasons will all combine and interact, so you will see a range of extents of correlations. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can be positively correlated because communication is a part of research, so giving good lectures and scientific talks, writing good papers and lessons will be correlated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They must be negatively correlated as a consequence of both taking time from the same individual academic.  No one has infinite time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can be positive correlated because excellent departments and universities value their academics' time and provide resources like secretaries and teaching assistants to help academics have time for both.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T22:21:33.890" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T22:21:33.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-08T19:49:58.203" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are dealing with a bully who is insecure and threatened by you, direct negotiation will only result in your being manipulated further.  Read the available on-line literature on adult bullying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making friends with other powerful people (e.g. superordinates of your boss) is effective, eventually you might become someone that the bully wants &quot;on side&quot; and their overt behaviour will just flip like a light switch.  If you can document all your claims e.g. some members of a department having twice the teaching load for no clear, publicly-stated policy reason, you may have legal recourse &amp;amp; be able to get a more level playing field to try to prove your academic merit on (have you talked to HR?)  But if things are as &quot;sewn up&quot; as you say, and there is no help from HR or another campus organisation, then the best thing is to change job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T19:49:58.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2012-04-08T20:11:36.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right, the point of the letter is &lt;strong&gt;entirely&lt;/strong&gt; the candidate, any sentence(s) about yourself should be entirely to the point of facilitating communication about the candidate. I was told in school that all histories tell you as much about the culture that wrote them as the culture they describe, so you need to take both into account when you read them. I suppose this is true of reference letters as well. It's like introducing yourself before you ask an academic you don't know a question one-on-one over coffee at a conference – sometimes there's no need, but sometimes it's essential to framing the question &amp;amp; making the most of the other person's time &amp;amp; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never been explicitly asked for a biography beyond &quot;how do you know the candidate, for how long, and in what capacity&quot;.  However, the UK is under a lot of legal pressure concerning letters of reference because some are so much better than others, not necessarily due to the candidate, but possibly due to how knowledgeable the writer is about writing letters.  Possibly candidates deserve some credit for picking good letter writers, but this could be hard particularly for very junior candidates.  So  having guidance for writing a letter is useful, it's letting all letter writers know good practice by previous letter writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I include biographical information (not a full biography) where I think it may be helpful and when I am trying to write a strong letter. Similarly, I also give information about our institution where I think it might not be known and be helpful.   Examples: if I am writing a US institution from the UK, I let them know that I have attended US institutions &amp;amp; know what their programmes are like. Sometimes if I know someone well in the department I may point that out in the letter so that whoever is doing the search has the option of going to ask that person how seriously to take my opinion if they want to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put this at the end of the first paragraph or possibly as a stand-alone second paragraph, in advance of offering my verbose opinion of the candidate, so that the reader can have that information in mind when they see what my opinion is. The first sentence of the first paragraph says who the letter is for &amp;amp; for what position.  The second sentence is my one-sentence summary of my recommendation. The third (or the second paragraph) is in what capacity I am writing the letter.  That's where biographical details might be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T20:28:54.677" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T20:28:54.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-09T00:04:17.997" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to the other excellent comments: while I have no personal experience that might be of value in your situation, I think that there is one thing you MUST do on a continuing basis regardless of everything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document every instance where you feel this person is abusing their authority in relation to you&lt;/strong&gt;. Accumulate as much evidence you can on each case, and build up a case file. Even if you don't go on the offensive, you'll need this if the chair starts trying direct confrontation and provocation (instead of the passive aggressive bullying that's going on right now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T00:04:17.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T01:55:17.687" Score="4" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there are universities having real-world MSc related courses. My focus is to understand cloud technologies and services(especially if it is Amazon). Preferably in UK, but can be actually anywhere around the world. Maybe general or specific like PAAS , SAAS etc. Could you suggest any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="618" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T14:54:28.023" Title="MSc with relation to Cloud" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-04-01T16:09:55.803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T04:36:29.023" Score="11" ViewCount="18907" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you do bad in undergraduate school in say computer science. But you do very well in a masters program in computer science. If you want to apply to a PhD program in computer science, will the masters degree grades offset the undergraduate degree grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="620" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:49:13.327" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T17:49:13.327" Title="Doing bad in undergraduate but good in a masters program" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-09T06:01:22.263" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a full answer, but a suggestion: Consider meeting with the college's ombudsperson (if they have one), affirmative action officer, EEOC officer, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T06:01:22.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1073" CreationDate="2012-04-09T11:30:54.673" Score="24" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently looking for a PhD position and have started to realize that a lot of my time goes into sporadeously surfing the web in hope of finding an open position. Are there good job directories for academic work that lists available positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="141" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T10:21:31.400" LastActivityDate="2021-02-14T22:54:25.793" Title="Are there any good job directories for academic work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="15" ClosedDate="2021-02-15T00:22:29.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2012-04-09T11:55:58.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.higheredjobs.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.higheredjobs.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have jobs broken down by Job Category, Region, and Institution Type. They also do a great job of keeping you informed of opportunities when they are added to the their database.  You provide your CV and potential employers can search for applicants by credentials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="622" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T06:32:56.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T06:32:56.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1066" CreationDate="2012-04-09T12:06:31.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, recent performance will tend to outweigh prior performance. I will look at a student with a graduate 4.0 and an undergraduate 3.2 much more favorably than the converse (unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances, such as a large jump in the quality of the graduate program compared to the undergraduate). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the GPA drop is also important. A bad freshman year is almost certainly ignorable. A bad senior year is a red flag. Similarly, I will give much less weight to grades in &quot;general education&quot; classes, as I'm not hiring them based on their ability to analyze Shakespeare or Milton.  Important classes for the major, though, can be deadly even if they are in the undergraduate years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T12:06:31.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2012-04-09T14:46:02.757" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's almost impossible to give a general answer to this question, since different fields handle things in very different ways.  Your profile says you're a cognitive scientist and philosopher, which is beyond my competence, but for other readers here's an answer for mathematics jobs in the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The largest number of job ads for US academic jobs in math, especially at but not limited to reseach-oriented schools, are found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home&lt;/a&gt;.  In particular, most math departments do not advertise on generic websites (not field specific) unless there are university requirements to do so, and you cannot find most math jobs without going to math-specific sites.  I have no idea whether this is typical for academic fields, or unique to mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One unusual feature of mathematics (compared with computer science, for example) is that there's a centralized application site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs&quot;&gt;http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs&lt;/a&gt;, which covers a surprisingly large fraction of jobs and makes handling letters of recommendation very easy.  It's still important to look at ads on math society websites, since some schools do not allow departments to use mathjobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For industrial or government employment, it's a real mess, and different subfields advertise in rather different places (or sometimes hardly advertise at all).  I don't think there's anything valuable to say there without narrowing things down quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T14:46:02.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1065" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:10:57.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an MSc specialising in Networks and Distributed Systems at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/?q=node/47&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;St Andrews&lt;/a&gt;. There's also quite a large group that does cloud computing research and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/stacc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cloud lab&lt;/a&gt;, so you would almost certainly be able to do an MSc project on that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T16:10:57.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2012-04-09T18:09:42.377" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would depend on what your field of work is. But heres a nifty little list that I keep an eye on (I am looking for a postdoctoral position in academia / research and these websites are quite helpful to &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phds.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.phds.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postdocjobs.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.postdocjobs.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org/careers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aps.org/careers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academickeys.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.academickeys.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few websites suggested in the answers below/above my response to this question and they are quite nice too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that you probably have a general idea as to what you'd want to work as / work for. You could perhaps target a bunch of universities and faculty members for prospective positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T18:06:09.293" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T18:06:09.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1066" CreationDate="2012-04-09T19:33:31.663" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sort of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in exactly the situation you describe 20+ years ago.  My undergrad GPA was horrible (even restricted to computer science classes); my MS GPA was near-perfect; I got into Berkeley as a PhD student.  But I don't think the improvement in my &lt;em&gt;grades&lt;/em&gt; was as important as the improvement in my &lt;em&gt;letters&lt;/em&gt;.  My undergrad letters said &quot;He's smart but lazy&quot;, which is the kiss of death.  My MS letters were much more positive.  Also, when I applied to Berkeley, I had some research results in submission, so my positive letters had some substance to draw on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I got very, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as a faculty member who reviews PhD applications, I would certainly look at the improvement in grades as a good sign.  But as I've mentioned elsewhere, above a certain threshold of &quot;good enough&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision/961#961&quot;&gt;grades don't matter&lt;/a&gt;.  Especially since you're applying with a master's degree, your demonstrated research ability is &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T19:33:31.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:25:51.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the harassment really is for reasons of &quot;e.g. gender, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, accent, etc,&quot; then the federal government could get involved. See the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website (http://www.eeoc.gov/) for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T20:25:51.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:57:16.593" Score="23" ViewCount="3306" Body="&lt;p&gt;Invited talks are important for moving up the academic ladder, so I'd like to know how one maximizes the odds of being offered to be an invited speaker at conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the most obvious things like having important results to report. However, apparently this is not always necessary: one often sees in the list of invited speakers some fresh PhDs neighboring the really big shots. So, are there any &lt;em&gt;non-obvious&lt;/em&gt; strategies to increase the odds of becoming an invited speaker at a conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the advice may be field-specific, and I am most interested in the tips for conferences in mathematics and physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="623" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T08:36:26.980" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T08:36:26.980" Title="How to increase the odds of becoming an invited speaker at science conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2012-04-09T23:38:11.743" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give some colloquia (departmental seminars or lab-specific talks) in the departments of organizers of conferences. You can sometimes invite yourself by writing to the organizer of their seminar series and offering yourself as a speaker but better might be having your phd advisor write and recommend you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will increase your name recognition with the critical people and can give you a reputation for giving good talks. Organizers are unlikely to take a chance on someone that is junior and none of them have heard speak. If you can give a talk somewhere that will be videoed and posted online, that would also help with this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you work with a more famous friend (or phd advisor) in the same area who is frequently invited to give talks, you could mention to them that you are trying to do this and they may recommend you for talks they have to decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T23:38:11.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1080" CreationDate="2012-04-10T10:12:34.627" Score="25" ViewCount="6405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've changed jobs, and consequently the field of research has also changed. But I'm still getting proposals for publications in the previous field, and it is interesting for me to accept some of them. My concern is about which affiliation to use: on one hand I gain all the knowledge in that field while working on the previous employer, also I hope they can cover my expenses related to the publication. On the other hand, I do not work for them anymore, and my current company has very little interest in my old field of research, and probably will not support it financially, but I think it is wise to mention them as well. As a compromise I'm thinking to put the previous employer in the affiliation, and the name of my new employer in the footnote, something like &quot;currently at XYZ&quot;. Surely I'll discuss this issue with both, although the opinion of the community is also very valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="626" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T09:46:10.903" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T12:03:55.107" Title="Is it acceptable to publish a paper using an affiliation with a former employer?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2012-04-10T10:22:26.153" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this comes down to the time taken. I personally could not be bothered spending 2 days writing up and formatting a paper for negative data. It needs to be really simple to do and I either need to get some credit for it, or need to be mandated to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a growing requirement from funders and mandates forcing researchers to make all of their research outputs available are only a matter of time. In the mean time, altmetrics can act as carrots to encourage researchers to share their data, even the negative stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="575" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T10:22:26.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1078" CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:13:53.690" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have written the publication &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; with the resources and support of the former employer, then it is perfectly acceptable to do what you have written, and list the old address as your address for the &quot;active&quot; affiliations, and include a &quot;present address&quot; affiliation to show your updated physical location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your new employer &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; provide financial support, then you should list them accordingly. This is especially important if any of the actual research that makes its way into a publication has been performed while working for the new employer &lt;em&gt;using their resources&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T12:13:53.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-10T16:18:28.640" Score="7" ViewCount="13733" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background:  I'm currently 1 year out of my undergrad in psychology and I currently have a job working on a educational grant project at a university.  I've lost some interest in the field of psychology as a whole and I'm considering going back to school for computer science.  When I expressed this interest to an adviser at my old school she mentioned that I might be interested in a post bachelor comp sci certificate.  The certificate is 30 credits and can probably be done in about half the time that another bachelors could be completed in.  I asked her if any of the graduates of the certificate program had had any trouble getting into graduate school with said degree and she said no.  However, I believe there is probably more to this than she let on considering that it is her job to promote this program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:  I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with these type of certificates?  I know that I will have a more complete computer science education with an undergrad but I'm wondering if it is completely necessary.  All said and done I would like to get a masters in computer science because it seems like the smart career move.  Will I be limiting my job potential by only having a certificate and a bachelors in an unrelated field?  Is graduate school really possible with just a certificate?  My dream job would be working for a company in research and development for human to computer interfaces.  I also have a fleeting passion for gaming and music production, but I consider these to be more hobbies than serious career interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="632" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T12:08:07.183" Title="Computer science degree vs. post-bachelor computer science certificate" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1082" CreationDate="2012-04-10T16:44:36.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends largely on how &quot;strict&quot; the employer in question is regarding qualifications. Some companies—particularly larger corporations—don't have the ability to recognize that the certificate might be equivalent to a bachelor's degree. Then, you really need to be able to demonstrate that you have the requisite credentials, and it's hard to &quot;mix and match.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, smaller employers are generally able to make those distinctions. However, the issue with these faster-paced programs is that you might not have the same breadth of experience as someone who has the bachelor's degree; the four-year degree holder may have internships and other work experience that will make them a more suitable candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, you are right to be skeptical of what sounds like a &quot;sales pitch,&quot; and do your own homework to make sure that it's recognized. One way to do this would be to contact some companies in the area and see if they've had any experience hiring graduates of this program. (You could also ask the sponsor of this program to identify some contacts for you—with the obvious caveat that you'll be getting the &quot;success stories.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T16:44:36.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1082" CreationDate="2012-04-10T17:08:18.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues: whether it will be a formal barrier (i.e., you'll be screened out before anyone ever looks at your application carefully) and whether it will impress people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate school applications, there's no way you'll be officially screened out for this reason.  There are several programs aimed at encouraging post-baccalaureate certificates to help women enter computer science.  They attract excellent students, so grad schools are happy to see these applications; furthermore, if any grad school ever turned down applicants with such a background just because they had no &quot;real&quot; degree in CS, they'd be in big trouble on gender equity grounds.  So you have nothing to worry about there: grad schools are aware of these certificates and willing to consider applicants with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are still issues of people's personal reactions, for example how rigorous or extensive they think the program is.  It presumably depends on the program, and also perhaps on which courses you take within the program.  If take you challenging courses and do well in them, ideally do some sort of project with a faculty supervisor, and get strong letters of recommendation, then you should be in good shape for grad school applications.  As a sanity check, you should ask about the placement record of previous students in the program: without some reason to think otherwise, you can expect you would end up somewhere in that range.  If they all do well, that's a very good sign; if some but not all do, then you need to make sure you end up in that top group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for industry, CS hiring is much less credential-driven than some branches of engineering (where there are more regulatory or liability issues).  If you can demonstrate talent and skill, then nobody will really care what your degree is in (except sometimes for research jobs that require a Ph.D.).  There are some tricky issues: for example, some of the top tech companies get enormous numbers of applications and have to filter them rather brutally.  However, even there the filtering is more often by prestige (did you get impressive grades at a top university) rather than the field the degree is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T17:08:18.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-10T18:20:10.640" Score="37" ViewCount="7463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to keep a research notebook for my computational &quot;experiments&quot;. Basically, I should at least be able to write text and attach images like plots. Other nice features to have would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;linking to past experiments/pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;latex equations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;uploading papers, or other urls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being able to transfer data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dating and version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open-source tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am already familiar with trello and tiddlywiki. Trello is good for attaching stuff and organising tasks, but I need a notebook where I attach a plot, write stuff around it, attach another below it. It doesn't have a paper or canvas. Tiddlywiki is a little painful for attaching pics and equations, the file bloats, it seems I am keeping a blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good, free electronic notebook tool for research/lab work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T02:59:58.997" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T12:58:55.257" Title="Software/App for electronic research notebooks" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:05:43.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For uploading papers and annotating them, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com&quot;&gt;mendeley&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;To organize my citations, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org&quot;&gt;citeulike&lt;/a&gt; which is nifty for it bibtex entry generation. I also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Jabref&lt;/a&gt; locally on my computer to manage my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am into numerical  simulations as well and I generally add my results to latex documents (figures and all) as I eventually need it in a latex format for my dissertation! Plus this way, I save time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/notebook&quot;&gt;google notebook&lt;/a&gt;? I haven't used it in at least 3 years so I don't quite know how good it is now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T20:05:43.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-11T01:02:17.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're looking for something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://figshare.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's part of Digital Science, which is part of the same family of companies as Nature Publishing, but I know the guy who runs it and I think he's really sharp &amp;amp; going about things the right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T01:02:17.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2012-04-11T01:18:58.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find out which conference organizers your PhD advisor knows and see if he'll recommend you to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present an amazing poster at a conference and spend some time getting the word about prior to the conference about your work, so that when the organizers come by the poster session, they see your poster mobbed with people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you shouldn't do is respond to any of those conference solicitations for conferences you've never heard of, usually located in some Middle Eastern or Asian country. It's spam and they usually just bought a list of email addresses and did keyword targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T01:18:58.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-11T06:11:20.880" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the last month, I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://gitit.net/&quot;&gt;Gitit&lt;/a&gt; for this purpose.  That link goes to a live demo where you can try it out.  It satisfies all your requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a wiki, so you can easily make links between pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's built on pandoc, which understands TeX and uses MathJax to render it (it technically renders a subset of TeX, but it's a pretty substantial subset)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's actually a Git repository, so you can upload anything you want to it.  Or just put your figures out on the web (via figshare or a public Dropbox link) and link to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, it's Git.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is open source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jgm/gitit&quot;&gt;https://github.com/jgm/gitit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, you can put it out publicly on the web if you want (or just run it locally on your machine).  I run it on an internal server at my University and my students and post-docs use it to.  Thus it's a convenient way to share information as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T06:11:20.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:04:44.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out GitHub hosted blogs using what's called &quot;jekyll&quot;: &#xA;-http://jekyllrb.com/&#xA;-https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll (see the wiki tab for example sites)&#xA;-Easy way to start: use jekyll bootstrap or octopress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jekyll is just a bunch of code that makes it easy to have stuff that you have on blogs/lab notebooks: tags, pagination, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cool things are that its free, open source, versioned, handles images/papers/etc, can integrate comments (I use Disqus). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does require a bit of a learning curve over other blog platforms, but its well worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:04:44.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1065" CreationDate="2012-04-11T20:03:43.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wms.cs.kuleuven.be/cs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;K.U. Leuven&lt;/a&gt; there is a lot of research done in distributed systems, with a recent focus on cloud computing. You could do a Masters in Distributed Systems and do your thesis on an issue related to cloud computing.  (One would need to first check that the course could be done in English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T20:03:43.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2012-04-11T20:06:36.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do great research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give great presentations of your research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Become known, not only for your research, but by actively participating in conferences, workshops and other meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T20:06:36.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1096" CreationDate="2012-04-12T06:17:32.993" Score="117" ViewCount="109861" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to have suggestions of good software for drawing illustrations in research papers. I already know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xfig.org/&quot;&gt;Xfig&lt;/a&gt;, but this works only on Linux and is at times, clunky when it comes to text. Moreover the resolution is not always perfect making it difficult to manoeuvre the objects. Besides it is tough to learn and master, with all its weird click procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to know about better alternatives. Not talking about graphs here, just block diagrams and explanatory illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T09:52:04.940" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T08:19:19.267" Title="Software to draw illustrative figures in papers" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="71" ClosedDate="2017-12-02T20:23:19.040" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-04-12T06:35:15.903" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;As drawing software, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/&quot;&gt;OmniGraffle&lt;/a&gt; which is much more modern that Xfig, but based on similar principles. It's only available for the Mac and is not free, as far as I know. With little effort, one can produce very attractive diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/&quot;&gt;Tikz/PGF&lt;/a&gt;. It produces very nice diagrams and is very flexible. On the other hand, it requires that you specify the diagram in LaTeX and it has a bit of a steep learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T06:35:15.903" CommentCount="12" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-04-12T09:05:29.627" Score="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;A free, fairly portable, and very complete tool for general illustration is &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkscape.org/&quot;&gt;Inkscape&lt;/a&gt;. It uses &lt;code&gt;SVG&lt;/code&gt; as its native file format, and aside from attempting to be a decent drawing tool in its own right, one of its design goals was to provide complete coverage of the features available in &lt;code&gt;SVG&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For block diagrams, flow charts, and other simple sketches of process and data flow there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://live.gnome.org/Dia&quot;&gt;Dia&lt;/a&gt;. It's primary design goal is to duplicate the features of Visio in free software. Like Visio, it uses a stencils and connections drawing model that works really well for diagramming relationships and flow, but gets tedious when attempting to do art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clean layout of directed or undirected graph diagrams, it is difficult to beat the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.graphviz.org/&quot;&gt;Graphviz&lt;/a&gt; tools. They are primarily designed to be used from a textual description (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.graphviz.org/pdf/dotguide.pdf&quot;&gt;a concise intro here&lt;/a&gt; (PDF)) of the graph, but there are various GUI tools that can edit their &lt;code&gt;.dot&lt;/code&gt; files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T08:15:39.083" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T08:15:39.083" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1106" CreationDate="2012-04-12T09:50:02.237" Score="41" ViewCount="41378" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know PhD is unsparing in terms of available time, but at times there may be situations that demand some extra income, for example, family situations or some medical emergency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, are there any specific jobs PhD students could take up? This could be at some place within a university (a library, say) or somewhere in the city (assume it is a large one like London or NY). The desiderata are minimal time consumption and a sum of useful money which could be used to manage the unexpected expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T12:33:12.920" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T02:06:24.837" Title="What part-time jobs are suitable for PhD students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-04-12T10:56:34.850" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two obvious answers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marking (grading). Ask your supervisor if they have coursework that needs to be marked (for a price).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tutoring. Put a note up in your departmental office offering to tutor undergraduates. If you're doing a more mathematical degree, you could tutor undergraduates from other disciplines. For example, helping out with some statistics coursework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T04:49:26.290" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T04:49:26.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-04-12T13:48:47.527" Score="38" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know of a few graduate students who successfully made money doing consulting in their line of work. Most of these were engineering students, where the knowledge gained during graduate school is easily transferable, but I've seen others as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in this, talk to as many people as you can and network, network, network. It can be a fun side project with the potential to become a full-time job if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another very useful skill that some graduate students may be able to do is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_writing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;grant writing&lt;/a&gt;. While you may not realize it, this skill is necessary in many, many industries, and if you're good at writing, you can make earn some good income contracting out your skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T13:48:47.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-04-12T23:39:53.770" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would depend on whether you are an international student or a domestic student.&#xA;I am guessing, if you are an international student, you will have to work with your international office to work more than your &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; quota of hours citing extenuating circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, as a PHD candidate from India in the USA, I know that I get a stipend that counts as 20 hours of work per week. If I were to have, God forbid, extenuating circumstances and needed more money to support my cause, I'd have to work with the international office who in turn would work it out with the INS/ICE in the US so that I stay &quot;in status&quot; as a full time student &lt;strong&gt;whilst working for more than my quota of hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, my answer is for international students in the US. If you are a domestic student, some of the answers provided here would actually help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T14:01:12.690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T14:01:12.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1082" CreationDate="2012-04-13T12:08:07.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a retired software engineer from a well known company in U.S. Your dream job is to work for a company in R&amp;amp;D for HCI. My advice might be useful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the old days, the HR department of those companies received hundreds of paper resumes everyday (I carried bags of job application letters for an HR staff before. Don't ask me why I did that, just guess.) Now, they receive hundreds if not thousands of e-mails per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way they filter the job applications is by looking for key words. When they have an HCI job vacancy, they look for computer programming experience, psychology and others. So, your major is important for your future job hunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your question, do you need a degree or a certificate is good enough? In my opinion, a degree is always preferable unless you cannot afford to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies do not recognize those certificates. They would wonder why you didn't get a degree. Is it because you were not good enough? or some other reasons. You would be filtered out. Remember, they receive hundreds of e-mails everyday. By the time they read all of them, it's 5pm. When they see you have a CS degree, a psychology degree and some working experience, they'll call you for an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T12:08:07.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:51:20.663" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/ipe/&quot;&gt;ipe&lt;/a&gt; almost exclusively. It's not well polished, and some things are non-intuitive, but it does those things I need well (simple sketches of math. structures with LaTeX formatted text). Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tips_and_Tricks#Graphics_and_Graph_editors&quot;&gt;LaTeX wiki book&lt;/a&gt; has some useful suggestions for alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T16:51:20.663" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-10T05:51:26.427" Score="15" ViewCount="3213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read other threads along similar lines but I am looking for slightly different advice. And I am posting this anonymously because I would rather my current employer did not find out my intentions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I have a bachelors and a masters degree in computer engineering and currently work in one of the top microprocessor companies, which would otherwise be considered the &quot;dream job&quot; for someone with my degrees. However, every day I realize how much I miss Math and really want to go back and have an opportunity to work more with math, particularly in the field of numerical analysis, scientific computing, matrix algebra and the like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supporting factors - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have always done well in math. I can get great recommendation letters from math professors I have taken courses with. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am a CRLA level 3 certified math tutor. I used to be one when in undergrad. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am preparing for Math GRE and am confident I can do well in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good undergrad math and engineering GPA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My masters thesis involved quite a bit of dealing with numbers, since I worked with various LINPACK benchmarks and linear algebra solvers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negative factors - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not from a very highly reputed school. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have not published any papers, even though I did write a thesis for my MS in Computer Engineering. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My math courses are the basic math courses engineering students take, along with graduate level math courses in numerical analysis, scientific computing and the like. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about getting a PhD admit in a reputed Math graduate school? How do I begin to convince professors / hiring committees that I am capable of doing a PhD in Math? I am only looking at quitting my company and switching to PhD studies around either of Fall 2013 or Fall 2014, so I have time. What are some extra-curricular 'outside my day job' activities I can pursue that would further solidify my application in the meantime? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="NeedPhdApplicationAdvise" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T22:48:37.223" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T22:48:37.223" Title="Career advice - Getting a Math PhD admit in a good program with computer engineering background" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2012-04-10T07:08:13.780" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A concern (raised by your background) that occurs to me is that do you really have a clear idea what graduate programs in math are all about? I don't think that any reputable grad school would allow you to study numerical analysis alone ... [Edit taking note of Willie's remark] &lt;em&gt;within a graduate program in pure math&lt;/em&gt; - the scene is markedly different if you are applying into a program in applied and/or computational math. I apologize for not knowing that such possibilities exist. My smalltown background left me with the false impression that math and applied math always come together. Such programs may be better suited for you![/Edit] (continued rant) ... For the simple reason that doing research in math requires familiarity with a variety of tools and theories from adjacent, nearby and occasionally relatively remote areas of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is entering a computer science/computer engineering graduate program not an option? Probably you can specialize in scientific computing/numerical analysis in such a program. It may actually be easier to find an advisor in such a topic at a CS department? I don't know for sure, but it sounds like such a plan would entail less risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our resident experts on numerical analysis/scientific computing can give you more useful advice. Below I will say my bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you burn your boats I would recommend, as an extra-curricular activity, that you take a look at what the obligatory 1st year courses of math programs have in store for you.&#xA;The &lt;em&gt;core math&lt;/em&gt; at a typical US grad school (for 1st year grad students) contains at lest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology&quot;&gt;topology&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra&quot;&gt;abstract algebra&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28mathematics%29&quot;&gt;real analysis&lt;/a&gt; (sorry the link is only to measure theory, couldn't find a more fitting Wikipedia article at this time) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_analysis&quot;&gt;complex analysis&lt;/a&gt;. Some places would offer/recommend/require also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic&quot;&gt;mathematical logic&lt;/a&gt;. After the first year, you are expected to display a working understanding of the theories and results that those articles link to, and be able to reproduce their proofs on demand (ok, the committees will likely give you some slack on the more esoteric proofs, but don't count on it). The depth of those course probably depends on how much ivy the school has. I cannot give details on that for the simple reason that my experience is from a reputable but not top notch grad school, and I have only heard rumors about the others :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only after having covered those basics can you start specializing on a topic that interests you the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm. I just had a few fellow grad students who were surprised by the graduate curriculum, and either dropped out or had a hard time making through the 1st year. My concern is that you may not fully appreciate how limited your exposure to math actually is (given your background). GRE is a joke, but it does test that you can speedily pick the correct calculus concept/theorem off the shelf in your brains and apply it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if going through those links just makes you hungry to learn more, then 'full steam ahead!', but otherwise you may want to reconsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17484" OwnerDisplayName="Jyrki Lahtonen" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T12:04:52.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1114" CreationDate="2012-04-13T19:24:16.780" Score="31" ViewCount="17477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that I've helped other researchers with the statistical analyses for an epidemiological study and therefore I am acknowledged for that in the &quot;Acknowledgments&quot; section of the paper (something like &quot;We thank &lt;em&gt;andrea&lt;/em&gt; for his statistical support&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this doesn't count as a publication for me, as I am not one of the authors. But if I include it in my CV, how much &quot;weight&quot; would a professor (or someone within the academia) give to that? I also have other publications where I am either the first author or one of the co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not thinking of a particular situation here (like applying for a grant or for a PhD position). I am just curious to know if it could be useful to put it into my CV or if it would just be irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="663" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-28T16:28:15.307" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T12:38:25.583" Title="Should I include a publication where I'm only acknowledged (and not one of the authors) in my CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="449" CreationDate="2012-04-13T19:26:34.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found one possibly relevant result searching &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mendeley.com/search/?query=eyetracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; for your topic of interest. The advantage of using Mendeley over Google is that you can limit your search to researcher profiles. On-site people search is a little broken sometimes, so you might have better luck actually doing a Google search but limiting it to Mendeley profiles like this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=eyetracking+site%3Amendeley.com%2Fprofiles%2F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=eyetracking+site%3Amendeley.com%2Fprofiles%2F&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T19:26:34.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2012-04-13T19:31:15.867" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen anything like this on a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have other publications, I certainly wouldn't include this. It would look like you are trying too hard to find something to put on your CV, which could do more harm than good. Let your publications stand for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you could do when describing the various jobs you've had, is to include the statistical analysis work in the description of the activities you performed in that job. You could also mention it in the cover letter, if it is relevant for the job. Finally, do bring it up in the interview as an example of how you work in a collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T19:31:15.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-04-13T19:44:29.157" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The h-index is common (and the g-index, which corrects for self-citation), as is the Journal Impact Factor. Johan Bollen has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/research/principal-component-analysis-39-scientific-impact-measures/&quot;&gt;good review of the various metrics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's important to point out that all those measures are just different ways of counting citations. They don't account for things like code you've written or talks you've given and they can't address systematic bias in citation practices such as coercive citation or citation mutation. Also, any citation-counting metric will penalize younger researchers simply due to the time it takes to publish one paper and for other papers to get published citing yours. In order to keep academics from having to publish a paper just to describe some code they've written or a dataset they've accumulated, aggregators have been built to pull in these various metrics and consolidate them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://total-impact.org&quot;&gt;Total Impact&lt;/a&gt; is a good example of such a system. The general field of study looking at incorporating these broader metrics is called #altmetrics, and you can find a collection of research on the topic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/groups/586171/altmetrics/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T19:44:29.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13" CreationDate="2012-04-13T20:04:17.247" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Johan Bollen and Herbert van de Sompels are two researchers to follow in this area. Bollen did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/research/principal-component-analysis-39-scientific-impact-measures/&quot;&gt;analysis of 39 different citation-based metrics&lt;/a&gt; which is a good place to start. However, it's crucial to note that there are serious errors in trying to use citation-counting methods as some sort of ground truth. Citation counting is problematic because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different fields have different citation practices. In biology it's common to have 10 or more authors on one paper, whereas in math you often have only one or two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations take a long time to accumulate, penalizing early-stage researchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations only tell part of the story, leaving out the useful contributions made by researchers in the form of code written and datasets released.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations often &lt;a href=&quot;http://classic.the-scientist.com/news/display/57689/&quot;&gt;mutate&lt;/a&gt; over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's now possible to get more information about a paper than just who cited it, and it's possible to get this information before several years have passed and before the information about the impact of the paper becomes old and less useful. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://alm.plos.org&quot;&gt;Public Library of Science&lt;/a&gt; makes detailed article-level metrics available and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.mendeley.com&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; has an API from which you can collect real-time data about how many readers a paper has, as well as social metadata such as tags and annotations and reader demographics. These metrics are being consumed by services such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://total-impact.org&quot;&gt;Total Impact&lt;/a&gt; and combined with data from Github, Twitter, and traditional citation metrics. My bet is that if you're looking for a meaningful set of measures, you're going to find it in these richer sets of aggregated data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T20:04:17.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:41:36.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pure mathematics isn't your only choice for a PhD, and may not be the best fit with a computer engineering background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a masters student in a MS/PhD program in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_Science_and_Engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;computational engineering&lt;/a&gt; after getting a B.S. in applied math. Computational engineering is very different from computer engineering. It is a field which combines numerical analysis, linear algebra and parallel programming to solve engineering problems which are typically modeled as coupled systems of partial differential (or integral) equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utc.edu/Academic/ComputationalEngineering/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my program&lt;/a&gt;, the focus is on fluid dynamics, but there are others that focus on geophysics, structural dynamics, electromagnetics, etc. One of the advantages of this program is that it brings together people from mathematics, engineering and computer science, both in faculty and students, so you get a different perspective on problems than you would working strictly with other mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this sounds interesting, you may want to check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Computational Science&lt;/a&gt; board here on Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:53:56.063" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:41:36.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1119" CreationDate="2012-04-14T04:48:49.500" Score="35" ViewCount="5186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master's degree in Computer Science. I have applied to PhD programs, and decisions are trickling in. I may soon have to choose between two or more PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I have diverse interests. I was advised that a successful PhD application is usually quite specific, so I made each of my applications very specific. I wrote to a professor working in decision making (AI), another working in computational learning theory, another working in computer music, another working in quantum &amp;amp; parallel computing, another working in logical foundations &amp;amp; philosophy of computation. With much enthusiasm, I informed each professor that I was interested in pursuing a PhD in his / her field. This is &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt;. I am interested in &lt;strong&gt;each&lt;/strong&gt; of these fields, and know something about each of them. When advised to apply, I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is - being interested in each of these fields also means that I'm interested in &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; of them. (There are &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; areas of CS I'm interested in. What's worse - my interests are not even restricted to CS. For the purposes of this post, I'm restricting myself to only the mentioned areas.) So when I choose between PhD programs, I'm choosing between completely different areas - and that is surely going to be excruciating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a case of not knowing my 'true interest' now, only to discover it later. I have &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; 'true interest'. I have always pursued numerous unrelated things in parallel. I love all my interests equally. In fact, I love the feeling of 'being interested' more than the interests themselves. Whenever I've tried to restrict myself to &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; topic of study - even for a month - that feeling is lost, and I am quickly bored. As a result, my skill-set is a classic case of a jack of all trades - master of none. The worst part is - everybody knows that a PhD is about getting deep into &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; specific topic. It's not about breadth - it's about depth. Even if I were to choose one of the PhD programs (and I &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; choose one), I have a feeling that I might get bored quickly and be prone to constant topic-changing / transferring. Again, this is not about being fickle - it's about following my heart, and my heart takes me to different things at different times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think I'm likely to fail / never complete my PhD? Does anyone have any advice about dealing with diverse interests? Has anyone felt the same way and dealt with it? I'd love to hear from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="625" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T09:06:02.117" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T13:45:57.593" Title="How do I deal with diverse interests when applying for a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2012-04-14T07:15:45.027" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;(My experience with non-American PhD programs is limited, so some of what I say here may not be relevant or possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I think you may have painted yourself into a corner.  More important than being specific, PhD applications should be &lt;em&gt;honest&lt;/em&gt;.  Hopefully your applications described the breadth of your interests, perhaps with some extra emphasis and detail in one area, rather than implying falsely that you are only interested in one topic.  It's better to be rejected than to be accepted into a PhD program where you won't thrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to look for overlaps and connections between your various fields of interest.  Decision theory and machine learning are not that far apart.  Quantum computing and philosophy of computing are not that far apart.  Parallel computing and logic are not that far apart.  Decision theory and logic are not that far apart.  Machine learning and computer music are not that far apart.  Finding something at the intersection of five or six different areas is almost certainly impossible, but &lt;strong&gt;lots&lt;/strong&gt; of interesting stuff happens at the interface between field X and field Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, all the areas you describe are incredibly diverse within their own boundaries.  You may find enough different topics within (say) machine learning to keep your fickle heart satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should ask about (quickly!) is the possibility of having multiple (ie, two) advisors in different areas.  Some departments encourage inter-disciplinary co-advising; some don't.  Some advisors encourage collaboration with other faculty; others flatly forbid it.  (In many European PhD programs, students are attached to specific projects of specific faculty from day one, and moving between projects or fields is almost impossible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What worries me more than the diversity of your interests is this sentence: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Whenever I've tried to restrict myself to one topic of study - &lt;strong&gt;even for a month&lt;/strong&gt; - that feeling is lost, and I am quickly bored&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  You have to get over that.  Research requires long-term focused attention.  Early in your PhD program, you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be able to juggle a couple of different research projects at once, but eventually, you have to focus on a coherent thesis topic.  It can be an interdisciplinary topic, sure, but it has be coherent.  You will have to work on that one topic for &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt;.  If that sounds awful to you, then maybe you don't want to be a PhD student after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department head has changed fields several times in his career, so I think his advice on this topic is worth repeating.  Assuming good health and good luck, you have a 50-year research career ahead of you.  So if you're deeply interested in half a dozen different areas, you can afford to spend seven or eight years on each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T07:15:45.027" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2012-04-14T15:45:16.197" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd start with a fundamental question: why do you want to get a Ph.D.?  It's a major commitment of time and effort, so it's only worthwhile if you need a Ph.D. to accomplish your long-term goals.  Getting a Ph.D. really isn't worth doing for its own sake, or out of a feeling that it's something you ought to do (because you like computer science, or enjoy education, or feel you should have the highest degree you can get).  Really, it's just preparation for what you'll do after you graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this perspective, the question becomes what you hope to be doing in ten or fifteen years.  Not specific topics, but rather what sort of career.  When you look around at faculty or industrial researchers, do you see people who make you say &quot;Yes, that's exactly the sort of work and the range of topics I'd love&quot;?  If you do, then you should look into these cases specifically.  You can study websites and CVs, and maybe even e-mail a few questions (although keep in mind that people will be busy, so don't be pushy and don't waste time with questions you can answer in other ways).  How did they end up in these positions that appeal to you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find many people doing what you'd like to do, then that's an excellent sign, and you just have to learn how they did it.  If you can find only a few, or even none, then you should worry that maybe a Ph.D. isn't the right path for you.  In that case, if you enter a Ph.D. program you've got to hope for one of two things.  Either academia will change you, or you will change academia.  Either is possible, but neither is likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean for this to be discouraging, but I strongly recommend thinking this through carefully before getting too far into a Ph.D. program (if you haven't already).  Once you start, quitting is difficult psychologically even when it's clearly the right decision.  It's easy to spend years in denial, knowing things aren't really working out the way you had anticipated but hoping they'll somehow get better.  This isn't healthy, so the more thinking you do in advance, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!  I hope you either find role models in this career path or find another that suits you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T15:45:16.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2012-04-15T01:00:36.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Volunteer to help organise meetings yourself &amp;amp; invite people.  Even if this doesn't directly help you get attention (which it might), at least you'll understand the process better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T01:00:36.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-15T03:29:29.033" Score="22" ViewCount="954" Body="&lt;p&gt;While multitasking is not a desired trait unique to academia, it's something that seems particularly important for graduate students and new faculty. I've had many students ask me how to multitask effectively, and I'm curious to know what the collective wisdom of this forum would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what are good practices to manage multiple distinct academic&#xA;  activities effectively ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this more focused and relevant, I'll limit academic activities to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking (or teaching) classes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working on multiple research projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing grant proposals (or applying for fellowships)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;service responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a healthy lifestyle with outside hobbies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T12:46:02.303" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:07:49.777" Title="Good ways to multitask" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="10" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-15T08:17:22.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2012-04-15T06:32:56.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know howto respond individually, so I am just going to respond here all together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Willie, thanks, I have registered an account now. &#xA;@Zev, thanks for migrating to academia. I didn't know this site even existed till now, and I am hooked. I will be posting with my regular SO account here :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Tonymac, computational engineering would be ideal. That's exactly the kind of thing I am looking for as well, and that's precisely what excited me during my undergrad days and motivated me to take a lot of math grad courses as electives in my undergrad program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back, let me re-emphasize. I am currently employed, just moved to Austin, Tx.  I am only going to be applying for Fall 2014 for the most part, and that gives me an year to prepare. My question is, how do I &quot;best&quot; use the time till then? There are some advise I have seen on here that say &quot;use your time productively&quot;. What would &quot;productively&quot; be in this case? What are the things I could do in the meanwhile to improve my application when I do apply? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="672" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T06:32:56.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2012-04-15T06:49:14.120" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different people would have different techniques. What I found very useful for me is to have a list of the 5-8 most important things I need to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use any specific tool, just a simple text file to write my tasks down (always adding tasks so I will not forget anything), but keep the most urgent 5-8 tasks at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found out that the sole existence of this list is what helps me to focus. I don't follow the list item by item; I do jump between tasks; I start one task before I complete the the other. The important thing is that I keep looking at that list several times a day, recalling what else I still need to do, and trying to see the 'big picture'. Each time I look at the list I allow myself to re-prioritize tasks. Sometimes just to see the tasks written down is enough for one's mind to be able to arrange the day in the most effective way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T06:49:14.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1134" CreationDate="2012-04-15T13:07:02.527" Score="14" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;In programming there are many &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hackathons&lt;/a&gt; - intense voluntary one day-week events, where participants collaboratively attack problems. They may be proposed by a company, NGO, participants or a group; for qualification/profit, for fun or for a good cause (eg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhok.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rhok.org/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is - are there any similar events in science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what can be done or why it cannot work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a comment: as I observe, while scientist are open-minded for a discussion, they are conservative, when it comes to action; at least much more than some of the programmers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT (much later):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; such events, even if extremely rare, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ariel Waldman, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/29/hacking-science-the-intersection-of-web-geeks-and-science-geeks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hacking science: the intersection of web geeks and science geeks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; (August 29, 2011)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can we continue to make science more disruptively accessible across all science disciplines, geographies, industries and skill-sets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enter &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencehackday.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Hack Day&lt;/a&gt;, a 48-hour-all-night event that brings together designers, developers, scientists and other enthusiastic geeks in the same physical space for a brief but intense period of collaboration, hacking, and building ‘cool stuff’. A hack is a unique modification, an interesting mashup or a quick solution to a problem – maybe not the most elegant solution, but often the cleverest. By having a fresh set of eyes from those who solve different types of problems across a variety of industries inside and outside of science, new concepts often emerge and can go on to influence science and adults’ relationship to science in unexpected ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T23:43:56.257" Title="Scientific hackathons or other intense voluntary bottom-up events" Tags="&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2012-04-15T13:50:51.113" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math we have various programs where a group of people get together to do focused work on a problem, usually at one of the mathematical institutes (I know of the SQuaREs program at AIM and the Research in Pairs program at Oberwolfach, and there are probably others).  These are usually for 2-6 people, and the time frame is longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T13:50:51.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-04-15T14:17:04.147" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are less attractive than either consulting or tutoring because they take a more regular committment, but these are jobs I have taken in the past for a few extra dollars (that haven't managed to kill me yet!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being an adjunct teacher at another institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very hard though, and requires a substantial time commitment. It has the positive benefit of you gaining teaching experience, which is useful if you plan on continuing a job in academia. I have also heard teaching online classes are much easier on your schedule as well, although take that as heresay from me as I have not done it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moonlighting as a security guard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This probably comes off as an odd choice, but I have had two security guard jobs in the past that worked out really well. I intentionally chose jobs that I sat at a desk, so I could read or write while I was on duty. I'm sure your mileage varies though with this, and I may have just been crap lucky with getting jobs in which this was possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T13:18:43.177" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T13:18:43.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1132" CreationDate="2012-04-15T15:46:56.210" Score="27" ViewCount="2629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a economics major student who will be applying for PhD programmes pretty soon. I am quite interested in economics, but I find myself even more interested things related to probability theory, such as stochastic processes. And if I ever get into a econ PhD programme, I'm pretty sure that I should be looking for co-advising from the math/statistics department if allowed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am curious about what happens in academia if you ever find yourself more interested in a topic that you don't have a degree on. If you can write some good papers during your PhD, can you find good career opportunities in that field in academia even if you did not start out as a &quot;professional&quot; scholar in that field? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea would be very much appreciated!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="676" LastEditorUserId="9701" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:15:20.030" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T15:32:59.683" Title="Is it possible to become a professor in a field where you don't have a PhD degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2012-04-15T15:51:33.763" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to cross over between different fields following the PhD-level studies. However, in general, this tends to be more applicable to &quot;interdisciplinary&quot; fields that can fall into multiple disciplines. For instance, the engineering department I studied at hired people with PhD's in applied mathematics and physics, because their research fields—in fluid mechanics and interfacial science, respectively—meshed well with the research interests of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a counterexample, however, it will be much harder to make the case for a high-energy physics person to move into another discipline, just because it is so strongly identified with physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if you have a PhD in a field such as mathematical economics or econometrics, it will be a lot easier to make the lateral shift. However, if you're in a more &quot;traditional&quot; subfield, that move becomes much more challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T15:51:33.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2012-04-15T18:15:31.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One additional difficulty of doing this, which may indeed be a hurdle, is that it will be difficult to teach undergraduate courses within the new department, because you may not have the background to do so. This will cause a course assignment problem for the head of department, one which could be avoided by not hiring you. On the other hand, you will be capable of teaching cross-disciplinary courses giving the education provided by the department a new angle, which may be appealing to the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts&quot;&gt;Duncan Watts&lt;/a&gt;, of Six Degrees fame, switched from Physics to Sociology. It's hard to imagine a more extreme cross-over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T18:15:31.610" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2012-04-15T18:47:11.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found, having participated in a few fairly intensive workshops that were intended to produce a product after a short amount of time that this tends toward failure for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most academics are interested in &lt;em&gt;problems&lt;/em&gt; as well as the implementation of solutions. Hackatons are &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt; factories, but its only a small subset of academics who will enjoy and/or be supported just to solve other people's problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building on that, its hard to formulate a meaningful problem, do the background research, plan the research and perform it in a one or two week period. A hackathon benefits from having all but the last stage done before-hand. Generally I've found with those types of intensive workshops, you can get the concept and maybe the plan down, but there needs to be more work done when everyone goes home. A lot more work. Which leads to the final issue...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long distance collaboration, especially with people with whom you have a fairly weak bond, and especially one without strong, lasting grant support, is really, really hard to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they do happen, but the finished-product focused ones tend to have a longer timeframe, and the shorter ones tend to be trying to accomplish very specific things, like putting out a consensus statement or &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; research to be done later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T18:47:11.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2012-04-15T21:05:06.727" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving from an economics Ph.D. program to a job in a mainstream math department will be difficult.  There will be the practical difficulties (are you able to teach as broad a range of courses?), the incentive issues (&quot;If he's so great, why doesn't the economics department hire him instead?  What's in it for us?  If he's really a mathematician, why did he go to grad school in economics in the first place?&quot;), culture clashes (mathematicians will have no idea what a working paper is, won't know whether the American Economic Review is any good, won't recognize the names of letter writers from economics or care as much about their opinions, etc.), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you turn out to be a superstar, you'll have more flexibility, but anyone less gifted will have to work very hard to fit in.  In particular, to have any real shot at this you'll have to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Demonstrate that you have a broad background in mathematics, in particular in the areas that are not used in economics.  I.e., you'll need to study mathematics to the extent that nobody would guess you didn't go to math grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Publish papers primarily in mathematics journals.  An economics paper, even a very mathematical one in an excellent journal, will count substantially less than a mathematics paper.  if you have more economics papers than mathematics papers, then mathematicians who support other candidates will use this as an argument for why the economics department would be a better fit for you.  (And they will convince many people by arguing that if the economics department wants you, then the math department would get the benefit of having you around for free, and if they don't want you, then maybe that's a bad sign.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Find leading mathematicians to write letters of recommendation for you.  There's a widespread belief that recommenders lower their standards a little when recommending for other departments, or may not fully understand the standards or needs of these departments, so math departments will on average pay less attention to a letter from an economist than from a mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is unfair, but these issues are real.  If you might want to work in a different department, then you should start preparing as early as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  You'll also run into other cultural issues.  For example, economics candidates regularly get tenure-track jobs in top departments straight out of grad school, while mathematics candidates almost never do (i.e., the number of people who do this in a typical year is 0 or 1).  This may work to your advantage, for example by giving you a chance to do a postdoc and improve your credentials, but it's something you'll have to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T21:05:06.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T09:55:15.693" Score="18" ViewCount="5043" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's well-known that many grad schools (especially top-ranked) require some research experience from prospective students and consider this as main criterion for accept/reject decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During undergraduate study I was working on my research (hadn't finished it - had solved just one particular case) - but can't say it was great research. Now I work as software developer in subdivision of national Academy of Science. My position requires only coding, no problem solving (there's no projects here requiring any fundamential research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make any research (better related to my field of interests) without being undergrad or MS student, without working in lab. Can I simply choose interesting problem (e.g. my undegrad problem), work hard to solve it and then refer to that in research statement? Who should write letter of recommendation in this case? Or I must have any advisor (who can verify my results and then write recommendation letter for me)? Can it be unofficial advisor (just researcher I know well)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="552" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T15:56:04.163" Title="How can I improve my research experience for PhD application?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1139" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:59:39.293" Score="28" ViewCount="5941" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plenty of advice is available for standard interviews, should phone/Skype interviews be approached any differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This was asked on twitter by @emilyandthelime, I have my own, partial answer that I'll post)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T04:06:43.017" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T04:06:43.017" Title="Advice/guidance when interviewing for a faculty or postdoc job via Skype or phone?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;video-conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1136" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:11:46.197" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, there are three reasons why potential advisors want to see undergraduate research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show that the student cares enough about research to actually have participated in research during their undergraduate years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student is at least somewhat familiar with the ins-and-outs of performing academic research in a university setting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality of the performed research may give some indication as to how &quot;good&quot; of a student the candidate will be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you perform research yourself outside of the university settings, you'll provide a strong showing for (1), nothing at all for (2), and given that you're unlikely to publish anything, nothing of much use to the advisor for (3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, I would try to get a job as a research assistant before applying. (I'm not sure this position exists in all fields.) This is usually a paid position, and will give you an experience to work with research, help run a lab, learn about academia, and and even possibly work towards being acknowledged--or even possibly a co-author, although that's unlikely--in a paper. It should help your application significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T12:11:46.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1137" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:22:16.940" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;A major difference from an in-person interview is that interpersonal visual cues such as eye contact are absent or impoverished (even in Skype, because of poorer resolution / latency / smoothness than actual reality) and a rapid verbal back-and-forth is usually impossible.  So it's more difficult to assess the interviewers' reaction and when they've had enough of your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the interviewer(s) want to hear you talk about your research for several minutes and will ask a few rather open-ended questions that are mainly designed to get you talking. You should run with that and just keep talking and let the interviewer(s) say something when they want you to stop- it's too difficult to try to monitor their nonverbal reactions. Some candidates make the mistake of not saying much, in an attempt to not over-sell themselves or in an attempt to act suitably subordinate. The interviewer(s) really want to hear you describe your work in your own words and feel your enthusiasm and general attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interviewers themselves will realize that it's difficult to have a normal conversation rapport so don't let any awkward moments or technical difficulties stress you out, the main risk is that you won't say enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show you aren't off in your own world, you can't use the normal nonverbal skills very much, therefore be paticularly sensitive to the exact questions they ask, but once you answer the specific question feel free to answer more broadly, a broad perspective tends to impress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T12:22:16.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1140" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T13:02:18.577" Score="8" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am recent graduate from a UK university in computer science. As I am not sure what to study for my master degree, I went for a Web-Developer graduate job, and got accepted. As I will probably go for a master in 1-2 years, I was wondering if my undergraduate degree will be consider useless. And my master degree will possibly have nothing to do with the job I am currently accepted for. For example if I choose to do a master degree in computer graphics. Will that be a problem? (I have modules related to computer graphics in my degree, so my question is that will they be still valuable after 1-2 years as computer technology changes everyday) help? thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(this may not be the best forum in stack exchange to ask these, but it is the closest)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="680" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T13:54:31.090" Title="Master Degree or Job?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1140" CreationDate="2012-04-16T13:22:16.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, the latest/greatest degree you have is considered the most important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technology does change quickly, but principles change less rapidly. So if you have a good degree, it won't matter so much that technology changes. If you know the principles, then you can learn new technologies and more advanced concepts. If you only know how to use some specific set of tool, then you might have trouble as technology evolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a masters degree may help you get a better initial job, especially if you want to do something specialised, such as computer graphics, security or data mining, but once you have a job your experience will matter most, not your grades or degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T13:54:31.090" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T13:54:31.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1136" CreationDate="2012-04-16T15:33:22.080" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can consider the possibility of &lt;strong&gt;becoming a research assistant or research associate&lt;/strong&gt; in the research group you want to join, before applying for Phd program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to contact the reseach group leader and ask him/her if they have possibility (i.e. funding) and willing to assume you for some months as research associate. By this way, the group is able to know you and test you; you're able to work, get paid, do research, publish papers, and so &lt;strong&gt;reinforce&lt;/strong&gt; your PhD candidacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Them, when the Phd announcement will be out, you'll be a A-star candidate ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="22511" LastEditDate="2018-05-31T15:56:04.163" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T15:56:04.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2012-04-16T17:36:17.047" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can address questions 1 and 2 (although for 3, all I know is that my friends say it is very different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you are negotiating over salary, your leverage is determined by the best alternative you have.  To keep from losing you to another employer, your job must offer a better combination of pay and benefits than anyone else (including benefits like job security, having interesting colleagues and students, having flexible hours and the ability to choose your own projects, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in the humanities have very little leverage except from other academic jobs.  Mathematicans have more, because there are applications in industry or government, so they get paid somewhat more, but this leverage is limited by the fact that many mathematicians don't want non-academic jobs.  Computer scientists have a lot of leverage, and business school faculty have even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically it comes down to this.  Business school faculty often have expertise that is in high demand outside academia and could earn them a lot of money, and there's at least a stereotype that they care more about monetary compensation than some professors do (which makes sense, given their interest in business).  This means that to attract excellent faculty, business schools have to pay enough that job applicants would rather work there than in the business world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, this is no different from other departments: literature faculty also have to be paid enough that they don't leave for the business world.  It's just a question of how much that is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This really depends on the subfield.  Business school faculty are certainly more likely to do outside consulting than scientists are, but there are no universal rules (some business school professors do none at all, and some scientists run their own companies).  Occasionally, a company will sponsor a university program according to some negotiated agreement, but consulting generally does not involve a pay-sharing deal.  Instead, the faculty member simply consults part-time for the company, without using university resources, and is paid directly by the company.  In the US, universities typically allow a certain amount of time to be spent on outside consulting, for example one day per week, with no special approval needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T12:19:20.383" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T12:19:20.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1145" CreationDate="2012-04-17T01:22:47.267" Score="32" ViewCount="11940" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a tenure track professor wants to leave their university for another job, how much in advance should they inform their department chair? The standard two weeks notice probably doesn't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what times of the year are okay to leave? Only in the summer or between the fall and spring semesters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The faculty member doesn't feel mistreated and doesn't want to ruin ties at their current university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:23:15.547" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:23:15.547" Title="The etiquette of leaving a faculty position" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2012-04-17T01:56:20.847" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following rules are pretty standard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not reasonable to quit in the middle of a class except in a dire emergency (for example, a serious health problem).  In practice this means you can quit only between semesters, unless you aren't currently teaching.  Many universities plan their teaching one year at a time, in which case quitting in between the fall and spring semesters may be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should try hard to leave enough time for your university to find a replacement for your future teaching.  For example, for a US-style semester system, announcing in January that you will leave as of the next academic year (starting in September) is probably reasonable.  Announcing it in April is more problematic, but it might be OK if you have to.  Announcing it in June is a serious problem, and announcing it in August is a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's common for tenured, and sometime tenure-track, faculty to go on leave for a year or two rather than immediately resigning, even if they are sure they won't return.  If your chair offers you that option, then you should definitely take it.  Turning it down (and resigning instead) comes across as an insult: you are effectively saying that your new job is so much better that you can't imagine ever wanting to return.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T01:56:20.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2012-04-17T02:24:02.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In industrial math, Oxford has a long tradition of running &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/occam/study-groups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study groups&lt;/a&gt;.  This vague-sounding name has a rather specific meaning.  From the page just linked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a study group?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study groups bring together mathematicians from across the globe to&#xA;  work on mathematical problems presented by industry in a week long&#xA;  workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does a study group work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The academics work in problem solving teams with the presenters to&#xA;  tackle the problems raised, formulating their ideas using modelling,&#xA;  analysis and computation. At the end of the study group the academics&#xA;  present their findings and make suggestions of future work to be&#xA;  carried out. A final report is written after the study group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attended &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/occam/events/first-kaust-study-group-mathematics-industry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.  They are a lot of fun and have a track record of real impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T02:24:02.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1149" CreationDate="2012-04-17T07:00:58.423" Score="15" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that preprints deposited into a preprint server should be in a polished state. However, what should happen once it starts the review process? Should those copy-edits be updated on the preprint? What about updates when replying to reviewer's comments? What if the manuscript is rejected and I am rewriting the manuscript to be resubmitted to another journal in another format? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T13:04:38.140" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T13:04:38.140" Title="Updating a preprint when it is under review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1148" CreationDate="2012-04-17T07:38:26.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, anything that happens to &lt;em&gt;the content of&lt;/em&gt; a paper &lt;strong&gt;before printing&lt;/strong&gt; (ie, formal publication) should be reflected in the &lt;strong&gt;pre-print&lt;/strong&gt;.  So yes, if you correct a bug while the paper is in review, or revise the paper for a new submission, then you should update the preprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some journals object to authors' posting post-copy-edited (or even post-refereed) revisions.  And posting a revision while a paper is under review could interfere with the reviewing process.  When in doubt, ask your editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequent updates may earn you a reputation for being sloppy, especially on a system like the ArXiv that publishes the preprint's revision history.  (Why didn't you fix those bugs before you uploaded the first time?)  But that's still better than leaving a buggy preprint out in the wild, thereby earning you a reputation for not even knowing (or caring) that you're sloppy.  The right answer, of course, is to debug your papers &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you post them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T13:23:21.277" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T13:23:21.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1168" CreationDate="2012-04-17T08:42:45.277" Score="12" ViewCount="2434" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is slightly different from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/535/319&quot;&gt;What does author order indicate?&lt;/a&gt;. Our group has debated when would it be appropriate for a student or a post-doc to be considered the senior ie. the corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, for CV building purposes, would it be more beneficial to be the first author or the last author? Does it matter if one is an academic vs. in the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T08:17:04.323" Title="When is it appropriate for a post-doc/grad student to be the senior author?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2012-04-17T08:51:43.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I refuse to abide by the &lt;strong&gt;rich student&lt;/strong&gt; frame of thought. If the rich student has funding and works for a PI, then that PI is then able to fund another student. Graduate Fellowships should not always be considered a zero-sum game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, certain fellowships like SMART involve military service. Others like the NIH NRSA prevent you from taking summer internships. I see both as pretty valid reasons for not bothering to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T08:51:43.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1154" CreationDate="2012-04-17T09:21:41.803" Score="57" ViewCount="29260" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most graduate applications provide a choice for applicants to view their recommendation letters at a later date. There is a mention of some US mandate alongside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a better option to forgo this choice in the application? Will the recommending professor feel more secure then?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the procedure for the applicant to see his/her recommendation letters? Does the university readily show them when asked?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How ethical is it for the student to ask for the same, especially, for example, after being rejected from a program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="37432" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T05:24:03.940" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T20:02:51.423" Title="Should I waive my right to view my recommendation letters?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2012-04-17T12:13:50.207" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;The secret to getting a good letter from someone is making sure they're going to write you a good letter before you have them write one. You should never need to look at a letter someone wrote for you, as you should basically know what they're going to write without ever having looked at it. In most cases, if someone doesn't feel comfortable writing a 100% positive letter about you, they'll let you know when you ask them and recommend you get someone else to write the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it is definitely better to forgo this choice, for the reason you suggested... people will likely feel more comfortable to write freely and honestly when they know you won't read it. Regarding the procedure, I'm not familiar with the mandate, but if it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a US mandate, then they'll probably show it to you after a lot of waiting. It is definitely uncommon for someone to ask to see a letter written about them, and it likely would be looked down upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T12:13:50.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1150" CreationDate="2012-04-17T12:55:15.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (Computer Science), I usually assume that the first author and/or the &quot;corresponding author&quot; is the one who &quot;did most of the work&quot; and the last author is the one who secured the funding to do said work.  In some cases the latter does not exist (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, if a publication is not funded by a research grant/contract) or these are both the same person.  In my opinion and experience, the author with the greatest technical contribution should be the corresponding author.  This is because most inquiries to the corresponding author will be technical in nature.  If I were interested in contacting the authors of a paper for a non-technical reason (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, an inquiry to team for a competitive proposal) and I were unfamiliar with the authors (which is unlikely), then I would do a quick Internet search to determine if any of the authors are advisors of the others and contact the most senior one in terms of academic rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I think it is perfectly appropriate and even desirable for whomever provided the greatest technical contribution to be the senior author.  This may vary by discipline and/or country, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T12:55:15.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2012-04-17T13:42:13.187" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among the faculty members I've known (at US research universities), there's a widespread feeling that recommendation letters should be completely confidential unless the writer chooses otherwise, and that viewing them using FERPA is unethically taking advantage of a legal loophole.  Almost all the students check the waiver box, and if someone doesn't, then the letter writer is more likely to assume it was by accident than on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, my advice is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should always check the box.  If your recommenders believe you may look at the letters later, they will probably write weaker, vaguer letters.  (For example, the most compelling letters often involve comparisons with other students, which may be omitted if you'll be reading the letter.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are not checking the box on purpose, you should say so explicitly.  If you do this silently, people may assume it was an accident, and then if they learn later that you viewed the letters, they will be more offended than if you had announced this plan in advance.  (And they may actually find out, since the staff who handle your request may find it troubling and leak the information even if they aren't supposed to.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You would learn less than you might expect from looking at the letters.  It's remarkably hard to judge letters out of context, without having seen other letters from the same people, and it's not likely you'll discover a clear reason for your rejection.  If anything, it might mislead you: you might decide that Professor X was damaging your chances by being insufficiently enthusiastic, without realizing that Professor X is never enthusiastic and in context this letter was viewed as very positive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the fundamental worry many students have is of a terrible letter, a single letter that ruins what would otherwise have been a successful application.  This can happen, but I see an example only once every few years.  And even in those cases, it often looks like it should have been predictable to the applicant.  (For example, if you have had difficulties with someone in the past but things seem better now, don't ask for a letter without a serious discussion of how they think things stand now.)  So I wouldn't worry too much: the chances you could dramatically improve your application by substituting a letter are small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T13:42:13.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1161" CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:01:51.580" Score="26" ViewCount="5530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of interviewing for faculty positions and trying to keep my CV up to date as I go.  Should I include research (or teaching) presentations given during on-campus interviews as invited talks? Or are they considered just a part of the interview process and better left off the CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T16:16:19.917" Title="Do presentations given during interviews count as invited talks?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1157" CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:10:20.077" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. Leave them off the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the fact that you more-or-less invited them to invite you by applying for the position, thus they are not really invited talks, it's probably not a good idea to advertise all of the places you've unsuccessfully applied to or declined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T15:19:14.047" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T15:19:14.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:41:20.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Org-mode&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/&quot;&gt;Org-mode&lt;/a&gt; to organize and track my research.  It is an Emacs major&#xA;mode that seems to hit most of your requirements.  The .org files are&#xA;plain text which should guard against bloat and lets you access them anywhere, even when you do not&#xA;have Emacs or Org-mode available.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;linking to past experiments/pages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode has linking capability to any type of file, as well as to&#xA;specific locations in a document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;latex equations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode has support not only for LaTeX equations but for a number of&#xA;programming languages via &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/index.html&quot;&gt;org-babel&lt;/a&gt;.  You can include the code blocks&#xA;inside your .org file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;uploading papers, or other URLs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is only a text file, this sort of behavior can be&#xA;accomplished through the linking mechanism.  The links&#xA;can be to other documents/papers on your machine or URLs.  Visiting a&#xA;URL in Org-mode will open your browser to the requested link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;being able to transfer data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure what you are looking for here.  Org-mode has a nice&#xA;built-in table editor with automatic column width adjustment and some&#xA;spreadsheet behavior.  If you do not want the actual data in the .org&#xA;file, you can always link to do the data. If you are looking to import&#xA;data into the file directly, Org-mode has a function &lt;code&gt;org-table-import&lt;/code&gt; that&#xA;will parse TAB or whitespace separated data into an Org table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dating and version control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Org-mode to track my time spent on various research items.  You&#xA;can set the headings in Org-mode to behave like multi-state TODO lists&#xA;and assign time to them.  Most headings start as TODO, switch to&#xA;STARTED when I clock in on them, and then I can update them to DONE&#xA;when I am finished.  It can also generate reports based on your tracked time.  For example, I use a built-in report for the last week to help generate weekly research updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I handle my version control and distribution&#xA;through Dropbox, but since the files are plain text any version&#xA;control system you are comfortable with should work fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;open-source tool&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode is open source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode also can be set to display inline images, so even though the&#xA;actual .org file stays in plain text for VCS, when you open the file&#xA;in Org-mode you can view the images, and comment on them accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the .org files themselves are plain text, Org-mode has a number&#xA;of export options, including LaTeX, PDF, HTML, DocBook, OpenDocument&#xA;and others.  So if you want to turn your research notebook into&#xA;something more visually appealing than a plain text file, there are&#xA;many options.  I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/v46/i03/paper&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; for a good description of what Org-mode can do in a research environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is that it is a mode for Emacs. If you are not already&#xA;using Emacs it has a steep learning curve and can require extensive&#xA;customization to get things running exactly the way you want.&#xA;Org-mode and AUCTeX (the Emacs LaTeX mode) are the reasons I spent the&#xA;time to learn to work with Emacs and I have not been disappointed.&#xA;However, if you are looking to get something up and running quickly&#xA;(and are not already familiar with Emacs) it may not be your best&#xA;option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T14:41:20.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1157" CreationDate="2012-04-17T15:39:20.327" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say it's unethical to list them, since I think they could legitimately be considered invited talks, but I would strongly recommend leaving them out.  Partly that's because it's not worth the (probably small) risk of offending someone who really doesn't think they belong there, but mainly it's because in my experience most people don't list interview talks on their CVs, so listing them will look a little unusual.  In particular, it may make people wonder whether you felt you didn't have enough other talks, whether you're doing other unconventional things in your CV that they should watch out for, etc.  This isn't likely to cost you a job by itself, but it's not what you want readers to be thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a general meta-principle here: you should make your CV look like everyone else's, not because doing it differently would be wrong, but because you don't want readers to focus on the differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T15:39:20.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1157" CreationDate="2012-04-17T18:15:24.113" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Dave.  An invited talk is, by definition, a talk that you've been invited to give.  Yes, interviews count.  (More-or-less inviting yourself is not necessarily different than a non-interview invited talk.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that you shouldn't reveal &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; of your invited talks are actually interviews, but that's only an issue if all your invited talks happen in the last semester before you submit your thesis.  (And maybe you should wait until after interview season is over to add them.  The people who are interviewing you are &lt;em&gt;desperately&lt;/em&gt; curious about where else you're interviewing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T18:15:24.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1167" CreationDate="2012-04-17T20:34:33.430" Score="16" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;How well accepted has been (systematic) literature reviews in your research field, these days?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from computer science field, more specifically Software Engineering. Some professors I keep in touch usually ask their students to perform a systematic literature review (SLR) as a research kickoff, rather than performing any kind of unstructured review. However, it's become harder and harder to get such kind of publication accepted in a highly-ranked publication (e.g., a qualified journal or conf). My feeling is that, in a certain extent, the community has already saturated the amount of papers reporting on reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I'd like to know a point of view of people from other research fields, as well as their expertise on measuring the tradeoff time devoted to conduct a SRL vs. likelihood of having such a kind of publication accepted by a good venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T05:42:38.780" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T13:39:01.007" Title="How useful is it to perform a systematic literature review?" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1162" CreationDate="2012-04-17T20:40:15.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Epidemiology (and medicine generally) systematic literature reviews - and the meta-analysis subset that come from systematic reviews that can report pooled summary estimates - are extremely well accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel systematic review, while it will take some time, is generally speaking worth a publication at least somewhere - unless someone has already done said review, at which point your work is done anyway. They've also started to be parsed as &quot;no more work than you should have been doing anyway&quot; - in order to get good priors for Bayesian analysis, a truly comprehensive view of the literature, etc. you might very well already be doing a systematic review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T20:40:15.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2012-04-17T22:19:39.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible that you will have trouble finishing your dissertation and thus obtaining your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to do your coursework; each subject takes only one semester.  You'll finish your subjects before you get bored.  But a dissertation usually takes a year or more to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to take your PhD at a university which allows publication of a few papers as equivalent to a dissertation.  You can make the papers about different fields and yet related to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T22:19:39.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-17T23:19:53.063" Score="8" ViewCount="3338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a master's student in computer science. I have completed my coursework and will be graduating soon, with a project. I am planning to do a PhD in the future: is a master's thesis an important prerequisite for a PhD? Most people say yes, hence I am of two minds: (1) get an extension and improve my project into thesis, and then graduate or (2) graduate now, hoping that everything will work out fine. I already expressed my interest to work more on my project; my advisor said OK. Do I need to do anything other than this (improving my project, of course with research exploration) to get a thesis? My advisor seems to be a little uninterested, because he has to guide other students, too, rather than that I did a bad job on the project. But I am wondering which way to go: industry or master's thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="692" LastEditorUserId="692" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T20:49:34.827" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T20:49:34.827" Title="Planning to do PHD, Masters Thesis important? (USA)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1165" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:12:22.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your last question is a bit of a &lt;em&gt;non sequitur&lt;/em&gt;, frankly: I don't really see the connection between going into industry versus doing a master's thesis with the rest of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, JeffE's comment above is essentially correct: if you are interested in doing a PhD in the near future, an industrial job is probably not going to get you the research experience you need to be a competitive PhD applicant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to what you need to do to convert your project into a master's thesis, that's really something you ought to discuss with your project supervisor. Without knowing the specific policies of your department, as well as the specifics of what you did in the project, it's difficult (if not impossible) for us to know what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T07:12:22.537" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1162" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:20:19.203" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A systematic literature review is never a bad thing. At the worst, you have a large database of literature that you can cite in future work. as well as a feeling for where the &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot; might lie. It will also give you a framework on which to build and grow your literature collection over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whether or not you are able to publish it, a literature review is a good thing (within reason—don't spend six months doing nothing but reading literature papers!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T07:20:19.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1150" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:27:36.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you're not in a field where it's &quot;strictly alphabetical order&quot; (like economics), the question of which position is more important depends on what stage of your career you're in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a &lt;em&gt;beginning&lt;/em&gt; academic—a PhD student or a postdoctoral fellow—then the &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt;-author publications are most important, as these will show you taking an active and leading role in your research. As you move up the chain, however, and reach more senior positions, having the &lt;strong&gt;last&lt;/strong&gt;-author credit becomes more important, as now you're showing your leadership role in directing projects.  You don't want to be stuck in the trap of being a &quot;junior&quot; partner in research collaborations, with the senior PI getting all of the credit for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T07:27:36.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1174" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:54:43.260" Score="40" ViewCount="15466" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a PhD student proceed when his/her advisor quits midway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should be the student's considerations when the professor offers him a choice to move along with him? Should it be the comparative rankings of the universities? Or the relationship enjoyed with the professor thus far? Or the progress of the work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do universities offer to waiver coursework and ensure faster-than-usual graduation for students accompanying new professors? Can papers published in the older university be considered a part of the thesis that will be written for the newer department?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should a student do if such an option is not available to the professor and also there are not other professors in the department who could or are willing to guide the student? Will the university offer a compensation for him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="79875" LastEditDate="2020-07-18T19:44:22.010" LastActivityDate="2020-07-18T19:44:22.010" Title="How to proceed when PhD advisor leaves academia or moves to a new university midway?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1150" CreationDate="2012-04-18T08:17:04.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most(?) PhD students don't stay in academia. If they a planning on leaving academia for some other profession, does it really make sense for them to be a corresponding author? Once a PhD student has left Uni it's hard enough to get them motivated to write any papers, never mind answer future questions on it! Ditto for RAs, not all RAs stay in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose a PhD student does stay in academia and goes on to do an RA. It's unlikely to be on the same topic, so they won't be able to keep on top of the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As @aeismail mentioned, I really don't pay attention to who the corresponding author is. If you are doing a PhD with a well known researcher, anyone who looks at the paper will automatically assume that the senior person had the original idea. The junior author gets to dispel this &quot;myth&quot; by giving really good presentations or by &quot;author order&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T08:17:04.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2012-04-18T12:28:36.107" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went through this experience, and I have friends who've gone through this experience, and it's never fun. You ask a lot of questions; I'll try to answer as many as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should be the student's considerations when the professor offers him a choice to move along with him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How far along are you in your work? If you haven't proposed yet, it's probably easier just to find a new professor and start anew. If you haven't done any serious research yet (1-2 yrs), &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; find a new advisor and start fresh.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you have a good relationship with this person? Do you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to continue working with them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often, your credits will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; follow you. (I don't have a source for this statement, other than I've been told by numerous people that graduate credits rarely transfer between institutions.) Make sure they will transfer, or that you will be given some sort of pass, before transferring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other stuff (rankings, location, collaborators) should obviously be taken into account as well. In my experience, most students do not move along with their advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do universities offer coursework waiver and faster-than-usual graduation for students accompanying new professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can papers published in the older university be considered a part of the thesis that will be written for the newer department? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, talk with the university before transferring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should a student do if such an option is not available to the professor and also there are not other professors in the department who could/are willing to guide the student? Will the university offer a compensation for him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty unusual. This happens all the time; people are familiar with the situation. In many cases, the department will be willing to help you find someone new. You should view the ordeal as identical to when you chose your initial advisor; you'll probably do (shortened) interviews with a few profs, talk to lab members, look into research, etc. The difference is that, by now, you should be familiar with those people who do research similar to what you've been doing, so your search will be easier; you'll know them, and they should know you, even if only because you've taken a class with them or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will almost definitely not receive compensation. C'est la vie, my friend... welcome to the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T12:28:36.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1085" CreationDate="2012-04-18T12:58:55.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally use &lt;a href=&quot;http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VoodooPad&lt;/a&gt;, which is basically a personal wiki, in conjunction with &lt;a href=&quot;http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LaTeXiT&lt;/a&gt; for latex equations. I've found it to work very well; you can store many things in it, including papers. It's all text-based so you can back up using Git or whatever you like. They have a free version. Not open source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised nobody's mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;. They claim you can put anything at all in it, and from what I've seen, that's true. Backup to Evernote cloud. Free, not open source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T12:58:55.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:08:23.827" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue is what your advisor is doing.  If your advisor is leaving academia (e.g., going to work on Wall Street or for the government), then you are probably on your own, but moving to another university is generally not a big problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't started doing research yet, you should probably just switch to a new advisor, but if you are already making progress, then staying with your current advisor is often the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility that wasn't mentioned in your question is moving physically to the new university as a visiting student while staying enrolled at the old university.  You still work on research with your advisor, and at the end receive a degree from the university you started at.  Maybe it varies between fields, but this is pretty common in mathematics, and it avoids some of the difficulties like transferring credit or different requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is supportive (and they should be!), then this is generally not hard to arrange.  It's easiest if they are technically going on leave from the old university, rather than resigning immediately, but that's a pretty common way to arrange moving between universities, partly because it simplifies situations like this.  (And even if your advisor is not going on leave, you just need a colleague to step in as the formal advisor, while letting your advisor handle the day to day interaction.)  The major reason for difficulty would be if there was some serious problem at the old university, such as a personality conflict with the department chair, which could make the department unwilling to be flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T13:08:23.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1162" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:39:01.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Mechanical/Aerospace engineering it has been my experience that most research projects start off with a systematic review.  Some journals will consider such reviews for publication, but the goal is usually not a publication, but to build a background in the area and to find potential gaps in current research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I have found helpful is to periodically review your review.  This is important especially for longer term projects (PhDs, continuations/extension of previous research).  I try to do a quick followup review every few months or so to make sure my review stays current.  The duration between updates will vary based on the research and the discipline.  Once you have the initial review in place, keeping it current should take only a little bit of time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T13:39:01.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="567" CreationDate="2012-04-18T14:02:13.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It greatly varies, my adviser replies at lightning speed, if I ask any questions. He never replies if I ask for an appointment though,LOL. If I ask a question, that he already knows, then within next 2 - 5 mins, If I ask some question, that need some thought, a day MAX. But I took courses with people who ignore stupid questions and move on, even though, that is introductory course. Not saying its wrong, kinda grey area though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="692" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T14:02:13.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1187" CreationDate="2012-04-18T15:19:45.030" Score="11" ViewCount="3059" Body="&lt;p&gt;During undergrad, students can face several opportunities, ranging from participation in (1) research groups, (2) study/training for competitions, (3) internships, (4) opening start-ups with colleagues (the latter is becoming very common these days), but I wonder, what is really important, for a Ph.D. application/admission... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By competition I mean ones like: INTEL GLOBAL CHALLENGE (VC), ACM ICPC, IMAGINE CUP (examples from the Comp. Sci. field, and Business, but indeed there may be a bunch of these in other fields, that I don't know)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about (1) and (2) aforementioned...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student stays a long time during his/her undergrad in a (world-class) research group, he/she is likely to have the opportunity to publish a bunch of papers (some of these might be good, well-referenced, etc; some of these might be not as good), and meet some good researchers around the world, and so on; it really required dedication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, take part into a training class for competitions (that requires dedication, as well) may lead students to gains in terms of working in group, time-boxed activities, etc, as well as to face the opportunity of proposing solutions for real-world problems, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really tough to do both, in order to have great results, since in both cases time and dedication is mandatory. Indeed, there are some &quot;outliers&quot; students that can do both in a very good way, but I'm trying to generalize my assumption, by considering &quot;average&quot; students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, it's known that good papers have a great influence on the Ph.D. admission (despite of other well-known recommendations, e.g., a great GRE, good recom. letters, and so on), but I'd like to know if (and how) the universities consider students who dedicated their time to join this kind of competitions, obtaining some prizes, as a consequence, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T16:17:19.020" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T09:20:17.970" Title="Are participations in competitions well recognized for a Ph.D. application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1218" CreationDate="2012-04-18T16:24:55.920" Score="14" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Internet is littered with information about university rankings and comparisons that it is very easy for an applicant to lose track of what exactly he wants to know. Apparently rankings which compare all departments of a university and have a single rank are not very useful from an applicant's perspective. Yet these are the most common rankings one can find. I know of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings-2012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FT rankings&lt;/a&gt; which order MBA schools. It does rank B-schools in terms of research too, but clumps different branches (Accounting, Finance, Operations, etc) into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For other departments are there &lt;em&gt;reputable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reliable&lt;/em&gt; portals where one can get to know rankings based on various criteria like published research, number of graduates, time taken for graduation, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there no well-established ranking systems for academic departments? For example, these ranking systems could be similar to those in cricket or football. Such as periodic updates are made with every publication and every citation, and possibly journal reputation could also be brought into picture. In a way, would that not enhance the competitiveness in academia among similar departments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T15:07:41.763" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T15:07:41.763" Title="Rankings for university departments" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2012-04-18T16:42:25.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can add your list with two more well-recognized ranks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;topuniversities.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;timeshighereducation.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They indeed present some divergent results, but I guess they may provide community with some clue about the &quot;best&quot; universities in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I agree with you that it'd be more interesting not only check out these &quot;marketing&quot; ranking, that considers a bunch of aspects, sometimes not transparent (!). IMHO, a good &quot;ranking&quot; would depend upon your subject matter, i.e., the research of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really posed a very nice question, and I'd appreciate to hear from colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T20:31:48.343" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T20:31:48.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2012-04-18T17:10:42.400" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd argue that you shouldn't worry too much about preventing plagiarism of your papers.  At least in the areas I'm familiar with (math and theoretical CS), it's extremely unlikely to do you much harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I'm talking about wholesale plagiarism of written text.  There can be much trickier situations - for example, if your rival learns an idea from you in a private conversation and then claims you learned it from him - but that's a subject for another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism happens all the time, on a massive scale, but you don't see it very often because it takes place at the margins: usually in junk journals or conferences, and occasionally in solid but low-prestige venues.  This is by design, since plagiarists know that if they attract too much attention, they'll get caught.  Nobody submits a plagiarized paper hoping to get lots of citations.  Instead, they just want credit for having published something, usually because of some external pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One fear people sometimes have is of being caught in an ambiguous situation, where it's not completely clear who the plagiarist is.  In the areas I'm familiar with, this never happens.  The community is always quite sure of who is to blame, and as far as I can tell they are always right.  This is a valid worry in principle, but it's not worth losing sleep over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fear is that the plagiarist will attract attention and citations that should have gone to your paper.  As I mentioned above, that's not likely.  These papers are typically almost unnoticed, and if they do get noticed, then that's just a prelude to getting caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is still a serious problem, and plagiarists are cheating the system, but in the fields I'm talking about, they are generally not specifically hurting the authors they are copying from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting your papers online makes it slightly easier to plagiarize them, but it's not really contributing much to the problem, since there are so many possible sources.  (There has even been a paper plagiarized from an advertisement for a consulting firm!  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiary/index.php&quot;&gt;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiary/index.php&lt;/a&gt;.  It's amazing how much garbage there is out there, and how unscrupulous some authors are.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, making your papers as visible and accessible as possible makes it more likely that plagiarists will be caught.  And, of course, this is in addition to all the other benefits of making it easy to read your papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vanity googling can also help: I periodically do searches for topics I care about, or to see who is citing my papers, and I've caught several plagiarists that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arXiv flags papers whose text overlaps nontrivially with a previous paper.  This means in fields where arXiv use is widespread, plagiarists can't get away with using the arXiv, so they are further marginalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, after plagiarism is discovered, there is little or nothing you can do to ensure that the plagiarist is punished.  Reputable conferences or journals will investigate the situation and flag or withdraw the paper; less reputable ones will ignore you and hope you quit asking about it, although they will sometimes act if you publicize it enough.  The plagiarist's employer probably won't do anything, no matter how serious the case is.  What I'd recommend is that you try to correct the literature, and report the incident to the plagiarist's employer (assuming the paper was published as part of their job), but not worry too much about getting any action from the employer.  If pursuing the case further would give you some satisfaction, then that's a good reason to do it, but don't do it with the expectation of concrete results.  If you're lucky, you'll get a letter explaining that something awkward might or might not have happened, that everyone involved is very sorry for any hurt feelings, that whatever did happen wasn't really anyone's fault, but that it won't happen again.  (Sadly, it often does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T17:10:42.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:29:40.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nice tool I have found for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://vue.tufts.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Visual Understanding Environment (VUE)&lt;/a&gt;, which is an open source tool that sounds very much like what you are looking for.  You can position nodes how you like and sketch connections between them.  It even has a nice mechanism for nonlinear presentations by setting pathways between the elements in your file.  The presentation mechanism is not as polished as Prezi, but since you are looking at note-taking rather than presenting, this should not be an issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing keeping me from using it more is that there currently is no support for equation editing, LaTeX or otherwise, which is a deal-breaker in my field.  There are workarounds like using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thrysoee.dk/laeqed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Laeqed&lt;/a&gt; to generate PNGs of your equations, but it can be cumbersome for large projects.  If this is not a concern in your area, I would recommend giving it a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T18:29:40.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:36:47.640" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, if you intend to draw either &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mind maps&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_flow_diagram&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;flow diagrams&lt;/a&gt;, you may use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conceptdraw.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conceptdraw&lt;/a&gt; tool. It serves both Mac and MS Windows users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T13:03:35.070" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T13:03:35.070" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:42:21.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student is going to dedicate a substantial amount of time to a non-academic, non-research activity, there had better be significant attention paid to this activity in the application itself. I would want at a minimum an explanation of the time commitments and the resultant recognition obtained from these activities. An additional letter of support or clarification (or recommendation) from the advisor for such an activity would also help to assuage my concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, if there is no direct correlation between the activity and the research field, I am likely to take a somewhat &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; view of this, if it has a detrimental impact on the rest of the application. (For instance, if I were sitting on a math admissions committee, and saw someone applying who was applying for topology but spent a lot of time on some economics competition and had a weak GPA as a result, I don't think it would help the student's case much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T18:42:21.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1195" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:50:59.843" Score="24" ViewCount="2603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering a PhD and asked a professor at my university. I suggested a topic to him that he accepted. I applied and he offered me a position but I didn't accept yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later he changed my project's topic to one that suits his interest. I said I would like to do the original topic that I got accepted with. Then I asked more about the project and it turns out he works in collaboration with another university. They divided the work up between themselves, but what the other university researchers is a lot closer to my personal interest than what he works on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my professor their contact details, so that I could ask them if I could work with the other university. He explicitly prohibited me from talking to them. He told me I would give bad reputation to him if I contacted them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am extremely confused as to why he prevents me talking to people. Even a simply inquiry email is not allowed. So I contacted the other university anyway. They told me that they would be happy to see me but they don't want to poach students from their colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep asking my professor if I could do my original topic with the other university that works on that exact topic that I'd like to do. But he keeps telling me that I either do his topic or I should do my PhD somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am utterly confused now and have no idea what is going on. Can someone please explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="477" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T05:00:58.290" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T09:17:26.573" Title="Why does professor prohibit me talking to people?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="705" CreationDate="2012-04-18T19:02:15.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add some info to the above provided answers, that are, IMHO, very well-explained and helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your research field is not very mature yet, you could also think about organizing a &quot;summer school&quot;, in which you could invite some well-recognized researchers to serve as lecturers, especially with some practical experience (not only from the research env.), for you (and your attendance, as well) to have a broader view on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The environment provided by a summer school is really nice (I've got the experience of organizing a series of summer schools in my research field, for a couple of years), and you may provide your attendance with an opportunity to &quot;keep in touch&quot; with good &quot;names&quot; in the specific research field, most of them that we usually reference in our papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the organization, a summer school is usually not paper-driven, i.e., you don't have to care about steering and program committees, so it may save you some effort. In addition, you don't have to care about proceedings (usually expensive to prepare, and to print... even if you think about publishing it online only, you will have some effort and costs to deal with).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, you must care about funding, in order to pay for the hotels/airline tickets/food, etc, that, sometimes only counting on the money from registrations is not enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T19:02:15.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1184" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:28:09.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation isn't quite clear. Are you deciding whether or not to accept a position, or have you already accepted and are trying to switch projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the former case, if you're getting that kind of pushback from your advisor, then he probably is not going to be the kind of advisor you'll really want to work for in the long run. In which case, you should look for someone else to advise you (in other words, pick &quot;somewhere else.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're already employed by the advisor, your choices are more limited. It sounds lie you're writing from somewhere in the European system (otherwise, you'd be talking about applying to a different department, rather than another research group). The problem is exactly what the other group told you—they can't be seen as poaching a colleague's student. That's a major social &lt;em&gt;faux pas&lt;/em&gt;, and would probably make their collaboration impossible to continue in the long run. Therefore, again, you probably won't get to work on the project you want, because you won't be able to move over to the other group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T20:28:09.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:29:19.987" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Competitions can be valuable evidence of achievement, but they have to be not just widely recognized, but also really relevant to the field.  (Nobody cares if you're a chess champion, since you aren't going to grad school in chess, and the fact that it involves hard work and talent will not help your case; if anything, it will be viewed as a potential distraction that may cause trouble in the future.)  The best case is if some of the faculty once participated in the same competition.  Then they will know exactly what's involved and what success means.  The next best case is if some of their current students participated.  Otherwise, it will mean very little, unless your recommenders somehow make a strong case for its importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a test case, let's think about the Putnam examination, which is the most prestigious math contest for undergraduates in the US and Canada.  Doing well on the Putnam exam is very valuable in math grad school applications, but even being one of the winners is not a guarantee of admission.  The big advantage of the Putnam is that it gives objective evidence of talent compared with a nationwide pool, but the disadvantage is that solving contest problem is really not the same thing as doing research.  If an undergraduate writes a paper a faculty member would really be proud of having written, then it looks better than winning the Putnam exam, but most undergraduate papers do not rise to that level and may not be as impressive as winning the exam.  It's hard to quantify this trade-off, but I would definitely not advise anyone to neglect research opportunities in order to prepare better for the Putnam.  Ultimately, graduate school is about research, and admissions committees sometimes worry about applicants who look more interested in competitions than research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mathematical Contest in Modeling may be more along the lines of the contests you mention: it's a multi-day, team-based contest.  My impression is that it carries less weight in admissions decisions than the Putnam exam does.  Being able to help organize and train a winning team has real value, but it won't play much of a role in graduate admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T11:30:37.597" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T11:30:37.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:41:54.867" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with @AnonymousMathematician that the easiest thing to do may simply be to visit the New University while staying an enrolled student at Old University. It may require checking with both departments, but then again so will and out and out transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option that hasn't been mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be possible to convert your current advisor to an &quot;outside reader&quot; or simply a committee member who happens to have an appointment at another institution. The formal title of your &quot;advisor&quot; can then be switched to a member of your committee at your current institution - preferably one sympathetic and supportive of your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T20:41:54.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1197" CreationDate="2012-04-18T23:21:07.963" Score="8" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an international student in the united states, I am legally allowed to work for 12 months, extendable to 29months for STEM fields, after graduating with my PhD (or masters degree for that matter) without having to change my visa/student status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am looking for post doc opportunities in the US at several univerities but unfortunately none of the PI's respond to any queries OR application material that I send them for opportunities &lt;strong&gt;advertised on their websites&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am seriously considering working voluntarily, without pay for my current advisor after I graduate in Dec 2012 with my PhD in Mechanical Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am legally allowed voluntarily as part of the &lt;strong&gt;optional practical training&lt;/strong&gt; period available to me after graduation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I intend on doing my post doc / work pro-bono in the US because, lets face it, my home country doesn't really do much research and the pay grades are about $140 a month for fresh PhD graduates whilst I earn &lt;em&gt;several times more&lt;/em&gt; as a grad student here in the US.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visa regulations make it horrendously difficult to move to an other country for post doc opportunities and it is easier for me to continue in the US as I am alreadly legally here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am planning on writing a couple of proposals with my advisor so that I may &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/986/21&quot;&gt;grow my own post doc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is an absolute pleasure working for my advisor and I wouldn't mind doing it for free for the mental stimulation that it provides (although I wouldn't want to work for free forever teeheehee &lt;code&gt;:P&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I approach this situation? I am planning on requesting him to retain me on a pro-bono thingy as I genuinely like the direction my research has taken since I signed up with him 3 years ago!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else encountered such a quandary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T06:32:31.710" Title="Prospect of pro-bono/voluntary work with current advisor after graduating with PHD" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-19T02:58:43.980" Score="31" ViewCount="16842" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisers are starting to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com/&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; for my project, and I like most of it so far. I am wondering, though, about the arguments for and against Basecamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T17:08:51.287" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:25:07.810" Title="What are some good project-management tools for academics?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-04-19T03:51:40.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nice question. Curiously, I've been used the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotproject.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dotproject&lt;/a&gt;, it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FLOSS&lt;/a&gt; (i.e, an open-source software) alternative to msproject. It may sound weird for somebody, for a couple of reasons (isn't it a tool for huge projects? yep, and I can ask someone: isn't my thesis a huuuuge project? lol)... but, believe or not, it's been good to keep my tasks on track. Besides, as it is web-based, I've provided my advisor with access to such a tool, so that he may monitor my tasks, especially because I've been out of my country, for a while (due to an internship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've really thought about implementing some features to extend this tool so as to include things that are interesting, and unfortunately dotproject doesnt include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;btw, if anyone either know any tool (as a good answer for the main question) or is interested in extend the dotproject in order to come up with a tool for helping researchers to keep their tasks on trach, please tell me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T13:46:46.477" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T13:46:46.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1196" CreationDate="2012-04-19T04:17:23.633" Score="23" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;Selecting members of one's PhD committee is an important part of a PhD student's academic  development. Committee members can have considerable influence on a student's PhD program, such as determining what topics are on the student's prelims exams. However, sound advice on this process can be hard to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are some guidelines to keep in mind when selecting members of one's PhD committee?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This should be a generalized question useful for many different student-selected committee systems)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T15:51:49.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T15:51:49.530" Title="What are some guidelines to keep in mind when selecting members of one's PhD committee?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1194" CreationDate="2012-04-19T05:24:42.657" Score="13" ViewCount="1422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing a paper which was created thanks to my inspiration of Erik Erikson's work on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychological developement&lt;/a&gt;. The paper is, however, in the field of thermodynamics and complexity-science. I, therefore, feel grateful that such a great theory was created many years ago, and now is capable to push exact sciences step forward. I named two terms following Erikson's theory. I would like to note this somewhere, or state in general that I was inspired by the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that it is OK to do this? Maybe I should hold back for some time, I can always state the &quot;thank you&quot; in the subsequent papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="280" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T07:50:13.700" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T07:50:13.700" Title="Can I put into Acknowledgments someone who is no longer living?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;death&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1193" CreationDate="2012-04-19T05:38:27.010" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would reserve the acknowledgments section for people or organizations that directly contributed to the paper.  For example, if you talked with Erikson while he was still alive and he offered advice or suggestions, then it would be appropriate to thank him in the acknowledgments.  If you were just inspired by his papers, then it is better to discuss that elsewhere in the paper.  For example, you could note in the introduction that your approach is inspired by Erikson's work on psychological development, or you could mention this background when you define the terms based on his theory.  But if you thank him in the acknowledgments section, then people will assume there was a more personal connection unless you clearly specify otherwise (&quot;Although I was never lucky enough to discuss this work with him in person, I owe Erik Erikson a great debt for...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing you should not do when thanking a deceased person is to attribute opinions to them, because they are not around to contradict you.  For example, you should not thank them in a way that suggests they supported your work, even if it's true, unless you have some documented proof.  For example, it's awkward to write &quot;I am deeply grateful to Erik Erikson for his steadfast belief in my theory.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T05:45:24.317" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T05:45:24.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1184" CreationDate="2012-04-19T07:38:34.833" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several possibilities for this behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're good, he knows that, and the collaboration with the other research group is more formal than you may know (maybe they are in the same funded project because it was the only way to be funded, while the two groups may be in competition). In this case, he doesn't want you to go “behind enemy lines”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're not the one he was looking for, he recently discovered that. He is very close with the other group and he don't know how to tell you that you are not a good fit for his group and relatives. So instead, he changed what he said in order to make it unacceptable for you, hoping that you will leave, and that you will also not go to the other group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He's not reliable, he had a weird idea of what is a student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, except if you are a recognized genius, this is unlikely that the other team will accept you if they are close to your current advisor and want to stay that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three cases, only one option: run far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="2740" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T13:05:37.590" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T13:05:37.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1192" CreationDate="2012-04-19T07:47:17.240" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some general guidelines for choosing members of a PhD committee:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They should have some enthusiasm for the work that you do.&lt;/strong&gt; If they're not invested in seeing you succeed, you won't get as much utility out of that committee member as someone else who might not be as knowledgeable, but is more committed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They should have the time to be on your committee.&lt;/strong&gt; If they're extremely busy, then it doesn't help to have them on a committee, because it will be difficult for them to attend the meetings—or it will make scheduling the meetings a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They should not have conflicts with either you or your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt; A thesis committee is already a somewhat political body. There's no need to add extra politics to the situation by having interpersonal or professional conflicts before the committee even begins to meet!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collectively, there should not be a power &quot;imbalance.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; If your advisor is a new assistant professor, don't overload the committee with a bunch of full professors holding named chairs, and &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they will set preliminary exams, there's the additional qualification of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The committee members should be familiar enough with your area that they know what it might make sense to test you on, but not &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; familiar with your work that they turn it into a &quot;gotcha&quot; game.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T07:47:17.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1189" CreationDate="2012-04-19T08:32:23.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it really depends on how long you plan to work without salary. If you apply for some grants in the next months, and you'll get the answers for instance in February 2012, I guess it's ok to work without salary for a couple of months, but only because you're expecting something specific. But I wouldn't recommend being in such a situation if there are no concrete expectation, because, in addition to the fact that you might need money to live, it can also be psychologically difficult, for both your advisor and yourself (maybe it's just me, but I would feel bad asking someone to do some work without any salary, even if this person is willing to). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that visa regulations make it difficult to move from one country to another, I don't know which country you come from, but having a PhD usually makes the process quite easier, especially coming from the US. You still have more than 6 months to find a postdoc, you would be better off with trying to get a job somewhere, meet new people, do something different and in the mean time, work with your current advisor on a proposal that would allow you to come back with some funding. An important aspect of a postdoc is to demonstrate your ability to cut the apron strings with your advisor, and to show that you can work with other people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T08:32:23.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2012-04-19T12:15:42.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything that has been said so far, but I'd like to add that one way to more quantitatively judge the &quot;value&quot; of a publication is by looking at the acceptance rate of the venue.  Many conferences in Computer Science are considered &quot;terminal&quot; publications because of their extremely competitive nature and low acceptance rates.  There are other conferences, however, that have 50% or higher acceptance rates.  Likewise, some workshops are very competitive while others have near 100% acceptance rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T12:15:42.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1210" CreationDate="2012-04-19T14:09:43.673" Score="20" ViewCount="9176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's rather difficult to establish a ranking of publications, especially because the ones in charge of establishing values for venues might be biased by their field, and several other aspects. However, I know some well-accepted (at least locally) ranking, that consider all fields under research, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://qualis.capes.gov.br/webqualis/&quot;&gt;Brazilian Qualis&lt;/a&gt; - in portuguese - that includes both confs and journals, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm&quot;&gt;Australian ERA&lt;/a&gt; - this latter has served as baseline for some class A conferences in Computer Science (my research field), in some countries other than Australia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I wonder about the existence of another &quot;global ranking&quot;, that has been applied overseas, thus including at least the most prominent events and journals in every field. For journals, it's a little bit easier to measure its importance, by looking at their Impact Factor values, but for conferences it's a little bit tough. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know a largely-applied means of measuring the impact of a conf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to hear from you. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T07:16:58.773" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:39:22.263" Title="Is there any world-wide ranking of conferences/journals?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3416" CreationDate="2012-04-19T14:13:26.320" Score="46" ViewCount="11101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to have a professional academic webpage, and for different reasons, I don't want to use the website of my current workplace (mostly because due to some external factors, it's not currently possible where I work, but also because I consider changing affiliation in the future, and I'd like to avoid moving my webpage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible solution I'm considering would be to rent a server somewhere, and to manage it myself, but I was wondering if it existed some dedicated solutions for academics, ideally coming for free (after all, I can archive my papers on arXiv for free, I have a free academic licence for Bitbucket, I use Dropbox with the free version, I can also use Mendeley and academia.edu for free, I currently have a free wordpress.com blog), with the constraint that I'd like to be able to write my own scripts (for instance to publish my personal list of publications &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/719/102&quot;&gt;Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web? &lt;/a&gt;, or to manage a list of conferences I'm interested in). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T08:23:14.113" Title="Free web hosting for academics" Tags="&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1192" CreationDate="2012-04-19T14:17:08.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;aeismail's post is very good, and just to add another few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How difficult of a committee member are they? Some people will ask you to do far more work than others, and they typically have a reputation as such. It's worth trying to find that out and saving yourself the headache.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many universities allow one or two committee members from outside the university. If there is a particular subject matter expert you would like to consult, feel free to ask them to serve on your committee... it  can help you build a relationship with them and get their feedback on your research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T14:17:08.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1184" CreationDate="2012-04-19T20:06:28.027" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a red flag. Find someone else to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T20:06:28.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-04-19T22:44:56.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikidot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikidot&lt;/a&gt;; its main version is free plus has some additional features for researchers and teachers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WordPress.com&lt;/a&gt;, which you already have mentioned. If you have a server, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WordPress.org&lt;/a&gt; may be even a better option (as it is much more adjustable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for papers/conferences/etc it may be better to use widget from a dedicated server (or add by hand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T07:03:34.123" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T07:03:34.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-04-19T22:57:07.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google sites&lt;/a&gt;? I have a &quot;website&quot; on it. I don't quite remember the amount of data you can have on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T22:57:07.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1224" CreationDate="2012-04-20T00:29:48.290" Score="34" ViewCount="10940" Body="&lt;h3&gt;General background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/06/23/write-only-articles/&quot;&gt;a blog post, where there was some discussion about how many people read journal articles&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;I think that such an estimate is important when trying to assess the impact of research on society.&#xA;However, whereas internet sites readily track usage. Such information seems a little more difficult to come by when it comes to readership for a particular journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Initial Ideas&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Articles vary&lt;/strong&gt;: Obviously journal articles vary in many ways and just as with citation counts, readership is likely to be highly skewed, perhaps something like a power function. In addition to academic impact, presumably articles that are available for free on the internet are read more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time since publication&lt;/strong&gt;: The number of reads increases over time, but the rate of readership presumably varies over time (perhaps a spike on initial release, and then gradual decline as relevance dissipates).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definitions of reading vary&lt;/strong&gt;: Read counts would also increase or decrease based on how reading is defined. At the low end is a glance at an abstract. At the high end is carefully reading the entire article. I'd be happy with a working definition that involved reading at least two pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Initial Data&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/static/journalStatistics.action#PLoSONE&quot;&gt;PlosOne article statistics&lt;/a&gt;: As a very rough guide, it suggests that mean views per article is around 800 per year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofvision.org/content/9/4/i?related-urls=yes&amp;amp;legid=jov;9/4/i&quot;&gt;Journal of Vision&lt;/a&gt;: this article reports some download statistics: &quot;In the most recent accounting in July, 2008, the top five articles were each downloaded between 1,993 and 3,478 times.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some journals list subscription counts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Initial Guess&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it useful to have a ball park estimate of these things.&#xA;My own initial guess, based on minimal data, is that readership is between 50 and 1000 times the citation count for the article. Linking the estimate to citation count makes it easier to estimate for a given article and should incorporate effects like time and journal prestige.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good estimate of how many people read a given journal article?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What data and sources of information justify this estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any established literature that can inform such an estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T00:38:29.670" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T00:41:14.247" Title="How many people read an individual journal article?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-04-20T01:27:06.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not academic specific, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon.com&lt;/a&gt; has instructions for setting up a free web server using their free Micro EC2 instance type. As specific academic websites are fairly low traffic, generally speaking, that might be an option that gives you the scripting flexibility you're hoping for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T14:31:22.800" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T14:31:22.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1209" CreationDate="2012-04-20T03:16:12.077" Score="12" ViewCount="1594" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently applied to two PhD programs (in Europe) under professors working in the area of Sound and Music Computing (SMC). Both programs are very well regarded in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SMC covers topics such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Music information retrieval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Computational musicology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Algorithmic composition / performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sentiment and expression modelling in music&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Computational approaches to music cognition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audio signal processing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a complete list. I find the field very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, would the industry want to hire someone with a PhD in SMC? Let's say Google (just as an example), which is known to hire many PhDs. Would they be interested in someone with a PhD in SMC, or would they restrict themselves to machine learning / web / search PhDs? And yes... I'm sure that Yamaha would love to hire an SMC PhD, but would I be restricting my options to only a small subset of the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about academia? How would they look upon an applicant to the assistant professor position who has a PhD in this area? Would they simply reject him saying &quot;Sorry, but we don't do research in your area...&quot;, since it is true that &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; CS departments don't do active research in SMC? Again, would I be restricting my options to only a small subset of universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, how easy / hard is it to switch fields AFTER doing a PhD in it? I may like SMC enough to work on it for 5 years (and get a PhD) but I MAY not want to work on it for a lifetime. In industry or academia, could I switch to something else when (and if) I want to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One researcher told me that I should only consider pursuing my interest in SMC &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; I have already established myself in some other, more fundamental, area of CS, like algorithms or AI. Do you agree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This thread should be useful to anyone considering a PhD in a specialized or maybe even an obscure area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="625" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T21:49:53.557" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T16:24:41.090" Title="Should I do a PhD in Sound and Music Computing?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-01-29T08:20:02.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1208" CreationDate="2012-04-20T04:11:19.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;SMC sounds like a very interesting but somewhat narrow specialization.  Since it's not likely that an expert will appear to answer this question, here are some comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key question regarding career paths is how bad you would feel if they fell through.  For example, suppose you got a Ph.D. in SMC, tried and failed to get an academic job in this area, and ended up getting a job in industry that was relevant but didn't really require the full Ph.D.  Would you regret having started on this path, or would you be happy to have had a chance to study something exciting and to have developed expertise that might still serve you well in the future?  If you would regret it, then you need to think very carefully about the job market, but if your personality could handle this situation, then this path could be a wise choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big danger with unusual fields is that few people will be specifically looking to hire in this area.  You may get lucky and find someone who is, but you may need to create your own opportunities.  If you have an outgoing personality and are good at networking and making connections, then there will be less risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, you'll run into two difficulties.  One is that no CS program will &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to have this area represented, so you'll have to make a stronger case for why you would be a great hire.  The other problem is that if a school is open to SMC, then they may already have someone in this area, and it's a narrow enough field that making multiple hires could be a very tough sell.  So you would be looking for the schools that are interested, but not so interested that they have already hired someone.  Of course, it's far from impossible, but some other branches of CS may be a little easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for switching areas, it can certainly be done.  You may run into a little resistance, depending on what you were originally hired to do.  (This could be a serious issue in industry, and even in academia your colleagues may be counting on you to teach the introductory course in your old field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are equally interested in and talented at algorithms and SMC, then it's probably a little safer to start with algorithms.  However, if only one of them will make you happy and inspire you to do your best work, then that one would be the better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T04:11:19.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1199" CreationDate="2012-04-20T08:43:55.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Computer Science, CiteSeerX used to provide a Venue Impact Factor, that included journals and conferences, but it seems they've stopped doing it. As indicated by Gopi, Microsoft academic Research is some kind of global ranking, and JeffE also mentions google.scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, a global ranking, across sub-fields, is not necessarily meaningful. For instance, if one does not work on programming languages, then it's unlikely to submit a paper at POPL (the first venue according to CiteseerX). Hence, I'd say that field-specific rankings matter more, for instance in security: &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/changyu.dong/ranking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/changyu.dong/ranking.html&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T19:43:32.303" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T19:43:32.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1199" CreationDate="2012-04-20T10:14:36.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not perfect (I have found many conference from my field not listed under the right subfield) nor exhaustive, but I have often found &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft academic Research&lt;/a&gt; useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore it has the great advantage to give ranking for both journal and conference and to cover many domains (Agriculture Science,    Arts &amp;amp; Humanities,    Biology,    Chemistry,    Computer Science,    Economics &amp;amp; Business,    Engineering,    Environmental Sciences,    Geosciences,    Material Science,    Mathematics,    Medicine,    Physics,    Social Science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T10:14:36.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1208" CreationDate="2012-04-20T11:32:51.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every PhD is necessarily specialized, but along the way you must obtain different depths of knowledge from different fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than selling yourself as someone researching Sound and Music Computing, you should mold yourself as someone doing, for example, Machine Learning with a focus on Sound and Music applications. This way, when you have finished your PhD doing what you love, you will still have skills that some department will be willing to hire you for. If you know machine learning, then you'll be able to teach machine learning courses. You'll be able to adapt that knowledge to solve other problems that may have similarities at some abstract level to Sound and Music, perhaps because they involve temporal streams of almost repeating data points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When publishing, you will need to try to publish in top quality, general conferences or journals, rather than publishing everything in smaller, Sound and Music specific events. Naturally, the small events may provide you with good feedback and exposure within your community, but the larger events are what count when people are looking at your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is very important to study what you find interesting, but do not overspecialized yourself into a tiny niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T11:32:51.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2012-04-20T15:24:09.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question, getting accurate data can be tricky. The recent kerfuffle over the NRC rankings of computer science is a good example. The methodology was flawed, the data was old, and the data was misinterpreted, and it still took many years to produce the results ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T15:24:09.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1216" CreationDate="2012-04-20T15:25:09.163" Score="16" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold an engineering undergraduate degree in EC. When I went to a good school for my post-grad, I found that research in many EC/CS departments required a lot of core math expertise which my UG lacked. It took me a whole lot of time to accustom myself and complete the courses. At the end of the coursework, I was able to thoroughly appreciate the development of the theory (in my case, real analysis, measure and probability theory). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working on an engineering problem, I was able to understand fundamental ideas in many papers, thanks to the courses. Yet when it came to using the math for solving my own problem, I found things arduously difficult. In other words, non-intuitive math was well beyond me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regularly find top academic researchers in engineering fluently pulling off sophisticated mathematical results in their work. What tips could you suggest for someone with an engineering (or non-math) background requiring mathematical sophistication for their research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T07:07:47.697" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T07:07:47.697" Title="Tips for engineering students applying math in their research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:17:38.303" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using a mode for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emacs&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Org-mode&lt;/a&gt; to track my research and do project planning.  See my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1159/662&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for some of the other capabilities of Org-mode for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode has a number of features that are useful for project planning.  You can set headings as multi-state TODO lists and set scheduled start times or deadlines.  You can also set effort estimates for tasks and generate text based reports via tables or the agenda view, all while inside Org-mode.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Org-mode manual&lt;/a&gt; covers the customizations to these areas and there are a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tutorials&lt;/a&gt; discussing the customization of Org-mode for a variety of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To generate graphical reports, Org-mode has an export feature for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taskjuggler.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TaskJuggler&lt;/a&gt;.  TaskJuggler takes text-based inputs and generates a number of different reports including Gantt charts and resource allocations.  If you do not wish to use Org-mode as the source of your planning, TaskJuggler has its own native format for the text files, highlighted in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taskjuggler.org/tj3/manual/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the tools listed are open source and are actively being developed/maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential downside to these tools is that they are primarily text-based.  If you are a visual person who wants a GUI approach to planning/reporting, these tools are probably not suited for you.  Additionally, Emacs has a fairly steep learning curve, so if you are not already using it and do not have the time to become familiar with it, other tools will probably be better suited for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T16:17:38.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2012-04-20T17:25:02.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, so I cannot comment on EC/CS directly.  However, much of my work is mathematical in nature, so generally speaking I would offer the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not be intimidated those fluent mathematical results.&#xA;In my experience, for every &quot;hit&quot; that has an elegant result there were probably multiple &quot;misses&quot; that did not lead anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Balance perseverance with distance.&#xA;Even techniques that seem ideally suited to your problem will inevitably have challenges,  otherwise someone would likely have published the result already. It is important to stay positive and keep working at it.  At the same time, sometimes it helps to take a step back and work on something else for awhile and give your mind a break.  When you get some distance from your original problem, you may find an insight that helps you to overcome your roadblock.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read widely.&#xA;I am sure you have been reading papers related to whatever problems you are working on, but oftentimes there are techniques used in tangentially related or even unrelated fields that may be adapted to work on a problem in your area.  Even if such studies do not lead to a usable result for your current work, they may lead to inspiration down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like in your classes, learning to apply mathematical techniques to research problems takes time and practice. If it is possible, try to scale down your problem as much as you can to something very basic.  Finding a solution to the more basic problem will increase your confidence in the method.  Then you can slowly start to scale your problem back up. By attacking the problem this way, you get a number of small successes that help build your background with whatever techniques you use.  Overcoming the smaller problems can give insight into the issues you may be having with your larger problem as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T17:25:02.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-04-20T17:48:42.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; is a popular open-source project management tool. It has lots of capabilities (issue tracking, time management, gantt charts, wikis, etc); see the overview on the linked page. You download and run it on your own server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T17:48:42.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2012-04-21T01:58:46.707" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big difficulty with devising formal ranking systems based on numerical measures is that, outside of a handful of areas like sports, anything we can measure is at best a proxy for what we really care about.  It may start off as a pretty accurate reflection, but anyone judged on this basis will quickly discover how to manipulate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, universities in the US are often judged partially by the fraction of students they accept.  Of course, ambitious universities have adapted by advertising to encourage more applications, with no intention of accepting these applicants, but just to lower the acceptance rate by increasing the denominator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, universities are also judged based on &quot;yield,&quot; the fraction of admitted students who attend.  That sounds at first like a pretty good measure of popularity, but it creates an incentive to game the system by rejecting students you think are likely to choose another university in the end, and universities do just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time taken to graduation can be gamed by kicking out students who are taking too long.  Employment rates can be gamed by offering ten-week temporary jobs to unemployed students, timed to coincide with the measurement of employment rate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abovethelaw.com/2011/05/employment-statistics-shenanigans-open-thread-which-schools-are-juking-their-stats/&quot;&gt;really!&lt;/a&gt;).  All sorts of things can be gamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is not just a theoretical problem.  It occurs all the time in practice (if you are in the US, then your school is very likely doing some of these things), and some people are &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1990746&quot;&gt;extremely upset&lt;/a&gt; about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might think scholarly measures based on citation counts would be less subject to this, but they are not.  There are plenty of corrupt journals where editors put pressure on people to cite papers, or even use totally fraudulent methods like publishing review articles that carefully cite every paper they have recently published.  People have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/&quot;&gt;caught&lt;/a&gt; seriously distorting their journals' impact factors by doing this, and I'm sure there are other, more clever editors who are getting away with it.  If professional success depends on influencing a number, then people will discover ways to influence it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there's an awful tension between transparency and resistance to fraud: if you explain how your ratings work, then people will manipulate them.  Nobody has any idea how to avoid this, and the net effect is that serious scholars do not waste time trying to compile numerical rankings.  For the most part, the only people who do are those who are naive, trying to make money in unscrupulous ways, or trying to promote a cause through carefully chosen rating methods.  The rankings they produce are not worth paying attention to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  Polls of expert opinion are generally much better than rankings based on numerical measures, but even they have their problems.  For example, the U.S. News college rankings are based partly on asking college presidents to rank other schools.  Clemson University &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings&quot;&gt;manipulated&lt;/a&gt; the rankings by rating all competing schools as below average, no matter how good they were.  I suspect they weren't the only ones to do this - the amazing thing isn't that it happened, but rather that we ever found out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T01:58:46.707" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1220" CreationDate="2012-04-21T04:55:12.880" Score="14" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;OpenCourseWare has become more and more popular over the years, and quite a good number of universities make their lessons available in the form of online videos. However, compared to the total number of universities found in the US or rest of the world, the offerings are quite small. It seems to me that OpenCourseWare is a great way for schools to draw attention to themselves, so why is the percentage of schools offering OCW courses small?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T07:03:50.377" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T07:03:50.377" Title="Why do so few universities offer OpenCourseWare videos of their lessons?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1219" CreationDate="2012-04-21T06:19:31.057" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making an OpenCourseWare course isn't as simple as getting a team of kids with videocameras and uploading the course onto YouTube. There is a surprisingly high standard that the Professor and the University attempts to meet when they prepare a course to be deposited onto OpenCourseWare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stanford had built entire classrooms for the purpose of sharing online classes. Many of them have 3-4 cameras controlled by two operators while another is entirely responsible for the sound. Classes that require a balance between boardwork, slides, and discussion require a very well-trained team of videographers to recognize what they are supposed to be looking at without breaking the rhythm of the course and capturing the intent of the lecturer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask any Professor how prepared their lectures are. Despite how absent-minded most professors seem, there is a large amount of practice and slidology behind each lecture. OCW adds a whole other layer to preparation since the course actually has to run on schedule and conclude with the course completed. The materials used require additional thought since OCW is limited to only a single camera. Look at some of Yale's early OTC courses; the professor will make references to a figure and the camera will be focused on his gestures rather than the actual information that they are trying to portray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly online courses are extremely expensive and don't truly make the return on investment as one would imagine. For instance, Utah State was forced to &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Free-Online-Courses-at-a-V/48777/&quot;&gt;end their OpenCourseWare initiative&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T06:19:31.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1699" CreationDate="2012-04-21T13:19:02.823" Score="8" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing my masters thesis. I include in it a screenshot of a webpage, in which I want to point at some components and explain what each of them does. What I did so far is that I draw circles around the components and an arrow from the component to a one word text saying what it is, I intend to go into details under the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that sort of “labeling” formal enough for a thesis figure? Or is there another presentation that would be more appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T09:41:01.887" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T09:52:22.080" Title="How formal should figures in a thesis be?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2012-04-21T14:10:49.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/?dag_type=345&amp;amp;dag_year=2012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dagstuhl Seminars&lt;/a&gt;. In that space some summer (and winter) schools on SE are frequently offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their list is updated very frequently, and they make available a schedule of events about to happen for a couple of years. This way, you can organize your time (and money) to attend any school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T19:32:49.073" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T19:32:49.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-21T14:33:59.660" Score="6" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been accepted to a top 20 Computer Science department with a RA, TA and fellowship. I decided to defer my admissions a year due to unforeseen circumstances. I was informed the school does not allow deferment, and my adviser told me to simply reapply next year. If I was accepted to the university this academic year, should I be able to get accepted next Fall? My application will be the exact same as it was this year including my recommendation letters, personal statement, and research experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T14:24:02.883" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T14:24:02.883" Title="If I decline admissions at a program that doesn't allow deferment, will I be accepted next year?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;deferral&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1206" CreationDate="2012-04-21T16:14:28.223" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a Fermi Problem :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question I asked myself recently, based on the many cases of plagiarism by top-politicians in Germany in humanities, was, are in humanities more articles/texts published than scholars can actually read completly. The amount of copied text in single phd thesis showed by plagiarism-detection communities in Germany like &lt;em&gt;Vroniplag&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Guttenplag&lt;/em&gt; is shocking to me. Often 50% of text is not marked correctly as citation. Even the supervisors at the local universities look like they never read some of these thesis completly. I really hope this is not representative, but fear it might be the tip of the iceberg in humanities (in Germany).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, coming and working in a STEM field, I did a very specialized thesis, there are often less than a dozen groups worldwide working on such a narrow-specialized topic (matter of scientific competition/finding a niche, time, expertise and lab hardware in such fields). &lt;strong&gt;So there will be articles in peer-reviewed journals that are not really interesting to more than 20-50 researcher and probably a similar number of industry-researchers worldwide in STEM&lt;/strong&gt; (competition between companies and research groups being not that different due to economic contraints). Without modern search engines, most non-scholars/private men would have a hard time to find such articles. This is another point in your estimation. The reader count for nature/sciene vs. very specialized journals varies a lot, I don't think any average number really helps you a lot or is that interesting. If you know your specialized field, you should notice pretty fast studying some journals, how many scholars have really a interest in that field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your PlosOne link is interesting. I can back this up a bit to give you at least a rough magnitude of order, what the reader count of top, specialized, ... journals is. I think it's quite normal, to read articles not completely (even if you cite them), but I take a close look on articles I downloaded, often due to the fact that I use many keywords and google operators to really filter out the stuff I'm looking for. This is something that varies also a lot between different scholars/students. I'm often shocked how students make use of search engines, if it is laziness or ignorance of search operators. This can save you so much reading time. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore, I think the extrapolated reader count based on citation factor might be more representative and reliable than using site views/downloads&lt;/strong&gt; due to scholars, private people, laymen often downloading articles with information they didn't look for because of bad search engine use. Growing redundancy/plagiarism is a further factor here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible heuristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comparison of published aricles per month and web site/interface visitors per month on download platforms like PlosOne, arxiv, nature. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;arxiv has around &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions&quot;&gt;6000 published articels per month&lt;/a&gt;, unique visits &lt;a href=&quot;http://siteanalytics.compete.com/arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;100000&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/support/2011_usage&quot;&gt;12,4 million downloads by academic institutions, 50 million overall&lt;/a&gt; vs. 12x6000 articles 2011 means &lt;strong&gt;downloads/view of abstract of around 170 (I used 12,4 million here)&lt;/strong&gt;, of course, that doesnt count articles not published in that year, &lt;strong&gt;so the average read count of a single arxiv article is probably lower than 170 and more touching the 20-50 mark I explained above. But here you have IMO a reasonable and quite objective minimum and maximum limit for a scientific article other scholars are really interested in, 50-170&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;nature has &lt;a href=&quot;http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nature.com/&quot;&gt;900000&lt;/a&gt; unique visits per month, around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=21206&amp;amp;tip=sid&amp;amp;clean=0&quot;&gt;200&lt;/a&gt; articles per month, so you see why having an article published in nature is probably more worth than 10 articles on arxiv, PlosOne or many other specialized journals in a distinct branch, even if they are peer reviewed ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;looking up bibliographies of a some phd thesis in your field at your local university, the number of cited articles is in STEM often in the range of 50-200 (You see even here it varies a lot what a single phd student will/has to read). Of course you do not cite all articles you read, but the factor shouldn't be higher than 2 between (or your search engine use is imho suboptimal) cited and read articles. Considering the phd student will publish 3-5 (in STEM reasonable number or 1 nature article :) ) articles during his phd work and multiplying 3-5*20-50 (average read count by institutional scholars) you also get the number of articles in a phd thesis bibliography of 50-200. Pure Chance?! Looks like a strange calculation, but there is a link between how much article input a average scholar needs and how much output he creates (thats why I multiply both values) and it strengthens my experience/analysis above that 10-100 readers is a reasonable magnitude of order for people being really interested in an single average article. To me it doesn't look like pure chance, but that's the main problem with Fermi questions and answers :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: notice this analysis is focused on STEM, I believe the average read count is much lower in humanities and side-effects like different languages and plagiarism seem to play a bigger role to make a really objective guesstimate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T16:14:28.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1223" CreationDate="2012-04-21T17:13:34.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the time and financial resources to apply, there's no reason &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to apply to schools that you think you have a chance to be admitted to. One thing that you could do is to see if you can get an appointment to talk with a graduate admissions officer at one of the departments you're interested in; you'll find out pretty quickly what the officer thinks of your admission chances. (It was how I learned not to worry about my credentials when I applied way back when.) In addition, the initiative may be appreciated by the officer, which may help your chances of admissions in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for deferment policies, those are strictly school- and department-dependent. I would hope that you would be considered equally both years, but the truth is that you are usually compared to other applicants &lt;em&gt;in the year that you apply&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, a weaker application next year will not help. (Although if your grades in the major are strong, weaknesses outside the major won't hurt you so much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T17:13:34.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1223" CreationDate="2012-04-21T18:07:58.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address the chances of being admitted again next year at a school that accepted you this year.  Certainly they aren't 100%, or even 95%, since if they were that high, then the department would save itself the trouble and simply allow deferrals.  As Aeismail points out, it also depends on the strength of the applicant pool, and that can fluctuate from year to year.  For example, in a bad economy, or if the department hires a star faculty member, it can become harder to get admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Department admissions procedures vary greatly.  In some departments, having strong support from a single faculty member may be enough to guarantee admission.  That is not true in my department, and I'd estimate that the average chances of being admitted again in this department are about 75%.  (Don't take this figure too seriously, but it's a better estimate than 50% or 100%.  It's based on experience and thought experiments rather than data.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly, the top 25% of the class is admitted quickly and easily, with little debate.  The next 25% involves more discussion, but the answers are probably pretty consistent, and the main issue is ranking for things like fellowships.  It's the bottom half that involves increasing amounts of randomness.  The number of plausible acceptances - people where nobody would think it strange if they were admitted - is substantially larger than the number we will actually accept.  Near the dividing line, there are a lot of people whose applications are really pretty comparable.  We arrange them in order, after a lot of discussion, and draw lines for admission and waiting list.  The order is not completely random, of course; the stronger your application is, the higher you are likely to be ranked.  But there's a lot of arbitrariness to it, since it's a matter of small distinctions.  The trickiest cases are the applicants who have notable strengths and weaknesses, and their positions depend sensitively on who is on the committee: getting a high ranking depends on having some committee member who strongly supports your case, and nobody who is strongly opposed.  (Admissions committee are often risk averse, so opposition counts more than support.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I'd guess that as many as half of the people in the bottom half of the list might have been replaced with someone else if another committee had examined the applications from scratch.  That would correspond to a 75% overlap between the decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this figure is pretty much meaningless for individuals.  If you are a star, then you will definitely be accepted again.  If you were the most controversial and lowest-ranked person last year, then your chances of being lucky next year as well are not good.  The truth is most likely to be in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T18:07:58.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="963" CreationDate="2012-04-21T20:50:09.317" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies enormously between universities (see Suresh and JeffE's comments, for example).  At some schools, having a soft-money position means very little.  They are basically just saying you are allowed to use their name to apply for grants, and to pay for things like office space using grant funding (including overhead).  In such a case, there may not be much to negotiate over, since they intend to make a profit from you, not spend money on you.  You could ask for adjunct status, and the salary requested in grant applications might be determined by the university, but most of your other issues (space, travel, equipment, assistants, etc.) would be handled in the course of dealing with individual grant applications, rather than specified in advance.  The key would be getting large enough grants to pay for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At other schools, particularly in medical fields but sometimes elsewhere too, being a research professor can be very serious: you may be a full faculty member, attending and voting in faculty meetings, with the possibility of tenure.  Of course, tenure on a soft-money position doesn't mean much, since the university never gives you a salary.  If you don't get grants, you don't get paid.  But it does mean that as long as you get grants, the university cannot get rid of you.  (This can be a genuine issue in some soft-money positions.  If the regular faculty don't think you meet their usual standards, then the department chair may eventually be tempted to push you to leave, so you do not seem like a permanent fixture and start to affect the department's reputation too much, or to make your lower status clear in other ways.  A tenured soft-money position is a real indication that the department values you, even if they aren't paying for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you should negotiate really depends on the sort of position.  It can't hurt to ask how anything you care about works, and the worst case scenario is being told it's not negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I'd avoid bringing up is authorship issues.  This is something that should be discussed at the level of individual projects, and bringing it up here may make people worry that you are asking for something inappropriate (like guaranteed authorship just for providing funding), even if you have nothing like that in mind.  If you do discuss it, you should make it very clear that you are just making sure everyone is on the same page, rather than trying to negotiate special rules that would be guaranteed to apply to your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I'd add is grace periods between grants.  If all goes well, you'll arrange overlapping funding, so you will not have a period with no active funding.  However, it might well happen if you aren't lucky, so you should discuss how that would work.  For example, if you had a gap between grants, would they immediately take away your office when the first grant expired?  If you reached a state in which all your grant proposals had been rejected, with no pending applications, then would that be the end of your job?  Or would they allow you some period of time to continue making applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T20:50:09.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1231" CreationDate="2012-04-22T06:07:14.130" Score="18" ViewCount="1680" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate Computer Engineering student at the University of Florida. In response to recent budget cuts to higher education in Florida, my department (Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering, CISE) could be undergoing some restructuring, namely the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the Computer Engineering Degree programs, BS, MS and PhD, would be moved from the Computer &amp;amp; Information Science and Engineering Dept. to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. along with most of the advising staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roughly half of the faculty would be offered the opportunity to move to Electrical/Computer Eng. (ECE), Biomedical Eng. (BME), or Industrial/Systems Eng. (ISE).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staff positions in CISE which are currently supporting research and graduate programs would be eliminated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The activities currently covered by TAs would be reassigned to faculty and the TA budget for CISE would be eliminated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any faculty member who wishes to stay in CISE may do so, but with a revised assignment focused on teaching and advising.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;click here for additional information&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dean of our college claims that eliminating research and TA support within the CISE department will have no effect on the quality of the education future students will receive. She also claims that existing research in the department will be unaffected, except that it will be moved to ECE, BME, or ISE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad, I don't feel qualified to challenge these claims. Therefore, I would like to hear your opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the quality of education in the CISE department be the same after this restructuring?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can software-oriented research take place in a department which, until now, has concentrated solely on hardware/electronics?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since only half of the faculty will be moved to a research department, half must remain in CISE and focus solely on teaching (with no TA support). Do you think these professors will remain at UF given the circumstances?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the teaching-only CISE department be able to attract quality professors? Top students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will employers value a UF CISE degree as much as they do now? [thanks for pointing this one out JeffE]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty and graduate students in the department know exactly how these changes will affect them (and they aren't pleased!), however many of the undergrads are a bit uncertain. I (and the rest of us undergrads) would really appreciate any wisdom to help clear things up. Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="706" LastEditorUserId="706" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:51:48.953" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T17:51:48.953" Title="How will this departmental restructuring plan affect students and faculty?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1219" CreationDate="2012-04-22T06:53:15.363" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with @bobthejoe's excellent answer, I've heard a few other reasons not to post certain types of courses online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The notion of &quot;supporting&quot; the course. If you put your course online, are you obligated to answer questions, provide student support, etc.? I'm not talking about a contractual obligation as much as &quot;If I put my lecture up there, how do &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; feel about 'Good luck with this material, you're on your own'?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on your answer to the above, you may have to actually redesign your course so it can &quot;stand alone&quot; as a series of videos, rather than how you prefer to teach face-to-face. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some professors who run heavily student-interaction based classes are reluctant to post those lectures, because they want their students to be free to ask questions freely, make mistakes, etc. without those errors being archived on the internet for all time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the technical one is the biggest hurdle. OpenCourseWare needs to actually have production values in order to be worthwhile, as anyone whose remotely participated in a course where the lecture is in a room with poor acoustics and a single camera in the back will tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T06:53:15.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-04-22T08:32:55.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look into a cloud application platform like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heroku.com/&quot;&gt;Heroku&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you can deploy web applications for free (with or without a custom domain name). You only pay if you need more power or more database storage. They also have addons, some free and some paid. You don't manage the details of the server, you only worry about your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can instantly deploy a rails app with a git push command. If you need to run a periodic tasks, you can enable a cron addon: free for a daily task or a fee for a more frequent task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T08:32:55.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1228" CreationDate="2012-04-22T11:42:23.430" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my former PhD students works in the CISE department at UF, so my opinion is not exactly objective.  But here it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the quality of education in the CISE department be the same after this restructuring?&lt;/strong&gt;  Absolutely not.  Teaching computer science well requires serious manpower.  Unless CS courses are limited to a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; small number of students, which seems incredibly unlikely for a flagship state university, educational quality will plummet.  The near-certain increase in faculty teaching loads only makes this worse.  If nothing else, with less individual attention on students and more automated grading, cheating will increase dramatically.  (Also, in the longer term, educational quality will suffer because the instructors are not themselves active researchers.  Computer science changes fast; if the faculty aren't leading that change, they'll fall behind.  Obviously.  But in the short run, the removal of TA support is a much bigger issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can [CS] research take place in [an ECE] department?&lt;/strong&gt;  Maybe, but probably not at existing levels.  If faculty treat the incoming CISE faculty as anything less than full-fledged intellectual peers who should be judged by the standards of their own research communities (as opposed to ECE community standards), then no.  Most recent CS-EE mergers have failed for precisely this reason.  This has far less to do with the distinction between &quot;software&quot; and &quot;hardware&quot; than cultural differences about intellectual values, publication standards (conferences vs. journals), funding, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think [teaching] professors will remain at UF given the circumstances?&lt;/strong&gt;  I expect some faculty will stay, either because they prefer teaching anyway (or even support the restructuring), or because they have eternal constraints that make moving impossible, or because they are close enough to retirement that they're willing hold their nose for a few years, or perhaps because their recent research records are not strong enough for them to land a tenure-track position in a comparable department.  But I would expect most CISE faculty—&lt;em&gt;including the research faculty forced into other departments&lt;/em&gt;—to leave at their earliest opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the teaching-only CISE department be able to attract quality professors?&lt;/strong&gt;  Not as easily, and not as long as the current political players are in power.  Setting aside the common assumption that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183/is-there-a-correlation-between-being-a-good-teacher-and-being-a-good-researcher&quot;&gt;quality is correlated strongly with active research&lt;/a&gt;, I expect most strong teaching faculty would have trouble accepting a position from a college with such blatant disregard for academic freedom and shared governance.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top students?&lt;/strong&gt;  Undergrads, yes, although probably in smaller numbers.  Because UF is a flagship state school, it attracts a significant fraction of the top high school graduates in the state (at least by STEM standards).  The number of such incoming students is unlikely to change very much, but many of those students who would have studied computer science will go into other majors instead.  Graduate students, probably not, for the same reasons as faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one question you didn't ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will employers value a UF CISE degree as much as they do now?&lt;/strong&gt;  I doubt the restructuring would have a significant effect on the job prospects of &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; CISE majors, except possibly if some of the software companies who've recently announced plans to open offices in Gainesville change their mind.  But if the quality of education (and the strength of incoming majors) suffer as I expect they will, then a UF CISE degree will be less valuable than it is now, even for the best students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flagship state university where I work has attempted a few similar restructuring efforts, and currently faces similarly severe budgetary constraints.  Some of the resructuring attempts were successful (for example, our Theoretical and Applied Mechanics department was recently merged into Mechanical Engineering); others were not (for example, our Nuclear Engineering Department survived a proposed closure).  In the years leading up to the TAM closure, a significant majority of the TAM faculty moved or retired.  Although TAM survives as a degree program within our MSE department, it attracts considerably fewer students and faculty than it did as an independent department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T11:42:23.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1266" CreationDate="2012-04-22T12:20:20.930" Score="19" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times in universities, people don't dedicate much time to build friendly relationships with colleagues. &#xA;Unfortunately, this happens both in the tenured positions and in non-tenured positions, with many bad consequences (such as for examples, many researchers actually don't know what other colleagues are researching on...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always been thinking that building strong friend relationships with colleagues can be very useful and powerful, for careers but most of all to create a more serene work environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a good way to create friendly relationships with colleagues is organizing &lt;strong&gt;extra-work activities&lt;/strong&gt;, such as dinners, soccer matches, etc.&#xA;Last week some of my PhD student colleagues organized a pizza dinner between colleagues. All my department (~150) PhD students were invited, but in the end we were just 9! :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What d'you do to build strong friend relationships with colleagues?&#xA;Could you tell some success stories?&#xA;Could you give some good advices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:44:42.240" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T01:09:49.403" Title="In universities, how to team up with your colleagues?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;extracurricular&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T19:48:48.667" Score="1" ViewCount="1355" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/301/how-to-make-a-presentation-that-includes-math-symbols&quot;&gt;How to make a presentation that includes math symbols?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been using TeX4PPT for PowerPoint under Windows for a few years to include matematical formulas in PP presentations. Recently, I got a Mac notebook and I would like to use my PP presentations both under Windows as well as under Mac OS X. However, I cannot find a program that would allow me to use LaTeX generating formulas in PP under both operating systems (so I could use my  presentations freely on both OS). Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T21:07:49.367" Title="PowerPoint presentations including Latex both under Windows and Mac OS" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-04-23T12:20:38.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1233" CreationDate="2012-04-22T20:02:07.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Mac Os only, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Keynote&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Latexit&lt;/a&gt;, as explained in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/301/102&quot;&gt;How to make a presentation that includes math symbols?&lt;/a&gt; I've been using this technique recently, and it's very nice!&#xA;However, as far as I know, you cannot show Keynote presentation on Windows. A possible solution could be to export them as PPT, but I've just tried, and it's not very nice, especially for the included formulas. You can also export them as PDF, in which case it's graphically nice, but you lose any animated transition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution could be to use Latexit to generate PDF, and to include the PDF directly in Powerpoint. If you use a white background, that can do the trick, since formulas will be exported with a white background (but maybe it's possible to set it up, I've never tried with Powerpoint to be honest, so maybe you can import SVG format directly in Powerpoint). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T21:07:49.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1233" CreationDate="2012-04-22T20:11:40.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possible solution is to work directly in tex (that is, via &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_%28LaTeX%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beamer&lt;/a&gt;) and get a cross-platform presentations. Although, if you want to do presentation animations and sophisticated tricks, this is inferior to PPT/Keynote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T20:11:40.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T22:03:41.437" Score="38" ViewCount="4936" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that usually when applying for a post phd academic position students need at least three recommendation letters. But what can we do if we have only worked with our advisor and we have no other close professors in the department to ask. This refers to the case when the student took classes, had a little teaching experience, but never got to the point to know some professor well, or collaborate with researchers from another place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sub-questions:&#xA;1) how well does the writer need to know the student to write a decent recommendation?&#xA;2) how research recommendations are looked at when applying for purely teaching job?&#xA;3) how non-research recommendations are looked at when applying for research job?&#xA;4) what else can we do in a short period of time to acquire those recommendations?&#xA;5) is there a way to avoid submitting recommendations, at least in the first stage of the application process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="713" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T12:30:28.443" Title="How to acquire 3 recommendation letters to apply for jobs when working with 1 advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1236" CreationDate="2012-04-22T22:19:09.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could ask members of your doctoral committee to write you a letter of recommendation each. They would probably need some details about the job and what it entails. They would also want to see your transcripts and a copy of your curriculum vitae but that shouldn't be a biggy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research related recommendation letters are obviously great if you are applying for a research job. Either way, you could ask your &lt;em&gt;advisor&lt;/em&gt; to write you a letter that carries a good balance of &lt;em&gt;research aptitude&lt;/em&gt; and general &lt;em&gt;work skills&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it is difficult to get letters of recommendation on short notice. They could take a couple weeks to a month or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T22:19:09.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1236" CreationDate="2012-04-22T23:09:16.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for a position that involves teaching, you should have one or more letters addressing your teaching.  If you were the TA for the course, they should come for the lead or recitation instructor.  If you were the lead instructor, it should be whoever supervised you, possibly an administrator.  If you apply for a teaching position without any such letters, they will infer you really want a research position and are only applying to them as a fallback position, which does not make you an attractive candidate.  (I've been on both sides.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second the recommendation to solicit letters from members of your doctoral committee, as well as anyone with whom you have co-authored a paper, done an internship with, particularly impressed while taking their class, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done impressive service, you can get a letter from someone about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T23:09:16.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T23:17:49.497" Score="18" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software engineering&lt;/strong&gt; (SE) is the application of a systematic, disciplined,&#xA;  quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance&#xA;  of software, and the study of these approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is something similar for research, something that we could call &lt;strong&gt;Research engineering&lt;/strong&gt;. I imagine it to be a research field on its own, with students &quot;researching on how to do research&quot;. I believe software development has benefited a lot from research in SE. Maybe research could also benefit from Research engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there some institute or some university department in the world where they work on Research Engineering?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in which faculty you would position such department/institute?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited&lt;/em&gt;: After getting a couple of good answers, I am still not completely satisfied, so I would like to clarify my question. What I am really interested in is indeed a &quot;software engineering&quot; approach. I am not interested in philosophical or sociological research. In fact, the question I had originally in mind was whether it's possible or not to apply actual software development methodologies to research. In more concrete terms, I am wondering  whether anyone has studied the application in research of models similar to the waterfall, or the spiral model, or things like extreme programming, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, etc... (Note: these are just examples, please don't comment to each of them one by one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T13:39:52.760" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T15:27:42.103" Title="Research in &quot;Research Engineering&quot;" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1242" CreationDate="2012-04-22T23:39:13.290" Score="6" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm citing a page in a journal, and the article has an independent page numbering system, should I cite the page number of the journal or the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="715" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:51:05.543" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:51:05.543" Title="Should I Cite a Journal's Page Number, or an Article's?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1236" CreationDate="2012-04-23T00:34:48.703" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to strategize with your advisor, or a trusted mentor, about this.  You need recommenders who have a high opinion of your work, are willing to put in the time to write a good letter, and know how to do so (which rules out more people than you might think).  Ideally, you need advice from someone who knows what sorts of letters different people write and can help you choose who might be most appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I recommend for my students is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A letter from me, which will discuss in detail what they have done, why it's important, what the student's key contributions were, what the future might hold, etc.  I'll also sit in on a class the student teaches and talk with them about teaching, so I can put in a reasonably well-informed paragraph about that, but the focus of the letter will be research.  (I'll have a different version of this letter, which emphasizes teaching more, to be sent to highly teaching-oriented jobs.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A teaching letter from someone in the department who is well known for excellent teaching and can evaluate the quality of their teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A research letter from another faculty member in the department.  This will be from someone the student has met with at least a couple of times each semester for the last year or two, if not more often, so they will be in an excellent position to write a serious letter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A research letter from someone at another university, typically someone I know who has interacted with the student at conferences, seen the student give at least one talk, and read at least one paper by the student.  This proves that the student is developing a reputation outside their university, and it supplies a letter from someone who has less of a vested interest in seeing the student succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's hard to set up (3) and (4) on short notice.  It's often helpful if your advisor asks someone.  I can say &quot;You remember my excellent student Alice, the one who wrote the paper on X?  She's graduating this year, and I think she's going to do very well on the job market, but she still needs one more recommendation, and we're hoping for one from another university.  Could you help?&quot;  By contrast, there's nothing a student can write that will be as effective.  (From a student's perspective, the letter is a favor to the student, but faculty sometimes think of it as a favor to the advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem is if your advisor can't or won't help with this.  Then you'll have to pick the most supportive people you know and ask them yourself.  It's helpful to offer to meet with them to tell them about your work, to make sure they are fully up to date.  You should send them copies of all your application materials.  It's also helpful if you supply additional background and commentary, to help give them more of a feeling for your work and its context.  This makes it easier to write the letter, by supplying interesting ideas and facts the letter writer can mention.  (That's the lazy approach to writing a letter, but if someone is going to be lazy, you want to make it as easy as possible for them.)  Make sure everyone writing a research letter actually plans to discuss your research.  It can really hurt your application if a letter just says &quot;Bob took my advanced phrenology class and received an A.  I was particularly impressed with his insightful questions regarding retrophrenology, and I became convinced that this bright young man has an extraordinary future in pseudoscience.  I haven't read any of his papers, but his advisor assures me that they are wonderful, so Bob has my strongest recommendation.&quot;  When you get your Ph.D., you should be judged based on your research (and teaching), not your performance in classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should request letters at least one month before the deadline.  It doesn't really take a month to write a letter, but it can take a number of hours (looking at papers and application materials, thinking, and then writing).  Any given week may be very busy - for example, someone may be travelling or facing a major deadline - and faculty members often have to write dozens of letters, so if you do not ask far enough in advance, then there may simply not be enough time for your letter.  If you need a letter very quickly, then you are asking for a huge favor, and the letter probably won't be as long or compelling as it might have been otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for some of your sub-questions:  The writer does not need to know the student well, but must know something about the student's work (for example, from papers or talks).  For most academic jobs in the fields I know about, there is no way to avoid submitting recommendations with the initial application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T12:15:15.800" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T12:15:15.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2012-04-23T00:57:33.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not certain what you mean by an article with an independent page numbering system, but I assume you mean the following.  The published journal article is, say, on pages 25-48 of the journal, but there is also a preprint available online with different formatting, and it is numbered from 1-23.  Not only the page divisions, but even the number of pages differ, so there's no easy way to transfer a reference between these numberings except approximately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important rule is to be clear and correct: you should leave no doubt or ambiguity about which numbering system you are using.  If you cite only one version of the paper, then you should use the same numbering used there.  If you cite several versions, then you need to make sure your references are clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second rule is that you should focus on the &quot;most official&quot; version of the paper, whatever that is.  In most cases, a journal paper is more official than a conference paper, which is more official than a numbered technical report in a series, which is more official than a random preprint.  You want to cite the most final, complete, and authoritative version, and the one most likely to be accessible to future readers.  There may occasionally be subtle cases (for example, a paper that has been reprinted in books with corrections or additions), but this generally means the journal version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  The only other interpretation of the question I can think of is for journals like Physical Review, where an article has its own page number (like 032326) and then the individual pages are given subsidiary numbers (like 032326-1 through 032326-8).  In that case, if you want to cite a specific page you could refer to it as 032326-3, or maybe just 3 if the context is clear.  In the bibliography, you would write 032326:1-8 or just 032326, depending on your bibliography style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T00:57:33.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-23T01:54:46.553" Score="27" ViewCount="5261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a math PhD program for one year during the 2009-2010 year in US (with funding by school). I was expelled due to low grades (nothing related to violence/cheating). During the Fall of 2010, I took some classes at a local university and applied to Master's programs during that time. I went to a Master's program in math in Canada from 2011-2013 (currently there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan is to apply to top PhD programs in the US in math this Fall and enter at the Fall of 2013. I have a 4.0 Masters GPA, &gt;95% GRE math scores, publications, and excellent relations with Master's advisors. I have developed great focus and motivation and have rid myself of procrastination which plagued me the past. I am also sure I want to continue doing mathematical research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that when applying to PhDs, mentioning the expulsion from years ago will only hurt me so I intend to not mention it (I have not told anyone about this either). My question is if PhD programs will discover this hidden information when I apply? What if when I apply for fellowships?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="717" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T17:28:54.683" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:28:54.683" Title="Apply to PhD after expulsion from another" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2012-04-23T02:28:57.610" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend mentioning it briefly somewhere in your application, with a very short explanation of why it is irrelevant (for example: you were less mature and motivated, so you procrastinated and your grades suffered, but your performance over the last few years proves that these issues are no longer a problem).  Don't emphasize it too much, but your best strategy is not to hide anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that it might hurt your chances, but I do not think it will hurt them much.  If it came up in a committee I was on, I would argue against worrying about it, if the rest of your application was compelling.  If you do not mention it, then you'll have an unexplained gap of a year in your CV, and that will also raise suspicions, since such a gap is usually a sign of something that did not work well.  If you don't want to mention it or have a gap, then the alternative is lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should definitely not lie, by giving an incomplete list of previous schools attended if asked for a complete list, or by giving a different explanation of what you were doing during that year.  You might get away with the lie, since it can be difficult to detect missing information or disprove vague excuses, but if the lie is detected then it will ruin your chances of admission.  (And committee members might even mention it to friends at other schools, if they are irritated enough about the lie.)  Even if you get admitted, the lie may also come up again to haunt you in the future.  For example, a faculty member from your old school may someday visit to give a talk, recognize you, and mention the connection to your advisor.  Or you and your advisor may someday end up attending a conference at that university.  You probably won't get kicked out of grad school if the lie is discovered later, but it's technically possible (at least at some universities), and in any case you do not want to be known among the faculty as someone who lied about his/her past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already done the hard part of moving beyond this issue and demonstrating that it is no longer a problem, and that will minimize the risks of honesty.  By contrast, the risks of dishonesty may follow you for years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T02:28:57.610" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="906" CreationDate="2012-04-23T03:48:11.100" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the admissions committees I've been on, GRE scores have been used primarily for one purpose, namely dealing with students from out of the way places.  Every year, we see a number of applications from students at not very prestigious schools but with perfect grades and letters saying they are the best in years.  We suspect that the courses are easy and the competition is not impressive (being the best is meaningless if we doubt the second best is very good), but we don't want to reject someone unfairly.  GRE scores give a simple, consistent way to compare these students with those from other schools.  Most of them have unimpressive GRE scores, but occasionally they do very well on the GRE, and in those cases we investigate further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TOEFL scores are another case in which consistency is very helpful.  Skype interviews would give more information, but different interviewers would be more or less demanding (plus the interviews would be a lot of work).  If you want to set a consistent cut-off, for example for TA support, then a standardized exam may be the right approach.  Note also that the administration may not trust faculty interviewers not to exaggerate the English abilities of students they want to admit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it weren't for its usefulness in screening the applications from out of the way places, I'd be in favor of eliminating the GRE entirely.  However, even making someone jump through a meaningless hoop can actually be a useful filter.  In practice, having a successful career requires occasionally doing things you don't care about, for reasons that may not be clearly explained (and might or might not turn out to be justified if they were explained).  Some students run into serious psychological issues here.  Maybe they can't overcome their disorganization if they don't feel motivated, or maybe they just refuse to participate in anything without a clear justification.  It may be unfair, but these students are not likely to be successful in the long run, and it's a waste of time and energy to prepare them for a career that isn't likely to work out.  Jumping through hoops like the GRE is a mild test in this direction.  If you are too disorganized to sign up for it in time, or if you aren't willing to jump through such a hoop at all, then that's a bad sign for your future career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T03:48:11.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1248" CreationDate="2012-04-23T06:05:50.703" Score="14" ViewCount="2706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to but different from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/should-i-include-a-publication-where-im-only-acknowledged-and-not-one-of-the-a&quot;&gt;Should I include a publication where I&amp;#39;m only acknowledged (and not one of the authors) in my CV?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a part of some publications which officially are written by author A and B and then the Team Members. Should these publications be on my CV? I contributed to the project (hence the team co-authorship) but don't want to seem like I'm trying to pad my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I have my publication list broken up by sections: Journal, Talks, Technical Reports, and then Other, and I have the Team Member publications listed under Other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this appropriated and/or reasonable, or should I remove them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T09:02:55.390" Title="Should I include publications where I am a &quot;team member&quot; in my CV" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2012-04-23T06:51:39.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are listed as an author in the paper, then you can always include the paper in your publications list. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are pruning your resume to be a 2-page one and if you have better publications (say where you are the lead author) to show, then have a single category titled &quot;Selected Publications&quot; and exclude this paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are making a very detailed list of publications, say one on a webpage, then do consider including the name of all authors in the same order as in the published paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-04-23T09:01:37.033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T09:01:37.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2012-04-23T09:02:55.390" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the CV that's linked to your website, I don't see anything inappropriate about what you've done. The only thing to make sure of is that when you have a team listed explicitly as the author in a paper (e.g., &quot;Author X, Author Y, and The A-Team&quot;), you will need to make sure that there is a publicly available listing of the team members available for reference. This could be as a supplement to the paper online (as &quot;supporting information&quot;), or it can be on a permanent web site for the team's endeavors. However, people should be able to confirm that you are a member of this collaboration beyond just what's on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T09:02:55.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1251" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:15:51.423" Score="13" ViewCount="1926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have successfully got my papers accepted in different journals. However, due to some money issues, I couldn't get them published. Now I have my final project presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it hold value for me? I have slogged day in and out to accomplish this, but money constraints have shattered everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I manage my presentation in such a scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; : I do have all the email conversations and acceptance notifications and  do have the feedback as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="721" LastEditorUserId="473" LastEditDate="2012-04-23T19:09:19.970" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T01:31:23.410" Title="Four papers accepted for publication however not published due to some monetary issues?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1239" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:18:16.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of a field dedicated to the study of research methods. There are journals dedicated to advances in methodology (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-neuroscience-methods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biotechniques.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;), but the closest concept I've encountered to a field dedicated to researching research is Thomas Kuhn's classic work &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Structure of Scientific Revolutions&lt;/a&gt; and other similar philosophical works, which discuss how science, as a field, progresses and evolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that the reason for the lack of such a field is such research is part and parcel of the actual work done in the field. In order to study biochemistry, one must understand &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to study biochemistry; in order to study mathematics, one must know the types of questions and the methods used to find answers in mathematics. Each field is unique, and each field will find specific methods that will optimally serve the needs of that specific field. While there may be broadly-applicable research techniques, each field will solve the problem of &quot;how to do research&quot; differently, in the way that best suits that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T12:18:16.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1249" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:59:52.323" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reputable journals will waive publication charges for authors who cannot pay them, so you should ask about that.  If everything goes well, then that will simply solve your financial problems.  I see only two ways you can get stuck:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1)  The journal insists you can pay, perhaps because your advisor has plenty of grant money, but your advisor refuses.  In that case you have a serious problem, and it is much deeper than just paying for these publication charges; you need to sort things out with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2)  The journal does not have a procedure for waiving the charges.  In that case, the journal acceptance is worthless.  The journals in this category are money-making operations with no academic validity.  Nobody will care that they accepted your paper, because they just wanted your publication fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to determine is which case you are in.  For example, one valid reason for an advisor to refuse to pay is because the journals are not reputable.  If you are in that case, then you need to rethink everything.  Otherwise, it sounds like you may be in a complicated situation with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T13:59:52.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1255" CreationDate="2012-04-23T17:23:41.813" Score="12" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider an undergrad student (who wishes to dive into STEM research) in an obscure university in an obscure town who has a few ideas which he converts into a well documented article. All of this by learning completely on his own. He has no faculty within his institute (or locality) to turn to (they aren't as active in research) for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should such students/learners try to get comments/criticism on their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sending it out to publishing is not a good idea because it will get rejected with cliched answers and will rarely help the candidate improve his work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stackexchange/Quora/Reddit etc. are great for small answers but it is too much to ask to read and rate someone's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One can send out mails but Professors/Grad Students/Researchers in the field might not have the time to reply to such mails. Further, if the work is fundamentally flawed, the student might never get replies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other repository site (ArXiv?) might cause the paper to be drowned by more successful ones and the student might never get comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can he do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T18:01:45.343" Title="On getting reviews for research work as independent learners" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1239" CreationDate="2012-04-23T17:41:33.700" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of &lt;em&gt;&quot;research on research&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;&quot;science of science&quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are dividid into different fields, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/a&gt; - measuring citations, networks of collaborators, relations between topics and other quantities characterizing the scientific output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_scientific_knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sociology of science&lt;/a&gt; - treating science as a activity of groups of people, with its history etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example there is a great book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202695.Genesis_and_Development_of_a_Scientific_Fact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research on &lt;em&gt;collective intelligence&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;innovation&lt;/em&gt; (when, where and how does it happen), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General fields related to education, didactics, teamwork and management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you asking about &lt;em&gt;engineering&lt;/em&gt; (i.e. how things work in practice), I don't even mention things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;philosophy of science&lt;/a&gt;. Also, as you see, the answer depends on scale - from an individual, through a group or an institution to a country, the world nowadays or our civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically it is done under umbrella of complex systems, complexity, network science, econophysics or data-mining and modeling in sociology. There are institutes doing it, see e.g. the front page of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.santafe.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Santa Fe Institute&lt;/a&gt;. Also, there are some projects on it, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qlectives.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;QLectives&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDED:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are interested in the optimization (not only the observation) and on the micro scale: some findings may implicitly give hints, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R. Kenna, B. Berche, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0928&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical mass and the dependency of research quality on group size&lt;/a&gt; (2010) says that you need a critical number of researchers to make it working smoothly,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B. Jamtveita, E. Jettestuena, J. Mathiesena, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903190106&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scaling properties of European research units&lt;/a&gt; (2009) says that the larger an institute, the higher percentage of administrative workers it has.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things may be harder to find, as in science it works a lot in apprentice-master mode, with approaches differing from a group to a group. So it may be not as easy to be serialized (as in different fields, countries, etc. one may need to have different approach); and when you don't a large enough sample, you cannot use quantitive methods in a meaningful way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, now we are in the phase preceding formalized studies, as only recently people started to share with the world their &lt;em&gt;soft and subjective&lt;/em&gt; findings on that matter, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/nurturing/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Materials for Nurturing Scientists&lt;/a&gt; (a collection) on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uri Alon Lab website&lt;/a&gt; (BTW: he is the right person to talk about it, as he promotes such exchange of information on research)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;G. Whitesides, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.egr.msu.edu/~mason/teaching/How2WriteApaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper&lt;/a&gt; (2004)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J. Gallian, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.d.umn.edu/~jgallian/goodPPtalk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advice on giving a good powerpoint presentation&lt;/a&gt; (2006)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and on things like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;academia.SE&lt;/a&gt;, for a bit of self-reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T19:47:32.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1252" CreationDate="2012-04-23T18:00:54.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be that even if the faculty at the institution are not themselves active in research, they are likely to know people they are (after all, they got their own degrees somewhere).  The best route, if at all possible, would be for one of the the local faculty to put the student in touch with someone who is active in research.  The personal introduction makes it much likely that the work will get actual feedback.  (I'm assuming here that the student has actually talked to the local people and determined that they're not interested; just because a faculty members isn't currently active in research doesn't automatically mean they don't care and won't be able to help an interested student.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not an option, the student might be able to meet researchers through some sort of event, either one aimed directly at undergraduates (for instance, in the US, there are many summer programs for undergraduates), or even just by attending a conference and trying to meet people.  This may not be an option (summer programs require being accepted, for instance, and attending a conference on one's own can be expensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's off the table as well, it may be time to personally e-mail researchers in the area.  It's true that there's some risk the work will be ignored, but there are steps that can be taken to minimize this: choose a person to contact carefully, making sure it's someone actually interested in the exact topic of your research (on the one hand, you want it to be someone you cite, or at least someone who's worked directly in the area, but on the other hand, you don't want to e-mail the biggest name who has anything to do with the subject); and write a personal e-mail which makes your situation clear without being too verbose, and which explains why you're e-mailing this particular person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T18:00:54.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1252" CreationDate="2012-04-23T18:01:45.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to try a combination of &lt;strong&gt;networking&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;learning how to ask good questions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Networking—you have to find people in your field in order to grow, and you can only find people in your field by networking appropriately. Try to find money in the department/broader university to attend a conference, or even just email authors of papers you cite. Describe your situation (briefly). If they're local, ask to meet with them for 30 minutes-1 hr; if not, try for phone calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that, generally speaking, graduate students/postdocs will be more willing to give you time than advisors; try to get in touch with them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking good questions—you can and should assume that no one has time to act as your advisor. Because of this, your interaction with those whom advise you will be brief. Make the most of those minutes. Give a summary of your work, ask very directed, substantial questions. Make the most of your meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, the most productive meeting I had in the entirety of my just-under-five year graduate school stint was one with a member of my thesis committee, and the entire meeting lasted 15 minutes. I gave the right background, asked the right questions, and came away with what turned into my thesis project. (I don't think I've done that well since.) Do your homework, and you may benefit nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T18:01:45.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1259" CreationDate="2012-04-23T23:16:26.540" Score="15" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what JeffE says over at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision&quot;&gt;Priority of application materials for admission decision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The list is not that different for postdoc hiring (not &quot;admission&quot;),&#xA;  at least in my field (computer science). The big differences are (1)&#xA;  grades do not matter at all and (2) the focus changes from &quot;potential&#xA;  for research&quot; to potential for intellectual leadership backed by&#xA;  actual published research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm curious - how do committees assess potential for intellectual leadership? And how do graduate students demonstrate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T02:04:19.777" Title="How do academic position job search committees evaluate potential for intellectual leadership?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1249" CreationDate="2012-04-24T01:31:23.410" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would raise a red flag for me generally - I've never published in a journal that had publication fees just for publishing the papers themselves. Color charges, sure, and if I had submitted to an open access journal they have fees, but nearly every one of them has a mechanism for waiving the fee in the case that the author can't pay. My four suggestions are this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make doubly-sure, as @AnonymousMathematician has stated, that you're not accidentally trying to get published in a for-profit vanity press journal. These won't actually do you much good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact the journal and see if you can get the fees waived, if they are indeed a legitimate scientific journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get in touch with your institution's librarians. Universities often have discount deals with some publishers, are members of groups that waive the fees, etc. Make sure you're not covered that way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop submitting to journals with publication charges if you don't have grant backing. Submitted, or even accepted papers that aren't in press (and it sounds like will never see the light of day) don't do you much good. Those papers are currently just rotting there - no journal is good enough for you to let your work languish without publishing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T01:31:23.410" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-04-24T01:42:46.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To also complement the answers given, here's how it works at my institution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Committee 1:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is a small committee of faculty members, chosen by the student but with particular rules established by the department (Three total, choose one member from List A, two faculty members, two must be tenured professors in the dept. etc) who determine whether you are ready or not to transition from coursework to working on your dissertation proposal, and the dissertation itself. This is often, but not always, a subset of committee #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Committee #2: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;The dissertation committee. This committee has several formal obligations toward the student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They meet with the student when they submit their dissertation proposal, to provide comments, criticism and ideas in order to strengthen the proposal, (theoretically) stop doomed projects from ever being started by the student, and identify any areas they believe the student may need additional coursework or expertise in order to complete their project. They also meet independently without the student during the same meeting to have a candid discussion of said student. This is usually about the project, but can range to cover mentorship concerns, thoughts on their job search, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student is obligated to meet with each member of their committee every 6 months or so to keep them updated on their progress, and the committee as a whole meets at ~the midpoint of the dissertation project to make sure any problems are addressed before they have a chance to &quot;go too far&quot; and stall the defense itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They then meet at the dissertation defense, evaluate the student, and make the determination as to whether or not they have successfully completed their program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain members of the committee do have certain roles, beyond the usual advisor/chair role, but these are usually informal. For example, there is often a statistician on the committee, with the informal understanding that this is the person the student can turn to for questions re: statistical methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T01:42:46.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2012-04-24T02:04:19.777" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a postdoc applicant, you should be starting to develop a distinctive, compelling research agenda and vision.  As a grad student, it's usually enough to work on problems someone gives you, and you can go to your advisor for help as needed.  If you never move beyond this, it's not a great outcome, but you'll eventually get your Ph.D.; you just won't be on track for further research success.  To be a successful postdoc, you need to develop the ability to work more independently.  However, intellectual leadership is more than just independence.  It's not enough just to write papers.  Instead, these papers should fit together and be aimed towards larger goals, in a way you can articulate coherently.  If someone asks you what sort of research you do, you should be able to explain what you are aiming for, how your work differs from other people's, and why your approach is worthwhile and even important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This takes time and comes only with experience - more will be expected of tenure-track job applicants, or people being considered for tenure or a full professorship.  But a postdoc applicant needs to demonstrate a start, by writing a research statement that sounds exciting, and ideally by publishing several papers that build on each other to accomplish something larger than any one of them.  It's even better if other researchers have already started to take up your ideas and apply or extend them, although that's more common in fast-moving fields with short publication cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you don't want is to come across just like your advisor, but with less experience and perhaps less talent.  You can succeed that way if you do fantastic work, but it's not a wise approach for most students: it's just not good advertising to say &quot;I'm basically a less good version of my advisor.&quot;  Even while you are still in graduate school, you should be aiming to differentiate yourself a little from your advisor (with your advisor's help - after all, they shouldn't be trying to produce a clone).  Find some important aspect of the subject that interests you more than your advisor, learn some useful background they don't know well, or find a collaborator who doesn't work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how committees judge this, you've got to make a convincing case in your application.  Your research statement should sound like a future leader, not a student (don't be arrogant, but you shouldn't sound like you are implementing someone else's vision - you need to demonstrate clearly that you understand how everything fits together and are adding your own ideas).  You need to back your research statement up with publications worthy of it, as well as some concrete ideas for future work.  Your letters of recommendation should convey the impact you are already having on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is the best case scenario, and not every application will achieve this, but if you want to get a prestigious postdoc position and go on to a tenure-track job at a research university, then this is what you should be aiming for.  You may feel like a fraud even trying to do this, since you know perfectly well that you still have much more to learn, but you should ignore these feelings.  Everyone recognizes that postdoc applicants are still developing their research abilities, but it's important to be ambitious and show what you are capable of.  (In fact, no matter how far you progress in your career, you'll never reach the point of being able to say &quot;OK, I've reached my full potential and know everything I need to,&quot; but you can't let that stop you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T02:04:19.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T07:11:56.263" Score="9" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to pursue my MBA in a premier business school. Is it better to go straight from my graduation (B.Tech in CS) or get some work experience and then go on with MBA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="724" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-26T05:55:25.963" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T04:22:47.147" Title="Is it better to do an MBA with some work experience?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1263" CreationDate="2012-04-24T08:20:45.037" Score="47" ViewCount="3689" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with many papers in the sciences, there are multiple authors who aren't physically close to each other. I was curious about the most efficient and simplest way to technically share the writing. On the more complicated side would be LaTeX and subsequently using subversion to merge all of the changes. Then there is google docs. Finally, there is the traditional write out edits on word and email the document with comments back and forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T06:39:46.833" LastActivityDate="2020-01-20T12:07:28.430" Title="Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1261" CreationDate="2012-04-24T09:11:46.303" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also depends on what should be the final format of your document. For instance, I write all my articles in Latex, and when collaborating with other researchers, I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt;: I create a Latex repository, and give access rights to the other authors. One good aspect of BitBucket is that they have a special plan for academics, where you can get an unlimited number of collaborators for free. In order to avoid conflicts as much as possible, we usually decompose the main document in one file for each section, and we try to avoid working on the same section at the same time, but even if it happens, then it's usually possible to easily merge the different edits. One nice feature is the possibility to automatically receive notifications when one author commit her changes. Also, since anybody can create a BitBucket account, there isn't the problem of creating an account to an external collaborator on an internal server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, BitBucket is not the only possibility, and one could also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt;, or even &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt;, although for the latter, I don't really like the lack of native versioning system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I don't work directly on a paper, but for instance on a draft for a project proposal, then I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt;, because it's quite simple to do some collaborative editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T09:11:46.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1261" CreationDate="2012-04-24T10:48:18.833" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your collaborator is not technically inclined, then there are a few possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is very simple, robust and real-time (no need of thinking 'which version is the most recent'). I created a lot of documents with it (though only 1 scientific article). A good idea is to use different colours so that it is clear who wrote what. One drawback is that it may be not as simple for equations and than you will need to copy things from there to LateX manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annotating PDF files with &lt;a href=&quot;http://get.adobe.com/reader/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adobe Reader&lt;/a&gt; or sth equivalent&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also simple and robust. However, as it is not real-time you need to keep track of which version is current and it is not possible to make changes in the same time. Here you are the only person responsible for changes in LaTeX file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annotating or changing with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openoffice.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenOffice&lt;/a&gt;, MS Word or another office package...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Another variant which allows you collaborator to make direct changes, at cost of some robustness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a practical remark for the two last: always keep track of the version, e.g. &lt;code&gt;draft_20120424_prof.pdf&lt;/code&gt;, where you add both date of the last edit (not &lt;code&gt;final5&lt;/code&gt;!) and name of the last editor. When exchanging things by e-mail it is easy to loose track which version is the most recent and in fact lost changes (often not knowing about that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possibilities, requiring some technical knowledge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writelatex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writeLaTeX&lt;/a&gt; or sth similar (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sharelatex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ShareLaTeX&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scribtex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScribTeX&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.latexlab.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX Lab&lt;/a&gt; - the one using GoogleDocs, ...)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Tools for editing  documents collaboratively (in real-time) and compile it within one's browser (so no need to install anything). Though some knowledge of LaTeX is required (at least to know how not to spoil a file).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;ScribTeX(the only one I used) gives version control and you can see which lines were changed (as in version control system), so not need of guessing what might have been changed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;EDIT: ScribTeX is being replaced by ShareLaTeX.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;writeLaTeX has live preview and may be the most suitable for beginners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; or another version-control system, e.g. at &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, it may require technical skills beyond edition of LaTeX. While it is not hard to use it, &lt;strike&gt;I never did&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5277/why-use-version-control-systems-for-writing-a-paper&quot;&gt;I am using&lt;/a&gt; it for writing papers and I would never try to use it with someone with low computer literacy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; - it is a good stuff for sharing files for a project but NOT for making changes in files. First, you never know &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the changes happen. Second, you don't know &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; the changes happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an article on it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://robjhyndman.com/researchtips/online-collaborative-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research tips - Online collaborative writing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27549/simultaneous-collaborative-editing-of-a-latex-file&quot;&gt;Simultaneous collaborative editing of a LaTeX file&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;tex.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/3044/tools-for-collaborative-paper-writing&quot;&gt;Tools for collaborative paper-writing&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3/compiling-documents-online&quot;&gt;Compiling documents online&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;tex.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T15:52:11.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1260" CreationDate="2012-04-24T10:58:08.773" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, MBA is something that you do when you have significant work experience. There is a good reason for that. If you go straight from your graduation into the program, you will learn a few thing on the theoretical side of business administration. But if you already have encountered troubles in management, you will learn a lot from the numerous case studies (because most of the learning in a MBA is through case studies) and exchanges with other &quot;students&quot;.&#xA;Moreover, the main advantage of a MBA, besides the few things you learn, is the network that you will acquire, and only a few fellow students will be ready to network with somebody without experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T10:58:08.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1261" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:38:22.483" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're working with Word documents, Word 2007 included a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; nifty merge changes feature. &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/merge-comments-and-changes-from-several-documents-into-1-document-HP001221654.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This online help document from microsoft.com&lt;/a&gt; details how it works, but doesn't really do the feature justice. See the following screenshot for an idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRNnZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRNnZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Document compare in Word 2007&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briefly, you can click on &quot;compare&quot; (in ribbon, third from right), and it lets you choose two source documents. From there, it opens the very nice interface shown above, with the two source docs on the right, the merged doc in the middle, and the changes on the left (or bottom, you can hide it if you don't wan t it). You use it like any other &quot;track changes&quot;; just go through, change by change, using the &quot;previous&quot;, &quot;next&quot;, &quot;accept&quot;, and &quot;reject&quot; buttons om the Changes section of the ribbon. When you're done just save the combined document, and you've got your merged doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used this a number of times, and it's a very useful feature. By far the best aspect of this is that it can be used with the technically incompetent. Just tell them, &quot;take the document, make changes, I'll deal with it&quot;; I've used this with my technologically challenged boss a number of times, and it's been a lifesaver. Given your situation, this may be your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T12:38:22.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1232" CreationDate="2012-04-24T21:57:39.627" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a lot of academics tend to shy away from things like a pizza party. I would suggest thinking about things that connect common interests. For example, consider starting a book club on some relatively broad topic of interest, or a group where folks read and comment on each other's work. These kind of things can be really valuable of they  ring together folks from different specalizations. It is always good to get a different perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another example, think about setting up a brown bag lecture series. These can be great ways to get folks out of their offices and talking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, I would generaly suggest not trying to set up events that have 150 people invited. Think smaller and more targeted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T21:57:39.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="748" CreationDate="2012-04-24T23:09:51.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like Gradekeeper remains the go-to program. So if you want to do something more sophisticated you probably want to think about working up some macros in Excel. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://divisbyzero.com/2008/12/22/how-to-curve-an-exam-and-assign-grades/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post has some good example macros&lt;/a&gt;. There were three extensive discussions of gradekeeping software on Profhacker that you might want to skim. One on &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/grade-keeping-programs/22745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gradekeeping programs in general&lt;/a&gt;, one on a neat iPad app called &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/gradebook-pro-or-one-grading-app-to-rule-them-all/37942&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GradeBook Pro&lt;/a&gt; and one that focused on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/create-an-easy-online-gradebook-with-learnboost/39272&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;few cloud based apps for grade keeping&lt;/a&gt;. None of these seem to really do what you want, and with any of these you probably want to talk to someone at your institution about any policies they might have, particularly for something like a cloud app or an iPhone app regarding where student grades are kept and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T23:09:51.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1232" CreationDate="2012-04-25T02:33:01.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eat lunch with people.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many researcher don't have very flexible schedules, they do occasionally eat. However, creating a structured lunch environment where there is a daily meeting location at a consistent time with a knowledge that anyone can drop by without feeling excluded, closeted academics might feel like they might have to make time to grab some lunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are the occasional department happy hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T02:33:01.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1232" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:00:38.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our department, the assistant professors go out for drinks once a month (a fixed day of the week and a fixed week of the month). That tends to work out quite well: we can let off steam, compare notes on our students (and what senior faculty dish out in the name of advice :)), and generally get a nice group. I've had a few collaborations start because of this as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general faculty also do a drinks night occasionally, but not as regularly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:00:38.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1272" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:52:57.760" Score="16" ViewCount="3254" Body="&lt;p&gt;In EE/EC/CS departments, there are certain fields that are theory-based (like the algo or complexity groups), ones that lean towards systems implementation (OS, programming languages, etc) and others have a component of both (like networking). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a field like networking, there are professors who work on hard-core math modelling (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~srikant/&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) and people who work on implementation and protocol design (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nms.csail.mit.edu/~hari/&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;). From what I glean from my own paper-reading experience, the natures of these papers are as different as chalk and cheese: the math papers seem to look for ways to cast the problem in a mathematical framework and try to derive their results from such a set-up, while the implementation-oriented papers conceive of some algorithm and a protocol (based solely on logical argument rather than any rigorous mathematical premise) and present the results of their software simulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While on paper people argue there is no divide between theory and practice, at least to me the approach towards research differs widely between faculty members in the same field and department. Now to my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is math emphasis in an applied field like networking? Industry work is almost always simulation-based from whatever I have seen. After all, networks are there to be implemented and deployed, so why bother about probabilistic modelling? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When there are two modes of research in a particular field, will the PhD student's approach play a role in faculty recruitment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a widespread notion of one being superior to another? I know of professors and students who widely emphasise math and pooh-pooh &quot;S-BAA: simulation based on arbitrary algorithm&quot; type of papers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T05:48:55.563" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T07:30:52.863" Title="How important is mathematics in engineering research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1270" CreationDate="2012-04-25T10:00:38.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How important is math emphasis in an applied field like networking?&#xA;  Industry work is almost always simulation-based from whatever I have&#xA;  seen. After all, networks are there to be implemented and deployed, so&#xA;  why bother about probabilistic modelling and research? In other words,&#xA;  why should an engineering department award a degree to a thesis where&#xA;  the problem has an engineering cause, but everything is simply applied&#xA;  math?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these fields, math is a tool, as coding or lab experiment. Even if you have a full mathematical analysis of a protocol, you have to conduct experiments, because real life is not one of our - too simple - models. Why bother on probabilistic modelling? because we have to find ideas for designing algorithms, hoping that the performance in the real world will be somehow related to those in the formal model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When there are two modes of research in a particular field, will the&#xA;  PhD student's approach play a role in faculty recruitment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it almost always will. You apply in a team, probably the team is inclined in some of the ways, and want either to make the team even stronger wrt an approach or, to the contrary, to open itself to other ways of thinking.&#xA;I also remember my own recruitment, where the fact that I am in the middle (maths + experiments) was a big plus for me- since people assumed that I will be able to speak to a lot of people in the lab, from theory to practical people (and that's what happened).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a widespread notion of one being superior to another? I&#xA;  know of professors and students who widely emphasise math and&#xA;  pooh-pooh &quot;S-BAA: simulation-based on arbitrary algorithm&quot; type of&#xA;  papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, only one thing is important: making things that work. You will always find people that think that the theoretical approach (resp. the experimental approach) is superior to the experimental approach (resp. the theoretical approach). Both are wrong, what we want is usable (in real conditions) algorithms with guarantees (controlled error, correctness, etc.), how we achieve this goal is interesting for us, but not the main point of our research (&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;recall that the question is about engineering research&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T10:00:38.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1270" CreationDate="2012-04-25T11:12:29.530" Score="12" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How important is math emphasis in &lt;strike&gt;an applied field like&lt;/strike&gt; networking?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Networking is an enormous field, which runs the full spectrum from pure mathematics to actual real-world deployment, with many shades of applied mathematics, algorithm development, modeling, simulation, and experimentation in between.  There are far more than &quot;two modes of research&quot; in networking, as you put it.  Mathematical emphasis is fundamental at the mathematical end of the field, useless at the deployment end, and somewhere in between in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it differently, it depends on what you mean by &quot;networking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why should an engineering department award a degree to a thesis where the problem has an engineering cause, but everything is simply applied math?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no contradiction here.  I'd estimate that somewhere between a third and half of our engineering faculty at my university can legitimately call themselves applied mathematicians.  There was even a small but serious proposal a few years ago to move our mathematics department into our college of engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the PhD student's approach play a role in faculty recruitment?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course!  Hiring patterns at my own university (in both CS and ECE) suggest that the networking PhDs most likely to be hired as faculty comfortably bridge the so-called gap between theory and application, speaking to both camps in their native languages, and applying techniques from both camps to Actually Make Things Work.  (Sylvain's answer is consistent with this observation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a widespread notion of one being superior to another?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course.  Networking people are people.  As in any other wide-ranging field, many experimentalists think all theoretical work is pointless symbol-pushing, and many theoreticians think that all experimental work is mindless hacking.  They're both wrong.  &lt;strong&gt;Some&lt;/strong&gt; theoretical work is pointless symbol-pushing, and &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; experimental work is mindless hacking, which is exactly as it should be.  Neither viewpoint is &quot;better&quot;; they're just different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not chalk and cheese, but chocolate and ginger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T11:12:29.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1388" CreationDate="2012-04-25T11:55:17.727" Score="25" ViewCount="9327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a social scientist working primarily on Linux, but also at times required to work on Windows systems at the University. I have been looking to improve my productivity in the academic workflow which primarily consist of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collecting literature, reference-management, review notes etc. (currently zotero)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outlining, writing long documents (currently Lyx)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task, time and project management (currently misplaced and lost pieces of paper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that these steps apply to most academics, and many will share my interest in developing a more productive workflow. In my research on potential solutions to this issue, I keep being drawn by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org-mode&quot;&gt;org-mode&lt;/a&gt; as a potential swiss-knife solution that can take care of all these needs, and be my mainstay as a personal-information-manager, organiser and text editor. But being built on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs&quot;&gt;emacs&lt;/a&gt;, I find it forbidding. I also have no need to program anything, so learning emacs seems like major overkill for my needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could academics who use org-mode or a similar solution for organising their workflow give examples of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; they use it? Also helpful would be an evaluation of productivity improvements that such users have themselves experienced, and the kind of productivity improvements that can be expected with a basic academic workflow described above. I am interested in evaluating whether it pays off in terms of productivity improvements in the face of what appears to be a massive learning curve, especially as I don't need any programming tools? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that this might lead to subjective opinions, so I would request academics with a similar work profile to reply based on their personal experience regarding the learning curve, possible benefits, example cases and perhaps alternatives they have found superior (preferably also cross-platform and open source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T12:51:13.400" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T15:27:14.177" Title="Use cases of org-mode as a scientific productivity tool for academics without programming needs" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1276" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:00:43.497" Score="31" ViewCount="8158" Body="&lt;p&gt;While making some paper search in my scientific field, sometimes I find articles that are not published in journals or conference proceedings, but as &lt;strong&gt;technical reports&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I've never written a technical report, and I've never even been asked to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering: what's the difference between a technical report and a scientific paper?&#xA;Why some researchers publish a work as technical report instead of sending it to a conference or a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When do you suggest to write one instead of addressing it to a conference or a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: It seems to me that writing technical reports is more diffused in English-speaking world than in Continental Europe. Is it true? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T17:01:29.807" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T22:52:04.593" Title="When and why a scientific technical report is written?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1275" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:08:54.443" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main advantages of a research report is that it's published very fast, and without reviewing process. From what I've seen, a research report is basically used: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to publish a longer version of a paper, for instance including proofs or detailed examples that couldn't fit in a version submitted to a conference. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to put a timestamp on an idea, in order to be able to claim &quot;We did it back then&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to create a reference that can be cited for project reporting, even though the work has not been published (yet). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to make a pre-print document freely available, for instance if the published version is behind a paywall. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such features are particularly useful when one wants to disseminate (for instance sharing with some colleagues) some unpublished material. Basically, I'd say that most of this can also be achieved by submitting the paper to a public repository, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: considering the language question, intuitively, I would say that when research reports are used in the publication process, it's likely they are written in English. If a non-English speaking university does not offer a mechanism to submit research reports written in English, that might explain why it's not used. However, I've written research reports in France and Italy (in English). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T14:08:54.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1275" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:55:14.650" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it varies by field but other uses I have come across in my field are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required by a grant funding agency (i.e. a report of the findings from the study to the grant agency). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/236057.pdf&quot;&gt;Here is such an example of a NIJ report&lt;/a&gt;. These tend to be &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; longer and more detailed than a single journal article. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reports disseminated by other institutions. For instance, the non-for-profit I work for releases technical reports that we want to disseminate to the public (the same goes for the state agency I work for). The material &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be the same as subsequent journal articles but the intended audience is not limited to academics and is much broader. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP325.html&quot;&gt;Here is an example of this by the RAND corporation&lt;/a&gt;. Another popular one in the Social Sciences is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/library.php&quot;&gt;Campbell collaboration library of meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are similar to what Charles stated, but I would nit-pick a bit with the motivation. They aren't always just another means to disseminate what are otherwise journal articles. It is also a very potential heterogeneous field of papers. The RAND and Campbell articles I cited above are typically considered very high esteem (and go through a similar peer-review process to more typical journals). But pretty much any agency can release a technical report (put your agency name on it and post the pdf on the internet) so they can vary dramatically in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T14:55:14.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:13:28.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eclipseppm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eclipse PPM&lt;/a&gt; is a good tool - it's project/project portfolio management software. Quite a few universities and colleges use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="728" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T15:18:55.873" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T15:18:55.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:40:36.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to all that was mentioned before, as a &lt;strong&gt;student member&lt;/strong&gt; of some of these associations &lt;em&gt;(experience with the ACM)&lt;/em&gt;, you may apply for some travel funding... that will enable you to attend a (or some) conference(s) - in case your university/project doen't give you enough money to do that (I personally know about several cases)- ,  and then you have the opportunity to keep in touch with your peers. It should be good, to a certain extent, for your carrer. Maybe in a simple conference you can meet the guy you've referenced for a couple of time (that doesn't answer your emails... lol), and talk to him about your research projects/ideas, receive some (good) feedback, and so on... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T15:40:36.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1282" CreationDate="2012-04-25T23:29:21.637" Score="36" ViewCount="14845" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was applying for grad school, I felt that my CV was pretty empty and so I included all my research related presentations (posters/talks) from conferences/competitions/etc (11 of them at the time). However, I am not sure how much of a role they played in my acceptance at that time (I feel I mostly got accepted based on my papers and two very strong reference letters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I keep a semi-complete (semi- because of infrequent updates) list of presentations on my website; this is mostly so I can post slides. However, I feel the list has gotten too long for a CV (~25 items; about a full page) and other more important parts of my CV (such as publications) have grown to need that space more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When should I start omitting or shortening the talks on my CV?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I include a 'selected' talks section: How many talks should I select? Should I select them based on prestige of venue, or uniform-covering of my interests, or uniform-covering of my time (show that presentations are a regular activity)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More context: I am at the graduate-student level in my academic progression. A related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1157/66&quot;&gt;Do presentations given during interviews count as invited talks?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T17:15:01.337" Title="When should I stop including talks on my cv?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="941" CreationDate="2012-04-26T00:25:48.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student, and my experience with attempting research has been frustrating at best. Science is a political ballpark like any other profession. Tact and suave are your best friends when it comes to wooing a potential mentor in academia. Hard work is necessary as well, but hard work alone will only get you so far in the modern socioeconomic landscape. If a professor senses that they can get away with ignoring you then they probably will. This is especially true of large institutions with thousands of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you can really do is just talk to people and hope for the best. Make sure you talk to a number of people, and don't put all of your hopes in just one researcher or professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="729" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T00:25:48.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1280" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:08:07.040" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: note that there is a difference between an academic CV and a resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;strong&gt;academic CV&lt;/strong&gt; typically lists everything you've done related to academia; every talk, every conference paper, every award, every grant, every mentored postdoc, grad, and possibly undergrad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;resume&lt;/strong&gt; is a two-page document that summarizes your work/academic experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Terminology may differ, some may refer to the first as a resume also; semantics aside, there is a distinction between the two documents.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the answer to your question depends on which document you want to complete. The first should have everything, no matter how old. The second should list your most important, more recent accomplishments, in the interest of space. Regarding the second, the answer to &quot;when should I remove stuff&quot; is simply &quot;whenever you have newer and better things to put in it's place&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T02:08:07.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1280" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:49:46.927" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you do more things, you can become more selective with what you list.  I think most computer scientists quickly stop listing conference talks for papers that already appear in their CV.  Then you can stop listing small talks you gave at your own department, etc.  People who are very well established often become even more selective, listing only the big invited talks.  You have to figure out the right balance to strike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's no right or wrong answer -- it's just a matter of how you want to present yourself and what you want to emphasize.  I also don't think that section is at all the most important.  It's good to show you've gone around and given some talks, but I think you're mostly evaluated on your actual research.  Also, I don't understand the concern of running out of space on a CV; CVs unlike resumes have no page limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T02:49:46.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1292" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:57:52.487" Score="13" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been to a few conferences that worked based on precirculated papers. That is, everyone submits their papers in advance and the assumption is that conference goers who come to a given talk have read the paper in advance. In principle this seems ideal, we can use that face-to-face time to discuss work instead of just listening to people read their papers (this people reading their paper at a conference thing happens all the time in the humanities). In what circumstances should conferences precirculate papers? Is it something that is best for small conferences, or are there good examples of large conferences that work this way too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T08:00:40.580" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T15:56:43.723" Title="When should conferences precirculate papers?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1288" CreationDate="2012-04-26T03:02:56.130" Score="16" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it better to contact a publisher early in the writing process so that the editor can be involved in shaping the project, or is it better to submit a full academic book manuscript? In my case, this would be for a first academic book. If this is something that is dependent on particular academic fields my field is digital humanities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T12:36:16.900" Title="At what point in the writing process should one contact an academic book publisher?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1287" CreationDate="2012-04-26T05:37:09.230" Score="45" ViewCount="4990" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to write a cover letter to journal when submitting a manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the letter, it is expected that I propose 5 referees. Is this the only reason to write a cover letter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the cover letter be sent to the referees or only to Journal's staff?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I feel reluctant to praise my contribution in the cover letter. The article should defend it itself. Is the praising important part of the cover letter? Is it required?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="280" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T09:21:53.217" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T09:21:53.217" Title="Are cover letters sent to referees and should you highlight the contribution of your paper in the cover letter?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1286" CreationDate="2012-04-26T06:31:16.727" Score="27" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is also polite to write a cover letter, even if nobody asks for it. And the purpose is often to ease the process of finding the referees, so helping to do so by giving insights about the paper that cannot be write in the paper is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you mention potential referees, I guess it will not be sent to the chosen referees. Otherwise (in my experience) it is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to praise your results in the cover letter. Just state shortly the results (say more than the abstract, less than the introduction). If you think that there are issues related to the paper, this is also the place to state them (conflict of interest, new way of considering something - which can hurt someone's feelings -, direct negative comment on related work, etc.). If you think that, because your paper is gap-bridging, you need reviewers from several fields, you should say it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T06:31:16.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1285" CreationDate="2012-04-26T07:54:38.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Book writing is a very thankless task—it takes a long time, and the profits probably don't make up for the cost of the time it takes you to write the book, unless you happen to write a textbook that becomes the default for a field. On the other hand, in some disciplines (particularly in the humanities), a published book is practically a requirement for tenure, so you'll want to make sure that you do things right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would depend upon where you are in the process. If you haven't already started writing, I'd shop around a prospective outline of the book plus an introductory chapter or two &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you get too much further. Then you'll have a sense of what the publishers would be interested in. If you've gotten a lot written, then you just need to start shopping the full idea around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T07:54:38.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2012-04-26T08:04:16.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't see this happening in any sort of large-scale conference. This would involve too much work and logistical planning on the part of everyone involved to be successful. It's hard enough to get abstracts for many conferences—let alone finished papers far enough in advance that people have time to read them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this last point is another major obstacle: people don't have a lot of time to read all the papers that we're supposed to, let alone a bunch for a particular conference. The main reason why I would undertake that much work was if it were for a relatively specialized workshop in my personal field of endeavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T08:04:16.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1275" CreationDate="2012-04-26T10:20:26.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answers already posted, sometimes when a professor is given a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professorial_chair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;professorial chair&lt;/a&gt; (endowment), he or she is required to submit formal documentation describing the research done while &quot;sitting in the chair.&quot;  Some departments/colleges/universities will accept (non-refereed) technical reports in lieu of refereed papers just to get around the technicality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T10:20:26.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1285" CreationDate="2012-04-26T12:36:16.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what is better, but I think it depends on where you want to publish. I can only talk about my limited experience, hoping it will be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've published a book with the MIT Press, and when my coauthors and I decided to contact them, the book was far from finished, but we had enough content for them to have an idea of what to expect -- which was one of their requirements. We then had to answer questions to help them decide whether or not our project would be  worth their time and investment and to tell them when we would be done with the final (preprint) version of our manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They haven't been involved at all in shaping the project as you say, although they did a wonderful job of proofreading the final text. Which was a relief, given that none of us are native English speakers. But I have the feeling that publishers typically limit themselves to that job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T12:36:16.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2012-04-26T15:56:43.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some workshops in the CS field (more specifically in a subfield of Software Engineering, e.g. VaMoS - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://uni-leipzig.de/~vamos2012/?q=node/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;workshop format&lt;/a&gt; -, in which there is a kind of &quot;precirculation of papers&quot;, before the event take place. The workshop format includes a kind of &quot;discussion session&quot;, in which, before attending the event, one paper is sent to an attendee other than the paper's (set of) author(s), so that he/she is in charge of reading the paper and preparing some discussion slides. During the event, after the paper's presentation, the discussant will provide attendance with his/her point of view on the paper, thus promoting the actual &quot;discussion session&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, it is a small-scale precirculation of papers, in a sense that a paper is sent previously to only a few people (usually an author of another paper). However IMHO such a format provides event's participants with an interactive environment (in the worst case, at least you, as a paper author, will be sure that at least one another peer has read you paper... lol).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://uni-leipzig.de/~vamos2012/?q=node/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;workshop website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each session will be organized such that discussions among presenters&#xA;  of papers, discussants and other participants are stimulated.&#xA;  Typically, after a paper is presented, it is immediately discussed by&#xA;  pre-assigned discussants, after which a free discussion involving all&#xA;  participants follows. Each session is closed by a general discussion&#xA;  of all papers presented in the session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be very honest, I guess it's not feasible to do such a thing in big conferences, due to time constraints, but for small (and focused) events, like workshops, I guess this idea is very welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said before, there are some other workshops that follow this same format: &lt;a href=&quot;http://planet-sl.org/fosd2012/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=90%3aworkshop-format&amp;amp;catid=35%3apresentation&amp;amp;Itemid=313&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FOSD&lt;/a&gt; and  &lt;a href=&quot;http://please2012.haifa.il.ibm.com/format.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLEASE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T15:56:43.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2012-04-26T19:05:02.560" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three answers to this question; I'll put them all here for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Don't.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-tasking is a necessity when there are many tasks that demand your attention all at once. The people who most need these skills are either managers, whose work demands that they divide their attention among their subordinates as necessary, and those working in a highly collaborative environment, where interaction with colleagues happens regularly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, this will almost never happen. Your responsibilities will typically include coursework, teaching assistantships, and research duties, and writing. Even your collaborations will happen at a slow pace. You'll rarely be in a situation where you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to get in touch with someone within the hour; almost all your issues will be able to wait a day. Considering that almost all research shows that multitasking decreases productivity, consider yourself lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, if you can train yourself to focus on a single task at a time, your work will benefit from it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/&quot;&gt;Pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently (~6 mos) read about this technique online, and I've found it very useful for certain tasks. The concept is ridiculously simple. Before you start working, write down the task you're about to start on a piece of paper. Start a 25 minute timer and work until it runs out. Take a 5 min stretch, put a tic next to the task on the piece of paper, and then repeat until you're done. If you need to switch to something else, write it down on the paper as well, and switch every 25 minutes. This way, you always have at least 25 minutes to do each task, and you can set up your multitasking in 25 minute chunks. (As an added benefit, you're taking stretch breaks every 5 minutes, which is good for your health.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an answer below that mentions this, but doesn't do it justice. I've been using this for years and it's a wonderful way of keeping track of what you need to do. At it's simplest, the technique just advocates that you make a to-do list of everything you need to do. The useful part of this technique is how he separates tasks; he puts them into &quot;contexts&quot;, which you can think of as &quot;environments&quot;. Some tasks will be done at home, some at work, some wherever you have email access, etc. By breaking up tasks like this, you can easily see what you need to do at any given time by simply consulting the correct list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique has gained immense popularity, and because of that many to-do lists online feature &quot;GTD compatibility&quot;. This basically means that they let you make lists of your to-dos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method comes with a catch; if you don't do it rigorously, you may as well not do it at all. As soon as some tasks &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; on your lists, then you'll stop checking the lists, and then the whole thing goes to pot. However, if you keep the lists current, then it's an immensely helpful technique. For forgetful people like me, the to-do concept is a veritable necessity, and the context idea is a good way of segmenting what you need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T19:05:02.560" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-26T19:05:02.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1296" CreationDate="2012-04-27T12:50:05.873" Score="27" ViewCount="2779" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/890/546&quot;&gt;Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time?&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1078/546&quot;&gt;Is it acceptable to publish a paper using an affiliation with a former employer?&lt;/a&gt; except that I am a retiree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to submit a paper to a journal without mentioning any affiliation because I am no longer employeed. I have been thinking about a footnote in the paper indicating I am a retiree from my former employer for two reasons: I am receiving pension from the company pension fund and it is a well-known company in U.S. Using their name may make me look good. On the other hand, I feel like it's cheating because I am not their employee anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T04:42:21.917" Title="Affiliation for a retiree" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2033" CreationDate="2012-04-27T13:17:34.130" Score="13" ViewCount="2347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated in the UK last year with an M Ost, an integrated masters of osteopathy. This is currently the standard qualification offered by colleges teaching osteopathy in the UK, although it's changed several times in the past and seems likely to change again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My course consisted of 480 credits. 360 credits were at undergraduate level (including 120 at honours level) and a further 120 credits were at master's level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am intrigued by research, and wonder if it would be possible to eventually apply for a PhD, but I have no idea whether applicants with integrated masters courses are considered. I suspect not, and assume I would need to do some extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I don't understand what that extra work would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can tell.... I am a little lost! This seems the most basic of questions, but I am struggling to find any clear advice. I have contacted members of the faculty in my old college, but they haven't not been very helpful. Suggestions have included doing a further qualification in osteopathic studies -- something I'm not keen on. I would prefer something that is science-based, and would be accepted as qualification to go on to apply for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this is quite an open-ended question. Ideally I'm probably looking for pointers as to where and how to continue my search. Should I contact PhD-providing universities and colleges directly, and ask what I would need to do in order to be considered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that PhDs are hard, hard work. I am not looking for questions around why I want to do one, or alternative options. Many thanks for understanding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="733" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T09:24:20.510" Title="I have an &quot;integrated masters&quot; degree. How can I eventually gain a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2012-04-27T15:47:34.433" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best source of advice on these issues are the journal editorial staff. Some journals may require you to list your last affiliation with the word &quot;retired&quot; added in parentheses; some journals may prefer you not to list an affiliation at all. Some others may not care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T15:47:34.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1302" CreationDate="2012-04-28T08:30:40.067" Score="15" ViewCount="1526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I occasionally receive &quot;cold-call&quot; applications from graduate or postdoctoral candidates interested in working in my research group. Most of the time, they are of no interest—it's just a &quot;form letter&quot;-type application. However, once in a while, I get an application from someone who I would consider giving an interview to—if I actually had an open position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to do is to let people know that I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; interested in such candidates, even though I don't have an open job for them. Is there a way to express this interest, and to encourage them to apply again when a new position becomes available. Is there a good way to do this—most of the time, such emails sound very trite, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T15:41:17.647" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T19:50:04.073" Title="How to show interest in a candidate when no positions are available?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-28T09:37:09.940" Score="7" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if it would be worth emailing departments that I haven't applied to this year, asking if they'd be willing to take a look at my application material. Any advice, or should I just wait till next year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied to too few places this year, because I couldn't afford all the application fees. I'm saving up now but I feel bad that I don't have anything planned for next year, and I really want to begin my higher education since I feel strongly about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="736" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T18:06:17.300" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T09:43:09.670" Title="Is the end of April too late to find placement in Ph.D programs in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2012-04-28T10:30:59.613" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the most part, yes, it is too late to be considered for graduate admissions at most programs for this coming fall, as most schools have already made their decisions as to who they will admit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you are an exceptionally qualified candidate, and unusual circumstances have taken place, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be possible to be considered by specific programs. However, there has to be some really strange events taking place. (For instance, one school I know had a banquet during their one prospective students' weekend, and accidentally food poisoned everybody—and ended up with 20% of their expected yield of students. They probably would have loved additional late applicants!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, basically, you'd need a department that had a major shortfall of accepted students compared to their research needs, and you'd need to be a candidate that would be strong enough to accept in the regular admissions cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T10:30:59.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1297" CreationDate="2012-04-28T13:55:17.433" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This answer is about faculty candidates, not graduate student or postdoc candidates.  (I misunderstood the original question.)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, be honest with the candidate, both about your interest and about your ability to hire.  Yes, we are very interested.  No, we don't have any regular faculty slots this year.  Yes, we would love to fly you out, have you give a talk, meet with some of our faculty and students, maybe have a chat with the dean, and see where things go from there.  Make no promises you can't actually keep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, a lack of open slots does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean it is impossible to hire.  Your college or campus may have finds set aside for &quot;excellence&quot; hires, or for cross-departmental research initiatives (like &quot;clean water&quot; or &quot;computational science&quot;), or for dual-career families.  Some other overlapping department may be willing to give you half a slot for a joint appointment.  Another faculty member in your department or college may have just unexpectedly retired, resigned, moved to administration, failed to get tenure, or died.  Your dean may be impressed enough (or encouraged enough by other senior faculty) to give you an extra slot just for that person &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a slot takes a lot of legwork and a lot of political capital—you may burn a future slot even if the candidate doesn't come.  So they'd better &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; be special, and you'd better know that they'll come if a position is actually offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have seen this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T19:50:04.073" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T19:50:04.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1307" CreationDate="2012-04-28T18:27:53.977" Score="22" ViewCount="1409" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scientist, the idea of a &quot;research notebook,&quot; or its functional equivalent, has been well ingrained into me. However, it's not clear to me if this is a universal phenomenon, or if it's limited to the sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students working in the humanities and other fields—such as literature, economics, or philosophy—what is the working equivalent of the laboratory notebook? If not, what is the preferred method of keeping records in those fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T08:02:07.337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T21:09:14.727" Title="What is the equivalent of the laboratory notebook in the humanities?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1297" CreationDate="2012-04-28T19:03:49.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being in the situation of looking for postdoctoral positions, I can at least give you my feelings of how I would understand that the person I contacted is interested, but cannot provide a position right now: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, replying is already a good sign of interest. There are many persons who don't even take the time to answer to an official application for an open position (apart from the standard acknowledgement email), and you have to consider that you don't get the job if you don't hear from them. So, if you take the time to answer, that shows that you have at least a bit of interest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you provide a &quot;personalized&quot; answer, that shows that you took the time to read some of the applicant's papers, then it's clear that you are interested, and even if you can't provide a position, you might be interested in a collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ideal would be if you can invite the applicant to give a talk, even though it's clear that there is no job following It would be a good opportunity for the applicant to talk about his work, to get some practice, meet new people, and that can also give you the opportunity to talk about creating a project together. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, when one contacts a professor even though there are no official open positions, there are no really high expectations. But knowing that the professor is interested, but has no funding, is great, because it also opens the possibility to apply for a position in one year or two, when some funding is available. In order to show your interest, you can consider it as offering a potential collaboration: you can't provide money, but you would be glad to work with the applicant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T19:03:49.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-29T01:38:47.213" Score="39" ViewCount="1605" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's a tactful, respectful way to notify job applicants that you won't be hiring them?  I see a lot of angry online discussion of this issue.  Nobody seems to like the common &quot;if you don't hear back, you're not hired&quot; approach, but it's easy to go wrong in other ways (too short, too long, too condescending, too cheerful, too early in the hiring season so it seems insulting, too late so it's no longer useful, etc.).  Of course, part of the problem is that being rejected is intrinsically painful, so nobody's ever going to enjoy a rejection letter.  The question is how to provide useful and timely information while avoiding adding unnecessary pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:28:56.373" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:28:56.373" Title="How should one turn down academic job applicants?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1303" CreationDate="2012-04-29T08:40:37.677" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from a perspective of one who has been rejected a lot of times (although from schools and research programmer, then as an undergraduate), fast and informative feedback is the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me there is little difference between hearing &lt;em&gt;&quot;the competition was very high&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&quot;get  out&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Saying that &lt;em&gt;&quot;there was only one place&quot;&lt;/em&gt; when if fact you don't want to hire someone is very short sighted. It may make the decision smoother, but in a long run it will create false impressions and hopes; and, in fact, such approach makes it impossible to say that actually you want to hire someone, but you run out of positions (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1297/how-to-show-interest-in-a-candidate-when-no-positions-are-available&quot;&gt;How to show interest in a candidate when no positions are available?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;waiting long is bad both psychologically and for practical reasons (i.e. other plans); I don't see a reason for not rejecting as soon as you are sure,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is important to distinguish if you don't want someone now or at all,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any feedback is of great value;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;otherwise one gets no idea what was wrong, if it makes sense to apply again and how to improve; I would love to hear &lt;em&gt;&quot;there were 5 places but only 1 funding for someone with your status; I had expected someone with stronger skills in X and Y (but your Z is more than fine)&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T09:49:58.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-29T11:52:03.427" Score="9" ViewCount="565" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of you probably have already lived these career turning point: your PhD program is going to end, and you have to choose an university research group to apply for a postdoc position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which factors do you consider as more important in this choice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take research group X at university Y.&#xA;Which factors you consider to decide if it's worth to write to them for a postdoc opportunity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research group project's affinity with your PhD research work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research group's excellence, and international ranking of its team&#xA;leader researchers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research group members' human affinity with your personality (if perceptible)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research group project's scientific novelty and genius?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University excellence, and its international&#xA;ranking? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distance from your hometown? Proximity to your hometown?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Going abroad?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The university city/country way of life?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other elements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please tell which of these (and other) elements you consider the most important (or by giving a percentage to each, if you want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T12:33:33.013" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T09:09:28.647" Title="Which factors in PostDoc opportunities choice?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1305" CreationDate="2012-04-29T12:40:00.040" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I think the frame of this question isn't quite right. I would argue that these are criteria that I would use if I were choosing between multiple postdoc &lt;em&gt;offers&lt;/em&gt;, but these are not necessarily appropriate when deciding where to &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is decide what my &quot;deal-breakers&quot; are: that is, what are the criteria that would prevent me from accepting an offer, regardless of how good it is? For instance, if you need to take care of an ill family member that lives in a specific location, then you're probably not going to want to consider international programs. Similarly, if you're determined to go into industry, you're not going to be inclined to take a purely theoretical postdoc project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once you've decided upon those deal-breakers, if you then see a project for which those criteria do not apply, then you should go ahead and submit an application. You don't have much to lose by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the offers, the challenge is tougher. All of the criteria you've listed are valid, and it's hard to say which of those might be the most important—it all depends on your own personal circumstances. One hopes that research concerns are the most important of all, but as I've mentioned above, there are valid reasons why that might not be the case. The only thing that I would make sure of is that whatever option you decide for in the end, it helps you in moving on with your career beyond your postdoc. There's nothing worse than getting stuck in &quot;PD purgatory,&quot; where you can't really stay as a postdoc any longer, but are having problems moving to a permanent position afterward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T12:40:00.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1301" CreationDate="2012-04-29T14:56:44.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked my wife, which works in art history/egyptology. So first, &quot;it depends of how the person works&quot; ;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that many people are making a large number of thematic reading synthesis, research notes (as we do) and she also pointed out the importance of her personal database, where she stores archaeological artefacts, their descriptions, the related bibliography, personal notes about them, their relations, etc. According to her, this is THE most important thing for her work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T14:56:44.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1309" CreationDate="2012-04-29T18:01:26.190" Score="28" ViewCount="40558" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have seen it spelled both ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is one spelling more common or formal than the other ? (e.g. in the U.S.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T08:48:14.647" Title="Ph.D. adviser or Ph.D. advisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1308" CreationDate="2012-04-29T18:11:16.757" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the New Oxford American Dictionary (that I have by default on my Mac :)): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The spellings adviser and advisor are both correct. Adviser is more common, but advisor is also widely used, especially in North America. Adviser may be seen as less formal, while advisor often suggests an official position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's an official position, I'd rather go for &lt;strong&gt;Ph.D. advisor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T18:11:16.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1303" CreationDate="2012-04-29T18:28:07.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Piotr's answer, I would add that it also depends on the profile of the applicant. For instance, if the applicant does not have a CV that matches exactly the ad, then there is nothing wrong to answer with a succinct &quot;Sorry, your profile is not what we are looking for&quot;: the applicant took a chance, to see if a different profile could be of interest, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and there is no shame in &quot;failing&quot; in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the profile matches, but is too weak, then it could be helpful to point out if the applicant is good, but there was a better one (in which case it might be worth to keep in touch in case the stronger applicant decline the offer, or leaves for any reason after a few months), or if the applicant is just not good enough (for instance, not enough publications, not enough publication in top conf/journals, not enough external collaborations, not enough teaching experience, not enough grant applications, etc). I guess it's worth doing so at least for short-listed applicants, who took the time to come for an interview, and maybe a public talk, and that can help them understanding what points they need to focus on in the future, especially for the youngest applicants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I also know that some recruiter can be reluctant to give detail as to why they didn't recruit an applicant because they are afraid that it could provide means to the applicant to official contest the recruiting process, and maybe sue the university. In this case, I would suggest to say this kind of things by telephone, i.e. without leaving a written trace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T18:28:07.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1308" CreationDate="2012-04-29T18:33:54.487" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I grew up learning the spelling as &quot;advisor,&quot; which goes along with &quot;supervisor.&quot; I've never seen &quot;superviser,&quot; either, and &quot;adviser&quot; just looks strange to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may actually be a &lt;em&gt;field-dependent&lt;/em&gt; issue: in academia, I've always seen &quot;advisor&quot; as the preferred spelling (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/ontarget/0502/adviser_advisor.htm&quot;&gt;a number of schools agree with that assessment&lt;/a&gt;). However, outside of academic contexts, &quot;adviser&quot; seems to be preferred, both in the UK and the US, &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammarist.com/spelling/adviser-advisor/&quot;&gt;as shown here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T08:48:14.647" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T08:48:14.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-29T19:11:54.390" Score="19" ViewCount="23777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can all the professors in a department see a particular student's grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the chair of a department see a student's grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="740" LastEditorUserId="740" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T02:27:33.963" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T14:22:48.813" Title="Who can see a student's grades?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-09-25T15:55:12.967" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1312" CreationDate="2012-04-29T19:35:36.657" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Officially and in general, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teacher of a class should in general not share grades with his colleagues. Informally, however, there might be some communication of individual students' performance in ways that don't violate confidentiality: &quot;she did very well on my class&quot;; &quot;he struggled on the exams, but did a very good job on the final project.&quot; Typically, this would be in the context of a colleague inquiring about hiring a student as a student worker or as a graduate student. Aggregate information could also be shared without harm to enable better matching of teaching to student needs and abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are exceptions to this rule. For instance, your academic or research advisor will typically have access to all of your grades. Similarly, an evaluation panel—such as one that convenes for a graduate student's qualifying exams—will probably have access to all of the student's academic record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a random professor generally will not see a student's grades in all courses. This is by design and a logical move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T19:35:36.657" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1308" CreationDate="2012-04-29T20:34:15.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my high school, my teacher said it is British English Vs American English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="741" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T20:34:15.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1305" CreationDate="2012-04-30T09:09:28.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;aeismail's answer points out two very important points: the deal-breakers and the PD purgatory. Basically, your choices of postdoc should reflect somehow a strategy to get a permanent position at some point. Hence, you need first to understand what kind of position you eventually want (for instance a teaching position or a &quot;pure&quot; researcher position, academic or industry, which country you want to be), and then understand which aspects of your  profile you want to strengthen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if you already have strong publications and you want to work only research, you might be more interested in going abroad and strengthen your network and your ability to work in international projects. On the other hand, if you lack some strong publications, then you might be more interested in finding a place where you could get such publications, for instance in a team with which you already have some collaborations and ongoing projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to teach, then you need to look for places where you can be involved in teaching, which also means that you need to speak the local language (or to go somewhere where the teaching language is English). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you eventually want to get a permanent position in a country where internal recruitment is basically the norm (from what I've seen, Italy seems to qualify for this) then you need to take into account the fact that you will need to go as a postdoc in this country eventually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think you first need to assess your current profile, and to understand what are your expectations for your permanent position, in order to see what could be best for your postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T09:09:28.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1319" CreationDate="2012-04-30T11:33:23.303" Score="60" ViewCount="14008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon finish my PhD and start searching for a post-doc position and I was wondering which web-based solution is the best suited to present myself and my work (I work in plant biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two main options: social network type, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;personal page&lt;/strong&gt; (using  for instance Wordpress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that social networking solution does not offer a lot of flexibility (attaching documents, presenting my current research more in depth), but I do not want to seem too pretentious by having my own webpage while I am just a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't it too soon to have a personal web page at this stage of my career (I am still a PhD student) to present my work or is the pre-made solution more adequate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T21:29:18.147" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:00:55.403" Title="Personal web page vs Academia.edu vs ResearchGate" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T12:01:10.207" Score="13" ViewCount="1112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately lots of courses like udacity, coursera, and MITx are provided online. I attended most of them; also I have attended courses in OCW provided by MIT. Now I desire to earn some credits for whatever I have learnt so far, so that I can apply for a degree (in electronics and computer engineering). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could anyone suggest some place where I will get accredited for the courses I do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user747" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T04:13:46.030" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T04:13:46.030" Title="Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1317" CreationDate="2012-04-30T12:25:06.917" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the courses that I've seen explicitly state that you obtain no credit for doing the course. More explicitly, they may offer certificates of completion, but these certificates do not convey academic credit. For example, from Coursea's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/about/terms&quot;&gt;Term's of Service&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Letter of Completion, if provided to you, would be from Coursera and/or from the instructors. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, if provided to you, may not be affiliated with Coursera or any college or university. Further, Coursera offers the right to offer or not offer any such Letter of Completion for a class. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, and Coursera’s Online Courses, will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution, and do not convey academic credit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short answer is that you will be unlikely to obtain such credit. Certainly, read the terms of service to be sure. Nevertheless, you could add such things to your CV to demonstrate your interest in a particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T12:25:06.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2012-04-30T12:39:01.890" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it's different in other fields, but in math, it isn't pretentious for a PhD student to operate their own website, and it's quite common. (Most schools, at least in the US, provide the space for students to host a personal website.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I'd say that after a couple years, a PhD student (again, in math) absolutely should have a personal website. Formats oriented around published papers or formal CV aren't very useful for giving information about a grad student because there isn't that much of either. If I meet someone or hear about them from their advisor, and want to learn more about their work, a personal website is best way to get some information about where they're likely to be when they finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="8" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T05:10:19.910" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T05:10:19.910" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2012-04-30T13:18:55.883" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally the professors and PhD students I remember well are the ones with an elaborate page for themselves. From what I have learnt from this site, a PhD is simply not merely about publications, citations and academic work. You need to build contacts, make friends and network in the academia, which as such is a small place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a page for yourselves is hardly pretentious. It is just like having a Facebook profile or a Twitter account, a means to show others that you are alive and kicking. And publications are not the only thing you may have there. Add a lot of extra-curricular details, your non-academic passions and interests, some photos that may make people take interest in you as a person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further details, I would like to redirect you to some wonderful answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/726/on-being-a-well-known-phd-student&quot;&gt;the question I asked here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T14:58:01.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2012-04-30T13:39:39.430" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as you have even a single preprint, people will begin searching online to find out who you are and what else you have done, so you must have a web page.  It doesn't have to be elaborate, and it's enough to start with a few lines of professional contact information and a list of links to papers, but you have to have something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a generic web page looks more professional than one created using a social networking site, but perhaps that's because I'm old.  However, there is one absolutely critical issue: the page must allow visitors to download any content without logging in.  At least one of the social sites lets visitors view papers on the site, but insists that you create an account if you want to download anything.  This is terrible!  In my experience, nobody's going to create an account unless they really, really want that paper, and either way they are going to be unhappy at the imposition.  Offering access to papers and then harassing anyone who tries to download them leaves a very bad impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T13:39:39.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1324" CreationDate="2012-04-30T13:40:59.677" Score="38" ViewCount="2365" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is a question in the light of the recent Elsevier boycott. Currently we do have an arXiv, maintained by academia and where researchers regularly upload parts of their work. In such a case,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do universities spend lots of money to publish in third-party journals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question especially applies to journals that operate with a rigorous profit motive. The subscription is very high, so wouldn't publishing in such journals affect the paper's citation count and deter the spread of knowledge about the work within academic circles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why should not universities collaborate to create free, open access, peer-reviewed journals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, given the need to conserve paper, why should journals spend on printing research papers? Wouldn't an online version suffice, as most people use only local computer printouts anyway? In other words, why can't we have a Wikipedia-like system of sharing research knowledge, having properly established standards for such journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T16:39:17.063" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T01:52:47.427" Title="Why do universities have to spend money on journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-04-30T13:49:32.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do universities splurge lots of money to publish in third-party&#xA;  journals?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because researchers ask for these journals, and the money is given by the university, and most researchers just recently discovered the cost of all this stuff. Now that we are all aware of the cost, and now that universities are running out of money, we, at last, want to change the way publishing is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why should not universities collaborate to create free, open access,&#xA;  peer-reviewed journals?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because to run a journal, you need people whose jobs are to run a journal. This is not the work of researchers or actual faculty staff. At the moment, hiring new profiles in universities is unlikely. Moreover, maybe this should be done at a higher level (funding agency or state level?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T13:49:32.130" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-04-30T13:59:45.550" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really big question, which unfortunately has no simple answer.  Some short comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities have very little choice about subscribing to journals, as long they publish good papers, since faculty &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; access to those papers to do their research.  The solution has to start on the publishing side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaborating to create free, open access, peer-reviewed journals is a fine idea, but either you need to convince universities to support this financially, or you need to recruit enormous numbers of dedicated volunteers.  (Whenever this topic comes up, someone is sure to point out that volunteers run some free, high-quality online journals.  Of course they do, but the question is how to recruit hundreds of times as many volunteers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Printing is a non-issue.  Everything is already available online, with printed copies only for those who want them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a mathematics context, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://gowers.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/elsevierstatementfinal.pdf&quot;&gt;http://gowers.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/elsevierstatementfinal.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1351&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1351&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T13:59:45.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1326" CreationDate="2012-04-30T14:29:22.070" Score="18" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do I expand abbreviations at their first use &lt;strong&gt;per section or per paper&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an IEEE publication, but I haven't come across any specific instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="748" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T18:30:18.060" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:30:18.060" Title="Abbreviations in journal papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1325" CreationDate="2012-04-30T14:35:13.090" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do it per paper, unless the paper is extremely long and some abbreviations are defined (and used) in the start, but not used again until 20 or 30 pages later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay to remind a reader what the abbreviations mean, but avoid annoying the reader by being overly and unnecessarily repetitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T14:35:13.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T14:45:40.273" Score="9" ViewCount="1259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an offer to do a PhD in Computer Science from a fairly new university. The research topic is good but I can't really decide what are positives and negatives of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="504" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T14:39:12.060" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T14:39:12.060" Title="Advantages and Disadvantages of doing PhD from a new university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:28:47.420" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another (admittedly cynical) viewpoint is that the reason there are so many journals out there, and so many high-priced third-party journals, is that academics want to publish, and the system in which they work more or less demands publications in exchange for career advancement. The need of so many researchers from so many countries, as well as the fractionation of existing research fields into many sub-specialties, allows for this kind of behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I would argue that &quot;splurge&quot; is the wrong word—researchers want access to as many journals as possible, and as a result, libraries are &lt;em&gt;forced&lt;/em&gt; to spend substantial parts of their acquisition budgets on journals, which, with policies like Elsevier's, mean many of them will go largely unused in exchange for a handful of high-quality journals that aren't quite worth collectively what Elsevier charges for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution will be for the university libraries to join forces together and bargain collectively with the publishers. Working individually, they have no leverage. A hundred or a thousand libraries working together will have an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T19:54:22.087" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T19:54:22.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T20:08:01.723" Score="10" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any published work that quantifies the roles of different factors on rising tuition in the U.S. over the past half-century? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard a number of explanations bandied about, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increases in admin overhead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT infrastructure costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baumol's cost disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more expensive facilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reductions in state funding over time (public institutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is some quantitative analysis that tries to estimate &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt; each of these different factors contributes to the average increases in tuition over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="610" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T21:53:09.813" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:53:09.813" Title="What are factors leading to rising tuition costs over time?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-04-30T21:43:53.953" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on parts of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently we do have an arXiv, maintained by academia and where researchers regularly upload parts of their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be on something of a crusade against arXiv users who believe arXiv is more than it is, more more widely adopted than it is. &quot;We&quot; don't have arXiv - certain disciplines have it. Other disciplines, equally valid as those which support arXiv, both don't use it and have understandable issues with the reliance on a pre-print site as a way to disseminate findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do universities splurge lots of money to publish in third-party journals?&#xA;  The question especially applies to journals that operate with a rigorous profit motive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, they're not paying money to publish in the journals. They're paying money to be able to read said journals. I've published in for-profit journals, even ones my university didn't subscribe to, for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The subscription is very high, so wouldn't publishing in such journals affect the paper's citation count and deter the spread of knowledge about the work within academic circles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. Papers are often available from the author, inter-library loans, etc. Beyond that, how a paper gets cited is a far more complex question than just &quot;Do you have to pay for a subscription&quot;, and I don't think Open Access journals have compellingly showed that the citation counts are higher for open journals. The readership and downloads? Probably, but in terms of citation the Open Access journals are still struggling with a perceived gap between their prestige and the prestige of the &quot;leading&quot; for-profit journals. Perhaps that will change in time, but there are ways to get journal articles that your institution doesn't subscribe to, and those ways are often fairly trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why should not universities collaborate to create free, open access, peer-reviewed journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some do - but for many the cost of laying out and producing a twice monthly journal would be distracting from the core mission of the university (or more likely, particular departments), and they'd run into staffing and budget concerns. Most don't have the money to fund what they actually need to do, let alone add a publishing arm that may or may not ever make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those groups that are interested, like professional societies and the occasional university? They often turn to for-profit publishers to outsource it. For example &lt;em&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;, a publication of The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology is published by Lippincott. &lt;em&gt;The American Journal of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;, which is put out by Johns Hopkins and sponsored by the Society for Epidemiologic Research? Published by Oxford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, given the need to conserve paper, why should journals spend on printing research papers? Wouldn't an online version suffice, as most people use only local computer printouts anyway? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because some readers want the paper versions. Seriously, nearly every journal I know has an &quot;online only&quot; subscription for less money. But if you want a paper version, why shouldn't you be able to get it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T21:43:53.953" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1332" CreationDate="2011-10-12T18:58:34.073" Score="40" ViewCount="1834" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation&quot;&gt;grade inflation&lt;/a&gt; is the tendency of academic grades for work of comparable quality to increase over time.  That article also includes plenty of evidence for the phenomenon and lists some potential causes.  Has this issue been studied using game theory?  What game-theoretic models of the educational grading process exist that could shed some light on the forces behind this phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" OwnerDisplayName="Tal Fishman" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T07:08:32.683" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T07:16:49.380" Title="Can game theory explain grade inflation?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1331" CreationDate="2011-10-13T02:11:15.533" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;One paper that looks relevant is &quot;A Signaling Theory of Grade Inflation&quot; by Chan, Hao, and Suen (2007). From their abstract, it seems like this is what you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When employers cannot tell whether a school truly has many good&#xA;  students or just gives easy grades, a school has incentives to inflate&#xA;  grades to help its mediocre students, despite concerns about&#xA;  preserving the value of good grades for its good students. We&#xA;  construct a signaling model where grades are inflated in equilibrium.&#xA;  The inability to commit to an honest grading policy reduces the&#xA;  efficiency of job assignment and hurts a school. Grade inflation by&#xA;  one school makes it easier for another school to do likewise, thus&#xA;  providing a channel to make grade exaggeration contagious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check out &quot;Comparative cheap talk&quot; by Chakrabortya and Harbaugh (2005). From the introduction: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are such statements more credible than claims such as “they both look&#xA;  great” or “every student is excellent”? How much information can&#xA;  comparative statements convey? When does it make sense to withhold&#xA;  comparative information? And, are comparative statements still&#xA;  credible when the speaker is not impartial, e.g. when a professor has&#xA;  a favorite student, or a salesperson receives a larger commission on a&#xA;  particular product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, section 4.2 discusses &quot;Recommendation games&quot;. They consider situations where an expert with private information can rank alternatives for a decision maker. Here is their description: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recommendation games we ﬁnd that the expert prefers ex ante to&#xA;  reveal a partial ranking rather than the complete ranking. For&#xA;  instance, if there are three students being recommended by a professor&#xA;  and the middle student is unlikely to receive a job based on the&#xA;  complete ranking, an alternative is to put the top two students in a&#xA;  group and not differentiate between them. As the number of issues&#xA;  increases, such groupings can be used more and more effectively to&#xA;  maximize the expert’s payoffs. The gains from partial rankings may&#xA;  explain why highly ranked schools often obscure the relative quality&#xA;  of their graduates, either by grade inﬂation as in Ivy League&#xA;  undergraduate programs, or by withholding grades from employers as in&#xA;  some elite M.B.A. programs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the conclusion they reach is that grade inﬂation &quot;should be more severe when average student quality is increasing&quot; so &quot;grades should be more inﬂated in elite schools&quot;. Look into their section 4.2 for a detailed analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Ryan" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T02:11:15.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1331" CreationDate="2011-11-28T15:09:54.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schools want their students to get more than &quot;their share&quot; of jobs. One way to do this is through grade inflation, that may convince employers that the one school's students are &quot;smarter&quot; than those of other schools with &quot;lower&quot; grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when the other schools catch on, they will raise THEIR grades too, cancelling out the first school's advantage, but causing grade inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like watching a performance at a standing room only event. Any ONE person can get a better view of it by standing on tiptoes. But if ALL of them do it, this just cancels out. That's what game theory would predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" OwnerDisplayName="Tom Au" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T15:09:54.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1331" CreationDate="2012-04-28T20:39:41.703" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a college professor, I can tell you that student evaluations are a major cause of grade inflation.  College administrations use student evaluations of professors as a major determinant in promotions, assigning classes, tenure, any form of recognition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the professor's perspective, if you start to get too many bad evaluations, your career is in jeopardy.  So, why not go with the flow?  Call a C an A- and everyone is happy. Of course, the integrity of the educational system is destroyed in the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the standpoint of the university administration, who wants the hassle of dealing with student complaints?  The way to get ahead is to grow your program and generate income.  This is especially true of MBA programs that are generally funded not by students, but by their employers.  One way to compete with other MBA programs is to make the grading easy, but universities also make the degree programs shorter and the experience more entertaining&#xA;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dave" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T07:16:49.380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T07:16:49.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1327" CreationDate="2012-04-30T22:59:52.133" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the first thing to think about is what sort of new university this is.  If it's UC Merced, then you might reasonably guess that it will eventually be as well known as the typical UC campus, and of course that's not the only new university intended to be very prestigious and successful (e.g., IIT Indore).  On the other hand, most new universities just don't come with this sort of commitment and backing.  If you don't have a powerful reason to think the university will be unusually successful, then you should assume it's headed for a not particularly distinguished future.  Furthermore, the initial years may involve growing pains that would not be present in a better established university, although these issues are not likely to be a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't a reason not to study there.  Most universities are by necessity not particularly distinguished, but that won't stop you from getting a decent education.  However, the key thing is to avoid getting caught up in a feeling of &quot;Wow, a new university!  What a great opportunity to start from scratch and do everything right!  I'm sure we'll avoid all the mistakes that have held other schools back.&quot;  Helping to start something new really is exciting, and it can be a wonderful experience.  However, all new projects start with high hopes, while history shows that most never fully meet these expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real question is how much these high hopes matter to you.  If the new university turned out to be a solid, respectable school but not highly ranked or especially successful, would you regret having gone there?  If not, then there's no problem.  (I'm assuming it's definitely a respectable option, and not for example an online diploma mill.)  If so, then you should think carefully and investigate whether their plans really look feasible.  For example, by looking at what sort of faculty have they managed to recruit so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T22:59:52.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:45:47.053" Score="29" ViewCount="7178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have offers for tenure-track computational biology positions at a couple of U.S. research universities. What sort of things do I need to budget for in my startup package?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="753" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T01:26:54.543" Title="What items should I ask for in my startup package?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1336" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:26:43.770" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll hopefully be in your position in another year or two, so I'm not speaking from experience. But a few things come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Laptop (be specific) and associated technical support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any software licenses you need to complete your research and teach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Office space and furniture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lab space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lab equipment (be specific)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to shared lab equipment as needed (be specific)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to server(s) where you can test your code/algorithms/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to cluster computing resources (if that fits in with your research)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lighter teaching load your first 1-3 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lighter service load your first 1-3 years (not sure if that's something you would explicitly ask for though)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salary (and benefits where applicable) for any students, staff, post-docs you will need to be successful in getting papers and grants written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money for other miscellaneous expenses that you envision will be necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money to travel to 1-2 conferences per year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure others could think of more to add...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="315" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T03:26:43.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1325" CreationDate="2012-05-01T08:52:18.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard is once per &quot;document,&quot; whether that's a report, or a book, or a journal article. However, longer documents will typically come with lists of abbreviations and symbols; many journals also do this. Even then, it's still better to define it once in the text first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;standard widget units (SWUs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;before using it again later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T08:52:18.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1336" CreationDate="2012-05-01T08:59:14.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on the offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to negotiations, you should privately keep track of what you really need, and then ask for a bit more than that in the negotiations. Since the department (or university) will likely want to negotiate downwards, starting with just what you need might leave you after negotiations with a somewhat undersized package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To borrow from Steve P's answer, however, perhaps the single most important component that can help you get the group off the ground is to get as much salary support for additional employees as you can. Having that first postdoc and grad student can make a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; difference in a new group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T08:59:14.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1342" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:07:45.240" Score="22" ViewCount="2376" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I find out what theories are 'widely accepted' in the scientific world at the moment? When I read about a theory, or read a paper, how can I tell what 'the scientific world' thinks of these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Background:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When hearing about development or history of science, the phrase 'widely accepted' is quite popular. One of the common stories seems to be of some discovery which nobody wanted to believe when published, but a decade or a few later the scientific world came to accept it and it turned into consensus. Prime examples in history would be the heliocentric world view or the theory of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, I have read 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. He takes every chance to provide evidence that the theory of group selection is unnecessary to explain evolution. The book was published in 1976, when group selection was apparently quite popular. In annotations of the current edition, he gives comments about how the scientific world has now more accepted that group selection is wrong. I asked a question about one of his claims which I did not fully understand (irrelevant here) on Biology.SE and - unexpectedly - promptly got answers by people claiming that group selection was presently very widely accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="754" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T02:07:27.897" Title="How to tell what is 'widely accepted' or 'consensus'" Tags="&lt;science&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1329" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:10:54.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltacostproject.org/index.asp&quot;&gt;Delta Cost Project&lt;/a&gt;, a nonprofit organization in Washington DC, issues &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltacostproject.org/analyses/delta_reports.asp&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; each year with information about college spending. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlights.pdf&quot;&gt;highlights of the 2011 report&lt;/a&gt;, which I recommend browsing through, states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the majority of institutions, increases in tuition do not translate into increases in spending. In fact, at most public institutions, tuition increases attempt to compensate for lost revenues from state and local budget reductions, but actual tuition increases are less than half of the actual reduction in state and local appropriations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in the report, other sources of tuition increases are listed, including increases in benefit spending for employees (primarily public institutions). Salary fluctuations are not significant factors; in fact, spending on salaries has gone down slightly over the past few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those interested, I strongly recommend checking out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlights.pdf&quot;&gt;highlights&lt;/a&gt; listed above, as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Trends2011_Final_090711.pdf&quot;&gt;full report&lt;/a&gt;, for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T13:10:54.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1340" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:53:35.740" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the &quot;official&quot; ways that researchers state their opinion is by stating it in either a publication or in a presentation at a conference. It is from here that we can gain any idea of what &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; researcher thinks about a given topic.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the only way to know whether something is &quot;widely accepted&quot; is to be familiar with most of the current (academic) literature on a given topic. Only by really having read the publications of most of the preeminent researchers in a given field can you really get a sense of what the consensus is on that topic. This, of course, requires a lot of time and expertise (and, if you don't have access to a university library with journal subscriptions, money). It took me years as a graduate student to learn what was the consensus about certain topics &lt;em&gt;within my own field&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, anyone can state anything and most people won't know the difference. The easiest way to really determine if it's true is to ask two or three recognized researchers if they agree with the statement of interest. You can do this via email, but they likely won't get back to you. You can ask grad students in their lab and the answer will be that much less reliable, but still close to the source. Beyond that, you'll just have to find experts you can trust and rely on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Obviously, researchers are people like anyone else, and will discuss their pet theories with friends and colleagues over email and in person; it's very hard to quantify these, and you only rarely see this sort of discourse being formally recognized. Occasionally a publication will cite &quot;unpublished discourse&quot;, but that's a rare occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T13:53:35.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1340" CreationDate="2012-05-01T15:45:48.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Structured review papers can be a very good route into establishing what's the most-widely accepted state of current research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In health care, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews&quot;&gt;Cochrane Reviews&lt;/a&gt; are a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some subjects have journals dedicated to such structured reviews, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-and-sustainable-energy-reviews/&quot;&gt;Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, a subject is so important that international organisations are set up to establish the state of the art in a current subject: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/&quot;&gt;International Panel on Climate Change&lt;/a&gt; is one such example, and this produces a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml&quot;&gt;whole-field review&lt;/a&gt; every few years. At time of posting this, one (AR5) is being compiled at the moment, for publication in 2013-4. The previous one (AR4) was published in 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T15:45:48.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2012-05-01T16:00:57.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an academic [history] who adopted org-mode about 18 months ago. Frankly, I'm puzzled by all the warnings about the steepness of the emacs learning curve. For a newcomer who doesn't do a lot of command-line work, the hardest part for me was configuring emacs on my Win and Ubuntu machines. But there are lots of resources and tutorials out there, many of them accessible from orgmode.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started out only using emacs for org-mode. After watching a few screencasts I knew enough to start outlining. Gradually i've been using emacs for more and more tasks outside org-mode, though that remains my main use for the editor. I've been gradually increasing the complexity of my workflow over the last year, adapting bits of the various GTD setups linked to the org-mode.org. I am not a programmer and had only started working with a Linux machine a few months before getting into org-mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, one of the obstacles to greater adoption of org-mode is that people see the amazing workflows set-up by gurus and assume they need to use emacs at that level. My opinion: for writing, organizing and work-flow, you can get 80% of the ultimate value of org-mode in about 20 minutes of instruction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="756" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T16:00:57.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1347" CreationDate="2012-05-01T17:13:51.543" Score="17" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Muslim, I use Md. as for Muhammad. So when submiting to journals, should I stick to the 2nd &amp;amp; 3rd names? I'm currently facing problems in submitting to arxiv.org which asks for only first and last names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T02:48:48.577" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T02:48:48.577" Title="For publications, what do I do when my first name is abbreviated?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1345" CreationDate="2012-05-01T17:52:19.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to use at least 3 names (including your surname) so that you will be uniquely identifiable. It probably doesn't matter if you do not use your first name unabbreviated. I know a few researchers whose names are of the form: C. Harry Kay. I also know of researchers who go by a single name (Robby, Arvind). So just fill in whatever names you want , abbreviated or not, into the first names field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you use the same configuration of names for your entire career, so that all your papers can be linked to you (I made this mistake). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T19:38:42.663" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T19:38:42.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1345" CreationDate="2012-05-01T17:54:18.903" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This shouldn't really be a problem these days in most places, because the entry fields on most web-based entry forms are smart enough to recognize and accept spaces. Thus, even when the site asks for a first name only, you can put in &quot;Md. [Middle Name]&quot; as your first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dave suggests in the comment, unless you have a really uncommon last name—one that doesn't show up in ISI or arXiv.org searches at all right now, you're better off having parts of three names show up. It's also helpful to keep your professional name fixed throughout your career. (In other words, if you want to go by Md. [Middle] [Last], use that same form whenever possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T17:54:18.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2758" CreationDate="2012-05-01T19:58:56.690" Score="4" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in teaching at the university-level in Arabic.  Would teaching arabic in a high-school first(as I have no university-level  teaching experience) help me? I currently teach science to 6th graders, and am considering quitting after 4 years there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an MS in Arabic from UCLA, also an MS in Educ. Bachelors in Arabic also.&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="621" LastEditorUserId="621" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T20:32:35.900" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T15:28:23.150" Title="How to get into position to teach college Arabic?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="625" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:25:11.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any proof either way, but for one data point, you might look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigcomm.org/events/hotnets-workshop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the HotNets workshop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At several of the early workshops, the program committee published public reviews of the papers.  During the reviewing process, program committee members wrote blind reviews, as is the usual process (the reviewers were anonymous).  But also, for each published paper, a member of the program committee wrote a fresh review intended for public consumption summarizing the program committee's view on the paper.  Many of the public reviews were quite frank, both in identifying reservations about the paper as well as aspects of the paper that the program committee enjoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think HotNets still does that, but you could try to research more about what the HotNets community's experience with public reviews was (public? negative?).  Also I think there have been some other computer science workshops and conferences that have also written public reviews, so you could look at them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T20:25:11.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1336" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:32:49.207" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many departments, while it might seem like you're negotiating with the department, you're actually negotiating with the dean and the department is really trying to help you. If there's a way to determine this (talk to recently hired faculty at the department), then it changes your strategy, because now your goal in the negotiation is to provide the department with plausible arguments (not iron-clad) for why you need what you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably comp bio specific needs you have for which you should consult colleagues who've recently joined other universities, or even any senior mentors you have who sit on the other side of these negotiations. For generic things, Steve P's list is great. Just remember that each department at each university has their own customs and things they &quot;usually&quot; give out - you don't have to stick to that, but it's good to know what the baseline is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it always helps to provide justification (for equipment, student support, postdoc money, and so on). It's a lot harder to argue for salary raises unless the school is private (since public schools often have fixed scales). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line though: there's no harm in asking as long as you can provide a reason. Definitely ask for all that you need, and let them whittle you down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T20:32:49.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1352" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:03:05.973" Score="67" ViewCount="98986" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences ask for an extended abstract. What are the differences among &quot;abstracts,&quot; &quot;extended abstracts,&quot; and &quot;full papers?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T21:56:21.037" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T12:55:29.743" Title="What is an extended abstract?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1351" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:55:06.687" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;em&gt;abstract&lt;/em&gt; is a preliminary submission that summarizes the contribution of a paper. There are usually strict limits on the length of an abstract, either in terms of words or of total characters (rarely do they exceed 1000 words or 5000 characters; they are often substantially shorter than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;em&gt;extended abstract&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;full paper&lt;/em&gt; are nearly the same; the primary difference is that an extended abstract tends to be somewhat shorter than a full paper; I've seen extended abstracts from 2 pages up to 6 pages, while conference papers run from 4 up to about 12 or 15, depending on the space allotted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other important difference—outside of computer science, extended abstracts almost never go through a formal peer-review process before being published, while a conference paper will typically have at least one reviewer. (I think this is the case for almost all such papers, but there may be exceptions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T16:59:38.820" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T16:59:38.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="719" CreationDate="2012-05-01T22:09:49.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a little follow-up on my own question. I've recently moved my webpage to a server I manage, which allows me to use PHP scripts, and I came across the excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monperrus.net/martin/bibtexbrowser/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bibtex Browser&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I just have my own bibtex file on my server, and the publications list is automatically generated from a very simple PHP script. It seems to work as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/For_Authors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exhibit&lt;/a&gt;, that Suresh mentioned, and although it does not answer exactly my original question (since it requires the ability to run scripts), I thought I would put it here for completeness :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T22:09:49.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1415" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:13:30.540" Score="9" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a doctoral student and I've published several academic papers. My institution maintains a digital institutional repository, but it doesn't look like I can put copies of my work in it. When I finish my dissertation, a copy of that would go in the IR. It seems strange that the institution doesn't seem to have practices in place to take in other published work of students. Are there other academic institutions that allow this? If so, it would be great to have links to their policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastEditorUserId="8343" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T06:37:14.910" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T06:37:14.910" Title="Do many academic institutions let students deposit their publications in the institutional repository?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:47:42.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it is not correct for an institution to host the students' works, but Theses, Dissertations, and Technical Reports, in its internal digital library (usually open to externals). The reason is simple, most papers are published under copyright terms. This way, one is not allowed to host this &quot;copyrighted&quot; content, without the publisher permission. I see many departments, research groups, and so on, making public available the list of publications, with a link to the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T23:47:42.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1351" CreationDate="2012-05-02T00:27:25.220" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science conferences, the terms &quot;full paper&quot; and &quot;extended abstract&quot; are often used interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, STOC calls it an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.nyu.edu/~stoc2012/CallForPapers.htm&quot;&gt;extended abstract&lt;/a&gt;&quot; while SODA calls it a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/da12/submissions.php&quot;&gt;full paper&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. In this case there is no difference that you can infer from the choice of the terminology: they are of the same length (approx. 10 pages + appendix) and they go through a similar peer review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T00:27:25.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:20:00.563" Score="8" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're beginning a fairly large effort to share the vast number of protocols accumulated in our lab and pushing them all to the cloud. Naturally, you don't want the knowledge of older graduate students lost when they graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have had experience with putting all of this information into OpenWetWare but there is a small but non-trivial learning curve with the wiki-format. Another possibility would be to create living documents with google docs and organize the links in a wiki format. Finally, there is always the dropbox method of having a bunch of files in folders. I was curious about good methods to create a repository of protocols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T12:53:12.483" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T18:50:11.403" Title="What are good practices for sharing protocols online" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;lab-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1475" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:27:09.557" Score="12" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openwetware.org&quot;&gt;OpenWetWare&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Sites&lt;/a&gt; have been effective strategies in curating lab knowledge. I was curious about what are effective ways to create an effective wiki. Factors include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ease of use and low learning curve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speed of sharing and diversity of shared files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Privacy and protection from sabotage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational flow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legally sharing papers/manuscripts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T12:51:41.937" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T01:56:35.430" Title="Good practices with lab wikis?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;lab-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:34:39.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how common it is, but certainly some institutions allow student papers.  For example, Harvard's repository &quot;provides open access to peer reviewed scholarly articles authored or co-authored by faculty, staff, and students of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/2&lt;/a&gt;).  I can't think of any good reason to exclude students, so I'm puzzled by why a university would do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T01:34:39.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T03:33:23.337" Score="18" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a very extroverted person, for example, be more favored than a very quiet person? Or is this not ethical? Can someone who is psychopathic be barred from admission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="740" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T19:19:53.940" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T07:49:15.797" Title="Do PhD programs care about the personalities of applicants?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1360" CreationDate="2012-05-02T04:13:04.163" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, decisions based at least partially on personality do occur.  It's not clear to me what the legal technicalities are - for example, depending on your country there may be laws regarding things like discrimination against the mentally ill - but in practice an admissions committee can do whatever it likes, and nobody will be able to prove there was any illegal discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it typically works is that having a particularly pleasant or agreeable personality won't help you, but having an unpleasant personality may hurt you.  If you seem likely to be difficult to get along with, rude, disruptive, uncooperative, or otherwise problematic, then that will generally be held against you.  (This may be judged based on your personal statement, letters of recommendation, etc.)  It won't necessarily doom your chances: some committee members just won't care, and others may be willing to excuse bad behavior if you are sufficiently talented.  However, on average it will hurt your chances, sometimes substantially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T04:13:04.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1317" CreationDate="2012-05-02T04:50:38.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no services to help you get that coursework accredited. However, Degreed.com helps you validate that you have taken those courses so you can let employers know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="760" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T04:50:38.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T07:09:41.247" Score="34" ViewCount="1777" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I was giving a small informal talk in a local college. The audience comprised of engineers and my talk was based on current research in engineering. One of the girls asked about the position of women in academia. I answered that stating that academia was like just another field for women but now that I think of it, it might not be entirely true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that perhaps I could refer interested female student to resources explaining any gender specific aspects of academic life. I've read 2 books &lt;em&gt;&quot;Surviving your Stupid Stupid Decision&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&quot;What you came for.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Both were books to read before PhD to discuss common problems and their solutions presented as a preparatory handbook or survival guide. I am looking for something similar, but specifically addressing the aspect of gender in academia. I don't have a specific question in mind. A cursory Amazon search failed to yield any fruitful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to find resources applicable to female students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engineering in North America but maybe even Europe. These students showed some statistics of bias within academia. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interested in joining faculty positions or industrial labs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are there books, biographies, or survival guides for women in academia?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="761" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T18:34:02.050" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T18:34:02.050" Title="What books, biographies or survival guides are helpful for women in engineering in academia?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2012-05-02T08:11:55.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use org-mode as an grad student (computer science), and primarily use it for throwing together fast documents. It isn't great for papers/articles, but it is great for homework and notes, because it uses markdown for formatting. There is very little to learn here that can't be found in the manual. See the sections on exporting/publishing, and pay attention to the parts on LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to use org-mode for scheduling and it was great (I went on vacation and lost interest in tracking all of my time).  It's great for tracking how much time you spend on projects and doesn't need much configuration up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also used it for collecting references, but that took some nontrivial configuration. It wasn't hard for me because I'm used to programming, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="762" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T08:11:55.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1358" CreationDate="2012-05-02T12:45:17.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A wiki is a platform, which you can use in whatever way you see fit. Personally, I've used them academically for the following purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lab notebook&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was running cognitive psychology experiments on subjects. I would make a top-level page that contained links to a separate page for all of my research projects. On each research project page, I had links to separate pages for each of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Study protocols (behavioral testing, brain scanning, data cleaning, data analysis) - separate pages for each&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change log to the paradigm itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Troubleshooting notes... as I encountered problems, write them down here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subjects (one page per subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each subject page contained notes on each session, results, general info (&quot;subject performed poorly today, possibly due to stress from midterms&quot;), as well as the results of their data analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Publication repository&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wiki was basically a place for me to store papers. Many wikis allow embedding of pdfs, and I would store pages as follows. The top-level page segmented topics. Each topic page contained links to pages about individual papers, as well as links to ongoing summaries of my reading. This was where I would write down my thoughts and conclusions after reading papers, and made it easier for me to combine my thoughts on multiple papers... after reading a new article, I would review what I had written there and try to somehow incorporate the new article in my ideas (if relevant, more often than not it wasn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just two ideas, and they were just used by me, not my whole lab. I'm sure you can think of more (managing lab meetings, managing collaborations, managing lab-wide protocols, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T12:45:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1363" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:23:13.810" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a month ago, MIT published their most recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/images/documents/women-report-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Report on the Status of Women Faculty in Science and Engineering&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, following up on previous reports from 1999 and 2002.  It's not exactly a &quot;survival guide&quot;—it's written for existing faculty and administrators more than for prospective academics—but it does clearly describe several barriers to gender inequality, both past and present.  The National Academies published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9813/&quot;&gt;similar report&lt;/a&gt; in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more recently, Nancy Hopkins (one of the authors of the MIT reports) gave &lt;a href=&quot;http://techtv.mit.edu/tags/124-science/videos/12205-keynote-the-status-of-women-in-science-and-engineering-at-mit-&quot;&gt;a fascinating talk&lt;/a&gt; about MIT's efforts to attract and retain female faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Hopefully someone else will suggest something more useful for prospective academics.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; One of my female colleagues sent me the following reply, which I'm posting with her permission.  (I'll delete this update if she decides to post an answer herself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My more recent reading has focused more on survival with children in&#xA;  academia, which is not quite the same thing.  However, some of the&#xA;  issues might be the same.  Two good books are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mamaphd.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mama,&#xA;  PhD&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0801446643&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Motherhood: the Elephant in the&#xA;  Library&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  both of which are essay-based, with women sharing their stories.  Both&#xA;  are available on Amazon, and are quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the best survival guides these days are the blogs - there are&#xA;  a bunch of good ones which provided sanity and good advice along the&#xA;  way.  My two favorite aren't active anymore, but their archives are&#xA;  nice, and there are plenty of good ones still active:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/&quot;&gt;http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/&quot;&gt;http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are tons of research papers on the issue, but to be honest, at&#xA;  least for me, those tend to be more depressing than helpful.  For&#xA;  example, an interesting (but outdated) one:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/EKNU.html&quot;&gt;http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/EKNU.html&lt;/a&gt; There was a recent&#xA;  article that retention is going better among faculty (except in math,&#xA;  which surprised me):&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6070/864.abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6070/864.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T15:38:48.173" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T15:38:48.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1360" CreationDate="2012-05-02T17:06:25.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personalities &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; count, because nobody wants to be an environment with lots of boorish colleagues. It's just not very fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in most cases—at least in the US—admissions are done without interviews. Therefore, the only way the personality of the candidate comes through is through what's written in the application. Either the personal statement or the letters of reference might reveal some details about the personality of the applicant. Usually, though, this is negative; I don't put much stock in letters of reference saying &quot;so-and-so has a pleasant personality,&quot; since that is almost a &lt;em&gt;de rigeur&lt;/em&gt; statement. (Something exceptional that goes into considerable detail, however, is different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have an interview, however, it's hard to hide your personality for very long. It can make a difference—but generally only if you're a candidate &quot;on the bubble,&quot; or if your personality is so polarizing that nobody wants to bother with you, regardless of how nice you are. On the converse, though, I don't think a super-nice personality is enough to get someone on the bubble &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T17:06:25.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1357" CreationDate="2012-05-02T18:50:11.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Stack Exchange, I've recently started to become familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; and in particular its variants, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MultiMarkdown&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt;. These might be the ideal alternative, as they're very easy to master—after all, it's what powers sites like this one!—and yet powerful enough that it can handle most of your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual users can write their protocols in a simple, easy-to-read text format, and then output that to HTML, PDF, Word files, or whatever. Then all you need is a master page to catalog everything, and a web site manager who's skilled enough with a command prompt to handle the conversions using one of those tools. The format's flexible enough to handle hyperlinks as well as graphics with a minimum of fuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other advantage of having a text-based system is that it makes version control very easy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T18:50:11.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1371" CreationDate="2011-10-15T15:23:51.833" Score="28" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most fields that rely on statistical analyses, economics has suffered from a few well-publicized coding errors (most notably the Foote and Goetz finding that when correcting Donohue and Levitt's programming error in the abortion/crime paper the conclusion is reversed), and likely suffers from far more which are never discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What solutions have other fields used to ameliorate this problem, and how might the incentives of researchers be changed to encourage them to submit to these changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="775" OwnerDisplayName="gsk3" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T05:33:24.500" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:44:41.883" Title="Solutions to the lack of code transparency in economics?" Tags="&lt;economics&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1369" CreationDate="2011-10-15T16:06:47.803" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning - anecdotal evidence ahead:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a couple of pet statisticians that we run things past: they review our statistical methodology, and can check that the code does what we think it's doing. (That is to say, we borrow a few hours of time from colleagues in other departments. And in some funding bids / project proposals, we explicitly put in time for them). In some cases, we've coded up algorithms in different languages, and checked that results have been reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incentives for cross-disciplinary collaboration are, I believe, already there. When we've explained to our statisticians what we're trying to do, for a stats health check, they've often been able to suggest additional tests.  And they love getting their paws on new datasets, to go mining on. So it's constructive for all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" OwnerDisplayName="EnergyNumbers" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T16:06:47.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1369" CreationDate="2011-10-15T18:45:10.407" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need the journals...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing will move without it. The American Economics Review has taken the lead in requiring all data papers to make their data and source code available. Unfortunately, there's no real indication that other journals will follow suit, despite the formidable reputation of AER. Sadly, even the AER doesn't have a clear repository and not all code is available even though they require it of the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, David Card has a nice repository of sorts for structural econometrics data. Josh Angrist and David Autor should be praised for creating Data Archives that document their own work. But at this point it's still up to individuals to make their research transparent and their code available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately and decided to create a Google Code Project where economists can upload their code:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/econ-code/&quot;&gt;http://code.google.com/p/econ-code/&lt;/a&gt; ... That said, I have not yet tried to publicize it and think the ultimate key to adoption lies with the journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="dchandler" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T03:35:43.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T22:38:26.203" Score="9" ViewCount="21837" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just got my Ph.D and I'm trying to work out how to do the &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; series of abbreviations after my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My scholastic qualifications are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ph.D University of New South Wales, Philosophy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Information Technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bachelors of Science, RIT, Information Technology&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RIT Scholar (University Medal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highest Honors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I have both American and Australian degrees, what series of abbreviations is appropriate to put after my name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T23:25:04.173" Title="How do I abbreviate the titles after my name?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2012-05-02T23:24:55.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, once you pursue a Ph.D. you are encouraged to put only that achievement right after your name, since it is more relevant that everything else. I maybe wrong, but it's what I've seen for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="690" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T23:24:55.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2012-05-03T01:31:26.643" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies between countries.  My impression is that listing titles after the name is more common in the UK and Australia, and there may be fixed conventions as to the ordering, but I can't address that.  What I can deal with is the U.S., and my advice in that context is simple: don't do it.  In the U.S., if you list one title (&quot;John Smith, Ph.D.&quot;), you'll look a little pompous and like you are overemphasizing your degree (leading to questions like &quot;Gee, is that Ph.D. still his proudest achievement?&quot; or &quot;Does he worry people will think he didn't get a Ph.D.?&quot;), and if you list more than one it will look ridiculous.  In particular, don't list titles after your name in academic job applications, CVs, signatures for letters of recommendation, etc. that are being sent to the U.S.  Of course, conventions in other countries may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T01:31:26.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1386" CreationDate="2012-05-03T01:58:07.490" Score="19" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/925/767&quot;&gt;Past advice&lt;/a&gt; suggests that potential PhD students should be wary of attending schools with only one professor in their subfield. If you have problems with your advisor and want to switch, having that option would be invaluable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if your subfield is not represented that well in the vast majority of departments? Almost all schools I'm considering applying for only have one professor in my intended research area. I'm a MS student at the moment and I'm sure what general subfield I'd like to do my PhD research in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just accept that this is how things are and try to check whether a professor and I would be good matches before accepting? Or should this make the few schools with more than one professor in this subfield more attractive? To be clear, every school I will apply to will have top researchers in this subfield. The comparison is more between a school with one top researcher and one newer researcher and another school with one top researcher and no one else in the subfield. The majority of schools are in the latter group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tempted to think that hiring committees avoid hiring additional faculty in my subfield if they already have one professor doing research in the area. They have their token professor and that's enough for them. Never mind that the professor's personality, perspective, and research methods matter!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="767" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T11:42:49.583" Title="Number of potential PhD advisors at a school" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T03:40:42.020" Score="20" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or in Sean Carroll's words, is it true that &quot;you are better off if your hobbies are nothing like your work&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carroll, Sean. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university/&quot;&gt;&quot;How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University:&#xA;  Cosmic Variance.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Cosmic Variance. N.p., 30 Mar. 2011. Web. 09 Oct. 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question applies for both cases of tenure and cases of applying for academic positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T20:04:45.560" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T16:04:43.590" Title="Should someone who wants tenure (or a research position) have hobbies totally unrelated to their work?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1380" CreationDate="2012-05-03T04:22:39.400" Score="14" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the major issues in universities with respect to PhD is the high dropout factor. Demotivated students cause a big loss to the university - a lot is spent on assistantships, but in the end, the students quit without making any meaningful contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What steps do/should universities and faculty members take to reduce alarming drop-out rates? One step is obviously to choose the right women for the job, which we expect the admissions committee to do anyway. PhD involves years of wading through uncertainty and possibly it is in these years that students get distracted and unfocused. How should universities ensure the students remain unwavering in their efforts during these uncertain years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-26T05:01:14.203" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T05:01:14.203" Title="What steps could universities take to reduce Ph.D. drop-outs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;quitting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1377" CreationDate="2012-05-03T04:27:41.040" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect Sean Carroll is emphasizing this more than most people would, thanks to his tenure denial.  It's not always important - plenty of serious bloggers have received tenure, and I know of one mathematician who published a novel before successfully getting tenure at a serious research university.  However, Carroll's right about the risks: it will hurt your chances if people spend too much time comparing what you did accomplish to what they imagine you might have accomplished if you had focused more.  If your hobbies could be viewed as taking time away from research, then it gives anyone who doesn't want you to get tenure an excellent opportunity to try to derail your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, if your tenure case could be viewed as marginal or you might have enemies in the department (or among your letter writers), then you should worry about this.  Otherwise, I wouldn't let it dictate your life, but I guess it depends on your tolerance for risk.  One common-sense approach is not to go around emphasizing to colleagues how much time you are spending on hobbies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T04:27:41.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1378" CreationDate="2012-05-03T05:20:16.687" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One difficulty is that it's far from clear what the ideal dropout rate should be.  Probably not zero, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even the best students sometimes find that their interests change over time, in ways nobody could have predicted.  Dropping out may become a quite sensible choice, in which case it's harmful for the university to discourage it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's reasonable for a university to give someone a chance even if it's not certain that they will succeed.  The only way to get a really low drop-out rate is to admit just the applicants that are obviously destined for success.  The top few schools can get away with this, but if everyone tried it, then many talented candidates would be shut out from graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So some attrition is OK, and some is bad but may be a necessary consequence of policies that are on the whole good.  The question then becomes how you distinguish these kinds from needless and damaging attrition, and then how you minimize that kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advisors play a key role here, because some are much better than others at being supportive or motivational.  However, at least in mathematics, most advisors don't supervise very many students, so the numbers often aren't large enough to see patterns clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure people have studied this problem, and perhaps identified best practices for addressing it.  However, in my experience any studies or solutions are not especially influential (at least in the few math departments I've been in).  Most discussions are at the stage of trying to figure out whether there is a real problem and if so why, rather than what to do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T05:20:16.687" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2012-05-03T05:56:14.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this subarea might be somewhat marginalized in the larger area the department represents, and this is consistent across universities. Why is that ? is the subarea not particularly popular, or interesting, or does it lack the ability to get funding ? In all these case, you do have to ask yourself whether the risk of getting into such an area is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the more direct question of whether you should favor the few schools that have more than one professor, the right question is: what are you planning to do after a Ph.D ? And in what way can this professor (or professors) help with that goal ? If you want to go into academia (say), are these professors the dominant players in the area ? and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T05:56:14.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1378" CreationDate="2012-05-03T10:14:30.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the problem is that often many professors underestimate the PhD student's will and personal scientific aims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often it happens that a perspective PhD student apply for PhD admission to work on a project X, and then, once he/she starts the doctorate program, professors say to him or her &quot;Surely you will work on X some day, but now you have to work on Y&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, effectively, that &quot;some day&quot; never arrives. So the PhD student looses motivations, gets sick, and finally quits...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question, I would sat that PhD student supervisors should take more care of the PhD student will and expectations, and understand that letting him/her work on the topic he/she prefers will make him/her more motivated and finally get better results than working on someone's else objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="379" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T10:19:45.897" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T10:19:45.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1378" CreationDate="2012-05-03T13:01:58.740" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is asking the wrong question. To me, the right question is, &lt;em&gt;what are the main reasons that students drop out, and what steps can be taken to address those reasons?&lt;/em&gt; To properly examine this data would need to be gathered, but anecdotally I can think of a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student gets bored/loses interest/experiences major life changes (marriage, death in family, midlife crisis, etc.)&lt;/strong&gt;. This will happen in any profession, and are essentially unavoidable. It can be mitigated somewhat by stressing at the outset the time commitment necessary to complete a PhD, but that can only do so much... a lot can happen in four (or five, or six, or...) years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student has major fallout with advisor&lt;/strong&gt;. Again, this happens in every profession... people have personality conflicts with their bosses all the time. Communication, and lots of it, is often cited as the best tonic for this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Students become disillusioned with academia&lt;/strong&gt;. This problem often manifests later on in the career, as papers are rejected, grant applications are rejected, and/or the student has difficulty with his or her research. I would venture that this is simultaneously the most treatable problem and the most difficult to treat correctly; the advisor has to work very closely with the student and give them good academic and professional advice. From my experience, the success of the advisor in this task is often the main factor in whether the student remains in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely other reasons students drop out; if I think of more I'll add them, and please list others in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T13:01:58.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2012-05-03T14:01:47.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, having other professors in your subfield is a benefit. You and your advisor might have a falling out, or some freak tragedy could befall your advisor, or your advisor might leave for a job elsewhere and not get you an adequate (or any) offer to bring you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't make it an absolute necessity, since there are plenty of other really important things to consider. You should consider it a plus at the institutions that have two, but only you can evaluate how big a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also think about ways to mitigate the problem at other places. For instance, there might be people in related areas, even if not your exact subfield, who are close enough to potentially supervise you, especially if they're switching in half-way through your PhD.  Or there might be other faculty in the area near-by, at other schools in easy reach, who might at least be able to help out if something happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T14:01:47.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2012-05-03T15:37:12.427" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the author of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/925/767&quot;&gt;original answer&lt;/a&gt;, I suppose some further clarification is appropriate. The issues are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you willing to work on a topic outside of your intended subfield?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your program assign students directly to a research supervisor at the time of admission?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; questions is &quot;no,&quot; then you have a potential problem on your hands, and then you should be very cautious. However, if you are willing to move outside your intended subfield if there are no positions available, or if you're guaranteed entry to the desired research group at the time, it's not nearly as serious a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you only want to stay in your subfield, and it's only represented by one faculty at most institutions, then you'll need to do due diligence and figure out who will be the best fit for you, both in terms of research but in terms of &quot;fit.&quot; A significant concern would then be: &quot;Whose advising and supervision style best meshes with my own preferences?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T15:37:12.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2012-05-03T15:49:42.270" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in countries like Germany, where titles get stacked up, only your highest degree &lt;em&gt;in a given field&lt;/em&gt; is listed. However, in your case, you have two different degrees in very different areas, so it might be helpful to list both the master's and the doctorate in your title. However, the bachelor's is superseded by the master's, so it doesn't appear in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beyond that, I think it's a function of context: whichever degree is most important for you in the situation should be right after your name, and then the other degree. If it's a IT-related issue, then the MSc is probably more important than the PhD; the PhD matters for philosophy-related stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T15:49:42.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:36:16.497" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Org-mode&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AUCTeX&lt;/a&gt; (Emacs LaTeX package), to do all three tasks&#xA;you outline.  I have an Org folder that I sync across machines using&#xA;Dropbox, which I find to be a simple solution for someone who does not&#xA;use version control on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Organization&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I separate my tasks into broad groups with each group getting its own&#xA;.org file.  For example, I have .org files for administrative tasks,&#xA;journal publications, service, research topics, and any major projects&#xA;that I am currently working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of an .org file is relatively simple, for example a file to&#xA;track journal submissions, revisions, etc. may look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Initial Submissions&#xA;* Accepted&#xA;* Rejected&#xA;* Revisions&#xA;* Book Chapters&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode uses asterisks to denote levels of headings, and &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;Tab&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; to&#xA;fold and unfold the headings.  So expanding the revisions heading would&#xA;lead to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Revisions&#xA;** Paper 1&#xA;** Paper 2&#xA;   DEADLINE: &amp;lt;2012-05-04 Fri&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can set deadlines for any task by pressing &lt;code&gt;C-c C-d&lt;/code&gt;, which will&#xA;generate the the DEADLINE: line you see above.  Setting a deadline for&#xA;a task will make the task show up in the agenda view (accessed through&#xA;&lt;code&gt;C-c a a&lt;/code&gt;), which is my main project planning tool for day to day&#xA;work inside of Org-mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also track the time you spend on tasks with &lt;code&gt;C-c C-x C-i&lt;/code&gt;,&#xA;which will clock you in to a task and &lt;code&gt;C-c C-x C-o&lt;/code&gt;, which clocks you&#xA;out.  The tracked time will show up in the agenda view and can be&#xA;useful for project planning or reporting.  You can also generate&#xA;separate standalone tables inside your .org files if you prefer a bit&#xA;more customization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this can be done with a vanilla Org-mode install and no&#xA;customization.  I have my tasks set as multi-state TODO lists that I&#xA;can cycle from TODO-&gt;STARTED-&gt;WAITING-&gt;DONE-&gt;CANCELED.  I have my&#xA;keywords set in my .emacs configuration file with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(setq org-todo-keywords&#xA;       '((sequence &quot;TODO&quot; &quot;STARTED&quot; &quot;WAITING&quot; &quot;|&quot; &quot;DONE&quot; &quot;CANCELED&quot;)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;&quot;|&quot;&lt;/code&gt; separates in process keywords from finished state keywords.&#xA;If you are looking for more elaborate reports, such as Gantt charts,&#xA;my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1215/662&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; briefly discusses some of the options&#xA;available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Outlining&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For outlining and writing long documents, you can just create a new&#xA;.org file and outline using the * heading approach.  Org-mode makes it&#xA;easy to move headings around if you want to restructure your document&#xA;at any stage.  For example, if you had this outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Intro&#xA;* Part 2&#xA;** Part 2a&#xA;** Part 2b&#xA;* Part 1&#xA;** Part 1a&#xA;** Part 1b&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You realize that Part 1 should really come before Part 2 so you move&#xA;the cursor to the Part 2 heading and press &lt;code&gt;C-&amp;lt;down arrow&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, and Part&#xA;2 and all of its subheadings will move to the proper position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Intro&#xA;* Part 1&#xA;** Part 1a&#xA;** Part 1b&#xA;* Part 2&#xA;** Part 2a&#xA;** Part 2b&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your needs, writing a paper based on the outline can be&#xA;done in much the same way.  Org-mode has support for LaTeX, both for&#xA;inline fragments and for environments.  Since you mention LyX, I would&#xA;imagine the transition to stand-alone LaTeX should not be too onerous.  The Org-mode LaTeX export does a fairly good job but if you have a document with a significant amount of LaTeX syntax, it may be better to just write the draft in LaTeX using AUCTeX, but this is beyond the scope of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Reference Management&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a combination of Org-mode and RefTeX (available with AUCTeX) to&#xA;manage my references and to make notes.  As mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1364/662&quot;&gt;John&#xA;Moeller's answer&lt;/a&gt; this takes some non-trivial configuration.  I used&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tincman.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/research-paper-management-with-emacs-org-mode-and-reftex/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this setup&lt;/a&gt; almost verbatim to start my reference management, and I&#xA;have found that it works well.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/weblog/2012/03/23/how-to-manage-and-export-bibliographic-notesrefs-in-org-mode/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; was inspired by the same setup and may be useful for both reference management and writing drafts in Org-mode that contain extensive references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start with a master .bib file, that contains the bibliographic&#xA;material for each reference.  After adding updating the .bib file, I&#xA;use &lt;code&gt;C-c )&lt;/code&gt; to insert a new heading into my notes.org file.  The&#xA;customization will generate a heading with the title of the paper and&#xA;a link to the PDF of the paper.  For any notes I take on the paper, I&#xA;can use the rest of Org-mode's abilities to either have multi-heading&#xA;outline style notes as subheadings, or just write paragraphs separated&#xA;by a blank line.  The end result is an .org file with headings for&#xA;papers, textbooks, etc. and subheadings for each paper with links to PDFs and all my notes in a single file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Tips for Starting Out&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways to help smooth the way to working with Emacs,&#xA;Org-mode, and AUCTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Install Emacs 24 pretest instead of Emacs 23.  Emacs 24 has package&#xA;management included in the vanilla install which makes it much&#xA;easier to add packages without a lot of programming experience.  It&#xA;also has Org-mode included in the default install.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://batsov.com/articles/2011/10/09/getting-started-with-emacs-24/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; gives&#xA;instructions for a variety of operating systems.  I have been using it for awhile now and I have found it to be very stable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go through the Emacs tutorial, accessed via C-h t.  This will give&#xA;you the basics of navigating using the Emacs keys. It will likely&#xA;take some getting used to, especially how Emacs handles selection,&#xA;cutting, and pasting.  This will likely be the biggest hurdle if&#xA;you are used to the cutting/pasting/navigation in word processors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://refcards.com/docs/gildeas/gnu-emacs/emacs-refcard-a4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this reference card&lt;/a&gt; handy.  It has nearly all of the commands&#xA;that you will use on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Org-mode specifically, look through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;manual&lt;/a&gt;, but more&#xA;importantly look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tutorials&lt;/a&gt;.  Specifically the general&#xA;introductions and the power users describe their setup sections&#xA;(the first two sections linked above).  These tutorials will&#xA;highlight the customizations made to the initialization file&#xA;(.emacs) for these users.  Even without elisp experience, you&#xA;should be able to find something close to your desired workflow and&#xA;be able to modify it with some trial and error.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started with Emacs and Org-mode I had very little experience&#xA;with Emacs.  A vanilla Org-mode install with no customization is still a powerful tool.  As you get more comfortable with working in Org-mode you can start to work on customization. Even with very little interest in programming there is a significant enough user base that someone may have already done something close to what you are looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I got comfortable with Org-mode, I started using &lt;a href=&quot;http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bernt Hansen's set-up&lt;/a&gt; with no&#xA;changes.  It is a bit intimidating on the whole as he has some extensive customizations, but he documents them well and explains almost everything he does.&#xA;Then after using it for awhile, I was able to modify&#xA;the initialization to something that better suited my workflow.  It&#xA;took some trial and error and a bit of extra time on the learning&#xA;side, but I believe that it has payed off in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are comfortable with Emacs, I would also recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://emacswiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emacs&#xA;wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  It has some descriptions of useful packages, some discussion,&#xA;and even some configuration suggestions to help build up your&#xA;initialization file.  If you ever get to the point in your setup where you think, &quot;I wish I could do XXX&quot;, the odds are someone else has written a package that covers what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T16:36:16.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1400" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:21:54.127" Score="22" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;After factoring in government subsidies (or lack thereof), is the &lt;strong&gt;total price&lt;/strong&gt; for one year of undergraduate education in Europe increasing at a rate similar to America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7701" OwnerDisplayName="user8077" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T12:58:09.253" LastActivityDate="2019-09-14T15:46:07.603" Title="Are European schools experiencing the same cost raise as American schools?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2012-04-17T15:11:32.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on the situation in Sweden, I think similar principles would apply in the Nordic countries and possibly in north Europe.&#xA;First cost of education is very low compared to US, as can be seen in the following references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swedenabroad.com/SelectImageX/165193/Funding-the-swedish-school-system-080403[1].pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Link to educational costs in Sweden&quot;&gt;Sweden Abroad's paper on education costs in Sweden&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/inthigheredfinance/files/Country_Profiles/Europe/Sweden.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Higher Education Finance and Cost-Sharing in Sweden&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no tuition fees for European citizens (non Europeans pay a tuition fee which varies based on the University and the Education. For example a technical education for a non European may cost in the range of US$12000/year. The government also provides a grant and a loan on favourable conditions. Everyone who wants to study can get a seat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be argued that even when the government subsidies something there is still a real price, and if there is a real market driver the price should go up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government provides resources to a University based on the number of students and the number of courses provided. The amount differs based on the course. For example for natural science and technology the amount is higher than for social sciences. Half the amount is given when the student signs up for a course and half when he or she passes the course. Since the government provides means based on the number of students, there is no reason for why supply and demand should not be met and there should not be any price driver as in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For certain very popular educations there are limited seats, and the college would then limit access to these seats based on scores. But money is still not the driver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For commercial education such as a professional MBA at Stockholm School of Economics there are market price and there prices have increased dramatically over the years. The current cost is in the range of SEK 500K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mikael Gislen" LastEditorUserId="113947" LastEditDate="2019-09-14T15:46:07.603" LastActivityDate="2019-09-14T15:46:07.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T01:51:29.240" Score="38" ViewCount="3307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm studying published journal articles on my topic, and I'd like to reproduce their analysis.  How can I get a copy of their dataset and enough specifications to reproduce their numerical results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my specific case, I'm studying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/134h2p647654x684/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this work: Stecklov et al. (2005)&lt;/a&gt;, published in &lt;em&gt;Demography&lt;/em&gt;, and they're using PROGRESA datasets which are &lt;a href=&quot;http://evaluacion.oportunidades.gob.mx:8010/es/eval_cuant/bases_cuanti.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publicly available&lt;/a&gt;, but when I try to reproduce their results, all the base statistics are off by a bit, and the regressions come out a bit different.  Probably I'm just including or excluding a few different cases, but what can I do to identify the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Paul Dexter" LastEditorUserId="49273" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T18:29:23.853" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:04:33.697" Title="How to get the data to reproduce a published result?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1401" CreationDate="2011-10-24T02:19:38.310" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read carefully, underline everything it says about anything to do with the data, but it is likely you won't get it quite right. For Labor we were assigned to reproduce &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2118419&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tax Incentives and the Decision to Purchase Health Insurance: Evidence from the Self-Employed&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Jonathan Gruber and James Poterba (QJE, 1994) and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/116844&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Joshua D. Angrist and William N. Evans (AER, 1998).  Try as we might, no one in the class ever got exactly the same things as in the papers. It was always about right, and enough people did it independently that we trusted we were doing the right thing.  After a while the small differences stopped bothering my classmates and I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bitsy" LastEditorUserId="49273" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T19:04:33.697" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:04:33.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1401" CreationDate="2011-10-24T06:39:43.693" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Email the author nominated for communications, and ask them for a copy of their dataset and enough specifications to reproduce their numeric results. As a backstop, ask for the specific criteria they used to exclude cases. Consider offering co-authorship on any papers that will result from your analysis, as incentive. Give them enough context about you &amp;amp; your own work, so that they know your enquiry is serious, and that you're looking to constructively build on their work, (and not to stitch them up!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" OwnerDisplayName="EnergyNumbers" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T12:08:56.863" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T12:08:56.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T17:17:15.463" Score="2" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the same vein as &lt;a href=&quot;https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/2203/books-that-explain-dsp-well-to-those-not-directly-in-engineering&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, but making sure to abide by &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective/Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt;, what DSP programs are out there that are excellent and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give concrete examples or at least a cursory explanation for what makes them good/thorough, and stand out from other programs at different universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="770" OwnerDisplayName="Mohammad" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:29.867" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T21:24:22.653" Title="What excellent university DSP programs exist and what makes them excellent?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1404" CreationDate="2012-05-03T14:17:42.013" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, lets assume you're talking about graduate programs. X being such a specialized program would only be available at that level of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large list of cross listed (undegrad/grad) or only grad courses in all areas of study. You still need to have courses that can advance your overall knowledge of engineering. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large variety of courses in your area of study. (If your studying DSP, its not enough to just take a DSP class, you may find it relevant to study data compression, machine learning, Free-space laser communications.) This also means you wouldn't have to complete a large number of independent study programs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large Number of Faculty in your research area. If you are interested in studying music signal processing, you would want to do research with a professor who has experience in that field. If there are 10 professors, you could be more selective about who to work with or who will be the best fit for your research area. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for schools with decent program: &lt;strong&gt;Binghamton University&lt;/strong&gt;, while it is not well known outside of New York, its master's programs is well structured, large number of faculty in EE at least 3-4 DSP professors, 10-20 graduate level courses offered a semester and large number of those are DSP related.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="769" OwnerDisplayName="CyberMen" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T21:24:22.653" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T21:24:22.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-04T03:02:19.977" Score="21" ViewCount="2230" Body="&lt;p&gt;After graduating high-school, I did not attend a university and instead decided to enter the work force. Eight years hence, I would like to pursue a university degree but I am not entirely sure which credentials are important for an adult freshman. Are my high-school transcripts still relevant almost a decade after the fact? Do universities consider professional experience in their admissions process (I have 6 years professional experience related to my intended field of study)? Do I have a shot at competitive university even though my academic history is essentially nothing? With sufficient review, I expect I can achieve high standardized testing scores, but I wonder if that will be enough to compensate for such a huge gap in my academic career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of my question is: how should an adult freshmen prepare before applying to a competitive university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="772" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T18:19:25.753" Title="Attending university as an adult freshman" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2012-05-04T12:31:02.113" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently direct a graduate program and as others have said,  grades are most important while you're in a graduate program when decisions about funding are being made. C's may get you dismissed, and B's could lead to no funding in programs where funding is limited to a handful of students. If you are in a terminal MA program and applying to PhD programs, grades matter. After graduation and when you're on the job market, grades won't matter as much as your dissertation, publications and recommendations. The way that grades would matter then would be what they say about your professors' estimation of your work and whether they are likely to write you strong rec. letters. In short - if you get anything below an A, talk to the professor about what you could have done to do better and strive to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="776" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T12:31:02.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1407" CreationDate="2012-05-04T20:33:24.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say definitely - it's worth a try. I am studying at a university that usually ends up high in rankings (although it dropped quite a bit now because of student feedback), the oldest person in my course is about 9 years older than the rest of us. He spent around 5 years after school working (he had already worked there during school) and then two years ago took some additional courses at an adults' school and applied here. What should I say, they happily took him and he's constantly getting the best grades in the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mention that you have professional experience related to the subject, I think you may find it interesting that his years of work were completely unrelated to the subject he is studying now. I think that's a good factor as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in such a situation I would put much more stress on what I have done &lt;em&gt;since&lt;/em&gt; school rather than what I achieved at school. With such a long gap, what happened at school should be practically irrelevant unless you can demonstrate what strengths you have taken from school that you still maintain today. This should go by the same reasons for which certificates such as IELTS or TOEFL are not accepted more than two years after getting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I should add that this is a UK university. Procedures in the USA may of course be very different and so may your chances - but in any case it's worth a shot. It can't get much worse than having your application rejected can it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="754" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T20:33:24.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1952" CreationDate="2012-05-04T23:49:45.527" Score="10" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;An editor for a major publishing house is visiting our institute, and some PhD students will get the chance to have a 15 min talk with them and discuss the publication of their dissertation as a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to pitch my dissertation (a few months from completion) as a potential book for their publishing house. I am in the social sciences in Europe and there is no tradition of the authors getting any financial benefits out of their books, indeed sometimes we have to pay the publishers. But I would like to convince this one to &#xA;a) Publish my diss&#xA;b) do it for free&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the sort of &lt;strong&gt;information that this editor would be the most interested to have&lt;/strong&gt; regarding my dissertation? &lt;strong&gt;What important criteria do such editors consider&lt;/strong&gt; in coming to a decision regarding the publishability of Ph.D. dissertations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, this is not a formal book proposal but only a short informal conversation, but one which I hope can be useful to both the editor and me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T21:49:38.320" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T21:49:38.320" Title="What are the most important points to emphasize while pitching for a dissertation to be published as a book?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1419" CreationDate="2012-05-05T00:03:51.077" Score="9" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to prepare a 2-page abstract of my dissertation as part of a funding application. &lt;strong&gt;What are the essential points that such an abstract should cover?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This opportunity (and my PhD) is in the social sciences, and I know the points regarding &lt;em&gt;tailoring&lt;/em&gt; the abstract to the opportunity advertised. But still what is the sort of information that the recruiter would scan my abstract for? For instance, I have seen Profs run their finger down a 2 page list of publications in an application; only occasionally pausing at some journal names. What are the fingers of &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; evaluators going to pause at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T21:49:14.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T21:49:14.490" Title="What are the essential points that should be covered in a dissertation abstract?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1462" CreationDate="2012-05-05T04:00:11.597" Score="17" ViewCount="2311" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing your PhD research (in science, math, or engineering) at a non-academic lab (like a government or industrial lab) vs. the traditional academic setting? (Of course, the degree is granted by a university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is one option better than the other if you have the choice between doing your research in an academic or non-academic setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few potential advantages I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're likely to be hired by the lab after graduation. If you don't want to enter academia and are happy with the lab, this could be your career. If you do want to enter academia, often you're in good company because leaving research labs for academia isn't uncommon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can work with more people (your school's students and professors and the lab's researchers). This'll expand your professional network and expose you to different perspectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your affiliation with the lab could add some credibility to you and your research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few potential disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Travel could be problematic if your school and your lab aren't close. This could be mitigated by taking care of the coursework first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research topic is often dictated by someone in the lab if you are funded by them. If you decide this topic is not worth researching or not interesting then you might have a problem. Politics in the lab could change the research topic in the future and that might also be a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="767" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T10:12:13.093" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T10:12:13.093" Title="Advantages and disadvantages of doing PhD research at a non-academic lab" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;government-institutes&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2012-05-05T04:58:40.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most university institutional repositories will allow students to submit their work, as the aim of an institutional repository is, generally, to capture the scholarly, research and creative output of a university. This would include work being created by faculty, of course, but also staff and students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What differs between universities is the emphasis they place on different creators. At a large research university, increasing citation counts of faculty members will be a key consideration that may make the acquisition of faculty works a higher priority than student works. Liberal arts colleges will, based on their institutional missions as teaching centres, will be able to focus on undergraduate research on a level that many research universities would be unable to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently become the Digital Repository Coordinator at a research university, and one of the challenges I face is trying to balance acquiring faculty and staff work vs. student work. Many of the faculty I have talked to, however, are excited by the potential of using the institutional repository as a way to showcase their students' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a doctoral student, especially, I would assume that you would be able to submit work to your university's institutional repository. Looking at your profile, I believe that your university's repository does allow students to submit work (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://digilib.gmu.edu/dspace/handle/1920/2883&quot;&gt;http://digilib.gmu.edu/dspace/handle/1920/2883&lt;/a&gt;, for example). If it's not clear how to do so, contact your university's repository coordinator to make it happen! They'd more than likely be thrilled a student (1) knows what an institutional repository is, and (2) is interested in depositing their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T04:58:40.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-05-05T05:22:02.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the big factors driving the traditional publishing model is the tenure and promotion process. To win tenure and promotion, faculty members must publish in peer-reviewed journals... and journal reputation counts. Thus, many top researchers will strive to publish in journals with high reputation and university libraries will want to maintain collections that feature journals of high reputation (especially if those journals feature the work of its faculty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal publishers point to the value added during the traditional publishing process, including peer review, editing and layout. This argument, however, is controversial, as many editorial and peer review panels are voluntary, unpaid positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, electronic journals are not necessarily cheaper than print journals. Often, electronic journals are sold in expensive bundles and libraries are not allowed to select individual titles (this is how, say, EBSCO operates). Thus, libraries have to pay to subscribe to the whole database, which will include journals that are of little interest to the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T05:22:02.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-05T10:54:35.213" Score="2" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently enrolled as a first year student doing a computing related degree (my first) at the University of London (distance learning). Since I started, there has been a massive shifts in online education with a particular focus on the direction I want to take (computer science). With the exception to access to a wide-range of journals and digital libraries, the quality of the materials provided by the university are far eclipsed by those offered by sites such as Udacity and Coursera, plus there is no where near the same level of interaction among students or even lecturers for that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I feel like I am paying for a piece of paper and nothing more. I'm given a guide as to what is on the paper but I'm essentially on my own. I've spent all my savings so far on this, but would need to take a loan for next year. I'm both a mature student (28) and living in a foreign country, therefore the traditional paths were not open to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it? Should I just invest the time pursuing the free courses and hope that It does not impact my employ-ability? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="785" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:26:07.953" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T06:22:21.150" Title="Distance Learning vs Free Online Education" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="503" CreationDate="2012-05-05T11:10:34.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find out what the most current problems in these fields are. This can be done by reading papers in the most recent proceedings of the conferences and journals dedicated to these topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding these three topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;XML is, as you say, a tool. XML in itself is not particularly novel and a lot of research involving XML is of the form &quot;Something interesting and known &lt;em&gt;in XML&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; I find such papers unexciting and reject them if they pass my way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cloud computing is a hot topic and there will be lots of people working on it. This means that it is easy to find papers and easy to find a venue for publications. On the other hand, there is a lot of competition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complex data is and will always be interesting. But what do you plan to do with it? Are you planning to use the cloud to process massive amounts of complex data? That is certainly a hot topic these days, with things like Google's Map-Reduce framework and other comparable things (Hadoop, Cassandra, ...). A lot of big companies have interest in such settings, so it might be challenging to find something new to do, but you will likely have people interested in the work you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I think you only really need to consider the complex data and cloud computing combination. This will make your search a little easier. Then find the top conferences in the area and read the proceedings from the last few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it is crucial that you build on top of what other people have done, rather than starting from scratch. Ideally, start with something developed by people in your own lab (whether it be a system or a theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-05T13:54:34.487" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T13:54:34.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1413" CreationDate="2012-05-05T14:15:57.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any abstract should cover 4 elements: &lt;strong&gt;context&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;problem&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;solution&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;validation&lt;/strong&gt;, in this order. The main thing you want to highlight is the &lt;strong&gt;contributions&lt;/strong&gt; of your dissertation. The context and problem descriptions are essential to try to make your contributions understandable, and to convince the reader that what you have done is important. Describing the validation is important so that you convince the reader that what you have done is correct/valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T14:15:57.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2012-05-05T18:38:37.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since a Ph.D is always granted through some kind of Ph.D granting institution (usually a university) I assume your question is about being &lt;strong&gt;funded&lt;/strong&gt; by a research laboratory while being formally affiliated with a university ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with most things, it depends on the context. First of all, I wouldn't be so sure that a permanent job is guaranteed. Unless you have an explicit letter in writing saying so, nothing is set in stone. Secondly, I'd worry about your potential future marketability in the event that you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have to look for a job elsewhere. Again, whether this is an issue depends on the specific context of your arrangement. Finally, your last &quot;pro&quot; about working with students AND researchers may not be true unless the lab and university are relatively close to each other. There's also the risk of your advisor tuning you out, unless there's already a structure of collaboration in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T18:38:37.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1424" CreationDate="2012-05-05T19:31:28.623" Score="20" ViewCount="10178" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a thesis, is it acceptable practice to cite only the URL of referenced research papers where they are published electronically? Or is it compulsory to give proper authors, title, year of publication, etc... information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data mining is the process of analyzing large data sets in order to discover hidden patterns within these data sets.[1] Stock market prices do not follow random walk.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5FIEAwyn9aoC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5FIEAwyn9aoC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/41.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/41.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T20:02:50.913" Title="Can I cite a URL only instead of author, title, etc. in a research paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-05T19:38:52.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because URL are (usually) not eternal, but hopefully your publication is, then I wouldn't advise to only put an URL, especially for books or paper. It doesn't add much to make a full biblio item, that can of course include the URL!&#xA;Note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bibtex&lt;/a&gt; has a special field for url, but you can also add it as a note. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T19:38:52.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-05T19:39:59.253" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not OK to cite URLs because firstly, you are citing ONLY the URL! The URL could change at any given time without notice. Also, you are assuming that everyone is reading your paper electronically and has access to the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You NEED to give the name of the paper, the author(s), the Journal it was published in and the year it was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T19:39:59.253" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-05T20:04:35.893" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not!  The other answers mention impermanence of URLs, which is an issue, but not, I think, the most important one.  The most important reason is that some of the information in a citation, especially the author and year of publication, is important context for interpreting a citation, and is therefore essential content to the paper itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T20:04:35.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1417" CreationDate="2012-05-05T21:37:36.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, is your question is &quot;Is it worth it to enroll in distance learning when you could do the same attending free online lectures?&quot; I believe you can have some good input from  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/603/102&quot;&gt;Looking for sources of online graduate-level education&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1317/102&quot;&gt;Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is: online lectures usually don't provide academic credits. So you can't show an official degree to an employer, so it depends on the kind of job you want to do: if it's enough to show what you can do (say, for instance, you want to be a web-designer, then your portfolio is likely to be more important than your degree), then why not. But otherwise, you might have to stick with the distance learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T21:37:36.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="503" CreationDate="2012-05-05T21:41:13.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point not covered by the other answers is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review articles&lt;/a&gt; which summarize the state of a particular research field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the OP is at an early stage of the process, these are especially useful for gving an overview of the most important work, and are usually written by an authority on the topic. They can be invaluable in preparing a reading list, as the references are the ones that are considered central to the development of the field, and will often be articles that you'll be expected to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when looking for inter-disciplinary stuff it is usually useful to begin with review articles from all the sub-fields that touch upon the research topic. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Annual Reviews&lt;/a&gt; series of journals are a good generic place to start, though you should focus on the leading journals of your field. The number of citations that can be checked on google scholar are also useful in establishing the important research concerns of your field to know &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you start working on something brilliant that nobody will care about. For instance, there might be excellent reasons why nobody has done work usng your chosen approach, so getting the most respected/ cited papers will help you identify useful research topics, and also the ones to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T21:41:13.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1431" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:06:52.263" Score="27" ViewCount="5775" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to present a URL using a link shortening service such as bit.ly? The reason I'm asking is that I think it's a lot easier to enter this URL (e.g., if you read it in a paper) as opposed to full URL. Or is this a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-08-01T03:55:20.653" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T03:55:20.653" Title="Is it advisable to use a URL link shortening service when writing an academic article?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:48:36.020" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never offer a link shortener as the only option in an academic paper, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's adding another point of failure: if the shortening service is down, then the link cannot be followed.  This is a particular worry over time, since the service may go out of business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the big reasons why link shorteners are so popular is that they keep track of usage statistics.  I'd be offended if I thought an author was using this to monitor when the link was followed, where the people following it were located, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you offer a shortened URL, it should only be in addition to the real URL, not in place of it.  However, I'd tend to avoid even that.  It doesn't look professional to me, and I don't think there's much savings for the reader.  (Online papers should have clickable URLs, or at least ones that can be copied and pasted, so this only arises for someone who has a printed copy but no online copy.  That can happen, but it's hardly a major issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2015-07-30T19:05:07.403" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T19:05:07.403" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2012-05-06T02:01:31.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean when you say it's easier to enter. If someone is reading the paper online, it's a click (in the PDF) either way. And as @AM points out, link rot can then get you in two ways instead of one. In fact you should in general be leery about linking to URLs in a paper unless you have some belief that the URL will persist for the life of the paper itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T02:01:31.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2012-05-06T03:34:25.580" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: It depends!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: Shortlinks are very useful when space is essential, i.e. when advertising something on twitter. Futhermore, they can often be used for analytics which some of those services offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, it is often better to provide a full link. It looks more professional and gives more information. Since it is a link, it does not need to be typed in, so it might even be better to show a description instead of the link. The full domain also allows users to decide if they want to follow since it gives additional authenticity when the domain is well known. A lot of shortened urls lead to spam sites, or sites that try to introduce trojans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="792" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T03:34:25.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-06T04:34:30.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;URL sources are a grey area.  When possible, cite the original source.  For example if you are citing books.google.* , then you need to cite that book as a book and not a URL. For academic publications, there is an OPTIONAL URL field you may use, but this should be in addition to citing the original conference/journal/workshop/etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are circumstances where a URL is the best identifier of the resource, and in those cases, you'll have to cite the URL. For example, I used a URL resource from the libary of congress because it was unpublished historical (circa 1890AD) blueprints scanned into their library.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="793" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T04:34:30.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-06T05:06:20.250" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MLA Style guide (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~libugls/Publications/electronic_mla.html&quot;&gt;Indiana University&lt;/a&gt;) says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;World Wide Web Sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many different kinds of web sites, so it is impossible to give just one set of precise instructions for citation format. If you can not find some of the information needed, cite what is available. The following Works Cited/Bibliography examples are only guidelines; utilize the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers for additional examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you need (at minimum):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   Site title (if there is no title use a description such as &quot;Home Page&quot;)&#xA;    Date you accessed the information&#xA;    URL&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you need (if available):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   Author(s)/Editor(s) name&#xA;    Publication or last update date&#xA;    Organization/Institution name associated with the site&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="794" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T05:06:20.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-05-06T07:43:41.267" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of a bibliography is not only to identify your sources, but to allow your readers to read those sources themselves, at some indefinite time in the future.  Bare URLs rarely serve that function, in part because URLs are (by design) transient, and in part because &lt;strong&gt;you cannot assume that your unknown future reader will have internet access.&lt;/strong&gt;  This is the same reason why citations should still include page numbers, even though a quick Google search on the title and authors almost always finds the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, books go out of print, library subscriptions lapse, some conference proceedings are only distributed online, some papers are still preprints, and sometimes the source in question is a blog, a usenet post, a source code repository, or a StackExchange question.  For sources without permanent reliable offline access, I think you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; include a URL in your bibliography, despite its transience, in addition to as much traditional identifying information (authors, title, journal/conference/book title, page numbers, date) as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T07:43:41.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-06T09:12:05.377" Score="6" ViewCount="5374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got my Ph.D. from the Faculty of Computers and Information Technology, Cairo University in 2007. I want to know if it is possible to compensate or to accredit my Ph.D. from USA. If it is possible, I want to know the steps for that. Advise and tell me if there is any program in USA for a Ph.D. holder to improve and add on to his career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="795" LastEditorDisplayName="user96483" LastEditDate="2018-07-28T00:34:57.193" LastActivityDate="2018-07-28T05:12:52.177" Title="How to accredit my Ph.D. in USA" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1440" CreationDate="2012-05-06T13:07:08.050" Score="7" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I solved an interesting problem in probability, and I think it's worth publishing as an interesting application. However, I am not a mathematician and don't know anything about existing journals or conferences where my problem may fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a comprehensive guide with all the important journals and conferences in math, with an explanation of what kind of papers they may publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:25:31.933" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:25:31.933" Title="Beginners' guide to publications in mathematics" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1439" CreationDate="2012-05-06T13:42:45.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention that you are not a mathematician and that you feel that your solution to a math problem is worth publishing.  If you are an undergraduate, you might want to consider journals targeted at authors who are undergraduates (search the internet for &quot;undergraduate math journal&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not an undergraduate (or even if you are), I recommend you look at the three journals published by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/subpage_2.html&quot;&gt;Mathematics Association of America&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/mathmag.html&quot;&gt;Mathematics Magazine&lt;/a&gt; &quot;offers lively, readable, and appealing exposition on a wide range of mathematical topics.&quot;  (Read more about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/mm-guide.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/cmj.html&quot;&gt;The College Mathematics Journal&lt;/a&gt; &quot;is designed to enhance classroom learning and stimulate thinking regarding undergraduate mathematics. It publishes articles, short Classroom Capsules, problems, solutions, media reviews and other pieces. All are aimed at the college mathematics curriculum with emphasis on topics taught in the first two years.&quot;  (Read more about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/cmj_info.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/monthly.html&quot;&gt;The American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/a&gt; &quot;publishes articles, notes, and other features about mathematics and the profession. Its readers span a broad spectrum of mathematical interests and abilities. Authors are invited to submit articles and notes that bring interesting mathematical ideas to a wide audience of Monthly readers.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T13:42:45.160" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1437" CreationDate="2012-05-06T15:38:55.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., most academic fields are not like medicine: there is no licensing and for most purposes there are not strict legal requirements for what constitutes a degree.  In particular, there is nothing that needs to or can be done to accredit a foreign Ph.D.  (Other countries may differ.  For example, Germany used to treat non-EU Ph.D.'s differently; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/2008/12/C-Seitenhieb-12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.zeit.de/2008/12/C-Seitenhieb-12&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding more specific issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employers sometimes verify CVs, but that is not your responsibility.  If they need to check that you have a legitimate Ph.D. from Cairo University, then they will get in touch with the university directly to verify this.  You do not need to help (and in fact they won't allow you to help, to make sure the verification is unbiased), so all you need to do is to make sure everything on your CV is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may run into people who acknowledge that you have a legitimate Ph.D. but have no idea what the standards of Cairo University are.  That will give you a modest disadvantage compared with students from, say, Stanford, but there's nothing you can do about it.  Ultimately, if you publish strong papers in prestigious venues, then that will matter much more than where your Ph.D. is from.  If you don't, then you will not get a research job anyway, wherever you studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about upgrading the degree somehow - perhaps getting additional certification or even another degree from a particularly prestigious school - then it basically can't be done.  It's not truly impossible, and I know of a couple of cases in which people with Ph.D.s from other countries enrolled as students in the U.S. in order to improve their job chances.  However, most U.S. universities strongly discourage this, on the grounds that it's a waste of time and resources to devote a space in a graduate program to someone who already has a Ph.D. in the same field (or a closely related one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T21:14:50.983" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T21:14:50.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-05-06T20:35:15.913" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing actually comes for free.  Expensive journals tend to have established their merit with a long history, and managing / maintaining that quality across decades and editors has traditionally been the job of publishers.  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although publishing can be a pain, but it is absolutely key to academic progress.  We need to be able to rank contributions if for no other reason than to determine what to spend our precious time reading.  Like all systems with power, publication is potentially subject to corruption.  Publishers are traditionally seen as more objective than authors or universities, since their reputation and income is entirely determined by how good a job they do of publishing selectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could imagine a situation where a bunch of universities got together, dedicated their resources (paid their staff's time) to make an objective publishing system that was not controlled by any one academic institution.  But that is actually what most academic publishers are.  In fact, many academic publishers &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; associated with individual universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem remains, who pays?  Currently, in general readers / consumers pay, and they probably are really in the best place to know whether research is worth purchasing. But under open access, the authors pay.  This can actually be immensely more expensive for universities than paying subscriptions, since they produce a lot of research.  For example, my university spends less than the cost of two PLoS open-access articles per year per academic on subscriptions, but most academics are expected to publish a lot more than two articles a year.  The other problem with authors paying is that there is then a moral hazard.  Journals are effectively bribed to take papers, which may result in compromising the selective process that underlies academic progress.  This would be a terrible cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many academics self-publish by putting their papers on line or just writing blogs.  This can be effective, but note that it returns to the problem of knowing what is worth reading.  Generally, successful academic blogs are run by people who also prove themselves as academics by publishing in highly-rated journals, so this is not really an independent solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer then is: because paying to read publications is the best system we currently know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T20:35:15.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1407" CreationDate="2012-05-06T20:41:40.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities take all sorts of information into consideration when they take in undergraduates (or postgradautes). Essays, recommendations, your CV (your experience) all matter.  For a mature student, your high school record will normally matter somewhat, but it will almost certainly not be weighted as highly as it would for a person with no other experience or evidence of their quality of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different universities have different strategies and requirements, and you should check into those of the one you are interested in.  For example, when I was working in Chicago I took night classes from one of the local universities, I think it was Northwestern although the classes were at Roosevelt.  At the time at least, they would let anyone sign up for up to four undergraduate classes, no questions asked.  Then after four classes you were called in to consider really registering for your degree, and that was done almost entirely on the basis of your four classes.  I actually already had a degree, but I remember being incredibly impressed with the system, it seemed immensely sensible and fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T20:41:40.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1401" CreationDate="2012-05-06T20:48:05.930" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Replication is an incredibly important part of academia.  Don't forget that it's possible you are failing to replicate because the original authors did something wrong!  You should absolutely email them, but keep in mind that failure to replicate can be publishable, provided your differences are significant and you can couch couch our results in current theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at Gary King's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gking.harvard.edu/files/abs/replication-abs.shtml&quot;&gt;Replication, Replication&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T20:48:05.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2012-05-06T20:51:06.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried asking your supervisor to deposit the papers?  Certainly in the old days there was usually some kind of review process for technical reports which might still be applicable to solely-authored-by-students papers, but I should think that if it is actually published in a journal and/or a member of faculty will vouch for it then the repository should accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T20:51:06.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1378" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:00:12.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly universities should be more careful about hiring PhD students in the first place.  It's not enough that they are smart.  Students need to be persistent and motivated and their motivations should be realistic.  I think it helps a lot of if the students have had some time out of academia so they know early whether this really is what they want to do with their time.  I've seen a lot of faculty try to talk smart students into staying when if anything we should be trying to talk them out of staying to make sure they really want to be here.  (And &quot;staying&quot; is a bad idea anyway, it's better to change institution so it really does feel like you aren't at school anymore, because a PhD is a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; different from a college degree.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the worst thing is students that hang around forever neither quitting nor working hard.  It is the student's life and career and time, and they need to take it in hand and change supervisor if they need to, or change project, or leave.  But wasting everyone's time including their own is almost criminal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:00:12.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1457" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:13:16.403" Score="19" ViewCount="5030" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible if I could get 4 letters of recommendation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How far in advance should I notify those who are writing my letters? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does activity on sites like Quora, Stack Exchange, and Reddit's AskScience&#xA;(as well as a personal webpage/blog of one's research) count as&#xA;public outreach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:03:27.000" LastActivityDate="2019-10-29T21:23:24.900" Title="What are some good practices for applying to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1363" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:35:48.337" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two blogs that academics might enjoy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://femalecomputerscientist.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Female Computer Scientist&lt;/a&gt; - Especially, read the archives, starting from the beginning and moving forward, for a perspective from a graduate student who later went on to a professor position.  Lots of great advice for men and women alike.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Female Science Professor&lt;/a&gt; - Worth reading, and with a sense of humor.  Written from the perspective of a mid-career science professor.  Probably more likely to be of interest to faculty than grad students, but for faculty, you may find some of her writing spot-on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly found some of the stuff there helpful.  I don't know if it will help women in the position you mentioned, except perhaps to feel a sense that others have gone through this and that it is possible to remain a sane, productive person despite the hurdles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T22:35:48.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1451" CreationDate="2012-05-07T03:36:05.377" Score="15" ViewCount="2946" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, a person starts out with a single primary research interest as a PhD student (closely related to that of their adviser). But then as they move on through the assistant professor stage, they discover new research interests. Do they usually discover new research interests through collaborations/discussions with professors at their university or through conferences? Or do they discover new research interests through what can earn them funding (through the NSF and other agencies?) Especially since &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; topic could theoretically be interesting to them? (even though they might find some topics more interesting than other topics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it more often that they do what they're most interested in, or that they do what they obtain funding for (and find what they get funding for interesting enough)? And can they sometimes even discover new interests through their PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T16:13:17.043" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T05:04:19.373" Title="How do professors usually discover &quot;new&quot; research interests?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1460" CreationDate="2012-05-07T05:53:18.813" Score="24" ViewCount="13873" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say there is a student who writes a mail to a professor asking for a PhD vacancy or a RA-ship position. Should he attach his résumé in a mail to a professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had contradictory viewpoints on this. Some people ask not to attach résumés in such mails to professors, saying such mails go straight to spam. They instead prefer having a webpage and providing a URL. This is tough, as students (esp. undergrads) do not have a lot to share on a website. Moreover there is a contradiction: if a professor cannot view a résumé in her browser, what is the guarantee she would visit a website and click each of the sublinks? Looks more implausible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are others who advise applicants to provide a brief bio instead of a résumé or a URL. Again this could turn out awkward: in a bio, &quot;I did my bachelor's in XYZ University&quot; is fine, but &quot;I was fourth in the Department during my bacheor's&quot; looks out of place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T07:46:00.987" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T07:46:00.987" Title="Should résumés be attached in a mail to a professor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2012-05-07T06:12:01.927" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple ways that have resulted in new research directions for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading a paper/book.&lt;/strong&gt; Reading a paper/book can inspire new ideas. You may find that a paper is missing something, or you think of a way of doing it better, or perhaps you can combine the ideas in the paper with something you already know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obtaining funding.&lt;/strong&gt; Often funding is obtained in groups, generally to inspire collaboration and cross-fertilization of ideas. As a result, one is &lt;em&gt;forced&lt;/em&gt; to venture into new territory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talking to a colleague (generally from other institute)&lt;/strong&gt;. Simply chatting with someone at a conference or when visiting another institute can inspire new research directions. They may have a problem; you may have the tools to solve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changing job&lt;/strong&gt;. This brings you in contact with new people who have new problems. Collaborations my result from conversations in the coffee room, or by going to research discussions within the new department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Following up on something a student has done&lt;/strong&gt;. You may set a masters student, for example, to look at something you find interesting, but have not yet had time to explore in depth. The student may come up with something useful, but then leaves. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T06:12:01.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1454" CreationDate="2012-05-07T06:15:09.347" Score="42" ViewCount="9944" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is an unethical academic practice, it is a fact that most recommendation letters for MS degrees in US and Europe from countries like India and China are written by students themselves. Students apply en masse; the faculty strength in departments in many universities is small; the few professors hardly get the time to write recommendations for all applying students. Moreover a 4-year engineering degree is dominated by coursework and professors are unlikely to get to know students outside the classroom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us set aside the question of whom to blame for this practice and look at the question that comes up on most applicants' minds: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;In the event that I have to write a recommendation letter on my own, what are the points I need to bear in mind?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring similarity of language among all letters from a particular professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maturity of presentation and avoidance of blandishment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating tonal differences among different recommendation letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone elaborate on these points? The third one is oft-quoted but is found to be very tough to execute in practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-07-16T05:18:44.690" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T08:56:34.703" Title="Points to remember when having to write recommendation letter yourself" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1437" CreationDate="2012-05-07T07:16:13.940" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it is not possible to &quot;accredit&quot; a foreign degree, there are services out there that will determine if your foreign degree is equivalent to a degree issued by an accredited university in the United States. This type of service might be useful for immigration purposes and it might be necessary to apply for certain jobs in the United States, especially in the public sector. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osp.state.nc.us/ExternalHome/Group5/LocalGovmt/ForeignDegreeEquiv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are lists of  foreign degree equivalency service providers available.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the services offered by Educational Credential Evaluators, the reports &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ece.org/main/content=EvaluationServices&amp;amp;SubSite=1&amp;amp;LeftNav=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that can be purchased&lt;/a&gt; vary in detail (and, of course, cost).  These reports are not cheap and, in most instances, probably unnecessary, so I would hold off on getting one done until I'm positive I'll need one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-07-28T05:12:52.177" LastActivityDate="2018-07-28T05:12:52.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2012-05-07T07:22:19.213" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first point is impossible to carry out without a cross-sample of the professor's existing letters; obtaining such a cross-sample, however, is just as unethical as writing one's own letter of recommendation. The second is difficult for someone without experience of writing their own letters of recommendation, and the third point is challenging for anyone who isn't a good writer of his or her own accord.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I have to admit that most letters of recommendation I receive from candidates in non-Western countries falls under the rubric of &quot;not helpful to the candidate&quot;; many actively hurt the candidate's chances by not providing any distinguishing information that can help me make a case for why this should be the one candidate in 20 we choose to admit. (Yes, we have an admit rate below 5% in my program!) On the other hand, having seen a number of candidates' applications with letters of recommendation that contain similar phrasing, I can attest that this usually raises my hackles—and usually leads me to rejecting such candidates from further consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T07:22:19.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1450" CreationDate="2012-05-07T07:28:07.803" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I prefer to have the résumé or CV attached in the email. If there's not enough detail for me to decide if someone is going to be able to actively contribute to the group, there's no incentive for me to pursue the candidate further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if someone tells me in the body of the email something like: &quot;I have done X, Y, and Z; and would like to do A and B using method C,&quot; then that's OK. At a certain point, the letter does provide enough information for me to determine that (a) the student is competent and (b) will be a good fit for my group. However, my response would be: &quot;That's great—sounds like you're what we're looking for. Can you send me a CV and a list of references?&quot; So we're right back to square one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T07:28:07.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2012-05-07T07:35:50.603" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To riff of off JeffE's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although only three letters of recommendation are allowed to be considered, you should always have an &quot;emergency&quot; writer on backup just in case one of the other writers can't submit the letter on time for whatever reason (sudden illness, job change, etc.). You don't want to miss out on the opportunity because somebody &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; dropped the ball.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should notify them as far in advance as is logistically possible. You should already know who your letter-writers will be; you should find out how much advance time they need now, so that you can plan accordingly in the fall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While most of those sites would count as public reach, I don't think Academia.SE would fall under that rubric. Something discipline-specific, on the other hand, would.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T07:35:50.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2012-05-07T09:55:33.640" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's helpful to understand how NSF graduate research fellowship applications are reviewed.  &lt;em&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Caveat lector:&lt;/strong&gt; This answer was written in &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;; the application requirements and the evaluation procedure have both changed significantly since then.  I strongly recommending consulting someone who has been on the review panel more recently.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each application consists of the following components: a 2-page personal statement; a 2-page description of past research; a 2-page description of proposed future research, transcripts, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;exactly three&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; recommendation letters.  If you attempt to send four, NSF simply refuses the fourth letter; on the other hand, if only two letters arrive by the deadline, your application is rejected without review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All 10000+ applications are reviewed in a single three-day physical meeting.  Applications are split into 30+ subject areas, each considered by a separate review panel.  Each panel has 20-30 members and reviews 300-400 proposals.  (All these figures are ballparky; panels vary in size depending on the number of applications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before review, applications are divided into levels based on the applicants' time in graduate school: None (30%), less than a semester (30%), less than 12 months (30%), and more than 12 months (10%).  All level-1 applications are reviewed together, then all level-2 applications, and so on.  &lt;strong&gt;Expectations are significantly higher for more experienced applicants.&lt;/strong&gt;  The precise expectations obviously vary by discipline, but in computer science, pre-students need a credible research plan, early students need publishable results, and older students usually need multiple publications.  The &quot;more than 12 months&quot; level is only for people with extenuating circumstances, like a &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; change of field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 12-month limit counts time that applicants have actually been registered, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; time since entering their first graduate program.  So a student who started a PhD program in August 2011 and does not register for classes this summer will still be eligible in September 2012.  &lt;strong&gt;If you want to apply in your second year, do not take classes your first summer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each review consists of a &quot;letter grade&quot; (excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor) and a narrative evaluation of &quot;Intellectual Merit&quot;; a letter grade and a narrative evaluation of &quot;Broader Impact&quot;; and an overall numerical score.  The panelists use the numerical scores to cluster the applications into four categories: Yes (10%), Maybe (25%), Honorable Mention (5%), and No (60%).  NSF uses the narrative evaluations to decide which Maybes get fellowships and which get honorable mentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every proposal is reviewed twice, the proposals in the &lt;em&gt;No&lt;/em&gt; pile are retired, and each of the remaining proposals is reviewed a third time.  Thus, each reviewer reviews roughly 35-40 proposals.  &lt;strong&gt;On average, each reviewer spends 20-30 minutes on each proposal.&lt;/strong&gt;  That's just enough time to read each of the documents once, make a snap judgement, and then assemble a narrative review from a pile of boilerplate sentences.  It's brutal, especially because &lt;strong&gt;most applications are strong&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So anything you can do to make your reviewers' life easier will work to your advantage.  &lt;em&gt;Every&lt;/em&gt; component of your application should &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; address each of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsfgrfp.org/how_to_apply/review_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;two main review criteria&lt;/a&gt;.  In particular, all three statements and all three recommendation letters should include a paragraph describing intellectual merit, starting with the phrase &lt;strong&gt;Intellectual Merit&lt;/strong&gt; in boldface type, and another paragraph describing broader impact, starting with the phrase &lt;strong&gt;Broader Impact&lt;/strong&gt; in boldface type.  Both paragraphs should say something specific, substantial, and credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For security/privacy reasons, the review panel does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have internet access; reviewers are not even permitted to use their own laptops.  So if you use your StackExchange participation as an example of broader impact, be specific about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you participate; the panelists can't look up your answers or your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point to keep in mind is that reviewers are probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; experts in the applicant's chosen subdiscipline.  An application by an aspiring astrophysicist studying planetary climatology (to make up a random example) might be reviewed by a high-energy astrophysicist, an expert in planetary formation, and a string theorist.  Yes, your statements must include enough field-specific technical detail in your statements to be credible, but the overall goals and merits of your proposed research should be clear to a broader audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fine details, it's always best to talk with faculty in your field who have experience with NSF fellowship winners, either as an advisor, a reference, or a panelist.  (The most useful letters read &quot;I have written reference letters for &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; NSF fellowship applicants, of which &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt; were successful; I would rank this student among the top &lt;em&gt;z&lt;/em&gt; of those fellowship winners.&quot;)  It's also a good idea to talk with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;past fellowship winners&lt;/a&gt; in your (target) department; ask to read their applications &lt;em&gt;and their reviews&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsfgrfp.org/applicants/tips_for_applying&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSF's advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2019-10-29T21:23:24.900" LastActivityDate="2019-10-29T21:23:24.900" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2012-05-07T14:11:07.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some points (I'm no Prof., but which research topics might &quot;pay out&quot; (wether citations, patents, fame) is imo rather a matter of common scientific sense):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It may be cheap/easy/time-efficient based on the current lab hardware and expertise/knowledge of the group to &quot;dive&quot; into a additional topic. So I would call this economical reasoning to exploit new research opportunities similar to funding reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish or perish. Which research fields are trendy or will become trendy and offer high chance to publish and get citations. &lt;a href=&quot;http://well-formed.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;Visualisation tools&lt;/a&gt; for the publishing landscape or search engines might show you which fields are currently booming more or less. Or browse research forums like mathoverflow,citeulike,... to see what top and experienced scientist are currently interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finding a niche, which needs of course a really good overview on and understanding of a research field. Contrary to bullet point 2, focusing on a topic/problem no one else is interested in or thinks of may give you the chance to become a trendsetter, find a new effect/phenomenon and may earn you a lot &quot;automatic&quot; citations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;simply working off the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems&quot;&gt;list of unsolved problems&lt;/a&gt; :) (Wikipedia knows also, what we don't know!), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openproblems.net/&quot;&gt;http://www.openproblems.net/&lt;/a&gt;, science's magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5731/78.2.full&quot;&gt;125 big questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T14:11:07.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1461" CreationDate="2012-05-07T14:38:59.697" Score="45" ViewCount="3892" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I got a cite in a research paper where the author cited my work as [first name] et al, where it should have been [last name] et al. Is there any problem for indexing purpose? should I contact the journal editor about this incident and ask for correction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2018-10-17T08:57:27.067" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T10:02:06.000" Title="What to do if my paper is incorrectly cited in a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1450" CreationDate="2012-05-07T14:41:11.900" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I slightly prefer attachments.  The problem is that I'm reluctant to reply to e-mails asking for more information, or even to show up on server logs following links, because it may be interpreted as a sign of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like most faculty members (at least in technical areas), I get enormous numbers of junk e-mails regarding PhD positions or summer research.  The general pattern is that they are form letters sent to large numbers of people, almost all of whom ignore the letters.  If anyone replies in anything but the most discouraging way, then it inspires a potentially lengthy e-mail exchange that will probably just waste everyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a real problem, and I don't know what to do about it.  It's not really fair, but right now the burden is on applicants to stand out from the junk e-mails.  In particular, your e-mail should provide compelling proof that you spent at least as long thinking about it and writing it as you expect the faculty member to spend on it.  If it looks like it could be a form letter with the professor's name and research topic pasted in, then I'll ignore it, as will many other people.  [I should point out that I work in a department with centralized admissions, so I cannot accept students on my own.  This is explained on my web page and the department's.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a clearly personalized e-mail that discusses the professor's research in detail is good.  Keep in mind that plenty of people are trying to cheat with this.  For example, I regularly receive e-mails saying something like &quot;I found your paper X fascinating when we read it in our seminar&quot;, with no further details.  This looks like a form letter, and there have been a couple of times when I've received e-mails from the same sender that were identical except for having different paper titles pasted in, with no indication that they had previously e-mailed me about another paper.  Maybe a few e-mails are genuine, but they sure look like lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I get an e-mail regarding PhD admissions or summer research, I'm very skeptical that it's more than spam.  There's a five or ten second window to convince me that it's different from the other e-mails, before I set it aside.  If it looks promising, then I'll read further, and I'm a little more likely to do so if any information I need is available right there.  So I'd recommend attaching whatever is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T14:41:11.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1459" CreationDate="2012-05-07T14:53:48.653" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's a problem, and you will absolutely want to fix it. The problem is that it's actually a two-stage problem to correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, you will need to contact the journal to fix the citation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, after the citation has been corrected in the article, you'll need to submit a correction request to the various citation trackers (such as ISI and Scopus). They will need to fix your citation in their database, if the article has already been entered. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: It may or may not be possible to correct the journal—the editors may or may not be willing to issue a correction to fix a reference. However, it may be possible to correct the reference with the citation indices, even if it's not correct in the journal. However, the road will be tougher; you'll need to show that the paper that should be cited is indisputably yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T16:34:49.823" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T16:34:49.823" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2012-05-07T15:24:35.887" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Throughout graduate school I worked at and was funded by a university-run laboratory that operated somewhat like a government laboratory and was largely funded for applied research. I now work at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Affiliated_Research_Center&quot;&gt;UARC&lt;/a&gt; (which is similar to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_Funded_Research_and_Development_Center&quot;&gt;FFRDC&lt;/a&gt;).  Given that my graduate school lab was already affiliated with the University, though, my situation is slightly different than yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, it is relatively hard for non-academic laboratories to find funding for basic research; funding agencies like the NSF have a prejudice toward funding degree-granting institutions.  Therefore, in my experience, much of the flavor of the funding at non-academic laboratories is geared toward applied research.  This might not be a problem, but it can be a challenge to find a deep, Ph.D.-level problem to solve when your sponsors are interested in seeing more concrete results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, working at an applied research laboratory to fund my graduate degrees was actually somewhat of a benefit.  Due to the reasons I listed above, it was difficult for me to latch onto a deep problem to solve for which there was stable, direct funding.  Therefore, I used my position at the laboratory to basically &quot;pay the bills&quot; (it covered my stipend, tuition remission, &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp;c.&lt;/em&gt;).  That gave me the freedom to work on related—but not directly funded—problems that interested me.  This of course had the overhead of essentially working two jobs at once, but it had the added benefit of providing visibility to my &quot;side&quot; research to the sponsors who were funding my &quot;pay the bills&quot; research.  It also paid for my trips to relevant conferences, at which I was able to present &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; flavors of my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I am working at a UARC, I see others here who are also pursuing part-time Ph.D.s.  Most of them seem to have found a similar model to mine: They use their position at the non-academic lab to &quot;pay the bills&quot;, and then focus their actual research on a related but independent problem.  If you are able to fund yourself (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, if your Ph.D. advisor doesn't have to worry about finding funding for you), then many advisors will be willing to take you on as a student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="92" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T15:31:14.800" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T15:31:14.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:40:00.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1451/73&quot;&gt;Dave Clarke's answer&lt;/a&gt; is excellent, and just to add a few more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changing funding opportunities&lt;/strong&gt;. The unfortunate reality is that grants are often hard to come by, and it's not unusual for professors to tailor specific grant applications to the nature of the grants being offered. Depending on how unpopular the professor's previous research interests are at the time, this may result in a shift in research topics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Single topic diverges into multiple topics&lt;/strong&gt;. To describe this via example, at one time our lab was working on a neural imaging project related to human decision making. This research led to investigating decision-making on a larger scale, as we tried to create computational models. This led to a few papers detailing the applications of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ontologies&lt;/a&gt; to behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. Simply by following the various aspects of the project we were able to investigate a wide range of topics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T16:40:00.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1491" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:33:41.220" Score="7" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some preprints on arXiv have 1.5- or double-spaced lines, making it less pleasant to read and more wasteful to print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reason for it, except for the laziness/sloppiness?&#xA;(If drafts were &gt;1-spaced, one need to change only one option.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T19:33:23.623" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T19:33:23.623" Title="Why do some arXiv preprints have increased line spacing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2012-05-07T19:21:59.510" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ethics of the question is moot here; this practice is widespread, and the questioner is asking for a solution to his problem, not for an ethical reform of the international academic community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guidelines for such a letter would be identical to writing any other letter of recommendation. If you must write your own and have a professor sign off on it, read up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Write-a-Good/45944&quot;&gt;how to write a good letter of recommendation&lt;/a&gt; and follow any tips you may come across. You probably have little to no experience writing letters such as this one; there are many subtle nuances, both in what you say and in what you don't say. Take the time to write it correctly. If you find yourself completely stuck, ask someone else with experience to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having difficulty writing a letter about yourself, imagine you're writing about a colleague who has done all the things you have done. It may make the task easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding trying to mimic the professor's style, if he asked you to write your own letter, then he likely asked all his other students to write &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; own letters. There will be no consistent style, and that will be a reality of this individual's letter. If the department/faculty member receiving the letter has received letters from this professor in the past, this likely will count against you, and you should consider that when asking this person for a recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T19:21:59.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2012-05-07T19:33:55.380" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I applied for graduate studies, one of my recommendation letter providers was not that comfortable in English; he asked me to write the letter completely on my own and give it to him. He would edit it if necessary and then would submit it. I knew that he would not make many edits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point in such cases is to make a compromise: between the authenticity/credibility of the letter (which should ideally reduce your involvement) and the helping the language shortcomings of the professor (increasing your involvement)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as your 3 points are concerned, I strongly am against all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how you can try reaching a compromise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case the professor's first language is NOT English (which I believe is the case in India), go to him and talk to him in whatever language and extract bullet points of what he would like to write in a letter for you. The problem with most colleges is that the professor might have things to say but owing to language barriers, is unable to say it coherently in English. Thus, they are hesitant in writing their own letters. Go to him and explain it to him clearly what a recommendation letter is supposed to be and it's structure. Ask him for things he would like to say. It is important to let him be frank. Sometimes, they can be a bit hesitant to talk openly (if you don't make an atmosphere where you welcome negative comments about you, he will be very hesitant) make sure you are creating an open discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Convert those bullet points into a skeleton. For instance, suppose he liked your analytical abilities but found you to be lazy (&amp;amp; cited classroom/research experiences for the same), you can have a skeleton like :&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Only student to have solved difficult problem - Analytical skills high - usually late with assignments although they are well thought - maybe lazy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go over this process (talk, skeleton, talk, skeleton) till you have clarity in your skeleton. This might happen in the first attempt if the environment is set right or it might take several. It should contain essentials without grammar. Example (fictional):&#xA;&lt;em&gt;taught 3 courses, did well in all, strong:analysis,math,communication, weak:lazy,impatient, only student to have scored 100/100 in finals,add some examples or whatever&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give this to the professor to write it off assisting him when required. Although he might still be hesitant, try to work up a compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this might not answer your actual question, I felt it was necessary to think of a way to cut through the problem when professors wish to give you the letter, have good things to say, have time but can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T19:33:55.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="635" CreationDate="2012-05-07T20:04:36.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good answers here. I would like to add that this happened to me also. For a long time, I was also apprehensive and worried about prospective employers noticing that I don't list my advisor as reference, how to defend myself in interviews etc. but then I realized the best solution is to be upfront about it. When you are hiding something, people think you are guilty vs. when you are upfront about it - people tend to sympathize, plus most importantly you have no fear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="802" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T20:04:36.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1464" CreationDate="2012-05-07T20:14:29.317" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like it either.  My understanding is that it's for historical reasons: in the dark ages, publishers asked for double-spaced manuscripts (produced on typewriters) because it would leave space for the typesetters to mark up the manuscript.  Some authors got used to doing this and have continued the tradition to this day, despite the fact that publishers no longer care, and a few younger authors even imitate it.  I think a lot of people find it a little annoying, but they typically don't care enough to complain to the authors, so it will take a while for this practice to die out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  It's not just the arXiv, but also journal submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T20:14:29.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-07T21:35:55.490" Score="15" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in answers for both the individual faculty member and for the department as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the individual prospective faculty member - How long does the prospective faculty member's visit usually take, especially compared with the visit of a prospective PhD student applicant? And does the faculty member go through multiple interviews with individual members of the department? I know that the process varies from department to department, but specific examples would still be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:25:05.947" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:25:05.947" Title="How intensive is the process of interviewing people for faculty openings?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1469" CreationDate="2012-05-07T22:04:30.960" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; This answer applies only to the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the typical case seemed to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Day 1: Fly in mid-afternoon. Meet your faculty host and 3-4 faculty members for dinner where you have informal discussions about research, the university, or anything else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Day 2: This is the main day. The day lasts from about 8am until about 6pm. You give your 1 hour talk, interview with about 6 different members of the faculty (sometimes more if the meetings are in groups), have lunch, meet with graduate students, meet with the dean, and meet with the chair.  After 6pm, you usually get taken to dinner with 3-4 more members of the faculty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Day 3: Sometimes you'll have breakfast with your host, sometimes not.  Then you fly out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also wasn't so different for research labs.  Just replace &quot;faculty member&quot; with &quot;research scientist.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that these visits aren't any longer than a prospective Ph.D. visit, but much more intensive.  Also, Ph.D. students usually visit after being admitted, whereas faculty members visit to interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T13:22:30.227" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T13:22:30.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-08T00:08:14.753" Score="14" ViewCount="8489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd imagine that a good fraction would actually start to tire (a bit) of the repetitiveness of describing their research hundreds of times over, and would probably want to talk about something else.. After all, does the professor usually benefit when they talk about their research to a random undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, &quot;ask the professor about his research&quot; is generally considered to be standard social advice in academia... (after all, people love to talk about themselves - &lt;a href=&quot;http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-people-brain-scans.html&quot;&gt;http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-people-brain-scans.html&lt;/a&gt; ). Is the pleasure of talking about your research similar to the excitement of having the liberty to be self-centered and to talk about yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe professors would prefer to talk about something else - it's just that it's hard to think of a topic that they would prefer talking about, so it's simply a &quot;safe option&quot; to ask them questions about their research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; interested in - is this - would professors usually prefer to talk about something other than their research, if some such common topic could conceivably be found?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T02:38:47.763" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:41:13.767" Title="When meeting a professor for the first time, is it always a good idea to ask about their research interests?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1474" CreationDate="2012-05-08T00:13:29.037" Score="8" ViewCount="10904" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many teachers at my university have produced custom course books for their students. These books contain all original content, written by the teacher, and tailored specifically for the course and students. The school does publish a trade journal, but to provide the lowest costs available, and perhaps to keep things simple, the school administrators always simply takes the teachers' course books to the school's print center, photocopies them in the necessary numbers, and staples the pages together with a cheap construction paper cover. I am currently preparing some custom textbooks for my own courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If these books are prepared in this same way by the university, is it considered “published”?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How might such a work be presented in an academic CV?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T22:02:22.273" LastActivityDate="2018-03-10T07:51:01.260" Title="Is printed the same as published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1476" CreationDate="2012-05-08T01:20:47.207" Score="5" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just looked over &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/correcting-the-anatomical-record-article-pulled-after-former-student-lifted-lab-findings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article from Retraction Watch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story short, a student used previous data from their former lab and then published it without the PI's permission or knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the above is a rather extreme example of poor ethics, I'm curious where the line gets drawn regarding the ownership of research. I can understand if the data was produced in one environment and then get published in another. What about reagents (clones come to mind) that were produced in a previous lab and then were transported to a new lab? What about ideas that were developed in one lab and then taken to another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T06:36:16.117" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T06:36:16.117" Title="Publishing previous results from a previous lab" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1472" CreationDate="2012-05-08T01:24:26.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Published&quot; is a vague word, since for example you can even self-publish a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a published book will have been carefully selected and edited, widely distributed, archived in many libraries, etc.  How close it comes to this ideal varies, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether what you are describing would meet a formal definition of publication, but I'd be careful about how you describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your book has an ISBN, is labeled with a publisher like &quot;X University Press&quot;, and is publicly offered for sale (perhaps only through the university's website and university bookstore), then I would consider it published, even if only on a small scale.  (It may be cheap, but there's no requirement that a published book must have gilded pages.)  However, that sounds unlikely to be true in the case you've described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you could describe it in other ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone who wants a copy can buy one by getting in touch with your department, then you could describe it as a &quot;book distributed by the Department of ... at University X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is not offered for sale to anyone except students in the course, then you might describe it as a &quot;book prepared as course materials for ... at University X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to specify something like the number of pages, to help distinguish between a lengthy book and shorter lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T01:24:26.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1358" CreationDate="2012-05-08T01:56:35.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the &lt;strong&gt;labs (about a dozen people)&lt;/strong&gt; I work with, we use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt; install given to use by the university that requires log-in to view everything but the front page or to edit. Although the learning curve is not steep (most people already know how to use Wikipedia) it has been hard to convince the undergraduate lab members to use the wiki. It mostly serves as a place for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;short project summaries (since the lab has many different projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;notes/minutes from lab meetings, a place to store slides and presentations, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;link repository (for instance I maintain a big collection of links to relevant StackExchange questions).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a former supervisor, we used to have a private MediaWiki install that was used by a our &lt;strong&gt;small group (3 or 4 people)&lt;/strong&gt;. Since we worked on theory/math it contained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;short tutorials on how to do automated calculations as experiments for testing potential theorems (before trying to prove them), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collection of special cases that we had calculated by hand. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was relatively well maintained by the prof, and a pretty good guide for understanding some of the work behind his earlier papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also keep a &lt;strong&gt;personal&lt;/strong&gt; private &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt;, there I keep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;notes from papers I've read (although I am slowly moving this over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collections of relevant links from the internet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a more structured index of the folders and files on my harddrive (through local links) that is easier to navigate and search than my file system directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;partial documentation of code and notes on partial results of simulations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;administrative stuff like members of mailing lists, and groups I organize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the most useful was the private Wiki, the second most useful was the small group wiki because of the good maintenance by my prof, and least useful is the large lab wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T01:56:35.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1473" CreationDate="2012-05-08T04:46:06.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that so long as the principal investigator is actively involved in the planning, performance, or analysis of the research being funded, it is the duty of any researcher working in that group to determine the PI's status as a co-author. However, only if there is no active intellectual activity taking place—in other words, it's an entirely self-driven initiative, then it might be possible to say that the PI doesn't merit co-author status. (Even then, though, the provision of financial support should be clearly recognized.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T04:46:06.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1471" CreationDate="2012-05-08T05:26:48.353" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two points from experience (as a student):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't ask/talk about something that can be googled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to talk about the professor's research interest, that's great but the key point is not to talk/ask things that can be answered in a Google search. Asking a professor about his research interest might qualify as one of these cases. Checking his webpage (if updated) might answer the question. &quot;Why did you use X instead of Y in your paper titled Z&quot; might probably be a good question to ask (depending upon the occasion). &#xA;&lt;em&gt;Now that I reread my answer, I feel professors are like SE sites. Ask closed non-google-able questions while showing interest and initiative and you will have a good time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gauge the occasion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, meeting a professor for the first time in an orientation party, conference or a course orientation might call for different &quot;first conversations&quot;. Don't force what you want to talk about on the professor. (But then, this is true for all people not just professors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T06:19:57.747" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T06:19:57.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1492" CreationDate="2012-05-08T05:47:41.623" Score="24" ViewCount="2479" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tenure from a good university is generally considered to be the pinnacle of academic achievements. It is packed with so many benefits that it is easy to lose direction in one's research career post tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the event that such a thing happens, i.e., if a professor loses interest in research after obtaining a tenure (due to health, family or whatever), what steps do universities take? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any procedure built into the functioning of universities that helps them minimise productivity loss post tenure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there incentives which universities (could) offer struggling professors?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:21:53.933" Title="How do universities deal with loss in productivity post tenure?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1469" CreationDate="2012-05-08T06:48:42.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once again, this depends on where you're applying for jobs. In the US, the typical interview is between one and three days, with public presentation, closed presentation to the faculty (or hiring committee), and one-on-one meetings with faculty and possibly students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, in Germany, where I now work, the interview is just a public presentation and an interview with the hiring committee. There are no one-on-one meetings, and the idea that they should be scheduled (when I asked about them) struck the organizer of the interview as an entirely novel idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T06:48:42.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1486" CreationDate="2012-05-08T09:29:35.200" Score="8" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently submitted a paper to a conference requiring anonymous submission, meaning that the name of the authors should not be included, and no obvious self-reference should be made. The problem is that I add additional information relevant to the submission, such as some proofs and some code working on an example, calculating some numerical data (that could be found on the paper, but requiring some effort). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a non anonymous submission, I would have published a technical report with all the proofs, cited the report in the submission, hosted the code on my website, and put a link to it. However, since the technical report would not have been anonymous and since my website is obviously linking to me, it was not possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the proofs, I managed to put them in the appendix, explaining that they were only intended for the reviewing process, but I could not find any solution for the code. The conference submission site (easychair) did not provide any way to input additional data. What's the best way to deal with this kind of situations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T12:26:24.103" Title="Additional data for anonymous submission" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1488" CreationDate="2012-05-08T09:44:19.630" Score="38" ViewCount="12337" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am asking this question in the context of the long running plagiarism scandal in Germany.The most prominent victim of the scandal of plagiarized doctoral dissertations by politicians was former defense minister &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg#Doctorate_plagiarism&quot;&gt;Guttenberg&lt;/a&gt;. His doctoral title was withdrawn, and he resigned from his position. He was followed by several other politicians, and now even the German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is under &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/05/german-research-minister-faces.html?ref=ra&quot;&gt;suspicion of plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that for all these people, the plagiarism was detected only due to plagiarism detection wikis like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VroniPlag_Wiki&quot;&gt;VroniPlag&lt;/a&gt; and GuttenPlag, where ordinary people compared these doctoral dissertations with other published work. The only role of universities has been to respond to allegations that are especially well documented and have caused a reasonable amount of public uproar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't the Universities themselves bear any responsibility for letting this plagiarism go undetected? In fact Guttenberg's dissertation was awarded a &lt;em&gt;summa cum laude&lt;/em&gt;. It appears as if their is no mechanism whatsoever (at least in German universities) to detect academic fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any mechanism at all to detect plagiarism or fraudulent research in PhD dissertations (doctoral theses)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that there are probably country based differences and my experience is primarily with the German system. Still it would be good to know the seriousness with which academic fraud is taken in different countries. This appears especially pertinent to the maintenance of the credibility of academia in general and doctoral degrees in particular, and yet there seem to be no checks whatsoever!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T23:07:12.863" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T18:42:10.457" Title="Who is responsible for detecting plagiarism in a PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1471" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:41:13.767" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the context I guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are alone at a coffee break, and eager to discuss with someone, you should maybe consider discussing on something else, or on someone else research (talk about the talk just before the break, talk about the nice venue, talk about the quality of the banquet, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But If you have a purpose wrt talking to a specific person, go straight to the point. You have a technical question about one of my paper, ask it! You are looking for an intership, say it! Don't try to be too smart by starting a broad discussion that you will narrow later. You have only a few minutes to go from the status of &quot;yet another boring chitchat&quot; to &quot;mmm, interesting&quot;, don't spoil these minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:41:13.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1482" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:51:05.977" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the complexity of the modern PhD thesis, and the number of references to other works in the literature that such a work would normally contain, being able to catch plagiarism can be difficult. This is especially true when you only have a printed version of the thesis to work from. Moreover, the time to review a thesis is normally quite short—a few weeks to a month at most. Given the number of &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; responsibilities most faculty members have, it's unlikely that they're actually able to verify every fact and every citation, let alone check for evidence of plagiarism!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a general level, it is also assumed that everybody plays by the rules, and that therefore plagiarism shouldn't be likely in a PhD thesis. Only if suspicions somehow get raised do people take a second look. It's probably an invalid assumption, but it keeps the system moving. Unless we want to move to a QA-like scheme in which every claim and source has to be verified against the original, I'm not sure what other options there are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:51:05.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1481" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:53:05.927" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to distribute stuff anonymously via the web, as far as code goes, you could create a pseudonymous github or Google account for a &quot;project,&quot; and then make it accessible during the review period. Once the review period is finished, you could delete the site, if intellectual property issues are a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:53:05.927" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1481" CreationDate="2012-05-08T12:26:24.103" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three criteria: the solution must obscure your identity, it must not allow you to learn anything about the reviewers, and the second criterion must be common knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any attempt to distribute files yourself through the web will fail to satisfy these conditions.  For example, if you use a website you own (under a pseudonym, say), then you can inspect the logs.  Even if you have arranged to use a service that will not provide any logs or allow you to tag pages or link to outside services, the reviewers may not notice that you have done so, and they may not even be willing to believe that you are not doing something tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a problem you cannot solve yourself.  You should get in touch with the program committee chair and ask whether the committee could make this data available to the reviewers.  As long as it goes through them, it doesn't matter how they provide it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T12:26:24.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1482" CreationDate="2012-05-08T12:51:34.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagarism in journal publications is a large concern because the professors are often running their own labs, doing their own research, with very little oversight. The only chance to catch fraud is through a careful analysis of their publications, which is done both by the publications themselves, their peers, and the public at large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding PhD theses, the student is working with an advisor, doing (hopefully) original research. Any actual publications the student submits will go through the peer-review process, which will hopefully find any plagiarized references. Regarding the dissertation itself, it's often simply cut-and-paste from their actual publications, and once submitted, never read again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely for this reason that people probably don't dedicate much effort to finding plagiarized works in their thesis. The student &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; doing original work, as verified by their advisor and their committee, and any publications by the student have been peer-reviewed. No one cares about their thesis, and if they try to continue their behavior as they progress in their career then they'll simply get caught when it actually matters (i.e., during the peer-review process) in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T12:51:34.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1482" CreationDate="2012-05-08T13:15:10.923" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the PhD system is designed for people who intend to become researchers.  For these cases, plagiarism is not at all a common problem.  You are expected to published your research, and you will not have a successful career unless it is widely read and cited.  That gives lots of opportunities to get caught, and the penalties for plagiarism are a huge deterrent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent you find plagiarism, it's generally people who do not want a research career, but instead view the PhD simply as an obstacle on the road to a teaching (or other) career.  Probably the community should scrutinize these sorts of theses more carefully, but it can be hard to work up the energy to do so when most of them are OK, and when these theses really don't matter much for the research world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The German politicians are pretty much the worst case scenario.  In the US, the stereotypical case is educational administrators.  Typically, you have a distinguished person who starts to feel the need for a PhD.  Perhaps it's because they associate with academics and feel looked down upon, or perhaps it's because an academic endorsement would make the public value their expertise more.  This student is very smart and accomplished, and nobody suspects them of any dishonesty.  However, they are also very busy, often working on a PhD while pursuing other projects as well, and academic research is not a priority.  At some point, they succumb to pressure and start taking shortcuts.  Probably it starts with small things, but the shortcuts gradually grow larger.  They rationalize that the thesis doesn't really matter anyway, because they have no intention of following an academic career track.  After all, they have the knowledge and experience, and they deserve the PhD title, so what difference does one document make anyway?  Meanwhile, the advisor probably doesn't spend that much time working with the student, and has no reason to suspect anything.  The advisor really ought to be extra careful in cases like this, but that would seem like an insult to the student, so it's easiest just to trust them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my take on this is that plagiarism is not as widespread as news stories might suggest.  It's just particularly likely to happen in cases where it would attract media attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T13:15:10.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1501" CreationDate="2012-05-08T15:38:06.213" Score="32" ViewCount="4903" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most bibliography formats require the city of publication for books. Why? In this digital era, ISBN would be way more important. But even before the digitalization of everything, why was the city of publication important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine some purposes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to distinguish potential same names of different publishers, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to help book-seekers find the publisher and the book by actually visiting the city or contacting libraries in the city. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know better stories about the '&lt;em&gt;city of publication&lt;/em&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T00:41:04.353" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T00:41:04.353" Title="Why is the city of publication important in most bibliography format?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1464" CreationDate="2012-05-08T15:54:32.437" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the real underlying cause is just what Anonymous Mathematician said, that having a double-spaced version of a paper is more convenient for going through and making notes on a printed copy. But it's not just a phenomenon of the dark ages; many people still do this today during the revision process when a paper is being prepared for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, at least in physics (my field), the tradition of double-spacing is perpetuated by the fact that at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://authors.aps.org/revtex4/&quot;&gt;one of the major journal publishers' LaTeX class&lt;/a&gt; defaults to a &lt;code&gt;preprint&lt;/code&gt; mode which sets the line spacing to double. It is possible to change this to single line spacing by passing a class option for the appropriate journal (&lt;code&gt;pra&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;prb&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;prl&lt;/code&gt;, etc.), but many authors forget to do this - and somewhat understandably, I think, because their job is to do research, not to be proficient with LaTeX. I would imagine that a similar situation might arise with LaTeX classes used by other publishers and in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that arXiv &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/submit_tex#double&quot;&gt;recommends&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; submitting in double-spaced mode. But probably very few submitters have the patience to read through the instructions in their entirety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T15:54:32.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:13:52.540" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cynical answer is &quot;nothing&quot;. But in truth there are other ways to monitor progress and dole out rewards/lack of reward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your productivity drops off a cliff after tenure, you're unlikely to get promoted to full professor (US-specific), and get the associated salary increases etc. You may be comfortable with this (less service is a good thing!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some universities do 5-yearly post-tenure review. Doing poorly on such reviews can lead to loss of raises, reduced access to new space and facilities, increased service load (if you're not pulling in funding or teaching well for example), and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but ultimately, the final incentive is your own desire to perform. It's very hard to fire faculty. But administrators can try to kill entire departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:30:41.197" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:30:41.197" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1494" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:16:38.590" Score="9" ViewCount="1094" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I know that some lecturers just do a better job at getting their point across than others, consequently I would give them better feedback than others. I assume that teachers receive their feedback, so they know how popular they are with students. And presumably, they also talk about it with colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine this to be a considerable source of conflict between academics, so I was wondering: How do those in a teaching role at a university/college/... deal with this problem? Does student feedback create awkwardness between colleagues, or is there some kind of unspoken law not to talk about student feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="754" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:39:01.023" Title="Student feedback and jealousy between colleagues" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;community&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1493" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:39:01.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that most colleagues just don't care about the feedback. Long before those feedbacks generalized, we already knew who are the good and bad teachers. However, when I was in charge of one year of our engineering program, I tried to move teachers from the lectures where they were poorly graded. It's not easy, but it's do-able. Luckily, it seems uncommon to be globally bad at teaching, so I was always able to find a place for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:39:01.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1482" CreationDate="2012-05-08T19:03:11.313" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a proper answer to the question at hand but since Ivar Persson used the term &quot;responsible&quot; - I only see &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; responsibility*: The responsibility of the PhD candidate to follow the main academic goal: the search for the truth with true methods and true intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we really blame mentors (or: advisors) for failing to detect plagiarism when the problem is on the other side of this mentor-mentee relationship? .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* for a responsibility term close to what Christopher Avery proposes&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="764" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T19:03:11.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1497" CreationDate="2012-05-08T19:40:20.933" Score="27" ViewCount="7259" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper got accepted in a mediocre open access journal. However later I found out that its publishing fees was too high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the correct way of asking a withdrawal of your article from the journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="682" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T06:50:40.400" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T06:50:40.400" Title="How to withdraw your paper from an open access journal where it has been accepted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1496" CreationDate="2012-05-08T20:22:15.507" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it has been accepted but you have not yet signed any sort of agreement, then it's easy in theory: you just tell the editor that you have decided to withdraw the paper.  They might be unhappy, but you have a right to do this (both legally and according to academic norms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper has already been published, then there may not be anything you can do.  Retracting a published paper is serious business, done only in cases of serious error or unethical behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have already agreed to some sort of license allowing publication and paid (or agreed to pay) but the paper has not yet been published, then you should move fast.  Legally the journal can go ahead and publish, and they may decide to do so, but your chances of convincing them before they publish the paper are higher than after they publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130903150917/http://www.jfdp.org/forum/forum_docs/1013jfdp1040_1_032912094346.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stories&lt;/a&gt; of unethical journals publishing papers that have been withdrawn and then demanding money.  If that happens, then it is serious misbehavior on the part of the journal (and proves you were wise to withdraw the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T05:42:33.190" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T05:42:33.190" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:35:46.120" Score="42" ViewCount="10999" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general). &#xA;Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one solve this problem?  How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers?  What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T23:22:32.360" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T08:07:34.040" Title="How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1498" CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:00:07.693" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the statement that a PhD student never doubt a published article (at least in my field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, it seems to me that one of the first work of a PhD student is to read and &quot;review&quot; papers: for example, when we start a new project, my advisors always ask me to do a whole bibliographical work, sum up the papers read to them, comment them, try to find what is good and what can be improved in the previous work. Even after, I am also asked to always follow on the new papers that could correspond to our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is one of the work of the advisor to help her/his PhD student to learn to do this sort of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then if one really wants to review unreviewed papers, there is always &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;ArXiv&lt;/a&gt; (or other equivalent repository for papers) where one can subscribe to the rss feed, then work on reviewing for oneself (or for one's advisor) the papers read that are close to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your question seemed to be how can we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; a review, I believe it is not important whether it is an official review or not: the important part was to review a paper in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T08:00:07.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1498" CreationDate="2012-05-09T09:20:26.530" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to address your question, but first, I have some issues with it generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that one of the problems of most PhD students (and postDocs and researchers in general) nowadays is that they don't read scientific papers with a critical judgement. They often think that everything is right in a scientific paper; they're not used to doubting its content...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is manifestly not true in my opinion. Indeed in my experience (and I've seen this shared by others), I've watched faculty members reign in students who had torn into a published paper for what were essentially minor methodological flaws that wouldn't change the substantive findings of the paper one way or the other. I think a far more common problem is &quot;failing to see the forest from the trees&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, anyway, review opportunities for PhD students are not many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can be. I've reviewed 4 or 5 papers for journals in my time as a PhD student, and a disheartening number of conference abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three ways I've gotten papers to review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor puts in a good word for you. Essentially, a journal asks them to review a paper (or if they're an editor somewhere, a paper hits their pile) and they redirect it to you, either formally or informally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish. All of the papers I've reviewed are in areas where I already have a well received publication, which bypasses the &quot;Journals don't think PhD students are competent&quot; problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some conferences put out calls for reviewers. Keep an eye out and sign up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would you suggest a PhD student who wants to do some review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publish. The strongest way I've ever ended up getting papers to review has been from papers I've published. Talk to your advisor. Look out for opportunities - I've seen at least three calls for reviewers in my time expressly open to students. This also gives you an experience &lt;em&gt;being&lt;/em&gt; reviewed, which is important both for honing your own skills as a reviewer, and something you need to learn how to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any open-to-review journals where one could train oneself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a journal to do this. One of the most useful things you can do to train is to get a faculty member to support a journal club where, in addition to presenting the paper, the student writes a critique in the style of a review. Not only does this force you to read the paper you're presenting more closely, but it will let you learn in a protected, mentored environment rather than &quot;out in the wild&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T09:20:26.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1490" CreationDate="2012-05-09T10:35:02.873" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mentioning the city in the bibliography is important because sometimes the same edition published in different cities would have &lt;strong&gt;different pagination&lt;/strong&gt;, and occasionally even &lt;strong&gt;redacted content&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore when someone wants to look up the original source, they need to have this additional information available to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important reason to keep the bibliographic information on place of publication is for reasons of style. Many of us might have bibliographies stretching a century or more, and it would look odd to mention place for some and not for others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But naturally changes in citation styles are continual, and another element of the citation that is of lessening importance is the page number for journal articles. For one of my publications, I was actually required to &lt;em&gt;remove&lt;/em&gt; the page numbers in the in text citation, because the relevant information is easier to find using a search engine rather than by leafing to the correct page in a printed copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="314" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T10:35:02.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:31:46.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities can and do fire tenured faculty who are egregiously derelict in their duties — doing &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; research, performing &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; service to the university, and doing &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; (or only perfunctory) teaching — or how have committed a truly serious ethical or criminal offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even under these circumstances, firing a tenured faculty member requires extensive documentation (in the case of &quot;just not doing their job&quot;, covering a period of several years) and a long legal battle that is expensive for both sides.  When faced with the necessary mountain of evidence, I suspect most offending faculty are convinced to resign instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T15:31:46.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1032" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:47:41.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems a bit wide to answer.  Are you interested in public or private schools?  Junior college or peer 1 research level?  US or elsewhere?  Let me answer from the prospective of a 4-year US state institution.  Generally senates seem to be what the faculty make of them, they can choose to become a rubber stamp, or choose to act...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A. The senate functions as a voice of the faculty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By filtering and focusing the concerns of the faculty, the senate functions as a key voice of the faculty.  A voice selected or elected by departments across the campus. The senate can conduct dialog with the administration, offer press releases, lobby with legislators, join in with other institutions to tackle larger issues... Whether or not they are listened to, faculty member should speak together often about the central issues at the institution.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B. Determination of General Educational Policy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally the senate allows the different disciplines to discuss joint concerns, such as the general education policy, starting new programs, ...  They are rarely the final voice (or even the key voice) in these issues, but they are an important one.  Anytime an educational goal has been set, it is the faculty who should determine the curriculum, these decisions usually pass through a senate body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C. Maintaining the Faculty &quot;handbook&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be given different names at different institutions, but the subset of policies and procedures related to tenure, promotion, post tenure review, usually fall under faculty review. Core parts are usually decided by the institutions board, but many of the details of faculty evaluations, ... are often decided by the faculty.  Even when they are not, the Senate provides a united voice to address these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D. Protect the Faculty's Interests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Senate should (to the best of their ability) be involved in suggestion priorities for budgeting (whether listened to or not); in suggesting standards for academic freedom (and explaining to its member what it is, and what it is not); when necessary, the Senate should be ready to stand up for individual faculty when the institutions polices have been incorrectly applied;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="817" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T15:47:41.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1498" CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:53:22.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add some personal experience to the other answers. I did quite a lot of reviews as my advisor and other people in my group who were on programme committees asked me to do some of the reviews they were assigned to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, this is quite common practice in Computer Science. You would probably have more trouble avoiding doing reviews than doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T17:53:22.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1508" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:28:45.137" Score="34" ViewCount="5914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper which I'm interested in submitting to arXiv.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/submit#responsibility&quot;&gt;submission guidelines&lt;/a&gt; say an institutional affiliation is required for submission. I've graduated in physics from Unicamp in Brazil, but I didn't follow a scientific career. My current employer doesn't relate to physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you suggest that I do? Is there a way to submit my paper? Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="819" OwnerDisplayName="Sony Santos" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T06:30:26.883" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T23:00:55.817" Title="I want to submit a paper to arXiv.org, but I'm not affiliated to an Institute. What can I do?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1505" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:43:34.887" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;I don't see where it says that you must have a institutional affiliation,&lt;/s&gt; &#xA;Reading comprehension is not my strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says that you must represent your affiliation correctly. If your current employment is concerned with certain areas of Computer Science or Mathematics (and your paper is in a related area) this will probably count. Otherwise, I'd suggest entering &quot;none&quot;, as that is the truth of the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I believe that without either an affiliation or a history with arXiv they will expect you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement&quot;&gt;get endorsed before they accept your submissions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for finding endorser they write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're looking for an endorsement, you can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled &quot;Which of these authors are endorsers?&quot; at the bottom of every abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all that is left is for you to convince one of these people that you are serious and competent. Assuming that you were previously affiliated with a institution in the appropriate field you should probably use your contacts there to get in touch with an endorser: they are like to suspect that anyone who contacts them out of the blue is a Not-Very-Serious-Person (tm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T19:12:52.383" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T19:12:52.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1010" CreationDate="2012-05-09T20:05:15.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be a good idea to seek info from those that might know, such as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspiringdocs.org/faqs/preparing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aspiringdocs.org/faqs/preparing/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-physician/medical-school/preparing-medical-school.page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-physician/medical-school/preparing-medical-school.page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aamc.org/students/considering/gettingin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.aamc.org/students/considering/gettingin/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site is aimed at questions about Academia, I can see how you might think this would be an appropriate place, but the sites listed above should directly answer your questions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you spent time with some of your local medical professionals, found out about their jobs, their specialties?  Good luck!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="817" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T20:05:15.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1505" CreationDate="2012-05-09T20:44:14.563" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have no luck, you can always fall back on &lt;a href=&quot;http://vixra.org/&quot;&gt;http://vixra.org/&lt;/a&gt; [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViXra&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViXra&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many papers there look distinctly dubious at the very least, or trivial, as one would expect from an unmoderated repository. But I'm sure some are sound and worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although perhaps not ideal, one advantage is that at least you'll have evidence of when your paper was submitted, in the event of priority disputes. Also, it is handy to give a standard(ish) URL for references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guy who founded ViXra and runs it, Phil Gibbs, is a physics graduate himself, and as clever as a tree full of owls. But there's no getting away from the fact that in academia ViXra is generally treated with a fair degree of contempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="821" LastEditorUserId="821" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T00:18:05.060" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T00:18:05.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1010" CreationDate="2012-05-10T14:22:24.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from (1) experience applying and talking to applications officers, and (2) knowing doctors who take part in the admissions process, I would suggest that the ideal medical student would appear as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any major, but very high grades in all pre-med courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very high MCAT score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience working in a hospital &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; medical research lab, with demonstrated results (good recommendations from doctors and published papers, respectively)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very personable during the interview, well-liked by all interviewers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these should be a surprise; they just want awesome, academic students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T14:22:24.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1541" CreationDate="2012-05-10T14:42:45.790" Score="20" ViewCount="1684" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if I submit a same preprint to several open access repositories, e.g. arxiv, vixra, philica etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess doing so would give to a paper more visibility. But would it be a bad practice? Would it be unethical? Scientific community would complain or blacklist me? Is there any copyright issues, or other notes that I should know? What do you advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's unethical to submit a paper to more than a journal (or maybe &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51/submitting-the-same-research-to-multiple-conferences&quot;&gt;conferences&lt;/a&gt;), but here I want to know about preprints and open repositories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="819" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2020-12-11T14:46:17.700" Title="What are the pros and cons of submitting same paper to more than one open repository?" Tags="&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1510" CreationDate="2012-05-10T14:58:47.490" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first glance, I don't think it would be an ethical problem, but it could be a management one: if you need to update the pre-print, you could take the risk to have inconsistent versions available. It could also be confusing for those who are looking for your paper: if I see a paper with the same title on two different open repositories, I might wonder if there is a difference between the two versions, download the two versions, realize they are the same, and dislike the fact that I just wasted some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it could also be interpreted as an attempt to artificially increase your citation count, and that could be frowned upon. For instance, in Computer Science, DBLP is often considered as a good publication indicator. If you publish a paper on arXiv, on ePrint and at a conference later, that's 3 references for a single paper. Someone realizing this might think that you're just trying to abuse the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T14:58:47.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-10T17:01:42.993" Score="14" ViewCount="7723" Body="&lt;p&gt;For computer science tenure-track faculty, the standard teaching load at a major research university in the US is 1-1 (meaning 1 course each of the two semesters).  My understanding is that in math the standard teaching load is 2-1 (two courses one semester, one course the other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the standard teaching loads in other fields (e.g. physics, history, etc.) at major research universities in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T16:52:59.017" Title="Teaching Loads by Field at Research Universities" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T18:38:15.403" Score="21" ViewCount="1433" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a good practice of citing (or not) a paper or preprint that you consider flawed (or at best - totally incomprehensible)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I had a problem of that sort. I wrote a paper on a topic, which was not very popular. Even if I was not using other's results directly, I wanted to cite a few papers solving very similar issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I had a dilemma if to cite a preprint tackling the same problem, using methods I don't understand (with a feeling that it is incomplete, flawed or just extremely badly written).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ii that case it is better to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;simply drop it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cite but make it explicit that you are just mentioning it, not using their results,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or cite making it explicit that you have serious doubts on its content?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By a preprint I understand sth which is archived on arXiv or sth similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T13:12:02.553" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T20:55:02.493" Title="Citing (or not) a flawed or incomprehensible paper or preprint" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1519" CreationDate="2012-05-11T18:51:58.063" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;in what follows, I'm assuming you're correct in your assessment of the flaw.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is to communicate with the authors. If you mutually resolve the flaw (they accept the mistake, and/or redo the proof), then you either cite the corrected version or mention when citing the paper that it has a flaw and cite your discussion with them as a personal communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the conversation with the authors stall (they're nonresponsive or shift the goalposts), then you can cite the paper and briefly outline the flaw in an appendix (or if you're space constrained, post a brief link to a document available elsewhere). I'm not entirely happy with this last idea, but I can't think of anything better in a space-constrained scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that incomprehensibility is a good reason for not citing, or citing negatively. You'd have to narrow down the incomprehensibility to something in particular that the authors are not clear on (a definition, a set of cases, or something like that). Again, this should be a last resort if the authors are not responsive to contact - ideally, matters of lack of understanding should be resolved between the authors without it making it into the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;post-caveat: my answer deals mostly with theoretical papers. In more applied works, it might be trickier to determine whether something is &quot;known to be incorrect&quot; or &quot;not known to be correct&quot;.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T18:51:58.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T23:23:19.237" Score="20" ViewCount="5956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to apply for a PhD but made rather a mess of my masters. Advice from anyone involved in the process is appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying in the UK, and have a good bachelor's, which is all that is necesary for funding. I worked for 2 years before doing a master's. My field is computer science or bioinformatics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The master's went wrong - I failed about half of my modules, although I passed them on retake. I produced a good project, but did not impress my supervisor. He doesn't dislike me, I just just ended up looking flaky. Regarding what went wrong, on the one hand, my cohort had an exceptionally high failure rate, but on the other I didn't work hard enough, and got quite depressed after failing some of the first set of exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reasonable question over whether I would be suited for a PhD, but you could say that about anything hard that I try and do next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a &lt;strong&gt;bounce-back plan&lt;/strong&gt;. What can I do to mitigate the damage? How bad is the damage? Do you accept candidates with less than ideal transcripts and so-so references, given a good work history and supportive references from earlier supervisors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="838" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T05:18:21.327" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:53:10.323" Title="Applying for PhD after a poor master's" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1525" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T03:17:58.220" Score="7" ViewCount="1197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities do encourage close cooperation between students and faculty. However, how does one prevent close working or personal relationships from affecting grading, so that it can be carried out fairly and uniformly? Is there a method of avoiding &quot;playing favorites&quot; with students a faculty member has a &quot;closer&quot; relationship with than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="840" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T16:30:43.177" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T22:38:55.517" Title="How do you avoid favoritism and personal relationships from affecting grading?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1537" CreationDate="2012-05-12T08:03:20.107" Score="11" ViewCount="737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many undergraduate students who are often confused whether to make an MS or PhD application when applying to US universities. They often have the credentials required in a PhD application - good grades, UG-level research, good SOP, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, whenever there is a conflict of MS versus PhD, reasonably good students deem it safer to apply for a PhD. While there are lesser positions for PhD, an admit ensures funding and tuition waiver. Later many of those students quit PhD midway and graduate with a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the risks involved when bachelor's students apply to PhD for purely monetary reasons? Will the tuition waiver cancelled and the students be required to pay the entire fees when they quit? Or do universities bear this loss due to admission decisions that did not work out? Are there any other penalties involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:37:30.857" Title="Perils of making a PhD application merely to get funding" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1555" CreationDate="2012-05-12T08:35:17.960" Score="68" ViewCount="24089" Body="&lt;p&gt;The internet is littered with information on what makes a good SOP, but I would like to ask a specific question regarding mentioning one's research interests in SOP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What points should a student keep in mind while writing her statement of purpose? If there is exactly one specific professor the student is targeting, it makes sense to talk of one of his recent papers and ideas for extending its results in the SOP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If 1) there are a couple of preferred professors or more, 2) each of them has multiple research interests and 3) the student is unable to zero in on a field or topic, how should the student tailor her SOP to make it appealing to more than one professor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the student worry about the feasibility of her ideas in the SOP? Is an extensive literature survey in the relevant field necessary before putting anything in the SOP?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T10:02:54.663" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T10:02:54.663" Title="Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="82" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T09:05:55.213" Score="16" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once I expressed an opinion on a question in a discussion with a person working on the problem. My opinion didn't work in its original form but could be modified a little to make it correct, i.e., although not completely correct it contained useful information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I found that the person I was having the discussion with has quoted me in a paper in an incorrect form by mentioning that I'd expressed the statement. But he has made no claims about its correctness. The person never asked me later for explanation and didn't even check if the way he is quoting me is correct. The discussion was brief and spoken. And he did not even send me a copy of his paper afterwards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that he should have asked me for clarification before quoting me in the paper or at least he should have given me notice that he is quoting it. At the time of the discussion he agreed to what I said and told me he would contact me about it and even send me a draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like being quoted for a statement I don't know, and moreover I am a little bit pissed off by his action (quoting a brief informal discussion about a possible proof of some result without notifying me or asking me for clarification). What should I do now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is not published yet, it is on arxiv.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="844" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T09:44:09.047" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T16:27:39.400" Title="Being quoted for an incorrect statement" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1532" CreationDate="2012-05-12T10:21:03.220" Score="4" ViewCount="2486" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me explain my situation a little bit, then I will try to make it more general for others to benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am graduating in a month and getting my bachelor degree in computer science. I did apply to graduate programs of US universities, and it did not end up as I expected. Right now, I am still looking for chances, graduate programs, to get in. I guess all the programs in US made their decisions already, and this is true for most of EU universities. But, still I want to check if I am missing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, consider an international student who wants to apply for graduate programs of computer science in EU/US. It is mid of May. Does this student still have chances to get in a graduate program with scholarship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T10:40:58.960" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T21:22:19.537" Title="Is the middle of May very late for graduate admissions in the same year?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1531" CreationDate="2012-05-12T11:30:43.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university (Bath), prestigious university scholarships are awarded through a competition that has its first rounds of evaluations in January, so we recommend submitting December of the year before.  However, in the UK and Europe generally much research is funded by grants from research councils and industry which may be awarded at any time.  These studentships are on particular topics and will be advertised on relevant mailing lists and sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt;.  In addition, often multiple universities offer the same top students studentships, so occasionally funding gets returned and reoffered to a new applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Application times for American academic positions (both faculty and postgraduate) seem to be more structured, at least in my experience.  At MIT they said they had at least 120-150 fully-qualified applicants for the 30 slots they had the year I was lucky enough to get in (note: this means getting rejected does NOT necessarily mean you weren't good enough to get in!)  So I don't think there is any chance they would look at someone who missed their application deadline if they applied late.  But I could be wrong, and certainly it might be different at smaller universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general though I'd recommend spending the time between now &amp;amp; the next deadline making yourself a better candidate, e.g. by publishing, working in a lab, or helping out with a conference or even just getting a job.   Even if you put in another application this year, this is still good advice in case you reapply for next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T11:30:43.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1530" CreationDate="2012-05-12T11:34:39.580" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the author first.  Assume the best, that their memory is faulty, and suggest alternative text in a friendly manner.  If you do not get a response, contact the editor of the journal they have submitted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately though a lot of people get misquoted, and a lot of publications get misunderstood &amp;amp; cited inappropriately.  If it's really a big deal you might get a publication out of contradicting it, but otherwise just be glad that people think you are important enough to mention.  It's better than not being given credit for your own ideas!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T16:27:39.400" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T16:27:39.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1519" CreationDate="2012-05-12T11:41:09.540" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would never cite a pre-print except possibly as &quot;personal communication&quot;.  In fact, that is how authors have asked me to cite their pre-prints.  If it is not published, it is not a part of the cannon.  That's what publishing is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T11:41:09.540" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1032" CreationDate="2012-05-12T12:14:31.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been on the Senate and on the Faculty Board of Studies in my university.  Basically, boards like these are about communication, to make sure there is some oversight by academics of administrative decisions.  They do have veto rights, and on rare occasion these may be exercised. Individuals on them have an opportunity to bring things to the attention of academic executives.  How happy they seem about an idea also gives the executive an idea of how much trouble an idea will be to implement.  They also learn things about what is happening in the university or faculty which they can bring back to their department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How useful a board is and how much communication is really done depends on both established culture and individual initiative.  But the mechanisms are usually there in the university's charter for these groups to actually to be quite useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:14:31.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2012-05-12T12:21:53.933" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;At good universities it is very difficult to get tenure if you aren't very much driven to be an academic, that is, self motivated.  There may thus be a little slackening off, but often not much.  I've known of academics who got divorced &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; tenure because their spouses hadn't realised they just really did love working that way and were never going to change.  I don't recommend that; it does make sense to balance your life a bit more when your job is safe. Organisations that can't allow their employees to age gracefully and live full lives will lose a lot of valuable talent.  But in general, tenured faculty are either still very active or else quite useful for administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:21:53.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1528" CreationDate="2012-05-12T12:37:30.857" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can always happen that a PhD student may not complete, and for a wide variety of reasons, so I doubt that you could actually be prosecuted for fraud for a case like this, unless someone could really prove it.  But realise that whether or not fraud could be proven, such an action could be highly unethical.  Tax payers in your host country would be paying for something they didn't get, and supervisors and administrators would be investing time in someone believing they were likely to become a PhD.  It would be taking away funding from someone, possibly multiple people, who really did want a PhD, both because you would have taken money that could have gone to someone else, but also because in the future, an application similar to yours might not be ranked so well if the admissions board was afraid the outcome might be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T12:37:30.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1531" CreationDate="2012-05-12T13:09:58.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it's too late&lt;/strong&gt;, at least in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the PhD programs I'm familiar with (mostly in North America, but a few European programs too) require admitted applicants to accept or decline admission offers by April 15.  The admission offers themselves are sent out weeks or even months earlier.  For example, my department tries to finalize all PhD admission offers by mid-February.  We get about 750 PhD applications every year, so to keep ourselves (relatively) sane, we don't even consider applications that arrive after the December deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few PhD programs do consider applicants for admission in the spring semester.  But I wouldn't recommend trying for spring admissions to the same programs that already turned you down.  In my experience, spring admission is &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; competitive.  Moreover, a few months is unlikely to significantly improve your application, especially since they've already formed an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also agree with Joanna's recommendation: &lt;strong&gt;Your best bet is to strengthen your record and apply again next year, for admission in Fall 2013.&lt;/strong&gt;  If possible, get involved in a research project with the goal of publication.  At a minimum, do something independent, creative, and technical to show off your potential for research.  Show your complete application to your letter writers (or other faculty mentors), especially your research statement, and ask for their detailed &lt;em&gt;and brutally honest&lt;/em&gt; feedback.  Listen to them.  Finally, confirm with your references (by asking them directly) that they are willing to write you strong letters emphasizing your research potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T13:09:58.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T16:32:07.873" Score="65" ViewCount="17674" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a professor is teaching a student currently, is it okay if he/she friends the student on social media sites such as Facebook or Google Plus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="840" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T03:55:55.833" LastActivityDate="2020-09-29T18:46:49.513" Title="Is it okay if a professor friends a student on social media sites?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-12T16:53:54.143" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a little on the circumstances, but generally not.  If the student is your Ph.D. student, then it's probably OK to accept a friend request, but you shouldn't initiate it (and some people might not even approve of accepting it, depending on the sort of advising relationship you have).  If it's an undergraduate in one of your classes, then I don't think you should even accept a friend request, and sending one would be very improper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three basic principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't put your students in situations where they might feel awkward or uncomfortable.  For example, would turning down a friend request from one's professor come across as rude?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not healthy for class dynamics if there's a perception that you have a closer, friendlier relationship with some of the students than with others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to be very careful not to do anything that could be misinterpreted (or, worse yet, correctly interpreted) as showing romantic interest.  Some people will interpret things that way if it's even vaguely plausible, and fair or not you've got to keep this in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T13:43:10.463" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T13:43:10.463" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1510" CreationDate="2012-05-12T17:04:12.733" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the viewpoint of the repository (although, I am speaking primarily from the viewpoint of a university institutional repository), it would not be considered unethical or undesirable for authors to submit their work to more than one repository. Open repositories are built to increase access to the products of research and creativity, by making works publicly and freely available online. Submitting work to more than one repository is another way for an author to increase accessibility to his/her work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only copyright issue present would lie in the relationship between the author and the publisher that published the author's article. Most journals allow authors to deposit preprints of their work, that do not contain any edits or revisions from the publication process, in open repositories. Others allow authors to deposit preprints of their work that have been revised to show the revisions made in the publication process, and a few journals will allow authors to deposit the final publisher's version of the article. Some publishers will want their authors to wait a few months after publication before making their works accessible through open repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals rely on the quality and originality of the articles they publish to build a reputation. As most journals charge subscription fees, the originality of their articles is important. Open repositories do not operate on this model, so the ethics of publishing in the journal do not translate to depositing your work in an open repository. Most repositories require their authors to sign a non-exclusive distribution license to deposit their work, which allows the repository to make the work accessible online. As a non-exclusive license, authors retain the right to submit their work to journals, other publications and other repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different open repositories have different functions. Institutional repositories capture the research and creative outputs of their host institutions. Subject-based repositories capture the work being done in a specific field. Because repositories exist for different reasons, I would see no problem in submitting your work to multiple repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="132629" LastEditDate="2020-12-11T14:46:17.700" LastActivityDate="2020-12-11T14:46:17.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-12T18:52:22.220" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid it and refer them to linkedin as an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T18:52:22.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-12T20:12:42.063" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;People use Facebook in different ways*). Some are actually spreading links, thoughts and comments related to their professional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: most of the time people are using it for things related to their personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know examples of TAs, who are FB-friending their students. But most aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main question are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you want them to see your all FB stuff,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you want to see all their stuff,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you call them your friends,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and do you want them to call you a friend?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, why adding them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, it depends highly on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your personal approach to such social networks,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your natural contact with your students (if it is formal or even semi-formal, perhaps FB is not the right tool).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on both, it may be either natural, acceptable, improper or really creepy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) And also there are different philosophies when it comes to adding friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T20:12:42.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T20:25:26.660" Score="9" ViewCount="1926" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should I interpret a journal rejection of &quot;not of sufficient interest&quot; or &quot;does not meet journal standards&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what happened to me particularly. Papers were rejected for those reasons and the journal never told me that they had found any error or that anything was wrong or inconclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a paper is rejected, do reviewers let you know if they found any error or they will never tell you even if they found one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T21:54:19.067" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T21:54:19.067" Title="How should I interpret a journal rejection of &quot;not of sufficient interest&quot; or &quot;does not meet journal standards&quot; without mention of any errors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1544" CreationDate="2012-05-12T21:31:23.410" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that if a reviewer found an error, the reviewer will generally tell you.  If you get a rejection without any further comments, the likely reason is that the reviewer read the outline and main results, and concluded that it wasn't necessary to go through the paper carefully to decide to reject it, probably because the results weren't significant enough for that journal.  (Some journals specifically request that reviewers do a quick read of the article within a couple weeks of receipt, to see if it has any hope of being published; it often takes reviewers months to do a full read through, and if it has no chance, it's kinder to the author to give a quick rejection so the author can promptly resubmit to a journal which might publish it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However sometimes the reviewer has carefully read through the paper before recommending rejecting it, and in that case the reviewer usually (at least in my experience) includes a list of suggestions or comments (including pointing out any errors the reviewer found).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T21:31:23.410" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1544" CreationDate="2012-05-12T22:57:27.483" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a journal rejects a paper because it is not of sufficient interest for them or it does not meet the standards of the journal, it generally means exactly what they said.  They thought the paper wasn't interesting or important enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals vary enormously in how selective or prestigious they are.  Some journals will accept any paper that seems to be correct, original, and at least somewhat interesting. If a journal like that rejects a paper for this reason, then either it's not a very good paper, or they are being unfair (perhaps accidentally - peer review isn't perfect, so occasionally you just have to try again), or you submitted it to the wrong sort of journal (the line between different subfields can be blurry, but if you choose the wrong side it decreases your chances of acceptance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other journals impose extremely high standards and only want to publish papers on exciting breakthroughs.  In that case, there might be nothing wrong with the paper at all, and the only issue is that they have received other submissions they like even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, there's a whole range of journals in between these extremes.  Depending on where the journal is in this range, it will shift from a statement about your paper to a statement about the journal's high standards, and there's no way to be more precise without knowing more about the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best source of advice is a trusted mentor in your field, but I wouldn't get too worried on the basis of one rejection.  Look over the paper again with fresh eyes, make sure the introduction and conclusions are compelling, choose another journal, and resubmit.  If you run into this problem repeatedly, then something's wrong (either the paper needs work or you need to choose more appropriate journals) and that would be a good time to seek more detailed advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T22:57:27.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1550" CreationDate="2012-05-13T08:09:33.383" Score="13" ViewCount="3495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in the UK, study Computing and I'm about to start my final year. I have been told by friends that the University holds the right to my final year project. Is there a way of getting the rights and intellectual property of my final year project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="827" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T08:50:15.617" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T12:33:42.427" Title="How can I get the rights to my final year project?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1547" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:08:31.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I expect that it differs from university to university, but in general you won't be able to do this unless you buy the rights from them. Somebody in your students' union/student support services might be able to give you a better answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T11:08:31.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:12:19.793" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To second &amp;amp; enlarge upon what Md. Golam Rashed said in a comment: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.edu/&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; is designed as a networking site for academics (rather than, say, originating in a site where users picked which of two students' photos was &quot;hotter&quot;). So referring any students who approach you on facebook, to Academia.edu instead, would be contextually appropriate, and give you a defensible position that you were linked to them via a site that exists to allow academics to network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to Academia.edu : I'm simply registered there)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T11:12:19.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1547" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:50:06.890" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question is why you want the rights.  For example, if you are working on something with serious commercial applications and hope to start a company or sell the technology, then this is a very serious issue.  The first step is hiring a lawyer, who can advise you on precisely which rights you and the university currently hold, and who can help you negotiate with the university regarding commercialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, most student projects are of no commercial value.  If you just want to display your work online (to help build a portfolio for job applications and in case this work is useful for someone else), then it's probably easier.  It may depend on the university, but presumably they don't want to limit the dissemination of student projects, so if you ask them I bet they'll grant permission.  You should think about exactly what you want to provide and under what sort of license (for example, if you put code on the web, nobody's allowed to use it unless you license that).  I imagine the university would be happy with some sort of Creative Commons license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend being very clear and straightforward when asking, to avoid raising suspicions that you are trying to trick them into giving up the rights to valuable technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T11:50:06.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-13T15:06:06.133" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It clearly depends on how you use Facebook, as it says in an earlier comment friend on facebook are not real life friends. I think that is is clear for everyone, so if you have a policy of accepting anyone as facebook friend, and if you have nothing personal on your facebook account, I don't see any problem in having students as facebook friends. &#xA;For me, facebook friends are no different than linkedin connections or google+ circles members, and I have the same policy for all social networks: I accept almost everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: and for really personal matters, I have an additional account, totally anonymous, except for the family and real friends.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T12:15:34.973" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T12:15:34.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-13T20:16:29.820" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When facebook was new some PhDs at my university asked everyone to join, so my first &quot;friends&quot; were other academics &amp;amp; PhD students.  Immediately that first year undergraduates tried to friend too, so I made a rule:  &lt;strong&gt;some people do not really want to know your internal state, so they should be put on &quot;limited profile&quot; and not allowed to see your wall.  All undergraduates are in this category&lt;/strong&gt; until at least a year after they graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then facebook security has gotten a lot freakier, and also I have gotten older, while grad students by and large haven't.  One thing to consider: &lt;strong&gt;do you really want to see your graduate students that are not writing their dissertations stories about the on line gaming they do in your facebook feed?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to encourage my PhD students to think of themselves as peers, so I friend them like peers if they ask.   But if some do &amp;amp; some don't, is that discriminating against the ones who don't?  Even if it's their own choice?  I don't think so, but it is weird &amp;amp; I am rethinking my policy.  But then, I'm always rethinking facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T20:16:29.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1529" CreationDate="2012-05-14T08:53:09.317" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your research statement (not &quot;statement of purpose&quot; as university administrators strangely insist on calling it) should be a description of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; research experience, interests, and goals, as a supporting case for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; potential for &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; research.  If you were applying to work in my research area, I would much rather read about &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; research ideas than mine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I like to see in research statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What have you already done?&lt;/strong&gt; What problems have you solved, or at least worked on?  What independent projects have you been part of?  What were your key contributions?  What did you learn?  What did you teach the world?  How do your results compare to what was already known?  What original ideas are you most proud of?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  Refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details: preprints, project reports, source code, videos, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are you working on now?&lt;/strong&gt;  What problems are you currently trying to solve?  What are you currently trying to build?  What are the open research issues?  What intellectual tools are you using, or learning to use?  What are you reading?  What prior results are you building on?  How are you building on your own earlier work?  What is your current favorite half-baked idea?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  If you have partial results, refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask whether you should worry about the feasibility of your ideas.  No more or less than if you were actually doing research.  Ideally, I'd like to see both that you have good ideas and that you're not afraid to have bad ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What might you want to work on in the future?&lt;/strong&gt; What problems you would like to solve?  What would you like to build?  Do you want to push your existing projects further?  If so, how?  What new areas are you interested in exploring?  What are your long-term career goals?  Convince the reader that you are  knowledgeable about your target area(s), but be honest about your ignorance.  Be specific, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one will hold you to your stated plans.  You don't need to do an extensive literature survey (although it certainly can't hurt; put a copy on your web page), but at a minimum you should have had a strong undergraduate course on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does my department fit your research goals?&lt;/strong&gt;  (If the rest of your statement is well-written, the reader already knows the answer to this question, but you also need convince the reader that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; know.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few sentences about motivation are worthwhile, but don't talk about how many programming languages you know, or about how you were a child prodigy, or how many &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1177/are-participations-in-competitions-well-recognized-for-a-ph-d-application&quot;&gt;contests you've won&lt;/a&gt;, or how many A+s you got, or how Alan Turing was your childhood hero, or how your research area will Change The World.  Write in simple, direct, flawless English.  Like Suresh, I have seen many phrases like &quot;my first trembling steps&quot;, but never in successful applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only credible reason to &quot;target a particular professor&quot; is if that professor's research interests &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; mirror your own.  If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that means you have to &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; well-developed research interests.  That's the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T09:01:09.307" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-14T11:30:35.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should also bear in mind local government rules and/or school policies. For example, recently it was clarified by the New York City Education Department that that &lt;em&gt;public school teachers&lt;/em&gt; (so not quite University professors as I think the original question intends) &lt;strong&gt;may not&lt;/strong&gt; contact students through FaceBook (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/nyregion/social-media-rules-for-nyc-school-staff-limits-contact-with-students.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;link to New York Times article&lt;/a&gt;). It is not inconceivable that similar rules may be put in place by other local governing bodies and/or university regulations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T11:30:35.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1523" CreationDate="2012-05-14T12:11:50.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delay applying for a year and work on a new project, where you can perform much better (now that you have more experience). Get a publication out of that and work with someone new, who will write you a good recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know for a fact that many labs are very interested in getting bioinformaticians, so it shouldn't be hard if you are not looking for a great salary (which you shouldn't be: this is a career investment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T12:11:50.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1523" CreationDate="2012-05-14T16:00:38.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have seen some people that were very good in their Masters totally screw up their PhD. And other people are not doing very good in the Masters but doing a great PhD after and get an academic position. A PhD is long time, so be sure that you like the subject, be sure that you can publish within the subject. You have to be comfortable with the people you will working with. If you can work with the people that will offer you a PhD before starting the PhD, that is a very good point. That maybe out of the question but even after 6 months or one year, if you see that not doing it, that better to leave and try to find another PhD. You can do well on your second PhD and get an academic position, I know someone who has done this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't find a PhD that you feel is good for you it's definitely better to wait. Going back to work or doing an other Master, but in a related field. That gives you more experience and more time to find a good PhD subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start your PhD it's kind to be like in a tunnel, sometime you never really see the end. I think most of people get discouraged at one time in their PhD, even the better, you really need to believe in yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem by doing a PhD after a not so good Master is that you will have more difficulty to find a good PhD subject. You can definitely find one but you have to find a good one for you. If nobody wants a PhD subject, there is a reason. That's not mean that it's bad subject but you have to figure out why it's less attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions that may help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you mentor have previous PhD candidates and how did those PhD candidates end up? Generally when there is not a full transparency from the mentor there is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you comfortable with your mentor and the team that you will working with  (if there is a team)? Can you talk freely? If it's not comfortable when starting I don't think it's will going better with the stress of the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the plan of action of the PhD well defined? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When can you expect the first publication? For example if the mentor said you that there is a publication in progress and they can add your name to it that a good point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you feel comfortable with the subject or does it look too hard? Especially if you have to write a program or build an experiment. You have to estimate the time that it will take you and if you can get publication from this. Some mentors don't hesitate to take a PhD candidate just for coding as cheap workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="866" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T14:53:10.323" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:53:10.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:50:33.907" Score="5" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does undergraduate tuition help fund professor salaries? Does it help fund graduate student salaries, especially if the grad students are TAs? What about lab facilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T21:51:41.537" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:51:41.537" Title="What does undergraduate tuition fund, and how does this differ between public universities and private universities in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1569" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:52:30.253" Score="6" ViewCount="2866" Body="&lt;p&gt;Undergraduates have several-month long &quot;sabbaticals&quot; every years. While graduate students shouldn't expect to have the same thing, could it maybe be justifiable for them to take a several-month long sabbatical in the middle of graduate school? These things can be really helpful for things like evaluating whether or not you're trying too hard to reach a dead end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T01:58:56.950" Title="Is it ever advisable for graduate students to go on sabbatical for several months?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1579" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:57:49.903" Score="12" ViewCount="6393" Body="&lt;p&gt;And how often does it happen? I know someone who was de facto kicked out of Harvard due to some conflict with his advisers, though he was later able to transfer to Caltech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example - what if there was an irreconcilable difference between the student and adviser, and what if other advisers were reluctant to take the student on (for whatever reason)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T19:41:00.040" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:39:01.790" Title="Can graduate students be forced to leave graduate school under pressure from their advisers?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1563" CreationDate="2012-05-14T18:23:38.857" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is such a loaded question I'm hesitant to answer. While it might seem that a student was &quot;kicked out&quot; of a program for conflicts with an advisor, most departments (including ours!) have a procedure and policy for when students are asked to leave the program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the reasons would be some mixture of lack of basic minimum grades and lack of satisfactory progress. if there's conflict between a student and advisor, there's usually some departmental mediator (a director of the graduate program) who should be able to step in and deal with the situation (either finding the student another advisor, or something like that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not aware of it being generally possible for an advisor to fire a student and have that student then be removed from the graduate program: these two things are usually separate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T18:23:38.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1563" CreationDate="2012-05-14T18:41:58.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;it depends&quot;. It depends on the country and it probably even varies between universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, Sweden or the Netherlands, for example, it is virtually impossible to force a graduate student to leave, though eventually the funding allocated to that student may expire. I am aware of one case of academic misconduct in the Netherlands where the student was more or less forced to quit or otherwise face a long and painful series of disciplinary hearings to officially make him leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other places, Belgium, for example, students are often paid based on year long contracts (graduate students are employees). The contracts can be evaluated each year and terminated in the case of unsatisfactory performance. Of course, matters are handled delicately, and often by involving the student in the process. That is, discuss the student's performance and paint a bleak picture and let him/her see that quitting is the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the student's perspective, it is best that they do not waste 4+ years of their lives and achieve nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the university/department/professor's perspective, it is best that the student does not waste 4+ years of funding and achieve nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T19:53:37.473" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T19:53:37.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1567" CreationDate="2012-05-14T19:39:39.560" Score="13" ViewCount="7159" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the proper etiquette for requesting a meeting with a professor who you don't do research with or take a course from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say, the professor is doing something you're interested in, and you just want to talk to them just to learn more about their research (you might be interested in their research out of pure curiosity, or might be wanting to find a possible connection between their research and your potential research). How should one phrase the email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm interested in trying to find a way to set a particular time for a meeting. Sometimes I ask &quot;are you available next week?&quot; and they say they are, but it's possible that they could be away for most of the week (for unexpected meetings and the like). Should I request a time of my own in a reply? (especially if they don't give a time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T20:19:05.477" Title="Email etiquette for requesting a meeting with a professor who one won't do research with or take a class from?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1566" CreationDate="2012-05-14T20:19:05.477" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that you are a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply send a short, polite email expressing that you are interested in his/her research and that you would like to talk about it. If you share a coffee machine, lounge, canteen, etc, you could suggest to talk over coffee. Certainly, say who you are and what you do in the email, and indicate why you are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't ramble on in the email. No one has time to read long emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing interest in research and showing that you won't be wasting his/her time are main points to observe. Most researchers (unless they are ridiculously famous and super busy) would be happy to explain their work and create new avenues for future exploration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T20:19:05.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1560" CreationDate="2012-05-14T20:56:01.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This is very much a US centric answer; other countries structure their university systems differently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to answer because money is fungible, so in some sense it doesn't matter what the nominal answer is---if the money isn't going to fund those things, it's filling in other expenses so that other sources of revenue pay for those things.  But in practice, most universities put undergraduate tuition directly in their &quot;General Fund&quot;---a big pot of money, which is then divvied up to support the general operation of the university, which includes all the things you mention.  (Note that many sources of funding for the university are dedicated for particular things, and don't go into the General Fund, but undergraduate tuition usually isn't one of them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Michigan has a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/budget/fundingsnapshot/3.html&quot;&gt;online presentation&lt;/a&gt; about this, and as far as I know, that's typical: undergraduate tuition pays into the general fund, which pays for most of the university's core activities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T20:56:01.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1561" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:14:05.407" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;We encourage our graduate students to take internships for 3 months during summer (at Microsoft Redmond and MSR Cambridge). This is a bit like a sabbatical. In our experience, these are extremely valuable for the students and for fostering research collaborations. Usually one publication results for the student, but the experience and the contacts they gain cannot be measure in the regular units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not allow our students to go on such 'sabbaticals' if they are not already performing well. The lucky students who do get to go need to act as ambassadors for our university. We do not use internships as a way of kick-stacking the research of a student-gone-astray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless by sabbatical, you mean vacation, in which case, I've answered the wrong question. Students are entitled to 6 weeks vacation per year (not including Christmas). They may take it in one chunk if they wish. Whether we allow it depends on what project deadlines need to be met and so forth. Generally, we encourage them to split up their vacation into smaller chunks (1 week here, 2 weeks there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T21:20:47.177" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T21:20:47.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1561" CreationDate="2012-05-15T01:58:56.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, academic sabbaticals have a direct, stated purpose; for example, performing research (and having some fun) in a different country with a different academic environment, casting your hand at doing some work in a completely different field, taking a break from work to write a few long review papers. To this end, I'm not sure what a student would &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; on a sabbatical; most graduate students have a single project, and they haven't been involved in research to be able to try something else–they're still learning their first field, for goodness sake. I'm not sure how anyone would benefit from a student taking a sabbatical. On the other hand, there are numerous downsides, the main one being that there is a definite chance that the student will not return to their research after doing something else for a few months. I can't think of any reason why this could be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T01:58:56.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1573" CreationDate="2012-05-15T02:19:21.453" Score="13" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the tenure review process, someone puts it like the way it's put below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tenure review process is designed to determine whether someone has&#xA;  &quot;the ability to do their job.&quot; The junior faculty member has six years&#xA;  to construct a track record of success. During these six years, the&#xA;  junior faculty member acquires teaching evaluatons from students and&#xA;  colleagues. The junior faculty member acquires grants and sets up a&#xA;  lab with a productive research program. The junior faculty member&#xA;  develops a reputation of collegiality and service within the&#xA;  department and the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though that's how it's done in name. Others, like Sean Carroll, say that research is far more important than teaching (which is probably true in the elite private universities). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about things like successfully graduating PhD students though? Can a PhD student help an assistant professor gain tenure? I'm particularly curious about whether or not this applies for all universities - both in the elite privates and the public ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-26T12:39:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T12:39:22.697" Title="Do tenure reviews in U.S. universities usually consider the number of PhD students that a professor successfully graduates?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1572" CreationDate="2012-05-15T02:55:59.940" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many graduate students a professor helps through the program can have a number of impacts on tenure - including some I'll likely miss. Off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a former student, I have been asked to write a letter on behalf of a mentor of mine. The more students one helps launch off into bright, shiny, productive careers, the more of these letters should be positive and strong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD students &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; heavily correlated with research productivity. One person can only be so productive - having a thriving lab with graduate students passing through it can help boost publications, productivity, etc. all of which may very well help one's tenure portfolio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To address &quot;like Sean Carroll, say that research is far more important than teaching&quot; - your actual, direct supervised graduate students really don't fall under &quot;teaching&quot; in many cases, and are much closer to either the research or service end of things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that, with the tenure clock of many universities, a junior professor may very reasonably not have graduated any students from their lab by the time they come up for tenure. But being a good mentor and building a pool of capable graduate students can help one's tenure application in a number of ways even if the committee doesn't look at it as a solitary number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T02:55:59.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-15T17:13:18.157" Score="17" ViewCount="2428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a civil engineer myself and found no options for depositing engineering related &lt;strong&gt;pre-print papers&lt;/strong&gt; in any online repositories. Is there any easy solution to this? For example, academia.edu lets one upload their papers but other people must have account to download the paper which is kinda turn off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I want a repository like ArXiv from where people can download anonymously and also with easy submission procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;strong&gt;This is about already published articles in journal or conferences, so that people can download the pre-print anonymously.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T20:45:56.330" LastActivityDate="2020-10-30T15:43:30.610" Title="What is the best repository for Engineering research work in pre-print format?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-15T17:16:18.173" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two simple important rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never initiate a friend request with a student&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you accept a Facebook friend request from a student in a class that you are currently teaching then you must accept friend requests from all students in that class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond those rules things are more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T17:16:18.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2012-05-15T17:54:29.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason you're having difficult getting answers is because your goal is unclear from your question. The best way to have your work added to an online repository is to submit your work to a recognized engineering journal, such as one of the IEEE societies. If you don't want to support paid publishers, you could consider checking out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS&lt;/a&gt; journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have to recognize something fundamental about your work; from my experience, people doing serious research aren't trawling the web looking for information that happens to be placed on the internet that just happens to be related to their field of interest. Researchers overwhelmingly use journals to communicate, for the simple reason that journals provide a peer-review process, meaning that the content is vetted for accuracy, quality, and relevance. If you simply want to put your stuff online, get a blog, but if you want others to read it—particularly others recognized as leaders in the field—you will almost certainly want to submit to a journal. Most well-known researchers that I know wouldn't look to &quot;online repositories&quot;, if they exist, simply because the signal to noise ratio is guaranteed to be far too high to be worth their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - I'm not sure of your end goal. Consider submitting your results to be published (and added to the publisher's archive). Also, interesting discussion in comments; read them below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T20:35:21.197" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T20:35:21.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1531" CreationDate="2012-05-15T21:22:19.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university (KU Leuven, Belgium), PhD positions are available all year round, as admissions depend very strongly on faculty obtaining grants, and these are available at different times of the year. Faculty select their own PhD students individually, rather than depending on a centralised procedure. Just check the web site of the faculty you are interested in and look for open positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same procedure may be used by other Flemish universities, but I cannot say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T21:22:19.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2012-05-15T23:43:56.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I shall argue that &lt;a href=&quot;http://igem.org/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iGEM&lt;/a&gt; falls under the category of a Hackathon. Having coached a team, I have grown the impression that the program essentially gathers a bunch of undergrads together, teaches them various problematic things about biology, and then for 10 weeks the students slash together a random assortment of solutions and call it a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like EpiGrad, I have evolved to not favor this type of approach. Many times the students will take on a problem without recognizing that it is actually isn't a real problem. The result is a solution that tends to be very very narrowly constrained. Secondly, unlike a programming Hackathon, these sessions result in tons of hastily performed experiments with very few controls and lots of very difficult to reproduced data. Notably the &lt;a href=&quot;http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Registry of Biological Parts&lt;/a&gt; is having a serious issue with the quality control of their &quot;parts&quot; since they all come from unsequenced plasmids that were shipped to the Registry to qualify for the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The positive is that it does get a lot of young students interested in science but it isn't a very productive way of doing science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T23:43:56.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1563" CreationDate="2012-05-16T02:43:51.927" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like @Suresh says, in the US, I would expect that the advisor-advisee relationship would be separate from enrollment in the department.  The advisor can decline to continue funding the student, and can decline to continue advising the student.  However usually the advisor cannot force the student out of the graduate program; that's up to the department or university.  I would expect that most departments or universities would have an established process for asking students to leave, which would typically be if the student is not making satisfactory progress towards their degree or meeting other requirements.  Normally I would expect this process to include some degree of warnings and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is some coupling between the advisor-advisee relationship and one's status as a graduate student.  Many PhD programs have a requirement that the graduate student must have a faculty advisor.  If the student's current advisor is no longer willing to continue advising them, and if no other faculty is willing to advise the student, then this may eventually lead to the student being asked to leave the graduate program, for failure to meet the program requirements.  Normally I would expect that to happen only in egregious cases: most departments probably feel a sense of responsibility towards their graduate students, take care to look out for their students, and try to create an environment that gives students a chance to finish their degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T18:39:01.790" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:39:01.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1581" CreationDate="2012-05-16T05:41:47.777" Score="51" ViewCount="2532" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's &quot;published&quot;. Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="833" LastEditorUserId="833" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T03:00:07.370" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T03:53:29.253" Title="Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1580" CreationDate="2012-05-16T07:23:35.667" Score="22" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Issue of citing authorship&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting from first principles, I think in most instances on StackExchange it would be &lt;strong&gt;the original poster of the quoted answer&lt;/strong&gt; that would be the relevant author. The person asking the question is useful but it is typically the information provided in a particular answer that would be the typical candidate for citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I imagine there could be instances where the question itself or an overall exchange represents the unit of citation. In such a case, it would make sense to cite all relevant contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Does something learnt from StackExchange need to be cited?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of learning goes into a journal article. This learning comes from many sources. That which gets cited is only a small fraction of that. A scientist might (a) read a statistics book; (b) ask a friend;  or (c) ask a question on Stats.StackExchange.com to learn more about how to analyse his or her data. In both cases, the person has devised an analysis plan based on having learnt something. However, generally these sources are not cited. In each case the scientist has learnt how to do something, but ultimately the knowledge is already established in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that the vast majority of posts on StackExchange do not constitute a citable unit of original research. That said, where this does occur and it it influences your work, it makes sense to cite the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T07:23:35.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-16T08:52:31.030" Score="7" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that many Doctor of Business Administration or PhD in Business Administration programs in the US tend to reject students who did not complete a master's program at an AACSB-accredited school. From checking the list, there are no AACSB programs in the country where I live and it seems that many other foreign students would similarly lack such opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this true only for American students or also of international students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I complete a non-AACSB-accredited program, how might this limit my opportunities for further study?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I demonstrate that a foreign program has sufficient quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T15:36:09.193" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T08:59:11.987" Title="How important is AACSB accreditation for further study after an MBA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1580" CreationDate="2012-05-16T13:07:34.557" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;What merits a citation or coauthorship is a subtle question, but the answer doesn't change when people interact online.  The main difference is that the interaction is more visible: authors may feel awkward if they decline to cite a publicly visible (but unimportant) contribution, and the contributor may feel encouraged to complain.  This adds to the pressure of the decision, but it shouldn't change the answer, and the other issues and subtleties are the same as in offline interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for online contributions being &quot;published&quot;, I suppose that's true in the technical sense that they have been made available to the public, but that's not what academics mean when they talk about publication.  For example, listing a stackexchange answer as a publication on one's CV would be considered at least eccentric, if not deceptive, regardless of how impressive the answer was.  (The best one could hope for is to list it somewhere else.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what the relevance of the second paragraph of the question is, but here's a guess.  Suppose Alice is writing a paper and Bob makes an absolutely critical intellectual contribution via a stackexchange answer.  Normally such a contribution would merit coauthorship, but Alice might declare that Bob's work is already published via stackexchange and that she will simply cite it rather than making him an author.  That would be unreasonable and unfair to Bob, but if Alice was scrupulous in citing Bob's answer and giving him full credit for its contents, then it's not clear that Bob would have any recourse.  I'm not convinced this is more than a theoretical problem, since the number of stackexchange answers that could merit coauthorship is tiny (maybe not zero, but that's a good first approximation) and most authors are well behaved anyway.  However, I suppose it could happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T13:07:34.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2012-05-16T14:49:30.040" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;the best source for scientific papers is American Society of Civil Engineers witch you can visit at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ascelibrary.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ascelibrary.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;second source is ICE Virtual Library at this address &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;anyway, many publishers have journals in field of civil engineering, but as you said, most of them require subscription (personal or via university)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also, you can find some journals in Directory of Open Access Journals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="872" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T14:49:30.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1580" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:25:17.217" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing a forum post is very close to &quot;personal communications&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of actually citing (instead of thanking the author in the acknowledgements) is that you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explicitly say what was &lt;strong&gt;their contribution&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give more &lt;strong&gt;details&lt;/strong&gt; or provide the context&lt;br&gt;(sometimes the post is longer, with more threads than those mentioned in the paper),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;implicitly &lt;strong&gt;build visibility&lt;/strong&gt; or prestige of the forum/SE site/MO/... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the author(s), there is no established approach. Typically (default from &lt;code&gt;cite&lt;/code&gt; on the MathOverflow and &lt;code&gt;link -&amp;gt; cite&lt;/code&gt; on the StackExchange) &lt;strong&gt;you cite the exact post&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. the selected answer with its author). However, if you want to point explicitly to more authors (e.g. actually you base on two answers or the question itself is non-trivial), then it may be a good idea to include them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider that their contribution is substantial, then you can decide to have them as &lt;strong&gt;coauthors&lt;/strong&gt; (of course assuming they agree). But then the rules are no different from talking in person. (Except for the fact, that on fora some people may be unreachable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if something is simple (but not trivial, i.e. present in standard textbooks), citation is welcome. For that reason people quote tables of integrals and for the same reason I think that simple &lt;strong&gt;findings you base on should be cited&lt;/strong&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that hiding one's sources is neither productive nor fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="833" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T03:53:29.253" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T03:53:29.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1580" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:34:47.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a simple test for citing/acknowledging. Did you come up with the contribution yourself ? If not, then you need to cite whoever did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this amounts to authorship, and how exactly to cite the contribution (as a footnote, acknowledgement, personal contribution or whatever), depends on the conventions of your research area (especially for authorship thresholds). In general, if you're merely deciding between different kinds of citation, more information is usually better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the entire second paragraph about conventions in publishing, I think that's irrelevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:34:47.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:49:39.990" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a larger question at hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why have you people been historically trusting a signed piece of paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is never any good proof the person who wrote the text has been honest, even if this person holds a professor position at some university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters of recommendations is the historic absurd which make no sense whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me too I had my letters of recommendations written not by professors but by other people who knew me (I'm from Russia). Why? Because when I approached professors only one really took the time and effort to write one, while others honestly said they didn't know how to write something like that and they didn't know me well enough to be a judge to my character. They told me to get the text written any way I liked it and they would sign it. That was it. So I asked other people if they would be kind enough to write a few words about me and they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There hasn't been a history of writing letters of recommendations in my country, then what do you expect people to do if they wish to apply to a Western university? They do fake letters and they will continue to do so for as long as this stupid practice exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give here is to ask somebody else who knows you well and knows your subject area well to write a letter for you. If you attempt to write about yourself it may eventually suck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thought: in some countries (notably Germany) there is a practice of putting watermarks in this sort of papers (sequencing of words, particular wording and other tricks) to convey hidden information about the person. Sometimes it would make sense to put a notice into the letter stating that this text has been written by e.g a Chinese professor who is not familiar with hidden language ubiquitous in e.g Germany. Should such things be discovered this should be attributed to mere coincidence and should be discarded as such, the text written should be understood as it is written with no &quot;alternative&quot; interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to the hidden language of reference letters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The keywords to google for are &quot;Geheimsprache&quot;, &quot;Geheimcodes&quot;, &quot;Zeugnissprache&quot;. There are tons of pages. Just a few to provide an overview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeugnisdeutsch.de/arbeitszeugnis/geheimcodes.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Geheimcodes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arbeitszeugnis.de/arbeitszeugnis-code.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Der Arbeitszeugnis-Code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastEditorUserId="875" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T19:08:57.947" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T19:08:57.947" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1589" CreationDate="2012-05-17T00:48:43.777" Score="23" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am beginning to develop research projects that will incorporate undergraduate researchers.  I have observed that some faculty manage to create a strong lab culture, where the students that work with them seem to get a sense of achievement from simply being part of the lab and the lab culture.  (I work in biology but I have seen this across disciplines)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I would like to create an environment where there is a sense of community associated with my lab. What steps should I take to accomplish this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T08:01:07.897" Title="How can I create a sense of community in a research group?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1588" CreationDate="2012-05-17T07:08:39.577" Score="13" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enthusiasm&lt;/strong&gt;: Students in a lab should get the feeling that the professor is someone who shows as much interest and puts in as much hard work in the project as themselves. The professor may have a lot of credentials and experience, but his enthusiasm level must be the same as that of his students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emotional management&lt;/strong&gt;: Sometime there could be students who lose their focus on research; at others, there could be slight rifts and differences in opinion between the professor and student because of their approach to the problem. There may also be problems within the students which could be distasteful. The professor must be mindful of these, try his best to ameliorate the situation and not let things go out of hand. Without getting smarmily personal, the professor must manage his lab as though it were his second family.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensuring good placement&lt;/strong&gt;: Placement is not an indicator of research, but in reality, people use this record to gauge a lab's quality. The professor must build contacts and be willing to counsel and recommend their students to good places (each according to his ability, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good Results&lt;/strong&gt;: The most important point. If students must feel a &quot;sense of achievement from simply being part of the lab&quot;, then the output from the lab should be sensational. This involves a lot of man-management; knowing what each student is good at and how to get the best out of each one of them. Finally, though it may sound cliched, hard work is the key to good results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T08:01:07.897" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T08:01:07.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1595" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:00:01.050" Score="6" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often the industry finds that students graduating from a particular department do not possess the skill-set required to perform well in their company. While research can at least afford to be outside of the interests of the industry, academic syllabus taught to students for their bachelor's or master's has to cater to the demands of the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What steps are taken by a university to ensure that its students are employable and industry-fit? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this recalibration happen at all, and if yes, how often? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not every requirement of the industry could be met in an academic syllabus. For example, programming languages cannot be taught in class simply because the industry needs them. What points should academicians keep in mind when addressing industry's expectations from a university?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T21:41:04.373" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T21:41:04.373" Title="How does calibrating syllabus based on the requirements of the industry happen?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1596" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:16:32.043" Score="20" ViewCount="1568" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a general tendency of students (master's or less) to rate highly those courses that create a value for them at the industry. For example, in CS, networking or OS courses are found to be attractive by many students simply because these are (almost) indispensable for most job interviews. It is difficult to find the same kind of enthusiasm for say, an optimisation course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example from ECE will be courses pertaining to electromagnetism. Students generally love VLSI-based or telecommunication courses and ignore or dislike the ones on EM. Similarly there could be subfields in many areas where research has stagnated and relevant courses do not carry industrial value, but it is impossible to exclude them from the syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a professor teaching such a course sustain the interests of the students? How does he/she make the best out of a bad job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-25T02:44:06.710" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:44:06.710" Title="Motivating students when teaching a widely disliked course" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1591" CreationDate="2012-05-17T09:24:16.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to resort to youtube but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/WgWNQVdhE9A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/WgWNQVdhE9A&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Channing Robertson at Stanford teaches Intro to Chemical Engineering which is essentially a glorified way to say Mass Balance and Stoichiometry. It is literally a course on converting values from Metric units into English units. It is literally a course about realizing that what goes in a box must come out of the box. It is dry and boring material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1219/319&quot;&gt;Why do so few universities offer OpenCourseWare videos of their lessons?&lt;/a&gt;, not every class is worth making an OpenCourseWare video but they did for this one. He kills time with stories and lots of them. He goes into the history of chemical engineering. He teaches use the Socratic method. They do problem sets and then go on field trip to see what their problem set was about. It may be dry stuff but at least it would be entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T09:24:16.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-17T09:25:59.410" Score="26" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;Discussions about academic publication (for example, the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com/&quot;&gt;Elsevier boycott&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/&quot;&gt;actual cost of publication&lt;/a&gt;, open-access initiatives by &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&amp;amp;tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448&quot;&gt;universities&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=419475&quot;&gt;funding&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicaccess.nih.gov/&quot;&gt;agencies&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/&quot;&gt;citation cartels&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/19/post-publication-peer-review-what-value-do-usage-based-metrics-offer/&quot;&gt;post-publication review&lt;/a&gt;) are often muddled by the fact that publication practices and culture vary significantly from one discipline to the next.  I would like to see some of these differences explicitly teased apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm particularly interested in exactly how publishers in different disciplines help move authors' ideas to formally published papers.  Publishing in any discipline requires the combined effort of authors, publishers, editors, and reviewers, but the distribution of these efforts (and their associated costs) seems to vary from one discipline to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What specific services do publishers provide to authors in your discipline?&lt;/strong&gt; Please only one answer per discipline.  (If necessary, define &quot;discipline&quot; as &quot;set of researchers with the same publication practices&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(At a deeper level, I am curious why so many people seem to associate the value, authority, and prestige of various publication venues with their &lt;em&gt;publishers&lt;/em&gt; instead of their authors, editors, and readers.  But that's not a good question for StackExchange; let's stick to the narrower factual question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll provide an answer for my own discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T11:54:10.610" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T05:51:48.123" Title="What do publishers provide to authors in different disciplines?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-17T09:37:25.543" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2012-05-17T09:27:30.143" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Papers are written, illustrated, and typeset (in LaTeX) by authors and refereed by unpaid volunteers.  Some publishers give free journal subscriptions to editorial board members; a few pay a small stipend to the editors-in-chief of each journal; otherwise, editors are also unpaid volunteers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most journal publishers provide an online system to help editors track submissions and communicate with referees.  Conference publishers do not; most program committees use free systems like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easychair.org/&quot;&gt;EasyChair&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/hotcrp/&quot;&gt;HotCRP&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some journal publishers employ copy editors, who produce the final camera-ready paper directly from author-provided LaTeX and image files.  Specifically, copy editors correct (and invariably insert) spelling and grammar errors, and reformat the paper (especially the bibliography) to fit the publisher's standards.  For other journals and most conference proceedings (Springer's LNCS series being a notable exception), copy editors simply do not exist; camera-ready papers are produced by authors using publisher-provided LaTeX packages, except possibly for page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most publishers provide electronic versions of their papers to subscribers.  Some publishers also provide extensive indexing and cross-referencing of their publication catalog.  Online-only venues are still relatively rare, so for most venues, publishers print, bind, and ship paper copies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T21:46:36.213" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T21:46:36.213" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-17T11:10:21.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2012-05-17T12:55:50.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, for teaching computer science, information systems and software engineering you can refer to model curricula provided, e.g., by the ACM. An advantage of such curricula is that they result from a joint effort of the universities and companies. For instance, the Graduate curriculum for Sofware Engineering lists contributors from General Motors, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Ford, Nokia, Avaya and the Department of Defense: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gswe2009.org/fileadmin/files/GSwE2009_Curriculum_Docs/GSwE2009_version_1.0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gswe2009.org/fileadmin/files/GSwE2009_Curriculum_Docs/GSwE2009_version_1.0.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the ACM curricula are but a proposal and every univerity has to try and find the right balance between industrial and academic needs. However, comparing your curriculum with the ACM guidelines can reveal interesting patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T12:55:50.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1591" CreationDate="2012-05-17T16:33:07.930" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to motivate students, including but not limited to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;showing practical relevance of the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explaining what makes &lt;em&gt;the teacher&lt;/em&gt; passionate about the subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;linking the course topic to their own experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actively engaging the students in discussions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;giving the students adequate tasks and providing them with rapid and positive feedback (adequate = not too difficult and not too easy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips and tricks can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/motivation.html&quot;&gt;http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/motivation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="882" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T18:59:03.443" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T18:59:03.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1761" CreationDate="2012-05-17T17:49:06.507" Score="22" ViewCount="3184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a research grant proposal and the funding agency requires us to turn in a white paper before the actual proposal. I have no clue how a research grant white paper should look like. I tried googling and searching in the university library, but could not find anything similar. Will somebody be able to give me a link to a research grant white paper, something which I can look at and learn the format? (my field is computer science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="884" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T06:57:42.260" Title="Sample Research Grant White Paper" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1598" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T01:20:39.987" Score="10" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several months ago I submitted a paper to a journal. The area covered by the journal is the same as the one covered in the paper. However, I waited several months and finally the paper was rejected by the journal, and they explained to me that it was not of sufficient interest for them. What can I do to avoid having to go through this again if I submit my paper to another journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="886" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T04:53:02.620" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T04:53:02.620" Title="What are the factors one needs to take into account in order to choose an appropriate mathematical journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1601" CreationDate="2012-05-18T06:38:06.747" Score="31" ViewCount="2918" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do academicians need to keep in mind when they are conversing with a fellow researcher whom they do not think highly of? I was reminded of &lt;em&gt;A Beautiful Mind&lt;/em&gt;, where Nash (Crowe) says &lt;a href=&quot;http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/247553&quot;&gt;the following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I imagine you're getting quite used to miscalculation. I've read your preprints... both of them. The one on Nazi ciphers... and the other one on nonlinear equations... and I am supremely confident that there is not a single seminal or innovative idea in either one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is as forthright as it could possibly get! Suppose there is a situation where you have read a paper in some detail, and are sure that it is not just worth its salt. If you happen to strike a conversation with the author about the work itself, how do you go about it? How do tactful researchers react to this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T00:14:26.607" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T05:05:55.990" Title="Etiquette when talking to a researcher whose work you do not think highly of" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2012-05-18T07:14:48.303" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you for your useful contribution to the field&quot; seems to be a popular opening in such cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as it might be you, rather than the author, who's got it wrong, then proceeding by the Socratic method can be both tactful and constructive. Start with establishing common assumptions, focussing on those areas where you think the mistake starts: &quot;So I think you started by assuming XXX - have I got that right?&quot; Then continue asking questions, stepping through their methodology, giving them an opportunity to either contradict themselves, or to clear up your own misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, there's the altogether briefer: &quot;Thank you for your useful contribution to the field. Oh, please excuse me, there's someone over there I've been trying to catch up with for some time, and I must catch them now, while I can&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T07:14:48.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2012-05-18T09:22:02.280" Score="36" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be polite.&lt;/strong&gt; There's nothing to be gained by being a jerk. It's funny in the movies, but do people really say things like that in real life?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be diplomatic.&lt;/strong&gt; State initially that you do not fully understand the approach or the motivation, and then after some discussion state that you do not fully agree with the approach taken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be succinct.&lt;/strong&gt; Point out clearly what you see as being the problem with the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be constructive.&lt;/strong&gt; Indicate places where you think the paper/research could be improved, with concrete suggestions of how you would make the improvements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid the topic&lt;/strong&gt;. Talk about the football scores instead. &lt;em&gt;What about those Bears?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T16:43:23.157" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T16:43:23.157" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2012-05-18T10:22:07.447" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To understand that a paper is wrong can be much more difficult than that it is right. You might simply not get an idea or it could be badly written, or with rather a typo than an error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Could you explain me the main idea of your paper?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How can it be related to other research, ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or more technically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I don't understand how does X imply Y, could you explain it to me?&quot; (*)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or if it is about the general approach/philosophy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Personally, I prefer loop quantum gravity to string theory.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a plain error, there is no reason to hide it. (Otherwise you would value tact over truth, which is IMHO a very bad approach to science.) But still it can be done politely, perhaps using (*). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rants are rarely successful at anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, judging quality or impact of a work is risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T10:22:07.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T15:21:19.387" Score="9" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Luck favors the prepared mind&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Louis Pasteur&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the MS degree program or PhD program, it's advisable for a good student to get used to take a look on scientific activities of research groups he want to join, after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the student decides somehow that he wants to try to join X, Y, Z groups, how should he &lt;strong&gt;prepare himself the best&lt;/strong&gt; for the admission procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should he do &lt;strong&gt;before actually applying&lt;/strong&gt; for that position in that group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should he do &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the (formal centralized or informal) &lt;strong&gt;admission procedure starts&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my own answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task #0: he must read all the recent papers of the group he would like to join, and know very well those related to his research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task #1: prepare all the admission material &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision&quot;&gt;(we've already discussed about this)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task #2...#N... what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest to anyone to prepare himself to an admission procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T18:50:24.300" Title="How to prepare for a (PhD or PostDoc) admission procedure?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1604" CreationDate="2012-05-18T16:13:34.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with some steps prior to yours in the interest of making the answer more generalizable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine which universities to apply to.&lt;/strong&gt; This will involve weighing factors such as ranking, faculty members, student opinions (from online discussion sources like this one or face-to-face discussions), sub-field specialties, and location, among others. You can prepare for this by looking all this stuff up:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US News &amp;amp; World Reports rankings for graduate programs&lt;/a&gt; is a good ranking system; there may be better ones I'm not familiar with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the department's faculty page (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/Bioengineering/Research/Faculty_Research_Interests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) for each university to see broadly-defined research interests for faculty members. Some people will explicitly list whether they're taking on new graduate students or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know anyone in the field, talk to them to see which universities/professors/labs would be good to check out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine which lab to apply to.&lt;/strong&gt; This will involve a lot of the above, but specifically it will involve talking to graduate students. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/353/73&quot;&gt;This question covers that topic in pretty good depth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read up on the fundamentals of the topic you're interested in.&lt;/strong&gt; I would suggest you be familiar with the field enough to ask a basic question about it. In my field, review papers would be a great resource for this, although I will admit that it may be hard for you to find a good one. Speak with one of the subject matter librarians in your university (i.e., if engineering, talk to the librarians in the engineering library) and ask them to help you find recent review papers on your topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll concede this is a difficult task, but being able to ask even simple questions about the field shows familiarity, and will make you look better during the interview. I recall some of my graduate school interviews where I just sat there, almost completely unfamiliar with the lab's research topic, and I felt very foolish indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All the stuff in the question you linked to above&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, most of your work is already set in stone; your undergraduate grades are set, your summer internships are complete, you finished the GRE, and it isn't likely you can do anything for your professors at this point to improve your recommendation letters. Just focus on the labs themselves and learn as much as you can before making decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T16:13:34.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1604" CreationDate="2012-05-18T19:33:25.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question also depends on whether you want to apply to a specific group (which I think of as the &quot;European model&quot; of admissions) or to an entire department (&quot;US model&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US model, test scores, transcripts, and letters of recommendation tend to be the most important factor, with the statement of purpose being a less weighted criterion, as you tend not to be &quot;locked in&quot; to the area you outline in your statement of purpose. In that case, selecting a group follows admission, and then you need to do your homework on the different groups at the institutions you're interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the European model, selecting a group occurs &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the admissions process begins. In that case, everything eykanal mentions in his answer is important. However, the key thing will be to convince me that you are directly and actively interested in applying to &lt;em&gt;my group&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicate how your skills and background are tied in to the projects available in my group. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show that you've done some looking into the recent work in my group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you've established previous contact with me, raise a reminder of that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why you would make a good fit in my group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start doing those things, you'll make me want to request letters of reference and call you for an interview. If not, it's likely I'll send your application to the &quot;circular file&quot; without further consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T19:33:25.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1598" CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:20:31.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no easy solution to this problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently went through a situation where a paper was rejected from a journal without review; the same paper, with only minor edits to the abstract and the introduction, was accepted &quot;as is&quot; for publication in another journal of similar quality and impact factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue for getting your work accepted may not be that it isn't of sufficient interest—it may be that the way &lt;em&gt;you have presented it&lt;/em&gt; does not convince the editors and referees that the work is suitable. Have you hit on the &quot;hot-button areas&quot; that tend to come up again and again in the journal? Have you made it clear from your abstract and your leadoff paragraphs why this article will be of interest to the target audience of the journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small differences—these changes don't require much work—can make a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; difference in the acceptance of a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T21:20:31.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-19T00:44:29.683" Score="14" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've just written up a report that could eventually turn into a publishable manuscript, but since I'm new and this would be the first paper that I've ever written, I'm definitely going to need quite a bit of feedback before submitting it (especially since it's important for research to be interesting to multiple individuals if it's ever going to be cited).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm wondering - how should I phrase an email asking someone to look at my work? Which people should I ask to comment on my work? And how would it differ from professor to graduate student? I'm thinking that my research can be interesting and helpful to a few grad students, so they can often provide a lot of help (that, and they have a lot more time than professors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one has time, I'm also wondering if it's a good idea to send the manuscript to people sequentially (e.g. send it to a 2nd person only after getting feedback from the first). That way, no effort is lost if two people suggest the same set of changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:33:00.130" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:33:00.130" Title="Etiquette and guidelines for sending pre-published work to other people?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1611" CreationDate="2012-05-19T01:47:56.827" Score="17" ViewCount="1114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you find out that someone you know well or work with is reviewing the same journal paper you are reviewing (i.e., finding out this information on your own, and not via the journal or editor, assuming a blind process). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you discuss the paper? Can you discuss your reviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T16:01:24.790" Title="Are reviewers allowed to discuss their review with each other?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1620" CreationDate="2012-05-19T06:43:18.183" Score="8" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, say, if I want to start on a new research project but want to be sure that someone else isn't doing the same thing that I'm doing, how should I phrase an email to them, if at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes, this could lead to a collaboration between the two. But in a few cases, this could also be a case where someone might be competing with you for the same research finding, and where they might want to &quot;take the glory&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T14:35:13.923" Title="Etiquette and guidelines for asking someone if they might be doing work potentially similar to yours?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1609" CreationDate="2012-05-19T10:45:24.137" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a blind process, you're not meant to find out. As various people have pointed out in the comments already, discussing your review with them is therefore a big no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main principles of reviewing by several people is that you get independent opinions, so that if a particular (maybe well-known and well-respected) person doesn't like the research, they can't just make it disappear by convincing everybody else that it's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some conferences (and maybe journals?), you are able to discuss your review with the other reviewers after the initial submission. But in this case the facilities for doing this are provided by the submission system. There are two important differences to the situtation you've described though. First, your initial review will not be influenced by the discussion and second, there is a record of the conversations and changes made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T10:45:24.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1608" CreationDate="2012-05-19T12:04:34.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Talk to your advisor. She or he should be aware of your intention to send your work to a third party, and can even suggest you the right persons to send your work to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Usually you can ask only people you know personally (or your advisor knows personally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) In our university internal review of two colleagues is required if you want to publish a technical report. So, sometimes showing your manuscript to somebody else is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) You might like to stress that the manuscript you are sending is still a preliminary version, and ask the reviewer to keep confidentiality issues in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T12:04:34.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1615" CreationDate="2012-05-19T17:22:03.663" Score="25" ViewCount="3834" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a mid-level PhD student in a STEM field (maybe 2-3 years into the program), he and his advisor are working on something relatively new and interesting but they have reached a point where the research isn't moving ahead. How do you get out of this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All papers have been read, colleagues have been consulted and top-of-the-head alternatives considered but the problem isn't moving ahead. No theory, computation or intuition helps. The only possibility left is to (optimistically) wait for a Hollywood moment when it all comes together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do you go from here assuming that you &lt;strong&gt;cannot&lt;/strong&gt; completely abandon that topic? At what point should you &quot;start searching for other problems&quot;? How do you choose what to work on next (should you start anew or pick something allied)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T20:59:57.490" Title="What's a good way out when research is stuck?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1613" CreationDate="2012-05-19T18:02:34.570" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;two possible suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;let it go. Take a break, or start a new project. But not for good - come back to it after a month, two months, maybe even half a year. A fresh look on the problem might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this will (a) give your mind the time needed to consider it with no pressure, and (b) will allow you to have alternatives for the case the project is a dead end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to go in the &amp;quot;opposite direction&amp;quot; to what you've done so far. I mean, if you are trying to prove something, and it just doesn't work, assume it is false and now try to prove it wrong. Maybe you'll succeed (which is already a progress), but even if not, this might give another insight to the core of the problem and how to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deciding when a project is a &amp;quot;dead end&amp;quot; is a tough decision, and I would say that's the role of your advisor (which depends on your current status: funding, time to graduate, current publications, and of course your advisor's estimation of the probability to solve it eventually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T20:49:22.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1613" CreationDate="2012-05-19T19:41:15.077" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are another three suggestions to add to Ran G.'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1614/643&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first approach is to &lt;strong&gt;solve a simpler version&lt;/strong&gt; of your problem. If your problem involves some dimension that is infinite, what does the problem look like if that dimension is finite (or ignored all together). &#xA;This approach worked for my PhD research. The system involving the finite dimension was easier to deal with and the technique developed to get my solution generalised to the infinite case. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second approach is to &lt;strong&gt;work through a less general version of the problem&lt;/strong&gt;. This could involve solving some examples of the more general problem or make more concrete some of the general dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third approach is to &lt;strong&gt;solve a more general version of the problem&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These approaches are not guaranteed to work and the results they produce may not be publishable, but they might give you enough insight to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T20:59:57.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:25:15.007" Score="9" ViewCount="1028" Body="&lt;p&gt;The metric I see most on the internet and on journals' home pages is the 'Impact Factor'. Are there any other metrics that are considered as important as (or more important than) the Impact Factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="893" LastEditorUserId="1537" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T18:40:47.213" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:40:47.213" Title="What metrics are used to judge a mathematical journal's quality?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1544" CreationDate="2012-05-20T03:24:00.847" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, when a paper is rejected by the editor (without being sent out for review), the standard response is along the lines of &quot;not of sufficient interest&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should you interpret this? One interpretation is to be humble and select another journal that will be interest. Another interpretation is that good and interesting science has been poorly presented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility that has not yet been covered is that the paper did not present interesting science in an interesting way. I had a paper that was rejected from a number of journals although I felt strongly that these judgements were inconsistent with the work that I had done. I also recognized that such quick judgments can be based on the title and abstract, and on re-reading these, I realized that the main, important points of my paper were not given enough emphasis up front. After minor revisions to focus my readers, my next submission was very warmly received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T03:24:00.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2012-05-20T13:22:11.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considered important by whom? Funding agencies will obviously prefer something &quot;objective&quot; like the impact factor, immediacy index or cited half-life. Researchers usually have less quantitative criteria like where do my peers publish or what is the journal's reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T13:22:11.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2012-05-20T13:54:36.457" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on JeffE's comment, impact factor gets zero respect among mathematicians.  It gets very little respect in any field, as far as I know, but it's a particularly bad measure for mathematics journals.  For example, it only counts citation received within two years of publication, which is just about the quickest turnaround time you could get in mathematics (given math's publishing practices and timing).  So numerically, the impact factor amounts to saying that if your paper doesn't inspire people to drop everything else and rush to get followup work into print quickly enough, then it has had zero impact.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Impact factors are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/&quot;&gt;manipulated&lt;/a&gt; by journal editors, often enough to require serious work detecting and punishing this behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason impact factors exist at all is that administrators want simple ways to rate research productivity, especially in dysfunctional settings where there's no infrastructure of trusted experts.  Counting citations is easier to defend as &quot;unbiased&quot; than most other approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other numerical measures of journal quality, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;eigenfactors&lt;/a&gt;, but they are not popular or widely used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, the Australian Research Council rated 20,000 journals by quality based on expert opinion (for example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/math-journal-ratings/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for the math journals).  This is still not great, since the ratings miss subtleties (such as journals with greater strength in some subfields than others) and it's not clear how reliable they are for lesser-known journals anyway.  However, this is the closest anyone has come to giving a replacement for impact factors based on expert opinion.  Unfortunately, it was so much work that they decided not to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T13:54:36.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1610" CreationDate="2012-05-20T14:35:13.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend against sending such an e-mail to someone you don't know well.  If you've got serious reason to fear there may be competition that neither of you wants, then perhaps a mutual friend could help sort it out; if you don't, then I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One danger is that the e-mail can come across as aggressively staking out territory.  Even just asking whether someone is working on this topic can be read as &quot;speak now or forever hold your peace&quot;, with the implication that unless they announce it now, you'll be seriously offended if they end up competing with you on this topic.  This is not a fair position to put someone in, since research can be unpredictable and their work may end up having consequences for these topics that they do not yet foresee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaboration can also be a touchy issue.  It's sometimes a mutually beneficial way to resolve this sort of situation, but not always.  It can be awkward when someone you don't know well suggests a collaboration, since no matter what excuses you offer, it's hard to avoid the appearance that declining a collaboration request is a negative judgement on the person making the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know someone well, you may be able to avoid these difficulties, but I wouldn't try it otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a graduate student, then your advisor should help with situations like this.  For example, they should make sure potential competitors are aware of your thesis project (at least in mathematics, it's considered extremely bad form to compete with a grad student, and part of the advisor's role is to minimize the chances of accidental competition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T14:35:13.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1627" CreationDate="2012-05-20T17:36:07.457" Score="36" ViewCount="2555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any compulsory rule for researchers to have publications in restricted access publication platforms? What if one has majority of his publications in open access journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorDisplayName="user65587" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T08:56:51.977" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T08:56:51.977" Title="Is there any disadvantage to having open-access publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1629" CreationDate="2012-05-20T18:16:03.287" Score="18" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for the PhD program in mathematics, usually, one is not required to specify in what field (e.g., PDE, dynamical system, etc.) he/she intends to do. However, I don't know whether it will be &lt;em&gt;disadvantage&lt;/em&gt; that one does not have a specific field in mind at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this question because some people suggest the students who are applying to the graduate school should talk to or connect with the professor who is in the school he/she intend to apply for. But if one does not even have a specific interest in mind, how can he/she talk to a professor about his/her application? (Even if the student is interested in analysis, say, there are lots of sub-field in analysis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is my &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does one need a very specific field in mind to apply a PhD program in mathematics? Would this be thought as advantage or disadvantage of an application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T01:36:13.800" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T01:36:13.800" Title="Does one need a specific field in mind to apply to a PhD program in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-20T19:58:58.293" Score="7" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to evaluate the genuineness/authenticity, impact, significance &amp;amp; reputation of an open access journal? The prestigious journals have Impact factor &amp;amp; various indices, What about open access journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Although a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;previously&lt;/a&gt; asked question has garnered many responses, this question is only toward open access publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T20:49:10.037" Title="How to evaluate an open access journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-05-21T07:07:44.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2012-05-20T20:00:22.393" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. The important point is whether the journals are &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; (= publish good papers) rather whether the access is open or restricted. This being said, in many fields AFAIK the better journals are access-restricted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T20:00:22.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1633" CreationDate="2012-05-21T03:16:05.240" Score="71" ViewCount="3859" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of writing an academic book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It currently looks better on a CV when applying for jobs, grants, promotions, etc. than a blog post, or a website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Libraries and people archive the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the best academic content currently seems to end up in books and journal articles, rather than on websites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People have an attractive physical copy to engage with if they want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't like the constraints imposed by a book. In particular, readership is limited to those who buy/borrow the book or have access to a library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Aim&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, I'd prefer to write something like an &quot;open access book&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If readers want the physical copy, they can purchase the book. Ideally some of this revenue would go to the author, but I'm not too fussed if the publisher just uses this money to fund promotion, editorial assistance, production, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, access to a PDF of the book is free online. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book gets an ISBN, archiving, availability on Amazon, etc. and all the academic recognition associated with publishing an academic book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, are there any options for doing this, and what might be best option?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any case studies of others who have done this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T11:37:06.557" Title="How to publish an academic book but make the PDF freely available online?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2012-05-21T03:56:09.597" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least for most graduate programs in pure mathematics in the US, there's no need to have a specialization in mind when applying.  [This may be very different in other countries.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's valuable to demonstrate in your application that you have studied some serious mathematics, by discussing undergraduate research or advanced coursework.  However, there's no implication that you intend to focus on the same fields in graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common to indicate an interest in a few possible specialties, usually at a level of detail ranging from &quot;algebra&quot; to &quot;analytic number theory&quot;.  If you are completely undecided, then that could come across negatively, by suggesting a general lack of enthusiasm.  However, being too specific is also problematic.  Matching a possible advisor too closely comes across as pandering, while being specific without matching anyone makes it look like you aren't a good fit for this particular department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the general feeling is that incoming graduate students don't know enough to make well-informed decisions about specialization, and that anything they say is a little unreliable because their interests may shift as they learn more.  From that perspective, it's not worth worrying about this too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for talking with professors, at least at the schools I'm familiar with this will not increase the chances of admission (the decisions are made by a committee).  After you've been admitted, it's important to talk with faculty and try to gauge the chances of finding a suitable advisor.  However, that can and should wait until February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T03:56:09.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1626" CreationDate="2012-05-21T04:41:58.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the same way you evaluate quality of a non-open access journal: who are the people on the editorial board, what kind of papers do they publish, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T04:41:58.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2012-05-21T06:53:54.920" Score="21" Body="&lt;h3&gt;OTexts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just remembered that Professor Rob Hyndman had spoken about his upcoming textbook &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.otexts.org/fpp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forecasting: Principles and Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The entire book is avail­able online and free-of-charge. Of course, we&#xA;  won’t make much money doing this, but text­books never make much money&#xA;  any­way — the pub­lish­ers make all the money. We’d rather cre­ate&#xA;  some­thing that is widely used and use­ful, than have large&#xA;  pub­lish­ers profit from our efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even­tu­ally a print ver­sion of the book will be avail­able to&#xA;  pur­chase on Ama­zon, but not until a few more chap­ters are written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher is called &quot;OTexts&quot;.&#xA;It says on &lt;a href=&quot;http://otexts.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OTexts represents a new approach to university textbooks. All our&#xA;  books will always be completely and freely available online. Why spend&#xA;  hundreds of dollars on printed books which are soon out-of-date when&#xA;  you can have continually updated online books for nothing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At time of posting Rob's book appears to be the first text book to be published with this publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says at time of posting under the &quot;For Authors&quot; section&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Print royalties are shared 50-50 between the author and OTexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reflections&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, this sounds perfect for an author keen to maximise academic impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a very new company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not sure what the implications would be for grants, promotions, jobs relative to publishing with an established academic publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T02:31:42.477" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T02:31:42.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2012-05-21T07:59:34.977" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cambridge University Press allows authors to freely distribute electronic copies of the books that it publishes, at least in mathematics and computer science.  (Of course this has to be explicitly negotiated into the publishing contract.)  Two good examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/AT/ATpage.html&quot;&gt;Allen Hatcher's &lt;em&gt;Algebraic Topology&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://planning.cs.uiuc.edu&quot;&gt;Steve LaValle's &lt;em&gt;Planning Algorithms&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also just release the book on the web, let people create their own physical copies through a book-printing service like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blurb.com/&quot;&gt;Blurb&lt;/a&gt;, and rely on the quality of the text to bolster your reputation instead of a traditional publisher's imprimatur.  See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://opendatastructures.org/&quot;&gt;Pat Morin's excellent &lt;em&gt;Open Data Structures&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  However, I don't recommend this route unless (a) you write an &lt;em&gt;amazingly&lt;/em&gt; good book, and (b) you already have tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T07:59:34.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2012-05-21T09:03:09.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, you can try with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intechopen.com/&quot;&gt;INTECH&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;InTech is a pioneer and world's largest multidisciplinary open access&#xA;  publisher of books covering the fields of Science, Technology and&#xA;  Medicine. Since 2004, InTech has collaborated with more than 60 000&#xA;  authors and published 1720 books and 13 journals with the aim of&#xA;  providing free online access to high-quality research and helping&#xA;  leading academics to make their work visible and accessible to diverse&#xA;  new audiences around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T12:07:37.513" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T12:07:37.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2012-05-21T10:49:37.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to self-publish. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essex.ac.uk/maths/staff/profile.aspx?ID=1309&quot;&gt;DH Fremlin&lt;/a&gt; published his extremely well-respected treatises on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essex.ac.uk/maths/people/fremlin/mt.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Measure Theory&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot;&gt;Lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;. The books (in fact, the TeX source files) are available on his website for free; all the while his books are well-enough received that many university mathematics libraries have purchased physical copies of the books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T10:49:37.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2012-05-21T11:20:36.920" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to what the Anonymous Mathematician said (so again, this has to do with United States)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not already decided on a specialisation, you should &lt;em&gt;certainly not&lt;/em&gt; try to shoehorn yourself into one just for the sake of applying for graduate school. If you have already decided on a specialisation, however, you should certainly specify it &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; try to talk to faculty members before and/or during the admission process. This is not so much to improve your chances at the school per se; this is mostly to find out whether that school would be a good fit for what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want to study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was applying for graduate schools I had just one such experience. I was already quite sure about what I wanted to study, and so contacted some faculty members at places where I applied to who may be good advisors. One of them told me that (a) I have a pretty strong application and they will probably admit me (b) But he is personally busy with his existing students and won't want to take another one (c) There's no one in the same department that he sees as having similar enough interests to be a good advisor for me and (d) The department is running a bit low on money so unless I get a fellowship somehow I will have a hellish teaching load. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end I took an offer from another school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For emphasis, however, what I mean by specialisation is very narrow: &quot;partial differential equations&quot; is still too broad. For my advice above to apply you need to be able to say which type of PDEs you are interested it (elliptic, parabolic, evolutionary, dispersive, transport, kinetic theory, fluids, and/or optimal control to list a few) and to be able to hold an informed (not necessarily expert) discussion on the subject and why you want to study it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other countries the system can vastly differ; this is especially so for degree programs which &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; a Masters or equivalent degree for admission. Many of those programs require submission of a research proposal and admission is contingent on the research being likely to be able to be conducted at said university and that a suitable advisor can be found for your research proposal. But for these kinds of degrees the opposite of the expectation described by Anonymous Mathematician holds: the incoming students are expected to be sufficiently educated (by the Masters degree) to make informed decisions and are also expected to have a good idea what is involved in pursuing PhD research and know what they want to work on. But you can general tell the expectations by reading up on the qualifications for admission and on what the departments/universities expect on the application form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T11:20:36.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2012-05-21T16:17:51.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may wish to investigate &lt;a href=&quot;http://re-press.org/&quot;&gt;http://re-press.org/&lt;/a&gt; in Australia. They are an academic press that is, I believe, affiliated with an Australian University. They appear to do exactly what you describe -- make the PDF freely available and simultaneously offer a print version. We will be offering PDFs of our books through Google Play, but haven't yet found a way to subsidize this; at this stage of our development, we still have to charge, both for print versions and for PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="903" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T00:32:52.980" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T00:32:52.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1640" CreationDate="2012-05-22T02:41:32.387" Score="16" ViewCount="1559" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could multiple advisers mean that it might be easier for you to get funding? (since you're not just limited to one person?) Could it also mean that you get more overall input in your project (the input of 3 different people), and that maybe your project will be geared in a way that it's &quot;interesting&quot; to more people, and consequently might also get more citations that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might pull your project in different directions, but how much is this really a concern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about the special case where they explicitly expressed the desire to interact with each other more through the student? (this was actually the case in my situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T17:55:23.047" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T17:55:23.047" Title="What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple advisers?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2012-05-22T06:26:23.977" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer (as in case of most answers in academia.SE) is it depends, often widely from case-to-case. Unless presented with an exceptional example, I would generally view having more than two advisers as a major hindrance - the perceived benefit of having another source of ideas is negated heavily by the communications overhead between them, and the scope for misunderstandings about their role, which might cause the student to be either overloaded in multiple (possibly conflicting) areas, or languishing without any significant guidance. The rest of my answer is based on the assumption that the number of advisers is 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the defined role of the said advisers - are they equally responsible for guiding the student towards completion of their graduate studies (as I've been told is the case in some European schools/research schools), or is one of them the principal guide and the other a co-guide? The amount of time/effort invested by each would depend on their perception of how much they are actually responsible for the student's growth as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As with most social interactions, it would help greatly if there is a good (or at least professional) working relationship between the 2 guides, as well as a healthy overlap of research areas - a new student might not be able to handle multiple research problems in completely different areas at the same time (without affecting the time to graduate, or the quality of results).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the student publishes with both of them independently, it would look good on her CV that she can produce publishable research with multiple established researchers. This could also have the side-effect of enhancing the student's research network - as a lot of papers (in CS at least) have more than 2 authors, and often collaborating on an paper could lead to more papers/research done with the same set of persons in future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T06:31:31.770" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T06:31:31.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2012-05-22T07:08:41.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add three important questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you personally done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is that you currently work on? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long have you been here?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best indicator of future performance is past performance. You are likely to be in these graduate students' position in a couple of years' time. How satisfied will you be if you accomplished as much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="609" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T07:57:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T07:57:50.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2012-05-22T08:53:57.113" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's detrimental to research progress to have more than two advisors &quot;in practice.&quot; (By this, I mean that there should not be more than two people directly involved in day-to-day matters. A &quot;formal advisor&quot; who does not play a substantial role in the thesis would not count.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can be very difficult to get all of the advisors together in the physical sense, and even harder to get them to agree on anything, when they all will want to have their viewpoint considered and accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A substantial part of your time as a research student may be spent &quot;translating&quot; back and forth between the different advisors. On the other hand, this can also be a potential strength, in that you will have to learn how to make arguments using several different research &quot;languages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Funding and bureaucracy will become more complicated the more advisors you have. (This will be true for multiple advisors, even if some of them are &quot;hands off&quot; or formal rather than practicing advisors.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in general, it's best to have one or two advisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T08:53:57.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2012-05-22T10:11:08.313" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In psychology and neuroscience, in addition to all the services noted by JeffE for theoretical computer science, the publisher lays out the text and the figures on the page to fit the standard journal layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usually requires manual intervention because papers in psychology and neuroscience are rarely composed with LaTeX. More often they are submitted as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. The need for intervention by a person makes this process expensive, although it is sometimes outsourced to India to make it cheaper. In many cases, layout seems to be the process that preventes academics from publishing their journals online themselves without a publisher. Doing the layout seems too time-consuming for academics to manage on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T10:11:08.313" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-22T10:11:08.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-22T12:50:25.813" Score="9" ViewCount="3897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is a rule of thumb for the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What percentage of students that are accepted for a PhD position were initially put on a waiting list, and were only admitted after high-scoring applicants did not enroll?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="870" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:32:33.080" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:32:33.080" Title="What percentage of admitted PhD students comes from waiting lists" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1666" CreationDate="2012-05-22T13:22:14.190" Score="38" ViewCount="113863" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a master's degree candidate needs to select a thesis topic, but their advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter, how should one go about selecting a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How might one select an area to study?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can one evaluate if if is a suitable topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the thesis need to focus on an area which is relatively unexplored by prior research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T20:50:31.690" LastActivityDate="2016-02-06T14:48:28.820" Title="How to select a Master's thesis topic if your advisor won't suggest one?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2012-05-22T14:23:28.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look what are the domain of interest of my advisor, see what he dose, and pick a thesis on one of that domain (In case I can run in trouble he can help). But I will take care to be a topic that I can also find interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="899" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T14:23:28.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2012-05-22T16:06:11.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you read into some area of your Master which your find interesting. After you have an outline of an idea, then see on your university website which of the professors might be a suitable supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="870" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T16:06:11.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1667" CreationDate="2012-05-22T18:41:15.457" Score="5" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a result of comments on my &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1644/what-percentage-of-admitted-phd-students-comes-from-waiting-lists#comment2562_1644&quot;&gt;earlier question&lt;/a&gt;, I am posting another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a rule of thumb for what percentage of waiting-list students is eventually placed, or invited, for a PhD position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="870" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T15:53:01.433" Title="Percentage of waiting-list students offered a PhD position" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1653" CreationDate="2012-05-22T19:06:48.043" Score="39" ViewCount="1218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Compared to writing a research paper, I found writing a grant proposal to be much more intimidating, because there aren't any finished products that I can compare to. I am wondering if there are any good samples out there so that I can see what good proposals are like, especially for social sciences. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: maybe I am naive, why don't NSF and other funding agencies publish the full proposal of the ones that were accepted, say 5, 10 years after the funding ends? It seems to me that these older projects should have wrapped up already and there are probably minimal risk of being scooped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="456" LastEditorUserId="27515" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T13:48:22.767" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T03:26:49.433" Title="How to find grant proposal samples?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2012-05-22T20:48:52.747" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is probably to ask your colleagues if they would have you let a look at their (successful) grant proposals. That way you can also ask questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T20:48:52.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1662" CreationDate="2012-05-23T05:11:25.203" Score="23" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic blogs and websites are emerging as an important component of academic discourse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I often lack confidence that the content will remain accessible in the short term (e.g., 5 years) let alone the longer term (10, 20, 50, 100 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important function of journals is to archive the content and provide a stable citation system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm worried about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academics who change employment where the site is hosted by the previous employer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academics who die or lose interest in their content (e.g., domain names lapsing; site hosting fees ending)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internet services that close down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What can an academic blogger do to ensure that their blog content remains archived and accessible in the longer term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T18:24:24.520" Title="How to archive an academic blog or website?" Tags="&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2012-05-23T05:14:18.743" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities have a unit devoted to providing support with grant applications. Often they will have a database of previous grants (from members of the university), which you can examine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T05:14:18.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2012-05-23T07:16:57.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you have a number of options, which I'm stating in no particular oder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wayback Machine&lt;/a&gt;, which strives to store snapshots of web-pages across time. You can also use the more personalized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive-it.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;archive-it&lt;/a&gt; service, which lets you manage your &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; collection, at the same time sharing it with the public - this is mostly used by institutions I think.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can host your own blog on a licensed domain name, where you've prepaid the fees for enough years in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, a very simple suggestion - if the content of the website is tending towards the academic quality/nature of a book, why not publish it as a short collection essays, which you can then disseminate freely over open web libraries etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T08:09:49.487" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T08:09:49.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T08:00:35.500" Score="45" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think contributions to StackExchange constitute a valuable thing for an academic to do. In many cases such contributions are directly related to the aims of an academic department: community engagement, building new knowledge, etc.&#xA;This is particularly clear for sites that directly align with a particular academic discipline (e.g.,  &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;mathematics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cogsci.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;psychology&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many people in academia have not heard of StackExchange. They often won't have heard about the reputation system. They may not be aware of the high quality content that often appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, as an academic, &lt;strong&gt;how should you share your achievements on the StackExchange network in contexts where how your performance is evaluated has material consequences?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., a CV, job interview, grant application context, promotion context)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T03:35:52.960" Title="How to communicate achievements on the StackExchange network in an academic CV or job interview?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2012-05-23T08:48:36.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess that unfortunately, it's not possible to rely on any private service to ensure a long-term accessibility, since any service can shut down (in a similar way that any book editor can disappear, making impossible to print new editions of old books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your own blog, you basically need to have a local copy of it, and either you back-up the public version. For instance, you have a wordpress blog, and you back-up every new article you publish locally. In my case, I have a local version of my own website running on my personal computer (with a webserver and database), and I just sync my local copy with the server it's hosted on, so that there are always two versions of it. The likelihood of losing both at the same time is low enough to make it safe. If you have a decent Internet connection, you can also have your own server at home, and back it up online, so that there are always at least two versions in two different places.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the other blogs, that's why it's important when you cite one blog not only to put a link, but also to put the text you're quoting, or some text you find interesting. Hence, if the original source disappear, there still exists a copy in many other places. That's the reason why on the SE network, it is asked not to put only links, but also the (description of the) content of the link. In other words, copyright problems aside, it's a good thing to copy! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T08:48:36.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1665" CreationDate="2012-05-23T09:18:24.110" Score="11" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is based on the pie-charts shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/2005/07/what_are_the_so.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, such as this one for the University of Michigan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In most of these charts, around 5% of the revenue comes from gifts. What are these exactly? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do hospitals and clinical services play such a critical role for the revenue? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JuOR8.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T14:46:53.827" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T14:46:53.827" Title="Contribution of gifts and hospital services to university revenue" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:06:58.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keep up-to-date backups&lt;/strong&gt; so that you've got copies in at least two geographical locations (e.g. one at home, one at work) of everything you want to keep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;route everything via your own personal domain&lt;/strong&gt;: so that even when things are hosted elsewhere (current university website, pre-print archives, whatever), the URL people see and bookmark is the one on your own personal domain. That way, their bookmarks will still work when you change your affiliation away from your current university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pick good URIs, and then stick to them&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T10:06:58.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2012-05-23T12:25:22.783" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Digital preservation is an evolving area, and the ability to preserve websites over the long-term is one of the most problematic areas. There are several reasons for this: the dynamic nature of contemporary websites (especially in a format like a blog, where content is update regularly and interactive components such as commenting), hyperlinking (which will eventually lead to broken links and broken images, which, if you point to content external to your site, is out of your control) and the instability of Web formats (websites might look better in one browser than another, much less how websites hold up over time) are just a few of the challenges in preserving websites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, several things you can do to help preserve your website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backup—keep your content stored in more than one location (on your server, on your hard drive, on an external hard drive, in the cloud, etc.) and don't use an external service as your primary storage location, as they can collapse at any time (Geocities was a huge service when it was shuttered);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep up to date in changes in file formats and browser software—when browsers get updated to view HTML 5, 6, or whatever may replace HTML in the future, will they be backwards compatible to be able to view the blog you're authoring today, or will you need to migrate your website to a contemporary format?;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Utilize pockets of expertise on campus—archivists on many campuses have been working towards digital preservation solution and your university's archivist (especially at larger universities) may be able to provide solutions for the long-term preservation of your website; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider normalizing your website to a preservation format—although creating a copy of your website as a PDF may mean losses in functionality (in terms of interactivity), it is a way to preserve the content and appearance of the site in a file format that is considered a safer bet for long-term preservation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Library of Congress also provides some tips on how to design preservable websites including following available web and accessibility standards, embedding metadata and maintaining stable URLs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taylor, N. (2012, February 6). Designing Preservable Websites, Redux.&#xA;  Retrieved May 23, 2012, from&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/02/designing-preservable-websites-redux/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/02/designing-preservable-websites-redux/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T13:16:16.677" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T13:16:16.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:23:00.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing proposals for NSF consider volunteering as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/meritreview/reviewer.jsp#2&quot;&gt;reviewer&lt;/a&gt; in your discipline.  This way you have both the opportunity to see a number of proposals and discuss them critically with others in your area.  It is not a short term solution as it involves a significant committment of time and energy, but in addition to helping with your own proposals, you provide a valuable service and gain the opportunity to network with others in your area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NSF also has a number of workshops on grant-writing that may help, but you likely will not see actual proposals during the workshop.  In my area, NSF hosts a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmmigranteeconference.org/&quot;&gt;conference&lt;/a&gt; every 18 months with a number of grant-writing or career development break-out sessions which may help with the proposal writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:23:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:52:32.527" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll be amazed at how much the choice of Master's thesis will influence your long-term interest in the field, prospects for jobs within and outside of academia.&#xA;I'd suggest picking up some mainstream journals or magazines in your field and see what is currently trendy in the field, and what are bread and butter topics. Having a birds eye view of what's going on in the field allows you to be strategic about your topic, with the goal of planning a successful career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, a successful career is one that will hook into an existing community of researchers in a topic, with a reliable source of funds that pay for conferences, departments, and students to populate them. A strategic topic is one that has the potential to make an impact in the field, and has the potential to cross-over into related disciplines, or even to have practical applications to real people (god forbid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and most importantly, choose a topic that gets your blood flowing. Your master's topic could very easily become a PhD topic, which could then become a career focus. A lot of grad student burn-out is the result of students reaching their limit of interest in a topic, and thus deciding they've had enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you survey mainstream and more specific literatures, be aware of what problems and topics get you excited. Choose something that you actually get excited about, that you can't stop thinking and talking about, and that you can even get other people excited about. That's the topic that will keep you going  when you get stuck in the muck of research and don't know if you can keep going for another year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:52:32.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1660" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:53:01.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gifts are donations, typically from former students but they could come from anyone.  That's just how higher education works in the US, and the tradition of making these donations is a big factor in how some US universities have become very wealthy (some of the donations are spent each year, but many are added to the endowment).  The donations qualify for a tax deduction, so there's an element of government subsidy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hospitals and clinical services can loom large because university teaching hospitals are huge and medical services are very expensive.  (You can have thousands of employees, some of them very well paid, and elaborate equipment.)  However, this is really not relevant.  The medical revenue is typically paying for the hospital activities and medical education, but not used to subsidize the rest of the university.  Many universities do not have hospitals or medical schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:53:01.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2012-05-23T14:43:43.513" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach is follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find one or two good recent PhD theses in your chosen area. Read these thoroughly. As you read, write down every question that pops into your mind, write down every time the author states that something is left for future work or needs further investigation. &#xA;This will have a dual effect. Firstly, you will get a good introduction to a particular research field. Secondly, you will have a bunch of questions that need to be investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prune trivial questions, non-sensible ones, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next, organize your questions thematically and see whether you can find a common thread to these questions, something that could form the basis of your research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove any questions that do not fit will with the others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on the remaining questions, formulate a couple of coherent questions that your research could address.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write a plan to address these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work through plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T14:43:43.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1651" CreationDate="2012-05-23T15:53:01.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there really isn't a rule of thumb for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate departments that admit on a fixed cycle, they generally have a certain number of places open each year. They admit from their applicant pool a number of applicants that, when all decisions are made, are designed to give them their target number of enrollees. If, for some reason, the number of students who accept is significantly smaller than the target, and there were good students who were wait-listed, they &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be offered admission, although this is by no means guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate departments that do rolling admissions this is obviously not an issue, as they don't need a wait list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T15:53:01.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T17:26:49.067" Score="20" ViewCount="1068" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a learning disability where I can only learn through seeing (not seeing and hearing). As a result, I need to have headphones in class to block all sound. Should I just tell the professor this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="918" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T07:47:25.677" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T23:44:36.173" Title="Is it rude to ask for accommodations due to a learning disability?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1658" CreationDate="2012-05-23T17:31:41.530" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I routinely mention my participation in cstheory as a moderator on grant applications (under Broader Impact). I also mention it as part of 'synergistic activities' in my NSF 2-page bio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For departmental review, I'd view this as external service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T17:31:41.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1668" CreationDate="2012-05-23T18:04:12.393" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would not consider the request rude, as long as you have a reasonable justification for needing to wear headphones during class (which you do). How you might approach your professor and whether he'll accommodate your request may depend on where you're located and whether your jurisdiction provides protections for individuals with disabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, for example, individuals with disabilities are protected though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which require colleges and universities (amongst other organizations) to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities—in your case, needing to wear headphones in class would be considered a reasonable accommodation (although this might depend on the subject of the course—in a woodworking course where headphones would pose a threat to safety, for example, it would likely not be a reasonable accommodation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also proper channels a student needs to go through to request medical accommodations—initial requests should not go directly to the professor. Universities and colleges will have a centralized student disabilities office that handles requests for disability accommodations and it is this office that will require documentation of a disability and determine what accommodations a professor will be required to provide. They will then send a form to your professors indicating what accommodations they need to give you. Because of ADA and health privacy laws, the disability office will not tell your professor what your disability is and your professor is not allowed to ask you what your disability is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this answer is very much local to the United States, similar protections may exist in other countries as well. Rather than approaching your professors directly, consider asking your university's student advising office, student life office or health clinic whether professors will provide accommodations for disability (you shouldn't need to tell them what your disability is). They will then be able to point you to resources that will work with you to find solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T18:04:12.393" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-23T18:32:03.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between being &quot;connected&quot; to someone and being a &quot;friend&quot; on social media tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook and the likes connect people together but uses the word &quot;friend&quot; to make this connection look nice and appealing to users. LinkedIn &quot;connects&quot; users on a professional|business level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe that a Facebook &quot;connection&quot; should be interpreted as real &quot;friendship&quot; unless you make it happen as such. I have the impression that many of us have lost the true sense of friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T06:07:02.690" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T06:07:02.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2012-05-23T19:09:17.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot has already said in previous comments. I will add the following points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you wrtie a letter of recommendation for others or yourself for others to endorse, make sure you write and justify :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In which circumstances have you know the recommendee (student) and for how long ( 4 years undergrad.) in which capacity ( I am his professor of Biology) ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is your impression of his academic achievements and skills&#xA;(you have to back up with facts your statement) ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do you think of his character and personality ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much (strongly, simply) do you recommend him/her for other institutions ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T20:01:55.117" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T20:01:55.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1868" CreationDate="2012-05-23T23:20:37.290" Score="20" ViewCount="1088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally chase after whatever my adviser/supervisor tells me to do, although I know that it's sometimes a project that they don't want to spend their time on. I know that I can learn a lot even when I go after such &quot;wild goose chases&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently talked to a PhD student though, and he advised me that I should learn when to say &quot;no&quot; to an adviser, to recognize that sometimes those suggestions can lead to &quot;wild goose chases&quot; that aren't worth the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some guidelines when an adviser wants you to chase a problem that might not be worth its time investment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="100" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T15:18:33.910" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T16:13:21.260" Title="Guidelines to follow if my adviser suggests that I work on dead-end projects" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2012-05-24T00:05:53.260" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult issue to deal with. You are correct in stating that (in some disciplines) this can be a significant problem, but as a graduate student, it may be hard for you to argue your case that the project will lead to a dead end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two possible solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a good relationship with your advisor, speak with him about your concerns. He may admit that he's not sure where the project will lead, but he will likely be willing to give you the background as to why he's interested in the project, and where it will lead you. These types of projects are also good opportunities to ask your advisor to introduce you to collaborators with whom you can complete the project, as he's only tangentially interested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor likely won't listen to you, then put in the month or three to do the necessary background research to prove your case. Look up the references, research previous findings, contact others who have worked in the field. One of two things will happen: (1) you will change your mind, or (2) you'll build a strong case to present to your advisor as to why this research is not worth yours or his time. If at that point he still wants you to work on the project, then either he has political motivations or he's just being unreasonable, both of which are indicative of larger problems which you should deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T00:05:53.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1681" CreationDate="2012-05-24T09:49:11.157" Score="50" ViewCount="14857" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there expected dressing norms at faculty interviews? Will a casual tee-jeans be discouraged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, what is expected when a student visits the campus for an interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-26T03:40:56.373" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T03:40:56.373" Title="Dressing etiquette for interviews in academia" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1680" CreationDate="2012-05-24T09:57:38.803" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;While its not mandatory to wear a suit for a faculty interview, it doesn't hurt, and may actually be expected in certain disciplines. Best to ask around beforehand. I've never heard of a dress code for student visit, but something semi-formal doesn't hurt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general principle, it doesn't hurt to be more dressed up than necessary. The reverse can often be embarrassing. But as with most such thing, the departmental culture is the most important factor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T09:57:38.803" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1684" CreationDate="2012-05-24T11:13:56.630" Score="11" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to release a Technical Report that will be archived and made available online by the university's library. An abridged version of the work was accepted by a peer-reviewed conference and will be published in the proceedings. For this to happen, I have to sign a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&quot;&gt;copyright form&lt;/a&gt;, assigning to the publishing institution all rights under copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) What is the best way to grant readers of the Technical Report the freedom to quote (unlimited length), distribute, and build upon the work? And point out that they have this freedom without asking for my permission?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Is a Creative-Commons License the way to go? If yes, in what form should include the lincense in the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Is there any conflict between the copyright form for the conference paper and releasing the Technical Report under an open license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="704" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T12:00:19.037" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T22:48:44.140" Title="Releasing one version of a Scientific Paper under an Open License" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1680" CreationDate="2012-05-24T11:15:52.417" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only single right answer is that &lt;strong&gt;it varies&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are methods that you can use to establish what the right answer might be in the particular case you have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As with pretty much all human contact, &lt;strong&gt;the person you meet will have norms and expectations&lt;/strong&gt;, conditioned by their culture, their quirks, the organisation they work in, the physical location of the organisation, your gender, their gender, your age, their age, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no general answer as to what those norms and expectations are, so &lt;strong&gt;research the specific person, organisation and country&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's half the story. The other half is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what impact do you want to have&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you want to meet their expectations, or challenge them?&lt;/strong&gt; The latter is high risk, but with potentially high reward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you want to project yourself to them&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How strong is your position&lt;/strong&gt; - are you going from a position of strength, or one of weakness?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;strong&gt;if in doubt, wear the clothes that are smart clothes within the business world (rather than the academic world) in your own culture.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T17:16:08.077" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T17:16:08.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1682" CreationDate="2012-05-24T12:01:46.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Creative Commons License is a good way to achieve this.  It doesn't really matter how you convey this information, as long as it's clear.  (A footnote on the first page is fine, for example.  Whatever you prefer.)  The attribution license (CC BY) sounds like a good choice for what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this definitely conflicts with the copyright form.  You can try asking the IEEE for permission, and there's some chance they will agree, but they tend to be picky about copyright.  If you can't come to an agreement with them, then you will have to decide whether publishing in this conference is worth giving up copyright, and they will have to decide whether it is worth losing your paper over this issue.  (If you have already signed the form, then there's nothing you can do except ask them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T12:01:46.587" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1680" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:57:01.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know who the person(s) you will meet with are, try to find photographs of them on their faculty pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way they want to be seen by other people is usually pretty close to what they expect of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T03:43:10.127" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T03:43:10.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1688" CreationDate="2012-05-24T21:57:22.293" Score="54" ViewCount="6574" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always worthwhile to take some time to try to figure it out by yourself. But eventually there's a point where you're unsure how much more time it would take to figure it out by yourself (which could take far longer than you originally think), and when asking for help could be more helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for analytical or computational research, what are some guidelines for when you should ask for help (from either your adviser, other grad students, or other researchers) when you get stuck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T06:40:20.897" Title="If you get stuck in research, at what point in time should you ask for help?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-24T22:06:52.653" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It took me six months to gather the courage to talk to my research adviser when I was stuck on a project that I knew would &quot;never&quot; work. I should not have waited so long. The conversation we had was very helpful, got me back on track, and, more importantly, got me off the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in the same place for more than two or three weeks, its time to have a frank discussion with your research adviser. It's unlikely that he or she knows that you are stuck. The best case scenario is that you have a plan to get unstuck. The worst case scenario is that you are no better off. If you already have a committee, then your next step is to go to the other committee members for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T17:38:46.313" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T17:38:46.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-24T22:31:13.053" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that grad students always wait too long to ask for help, either out of fear of looking &quot;stupid&quot;, or out of inexperience, or out of a misplaced sense of stubbornness. If you've spent a few weeks on something and you're thoroughly stuck, then you should absolutely ask someone (advisor, other students, anyone with knowledge). You'd be surprised at how often you were merely barking up the wrong tree, or just didn't know a very important fact or reference, or just had to reformulate the question differently. All of this takes experience, and that's what an advisor is supposed to provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T22:31:13.053" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-25T02:19:57.517" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your advisor's personality, your history of asking for help, the timing of the project, etc. The way in which you ask is also relevant. If you are generally a person who works autonomously and feel you can approach your advisor in a professional (non whiny, non needy) way, most advisors will be happy to help. If you're just afraid to dig in and get your hands dirty (which it sounds you are not), your advisor will probably be less interested in leading you through the process. And there is everything in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on whether it's your advisor's project and your project is part of a greater whole; if by delaying too much you are going to slow other people, you should definitely lean on the side of asking for help earlier. However, if you are working on your own idea, you should probably work longer before asking for help. You may also find that you are as much (or more) an expert on the topic than your advisor, so the advisor may not know the answer and may be hoping you'll be the one to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no general rules. But if you can show that you can figure things out on your own, your advisor may see that as a positive thing and give you a better recommendation for it. On the other hand, if she/he sees you as so stubborn about asking help that you work inefficiently that could be a bad mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="315" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T02:19:57.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-25T03:17:45.007" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do analytical/computational work daily, and I talk to my colleagues quite frequently. Just showing the derivations I made so far to someone often helps me spot my own mistakes, and get new ideas to attack the problem. Your colleagues will often have better understanding of certain subjects that you didn't think would matter for your problem. I guess it depends on your personality (I have highly collaborative), but I would say ask within a day from the moment you got stuck. If someone ends up helping you solve the problem, you will learn from that experience anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T03:17:45.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-25T03:35:42.403" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is in two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When to ask other grad students or other researchers for help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is, anytime. There is nothing to be afraid of asking questions to your office mates, researchers across the doorway or even online. However, they may or may not be able to offer much help because they may not know exactly what you're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When to ask your advisor for help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is, when you're ready to ask meaningful questions. You don't want your advisor to say why didn't you ask for help sooner. Nor you wanted him to accuse you not working hard enough. If you have meaningful questions and you're stuck for a while - how long is that &quot;a while&quot; usually is a few weeks(long enough to be considered long), you should approach him/her and say you're stuck. Your advisor is there to answer your questions. That's what an advisor is. If you already spend a few weeks on a problem, he would be glad to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You gain more understanding of your research when you try to figure out how to ask questions which make sense because you have to organize your thoughts before asking. Then you're closer to the bottom of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you really want to figure it out by yourself for some reasons, you can consider giving yourself a few months. In this case, you would at least let your advisor know you're onto something so that he knows you're making progress. Don't forget he is your advisor. He is on your side !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T03:28:19.333" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T03:28:19.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2012-05-25T08:31:43.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, after quite some time spent on reading the paperwork and talking with helpful staff, I finally understood how this system works. There are different amounts involved: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;: the salary of the researcher, corresponding to the gross amount, i.e. before tax. For instance, 50.000 euros per year. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;r&lt;/strong&gt;: the overhead asked by the host institution, which basically corresponds to the indirect costs of hosting the researcher (renting the office, paying the admin staff, etc). This is an agreement between the host institution and the european commission, usually calculated as a percentage of the salary. For instance, where I'm working now, it's 67%. In some places, it can go up to 100%. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;: the travel and equipments expenses. It basically depends on the expected number of conferences to attend per year, the meetings organised for the project, etc. For instance, based on 4 conferences per year, 2500 euros per conference, that makes 10.000 euros. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C = S + rS + T&lt;/strong&gt;: the total cost of the researcher per year. For instance, that would be 50000 + 33500 + 10000 = 93500. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Req = 0.75 * C&lt;/strong&gt;: is the requested amount to the commission (assuming the host institution belongs to: profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs, 0.5 otherwise). So, for the example, we would request 70.125 euros per year. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the request amount is 10.000 euros above the gross salary of the researcher (deducting the travel costs). In other words, one could consider that the 25% the host institution has to pay are indirectly paid by giving an office and proving staff support (who, in general, would be paid anyway, EU project or not), and therefore it does not necessarily mean that the researcher has to find another funding source for the missing 25%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T08:31:43.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T09:25:48.507" Score="6" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about academia in the UK/England. I understand that in physics, the PhD thesis one produces must be of their own studies, almost like publishing a paper. If you will, a kind of discovery they themselves or along with others have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not so sure about a physics masters thesis, if there even is one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming here that you do have to produce a masters thesis as I've seen people ask about masters thesis questions for other subjects, please do correct me if I'm wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a physics masters thesis, is it the same basis and a PhD thesis (something on research you've conducted yourself)?&#xA;Is it a thesis question on something you find interesting and you're just writing as a good a question as you can about it (so something someone else has discovered)?&#xA;Or is it something completely different from the two of these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="926" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T19:13:37.293" Title="Physics masters and PhD degrees in England/UK" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T09:44:42.283" Score="18" ViewCount="1670" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research interests are shifting, due to papers I read and talks or conferences I attend (and also due to change of tastes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know how to communicate it on my CV or my website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One the one hand, I am eager to move into new fields, and I am eager to learn more (and they are my first preference, when it comes to the further research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other, neither I offer &quot;expertise&quot; in them nor I have a collection of relevant publications (at best 1-2 somehow related papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should the new interests be listed in &quot;Research interests&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the first ones,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the last ones,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other (don't list them, or do sth else)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course in longer research statements it is easier to explicitly state what one is doing and where the interest are going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is relevant, I am a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T10:16:46.863" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T05:22:56.643" Title="How to indicate shifting research interests on a CV or a website?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1697" CreationDate="2012-05-25T10:44:18.863" Score="21" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious whether it is common working on different subjects in an area throughout an academic career. I think life is long enough to work on different and interesting subjects, but how common is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, let's consider area as computer science. Topic X and topic Y are not totally unrelated, but it is hard to find people who list X and Y together under his/her interests. For my situation X is software engineering and Y is computer architecture/embedded systems. How might pursuing masters on a topic X and applying to PhD on topic Y look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T22:18:20.877" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T22:18:20.877" Title="How might changing topic affect a career in academia?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1696" CreationDate="2012-05-25T10:54:03.007" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do a masters thesis on topic X and topic X is not too far from topic Y, for example, if they are both computer science topics, and your academic record is good and your background is sufficient to make the transition, then I don't see any problem making the change at this level. You can catch up on whatever knowledge you need while learning about and researching topic Y. This will not look bad. After you obtain your PhD, people will be less interested in your masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing later in your career is also possible, though a little more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One positive point about being able to demonstrate that you can change topic is to show that you are not a &lt;em&gt;one trick pony&lt;/em&gt;, meaning that you are able to apply yourself at the highest level to different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, as interests in the field shifts and technology changes and new topics open up, it will often actually be necessary to change topics in order to survive in the field. If people (or just you) lose interest in a topic, then you need to be able to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is also good to demonstrate that you can commit to one line of research. Apart from the advantages this gives you, such as having a deep knowledge of a specialised topic, it demonstrates your commitment and can be used to show that you have and follow a research strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T10:45:02.643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:45:02.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4830" CreationDate="2012-05-25T14:02:05.493" Score="10" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to strengthen my return for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ref.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Research Excellence Framework&lt;/a&gt; (REF). My publications are fine, but how can I improve my REF &quot;impact&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T03:04:06.947" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:04:06.947" Title="How do I prepare for the UK Research Excellence Framework submission?" Tags="&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2012-05-25T14:13:59.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Images in a thesis should be of the same quality as images in a peer-reviewed publication. Hand drawn circles and arrows are not formal enough. Circles and arrows drawn with programs like TeX, GIMP, Illustrator, or Powerpoint are formal enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T14:13:59.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-25T14:23:53.823" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I follow 4 rules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I never initiate contact with students or post-docs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not accept requests from undergraduates until they graduate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I always accept requests from post-grad students and post-docs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I attempt to never post anything that could cause me problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T14:23:53.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1336" CreationDate="2012-05-25T14:36:51.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add to the list of @Steve&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer salary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration for which start up capital is good (if you get a grant, you want to be able to keep your startup)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lab renovations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moving expenses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web page design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page charges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to provide whoever you are negotiating with justification, and ideally quote(s), for everything. In general, they want to give you as good of a startup package as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T14:36:51.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1695" CreationDate="2012-05-25T17:13:36.157" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As suggested in the comments above, the answer will depend on whom you are targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are a professor targeting graduate students in a new field, I would just list the new field as an interest on your webpage, with links to your few papers. It should be enough to indicate to potential graduate students that if they have an interest in this field you would be more than happy to work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are a professor targeting grant agencies, then just write grants targeted at whatever field you're interested in. Note that, if you have a poor publication record in the field of interest, it may be a good idea to find a strong collaborator or co-PI (if applicable in your field) to boost the likelihood of acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are a post-doc looking for new positions, I think it's pretty widely accepted that your interests will and should be changing. I would indicate it explicitly on your CV in your objective statement (assuming you have one) that you're interested in branching out, and again in the cover letter. Regarding your previous research, just list it under &quot;experience&quot;; the reader will understand based on your resume, cover letter, and the fact you're applying to jobs in different fields that this was intentional. As you stated, there is a not-insignificant chance that your lack of publications in the new field will negatively impact your application.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're a student, then you barely &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; research interests; you just have the research you've worked on for 2+ years, which you did so you could earn a PhD. Your colleagues will recognize that you're still familiarizing yourself with the field. Unless the shift is so substantial that none of your previous expertise would be useful, I wouldn't even bother to mention shifting interests; it's healthy and expected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T17:13:36.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-05-25T17:14:26.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask whenever you're stuck.  And, as mathematician Peter Sarnak said, &quot;Doing research ... most of the time one is stuck.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should always be talking to people about what you're working on.  You shouldn't be asking them to solve the problem for you, but you should be asking if they know of relevant techniques that might work on your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should certainly ask your advisor for help every time you meet with him/her.  Again, don't ask them to solve the problem for you.  Instead, ask whether you should pursue strategy X or technique Y.  This can save you a lot of time (but they might be wrong, too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T17:14:26.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T17:55:38.093" Score="37" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days there is so much material on the web that it is difficult to set good exercises/assignments for students, because they often find the questions on the web simply by googling (or else ask at a site such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://cs.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do people deal with this problem? How do you generate unique assignment questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, the area I teach is computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T19:47:35.407" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T17:03:40.713" Title="Setting exercises and assignments when everything is on the web" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:30:41.723" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree that asking creative questions in assignments and exam papers is quite a challenge. (Doffing my hat off to all profs who do that regularly.) Some of my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Different wording&lt;/strong&gt;: The web may be a huge repository, but that should not be a limiting factor when it comes to questions. For example, consider the topic of probability. The basic stuff a student requires to know is limited enough to be taught in detail in the classroom, but the applications are innumerable and so are the questions that could be asked in probability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grouping questions&lt;/strong&gt;: Often the sort of questions that I find are the most difficult (and the most useful) are the ones where there is a single question with a number of interconnected sections, each of which draw from a different concept taught in class. Such questions require genuine understanding, and solution manuals and SE sites may not be of real help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research-based&lt;/strong&gt;: I would also appreciate questions where the faculty has included a small fragment of their own research (proving a small lemma, for example). This also gives the students a peek into the research of the professor's lab.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using WWW constructively&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, the web can play a dampener to assignment marks, but ultimately if the student uses it constructively to learn stuff, why should one discourage it? One solution could be to give google-able assignment questions, conduct a mini-test in class on those questions and mark the students based on the performance in this test. This is a better solution than home assignments where submission without learning is a possibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T18:44:04.217" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T18:44:04.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1715" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:44:45.513" Score="11" ViewCount="4690" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were a Spanish Major as an undergraduate and decide to pursue a PhD in a completely unrelated field (like Theoretical Physics), it makes sense to give a qualifying exam to check that I had the necessary skills to begin the program.  But if I'm coming from a B.S in math to a PhD program also in math, it doesn't seem to make sense to give a qualifying exam, as if the knowledge I gained in my undergraduate was insufficient.  I presume that one is accepted into a PhD program because he/she has already demonstrated the &quot;qualifying&quot; skills.  Thus, I'm baffled by the notion of the qualifying / prelim exam.   I'm curious about the ultimate goals of these exams, and how they relate to the professional development of a graduate student.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T01:37:53.113" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T01:37:53.113" Title="What are the main goals of administering preliminary / qualifying exams to graduate students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:45:53.123" Score="27" ViewCount="25452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at a public high-ranked Canadian university where undergraduates are heavily encouraged to participate in research, and currently recruiting an assistant for myself (and my supervisor). While at this university both as an undergrad, undergraduate researcher, visiting lecturer, and graduate researcher I have seen a very large variance in undergraduate performance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good number of students have great research potential, motivation, and creativity; these students typically contribute well to undergraduate research and go on to top graduate schools in their specialties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good number of students are here just to prepare for a professional school (typically Med School, but sometimes Law). Typically these students are very hard working, but don't have a passion for research. They apply for research positions just to flesh out their CVs. They typically don't display great creativity and tend to be overworked and over-committed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of students are hard to motivate, and seldom display great research potential or creativity. It is hard to get results from them on tasks that are not route/mechanical in nature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tips and tricks to how to attract students of type 1. More importantly, &lt;strong&gt;how can I structure interviews to better recognize students of type 1&lt;/strong&gt;? Is it impossible to attract type 1 students with high probability and I should just hope for the best, but plan for the worst? Is the division I observed artificial and it is my job as the supervisor to turn every student into type 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T23:49:37.887" Title="How to interview undergraduate candidates for research assistants?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1694" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:13:37.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how much this question strongly depends on Physics/UK, so let me detail how it is done for Computer Science in France (as far as I know, the French and British systems are quite close on this, and hard sciences tend to have a common academic process). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD thesis is indeed a novel contribution to the state of the art, and demonstrates the ability of the candidate to be an autonomous full-time researcher. In many fields, it's usually required to have several publications before submitting the PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the Master thesis corresponds to an research internship done in a lab (usually the one in which the candidate will pursue her PhD). The role of the Master thesis is two-fold: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, it demonstrates that the candidate has acquired some techniques taught during the Master, and that she was able to use them to solve a particular research problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, it's a first step for the candidate into the world of research. Often, the Master thesis constitutes the first chapter of the thesis. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note that I'm talking here only about research-focused Masters, as there are also industry focused Masters, for which the thesis has a different role). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, the topic of the thesis is usually a &quot;simple&quot; research problem, defined by the advisor based on the interests of the student. By simple, I mean that even though the exact solution might not be known, the advisor is usually confident that the solution can be found in a reasonable amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in France, the time constraint is quite strong, and the thesis must be written in 6 months maximum, otherwise the Master is not validated at all, and therefore the topic of the thesis is usually not an open and complex research problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T19:13:37.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1707" CreationDate="2012-05-25T20:04:11.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a &quot;sanity check&quot; to make sure that the student you've admitted is really the student you thought they were; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a weed-out tool, in case you've admitted more students than you have spots for in PhD projects in a given department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both purposes are significant. The second is the more unfortunate, and could generally be reduced through better selection processes and through better deployment of teaching and research resources and funding within a department. The former use is equally important, in that it makes sure that students don't try to &quot;coast&quot; their way through what the department believes is its core curriculum that students need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T20:04:11.140" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1695" CreationDate="2012-05-25T20:44:22.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;CVs usually have a line for research interests, and you can put whatever you want there. Similarly for a website. But if you're in a position to be evaluated based on your CV, be careful - you could be asked about these interests and you should have something to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if you're really interested in an area you'll start publishing in it and that will then be reflected in your publication list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T20:44:22.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T22:05:19.423" Score="12" ViewCount="1208" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this is what she sent me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i emailed a caltech neurobio prof, dr. X, and he emailed me&#xA;  back and wants to meet me, im visiting him on june 16...i went through&#xA;  this sort of thing with ucla and stuff but this time i'm sooo nervous&#xA;  because he's a caltech prof and caltech is caltech...do you have any&#xA;  tips for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my general suggestion to her is this: show that you can do something that can reduce the time load on his research (which is pretty much what all PhD/UG/HS research is about) - you want to do things that the professor wants to do but doesn't want to spend the time on, although some professors might be willing to &quot;waste&quot; a little time mentoring high school students and undergrads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he already asked me what lab and general knowledge i know i told him i&#xA;  know gel electrophoresis, pcr, restriction endonuclease digestions,&#xA;  immunohistochemistry, and some basic cell culture techniques and that&#xA;  i learned some basic neuroscience neuroanatomy and neurohistology and&#xA;  how to read fmri images through the us nat'l brain bee competition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggested this: when making a list of your skills, show - don't just tell (although this is really hard for many high school students since they haven't had the chance to show yet). Professors are used to people who claim to know more than they really know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;====&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other general suggestions that can be helpful to high school students who are trying to do research with specific professors? Generalizable cases are fine - as I do get quite a few emails from high school students who want to seek my advice on how to get research with a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T23:08:05.320" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T09:15:32.597" Title="Suggestions for high school student who is visiting a professor for HS research?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1708" CreationDate="2012-05-26T00:28:05.133" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor, bless his heart, entrusted in me the responsibility of interviewing and selecting undergraduate students to work in our research lab while still being a graduate student myself.  Sometimes it's difficult to determine what a person is really like just from a few minutes speaking with them.  I found a few particular questions to be particularly helpful:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them what their goals are for the future.  Most undergraduates give very general answers because they are not sure what they want.  A highly motivated student knows what they want, and are likely to link their goals as part of the reason why they want this particular research job opportunity.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe in detail a difficult problem that they had to overcome, and explain how they overcame it.  This is a question they typically anticipate, but it's the manner in which they answer that matters...  Observe how well they put together their answer, how long it takes them, and how well they articulate it and its relevance to the research job that they're applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about their greatest strengths, and greatest weaknesses.  In particular, examine how they explain how their weaknesses may affect their job and how they intend to overcome these weaknesses.  A strong candidate will not only be self aware and honest, but will seek ways to overcome these deficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T23:49:37.887" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T23:49:37.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1707" CreationDate="2012-05-26T13:46:50.253" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of qualifying/preliminary exams, those that cover graduate or undergraduate topics.  I assume you are just talking about the latter (while in my experience the former is a little more common).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the big reason for preliminary exams on undergraduate material is that many students haven't actually mastered this material to a professional standard.  At less prestigious schools, many students won't have received straight A's (or the equivalent in other grading systems), so they had gaps or weaknesses in their understanding, and unless they took more advanced courses in the same area they may never have filled those gaps.  Furthermore, it's possible to get excellent grades without true mastery, and students sometimes forget things they knew while taking a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preliminary exam sends a message of &quot;OK, you're in grad school now, and as a professional you're expected to know this material cold.  If you have any doubts about your mastery of it, now is the time to study carefully.&quot;  The few students who don't need to study suffer little harm from the exams, and the students who do need to study benefit from the studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T13:46:50.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1707" CreationDate="2012-05-26T17:49:57.060" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer serves mainly to corroborate @Anonymous Mathematician's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As she says, the most important thing to realize is that there are two different kinds of exams that go under the name &quot;prelims / quals&quot;.  The first of these generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) tests undergraduate material&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(ii) is administered soon after arrival in the graduate program&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(iii) used to be used for preliminary weed-out purposes but is now -- at least, in most programs I know about -- used almost entirely for diagnostic purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably (iii) is most important: once upon a time, many graduate programs -- even excellent ones, like Berkeley (in fact, especially Berkeley) -- admitted lots of students, as in up to 50% more than were expected to finish.  The idea was to give a large group of people, including those with less than sterling (or ivy) pedigrees, a fair shot.  Then after a small amount of time in the program -- maybe a year or less -- they would take a &quot;prelim&quot; exam, and a significant portion would fail and leave.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no longer the way graduate programs work (at least not in North America, which is what I am primarily familiar with, but to the best of my meager knowledge they don't work that way in other parts of the world either).  We pay much closer attention to each student we admit now than in the scenario above, and further our program is judged on retention and completion rates.  A graduate program in 2012 who dismissed a third or more of its incoming class every year would look disastrously bad by these sorts of metrics.  So this &quot;weedout prelim&quot; is, as far as I know, a thing of the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the graduate program at UGA we still give a &quot;prelim exam&quot; to all entering graduate students, but as I said above we use it almost entirely for diagnostic purposes.  In fact we have a certain graduate course designed entirely for students who didn't do well on the prelim, whose purpose is to shore up their undergraduate knowledge ASAP.  Other than being encouraged to take this course, there are no direct consequences of failing the prelim (in fact, I'm not sure that one &quot;passes&quot; or &quot;fails&quot; the prelim in any technical sense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, most of the &quot;qualifying exams&quot; that you hear graduate students talking about are something entirely different.  They:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) test graduate level material; in particular, most students do not enter equipped with the knowledge to pass most qualifying exams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(ii) occupy students' attention for a while: in our program, students have up to three years to pass their qualifying exams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(iii) really must be passed in order for students to advance in the program, in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this answers your question.  Let me say though that the scores on the &quot;prelim&quot; exam -- i.e., the undergraduate level exam that I mentioned first -- are often all over the place.  All of our entering students have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics.  So, unfortunately, no, an undergraduate degree in mathematics is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a guarantee of ability to do undergraduate level mathematics...at least not to the satisfaction of a decent mathematics graduate program.  (And a student who does poorly on this entering prelim may yet succeed in doing PhD level mathematics a little later on: that is, the fault often seems to lie with the undergraduate program more than the student.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T17:49:57.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T18:19:27.123" Score="8" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like a halloween mask to conceal injuries of a burn? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="939" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:26:06.413" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:39:55.550" Title="Is it okay if a student wears a mask to class to conceal scars?" Tags="&lt;health&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2012-05-26T18:36:27.570" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course. If there's a medical reason for it and the student can produce an appropriate doctor's certificate or what not. You would need to check the regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on what sort of mask it is. If the mask is distracting for other students  or plain silly, then I can imagine that it is reasonable to object to it. So, 'halloween mask' may not be the best description of an appropriate mask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T18:53:25.677" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T18:53:25.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1707" CreationDate="2012-05-26T18:57:14.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with @Pete L. Clark and @Anonymous Mathematiciar. These exams have names that suggest the darker purposes in their pasts, but they are mainly used as administrative tools by graduate departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the graduate school I attended for chemistry, we took &quot;placement exams&quot;. These exams happen for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) to provide the department with a common baseline, as we all did not likely take exactly the same GRE on exactly the same day. Particularly, this provided a means to directly compare the national students with the foreign students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) to identify deficiencies, as @Pete L. Clark and @Anonymous Mathematiciar have indicated. In chemistry, the smaller schools occasionally cannot offer courses in all five disciplines: organic, inorganic, analytical, physical, and biochemistry. Rather than punish those students for attending small liberal arts schools, many Ph.D. programs accept them on the premise that they may have to take an undergraduate course to fill in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) to select TAs. All first year graduate students in my chemistry program had to TA undergraduate labs. The placement exams determined which course you got to TA. The highest scorers on the organic chemistry exam were TAs for organic chemistry labs. The highest scorers on the analytic chemistry exam were TAs for analytical chemistry labs, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T18:57:14.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2012-05-26T19:33:55.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is too much of a problem in courses where students have to build and demonstrate something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I teach first year, second semester programming.  We set three weird courseworks that aggregate together to make a nethack like game.  No one will have precisely this game on the web.  Of course they can take advantage of code libraries from the web (in fact, I have a lecture teaching them to do just that when we get to GUIs).  But that's a lot of what they'll be doing in the &quot;real world&quot; as well, so that's fine as long as it's acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also teach a final year AI / Cognitive Systems course.  Here it's even easier to set weird questions that aren't available on the web, e.g. replicating recent results or using new versions of research software (though either of these can be hazardous and therefore time consuming.  Good TAs that test assignments in advance are a necessity!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Material that they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; just look up but you want them to know by heart for some reason doesn't belong on assignments, it belongs in exams. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T19:33:55.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1721" CreationDate="2012-05-26T19:35:14.560" Score="8" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, there are certain open questions which are the subject of current research (think of the newest papers in the top journals).  I have also heard that some graduate programs ask questions such as these on their qualifying exam.  How common is this practice?  What kinds of questions can I expect to see on a qualifying exam?  I know that a qualifying exam typically tests the knowledge gained in graduate school, but I'm not sure to what extent this knowledge is tested?  How &quot;advanced&quot; should I expect these questions to be?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T01:37:37.547" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T01:37:37.547" Title="What kind of questions can I expect to see on a qualifying exam?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1720" CreationDate="2012-05-26T20:53:07.423" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you shouldn't believe everything you hear.  Mathematicians like to tell stories about posing various famous open problems to certain brilliant young students, the idea being that these students don't have the respect and fear for these problems that an adult mathematician would and that maybe, just maybe, they will innocently work on them and even solve them.  And it seems to be true that every once in a great while a student solves a serious open problem this way.  The vast majority of the time they don't, of course: a problem that the experts in the field want to solve but can't is not going to be accessible to a young student, however brilliant, 99.99% of the time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe every once in a while a faculty member decides to put a &quot;ringer&quot; problem on an exam.  What do you think is going to happen?  With probability very close to one, no one will solve the problem, and the writer will have to own up to the fact that the question was not an appropriate one and make sure the students were not in any way penalized by its appearance on the exam.  How many times have I seen this happen on exams I have taken, written, or otherwise encountered?  Zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact qualifying exams test a standard syllabus; they certainly do not test research level mathematics.  Every department does their exams at least a little differently (a very few departments, like Princeton, don't even have written qualifying exams!) so I don't think there's much point in preparing / worrying about quals until you enroll in a specific graduate program.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, when you arrive in a graduate program, you should start asking for information about the qualifying exams.  And you'll get it: most programs have posted syllabi for quals.  Many programs, including those I've personally been involved with, have years and years of old quals for you to page through.  Nowadays a lot of these are freely available online: in fact, please see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.osu.edu/node/27223/print&quot;&gt;Ohio State's webpage&lt;/a&gt;: not only do they do they have posted all of their own qualifying exams going back at least ten years, they helpfully post links to qualifying exams at almost 20 different departments.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus the way to study for and pass quals is to go through old quals learning the material and techniques that come up again and again until you can do most of the problems on a given qual in a reasonable amount of time.  It's not really any more mysterious or romantic than that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T20:53:07.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1723" CreationDate="2012-05-27T00:02:40.063" Score="9" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just submitted a paper to a conference.  The reviewers gave me their responses only two days before the deadline to resubmit the paper.  They seemed to indicate that my paper was on topic, and had good preliminary results, but they seemed to indicate that it was lacking more results.  I understand it, and I think they're probably right, but I really don't have the time to invest much more time into this particular paper.  My advisor thinks that I should invest my time in other research endeavors, but I don't really want to abandon a paper that i've already invested a lot of time in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should you do when you want to salvage a paper but don't have time to correct it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T10:24:24.700" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T16:09:35.003" Title="How to salvage a rejected paper when you don't have time to correct it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2012-05-27T00:41:39.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One piece of &lt;strong&gt;advice-I-would-not-follow&lt;/strong&gt; is to submit the paper to a lower quality conference. This could really be a waste of time if the conference is of very low quality, and if you are really proud of the work, do not do this. In the end, this may even look like a black spot on your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you doing this weekend? Maybe canceling those plans and using the time to obtain the additional results. Then improve the paper based on the reviewer comments (evenings and other weekends) and resubmit to the next suitable venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative is to get help, either from a colleague or maybe even an undergraduate, if it is easy enough to the him/her how to run your experiments. Reward them with co-authorship, even if they haven't written a word of the paper. (This won't hurt you any.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you cannot get something for nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T16:09:35.003" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T16:09:35.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2012-05-27T02:36:47.023" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly an important question.  Here are some of my own thoughts on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Having the regular homework consist of questions that the students do, in principle, have access to on the web is not necessarily problematic.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I recently finished teaching a year-long course out of Michael Spivak's acclaimed &lt;em&gt;Calculus&lt;/em&gt; text.  At the beginning of the year I found that I was able to freely download the solutions manual.  I told the students that the solutions manual was available online and that it was their job to look at it from sparingly to never.  In fact they did a good job of this: the amount of time that they spent &lt;em&gt;coming to me instead&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes more than once per problem, and the amount of effort and verbiage that most of them put into their homework strongly suggests that they hardly ever consulted the answer book.  (I remember one instance in which a student freely admitted that she had cited the answer book for a single problem, which I found most impressive.)  It also helps that the answer book is on the terse side and the grader was very picky and detail-oriented.  Finally, the grades they were receiving on their homework were not such a large determining factor in their course grade so as to tempt students to cheat.   This I think is an important point in undergraduate classes: make the homework be worth a not completely negligible percentage of the course grade -- say, 15% - 20% -- but grade it generously enough and/or drop enough problem sets so that the students can see that (i) they need to spend significant time and effort on the homework and (ii) the homework that they themselves can do and turn in is earning them good enough grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;It takes some skill to successfully use the web to answer your questions.  The average young university student does not find the web the miraculous, Borges-ian answer book that those of us who have spent years studying our subject and honing our google-fu do.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hang out at a subject-oriented SE site like math.SE, you will be surprised how many students ask questions for which your tempted first answer is to include a link to a wikipedia article.  But these questioners often clarify that they don't understand the wikipedia article / weren't looking at the right part of it / didn't understand why it answered their questions (in cases where it is immediately clear to the trained eye that it does).  It's easy to forget how fragile your knowledge and understanding is when you first start out learning a discipline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has several implications for undergraduate teaching.  (One of them, relatively little explored, is that we should probably be &lt;i&gt;teaching&lt;/i&gt; our students how to search for information on the web.  This is certainly an important skill...) One implication is that two questions which the instructor will regard as &quot;isomorphic&quot; (for the non math people: essentially the same, but perhaps superficially different) will not necessarily be regarded so by the students.  For instance, when teaching (non-honors) freshman calculus class one can use webwork/webassign to give students various problems.  Often these problems are generated from a much smaller class of template problems with some parameters randomized for each individual student.  This is already enough difference to prevent students from easily doing each other's homework. But if you take things one level higher, then you'll see that most of what we ask students to do in freshman / sophomore level classes is to be able to solve a type of problem given a certain template.  As a calculus instructor, I no longer have to think of &quot;new&quot; min-max or related rates problems: the internet has plenty of them.  A student who combs the internet trying to get hints on which min-max problem is going to be on the test is quickly going to find out that if she can solve all five sample problems appearing on any one webpage or problem set then she can solve most of the problems that are likely to appear on the exam.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;The best way to generate unique questions and coursework is to take a unique approach to the course.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach courses at the advanced undergraduate level and beyond, I often type up my own lecture notes, which leads me to present at least some of the material in a different / new / nonstandard way.  Having done that, it is easy to ask questions which are nonstandard.  And any given undergraduate course (at least in mathematics, but I'd be surprised if other subjects were much different in this regard) can be taught in many different new / nonstandard ways.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to what I said above, whenever I do something in my course or course notes which I think is &quot;new&quot;, I then go the internet to see to what extent it is actually new.  More than half of the time I can find something which I recognize as being an essentially equivalent idea or approach...but again, what seems &quot;isomorphic&quot; to me probably will not seem that way to a student first learning the material.  A lot of times I find the past precedent in some article or note published up to fifty years ago.  I am pretty sure the students are not reading such things at all: if they were motivated to try to do so in order to get a jump on assignments, that would be fantastic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T17:44:12.310" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T17:44:12.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2012-05-27T09:06:40.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;(My answer applies to fields of study that have been around for some time.  So it doesn't apply to, say, computer programming classes that use a recently created computer language.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to a library and look at an old textbook with problems and solutions; the older, the better.  (Anything before 1980 should do.)  Chances are the contents of these references will not be on the internet (unless they have been recently revised).  The problem with this is that, to imply that you were not the one who created the problem, you might need to cite where you got it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T09:06:40.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1729" CreationDate="2012-05-27T10:41:35.077" Score="5" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you wrote a good thesis on some discovery you made in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was a mediocre discovery, nothing special, are you more likely to get awarded the PhD at a 'not very good' university than at a top class university like Cambridge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="926" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T16:32:44.270" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T16:46:09.733" Title="Does getting awarded your PhD in physics depend on the quality of university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T11:09:42.133" Score="13" ViewCount="5167" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student feels that the grade he received is lower than he expected, because he has been working very hard, and truly trying to understand things, but sometimes at the cost of sacrificing details. But the instructor might think differently, as the student sometimes made careless mistakes in assignments and didn't have much time doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can he email the instructor for &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt; of changing his grade, stating the reasons above? He knows if he never asks, the grade will stay the same, so he wants to have a try. Also as far as he knows, course grading generally has more or less flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he does, is there some ethic issue that the student should be aware of? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: This is in a U.S. university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="218" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T13:17:15.110" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T22:00:45.303" Title="Can students ask for changing grades?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1727" CreationDate="2012-05-27T11:16:25.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle yes, although the procedure will be different from university to university. Just emailing your instructor and asking for some additional clarification/justification (and maybe mentioning that you aren't satisfied with the grade) is definitely going to be fine though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the instructor declines to change the grade and you are still not satisfied, your next point of call would probably the course coordinator or director of studies. If your school has a handbook or a set of policies or something like that, they should tell you what to do in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T11:16:25.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1726" CreationDate="2012-05-27T12:02:10.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of the university and the quality of the theses produced are not perfectly correlated. You are just as likely to end up with a &quot;nothing special&quot; thesis at a Cambridge as at a Random State University. The criterion for awarding a PhD is the completion of an independent and original contribution to the field of knowledge one is studying. There is no requirement that it be &quot;groundbreaking.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, given that the &quot;top&quot; universities also tend to have superior resources available to students, the likelihood that a &quot;nothing special&quot; thesis will be accepted &lt;em&gt;by the advisor&lt;/em&gt; as suitable for a PhD thesis is also somewhat mitigated as a result.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T12:02:10.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1727" CreationDate="2012-05-27T12:08:01.647" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is possible to &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt;, I suspect such efforts are unlikely to succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In an &quot;objectively&quot; graded class, such as in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences, where answers are either right or wrong, the only guaranteed way to get a grade changed is to show conclusive evidence that a mis-grading has occurred: an answer was marked wrong when it was correct, or at least ambiguous. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In more &quot;subjective&quot; classes, which are typical in the arts and humanities, an &lt;em&gt;ex post facto&lt;/em&gt; change of grade is not going to be received well. If the student was worried about performance in the class, such concerns should have first been lodged &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; the class. In this way, improved performance could be seen and taken into account at the time of the original grading. Afterwards, there's no way to do this and not come across as &quot;grade-grubbing,&quot; which is considered to be in poor taste, and earns you a bad reputation with the faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, at many schools, once a final grade has been submitted to the registrar, it is &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; possible to change it as a result of clerical errors. &quot;Judgment&quot; issues cannot be taken into account. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if a &lt;strong&gt;legitimate&lt;/strong&gt; grading error has occurred, the faculty is &lt;strong&gt;obligated&lt;/strong&gt; to correct it, as this affects your permanent record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T12:13:43.463" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T12:13:43.463" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T13:40:16.990" Score="15" ViewCount="10934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student of computer science from India and specialize in Artificial Intelligence &amp;amp; Robotics. I have completed M.Tech (for those who do not know, it covers 18 years of education. It is actually PG in engineering, sort of an Indian equivalent of MS, consists of a one year course work + one year dissertation ). I have a conference paper to my name and I'll take up my GRE exams in a short while. I wish to pursue PhD from the US. Let us assume I make it to one of the top 50 grad schools in US in the next academic session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my chances of landing in a good R&amp;amp;D job in industry after completing PhD? I do not wish to stay in academia throughout my career. I do not wish to teach. Post-PhD, I'd prefer a transition to industrial R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not really figured out the details, have just started conceptualizing a career plan. So I thought it wise to start with the basic question. Given my career objective, is PhD really worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="945" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:47:09.503" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:47:09.503" Title="Chances of getting R&amp;D job in industry after PhD in AI/Robotics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-07T21:53:52.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2012-05-27T13:48:29.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Baoye,&#xA;There are plenty of accredited online MBA programs at accredited institutions. In Maryland, where I am, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frostburg.edu/colleges/cob/mba/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Frostburg State University&lt;/a&gt; offers an AACSB accredited MBA fully online. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umuc.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Maryland University College&lt;/a&gt; also has a good online program. A little effort on Google should find other programs, perhaps even on New Jersey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T13:48:29.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2012-05-27T13:53:36.070" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will definitely need to check regulations regarding the wearing of costumes that conceal one's appearance. For example, in France it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering&quot;&gt;forbidden by law to conceal one's face in public space&lt;/a&gt;, including in universities (and it's made explicit in universities' by-laws). While there's normally allowances made for legitimate medical reasons, there will definitely be limits. &quot;Halloween-style&quot; costumes and masks will probably be disallowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional comment not mentioned in Dave's answer is that in cases of laboratories and other &quot;practical&quot; exercises, such costumes may be disallowed for legal and protective reasons. You will need to talk with the appropriate staff about any accommodations that can be made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorDisplayName="user9646" LastEditDate="2016-01-11T20:39:55.550" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:39:55.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1731" CreationDate="2012-05-27T13:57:23.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Yes. Will it definitely happen? It's hard to say for any particular individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are definitely people graduating with PhD's in robotics or AI that go on to jobs in industry—I even know a few. However, your ability to find a suitable job will depend on many factors both within your control—such as the quality of your PhD thesis, your letters of recommendation, and your ability to &quot;sell&quot; your work—as well as a number of factors you can't control—such as the economic state at the time of your graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, getting a PhD shouldn't prevent you from getting an R&amp;amp;D job after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T13:57:23.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1727" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:17:47.117" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A student sure can ask for re-grading, but he or she should have strong evidence that what was graded was better than perceived by the grader. It is a very bad idea to try argue how the teacher should be grading (e.g., asking her or him to grade according to what work you claimed you provided rather than the quality of your homework or exam). These questions are up to the teaching teams, not up to the students, and yes that makes the situation rather unbalanced. What you can do about this is to ask for a general change in suitable meetings if they exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I would like to point out two things :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most of the time, grading is not for acknowledging good effort, but to measure if the student understood enough of the class to have a decent chance in the next one (at least in fields where classes depend strongly one on another, like in mathematics);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my experience tells me that students that consider they understand well but do poor exams in fact understand much more shallowly than they think, and their grades should be taken as an indication that the way they work is probably not good enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:17:47.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:26:51.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess we work on fairly different domains, because spending significantly more than &lt;em&gt;two days&lt;/em&gt; to improve a paper seems negligible to me (writing one good paper a year is already good for me!), even if I agree it would mean submit to another venue in your case. If the referee is right in his or her demands, you should afford to spend a time at least one order below the time already invested in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:26:51.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:37:12.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France the picture is very different from the US, since you start right away your PhD research (so you must have an adviser from the beginning, and an idea what you will be working on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one includes the M2 (second-year master) in graduate studies, then anyway most of them are specialized, so by picking one you do choose a specific field. You can switch for your PhD, but for some fields with many prerequisites it is usually a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:37:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1727" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:40:03.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can surely ask for a change. And if there is a clear mis-grading this must be fixed. This happens frequently: for instance, this year I did forget to grade the last page of the exam of one of my ~100 students...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is the only case when grades may be subject to a change. Grading performance is the only way to apply consistently the same grading process to all the students. And, BTW, this is what will be done in real life. Let's say you are a plumber, you work hard, you truly try to understand how to connect pipes, but you make careless mistake because you don't pay attention to details and you let a lot of leaks in your customers houses. Do you think you will be paid by your customers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:40:03.967" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:45:34.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now the Web of knowledge issues a five-year impact factor that may be considered (slightly) more relevant in some fields, like mathematics. Mathematicians sometimes convince people rating them to use the MathSciNet MCQ instead, which is a five-year impact factor computed with a mostly mathematic database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AMS Notices publish yearly a survey of the processing time of many mathematical journals; this is one aspect of the editorial process quality, probably the easiest to measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find surveys on the prices of journal, which is certainly a good measure of the commercial talent of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, quality can mean a lot different things and you should explain for what purpose you intend the measures to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:45:34.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:56:09.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, the publisher mainly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organizes the peer-review (for example by providing an electronic platform for submission, communication with authors and referees, etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provides copy-editing;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publishes in paper (organizes printing, sends the volumes, etc.) and electronic formats (manages a website, cross-links, a database, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add a remark: it seems that many of the cheapest journals do all these three things a lot better than most the expensive ones. For example the professionalism of copy-editing was far better for my papers handled by the London Mathematical Society or the American Mathematical Society than for the one I got published by Elsevier, Springer or World Scientific. My only copy-editing horror story happened at Springer (seven errors in formulas introduced &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the proofs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:56:09.783" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-27T14:56:09.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:57:34.820" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I second Dave's answer. There is one point, however. During exams students have to identify themselves, and this is commonly done by showing some identification document (e.g., student id) to the person in charge. Wearing a mask would likely be interpreted as a failure to identify yourself, unless identification is possible in some other way. As a rule, failing to identify yourself at our university means that the lecturer is not allowed to grade the exam. However, if wearing a mask is required due to a medical condition, the student can notify the examination board &lt;em&gt;before the exam&lt;/em&gt; that can decide to deviate from the identification rule and oblige the lecturer to grade the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T14:57:34.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1731" CreationDate="2012-05-27T15:10:06.597" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to think about two questions, essentially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do I need a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt; - Do you really want to contribute something special to the field? Unlike M.tech where you are guaranteed a degree after two years, things are a lot more uncertain in a PhD, so unless you have the drive, it could be very difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the nature of work of doctorates in your field?&lt;/strong&gt; - This is much more important than knowing if you will get a job after PhD. Do try to contact people who are in good places in the industry and form an idea about the nature of their job. If you are enthused by that and you feel an industrial research position is where you seek to be, then go ahead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD from a top institution can never be &quot;worthless&quot;. You learn some set of skills that are difficult to pick up if you are elsewhere, so that's a huge plus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL,DR: If you are happy being a skilful software or embedded systems engineer, then you are better off building your experience in the industry; if you really desire to contribute to the field as a researcher, PhD is a must, so hurry up with the formalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T15:10:06.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1747" CreationDate="2012-05-27T15:28:04.867" Score="29" ViewCount="1903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've already completed my first grueling year of the PhD program, and graduation is still a yet to be seen light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm very sure that academia is for me, and I really want to obtain a tenure-track position in my field (computational science).  I know that universities often look very highly upon doing a post-doc and accumulating plenty of journal publications.  Of course, open faculty positions are extremely competitive and I'm sure that everyone applying for them have those qualifications already.  I'm curious if there is anything else I do as a graduate student to help maximize my chances of getting a Tenure-Track Faculty position in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T04:29:00.150" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:29:00.150" Title="What can I do as a graduate student to maximize my chances of obtaining a professorship?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T15:43:09.607" Score="29" ViewCount="2995" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was raised by Dave Clarke &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1725/64&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture notes using this novel approach or interesting example would be doing the right thing to cite the originator of the approach or the example.  Similarly, whenever I copy a clever (and clearly unique) problem from a textbook and give it as a question in an exam or an assignment, I try my best to indicate (in the exam or assignment paper itself) the source of the original problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an exam or an assignment without citing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2019-08-03T09:27:10.380" Title="Citing sources of problems in assignments" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:20:54.547" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's considered more of a courtesy rather than a requirement to credit someone who has developed a problem, provided that there is no new technical content introduced in the problem. On the other hand, however, if one is to use a problem in a problem set or examination completely unchanged, then some citation of the original source is certainly recommendable, as otherwise one is guilty of a copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T17:20:54.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1750" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:38:07.177" Score="32" ViewCount="1190" Body="&lt;p&gt;In recent months, I have found myself getting involved in varying degrees with the papers being written with members of my group. Some of the papers—by the more senior and experienced members of the group (primarily the postdoc) have needed little real effort on my part, except suggestions for improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some of the more junior members of the group have been struggling significantly in writing papers that I believe can pass muster in getting into good peer-reviewed journals. My question is: &lt;em&gt;how involved should I be in the writing process&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am ultimately equally responsible for the contents of the paper, it is not clear how strong a role I should play. Is it better for me to keep hounding the student through draft after draft until things are fixed to a satisfactory level, or do I need to step in at some point? Does the decision calculus change when an important deadline is on the horizon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T18:13:50.350" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T08:16:03.250" Title="How active should professors be in writing papers with their students?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1743" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:44:32.333" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's anything &quot;special&quot; that's unique to applying to academia that a graduate student can do to increase the odds of becoming a professor in the long run, particularly if one is going to do a postdoc later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two areas that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; help are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gain teaching experience that goes beyond the standard &quot;recitation section&quot; leader—that is, into actual lecturing and other forms of direct interaction with students, as well as formulation of assignments and examinations. This might make a difference at schools which are more teaching-oriented rather than research-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Formulate a well-defined scope for your future research activities, and also develop the tentative outlines for the first few projects that you'd start in that field. This is an essential part of any professorial application, and the sooner you start working on it, the more polished it will be when you're ready to apply for positions when the time comes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, what makes someone a good candidate for a postdoc are essentially the same qualities that will help in being a good candidate for a professorship later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T17:44:32.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:45:26.910" Score="6" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, do professors work at liberal arts colleges because they do not want to have to face the pressure of writing a lot of research papers? Instead they want their evaluations to be skewed towards their teaching quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="950" LastEditorUserId="882" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T10:43:43.310" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T10:43:43.310" Title="Professors and Liberal Arts Colleges" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1746" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:49:29.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you already know the answer -- it depends on the paper (your level of interest), the co-authors (their ability to work alone) and your time. There are no rules. I saw both advisors that spend a lot of time in technical discussions and advisors that hardly spend time to read the paper. Both were good advisors INHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the role of the advisor is like the role of the head-chef in a fancy restaurant: &lt;em&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/em&gt;. If the cooks make great food, all you need to do is to clean the crumbs off the plate before it goes out. If the cooks messed the food up, you need to return the plate back to them and tell them that the fish is still raw; the chicken is blend; and the correct way to do Flambé is by lighting up 95% alcohol rather than 5%-alc beer. Demonstrations are always appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T17:49:29.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1746" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:52:26.537" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing &quot;good&quot; papers is an integral part of being a good academic, and therefore it is, in my opinion, something that supervisors &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; teach their students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you should be &lt;strong&gt;active in teaching them how to write&lt;/strong&gt;, and less active in the actual writing itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Struggling is part of any learning process, provided they are struggling with writing, and not with your reviews. The best you can do is to provide the student with clear goals of how the paper should look, how it should be structured and what it should contain. Looking back at my own first papers, I usually started writing before knowing exactly what the bottom line, e.g. the take-home message, should be. Discussing a plan of the paper, both with regards to content and the writing process, with the student before letting him/her write it is probably a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reviewing the manuscript, I think it's important to provide clear, consistent and constructive criticism. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Clear&lt;/em&gt;: If you don't like a sentence, paragraph, figure or table (don't forget these latter two!), make sure you tell the student &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what you don't like about it. This may require putting intuition aside and thinking through why you're not happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Consistent&lt;/em&gt;: Avoid editing ping-pong that lead to the same paragraph being re-written 20 times back and forth. It's probably a good idea to keep copies of previous iterations with your own comments. This also helps the students if you can tell them they've done a good job fixing things from the previous iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Constructive&lt;/em&gt;: This is kind of obvious, but I can't be reminded of it often enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadlines are a bummer, but they're as much part of the academic process as the writing itself, so the best you can do is to teach your students to prepare for them adequately, i.e. plan ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for authorship, in my opinion, teaching a student to write a paper in no way qualifies as co-authorship. It's part of your job as an academic. Co-authorship is something that arises out of having contributed significantly to the &lt;em&gt;contents&lt;/em&gt; of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T20:40:24.733" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T20:40:24.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:58:45.007" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're not expressing the question in the most flattering way, but yes: most academic jobs are a mix of research and teaching (and also service / administration), and there is a lot of variation in the importance placed on each from job to job.  Some people are more interested in one than the other, and the faculty at liberal arts colleges have signed up for a job in which more emphasis is placed on teaching and student contact than a, well, a research university.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a good liberal arts college faculty are still expected to be research active -- it's just that they spend more hours per week on teaching than their colleagues at a more research-oriented institution.  Someone who felt like writing research papers was pressure that they didn't want to face would probably be more comfortable at something like a four-year, junior, or community college, in which in most cases the research expectations are really nominal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T20:41:15.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T20:41:15.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T18:19:28.853" Score="7" ViewCount="1144" Body="&lt;p&gt;After all, to do research with a professor, a student has to have good social skills. So why not have classes that teach social etiquette and social skills? It seems that many courses in college are &quot;book courses.&quot; Yet, when students graduate, what really matters is how they present themselves and their social skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="950" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T13:38:38.580" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T09:35:39.663" Title="Why don't colleges and departments teach social skills?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T18:25:00.053" Score="9" ViewCount="4847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see some professors at Ivy league schools who didn't go to Ivy league schools. I also see professors who went to Ivy League schools that end up working at mediocre universities. So clearly pedigree doesn't play a very significant role by itself. What other factors come into play?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="950" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T16:23:30.983" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T16:23:30.983" Title="What does it take to get a tenure track position at an Ivy League School?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1752" CreationDate="2012-05-27T18:49:06.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our university (the Netherlands) students are actively involved in group projects and as a part of the preparation to these projects they get some training on how to give talks, how to negotiate, how to organize/chair meetings, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T18:49:06.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2012-05-27T19:47:13.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a thorny issue. It comes down to copyright and license, and, particularly, what is and isn't copyrightable. If the problem is not copyrightable, then you can do whatever you wish. If the problem is copyrightable, you should assume it is copyrighted,  which means you can't use it unless you have a licence to do so. The only way you are guarantee that you have a licence is to use that book in your course. If you require your students to purchase the book, then they are purchasing the license to use all of that content. You can then use the same content with them.  Even providing a reference is not good enough if the material is copyrighted, and you don't have the licence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is fundamental or factual, then it's probably not copyrightable unless there is something peculiar about the wording. Thrse questions can be complex. For example, the following would not be copyrightable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the derivative of x3 + 4x?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the major product of the reaction between calcium carbonate and sulfuric acid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the time-independent wavefunction for the electron in a ground state hydrogen atom. Then, provide the eigenvalues for this wavefunction with the kinetic energy operator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draw a simple set of supply and demand curves for a generic free market for a manufactured product. Describe or draw the effects of each of the following changes on the market: 1) discovery of a cheaper method of production, 2) closing of a plant, 3) government enforcement of a maximum price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble coming up with a question that is copyrightable. Feel free to add one to my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T19:47:13.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2012-05-27T20:15:10.800" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a textbook author. I agree that it's hard to formulate a cut-and-dried answer to your question. One criterion to consider: If a colleague would compliment you on a copied problem or question because it was particularly clever or insightful, you should probably consider a citation. Stated differently, if you're getting academic credit (even if informal) for the contribution, cite the source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="952" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T20:15:10.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1731" CreationDate="2012-05-27T20:35:13.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to answer your question is this. Identify the top few places you'd like to work at (regardless of degree). Look at the people doing the kind of work you'd enjoy doing, and then see what professional degrees they have, and what their trajectory has been. That will give you a sense of what kind of training is required for industrial R&amp;amp;D in robotics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in CS I can say that having a Ph.D doesn't hurt in R&amp;amp;D labs, and it garners a modicum of authority/respect that helps in the corporate world, and might even be necessary for career advancement. Whether this is true for robotics as well depends on the research you do above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T20:35:13.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1727" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:04:59.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I can support your idea a little&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exam or assignment is not always the best way to judge a student's understanding - although it is the easiest and most practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An education system might reasonably have some way for a student to demonstrate their clear knowledge and understanding of what is being taught outside the examination or assignment. If there are objective standards that can be proven by the student, this takes away the variability from the examination room or particular assignment and student's/instructor's differing interpretation of the assignment requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be, then, that your instructor is willing to consider regrading, if you can provide suitable evidence outside the exam that you understood and can apply the material at a level higher than you did in the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think this is very unlikely to happen in practice&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a serious ethical issue here: all the students should have the same opportunity that you do. You should not receive special treatment just because you personally appeal to the instructor. (The other students may not have the opportunity to personally appeal, or may not realise that it makes a difference). The criteria for grading should be equal and obvious to all students. If an appeal process is possible, then ethically all students must be made aware of the possibility. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Aside: In your case, if there is an available appeal process, you can follow it with no problem: if you meet the criteria]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exams and assignments are typically designed to test your understanding in an effective way. They may not be ideal, but usually they are the only good and practical way of testing - there is unlikely to be a good alternative proof you can offer the instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An instructor's time is precious: it is likely they have spent significant time writing an assignment that suitably tests the material, and significant time in marking, and will not be willing to spend more time to listen to this complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that avoiding &quot;careless mistakes&quot; is part of the test - the grade should depend partly on whether the student understands the material well enough to avoid commonly-made mistakes. So, if you feel you have made careless mistakes, it shows that - probably - you did not understand the material well enough to check and avoid these in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The amount of work you did, or effort you put in, should not really be relevant to the grading. You must show understanding, not effort. (Although, effort should be necessary - it is not what's being tested)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the argument that there is no harm in asking, but I do not expect that this type of request would be well received by the instructor (neither, by your fellow students). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's plausible that asking for a regrade would harm your professional reputation with the instructor, and your personal reputation amongst fellow students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you consider asking for a retest instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="691" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T00:04:59.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1753" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:45:58.407" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League&quot;&gt;Ivy League&lt;/a&gt; is an athletic league, not a list of the top universities.  They are all very good, and some of them are great, but nobody thinks UPenn is more prestigious or a higher-ranked university than Stanford (despite the fact that UPenn is in the Ivy League and Stanford is not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the strength of individual departments is correlated with the overall prestige of the university, but there's a lot of variation.  The prestige of the university plays some role in recruiting faculty, but departmental strength is the primary factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, schools really shouldn't (and generally don't) care much about the pedigree of the candidate.  They are much more interested in accomplishments than educational background.  Of course, there's a strong correlation between accomplishments and pedigree, for at least two reasons.  Talented, ambitious students are likely to have the opportunity to attend top schools, and they often take that opportunity.  Once they are there, they benefit from an environment full of top faculty and other students like them.  So it's no surprise that many professors at top schools studied at such schools themselves, but they didn't all do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what other factors come into play, that's a very broad question.  At top research universities, the big question is how good your research is, primarily judged by external letters of evaluation.  There's nothing special about getting a job at a top school, beyond the degree of competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the Ivy League students who end up teaching at lower-ranked universities, that's numerically guaranteed.  Every research university graduates more Ph.D. students than it hires, and typically far more, so there's no way they could all get jobs at schools like the ones they attended.  (But keep in mind that most colleges are not research universities and do not offer Ph.D. programs.)  To a first approximation, most Ph.D. recipients from top universities will get jobs at lower-ranked research universities (or other types of jobs entirely, for example teaching-focused or industrial).  Most students from lower-ranked research universities will not get jobs at research universities at all, although of course they may still end up in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T00:45:58.407" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2012-05-28T01:00:25.853" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on a little Googling, his white paper sounds like a preproposal. It is likely a short overview over your research project: the problem you are working on, your approach to solving it, how much it will cost, and what you and/or the agency will get out of it. Consider this white paper an outline of your full proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many agencies will ask for these if they expect a particular program or funding opportunity will have a high response or if the purpose of the program is to provide a single large award to one project. The prepreposals are used to narrow the field before they ask for full proposals from a smaller set of submitters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been successful at finding examples, since proposals and affiliated documents are almost never released unless they are funded. However, I have found some tips for preparing white papers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rit.edu/research/srs/news/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=141&amp;amp;Itemid=114&quot;&gt;Rochester Institute of Technology&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purdue.edu/research/vpr/funding/rdgn/rdgn2.pdf&quot;&gt;Purdue&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T01:00:25.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1787" CreationDate="2012-05-28T02:27:41.680" Score="13" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;So &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/757/77&quot;&gt;bobthejoe said this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PhD students I remember the most are the ones who came up to me&#xA;  and made meaningful comments or suggestions regarding my work. They&#xA;  get extra bonus points if in the middle of the night the next week&#xA;  they offer more meaningful comments or suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the question though: how many PhD students actually manage to make meaningful comments or suggestions about a professor's work? And how often does the professor follow up and inform the student that those comments are helpful (rather than pretend that the comments are helpful as a matter of politeness)? And if the comments are implemented, does the professor ever notify the student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm saying this as someone who makes &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of suggestions/comments to other people, but who can never be sure whether or not they find them helpful. Most suggestions seem to be discarded simply because it takes too much time/effort to implement them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T10:46:19.060" Title="How does a PhD student make meaningful comments or suggestions regarding a professor's work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1765" CreationDate="2012-05-28T03:54:32.717" Score="33" ViewCount="14420" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of very smart people in academia. They are at the front of human knowledge and push it further. Obviously, the research that comes out of academia is very new. My question is who applies this research? In other words, why don't these smart professors start a company and sell their new findings by applying it to a problem and sell a service or product? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it. Yet what I see is that all these researchers remain relatively poor compared to business people, and they publish some papers and then someone else applies their findings and makes a lot of money, while they do not get anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be wrong though. I don't really know how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T06:20:33.110" LastActivityDate="2018-01-16T10:04:39.823" Title="How do academics make money from applying their research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1762" CreationDate="2012-05-28T04:03:29.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a professor finds your comments insightful and valuable, he/she would take the initiative to request your opinion or collaborate with you on a project.  If not, they won't make an effort and may keep silent about it to be polite or outright request that you not give your opinion.  Just keep in mind though... Some professors may regard your comments as being a bit ostentation or arrogant... I know, because I've been there and done that myself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T04:03:29.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2012-05-28T04:23:16.787" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Come on, do you even think it is so easy for someone to start a company and start making money? The skills needed to make a product (corporate world) are different from those necessary to create an idea (academia). A simple well-thought out, well-exposited algorithm may bring plaudits in academia, but in the industry you need to implement the algorithm as a small part of a large system, subject it to rigorous testing, find people to market the product and suitable customers to buy, etc. And then there is the whole HR team which has to do its thing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patents&lt;/strong&gt; are the way to go if you have to make money from a smart idea in the academia. (&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Generally, both the University and the inventor share equitably the royalties and other income arising out of inventions &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/patents-policy-statement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;developed under University auspices&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors do engage themselves in collaborative work with the industry; at times, they are funded by the university for setting up small companies (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/792/entrepreneurial-opportunities-for-faculty-members&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.). The lifestyles of people in the academia and the industry are vastly different; for one, professors have much more freedom with respect to timings than in the industry and afford greater time for their family - not a bad thing in exchange for money, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful researchers in academia are unlikely to quibble about low income compared to people in the industry. Happiness versus money is a concave function - beyond a point, more money is unlikely to make one happier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T13:25:06.850" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1762" CreationDate="2012-05-28T04:29:55.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, even a good question at a department colloquium will make a student stand out. Often, a student will ask a question or make a comment that I've thought about but didn't bother to mention. That is also something that catches the eye. Ultimately I think that Bravo's point is a good one: just try to think about the problem and comment if something comes to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T04:29:55.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1770" CreationDate="2012-05-28T04:47:00.500" Score="13" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow-up to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/792/entrepreneurial-opportunities-for-faculty-members&quot;&gt;How good are entrepreneurial opportunities for faculty members?&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Say, a few researchers, professors and their students, at a university would like to start a company to exploit and commercialize their research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who owns the copyright/patent of their research? Will the university claim ownership of the startup company? What is the general procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T21:59:28.780" Title="How to start a startup based on university research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1490" CreationDate="2012-05-28T06:00:00.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, mentioning the city in the bibliography is not important.  It appears to be largely a legacy of older practices.  For this reason, I usually don't include the name of the city in my references, unless there is some particular reason to include it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T06:00:00.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2012-05-28T06:54:45.383" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I do (or at least try to do) in my algorithms classes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make homework useful.&lt;/strong&gt;  The whole point of homework is to help the students master the course material.  Students learn by &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;, not by passively reading or listening.  So I try to choose homework problems that exercise the insights and skills that I want the students to master.  (Among other things, this means keeping busywork to a minimum.)  If a student &quot;writes&quot; their homework solutions using Google and a stapler, they've robbed themselves of an opportunity to learn; all else being equal, that student will do worse on the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give homework relatively little weight&lt;/strong&gt; in the final course grade, usually 30%, with the other 70% from exams.  I'd make the homework worth 0% if I thought the students would still do it.  See the previous point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tell&lt;/em&gt; the students that homework is useful.&lt;/strong&gt;  Many students think of homework primarily as a vehicle for points, not as a tool for learning.  This is not entirely unreasonable—in some classes, homework &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; primarily a vehicle for points.   Better warn them early!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Include new questions in each homework assignment and exam.&lt;/strong&gt;  Because I want to sleep occasionally, I regularly recycle homework problems from previous semesters, but if I recycle too much or too quickly, students &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; learn the material as well.  (Whether they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; learn the material as well is immaterial.)  Coming up with new useful problems is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard, even if &quot;new&quot; just means &quot;I haven't used it before&quot;.  I scour through a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of textbooks and papers and web pages; if you teach algorithms, I have mined your web page for homework problems.  Still, I don't always succeed.  (On the other hand, failure sometimes suggests &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/34/how-hard-is-unshuffling-a-string&quot;&gt;interesting&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/6356/super-mario-galaxy-problem&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1962/is-it-np-hard-to-play-international-draughts-correctly&quot;&gt;problems&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2eFr9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;READ ALL THE THINGS&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insist on ethical scholarship:&lt;/strong&gt; proper citation of all sources, and no verbatim copying of anything.  Within those minimal constraints, students can use whatever source they want, and can collaborate with whoever they want, with no penalty.  In particular, students are welcome to use my official solutions from past semesters, if they can find them, as long as they cite them and don't just parrot them back to me.  Breaking this rule has harsher consequences than not doing the homework at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Homework presentations.&lt;/strong&gt;  I used to ask students to present their homework solutions three times a semester, instead of submitting a writeup.  Here's the whiteboard, you have ten minutes per problem.  A single question like &quot;But what about the empty string?&quot; or &quot;Why did you split the cases that way?&quot; usually reveals students who didn't work out the solutions themselves.  Sadly, growing classes and shrinking TA budgets make this impossible now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remind the students that the course staff also uses Google.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Remember, we're already scouring the web for new homework problems!)  And we have all the old textbooks, and their solution manuals.  And we read StackExchange.  And we have all the official homework solutions from past semesters, because, you know, we wrote them.  (I really wish I didn't have to say that last bit, but more than one student has submitted my own homework solutions, typos and all.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T06:54:45.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1767" CreationDate="2012-05-28T07:44:06.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will heavily depend on the specific country you are talking about. We have a so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tue.nl/en/innovation/tue-innovation-lab/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Innovation Lab&lt;/a&gt; that aims at encouraging &quot;entrepreneurship and innovation by identifying, supporting and providing guidance for potential high-tech startups and spin-off companies originating at TU/e.&quot; Specifically, they guide researchers along the entire process: from checking whether the idea can be patented to actually establishing a startup / spin-off company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to copyright: lion's share of our research is being published so there can be no problems for companies to use the ideas presented in scientific papers. Using &lt;em&gt;unpublished&lt;/em&gt; results might be more tricky but I can imagine that the university will agree to formally keep copyright and allow the company to benefit from it under some restricted conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T07:44:06.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1746" CreationDate="2012-05-28T08:16:03.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One strategy for teaching students about the writing process is to get them involved in projects/papers being written by the professor or by more advanced researchers of the professor's group (post docs or 3rd or 4th year students in European system), and over time gradually increase the amount of responsibility that the student has. This works in groups where people are collaborating on the same thing. For a computer science example, you can imagine that people in the lab are developing the same software system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by getting a first year PhD student working with a more advanced researcher. The research is not wholly done by the new student, but the student should be involved in all steps of the process. The new student can learn mostly by observation (watching the paper grow), contributing about 10% of the total effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing of the next paper could follow more or less the same pattern, except that the new student should take a more active role, say 25%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the third paper, give the new student the lead, and keep the more experienced researchers around helping and contributing, but make sure that they do not take over, and let the student work at his/her own pace. Whenever the student gets stuck, the more experience researcher could help move things forwards, to avoid the work stagnating. On this paper the student could do 60-70% of the work, and most of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let the student take the main responsibility on a paper and have the more experienced researchers contributing only comments and encouragement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing things in this way requires a bit of bootstrapping, as you need to have multiple papers on the go, written by multiple people, but all around the same topic, but it could work with a single student-single professor set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T08:16:03.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1792" CreationDate="2012-05-28T09:02:22.850" Score="6" ViewCount="5097" Body="&lt;p&gt;A stack of psychology exam essays has just landed on my desk for marking. It was a 3 hour exam with 3 essay questions. This is a final year essay so I do not have to provide written feedback. How long should I be spending marking an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:41:02.037" Title="Time spent marking essays" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1712" CreationDate="2012-05-28T09:15:32.597" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a HS student visiting a lab, a willingness to do some of the &quot;grunt&quot; work in exchange for a chance to do &quot;real&quot; research is helpful. Being able, and willing, to do literature searches on a database (e.g., pubmed), to download easy to get papers, and go to the library to get hard to find papers papers is really useful for a lab. Most researchers would happily trade their time teaching about the methods they use and love, in exchange for not having to make a run to the library. Being able to do data entry and carry out statistical tests, with guidance, in a program like SPSS, is really valuable. Being able to make charts/figures in programs like Excel, Photoshop and Illustrator is a real plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T09:15:32.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1762" CreationDate="2012-05-28T09:25:46.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very very carefully.&lt;/strong&gt; One of the important aspects of being a PhD student is learning how to think critically. Turning that critical eye on a colleague, and even worse on an advisor, can be a real disaster. The key is for the student to be able to provide his/her insight into the issues without putting the colleague on guard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T09:25:46.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-05-28T09:46:38.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer to your question depends very strongly on the field. In mine, mathematics, the most used quick proxy for quality of research is the prestige of journals one's publishes in (which is not measured by impact factor, although there is a correlation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some humanities fields, books are the most prominent research outputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a PhD student in biology (especially molecular and cellular, at least in some labs in France), time spent in lab in the evenings and week-ends seems to overweight everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T09:46:38.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1752" CreationDate="2012-05-28T10:57:26.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;During one's university life as an undergraduate, there are many opportunities to improve one's social skills and confidence as an adult. These range from the various sporting and political clubs students can join, through volunteer activities students can participate in, through coaching activities (of more junior students or even high school), all the way to activities like having a few drinks in the uni bar (soda, for US students). During the summer, one can participate in &lt;em&gt;spring break&lt;/em&gt;-style activities or get an internship at a law firm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these activities, I dare say, help shape a student into a person. There's no assessment, no assignments, no grades, but such is the school of hard knocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T10:57:26.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2012-05-28T12:06:08.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only hard and fast advice I have been given in general is to not spend more time grading than the person did writing the essay. Note in most instances you shouldn't spend anywhere near that amount of time, but in general you should be cognisant that grading essays is an arduous task, and for a size like 60 it certainly shouldn't be done in one day (I don't know anyone who grades that many by themselves to be frank, all classes of that size I am familiar with have TA(s)). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other elements will impact how long the grading takes. Such as are you grading all of the exams by yourself or are there other professors/teaching assistants grading exams. If there are multiple people sometimes it is necessary to have a collaborative meeting, and even co-grade several essays to make sure you are being consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For essays people typically make rubrics with which to grade, and this focuses the content for your review (as well as makes expectations explicit to students). The more focused the rubric the easier your task of grading becomes. The only other advice I would give is I typically read all of the essays once, making small comments, marks and notes for myself, and then go back through a second time and grade the papers. This obviously adds more time to grading though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not being able to give students feedback is awful for learning, so I would suggest (if possible) you at least keep notes for yourself and/or keep copies of the essays for a short period. Thus if a student requests feedback it will be possible to give them some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T13:53:24.880" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T13:53:24.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1752" CreationDate="2012-05-28T13:11:22.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that there where some (highly wanted) trials in Potsdam (maybe somewhere else):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/studium/soft_skills/soft_skills_colloquium.html?L=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soft Skills Colloquium, Hasso Plattner Institut, Potsdam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/09/us-flirting-odd-idUSTRE5085DE20090109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computer geeks learn to flirt&lt;/a&gt; (Reuters):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new &amp;quot;flirting course&amp;quot; being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To name the (alleged) reasons, why university courses in social skills are so rare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many social skills can't be easily fitted into a course scheme,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a common belief (with which I strongly disagree) that there is no such need (as its to late (not necessary) or people will learn it automatically  (a wishful thinking)),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there may be a huge difference in initial social skill levels (from one where no course is needed to one, when a course won't change things),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching social skills may be difficult, as many things are very culturally- and context-dependent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I regret that there were no social skills courses at my university (so I had to learn from books, mostly - undergraduate psychology). For me, as for many other STEM students, it was (relatively) easier to learn technical material &amp;quot;in the natural way&amp;quot;, than social skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, social skills (as any other skills), are the best to be honed in practice (at least after). There are many opportunities, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teamwork on any project (scientific or &amp;quot;just for fun&amp;quot;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;running a students' chapter or club,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organizing trips, excursions, movie nights, parties, ...,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organizing a students' conference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T13:52:08.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1780" CreationDate="2012-05-28T15:09:19.090" Score="15" ViewCount="1518" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I go to conferences and try to network, I want to be able to explain my research in a clear and concise manner while still effectively communicating what I do.  What are the most effective ways of doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T08:23:44.713" Title="What are the elements of an effective elevator pitch?" Tags="&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2012-05-28T15:15:59.747" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An effective elevator pitch is between 30 and 60 seconds in length. Based on how most people speak, that's between 60 and 120 words. That's not a lot of time or verbiage, as this corresponds to about one paragraph in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the challenge as answering the six fundamental questions (Who?, What? Where?, When?, Why?, and How?), several of them have already obvious answers (these would be Who?—You!, When?—Now!, and Where?—My PhD project!). That leaves the three remaining questions: What?, Why?, and How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I'd format the pitch as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the basic problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is solving this problem important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you solving this problem in an original way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is to rehearse it until you can tell it without thinking about it—either because you have a rehearsed script, or because the key points have become ingrained and recallable without much thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;======&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POSTSCRIPT&lt;/strong&gt;: As Artem mentions in a comment below, you should have different elevator pitches for different audiences. At a minimum, you should have one for experts in your specific field, one for other members of your profession but outside your field, and then a third for &quot;general&quot; audiences. Having one for family and friends who want to know &quot;what exactly is is that you do?&quot; probably isn't a bad idea, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T08:23:44.713" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T08:23:44.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-28T17:28:23.623" Score="17" ViewCount="994" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what I don't understand. Journals provide you with LaTeX class files and instructions and they also advise not to spend time typesetting the paper into the exact format of the journal. What does this mean? I don't know if this applies to all journals or to most of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T20:28:47.693" Title="Why do Math journals provide you with LaTeX class files and instructions and they also advise you not to spend time typesetting the paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1782" CreationDate="2012-05-28T17:45:11.783" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know, but here's a possibly useful tip: when I get sent latex style files and complicated instructions for how to format my (accepted) paper, I usually try right away to get these files to work and to format things in the way asked of me...for up to half an hour.  If at the end of half an hour (or slightly less if I am feeling impatient that day) the task is not yet finished, I generally give up and say that I wasn't able to get the style files to work.  In almost all cases, the editor in question asked no further questions and gladly did the formatting himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception was a note I submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly, where they were extremely picky and passive aggressive about the changes they wanted made.  After at least six (not an exaggeration!) emails from a secretary of the form &quot;For some reason you still haven't included your references in the proper format...&quot; I lost my cool a little, gave them blanket permission to format the (three page!) paper however they wanted, and requested that they leave me out of it.  Which they did, and the note appeared a few months ago.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moral: this is one of those tasks that will expand to take up as much time as you let it.  Given that most journals have professionals who will devote further time to typesetting your paper after you sign off on it anyway, why not sign off on it sooner rather than later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add as a counterpoint that there are some smaller, internet based journals where most of the nuts and bolts work is done by a single person, who is working hard to put out the product rapidly and well (example: the Journal of Integer Sequences).  In fact I seem to recall that Prof. Shallit of JIS spent some time reformatting my accepted JIS manuscript, which then got electronically published within a few days of its final acceptance.  He really went above and beyond, and if I have it over again I will do more on my own side.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Looking back at your question, I worry that I may have misinterpreted it: are you asking about the initial submission of the paper? Definitely do not mess with any style files or publication instructions before your paper gets accepted. I agree that &quot;instructions for authors&quot; pages seem ambiguous on this point, but in all of my experience authors, editors and referees have a common understanding: &lt;strong&gt;first we decide whether we want to publish the paper, then we worry about its format and type-setting&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T20:13:08.417" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T20:13:08.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1782" CreationDate="2012-05-28T20:28:47.693" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The instruction not to typeset means that you should not worry about the appearance of your manuscript over and above what the style file provides. Don't worry about strange page breaks, overfull hboxes, and floats that end up in the wrong place. Fixing these would be examples of what the publisher means by &quot;typesetting&quot;. Any fixes you make will almost certainly be removed by the publisher once the manuscript is final and being prepped for publication, so you will have wasted your time and made extra work for the publisher. You do want your manuscript to be readable using the publisher-provided style file, and you should probably be judicious about adding packages to your document. (Ideally the publisher will give guidance on this.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pete L. Clark that you shouldn't worry about this issue at all until your paper is accepted. Journals should provide clearer instructions about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="952" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T20:28:47.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1762" CreationDate="2012-05-28T21:20:40.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same way any other researcher would make meaningful comments or suggestions regarding a colleague's work.  By having real insight, and presenting it carefully and respectfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And I agree with all the other answers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T21:20:40.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1762" CreationDate="2012-05-28T23:46:36.730" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers make good suggestions for the asking of questions or posing ideas to professors. Most professors are open to questions and new ideas. I personally love it when my students come to me with something that I hadn't thought of before. As for getting recognition, it depends on the relationship between the Ph.D. student and the professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you, as a grad student, ask a poignant question at a visiting professor's lecture, and then the professor returns and gets his or her group working on the matter, the you will very likely not receive any further communication about the matter. You will, however, be able to determine if your question had an effect when the publication came out. If nothing else, you can have that warm little feeling that something came of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you, as a senior graduate student, pitch something to your adviser that is relevant to your project, your adviser should listen. At some point you know more about your project than your adviser does. I pitched many things to my adviser over the years. Sometimes I was shot down, and then did them anyway. One of my questions, however, transformed the direction of my thesis work. I started and finished a whole new project in my last year based on an idea I pitched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior graduate students weighing in on other projects going on in their group also tend to get listened to, and occasionally acknowledged in the publication for &quot;helpful discussions.&quot; Yes, sometimes those names are graduate students. For one example I know of, see the acknowledgements in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja102670n&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;The authors would like to thank... ...Mr. Benjamin N. Norris for helpful discussions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T23:46:36.730" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1789" CreationDate="2012-05-29T04:44:56.300" Score="25" ViewCount="4429" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are faculty salaries negotiable in general? Wherever they are negotiable, how could applicants gain insights about the statistics of offers or the extent of safe negotiation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T21:28:50.560" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:12:32.613" Title="Are faculty salaries negotiable?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2012-05-29T05:37:43.250" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This entire answer is US-centric, since I have no clue how other countries work. This is not to say that I know the US system that well - but rather that it's the only system I know at all.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public universities work differently from private universities. Public universities usually have pay scales and these are often public since professors are considered state employees (yes, my salary is public knowledge). So you can start digging around there. Usually there's a range within which you can hope to negotiate: moving out of that range is beyond even the power of the university to authorize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Private universities usually have more flexibility and it might be harder to get the range of salaries. But if you get an offer you can ask around to get a sense of the ballpark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what a reasonable range is, getting data is very discipline-specific. For CS, the CRA puts out stats fairly regularly and there's the Taulbee survey. For other disciplines, there might be something similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salaries in academia at least at tenure-track level are less flexible in general. Probably the best way to get to the top of the permissible range is to have another offer. Other than that it's hard. Often, the things that are most easily negotiated are other parts of the startup package. Which is not to say that you shouldn't negotiate salary - but unlike in industry, it's less likely to be as beneficial.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T05:37:43.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2012-05-29T05:56:43.000" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer applies to Belgium, or perhaps just Flanders.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are public servants, so the pay scales are fixed. The only thing that is flexible is where on the scale you start. This is then based on the number of years of relevant experience, which is often counted as the number of years after your masters. They will probably apply some tricks to bump it down a notch or two, while appearing generous. No room for negotiation, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T05:56:43.000" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2012-05-29T07:45:22.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't work in a field with essay exams, but I do ask my students to write proofs, so maybe my advice is still useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TAs at my university are contractually limited to at most 20 hours of work per week.  You have 60 exams to grade in one week; that suggests an absolute limit of 20 minutes per exam.  Since each exam has three essays, I would aim to spend &lt;strong&gt;at most 5 minutes per essay&lt;/strong&gt;.  It'll probably take longer at first, especially if you also have to develop a rubric, but you'll get faster as you work through the pile.  Aiming for 5 minutes leaves you lots of slack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I strongly recommend grading vertically—grading all of essay #1 before reading anyone's essay #2—instead of horizontally—finishing each student before starting the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T07:45:22.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1794" CreationDate="2012-05-29T10:50:47.853" Score="9" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my master thesis and I am not sure how to reference/cite different sources in a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a small list like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The benefits of an &quot;incredibly interesting topic&quot; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;benefit 1 (ref 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;benefit 2 (ref 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;benefit 3 (ref 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;benefit 4 (ref 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;benefit 5 (ref 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that putting the reference after each point is a bit intrusive, but I don't know how else can I do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any convention of how to reference in this scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastEditorDisplayName="user68958" LastEditDate="2018-08-02T11:33:31.007" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T11:33:31.007" Title="How to reference different sources in a list?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1793" CreationDate="2012-05-29T11:43:43.183" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the method you've proposed, while cumbersome and intrusive, is also the correct way to do things, as you will be assigning a specific item to a specific source. That is the point of citing original source material in the first place. So while it may be somewhat unsightly (particularly if using a Harvard-like style in which the authors are listed as part of the reference), what you're doing has the advantage of being unambiguous and completely legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T11:43:43.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2012-05-29T13:01:30.310" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of reasons leading to the fact that academics don't necessarily start a business each time they have an idea that seems to work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a very long and difficult (technical) path from an idea that works to a product. Finding the good persons for following that path is generally painful, and an error-prone process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a very long and difficult (marketing) path from product to money. Marketing and sales are two difficult jobs, where academics are not (most of the time) very gifted. Moreover, it may be hard to convince good marketers or salespeople to go with you in your adventure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not all academics want more money. If my purpose was to earn more money, I would have originally chosen an other job. As a friend of mine say, if you want to be rich with high probability, start a pizzeria, then another one, then another one, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T13:01:30.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2012-05-29T13:15:45.037" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, most researchers who choose to make money do so in one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entrepreneurship.&lt;/strong&gt; Take whatever you've found with your research and start a business somehow marketing it. This is a common path, as you are the expert in your field, and you can bring it to market in ways that no one else can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many researchers do not follow this path, though, because the skills and interests required to run a successful business are oftentimes very different from the skills required to become a successful researcher. Anecdotally, the majority of researchers I've met were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; interested in bringing their findings to market in any way; they just wanted to perform research and not have the headaches of running a business. Note also that you will have to inform the university about your business, and you will have to deal with the conflict of interest problems that arise because your research affects your business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consulting.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a much easier path, and is performed by many researchers in a variety of fields. It is unlikely you will strike it rich doing consulting, but it can bring in a significant amount of extra cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A subcategory of this is &lt;strong&gt;legal consulting.&lt;/strong&gt; I put this separately simply because it's consulting of a completely different nature that most business consulting. Depending on your field, you may be able to be called in as an expert witness in a legal case, which can also bring in extra cash. This is less common, simply because of fewer opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T13:15:45.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:42:31.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK/England, the scale is fixed. There is a &quot;London allowance&quot; which, again is fixed, that I believe is not counted as salary for tax and pension purposes. Your salary increases ~2.5% for each point on the scale you move up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each university sets the starting point at which they appoint lecturers (assistant prof equivalent) as well as the maximum point you can progress to without promotion. There is some variation in this range across universities, but within a university it is fixed. I think most universities/departments appoint new lecturers at a 2 points above the bottom of the scale. Sometimes you can negotiate to move up another point or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T14:42:31.760" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1814" CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:46:11.027" Score="30" ViewCount="15248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the stage in writing my dissertation where most of the substantive aspects are finished and the only tasks left are more or less administrative. However, one thing that I've been avoiding is writing the &quot;Acknowledgements&quot; section. Obviously I will thank my supervisor, committee members, other faculty and staff that have played a meaningful role in my education, other students who have been friends and co-workers, my close friends, and my family (in that order!), but I'm struggling with how to approach it. Does anyone have advice or hot tips about what to do or not do that they'd be willing to share? Is it possible to make it meaningful without sounding contrived or pedantic or disingenuous? Do I go with the standard disclaimer about how any errors that remain after getting all that wonderful help and support are mine alone...? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="967" LastEditorUserId="36320" LastEditDate="2016-01-02T06:50:54.820" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T06:50:54.820" Title="Dissertation acknowledgements" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T15:15:11.527" Score="11" ViewCount="4909" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/980/how-much-do-soft-skills-matter-for-admission-decision&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt; we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission decisions in universities, so I suppose that you'll agree with me if I said that they are very important not only during the admission phase, but throughout the whole career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which do you think are the most important ones?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanx!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T23:58:32.283" Title="Which soft skills for research career?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1799" CreationDate="2012-05-29T15:40:32.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I'd suggest these (in order of importance): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hard-working attitude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;public speaking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to manage personal relationships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to work in independently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to work in team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;creative skills and ability to formulate new problems and ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to accept &amp;amp; learn from criticism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree with this list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you add something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you change the position of something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T16:50:53.137" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:50:53.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1799" CreationDate="2012-05-29T18:09:13.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I broadly agree with Davide's answer above, but I would move the list around somewhat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tier 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self motivating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication, broadly-defined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to stay focused on a single task for multiple months &amp;amp; years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tier 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on a team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative, curious personality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strong writing skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tier 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn from criticism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 1&lt;/strong&gt; skills are, in my mind, absolutely required to be a researcher. The inability of any of those will preclude you from doing your work (i.e., unable to communicate means unable to publish; unable to stay focused for long periods of time means unable to complete research projects &amp;amp; grants.)  &lt;strong&gt;Tier 2&lt;/strong&gt; skills will turn a good researcher into a great researcher. Technically speaking, researchers don't need to be good team members, but having that skill will greatly improve your academic worth and potential. &lt;strong&gt;Tier 3&lt;/strong&gt; will improve your worth to yourself and others as a researcher. There are probably a bunch here that I missed and should have included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T18:09:13.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1810" CreationDate="2012-05-29T19:46:39.923" Score="19" ViewCount="3683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a certain topic on the theoretical side and just came across a publication that I think would be a nice starting point for collaboration with an experimental lab (developmental biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a second-year student in Europe and my supervisor does not know anyone in the other lab. The question title mentions e-mail specifically as I don't expect to run into these people at conferences or any other occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are common rules and guidelines you follow when contacting someone for the first time about stuff that they work on and you feel excited about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do some of you that are contacted by people like me react to their attempts? And what are aspects to these requests that trigger interest on your part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="907" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T00:32:24.503" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:32:24.503" Title="Etiquette for seeking collaboration via E-Mail?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:07:03.860" Score="1" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research&quot;&gt;How do academics make money from applying their research?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the various revenue sources for academics? Are some ways to earn money more usual than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this question per this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research#comment2845_1763&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T20:21:50.613" Title="What are ways that academics make money?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-05-30T14:22:54.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1813" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:11:33.013" Score="14" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a paper is published, say in CS, who reads the paper? How are the ideas presented there applied to business and industry? How is industry collaboration done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this question per this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research#comment2845_1763&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T14:54:21.180" Title="Who applies academic CS research in the industry and how?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1812" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:15:12.960" Score="21" ViewCount="7072" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't more professors attempt to use the knowledge gained during the course of their research work by starting a company and commercializing their findings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this question per this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research#comment2845_1763&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T21:46:37.217" Title="Why don't professors start companies?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:21:50.613" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consulting is a common way to make more money. Universities in the Us have some kind of policy saying that you can consult for x days a month (x being less than 5, or 2-3). If you find a consulting gig, you can then charge them whatever hourly rate the market can bear, and augment your income that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T20:21:50.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:30:21.697" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because we're having too much fun doing research to waste our time making mere money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of professors &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; start companies based on their research.  Especially in engineering, entrepreneurship is one of the signs of a healthy department.  But starting and running a company is a tremendous amount of work, requiring a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different set of skills than being a successful academic researcher.  Brilliant and novel ideas, even the tiny minority that are marketable &lt;em&gt;in principle&lt;/em&gt;, are neither necessary nor sufficient to maintain a successful business.  Business plans are just the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the metrics for success are very different.  Put baldly, academic research is successful if and only if your peers like it; a business is successful if and only if it makes money.  Academics tend to be more narcissistic than greedy.  As evidence: most faculty in science and engineering could easily double their annual salaries simply by leaving academia for industry.  If money were our primary motivation, we wouldn't be academics in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a closely related issue of openness.  Academic research is (in principle) entirely public; academic researchers publish their ideas for other people to use, adapt, modify, and apply in ways that are completely out of their control.  Businesses, on the other hand, keep tighter control of their best ideas, either hiding them behind non-disclosure agreements or locking their use behind patents, lest some competitor use them to gain an advantage.  If you're an academic researcher, someone else using your ideas (usually) helps you; if you're a business, someone else using your ideas (usually) hurts you.  For academic researchers used to the unfettered exchange of ideas, the secrecy required for a successful business can be incredibly stifling, if not offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T12:24:28.153" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T12:24:28.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:42:08.263" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's more to life than making money... teaching students, grading exams, obtaining funding,  being away from your family to present papers at conferences, correcting appallingly written research papers, reviewing similarly appalling papers, trying to get promoted.... It's a laugh a minute and we wouldn't change it for the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it puts bread on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T20:42:08.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:46:43.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A collaboration is comparable to a business relationship; both sides need to put significant, continuous effort into making the relationship work, and the benefits are often only realized after some initial time period has passed. Given that mindset, you'll have to convince the prospective collaborator that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a good researcher,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your idea is worth researching, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will significantly benefit from having your cooperation in implementing this idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;negative nelly&amp;gt;&#xA;From my experience, as a graduate student, you will likely find it very difficult to succeed at convincing them of 1 and/or 3 without having the full backing of your advisor.&#xA;&amp;lt;/negative nelly&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, if you plan on initiating contact via email, simply compose it as you would a communique to a business contact; write professionally, describe the idea clearly and briefly, and discuss how they should contact you to follow up. You will want to convince them of all three in the email, which may be a difficult task. I would imagine you should follow up via phone or in-person meeting, as you would a business contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T20:46:43.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-05-29T21:05:53.303" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did that in the past (now it's my brother turn ;)), and trust me, you don't start a company for the money, you do it because you think it will be fun, and that maybe you will provide something that will change the world (or at least something). Sometimes it's work, sometimes not. In fact, most of the time you will work a tremendous number of hours, for a salary (if you are lucky) that will be just the average salary of an average guy. And at the end you can end up totally broke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost 10 years after this experience, I don't regret it, but this is a completely different work than research, and for me this is less fun than research. However, being in the shareholders of a company, and just be there for giving advice is both interesting and fun, because all the &quot;boring&quot; work is done by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T21:05:53.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-05-30T03:19:23.980" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems to be based on a misconception, namely that professors start companies substantially less frequently than they could or should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of professors, even in fairly applied areas like computer science (compared with literature, say), are simply not in a position to start companies based on their research.  You need a viable business plan, and they don't grow on trees.  Specifically, even really profound research with many practical applications usually just doesn't have obvious commercial potential as a stand-alone business, since it won't be clear how to monetize it.  Of course, there are exceptions, and plenty of important businesses were started by faculty, but only a small fraction of professors could do this successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another way of looking at it.  There's no reason why a business based on a professor's research needs to be founded by the professor.  If you see someone with great ideas, you can buy the rights to the ideas and found your own company.  If professors were missing a lot of wonderful opportunities to found companies, then you'd expect entrepreneurs to step in and do it, but that doesn't happen very often either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is why we have academic research.  The stuff that leads to obvious business plans could easily be funded by industry.  By contrast, one of the reasons why academia includes research is to make sure work that can't easily be sold doesn't get neglected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T03:19:23.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2012-05-30T03:21:32.853" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends in large part on what the research is. Some fields lend themselves more readily to real-life application, while others like, say, theoretical physics, are a long way from being used by industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the researcher. I am a firm believer in the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.borders.arizona.edu/cms/last-research-mile&quot;&gt;Last Research Mile&lt;/a&gt;&quot; principle (disclosure: the man who wrote that is my advisor). The premise of the Last Research Mile is that a big part of doing research is taking it all the way through to implementation. Doing the early research provides a good start, but lots of important lessons, including research lessons, are learned as the idea is carried through to execution. I'm studying in an Information Systems program, and so my research is in business, computers, and people. While it would be easy to do the basic research and move on to another topic, I think it is important to continue to push and test the idea even in its implementation phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of following the Last Research Mile principle, my advisor has created at least one company that sells the product of decades of his research. Many lessons were learned, and many publications resulted because of those lessons throughout the whole process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="970" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T03:21:32.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1798" CreationDate="2012-05-30T04:42:00.427" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acknowledgements are the only part of the dissertation where you are writing as &lt;em&gt;yourself&lt;/em&gt; instead of the Impartial Professional Narrator.  Just relax and be honest.  (Yes, that can be hard, especially after so many years of writing as Impartial Professional Narrator.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about writing it the right way.  Just be yourself.  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; your acknowledgements will sound trite to the average reader, but you're not writing to the average reader; you're writing to your mentors, colleagues, friends, and family, who will value the sentiment far more than the specific words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't forget to send a copy of your dissertation to each of the people you acknowledge, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; your family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T04:42:00.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2012-05-30T04:46:16.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.laquso.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lab&lt;/a&gt; within our department that &quot;...takes state-of-the-art methods, techniques, and tools on software product quality analysis developed during more fundamental/strategic research... and applies, validates, and deploys these in industry and government.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T17:53:05.117" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T17:53:05.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1821" CreationDate="2012-05-30T14:36:42.677" Score="11" ViewCount="1414" Body="&lt;p&gt;When interviewing for a new position, is it common practice to count the days spent on interviews as vacation days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't seem unreasonable to count these as vacation days, except that I could also see them as being work days. If I were only visiting to give a lecture and speak with faculty in another department, it would seem like work, and presenting at a conference is certainly not vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few follow up questions - does it matter that I am a post-doc (e.g. would it be different from a faculty, in which case interviewing for another position would not be in the interest of the current employer)? Would it be different if I were interviewing at a company rather than a university? Does it depend on the country? I am in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(this is related to the question related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1157/do-presentations-given-during-interviews-count-as-invited-talks&quot;&gt;Do presentations given during interviews count as invited talks?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T17:25:00.453" Title="Do interviews require taking vacation days?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1816" CreationDate="2012-05-30T16:05:46.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases you will not take all of your vacation days and work more than the required number of hours, so it shouldn't really matter. As a post-doc, you should ask your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T16:05:46.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1157" CreationDate="2012-05-30T16:16:19.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on which CV you are talking about. Hopefully you have better things to include on a one-page CV. Everything you do belongs on your &quot;full&quot; CV. I put departmental seminars in a different category from conference talks. I divide up my conference talks into invited and not invited (and maybe someday keynote). Interviews talks generally either go in external departmental seminars (as opposed to internal seminars) or guest lecturing depending on if it is a research talk or teaching demo. If the interview talk is only given to the search committee, then it goes under positions interviewed for and does not make the seminar list. My full CV lives on the web, but if I am asked to send a CV I purpose tailor it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T16:16:19.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-30T16:26:13.553" Score="9" ViewCount="1773" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his famous and interesting article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020121&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Postdoctoral Position&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, author Philippe Bourne states, in the 2nd point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rule 2: Select a Laboratory That Suits Your Work and Lifestyle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If at all possible, visit the laboratory before making a decision.&#xA;  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that is definitively a good advice, not only for Post-Doc applicants, but for all applicants in general. But, &lt;strong&gt;what is the best way to arrange a lab visit?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do when you're there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whom to speak to?&#xA;What to ask?&#xA;What to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T13:25:51.660" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T13:25:51.660" Title="What to do when visiting a lab or a university for prospective application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1825" CreationDate="2012-05-30T17:13:42.637" Score="8" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a U.S. sophomore (junior in the fall) studying Computer Science looking to transfer. I have three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What schools in Europe should I look into for Computer Science? To clarify what I'm looking for out of this question, I'm not asking for schools tailored to what I'm seeking (ie, will this school be good specifically for me), but rather the shared consensus of which schools are considered respectable for Computer Science. For example, even in the states I think everyone would say Oxford and Cambridge are well respected, but beyond that most (including myself) are not aware of other schools not in the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the timeframe for applying to these schools? In the U.S. most schools allow you to transfer into the spring or fall semesters, with the application being due approximately 6 months in advance (for example, due in March for fall semester that starts in September) and the application process starting 9 months in advance.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ballpark, how much does it cost for international students to study at these schools? I've heard that University tuition is much lower in Europe. I have tried transferring to schools in the U.S., but for both schools I got accepted into the financial strain of ~30k in loans per year made it impossible to transfer. I don't want to waste my time applying to schools across seas if the same will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="978" LastEditorUserId="978" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T18:08:28.513" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T13:44:05.117" Title="Undergraduate European Computer Science Schools and their application process?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1816" CreationDate="2012-05-30T17:25:00.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask your advisor, but it is reasonable for an advisor to allow you time (potentially several weeks or months) to essentially be away from the lab and your research in order to interview for jobs. In my opinion, this is a concession that is reasonable to give as a reward for hard work during previous phases of an advisee's research. If not, the advisor likely does not have the advisee's interests in mind. That could come back to bite him/her later when attempting to find new advisees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're spending a lot of extra leisure time on the trips that is not part of the interview, then it should probably be considered vacation time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="315" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T17:25:00.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1820" CreationDate="2012-05-30T22:20:18.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you believe in university rankings here is the one from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/engineering/computer-science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QS&lt;/a&gt;. According to it, the following nine European universities belong to the world top 50 in Computer Science: Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), ETH Zurich (CH), Imperial College London (UK), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH), École Normale Supérieure, Paris (FR), University of Basel (CH), University of Amsterdam (NL), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (UK). Basically, I would say that all universities in the world top 200 list are good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, depending on what are in Computer Science you prefer, it might be a good decision a university outside of this top 50/200 if they are specialised in the area you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="882" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T13:44:05.117" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T13:44:05.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-05-31T04:51:55.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is intellectual property rights. As an academic, you generally share intellectual property rights with the institution you are affiliated with, at least insofar as royalties must be shared. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research&quot;&gt;How do academics make money from applying their research?&lt;/a&gt; for a related question with some more information on this and related subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="941" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T04:51:55.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1820" CreationDate="2012-05-31T06:51:04.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As there are many different countries in Europe, each with many different Universities, and each probably has its own application procedures and costs. You will need to consult each candidate university's website to find the appropriate information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I googled &quot;International Admission University College London&quot; and clicked around to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/registry/studentfinancialsupport/livingcosts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt;. It estimates &lt;strong&gt;11-14,000 pounds&lt;/strong&gt; living costs (food, accommodation etc) per annum and, clicking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/registry/studentfinancialsupport/tuitionfees/2012-13fees#UG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;further&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;24,500&lt;/strong&gt; pounds of tuition fees (I guess, per annum). London is expensive to live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of information on the web. Universities are competing for students, and are happy to take your money, so they provide good web sites to make it easy for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding timing, I think it's good to start looking into it now. On one website (ETH, I think), they said admissions closed at the end of April, but late admissions will close at the end of July. Time is tight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a strategy to get this done relatively quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a bit of googling about universities and countries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a few candidate places and find their web pages about international admission procedures and fees. Also check whether they have a program in English. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps make a few phone calls, though with the time difference this will be difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Narrow down the set of candidate universities to relevant ones that fit your budget and are in sufficiently interesting places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that you will need to obtain a visa, and that can take months (especially if you were to come from a dodgy country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T06:51:04.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T12:41:07.577" Score="4" ViewCount="6422" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I enroll in a masters degree program via correspondence at another university while simultaneously enrolled as PhD as a regular student from University of Delhi?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="982" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T20:10:25.057" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T20:10:25.057" Title="Can I simultaneously pursue separate masters and PhD degrees?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1826" CreationDate="2012-05-31T15:42:10.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question as stated is almost certainly &quot;yes&quot;. A correspondence degree can be pursued by anyone, regardless of occupation, and your occupation as a PhD student shouldn't affect that. Note that your department may discourage this practice, as you would effectively be holding two full-time jobs (or one full-time and one part-time, depending on how quickly you pursue the correspondence degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T15:42:10.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1819" CreationDate="2012-05-31T15:46:46.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two options I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply email the professor and arrange a visit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some programs will have lab tours during the recruitment/orientation programs, so you can try to arrange to meet the professor on that visit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T15:46:46.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1826" CreationDate="2012-05-31T20:20:03.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most departments set the maximum number of hours you can work an outside job. In this case I think pursuing a second degree would count as a job. Funding agencies have even tighter rules. If you are being funded for both degrees, that would also cause major problems. Finally, most advisors would frown upon this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T20:20:03.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T20:47:00.707" Score="11" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student and have a &lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt; in one of my exams due to some family issues. I also have a &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; in 3 subjects and &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; in one. I am worried about my future. will the &lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt; have an impact on my job prospects even if I maintain my GPA above 3.3?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="989" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T10:44:14.093" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T17:57:39.190" Title="Effect of &quot;D&quot; grade in PhD-level course on job prospects" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1841" CreationDate="2012-06-01T08:15:28.943" Score="10" ViewCount="26912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of people who have gone on to pursue an MBA after their doctorates. What are the advantages/downsides of this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't the companies recruiting them after MBA value their doctorate experience less compared to the experience gained at an MNC? Is there a risk of them being valued as &quot;failed&quot; doctorates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T12:07:27.283" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T20:52:31.160" Title="Is it useful to do an MBA after PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1838" CreationDate="2012-06-01T08:18:35.053" Score="6" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for faculty members to enrol themselves for a degree while being employed? I have seen professors attending classes occasionally, but how about earning a full degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this may not be an issue within a university, but what if the professor wants to earn the degree with another university in the same city, for example? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T03:28:17.767" Title="Could faculty members earn a degree while being employed?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1837" CreationDate="2012-06-01T08:23:54.227" Score="53" ViewCount="76431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would love to know the circumstances under which people opt for a second doctorate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Could a professor working in a university write up a thesis and submit it to his department to earn a second doctorate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do only those who want to remain in the university forever as students go for a second doctorate?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any general merits/downsides to earning 2 PhDs, if you are perhaps assured of a research career after a good first one? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T07:38:39.447" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T01:00:30.980" Title="When does one go for a double doctorate?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1836" CreationDate="2012-06-01T08:35:48.873" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally you cannot get two PhDs in the same field. One could get a second PhD in a second field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who want to do research in multiple fields or in a multidisciplinary topic or wish to change fields may obtain multiple PhDs. Alternatively, as you suggest, people who want to remain students forever do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main downside of doing multiple PhDs is that people may not see that you are moving on with your career. There is a career after getting your PhD, and obtaining a PhD is a small step along that career path. Hovering around getting multiple PhDs would be akin to getting multiple bachelor degrees. People may see you as a permanent student, not someone growing into a mature researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T08:35:48.873" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1835" CreationDate="2012-06-01T08:40:25.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally someone who holds the rank of a professor already has an earned doctorate, so there really isn't any need for additional qualifications. It's not really clear to me why a faculty member would then want to go on to pursue an additional degree. To my mind, it would be one of those warning signs that they're not entirely serious about working in their given field, and might choose to move on to &quot;greener pastures&quot; in a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, I don't think there's any real advantage in a professor obtaining an additional degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if one is a lecturer or adjunct, then returning for a further degree &lt;em&gt;in the field in which one is working&lt;/em&gt; makes sense from a career perspective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T08:40:25.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1835" CreationDate="2012-06-01T09:17:54.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France, it is possible, in particular in order to get the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot;&gt;&quot;Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which is a degree one can get after a PhD, and that demonstrates the ability to fully supervise a PhD student. &#xA;It is required in order to apply for a full professorship position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get the HDR, the lecturer must write a thesis and defend it in front of a committee, and needs to enroll in a university (and therefore is a student), usually the one where she is working (but I don't think it is required). Note that for the HDR, there is no class or lectures to attend, only the thesis to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T09:17:54.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1842" CreationDate="2012-06-01T10:04:02.820" Score="8" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I was having a chat with a few senior PhD students (almost done with their thesis) and they pointed out that the professors would, at times, solicit their opinion regarding the admission of a particular student. This was especially true when the prospective student belongs to the same country as that of the senior PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this happen in all institutes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does happen, is it official or discussed-over-coffee unofficial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T06:05:19.437" Title="Do senior PhD students form a part of the admission commitee?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1834" CreationDate="2012-06-01T10:10:06.760" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several cases where PhDs do an MBA. Some of them are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bored of research as a whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Irritation with academia and poor scope in Industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want to earn money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For furthering responsibilities at the university where one is a professor. If you do some looking around, a high amount of Deans to have an MBA along with a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T10:10:06.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2012-06-01T10:25:35.463" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a particularity helpful answer, but ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it does not happen at all institutes, but it does happen at many. In some cases it is official and in other cases it is unofficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an applicant you should assume that the entire time you are on campus is part of the interview including any drinks/meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T10:25:35.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:12:19.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate students will almost certainly not be part of the official committee. However, as Daniel stated, they will may be asked about their feelings about a given applicant to the graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying to join a lab, it is very common for individual lab professors to consult the postdocs/graduate students in the lab regarding candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T13:12:19.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:34:44.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our department, we employ the help of grad students (through the grad student committee) to assist with rating institutions (especially in countries that have seen a proliferation of colleges in recent years). We don't usually let students read things like reference letters, since that gets into confidentiality issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the applicant knows people at the department, then we often get informal feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T15:34:44.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1563" CreationDate="2012-06-01T20:02:49.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my college a graduate student was terminated with a master degree in the middle of PhD due to his inabilities to perform well in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="989" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T11:13:30.620" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:13:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-01T22:01:53.267" Score="7" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university is in Oklahoma and most companies are in east coast and west coast in the US. I am a bit worried if a PhD will be worthy from an average university with poor location. Should I apply to a college where there is a bunch of industries around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="989" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T02:34:31.307" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T20:02:09.970" Title="Does university location affect job prospects?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1835" CreationDate="2012-06-02T02:41:55.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a few examples of people getting other qualifications in the Australian context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some universities require or encourage lecturers to get a qualification (perhaps a diploma) related to higher education teaching. These courses are often provided by the employing university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some academics want to expand their skill set; doing a formal qualification is one way of doing this. It really depends on circumstances and personal goals. Often an academic has a choice between self-study or doing a formal qualification.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general life, many people do a degree part-time while they work full-time. If you are still able to perform your duties at your job, then there typically wont be any issue with the study.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you need some time off from your job to attend classes, then in most jobs you would typically want the support of your supervisor. &#xA;In an academic context, if the study is related to your research or teaching, then a supervisor (e.g., a Head of Department) is likely to give such support. Furthermore, most academics have a high degree of autonomy in how they spend their time, such that no one is keeping track of when they go off campus, whether that be to attend a colloquium, collaborate with other researchers, or do a little study somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T03:28:17.767" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T03:28:17.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1834" CreationDate="2012-06-02T04:36:30.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No degree ever goes waste. Most people with PhD and MBA acquire director positions in companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="989" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T09:25:05.460" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T09:25:05.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2012-06-02T06:05:19.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My department's graduate admissions committee &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/917/who-typically-serves-on-a-graduate-school-admissions-committee/929#929&quot;&gt;officially includes senior graduate students&lt;/a&gt;.  And yes, we specifically ask student committee members for opinions about applicants from their home countries.  We sometimes also solicit unofficial &quot;over-coffee&quot; opinions if a student knows an applicant (or letter writer!) personally but isn't on the committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T06:05:19.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1854" CreationDate="2012-06-02T06:38:10.720" Score="26" ViewCount="1789" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been admitted to a generally well-regarded Computer Science PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My potential advisor's research &lt;strong&gt;interests&lt;/strong&gt; match very well with mine. However, he appears to be an extremely controversial figure within the community - someone whose research always evokes strong reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people consider him to be an innovative out-of-the-box thinker whose research is always fresh and interesting. Others, perhaps the majority, consider much of his work to be ridiculous, outrageous, and gimmicky. In either case (for both the right and wrong reasons), he appears to enjoy plenty of publicity. He is also a full professor and the chair of his department (which is a well-regarded department).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really want to accept the offer, but these issues are making me uneasy. Should I be worried at all? What do you think? For obvious reasons, I don't want to name my potential advisor here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="625" LastEditorUserId="625" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T11:29:37.480" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T12:00:57.490" Title="PhD to be advised by Mr. Enfant Terrible?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1853" CreationDate="2012-06-02T12:00:57.490" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best single predictor of your future is how your advisor's students have done in the past.  Of course, this is not entirely reliable, because you could turn out to be your advisor's most or least successful student, the job market changes over time, etc.  However, there's a good chance that you'll fall somewhere in the range of past students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the past students have been well accepted by the community and ended up with jobs you would like, then that's a good sign.  If not, then you should certainly be worried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do work with this advisor, I'd recommend keeping this issue in mind and trying not to become too narrow.  Talk frequently with other faculty, do an internship at an industrial lab, try to collaborate with someone other than your advisor, etc.  This is a good approach anyway, even if your advisor isn't controversial, but it's especially important if you are trying to establish greater mainstream credibility than your advisor.  (You may have trouble pulling off the &quot;out of the box thinker&quot; approach to getting a job: even if you are as creative as your advisor, being his student can still make your creativity look derivative of his, so it's important to have another angle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T12:00:57.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1857" CreationDate="2012-06-02T13:45:01.307" Score="4" ViewCount="1625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis in biology, and am not sure how to format the M&amp;amp;M section of my thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is like an experiment protocol, with a lot spaces, itemized lists of steps, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is more like an article, which is usually more dense, and harder to comprehend, but takes up less space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which format is the norm for a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="991" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T10:41:16.807" Title="What format should the Methods &amp; Materials section of a thesis be in?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-11-12T15:43:46.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1832" CreationDate="2012-06-02T14:59:19.120" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its not the grade that you get that determines gets you the job.  It's your ability to apply what you have learned to new and challenging fields that ultimately determines your qualification for a job.  This is best measured not by grades, but by the quality (and possibly quantity) of publications.   In rare circumstances, as @aeismail suggests, employers look closely at your GPA.  I do not believe this is the norm though.  Most institutions that employ the highly educated look more highly upon strong letters of recommendation and publication history.  As long as you have that, you should not have any problems with this grade on your record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ultimate impact of your &quot;D&quot; really depends on the policy of your school.  As @BenNorris indicates, some graduate programs have a minimum performance requirement such that a low grade in a class may impact your retention in your program.  It is best to speak with your advisor, the graduate chair, and possibly even your department chair to discuss the circumstances surrounding your performance, how it will impact your retention, and if there is anything you can do about it.  Immediate dismissal is extremely rare.  Most institutions place the student on probation (and may make you repeat the course in question).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T14:59:19.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1855" CreationDate="2012-06-02T15:05:54.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thesis writers generally have much more freedom to format them as they please. The only real requirement is that it follows any guidelines of the department and institution to which it is submitted, and receives the approval of the writers' thesis committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I believe that these days, space should not really be a limiting consideration for a thesis writer. The methods section should be as long as needed to convey the necessary information. In addition, since this is not normally a journal publication, there is much more room to explain things in detail—which can be very useful for future members of the lab group who might follow up the same project.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T15:05:54.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1848" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:44:27.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Far more important than location is the quality of the program. You can get some measure of the program's quality by looking at the job placement of recent graduates. If they are making it out to the companies you are interested in, then you should be fine. If all the graduates are staying in-state, you will probably want to look to a different program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="970" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T19:44:27.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1848" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:02:09.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The location of a school is far less important than its reputation in the field. In particular, a school may have a top-10 department in some fields, but have only an average reputation in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good employer who knows his field will know which schools are good and which are not. Location close to industry will not matter as much, so long as you can get on the radar screen of potential employers. This is where your contact network and mentors will be able to help you negate any potential disadvantage of being far away from the traditional job centers in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T20:02:09.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1863" CreationDate="2012-06-03T04:38:07.347" Score="9" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I have read a lot in my area of interest (plant taxonomy and botanical nomenclature), in am no academic of it, having only a Bachelor of Translation degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has taken me two years of waffling back and forth before I worked up the courage to write up a quick note (something not entirely dissimilar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phytoneuron.net/PhytoN-Dermatophyllum.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; in nature, mostly bibliographical, but necessary nonetheless) which I'd like to submit to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phytoneuron.net/phytoneuronINFO.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phytoneuron&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. I call it &quot;informal&quot; because it is an independent, one-man journal with a relatively unelaborated review process where one sends the prospective article straight to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have NO idea what sort of language one in my situation can be expected to address to a journal editor. That I am diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and have been told before my writing can be overly formal to comical or insulting degrees at times is not helping my crushing nervosity about the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="995" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T07:54:27.237" Title="How does one submit an article &quot;informally&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1862" CreationDate="2012-06-03T06:59:19.200" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could write something like the following. Short and sweet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the editor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please find attached an article for consideration for publication in the journal Phytoneuron.  I assert that this is an original contribution and it has not been submitted for consideration elsewhere.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Could you please acknowledge receipt of this submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Your name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Your Affiliation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title of Article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Authors&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin egestas odio non mi mattis rhoncus. Vivamus ultrices urna a ante tristique pellentesque. Nam tincidunt lacus a mi sollicitudin tincidunt. Curabitur malesuada, quam sit amet iaculis lobortis, enim lacus commodo turpis, nec elementum mauris libero ac enim. Quisque justo mauris, eleifend id ornare vel, luctus eget tellus. Etiam auctor ultrices tincidunt. Curabitur diam nulla, aliquam nec gravida a, consequat non nulla. Cras viverra massa id felis blandit gravida. Pellentesque enim mi, convallis vitae ornare quis, ornare sit amet dolor. Pellentesque velit urna, feugiat non tincidunt in, sollicitudin sed purus. Phasellus laoreet ligula nec odio mattis fringilla. Fusce sed arcu mi. Pellentesque dictum erat sit amet sapien pharetra porta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T07:54:27.237" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T07:54:27.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1865" CreationDate="2012-06-03T14:00:59.740" Score="16" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of the style of a journal, and the space limit, I was asked to remove a section and all appendices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have no problem with that, I want to preserve it in the arXiv preprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it OK to have different final papers and its arXiv version? &lt;br&gt;(perhaps with the comment, e.g. &lt;em&gt;&quot;Sec 3.4. and Appendices A and B only in the arXiv version&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it OK to cite in a paper its own arXiv version? &lt;br&gt;(e.g. &lt;em&gt;derivation of (15) is in [5]&lt;/em&gt;?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T14:06:31.517" Title="arXiv preprint and final paper differing by sections and appendices" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1864" CreationDate="2012-06-03T14:06:31.517" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't need to be a strict correlation between an arXiv publication and an actual publication. It's actually common to use arXiv to publish extended/longer version of a published version (which seems exactly what you want to do). So &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, it's OK to have a final paper that differs from the arXiv version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, it's even encouraged to cite the arXiv version to point to appendices/extra material/proofs/detailed examples, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the main rule is still that your journal paper must be self-contained, i.e., must be understandable without having to read the arXiv version. In other words, if removing the section implies to remove a definition (for instance), then you must put this definition somewhere else in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T14:06:31.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1799" CreationDate="2012-06-03T17:30:35.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't say what kind of graduate program you are talking about.  The admissions criteria for a Master's program are very different than for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what the top-three admissions criteria look like for admission to a research-oriented PhD program:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evidence of research ability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evidence of research ability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evidence of research ability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if evidence of research ability is so important, how is it judged?  Well, there are several ways that applicants can demonstrate research ability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrate prior success at research.  For example, participated in one or more prior research projects that led to a publication at a peer-reviewed place.  This is usually the strongest evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show prior experience with research, with evidence that it went well or that future research will likely be a success.  For example, participated in one or more prior research projects, which did not lead to a publication, but the letters of reference state have positive things to say about the applicant's research ability, and the letter-writers are credible on this.  This is next-best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show great intelligence and technical ability, as well as passion/motivation.  Here we are talking about indirect measures of research ability.  One of the strongest ways is to excel in technical classes.  Admissions committees will also look at the motivation/drive (what does the applicant want to study? why? is the applicant driven to do research? why?), at written and other communication skills, and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the materials in the application packet, I could prioritize which are most important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publications.  If you have publications, include them.  Admissions committees will often read the publications, look to see where they are published, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Letters of reference.  Strong letters of recommendation can be very valuable.  They need to come from credible people who are well-calibrated about what it takes to be successful in a Ph.D. program, and they should be as strong as possible about the applicant's research potential and other abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Classes.  Great grades in relevant courses is helpful.  The courses also need to provide adequate preparation for the Ph.D. program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Essays.  The personal essays should be thoughtful, well-written, demonstrate the applicant's interest in research and goals for Ph.D. study.  Admissions committees will read to see whether the essays seem well-informed about the field the applicant wants to join.  They'll also try to figure out the applicant's most likely interests, to see if they are a good match for the faculty in the department who are looking to advise new Ph.D. students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other materials.  The rest of your application packages (e.g., GRE scores) are of lesser importance.  They're more likely to get you rejected, or raise a red flag that causes the committee to look more closely at the rest of your application packet, than they are get you accepted.  It is semi-important to demonstrate communication skills; if you cannot communicate clearly in the language of instruction at the university, then you may not be able to serve as a teaching assistant, which means the school may not have a way to fund you, which is very bad.  Also, advisors are more likely to want to work with someone who has good written English than someone who will need to learn how to write clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T18:07:54.557" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T18:07:54.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1799" CreationDate="2012-06-03T23:58:32.283" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will add some further unmentioned skills I value highly and miss among many students &lt;strong&gt;in the age of internet and information overload&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;googling/filtering, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/455/213&quot;&gt;knowing &amp;amp; using search operators&lt;/a&gt;, especially for finding literature. Seems obvious, but I see so many students lacking basic search and internet skills that this is my #1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knowledge management, meaning &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/580/what-future-proof-software-for-building-managing-a-personal-big-knowledge-base&quot;&gt;future-proof&lt;/a&gt; saving and &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/a/1600/560&quot;&gt;organizing&lt;/a&gt; of your knowledge and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/456/213&quot;&gt;bibliography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/a/737/560&quot;&gt;keeping up with academic publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;critical thinking (logic, fallacies, cognitive bias, problem solving), history and philosophy of science (Popper &amp;amp; Kuhn), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a scientist means to study further and learn your whole life, more than in any other job, where most of soft skills named in other answers apply too (work hard, in team, motivation ...). Also I think curiosity and creativity are rather personal traits than trainable skills. If you don't have them, consider choosing another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.560" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T23:58:32.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2012-06-04T03:56:30.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend upon your relationship with your advisor.  Does your advisor solicit your opinions on projects?  Does he/she project openness about projects?  Does he/she give you several options of projects?  Does he/she ask for your suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, then I think you can have a frank conversation with your advisor.  Mention your concerns politely, and ask your advisor for their thoughts on those issues.  Maybe your advisor has already given them thought and has some reasons to think it's a better project than you realize, and can explain to you.  Maybe your advisor thinks highly of you and has handed you a long-shot high-risk high-reward problem, on the idea that you might just solve it, and if you do, you'll hit a home run.  Or, maybe the concerns haven't occurred to your advisor and that might lead to a fruitful discussion about how to deal with the challenges, or might lead to a change in your project.  It's also possible your advisor might have good advice about how to mitigate the risks you are most concerned about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, one piece of advice I got from &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; advisor was: be ambitious, reach high, but also design your research to &quot;fail fast&quot;.  Think proactively about what are the most likely ways that the research might fail, and then try to order your work so that if the project is going to fail, you discover that fact as quickly as possible.  That's not always easy to arrange, but your advisor might have helpful suggestions for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor doesn't seem likely to welcome discussion about which project to work on, you can still raise these issues, but you may need to be even more deferential and careful about how you raise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to avoid: Be very careful to avoid sounding like you are whining.  Faculty put a lot of effort and thought into trying to find good projects for their students, and it can be very challenging (you want to find something that they have the skills to succeed at and that they have a chance of completing successfully; but on the other hand, you want to choose an ambitious project which if successful will lead to a good publication, which often means it is hard to  know in advance whether the project will succeed or not).  My experience is that many students tend to be a bit critical and &quot;picky&quot; about projects, so be careful not to sound ungrateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also be careful not to be too arrogant.  Your advisor probably has a lot of experience with research, whereas you are just learning.  Therefore, your judgement may be a bit off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that it is expected that many research projects fail.  Therefore, you have to be willing to take risks and take on research projects where you're not sure whether you will succeed, and you have to give 'em a good try.  You should expect that perhaps 50% of your research projects will be failures, or at least will succeed in the way you initially envisioned.  If all of your research projects are a success, either you should maybe consider taking on harder problems, or else you are very lucky to have an amazing advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, remember that it is important that any research project you take on relate to shared interests.  You want the project to be something your advisor is excited about; if your advisor is unenthused, nothing good can come of it.  So if you've noticed that your interests seem to be a different than the things your advisor is excited about, your advisor may be trying to thread the needle of finding something of mutual interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thought: if you think your project sucks, one constructive way to move forward is to try to identify a better research project and propose it to your advisor.  If it is truly promising, and if it is in an area of interest to your advisor, he/she might get excited by your idea and encourage you to run with it.  Just be careful: since you don't have as much experience as your advisor, you don't have as reliable a judgement about what constitutes a promising project and what doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T04:03:08.507" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T04:03:08.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1874" CreationDate="2012-06-04T04:27:47.330" Score="35" ViewCount="3939" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be specific, I just graduated with a Bachelor's degree, and my final project supervisor has asked me to co-author a paper with him about the subject of the project I did with his supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to join the research community, and I guess this would a be good starting point, but there are two issues I'm concerned about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first is related to the subject itself: (a) I'm not convinced of the quality of the suggested solution. (b) The project tries to solve two different problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second issue is that I'm not interested in the field of the project. My interest is in a different field. Though, both are related to computer science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would participating in this paper do any harm to my reputation or my chances of getting into a good graduate program in the field I'm interested in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so much for the kind answers. Almost all of you agree that the second issue is harmless, but there are different opinions regarding the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I said that my supervisor knows better, and I decided to go on and started planning the outline of the paper with his help. When I got to the writing part, I noticed that the main body doesn't relate to or even mention the main problem that we've specified. This is when I decided to decline the offer. It just doesn't feel right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1001" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T17:09:05.073" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T09:44:22.877" Title="Can co-authoring a paper as a new grad harm my reputation/career?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1644" CreationDate="2012-06-04T05:06:20.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend upon the department, but I would expect that relatively few students would be admitted via a waitlist.  Departments usually have a pretty good estimate of how many students who they accept will take their offer and enroll in their program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T05:06:20.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2012-06-04T06:08:25.633" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the paper to be published is plagiarized from a different source, I can't think of a case where a publication (in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; field, even if its not related to your future field of research) would affect your career negatively in any way. Sure, if the quality/stature of the venue where this is published is not too high, few would take this paper seriously, but even then, it would be better than no publications at all (seeing that you are just completing a Bachelor's degree - my advice would have been completely different had you been a grad student, where the expectations are a lot higher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T06:08:25.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2012-06-04T06:08:33.177" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, unless there are ethical concerns, which is unlikely to be the case in computer science, then I'd say &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. If you get some paper published as a Bachelor student, this demonstrates your ability to do research, which is what people in charge of admissions are interested in. If the paper gets accepted at a good venue, then this is even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the current stage of your career, your main concern should be getting into a good graduate program. After you write more papers, better ones on the topic you choose, no one will even worry about that first paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T06:08:33.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1644" CreationDate="2012-06-04T07:13:30.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't have a wait list, and actually make more offers than slots, because of the historical hit rate that we have with admissions. Some years, this comes back to bite us, but it all averages out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A practical matter with waitlists is that you have to wait till Apr 15 before moving to the wait listed students. But by then, they've often accepted a position elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T07:13:30.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2012-06-04T18:22:17.907" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I somewhat disagree with the previous answers. I think it is largely improbable that publishing a paper would harm your career, but it could if, for example, it is really poor and someone happens to read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eykanal in a comment to Dave Clarke said that &quot;no one would consider holding you accountable for the content of the paper&quot;; I recall that there is a important trend to insist that &lt;em&gt;all authors of a paper should be accountable for its content&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you do not want to pursue in the direction of the paper is completely harmless, though. There is really no problem working in different areas, the only thing to be careful about is not to spread oneself efforts too much, but this does not apply here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main issue is (a); here I would say that it can be difficult to judge the quality of a result, especially for an undergraduate, and I would advise to trust your advisor. So it is really, really unlikely that co-authoring this paper could do any kind of harm to your career; in fact it could do more harm to decline this opportunity, since your advisor would probably not understand and you will probably need his or her recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, I do not disagree that much with other answerers; but I would be less general in my statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T19:38:52.710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T19:38:52.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2012-06-04T19:59:16.373" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, participating in a research paper &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; harm your reputation/career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; it's very unlikely, as long as you take basic precautions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid quack journals, crank journals, and the like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid ethical breaches (plagiarism, fraudulent data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid co-authoring with known cranks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your specific issue: &quot;I'm not convinced of the quality of the suggested solution.&quot; - if it does indeed solve the problem, then publishing is fine. If it may not, then you need to work things through with your co-author until you agree on whether or not it does solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T19:59:16.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1879" CreationDate="2012-06-04T22:40:22.007" Score="5" ViewCount="6471" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1498/how-do-you-earn-opportunites-to-review-journals-or-conference-papers&quot;&gt;How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that I have just finished my postdoc and am now starting a professorship/scientist position (I am not). How do I start joining the ranks of peer reviewers? More importantly, how do I become a peer reviewer of a particularly prestigious journal rather than some junk journal? Does the journal contact me or do I start to publish in those journals, the editors recognize my &quot;expertise&quot; and then they solicit me? Even though everything is &quot;blind&quot; does my reputation of doing quality reviews get shared with other editors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T22:44:42.073" Title="How do I become a journal reviewer?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-06-05T03:07:31.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1878" CreationDate="2012-06-04T22:44:42.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to do it, in my experience, is to write. Every single journal I've been asked to review things for (with the exception of one done as a favor) was born of a request by an editor to review a paper in an area where I might be considered an &quot;expert&quot; - because I had a publication, and a decently received one, in that topic area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get an invitation or two, &lt;strong&gt;accept them&lt;/strong&gt; and as importantly &lt;strong&gt;make your reviews useful and timely&lt;/strong&gt;. Establishing yourself in an editor's mind as someone who gets their reviews back, and gets them back on time (or communicates when they aren't able to do that) can't do anything but help in ensuring that you'll get similar requests in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T22:44:42.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1881" CreationDate="2012-06-05T01:30:25.053" Score="61" ViewCount="80810" Body="&lt;p&gt;And how much time does it usually take? I'd like to create a poster without having to put too much time into formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-06-05T06:24:53.833" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T17:39:23.570" Title="Software to use for creating posters for academic conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T01:31:54.950" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Powerpoint. There are &lt;em&gt;hundreds&lt;/em&gt; of PowerPoint poster templates available online, many of them are good, and it is one of the standard formats people accept — and can be exported to PDF for easy post-conference distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T09:11:14.323" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T09:11:14.323" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T02:15:08.900" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't written a poster yet, but if you're a Latex savvy, there are plenty of packages that allow you to design posters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See related questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/341/2061&quot;&gt;&quot;How to create posters using LaTeX&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/45213/2061&quot;&gt;&quot;What can you tell me about poster design and typography in LaTeX?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/41209/2061&quot;&gt;&quot;Conference Announcement Poster&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T03:37:02.747" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T04:06:00.700" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to avoid bringing this question into the subjective situation but I'm personally a fan of Adobe Illustrator as it combines the speed and ease of ppt (but not as quick and dirty) but it provides much more control. If you save the files as *.SVG or *.PS files, you can get really into the details and obtain a WYSIWYG level of detail. Plus, if you're aiming to print your poster, it becomes much easier to switch between RGB and CMYK color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T04:06:00.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1893" CreationDate="2012-06-05T04:34:57.497" Score="5" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to categorise my large collection of electronic documents. I need a foolproof set of categories to put each document in. I want to use a classification system similar to how university schools are organized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my documents are productivity tips (similar to Dave Allen's &quot;Getting Things Done&quot; book). I can't find an academic category under which productivity comes. The term &quot;productivity science&quot; doesn't seem to be a widely accepted term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most natural category to put the study of &quot;Productivity&quot; in? Psychological Sciences (or other Social Sciences)? Applied Sciences/Professions? I'm tempted to put it in Psychology because I have other documents based on Learning, Memory and Performance. The four of those seem best suited to Psychological Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1011" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-05T14:18:51.303" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T17:17:30.710" Title="What academic discipline does &quot;Productivity Science&quot; come under?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:07:04.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Publisher&quot;&gt;Microsoft Publisher&lt;/a&gt; is quite easy to use if you're used to work with MS Office already (especially Powerpoint). It helps you with some basic checks, e.g. that images you include have sufficient resolution, you're working in the correct color space, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="339" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T06:07:04.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:11:01.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For completeness, Apple's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/&quot;&gt;Pages&lt;/a&gt; has quite a few nice poster layouts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T06:11:01.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1889" CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:21:50.703" Score="23" ViewCount="5326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a bad thing in academia if a student works from home? &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/39/will-people-judge-me-negatively-for-skipping-department-seminars&quot;&gt;Missing department talks and seminars&lt;/a&gt; is obviously bad, but in case a student is pursuing a problem alone and he feels comfortable researching at home, is it viewed negatively? At times the time spent on travel and a crowded lab may disrupt one's flow of thoughts, so in those cases home provides an edge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is physical attendance deemed important by the department as long as they are kept in the loop regarding your progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T11:31:37.757" Title="Is &quot;working from home&quot; a bad thing in academia?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;lab-meeting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2012-06-05T07:48:34.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. With the way that some departments are rapidly running out of physical real estate, they may even appreciate students who chose to work in their dormitories, homes, or libraries. (Of course, there is a barrier where one's work needs to be able to be performed at those locales, which of course rules out lab-based works in the experimental sciences.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a graduate student the department actually sent out an e-mail to all students asking students who intend to work mainly from somewhere apart from the department building to &lt;em&gt;declare their intention&lt;/em&gt; so that they can more efficiently assign (the very limited) office spaces. But this was in a math department and eccentricity seems to be more tolerated there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T07:48:34.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2012-06-05T08:42:24.430" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is it depends - both on the student and the culture of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course some situations where working from home is impossible - graduate programs that are heavily lab based come to mind. Below is a summarization of my thoughts from a more data analysis driven field, having done both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lots of departments these days don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; lots of graduate student space. While some labs might have dedicated bench space, and there may be an RA/TA office or two, there's not &quot;a place&quot; where students can work anyway, which makes &quot;is it bad to work from home&quot; something of a moot point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working from home benefits certain work styles. If you're the kind of person who prefers to work in a spread out, sprawling fashion, with multiple monitors, tons of stacks of paper, and a whiteboard or two, that's just not feasible in most grad student offices, even when they do exist. And when the only spaces that exist are transient ones, like shared desks or cubicles, library study areas etc. you also can't customize your work space at all - and expensive textbooks and laptops are theft bait.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It facilitates more flexible schedules. Universities tend to be closed at 3:00 AM. I tend to do my best work at around that time. This seems to be relatively common in academia, and as academia seems to promote an &quot;always working&quot; lifestyle, having a single centralized space you have access to 24 hours a day is nice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negatives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do lose out on departmental interactions somewhat. The concern about missing seminars is I think a bit of a non-issue. Those are easy to miss when you're working &lt;em&gt;on site&lt;/em&gt;, and can be attended with just a little bit of diligence on the part of someone working from home. What I've found missing more is the transient, passing in the hallways interactions. I realized, for example, one day that I had gone several weeks without talking to anyone about  my field. That's not good. It also does some harm to cross-polination and ideas from unexpected places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can get lonely. Seriously, this seems to be a major challenge. It's possible, and the workload sometimes promotes, just disappearing into a cave.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's possible to get distracted, as it always is working from home. &quot;Real life&quot; has infinitely many things to take care of, and its much easier to defend &quot;work time&quot; if you're at an office. But then unless you have an &lt;em&gt;office&lt;/em&gt; its easy to get distracted in a department where your friends and colleagues are around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I wouldn't say its bad. I know successful academics who work almost entirely in their office, and who work almost entirely from home. I'd say the best way to promote on-site work, if a university is trying to accomplish that, is not to focus on the bad parts of working from home, but on addressing what makes it appealing. I finally moved entirely to a working from home setup because I got tired of &quot;work&quot; involving camping out in cramped spaces, without the materials I needed, fighting for power outlets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not your physical presence is &lt;em&gt;important to the department&lt;/em&gt; - it depends on the department. I've known some who don't care as long as you show up to what you need to, and others that absolutely want you there, and subtly penalize those who aren't around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T08:42:24.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T09:35:16.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, if you are on a mac, you can use the combo omnigraffle + latexit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T09:35:16.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T09:59:35.953" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkscape.org/&quot;&gt;Inkscape&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vector graphics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;powerful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intuitive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cross platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1014" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2016-01-21T16:59:52.777" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T16:59:52.777" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1884" CreationDate="2012-06-05T11:15:55.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess would be Business -&gt; Industrial and labor relations -&gt; Organizational &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T11:15:55.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-05T11:24:09.423" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general there are a number of different distinct workflows that lead to a poster. Each workflow has a number of software implementations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word Processor (Word, Pages, OpenOffice Writer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote, Impress)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vector Graphics (e.g., Illustrator, Inkscape, OpenOffice Draw)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Desktop Publishing (e.g. Publisher, In Design)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are advatages/disadvatages to each category and to each piece of software within a category. For making a poster, the differences within a category are much smaller than the differences across categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word processors are probbaly the weakest for layout, but are likely the software you are most familair with. Presentation software is a little stronger on the layout and also something you are likely familiar with. Vector graphic programs are really strong on the layout, but take a lot of fiddling. Most academic work doesn't require extensive use of a vector graphics program, so most people are not familiar. There is little added benefit of learning one. Desktop publishing software is really designed for making posters and other complicated layout (think magazines and brochures). There is almost no reason for most academics to master a desktop publishing software. LaTeX is an &quot;oddball&quot; you can use it for everything and it is well suited for both simple layouts and complicated layouts. The learning curve is pretty steep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T11:24:09.423" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-05T11:24:09.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2012-06-05T11:31:37.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As this relates to students, I feel it is extremely bad to work from home regularly. Being a grad student is not about being efficient, or even learning to be efficient. It is about learning your subject area and making contacts. Working from home means you miss interactions with your colleagues. You will be judged by your senior collegauges both in terms of your productivity and percieved work ethic. No department sets out to hire people who they know will predominately work from home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T11:31:37.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1902" CreationDate="2012-06-05T12:35:12.163" Score="10" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student pursuing an academic career (but optionally a career in industry), what should I do do to get the most of a 10-week internship at a research lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things I've thought of: talking with people (networking); attending talk/seminar (new ideas); giving a talk (get people to know you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other things can/should be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T07:49:48.357" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T07:49:48.357" Title="How to get the most out of an internship (in industry)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1899" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:05:19.623" Score="34" ViewCount="23531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing writing my master's thesis (~100 pages) and I also just submitted a paper (8 pages) to a conference. Since both are on the same subject and I am an author on both, is it ok if I reuse one page from the paper and put it in my thesis without many changes? The paper will not be published until 2013 (if at all). Is it necessary to cite it in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="413" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T17:49:52.877" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T17:49:52.877" Title="Can I reuse part of a paper for my thesis?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1884" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:38:10.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any of the four categories you suggest would make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, for exactly this reason, I would recommend against a category-based classification system, as many fields of research are significantly cross-disciplinary. Depending on your field, you'll end up having to cross-reference your article a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would rather suggest a tag-based method, where you devise an intelligent tagging scheme and simply tag each paper as necessary. This way, you get the benefits of categorization, combined with the ability to cross-categorize by simply adding another tag. You can add as many tags make sense and ensure that you can find the paper again later, which, at the end of the day, is the whole point of the system. Additionally, many bibliography programs support tags references out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T13:38:10.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:40:38.730" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is certainly okay. Indeed, general practice when writing a PhD thesis is to produce a number of publications that add up to the thesis, whether directly (using staples) or by a good deal of massage. Some published material may be omitted and some additional material may be included. There's no reason why this shouldn't apply to a Master's thesis, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to cite the paper in the thesis (if the paper has been accepted for publication) and the thesis in the paper, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T13:40:38.730" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1034" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:01:54.100" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your approach is wrong and will be a hindrance in maximizing your chances for acceptance. No school wants to accept someone who only wants to go to their school because of its ranking. You need to tailor your application to demonstrate why you want to go to the particular school. Once you have identified some schools/supervisors, ideally one of your recommendation writers can introduce you. You then need to build on that relationship. Talk to them about how your work fits in with their past and current work. As your relationship with the potential supervisors builds, figure out how they fit into the department. They will likely have the inside knowledge needed for writing a really good application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T14:01:54.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1884" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:09:53.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a foolproof set of categories to put each document in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With paper documents the document had to &quot;live&quot; in a single locations and therefore needed a primary category/label/tag. You then had lots of different indexes that would allow you to find the document from multiple places. You often had to walk to a different library to collect the document. This system was/is inefficient and problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electronic documents can &quot;live&quot; in multiple places. The concept of assigning a single primary category to an electronic document is dated and silly. You should either modify the file directly to add helpful metadata or create a database that lets you externally create searchable metadata. This then allows you to easily search for the document, and related documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T14:09:53.403" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1896" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:12:28.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, good for you in getting the internship. Now that you're there, some suggestions for what to do, broadly and specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet people with similar backgrounds to yourself. Find out what they do, what skills they value, what skills they wish they had.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a large company, talk to people in other parts of the business, see what they do. You may find positions in other parts of the company that interest you that you weren't even aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a large company, talk to managers, see what they desire in people like you. They'll already be slightly impressed that you thought to talk to them. Learn what they do, what skills they like. It can help you guide your career later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn new skills &amp;amp; hone old ones. This is a good time to see which of your skills are marketable and which aren't. Get really good at the marketable ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the opportunity to reach out to people in similar positions at different companies and see what they're doing. If you don't know people at other companies, ask around; your new coworkers should have friends they can put you in phone/email contact with, and you can take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, try to do a really good job. Internships can often lead to full-time employment, so you want to impress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T14:12:28.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:18:06.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reusing material is typically done there are three concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is citation. If it is in press or published at the time you submit the thesis, I would cite it. I wouldn't bother citing manuscripts that are in preparation/under review/in revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is copyright. Many journals and some universities require you to give up copyright control. Most make concessions, especially for articles, less so for book projects. You need to check and read the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third is being scoop. Putting your stuff in the public domain is important, but it also puts you are risk. Someone might independently build on your research publish your second chapter before you or conduct follow up research which reveals a huge hole in your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T08:22:59.243" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T08:22:59.243" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1896" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:42:38.137" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add two important items to eykanal's great answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do awesome research.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you want an academic career, you can't ever &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do this.  A good internship is not a vacation from research; it's an opportunity to broaden your research portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cultivate references for your future job search.&lt;/strong&gt;  Find, work with, and impress people whose interests overlap yours &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; whose opinions are valued in the academic research community.  These people may work at the company, or they may be visitors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes time to look for an academic job, your application will be &lt;em&gt;significantly&lt;/em&gt; stronger if you have recommendation letters from and publications with people who don't work at your home institution.  In fact, if your CV lists an internship, but you don't have a letter from or paper with someone at your hosting company, that gap will raise a (small) red flag with recruiting committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T14:42:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2012-06-05T15:34:49.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is very common.  Indeed, theses are often verbatim copies of one or more published or submitted papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say you should cite the conference paper, listing it as &quot;Submitted&quot;.  You should also check with your university's thesis guidelines.  It is very likely they will tell you how to cite work that is/will be published elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T15:34:49.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1609" CreationDate="2012-06-06T06:42:17.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends upon the context and field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, on program committees in my field, once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews.  (As a program committee member, I've always been able to see other reviewers' reviews and see their identity.  If I was barred from doing so, I would probably refuse to serve on the program committee.)  I always read the other reviewers' reviews, and sometimes discover that I'd missed something important.  It is not uncommon for me to adjust my review in light of insightful comments found in other reviews.  Therefore, I think it is helpful to be able to read other reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I think the reviewing process assumes that reviewers will be independent.  This is important, to give authors a fair shake and combat groupthink.  For instance, in my field, we generally try to ensure that every submitted paper receives at least 2 reviews (usually at least 3 reviews).  Why do we do this?  Because we know that reviewers are human and can make mistakes, and it is possible for one reviewer to dislike a paper that is nonetheless great and worthy of publication.  Therefore, our system relies upon reviewers to independently evaluate the paper in their initial review, without talking to other reviewers.  If all reviewers got together and shared notes before forming their own evaluation or submitting their own review, it would create significant dangers of groupthink and undermine the purpose of having multiple reviewers read every paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, once you and the other reviewer have submitted your initial review, it's probably fair game to exchange notes -- but this may be dependent upon the culture in your field or conference/journal.  If you are not familiar with the culture, I recommend that you contact the program committee chair or journal editor to find out what process they want you to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T06:42:17.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1912" CreationDate="2012-06-06T09:08:35.700" Score="17" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers&quot;&gt;importance of web presence&lt;/a&gt; how does one manage the web presence of a research group? The simplest approach seems to be to use links to the personal webpages of the group members to supply content. Is it worth creating content specifically for the group and if so should it reflect the interests of the current group membership or the interests of the PI, which will need updating less frequently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T06:00:11.680" Title="How to manage the web presence of a research group" Tags="&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1911" CreationDate="2012-06-06T09:48:49.127" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things that could be useful for the web presence of a research group, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief presentation of the aims of this research group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The members of this working group (past and currents) with a link to their homepage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a list of publications by this research group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if there are working groups organized by this research group (for instance a presentation every two weeks by one of the member of the work done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other results such as software ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe a link to the people funding this research group, a little advertisement never hurts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T09:48:49.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1914" CreationDate="2012-06-06T10:32:37.503" Score="28" ViewCount="9320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I want to cite a Russian text in my own paper which is written in English. Should I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reference it as is, in the original Cyrillic alphabet, although the readers won't be able even to pronounce it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transliterate the authors' names, while keeping the rest as is?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transliterate the names and translate the title of the work, journal name, etc. into English?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="413" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T05:21:57.207" LastActivityDate="2018-07-08T00:25:53.073" Title="How should references in non-Latin script language be treated in English paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1913" CreationDate="2012-06-06T11:15:33.250" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, this would depend on the style prescribed by your publisher (journal, conference, etc.) For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/05/06/how-to-cite-chinese-sources-in-chicago-style/&quot;&gt;a blog post cites the Chicago style manual&lt;/a&gt; explains how one should go about sources in Chinese and Japanese:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10.108: Inclusion of original characters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chinese and Japanese characters, immediately following the romanized version of the item they represent, are sometimes necessary to help readers identify references cited or terms used. They are largely confined to bibliographies and glossaries. Where needed in running text, they may be enclosed in parentheses. Computer technology has made it much easier than it used to be to typeset words in non-Latin alphabets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hua Linfu 華林甫, “Qingdai yilai Sanxia diqu shuihan zaihai de chubu yanjiu” 清代以來三峽地區水旱災害的初步硏究 [A preliminary study of floods and droughts in the Three Gorges region since the Qing dynasty], Zhongguo shehui kexue 中國社會科學 1 (1999): 168–79 . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harry Harootunian and Sakai Naoki, “Nihon kenkyū to bunka kenkyū 日本研究と文化研究, Shisō 思想 7 (July 1997): 4–53.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That year the first assembly of the national Diet was held and the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 敎育勅語) issued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/pdf/harvard_citing_and_referencing_guide_2007.pdf&quot;&gt;Harvard style and reference guide&lt;/a&gt; requires a translation, followed by the original name: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Milani, F. (2001) The Phantom of the Opera. [Le Fantome De L’Opera] Paris, LeRoux.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T13:33:44.347" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T13:33:44.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T11:46:54.223" Score="7" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few questions regarding admission into a PhD program in Applied Linguistics or Linguistics at US universities. I could not find any other valuable online sources regarding Linguistics for the answers I seek. Let me start with my qualification. I am an international student with a Masters in English Linguistics and Literature with a percentage of 65.9. Although it's the best language university in my country but it is not that famous anywhere else. My grade average was B with no A or C in any of the individual modules. We don't have GPA system for language studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This percentage is regarded with high value in my country and I was one of the top four in my class. However, there is no set grading scale used by the examiners in my country and it is very rare, in fact, almost impossible to score above 70% in any language related field. And that is the case for the most perfect performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Bachelor's scores are mediocre (59.9%). I was disappointed in myself for not being able to get admission into a medical school (marginally) like the rest of my siblings and ending up doing Bachelors in law and English Literature was a major shock for my planned future career (I had been a brilliant student before). I, however, slowly developed interest in Linguistics and did well in Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My first question is, as most good Universities require a GPA of 3 or above with successful candidates usually having more than 3.6, what are my chances of admission? How can I go about explaining my situation as the % of students pursuing Linguistics doctorate at US from my country is very low. Are my scores too horrible?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My only research was Masters thesis in a literature related field, titled, 'Autobiographical element in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's &quot;One Hundred Years of Solitude&quot;' of almost 40,000 words. Will it hinder my chance for admission into Linguistics?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do to improve my application and up my chances specifically for Linguistics? How should I lay out my SOP? My ultimate preference would be Berkeley, UCLA and MIT. Should I even think about these universities with such scores?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-18T18:17:12.823" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T18:17:12.823" Title="Questions regarding PhD in Linguistics or Applied Linguistics at US universities" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1915" CreationDate="2012-06-06T12:59:02.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an international candidate you need to think about what your scores mean. I think percentile rank, as opposed to GPA or raw percentage is what is important. In the US a 65.9 would be very bad and I would guess that in the US 75% of the students have a GPA of 3.0 or above and 10% have a GPA of 3.6 or above. In many European countries a 59.9 would be a borderline 2:1 and put you in the 50th percentile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you think your Masters work would be in the top 10%. That is very good. With a little help (both in your letter and by your recommendation writers) schools will figure this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solid piece of previous research is really all that is need to get into a PhD program. 40,000 words is huge. You may want to work on shortening it so you can present it as a paper and send it as a writing sample if English is not your first language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T12:59:02.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1911" CreationDate="2012-06-06T13:28:52.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Gopi's answer, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A list of lab alumni and optionally where they currently are working, it can help lend credibility to the lab (&quot;look at how awesome we are, former postdocs from our lab are now working at MIT&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the publications section, I would add downloadable PDFs of your papers, as that's the most common reason people will be visiting your website&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your mention of content for the lab specifically (i.e., an intranet), we had such a page in our lab, and we used it solely to distribute (and keep historical records of) papers discussed in lab meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T13:28:52.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1609" CreationDate="2012-06-06T16:01:24.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I largely agree with @Lars Kotthoff's answer, but I think there's another important aspect to the reviewers not discussing the paper with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It encourages you not to rely on the other reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I knew that X, who is really good at the mathematical side of things, was reviewing the paper, and talked it over with them, I might very well be tempted not to go over the math aspects of a paper with a fine-toothed comb, figuring &quot;they've got it&quot;. Similarly, they might rely on me to pick over the data analysis or parameter choices, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's bad. Reviewers should be reviewing &lt;em&gt;papers&lt;/em&gt;, not chunks of papers. It's one area where division of labor isn't desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T16:01:24.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1920" CreationDate="2012-06-06T23:19:09.060" Score="21" ViewCount="10527" Body="&lt;p&gt;After receiving a rejection (not revise and resubmit) decision from the editor/associate editor of a journal, should we write an email to thank him/her for the time, or just do nothing? I imagine one might do that out of courtesy, but then I don't really have much to say otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="456" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T03:02:35.750" Title="Should we reply to the editor after a paper has been rejected and we don't plan to revise/resubmit?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1919" CreationDate="2012-06-07T00:00:06.923" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recall ever having received such an e-mail as an editor, so it's not standard (let alone mandatory), but I wouldn't be unhappy to receive one.  I doubt anyone would care enough to make it worth the effort, but it could be a nice gesture if you feel inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T00:00:06.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1924" CreationDate="2012-06-07T03:12:59.967" Score="28" ViewCount="34656" Body="&lt;p&gt;The example is when you might be reading a certain paper, and the authors refer to another paper. You can't get that other paper as it's unpublished, or it's in a language that you can't read, or maybe something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Featherstone et al 1900 (in Thomas and Cullen 2002).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how is it to be handled in the bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1030" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T19:40:48.107" Title="What's the correct way to cite a paper cited by another paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T04:09:12.537" Score="5" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an STS student, so bear with me; I'm happy to provide clarification but I want to leave the specific application unspecified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What sources would you consult if you were trying to generate a huge &quot;list of all academic topics&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking it would include all the 'ologies', the 'isms', the 'X studies', all the historical &quot;movements&quot;, all the 'subjects' of journals and papers, all the 'big questions' of any given &quot;field&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other sources, whether vague (like above) or specific (like a URL with some good list items), would you suggest in compiling this list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1031" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T05:19:46.623" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T12:15:03.160" Title="What sources provide a list of all academic topics?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2012-06-07T04:28:22.117" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In APA style, you can write, (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/tutorials/citing/apa.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;see this APA tutorial&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Featherstone et al 1900 (as cited in Thomas and Cullen 2002)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in general you should try your best to read the original and cite the original directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone in the comments asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In such case do I need to list original paper also in reference section or only the recent one I am referring to?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference to the original article is the more important reference to include, but you should include both in your reference list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-11-22T10:01:19.100" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T10:01:19.100" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1919" CreationDate="2012-06-07T05:35:24.490" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that if you feel the rejection was unjustified and you do not plan to submit to that journal again, you do not need to reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you feel the rejection was justified, you plan to submit to that journal again, or you were helped by the comments and suggestions of the referees, then I would recommend that you write an e-mail thanking the editor and the referees for their time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T05:35:24.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2012-06-07T08:06:54.340" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cannot get that paper, you &lt;strong&gt;should not&lt;/strong&gt; cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a citation? The word &lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt; comes from Latin verb &lt;em&gt;cio&lt;/em&gt; (past participle: &lt;em&gt;citum&lt;/em&gt;) that means &lt;em&gt;to call somebody&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;to invite somebody&lt;/em&gt;, or preferably &lt;strong&gt;to demand someone to give his own testimony&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your case, if you would like to cite that paper, that means that you invite that paper to give its own testimony. But &lt;strong&gt;if it's not available&lt;/strong&gt;, how could it do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply, &lt;strong&gt;it can't&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T08:06:54.340" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1919" CreationDate="2012-06-07T08:17:09.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is reasonable to thank editors that keep you up to date, solicit reviews in a timely manner, and provide an understandable overview of the reviews. Unfortunately, the number of good editors is small, so I would caution against thanking editors for merely acting as editor. The benefits are small while the potential cost is huge. It is so atypical that you run the risk of the editor thinking you are whining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T08:17:09.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1923" CreationDate="2012-06-07T08:33:20.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to define topic first. At the macro level, all topics fall under &quot;knowledge&quot;, or some such nonsense, and at the micro level, every published paper and book is on a different topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use the different doctoral degrees as pretty broad topics. This would give you a list like philosophy (PhD), medicine (MD), science (ScD), etc. A less coarse division would be &quot;schools/College&quot;. This would give you a list like School/College of Arts, School/College of Humanities, School/College of Medicine, School/College of Science, etc. A finer division would be departments and institutes within a School/College. A still finer would be research groups within departments. This of course leads to individuals within groups and finally publications by individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University websites would provide all the information you need, although not in a format that is easy to search and retrieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T08:33:20.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T12:12:20.710" Score="36" ViewCount="20029" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is about using a Ph.D. title/grade from an EU University in Germany.&#xA;Germany recognizes (properly obtained) Ph.D.s from other EU countries.&#xA;People with an EU Ph.D. are allowed to use the abbreviation &quot;Dr.&quot; in front of their names without mentioning the country of origin (which is AFAIK required for some other countries) or using the original version. However, reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120523204045/http://www.stmwfk.bayern.de/hochschule/pdf/grade.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this information letter from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts&lt;/a&gt;, section 1.3.2. (German), you are not allowed to use both together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused about this and its exact scope. &#xA;Does this mean a Ph.D. holder can't call him-/herself &quot;Dr. Firstname Lastname&quot; on a business card and then list &quot;Ph.D.&quot; together with the other titles like &quot;M.Eng., Dipl.Ing.&quot; on a second line? Using &quot;Firstname Lastname, Ph.D.&quot; in Germany would not have the same effect then the first form. Not mentioning the Ph.D. at all however would keep many people wondering what kind of doctor grade you have. Maybe it only means not to use &quot;Dr. Firstname Lastname, Ph.D.&quot;, but the business card example is very close to that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, can &quot;Ph.D.&quot; be used in one occasion and then &quot;Dr.&quot; in a different one, or do you have to stick with one? Would it be ok to use &quot;Dr.&quot; on your German business card and &quot;Ph.D.&quot; on your English one? Even if both are on opposite sides of the same card?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="14774" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T06:48:17.600" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T06:48:17.600" Title="EU Ph.D. in Germany: Calling yourself &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Ph.D.&quot;" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1932" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:40:05.310" Score="15" ViewCount="20675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing these terms being thrown around at conferences, but I'm not really sure what they really mean, if there is any difference between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T08:33:27.760" Title="What is the difference between research intensive vs. research extensive universities?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1931" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:59:24.170" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Research intensive&quot; and &quot;research extensive&quot; are obsolete terms from the Carnegie classification of research universities.  They are terrible, confusing terms that should never have been introduced (see page 5 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/downloads/rethinking.pdf&quot;&gt;Rethinking and reframing the Carnegie classification&lt;/a&gt;).  The idea was that &quot;research extensive&quot; means there's an extensive research program covering many areas at a high level, which &quot;research intensive&quot; means there's just a narrowly focused, intensive research program in certain areas.  Basically, extensive is supposed to be better than intensive.  Of course the problem is that this really isn't what they sound like.  For example, most people would say Harvard is a research intensive university, but in this classification it's not.  Because of massive confusion, the Carnegie classification was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/27/carnegie&quot;&gt;updated&lt;/a&gt; to use other terms, but the old terms still persist.  One reason is that some people just got used to them and found it hard to develop new habits; another is that every time the classification changes, some universities end up moving to a less prestigious category than they used to be in, so they have a strong incentive to describe themselves using the old terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T14:59:24.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1941" CreationDate="2012-06-07T15:58:38.403" Score="8" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When preparing a final version of a figure, it appears that some changes could be more easily made in a graphics software (gimp, inkscape, scribus, adobe) as opposed to R. Such changes might be done more efficiently, and more to the publishers standards, by the publisher. Apparently, the publisher uses some such software to makes final changes to the image anyway. Presumably, these changes can do it more efficiently and to their standards. Also, some tasks would be trivial or would be done anyway by the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tasks that I am currently doing to prepare figures for a journal article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;move / add text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change font&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change line thickness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change background color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that would be neat to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;integrate figures into text, in the style of Tufte:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/51CAI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What formatting is commonly done by a publisher rather than an author?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it reasonable to make requests?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, what work will a publisher be willing to do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T19:22:26.257" Title="What figure formatting can, should, or will be done by a publisher?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:17:09.887" Score="10" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a website (with data and modeling interface) that will be referenced in a series of scientific publications that are beginning to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the website is along the lines of &lt;code&gt;myserver.institution.edu/mysite&lt;/code&gt; but I would like to change this to something like &lt;code&gt;mysite.org&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Costs for the site range from $37/year for 2 years to $9.99 for 100 years. Even 100 years would be a tiny fraction of the overall research budget, but my first inclination is to go for five years at $33/year. But I don't even know if the web will still be around by then, much less a server hosting this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(this is related, but not a duplicate of related, but not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1655/258&quot;&gt;How to archive an academic blog or website?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is five years long enough? Is 100 years justifiable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T20:26:49.147" Title="How long should I register a domain name that will be referenced in scientific publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1934" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:33:50.607" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you consider the data of permanent value and essential to your paper, then you should try to preserve it permanently.  The question in that case is not how long to register a domain name for, but rather how to find an organization that's willing to archive the data in the long run.  If you don't have that, then it's going to disappear eventually anyway.  If you do, then you can do whatever you want with the domain name as long as you provide enough information that someone could access the data from the archive even once your domain has expired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most scientific publishers solve this problem by archiving supplementary information and data along with the paper.  There are also field-specific data banks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if this isn't an essential part of your paper (but rather just for illustrative purposes), then you can do whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T16:33:50.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2012-06-07T20:16:25.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many universities accept sandwitch theses, the only thing that can give you the right answer are the &lt;strong&gt;examination regulations&lt;/strong&gt; you're subject to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are cases when parts of thesis work are not allowed to be published (in an article) though that can also create difficulties with the regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually the university will want to get a paper out of the work in addition to the thesis. So the content being published is usually seen positive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, they may still not accept verbatim copy of large parts of the text but expect you to rewrite it so that your thesis is one &quot;unbroken&quot; piece of text written by you yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T20:16:25.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T22:44:23.223" Score="10" ViewCount="20372" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, a presentation whose PDF is listed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what if the presentation doesn't have a publicly available URL? How would the citation style differ from that of a poster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T12:02:26.593" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T22:01:07.767" Title="How do you cite from a presentation or poster at a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1937" CreationDate="2012-06-08T01:24:04.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To supplement Nate's comments, what I have usually seen is &quot;personal communication&quot;. The poster isn't yet peer-reviewed and if it has yet to be written up as a manuscript and you can't cite it as a paper that is &quot;in press&quot;, &quot;personal communication&quot; is a good substitute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T01:24:04.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1933" CreationDate="2012-06-08T02:54:07.973" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many particle physics journals the answer is they do &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt;. You deliver a latex source file that uses their class and figures that meet their standards or they send it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in all truth, I &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T02:54:07.973" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1933" CreationDate="2012-06-08T10:20:55.100" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many years, the standard on the part of journals is to do &lt;em&gt;absolutely nothing&lt;/em&gt; with respect to journal articles. Essentially all of the work in terms of preparation falls on the authors. Previously, figures had to be &quot;camera-ready&quot;; now, they &quot;just&quot; have to be publication quality. The journal production staff will not do anything, except potentially change the size of the graphic to better fit the column space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check with the journal about the regulations on acceptable graphics; they should have them available for your review on their website. If there are questions about the use of graphics outside of those guidelines, send an email to the journal office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T10:20:55.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1930" CreationDate="2012-06-08T10:25:04.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An American using &quot;Dr.&quot; and &quot;Ph. D.&quot; in the same title is double-counting, just as if a German were to use &quot;Dr.rer.nat.&quot; and &quot;Dr.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you're going to use multiple titles, you should probably be consistent and list the PhD as one of those degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T10:25:04.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1965" CreationDate="2012-06-08T10:28:35.123" Score="9" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an interim (or tenure!) review, are their guidelines in place for choosing &quot;neutral&quot; referees, if asked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously choosing the PhD advisor (and probably postdoc advisor) is a no-no, but are there other things to take into consideration? For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is the standing of the referee? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well should the referee know the candidate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone is working in an inherently multidisciplinary area, how should the referees be selected? According to the &quot;home department&quot; of the candidate, or are other criteria more important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T18:47:50.447" Title="Picking referees for a staff review?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1946" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:46:06.137" Score="29" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student right now, and I'm looking towards doing a post-doc in the future.  There is a research laboratory where I want to do my post doc, primarily because there are scientists engaged in very similar topics to my dissertation work.  I've never met any of them personally, and I know that the standard approach is to network with them at conferences first.  Someone had suggested to me that it is possible to target an individual in that institution, and somehow invite yourself to their lab to meet them, potentially giving an unofficial (non-departmental) talk in their lab.  I know that this is not a standard approach, and I think that if I'm not careful I might give a bad impression in the process.  How can I invite myself to the lab if I don't have a personal connection to a researcher in that institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:43:33.007" Title="How to invite yourself to present at another university?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:57:19.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you are worried about it, so you might want to ask your advisor to do the intro. PIs generally appreciate getting a a heads-up on good potential postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would make a better impression if you were comfortable to do it yourself. I would start off pretty light by sending the PI an electronic &quot;reprint&quot; of something related to a conference you attended/are attending. Something like: &quot;I was hoping to meet you at the basket weaving conference, but I didn't see you. I have attached my poster/talk/reprint.&quot; This works for either a recent past conference or an upcoming conference. For an upcoming conference, if they have an abstract tailor the email appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the PI responds, but if not, then go a little harder. Send them your CV and tell them you are looking for a post doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T15:57:19.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:00:23.333" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that sometimes works is the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hi, I'm so and so, working with Prof. X on topic Y (my webpage). I was&#xA;  going to be in the area during (vague period) and was wondering if I&#xA;  might stop by to chat with your group about your fascinating work in&#xA;  Y'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is a little passive-aggressive, I've found that more often than not, they'll ask you to give a talk, and even if not, you might get a chance to meet with the lab folks, which is the real purpose in any case. Make sure that the PI is around though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T16:00:23.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1923" CreationDate="2012-06-08T17:48:53.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good starting place may be: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines&lt;/a&gt;, with the links there, esp. restricting to specific disciplines (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biology_disciplines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;List of biology disciplines&lt;/a&gt;); for each field of science, usually there are a few different official classifications of sub-disciplines (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/pacs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS)&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, bear in mind that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no universal classification, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some are constructed for different purposes, with differently 'catching' subfields and their intersections,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are many synonyms, e.g. 'biological chemistry = biochemistry',&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for may there may be historical bias (i.e. divisions which were useful 10 year ago, but not are out-of-date),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some classifications use descriptive names (one sentence or more), some - 1-3 word tags,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many classifications are hierarchical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T17:48:53.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2012-06-08T20:05:11.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also doing a PhD and have a 'target institution' for a post-doc. I visited it already, but my supervisor knew the guy there and he made first contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the impression that it's common practice to have people from other labs just visit, and that the stuff you can do while there is entirely flexible. My visit (two weeks) consisted of me sitting at a computer surrounded by local lab members, doing my own work, and talking to all of them about their work during lunch breaks. I also arranged to do a joint experiment with the PI there, which will now become part of my PhD, and we roughly agreed on a research design while I was there. I didn't mention the post-doc idea yet, as I think it's best if I prove my worth through this joint experiment first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the first day there, I was asked if I would give a talk (which I did). I could even choose how big an audience would be invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While visiting, I also discovered another lab at the same university, which does related stuff to mine. I just e-mailed them, saying I'm in town (from lab so-and-so) and asking if I could come talk to them a bit. I googled their web page and came up with a few names of people I told them I'd like to talk to, although I didn't know much about any of their work. I did not ask to talk to the big names, in that lab, just PhD students and post-docs. What did they do? They immediately asked me to give a talk (which I did). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my impression is that this is standard practice. People like to hear about related work. I would suggest that you just e-mail someone there, tell them you find their stuff interesting (it's best to mention some specific result of theirs, so that they see you're really into it), tell them you're working on something similar and ask whether you could visit their lab. I would guess that you'll end up giving a talk. You can also suggest it yourself, once you've established communication and exchanged a few e-mails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T20:05:11.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1951" CreationDate="2012-06-08T21:08:03.290" Score="8" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to get some more experience with writing grant proposals, and I know that professors are often invited to review them.  How can I get involved in it while still being just a graduate student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T22:12:52.643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T22:54:20.137" Title="How can I get involved in grant proposal reviews as a graduate student?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1950" CreationDate="2012-06-08T22:26:24.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewing grant proposals as a student is tricky, at least in some fields.  The NSF is highly unlikely to ask a grad student to review proposals (it might theoretically be possible for a brilliant student who is almost done with their Ph.D., but I've never heard of it happening).  Furthermore, faculty are not allowed to show proposals they have been asked to review to their students (it may sometimes happen, but it's breaking explicit rules regarding confidentiality).  Overall, in pure math grad students basically never review grant proposals.  I can't speak for other fields, but I'm skeptical that grad students ever play a major role in reviewing proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I'd recommend asking your advisor to see the other side of the process.  They could share their own proposals, and perhaps even reviews of those proposals or drafts of upcoming proposals.  They could also ask collaborators whether they had any proposals they would be willing to share.  This isn't quite the same as reviewing proposals yourself, but it could still give you valuable experience with how grant applications work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T22:26:24.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1412" CreationDate="2012-06-09T00:33:21.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editors need books that will have an audience, a point, impact, and a connection to their &quot;lists&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a conversation you should be able to briefly summarize your manuscript -- and in this summary make clear its central argument / narrative, scope / evidence base, and its what is novel, important, and exciting about it. You should also summarize the audience for the manuscript,  -- how it fits into the market: what other books are competing for this audience, and what distinguishes your manuscript. These summaries should be honest, and direct -- avoid both negativity and overstatement. Choose language to appeal to a smart, and critical, but not  specialize reader -- avoid jargon, and if you have to use specialized terms, define them briefly, in common-sense terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a written prospectus, follow the same model, but expand to two pages; and include an outline of the work, list of figures/tables, and note any special features such as data, or an accompanying website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details, see: Germano, &lt;em&gt;From Dissertation to Book&lt;/em&gt; and Luey, &lt;em&gt;Handbook for Academic Authors&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T00:33:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2012-06-09T01:02:24.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the largest national survey collecting this data is the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nsopf/design.asp) It was last conducted in 2003-4.  The average number of classroom hours for full-time faculty ranged from 7.9 in engineering to 11.0 in fine arts (as of 2003). See:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/showTable2005.asp?popup=true&amp;amp;tableID=2128&amp;amp;rt=p&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/showTable2005.asp?popup=true&amp;amp;tableID=2128&amp;amp;rt=p&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T01:02:24.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1950" CreationDate="2012-06-09T01:39:45.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Receiving an invitation to help out at a NSF or NIH study session is highly unlikely and logistically difficult. However, I would try to get involved with study sessions for an University driven call for proposals. Alternatively, you could get involved with a course that does a mock grant proposal as part of its coursework. I just submitted a mock proposal recently and I'm sure that the TAs will be forced to look over my work and get practice in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T01:39:45.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1937" CreationDate="2012-06-09T01:42:19.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The specifics of the citation would depend on the citation style you are using. I am most familiar with Chicago style. To cite the presentation you've linked to in &lt;strong&gt;Chicago&lt;/strong&gt; style, I would put:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Ferreira, et al., &quot;Climate of an Earth-like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case&quot; (presentation, Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, CO, January 16–20, 2012), accessed June 8, 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following these guidelines: &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/08/&quot;&gt;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/08/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For APA style, you would only cite a presentation in a reference list if there is a tangible remnant (&quot;recoverable data&quot;) of the presentation (e.g., slides posted on a website). The citation would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ferreira, D., Marshall, J., O'Gorman, P., Seager, S. &amp;amp; Lau, H. (January 2012). &lt;em&gt;Climate of an Earth-Like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case.&lt;/em&gt; Paper presented at Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, Co. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more examples in APA citation, look here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://citationonline.net/CitationHelp/csg04-manuscripts-apa.htm#53&quot;&gt;http://citationonline.net/CitationHelp/csg04-manuscripts-apa.htm#53&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T01:42:19.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-09T06:48:53.290" Score="20" ViewCount="5350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math student and never take notes in class. I feel like I am offending the professors by not taking notes. In general, do professors like students to be &quot;active&quot; during class? I have never learned much by taking notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see other graduate students furiously taking notes...and then I am afraid that professors may write that I am lazy in recommendation letters. So maybe I should just takes notes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1040" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T03:49:20.263" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T01:35:15.270" Title="Do professors frown upon students who don't take notes?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2012-06-09T11:14:34.090" Score="25" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am afraid that professors may write that I am lazy in recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can assure you that there is no reason to be afraid of that. That is just not something that would ever get written in a letter. Not taking notes might lead to a poor first impression, but it is your knowledge of the subject (something like your grade, but not exactly) that influences letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am teaching, I don't pay attention to if people are taking notes or not. I do pay attention to if students are paying attention. As long as you can remember the things you need to remember, then you do not need to write them down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T11:14:34.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2012-06-09T11:52:45.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use whatever study habits you need to succeed. Your performance on assessments will make more of an impression than how you absorb the material.  If you can perform well without notetaking and your professor recognizes it, he/she will more likely be very impressed with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T11:52:45.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2012-06-09T13:26:56.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard load; it depends widely on the department, the number of students enrolled, the available number of faculty, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in some departments, it is possible to fundraise your way out of commitments. For instance, if you bring in X dollars in overhead, you can &quot;buy&quot; out of teaching a class for a semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, stating that a load is &quot;1-and-1&quot; can mean different things. In the department where I did my graduate work, professors now co-teach one class per semester, and sometimes offer an elective course on top of that 1-and-1 load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T13:26:56.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2012-06-09T20:12:46.707" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I wish students would stop taking notes and actually think about what I'm saying. I provide the lecture notes before/after class anyway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T20:12:46.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2012-06-09T22:48:28.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does depend on how popular the field is among undergrad majors, and whether or not their courses are often pre-requisites for courses in other majors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fields I'm in (astronomy, earth/atmospheric science), there are so few undergrad majors, and so few majors that use their courses as requirements, that the professors generally tend to have much lighter teaching loads (often one course per year) than professors in other fields with more undergrad students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in some departments where there isn't even an undergraduate major in them, professors often have years without needing to teach at all (e.g. Pathology or Physiology/Biophysics at the University of Washington).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T22:48:28.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2012-06-10T18:40:26.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: &lt;strong&gt;You want a letter from God.  Until then, do not work with God.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference letters for promotion and tenure cases are supposed to be impartial evaluations of the quality, importance, visibility, and impact of the candidate's research, their standing in the research community, and their promise of future intellectual leadership (or in the case of full professor promotions, their &lt;em&gt;proven&lt;/em&gt; intellectual leadership.)  So the people who write those letters must be credible independent judges of those qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the rough guidelines applied &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.provost.illinois.edu/communication/09/index.html&quot;&gt;at my university&lt;/a&gt;.  Specific standards my be different elsewhere, especially outside the US — Ask your senior faculty mentors, department chair, and/or dean! — but I suspect the general principles are common everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referees must be familiar with the candidate's research.&lt;/strong&gt;  Promotion letters must discuss the importance and impact of the candidate's research in detail.  It is especially helpful if the candidate's work led to a breakthrough in the &lt;em&gt;referee's&lt;/em&gt; research.  (Obviously, you can't dictate the letter; you have to choose a referee that can write such a letter.)  It doesn't matter whether the referee knows the candidate personally.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referees must be experts in the candidate's research area.&lt;/strong&gt;  For successful cases, this criterion should immediately imply the first.  However, &quot;research area&quot; must not be defined so narrowly that there are only a dozen experts in the entire world, or the impartiality of the referees is not credible.  Editors-in-chief of major journals, committee chairs of important conferences, and officers in relevant professional societies are all good choices, but for the most part, the expertise should be visible from the language of the letter. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referees must be &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt; experts in the candidate's field.&lt;/strong&gt;  Here by &quot;field&quot; I roughly mean &quot;department&quot;.  The letter-writers will be scrutinized by faculty committees at several levels (department, college, and campus), most of whom don't have the expertise to make a direct judgement; they have to rely on the trappings of success instead.  At my university, it is a de facto requirement that all promotion references must be full professors (preferably with chaired positions) at top departments, in top colleges, in top universities.  Professional society fellows and major award winners are even better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referees must be &lt;em&gt;obviously&lt;/em&gt; impartial.&lt;/strong&gt;  Thesis and postdoc advisors are right out.  At my university, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; faculty member from the candidate's PhD department is barred, but this is not universal.  Frequent and/or recent coauthors/coPIs are out.  It's okay to have a few letters from former collaborators, as long as the coauthored work is far enough in the past &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; represents a small fraction of &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the candidate's &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the referee's research record.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referees must be familiar with the promotion standards of the candidate's institution.&lt;/strong&gt; At my university, this means that almost all letters must come from faculty at top &lt;em&gt;American&lt;/em&gt; universities.  I was explicitly warned &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to ask for letters from European researchers, because they tend to write blunter (&quot;more honest&quot;) evaluations than Americans, and in any case, European promotion systems are different.  This is another reason for needing letters from top institutions; a supportive letter from a significantly lower-ranked school will likely be viewed with suspicion, because the writer &quot;doesn't understand &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; standards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multidisciplinary research makes this much more difficult.  The strategy I would recommend (and have applied myself) is to find referees that cover most of the different disciplines of the candidate's research.  To pick a random example, a candidate studying molecular simulations might request letters from other molecular simulators, from other computational scientists, and from polymer chemists.  This may require a higher than usual number of letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional complication at most US universities is that a majority of the referees must be chosen by the candidate's department, &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; the candidate's knowledge or direct input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T18:47:50.447" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T18:47:50.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1970" CreationDate="2012-06-10T19:22:19.133" Score="19" ViewCount="3145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a paper right now based upon some of my preliminary results, and I'm attending several conferences to present and get some feedback on my results from other experts in my field.  A thought occurred to me that because my work is yet to be published, I there is a potential for others to steal my idea and publish before I get a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm probably over-thinking this, and there is little chance of it actually happening.  But I'm curious how frequently this happens in scientific domains.  Do people go to conferences to steal ideas?  If it does happen, how can I best prevent it from happening?  Obviously, I want to share my ideas with the world, but I don't want to lose a chance to take an idea into fruition.  What should/shouldn't I share about my research before it is published?  Should I simply wait until my paper is accepted before I go on the conference circuit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My field is computational science (not to be confused with computer science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T21:32:11.703" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T09:11:34.520" Title="How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1974" CreationDate="2012-06-10T20:40:47.963" Score="39" ViewCount="13184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a mathematical model to help explain some experimental results and generate new hypotheses. Unfortunately, I have neither the resources nor interest to gather experimental data, but in this particular sub-field publishing a model without showing its usefulness on some experimental data is not common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several existing experimental findings that can be explained by my model. However, they are presented in other modeling papers and the raw data is not available with the paper or on the authors' websites. In the papers they only present partially-analyzed data (for instance, they show results averages over participants, but not individual participant's results; or sometimes they only give the results of statistical tests). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to contact the authors for their raw data and have 3 related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the protocol for contacting by email to ask for authors' raw data? Is this common? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the researchers expect to be invited on-board as co-authors? Or is a citation to their papers, and an acknowledgement of the form &quot;AK would like to thank X, Y, Z for providing their raw data&quot; sufficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="4317" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T13:09:59.777" LastActivityDate="2019-11-11T11:57:35.487" Title="Requesting raw data from previously published research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1969" CreationDate="2012-06-04T13:27:06.023" Score="20" ViewCount="4032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to take the French language exam as part of the requirements for the PhD program at my university. The exam will consist of having to translate (with the help of a dictionary) a subset of a mathematics paper written in French. As an Indian international student in the US, I speak a number of languages, but I've grown up knowing them (i.e. never went through the process of having to learn it) and none of them (except perhaps English) give me any insight into the French language, which makes me nervous! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any tips as to how one might prepare for this exam, and materials that might be handy. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Did you have to take a language exam? How did you prepare for it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Has knowing said language helped you out in your mathematical career? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do there exist collections of mathematics papers in French that one can practice on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks you in advance for your answers! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" OwnerDisplayName="aru" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T07:18:36.370" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T07:18:36.370" Title="How to prepare for the French language exam as part of PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1968" CreationDate="2012-06-04T13:43:02.353" Score="19" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. I took both German and French. I was already fairly comfortable with French from having studied it in high school and in university, so I'll write about German instead. I prepared for my German language exam by going on to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/&quot;&gt;GDZ server&lt;/a&gt; (a program to retroactively digitise documents, including a lot of classical mathematics papers) and downloading some papers in mathematical analysis (my field, sort of) from around the 1950s to 60s (when still a lot of the papers were published in German). I then went to the library and borrowed the copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ch/books/about/German_English_mathematics_dictionary.html?id=fBYgAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;Hyman's German-English Mathematics Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; (for the nouns) and a copy of a normal German-English dictionary (for the verbs) and sat myself down and started translating word by word. After about a month I translated about 30 pages or so of math papers (and at the same time learned about uniform spaces), and proceeded to take my exam. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not much. I have absolutely no conversational German, and only very rarely do I have to look something up in German that I cannot find a write-up in another language. (So far twice only, one a slightly obscure result in algebraic lattices that the only reference I could find is to a paper in the 30s.) (French on the other hand has been useful; mostly because the abovementioned &quot;write-up in another language&quot; often turned out to be in French.) Given how much I've found French to be useful for me, I'm sure that if I had actually properly learned the language, German would be just about as useful. Conversely, if you don't really learn the foreign language, you will probably be able to get by through other means in this day and age. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The canonical place to find French papers to read is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.numdam.org/?lang=fr&quot;&gt;NUMDAM&lt;/a&gt;. Of course, for practice, you can also check out Bourbaki from the library; it may be slightly less intimidating to start working first on the language by reading something whose mathematics at least you are familiar with. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" OwnerDisplayName="Willie Wong" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T13:43:02.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1966" CreationDate="2012-06-10T21:22:13.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As some comments note, answers will vary dramatically by field, but it seems better to have a bunch of answers for different fields to one question, instead of having people ask the same question a dozen times for different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For math, if you're talking about a completed, submitted paper that hasn't been published yet (say, because it's still being refereed), you should feel free to talk about it; the submission date proves your claim on the result, so it can't really be stolen at this stage.  (Also, you already put it on the arXiv, so it's already public, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you're still writing the paper, but the results are completely solid.  There are good reasons to tell people about the result: you may be want to discuss ideas for how to build on your paper, you may want to give people a head's up that the theorem is coming---say, so they can use it to prove things themselves, and you may want to establish a partial claim on the result in case someone else is doing the same thing.  There are also good reasons not to tell people: even though you're really awfully sure the result is solid, there might still be mistakes; routinely announcing results well in advance of the paper can negatively affect your reputation; someone could use your ideas to write their own paper faster.  (There's an interesting phenomenon where once people know a theorem is true, it becomes easier to solve; sometimes a problem is open for a long time, and then abruptly solved multiple times in a short period.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking these together, I'd advise not to announce a result until the paper's finished unless there's a strong reason to do so.  This is particularly true early in your career, when it's more likely that you'll mistakenly believe a proof was really-definitely-totally finished.  (I was given this advice when I was in grad school, and while I haven't followed it 100% of the time, I've never regretted following it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T21:22:13.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1967" CreationDate="2012-06-10T21:25:25.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journal formats (and the arXiv) indicate a &quot;corresponding author&quot;. That's the person you'll want to contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing so isn't a everyday occurrence, but it does happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields access to the data may be covered by agreements to keep it confidential for a certain period of time (or until first publication). These agreement often specify the answer to the authorship question as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T21:25:25.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1968" CreationDate="2012-06-11T03:11:48.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main purpose of learning another language in the PhD program is to be able to explain your research in that language if necessary.  At my former institution, the language exam covered reading and writing about mathematics in french or russian.  It would be best to investigate your institution's policy about the exam and their requirements for the PhD degree.  That will determine what and how you need to study for that exam.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I've never had to write a technical paper in another language, knowing these other languages has certainly increased my ability to network with experts from around the world.  That's the true value of learning languages: being able to connect with others on another level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T03:11:48.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1966" CreationDate="2012-06-11T03:37:14.883" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will really, really depend on the field you're coming from - or even the sub-field. Take two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mathematical epidemiology: If I present a paper with a nice infectious disease model, with the equations, the parameter values, and some numerical results, but I haven't tackled anything analytical yet, you could very well - if you could get all that down - beat me to publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observational epidemiology: I could tell you everything about my study but, without access to the raw data, you'd have to go find your own multi-year hospital acquired infection cohort to study. Good luck with that. And if you &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; beat me to the punch? Well, I probably deserve that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, for in-progress stuff, I present enough for people to know what I'm doing, comment on it, etc., but not enough to fully replicate the experiment without coming to me for more information. For example, some folks I'm working with struggled with whether or not to present a theoretical result without its implementation done yet, because someone &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; scoop us with the implementation. We decided for the audience I was presenting to, that was...unlikely. For another audience? They'd get the theory in broad strokes, but without enough information that the theory alone is enough of a springboard to run with the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T03:37:14.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1967" CreationDate="2012-06-11T03:45:28.583" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will, as it seems nearly all questions on this site, vary based on field. My answer applies to Epidemiology and medical research only. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; common for this to happen in my field. There has been an increasing emphasis on using meta-analysis and systematic reviews to summarize bodies of work, and with those there is almost &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a need for some more information, raw data, etc. to come from study authors. It's fairly routine now. They may not say &quot;yes&quot; for a number of reasons. One may be that they're working on their own projects in a similar direction. But there are others - that privacy laws prohibit releasing data to just anyone or their funding dictates similarly is a fairly common one. So be prepared for &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for the authorship question, it likely depends on the extent of your data request. Generally, if you're just asking for a few numbers that go into a reported value, then in all likelihood, an acknowledgement is more than sufficient. If, on the other hand, you're asking for access to the raw data from their 5 year, many thousands of dollars cohort study? You're likely going to have a member of their study team be an author on your paper, and there will be far more extensive approval processes than just &quot;Sure, .csv file is attached.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?&quot; For the initial contact, I'd suggest it isn't necessary, because what you're really trying to find out is &quot;Is the release possible&quot;. At later stages, I would expect to see what you were doing, either in a full explanation, or as a pre-print. As to your &quot;What if?&quot; question - so what if it does? Science is about improving the methods we use.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="114825" LastEditDate="2019-11-11T11:57:35.487" LastActivityDate="2019-11-11T11:57:35.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-11T04:21:59.420" Score="10" ViewCount="2713" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: I have been in the Phd Program since fall 2010, I have made great academic progress (two papers published in journals). From the 4th semester (spring, 2012), I have started working in a company and still a part time student in school. Till now, I am still keeping doing research and publish another paper and one conference paper. As I have finished all coursework requirement (72 semester hours, I transfer some credits from MS), I plan to work in the company and be a part time student to finish the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From last month, my adviser kept asked what's my plan. I told him I will make my decision in mid-July as I can know my H1b working visa is approved or not. He send me another email ( I post here for information). My impression is he is threatening me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion? Again, it's difficult to look for a job for international students in such economics. I hope I can work and study as a part time student to finish the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1047" LastEditorUserId="1047" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T03:12:17.640" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T05:37:27.723" Title="My adviser threatens to kick me out if I am not to be a full time student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1975" CreationDate="2012-06-11T06:53:02.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I think OP's situation is not that specific. Many international students in US are facing the same. Just that his is very extreme - his advisor wants to kick him out. In that regard, I agree with JeffE's comment. OP's advisor is not friendly at all, he probably needs to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer the question. It all depends on how much you want to be an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue what you're doing right now, I think you hurt your current and future academic career. Your industry job is demanding, particularly since you need your employer to sponsor your H1B visa. You have to work very hard. You can't devote yourself to your research unless your job is directly related to your dissertation. You are still publishing papers. I believe you can even publish more and better papers if you do research full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you quit your current job, the H1B will be gone. But, you can concentrate on your research. You might become a great academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you continue your industry job, you will get H1B visa and everything to make your American dream come true. But, how about your dream to be a great academic? Didn't you want to be a scholar when you went to US to study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's June now. Too late to change school. I would talk to the advisor if I were you. Explain to him your situation. Maybe it's just misunderstanding between you and him. He may not know what you really want and need. If it doesn't work, change the advisor. If you can't do that either, you'll have to make a tough choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T02:23:15.363" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T02:23:15.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1966" CreationDate="2012-06-11T09:11:34.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say give all the details and don't hold anything back. Most researchers do not want to enter a first to publish race from that far back. People tend to work on similar topics so getting scooped is bound to happen. This doesn't mean your ideas were &quot;stolen&quot;. I think you are less likely to get scooped if you let people know everything you have done and where you are going. This lets people get out of your way or approach you about collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T09:11:34.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1975" CreationDate="2012-06-11T09:17:22.347" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is completely inappropriate for an advisor to send an email like that. The email makes it clear that this is an advisor that you should steer clear of. At a minimum a change in advisor is required. I would also approach the department head about the email. Faculty need to know that they need to behave better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T10:59:34.070" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T10:59:34.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2012-06-11T10:34:38.463" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add an additional tool that I always use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T10:34:38.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-11T12:07:34.297" Score="6" ViewCount="3763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am three years into a PhD in Germany in an interdisciplinary social sciences field (Global Integration/Global Studies), but I am quite disillusioned with the faculty and the quality of guidance here. Moreover, the academic job prospects are not very good after the PhD, and any other job, given EU regulations, is hard to get (I am non EU). Going back to my country, given the corruption in academics, is also not an option. I am thinking of dropping this, and applying for PhDs in Canada or the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good option? I would apply for single discipline such as political science. I am thinking of international business too, because my work is a policy relevant field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:50:39.100" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T18:24:12.587" Title="Should I do a second PhD in Canada or the US?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1980" CreationDate="2012-06-11T15:51:08.983" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, if your current degree program is not serving your needs/goals, then yes, you absolutely should look for other options.  Hopefully the research experience you've gained in your current program will prove helpful in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you need to be careful in applying to a new program.  A PhD application from a student already in a PhD program raises a red flag, especially if they are already fairly far into the program.  Obviously the current program isn't working out for the student, but does that indicate a problem with the student (uh-oh), a problem with their advisor (but then why not change advisors?), a problem with the program as a whole (but then do we really want a student that was admitted to a dysfunctional program?), or something else?  And even if there isn't a problem, why should we give a slot to someone who already has one elsewhere, instead of giving a new student a chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to ameliorate these concerns, in my experience, is to get strong and supportive recommendation letters from the faculty in your current department.  You also need to tell a convincing and &lt;em&gt;positive&lt;/em&gt; story about why you want to move (for example: a shift in research interests that does not match the strengths of your current program).  One thing you absolutely &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; write is &quot;I want to move because my current program just isn't good enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T15:51:08.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1975" CreationDate="2012-06-11T18:37:10.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a fairly common experience at my university given the large volumes of EE and CS PhD students who take a &quot;leave of absence&quot; and slack off on their PhD research to do trivial things like starting Google and Yahoo. Here is what I've learned from their experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your University may offer you some protection while your H1B visa gets worked out. Typically, students can take a 1 year deferment, stay on status as a student, work for their company, and wait for their visa status to change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the leave of absence. The &quot;part-time&quot; status is a lose-lose scenario for you, your advisor, and your company. You're wasting your time by being inefficient, your advisor is probably still paying for all of you despite your &quot;part-time&quot; status, and your company isn't getting your full mental investment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For EE and CS PhD students, their goal was to get a US-based job and with it, legal status. For the majority of them, the PhD wouldn't add much since they would essentially be doing the exact same work. However, if you're in an industry where that isn't the case, maybe I would be a bit more concerned about giving up the PhD. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That being said, you have a job and it sounds like the company wants to keep you if they are talking about the H1B process with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, you're a 2nd year grad student. You have a long long way to go if you want that PhD and it just so happens that you have an advisor in the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T18:37:10.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1984" CreationDate="2012-06-12T01:53:48.767" Score="21" ViewCount="8163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought of an interesting idea for a thesis for my Masters program and I think I would eventually be able to sell a product that is built from the algorithms/code that I develop for this thesis.  I realize my thesis is my work and I have the copyright permissions, but I am wondering what rights I have and what rights my school has if I were to take my thesis and develop it into a product which I then sell to customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well?  I can only seem to find answers on the internet that pertain to the copyright permissions of the actual developed thesis, not products that might be derived from such efforts, or code that was developed in tandem with writing the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any links to proof or legal precedence would be very helpful as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1051" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T14:25:34.157" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T08:58:04.370" Title="Who holds intellectual property rights on a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1983" CreationDate="2012-06-12T03:14:15.550" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your institution almost certainly has a policy on this, and an office dedicated to administering it.  You should consult them.  If you really think this is serious, you should also consult an intellectual property attorney rather than relying on the babblings of some goofball from the Internet (e.g. me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, &lt;em&gt;employees&lt;/em&gt; of a university are commonly required to sign an agreement that the university has an interest in any patent or other profitable invention that they develop in the course of their work.  The agreement usually specifies that the royalties and other profits are to be split between the university and the inventor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not heard of this being required of students, and if you had signed one, you would presumably know.  However, if your advisor had a significant part in the project, he or she may have some rights in it as a matter of law (and the university in turn would get a share of your advisor's, per their agreement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it may be relevant where the funding for the project came from, and what if any financial support you received from the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T03:14:15.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1975" CreationDate="2012-06-12T05:37:27.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't walk.  Run.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T05:37:27.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1983" CreationDate="2012-06-12T08:52:53.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very difficult and touchy question. You need to talk to your supervisor as early as possible. Many students drastically underestimate the supervisor's contribution. Starting your graduate studies with the idea is very different from developing the idea in conjunction with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T08:52:53.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-12T19:03:02.673" Score="6" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel I've received poor grades in my bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering - Second Class Second Division as per UK grading system. Having finished my bachelors in the UK I wish to enroll into a masters program in Systems or Mechanical Engineering in the US. I am currently employed by a logistics company in Dubai. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve my chances of getting into a grad school in the US with what I consider as poor grades? What other factors can strengthen my application? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1058" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T16:30:35.433" Title="How can I make up for weak grades while applying for a masters?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-12T23:45:49.980" Score="5" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my doctorate in global studies in Germany, and would like to apply for a post-doc position in North America, especially in Canada. The topic I work on has considerable policy relevance, and I see that some North American professors are working in those areas. I am a non-EU citizen. Is there any chance that I will be accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T08:43:00.900" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T08:43:00.900" Title="Can I apply for a post-doc in global studies in North America?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1994" CreationDate="2012-06-13T02:34:36.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes!  US universities routinely hire postdocs from all over the world.  A few positions may be reserved for US citizens, due to funding requirements, but those will be indicated in the postings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one way to check, go to the web site of a department that interests you, find the web pages of some of the postdocs, and read their CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T02:34:36.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1994" CreationDate="2012-06-13T03:39:20.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fairly routine to hire foreign postdocs in the US. The main issue to worry about is the work visa - the faculty mentor might not have much of an idea so if you did get an offer you'd have to discuss it with them and probably some admin folks at the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T03:39:20.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2005" CreationDate="2012-06-13T08:02:08.110" Score="20" ViewCount="2014" Body="&lt;p&gt;Up to now, I've only applied to &quot;public&quot; academic positions (universities or public research centers). I have now an academic CV, that is roughly 7 pages long (2 pages of &quot;classic&quot; CV, and 5 pages of research experience + list of publications). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in applying for research positions in industry. I know that if I wanted to apply for a regular position (for instance, as a software developer), only my classic CV is enough (and the long one might actually be counter-productive). However, the kind of position I'm interested in is very similar to a public research position, i.e. people there publish, applying for public funding, might even co-supervise PhD students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what kind of CV should I send for such a position? Should I consider the application process as the standard public one, or rather as the standard industry one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it's relevant, it's in Computer Science, and I'm thinking of positions such as those available at Microsoft Research, IBM Research, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T16:52:04.640" Title="Different CV for university position and research industry position?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2002" CreationDate="2012-06-13T08:39:48.410" Score="12" ViewCount="13200" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is a follow-up on a comment at a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1836/when-does-one-go-for-a-double-doctorate&quot;&gt;recent question&lt;/a&gt;, where Dave Clarke mentioned that an acquaintance of his has &quot;3 professorships and 2 doctorates&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does a faculty member get appointed simultaneously by two or more universities? Are all except one honorary posts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can any faculty member work with a second university with the consent of his present employer? What are the conflicts of interests that come into play usually?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T19:25:48.460" Title="How does a faculty member get to work at two universities or more?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;joint-appointment&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2012-06-13T09:01:52.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in the Netherlands it is relatively common to appoint somebody as a professor for one day a week. For instance, one of the colleagues is 4 days a week at our university and 1 day a week at a different university. Another colleague is 4 days a week working for a company, and works at the university only on Mondays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T09:01:52.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2003" CreationDate="2012-06-13T12:57:55.010" Score="14" ViewCount="9059" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am expecting to finish my masters degree in computer science by mid October and then I was planning to apply for a PhD program this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how much time will I have after being done with my masters to apply? I know different US universities have different deadlines but a general safe assumption would really be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still haven't decided which universities I would be applying to. I am also aware of the fact that eventually I'll have to look up at the websites for the exact deadlines but for now I just needed an approximate idea of a date by which I should have everything ready for submission including my GRE scores (which I am planning to retake). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1043" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T14:36:38.463" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T14:36:38.463" Title="Can deadlines for PhD admission in US be approximated?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2012-06-13T13:27:25.940" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation I've seen most often is that a professor will hold a primary appointment at school A, where they have a lab and complete their research. Often for reasons related to collaboration, school B will then give the professor an appointment in a related if not identical department. If the professor also teaches a few courses at school C, they will likely be granted an adjunct position there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was my setup when I was in graduate school; I was a grad student in bioengineering at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pitt.edu/&quot;&gt;U Pitt&lt;/a&gt;, and I had a secondary appointment at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmu.edu&quot;&gt;CMU&lt;/a&gt; due to both lab collaborations and my being registered in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/&quot;&gt;certificate program&lt;/a&gt; there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T13:27:25.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2012-06-13T15:12:37.307" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies greatly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are the fixed deadline places, for which there are deadlines starting from Nov 15 or thereabouts, all the way upto Jan 15.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are also places with rolling deadlines, where it's better to apply early. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should have your materials ready to go in the beginning/middle of November and that should take care of most deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T15:12:37.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2012-06-13T15:28:13.130" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another common scenario happens when a professor leaves university X for university Y, but still has grants and PhD students at university X.  In that situation, it's fairly common for university X to keep the faculty member on the books without pay, possibly with the word &quot;adjunct&quot; added to their title, so that the students and the grants that pay them don't have to move from X to Y.  (And to simplify the paperwork if the professor changes their mind and moves back to X.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T15:28:13.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1998" CreationDate="2012-06-13T16:43:07.537" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb, if the position you are applying for (1) has the term &quot;researcher&quot; or something similar in the position title and (2) requires a PhD (or research masters), definitely send the academic one. The fact they're looking for PhDs means they're interested in research experience, and your academic CV will highlight that much better than your industry one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is an industry position, so I would do my best to keep the resume two pages, and offer to send the full CV on request. Definitely include &quot;Selected Publications&quot; and &quot;Selected Oral Presentations&quot; sections, but keep it short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One extra idea for consideration: I sent my (academic) resume to an industry position, and they sent it back asking for a short (one to three) sentence blurb describing each of my projects (at the time, my resume included work as a research assistant, graduate student, and post-doc). I ended up using that format for all the jobs I applied to, since most people have no idea what &quot;Temporal Dynamics of the Cortico-limbic System&quot; actually means. It's a good way to help them actually get a feel for what you accomplished and what your skills are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T16:43:07.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1998" CreationDate="2012-06-13T16:52:04.640" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't really change my CV for industrial research positions versus academia, but I did tailor my research statement a fair bit. As I recently explained to a student, industrial research labs are often more interested in your skills, and academic positions are more interested in your contributions to an area (&lt;em&gt;all these statements are &quot;on average&quot;&lt;/em&gt;). That might indicate ways to modify your CV ? maybe have a blurb highlighting your interests/skills up front for the industry position ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T16:52:04.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2012-06-13T22:24:43.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what program it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most top ecology and biology programs have deadlines in early December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most top-20 physics and astronomy programs (excluding Columbia) have deadlines on December 15th. Columbia's deadlines are usually on the first few days of January. Mid-tier astronomy programs tend to have deadlines around January 15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are weaker programs in Physics (like Montana State and Kansas) that have deadlines that go well into Spring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;======&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for most strong Earth/Atmospheric/Planetary science programs - they primarily have deadlines in late December and early January. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(E.g. for this year for EAPS programs - deadlines were Stanford in mid-December, Berkeley on Dec 19, Harvard/Princeton on Dec 31, Caltech on Jan 1, Yale on Jan 2, Columbia on Jan 4, MIT on Jan 5, Chicago on Jan 9, UWash+Brown on Jan 15, and Cornell on Feb. 1st).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my case, I was utterly unprepared until mid-December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't take my General GREs until mid-December (though I took the Biology GRE in mid-October and the Physics GRE in mid-November - those two dates are the two subject GRE test dates in autumn), and only asked for LORs in mid-December (I managed to get them all in by January 2, but a couple of professors said that they wouldn't be able to write me LORs because they would be traveling during late December - I was fortunate to have many options to choose from though). Then I didn't start on my personal statement until the last two weeks of December (and I went through like 7-8 proofreaders). So the result was that I missed the Harvard/Princeton deadline and barely made the Caltech deadline with a crappy essay. Everything past January 2 was fine though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T22:37:30.900" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T22:37:30.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-14T08:08:48.230" Score="14" ViewCount="2574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes here on Academia I read messages referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American National Science Foundation (NSF)&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;the USA agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/986/how-do-you-grow-your-own-post-doc-opportunity&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/can-i-apply-for-a-post-doc-in-global-studies-in-north-america&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; we discussed about NSF postdoctoral funding possibilities. Since I am in the European Union, I don't know very much about NSF. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does NSF funding system work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does NSF postdoctoral funding program work? Does it fund only American citizens or anyone that wants to work as a researcher in the US?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T11:55:40.190" Title="How does the US National Science Foundation (NSF) research funding system work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2014" CreationDate="2012-06-14T10:33:54.220" Score="6" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do universities sponsor a student's conference travel and publication costs if the research on the paper has been done elsewhere? For example, a student may have published a paper during a master's at university 1 and may currently be pursuing PhD at university 2. Similarly will the second university bear the cost of the journal publication? Are there any caveats involved (eg., indication of university's name in the paper, related department, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, will the first university sponsor one of its alumni for the travel? (This looks unlikely to me.)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T12:56:33.920" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T18:13:18.120" Title="Publication sponsorship for research conducted elsewhere" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2012-06-14T13:22:59.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the cases I'm familiar with (math departments at US research universities), funding for travel is more likely to come from an individual department than from a university-wide source, so this would be a matter of department policy.  That's a little less true for publication costs, because some universities have started funds to pay for gold open access, but everyone is setting it up a little differently so I don't think one can announce a general rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the department level, this really varies.  One department I used to be at provided a certain amount of travel funding to each student, to be used however they wanted (as long as it was for academic purposes, of course).  I think that's a little unusual, and many departments don't make a decision until the student applies for funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a field in which these costs are an important part of publication (not pure mathematics, for example), then this is probably the wrong question.  In such fields, the funding usually comes from the advisor's grants, rather than the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T13:22:59.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2008" CreationDate="2012-06-14T16:47:33.173" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm most familiar with the NSF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301&quot;&gt;mathematical sciences research postdoctoral fellowship&lt;/a&gt;, which I was lucky enough to get 15 years ago.  The application process is described in detail in NSF's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301&quot;&gt;formal solicitation&lt;/a&gt;, but here's an executive summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unlike most other NSF funding, this program is &lt;strong&gt;limited to US citizens and permanent residents&lt;/strong&gt;.  (NSF's regular research grants formally fund the &lt;em&gt;institution&lt;/em&gt;, not the PI, so non-American PIs can win grants; on the other hand, NSF's graduate research fellowship has a similar citizenship requirement.)  There was a parallel program for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5179&amp;amp;org=NSF&quot;&gt;international postdocs&lt;/a&gt; for several years, but it seems to have been retired.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11541/nsf11541.htm#elig&quot;&gt;Applicants must be within two years of their PhD and must have no previous US federal grant funding.&lt;/a&gt;  In practice, this means each applicant can apply at most three times: once just before graduating and twice after.  Applicants do not need an academic affiliation when they apply.  (Again, the fellowship funds the applicant, not the institution.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The application itself requires a bunch of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11541/nsf11541.htm#prep&quot;&gt;NSF boilerplate&lt;/a&gt;, but the main content is an abbreviated (3-5 page) research proposal, a one-page project summary, and four recommendation letters (submitted separately by their authors).  As usual for NSF, the proposal &lt;em&gt;absolutely must&lt;/em&gt; contain a paragraph explicitly labeled &lt;strong&gt;Intellectual Merit&lt;/strong&gt; and another paragraph explicitly labeled &lt;strong&gt;Broader Impact&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Applicants also need an agreement from a sponsoring scientist/mentor/advisor.  The sponsor separately submits a statement describing their proposed mentorship role, research opportunities available in the hosting department, and promised infrastructure (office, computer support, libraries, specialized equipment, etc.).  The sponsor cannot also write a recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All applications are submitted electronically through &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/&quot;&gt;NSF's FastLane web site&lt;/a&gt;.  Considering how much FastLane has to handle (basically everything NSF does), it works &lt;em&gt;amazingly&lt;/em&gt; well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The applications are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11541/nsf11541.htm#review&quot;&gt;reviewed&lt;/a&gt; by a panel of mathematical scientists (or more likely by multiple panels, given the number of applications).  Panelists are invited by the program director, but in my experience, NSF program directors are happy to hear from volunteers! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each panel recommends and ranks a subset of the applications they review.  Standard NSF practice is to fund all applications &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; recommended by the panel, and &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; applications with weaker recommendations, depending on available funds and other criteria.  (NSF is deliberately vague about these other criteria, but gender, ethnic, and geographic diversity are likely guesses.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Applications for fellowships to begin in Fall 2013 are due &lt;strong&gt;October 19, 2012&lt;/strong&gt;.  Yes, this is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; early.  Winners are usually notified in February and announced on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/progSearch.do;jsessionid=E4985CE828429E5CFB0821F9F57CBB44?WT.si_n=ClickedAbstractsRecentAwards&amp;amp;WT.si_x=1&amp;amp;WT.si_cs=1&amp;amp;WT.z_pims_id=5301&amp;amp;SearchType=progSearch&amp;amp;page=2&amp;amp;QueryText=&amp;amp;ProgOrganization=DMS&amp;amp;ProgOfficer=&amp;amp;ProgEleCode=&amp;amp;BooleanElement=true&amp;amp;ProgRefCode=9219&amp;amp;BooleanRef=true&amp;amp;ProgProgram=&amp;amp;ProgFoaCode=&amp;amp;#results&quot;&gt;NSF web site&lt;/a&gt; soon thereafter.  All applicants receive a summary of their panel reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The total award amount is $150,000, distributed over a two-year period.  Most of that is salary, but about $30,000 is set aside for stuff like equipment, travel, and benefits from the host institution.  Frustratingly, fellows are neither employees of the hosting institution, employees of NSF, nor formally self-employed; the US Treasury Department simply injects $5000 into your bank account every month.  So good luck with taxes!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fellows need to submit progress reports once per year and a final report when the fellowship ends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T11:55:40.190" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T11:55:40.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2012-06-14T21:21:01.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast with Anonymous Mathematician, in the cases I'm familiar with (American CS departments), travel funding is provided primarily by &lt;em&gt;advisors&lt;/em&gt; rather than by departments.  And then it's really up to the individual advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a rule of thumb (or as evidence of my confirmation bias), I suspect most CS advisors would be happy to pay for at least one conference trip stemming from earlier work, if only to advertise their own insight in recruiting the student!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal &quot;publication costs&quot; are almost completely unheard of in computer science, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;even in open-access journals&lt;/a&gt;, so the answer there is trivially yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T18:13:18.120" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T18:13:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2012-06-14T21:26:30.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent answers given above, here are some reasons I've seen for professors to get an appointment at a different university (or to retain an appointment when they moved):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're a major part of a center at University A, and University A really doesn't want 'Co-Director of the A Center for Really Important Research' to be listed as a faculty member elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weird university tradition. For example, my university automatically gives all outside readers on a dissertation committee an appointment at the school. It's utterly meaningless, but technically its a thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration, grants, etc. are sometimes easier if everyone is technically faculty at the same school, and schools will sometimes bring in a professor from another nearby university to &quot;shore up&quot; a program, allow for easier mentorship if a professor keeps appearing on grad student committees, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T21:26:30.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2012-06-14T21:47:00.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; Anonymous Mathematician and JeffE, I've had a fair amount of conference funding come from a University-wide funding source, and never had anything come directly from my department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, there wasn't actually a restriction on whether or not the research was done at the university, merely that I was a student there, and that I was presenting research (rather than merely presenting at the conference). As you have a very limited number of times you can apply for travel funding using that mechanism, and it seems the frequency of conference travel increases as you approach graduation (and understandably have more to present), I suspect they're content if a few &quot;slip through&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of @JeffE's statement that a lot of funding comes from &lt;em&gt;advisors&lt;/em&gt;, I agree, and then it really is up to the individual advisor. Many I know would be happy to fund a student regardless of where the research originated (especially if the student hasn't had a chance to produce research from their lab yet) for the experience, networking, education, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publication costs are a somewhat trickier question - honestly, I've never &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; to publish in something with publication costs, so if I were the new supervisor, I'd argue it was an avoidable expense. If its not, then I'd probably say it's the originating university's problem - their faculty are presumably the ones who would be benefitting from the research hitting the press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, I'd at least expect your affiliation to be at your new university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T21:47:00.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2018" CreationDate="2012-06-15T01:07:11.297" Score="16" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reference librarians at my school are often very helpful. If I tell them my topic, they will help me find many resources which I might not have otherwise found and generally tend to save me a lot of time. Is it common practice to credit them in someway, especially when publishing a paper? If so, what is the common format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T12:55:36.763" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T12:55:36.763" Title="Should writers give credit to reference librarians?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2012-06-15T02:35:35.913" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the acknowledgements section of your paper is an appropriate place to thank anyone who provided valuable assistance.  Depending on the circumstances, you could phrase it pretty generally (&quot;I thank the reference librarians at University X for their assistance in conducting a literature search&quot;), you could thank specific people, or you could even identify particular contributions (&quot;I am grateful to Y for bringing the literature on Z to my attention&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T02:35:35.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2028" CreationDate="2012-06-15T05:47:32.350" Score="16" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when I'm working on research in the office, at least with the door open, I often get interrupted and am generally less productive.  On the other hand, I often have students ask to meet with me outside of office hours on days when I don't plan to be in my office, and they're unhappy when I mention that I won't be available that day.  I suspect this hurts my student evaluation scores (which are the primary basis for the evaluation of our teaching in our tenure process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, as junior faculty, I'm aware that getting tenure is partly about &quot;fitting in&quot; with your department.  In mine, many (most?) folks are in their offices for something closer to 9-5 five days a week, perhaps leaving early on Friday.  When I am in the office, I make a point to stop in and say hi to colleagues, but I'm sure that I'm less visible around the department than many others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than a specific answer, I guess I'm looking for guidelines in how you approach this type of decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T17:31:44.660" Title="What are the trade-offs of working in the office versus elsewhere (as a professor)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2012-06-15T08:20:55.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation also depends a bit on if you're looking for financial support in the form of fellowships. If so, then you need to be a bit ahead of the schedule for applying to the graduate departments directly—some fellowship programs, including the NSF, typically have deadlines in November. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, if the school does not do &quot;rolling admissions,&quot; then the deadline will be somewhere in December or early January, with decisions given in February or early March, and a decision expected usually by May 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T08:20:55.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-15T08:43:19.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find that when I'm working on research in the office, at least with the door open, I often get interrupted and am generally less productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to redefine productive. Having your door open will increase the time it takes to get a manuscript out, but that is not the only thing that defines productivity. Time spent improving your teaching evals (e.g., by meeting with students) and being visible to your colleagues IS time well spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T08:43:19.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2024" CreationDate="2012-06-15T13:16:07.650" Score="25" ViewCount="1551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reviewing a journal paper recently that is closely related to work a colleague and I are doing. We are currently in the process of writing up our paper, and I plan to cite the paper I reviewed in ours. The paper I reviewed has been accepted after two rounds, but has not appeared in print yet. The author does not have a preprint on their website (or other preprint services). We don't build on the reviewed paper I want to cite directly, but our work is closely related. In the future we will probably start building on the reviewed paper, so I want my co-author to be aware of it as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I send the last version of the reviewed paper (that I saw) to my colleague? Can I cite the paper as &quot;(in press)&quot; if I submit our paper before the reviewed paper finally appears in print?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:47:35.403" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T01:47:35.403" Title="Can I show my co-author the final version of an accepted publication I reviewed?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-15T13:22:21.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the basic guideline is the perception that you give.  The actual time you spend in and out of your office is less important than whether your colleagues feel like you are an active member of the department and your students feel like you are accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For your colleagues, I would be conscious of the times and events that seem to build cohesion in your department and make sure you are present for those.  This can be informal things like having lunch together.  Or more formal things like departmental seminars.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For your students, I would set consistent and clearly defined office hours and always be available during those times (even if you don't have a student scheduled).  You will need to make sure that these office hours are distributed such that most of your students can utilize some of them and be prepared to be somewhat flexible for students that have consistent conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T13:22:21.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2022" CreationDate="2012-06-15T13:55:57.023" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you cannot. Until the paper is publicly available you cannot show it to anyone nor even acknowledge its existence. The only slight exception I would make is that if a colleague was going to pursue similar/identical research, I would tell them they might want to contact the author. I would assume that this would result in my identity as a reviewer being revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit your manuscript as is, but add the citation as soon as it become public.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reveal your identity as a reviewer and ask the author for a preprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1 is reasonable since you believe the existence of the paper is not critical to your paper. Option 2 is okay, but remember the reviewers of you manuscript will not have easy access to the cited material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T13:55:57.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-15T14:42:10.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be able to mollify your students a bit by paying attention to your wording.  Saying &quot;I can't meet with you on Tuesday because that's my day for research&quot; makes the student feel like a low priority.  Saying &quot;I'm afraid I can't meet on Tuesday, but how about Wednesday?&quot; helps convey that the student is important to you and you would like to meet with them when you can.  I think accessibility is as much about perception as reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T14:42:10.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:11:21.870" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few issues here: one is dealing with students, and one is general &quot;visibility&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first, I can understand student unhappiness if you give them office hours but wish to meet outside the allotted time. They have constraints as well and probably don't have a lot of free time to meet with you :). Maybe, since you're concerned about distractons, you can pack all &quot;distracting&quot; activities into a single day and do your office hours on that day ? Alternately, do you prefer to work at home or at a cafe ? If the latter, you could always do your office hours and then disappear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second, I think the issue is a little overrated. As dQdM points out, the issue is whether you're perceived as being active and a &quot;good citizen&quot;. The former can be achieved by responding to email promptly and the latter by your usual service responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of perspective: I came to academia from a research lab. In a lab, people are usually around all the time, and I was shocked when I came to academia to see how few faculty were around in the office at any given time. So I don't think your absence might even be noticed that much :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T15:11:21.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2022" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:14:12.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't cite the paper till it's in print or somewhere publicly available. As for sharing with your colleague, I think there are degrees. If the colleague is sitting in your office and you show them a hard copy, that's less of a problem than emailing a copy to a colleague (remote or local) which I would not do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T15:14:12.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:08:07.847" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to set boundaries with students, with colleagues, and with yourself about when and where you're available for meetings.  It's also important to find environments that most effectively support different types of work, and give yourself permission to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you, when I'm in my office, I &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to be interrupted; so when I'm working at my desk, I can only productively work on tasks that survive interruption.  Put bluntly, the office is where I have meetings; if I need to think, I find a whiteboard in an empty conference room; if I need to write, I go to a coffee shop.  (Suresh is correct; I am in a coffee shop &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;.)  As Daniel says, all three places allow for productive work, but of very different types.  Even in the computer science building, for small meetings where I don't want to be interrupted, I prefer to go to the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; person's office.  And because my undergraduate office hours are occasionally &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; popular (especially right before exams), I don't hold them in my actual office, but in a larger room down the hall with couches and whiteboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You express two points of concern, which I'll exaggerate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My students won't like me if I'm not available on their schedule.&lt;/strong&gt;  I agree with DQdlM and Nate.  Spread out your office hours to fit as many students' schedules as possible, be in your office (or &quot;office&quot;) for every minute of office hours even if nobody shows up, and be willing to offer &lt;em&gt;occasional&lt;/em&gt; off-schedule meetings.  It might help to announce &lt;em&gt;in your syllabus&lt;/em&gt; times that you're willing to schedule sporadic meetings.  (&quot;I'm also available for occasional meetings Tuesday or Thursday afternoons; send me email to set up an appointment!&quot;)  Consider moving (not adding) your office hours if student demand doesn't match your announced schedule.  But then stick to your guns.  Yes, some students will be unhappy, but that's inevitable; don't take it personally.  Your availability outside regular office hours will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be the most significant bit in your student evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My colleagues won't like me if they don't see me in my office.&lt;/strong&gt;  I agree with DQdlM and Suresh here.  Yes, it's important to be visible and active citizen of your department; that's not the same thing as being constantly on call.  The amount of time you spend at your desk will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be the most significant bit in your tenure evaluation.  The danger is not that nobody sees you in your office, but that nobody knows what you're doing.  Give regular talks to your colleagues &lt;em&gt;and their PhD students&lt;/em&gt; showing off the results of your out-of-office effort.  Go to faculty meetings, and &lt;em&gt;occasionally&lt;/em&gt; offer an opinion.  (Careful, that gun is loaded.)  Attend seminars, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; for faculty candidates, &lt;em&gt;and ask questions&lt;/em&gt;.  If there is a regular departmental social event (&quot;Tea&quot; in many math departments), be there.  And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; encourage you to raise these concerns with your department chair or your senior faculty mentors.  (You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have a senior faculty mentor, don't you?  If not, find one!)  They can help you navigate your department culture far better than Some Guy On The Intertubes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T18:08:07.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2031" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:46:53.500" Score="32" ViewCount="6093" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my institution, I am required to publish four papers in addition to my PhD thesis.  Of course my planned papers are related to my dissertation project, but I'm not sure if it could be considered academic dishonesty / plagiarism to use these works to form part of my dissertation.  I'm not thinking about copying them word for word, but I was hoping that I can include summarized versions of those works as chapters in my dissertation.  Is this a common practice or would this be considered self-plagiarism?  Should my dissertation work be completely separate from those other publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T17:50:41.670" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T17:50:41.670" Title="Can I use the work in my journal/conference publications as chapters in my dissertation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2012-06-15T21:23:53.393" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends probably on the rules at your institution. At many places actually this is the usual custom. Ask your adviser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write out the correct references so that everybody who reads knows that this part can be found in that paper, then it is never plagiarism. See also the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/149/what-is-a-sandwich-thesis&quot;&gt;&quot;Sandwich thesis&quot;&lt;/a&gt; question mentioned in the comment by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3/andy-w&quot;&gt;Andy W&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T21:23:53.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2012-06-16T01:05:44.427" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementing the answer from abatkai:&#xA;The rules likely vary by field also. In chemistry, converting previously published papers into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/149/what-is-a-sandwich-thesis&quot;&gt;Sandwich Thesis&lt;/a&gt; is generally accepted and commonplace. My thesis contained a chapter that was prefaced &amp;quot;Portions of this chapter were previously published as (citation), and have been reproduced with permission. Copyright is held by (publisher of the journal).&amp;quot; This was followed by further copyright information and the statement required by the publisher. My institution also required that I submit paperwork in support of my use of published and copyrighted material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to consulting your adviser and your institution, you should consult the journals in which you publish. Many have policies in place for this. For example, from the American Chemical Society's &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/journals/faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyright faq&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current ACS Journal Publishing Agreement covers several permitted uses by authors... Permitted uses of all versions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use in theses and collections of your own work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T01:05:44.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-16T01:58:21.790" Score="6" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a software developer for about three years now (making custom ERP software), I love programming and also other areas in CS like AI, but I really don't like the fact that you have to learn a lot of business related topics (accounting, finance, so on) and also having to deal with end-users and managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about starting an MSc degree in computer science and turning my career more onto academia. I think it's best to do a MSc and not directly a PhD because I feel that I can go back to industry if I don't like academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the move to academia over industry the way to go or I'll face similar problems there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some more data: I am still somewhat young (28 yrs) and with a B.Sc Degree in Information Systems with 4.1 out of 5 GPA from a small college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1075" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T19:50:24.350" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T19:50:24.350" Title="Is MSc the way to go?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1295" CreationDate="2012-06-16T09:24:20.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, you will be expected to have some research experience before applying to a PhD programme in science: not necessarily publications (although that always helps!), but certainly having done an extended project and written a dissertation about it. In my field (physics) you can definitely apply straight out of an integrated masters degree, provided that your last year had a substantial research component. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any research background at all (or just short summer projects or the equivalent), then this is the &quot;extra work&quot; you are looking for. Find a MSc by research in a field as close as possible to the one you want to do a PhD in. This also has the advantage that you get to decide whether a PhD is really for you while only taking a year, and to leave with a qualification at the end if it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is just general advice: as JeffE says, individual universities will be able to provide specific information on their admissions and funding criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="961" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T09:24:20.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2038" CreationDate="2012-06-16T15:46:08.827" Score="35" ViewCount="3622" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the impact factor really useful for judging the quality of a journal article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="7269" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T18:54:33.427" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T18:54:33.427" Title="Does Impact Factor reflect the quality of a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1743" CreationDate="2012-06-16T15:49:25.207" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the single thing that most helped me get a tenure-track job was that during my postdoc I &lt;strong&gt;gave lots of talks&lt;/strong&gt; at conferences and in seminars at other schools (something like 30 talks in 2 years, including those I gave at my postdoc institution).  First, this helped a lot with networking.  Second, and perhaps more important, all this experience gave me a ton of confidence in my ability to give good talks.  That confidence spilled over into the rest of my interviews, which was generally a very good thing.&#xA;I didn't really start giving many talks until during my postdoc, but in retrospect, I wish I'd given many more in grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All grad students know that if you want a job in academia you should publish lots of good papers.  But many of them don't grasp the value of learning to communicate clearly and to publicize their work.  During my postdoc, I set aside 2 or 3 weeks to learn how to draw good pictures to go into my talks, and I think that skill has really improved their subsequent quality.  Personally, I do everything using beamer and tikz (presentation packages for latex).  However, your specific tool is not so important.  Ask around and find a tool that is widely used and supported by folks in your research area, then invest the time to learn to use it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second really important thing you can do is &lt;strong&gt;network&lt;/strong&gt;.  When I was in grad school, I had no concept of how important networking is for a career in academia (in fact, almost any job).  Many of my papers have grown out of conversations that started at a conference.  Once people know you, they invite you to speak (at their school or at a conference session they're organizing).  As you get to know more of the key researchers in your area, you find it easier to keep up with important new developments (which better inform your research, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T15:49:25.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:31:44.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you announce your office hours to the class at the beginning of the term display a chart that includes all reasonable hours but no marks. Point to a particular time and ask, &quot;If I choose this hour how many people will not be able to come to this office hour?&quot; If lots of students raise their hands, say &quot;That's not one of my office hours.&quot; If a lot of students indicate they can go mark it as an office hour. Repeat this process, perhaps rearranging previously chosen hours until every student can go to at least one office hour. If you are also available by appointment at other times It should solve a lot of problems. Also at the beginning of the the first day of class you will create a favorable impression. Before you do this you should have a very good idea of time when you do not want office hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1076" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T17:31:44.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2034" CreationDate="2012-06-16T19:37:41.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quality&quot; is very subjective.  Impact factor is a good measure of how often articles in a journal are cited, but this doesn't necessarily directly relate to &quot;quality&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals with a narrow focus will have relatively low impact factors, but are still considered very &quot;high quality&quot; (i.e. prestigious to publish in) journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, in the geosciences, the Journal of Structural Geology is a much more prestigious (and harder to publish in) journal than, say, Tectonophysics (just to pick another Elseviver journal), but it has a lower impact factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="169" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T19:37:41.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2034" CreationDate="2012-06-16T22:12:06.613" Score="29" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer Paul's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the post asks about journals.  For a well-worn list of criticisms of Impact Factor as an indicator of journal quality, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticisms&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; and the sources it cites.  In many disciplines, important papers receive most of their citations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Report/CitationStatistics.pdf&quot;&gt;well outside the IF's two-year window&lt;/a&gt;.  Raw citation data can be manipulated by editorial policies, some more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_citation&quot;&gt;nefarious&lt;/a&gt; than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475651/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;, or even by &lt;a href=&quot;http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57500/&quot;&gt;individual papers&lt;/a&gt;.  Thomson-Reuters' calculations of Impact Factor are &lt;a href=&quot;http://jcb.rupress.org/content/179/6/1091.full&quot;&gt;not reproducible&lt;/a&gt;, even using their own citation data.  Et cetera ad nauseam.  But most importantly: &lt;strong&gt;Having lots of citations is not the same thing as quality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body of the post asks about journal articles.  Impact Factor is (roughly) the average number of citations to all papers published by a journal in a given time window.  Even if it were a reliable measure of &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; quality (which it isn't), it would say nothing at all about the quality of any &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-06-17T20:35:41.077" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T20:35:41.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1743" CreationDate="2012-06-16T22:17:11.787" Score="12" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do awesome research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get famous people to rave about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T22:17:11.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2041" CreationDate="2012-06-17T01:16:28.120" Score="12" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I'm doing some work which is closely related to someone's else's work. I want to study the same data that he studied. I know him well, and producing the data is no big deal but is time consuming, so I ask him to provide me with the data he had produced. If he agreed. Should I include him as a co-author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1078" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T01:21:03.247" Title="If someone provided you with data does he become a co-author?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2040" CreationDate="2012-06-17T01:21:03.247" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of whether or not merely providing data for a project constitutes &quot;authorship&quot; is a thorny one. Many medical journals, for example, are asserting that merely having generated data is not grounds for authorship all on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if he's just providing you with a data file, and that's the last you'll hear from him? In my mind, that lands you in the acknowledgements section of a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if he's going back and forth retrieving data as you refine your question, providing advice on how it came about, what it means, etc. and may end up reviewing the draft of the paper, etc.? I'd make him an author. Essentially, I would extend him the &lt;em&gt;chance&lt;/em&gt; to take up the slightly more burdensome mantle of authorship, and let him turn it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T01:21:03.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2032" CreationDate="2012-06-17T03:06:56.417" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many M.Sc degrees in the US are not research oriented (try Canada, they seem to be more common here), and you should be wary of this. If you want to gain experience in research to see &quot;if it is for you&quot; then you need to find a thesis bases Masters, and not a course based one. A good sanity check to see if your potential Masters program will involve real research is to see who is paying who. If you are paying them, then this is not where you want to be. If they are paying you, then it is much more likely that you are in a research based masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a Master's degree is a good way to test the waters. It is also a good way to shore up on any knowledge you might lack after being out of university for 7 years, and make sure you have all the necessary foundations (sometimes Information Systems degrees don't teach these). If you change schools between your M.Sc and Ph.D it also offers you a chance to work with more people and if you don't change schools you can often fast-track before graduationg as if you had been in a Ph.D program all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, getting an M.Sc degree does have potential downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can take longer to finish the whole process (B.Sc + M.Sc + Ph.D tends to be longer than just B.Sc + Ph.D)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ph.D programs tend to have more stringent requirements for applicants that already have a Masters degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some funding opportunities (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1447/what-are-some-good-practices-for-applying-to-the-nsf-graduate-research-fellowshi#comment2211_1457&quot;&gt;such as NSF&lt;/a&gt;) might end up unachievable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T03:06:56.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2034" CreationDate="2012-06-17T03:22:09.877" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the other two answers haven't made this obvious. The answer is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, but it can be taken even further than what the above answers suggests. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4328&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;We can study this!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L0KoZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above image is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_determination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;coefficient of determination&lt;/a&gt; between the impact factor of journals and the 2-year citation rate of their papers from 1902 to 2009, for all natural and medical sciences journals. Basically this means that even if all you care about is the number of citations you get then even then the impact factors of journals is starting to matter less and less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what matters is how influential your ideas are and not how much they are cited, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1020/66&quot;&gt;but we don't really a have a good metric for that.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T03:22:09.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2034" CreationDate="2012-06-17T04:02:46.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editors of &lt;em&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; (a very good journal), recently had &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2012/07000/We_Are_Number_One_But_Nobody_Cares_That_s_Good.1.aspx&quot;&gt;an editorial&lt;/a&gt; about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most major epidemiology journals, including ours, have seen a steady&#xA;  rise in their impact factors during recent years. At the same time,&#xA;  the relative rank of these journals changes from year to year. Such&#xA;  changes are unlikely to represent true annual changes in these&#xA;  journals' relative quality. We think the various epidemiology journals&#xA;  are indeed different, and they deserve to be evaluated and compared.&#xA;  But we're happier when such assessments are based on matters of&#xA;  substance, such as editorial policies, quality of reviews, quality of&#xA;  editing, efficiency in the processing of manuscripts, and the (real)&#xA;  impact of the journal on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said editorial also has links to several others in that journal critiquing the notion of the Impact Factor, and its scientific merit (or lack thereof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T04:02:46.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="863" CreationDate="2012-06-17T04:34:28.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the slower pace and autonomy that you're looking for may be available to you once you finish your classes and pass your prelim (or qualifying exam; the name may vary, but most PhD programs have some sort of exam, after which you are &quot;all but dissertation&quot;).  This is an important aspect to consider when choosing your PhD adviser.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser allowed me quite a bit of freedom to work on problems that I picked.  As a result, grad school took me a little longer, but I think I was better prepared for life afterward, when I did not work closely with a supervisor.  Through high school, undergrad, and the start of grad school I had a &quot;get through fast&quot; mentality.  Once I got a few years into grad school, I changed my view more to &quot;take time to learn the stuff you want to learn&quot;.  If you do stay in academia, the clock really starts when you finish your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T04:34:28.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2012-06-17T05:04:19.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as possible, I'd encourage you to pick research topics because they really interest you, rather than because you think you can get funding for them.  It's so much easier to bring passion and energy to your research when you love it (rather than when you've chosen it to get funding).  That said here are a few more ways to develop new research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hear a talk&lt;/strong&gt; at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write a paper with a &lt;strong&gt;colleague who knows a different area than you&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chase &lt;strong&gt;references for a paper you are reading or writing&lt;/strong&gt;.  I often learn quite a bit the first time that I write the introduction of a paper in an area that's new to me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T05:04:19.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1743" CreationDate="2012-06-17T05:51:05.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in your field, and I'm a bit later in the game than you are, as I completed my PhD in 2010. Here's some advice, in increasing order of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very good way to get a feel for what it takes to land faculty positions is to take a look at the departments you would like to work at in the future and scope out the Assistant Professors.  Many of them will have their CVs and Teaching and Research Statements updated to when they applied for the position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to cultivate several strong letters of reference, hopefully by working with some of the bigger names in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to go to a few job talks, as this will also give you a sense of what a strong research agenda looks like, both in terms of accomplished work and future directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need some teaching experience, but being a great classroom teacher will not get you a job if your research portfolio is weak unless you are going to a school that focuses on undergraduate education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computational Science is a bit of a funny field, as we live at the intersection of several very different fields: physics, mathematics, computer science, and usually some scientific application.  These fields all have their own rules for hiring and promotion, and this is important to understand, because you will almost certainly land in a department that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; titled Computational Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to &lt;strong&gt;statistically&lt;/strong&gt; look good, because the members of the hiring committee will have almost no other grounds for justification besides what is written in your hiring application.  This means you will absolutely need a good number of high-quality journal publications, preferably at least 5, when you apply for a faculty position.  Conference papers only count for a Computer Science department, and you may need twice as many to be considered in that direction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="404" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T05:51:05.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-17T13:55:35.833" Score="11" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently doing a master's degree near my home state and have been offered to continue at the same grad school with a PhD. The funding side of things has yet to be confirmed, but is almost secure. I also have another offer from a grad school in Switzerland for which the funding is definitely secured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding the position in Switzerland, (i) living abroad for a few years is an advantage and (ii) the research topic is more closely aligned to what I ultimately would like to focus. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My current place has the advantage of (i) continuity and knowing the research group environment and (ii) research collaborations and publications that would probably exceed - in terms of both quantity and quality - that of the position in Switzerland.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other considerations should I factor in to my decision and any advice as to which option I should choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1080" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T00:47:56.997" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T10:45:27.483" Title="Deciding whether to study abroad or continue at my current university for my PhD, what factors to consider?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2012-06-17T22:55:19.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely take into account quality of life in either position. Also, you should keep in mind that in the academic world, it is looked upon favorably to move around for your training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T22:55:19.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2012-06-18T00:52:24.793" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One big advantage of changing schools is that you meet new people.  Most people have a few things they're really good at.  By meeting new people, you get to learn the new things that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are really good at.  More generally, you get to experience the culture of a different place and group of people (both academically and socially).  This helps to give you a more developed sense of what is normal (reasonable to expect), and likely will expose you to new insights.  All else being (close to) equal, I suggest that you move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T00:52:24.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2053" CreationDate="2012-06-18T02:09:16.840" Score="7" ViewCount="27191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my masters thesis now. I saw some theses with the acknowledgement chapter after the abstract, in other cases it's the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the acknowledgement chapter is not related to the scientific work in the thesis, and thus should not be put between the abstract and the introduction. An abstract could be nice in the beginning if we're looking at a paper for example, but for a thesis (usually &gt;80 pages) the reader would have to turn the pages anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T12:52:13.803" LastActivityDate="2020-04-21T08:00:04.613" Title="In a thesis, which comes first - Abstract or Acknowledgements?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2052" CreationDate="2012-06-18T02:30:13.673" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check the guidelines from your university. I'd assume that they would have requirements for the order. If not, I always prefer the acknowledgements should come first, that way the non-scientific stuff is out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T02:30:13.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2034" CreationDate="2012-06-18T08:13:59.223" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly, people here don't seem to like the idea that impact factor would be used to evaluate journal quality. I'm not a big fan of impact factor either. It can be gamed (and the degree to which it is gamed will increase as greater importance is placed on it). It also becomes particularly problematic when you compare across disciplines with different citation practices and citation half-lives. Furthermore, there's also the risk that people start using impact factor to evaluate article quality, which is a lot more questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, within a discipline, I generally find that better journals have higher impact factors. It's not perfect. But there is a strong correlation. There's also research that shows very high correlations between various indices of journal quality including peer ratings, impact factor, and various other citation based indicators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, &lt;strong&gt;within a field, impact factor is one of many variables that typically correlates highly with journal quality&lt;/strong&gt;. If you know nothing about the quality of a journal, you'll know more about it by looking at its impact factor. However, &#xA;That shouldn't stop you from looking at other and most likely better indicators of journal quality (e.g., what is your own evaluation of the content published in the journal in recent years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also really important to ask yourself why you want to evaluate journal quality. Is it to select a journal? to reward, promote, or hire academics? Using impact factor in these cases can be problematic for a wide variety of reasons, but these are separate issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one article that I found providing empirical evidence by Saha et al (2003). To quote the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Objectives: Impact factor, an index based on the frequency with which&#xA;  a journal's articles are cited in scientific publications, is a&#xA;  putative marker of journal quality. However, empiric studies on impact&#xA;  factor's validity as an indicator of quality are lacking. The authors&#xA;  assessed the validity of impact factor as a measure of quality for&#xA;  general medical journals by testing its association with journal&#xA;  quality as rated by clinical practitioners and researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methods: We surveyed physicians specializing in internal medicine in&#xA;  the United States, randomly sampled from the American Medical&#xA;  Association's Physician Masterfile (practitioner group, n = 113) and&#xA;  from a list of graduates from a national postdoctoral training program&#xA;  in clinical and health services research (research group, n = 151).&#xA;  Respondents rated the quality of nine general medical journals, and we&#xA;  assessed the correlation between these ratings and the journals'&#xA;  impact factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results: The correlation between impact factor and physicians' ratings&#xA;  of journal quality was strong (r2 = 0.82, P = 0.001). The correlation&#xA;  was higher for the research group (r2 = 0.83, P = 0.001) than for the&#xA;  practitioner group (r2 = 0.62, P = 0.01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions: Impact factor may be a reasonable indicator of quality&#xA;  for general medical journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saha, S., Saint, S. &amp;amp; Christakis, D.A. (2003). Impact factor: a valid measure of journal quality?. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 91, 42. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC141186/&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T08:19:01.087" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T08:19:01.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2060" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:12:01.420" Score="15" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started to get emails like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From: Firstname Middlename Lastname &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;someotherfirstname0000@hotmail&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need the article to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firstname Middlename Lastname&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title of paper identifying one of my papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the beginning of academic spam or phishing? Do you get such stuff regularly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first reaction&lt;/strong&gt; I had was to answer with an ironic version of how I'd like such an email to look and how I'd have answered it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On a second thought&lt;/strong&gt; I decided that the email was so rude that I won't  answer it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few hours I got the very same email a second time. I noticed that the sender name is not the one of the names in the &quot;signature&quot;. Also, the sender is rather unknown to the more relevant part of the internet (including pubmed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T18:32:29.880" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T18:32:29.880" Title="Should I respond to emails (resembling spams) asking for my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;spam&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2055" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:19:48.570" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is it's someone setting up a bot to try and get research articles for free. Once your paper is published, the copyright is owned by the journal. Unless you paid for open access, you are breaking the copyright by sharing the article. In addition, you are probably also breaking the terms of the subscription to the journal your university has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In other words, ignore the email!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T19:19:48.570" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2061" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:36:36.887" Score="17" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question came up from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/a/4466/468&quot;&gt;a discussion&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;meta.MSE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we need to search &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;MSE&lt;/a&gt; (or blogs, math forums, ...) to make sure someone hasn't already proven a result when writing a paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if we are already aware of a them (so no need for searching)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is not citing such a post in these two cases considered plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand, the common practice is to check standard reviewed reputable publication venues (journals, conferences, maybe arXiv) and also with experts in the area to make sure a result is not already published nor a well-known folklore result. No one is going to search all over the internet and check every post that Google returns and citing other resources is very uncommon. I think checking &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathoverflow.com&quot;&gt;MatheOverflow&lt;/a&gt; can be considered similar to the later (checking with experts) (also see this discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.mathoverflow.net/discussion/951/copyrights-at-mo&quot;&gt;MO&lt;/a&gt; but that doesn't seem to apply to a site like MSE. I am not going to cite a discussion with some random person on the street (not a professional mathematician) who claimed to have a solution or an idea for a solution for a problem (which is not passed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peer-review&lt;/a&gt; process and I might not want even want to spend time understanding or checking the correctness of the solution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the accepted practice for checking originality of a result? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is expected from authors regarding this before making a paper submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some clarification since there seems to be a misinterpretation of the question about being academic honesty. The question is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; about posts that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are aware of,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contain a complete rigorousness solution (not just ideas), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are confident the solution is correct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T04:47:47.020" Title="What references must be acknowledged in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:44:13.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience I think the accepted practice is searching the peer-reviewed literature in your field. I'm not saying results published on websites/MSE, etc. aren't valid, they just aren't part of the expected search. Anyways, I don't think peer-reviewed journals would react well to web citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T19:44:13.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:55:54.537" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question of academic honesty and due diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not arrive at the result yourself, but got it from someone else (either on SE or a homeless man on the street) then it is your responsibility to not claim credit for the result. Of course, in the case of the homeless man you can get away with claiming credit, and in most cases for SE, too. However, it is simply not honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you arrived at the result by yourself, then as a research you should provide due diligence and check if the result is already known. This usually consists of checking the standard sources (i.e. published papers, books) and the communities which you are a part of. &quot;Folklore&quot; in mathematics is vast, and MO, math.SE, and cstheory are all becoming part of it. If you are aware that others arrived at a result before you then you should mention it in your paper (either with a full citation, if applicable, or with an acknowledgement). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just like you are not expected to search the back-log of every journal ever published, you don't have to scour the whole internet, either. If you want precedent of this: consider all the results that were published independently in the west and the soviet union during the Cold War. It would have been unreasonable of the scholars on both sides to be fully aware of the work of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T19:55:54.537" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2055" CreationDate="2012-06-18T21:11:02.423" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't even think this is for harvesting papers. My guess: it is to validate email addresses so that actual spam campaigns can achieve a better return on investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T21:11:02.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2012-06-19T00:57:16.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As best I understand it, the clarified question is this: if you are writing a paper and find a posting on the internet that contains ideas on your problem (which may or may not be correct, may be difficult to understand, and in any case do not seem to constitute a complete solution), then should you cite it?  Let's assume you are making no use of the ideas, since if you are then you obviously need to cite the posting (regardless of whether you developed the ideas independently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you must cite it anyway.  Of course, there are exceptions.  If it's obviously crackpot work, then you are free to dismiss it as worthless.  (Andrew Wiles didn't need to cite thousands of crackpot &quot;proofs&quot; of Fermat's Last Theorem.)  If it's really only tangentially related to the problem you are working on, then it may not be relevant enough to cite.  However, it absolutely &lt;em&gt;does not matter at all&lt;/em&gt; whether the work is peer reviewed or formally published, who wrote it or what their credentials are, whether it is complete, how easy it is to find, or whether it is difficult to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to endorse it, and citing a paper does not in any way indicate that you feel it is correct.  If you rely on the paper, then that's an endorsement, but mentioning it is not.  For example, you could write &quot;Several authors have studied this problem, including...&quot; and give citations to them.  Then readers can decide for themselves what to make of these contributions.  They will understand from the form of your citation that you feel these works are closely enough related to be worth citing, but not important enough to your paper to discuss in detail.  You can also say something more skeptical if warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason you don't see these sorts of citations very often is that this situation doesn't often arise.  (I've never seen a post on mathoverflow or math.stackexchange that I felt I should cite in one of my papers.)  And even when it does arise, the citation may be as a personal communication rather than giving a URL.  (It's much better to give a more detailed citation, so other people can find and learn from or evaluate the posting, but I guess an uninformative citation is better than none at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for due diligence in searching for prior work, there's no simple rule.  You should search everywhere you feel there might plausibly be something to find, and you should consult with experts on anything you feel unsure of.  It's certainly impossible to search the entire academic literature, let alone the entire internet, so you'll be forced to make compromises compared with an ideal world.  For most purposes, non-academic internet sites will not be relevant enough to be worth searching carefully, but I guess it depends on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T00:57:16.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2012-06-19T04:47:47.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think due diligence in searching the literature includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking to at least one expert in the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking through the bibliographies of any major papers closely related to your paper to see if any of the titles look relevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Searching on google scholar or something similar for papers which cite any papers closely related to your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Searching on google for some of the key terms in your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last of these would pick up math.SE, but also often picks up lecture notes, slides, wikis, and other things which would not come up through more traditional academic sources.  If you find something clearly relevant then you should cite it.  Furthermore, you should do these things before getting too far into a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, no matter how much due diligence you do, you're going to miss stuff sometimes.  5 years after &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/1q1fcfdwvh7babhm/&quot;&gt;my first paper&lt;/a&gt; was published, it was pointed out to me that Osterle gave the same argument in Seminaire Bourbaki (1987/8:165–186).  More recently, one of the 3 main results in &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2240&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; follows from a 15 year old result of Popa.  Searching what's known is incredibly hard even if you try your best.  But that's no reason not to try your best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T04:47:47.020" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2069" CreationDate="2012-06-19T05:31:40.203" Score="8" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bad habit of trying to objectively measure myself and my understanding. One of the ways I do this is by saying to myself &quot;I only understand X after I have read the entire chapter in this book on X&quot; or &quot;I can start doing a problem on X after I have read all about X.&quot; I do this because it generally guarantees that I haven't missed something important; that I'm not stuck on something that's obvious to everybody else. It's also something external that I can point to to justify my ignorance. Like, if I didn't know something, I could say &quot;Well if that's important, then why didn't this author mention it in this entire chapter?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of my peers don't do this. I think most of them pick up just enough from lecture to do the assignments. I'm really starting to wish I was like that because this way of learning is seriously failing. It's starting to take a tremendous amount of time and I'm under time constraints. But it bothers the hell out of me if I can't first get all the facts down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And actually I did this last semester with one class because it was simply unfeasible to follow along with the book. When I look back I feel somewhat bad about it because the subject truly interested me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So how should I balance &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;solving assignments&lt;/strong&gt; during coursework? On one hand, I spend a lot of time with the books as there's a lot of stuff to learn and it helps to know all the facts and the motivation behind the ideas, as they can be enlightening. On the other hand, it leaves no time and my performance in school could be better if I focused more time on doing the assignments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="325" LastEditorUserId="325" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T22:40:23.217" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T22:40:23.217" Title="How to balance learning and solving assignments during coursework" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2063" CreationDate="2012-06-19T07:55:09.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this is on topic, but I'll answer anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you have time management problems. Sure, it is interesting to learn as much as possible about a topic and study it deeply, but ultimately, you have assignments and exams to complete. To a large degree you should be optimizing your time usage to do as well as possible in these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to determine whether you have learned enough is to attempt a lot of exercises. See how far you get with them. If you cannot do them, then this helps identify holes in your knowledge. Read about that particular topic. If there are things you don't understand while learning about the topic, work backwards and try to fill in those gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T07:55:09.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2055" CreationDate="2012-06-19T09:49:09.727" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The worst case of responding is a little more spam, so I would respond. I often find myself in a culture slash between what I consider rude and students consider acceptable email behavior. It wouldn't surprise me if a number of students were prepping for an exam and all wanted your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the paper phishing bot, it seems like it would be more efficient to use student library access to download papers (automatically) than to collect them via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T09:49:09.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2063" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:30:14.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what I found worked for me throughout my undergrad career and continues to work in my graduate career:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the chapter focusing on the main ideas (not the details) before lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take great notes in lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After lecture is done on a chapter, go back and re-read in more detail and make an outline combining the information in the book with what was presented in lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do all the assigned homework problems, going back to your outline as necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have time, do the rest of the problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T13:30:14.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2068" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:48:35.670" Score="25" ViewCount="5426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason to get paper reprints of your articles? Some journals charge for reprints others give them for free. Should I save the trees and not ask for the free ones? Are reprints so important that I should be paying for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I should add I have only seen reprints offered in bundles of 100 (maybe 50) and getting 10 does not seem to be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T01:13:43.647" LastActivityDate="2020-06-07T12:56:04.877" Title="Is there any reason to get paper reprints of your articles? " Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-06-19T14:51:03.493" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did it initially so that I would have a nice paper copy of my paper. In principle I could hand these out to my colleagues and other people who were interested in my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is rather out-dated these days. You can just send interested parties a pdf and they can read it on their iPad. Save the trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason at all to actually pay for reprints. You have a copy already, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T14:51:03.493" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2063" CreationDate="2012-06-19T15:50:38.663" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be interested to know that this problem doesn't go away when you finish classes.  It's easy to struggle with the same question when you're doing research.  Simply put, &lt;strong&gt;you don't have time to learn everything&lt;/strong&gt;.  You need to estimate how important a topic will be to your future studies (and future research).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to what you're describing, I feel a sense of security when I can reproduce the details of all the relevant proofs.  However, taking this approach to everything I learn is simply infeasible.  Perhaps you can take comfort in telling yourself that for the stuff that is most important, you'll reread it later and learn it in more detail.  The difficulty is that right now you most likely can't really tell which material will be most important (to you).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I continue to listen to talks and read more papers (or take more classes, at an earlier stage of my career), I watch for which ideas keep coming up.  When I hear about a topic repeatedly, I often become convinced that it's really worth learning in depth.  In the time between first seeing a topic and finally sitting down to really understand it, I'm also likely to learn about many connections to other areas, which give me more motivation.  In addition, I often grow in intellectual maturity, which makes it much easier to grasp ideas that were quite challenging the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T15:50:38.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2075" CreationDate="2012-06-19T19:55:02.307" Score="16" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What techniques have you found to improve collaboration with a remote colleague, in particular to make it feel more like collaboration in person?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of my collaborations are with colleagues outside of my state.  The simplest model I've used is that we each write up certain proofs, and then eventually one of us organizes the various pieces into a draft of a paper, which gets passed back and forth via email until we agree that we're ready to submit.  However, this typically feels quite different from collaborating in person.  One technique that I've used with surprising success is to skype with my colleague.  He was actually able to write on the chalkboard so that I could read it.  What techniques have worked best for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:30:27.000" Title="What are useful tips and tricks for collaborating remotely?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2071" CreationDate="2012-06-19T20:28:27.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have some money to spend, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gotomeeting.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GoToMeeting&lt;/a&gt; will hands down make your collaborations feel as if they are in person. You can have a meeting with video, screen sharing, etc. and I believe they have a 30 day free trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to go the free route, try out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; for sharing drafts. It will automatically keep version history and it eliminates all the emails. You could also hold meetings over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skype.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skype&lt;/a&gt;, however, it is only free for two video feeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T20:28:27.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2071" CreationDate="2012-06-19T22:05:19.150" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control&quot;&gt;Revision Control&lt;/a&gt;!! I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; coupled with &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt; being an efficient way (and free) to share and complete a collaboration, especially for &lt;code&gt;code&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;latex&lt;/code&gt; files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Else, google docs is also free,  allows to multiple persons to edit the same file at the same time, and you see who is doing what. You can do most &quot;Microsoft Word&quot; formats and things. You have also have as service free video-conference and chat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly &lt;strong&gt;discourage&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;Dropbox&lt;/code&gt; to share files edited per &lt;strong&gt;more than one person&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T22:05:19.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2079" CreationDate="2012-06-20T08:03:43.453" Score="7" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;In India, a minimum of 3 years of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobalertsindia.com/articles/iiit-allahabad-announces-recruitment-2012-for-faculty-positions-1970.html&quot;&gt;work experience&lt;/a&gt; is necessary to be appointed as an assistant professor in any of the IITs. (Years during the PhD or master's are not counted, but any year spent outside university after bachelor's will count.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is such a work experience a necessity even in US universities? If yes, how much will this weigh towards selection? If the candidate has only a post-bachelor's experience, what should be highlighted from that so as to enhance this application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T08:23:01.627" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T19:59:19.140" Title="Is work experience necessary for tenure-track positions?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2071" CreationDate="2012-06-20T08:28:59.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the hardest parts of remote collaboration is making sure everyone is on the same page. Agreeing on work flow in advance is critical. To me the most important thing is that everyone has a good understanding of the roles and expectations of the individuals. A good timeline, that is flexible, is also very useful. Agreeing upon software, programming, and writing style issues at the outset is also useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T08:28:59.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2071" CreationDate="2012-06-20T10:45:57.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use virtual world Second Life for team meetings. It is fun and we feel like we have traditional F2F meeting. We deal with the research of virtual team management. Some of our findings are available in my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jaroslava_Kubatova2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;publications&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1095" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T10:45:57.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2074" CreationDate="2012-06-20T15:18:48.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt the minimum is rigid and there is a room for lot of considerations.&#xA;I'd like to point you to a specific example (IISc). Although the points are opinions of a single person, my conversations with people at IISc have yielded similar opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/giridharmadras/aboutme2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prof. Giridhar Madras&lt;/a&gt;(Did his PhD from TAMU in &amp;lt;3 years!) has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://giridharmadras.blogspot.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excellent blog&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to IISc/IITs and some excellent articles for prospective faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He points to &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/newfacultyiisc/recruitment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one page that he authored about recruitments in IISc&lt;/a&gt; from which I'd like to quote a few points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technically, there is no age bar and no limit to the experience a candidate may have, but with increasing years of experience, candidates must be considered for correspondingly higher appointments. Though IISc has recruited faculty from 27 to 37 years old at the assistant professor level, the median age of recruitment would be around 30.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Begin making your enquiries at least one year before you actually want to move. The time taken to acknowledge an application vary from department to department, depending on the chairperson. If this happens, find someone you may know in the department and request them to check with the chairperson of the department. After an application is acknowledged, try to arrange an informal visit with a seminar. You can indicate that you are planning a trip to India in the month of X and would be happy to give a talk/seminar at that time. In your conversation with the chairperson, state the time frame you want to join the institute. Normally, chairpersons will arrange your talk. Besides the talk, a visit with all faculty will also be arranged. Talk to all faculty and make your research sound interesting to them. Talk about your doctoral and postdoctoral research, your future plans and how you plan to distinguish yourself from your advisors. If possible, explain why you think you will fit into the department. Also, there is nothing wrong in stating that you have applied to more than one place and your preferences depending on the offers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The suggested timeline is as follows: Apply to several institutes at month X. Follow up and try to get an acknowledgment by month X+1 or X+2. Then, send an email saying that you are visiting India in X+3 month and would like to give a seminar. Try to schedule as many seminars in many institutes in that month. After the seminar, inform them you are willing to return around X+6 months, which will require them to make a quick decision. You can return after X+12 months because the institutes will give you time to join. Please note that each department in IIT/IISc receives at least around 30 to 40 applications per position. Simply applying by email and expecting a detailed response is foolhardy. Unless the applicant shows repeated interest (followed by a visit to give a seminar), it is unlikely that the application will be considered seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Civil dept at IISc has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://civil.iisc.ernet.in/facultypositions-faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;informal FAQ&lt;/a&gt; for it's recruitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T15:18:48.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1668" CreationDate="2012-06-20T15:48:50.157" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the United States, I would suggest you identify the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. That office can formally write you an accommodation for your disability, which you can share with your professors. By law, professors must follow the accommodations that have been created for you by the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. You do not have disclose your disability to your professors, but you do need to provide them with documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1097" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T15:48:50.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2074" CreationDate="2012-06-20T19:59:19.140" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no universal rules regarding employment status and being hired at US universities. In some fields, such as engineering, graduate students may be hired before they have completed &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; post-graduate professional experience. In contrast, in departments such as physics, it may be required to complete several post-doctoral appointments before being considered for faculty positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some general guidelines, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In less &quot;applied&quot; STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, more time is generally required in academic positions before earning a full-time faculty position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In more &quot;applied&quot; fields, the time spent is reduced. Unfortunately, in some cases, although industrial experience is often seen as a good thing, it also has a tendency to make it difficult to jump back into a research field—unless one has been employed in an industrial research capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In humanities fields, it's very difficult of to be able to continue to a faculty position after leaving academia. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T19:59:19.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T21:03:51.033" Score="5" ViewCount="1508" Body="&lt;p&gt;More generally, what are the most important factors for getting a tenure-track job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T09:31:37.260" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T09:31:37.260" Title="How important is number of publications and prestige of the publication outlets for getting a tenure-track job?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2012-06-20T21:03:51.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This anecdote suggests that number of publications and prestige of corresponding journals/conferences is not as important as people usually think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summary data of the short list from a past search for an assistant professor in Psychology at the University of Virginia. For this particular search, more than 100 applications were received. The Table presents the 11 applicants that made it to the short-list. All short-list candidates had at least 4 publications and at least 1 first- authored publication. Based on publication numbers, there are clear stand-outs from this group such as the postdoc with 35 publications, an assistant professor with 21 publications, and a graduate student with 10 publications. Further, these candidates published in prestigious outlets. However, none of these three were selected as a finalist. In fact, two of the three interviewed candidates were among the least productive on the short-list.&#xA;  This anecdote suggests that some degree of publishing productivity is essential to get into the pool of competitive candidates but, after that, other factors are more important for getting the job. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4251&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4251&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cynical interpretation of this anecdote is that the only thing that matters is whether A) you know someone and B) the committee happens to like your research topic. However in my experience what's more important is C) how high-quality the committee judges your research, together with it being on a &lt;em&gt;promising&lt;/em&gt; topic. &quot;Promising&quot; is of course very subjective, and usually has something to do both with the topic being good science and its ability to get grants and yield interdisciplinary collaborations with others, including others in the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, people do get really downweighted for being in an area that doesn't mesh with the department or meet its needs. And those needs often aren't clear from the job ad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T01:03:30.867" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T01:03:30.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2085" CreationDate="2012-06-21T04:42:42.307" Score="16" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm pretty much working on my own project with guidance from two supervisors. Since it's my own project (and it's exploratory research), the two supervisors don't need to pressure me to get results. So - I got into a lot of dead ends in my current undergrad research project, and while I've definitely learned &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; in my current research, I highly doubt it can lead to a publication by now, especially since my supervisors are unfamiliar with the technical details of my model, and the objective of the research is such that there aren't many people in the nation I can contact who are familiar with what my supervisors want to do. I've already contacted a number of people who might be familiar with it, but most of my emails have gone without reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I only have a month left before I leave for graduate school, and I'm not sure how I should conclude my research with my supervisors. I've already written up a report (which could perhaps be analogized to a senior thesis, and which could be helpful for the future) - I've shown the report to one of my supervisors. At this point, what should I do? Should I show them what I've done? Should I feel guilty? I've actually been out of contact with one of my supervisors for several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T13:37:29.107" Title="What to do if undergraduate research has stalled for a long time?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-06-21T04:59:03.393" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 20 years since I published my first paper, I have been asked for actual paper reprints exactly three times: Twice by researchers, who each asked for one paper by &lt;em&gt;sending a postcard&lt;/em&gt;, and once by my tenure committee, who required paper copies of everything I'd ever published.  In the latter case, it was much easier to just download and print new copies than to hunt for the official reprints, which are still hding somewhere in the back of some disused filing cabinet.  (My university finally stopped requiring tenure applicants to kill forests about two years after I got tenure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm gonna go with &lt;strong&gt;NO, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to get paper reprints.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T04:59:03.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-06-21T08:41:29.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a different supervisor. Maybe a very bored grad student. If that doesn't work work on a different aspect of the project until you hit another deadend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it sounds like you've tried both so there is always finding a new supervisor and a new project when you do finally go to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T08:41:29.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-06-21T09:03:16.740" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you have learnt a lot, so you need not feel guilty. You do not think your work is publication-worthy yourself, and you also are leaving for grad school - so the only solution is to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a neat report explaining your work. Even if it is not publishable, you could include it in your resume as a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;technical report&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; From the tone of your question, this seems to be the only way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T09:03:16.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-06-21T09:07:19.880" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;One potential idea is to submit the work and get your degree and head off to grad school. Keep the work that you have done in a bottom drawer for a few months or a year. Then pull it out again and reassess whether it is any good or not. If it is good, then polish it up and submit it somewhere. If it is not good, then you've lost nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon to do unpublishable work at the undergraduate level. Don't worry about it and don't be hard on yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T09:07:19.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T18:48:44.297" Score="9" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering applying to chemistry graduate schools within the next six months and am hoping for some guidance in prioritizing aspects.  For instance, among my list of considerations there exists: renown of school, programs of interest, appeal of location, amount of financial aid, duration of program, and success of past alumni. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do others who have already gone through this process have suggestions about how to prioritize these considerations?  Were there things in your experience that you thought would be important and ended up not being so.  Or visa-versa, are there aspects that you neglected and wish you hadn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="FlippantBuoyancy" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T05:33:57.293" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T00:58:33.327" Title="What are the most important factors when considering graduate school in chemistry?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2012-06-21T13:31:01.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a second year grad student in chemistry, I would say the two most important factors are if there are multiple professors you could see yourself working for and if you feel like you could spend the next 5+ years of your life at the school/in the area. You are going to be stressed out with work, so you want to enjoy where you're living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard of any US chemistry PhD grad programs that don't pay tuition + insurance + stipend, so I don't think that's much of a worry (I would, however, make sure you get all that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The renown of the school and success of past alumni is actually less important than you'd think. Grad school is all about your research advisor and your research (i.e. a better professor at a lower tier school is better than the other way around).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T13:31:01.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-06-21T13:37:29.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds like you don't really communicate with your supervisors — that is key to research, even with an independent project. Especially with undergrad research, your supervisor is there to help guide you on your project. With graduate school so close, make sure you conclude with a good meeting with your supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take this as a learning experience for two things:&#xA;1. Research doesn't always work...in fact, it fails more often than it works. If the answers were apparent and easy, it wouldn't be research.&#xA;2. Communication with your supervisor/advisor is KEY!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T13:37:29.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2012-06-21T15:17:57.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Dan's comments recommending you move, I would add that if your goal is to obtain an academic job, it will help you to have more people familiar with your work.  Aside from a few schools and fields, such as MIT and engineering, it almost always makes sense to move, particularly if the quality of the program is substantively similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving schools also improves the signal sent by your education.  Having more good schools on your CV sends the signal that multiple independent parties deemed you worthy of acceptance.  If you stay on at the same school, it may not be clear to someone who first reads your CV whether you were accepted into the PhD to start or whether it involved an independent admissions process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T15:17:57.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2012-06-21T15:26:14.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common scenario I've observed is where University A offers a job to a professor at University B, a far less prestigious and well-connected institution, but the professor and his/her family wish to remain in the location of University B for personal reasons.  If the professor is good enough, University A may agree to a half-time or similar arrangement, where the professor is only on-campus for one semester per year (usually 4 months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T15:26:14.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2093" CreationDate="2012-06-21T17:36:29.097" Score="16" ViewCount="11559" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have little understanding about invited papers, but as far as I know, I think these are non-peer-reviewed papers presented at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now why and when does one go for an invited paper? Is it only to advertise one's work? Is there any other merit in this? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, are normal papers and invited papers the same as far as cost is concerned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T05:36:31.387" Title="When does one go for an invited paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2092" CreationDate="2012-06-21T18:03:26.007" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being invited to present a paper or give a keynote is an honour. It shows that the community recognizes your work. Of course, it is also a way to further advertise your work, or to reflect on what you have done. Generally, the audience is larger for invited speakers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One accepts the invitation if one has time and prestige of the conference matches one's reputation. If you have a small reputation, an invited talk at a workshop is an honour. If you are super-famous, you'll tend to only accept invitations to prestigious events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost may depend on how much money the conference has in its budget, which will often depend on the sponsors. Sometimes the conference will waive the registration fee, often they may provide accommodation also, and sometimes they may even cover airfare. Bigger conferences will be able to cover more of the costs. Small workshops may not be able to cover any of the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:03:26.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2092" CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:38:09.250" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Dave Clarke's answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I get quite a lot of &quot;invitations&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;scam journals&lt;/a&gt;, which I ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the conferences I attend now publish their &quot;proceedings&quot; as a special issue of one of the relevant journals, and they undergo the usual peer-review.  I'd expect that this is true too for the proceedings paper belonging to an invited talk.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, many of the invited lectures are actually more lecturing(*) than presenting the very newest work. So the work presented there usually is already published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) I like it if invited and keynote lectures are actually teaching. It's like an oral review paper, and I think it is a good idea to have an overview and common starting level for hearing the more specialized talks that follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T21:38:09.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-21T23:39:32.183" Score="5" ViewCount="3136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently hold a BA in Middle Eastern History, which was a pretty good fit for my last job in the Army.  I'm getting ready to move on to the civillian world now, and computer science/programming has always been a hobby for me that I'd like to look into turning into a career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;strong&gt;what type of program should I look into in order to deepen my knowledge and verify my abilities?&lt;/strong&gt;  Should I look at getting a second undergrad, or would a programming education certificate be enough to get my foot in the door for employment/grad school later on?  Are online certificates such as Kaplan/Phoenix respected enough, especially if they are in addition to a traditional degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically want to know where to set my sights, in order to get going in software development.  Getting an additional qualification seems necessary, so which kind makes the most sense for getting started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1102" LastEditorUserId="1537" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T13:51:06.683" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T19:07:21.140" Title="How to transition into computer science" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2092" CreationDate="2012-06-22T05:36:31.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked whether there is any merit to presenting an invited paper other than advertising your work. &lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  What you really want, more than people getting excited about a particular paper you write, is for them to &lt;strong&gt;get excited about you&lt;/strong&gt;.  You want to be viewed as a valuable member of your community, whatever community you choose that to be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So partly your talk is an advertisement for your work, but more than that, your talk is an advertisement for you, the helpful guy or gal that you are.  It increases your visibility, but it's your job to follow up on the opportunities this visibility creates for you.  Talk with people.  Listen.  Really listen to what they're saying (and don't just wait for your turn to talk again).  Remember names.  Start building your network.  Sometimes the most useful thing you'll do at a conference is to grab a beer with new friends, after the talks finish for the day.  One key to building a successful network is really trying to help your contacts as much as trying to help yourself.  (If you have more questions on networking, I'll be happy to share my thoughts, but I'll stop now for fear of drifting too far off topic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T05:36:31.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2117" CreationDate="2012-06-22T08:53:08.747" Score="11" ViewCount="2256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently applied for a PhD position with a major university in Europe. However, I haven't heard back from them even though the dates for the interviews have passed. This somewhat provoces me since I've put a lot of work into my application (it feels disrespectful to not get back to me) and since it makes me unsure whether I have been rejected or merely forgotten. I've already got a response (possibly automately generated) that my application was received by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T11:46:48.897" Title="Is it reasonable for me to expect an official and timely response to my PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2103" CreationDate="2012-06-22T09:00:27.503" Score="18" ViewCount="7907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise that the answer to this question varies greatly between department and universities but I would like to get some estimates from somebody within the field since I myself has absolutely no idea. When I apply for a PhD position, can I expect to compete with a handful of other persons or can there be hundreds of applications sent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T08:19:36.250" Title="How many applications are usually received for a given PhD position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2099" CreationDate="2012-06-22T09:19:10.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, final decisions take a while. It is not the fault of the program, but rather an issue of funding. Programs tend to initially reject very few applicants. An applicant that seems weak on &quot;paper&quot; might get accepted if their proposal fits into a very narrow funding scheme that no other applicants are eligible for. There is no global rank order of the applicants, but rather the &quot;best&quot; applicant for each funding scheme is identified. Programs generally construct strategies which lead to the most funding. The strategy is constantly revised when the program finds out about successful/unsuccessful funding applications and whether the applicant accepts the acceptance. Basically the whole system is a nightmare for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T09:19:10.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T09:22:10.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm located in Belgium in a computer science department. Recent positions that I've advertised have had between 3 and 30 applicants, depending on the topic. Most applicants were poor or hard to assess (from countries we have little experience with). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently have 8 positions open and are not expecting to get 8 good candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T15:48:12.917" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T15:48:12.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T10:08:48.370" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was over 80 for the position I applied for a few years ago, at a Dutch neuroscience institute with a good reputation. I imagine there would be more at world famous universities in the US. I hear that most of the time, most applicants aren't that good, even the top 10% who make it to the interview. In my case the best candidate got the position, and the one ranked second (me) got an offer for a position later on... so in the end it was one out of 40. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:08:48.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T12:53:24.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the school and the program. For example, most big US universities that have chemistry PhD programs take ~50 new graduate students every year, so I can't imagine there are &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; many applications for each spot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T12:53:24.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T16:18:10.387" Score="11" ViewCount="2503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math student in the US preparing for an hour long defense of my thesis. I am assuming that the dissertation committee has already read my dissertation by the time of my defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any advice for preparing and giving the dissertation defense talk? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What balance between presenting subtle parts of the proofs and a clear big picture of the results obtained should I aim for? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be more interesting for the committee to hear me explaining more technical parts of the proofs rather then the statements of the main theorems obtained?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1104" LastEditorUserId="66" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T18:36:28.727" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T06:28:31.800" Title="How to make a concise dissertation defence in Math department" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2109" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:06:04.900" Score="14" ViewCount="9033" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor liked me during the exams. Then, when I came with the thesis I wrote, he got very angry, maybe because I did not do what he suggested, maybe because what I did is not quite in his domain. The tension between us did not diminish with time, because I like my thesis and don't want to throw it away and start over. I proposed him that I move to another advisor, and he agreed, maybe relieved. But if I will ask another professor to be my advisor, this will raise suspicions on the reason I move. I don't want to make the current advisor look bad, and certainly I don't want to look bad (this is more likely to happen, because he is very respected), so I am in a delicate position. Possible issues which may trigger suspicions about my thesis (and maybe they are the reason my advisor got angry in the first place):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the main claim is considered a lost cause,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my solution is developed in a large number of steps which are difficult to understand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please suggest how should I approach the problem of finding and asking another professor to be my advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1105" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T02:46:38.707" Title="Incompatibility with the PhD advisor" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:10:32.913" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the OP is asking a more Euro-specific question ? In the US you don't apply for a single position - rather there's a large pool of applications for a small set of &quot;slots&quot;. In contrast to the answer by @scientifics above, in CS it's not uncommon to see over 500 applications for around 15-20 slots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T18:10:32.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:37:24.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Physics (and some Astronomy) PhD programs, you can find out a lot of the information about acceptance rates and total # of applicants from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735409668&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AIP graduate handbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the same information is found at www.­gradschoolshoppe­r.­com, which is somehow down today...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T18:37:24.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2106" CreationDate="2012-06-22T19:53:05.210" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Students change advisors all the time for all sorts of reasons. While it is important that advisors and advisees have to recognize that they are supposed to work on improving their relationships and fight through tension, sometimes it just doesn't work out or will not work out in the long term. I've changed advisors and during that process, I found several other students who have gone through the same experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to recognize that this does happen for better or for worse and it is important for you to do what is necessary to do what is best for you. Despite what you would think, people (even academics) don't really put much weight on seeing someone change careers or direction so you shouldn't worry about such things being regarded as suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step would be to find a set of people that you can rely on for rational advice since this will likely be an emotional transition. Parents and close friends come to mind but also finding an older student, administrative staff, and understanding professors will be key. In my case, my co-advisor and one of my committee members were resources in addition to several senior graduate students who had changed advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second would be to start to find a new advisor. If you get along with your current advisor, he would make good suggestions, if you're switching behind his back, probably not so much. As you a mid-PhD student, you now have a much better understanding of what type of advisor/mentee relationship you want and you can narrow down advisors based on that reputation. During my search, I got in touch with senior students first asking them able advising styles (and availability of funding). Only after that initial conversation did I meet with the advisor themselves. Despite what you would think, advisors actually like picking up/stealing veteran graduate students from other advisors due to the expertise that they may add to the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally is the administrative side. You chair will have to know about this and your committee will likely be restructured. People don't have to know the reason why you've changed (my current advisor still doesn't know). If possible, try not to burn any bridges since you will likely need his (his/her for other people reading this) signature at somepoint on your thesis. Try to keep things professional since this really is a career based move rather than something personal although it really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best news is that everyone I've known who have changed advisors are/were really happy about their new sitatuion. It's just a very stressful transition but it really wasn't as stressful as I was expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(edit) I've noticed this about eykanal's answer regarding the timing. Yes, it is inevitably that you will lose some time especially if you're in the thesis writing stage of your career. However, if you're an earlier student in the dissertation/research phase (I was in my 3rd year), I didn't feel like I lost much time. Most of the first years of grad school are &quot;wasted&quot; relearning learning and taking classes. Especially in the sciences, most of the early years is developing various soft-skills and competence which isn't lost when you change advisors/research projects. Furthermore, spending an extra year to reconfigure a PhD is probably better than falling into ABD purgatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="319" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T02:46:38.707" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T02:46:38.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2106" CreationDate="2012-06-22T20:34:20.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons students may switch advisors during the course of their postdoc, so I would not worry too much about the statement is says about you. Given the situation you described, you could simply state that as you progressed through your research your interests diverged, and that would be both truthful and tactful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding finding another advisor, I would try the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your department chair. He/she may be able to help you find other people in your university whose interests align with yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk directly with other professors. Let them know that you're interested in their research, and are interested in joining their lab.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look to switch universities and start everything from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that, no matter what route you choose, you will have lost a significant amount of time; your new advisor will almost certainly want you to do things you haven't yet done, and will not fully value some things you already have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I would definitely recommend meeting with your advisor more frequently to avoid such situations in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T20:34:20.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-06-22T23:05:34.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The University of Minnesota is one of few institutions that makes their admissions statistics publicly available &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.grad.umn.edu/programs/select_program.aspx?l=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://apps.grad.umn.edu/programs/select_program.aspx?l=t&lt;/a&gt; (choose a field and press the &quot;Program Statistics&quot; radio button) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pulled the info from my field (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) and you can see that it varies from year to year but the mean is around 80. Here is the site for the EEB program: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradpub.grad.umn.edu/data/stats/ad/1124400.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gradpub.grad.umn.edu/data/stats/ad/1124400.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, at least in the US, more and more people are applying to grad school since it is viewed as a viable alternative to the weak job market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1106" LastEditorUserId="1106" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T00:40:45.963" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T00:40:45.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-23T04:17:28.257" Score="35" ViewCount="2187" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of women in some academia disciplines like computer science remains low despite the continuous efforts to increase it. What is being done to make academic careers in computer science (and related fields) more appealing to women? Are there any studies on the ways of improving the working conditions for women in academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1108" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T19:08:41.593" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T19:08:41.593" Title="What is being done to make the academic environment more women friendly?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2116" CreationDate="2012-06-23T09:23:28.327" Score="42" ViewCount="11076" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am admittedly an undergraduate so I do not have very much experience yet in finding resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have an idea of something I would consider worthwhile to research (in my case for a proposal to a supervisor about an undergraduate research opportunity), assuming I do extensive research online to see what has been found out about the subject and end up concluding that what I want to look into has not been investigated yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I ensure that it actually hasn't, and it isn't just a case of me not finding the information that is already available somewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="754" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T10:21:42.403" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T15:31:13.270" Title="How to ensure a research idea has not been explored previously" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2012-06-23T10:15:10.977" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is of course always hard to protect oneself from. However, I would say the best way to ensure that your research proposal hasn't been investigated before is to get in contact with an expert in the field and ask him or her this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should investigate the topic thoroughly before approaching the expert. One tip to do this is by using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index&quot;&gt;citation index&lt;/a&gt;. This enables you to track how a certain paper has been cited, meaning you can follow the trail and more effectevly find out what has been done. For example, if you have located an old seminal paper in your field, finding out which papers have referenced this one should give you a fair chanse of finding what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="141" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T10:36:25.817" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T10:36:25.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2099" CreationDate="2012-06-23T11:46:48.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect a timely response, however it seems to be the case that many graduate schools are overwhelmed with applications and underestimate the time it takes to deal with them. A slightly more cynical view would be that many graduate school admin departments are understaffed and don't have the resources to cater for expected number of applicants. In my case I submitted my application on 28 Feb and was informed that interviews would take place &quot;during the week of the 19 March&quot;. This date came and went and I assumed I had not been successful, so I called the Faculty Graduate Office the following week and was informed that the process was taking longer than expected but I would be notified of the status in due course. On 5 April I received an email saying I had been selected for interview and &quot;we will contact you shortly with an interview date and time&quot;. On 25 April I was given the interview date (for the middle of May).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you just call them and ask to know the status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="979" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T11:46:48.897" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2105" CreationDate="2012-06-23T16:06:34.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a meaningful answer to this question that is helpful across all US math departments and advisors.  There is too much variation in what is expected.  You need to find out what your committee expects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if I had to answer without knowing your department or committee, I would recommend trying to focus on the big picture but making sure that you spend most of your time explaining your contribution to that big picture.  That's certainly what you'll want to do for job talks, which you're presumably also giving around now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the committee is concerned about your understanding of the technical parts of the proofs, they can ask you in the closed exam following the public talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T16:06:34.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2120" CreationDate="2012-06-23T19:05:06.740" Score="11" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student with no experience and no guidance from any teacher whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done research on Recreational Mathematics (Maths tricks). I have a lot of new tricks to introduce, in a completely new format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem is that there doesn't seems to been any research paper on this topic before, but there are many books. Can I quote books as a source of reference instead of research papers published? (I am quoting research papers related to the theorems and concepts I have used - but there is no reference to the trick on which I have worked upon.) Also the trick seems to be age-old and extremely simple, and I think that the inventor of it is not known to the world at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I cite the book? (I know that the author of the book didn't invent the concept behind the trick.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user557" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:48:03.267" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T09:15:32.940" Title="On citing books as references in papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2119" CreationDate="2012-06-23T19:13:03.367" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; and you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, peer-review papers are preferred over regular (not peer-reviewed books) but if the information you want to cite only is written down in a book (peer reviewed or not) rather than in a research paper, of course you should reference to the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, you can refer to whatever you want (a painting, a tv show, a private discussion with a friend of yours or &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Ghosts and Humbug&lt;/em&gt;). However, if you want to write a believable paper, you should strive towards citing as trusted and/or high quality sources as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="141" LastEditDate="2015-12-29T09:15:32.940" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T09:15:32.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2012-06-23T19:49:53.190" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate doing research, &lt;strong&gt;your primary goal is to learn&lt;/strong&gt; and publishing is secondary. Of course, publishing your results and going through all the associated things for the first time is part of the learning. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with spending your undergraduate years rediscovering something. To bring up a particularly relevant example for today: Alan Turing was elected a fellow of King's College in 1935 (at the end of his undergrad) by proving the central limit theorem. He failed to notice that it was already proved in 1922. I am sure he learned a lot from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you have to be prepared to rediscover. If you are not it can be very discouraging. From a &lt;em&gt;person experience&lt;/em&gt;, when I was an undergrad preparing my first first-author paper for submission I ended up finding previous work that had shown almost the same results 3 years prior. I had spent a lot of time rediscovering the ideas and writing my paper and it was a pretty devastating blow. My supervisor's words of encouragement: &quot;Don't worry, at least we know we're on the right track&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was right, and I was able to learn a lot from the experience (eventually leading to other publications). The particular paper in question sat in the back of my filesystem for a while, but I returned to it 2 years later with fresh eyes to discover that it was not as derivative as I had originally judged it and even this paper ended up being published (with some modifications) at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another adviser takes the idea of rediscovery even further. When we move into new territory on a project, he will suggest some directions knowing that the relevant theorems have been proved already. He will tell me: &quot;this result has been proven, but don't look it up, you will arrive at it on your own and then we will both be able to understand it better&quot;. This approach works very well in math-like fields since you have the advantage of knowing what you are going after as true, but still get to experience all the joy of (re-)discovery and the lessons you learn along the way. Something that is often not obvious from just reading somebody else's paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad, don't worry about accidentally working on something that has been done. Concentrate on learning as much as you can!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T19:49:53.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2126" CreationDate="2012-06-23T20:15:49.207" Score="15" ViewCount="7611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that not all, but many papers (that are accepted and published) are based on ideas that can be patented as well. So, why is that there is no system in which a person can apply for a Publishing a Paper and also getting the Idea patented at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that I publish a paper, do not get it patented (going to patent it at a later point of time - because of not having sufficient money to pay for the patent application or whatever) and during that time someone else patents my work in his name? Or Someone else picks up my theory, develops it further and gets a patent? How would the situation be then? What should I do under such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user557" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T03:14:27.703" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T03:14:27.703" Title="Why is Paper Publishing and getting a patent completely unrelated?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2012-06-23T20:46:35.177" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patents are about owning and protecting an idea to make money from it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papers are about advancing science. A paper lays claim to an idea, but anyone else is allowed to build on that idea without having to pay royalties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T05:58:33.570" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T05:58:33.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2012-06-24T03:29:27.717" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Dave Clarke's answer: Even in the rare cases when a publishable result is also patentable, filing for a patent is a serious amount of work.  Filing a patent application costs thousands of dollars; submitting a paper is free.  Filling a successful patent requires &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; specific and formal language, which is not the same as the specific and formal language used to communicate with other researchers.  Why should we spend all that extra effort for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1808/65&quot;&gt;so little reward&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Or Someone else picks up my theory, develops it further and gets a patent? How would the situation be then? What should I do under such a situation?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should cite the patent in your tenure case as iron-clad evidence that your research has real-world impact.  Congratulations!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T03:29:27.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2012-06-24T04:26:22.123" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;not all, but many papers (that are accepted and published) are based on ideas that can be patented as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a misconception.  Even in engineering, only a small minority of papers contain ideas worth patenting.  The further you get from engineering, the smaller this fraction gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, why is that there is no system in which a person can apply for a publishing a paper and also getting the idea patented at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can indeed do both things in parallel, but not via the same process.  Publishing a paper is an academic process, whereas filing a patent application is a legal process, and the two things just don't overlap very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's kind of like asking why you can't write your dissertation and apply for jobs via the same process.  You can certainly work on both at the same time, and there is a relationship between them, but fundamentally they aren't the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible that I publish a paper, do not get it patented and during that time someone else patents my work in his name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not possible.  Well, technically someone could try, but they would be wasting their time, since your paper would serve as &quot;prior art&quot; that would invalidate the patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or someone else picks up my theory, develops it further and gets a patent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That could happen, whether or not you file for a patent.  They would own the intellectual property rights to the extension of your work, but not to your work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T04:26:22.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2105" CreationDate="2012-06-24T06:28:31.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two general suggestions which can overrule anything else I'm going to say: Ask your advisor about the talk! Practice your presentation with your advisor, if that's alright with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should not give details of proofs unless pressed; even then, you should be careful. Proving real theorems in talks (even thesis defenses) is hard, time consuming, and generally of minimal benefit to the audience. You should instead try to give the general picture of what you've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other good resources for communicating math are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200709/tx070901136p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/200709/tx070901136p.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/workshops/gcoll.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/workshops/gcoll.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither are specifically about the thesis defense, but are general resources for math talks. I've found them both helpful at various points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="934" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T06:28:31.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2143" CreationDate="2012-06-24T06:57:49.807" Score="10" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;For graduate schools in STEM which take students with a Bachelor's degree (BS/BE/BTech etc.) and graduate them with an MS and/or PhD, what do they assume about the student's prerequisite knowledge when designing courses, their difficulty and overall dynamics? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is pointed towards &lt;strong&gt;knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; and not what is on the student's transcripts. For instance, a student might have &quot;Linear Algebra&quot; on his transcripts but might not &lt;em&gt;remember&lt;/em&gt; Singular Value Decomposition very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assume that student knows all the courses he has taken very well and build from there? (What happens to people who had a BS in allied fields? For instance a student may have a BS in Pure Math but enrol for a MS/PhD in Computational Math with little idea about a &quot;compiler&quot;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assume he knows nothing and take him to proficiency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything in between?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T08:11:45.960" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T13:13:57.840" Title="How do grad schools design courses for potential students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2128" CreationDate="2012-06-24T10:54:05.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very difficult question to answer, since there are so many disciplines and so many programs at so many universities, all of which have their own rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, the standard master's program (or coursework phase of a doctoral program) is designed to take someone who has a bachelor's degree &lt;em&gt;in the same field&lt;/em&gt; and bring them up to a level of competence sufficient to pursue graduate-level research in that field. Very little allowances, if any, are made for people coming from other disciplines and programs, and they're certainly not designed for someone starting with no knowledge whatsoever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T10:54:05.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2135" CreationDate="2012-06-24T14:02:04.103" Score="6" ViewCount="1436" Body="&lt;p&gt;1.What qualities do professors (assume STEM if necessary) look for in students (in their MS) when recruiting them for an RA (Research Assistantship)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Consider the follow scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Person 1 : Has excellent fundamentals, thirst for knowledge and good grasping power but no exposure to the academic research per se.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Person 2 : Above average fundamentals (few random holes here and there. Not too minor, not too major either) and prior exposure to academic research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who would a professor rather pick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation of the question is to find out how a potential grad student can prepare himself to increase the likelihood of getting an RA with a professor he/she likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="66" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T02:18:24.033" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T02:18:24.033" Title="Important qualities for Research Assistanship applicants" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2128" CreationDate="2012-06-24T14:44:04.770" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are coming to &lt;em&gt;grad&lt;/em&gt; school, not some hand-holding, jolly the kids along, summer program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is assumed that if students arrive with a deficiency they will take the necessary remedial classes (often that means getting in with the upper-division undergrads) and if you have forgotten something they will do the necessary boning up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will be boning up on things from time to time for the rest of their lives, after all. Might as well get in some practice in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T14:44:04.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2130" CreationDate="2012-06-24T14:59:37.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues here: what do advisors want, and what can they observe?  In principle, I think most would choose Person 1 over Person 2, if they knew all the facts.  However, this choice will not typically arise in practice, because they won't be able to verify the &quot;thirst for knowledge and good grasping power&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classroom performance, no matter how excellent, is generally not sufficient for admission to a strong graduate school.  The problem is that lots of students get excellent grades, and these grades are only loosely correlated with research ability.  The only way to stand out is to do something that's fundamentally more impressive than doing well in courses; this could be a research project, or a substantial exposition, or coding, or any number of other things.  Research has some advantages, since that's what you're aiming to do in grad school, but it's by no means necessary.  However, if you don't do any research, then you'd better have some other way of demonstrating your talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Person 1 has done no research, but wrote a beautiful, 80-page undergraduate thesis giving an exposition of forcing and the continuum hypothesis, then that might count for more than most undergraduate research projects.  On the other hand, if Person 1 can point to nothing concrete except course grades, then that will likely be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T14:59:37.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-24T15:16:48.100" Score="7" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which are the well-regarded institutions in Europe (apart from the Open University in the UK) and America offering distance learning postgraduate degrees? I'm especially interested in Applied Mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1078" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T03:53:05.610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T21:10:02.767" Title="Well-regarded institutions offering distance education (PG) in applied Math" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2020-03-13T14:05:24.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2142" CreationDate="2012-06-24T18:04:46.933" Score="5" ViewCount="6091" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing original research in Theoretical Computer Science requires a quite good understanding of almost all areas of Mathematics.&#xA;I think double majoring in Mathematics and Computer science for someone who wants to do research in Theory is very important.(Or at least having a knowledge of Algebra, Analysis, Logic, Topology etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how do graduate admission offices take this as an advantage?( Specifically in comparison with other good applicants which have publications or higher GPAs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="894" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T03:50:15.280" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T03:50:15.280" Title="What is the advantage of being a Math/CS double major in graduate admissions for someone who wants to work in TCS?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2130" CreationDate="2012-06-24T18:14:28.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question, I'm guessing that you're coming from the American system (or similar) in which it is common for students intending to pursue the Ph.D. to start in the MS program at the same school.  While they are completing MS requirements, they try to find an advisor and a research project for the Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that often the advisor will expect the student to start a project and demonstrate some competence and progress while the student is still TA'ing and taking classes.  That way the advisor can measure the student's capability before committing to funding.  I typically give a student some material to read and ask them to implement and test some existing algorithm, in order to help the student get started and to test the student's capability for research.  The most important thing is the ability to rapidly understand new ideas well enough to implement them from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coursework is not sufficient to get you a research position, but it can certainly disqualify you.  Usually prospective RAs have taken or are taking my (graduate-level) class, and I won't consider taking them on unless they get at least an A-.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T18:14:28.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2134" CreationDate="2012-06-24T18:27:02.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Studying mathematics is great, and I agree that many theoretical computer science students would benefit from studying more mathematics.  However, double majoring is definitely not a must, and it will help only slightly with admission.  It could serve as a tie-breaker, but it is less important than getting good grades and much less important than doing research.  Ultimately, a double major is worthwhile if you would enjoy it or find it useful, but the learning will have to be its own reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T18:27:02.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2138" CreationDate="2012-06-24T22:23:50.587" Score="42" ViewCount="2701" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a non-native speaker of English, it can often be hard to spot some of the errors that a native speaker would find. For a long time, I've been thinking about getting a native speaker to help me with proof-reading my texts (articles, theses, application, etc), but I don't quite know where to look. What are some good ways to get proofreading for your texts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, are there any websites on the Internet where one can exchange proofreading services between different languages? (Say, if you help me proofread my text in language &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;, I'll help you with yours in language &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T09:21:14.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T14:06:01.260" Title="How to find ways to proofread English in papers" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2137" CreationDate="2012-06-25T00:47:27.880" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Elsevier publishing group provides professional language services, like editing. You can find about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageediting/index.cfm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;https://wordy.com/&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; which looks good, and it's cheaper and quicker, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1078" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T00:47:27.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2157" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:07:54.453" Score="8" ViewCount="1334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a site (other than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/&quot;&gt;Scimago&lt;/a&gt;) that presents statistics of published papers and/or citations per country. However, I need more detail than that presented in Scimago. Ideally, I would like to have a list of authors, or the list of papers per country (having all the statistics that Scimago shows is a plus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any site that provides such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:42:03.870" Title="Site with statistics of publications/citations per country?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2140" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:19:55.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the process of production and dissemination of literature, and information. The activity of making information available to the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T03:01:04.657" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T03:01:04.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2141" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:19:55.487" Score="0" Body="Regarding the process of production and dissemination of literature, and information. The activity of making information available to the general public." OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T03:01:08.790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T03:01:08.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2134" CreationDate="2012-06-25T03:05:19.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally rate strong math skills as a major plus when it comes to looking at applicants. This is not superior to having actual research experience, but it definitely helps an application. For many areas of TCS, a strong math background can be more valuable than a strong CS background that is weak on TCS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But students with a strong math background AND a weaker TCS background tend to need a little reprogramming when it comes to asking questions :) - they are good at answering them though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T03:05:19.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2128" CreationDate="2012-06-25T03:17:03.300" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @aeismail's and @dmckee's answers, but let me add a different spin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students are admitted to strong PhD programs not on the basis of how much or what they &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;, but rather on their potential for successful research.  Every program admits students from all over the world, who may or may not have undergraduate degrees in exactly the same field.  Beyond a few fundamental concepts, it is not reasonable to assume that incoming graduate students have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; specific prior knowledge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, most courses for PhD students are generally taught &lt;em&gt;as if&lt;/em&gt; the students have a strong undergraduate background in the same field.  The definition of &quot;strong undergraduate background&quot; depends &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; on the graduate program; the expectations at the top PhD programs are generally extremely high.  More importantly, &lt;strong&gt;PhD students in top departments are expected to have the intellectual maturity to recognize and correct weaknesses in their background&lt;/strong&gt;, even if the missing material is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; normally covered in a strong undergraduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also:&lt;/strong&gt; Courses are arguably the &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; important part of any PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T13:13:57.840" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T13:13:57.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2128" CreationDate="2012-06-25T07:52:05.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it is not uncommon for first year grad classes to share a syllabus (and lectures) with an undergraduate class. The grad class often has some additional assignments (e.g., an extra or longer paper or additional problems in homework assignments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T07:52:05.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2113" CreationDate="2012-06-25T08:02:31.033" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://womeninscience.nih.gov/nihwide/index.asp&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383&quot;&gt;NSF&lt;/a&gt; have efforts to encourage women to enter, and stay in, biomedical sciences (NIH) and science and engineering (NSF) careers. I am not sure to what extent these efforts are evidenced based. I am not aware of to what extent the IEEE, DOD, etc. have formalized their &quot;inclusion&quot; efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T13:41:27.723" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T13:41:27.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2146" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:33:09.087" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T09:33:09.087" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:33:09.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2147" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:33:09.087" Score="0" Body="The search for employment, inside academia or outside of it, by students and by academics." OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2019-03-13T23:11:08.173" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T23:11:08.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2148" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:35:29.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules of social interactions, whether formal or informal.&#xA;It can include vocal and verbal interactions, may be specific to the culture and region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24064" LastEditorUserId="24064" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T15:09:53.987" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T15:09:53.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2149" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:35:29.397" Score="0" Body="The customary code of polite behavior amongst the academic world." OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T17:48:42.267" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T17:48:42.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2150" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:36:36.837" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T09:36:36.837" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:36:36.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2151" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:36:36.837" Score="0" Body="Regarding the duties, employment and work of research assistants." OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T09:47:39.487" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:47:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2152" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:37:15.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before asking, please take a look at&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38237/7734&quot;&gt;How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of high-quality, answerable questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17658/is-it-ethical-to-apply-different-criteria-for-graduate-admissions-based-on-count&quot;&gt;Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2167/how-should-one-formulate-a-statement-of-intent-for-an-interdisciplinary-degree&quot;&gt;How should one formulate a Statement of Intent for an interdisciplinary degree?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7274" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T12:44:29.490" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T12:44:29.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2153" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:37:15.540" Score="0" Body="On strategies, procedures, and problems related to getting admitted to, or selecting students to be admitted to, a graduate degree program. Please click on “info” before asking a question." OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T20:07:04.370" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T20:07:04.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2154" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:38:14.790" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T09:38:14.790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:38:14.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2155" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:38:14.790" Score="0" Body="Regarding Post-Doctoral appointments, duties and job-hunt." OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T09:47:32.700" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:47:32.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-25T00:50:55.580" Score="5" ViewCount="2579" Body="&lt;p&gt;About me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work full time often more than 60 hours a week but I want to go to&#xA;college to be a neuroscientist. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I live in the US and have bachelors&#xA;degree in Chemical Engineering. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My goal is to get a PhD in&#xA;neuroscience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work in the IT department in a corporate but do&#xA;mostly documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan is to begin by doing the following -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing for Bio, Psyc and Math GRE subject tests &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subscribe to Scientific Weekly and Scientific Mind to get current research news  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a college level Biology textbook to get some background on&#xA;Biology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please help me with the following -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer some advice if I am headed in the right direction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What else will help me get into school/neuroscience research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any pointers on getting scholarship/aid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will I be able to get into a Masters program (with some pre-requisites) or do I need to start from undergrad?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1120" OwnerDisplayName="SKA" LastEditorUserId="1120" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T21:33:35.460" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T19:00:19.320" Title="What can I do to get an admit in a Neuroscience program?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2012-06-25T13:11:41.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are asking can be carried out using Web of Science. I used address == &quot;Canada&quot; for the past 5 years, and immediately had published records for 241, 711 articles! You can ask for a citation report, which provides the information that Scimago has at the top. I think the issue you'll face is the sheer volume of data you're asking for. Even limiting the category to &quot;ecology&quot; (my field) yields over 3000 articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this answer won't be much use if your university doesn't have access to WoS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thought I had was using Harzing's Publish or Perish (http://www.harzing.com/index.htm) which uses Google Scholar data. I tried a direct google scholar search, but can't immediately see how to limit it to articles &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; by people in the country as opposed to being about the country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hadn't heard of Microsoft Academic Search (see comment by Gopi) - so I had a look. The short answer is yes, it will show you publications by geographic region, but you have to go in by institution. You can get a google scholar like list of papers - and export those in various formats, but I only found the export option at the level of individual author. &#xA;For example, Université du Burundi has 16 publications by 5 authors, with an H-index of 4. &#xA;Pretty cool map though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1116" LastEditorUserId="1116" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T19:32:49.930" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T19:32:49.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2159" CreationDate="2012-06-25T13:38:41.313" Score="50" ViewCount="6544" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the best strategies for assessing if a journal is a &amp;quot;vanity&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;predatory&amp;quot; journal that should be avoided (both for publishing in and reviewing for)? For example, how would one go about determining if a journal/publisher belongs on &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="49927" LastEditDate="2021-05-24T13:00:42.240" LastActivityDate="2021-05-25T17:26:26.680" Title="How to identify predatory publishers/journals" Tags="&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2158" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:11:43.170" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should probably publish in the same venues that you read and cite.  Presumably those are reputable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to describe low-quality vanity publishers.  Two essential characteristics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The publication of very low quality material.  This is usually immediately recognizable to any expert.  Sometimes it's obvious to anyone; for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=2210&amp;amp;JournalID=160&quot;&gt;read this abstract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A business model in which the author (rather than the reader) pays the publisher.  Of course, this by itself isn't necessarily indicative of a low-quality publisher (think PLoS).   But low-quality publishers can't make money off of subscriptions, since they provide no content of value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional common characteristics of such publishers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mass e-mails (spam) to academics, especially when the recipients include researchers in unrelated fields.  These e-mails may request submission of conference presentations, papers, or book manuscripts, or may contain invitations to journal editorial boards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A high number of prominent typographical errors in text attributable to the publisher.  For instance, at the beginning of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tonumj/articles/V004/1TONUMJ.pdf&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; &quot;abstract&quot; is mistakenly spelled &quot;abstarct&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T20:19:12.227" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T20:19:12.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2137" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:13:40.030" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a native speaker does not mean they are a good proof-reader. In fact, most are far from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your spelling- and grammar-checkers should pick up most of the horrors, and the common 'tricks' of pushing the text to one side for a few days and reading from the end to the beginning will probably allow you to catch the rest yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your articles are for publication, the editor or sub-editors will tidy up the details if the text is basically sound. A thesis generally needs only to be clearly readable - nobody is going to pull you up for ending a sentence with a preposition or using 'that' instead of 'which'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your CV... try a professional CV writer, or one of the many CV templates available on-line. Go to the the university ones though, to avoid the scammers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="864" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T14:13:40.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2163" CreationDate="2012-06-25T16:11:31.223" Score="12" ViewCount="3483" Body="&lt;p&gt;During coursework if a solution manual is available for the textbook, it is always a huge bonus for the student. While the student is exposed to a variety of relevant applications and tricks in the problems, the solution manual ensures the student's hard work spent trying out the problems does not go waste. The solution manual's availability is akin to the presence of a &quot;Cheat&quot; button in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/cryptic/25671&quot;&gt;crossword applets&lt;/a&gt; - the earlier you press the less you try, but still the presence of the button is useful as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some useful tips for a student who wants to utilise the solution manual optimally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2021-01-28T13:52:15.727" Title="For a student, what is the optimal usage of a solution manual?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2172" CreationDate="2012-06-25T16:25:49.850" Score="13" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone publish a paper on the mathematical model of the open source software i.e. parameter analysis of the model (i.e relevant to specific area) which is the backbone of the software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to publish paper on model analysis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from citing the software, what kind of credit I should include in the paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1118" LastEditorDisplayName="user1118" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T21:39:10.610" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T20:26:33.523" Title="Publishing paper using an open-source software" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2161" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:43:42.373" Score="12" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Never use the solution manual before trying everything else; talk to friends, visit the professor, go to class and listen (!), check the internet. Once you use the solution manual for a problem, the potential gain from that problem is significantly and irrecoverably reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the solution manual to check your work. (Duh.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For problems you aren't planning on solving, you can use the solutions manual to create flashcards and other learning aides (if the course material is anemable to such a construct).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a friend/roommate/spouse/trained monkey who can compare your answers to the manual for you, such that you don't actually read through the manual, that may be useful for certain topics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can make some good money selling it when the semester is over :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:43:42.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="363" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:52:04.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you ultimately need to ask is why do you want the MFA, MA or PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a long time I didn't want these. I saw the MFA as something that many of my friends got with no real objective except to avoid the so-called &quot;real world&quot; and get to stay in a studio as long as they can. I can't do that and it sounds like you can't either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then the question is what reason should you get the advanced degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is simple: I want to do advanced research in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(topic)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answer is anything but the above then it isn't for you. So I can teach is not a strong reason for an MFA or PhD. So I can get a higher paying job is not a strong reason for an MFA or PhD. It is a research degree and ultimately that needs to be your reason for pursual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T18:52:04.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2012-06-26T03:48:04.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my PhD doing almost all my research in neuroscience, so I can give you a few tips from my personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Neuroscience is by nature a very cross-disciplinary field. I was coming from a psychology background, and my classmates had backgrounds ranging from biology to computer science to mathematics to pre-med. You will be at a disadvantage given your relative weakness in biology, but not a very significant one. Your math skills from the bachelors in engineering will serve you well as you learn about neural and systems dynamics, and the chemistry you learned will be of immeasurable use in understanding the biochemistry of the nervous system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your background, you should definitely be able to apply directly to a MS or PhD program without having to retake (too much) undergraduate coursework. Do note that you may be able to get into the program with the caveat that you will be required to take some undergraduate courses during your first year; this was a common practice in my program. Given how long it takes to complete your PhD anyway, it should not delay you much, if at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coming from an IT/engineering background, you may be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_neuroscience&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;computational neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;, a subfield which attempts to understand how the brain works—both at a systems-level (i.e., whole brain) and cell-level (i.e., individual neurons)—using computational models. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/research/areas/compneuro/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;entire&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eecs.mit.edu/bioeecs/CompNeurosci.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;departments&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/research/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dedicated&lt;/a&gt; to such research; it's a fairly large field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your action items listed above are all excellent ideas, and should serve you very well. The only suggestion I would add is to simply google the term &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=neuroscience+research+labs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;neuroscience research labs&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; and begin browsing around the web to see what types of research is being performed. As you search, google again using narrower terms, to see how broad each subfield is. Consider writing down some of the schools that house labs that sound interesting to you for future reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T03:48:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2161" CreationDate="2012-06-26T05:39:42.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ignore it and write a new one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the solution manual is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; useful; it only gives you &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt;.  The point of homework isn't the answers, but the struggle to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T05:39:42.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T11:46:13.280" Score="4" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble articulating a statement of intent because of a few things. But to keep on point for Stack Exchange I'll focus only on one: interdisciplinary coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have spoken to a Fine Arts Department at my top choice and they not only permit but promote taking interdisciplinary courses. My intention is to take as many courses as I can in Psychology while doing the MFA, as well as any required training to use the Eye-Tracking facilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I specify professors from both departments?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I mention that after I complete the first degree (MFA in my case) I plan to pursue a PhD in the other field (Visual Cognition in my case)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I state research goals in both fields or keep it to only the school I am initially applying to? (In my case: In the immediate I want to research neurotypical perception through visual design for clearly communicating complex ideas. Eventually though (as in during the PhD if not Post Doctorate) I want to research atypical perception and how to design visual communications that can be easily understood by people with disabilities. I am not sure which disability but mostly Autism Spectrum Disorders, however I also think there could be a strong use for this research in assisting those with Alzheimer's.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this cross disciplinary information should a person state in their Purpose Statement / Letter of Intent? My concern is that I don't want it to sound like I only want the Psychology Department and leave the committee wondering why I am going for the MFA in Design first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T00:07:12.017" Title="How should one formulate a Statement of Intent for an interdisciplinary degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2167" CreationDate="2012-06-26T13:13:00.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the more concrete your essay is—and the more it shows that you've thought through your plans and potential options at the school to which you are applying—the more strongly it will be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if you're pursuing an unconventional path, such as applying for psychology but also going for an MFA in design, then you'll probably want to make that clear from the very outset. Otherwise you run the risk of the faculty—which normally makes admissions decisions at the graduate level—thinking you've hoodwinked them somehow. When that happens, that can make your life very uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should mention your full degree plans including, if possible, professors from both departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, when it comes to writing the essay for admission, that depends a lot on the specific program you're applying to. If you are applying only for a master's program in psychology, then you should talk primarily about psychology-related topics. Your proposed work in design should amplify your psychology work, but not dominate it. On the other hand, if you're applying directly to the PhD program, and the MFA is an integral part of your plans, then you need to explain that at the outset, and should indicate what goals you'll achieve in the MFA that will help you with your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T13:13:00.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:46:08.873" Score="16" ViewCount="5762" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to get the DOI (Document Object Identifier) of a research paper when its title is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a reference database I could not get the URL of all the references. So, I tried to search online but could not  get to anything. I will appreciate if anyone uses such tool/website or has any idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am sorry but my problem is little bigger. I need to automatically (not manually) get them from the websites. Of course, I do not want to do it for more than 50 papers if that is legal/allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:09:27.050" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T15:00:07.360" Title="How can I get the DOI of a paper from its title?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2169" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:30:24.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Resources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isiknowledge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt; should have information on the DOI's for any titles that have them available (which should be &quot;all of them&quot; for anything that's been published in the last few years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mekentosj.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; should also be able to &quot;harvest&quot; DOI's for published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T16:30:24.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2169" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:34:08.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you can do this easily using e.g. Web of Science, and probably other bibliographic databases available through your library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that isn't an option, a little google search lead me to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI website FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, and question 3 is yours. There are 8  registration agencies for DOI, and no single way to search across DOI using document metadata. I tested the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crossref service&lt;/a&gt; and it was unable to find one of my articles because that journal doesn't use the crossref agency. One of the other agencies has that information, but you might have to search all of them to find it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I tried Google Scholar, which will work if the article in question has reference information available online. That depends on the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1116" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T16:34:08.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:38:44.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to publish a paper on model analysis. I would treat this like any other situation in which I wanted to use someone else's &quot;data&quot;. Generally, it would be the owner of the data (in this case the developer of the model) that would do the analysis. In the absence of an analysis that I need (or want, or think would be interesting), I would contact the owner(s)/developer(s) and see if they have plans for a similar analysis or would like to collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T16:38:44.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:49:06.200" Score="41" ViewCount="113648" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of us often talk about Bachelor's and Master's students, PhD students, researchers, professors, and postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, do we know what we actually intend when we say &quot;&lt;em&gt;Post-Doc&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all know that a Post-Doc is a person who, after finishing his/her PhD, works for one or two years as a scientist in a scientific research group. Beyond this simple definition, I would like to know what you think about Post-Doc &lt;strong&gt;roles&lt;/strong&gt; inside a laboratory and a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is actually a Postdoc fellow?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he a &lt;strong&gt;debutant researcher&lt;/strong&gt;? Or is he just a &lt;strong&gt;ultra-super-student?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is he &lt;strong&gt;half&lt;/strong&gt; a super-student, and &lt;strong&gt;half&lt;/strong&gt; a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a Postdoctoral fellow supposed to do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you expect from a Postdoctoral fellow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="379" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:01:28.327" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T14:35:22.667" Title="Who actually is a Post-Doctoral fellow?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:23:37.627" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many formal roles that generally fall under the category of &quot;post-doc&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The simplest is as a post-Ph.D researcher working with a faculty mentor and doing their own research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some postdocs have a role as &quot;lab manager&quot;: they help with advising students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, if given an appropriate title, a postdoc (as &quot;visiting/research faculty&quot;) can write their own grants or collaborate on grants that might support them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The limit of the above is a pure soft-money position that is not &quot;supervised&quot; by a faculty member. Such faculty are also often called 'research faculty', and may be many years away from a Ph.D&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In wetlabs, a postdoc role might also be as a lab technician or lab manager, handling supplies, tech work (making knockout mice for example). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T17:23:37.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2733" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:42:55.510" Score="5" ViewCount="2077" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of getcited.org and getcited.com?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am completely new to researching and paper publishing and I frequently get results from this site in Google Scholar Search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am absolutely not able to make out what this site does, it just gives the name of the paper, the author and the publication. It does not give a link to download them, neither does it give any abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are these &lt;em&gt;link buttons&lt;/em&gt; which ask you to enter a username and password each time. Even after creating an account and logging in, I am asked to log in each time I click on a link button and the link button just opens my profile on the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user557" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T05:37:09.583" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T15:15:08.760" Title="What are &quot;getcited.org&quot; and &quot;getcited.com&quot; for?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-06-26T19:50:47.067" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Suresh's answer, I'd say that a postdoc is no longer a student. A PhD student is expected to demonstrate that she can do research, and this is sanctioned by the PhD degree. A postdoc is rather expected to demonstrate that she can be trusted with a permanent academic position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, postdoc positions usually denote fixed-term positions (between 1 and 3 years) with limited &quot;official&quot; administrative responsibilities (i.e. no involvement in the long-term management of the department). Most postdocs are usually funded on some project, which implies some concrete duties w.r.t. to the project (such as taking care of the &quot;deliverables&quot;). Some are more like &quot;fellowships&quot;, where the applicant must come up with her own research agenda. &#xA;But there is no common basis, and it can varies greatly from one position to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T19:50:47.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-06-26T20:54:03.203" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote (jokingly) a rather blunt friend of mine, a post-doctoral fellow is &quot;someone who has a Ph.D. but is still nobody.&quot; I don't quite subscribe to so dismal a view, but it usually means someone who hasn't achieved full independence yet (inasmuch as they still have at least a nominal advisor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect a postdoctoral fellow in my group to be a competent researcher who doesn't need much instruction on the basics of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do research, but might need some training on the particular skills needed in my group. She should be capable of taking over virtually any duty in the group, and would be expected to take on some of the duties that would be associated with being a professor (or staff member in a research lab somewhere). That would mean being responsible for supervising undergraduates doing research projects, occasionally covering lectures, and being responsible for supervising the lab (purchasing equipment, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the post-doctoral fellow would not be left entirely to her own devices: since she is still effectively in a training situation, she would be given help and advanced notice. I would not just surprise her with duties; they would be assigned per mutual agreement, and always with a specific purpose in mind. (In other words, I am not simply &quot;dumping&quot; duties on the post-doc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T13:34:21.837" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T13:34:21.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2180" CreationDate="2012-06-27T09:06:05.177" Score="8" ViewCount="7753" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does it mean by publication in refereed and non-refereed journals? Are these terms applicable to conference papers too? Is there any relationship with peer-review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T22:25:44.457" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:01:18.237" Title="What are refereed and non-refereed journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2191" CreationDate="2012-06-27T09:32:18.623" Score="21" ViewCount="2857" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors, what is the etiquette for approaching them for advisor commitment? Specifically,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you get across that you aren't sure yet about him being your advisor  and are fishing around before you decide without sounding rude?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T04:22:06.503" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:22:06.503" Title="Etiquette for establishing contact with multiple professors for PhD guidance" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2178" CreationDate="2012-06-27T10:06:15.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your original question, &quot;referred journal&quot; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freudian slip&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps on your part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refereed journals/conferences are the ones where the published papers have been peer-reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T04:01:18.237" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:01:18.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-06-27T11:54:00.317" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is a bit different from the others. The other answers deal with what a postdoc &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt;. My answer describes the difference between the roles of grad students and postdocs in two ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first distinction is this: A graduate student is an &lt;strong&gt;apprentice&lt;/strong&gt;, while a postdoc is a &lt;strong&gt;journeyman&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academic system in which a student earns a doctorate and eventually becomes an academic is based on the apprenticeship system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graduate student is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship&quot;&gt;apprentice &lt;/a&gt;. The graduate student is learning his or her craft from the adviser (master). The graduate student hones his or her research skills performing the research of the adviser. Completion of the PhD defense signals that the student has completed the apprenticeship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post-doctoral fellow is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman&quot;&gt;journeyman&lt;/a&gt;, one who has completed training in the basic skills, but is not yet considered a master. To this end, the postdoc seeks out other masters to learn from. Since the postdoc is not an apprentice, the postdoc is given more freedom to design and implement his or her project. The postdoc is also expected to be able to work with minimal oversight from the adviser. A postdoc journeyman becomes a master upon successfully securing his or her own academic position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second distinction is in terms of classification and compensation. At most US institutions, the graduate student is a &lt;strong&gt;student&lt;/strong&gt;. The grad student may receive a stipend and benefits, but someone pays tuition for that student. A postdoc is an &lt;strong&gt;employee&lt;/strong&gt; who receives a salary and benefits. No money is paid back to the institution by (or on behalf of) the postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T22:41:58.210" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T22:41:58.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2183" CreationDate="2012-06-27T12:34:37.473" Score="14" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing to write and submit a grant proposal to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5518&quot;&gt;Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI)&lt;/a&gt; program. This will be my first submission to this program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, proposals submitted through RUI are sent to the appropriate program in the appropriate division and directorate. Since my project involves synthetic chemistry in alternative reaction media, my proposal would probably go to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503419&amp;amp;org=CHE&amp;amp;sel_org=CHE&amp;amp;from=fund&quot;&gt;Chemical Synthesis (SYN)&lt;/a&gt; program in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_list.jsp?org=CHE&quot;&gt;Division of Chemistry&lt;/a&gt; under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=MPS&quot;&gt;Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My colleagues, both in chemistry and in other disciplines, have shared conflicting reports about how RUI proposals are evaluated. Will my proposal be evaluated against the entire pool of proposals in the SYN program from all institutions? Or, are RUI proposals evaluated separately? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping that RUI proposals are evaluated separately, since I do not have access to the same research infrastructure that someone at a research institution does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T14:25:50.553" Title="Are NSF RUI proposals evaluated separately or are they evaluated against the general pool for that program/division/directorate?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2182" CreationDate="2012-06-27T13:45:36.373" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in mathematics (and presumably in other fields, although I have no direct experience with that), they are evaluated in the same pool as all the other proposals.  In practice, there seem to be two key differences in how they are treated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Panel members can be a little more forgiving for certain aspects of RUI proposals.  For example, if the PI publishes excellent papers but not very many of them, then this low publication rate would probably be considered a bigger drawback in a non-RUI proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The NSF may give some degree of preference to a few RUI proposals, as described below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review panel classifies proposals into three categories: roughly 10% that are highly recommended for funding, 30-40% that are recommended for funding, and 50-60% that are not.  The available funding is never sufficient to cover all the proposals recommended for funding, so further decisions need to be made after the panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ones not recommended for funding are automatically eliminated, and the ones highly recommended for funding are more or less guaranteed to be funded.  The ones in the middle are ranked in order by the panel, but the NSF is not required to follow this ranking.  They largely follow it, but they adjust it based on their own criteria (for example, balance of fields, geographical diversity, etc.).  My understanding is that if no RUI proposal in a given panel would otherwise be funded, then the highest-ranked RUI proposal may be bumped up in the rankings.  However, this is not guaranteed, and it depends on having a high enough ranking from the panel.  The program officers may also compare how panels in different areas ranked their RUI proposals, to see which ones seem most worthy of funding.  However, there is no RUI-only panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T13:45:36.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:42:03.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Gopi's comment, here's a snapshot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic map&lt;/a&gt; at work. I could only see the cumulative publication count in every field; but from the highlight of a few Indian universities I doubt if any quality measure has been considered at all. Also it lacks the cumulative country statistic and the citation counts you ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ryuui.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:42:03.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2197" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:42:50.597" Score="21" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down on a couple of potential advisors, once a student has established contact with his potential advisor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point do you discuss things like authorship, expectations and other such details? First meet, second meet or otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T08:41:23.293" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T17:26:15.210" Title="Etiquette for discussing authorships, expectations, etc. with potential advisors" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2203" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:44:38.863" Score="15" ViewCount="4656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down on a couple of potential advisors and has taken AT LEAST one course with each of his potential advisors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the student take to the first meet? A rough research idea, summary &#xA;of the professor's important papers or otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I have made 5 separate questions as suggested (As opposed to the single one which I started off with)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T19:59:37.693" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T19:59:37.693" Title="Etiquette for an initial meeting with a prospective advisor: What is expected of the student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2190" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:45:46.507" Score="10" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors and has taken at least one course with each of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How early should one contact potential advisors? Just at the beginning of the program (early bird?) or after 6 months (after taking courses with each one) or right when you need to choose (don't make decisions till you have to?)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T04:26:11.990" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:26:11.990" Title="Appropriate time for contacting professors after PhD enrolment" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2205" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:48:36.830" Score="10" ViewCount="1191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors and that he/she wishes to do his thesis under multiple advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the procedure for suggesting multiple advisors? Whom do you speak to first? What if the advisors don't go so well together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T04:28:51.160" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:28:51.160" Title="Procedure for having multiple advisors for a PhD thesis" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:54:35.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As soon as is reasonable.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way. There are possibly other students competing to work with this advisor, and they might have funds only for one new student. There might be other considerations - maybe the advisor is going on sabbatical, or isn't taking new students, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as soon as possible, set up a meeting with the potential advisor, indicate your potential interest (and why!), and ask them point blank if they're taking students, and how they prefer to screen students (some do it through course work, some might like to work with you on an independent study project, and so on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what they say, you can take further followup action - maybe they want you to take their class, and maybe they have a research group that has open meetings, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: don't wait till your year is over, because it is quite possible that someone has made a decision already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: if this year-delay is institutionalized, it might be that all advisors wait till the end of the year to even think about new students. I suspect this is unlikely, but in any case that first meeting will help clarify it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:54:35.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:57:11.260" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advisors understand that students are fishing around - that's normal. What's less common (but possible) is students fishing around in wildly different areas. Just keep in mind that either an advisor is going to see something in you that will motivate them to try and convince you to work with them, or they'll view you as someone who needs to make up their mind first, and won't spend too much time thinking about you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that respect, matching up with an advisor is more like dating than an job interview, at least in the US :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:57:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2216" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:57:22.270" Score="14" ViewCount="1339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student with no experience at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a research paper, that you are planning to submit for publication, how do you state that a particular statement/fact is commonly known to all and it's dicoverer/inventor is not known, and that there exists no research paper that introduced the concept but there do exist various books/websites that discuss the very concepts and a few derivatives of the concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not able to cite a particular statement/bunch of statements as I am not able to find any research paper related to that at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particular thing in question is: &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/161661/source-of-probably-the-most-simplest-math-trick&quot;&gt;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/161661/source-of-probably-the-most-simplest-math-trick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user557" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:44:48.137" Title="On citing &quot;common knowledge&quot; statements" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:58:31.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is never too early to contact potential advisers. If you have your heart set on a particular individual, you may even want to initiate contact before you start (and perhaps as early as right after you have applied). Early contacts usually come from motivated students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waiting a while gives you the ability to get to know the adviser and helps them get to know you. This could be beneficial, but you should not wait too long. Last minute contacts suggest a variety of behaviors that are unappealing in a graduate student, like laziness, forgetfulness, lack of dedication, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the program lets graduate students choose, then the advisers are well aware of how the system works. A short email requesting more information and an in person interview would be appropriate. If you know the adviser better (you have already taken a class with this person), then an informal stop by their office would be fine, too. Most advisers expect this kind of contact in this situation. An initial contact by email does not have to be anything more than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor {X}, I am (or will be soon) a graduate student in your department. I am interested in joining your research group. I have read about your work in the field of {Y} and found it interesting, and I want to learn more. Are you available to meet with me at one of the following times {suggest three specific times}? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:58:31.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:58:37.373" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you found a book that discusses the statement, and you really can't track down where it comes from (does the book cite anything?), then citing the book (with chapter/page numbers) is acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:58:37.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:07:42.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The adviser already knows that you are not 100% committed to his or her research group. If the system lets students choose, then the advisers know the rules. The faculty in that department very likely made those rules. They know that you are considering other advisers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is never rude to consider other advisers. Some programs even require it. My graduate program required that I interview at least three potential advisers and rank them. The faculty would then be informed of the list of students who chose each faculty member at the first choice &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;. Faculty had to fill open positions from this first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system was implemented by the faculty a few years previous, when they became dissatisfied with an approach that left matching entirely up to students and faculty meeting and getting along. Faculty would then choose their favorites from all interested students. Usually, this meant that a small number of students were not chosen at all, which was not acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:07:42.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:16:21.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the statement/concept/idea that you think you want to cite is covered (without citation) in the introductory undergraduate textbook(s) on the subject, then it is likely common knowledge in the field. This is particularly true in science and social science. For example, you should not need to cite things like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fluorine atoms are more electronegative than carbon atoms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asexual reproduction of eukaryotic cells usually occurs by mitosis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force is a vector quantity, while power is a scalar quantity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The free market equilibrium price for a commodity is found at the intersection of the supply and demand curves for that commodity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sigmund Freud is commonly considered the founder of psychoanalysis. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:16:21.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2185" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:24:49.283" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of your first meeting as a mutual interview. The adviser wants to know if you are worth spending time and money on. You need to ask questions to determine if the adviser is worth spending years of your life on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good topics for the first meeting are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The adviser's expectations of you (including hours worked per week, number of papers to publish before graduating, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your expectations of your adviser (Do you get vacation time? How long does it take your students to graduate? How much grant funding do you have? What earns me authorship on papers? etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your potential project (What are the long-term goals? What are the short-term objectives? Have other students worked on this project before?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What preparations do you need to make? (Should you take a particular course? Should you read certain papers or books?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also try to get candid answers to these questions from the students who already work for your potential adviser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:24:49.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2185" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:38:08.797" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question should be asked during your interview, in a polite but directed manner. The question is simply, &quot;How do you assign authorship on papers co-authored with graduate students?&quot; The answer should address who is on the paper, the ordering of the authorship, and what criterion is used to determine who is a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; ask his current graduate students the exact same question, preferably students who have gone through the process of writing a paper with the advisor at least once, just to make sure that what the advisor says is mostly mirrored in what the students report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:38:08.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2201" CreationDate="2012-06-27T17:23:26.290" Score="15" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following scenario: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A is working on a problem X and has unpublished new material. A is&#xA;  then asked to review a paper: upon reading the abstract, A realizes&#xA;  that the authors are also working on problem X and appear to have&#xA;  duplicated some of A's unpublished material (the results - not clear&#xA;  from the abstract if the approach is also duplicated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A now has four possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decline to review the paper, or review it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stop working on X, or continue to work on it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The safest combination might be to (decline to review, and stop working), but would it also be legitimate to (decline to review, and continue working) ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T17:48:50.493" Title="Conflict declaration in reviews" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2200" CreationDate="2012-06-27T17:48:50.493" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only problematic situtation seems to me to agree to review the paper, give it a deliberately bad review so it is rejected and then publish the own results. I personally would not review the paper in question at all because it might turn out that it is legitimate to reject it, and then it would be difficult to continue working independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you should stop working on the problem is a more difficult question. In general I would say no unless it's something very specific with limited scope for further work. If you are reasonably sure that your work would go beyond what the other authors have done, there's no reason not to do it. You could always wait to see if the paper is published and if it is contact the authors and propose to work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T17:48:50.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2012-06-27T19:53:25.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Norris is basically correct—as advisors, we know that students have multiple options for choosing advisors, particularly in setups where the students pick advisors after their arrival. Therefore, we won't (or at least shouldn't) take it personally when someone tells us they're considering other advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, you should also remember that these processes are often &lt;em&gt;double-sided&lt;/em&gt;: in case of competition, the advisors also have a choice in who they want as their top choice. If you are overly hesitant, the advisor may choose another candidate who is more certain as a top choice. So, you should be honest if you're not immediately &quot;sold&quot; on working for a particular advisor, but don't be so negative as to make the advisor look elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T19:53:25.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2186" CreationDate="2012-06-27T19:58:43.887" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an initial meeting, I would take an general idea of the kinds of things you'd like to do in a particular advisor's group, a sense of what the advisor works on—you don't necessarily have to have read papers in advance, and an open mind. That said, you'll make a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; impression if you have read a few recent papers, and have a few intelligent questions to ask. It will pique the advisor's interest, and show your sincerity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for coming in with ideas for a research project, this depends a lot on how the project will be funded. If you have your own fellowship and can design your own project, then you should definitely have an idea or two ready. On the other hand, if you will be funded by an existing research grant within the group, your choice of projects will be more constrained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final note—I would say that it's definitely &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; required that you take a course with an advisor before considering them as a research advisor. If that were the case, I would have been on a completely different career path than the one I'm on now, as I'd be working for my fourth-choice advisor (who was the only one I took a class with before choosing a research group!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T19:58:43.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2276" CreationDate="2012-06-27T21:33:54.047" Score="17" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I find research on strategies for recruiting students into undergraduate programs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an assistant professor at a small comprehensive 4-year public institution. My department (chemistry) has implemented a new strategic plan. One of our principle action items involves recruiting more high school students to attend our institution with the intention in majoring in chemistry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that research is conducted, probably at the institution level, on what recruitment strategies are successful in various disciplines. However, since my research background is in chemistry, I am not familiar with the resources to find this research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will start with this question: What journals and/or databases should I be reading and using? I know about the &lt;em&gt;Chronicle of Higher Eduction&lt;/em&gt;. Which others are good resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I would like to find relatively recent reports, preferably in peer-reviewed literature or published by not-for-profits. Strategies that use social media would be great. There is a nice study linked in Dan C.'s answer, but it is from April 2004, meaning the data likely predates Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T23:56:41.933" LastActivityDate="2017-12-09T07:46:59.670" Title="Research on strategies for student recruitment" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2189" CreationDate="2012-06-27T22:11:55.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I think the answer is going to be - &quot;it depends&quot;! I have advised several graduate students, including 2 who are currently &quot;co-advised&quot; with other faculty. In one case, the student approached me first, but I already had a working relationship (co-teaching, serving on supervisory committees together etc.) with the other faculty member. In the other case, I was approached 2nd, and again, I had previously worked with the other faculty and knew them well. When talking with potential students, if it is clear that a different faculty member would have better or equally relevant expertise, I always suggest talking to them. However, that's my opinion. I also have colleagues who would flat out refuse to consider co-advising a student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key &quot;test&quot; is to imagine your dissertation work as a 3 way collaboration - what does each faculty member bring to the table? What are they going to get out of it? How you approach them is completely dependent on the individual personalities involved. You should also find out if there are any policies on co-advising at your institution or department - there are none at mine, but that might not be universal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1116" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T22:11:55.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-28T02:36:07.260" Score="12" ViewCount="2725" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to getting a tenure-track position where one has both a lot of resources and academic freedom to do what one wants to do (so having a tenure-track position in a top university might be more useful because one may get more resources at a top university). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in short, when one wants to maximize one's chances of becoming a &quot;top scientist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are obviously &lt;em&gt;numerous&lt;/em&gt; factors, and &quot;rank/prestige&quot; should not be considered as a factor in itself. That said, the period after one gets a PhD is an extremely important time for building up connections, and those are easier to get at a top university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T09:12:42.267" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T16:24:13.410" Title="What are the tradeoffs involved in taking a postdoc at a top university versus an assistant professorship at a non-top university?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-28T02:56:56.873" Score="24" ViewCount="3034" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Australian universities have a large number of international students. Common countries of origin include China, Singapore, and Malaysia. When interacting with students, it's much nicer if you can learn their name and pronounce it correctly. To reduce the scope of this question, I thought I'd limit it to Chinese names, but it could be broadened to include other Asian countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several challenges emerge with Chinese names for an Australian (and presumably others from North America, Europe, etc.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;challenges of pronunciation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;challenges when reading a Chinese name of knowing which part of the full name is the name to address the student by&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;challenges in remember the name. In particular, I find it difficult to remember a name that I can't pronounce. Furthermore, the less familiar I am with a name and the fewer associations I have with a name, the harder I find it is to remember.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I learn how to pronounce names of Chinese students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I better recall names of Chinese students? e.g., get acquainted with common names, build some semantic knowledge around Chinese names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be particularly interested in any good online resources for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Following the suggestion of @scaaahu I have asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://chinese.stackexchange.com/q/1818/807&quot;&gt;this question also on Chinese Stack Exchange.com&lt;/a&gt; . I normally would not cross-post, but I think that this question might be a rare exception to the rule where cross-posting will provide complementary perspectives.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:05.637" LastActivityDate="2020-06-26T14:12:18.470" Title="How to learn how to pronounce and remember names of Chinese students?" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2212" CreationDate="2012-06-28T04:00:03.573" Score="19" ViewCount="1491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper for review and I would like to include comments (on clarifications/suggestions/errors) over specific paragraphs or statements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ideal software resources that could help reviewers? I would prefer them to be Linux-based. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T23:40:31.640" Title="Useful software resources for reviewing papers" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2207" CreationDate="2012-06-28T04:00:53.113" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would like to sincerely thank you for your consideration on behalf of all Chinese (I am a Chinese myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer your questions. One of the best ways to pronounce the individual Chinese names correctly is to ask them - those Chinese students. They would be glad to tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its nature, Chinese is hard for English speaking people to pronounce. This site is not the right place to discuss the details. There is a better &lt;a href=&quot;https://chinese.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many Chinese dialects. Mandarin Chinese is the most common one. I just did a search, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/How-To-Pronounce-Mandarin-Chinese.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; seems to be a good place to use. I tried some of the audio sound clips and they sound fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, asking them is the best way. My Chinese last name is Hu. The correct pronunciation is like &amp;quot;who&amp;quot;. Many non-Chinese speaking people pronounce it wrong. I already got used to it but I am always happy to tell them the right way when they ask me. So, thank you again for asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second question is how to recall Chinese names. This is even harder for a non-Chinese speaking person. My suggestion is to ask individuals what names they go by. If they have English names, would they prefer you call their English names?! I believe most of them would say yes. If they insist on you calling them by their Chinese names, I am afraid the only way is to ask their names every time you meet them. I am not sure they would like it but if that's what they want, that's the way they get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="100642" LastEditDate="2020-06-23T06:19:54.163" LastActivityDate="2020-06-23T06:19:54.163" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2207" CreationDate="2012-06-28T04:18:35.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~zhuxj/readpinyin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;specific site&lt;/a&gt; that has examples of Chinese names. You might find that quite helpful. There aren't audio files though, and there seems to be a disagreement between the site and the one linked above about the correct pronunciation of 'zh' (as 'dr' or 'j').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-05-31T19:24:35.853" LastActivityDate="2020-05-31T19:24:35.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2209" CreationDate="2012-06-28T04:22:21.277" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have access to the LaTeX source, there are a number of packages that will help you. Some include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/todonotes.html&quot;&gt;todonotes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/fixme.html&quot;&gt;fixme&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it's more likely that you have a PDF only. In that case, you need a PDF annotating package. A free cross-platform solution is &lt;a href=&quot;http://xournal.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Xournal&lt;/a&gt;, which runs on windows/linux (and maybe Mac). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're on a iOS device, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodiware.com/goodreader.html&quot;&gt;Goodreader&lt;/a&gt; is a nice app that does annotations. &#xA;There's always &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat.html&quot;&gt;Adobe Acrobat&lt;/a&gt; as well. Both of these solutions are not free though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: (by @atiretoo)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One issue to be careful with providing comments on a pdf or other document is maintaining anonymity. &lt;strong&gt;Adobe Acrobat (and probably other software), automatically flags your annotations with information about you unless you are careful to remove that from the document before commenting&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T23:40:31.640" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T23:40:31.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2209" CreationDate="2012-06-28T09:11:24.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The approach taken by many reviewers (myself included) is to simply reference the page and line number, or to insert a copy of the statement in question in the referee report, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On page 7, line 6, the word &quot;mispell&quot; should be &quot;misspell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the easiest approach if the number of such comments is not too large, since it doesn't require any extra software and doesn't require the authors to search through the PDF for your annotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T20:44:15.487" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T20:44:15.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2206" CreationDate="2012-06-28T09:52:41.987" Score="9" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting experience at a top university is good for your CV and for you as a researcher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting more research experience under your belt can increase your chance of getting a job in the future, but there are no guarantees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A post-doc will give you a chance to write more papers and to find out what topic you really want to do your research on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taking the assistant professorship now would get you immediately on the track to full professor, which may be delayed if you spend years doing a post doc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working at a non-top university might mean that the students you have access to, for example, as RAs or PhD students, to develop your research vision, will not be as good as at the top university. That said, as a post-doc, you will generally not have access to such students anyway, except perhaps as part of a collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pressure to succeed at a top university is much greater than at a non-top university. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T09:52:41.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2206" CreationDate="2012-06-28T11:28:34.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A post doc is merely a step towards getting a tenure track position. I would always suggest taking the tenure track job. The only time I would even suggest thinking about it is if the tenure track position has a heavy teaching load (e.g., 3-3 or higher in the sciences and 4-4 or higher in the humanities). Even with a ridiculous teaching load I would still suggest the tenure track position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone with a postdoc at a top university gets a tenure track job afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T11:28:34.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2012-06-28T12:28:51.447" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to cite common knowledge. If you think it is common knowledge, wait for the reviewer to ask for a reference, before going to all the trouble of sorting out the history. Often if a reviewer doesn't think the statement is common knowledge he/she will suggest a reference or provide a conflicting reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T12:28:51.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-28T15:45:53.090" Score="4" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there some automatic way to single out the books in bibliography of a paper in IEEE format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, write some program or use some functionality of some editors to find out the books mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pift6080/H09/documents/papers/blind_source_tutorial.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; with 303 references in its bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T21:22:15.030" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T21:22:15.030" Title="Separate books from papers in bibliography of a paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2217" CreationDate="2012-06-28T15:57:10.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a partial answer, since it's not really automatic, but since this paper seems to have been done with Latex, you could probably ask the authors for their bibtex file, and then using a reference manager such as Bibdesk, Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, etc, you should be able to sort them by category, and therefore isolate all the books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T15:57:10.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2221" CreationDate="2012-06-29T00:16:42.550" Score="593" ViewCount="73605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a third year (starting fourth year in the fall) PhD student in mathematics. I've passed all qualifying exams and am currently doing research. As far as I can tell, I am not doing poorly. I have the good fortune of having a great advisor, being in a very supportive department, and having friends and family who genuinely care about my success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting anywhere. Sometimes, rarely, I do figure something out and that feels wonderful, but the overwhelming majority of my time appears to be spent banging my head against a mostly figurative wall. I am not complaining about the material being hard, and I am not averse to putting in hard work, but I get frequently discouraged when I realize the vast volumes of mathematics that I yet know nothing about (and probably never will). It's very hard to quantify progress - in particular, there are too few tangible returns after too many hours worked. I find myself thinking along the lines of &quot;Oh, if only someone actually smart were thinking about this problem they would have solved it in moments&quot; and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've talked about this to some number of people; here is some advice I have received:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a day off. Putting in hours upon hours of trying things doesn't magically lead to a solution, particularly if the brain is tired and just wants to sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a hobby. Since math research doesn't exactly provide instant gratification, a hobby might provide some instead. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to other graduate students. Realize that many graduate students go through this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to know how other folks have dealt with being discouraged as a graduate student. Does it get better with time and experience? Is this a sign that research is not for me and that I should seriously consider a life outside academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2020-07-24T13:45:18.523" LastActivityDate="2020-07-24T13:45:18.523" Title="How should I deal with becoming discouraged as a graduate student?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-06-29T02:35:58.290" Score="130" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it get better with time and experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sort of, in that you become smart enough to realize that there ISN'T anyone smarter who would have figured it out in a couple of minutes  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a sign that research is not for me and that I should&#xA;  seriously consider a life outside academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly not !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is hard work. You're on the cutting edge, charting territory no one has explored before. It takes courage, persistence, energy and a VERY THICK SKIN for rejection. After all, (and this pertains to CS), probably 95% of your job applications will be turned down, 75% of your papers will be rejected the first time, a grant proposal has a 1 in 10 change of succeeding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's the small sublime moments of joy when you realize that you've discovered something that no one else knows that make it fun. And the feeling, as time goes on, that you're immersed in a wonderful lake of , with beautiful new ideas around you as far as you can see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s the advice you were given is very sound. Take breaks, find fulfilling things to do outside of work, and realize that everyone (even seasoned researchers) feel the same frustrations and highs that you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T02:35:58.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-06-29T02:59:46.327" Score="491" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting anywhere. Sometimes, rarely, I do figure something out and that feels wonderful, but the overwhelming majority of my time appears to be spent banging my head against a mostly figurative wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  This.  And it wouldn't be so damn tempting if those bricks didn't wiggle just a little bit every time I slammed my forehead into them.  Sometimes I think my eyes must be playing tricks on me, what with the repeated cranial trauma and all.  But then I remember how good it felt the last time my head actually went &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the wall, and so I keep plugging away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found it extremely useful to have two or three walls to bang my head against at any given time.  Surprisingly, sometimes banging my head against one wall actually makes one of the other walls weaker.  But most walls prove considerably stronger than my head; so it's helpful to have options, so I don't feel so bad about walking away with some scalp intact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're very lucky, one good smack on the bricks will actually bring the &lt;em&gt;ceiling&lt;/em&gt; crashing around your ears.  That takes a long time to clean up, but sometimes the debris will knock down other walls for you.  And then you have a whole new set of even bigger walls to bang your head against!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find myself thinking along the lines of &quot;Oh, if only someone actually smart were thinking about this problem they would have solved it in moments&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not listen to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;Impostor Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  Everyone &quot;actually smart&quot; is hearing &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same voice in their head saying &quot;Oh, if only someone who actually knew how to hit walls with their forehead hit this wall, it would come down like a stack of cards.&quot; when in fact the wall really is made of brick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it get better with time and experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Eventually, you'll move from hoping that you'll be able to knock down a wall with your head someday, to being surprised at how often the walls you hit with your head actually fall, to finally believing that you really can knock down walls with your head sometimes.  (For me, the second transition happened some time after tenure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your head will still hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="12012" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T17:33:53.253" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:33:53.253" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-06-29T03:08:04.380" Score="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;It definitely does not mean research isn't for you.  Research is hard, and it takes some getting used to.  Your experiences sound normal, and it will indeed get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is that it's tempting to focus too much on the destination: proving theorems, writing papers.  These things happen only occasionally, and thinking about them (or their absence) too much is an easy way to become depressed.  Instead, you want to reach the point of enjoying the journey itself.  This takes some perspective and confidence, but it will come with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine that one day you mention a difficulty you're having to your office mate, who tells you about a wonderful theorem that's relevant.  If you're feeling insecure, this is awful: you think about the time you wasted not knowing about this theorem, and you worry that your office mate knew it and therefore you should have.  On the other hand, if you're confident in yourself, then it feels great: you learned something beautiful that will help your research, and how can it be a bad day when you learned something like that?  This confidence can take time to develop, but as you feel more relaxed and bolder, everything will become more enjoyable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to keep in mind is that progress is difficult to measure when you don't know where you're going (which is what research is!).  Grad students sometimes feel bad because they don't think they're en route to solving their thesis problems.  Often they're right, but that's not a problem.  If you knew in advance that you were going to solve it, then it wouldn't be research.  The goal isn't to solve the problem you started with, and indeed you often won't.  Instead, the goal is to find something exciting along the way.  Once you're used to this, you can say to yourself, &quot;OK, probably I'm not going to solve this problem, but it's worth a try, and in any case I'm sure that if I think hard enough about it, something interesting and worthwhile will come out of that work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I think of this as a phase transition that happens in a certain point in one's development as a researcher.  Before the transition, you think &quot;Oh no, there's so much to learn.  How can I ever learn enough to be a good researcher?&quot;  Afterwards, you think &quot;Well, I don't know that much in the overall scheme of things, but I seem to be doing research anyway.  And I'm so glad there's a lifetime supply of great mathematics to learn, so I'll never be bored.&quot;  The key is to relax and trust that everything will work out, even when it feels overwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is easier said than done, and I struggled with it myself.  For years, I felt like I wasn't a real mathematician, and I would tell myself I would be one if only I could accomplish some goal: publishing a paper, learning some difficult topic, publishing a paper I was proud of, getting a job, etc.  However, it was never enough.  I thought the end game was deciding I was a real mathematician, but it turns out it's developing the confidence not to worry about this, and I've been much happier since that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T03:08:04.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-06-29T07:02:24.913" Score="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love the answers above, but here's another possible bit of advice: find ways to work with others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research on your own can be isolating.  Working with other graduate students can make the process much more enjoyable.  Staring at a problem on your own is both less fun and generally less productive than trying to work through it with a colleague.  Synergy happens.  Two brains isn't just better than one;  it's better than two brains working separately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In graduate school there's an artificial sense that you should be working on your own to get &quot;your&quot; PhD for &quot;your&quot; work on &quot;your&quot; problem.  This mindset is counterproductive, but it may be unavoidable depending on your field and school.  If you have to keep some problems to work on on your own, but then find one or two problems to work on with your officemates or others.  Once you're done with graduate school, the artificial &quot;work on your own&quot; constraints will start to disappear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1140" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T07:02:24.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2226" CreationDate="2012-06-29T13:42:19.013" Score="10" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imported many pdf articles into Mendeley but saw that Mendeley did not capture all the fields correctly. So, I needed to change them manually. It would be a tedious job to do so with many documents. Fortunately, many of the documents share common journal names and years. So, I needed a way to edit them together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reference manager where we can edit selected references in one go without having to do this for each reference individually? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried Endnote. Mendeley, and JabRef so far but could not find such a way. I will be grateful if someone has any idea/experience in this direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit-1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After solving the batch editing problem, I also had a problem with getting the syntax for the authors correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:43:23.817" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:43:23.817" Title="Batch editing references" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2225" CreationDate="2012-06-29T14:40:08.380" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mendeley does it actually. I did not try properly before. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LuKEr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;Then I had a problem with getting the authors correct. What you need to do is put them as follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Last Name, First Names&#xA;Last Name, First Names&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After Edit-1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;Another useful thing in Mendeley is that, you just have to select the authors from the pdf and Mendeley will give suggestions on the syntax based on existing authors in the current database. See the following image.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8BHxC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T21:10:34.463" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T21:10:34.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2206" CreationDate="2012-06-29T16:24:13.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postdoc is not a career goal; it's yet another step in training, with the purpose of preparing the trainee for the eventual faculty role. With that in mind,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Postdoc is good because:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're associating yourself with some top-notch researchers and gaining valuable research experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're learning new techniques and methodologies from a well-known and well-respected professor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're writing grant proposals that are X times more likely to be funded because &amp;lt;well-known researcher&amp;gt;'s name is on them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Faculty is good because:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're running your own lab and getting experience managing teaching, research, mentoring, and administrative duties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're proving that you can do it by yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can do research on your own interests, without having to worry about what your PI wants you to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, think about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost&quot;&gt;opportunity cost&lt;/a&gt; of both choices... it really depends on where you want your career to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T16:24:13.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2182" CreationDate="2012-06-29T17:57:19.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience with Computer Science panels (IIS Division) is similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in IIS, acceptance rates are typically somewhat lower:&#xA;10 %  Highly competitive (HC),&#xA;15 %  Competitive (C),&#xA;75 %  Not recommended for funding by panel (NRFP)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NRFP proposals are immediately discarded.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sometimes some of the NRFP proposals are classified as Low Competitive (but still&#xA;immediately discarded).&#xA;Highly competitive proposals are usually, but not always funded.&#xA;Some (approx. one third) of Competitive proposals are funded.&#xA;Total funding (acceptance) rates (e.g., for III) are typically around 15 percent, sometimes a bit higher (up to 20%) for Early Career proposals.&#xA;Funding rates in Computer Science vary widely across programs, solicitations, size classes,&#xA;divisions, year submitted, etc. &#xA;ranging from 10% to 50% (depending on budgets, number of proposals&#xA;submitted, etc.)  In general funding rates decline with increasing size (budget) class&#xA;of the proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RUI proposals are considered together with other proposals but&#xA;treated somewhat more leniently.&#xA;Proposals from all of the review panels for a particular cluster (group), e.g., III in IIS Division of the CISE directorate,&#xA;for a particular solicitation (and size class) are considered together when&#xA;making funding decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Panel recommendations are only advisory to NSF staff, who also consider geographic&#xA;diversity, programmatic priorities and balance, institutional diversity, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1155" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T17:57:19.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2225" CreationDate="2012-06-29T18:29:35.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use bibtex, then you can batch edit with things like sed, awk, or simple find/replace in any text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-06-30T21:17:07.523" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T21:17:07.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-06-29T19:42:44.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wunderkit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wunderkit&lt;/a&gt; (recently released) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wunderlist&lt;/a&gt; for organizing to-do list, and taking notes. I think the people at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;6wunderkinder&lt;/a&gt; have been doing great job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T19:42:44.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2095" CreationDate="2012-06-30T02:58:06.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's going to depend vastly on what kind of position you want to be headed into, and how deep down the rabbit hole you wish to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing I would say you ought to focus on is fundamentals: No matter what kind of work you end up doing, be it programming business processes or pursuing a PhD, getting your fundamentals straight will pay dividends over and over again. Courses in algorithms, software engineering, computer architecture, each will give you a different view into the work you do, no matter where you're doing it. A CS undergraduate degree would be a good choice, especially if grad studies is where you want to go after. I understand they vary in quality though, so that's something to bear in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T02:58:06.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2225" CreationDate="2012-06-30T03:20:53.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the author syntax changes if you're using DOI or PMID. In addition to the method that @Stat-R suggests, if you filter by authors, you can simply drag and drop author names onto each other and they will merge into your designated syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T03:20:53.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2244" CreationDate="2012-06-30T06:10:02.443" Score="12" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently researching on Recreational Mathematics - Mathematical Tricks and I have come across this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678174?origin=JSTOR-pdf&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&#xA;Ten Amazing Mathematical Tricks&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article is of free style and does not follows the pattern/format I have seen in all the other articles/research paper so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is this a research paper? Is it a paper? If not, what is it? Can such a paper be cited as a reference? I want to know more about these freestyle articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user557" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T13:43:09.987" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T13:43:09.987" Title="What category does a collection of mathematics tricks come under?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2234" CreationDate="2012-06-30T06:51:23.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't see the actual article, but if it's an MAA article by Martin Gardner, it's probably a list of interesting puzzles. Peter Winkler also writes a column of this kind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These might not be &quot;research papers&quot; in the sense of proving new theorems on a topic, but they're interesting communications. You can of course cite such a paper as a reference if you use some material from it (and you should!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T06:51:23.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2234" CreationDate="2012-06-30T10:07:40.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the description of the Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Math Horizons is intended primarily for undergraduates interested in &#xA;   mathematics. Thus, while we especially value and desire to publish &#xA;   high-quality exposition of beautiful mathematics, we also wish to &#xA;   publish lively articles about the culture of mathematics. We interpret &#xA;   this quite broadly—we welcome stories of mathematical people, the &#xA;   history of an idea or circle of ideas, applications, fiction, folklore, &#xA;   traditions, institutions, humor, puzzles, games, book reviews, &#xA;   student math club activities, and career opportunities and advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it don't contain research papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1009" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T10:07:40.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2234" CreationDate="2012-06-30T22:05:39.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the others have stated, what you refer to is an article in a magazine, and not a research paper in a journal.  If your goal is to show that you came upon an idea while reading this article, then you should cite the article.  (Research papers do sometimes include magazine articles in their bibliographies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, research papers usually cite sources where ideas were first published, and it is rare for original ideas to be first published in magazines as articles.  So there is a good chance that the ideas you found in the article were published earlier.  I recommend that you search for earlier sources and cite them also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend that you read a few issues of the three publications I mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1440/64&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to see how they cite work in recreational mathematics.  (In my opinion, the most prestigious place to publish work on recreational mathematics is the &lt;em&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T22:05:39.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2240" CreationDate="2012-06-30T23:00:07.087" Score="37" ViewCount="9954" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering buying either an e-book reader or a full tablet. My main motivation is to read books and scientific papers and I really don't need all the extra stuff tablets can give me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only concerns are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether e-book reader (that has pdf support) will handle many different layouts used in articles (how well will 2-column A4 page fit in an 800x600 e-ink display)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether it will display math properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any thoughts and (more preferably) experience about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T08:34:30.713" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T15:28:41.557" Title="Is typical ebook reader with pdf support enough to read scientific papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-01T03:18:07.877" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Not sufficient. Kindle DX, an almost full-sized page, was not big enough. Refresh rates are not fast enough for flipping back and forth. Zooming interface is terrible. E readers are good for simple flow text, one page after the next. That is not how I read papers. Tablets do much better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T09:47:36.883" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T09:47:36.883" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-01T04:10:29.793" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I still prefer to have a printed copy, I find that my Kindle Fire (which I bought for this particular purpose) works wonderfully. It's a little pricier than a standard kindle, but the touch screen allows you to zoom and scan on pdf pages with ease. It's far superior to reading the same paper on a laptop or desktop monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also nice to be able to carry around so many papers without additional weight or bulk!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T04:10:29.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2012-07-01T05:33:58.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this webpage have some of the information that you're looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.noellevitz.com/papers-research-higher-education/student-recruitment-and-financial-aid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.noellevitz.com/papers-research-higher-education/student-recruitment-and-financial-aid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I recommend the &quot;Factors to enroll&quot; report; it asks for a login, but you can continue as a guest.)  Alternatively, you might also find the following pdf useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edgeip.com/media/edgeip/graphics/Research0404.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.edgeip.com/media/edgeip/graphics/Research0404.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T05:55:25.187" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T05:55:25.187" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-01T05:59:59.840" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although my experience in this field is limited, here are a few points I learnt : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mode of learning should be active. You should scribble, underline, highlight, gnaw or circle or whatever to make sure you understand each and every point the author makes. One can't read papers like a fiction novel. It's not a spectator sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any device which allows you to do the above is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On PC you can use xournal. It works really well on Linux flavours.&#xA;On tablets, you have many options for markup.&#xA;A somewhat related question regarding the review of papers was asked and gathered some interesting answers:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2209/107&quot;&gt;Useful software resources for reviewing papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way the point is to get involved.&#xA;Personally, my productivity is highest on dead tree version but if that's not possible. I strongly prefer my tablet over the computer since distractions are lower. On my computer, any &quot;instant glorification&quot; distraction is one alt+tab away&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T05:59:59.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2234" CreationDate="2012-07-01T06:36:07.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of people have correctly told you (I can see the article) that this is a collection of mathematical puzzles, rather than a research paper.  So let me tell you a little more about this type of article.  Martin Gardner is considered by many to be the biggest popularizer of recreational mathematics in the 20th century (perhaps ever).  For 25 years (1956-1981), he wrote a column for Scientific American called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner#Recreational_mathematics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mathematical Games&lt;/a&gt;.  Many of his columns have been collected into books (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0883855453&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games&lt;/a&gt;).  Some other well-known examples of similar writing include that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Douglas Hofstadter&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stewart_%28mathematician%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ian Stewart&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/devlin/devangle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keith Devlin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T12:47:00.863" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T12:47:00.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2012-07-01T07:21:27.357" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The single most useful reference I've read on networking in academia is &quot;Networking on the Network&quot; (by Phil Agre): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Research/Advice/network.html&quot;&gt;http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Research/Advice/network.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me mention a few examples of advice that Phil gives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the Internet does not &lt;em&gt;fundamentally&lt;/em&gt; change the way that networking works.  You basically walk through the same five or six stages of networking whether you use email and the web or not (and he outlines how each stage works).  The exact &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; may differ, but the &lt;em&gt;substance&lt;/em&gt; is more or less the same.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, networking takes &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;.  Phil recommends budgeting &lt;em&gt;one day per week&lt;/em&gt; for maintaining your network.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third, work to ensure that each person in your network &lt;em&gt;benefits from knowing you&lt;/em&gt;, not just you from knowing them.  If you see an article or opportunity that you think may interest them, pass it along.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This essay is long (about 100 pages), but it has much valuable information.  I suggest that you return to it every year or two as you progress in your career.&#xA;Phil is a great writer, and you may find some of this other thoughts helpful as well.  You can read lots of them here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/&quot;&gt;http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T07:03:20.220" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T07:03:20.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-01T15:10:06.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started reading scientific papers on my iPad and now I hardly print any papers at all. I use an application called &lt;em&gt;PDF reader&lt;/em&gt;, which also allows one to annotate the pdfs, which is really useful for commenting on student papers. One can make comments using a pen or type them in.&#xA;Apart from saving trees, it is very handy for collecting and carrying around hundreds of papers (that I'll never have time to read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T15:10:06.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-07-01T15:24:23.243" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation was once mine. I suffered through the challenge of having a project that just wasn't working, while at the same time &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; of my advisors happened to be on sabbatical. Adding to the indignity, it was a theoretical/modeling project, which meant that the failure wasn't because some experimental device wasn't working, but because &lt;em&gt;I simply wasn't clever enough.&lt;/em&gt; If I were, of course I'd see exactly what's wrong, and figure out what's going on! And, to make the pressure worse, I found out that the next semester, I'd be responsible for giving the very first departmental seminar among the graduate students in my class. So, yeah, it was a bit of a perfect storm brewing there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, the &quot;Eureka!&quot; moment &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; come—I was literally walking around campus when the idea struck. And, the next time my advisors were back (a few weeks later), I had a working prototype simulation to show them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I trying to say? Well, a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't give up.&lt;/strong&gt; The course of true research never did run smooth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failure is normal—and even to be expected.&lt;/strong&gt; Just about nothing works exactly as you predicted it would. More importantly, if something &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; go wrong, then your project  has been badly designed, and in fact, I would argue that you're only doing &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt;, not research!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't be afraid to fail!&lt;/strong&gt; Failure teaches you lessons that you will never learn from success. I needed a few really abysmal grades in college to get me on the right track—the proverbial kick in the pants that allowed me to realize I couldn't coast through college the way I did through high school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2018-04-02T04:24:07.253" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T04:24:07.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-01T19:32:12.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The nook doesn't allow you to highlight things, make notes, or bookmarks. If you just read one paper at a time and leave it on it's fine, otherwise carry a piece of paper to remember the page you are on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1184" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T19:32:12.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2012-07-01T20:21:47.470" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finding it a little difficult to write my thesis while simultaneously working at an internet company, so I started using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; technique. Lean/Kanban is a technique from industrial production management that was adapted and is becoming quite popular in the software development world. I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; website to track kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is very intuitive - it's just a board with many columns (for example: (work to do) - (work in progress) - (work complete), you can increase the granularity as much as you want). Each task is a card that moves around on the columns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the board is giving you visualization on how much work you have to do. If you worked in a car factory and you realized that cars where stacking on a queue because one of the welding machine is broken, you would notice the problem right away. But it's quite difficult to realize that there's a pile of abstract work to be done because your workflow is somehow defective. If you have a visual representation of your workflow, it's easier to detect bottlenecks and solve them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few management rules like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limit the number of tasks in progress and never pull new tasks until there's space available in the &quot;in progress&quot; column (I usually like to create very fine-grained tasks and limit it to only one in progress at a time),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kanban is a &quot;pulled system&quot; instead of a &quot;push system&quot;. You'll pull work to your desk when you finish what you're doing now (instead of waiting until someone push work onto your desk when they need you to do it). This prevents both being overwhelmed by work to do and having free time because no one give you work to do.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organize tasks in order of priority, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce waste: if you do something and abandon when it's almost done, you've wasted that time. It would be better to spend this time working on something that you would work on until completion. Or maybe you just need to push a little bit harder and bring this to completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stablish &quot;acceptance criteria&quot;. What are the criteria this piece of work must satisfy to be accepted as finished?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stablish and measure what is &quot;value&quot; to you. If value is the quality of a text, then stablish levels of quality and measure the quality of your text. If value is getting things done quickly, than measure the time you take to do things. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stablish priority: what brings you the most value should be done first. Or rather: what have greater cost-of-delay should be done first. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean/Kanban works very well for software development and I needed something to organized the writing of my thesis. So I divided the thesis in chapters.sections.subsections (in the typical latex fashion) not longer than 3 paragraphs. Then I defined levels of quality (level A, the text is ok to be delivered, level B, it must undergo some review, level C, references must be checked, etc..., until level F when there's no text at all). So my tasks are: &quot;bring subsection 2.1.3 to quality D&quot;. Now it's very easy to assign priority and &#xA;measure the amount of work done / to do. There are even some scripts to graph your progress and extract some metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is really important is that it allowed me to focus on the small scale work to do and have clear short term landmarks, and also think on the large scale structure of the thesis and have large scale landmarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some reading on Kanban and Lean for software development (I believe most of it can be seamlessly applied to academic work - most of the problems are the same):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kanbanway.com/lean-software-development-using-kanban&quot;&gt;http://www.kanbanway.com/lean-software-development-using-kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/davidpeterjoyce/pulling-value-lean-and-kanban&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/davidpeterjoyce/pulling-value-lean-and-kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T21:16:14.157" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T21:16:14.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-07-01T23:38:52.713" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I would say not to tell unless your impairment is extreme enough to have required accommodations all throughout your schooling. I personally had always struggled at some things more than others and excelled in area that no one else could fathom and was considered a little 'quirky'. Because of some advice that I received, I did notify the university, as I had just been diagnosed with ADHD (at the age of 50) and just prior to turning in my final thesis, was told that I didn't belong in grad school. Unfortunately I was too humiliated to stand up for myself at the time and when I could, the statute of limitations (one year for discrimination) was over. There is still quite a stigma attached to both diagnoses unfortunately. The stigma won't be resolved with the secrecy but it depends on what your top priority is; challenging the stigma or graduating. Unfortunately, this was my reality and it tends to be rather ingrained in most of higher academia at this point, truth be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1186" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T23:38:52.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-07-02T01:27:47.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only advantage I see in entering graduate school in the same university where you completed your undergrad program is having a continuity between your undergrad research programs and graduate research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically it takes some time for a new grad student to get accustomed with research activities, with the routine of a new lab or research group, getting to know your advisor, etc. Also there are some adjustment of your personal life: you are probably moving to another town, choosing another home, finding a new favourite grocery store, a new gym, etc, etc. This takes time and certainly impacts how productive you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are enrolled in undergrad research programs, and you're already well adjusted to your lab's/research group routine and workflow, it might be that you'll feel much less of an impact of changing from undergrad to grad research programs. It might be that you can start being productive right away because you don't have to worry about a lot of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the short term, it might be that you manage to turn this into one extra article published at the end of your PhD. It's not improbable. But it's not incredibly probable either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You incur in a lot of risks if you don't change. If you spend too much of your formative years working on the same research group, you risk becoming &lt;em&gt;too well adjusted&lt;/em&gt; to its workflow and research programs, to the point that you can't see alternatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the real impact of a few months of advantage and an extra article, if it really happens, is probably offset by the advantages of moving to another university. A couple years after your PhD the time you lost finding an apartment and banging your head against the wall to understand your new research program will most likely be forgotten and will not influence your career at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T01:27:47.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2012-07-02T06:28:39.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One helpful approach can be to ask a few people that you think of as familiar with the field (in your case, this could be professors or certain other students).  Even though most schools offer no class in recreational mathematics, you can ask 3 or 4 people who you see as at least &quot;intermediate&quot; level (whatever that means) in recreational math.  If all of them immediately recall the information in question, then it's a good bet that you don't have to cite it.  Alternatively, if most of them don't know it, then perhaps you should cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically for recreational math, I recommend that you ask around on the website Art of Problem Solving: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/&lt;/a&gt; (from the front page, click on &quot;online community&quot;).  This site is focused on contest mathematics, which is distinct from recreational math, but a close cousin (and many people interested in one are also interested in the other).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T06:28:39.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2255" CreationDate="2012-07-02T07:03:46.197" Score="9" ViewCount="5584" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I submitted a paper in a journal then after a few days I got following comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your submission of the manuscript  has been unsubmitted. This is because your &quot;Author's Novelty File&quot; was not detailed enough. In order to proceed, please briefly describe, in a few lines, the new contributions of your paper to the field. Do not repeat for this purpose the content of your abstract. Instead, provide a brief itemized list of these contributions in a separate file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand what I have to write now. What he is asking for? I need help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for giving me time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T07:20:47.943" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T11:03:18.023" Title="What is an &quot;author's novelty file&quot; in journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2254" CreationDate="2012-07-02T07:13:12.457" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the journal wants you to identify in what manner your paper has expanded the state of knowledge in your field. Have you contributed a new experimental method? Or perhaps you've provided new insights into some sort of phenomenon, or measured data for a new material, or so on. These contributions should be collected in this &quot;novelty file.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T07:19:32.280" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T07:19:32.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2254" CreationDate="2012-07-02T07:17:18.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think they're asking for an &quot;explanation for non-experts&quot;.  Often, the abstract of a paper gives only enough information to be fully understood by an expert in the field (or at least in that problem).  Part of your job in explaining your work is &lt;strong&gt;explaining why it's important&lt;/strong&gt;.  Think about how you would explain your work to a student with roughly the same background as you, but who hasn't thought much about your project.  Now think about how you would explain it to a researcher working in a completely different field... in 5 sentences or less.  Your novelty file should say something like that.  Emphasize &lt;strong&gt;here's what we added&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T07:17:18.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2262" CreationDate="2012-07-02T09:31:31.503" Score="32" ViewCount="8451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a third-year PhD student in mathematics from a very reputed institute in my country. I have one problem to share and discuss that is related with my guide. He is a senior professor in our department. The day I joined that institute he gave me one research problem and asked me to study about that and present. I did as much as I can and presented. In return, instead of appreciation I was being scolded for small mistakes. And it has continued for the last two years. Seniors say it is his way of working. I have lost my happiness. Sometime I cry for joining this course. My prof is not impressed with my good academic record and my hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing that worries me is that he is not much aware of my research problem. I feel like I know much more than him. He has no paper on that topic, although he has a good number of papers in other topics.  I never got help from him in solving research papers. I have to study papers on my own and then have to present to him.  And again for small mistake I have to suffer his taunts. I am scared whether I would be able to finish my degree in such an environment or not? Is this normal? Does every PhD student suffer such mental trauma? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need  advice. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-09-08T07:25:42.543" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T12:49:05.723" Title="How to deal with constant pressure given by advisor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2503" CreationDate="2012-07-02T09:58:08.290" Score="9" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university is switching its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Specifically, we are moving from WebCT to Moodle, but I don't think this matters. This means I need to spend some time learning how to use the new software, but it also presents me the opportunity to think about how I use a VLE to supplement my traditional teaching. Are there any references of how to best leverage the use of VLEs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T02:42:53.967" Title="Strategy for using a Virtual Learning Environment (aka Blackboad/WebCT/Moodle)" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2012-07-02T11:13:50.450" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the less severe options that you can try out first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research the whereabouts of his former students. How many of them graduated, and if so, what was the quality of their work (publication venues/citations etc) and where are they now? Contact them individually, and talk to them about how they resolved this situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try talking to him, privately at first, in a pleasant, non-accusatory manner. Tell him that you tend to find his method of working rather discouraging, and ask for ways in which both of you can improve your working relation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else works, consider changing your adviser. As your institute is a reputed one, its almost sure to have a formal procedure which can be initiated by the student to change one's adviser. Before doing that, look around the department and find out, albeit discretely, if there are openings in other groups doing similar kind of work - after all, if no-one is ready to take you in the same dept., you may have to look at other institutions entirely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, do NOT give up on your research/look to find faults with yourself without any valid reason - a lot of researchers have faced similar issues with their advisers at first, and they have successfully either worked out all issues or simply changed to a more suitable adviser down the line!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T11:13:50.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-02T12:03:40.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with iPad too. My experience with trying to use an ereader was horrible. The page turns are far too slow for flipping backwards and forwards, but mainly the claimed advantage of eInk - it doesn't glow - became a problem when trying to research in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, plus the iPad's ability to access Google or JSTOR or whatever on the same device, means that I now use the iPad exclusively. The Kindle might get dragged out to read a novel now and then, which is what it is designed for, but for documents? Never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="864" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T12:03:40.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2012-07-02T12:27:44.087" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe, unfortunately, somewhat of a common problem in academia, particularly with senior faculty. My advisor and I had a somewhat similar relationship, but he was far less harsh than what you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following isn't a solution, but just a few points to think about as you consider your options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is almost certain that you will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be able to chance your professor's attitude. He's been managing his lab like this for years, and this is his way of doing things. I would strongly suggest speaking to other students about him before approaching him directly; I would venture a guess that talking to him about this issue and your feelings on the matter have a good likelihood do you more harm than good, as he likely will not care and will only think the worse of you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should have a research committee; speak to one of the members of your committee about your concerns. Personally, almost all of the useful advice I received during my PhD work was from a committee member, both in terms of direction and in terms of actual research work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can switch labs whenever you want. Yes, it will set you back a few years, but that may be a necessary cost. Always keep that in mind; you're not bound to him by any means. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, sticking it out may be worthwhile, as you'll have a good name behind your PhD, and this is a personality type you will likely come across again in academia (and elsewhere). It's definitely worth getting to know how to deal with this type of individual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do realize that his critique of your research doesn't mean it's bad by any stretch, it just means that he's focusing on your mistakes. To get more positive feedback, try joining other journal clubs and lab meetings around the university, and present your ideas there; most would be happy to have you, and would give you useful feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T12:27:44.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2012-07-02T14:18:37.930" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every PhD student suffers mental trauma. You say your advisor &quot;scolds&quot; and &quot;taunts&quot; you. I think of scolding and taunting as personal attacks, and hence unacceptable. That said, your English makes me unsure if he is attacking you or your work. Attacking someones work is a common occurrence in academia. We tend to get one sentence notifications about our successes and pages and pages of feedback about our failures. Even the best researchers fail more often then they succeed. The key thing to remember is that, in general, it is not personal. You need to identify if your advisor is attacking you or your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say your advisor &quot;is not impressed with my good academic record and my hard work&quot;. Successful academics tend not to be impressed by academic records and hard work since it is par for the course. This doesn't mean they do not respect you. The best way to find out what your advisor thinks about you is to ask. Ask what you are doing well and what you can work on. Also say that you are feeling unsure of yourself and looking for reassurance. Some advisors will give you reassurance and a shoulder to cry on, others will simply tell you that you are not failing. Not failing is another word for a major success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T14:18:37.930" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-02T15:41:54.860" Score="12" ViewCount="2198" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way a grade is assigned in a course influences the way students study which in turn influences their gain from the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to focus on ways to assign grades which aim to eventually increase the students' gain from the course (in contrast with grade assignment methods which try to single out the most talented students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What are such grade assignment methods?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are there texts/papers/other resources discussing this subject?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An answer should address issues such as: memorization vs. creativity, the temptation to get help from external sources while doing homework, spoonfeeding vs. self-learning, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will now give my own example of grade assignment components:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excercises which are graded regularly throught the semester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exercises for self-learning with a solutions manual provided&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quizes during the semester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strictly technical questions in quizes/exams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions in quizes/exams which mostly require to repeat what was taught in class&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions in quizes/exams which require some creativity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practical assignments (programming/labs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interviews (oral exams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe all of the above may have a place in some courses with the specificed goal in mind and would like to get new ideas for grading components, for how to combine them, and to know whether any written work exists which tries to answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking mostly of courses aimed towards math and CS students and mostly about senior undergraduates, but I do not want to limit the question to these subjects and this level of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastEditorUserId="61" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T16:19:57.697" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:52:21.593" Title="Grade assignment methods to make learning efficient" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2263" CreationDate="2012-07-02T15:56:14.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recent graduate in CS I can only provide my experience with grade assignment methods I came across during my studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the worst method is to let the grade solely depend on one exam at the end of the semester. The students will most likely put no effort in learning for this exam during the semester and will instead invest a couple of days before the exam to repeat the lecture's content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most promising method I came across was using (bi-)weekly assignments out of which the student had to reach at least 50% of the points. This way, they have to focus on the topic in order to solve the assignments to be able to take part in the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this method, some lecturers awarded students with more than 80% of the overall points a bonus in the exam, i.e. they will obtain (let's say) 10 points bonus within the exam. I for myself think this really motivated me to invest time into the assignments and consequently into the lecture content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there was one lecture where students could pose questions with possible answers in an online learning platform. The other students could use these questions (after review by an assistant or professor) to learn for the final exam. Students posing very good questions gained a bonus for the exam, similar to the above approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1172" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T12:52:21.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:52:21.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-02T16:11:02.007" Score="10" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kind of related to my last question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2239/is-typical-ebook-reader-with-pdf-support-enough-to-read-scientific-papers&quot;&gt;Is typical ebook reader with pdf support enough to read scientific papers&lt;/a&gt; (but I guess that this is distict enough). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are minimal sreeen parameters for tablet so I can read papers with ease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is 7'' screen size enough, or do I need 10''? I figured out that 5'' is not enough (to much scrolling). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is getting additional 3'' (from 7'' to 10'') worth about 70% price increase? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is iPad's retina display (2048 x 1536) really usefull or I can stick to cheaper tablets? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T17:13:08.773" Title="What are the minimal screen parameters for tablet bought for reading papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2265" CreationDate="2012-07-02T17:13:08.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The screen size really depends on how much scrolling/zooming you want to do...I would suggest trying both the 7&quot; and 10&quot; out in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the retina display, text is going to be much sharper. Again, I would check this out in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T17:13:08.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-02T17:22:28.390" Score="4" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am building a database from several online sources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringvillage2.org/controller/servlet/Controller?CID=quickSearch&amp;amp;database=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engineering Village&lt;/a&gt;. Everyday I am searching different/close/related keywords that pertains to my research topic. Then, I am (everyday) exporting and printing out the documents to do manual filtering depending on the relevance of the article/report. I also importing/appending daily search results into my cumulative list. This may lead to duplication which Reference Managers identifies and filters out in most cases. How do I have a daily reference list such that there is no duplicates? In order words, is there a way to know each time I append my references which are the new ones that I generated (through query) only today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you need any clarifications. Thank you for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:39:25.147" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:39:25.147" Title="Identifying new references when appending to existing reference list" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-07-02T18:34:18.263" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The research experience varies considerably across disciplines. I hold appointments in a computer science department and a business school and also collaborate with biologists and medical researchers. In some disciplines you are expected to work solo but in other domains, collaboration and working with a team is encouraged. The depth of the problem being addressed also varies widely. Plant biologists may spend years working on a specific gene and I believe this is true for mathematicians as well. The pace is much faster in computer science and in business schools breadth and applicability to the real world is often favored over deep thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good that you are asking these questions now. I have seen many faculty asking these questions long after they have received tenure and realizing that research is not for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a doctoral degree does open many doors beyond research and that the skills that you have required (logical thinking, formal reasoning) apply widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1191" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T18:34:18.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-02T18:47:37.420" Score="18" ViewCount="1631" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is similar to a previously asked question, but deals specifically with addressing the problem on the CV. My adviser had a bit of a personal meltdown and left the department while I was finishing analysis of field data/writing up. His students were assigned the following year to a non-tenured professor.  This new professor was of little help to me my last year of writing up, sat on my dissertation with no comments for over 6 months and only produced comments after I went to the departmental chair. He did not think much of the type work I was doing and went so far as to say so during my defense. I will add here that I have a number of publications (&gt;5) including single authored ones-which for my field is significant- as well as an excellent track record of funding and in presenting my research. I have a strong CV but have had no success thus far in securing a job. I once saw one of the letters he had written for me (it needed to be included in a single PDF so he had to send it to me) and it was terrible. It talked mostly about him and how he really did not know me well and with a few generic sounding &quot;he will no doubt exceed&quot; sentences that just sounded fake. Months later a colleague suggested that I find a different reference than my adviser (but was not clear as to why). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is this: since committees will no doubt look at my list of referees and wonder at my lack of an adviser-I have taken to including a short &quot;note&quot; in the &quot;reference contact information&quot; section explaining that 1) my original adviser left academia at the end of my time as a student and 2) that my new adviser was up for tenure the year I defended and very busy and was in a different field than mine, so instead &quot;below are three people who are in a better position to judge me on my research, teaching, writing skills&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this providing too much information or is this instead ensuring that rather than questioning and then rejecting my application the committees will stop and think &quot;oh okay, I can see why the applicant did not include their adviser&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1192" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T04:00:49.000" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T23:55:29.533" Title="From whom do I get references when my original advisor leaves academia?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2269" CreationDate="2012-07-02T19:44:12.370" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your field is relatively small, the odds are good that your advisor's fate is known to the community. Unfortunately, such events do happen, for all kinds of reasons—just a few weeks ago I learned that a relatively prominent academic in my field basically had his group wiped out because he was arrested on some rather nasty charges!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it doesn't seem that your original advisor befell such an awful fate, it is clear that, for whatever reason, he is no longer in academia. However, given that he is probably known to many of the people working in your field, it might still be helpful to try to get a letter from him, even if he's doing something completely different. If you can't, because he has refused to do so, then you are entitled to explain the situation in your CV or cover letter. Be succinct and to the point, and stick to the facts; do not make it into a &quot;sob story,&quot; which will not endear you to a hiring committee or postdoc advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck—such situations are always stressful, and are always unfortunate for the students caught up in them. It's one of the pitfalls of academic life, and I don't know of a good way to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T19:44:12.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2012-07-02T20:16:01.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using the EndNote reference manager, it will tell you that you are importing duplicates, which references are duplicates, and then give you options for what you can do with them. It seems reasonable that other reference managers will do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, many journals now have adopted the practice of publishing articles online before they have been assigned to a print volume. Thus, I may want the manager to replace the old reference (without page and volume information) with the new (with that information). EndNote lets me choose to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T20:16:01.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-07-02T21:38:18.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postdoc is also someone that needs to be hired by academia to do a task, that is, a contractor for academia. I am a scientific programmer, but I am hired as a postdoc because that's the only kind of contract they can give in academia. I publish no papers, have no interest in an academic career, and I have no other duties other than coding (or at least that would be the plan).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T21:38:18.403" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-03T06:44:55.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pocketbook-int.com/de/products/pocketbook-912&quot;&gt;PocketBook 912 Pro&lt;/a&gt; (which is an ebook reader). The display is almost 10&quot; and that is large enough (even too large for, e.g., SIAM papers, but zooming in persistent). Reading is great, reading outside in the sun is even better. The battery is great; I use it for more than a month now and I did not need to charge it (the small time I connected it by USB to upload paper was enough). The stylus allows you to highlight and scribble on papers. DJVU is supported. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downsides: Paper turning is indeed slow (for me this is not too bad, it slows me down and helps to read more carefully). Taking notes is sometimes slow, erasing notes is very slow. Hyperlinks do not work in pdf documents as well as the table of contents (this is a software issue and I hope, it will be fixed some day). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that if you need a device for traveling which allows you to read something when you only have a few minutes (at a bus stop or so) but also to read a little longer, than an ebook reader is a good option. I use it both to read papers and books and found is especially convenient to referee papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T06:44:55.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2012-07-03T10:02:11.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a nice survey report online: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/AFA304F0-C125-40C2-96E5-7A8C98915797/0/WhatMatterstoStudentSuccessAReviewoftheLiterature.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;What Matters to Student Success&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, a report from the Government of Kentucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work analyses the factors most crucial to student success in a college. It also discusses recruitment of students. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumerism colors virtually all aspects of the college experience, with many colleges and universities “marketizing” their admissions approach to recruit the right “customers” — those who are best prepared for college and can pay their way (Fallows et al. 2003)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not exactly answer your question on strategies for selection, but gives some insight to what makes a successful student pool, for which admission process is one determinant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure the reference papers cited in the journal (and their citations) will assist you in an extensive literature survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a relevant journal, I found this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nacacnet.org/research/PublicationsResources/Journal/Pages/Journal-of-College-Admission.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of College Admission&lt;/a&gt;. I do not know about the quality, but I was able to find this discussion (or thereabout) in a few papers herein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T10:02:11.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2012-07-03T13:35:43.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the specific questions in the OP for the &lt;strong&gt;Kindle DX&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size: if the original journal article is printed on B5 (which is also about the size of many textbooks in mathematics) or smaller, then the auto-zoomed display on the Kindle DX is more than sufficient. If the original article or book is two-column A4 with small font, it does not look so great. If the journal or magazine includes &quot;navigational tools&quot; in the PDF file, they become extraneous header and footers that make things even worse (&lt;em&gt;American Scientist&lt;/em&gt;, I'm looking in your direction). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maths and Graphs: so far everything displays well. This includes digital scans of old (1950s and 60s) mathematics articles, modern journal articles from Springer and Elsevier journals, arXiv downloads, as well as European Mathematical Society and Cambridge University Press eBooks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bookmarks: yes. Use them plenty, since internal hyperlinking doesn't work. The reader does remember where you &quot;left off&quot; automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notes and highlights: no. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page turning: slow, but is something I willingly put up with for the convenience. (It is lighter and cheaper than a netbook, and also lighter and more compact then deadwood format.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Battery life: great, one charge lasts me usually several weeks. Of course, the main energy consumption in eInk is the page flips. So if your paper reading habit is lots of back and forth page flipping, you will use up your battery much faster. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T13:35:43.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-03T14:19:21.953" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975/my-research-work-stolen-and-published-as-his-own-by-the-co-author-without-my-con&quot;&gt;My research work stolen and published as his own by the co author without my consent&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research paper was stolen by a co-author. I have reported her but the head of my institution is defending that teacher. I have all the mail correspondences between the unethical co-author and myself along with all the data that I produced as part of my contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about proving my side of defense? My faculty are trying to prove that she has done this as a part of her MTECH, which is completely false!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="721" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:53:00.547" Title="Paper stolen by a co author and published as his own" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T14:54:01.397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-03T18:19:08.853" Score="23" ViewCount="2992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a journal article to be published, and the work from this article is basically the entire work of my Master's thesis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly a thesis is usually more involved and fleshed out than a journal article, but how much direct copying is usually permitted?  Is it okay to directly copy-and-paste an entire chapter (or multiple chapters) of this article into my thesis, given that I wrote it anyway?  At what point am I plagiarising myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1200" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T23:30:38.770" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T21:03:15.610" Title="How much overlap is permitted between a submitted journal article and a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2281" CreationDate="2012-07-03T18:45:35.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, many publishers and fields have rules against reuse of one's own text if that use is a (a) substantial; (b) not disclosed/attributed; (c) published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How these terms are interpreted varies among publishers and disciplines. Most publishers would not consider a thesis or dissertation to be a &quot;publication&quot; for this purpose (hence the still widespread practice of converting dissertations into &quot;book&quot;). However, to avoid misunderstandings and keep definitively within the rules it is good practice to cite one's thesis, and to provide a brief summary of what content was reused and the extent it was updated, in the cover letter and in an introductory footnote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T18:45:35.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2269" CreationDate="2012-07-03T21:16:50.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your current advisor's letters are killing you.  Do not ask him for any more letters.  Do not list him as a reference in your CV.  Don't walk; run.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will add here that I have a number of publications (&gt;5) including single authored ones-which for my field is significant- as well as an excellent track record of funding and in presenting my research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you really should have no trouble finding enough other good references to overcome any concerns raised by not having a letter from either of your advisors.  Everyone reads advisor letters with a grain of salt anyway; strong letters from well-known senior researchers outside your home department have much bigger impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if anyone asks why your current advisor isn't writing you letters, you should answer honestly, but I think adding an explanatory note in advance is unnecessarily defensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T21:16:50.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2269" CreationDate="2012-07-03T23:55:29.533" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely get rid of the letter from your new &quot;advisor.&quot;  I think it would be reasonable to list only your original advisor as your advisor on your CV (not the new advisor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should make sure that one of your letter writers includes a short paragraph explaining that your advisor left academia and this is why you do not have a letter from your advisor.  I would look into whether there's someone you can ask for a letter who feels some responsibility for your original advisor, for example, your advisor's advisor or a frequent coauthor of your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T23:55:29.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-04T05:02:00.063" Score="30" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems with discussion boards&lt;/strong&gt;: After being involved with StackExchange for a couple of years, I've really grown to despise standard discussion boards. All those meandering threads, no commenting, no ability to edit questions to improve them, inadequate cross-referencing of questions, no markdown support, no voting for good answers; no rss subscription options, the list goes on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Educational context&lt;/strong&gt;: I have interacted with a few course management systems that include discussion boards for students to ask questions. These systems also lack most of the great features of the StackExchange model of Q&amp;amp;A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way of deploying a StackExchange-style Q&amp;amp;A site for a university subject?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any examples of people doing this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone know whether StackExchange themselves have considered this market?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Initial thoughts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that there are open source clones of stack exchange in existence. However, my concern is that they take a bit of effort to setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally any system should be very simple to deploy for the lecturer, and easy to learn for the student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2015-11-01T19:07:45.330" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T00:24:42.013" Title="How to deploy a StackExchange-style question and answer site for a university subject?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-04T05:13:37.087" Score="11" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; I was reading about &lt;a href=&quot;http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/7/151226-googles-hybrid-approach-to-research/fulltext&quot;&gt;Google's Hybrid approach to research&lt;/a&gt;. This prompted me to think about how in academia I try to get multiple output from the one set of inputs. For example, I might try to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present a talk and and then write up a journal article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write blog posts and question-and-answer combos on StackExchange to force me to learn something that I need to know in order to write a journal article.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I learn a new technique in the process of writing a journal article, then present a tutorial on how to apply the technique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard senior academics talk about employing this approach. E.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publishing an article in a journal as well as reframing the content for a magazine or newspaper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the most important examples of getting multiple outputs for a given input?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a systematic way of incorporating this into your project planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T09:18:56.683" Title="How to efficiently get multiple outputs for a given set of inputs?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-04T05:35:49.727" Score="16" ViewCount="2310" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Russian style&quot; seminar, as in the Israel Gelfand form, breaks from the traditional format of talk followed by Q&amp;amp;A and just opens the floor to questions at any time. I've seen a few professors who follow this format, so I definitely see its value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to start something like this, and how do you get the most out of the seminar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T03:08:02.013" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T03:08:02.013" Title="How can one carry out a &quot;Russian style&quot; seminar?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2012-07-04T05:38:42.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer your question in a somewhat sideways manner: I think anyone who is trying to write a math research paper who does not already have a PhD in mathematics or a closely related field should do so in close consultation with an &lt;strong&gt;adviser&lt;/strong&gt; who does have such a PhD.  It is not practical to learn all the standards of journals and publishing on your own.  Virtually every undergraduate is also in the following situation: their own perspective on mathematics is not yet mature, and thus if they submit a paper to a research journal they will be submitting their work to an audience with far more experience and background knowledge.  (A few truly brilliant undergraduates do work up to the standards of other mature, professional mathematicians, but even for them the work is probably much less than what they will be capable of later on.  I can't think of a single instance of a professional mathematician whose undergraduate work was in the same league as their later research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact -- and I don't mean to be discouraging by saying this -- most research done by undergraduates is not of a publishable quality.  This does not mean that undergraduates should not engage in research -- I think it is very valuable and enjoyable for them to do so (if anyone cares: I did research as an undergraduate, had a blast doing it, and did not try to publish it) -- but only that formal publication should probably be a goal for later in one's career than that, especially nowadays when it is so easy to put your work on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a particular statement/fact is commonly known to all and its discoverer/inventor is not known, and that there exists no research paper that introduced the concept but there do exist various books/websites that discuss the very concepts and a few derivatives of the concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, this sounds unlikely to me.  The vast majority of mathematical topics that are discussed in books are also discussed in research papers (maybe it is somewhat different in recreational mathematics, but even there I imagine it's still mostly true).  How do you know that no research paper treats the concept in question?  Searching the mathematical literature is itself a skill that takes both general experience and specific expertise in the subfield you're searching in: as a research mathematician it is common enough for me to come across a mathematical concept, try to find it in the literature, and only find it several weeks or months later when I have become more familiar with the local terminology and standard results.  Similarly, most mathematical concepts &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; traceable to a specific discoverer/inventor, although admittedly the generic mathematician does not feel as honorbound to track down primary sources as academics in most other fields (in my opinion this is a rare &quot;character flaw&quot; of the generic mathematician!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have done all the mathematical research yourself, consulting an experienced adviser on how to write up and submit your work could save you a lot of time and headache.  Some journals/editors/referees are relatively supportive of authors writing their first paper (everyone who has published a paper was in that situation at one time!), but if your paper is, or looks to be, below the level of papers they want to publish, it will probably get bounced back to you with little constructive criticism.  An adviser can be much more kind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T05:38:42.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2288" CreationDate="2012-07-04T07:19:37.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this format work well in colloquia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speaker generally says at the start that they are happy to answer any questions during the talk.&#xA;If needed  at various points the speaker can also ask if anyone has any questions. Ideally, after asking the speaker pauses for a couple of seconds to give people a chance to ask before moving on to the next section of the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also sometimes be necessary to close off a particular discussion if it is going on for too long and is not of particular interest to the general audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think the format works best when the presenter knows the material well, and the audience is reasonably well informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T11:32:30.930" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T11:32:30.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2012-07-04T08:50:54.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are not as many features as on SE, one possibility could be to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/reddits/create&quot;&gt;create a sub-reddit&lt;/a&gt;. You can restrict the access of the sub-reddit only to the concerned students if you want to, you can ask questions, you can comment (recursively), you can upvote/downvote the best questions/answers/comments, there is an RSS feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it covers all the features you want, but that could be a good start, since it's very easy to setup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T08:50:54.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2012-07-04T12:49:23.740" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it's possible. Yes it's been done. There are plenty of StackExchange clones such as OSQA to use - &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2267/164022&quot;&gt;there's a question over on meta-stackoverflow that lists them&lt;/a&gt;. You can pretty much pick your favourite platform, and there will be a StackExchange clone for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might well find that take-up rates are very very low (maybe one in 20 if you're lucky). And you need a lot of people to give a Q&amp;amp;A site enough critical mass to sustain itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're all reasonably easy to use, for the end-users. As to how hard they are to install and maintain, that's a question of the kit and talent you have available. If you've already got a server serving Django apps, then OSQA is easy. If you've got a *AMP stack, then any of the PHP clones should be pretty easy.  Installation and management is the really easy part of the process. Drumming up, and sustaining, partcipation is the really hard part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:31:50.297" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:46:02.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2288" CreationDate="2012-07-04T14:33:15.390" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a version of this in the weekly research seminar that I run.&#xA;This format typically works best when &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the speaker knows ahead of time that he/she is likely to get questions during the talk&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;at least a few of the audience members feel comfortable asking such questions&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the speaker is a regular attendee of the seminar, then &lt;strong&gt;(1)&lt;/strong&gt; works itself out naturally; otherwise, I recommend that the organizer mention this ahead of time to the speaker.  Generally, more experienced speakers are more comfortable with this model.  As I'm asking questions during the talk, I watch the speaker's responses.  If the speaker starts to get flustered or is unable to answer well a few questions in a row, then I often will stop asking questions.  Actually, I usually talk a little with the speaker ahead of time about what I'm hoping for from the talk, who the typical audience is, how long the talks usually go, etc.  I find that a few minutes beforehand can save you from the awkward experience of having a talk that is at too low or too high a level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;(2)&lt;/strong&gt;, I am usually quite comfortable asking questions, and I generally find that at least one other faculty member in the audience is.  As Jeromy mentioned, typically this model works best when the questions are asked by well-informed audience members (since they can more easily discern which questions will and will not be helpful to the rest of the audience).  If you find that no one else in the audience is asking questions, I suggest that you talk with a few of the regular attendees and ask if they would be willing to start asking questions.  (This conversation probably will work better &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; of the actual seminar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T14:33:15.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-07-04T15:12:54.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were a student in my class, I would recommend that you tell me as soon as possible.  That way we could brainstorm effective workarounds for you &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you possibly fall behind.  I've had a number of students with some type of learning disability (I realize this isn't the same thing, but my response is similar).  If you can get cleared with the university for extra time to take exams, I'm happy to provide that.  For one student who had trouble concentrating on quizzes during class, I let her take them outside of class (beforehand).  Many people will be happy to work with you, but they won't be able to unless you tell them about your condition and how they can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T15:12:54.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2287" CreationDate="2012-07-04T15:46:37.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your answer to this question will depend somewhat on your long term goals.  Everything you mention: talks, journal articles, blog posts, tutorials, magazine articles, etc. can be worthwhile in the right circumstances.  Most of what you describe consists of taking variations on the &lt;strong&gt;same theme&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;different audiences&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what circles do you most want to be known?  More generally, &lt;strong&gt;how will you measure success?&lt;/strong&gt;  Say for example that your primary goal is to get tenure.  If you're at a high research school, then publishing an expository article for undergraduates may well be viewed (by your tenure committee) as a waste of your time.  In contrast, if you're at a liberal arts school, this may be considered just as valuable as getting a research article in a top journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked about incorporating this into project planning.  I suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;decide which audiences you are most excited to reach&lt;/strong&gt;.  This will likely be largely &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; of the particular project.  Then as you start on each project, think about how you can &lt;strong&gt;tailor your message to suit each of these audiences&lt;/strong&gt;.  You may be surprised by how often you find you have something valuable to say to each of your target groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T03:06:25.523" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T03:06:25.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2012-07-04T16:13:21.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is far simpler than these. There is exactly one rule to follow: do what will get you to graduate sooner. If the problem your adviser has asked you to tackle isn't going to become a chapter in your dissertation, say &quot;no&quot;. A good adviser will direct you in such a way that you make progress to defending your dissertation. A poor adviser will try to get as much cheap labor out of you as he can before your funding runs out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let your doctoral adviser take advantage of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1203" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T16:13:21.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2287" CreationDate="2012-07-05T09:18:56.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of more than one team who produce for each chunk of research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a workshop paper describing what is planned, the challenges, requirements, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a conference paper describing the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a journal version of the conference paper, expanding on the results, providing more detail, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is not a bad approach, as it certainly helps to give better shape to the ideas by the time they reach the journal version. (I don't use this approach, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T09:18:56.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2301" CreationDate="2012-07-05T10:39:27.467" Score="23" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you stay in touch with researchers whom you meet at conferences? My intention is to stay in touch for possible collaborations and job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I meet people, we talk and I send them a &quot;thank you&quot; mail but later I get confused how to take this forward and &lt;em&gt;maintain&lt;/em&gt; this contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do send links, my preprints and interesting website questions and stuff once in a while but more often than not, I don't get a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T09:29:19.010" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T09:29:19.010" Title="How does one maintain academic contacts?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2012-07-05T11:44:01.000" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To build and maintain a network of professional relationships, one should develop, maintain, and express genuine interest in other people and their work. Introducing oneself at conferences is a good start, as is recording and updating contact information, and setting up a system to remind yourself to reach out to people regularly. (There are various tools for this, ranging from a spreadsheet, to social network services, to CRM software. If you use gmail, you may want to try &quot;contactually&quot; for the mechanical part. ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sending your contacts updates on your work is useful. And these should be targeted... it's ok to use a broadcast medium like twitter to announce new work to the world, but avoid sending out mass-email -- instead target those people who are likely to be most interested, and include a brief personal note that puts the new work in the context of their interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important, keep track of what others in your network are doing -- new publications, new projects, working papers, promotions, etc. (Social networks can be useful for this in some fields for tracking people directly, tracking working papers in your discipline, and disciplinary news can be quite useful, google scholar can also help alert you to new publications from people in your network. ) And when someone in your network is starting something of interest, re-connect -- with congratulations, a useful comment, and possibly some information on your own work (if it really is of interest with respect to their new project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T11:44:01.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2012-07-05T12:47:09.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is obvious, but never forget to wrap your networking cover ops in real social ops. In a conference, go talk to people, than go drink a coffee, beer, discuss with them about anything but work at the lunch, etc.&#xA;If you do that, it is really simpler to send a thank you mail and to reactivate a contact afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the action of sending your work around, why not, but you must target carefully who you are contacting. Be sure that your work is really of interest for the person, this is what will make the difference between a spammer and an interesting contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to ping is to ask genuine questions on new papers authored by your contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T12:47:09.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-05T14:10:21.577" Score="7" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have little research experience on &quot;Web Security&quot; and I made some inventions in that. I have patented my inventions and now when I was trying to apply for Masters by Research in Information Technology in some X University they are asking for Research Publications. I never came across them in my past and I don't know its importance. May anyone tell me &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its role to the admissions committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important they are as compared to patents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and where can I release my Research Publications? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1207" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T05:54:50.070" Title="Research publications for Masters by Research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2303" CreationDate="2012-07-05T20:14:14.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're going to be doing a master's degree &lt;em&gt;by research&lt;/em&gt;, then admissions committees are going to want to see evidence of any previous research that you've done. That way, you're less of a risk for them to admit you, because you've already learned many of the skills you'll need to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;currency&quot; for establishing this are patents and research publications. I assume you're familiar with patents, since you ask for a comparison. Basically, research publications will be considered at least as important as patents, as they generally represent a significant amount of original research. (Patents may be a matter of &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how and where to release research publications, that depends on your field. In CS, my understanding is that generally means that you have to publish your research in conference papers, which means that you'll have to get your research work written up and submitted to a conference. Then you'll need to get your paper accepted, and then you can publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any publications, don't worry. If you still have research experience, a recommendation letter from a research supervisor can also help to establish your qualifications. (Absent some evidence, though, most graduate programs will remain skeptical.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T05:54:50.070" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T05:54:50.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2303" CreationDate="2012-07-05T20:40:06.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think they are asking for your publications in case you have any, but I highly doubt that publications will be necessary to get into a masters program. It just something to add to your application to give a more complete picture of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T20:40:06.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2303" CreationDate="2012-07-05T22:01:40.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;List your patents in the place where they ask for publications. It is a good substitute at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T22:01:40.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-05T22:32:33.070" Score="5" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/lying-about-the-academic-job-market.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now here's some advice that isn't silly:  don't go to graduate school&#xA;  unless you get into a strong program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the meaning of &quot;program&quot; in this case? What would be a strong program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T23:11:46.887" Title="What's the meaning of &quot;program&quot;?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2012-07-05T22:56:59.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the thesaurus of my dictionary: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;a program of study&lt;/em&gt;: course, syllabus, curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it's just another word for curriculum, although I've heard it mostly associated with graduate studies rather than undergraduate ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T22:56:59.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2012-07-05T23:08:00.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this context, it is referring to the particular department or school, that is to say, &quot;don't go to graduate school unless you get into a good university, or rather a good department.&quot; Don't go to graduate school for the sake of going to graduate school - make sure you're going somewhere which does good research, where faculty members publish frequently, has a history of graduates doing well for themselves, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T23:08:00.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2012-07-05T23:11:46.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should interpret  &quot;program&quot; broadly in this case to includes &lt;em&gt;curriculum&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;faculty&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;placement record&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, consider what your objective is for entering the program. If the primary goal is to pursue research, the program strength is particularly important.  If the primary goal is to obtain a tenure-track position -- pay particularly close attention to the placement record of the department, and to its reputation in the discipline. If the primary goal is to obtain credentials, overall program strength may be somewhat less important, if the school is accredited and has a good placement record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as practical considerations, you may also wish to consider the completion rate, time to completion, level of student support offered, and RA/TA workload. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T23:11:46.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1459" CreationDate="2012-07-06T12:54:17.780" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the earlier answer, you may also want to email the authors of the paper and inform them of their error, providing the correct bibliographic information, to prevent the problem in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T12:54:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2314" CreationDate="2012-07-06T16:38:32.523" Score="13" ViewCount="4624" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findaphd.com/&quot;&gt;findaphd.com&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent website to search for PhD studentships (PhD funding on specific projects) in the UK. Also, UK universities often advertise PhD studentship opportunities in their &quot;job vacancies&quot; section. However, after much googling, I have yet to find similar sites or departmental advertisements for PhD studentships in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't suppose there is a similar site for the USA that I missed during my search?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there even off-cycle PhD studentships for specific projects in the USA, like those in the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T10:23:11.023" Title="How to search for USA PhD Studentships?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2313" CreationDate="2012-07-06T17:02:52.197" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such site because it is unnecessary.  In Europe, a Ph.D. student is like an employee and is admitted to work on a specific project.  In the USA, a Ph.D. student is admitted in a manner similar to an undergraduate (based on general considerations) and is not necessarily attached to a particular project or even a particular advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, you could say that every US department has a number of studentships available each year, always at the same time (start of fall semester) and you apply for all of them simply by submitting an admission application to the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus the answers to your numbered questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: there are probably exceptions, but what I've written applies 99% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional note: I disagree with the comment below that claims that individual faculty do not decide which students are admitted.  In every program I know, a small committee of program faculty makes &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the decisions.  If some faculty member (whether on the committee or not) really wants a particular applicant, that applicant will be admitted.  My own admission came on the same day that I contacted a faculty member (and as a direct result).  Of course, you should always follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/924/contacting-professors-for-phd-vacancies&quot;&gt;this good advice&lt;/a&gt; when contacting faculty you'd like to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T06:09:03.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2317" CreationDate="2012-07-06T17:38:57.800" Score="18" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that one has a skill (assume, programming) and is one of the very few in the department to have it. The other students need a bit of this skill for their projects and you help out when you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do you set the limit for how much effort/time you spend on helping others this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get insight into other students' work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a welcome break from our own research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe earns you a second/third author for setting up the experiment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Networking !&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort/Time spent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't necessarily improve your skills (For instance, coding in Python for someone else doesn't augment my Python skills by much. What I do might be really routine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You tend to have a &lt;em&gt;soft&lt;/em&gt; commitment towards that project. For instance, if I start working on it as a favour, it doesn't really come off well if I leave 'em midway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I do enjoy the work so long as it is at least a little challenging. I often get really n00bish questions and that is when I start reconsidering my stance on helping people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T07:23:45.160" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T03:06:20.170" Title="As a student, how much time should I spend helping other students with research?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2315" CreationDate="2012-07-06T18:31:51.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would invest effort proportionally to the potential benefit for me (in terms of number/quality of publications) as well as the fun I would have doing it. Where the limit lies depends only on you and I can't really give you any advice on it. You should also consider other factors, such as how your own research is progressing. If you have an important deadline coming up, you shouldn't be doing something unrelated, even if it might lead to a good publication or be a lot of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should be very upfront about the level of commitment. Leaving them hanging half way is IMHO a bad idea. Not only in terms of you not being able to participate in any successes after that, but also in terms of letting someone down who asked you to help them. If you don't particularly like the project or don't want to invest any effort in it, tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've been involved with a few such projects and always found it very rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T18:31:51.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2315" CreationDate="2012-07-06T20:07:11.967" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You forget one consideration: do you enjoy using that skill? To take your own example, I enjoy programming, and even though I might not learn or get anything technical from it, I enjoy solving someone's else problem with some lines of code :) Of course, one should be careful of the time spent and the reward you can get from it, but doing something you enjoy is very different than doing something you can, but don't particularly enjoy doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I can probably install a server and manage a website (with a CMS) for someone, but I don't enjoy it, so I would be very explicit about the benefit (I do that for you if you do that for me). But I could do some cool coding on my free time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a completely different aspect, it also depends if you intend to stay in academia: it's a very small world, and the person you're doing a favor to today might be the one sitting on your tenure committee in 20 years (if you work in the same department and all stay in academia, it's quite likely that your paths will cross again at some point in the future). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T20:07:11.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2313" CreationDate="2012-07-06T21:36:12.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest that you can come to this in the US is listings of graduate &lt;em&gt;fellowships&lt;/em&gt;, which is more closely related to the issue of funding rather than admissions. Pretty much every department has an annual cycle for admitting students, as David mentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, funding models vary widely, so acquisition of an external fellowship can make a significant difference in the kinds of projects one can take (since positions tend to be closely tied to specific projects, as a result of the grant model in the US). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T21:36:12.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-06T22:57:56.420" Score="38" ViewCount="5656" Body="&lt;p&gt;After submitting a paper for review, I received a letter from the editors containing a negative report and informing me that their (editors') decision was to reject the paper. Although the paper was about six months with the referee, it was clear from the report that she did not read it, just had a quick look and wrote a report, full of typos, mistakes and speculations about what the referee thought was in the paper (as she didn't read it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a letter to the editor saying that I agree with their decision to reject the paper and would not dispute it. But I also expressed my opinion of the report, because I think it might help to increase quality of the review process. I had no intention to get the paper reconsidered, and even started to prepare a slightly revised version to submit it to another journal. However, they have responded that they would give it to another reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this situation is quite uncomfortable for me: I imagine how the referee will feel if the paper gets accepted and appears in this journal. On the other hand, the referee should be well aware of the (poor) quality of her work, so maybe she will not care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: should &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T01:42:01.727" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T13:54:55.707" Title="Should I worry about a referee who recommended rejection being offended if my paper is accepted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2012-07-07T02:08:12.790" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes, the referee will not find out the editor's final decision unless she checks up on the status of your paper herself.  Furthermore, the editor could have initially chosen to ask for many referees, and there is often disagreement, so it is commonplace that some referee recommendations are not followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, don't worry about a referee getting offended that your paper got in.  You could have just as easily gotten offended that your own paper got rejected.  We all have to learn to live with not always getting what we want, referees included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T02:08:12.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2012-07-07T02:57:37.883" Score="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you should not worry.  Referees offer &lt;em&gt;opinions&lt;/em&gt;.  The actual &lt;em&gt;decision&lt;/em&gt; to accept or reject a paper rests with the editor.  The referee may very well be offended by the editor's decision to ignore her opinion, but that's certainly not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T16:45:35.163" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T16:45:35.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2324" CreationDate="2012-07-07T20:40:55.017" Score="11" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student doing PhD in North America. I wish to keep open the possibility of settling down in Europe, Australia or Asia. By settling down I mean getting a tenured professorship in good universities at any of the above mentioned places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting out with my research and I'd like to know if I can do anything right now, i.e. during my PhD to boost my chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T04:37:15.963" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T04:37:15.963" Title="Preparing oneself for jobs after PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2012-07-07T23:01:19.760" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should familiarize yourself with recruiting procedures in Europe/Asia/Australia and how they might be different from the US. while its early now, you should (when your research direction starts crystallizing) familiarize yourself with research in your area being done in institutions of interest, and identify people at conferences to chat with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main disadvantage you could face is a language barrier, local competition, and general lack of awareness because of distance. But except for the first, the others are less and less of a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at least for the first few years of your Phd just focus on finding interesting research problems to work on and do work that people will pay attention to. Thats much more important  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T23:01:19.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2327" CreationDate="2012-07-08T00:27:17.093" Score="8" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is the person selected? How far in advance is the selection process made? When a department makes an offer to have a speaker come, how often is the offer rejected? And what happens if the offer is rejected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T20:59:41.430" Title="What is the process through which a department chooses to invite someone to make a talk at the department?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2329" CreationDate="2012-07-08T01:43:38.573" Score="19" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;In papers or books, citation to another book usually doesn't contain the specific page, section, chapter of where a result is borrowed. If the book is really thick, and the readers may have different knowledge levels and familiarity with the book, some readers may find it not easy to locate the borrowed result within the reference book. So why don't people specify the source of a citation  as detailed as possible in books? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, it is good to specify as detail as possible for citation to a paper. But since a paper is usually much shorter than a book and it is usually in a searchable electronic form, it may be much easier to find the source in a paper than in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T18:43:12.170" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T15:50:48.933" Title="Why doesn't citation of a book give specific pages?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2325" CreationDate="2012-07-08T01:51:08.793" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies tremendously, based on the type of talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a first approximation, anyone can invite a speaker if they have grant funding to pay for the travel costs (or if there are no costs).  The limiting factor is getting an audience - it's embarrassing for everyone if few people show up - so this typically happens only if it's clear there will be real interest in a talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Departments in research universities typically have a number of ongoing seminar series, and often a departmental colloquium as well.  There will be one or more organizers for each of these, who invite speakers and introduce them before the talks.  How the organizers are chosen varies: sometimes they are volunteers, sometimes they are appointed by the chair, and sometimes they got a grant that's paying for everything.  The organizers can then ask whoever they want to speak, although they often solicit suggestions from other department members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be special distinguished visiting positions or lecture series.  These are quite a bit more prestigious and speaker selections are often made by a special committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far in advance invitations are made can vary: typically many months in advance for a prestigious lecture series, but a seminar invitation may have less advance notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how often an invitation is turned down, it's rare for someone to express a lack of interest in principle, but it's common for them to be too busy or for it to be impossible to arrange a mutually agreeable date.  I often suggest that someone should come speak sometime in a seminar I organize.  Sometimes they immediately start arranging a date, sometimes they defer it to another time but eventually come, and sometimes it never works out, but even in that case it's never certain it won't happen someday.  If a speaker can't make it, it's no big deal: you just invite someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T01:51:08.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2326" CreationDate="2012-07-08T01:54:53.420" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So why don't people specify the source of a citation as detailed as possible in books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, sometimes they haven't thought about this issue.  Sometimes they know something is in a certain book but don't have a copy handy to figure out exactly where.  Sometimes they do have a copy handy, and they know they should look it up, but they are too lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases one can easily locate the right section using the table of contents or index, but when this fails it's really annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T01:54:53.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2326" CreationDate="2012-07-08T04:18:21.660" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always good practice to cite as closely as possible, especially in a book. LaTeX makes it easy to do this with the &lt;code&gt;\cite[]{}&lt;/code&gt; form. For a paper, it's often not necessary since one typically cites the main result of a paper. But even with a paper, if what you're citing is a lemma buried inside (and that is not obvious from the abstract) it's good to say &lt;code&gt;[23, Lemma 3.1]&lt;/code&gt; or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why people don't do it, AnonymousMathematician already answered that above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T04:18:21.660" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2334" CreationDate="2012-07-08T06:09:09.220" Score="31" ViewCount="5733" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should one create slides similar to those that one uses in a good powerpoint presentation? Or are there things that a poster should include that a powerpoint should not include? (and vice versa)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T12:01:56.467" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T12:20:05.393" Title="What are some general good principles for creating a poster for a poster session?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2340" CreationDate="2012-07-08T06:16:13.107" Score="22" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a second year PhD student.  In general I love my advisor, but recently we've run into some small bumps in the road while working on a paper together.  He's controlling the &quot;master&quot; copy and I send most of my contributions and comments through email for him to incorporate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few days into the process, we had a conversation that went something like this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Me: &quot;Hey, so I cited a few papers you might not have seen.  How do you&#xA;  keep track of your references?  I use JabRef to keep up with BibTex&#xA;  entries, but I can export those citations to a bunch of different&#xA;  formats...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Advisor: &quot;What are you talking about?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Me: &quot;Like, when you need to&#xA;  make your references section... how do you keep track of all the&#xA;  papers you've cited in the text? Refworks? Endnote? Zotero?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Advisor: &quot;What?  ...I use&#xA;  the 'copy/paste' method.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was baffled by that answer.  I know he's been doing this for a long time with good success, but I cannot fathom someone who has been collaborating with so many people for so many years is still at the level of manually formatting each entry in a Microsoft Word document and then copying/pasting over whenever that reference is needed elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any suggestions on how I can help bring this faculty member into the 21st century without seeming presumptuous?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T03:52:04.310" Title="How can I encourage my advisor to adopt better work practices?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2012-07-08T06:59:20.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should get your advisor to use something like svn or cvs with the ability for anyone to edit the &quot;master copy&quot;. Then you can slip in your refs as you see fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T06:59:20.883" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2012-07-08T07:03:13.250" Score="15" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More images, and less text. A poster is a highly visual, two dimensional medium, and you should use the real estate as such. Since poster viewers will be skimming it while you explain something to another viewer, it's best to have lots of pictures so they can get a gist of the ideas. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PPT slides are the poor man's way of making slides on the quick. But they're not ideal. Again, it's best to use the entire real estate as a continuous medium, rather than as a set of tiles (unless you can do some creative flowing with the set of tiles). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having said all of that, readers still like some sense of progression through the poster, so it helps to have visual cues (arrows, arcs, etc) that help the reader understand the order in which to read things. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T07:03:13.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2012-07-08T09:55:44.797" Score="25" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The title is your bait, the first paragraph is your hook. Make the bait big and tasty, make the first paragraph catchy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A poster is primarily an advert for you. Secondarily, it's an advert for your research. Thirdly, it's an advert for your department. And it will succeed at those things best, if it gives the casual reader an easily accessible introduction into what's novel about your research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Know the flow: it should be clear to anyone reading, what they should read first, then second, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it clear that it's &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; work. Get your name and affiliation in big letters, with a photo of you. Include your contact details, and make sure you can be reached on them during the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't use powerpoint. A poster is graphic design, so use a graphic design package such as InDesign. If you don't have an eye for graphic design, design the poster with someone who does. Most departments have at least one natural talent. It's often the person who keeps winning the &quot;best poster at conference&quot; prize. It's orthogonal to (i.e. independent of) quality of research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a big, clear typeface. Not everyone you need to reach has the healthy, clear vision that most students have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Briefly state the problem, the method, the results, and the implications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pretty pictures are crucial. The words are there just to supplement the explanation of your work given in the pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test, test, test. Print it out life-size (tiled sheets &amp;amp; sticky tape are your friend), show it to a couple of colleagues (one hot on your area of research, and one hot on design), watch the order in which they read things, ask for feedback. Implement any advice on content that comes from the one who is hot in your area of work. Implement any advice on design that comes from the one hot on design.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T09:55:44.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2012-07-08T13:09:15.173" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably sounds defeatist, but you might just have to accept the fact that some people would rather do things the hard way because they fear that the technology will eat up more time than it's worth. Maybe after building more rapport with him, you will have an opportunity to demonstrate the value of your method...for example, if a paper gets rejected from one journal and you can reformat the references in a few minutes, whereas it would have taken him much longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="315" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T13:09:15.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2339" CreationDate="2012-07-08T13:57:35.993" Score="24" ViewCount="4869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I include in my academic CV that I have attended and completed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coursera.org&quot;&gt;Coursera&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.udacity.com/udacity&quot;&gt;Udacity&lt;/a&gt; classes I have been taking? I understand that these are not anything major, but the courses definitely gives a good overview and starting formal study on the subject becomes less cryptic. If I can include them without any negative impacts, then under what section should I include them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T04:13:11.540" LastActivityDate="2021-05-03T00:56:28.187" Title="Can I include the completion of Udacity and Coursera classes I have attended in an academic CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2012-07-08T14:55:44.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the excellent advice you already received, here are some additional points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bulleted lists instead of flowing text helps make your points more concise. They are also easier to read. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; concise. Although text should be minimal and the poster is not a stand-alone thing (i.e. you're there to present it), take into account that people who are interested in your work will ask you to mail them a pdf of it after the conference. They should be able to reconstruct your work from it (after having heard you present it once).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the research question and conclusion stand out. Circle them, put them in bold, give them a different color, anything. A person looking at your poster should be able to read the title, the question and the answer at first glance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the data as easy as possible to read: circle the important parts in the graphs, point arrows to them, write in words what they tell you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid putting tables, unless they are really small. Tables are difficult to read. Wherever possible, replace them with graphs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid trying to tell your audience everything. Choose one key point to present.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aesthetics have a slightly different logic than usually. An ugly background color might work in your favor for example, as long as it makes your poster stand out. Symmetry, however, is highly valued. Also, I wouldn't go for more than 2 colors (apart from the background color and letters).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've heard that sans serif fonts are considered better for posters, though I'm not sure why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T14:55:44.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2012-07-08T15:16:00.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I broadly support most of the tips given in the previous answers, but I'd like to add some more general concerns which I feel that you should think of before you even draw the first line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take-home message:&lt;/strong&gt; Think about this long and hard. If you had to describe what was exciting about your work in one single sentence, what would it be? What is the one thing you want people to remember about your work? About your presentation? Make sure you're 100% clear about this before you start writing your poster.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity:&lt;/strong&gt; Once you have your take-home message, make your entire poster subservient to it. Place it prominently in your title and make it crystal clear in your first paragraph, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96/energynumbers&quot;&gt;EnergyNumbers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/322/ana&quot;&gt;Ana&lt;/a&gt; suggest. Anything that's on your poster that does not contribute directly to the take-home message shouldn't be there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead your readers/viewers&lt;/strong&gt;: If your main argument requires a chain of explanations, display these prominently and mark them as such. Make the text flow follow the flow of your argument or reasoning. Place figures where they nail a point home, and nowhere else. Clip arts and colour can be cool, but don't use them if it will distract your readers from your take-home message or otherwise make their eyes wander.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preparation:&lt;/strong&gt; Try to think of the three questions people will ask you when you present your results, and try to answer them pre-emptively in the poster. Also try to be as prepared as possible to explain stuff while standing next to it, e.g. make sure it still has all the data you need to point to when making an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may all sound a bit reductionist, but remember that apart from the space restrictions, you're also dealing with &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; restrictions. People usually just browse posters while on their coffee break. Your job is to captivate them and make the most of that short break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might also all sound a bit too much like leading the viewer/reader like mindless cattle. Don't worry, though, they won't care. I've yet to hear anybody complain about an argument being presented &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; clearly. If anybody wants details beyond the take-home argument, you'll be standing there to give them, which is why you should be prepared and ready for questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T15:16:00.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2012-07-08T16:46:23.180" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  Specific coursework (whether formal or informal, online or in-person) does not belong in an academic CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T16:46:23.180" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2012-07-08T17:01:37.253" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Turn the tables.&lt;/strong&gt;  For your next paper, &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; maintain the master copy.  Make sure all the infrastructure is in place, including a fairly solid draft of the paper, before you involve your advisor in the writing process at all.  Use whatever version control and reference system you find most useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor may simply refuse to use your tools; fine, you can still incorporate their emailed inputs.  Or they may just need someone else to figure out the infrastructure and teach them how to use the tools, instead of figuring it out themselves from the manuals.  Either way, you'll have some extra work to bring your inexperienced (and possibly resistant) coauthor up to speed, but that's a standard part of the student-advisor relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case, your advisor may simply refuse to give up control of the master copy.  (Never mind that it's already too late.)  In that case, you may need to encourage them to look for another student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T17:01:37.253" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2012-07-08T17:10:47.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to give the opposite answer than JaffE's. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;You can't&lt;/strong&gt;, give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;unfortunately, the relationship between you and your advisor is not symmetrical. You can try to make him/her change his/her ways, but if s/he is not willing to change (and habits are difficult to change), you'll end up just fighting windmills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T17:10:47.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-08T19:43:52.493" Score="8" ViewCount="1895" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to reach a stage in my masters where I'll have to make a choice of doing either a regular thesis or a practicum. A practicum is simply an alternative to thesis in which a student has to submit a practical project employing the concepts developed throughout the graduate program and concludes with a paper and presentation of the crafted project.Since I am planning to apply for a PhD soon after graduation will it affect my application if I opt for the practicum instead of the thesis considering the fact that I already have published a technical paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1043" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T22:03:33.587" Title="Thesis or a practicum at Masters Level - Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2315" CreationDate="2012-07-08T20:05:16.537" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One idea: If you could ask the student if it's okay to record your sessions helping them (sort of like what Salman Khan did with Khan Academy), and then maybe save your sessions, then maybe you can then re-run those sessions for later students (so that you won't have to repeat yourself as much, and so that you can always show yourself when you're explaining the concept at your best). That way, you can do that and spend your time giving more personalized instruction to who-ever you're helping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:05:16.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2342" CreationDate="2012-07-08T20:48:46.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the fact that you've published a technical paper would carry more weight for a CS Ph.D admissions committee than whether you did a thesis or practicum, since that's the demonstration of your ability to do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:48:46.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2342" CreationDate="2012-07-08T22:03:33.587" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thesis.&lt;/strong&gt;  Thesis, thesis, thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But I do agree with Suresh.  The fact that you've published is more important.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T22:03:33.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2350" CreationDate="2012-07-09T01:26:27.517" Score="52" ViewCount="145952" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy for me to find out salaries for tech-jobs but it seems Professor salaries are quite hush-hush. I really love to teach and would be more than willing to join academia. However, I may choose to work for a few years in the industry before doing so. But even for information sake it's really &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard to figure out a tenure and tenure track professor's salary. It's rude to just ask my professors/colleagues directly :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in knowing an 'expected' range for the following countries - preferably both state and private universities (Computer Science). I'm not sure if there is a difference between the MS/PhD faculty and BS/B.Tech/BE though, but it'd be great to highlight the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United States&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Europe (Switzerland, Germany more preferable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australia/New Zealand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;India/China&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intent of information - awareness to take a better decision on the 'money dimension'. Please don't get me wrong, I am not intending to take a job with the most money but if a faculty position pays USD $50,000 per annum after 5 years of intensive effort, I'd like to hold off for a while. If &lt;em&gt;&quot;it depends&quot;&lt;/em&gt; then on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; does it depend and after I satisfy those dependencies, what can/should I expect? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: Just for clarification, I am on the verge of completing my PhD thus piquing my curiosity about the remuneration since it's difficult to ask your advisor or other faculty members. I have and mostly been asked to wait for infinity for the response, hence the question :) I just wanted to know so that I can take an informed decision when I'm at the crossroads of &lt;em&gt;applying for academia&lt;/em&gt; vs &lt;em&gt;industry&lt;/em&gt;. Please don't get me wrong. I DO NOT wish to undermine the value of a PhD. I'm genuinely curious and I personally enjoy every bit of my work and it's NOT ABOUT THE MONEY :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="407" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T23:19:58.487" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T23:19:58.487" Title="After my PhD how much salary should I expect as a professor of computer science?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T01:37:40.123" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many factors that go into figuring out the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;location - different countries/systems have different ways of paying &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;area: salaries vary HUGELY across areas. You didn't mention your area, but you can expect that salaries in the humanities are less than those in engineering which might in turn be less than those in law/business/medicine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;private/public: in the US salaries of profs at public universities are public knowledge - if you look up the university of Utah you can get my salary and that of all my colleagues. Public universities usually have public scales - private universities are - well - private. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;level: I assume you're starting at the lowest level, but based on experience/demand things can vary a lot. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get information, best to lookup surveys that are usually run by professional organizations in your area - they'll give you good ballpark estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you have to remember that a faculty salary, like any other salary, is a market-driven quantity with value set by the market. So it's very important to understand the local economy that drives the numbers - the above factors are some of the main drivers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T01:37:40.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2263" CreationDate="2012-07-09T02:59:14.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good place to begin research on grading methods is under such topics as &quot;formative assessment&quot;, &quot;educational assessment/evaluation&quot; and more general headings would be &quot;evaluation&quot; and &quot;educational measurement&quot;. From memory, there have been favorable results from formative assessments given periodically throughout a course session. Such tests or quizzes help provide numerous chances for students to demonstrate their learning, as well as giving themselves feedback on how well they are or are not progressing.  Finding out early that the subject is beyond them is always helpful, as is giving the more capable opportunities to improve over time. There is little merit in giving single, end of course exams or projects, assuming that you value students' opinions and their mastery of the course objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are a variety of alternatives to &quot;tests&quot; these days, many of which can provide students with the chance to show their learning way beyond the mastery of the facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1217" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T02:59:14.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2315" CreationDate="2012-07-09T03:06:20.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually when I help other students I put a large time investment making sure that they are capable of caring on the rest of the project without my help. I see my job is to help them get the ball rolling while maintaining the illusion that I'm the local &quot;expert&quot;. An analogy would be dressing yourself up as a consultant rather than a mercenary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coding is a particularly good example of this. While you can just code away and have it do the job, claim victory, and get endless praise and thanks, I think that its worth writing quality well commented code so that your peer can take it and do their own thing mostly without your help. At the sacrifice of a lot of initial effort, you get some valuable practice time with teaching and writing interesting projects and they won't feel totally abandoned when you have to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional plus is that you can establish yourself at a person only to inquire when there is a worthwhile need for you skill and that should filter out the &quot;hey dude, can you code this up real quick&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T03:06:20.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T03:34:10.993" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the United State, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/&lt;/a&gt; for salary survey data in computer science.  Of course, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2347/2740&quot;&gt;as Suresh points out&lt;/a&gt; there's enormous variation.  The median salary for a tenure-track assistant professor in computer science at a US research university is about $90k, but some make quite a bit less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T06:49:01.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T04:04:42.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's enormous variation in both field and university. I would however suggest that professorial salaries are not entirely &quot;hush-hush&quot;. For example, the University of North Carolina system has all their salary information available to the public:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/24/1011452/university-employee-salaries.html&quot;&gt;http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/24/1011452/university-employee-salaries.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up the department you're interested in, get some names of their lower ranked faculty, and look them up to give yourself a ballpark estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also break down State and Non-State funding so you can get an idea of how much of the salary is hard money and how much of it is based on grant support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T04:04:42.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T04:06:57.470" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is a good question which people naturally would like to know before committing for a PhD, a definitive answer is next to impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question on &lt;strong&gt;Indian public sector&lt;/strong&gt; is best answered by Prof Giridhar Madras's blog. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://giridharmadras.blogspot.in/2009/09/one-more-post.html&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, for example, he talks about a new professor getting Rs 52000 per month plus accommodation. Then there are scholarships, consulting work for many small companies (whose numbers are bound to be high in a rising economy), vacation period of 3 months when you &quot;get paid in international currency&quot; (ref:GM's blog), paid conference trips, travel allowances within India, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot directly compare this with any private sector company: you are obviously going to get paid more, but you are stuck inside those cubicles with monotonous work and you are likely to lack intellectual freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;strong&gt;Indian private sector&lt;/strong&gt;, things are hush-hush, and depend on your personality, education, job offers, negotiations, etc. But I would say deemed universities in India are particularly wealthy given India's population and the general affordability to pay high fees. On the flip-side, your colleagues and students are unlikely to be intelligent or sharp, as most of India's intellectual wealth generally lie within the IITs (and at times, the NITs, CEG, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T04:06:57.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2359" CreationDate="2012-07-09T05:39:01.777" Score="6" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold a bachelor's in computer applications. I have got my bachelor's degree from India. Now I want to get a job in research institutes or labs at Europe, USA or India. Will I need higher education like master's or PhD? Money does not matter to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1219" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T06:09:57.207" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T11:34:08.910" Title="Is it compulsory to have a master's degree in computer science for research jobs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2012-07-09T06:25:46.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is highly unlikely that you'd get a permanent research position in CS with a bachelor's degree. It's also unlikely (though not impossible) that you'd get one with an MS degree (for example, it might be possible to enter an organization after an MS, and then move internally into their research wing). The most common path to getting a research job at an institute is after a Ph.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T06:25:46.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2325" CreationDate="2012-07-09T06:49:29.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add to @anonymous-mathematician's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2327/6924&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;.  If you're interested in having a researcher come speak at your department, the seminar organizers are often open to suggestions, especially if the potential speaker isn't looking for much in the way of travel costs.  Conversely, if you're interested in speaking in a seminar, it can be completely appropriate to invite yourself.  This often works better when you've at least met the organizer of the seminar where you'd like to speak; however, you definitely don't need to know him or her well.  On more than one occasion I invited myself to speak somewhere.  The two or three times I can think of off the top of my head, the organizer was happy to have me.  (I think it helped that I didn't ask for any travel reimbursement.)  And in each case, I enjoyed my trip and I think my audience enjoyed my talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T20:59:41.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2374" CreationDate="2012-07-09T06:54:53.987" Score="6" ViewCount="1958" Body="&lt;p&gt;A follow-up question to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2346/after-my-phd-how-much-salary-should-i-expect-as-a-professor&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; as I feel it is very broad. For example, consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries/university-of-texas-at-austin?dept=Infomatn%2Frisk%2Fops+Mgt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; displaying the salaries at a particular department in a public school in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see very wide variations within assistant professors. Some assoc. profs earn lesser than asst. profs; people of the same age earn differently and so on. So, my question is, which of the following factors influence salaries at public schools and how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience as a faculty member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD at a top school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of years after undergrad/PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience at another school (Does a Stanford faculty with 5 years exp. moving to a public school earn more than a faculty member at the same school for 5 years?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number/Impact of publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other factor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all data is in public, I assume there can be no pay negotiations, so is it possible to determine one's salary in advance before the interview process itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T02:22:55.670" Title="Salary determinants for faculty at public schools in the US" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T07:24:45.450" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Australian starting salary with a PhD is around 70-80K USD. Up to 100K after 5 or so years, ++ if you are a super academic/head the faculty etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost of living is quite a bit higher than the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tenure doesnt exist in Aus, you will be an academic as long as you can bring in research dollars/you teach important subjects that bring in students. There are no private universities here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1220" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T07:24:45.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2012-07-09T07:46:07.303" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could aim at &lt;strong&gt;technical universities&lt;/strong&gt; (in Germany and Switzerland, they are called &quot;&lt;em&gt;Fachhochschulen&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, Universities of Applied Sciences). Their focus is more on applied research and teaching. I worked 2 years there as a researcher without a MS in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1222" LastEditorUserId="1222" LastEditDate="2012-07-10T07:40:26.800" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T07:40:26.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T08:57:59.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/221/102&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the net income of a W1/W2 german professor?&lt;/a&gt;, and according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myscience.de/en/jobs/salary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, in Germany and in 2008, the monthly gross salary could go from 3500 euros per month up to 7000 euros per month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T08:57:59.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2362" CreationDate="2012-07-09T10:08:31.117" Score="9" ViewCount="1925" Body="&lt;p&gt;Engineers and Scientists are probably not the kind of people management consulting companies look for. But I think many of such would be highly qualified and a good fit for management consulting positions, especially where vision and strategy are needed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What would you suggest for a scientist or an engineer to succeed in getting a job, considering that the hardest part is to even get a phone call?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1226" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:12:02.943" LastActivityDate="2019-07-14T12:49:39.787" Title="Engineers/Scientists to break into management consulting" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2361" CreationDate="2012-07-09T11:01:34.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I've got to say that many of the things that one might consider an asset, are in reality going to be a hindrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rigour, consistency, reason, domain knowledge, ability to describe uncertainty, always prepared to put appropriate caveats on findings: these are all encumbrances in almost all management consulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to cultivate is the ability to form strategy on the basis of a fairly superficial understanding of a business; and the ability to persuade people to pay you lots for you to borrow their watch and then tell them the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and do watch &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1797404/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;House of Lies&lt;/a&gt; through, end to end, a couple of times, to get a feel for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there is a tiny niche in management consulting available for the skilled technician who's prepared to say no to clients who want &quot;regular&quot; management consulting, and only take on clients who want a thorough, rational, informed job done. There aren't many of those clients, whch is why it's a tiny niche. And it's more likely to be a boutique subject-specific consultancy. But if you find one (or found one, i.e. you are the founder), and it gets the right kind of clients, you'll be very happy (and completely exhausted much of the time), and financially very comfortable while the clients are there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T11:01:34.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2361" CreationDate="2012-07-09T11:58:04.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A management consulting company once tried to recruit me (I have a PhD in computer science). They said they wanted me for my brain and they didn't care so much about my background. That said, I didn't have a PhD at the time, so maybe my brain is now spoiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T11:58:04.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2368" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:05:59.610" Score="18" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is : What is a &lt;strong&gt;time effective&lt;/strong&gt; way to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; new material/ &lt;em&gt;reviewing&lt;/em&gt; old material you don't completely remember?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my research in Computer Science, I need &lt;strong&gt;lots of elements&lt;/strong&gt; of hypothesis testing that I learnt in Statistics 101 (Roughly 10 years ago). I haven't taken a single stats class ever since. I vaguely remember the terms involved in the subject and am somewhat conversant with the basics of statistics (so I don't need to retake the course). But all in all, it's as good as a blank slate right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/631/how-to-efficiently-read-mathematically-and-theoretically-dense-books-in-stem-fie&quot;&gt;How to efficiently read mathematically and theoretically dense books in STEM fields?&lt;/a&gt; but that targets a specific topic that the OP wants to learn, not an entire book. The top 3 answers talk about reading only those sections which you are interesting in. I, on the other hand, need to understand the whole of hypothesis testing which by itself is a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My options are (As far as I can see):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take out the book I used / &quot;Best&quot; book of the subject (i.e. the one best suited for my background) and read it from page 1 till I am comfortable. &lt;strong&gt;Too time consuming&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the chapter I need and then go back to the terms I don't understand. &lt;strong&gt;Time spent in confusion and direction-less reading exceeds the time actually spent adding value&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take course again/Read cover to cover. &lt;strong&gt;God No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any other?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT : I wish to add that I can sacrifice depth for familiarity and savings in time. (Is this a good idea but? Assuming that it's not a central part of my research)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T04:33:07.750" Title="Learning/Reviewing New Material Quickly" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2361" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:07:17.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your most likely bet is to sell yourself as an operations management specialist. There's an entire field called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Industrial Engineering&lt;/a&gt;, which is essentially business optimization techniques. There are many aspects of this field that you've likely covered in your coursework, such as optimization methods and probability theory. Emphasizing this in your portfolio can help land you positions in a vast array of fields, ranging from broadly-defined operations management to process engineering to personnel management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T12:07:17.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2356" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:17:01.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, everything you list above—and more—can affect salary. (Do note that, in the US, age discrimination is illegal. Not that it doesn't take place anyway...) The only thing I'm not sure of is &quot;number of years as a PhD&quot;, that's more of a proxy for &quot;work done during PhD tenure&quot;, which is included in the impact factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few factors I thought of, not likely exhaustive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters/PhD/postdoc alma mater&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters/PhD/postdoc advisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number and quality of publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grant history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Existing grants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Field of research (psych vs history vs engineering vs etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type of institution (public/private)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Economic environment (budget cuts in state funding, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching load&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location (Dallas, TX vs Palo Alto, CA vs etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T12:17:01.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:20:05.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here you have a great article for the &lt;em&gt;Ten Simple Rules&lt;/em&gt; series, by Thomas C. Erren and Philip E. Bourne:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030102&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T12:20:05.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2364" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:23:11.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you will spend virtually your entire career doing this (trying to remember stuff you forgot), so this is a question that's worth really working on. You'll hopefully receive a good few answers; try them all over the course of a year or two in different situations and choose the one that works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal method is very similar to your (2); review the specific parts of the material that you need to know for that specific situation. In most cases, you'll find this to be sufficient for solving a particular problem. If you don't understand your material, then either Google the topic and try to read someone else's overview, or simply take a step back and go over the more fundamental material, working your way back up to the topic at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this will not work for situations where you need everything, such as interviews. For those, you'll want to read outlines and try to summarize contents for yourself. I've also gone back and looked at homework problems, which (assuming they were well-written assignments) can provide you with a good overview of the material that you need to know about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T12:23:11.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:41:34.043" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australian discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay scales are available on most university web sites: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deakin.edu.au/careers-at-deakin/assets/resources/why-deakin/benefits/salary-rates-academic.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deakin&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adm.monash.edu.au/enterprise-agreements/academic-professional-2009/s1-academic-salary-rates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monash&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/services/salaries/acadsal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UNSW&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first challenge is to get a job.  You may need a year or two post doc experience before you can get a level B lecturer position. For reasonable performance you'll typically go up one increment each year (i.e., B1, B2, etc. to B6). To go to C (Senior Lecturer), D (Associate Professor), or E (Professor), it is not automatic. You need to meet more criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T06:43:48.630" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T06:43:48.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-09T14:42:46.273" Score="19" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently reading some papers regarding bridging the gap between academia and industry, specifically in undergraduate computer science and software engineering programs. The papers I read were published between the late 1970s and the mid 2010s. I noticed a stark contrast in papers published in the 1990s as compared to the 1970s with regards to education, often in reference to mathematics and science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small passage from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=807660&quot;&gt;Essential Elements of Software Engineering Education&lt;/a&gt;, published in 1976:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear from the above discussion that the education of a software&#xA;  engineer will involve the study of a variety of subjects combined with&#xA;  a considerable amount of practical experience which must be&#xA;  accumulated over a number of years. From a university standpoint, the&#xA;  subject matter not only cuts across a number of traditional&#xA;  disciplines and boundaries, but also covers topics that historically&#xA;  have not been part of academic curricula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This passage follows a discussion of problems that arise from teaching software engineering, specifically the difficulties in mapping certain aspects of industry into the classroom. This discussion is a significant portion of the paper, and similar discussions are prevalent in other papers written around the same period of time. Generally, there's an understanding that a wide knowledge base is needed in the fields of computer science and software engineering, but the trend is to focus on maximizing the skills and knowledge needed in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout everything published in the mid-to-late 1970s, I get the idea that the people designing the computer science and software engineering curricula understand the industry. This includes technical and non-technical topics, but always serving the needs of the profession. It's well summarized in this statement, also from Essential Elements of Software Engineering Education:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A curriculum in software engineering must be multi-form and in fact be&#xA;  a collection of curricula to meet the diverse needs of existing&#xA;  professional groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-forward to the 1990s. A passage from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=107088&quot;&gt;The SEI undergraduate curriculum in software engineering&lt;/a&gt; reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mathematics and science content of the curriculum should help&#xA;  achieve two fundamental objectives. First, it should prepare students&#xA;  to participate competently in an increasingly technological society.&#xA;  This includes the ability to understand science and technology issues&#xA;  well enough to make informed political decisions. Second, the science&#xA;  and mathematics content should provide the students with an&#xA;  appropriate foundation for subsequent software engineering courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the physical and life sciences are fundamental to traditional&#xA;  engineering disciplines, they provide virtually no basis for software&#xA;  engineering. The only significant exception is that electricity and&#xA;  magnetism, common topics in introductory physics courses, support the&#xA;  study of the computer itself, and software engineers need a basic&#xA;  understanding of the machine for which they are developing software.&#xA;  To achieve the first objective stated above, however, it is probably&#xA;  the case that basic knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology are&#xA;  essential in almost any undergraduate curriculum. Chemistry and&#xA;  biology, in particular, are likely to be increasingly important in&#xA;  understanding society’s health care, environmental, and genetic&#xA;  engineering issues in the next century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really the first time that I saw society come up in a discussion about the content of a curriculum. There were mentions of law and legal topics being relevant for software engineers and computer scientists in previous papers, but always from a professional standpoint. In the above quoted passage, the first objective (and I'm assuming the most important in the eyes of the author) of mathematics and science education is not to prepare the students for future course work or their first job in industry or for future research, but for functioning fully in modern society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, the authors even identify that these topics have limited utility in many industrial settings for software engineers. However, they continue to encourage that basic knowledge should be part of the curriculum for society's benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happened in the late 1970s into the 1990s that caused a shift from focusing on the profession and entering the workforce (both industrial and academia/research) to the general needs of the society in computer science and software engineering education?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was this phenomenon localized to computer science and software engineering education or was it a widespread event?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were the triggering events?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="1229" LastEditDate="2012-07-10T22:34:56.170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T01:06:26.157" Title="Were there changes in approaches to undergraduate education in the 1970s or 1980s?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2364" CreationDate="2012-07-09T14:59:55.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't really mention WHY you need the material for your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One case is when you have this vague feeling that there's a concept from statistics (in your case, hypothesis testing) that you need for your work. In that case, eykanal's approach and strategy (2) is best. Focus on what you need, and do deep search, taking detours when needed to understand ancillary concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another case is when you're moving into a new area and expect that you'll need a firmer base in the material before you can continue (to develop the right intuitions and so on). In that case, strategy (2) is still ok, but it helps to do some background work on the side. I find that working through problems is a good way of keeping you focused on learning by doing, and also tests your fundamentals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T14:59:55.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2364" CreationDate="2012-07-09T16:00:29.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer a different (but related) question.  How can you learn material now so that you'll be better able to recall it years from now?  Here I recommend that you explore to discover your own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/&quot;&gt;learning style&lt;/a&gt;, which has a couple key advantages.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using the right style can help you to absorb information more quickly and retain it longer.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more importantly, by recreating the techniques you used to learn the material, you can more easily recall it.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple example of (2) is that if you learn certain material while listening to classical music, then later you'll be better able to recall it while listening to similar music.  This may sound obvious, but far too few people make use of it.  Let me give a personal example.  Like many people, I retain information far better if I interact with it: take notes, draw diagrams etc.  This process can be time intensive, so you have to find a balance.  What was terrible though, was that I would often lose my notes, so that when trying to recall the information later I'd be stuck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only after I was well into grad school did I settle on marking extensively in my books.  I underline, draw arrows, mark key ideas with boxes and stars, etc.  The magic is that when I reread later, my markup helps me to quickly remember what I was thinking when I first processed the concepts.  So whatever epiphanies I had the first time around are more readily accessible.  My point isn't to tell you to mark in books (though I find it invaluable).  My point is to tell you to &lt;strong&gt;recall&lt;/strong&gt; information in a way similar to how you &lt;strong&gt;learn information&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T16:00:29.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2356" CreationDate="2012-07-09T17:07:04.493" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @eykanal's list, there are several factors that can lead to salary variance even within a single department:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negotiating ability&lt;/strong&gt; — Some profs are simply better at negotiating for better salaries than others, even with comparable publications, funding, students, teaching evaluations, etc.  Conversely, some people have lower salaries simply because they don't realize they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; ask for more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time in the department/time since PhD&lt;/strong&gt; — All else being equal, the longer you've been here, the higher your salary.  But as usual, all else is never equal.  In particular, faculty hired with more post-PhD experience are generally paid more.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Performance&lt;/strong&gt; — In most departments, faculty are reviewed annually, if only very lightly, to make sure we're doing our jobs.  Salary is one of the few levers that department chairs have to reward faculty who are doing exceptionally well, or motivating faculty (especially with tenure) who aren't (seen to be) pulling their weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offers from other institutions&lt;/strong&gt; — This is one of the biggest sources of salary jumps.  If a valuable prof in your department starts getting offers from other places, you department is very likely to raise their salary to keep them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Administrative bonuses&lt;/strong&gt; — Faculty who hold significant administrative positions (like associate head, or chair of the undergraduate program) often get a salary boost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Variance in the job market&lt;/strong&gt; — New assistant profs are generally hired at the prevailing salary rate for new assistant profs.  Departments do not collaborate explicitly, but information does flow through applicants who get multiple offers.  For example, about 10 years ago, a top-rated US CS department (not mine) decided to significantly increase its salary offers to new profs, to gain a strategic advantage over other departments.  It didn't work; other departments (including mine) just raised their offers to compensate.  It took several years to correct the resulting salary inversions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Variance in university budgets&lt;/strong&gt; — When times are good, faculty get raises.  When times are not so good, faculty don't get raises.  These times do not necessarily align with fluctuations in market rates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intramural politics&lt;/strong&gt; — Academics are human, and subject to human failings.  Everyone who reaches a position of power arrives with their own agenda; sometimes that agenda favors certain people or groups over others, for reasons that are more personal than objectively fair.  In some departments, fights over limited resources can be ugly and brutal (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law&quot;&gt;because the stakes are so low&lt;/a&gt;&quot;); sometimes that ugliness is reflected in salary differences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T17:07:04.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-09T23:48:18.737" Score="11" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper I want to publish is just a conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1234" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T08:56:30.113" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T08:56:30.113" Title="What are examples of appropriate journals to publish new mathematical conjectures?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2375" CreationDate="2012-07-10T00:19:25.210" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways in which conjectures propagate, and each has its own method for publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As future work/further direction on a set of theorems you proved. In this case, you submit the paper based on the set of theorems, and the conjecture is just a bonus. Your primary contribution is the &lt;strong&gt;original theorems&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a reasonable technical lemma to use to prove a difficult theorem. One again, submit as you would a paper proving any other theorem. Your primary contributions is the &lt;strong&gt;interesting/non-obvious consequence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a consequence or expected result based on a novel model. In this case the empirical model is usualy motivated by some sort of science, attempt to publish in the relevant scientific or applied math journals. Your primary contribution is &lt;strong&gt;evidence in the reasonable model&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a synthesis of connections between many different areas of math that your conjecture brings together. Publish this as a survey that unifies the areas of interest. Your primary contribution is &lt;strong&gt;the connections between fields&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your paper does not have any results apart from the conjecture, then such are usually disseminated informally. Tell your friends, colleagues, publish a blog post, ask for a proof on MO. This is a great way to find someone to work with in helping you turn your conjecture into a theorem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T00:19:25.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2364" CreationDate="2012-07-10T04:33:07.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tablets make it a lot easier to go through old materials. If you can find ways to download your textbooks and lecture notes as PDFs and then use a tablet to heavily annotate your textbook (you can even insert extra pages too), you can come up with an easily-searchable annotated version of your textbook that you can re-use again for years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a Lenovo ThinkPad because of its large screen size and stylus pen, which makes it very easy to annotate and highlight textbooks and lecture notes. I also put my textbooks in my Dropbox folder so that my annotations are auto-saved in my Dropbox (and in case I ever lose my tablet, I won't lose my textbooks along with them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T04:33:07.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2012-07-10T09:41:22.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is from a retired software engineer’s point of view. In 60’s and 70’s, not too many people had a close look at real computers. I wrote my first few FORTRAN programs on punched cards without actually seeing what a computer looked like.To me, a computer was like a black box. There was a magician living in the computer room, could understand the DO loop instructions in my program and do the job for me. There were a lot of students thinking the same way like me.  The professors in CS department were facing tough choices. There was limited time for the students to take the courses. You teach them math and science first, or programming first? What would the industry think if your computer science graduates could not even write programs? Naturally, the curriculum had to be focused on computer science itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In late 70’s, micro computers came out. In 90’s, PC became house furniture. A lot of software packages were available. Programming became everybody’s skill like driving a car. In the mean time, the industry found out CS graduates are hard to use because they don’t have enough application domain knowledge. I, for example, had to borrow books from the library to learn how radar operates. In the last few years before I retired, I didn’t need the programming language manual because I knew them. But I had to get on Wikipedia web site many times everyday because I was not familiar with the application I was working on. And I know I was not an exception. Many of my colleagues were doing the same thing.  Naturally, the industry and academia have to train the undergraduate student math and science so that they would be more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is my observation and my experience. I would not say who is wrong or right. The OP was wondering what happened. I believe it was a gradual process and a basic economics rule, demand and supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T09:41:22.477" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-10T10:02:07.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;in Spain you can max out some 35k€ / year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some details to complete the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &quot;Profesor Titular&quot; (senior lecturer with a tenure position, like a second class Professorship). I have 15 years experience&#xA;My total income last year was EUR 45ooo. That included 2ooo for an extra course, 27oo for a positive evaluation of research and 86oo for the 15 years. That gives a basic salary of about EUR 31ooo when you start. But when you start you have a lower category, so the first salary is lower. There are also variations depending on the region.&#xA;I pay about 12ooo for taxes and insurance. That leaved some 33ooo as true income. &#xA;With the cutbacks, I expect some 30ooo this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T19:49:24.657" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T19:49:24.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2382" CreationDate="2012-07-10T11:27:07.447" Score="57" ViewCount="3083" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time, I had been using open source software for my work to boost &quot;reproducible research&quot;. I believed that if I made my codes open source and the softwares to run those codes in were open source too (or at least free), my research would be utmost reproducible. However, recently, in a discussion, it came through that research is more reproducible if one uses &quot;popular&quot; softwares instead of &quot;unpopular&quot; free ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had been using Scilab (Free) for a lot of my work and distributed my files to others. But I was surprised that more people had MATLAB ($$) and preferred if I sent  them MATLAB files instead (little modifications). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm starting a new project and I wish to make it as reproducible as possible. Should I be using relatively unpopular free software or extremely popular proprietary ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T18:27:11.910" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T21:56:54.937" Title="Popular proprietary program or obscure open source substitute for reproducible research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2012-07-10T13:31:45.030" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two kinds of reproducibility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability of someone else to run your code and obtain the same output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability of someone else to write their own code that does the same thing as yours based on your description and on examination of your code (reproduction from scratch).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second kind of reproducibility is much more convincing, since &lt;strong&gt;the main point of scientific reproducibility is to verify correctness&lt;/strong&gt; of the result.  For science that relies on code, it is usually impossible to include &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; detail of the code in the paper, so verification requires examination of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you use proprietary software, your code probably makes use of closed source code, and therefore it cannot be verified or reproduced from scratch.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you use open source software, then all of the code that your code calls is probably open source, so it can all be verified or reproduced by someone else from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, it is probably true that the first kind of reproducibility is more achievable with proprietary, widely-used software.  I am optimistic that the current trend will lead to open-source software catching up in terms of wide use (consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagemath.org/&quot;&gt;SAGE&lt;/a&gt;, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum, in light of Epigrad's answer below, which I mainly agree with:&#xA;The problem with relying on closed-source code &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; that someone else won't know what that closed-source code &lt;em&gt;is expected to do&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if you have two closed-source implementations of &lt;em&gt;the same algorithm&lt;/em&gt; and they give &lt;em&gt;different results&lt;/em&gt; (trust me, they usually will), then you have &lt;em&gt;no way of determining which (if either) is correct&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, closed-source code would be fine for reproducibility if it were bug-free.  But it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T12:13:48.433" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T12:13:48.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2012-07-10T15:19:58.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listen to your colleagues &amp;amp; peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've already told you what is most suitable for them, in order for them to be able to reproduce your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That answer, in your particular case, is Matlab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be some others who want to port it to Octave, SciLab, Excel, Fortran or whatever. That's fine too - but if you're flexible about which platform you code in, and coding in Matlab won't make you less productive (or the small reduction in productivity is a price worth paying for the increased reproducibility), then code in Matlab. Because your colleagues have already told you that that's what enables them to reproduce your work, easiest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of good reasons (and maybe some bad ones) why many of your colleagues prefer Matlab. Sometimes the cheapest things can cost you most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For anyone else reading this, with a similar problem, the gist of the answer is the same: listen to your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T15:19:58.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:30:39.467" Score="69" ViewCount="3935" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of my computational scientist colleagues used to use Google Reader to share and discuss new journal articles.  The loss of Reader's social features killed that, and we have subsequently tried Google+ and Reddit, but neither seems to work nearly as well as Reader did for holding this kind of discussion.  Does anyone have experience using a site they like for this purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of a few options, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://annotatr.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;http://annotatr.appspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;, that seem promising but appear not to be actually used much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" OwnerDisplayName="David Ketcheson" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T13:13:26.350" LastActivityDate="2020-04-10T07:14:04.460" Title="Is there a good site for holding online discussions of scientific papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2012-02-01T23:03:34.937" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://scicomp.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://scicomp.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the StackExchange system isn't the best - and indeed isn't designed - for &quot;discussion&quot;, I've found that many &quot;What did you think of this paper&quot; type questions can be phrased in SE-compatible formats. CrossValidated has a semi-periodic &quot;Journal Club&quot; bit, and questions and musings about scientific papers come up a fair amount there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if framed correctly, they might find a useful home here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally though, I think the online discussion of scientific papers suffers from a few problems. Generally, the two I find the most problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of a clear community to talk about papers in. Essentially, the problem your question is looking for an answer to. I haven't found a really good general purpose one, though I would love to if I did find it. There's blogs and the like, but even the ones talking about peer-reviewed papers are somewhat one sided in terms of their communication, and not great for anything but transient chatter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A hesitation to talk about that online. Among colleagues, it seems somewhat easier to summarize things like &quot;Bad paper is bad&quot;, or slice apart someone's methodology. I'd be somewhat more hesitant to do that anywhere where my identity is both traceable and the conversation is saved for eternity (the internet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" OwnerDisplayName="EpiGrad" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T23:03:34.937" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4743" CreationDate="2012-07-10T19:32:17.507" Score="7" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to decide whether or not I should pursue an undergrad in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/undergrad/courses_progression/courseprogression/progression_table?prog=bsc&amp;amp;conc=none&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;CPSC&quot;&gt;Computer Science (link to curriculum)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;or an undergrad in &lt;a href=&quot;http://lss.athabascau.ca/advising/Advising%20Program%20Plans%202011/11%20Program%20Plans/bsccis11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer Information Systems (link to curriculum)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'd be curious to know if picking one over the other could be problematic later, when applying to a masters program in computer science (the CIS degree is much less theory heavy). I am interested in Standford's MS program, but if I go with the CIS program, I am concerned I will be filtered out in the selection process because I don't hold a brick-and-mortar CS degree with a heavy theoretical focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a mature adult, I have financial obligations that constrain my ability take on studies full time, so I am leaning towards the CIS degree because it is offered through distance education (the CPSC degree is not), and subsequently applying to Stanford's Masters program which is also offered through distance education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I currently work as a developer full-time, and in my younger years I worked on a lot of random jobs, mostly non-applicable to my computer science interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1241" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T12:00:29.873" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T16:03:18.897" Title="BSc in CPSC or CIS: How will this affect Grad School applications (Stanford, UBC)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2393" CreationDate="2012-07-10T19:46:43.030" Score="11" ViewCount="1918" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot;&gt;STEM&lt;/a&gt;, At what age do tenured professors stop taking new students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a first year PhD student and have my eye on one professor who seems to be really interesting and I feel he finds me as a good candidate too but &lt;em&gt;for some reason that he refuses to discuss&lt;/em&gt; he does not wish to take me in. Most of his current students are 1-2 years from graduating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a strong reason to believe that it's his age (60-65). That's when I thought about the more general question I am asking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditorDisplayName="user107" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T07:54:22.573" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T07:54:22.573" Title="At what age do professors stop taking new students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;stem&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2388" CreationDate="2012-07-10T20:13:04.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people avoid taking students if they expect to retire or move before the student would graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T20:13:04.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2388" CreationDate="2012-07-10T20:48:30.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I strongly believe that this depends on the professor and department in question. One imagines that there is a time that professors &lt;em&gt;would like to&lt;/em&gt; stop taking students and a time that they &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; stop taking students, and these do not necessarily coincide. In a small department where there are many graduate students and a shortage of advisors, presumably there is &quot;peer pressure&quot; from other faculty members to continue to advise students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T20:48:30.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:35:35.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with most that has been said by EnergyNumbers and David Ketcheson, I'd like to add some slightly different points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the fact that code is written in a particular language (Matlab) does not make it closed source per se.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just as using Scilab on closed source Windows (or using a closed source BLAS) doesn't make Scilab closed source.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are journals that require reproducible research and open code and accept Matlab code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;likewise, popular and free do not exclude each other, nor does proprietary imply that it is popular  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;neither of the two imply that the respective software is suited for the reproducible data analysis.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The choice on the language should be based on several factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how suitable is it for the problem at hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;here also: how suitable is it for reproducible data analysis (I'm experimental scientist, so reproducing a data analysis is just a part of reproducible research for me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;particularly if talking about sharing code: infrastructure considerations (can code be packaged into libraries? How can data and code and the text be bundled into a reproducible paper?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;popularity = size of peer group using this software (which somehow includes the cost of a license)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you may also want to consider what the peer group that is interested in reproducible research is using (In my field(s), the reproducible research crowd coincides much more with the open source (R) crowd, while of the peer group working on the same kind of problem probably the majority uses Matlab) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My old supervisor used to say that the cost of a license is no scientific argument.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But of course you may need to consider it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likewise, popularity is not a scientific argument, but you should critically examine whether the propularity does actually indicate that lots of good reasons exist to use that software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my field, R is increasingly popular (by now popular enough to publish in R) and to a certain extent replacing Matlab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So R is both free and popular (yet most people from my field don't make use of the fact that you can look into R's source if they discuss reproducible data analysis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reasons IMHO include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most importantly: R is well suited for our kind of problems (I think it is better suited than Matlab, others differ slightly in their opinion and use Matlab. Even others do think it may actually be better suited but not as much as to outweigh learning R right now)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being well suited includes the availability of methods we use at CRAN vs. commercial Matlab toolboxes and Matlab file repository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being better suited includes the fact that I cannot adapt the code of proprietary Matlab toolboxes (p files) to particular needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being well suited includes the ease of report generation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;infrastructure: e.g. R's package concept enforcing a minimal standard and allowing to rely on examples and tests actually being runable vs. a folder full of .m files (I heard that recently a more package like concept was introduced). This helps a lot with sharing the code (whether to reproduce your findings or to use it on their own data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;license costs come in indirectly: it is more that you don't need to worry if you install it on your private computer as well and you can tell students to install it on their laptops than worrying about the cost of a few licenses for computers at work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;probably far more costly than license fees themselves are the time to get the license manager working or to transfer licenses between computers, and if you just want to give a toolbox a try before deciding whether to buy it or not, the hassle of a) asking the vendor for a demo version and later on b) of filling out order forms and writing justifications why you need to spend money on that license.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how many of these arguments are &quot;soft&quot; and in fact have more to do with being used to one system or the other or using a feature is easier, more obvious, or more common among the peer group of that software's users: noweb &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work with Matlab, documentation of m-files is possible and encouraged (though not really enforced), unit tests are possible in Matlab, Matlab Central has lots of free code, etc. Just R users always know of CRAN, whereas not all Matlab users know of Matlab Central, there's a good culture of citing scientific papers about the implemented method in R help files, shipping code together with example data sets and/or giving actually running example code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of invalid arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if my peers did not use version control for coding, I wouldn't consider that an argument &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; using version control (as there are lots of good reasons for using it)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, if the ones refusing to use version control were programming in Matlab, neither  would that be an argument against Matlab - but I'd check whether there is any reason that prohibits using version control for Matlab code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T21:35:35.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2388" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:36:16.087" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no hard and fast rules for this. However, in general, the question is not so much time-after-PhD, but rather time &lt;em&gt;before retirement.&lt;/em&gt; Most faculty advisors in the final stages of their careers stop taking students, so that they can wind their research groups down gracefully. Frequently, the last years before retirement will be spent writing and teaching, and mentoring a few additional students. The amount of time depends on the average career of a graduate student in the professor's particular discipline, but somewhere between three and seven years before retirement, the &quot;wind down&quot; will begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T21:36:16.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:39:22.090" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To supplement @David Ketcheson's answer with a &quot;Yes, but...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that there are two types of reproducibility - CrossValidated discusses them with some degree of frequency. There is, as has been mentioned, &quot;Can I click 'Run' and get the same answer you did&quot; reproducibility, which I generally don't find very compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &quot;Could I repeat your analysis from what you have provided from Step 1 to Step End, and get the same or a similar answer?&quot; I think this is the one we should be aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is &lt;em&gt;often&lt;/em&gt; helped by using accessible, non-proprietary code, but not always. Consider the following example of an infectious disease dynamics model, expressed as a system of ODEs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, in order to replicate (or fail to replicate) my findings, the software I used doesn't matter. What matters is the equations and parameter values I chose. If I provide those, then the only reason for code being needed is because someone &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; want to implement the study from scratch, and does want to just run the code and see if the results match, tinker with the assumptions a bit, etc. In that case, everyone benefits from the code being in a form people use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the same is often true for statistical analysis that doesn't use novel methods. At this point, what matters is that the &lt;em&gt;data&lt;/em&gt; is available, and that the code is implemented in a language people understand and use. If 95% of people use SAS, even if it is proprietary, then the way to make your results most accessible, and most easy to replicate, is to have an implementation in SAS. Because if you pick an obscure but free language, what you've done is replaced the &quot;Money&quot; barrier with a &quot;Time to understand&quot; barrier - which for most people equates to the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary is this: I don't think &quot;Free/Open&quot; vs. &quot;Proprietary/Closed&quot; is necessarily the deciding distinction. I think that distinction is accessibility, and trying to maximize that. If there is both an open, free and popular software package that's used (R for example) then great! - use that. But if the field uses primarily one commercial package, picking an obscure alternative just because its free doesn't fix accessibility, it just shifts the burden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T21:39:22.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2012-07-10T22:31:09.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I asked this question, I studied a number of factors. I believe that the two primary factors are the age of the disciplines and the education reform in the United States in the 1980s. I also believe that the growth of multi-disciplinary education and the prevalance of computers have spurred these changes more drastically in the computing related fields (although I don't have sufficient knowledge at this time to be as confident in this assessment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to consider is the age of the disciplines. At the time of the publication of the first articles, in the 1970s, the fields of computer science and software engineering were relatively new on the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first computer science degree program was started in 1953 at the University of Cambridge. In the US, the first computer science program wasn't founded until 1962. However, some of the papers noted that computer science education didn't made significant advances until 1969, with the publication of the ACM Curriculum 68 and ACM Information Systems Curriculum, which established the central topics to computer science. That's over 15 years between the first CS program and significant advances in CS education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software engineering as a separate discipline wasn't even a thought until the NATO conferences in 1968 (Garmisch, Germany) and 1969 (Brussels), and it took another 10 years (1979) before the first graduate program and it wasn't until 1996 that an undergraduate software engineering program existed. If SE as a discipline follows similar trends as computer science, I wouldn't expect significant advances in the education techniques before the late 1980s or early 1990s, after the central topics have been identified and disseminated. As a point of reference, the IEEE's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK)&lt;/a&gt;, which outlines the core knowledge areas and related disciplines of software engineering, wasn't even started until 1993, which puts it at roughly the same time-to-development as computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not an academic, but I would suspect that it's rather difficult to design a curriculum that's relevant to students seeking careers in industry without a solid framework, especially when the goals are to produce a solid, reliable curriculum that stands up to the rigor of engineering. In addition, there is the additional work related to validation and accreditation of the programs. The papers from the 1970s were typically laying the groundwork for the work to come over the next 15-20 years by proposing the key topics and content. Upon further examination, nearly all of the topics presented in the papers were identified as essential knowledge areas of software engineering or as a related discipline in the Guide to the SWEBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that educational reform also plays a role in the changes. According to Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_reform&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;education reform&lt;/a&gt; was occurring around the world, starting in the early 1900s. Considering that the majority (all but one or two) of the papers that I read were written by someone in the United States, I focused my research on the educational reform that started in the 1980s and still continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1983, a report titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nation_at_Risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://datacenter.spps.org/sites/2259653e-ffb3-45ba-8fd6-04a024ecf7a4/uploads/SOTW_A_Nation_at_Risk_1983.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;) was published. Although the bulk of the paper is centered on primary and secondary education (in the US, kindergarten through 12th grade), it also mentions a decline in SAT scores, a decline in College Board (AP) test scores, an increase in the teaching of remedial mathematics courses in public 4 year universities, and millions of dollars being spent by businesses and the military for remedial education and training programs. The report found that the average graduate (of secondary schools as well as higher education) is not as well-educated as the average graduate of the previous generation and smaller proportions are completing high school and college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report presents the &quot;Learning Society&quot;. A learning society has &quot;a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life.&quot; The focus become on life-long learning, well beyond the end of schooling. In contrast to this &quot;learning society&quot;, they find that the American education system is expressing standards in &quot;minimum requirements&quot; and students who do the minimum amount of work to get by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To report also finds problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are taking &quot;general track&quot; courses instead of vocational or college preparation courses in secondary education, but only small percentages complete courses like Algebra II, French I, and Calculus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large numbers of credits are gained in physical/health education, remedial courses, and courses for training for adulthood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grades rose as amount of required effort to complete work rose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Science-oriented students (4 years of science/math in secondary school) in the US are spending significantly (1/3) less time than any counterpart in many other industrialized nations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A significant number of public colleges must accept all high school graduates from their state&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Textbooks aren't being written by experienced teachers or scholars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many textbooks don't challenge their readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;School years are significantly shorter (in length and total days) than many other industrialized countries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teacher preparation curricula are focused on &quot;educational methods&quot; instead of subject matter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shortages of teachers, especially in mathematics and science, leading to under-qualified teachers teaching these subjects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many of the recommendations point to changes in secondary education, it only makes sense that ripples flow throughout higher education. Vocational schools, colleges, and universities most likely adjusted their curricula in two directions. The first would be to meet the needs of the students who might have been underprepared by their secondary education by adding courses for subject matter that might have previously been expected by a high school graduate. The second direction would be to create the environment of the Learning Society by creating courses to expand the mind and enable students to &quot;learn to learn&quot; in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2379/1229&quot;&gt;scaaahu might be onto something in his answer&lt;/a&gt;, as well. As mentioned in several of the papers in the 1970s, industry can drive academia. This is even evident today with things such as Industrial Advisory Boards, which allow representatives from industry to meet with departments at universities and provide feedback on the quality of the graduates and suggest curricula improvements to allow graduates to ensure they have the skills needed in the workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm looking at domain knowledge. After reading some work regarding how in the early days of the computing profession, computing professionals were expected to know computing. However, the modern workplace is often cross-functional. Having domain knowledge seems to be more important in these cross-functional teams to facilitate communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, going back to the idea of a Learning Society, even if the education isn't necessarily in the domain of work, the ability to learn to learn along with critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration (themes that are cross-cutting across nearly every discipline and things that are difficult to teach outside of practice) is critically important to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T22:31:09.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:06:26.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the late 1970s when Freeman, Wasserman and Fairley wrote about software engineering curricula they were talking about graduate education. They assumed that most students would be working professionals returning to school to learn those things that they should have learned earlier, but which were not being taught when they had been in college. Those ideas were implemented in the early MSE programs at places like Wang Institute (where Dick Fairley and I met). We felt at the time that undergraduates could not appreciate some of the problems and techniques we taught, so it was not worth trying. I remember having arguments with Gary Ford at the SEI about exactly this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the 1990s people were beginning to believe that software engineering &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be taught to undergraduates, so that they wouldn't have to unlearn bad habits when they went to work. There was also an increasing interest in professional licensing of software engineering. Licensing would require ABET-accredited undergraduate programs, among other things. The focus on society is related to the interest in developing a discipline of software engineering aligned with ABET accreditation and professional boards of engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that we weren't interested in serving the needs of society in the 1970s and 1980s. We even had a version of a code of ethics that we taught Wang Institute students during orientation. But we assumed that students already knew their role in society. They had come back to school primarily to learn new methods and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, SWEBOK was actually started in 1998 as part of an effort to professionalize software engineering. The software engineering code of ethics was published at about the same time. Both of these projects were meant (by some of us) to support the eventual licensing of software engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1242" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T01:06:26.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2399" CreationDate="2012-07-11T07:12:16.053" Score="10" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm learning new material, it helps me if I take notes (I usually use emacs org-mode). I read on Xournal (annotating on the way) and Alt+Tab to emacs to punch in important points. My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How organized should my notes be &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; I am authoring them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, I can either make chapters-sections-subsections etc. &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; I am writing the notes (but this breaks the flow and is sometimes I feel it is irritating since I'm fretting on unnecessary details) or I could write the notes as bullets and organize them later (Something I like but overhead time is spent on organization after reading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T03:37:05.560" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T03:37:05.560" Title="Tips for useful note-making when learning by oneself" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2375" CreationDate="2012-07-11T08:56:09.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your conjecture is supported by partial result, then as pointed out by Artem Kaznatcheev, a journal suited to this results is the good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is supported by numerical computation, you can aim at &quot;Experimental Mathematics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not supported, or supported only by previous results, then it would probably be difficult to publish. Sometimes conference proceedings can be a suitable place, but informal dissemination would probably be the most common practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T08:56:09.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2397" CreationDate="2012-07-11T12:15:04.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the method I found works best for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a section&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the paper down, summarize verbally (mentally or out loud)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't summarize, re-read the section. If you can summarize, write down the summary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method has the benefit that your notes don't reflect the stream of consciousness that I found went through my brain as I read the paper, but rather only a concise summary of what I actually understood from the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there were definitely papers where I read a particular section numerous times and had no idea what it was talking about, and I wrote that in my notes (e.g., &quot;The authors then performed a mathematical transform involving  technique, and I was not able to figure out how it works from reading the paper.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T12:15:04.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-11T12:38:27.320" Score="19" ViewCount="1287" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you're a PhD student, and you found a research group, in another university, that you'd like to join for a PostDoc period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to join that group because you really like their subjects, and their projects, and/or for other reasons. You just dediced you would like to join them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what could you do during your PhD to augment the probabilities to reach this objective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might say: just relax, &lt;strong&gt;make an awesome work&lt;/strong&gt;, and then, when you're ending your doctoral period, contact that group PI and ask to be hired &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1604/how-to-prepare-for-a-phd-or-postdoc-admission-procedure&quot;&gt;(we already discussed how to cope with this phase)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, but, &lt;strong&gt;is there something you could do during your PhD before that moment?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep up-to-date on their scientific papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Email them? About what?&#xA;Visit their lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T19:28:29.503" Title="How to &quot;cultivate&quot; a postdoc position during PhD program?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2400" CreationDate="2012-07-11T13:35:28.853" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend speaking with your advisor as a first step. He may be able to initiate collaboration between you and the researcher running the other lab while you're still performing your PhD work, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is impractical for any reason, I would recommend reaching that, as soon as you think you have a strong enough knowledge base to be able to demonstrate expertise in your field, you should reach out to the professor at the second lab and express your interest. Research grants often take many months, and demonstrating your interest in his work at an early stage may give the professor more interest in writing a grant in which you could participate. Note that I would definitely recommend waiting until you can impress the professor with your knowledge. Postdocs are hired to get stuff done. While it's true you still are a PhD student, you're essentially applying for a position as a postdoc, and if you're not an expert (or close to one) in your field, he will likely be wary about bringing you in to your lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last reason is why people typically wait until they're pretty far along, if not outright finished, with their graduate work before looking for postdoc positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T13:35:28.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2012-07-11T14:02:42.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often compare code with a scientific paper. The purpose of a paper is to describe your results and approach to the problem in such a way that your peers can validate/refute your findings, &lt;em&gt;in whatever way they see fit&lt;/em&gt;, so that a collaborative effort can take place to make progress in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who cares whether the paper's author has used LaTeX to write his paper, or MS&amp;nbsp; Word? Who cares if the data was processed with MATLAB, or Excel, or Pascal? It is the truth(s) in the paper that count(s), &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the tools used to get there (although many would gladly jump in here and start a fierce discussion on this point...but in my experience, the arguments used in such discussions tend to be more like religion than anything else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is &lt;strong&gt;very important&lt;/strong&gt; however, is the means of getting through to your peers. For example, if you write and publish a paper in Esperanto (supposing for the moment that would get accepted), simply because you think it's beautiful and elegant and everyone should speak it. Plus there are many books about how to convey meaning in Esperanto right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not many of your peers will be able to understand the paper, let alone get the message and reproduce your findings. You'll have to wait until someone comes along in your field who shares your views on Esperanto, which might take half a lifetime. Altogether this is a very poor way of making progress in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This I think is the crux of your predicament -- if your peers mostly use MATLAB, you'd best stick to MATLAB, because you'll reach the most peers the quickest. Leave it to (other) engineers to sort out whether MATLAB actually produces good (enough) results for your case, and leave it to one of your peers half a world away to translate your code to C++ and verify your findings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the code that counts -- it's the knowledge that is contained in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastEditorUserId="1243" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T16:59:34.863" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T16:59:34.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2437" CreationDate="2012-07-11T15:56:17.923" Score="11" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished all of my manuscript revisions except for some minor details in the figure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, once the manuscript is accepted, a final draft of high resolution figures will be requested. In the past, I have also had requests to relabel and rearrange subplots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that I can wait until the final draft figures are requested to make minor tweaks, like aligning and sizing fonts and graphical elements? The content will be the same, but I still want to finalize elements such as the font sizes, line widths, title placement and legends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interest of speeding up the process, is it acceptable for to submit revisions with the figures still in draft form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T19:23:24.627" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T10:02:09.513" Title="How much tweaking of figure design (not content) can I postpone until the final figures are requested?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2400" CreationDate="2012-07-11T19:20:14.317" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to establish substantial professional contact with the head of your target group &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; before your doctoral period is about to end.  They need to know who you are already when your postdoc application crosses their desk.  It is never too early to start.  Here are a few suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your advisor to invite the head of the group to give a talk in your department.  Meet with them one-on-one.  Ask about the possibility of a short visit to their lab to give a reciprocal talk.  &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Have something compelling to talk about; be a good speaker.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask about the possibility of summer internships.  &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Be a good candidate for a summer internship.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your advisor to suggest a one-semester student swap.  &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Be someone that the other person would want to hire as an RA.)&lt;/em&gt;  More generally: Convince your advisor to collaborate with the other group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the head of the group to be an external member of your dissertation committee.  Ask at least two years before your defense. &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Have a thesis topic that they will care about.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the head of the group and/or his students at conferences.  Join them for lunch, or dinner, or coffee, or beer, or whatever.  &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Be an interesting human being.  Know a few good places to get lunch/dinner/coffee/beer/whatever.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't put all your eggs in one basket.  Cultivate &lt;em&gt;multiple&lt;/em&gt; colleagues.  Some may develop into future employers, others into future research collaborators, still others into letter-writers, still others into mentors,  perhaps a few into friends, and most into nothing.  &lt;em&gt;(Prerequisite: Know more than one person.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; think of this process primarily as &quot;cultivating a postdoc position&quot;.  Think of it as &lt;strong&gt;cultivating a research community&lt;/strong&gt;.  People &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; notice if your motivations are mercenary, if only subconsciously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T19:28:29.503" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T19:28:29.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2410" CreationDate="2012-07-11T21:23:51.060" Score="15" ViewCount="2362" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my undergrad, we had a reading assignment (for most courses) which would nearly cover up the entire textbook including introductions, summaries, &quot;did you know&quot; and other such &lt;em&gt;fluff&lt;/em&gt; material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In graduate school as pointed out in most answers here on SE, one does not read the whole book cover to cover but just read the parts you need and backtrack if doubts. But is this also true if I'm starting out in a new field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my BS in Engineering and I'm pursuing my grad studies in Math, certain topics like Topology are completely new to me. I don't need the whole of Topology but just certain bits and pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I attain some familiarity with the topic by reading a good introductory book cover to cover or just dive in (into a completely alien field) and understand only the parts I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T04:53:27.970" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T04:53:27.970" Title="When do you stop reading books cover to cover?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2012-07-12T00:03:53.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used it personally so I can't vouch for its quality, but I know several people in another research group using a site called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalfire.com/&quot;&gt;Journal Fire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for this purpose.  Might want to check it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think the citation manager and social network &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; has some limited discussion capabilities, but I prefer to manage my references with BibDesk so I haven't use it much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T00:03:53.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2405" CreationDate="2012-07-12T01:43:24.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this has been covered here in prior questions, but to continue on anyway ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read material with a purpose or a goal. If the material is helping to achieve that goal (learning new or foreign material that you have a desire to learn) then reading all of the material is fine. There is no point in reading material though if it has no purpose or a goal (e.g. topics you are not interested in, material you already know sufficiently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally for me it is a mix, some material I skim in large parts, some material I read only portions that I'm directly interested in, and if I'm really engrossed in some material I will read it front to back. Currently I'm reading an introduction cartography text book and really enjoying it and reading every chapter! It would be torture for me though to read though an intro textbook for criminal justice, criminology or sociology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for journal articles, posts on Q/A forums, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T01:43:24.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-12T02:04:47.187" Score="9" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was 23, I quit my computer science undergraduate studies at USC with only one semester worth of units left and a low (less than 3.0) GPA due to personal reasons.  I just turned 30 and have rekindled a desire to pursue research in computational neuroscience.  Is there any realistic hope of eventually getting into a PhD program and pursuing a career in academia, or is it too much of a long shot given my personal circumstances and the job market?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what I want to know is, if I were to finish my BS, kick ass in a master's program (applied mathematics), and have great GRE scores, would that overcome my abysmal undergraduate record and gap in years away from school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest obstacle in my view is getting into a terminal master's program with my undergraduate record.  If I were to get into a 1-year terminal master's program in mathematics at a sub-par university and do great, would I have a chance at a higher ranked university for my PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1246" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T03:34:14.767" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T16:55:02.103" Title="Entering into PhD program after having dropped out of bachelor's" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2405" CreationDate="2012-07-12T04:27:08.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you want to gain from reading that book?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically find that I only read books (or articles) &lt;strong&gt;cover to cover when I hope to work on a very closely related topic&lt;/strong&gt;.  For example, if I'm trying to improve the result in a paper, I will often read most or all of the details.  However, the vast &lt;strong&gt;majority of the time all I need is the big picture&lt;/strong&gt;.  In that case, I often read the introduction in detail, then skim the remainder to understand the structure of the actual proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case as a math grad student, it may be important to understand the types of questions and answers common in topology.  So I would probably recommend reading the book well enough that you can at least solve the easier exercises.  However, if you don't plan to work in that area, and you aren't preparing for a qualifying exam or something similar, then likely the time you'd take to read the book cover to cover could be spent better elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T04:27:08.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2405" CreationDate="2012-07-12T05:19:39.050" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You stop reading books cover to cover when you don't need all the information between the covers of the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a textbook on topology and flip to the middle, it will probably be largely uninterpretable because you don't know the terminology, previously proved theorems, and so on.  You can still glance through the chapter on the material that you really need to know to get an idea of what you're completely missing.  If you can select a subset of earlier chapters that let you understand the later one, great!  If not, read the whole thing.  If that's still not enough, get another textbook or talk to someone who knows the subject well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to make the call regarding when it's better to proceed in this way and when it's more efficient to simply start at the beginning and go through it all.  If you need to know something well, this is often the approach to take not because the other wouldn't work as well &lt;em&gt;in principle&lt;/em&gt;, but because in practice the temptation to be less thorough than one really needs to be is often too great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T05:19:39.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2408" CreationDate="2012-07-12T05:49:09.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My expectation would be yes. Of course, you will have to explain in your application letter that your undergraduate grades do not really represent you any more, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T05:49:09.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2408" CreationDate="2012-07-12T06:42:41.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The odds of a career in academia are long in general, and certainly your situation is going to make the odds even longer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, people tend to only look at your most recent degree.  It seems pretty likely that if you got into a masters program and did very well there, you'd have a good shot at getting into a solid Ph.D. program.  But you'd actually have to do very well in the masters program (probably &quot;best in several years&quot; level).  Furthermore, even once you get into a solid Ph.D. program the odds are against your getting a job in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T06:42:41.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:00:17.870" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some funding agencies require to publish in open-access journals, or at least strongly encourage it. For example, I am funded by a funding agency that strongly encourages to do so. Unfortunately, in many fields, there simply aren't any high-quality open-access journals around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T14:00:17.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2423" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:45:22.347" Score="9" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is somewhat broad, but this place seems like the best place to ask. I have been accepted for an information assurance program, but &lt;strong&gt;I am a computer science major and my main interest lies in software development. Should that deter me from deciding to study information assurance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor in the decision is that the program is through scholarships for service, so it is a 2 year program with 2 years of work in a government position for information assurance. Ultimately, I recognize it is a subjective decision. &lt;strong&gt;The core question I am trying to ask is, should you do graduate study even if you are only partially interested in the subject matter?&lt;/strong&gt; In other words: how committed do you need to be to the subject matter for graduate study to be worthwhile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another note, we continually see news about huge networks with cybersecurity issues. Sony's Playstation network, LinkedIn, and I think I read today that Yahoo! accounts may have been compromised. With the growth of businesses and services online, it seems only natural that an adept skill-set in information assurance would be beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1252" LastEditorUserId="1252" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T20:44:17.923" LastActivityDate="2020-04-27T09:19:53.483" Title="Should graduate study be done when you are not fully interested in the subject matter?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:54:35.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a math professor. (I have taught at Stanford and several other universities.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer that my students do not take notes during my lectures.&#xA;Before the lecture, browse through the relevant chapter of the text book.&#xA;During the lecture, focus on what your professor says. Taking notes will just distract you, and make it harder for you to follow the lecture.&#xA;After the lecture, read the textbook carefully. It is much more well written than any notes would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T18:54:35.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-12T19:36:29.173" Score="4" ViewCount="846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this anonymously. Our department of computer science just received a donation to buy laptops for students. Major activity will be programming and languages used will be C/C++/Python/Perl/Java/R. We will be instituting a lending scheme for students who can't afford them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a committee, we now need to decide whether we should be buying Apple Macbook Pro(13&quot;) or Thinkpad (T420) both with more or less similar specifications and price. The Apple will run it's OS and Thinkpad will run Debian Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is : We are training the students for research and we wish to provide them with an environment close to how it is in the real world. Should we choosing one over the other considering all students have an inclination for research/academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not meant to be a flame war but rather a question of whether Academia has &lt;strong&gt;hidden liking towards Apple and if yes, why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1254" LastActivityDate="2019-10-05T21:06:33.850" Title="Apple or Thinkpads, buying for department" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2419" CreationDate="2012-07-12T20:01:14.793" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that in most conferences/project meetings I attend, there isn't an overwhelming preference on one side or the other (I'm working in computer science, in case that matters). In other words, there are many academics happily working with linux, and many academics happily working with mac (some are even working with both), so in your case, there is no real wrong choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've experienced, in some places, there could be a preference for apple computers because of the way some universities order their hardware: if you ask for a PC, you might not be able to choose which one exactly, and you might end up with a low quality, cheap product, whereas if you ask for a mac, the quality is better (at least, that was true a while ago). But  I don't think it can explain why the proportion of apple laptops in the academic world is higher than that of the general population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I don't think that working within on environment will prevent the students to switch to another one later one if they need to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T20:01:14.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2419" CreationDate="2012-07-12T21:22:24.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think there's any appreciable difference. Both types of machines are able to perform the tasks you require more than adequately, and neither has a significant learning curve for students unfamiliar with the platform. I would choose the one that your IT staff has more experience supporting and the one that has the fewest associated costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all costs really are equal, ask the students; they'll probably have a strong opinion one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T21:22:24.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2416" CreationDate="2012-07-12T21:23:51.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people do further study because they are interested, indeed passionate about the topic matter. Others do it to improve their job prospects/career outlook/ultimate pay packet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself which category you fall into. If you are not interested, then you may not enjoy it and may not succeed unless your motivation is more financial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T21:23:51.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2416" CreationDate="2012-07-12T21:44:36.827" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unmotivated graduate student will usually be a lackluster student at best. These students will be more likely to be distracted by whatever their true interests are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in a program like the one you are describing, you will be making a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; significant career detour. You would be advised not to make such a move unless you are &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt; sure that it's something you'll want to do for the next four years, since you will have a payback requirement. If you're not sure about it, this is the kind of move that can wreak havoc on your career—particularly if you (re-)discover your dissatisfaction after the classwork is complete, and the service period begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T23:13:52.350" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T23:13:52.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2419" CreationDate="2012-07-13T00:48:04.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that neither apple nor Thinkpad T420 have a reasonable advantage for a programmer. A 13&quot; screen is too small for an activity that it is often done with, much bigger displays (at least in my limited experience). I think that a standard programmer doesn't see any difference between these laptop and a good 750$ 15&quot; laptop; but you can buy two of them at the same price of the T420 or the macbook pro. And you can lend them at a lower rate. If you need more computational power, then probably they are not enough. An OpenCL or OpenGL programmer, for example, cannot seriously use them for his job; expecially without a ssh connection to a high performance desktop or a connection with some cloud computing server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my opinion is that you can find a cheaper laptop, with adequate performance, and increase the number of laptop that you buy. Obviously, if the number of laptops is fixed, there is no advantage in a cheaper laptop, even if I think a bigger display can be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1009" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T00:48:04.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T04:28:37.547" Score="8" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;Faculty members switch between universities for many reasons, but how often does this happen? Has there been any study/report on the frequency of job shifts and resignations in academia, especially in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T21:47:18.810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T19:38:07.127" Title="How common is faculty members changing jobs in the US?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2419" CreationDate="2012-07-13T07:31:22.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your donor have a preference? Neither will look like good value for money, but Macs are sexy looking. What about buying Macs and dual booting them? This way your students can get experience in both environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T07:31:22.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T09:03:19.460" Score="9" ViewCount="6473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Literature, and I see potential in further research on the current topic of my dissertation for a PhD in the future. I have been told that an Honours thesis cannot be used as a foundation for a Masters dissertation, so i am wondering if a Masters dissertation can be used as a base for a PhD dissertation later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1256" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T12:43:51.470" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T13:02:44.140" Title="Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2012-07-13T09:27:56.183" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What defines a PhD dissertation can change from one field to another, from one university to another. However, in my case, one chapter of my PhD thesis corresponds to a condensed version of my Master thesis, and as far as I can tell, it's not an unusual practice from where I come from (computer science, france). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes sense when the PhD is somehow an extension of the Master thesis, that is, the Master thesis is used to study a particular aspect of the PhD research problem. That being said, the better for you is probably to check some PhD dissertations coming from your department, and check the intersection with the corresponding Master thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T09:27:56.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2012-07-13T12:46:22.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing your question, I guess this can vary from field to field, but the practice I've seen (engineering, neuroscience, and psychology) is that the PhD work &lt;em&gt;often&lt;/em&gt; is an extension of the masters research. The masters work explores one facet of the research problem, and the PhD thesis explores two or three more. This is often a practical matter, as sometimes the masters is one step towards the eventual granting of a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T12:46:22.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2419" CreationDate="2012-07-13T12:47:18.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there is technically a real difference between the two alternatives that you mention. &#xA;Now, you have to find other ways to choose. I guess that buying macs can seduce prospective students easily (at least more than T420): &quot;Hey Bob, do you now CS dpt XYZ? Sure Alice, this is the coolest on earth, &lt;em&gt;they even give macbooks to their students&lt;/em&gt;...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T12:47:18.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T20:47:26.167" Score="5" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on my Ph.D. with topic “Research of the current methods and technologies for web sites and web application development“. I have some articles that I would like to share(and also I must have several publication before I complete the course) so I was wondering can someone advice me to and university/science organisations that publish students articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1259" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T15:25:36.637" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T15:25:36.637" Title="Where to publish Ph.D. related articles in the IT field" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2012-07-13T21:44:20.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general the master's thesis and the doctoral thesis should not be on exactly the same topic. On the other hand, it is entirely rational for earlier theses to provide the inspiration for later work in one's career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can't really do is retread the same ground—you will need to develop a different topic, with different literature citations and original research. But the move doesn't have to be radical—in literature, for instance, you don't have to go from Sophocles to Virginia Woolf. But you probably shouldn't do &lt;em&gt;The Winter's Tale&lt;/em&gt; for your master's thesis and then &lt;em&gt;Cymbeline&lt;/em&gt; for your PhD thesis, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T21:44:20.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T22:13:11.147" Score="6" ViewCount="6914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student from an unknown school with a sub 3.0 gpa. I am a CS major but I certainly have a deep interest for statistics grad programs. In the future I want to work on algoritmic trading and want to involve with topics such as time series, machine learning and other statistical techniques used in finance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people I have talked with about this issue recommended me to get a PhD from a top 20 statistics program. But I don't have much math classes on my transcript, actually numerical analysis and ODE's are the most advanced math classes which I had. Also I had a traditional probability and statistics for engineers class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am self studying through Walters Rudin's principles of mathematical analysis book and plan to involve further with math. I plan to self study undergrad level topology from munkres, abstract algebra from artin, and some advanced linear algebra and functional analysis may be some measure theory based probability etc. I can attend a university for these classes but it would be extremely difficult for me to manage it just because money constraints which I have. I have to admit that I learn better when I self study and I usually try to attempt  most of the exercises in the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I can't prove that I studied these topics except a good score in math subject gre test. But this test is not a good indicator of abstract math knowledge and most of the test is about calculus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a good score from Math GRE carry a value in MS level admissions to a decent thesis based statistics program with some funding which will help me to get a PhD from a top 20 school later. I don't have any intention of applying to CS grad school because I do not want to get any systems related course as a requirement and majority of the classes I am interested in are mostly offered by math or statistics departments except some machine learning classes offered by CS departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is your point of view for GRE Math subject test results ? What score you love ? May be I can pay to a college some money for attending to one or two advanced courses such as differential geometry and a grad level real analysis course. If I do well on these courses in what level will they help for admission with some aid ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1260" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T05:36:24.333" Title="GRE Math Subject test for admission to statistics grad programs?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T23:49:10.957" Score="20" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you expect from a PhD student before being an advisor for him? I mean do you expect from him to fully understand your papers and to be able to contribute your research from the first day or first month? Or, do you ask him to join your research group meetings and ask him to do some minor tasks in the group (collecting data, maybe some coding) while still learning about your research and other relevant topics he needs to understand the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assume that you are working on manifold learning and your PhD student has some experience on machine learning and has a very superficial knowledge about topology and manifold learning. Do you tell him to go and not to come back till getting some advanced math classes. Or do you rather tell him: &quot;You did well on the general machine learning class which I taught why not come and join my group and lets have a look what we can do&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1260" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T07:17:07.070" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T07:17:07.070" Title="Choosing and training (admitted) PhD students for research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2403" CreationDate="2012-07-14T02:06:33.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this will depend highly from the publisher himself, but any problem will probably result in delay before publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher sees for the first time at the final draft slightly new figures, he might still ask for a few modifications. As such, I prefer to do before the next revision as much as possible to make sure that the publisher is happy and everything is done as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T02:06:33.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-14T02:50:32.677" Score="15" ViewCount="4694" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should one give gifts to those who one's close to, or those who one generally doesn't interact with very much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professors who wrote my LORs seem reluctant to meet me again for some reason (not sure why - maybe they're just busy), should I simply forget about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do people usually give gifts to their advisers for PhD programs, or not really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T21:21:43.640" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T21:21:43.640" Title="On giving gifts to LOR writers" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2438" CreationDate="2012-07-14T03:27:01.907" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may vary from country to country, but I think a simple &quot;thank you&quot; is sufficient.  Writing letters is part of their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm actually &lt;em&gt;forbidden&lt;/em&gt; from accepting gifts from students, on the grounds that an outside observer might interpret the gift as undue influence.  But then, I work for a state whose &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_Illinois#Corruption&quot;&gt;last two governors are in prison&lt;/a&gt; for various flavors of corruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T03:27:01.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2436" CreationDate="2012-07-14T04:03:28.490" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you tell him to go and not to come back till getting some advanced math classes. Or do you tell him: &quot;you did well on the general machine learning class which I taught why not come and join my group and lets have a look what we can do&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;advisor&quot; you mean &quot;research mentor/collaborator&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;definitely the latter!&lt;/strong&gt;  In my experience, strong students can jump in and learn as they go.  Even the most inexperienced student can ask useful &quot;stupid&quot; questions, precisely &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; their backgrounds aren't yet firm.  Moreover, struggling with research (either reading or thinking or coding) &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; taking their first topology class tends to drive the relevant topology deeper into their heads.  I don't expect most new PhD students to contribute real research results in my area (computational topology) in their first year, but I've been pleasantly surprised more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if by &quot;advisor&quot; you mean &quot;provider of research funding&quot;, my expectations are a bit higher.  Before I hire anyone as a research assistant, I need concrete evidence of research output (not just potential), preferably in the general area of the grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the gripping hand, if by &quot;advisor&quot; you mean &quot;guy who signs paperwork&quot;, things are different again.  Regardless of their background, I'll agree to be a student's &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; advisor only after we've worked together for at least a semester &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; they've worked with at least one other professor for at least a semester &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; we both agree that we're a good match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T04:03:28.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2438" CreationDate="2012-07-14T04:37:41.653" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I would feel about various expressions of thanks, for something like writing a letter of recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No response at all: I might be a little disappointed but if I am busy I might not even notice.  Some people might be more offended.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Email saying thank you: Feels perfectly sufficient to me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Handwritten note: A very thoughtful gesture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Token gift (small box of candy, desk trinket, etc): Appreciative but slightly embarrassed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gift of non-negligible monetary value: Quite embarrassed.  I would probably gracefully try to decline it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gift of money, in any amount: Very uncomfortable.  Feels like a bribe.  I'd refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this could vary by culture (I'm in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding gifts for an advisor: A common tradition is to give your advisor a nicely bound copy of your dissertation, for their reference and as a memento.    (Also be sure to thank them &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the dissertation!)  You could accompany it with a nice personal note.  But again, I wouldn't suggest anything of significant value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2012-07-14T08:44:46.553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T08:44:46.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2443" CreationDate="2012-07-14T06:29:39.033" Score="5" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be starting a master's program soon that is all online. I have taken some online courses before at a community college, and the interaction with professors was rather limited. I'll be starting at a university soon, and I'm hoping that aspect will improve. But my question is, how can I create good relationships with professors online that will allow me to get meaningful recommendation letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1261" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T07:46:19.140" Title="How to get good recommendations in online courses?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2012-07-14T07:46:19.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for me to want to write a student a good letter of recommendation, I typically want to see two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;mastery of the material&lt;/strong&gt; (at least enough to earn an A- or better in the course)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;engagement with the material&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most often (2) comes through asking me good questions in office hours, although in one case that I recall, I was really impressed with the student's final paper.  Although she already had the top grade in the course, she went above and beyond on the final paper.  I wrote her a glowing letter of rec, and she ended up winning at least one scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your question, I suggest that you approach a web-based course similarly.  Obviously, work hard to do well in the course.  But also make an effort to get to know the instructor a bit.  Many web-based courses have some type of office hours (perhaps a scheduled chat-room time).  Whatever format you have available, take advantage of it (possibly this could be only a forum; not ideal, but still workable).  Take time to think of good questions about the material, and ask them in office hours.  If you have the chance, let the instructor get to know you a bit, too.  It's much easier for your instructor to write a letter of rec for you if they know you well enough to have something to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T07:46:19.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2403" CreationDate="2012-07-14T08:05:07.613" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a referee, if figures are in a rough shape, I will absolutely call the paper out on that, and &lt;em&gt;demand&lt;/em&gt; improvements. This will potentially set the acceptance back by weeks. Unless the figures will take weeks to get right—and in this day, that would usually imply  that more data needs to be collected—then it's better to just do it right the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T08:05:07.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2012-07-14T08:10:11.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check with the statistics departments in question about their admission requirements. In some cases, it may be required; in others, it may not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for recommended scores, that's even harder to say. Different schools will expect different results, depending on the caliber of students they attract. In any case, though, you should aim to get the highest score you can, rather than aiming for a particular target. But at a minimum, you won't want to show a score that results in a below-average score; that probably won't help you at any competitive program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T08:10:11.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2433" CreationDate="2012-07-14T10:38:41.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you can of course submit your papers to regular conferences/workshops. Usually, you can have the choice between regular papers, short papers or posters (the last two categories are sometimes merged). You need to be careful whether the accepted papers will be published in the proceedings (sometimes short papers/posters are not), otherwise it might not count as a publication for your course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some conferences also organize a doctoral symposium, which is reserved for PhD students. It can be a good opportunity to attend a selective conference, and to do some networking with other students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to know which conferences are the most suitable for you, the better option is to ask your advisors, they should know about that. You can also search on the web for &quot;call for papers&quot; with some keywords corresponding to your research field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T10:38:41.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-14T16:44:59.293" Score="20" ViewCount="4175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis (in Computer Science, if that's relevant) and I am thinking about the style, especially about using contractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that thesis is a formal text and contractions like “&lt;em&gt;we're&lt;/em&gt;” are quite informal, so they shouldn't be used. But does that apply to all contractions (like “&lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt;” or “&lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;”)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English is not my first language, so I'm not sure how much informal the various contractions are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="323" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T18:02:50.070" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T19:20:57.267" Title="Can I use contractions in my thesis?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-14T18:15:36.857" Score="66" ViewCount="169533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am flying to a conference, in which I am presenting a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle there might be a problem, as the poster tube:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is a second piece of hand luggage,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is longer than the limit allows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that it works (once I tried with no problem, my colleagues usually have no problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it happen that one is not allowed to take a poster tube in the hand luggage?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how to avoid this problem? (Advice, tips and tricks are welcome.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is place-specific, I'm interested mostly in EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-07-14T23:09:28.633" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T02:05:17.607" Title="Flying with a poster tube as a hand luggage" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2012-07-14T18:19:59.613" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people have different opinions, even among those who are native English speakers and/or think a lot about what makes for good exposition.  That said, here are a few rules of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your thesis is possibly the most formal writing you will ever do.&lt;/strong&gt;  Survey articles and expository articles (especially for undergrads or other non-experts) are often written less formally.  Even many conference proceedings and some journal articles omit some details, and thus can feel less formal than your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No one will fault you for avoiding contractions altogether.&lt;/strong&gt;  If in doubt, leave it out (the contraction, that is).  I hate some techniques common in formal writing, such as overuse of the passive voice, or nearly any use of the pronoun &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt;.  But lack of contractions doesn't bother me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a more general resource for non-native English speakers, consider Doug West's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~west/grammar.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Grammar&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  West has written two textbooks and over two hundred papers, as well as having served as a problem editor for the Math Monthly for the last 20-something years.  Surely many people will disagree with at least one piece of advice he gives, but what I find helpful is that West &lt;em&gt;explains his motivation&lt;/em&gt; for each piece of advice he offers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T18:19:59.613" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2012-07-14T18:46:34.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice depends upon the style of your thesis. If you are working in a field where you might be expected to publish your thesis, then something aimed at experts should be written in a formal tone (avoiding contractions whenever possible, outside of direct quotations). However, if you're aiming at a wider audience, then a more conversational tone might be completely appropriate. The same logic applies if the chapters of your thesis are planned for publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should also check with your advisor about his or her expectations when writing. It would be better to get a sense of what will be allowed &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you get too far along; major structural changes are always a pain afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T18:46:34.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-14T18:49:33.843" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes flight attendant staff will be willing to hold a poster for you, since generally they can't safely go as checked luggage, and may not fit in the overhead compartment. You should inquire as to what will be allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One useful alternative I've taken advantage of is to use a printing service in the city where you will be presenting your poster, and picking up the poster there. Nowadays, many will accept things sent by email, file transfer service, or web site. This makes the transfer process easier than before, and avoids the problem of last-minute delays (provided you send it ahead of time!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T18:49:33.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-14T20:05:21.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen many people checking a poster in, since the size limits for checked-in luggage are larger than those for carry-on luggages. Another solution would be to send the poster by mail (preferably with a tracking system) a few days before to the hotel where you're going to stay, or even directly to the conference organizers, who can check that everything went fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T20:05:21.470" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-14T21:43:53.593" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you assume that after finishing a PhD, your chances for a professor position are good. As far as I can say (a CS post-doc@EU university), this is generally not straightforward unless you deliver a star PhD. Otherwise, expect at least one  post-doc appointment. After a return from industry, unless you were &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; active in the research community during your time with a company, again post-doc is what you should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the answers, a European perspective. Generally in the EU, probably except for the UK, the academic salaries are governed by tables subject to annual change. In many countries these would be fixed without a variable component based on performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Germany:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The positions of research assistants underlie &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV%C3%B6D&quot;&gt;TVoeD regulation&lt;/a&gt; (BAT in the past). There is no special category for a post-doc, all research assistants are treated equally. The salary scale reflects the individual's experience, that is, officially years of employment. Generally that should include also academic experience abroad too. Find the current tables also &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/west/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; - note the scales differ for West Germany, East Germany, Berlin and Hessen. You are interested in the class E13. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professorships are remunerated according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besoldungsordnung_W&quot;&gt;W scale&lt;/a&gt;. Again the salary differs from state to state, but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w-besoldung.net/informationen/wie-hoch-ist-das-grundgehalt/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, we speak a baseline of about &lt;em&gt;EUR 47k&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;EUR 53k&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;EUR 65k&lt;/em&gt; a year for W1, W2 and W3 professorship positions. W1 is for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniorprofessur&quot;&gt;Juniorprofessor&lt;/a&gt;, roughly equivalent to an assistant professor. W2 and W3 are two different levels of full professorship, the particular difference is mainly an experience/salary issue. The salaries are again graded in steps according to the number of years of experience at the particular position. You start at 0 and from there your grades increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however, at least in CS and generally in STEM, Germany does not fare very well in terms of foreigners on senior academic positions. It's relatively rare to encounter a non-German (or Swiss/Austrian) holding a professorship at a German public university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Netherlands:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system is slightly simpler than in Germany, the salaries are fixed according to CAO (Collective Labour Agreement) regulation and subject to annual/bi-annual negotiation and modification. You can find the information on CAO &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vsnu.nl/cao-universiteiten.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Salary-wise you are interested in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vsnu.nl/files/documenten/CAO/Salarisschalen_2013IenII.pdf&quot;&gt;salary table&lt;/a&gt;, columns H1 and H2 (Professor 1 and Professor 2). These are full professorships. Here we speak about &lt;em&gt;EUR 65k&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;EUR 58k&lt;/em&gt; respectively as a baseline from which the annual grading increase starts. For a assistant professor, the columns of interest are 11-13, so the variance is big. E.g., 11 is also for post-docs, though sometimes assistant professors get that as well. Depends on the particular position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now considering positions in the Netherlands taken by foreigners, you are eligible for a so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands#The_30_Percent_Rule&quot;&gt;30% rule&lt;/a&gt; which basically states that you do not have to pay taxes for 30% of your income. That leads to a significant salary increase for foreigners in the first years of their employment in the Netherlands so even the assistant professor salary grades might not look extremely interesting, considering the 30% rule, they turn out to be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the quotes should be understood brutto before taxation and social system/healthcare/++ deductions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T14:37:37.643" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T14:37:37.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-15T01:33:48.183" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple solutions to the &quot;transporting a poster tube on a plane&quot; problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most flights allow a second piece of hand-luggage, so that bit is fine. And while it is larger in the length dimension than is usually allowed, I've never had this be a problem. In not-very-full flights, it can be stored on top or behind other bags. On fuller flights, I usually just ask a flight attendant for help. So far the tubes have ended up behind the seats in the last row against the bulk head, and in the coat closet usually reserved for first class. Generally, I find they give you &quot;credit&quot; for trying not to be a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As has been mentioned, you can get your poster printed or shipped to the conference location.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cloth posters&lt;/strong&gt;. These are becoming more easily accessible. While more expensive than paper posters, if carrying a poster on forces you to check a bag, and your airline charges fees for those, the cost difference vanishes swiftly. These can be folded and stored flat in a shipping envelop or bag. Just make sure to take them out and iron them on a &lt;em&gt;very low&lt;/em&gt; setting to get the creases out before you hang them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T01:33:48.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2346" CreationDate="2012-07-15T11:22:04.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your expectation should depend on both the potential salary (which the other answers are provided reasonable estimates of) and the probably of the outcome (which most of the other answers have not touched on). If you have not started a PhD program yet, your expectation about how much you will make as a professor should be $0 since the probability of becoming a professor is essentially zero. Even using generous numbers 0.5 get into PhD programs, of those 0.5 finish PhD (0.25 of those who apply). Of those only 0.5 will get a post doc position (0.125 of those who apply for a PhD). Then you have TT position (0.06) and tenure (0.03). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T11:22:04.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2462" CreationDate="2012-07-15T13:37:12.150" Score="27" ViewCount="3051" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is an off-shoot from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2346/after-my-phd-how-much-salary-should-i-expect-as-a-professor-of-computer-science&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, where it has been agreed by most that securing faculty positions is difficult in general. I would like to know what exactly makes this so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though in theory university rankings may be pointless, there is a broad quality-based classification of institutions in any country which many will agree on - for example, the crème de la crème, top tier, middle tier and decent universities, of which there could be a few hundreds. We shall assume the student has passed out with a good thesis and impactful publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it tough for a student graduating from a higher rung to gain a position in the lower rungs? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What factors dictate the difficulty in securing a position in a university in the same league?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: In India, the answer to Q 1 is &quot;not at all&quot;, as there is a heavy crunch for faculty positions even in top institutes. Instead the difficulty arises only when students from low rung colleges seek top positions: in most cases, such students are found wanting in skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T16:29:50.693" Title="What makes securing faculty positions difficult?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2459" CreationDate="2012-07-15T13:52:58.363" Score="12" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does a faculty member seek administrative responsibilities in a Department? Do such positions come in a cycle only? Or should the faculty member make his/her willingness known in advance to the Chair? Are there any politics/wrangling involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, for an assistant professor, is there anything that could be done during PhD so that the profile comes out as someone willing to take admin responsibilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T23:23:35.677" Title="Tips for faculty members seeking administrative responsibilities" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2012-07-15T15:02:55.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry, administrative responsibilities will find you unless you flee them, and even then you probably won't avoid them.  At most universities, young faculty are expressly spared administrative responsibilities so that they can focus on research and get tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really looking for them, generally all you need to do is vocally speak your mind on every issue that comes up.  Most of your colleagues will feign apathy in order to avoid being assigned to a committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T15:02:55.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2457" CreationDate="2012-07-15T15:03:03.637" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult because there are more graduating PhDs than there are faculty positions. This is because by and large, academic departments are not growing very fast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a department that has 40 faculty positions, and is not growing. Suppose each faculty member has a career that spans 40 years (Say, ages 28-68). Then in a steady state, this department will hire 1 new faculty member every year. On the other hand, say each faculty member graduates 1 student on average every three years. (This is conservative: say each professor has only 2 students at a time, and each one takes 6 years). So this department graduates 13-14 students every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what happens in general: each department produces many more PhDs than it consumes, so there must be many who leave the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T15:03:03.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2457" CreationDate="2012-07-15T15:04:12.617" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that there are many more people that &lt;em&gt;want faculty positions&lt;/em&gt; than there are &lt;em&gt;positions&lt;/em&gt;.  Any time &lt;em&gt;demand&lt;/em&gt; is higher than &lt;em&gt;supply&lt;/em&gt;, cost tends to go up.  So why is demand so high? Partly it's because being a professor has lots of attractive qualities.  However, partly it's because that's what our professors tell us we should be (some do this very explicitly, and some more implicitly).  As a result, many students (especially stronger students) decide that the only way to succeed is to become a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect that makes becoming a professor hard is that most professor jobs require a combination of skills: teaching, research, article writing, grant writing, advising and mentoring, networking, etc.  However, grad school generally fails to teach us many of these skills.  Most grad schools focus almost exclusively on research, and possibly teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T15:04:12.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2457" CreationDate="2012-07-15T16:29:50.693" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the strange effects of faculty hiring (and graduate admissions) is that offers do not necessarily go to the strongest candidates.  Departments have limited resources to interview, recruit, and hire faculty.  Interviews are expensive; startup packages are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; expensive; faculty job offers burn political capital &lt;em&gt;even when they aren't accepted&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So hiring committees make strategic decisions based on the perceived probability that candidates will accept the position.  The University of Southeast North Dakota at Hoople would most likely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; interview superstar applicants, because they don't want to waste their time interviewing someone who's &quot;obviously&quot; going to get offers from stronger schools.  As with any self-selection process, this assumption is partly justified and partly Institutional Impostor Syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, selecting an MIT grad is &lt;strong&gt;absolutely not&lt;/strong&gt; a no-brainer for U-Cal-XYZ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, sometimes reasonable PhD students from very strong schools fail to get faculty jobs, or even interviews, because they don't quite have the research record to get an interview at the best departments, but their pedigree scares off weaker departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T16:29:50.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2012-07-15T21:36:16.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Administrative duties are considered &quot;service&quot;: that is, something that everybody is expected to do. However, that also means that, if you're a junior faculty member under consideration for tenure, having extensive administrative duties won't help advance your case. In many ways, it can, as David says, get in the way of productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can probably get a sense from your colleagues about the amount of administrative duties you are required to take on. And there is one potential advantage to making your preferences known to the chair (provided he or she is friendly with you, and is working in your best interests): if you have a particular preference for committee duty, then announcing that may make it easier to actually get it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T21:36:16.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2012-07-15T23:23:35.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to JeffE's comment and David's answer, at four-year institutions, opportunities to engage in administrative duties within and outside your department will usually come up long before tenure. And, at four-year institutions, &lt;em&gt;not engaging&lt;/em&gt; in governance activities will usually hurt your tenure application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particulars, of course, vary by disciple, department, and institution, but aeismail's advice about following your colleagues' leads is a good way to gauge what you should be doing. If you feel like your department is not the best example, look at others on campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as is likely true everywhere in academia, if you voice your &quot;good idea,&quot; said idea and the committee developed to implement it will be your for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T23:23:35.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-16T01:43:42.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently flew with a poster to a conference. The dimensions for hand-luggage usually are Height+width+length &amp;lt;= 42&quot; (inches) (maybe 45&quot;, don't quite remember accurately). If the 'tube' sums up to less than this you should be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is mentioned in another answer, most airlines allow two pieces of hand-luggage e.g. A laptop bag and &lt;em&gt;maybe your tube&lt;/em&gt;, if you don't have anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are free to carry it with you in the hand unless the tube is arbitrarily long i.e. it exceeds 42 inches in length. If you are below that by length, I doubt the other 2 dimensions would be all that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times they may take it from you right at the boarding gate and ask you to check it in there and then. That's fine. It'll be safe and given to you the instant you exit the aircraft rather than at the carousel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some aircrafts are small and may have a separate luggage are for hand bags towards the tail. You can put it there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a small flight and the tube is not too big (diameter and length wise) just prop it by your leg if you are in a window seat or put it below your seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you are within the dimensions and allowable limits of hand luggage (count = 2 weight &amp;lt;= 7kgs) you should be fine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="407" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T01:43:42.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-16T03:19:43.827" Score="150" ViewCount="55461" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (theoretical computer science), authors of any paper are always listed alphabetically; our papers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf&quot;&gt;don't have &quot;first authors&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  (Well... hardly ever.)  In most other disciplines, at least within science and engineering, the ordering of authors is a signal about their relative contributions to the paper, with the first author indicating the most significant contributor.  Hiring and promotion committees do give extra weight to &quot;first-author papers&quot; (and sometimes have to be reminded that not all areas have them).  As an outsider, I find this practice confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does first authorship actually mean in your discipline?&lt;/strong&gt; I understand vaguely that the first author is supposed to be the one who &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_author&quot;&gt;did the most work&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but what counts as &quot;work&quot; in this comparison?  Does &quot;most&quot; mean &quot;more than all the other coauthors together&quot; or just &quot;more than any other coauthor&quot;?  What happens when the comparison is unclear?   How often is &quot;did the most work&quot; the actual truth, versus a cover story for a more complex political decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the precise answer is different for every paper.  &lt;strong&gt;I'm looking for general guidelines&lt;/strong&gt; for how an outsider (like me) should interpret first authorship &lt;em&gt;in your field&lt;/em&gt;.  Pointers to guidelines from journals or professional societies would be especially helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give only one answer per discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T04:45:20.600" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T20:24:47.010" Title="What does first authorship really mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="39" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T06:03:29.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T03:39:55.640" Score="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pure Mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;: All authors are assumed to have contributed equally and are listed alphabetically.  The American Mathematical Society has put out a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; to this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T03:39:55.640" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T03:39:55.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T09:02:04.430" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cognitive neuroscience.&lt;/strong&gt; The first author (most of the time a PhD student or a post-doc) is typically involved in designing the experiment, running it, analyzing data and writing up. The other authors are mostly involved in some but not all of these steps. They will usually help out but not do all of the work (e.g. they might show the first author how to do some analyses, or they might make many useful comments on a draft of the manuscript). In the institute where I'm studying (in The Netherlands), all the papers where I am first author will also be chapters in my thesis, and all the unpublished chapters in my thesis could potentially become papers where I am first author. Those where I am only partly involved will be a chapter in someone else's thesis, and I will not be first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;last author&lt;/em&gt; is as important as the first one. It is typically the supervisor, and ideally the supervisor is heavily involved. In labs that grow too big, a post-doc (once trained by the supervisor) might take over this role, but the last authorship still goes to the supervisor. It's like a brand name, it tells you whose lab the work is coming from. If you know a bit about the field, you will know the general ideas the paper will revolve around. If two supervisors are involved, they have to work out whose name will be last. I know of one situation where the two believed in different outcomes of the experiment, and decided beforehand that the person who turns out to be right will get last authorship. Most of the time, though, the decision is based on who did more supervision, which is ideally agreed on beforehand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T09:02:04.430" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T09:02:04.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T09:09:17.990" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Applied mathematics.&lt;/strong&gt;  The first author is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; the one who contributed the most.  However, sometimes the pure mathematics convention of alphabetical ordering is used; this may be expressly declared in a footnote.  There are no official guidelines from SIAM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no significance to being the last author, and only those who contribute substantially are listed as authors.  If the supervisor is not directly involved in performing the research and writing the paper, he is typically only listed in the acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T09:09:17.990" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T09:09:17.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T09:37:57.713" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt; This really depends on the institution and the group. In one group I've been working in the ordering was &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; alphabetical and doing otherwise would have been considered impolite. In another group, the PhD-first-boss-last principle was used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T09:37:57.713" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T09:37:57.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T11:21:16.937" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer Science.&lt;/strong&gt; Computer science varies by field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theoretical computer science&lt;/strong&gt; generally follows the same conventions as mathematics: the ordering of authors is alphabetical.  Cryptography follows the same conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;programming languages&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;computer systems&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., operating systems, databases, computer security, etc.) and other applied fields, the order of the authors is significant.  The authors are often listed in order of decreasing contribution; faculty or senior folks are typically listed last.  The first author often has led the design, implementation, and experiments presented in the paper or has contributed the most to these elements. Other authors may have contributed more in total, or even individually, to these components, but sometimes at the direction of the lead author. The lead author may also have been considered to be primarily responsible for the writing of the paper, though not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where the lead is shared between several people, papers can have multiple &quot;first&quot; authors, listed alphabetically, followed by an alphabetical listing of the other junior authors, followed by the senior authors. I have seen this fact listed explicitly on a CV. Usually, a PI comes last even if he or she provided the bulk of the leadership of the project; a PI coming first is indicative of an unusually high level of contribution from the PI / low level of contribution from the junior authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the meaning of first authorship ends up being vague enough that usually you have to explain the level of contribution explicitly in reference letters as such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HCI&lt;/strong&gt; (human-computer interaction) follows similar conventions to those in computer systems.  The authors are listed in decreasing order of contribution.  The first author is generally the person who both had the &quot;main idea&quot; and led the effort to ensure that the efforts to carry out the research and write the paper occurred properly. The authors are generally then decreasing in order of their contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="8966" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T22:35:28.773" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T22:35:28.773" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T11:21:16.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T11:35:55.537" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Engineering&lt;/strong&gt;: A first author is usually the lead student or worker on the particular project from which the paper originates. If there are multiple people working on a common project, then the authorship goes to the person whose results are most prominently featured, and who has done the most work in preparing the manuscript for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A significant exception might be in multi-part papers, in which the first authorships may be shared among different people to recognize equality of contributions throughout the combined work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;last author&lt;/em&gt; is often a professor, who advised or directed the lead author, but may have done little work on the project themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="6334" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T13:49:41.977" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:49:41.977" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T11:35:55.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-16T15:42:39.683" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microbiology&lt;/strong&gt;: Similar to cognitive neuroscience: Ph.D student is first author by virtue of having done most of the work, and the PI is the last author. If it is agreed upon that more than one person did &quot;first-author-level&quot; work, then the authors are listed alphabetically with a footnote noting this fact on the title page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T15:42:39.683" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-16T15:42:39.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-16T18:27:40.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost every airline allows &quot;a personal item&quot; in addition to your carry-on luggage; otherwise people with purses wouldn't get any carry-on.  Your poster tube is probably not &quot;a personal item&quot;, but your carry-on could be if it's small enough to fit under your seat.  (That's the real reason: there's not enough overhead bin space, but there's plenty of under-seat space.  Many people hate having stuff at their feet, though, so the airline can't count on that space being used; saying that you can take a personal item that fits under the seat works for you.)  In any case, the way this all works out in practice is that if you're lugging a huge amount of stuff that doesn't look like it'll fit, you'll be asked to check some at the door.  Otherwise, it's all okay as long as it will either fit overhead or fit under your seat without sticking out inordinately.  I've never seen problems even with backpack (personal item) + carry-on (overhead, fitting strictly within size limits and without requiring lots of shoving to get it to pretend to fit) + poster tube, except on really small regional airplanes with desperately tiny overhead bin space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the poster tube doesn't fit in the overhead luggage--it nearly always does--they'll be able to check it at the door to the airplane, just like they do with other overly large and slightly fragile items like strollers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally, almost everywhere you will present has its own poster printing facilities within a few miles.  Any institution of respectable size will have their own, and any city of respectable size--and you're rarely far from one in the EU--will have a copy store of some sort at which you can print at poster size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just take the item with you as carry on, and in the extraordinarily unlikely event that something goes wrong and the poster is destroyed, get it printed at your destination.  (If you are extra-paranoid, you can get a somewhat tougher plastic poster tube instead of the cardboard ones--bearing in mind that I have yet to see a cardboard one get so crushed that the poster was significantly damaged.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T18:27:40.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2426" CreationDate="2012-07-16T19:38:07.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The frequency with which faculty members switch departments varies by field. For example, it happens much more frequently in Economics than in Computer Science. I remember lunch-time discussions proposing an informal study aimed at testing the hypothesis that this difference in mobility was partially responsible for the income gap between econ and CS (economists make substantially more money), but looking for it now, I can't find it. Maybe it was never written up...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T19:38:07.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2012-07-16T19:44:33.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that a good score on the Math GRE subject test is always a good signal. That being said, test scores in general have relatively little importance in PhD admissions -- they can disqualify you, but barring that, won't do much to get you in the door. Its something to optimize only after you have optimized the other, more important parts of your application. In your case, it might be helpful to alleviate any concerns someone might have about your math background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you might want to check out CMU's PhD program in Machine Learning: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ml.cmu.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ml.cmu.edu/&lt;/a&gt; -- none of those pesky systems course requirements!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T19:44:33.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2482" CreationDate="2012-07-16T19:49:01.233" Score="8" ViewCount="801" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming I am reading a textbook/paper or any kind of rich material and then there is a point where I feel that the chapter I am reading is unnecessary or insignificant (I can get back to it later if I am wrong) or at times unmotivated or boring, what are good practices to skip such chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assume Math/Engineering books)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you make sure that the content you skipped doesn't get in the way of the subsequent chapters? (i.e. Skipping does not carry any drawbacks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T02:13:27.680" Title="Good practices for skipping chapters when reading" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-16T22:27:59.447" Score="16" ViewCount="5075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior maths major (computer science minor) who is pretty worried about the next step in my academic career. First, let me state that I'm about as sure as I can be that I want to get a PhD in mathematics. Unfortunately, I didn't realize what the field entailed, or my passion for it, until I had made many really poor decisions - mostly in the form of bad attendance. For example, I basically just showed up for tests in calc 2, 3, linear algebra, and differential equations, and consequently, my field of potential letters of recommendation is quite small. To make things worse, I come from a party school - I need letters! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had one professor (abstract algebra) offer to write me a letter, and I've taken my advanced calc sequence under a professor who I think could write me a good recommendation (adv calc 2 was a graduate course; had [i think] the highest grade out of about 15 students). I'm also taking topology (graduate level) this semester, and am hoping to impress my way to a third letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GPA is okay - cumulative about 3.61; math is all A's and one C in linear algebra. I've also been working through a few books (Spivak's &quot;Calculus&quot; and &quot;Calculus on Manifolds,&quot; and am about to start Birkhoff and Maclane's &quot;Survey of Modern Algebra.&quot; Although I love the material, and enjoy learning it, the independent studying probably stems from some feeling of inadequacy due to my past immaturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a 169/170 Q, 165/170 V on the general GRE. Also, I think I can crack 80% on the subject test, but am not overly confident about this. One glaring hole is that I have done zero research, and have done nothing extracurricular - I literally have nothing &quot;extra&quot; going for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that I've seen the resumes of many people accepted to top universities (PhD track), and I just don't stack up. But if my goal is to become a professor one day, it seems that where I go to school is extremely important. So should I just hope that I can get accepted into a top 30-50 school, or would it be beneficial to consider improving my resume in a solid Masters program so that better schools become available? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if a masters is a viable option, what caliber of school would I need to excel at in order to be a competitive applicant for a top 10 PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1278" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T07:22:20.593" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T01:03:09.300" Title="Advice - MS in mathematics to increase competitiveness for PhD programs?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-17T00:24:58.583" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemical Engineering:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first author is generally considered as the main contributor. In case there are multiple students who made equal contributions, then this is specified as such in the list of authors. (Mostly by adding an asterisk on the names and a footnote explaining the asterisk). Certain groups follow a policy of Adviser first and then rest, though it is considered as arrogant (This is prevalent in mostly Chemistry related sub fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Machine Learning/Applied Computer Science the policy is again similar as Chemical Engineering with Student first and Adviser last, if there are multiple advisers then the advisers tend to rotate between different papers from the same project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally in Medicine especially in General Medical journals, There is a detailed statement of contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.  Author Contributions: Dr De Wals had full access to all of the&#xA;data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the&#xA;data and the accuracy of the data analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study concept and design:&#xA;De Wals, Deceuninck, Toth, Boulianne, Landry, De Serres. Acquisition&#xA;of data: Deceuninck, Toth, Boulianne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis and interpretation of&#xA;data: De Wals, Deceuninck, Brunet, Boucher, De Serres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drafting of the manuscript: De Wals, Deceuninck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: De Wals,&#xA;Deceuninck, Toth, Boulianne, Brunet, Boucher, Landry, De Serres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistical analysis:&#xA;Deceuninck. Obtained funding: De Wals, Boulianne, De Serres.&#xA;Administrative, technical, or material support: De Wals, Deceuninck,&#xA;Toth, Boulianne, Landry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study supervision: De Wals, De Serres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important point is how are paper cited, from what I remember esp. in chemical engineering. A paper is generally mentioned as Last_name et al. and if there are only two authors or two equally contributing authors then it is mentioned as Last_name_1 &amp;amp; Last_name_2 et. al or just Last_name_1 &amp;amp; Last_name_2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1279" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T12:32:27.510" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-17T00:24:58.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2012-07-17T00:28:12.307" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm usually backtracking, i.e., I try to read a subsequent chapter, then I usually discover that there are some definitions/concepts that I do not understand, so I go backwards to look these up, and, once I've understood these notions I can resume the reading of the subsequent chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T00:28:12.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2486" CreationDate="2012-07-17T05:11:28.860" Score="23" ViewCount="1300" Body="&lt;p&gt;On occasion during talks, presenters will say, &quot;as you know from reading my papers&quot; or during a Q&amp;amp;A someone will say &quot;you should know from my papers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above clearly seems inappropriate for most settings outside of a group meeting. However, to what extent should I expect my audience to know what I am talking about vs. completely assuming that my audience know nothing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T18:44:07.887" Title="Should I assume that attendees have read my papers when I give a talk?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2483" CreationDate="2012-07-17T06:02:15.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess that this would strongly depend on the culture within your scientific domain. In my case (software engineering) making this assumption would be inappropriate. You can suggest to read your paper if, e.g., there are some technical details you are not going to present since they might not be of general interest, but you cannot assume that this already happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T06:02:15.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2483" CreationDate="2012-07-17T06:13:20.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the broader the audience, the less you're able to assume about the audience's knowledge of your work. For example, at a general meeting for your profession or a department-wide seminar, you'd have to be more careful to provide background and context than at a smaller, more specialized event like a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gordon Research Conference&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, time limitations will also be a major consideration—and in some cases, can outweigh the specialization issue. If you only have ten or twelve minutes to give your talk, then you don't have time for more than a minute or two of background information, regardless of how complex or novel your topic may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T06:13:20.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2483" CreationDate="2012-07-17T06:13:42.123" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on your audience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At a department colloquium, I assume very little background, probably an undergrad degree in math, but not even an undergrad class in my research area. Here the audience will often be &lt;em&gt;smart&lt;/em&gt;, but ignorant of the relevant background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At a research seminar with lots of undergrad and/or masters students, I still don't assume much background, maybe an undergrad class in the area, but even then I &quot;remind&quot; the audience of important information they &quot;should&quot; know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At a research seminar with mainly PhD students and active researchers I assume more, but even here I usually don't assume that they're familiar with the problem or the relevant literature or techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A conference special session (or minisymposium) is similar to a research seminar with mainly PhD students and active researchers.  Here I often expect that much of the audience is familiar with the background and the techniques, but I still usually review them at least briefly.  &lt;strong&gt;I've never gotten complaints about giving too much background and context.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;never assume the audience has read any of my papers&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;I typically view my talks (at least in part) as advertisements for my papers.  The audience will never want to read my paper if they don't see why it's important (so that's my job during the talk).  For those few that already want to read the paper, I hope they leave my talk with an outline of the paper, which will make it easier to read.  Any time you're talking to an audience with varied background, it's good to briefly describe the key definitions.  If you can do this quickly, perhaps only verbally, you don't bore those who already know, and you give the rest a fighting chance to keep up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T06:13:42.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-17T07:20:36.863" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Medicine:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first author is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; author. He or she is credited with the bulk of the work, and some even consider first authorship to be the only authorship of value. This may be partly due to the fact that a medicinal paper often has many authors, with some having done next to nothing for the paper (maybe read it). Although journals would like to discourage this, people write their colleagues' names on their papers, so maybe their colleagues will do the same for them and both get a more impressive publication record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you see asterisks above the first two authors' names, indicating that &quot;both authors contributed equally&quot;, although it seems to me that this is in general not well recognized. I've been told journals want one main author. Also, for many academic positions a given number of publications is required, with some minimum number &lt;strong&gt;first authorships&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-11-05T20:14:35.267" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T20:14:35.267" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-17T07:20:36.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2448" CreationDate="2012-07-17T08:14:09.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I only encountered problems once (with Ryanair - I think they wanted to make me pay for late checked luggage). Fortunately it was going back home. I had to make the poster roll small (it then fit into their hand luggage frame) and I loosely folded the poster. As soon as I was in the cabin I unfolded it again and put it into the roll. Someone frome the cabin staff even asked why the poster was folded and said that this was crazy. Fortunately the creases were not that bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd always take the poster with the hand luggage: I once attended a conference where at the first 2 days about 1/3 of the posters had an A4 sheet saying: The poster can currently be found at Alitalia's lost luggage department... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could print the poster at the place of the conference. I once presented a poster that was printed by the poster printing service of the conference hosting university (who actually allowed orders from the outside). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T08:14:09.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:07:41.003" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemistry&lt;/strong&gt;: similar to cognitive neuroscience and microbiology and many other fields - the first author is usually the individual who put most of the labor into the work. The PI, usually the last author, may have come up with the idea, but the first author usually does most of the following work: designing the experiments, synthesizing and purifying the compounds, collecting and analyzing the data, and writing the paper. The other authors might be: A student in a collaborating group that conducts an important, specialized experiment for the first author, a junior student in group who prepared some of the intermediates and collected routine data to help the first author and to learn the workings of the group, or a consulting professor offering expertise in an area that the first author and PI are weak in. The last author is usually the PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals are beginning to ask for specific descriptions of the contributions of each author to combat vanity authorships. You also occasionally see the note that two or more authors may have contributed equally, but some journals discourage this practice also. As an example of this sort of declaration, the following statement was attached to the final article from my thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author Contributions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B.N.N. and S.Z. were coequal in their contributions and should both be considered first authors. B.N.N., T.Y.M., and G.R.H. proposed the project and designed the experiments. B.N.N., S.Z., J.T.A., and P.C.M. performed the synthesis and characterization. C.M.C. and G.R.H carried out the calculations. B.N.N., S.Z., T.Y.M., and G.R.H. assembled the data and wrote the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, the practice of putting the PI last is relatively recent. The PI used to be listed &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt;, so that the PI was easier to identify and the collective works of the PI were easier to find in printed catalogs systems (where articles wee often indexed by the first listed author only). The historic order would have thus been: PI, first author, second author, etc. The advent of electronic databases removes the need for the PI to go first, though there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo901459t&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some who still do it that way&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T10:56:00.957" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-17T12:07:41.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:39:14.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you judge that the chapter is unnecessary or insignificant without reading it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is tempting to skip the boring stuff, but I don't see how you can decide that a section is not needed except in hindsight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="864" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T12:39:14.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2012-07-17T13:10:44.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always thought that one good indicator of whether or not you even have the motivation to complete an entire PHD is whether or not you do the practice problems in text books. If you enthusiastically do those practice problems, like you solve them in the shower, then I would say that, barring talent, you at least have the requisite level of enthusiasm for the subject. In other words if your not a fan of practice problems, your prolly not gunna like the 300 page writing part of the PHD, nor the fact that not all 100% of the work you do will make it into that writeup (there's alot of tangential calculation and verification). In this way, personal interest and commitment to mathematical activity is absolutely requisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should wait until you finish that course in topology. Math takes on a  different character when you get into analysis, manifolds, algebra and beyond. For me, smooth manifolds was as far as I needed to go in the analysis route to satisfy my curiosity. Then I became interested in other things. If I had had that shift of interest midPHD then I don't think I would have been able to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also just sit down, learn LaTex if you haven't already, and write about something that interests you, exploring it to the absolute highest level of detail while always leaving an obvious path for generalization and application. Make it lucid and interesting. Convince the reader you have an idea and entertain them with it. Put it on the Internets, have a proff edit 1 or 2 pages, show it to a friend or classmate, stick it in a library book, whatever. This is one defining characteristic of a mathematician, communicating your thoughts to paper so that they may survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/Best-Writing-Mathematics-2011/dp/0691153159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1342529450&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Best Writing on Mathematics 2011&lt;/a&gt;, it will give you a good idea of what doing math as a profession is like. Regardless, you may have an excellent academic record, but what makes a good mathematician is a commitment to doing math and that should be your primary focus, grades second. Although there's nothing wrong with being competitive academically, if that's your thing then go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I didn't like Spivak's manifold calculus text. I went Munkres' Topology, to Lee's Topological Manifolds, and have yet to finish Lee's Smooth Manifolds. If your looking for a reliable publisher, just stick with the yellow covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1284" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T13:10:44.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:31:03.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often &lt;strong&gt;the authors will tell you&lt;/strong&gt; which chapters or sections are prerequisites for others.  The most common place to find this is in the preface or forward.  If you don't find it there, you may also find this information throughout the book.  One book that I'm working through right now has 25 chapters, grouped into 9 sections.  At the start of each section, the authors spend about a page outlining the goals of each chapter.  &lt;strong&gt;Nearly any time I plan to read much of a book, I first read or skim the introductory material.&lt;/strong&gt;  These sections usually don't take much time, and they often give me a decent sense of what to expect from the rest of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T14:31:03.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:45:23.787" Score="21" ViewCount="3346" Body="&lt;p&gt;What fraction of new assistant professors end up receiving tenure at the institution that they started at? This of course varies by field and rank, so please include the area and range of ranks you are thinking of when you answer. (i.e. &quot;Computer Science, top 25 but not top 10&quot;, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems hard to find hard statistics on this question. When you get official statistics for how many people come up for tenure and are denied, you get an overly rosy picture, because people who are not going to get tenure often leave before they come up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1286" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T15:36:19.923" Title="What is the likelihood of getting tenure?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:51:35.717" Score="16" ViewCount="6563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you have a faculty job, how do you ask for a raise (beyond a yearly university-wide cost of living increase)? Is there any way to negotiate, short of soliciting outside offers? What should someone do if they are not willing to uproot their lives and move to a different city?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1287" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T19:25:50.913" Title="How do you ask for a raise?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:10:14.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK everyone receives a university-wide cost of living increase. If you meet or exceed expectations, you also get a raise. Generally one point on the pay scale for meeting expectations and two or three points for exceeding expectations. It is rare not to meet expectations. There is a little politicking involved in being assessed as exceeding expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T15:10:14.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:35:16.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal whenever you ask for a raise (inside or outside of academia) should be to &lt;strong&gt;convince your boss of your value to the company&lt;/strong&gt;.  (It's highly recommended not to start with a phrase like &quot;I need more money.&quot;)  Much general &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Ask-for-a-Pay-Raise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;advice&lt;/a&gt; on asking for a raise, applies well within academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you should be consistently meeting expectations.  Additionally, most administrations (both at the department level and the college or university level) have &lt;strong&gt;favorite goals or pet projects&lt;/strong&gt;.  Many such folks drool over the word &quot;interdisciplinary&quot;; perhaps at a liberal arts school this list of hot topics might include &quot;undergraduate research&quot;.  At my school, we have a strategic vision, with 5 goals.  Whenever you can &lt;strong&gt;present your accomplishments as fitting into one or more of these goals, they are viewed more favorably&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T15:35:16.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2493" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:36:19.923" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was the topic of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6070/864.abstract&quot;&gt;recent article in Science&lt;/a&gt;. Briefly, around 50% of tenure-track faculty will actually remain to become a full professor. This varies with gender, discipline, and year (e.g., its harder to obtain tenure now than it was 20 years ago). I strongly recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/02/survival-in-academia-the-tenure-track-not-taken/&quot;&gt;this Ars Technica article&lt;/a&gt;, which explores the aforementioned Science paper in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T15:36:19.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2502" CreationDate="2012-07-17T18:09:15.513" Score="68" ViewCount="173800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of people transferring between graduate schools because of their advisor moving to another school and taking their students with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do students ever transfer for other reasons? If a student isn't happy at the school they choose, could transferring be an option? Presumably they would frame it as something positive such as &quot;turns out I really want to work with Professor X&quot; rather than &quot;I hate my school&quot;, but does this ever happen? Is there a certain timeframe in which this is possible? (Assume it's a 5 year PhD program.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer varies by subject please mention the subject in your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Context: many friends have told me that if it turns out I'm not happy with my choice, I can always transfer. My impression is that this is actually difficult since many schools don't accept transfer students and in any case not being able to stick with a program looks bad -- but I don't have evidence either way so wanted to ask people who are in academia. Of course the ideal would be to pick a school one is happy with in the first place!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1291" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-03-14T07:11:26.007" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T05:02:50.403" Title="Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;transfer-student&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2498" CreationDate="2012-07-17T19:25:04.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Field: &lt;strong&gt;Mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transferring is possible although you might have to 'start over' at your new university. For example, perhaps you have completed the first year sequence of courses in University A and passed some prelims before transferring to University B. At University B you might either be required to go through their first year sequence, or take (and pass) the relevant prelims to have the courses waived. This can be difficult since first year courses and topic and prelims tend to vary across departments. In addition, depending on how much prior experience you have before coming to University B, they might require you to finish your degree in less than usual time (say, 3-4 years instead of 5). In particular, folks with Masters degrees applying to PhD programs are often required to get a second Masters in their second university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: A friend of mine transferred from Rice Mathematics to UW Madison Mathematics; additionally this was a topic of conversation at a Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women  in Mathematics where a breakout session leader had transferred universities mid-PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T19:25:04.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2498" CreationDate="2012-07-17T19:29:38.553" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for a student to transfer, usually earlier in the program. The reasons can be as you mentioned, and often there are non-academic reasons as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to apply again from scratch, although its possible that admissions committees will look more generously on the application. You might be able to apply out of cycle for spring admission as well - there are fewer applicants and each application gets more careful scrutiny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in any case it is important to have a reason relating to the desired destination. If you want to work with professor X it will help immensely if professor X can speak on your behalf by writing a letter. In other words, don't think of transferring out, but think about transferring in to maybe one or two targeted placed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T19:29:38.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2498" CreationDate="2012-07-17T19:35:47.717" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, PhD students transfer for &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; reasons besides moving advisors.  Sometimes the reasons are purely professional; for instance, I've seen several students successfully transfer because they  discovered a passion for a subfield that didn't match the interests/experience of the local faculty.  Sometimes they're more personal things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Two-body_problem_%28career%29&quot;&gt;two-body problems&lt;/a&gt; (especially when they become &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant&quot;&gt;three-body problems&lt;/a&gt;).  Sometimes advisors die or leave academia.  Sometimes it's because of an irreconcilable disagreement between student and advisor/committee.  Sometimes the student just thinks they can do better than their current department (and has the publications to prove it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most painless time to transfer is immediately after completing a master's degree.  (I did this.)  That's a natural time to switch research directions, and many PhD programs allow their students to pick up a Master's degree along the way, even if they don't have a separate Master's program.  (Mine didn't.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, applications from MS students in PhD departments will face skepticism, especially if the applicant already has a good track record with their former advisor.*  (Why do they want to leave their current advisor?  Shouldn't we offer this slot to someone who doesn't have one?)  So it's important for the applicant's research statement to explain why the new department would a better match, &lt;em&gt;without disparaging the old department&lt;/em&gt;.  It's also important to have a strong and supportive recommendation letter from the former advisor, to address possible concerns about technical weaknesses or personality conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*And if a PhD applicant &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; have a good track record with their MS advisor, they're not likely to be admitted anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T19:35:47.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2498" CreationDate="2012-07-17T20:48:43.377" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me specify that by transferring, I mean moving to another university in the middle of a graduate program.  Switching universities between undergrad and grad or between a master's degree and a Ph.D. is very different.  Basically, those are the only mainstream opportunities to move, and anything else will require an exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transferring is certainly not unheard of, but there are some serious caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to transfer to a substantially more prestigious department.  It can happen, but the admissions committee will be very skeptical, and it's just not going to work out unless the application is outstanding.  In particular, many committee members specifically do not want to reward rolling the dice again and seeing what happens, so for transfers the question is not &quot;Does this application look better than our weaker students?&quot; but rather &quot;Is this application so obviously wonderful that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we accepted someone else instead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Expressing any unhappiness will make it much harder to transfer.  You may think you'll be happy at the new school, but they will worry about ending up with an unhappy, unproductive grad student on their hands.  And they are right to worry about that: the best predictor of future happiness is past happiness, and many unhappy people have unrealistic beliefs about what would make them happy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to transfer once you start seriously working on a thesis.  If your work isn't going well, then that's a reason not to accept you.  If your work is going well, then that's a reason you should continue working with your current advisor.  Unless your advisor has died or left, it will be tough to convince anyone you are a good candidate for transferring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No matter why you say you want to transfer, there will be some suspicion that your goal is to end up in a stronger department or a more desirable location.  If you have another reason, you'll have to make a powerful argument for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've heard of people transferring between graduate schools because of their advisor moving to another school and taking their students with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes they transfer officially, and sometimes they still get degrees from the previous school but complete their theses while in residence at the new school.  The latter is generally easy to arrange when an advisor moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T20:48:43.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2258" CreationDate="2012-07-18T04:42:26.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;WebCT is probably about as user unfriendly as it gets so you'll probably find moodle pretty easy to pick up after that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this &lt;a href=&quot;http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T04:42:26.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2012-07-18T06:46:26.340" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is quite possibly both US and CS-centric.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negotiating raises as an academic is rather tricky. You don't have the same kind of leverage that you have in industry unless you are actually willing to go out there and acquire another offer. In fact, the only times I've heard of faculty getting non-scheduled raises (i.e tenure, or when everyone gets a raise) is by &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Threatening to leave&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participating in senior administration work and negotiating a deal before signing on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you might be able to increase the raise you get relative to others when there's a general raise if you can argue that you're underpaid relative to your peer group, or have done exceptional quality work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T06:46:26.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-18T14:51:16.650" Score="12" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've already discussed about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42/what-are-the-common-productivity-measures-of-a-scientist-like-h-index&quot;&gt;which bibliometric indeces are diffused the most&lt;/a&gt;, and how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all know that, along the most common &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;h-index&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, there are many other parameters deriving from it or similar to it.&#xA;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pophelp/metrics.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publish or Perish website&lt;/a&gt;, we can list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;g-index: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pophelp/metrics.htm#gindex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Egghe's g-index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hc-index: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pophelp/metrics.htm#hcindex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contemporary h-index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;individual h-index: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pophelp/metrics.htm#hiindex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its three variations hI-index, hI-norm, and hm-index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between these (and other) bibliometrics indeces, &lt;strong&gt;which one do you trust more?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Which one do you think is the &lt;strong&gt;best one&lt;/strong&gt; to get the scientific excellence of an author?&#xA;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T18:08:53.030" Title="Which bibliometrics index to trust more?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2506" CreationDate="2012-07-18T15:02:48.710" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is NONE. A longer answer is &quot;to get the scientific excellence of an author, read their papers and understand their contributions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is in expecting a number to characterize the contributions and quality of an individual researcher. Probably the only way in which these measures can be useful (and that's stretching it a LOT) is if they are viewed in aggregate (for a department/university) to get a very crude picture of &lt;strong&gt;research productivity&lt;/strong&gt; (not excellence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the signal is so noisy as to be useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, there's no shortcut for the hard work of reading, researching and asking in order to assess the &quot;scientific excellence&quot; of a researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T15:02:48.710" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2012-07-18T16:41:43.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short of making a credible threat to quit and go to a competing University, I don't think you can negotiate a meaningful salary raise based on excellence or need, at least in engineering schools. You have to demonstrate that you are adding value which is beyond what you are supposed to do for your own research/teaching program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could try finding an activity that is aligned with your research interests but even more beneficial to the University. Then go to your Dean and propose doing that in return for more salary or a bonus. It has to be something that benefits the University as a whole rather than you. Examples are: offer to start an industrial affiliates program, and negotiate xK a year for each 25K a year affiliate that you bring in; start a corporate certificate summer program and ask for a large fee to organize and charge it; offer to start a partnership with a foreign University, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T16:41:43.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2506" CreationDate="2012-07-19T06:42:42.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indices are (unfortunately) liked by managers, administrators and funding agencies rather than by researchers. Hence, you should ask these managers, administrators and agencies which indices they trust (and why). I am not sure that academia.SE is the right place to find managers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:42:42.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2529" CreationDate="2012-07-19T10:12:30.503" Score="16" ViewCount="538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net&quot;&gt;AMTD&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net&quot;&gt;ACPD&lt;/a&gt; contain an open discussion where anybody can comment on papers under review. The peer-reviewers are still anonymous, but other people commenting are not. If I'm reading a paper and have questions about it, what are the pros and cons on posting them as public comments versus writing an e-mail to the author directly? On the one hand my comments may improve the paper; on the other hand, if I write something stupid or step on somebody's toe, that may harm my future career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do others think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: I might add that in the case I have in mind, I am already in contact with the author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T12:14:31.803" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T18:10:05.650" Title="Pros and cons on commenting on public review papers" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2510" CreationDate="2012-07-19T13:53:54.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first advantage that comes to my mind is that emailing the author and getting an answer will only help you, while commenting on the paper and getting an answer in the open discussions might help other readers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really understand your concerns. One does not want to embarrass oneself or the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads me to the inconclusive result of &lt;code&gt;+1&lt;/code&gt; for both methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1172" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T13:53:54.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2510" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:04:52.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to answer this from the standpoint of a cost-benefit analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A private conversation with the author will benefit you in that you now know the answer, and can harm you in that if your question is completely boneheaded the author will think you're an idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A public conversation has the added benefit that you &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; other people both benefit. This is somewhat of a questionable added benefit, as oftentimes the question being asked isn't relevant to most people, but still, added discourse is often a good thing. Public discussion also has the added cost that more people can see your boneheadedness. While typically this wouldn't be a problem, as most people wouldn't ever encounter the discussion, anything on the internet can go viral, even if only within a smaller community (such as your research field). Personally, that cost strongly outweights the potential benefit. I would definitely stick with personal correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T14:04:52.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2514" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:56:36.200" Score="58" ViewCount="42938" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was contacted by the Acquisition editor of Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP) to publish my bachelor's thesis as a printed book. Is LAP any good? I have no idea about it; I have just heard that it's a freelance publishing house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="682" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T17:52:36.970" LastActivityDate="2017-10-09T10:52:49.283" Title="Is Lambert Academic Publishing a reputable company?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2513" CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:42:45.623" Score="91" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing a thesis this way has no academic value whatsoever.  (I.e., it will lead to no prestige, respectability, credit, etc.  For academic purposes, it will not count as a published book, except for interfering with other forms of publication.)  LAP's business model seems to be collecting as many theses and other unpublished academic documents as they can and then selling printed copies.  I don't see much value to this, but it could be harmless if you do not plan to publish the thesis in any other form.  If you like the idea of seeing your thesis for sale on amazon.com, then you should investigate other options as well and choose whatever seems like the best deal.  However, it's unlikely that you'll make any money from this, and certainly no more than a small amount, so you'll be contributing more to the academic community if you make the thesis available for free online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/03/lap_lambert_academic_publishing_my_trip_to_a_print_content_farm.single.html&quot;&gt;I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm&lt;/a&gt; for a detailed account of LAP's business practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T18:28:54.780" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T18:28:54.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2012-07-20T05:36:10.867" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/strong&gt;: First author generally means the author who did the bulk of the writing, and is likely directly responsible for the analysis of the data. The last author is (often but not always) the project's PI, a senior member if its a multi-site collaboration, or a place where someone who contributed heavily in some aspect, but not as much as the first author, goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, first authorship is considered the most important, last authorship has some benefit in terms of establishing a mentor role or the concept of the author as a senior researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception for this is a small number of &quot;pairs&quot; of methodologists who tend to write papers together, which end up getting seen as a kind of equal contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T05:36:10.867" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-20T05:36:10.867" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2483" CreationDate="2012-07-20T08:13:36.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, when giving a talk, my only assumption about the audience is that they found the title (or me) compelling enough that they decided they didn't have anything better to do with that hour (or 15 minutes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or at a conference, that they can't be bothered to get up and leave before the session ends, and decided to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I will give references to papers I've written, it's always a &quot;For more information...&quot; rather than a &quot;As you all know...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T08:13:36.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2522" CreationDate="2012-07-20T10:03:41.850" Score="24" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The UK recently decided&lt;/a&gt; that from 2014, all research papers supported by public funds must be published in open-access journals.&#xA;For instance, the Research Councils UK announced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2012news/Pages/120716.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a new policy stating that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new policy, which will apply to all qualifying publications being submitted for publication from 1 April 2013, states that peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;must include details of the funding that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research materials such as data, samples or models can be accessed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is the following: what could concretely happen if someone does not respect this policy? For instance, if someone publishes both in open-access and in paywall journals, does that mean that only those in open-access count in the report to the RCUK? Or does that mean that you can get &amp;quot;black-listed&amp;quot; if you publish in paywall journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Directly related question: what happen if one publishes a paper in a paywall journal and publishes at the same time the pre-print on a freely accessible archive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T15:13:36.923" Title="What will happen to non open-access publications in the UK after 2014?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2517" CreationDate="2012-07-20T13:38:24.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that non-open access publications will not be able to be counted towards the REF (or whatever replaces the REF), used in annual progress reports, or be considered by grant reviewers when evaluating your track record. If Research Councils (RCs) catch you publishing in a non-open access journal, they likely will be able to charge the university for the costs associated with making it open access and possibly black list you from further funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these punishments will be rare, because I don't think the UK RC model is very different from the US NIH model. The US model requires open access after an embargo period. It is not clear if the UK model allows for an embargo. The US system allows for the version accepted by the journal, but not yet copy edited and typeset by the journal, to be made open access. Many journals just make the final copy available after the embargo, but not all do. It sounds like the UK system will require a creative commons licensing, which I think would allow publishers to copy edit, typeset and sell the open access version. Complying with the US regulations is relatively easy, so I doubt it will be hard to comply with the UK regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T13:38:24.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2510" CreationDate="2012-07-20T13:50:11.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By openly and intelligently commenting on many new papers in your subfield, you might gain respect among your peers, which is the currency of the academic world.  I can give at least one example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T13:50:11.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2520" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-20T14:05:19.010" Score="12" ViewCount="1606" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goal is to produce a graph showing the linkages (and lack there of) between several fields that share a common subproblem by showing who cites whom.  There are many databases that show citations between papers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.webofknowledge.com/&quot;&gt;ISI Web of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Research&lt;/a&gt;, and Google Scholar.  However none allows me to download even part of their database.  Is there some database I have overlooked?  Has someone written a scrapper for one of these websites?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, the fields I'm considering are Mechanics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Signal Processing, Geophysics, and several others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T16:48:30.807" Title="Automatically building a database of forward and backward citations" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2517" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:03:26.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every scientific grant I know of has a clause stating that continued disbursement of funds is contingent on compliance with the the terms of the grant.  So the most likely result of violating those terms is that they'll stop funding you.  I think there would also be a strong effect on your professional reputation, since you signed an agreement to abide by those terms and then willingly violated them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you violated the terms of the grant &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; it expired, you would probably not get funding from that agency in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T15:03:26.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2517" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:06:50.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems slightly annoying, but not insurmountable. From the UK Research Council's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Policy on Access&lt;/a&gt;, I quote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Research Councils define Open Access to mean unrestricted, on-line access to peer reviewed and published scholarly research papers. Specifically a user must be able to do the following free of any publisher-imposed access charge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read published research papers in an electronic format.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for and re-use (including download) the content [&lt;em&gt;N.b.: footnote specifies including but not limited to the text, data, images, and figures&lt;/em&gt;] of published research papers both manually and using automated tools (such as those for text and data mining) provided that any such re-use is subject to proper attribution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open Access therefore allows unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools, as well as unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution – as defined by the Creative Commons CC-BY license. The Research Councils acknowledge that some publications may need to amend their copyright&#xA;conditions if they are to meet this definition of Open Access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, about compliance by journals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Research Councils will continue to support a mixed approach to Open Access. The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with their policy on Open Access if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The journal provides via its own website immediate and unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY license should be used in this case. &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above, the journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no ‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For individual grant recipients, the most important bit is probably the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RCUK have in the past provided support for APCs through both direct and indirect costs as part of grant funding. From 1st April 2013 and until further notice, RCUK will support the payment of APCs and other publication charges related to Research Council-funded research solely through block grants to UK Higher Education Institutions, approved independent research organisations and Research Council Institutes. Research grant applications will, therefore, no longer include provision for Open Access publication or other publication charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases universities and research organisations upon receipt of funding should transfer these charges to&#xA;their institutional publication fund. A university or research organisation can then access these funds to pay&#xA;for APCs for any article resulting from research council funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the &amp;quot;guidance&amp;quot; document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Research Councils will be amending their conditions of award to reflect these new requirements and will be extending existing mechanisms which capture research grants outputs (such as the Research Outputs System) to include compliance monitoring on this policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise: much as Daniel Shub &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2518/94&quot;&gt;anticipated&lt;/a&gt;, the policy allows for &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; a fully open access publication &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; publishing in a pay-walled journal which allows you to deposit the Accepted Manuscript in certain repositories, with an acceptable embargo delay. And enforcement of this will be much in the same way other conditions for grant dispersal are enforced. (They tell you what you can do with the money; if you don't follow the rules, they take the money back and/or not give you money ever again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing to additionally note is the small caveat that &lt;em&gt;pay-walled journals, to qualify for the second option of &amp;quot;open access&amp;quot; cannot charge article processing fees&lt;/em&gt;. (Which is not too unreasonable: a journal is to charge either the author or the reader but not both.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T15:13:36.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:14:07.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scraping Google Scholar&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/blob/master/R/googleScholarXScraper/googleScholarXScraper.R&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/blob/master/R/googleScholarXScraper/googleScholarXScraper.R&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wrote something a while back, though it's not pretty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ketch/scinet/blob/master/gss.py&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/ketch/scinet/blob/master/gss.py&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using either of these you could trace citations forward through the literature.&#xA;Note that Scholar will block you if you hit it too many times, too quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download thousands of records at a time from Scopus, if you have access:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run a search.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tick the box to select all documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click &quot;create bibliography&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to desired format.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't include citation information, so it's probably useless to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T15:14:07.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2527" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:41:29.020" Score="6" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming someone just received their PhD (in say, Computer Science) and chooses to step into Industry RnD rather than taking up a post doc, a year or two later, he/she realizes that Academia is where he/she truly wishes to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it tougher to transition from an Industry RnD job to a professorship as compared to a parallel universe in which he would have chosen a PostDoc instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can an Industry RnD job double up as PostDoc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assuming that one keeps publishing and works on important problems)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T17:30:17.550" Title="Is it harder to transition from Industry Research to Prof than PostDoc to Prof?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2526" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:48:54.867" Score="18" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started my PhD and although I love research and everything that accompanies it but I am put off by Academia a bit and would prefer an Industry job at the end of my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do differently during my PhD years with this ambition in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf&quot;&gt;PhD Grind&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Philip Guo wherein he states that at the end, he disliked Academia and thus his motives at conferences and other events changed from &quot;crazy networking&quot;. Further, he spent more summers working in companies (Google and Microsoft Research, in his case) than with other research groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, should I handle the following any differently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relation with Advisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How I spend my summers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T12:13:39.067" Title="Tuning the PhD journey for Industry jobs" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2525" CreationDate="2012-07-20T17:00:39.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal after grad school is to get a job, then during grad school &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should &lt;strong&gt;do the things needed to&lt;/strong&gt; impress the people you want to hire you and to &lt;strong&gt;be accepted and esteemed in their community&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slightly more concretely, &lt;strong&gt;find people who now have the career that you would like to have&lt;/strong&gt;, and during grad school &lt;strong&gt;do stuff that they have done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still think &lt;em&gt;networking is key&lt;/em&gt;, but now you may be networking with a different group of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T17:00:39.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2012-07-20T17:30:17.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;assuming one keeps publishing and works on important problems&quot; bit is the hard part.  If you are working at a serious industrial research lab doing academic-style research, then moving to academia is doable.  If you are in a more typical R&amp;amp;D job but doing cutting-edge work and actively publishing, then it's still possible (but you may face more resistance, depending on your subfield).  On the other hand, the vast majority of industrial R&amp;amp;D positions in CS do not put one in a good position to apply for faculty jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to be overly optimistic about this.  I've seen a number of students take industrial jobs and declare &quot;I'm going to keep my options open by continuing to publish, even though it's not a job requirement.&quot;  This rarely works out.  It's far from impossible, but maintaining an active research program when it's not your primary job is difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T17:30:17.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2012-07-20T17:49:11.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no compulsion to force yourself to read every section ... on a first pass, or second, or on any particular pass through a book. Often, seemingly obscure choices become clearer only later, and, even then, often only on the fifth or tenth time through. That is, genuine reading of sources is essentially never linear, and takes many passes through, both to get an idea of the content, and to absorb it in varying degrees. Certainly we should not feel bound by artificial rules, although the physical linearity of books and papers perpetually misleads us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T17:49:11.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2510" CreationDate="2012-07-20T18:10:05.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I pointed out recently in &lt;a href=&quot;http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2012/07/problem-with-pre-publication-peer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2012/07/problem-with-pre-publication-peer.html&lt;/a&gt; , the problem with the current peer review system is not the rejection and all the horror stories that go with it, it is the secrecy that goes with the process. Make anonymous the reviews but hold the reviewers accountable is the surest way reviews can be both effective and provide some &quot;currency&quot; as +David Ketcheson points out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short If I were you, I would send the author some questions, then (after her/his approval) make the whole discussion available on the interwebs (after you have edited the parts that are sensitive or the ones that make you look really clueless). I do this often on Nuit Blanche with good results. Make sure you run the whole thing you are going to publish through the person you talked to as you are not a journalist. If you ask questions, you surely are not the first or the last one and remember what you publish must enlight both the people of your community and your future self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1304" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T18:10:05.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2483" CreationDate="2012-07-20T18:44:07.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the causality is probably reversed: a talk at any level is a chance to &quot;advertise&quot; or &quot;promote&quot; ideas (whether &quot;your own&quot; or due to a larger enterprise) far more dynamically than in a paper. Thus, a good talk will &lt;em&gt;motivate&lt;/em&gt; people to read your (or others') papers. Papers and talks are not in the same currency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if you have any reason to believe that most people in the audience have read your paper that you intend to talk about... you'll surely be boring them, and making them sorry they attended, no? Certainly if the talk is just an abbreviated form of a formal paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T18:44:07.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2012-07-20T18:54:28.337" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a thin B.S. background in math, it is definitely very helpful to get a M.S. in math before (re-) applying to Ph.D. programs. (I say this having been on the Grad Admissions cte, and having been Dir Grad Studies in two different incarnations...) In the U.S., &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; undergrad programs are really very thin, due to the requirement (otherwise wholesome) of &quot;breadth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;undergrad research&quot; episodes in summers, and during the academic year, are good for generating enthusiasm and camaraderie, and especially for getting outside the rigid classroom/textbook atmosphere, but (apart from very broad features) are not at all good indicators of what serious research is or will be like. Those programs are &lt;em&gt;designed&lt;/em&gt; to be fun (pizza parties, etc), so &quot;doing research&quot; in that sense is fun for nearly everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, apply to MS/PhD programs at the top 30-50 schools, and do the best job you can in the standard/required PhD curriculum (usually, there is no distinction between PhD curriculum and MS, except that the latter is designed to accommodate, if necessary, weaker students, perhaps weak enough so that the MS will be their last degree in Mathematics... don't be misled into taking an &quot;easy route&quot;). And, in the course of doing the coursework, don't be a stranger to the instructors of those courses, who will be your letter-writers for either re-application to &quot;better&quot; schools in a year or two, or will be your letter writers if you need to re-apply to that institution itself for the PhD program, for bureaucratic reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades in non-math courses, and grades in calculus and lower-division courses don't matter much, although obviously good grades are a not a bad thing. Admissions committees are well-acquainted with the changes people go through around age 20 and so on. The question is not so much what silly things one has done a few years back, but where one is heading &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, and what documentable evidence there is for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, although self-learning is the most significant long-term way to develop scholarship, it is obviously hard to document. Perhaps the best way is to sign up for courses that appear to re-iterate (serious) content you've already studied. Presumably, you absolutely ace the material and draw the instructor's attention... since self-study beyond &quot;requirements&quot; is, strangely-or-not, extremely rare. Evidence of non-passivity is excellent, if it really proves to be what you feel it is (rather than, say, mere obsessiveness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, yes, think about &quot;proving yourself&quot; during a year or two of &quot;MS work&quot;. No downside, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T18:54:28.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2012-07-20T19:06:48.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For very standard, orthodox material based on a textbook, it is reasonable to not take notes and do as much engaged, active thinking-or-questioning during a lecture. One should be alert to insights (hopefully!) from the person in the front of the room, and from others, so a bit of note-writing about the peripheral things is to be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For advanced courses, and for seminars based only loosely on publicly-available material, or actually intended to be _explications_of_ otherwise-opaque material, the task is to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; take as many notes as possible (even if/when printed material is provided), &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; think as much as remaining resources allow, because without notes the words spoken and written will mostly vanish. Here I overlook the possibility that one's memory is so excellent and so practiced that one truly can perfectly remember things one does not understand. The latter possibility is very important to cultivate, but this question wouldn't have arisen at all if that were already in reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, in advanced courses and seminars, although I've gotten over the surprise, I am baffled at the claim that people can't usefully take notes. The usual claim is that by not taking notes they think about the material in real time. This would be great if it were usefully true, but I find that my students do not have total recall... so that mostly they have neither notes nor recollection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the main practical trick to learn is to be able to write, very fast, without looking at the paper, and be able to &quot;copy&quot; the visual layout of the blackboard (whiteboard, whatever) without necessarily stopping listening to the audio. Yes, this does require a lot of effort, but, hopefully, it gains something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Belated Edit: thinking about (perceptions of the idea of) &quot;learning styles&quot;... If the material in a class is truly available in many places, and the instructor has no insights to offer, is just rehearsing it for those too passive to do it themselves, well, sure, note-taking is a dubious ritual. But, as my biased language was entirely meant to communicate, there's no operational issue there. There is of course the risk that the students fail to appreciate that the instructor offers genuinely new insights, but nevermind. A much more serious issue arises if we're talking about more-advanced graduate-level material. Of course, once again, if the lectures are mere quotations from a standard text or extant notes, with no &quot;added value&quot;, ... sure, scant need to write anything down. &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, and I think this is the interesting and most dangerous case, if, heaven willing, your instructor is really an expert with hard-to-objectify understanding of significant things, one should expect to fail to understand, or seem to understand but actually fail, or ... so having a written transcript to study later and deconstruct is incredibly useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in the interesting/serious/dangerous situations, it's not about &quot;learning styles&quot;, but about preservation of information per se. All my experience indicates that students misjudge the cut-off for this, too, so, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-11-10T01:35:15.270" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T01:35:15.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2388" CreationDate="2012-07-20T19:18:02.577" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not one comes up with a number of years since PhD, since tenure, etc., for faculty to stop taking students, that is not the determining mechanism... except in a few cases where the cause &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; simply fatigue or disillusionment with the whole enterprise. But the latter seems uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, the absolutely dominant cause is senior faculty' estimated time to retirement. Not only would it be bad to retire while one has a PhD student still in progress, but, further, it would be bad to retire while one has a former PhD student pre-tenure. Thus, taking on a student is approximately a 12-year commitment, at least, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, then, it becomes hard to clearly picture one's own energy level and frame of mind 12 years into the future...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: as to why it might be bad to retire when one has a not-yet-tenured former student: very often, unless the student has taken a sharp turn away from the general enterprise of their advisor relatively quickly, the advisor will still be a leading expert concerning the topic. Even with the presumption that the advisor will be positive rather than negative, that opinion is important. If the advisor is retired, or is operationally retired, the expert-ness of their opinion, e.g., toward the future and future developments, is weakened, and their credibility in appraising &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; contributions of their former student is weakened. One wants to be visibly sufficiently engaged so that one's opinions are connected to current and future events, not only archival or historical or nostalgic stuff!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and to have this presumably-positive, presumably-helpful letter simply due to retirement or disengagement is a loss that many could not afford. Nothing overtly bad happens, but one has lost a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-07-20T21:35:17.897" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T21:35:17.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-20T21:44:35.230" Score="11" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it legal (for a faculty member) to publicly reveal a student's performance in PhD comprehensive exams? In the US, isn't this in violation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1306" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T04:58:26.063" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T04:58:26.063" Title="Is it legal in the US for a professor to publicly reveal a student's performance in PhD comprehensive exams?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2534" CreationDate="2012-07-20T22:58:25.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit, again: The question seems to have changed, yet again. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A student can reveal their own performance in an exam. That information is their property.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Faculty cannot publicly reveal students' performances, as that would, indeed, violate the &quot;FERPA&quot; laws. (As parent of over-18 college student, whose tuition I'm paying, I do not have access to her grades without her permission!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Hm... the sense of the question is radically changed. [Initially, it was about faculty publicly disclosing students' performance results. When this answer was written, it had become about whether one could disclose one's &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; results.] Sure, one is at liberty to reveal one's own quality-of-performance on an exam in the U.S. The &quot;FERPA&quot; laws would only prevent your examiners from revealing your performance publicly or to anyone who did not have a legitimate operational professional reason to have access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be that the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of the exam might be partly confidential, but that is a different issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-07-22T16:18:34.617" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T16:18:34.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2537" CreationDate="2012-07-21T02:26:03.500" Score="104" ViewCount="397113" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between an associate professor and an assistant professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can one of them do that the other can't? and which is a higher level? can any of them supervise a PhD student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T04:57:23.700" LastActivityDate="2018-11-23T21:03:40.233" Title="Assistant professor vs Associate professor" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;associate-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="18" ClosedDate="2020-02-28T23:10:44.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2536" CreationDate="2012-07-21T03:21:00.383" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a typical university in the &lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An assistant professor is an entry-level faculty member.  They are generally on the tenure track (although the term &quot;assistant professor&quot; does not guarantee this) but do not have tenure yet.  Typically, within about seven years an assistant professor will either be promoted to associate professor or will leave the university, although the timing can vary a little and it's theoretically possible to remain an assistant professor forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An associate professor is one step up from an assistant professor.  This promotion is usually the same as getting tenure, but not always.  (Some universities, like MIT, frequently have non-tenured associate professors.)  The final step for most faculty is a full professorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what an associate professor can do that an assistant professor can't, that varies even more than the terminology.  In many US universities, the only additional power an associate professor has is voting on who gets tenure, but I wouldn't claim this is universally true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T08:12:19.813" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T08:12:19.813" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2536" CreationDate="2012-07-21T03:40:42.090" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Netherlands&lt;/strong&gt; both assistant and associate professors are frequently tenured (= have a permanent position). Associate professors are expected to develop their own research line, while assistant professors can work on the topics of their bosses (full professors). Neither assistant nor associate professors can formally supervise PhD students: they can only co-supervise. There are some more minor differences: e.g., associate professors can be members of the Ph.D. assessment committee, assistant - not, unless they are co-supervisors of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2018&lt;/strong&gt;: As of last year associate professors at some universities have been granted the right to formally supervise PhD students. Details of the implementation are however left to the universities, and, e.g., Eindhoven decided to grant this right only to &lt;em&gt;senior&lt;/em&gt; associate professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="882" LastEditDate="2018-11-03T20:58:25.490" LastActivityDate="2018-11-03T20:58:25.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2543" CreationDate="2012-07-21T08:34:50.197" Score="45" ViewCount="4037" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with a group in China, and we were discussing the following question, which I would like to ask here too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;:  Is it better to write a paper in Chinese, then translate it into English, than to write it in English to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this question is not limited to Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both myself, and the (Chinese) professors in the group I work with felt rather strongly that writing in English to begin with is better.  However, we didn't manage to articulate any tangible reason as to why we feel this way (mostly just out of intuition).  Hopefully the group here can offer some meaningful insight one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: I'm sure if I leave out the specific context, I'll receive a comment asking for it.  So, in our case, the context was students writing technical scientific research papers (in computer science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:07:50.500" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:31:29.883" Title="Writing papers in language X and translating to English vs. writing papers in English to begin with?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2541" CreationDate="2012-07-21T13:10:49.027" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a non-native English speaker myself, I've faced similar situations during my PhD. Some pros/cons of writing not in English, and then translating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're working with people who don't speak English very well, it can make it easier for them to write in their native language first, so that they can focus on explaining the idea, rather than trying to find a correct vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to publish the work twice: once for a Chinese-speaking conference (or journal) and another time in English. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to have this paper read by undergraduate students later on, then it might be easier for them to understand it if it's in their native language. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a waste of time, since you're basically working on the same thing twice. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Translating is hard, in general, and speaking two languages does not necessarily make you a good translator. In practice, it might give a structure, but you might have to rewrite entirely each paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're working with people who aim at staying in academia, they they need to be able to write directly in English. It's hard in the beginning, but it gets much easier with time and practice. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It could make complicated any external collaboration (I've been collaborating with some people who write their papers in English, but their comments and ideas in another language, it was really frustrating). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's probably a subjective perception, but I think that a paper is not only a technical idea, it should also be an interesting piece of work to read. It might be specific to CS (I don't have the same feeling when talking with people in maths), but I feel that we're already reading A LOT of papers (probably due to the multiplication of conferences/journals in CS), and at some point, it becomes harder to focus on those that are not pleasant to read. The best way to make your paper pleasant to read is to think it in English from the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in the Cons, I assumed that you would translate the paper yourselves, and that you're not particularly trained for translating technical documents. Of course, that would be quite different if you were to delegate the translation to some professionals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T13:10:49.027" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2545" CreationDate="2012-07-21T15:47:41.177" Score="46" ViewCount="32703" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does a typical graduate program's admissions committee operate? (In the US --- I understand that in Europe admissions are often structured differently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mental model at the moment is several professors sitting in a conference room with a stack of printed applications and a few piles: accept, maybe, and reject. Three or so professors will read an application and then make a decision. If the volume of applications is large enough, multiple meetings might be required. This is purely my imagination --- I don't know how accurate this model is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm sure that how admissions are handled depends greatly on the school, program, and department. I'm interested in a few data points to get a rough idea of what the average is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few more specific related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much time does a typical committee spend on each application? I suspect there's a distribution. Obviously unqualified applicants will probably have their applications tossed into the reject pile pretty quickly. Qualified applicants' applications might receive more attention.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do admissions committees look online for more information about an applicant? I've read some professors (in CS --- not my field) will look at a student's research/project website, but I have no idea how common this is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="767" LastActivityDate="2020-08-29T22:31:38.170" Title="How does a graduate program's admissions committee operate?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2012-07-21T16:51:28.283" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been on the grad admissions committee at my university for 30 years, and have been Dir of Grad Studies in math on two different occasions, so I have a good sample of what goes on here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, in the last few years all &lt;strong&gt;our applications are electronic&lt;/strong&gt;, so the admissions cte doesn't have to be in a little room with piles of paper any more. This also allows much more asynchronous appraisal of files, which allows &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; wasting time trying to figure out common meeting times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, a preliminary screening is done in a &amp;quot;distributed&amp;quot; sense, that is, &lt;strong&gt;obviously-not-qualified or misguided applicants are removed from the &amp;quot;active possibilities&amp;quot; queue&lt;/strong&gt;. By this, I mean engineering or computer science students, or crackpots, who declare interest but have no documentable mathematics background, no letters of recommendation from mathematicians, no GRE subject test, no nothing. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after this initial filtering, we have many fewer (funded as TAs or RAs) spots than approximately-qualified candidates. Even though we expect maybe 50-percent accept rate of our offers, the &lt;strong&gt;number of approximately-qualified candidates is still too large by a factor of 2 or 3 or more&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Candidates from small colleges in the U.S. typically have a very thin background, whether or not they've done special summer programs, so are at some initial disadvantage in comparison to candidates from Europe or Asia who have seen much more coursework, if only due to the structure of &amp;quot;college&amp;quot; there. This also precipitates discrepancies in GRE subject test scores. Nevertheless, we have found that this discrepancy is often very temporary, and after two years, or less, success in our program is almost completely uncorrelated with such things. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;many of the pretend-objective measures of prior success are of very limited value&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the import of letters of recommendation depends greatly on the author, and &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; prior experiences, basis for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we are left trying to compare candidates from widely varying backgrounds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to the &amp;quot;final list&amp;quot; of offers thus consists partly of winnowing out candidates who are perhaps vaguely qualified but indicate no genuine interest in anything about &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; program, while &lt;strong&gt;putting onto the &amp;quot;definite&amp;quot; list candidates who seem to be focused and have a particular interest in the research program(s) of our faculty&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentably strong background and prior success is good, obviously, but, again, undergrad work, summer REUs, and such are a different enterprise than genuine graduate work and long-term research. &lt;strong&gt;Success in a highly structured environment gives very ambiguous indication about success in an unstructured environment&lt;/strong&gt;. Success when there are unambiguous answers to questions that can be answered in a few hours is different from success in situations where the program can take months, and one is not quite sure what the question is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is considerable discussion and re-reading of personal statements and letters of recommendation, trying to project into the future and a new environment, based on our prior experience. Not easily turned into an algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the specific questions: an obviously &lt;strong&gt;implausible applicant could be appraised in 5-10 minutes&lt;/strong&gt;. At the other end, the final decisions about the better &lt;strong&gt;obviously-qualified applicants may involve repeated appraisal, so that the total time spent might be 5-10 person-hours&lt;/strong&gt; in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether we look at on-line manifestations of applicants: this is a potentially delicate issue. The default approach would be to absolutely not do so, certainly not look at Facebook or other social media. If the application gives a pointer to a &amp;quot;professional&amp;quot; web page, of course this is considered useful, and positive if that site gives evidence of good work of the applicant. But &amp;quot;snooping around&amp;quot; would be unethical, inappropriate. Even if there is a pointer to a site in the application, if the application is not otherwise plausible I don't think I'd look at the web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT (29 Aug 2020): since this thread got bumped to the top anyway, I thought it'd be not too disruptive to update remarks about GRE subject tests: the ETS (Educational Testing Service), which creates and administers the GRE, have cancelled the subject tests for this autumn (in the northern hemisphere, I hasten to add, having someone recently note my hemisphere-ism! :)... As I've said in this thread and others, in fact my dept does definitely does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; consider GRE subject test scores good predictors of future success. The only aspect of interest has always been whether or not students succeed in understanding that (in the past) many or most places &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; consider a subject test score essential to an application... so we here would wonder why a student wouldn't have that score, even if we didn't care what it was...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the Dir Grad Studies office is composing a highly revised statement of our attitude about the GRE subject test, at least saying that we are not interested in it, do not require it, and do not want to see it. (Apparently my math dept does not want to make any remarks that might be interpreted as &amp;quot;snarky&amp;quot;...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2020-08-29T22:31:38.170" LastActivityDate="2020-08-29T22:31:38.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-21T18:37:32.827" Score="9" ViewCount="2078" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any proven methods for keeping a computer science lab notebook? What sort of stuff goes into a CS lab notebook, and what notation is used? Are there any reliable &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_lab_notebook&quot;&gt;ELN methods&lt;/a&gt;, preferably integrating with Git?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep a lab notebook that helps me keep a running narrative of my research as well as my programming, in the same way you would keep a natural science lab notebook. It would be handy to be able to write down what I'm doing as I'm programming, then when a bug mysteriously appears in the software, I can see the last time the software was working, see where the bug started, then read the running narrative in between to help figure out what is causing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1316" OwnerDisplayName="Nick Anderegg" LastEditorUserId="66" LastEditDate="2012-07-22T06:22:50.217" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T10:17:18.950" Title="What are some proven methods for keeping track of research and programming in a lab notebook format?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2525" CreationDate="2012-07-21T19:34:03.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the number one thing you can do is plan your internships appropriately. Want a job at Google? Spend a summer there in a product group. Ditto for twitter, facebook, ebay, etc: all of these companies have large internship programs open to PhD students. Not only will this give you contacts inside the company, it will give you an idea for the kinds of problems that they need to solve, which can (if they are interesting), inspire the direction of your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T19:34:03.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2541" CreationDate="2012-07-21T21:16:00.053" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a native English speaker working in a country of non-native English speakers, I come from a slightly different perspective than Charles. I've also done some translations of abstracts (from English to French, although arguably this isn't so advisable, since I'm not a native French speaker—but being the only option in the company makes for little choice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my collective experiences in the last few years, I agree with Charles's main point: if the paper is to be submitted in English, it should be written and commented on exclusively in English. Doing a bilingual job makes for a mess. I recently went through two proposals written &quot;by committee.&quot; One was done exclusively in English; the other was a &quot;mixed-language&quot; proposal. The all-English proposal was not only finished faster, but it was easier to work on and understand. I think ultimately it was also a higher-quality proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do want to take exception to a point that Charles made: with respect to undergraduates, I believe that it is more codifying than assisting undergraduates to give them &quot;natively written&quot; materials, when the originals started out in another language. You cannot really do science in academia today without being able to communicate in English; getting experience in doing so—in all of its forms—is an essential part of the training process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T21:16:00.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2554" CreationDate="2012-07-21T22:38:25.213" Score="24" ViewCount="1238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much is written about how to get a job, but I've seen very little about how a professor with tenure (typically an associate or full professor) goes about changing schools.  If a professor wants to move to a school with a higher emphasis on research, obviously his or her research, publication, and grant records will be very important.  But what else will be important?  Particularly, which aspects will be much more important than they would be for an assistant professor looking to get a job at the same school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T09:33:42.200" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T09:33:42.200" Title="What should a tenured professor do to move to a more research oriented school?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2546" CreationDate="2012-07-22T04:52:29.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't do CS specifically, but I do research in computational/mathematical Epidemiology, which similarly lacks a clear format for a &quot;lab notebook&quot; and where the electronic tools designed for something like chemistry and biology doesn't necessarily suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I've tried a number of systems. A private Wiki, a variety of other electronic systems, etc. And when it came down to it, I went back to a traditional paper notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've ended up with a bound paper notebook where I keep notes about experiments and simulations being run, thoughts on direction for the project, and the occasional printout of results taped inside. This has, for me, worked far better than electronic systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T04:52:29.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-22T17:04:12.487" Score="31" ViewCount="8939" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you do if after 6 years of being an assistant professor, you come up for, and are denied tenure? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How hard is it to get a job in industry, when you are middle aged and have no relevant work experience? How hard is it to get another job in academia? Who wants to hire someone who was denied tenure at their home institution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1320" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T22:39:23.113" Title="What to do after being denied tenure?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2549" CreationDate="2012-07-22T17:08:49.097" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its difficult, and rare for faculty to move from non-research oriented schools to research oriented schools, particularly at the senior level. To be hired as a senior faculty member, you generally have to be specifically recruited, and someone has to make a case that you, specifically, would substantially strengthen the department. This is because making an offer with tenure is a huge commitment for a department, and much more expensive than hiring a younger scientist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you have to do is be a visible leader in your field. When people think of your field, they should think of you, and when their university thinks of expanding their coverage of your field, you should be one of the first people they think of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T17:08:49.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2553" CreationDate="2012-07-22T22:38:48.637" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with anything, it depends: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How hard is it to get a job in industry, when you are middle aged and&#xA;  have no relevant work experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that really true ? It of course depends, but academics even in very theoretical disciplines have skills of value to industry (witness for example the number of math PhDs getting jobs on Wall Street). Of course, if one presents oneself as having no relevant work experience, it's going to be very hard to find an industry job, but I question the premise. Maybe the right fit is not obvious, and maybe it will take some networking and talking to people to find the right niche, but it's more a matter of repositioning one's skills. It's easier said than done, but it's possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How hard is it to get another job in academia? Who wants to hire&#xA;  someone who was denied tenure at their home institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of many people who get faculty jobs after being denied tenure elsewhere. Universities don't operate on the same scale or with the same criteria or needs. It might need some time (again) to reposition oneself, and it might require some digging into the circumstances leading to tenure denial in the first place (painful, but sometimes yielding useful information). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's by no means a definite thing, but it can be done. It will take some time though, also because without a job, one lacks leverage to dangle in front of another institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s The question was asked in the abstract, and the answer is thus necessarily vague. The real point is that every case is different, and there are always ways to move forward, if not exactly in the direction one is hoping for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T22:38:48.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2553" CreationDate="2012-07-22T22:39:23.113" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I hope this has not already happened, but is only a &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I'd first address &quot;how to &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt; having this happen&quot;. As with failing oral prelims and such things, this results primarily from failed &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; between the junior person and one or more relatively senior people. Ignoring for a moment department-politics-motivated tenure-vendettas, which do occur, departments are not collectively happy to deny tenure, since it reflects a kind of failure on their part, as well. Although the details of the expectations are different at &quot;research universities&quot; versus &quot;small colleges&quot;, departments have &lt;em&gt;expectations&lt;/em&gt;. Usually these expectations are communicated fairly clearly, although sometime not too forcefully or formally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pre-tenure person should have senior people to talk to about their situation in the department, about expectations, and about progress-so-far. Unfortunately, often there is no systematic implementation of this sort of mentor relationship, and the default is that the dept chair has a yearly talk with pre-tenure faculty. If this defaults further into an absolutely pro-forma, content-free interaction, there is potential danger, especially with a pre-tenure person who is oblivious to exactly these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst cases I've witnessed, apart from those involving some political motivations, involved pre-tenure people who were surprisingly disconnected from the department in which they worked. Plausibly doing worthwhile work, but not interacting with local people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another kind of disconnection is that the pre-tenure person does receive fairly blunt advice from the dept chair, but decides to ignore it, as though some abstract notion of &quot;virtue&quot; would supercede the dept chair's recommendation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, even if one &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; paid attention, it might be that one's research program just didn't &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; measure up to hopes... Or there might be political/scientific shifts in the dept which (rightly or wrongly) marginalized your field/work &quot;out from under you&quot;. In such cases, the external perception usually is fairly well informed, and the stigma is not too great, and there is hope for other academic opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one &lt;em&gt;hasn't&lt;/em&gt; paid attention, and, in some sense &quot;rightly&quot; was denied tenure, then this situation is externally understood, too, and it is in this case that one's academic prospects are dim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I've had the good fortune to not need to look for non-academic employment, my several students who have deliberately (or due to vagaries of the job market, grudgingly) found non-academic positions emphasize that it's possibly not your specialized knowledge that you can &quot;sell&quot;, but the point that you can learn very complicated things, and do things with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T22:39:23.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T06:58:11.853" Score="30" ViewCount="5703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told to set up software to organize a workshop. Is there (preferably an open source) conference solution that allows for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract Submission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Event Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arbitrary user data-fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently managing &quot;dietary requirements&quot; is a really big deal for the organizers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T17:16:07.527" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T15:53:14.413" Title="Conference management software (preferably open source) with custom fields" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T07:50:34.137" Score="22" ViewCount="4138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a nightmare adviser, who is also the head of the Department. The problems are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he has too many students,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;never reads my chapters, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he is trying his best to sabotage TA or RA opportunities that are my only source of funding,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he discourages me from attending conferences, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refuses to introduce me to anyone in his network. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing is that I am an international student in the social sciences in Germany where professors have too much power, and there is no system of redress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a second supervisor from another university, but he does not want to get involved as he is not the primary adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am three years into the program and have a nearly completed thesis. Without his comments on my chapters, I fear that I will end up with a lower grade (PhDs are graded here) which marks an end to my academic career.  I was the top student in the Masters program and that is why I was offered a fully funded PhD. My adviser was very happy with me until I spoke to him about trying for a job in Germany or in Europe. Since then he is distant because I think he expected me to go back to my Third World country and create links for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can I do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I drop this PhD and apply for another one in the US or Canada? (I am not sure he will give me a recommendation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I complete this PhD in a multi-disciplinary field (Global Studies/Global Integration) and start another one in a related discipline such as Political Science or Geography or another traditional discipline, in Canada or the US? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I apply for post docs and hope he will give me a recommendation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other ideas. Please help. I am severely depressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastEditorUserId="1048" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T10:45:31.100" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T19:07:59.080" Title="What to do when PhD is becoming hell due to non-cooperation from supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2534" CreationDate="2012-07-23T09:03:24.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of three reasons why a faculty member might reveal how a student performed on a qualifying examination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When writing letters of recommendation requested by the student. Ideally you will have students provide you with written or electronic documentation stating what areas will be touched upon in a letter of recommendation. Assuming the student consents to you mentioning the qualifying examination, then you should be covered from litigation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When approached for a reference that the student hasn't informed you that they have requested. Often students list individuals as references, but then don't let the potential referees know. As of two years ago, my school has advised us to say nothing in these cases. While this initially hurt our students, they are now aware of the policy, and the number of surprise requests is greatly diminished. If you chose to ignore school policy and reveal information about the student, then you can presumably be held liable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gossip. It can be accidental where you implying that someone failed his qualifying examination: &quot;John is no longer a student here&quot;. It can also be intentional: &quot;Don't be so quick to write off John's theory, he aced his qualifying exam.&quot; Both can get you in trouble. As with most gossip, you need to be careful with what you say and who is listening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T09:03:24.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2558" CreationDate="2012-07-23T09:38:42.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you only have a single supervisor? In Sweden, we always have at least a primary and a secondary supervisor. I know some people where the primary supervisor has little time, and the secondary supervisor(s) actually spend a lot more time in helping out. If it's for publishing a paper, you could offer co-authorship to other faculty if they can contribute to helping/advising on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T09:38:42.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:25:58.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the developer, the non-free version of easychair can support something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have a similar functionality in the registration module (non-free).&#xA;  All your requirements are related to conference registration, not to&#xA;  paper submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &quot;registration module&quot; is very difficult to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastEditorUserId="6" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T06:19:59.793" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T06:19:59.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2525" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:59:15.613" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is really critical that at each stage of academia you are thinking about the next stage and how to get there. For those interested in staying in academia, I take the often controversial view that you should do everything possible to delay getting to the tenure review (extra time as a student and post doc). For someone interested in an industry job, it is all finishing asap. For industry, PhD and post doc experience just isn't that valuable. With that in mind ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relation with Advisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should tell your advisers that you are interested in industry jobs. This will help them tailor how they market you to your colleagues. It might mean they are more receptive to adding an industry contact to your committee or changing your topic slightly. They also might help you finish faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How I spend my summers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summers should be spent working on your PhD (i.e., trying to finish as quickly as possible) and picking up skills useful for industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conferences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is industry, conferences are no longer about meeting colleagues and selling your research. It is about hanging out with the vendors and industry reps. Small conferences, which are great for meeting a post doc adviser, are probably less useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Publications&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back burner them. Take second authorship and let someone else spend the time writing them. They are not going to be critical for getting you an industry job or promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T11:59:15.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2525" CreationDate="2012-07-23T12:13:39.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do well in all your courses. Those who will be hiring you in industry generally places a higher importance on grades than those in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publications are still important, but not nearly as much as in academia. Having a few papers under your belt will demonstrate that you know what you're talking about and that your research has been reviewed and accepted by your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As was stated in other answers, find out what skills are necessary in the field you wish to enter, and master those skills. Oftentimes this will involve familiarity with a set of techniques or understanding of a very specific field. This is significantly different from academia. Remember, people in industry will want to hire you so you can help their business make money. The faster you can do that, the more easily you'll find employment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Network, network, network. If you know specifically what you want to do in industry, talk to everyone you can (people in your academic program, friends, relatives) about possible leads in industry. If you don't know which field you want to enter, start talking to people very early on so that you can appropriately customize your training to your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T12:13:39.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2566" CreationDate="2012-07-23T12:43:55.987" Score="13" ViewCount="739" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a committee is evaluating applicants for a permanent academic position (such as a Lecturer or Assistant Prof. position), do they select the best candidate in the absolute, or do they relativize with the corresponding experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider for instance two applicants, one who just graduated from her PhD, and the other with 10 years of postdoc experience (for the sake of the example, let's assume that both are &quot;regular&quot; applicants, i.e., none of them is a exceptionally good or bad). Clearly, in general, the second applicant will have many more publications, grants, etc, than the first one. &#xA;In that case, will the committee judge them by relativizing the CV of the second one by stating like only the number of publications per year counts, not the total one, or say that the second one has a better CV in the absolute, and therefore is better? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T19:05:08.787" Title="Relative or Absolute evaluation for academic positions?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2565" CreationDate="2012-07-23T12:57:53.100" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a single answer to this question. Ultimately, departments look for the candidate who will be the best fit for a given position, and for the department as a whole. If you also subscribe to the view that the department would rather choose a candidate who is more likely to accept a given position, then that also changes the decision calculus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, however, I don't think hiring committees are doing &quot;hard&quot; comparisons of citations; that would just be foolish. Grant-winning experience also does matter, obviously, but that's also something that can be learned and developed over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ultimately, hiring tends to be a subjective process—you can view the data in whatever &quot;objective&quot; light helps you get to the conclusion you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T12:57:53.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3068" CreationDate="2012-07-23T13:58:42.290" Score="22" ViewCount="8535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love Google Scholar as my go-to place to search for papers. Some features like &amp;quot;forward-citations&amp;quot; and their nice-ish  autogenerated bibtex are life savers. However, sometimes I (and others) wish we could write scripts to help us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/7523961/859536&quot;&gt;Google Scholar with Matlab&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2520/66&quot;&gt;Automatically building a database of forward and backward citations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Google Scholar does &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail?id=109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not provide an API&lt;/a&gt;, their &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ca/robots.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;robots.txt&lt;/a&gt; disallows scrapers on most pages of interest (for instance the cited-by results are not suppose to be accessed by bots), and if you try to make many requests (as a bot would) you will get an CAPTCHA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year they &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/7587994/859536&quot;&gt;used to have a EULA&lt;/a&gt; that said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shall not, and shall not allow any third party to: ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) directly or indirectly generate queries, or impressions of or clicks on Results, through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means (including, but not limited to, click spam, robots, macro programs, and Internet agents);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(l) &amp;quot;crawl&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;spider&amp;quot;, index or in any non-transitory manner store or cache information obtained from the Service (including, but not limited to, Results, or any part, copy or derivative thereof);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Google services like custom search (for which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/cse/docs/tos.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I could find a EULA&lt;/a&gt;) still state this in section 1.4, but the link in the SO answer is now dead and I have not been able to find a new EULA for Scholar. From anecdotal evidence, I know that you can get in a decent amount of trouble of you try to circumvent Google's efforts to prevent scraping of Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there an official source where I could look up Scholar's terms of service? Or does the new unified ToS Google unveiled mean that I should be looking for the terms elsewhere? Is scraping still disallowed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T01:10:15.777" Title="API, EULA, and scraping for Google Scholar" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2565" CreationDate="2012-07-23T14:53:07.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak for France. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do relativize the application with the corresponding experience. In fact this is sometimes easier for the &quot;younger&quot; applicant to have a junior position since after a while, the committee expect someone with a lot of experience to have shown more than the ability to conduct research. To tell the truth, if you apply for a junior position with 6 years of postdoc, I will find suspicious that you was not hired before, and ask about that issue. Similarly, if you have 6 years of experience and if you never led a team or had a grant, I will find that highly suspicious (and so will be the rest of the committee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T14:53:07.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2593" CreationDate="2012-07-23T15:14:38.763" Score="12" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attending a number of short (two and three day) conferences this fall. In the past I have scheduled meetings (e.g., time to chat and catch up over meals and coffee breaks) with people prior to the conference in an attempt to maximize my ability to catch up with colleagues/friends. This approach, however, doesn't work for me. To often meetings get cancelled and if I fill in my schedule too much it is hard to reschedule. Other times I have taken the play it by ear approach and catch up with who I catch up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good strategy for catching up with colleagues whom you already know well (I am not asking about strategies for meeting new people)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T13:44:09.187" Title="Making time to catch up with people at a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2572" CreationDate="2012-07-23T16:00:21.343" Score="20" ViewCount="1475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question : Should my advisor know if I am auditing unrelated courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation : I am a PhD student in Computer Science and at times, I wish to audit courses which are not at all related to my thesis or research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Fun : Italian Food and Art&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For probable post-PhD jobs (but not related to thesis) - Econometrics, Quantitative Finance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, my advisor is cool and won't mind the hour(s) I spend in the classroom. He allows me to work from home or wherever and doesn't care about &quot;seeing&quot; me in my office so long as I keep doing my work on time (which I do). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I tell him about the courses, he unnecessarily might get freaked or worried and might question my intentions (which I can obviously clarify), If I don't it seems as if I am keeping something important from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T23:09:37.110" Title="Should my advisor know if I am auditing unrelated courses?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T16:12:06.413" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, you should let your advisor know, because the time spent in the classroom is time not spent in the lab. Since he's paying you for your time, if you will be doing daytime activities that will take time away from research he has a right to know about it. On a different note, depending on how auditing works in your university, there may be costs associated with your auditing the course, and he (or his grant) would be covering these costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the more communication between you and your advisor, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T16:12:06.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T16:12:38.790" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely tell your advisor about the potentially job related courses. As for the fun courses, if they are at your university and/or taught during regular working hours (9-5), you should tell him. If the courses are outside regular working hours and at a different school, then it is up to you. In either case, I would suggest telling him. These are the personal details that don't make anyone uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is going to have an issue with you taking courses, you are better off knowing right off the bat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T16:12:38.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2012-07-23T16:38:18.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openconf.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenConf&lt;/a&gt; for your purpose. It is free but you have to buy license for upgraded features. Going through the demo, it seems impressive. Bear in mind that you have to host this on your event website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T16:38:18.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:07:42.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, what you do in your &quot;off-duty&quot; hours are not subject to your advisor's wishes. So long as you're getting your job done, and are not using group resources to carry out those other activities, then what you do is your own concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're doing it during the daytime, or doing it for credit, then you should definitely let your advisor know. This is especially true of things related to your research program, as he or she may have helpful hints or suggestions about what is the right set of courses to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T18:07:42.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2565" CreationDate="2012-07-23T19:05:08.787" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., currently, the usual &quot;tenure guidelines&quot; as well as surrounding department policies in math departments, mostly create pretty narrow windows for competition. For example, &quot;post-doc&quot; positions are only open to those within 1-2 years of Ph.D., tenure-track assistant prof spots for people less than 6-or-so years out. Already-tenured hires are a much smaller fraction of all hires, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is the point that someone 10 years out is considered perhaps-essentially-ineligible for merely tenure-track, not &lt;em&gt;tenured&lt;/em&gt;, positions. This arose originally as a device to protect junior people from being strung along indefinitely without tenure. But, through the obvious process, now it is essentially against HR rules to hire anyone &quot;too far post-PhD&quot; without tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the relevant &quot;competitions&quot; are between not-too-disparate populations: people 3 years post-PhD and those perhaps 6 or 7 years post-PhD. Certainly these are looked at in relative terms. If anything, the more-years-out people are looked at more critically, because they really have had an opportunity to get their research program going, while someone just 2 years out could understandably still be getting their first papers through peer-review, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T19:05:08.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T19:09:08.553" Score="15" ViewCount="3269" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much of a disadvantage are you if you are not a US citizen, but want to enter American academia? It seems Americans have lots of advantages starting early, including NSF graduate fellowships, continuing with more access to DARPA money, US-citizen specific awards like PECASE, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1324" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T18:02:06.210" Title="How much of advantage do US citizens have in American academia?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T20:30:04.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, having pursuits and interests that are fun and relaxing and not-research are helpful to one's continued sanity and (research-)productivity. Since your work isn't suffering and if you're not spending excessive amounts of time on these pursuits, why not just mention it to your advisor? It might be nice for them to see you as an individual with varied interests as opposed to a research-doing machine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for job-related classes, perhaps there is a worry that your advisor wants you to go into academia but you want to say, go into industry - perhaps your additional classes are geared towards the industry side and you don't want your advisor to know about them as a result. In this case, I would say that it's better to just let your advisor know your intentions. If there is no discrepancy between the two of you about the courses being beneficial to your future, then letting your advisor know you're spending time and effort bolstering your background and knowledge sounds like a very positive thing to me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T20:30:04.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T20:47:02.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just let them know! It's okay to be in pursuit of knowledge or hobby but DON'T let it interfere with your research. See, you can take everything from Physics to Fine art and everything in between but at what cost? You will spend more money and more time to complete your PhD and it won't be worth it. The charm is for the first few years/semesters, but when the research takes over and you start loving what you do, you won't find time for other courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your auditing unrelated courses is for your &quot;personal gratification&quot; only and doesn't help your advisor. It's okay to do it sometimes, but keep it at a minimum. For example, I love fine art and thought of auditing a fine art course. It won't cost my advisor and will only be for 1 hour per week in the evenings. I've never got around to doing it! I love my research and spend a lot of time working on that - so much so that my hobby can be put on hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure you understand what is being lost and what is being gained - it should be valuable in some form or the other. If it keeps you sane, then a course once in a while is fine. But if you are auditing a lot more, you are going to take a longer time to do your Phd and when you look back you'll realize that you could've done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do TELL your advisor - they are your friends (most of the times :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="407" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T20:47:02.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2577" CreationDate="2012-07-23T21:25:17.963" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;True, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; federal funding of grad students in the US is restricted to US citizens or permanent residents, but, in mathematics, most funding of grad students is as TAs (=Teaching Assistant) supporting lower-division mathematics courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of &lt;em&gt;admission&lt;/em&gt; itself is mostly separate from federal citizenship requirements. Let me explain some things an admission committee wonders about, statistically, at least, about international applications, that would not be  relevant to an applicant already in the US and with no visa issues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It turns out that quite a few applicants simply want to get to the U.S.,&lt;/strong&gt; in effect as informal political asylum, while having limited genuine interest in mathematics, and this creates visa and other complications subsequently. I have no objection to fairly open immigration policies, but I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; object to adding that noise to applications to our graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given that the bulk of funding is as TAs, &lt;strong&gt;problems with &lt;em&gt;understanding&lt;/em&gt; colloquial spoken English&lt;/strong&gt; cannot be taken lightly. This isn't about &quot;cultural bias&quot;, but about the practical features of teaching in this environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimum funding to generate visa papers:&lt;/strong&gt; The INS (U.S. &quot;Immigration and Naturalization Services&quot;, which controls visas of non-US-citizens) mandates that we promise a certain annual stipend for international grad students... ok... except that that number is several thousand dollars above what the university sets as the ceiling for standard stipends. Not hard to imagine the craziness and injustices this leads to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Theoretically, the university is not necessarily responsible for guaranteeing the (needlessly high) minimum, but different universities develop policies designed to keep them at some safe distance from &quot;trouble with INS&quot;, and sometimes/often such policies create complications not originally intended, and not due directly to INS. (Also, interpretations and policies drift over years, and I'm refering to a situation from a few years ago...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;International students demand resources for their spouses.&lt;/strong&gt;  We have repeatedly &quot;discovered&quot; that an admitted international student is married, &quot;needs&quot; a visa for a spouse, the spouse needs admission to something, etc.  It is easy to understand the desperation that leads to such situations, but it also corrupts things, and absorbs resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Yes, if things are done right, as noted in comments, it &quot;should not be&quot; the university's responsibility to &quot;take care of&quot; other family members. Nevertheless, for reasons I do not fully understand, it somehow has come to this on many occasions. (The quasi-legal details are mercifully slipping from my mind! :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many other college-university cultures have a hugely different emphasis on problem-solving versus memorization, and relation of teacher and student.&lt;/strong&gt; Thus, although in one sense the U.S. system generates the weakest outcomes &lt;em&gt;in specialty&lt;/em&gt;, because of all the other required coursework for &quot;breadth&quot;, the balance of demands, and the goals, of upper-division coursework is mostly compatible with what happens at the beginning of grad school. Further, the less structured parts of the rest of grad school have counterparts in some undergrad projects. In contrast, we have found that several other traditions give students not prototype whatsoever for coping with ambiguity, and this can lead to strange crises well into a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Again, not to be claiming that all non-USA programs are the same! For this last point, let's say &quot;traditions which emphasize memorization and reciting, of definitions, theorems, proofs, and examples&quot;, as opposed to problem-solving as at least &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; component of activities. It seems that getting into the habit of thinking that there is a &quot;sacred canon&quot; of results, even perhaps including wording, is not a good habit of mind. Similarly, an exaggerated impulse of &quot;following orders&quot; or &quot;compliance&quot;, while a habit highly rewarded in some situations, is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; so much the desired methodology after the very beginning of grad school. Thus, success in a prior situation may be misleading &lt;em&gt;to a student&lt;/em&gt;, when further adaptation and growth is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't misunderstand me: I understand how such things come about. Nevertheless, with limited resources, not only money but energy to help people get in sync with their responsibilities as grad students, there is a serious question about how to allocate. Thus, we can capsulize this by saying that grad school applicants from within the US system are more &quot;known quantities&quot;, are already fairly in-sync with the system, are cheaper dollar-wise, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; are rarely or never under the threat of returning in disgrace to a genuinely dangerous situation in their home country if we stop renewing their TA!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small further edit: At a university receiving state funds (although this amount is ever-decreasing), the state legislature, and the electorate, take the viewpoint that the university has an obligation to give priority to students from the region, if not literally the state, and to serve the state's and region's goals. This has become less idealistic during economic downturns, unsurprisingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: in response to some comments... I certainly do not claim that &quot;all&quot; non-USA undergrad programs are the same, &quot;bad&quot;, etc., nor that all in-USA programs are &quot;good&quot;. At the same time, I didn't want to single out specific traditions for criticism. And, certainly, applicants in the U.S. can easily &quot;achieve&quot; weaknesses for no particular reason. As I understood the question, it was inquiring about the realities of the situation, advantages that in-USA applicants &lt;em&gt;tend to have&lt;/em&gt; over not-in-USA, at least in the minds of admissions committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think literal xenophobia or cultural bias plays any role in admissions, in case people wonder. If anything, the generally stronger undergrad prep of people from non-USA programs has created a &quot;bias&quot; &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; US students on that criterion alone. The practical and prosaic considerations mentioned above diminish post-PhD, so that &quot;nationality&quot; plays no detectable role in post-doc hiring or tenure-track hiring. (For that matter, examination of the faculty at most &quot;research&quot; universities shows a pretty international population!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T16:47:11.953" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T16:47:11.953" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2577" CreationDate="2012-07-23T21:39:03.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the grad level in CS, fully 80% of admitted students in most universities (funded or otherwise) are from foreign countries. So any department that prefers domestic students is going to have a tough time attracting students :). There are numerous funding opportunities limited only to domestic students - in addition to the ones you list, the IGERT funding program is specifically for domestic students, but it's to encourage more domestic students to go to grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the postdoc level, visa requirements can make selecting a foreign student a little tricky but not impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the faculty level, I am not aware of any issues involving hiring non-US citizens.  In our last round, we hired Chinese, Croatian, Turkish, and South African researchers ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that DARPA money can be limited to US citizens, but in CS before tenure, this is not necessarily a bad thing :). It gives you an excuse NOT to go after DARPA funding which can be very difficult to get and even worse if you get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T21:39:03.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2012-07-23T23:09:37.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a paraphrase of some other remarks: you should not get into the habit of thinking that your employer/boss &quot;owns&quot; you, or has priority to &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that you and your boss began the relationship with some explicit or implicit understanding, say, that M-F 8-5 your time &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; their time, maybe with an hour for lunch. Or, starting down a slippery slope, perhaps it's 60 hours per week, or even understood that there's no upper limit? That &quot;the larger enterprise&quot; takes precedence? That people who &quot;sacrifice everything now will be rewarded later&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there's non-trivial content there, it is unwise to &quot;buy&quot; that propaganda too easily. For one thing, very few people are able to function at a high level more than a handful of hours in a day. The usual &quot;40-hour workweek&quot; is not predicated on _high_level_ function every minute of that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, yes, some of us are aware that we are just messing around, or just fretting, or just hanging out at the coffee machine, or water cooler, or... That this happens surprises no one, especially with confusing, large-scale projects where the novices participating find it very hard to understand what they're supposed to be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, your employer does not own you, and does not have a claim to all your waking hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, your demonstration of commitment to your employer/advisor/mentor's goals makes a positive impression on them. Self-deprivation is not the same as constructive work! Some sort of false converse. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T23:09:37.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2583" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2586" CreationDate="2012-07-23T23:58:22.347" Score="5" ViewCount="669" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a rewrite of a question that was perhaps-naively posed. I rephrase...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What file formats are ok/good/ideal/common/long-term-viable/archivable/useful for research papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, also, there's the history-question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the story of viable file-formats in the last 20+ years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T03:46:09.493" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T11:45:37.693" Title="Common file-formats for writing research papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2583" CreationDate="2012-07-24T00:06:14.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people know what I'll say here, but I thought the re-format of the situation was appropriate...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For mathematics and &quot;hard&quot; sciences, PDF (portable document format) is absolutely standard now. Until a few years ago, PS (postscript) and DVI (device independent) formats were typical, but no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, &quot;Word&quot; format was never common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, traditional (meaning various things) mathematics journals want a PDF file to send to referees. Everyone has software that can convert PostScript files to PDF, and so on. In fact, &quot;OpenOffice&quot;, for example, can convert/export &quot;Word&quot; files to PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in sciences, PDF, though &quot;Word&quot; may be forgivable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of future readability of these or any other file formats is hugely non-trivial. (Similarly, kids-these-days, such as my almost-20 daughter, have great difficulty reading &quot;cursive writing&quot; of &quot;old&quot; people. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: modulo issues that the original questioner can't afford to worry about, the current answer is &quot;PDF, and tolerance for Word files, esp. from the humanities...&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long-term answer about survivable file-formats... is troubling. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T00:06:14.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2583" CreationDate="2012-07-24T00:36:44.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;binary/plain text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things to consider (for the future) is the movement towards standard meta-data items contained with the research articles (e.g. structured abstracts, specific research repositories, meta-analyses), and supplemental material for reproducible analysis. These suggest to me the conversation should likely include more than one data file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO we can be more imaginative than word or pdf files. For instance open access journals frequently have everything right there in html on the page. I even think this idea &lt;a href=&quot;http://yihui.name/en/2012/03/a-really-fast-statistics-journal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for a fast journal&lt;/a&gt; by Yihui Xie using markdown for revisions and compiling to html is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is forward thinking though. Realistic constraints force collaborations to work with WYSIWYG file formats and PDF &lt;em&gt;for writing&lt;/em&gt; because such behavior has not permeated enough in many fields (although for exceptions in some fields that extensively write in Latex see Jeffe's comment below). That may change in the future though, especially if journals adapt submission standards that encourage such actions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T11:45:37.693" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T11:45:37.693" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2583" CreationDate="2012-07-24T01:22:22.050" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;plain text/markup language&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For mathematics, I think TeX/LaTeX is the way to go.  This is the standard way to write papers in nearly all areas of math (perhaps not biomath, where collaborators necessitate Word), so there's little extra cost.  One advantage of this approach is that it's easy to automate outputting in almost any format you want.  Furthermore, as new formats develop, we will almost certainly develop tools to convert TeX source to these new formats.  The arXiv is a great example of this model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T01:22:22.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T01:26:45.103" Score="23" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a professor at the top university in your field must be a very different experience from being a professor at a top 20 university, which must be a very different experience from working at a top 100, 500, etc. university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do these jobs differ? What are the qualitative differences between working at universities in different tiers? I'm less interested in pay and benefits -- more interested in the day to day experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1327" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T17:44:04.753" Title="How does the experience of working at a &quot;top&quot; university differ from working at an average one?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2012-07-24T05:07:50.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs&quot;&gt;Open conference systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; supports a nuanced registration module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While arbitrary checkboxes are not supported out of the box, there is an area for &quot;optional registration types&quot; which we have repurposes into an area for us to track the various optional things we need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the system supports abstract management and scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://pkp.sfu.ca/support/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&amp;amp;t=6310&amp;amp;p=34232&amp;amp;hilit=registration#p34232&quot;&gt;forum post&lt;/a&gt; has literal instructions of how to hack registration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastEditorUserId="6" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T06:41:18.170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T06:41:18.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2012-07-24T08:09:10.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that with research universities the ranking is not going to matter much in terms of the overall experience. At all research universities you teach, do research, and do service. The relative amounts vary, but I don't think it is strongly correlated with ranking within research universities. The quality of the students and colleagues and the available resources will have some affect on the experience, but in my opinion the personal work environment is much more important to the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T08:09:10.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2558" CreationDate="2012-07-24T11:14:46.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I have questions for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your (1): &quot;he has too many students.&quot;&#xA;   Why would you be bothered? Is it because he is too busy to pay attention to you? If so, why (3) (sabotage)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your (4) and (5): &quot;he discourages me from attending conferences&quot;, and&#xA; &quot;refuses to introduce me to anyone in his network.&quot;&#xA;   Can you talk to your secondary adviser to help you? Do you really need your primary adviser to introduce you to people? Do you need his approval to attend conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your (3) &quot;he is trying his best to sabotage TA or RA opportunities that are my only source of funding&quot; is a problem. You need funding to support your study. I am not familiar with German. Can you find a job somewhere to support yourself? Would it have to be TA or RA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your true problem is (2) &quot;never reads my chapters.&quot; You need him to finish your dissertation. For that, you need to talk to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do believe there are some serious misunderstandings between you and your adviser. Generally speaking, a student and his adviser are on the same side. Do you believe he would be proud of your failure? I would like to tell you this, if you fail, he fails, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would urge you to have a sincere talk to him. Tell him what you want to achieve. Tell him what you'll do and where you will be after you get your PhD is really your own decision. Ask what he thinks of you and what kind of problems he thinks you are having so that you can improve yourself. Maybe he thinks you have not done research in depth enough so your chapters are not ready yet. So on and so forth. Once you two can have an open talk and clear up the misunderstandings, it will be a happy ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T12:57:44.033" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T12:57:44.033" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2558" CreationDate="2012-07-24T12:02:03.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am three years into the program and have a nearly completed thesis. Without his comments on my chapters, I fear that I will end up with a lower grade (PhDs are graded here) which marks an end to my academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't miss anything. Trust me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was the top student in the Masters program and that is why I was offered a fully funded PhD. My adviser was very happy with me until I spoke to him about trying for a job in Germany or in Europe. Since then he is distant because I think he expected me to go back to my Third World country and create links for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which third world country ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I do? Should I drop this PhD and apply for another one in the US or Canada?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. You are too far in the thing to pull out. Complete it, get the money and the title, and then reconsider your path. Career is not something you pursue, it's something that happens. There's nothing wrong with it, and academia is not that paradise so that you will miss it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any other ideas. Please help. I am severely depressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are depressed as in depression, seek medical help. If you are in a bad mood, just finish and look for something else. Life is more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T12:02:03.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T13:35:38.320" Score="39" ViewCount="1596" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar is making it very easy to track (their measure of) citation counts, h-index, etc. for individual researchers. Is this changing how academics are evaluated? Do tenure committees now bring up google scholar profiles, or do they continue to prefer other sources for citation data? Is there pressure to make your Google Scholar profile public? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1333" LastEditorUserId="36320" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T01:10:06.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T01:10:06.750" Title="How is Google Scholar changing academic evaluation?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2570" CreationDate="2012-07-24T13:44:09.187" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Skip the talks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for meals, most of the time at a conference is taken up by scheduled talks. Don't go to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, go to some of them. But if you want to get some work done, catch up with a colleague during a coffee break, take a look at the schedule, find a session (or two, or three) that seem extra boring, and agree to skip them. Use that time to go to a coffee shop, or sit in a quite space in the conference center. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T13:44:09.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2592" CreationDate="2012-07-24T14:33:50.203" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, promotion and hiring committees look at Google Scholar, especially in fields like computer science where Google's citation data is more comprehensive than other sources like Scopus, which misses many citations of and by conference papers.  In this respect, Google Scholar hasn't really changed the way people are evaluated, though; we've just replaced one unreliable (and expensive) source of questionable statistical data with a slightly less unreliable (and free) source for almost (but not quite) the same data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more importantly, though, Google Scholar makes it easier to find electronic copies of papers, which makes it easier for committees to judge each candidate's work directly.  In this respect, Google Scholar has had a significant impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T14:33:50.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1498" CreationDate="2012-07-24T16:13:38.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what field you're in, but in my field, there exist journals with a public discussion phase. Anybody can comment. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/2/315/2011/esdd-2-315-2011-discussion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this interesting paper explaining why there is no easy way out to anthropogenic climate change&lt;/a&gt; had a lengthy discussion (most papers do not). Assigned peer reviewers are required to comment, and naturally the author is required to respond. But in addition, anybody else can respond. Unlike Stack Exchange, there is no voting (-;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In geophysical sciences, the European Geophysical Union has the following two-stage journals (as of July 2012):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atmospheric Measurement Techniques &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biogeosciences &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clim-past-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Climate of the Past &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drink-water-eng-sci-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drinking water Engineering Science &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earth System Dynamics &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earth System Science Data &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geosci-instrum-method-data-syst-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geoscientific Model Development &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hydrology and Earth System Sciences &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ocean Science &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Social Geography &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solid Earth &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cryosphere &amp;amp; Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly, there may be other fields where such kind of journals exist. Then you can exercise your reviewing by posting an unrequited review for a paper — note, however, that unrequited reviews (short comments) are not formally anonymous — although I have seen instances of people posting under a false name...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a discussion on the wisdom of actually posting there, see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2510/pros-and-cons-on-commenting-on-public-review-papers&quot;&gt;Pros and cons on commenting on public review papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T16:13:38.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T17:22:41.847" Score="22" ViewCount="4364" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I want to get letter of recommendation for a PhD program. Could this letter be from someone not from my institution? Could is be from someone I have collaborated with online? Or generally do schools want recommendations from professors from a student's home institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1306" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T09:10:58.473" Title="Does a recommendation have to be from a professor from your university?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2012-07-24T17:44:04.753" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Since I've only been faculty in one department, my answer involves a bit of extrapolation...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality of students&lt;/strong&gt; — It is much easier for top departments to attract the strongest students to their PhD programs, so the average quality of students tends to be higher.  Faculty at top schools can spend less time bringing their PhD students up to speed and more time interacting with them as mature colleagues.  This has a big impact on the productivity, research quality, and enjoyment of the faculty.  (Of course, the strongest students are not all concentrated in the top few departments.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality of faculty&lt;/strong&gt; — Similarly, it is much easier for top departments to attract the top faculty in their respective subfields, so the average quality of faculty tends to be higher.  Again, this has a big impact on productivity, research quality, and quality of life.  (Again, the strongest researchers are not all concentrated in the top few departments.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rock star culture&lt;/strong&gt; — See my previous answer about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d/154#154&quot;&gt;benefits of being a PhD student in a top department&lt;/a&gt;.  The same comments apply to faculty in top departments. &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; everyone publishes in the top conferences and journals.  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; every assistant professor gets a CAREER award.  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; everyone has a few best paper awards.  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; everyone sends their PhD students to academic positions in top departments.  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; the faculty got another umpty-dozen-million dollars in grant money this year.  That's not exceptional at top places; that's just normal business.  That assumption of excellence is both incredibly powerful and incredibly stressful, just as it is for students.  Impostor Syndrome is rampant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Center of the world&lt;/strong&gt; — Top departments are more likely to attract the best researchers to visit, either as informal collaborators or as formally invited speakers.  This opens up many more avenues for collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Administrative support&lt;/strong&gt; — Because top departments are well-funded, they tend to have more administrative resources.  For example, my business office (paid entirely by &quot;indirect costs&quot; from grants) takes care of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the financial and administrative details in my grant proposals, letting me concentrate entirely on the 15-page narrative.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T17:44:04.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2012-07-24T17:56:15.487" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally if it’s for a PHD program they want letters of recommendations from a professor . &#xA;It depends on the program though, so it’s better to ask the admissions office at the school your applying to . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1323" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T09:10:58.473" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T09:10:58.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2012-07-24T17:56:50.800" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A letter of recommendation absolutely does not have to be from someone at your university. It &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be from someone you have collaborated with. In general, a letter of recommendation will be most valuable if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can speak to your potential as a researcher: letters from supervisors of research projects are much more valuable than letters from people who have only had you in class&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is written by someone well known in the field that you are attempting to enter. When this person says you have potential to be a researcher, it is much more credible if they have experience working with excellent researchers in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is written by someone who knows you well. They should be able to point to specific things you have done with them, specific conversations you have had, specific ideas you have had. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should pick your letter writers by seeing how well they optimize these three properties. It won't matter if they are at your home institution or not. The only reason not to get a letter from &quot;someone you have collaborated with online&quot; is if they don't satisfy these criteria. In particular, I might be concerned that they don't know you well enough if you have never met them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it might raise a red flag if &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of your letter writers are from your home institution. But if you have one of these, that should be enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T02:20:29.707" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T02:20:29.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2012-07-24T17:57:22.020" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schools want a letter that demonstrates that you are a smart, hardworking individual, whose presence will be a net gain for the program specifically and the university generally. In most cases, the people most able to write such a letter are from the institution where you received your undergraduate (or masters, as the case may be) degree. These people have interacted with you in a classroom (and possibly research) setting, and they know you well enough to write a good letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that extent, if there is another individual—with stature enough to be recognized by an academic institution (i.e., a professor or recognized researcher)—who can write such a letter, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T17:57:22.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2577" CreationDate="2012-07-24T18:02:06.210" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say none , actually since the high-school system in the United States is an absolute disaster you might have an advantage . This really depends on you though , when did you start learning English , how comfortable are you in a conversation with native speakers , etc . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1323" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T18:02:06.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2671" CreationDate="2012-07-24T18:53:51.660" Score="8" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're thinking of starting a journal for undergraduate research.  I'm vaguely aware that some electronic journals have a 'print on demand' capability, so that someone who wants a printed bound copy can get one.  Can anyone point me to a journal that does this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1335" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T04:09:27.470" Title="Electronic journals with 'print on demand'" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T19:12:42.597" Score="30" ViewCount="7678" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romantic relationships between faculty members and students are often depicted in movies or books, and the student falling in love with his/her professor seems to be a bit of a cliché. But how common are such relationships in practice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1336" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T03:52:02.713" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T03:52:02.713" Title="How common are romantic relationships between faculty and students?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-07-24T19:32:23.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It hasn't begun operating yet, but Cambridge University Press's &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialPage?pageId=3896#.UA74BTGe66A&quot;&gt;Forum of Mathematics&lt;/a&gt; will work that way.  The journal will launch later in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T19:32:23.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2012-07-24T20:18:47.553" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a rather old survey (1982) of David L. Rowland, Larry J. Crisler and Donna J. Cox that claimed &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the 184 respondents (59.8%  female and 41.2% male), over&#xA;  one-third  of  both sexes reported flirting with their instructors,&#xA;  while 46% of females  and 32% of males felt that instructors had&#xA;  flirted with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flirting is, of course, is not the same as a romantic relationship. Patricia A. Rupert and Deborah L. Holmes (1997) survey earlier studies of the sexual relations between faculty and students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in a survey  of  807 male faculty,  Fitzgerald,  Weitzman,  Gold, and&#xA;  Ormerod (1988)  found that 26% of the 235 respondents  reported &#xA;  having sexual encounters with students;  in a similar  study  of&#xA;  483 male and female psychology  professors,  Tabachnick, &#xA;  Keith-Spiegel,  and Pope (1991) obtained  a rate  of 11%. Although &#xA;  there was a considerable  difference  in these rates  no doubt in part&#xA;  due to the inclusion  of female faculty  in the second survey - &#xA;  both indicate that sexual encounters  between faculty  and their &#xA;  students  are commonplace  on our campus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/a-law-school-love-story-prominent-professor-marries-columbia-3l/&quot;&gt;notable example&lt;/a&gt; is the marriage of Professor Philip Bobbitt (Princeton (A.B.), Yale (J.D.), and Oxford (Ph.D.)) and Maya Ondalikoglu,Columbia Law School graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="882" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T20:23:52.523" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T20:23:52.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21" CreationDate="2012-07-25T00:41:08.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reiterating what others have said: there is danger here, but at &quot;better&quot; universities in the US, the venal impulses of university administrations have at least recognized that they'll not make gazillions of dollars on grabbing royalties on textbooks or monographs, ... so they just let it go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One should pay attention to the local rules. Yes, the UK rules in the last few years are disturbing... Maybe they've changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the contractual idea is that if one does something &quot;specified, under contract&quot;, that the product is owned by the &quot;entity&quot; that engaged one to produce the work. Universities have been a teensy-bit more ... fair... about this kind of thing, but one should look around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we should address the dangerous cases: yes, some colleges/universities will claim that whatever you write/produce/do is their property. (I can't help recommending that you send them stool samples... maybe daily...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, obviously, try to use common sense. Yet be alter to the (duh, human nature) problem that &quot;things are more complicated on the ground&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net is that novices are coerced to give up &quot;rights&quot;. This is ill, but I cannot change it. Apparently we must all &quot;cope&quot;. (Sorry I can't give better/happier advice&quot; It is disturbing ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T00:41:08.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2012-07-25T01:28:08.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have references and statistics, but I know of one MIT PhD who later married their advisor and now they are both tenured faculty in the same department.  They did divorce later in life, but that doesn't seem to have outwardly affected their working relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody talks about it much; it seems like a nonissue, although perhaps it was different before the dust settled.  She never changed her name, so you probably wouldn't know they'd ever been married if you weren't close enough to know they have teenage children together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T01:28:08.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1137" CreationDate="2012-07-25T05:02:56.290" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm preparing for a phone interview, I often: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write out extensive notes&lt;/strong&gt;.  Partly, this helps me to organize my thoughts (which is good preparation for any interview), but in the case of a phone call, I &lt;strong&gt;actively consult them during the interview&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For example, I &lt;strong&gt;write out answers to questions that I think I may be asked&lt;/strong&gt;.  When I'm asked one of these questions, I &lt;strong&gt;quickly skim my written answer to remind me&lt;/strong&gt; of what I want to say.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, beforehand I also &lt;strong&gt;write out the names of the committee that will be interviewing me&lt;/strong&gt;, as well as a few comments on each committee member if possible.  This can help me to keep track of my interviewers, even when I can't see their faces.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, I will sometimes print out or &lt;strong&gt;take notes on information about the school that I'm interviewing with&lt;/strong&gt;.  Then, when they ask me question for which I don't have notes, I consult my notes on the school and try to work some of that information into my answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T05:02:56.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1236" CreationDate="2012-07-25T05:19:38.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really, you should start thinking about who you'll ask to write letters a couple of years before you ask for them.  Then you'll have time to develop relationships with your letter writers.  If you'd like to get a letter of recommendation from someone (particularly at your university), but haven't worked with them, try to start a collaboration.  For faculty other than your adviser, your &quot;researchy&quot; interaction with them will often start with a reading course (or independent study).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T05:19:38.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="731" CreationDate="2012-07-25T06:15:29.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paul Halmos was a master expositor, and one of my favorite articles on writing is his: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~azoff/courses/halmos.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write Mathematics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A more detailed collection of advice can be found in: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mathematical Writing&lt;/a&gt;, by Knuth, Larrabee, and Roberts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But as other answers have stated, &lt;strong&gt;the only way to improve your writing is to write&lt;/strong&gt; (and to get feedback, and take that feedback to heart)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T06:15:29.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2137" CreationDate="2012-07-25T06:30:02.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning all the nuances of a second language can be overwhelming.  Fortunately, when writing in a technical field, often the vocabulary needed for your paper is a tiny subset of the whole language.  However, I recommend that when you get the chance you ask native speakers (or others who write clear, precise prose) to explain the motivation behind their decisions.  One good resource that does this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~west/grammar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Grammar According to West&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T06:30:02.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-07-25T07:05:10.697" Score="47" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of&#xA;  staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting&#xA;  anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I found helpful in this regard: consider switching to a different &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;of research. Instead of studying problems, study &lt;em&gt;techniques.&lt;/em&gt; Avoid focusing on questions&#xA;like &quot;Is X true?&quot; Instead, focus on questions like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No one seems to have observed that object X is as an instance of object of type Y. Does the available theory about objects of type Y say anything useful about X?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There seems to be a parallel between techniques used to prove statements of type U and statements of type V. How deep does the parallel go?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Objects A and B appear to both satisfy property Z. Can we prove a general theorem about when property Z is satisfied? What are the really important parts in the proofs that A and B satisfy Z? &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean my advice to apply generally - this is only my personal experience. I found working on questions of the type &quot;Is X true?&quot; to be very frustrating - immensely rewarding if I succeeded in resolving them, but they felt like banging my head against the wall most of the time. When I changed my research style to study techniques, there was a lot less blank staring involved and research became more fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1344" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T07:05:10.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2012-07-25T07:48:49.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the closing votes are because of the statistics and the &quot;notable examples&quot; the OP wants, but this is an important ethical and psychological issue specific to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to the issue, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/download/2132/827&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://education.illinois.edu/epol/people/crh4&quot;&gt;Prof Higgins&lt;/a&gt; published in 1998. One key issue seems to be the age difference between the teacher and the student. The second point is the drama it creates in the mind of the student, which is supposed to be focused on learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We [teachers] should be responsive to the fact that one of our students is going through a drama that will affect her learning and ought to be heeded in the handling of the relationship. This does not mean that we should treat a student’s avowal of love as something which calls for a life decision on our part. To do that would be to respond in kind and to lose sight of the fact that classrooms are in part like the playground of the analytic situation, a place in which we can express ourselves without every utterance leading to immediate action. When someone is in process, and you have devoted yourself to witnessing and facilitating that process, you are wary to treat as definitive any one version of the evolving being before you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that faculty members at graduate schools will be punished for just having a romantic relationship. But frequent problems in romantic life will surely be noted by colleagues and some curb be introduced when the academic pursuits of the prof suffer heavily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T07:48:49.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2137" CreationDate="2012-07-25T09:20:04.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are professional translators who offer editing and proofreading of scientific articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just google it (the good thing that they don't need to be nearby).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I tried such service and I was happy (and the reviewers as well). And even a bit surprised, as I had some doubts if such service can work for scientific texts, full of jargon and complex ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, to start with, the article needs to be decent enough - readable (even if with some grammatical errors). Otherwise you need someone to write it with you, not only correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T09:20:04.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1236" CreationDate="2012-07-25T12:30:28.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some areas of computer science, summer internships at corporate research labs (Microsoft Research, IBM research, and AT&amp;amp;T research mostly) have become an important part of the PhD process. The main benefit of doing an internship or two is to broaden the student's set of collaborators. This is helpful for them to get exposed to new areas of research that will eventually form a part of their thesis, but it is also an excellent source of recommendation letters. A researcher who supervised a student for a summer, and with whom he wrote a paper (or two, or three!) is in an excellent position to write a strong letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your thesis committee is another good place to look. Many times you will need 4 people on your committee (Your advisor, two others from your department, and sometimes an external researcher). With luck, at least 3 of these people will know your work well enough to write for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T12:30:28.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-25T12:33:48.193" Score="1" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1639/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-having-multiple-advisers&quot;&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple advisers?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages to having a single advisor vs having two co-advisors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1347" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T12:33:48.193" Title="Pros and cons to having two advisors" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-07-25T13:36:20.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2626" CreationDate="2012-07-25T17:40:37.453" Score="29" ViewCount="1789" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of articles in Wikipedia has grown tremendously in the last few years. A &quot;good article&quot; requires a big list of necessities, including coherence, readability, comprehensiveness and credible references. As such contributing technical articles requires academic merit, good explaining skills and mastery of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much value is being accorded to doctorates' contributions to Wikipedia during faculty recruitment? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since, on paper, a Wikipedia article should exposit an article lucidly to a (relative) fresher in the field, can Wikipedia contributions be taken as a partial measure of one's teaching abilities? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How effectively could one list his/her Wikipedia contributions? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:08:36.783" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T06:00:31.527" Title="Value of contributions to Wikipedia when applying for academic jobs" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2012-07-25T17:49:54.817" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of any weight given to contributing to Wikipedia for any aspects of academic evaluation. I personally wouldn't attach any weight to it either, especially given that many articles have a long history of edits and figuring out exactly who contributed what can be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to include this on your CV or similar, I would mention it under &quot;Misc.&quot; or &quot;Other&quot; or something like that. If you have made significant contributions to other similar sites (e.g. stackoverflow) I would put that into the same paragraph. I would definitely avoid trying to make it appear as one of the major things you have done. Wikipedia is regarded rather suspiciously in general because it can be an unreliable source. While contributing to it could be a bonus, it won't be a significant one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T17:49:54.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2012-07-25T18:20:49.153" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lars: contributions to Wikipedia will receive zero weight. It may even hurt you if you try and emphasize this too heavily on your CV, because it will suggest that you are attempting to compensate for lack of more traditional accomplishments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get credit for expository writing, write survey articles, and try and get them published, or at least post them on arxiv. Survey articles also won't count very heavily as &quot;publications&quot;, but will certainly count towards evaluating your skills as an expositor. A good survey article in a field lacking in one may accumulate many citations as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T18:20:49.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2012-07-25T18:22:48.447" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an addendum to Lars's answer above, academics place a high value on peer-reviewed literature and professional activities (book chapters, conference proceedings, invited talks, professional workshops you've taught). Non-professional activities, such as being cited in the popular press and appearances on TV and radio shows are nice, but usually aren't big factors... such invitations are only given to those who are big in their field, which itself comes from professional activities and publications, so they're not needed to make a judgement. Personal activities such as volunteering in your community are simply measures of your character. Blog postings and Wikipedia editing would fall in that category for the reasons he states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One area not mentioned is being the maintainer of a popular analysis/experimental package used by researchers (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinos.org/mne/&quot;&gt;MNE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/&quot;&gt;FieldTrip&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/&quot;&gt;SPM&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychtoolbox.org/HomePage&quot;&gt;Psychtoolbox&lt;/a&gt;; there are hundreds of others in different fields).  These activities will be looked upon as being a contributing member of the community, and are nice to demonstrate, but ultimately have a small weight in the final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T18:22:48.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2012-07-26T00:26:34.870" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contributions to Wikipedia (or Stack Exchange) are best viewed as community service.  Like other kinds of community service, &lt;strong&gt;significant&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;sustained&lt;/strong&gt; contributions can have a positive effect on hiring and promotion decisions.  The effect is not likely to be major, unless &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; your outreach efforts rival Neil DeGrasse Tyson's, but it won't be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I have to agree with Anonymous Mathematician's warning.  Significant community service of any kind is best offered after tenure.  Unfortunately, some people view significant service (or teaching) accomplishments as &lt;em&gt;prima facie&lt;/em&gt; evidence of a lack of research focus.  (Indeed, the case that I'm familiar with was a post-tenure promotion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T14:49:54.167" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T14:49:54.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2012-07-26T02:54:54.847" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love the answers here, and I just want to add that I find the following things helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the literature. You can get a lot of good ideas from seeing how other people have solved similar problems before. (It's also rather frustrating to have your manuscript rejected by a journal because you didn't do enough reading. It's better for you to find these things out on your own.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A related point is that learning the vocabulary in another discipline may show you that your problem was actually already solved, but other researchers just called it something else. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe your problems to a colleague. Just restating the problem to a third party can help you to see something new. (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging&quot;&gt;Confessional debugging&lt;/a&gt;&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find something bigger to procrastinate on. You can fool yourself into working on an unpleasant task A if you feel like you're avoiding a harder task B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YMMV because my research is engineering, not math. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I forgot to say that for a short term boost of morale, consider reading all of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1&quot;&gt;Phdcomics&lt;/a&gt;. They're funny, cathartic, and painfully true. If you like posting to a forum to complain about the problems in academia, &lt;a href=&quot;https://chronicle.com/forums/&quot;&gt;The Chronicle of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt; will show you that you're not alone at all. Finally, if you want proof that your problems have occurred before, &lt;a href=&quot;http://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/archived-issues&quot;&gt;The NIH Catalyst&lt;/a&gt; goes all the way back to 1994 with hilarious comics about &lt;a href=&quot;http://dentcartoons.blogspot.com/2008/02/nine-types-series.html&quot;&gt;the types of people in academia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastEditorUserId="1352" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T12:05:22.253" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T12:05:22.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-26T07:45:12.463" Score="50" ViewCount="38109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I've attended and will attend international conferences presenting a poster in my life.&#xA;I used to think that this poster works have been considered less important than scientific papers or oral communications, but important anyway for scientific divulgation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when presenting a poster, I've always been thinking: &quot;Okay, it's not as important as a oral communication, but, if they accepted it, this means they found it interesting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation&quot;&lt;/a&gt; article by Thomas C. Erren and Philip E. Bourne, and I was pretty disappointed after reading point 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rule 4: Poster Acceptance Means Nothing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not take the acceptance of a poster as an endorsement of your work.&#xA;  Conferences  need attendees to be financially viable. Many attendees&#xA;  who are there on grants cannot justify attending a conference unless&#xA;  they present. There are a small number of speaking slots compared with&#xA;  attendees. How to solve the dilemma? Enter posters; this way everyone&#xA;  can present. In other words, your poster has not been endorsed, just&#xA;  accepted. To get endorsement from your peers, do good science and&#xA;  present it well on the poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree with this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the overall importance of a poster session during an international conference?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is just a way to &lt;strong&gt;collect subscriptions and money&lt;/strong&gt;, or is it an important occasion for &lt;strong&gt;science divulgation&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I'm speaking about poster session vs. oral session, I do know that a poster with presence is better than nothing. As Woody Allen once said: &lt;em&gt;&quot;The 80% of success is just showing up&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="37441" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T22:03:46.220" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T22:03:46.220" Title="How important are poster sessions in conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;poster&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-26T08:28:06.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would guess that this depends on your &lt;em&gt;domain&lt;/em&gt;. In computer science, talks at conferences present peer reviewed papers. Posters are also reviewed (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/icst2011/posters&quot;&gt;ICST 2011&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sefm2010.isti.cnr.it/posters_call.php&quot;&gt;SEFM 2010&lt;/a&gt;). However, in my experience, there are not that many candidates submitting posters, i.e., the reviewing may be less stringent. At some conferences, posters are combined with, e.g., tool exhibitions and/or doctoral symposiums. Advanced PhD students are sometimes encouraged to prepare a poster and to give an overview of their work so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T08:28:06.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-26T10:33:29.660" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;A poster session is a good way to &lt;em&gt;disseminate&lt;/em&gt; your work: but it has nothing to do with how you get &lt;em&gt;credit&lt;/em&gt; for your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some computer science venues have moved to a model where papers are reviewed and accepted, but the vast majority of papers only get a poster presentation at the conference. Another model is where all accepted papers are invited to a poster session. So it really depends on your area and venue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T10:33:29.660" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-26T11:43:41.393" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal experience (atmospheric science / remote sensing) is that poster sessions have little significance. You can present your work, maybe you will have some interesting discussions with scientists or get interesting ideas from others. In my field, posters are not peer-reviewed and virtually always accepted, if not clearly off-topic or rejected for political reasons. For me, the main point of going to a small (&amp;lt;300 people) conference where I have only a poster is to be able to speak with famous scientists in my field (who of course have talks), do networking, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: do your best on your poster, make it informative and attractive (not too much text please!), but don't expect a huge attention or exposure. The conference consists of more, much more, than just the poster session where you present your work. Use the opportunity to be with senior scientists in your field!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T11:43:41.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2636" CreationDate="2012-07-26T11:55:42.787" Score="21" ViewCount="3152" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time I thought that when I start my PhD, my field of research is fixed for the rest of my academic career. However, I've encountered multiple people who have a PhD in space science or particle physics, and have later moved to atmospheric science or remote sensing — one of them even after already having tenure, starting an entirely new topic while remaining at the same institute. How common or uncommon is it to change to an unrelated field within natural science? How much chance would one have of a post-doc if the newly graduated PhD has no experience with the actual topic whatsoever? Is it expected that a Postdoc spends the first 3–6 months getting into the field, or that he/she can dive into the depth right away? Of course, a lot of scientifically relevant skills (data analysis, critical thinking, programming, statistics, etc.) are in common between different fields, but how important is the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of ones experience, really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related but different question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1696/how-might-changing-topic-affect-a-career-in-academia&quot;&gt;How might changing topic affect a career in academia?&lt;/a&gt; (different because from e.g. particle physics to climate science is more than just changing topic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2021-04-28T10:44:32.590" Title="How (un)usual is changing fields?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2638" CreationDate="2012-07-26T12:02:04.950" Score="68" ViewCount="4180" Body="&lt;p&gt;When two people in a couple are both in science, but specialised in different fields, how can they both find relevant positions but still be geographically reasonably proximate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compromise and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2632/how-unusual-is-changing-fields&quot;&gt;change fields&lt;/a&gt;? Work part-time from a distance if employers' permit it (do they usually?)? Travel both quite far each day? One person leaves science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways to resolve this? Any personal experiences around here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T17:33:23.370" Title="How do &quot;scientific couples&quot; (from different fields) find positions?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;two-body-problem&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2633" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:13:14.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not performed a literature survey, but the only solution that looks viable is to choose a large and well-connected city like London with plenty of scope for both fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very common in India to find faculty couples, especially in the IITs. It is advantageous for the university as they are, in a way, settling the couple and ensuring their long-term stay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T13:13:14.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2633" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:16:16.227" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very difficult, and unfortunately common problem. It is dealt with in many ways, including all of the ones you mention. Solving the problem almost always involves a serious compromise by one or both parties. Couples can take many approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not compromise on their jobs: both take the best academic jobs they can find. This usually involves living apart, in different cities, sometimes for years. They end up with lots of frequent flyer miles. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One becomes an academic, the other leaves academia: this makes it much easier to live together, but might require a major sacrifice by one of the couple, if they had their heart set on an academic career. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Both compromise on placement quality: couples can commit to both finding academic jobs together. Since it is difficult to find two jobs at the same university, this often involves taking jobs at a lower ranked institution, or less desirable location than either could get on their own. Some universities specialize in recruiting couples: this can be a coup for the university, since they get two researchers who are both higher quality than they would normally be able to recruit. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long (daily) commute for each person can represent an extremely successful outcome of type 1), or a less successful outcome of type 3). For example, it is possible (although grueling) for a couple to live in Princeton, and have one commute to Philadelphia and one commute to New York. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that it is impossible to achieve perfect success: there are academic couples, both of whom are in the same department at the top university in their field. But this requires an extraordinary amount of both talent and luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T13:56:33.737" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T13:56:33.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2632" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:35:06.227" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most successful career researchers choose their field fairly early on in their career. This is often due to their approach to research; they have a fundamental question they're attempting to answer, and they spend years attacking different parts of the question through various projects. Pursuing research in this manner allows for flexibility in the research and can lead to some very interesting breakthroughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen, those who do change areas of interest often do so within a single field, so that the majority of their expertise is still relevant. Yes, data analysis skills can transfer, but much of a researcher's expertise is in the form of a deep understanding of what the past and current state of the field; knowing important (and less important) papers, what different lab groups are researching, what's been tried and what hasn't. Since such a knowledge base can take many years to gain, people are often reluctant to switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would venture that it's more common for a &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt; to shift than for a single researcher to shift; i.e., some new technology or methodology allows a whole group of researchers in a given field to investigate something new or different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T13:35:06.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:44:14.110" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are definitely cases where Wikipedia contributions have helped someone's academic career (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/04/06/tenure-awarded-based-in-part-on-wikipedia-contributions/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;).  However, I think it's exceedingly rare at major research universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have tenure, it's worth looking into this.  Then your department is already stuck with you, and they are likely to be somewhat more flexible in evaluation.  For example, full professor promotions can be quite a bit less rigorous than tenure cases, and they are sometimes approached from a perspective of &quot;Professor X has been a good departmental citizen and put in their time.  We want them to be promoted to full professor eventually, so what basis can we find for justifying the promotion?&quot;  (This can happen even in departments that would never consider approaching a tenure decision that way.  The big difference is that people who don't get tenure leave, while people who are stuck as associate professors may hang around the department feeling bitter for decades.)  If you've done some unusual community service, then that might be when the university decides to recognize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd be wary of doing more than briefly mentioning Wikipedia before tenure.  It's just not respected or valued by many professors, so the downside is greater than the upside.  A lot of hiring isn't based on totaling up some sort of abstract value for the different parts of the application.  Instead, it's based on an overall feeling you create of being a desirable colleague.  If anyone rolls their eyes and wonders why you waste your time on something, then that will actually hurt your chances.  If 20% of the department reacts this way, you've got a real problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T13:44:14.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2633" CreationDate="2012-07-26T14:37:26.110" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities (like the one where my wife and I work) have dual-career hiring programs explicitly to address this issue.  It's definitely worth asking—&lt;em&gt;carefully&lt;/em&gt;—whether the universities you are considering have such a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how our system works.  Suppose Department X offers a faculty position to Partner A, and later department Y offers a faculty position to Partner B.  Then Partner B's salary is paid 1/3 by department Y, 1/3 by department X, and 1/3 from a general campus fund.*  (Note that X and Y may be the same department.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Department Y has a significant financial incentive to hire Partner B.  On the other hand, Department X must be willing to pay extra for Partner A; in practice, however, once an faculty offer to A is actually on the table, most department chairs find it hard to refuse to help hire B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why you have to be careful how and when you ask.  It's illegal in the US to discriminate against a job candidate because they're married—we're not even allowed to ask—but it is completely legal to hire a cheaper candidate over a more expensive one.  If department X already knows that you have a two-body problem, they also know that hiring you will be more expensive.  The safest strategy is not to mention that your partner needs a position (or even that your partner is another academic) until an offer is on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*When I originally posted this answer in 2012, this financial arrangement was de-facto permanent, but my university has recently refined its policies.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://provost.illinois.edu/policies/provosts-communications/communication-8-dual-career-academic-couples-program/#_Toc432164824&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;As of June 2018, the joint funding arrangement is permanent (“recurring”) if Partner B has a tenure-track faculty position, and limited to three years otherwise&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2018-11-28T17:33:23.370" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T17:33:23.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2640" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2647" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:27:32.183" Score="9" ViewCount="1983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a year away from getting my undergrad degree in (computer) engineering, with a minor in Japanese. I never had the opportunity to do a study abroad due to the rigors of the major. As some probably know, the JET program is a program by which selected individuals move to Japan to teach English at public schools for a year (or two or three, but not more, I believe). I've always been very interested in doing something like this, but I have always assumed that doing so would ruin my chances of getting into a graduate program or landing a good job upon my return. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be like attending grad school before entering the industry or vice versa, in that I would be teaching English for a living, not studying or working in my field. I could still self study, and my field gives me the advantage of still being able to apply my skills working on personal projects and open-source software, but I would certainly be removed from the industry and academia, I would expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like leave from the field would look bad to any prospective schools or employers. How accurate is my assumption? Would a leave of absence to do something like this reflect poorly on me in the eyes of potential schools or employers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1365" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T19:13:13.127" Title="Will delaying entering grad school for a year to pursue study abroad put one at a strong disadvantage?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2640" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:40:00.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will not hurt your future plans. International experience and second language skills like this will likely help, even if they are not related to your undergraduate or graduate career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T21:40:00.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-26T22:55:04.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a poster session is better than an oral presentation due to time constraints in the latter. During a typical oral presentation you will have 10-15 minutes for questions and comments while a poster session lasts for few hours, allowing for more in-depth discussions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, not all people will manage to make it to your oral presentation because there will probably be many panels running in parallel. Poster session will typically run after all oral presentations have been finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1312" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T08:44:59.783" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T08:44:59.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-27T00:36:24.683" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be better if things change in the direction of making &quot;posters&quot; and &quot;poster sessions&quot; have greater weight, but, at the moment, in &quot;research&quot; mathematics, I fear this is not so. (This does not deny that undergrad &quot;research&quot; is typically showcased in exactly this way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questioner's potentially-cynical-sounding quoted &quot;market analysis&quot; is I think perfectly correct, if slightly exaggerated. That is, every enterprise &quot;needs to&quot; support itself, and this is typically by giving larger numbers of people the impression of participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no experience whatsoever of anyone in graduate admissions or post-doc hiring or... caring at all about any poster-session contribution. A &quot;contributed talk&quot; is also of essentially zero weight, exactly (as other answers mention, and the question anticipates) there's no filter (a.k.a. &quot;peer review&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &quot;doing things&quot;, as opposed to &quot;not doing things&quot;, is a plus. Passivity and quietude are vastly less valued than activity, whether peer-reviewed or not. Ok, the market drives certain conceits, so don't be fooled by these, but, still, &quot;being seen&quot; is a good thing. Maybe not a resume-padder, but better than &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; being seen, by far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T00:36:24.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2646" CreationDate="2012-07-27T04:03:06.827" Score="54" ViewCount="1496" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have had quite a few discussions on how to gauge the quality of research papers and academic journals. The consensus is that it is tough to identify a single metric which could reveal this quality factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had an idea in this context. In the past newspapers used to have a single &quot;Letters to Editor&quot; section to which comments on all articles were sent. With the advent of the Net, we have a comments section under every article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, why don't reputable journals introduce a comment space for their published papers, where fellow researchers could appreciate/criticise/query the works?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What hinders us from having a reputation system for published papers - something where registered users could vote based on their perceived utility?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T13:11:21.497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T18:51:07.773" Title="Towards a Stackexchange-like comment/reputation system for research papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2012-07-27T04:44:04.987" Score="39" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, why don't reputable journals introduce a comment space for their published papers, where fellow researchers could appreciate/criticise/query the works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't need to create such a space, since these comments can already appear elsewhere on the internet.  Nevertheless, some journals have tried, but they typically attract &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2012/07/23/no-comment/&quot;&gt;very few comments&lt;/a&gt;, and nobody knows how to create a viable community this way.  See that link (and the blog posts it links to) for further discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What hinders us from having a reputation system for published papers - something where registered users could vote based on their perceived utility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One major obstacle is that not enough people seem to want to use such a system.  There have been many attempts to set one up, but none have caught on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's a deeper obstacle.  In order to get any meaningful results at all, you need to solve at least three problems: ensuring that votes come only from competent researchers, ensuring that nobody can deliberately manipulate the system or cheat, and ensuring that voters have the right incentives even if they are not trying to be dishonest.  In principle, it might be possible to solve these problems, but it would take a nontrivial infrastructure.  However, the more elaborate the system becomes, the harder it will be to get lots of users.  A large majority of researchers won't pay any attention to a system like this, and some of the ones who do care will be strongly opposed, so getting widespread adoption will be an uphill battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T23:00:56.270" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T23:00:56.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2640" CreationDate="2012-07-27T05:01:49.550" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might have a small negative effect on your chances of admission, by making you look less committeed or sure of your long-term goals.  However, I believe the effect would be quite small, and in many cases it wouldn't be an issue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to avoid this issue completely would be to apply to grad school and then defer for a year after admission.  Deferring may or may not be possible, depending on the field and university.  In my department, several grad students defer each year, usually for things like Part III of the Tripos at Cambridge.  I don't recall a case where someone was teaching English for a year overseas, but I imagine deferring for that would be allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T05:01:49.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2648" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-27T08:41:53.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Useful links&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Letter-of-Recommendation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write a Letter of Recommendation&lt;/a&gt;; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiHow&lt;/a&gt; website&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1777&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On the Art of Procuring Reference Letters&lt;/a&gt;, by David Keyes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This essay written for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) covers many key points about the process of obtaining a reference letter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referenceletters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sample Reference and Recommendation Letters&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://about.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About&lt;/a&gt; website&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reference-letter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference-Letter&lt;/a&gt; website; An online and easy online letters of reference creator.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T19:40:28.600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T19:40:28.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2649" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-27T08:41:53.107" Score="0" Body="Questions on recommendation or reference letters received from faculty members when applying for graduate schools or faculty positions." OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T20:07:53.917" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T20:07:53.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2650" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-27T08:47:23.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/can-co-authoring-a-paper-as-a-new-grad-harm-my-reputation-career&quot;&gt;Can co-authoring a paper as a new grad harm my reputation/career?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16976/mathematics-research-status-in-india&quot;&gt;Mathematics research status in India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19951/how-to-neutralize-an-ivy-league-obsession&quot;&gt;How to neutralize an Ivy League obsession?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T21:14:36.110" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T21:14:36.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2651" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-27T08:47:23.323" Score="0" Body="The perception of the quality of a journal, conference, university, or other academic entity by a specific community or the general public. Also: how reputation develops and factors influencing reputation." OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T20:31:45.643" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T20:31:45.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2640" CreationDate="2012-07-27T14:51:23.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a gap year of the kind you describe would influence my admissions decision adversely. If anything, it would make me more intrigued. As with all things, you should make sure to articulate your story well in your personal statement if you think it needs explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T14:51:23.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2654" CreationDate="2012-07-27T15:50:33.973" Score="13" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best strategy to determine common knowledge in an unfamiliar field? I have provided an example below, but I am not looking for an answer specific to that example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/on-citing-common-knowledge-statements&quot;&gt;an answered question&lt;/a&gt; that addresses whether and how common knowledge should be cited. A more difficult problem is determining what is common knowledge in an unfamiliar field. In my answer to the question linked, I provide one strategy, examining introductory textbooks in that field. However, as was mentioned in the comments, not all fields have introductory texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I am working on an institutional grant proposal. The proposed activities have to do with increasing retention rates of freshmen students, particularly in the sciences. We are looking at targeting pedagogical reform in introductory classes and increasing engagement through more and better co-curricular experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background is in chemistry. I do not know what is common knowledge in the worlds of pedagogy and student engagement/retention. I have been reading books and articles on the subjects, and citation practices have been inconsistent. Some authors provide citations for everything, including broad generalizations and common sense, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There are many reasons why an undergraduate student may choose to leave college.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then others provide very few citations, including for statements that seem like they should have been based on a study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;More than half of all students who withdraw from college are freshmen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Less than half of the students who declare science majors will graduate with a degree in a science field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the former case may be from overzealous paranoia about plagiarism, and the latter case may be an example of poor scholarship, but this is difficult to assess as an outsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: For clarification, I am asking about determining when something requires a citation if I am writing in a field that I do not normally participate in. I know that I should always cite things that are new, obscure, or counter to prevailing thought. I wouldn't necessarily need to cite things that are &quot;well-established&quot; or &quot;agreed-upon&quot;. After a certain point, if enough studies have reaffirmed the same result, or if the result has been so widely cited that it becomes well-known, it is pointless to cite it. It is currently silly to provide a citation for &quot;The structure of DNA is a double helix formed by two complimentary strands held together by hydrogen-bonding between the base pairs.&quot; At one point, however, it was not silly, because this idea was new. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I quickly determine where a finding is on the continuum between new/obscure and well established?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T00:00:19.653" Title="Determining common knowledge in an unfamiliar field" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2653" CreationDate="2012-07-27T16:17:02.673" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;By far the simplest way to get around this problem is to simply give it to a colleague who is more well-versed in the field and have them judge which statements need to be backed up by citations and which don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next simplest way is to read papers on a very similar topic to yours (which, no doubt, do exist) and see what they cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, my advisor gave me the advice of &quot;when in doubt, cite.&quot; His point was that the only real downside of an unnecessary reference is added length to the paper. If you get to that point, and the only thing left to cut is citations, then you can start to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T19:40:01.630" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T19:40:01.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2653" CreationDate="2012-07-27T19:06:02.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no easy criterium saying where you should cite, when - a review article or a book, and when - you can safely skip citing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, ask 2-3 guys within that field. If for any of them it's not 'obvious' - you should cite. If it is old enough that there is a book on it - it's fine to cite it. (Alternatively, you can try asking on a respective StackExchange site.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if for you something is not obvious, you should cite it as well (the chances are a reader of you paper won't know more than you). Note that many well-known results (e.g. results of integration or summation) are referenced for the reader's convenience (and to make it obvious that it is not a novel discovery).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one sanity-check may be if there is a well-written Wikipedia page on the subject. If there is, &lt;em&gt;perhaps&lt;/em&gt; you don't need to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T00:00:19.653" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T00:00:19.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-27T21:30:02.820" Score="6" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2596/does-a-recommendation-have-to-be-from-a-professor-from-your-university&quot;&gt;Does a recommendation have to be from a professor from your university?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying to an applied math graduate program in the US. I frequently interact with professors from other institutions. Some are from math departments and others are from other departments. Could they write letters of recommendation for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T05:49:44.190" Title="Should recommendation letters be from the home university of a student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-08-31T15:13:05.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2656" CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:02:13.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they could write letters for you.  In fact, strong letters from faculty outside your home department or university will likely &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat, though: A strong recommendation letter must praise your potential for research &lt;em&gt;in applied mathematics&lt;/em&gt;, not just in the writer's native discipline, in specific and credible detail.  Moreover, it must be clear that the writer has the expertise to judge that potential; that expertise may not be clear from their departmental affiliation alone.  So you should consider asking your references to include a short paragraph in their letter, explaining their own applied math background (either as a researcher themselves or as a reference for past successful grad students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T05:49:44.190" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T05:49:44.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2012-07-28T01:09:24.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a follow up to Anonymous Mathematician's answer, I think the answer lies in Arxiv: a lot of people already use it, there is no profiting involved and even if a paper is moved to a given journal, the paper's page main remain online with all discussions In it (except that the PDF is replaced with a link). So it can create a solid up/down voting system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for reputation, everyone may start equally but a Web of Science citation analysis,for example, may be used to yield a larger starting reputation to get things going. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going further, this may also replace the reviewing process: the paper is uploaded, everyone may read it and someone who thinks it is interesting may then apply as a candidate reviewer. This would avoid reviewers who don't really understand about your work (as is certainly not uncommon to happen). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a leap of faith to trust a reputation system rather than a faculty hierarchy. Notwithstanding, note that the current review system is already embalmed in such trust: even a high school student can publish a paper if it is reviewed to be interesting; conversely, if you publish nice papers you are invited to review nice papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sense, this shifts the focus away from the periodicals themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1367" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T05:00:46.917" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T05:00:46.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2640" CreationDate="2012-07-28T13:21:18.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, a year teaching English won't look bad on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you are thinking of graduate school, you might want to figure out who will write you letters of recommendation, and ask them to write the letters now. You want your letter writers to write for you while their memories are still fresh, rather than having to remind them of what exactly you did with them a year later, by email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T13:21:18.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2012-07-28T13:32:32.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK universities have received about £10,000 (15,000 USD) in tuition and fees per student per year. This has been pretty constant with small increases over the years. Students who are not part of the EU are expected to pay the fees in their entirety &quot;up front&quot;. EU students who are not part of the UK pay £6000 a year up front. For UK students the rules vary amongst Scotland, Wales, and England. In Scotland university is free for Scots. I am not sure how much, if anything other Brits pay. In England, the fees just rose from £4000 to £9000. Students don't have to pay until after they graduate and begin making more than £25,000 a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T13:32:32.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2670" CreationDate="2012-07-28T21:15:36.080" Score="14" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Bachelor's in Computer Engg from India but the education system here is pathetic and I have no idea about research.&#xA;I'm about to join an Ivy league university in the US for the Master's program and I'd like to experience research now that I'll have the perfect opportunity to, but I'm not even sure if I know what research is. So I have a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say you're into research, what do you exactly mean? What are you doing? Why are you doing it? If not this, what else could you have done that would still be classified as research? How did you come up with the idea of what you're doing right now? What can I publish and what can't I but I'm likely to think that I can being a rookie? And most important, how do I come up with an idea to carry research on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1379" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T00:15:07.323" Title="What is research, specifically in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-11-30T05:40:07.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2661" CreationDate="2012-07-28T21:28:06.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And most important, how do I come up with an idea to carry research&#xA;  on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, for most people, is a learned skill. Increasingly, Phd programs are where this skill is learned. A non exhaustive skill sets include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the &quot;right&quot; way to approach an issue as a research problem. Learn to identify what issues are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fruitful research problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A set of ethic/behavior codes specific to research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing a strong level of perseverance (research &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; grinding)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are you doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, in an increasing number of fields, these skills are necessary. Phd is a form of apprenticeship approach to the acquisition of these skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1380" LastEditorUserId="1380" LastEditDate="2017-11-29T00:15:07.323" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T00:15:07.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2012-07-28T23:51:59.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also complementing Anonymous Mathematician's answer: one of the main uses of the &quot;peer-review system&quot; is &quot;allocation of a scarce resource&quot;, namely, academic positions and grants. For that matter, it is not really accurate to talk about &quot;peer review&quot; in that regard, because typically it is not one's peers but one's &quot;seniors&quot; or &quot;competitors&quot; that reject one's paper, whether or not with good reason. But it is pleasanter to talk about &quot;peer review&quot; than &quot;gatekeeping&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another corruptive influence is that journals themselves vie for &quot;reputation&quot;, which drives an odd jousting-for-position between authors and editors, wherein each tries to acquire as much status as possible, by connecting to higher-status &quot;others&quot;...  Let's ask ourselves whether the same impulse wouldn't corrupt nearly any publication-for-status structure. I have no idea how to design-against, or design-around this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the status rewards are reduced beyond a certain point, we might indeed find ourselves with the &quot;hermit gatekeepers&quot; who simply have nothing better to do... as mentioned in the comment by John Moellner. Given human nature, it seems that the broad pattern demands incentives that are not entirely idealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is, we can easily see that on Math Overflow, MathStackExchange, and many such vehicles, the most-popular questions are approximate repeats of questions that have been asked many times before. For a year or so, such a site will have a feel of freshness and novelty, but it is not clear to me what happens after some years when the limited repertoire of basic questions (motivated by undergrad or grad courses and such) is fairly completely documented, so that one no longer &lt;em&gt;asks&lt;/em&gt; a question, but first carefully does the archival search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; advocate that academics who are already established, tenured, etc., think more in terms of the subject matter itself and putting helpful things on-line, rather than continuing to take up quite so much space in the game that beginners must play to &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; a position, &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; tenure, etc. True, one won't maximize one's pay raise each year without continuing to play the same game forever, but academic departments could really work harder to figure out how to appraise post-tenure people, which wouldn't upset the tenure criteria per-se at all. &quot;Get out of the young peoples' way.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: In response to &quot;comment&quot;: I think the sense in which these points address the original question is that, if there were &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; presumption that the present &quot;peer review&quot; system should be supplanted, then why ask the question at all? Just use the &quot;stack exchange&quot; or similar software and everyone who wants to put papers or reviews of papers on it, and vote, or down-vote, can do so. There is no obstacle to this, so why ask the question... &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; to propose also that there be a transition. My remarks above, and some of the other comments, indicate why I think there would be problems. E.g., many of the people one would want to participate would not, for a variety of reasons, which would certainly have the effect of failing to confer one sort of status of a sort currently essential to professional survival at a junior level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, putting the question in a context in which it makes sense to ask it (rather than a more formal sense somewhat disjoint from that context), the other parts of the context prove to be significant in answering the original. If one speculates that the issue is about &lt;em&gt;replacing&lt;/em&gt; &quot;peer reviewed traditional journal publication&quot; (paper or electronic) with a different structure, then it is reasonable to see why there would be trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-07-31T16:39:00.127" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T16:39:00.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2661" CreationDate="2012-07-29T00:39:16.277" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of being trite, research is about creating &lt;i&gt;new&lt;/i&gt; knowledge (that's really the underlying condition for PhD acceptance, did you do something new - and worthwhile, and enough of it). However, like JeffE commented, how this is done in CS varies from area to area, quite significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my area, it's quite like a lot of mathematics research, it all revolves around developing new theorems about properties of problems or computational models &amp;amp;c. (so you think, then think some more, write it down, realise it's wrong, go back to thinking, talk to someone else, think a bit, write something done... until you have something that is &quot;enough&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other areas, say data security, research might involve developing and implementing new security protocols, or cryptographic algorithms (though in data security, there's also the mathematical theory part, so it's not all the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why you do it, that's kind of up to you. At one level you're contributing to human knowledge in a way that will hopefully be useful, however the underlying reason a lot of people go into research is really because they love the area they're in, so the &quot;why&quot; is quite personal. You really do have to love it though, as research is usually slow, misunderstood by others and often disheartening - until you get that moment when you have a result (then you go back to the start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the ideas come from is also a tricky thing. If you're thinking far in the future, they come from you, but this isn't as hard as it sounds, once you start to get into a particular discipline, you (should) start asking questions about why things work certain ways, how they can be improved, how they can be combined with other things. Some of these questions will already have answers, others won't, that's where you start the research. In the short term however, you will likely not need to come up with the overall questions and directions for your research, you will be part of your supervisor's research project(s), and they will give you a starting point. Note that they don't necessarily know how to get the answer either, that's why it's research, a lot of excellent students come undone at this point because there's no definite answer, they can't just check things when they're unsure, so you have to be prepared for uncertainty and incomplete knowledge (its your job to complete it!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing standards you'll also learn from your supervisor, and from reading papers in your area. You'll quickly figure out how much goes into papers of different types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T00:39:16.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-07-29T03:28:09.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think American Journal of Neuroradiology does this yet, but here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajnr.org/content/30/1/1.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an editorial&lt;/a&gt; from their Editor-in-Chief, discussing the merits of such a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T03:28:09.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-07-29T12:08:15.363" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really care about typography, it is best to produce the figures and the text with the same layout engine. This is the only way in which you can be sure that fonts, stroke size and spacing match those of your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TikZ, already suggested in Dave Clarke's answer, solves this problem excellently for TeX. Although, like TeX, it can be difficult for a newcomer. Adobe InDesign is a WYSIWYG solution. MS Publisher is another one, although less powerful. Word has limited capabilities in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most often, this requires access to the final article style of the journal, and is work for a typographer rather than a scientist. So it would be better left to the journal staff. However, it is an unfortunate truth that most journals try to reduce costs at the expense of quality when it comes to typography. Some of them offer &quot;professional figure editing&quot; as an extra paid service for authors. Some of them just take what is provided and do not care about fonts and stroke sizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T12:08:15.363" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-07-29T12:30:32.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals of the American Diabetes Association (found this through the second hit via Google):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetesjournals.org/site/misc/AdvertisingRates.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.diabetesjournals.org/site/misc/AdvertisingRates.xhtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T12:30:32.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-29T13:42:55.303" Score="15" ViewCount="2427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to find journals response times? A google search does not give any good results. May be I am using wrong key words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am open to find particular subset of journal response times too. Any pointers about this is welcome. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/904/333&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; gives a list of backlog for mathematical journals. Are there any such other list? How can I find them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for comment.&#xA;Actually I would like to learn &quot;From submission until a decision&quot;. I know &quot;Total time from submission to publication&quot; can take a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T11:54:26.497" Title="How to find response time for a given journal in engineering?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2668" CreationDate="2012-07-29T19:44:51.857" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals insert the submission date and acceptance date in a footnote on the first page of the article.  For those, it would be easy to look through the latest issue and see what is typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T19:44:51.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2661" CreationDate="2012-07-29T20:17:58.137" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This answer is colored by the fact that I'm a theoretical computer scientist.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate, you are (usually) given crisp, well-formulated problems with definite correct answers that you can reasonably expected to discover in a relatively short time period, using only a very narrow range of knowledge and skills.  If you get stuck, your instructor can give you useful hints, because they already know how to solve the problem.  Moreover, the instructor can probably explain the complete solution to you fairly quickly (in, say, less than a week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research involves vague, half-baked, open-ended problems that may resist progress after months or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2221/65&quot;&gt;even years&lt;/a&gt; of hard work, regardless of how many classes you've taken or books/papers you've read.  Nobody else knows the answer to the problem you're working on (or it isn't really research); nobody can even give you a hint how to proceed.  Nobody has a clue what other results or techniques will be helpful, or if you're just going to have to make up a completely new technique on the fly.  You don't know if the solution you're aiming for is actually useful or interesting, or even if the problem is formulated so that it has a definite answer.  Still, you'd better find &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; interesting, or you'll never graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that sounds like fun, research might be for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T20:17:58.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-07-30T04:09:27.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-jams.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, the &quot;Journal of Academy of Medical Sciences, a publication of Osmania Medical College, is a peer-reviewed online journal with Quarterly print on demand compilation of issues published.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T04:09:27.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-30T06:15:42.510" Score="19" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student I will mentor some undergrad students so that they can help me with my work and get some useful experience working in a lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my past experience, I realized that they lack knowledge. So I do not want to them work on data analysis at least for a semester (unless they show promise) but at the same time do not want to just work on tightening nuts and bolts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also they lack time to get up to speed on doing research on their own.&#xA;What is a good way to get them interested in learning more? Also if you can point to some good resources on mentoring that would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (following eykanal's comment): I do not need to interact with undergrads on a regular basis. So I am not thinking about getting them interested in research, in general. I believe most of the students, who come to work in lab, are in general interested in learning, ignoring few who are just want to beef up their resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last time I worked with a student, I had assigned him some data analysis related work only to realize later that he was more interested in working in the lab then in front of a computer. Lesson learned the hard way, because we ended up wasting time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for is the missteps to avoid when mentoring a student so that they would stay interested and try to do things on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:58:58.870" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T17:58:58.870" Title="Good resource/advice on mentoring undergrads" Tags="&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2680" CreationDate="2012-07-30T11:18:04.717" Score="28" ViewCount="5961" Body="&lt;p&gt;For conferences that &quot;peer review&quot; and &quot;publish&quot; full papers, when, if ever, can you resubmit essentially unchanged versions for publication in a peer reviewed journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, when conference papers appear as book chapters, people often &quot;republish&quot; them as journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just had a talk accepted at a conference which is now (decided post submission) planning on publishing the proceedings as a special issue of a journal. It appears the journal is complete crap with an extremely light peer review process in general, no impact factor, and essentially not indexed. I think this &quot;article&quot; will be worthless, but I am concerned that I will not be able to republish the results in a respectable journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T20:11:19.753" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T20:11:19.753" Title="Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2673" CreationDate="2012-07-30T11:33:17.980" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies by field. In (most) fields that have journal-based publications and no tradition of selective refereed conferences, it might be quite hard to publish a paper in a journal after it has appeared in some proceedings, without substantial changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computer science, in which conference publication is the norm, it is expected that journal papers have first appeared in conference proceedings. This is especially true if the full paper does not fit in the page-limit of the conference proceedings, and proofs or other material had to be left out of the first publication. Typically you have to make some small changes between the conference and the journal version (i.e. include full proofs, include a fuller discussion of related and subsequent work, etc), but in CS, the delta between conference and journal version can be relatively minor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T11:33:17.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2668" CreationDate="2012-07-30T11:54:26.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would send an email, or ideally go down the hall, and ask someone who has published in the journal how long it took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T11:54:26.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2692" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:16:34.193" Score="29" ViewCount="1260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently decided to no longer publish, or at least publish less, with a well respected journal in my field. How do I let the journal know in a meaningful way that the submission process is very painful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The required Microsoft Word and LaTeX templates are extremely dated and do not match my (or anyones) workflow. The review time (6 months), number of reviewer (3-4), number of rounds of review (3-4), and delay from in press to available online (8 months) are all too much. The lack of communication is extreme. The online system tells you if the manuscript is on your desk or the journals desk and nothing more. Editors do not respond to queries other than to tell you it is being reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T13:25:46.480" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T14:30:19.257" Title="How to let a journal know that its submission process is very painful?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2677" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:31:53.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from writing a letter to their editor, I don't think there's much you can do, particularly if the journal is well-respected. There are plenty of fish in the sea, so to speak. Unless you're the leading researcher in the journal's field, your ideological protest, while commendable, won't make the slightest difference to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T12:31:53.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2677" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:43:51.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best method to send the message that you disagree with one or more of its policies or practices to a journal is to stop publishing in it (regardless of prestige) &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; to convince as many of your like-minded colleagues to stop publishing in it as you can. Publicizing your intent in a calm, rational, and deliberative way, does not hurt, either. See the ongoing &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier Boycott&lt;/a&gt;, which has already gained the attention of Elsevier and earned some concessions from the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-07-31T07:07:21.510" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T07:07:21.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2673" CreationDate="2012-07-30T15:36:58.003" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math, FPSAC (Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics) accepts and referees &quot;extended abstracts&quot; for presentations. Presenters are selected based (in part) on the quality of these abstracts, and the abstracts appear in a special issue of DMTCS. The submission guidelines for FPSAC state &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors will retain the right of publishing a full version of their work in another journal. Authors who do intend to publish a full version elsewhere should however make sure that their conference contribution is clearly an extended abstract of this full version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several conference centers publish proceedings of their workshops, for which presenters are asked to submit extended abstracts of their talks after the fact; for example, both AIM (the American Institute of Mathematics) and Oberwolfach (formally known as Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach) do this. Again, the norm is that the abstract should be a summary of your presentation, with less detail than the published version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the main answer here is going to be &quot;see if the conference organizers have made a statement, and check with some more senior people as to what the unwritten norms are&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T15:36:58.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-30T15:52:38.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, several AI/CS conferences, such as AAMAS, or IJCAI put quite a bit of weight on poster sessions. Either each paper is required to be presented as a poster as well (AAMAS), or only selected papers get oral-only presentation and the rest poster-only presentation without making any difference in the conference proceedings (IJCAI). Poster sessions serve for dissemination of good quality work, being either promising, but still relatively preliminary, or targets a narrow audience, instead of general community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, when planned and executed well, I find poster sessions very useful and  at times even more useful than plain oral presentations. Interactions by posters allow for more involved discussions with the authors. Of course this requires a good thought at logistics of poster sessions from conference organizers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T15:52:38.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2682" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-30T16:00:44.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions which ask for advice in handling a specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T16:31:06.680" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T16:31:06.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2683" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-30T16:00:44.410" Score="0" Body="Questions which ask for advice in handling a specific situation." OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T16:31:07.473" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T16:31:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2672" CreationDate="2012-07-30T20:03:22.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All of the below stems from my own experience mentoring and working with undergrads, both as a grad student and as a postdoc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, realize that many undergraduate students aren't ready to do research on their own when they first arrive in a research lab. (Heck, neither are many graduate students...) Additionally, many will not &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do their own research, but they're very happy learning what you do and helping you set it up and work through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you'll want to start with simply talking to them &lt;em&gt;during the interview process&lt;/em&gt; to determine what they want to gain from the experience. Most won't have a solid answer, but for the few that say something like, &quot;I want to improve my MATLAB skills,&quot; or &quot;I want to gain experience doing cell cultures&quot;, you now know whether they're a match for your lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority don't have specific interests, though. For those students, consider allowing them to work on a variety of projects with multiple graduate students. This allows them to observe different research techniques, different approaches to solving a research problem, and the different tools used in research. If you have the time, you (and the members of your lab) can take a more hands-on approach and actively mentor the student, showing them the various steps involved in constructing an experiment and the logic behind the data analysis stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T20:03:22.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2686" CreationDate="2012-07-30T22:21:47.983" Score="18" ViewCount="2763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often read in research articles acknowledgments such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first author is (partially) supported by a grant of the National Science Foundation of Sikinia no. 1234567890.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the guidelines for acknowledging funding agencies? Should I mention, for instance, grants that cover some research expenses or sponsor my participation to a conference? Or only those who pay me directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T23:16:58.383" Title="Acknowledging funding" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2685" CreationDate="2012-07-30T22:51:24.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the funding agencies provide guidelines regarding the kinds of acknowledgements you need to use. When reporting to the funding agency, some will only accept papers that have been appropriately acknowledged. Others are happy just to see papers produced by the people they fund. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EU Projects require acknowledgement, and a specific phrase must be used.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flemish FWO projects require no such acknowledgement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it never hurts to acknowledge your source of funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T22:51:24.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-30T23:16:08.603" Score="10" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is the appropriate stacksite to ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BSc in Computer Software Development and would very much like to study another year for an MSc in Computer Science. I had the choice of an MEng but decided to take the separate MSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard mixed opinions on the subject but considering the climate I personally think it would be a good idea to gain a post-graduate degree. I've heard from Master students who were able to open many more opportunities from gaining an MSc - such as successfully entering the Game Industry which I know is very competitive. Although I'm not one for Game related modules, I chose more software engineering, database, and programming modules instead of rendering and games design modules throughout my BSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be getting into a considerable amount of additional debt to fund this year, but I feel like I'd be much more employable so the debt wouldn't really be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated. I am 23 and an Englishman, just to put things into perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1388" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T12:46:53.387" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T20:01:02.877" Title="Benefit of a 1-year MSc in Comp Sci in the UK" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2685" CreationDate="2012-07-30T23:16:58.383" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rule I recommend is extremely liberal: If you write or publish a paper while being funded by a grant in any capacity whatsoever, acknowledge the grant.  (&quot;Work by this author was partially supported by...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, say thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T23:16:58.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2698" CreationDate="2012-07-30T23:23:56.927" Score="15" ViewCount="4030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am originally from India, currently a PhD student in Mathematics in the US. As such I don't have very many ties to the US and I was wondering whether it is common for PhDs from the US to get academic positions in Australia and New Zealand. I have seen some jobs postings on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjobs.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mathjobs.org/&lt;/a&gt; advertising positions in Aus/NZ universities, but I am not sure how many US PhDs apply to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are most faculty members in Aus/NZ universities 'homegrown', or is it fairly common to see PhD's from other countries? Is a US PhD the norm, an advantage, or a disadvantage when applying for an academic position in Aus/NZ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="948" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T13:20:47.070" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T16:34:16.753" Title="How hard is it to get an academic position in Australia/New Zealand with a PhD from the US?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;australia&gt;&lt;new-zealand&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-31T00:05:38.170" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will speak toward my experience, as a poster presenter, and a poster reviewer. My experience is primarily in the domains of &lt;strong&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Public Health&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Medicine&lt;/strong&gt; so take that for what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Does this mean they liked my work?&quot;. It means they don't &lt;em&gt;hate&lt;/em&gt; your work. While conferences do need people, and their only rate-limiting factor is the size of whatever room they're having the poster session in, they don't accept all posters. I've reviewed posters, and some of the posters I marked down heavily didn't end up getting accepted. Admittedly, you'll see reject rates of like 20-25%, but that's still not nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Is it as good as a talk?&quot; Probably not. But keep in mind an abstract gets accepted as a talk because it fits &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; criteria: Quality and Theme. The talk has to be good. But as importantly, the talk has to be on a subject that fits well within a session, so an organizer will grab it. It's possible this doesn't happen, even if your abstract is amazing - sometimes, it just doesn't fit in somewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Is it important?&quot; &lt;em&gt;Yes!&lt;/em&gt; It's not the most important thing you've ever done, and it's not going to change your career. But from standing next to posters I've gotten complements - and critiques - of my work that have made it better. I've made contacts that have turned into collaborations. I've talked to important people, and had my work in front of them. Someone I know got a &quot;Here's my card, why don't you shoot me an email after the conference...&quot; Admittedly, I've gotten all that from talks as well, but a poster isn't just some sad way to justify your registration fee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T00:05:38.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2689" CreationDate="2012-07-31T01:31:41.820" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many academics in Australia who obtained their PhD in the United States. In general, I think that overseas experience is seen as a positive, whether it be an Australian going overseas to do a PhD or a PostDoc or a non-Australian  obtaining their PhD or PostDoc overseas. Some ranking systems even rate departments based on the number of international faculty members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you still need to meet the job requirements. Thus, it is still going to help if you have a great publication track record, have studied or worked in a world-renowned university with world-renowned academics, and so on. Most Australian universities have a job listing site where you can subscribe to job alerts. Also, you would generally need to have good English language skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T01:31:41.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2677" CreationDate="2012-07-31T05:33:12.647" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may get the best response by using informal channels.  If you know the managing editor of the journal (my field is small enough that I often do), you might send an informal email, or even just express your concern in person.  As Ben Norris mentioned, &lt;strong&gt;the key is that you communicate in a calm, rational, and deliberative way&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T05:33:12.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-07-31T05:50:19.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I basically agree with Rule 4, and analogously feel that giving a contributed paper doesn't count for much (and carries almost no evidence that your work has been vetted).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would encourage you to see a poster presentation (or giving a contributed paper) as an &lt;strong&gt;opportunity to practice your presentation skills&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One advantage of a poster session is that you can try explaining a concept in different ways, and see which explanation is most well received.&#xA;Although you're obviously honing your ability to communicate verbally, you should also be honing your ability to present information visually in a simple way.  Many of the same principles that make for a good poster also make for good slides.  And these principles are far from obvious to most people when they start out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T05:50:19.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2012-07-31T06:28:02.083" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention if you want to do an MS in the UK or the US. If the former, I have no experience of how it works over there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, an MS in CS does improve your chances of getting a decent job, but a lot depends on where you're getting an MS. In the US, the masters program is often viewed as a way to generate revenue via tuition, so your main benefit from the program is if it's very good at placing students. Obviously an MS from a place like Stanford or Berkeley will help you immensely because of the proximity of many tech options. But if you don't go to a place that has a good track record with placement, then the degree itself, while opening some doors, will not have provided you with maximum benefit for the price you're paying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure you go to a place that has strong ties to industry in the areas you're interested in. Since you mentioned games, many universities (including mine!) have specialized MS programs in game design (and we have fairly strong ties to local industry in the game world). That might be too specialized for you, but you get the general drift&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T06:28:02.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2700" CreationDate="2012-07-31T07:03:53.313" Score="16" ViewCount="11297" Body="&lt;p&gt;IEEE asks journal authors to submit the names of their (non-)preferred reviewers. Given it may not be appropriate to list an acquaintance as a reviewer, how does one judge if an anonymous person will be a good reviewer or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is giving &quot;non-preferred&quot; reviewers akin to the author confiding about his academic relationships to the editor? Do people really need to fill this column up at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2020-08-02T10:19:06.247" Title="Having preferred and non-preferred reviewers in journal submissions" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2705" CreationDate="2012-07-31T07:13:10.057" Score="14" ViewCount="15607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some US universities offer a master's program that lasts for just a year. At times the cost of such programs are higher than the regular 2-year MS programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should students opt for a one-year master's? What are the merits involved in such an option? The demerits seem to be many: lack of time for courses or internship opportunities or learning in general, less useful for a research career, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T06:44:43.233" Title="When should one opt for a one-year master's program in the US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2695" CreationDate="2012-07-31T07:29:47.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;non-preferred&quot; reviewer is typically someone who may have personal or subjective reasons to react negatively to your work, regardless of its scientific content.  It is not intended to be a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T07:29:47.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2689" CreationDate="2012-07-31T07:51:15.447" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The proportion of &quot;homegrown&quot; to &quot;...imported?&quot; PhDs varies depending on your discipline, but at the science end of things (I'm in computer science, but know plenty of mathematicians and also majored in chemistry as an undergraduate) it's quite international. Apart from pathological cases (known &quot;bad&quot; universities, or otherwise extremely dubious universities), where you got your PhD is not particularly important. As Jeromy says in another answer, international experience is definitely viewed favourably though. My having done my doctorate overseas has definitely been a boon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real criteria are performance based; publications, teaching (especially awards or other recognition) and ability to bring in the grant money! (That last one in quite important, for better or worse). As a recent Doctorate, you'll mainly need to show that you can conduct quality research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for some completely non-statistically-significant stats, my Australian undergrad. chemistry department had about 50% overseas PhDs, my CS department had more like 90% overseas PhDs and my maths department had about 50% too. At my current (Australian) department (CS), it's probably about 70-80% overseas PhDs (though that's a guesstimate at the moment), including me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the caveat is, again, this will change from department to department and university to university. Some like to only hire their own graduates, others will never hire their own graduates. Your best course is really to contact the academics offering the jobs, establish a bit of an informal relationship and find out what each position is looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T07:51:15.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-31T08:01:17.753" Score="17" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently in my university research group (scientific fields: computer science and bioinformatics) we had some open positions for PhD students and PostDoc.&#xA;For the hiring phase, we decided to insert some announcements on many free websites.&#xA;We avoided pay websites, such as IEEE Job Site or others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the hiring phase has just ended up. We've found some good applicants, but not so good as we expected.&#xA;So I am wondering what would have happened if we had chosen the pay way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched for some prices for a 30 days announcement on some popular job websites, and here are the prices I've found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linkedin: 140 €&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ACM Careers: 380 €&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IEEE Computer Science Society job board: 400 €&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IEEE Job Site: 212 €&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think that these prices were worth to find better PhD or PostDoc candidates?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that next time we should pay one of these announcements in order to get better candidates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you experienced before with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="379" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T17:49:52.183" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T17:49:52.183" Title="Are pay announcements worth their price to hire people?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;announcements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2695" CreationDate="2012-07-31T09:14:53.620" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally worthwhile to identify people who both should and should not be invited to review a paper. Obviously most journals now require you to suggest names for reviewers—however, the editor is generally under no compulsion to invite these people to review the manuscript, if they feel other people are more suitable (or are more likely to accept the invitation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of &quot;non-preferred&quot; reviewers is meant for &quot;conflicts&quot; rather than &quot;conflicts of interest.&quot; If you have a direct competitor, or someone in the past who has been &lt;em&gt;inappropriately&lt;/em&gt; hostile to your work, then you should list them here. However, as the original poster suggests, this could also be used to list &quot;obvious&quot; referees who shouldn't be candidates for a given paper &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they are also collaborators of the authors (but perhaps not in the present work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T09:14:53.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2696" CreationDate="2012-07-31T09:45:12.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the length of program should be a direct factor when deciding on a masters program. I think you need to think about what each program gives your for your investment (time and possibly money).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T09:45:12.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2677" CreationDate="2012-07-31T09:51:33.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering my own question with an option that hasn't been given yet. If the journal is linked to a society (which it is in this case) with an annual (biannual, etc.) conference, then there may be a special conference session on the journal which the managing editors attend. For the journal in question, the concerns have been raised at the annual meeting for the past few years and there is a growing community of dissatisfied people who are taking stances like mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T09:51:33.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2012-07-31T10:05:27.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I believe, that graduate science education is not a good choice from a purely financial standpoint. Not only do you have the fees, but also a lost year of wages and experience. If you are looking at a year of un/under employment, then it is easier to argue for graduate education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T10:05:27.167" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2696" CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:26:45.087" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One-year master's programs in computer science are usually terminal course-based degrees.  They are essentially useless for a future research career, because they do not include time to do research.  (PhD admissions committees care about your research potential much more than your grades.)  Put brutally, professional MS programs exist for the sole purpose of trading tuition for the promise of a higher salary.  The advantage of these programs is that successful graduates (at least from my department) actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get higher salaries, and the program only takes one year.  Also, if you work for a particularly enlightened employer, they may be willing to (help) pay your tuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two-year master's programs in computer science are more research-based.  In addition to classes, most research master's students write a thesis describing original research; that's why it takes two years instead of just one.  That's also one of the advantages of the program; you have more time to learn outside the formal classroom environment.  You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; also be able to secure funding through research or teaching assistantships; these are almost unheard of for professional master's students.  The disadvantage is that if you're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; interested in research, the program takes two years instead of one.  On the other hand, a research masters seems to have the same effect on salary as a professional masters, in part because it's impossible to tell from a resume what type of MS you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T15:26:45.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2718" CreationDate="2012-07-31T23:01:38.047" Score="31" ViewCount="7650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student at a top-ten university in the UK. I'm just starting the second year of my social science doctorate. I'm way 'ahead' of where I should be at the moment in terms of words written, research done etc, so I've got some time to build my CV and that kind of thing. In the past few months I've come to recognize the critical importance of getting published during the PhD to getting a postdoc at a good University, so I want to get something published. I'm working on two papers on my own - one a full length, one more of an opinion piece (the journal in question calls it a 'viewpoint'), but I recently met at a conference someone I'd be very interested in doing a collaboration with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my basic question is - should I just email him and suggest my idea? Or should I begin by just chatting about the conference? He's a lecturer in another university, one higher up the league tables than we are (not Oxbridge). We got on really well at the conference and had a lot of academic work to talk about. I also considered getting some of his papers/books and getting a much better feel for the details of his work and then starting a conversation based on some questions/comments on his work. This therefore feeds into a wider &quot;mechanics of academia&quot; question - is this how collaborations start in general? Person A just finds a suitable Person B and emails them with an idea for a paper they both have appropriate expertise to write? Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1392" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T05:01:56.387" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:54:36.183" Title="How should a PhD student approach a collaboration?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2711" CreationDate="2012-07-31T23:49:34.133" Score="12" ViewCount="2979" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can international PhD students go do internships during summer in industries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does their F1 visa status allow this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From how I see it, this is neither an OPT or a CPT. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my International Office and they said I could spend a term at another university because then I'm still enrolled Full Time (just at another institution) which I believe is fine with some paperwork. However, they are getting back to me (it's been a while so I am asking here) whether anyone else has done something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2017-07-15T09:10:53.023" Title="Can international students in USA intern in summer in industry?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2712" CreationDate="2012-08-01T02:13:31.070" Score="19" ViewCount="5003" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen similar questions here, and I wish there was a narrower tag than the broad soft-question and career-development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently a freshman/sophomore-to-be at a top ten math program in US. My major GPA is around 3.5-3.6, and so is my overall GPA. Due to fast progress in my courses (skipped all lower divs) I will be ready to graduate in a year or year and a half. The question is whether I should do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see myself outside of academia, and dead-set on pursuing PhD in math. With my GPA far from being stellar, I was going to take more grad courses to improve the situation. The college is quite pricey, with me being an out-of-state, and so I am not really sure whether I should just graduate and take those courses back home (or apply for masters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recap: is it better to graduate early, with an average GPA and no hooks (e.g., research, high Putnam grade, no grad courses), apply for Masters program and save money, or graduate later and improve my record as an undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1393" OwnerDisplayName="user22835" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T23:32:11.833" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T23:32:11.833" Title="Graduate early with average GPA, or later with better GPA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2012-08-01T02:52:24.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too long to be a comment, and originally written for Math.SE - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, if you're set on a math PhD, then you will probably never apply for a Master's program. Most math PhDs apply straight to PhD, and these are generally funded (this is all under the assumption that you stay in the US). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical accepted candidate to a good math PhD program has a good background in the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Math knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE/Math GRE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One doesn't need to be perfect at everything, and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. The exception to this rule is that you must have great recs - there is a certain recommendation inflation right now, and it seems to me that recommendations are judged just as harshly by what is not said. I say this only because without grad courses/research/high gpa, it might be challenging for one of your professors to speak highly on your behalf. Or maybe not - it's case by case, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak as to how strong your exact application would be, as I don't know the specifics. Your best feedback would probably come from a mentor or advisor from your department, or one of the professors whom you would ask for a recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing specifics, I might also ask: what is the rush for? (rhetorically)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, I should mention that it might be possible, depending on your school's policy, to apply for grad programs and decide to actually graduate only if you get accepted/have positive feedback. But this is not ideal, as it's sort of a punt. Were you to not get accepted, you wouldn't have set up summer plans and your last year would be somewhat hodge-podge. Yet these are the exact things that would improve your application for the next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food for thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T02:52:24.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2708" CreationDate="2012-08-01T03:18:40.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can, and this is exactly what CPT is for. (assuming you get paid for the internship. If you are not being paid - I'm not sure what the rules are, but it might be easier than CPT)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do it for up to 12 month (not necessarily consecutive) during your degree. Check again with your international Office for the exact rules (you might still need to be enrolled to 12 units if not summer quarter/semester).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T03:18:40.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2012-08-01T03:40:14.587" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your answer will depend partly on what you want to do in academia.  If you want to teach, but don't really want to emphasize research much, you might do fine to graduate now.  However, if &lt;strong&gt;your goal is to become a professor at a research intensive school, then you really should go to the strongest grad school you can get into.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Based on your description, I strongly suspect that if you bust your butt for another year or two, in particular working to earn one or two strong letters of rec, you could get into a better grad school than you can currently.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know there are considerations about who you will work with, perhaps geography, potential two-body problems, etc.  So, why's it so important to go to the best school you can?  Again and again I see that in academia (as everywhere) networking is crucial.  Generalizing and stereotyping a bit: &lt;em&gt;the best schools have the best researchers, who know the other best researchers, who have the biggest grants, which fund the nicest postdocs, etc.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;If you want to thrive as a researcher, you will do well to get into that network.&lt;/strong&gt;  (To a large extent, it's a rich get richer system.)  As an undergrad or early grad student, one way you can get into that network is to work with a professor who is a central part of it, and is willing to weave you in.  And your chances of working with said professor typically go up with the reputation of the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a personal digression.  Through high school and undergrad I was in a hurry to get to the next level as soon as possible.  I skipped 7th grade, finished undergrad in 3 years, and started grad school at the age of 20.  I even turned down a year abroad in the Budapest Semester in Math, because I was worried I'd miss out if I waited too long to get to grad school.  The sad truth is that I wasn't ready.  Maybe &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would be; I've never met you, so I can't say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually (after 8 years), I finished a PhD, and am fairly happy with where my career is headed.  However, I don't regret that time in grad school at all.  I learned a lot of useful stuff.  In fact, I think it's &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; I took my time in grad school that my career has gone as well as it has.  One interesting feature of academia is that you're typically judged by your productivity relative to the time since you earned your PhD (rather than your age).  As a result, I encourage you to take your time and learn as much as you can.  You'll never again have as much free time as you do now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T03:40:14.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2012-08-01T08:19:55.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pay rises in the Australian context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, many universities have a system of increments and levels: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level A: Associate lecturer / research assistant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level B: Lecturer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level C: Senior Lecturer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level D: Associate Professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level E: Professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://policy.unimelb.edu.au/UOM0115#section-1.1.1.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Melbourne HR with pay information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within each level there are multiple increments. You will tend to get an increment each year for reasonable performance. For exceptional performance, you might get a double increment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, moving up a level is considered a promotion and is not automatic. Thus, you might sit at the top of a level for a while if your service, teaching, and research does not meet the requirements of a higher level. Promotions at early levels are generally handled at departmental or school levels. As you go up, promotions are progressively more likely to require department, faculty, and university support and review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if you want to earn more in the Australian context, you may have to work out a way of meeting the requirements for promotion. Your university should have detailed information about how this occurs (see for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hr.unimelb.edu.au/careers/development/academic/promotions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Melbourne example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are extensive guidelines for what is required for a promotion, there is still presumably some scope for how they are applied. Thus, it helps if you have the support of key decision makers who will be involved in approving your promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some other examples&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have heard of cases where an academic has been given a job offer at another institution and has used this to leverage a promotion at their current institution. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likewise, changing institutions is one way of getting a pay rise. E.g., I've seen many examples of people changing universities in order to move from associate professor to professor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some departments have special bonus schemes which permit you to earn additional money for publishing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some departments are more tolerant of external paid consulting work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are some exceptions to the standard context where salaries are negotiated a bit more. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T08:19:55.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-01T08:54:37.660" Score="13" ViewCount="3333" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is one incentive their ability to communicate their perceptiveness to people in their general community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other incentives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T13:11:13.387" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T19:51:23.557" Title="Incentives for professors to write recommendation letters" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2714" CreationDate="2012-08-01T09:11:50.137" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The principal reason for writing any letter of recommendation is to benefit the person for whom you are writing it.  If a student is talented, helping him or her get into a good program is its own incentive.  I can't imagine writing a letter with the motive of showing off my perceptiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional motive is that others wrote letters for the writer once, and he/she can show gratitude by paying it forward.  From David Keyes' excellent essay on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1777&quot;&gt;procuring reference letters&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyone in a position to write a career-changing letter of reference&#xA;  is there by the grace of earlier generations of mentors at school or&#xA;  work who poured their lives into today's writer and then wrote about&#xA;  the results in now dusty letters. The only gifts today's authors&#xA;  expect from today's candidates are those &quot;in kind&quot; or better to be&#xA;  delivered to tomorrow's candidates, in one-way cross-generational&#xA;  equity. Writers have their own rewards in the success of their&#xA;  protégés, and though they will moan to each other about the burden,&#xA;  they recognize that reference letters are key components of an&#xA;  imperfect system that nevertheless is on the whole effective in&#xA;  keeping their discipline healthy and growing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T05:20:38.283" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T05:20:38.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2714" CreationDate="2012-08-01T11:03:31.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the best incentive you can give a professor to write you a good letter is to 1) develop a relationship with the professor so that he or she knows something more about you than the grade you earned in their class, and 2) impress them in some way so that he or she has something good to say about you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with David Ketcheson. My sole purpose for writing letters of recommendation is to help the student. Letters of recommendation are read by committees that read hundreds of them every year, and I want the committee to have a strong impression of the student after they read my letter, not of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, my students don't automatically get the &quot;best&quot; or &quot;strongest&quot; recommendation I can write. They get the recommendation they earn. For example, I cannot justify describing a C student as having strong academic potential. I can't write favorably about an undergraduate who signed up for a research project and then never showed up. And, I usually cannot say all that much about students I don't know very well. No matter what, I will take what I know about the student's strengths and weaknesses and try to paint the best picture possible; it just might not be glowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T11:03:31.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2719" CreationDate="2012-08-01T11:43:20.197" Score="27" ViewCount="5866" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should a professor proceed when a student or colleague asks for a letter of recommendation and the professor does not have a high opinion of that person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T12:09:23.700" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T12:59:48.810" Title="What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2707" CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:01:14.430" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to start a collaboration is to engage in a face-to-face brainstorming/working session so that you 1) formulate a problem of a mutual interest, 2) jointly sketch a scaffolding of a joint paper, and 3) come up with a plan to proceed, or at least agree on how to arrive to such a plan. Before the meeting consider the topic semi-open (unless you are dead-sure you know what you want to work on with the person), you never know what new/interesting/unexpected will come out of your discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to get to a meeting/a few days stay, you need to arrange for a visit at the (future) collaborator's place and it seems that what you are asking is about a particular way to do that. From my personal experience, there is no &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;, nor a &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; way to do it. I understand these things in terms of &lt;em&gt;signalling&lt;/em&gt;. That is, the form is &lt;strong&gt;less&lt;/strong&gt; important that the signal you are sending. In my opinion/experience it does not matter whether you write a short notice like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello Joe, we met there and there and I got intrigued by the topic we discussed. Would it be possible for me to visit your lab/group and expand on those ideas? Fred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or expand in a two-page argument about why it is beneficial for both of you to meet. In both cases the signal is the same: &lt;strong&gt;would you be willing to speak to me?&lt;/strong&gt; and that is the only thing which matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you should read the reply in exactly the same manner. Whatever is written there, the only thing which matters is whether the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes, let's see what comes out&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;no, blah, blah&lt;/strong&gt;. All the rest can be discussed during the meeting, given the reply is positive. If it's negative, most probably the collaboration wouldn't work out anyway. Being open-minded is a state of mind, a personality trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your concern about the collaborator's higher rank/position at a prominent university: I do not know about the culture and social interactions in communities concerned with humanities, but my general observation is that the &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; a scientist (whatever &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; means), the more humble and modest the person is with respect to the corporate structure and seniority ladder. That is, the majority of really good/respectable researchers in my experience do not care for your rank, they care for what you say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I wanted to convey above is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if the person you want to collaborate with is open minded and thus a potentially a good collaborator, it does not really matter how you approach him/her, &lt;strong&gt;just do it&lt;/strong&gt;. In the case you have something important/significant/novel to say, he/she will engage you and the collaboration will start. Just remember, it's you who approached the other party, hence you want something from her/him, therefore it is important that you understand that you will be the driver of the collaboration, at least at the beginning - the ball is initially on your side - unless you touch a topic the other party is working on and has some solutions for anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T12:01:14.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2717" CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:59:48.810" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it may be quite awkward, it is certainly acceptable to tell the student/colleague that you do not feel you can write a strong LoR for them, and to suggest that they ask someone else. This may seem rude or even unkind, but it's much better for the student/colleague in the long run than a lukewarm or poor letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T12:59:48.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2708" CreationDate="2012-08-01T13:32:48.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was an international undergraduate in the US and I participated in summer research programs twice during those 4 years. This is slightly different from what the OP is asking, since I was working at a different university as opposed to a company. The way it worked for me was the following: I needed a faculty member at my home institution to be my 'sponsor', and I had to register for a 2 credit course over the relevant summer. Having finished my summer research, I was required to give a presentation (to some sort of relevant audience, for example, once to an 'Introduction to Research' class) and submit a journal/report. I believe my supervisor from the institution where I did my summer work was asked for a short report on my activities. That was all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest hurdle for me was to find summer programs which are willing to accept international students, or at least to fund us (in mathematics, for example, REUs are typically funded by the NSF, which prevents them from accepting international students). In Math I was only able to find 2-3 programs which would do so. There were many more in biology/biochemistry. I have a list around here somewhere if anyone is seeking such information. On the other hand, this might be different if one is looking at industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T13:32:48.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2699" CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:03:39.020" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it's worth paying for an advertisement if you end up hiring a stronger candidate.  I tend to be fairly frugal, but I think of your situation in terms of &lt;em&gt;one-time cost&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;recurring cost&lt;/em&gt;.  When you pay for the ad, &lt;strong&gt;you pay just once&lt;/strong&gt;.  When you hire a weaker candidate, &lt;strong&gt;you pay every day&lt;/strong&gt; in terms of lower productivity and lower quality results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., a typical annual salary for a postdoc in math might be in the range of $40,000-45,000 (33,000-36,500 €); in CS, it would likely be higher.  Even the IEEE price (the highest of those you list) is roughly 1% of that.  So, if you're fairly confident you'll get a better candidate by paying for a few ads, IMHO, &lt;strong&gt;you'd be foolish not to do so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T14:03:39.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:42:31.650" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add a couple of remarks to Dan C's excellent answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you should not graduate early, unless your finances force it.&lt;/strong&gt;  Except for cost, there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; advantage to finishing early.  Admissions committees will compare you to other undergraduate applicants, not other applicants your age; age discrimination is illegal.  They will not care about your grades, as long as they're good; everyone applying to those departments has fantastic grades.  I suspect almost all applicants to top math departments skipped their low-level math classes.  I assume you'll ace the math GRE, but then so will everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sets the successful applicants to top PhD programs apart is &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence of research potential&lt;/strong&gt;.  To gain admission to the top departments you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have strong letters &lt;em&gt;from faculty&lt;/em&gt; that directly praise your potential for mathematical research in specific, personal, and credible detail.  The only way to get those letters is to work directly with faculty &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the classroom.  Fortunately, because you skipped your freshman classes, you have room in your schedule to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention &quot;out of state&quot;, so I'm guessing you're at a big state school (like mine); your classes so far probably had hundreds of students, and many were taught by graduate students or adjuncts.  You have to break out of that; you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; get to know some faculty.  And because you're at a big state school, this is going to require considerable initiative on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking graduate classes is a good way to meet faculty, but it's just a start.  &lt;strong&gt;Do not just sit quietly in class and get an A.&lt;/strong&gt;  Meet with your instructor early in the semester, explain you ambition for academia, and ask about opportunities for research and/or independent study.  Be prepared to explain what kind of mathematics you're best at, and what kind of math inspires you.  The first prof you talk to is not likely to be a good match for your specific interests; ask them for suggestions of other faculty to talk to.  Repeat ad infinitum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other reasons not to graduate early, which are less professional, but no less important.  Give yourself some time to grow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T14:47:55.153" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T14:47:55.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2699" CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:58:38.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The research center I am affiliated with had a difficult time filling a couple of the senior level posts. Basically, they were looking for people with associate professor type qualifications who were willing to work on a 3 year project with limited research freedom, but generous funding. We resorted to using a head hunter, which was a couple of order of magnitude more expensive, but well worth it. The head hunter found candidates that we couldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For studentships and postdocs, I am not sure the people you are looking for are browsing the pay sites. The amount of money is small enough that it is probably worth it, especially if you can get a couple of posts into one advertisement. I would suggest building up your groups network. Talk to your colleagues at other universities. I think in general there isn't a shortage of good phd students and post docs, it is just getting an inside scoop on who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T14:58:38.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2714" CreationDate="2012-08-01T15:27:05.117" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the main incentive is to help the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recommendation letters are also a service to the departments who read them.  &lt;em&gt;Your colleagues&lt;/em&gt; will read your letters to help them make admissions or hiring decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, over time, faculty build up reputations for the kinds of letters they write.  Faculty that are known to write overly effusive letters (as an extreme example: &quot;best student in five years!&quot; every year) are not taken seriously.  On the other hand, a strong letter from someone who is known to write measured but accurate letters has a big impact.  So writing perceptive letters is not useful only to the present student, but to future students as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reputation effect becomes more significant (but more entangled with &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; reputation) as you climb the academic food chain.  For graduate admissions, it's fairly subtle.  For faculty hiring, it's much more noticeable, because hiring letters tend to come from a smaller pool.  For tenure and promotion, where the pool of writers is even smaller, the reputation effect is quite significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T15:27:05.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2707" CreationDate="2012-08-01T16:52:01.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no sense beating around the bush. Just ask. If they are interested they will show a sign. If not, then at least you havn't wasted weeks writing up documents that may never get used. It's flattering to have someone approach you out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1401" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T10:09:05.697" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T10:09:05.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2672" CreationDate="2012-08-02T10:26:52.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, mentoring undergraduate students depend highly on their skills and motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you should expect that an undergraduate needs to learn the technique. Even if there are after many courses, real research involves learning particular theories, techniques, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, you will need to invest some time in teaching them. Almost for sure it will be beneficial for them (unless there are not smart enough or lazy; or you overshot with a way-to-difficult problem). If they will pay back - it's hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of my experience (as a PhD student) - working was interesting and enjoyable, but I benefited only in terms of learning how to collaborate and lead projects (a crucial skill). In terms of boosting me research - well, I would have done the same (or more) by doing things by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But the main problem was that it was never so formal, so they had a limited amount of time to spend on the project; OK, once mentoring a high-school student it was &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; beneficial for them (the first prize in an international competition), but it's a different story than a collaboration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T10:26:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-02T14:32:38.893" Score="30" ViewCount="2605" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I am post-doc in the USA, and my PI (principal investigator) just published a review &lt;strong&gt;I wrote&lt;/strong&gt;, with pictures &lt;strong&gt;I took of my experiments&lt;/strong&gt; without putting my name as the author. What tools do I have at my disposal to get what is rightfully mine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:58:50.430" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T18:25:02.987" Title="What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:12:29.540" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Committee on Publication Ethics has published &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/category/keywords/disputed-authorship&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; on a number of cases of this sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know very much about this, but it appears that the COPE is an independent organization who investigate and provide advice on ethical questions involving scholarly publication, upon request; they do not have an enforcement role.  As one might expect, the cases they discuss vary widely in circumstances and in outcomes (and in many cases the outcomes were never reported back to COPE).  They generally begin with the objecting author contacting the journal's editor, and in some cases the defending author's institutional authorities become involved.  As to outcomes, when the complaint was determined to be justified, a common response was to publish a note in the journal correcting the authorship; in some other cases the article was retroactively withdrawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; offering this as advice on how to proceed; I don't have enough experience to offer any useful advice at all.  I just thought it might be helpful as context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T12:56:45.623" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T12:56:45.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2175" CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:15:08.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the wikipedia page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;GetCITED is a website database that lists publication and citation information on academic articles whose information is entered by members. It aims to include not only journal articles but also book chapters and other publications, both peer-reviewed and non-reviewed. The objective is to make this information publicly available, as such information is presently held in restricted databases. It indexes over 3,000,000 publications from over 300,000 authors.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the actual getcited.org webpage, we see the copyright dates &lt;em&gt;2000-2006&lt;/em&gt;, which makes me think the page has not been maintained in 5 or 6 years.  So basically, it seems to be a dead website, that is still available mainly because domain registration is so cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T15:15:08.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2736" CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:29:47.140" Score="9" ViewCount="1191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ed Tufte offers a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses&quot;&gt;discount to his seminars&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;full-time teaching faculty&quot; (as well as full-time students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;full-time teaching&quot; exclude full-time faculty who spend part time doing research? Does advising count as teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I contacted the organizer and they clarified that &quot;full-time teaching&quot; excludes most &quot;research&quot; faculty; it is intended for faculty whose primary job is to teach, not research faculty who also teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T04:00:27.497" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T04:00:27.497" Title="What is a &quot;full-time teaching faculty&quot; (and does advising count)?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2169" CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:54:30.160" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reposted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9711539/reverse-lookup-digital-object-identifier-given-table-of-citations/9795971#9795971&quot;&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Here are three options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;CSV upload to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crossref.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CrossRef allows you to upload the linked csv directly, and then&#xA;  performs a text query here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/stqUpload/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.crossref.org/stqUpload/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, only 18 of the 250 queries (~7%) returned a doi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;XML Query&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/9711893/199217&quot;&gt;answer on SO by Brian&#xA;  Diggs&lt;/a&gt;, here an attempt&#xA;  that does 95% of the work - toward writing the xml-based query, it&#xA;  still has a few bugs that require some deletion using &lt;code&gt;sed&lt;/code&gt;. But the&#xA;  biggest problem that my &quot;session timed out&quot; when the query was&#xA;  submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the xml syntax includes an option to use fuzzy matching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the doiquery.xml contains the template text in @Brians answer; the&#xA;  citations.csv is linked above. (using R, a sample csv can be found on&#xA;  I have posted the first few lines of the table on &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ai_PDCcY5g2JdGN0VGxCd2NsNk5aQ0puUGlQZGczRkE&amp;amp;output=html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google&#xA;  docs&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ai_PDCcY5g2JdGN0VGxCd2NsNk5aQ0puUGlQZGczRkE&amp;amp;output=csv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;csv&#xA;  version&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  (not all records have a doi))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;library(XML)&#xA;doiquery.xml &amp;lt;- xmlTreeParse('doiquery.xml')&#xA;&#xA;query &amp;lt;- doiquery.xml$doc$children$query_batch[[&quot;body&quot;]]&#xA;&#xA;citations &amp;lt;- read.csv(&quot;citations.csv&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;new.query &amp;lt;- function(citation, query = query){&#xA;  xmlValue(query[[&quot;author&quot;]]) &amp;lt;- as.character(citation$author)&#xA;  xmlValue(query[[&quot;year&quot;]]) &amp;lt;- as.character(citation$year)&#xA;  xmlValue(query[[&quot;article_title&quot;]][[&quot;text&quot;]]) &amp;lt;- citation$title&#xA;  xmlValue(query[[&quot;journal_title&quot;]]) &amp;lt;- citation$journal&#xA;  return(query)&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;for (i in 1:nrow(citations)){&#xA;  q &amp;lt;- addChildren(q, add.query(citations[i,]))&#xA;}&#xA;axml &amp;lt;- addChildren(doiquery.xml$doc$children$query_batch, q )&#xA;&#xA;saveXML(axml, file = 'foo.xml')&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;CSV to XML Converter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Creativyst software provides a web based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativyst.com/cgi-bin/Prod/15/eg/csv2xml.pl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CSV to&#xA;  XML&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  converter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steps: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Enter columnames in ElementID's field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;document&quot; in DocID field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;query&quot; in RowID field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Copy / paste csv in &quot;Input CSV file&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Click Convert&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, see this related question:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9880808/shell-script-to-parse-csv-to-an-xml-query&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9880808/shell-script-to-parse-csv-to-an-xml-query&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T13:07:23.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2734" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:47:02.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd have to ask him to know for sure, but I would expect &quot;full-time teaching faculty&quot; to refer to full-time faculty whose duties include a substantial amount of teaching.  It would exclude adjunct professors and other part-time faculty, and would also exclude faculty who never or rarely teach.  I expect that very few college or university faculty positions literally involve teaching &quot;full-time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T16:47:02.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2734" CreationDate="2012-08-02T17:05:51.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a single definition. The website refers to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Full-time students not currently working, and full-time teaching&#xA;  faculty only&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in this case, it means people who do not have jobs outside the university, but it may exclude people who have a portion of their salary paid by grants (e.g., post docs). The best thing to do is to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T17:05:51.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2714" CreationDate="2012-08-03T00:03:05.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent points others made, it reflects well on a faculty member and a department for their students to be successful.  While I primarily write letters for the benefit of the students, it's great to be able to say when recruiting other students, or when talking to the Provost, that our graduates are getting great jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T00:03:05.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2012-08-03T14:25:44.347" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to realize that you are on dangerous ground and that nothing good is going to come out of this situation. Having your colleagues (including your PI) think that you are accusing your PI of academic dishonesty is a major black mark against you, even if your PI has done something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is important to vent, you need to do this very carefully. You cannot vent to any of your work colleagues or anyone who knows your PI. Even a post in a public forum like this is dangerous. Yelling in your closet at home is probably best. Even better would be in a closet in a hotel in a foreign country. I am not kidding, no one can know about this until you can deal with it calmly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can calmly deal with the issue calmly, schedule a meeting with your PI to ask what you could have done to get authorship on the review. Do not accuse your PI of stealing your work, or even hint that you deserved authorship. Hopefully this discussion goes well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the discussion doesn't go well, or even if it does, after a little bit, schedule a different meeting to discuss authorship on all the work you are currently undertaking. This is something that doesn't get done enough, and can cause major problems like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point you will hopefully have a clear understanding of your PI's policies on authorship. Now you need to decide if they are unfair, or were not applied in the case of this review. If the PI's policies are unfair (or not applied fairly), you need to find a new advisor ASAP. Once you have secured another position, but not before, think about leveeing accusations of academic dishonesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T14:25:44.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-08-03T16:35:50.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending what country you are in, they are often required to make accommodations by law, but that is only if they know about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if it is 'just' social interactions that are the issue affecting you, then it is worth examining exactly what you hope to gain out of telling people, because it is more of a gray area in terms of your rights as far as I understand it, anyway.For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are always being expected to work in a group and you feel worried about this and want to work on your own, it might be worth it. However, if it is just a bit of understanding you want for when you say inappropriate things then you might also be disappointed by how ignorant educated people can actually be about these sorts of things... It depends on you though, some people are more bothered by what people think than others are! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1248" LastEditDate="2012-08-14T23:35:14.940" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T23:35:14.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2765" CreationDate="2012-08-04T06:16:44.233" Score="30" ViewCount="4170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of posting slides from some of my technical presentations online.  One option I've used in the past is just posting the PDFs.  But I've seen some sites that offer nice interfaces for others to view and share your slides without downloading them, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://speakerdeck.com&quot;&gt;SpeakerDeck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/&quot;&gt;Slideshare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://present.me/&quot;&gt;Present.me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am primarily interested in advertising my research to other researchers who might be interested in using it or collaborating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which site should I use, and why?  Or are raw PDFs the way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it matters, I'm a computational mathematician and my slides are a mixture of text, equations, plots, short videos, and diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-04T14:43:45.977" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T06:07:24.780" Title="What's the best way to share my presentation slides online?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-04T09:45:14.677" Score="4" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am completing a PhD in Global Studies in Germany, and would like to apply for a post doc in North America, especially Canada. However, I am not sure if there is funding for post docs in the social sciences. For international students is it easier to apply for a PhD than for a post doc?&#xA; I have a publication in an edited book from a prestigious publisher, another in English in a peer reviewed journal published from Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T20:25:05.373" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T20:25:05.373" Title="In the social sciences, is it easier to get a post doc than a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-04T13:15:37.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I can see, some key issues to think about are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Social media integration and analytics.  These sites will help you advertise your presentation and gather data on who views it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Downloading.  You can make it inconvenient or impossible to download the slides.  That's an advantage if you want to control the presentation and keep anyone from archiving a copy or extracting figures (you can't stop someone determined and knowledgeable, but you can stop casual users).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accessibility on devices.  My smartphone cannot view Present.me presentations at all, and it has a little trouble with SpeakerDeck and Slideshare presentations.  (I can view them, but they are awfully small and I cannot zoom in.)  I don't usually view slides on my phone, but I do every so often.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T13:15:37.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-04T14:40:22.523" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Anonymous Mathematician, but I want to add an additional key issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rendering Compatibility: Can whichever method you choose properly render all of your content? I have had trouble converting PowerPoint files containing chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (which are vector graphic objects). Creating PDFs seems to be hit or miss depending on the method I use. Notably, Office is better at it than Adobe software. Slideshare will not render these objects at all. I do not have experience with Present.me or SpeakerDeck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T14:40:22.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-04T19:16:15.530" Score="3" ViewCount="486" Body="&lt;p&gt;To keep it short I already have a BS and MS in a physical science from decent schools.  I want to apply next year for a MS or PhD in ECE and thought I should get some formal programming on my transcript first.  I have only one intro class on there now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not having much luck finding any online courses that don't look like scams or poorly set up at best.  I was pretty excited to see that &lt;a href=&quot;http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/new-online-post-baccalaureate-computer-science-degree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oregon state&lt;/a&gt; is offering a post-bacc BS degree but the tuition is $600 a credit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess I'm looking for legitimate courses that aren't crazy expensive.  Is there anything else out there like the Oregon state program?  That's exactly what I'm looking for.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1412" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T07:16:43.960" Title="Are there any decent online undergrad computer science degrees or courses" Tags="&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:02:27.407" Score="25" ViewCount="2517" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people, when asking a question at the end of a seminar, make comments on the talk first along the lines of &quot;great talk,&quot; &quot;really enjoyed this talk,&quot; or similar phrases. Is this a desirable thing to do? I've noticed that most people don't do this, but some of my favorite scientists do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T17:48:00.420" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T19:12:02.777" Title="Is it desirable to compliment a seminar speaker before asking a question?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:23:58.270" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's your honest opinion, then I would compliment the talk. However, I wouldn't do it just to be polite. There is no need for false kindness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1172" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T20:23:58.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:25:57.613" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal preference is &lt;strong&gt;not to offer a compliment in this setting&lt;/strong&gt;.  It often strikes me as less sincere (off-handed or perfunctory).  If I really want to compliment someone, I tend to catch up with them later and start with something like &quot;I really enjoyed your talk.  If you have a minute to talk, I have a question for you about...&quot;  On the other hand, I know that some people feel like asking questions (especially if they are critical of some aspect of the work) can feel hostile, and so they find the compliment as a good way to off-set that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T20:25:57.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:06:10.227" Score="38" ViewCount="2689" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, building on unpublished work of another author, which he may have told you in  confidence, or you may encountered as a reviewer or by word of mouth or other informal means, is not an acceptable practice. Does the same apply if the author has uploaded his work on arXiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a specific scenario: Suppose I submit a paper for review to a journal. The paper has results that could possibly be extended, however, the idea for extension is either not obvious or is not compatible with the theme of the paper, so I may plan to keep it for a  later paper. If I put the paper on arXiv would it be considered ok if someone else extends my results? This would ruin the theme of the other paper I wanted to write with the extension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happened to me it would make me uncomfortable, as if my confidence has been breached. I don't know if this feeling is justified. This feeling stems from my view of arXiv. My personal theory is that arXiv is an informal medium, unlike journals and conferences, and in that sense it is no different from other channels of informal communication. It allows for structured and faster dissemination of work (thus inform the ongoing work of others), in addition to establishing priority of results, but that does not grant it a formal status. I think an author should exercise restraint in extending results from arXiv, and apply the same standards that he would if he were to encounter the work through classical informal channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is just my theory. I would like to hear what others have to say about this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1417" OwnerDisplayName="Ankur" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T19:11:43.480" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T05:08:43.880" Title="Is it acceptable to extend results from an arXiv paper that has not appeared in a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:15:07.757" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your logic, but I do not think that many people treat papers on arXiv in that way.  Papers on arXiv are public unlike the papers you reviewed or the work you just heard by personal communication.  As such, extending the results in a paper on arXiv is a perfectly acceptable practice as long as the second paper cites the paper on arXiv properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1416" OwnerDisplayName="Tsuyoshi Ito" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T17:15:07.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:22:53.660" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like publishing something on arXiv is an act of &quot;publishing&quot; nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has the advantages of publishing. These include: getting your work out there (with more visibility than if simply posting it on your webpage , which requires people be looking for your articles), getting people interested in it, and perhaps even getting citations before the paper has gone through the long and grueling process of being validated by a journal. It also had the advantage of showing that this is your result, thus preventing anybody from &quot;preempting&quot; you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then it also has the &quot;disadvantage&quot; that someone may run with your idea, and extend it, possibly even obtaining a result that is more significant than your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean publishing things on arXiv should be seen as a risk. It means that publishing on arXiv, like anywhere else, should be a well-thought decision. Note that with all the turmoil surrounding official journals, and common practices, it seems we are slowly evolving towards archives such as arXiv getting increasing legitimacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question: an article on arXiv is not &quot;unpublished&quot; at all (unlike papers you get to read as a referee, or which a colleague has shared with you in confidence---those are other issues altogether), so yes, there is generally nothing wrong with extending results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23563" OwnerDisplayName="Jérémie" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2012-08-07T14:37:13.983" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T14:37:13.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:37:45.617" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other replies say, putting your paper on a public archive is a way of making it public, and so other researchers may build on the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to do when you want to make your work public, but you're also working on extensions that will take more time to establish, is to explicitly write in the paper you publish that you have an ongoing work on those extensions.&#xA;This at least lets people know what the situation is. You can't control what people are going to do with this information, but I think that reasonable people would not immediately start working on the same extensions, and, if at some point they do want to work on these extensions, they are likely to contact you to check what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this &quot;ongoing work&quot; statement should be used only when it's appropriate and there's really an ongoing work that is likely to be completed within a reasonable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dana Moshkovitz" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T20:37:45.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2748" CreationDate="2012-08-04T21:25:19.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to try Coursera. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/courses&quot;&gt;Their courses&lt;/a&gt; are quite good and the instructors are some of the top computer scientists in their fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They give you a certificate signed by the instructor if you finish the course well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T21:25:19.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="517" CreationDate="2012-08-04T21:40:55.193" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities have offices dedicated to help people which might have learning and other kinds of difficulties, the office in University of Toronto is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessibility.utoronto.ca/&quot;&gt;Accessibility Services&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessibility.utoronto.ca/Home/About-Us.htm&quot;&gt;Their job&lt;/a&gt; is helping people who have such difficulties. I suggest that you check if your university has such an office and register with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally it is better to discuss this with them and let them inform the departments and instructors as needed. They can also provide advice to you and to the instructor and tell the instructor about the kind of special considerations they need to provide for you while keeping your personal information confidential as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has the benefit that you don't need to explain it more than once, the office will do it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also helpful for instructors. An instructor might not be knowledgeable about your difficulties and how he or she can help you. The office can tell your instructors what they have to do exactly to help you in their courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2012-08-04T21:50:06.320" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T21:50:06.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1348" CreationDate="2012-08-04T22:32:17.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my opinion that unless you have a PhD in Arabic or something intimately related to it you won't get more than a part-time adjunct instructor position. If your goal is to teach some classes without working towards a full appointment, then you might not need the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T22:32:17.860" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2012-08-05T02:13:27.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the existing suggestions, if you know someone else who has read the book they might have very good advice on which sections are essential or can be skipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1418" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T02:13:27.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-05T02:16:36.007" Score="13" ViewCount="1450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep publications from the literature in Mendeley for later reading on my iPad. There are many publications, so I need some sort of way of prioritizing the ones I need to read first versus the ones I might read someday. Right now, I use folders with varying priority levels. The biggest problem is that I cannot move articles to different folders on the iPad, so I have to do this prioritization while I'm at my computer (where I usually have more important things to do). Also, I feel like I spend most of my time assigning priorities to articles rather than reading them, which is not ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have better suggestions on how to prioritize and organize the publications I want to read using Mendeley?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1418" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T11:43:54.400" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T11:43:54.400" Title="Organizing my reading list in Mendeley" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1695" CreationDate="2012-08-05T05:22:56.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that &lt;strong&gt;few of my research opportunities come from what I put on my CV or website&lt;/strong&gt;.  I think much more &lt;strong&gt;they come through my personal network&lt;/strong&gt;.  If I'm invited to speak in a conference session, it's usually because the organizers know me, know my work, or (occasionally) know my PhD adviser (even though I finished more than 5 years ago).  When I'm asked to referee a paper, it's often because my work is cited in the paper.  One time I decided to go to a workshop in an area where I had not worked much.  Not long after I committed to the workshop, one of the organizers asked me to referee a paper on that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that is to say, that I don't think what I list on my CV among my &quot;research interests&quot; contributes much to my research opportunities.  So, &lt;strong&gt;if you want to generate more opportunities&lt;/strong&gt;, what should you do?  &lt;strong&gt;Go to conferences&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you have work to talk about, great.  If not, go to sessions on the areas you want to move into.  &lt;strong&gt;Ask good questions.  Talk with the people you meet there&lt;/strong&gt; about possible research and workshops, or what's the next big thing in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T05:22:56.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-05T18:08:19.577" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is however one more important distinction between arXiv and journals/conferences. Whatever is published in journals/conferences is final and can no more be revised. It is as if the author has said all that he has to say on the topic and it is now fair game for others to say what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this is a meaningful distinction depends on the circumstances: it's common to write a series of papers on a given topic, in which case no single paper contains all the author has to say on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers have clearly explained how the communities that use the arXiv view this matter.  However, I'd go a step further: a system where people could stake out credit for unpublished work while preventing other people from building on it would be bad for science.  Currently, this is the trade-off researchers face.  You can keep your ideas private for as long as you want, to give you time to exploit them fully.  However, you run the risk that someone else may independently discover them.  In that case, the best you can hope for is to share the credit if you promptly make your work public (and make a convincing case that it was independent).  On the other hand, if you circulate a paper publicly, then you no longer need to worry about credit, but anyone can use your ideas.  This is very reasonable: credit is not awarded for being smart or accomplished, but rather for contributing to the community, and that contribution is the ideas.  Being able to use and build on these ideas is why they are so valuable, and this is the justification for awarding credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative to this trade-off would be to allow researchers to claim credit while temporarily reserving the exclusive right to do follow-up work.  In that case, the optimal strategy would be clear: make a public announcement as soon as you cross the neecessary threshold, but then delay finalizing the work for as long as possible.  This would be very disruptive for the research community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, things are slightly less black and white than I've described them above.  It can be considered rude to compete too strenuously without a very good reason. If you come up with a minor idea building on someone else's work in progress, it's common to donate it to them rather than competing, and a major idea may lead to a collaboration.  However, this is a matter of politeness rather than ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T18:08:19.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-05T18:21:29.437" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, it is very common to build on papers that are on arXiv.  Indeed, this is more or less the whole point of arXiv: to disseminate work faster than the journal publication cycle, so that the community can immediately begin to make use of it, which includes extending it.  If you wait until the paper is published, you will be well behind the curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your reservations about building on &quot;unpublished&quot; work are applicable here.  At least in mathematics, preprints are generally posted on arXiv at the same time as they are &lt;em&gt;submitted&lt;/em&gt; for publication; they are thus already in the &quot;final&quot; form intended by the authors.  Of course it may be that further revisions take place before publication (perhaps as a result of the peer review process), but the arXiv version is usually perfectly suitable as a foundation for future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a few extra caveats are in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since a paper from arXiv has not passed peer review yet, you should probably be even more diligent than usual about checking its results before using them.  If you find errors or unclear points, it would behoove you to alert the authors, since they may be able to be corrected before publication.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, you should also keep an eye out for updates to the preprint which may contain important corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may certainly cite the arXiv preprint in your own paper.  However, you should check for a published version before final acceptance of your own (and again when correcting the proofs), and update the citation if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T18:21:29.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-05T20:11:34.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I upvoted all the earlier answers... and want to reiterate certain points. First, arXiv (and stable personally-maintained web-sites, e.g., at universities) should count as &quot;publication&quot; in the sense of making the information &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt;, which is the ideal point of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is some conflict with &quot;the other&quot; point, namely, staking a claim, getting credit, getting a job, getting tenure. But, as others have pointed out, it would have a bad effect if one could &quot;stake a claim&quot; without divulging details, thereby stifling others' work (if they needed to hope to get some &quot;credit&quot; also). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There has always been an analogous hazard for beginners, all the worse pre-internet, that senior people can be &quot;rumored&quot; to be &quot;working on something&quot;, circulated in mimeo to friends, etc. Mercifully, this is now diminished, I think, exactly because there's no excuse for limiting circulation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Anon Math and others said, of &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; it is more civil to offer collaboration rather than to compete directly, etc., and this is vastly more consistent with our ideal of advancing knowledge (rather than mere &lt;em&gt;self&lt;/em&gt;-advancement, as necessary as some of the latter may be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, then, yes, a relative novice risks having their ideas taken up by more experienced people. Yes, in particular, some people are able to rationalize that non-refereed papers need not be cited at all! This is, of course, barbaric. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T20:11:34.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-06T02:51:02.377" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I typically &lt;strong&gt;post my slides on my website as pdfs&lt;/strong&gt;.  On the &lt;strong&gt;title page of my slides&lt;/strong&gt;, I have started adding a line that says something like &lt;strong&gt;&quot;slides available on my preprint page&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, and sometimes I'll mention this at the start of my talk.  On my website, I have a page for all my slides and I also link to the relevant slides on my preprints page.  Personally, I prefer when speakers make their slides available as pdfs, because I like being able to download them and file them away, rather than needing to bookmark a website.  Similar to my preprints, I'm &lt;em&gt;excited&lt;/em&gt; to have folks download my slides (so I don't see any reason to control their distribution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T02:51:02.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2752" CreationDate="2012-08-06T08:27:18.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a risk in releasing your results early (since others may build on your work before you do it), but there is also a risk in &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; doing it (since an article doing the exact same thing may appear before you make your preprint public).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other advantages in publishing early (and, more in general, making your work known in conferences before it is fully peer-reviewed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;instead of &quot;stealing your ideas&quot;, people may contact you and propose a collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if people know your work, they can cite you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why I suggest releasing early, at least in my field (numerical linear algebra --- which, I realize, is a quite friendly and relaxed field, so your mileage may vary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T08:27:18.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-06T10:19:01.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you reason why you compliment the person, like &quot;I really enjoyed your talk &lt;strong&gt;because&lt;/strong&gt; [state your specific reason here]&quot;, it will always be warmly accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1312" LastEditorUserId="1312" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T19:12:02.777" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T19:12:02.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-06T10:34:23.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other posters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I try to make my tone of voice, attitude and choice of words respectful when asking a question while the conference is in session (and of course otherwise). I try to indicate indirectly that I enjoyed the talk (if indeed I did), without offering a direct compliment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You note your favourite scientists being complimentary to speakers. I expect that these scientists are well-established, well-regarded and that they know that any praise from them would be a particular boost to, in particular, more junior scientists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T10:34:23.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-06T12:17:47.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When asking a question, it is desirable to explicitly establish a non-confrontational tone.  &lt;strong&gt;It is natural and common (though of course not correct) to interpret even well-meaning questions in an antagonistic way.&lt;/strong&gt;  If the speaker feels threatened, they will be less able to focus on the content of the question and may instead become defensive.  &lt;strong&gt;A question that is interpreted as non-confrontational is therefore likely to get a better answer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complimenting the speaker is one way to make your subsequent question non-confrontational, and is a good idea as long as you are sincere.  Other ways include saying something nice about the topic itself (&quot;you're studying a very interesting question&quot;), smiling, and carefully controlling your tone of voice.  These are especially important if your question amounts to a criticism of the presented material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T12:17:47.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-06T17:00:17.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scribd&lt;/a&gt; to be useful in sharing files/papers. You can also know who accessed and downloaded your paper or at least you would know how many times it was downloaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T14:29:23.290" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T14:29:23.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-06T17:05:40.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhat like @Dan C suggested...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really felt inspired and got something new from the talk you should offer verbal appreciation. If you very much liked the presentation and is relevant to your research, it would be a good idea to talk in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T17:05:40.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2843" CreationDate="2012-08-06T17:25:17.940" Score="11" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I have attended a few &quot;virtual&quot; classroom sessions as a trainee and I always found it a little boring.  I could notice the sincere effort that the trainer has put through but I couldn't control the feeling of boredom.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques specific to teaching in a &quot;virtual environment&quot; that can improve the pedagogical experience and keep students motivated?  I do have a list for a normal environment but it is of little help in this new medium!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for helping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1425" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T10:44:06.953" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T03:10:09.007" Title="Are there any specific teaching techniques to handle &quot;virtual&quot; classroom sessions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2749" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:12:37.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not desirable, but you can do it if you want. But do it shortly, because there is not a lot of time for questions after a talk.&#xA;Personally, I think that saving the compliment as a way to start a discussion later with the speaker is preferable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To tell the truth, I also think that, except for clarification requests, questions are better asked in a discussion with the speaker, after the session. This is the only way to have complete and clear answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T18:12:37.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2775" CreationDate="2012-08-06T20:40:51.920" Score="24" ViewCount="87411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often find academics with tenured bracketed beside their position. What is meant by a tenured position? Is this different from a permanent teaching position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-08-07T04:15:43.890" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T07:15:26.327" Title="What does &quot;tenure&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2774" CreationDate="2012-08-06T20:51:37.723" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, tenure means that you cannot be fired (you have a very permanent position).  For more details, look at this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/185/in-practice-how-secure-is-a-tenured-position-in-the-us&quot;&gt;In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?&lt;/a&gt;  In particular, look at the first link in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/186/15723&quot;&gt;first answer&lt;/a&gt; to that question, which is an article in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; that talks about the role of tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T07:15:26.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2776" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-07T06:23:07.560" Score="21" ViewCount="1888" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this day and age, with more and more people going the self-publishing route, I'd be interested in experiences from/opinions about how to go about having your self-published book properly peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastEditorUserId="68189" LastEditDate="2017-03-05T20:05:03.777" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T20:05:03.777" Title="How to ensure proper peer-review for a self-published book?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2774" CreationDate="2012-08-07T08:58:16.993" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;To have tenure is an acknowledgement from the host institution of the academic's record of published research, teaching and contribution to the administrative life of their department/institute/college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult, but not impossible, to fire a tenured academic from their host institution. See e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hr.msu.edu/documents/facacadhandbooks/facultyhandbook/dismissal.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.hr.msu.edu/documents/facacadhandbooks/facultyhandbook/dismissal.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An academic with tenure is typically only dismissable on very serious grounds of misconduct. That it is so difficult to dismiss a tenured academic arises, historically, from the idea that university researchers should enjoy &lt;strong&gt;academic freedom&lt;/strong&gt; - the ability to research unfavourable topics, persue and advance unpopular or controversial theories, to challenge the status quo without fear of reprisal in the form of dismissal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tenure system is itself, somewhat controversial, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/07/how_to_save_tenurecut_it_way_b.html&quot;&gt;http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/07/how_to_save_tenurecut_it_way_b.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T08:58:16.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2781" CreationDate="2012-08-07T11:00:20.077" Score="10" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was discussed in prospect of PhD research proposal &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/117/675&quot;&gt;previously&lt;/a&gt;, but this question is for all ages of researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What factors should one take into consideration before selecting a research field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T23:59:29.553" Title="Factors determining a feasible research field" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2778" CreationDate="2012-08-07T13:04:38.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some points for STEM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What are worldwide current emerging technologies?&lt;/a&gt; Which topics become attention by scholars, industry and funding institutions in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Funding: What topics (like green energy in Germany) are on the local research agenda of your country for the next decades?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fundamental research: where are contradictions of widely-accepted but incomplete theories in a field. Are the major paradigms consistent? (e.g. bringing together general relativity and particle physics). See my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1458/213&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on open problems&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meterology improvement/measurement methodology. Often very tricky, time- and cost-intensive engineering problems, but often making falsification/discovering of new phenomenons possible at all, opportunity to develop patents&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there enough possible and qualified students, scholars for collaboration in a special (new) research field you can hire/attract? Of course, someone has to make the first step, but in STEM money and manpower is often the crucial factor to compete with other research groups, otherwise it's easy to waste a lot of money and time while someone already published the results you are still trying to measure. Without good students and a well-equipped lab it will be hard to attract money, students and scholars. In Germany you see this in form of &quot;clustering&quot; of several research institutions interested in semiconductors and chip-technology in German silicon valley near the city of Dresden.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you and your group dive easily into a new or related research topic? Do you have the infrastructure, is the gap of knowledge too big? How big is the risk, if you fail in this topic or it becomes suddenly un-trendy/unimportant. That's why research groups often do some diversification of research interests. Don't put all your money on a single stock.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a really good nose, overview and knowledge of current state of the art and knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T23:59:29.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2776" CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:20:48.260" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, traditionally, and I think currently, very few books are reviewed at all in any serious sense. One possible sense would be &quot;critical appraisal&quot;, and this is rare: a handful of books is given serious reviews in the Amer. Math. Soc.'s &quot;Bulletin&quot;. The other possible sense of &quot;peer review&quot; is in a sense adding something to one's CV for jobs, tenure, promotion, grants. Almost by definition, this never happens. That is, &quot;refereeing&quot; is done for the conventional &lt;em&gt;journals&lt;/em&gt;, whether paper or electronic, and referees are solicited by the editors, for &lt;em&gt;papers&lt;/em&gt; submitted to that journal. The &quot;valuation&quot; of books is typically done not via &quot;reviews&quot;, but by the status of the publishing house, and the status gain from publishing a book is probably less than a small paper in a medium-status journal. Thus, in particular, self-publication confers none of that cachet. And I'd wager that self-publication would compromise &quot;review&quot; in the sense of &lt;em&gt;appraisal&lt;/em&gt;, as well, because other publications would have higher priority for the reason of status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I do hope things improve, but I do think this is the current state, in mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: As examples of &quot;self-publication&quot;, disregarding the &quot;peer review&quot; idea entirely, a certain number of relatively senior (and not only!) people put book-like items on-line at their web-sites, often at universities. I heartily endorse this (and have been doing it myself for quite a while!) However (?), this appears to confer even less status than &quot;books&quot; published in physical hard-cover, I presume because there has been no hurdle of sufficiently-impressing publishers (who do ask opinions before &quot;consenting&quot; to publish). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more legitimate issue of &quot;(peer?) review&quot; to ascertain correctness, or helpfulness, etc., I think has so few precedents that little is happening. First, Math Reviews has no procedure in place to review such things, and it doesn't happen. Second, there appears to be considerable reticence to &lt;em&gt;cite&lt;/em&gt; such things, even in stable situations, for a variety of (not entirely sensible) reasons. Third, while one might imagine that on-line, thus, &lt;em&gt;dynamic&lt;/em&gt;, documents &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; reliable, by virtue of being &lt;em&gt;correctible&lt;/em&gt; (indefinitely!), this actually disturbs/perturbs many people... Further, third(b), disappointingly to me, very, very few people have ever given me any feeback/corrections about my on-line stuff, or even asked for clarification (in some cases leading to correction or, anyway, better writing). I can imagine that some of this is politeness, or respect, which is understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I might claim, the real &quot;problem&quot; is lack of precedent. The &quot;refereed journal&quot; model is 150+ years old, and itself depended upon evolution beyond the &quot;reading before the Academy&quot; 200+ years ago when printing itself was a non-trivial matter, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, rethinking the action-oriented sense of the original question: since &quot;self-published&quot; ought mean nothing, really, in today's context, apart from the fact that it doesn't have a &quot;prior&quot; approval from status-conferring entities... to &quot;get an expert opinion&quot; one (&quot;gosh, let's just try to think clearly for a sec!&quot; :) would send th'thing to (web-obtained?) experts, asking very politely whether they'd be so kind as to offer critical remarks... and as a very polite secondary question, whether they'd be willing to be quoted in such remarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This has led me to thinking that the difficulty in quantifying &quot;civility&quot; and &quot;politness&quot;, especially between different generations (if only in convention and usage), potentially causes substantial difficulties in on-line forums, and/or &quot;stack-exchanges&quot;, and or . Not that I think high-status entities have a &quot;moral&quot; superiority, which is the stereotypical exaggeration-to-disqualify, and which is a popular (mis-) interpretation of that elite, but that experience &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be worth something, and that something is not easily acquired by any other means.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T00:09:28.697" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T00:09:28.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2778" CreationDate="2012-08-07T18:48:58.773" Score="16" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you passionate about it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you good at it?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will people pay you to do it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T18:48:58.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2783" CreationDate="2012-08-07T18:50:23.607" Score="17" ViewCount="1088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious when should an author make a call on retracting their paper vs. sending an errata or a correction. Many say it is when an error is involved that influences the interpretation of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding it hard to understand when a paper should or shouldn't be retracted, since there are plenty of papers out there with errors at every step of the process but they are still available. There are also several papers that have been outright wrong but they are still available. There are several papers that have been performed incorrectly, interpreted incorrectly, and still published in a high profile journal that haven't been retracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is distinct from retractions due to fraud or other ethical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T21:44:05.917" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T21:44:05.917" Title="When should an author retract their paper as a result of misinterpreted results?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2782" CreationDate="2012-08-07T20:38:53.860" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of ethical issues, I'd argue that the only time that retraction of a paper is warranted,  is when there is a methodological error that is so great that it completely invalidates &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;almost all&lt;/em&gt; of the paper's &lt;strong&gt;key&lt;/strong&gt; results. For example, if a paper is supposed to observe phenomena A, B, C, and D, I wouldn't retract the paper if the experiment that was supposed to measure D was done incorrectly, but the results of A, B, and C remain unchanged. A correction or erratum should suffice in such cases. However, if a paper was trying to derive X, Y, and Z, but faulty assumption Q invalidates &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the derived results, then that paper should be retracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T08:21:31.823" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T08:21:31.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2745" CreationDate="2012-08-08T08:25:40.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you already have a PhD, the chances of being admitted into a second PhD program are quite low, I would imagine. Furthermore, I would not recommend such a strategy: the possibility of being labeled as a &quot;perpetual student&quot; could have negative ramifications on one's career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is funding for post-doctoral associates in addition to graduate students, even in the social sciences; in particular, there are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gsasgrants.fas.harvard.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number of fellowships&lt;/a&gt; that are designed specifically for postdoctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Of course, there is relatively more funding for PhD's than for postdoctoral associates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T08:25:40.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2786" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:33:58.060" Score="21" ViewCount="3913" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it usually happen even if all of the adviser's students have very different research interests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T13:09:22.333" Title="What is the purpose of the weekly research meetings that advisers often have with their research group?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:51:49.597" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;These meetings can serve a variety of purposes, but many of them fall into the broad category of &lt;strong&gt;keeping the adviser and all the group members updated on what everyone in the group is doing&lt;/strong&gt;.  Below are some of the secondary benefits of a group meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;saves the adviser time (compared to meeting with students individually)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motivates the students to keep doing work, so they have something to report at the meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fosters a sense of community with the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provides the students experience giving informal presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;often leads to the more senior students mentoring the junior students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your follow-up question in the description, &lt;strong&gt;no, some faculty meet with each student individually&lt;/strong&gt;; in fact these separate meetings are common, for example, in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T14:38:10.647" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T14:38:10.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-08-08T15:01:23.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from Dan's answer, which is probably one of the main points, having the lab members present in group meetings also helps significantly in developing public speaking skills in a low-pressure environment. Many of the lab meetings that I've attended focused on the ability of the presenter, often a graduate student, to present an idea clearly, concisely, and persuasively. As an added bonus, at well-run meetings, there are often many questions, which helps the presenter learn to field (sometimes difficult) questions on-the-fly. These skills are pretty important in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T15:01:23.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-08-08T15:18:36.510" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one of these advisors who has both individual meetings with students as well as group meetings, I can attest that I use the group meetings more for skills development rather than just rehashing research-related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It serves a number of purposes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation of skills and tools that will be useful to the entire group (for example, in my group, that means programming tools, content management software like Git or Subversion), as well as things like &quot;How do you write an abstract?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation by group members of their own research work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation by group members of &lt;em&gt;other people's work&lt;/em&gt; (often through a discussion of a paper in the literature, or a group of papers clustered around a common topic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my group happens to be bifurcated in purpose: I have people working in two very different application fields. I still have everybody present to the entire group for the simple reason that if they can't inform group members with whom they have methods and techniques in common about their research, how are they going to explain their work to anybody else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T15:18:36.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2792" CreationDate="2012-08-08T16:53:10.513" Score="28" ViewCount="1951" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the appropriate limits when criticizing the previously published work of others that you're citing in a paper? Are there limits with respect to maintaining decorum and decency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T17:17:52.797" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T09:35:40.403" Title="In writing a paper, how far can criticism of previous works go?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2791" CreationDate="2012-08-08T17:15:52.477" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, any critiques should be brief and directed (i.e., &quot;the cited works failed to consider &amp;lt;X&amp;gt; in their analysis&quot;, &quot;to simplify their model, they assumed &amp;lt;X&amp;gt;, whereas in reality &amp;lt;Y&amp;gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're criticizing &lt;strong&gt;assumptions&lt;/strong&gt;, be sure to specifically state which assumptions you challenge, and clearly deliniate (with references) why they are incorrect. Note that many papers use incorrect assumptions to begin work in a new field, and your critique should recognize that (i.e., &quot;The seminal paper assumed &amp;lt;X&amp;gt; [1]. We extend this work by removing said assumption.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're criticizing &lt;strong&gt;conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;, again state specifically which conclusion you disagree with, and be sure to provide data/analyses to back up your conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're challenging their &lt;strong&gt;data&lt;/strong&gt;, note that (in neuroscience, at least) this is perfectly common; findings differ all the time. Progress often stems from finding the cause of these differences between data. You should note the difference and mention something along the lines of &quot;Our findings differ from those of &amp;lt;X&amp;gt; [1], and we believe this is because &amp;lt;Y&amp;gt;&quot;. Note that it is almost a requirement to mention something like this; if you don't, (1) the researchers whose paper you missed will probably mildly insulted, and (2) people familiar with the field will assume you didn't do your basic literature search, which makes you look stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, ad hominem attacks are always inappropriate and should never appear in scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T17:15:52.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-08T20:46:49.587" Score="21" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Places like the old Bell Labs and Genentech gRED have an environment where the scientists publish quite a lot. Suppose I wanted to build my research R&amp;amp;D departments to have strong academic ties. What would I need to have in place to keep in touch with academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T09:39:55.337" Title="How can I stay active in academia from an industry position?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2012-08-08T23:20:36.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;People tend to do whatever gets rewarded.  So if you want your department to establish strong academic ties, then find ways to formally reward that.  In addition, people do stuff that they like to do when they don't have to cut through red tape.  In particular, you should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it easy for your researchers to attend conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a culture of seminars, and make it easy to bring external visitors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T05:02:46.297" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T05:02:46.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2791" CreationDate="2012-08-09T08:15:42.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that simply by thinking in terms of &quot;criticism&quot; you have already gone too far. I try and point out what the previous work has done and demonstrate how my work builds on that. Things like reducing the number of assumptions, doing additional analysis, or using a better method, don't require you to criticize the previous work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T08:15:42.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-08-09T08:29:36.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I generally agree with the other answers, I see three additional purposes of group meetings that I cannot accomplish easily in my individual meetings. While the meetings are weekly, I like to have lab members think about the upcoming month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notifications about upcoming events: I might tell people about an upcoming conference deadline at our individual meetings, but I often will forget to tell someone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management of  shared resources: Getting everyone to briefly say what they are planning to do in the upcoming weeks often highlights that there is going to be high demand for a resource and lets us work out alternative arrangements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing my (PIs) time: Maybe this is also a shared resource, but I try and let people know my teaching, marking, reviewing, writing, etc loads. I also try and get people to tell me what they want me to do over the next month. I think this helps people (both myself and lab members) adjust their schedules so that we can tackle tasks efficiently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T08:29:36.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2012-08-09T09:39:55.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start collaborative projects with members of university departments. Initially, this could begin as informal collaborations,  but ideally start submitting collaborative research proposals to relevant funding bodies. For certain funding sources, having an industrial partner strengthens the collaboration. In fact, some funding sources are only available if an industrial partner is on board. The catch here is that sometimes the funding agencies require that the industrial partner commit resources, although others (such as EU FP7) will provide funding for industrial partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many academics in university departments will be willing to form such a collaboration if it provides them another (potentially easier) way of getting funding. From that perspective, you have a strong position, assuming that you have the track record to convince funding agencies that giving you money is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T09:39:55.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-08-09T13:09:22.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main purpose is to waste some time. Probably the only thing that does not happen during these meetings is work. Unfortunately, lot of managers and professors think that we need to meet in order to know what everyone else is doing (seen from PhD position). We &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; meet each other in the coffee room, in the lab, while commuting, after hours, in the elevator and so on. We talk. We know. If we have a problem, we talk. Sorry for the rant, but I had to counterweight all the positivity in other answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1312" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T13:09:22.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-09T14:47:13.643" Score="11" ViewCount="1386" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any tiers or levels for conferences? and if yes on which basis people and authors can decide that a particular conference is of Tier 1 and another one is Tier 2 ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T00:31:51.137" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T22:58:37.063" Title="Is there any level or tiers in conferences or all conferences are of same level?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2800" CreationDate="2012-08-09T15:00:09.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Australian Research Council (ARC) publishes a comprehensive ranking of journals which classified each as A*, A, B or C. This list can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_2012.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way, however, is to talk to researchers or faculty members from the relevant field. I would be surprised if any researcher worth their salt didn't know what the main conferences are, each conference's preferences and biases, or what notional level of prestige is associated with each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1435" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T15:06:22.700" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T15:06:22.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2803" CreationDate="2012-08-09T17:05:40.947" Score="14" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries like Australia, Singapore etc, A candidate may be enrolled into Masters leading to PhD program on condition that he/she will pass the candidature test after the 1st year and are subsequently given PhD in the final/fourth year (subject to successful completion), which results in no M.Sc. degree in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any discrepancy towards these PhD holder in academic or professional life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T17:13:50.437" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T19:56:41.077" Title="Is there any disadvantage to having PhD skipping M.Sc.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2012-08-09T18:48:34.907" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  Once you have a PhD, nobody cares about your previous degrees, or if you even graduated from high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://erikdemaine.org/&quot;&gt;tenured professor who did not graduate from high school&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T18:48:34.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:41:16.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answers the title question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a bad idea to take a break between a BSc and a PhD, just to see what else is out there in the world. Maybe do a bit of travel or work for six months or year. The disadvantage thus of doing a PhD right after a BSc is that you spend too much time in school, getting deeper and deeper into one topic, without taking an opportunity to broaden your perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T19:41:16.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2800" CreationDate="2012-08-09T20:21:26.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some fields rank conferences by &lt;em&gt;geographic scope&lt;/em&gt;. For example, you may have local, regional, national, and international conferences. Presumably, but not always, the prestige of the conference increases as it caters to a larger audience. If the conference has enough draw to convince individuals from other countries to pay the travel expenses, it will be more prestigious than a conferences attended only by people who live within 50 miles of the location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be able to distinguish conferences based on how well-known speakers are. Most conferences release their programs in advance. If your conference has multiple well-known researchers in your field giving several talks each, or maybe a keynote given by a Nobel Laureate, it is probably a serious conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not judge the prestige of a conference on the physical size, i.e the number of participants. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gordon&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Research_Conferences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research Conferences&lt;/a&gt; are very well thought of, but often quite small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last paragraph of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2800/is-there-any-level-or-tiers-in-conferences-or-all-conferences-are-of-same-level/2801#2801&quot;&gt;jogloran's answer&lt;/a&gt; is good advice. Ask your colleagues in your discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T20:26:29.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-10T07:07:41.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep track of the people viewing our work, &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; might be worth a try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think they provide the nicest viewer for presentation, but they keep track of the people viewing and sharing your work. They also enable your work to be citable but providing a permanent link to it. The only drawback is that once you publicly publish something, they do not allow you to remove it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T07:07:41.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T07:17:35.660" Score="12" ViewCount="873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended a doctoral program and was completing it in 3 to 4 years. I got a life-threatening sickness that set me back several years. When nearing my dissertation I was dismissed. I was told that I was let go because I had cancer. I never wanted to return to that school again, but not having completed my work has caused me great heartache and I am not able to pursue the career I desired. Is it at all possible to complete the degree elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1438" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T18:42:31.657" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T18:42:31.657" Title="Dismissed by my committee" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2811" CreationDate="2012-08-10T14:54:25.747" Score="23" ViewCount="17354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to request a faculty member outside of my department to be on my thesis committee and I was wondering how I should go about doing this. To be frank, I don't really see why someone would be willing to be on the thesis committee for someone outside their department and even field - apart from the altruism of wanting to help others in academia and all, but I assume professors are busy! Therefore, I imagine that it's hard to convince someone to do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I was wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what information about myself should I aim to include in an email request to a potential thesis committee member outside my department? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, while I need to find someone to file my candidacy papers, but I have only a vague idea of what my final thesis will look like (I know the field, but not the particular question it will address.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things I have come up with include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a rough description of the subject area &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'expected' graduation date and number of years spent in graduate school so far&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they have been on the thesis committee for someone else with a similar thesis (by looking at the thesis committees of former students who worked with my advisor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T17:50:16.203" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:50:16.203" Title="How to ask someone (outside the department) to be on the thesis committee" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2810" CreationDate="2012-08-10T15:14:52.890" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, having cross-department committee members is very common, and can actually be very beneficial to the student, as you gain access to expertise and perspective you might otherwise miss. There's usually at least some connection between the research being done and the expertise of the faculty member. To use myself as an example, my research involved behavioral neuroscience, but I had both an electrical engineering faculty with signal processing experience and a psychology faculty on my committee, and they both gave &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; useful advice with my project. That being said, I had a committee member who was completely unrelated to my work (my focus shifted midway through my PhD career), and he requested to still stay on despite the lack of direct research connection; he was happy just to give advice and provide feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find potential committee members by talking to other graduate students, and by looking at what theses professors have worked on (as you suggest above). I definitely recommend talking to other students; some professors are more difficult to work with than others, and you likely won't get that type of information from your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to go about talking to the professor, I would just send a simple email asking for a meeting about this topic. If they're simply not interested, they'll say so, and you'll save yourself time. If they are, meet to discuss the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who you work for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what you're researching (both the ten-year research goal, if there is one, as well as your specific project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why you think this faculty member can help you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why this person should be interested (this should be tacit; i.e., you shouldn't have to say it explicitly, he should understand it from the above items)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T15:14:52.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2012-08-10T15:41:08.833" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To amplify JeffE's answer, there are some instances where it will be inconvenient, in the sense that you will have to explain your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I hold no master's degree. When I started my present job in Germany, this was looked upon as very unusual, and I had to explain that I attended a degree-granting university that did not require a master's for admission to PhD candidacy. (In Europe, the norm is that you essentially &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to have a master's before beginning your PhD candidacy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, however, there is generally no concerns beyond things that can be relatively easily explained. (The only thing I can think of is that if qualifications for a position are based on &quot;years of experience,&quot; the truncated education may mean more post-educational work is required to satisfy the requirement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T15:41:08.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2012-08-10T15:47:04.710" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I think graduate schools want students to pursue their entire PhD candidacy at a given institution. Moreover, schools may be reluctant to count work done a long time ago as part of the requirements for obtaining a degree, as it likely sets a bad precedent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, there's the question of financing. If you're in a program where students are financed through TA's, it's a lot easier to convince a school to take a chance, rather than in the sciences. The reason for this is that funding in the sciences is often tied to specific projects—which means that you will most likely need to change topics if you pursue a PhD in such a department. This would of course set your time to degree back considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you may find a sympathetic department that's willing to take a chance. My best advice is try to talk to the graduate admissions officers of some of the departments you're thinking of applying to. They'll help you to figure out what are the requirements and possibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T16:11:52.370" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T16:11:52.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2810" CreationDate="2012-08-10T19:45:09.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As eykanal mentioned, this is very common. Likely the same requirement exists in the other departments at your institution. Your request will not get rejected solely because you are from a different program. They may still decline if they feel that they know too little about your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to maximize your chances of identifying a professor who will agree, then approach professors who have participated in the committees of other members of your group. Which professor(s) sat on the committees of recent graduates? Which professors have your fellow group members gone to? Perhaps your adviser has an unofficial reciprocal agreement with one or more faculty members in different departments. Mine did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is already a connection between your group and a professor, then an email from you like the kind eykanal describes will not actually seem so random to that individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T19:45:09.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T23:54:05.750" Score="6" ViewCount="1632" Body="&lt;p&gt;About to do this PhD thesis here - but am not really satisfied with my layout. Could somebody point me to some interesting layouts, templates or whatever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1443" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T18:44:45.027" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T18:44:45.027" Title="PhD thesis layouts from around the world" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2815" CreationDate="2012-08-11T00:03:35.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at these options, I personally prefer the third option as Latex is always the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/teaching/phd/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/teaching/phd/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.clack/phd.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.clack/phd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/thesis/thesis_a4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/thesis/thesis_a4.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="690" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T14:25:36.763" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T14:25:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2815" CreationDate="2012-08-11T08:27:22.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following are all LaTeX related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like Uggedal's thesis design. You may download the sources from &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jrk/uggedal-thesis&quot;&gt;https://github.com/jrk/uggedal-thesis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other starting points are Andre Miede's &lt;code&gt;classicthesis&lt;/code&gt; and Lorenzo Pantieri's &lt;code&gt;classicthesis&lt;/code&gt; packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@Manual{classicthesis,&#xA;    author    = {Miede, Andr{\'e}},&#xA;    title     = {The Classic Thesis Style},&#xA;    keywords  = {latex},&#xA;    date      = {2010-01-24},&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;@Manual{arsclassica,&#xA;    author    = {Pantieri, Lorenzo},&#xA;    title     = {Customizing \texttt{classicthesis}&#xA;                  with the \texttt{arsclassica} Package},&#xA;    keywords  = {latex},&#xA;    date     = {2010},&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T08:27:22.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2820" CreationDate="2012-08-11T14:38:29.067" Score="8" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if one pursues a PhD from a university campus which is not the main campus, rather in a different city hundred miles away. The certificate is given by the main campus authority. Is there any discrimination towards the graduates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, say the campus is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/&quot;&gt;ADFA&lt;/a&gt; which is a sub campus of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unsw.edu.au/&quot;&gt;UNSW&lt;/a&gt;, Which is also known as UNSW Canberra (&lt;a href=&quot;http://info.unsw.adfa.edu.au/history.html&quot;&gt;details&lt;/a&gt;). more on this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Force_Academy&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T19:02:39.393" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T19:02:39.393" Title="Is there any disadvantage to having PhD from a non-main campus?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2818" CreationDate="2012-08-11T15:02:55.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often a university will have many campuses, and some campuses will be &lt;strong&gt;much more prestigious&lt;/strong&gt; than others.  (One well-known example is the University of California, Berkeley, versus UC Merced.)  In that case your degree will generally be more highly regarded if you go to the more prestigious campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think the example you mentioned does not fall into this case.  (After reading the link you sent, I couldn't quite decide, but I got more information from the wikipedia page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_South_Wales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UNSW&lt;/a&gt;.)  So in your case, I would ask about which resources, particularly classes and faculty members, you will have access to.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2709/college-vs-grad-school/2712#2712&quot;&gt;Elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; I've written about why you should go to the best grad school you can get into.  One big reason is &lt;strong&gt;networking&lt;/strong&gt; and another is the culture and &lt;strong&gt;mindset&lt;/strong&gt; you will absorb from your classmates and faculty.  Even if you have the same degree on paper, many people will know (or think they do) if there's a difference in the quality of your training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T15:10:32.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2818" CreationDate="2012-08-11T16:12:53.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of the department has much more influence on the degree than the &quot;famousness&quot; of the campus—whether it is a &quot;main&quot; campus or a &quot;branch&quot; campus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in my field, Chemical Engineering, the University of California has two departments that are widely acknowledged to be top ten: Berkeley and Santa Barbara. A degree from either of these schools would be recognized as essentially equal; degrees from campuses like Davis or Los Angeles would be slightly less well received, but still be considered good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to some extent, it's more the issue of the resources available at a given department, and its reputation within the community as a whole, that makes the difference. The campus as a whole is a distant second. (As a similar example, the University of Minnesota is recognized as a top-five program in my field; nobody would rank UMN as top five nationwide overall.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T16:12:53.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2815" CreationDate="2012-08-12T04:20:10.380" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the one that is provided by your institution.  The formatting guidelines are not &quot;guidelines&quot;, but are instead &quot;requirements&quot; that are checked by someone who deeply cares about them.  So you should use a template that has successfully been used in the past at your institution.  If you do otherwise, you are setting yourself up for a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of formatting work.  All of that said, University of Oregon's style file, which I used for my degree there, may be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/uothesis&quot;&gt;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/uothesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1446" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T04:20:10.380" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2012-08-12T04:25:59.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an MS, but I do have a BS and a PhD in the same field.  I have had no professional problems as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1446" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T04:25:59.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2825" CreationDate="2012-08-12T09:13:45.150" Score="13" ViewCount="4381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a economics major undergraduate student who will apply for grad schools in the coming semester. I think I have quite a strong research experience in mathematical statistics (asymptotic statistics to be specific), but, unfortunately, not much in economics itself. So I am curious if economics departments in graduate schools will care about my research experience in statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a broader question is if grad schools care about applicants' research experience in a different (maybe even unrelated) field at all? I guess in my case statistics and economics are still quite correlated, but what about other more distant combinations of target departments and previous research experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="676" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T22:00:36.513" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T22:00:36.513" Title="Is research experience in a different field relevant for PhD application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2824" CreationDate="2012-08-12T11:18:42.180" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;While field-specific research experience is always the best kind, I think there is a role for good research experience in any &lt;em&gt;related&lt;/em&gt; field. Close-by disciplines that share similar research methods and approaches will carry much more weight than something much further removed. (For instance, as a chemical engineer, I wouldn't put much stock in somebody doing sociology or clinical medical research, but somebody who had a background in research in applied mathematics or mechanical engineering would be potentially of interest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're going to go into an area of economics where your mathematical statistics background will be of benefit, I think that will (or at least &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;) be viewed favorably by an admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you will want to make sure that your research supervisor understands that you're applying to economics programs, and tailors her letter of recommendation accordingly. Also, if you have a lot of experience in a different field, you will need to make clear to the admissions committee why it is you want to pursue the new field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T11:31:17.017" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T11:31:17.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2824" CreationDate="2012-08-12T11:22:09.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A graduate program in any research field considers a variety of criteria for each applicant. The contents of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision/961#961&quot;&gt;good application to graduate school&lt;/a&gt; have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1136/how-can-i-improve-my-research-experience-for-phd-application?rq=1&quot;&gt;addressed here before&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most admissions committees look at several criteria, which are often weighted, but none weighted so high as to dominate the whole decision. A strong showing in one category can offset a weaker showing in another. Among them are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic knowledge of the field: You demonstrate this by completing a Bachelor's Degree in the field or a related field, or presenting evidence that you will do so by the time you matriculate. For example, in your question you mention that you are majoring in economics and want to go to graduate school in economics. No conflicts there. If you were majoring in philosophy and wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry, you would be a harder sell. What constitutes a related field may vary, but I know that a B.S. in mathematics can get you into graduate programs in engineering.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic ability: You demonstrate this through your grades in your courses, especially those relevant to the graduate program you want to enroll in, and through your scores on whatever standardized tests the program asks you to take before you apply. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research potential: You demonstrate this one of two ways. If you were lucky enough to publish your research as an undergraduate, then the committee can assess what you did directly. If not, then you need one or more letters of recommendation from someone who has supervised you in a research setting. The admissions committee wants evidence that you have certain qualities that make good researchers, regardless of discipline: curiosity, critical-thinking, creativity, strong work ethic, passion or drive, etc. A good research experience in another field is worth much more than a bad one in your own field. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications skills: You demonstrate these through your personal statement (or essay or letter) that you must write. Spelling and grammar errors or worse writing problems in this document are more damning than a bad letter of recommendation! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And as JeffE mentions in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision/961#961&quot;&gt;his answer to a related question&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;No Red Flags&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T11:22:09.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2829" CreationDate="2012-08-12T19:16:08.203" Score="12" ViewCount="12089" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the field of numerical modeling, Researchers often times find conference papers or journal articles which cites an internal report as the core of the paper. The main authors may have access to the internal report but what about the others? How does one cite an internal report in doing further research based on the main article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.aip.org/link/doi/10.1063/1.1766756&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tfaws.nasa.gov/TFAWS10/Proceedings/Interdisciplinary/Ted%20Wertheimer.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; cite both of the papers below -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;M. Saeedvafa and R. J. Asaro, “Transformation Induced Plasticity,” (LAUR-95-482, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1995)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saeedvafa, M, “A Constitutive Model for Shape Memory Alloys”, Internal MSC Report, (January 2002).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T16:04:46.200" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T16:28:01.240" Title="How do you cite an internal report?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1911" CreationDate="2012-08-12T20:16:11.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the components listed by eykanal and Gopi, my group webpage includes pages for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software developed by the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open positions (Ph.D. studentships and post-docs) available within the group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things could be maintained on my personal webpage (as PI), but I consider the group to be more than just &quot;people who happen to be working with Prof. X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it is helpful to have an example, here's mine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://numerics.kaust.edu.sa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://numerics.kaust.edu.sa/&lt;/a&gt;.  I could give other examples of group sites I think are better than mine, but I don't know if they would like me advertising them as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T20:16:11.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2827" CreationDate="2012-08-12T20:44:26.470" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you cite &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; source, you should give enough that the reader can, at least in principle, read that source for themselves.  This information is especially important when you cite something &lt;em&gt;as a source for further information&lt;/em&gt;, as it is in your example paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper presents the framework of such a complete phenomenological model &lt;strong&gt;outlined by Sayeedvafa (2002)&lt;/strong&gt; that provides a description of a wide range of the observed behavior, which are both tractable from analytical as well as computational viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, citations of technical reports (like your first example) should uniquely identify both the institution and the report, so that the reader knows who and how to ask for a copy.  In particular, if the report is available on the web at a stable location, the citation should include a stable URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a source is likely to be inaccessible to most readers (like your second example), you should also cite an accessible secondary source that describes the relevant content in detail.  (If you really want to be helpful, the primary source citation should include a pointer like &quot;Cited in [xxx].&quot;)  Otherwise, you're just asking for the reader's &lt;em&gt;blind trust&lt;/em&gt; that the source has the missing details you claim, or proves the result that you claim, or is as important as you claim, or even exists at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2019-12-09T16:28:01.240" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T16:28:01.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2012-08-12T22:31:28.657" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This situation surprises me: in the U.S., one could likely file (and win) a lawsuit alleging discrimination, in such a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dismissal from a college or university on grounds that one is ill is not legal, I think. Accommodation must be made, so that perhaps things are delayed, but not simply cancelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outright dismissal from a job (such as research assistant or teaching assistant) on medical grounds I think is not allowed, either. One may be required to take a leave of absence if one absolutely cannot do one's job even with accommodation, but there is substantial legal (and moral) push to accommodate and reach a compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think discrimination on admissions, on medical grounds, would also be essentially illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: you should talk to a laywer conversant with such things, who might be willing to talk to you without a huge fee if you describe your situation to their screening personnel. The situation is rife with lawyerism, indeed. Be careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T23:23:37.070" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T23:23:37.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2827" CreationDate="2012-08-13T04:46:01.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing a paper serves two roles. One is as a reference - a place for the reader to go and check the details. @JeffE's excellent answer deals with this case. For the completeness of the answer, let me discuss the other case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other role of citation is &lt;em&gt;acknowledgment&lt;/em&gt;, that is, acknowledging that somebody else did that piece of work, rather than the authors. That should be the only reason for you to cite a paper which is not publicly available (for instance, because it is not yet ready, etc.) Some time you can find a citation that says &quot;Author A., Private Communication&quot;, which usally means you had a bunch of emails from Mr. Author, and the result/claim/lemma is actually based on what he told you or the draft of his paper that he sent only to you, etc., and you fully acknowledge him for that contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I never liked citation to Private communication, but they do exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T04:46:01.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2850" CreationDate="2012-08-12T19:48:04.290" Score="26" ViewCount="8332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to my field (cell biology / immunology) and I would like to ask about the best practice to annotate or summarize research articles and reviews for long-term retrieval. When I start reading into a new topic, I end up highlighting almost each paragraph of the paper/review. This doesn't make any sense, and it is actually making me slow and frustrated and it is holding me from reading more. Could you please share your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: although two very important points of how to approach new papers and how to tag them have been addressed in the answers so far, my main concern was about the new acquired details which I can't remember a few months later. For example, I read a paper about JAK/STAT signaling two months ago, now I can't remember for example which JAK attaches to which cytokine receptor and interacts with which STAT. I need to skim through the paper again to find this piece of information. So, what I am looking for is an approach to accumulate the new knowledge and to facilitate reviewing them without the need to skim through the paper again and again. I know this will come with experience, but at the beginning there are too many new facts to keep track of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1448" OwnerDisplayName="Live" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T12:33:42.670" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T08:38:21.387" Title="How to annotate/summarize research papers for long-term retrieval?" Tags="&lt;note-taking&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-12T20:19:19.257" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;best&quot; way, everyone has their own way. I like to read the abstract and the discussion, and then the figures, and after that, the text. Its not something thats been tried and tested, you just develop your style over time reading hundreds of papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="gkadam" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T20:19:19.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-13T09:49:43.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As gkadam said, there is no absolute best way, and finding the way that suits you the best is also part of the learning process, and it can strongly depend on how your memory work. For some people, it's enough to just add some tags or keyword on the paper, allowing them to retrieve the information later, while other people needs to rewrite some parts in order to remember it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the first time I read a paper, I do it without a pen, because I want to get a &quot;feel&quot; of the paper first, and if there is a point that I don't understand or that I think it's really important, I just leave it for later. I then read some of the references of the paper to see if I can't find a similar idea explained a bit differently (typically when there is an extended version of the paper I'm reading). After reading several papers, I start to have a good idea of the problem, and what part of which paper is the most important, and at this point I can read again, in detail, with a pen and some paper, to go through the tough parts of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time you &quot;lose&quot; by reading the same paper several times, you gain it by focusing on the most important parts and by &quot;skipping&quot; the redundant ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T09:49:43.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2839" CreationDate="2012-08-13T10:25:42.040" Score="17" ViewCount="4626" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes, researchers talk about a paper that's been published &quot;in Nature&quot; (typically to establish its notoriety).  However, I would like to clarify exactly what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, the Nature Publishing Group publishes a wide range of journals, including journals with the word &quot;Nature&quot; in the title, such as &lt;em&gt;Nature Biotechnology&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Nature Cell Biology&lt;/em&gt;, and so on.  Other journals published by Nature Publishing Group do not include the word &quot;Nature&quot; in the title, such as &lt;em&gt;Heredity&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Molecular Systems Biology&lt;/em&gt;, and so on.  (See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/siteindex/index.html&quot;&gt;journal index&lt;/a&gt;.)  With this in mind, it does not seem clear to me exactly what it means to have published &quot;in Nature&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: When someone says they've published &quot;in Nature&quot;, does this literally mean they have published in the journal entitled &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T02:35:37.650" Title="When someone says a paper is published &quot;in Nature&quot;, does that mean it's published in *Nature*?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-13T11:02:58.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I read papers electronically, and save the PDFs to my drive, I put the most useful part of the paper, along with the first author's name, journal abbreviation, and year in the file name. It means I have long crazy file names but I always know why I saved that paper even if it was years ago. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chang_ChemRev_2009 - polymers  for photovoltaics - PPV on p. 5874 and figure 3.pdf&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T11:02:58.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2837" CreationDate="2012-08-13T11:18:52.307" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is probably &quot;Yes and No&quot; or, more properly, it depends on who is telling you this and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the individual wants you to find his or her research, then &quot;in Nature&quot; might mean in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;. However, if someone wants you to find research, why aren't they giving you a full citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually someone would say their work is published &quot;in Nature&quot; to make themselves sound important (sometimes rightfully so). In this case, I doubt that the individual would make a distinction between &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and the derivative journals, most of which also have high impact factors. The person is more likely to be vague if the field-specific NPG journal in which the work is published has a much lower impact factor than &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the field of chemistry, &lt;em&gt;Nature Chemistry&lt;/em&gt; is relatively new, 4 years old. Since &lt;em&gt;NChem&lt;/em&gt; is so new, most folks I talk to distinguish whether they mean &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;NChem&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;NChem&lt;/em&gt;'s newness leaves it with a lower impact factor (20.524 for 2011, the first year it qualified for one) vs. &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; (36.280 in 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T11:18:52.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2012-08-13T12:57:48.597" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation 1.5 years ago: made a series of bad decisions, have 0 publications or research experience, nothing outstanding about my academic CV. I was in fact wavering between pure and applied mathematics, not really knowing much about research in either area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing a 1 year mathematics MSc at a top-tier university, would I say that in situations similar to yours and mine, doing an MSc is a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; wise choice. Doing well in a good MSc will &lt;strong&gt;certainly&lt;/strong&gt; overshadow what you did in your undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The primary goals of the MSc are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obtain good grades and recommendations letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Research! It is absolutely vital that the MSc has a significant research component.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things I wished I knew back then:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take courses to maximize your grades. This could mean taking courses you have already taken before. Its not strictly a waste of time: you can see this as a test to see if you can perform in the topic at a graduate level. Also, if you're interested to do research in it, this would seriously help reinforce your knowledge in that area and you can take the opportunity to know the professor teaching it, even doing your dissertation in it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DO RESEARCH. Grab any chance you have to do research. In fact, be prepared to stay behind for a few months after graduation to turn your dissertation into publishable material or for an internship in the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pin down your interests ASAP. Do your MSc dissertation in that area if you can. It is such an advantage to have a dissertation project in and a letter of recommendation from someone in the area you're applying to. Contact relevant professors about graduate applications asap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advice for applications:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO you should aim as high as possible when applying for MSc. Top tier self funded MScs are a lot easier to get into if you don't have terrible grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not about the prestige of the department. Rather, more competitive places tend to attract highly motivated and competitive people. Being in that environment would seriously inspire you to push harder and accomplish more. Also, they tend to have more &quot;intellectual resources&quot; - brilliant professors, brilliant classmates etc for you to learn from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a student still in the process of applying for a PhD in Applied Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T22:16:40.500" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T22:16:40.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-13T16:13:48.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using jabref as reference manager (I read the comment that you use Sente, which I don't know). Jabref allows me to assign a paper to different groups, and also to set up grouping in a hierarchical way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I can put notes that are searchable (however, usually I don't do that but write them on the paper). I guess that's what I'd do with your JAK/STAT things. Sometimes I write the important stuff on a new sheet (if the margins of the paper are too small) and file that together with the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still going mainly with printed papers, as I can have a whole bunch of them besides each other and keep the overview which says what while writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T16:13:48.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2837" CreationDate="2012-08-13T20:45:36.440" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard a neuroscientist say they published in Nature, if it was in Nature Neuroscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T20:45:36.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2772" CreationDate="2012-08-13T22:55:34.650" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read this question, I immediately thought of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_norvig_the_100_000_student_classroom.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this TED talk.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In it, Peter Norvig, who taught a huge online course on AI, shares what he learned about teaching to a large virtual audience.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His main points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mimic a one-on-one teaching style by positioning the camera overhead as you write and speaking as if it is a single student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alternately, use a livescribe pen (I've had experience with this for a math class; loved it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make short, &amp;lt;10 minute videos to retain attention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask questions to check understanding (they will pause+answer) and then go over them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have due dates for watching the videos; students need motivation to watch them in a timely manner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage online forums because peers are great tutors they &quot;remember what it's like to not understand&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1453" LastEditorUserId="1453" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T03:10:09.007" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T03:10:09.007" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2847" CreationDate="2012-08-14T09:49:51.967" Score="14" ViewCount="10985" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my thesis I included some pages of a foreign specification. To improve the reader's convenience I have translated them as they are vital to my topic and I can't paraphrase them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I properly cite these five pages/mark them as not my own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1457" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:06:43.693" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T16:06:43.693" Title="How to mark/cite text that you only translated?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2133" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:04:15.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of schools that have distance-learning programs, including for applied mathematics. For instance, the University of Washington offers an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amathonline.uw.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online master's of science program in Applied Mathematics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T21:10:02.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T21:10:02.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:22:50.240" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this section of the thesis contains only the translated passage, then it is silly to use one of the quotation notifiers. As I said in my comment, preface the whole section with a notice about the origin of the passage. Then, present the passage unaltered (except for the translation). The contents of that notice will depend on which of the following categories the original passage falls into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Public domain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original passage is in the public domain (for example if it was written by a government employee in the course of their normal duties or if the author released into the public domain or if the passage is old enough that any possible copyright has expired) - then say something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following section is was translated by (your initials) and is reproduced without any further alterations from (original source). This passage is in the public domain (rationale if possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fair Use&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a thesis is a document created in the course of obtaining an education, you can claim fair use for educational purposes. The passage represents less than the fair use maximum set for the original document (typically around 5% or less of the original work), then you can state something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following section is was translated by (your initials) and is reproduced without permission and without any further alterations from (original source). Since this passage represents a minimal part of the original document, it constitutes fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Public License&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The creator of the document could have released the document under a license that allows reuse for non-profit purposes with appropriate attribution. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Licenses&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License&quot;&gt;GNU General Public Licenses&lt;/a&gt;. Licenses like these generally allow you to reproduce the work if you include the appropriate statement. Make sure the license allows derivative works (because that is what your translation is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following section is was translated by (your initials). It is reproduced from (original source) under the  &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Cmmons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) License&lt;/a&gt;. The original copyright is held by, and all other rights are reserved by, (original copyright holder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Express permission&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the work in your thesis, then you would state something like the following. You should include the evidence of written permission in your appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following section is was translated by (your initials). It is reproduced from (original source) with permission of the copyright holder. The original copyright is held by, and all other rights are reserved by, (original copyright holder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None of the above&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without permission, a license, fair use, or public domain, you are violating copyright by reproducing the passage, even if you translated it (translations count as derivative works, which are still a no-no). Get the appropriate permissions or reduce the length of the passage so that it becomes fair use and see above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;US Copyright&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this answer primarily to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_copyright&quot;&gt;US Copyright Law&lt;/a&gt;, with which I am most familiar. The copyright laws in other nations, as well as international copyright law, will vary, but many have similar provisions. However, some parts of my answer will be inapplicable in some countries. In these cases, behave as if the material is copyrighted. The concepts of &lt;em&gt;public domain&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;copyright&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;license&lt;/em&gt; are fairly similar in most places. Generally, the existence of a license supersedes copyright, with the exception that a license cannot supersede the public domain status of a work. &lt;em&gt;Fair use&lt;/em&gt; may not exist in all jurisdictions. If you are unsure whether your nation has a fair use or similar exception in its copyright law, act as if it doesn't. Better safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2012-08-14T16:05:17.580" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T16:05:17.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2012-08-14T16:34:41.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your presentation is in LaTeX, you may want to try &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writelatex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;writeLATEX&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. You can actually make your presentation in writeLATEX, and share it from there once it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Docs&lt;/strong&gt; is another option that allows you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=86101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Embed the presentation on your site with a nice interface&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a public link to the presentation, where viewers will have the option to download as PDF, PowerPoint or Text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=2494886&amp;amp;rd=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Make lists of viewers (possible contributors) authorized to comment or edit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;While making the presentation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work from school, home or anywhere with an internet connection, without the need of manually synchronize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work collaboratively, collaborators can edit or comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revision history (who changed what) with the possibility to revert changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the presentation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See your notes using &lt;em&gt;speaker notes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present remotely using &lt;em&gt;Google+ Hangouts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1353" LastEditorUserId="1353" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T06:48:59.757" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T06:48:59.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-14T17:48:06.177" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it important to &lt;strong&gt;be as active as possible&lt;/strong&gt; in your reading, especially for papers close to the questions you are working on. If you are only highlighting, then this is largely a passive activity, and does not help much with retention or even later rereading. If you are making notes, it is a little bit better, but still largely passive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For important papers, I try to read the paper and then &lt;strong&gt;write up a quick summary for myself&lt;/strong&gt; of the key ideas relevant to my interests: a sort of mini-review or personalized-abstract of the paper. For papers that don't contain important tools I use, but contain facts I have to cite I usually include a section that lists in what settings I would expect to cite this paper. This helps a lot at the writing stage. These little summaries of the paper are usually too rough and critical to be useful to others, so I keep them private. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually organize these summaries in a little personal wiki like &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tiddly Wiki&lt;/a&gt; where I can tag and do full text search as well as include links to the original PDF of my computer. Each article gets its own tiddle and is tagged according to topic. Other useful tools are available in: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/109/66&quot;&gt;Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some heavy papers (say important math papers) the reading has to be even more active. Usually including reproving the theorems and sometimes presenting these proofs to others in my group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T17:48:06.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2837" CreationDate="2012-08-15T04:45:04.817" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/1b_Accept_pub.pdf&quot;&gt;Nature guide to authors&lt;/a&gt; uses the phrase &quot;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and the Nature research journals.&quot;  Also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/index.html&quot;&gt;editorial policies website&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nature journals' editorial policies concerning publication of&#xA;  primary scientific research can be found on the pages listed below.&#xA;  The policies described are those of &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and the journals with&#xA;  &quot;Nature&quot; in their titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that when the Nature Publishing Group uses the word &quot;Nature&quot; in italics, they are referring to the journal &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and not to their other journals.  If they want to refer to any of their journals, they use the phrase &quot;Nature journal&quot; (without italics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T04:45:04.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2854" CreationDate="2012-08-15T13:58:18.147" Score="16" ViewCount="20630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start recording mathematics lectures for students to watch on their own time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I need to find a device that allows me to write out the lecture with a stylus and import it to a computer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I suppose I could buy an iPad or something close to it.  But, that would be a bit of money.  I am looking at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Bamboo/BambooTablets/BambooSplash.aspx&quot;&gt;Wacom Bamboo Splash&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem here is that the writing area seems very small (the class is a math class).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good device for writing out lectures to a computer?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a device that makes this work best and is not hundreds of dollars?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1462" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T05:19:04.877" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T17:41:49.723" Title="Device for writing a lecture with a stylus for video lecture recording" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2012-08-15T14:40:58.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your department has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_camera&quot;&gt;document camera&lt;/a&gt;, especially a newer model, then you could use that. I currently use a document camera for my regular lectures. I write on the paper under the camera, the camera sends it to the computer and the computer sends it to a projector, where it gets projected onto the big screen in the lecture hall. This way I can look at my class the class the entire time and I do not have to worry about whether students in the back can read the writing on the whiteboard in front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document camera I use can also be set up to display the images it captures on the computer. Then, with video capture software, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://camstudio.org/&quot;&gt;CamStudio&lt;/a&gt; is an example of one with a free option), you could record a video as you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your department does not have a document camera, you can set up something similar with a webcam, which would be cheaper to buy but produces lower video quality. Set it to look down on the paper. You write your lecture, and the computer records it. Alternatively, your institution may have an instructional technology office that could loan you a document camera (or may even have a more advanced set up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T14:40:58.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2012-08-15T14:52:26.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We went this path heavily some years ago with the Italian Math Olympiad organizing committee. (you can see some of our lectures, in Italian, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://olimpiadi.dm.unibo.it/videolezioni/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://olimpiadi.dm.unibo.it/videolezioni/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will obtain the best results with a tablet pc with a Wacom active digitizer. The quality of the pen writing cannot be matched by iPads and the like. Unfortunately, that is a toy that does cost hundreds of dollars. You may get a used one off eBay for cheaper. I never used one, but I heard that the HP Touchsmart TM2 was one of the most appreciated models in the past years, and now it should be quite cheap to get one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no cheaper option, as far as I know, that will provide the same overall quality. Graphic tablets such as the one you are considering are a reasonable substitute, but, apart from the size issue, they have a higher learning curve (since you have to learn to watch in point A and write in point B --- no problem after some training if you are the one teaching, but this will prevent you from asking the students to solve exercises in a class, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget about iPads and anything that does not have an active digitizer --- the writing quality will simply not be sufficient for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: clarification: I wrote &quot;we&quot; but I am just one member of the project and only a few of those lectures are mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2012-08-15T21:51:54.200" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T21:51:54.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:13:41.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about using some kind of screen recorder that also do editing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BB FlashBack Express&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debugmode.com/wink/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wink&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screen-record.com/screen2exe.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; to be good ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-15T16:20:51.880" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T16:20:51.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2858" CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:36:47.100" Score="20" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;A non-academic group to which I belong holds military history conferences a few times a year. We've discussed seeking presentations from graduate students, but we're unsure of the process. So, I have a few questions that might be answerable here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where would one publish&lt;/strong&gt; a &quot;call for papers&quot; on specific areas of military history? (Our conferences are on Operation Dragoon and the Battle of the Colmar Pocket in WWII.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be expected&lt;/strong&gt; to be provided for presenters who are accepted? We're a non-profit, funded only by fees for the conferences, so have never budgeted for honorariums, lodging for speakers or their expenses. Would that be so uncouth as to inhibit anyone from responding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would sample presentation videos be excessive?&lt;/strong&gt; We've had some presenters in the past whose style has been so dry and non-interactive that the audience became disengaged. So, before we would accept a speaker, we'd want to see video or a live presentation to ensure that they will meet our needs. Is this excessive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How long a presentation&lt;/strong&gt; would be acceptable from the speaker's perspective? I expect we'd be interested in presentations of 15-20 minutes, as the topic would be rather specific (such as a presentation on the actions of a single military unit rather than on the campaign in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I want to know if our expectations don't meet academic expectations, so we can decide whether to modify our expectations or decide not to issue a call for papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1464" LastEditorUserId="54237" LastEditDate="2020-08-28T09:16:05.547" LastActivityDate="2020-08-28T09:16:05.547" Title="How does one issue a call for papers on military history?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;history&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2857" CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:52:13.810" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of your expectations fall within the norms and some may not. There may be some variation by field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having never organized a conference, but having attended and presented as several, these seem to be the norms I have encountered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where would one publish a &quot;call for papers&quot; on specific areas of military history?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anywhere and everywhere. Send emails (or snailmail) to the history departments at nearby colleges and universities. Pass the word along to other organizations with similar interests. Are you close to a military academy? Is there a military museum nearby? Those are other good places to find speakers.Make sure that all correspondence includes the soft deadline (i.e. about a week before your real cutoff) for submission, and the process by which an individual signs up to speak. Also, you need to make clear the type of talk you are expecting based on the audience. Should this be a talk for experts, for enthusiasts, or for the general public? These announcements also serve as advertising for your event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be expected to be provided for presenters who are accepted?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, at large conferences with hundreds of talks, the travel costs are paid by the speakers. For a small conference, you may want to offer to reimburse some costs on a first-come-first-served basis, however, very few folks should be put out by lack of financial support. I would save honoraria for their true purpose: providing an award for someone and/or attracting a really big name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would sample presentation videos be excessive?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. The situation you describe is a known danger, but it is not normal to ask for videos. Your better bet is to send people to attend other talks by your speakers and evaluate them unofficially, but you should still let them speak. If you secure a big name in the field, you will attract an audience, even if said person is a horrible speaker. If you are attracting academic speakers and you have a nearby university, asks folks in the relevant departments if they know of good speakers and try to target those individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might get away with suggesting that individuals who wish to be considered for the keynote spot send in a short clip of them presenting elsewhere, but that would still be pushing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How long a presentation would be acceptable from the speaker's perspective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the number of speakers you hope to attract and the length of the conference, block off 30 minute or 60 minute blocks. 15 minutes is a little short, and you should only exceed one hour for keynotes/plenaries. Most academics would interpret a 30 minute block of time as 20 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of questions and answers, which sounds like what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T17:52:13.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2861" CreationDate="2012-08-16T01:24:15.720" Score="11" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently enrolled in a social science (management/information systems) PhD program, and I have spent a lot of time thinking/experimenting with how to maximize my performance. First I tried working 80 hours a week - this led to a hard time focusing, more time spent doing support activities (e.g. reading) rather than core activities (e.g. writing, coding etc.). Now I'm starting to settle more towards a 40-50 hour week that keeps me more energized the hours that I actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering, in your experience, what is the optimal balance of work/rest for graduate academic performance in the social sciences? Other factors that stimulate your academic performance? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1465" LastEditorUserId="1465" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T02:51:59.280" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T04:11:33.593" Title="How to maximize performance in social science PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2860" CreationDate="2012-08-16T04:11:33.593" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too have struggled at times to find this balance.  I'm coming from math and computer science (rather than social science), but I think the field matters less than the type of work.  If what you're trying to do is cognitively intense, then it's really important to be well-rested and to maintain focus.  In grad school, I often would bang my head for hours on problems without much progress.  Now &lt;strong&gt;if I work for 45 minutes or an hour with little progress&lt;/strong&gt;, I'll go for a short walk, get a light snack, do jumping jacks, or play a quick web game; all of these are ways to &lt;strong&gt;reset my focus and attention&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the single &lt;strong&gt;most useful skill I've learned&lt;/strong&gt; is to &lt;strong&gt;be more aware of my current state&lt;/strong&gt; (energy level, focus, sleepiness, hunger, emotional state) and try to &lt;strong&gt;choose work appropriate for (doable in) that state&lt;/strong&gt;.  For more thoughts on this idea, I recommend the advice given by Terry Tao here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/on-time-management/&quot;&gt;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/on-time-management/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T04:11:33.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-16T05:08:15.547" Score="29" ViewCount="26860" Body="&lt;p&gt;When creating online learning materials, I like the idea of sharing slideshows with audio commentary for each slide.  I know it is possible to do this with PowerPoint (e.g., see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/add-sound-and-video-to-a-powerpoint-presentation-HA001159312.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MS Office tutorial&lt;/a&gt;).&#xA;However, I prefer to create PDF slides using tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_%28LaTeX%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;beamer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to create PDF presentations with embedded audio?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good workflow for implementing this (e.g., recording the audio files, storing the audio files, sharing, etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the solution would be cross-platform and minimise external viewer requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T09:55:16.667" LastActivityDate="2020-03-31T07:15:44.563" Title="How to create PDF of slides with audio?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2862" CreationDate="2012-08-16T05:20:35.897" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro.html&quot;&gt;Adobe Acrobat Pro&lt;/a&gt; to record audio and integrate it into your PDF files.&#xA;Anybody can access the PDF+audio via the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://get.adobe.com/reader/&quot;&gt;Adobe Reader&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="206" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T05:20:35.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-16T06:08:51.837" Score="10" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;This follows on from a recent question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2862/how-to-create-pdf-of-slides-with-audio&quot;&gt;embedding audio in PDF slides&lt;/a&gt;. I don't like the thought of users needing to use a particular PDF viewer in order to hear the audio and I don't like the thought of needing proprietary software just to create the presentations. Thus, another option would be to create HTML slides. There are a range of HTML slide production approaches (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;S5&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulrouget.com/dzslides/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DZSlides&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slidy&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://goessner.net/articles/slideous/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slideous&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: &#xA;I was thinking about  using &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#producing-slide-shows-with-pandoc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pandoc to convert markdown into one of the slide formats&lt;/a&gt;. @Federico mentions the audio HTML tag. I assume that would be part of an overall solution. This presumably represents a basic answer, but I'd be keen to get some guidance about how this works on a practical level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any examples of implementing audio in HTML slides?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any strategies for increasing the usability of consuming and activating the audio?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any browser or operating system compatibility issues?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in a broad sense my question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can HTML slides be created in an effective and efficient way with embedded audio?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T16:55:49.583" Title="How to create HTML Slides with audio for online lectures?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-08-16T09:19:01.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question depends on which timeframe you are concerned with, and how optimistic you are about modern technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding copies of old, paywalled papers can be a problem. Nowadays, most papers are freely available on the web or at least in preprint form from the author's sites. DOI provides a robust way to link to them, even if the actual storage place should change. As the other answers state, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have probably no use for prints &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; (or in the near future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what happens in the remote future? Once you stop caring -- maybe you switch career or (eventually) die -- the situation is similar with old papers today: readers are at the mercy of publishers. Is your paper still paywalled? Is the publisher still there? Has some search engine cached a version? Can PDF still be read on modern devices? In the worst case, your paper is practically inaccessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does an archived paper copy help? Depends. There is no way any one place keeps hard copies of everything published. You can give your students and close colleagues hard copies for their own use, and maybe they keep so that maybe even in 50 years, an interested student who can not access your paper (easily) can get a copy from their professor that has undiluted value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Flajolet died. I am certain my boss (who works in closely related field) knew whom to ask for his academic remains. My boss has himself inherited all the paper accumulated and written by his late advisor (one of which I actually retrieved from the archive to check out for an answer on cs.SE; because it was impossible to find on the webs). This is stuff that does not exist on the web, but in real-world networks. For such, paper is important. Maybe that model is doomed given our technological advances, but I have the feeling that it will have its place for some time at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the issue of how we can keep our rapidly accumulating mass of data and knowledge at all and also accessible and organised over time is unsolved. It may be useful to keep that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T09:29:33.097" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T09:29:33.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-08-16T09:42:55.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Italy, when you apply for a position, you often have to send together with the paperwork one to three dead-tree copies of your $N$ best papers (or sometimes even of &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; you have published).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can easily amount to several hundred pages; multiply it by the number of positions you will apply for. It may be costly and troublesome to print them from a university printer. And, you know, printers are always low on toner the day before the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this case reprints are handy to have. I assume Italy is not the only country where this happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T09:42:55.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="987" CreationDate="2012-08-16T09:47:46.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a website with free preprints of your work (which you probably should have), put your data (and code) there. Alternatively, I know people who use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; (or similar) for the purpose of (distributed) storage. This has the charm of persistence and an immediate potential of collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a (hopefully) persistent approach to citability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://datacite.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DataCite&lt;/a&gt; looks legit. In particular, they issue DOIs and &lt;a href=&quot;http://datacite.org/members&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;are funded by libraries and research facilities from around the globe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T09:47:46.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2864" CreationDate="2012-08-16T10:55:40.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I read correctly, in all those HTML slide systems you write the HTML file directly, it is not produced by some external tool. So I think you can simply put an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_audio.asp&quot;&gt;audio tag&lt;/a&gt; in it. Or am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T10:55:40.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2864" CreationDate="2012-08-16T16:55:49.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A different option would be creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;screencast&lt;/a&gt;. A screencasting program would record your slides as they play as well as recording voice (or other sounds) from the microphone. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jing&lt;/a&gt; is a free, though limited, screencast program. &lt;a href=&quot;http://camstudio.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CamStudio&lt;/a&gt; is another free program. There programs you can purchase that include advanced features, including editing and post-production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this method is that your lecture is now a video file, which rarely requires any type of special software, and you can share them easily on youtube, vimeo, or social media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T16:55:49.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2871" CreationDate="2012-08-16T21:07:12.023" Score="12" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;How successful would someone be who completed his PhD in something such as computational biology or neuroscience but wanted to pursue post-doctoral training and beyond in computer science? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say computer science because, presumably, dissertation work in computational X involves programming and a working knowledge of data structures and algorithms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T17:01:03.637" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T17:01:03.637" Title="How successful would one be in switching fields from PhD in computational biology/neuroscience to postdoc in computer science?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2870" CreationDate="2012-08-16T21:37:21.733" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that career changes and &quot;reinventions&quot; are a regular part of modern careers in highly specialized fields. Very few people will be able to work in a single domain for their entire careers, and the ability to move laterally between &quot;adjacent&quot; fields will be a critical skill enabling one to have greater chances and opportunities for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, your chances of success in any &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; job hunt will depend to some extent on how &quot;enlightened&quot; your future boss (or hiring staff) are: some will actively seek out anyone with the appropriate skill set and enthusiasm for the work, while others will be more focused on people who have the &quot;direct&quot; skills they need, assuming such people will require less training to be able to carry out their work. Neither of these positions is &quot;better&quot;; they just happen to coexist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T21:37:21.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2886" CreationDate="2012-08-17T09:00:37.067" Score="99" ViewCount="8786" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is customary to use one's academic e-mail address as contact address in publications; I have seen once or twice an &lt;code&gt;@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt; address being used instead, but it simply looked unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I already experienced personally twice that system administrators love to deactivate e-mail addresses when people leave the institution. In a time when serving 1 GB of data costs one cent, apparently it is too demanding to set up forwarding for a few old users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to &quot;e-mail rot&quot; in many published papers, also for addresses that are explicitly designated as contact addresses. If one happens to have a popular name, it might become difficult to identify them using a search engine after the e-mail address becomes invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your proposed solution to this problem? Should we (well, the ones of us that have tenure and power) put pressure on system administrator to change this practice? Should we use in our publications a different, more stable e-mail address than the academic one? Should we maybe get rid of the e-mail and contact address in papers overall? Should we insist that the journal publishers set up an alternative contact system (good luck with that)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/164/changing-mailing-and-e-mail-addresses-as-corresponding-author-which-to-include&quot;&gt;Changing mailing and e-mail addresses as corresponding author--which to include?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2020-08-29T02:26:44.660" Title="E-mail address to use in publications" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-17T10:05:37.363" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that (in academia) sticking to official e-mail addresses is an atavism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, one's personal e-mail (say, &lt;code&gt;...@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt;) is better because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;usually more efficient/stable/etc,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lasts for longer than 1-4 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While names like &lt;code&gt;mad_theoretican_666@...&lt;/code&gt; may sound ridiculous for professional communications (but it's rather a matter of taste than anything else), I don't see anything wrong with e-mails like &lt;code&gt;name.surname@&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;n.surname@&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I heard quite a few times that non-institutional e-mails sounds less serious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But honestly, if someone builds his/her value depending on how his/her e-mail sounds (and doing it against very practical reasons), it is the thing that is ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T12:15:58.590" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T12:15:58.590" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-17T10:22:28.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should we use a stable email address?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that seeing @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com in email addresses for academic papers is somewhat jarring. That it should be the case probably says more about our assumptions about the author than it should (why doesn't he/she have a &lt;em&gt;proper&lt;/em&gt; email address?). The benefits of having a stable email account - for those of us still moving frequently from post to post - is undeniable, but we choose not to use it for these reasons. Will that attitude change? Not impossible, but don't count on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should we put pressure on sysadmins to maintain forwards on our old emails?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a sysadmin but I doubt whether any sysadmin would look favourably on maintaining indefinitely forwards in this way. After two or three hops, your email chain starts getting long and vulnerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should we get rid of addresses altogether?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not. We need some way of being contactable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should we insist that the journal publishers set up an alternative contact system&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this idea but appreciate that getting the publishers to do this would be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if there was a third party site which stored up-to-date contact data and was linked to by the journals? A freely accessible, central repository of author contact data. The authors would be responsible for maintaining their contact information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users of the repository would themselves have to log in to prevent massive downloading of users' data by spammers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T10:22:28.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-17T11:53:40.057" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Mathematical Society had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/membership/individual/benefits/mail_forward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;email forwarding&lt;/a&gt; service for its members, which gives them a stable @member.ams.org address that they can update as they move. However, this email forwarding service is no longer available. Still, something like this could be a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="24210" LastEditDate="2019-01-05T17:08:11.407" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T17:08:11.407" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-17T14:22:30.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we (well, the ones of us that have tenure and power) put pressure on system administrator to change this practice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementing a direct forward (i.e., your mailbox no longer exists, so no disk space problem) is not really hard, and I have currently two previous email addresses forwarded. The volume of emails decreases &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we use in our publications a different, more stable e-mail address than the academic one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes you think that a gmail address is more stable than an academic one? What if gmail decides to switch to a different business model where you would have to pay for that address, would you necessarily keep it? Would you say that your yahoo email is stable? Maybe it was 3 years ago, but now, I wouldn't be so sure. Academic institutions tend to last longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, as you said, personal addresses look unprofessional, because they cannot be trusted. It won't cause your paper to be rejected, but that's not going to be a plus side. And it won't change the fact that readers of your papers can contact you or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we maybe get rid of the e-mail and contact address in papers overall? Should we insist that the journal publishers set up an alternative contact system (good luck with that)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other people mentioned, the important point for contact is actually that people can find you. An email is a unique ID, you can put it on your current page so as to be indexed by search engines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T14:22:30.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-17T17:05:10.570" Score="21" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it safe to post my CV online (with my physical address included)?  Should I be worried about identity theft in doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1476" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T17:33:48.747" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T16:10:20.057" Title="Is it safe to post my CV online?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2012-08-17T17:52:09.973" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that public telephone directories with names, addresses, and phone numbers have been around for decades, I don't think there's a significant risk of identity theft here. You could consider using a distinct email for your resume such that if you begin getting too much spam you could manage it separately, but even that's probably not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T17:52:09.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2012-08-17T19:20:58.083" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supporting @eykanal, it is not a big issue since data pertaining to many of the social network accounts are not completely private and many do have access to them for various reasons. One option is to put your university/office address on your CV since your name would in general be there on the university website. Also, as a side point at least do not put your photograph on the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T23:03:56.177" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T23:03:56.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2862" CreationDate="2012-08-17T19:57:46.523" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to pay for Adobe Acrobat Pro, as @schultem mentions, LaTeX can do this with embedded hyperlinks. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170226134025/http://www.bio.lmu.de/~benda/software/latex/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, Section 3.5 for more information. Note that if you use this method (as far as I know) you will have to click for sound, it cannot be automatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-03-24T07:44:02.730" LastActivityDate="2020-03-24T07:44:02.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2776" CreationDate="2012-08-18T02:56:03.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is extremely vague. The OP could be a professor of creative writing who has written a novel, a math professor who wrote a calculus textbook, a sociology professor who wrote a monograph on water rights in 19th-century Oregon, or a physics crank who wrote a book proving Einstein wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case that this is research: --- In some fields of academia (e.g., literature, sociology), it's normal to publish books and monographs on one's research, and these are considered professional pluses (e.g., for tenure). In other fields (such as physics), this is not normally done, and a book is not a feather in the author's cap. If this is a field where research often is published in book form, then the way to get peer review is to submit the book to publishing houses, whose acquisition editors, if they think the proposal/manuscript has possible merit, may try to get academics in the field to review it. Yes, the acquisition editor is a gatekeeper. No, there is no way to get around the gatekeeper and convince random academics that they should read a manuscript. There's a reason that acquisition editors are paid money. It's because the job they do is dreary and thankless. Random academics are not going to wade through a slush pile for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case that this is a textbook: --- There is a model that has been going on forever, which is that you distribute the book to your students via the best available technology of your era (quill pens, purple mimeos, internet), hone the book over years of teaching the same course over and over, and then, finally, send it out to publishers. A typical modern exmaple of this model is that Sean Carroll posted his textbook on general relativity on the internet &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/?9712019&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in 1997, and in 2003 it was published in dead-tree format by  Benjamin Cummings. If, like Sean Carroll, you're ethical, you make sure that your own students can get the book without paying you money. If you succeed in getting the book published in print by a traditional publisher, you can usually, if it's important to you, negotiate a clause in your contract allowing you to keep the book online for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people do self-publish textbooks as an alternative to traditional dead-tree publishing (rather than as a preliminary to dead-tree or a last resort after failing at dead-tree). A few of these projects are successful in the sense of gaining adoptions by other professors. This path does not involve peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T02:56:03.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2012-08-18T06:18:32.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many professors and graduate students who post full information in their website copy of the CV, including home address &amp;amp; home/cell telephone numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think posting this kind of information is necessary at all for the online CV. I guess most readers/browsers of your &lt;em&gt;online&lt;/em&gt; resume are interested in learning about your background, education, honors, grants,  projects, experience,  positions, and publications, rather than calling you on the phone, or paying you a home visit. Including your email adress is enough I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user489" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T06:18:32.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-18T07:22:53.117" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I make a point of offering all of my papers for download from my website.  So if readers discover me via a paper I've written, it should be easy for them to find my website (just google my name and the title of the paper).  On my website I list my current email address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T07:22:53.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-18T09:10:02.240" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2873/442&quot;&gt;Piotr's answer&lt;/a&gt; and the discussion following it states the most important points (while an academic email address may become invalid, a private one provides no means to verify the author's actual affiliation, or even suggest the author doesn't &lt;em&gt;identify&lt;/em&gt; with it), here's my suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a PGP key&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; for your private email address&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;optionally add your academic email address as another identity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your key signed, e.g. by&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;colleagues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your institution's sysadmin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a key exclusively for your academic email adress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish the key, e.g. at &lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.mit.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pgp.mit.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the publisher to include your &lt;em&gt;public&lt;/em&gt; key&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; or at least the footprint in the publication&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The online version should even link to the key entry to make verification easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now everyone can easily check your affiliation while you've made sure you can be contacted in the future - you can even add alternative email addresses to you key later on (the upload can be updated), and everyone will be able to deduce that should your original address not be reachable any more, you might be reachable via one of the other addresses associated with your public key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional benefit, now both you and your co-authors can sign the publication itself, adding another level of trust that this is truly authored (or sometimes rather endorsed, if you're so honest ;) by each of you. &lt;em&gt;And&lt;/em&gt; since you now have PGP keys anyway, you can also sign and/or encrypt your emails, making electronic communication both more trustworthy &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; less prone to leaks. Also, it keeps the NSA out for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; In case you're not familiar with PGP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create a pair of keys consisting of a &lt;em&gt;secret&lt;/em&gt; key (which you and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; you shall ever possess) and a &lt;em&gt;public&lt;/em&gt; key (which you are supposed to make as public as possible/required). The secret key can be used to put a signature on anything digital, like messages, files, protocols, papers or other people's public key, and anyone can use the matching public key to verify that this signature stems from that secret key, and thus (hopefully) from you. Reversely, anyone can encrypt data for you with your public key that only you can decrypt again with your secret key (messages can be encrypted for multiple recipients as well if required). Since everyone can sign anyone's key, you obtain the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web of trust&lt;/a&gt;, a network of keys that allows you to estimate how reliable the association of a key to an actual person is without having to exchange public keys in person. (The downside is, your email address is public and social engineering is possible, but we're responsible adults, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great open source implementation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open PGP&lt;/a&gt; standard is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GNU Privacy Guard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T06:14:38.723" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2888" CreationDate="2012-08-18T09:41:18.547" Score="8" ViewCount="2833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to study for a Master Program in the US. I'm from foreign country, so I don't know what's the procedure to submit letters of recommendation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial guess is, the ones who write the letters for me have to submit it (otherwise it would be meaningless to submit it myself). But I wonder, do I have to create separate accounts for sending the letters, or I have to send my application account to my writers? If so, can I create accounts for them, because they are very busy? Finally, is it possible to submit same letters to multiple universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1483" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T11:50:23.833" Title="Submission procedure for letters of recommendation" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2012-08-18T11:50:23.833" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consult the application page of the school you are applying to. Most institutions make it pretty clear how letters of recommendation are to be submitted. From an ethical standpoint, the letters should never pass through your hands, just as your transcript should be mailed directly from your undergraduate institution without going through you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the application process is completed online, as most are these days, you will have to provide email contacts for your references. They will receive emails from the application system on how to proceed. Their access to the system should be generated automatically. Neither you nor they should have to create accounts for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the institution is insistent on using snail mail as the means of submitting information, then provide each of your letter writers with an envelope that is already addresses and has proper postage. That way your letter writers can seal the envelope themselves and drop the letter in the mail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to submit the same letter to another institution. I have read some letters that were clearly done that way (e.g., addressed to a different institution, describing the candidate's aptitude for an unrelated position, photocopied, or dated five years ago). &lt;strong&gt;I would not do this.&lt;/strong&gt; Submitting identical letters to multiple institutions (and it is usually obvious, because a good letter is tailored to that institution), implies three bad things about you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are too lazy to ask for new letters of recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your letter writes did not know about the second application, so their comments are not relevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You didn't trust your letter writers to write you a good letter for that position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just ask your letter writers to write new letters to each institution. This second letter will not be written from scratch, so it won't be as much work for them. Likely, they will edit a letter they wrote about you previously to create a new letter specific to the new institution or position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T11:50:23.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2012-08-18T16:10:20.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To complement the other answers, very often nowadays home address and home phone can be suppressed, and, indeed, are not &quot;public&quot; information in the U.S.  Workplace contact info suffices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T16:10:20.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2891" CreationDate="2012-08-18T16:50:12.123" Score="4" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I earned my Bachelor Degree in Computer Science 5 years ago. From the moment when I have a diploma in my hands, I thought, enough I never return to academia, no matter what happens. I was very keen to start working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the moment I changed few workplaces. I wanted to try all kind of positions that computer science man can get. All my positions were not very interesting. I wouldn't say I became very experienced programmer, I have some experience, but I don't have a field I am good at, and actually I am not too worried about that. The main problem I think is I don't feel that I do something useful or something challenging, actually, I feel that I waste my time. I do my job, but I don't feel I contribute to myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few years ago I realized that may be it's worth returning to academy. Simply, just because I remember it wasn't boring. I sent few application letters to few good universities in my country, but they didn't apply me. There were universities that just refused without any explanation, and in few of them I fault in interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, I decide if no official program is allowed, I can just take few courses of Master Degree in any university. The result of my first course was very terrible, I think I was the worsen student on the course. But afterward there was a gradually improvement in the grades (I never took the same course twice). This year again I sent few application letters with my grades, and I was applied by all universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is by now I have a very good position in very successful start-up company. The position is very hard and almost all the time in the office I am under a high pressure, but of course, there are benefits of a successful start-up company, fast promotion, investment, but still I have a feeling that I am doing something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a decision yet, either postpone my studies or give up good position. Have you found yourself in a similar situation, when you have give up a lot, just because you want to do something you was dreaming about? Particularly, have you gave up you job for studies, and do you regret about your decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dnr:&lt;/strong&gt; A few years ago, I didn't like my computer programming job.  I was good enough at it, but the job wasn't very challenging and didn't offer much room for personal growth.  I felt like I was wasting my time. Even though I had sworn that I never would, I applied to grad school.  I was not accepted as a full-time student, so I just started taking classes as a non-degree student.  Initially I did badly, but over a few years I improved.  Recently, I was admitted to grad school.  But by now I have a great job in a fast-paced startup.  So I'm torn about whether to quit my job to return to school.  What do you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="312" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-08-18T22:36:36.857" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T22:36:36.857" Title="Giving up good position because of studies" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2012-08-18T18:37:21.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important consideration is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;window of opportunity&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.  How long will you have the chance to go back to school?  Will the school be happy to let you defer for a year?  In contrast, if you leave your current job for school, is there a good chance that you could return to work there after you finish a masters degree?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also ask &lt;strong&gt;&quot;What are my long-term goals?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  It sounds like you mainly want to be challenged and experience personal growth; perhaps also to &quot;do something useful&quot;.  Do you have others long-term goals?  How likely are you to be happy and on your way to these goals in 5 or 10 years if you stay at your current job.  Grad school can be fun, but it's often just a way to delay &quot;real life&quot; for a few years.  If you get a masters, will that really help you to be happier with your life and where you're headed 5 or 10 years after you finish school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T18:37:21.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-18T22:59:25.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the age of search engines and relatively high mobility on the side of researchers, personally I see no reason to include an e-mail address on research papers. Whenever possible (i.e., the published/editor does not explicitly ask for it), I do not include it at all and if I must, I use the currently valid one. The reason is exactly that it becomes invalid quite quickly. The e-mail address is not useful even as a means for author identity disambiguation. For lucky guys bearing a name like &quot;John Smith&quot; in various languages (I am such a case as well), it's relatively common to encounter a guy with the same name, or initials working at the same university, or sharing part of academic history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A complementary issue to the original question posed is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many times in the last ten years did you used an e-mail address stated in the paper as a means to contact the author(s) of the paper?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did so exactly zero times and know of nobody who did so more than that (and yes, I asked several colleagues about this in the course of the last few years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T22:59:25.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T01:01:18.630" Score="81" ViewCount="7335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to write several papers exploring various aspects of the same scientific question. Each of these papers must have an introduction which motivates it and explains the relationship between the problem and what others have studied in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be fantastic if I could simply copy-and-paste the same introduction, or, at least, 90% of it.  This seems to me to be ethically unproblematic. After all, I need to say the exact same things every time, and I certainly don't mind the self-plagiarism. Am I hurting the reader in any way? I suppose I might be, if the reader desired an introduction which consists of original material, but that is an odd desire, isn't it? Its the research, the stuff that follows the intro, that is original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, I have gotten wind that the majority of the research community apparently does not agree with the sentiments expressed in the previous paragraph. This leads me here to ask a series of related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To what extent is self-plagiarism in non-technical bits considered acceptable? I often see authors recycle paragraphs but I have never seen anyone cut-and-paste the entire section outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be particularly interested in learning whether norms on this vary across different scientific communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How often do scholars find themselves trying to same the same thing in different words to avoid self-plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supposing I insert a sentence to the effect of: &amp;quot;The introductory section 1.2 is taken verbatim from the author's earlier paper [1].&amp;quot; How likely are journal editors and reviewers to complain about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I am fairly certain they would be &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; likely to complain about a sentence to the effect of &amp;quot;We refer the reader to [1] for motivation to study this problem and a discussion of its relation to prior work.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T02:53:50.123" Title="Attitudes towards self-plagiarism" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-19T07:44:41.397" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a referee, I would not have problems with either way of referencing your previous paper. I would be more pissed off if I checked one of your earlier papers and found that a section was ripped off that without notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T07:44:41.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-19T08:02:33.590" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, quoting any work, &lt;strong&gt;including your own&lt;/strong&gt;, without explicit attribution of the quote, is going to earn you a very bad reputation for plagiarism sooner or later. Just say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and to state the obvious, the introduction is there to introduce the rest of the paper. As each paper will be unique, so should the introduction be: the point is to lead the user into the paper, rather than to give a grounding in the whole subject area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, why not wrap up all of the things you want to say in all of the papers' introductions, into a single review paper?  It would contain all of the literature review, motivations, unsolved problems, areas for future research, that you want to reference in your other papers. And then, those other papers can just briefly &amp;amp; concisely properly reference and quote the relevant bits of that review paper in their introduction. It won't be as brief as &lt;em&gt;&quot;for review and motivation, see my paper DOI:ABC.DEF.GHI&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, but you should be able to distil the review paper down to a paragraph or two for each subsequent paper, and those words will be unique for each subsequent paper, drawing only on the elements you need for that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T08:02:33.590" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-19T09:08:48.263" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To what extent is self-plagiarism in non-technical bits considered acceptable? I often see authors recycle paragraphs but I have never seen anyone cut-and-paste the entire section outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no strict rule about that, apart from the fact that &quot;the overlap between two papers must not be substantial&quot;. I think it's mostly a matter of content than size. For instance, if you were in your paper to reuse a technique/theory/tool that has been previously defined, by you or someone else. Then having a short section reintroducing the tool (for the sake of the self-containment of the paper) that is a copy/paste from another paper is OK. You found a nice and concise way to present a technique/theory/tool, there is no real need to reinvent it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the introduction is quite different, because that's the part that motivates your paper, and present the results detailed in the paper. There is of course some high-level paragraphs/sentences that you can reuse (The need of general-appraoch is paramount in the context of general-problem because of general-reason), but somehow, if 90% of your introduction is the same than for another paper, then that probably means that either the 10% is not enough as a contribution alone (which doesn't seem to be the case) or that your introduction does not focus enough on why those 10% are important. If the major part of your 90% is background and related work, then move them to explicit sections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd be particularly interested in learning whether norms on this vary across different scientific communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't speak for other communities, but something that is usually frowned upon (but many people still do it) in CS is &quot;incremental research&quot;, where your next paper is just a small improvement of a previous paper of yours, and where your strategy from the beginning is to maximize the number of publications you can get from one idea, instead of trying to publish directly the full idea. In this context, self-plagiarism, especially in the introduction, could be seen as a blatant proof of incremental research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How often do scholars find themselves trying to same the same thing in different words to avoid self-plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally not that often, as I will mostly reuse &quot;technical&quot; parts, and try to write from scratch non-technical ones for each paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supposing I insert a sentence to the effect of: &quot;The introductory section 1.2 is taken verbatim from the author's earlier paper [1].&quot; How likely are journal editors and reviewers to complain about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the above reasons, I would complain about it: if your introduction is taken verbatim from another paper, then maybe the contribution of the paper I'm reviewing is not that novel. For background/related work section, I wouldn't bother mentioning that it's a copy/paste from another paper, however, I would certainly like to be directed to &quot;full&quot; version of the sections. Also, and that might be something field-specific, some submissions are double-blind, i.e., the reviewers are not supposed to know the identify of the authors, and obvious self-references are forbidden. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T09:08:48.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T09:49:22.840" Score="16" ViewCount="5681" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Disclaimer: The GRE Program &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;discontinued the Computer Science Test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm from an unknown school in Georgia. I want to apply for grad school in U.S, but I don't have a good GPA although I am at the top %15 of the class. Here we have some strange grading system - we use 4.0 system but grading is not similar to the western world. I am confident on my knowledge and I believe that I can do well on GRE CS Subject exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do you care about or value GRE Subject test results ? &#xA;If so, what score do you expect from a candidate ? &#xA;Is it possible to get some funding at top 40-70 range schools? &#xA;Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1487" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T10:58:33.590" LastActivityDate="2017-07-12T14:33:12.910" Title="Will a good GRE Computer Science subject test score overcome a &quot;weak&quot; academic record?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2897" CreationDate="2012-08-19T11:28:18.823" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The GRE subject tests are useful measuring sticks in disciplines where it's available, as they test understanding in a single discipline in a way that is hopefully &quot;neutral&quot; across different schools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you'll need to have a very strong &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; package in order to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;overcome the weakness in your GPA&lt;/a&gt;. A strong showing on the GRE subject test will help, as will strong letters of recommendation from several of your instructors. These letters should clearly indicate structural reasons why you can't do research, and should find some way to indicate your aptitude for graduate studies. If it is possible, you should also get an official note on your transcript indicating your class rank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really comment on the funding situation in CS; perhaps one of our other site users can fill in that part of the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T11:28:18.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2897" CreationDate="2012-08-19T13:47:07.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, a good GRE score does compensate for your getting an undergraduate degree from &quot;not among the best institutes&quot;. As for funding, a graduate student in US generally gets funded through either (1) some research project funding, or (2) the department. In the former case you become a Graduate Research Assistance (GRA) where you assist a professor or a researcher in his/her research. In the later case you help the department (through some professor/teacher) in work related to teaching e.g. grading homework and so on. This position is called Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA). Apart form these two ways of getting financial support there is fellowship but that is achieved generally by those with exceptional academic and research experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your background and expertise, the only feasible option is to get a GTA. I would suggest doing your best to get good GRE score (general and specific -CS) and then do a good search on available GTA and write to the professors (top and medium level universities) how you can hep them teach classes. Your cover letter must clearly and honestly state your abilities and interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T14:25:20.870" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T14:25:20.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T14:08:42.680" Score="14" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;The impression I get in my field of research (theoretical chemistry) is that candidates for postdoc and more permanent research positions are judged partly upon their publication record. I suspect this is true of other fields, particularly the sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suffer from a long term chronic illness which means currently I cannot work full-time. I manage 75% of full-time hours  working on my PhD currently, so while I am well enough to do research, I am not well enough to do as much as I'd like. I am concerned that, should my health not improve, this will prove problematic as I try to move from being a student to an employee. My academic output would likely be less than an able-bodied person in the same position. While it may be of the same quality, there would be less of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is legislation in many places that prevents discrimination against disabled people, but I suspect this would not apply where candidates are being judged based on previous academic output. My worry is that because academic employment seems so performance/output-oriented, I will be left behind, even if my work is of good quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts and experiences regarding how disability is treated in academia, particularly with regards to selecting candidates for a new position, would be greatly appreciated. I would also welcome advice on how to mitigate the possible issues arising from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was initially unsure whether to post this, as it would be possible for potential employers to identify me from this posting. However, I think this topic is important to discuss and there are potentially other PhD students in the same situation as me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T12:57:02.917" Title="Does disability impact on prospects of employment in academia?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2897" CreationDate="2012-08-19T15:49:42.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pure anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a peak at the notes that were written on my file&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; at one place I applied to after a ... uh ... less than stellar performance at my undergraduate institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things on the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Great test scores. What was he doing in school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That program offered to admit me without support. In fact, a lot of places offered to admit me without support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grad school is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard if you have to work too. The program I eventually chose gave me support about a year in, and it is just as well because I wouldn't have been able to keep it up much longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;No cloak and dagger stuff here, the reviewers wrote summaries on a sheet affixed to the front of the file which was left were I could see it while the departmental admin stepped out to flag someone down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T23:39:03.803" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T23:39:03.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:19:37.773" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, you will not write all of these papers simultaneously in parallel, but one after another. And each time you write a new paper related to the topic, you will have a learned a lot more, and you will have a much better idea of how to explain the setting, what are the right definitions, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore you have a very good reason to re-write your introduction for each paper, and tailor it for the specific question studied in this particular paper. And this way there is no risk of anyone accusing you of self-plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, this way you can even go as far as &lt;em&gt;experiment&lt;/em&gt; with different ways of explaining the basic setting of your work, and see if you get different feedback... After all, your introduction is the most important part of your work from the marketing perspective, and it is not easy to get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T16:19:37.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2901" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:19:56.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a recruiter (we have some here, I hope they'll answer to you), but I've been applying to quite a fair number of positions in the past years, so I can tell you how I've &lt;em&gt;felt&lt;/em&gt; I've been judged and evaluated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a project postdoc (i.e., a postdoc where your research plan is already predefined), you need to prove that you can address the research problem of the project. I've usually felt that the evaluation process could be quite fast, and in this case, you might be judged a bit in the absolute: if there is another candidate with a better application (which is of course not limited to your publication track), she might be selected. Furthermore, in this case, the problem could mostly be the fact that you can't work full-time: if I have a budget for a 1 or 2 years postdoc, I might not be able to use the 25% of the budget elsewhere, so I might have little incentive in hiring a 75% postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a permanent academic position, there are a priori hiring for life, and you might be more judged on your long-term research agenda. I've been applying to some positions in the UK, and all the forms ask you to indicate if you have any disability and if you need some specific treatment (for instance, if you are in a wheelchair, you might not be able to access some parts of the building). I would think that having a part-time is not necessarily a problem, as they can probably reuse the 25% of the budget (but of course, that would completely depend on the university). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I've had the feeling that you're judged before all on how you have used the resources you had, and how you have progressed, rather than a simple look at your publication list. An academic application is quite huge, you can have a cover letter, a research statement, a teaching statement, a description of your best publications, a full academic CV, and some recommendation letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, from how I can see people think and act in academia, I don't think they would care about your illness, and you should be evaluated taking that factor into account. The main question might rather be whether they would be interested in a part-time position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T16:19:56.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-19T19:50:48.217" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very dangerous (for your career) issue here.  If your papers are so similar that the same introduction could be repeated almost verbatim in each, it may be that the content of the individual papers don't represent a truly significant advance.  As an obvious example, if you are just changing one parameter in your code and running it again, with no new analysis or insight, you will run into trouble and may even get banned from submitting to offended journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is not a direct answer to the question, but I think it may be useful to people interested in this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T19:50:48.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2958" CreationDate="2012-08-20T08:14:03.280" Score="20" ViewCount="3215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why can't I have a single ScholarOne login for every journal I submit or review for?  Is there some way to copy over the address, keywords &amp;amp; password for all my accounts so I don't have to waste time making the same stuff up every time I get involved with another journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T16:12:42.997" LastActivityDate="2020-05-04T20:02:58.590" Title="Does ScholarOne really force you to have multiple logins?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-20T12:00:09.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2886/725&quot;&gt;Tobias' approach&lt;/a&gt; I agree that it is overkill. However, I wonder whether it would just be a rather simple solution to give two email adresses of the corresponding author: the institutional and the stable personal one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, while I do sometimes contact authors using the contact email address, I consider this a convenience rather than a necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is usually quite easy to track down the author even if he moved on. People at the old institute usually know where he went.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the author has been moving on so often that the old institute doesn't know any longer where to find him, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;usually that means that he (or the institute) moved to a different field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and this happens mostly for papers that were published quite a while ago (but if he has continued working in that field, you usually find newer work with newer contact address)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consequently, there's a high probability that he anyways doesn't remember the details I want to ask...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T12:00:09.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2901" CreationDate="2012-08-20T12:57:02.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-identifying a disability at some stage during the interview process is usually in your best interest. Being upfront with a potential employer can make all the difference, especially because of the legal protections it affords you in most academic settings. It's also important because then expectations are properly set at the beginning of the process, rather than having to &quot;adjust&quot; later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, many application processes (at least in the EU) allow for self-identification of illnesses and handicaps that could &quot;slow down&quot; one's career. This allows one to &quot;lengthen&quot; the eligibility clocks for many programs. This helps to ameliorate the problems you mentioned of being judged against a cohort that has had more time to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T12:57:02.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2870" CreationDate="2012-08-20T13:21:17.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important of all criteria is the interest you have and confidence you feel in the new or adjacent field. In addition to this you need to convince your future post-doc supervisor that you are capable of pursuing post-doc in computer science. This would need from you a specific and honest cover letter and curriculum vitae that highlights your new intentions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;em&gt;computer science&lt;/em&gt; is a broad area and I am not sure if someone offers post-doc in just &lt;em&gt;computer science&lt;/em&gt;. This supported by @JeffE (see his comments down) also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T12:29:02.900" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T12:29:02.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2906" CreationDate="2012-08-20T13:57:59.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the primary issue is the fact that because different publishers are responsible for maintaining the different author and referee databases, it's impractical (or perhaps even impossible) to share them between different journals. If you had the ability to get somebody else's database, it would be a potentially tempting target. So I think that everything is locked to a specific journal, without the ability to transfer between them. You can probably use the same login information for all of the different journals, but you'll need to register for each one separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T13:57:59.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2912" CreationDate="2012-08-20T15:54:52.223" Score="15" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a little bit different from the case of reusing boilerplate text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say one has done a series of experiments (either real or &quot;virtual&quot;) to produce a set of results. Because the results are inconclusive as to the cause of certain effects, an additional, much larger set of experiments were performed under a series of different conditions to complete the &quot;factorial matrix&quot; of possibilities (all possible states of factor X crossed with all possible states of factor Y).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because the original results are valid, and represent unique &quot;cells&quot; in the factorial matrix, is it necessary to rerun the experiments for a future publication, or is it just a matter of obtaining journal permission for the re-use of figures and tables associated with the presentation of the data? As an example, am I violating copyright if I add a new set of curves to a figure which contains the same data as before? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask in part because there was just today a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp306088h&quot;&gt;retraction&lt;/a&gt; based on reuse of figures, and I'd rather not run afoul of guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T20:57:23.030" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T19:05:50.710" Title="Is reuse of &quot;internal&quot; results considered self-plagiarism if used in a later publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2911" CreationDate="2012-08-20T16:57:42.417" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, researchers are free to re-use a given dataset as many times as they want in numerous publications. I've been involved in single datasets (which, admittedly, took years to build) that generated &lt;em&gt;dozens&lt;/em&gt; of papers, and that is by no means a unique scenario. My understanding is that researchers are to refrain from publishing an identical analysis on an identical dataset in different papers. If you're using a single dataset for multiple analyses, there's no need to re-generate the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T16:57:42.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2897" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:09:58.527" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purposes of graduate school admissions, any self-directed intellectual activity counts as research.  Have you contributed to any open-source projects?  Have you written any Android or iPhone apps?  Did you solve all the double-starred problems in Hopcroft and Ullman?  Did you write a confluently persistent graph data structure library?  Did you participate in (or better yet, coach for) the International Olympiad in Informatics?  What about Google Summer of Code?  Do you contribute regularly to a StackExchange site?  Have you rebuilt a pinball machine?  &lt;strong&gt;These are all real examples.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research opportunities are not something you're &lt;em&gt;provided&lt;/em&gt;; they're something you &lt;em&gt;hunt down and kill&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T14:30:24.733" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T14:30:24.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2918" CreationDate="2012-08-21T03:54:50.133" Score="21" ViewCount="8963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of applying for various scholarships to fund my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scholarships mention explicitly the approximate amount per year of the scholarship. This is usually the amount &lt;em&gt;excluding&lt;/em&gt; tuitions, so the amount mentioned is intended to be a stipend to cover living expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen it mentioned anywhere, nor could I find a definite answer of this online: will this stipend be taxed? E.g., should I subtract a certain percentage off the scholarship amount that's mentioned, to calculate my &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; monthly income? Does this depend on the country the scholarship is given in, or are there international agreements on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the initial stages of setting up my PhD programme, therefore I'm in contact with professors in New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Canada, so ideally, answers to my question apply to any of these countries. If it's relevant: I'm a dual citizen (European/American Citizen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T08:00:16.597" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T18:02:44.710" Title="Are PhD scholarships and assistantships taxable?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2939" CreationDate="2012-08-21T03:29:01.713" Score="5" ViewCount="1395" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two questions &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1&amp;amp;fb_source=message&quot;&gt;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1&amp;amp;fb_source=message&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1&quot;&gt;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1&lt;/a&gt; inspire me to ask this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike Math &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GRE&lt;/a&gt; in Physics GRE, almost everything taught in first 3 years of undergrad is examined with almost equal percentage of total questions (Classical Mechanics 20%, EM 18%, QM 12%, Optics 9%) while in math, 50% can be scored only with good calculus skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can one expect to be accepted in good physics grad schools if he has good Physics GRE score? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another question is, can one go to theoretical physics grad school only with good score in Physics GRE? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this is appropriate place to ask these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" OwnerDisplayName="Adnan Bashir Fuaad" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T19:11:44.217" Title="Do Physics grad schools accept non-physics students with good Physics GRE score?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2914" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:11:23.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Belgium, we have two kinds of ways of paying PhD students. One is a bursary, which is untaxed. The other is a salary, which is taxed. The amount the student gets in the hand is roughly the same, though there are factors such as amount of experience, whether there's a family and/or children, etc, that affect the value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a bursary or salary was offered depends upon where the funding comes from. In practice, the tasks of the students in each case are the same. No additional money is provided for tutoring, though it is expected that students help out with tutoring and other activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tuition fees (less that 1000 euro per year) are not covered by the scholarship. Money for books is not provided, though in our department students can order books for the library and keep them on their desk for as long as they want to. Sufficient money for conference attendance is generally available, independent of the scholarship, as far as the student is concerned (which means, managed collectively by the supervisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Belgian PhD students earn a comparatively good amount of money, I think almost the highest among PhD students in Europe. (I can't find a reference for that at the moment.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T07:26:24.653" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T07:26:24.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:18:30.643" Score="13" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just about to go into my final year of my computing degree, and I want to continue to a PhD after completion. What preparations do I need to do prior to applying for grants/scholarships/funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="827" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T17:07:56.723" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T00:53:37.193" Title="What do I have to do in preparation for applying for a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2914" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:59:46.207" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taxation does depend very much on the country, as well as the type of award you receive. The amounts similarly vary from nation to nation. To give two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the US, scholarships and fellowship stipends are taxed as ordinary income. However, in some cases, for externally funded awards, you need to be careful, as the university might &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; withhold taxes. In that case, however, you would need to make estimated tax payments, as you are still responsible for paying the tax &quot;on time!&quot; &#xA;Don't forget that your tax burden may also include &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; income taxes, depending on where you live. Making matters even more complicated, cost of living fluctuates wildly: you're probably better off with a $25,000 award in the midwest than a $35,000 or $40,000 award in New York City.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other countries, the system can vary. In Germany, for instance, graduate fellowships are not taxed, while &quot;standard&quot; graduate positions, which are considered employees of the state, are taxed. At the same time, however, people receiving the taxed positions receive health benefits and pay into the social security system. Stipend recipients are responsible for their own health insurance, and do not accrue time in the social security system.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T07:59:46.207" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2924" CreationDate="2012-08-21T08:31:56.947" Score="21" ViewCount="13794" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've been receiving an increasing number of invitations to submit papers to several new Open-Access journals published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/&quot;&gt;Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody here had any direct interactions with any of their journals? If so, what is your opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I googled around a bit and they do not seem to be an exceedingly serious outfit. Although I have no intention of publishing there, I think this discussion may be useful for others receiving the same, or similar, invitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T19:43:39.197" LastActivityDate="2020-12-15T07:25:19.670" Title="Experiences with Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2020-12-15T08:01:36.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T08:47:48.217" Score="12" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I receive some emails to attend scientific conferences organized in beautiful tourist places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, recently I got a message for a conference in the wonderful &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cinqueterre.it/info.php&quot;&gt;Italian Cinque Terre&lt;/a&gt;, that was promoting both the conference scientific relevance and the beauty of the city locations. &#xA;Or, another time, I received a message that invited me to attend a conference in the marvelous mountains of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bardonecchiaski.com/&quot;&gt;Bardonecchia&lt;/a&gt; next winter. In this case, the mail said that organizers would provide a ski pass for skiing activities for any participant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kind of conferences leaves me quite doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim of the organizers is obvious: to sum up the beauty of the places to the scientific importance of the conference, to convince more people to attend.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;But is it fair?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering: is it right to organize conferences in wonderful places, to make people coming more for the beauty of the places than for the scientific relevance of the event?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should not a conference be attended &lt;strong&gt;just and only&lt;/strong&gt; for the scientific relevance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it have to be necessarily a &lt;strong&gt;partial vacation&lt;/strong&gt; for attendees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T21:14:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T21:14:38.487" Title="Is it fair to organize conferences in beautiful tourist places?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2012-08-21T09:05:47.797" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that so-called &quot;travel junkets&quot;—such as conferences with dubious scientific or technical content—that are organized in exotic locales &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; to provide a vacation for attendees than to provide a rewarding scientific exchange are largely indefensible, and I certainly would not authorize use of my group's travel funds to attend such conferences, either for myself or for my group members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I see nothing wrong with combining a high-quality scientific program with pleasant surroundings and environments that make attending more of a pleasure. Academics are humans, too, and can certainly enjoy aesthetics and exploration just as much as anybody else! For instance, I much prefer attending conferences in cities like Boston or San Francisco in the US than I do conferences in (for example) Cincinnati or Salt Lake City, because of the range of things to do and see in the former cities is so much greater than in the latter. That doesn't mean I won't go to the latter—but it does mean that the conference will have to do a better job of selling itself than one that's located somewhere more &quot;interesting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T09:05:47.797" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2917" CreationDate="2012-08-21T09:06:32.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every school has its own requirements: typically, letters of recommendation, GRE tests, language tests. Check them with much advance: 1 year is not too soon, especially if you are applying for a US school as a foreigner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, nothing special: have a good academic record, and make sure that the first Google result for your name is not a college party Facebook picture in which you are drunken and naked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T09:06:32.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2917" CreationDate="2012-08-21T09:15:48.283" Score="13" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get good grades. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure (some of) your lecturers know who you are, so that you can ask for a recommendation letter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get involved in some kind of research, either a thesis or something extracurricular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work out what topic you want to study; at least have a first idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select relevant coursework based on the previous point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid of going abroad. Prepare yourself mentally for this &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt;, so when the time comes to actually decide, you'll be ready. Check details such as visa requirements, as these can take 3-4 months to obtain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research good universities who do what you want to do. Find out about their application procedure is and their deadline. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T10:39:22.413" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T10:39:22.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2919" CreationDate="2012-08-21T09:21:11.670" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100113/full/463148a.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; news item&lt;/a&gt; would seem to suggest rather strongly that SCIRP is not a serious outfit. Given the ethical improprieties mentioned in that article, staying away from such journals with a ten-foot pole (or longer) seems advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T09:21:11.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2012-08-21T11:51:34.537" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fairness is not a point at all in the organisation of conferences. The goals of the organisers of an event (scientific or not) is to have as much incentive as possible for people to come. &#xA;Indeed, most of the time, the organisation part has to be done &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; knowing the exact number of attendees, and the organisers still need to cover the expenses in terms of room rental, catering, etc. There are many ways to attract researchers for a conference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organise a high quality conference, where the scientific interest alone make it worth to come. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a &quot;paradise&quot; location, such that the attendees can just show up for their session, and then relax on the beach or on the ski slopes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select an &quot;interesting&quot; location, where people wouldn't go normally in vacation, but that could be a good opportunity. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a quiet place, with few distractions, allowing the attendees to focus as much as possible on work. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/dagstuhl-seminars/&quot;&gt;Dagstuhl seminars&lt;/a&gt; are quite famous for that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a conveniently located place, such that it will be easy (and cheap) for many attendees to come. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a &quot;cheap&quot; place, for instance by organising during summer in a university, where you get the rooms for free, and where housing can be cheap. It can be a nice way to attract many students. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, in general, it's a mix of those, and you can't maximise all of them. And then, as aeismail said, it's a matter of whether you can get funding to attend the conference. But the question of whether is fair or not is not really relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I have rephrased the answer following David's comment. Clearly, an important point is that there is always a targeted audience for any event. If you want to organise a conference on an extremely specific topic, maybe there are only 20 researchers who could be interested. The job of the organisers is therefore to find the best way to attract as many as possible from these 20. I also want to make the difference between the &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; behind organising an event, e.g., advance science, create collaboration, make money (for some scam conf) and the goals to reach in terms of organisation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T16:11:05.043" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T16:11:05.043" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T14:51:17.750" Score="21" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of applying for various scholarships to fund my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm writing to many different organizations/institutions/etc., I started wondering whether these different funding schemes can be combined. I found it hard to find any reliable information on this matter, so I reckoned I'd ask it here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I successfully obtain two scholarships, in two different countries, amounting to roughly $15.000 and $25.000 annually, both &lt;em&gt;excluding&lt;/em&gt; coverage for university tuition fees. Should I notify both of them of having obtained the other? Or should I make absolutely sure they'll never find out :) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there'll be severe consequences to keeping it silent -- if so, what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:39:18.050" Title="How do multiple PhD scholarships combine?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2012-08-21T15:38:14.383" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not accept both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To check the rules, you should notify each of the providers, in case this is not allowed by one of the universities. I know of one student thrown out of two universities because of this (one of them was a Dutch university). This is more or less equivalent to &lt;strong&gt;goodbye academic career&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be able to get funding from one university and supplement it with further funding from the same university, assuming that this is within the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T18:39:18.050" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:39:18.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T15:48:28.250" Score="10" ViewCount="10723" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics (other than being a professor)? Do people with PhDs in statistics earn significantly more than people with MS degrees in statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, does a PhD in a quantitative field provide a salary advantage over a MS in a quantitative field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1502" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T08:47:51.627" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T08:47:51.627" Title="What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T12:46:06.850" Score="15" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I became aware by own experiences and friend's stories that some international statistical journals (whose names I prefer to omit) are rejecting papers because they do not include a reference of the journal in question. This is, if you do not cite a paper from journal X, then you cannot attempt to publish a paper in journal X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, has an influence on the Impact Factor of the journal and the administrators are trying to increase this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there explicit regulations regarding these issues? Is it possible to denounce this kind of behaviour? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Journalist" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T11:27:04.503" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T03:25:27.023" Title="Ethics of a journal requiring that submissions cite existing articles in the journal" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:18:20.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no explicit regulations regarding impact factors; the definition is too simple. (In terms of complexity, it's a lot like calculating a slugging average in baseball. So it's open to a lot of manipulation, and all of it is permissible. However, permissible does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean ethical, and this is clearly a situation where, if true, the journal editors are trying to manipulate statistics to make their journal look better. Such a policy, if done with the intent of manipulating statistics, is deplorable, and should be denounced—via web campaigns, blog posts, open letters, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is a counterargument that is less nefarious in aim. It is possible to argue that you should, in general, cite &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; article from the journal you're submitting a paper to. If you can't do that, why is your article suitable for submission to that journal (let's call it journal X)? Presumably, there are a number of other journals (A, B, C, etc.) whose works you have cited instead of X. In that case, the journal could argue that your paper is a better fit for journals A, B, and C instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's not clear &lt;em&gt;for which reason&lt;/em&gt; the journal has the self-citing policy, I would make sure that you can determine it convincingly, one way or the other, to avoid embarrassing yourself. The last thing you want to do is spearhead a campaign that turns a molehill into a mountain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:18:20.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:23:26.897" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dave's answer is mostly correct: you should not accept both &lt;em&gt;without the explicit written permission of both scholarship providers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some scholarships can be combined, if the fellowship sponsor allows it. However, in general, large-scale fellowships cannot usually be accepted in conjunction with other fellowships. You'll need to choose one or the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're talking about actual scholarships—by which I mean cash awards directly to you, without being tied to a specific course of study at a specific university—the rules may be more relaxed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to read the rules and conditions associated with each award, and then to ask the sponsors if you have any questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:23:26.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2012-08-22T03:45:09.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a new strategy as follow: I am reading the article, taking notes, and then generating Q&amp;amp;A of the most relevant facts. I am using a flash card software with spaced repetition to help me review them. By doing so, I am no longer worried about forgetting things and more concentrated on understanding things. As I read more and more, I hope to reach the stage where only the recently published idea/concept are the ones which goes into my flash cards program. I know it's a tedious workflow, but I believe it will pay off soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1448" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T03:45:09.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2914" CreationDate="2012-08-22T08:40:31.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When thinking about taxation you need to consider how tuition and fees are handled. Under some circumstances, you could be responsible for paying tax on the money used to pay your tuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to think about minimum earnings. If your only income is your scholarship, the tax burden will be small. If you have additional income, then the additional tax burden from the scholarship could be very large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T08:40:31.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2936" CreationDate="2012-08-22T11:04:31.937" Score="11" ViewCount="3277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently graduated from a non EEA university—though arguably one of the better/best schools in its field in my country—with a CGPA of 2.90, majoring in Computer science. I used to study Bioengineering/Bioinformatics—from which I hold a publication—before switching to CS. I suffered from an extensive period of burnout and some personal problems starting my second year in college—after getting a 3.30 in my freshman year, not exactly an upward trend in my grades in following years either—resulting in my current CGPA. I did a summer research at my school after my 2nd year which resulted with that conference publication I mentioned above, did two internships of Computer science (first one at a company, second one at one of the top 3 CS universities in the USA), I have two posters from my graduation project (one presented at an international conference the other one not-so international), and an upcoming journal or conference paper depending on deadline circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my cliche question is: &lt;strong&gt;should I take my chances with good/top Computer science master's programs throughout Europe (e.g., TU Eindhoven, EPFL, RWTH Aachen or TU Munchen) before applying for a PhD, or should I stay at my school for my MSc and then apply for the PhD?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not even hoping for a scholarship at this point, just an acceptance. I haven't taken the TOEFL and the GRE yet since now I'm in my gap year, I will be taking them soon in order to start my application procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1511" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-08-22T11:51:20.187" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T12:37:41.857" Title="CS PhD application with low GPA but extensive research experience" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2935" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:37:41.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to check the requirements of the individual schools to see if a transfer is even possible. For the German schools, at the very least, the computer science degree is often subject to &quot;continuity&quot; requirements, which make it very difficult to enroll in a master's program unless you already have the bachelor's in the same subject from a German university (or can demonstrate &quot;equivalence&quot; of your degree if it's coming from abroad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, admission often depends fairly strictly on GPA, at least at the master's level. Recommendations hardly matter, if they even count at all. At the PhD level, the process changes, and becomes more like getting hired for a job. So it may be better to wait until you're applying for PhD positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T12:37:41.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2941" CreationDate="2012-08-22T15:26:10.333" Score="26" ViewCount="25658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished my PhD thesis which will be published as a book soon.&#xA;Now I'm wondering if it's possible or allowed to submit parts to a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally the process would be the other way round I think: Submitting papers and &quot;gluing&quot; them together for the thesis. I've read the guidelines of some journals which state &quot;that the work described has not been published before&quot; or that &quot;Papers must present scientific results that are essentially new&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1513" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T14:11:58.547" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T17:06:10.060" Title="Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2012-08-22T15:49:24.830" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, this is allowed, even encouraged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on what kind of book you are publishing. If it is the regular dissertation, then you can publish in journals. If it is a properly published book by Springer or equivalent, then I doubt that you can publish again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T15:49:24.830" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2915" CreationDate="2012-08-22T19:11:44.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate admissions is based on lots of different factors.  I don't think any one thing will make you in-eligible for acceptance, at even the best institutions---including not being a physics major.  That being said, unless you have physics (or similar) experience, or are in a related field, it will hurt your application.  I know numerous people with math, computer science, engineering and chemistry backgrounds who have joined (and are doing well in) prestigious physics programs (e.g. stanford, chicago, columbia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have experience in a not-too-distant field (e.g. chemistry), one way to make your application more appealing - would be if you are interested in subjects somewhere &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; physics and chemistry (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can demonstrate that you have excelled in your own field, and have an aptitude for physics (e.g. good GRE scores), you shouldn't have a problem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1514" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T19:11:44.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2012-08-22T21:22:33.883" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely cite everything you copy verbatim, no matter what.  (I.e., you should say something like &quot;the following background information is repeated nearly verbatim from Section 2 of BLAH&quot;, so the situation is unambiguous.  It's not enough to cite the source without making the copying clear.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see why, note that there are four possible types of people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who think it is OK to copy your own text without citation, and think it is OK with citation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who think it is not OK without citation, but is OK with citation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who think it is not OK in either case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who think it is OK without citation and in fact you must not cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe people of type 4 exist.  This means you should always cite any text you copy (even if you wrote it in the first place).  There's no way you can lose: people of type 2 require the citation, people of type 1 don't mind, and people of type 3 are a moot point since they don't want you to copy it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I think a large majority of academics are type 2, but it really doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T21:22:33.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2012-08-22T21:41:56.647" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, you cannot publish anything as original research that has already been published.  (You may be able to reprint it in other venues, but most research journals do not do this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the trick is what counts as &quot;already published&quot;.  Nowadays, many publishers (including all mathematics publishers, for example) do not count informal distribution on the internet as prior publication.  It's common not to count extended abstracts from conference proceedings, although the journal may require some revisions or extensions.  Nobody counts submitting a dissertation as prior publication, even if the university makes it available for download or purchase, and technical reports are generally in the same category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, publication as a &quot;real book&quot; definitely counts as prior publication and would rule out journals.  Of course, this just brings up the question of what a &quot;real book&quot; is.  Basically, if it's published by a serious academic publisher, with some nontrivial selection and editorial advice, then that counts as publication.  On the other hand, if it's some random publisher printing copies of Ph.D. theses and selling them online, then you could make a strong case that it's not really published (and that this is not so different from ordering a dissertation copy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think you need to discuss this explicitly when submitting your paper.  For example, you could add a sentence to your submission letter along the lines of &quot;This work is based on my thesis from University X, which is available for sale by Y but has not been traditionally published&quot;.  It's much better to deal with this upfront than to have someone later ask &quot;Wait, why is someone selling copies of this work online?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T21:41:56.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2928" CreationDate="2012-08-22T22:22:35.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, this greatly depends on where you get your degree from. Sometimes people who have done just MS are able to get to the bottom of the thing and can use their knowledge of statistics on a practical level. It depends on how solid your concepts are. Once you are in some position earned through your sound academic record you can grow quite fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have good record (not just grades but grasp), you may be able to get to the same level of salary as a PhD would. This is because statistics is an applied branch and is in demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T22:22:35.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2917" CreationDate="2012-08-22T22:48:44.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from @Dave 's quite long list, I would also like to mention that by now you may decide on what area of research are you interested in and feel most confident about. This would help you to find the right professor/adviser and university and also keep you motivated in all good and bad times during your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T00:53:37.193" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T00:53:37.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2949" CreationDate="2012-08-23T02:00:49.713" Score="16" ViewCount="4188" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one changes careers/subjects dramatically,  would it be necessary in the interest of full disclosure to include irrelevant aspects of the educational background and work-experience etc. ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance if somebody has an undergraduate degree in politics and 2 years of experience in PR but then goes on to an academic career in theoretical CS (essentially starting from scratch i.e. including an undergraduate degree), would it be better/necessary to clutter the CV by mentioning that earlier background ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess there must be a certain degree of flexibility, as people would not include say a part-time job in the cafeteria etc. pp. but I am not sure what the academic conventions are in different scenarios. ( I am thinking about this in the context of applications for conferences, funding, workshops, travel funds etc. pp. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T08:58:32.210" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T08:58:32.210" Title="Should one include irrelevant background on CV after career change?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2948" CreationDate="2012-08-23T03:54:25.067" Score="116" ViewCount="26088" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which personal pronoun is appropriate in single-author papers - 'I' or 'we'? Could the use of 'I' be considered egotistical? Or will the use of 'we' be considered to be grammatically incorrect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="48369" LastEditDate="2016-01-31T01:28:30.683" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T02:07:08.907" Title="Choice of personal pronoun in single-author papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="37" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2945" CreationDate="2012-08-23T05:23:25.553" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authorial &quot;we&quot; is quite common, even in single author papers (at least in math and related fields). The explanation I've heard is that it should be read as both the writer and the reader (as in &quot;we now prove...&quot;, meaning that we two shall now prove it together). Some people find it awkward, and insist on &quot;I&quot;, but this is unusual (and I've heard of referees demanding &quot;we&quot;). In cases where &quot;we&quot; is truly nonsensical (for instance, introducing a list of people being thanked), people who avoid &quot;I&quot; either find an alternate phrasing or refer to themselves in the third person (&quot;The author would like to thank...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T05:23:25.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2945" CreationDate="2012-08-23T05:29:33.943" Score="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very rarely is 'I' used in scholarly writing (at least in math and the sciences).  A much more common choice is 'we', as in &amp;quot;the author and the reader&amp;quot;.  For example: &amp;quot;We examine the case when...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception to this rule is if you're writing a memoir or some other sort of &amp;quot;personal piece&amp;quot; for which the identity of the author is particularly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let me quote Paul Halmos (Section 12 of &amp;quot;How to Write Mathematics&amp;quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One aspect of expository style that frequently bothers beginning authors is the use of the editorial &amp;quot;we&amp;quot;, as opposed to the singular &amp;quot;I&amp;quot;, or the neutral &amp;quot;one&amp;quot;. It is in matters like this that common sense is most important.  For what it's worth, I present here my recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the best expository style is the least obtrusive one, I tend nowadays to prefer the neutral approach.  That does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean using &amp;quot;one&amp;quot; often, or ever; sentences like &amp;quot;one has thus proved that...&amp;quot; are awful. It does mean the complete avoidance of the first person pronouns in either singular or plural. &amp;quot;Since &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;, it follows that &lt;em&gt;q&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;This implies &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;An application of &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;q&lt;/em&gt; yields &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; Most (all ?) mathematical writing is (should be ?) factual; simple declarative statements are the best for communicating facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frequently effective time-saving device is the use of the imperative. &amp;quot;To find &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;, multiply &lt;em&gt;q&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Given &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;, put &lt;em&gt;q&lt;/em&gt; equal to &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with the editorial &amp;quot;we&amp;quot;, but if you like it, do not misuse it.  Let &amp;quot;we&amp;quot; mean &amp;quot;the author and the reader&amp;quot; (or &amp;quot;the lecturer and the audience&amp;quot;).  Thus, it is fine to say &amp;quot;Using Lemma 2 we can generalize Theorem 1&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;Lemma 3 gives us a technique for proving Theorem 4&amp;quot;.  It is not good to say &amp;quot;Our work on this result was done in 1969&amp;quot; (unless the voice is that of two authors, or more, speaking in unison), and &amp;quot;We thank our wife for her help with the typing&amp;quot; is always bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &amp;quot;I&amp;quot;, and especially its overuse, sometimes has a repellent effect, as arrogance or ex-cathedra preaching, and, for that reason, I like to avoid it whenever possible.  In short notes, obviously in personal historical remarks, and perhaps, in essays such as this, it has its place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download the pdf of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.washington.edu/~lind/Resources/Halmos.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Halmos' complete essay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T20:05:56.017" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2012-08-23T07:47:44.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The context for what the CV is going to be used for is key. I have a single CV that includes &quot;everything&quot; since I started grad school and selected things from before then including seemingly unimportant part time jobs. Having a long CV makes it easier for me to create short CVs because it means I need to delete things instead of remember things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your intended context, I would not include the work experience, but might include the degree in politics. Including that degree will likely lead people looking at your CV to think you are older (which might be a pro or a con). If you are worried about age discrimination, I would drop it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T07:47:44.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3000" CreationDate="2012-08-23T09:09:59.917" Score="12" ViewCount="1530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Bangladeshi student studying CSE in the best university of my country. At the beginning of my second year in my university, an interest towards pure math grew in my mind. But my university does not offer courses in Abstract algebra, Real Analysis, Topology, Complex Analysis, Algebraic geometry, etc. I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/177/phd-in-pure-mathematics-for-a-student-in-computer-science&quot;&gt;this related post&lt;/a&gt;, but the advice there doesn't help me because there is no computer scientist in my university whose research interests lie between CS and Pure Math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met a few of my professors to discuss about my situation. Some of them asked me to study math by myself and also to try to study a paper by mathematicians under whom I want to work, then to write a paper which demonstrates I understand all (at least most of) the things written in the paper, and later send it to them asking if they are interested in taking me as student. They also asked me to get prepared for Math GRE. But is it possible to switch to pure math if I do so? If not, how I can go to a pure math grad school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T06:37:14.920" Title="Is it possible to attend graduate school in pure math after undergrad in CSE?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2952" CreationDate="2012-08-23T10:18:56.667" Score="40" ViewCount="13880" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you receive a paper proof and review it prior to publication, what exactly should you be looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that come to mind are any changes in the annotation of author list and the corresponding author. What else is there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T05:54:56.853" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T22:49:20.607" Title="What to check when examining paper proofs?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2951" CreationDate="2012-08-23T10:27:20.553" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is basically the last chance to fix anything (non-substantial) in the paper, so in addition to the things you mentioned, I usually check for spelling or grammatical errors, misprints in formulas, etc. Sometimes one might want to add a sentence to clarify something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if the journal did any copy-editing, you should check its job. Some journals provide a list of changes they made for that purpose. You should also check if the pictures and formulas are still in the right places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added: sometimes it's necessary to update the literature list, for example if preprints cited there have been published in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T05:27:07.253" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T05:27:07.253" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2951" CreationDate="2012-08-23T12:16:13.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Between your manuscript being accepted and the proofs being created two things are likely to happen: a copy editor may make changes and portions of the manuscript (e.g., tables) may be retyped (as the manuscript is converted from the format you submitted into the journal format). I know a number of PIs who get two people to look at the proofs. One person reads the proof out loud while the other person compares what was in the submitted version. I know one group that goes sentence-by-sentence backwards. The idea is you never know what will get screwed up in the conversion process. While I like the concept, I spend a lot less time going through the proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T12:16:13.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2012-08-23T12:31:52.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your intuition is correct; filler like that is very easily detected as filler. However, it does serve a useful purpose, in that it informs the person reading the CV what you've been doing for the past few years. If you do mention anything, I would just list the single most recent item. Any more than that would simply exaggerate the fact that you made a career shift, and doesn't provide any useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T12:31:52.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-08-23T14:43:33.403" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Henry about breadth vs. depth.  You'll ultimately be judged on depth, so that has to be your first priority.  However, breadth is quite valuable too.  Many breakthroughs have come by applying standard techniques from one area to a new area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The $.02 I want to add is that &lt;strong&gt;not all reading is created equal&lt;/strong&gt;.  Particularly when you're learning a new topic, well-written exposition is invaluable (in large part because it's so rare).  As you progress, you'll develop a better intuition for what's worth reading.  But when you're early in your career, I strongly encourage you to ask your adviser (or more senior students) &lt;strong&gt;which papers and books you should be reading&lt;/strong&gt;.  Personally, I've slogged through many manuscripts mired in myopia before encountering enlightened, engaging exposition.  ...and that has made all the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T14:43:33.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2951" CreationDate="2012-08-23T14:45:21.777" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;One other thing to be concerned about is overzealous copy editors, particularly when it comes to highly mathematical papers. In one of the first manuscripts I ever submitted, the copy editor in question decided that what I wrote as (1/2)x really ought to be 1/(2x). This would have completely altered the intent and the results of the derivation and everything that followed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the lesson of this is that you need to check &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that was changed by the copy editors. If they give you a &quot;mark-up,&quot; review that first, and then make sure everything has been transferred correctly to the paper. If not, you'll need to go side-by-side with the submitted manuscript and the final proof, and make sure eveyrhing is as you intended it to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T19:21:06.747" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T19:21:06.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2945" CreationDate="2012-08-23T14:52:01.157" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In single-author papers, I think consistency trumps any particular rule or style. As the Haimos essay suggests, you can achieve whatever style you choose; you just need to make sure that it makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, don't switch back and forth between &quot;I&quot; and &quot;we,&quot; or between active and passive constructions too close to one another. Make the use of &quot;I&quot; and &quot;we&quot; clear to indicate active participation in the project (for instance, for assumptions or approximations made, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; choose that—unless it's something &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T14:52:01.157" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2906" CreationDate="2012-08-23T17:16:45.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your question. My name is Jasper Simons and I work for Thomson Reuters, the organization behind ScholarOne. Our platform is configured by our publishers as they service their authors and editors. Publishers seek to maximize the value they offer to their journals, their editors and their authors through specific configurations of the ScholarOne peer-review workflow. This doesn't address your concern, but I hope that it sheds some light on the reasoning behind the multiple login requirements for authors. In short, there is one ScholarOne platform but there are many site configurations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1523" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T16:14:05.267" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T16:14:05.267" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2960" CreationDate="2012-08-23T17:30:06.140" Score="10" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how job transfer of faculty members affects their designation. Will they retain their designation (Prof/Assoc/Asst.) in the new institution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly if a faculty member faces an unavoidable need to shift job after getting his tenure, will his new department recruit him with tenure? Or should a few years pass in the new place before he is evaluated again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T18:20:43.590" Title="How does shifting of jobs affect designation and tenure in academia?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2012-08-23T18:06:41.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This all depends on what is offered in the new position and on your negotiation skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally one tries to go up-hill, so to speak, or at least stay on the same level. The new institution hardly will expect you to make the transfer if they offer you a lower position and tenure track when you have tenure already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are forced to move, then you have a weaker bargaining position and might have to take a tenure track position, and go through all the evaluation process again.  But this would probably mean that you have bargained poorly or accepted bad working conditions, or it simply could be because there are so few academic jobs these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard of one case where someone traded in a tenured Associate Professor position for an untenured Assistant Professor position at a better institute. (The risk paid off in the end.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T18:20:43.590" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T18:20:43.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2012-08-23T19:24:29.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understood you correctly, even for getting the side benefits (attending conference,travel funds) you need not include &lt;em&gt;irrelevant&lt;/em&gt; information in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One need not &lt;em&gt;clutter&lt;/em&gt; the CV with something that is far from the requirement  of the job. It does not matter how many things you did but rather how much of few things you did. These were my thoughts on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T19:24:29.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2964" CreationDate="2012-08-23T20:24:13.170" Score="14" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the key information that should be included in a letter of support on a grant application? What information should I avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a theorist and I am planning to list my expertise and experience in similar problems. But I don't know how to convey that I would actually support the project if funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T17:35:45.943" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T17:35:45.943" Title="What information should I include in a letter of support for a grant?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2965" CreationDate="2012-08-23T22:05:49.490" Score="7" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I mainly refer to applied mathematics when describing my experience&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I find that it is easier to grasp a concept from the author's slides than from the description in a paper. When one has to summarize their findings for a talk, they often end up with an exposition that gives a clearer understanding of the &quot;big picture&quot; and the nontrivial details. It is easier to separate what is important and what is not. If someone really needs more detail and rigour, they can check the paper, but I think that 90% of the readership would get more from the slides than from the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course a real paper is still necessary, to provide details to the interested reader and to testify that the details work indeed (and the referees can certify it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, slides are typically difficult to find. Some scientists self-archive (a subset of) their slides on their personal web pages; some others are hidden in conference sites. No database such as Scopus indexes them. It is often tricky to match up a paper and its slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any journal that publishes slides together with their papers? Or slides only? Or, more generally, that tries to experiment and consider similar less formal media for presenting real science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T08:06:58.150" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T09:13:29.257" Title="Is there a journal that publishes slides together with the text?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;supporting-information&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2012-08-23T22:14:30.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good letter of support, in my mind, should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convey a clear understanding of the proposal in question;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate that the letter writer is in a position to support the application—in other words, she has the requisite experience to contribute;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly indicate what the writer will do to support the grant in the event it gets funded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently contributed such a letter for an educational grant. I cited my research, which was a fit for the program; and conveyed support for the program as the academic administrator of a summer program as well as a mentor in that same program. I also clearly conveyed my intention to support the program by directly mentoring a program fellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T22:14:30.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2963" CreationDate="2012-08-24T04:46:03.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;don't know of any such journal&lt;/strong&gt;.  The closest I've come to this is that often &lt;strong&gt;after I've listened to a talk, I've asked the speaker for his slides&lt;/strong&gt;.  I can't recall ever being turned down.  Alternatively, if you can't attend a talk, you might still ask the speaker for his/her slides.  This request will likely be a bit more successful in person, but even via email it can't hurt to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:46:03.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2973" CreationDate="2012-08-24T06:54:35.547" Score="19" ViewCount="56150" Body="&lt;p&gt;One book I ordered this semester is a loose leaf book (3-hole punched) that I'm currently keeping in a binder. Problem is, the pages are quite thin, and tear very easily near the hole punches. What can I do to help prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1526" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T08:51:39.690" LastActivityDate="2020-08-31T03:23:51.000" Title="How can I protect my loose leaf textbooks?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2966" CreationDate="2012-08-24T07:38:59.340" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the olden days, you could buy little sticky circles that you'd place around the holes and this would prevent the pages tearing out of the binder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to put the whole thing in a box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe scan the document and carry it around on your iPad – that's probably the modern solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T07:38:59.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2012-08-24T07:41:55.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are usually specific guidelines for letters of support. For example, the NSF discourages letters of support for typical grant applications unless the support letter lists concrete things the letter writer will be contributing to the project (and then those things need to be listed). Since you're writing a letter for someone else's application, it's best to ask them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T07:41:55.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2963" CreationDate="2012-08-24T07:55:13.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know about any such journal. But one idea could be to archive your papers on a pre-print server, such as arXiv and always append your slides as an appendix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T07:55:13.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2012-08-24T08:25:23.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid writing anything negative in the letter, even if it is constructive criticism. Some committees processing grant applications will use any evidence they can find to kill a proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T08:25:23.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-24T09:19:57.033" Score="11" ViewCount="10912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working in a manufacturing company as a software developer and have just completed my masters in control and automation in 2011 with my bachelors in &quot;Electrical and Electronics&quot;. My main reason for doing my first masters is to change to my domain from IT where I was working as a programmer for 1.5 yrs. Now I am thinking of doing a second master's degree in mechatronics, because I am short of some knowledge in the electrical and automation field which I think is must for me to become an expert in the factory automation field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I feel it will be helpful for my personal career and reputation. &#xA;I find some doubts whether a person having a double degree is welcomed in the job market or not. Also Frankly, In my opinion, I used to think that who are having many degrees as people who run away from real-world jobs and are not as competent as those who have years of experience. Another thing is I also want to do MBA after 5 or 6 years. So, &lt;strong&gt;can someone tell me what are the pros and cons of having multiple degrees?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1529" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T13:39:03.583" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T13:39:03.583" Title="Pursuing a Second Master's Degree(Part Time) : pros and cons" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2966" CreationDate="2012-08-24T09:25:25.930" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find someone who has access to a document scanner and scan it. Our departmental copier/printer can also scan (I think the spec is 100 ppm), so 2000 pages will take a while, but not forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Have you contacted the author to see if an electronic version is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T10:51:32.843" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T10:51:32.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2966" CreationDate="2012-08-24T11:02:34.763" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could take the book to a copy shop, and have it binded properly (e.g., hot glue, hardback, etc.). Here in the Netherlands, that costs about 3 euros for a simple but effective glued back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T11:02:34.763" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2012-08-24T12:14:27.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pros... it certainly doesn't do any harm, you will learn something, and there is always the personal development aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons... if you are going to make the effort to get a second Masters, why not build on the existing Masters and get a PhD? That is worth a lot more than a second Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MBA... in my opinion, not worth a thing. A con. Not a true Masters by any standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="864" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T12:14:27.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2012-08-24T13:35:58.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning something new is always a plus.  Anything that makes you better at what you do and furthers your academic/career goals is definitely a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to come up with a &quot;con&quot; of having multiple degrees.  If I had to come up with something, I would say that it may give the impression that you lack focus for a particular field.  So just be prepared to answer questions as to &quot;why&quot; you pursued master's degrees (in different fields) in an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To echo what Roaring Fish said; I won't go so far as to say that a MBA is not worth it.  But the truth is that many, many people in business have MBAs today.  So many, that (my opinion) getting one doesn't help you stand-out professionally any more than having a bachelor's degree does.  That is where having a master's degree (or multiple in your case) is a definite plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1508" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T13:35:58.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2012-08-24T14:50:06.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since control systems like Mechatronics is related to both Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering (EE) and doing a Masters is not bad but why not get a PhD in EE with Mechatronics as specialization. This would not only take you to a higher level but also deepen your knowledge. But this is only reasonable when you are available full time and are able able to get into a university that offer such course/opportunity. This may not be easy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you want to just deepen your knowledge of electrical and automation field &lt;strong&gt;which you think is must for you&lt;/strong&gt;, it is faster to do a Masters. I do not think it has any big disadvantage. In addition, it is relatively easier to get into a program (including part time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for MBA, if you are thinking of doing it after 5-6 years, why bother about that now. So many things can change by then. Since, it is an entirely different training of your carreer, I do not think you will have to regret it being a third Masters degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T14:50:06.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-24T18:09:02.620" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I see a gmail address on a paper I think &amp;quot;this is an IT-savvy author who realises their current institutional email address will probably be gone in a few years and wants people to be able to contact them after that.&amp;quot; It doesn't look at all unprofessional to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're concerned about the appearance of such an address, one solution would be to register your own domain name and have an email address like &lt;code&gt;contact@yourownname.com&lt;/code&gt;, which forwards to (for example) a gmail account. You can also put your own academic web site at this domain, meaning you can take that with you when you change institutions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(Edit from years later: if you do this, make sure that you will be able to keep the domain name registered decades hence. I didn't receive emails from the registration company I used - ironically, because my email address changed - and consequently the domain now points to a spam site, and I can't get it back. So I'm kind of glad I stuck with gmail for my publications.)&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1534" LastEditorUserId="1534" LastEditDate="2020-08-29T02:26:44.660" LastActivityDate="2020-08-29T02:26:44.660" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:19:28.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a BS in Electrical Engineering , MS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Computer Science.   I now work at a small company that allows me to practice a bit of software, circuits and mechanical design.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain academic insight into the details of each field. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps in placement in jobs requiring skills in many discplines.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My research and paper writing skills greatly improved after the 2nd masters (and thesis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was in the MS/PHD program and had no tuition costs for my 4 years of grad school. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cons:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lots of time in school ( I spent 8 years in the university setting) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loss of potential earnings while in school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Summary:&lt;/em&gt; I have no regrets about my graduate degree history.  However, I would probably spend more time choosing advisors and research topics if I had to do it all over again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1536" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T20:19:28.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1286" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:39:54.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it could be. Sometimes one has to explain some prior publications and how they relate to the current manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the cover letter is not sent to reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brief statement should be fine. It is not required.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="1537" LastEditDate="2015-12-29T20:30:02.797" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T20:30:02.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2760" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:42:23.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option would be to create a tags P1, P2, P3, P4 ... and assign &quot;rating&quot; to articles how much priority they have. Tags could be updated as priority changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(similar system could be used with Delicious.com tags to websites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tags are more flexible then folders. Mainly - Multiple membership in more than one tags&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T20:42:23.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2982" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:47:14.657" Score="12" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Identifying uniquely a researcher as author of a publication is important. There is a commercial effort to create researcher ID for every researcher. It is not likely to succeed if it is not multiple publisher effort. Something like DOI and CrossRef. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there truly non-commercial alternative emerging?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T08:02:59.597" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T16:14:38.933" Title="Is there any non-commercial alternative to ResearcherID?" Tags="&lt;digital-researcher-id&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2981" CreationDate="2012-08-24T21:37:39.517" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://about.orcid.org/&quot;&gt;ORCID&lt;/a&gt; is supposed to take care of that and it seems to gain significant traction. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://about.orcid.org/content/orcid-staus-and-plans-2012&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt;, it should be launched in fall this year (2012). However, I am not sure whether it falls under your definition of &quot;non-commercial&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am myself very curious about it, my hopes are that finally it will take care of disambiguation of names like &quot;John Smith&quot; - for me e.g., Web of Science database is practically unusable as it shows several thousands of papers for my name :-|.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T21:37:39.517" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2928" CreationDate="2012-08-25T00:08:56.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there's something different to consider. As a MS student you pay to study. As a PhD, you are paid to study. I know that depends between countries but where I am, a MS is terribly expensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reasons I see to do a MS instead of a PhD is when someone doesn't have good enough grades to get into a PhD or because they want to shift their area a lot: for example, a chemist taking a master in Biochemistry because he wants a PhD in Cell biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1539" LastEditorUserId="1607" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T00:02:05.910" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T00:02:05.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2963" CreationDate="2012-08-25T01:09:49.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the Nature journals and Science make their figures available as PPT slides with the captions available as comments, presumably to facilitate their use in journal clubs. Tinkering with something such as TikZ for a bit will tell you that it's not trivial to productively annotate equations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, and I don't say this glibly, you would deepen your understanding of difficult papers by making the slides you wish you had. It helped me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T01:09:49.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2012-08-25T06:16:20.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eventually, if &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ORCID&lt;/a&gt; (discussed also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2982/958&quot;&gt;in this answer&lt;/a&gt;) takes momentum (and it seems it will, since it is backed by the most important publishers), it could solve this problem: the paper contains the ORCID number of the author, and points to an online profile which the researcher themselves can update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2020-08-28T17:26:06.087" LastActivityDate="2020-08-28T17:26:06.087" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1312" CreationDate="2012-08-25T13:55:52.597" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to have changed somewhat recently at our school.  I used to only have access to the grades of my advisees and perhaps current students.  For the last year or two though, I seem to have much wider access.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student from another department stopped by to talk with me about possibly attending grad school in our program.  I looked him up in our computer system, and could see his whole transcript (which classes were taken in which semesters and the course grade for each).  I've never looked up transcripts for students who I don't somehow know (either my advisee, or in a class I'm teaching, or at least someone who has asked me advising questions), but for the last year or more &lt;strong&gt;I've had access to every student transcript that I've looked for&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T13:55:52.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2981" CreationDate="2012-08-25T16:56:26.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those of us in particle physics and related fields &lt;a href=&quot;http://inspirehep.net/?ln=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inSPIRE&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://inspirehep.net/collection/HepNames&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HepNames&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; service assigns a unique ID to each researcher (though they are rarely used outside of the database) and keeps track of their professional history, publications, citations and so on. &lt;a href=&quot;http://inspirehep.net/record/1046133?ln=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;My inSPIRE record&lt;/a&gt; is not really that inspiring, but there it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The successor project to the original SPIRES; inSPIRE also supports a rich search operation across affiliations, publications, names, and other data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T16:56:26.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2012-08-25T23:04:46.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To complement other answers: the &quot;research&quot; issue is volatile. Ill-informed, childish &quot;research&quot; is not a plus in applications to elite grad programs. I think it might be more apt to be able to give evidence of _getting_in_sync_with_ some contemporary &lt;em&gt;serious&lt;/em&gt; research, even if one isn't yet able to make one's own contribution. Better to be an apprentice at something serious, than journeyman at something of dubious interest to professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the same thing said in a different context: coursework per se is nice, but is (almost entirely) miles away from live mathematics. Thus, the point is not to &quot;bluff&quot; &quot;research&quot;, but to get beyond the sterile, formal classroom/textbook mathematics. Live discussions with faculty and presence in seminars are substantive steps in the right direction, without the too-facile pretense that one is doing a big research project in 10 weeks in the summer, based on scant prior information. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to have people speak on your behalf, that you have ably moved beyond &quot;school math&quot;, and that that's what you are interest in, and have talent for (never mind classrooms) is what will get you into an elite program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T23:04:46.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2992" CreationDate="2012-08-25T23:28:20.270" Score="17" ViewCount="3989" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the new faculty orientation, there is a get together where they will ask every new faculty member of all departments to say a few words about him/her self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the best practices regarding that? any advice/examples/templates of how to do that briefly, eloquently and professionally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastEditorUserId="1547" LastEditDate="2012-08-26T00:57:47.893" LastActivityDate="2017-09-08T12:29:48.080" Title="How to introduce myself briefly in a get together for new faculty members?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2991" CreationDate="2012-08-26T06:25:57.207" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partly, you'll want to &lt;strong&gt;copy what others are doing&lt;/strong&gt;.  If everyone else only talks for 15 or 20 seconds, then almost anything that you say in a 3-minute monologue will be poorly received.  Information that you'll likely want to mention includes: &lt;strong&gt;name&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;department&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;research interests&lt;/strong&gt;, possibly &lt;strong&gt;where you've just moved from&lt;/strong&gt;, and maybe &lt;strong&gt;a bit about you personally&lt;/strong&gt; (I enjoy triathlons; married with two kids; active in a barbershop quartet; etc.)  One point about your research interests: keep it &lt;strong&gt;very nontechnical&lt;/strong&gt;.  Rather than give many details, say something like &lt;em&gt;I write computer programs to help blind people use computers&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;I study 18th century literature, particularly the works of SoandSo&lt;/em&gt;.  Most likely, this activity will be pretty informal.  If you're still a little nervous about it, you might ask another junior faculty member in your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T06:25:57.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2996" CreationDate="2012-08-26T14:48:50.807" Score="5" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge to search papers. &#xA;What I need to do is to sort the result in a descending order of number of citations.&#xA;SCOPUS and W_of_K both provide this feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I further need to confine those citations only in a specific field.&#xA;For example, statistics paper can be cited in another statistics paper or in a medicine paper. What I'm interested in is how many times this paper is cited in another statistics paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using scopus and Web of science, I can see all the papers that cited this paper and then confine to a specific field. But I have to do this for all papers one by one.&#xA;Thus I wonder if there is any search engine that can to this automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1548" LastEditorUserId="1548" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T18:35:16.787" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T18:35:16.787" Title="How to sort search results from SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge by number of citation in a specific field?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3002" CreationDate="2012-08-26T18:51:08.810" Score="24" ViewCount="3601" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical freshman course on calculus has about 100 students every semester. If the course is divided into 4 sections, each has 25 students and a different instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the instructors are different, a student's grade may strongly depend on who teaches his section. Lazy students could ask other students before registering who is the easiest grader or who makes easy or straightforward exams, etc. This is unfair to the rest of the students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody else faced the same problem? And how did you overcome it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What criteria one should impose to guarantee that a student's grade will only weakly depend on who is teaching him?. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are thinking about giving all sections the same midterms and finals. But, obviously this is not enough&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T12:35:31.520" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T17:52:04.767" Title="Coordination of a class taught by different professors: how to be fair to the students?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-26T20:31:29.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already said, &lt;em&gt;&quot;we are thinking about making same midterms and same finals exams to all sections, but obviously this is not enough&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect it is not possible on a practical level to be equal since it all depends on how each professor teach and interact with his/her students. Each professor has specific personality and way of doing things which different people/student would like and dislike. However, somehow the following principles are followed by each professor, each class may be comparably good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professors are dedicated to student's welfare&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a good understanding among the professors and they are in agreement with what should be taught (This may include regular meetings among themselves)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from this each professor has his/her natural way of teaching that he/she is most confident about and this cannot be separated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T20:31:29.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2993" CreationDate="2012-08-26T23:14:18.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no automatic solution to this - it is an extremely time-consuming labour, sometimes performed by bibliometricians - and often only by those with access to full editions of either database (not the web-interfaces, with strict limitations to download sizes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a tricky subject, as the defionition of e.g. a statistics paper may differ from what you are actually looking at: journal categories. Papers on any topic are also published in journals not directly related hereto, there are plenty of translational and multi-disciplinary journals as well - in other words, what may appear to be a trivial task is actually very complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1549" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T23:14:18.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-27T02:38:00.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from having common exams, one possibility is to withhold the names of the instructors until the registration is finished.  In that way, students cannot choose sections based on who is teaching it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to have all, say, 4 teachers teach all 4 sections:  Teacher &quot;W&quot; teaches section &quot;A&quot; during the first quarter, then teaches section &quot;B&quot; during the second quarter, ..., while teacher &quot;X&quot; teaches section &quot;B&quot; during the first quarter, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not completely agree with your statement that &quot;the student grade in any section will strongly depend on who is teaching it.&quot;  I think that the teacher is a factor, but not the main factor.  An extremely lazy and weak student will fail no matter who the teacher is; An extremely hardworking and strong student will pass no matter who the teacher is.  I believe the student is the main factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T02:38:00.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-27T04:09:26.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The above is the common situation in Israel. Most of the freshmen-year classes are given by multiple lecturers, while the students are tested by the same midterm and final. They also have exactly the same homeworks and due dates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officially, the sections are &quot;identical&quot;. One professor is declared as the leading-professor and s/he sets the syllabus and takes any course-wide decision. Since all the professors are aware that the homeworks/exams are the same, they all teach the same material, more or less, giving the same emphasis on different subjects, more or less, etc. It should be the case that if one student misses one lecture at some week, s/he can go the the other lecture and be able to continue from the same point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is not perfect, and the different sections are not &quot;identical&quot;, but rather, &quot;close enough&quot;. In addition, an important thing is that students can choose which section to go. Indeed, sometimes &quot;good lecturers&quot; gets a class full of students (with people sitting on the floor, etc) while &quot;bad&quot; lecturers teach a half-empty class. Most of the times, there are no &quot;bad&quot; lecturers (there are better and worse, but many time the difference is not substantial enough that students change their schedule), so most of the classes are 70-90% full on avg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exams are graded by the same team, regardless of the section you are enrolled to. In general, the sections are &quot;technical&quot; partition, and any decision is course-wide and not section-wide. All students from all sections should be treated the same in the most objective way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T04:09:26.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-27T04:57:58.980" Score="10" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an interest in taking some very specific engineering classes at my local (very competitive) university. I already have an MSEE. As it is not close enough to my current career path, I am trying to get a better background in some areas and stay up-to-date in others. Since I don't really want a PhD, I had applied as a self-financed non-degree candidate. But, I was not accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering, is any consideration given to degree status during admissions? Is the admissions process typically identical to MS and PhD candidates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1550" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T11:27:28.170" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T13:18:47.707" Title="What factors does an admissions commitee use when considering a non-degree candidate in grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2950" CreationDate="2012-08-27T05:04:35.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Dave mentioned, what you want to do will be &lt;em&gt;very challenging&lt;/em&gt;.  One possibility would be to &lt;strong&gt;change to a different university&lt;/strong&gt; that offers the math classes you mentioned.  However, I will assume that switching schools is not an option for you.  &lt;strong&gt;If you are very dedicated to this goal, here is one possible route.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finish your current studies in CSE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get a job in a town with a university that offers the math classes you desire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start taking one class each semester as a &lt;em&gt;non-degree student&lt;/em&gt;.  I don't know about policies elsewhere, but many school in the United States have less strict admission requirements for non-degree students.  Your goals for these classes should be two-fold. (1) Learn the material as well as you can.  Your understanding of this material will be important for both &lt;em&gt;getting into&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;succeeding&lt;/em&gt; in graduate school.  (2) Impress your professors with both your &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; and your &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt;.  When you eventually apply to a masters program, you will &lt;strong&gt;ask some of these professors for letters of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apply to a masters program in mathematics.  Ask for letters of recommendation from both your current professors in your CSE program and from those who know you from the math classes you take after you finish your BS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as you near the finish of your masters (where you have worked hard to prove yourself) apply to PhD programs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a long-term plan, but with hard work and dedication you could make it work.  Here is another question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2480/advice-ms-in-mathematics-to-increase-competitiveness-for-phd-programs&quot;&gt;Advice - MS in mathematics to increase competitiveness for PhD programs?&lt;/a&gt; that you may find to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T05:04:35.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-27T07:03:30.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, I think this is better to make a rotation of the instructor. Split the course in 4 parts, each part being taught by one instructor to all the students. Each part is graded independently by each instructor as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not doable (slots in parallel, with a strong sequencing of the content), then the only thing I can think of this making as much grading as possible in common (same exam, etc.) and normalize the grades for the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible way of action is to randomly select the correspondence between groups and exams. Let me be clearer: let say that two instructors A and B give a lecture in common. We toss a coin to decide whether group A (or B) have exam by instructor A. In that way, students cannot have a strategy that maximizes their grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T07:03:30.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-27T10:59:31.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more common problem across multiple sections of large courses taught by several different instructors is content drift, not grade drift. At my institution we have three General Chemistry I sections, and the distributions of A's, B's, and C's among the students does not change significantly depending on which of 6 people teach the course. The distribution of D's and F's does vary, however. What is more troublesome to us is that some instructors will cover 8 chapters, some will cover 9, some 10, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you really want to minimize grade drift, then do the following, which will also eliminate content drift:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinate the class - same textbook, same syllabus, identical assignments, exams, everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree ahead of time on a common grading policy, including cutoffs, curves, grade disputes, etc., &lt;strong&gt;and enforce it uniformly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach from a common outline so that all sections get the same material in the same week. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet frequently, including at least one meeting before the class starts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade equitably, which may seem difficult, unless you do the following: Professor A grades all of Assignment 1 across all 4 sections. Professor B grades all of assignment 2, etc. Better yet, hire one person (a grad student maybe) to do all of the grading for all 4 sections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T10:59:31.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2994" CreationDate="2012-08-27T17:52:04.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did upvote most of the other answers... but would like to add something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is important to try to be &quot;fair&quot;. Sometimes, &quot;uniformity&quot; is the best approximation we can systematically arrange to &quot;fairness&quot;. Other answers discussed how to implement this (common mid-terms, common finals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is sometimes a danger that &quot;uniformity&quot; seems to demand that everyone's situation be degraded to that which can be guaranteed for everyone else. That is, while it is highly desirable to guard against bad effects of poor teaching, it is surely also desirable to not prevent &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; teaching, as a side effect of administrative design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, while the impulse is understandable, keeping instructors &quot;secret&quot; so that students cannot seek out desirable instructors (desirable for both wholesome and less-than-wholesome reasons) is a bit perverse, in my opinion. Namely, it always seems to me that &quot;equality&quot; achieved by suppressing information is not at all moving to maximize social welfare, but only &quot;equalizing&quot; it in a rather poor, default sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students &quot;voting with their feet&quot; is a &quot;problem&quot; at all levels, and some of that is reasonable, some unreasonable, of course. But the &quot;solution&quot; of having instructors be &quot;secret&quot; amounts to merely ignoring &lt;em&gt;genuine&lt;/em&gt; issues in the situation by trying to obliterate information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T17:52:04.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3006" CreationDate="2012-08-27T22:46:52.853" Score="12" ViewCount="6569" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the key components of a progress report? There are no official guidelines from the funding agency; all I have is a set of project objectives listed in the original proposal and a target length: three pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at the stage of putting together a draft for the PI, and I would like to due my due-diligence (get some basic guidelines here) before asking the PI for further input. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What sections should it include?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any essential &quot;key concepts&quot; to include?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable to cut and paste from the proposal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include figures and graphs from unpublished findings? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would the writing style compare / contrast to a proposal? To a research paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, is there a good resource that provides a comprehensive (if brief) overview of writing progress reports? I have a few books on scientific writing, but none specifically adress progress reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T23:22:48.127" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T03:04:12.827" Title="What should a progress report contain?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-28T01:05:13.840" Score="9" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems reasonably focused and of interest, but is perhaps unanswerable. I'm a mathematics student graduating and would like to apply for the NSF postdoctoral fellowship. I wanted to know whether choosing an NSF sponsoring scientist who already has postdocs under their supervision damages one's chances of obtaining the fellowship. I'm not as interested in the question of whether such a sponsor will do as good a job in their role. I'm especially interested in answers which provide some evidence which bears on the matter. This seems slightly(very?) field specific, so answers from people with experience in mathematics or related fields are preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1552" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T14:28:54.297" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T14:28:54.297" Title="NSF sponsoring scientist already having postdocs under their supervision" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3004" CreationDate="2012-08-28T03:04:12.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good engineering practice suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;strong&gt;executive overview&lt;/strong&gt;: a couple of sentences (3 lines) which states either &quot;The objectives for the period have been reached.&quot; or &quot;The objectives have not been reached, because ...&quot;; then &quot;No obstacle in the way to the next objectives.&quot; Or &quot;Possible obstacle are ....; contingency plan is ....&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt;: what were the objectives for the period; then for each objective what has been done towards that objective. A little reuse of figures/graphs here is acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;main results&lt;/strong&gt; section, as space allows: here you select one or two &quot;main achievements&quot; from the previous reporting period, and you give more details about that, with possibly references to external reports / draft papers / additional materials that the report reviewer can go analyse if they are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;an optional  &lt;strong&gt;obstacles &amp;amp; contingency&lt;/strong&gt; section: if the executive summary lists problems, here you details what these problems are (either the obstacles in the previous period, or the foreseen obstacles in the next period, or both). Also detail your planned contingency actions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;report of effort spent&lt;/strong&gt;: here you detail where your budget (and man-hours of work) was allocated to each objective/task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't make it too long. It's extremely important that the reviewers of your project can get an overall impression of the progress in a very short time. (they will typically have many projects to evaluate in a short time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1282" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T03:04:12.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3008" CreationDate="2012-08-28T06:58:13.953" Score="15" ViewCount="2450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often come across papers which have a 'Novel' in their titles. In the content the authors go out of their way to explain how their work is the &lt;em&gt;first to the best of their knowledge&lt;/em&gt; to come up with the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't novelty a necessity in research papers? Is a separate emphasis really needed? What is the best way to convey novelty without sounding extravagant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T10:35:52.540" Title="Is an emphasis on &quot;novelty&quot; necessary in academic papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3007" CreationDate="2012-08-28T07:29:27.680" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The authors need to make it clear that the paper makes a contribution and to be explicit about what that contribution is. Otherwise the work is not original and does not deserve to be published. (This excludes survey papers and such things.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emphasis on novelty need not, however, be placed so explicitly in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good ways of emphasizing the novelty are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include a short discussion at the end of the introduction stating explicitly what the contributions of the paper are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back this up with &lt;strong&gt;evidence&lt;/strong&gt; in the body of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A proper &lt;strong&gt;comparison&lt;/strong&gt; with related work. (As El Cid's answer states.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T10:35:52.540" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T10:35:52.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2012-08-28T08:44:52.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not directly familiar with the NSF scheme, but for the NIH NRSA scheme choosing a PI with previous post docs is a huge benefit. In fact, from what I have heard from young colleagues, if the PI does not have current or previous post docs, the NIH likes to see a more experienced co-supervisor listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T08:44:52.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3011" CreationDate="2012-08-28T08:46:39.957" Score="144" ViewCount="82618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume you have already completed your undergrad and have been working for a number of years. Does one need to be part of a university or a learning institution to publish papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T04:06:03.307" LastActivityDate="2019-03-16T13:46:32.213" Title="Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="52" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2012-08-28T08:52:12.740" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. Affiliations do not matter; what matters is the value and the fit of the contribution to the journal or the conference to which you are submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T08:52:12.740" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2012-08-28T09:36:21.450" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is not true that you should be in academia to publish papers, I'll give my two cents on what I learned so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you work in industry and you write technical papers, your contributions are well-accepted, although they're typically more focused on certain practical aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Authors writing by themselves are welcome, but they somehow are not very common because they lack the ability of writing an academic paper: they do not lack the message or the content of a paper, but just the structure, and that's something that you learn in an academic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reviewing process is not everywhere &quot;double-blinded&quot;, so as a reviewer you do see the affiliation of who wrote the article, while they do not know you as a reviewer. I know that it's frowned upon, but I've read comments in the afterwards discussion (before the formal decisions) where reviewers pointed at the lack of a proper affiliation, or the &quot;Who's this guy? where's s/he coming from?&quot; sort of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all in all, there's no need to be an academic.  But if you're not, stress enough your industry affiliation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T14:10:19.963" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T14:10:19.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3007" CreationDate="2012-08-28T09:57:48.077" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rather comment on @Dave's points, but since I have no reputation, here goes my comment/answer :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally was taught not to put &quot;novel&quot; or &quot;to-the-best-of-my-knowledge&quot; or any other weasel words in the papers, so I also do not like the cited examples, if and when I review papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is most often overseen in papers is the &quot;related work&quot; (apart from the discussion section, which I believe belongs more to a journal-type publication), and how the paper makes an advance to the field. The authors should emphasise what the state of the art is, and how the paper advances it. That is what makes me judge for an accept or reject, rather than &quot;incredible results&quot;. But it is also true that when you're growing &quot;older&quot; you look for different things in papers, and that &quot;younger&quot; reviewers are more easily captivated by strong claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T09:59:18.653" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T09:59:18.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1930" CreationDate="2012-08-28T10:16:32.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My interpretation of &quot;gleichzeitige Führung&quot; is that they &quot;decorate&quot; the same mentioning of your name. So at least in Bavaria the Dr/PhD for German/English cards should be legal even if on the same side (assuming there is no other conditions that prohibit the use of Dr), but the option with different versions of the same title in different lines would be not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1557" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T16:00:47.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T16:00:47.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3007" CreationDate="2012-08-28T10:34:08.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually employ the following interpretations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;best-of-our-knowledge&quot; means that the authors were too lazy to search for existing work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;novel&quot; and the like in the title means that something very close already exists for ages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novelty (a contribution improving on the previous state-of-the-art) is necessary, such emphasis is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to &quot;convey novelty&quot;: It is absolutely required to explain why it is new instead of asserting that it is. This holds for both the title and the body of the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1557" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T10:34:08.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-08-28T10:49:21.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting question, and I am surprised that there's no more about &quot;bullying&quot; in the SO academia community (I hope this will change fast).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As anonymous and new user, I can share some experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If someone (higher in grade) bullies or harasses you, it's sad to say, but that means that you are not seen as doing a valuable contribution to the department. Not a &quot;maybe&quot;, not a &quot;perhaps&quot;: that is just what it is. This assumption could be right or wrong, but any dean/chair/professor wants to have a supportive (adoring?) team. So either you adapt to the system, or you will make your life very miserable: make your contributions very clear, boast about your workload or find another place. Bullies like strong (and loud) voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Do not confront the bullying person: it's anyway an unfair battle, since they're managers and higher-ranked anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Be blatantly open with what you do, aka &quot;blow your own trumpet&quot;: when you start doing it, others reply as well, and you start realising that your &quot;case&quot; is no worse or better than somebody else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MISTAKES TO BE AVOIDED:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I think that the worst mistake to be done in these cases is moaning about the issue, or using &quot;allies&quot; to make the case, or asking the unions to do something about it. Moaning won't solve your case, but just make your stomach more acid; internal allies will not either: having allies and support is generally a good thing, but I realised that I was just &quot;using&quot; them to reinforce my assumptions and beliefs (ending up in a infinite loop of self-commiseration); unions will just use a pre-defined strategy that will be well known in advance by the bully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REMEDIES:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Since you do not want to change your affiliation (but sadly this is the only real way to solve the issue, I am afraid), my take on the issue is to be honest with yourself, and ask whether your workload could be worse, or if you could make a request to avoid some teaching times by using some reasonable excuses, and in general stopping being negative about the person. The latter is tough but again, if you're being (overtly or secretly) negative, the bully will make your life even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESOURCES:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;An excellent blog on the matter, and an &quot;external&quot; voice to talk to (yes! they talk and listen to you, also privately...) but in the UK: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T10:22:17.160" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T10:22:17.160" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3020" CreationDate="2012-08-28T11:48:43.963" Score="30" ViewCount="71056" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a silly question, but I can't find a clear answer online. If Dr. Brainiac's Big Book of Science was first published in 1974, but I have the second edition, published in 1996, should I cite it as (Brainiac, 1974) or (Brainiac, 1996)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that this is the sort of thing that might come down to the policy of the journal, but it happens that the journal I'm submitting to doesn't offer any specific guidelines on this particular topic, so I was wondering what the standard practice is, if there is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit:&lt;/strong&gt; for clarity, of course I would mention in the references section that I was referring to the second edition. I guess it would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brainiac, Q. Big Book of Science. Aperture publishing, 1974. (2nd edition 1996.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brainiac, Q. Big Book of Science, 2nd edition. Aperture publishing, 1996. (First published 1974.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where in the first case the in-text citation should be (Brainiac, 1974), and in the second it would be (Brainiac, 1996). The question is which of these is considered the best, or at least the most usual, way of doing it.  In my particular case I'm citing a specific fact that is almost certainly in both editions, but of course I can't be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1534" LastEditorUserId="1534" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T12:42:03.003" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T11:03:26.893" Title="What year to use when citing second editions of books" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2012-08-28T12:01:59.870" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case I would say &lt;em&gt;Be Honest&lt;/em&gt;: only cite the references that you have read. Even if you have read the &quot;rev 1&quot;, you might be (wrongly) citing as &quot;rev 2&quot; a sentence from &quot;rev 1&quot; that was removed in &quot;rev 2&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be obvious, but sloppy mistakes like that happen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T12:01:59.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2012-08-28T12:24:07.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always best and safest to cite the sources you've &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are two (or more editions) of a book, you generally don't have a complete list of changes from one version to the next. The relevant information might not be in the first edition, or might be outdated from the one you've used. So: use the edition you've actually read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also true if you've &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; an eprint on the arXiv, but you later find out that it is published (or will be published) in a journal: still use the arXiv reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is subtle: the eprint wasn't ever peer reviewed, and thus is a less authoritative source. Your wording should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; reflect that. If then the e-print is published in a journal, and you &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; change the reference it's like saying &lt;strong&gt;you don't care about peer review&lt;/strong&gt;. It occurs all too often, but it's simply bad science, even if the contents of the two is word-for-word the same. If you change the reference, re-write the relevant sections as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastEditorUserId="1243" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T18:01:01.170" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T18:01:01.170" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:22:25.137" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the journal uses the American Psychological Association (APA) style, then you cite the year of the edition and you do not mention earlier editions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are using the 4th edition (published in 1994) of the APA publication manual, you would cite it as (American Psychological Association, 1994) and its bibliographic entry would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Psychological Association. (1994). &lt;em&gt;Publication manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/em&gt; (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T13:22:25.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3640" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:28:58.507" Score="11" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;After obtaining my masters degree, I spent four years doing other things before returning to pursue my PhD.  My advisor has a Dept. of Energy grant which has funded me, but the grant will not be able to fund me for my entire PhD program.  I'll probably need another two years worth of funding to finish my degree.  I may not be able to get a Teaching Assistantship, as they are limited at my institution.  I've also noticed that I don't qualify for some fellowships (like NSF GRFP) because I am not a &quot;traditional&quot; student.  What are some other options for students in the latter part of their PhD program (i.e. dissertation)?  Particularly, for the field of computational science?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T14:11:45.377" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T14:11:45.377" Title="Are there any particular grants or fellowships in the sciences specifically for non-traditional students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3025" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:33:41.997" Score="13" ViewCount="6396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just visited a &lt;a href=&quot;http://icml.cc/2012/call-for-papers/&quot;&gt;conference website&lt;/a&gt; where organizers, for the submitted paper review process, listed a date for paper submission, a date for &lt;strong&gt;&quot;author response&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, and another date for &lt;strong&gt;&quot;author notification&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the first time I see this double wording. &#xA;I suppose that &quot;author notification&quot; is when they communicate to authors if their papers have been accepted or not, but &lt;strong&gt;what does &quot;author response&quot; stand for&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T01:12:08.037" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T01:12:08.037" Title="In conference review process, what do &quot;author response&quot; and &quot;author notification&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3028" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:35:42.180" Score="16" ViewCount="5666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started narrowing down the scope of my dissertation, and I have one year before I need to defend my proposal.  I'm curious to know what is expected from a dissertation proposal.  What are the key elements that I should include / exclude?  What criteria typically used to judge whether the proposal defense is successful?  Are the committee's feedback of the proposal typically used as a criteria for the full fledged dissertation defense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T23:17:08.407" LastActivityDate="2017-08-23T12:17:59.810" Title="What is a committee looking for in a dissertation proposal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3022" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:41:18.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that during this period you can respond to any questions or criticisms raised during the review of the paper. After this round of feedback the final decisions will be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T13:41:18.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3022" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:41:48.507" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has to be a conference with a &lt;em&gt;rebuttal&lt;/em&gt; phase, where the authors can answer the main points raised by the reviewers, who in turn will be able to draw more conclusive remarks on the paper itself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see also here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T13:41:48.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3022" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:56:17.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As ElCid and Pieter said, there is a rebuttal phase in the reviewing process (last paragraph of the CfP). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The review process this year incorporates several improvements. Authors, reviewers, and area chairs indicate subject areas. With the help of these subject areas, area chairs and reviewers bid for papers. A first reviewer for each paper will be selected from those bids. New this year, two area chairs will also be assigned to oversee reviewing of each paper. Each area chair will manually appoint an additional reviewer for each paper using input from the bids. Authors will have the opportunity to see and respond to the reviews (and optionally revise their paper) before a final decision is made. Final decisions will be made using the input from all reviewers, the author feedback, the area chairs, and the program chairs. Reviewing for ICML 2012 is double blind between authors and reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T13:56:17.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3023" CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:23:41.653" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;your committee has total say about what constitutes a successful thesis proposal&lt;/strong&gt;.  As JeffE mentioned, you should &lt;strong&gt;ask them&lt;/strong&gt; (particularly your chair).  In my case, I scheduled short meetings (10-20 minutes) with each of my committee members.  (Ideally, this should happen at least 3 before your proposal.)  I asked each one &lt;strong&gt;&quot;What are you looking for in my thesis [proposal] for you to judge it as successful?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  I don't remember all of their answers. From three of the four members of my committee (including my chair) I had clear expectations, which I knew I could meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, from one member, I never really got a clear answer.  Not surprisingly (in retrospect), part way through my presentation he complained because he thought that what I was presenting was off-topic.  In the end, everything was okay.  However, I think he was a bit unhappy and had to be &lt;em&gt;persuaded&lt;/em&gt; to pass me.  The &lt;strong&gt;single most important thing you can do to guarantee a successful proposal (or defense) is to make sure that your chair will strongly support you if you get resistance from another committee member&lt;/strong&gt;.  Besides that, you should schedule meetings (as I mentioned above) to ask what your committee is looking for.  Start with your chair and get advice from him/her about how to approach your other members.  If you don't get a good answer from one member, try scheduling another meeting to ask again (perhaps after meeting with your chair a second time to ask for help on how to approach the troublesome member).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to account for EnergyNumber's comment.  My own experience (mentioned above) was actually with my thesis defense, but I think the advice applies equally well to a thesis proposal, so I've edited my answer to address that (since it was the subject of the question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T12:44:22.717" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T12:44:22.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3023" CreationDate="2012-08-28T15:21:34.077" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;JeffE is correct; talk to your chair and get feedback. That being said, you'll want to include the following in your talk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An overview of your research topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A discussion of relevant literature (to demonstrate that you've researched the topic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A discussion of your specific problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another literature discussion, much more focused on your specific problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any preliminary results of experiments you may have run, if any&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you plan on doing for the next few years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Possibly most important)&lt;/em&gt; Any specific issues/problems that your advisors have raised about your research. You should specifically address these to show that you're paying attention to what they say and that you listen to their comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to prepare is to talk with everyone in advance and find out what their objections/comments/issues/questions will be as much as possible, and then do your best to prepare for that and any related issues. If that sounds like a lot of work, it's because it is a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dan's comments are also spot on; you may have some very difficult committee members who will ask all sorts of questions, and you should make sure your advisor is on your side from the get-go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T18:31:31.597" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T18:31:31.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3035" CreationDate="2012-08-28T15:40:09.047" Score="27" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a young academic, I am struggling to set up a research group that produces papers or proposals on a regular and sustainable basis. I had my share of PhD students, but nothing structured in a proper group or centre. I am also aware that when an academic starts collaborating with others, s/he sooner or later realises that several skills are needed to achieve a quality submission, and that not everyone can excel in all the needed skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What type of skills are needed in a cohesive academic group or research centre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T19:42:39.913" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T13:18:21.113" Title="What skills are needed to sustain a research group?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:13:21.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the best option is citing the edition you actually used for two reasons: 1- It's more honest (since you're not citing something that maybe you didn't really read); and 2- In some cases the original text may have been revised in a way that may contradict your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1560" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T18:13:21.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3029" CreationDate="2012-08-29T12:36:26.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coherent research focus&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Try to make sure that the members of your group work on topics that are  close together, to create synergy between topics and allow  experienced members to work closely with less experienced ones to allow their skills to pass on and build an environment where  internal collaboration is the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T12:54:08.937" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T12:54:08.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2012-08-29T14:00:09.843" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, Maurice is right.  You really don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be in academia to publish (even in academic journals).  One famous example is Paul Erdos ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Career&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Career&lt;/a&gt; ), who I believe had no affiliation (at least in practice) for much of his life.  However, &lt;strong&gt;most cultures have certain standard ways of doing things&lt;/strong&gt;.  Academia, and in particular the part of it that you want publish in, is no exception.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you can do to help get your ideas accepted is to &lt;strong&gt;learn to write and talk in the language common to your research area&lt;/strong&gt;.  Specifically, find some papers in your area that you really like (even better if they are widely cited) and study how they are written.  When you write your own papers, make a conscious effort to &lt;strong&gt;copy the writing style&lt;/strong&gt; of the papers you like.  One key part of this is to thoroughly know the relevant literature (previous work on the problem) and to mention it in your introduction and explain how your work relates to it.  For each research area, there are numerous other hurdles you should jump.  For example, if you're writing a math paper, do it in LaTeX.  If you don't know LaTeX, learn it (ask Google, if you need help), since using it will make your paper more readily accepted.  For a list of other criteria often used by mathematicians to quickly judge a paper, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304&quot;&gt;http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T14:00:09.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3029" CreationDate="2012-08-29T14:15:10.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to only work with people who are capable of excelling in all the skills needed to perform and write up high-quality research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that some of them (particularly students) won't need training in those skills in order to excel, of course.  But I definitely don't believe in having 1 guy who only collects data, 1 who only analyzes data, and 1 who only writes (or some such scheme).  If you pursue such a scheme, you may be crippling people.  They'll likely have a hard time in their next job, when nobody holds their hand through the other parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T19:26:07.960" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T19:26:07.960" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3029" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:25:14.007" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Setting goals&lt;/strong&gt;: As a PI, you need some skills on top of the obvious (like writing grants). One important skill involves setting goals. You need to be able to set reasonable and attainable (but not necessarily easy) short-term goals for your group. At the same time, you need to be able to clearly articulate the overarching long-term, big-picture goals of your research. Good goal setting will help you attract capable researchers to your group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T10:54:26.183" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T10:54:26.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3029" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:05:53.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some team-related skills:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewing&lt;/strong&gt;. You have to build your own team, and that team has to fit together very well. Given that your research group will likely be small and that your work can be measured in years, a few mistakes here can be very costly to your ability to produce. Be sure you know who you're bringing in, whether you can work with them, and whether when they can work with the rest of your group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delegation&lt;/strong&gt;. There's an art to knowing what to delegate and what to do yourself. This will vary from researcher to researcher, and from one graduate student/postdoc/lab technician to the next. Make sure you don't give someone more than they can handle, and make sure that each person has enough to keep them busy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:05:53.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:33:30.973" Score="6" ViewCount="2481" Body="&lt;p&gt;My speciality is statistics. I'm contemplating a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do a Masters first, that might take a different amount of time to reach the completion of my PhD from now, than if I just got a bachelors and then progress to the doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What factors would affect that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1565" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T06:27:19.510" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T13:26:02.230" Title="What factors affect how long it would take to get a phd, either going via, or without, a masters?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3036" CreationDate="2012-08-30T00:41:45.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer, as oft seems true on this site, is that it depends. I'll lay out a couple things that might change how long a PhD might take, and where coming in with a Masters or Bachelors might change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a large course sequence?&lt;/strong&gt; And will your department accept previous coursework? If there's many classes to take at the graduate level &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your PhD university accepts the classes from your Masters, having obtained an MS would likely trim the time from enrollment to PhD compared to a student with a bachelors degree starting at the same time. However, if the department &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; accept those courses (and many good programs might not) then you're not necessarily all that far ahread.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it easier to get funding?&lt;/strong&gt; If your department treats students who have not yet gotten their MS (in a sequence where the path from bachelors to PhD also involves getting an MS midstream) as transient and less likely to be funded, you might find yourself distracted and pulled in the direction of &quot;rent needs to get paid&quot; more than a better funded student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Dissertation&lt;/strong&gt;. Want to know what makes a PhD take X amount of time? By and large, its how fast your dissertation gets done. How quickly that happens has, in my experience, far more to do with how long a program takes then what letters you have after your name coming in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T00:41:45.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-29T19:49:50.890" Score="10" ViewCount="9564" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short background: I started my PhD last November and now I am helping a master student writing his MSc thesis. I still have problems when I need to formulate a concise research question and even, at least in workshop papers, some publications fail in formulating clear research questions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic the CS student writes about is the following. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bracha.org/pluggable-types.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this work by Bracha&lt;/a&gt; on pluggable / optional type systems, e.g.  for scripting languages. The student wants to solve the same problem that these 'pluggable typesystem' solves. But he is using dependent-type theory, i.e., to check that values in the scripting language are valid according to a given type. This can solve (or better solve) problems related to scripting languages (e.g. security problems in web programming; because everything is basically a string in scripting languages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to come up with a concise research question. (And possibly also with a method to evaluate the approach).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any references that can help me to formulate valid research&#xA;questions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest reference I have found is &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=776925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this mini-tutorial&lt;/a&gt; by Mary Shaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Germany there is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/journal/v20/n1/full/ejis201055a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Memorandum&lt;/a&gt; that is interesting, but the focus is only on information systems research and not CS. (I can't find a link to the long version in either English or German yet.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" OwnerDisplayName="mrsteve" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T19:37:48.760" Title="How to formulate good problem statements in CS research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-08-30T03:50:53.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/11/16/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet&lt;/a&gt;, which designed specifically for stylus use (iPad and the likes are not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1567" LastEditorUserId="8185" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T20:47:18.250" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T20:47:18.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-08-30T07:28:50.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out this question and my answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2853/device-for-writing-a-lecture-with-a-stylus-for-video-lecture-recording/2855#2855&quot;&gt;Device for writing a lecture with a stylus for video lecture recording&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short version: any professional tablet pc with an active digitizer (the Wacom ones are the best on market). They cost only a little more than an iPad. IPads are good for goofing off and clicking on your virtual farm but there is an abyss in terms of writing quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T07:28:50.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3045" CreationDate="2012-08-30T12:23:41.857" Score="14" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or, is it a good practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found most papers that I read are &quot;block by block&quot;: they have paragraphs that are not so long, and not so short. Is it a convention? Should I mimic that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2017-12-06T11:00:21.730" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T11:00:21.730" Title="Is it ok to have paragraphs that have only one sentence in a formal paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3044" CreationDate="2012-08-30T12:47:17.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the result reads like a newspaper, I would say, no, it's not alright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it reads like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus&lt;/a&gt;, then you are probably doing something right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are an exceptional writer, my advice is to follow the accepted conventions of your field, which probably includes block paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer paragraph allows one to build up an idea and explore it more thoroughly. The first sentence introduces the idea. Subsequent sentences explore it in more detail. There should be a logical connection between sentences, and sentences should ideally vary in length. Developing good style is matter of practice and reflection. And there is more to good style than the length of a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T12:53:24.933" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T12:53:24.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3044" CreationDate="2012-08-30T12:48:25.017" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph&quot;&gt;paragraph&lt;/a&gt; says a para could contain one or more sentences. The very purpose of grouping content into paragraphs is to organise similar thoughts into one unit. Too many small or one-sentence paragraphs will affect the cohesiveness of your content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a one-sentence para may be fine at the end of a section in a paper if it adequately summarises the content within. (Like this, perhaps!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T12:48:25.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2012-08-30T13:53:45.757" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is probably hidden in the previous ones but I'll give it a go anyways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;never assume that you discovered a completely new field&lt;/strong&gt;: if there's something that I learned in my research years is to be humble. Maybe soeone starts very boldly thinking that they're the best researchers in the &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt;, but for sure everybody at some point realises that the field is populated by experts, who know a great deal of things in the area. So in the case of finding out others sharing your ideas, humbly try and learn from them; in the (exceptional) case of really finding out a new research avenue, humbly start collaborating with others because you won't make any difference to the field only working by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;similar ideas do not prevent you from engaging on the same topic&lt;/strong&gt;: this is very common, and I've seen it happening a lot of times. Researchers become depressed when they see that something similar to their ideas has been published already. I think that what happens there is that you find something related, and even if you did not do the work, tend to believe that you would have done &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same steps. It's only when you engage directly with the problem that you discover that you would tackle it (slightly or vastly) differently: that gives you a lot of &lt;em&gt;potency&lt;/em&gt; in my opinion, and it's a very good exercise. Take an existing problem, which has been tackled already, and give it your spin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T13:53:45.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3051" CreationDate="2012-08-30T16:51:03.313" Score="19" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify what I mean, I have seen some review articles that have bibliography items like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bloggs, J., &quot;The Paper that has Been Written&quot;, &lt;em&gt;The Journal Title&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Series Number&lt;/strong&gt;, page number(s), (year). [DOI] [arXiv link]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where both [DOI] &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; [arXiv link] are hyperlinks to the paper, the former to its webpage on the journal website (with which it was published), the latter to its arXiv webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the author cite twice just in case someone is reading it who might not have access to journals? Or is there another reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:16:16.877" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:16:16.877" Title="Why are some sources cited twice in a bibliography, once with DOI and once with arXiv?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3050" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:49:48.583" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Dave Clarke.  I think the &lt;strong&gt;primary purpose of a bibliography should be to offer the reader a way to read the cited material&lt;/strong&gt;.  A version of the paper on the arXiv achieves this goal better than any other means I know.  However, it's &lt;strong&gt;also important that the cited material has been verified&lt;/strong&gt;.  By citing the journal version of the paper, the author communicates that it has been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T17:49:48.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3053" CreationDate="2012-08-31T11:38:18.690" Score="20" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not very clear in the publication guidelines of journals or conferences whether one can post some preliminary data or results online (blog, twitter, facebook, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;), gather feedback, and then edit and publish such results in a journal or conference publication (but in other fields &lt;a href=&quot;http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/lehrer-apologizes-for-recycling-work-while-new-yorker-says-it-wont-happen-again/&quot;&gt;it has happened&lt;/a&gt; with some embarassement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a researcher post a blog-entry, or use twitter, sharing data and results with a journal or conference paper? Would it be considered self-plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T08:19:43.220" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T22:50:46.737" Title="Can I use my blog posts for an academic publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2012-08-31T11:53:43.713" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd need to ask the specific journal if they're okay with it.  I suspect many would be, since many other forms of quasi-publication prior to a paper are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T11:53:43.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-31T12:44:49.810" Score="22" ViewCount="7408" Body="&lt;p&gt;What office package is good for academic writing purpose? These three are the most popular for a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) style rich text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Avoid LateX reference please. This question is for lazy writers like me who wants to write rapidly and with ease! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T16:54:43.057" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T16:37:33.073" Title="OpenOffice Vs. LibreOffice Vs. MSOffice for academic writing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-08-31T13:26:18.430" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;all the major conferences and journals provide &lt;em&gt;templates&lt;/em&gt; to use in order to format properly a submission, and they are circulated mostly in doc (Microsoft) and tex (LaTex) formats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are mostly identical, but they're divided by a large political/philosophical diatribe (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://askubuntu.com/questions/141701/what-is-the-difference-between-libre-office-and-open-office-what-are-the-advan&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Generally Libre-/OpenOffice can open the doc templates without problems, but they tend to loose some formatting against the latest docx format (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techbroil.com/2012/02/libreoffice-docx-support-is-terrible.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), and they sometimes &quot;break&quot; the docx files that coauthors give back to LibreOffice users (like in &lt;a href=&quot;http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/msg16773.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:25:25.510" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T13:26:18.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-08-31T17:32:00.627" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends a lot on one's field of work, where the end product will appear, whether the collaborator's mutually agree upon the package and finally the OS one use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most journals or conferences accept manuscripts in &lt;code&gt;DOC&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;DOCX&lt;/code&gt; format; other than &lt;code&gt;TeX&lt;/code&gt;. Native formats of &lt;em&gt;OpenOffice&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;LibreOffice&lt;/em&gt; are not [always] supported in most DTP centres/print or publishing houses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say, for example if you are in Science; esp in Physics or Mathematics, most of your academic writing will have lot of equations. In that case it better to opt for MS Office (along with MathType). This is because the equation editor that comes with OpenOffice or LibreOffice is not compatible with MS Office and vice versa. The equation either get converted as a figure or appear scrambled when opened in a non-native package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the collaborator uses a different package, compatibility is a big problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one has to work in different OS's; compatibility issues comes in there as well. For e.g. MS Office cannot function natively on Linux systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So considering the fact that &lt;em&gt;the academic work always reach a different kind of post-processing mechanism, it is better to use the  most popular package&lt;/em&gt;, MS Office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If typesetting and publishing are done by self/in-house, compatibility is not an issue and any package is as good as any other package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As question is about three specific office packages, references to &lt;code&gt;LaTeX&lt;/code&gt; is avoided; which may be the best choice, irrespective of one's field of work/typesetting environment as @marc-van-dongen has already pointed out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T16:48:44.060" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T16:48:44.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3061" CreationDate="2012-08-31T18:42:49.737" Score="14" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing papers, one specific problem is how to effectively organize the data we want to present so as to enable the audience and readers to quickly understand what we want to demonstrate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've browsed a very good book before which shows you how to draw figures and tables in academic papers in the &quot;right approach&quot; but seems I cannot remember its name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has read any good book on this topic, please recommend their names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="316" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T09:58:18.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T09:58:18.650" Title="Book recommendations for information visualization?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3059" CreationDate="2012-08-31T18:51:51.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two really well presented and interesting books are in the well known O'Reilly collections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920000617.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beautiful Visualization Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visualization is the graphic presentation of data -- portrayals meant to reveal complex information at a glance. Think of the familiar map of the New York City subway system, or a diagram of the human brain. Successful visualizations are beautiful not only for their aesthetic design, but also for elegant layers of detail that efficiently generate insight and new understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This book examines the methods of two dozen visualization experts who approach their projects from a variety of perspectives -- as artists, designers, commentators, scientists, analysts, statisticians, and more. Together they demonstrate how visualization can help us make sense of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Explore the importance of storytelling with a simple visualization exercise&#xA;  Learn how color conveys information that our brains recognize before we're fully aware of it&#xA;  Discover how the books we buy and the people we associate with reveal clues to our deeper selves&#xA;  Recognize a method to the madness of air travel with a visualization of civilian air traffic&#xA;  Find out how researchers investigate unknown phenomena, from initial sketches to published papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596157128.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beautiful Data The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this insightful book, you'll learn from the best data practitioners in the field just how wide-ranging -- and beautiful -- working with data can be. Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With Beautiful Data, you will:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web&#xA;  Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups&#xA;  Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel&#xA;  Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research&#xA;  Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data&#xA;  Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data&#xA;  That's only small sample of what you'll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T18:51:51.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3059" CreationDate="2012-08-31T18:53:09.830" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The preeminent author on this topic is Edward Tufte, who wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi&quot;&gt;&quot;The Visual Display of Quantitative Information&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. He has a few other books also available on his site (see previous link) that are worth checking out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T18:53:09.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-08-31T19:39:13.547" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in a field with lots of equations, the journals you are going to publish in will almost certainly take .tex.  So write in LaTeX.  Otherwise you will not be writing your equations rapidly or with ease (compared to those who know LaTeX)*.  Use a front end like LyX if you want some WYSIWYGness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in any non-equation-heavy field, use MS Office, for the simple reason that every journal takes .doc files and only some take other formats.  OpenOffice and LibreOffice are not yet compatible enough for publication-quality work.  (I have tried repeatedly.)  It's not that OpenOffice/LibreOffice can't do the right thing, it's that the journals only support Word.  And so either your manuscript will be full of errors that you have to hope you will catch and correct when you get page proofs, or you will have to end up using Word anyway.  Kind of sad, but that's the way things are (and have been for the past decade).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;sup&gt;Once you know LaTeX, &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is faster and easier, especially because you can save old solutions for formatting, shortcut macros, etc. etc., and import them with a cut and paste.  But it does take a non-negligible amount of time to learn, so if you're too impatient to learn new skills or under a very tight time deadline right now, LaTeX is not for you.  Unless you're doing equations--LaTeX still does those enough better that you may as well just use it regardless.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T19:39:13.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-31T21:10:34.743" Score="19" ViewCount="2087" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are interviewing some candidates for a part-time teaching faculty position to teach 2 upper level undergraduate courses in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is my first time to be in such committee and since this is a teaching job on the university level, I wanted to know what are the criteria/questions that are teaching-related and that should be asked to the candidate in the interview?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastEditorUserId="1547" LastEditDate="2012-09-04T00:28:36.803" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T06:17:07.873" Title="How to interview a candidate for a university teaching position?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-09-01T00:10:31.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really don't want to have LaTeX, then also &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GoogleDocs&lt;/a&gt; may be an option. It has a big advantage, when it comes to collaboration (even for real-time; no problems with mismatching versions of editors, no problems with &amp;quot;which version is the most recent?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;where (s)he made the changes?&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also you might consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LyX&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, you can at the same time write in the way you are used to (without learning anything just to start) and use benefits of LaTeX (formatting, bibliography (!), formulas (!)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite a few of my friends started their adventure with LaTeX with LyX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T00:10:31.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3065" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3070" CreationDate="2012-09-01T02:36:06.870" Score="16" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing in a journal is a long process that might take a lot of time (&gt; 1 year), and is possibly involved of several phases (submit, re-submit, re-re-submit...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the time passes, things change. Specifically, new results appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should one do with the new stuff that happens between resubmissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do one needs to cite / refer to papers that first appeared after the original date submission?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do one needs to update citations to papers that on the date of the original submission appeared only on arXiv, but now appear in a journal (those possibly slightly different than the original work cited in the original submission)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA; maybe one should wait for acceptance, and only then do the updates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T05:13:58.980" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T08:07:34.933" Title="Should one update a manuscript to current state-of-art when re-submitting?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3065" CreationDate="2012-09-01T04:09:08.747" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would like to add a partial answer. Don't know the answer to the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But about the second: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do one needs to update citations to papers .....?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they need to be updated. Most publishers ask to update bibliography with latest information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the original content that appeared in arXiv is changed in the final publication, it is better to keep the original citation in your paper, specifying the exact version that you cited.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T04:09:08.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3065" CreationDate="2012-09-01T04:31:18.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to both of these questions is &lt;strong&gt;it's your choice&lt;/strong&gt;.  However, I definitely &lt;strong&gt;recommend that you update the citation information&lt;/strong&gt;, because (a) it probably won't take long and (b) it will possibly be quite helpful to your readers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a field where it's uncommon for much to change between the time that I first submit and that I resubmit.  Perhaps I might find out that someone proved a result in our paper about the same time that we did.  In that case, I would add a line in the acknowledgments section stating so, and add a citation to the relevant paper or preprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T04:31:18.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2567" CreationDate="2012-09-01T15:03:52.537" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not too sure if you are looking for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/&quot;&gt;One policy, one Google experience&lt;/a&gt; released by Google &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On March 1, 2012, we changed our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.&#xA;  We got rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and&#xA;  replaced them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. The&#xA;  new policy and terms cover multiple products and features, reflecting&#xA;  our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience&#xA;  across Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means &lt;strong&gt;all of the Google services have the same ToS&lt;/strong&gt;, which is available here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/&quot;&gt;Google Terms of Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from that page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our&#xA;  Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface&#xA;  and the instructions that we provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T15:03:52.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3039" CreationDate="2012-09-01T15:16:56.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers. Chicago: University of&#xA;  Chicago, 1987. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a very nice book and is applicable to CS (unlike many other research methodology books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T15:16:56.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3065" CreationDate="2012-09-01T15:24:32.233" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, you should update your references at &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; possible opportunity.&lt;/strong&gt;  Whenever the manuscript is in your hands, if it is possible for you to update the references, you should do so.  Paper rejected?  Update the references before resubmission.  Paper accepted?  Update the references before sending back the revision.  Multiple rounds of reviewing?  Update the references after each round.  Submitting a journal version of a conference paper?  Update the references before submission.  Reviewing galley proofs?  Okay, then you probably &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; update the references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your paper serves as not only a description of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; new result but also as a guide to the surrounding literature.  Your readers (including referees and editors) are best served by the most up-to-date snapshot possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if one of the papers you cite has undergone a revision (for example, and ArXiv preprint has appeared in a journal), &lt;em&gt;you must read the new revision yourself&lt;/em&gt; to make sure that the cited information is still there, so that you know &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to appropriately cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically tag completely new references (for example, a relevant ArXiv preprint appears while my paper is under review) with phrases like &quot;Since this paper was submitted...&quot; or (since I'm in computer science) &quot;Since the preliminary version of this paper appeared....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T15:24:32.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3065" CreationDate="2012-09-02T08:07:34.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might some of the reviewers have published the relevant paper(s) that have come out and which you are not citing?  Yes?  Might they appreciate it if you cite rather than ignore their work?  Yes?  Better update your citations, then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T08:07:34.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-09-02T12:22:34.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised no one mentioned reStructured text (&lt;a href=&quot;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructured_Text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). This is a markup syntax where you can write your paper using pure text only. It also support math, automatic conversion to both LaTeX and PDF, and rendering on web pages. Check it out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1282" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T12:22:34.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-02T15:59:54.213" Score="1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/902/age-and-graduate-school&quot;&gt;Age and Graduate school&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it difficult to get a job as a professor if you don't go to a PhD program immediately after undergrad? For example, suppose you work for 5 years before returning to get a PhD? Is this very rare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T15:59:54.213" Title="Getting a PhD much later on" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-02T18:29:23.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2012-09-02T18:22:32.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mainly, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, if you have a PhD no one will care whether you have a master's degree in the same area or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I &lt;em&gt;disagree with JeffE&lt;/em&gt; that no one will ever care about your previous degrees.  This &lt;strong&gt;statement is nearly true with regard to research&lt;/strong&gt;, but I think it &lt;strong&gt;may be false for some other areas&lt;/strong&gt;.  For example, if you want to teach at a liberal arts school (undergraduate-only, focused more on breadth than many schools), then you'll have a better chance to land such a job if you got your bachelor's degree at a school like that.  At times I find it helpful to mention that I got a master's degree in &lt;em&gt;optimization and algorithms&lt;/em&gt;, rather than just saying that I have a master's in math.  I think this can more readily convey the particular skill set I acquired.  If the people evaluating you always did so rationally and with due diligence, yours master's degree (or lack thereof) probably wouldn't matter.  However, &lt;strong&gt;humans are often lazy and/or emotional, so your mileage may vary&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T19:56:41.077" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T19:56:41.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3083" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:37:00.510" Score="16" ViewCount="1137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find a way to search for all the citations contained in an article. What I want to do is create a workflow for my research where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a pool of articles that I have already read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to find a new article to read, based on this pool of articles, so I find all the citations of all the read articles and calculate the most cited article, which is the next article I should read (obviously skipping articles that I have already read).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have been unable to find a way to automatically download all of the citations of a specific article. Is there no way to do it? even payed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="828" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T01:43:10.000" Title="Web Service to fetch article citations" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3170" CreationDate="2012-09-03T03:26:11.210" Score="22" ViewCount="1405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a tenure-track position for 3 years and am going back on the job market. Would I be expected to &quot;explain&quot; why I am leaving, especially when it is pre-tenure? I suspect that a search committee might think I'm leaving because I felt in danger of not receiving tenure -- that is not the case here. However, my reasons for leaving stem from a two-body problem that I'd prefer not to disclose until after an offer is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more concrete way of asking: how should the application cover letter look different, coming from someone currently holding a faculty position compared to a newly minted PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1585" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T04:32:37.113" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T08:26:42.073" Title="During an application/interview should an applicant justify leaving a current faculty position (pre-tenure)?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3081" CreationDate="2012-09-03T05:21:40.980" Score="11" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1057/&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, Anonymous Mathematician says, &quot;You need to demonstrate that you have mastered the undergraduate material that is less relevant for computer science. For example, mathematical analysis along the lines of Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I demonstrate I have mastered materials from Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis or Artin's Algebra for admission in grad school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T13:05:41.943" Title="How to demonstrate mastery of courses not taken during undergraduation" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3080" CreationDate="2012-09-03T05:59:02.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this a hard question because I regularly have to deal with applicants claiming they have certain skills and because these cases are difficult to deal with. For example, recently an applicant got a bad grade for one module and wrote they really were much better. I decided the applicant's examiners are in a much better position than I to judge the applicant's capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case you want to prove you have knowledge you didn't formally study in your undergraduate school. If so it's impossible to prove your skills unless (1) somebody from your undergraduate school is willing to write a letter of recommendation, or (2) the grad school are willing to ``examine'' you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of (1) this may work. Unfortunately, (2) means the graduate school have to do more work and I think this is unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if the graduate school require the skills, it seems to me they think it is reasonable. In that case, applicants should have taken modules that demonstrate these skills. If they haven't, it seems to me they're not the ideal candidates in the opinion of the graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastEditorUserId="1194" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T13:05:41.943" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T13:05:41.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2012-09-03T15:53:53.643" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be no service or tool that let's you download articles in bulk. This is probably so because most journals &lt;em&gt;do have zero tolerance&lt;/em&gt; for bulk/automated downloads. &lt;strong&gt;Automated downloads are some times (may be most of the times) an attempt to infringe the copyrights.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://librarians.acm.org/policies&quot;&gt;ACM Digital Library ToS&lt;/a&gt; has this restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under no circumstances are the following actions permitted:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Using scripts or spiders to automatically download articles or    harvest metadata from the ACM Digital Library. This activity is a serious violation of  ACM’s DL  usage policy and will result in the temporary or permanent termination of download rights for the subscribing institution. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, irrespective of the field of research, here are some services (free and paid) that offers you a list of citations / &lt;em&gt;cited by&lt;/em&gt; articles (other than the journal's webpage for the article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/&quot;&gt;CrossRef&lt;/a&gt; (some services are paid ones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; (Paid)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; (Free)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/&quot;&gt;NASA ADS&lt;/a&gt; (for astronomy and allied fields. Free)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt; provide free &lt;em&gt;Cited by&lt;/em&gt; list, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt; provides this for subscribers/members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also please note, &lt;a href=&quot;http://doc.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs_doc/faq.html&quot;&gt;from NASA ADS FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, references may be incomplete due to our inability to&#xA;  match them with 100% accuracy (e.g. in press, private communications,&#xA;  author errors, some conference series, etc.). Anyone using the&#xA;  citations for analysis of publishing records should keep this in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is true for any citation / &lt;em&gt;Cited by&lt;/em&gt; lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T17:23:23.440" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T17:23:23.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-09-03T16:42:24.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend using a LaTeX whenever possible or Lyx. For Lyx you can also export to LaTex. A recent submission actually only accepted word, but that is not a problem if you start in Lyx or LaTeX. You can export for Lyx to Tex. I have found that if I do need to move to Word for submission or having someone help with editing, I can take the LaTeX/Tex file and use a converter (there are a lot you can try, here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/latex2rtf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;open source one on SF&lt;/a&gt;) to get RTF which will open in Word just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other editors, Such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mackichan.com/index.html?products/swp.html~mainFrame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Workplace&lt;/a&gt; which are more geared towards technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you may want to consider is using something very simple like Markdown with some extension for citations and the such. Here are some related links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mandown.rubyforge.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic writing extensions to Markdown‘mandown’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fieldnoise.com/2012/08/14/the-digital-dissertator-writing-footnoting-markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing and Footnotes in Markdown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to check out this &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1086797/wysiwyg-vs-wysiwym&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question on WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T16:42:24.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3094" CreationDate="2012-09-04T01:24:50.783" Score="15" ViewCount="1222" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've been researching my field of interest and I'm increasingly getting drawn to apply to a few &quot;top&quot; departments (in pure math) -- it seems like such a strong fit at the moment given that I've done relatively serious undergraduate research, though it was more of a &quot;directed&quot; study kind of thing, and my approaches to some of the problems have been fruitless, but have gotten me exposed to so much mathematics that got me excited to learn and think more about the topics I was looking at initially. I have the grades and the GRE scores (past the 80th percentile on the subject test in math, which seems like the unadvertised minimum). However, my reference letter writers don't appear to have any connections to some of these top places. From some research online, it appears that admission committees want to hear from &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; mathematicians -- but what if my reference letter writers aren't known in said department? Is such an application doomed from the &#xA;start? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who have served on admission committees, what is your take on this and how would you advise an applicant like me? Unfortunately there's no time to rectify this by going to an REU or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2642" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-04T03:46:17.343" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T13:18:12.160" Title="Should my references be famous if I want to get into top schools for PhD?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3063" CreationDate="2012-09-04T03:11:27.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll want to ask some standard questions that any experienced educator would ask a potential teacher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request to see a model lesson. It doesn't have to be a full lecture, just something to see their style. Ideally the entire committee should be there for this part.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask to see a university-level lesson plan of their creation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask how they would approach creating a semester-long curriculum for an advanced &quot;special topics&quot; course. I suggest the &quot;special topics&quot; idea because this lets you see whether they can do it for themselves or whether they are only able to follow pre-set curricula.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask how they'll ensure that the top students are being adequately challenged while the weaker students aren't being left behind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask how they handle unruly students. Even though this is fairly rare at the university level, they should have a ready answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have them explain some concepts to you and make sure for yourself that you are comfortable with how they explain them. (Similar to model lesson, but for specific topics.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to mention things like office hours requirements, whether they'll get a TA, and related administrative stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T03:11:27.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-04T03:01:37.723" Score="28" ViewCount="5319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I am an active user of SE, I have chosen to remain anonymous because of the nature of this question. I am currently a graduate student at a university that lands in the mid 70s among U.S. News' top graduate schools in mathematics, which by my understanding is very poor. My grades were quite good and although I didn't do terrifically on the subject GRE, I had a few offers from schools in the mid 40 range which I turned down. This was partially because I think I undervalued the importance of choosing a better school, and for a variety of personal reasons. My university has some unique opportunities in applied math, but is otherwise unremarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I enter my second year, I am increasingly convinced that a career as an active research mathematician is what I want for myself. However, I've heard so much contradictory information that I'm unsure if this is a realistic goal given the status of my university. While a variety of people have told me that there are plenty of desirable jobs available in &quot;industry,&quot; the general consensus is that graduate students from low-ranking schools tend to end up as community college professors. The fact that most universities (including my own) are full of doctors from strictly high ranking schools seems to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the chance to receive a terminal masters at the end of this year, rather than continue on for another four and complete my PhD, so I'm considering trying to retake the GRE and reapplying (I am unclear whether this is frowned upon in the math community in general, although at my school I have been reassured it is not). On the other hand, my university has a few professors who seem to be well known within their niche, mainly because their particular specialties are very unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general questions are these: How important is the quality of the university when it comes to having a full career in pure mathematics research? Is a well known adviser a factor, possibly outweighing the school? Is this significantly different among applied mathematicians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anonymous" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-04T03:45:10.340" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T02:16:54.557" Title="How does the ranking of a university relate to a future career in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3089" CreationDate="2012-09-04T03:26:59.433" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion, which is worth what you are paying for it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is the quality of your dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second most important thing is the reputation of your thesis advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ranking of the department only comes in third. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these things are not independent of each other. It may be that at a higher-ranked department you'll get a better education and write a better thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably best to speak to someone at your current institution (or your undergrad institution) who knows you well and can give you better advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Gerry Myerson" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T03:26:59.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3089" CreationDate="2012-09-04T04:30:09.487" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me answer an easy question.  It is &lt;strong&gt;not frowned on to get a masters at one school, then transfer elsewhere for a Phd&lt;/strong&gt;.  In fact, this is &lt;strong&gt;often encouraged&lt;/strong&gt;.  Next, let me confirm that &lt;strong&gt;yes, the ranking of your PhD institution really does matter&lt;/strong&gt; for a future career as a research mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some sense, Gerry is right when he says that the ranking of importance is (1) quality of dissertation, (2) reputation of adviser, and (3) ranking of department.&#xA;One big problem though, is that &lt;strong&gt;many of the people evaluating you won't know how to evaluate criteria (1) and (2).&lt;/strong&gt;  Hiring committees often include many (all?) people who are not familiar with your research area.  So they will often rely on what they (at least think that they) know, which is &lt;em&gt;quality of department&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2709/college-vs-grad-school/2712#2712&quot;&gt;written elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; about why you should go to the strongest program that you can get into, particularly if you want a career as a research mathematician.&#xA;I don't know all the details of your personal situation, but I strongly encourage you to at least take the GRE again and reapply.  It may be possible for you to wait to see whether you get accepted to a school that you prefer before you decide whether you'll leave with a terminal masters or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T02:16:54.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3093" CreationDate="2012-09-04T09:24:05.687" Score="9" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this question is best here, workplace.sx, or someplace else ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to clean off my desk before the semester starts (I am lucky and still have a couple of weeks). My department is far from paperless and many things only get distributed in paper form. While I would love to be organized enough to file away the paperwork from each meeting as it happens, I don't. Instead I have a large pile of all of last years meetings on my desk. I feel like most of these meetings do not directly affect me. I have piles from previous years stuck in my file cabinet. Is it worth saving unorganized papers from meetings or should I just dump them. Is there a better strategy going forward (preferably one that only requires intervention twice a year.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T12:20:56.310" Title="Guidlines for keeping adminstrative paperwork" Tags="&lt;paperwork&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3092" CreationDate="2012-09-04T12:20:56.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would recommend that you start taking notes at these meetings and toss all the handouts. Include the name &amp;amp; contact info of the person doing most of the talking in your notes so that you can contact them in the future if necessary. I use an electronic note-taking tool with user-defined tags to keep track of everything, as I've found it easier to search later on; experiment with different approaches to see what works best with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach works with most types of handouts, but for things like calendars and class rosters you'll still want to work with paper. Personally, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shopcopco.com/shop/ProductDetail.asp?Ino=72614&amp;amp;Company=FEL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;something like this&lt;/a&gt;; I have two on my desk and I haven't needed more in a while, as I throw out folders when done with them. Even if you just stick them in a huge pile, though, it'll still be less huge than your previous pile, so at least you're better off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T12:20:56.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2012-09-04T13:18:12.160" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not necessary for your recommenders to be famous.  It certainly helps a little, since it's only natural for the admissions committee to be influenced by fame, but it's not really relevant to the quality of the recommendation so most people try not to be too influenced by it.  Instead, these criteria are more important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do your recommenders know you?  I.e., can they make detailed, substantive comments, beyond just listing grades?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they know what's required for success at the schools you are applying to, and what the competition is like?  Do they have a good basis for comparison in your case?  The best case scenario is if their students regularly apply and are at least sometimes accepted; then a comparison with past students is very informative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the committee understand their personalities and writing styles?  Some recommenders are very optimistic and say everyone's great, while others lean towards understatement.  If members of the committee have read previous letters by your recommenders, or know them personally, then it's much easier to make a reliable judgment.  Otherwise, everyone will be at least a little more skeptical of the letters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of people who satisfy these criteria but wouldn't register as &quot;famous&quot; in the community at large.  On the other hand, if your recommenders don't satisfy them, then it will be harder to be admitted to a top department.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it's impossible, but this is worth keeping in mind when selecting letter writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T13:18:12.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-03T06:53:39.673" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/924/contacting-professors-for-phd-vacancies&quot;&gt;Contacting professors for PhD vacancies&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be applying for PhD programs (particularly TCS) for Fall, 2013. Should I personally try contact advisors for this purpose? At some universities, there are multiple faculties whom I want to work with. If I don't contact them then am I at a disadvantage? What should I write about if I should contact them? Any other advice is appreciable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry if this sounds a stupid question or not a real question but since many of the users are here themselves faculty and PhD students, I thought it to be the best place to ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5620" OwnerDisplayName="singhsumit" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:54:13.343" Title="Contacting Faculty While Applying For PhD programmes" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-09-04T17:04:09.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3097" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3161" CreationDate="2012-09-04T20:15:51.727" Score="17" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today's world is electronic, there is vision of semantic web and yet we still submit references in numerous versions of various journals. In medicine, many journals have special rules about after how many authors you can put et. al. etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is tedious to reformat references (even with EndNote or other reference managers) to suit a particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any pioneer journals or initiatives to simply stop submitting references and just list a DOI instead (if one exist), and to &quot;traditional refences only if DOI does not exist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LATER EDIT: In fact, people already try to do the opposite - convert PDF into list of DOIs.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.crossref.org/pdfextract/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://labs.crossref.org/pdfextract/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LATER EDIT: The receiving journal, after getting the article, would expand the DOIs into traditional references in the exact format the journals wants the references in the print version. Different journals would expand the DOI as preferred. A service at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery&lt;/a&gt; can expand the DOI (e.g., 1136/bmj.d7373 into XML with info such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;doi_records&amp;gt;&#xA;  &amp;lt;doi_record key=&quot;key&quot; owner=&quot;10.1136&quot; timestamp=&quot;2012-01-03 23:32:36&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;crossref&amp;gt;&#xA;      &amp;lt;journal&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;journal_metadata language=&quot;en&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;full_title&amp;gt;BMJ&amp;lt;/full_title&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;abbrev_title&amp;gt;BMJ&amp;lt;/abbrev_title&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;issn media_type=&quot;print&quot;&amp;gt;0959-8138&amp;lt;/issn&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;issn media_type=&quot;electronic&quot;&amp;gt;1468-5833&amp;lt;/issn&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;/journal_metadata&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;journal_issue&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;publication_date media_type=&quot;online&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;month&amp;gt;01&amp;lt;/month&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;day&amp;gt;03&amp;lt;/day&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;year&amp;gt;2012&amp;lt;/year&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/publication_date&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;publication_date media_type=&quot;print&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;month&amp;gt;01&amp;lt;/month&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;day&amp;gt;03&amp;lt;/day&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;year&amp;gt;2011&amp;lt;/year&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/publication_date&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;journal_volume&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;volume&amp;gt;344&amp;lt;/volume&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/journal_volume&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;issue&amp;gt;jan03 1&amp;lt;/issue&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;/journal_issue&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;journal_article publication_type=&quot;full_text&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;titles&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;title&amp;gt;Compliance with mandatory reporting of clinical trial results on ClinicalTrials.gov: cross sectional study&amp;lt;/title&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/titles&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;contributors&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;person_name sequence=&quot;first&quot; contributor_role=&quot;author&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;given_name&amp;gt;A. P.&amp;lt;/given_name&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;surname&amp;gt;Prayle&amp;lt;/surname&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;/person_name&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;person_name sequence=&quot;additional&quot; contributor_role=&quot;author&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;given_name&amp;gt;M. N.&amp;lt;/given_name&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;surname&amp;gt;Hurley&amp;lt;/surname&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;/person_name&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;person_name sequence=&quot;additional&quot; contributor_role=&quot;author&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;given_name&amp;gt;A. R.&amp;lt;/given_name&amp;gt;&#xA;              &amp;lt;surname&amp;gt;Smyth&amp;lt;/surname&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;/person_name&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/contributors&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;publication_date media_type=&quot;online&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;month&amp;gt;01&amp;lt;/month&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;day&amp;gt;03&amp;lt;/day&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;year&amp;gt;2012&amp;lt;/year&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/publication_date&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;publication_date media_type=&quot;print&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;month&amp;gt;01&amp;lt;/month&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;day&amp;gt;03&amp;lt;/day&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;year&amp;gt;2012&amp;lt;/year&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/publication_date&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;pages&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;first_page&amp;gt;d7373&amp;lt;/first_page&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;last_page&amp;gt;d7373&amp;lt;/last_page&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/pages&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;publisher_item&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;item_number item_number_type=&quot;sequence-number&quot;&amp;gt;bmj.d7373&amp;lt;/item_number&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/publisher_item&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;doi_data&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;doi&amp;gt;10.1136/bmj.d7373&amp;lt;/doi&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;timestamp&amp;gt;20120103162404&amp;lt;/timestamp&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;resource&amp;gt;http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.d7373&amp;lt;/resource&amp;gt;&#xA;          &amp;lt;/doi_data&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;/journal_article&amp;gt;&#xA;      &amp;lt;/journal&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;/crossref&amp;gt;&#xA;  &amp;lt;/doi_record&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;/doi_records&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:13:59.970" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:13:59.970" Title="Publishing DOIs instead of traditional references?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3103" CreationDate="2012-09-04T20:59:34.553" Score="66" ViewCount="66573" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I've seen a really nice figure in a paper; what's the best way to 'get a copy'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be on the publisher's website?&#xA;Do I need to draw my own version?&#xA;Email the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally, how does the answer vary for (a) those wishing to republish the figure in their own work, (b) those not wishing to publish the figure e.g. for student coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T02:15:00.337" LastActivityDate="2018-10-28T18:27:40.140" Title="I'd like to use a figure from a paper; what's the best way to do this?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2012-09-04T22:39:12.393" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a horrible idea.  DOIs are not meant for human consumption; bibliographies are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; assume that your readers are always connected to the internet while reading your paper, even if that paper is published only electronically.&lt;/strong&gt;  They might be reading a paper printout.  They might be reading the paper on an airplane.  They might be describing the results to students in a seminar, or to a colleague over the phone.  The campus network might be down, or overloaded by students google-studying for finals.  Their cellular data carrier might be unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, the reader might have access to your cited papers by other means,  like (gasp) the actual library.  Or they might be interested in when your references were published, or in which venues, or by whom.  Or they might want to track citations to other papers which are not identified by DOIs elsewhere.  Or they might want the raw bibliographic information for some other reason which you and I can't think of, but which they've learned to expect because every other publication includes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Stop whining and just type the stupid page numbers already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T22:39:12.393" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2012-09-04T23:39:56.763" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with JeffE and Users 17670, but there's another fundamental reason why DOIs alone are problematic: they don't have enough redundancy to correct errors.  If you have a typo in your DOI, then it will be very difficult to determine what you meant to refer to.  Of course, most DOIs are copied and pasted, and it's not hard to check that they work by pasting them into &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org&lt;/a&gt;, so I'm sure the error rate would be very low.  However, it would not be zero.  (I once found a typo in the DOI listed on a publisher's web page.  I have no idea how it got there, but it did.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T23:39:56.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3100" CreationDate="2012-09-04T23:58:46.593" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the paper is available under a very permissive license, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution&lt;/a&gt;, you will need to seek permission.  (There may be other legal possibilities, such as fair use or fair dealing, but that's a little subtle.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/04/26/is-reprinting-a-figure-fair-us/&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt; for more information on that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The copyright owner is the person you need permission from.  Who that is will generally be marked on the published paper (often it is the publisher, and sometimes the author).  If the publisher holds the copyright, then it is still polite to ask permission from the authors as well, although this is not legally required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big commercial publishers will often have a department for dealing with this, typically with a name like &quot;Permissions&quot;.  If you can't find such a department, then you can try just writing to the journal in question (look at their web page to try to find e-mail addresses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are lucky, they will quickly approve your use of the figure.  If you are not lucky, they will ask for money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And, finally, how does the answer vary for (a) those wishing to republish the figure in their own work, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are definitely legal issues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) those not wishing to publish the figure e.g. for student coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you never make the work available to the public, then it is hard to imagine that the copyright owner will ever learn about it or complain (and they would look foolish if they tried to sue someone for using their figure in a homework assignment).  However, you still have a moral obligation to cite the source of the figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T23:58:46.593" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3063" CreationDate="2012-09-05T06:17:07.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university requires a teaching portfolio to be attached to the job application. This will typically include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching practice (your education, courses)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;History of teaching (activities, awards)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student feedback (with comments on how did your teaching chanre as a response to these comments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materials you prepared for students (with comments on how and why they evolved)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1312" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T06:17:07.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3100" CreationDate="2012-09-05T08:53:05.580" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answer by @AnonymousMathematician, it's important to remember &lt;em&gt;how to cite a figure from another paper in your own&lt;/em&gt;. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.nmu.edu/guides/userguides/apacitingtables.htm&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; gives a good explanation on how to do so: for publications using the APA style guide, for instance, it should be in the format&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure #. Description/Note.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Adapted from “Title of Article,” by F. M. Author and C. D. Author, year,&#xA;Title of Journal, volume, p. xx. Copyright year by the Name of Copyright Holder. Adapted [or Reprinted] with&#xA;permission.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T09:28:24.777" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T09:28:24.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-05T13:09:44.027" Score="22" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did anyone research the data about scientific productivity? I.e. what is the average number of articles written by author in a year in a specific field? I am  referring to average, since this is maybe easiest to calculate, but it would be interesting to see the distribution data too. This of course depends on how many journals we want to scope, but I would be interested to see any data on say most popular fields like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc (order is of no importance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastEditorUserId="184" LastEditDate="2017-10-20T06:14:58.380" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T09:32:50.337" Title="What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2012-09-05T15:55:52.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though this is not a direct answer to your query, this hopes to lead to more productive / useful answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article&lt;/a&gt;, on Hirsch index or h-index that is a widely accepted measure of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist&#xA;  or scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also points to other indices on scientific/academic productivity and impact in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/ads_abstracts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service&lt;/a&gt; provides a gateway to the online Astronomy and Physics literature. A new interface of the ADS provides a tool to visualize the author and paper networks; that tells you how productive the author is, quantified with the number of collaborators and papers produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g. see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.adsabs.harvard.edu/ui/cgi-bin/topicSearch?q=Narlikar&amp;amp;qtype=NEW&amp;amp;db_key=AST&amp;amp;db_key=PRE&amp;amp;arxiv_sel=astro-ph&amp;amp;arxiv_sel=gr-qc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;; a search for the name &lt;strong&gt;Narlikar&lt;/strong&gt;. On top of the resulting page, next to &lt;em&gt;Top 200 results&lt;/em&gt;, you can see a drop-down menu, on which you can select various options like Author Network, Paper Network etc to get various  visualizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can contact the project personnels here &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/&lt;/a&gt; . They do conduct studies on bibliographic data, which is one of the measure of academic productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to the articles that cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/102/46/16569.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J. E. Hirsch&lt;/a&gt;'s article - &lt;em&gt;An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output&lt;/em&gt;- on h-index via Google Scholar &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2F102%2F46%2F16569.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2F102%2F46%2F16569.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T07:46:37.380" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T07:46:37.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-05T16:06:32.420" Score="4" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1280/when-should-i-stop-including-talks-on-my-cv&quot;&gt;When should I stop including talks on my cv?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering splitting my academic CV into a short version (ideally less than two pages) and a longer one with a full list of publications and talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q1: do you think it is a good idea to split it into two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q2: which ones of those would you put in the shorter version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list of most important papers (5?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list of most important talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research grants and awards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other scientific service (refereeing, conference organization)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;schools attended &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T16:06:32.420" Title="Short CV and publication list" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-05T16:50:56.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2012-09-05T20:07:49.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing papers about finished projects, it is important to take breaks - write something, and then get back to it next day (re-read what you wrote). So multitasking could be beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:07:49.777" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-09-05T20:07:49.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-05T20:51:18.153" Score="19" ViewCount="2411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been receiving number of visits from &quot;academic book buyers&quot; that are looking to buy books that I no longer want.  It is never stated outright but they seem to be looking mainly for evaluation copies of textbooks.  At least 2 of the cards that I have been given indicate that they are &quot;recycling&quot; the books, although what this means is not clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these book buyers benefitting or exploiting academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T23:54:03.140" Title="Are academic book buyers legitimate?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3114" CreationDate="2012-09-06T04:36:38.630" Score="26" ViewCount="5631" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago, I spoke with a colleague of mine who advised me to beware of journals that require you to pay to publish your work, as they may be predatory.  Today, I spoke with my advisor who informed me that even some reputable journals require payment to publish... even upwards of thousands of dollars!  Is this really ethical?  I can understand requiring a nominaly insignificant membership fee of some sort to keep the journal running, but such an exhorbitant amount?  Shouldn't all who have significant work to publish in a field have the ability to diseminate in reputable journals without being super rich?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="14938" LastEditDate="2016-07-23T13:40:40.800" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T13:40:40.800" Title="Is it ethical for a journal to request substantial payment for publishing a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3113" CreationDate="2012-09-06T08:40:53.970" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well someone's got to pay. If it's the reader, then howls go up about Open Access. So that leaves the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The costs of publishing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high-quality journal needs high-quality editors.  An awful lot of literature still gets printed and distributed around the world and that's expensive. Remember, reading this, we are the ones who are most active online, and so our paper-reading habits are much more likely to be skewed towards predominantly (or even exclusively) online access, so are not fully representative. High-quality journals often also get involved in conference sponsorship, publicity, and so on. The peer-reviews get co-ordinated; there is often some vetting of suitable reviewers; their responses need to be interpreted correctly; special issues get co-ordinated; someone ensures a good balance of articles covering the journal's remit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's a lot of costs, and someone's got to cover them.  If we want to publish at almost-zero overheads, we write a blog.  A journal is much much more than a blog - and some of the things that make it much more than a blog, cost money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not necessarily an efficient market&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that in certain sectors, there isn't a market failure: some sectors do have suspiciously high profit margins. And market regulators should be looking at removing barriers to entry.  Those barriers certainly aren't insurmountable, as notable new scientific publishers have emerged recently, with new business models: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PLOS&lt;/a&gt; being an obvious example, founded in 2000 to support Open Access, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/early-history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;becoming a publisher in its own right in 2003&lt;/a&gt;; and now a serious player, using the author-pays model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Author beware&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also plenty of scammers using the author-pays model. So be careful out there. Talk to colleagues about who's reputable and who's not. Read the journals. And there are lists online of the disreputable publishers. Read more about that on this site at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/101/96&quot;&gt;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T12:05:09.760" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3113" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:49:46.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does make sense to pay but I think the fees now went through the roof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example BMJ charges 2500 british pounds (all article are forced into paying open access) and they still sell printed copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hybrid model of optional payment for open access seems to be dying in favor of all open access and all journals charge an article fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(medical field answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T13:49:46.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:53:53.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PubMedCentral gives you full text and their API may be able to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But getting all article PMIDs which are cited by paper X is the necessary step for that and this is hard - I don't think thre is a service..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you parse the full text yourself using your own code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T13:53:53.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3605" CreationDate="2012-09-06T14:06:08.280" Score="17" ViewCount="1946" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you include books and/or professional society memberships in expenses under grants from agencies like NSF and NIH?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've purchased lots of books under grants from DOE and the Air Force in the past, but I'm wondering if they're generally considered allowable.  My quick searching uncovered the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NIH seems to explicitly &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2011/nihgps_ch7.htm#preaward_preagreement_costs&quot;&gt;allow books at least&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NSF: I'm guessing books are allowed under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/manuals/gpm05_131/gpm6.jsp#610&quot;&gt;&quot;materials and supplies&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found anything about allowability of professional society memberships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T03:45:59.987" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T04:11:18.580" Title="Are books and professional society memberships allowable expenses under US federal grants?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3113" CreationDate="2012-09-06T14:19:44.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A market in which authors pay to publish and their careers depend on the number of publications they have opens new possibilities for unethical practices, and those are being actively exploited by &lt;a href=&quot;https://symomega.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/academic-spam&quot;&gt;vanity press &quot;gold open access&quot; journals&lt;/a&gt;.  On the other hand, there are very reputable journals like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/&quot;&gt;PlosONE&lt;/a&gt; that charge authors but maintain highly ethical standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of-submission-in-scientific.html&quot;&gt;open submission is even more important than open access&lt;/a&gt;.  For a more thorough criticism of the author-pay model, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201109/rtx110901294p.pdf&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200803/tx080300381p.pdf&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T14:19:44.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4771" CreationDate="2012-09-06T17:12:53.163" Score="12" ViewCount="2048" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much of an advantage does an Applied Mathematics PhD applicant have if he/she has a publication under his/her belt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this depends on the &quot;prestige&quot; of the journal that he/she published in. I suppose publishing in a top tier journal like Nature or Science would be a major advantage, &lt;em&gt;but would the applicant be one of the first picks because of it&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More pertinently (I suppose seekers of such advice would not have a top tier journal publication), &lt;em&gt;what about those with publication/publications in lesser journals&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T11:39:52.760" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:21:52.367" Title="How big of an advantage are publications for Applied Mathematics grad school applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3113" CreationDate="2012-09-06T21:37:10.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an answer about the cost of publishing science article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A math paper, where the author gives a pretty good draft (we use LaTeX) still has to manage peer-review (which usually means paying a secretary to contact authors, late referees, and so on) and to typeset articles. I have heard that the overall cost is $50 per page for a cheap journal (and math pages tend to be small since we mostly write with a single column).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been computed in the (very interesting) blog SV-POW that subscription earn the publisher more than $5000 on average. But of course, we are cheated a lot with those prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PLoS ONE gains money (and reinvest it, since PLoS is non-profit) and charges &quot;only&quot; $1350 per article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, Cambridge University Press announced the launch of a math journal in gold OA for $750 a paper -- after three years of fee waivers for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, PeerJ claims to be able to publish all the paper one wants for a few hundred dollar, paid once in one's life (plus yearly reviewer duty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion: there is a wide range of prices, and a wide range of services a journal can provide, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the actual question, I would say there is no ethical problem with paying a publisher for the work it does, as soon as the editors are independent from the money flow; but there are some issues with a system where most journals would run such a model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T21:37:10.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3126" CreationDate="2012-09-06T23:46:37.997" Score="36" ViewCount="3295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year, I wrote a paper and it got accepted and was presented at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year, I am writing a more in-depth paper about a similar subject; but since one of the figures in my first paper is adequate for my purpose, I want to reuse that one (of course citing it adequately).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I OK in doing that, or is that seen as self-plagiarism or unprofessional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1607" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:51:39.163" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:51:39.163" Title="Is copying an image from a previous paper of mine and citing its source considered self-plagiarism or unprofessional?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3121" CreationDate="2012-09-07T00:15:24.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;EDT&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;in this case..&quot; ) There's no such thing as self-plagiarism. It's your figure. you drew it, you have the right to use it anywhere you want any time you wish and as much as possible. I don't even see a need to cite previous appearances of the same figure (unless this figure is the main theorem/claim/result rather than an explanatory tool.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing to check is that the conf that published your paper doesn't  hold some rights on it, due to editing it, improving it or that you gave up your rights when you signed a copyright-transfer form (as the Anonymous Mathematician mentioned in his comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T14:24:02.827" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T14:24:02.827" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-07T07:00:43.713" Score="7" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often said that branch change is possible while going for MS/ PhD in USA. But almost all examples (as seen on university sites and various blogs) are of someone completing undergraduate studies (ie BE, BTech) from ‘Circuit’ branches of engineering i.e. Electrical, Electronics, Telecom, Instrumentation etc and joining MS/PhD in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How difficult it is to go for MS or PhD in CS, having studied in ‘Non Circuit’ branches like Mechanical, Civil, Chemical and Aeronautics Engineering?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there people out there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What one should do if one has a strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My query refers mainly to top ranking colleges, say top 20)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1609" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T05:39:41.720" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T05:39:41.720" Title="Feasibility and procedure for getting graduate admission in CS with non-CS-related engineering background?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3125" CreationDate="2012-09-07T07:09:02.153" Score="144" ViewCount="15207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself in an awkward situation. Nearly two years ago I submitted a paper to a reputable mathematics journal. After 15 months it was rejected with the rationale that there had been papers published (most since the submission date) that contained results that I should have referenced. I found that a little spurious, but moved on and put my work together with some colleagues and got our new paper accepted (pending some language issues) by a different journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of my co-authors has found that my exact result (barring some small notational changes, but with the exact same language; I can recognise it as mine, I slaved over finding just the right words!) from my original paper has had the proof published in a book by one author of the references that caused the paper to get originally rejected!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My assumption is thus that the paper was sent to this person to referee and they liked the result so much that they kept it for themselves, which also explains the delay in refereeing... I believe that this author has also presented this result at a conference as their own work. They have a number of papers published on the topic in question from their doctoral thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what steps can I take now to re-assert my authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it would have been simpler if I had also submitted it to the arXiv, but I wasn't sure (at that time) how that would be seen by the journal. I did give a presentation of my results at a local conference, so I would be able to produce credible witnesses to back up my claim, if necessary. The book published containing my work is largely the doctoral thesis of the author, so I am attempting to find a copy of the thesis since it was deposited before I submitted my paper to the journal. Can anyone suggest any other recourse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My co-authors would prefer to err on the side of caution and include a reference to the result in our revised paper, but I would really like to reclaim my work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1608" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T05:56:31.247" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T01:26:55.187" Title="What to do if a referee plagiarises the result after rejecting a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3124" CreationDate="2012-09-07T08:46:14.737" Score="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you write a formal letter to the journal editor who handled your submission.  (Make sure it is the same editor.)  Give &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the relevant details, including dated copies of all correspondence (whether electronic or printed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor should know who refereed your paper, and although the editor will not reveal their names to you (I assume that blind refereeing was done), he or she would be in the best position to act on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the best thing that could happen is the editor agrees that some unethical behavior occurred, the editor helps you file a case against the erring referee, the erring referee gets penalized, and proper attribution is given to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the worst thing that could happen is the editor does not believe your story, thinks you are just looking for trouble, and tells other editors and referees that you are a &quot;bad, crazy person.&quot;  Or the editor does believe your story but is a close friend of the erring referee and so acts as if he or she does not believe your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, at least they know that you are aware of this unethical behavior and this will perhaps discourage the erring referee to continue with the unethical behavior in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T08:46:14.737" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3121" CreationDate="2012-09-07T08:56:26.467" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; such a thing as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-plagiarism#Self-plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;, but I would say that your case (reusing a figure that you created and providing a citation to it) is not an instance of it.  I also don't think it is unethical or unprofessional.  As Ran G. says in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3122/64&quot;&gt;his answer&lt;/a&gt;, just make sure you ask permission from the copyright holder (if it isn't you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T08:56:26.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:29:34.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are good chances that they are selling the books back to students. Given the price of academic books, this is  is the most profitable way of &quot;recycling&quot; a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1611" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T10:29:34.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:35:03.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would refrain from doing any business with these buyers, mainly because I find their solicitations annoying.  I wouldn't want to encourage them to continue bothering me or my colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to ask whether it is ethical to resell evaluation copies at all, start a new question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T13:35:03.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:37:42.057" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Yves that they are selling the books back to students.  Then I think the economics works out as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The faculty selling the books and the book buyers benefit a lot.  The publishers stand to lose some money, since reselling the books hurts the market for new ones.  They presumably pass some or all of this cost on to students through price increases, so the students also lose money in aggregate.  Now the question becomes what price the books are being resold at.  If they are resold cheaply (used book prices), then the students who buy the resold books benefit (they get near-new copies at cheap prices), at the expense of the other students.  If the books are resold at new prices, then no students benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T13:37:42.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3123" CreationDate="2012-09-07T16:54:23.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to get an admission for MS or PhD in a US university having studied Bachelor degree in 'Non Circuit&quot; field. This is more true if you have &lt;em&gt;strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same&lt;/em&gt;. However, to get into the top 20s would be a special case though not impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try approaching professors from top universities in CS showing them your credentials. If you are able to convince a professor, the battle is more or less won.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my friend did his Bachelor in Civil Engg. from a reasonably good non-US university but got admission in Electrical Engg. in a US university of medium rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T17:10:59.483" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T17:10:59.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3134" CreationDate="2012-09-07T16:57:14.343" Score="19" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among the various indices for academic productivity/impact in the respective field, which is most accepted one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see some productivity measures, used in academia, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42/what-are-the-common-productivity-measures-of-a-scientist-like-h-index&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13/scientifically-meaningful-sources-of-bibliometrics&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is inspired by the comment &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3108/what-is-the-average-number-of-articles-written-per-author-in-a-year-and-has-it-i/3109#comment5086_3109&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and should not be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/which-bibliometrics-index-to-trust-more?&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification:&#xA;The word &lt;code&gt;accepted&lt;/code&gt; meant to be taken as accepted in the respective field of activity, for various requirements, say appointments, career advancements, selection for awards, invitation as an examiner, editor, reviewer etc. These measures might not have much impact on the general public, and that is not being asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T02:46:44.620" Title="Which is the most accepted measure for an individual's academic productivity?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3123" CreationDate="2012-09-07T17:49:16.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having to deal with applications for admission to a taught MSc CS programmes, I am sorry to say that we only accept CS BSc graduates or ``equivalent''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if applicants come form ``related'' areas such as electronic engineering, they usually lack experience in basic (and non-basic) CS areas such as programming, databases, operating systems, security, discrete math, and web technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, it's possible to learn about these matters but to enter the programme you must prove you've mastered them on a formal basis. (Otherwise, we might as well let anybody enter.) We're willing to accept applicants with provable industrial experience, provided applicants can back up the experience with a relevant CV and some references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to non-CS BSc graduates, we simply cannot accept them &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; they can prove they've studied CS on a formal basis. In short this usually means you always need a BSc in CS or the equivalent of a CS conversion degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T17:49:16.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3159" CreationDate="2012-09-07T18:47:45.750" Score="6" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I am reviewing sources for my thesis, I am citing my sources in an (APA style) annotated bibliography (as required).  However, I am also finding some excellent points from other sources that are either not entirely on-topic or less-empirical (read: poorly referenced).  I have (of course) kept track of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the accepted practice for listing cited works in a thesis?  Is it acceptable to have an annotated bibliography, as well as a list of &quot;additonal works cited?&quot;  Or should they all be listed (with annotations) consistently in one section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have posed this question to my adviser, but I would also like to hear from others as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1508" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T04:58:35.860" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T04:58:35.860" Title="Is use of multiple bibliographies, especially with annotations, in a thesis, accepted?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2012-09-07T19:04:37.627" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no accepted numerical measure for an individual's academic productivity.  The available measures can sometimes be useful, but they all have serious weaknesses and many detractors.  In particular, there is no widely accepted or safe choice: if you make any public use of a productivity measure, many people will react angrily, no matter which measure you choose (and their anger may well be justified).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added in edit:  In my experience, citation and publication counts are sometimes mentioned in letters of recommendation, but just as a crude numerical measure, rather than with any serious importance attached to them; most letters do not mention them.  (I've never seen an h-index mentioned in a letter or job application, but perhaps it is more common in physics.)  Hiring committee members occasionally impose minimal numerical standards, but just to rule out inappropriate cases (&quot;we won't consider anyone for a tenure-track job unless they have at least two publications&quot;, say).  In the departments I'm familiar with, nobody uses them to choose between serious candidates.  Like Dan C says, they just aren't that useful: they add a small amount of information, with a lot of noise and even systematic bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T03:57:56.400" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T03:57:56.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2012-09-07T19:21:43.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally thesis formatting questions are answered by someone at the the institutional level. At my institution, deviations from the proscribed format were not permitted. You should verify with your institution what the guidelines are. The academic merit of this approach may be a secondary concern. Usually the person who is in charge of this can be found working for your institution's library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T19:21:43.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3124" CreationDate="2012-09-07T19:41:04.680" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some useful resources at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiarism.php&quot;&gt;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiarism.php&lt;/a&gt; (especially if you submitted the paper to a SIAM journal, but some of them are more broadly useful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My co-authors would prefer to err on the side of caution and include a reference to the result in our revised paper, but I would really like to reclaim my work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly agree with you on this.  You have a right not to share credit with a plagiarist, and you also don't want to seem to be treating it as independent work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am attempting to find a copy of the thesis since it was deposited before I submitted my paper to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds valuable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel's suggestion of contacting the editor seems like the best way to start, especially since the editor may have critical information (if the plagiarist was indeed the referee, then the editor would have proof), but there are also several other ways you could follow up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can ask a professional society you are a member of to investigate.  For example, the American Mathematical Society has a Committee on Professional Ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can complain to the publisher of the book.  A respectable academic publisher should seriously investigate the complaint, but unfortunately some publishers are not respectable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you discover any evidence of plagiarism in the dissertation as submitted to the university, you can bring it to the attention of the university.  Even if the dissertation was submitted prior to your paper, it could be worth doing some web searches to look for other plagiarism in it.  If you can document previous plagiarism, it will establish a pattern that may help make your case even more convincing.  I'd be surprised if this is the first or only time this person has plagiarized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the plagiarist is employed at a university or research lab, you can complain to their employer (since plagiarism is a form of professional misconduct).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you may never reach a really satisfactory conclusion (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiary/index.php&quot;&gt;http://www.siam.org/journals/plagiary/index.php&lt;/a&gt; for a case study).  For example, it may end up with the plagiarist using flimsy excuses (&quot;I copied the text by accident when I mistook my notes on your paper for my own research&quot;, &quot;my undergraduate research assistant copied it without my knowledge&quot;, etc.) and basically getting away with no serious consequences.  However, if all goes well you should end up with an authority figure, such as an editorial board or ethics committee, agreeing that your results were stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you reach that point, I'd recommend publicizing the case, for example on your web page.  Of course whether to do this is a personal choice, but I think it is a valuable service to the community to let us know about a plagiarist to watch out for (and it may deter or uncover other instances of plagiarism).  You could even publicize it now, although of course if you do so you should make sure to present a compelling case and avoid speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T19:41:04.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2012-09-07T21:02:19.427" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Anonymous Mathematician that likely any numerical measure will be insufficient.  The best measure is that of &lt;strong&gt;esteem by your community&lt;/strong&gt;.  This will often be reflected in: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invitations to speak&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inclusion in special issues of journals &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;election to society offices and/or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professional awards.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as administrations would find it convenient, &lt;strong&gt;scientific impact cannot be distilled to a few numbers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think part of the issue is that Noble is asking for some metric that can be &lt;strong&gt;used by non-experts&lt;/strong&gt; to judge a researcher in a field other than theirs. And essentially, what we (Suresh, AnonMath, JeffE, myself, etc.) are saying is: &quot;No. &lt;strong&gt;You can't really get a good answer, without asking experts within the field&lt;/strong&gt; of the person you want to evaluate.&quot; In some sense, this is a predictable power struggle. &lt;strong&gt;Outsiders want a way to do it on their own, and the insiders are saying &quot;No, you can't do it right without us.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T02:46:44.620" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T02:46:44.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2012-09-08T03:29:50.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question is &lt;strong&gt;very dependent on your subject and the culture of that research area&lt;/strong&gt;.  In my area, math, I've never seen an annotated bibliography as part of the thesis.  I've probably only looked at 15 or 20 theses, but I've never seen one.  In other areas (humanities and social sciences?), I suspect such a bibliography is more par for the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T03:29:50.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2919" CreationDate="2012-09-08T14:02:46.433" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientific Research Publishing is currently listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://metadata.posterous.com/83235355&quot;&gt;Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers&lt;/a&gt;, so it isn't a good idea to submit papers to their journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T14:02:46.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-08T14:39:46.777" Score="54" ViewCount="16374" Body="&lt;p&gt;What sorts of restrictions do universities place on romantic or sexual relationships between faculty and graduate students, and what are the underlying issues that motivate these restrictions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose the student has previously taken a class from the professor but has no plans for further academic contact.  What other factors could help determine whether a relationship would be allowed or considered appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1614" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T03:54:42.220" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T03:54:42.220" Title="Are relationships allowed between students and faculty?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;policy&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3150" CreationDate="2012-09-08T20:33:29.520" Score="10" ViewCount="1616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be applying to do a PhD in Applied Mathematics, and have been advised by some professors to consider doing a second masters degree if I do not get in. I have also approached researchers about collaborating on projects with them to improve my profile, and is currently working on one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering: if I fail to get into a PhD program, would it be more beneficial for my next application if I enroll in a second masters degree, or would it be better to continue doing research projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Both Suresh and JeffE gave good advice, but I have some points to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am already actively doing research with the possibility of publication (will submit but peer review process is iffy).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if I am already doing research with well-known faculty collaborators who will write strong letters of recommendation, there is no need to go for a second masters. But would it be realistic to count on a second masters for the opportunity to work with well-known faculty? (IMHO finding supervisors is quite a crapshoot)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there are quite a few PhD applicants like me: did a masters, but did not excel. Should they try to get research experience with academic collaborators or go for second masters? (there might not be a right or clear cut answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T18:01:26.927" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T18:01:26.927" Title="Which is more beneficial prior to PhD: research experience or a second Masters degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2012-09-08T20:58:32.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like pointing out that the very use of the word 'productivity' reflects a certain kind of bias towards &quot;quantity&quot;. Ultimately, there are many different ways in which a researcher can make useful contributions to their field, and society at large. Maybe a key insight, a new way of thinking, a set of tools, or even a large group of students. Any particular measure of impact captures some subset of these, but there's typically no way to capture the entirety of a profile, and if you resort to numbers, the problem gets even worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T20:58:32.550" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3144" CreationDate="2012-09-08T21:27:28.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about applied math Ph.D programs. But extrapolating from TCS programs, getting more research experience (and some concrete results) would definitely help. While a second MS doesn't help directly, it helps indirectly because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you don't have a gap in your resume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you automatically are placed in an environment where you can approach researchers to work on projects with them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T21:27:28.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2012-09-08T22:18:31.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is pretty clear to me that in fundamental mathematics, such a measure exists and is widely used: existence (and number) of papers in the five or ten most prestigious journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, publishing in one of this paper is very important for getting a professor position. We tend to pretend we judge people on the content of the papers, but the first thing we look at is for &lt;em&gt;Annals of math&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Inventiones&lt;/em&gt; and the like in publication lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US system is less known to me, but it seems very important to publish in one of these journals to get tenure too, at least for some people: I have heard a well-established colleague saying that when he was refereeing for, e.g., Annals of Math (arguably the most prestigious of all), he asked himself whether the paper was worth giving the author a career for the rest of his or her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T22:18:31.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3144" CreationDate="2012-09-08T22:59:10.590" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is framed oddly.  A master's degree &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; research experience will probably kill your chances for PhD admission, at least into the top programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a better framing: &lt;strong&gt;Is a second master's degree the best way to get more research experience?&lt;/strong&gt;  Unfortunately, the answer depends on your personal situation.  If you're already doing active research with a strong possibility of formal publication, with well-known faculty collaborators who will write you strong letters of recommendation, then a second MS is probably not necessary.  If that doesn't describe your current research environment, a second MS might be the best way to find such an environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T22:59:10.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3142" CreationDate="2012-09-09T00:17:58.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; means. Many things are &lt;strong&gt;legal but not advisable&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally the teacher-student relationship is Platonic. It also often continues beyond the class that brings the two together. If that relationship morphs into something else, it can appear improper even if nothing is &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; awry. We all know how important appearance is in university relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a further wrinkle. Do you mean an exclusively sexual relationship? That can create the &lt;em&gt;appearance&lt;/em&gt; of a quid pro quo.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To second @Charles, this is an interesting question precisely because it is a delicate topic. For example, it appears that the OP is male and discussing a female professor. How would our reactions change if the genders were reversed? Or, if both were the same gender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T23:22:54.570" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:22:54.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2012-09-09T01:03:33.007" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paper, printing, and binding (PPB) are typically a small fraction of the retail price of the book. It depends on a lot of factors, but as a ballpark figure, if you take the total cost of PPB for the nth edition of a big-selling 3-color college freshman textbook, and divide by the number of copies sold, it's probably ~$10, or ~ 1/10 of the ~$100 retail price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only that, but the &lt;em&gt;incremental&lt;/em&gt; price is even smaller. In traditional printing (not print on demand), printing costs are almost all setup costs. Once you have the print run going, the cost of producing one more book is nearly zero. Again, it depends on a lot of factors, but a ballpark figure would be about $1, or ~1% of the retail price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This explains why publishers are seemingly so wasteful about sending out these unsolicited copies so indiscriminately to professors. It's not wasteful at all, because the incremental cost of printing a book is so low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always just pass the books on to students for free. This is good for the student who gets the book, and the money spent by the publisher to produce the book is so small that essentially no cost gets passed on to students. If I give it to a student, and the student then turns around and resells it, I think that's fine, too. It has the effect of undermining the &lt;em&gt;$&amp;amp;%^#&lt;/em&gt;&amp;amp; evil publishers' exploitative pricing by helping to maintain a healthy market in used copies, while the nth edition is still in use. Part of their reprehensible scheme for maintaining exploitative prices is to kill off the used marked for edition n by rapidly bringing out edition n+1. The evaluation copy they send me might get out on the used market early enough to get some use before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T01:03:33.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3157" CreationDate="2012-09-09T01:54:06.540" Score="10" ViewCount="3772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always had an interest in electrical engineering (actually all engineering in general) and I've decided that I'd like to pursue a graduate degree.  I guess I'm wondering if I should really try to do this or just keep it as a fun hobby I spend all my free time doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is,  how does one change fields between undergrad and grad school?  A specific example follows, but please provide answers that address a more general case, so that your answers will be helpful to other people with the same general question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already have a BS and MS in chemistry with a minor in applied math.I published three papers during my MS, one first author in the top journal in my specialty and two as coauthor in an average and a so-so journal.  I hope those will count for something.  I finished my BS with around 3.1 and my MS with a 3.9 gpa.  I'm sure that my MS advisor would write me a great letter.  My GRE scores are too old to count so I'd have to retake it or try and get a pass on it since I already have a graduate degree.  Since finishing school I've been working for 4 years as a chemist.  I can get great recommendations from my supervisor who is a PhD chemist.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working for a while to cover some of the things I would have learned in a BSEE to try and make up for my lack of one.  I worked through some texts on analog/digital design, lots and lots of programming, built a balancing robot that got a bit of internet attention, and I'm currently working on an autonomous robotics project that's looking really good so far.  After that I have more project ideas than I have time or money for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to apply for PhD programs (specifically in controls/robotics) but I'm worried that my application will get tossed right away because I don't have a BSEE.  Maybe I should just apply to MS programs?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1412" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T06:35:11.027" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T12:46:48.047" Title="How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5063" CreationDate="2012-09-09T09:23:09.963" Score="3" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've finished my bachelor in Cognitive science and mathematics and I'm looking for research opportunities in the US, starting in a half year. Are there any programs for people in my position? The NIH-IRTA only works for citizens and permanent residents. A year ago I've been on exchange to a top American college, but didn't make acquaintances with any of the PI, as the classes were lead by TA's; can I still use my exchange to find an internship somewhere in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:34:07.060" Title="Neuroscience- NIH-IRTA for a international student" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2012-09-09T09:58:04.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A comprehensive review was conducted in the field of &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/4/283.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psychology&lt;/a&gt; in relation to publication rates and tenure. There is also a &quot;fun&quot; review related to beer consumption and publication in the field of &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2008.16551.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;avian evolutionary biology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01889.x&#xA;Psychological Science April 2007 vol. 18 no. 4 283-286&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2015-04-14T08:44:54.970" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T08:44:54.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3142" CreationDate="2012-09-09T16:56:08.833" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key issue of whether it is ethical or not reduces the question:  Is there a potential for a perceived imbalance of power that can be abused?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor and graduate student are in separate departments, I think it is not an issue because a professor of one department has no power to influence any matters pertaining to the graduate student's academic life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they two are of the same field, things can get a bit delicate.  Speculation of an improper relationship alone can be devastating to one's reputation even if unfounded.  We all know that politics play a role in one's success in a department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is maintaining a mentor-apprentice relationship (teacher-student, or advisor-mentee) and romantic relationship with the same person, it is difficult to determine whether certain actions (benefiting or detrimental to the apprentice or mentor) are biased due to emotion.  Furthermore, if the romantic relationship terminates, it is difficult to continue the mentor-apprenticeship relation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While technically not &quot;illegal&quot;, you have to ask yourself the question &quot;is there a potential for a perceived imbalance in power in the relationship?&quot;.  If so, I strongly advise against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T18:43:36.933" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T18:43:36.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3153" CreationDate="2012-09-09T17:58:01.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer a slightly more general question.  &lt;strong&gt;How does one change fields between undergrad and grad school?&lt;/strong&gt;  The answer &lt;em&gt;very carefully&lt;/em&gt; is correct, albeit unhelpful.  The single most important criteria when applying for a strong PhD (at least in math, engineering, or the natural sciences, but probably true in other fields too) are &lt;strong&gt;letters of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;demonstrated research ability&lt;/strong&gt;.  Bad grades can sink your application, but good grades (even from a top school) are not enough to get you in (nor good test scores, although they help).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get a PhD, but don't have any experience in the area, you should &lt;strong&gt;first apply to a masters program&lt;/strong&gt;, where &lt;strong&gt;you can gain experience and impress potential letter of recommendation writers&lt;/strong&gt;.  Often admission to a masters program is less competitive than to a PhD program (if even getting into the masters program is difficult, you could start as a non-degree student).  But if you can publish a few papers during your masters and convince a few of your professors that you have both the &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt; to succeed in grad school, then you're application to a PhD program will be much stronger.  I also recommend that you &lt;strong&gt;talk with the schools where you plan to apply&lt;/strong&gt; and ask what they suggest that you do to strengthen your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also like to read this question and answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/is-it-possible-to-attend-graduate-school-in-pure-math-after-undergrad-in-cse/3000#3000&quot;&gt;Is it possible to attend graduate school in pure math after undergrad in CSE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T17:58:01.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3142" CreationDate="2012-09-09T18:04:05.267" Score="25" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it allowed to have a sexual relationship between a Professor and a graduate student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the university's rules.  Pretty much every plausible set of rules you can think of is used somewhere: everything is allowed (well, generally not explicitly, but by not having rules for this at all), nothing is allowed, it's allowed only if they are in different departments, it's allowed only if the professor is not teaching or supervising the student, etc.  If this issue is relevant to your life, then you need to figure out which rules apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I'd say it's always a bad idea if the student and professor are in the same department or even related fields, regardless of whether the university's rules allow it.  You could have a secret relationship, but it's wise to avoid awkward or troublesome secrets in your professional life (and all the problems of a known relationship will be magnified if you are discovered in a secret relationship).  On the other hand, if other people in your department are aware of your romantic involvement, then it is almost certain to lead to complications.  For example, the student will eventually need letters of recommendation, some of which will be written by colleagues of the professor.  If they write honest letters, can they feel confident that what they wrote won't make it back to the professor?  Probably not, so they will feel constrained in what they write.  People reading the letters will realize this, so nothing positive will be taken quite as seriously.  And letters of recommendation are just one issue - the relationship will keep coming up in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you take into account all the important points made in other answers (power differentials, what happens if the relationship ends, improper appearances and effects on reputation, etc.), it's not hard to see why there are often rules against this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T18:04:05.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2012-09-10T01:59:28.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that reference formatting for a thesis tends to follow university and discipline specific guidelines. In my experience, theses also tend to have a little more flexibility than other documents, because the university often has to provide guidelines that are relevant to research students from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you are using APA style referencing, then you may wish to follow APA style guidelines more generally. I have not seen annotated bibliographies in APA style. Rather, if you cite a work, then it is added to the reference list. You can cite a wide range of works including popular-science and other works of less rigour. You generally don't cite works that you simply used as background reading, unless you can weave the reference into a specific citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In APA style, all references are typically combined into a single section at the end of the work. An exception can occur in the case of book chapters, particularly where each chapter has been written by different authors, where separate reference lists often occur at the end of each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T01:10:50.693" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T01:10:50.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3142" CreationDate="2012-09-10T03:40:13.757" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give one data point on how this issue is actually framed and enforced by universities (or at least public universities in the US), let me quote from my university's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.illinois.edu/ix/ix-a/ix-A-23.htm&quot;&gt;Campus Administrative Manual&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An individual may not initiate or participate in institutional&#xA;  decisions involving a direct benefit or penalty to someone with whom&#xA;  that individual has had a sexual relationship.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relationships such as those between supervisors and their subordinate&#xA;  employees are inherently asymmetric. Current or past sexual&#xA;  relationships can adversely affect decisions, distort judgments, and&#xA;  undermine morale. Any university employee who participates in academic&#xA;  supervisory or administrative decisions concerning another employee&#xA;  with whom he or she has or has had a sexual relationship has a&#xA;  conflict of interest in these situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly, no individual shall initiate or participate in&#xA;  institutional decisions involving a direct benefit or penalty&#xA;  (employment, retention, promotion, tenure, salary, leave of absence,&#xA;  etc.) to a person with whom that individual has or has had a sexual&#xA;  relationship. He or she must take specific actions to remove himself&#xA;  or herself from all decisions and actions that may influence the&#xA;  career or status of the other employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In cases where a conflict [of interest] is identified, the UEO [Unit Executive Officer] must develop a&#xA;  Supervisory Relationship Management Plan that redirects&#xA;  decision-making and bypasses involved parties. Such procedures must be&#xA;  agreed to in writing and approved through all administrative levels.&#xA;  For changes in existing positions that might create a supervisory&#xA;  relationship in the same unit, review and approval is also required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The appropriate human resources office will conduct periodic&#xA;  compliance reviews. Failure to abide by this policy constitutes&#xA;  misconduct, subject to discipline under applicable University&#xA;  procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Sexual relationships between students and faculty are not per se forbidden, but the conflicts of interest they create — either real or perceived — must be carefully &lt;em&gt;and explicitly&lt;/em&gt; managed by multiple layers of campus administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth emphasizing that these policies are invoked not only for sexual relationships that are generally considered inappropriate, such as undergraduates and their instructors, or graduate students and their advisors, but also with married (and formerly married) couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T03:40:13.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2012-09-10T05:35:34.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not the horrible suggestion that many people seem to think it is -- there have been some complaints about miscounts in citation counts because of improper parsing of references; mostly because of some journals allowing non-standard abbreviations.  (does &lt;code&gt;A&amp;amp;A&lt;/code&gt; mean &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aanda.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Astronomy and Astrophysics&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artsandarchitecture.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arts &amp;amp; Architecture&lt;/a&gt;?  Many citation parsers don't use the context and have alternate rules for what journal the citation came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could also bring up some other problems -- if someone's published a pre-print in arXiv ... but the final publication which may be substantially different.  Very few people cite the arXiv paper directly, but it might actually be more appropriate than citing the final published version in some circumstances.  (although, it would also show that perhaps those portions that you're citing didn't stand up under peer-review); you couldn't cite the arXiv via DOI, only via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibcode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bibcode&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in most situations, the reference list for some journals is handled differently from the rest of the paper.  In talking with the editor for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/astronomy/astrophysics+and+astroparticles/journal/11207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar Physics&lt;/a&gt;, when I talked to him regarding a proposal for &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.virtualsolar.org/wiki/Citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;data citation&lt;/a&gt;, he mentioned that a problem was that giving a second URL to provide specifics would be an issue, and I believe he hinted that it was the publisher and not something locally developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, this whole thing would be integrated into the submission process, and then the reviewers would have the list expanded so that they can do their work.  (and you'd probably want the submitter to verify the expansions) ... but this of course will take time from the publishers, who aren't exactly known to be nimble for the most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd suggest, so that you can get the benefits that you want, without waiting for the journals to make any changes, is to look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference manager software&lt;/a&gt;, which let you collect your references in a database, with notes, and can then generate a reference list using the appropriate format.  I've heard good things about a number of them (but never had a need for this purpose (the ones I've used were for shared project bibliographies).  I'd look to see which ones can generate whatever citation style is appropriate for the journal(s) you submit to, or ask around to see if any of the people you collaborate might use one (as using the same one could be of benefit when collaborating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1622" LastEditorUserId="1622" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T14:33:27.230" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:33:27.230" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-10T19:28:59.850" Score="6" ViewCount="3143" Body="&lt;p&gt;In context of a person's academic profile in a web application, I need to broadly classify the various degree/designations/stages in the academic career of the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I would like to clearly know what is the current stage the person , in his academic career path starting from a pre-university student &amp;amp; progressing ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would like to classify something like (below) &amp;amp; ask user to select one of these designations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edited:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Pre-university student&#xA;&#xA;Undergraduate(Bachelors/diploma/associate degree) student &#xA;-doing&#xA;-earned&#xA;&#xA;Masters student&#xA;-doing&#xA;-earned&#xA;&#xA;PhD(Doctorate) studs&#xA;-doing&#xA;-earned&#xA;&#xA;Postdoc&#xA;&#xA;Faculty &#xA;&#xA;Scientist &#xA;&#xA;Independent researcher&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this cover most of the stages/designations in the academic career or is anything missing ? Is there a better term to represent any one ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really need a fine grained classification like assistant prof, associate prof, etc but I do want to include all the academic community &amp;amp; related people who have interests in academic topics(which includes scientists or self learners as well) &amp;amp; ranging from university student to faculty, independent researcher or whatever are the higher positions. May not be necessarily a hierarchical list but at least an exhaustive list is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update 2:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea was too use classification which includes people from academia &amp;amp; even outside that work on/ explore  academic topics &amp;amp; removing ambiguity between faculty, scientist &amp;amp; research positions . Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    -&amp;gt; A Learner/ enthusiast,&#xA;&#xA;    -&amp;gt; Pre-university student&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;    University/Research Students:&#xA;    ================================&#xA;&#xA;        -&amp;gt; Undergraduate(Bachelors/diploma/associate degree) student &#xA;            -doing&#xA;            -earned&#xA;&#xA;        -&amp;gt; Masters student&#xA;            -doing&#xA;            -earned&#xA;&#xA;        -&amp;gt; Doctorate(PhD, DPhils, etc) student&#xA;            -doing&#xA;            -earned     &#xA;&#xA;    University Faculty/Research Positions:&#xA;    ==================&#xA;&#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Professor &#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Associate Professor &#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Assistant Professor &#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Lecturer &#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Emeritus &#xA;        -&amp;gt;  Other   &#xA;&#xA;        -&amp;gt; PostDoc,             &#xA;&#xA;    -&amp;gt; Scientist &#xA;&#xA;    -&amp;gt; IndependentResearcher &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="965" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T14:44:27.953" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T14:44:27.953" Title="What are the various designations/stages in the academic career of the person" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2012-09-10T20:30:16.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like EngergyNumbers said, you should tailor your classification to the culture of your targeted audience. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks&quot;&gt;list of academic ranks&lt;/a&gt; for various countries might be helpful for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;Scientist&quot; and &quot;Researcher&quot; doesn't really mean anything. A postdoc, assistant professor, principal investigator, or someone doing research in the commercial sector can be a scientist or a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you know this but just in case: &quot;postdoc&quot; is an (often) temporary job that people take up after obtaining a PhD, and not a qualification. Some people do not do postdocs, and go directly into teaching, industry or become assistant professors after getting their PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &quot;Post Grad&quot; can refer to both masters degree or PhD students. It is common to say &quot;applying to graduate/grad school&quot; to when referring to applying to a PhD course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T20:37:18.383" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T20:37:18.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2012-09-10T22:13:46.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see problems with your ranking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there is not much difference between &lt;code&gt;* (Completed)&lt;/code&gt; and the subsequent &lt;code&gt;** (Ongoing)&lt;/code&gt; level - somebody who completed a post-doc probably is currently either a professor or in the industry, where having a completed post-doc experience does not matter much in terms of being an academic rank. Besides that, there are countries where being a &quot;post-doc&quot; does not mean anything special, the official position would be either the same as being a PhD. student, or a staff researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if you want to be too fine grained, there are several levels of professor positions missing (assistant, associate, full plus all the combinations with tenure position, or being a teaching/research specific position, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, as others here wrote, the ladder is culture specific so you need to think about your target audience. In the case the audience of your website is somewhat local, go with the local tradition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your audience is global, my advice would be to give up the particular fine classification. Rather, you could go with a combination of 3 axes of coarse-grained classification roughly corresponding to the track the person currently follows (industry/academia) plus the highest achieved academic degree plus indication of duration of the current status. You would end up with classes such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic &amp;amp; BSc + 2 years - your ongoing undergrad student&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;industry &amp;amp; MSc + 5 years - you are probably facing an experienced professional &#xA;in an industry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic &amp;amp; PhD + 3 years - either a post-doc, or an assistant professor, or lecturer, well anyway an early career researcher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic &amp;amp; PhD + 20 years - somebody roughly equivalent to a more senior-level professor &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this way I guess you can capture more nuanced classification, than with a single ladder. You can of course add your own axes, e.g., tenure vs. pre-tenure, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T22:13:46.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T14:54:25.237" Score="6" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does working for a prestigious company help in a PhD application? For example, suppose one does interesting work while at a prestigious company. Would this help an application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1625" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T18:57:50.750" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T16:37:46.103" Title="Does working for a prestigious company help in a PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2012-09-11T15:17:45.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &quot;probably.&quot; The long answer is &quot;it depends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admission to a graduate program is almost solely dependent on how well you impress that department's graduate admissions committee (assuming you meet any minimum admissions standards: grades, GRE, etc). If they attach value to your work in industry, it'll help you out immensely. If they don't, it probably won't hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaptest.com/GRE/Get-into-Grad-School/Build-a-Great-Application/inside-the-admission-committee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kaplan page&lt;/a&gt; outlines the general process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T16:37:46.103" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T16:37:46.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3079" CreationDate="2012-09-11T17:38:00.667" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for people to move because of two-body issues, and if you're not comfortable disclosing the specific reasons, one possibility is to mention (at interview time) that you have non-academic constraints that force your departure from a place that you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you're not going to get an interview call unless you're a superstar and everyone wants you OR you have some positive argument for why you're interested in a particular university. So in your cover letter you'll at least need to provide some positive reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T17:38:00.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T17:50:51.567" Score="34" ViewCount="12393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a B.S. degree and I have been working in industry for a few years as a software engineer. I am very interested in reinforcement learning, a sub-field of machine learning, and I am interested in performing research and publishing a paper on that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, in my city there are no professors working in this field (or related fields) who could help me. I contacted other professors in different cities and they rejected my help request for a variety of reasons (such as I am not their student, they don't know me, they are busy, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I want to perform research and publish a paper. I can't attend school as a full time student and my collaboration requests were not successful. Given all that, how can I publish by myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to choose a research topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I read all the papers on this field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1629" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T12:49:10.557" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T12:49:10.557" Title="How do I go about publishing a paper without a university affiliation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3173" CreationDate="2012-09-11T17:59:09.640" Score="53" ViewCount="6211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently doing a PhD in applied mathematics,  I'm about to start my final year.   The problem that I've been working on for the last 2 years was originally proposed by my advisor and one of his colleagues.  The direction of research wasn't that good,  the problem had already been studied by previous researchers and there is very little one can add to what's there already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I discussed this with my supervisor early on,  but he suggested I persevere because he saw some promise in our approach.   In these 2 years I have struggled to find something worth mentioning,  and have only produced meagre results at best.   What's worse is that my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do.  I don't think he's actually read any of my work, or even read any of the surrounding literature.  His advice has not been so useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without anybody to guide me and without a clear problem to work on I feel really lost and a bit cheated especially considering the amount of attention he gives to his other students.  I'm no genius but I've consistently helped his other postgrads do their own research (in completely different areas), and while our advisor has guided them into publishing several papers each, I'm sitting here clueless,  with absolutely nothing to show for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry about the rant,  but I'm really lost.  Any advice would be appreciated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1628" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T04:32:08.987" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T19:52:05.273" Title="What are some options for a graduate student abandoned by Ph. D advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3172" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:26:08.263" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two questions to answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you got another project from this advisor, would you stay?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you got the opportunity to switch advisors, would you leave?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to stick with this advisor, you should bring up your dissatisfaction—and perhaps suggest a plan of action to &quot;migrate&quot; to another topic. (Can you, for instance, use the methodology on a different problem where it might be more successful?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that isn't an option—and to be honest, I suspect it isn't—you should work as aggressively as you can to find a new advisor and a new research topic, while if possible staying under the radar. You don't want to create a situation &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you have somebody firmly in your corner who's willing to support you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T18:26:08.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:28:24.083" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment on the later issues—they are too general for the scope of a single question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the first issue, yes, it is possible to publish without a professor. People at corporations and small companies publish all the time without academic collaborators (and without PhD level staffers). The challenge is having a topic that is worth publishing, and finding an appropriate venue to publish it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T18:28:24.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:58:23.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work at the prestigious company involved a demonstration of your intellectual and/or research prowess, then yes, it'll probably help. If your work was mostly grunt work, then it's unlikely to make a large impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T18:58:23.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:00:07.187" Score="16" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently attending a conference, and considering that (almost) everybody has a smartphone, but not necessarily an Internet access (because of roaming charges), it could be nice to have an application that could cache the program, the local map, the list of attendees, that could be updated with program changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know such an application? Ideally, that should be a &quot;meta&quot;-application, that could be instantiated for specific conferences (a bit like Easychair). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T03:56:56.443" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T21:09:53.147" Title="Are there any mobile application for conference attendees?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:06:43.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Except if you are in a recognized inner lab of a big company, it will probably not help, and not hurt. Working may help if you do something that proves that you have skills useful to research work, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:06:43.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2012-09-12T01:13:58.187" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to publish a paper without a Professor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sure, why not? The point is whether the paper (your work) is worthy enough to be published or not. It's not the point if the paper has a professor or not; it's about being professional and not about a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to choose a research topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it depends on your interest. Then it depends on if it's useful, uses new method, new knowledge, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I read all the papers on this field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all but only related to your topics. Because you have to &quot;re-search&quot; if others have done it already. You need their results and methods to compare with your work for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give up for this Q. Actually,it's not hard to answer but not easy too. Because there's no right or wrong answer, only depends on your like. People select scientific papers by their own standard and so do I. No one knows exactly which standard criteria should be decided, but at least you may know the trend of interests, so please &quot;re-search&quot;!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oops! I have to do it a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: This may not the most correct answer because I'm not a professor but at least I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1631" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T08:01:07.350" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T08:01:07.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2012-09-12T04:31:27.300" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to publish a paper without a Professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure.  Nobody gives a rat's patootie about the academic ranks of paper authors (at least in my field).  I published sole-author papers as a graduate student.  I have colleagues who published as undergraduates, and others who published with no university (or research lab, or corporate) affiliation at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to choose a research topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose something you're good at, that you're passionate about, and that other people will care about.  If you're not good at it, you'll never get anywhere.  If you're not passionate about it, you won't put in enough effort to succeed.  If nobody cares, then, well, nobody cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I read all the papers on this field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  Reading &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the papers in any field is simply not possible.  But you should read a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt;.  A few hundred papers should get you started (ha ha only serious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read lots of papers; talk to lots of people; go to seminars/conferences and listen to talks.  Or decide that the topics that you care about are so fascinating and your results are so compelling that you'll &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; other people interested (but be prepared for disappointment).  Or—my personal favorite—just make up something cool out of thin air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Both.  (Except not &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the prerequisite material; that's impossible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T04:31:27.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T16:59:50.007" Score="15" ViewCount="1184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate with virtually no experience with the expectations of academia (so I apologize in advance for the silly question). I'm finishing up a paper describing my research and would like to include a figure to describe something in my &quot;Background&quot; section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a graduate student in my lab who has a paper dealing with the background topic and has a perfect image that I'd like to use as said figure. The paper has been accepted but not yet published. Would I be violating some protocol if I asked to use the identical figure? If not, what is the proper way to attribute the figure to the original source? In the caption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="a p" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T16:31:13.250" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T04:14:41.107" Title="Is it a faux pas to ask for a colleague's figure in a separate but related publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2012-09-12T07:34:44.833" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always ask, then it is the choice of the author to accept or not. As for the citation, if the paper is accepted but not published, you can have a note in the citation &amp;quot;to appear&amp;quot;. For instance, your text could like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following [Alice12], we describe ... as illustrated in Fig.1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Alice12] Alice, paper, journal, accepted, to appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T07:34:44.833" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2012-09-12T12:35:55.097" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it&#xA;  is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an&#xA;  exam or an assignment without citing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of no document that addresses examinations and assignments directly but reusing someone else's words or ideas is plagiarism. It doesn't matter the source, purpose, or intent. For teaching materials I think there is a little leeway in that plagiarism may be unintentional. I am sure that some the examples I use in my teaching ,that I think are my ideas, are in fact someone else's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T12:35:55.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3172" CreationDate="2012-09-12T12:48:32.883" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of my friends doing PhDs in the UK have this problem, even those in top tier universities. Those with the worse problems ended up dropping out and reapplying for the same PhD under another supervisor. I think the supervisor tend to be more integral to PhD students in the UK and there might not even be an option to &quot;switch&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on their experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like aeismail said, you should definitely stay under the radar. This was advised to all of my friends in similar situation. Most importantly, it is deemed unprofessional to openly blame your supervisor, even if it really is your supervisor's fault.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek official help: the single biggest turning point for my friends was using the official channels and/or speaking to the director of graduate studies in your department. These people are very experienced at handling situations like your, and will certainly know to do it covertly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible outcomes based on my friends' experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your director of graduate studies or student counselor might offer to help or get someone to help read your current work and evaluate your situation. This might identify the problems you need to fix to graduate, and they might be able to help communicate any issues to your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They might arrange for a co-supervisor. This resolved the situation for several of my friends. The co-supervisor essentially becomes your new supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the worse case, it doesn't work out. The student drops out of the program and reapply to another supervisor with the help of the department (making it easier). Unfortunately, it can be a gamble because they have the option of rejecting you. Depending on your school, they might have a different policy and allow for an actual switch instead of having to reapply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: seek official help ASAP. Stay professional and under the radar, do not sound vituperative. Don't be afraid of taking drastic actions like reapplying if need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T12:48:32.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2012-09-12T16:08:56.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your comment above, that you &amp;quot;want to work on a problem and solve it&amp;quot;, I strongly recommend that you change your goal from &amp;quot;publishing in a journal&amp;quot; to simply &amp;quot;solving a problem&amp;quot;. By limiting yourself to research that would be publishable in a journal, you place yourself under the following very harsh constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must become familiar with the existing academic literature such that you can properly cite other academic sources when discussing prior findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't take the journal route, you can become familiar with existing techniques through books, tutorials, wikipedia, and blog posts, and work from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When publishing to a journal, your work will have a higher likelihood of being published if it relates to the topic du jour. Certain concepts go in and out of style, and researching a less popular topic can have an impact on when you can publish. On a related note, there's a lot of time between submission and actual publication; a number of months to almost a year is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatlive, if you go your own route, then you won't have that delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must be willing to work in areas which are of interest to whatever journal in which you wish to publish. This requires knowledge of the different journals and what they typically publish, which may be difficult for you to find without academic contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't take the journal route, you can simply publish your findings in a blog post or other open setting (there may be places specifically intended for this sort of thing, I'm not sure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will have to pay non-trivial fees for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T16:08:56.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2012-09-12T16:13:35.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly okay to ask for the figure knowing well that the other person may not give.&#xA;I assume you would get the permission to use the figure. As @eykanal, pointed out we need to put the phrase &quot;used with permission&quot; or write &quot;Source: Citation&quot; in the figure caption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/13BLz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 1: An example flow chart [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-05-2003/images/jw-0502-java1013.gif]&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-05-2003/images/jw-0502-java1013.gif]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also write&#xA;Figure 1: An example flow chart [Source: Alice et al. to appear in Journal,Year]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T16:13:35.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2012-09-12T17:16:15.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that an identical image, either modified from the original or made based on the original, is being used, here is a better way of citing the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.nmu.edu/guides/userguides/apacitingtables.htm&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Material adapted from a journal article. Note format is different from References.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure #. Description/Note. Adapted from “Title of Article,” by F. M.&#xA;  Author and C. D. Author, year, Title of Journal, volume, p. xx.&#xA;  Copyright year by the Name of Copyright Holder. Adapted [or Reprinted]&#xA;  with permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=6&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CEwQFjAF&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fauthorservices.wiley.com%2FPermissions%2520Guidelines%2520for%2520Authors%2520PDF.pdf&amp;amp;ei=9b1QUJnfIImHrAer1ICAAg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGpMrV1upRnZFBdtA7PzrKjeOxmGw&amp;amp;sig2=W2wQcx-T972xw7kqUJlBFQ&quot;&gt;Wiley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wish to republish an already modified figure or table,&#xA;  permission should be obtained from the source of the modified item,&#xA;  but the credit line should include reference to the original source(s)&#xA;  of the material as well as to the source of the modification. If you&#xA;  wish to republish a previously published figure or table originally&#xA;  compiled from data from other sources, permission for its re-use must&#xA;  be obtained from whoever owns the copyright in the compilation. The&#xA;  credit line should include reference to the source of the compilation,&#xA;  and to the sources of the original data by using the words ‘Based on’,&#xA;  ‘Compiled from’, or similar, or by using the credit line appearing on&#xA;  the original compilation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wish to make changes or further changes to content which is&#xA;  already in the process of being cleared, you may need to reapply for&#xA;  permission as it is possible that the copyright owner will not like&#xA;  the new proposed alterations and they are entitled to refuse&#xA;  permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mtu.edu/gradschool/administration/academics/thesis-dissertation/copyright/faq/&quot;&gt;MTU&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I modified a figure from a journal article. Do I need to ask for permission?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It depends. Significant modifications result in a figure that is&#xA;  uniquely yours. The source of the inspiration or base of the figure&#xA;  must be acknowledged in your caption. To clarify the source and figure&#xA;  creator, we recommend a credit line in your caption similar to,&#xA;  &quot;Figure adapted by author from SOURCE.&quot; where SOURCE would be replaced&#xA;  with an appropriate citation. If the figure is just a tracing of the&#xA;  original figure, or does not contain a significant amount of&#xA;  creativity, you have not created it, and must ask for permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T17:24:09.350" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T17:24:09.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3191" CreationDate="2012-09-12T17:32:02.200" Score="12" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a final year physics Master's student. I want to do a PhD after completing my masters. But instead of applying directly after completing masters, I wish to take a break from academics for a year and do a good research project with some professor unofficially, since doing good research is a big factor for PhD applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also got some comments that a PhD applicant with a break is given less importance, unless he has a high impact research done in the break.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I can't take a risk regarding high impact research. Hence I am confused regarding my future plans. What are the suggestions. How should I carry forward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1632" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T06:56:55.867" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T06:56:55.867" Title="What are some implications of taking a break before a PhD in the US or Europe?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3190" CreationDate="2012-09-12T19:43:33.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, ultimately up to you, people can only advise you; I will provide a list of some things to think about; hopefully this will help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You say that you want to &quot;do a good research project&quot;. Isn't that what the master's project is for? I don't know anything about unofficial projects but it could work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, taking a break &lt;em&gt;from academia&lt;/em&gt; would be a slight disadvantage, but if you're doing an unofficial project, then this won't be a problem at all, will it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;High impact research&quot;, in my opinion, is a very ambitious/risky thing to set your mind on, in terms of a master's-level project. Don't forget that as a master's &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt;, you are still expected to be learning; a PhD supervisor is unlikely to &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; something like this, although they would like it!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you do a project over summer? In the UK at least, there are loads of paid internships and summer projects available, both with universities and industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T19:43:33.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-13T14:23:22.667" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIR &lt;a href=&quot;http://lanyrd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lanyrd&lt;/a&gt; offers such an application. It works mostly for programming conferences, not so much for academic ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; and upload conference book (pdf) there. For maps and additional info (on travel, accommodation, etc) I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they are not very specific solutions and I'm missing an app that would make it easy to collect all conference stuff. Including &quot;which talk to choose out of competing ones&quot; and to tick talks and participants I would like to attend slash talk to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, sometimes it's hard to beat printed maps, and a combination of the conference book + a pen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T07:58:13.080" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T07:58:13.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-13T18:03:32.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no generic application. However, some conferences offer features geared towards smartphones (customizable calendars being the most useful one). I also use Dropbox and a note-taking application to cobble together a conference environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T18:03:32.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-14T01:19:28.603" Score="10" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many research conferences hold an in-person program committee meeting for all of the members of the program committee, where the PC members make the final decisions about which papers to accept or reject.  (At least, that's how it tends to work in computer science; I don't know about other fields.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can program committee members use federal grants to pay for their travel costs to attend a program committee meeting, for conferences where they are on the program committee?  Generally speaking, what funding sources do professors tend to use, to pay for travel to these meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T00:54:24.120" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T00:54:24.120" Title="Can grant money be spent on travel to program committee meetings?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3217" CreationDate="2012-09-14T14:14:37.637" Score="13" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published a paper about the combinatorics of adding a mixture of chemicals to a compound and observing a number of spectral peaks for this, which allows the user to gain information about the compound involved, while keeping cross-chemical effects low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure the same approach not only occurs in my field of expertise, but also elsewhere in science, as this is a pretty abstract concept. Where can i find other problems like this, so that my algorithm can be solved by simply modifying the input/output of my software? A specific journal would of course only hold articles concerning my own field/their own field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1568" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T08:25:53.240" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T10:42:31.967" Title="How do I find similar research problems in other fields?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:41:22.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take a somewhat skeptical view of the world. I see three stages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trainee: It doesn't matter if they are a student or a post doc or working in industry, if their goal is to acquire a set of skills and move up, then they are trainees. Generally, trainees think being an independent investigator is fun.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research monkey: Someone who is neither attempting to acquire new skills nor is conducting independent research. Generally, research monkeys realize that independent investigator spend all their time trying to get funding to allow research monkeys to do the fun stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Independent investigator: Someone who conducts their own research. Generally, when not looking for funding they are trying to figure out how they could become a research monkey.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T15:41:22.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3200" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:42:13.943" Score="14" ViewCount="1133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate student about to apply for a Ph.D program this year. I am interested in knowing whether seeking co-advising from a related, but different department (in my case I'm applying for econometrics but thinking about looking for co-advising from the statistics department) is seen as a thing to be encouraged in graduate schools in the U.S., or is it considered a violation of the division of departments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, would it make sense if I mention in my personal statement that one of the consideration of my applying for this school's economics department is that it also has a very good statistics department, from which I can potentially seek co-advising? Would the graduate admission committee be happy to see this kind of statements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="676" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T00:55:21.280" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T00:55:21.280" Title="Is seeking co-advising encouraged during Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:54:20.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to give a point of view different from what some of the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation&lt;/strong&gt; is generally associated with new, &lt;em&gt;clever&lt;/em&gt; or original creations. But sometimes it is very hard to know the origin. What if the author him/herself does not cite some examples or questions taken from someone else. How do you know they had the original idea? Often questions are borrowed modified and then presented. Should we take the credit for them or not? We learn some techniques of setting good and relevant &lt;em&gt;problems&lt;/em&gt; from someone else and then we create new ones. Should we cite them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean to say is that it may not be practical and possible and even clear if we need to cite and I agree this may not always be the case. I guess that is why none of us has come across any such documents and guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T15:54:20.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3198" CreationDate="2012-09-14T16:07:09.890" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly okay to have a co-adviser from another department. &lt;em&gt;Econometrics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;statistics&lt;/em&gt; are very close areas and often students pursuing PhD in &lt;strong&gt;Economics&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Industrial Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; (such as Reliability Analysis) have co-advisers from &lt;strong&gt;Statistics&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often acceptance of an applicant in the program differs from department to department. However, you may mention an intention for collaborating with &lt;strong&gt;statistics&lt;/strong&gt; department in the research statement. Also, if you do things appropriately you may have scope to get into the statistics department as a PhD student and pursue your research in light of economics. In other words, you may have greater chance of getting into the university as a PhD student. You may have to inquire about the possibility with the &lt;strong&gt;Statistics&lt;/strong&gt; department. I guess you have good background in both &lt;strong&gt;statistics&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;economics&lt;/strong&gt; so this seems to work out for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T16:07:09.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3198" CreationDate="2012-09-14T17:37:31.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cooperation is normally considered a desirable trait in academia these days, and collaborations between colleagues is generally a good thing. So, there is some advantage to working with multiple people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge, however, in such situations, as in many others in academia, comes down to the problem of &lt;em&gt;funding.&lt;/em&gt; Unless you're able to provide your own, in the form of an external fellowship, it may be difficult to convince an advisor in your &quot;home&quot; department to &quot;share&quot; you with an advisor in another department, &lt;strong&gt;unless&lt;/strong&gt; the other advisor is willing to pick up part of the funding. Normally, this requires that the two advisors have already thought about and worked toward a collaborative effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it may be substantially easier (and in some departments, required) to obtain someone from outside the department to sit on your thesis committee. While these people are not formally your advisors, they are resources to draw on, and may satisfy your concerns about level of involvement, depending on how active you want the co-advisor to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T17:37:31.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11480" CreationDate="2012-09-14T18:12:52.270" Score="8" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/195824/creating-a-book-based-on-an-article-copyright-issues&quot;&gt;asked this question at math.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;, but a comment proposed me to ask this question at  academia.stackexchange.com instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsevier &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/rights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explicitly permits&lt;/a&gt; me to make a book based on my article published with Elsevier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's about other publishers? May these forbid me to make a book based on my earlier article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T20:59:31.250" Title="Creating a book based on an article (copyright issues)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-14T20:27:22.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently attended the annual meetings of the European Economic Association. They had a quite nice mobile version of the conference web page combined with free wifi at the conference venue. I had good use of the webpage (almost a web application). The page is apparently still up, at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eea-esem.com/eea-esem/2012/m/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eea-esem.com/eea-esem/2012/m/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1638" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T20:27:22.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3206" CreationDate="2012-09-15T04:12:12.623" Score="19" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am reading a research paper of a well-known author published in 2011. I did a slight modification in his method and the new method is very efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable to send that paper first to the author before sending it to any journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T03:54:34.463" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T03:54:34.463" Title="What are the pros and cons in sending a research paper to well-known author, before publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3205" CreationDate="2012-09-15T05:04:57.813" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked on a few method development projects and I'm of the opinion that it is a good idea particularly if the author is well-known and well-liked (if they are a dick or you don't like them, that's a different story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious reason why is because when they happened to see your paper going out for review which claims a &quot;massive improvement&quot; over previous methods, they aren't going to get upset at you and pull strings to make your life miserable. Furthermore, they might have insight whether or not the new method is useful or merely enhancing a particular error which makes it look good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only instance where sharing the paper might be a bad idea is if they happened to be working on a similar improvement. Receiving the paper may motivate them to scoop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T05:04:57.813" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3036" CreationDate="2012-09-15T12:32:58.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether you are in the UK or the USA (or another country). The system is different in the UK in several ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) You might get a &quot;discount&quot; on your PhD length if you have a masters in the same department.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about other universities but for Oxford and Cambridge, many of their masters (or &quot;MPhil&quot;s) are meant to be the first year (or first two years) of the PhD program. A PhD usually takes 3-4 years in the UK, but if you continued directly from such a masters, it can be reduced to two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Your masters dissertation might count as your PhD project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the department but at least for mathematics, there are people who use their master's dissertation in place of the first year of the PhD. Once again, I am unfamiliar with universities outside of Oxbridge. But at Oxbridge, the first year is usually spent putting together an in-depth research proposal outlining research goals, literature, and methodology. Then, students go through a &quot;transfer of status&quot; where their proposal is evaluated and green lighted as PhD dissertation. I suppose this is similar to qualifying exams in the USA, minus the coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have done all these during your master's, and the department thinks your master's dissertation is of sufficient quality, then it can count as your transfer and save you a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) The research experience saves you time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies to both the US and UK. It can take some time to pick up various research skills. Master's programs with a significant research component that allows you to pick up these skills can help save time. Sometimes, A LOT of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the USA:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the USA, based on what I have read (so far) on the websites of various mathematics departments, all PhD students have to go through coursework and obtain an M.S., regardless of whether they have a masters degree. This policy need not be universal. I suppose the best thing to do is to email the departments that you are interested in and ask about their policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; I recently completed a master's degree in the UK and am applying to USA departments for PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T13:26:02.230" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T13:26:02.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-15T16:08:40.220" Score="5" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from an undergraduate maths course from a prestigious university. However, I was rejected from attending it's master's program due to poor showing in the final exams. I'd like to study at said university again sometime within the next few years, applying for the same course. In applying though, I will almost definitely have to use the same final exam results. What can I do to show that I have improved, if I indeed have? I am not currently enrolled in any graduate level program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastEditorUserId="1639" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T18:19:53.047" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T13:07:13.760" Title="Returning to university" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-15T22:48:17.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conference4me.psnc.pl/&quot;&gt;Conference4me&lt;/a&gt; will do this more or less automatically. It displays the conference schedule including talk titles, authors, and abstracts, as well as maps of the venue, the list of participants, and other information. All this can be browsed offline but the app will automatically update it every several hours if it has an active internet connection. You can add sessions to your agenda and the app also makes it reasonably easy to add them to your calendar system of choice (at least it works with Google Calendar on Android).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the app's functionality depends on some cooperation from the conference organizers. For starters, it can only pull information from Indico, EDAS, and OpenConf, so the conference has to be organized using one of those systems, and all the relevant information has to be uploaded. Additionally, the conference organizers will have to ask the app's developers to manually set up the link between the conference website and Conference4me's data stream. It's apparently not a very involved process for the organizers, but you can't just download the app and immediately use it on any arbitrary conference with a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T22:48:17.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3213" CreationDate="2012-09-15T23:02:02.630" Score="53" ViewCount="4358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the opportunity to teach an undergraduate class in statistics.  However, I've never taken statistics and the material and concepts are a little foreign to me.  I'm concerned, as a graduate student, that it may take up a lot of my personal time just to learn the material, much less teach it.  I really don't want to turn the opportunity down because I know its a good learning experience, but I don't want to become overwhelmed by it.  What are some effective strategies to teach a class that you've never taken before without overloading yourself?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T18:53:18.910" Title="How to teach a class that I've never taken?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3212" CreationDate="2012-09-16T02:35:20.937" Score="34" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes spend too much time on grading students' homework in the class I am a TA for. I am asking if there are some ways to improve grading speed? I hope that I can learn some useful tips from experienced people here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, which one do you think will be faster, grading student by student, or problem by problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T22:30:09.580" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T22:30:09.580" Title="What are some ways to increase grading speed?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;grading&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3211" CreationDate="2012-09-16T05:58:23.493" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it very helpful to write a &lt;strong&gt;grading rubric&lt;/strong&gt;.  It includes how many points I give for each part of each problem.  I also include &lt;strong&gt;how many points of partial credit I give for various common errors&lt;/strong&gt;.  Typically, my key consists of a worked copy of the exam, and I make notes about each question on the actual exam.  Generally, my &lt;strong&gt;rubric gets more detailed as I grade&lt;/strong&gt;, since it's only then that I learn what are the common mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I feel that I'm taking too long&lt;/strong&gt; grading, I'll often &lt;strong&gt;start timing myself&lt;/strong&gt;.  Maybe I get at most 30 second per question (often less).  This isn't a hard rule, but it helps me know what to aim for.  (Recently I just graded a calculus exam, so most of the problems were pretty quick to grade.)  Your mileage will vary from one subject to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T05:58:23.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3210" CreationDate="2012-09-16T06:36:53.037" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be a huge timesaver if you can &lt;strong&gt;get lecture notes from someone who has taught the class before&lt;/strong&gt;.  There's a big difference between &lt;strong&gt;understanding the material well enough to solve problems and answer questions&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;understanding it well enough to find the clearest, most succinct way to present it&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you get someone else's lecture notes, you will only have to attain the first level of mastery, rather than the second; this will save you a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before the class starts&lt;/strong&gt;, you should sit down with the syllabus (presumably you can get one from someone who's taught it before; typically, the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; time I teach a class, I don't change much unless I have a good reason to) and &lt;strong&gt;try to understand the structure (&quot;story arc&quot;)&lt;/strong&gt; of the class.  What are the big ideas?  For example, in Calculus I, some of these are: limits, derivatives, integrals, applications.  That gives you a sense of where you're going and helps you to know what may be important.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't feel like you have to know every little detail perfectly.&lt;/strong&gt;  The stuff that will likely stump you will be the obscure corner cases.  The stuff that most of your students will struggle with will be much more basic, like the limit definition of a derivative, and precalc and algebra.  If a student asks you a question that you can't answer right away, learn to be comfortable saying &quot;that's a great question&quot;; it's a little outside of the scope of this lecture, but I'd be happy to talk with you about it after class.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thinking on your feet in front of an audience (especially about unfamiliar material) can be really tough.  Most of the time, you can avoid it.&lt;/strong&gt;  Usually the student will be happy to talk with you after class.  The reduced pressure of not being in front of the other students will help you to think more clearly.  If you still can't answer the question after a reasonable amount of time, say &quot;This is a good question.  Let me think about it some more and get back to you in class next time.&quot;  At that point, feel free to ask your colleagues.  Often one of them will have encountered the question before, and will know the answer off the top of their head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dnr&lt;/strong&gt; Get lots of help from colleagues who have taught the class before.  Typically, it won't take much time from them, but it will save you a lot of time (later, when roles are reversed, be willing to do the same for someone else).  &lt;strong&gt;You don't have to be perfect.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you have decent lecture notes, and you really engage with the students and answer their question, you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T06:36:53.037" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3195" CreationDate="2012-09-16T10:00:46.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some pointers that one can start with; on the multidisciplinary aspects of Combinatorics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Annals of Combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Annals of Combinatorics will publish outstanding contributions to&#xA;  combinatorial mathematics in all its aspects. Special regard will be&#xA;  given to new developments which have yet to be given proper&#xA;  recognition, but which in the opinion of the editors show promise of&#xA;  eventual mathematical breakthroughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Papers published in Annals of Combinatorics will not be limited to the&#xA;  field of combinatorics in the strict sense. &lt;strong&gt;They will range over&#xA;  problems and theories that have arisen, or will arise, in applications&#xA;  to computer science, biology, statistics, probability, physics and&#xA;  chemistry&lt;/strong&gt;, as well as over work of a combinatorial nature in&#xA;  representation theory, number theory, topology, algebraic geometry and&#xA;  the theory of special functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.net/journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journals in Combinatorics and Related Fields&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.net/preps/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preprint Links in Combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;. The site also has a list of  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.net/problems/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Problems in Combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the list of journals, find those are closely related to your requirements and subscribe to their email alerts or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RSS&lt;/a&gt; feeds using Google Reader or the likes; for latest articles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these wiki articles (and the external links there) are already looked into; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_chemistry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Combinatorial chemistry&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_combinatorics_topics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Outline of combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics_and_physics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Combinatorics and physics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T10:00:46.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3215" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T10:10:25.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary#Multidisciplinary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Multidisciplinary&lt;/a&gt; refers to knowledge associated with more than one existing academic discipline or profession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_approach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Multidisciplinary approach&lt;/a&gt; to problem solving involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to redefine problems outside of normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:21:15.157" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:21:15.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3216" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T10:10:25.457" Score="0" Body="On degree programs, research efforts, conferences, journals, etc. involving tools, expertise, or knowledge from multiple disciplines. Unlike an 'interdisciplinary' approach, which involves the synthesis of disciplines, in multidisciplinary work the disciplines remain distinct." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T05:28:35.087" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T05:28:35.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3195" CreationDate="2012-09-16T10:42:31.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I answer it in a general way. If you want to ask it for your specific problem, try &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Chemistry.SE&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may try searching for relevant papers, but then it is easy to miss even obvious references, e.g. due to different terminology, notation, approach or motivation. (So even if you have a paper in your hand, it can take a lot of time to check if it is relevant at all; searching in all papers may be like searching for a needle in a haystack.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, the best idea is to ask people who are working on similar problems. They may know the direct references, or people who know them, or at least give some insight into research lines in their fields (or provide some general references which may be a good source for your own search).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: it happened to me quite a few times that even a long searching for papers gave me little information, but asking people doing research in related fields (and perhaps looking up references in papers they provided) has proved to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T10:42:31.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3218" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:03:52.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this tag for questions about the process of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the research has not begun yet (writing grants) or has already been completed (publishing), do not use this tag.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not use this tag for questions tangentially related to research. This would render this tag useless, as it would have to be applied to almost all questions on this site, because performing research is one of the primary tasks of academians. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are asking about how to best cite something, you are probably doing so because you are publishing your research. Such a question would only be &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt; to research, but not about it, and should thus not be tagged &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/research&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;research&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt;. If you are however asking, e.g., how to best organise your research, the question is actually &lt;strong&gt;about&lt;/strong&gt; research and thus should be tagged &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/research&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;research&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T08:56:41.263" LastActivityDate="2018-04-21T08:56:41.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3219" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:03:52.120" Score="0" Body="Questions directly focused on PERFORMING academic research. Do not use this for questions about publishing research. Read the tag wiki before applying this tag." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T06:55:23.397" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T06:55:23.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3220" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:11:53.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reproducibility&lt;/a&gt; refers to the ability of an experiment or study to be reproduced, or by someone else working independently. It is one of the main principles of the scientific method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/08/the-reproducibility-initiative/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Reproducibility Initiative&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:19:47.157" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:19:47.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3221" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:11:53.557" Score="0" Body="Questions related to research in which data and/or code is made publicly available so that others may verify the findings and build upon them." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T08:57:01.867" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:57:01.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3222" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:18:07.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;STEM&lt;/a&gt; is an acronym for the fields of study in the categories of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:56.750" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:56.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3223" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:18:07.653" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as set of related academic disciplines, and programs that lead to a degree in these fields." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T00:57:17.153" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T00:57:17.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3224" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:38:11.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term scientific productivity often refers to attempts on quantifying to scientific impact of an individual’s research publications. There are a number of indices to quantify impact of a scientist in their respective fields, by means of number of papers produced, etc.; like h-index, g-index etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also arguments that productivity cannot be quantified by a single number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T12:42:58.853" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T12:42:58.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3225" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:38:11.450" Score="0" Body="Queries and Discussion related to either qualitative or quantitative productivity of a scientist/scholar." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T12:42:55.593" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T12:42:55.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3226" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:43:50.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;h-index&lt;/a&gt; is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition is : - &#xA;&lt;em&gt;A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1283832/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hirsch, J. E. &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:52.973" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:52.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3227" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:43:50.120" Score="0" Body="An index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T12:46:27.697" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T12:46:27.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3228" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:49:19.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliometrics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bibliometrics&lt;/a&gt; is a set of methods to quantitatively analyze scientific and technological literature. In fact, many research fields use bibliometric methods to explore the impact of their field, the impact of a set of researchers, or the impact of a particular paper. Bibliometrics are now used in quantitative research assessment exercises of academic output which is starting to threaten practice based research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:19:56.673" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:19:56.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3229" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:49:19.223" Score="0" Body="Bibliometrics is a set of methods to quantitatively analyze scientific and technological literature." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T13:01:37.767" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T13:01:37.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3230" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:54:44.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic journal&lt;/a&gt; is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, and book reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:18.970" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:18.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3231" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-16T12:54:44.923" Score="0" Body="Online or printed academic periodicals in specific subjects to which the research papers in various topics are sent by the authors and are published after being reviewed and accepted by the editorial board." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T02:09:19.907" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T02:09:19.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3241" CreationDate="2012-09-16T18:03:27.140" Score="9" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use first names (or forename) to cite the work of others.&#xA;It has become even more relevent when I found that somebody working in my field shares my initial and surname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not the most common practice and in many cases, I do not know the forenames of the people I would like to cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any pratical way to find these information ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually resort to Google and Google Scholar search but that does not always solve the issue and can be time consuming (considering it is a detail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T15:19:15.757" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T03:59:07.413" Title="How do I use/add first name (or forename) in citation?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2012-09-16T19:44:00.210" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little tricky trying to expand someone's name, since you might inadvertently arrive at a form they never use (for example, some people have never been called by their first names, but have always used their middle names instead, and may prefer to be cited as &quot;F. Middle Last&quot; rather than &quot;First Last&quot;, &quot;First M. Last&quot;, or &quot;First Middle Last&quot;).  Some people also prefer to use initials when publishing, for example out of fear of prejudice or bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the published paper uses initials, then it is safest to retain them when citing it, unless you are really confident that your expanded version of the name won't confuse readers or offend the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the published paper gives a first name, then you have your answer.  Other databases may also give first names (for example, MathSciNet or the Mathematics Genealogy Project), but which databases are relevant depends on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T19:44:00.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-16T20:39:33.457" Score="8" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student pursuing my masters degree in computer science at a mid-low tier U.S. university. This is my second year and still I couldn't get in a research group and here usually profs. consider PhD students for research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This program has a thesis option but it is not compulsory and it seems like professors and department is abusing this to get rid of spending time for MS students. The program is actually a taught MS, but it is disguised as a MS CS program. Some schools clearly mention that their program is not designed for research or thesis work. And still my schools web page talks about thesis work but I don't see a single student in my batch doing a thesis. Also the courses they offer are mostly advanced undergrad classes. I didn't come here to take the same classes which I did in my undergrad or I can learn from MIT OCW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While choosing this program over others, their research focus was important for me and I was interested in doing a MS thesis. But now, I only have minor class projects which are far away from research. Probably, if I apply for a PhD my recommendation letters will not be strong as a result of this. My GPA is good, I am not a bad student but still whoever I talk with says &quot;give some time&quot;. And time is passing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to get involved with some research, what can I do outside this school ? Can I transfer to other program ? I am thinking of taking permission from school and not paying this semesters fees and applying for a transfer to a school where students really do a thesis work. If a get a masters degree from here can I find a research internship position  as an international on student visa ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:41:20.520" Title="Stranded in a taught MSc CS Program. What should I do?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3211" CreationDate="2012-09-16T21:06:33.887" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experience in grading math Olympiad papers; one principle we adopted there is to &lt;strong&gt;always grade in pairs&lt;/strong&gt;, with &lt;strong&gt;one pair grading a single problem&lt;/strong&gt;, or more pairs sharing a long or tricky exercise. I recommend this strategy especially for grading more important papers such as final exams, where good accuracy is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may seem that this is a waste of resources; however there are several benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accuracy increases much. A subtle error has to slip through two people instead of one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not waste so much time as it seems at first sight. &lt;strong&gt;Grading often follows an 80-20 law&lt;/strong&gt;: 80% of the papers takes you 20% of the time, while grading the remaining 20% consumes the remaining 80% of it. This may be due to particularly non-standard solutions, bad handwriting, or edge cases that evade your marking scheme (as suggested by Dan C, &lt;strong&gt;always have a marking scheme&lt;/strong&gt;, especially if there are multiple pairs on the same problem, and discuss together the more complicated cases). So, while you waste some time by having two sets of eyeballs looking at the easier papers, it is often invaluable to have a ready help in the more complicated cases. Your colleague may be faster than you in spotting a definition that you missed, a hidden line of reasoning, or deciphering a strangely-looking hieroglyph. This saves a lot of time on the  more complicated cases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will feel a lot less tired and find that you can go on with a steady rhythm for hours. You can chat together every now and then, share comments on good solutions, or make fun of particularly bad ones; this helps relieving tiredness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we see one person trying to explain the solution to the other, or the pair spontaneously evolving a &lt;strong&gt;good cop-bad cop behaviour&lt;/strong&gt; (one looks for weak points in the solution, the other defends the student). This method also doubles as &lt;strong&gt;training for beginner graders&lt;/strong&gt;, that can learn from working with a more experienced partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T21:06:33.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2012-09-16T21:53:33.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about citing them in the standard way, but in order to disambiguate use marks by the names, such as superscript *, or '. And on the first appearance of such, put the explanation of the markings, as well as reasons for doing this into a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T21:53:33.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3237" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3238" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T00:54:12.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3239" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-17T00:57:44.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary#Interdisciplinary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interdisciplinary&lt;/a&gt; refers to new knowledge extensions that exist between or beyond existing academic disciplines or professions. The new knowledge may be claimed by members of none, one, both, or an emerging new academic discipline or profession.&#xA;An interdisciplinary community or project is made up of people from multiple disciplines and professions who are engaged in creating and applying new knowledge as they work together as equal stakeholders in addressing a common challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:46.687" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3240" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-17T00:57:44.790" Score="0" Body="Interdisciplinary refers to new knowledge extensions that exist between or beyond existing academic disciplines or professions." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T03:03:27.257" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T03:03:27.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2012-09-17T03:03:14.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also prefer to cite people by their full professional name whenever possible.  Unfortunately, the only reliable way to find that information is to look for papers that they've written under their full name (whether first, or middle, or second-of-four, or what have you), while being &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; careful not to confuse authors with the same initial and last name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields, there are reasonably reliable review/citation databases like &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Reviews&lt;/em&gt; or DBLP that disambiguate authors by full name, affiliation, and so on.  (For example, DBLP successfully disambiguates me from another computer scientist that shares my first and last name.)  A slightly less reliable method is to find the author's web page, or at least a web page at the author's department with their name on it, such as a faculty roster or a class syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But always remember that someone's &lt;em&gt;full professional name&lt;/em&gt; may not be the same as their &lt;em&gt;full legal name&lt;/em&gt; or their &lt;em&gt;full given name&lt;/em&gt;.  As Anonymous Mathematician points out, some authors consistently and deliberately publish under their initials to protect against &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&amp;amp;news_item=5900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sexism&lt;/a&gt; and other biases.  The full professional names of these authors do not contain first names, only initials.  A smaller number of authors (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;groups&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/math/1/au:+Polymath_D/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;authors&lt;/a&gt;) publish under &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/45185/pseudonyms-of-famous-mathematicians&quot;&gt;pseudonyms&lt;/a&gt;.  Finally, authors from outside the US and Europe sometimes follow naming conventions that differ significantly from the modern European standard.  (For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/madhu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of my department colleagues&lt;/a&gt; publishes under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Madhusudan:P=.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;what &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; to be his last initial and first name&lt;/a&gt;; the reality is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_name#Initials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a bit more subtle&lt;/a&gt;.  He doesn't go by either of those names in person.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T11:06:21.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3244" CreationDate="2012-09-17T11:41:09.570" Score="51" ViewCount="5001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to put it. I have never published before. Previously my one paper was rejected, that was because the experiments were not ready and my advisor asked me to still submit it just to have practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, 6 months later, I am writing another paper (on a similar topic). I have done some experiments, some are still going on. My advisor had advised me that &quot;even if your experiments are not complete you should still start writing the paper&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm doing a lot of procrastination and I think I am scared of writing and possible rejection. I have done a lot of writing in other forms before, like blogging etc. But the thought of writing an academic paper with all the stringent rules (everything has to be clearly written, cited, nice flow of thoughts) is scary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know how should one's mindset be while in the process of writing a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T05:58:56.450" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T05:58:56.450" Title="How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T12:05:17.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you didn't have any &lt;strong&gt;scientific writing&lt;/strong&gt; class before, I think you should start buying a &lt;strong&gt;book&lt;/strong&gt; about it, and read it.&#xA;There are many titles avilable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get one, it can give you some &lt;strong&gt;good advice&lt;/strong&gt; on how to write (good) scientific papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T12:09:10.030" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T12:09:10.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T12:26:30.483" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two points in your question: writing a good paper and the fear of being rejected. For the first point, there is no miracle recipe, although there are some clear guidelines of what is expected to be in a paper. You can find many useful resources on the Internet on &quot;how to write an academic paper&quot;, and you will have to select what suits you the best. In general, a good way is to understand what you like in your favorite papers, and reproduce the same scheme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the fear of rejection, well, it's a bit cliché, but you just have to get over it. People get papers rejected all the time, even the top professors, sometimes it is fair, sometimes it is not. If you plan to pursue in the academic world, you should expect to get papers rejected until you retire. It's normal not to like it, but somehow, you have to deal with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, when a piece of work reaches a good level of maturity, I build a quick &quot;submission tree&quot;, that is, I look at which conferences I could submit the work, and the overlap between the notification dates and the submission dates. At the end, I have something like: I could submit to Conf1, and if it's rejected, I have one week to make it better and to submit to Conf2, and if it's rejected, ..., or I could submit to Conf3, and if it's rejected, I have two weeks to work more and submit to Conf4, etc. So, basically, the possibility of rejection is directly included in the submission strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T12:26:30.483" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T13:02:04.133" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a great book about scientific writing, that concentrate on the article structure and the writing process more than on the grammar per se:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6529.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words&quot; by David Lindsay&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book gives &lt;strong&gt;good advices on the writing&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the different section of a scientific article and what they should contain (e.g. how to choose a good title)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tips on how to improve the message you want to transmit in your article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to make a good poster/presentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also provides great advices on &lt;strong&gt;how to build a good scientific question&lt;/strong&gt;. It explains how a good question can facilitate not only the writing process but also the overall research. For me it is actually the kind of book any young researcher should read even &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; starting their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="481" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T13:53:56.367" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T13:53:56.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3246" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:10:45.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_school&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;graduate school&lt;/a&gt; is a school that awards advanced academic degrees (i.e. master's degrees and Ph.D. degrees) with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A distinction is typically made between &lt;em&gt;graduate schools&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;where courses of study do not provide training for a particular profession&lt;/em&gt; and professional schools, which offer specialized advanced degrees in professional fields such as medicine, business,engineering, ministry or law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:08.610" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:08.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3247" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:10:45.510" Score="0" Body="On schools that award advanced academic degrees, such as masters and doctoral degrees. This tag is mainly for questions about the structure and organization of a graduate school or the fundamental experience of being a graduate student. Do not use this tag for questions about research in graduate school (use [research] instead), coursework in graduate school (use [coursework] instead), gaining admissions to graduate school (use [graduate-admissions]), etc." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T06:12:29.913" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T06:12:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3248" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:25:53.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publications include articles in journals, magazines, and conference proceedings, as well as books, where academic outputs are published and made available to both technical community and the general public. Questions can include topics such as copyright, submissions, and open access scientific communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples of Good Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;How do you judge the quality of a journal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55665/what-does-the-typical-workflow-of-a-journal-look-like&quot;&gt;What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17379/what-are-fake-shady-and-or-predatory-journals&quot;&gt;What are &amp;quot;fake&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;shady&amp;quot;, and/or &amp;quot;predatory&amp;quot; journals?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2673/under-what-circumstances-can-one-republish-a-conference-paper-presentation&quot;&gt;Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T22:08:23.950" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T22:08:23.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3249" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:25:53.307" Score="0" Body="Questions related to academic publications including online and traditional journals, books, and conference proceedings. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="47985" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T07:16:13.573" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T07:16:13.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3250" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:29:49.277" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-19T10:06:15.103" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T10:06:15.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3251" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:29:49.277" Score="0" Body="Questions about when to cite a certain work, which work to cite, etc. For questions on formatting a given citation, use [citation-style]." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-19T10:06:15.103" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T10:06:15.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T16:25:15.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like anything else in life, perform the task with the goal to succeed, and the likely outcome of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that rejection is all a part of the game. Very few people succeed more than they fail. As a matter of fact, upwards of 90% of all academic papers are rejected for one thing or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to keep track of mistakes that you've made with past academic papers. Write them down as bullet-points on a separate sheet of paper. Keep that paper right in front of you as you work on other academic papers to remind you of what &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice makes perfect. If you're just starting out, it's likely that you're going to have many failures before you have a successful one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2644" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T16:25:15.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T19:05:53.100" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not really a complete answer, but it's too long for a comment, so here goes... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that whatever you write now is not going be submitted. You don't need to overcome your fear quite yet because you're just putting words on the paper for your own sake. Just open your favorite text editor and write down everything you can think of. Forget about editing. You are just taking notes so that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can read it later and understand what you did and what you had on your mind. Don't filter yourself. You are just emptying your head to make room for new things. Write to forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you run out of things to write, go back and clean it up &lt;em&gt;a little&lt;/em&gt; -- until you think of something else to write. Rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the content gradually becomes more complete, you will have more time and peace of mind to work on the quality of the writing and aligning it with all the best practices and advice and theory and rules of academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for now, what's the first thing you think of that you've been working on in your project? Now open your text editor and write that thought down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2648" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T19:05:53.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-09-17T21:28:10.437" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that might help with the fear of rejection is to view your paper as though it was a blog post. Obviously, you won't submit something in blog style to an academic journal, but it might help to think about why you blog. You have ideas and thoughts you think are important and you want to share them with a wide audience, who might be interested in your ideas or use them as a jumping-off point for something they want to do. The purpose of an academic paper is the same (well, in addition to the career benefits of publishing). You want to share what you're doing with people who will be interested in the results, and who might find inspiration for their own work in what you've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might even help, as an exercise to get past writer's block, to write a blog post about your research. (You may not want or be able to actually publish it on your blog, but it might help your thought process either way.) What are you investigating, what are your methods, how is it going so far, etc.? You can then take some of that material, formalize the language, add the appropriate citations, and include it in the appropriate sections of your paper. But picturing your blog audience, rather than some journal committee, reading your first draft might take some of the pressure off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I find helps me with fear of failure is to accept that the first draft of anything I write will be crappy and focus on getting ideas down and revising later. I also found, at least as an undergrad English major, that it's easier to just write late at night. Something about being tired takes the edge off my self-criticism and gets the ideas flowing. I describe it as my internal editor going to sleep by ten o'clock. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T21:28:10.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3258" CreationDate="2012-09-18T03:33:12.880" Score="26" ViewCount="32417" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm finishing my master program in computing. I need to decide between going to industry and starting a PhD programme. Having worked a bit with research and industry I prefer the former so far, however I wouldn't like to close my career paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2651" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T06:26:02.827" LastActivityDate="2020-03-19T16:23:07.750" Title="Is it hard to start a PhD programme after leaving to work in industry?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-18T06:58:00.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One recent conference I've heard that supports such an application is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ubicomp 2012&lt;/a&gt;. They have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2012/mobile-apps.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mobile applications&lt;/a&gt; with the content of conference programs and they are available on Android and iOS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="316" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T06:58:00.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2012-09-18T07:00:44.910" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did exactly that and I think that was a great thing. Being in computer science, this gave me solid experience in software engineering and pragmatics of &quot;real-world&quot; solutions. The benefits I feel till now (after completing my doctoral studies and working as a relatively senior post-doc (3+ years after thesis defence) are these: 1) good feeling for what &quot;societal&quot; problems are and how does my research translate to practice (at least hypothetically, but in a plausible way) and 2) allows me to be involved in applied projects in any role from low-level programmer, through technical lead to project manager. All this is vital in writing project proposals and project execution. In a nutshell: experience in industry, when used wisely, can give you an &quot;entrepreneurial&quot; attitude, which definitely is an advantage over students who plunge to doctoral studies right after completing their master's degree. The only slight downside is that you might end up as one of the oldest PhD students in the group. But I never perceived it as a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, all the above applies to experience in European context (in particular: DE, NL, BE). I have no clue about the cultural issues regarding your question in other parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Later edit:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;When it comes to the emotional and lifestyle part of the decision, of course there are issues to consider. Going from an industrial position to doctoral studies is almost always a financial downgrade. Perhaps more in countries where a PhD student has a &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt; status (US, UK), than in places which treat PhD students as university (public) employees (DE, NL), salaries tend to be higher in the latter. My own attitude, however, was this: since at that point I did not have kids yet, I always thought that should the life demand more money, or when I won't like the academic life, with the sound experience from industry I shouldn't have a problem going back any time. This definitely took a huge amount of pressure from my shoulders while pursuing my PhD, since I did not worry about my future (in career, or financial terms) - unlike my &quot;purely academic&quot; peers. Even till now, I feel confident (perhaps I fool myself) that should the academic path not work out in the next few years, it's not going to be the end of the world for me (again unlike for some of my peers). To sum up: &lt;em&gt;with the confidence that I am fit for industrial career, I can pursue my passion in academia, rather being under pressure to&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;produce&lt;/strong&gt;. So I would add this as yet another benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&#xA;To a more extreme note: I can point fingers to at least two people who after a long career in industry embarked on doctoral studies in their 50s and became successful researchers in their fields afterwards. Similarly, there are many people who after completing their PhD went to industry for awhile (5-10 years) and later came back to academia - though that feat seems to be harder to manage than the previous one. So everything is possible...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Even later edit (8 years later):&lt;/em&gt; I do no longer work in academia, at certain point 1) my family had enough of moving, 2) I ended up in a region with very competitive universities, 3) since I probably did not belong to the top notch, but let's say just slightly below, at certain point my funding dried out and I did not get a suitable professorship in that region. This led me to first seek job in industry again and later to start my own company/statr-up trying to capitalize on all the scientific knowledge I collected. Retrospectively, my career as an engineer before joining academia turned out to be a great asset once again. I could claim very solid history in my CV and I was immediately hired to senior positions. Also, the academic training in research creativity turned out to be a very useful asset when I started my own company later on. All in all, I am happy about this career path. Maybe this later edit will inspire others too... Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2020-03-19T16:23:07.750" LastActivityDate="2020-03-19T16:23:07.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2012-09-18T09:11:34.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an admissions standpoint getting into graduate school after a few years in industry is not much harder than going straight from undergraduate. Some undergraduate programs in the US offer 4+1 programs which make getting into a Masters program much easier, which in turn makes getting into a PhD program easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming a student again after working in industry can be a hard emotional and psychological shift. Your pay will be cut in around half (maybe even more). In the US you will likely be expected to complete some more coursework. For some it is hard to get back into the coursework mindset after a few years absence: Assuming a linear scale, it is the difficulties you face every fall as a returning student multiplied by 10 (or so). It might even be an exponential scale. It can be hard. Being a grad student is nothing like being an undergraduate student nor is it like working in industry. The job of a grad student definitely doesn't end at 5 pm and tends not to have 2+ weeks of vacation. There is also considerable uncertainty associated with long term job prospects that are absent in industry work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, those who love academics often find them selves out of sorts when working outside of academia and relish returning &quot;home&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T14:41:53.613" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T14:41:53.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3408" CreationDate="2012-09-18T10:03:15.923" Score="21" ViewCount="4874" Body="&lt;p&gt;In epidemiology it is not uncommon to see papers written by a bunch of authors on behalf of a research group (say &quot;the X research group&quot;). See, for example, this paper (randomly chosen from pubmed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreira L, Pellisé M, Carballal S, Bessa X, Ocaña T, Serradesanferm A, Grau J, Macià F, Andreu M, Castells A, Balaguer F; &lt;strong&gt;on behalf of the PROCOLON research group&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;High prevalence of serrated polyposis syndrome in FIT-based colorectal cancer screening programmes.&lt;/em&gt; Gut. 2012 Sep 14. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: are the members of the research group X (whose names and affiliations are usually reported in the Appendix at the end of the paper) considered as authors of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I am particularly interested to receive answers that apply specifically to epidemiology, but of course experiences from other fields are very welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="663" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T03:22:17.393" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:01:34.893" Title="Who all are considered authors of papers written on behalf of a research group?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3261" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-18T14:42:29.777" Score="7" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, is it better to complete a graduate degree first before deciding to work? Or is it also advisable to take a leave of absence and work while finish your graduate degree later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2656" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T10:07:03.600" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T10:45:57.983" Title="Is it a bad idea to take a leave of absence to finish a degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3262" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-18T14:59:07.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of utilities or tools are used by graduate students, researchers, academicians to better their life in academics. They can vary from simple reminder tools, To-Do list managers to Bibliography managers, project management tools and the likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T15:05:59.107" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:05:59.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3263" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-18T14:59:07.117" Score="0" Body="Utilities, software or otherwise, used for a better academic life" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T15:05:39.280" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:05:39.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3264" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:03:20.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_conference&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic conference&lt;/a&gt; or symposium is a conference for researchers (not always academics) to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:02.027" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:02.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3265" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:03:20.777" Score="0" Body="An academic gathering for researchers, scientists, engineers, etc. to present and discuss their work and mutual academic interests." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T12:44:05.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T12:44:05.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:04:03.010" Score="6" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a student complete 1 year of a masters degree (2 year program). She then decides to accept a job. Later on, she wants to apply to a PhD program. Would it look bad if she didn't finish the masters program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2656" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T15:42:55.917" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:46:51.280" Title="Consequences of quiting a masters program (because of a job) and later applying for PhD program" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3260" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:17:02.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In particle physics (and we have some very long author lists) they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorship rules are generally set out in the collaboration's Memorandum of Understanding (whatever it is called) and can sometimes call for odd things such as a paper being credited to someone who didn't even know it was being written but whose work calibrating some systematic effect of a minor subsystem a decade ago was used in the paper. That happened to me once, I checked inSPIRE and discovered I had a new paper out. Turned out to be a nice one, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid that many of these documents have a &quot;recent membership&quot; type of clause so that you have to have been an active member of the collaboration in the last (typically) year to be credited. &quot;Active&quot; is defined by things like sitting shifts, attending collaboration meetings, contributing institutional funds to the general pool or hardware to the experiment and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:17:02.323" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3266" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:37:52.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think doing a directly a PhD after a Bc is a very smart move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing course depending on the current need is a valid decision and people should understand it. So I would not worry about how it will look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:37:52.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:41:57.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to publish the book and you have found one publisher that allows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you seek more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elaborate what is wrong about Elsevier that makes you not to pursue it with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T12:56:40.687" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T12:56:40.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3266" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:46:51.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I do not think it would be a problem provided you work in a field close to your PhD area. If you get relevant experience, it helps to get into PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many university (at least in US) allow direct PhD admission for qualified BS students. So, if you are able to do some good work in your job, it can help you in applying for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am emphasizing &quot;relevant experience&quot; since otherwise you &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; have to justify quitting the Masters program. The admission managers/professors may tend to suspect your staying for PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:46:51.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3279" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:49:16.130" Score="34" ViewCount="919" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an academic, one has to publish. Often, an article is drafted, and you need feedback of a colleague.  I see that quite often some perspective articles are often written by long-term collaborating pairs of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some strategies people use to get feedback on their articles  (outside of immediate boss; and in the case that none of the friends in the field of work in the specific domain of the article, and one needs specific (not general) feedback)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you approach a colleague to simply read your article. Or do you just mention it at a conference to the most suitable colleague - would you like to read an article and give me feedback? How do handle the co-authorship or acknowledgement? Do you establish the limits at the &quot;approach time&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some strategies to establish a &quot;publishing&quot; duos (buddies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T20:33:57.897" LastActivityDate="2020-01-22T22:01:03.947" Title="What are the strategies for getting feedback on articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-18T17:16:26.637" Score="4" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to be enrolled at a Masters program at one university and a PhD program in another university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is one allowed to  do this? Or is this not possible in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2656" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T20:30:51.393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:29:01.533" Title="Feasibility of enrollments in a Masters program at one university and a PhD program in another university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3272" CreationDate="2012-09-18T17:45:24.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe, but why? Different topics? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you'd have to check the rules of both universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a supervisor/employer of PhD students, I would not want my student doing this. A PhD is a full-time job, requiring full-time commitment. Financing is scarce and I wouldn't want to waste it on someone who is not fully committed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T17:45:24.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3261" CreationDate="2012-09-18T19:00:44.160" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to finish a degree and work at the same time. This is especially the case if you have to write a (PhD) thesis. There are a number of obstacles. Firstly, you will have to work on the thesis during the evenings and weekends, which is both tiring and can induce RSI. Secondly, you will have no life and this is depressing. Thirdly, both your work and your PhD thesis will suffer. Fourthly, the time taken to complete the thesis could drag out 6 months or even 1 year, before you get close to finishing it. Under these circumstances, many people simply do not finish their thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not impossible, though. I know of a few people who have completed their theses after taking on another job. It requires a lot of discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the luxury of taking a leave of absence from work to study, then I'd advise taking it. Get the degree out of the way in as short a time as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T10:45:57.983" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T10:45:57.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3272" CreationDate="2012-09-18T19:02:07.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never, ever try anything like this without explicit written permission from the administrations of both universities, from at least the department chair level, if not the dean.  I once knew someone who was enrolled in two Ph.D. programs, and it completely derailed his career when this was discovered, even though his advisor had told him it was OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dave Clarke points out in his answer, funding is a big problem.  It's much worse than it might appear from the outside: it's obviously questionable to accept payment from both universities for doing full-time work, but in fact this can be a serious problem even if one (or both!) of them is not paying you in any direct way.  At least in the US, there are often payments being made behind the scenes within the university.  This may sound like &quot;funny money&quot;, since it just involves moving money between accounts within the same institution, but it really makes a difference in what departments are allowed to do, so they take it very seriously.  (For example, at my university, the administration charges the department tens of thousands of dollars for every enrolled graduate student, to cover tuition.  Sometimes this comes from grant funding, and sometimes from general departmental funds supplied by the administration.  If a student accepts an offer of admission without actually putting in the expected time or energy because of other academic commitments, then that's tantamount to a serious budget decrease.  That money comes from somewhere, either a grant or the department, and whoever spent it will be very unhappy.  It's not as bad as stealing, but it will be treated somewhat similarly by the university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are many different ways universities are run, so it's possible that you'll find a way to make this work.  But don't try it without making sure you have written proof of official approval (keeping in mind that individual faculty members are in many cases not authorized to give approval).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T19:02:07.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3277" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T00:55:59.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, peer review refers to the evaluation of work by the author's peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes, but is not limited to,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refereeing, which is often used determine an academic paper's suitability for publication in a journal or conference,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evaluation of research grant proposals by a group of experts to determine which will be funded,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;peer evaluation of teaching skills,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;post-publication review of a book or article, as is common in the field of mathematics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peer review&lt;/a&gt; is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Scholarly_peer_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scholarly peer review&lt;/a&gt; (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:52:18.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:52:18.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3278" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T00:55:59.613" Score="0" Body="On the evaluation of work (typically, a publication or grant proposal) by the author's peers. This includes: refereeing, which is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication in a journal or conference; peer evaluation of teaching skills; peer review of research grant proposals; and post-publication review of a book or article, as is common in the field of mathematics." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11593" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T12:43:57.267" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T12:43:57.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3271" CreationDate="2012-09-19T06:36:56.043" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I have a manuscript nearly ready to submit, I send it (by e-mail) to colleagues who I think would be interested in it.  I politely ask them to read it and send me any comments they have.  Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't; it's understood that there is not an obligation.  Of course, some of them send me their manuscripts too, and they're more likely to read mine if I have read and commented on theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colleagues I send the paper to (usually about 2-4 in number) may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior people who have mentored me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Past coauthors and collaborators&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People I don't know but whose work is essential to that in my manuscript&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in the first two categories are usually willing to assist based on our existing relationship; those in the last category are generally pleased to see their work being cited and built on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually need very specific feedback at this point in the process.  If I was concerned, say, about the correctness of some part of the work, I would have worried about that long before I wrote the article.  Occasionally I may have a specific question about, e.g., suitability of the manuscript for a particular journal.  In that case, I would send the article to one of the editors of the journal or to a colleague who often publishes in that journal, and ask specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any colleagues who provide substantial feedback will be acknowledged at the end of the paper.  Providing this kind of feedback certainly wouldn't qualify one for co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T13:44:30.487" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T13:44:30.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3280" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T06:59:22.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific literature, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acknowledgment_%28creative_arts%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acknowledgment&lt;/a&gt; (also spelled acknowledgement) is an expression of gratitude for assistance in creating a literary or artistic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Receiving credit by way of acknowledgment rather than authorship indicates that the person or organization did not have a direct hand in producing the work in question, but may have contributed funding, criticism, or encouragement to the author(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:21:17.950" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:21:17.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3281" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T06:59:22.077" Score="0" Body="On acknowledging an individual, agency, or institution that contributed funding, criticism, encouragement, or other support to a thesis or manuscript." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:35:40.033" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:35:40.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3282" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T07:06:37.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Co-authors are usually co-workers or collaborators of a particular project. The authorship in a publication is determined by a number of factors; see details here in this wiki article. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academic authorship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:19:44.397" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:19:44.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3283" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T07:06:37.250" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the role and purpose of co-authors in an academic publication." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T07:16:31.583" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T07:16:31.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3271" CreationDate="2012-09-19T12:51:56.110" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the excellent answer by David, I guess that any (experienced) academic knows that this job has a long memory and it's a non-zero-sum game, so the more you give to others the better you are perceived. So my answer would include also a pro-active behaviour in reviewing papers for others too. This way you'll learn more about writing styles, will be perceived as a contributor to someone else's research, and will be more likely to receive feedback from others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T12:51:56.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T14:41:07.593" Score="20" ViewCount="3404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of people start PhD programs, but far fewer finish (in some programs the drop-out rate is 50% or higher).  Some people are motivated to get a PhD by: wanting a &lt;strong&gt;job in academia&lt;/strong&gt;, wanting a &lt;strong&gt;job in industry&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;personal pride&lt;/strong&gt;, or simply a &lt;strong&gt;lack of direction&lt;/strong&gt; and an aptitude for the field of their PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you noticed that people with certain motivations are more likely to finish their PhD than others?  If so, which reasons correlate positively with success?  Conversely, do you have warnings for someone considering starting a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2660" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T03:21:15.397" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T15:30:21.363" Title="What are some reasons to get (or not get) a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3287" CreationDate="2012-09-19T14:48:57.037" Score="11" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person A is a recognized senior researcher, and Person B is an enthusiastic junior researcher. Both of them have been working more or less equally on a research project and are interested in  submit the results of the project to a particular venue. Based on the report written by Person B, Person A has written a paper (PA) to be submitted to the venue. Person B doesn’t like the style and some contents of PA, so he makes comments to Person A, who them modifies PA. Person B still doesn’t like PA, so writes a separate paper PB. Since PA and PB haven’t been published, there are citations between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, Person A submits PA, which list authors as &quot;Person A &amp;amp; Person B&quot;, and Person B submits PB, which list authors as &quot;Person B &amp;amp; Person A.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it appropriate to submit PA and PB?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would be your impression if you were part of the venue’s committee?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As reviewer, what would be your impression about reviewing two different papers about the same work for the same venue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any additional consideration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1353" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T02:28:15.907" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T02:28:15.907" Title="How appropriate is to make multiple submissions of research findings to same venue/conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3286" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:00:04.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most venues forbid simultaneous submissions, or overlapping submissions. For instance, in the call for papers of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2012/cfp.shtml&quot;&gt;ACM CCS 2012&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submitted papers must not substantially overlap papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal, conference or workshop. Simultaneous submission of the same work is not allowed. Note that submitted papers cannot be withdrawn from the process after the first phase reviews are received by authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in order to answer your question, the main problem is determining the overlap between PA and PB. If it's substantial (only some elements of style change, minor comments), then it should be forbidden. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the papers are different enough (for instance, PA presents a more theoretical approach and PB a more practical description, with a case study), then there is no problem. That being said, both papers must be self-contained, and cannot rely on the acceptance of the other, unless they are both also published as technical reports (or equivalent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things explicit, if I were a reviewer of a member of the PC, and if I were to think that the overlap between the two papers is substantial, I would recommend rejecting both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T15:00:04.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3286" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:04:43.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot submit to papers on the same data and that is what this sounds like. It doesn't sound like paper A is the data and paper B is a model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest Person B concede to the wishes of Person A and then never collaborate with Person A again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T15:04:43.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3286" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:39:13.690" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot submit both papers.  As others have pointed out, most venues explicitly forbid simultaneous submission of substantially overlapping papers.  The answer to your first three questions is the same: &lt;strong&gt;Immediate rejection&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I would go further: &lt;strong&gt;Neither PA nor PB can be submitted alone.&lt;/strong&gt;  It is unethical to submit a paper without the explicit consent of all authors, because authorship implies endorsement of and responsibility for the content of the paper.  On the other hand, it is unethical to revoke authorship from someone who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work.  The two authors must work out their editorial differences, like grown-up professional adults, before they can submit anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they can't agree on what to submit, then tough noogies — no paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T15:39:13.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3286" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:49:40.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;By venue, do you mean a conference? Depending on the conference, you could certainly focus on different aspects of the same study, or different (but not contradictory) conclusions from the same data (some datasets generate dozens of papers!). There could be a bit of overlap, i.e. in the introduction, but not too much. I'd say the most important thing is to be clear and honest about what you want to present. But if you have together done a large project and are going to write a peer-reviewed paper about it, I don't see any problem in presenting different aspects of the study at the same conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they should not be exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T15:49:40.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3291" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T16:45:05.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical report&lt;/a&gt; (also: scientific report) is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; It might also include recommendations and conclusions of the research. Unlike other scientific literature, such as scientific journals and the proceedings of some academic conferences, technical reports rarely undergo comprehensive independent peer review before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:49.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:49.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3292" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T16:45:05.453" Score="0" Body="A technical report is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T16:47:31.903" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T16:47:31.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3293" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T16:49:42.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentation_slide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slide&lt;/a&gt; is a single page of a presentation. Collectively, a group of slides may be known as a slide deck or slide show. Historically, a slide was created on a transparency and viewed with an overhead projector. In today's digital age, a slide most commonly refers to a single page developed using a presentation program such as Microsoft PowerPoint. It is also possible to create them with a document markup language, for instance with the LaTeX class Beamer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lecture notes in slide format are referred to as lecture slides, frequently downloadable by students in .ppt or .pdf format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:21:12.147" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:21:12.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3294" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T16:49:42.870" Score="0" Body="This tag may refer to slides of an academic presentation or a slide show." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:01:28.360" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:01:28.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2592" CreationDate="2012-09-19T16:50:54.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the criteria is the same (citation count, H-index, G-Index...) I think &lt;em&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/em&gt; is not changing anything, just making much easier to find/evaluate; therefore it might have a considerable impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But should be noted that, due to many errors like mixing authors with similar names and counting citations that shouldn't be counted, &lt;em&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/em&gt; can't be used as a definitive source of evaluation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1353" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T16:50:54.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3296" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:00:00.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_advising&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academic advising&lt;/a&gt; is, according to the National Academic Advising Association, &quot;a series of intentional interactions with a curriculum, a pedagogy, and a set of student learning outcomes. Academic advising synthesizes and contextualizes students' educational experiences within the frameworks of their aspirations, abilities and lives to extend learning beyond campus boundaries and time frames.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:08.840" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:08.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3297" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:00:00.297" Score="0" Body="Academic advising refers to the counsel given by a learned person regarding education, career, topic of research, etc." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:01:37.907" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:01:37.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3298" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:16:04.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An independent researcher is not usually affiliated to any university or institute. They are not employed by academic institutions as faculty members and do not receive grants from any such agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:18:40.470" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:18:40.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3299" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:16:04.000" Score="0" Body="An independent researcher is not affiliated with any university or academic institution, and does not receive grants from any such institutions." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T03:43:28.020" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T03:43:28.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3300" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:22:01.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pophelp/metrics.htm#hcindex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contemporary h-index&lt;/a&gt; was proposed by Antonis Sidiropoulos, Dimitrios Katsaros, and Yannis Manolopoulos &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It adds an age-related weighting to each cited article, giving less weight to older articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:24:16.007" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:24:16.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3301" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:22:01.833" Score="0" Body="The Contemporary h-index, adds an age-related weighting to the h-index." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:38:33.930" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:38:33.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3302" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:26:05.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofreading&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proofreading&lt;/a&gt; is the reading of a galley proof or computer monitor to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:05.877" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:05.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3303" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:26:05.143" Score="0" Body="Proofreading is done to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. An important stage in academic publishing." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:38:49.907" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:38:49.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3304" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:33:30.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Queries/discussions related to family life of a researcher or an academician and how they find balance between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:38:42.310" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:38:42.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3305" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:33:30.537" Score="0" Body="Queries related to family life of a researcher or an academician." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T17:39:00.997" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T17:39:00.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3306" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:39:29.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;résumé&lt;/a&gt; contains a summary of relevant job experience and education. The résumé is usually one of the first items, along with a cover letter and sometimes job application packet, that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The résumé is comparable to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;curriculum vitae&lt;/a&gt; (CV) in many countries, although in English Canada, the United States and Australia a résumé is substantially shorter than CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1998/73&quot;&gt;Different CV for university position and research industry position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:39.387" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:39.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3307" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:39:29.640" Score="0" Body="A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their academic background and skill sets. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T18:20:31.993" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T18:20:31.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3308" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:44:24.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Curriculum vitæ&lt;/a&gt;, is a Latin expression which can be loosely translated as &quot;[the] course of [my] life&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United Kingdom, a CV is short (usually a maximum of 2 sides of A4 paper), and therefore contains only a summary of the job seeker's employment history, qualifications and some personal information. A CV can also be extended to include an extra page for the job-seeker's publications if these are important for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States and Canada, a CV is used as a &quot;replacement&quot; for a résumé and is far more comprehensive; the term résumé is used for most recruitment campaigns. A CV elaborates on education to a greater degree than a résumé and is expected to include a comprehensive listing of professional history, academic credential, publication, contribution or significant achievement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A CV for a position in academia is often generated using &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/latex&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;latex&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;latex&lt;/a&gt;. Template examples and questions and answers about resumes can be found here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Curriculum_Vitae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikibooks: LaTeX/Curriculum Vitae&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latextemplates.com/cat/curricula-vitae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LaTeX Templates: Curricula Vitae/Résumés&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/resume&quot;&gt;LaTeX website on StackExchange: Resume Tag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1998/73&quot;&gt;Different CV for university position and research industry position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="47985" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T04:51:57.237" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T04:51:57.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3309" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:44:24.037" Score="0" Body="A curriculum vitae (CV) or resume provides an overview of a person's education, academic and industry experience, some of his qualifications, research interests and a list of his references. A CV may be optimized and edited to highlight some parts of the CV to be presented into a research institute or to apply for a job." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:28:59.673" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:28:59.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3310" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:49:51.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A dissertation or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt; is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries/universities, the word &quot;thesis&quot; or a cognate is used as part of a bachelor's or master's course, while &quot;dissertation&quot; is normally applied to a doctorate, while in others, the reverse is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a thesis involves conducting a research project, preparing thesis draft, reading and editing it by the professors and the student and finally reviewing by the assessment committee of the thesis in which two to five professors present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T23:05:30.370" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T23:05:30.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3311" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:49:51.757" Score="0" Body="Questions related to initiation, preparation, editing and presentation of a research thesis. A Thesis is a long research report including personal research conclusions and outputs. A Thesis must include personal research and the proper citations from other publications in the research topic." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T23:06:01.217" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T23:06:01.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T18:20:53.263" Score="17" ViewCount="16977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see places like Coursera, Udacity and EdX offer certificates upon successful completion of course work. Also most of the people doing recorded teaching at these places are famous and well known professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if someone mentions those kind of course certificates in CV or application material for grad school, does it have a significant value for the applicant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you consider these kind of certificates at the same level with a grade on an academic transcript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2661" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T03:08:00.050" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T23:02:31.260" Title="How do the completion of online courses impact a Master's application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T00:39:22.590" Score="12" ViewCount="1982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to apply to graduate school in applied mathematics, but I do not have any research experience. The reason being is that I did not become a math major until my junior year in college. How will a lack of research experience affect my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2662" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T02:28:19.230" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T03:24:01.583" Title="How important is research experience of undergraduates in the application for graduate school?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3314" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-20T04:25:30.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracurricular_activity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extracurricular activities&lt;/a&gt; are activities performed by students that fall outside the realm of the normal curriculum of school or university education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extracurricular activities exist at all levels of education, from 4th-6th, junior high/high school, college and university education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:02.693" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:02.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3315" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-20T04:25:30.507" Score="0" Body="Activities that fall outside the realm of the normal curriculum of school or university education." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T04:36:13.977" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T04:36:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3316" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-20T04:32:28.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_4conflicts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public trust in the peer-review process and the credibility of published articles depends in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. &lt;strong&gt;Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties).&lt;/strong&gt; These relationships vary from being negligible to having great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest.&lt;/strong&gt; Disclosure of such relationships is also important in connection with editorials and review articles, because it can be more difficult to detect bias in these types of publications than in reports of original research. Editors may use information disclosed in conflict-of-interest and financial-interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions. Editors should publish this information if they believe it is important in judging the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T04:36:38.407" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T04:36:38.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3317" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-20T04:32:28.847" Score="0" Body="Conflict of interest exists when an author, reviewer, supervisor, or editor has financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties)." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T02:34:51.097" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T02:34:51.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3285" CreationDate="2012-09-20T04:43:44.190" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't tell you what are and aren't good reasons for getting a PhD.  However, to get a PhD, &lt;strong&gt;you must stay remarkably determined for a minimum of 5 to 6 years&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you cannot, you will quit.  Earning a PhD is hard.  When I earned mine, it was &lt;strong&gt;easily the hardest thing I had ever done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During your PhD, you work &lt;em&gt;long hours&lt;/em&gt;, for a &lt;em&gt;low salary&lt;/em&gt;, with &lt;em&gt;little respect&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;bleak job prospects&lt;/em&gt;.  Most PhD students are at least fairly smart and/or moderately hard workers.  Nearly all of them could make more money  with less effort elsewhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, why get a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;  You need to find &lt;em&gt;your own&lt;/em&gt; compelling reason.  I &lt;strong&gt;couldn't imagine &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; studying math&lt;/strong&gt;.  Undoubtedly, I would be studying it now, even if no one would pay me.  I'd never cared too much about money (easier to say when you're in your 20s and single).  I was far from balanced, so long hours didn't bother me.  I really loved teaching (and still do), and after working with high school kids, I decided I'd much prefer college.  So I decided I'd be a math professor.  That was my vision, &lt;strong&gt;what I clung to in the midst of the storm&lt;/strong&gt;.  And it worked, &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt;.  Your story will be different.  But it must be just as compelling &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt;, or you likely won't make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T04:43:44.190" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3319" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-20T06:18:22.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;university&lt;/a&gt; is an institution of higher education and research which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects and provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education.  The word &quot;university&quot; is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means &quot;community of teachers and scholars.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:15.770" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:15.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3320" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-20T06:18:22.127" Score="0" Body="Queries related to universities, as an institution of higher eduacation that grants academic degrees and provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T06:27:50.223" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T06:27:50.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3321" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-20T06:24:02.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is much similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/thesis/info&quot;&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt; tag, but specifically refers to the document submitted for the award of Ph. D degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dissertation or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt; is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries/universities, the word &quot;thesis&quot; or a cognate is used as part of a bachelor's or master's course, while &quot;dissertation&quot; is normally applied to a doctorate, while in others, the reverse is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T06:27:46.217" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T06:27:46.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3322" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-20T06:24:02.933" Score="0" Body="Queries related to preparation and presentation of a research thesis, specifically for the award of Ph. D." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T06:27:28.103" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T06:27:28.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T09:32:08.030" Score="15" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many PhD programs envisage for every candidate &lt;strong&gt;a period&lt;/strong&gt; (3, 6 months or more) &lt;strong&gt;in another university&lt;/strong&gt;, in order to carry on research in another institution, acquire new skills and (maybe) lay the foundations for a postdoctoral fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task could be useful, but involves some problems, too. Often the PhD student is &lt;strong&gt;not able to familiarize&lt;/strong&gt; with the new scientific environment and start working efficiently with the new group. Also, it is often &lt;strong&gt;difficult&lt;/strong&gt; to find a research group that suites one's &lt;strong&gt;scientific fields and projects&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More over, sometimes the supervisor from the hosting institution agrees in welcoming a PhD student from outside (also to get his/her lab more &lt;em&gt;international&lt;/em&gt;), but he/she has &lt;strong&gt;no time&lt;/strong&gt; to dedicate to him/her...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all these reasons, and more, sometimes a period abroad for a PhD &lt;strong&gt;could be very useless and ineffectual&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think makes a &lt;strong&gt;period abroad successful&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any &lt;strong&gt;advice&lt;/strong&gt; for PhD students going to face this career phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T10:22:25.887" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T10:22:25.887" Title="How to get the most out of a period in another university during PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3323" CreationDate="2012-09-20T10:24:50.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to answer this question by asking one myself: would you go to a three-star Michelin restaurant, with a respectable but established clientele, with posh and smart diners, who do not need to meet their cooks or maitre's but just enjoy the glamour of the settings? Or would you prefer to visit a 1-star, striving to get a second star, where you have the occasional tourist and the owner is more keen on explaining to you the philosophy of their recipes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been visiting both types (restaurants and universities!) and I prefer the second one, but it's probably due to age. In the latter you have more flexibility and contact with the main person you're interested in. Also, the first period acts as a &quot;showcase&quot;, and it's very likely that more will be possible in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main advice would be to be a good networker. That implies &quot;work hard&quot; but also being prepared to &quot;party hard&quot;, if you see what I mean. You should not be afraid to &quot;ask people out&quot; as much as in asking to share some research: you're likely to be in touch more often with the &quot;second tier&quot; (the first being the professor and her peers), and they will be the next generation of professors, so it's good to have a number of relationships with the post-docs and researchers of any institutions, at your stage of career. So don't close yourself in a shell of hard work for six months: I have seen that happening, and it does not make a good impression (to me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T10:32:33.600" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T10:32:33.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3330" CreationDate="2012-09-20T13:33:46.493" Score="9" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/2665&quot;&gt;Overcoming Fear of Rejection&lt;/a&gt;, but not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience in academia was teaching Computer Science for four years at a mostly liberal arts college, and that was 30 years ago.&#xA;I frankly found the world of work to provide more challenging intellectual stimulation, at least in the sort of practical issues I cared most about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are highly technical issues in software development that I and other practitioners have discovered that are quite orthogonal (to say the least) to the trend of publishing in those areas.&#xA;So when I try to publish it is hard to build much of a bibliography.&#xA;When I submit (through an online submittal process) I tend to get responses that vary in quality, but are generally negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am tempted to revise, in such a way as to address the concerns raised by the better quality reviews.&#xA;I could buttress the claims with stronger mathematical arguments, but it's hard to tell if this would make the paper more or less approachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's the question whether I should resubmit to the same journal.&#xA;There don't really seem to be any others at the same level of relevance to practitioners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is a noobie question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T18:17:44.277" Title="How to revise/resubmit a rejected article taking an unorthodox view" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3328" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:40:40.313" Score="61" ViewCount="15487" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do different people in the department expect from a postdoc?&#xA;By different people I mean the advisor, graduate students and PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it mainly depends on the job description but there are few basic things that a postdoc must be expected to do. How aggressive (proactive) must one be? This question is important since a postdoc cannot just wait for the adviser to give him/her inputs. Rather the postdoc must take the project(s) as another PhD research of his own but be completely accountable to the adviser in terms of what he/she is doing and how is he/she doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are my thoughts. My question is divided into the following sub-parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you as a professor expect from your postdoc? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What preparation one must do to rise to the expected level? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the preparation merely restricted to having sound academic record and experience?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T16:02:17.193" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T10:56:47.220" Title="What is expected of a postdoc?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;responsibilities&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="52" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2012-09-20T15:01:11.153" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll very quickly learn that being an academic involves more than just writing research papers. Your time as a postdoc is when you can start learning about these other aspects, while building your own profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A postdoc needs to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build a publication record&lt;/strong&gt;. This will involve both what you are paid to do and your own line of research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get involved with supervising students&lt;/strong&gt;. Help with the PhDs in the lab, and get involved in supervising masters students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get involved with obtaining funding&lt;/strong&gt;. This can either be by helping your employer or (ideally) obtaining your own funding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build an international reputation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start collaborating with external parties&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gain some teaching experience&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;This is absolutely crucial if you want a faculty position.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn how to manage projects and a lab&lt;/strong&gt;. This includes overseeing the progress of projects, allocating your time (and others), presenting results at meetings and  writing deliverables. If you are in a lab setting, you will need to learn how  to fix/calibrate/maintain critical equipment and software so that you can start your own lab some day, and you will need to become proficient in teaching more junior members on how to use that equipment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start to devise a strategic research plan&lt;/strong&gt;. While it is fun to do opportunistic research, solving a problem that comes along or investigating any idea that pops into your head, a better long term strategy is to formulate an interesting long term research plan and follow it, building result upon result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as proactive as humanly possible, without being annoying. Talk to everyone in the department, especially people whose research interests are close to your. Go to conferences and sit down and work with interesting people (not necessarily the superstars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T11:00:16.563" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T11:00:16.563" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3190" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:07:08.453" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My perspective is primarily European, since I did my Master's in Sweden and my PhD in Germany. That said, I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; take a break before starting on my PhD. It wasn't entirely voluntarily -- I did not get any PhD studentships when I wanted them, and had to wait for the next round of applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my break, I moved from Sweden to Germany, and took a job doing industrial software design for a consultancy firm. It gave me good experiences, the knowledge that I could make a career in industry, and also a very strong drive to make it in academia. Furthermore, the PhD position I eventually was admitted to, I got in part because I had, at that point, both Open Source and industry experience with packaging, shipping and distributing software -- something my advisor wanted to learn more about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, this all worked out well. I left my industry job after 10 months to start a PhD, I graduated with a decent enough thesis, and now -- several years later -- I am about to start the first research project with my name on the grant application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One fundamentally important thing to note with my anecdote is that there is a huge difference in how PhDs are admitted in large parts of Europe vs. in the US. For my PhD, I applied for a job with a particular professor, which happened to include “&lt;em&gt;opportunity to study for a PhD&lt;/em&gt;” as part of the job description. This is how it mostly is done in Germany, and also in Sweden. In this setting, it is important that you come to the PhD with a set of credentials that will be valuable to your advisor, specifically. I managed to do just this with my break -- but that was luck as much as anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, there seems to be a LOT more politics involved in the process, and the applying to a school aspect of the US process biases the experience more towards grooming your CV for academia in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T17:07:08.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3326" CreationDate="2012-09-20T18:17:44.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I certainly can't speak for all reviewers, and what I'm saying might be true only for me, but when I review a paper, I try to ask myself three questions: is it interesting for the venue? is it correct? is it improving the state-of-the-art? I need to be convinced that all answers are &quot;yes&quot;, and the burden of convincing me is on the authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem I've seen with some papers is that they focus mostly on showing the correctness of their approach, and at first glance, it seems to be the case with the paper you're describing.  Showing the interest of the approach is tricky, because often the authors are convinced it's interesting (otherwise, they probably wouldn't work on it), and they to think that everybody else understand why it's interesting. Similarly, explaining why it's improving the state-of-the-art might be tricky, especially for novel approaches, but it's necessary to explain why other approaches won't work. You have the right to write: &quot;To the best of our knowledge, this approach has never been used to tackle this particular issue&quot;, but then, as a reviewer, I need to be convinced that your knowledge is good enough to make this kind of claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, in your situation, what you need is a compelling example (e.g., a situation/use-case where your approach is either the only viable one, or where you can show with experiments or formal proofs that yours is better than others). If you can focus on that point, then you can probably resubmit it to the same journal, but it's possible that you will get some of the same reviewers you had the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution could be to publish the paper first as a technical report (e.g., on arXiv), try to submit it a short version without the proofs and technical details to a specialised workshop, where maybe you can get interesting feedback from the community (for instance, some recent related work), and then use that feedback to improve the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T18:17:44.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:40:40.187" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add one item that Dave Clarke omitted, which I think is actually the most important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Separate your research reputation from your advisor's.&lt;/strong&gt;  Congratulations!  You have enough of an independent research record to land a postdoctoral position.  Unfortunately, that reputation is almost certainly deeply entangled with your PhD advisor's; deep down, many people in your research community still wonder if (or simply assume that) you've just been riding your advisor's coattails.  Your primary job is to convince them otherwise.  Do not work with your advisor, and do not work in the same subsubsubfield as your PhD thesis.  Make a name for yourself as a truly independent researcher and scholar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a secondary corollary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not just ride your supervisor's coattails.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T21:40:40.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3333" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T11:39:16.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;professor&lt;/a&gt; is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a &quot;&lt;em&gt;person who professes&lt;/em&gt;&quot; being usually &lt;strong&gt;an expert in arts or sciences, a teacher of high rank&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor is a highly accomplished and recognized academic, and &lt;em&gt;the title is awarded only after decades of scholarly work&lt;/em&gt;. In the United States and Canada the title of professor is granted to all scholars with Doctorate degrees (typically Ph.D.s) who teach in two- and four-year colleges and universities, and is used in the titles assistant professor and associate professor, which are not considered professor-level positions elsewhere, as well as for full professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:39:56.067" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:39:56.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3334" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T11:39:16.733" Score="0" Body="Queries relating to professors, academic staff members whose job responsibilities may include research, teaching, and service." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="269" LastEditDate="2021-05-17T04:13:34.763" LastActivityDate="2021-05-17T04:13:34.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3312" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:23:25.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if someone mentions those kind of course certificates in CV or application material for grad school, does it have a significant value for the applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are better than nothing, but it's unlikely that they would have significant value.  Courses are only a small part of what matters for graduate admissions, and elementary or low-level courses matter the least of all.  Only a fraction of Coursera/Udacity courses are at a high enough level to matter, and even those courses aren't likely to make much of a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend devoting any time to online courses for the purpose of graduate admissions.  If they are teaching something you really want to understand and have no better opportunity to learn, then that's a good reason, but the learning will have to be its own reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you consider these kind of certificates at the same level with a grade on an academic transcript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd look at a certificate of completion for an online course the same way I'd look at a traditional course taken pass/fail (i.e., without a grade).  It's evidence that you have done something, which shows some level of motivation and energy, but it's not evidence that you actually learned much in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's a bigger issue than grades here.  Ultimately, good grades don't mean that much: standards vary dramatically, the ceiling is rarely high enough to distinguish between excellent students, and even if the ceiling is high enough it's not clear that this is a meaningful comparison.  Letters of recommendation are crucial for supplying the information grades alone can't supply, and this is something MOOCs are currently unable to help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T14:14:22.463" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T14:14:22.463" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3336" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:49:21.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_paper#Scholarly_paper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic publishing&lt;/a&gt;, a paper is an academic work that is usually published in an academic journal. It contains original research results or reviews existing results. Such a paper, also called an &lt;strong&gt;article&lt;/strong&gt;, will only be considered valid if it undergoes a process of peer review by one or more referees (who are academics in the same field) who check that the content of the paper is suitable for publication in the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper may undergo a series of reviews, editions and re-submissions before finally being accepted or rejected for publication. This process typically takes several months. Next there is often a delay of many months (or in some subjects, over a year) before an accepted manuscript appears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:43.930" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:43.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3337" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:49:21.837" Score="0" Body="Queries related to academic papers, an academic work that is usually published in an academic journal." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T12:54:45.980" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T12:54:45.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3338" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:57:44.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_for_employment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;application&lt;/a&gt; or application form usually is a form or collection of forms that an individual seeking employment, called an applicant, must fill out as part of the process of informing an employer of the applicant's availability and desire to be employed, and persuading the employer to offer the applicant employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a minimum, an application usually requires the applicant to provide information sufficient to demonstrate that he or she is legally permitted to be employed. The typical application also requires the applicant to provide &lt;em&gt;information regarding relevant skills, education, and previous employment&lt;/em&gt;. The application itself is a minor test of the applicant's literacy, penmanship, and communication skills - a careless job applicant might disqualify themselves with a poorly filled-out application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:40.280" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:40.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3339" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:57:44.373" Score="0" Body="This tag refers to application process for an academic course or an academic employment. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T13:08:09.700" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T13:08:09.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3340" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:16:19.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/teaching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Free Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Teaching : the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At various levels of education roles of a teacher varies, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is related to the role and duties of a teacher, an academic instructor, tutor or a teaching assistant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:32.477" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:32.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3341" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:16:19.523" Score="0" Body="This tag is related to the role and duties of a teacher, an academic instructor, tutor or a teaching assistant.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T13:38:31.390" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T13:38:31.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3342" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:30:37.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;advisor&lt;/a&gt; is normally a person with more and deeper knowledge in a specific area i.e. a specialist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic advisor, an employee of a college or university who helps students to select courses or an academic major, and engaging in short term and long term educational planning (in some countries, the professor who offers a student academic/methodologic assistance to prepare the work/thesis job necessary to obtain the degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:39:59.077" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:39:59.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3343" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:30:37.730" Score="0" Body="The one who helps students to select courses or an academic major, engages in a short term and long term educational planning, assists in preparing the thesis necessary to obtain the degree; or a person who advises internship students on training in industry." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-15T00:25:45.770" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T00:25:45.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3344" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:34:54.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%27s_degree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;master's degree&lt;/a&gt; is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The duration of a masters degree is about one to two years which may vary because of different educational systems' policies. Masters students may have to conduct a research project as their thesis at the end of their masters level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:45:46.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:45:46.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3345" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:34:54.857" Score="0" Body="Queries related to a master's degree, sometimes referred to as a post-graduate degree. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T13:38:28.567" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T13:38:28.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3285" CreationDate="2012-09-21T15:30:21.363" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;By far the most successful students will be those who are genuinely interested in the research they are performing. They will be the ones who will put in the effort to think of new research avenues, create and follow-through with collaborations, put in extra thought do their analysis techniques, and &lt;em&gt;do it all with good spirits&lt;/em&gt;. Other students can (or more often, won't) do all this work, but they will definitely not do it with the same level of enthusiasm, which will over time make the work less and less enjoyable, and thus more likely to be abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question, the motivation most conducive to finishing is the motivation to perform the research you are working on. If the student is motivated by anything other than the research itself, there will be a definite waning of enthusiasm—with all the collateral damage that entails—as the student comes to realize that doing PhD research involves a whole lot of &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding warnings, I offer the following: If you're starting a PhD for any reason other than &quot;whoa boy I LOVE doing this stuff&quot;, the next few years will involve a lot of work that you will probably not enjoy at the outset, and progressively dislike more and more as the years tick on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T15:30:21.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3312" CreationDate="2012-09-21T15:37:12.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I see these places offer a certificate upon succesful completion of course work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Anonymous Mathematician. There is a difference between completion and mastery. Graduate schools need to know that you have &lt;strong&gt;mastered&lt;/strong&gt; the prerequisite material. In the future, courses like these may count for something to graduate schools if they demonstrate and certify rigor and mastery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, these courses are targeting the Professional Development market. Many industries required or encourage their employees to further their education. For professional development, usually &lt;strong&gt;completion&lt;/strong&gt; of the course/webinar/workshop/whatever is all that is tracked. A future employer may care that you have taken 2 or 3 MOOCs in accounting, but an MBA program would probably disregard them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T15:37:12.927" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3349" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:45:43.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/a&gt; is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease in defined populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and informs policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiologists help with study design, collection and statistical analysis of data, and interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:19:59.700" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:19:59.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3350" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:45:43.013" Score="0" Body="Questions related to epidemiology, as a discipline that study the distribution and patterns of health-events, health-characteristics and their causes or influences in well-defined populations." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T17:50:50.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T17:50:50.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3351" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:51:51.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-03-28T10:17:55.380" LastActivityDate="2020-03-28T10:17:55.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3352" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:51:51.567" Score="0" Body="For questions on the process of writing. For questions on the content of writing, use [writing-style]." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-03-28T10:17:55.380" LastActivityDate="2020-03-28T10:17:55.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3353" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:59:13.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific literature&lt;/a&gt; comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature. Academic publishing is the process of placing the results of one's research into the literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific research on original work initially published in scientific journals is called primary literature. Patents and technical reports, for minor research results and engineering and design work (including computer software) can also be considered primary literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondary sources include articles in review journals (which provide a synthesis of research articles on a topic to highlight advances and new lines of research), and books for large projects, broad arguments, or compilations of articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tertiary sources might include encyclopedias and similar works intended for broad public consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic writing&lt;/a&gt; and the tag - &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/writing/info&quot;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T06:40:05.473" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T06:40:05.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3354" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:59:13.600" Score="0" Body="Scientific writing is academic writing about science.  Scientific literature comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T18:12:55.340" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T18:12:55.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3358" CreationDate="2012-09-21T20:15:25.903" Score="6" ViewCount="15514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have looked at a number of academic resumes to get a feeling for what people expect. I see that the number of referees that people give at the bottom of their resume varies quite a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether it is essentially always better to provide more referees or whether one should rather stick to a maximum of say 4 ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T05:48:38.627" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T07:32:58.207" Title="How many referees are required on a resume/CV?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3357" CreationDate="2012-09-21T20:39:49.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are creating your &lt;code&gt;CV&lt;/code&gt; for some &lt;code&gt;application&lt;/code&gt; (job or graduate studies). I understand that having three to four good referees is good enough. You need not provide more than that. I am particularly speaking about the academia in US and I  believe it would be different elsewhere (e.g. UK). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you may put different referees according to the requirement. I mean you may need to create different &lt;code&gt;CVs&lt;/code&gt; for different occasions. Some referees would be better able to acknowledge your work for a given situation. For example you may need to take a &lt;code&gt;recommendation letter&lt;/code&gt; from a (for example) Mathematics teacher when applying for &lt;code&gt;graduate studies&lt;/code&gt; in Math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact I have also seen that many people do not put the references. In an application process, they are required to separately provide the names and contacts of the referees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T21:17:08.153" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T21:17:08.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3357" CreationDate="2012-09-21T23:00:42.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For entry level professorships I have had requests for between 2 (second tier school with no established research groups) and 5 (first class research group at a R1 in a desirable climate), with 3 being by far the most common. Adds requesting high numbers are often seeking stars and will often state that they will consider tenured placement for qualified applicants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T23:00:42.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3361" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-22T08:33:10.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Queries related to progression of academics in various capacities from a student to a professor and the various stages involved in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A general &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_career_path&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A career path refers to the careers available to you after you complete certain studies and entry-level jobs within a company.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/business-english/career-path&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambridge Dictionaries Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;the way that you progress in your work, either in one job or in a series of jobs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T08:36:57.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-22T08:36:57.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3362" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-22T08:33:10.573" Score="0" Body="Queries related to progression of academics in various capacities from a student to a professor and the various stages involved in the process." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T08:36:48.743" LastActivityDate="2012-09-22T08:36:48.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3363" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-22T12:41:25.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coursework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coursework&lt;/a&gt; is the name for work carried out by students at university or middle/high school that contributes towards their overall grade, but which is assessed separately from their final exams. Coursework can, for example, take the form of experimental work, or may involve research in the sciences. It can comprise dissertations, book reports or essays submitted for arts subjects. Unlike exams, students may have a number of days or weeks to complete the assignment, and often are allowed to use text books, notes, and the internet for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:11.760" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:11.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3364" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-22T12:41:25.103" Score="0" Body="Related to the work carried out by students at university or middle/high school that contributes towards their overall grade, in the form of dissertations, book reports, assignments or essays." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T14:08:22.173" LastActivityDate="2012-09-22T14:08:22.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3366" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:29:11.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You almost never want to use this tag together with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/policy&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;policy&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;policy&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/etiquette&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;etiquette&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;etiquette&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meta discussion on the use of this tag: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4049/7734&quot;&gt;On the over use of &amp;quot;ethics&amp;quot;/&amp;quot;ethical&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-08-17T09:56:34.060" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T09:56:34.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3367" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:29:11.117" Score="0" Body="On making a decision based on morals or common ethical codes instead of etiquette, rules, institutional or government policy, or technical or procedural reasons." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-08-17T09:56:34.060" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T09:56:34.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3368" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:35:01.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of homogeneous tasks related by similarity of functions.&#xA;  When performed by an employee in an exchange for pay, a job consists of duties, responsibilities, and tasks (performance elements) that are (1) defined and specific, and (2) can be accomplished, quantified, measured, and rated. From a wider perspective, a job is synonymous with a role and includes the physical and social aspects of a work environment. Often, individuals identify themselves with their job or role (foreman, supervisor, engineer, etc.) and derive motivation from its uniqueness or usefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/job&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dictionary.com definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a piece of work, especially a specific task done as part of the&#xA;  routine of one's occupation or for an agreed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T02:24:57.760" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T02:24:57.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3369" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:35:01.250" Score="-1" Body="On the duties, responsibilities, titles, and benefits associated with an academic job. (For questions on searching for an academic job, use 'job-search' instead.)" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T22:05:47.023" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T22:05:47.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3370" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:40:46.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergraduate_education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Undergraduate education&lt;/a&gt; encompasses all coursework and related educational experiences taken to earn either a bachelor's or associates degree. In many educational systems, such as that in the United States, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a bachelor's degree. In such systems, an entry-level university student is referred to as an &quot;undergraduate&quot;, while students earning more advanced degrees are referred to as &quot;graduates&quot;. In other educational systems, such as some science courses in Britain and some medicine courses in Europe, undergraduate education refers to post-secondary education up to the level of a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first degree of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergraduate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;undergraduate&lt;/a&gt; degree is normally named a Bachelor's degree. The undergraduate normally studies in a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-15T00:25:48.613" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T00:25:48.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3371" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:40:46.683" Score="0" Body="On providing academic services (such as teaching, advising, and research mentorship)  specifically to undergraduates. Questions about undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians are off-topic here and will be closed and deleted. Questions about coursework, etiquette, and other academic issues that apply to both undergraduate and post-graduate students should not be tagged [undergraduate]." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="17714" LastEditDate="2016-10-15T00:25:36.137" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T00:25:36.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3372" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:43:41.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Career&lt;/a&gt; is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's &quot;course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also pertain to an occupation or a profession that usually involves special training or formal education, and is considered to be a person’s lifework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T02:25:03.530" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T02:25:03.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3373" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:43:41.420" Score="0" Body="Career is a person's &quot;course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)&quot;. Questions related to academic career comes under this tag." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T02:22:57.743" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T02:22:57.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3374" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:49:11.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book (e-book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, and so on). A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile or, more informally, a bookworm — an avid reader of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:59.963" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3375" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:49:11.927" Score="0" Body="Related to academic books, including scholarly books, textbooks, and reference books. Considerations related to publishing academic books, choosing textbooks, etc., come under this tag." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:20:23.247" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:20:23.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3376" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:52:48.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_%28money%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grants&lt;/a&gt; are non-repayable funds provided often by government, foundation, trust or a society, to an educational institution, or an individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T07:37:54.617" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T07:37:54.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3377" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T01:52:48.787" Score="0" Body="Academic grants are non-repayable funds disbursed by government, trust, foundation or a society. This tag refers to questions related to source and utilization of such funds, criteria for award of such funds, etc " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T07:34:59.267" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T07:34:59.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-23T04:02:26.737" Score="12" ViewCount="5531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are MIT courses much different from MIT OpenCourseWare? I am curious, because as a high schooler, I have some intent to study from MIT OpenCourseWare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this allow me to be more comfortable if I am admitted to MIT?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how are MIT courses so different from those at other places? I heard that these courses are hard..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2679" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T13:25:02.583" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T23:40:13.293" Title="How do MIT OpenCourseware and real MIT courses compare?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3379" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:08:57.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The authorship in a publication is determined &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by a number of factors&lt;/a&gt;. Use this tag for questions on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who should be an author of a paper,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how authors are ordered (note that this strongly depends on the field),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the role of the corresponding author (note that this strongly varies between fields and even journals),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on joint first authorships and similar (in fields where the order of authors is relevant).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T09:06:10.627" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T09:06:10.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3380" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:08:57.423" Score="0" Body="Queries related to academic authorship, i.e., who should be an author, the order of authors, or special roles such as corresponding authorship." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T09:06:10.627" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T09:06:10.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3381" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:12:58.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science&lt;/a&gt; (from Latin scientia, meaning &quot;knowledge&quot;) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an older and closely related meaning, &quot;science&quot; refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally explained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:20:28.387" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:20:28.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3382" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:12:58.853" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions on academia specifically applicable to students, researchers, and faculty in scientific disciplines." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T13:54:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T13:54:49.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3383" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:16:04.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chemistry&lt;/a&gt; is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemistry is sometimes called &amp;quot;the central science&amp;quot; because it connects physics with other natural sciences such as geology and biology. Chemistry is a branch of physical science but distinct from physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular chemistry questions, visit our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Chemistry Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-22T19:13:27.630" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T19:13:27.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3384" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:16:04.467" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to chemistry as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular chemistry questions, visit our sister site Chemistry Stack Exchange." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-22T19:13:31.843" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T19:13:31.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3385" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:22:40.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Disambiguation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Academia.SE, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/bibliography&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;bibliography&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;bibliography&lt;/a&gt; is typically used to refer to a list containing bibliographical information for a set of references, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T07:19:59.010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T07:19:59.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3386" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:22:40.920" Score="0" Body="A list containing bibliographical information (authors, title, publishing information) for a set of references. Questions related to the structure, building, and typesetting of a bibliography may use this tag. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T07:19:59.010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T07:19:59.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3388" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:00:02.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open access&lt;/a&gt; (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. OA is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In publishing, OA means &lt;em&gt;free access to material&lt;/em&gt;. Open access journals give open access to all or a sizable part of their articles. Journals may also use a &quot;hybrid&quot; model in which only some of their articles are OA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many OA advocates support this unrestricted access because they believe the results of tax-payer funded research should be shared; since citizens have paid for this research, they should be able to access it at no additional charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many OA advocates also support unrestricted access because knowledge itself, or information, is a public good. A public good is something beneficial to everyone who seeks it, without added use diminishing its value. Common examples of public goods include: law enforcement, lighthouses, clean air and other environmental goods, and information goods, such as software development, authorship, and invention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia and from &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/general-information-about-open-access/open-access-faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT&lt;/a&gt;, both used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T08:01:17.493" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T08:01:17.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3389" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:00:02.853" Score="0" Body="On the open-access publishing model, in which journal articles or other academic works are made available to readers free of charge." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T07:55:52.457" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T07:55:52.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3390" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:09:24.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:19:51.167" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:19:51.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3391" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:09:24.547" Score="0" Body="Queries related to establishing and maintaining collaborative academic research endeavors or other activities." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="27515" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T22:58:51.323" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T22:58:51.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3378" CreationDate="2012-09-23T13:51:44.370" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;MIT OCW doesn't offer &quot;courses&quot;.  It offers &quot;courseware&quot; — basically textbooks with videos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real MIT courses have live instructional staff who answer questions, run recitation sections, and offer feedback (in particular, grades) on your solutions to the homework and exam problems.  Real MIT courses have deadlines that force (well, encourage) you to actually work on the course material regularly.  Real MIT courses also have a community of other students, all following the same lock-step schedule, that can work together to develop ideas, internal feedback, social outlets, and later professional contacts.  Real MIT courses give you an official record from MIT of your performance in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T13:51:44.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3394" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T16:03:41.247" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:03:41.247" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:03:41.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3395" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T16:03:41.247" Score="0" Body="Questions that are specifically more relevant to United Kingdom." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:04:28.483" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:04:28.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3396" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-23T16:42:11.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference management software&lt;/a&gt;, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations (references). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note :&lt;/em&gt; This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T07:21:09.213" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:21:09.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3397" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-23T16:42:11.743" Score="0" Body="Questions related to various reference/citation management software used for recording and utilising bibliographic citations." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T16:52:08.537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T16:52:08.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-24T12:55:47.180" Score="19" ViewCount="2331" Body="&lt;p&gt;While pursuing a PhD in an experimental field, one usually researches a given topic and conducts experiments that are rather closely related to this topic and one another. I imagine this specialization can be beneficial as one attains expertise in the research field and can work in a timely and focused manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can also imagine that this specialization may make changing your area of research more difficult when applying for positions as a post-doc. Therefore, I am wondering about the advantages and disadvantages of researching scientific questions one is interested in, but that are irrelevant to ones PhD thesis on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T14:27:53.833" LastActivityDate="2017-12-31T09:39:44.047" Title="Should one research multiple independent topics while pursuing a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3400" CreationDate="2012-09-24T13:46:07.513" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main downside is that it takes a significant amount of effort to gain enough specialization in a given topic to be proficient enough to perform useful experimentation. Given that a a graduate student you're spending almost all your time familiarizing yourself with the topic you're actually performing research on, it would be very difficult to become an expert in an area unrelated to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, many research topics are very conducive to multi-disciplinary research. To use myself as an example, I usually tell people that I'm a cross between a neuroscientist, behavioral psychologist, signal processing engineer, and statistician. A colleague of mine started his research examining how to use the lungs as a power source for an implantable device, and ended up publishing a significant paper in the field of organic chemistry, fairly unrelated to his intended research. Becoming an expert in your own field enables you to research some pretty interesting and diverse topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T13:46:07.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2012-09-24T13:46:49.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some subset of journals they are openly available. Who was the reviewer and what he/she wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BioMedCentral medical journals are often like that.&#xA;See example here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/12/147/prepub&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/12/147/prepub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you click on each article's publication history&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T13:46:49.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-09-24T18:37:31.770" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently created a website with Google Sites (https://sites.google.com/site/hadanylab/) and I think it was a good experience and a nice result. Easy to use, editing is the same as in Google Docs which is nice. Customization can be a pain, but that is expected. You can get around some of the difficulties using widgets, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2688" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T18:37:31.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3400" CreationDate="2012-09-24T18:38:40.507" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main downside is the opportunity cost of time spent being &quot;unfocused&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly, I think the relative merit of pursuing ancillary research topics hinges on how much time you want to spend on your PhD. The road to tenure is long and so there are strong arguments for starting on it early. A PhD is &lt;strong&gt;just the beginning&lt;/strong&gt;. However, later on, I do not think one can drop a side-project with as few consequences as during graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also distinguish between the same research that goes by different labels. Different fields call the same thing different names, which can make it seem as if someone has more varied interests than they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T18:38:40.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3400" CreationDate="2012-09-24T18:57:59.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see pros and cons to this. The pros are obvious and are just like you state: you will be gaining specific expertise, you'll be doing truly independent research , you'll be pioneering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would point out one major con though: if you do work that none of your professors are &quot;in charge&quot; of there is a good chance they will act like little babies and discredit, ignore, or openly assault your work! It happened to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my master's thesis in Scientific Visualization, which was an already funded idea hosted by my advisor. Unfortunately it wasn't a very popular idea so a) it wasn't that interesting, and b) I couldn't get much attention from my advisor. But then my friend, who was doing research in Computational Biology came up with a really great idea for a collaborative visualization project and I started working on that in parallel. It turned out to be really cool, I got a poster accepted to a major conference, and my friend actually benefitted from the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor, however, was just pissed off. He didn't give a shit that I was doing my own creative work. He just saw that I wasn't playing his game. I actually got in trouble for this. I tried to appeal to my team of 3 professors who were my secondary advisors but they reamed me too. One of them said &quot;well none of us know if your work is actually quality. Anyone can get a poster published.&quot; Mind you out of the entire group of 12 students who submitted work to the conference only 3 posters were chosen and two of them were mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short of it is: academics are like little boys tied to their mother's apron strings. Don't expect them to support you in being truly creative. If you follow this path then make sure you either convince a professor that it was his&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2689" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T18:57:59.960" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3409" CreationDate="2012-09-24T23:53:52.760" Score="11" ViewCount="1430" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is along the lines of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1449/how-do-professors-usually-discover-new-research-interests&quot;&gt;How do professors usually discover &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; research interests?&lt;/a&gt; but more to do with &quot;HOW&quot;? The above question deals with how professors discover new areas, my question is once a professor or a grad student has found an interesting lead, how do they pursue it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider Prof. X who is a mathematician and just talked to his old MS student who is now working on Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence. He speaks to the student for 20 minutes about how is applying math to AI. &lt;strong&gt;Where does he go from here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does he:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Wikipedia/Encyclopaedia to get a rough overview of the subject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for a good book to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to someone in his institution who works on AI and ask them for reading references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does a professor make sure he gets the right resource considering his expertise in some subject? For instance, the professor would definitely want a book which starts from a primer on Linear Algebra&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:17:27.167" Title="How do professors change research interests?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3260" CreationDate="2012-09-25T00:43:15.043" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll give my perspective, as an Epidemiologist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. Helpful, I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the reason there's a &quot;on behalf of the X group&quot; is that some small analysis has been pulled out of a larger study, and the named authors on the paper want to acknowledge that their results are the byproduct of a larger effort. A large clinical trial, or cohort trial for example, can spawn dozens of papers and secondary analysis done by doctoral students, small component research groups, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this paper is (I think) the result of the &quot;Epi proColon&quot; clinical trial currently being conducted by the manufacturer. It's a head to head comparison with 'FIT' - fecal immunochemical testing - to detect colon cancer. The paper you linked is an ancillary analysis of that, noting a particular finding that, while of interest to the field and clearly enough for a short paper, wouldn't ever make the &quot;main&quot; paper cut when the results of the clinical trial are published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Raphael has asserted that he thinks there should be a difference between &quot;I turned a skrew&quot; and &quot;I wrote the paper&quot;. The problem for Epidemiology studies is that's often somewhat ambiguous. For example, many clinical sites are directed by people who don't really care about publications, being professional clinicians, but are still instrumental enough in the conducting of the study that they could arguably be included as authors. If you only had one of these, sure, toss it in as authorship. But what if you're running a multi-site clinical trial at ten sites? Do you include all ten? After all, they saw patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;group&quot; authorship is a useful way to acknowledge that. They can cite those papers on grant applications, &quot;why should we continue to support your diagnostic lab&quot; progress reports, etc. It's a compromise position for trying to tighten up who is an author while at the same time supporting large, collaborative science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those authorship acknowledgements also serve to make something &quot;the official position of X study group&quot;. You often see that in vaccine trials and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, unless I was a named author on the paper, I likely wouldn't include it on my CV if I was anything but a very new investigator. But part of the point of these papers is that who is a named author is a rotating list. The Epidemiologists write their epidemiology papers, the clinicians write clinical papers, the lab people write lab papers, the biostatisticians write...you get the idea. So everyone publishes &lt;em&gt;named&lt;/em&gt; in their niche, but the group effort is acknowledged for the entire productive output of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T00:52:56.767" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T00:52:56.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3407" CreationDate="2012-09-25T00:44:55.213" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;All of the above&quot;... but maybe not wanting a book that started from a primer on Linear Algebra. (Probably the latter remark in the question is a result of a misunderstanding of some sort.) In short, all possible sources are used. I have little interest in connections to textbooks (which typically feel an obligation to include busywork exercises, etc. and express reverence to the founders of the subject by recapitulating &quot;troubles of the old times&quot; (which have been solved, often).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The operational point is that one &lt;em&gt;skims&lt;/em&gt; all these resources, looking for key points, rather than reading ploddingly, slavishly. I look to be &lt;em&gt;persuaded&lt;/em&gt;... or, equally interestingly, to be persuaded that the people doing the thing don't adequately understand it so as to be able to explain it simply. Quasi-ironically, the latter affords more possibilities for making genuine progress. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T00:44:55.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3407" CreationDate="2012-09-25T03:36:59.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer can best be understood in terms of the intended goal of the researcher making the switch. When moving to a new field, one is typically doing so because something they had heard/read/seen about that field was professionally interesting to them—i.e., they heard of an interesting research field or specific research problem—and they are considering trying to work on that problem themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that framework, our researcher will learn everything they can about the research question that they can, using whatever tools make the most sense in a given field of research. In neuroscience, I'd start with recent review articles and gradually move towards more and more specific journal papers. If the field is entirely new to me, I'd probably try to find a good overview online somewhere before reading the review papers. I might try books, but they take too long to read, and will likely contain far too much information that I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; care about and too little that I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;. If I had a colleague in the field I might ask them to point me to some good resources, and maybe discuss the field with me over coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you want to be versed in the field enough to (1) understand the problem that interested you and (2) be able to formulate your own related problem for you to work on. Any resources that can help you achieve that goal can and should be consulted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T03:36:59.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1312" CreationDate="2012-09-25T03:49:10.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the college I taught at, it was forbidden for anyone to reveal grades to anyone. The only people who had access to grades were the teachers who taught the course in question (I could see your scores only for classes I taught you) and counselors. Other teachers did not have access. Of course, some teachers did share grades informally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Vietnamese university I teach at now, grades are posted publicly and actually emailed to every other student in the same cohort and teachers freely share grades with each other because they are not considered private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it depends on the rules and regulations where you are in addition to the informal relationships around that institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T12:37:49.057" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T12:37:49.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-09-25T06:25:05.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, &lt;strong&gt;Google Sites&lt;/strong&gt; with a custom domain is the best solution here. Google sites gives 100MB space with unlimited bandwidth. Also, you can keep your pre-prints on Google docs and make them public. Additionally, you can use some widget like writing a blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Link to my website removed as it's no longer available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T21:01:01.303" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T21:01:01.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-09-25T07:11:16.343" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Publishing+a+Website+on+bitbucket&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bitbucket&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/272-github-pages&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt; allow you to publish a static website, which is handled under the same version control policies as everything else that you publish there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get no php/database support, but for academic web sites a static website generator such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://jekyllrb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jekyll&lt;/a&gt;, which they both use, is more than enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note added after reading @RebeccaJ.Stones &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/free-web-hosting-for-academics/3414#comment148880_3404&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; to another answer: github is currently blocked in China, while bitbucket &lt;a href=&quot;http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/?domain=bitbucket.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is not&lt;/a&gt;, so you may want to go for the latter, to make sure that everyone can access your website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T08:23:14.113" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T08:23:14.113" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2012-09-25T11:40:44.657" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.altervista.org/&quot;&gt;altervista.org&lt;/a&gt; and I am satisfied with it. They give me 500MB space and 10Gb bandwidth for free, an address of the form &lt;code&gt;yourname.altervista.org&lt;/code&gt;, run php 4 and 5 and a database service (with low performance in the free version), and allow a custom &lt;code&gt;.htaccess&lt;/code&gt;. They offer paid upgrades and the option of putting banners for a revenue, but you can say no without any disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They allow file upload only via (unencrypted) ftp, but you can automate that part easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not academics-specific, but as far as I can see neither is any other answer given up to now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T12:01:44.263" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T12:01:44.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3423" CreationDate="2012-09-25T15:57:00.170" Score="55" ViewCount="2795" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a new project I want to compile a literature review to determine the state of the art and possible approaches to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last time I adhered to the following scheme, but it felt very inefficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search scholar.google with relevant keywords. (3-20 papers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read this first set of papers and look for main publications most of these papers link to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use scholar and webofknowledge to collect all papers, which cite the main publications. (30-200 papers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go through all the papers ordered by assumed importance or newness and note used methods, results, strengths and weaknesses in a spreadsheet till running out of time or motivation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What system do you have to do literature review and what would you recommend me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[update]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After posting my question I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/50/am-i-reading-enough-of-the-scientific-literature-should-i-read-for-breadth-or-d?rq=1&quot;&gt;Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth?&lt;/a&gt; which talks, as I see it, more about how to read scientific publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more interested in advice on how to make sure one has found all the important publications and how to prioritize one's reading list. One advice I got some time ago was to start with new publications fist and then to work yourself back in time. Is this a good advice? How do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2698" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T18:03:48.163" Title="How can I do a literature review efficiently?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="37" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3421" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-25T17:12:55.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic literature or simply literature refers to the publications that carry reports of latest research findings in empirical or theoretical disciplines. More details here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific literature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T17:24:00.777" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T17:24:00.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3422" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-25T17:12:55.833" Score="0" Body="Publications that report latest research findings are collectively referred to as literature in academia." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T17:23:57.017" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T17:23:57.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3420" CreationDate="2012-09-25T18:22:04.177" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know that the relevant literature is mostly in one community, then the approach you've described works fairly well. It may be &quot;inefficient&quot; if there are lots of related papers, but (to use computer science jargon), it's efficient in the size of the output :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that finding a &lt;strong&gt;recent&lt;/strong&gt; survey helps a lot, because it taxonomizes the literature and provides many backward pointers (as well as forward pointers via papers that cite it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ultimately, the best test is if you start coming across the same papers in references over and over again. At that point you can feel a little more confident that you're converging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specific tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look carefully at &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; papers are cited. That provides clues on how to prioritize your searching. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to skim a paper really quickly to see its main contribution, which will indicate whether it merits further interest. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If certain researchers keep popping up, go to their websites to see if other papers might be relevant (or if they have a review article that Google search didn't reveal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at venues where papers are typically getting published, and look at recent issues of those journals/conferences to see if you've missed something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, going across communities is trickier, and often requires some luck, or the right keywords. Again, some knowledge of the researchers in the area helps: odds are that if the topic spans disciplines, at least some of the researchers involved also span disciplines and can point (via their work) to new paths to explore (see the above note about conferences)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T18:22:04.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3425" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:33:48.650" Score="17" ViewCount="3225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being somewhat familiar with referencing of academic papers as a source, it has struck me as odd why authors would leave out some date on their paper. The date could be the day the author completed the paper on or submit date or published date etc.&#xA;Certainly it would be of help to others who would want to reference their work?&#xA;So, does anyone know if there is a specific reason why certain authors leave out a date on their papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T14:54:41.483" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T08:27:26.063" Title="Why is the date left out of some academic papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:53:27.580" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is often a substantial delay between when the author finishes a paper and when the paper is actually published. The author may not be totally aware of the publishing date. This is why the authors do not include the date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date is generally found in/on the book/proceedings that the paper is published in. This is the date that should be used for referencing a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T19:53:27.580" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3427" CreationDate="2012-09-26T04:13:39.770" Score="55" ViewCount="37894" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T18:42:01.847" LastActivityDate="2021-02-06T18:58:47.957" Title="How old is too old for a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3426" CreationDate="2012-09-26T06:49:14.247" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would imagine most institutions would consider it discriminatory to judge on age, and in some places it would just be illegal. The real consideration is always whether the prospective candidate has a reasonable chance of success. Having appropriate education, or a reasonable substitute is of course the main criterion, though demonstrating research-level ability always helps (research publications etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have seen PhD candidates of all ages. There's some skew to the distribution across disciplines (business and history for example often have higher proportions of older doctoral candidates than, say, mathematics), but this seems to be more a socio-cultural thing than any institutional influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T06:49:14.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3433" CreationDate="2012-09-26T07:12:14.513" Score="8" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;In primary publications, such as journals or conference proceedings, it is a common practise not to use the title or designation of authors in the front-matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most compelling reasons for not including those information? Or in other words, are there any disadvantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T12:53:50.997" Title="What are the reasons for not using title and designation in publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2012-09-26T07:39:20.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re completion date: because updating it manually every time you modify a draft is time-consuming and error-prone, and TeX does not really offer an easy out-of-the-box automated solution (mainly because of its inherent limitations as a programming language).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a preprint repository such as arXiv, you have a submission date there, and that is good enough for most purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals list submission, acceptance and publication date, but that is a decision of the publisher, not of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T09:33:36.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:33:36.023" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3441" CreationDate="2012-09-26T08:26:20.020" Score="7" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is adjunct faculty's duty limited to teaching? Do they have any role in course design, grading, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the other responsibilities, as an adjunct faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T22:38:07.393" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T22:50:41.670" Title="What are the roles and responsibilities of an adjunct faculty?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3432" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:08:14.477" Score="14" ViewCount="809" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the “acknowledgments” section at the end of a paper, I currently have a sentence saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors thank Bob Johnson for discussions and insightful comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wonder: Bob’s full name is Robert Z. Johnson, he is a professor and a fellow of the Royal Society. Should his title be used? What about post-nominal letters? And middle initial? Finally, is it “Bob” or “Robert”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I initially went with “Bob Johnson”, because that’s how everyone calls him (heck, his academic webpage is title “Bob Johnson”!). But is that appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T09:33:27.753" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:33:27.753" Title="Should honorifics be included in acknowledgments?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3431" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:32:40.733" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, when in doubt, you should use the name of the author as it appears professionally. If the person in question publishes under a particular name, you should use that. The only exception is if you and the author have an existing relationship outside of this, in which case it is appropriate to use a less formal name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not normally need to include honorifics (&quot;Prof.&quot;, &quot;Dr.&quot;, etc.) unless specifically asked to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to the final point: if you have any questions about how someone should be credited in an acknowledgment, &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt;. They'll generally be more than cooperative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:32:40.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3428" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:38:33.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect to some extent it has to do with the wide range of available titles and honorifics out there. Moreover, this can lead to rather strange credits, such as the German system, where a title such as &quot;Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.rer.nat. Dr.(h.c.) Dr.(h.c.) Dr.(h.c.)&quot; is not as uncommon as it should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping to names makes things more egalitarian. If needed, you can always look up a person's credentials. (It also helps to keep things consistent, and easier to track authors and cite papers, if you don't have to deal with titles as well!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:38:33.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3428" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:55:26.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is that professional fields (e.g., engineering and medicine) title are used more frequently in everyday life and are included in publications (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine and IEEE) while in non-professional fields (e.g., math and biology) titles are used less frequently and not included in publications (e.g., Ann Math and Cell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:55:26.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3435" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:56:21.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Statement of Purpose (SoP) is a personal statement about oneself, professional interests, career path and future plans. It is the important part of the application that an admission committee would evaluate most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T09:57:49.193" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:57:49.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3436" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:56:21.213" Score="0" Body="The Statement of Purpose (SoP) is a personal statement about oneself, professional interests, career path and future plans. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T09:57:43.017" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:57:43.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3194" CreationDate="2012-09-26T11:32:04.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For each grant, or type of grant, there are rules specifying what it can be used for. You should follow these rules and, unless you ask us about a specific funding program or agency, it's impossible to give more specific advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T11:32:04.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2012-09-26T11:35:59.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are based in Europe, or would consider a position in Europe, I strongly recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccp5.ac.uk/mailing.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CCP5 mailing-lists&lt;/a&gt; for this purpose. I also second the advice about the Computational Chemistry List, these are the two places I post job openings for my own group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, all academic positions open are posted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobs.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt;, making it really invaluable for job search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some journals have a job listings section as well, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature jobs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Careers&lt;/a&gt;. The learned society of your field might also have job listing, as e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.rsc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Royal Society of Chemistry&lt;/a&gt; or the ACS’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistryjobs.acs.org/jobs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemistry jobs&lt;/a&gt; listing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T14:06:37.883" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T14:06:37.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3440" CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:04:04.023" Score="55" ViewCount="49815" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an easy way or existing tool to generate a historical chart with the occurrence of one or more user-specified keyword(s) (combinations) in academic publications, based on the words in the title and/or abstract of a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a almost-what-I-was-looking-for tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://ats.cs.ut.ee/u/kt/stuff/scholartrend/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Trend Miner&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems to be not working anymore, as it reports after hitting Go: &quot;&lt;em&gt;It seems that Google found out that we are a bot and started offering its CAPTCHA. Please, wait some hours and try again&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T15:12:53.860" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T22:57:23.167" Title="Easy way to see historical trend in keywords in publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:13:43.517" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have access to it, you can very easily do that with Thomson Reuters’ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webofknowledge.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; portal. Run any query you want, probably starting with the simplest one: &lt;code&gt;Topic=XXXX&lt;/code&gt;. Then, select “Analyze results” at the &lt;strike&gt;top-right&lt;/strike&gt; bottom-left of the results list, and sort them by year of publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dXUO4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="212" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T15:11:44.307" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T15:11:44.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3430" CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:39:44.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a wide range of people called adjunct faculty.  For example, it may include working professionals in the field who serve as part-time faculty (this is common in law and architecture, and I've seen it with industrial researchers in computer science).  Depending on the circumstances, this sort of adjunct may be treated much like the other faculty in the department, except for being part time.  However, I assume you are talking about the most common use of the term &quot;adjunct&quot;, at least in the US, namely low-paid, low-status faculty typically teaching part time on temporary contracts.  (They may be working full time overall, but only part time at any given institution, so the universities can avoid paying benefits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this sort of adjunct, it really depends on the details of the contract, and it may vary between universities, as well as depending on issues such as whether any of the courses are online.  A typical arrangement will include some amount of course design (at least at the level of creating a syllabus), lecturing, grading, and office hours.  Typically there is no committee work or other service and no research duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T12:39:44.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3428" CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:53:50.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see this as a specific issue about titles, but rather a broader issue about how much information to provide about authors.  In principle, there's an enormous amount one could say: for example, one could append complete CVs to the end of each published paper.  Clearly, it's important to draw the line somewhere.  The journals I'm familiar with typically do this by focusing on two issues: identifying authors unambiguously (people sometimes share the same name, but almost never the same name and department), and providing contact information.  Titles and credentials bring up the question of status, and that's tricky because there are many different signs of status.  Journals occasionally designate status awarded by the publisher (e.g., IEEE fellows or members of the US National Academy of Sciences), but it can be tricky to go much broader than that, since you need a good explanation of why you are publicly recognizing one person's particular type of status and not another's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option I've occasionally seen is to include a brief bio (typically one paragraph) of each author at the end of the paper.  This is a convenient way to learn more about the authors, and it lets them each highlight whatever information they think is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T12:53:50.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3426" CreationDate="2012-09-26T13:08:10.073" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the university where I work, there are no limitations or guidelines on appropriate age ranges for a Ph.D., and I'm sure this is true throught the US since age discrmination would be illegal.  In practice, we see the opposite problem regarding age: the application rate in mathematics is very low after the mid-20's, although we would be happy to consider older candidates.  It may be that they just aren't interested in applying (if you have a family or are used to earning a high salary, then going back to school may be difficult or unappealing; furthermore, everyone is exposed to enough math in childhood that perhaps relatively few people first discover a fascination with it at an older age).  However, I fear that there are people who would really like to go back and get a Ph.D., but who do not apply, because they believe they are too old to do mathematics research or because they do not believe they will be admitted.  That would be sad, since I've known several extremely successful mathematicians who entered grad school well beyond the typical age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T13:08:10.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2012-09-26T13:32:25.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have a look at the arXiv cultoromics website at &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.culturomics.org&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.culturomics.org&lt;/a&gt;, which however searches in articles on the arXiv. Depending on your field of interest, this may or may not be good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T13:32:25.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3447" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:34:16.337" Score="21" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I found a paper that has a number of typographical errors, esp in equations. Should one notify the authors or the publishers on such issues? How do the approach change if the article is somewhat aged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should/can one write a 'Comments on ...' article? How different is an Errata and a 'Comments on ...' article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T00:01:00.837" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T00:01:00.837" Title="What should/can I do on finding an error in a published article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3451" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:49:42.970" Score="16" ViewCount="21593" Body="&lt;p&gt;While looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/176.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; paper&lt;/a&gt;, I noticed that a few of the authors have a lot of affiliations: the first author has five affiliations, including four different departments or programs at Harvard University, and the last author has seven, all of them at Harvard University:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g445e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider it immoderate, as I cannot imagine that each author has such strong links to so many workplaces (imagine what their typical week looks like, changing desk every two hours!). However, it was published in a highly-respected (and highly-watched) journal, meaning it probably is an accepted practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the criterion for affiliations? How can one end up with 7 different departments at the same university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T22:57:23.933" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:10:16.503" Title="What is the criterion to include an institution as “affiliation” in an author list?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3445" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:57:46.100" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, alert the authors to the issues. Wait to see how they respond, or do not respond. But in all cases, they should be the first you write to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the issues do not severely impact the correctness of the work or its utility, stop there. It's probably not worth making a fuss about something most readers will either not use, or can easily correct themselves. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you publish something on the topic yourself, especially if you build on the authors' equations or otherwise use them, you should make a note of the issue in your article.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, if you believe the issue is important and/or the equations are widely used, you should contact the journal's editor and ask for guidance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Errata are “authored” by the original authors. Publisher's corrections also exist, when the responsibility for the issue (typo in equation, misprint in figures, etc.) is that of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T07:25:28.890" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T07:25:28.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3446" CreationDate="2012-09-26T17:42:28.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A department is paying something? If YES then the name is on the paper, it's that simple. I think that, one day, I will have to put the name of the coffee shop close to my home since it participated a lot in enhancing the quality of my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T17:42:28.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3445" CreationDate="2012-09-26T18:08:25.950" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question, an errata is always (almost always?) written by the authors of the article, whereas a &quot;Comments on...&quot; article can be written by anyone.  However, to write a &quot;Comments on...&quot; article, which in my experience are rare, you must have a substantial new idea.  It's not enough to say &quot;I found typos in the original paper&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;strong&gt;original paper contains a proof that is incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;you have a proof that is correct&lt;/strong&gt;, that could be enough for a paper.  In this case you probably also need to provide counterexamples to the original proof.  Similarly, if you can explain why the original data analysis was seriously flawed, and you have correct data analysis, that might be a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T18:08:25.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3453" CreationDate="2012-09-26T20:50:34.847" Score="20" ViewCount="5360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality with timeliness is among the most important criteria for a paper to get published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many a times when we are reviewing a paper, we are faced with dilemma as to how much of it is original, how much of it is based on another paper, and how much of it is just repetition in a slightly different context. Also, at times papers cater to interdisciplinary and cross-area and it may seem that the idea is original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What preparation does the reviewer need to have in order to review a paper justly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you judge the originality of a paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T00:20:53.163" LastActivityDate="2018-03-18T05:34:44.497" Title="How to review a paper for originality?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3446" CreationDate="2012-09-26T21:51:10.760" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general criterion is that you must list your primary affiliation or any institution that is providing essential funding/resources, and you may list any institution that has given you a relevant appointment (which could be called many things if it's not a real job: affiliate faculty, courtesy appointment, visiting position, consulting faculty, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, the way it works is that some people collect enormous numbers of affiliations through great popularity: every department wants these people to come and interact, so they all offer appointments.  (When this happens, it's hard for the popular people to turn down the invitations, out of fear of causing offense, so they end up with a lot of affiliations.)  Other people deliberately try to accumulate as many appointments as possible, to show off how popular or interdisciplinary they are, and they achieve this by going around asking for appointments.  (And they often get them, since even if you aren't excited about someone, it's easier to give them a meaningless affiliation than to turn down their request.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net result is that there's no way of knowing what it means in any given case, without more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T21:51:10.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3420" CreationDate="2012-09-26T22:26:36.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;More of a tip than a full answer but worth adding non-the-less: try starting off by reading 'review articles' rather than 'papers of original research'. &#xA;The advantages of doing this are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They provide an historical overview in most cases, useful for getting context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are more accessible (in terms of readability)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are longer, containing more information, with more thorough explanations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They tend to be less biased &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T22:26:36.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3450" CreationDate="2012-09-27T05:00:05.753" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've reviewed more than 50 papers, and my preparation to review them has varied widely.  At least a few of them have drawn heavily on papers I've written.  Generally, these are extending my results.  Typically, I ask myself: &lt;strong&gt;What does this paper add?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it something I would have thought of easily or not?  If yes, why didn't I include it in my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, I've also &lt;strong&gt;reviewed some papers that I was not well prepared for.&lt;/strong&gt;  They were in my general field, but in a subarea that I hadn't worked in.  &lt;strong&gt;These papers took a lot more work.&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Up to 10x as long&lt;/strong&gt; for me to review as a paper in an area where I'm very familiar.)  For papers in an area that's new to me, I often have to look up (and skim) at least a few of the references from the introduction to judge whether the paper is original.  &lt;strong&gt;Originality has at least two very different levels&lt;/strong&gt;.  The easier one to achieve is: (1) this &lt;strong&gt;result is new&lt;/strong&gt;, and doesn't follow simply from anything previous.  The much harder one is, (2) this &lt;strong&gt;technique is fundamentally new&lt;/strong&gt; and produces interesting results.  If the results are interesting, most journals are happy to publish articles of type (1).  Articles of type (2) are much rarer, and can potentially open entire new fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dnr:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preparation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: you need to &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; know the subarea well &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; be willing to read a lot to learn about it.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Originality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: What papers does it draw on? How likely is it that a reader of those would be able to write this paper?  Answering this question may require you to read a lot of background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T13:40:47.403" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T13:40:47.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2012-09-27T05:40:09.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that these book buyers are legitimate from personal experience, as a student, from Kerala, India. May be the perspective is different in different parts of the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a lot of second-hand book sellers and street vendors, selling used academic books. I don't think they are making much profits by selling them. They acquire books at no price or at very low prices directly from the users, students or faculties, and sell at one-fourth or even one-sixth of the original price of the book. They manage to do so, because they do not pay taxes to the government (either they are not bound to pay or they simply do not pay). They usually do not have permanent shop for selling the books. Sometimes they acquire books in exchange; the customer exchanges some of their books with the seller, for more useful ones, without money transaction. This is the kind of &lt;em&gt;recycling&lt;/em&gt; that happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I argue that they are benefiting the academia is; they market their books, saying that they are used by scholars and has lots of annotations, side markings, simple explanations on the margin etc. I have even heard one fellow saying 'this book was used by a famous rank holder of the university'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the demand of used books is large, they are actually fulfilling the customer interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for giving away of the books vary; having an extra copy, or the book is too old (some like new books), or the area of interest has changed or one has moved to higher class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T05:40:09.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-27T12:58:20.970" Score="24" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;After posting a preprint on arXiv, or after an accepted paper appears online, how to bring other's attention to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Unless one is already a big name in one's field, or one proves a long-standing and well-known open problem, I doubt that just waiting for things to happen is going to suffice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure one can give talks or present posters on relevant conferences. But are there any other methods of bringing it to the attention of others who might be interested and for whom it may be beneficial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is both about &quot;classical&quot; methods and any relevant Internet tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T19:37:15.793" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T14:42:05.707" Title="Advertising one's publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3456" CreationDate="2012-09-27T13:27:42.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would say &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. Poster sessions and talks are the main way of sharing your research. You can try contacting the authors of any widely-known blogs in your field, and you can try sharing your research with any collaborators from other projects (i.e., ones who don't already know about it), but anything beyond that and you're venturing in the realm of being annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's one major exception that I can think of, and that's in the case where you're publishing a research analysis technique. In that situation, you can publish a toolkit that uses your method, and that may help speed up adoption of the technique. For example, in neuroscience, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/&quot;&gt;SPM&lt;/a&gt; fMRI data analysis toolbox is very widely used. The group behind the toolbox came out a few years ago with a new set of techniques—DCM—for mapping brain activity, and incorporated those techniques into the toolbox. Because of this, many researchers now use this analysis tool. (Of course, this also means that you'll have many researchers using the tool incorrectly, and you may have to publish &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~rmoran/Journals/TenRules_NeuroImage_49_3099_2010.pdf&quot;&gt;instructions on when and when not to apply the technique&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JeffE pointed out another exception; if you're building on the results of another research group, it is definitely acceptable to contact the researchers in that group to let them know if your work. They're the most likely people to be interested in your work, and (arguably) they are in a position to give you the most useful feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T15:48:32.133" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T15:48:32.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-27T13:41:08.143" Score="3" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to exist many bibliographic reference styles and many universities have their own guidelines too. I wonder, whether there exist any universal guidelines for formatting bibliographic references in publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2706" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T13:29:04.737" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T18:52:28.537" Title="Are there any universal rules for bibliographic references recognised all over the world?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3456" CreationDate="2012-09-27T14:28:43.710" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eykanal is basically right, but there's a fine line between networking and being annoying.  There are plenty of circumstances where sending email to more famous/senior colleagues is perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have a professional relationship with someone, it's perfectly fine to write a quick email saying something like &quot;Thanks for the great lunch conversation we had at [conference] last month.  You might be interested in this paper I just wrote.&quot;  Yes, a recent lunch conversation counts as a professional relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; already have a professional relationship, then you should probably limit emails to a few key people who have a &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; connection to your paper -- either you build on one of their results (which your paper cites), or improve one of their results (which your paper cites), or they've written papers on closely related topics (which your paper cites) .  But within those constraints, emailing your paper is perfectly fine; everyone likes to hear that &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; work is useful and interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do send your paper out, be sure to welcome comments, but don't &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; a response from anyone.  That silence from Famous Person On The Internet doesn't &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; mean that they aren't reading your paper; they're probably just really busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T14:28:43.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:02:46.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no truly &quot;universal&quot; system—that's why packages like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endnote.com&quot;&gt;EndNote&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org&quot;&gt;BibTex&lt;/a&gt; both come with hundreds or even thousands of different bibliography styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are some common approaches—the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Modern Language Association&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sac.sa.edu.au/Library/Library/Bibliography/bibliography.htm&quot;&gt;Harvard&lt;/a&gt; formats are quite common in the humanities. The sciences have more widely spread systems, but I think the most common I've seen is the &quot;abbreviated style,&quot; containing authors, journal, volume and page info and year. (There are some variations within that style based on different publishers, and some publishers, like ACS, are now starting to take advantage of electronic distribution by including full titles.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T16:02:46.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:22:34.163" Score="10" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my PhD last year and now work in industry. Nevertheless I've continued to work privately on my MSc and PhD thesis' work and lately I've been getting stellar results on the work I did for my MSc thesis. (My thesis work is unrelated to my current employment.) The results have undeniable commercial potential which I hope to explore; yet perhaps because I've spent so much time in academia, I have the urge to publish. I'm keenly aware that publishing has the risk of ceding my competitive advantage to potential competitors, yet I know of a couple of academics who both publish state of the art research in the area of their growing businesses. Therefore I suspect that under some circumstances it is possible to be involved in enterprise and publish, although I'm not sure what those circumstances are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue. When is it okay to publish when doing enterprise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: my question is not about whether it is okay to publish if outside academia. Rather, it's about when its okay to publish research that is being seriously considered for a (future) commercial product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="900" LastEditorUserId="900" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T20:49:17.747" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T22:34:31.407" Title="When is it okay to publish when doing enterprise?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3465" CreationDate="2012-09-27T19:54:43.740" Score="11" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though fewer and fewer scientists actually read dead-tree editions of journals, being featured on a journal cover is still a nice way to highlight your paper to a large community, and is usually considered a great recognition of one’s work. So, how does one go about getting on a journal cover? If you feel you have extraordinarily attractive graphics, do you submit them for consideration to the editor? Or is it useless, and should only be done when explicitly asked (or suggested) by the editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T10:13:12.370" Title="How does one try to make a journal cover?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3462" CreationDate="2012-09-27T20:40:46.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the journals (at least with my very recent publication with Nature Publishing Group) ask for a potential journal cover upon notification of your manuscript's acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2709" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T20:40:46.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2012-09-27T22:34:31.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The results have undeniable commercial potential&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't mention &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; industry you work in, but within the industries I'm familiar with, companies own &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; that comes out of their employees' brains.  By default, your ideas, techniques, code, and results are almost certainly the property of your employer—even if you developed them at home on your own time using your own personal equipment— and they may not be inclined to let &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; exploit them commercially.  Read your employment contract &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T22:34:31.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3462" CreationDate="2012-09-28T00:33:03.670" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed the editor and suggested I had a beautiful and relevant graphic for a special issue. That worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Image attached. Also, note that I did go about it incorrectly, but it worked anyway. I emailed the editors when I submitted my paper. I should have waited until it was accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FbetZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cover Image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T04:41:04.027" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T04:41:04.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3469" CreationDate="2012-09-28T04:14:27.943" Score="14" ViewCount="8706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I've done some research as part of a (small) group, and this research has been published as a paper with all group members listed as co-authors. Then I go to give a presentation on this research at a conference, but I prepare the presentation and the writeup for the conference proceedings mostly on my own. Is it normal to list all the co-authors of the original paper as authors of the conference proceedings? If not, is there a particular way I should credit them in the proceedings, e.g. a footnote, or in the acknowledgments section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the obvious answer is probably going to be that I should ask my co-authors how to credit them, and I will do that, but what I would really like to know is the most common practice, if there is one. (My field is particle physics)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T14:13:46.577" Title="How should I credit co-authors of a paper in conference proceedings I prepared myself?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="782" CreationDate="2012-09-28T04:25:55.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be truthful in all your professional endeavors.  Lying is unethical and unprofessional behavior which could be grounds for dismissal or worse.  I say this as a blanket statement and stand by it, but obviously ethical standards and practices vary across different careers and walks of life.  In academia, the feeling that lying is unethical bordering on repugnant is very strong.  One should avoid it at all costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you use the word &quot;bluffing&quot; is slightly distressing and shows that you may not yet have internalized the ethics of academia.  &lt;strong&gt;Bluffing&lt;/strong&gt; is something you do in poker.  More generally, it is a game theoretic strategy designed to minimize information given to one's opponent.  Saying that you've been accepted by a program when you have not been -- or, especially, when you have been rejected there -- is not bluffing, it's &lt;strong&gt;lying&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who feel strongly that lying is unethical also well understand that you are not obligated to give full information just because it is asked for.  In some social situations an innocuous lie is more acceptable than a refusal to answer a question, but academia is not one of them.  If someone asks you for information about your applications to other programs and you have any concerns that it may not be to your advantage to give out this information, simply say something like, &quot;I'm sorry, but I'm really not comfortable discussing that right now.&quot;  As above, sometimes it feels impolite not to answer a question, so it is worth practicing a bit so as to be able to do it in a relatively graceful way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the question of whether different academic programs communicate with each other enough to make it a realistic chance that someone lying in this way will be caught out: absolutely yes.  Academic circles are small, are populated by the same people for years and years on end, and almost invariably tend to contain at least a few people who are ridiculously -- almost preternaturally -- in the know about all kinds of personnel decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T04:25:55.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3466" CreationDate="2012-09-28T04:30:10.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most common practise, I think, is to add them as co-authors in the write-up for proceedings, while in the presentation, mention them in the acknowledgements slide at the end of presentation. The title slide may include your name alone and  mentioning your group's name is a better practise. Some also highlight PI's name in the title slide of the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proceedings write-up, probably will get expanded later and takes the form of a journal article. So giving credits to all those worked in the problem should be properly attributed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T04:30:10.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3466" CreationDate="2012-09-28T05:29:58.003" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practice I'm most familiar with is that a coauthor is a coauthor is a coauthor.  Anyone listed as a coauthor on the title page of the paper should be listed on the title slide of any talk about the paper, and explicitly acknowledged (&quot;This is joint work with...&quot;) when the talk &lt;em&gt;begins&lt;/em&gt;.  Whether any of your coauthors helped you prepare your slides or the proceedings abstract is none of the audience's business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this attitude is clearly specific to my field, where papers only rarely have more than three authors.  It might not scale so well in fields (like particle physics?) where a &quot;small&quot; group may have 100 members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T05:29:58.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3466" CreationDate="2012-09-28T14:13:46.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key distinction is whether the conference presentation and writeup are viewed as a presentation of new results or as an exposition of work published elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are publishing a research paper, the criterion for coauthorship is making an important intellectual contribution to the research.  Everyone in this category must be listed, regardless of their role in the actual writing, unless they specifically decline coauthorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is no need to include these coauthors on further expositions: if you go on to write a survey or review article on this topic, then the authorship should reflect who actually worked on the article, rather than who did the original research.  (The same way if you wrote an exposition of some of Einstein's work, that wouldn't make him a posthumous coauthor.)  Of course, the exposition needs to give clear credit for the original research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The border between these cases can get a little blurry.  If something could be viewed as a research announcement (where experts would be learning of the work for the first time), then I'd say that puts it in the research category, rather than exposition, even if the primary publication appears elsewhere.  The basic issue is whether you could cause confusion.  If your writeup may be cited as a research contribution, then you should list your coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a field like CS, where conferences are a primary venue for announcing research results, then you definitely need to list your collaborators as coauthors on the presentation and writeup.  In math, things are a little different: some conferences publish refereed research papers in their proceedings, but there are also other possibilities.  Some places, like Oberwolfach, ask speakers to write up an account of their talk, but this is not considered a research publication at all.  In a case like that, there's probably no need to have formal coauthors, as long as the text itself is perfectly clear about referring to the research publication and author list.  (When collaborators of mine have written things like this, I've been happy not to be listed as a coauthor on the resulting document, since that way I don't have to worry about the writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most important rule is not to offend your collaborators.  Leaving out someone who feels they should be included is worse than including someone you don't think is necessary, so it's always best to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T14:13:46.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3471" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-28T14:51:47.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Illustrations, visualizations, graphs, etc. play a major role in academic publications.  This tag addresses queries related to proper use, format, and suitability of graphical representations in academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-09-28T14:54:40.413" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T14:54:40.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3472" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-28T14:51:47.853" Score="0" Body="Queries related to graphical representations in academic publications, documents, or websites." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T00:44:59.430" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T00:44:59.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-28T16:03:51.863" Score="14" ViewCount="8133" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the etiquette for addressing senior research staff and faculty members in an academic setting in the USA? A postdoc is no longer a student but at the same time he or she is (in general) not at the level of senior research engineers/scientists and professors. How should he or she address them (&quot;FirstName&quot; or &quot;Dr. LastName&quot;) so that proper respect as well as confidence in one's &quot;above-the-students&quot; position is maintained?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it depend on the University, Lab group or the level of experience one has acquired before joining the present postdoc position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T09:18:47.997" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T13:03:43.497" Title="How should a postdoc address senior research staff and faculty members in the USA?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3176" CreationDate="2012-09-28T16:32:06.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;CrowdCompass develops native mobile apps specifically for conferences. A native app works perfectly for conferences because it doesn't depend on the Internet to work. Our content management system (the backend) is easy-to-use and lets you make updates any time. All of these updates happen in the background so it doesn't affect the user's experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app shows the contact info for all the attendees who download the app. This lets attendees start networking with each other before the event even starts, and it makes it easier to stay in touch when the event is over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attendees can also use the app to navigate the conference area and find speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors more easily. They can use the map feature to find local attractions (which is especially nice if they're not from the area). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top 3 features for attendees and organizers are listed here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crowdcompass.com/blog/best-mobile-app-features-for-attendees/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crowdcompass.com/blog/best-mobile-app-features-for-attendees/&lt;/a&gt;. We've got a lot more resources if you want to do some mobile research. Just check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crowdcompass.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crowdcompass.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T16:32:06.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-28T22:25:06.667" Score="10" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about two possible career paths, for which I was unable to come up a better title. Let me explain what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Path 1, Working in an area: By this I mean, &lt;em&gt;making a career&lt;/em&gt; by adding to the knowledge of a field of study. This may include sorting out open questions in that field or identifying new issues or pushing the boundaries of existing knowledge. This typically involves having a larger perspective and understanding of the field and its relevance to the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Path 2, Working on problems: By this I mean &lt;em&gt;making a career&lt;/em&gt; by solving a series of specific challenging problems not necessarily belonging to a common field of study. Here one only attempts to understand enough about the problem at hand to solve the problem, but does not show an interest in developing the area as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working in an area requires one to have a broader vision, scholarship and commitment to the development of the area. Working on problems does not involve commitment, but requires one to repeated invest oneself in learning about a new area. By working in an area one can encounter a degree of monotony. By working on problems, one can potentially find new challenges at every juncture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: career wise, what is a better option? Specifically, which of these kind of academics are more valued by the community? What, if any, are pitfalls of these paths?&#xA;Meta question: is path 2 a path at all or do all academics eventually settle into path 1 after spending some time on path 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I guess the key difference between the two paths is that path 1 leads one to become an &quot;expert&quot; with extensive knowledge in a particular area. Path 2 exposes one to a variety of problem situations and makes one a better problem solver, though it may not make one an expert in any field. For the purpose of this question, you may take the area to be a well studied field such as, say integer programming, which has some long-standing open problems, but is not necessarily so young that it allows for a variety of research opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1417" LastEditorUserId="1417" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T04:49:20.143" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T07:41:53.073" Title="Work in an area or work on problems?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2012-09-29T03:26:37.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing anything about the specific area, I'd say that you've set up a false dichotomy. I don't know if anyone ever consciously does one or the other exclusively. Sometimes you work bottom up (i.e path 2 -&gt; path 1), and sometimes you work top down (path 1 -&gt; path 2). Both these &quot;paths&quot; should be dimensions of your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T03:26:37.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2012-09-29T04:17:50.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading the paths 1 and 2 as follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Path 1 : The culmination of working on one problem (either success or failure) leads to another which leads to yet another and it goes on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Path 2 : Number of problems on a field that are not related to each other and are stand alone; do not depend on or influence the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Suresh has already pointed out the answer might heavily depend on the field. But trying to answer in general, it is better to follow the Path 1, as it is mentioned in the question itself, it is focussed on a long term goal and elevated vision. Academia always long for broader vision and greater commitments. An employer would love to hire some one who has a concrete long term goal and enthusiasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Path 2 is not a way that &lt;code&gt;does not involve commitment&lt;/code&gt;, it is more focussed on short term goals and narrowed vision, such as getting a degree, finishing a project etc. This also involve commitment, but not on a large scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus brings up the question, &quot;Why we want to learn or explore?&quot; Irrespective of the field, this seems to be the essence of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T04:17:50.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2012-09-29T15:16:03.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Areas are not well-defined, they change over time and even if a dean know when the boarder between some fields, Nature does not (as they are mostly communities emerging from common scientific interests). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, confining oneself to a given area may end up into working in a exhausted subfield that people no longer care about (and missing new opportunities). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when it comes to your visibility and prestige, other researchers will care only about your skills and achievements in a given field. But again, there is also a question of how much the disciplines overlap, both in terms of communities and methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here there is a trade-off between being recognized (and prepared) well in one field vs less but in more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes &quot;is it better to focus on solving particular problems or learning general stuff&quot;, the question is a bit different from your career-related one. Opinions may vary (and it may be a matter of one's personal philosophy), but for research_ output (not e.g. &lt;em&gt;teaching&lt;/em&gt; skills) the first one is the only the one that counts. And if someone is skilled and committed, the later comes anyway (and the converse is not true).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Anyway, it's the reason why during PhD it is (arguably) advisable to focus on solving problems (and learning stuff needed to solve them), not on spending hours on general courses.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T15:16:03.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3482" CreationDate="2012-09-29T15:45:48.760" Score="11" ViewCount="875" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is &quot;really cool&quot;, for example, when describing a colliding black hole simulation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T05:08:48.683" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T05:08:48.683" Title="Unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is &quot;really cool&quot;?" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3479" CreationDate="2012-09-29T16:03:37.730" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds unprofessional and unscientific. Imagine also your readers in 30 years, what will they think? They may not even take the paper seriously. Indeed, current potential readers may not take the paper seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you think if you read an old paper that describes a black hole simulation as &quot;groovy&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T16:36:45.883" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T16:36:45.883" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3483" CreationDate="2012-09-29T17:29:48.110" Score="11" ViewCount="1057" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the point in a &quot;list of figures&quot; in the following cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ph.D. thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic (text)books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T16:52:26.057" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:04:03.707" Title="What's the point in a &quot;list of figures&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3479" CreationDate="2012-09-29T17:30:40.740" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Dave's answer, I'd say that in general, subjectivity is not very professional when writing academic papers. The point is to convince the reader by presenting only objective argument. Somehow, if I read a paper with something like &quot;it's cool, it's amazing, that's the best, etc&quot;, then I might think that the author just ran out of objective arguments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T17:30:40.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2012-09-29T18:02:37.083" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A list of figures allows one to find the figures contained in a book. This could be useful, for example, when you want to quickly find one of the figures you recall seeing in the book, but you can't remember which page it is on. You could also use the list of figures when buying the book to see whether it has lots of figures or only a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T18:48:32.877" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T18:48:32.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3473" CreationDate="2012-09-29T19:09:14.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Address senior research staff and faculty members in the same way that they do with you. You're &quot;Robert Doe&quot; and full profs are calling you &quot;Bob&quot;? Then you can do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you are the senior, you are supposed to tell explicitly what is the tradition, in order to avoid embarrassment for juniors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T19:09:14.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3473" CreationDate="2012-09-30T00:44:20.560" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a grad student, I got into the habit of always referring to everyone as &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Doctor&quot;. The theory was that no one would be insulted by your referring to them as &quot;Professor&quot;, whereas some folks would be insulted if you called them by their first name. This worked very well; the few people who wanted to be on a first-name basis always told me so at our first meeting (&quot;Oh, please, call me Bob&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T00:44:20.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3473" CreationDate="2012-09-30T01:14:59.303" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a grad student, my initial preference was to call faculty &quot;Doctor&quot; or &quot;Professor&quot;.  At some point (about halfway through, I think) one professor said to me: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;If you want them to see you as a peer, you should call the professors the same way that they call each other.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  At my university, all the professors called each other by their first names (it didn't matter if they were assistant, associate, or full).  Since I planned to make a career in academia, I &lt;em&gt;really did want to be viewed as a peer&lt;/em&gt;.  So I started calling them by their first name (and no one ever told me to do otherwise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T01:14:59.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3489" CreationDate="2012-09-30T05:13:20.303" Score="6" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a master's thesis the author provided a seemingly incorrect citation. ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-01182002-134625/unrestricted/ThesisB.pdf&quot;&gt;Link to paper&lt;/a&gt; citation 4) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information is obviously correct but in the cited paper I couldn't find any reference to the information he cited. Is it ok to cite him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2727" LastEditorUserId="2727" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T05:28:56.637" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T10:04:44.463" Title="Is it ok to cite someone who provided a bad citation for correct information?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3488" CreationDate="2012-09-30T06:28:07.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to refer to his work (i.e. his results, discussion or conclusions), you should cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a reference to the particular piece of information he cited (the sentences describing plasma etching before his call to ref. 4), then you should find a direct source: either a textbook or review on the topic. This would be much better than a research article (or thesis), especially one badly sourced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T06:28:07.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-30T07:23:32.770" Score="13" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When doing a literature review at the start of a process of addressing a specific problem, it's easy to miss related material, if I don't know that it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm looking at a particular electricity-generation  problem relating to pollution costs (in a very broad sense), of combustion and cooling: there might be relevant papers about,  say, biodiversity and temperature in river water, that I don't know about, and haven't made the connection to, and it appears in a journal well outside the field of electricity generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, within the literature, there will be authors whose papers span those fields: work on valuing biodiversity (so that loss of biodiversity represents a quantifiable cost), and the effect on biodiversity of changing river temperatures (so that using river-cooling in electricity generation, has a deleterious effect on river biodiversity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The proposition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be possible, by doing an analysis of keywords, of co-authorship, and of journals, to automate the building of a network of subjects and of authors, to map out interconnections between specific narrow subject areas, and find the people that work in those interconnecting areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a network map of subjects and authors, anywhere? Not just for this specific example, but one that spans a very wide range of literature (e.g. Engineering, Science, Technology, Economics). Ideally, one that gets updated frequently, based on ongoing publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I hope the example above illustrates, it has to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easy to interrogate it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very detailed on subject linkages; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide links between people as well as subjects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T14:48:56.580" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T14:48:56.580" Title="Is there a network map of subjects and how they connect with each other?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;network-analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3473" CreationDate="2012-09-30T09:59:33.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student I was lucky and faculty in my program tended to be clear about what they wanted to be called. Since everyone but the medics wanted to be called by first name, I came to the conclusion that faculty should expect to be called by the first name unless they say otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was one awkward Professor in my grad program who never made it clear what he wanted to be called. Soon after deciding to call him by his first name (Lou) I heard my advisor, who has known Lou for 40 years, called him Louis. At that point I decided if my advisor calls him Louis I better stick with Professor. About two weeks later another colleague was talking to me about how he and Louie used to play football together. At my next interaction with Lou I related the stories and asked him what he wanted to be called. He thought Lou would be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T09:59:33.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3488" CreationDate="2012-09-30T10:04:44.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I do not like citing non-peer reviewed sources. Further, it sounds like you ware using it as a secondary source, which I like citing even less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T10:04:44.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3462" CreationDate="2012-09-30T10:13:12.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay the color charges. A lot of journal covers come directly from figures in an article. If you go out of your way to avoid paying color charges, you will never have a cover worthy figure. You will, however, have a lot more grant money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T10:13:12.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3500" CreationDate="2012-09-30T14:26:29.590" Score="4" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought PhD as being the main post grad research path if you wanted to get funded and that Msc was the way to get yourself ready for a PhD. I recently became aware that not all master courses are taught and some are research based, so I am wondering whether it's normal to do a research Msc (as opposed to a taught one) and if so, are there any advantages to this over just going for a PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1556" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T08:37:39.187" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T08:37:39.187" Title="How does a research masters work?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3506" CreationDate="2012-09-30T14:54:22.390" Score="6" ViewCount="1496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Physics undergrad aspiring to pursue mathematical physics(string theory etc) as a future career. How much importance is given to your GPA by grad schools in the US or Europe for admitting students to PhD programs. A comprehensive account of the importance given by universities of different tiers would be appreciated. Example what are the guidelines followed by unis like harvard, princeton in comparision to something like texas, rochester, UCLA, etc. Also, what GPA is considered 'good' by a uni like princeton compared to the lower tier universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T18:13:13.520" Title="How essential is your GPA for admissions to PhD programs to US universities in Theoretical Physics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3498" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:11:44.720" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advantages of doing a research-based Masters (e.g an MRes) before the PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn research skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explore your subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refine your research question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get a big chunk of your literature review done in a structured setting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work out if taking a PhD is really for you - whether you've got the aptitude and the interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T15:11:44.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3529" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:14:56.160" Score="75" ViewCount="45328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the recent question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3481/whats-the-point-in-a-list-of-figures&quot;&gt;list of figures&lt;/a&gt;: what is the point of ending your introduction with a paragraph saying &quot;The paper is structured as follows: in Section 1 we do BLAH, then in Section 2 we do BLAH, we move on with BLAH in Section 3, and conclude with Section 4 in which we do BLAH&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many papers in my area do it, my coauthors add them to our papers, and I kinda took the habit, too, but I never really understood why. It looks like a poor man's table of contents. After all, we already write what we plan to do in the introduction, and remind the reader in the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T13:52:20.577" Title="What's the point in &quot;the paper is structured as follows&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="49" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3501" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:20:48.713" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is really the obvious one: it is to alert the reader to the structure of the paper. In addition to this part in the introduction, the paper should also, every now and again, tell the reader where they are in the overall story of the paper. This makes it easier for the reader to read the paper, by giving them the global picture and pointing out from time to time where they are in the global picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A table of contents would be overkill (and it would take up too much space).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T15:20:48.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3505" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:22:45.953" Score="17" ViewCount="30718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a physics undergrad, and plan to pursue a PhD in mathematical physics (string theory?). I have heard from a lot of people, who have personally seen the research scenario at universities both in the US and Europe, that it is much easier to get a PhD from a European university, that it takes about 3-4 years in a good university in Europe, while more than 5 years in American universities. Another thing I have been told is that in Europe you get your PhD after 4 years atmost by default, even if you have not done any original research. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorDisplayName="user2734" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T15:42:41.503" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T15:47:28.747" Title="Is it true that it is easier to obtain a PhD in Europe than the US on average?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:47:28.183" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The duration between US and Europe are not usually the same, mostly because in the US, you only need to have a Bachelor degree to enrol for a PhD (and you can get a Master during the PhD), while in Europe, it's usually required to have a Master degree before enrolling for a PhD. Since it can take two years to get a Master, you also need about 5 years after your Bachelor to get your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if you always get your PhD after a number of years, no matter what, but the point in Europe is that a PhD is not necessarily an advantage on the market, with respect to a Master (at least, that's true in France), and is mostly required for working in Academia. In Academia, nobody cares that you have a PhD (because, well, almost everybody got one), so your publications, references, contacts, your CV in general will make a difference, not your degree. Hence, it might be possible that you can get the degree after a while, knowing that it's useless anyway if you haven't done any original research (although in many places, it's now required to have a given number of publications before being able to submit a PhD thesis). &#xA;But I wouldn't claim in any way that it's a common practice, and I know several persons who have dropped (or been suggested to drop ...) their PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your main question, I don't know if one can tell whether it's easier to get a PhD in Europe than in the US, because it's hard to define what is &quot;easier&quot;. If your question is whether you can come to Europe, enrol to any PhD, just wait 4 years and get your PhD, the answer is no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T11:28:49.357" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T11:28:49.357" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:49:12.170" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&#xA;Long answer: Determining the minimum bar for which a PhD can be awarded is a bad exercise. If you are merely working towards the minimum you will not successfully complete a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is that PhDs in the US tend to be open ended (to the extent you can continue to get funding) while in Europe they tend to have fixed durations. This means in Europe the bar comes whether you are ready or not while in the US you get to chose when you  defend. Neither is easier, just different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T15:49:12.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3499" CreationDate="2012-09-30T16:00:40.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The importance of any single metric is binary and its value (important or not) depends on the size of the department. If the department is big admissions committees use metrics to weed out candidates. Basically anyone with GPA/GRE below X is triaged (doesn't matter what school you went to, how good your references are, etc). Smaller departments generally look at all applications. Once your applications is looked at, it is considered as a whole. There is no formula by which good GRE scores can offset a bad GPA. Obviously a better GPA doesn't hurt, but you really want to worry about the things you can control. For example, good research experience tends to trump everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T16:00:40.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3501" CreationDate="2012-09-30T16:17:11.467" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find these paragraphs very useful (and often include them myself), precisely because it's a short version of a table of contents: often readers don't want to read the whole paper, but want to find one particular part of it.  A summary of what's in each section makes this much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T16:17:11.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:43:46.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are tough (read respectable) and relatively easy (read weaker) schools and PhD programs in both sides.  You could find a comparatively easy US university v.s. top school in Europe, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to set your goals a bit higher than you think you can reach rather than wasting time (read life) shooting for an &quot;easy&quot; PhD track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T19:43:46.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:44:35.183" Score="16" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember that Europe is a big place, comprised of lots of different countries. It doesn't make sense to talk about a European &amp;quot;PhD&amp;quot;. The mechanism and typical PhD lengths between countries can be completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next few comments relate to the UK PhD system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't get a PhD automatically after 4 years. I can introduce you to a few people who will testify to this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, a PhD doesn't involve a &amp;quot;taught&amp;quot; aspect. I believe that in the US, the first two(?) years typically involve examinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In most Universities I'm familiar with, PhD students do not have a heavy teaching load. In my department, PhD students are allowed to take some tutorials/marking for additional money, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; this is on top of there usual PhD working week. The number of hours a PhD student can work is closely monitored. In particular, it's incredibly rare for a PhD student to take undergraduate lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is common in the US for PhD student to run a lecture course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T19:44:35.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:51:27.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic interview question (paraphrased) comes to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think is the most important problem in your area?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you done to solve this problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, these questions might be worth thinking about when choosing a career path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this might look more like a comment than an answer, what I mean is you need to think about your question from several perspectives: what do you think is essential for your field and how you can contribute there, and what are your personal talents or virtues, such as working on technical problems in depth, or administrative skills in managing resources for problem solving in a broad sense, or something else. These are your assets. List them and do analysis on how would they be better applied, what combination of them would yield bigger impact or bigger rewards, depending on what you favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastEditorUserId="2736" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T07:41:53.073" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T07:41:53.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3313" CreationDate="2012-09-30T20:06:35.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evidence showing a research experience is definitely a plus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do not get discouraged if you have none. Show in your application that you know what you want and why, be persistent and proactive and see how you can stand out in a positive sense from the rest of the applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T20:06:35.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5064" CreationDate="2012-09-30T20:17:19.557" Score="5" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some say that a person should change the work field every 5 to 7 years in order to stay productive and avoid stagnation. How does this apply to academia, for example, changing a research focus? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some universities advise to take a sabbatical every 5 years or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited as suggested: What are the indicators to show that it is time or an opportunity to change the research area? Perhaps, there is a good answer based on your experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastEditorUserId="2736" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T13:48:01.120" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:37:28.093" Title="When to change a research focus" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3490" CreationDate="2012-09-30T20:23:22.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, a researcher is current in the field, (s)he knows the top conferences and key research groups as well as what they have achieved. Often there is no space to list every paper on a certain subject anyway, so one must choose the key papers related to the topic at hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are quite a few services that index papers by keywords or topics and authors. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Xplore&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM digital library&lt;/a&gt; to name a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search engines do a good job indexing the papers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt; come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, the social networks such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linked In&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Gate&lt;/a&gt; encourage the authors to list their research publications and provide search functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastEditorUserId="2736" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T13:52:07.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T13:52:07.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3490" CreationDate="2012-09-30T20:35:57.117" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a subject map of science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rM8NB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Subject map, Borner, K., et al, Plos One&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is taken from the following paper, freely available from Plos One:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464?imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464.g001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464?imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464.g001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is the sort of thing that you are interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. I am not a co-author, nor have I read the paper, so I make no judgment on its quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T20:35:57.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3519" CreationDate="2012-10-01T04:13:01.123" Score="18" ViewCount="13473" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I publish a Master's thesis, does that count as a &quot;publication&quot; (ie protect me from other people publishing my work as their own?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I think I can get a paper out of my thesis, am I forfeiting this possibility by sending copies of my thesis around to other people to look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:26:23.717" Title="Is a thesis a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3518" CreationDate="2012-10-01T04:36:33.257" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order, yes, and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesis is a public document and thus helps establish &quot;prior art&quot; in terms of research. Of course sometimes researchers come up with the same ideas simultaneously, or certain work is just not known as widely as it should be, so sometimes work gets innocently repeated (as compared to plagiarised, which can also happen, but reasonably rarely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for publication, a thesis is an entirely different kind of publication to a paper, in every discipline I am familiar with, publishing papers drawn from work in a thesis is expected, sometimes even required. The only (?) way you could interfere with further publication would be if you published your thesis as a monograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T04:36:33.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3490" CreationDate="2012-10-01T09:10:04.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an interactive map on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;Eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt; (a much better (arguably) way for assessing impact that mere citation counting):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/map/index.php&quot;&gt;eigenfactor.org - mapping science&lt;/a&gt; (currently, only for medicine related)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can explore disciplines by graph of citations (i.e. which discipline cites which; it need not to be symmetric).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T09:10:04.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3521" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T09:27:56.120" Score="6" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;My employer is considering implementing &lt;a href=&quot;http://atira.dk/en/pure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atira PURE&lt;/a&gt; to help manage grant applications and grant funding at the university level.&#xA;Seems like it might have some benefits... but could also add a costly and unnecessary layer of overhead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any experience with this or the equivalent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2743" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T11:46:14.737" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T16:03:29.623" Title="Research Information System" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T10:46:09.217" Score="16" ViewCount="11905" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1930/eu-ph-d-in-germany-calling-yourself-dr-or-ph-d&quot;&gt;EU Ph.D. in Germany: Calling yourself &amp;ldquo;Dr.&amp;rdquo; or &amp;ldquo;Ph.D.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this question in relation to my doctoral studies in Germany. However, my question may be relevant to regulations in other European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university where I pursue my doctorate, I have the choice between two titles. Upon successfully completion of my dissertation and all related examinations I can decide which title I want to hold: &quot;Dr. rer. nat.&quot; or &quot;Ph.D.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, the traditional title is &quot;Dr.&quot;. From what I understand the title &quot;Ph.D.&quot; is being introduced at many universities for reasons of comparability with degrees from other countries (especially with the US and the UK). I'm guessing, the reasoning is that holding a &quot;Ph.D.&quot; will improve your chances when applying for (academic) openings internationally. However, I have also been told that the German &quot;Dr.&quot; has an excellent international reputation and may give you an edge over &quot;Ph.D.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A couple of years ago, legal steps were taken so that a &quot;Ph.D.&quot; issued by other European countries is automatically recognized in Germany (as long as the issuing institutions are eligible) and may be &quot;translated&quot; to &quot;Dr.&quot; in Germany. There is also a question related to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1930/eu-ph-d-in-germany-calling-yourself-dr-or-ph-d&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. However, a &quot;Ph.D.&quot; issued in Germany may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be &quot;translated&quot; to &quot;Dr.&quot;! Therefore, I have to decide for either one and &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; use both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of either title with respect to academic careers in Germany and internationally?&lt;/strong&gt; Is a &quot;Ph.D.&quot; seen as less distinguished by German academics? How is the German &quot;Dr.&quot; perceived by academics in other countries as compared with a &quot;Ph.D.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T09:25:58.637" Title="Choosing a title to hold upon completion of a doctoral degree: &quot;Dr.&quot; vs. &quot;Ph.D.&quot;" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-10-01T22:16:31.353" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3456" CreationDate="2012-10-01T14:42:05.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget about old-fashioned face-to-face conversation.  If you go to a conference, it is likely you will meet new people or re-connect with friends or acquaintances from other institutions.  A common first question in such conversations is &quot;What do you do?&quot; or &quot;What are you working on now?&quot;  This is a natural lead-in to tell this person about your latest work.  Try to keep it short and tailor it to the known interests of the person you are talking to.  If they are intrigued, they can ask more questions and keep the conversation going.  The same principle applies if you meet someone on a research or seminar visit somewhere (whether you are visiting them or they are visiting you).  Face-to-face conversation is less efficient than a talk or poster, since you are only getting to people one or two at a time, but it is also usually more compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worthwhile doing this even if you are also giving a talk or poster at the conference, since it can serve as advertising to convince them to come to your talk or visit your poster.  Alternatively, you can give a talk on one topic and advertise a different topic (say your previous paper) in conversations.  Again, it's worthwhile to tailor your choice of which result to advertise in conversation to the interests of the person you are talking to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage your co-authors to give talks on the paper as well.  This can be a mixed blessing, because people tend to associate a result with either the person they hear it from or the most famous person on the paper, but it definitely helps to spread knowledge about the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have your own travel money, you can write to someone and suggest you visit them and give a seminar.  You can also write to someone asking for a visit if you don't have money, but that is rather pushy, and is best reserved for cases where you have a strong existing relationship with the person, such as a past supervisor or recurring collaborator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, if you have money, you can invite someone to give a seminar at your home institution.  This is an opportunity to learn about their latest work and also to chat with them and tell them about yours, as above.  Even if you don't have money, there may well be a local seminar series that has some, and perhaps you can make a speaker suggestion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This one is less under your control, but one of the main ways people hear about new results is indirectly, when someone else mentions them or cites them.  What this means is that if you can get the information about your paper to just one person who can directly use it to advance their own work, you have doubled your advertising power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2746" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T14:42:05.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2012-10-01T15:04:03.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Dave Clarke's answer, especially in large publications, like the ones you mention, having a list of figures can be very helpful. E.g., a researcher cites a particular finding from a doctoral dissertation, which has some 100 pages and 20 figures. In such a case, researchers usually mention the figure's number. To the reader of the researchers article a list of figures in the dissertation would make locating the referenced figure much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:04:03.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3518" CreationDate="2012-10-01T15:26:23.717" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second question appears to be more involved than the existing answer indicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that your school may own the copyright (at least) to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/policies/13/13.1.html#sub3&quot;&gt;MIT Policies and Procedures | 13.1 Ownership of Intellectual Property&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright ownership of theses generated by research that is performed&#xA;  in whole or in part by the student with financial support in the form&#xA;  of wages, salaries, stipend, or grant from funds administered by the&#xA;  Institute shall be determined in accordance with the terms of the&#xA;  support agreement, or in the absence of such terms, shall become the&#xA;  property of the Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is further possible that your funding source may have a larger stake in your intellectual property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/2011/04/14/copyright-qa-do-i-own-my-dissertation/&quot;&gt;Do I Own My Dissertation? — Columbia Copyright Advisory Office&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, an employer supporting the student’s studies or an&#xA;  outside funding source may lay claim to whatever intellectual property&#xA;  is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the above source notes that this is not the usual case, a graduate student acquaintance of mine was not even allowed to continue work toward his thesis project after sale of his research by the university to an outside corporation.  He had to choose a new project and begin again from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user568" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:26:23.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-10-01T15:34:35.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As kena said, there are other ways of producting documents. I personnally use &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://org-mode.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;org-mode&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. There are saveral reasons :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The document you type can be &lt;strong&gt;exported into another formats&lt;/strong&gt;, including &lt;strong&gt;HTML, OpenDocument (LibreOffice / OpenOffice), or LaTeX&lt;/strong&gt;. In that way, your can publish your document without restriction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This language is &lt;strong&gt;much easier than LaTeX&lt;/strong&gt;, and you can write directly in plain text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you write in plain text, &lt;strong&gt;any editor can fit&lt;/strong&gt; (even though Emacs has the org-mode by default).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you write in plain text, &lt;strong&gt;an editor in wide screen prevents you from disturbances&lt;/strong&gt; (and this is a main point).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the references system, you can also write &lt;strong&gt;notes and outlines&lt;/strong&gt; in separate files, &lt;strong&gt;as in Scrivener&lt;/strong&gt; for example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The syntax for tables, pictures and links is simple, so you shall write &lt;strong&gt;the whole book in org-mode, then export it directly&lt;/strong&gt;. Few processing may be necessary then, you only have to set your environment in LibreOffice or LaTeX.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tried that, I enjoyed it at once :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note :&lt;/strong&gt; Of course ReStructuredText and Markdown can export to HTML, ODT and LaTeX, but I prefer Org-Mode for its flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:34:35.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2012-10-01T16:06:23.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone living in Germany right now, I can attest that there really is very little difference between PhD's from countries like the US, the UK, France, and Australia, and doctoral degrees from inside Germany. In many cases, German universities are looking for people with international experience when hiring, and thus the external experience with having a degree that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;Dr.rer.nat.&quot; or a &quot;Dr.-Ing.&quot; can be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as mentioned in the above link, it now &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; acceptable for people with PhD's to call themselves &quot;Dr.&quot; inside of Germany. It may not be allowed for someone with a PhD degree from inside Germany to call themselves &quot;Dr.&quot;; however, the inherent advantage is relatively small, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if you are outside of Germany, the possession of a doctoral degree is probably more important than the actual title of the degree: in the US, I don't think you will be treated differently holding a &quot;Dr.rer.nat.&quot; than the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T16:06:23.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3501" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:07:57.637" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike Dave and Henry, I am going to argue &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the style &lt;code&gt;The paper is structured as follows...&lt;/code&gt;, though not against inclusion of content serving the same purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite some time ago, I took to heart advice by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/give-great-research-talk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simon Peyton Jones&lt;/a&gt; on this, which can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/How-to-give-a-great-research-talk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (slide 19), also echoed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.win.tue.nl/%7Esetalle/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sandro Etale&lt;/a&gt; in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.win.tue.nl/%7Esetalle/introduction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;advice on writing introductions&lt;/a&gt;. In essence it boils down to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write &lt;em&gt;The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the problem. Section 3 ... Finally, Section 8 concludes&lt;/em&gt;. That is most of the time only a waste of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Instead, use forward references from the narrative in the introduction.&lt;/strong&gt; The introduction (including the contributions) should survey the whole paper, and therefore forward reference every important part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a consequence, the position I take on this part of writing introduction is that while it is important to inform the reader about the structure of the paper so that he/she can take the path of few surprises and easily follow the discourse, it should be however done with style. Doing it in such a poor manner as &amp;quot;The paper is structured as follows ...&amp;quot; is simply &lt;strong&gt;bad literature&lt;/strong&gt;. I would argue, that it is better to firstly, clearly state the contribution of the paper and then write up the paper's plot summary leading from the introduction to the culmination of the paper in supporting the claimed contributions and discussion. I mention the references to the individual sections, and sometimes even deeper structural parts, only in passing, or include them in parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a similar note, regarding &lt;code&gt;Conclusion&lt;/code&gt; section, I took to heart the advice of &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/djb.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;D. J. Bernstein&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/writing/devil-conclusions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing conclusions&lt;/a&gt;. Citing other authors, he suggest to simply drop the conclusions part from papers and put all the important conclusions into the introductory section. Well, unless there really is something &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; to say there. Since then, I conclude my papers either directly by a loose paragraph at the end of the &lt;code&gt;Discussion&lt;/code&gt; section (renamed usually &lt;code&gt;Discussion and final remarks&lt;/code&gt;), or if I feel like there is something important to say, by a standalone short section &lt;code&gt;Final remarks&lt;/code&gt;. However, never re-iterating what was done in the paper. The reader is anyway free to &amp;quot;rewind/relist&amp;quot; in the paper (see the very last point by &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/writing/devil-conclusions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DJB&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&#xA;The links to homepages of the two guys include many more good tutorials on aspects of writing/research in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T13:52:20.577" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:50:43.287" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add a bit of a legal perspective into the game. Disclaimer: I hold a Dr. rer. nat. from Germany, though lived and worked in several other countries in the EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, personally I think, that &quot;choosing a title&quot; and seeing it as an important issue, is largely a German/Austrian/(Central European?) specialty. After all, why should your title matter outside academia, where the difference is anyway largely understood around the world? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, even when you hold some title from country X, you &lt;strong&gt;are not&lt;/strong&gt; automatically eligible to use it across the border, even given there exists an equivalent one in the other country. Rather, there are legal procedures which lead to a formal recognition and proper translation of your title. So for me, being a &quot;Dr.&quot; with a title from Germany, to be able to use either &quot;Dr.&quot;, or &quot;PhD&quot; in other EU countries, especially those east of Germany, I would have to either undergo a formal procedure called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nostrification&quot;&gt;nostrification&lt;/a&gt;, or, in selected cases, if the university is granting an equivalent degree in my specialization, they could forgo the nostrification hassle and they could recognize it right away (rather and exception to the rule). Either way, you need to obtain a formal certificate from the state, or at least the university, stating exactly how your title translates to an equivalent title in the other country. Only then you can use the title freely. To top it up, the whole matter is regulated by bi-lateral international treaties between countries exactly stating which title holders are eligible to use which titles in the other country and how. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/ZAB/Aequivalenzabkommen/Tschechien.pdf&quot;&gt;the treaty on grades recognition between Czech Republic and Germany&lt;/a&gt;. There even is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://anabin.kmk.org/&quot;&gt;full website&lt;/a&gt; in Germany on all this (mostly for foreign title holders wanting to use them in Germany).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up, there is a whole lot to simply using an academic title in a country different from the one you obtained it in. This can be straightforward in countries where the culture doesn't care too much (in my experience e.g., Netherlands), but in countries where the title can be legally a part of your name (not sure whether it still is the case), such as almost whole Austrian-Hungarian empire heritage countries, this can be a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is the following: &lt;strong&gt;It's probably irrelevant which title you choose. If you want to be precise, legally speaking, somebody probably already translated your title to another one (which you can't choose) which you should adopt in other countries.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from all that above, I regularly see people approaching me in e-mails, or letters by both &quot;Dr. XYZ&quot;, as well, as &quot;XYZ, PhD&quot; - not speaking of those not checking the background and virtually promoting me to levels I do not belong to (yet). Again, the precise title doesn't matter that much after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;Later edit, on a more anecdotal note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the precise title doesn't matter that much after all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, except when you want to use the title for things like skipping a queue when visiting a doctor and being treated very respectfully by all the nurses (Germany), or when encountering police, getting away with only with a warning and avoiding a fine for speeding, or other minor trespassing (countries eastwards of Germany). I have first-hand knowledge of such incidents, so my advice here would be to 1) go for the fanciest possible title, yet it should be widely recognized by general public, and 2) if your country of residence allows it, include the title on your ID card, passport, social security ID, whatever else, so that you can wave it when necessary :-D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T21:36:30.873" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T21:36:30.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T20:38:32.337" Score="57" ViewCount="136509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received the reviews/comments for an article submitted few months back to a journal. All the reviewers overall appreciated the content and the usefulness, but also suggested corrections (varying from minor to major) : typos, better title and abstract, reorganizing the material, better exposition at certain places, adding more benchmarks; that need to be addressed before publications. All the reviewers recommended the paper for publication if the reviews were addressed satisfactorily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor, looking at the reviews, mailed stating a major revision of the paper is needed before re-submitting the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what does this mean, in terms of the chances that my article is accepted, when I re-submit it after making the corrections suggested by the reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would like to know what goes in the editor's mind when he suggests minor revision/ major revision etc. If an article needs major revision, will it be reviewed again? How do these translate into chances of the article being accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1162" LastEditorDisplayName="user1162" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T20:46:56.120" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T14:38:15.933" Title="What does a &quot;major revision&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2012-10-01T21:04:47.370" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (chemistry), the practice is: for those journals that make a clear distinction between minor and major revision requests, &lt;strong&gt;“major revision” means that the paper will have to undergo further review after revision&lt;/strong&gt;, usually by the same referees, while “minor revision” means that while changes should be made, no further reviewing is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all journals make this distinction, however: for some, the need for further reviewing will be decided by the editor upon reading your response to the reviewers’ comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are screenshots of the web interface facing the reviewer of ACS and RSC journals when he has to fill in his review. You can see that the categories are different for different journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sn1Zq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWwm1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T21:04:47.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2012-10-01T21:14:57.233" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As F'x said, a major revision will lead to another round of review, where your answer to the first review will be taken into account. It doesn't guarantee you that your paper will be accepted, but if you address correctly the remarks (and not only in your answer, but also in the paper), you might stand fair chances. In other words, it's worth working on the paper to improve it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T21:14:57.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3426" CreationDate="2012-10-02T00:21:02.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on which institute you are attending. I did my undergrad at UC Irvine where it was very rare to see older grad students. Most grad students at UCI were accepted directly from their undergraduate programs but at the University of Nevada School of Medicine (UNSOM)  where I am doing my PhD, most students have a few years of experience and so are a few years older ~30+. It never hurts to call the program head directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2750" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T00:54:56.813" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T00:54:56.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3473" CreationDate="2012-10-02T01:37:16.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is likely true is that first/given-name form of address expresses a peer-relationship attitude. In some contexts, there is a nearly-mandatory pose that &quot;we are all peers&quot;, etc. While, ideally, this is true at a moral or civil level, it is equally obviously false in terms of sheer experience, and, usually commensurately, expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There is an auxiliary-but-related question simply about &lt;em&gt;age&lt;/em&gt;... Given the extreme disparity between my own kids and myself, I don't expect them to address me by my first name... nor as &quot;Professor Garrett&quot; ... but hopefully by some affectionate honorific that does acknowledge (the complexity of) our relationship. Similarly, I pointedly adopt a stylized form of address for my kids. We are all acquainted with the trope that when the mom addresses the kid by the kid's full name, they're in trouble. I myself, especially at the point that I'm older than many postdocs' parents, have a similar feeling about &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; relationship. Opinions differ, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use of an honorific, even if informal-honorific, form of address does express respect. Use of given name expresses familiarity, etc. At worst, given-name address implies a sort of &quot;good ol' buddy&quot; relationship that verges on the demeaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the genuine issue isn't the words uttered, per se, but the tone-of-voice and body language. But, if we agree with &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt;, then the original question becomes enlarged to the question of whether one should express deference or respect for ... ok, the real question is about how one fills in the blank about the object of this sentence! If it's &quot;one's boss&quot;, well, one does what is necessary. If it's &quot;one's mentor/teacher&quot;, then perhaps a systematic tone of respect is appropriate. If it's simply &quot;the old person&quot;, then who knows? What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your attitude toward your mentor/advisor/teacher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Operationally, as in some of the other answers, unless there's a pervasive conformity pressure to do &quot;given name address&quot;, surely it's better to err on the side of slightly-excessive expression-of-respect, rather than the other way. Wait till some says &quot;Please, just call me ...&quot;, rather than the awkward opposite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In French and some other languages perhaps-inappropriate first-name address &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; to have its own name: &quot;tutoyer&quot;, meaning to address toooo many people with the familiar &quot;tu&quot;, rather than formal-er &quot;vous&quot;, but I gather that times have changed...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of quips, I might suggest that, ... in contrast to the suggestion that if your thesis advisor or postdoc mentor &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; want you to call them by their first name,then get another, ... if you don't have a mentor you respect enough ... for good reason, that their expertise and insights are nearly-unimaginably superior to yours at this point in your career... to throw a little honorific their way, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you should get a new advisor/mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People won't be offended by your being too polite and respectful, but may be by the opposite. Pretty straightforward, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T01:37:16.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3538" CreationDate="2012-10-02T03:43:29.597" Score="5" ViewCount="851" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does doing multidisciplinary research enhance one's employment opportunities compared to doing a degree in &quot;basic&quot; sciences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is a Ph.D. in Nano-science/Nano-technology in any way better than a Ph.D. in Physics or Chemistry, considering employment in India or in Asia? Would like to hear perspectives from other regions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In India, the basic qualification for employment in universities or affiliated colleges, as Assistant Professor is M.Sc. with UGC-NET or a Ph.D. in the relevant subject. Multidisciplinary research is available only in major research institutes and a limited number of universities.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T20:46:41.660" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T23:44:34.327" Title="What are the pros and cons of multidisciplinary research?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3537" CreationDate="2012-10-02T09:15:58.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does not fully answer your question, but it is certainly one consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multidisciplinary theses are often examined by multidisciplinary committees.&#xA;Examining such theses is difficult, especially if the committee has no experience examining multidisciplinary theses.&#xA; A consequence is that you will often be forced to conform to the conventions of different communities. In addition, the chemistry committee member may not see the thesis as a chemistry thesis and the sociology committee member may not see the thesis as a sociology thesis, because it lies somewhere in between the two fields and cannot be a complete thesis in both fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T10:41:20.937" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T10:41:20.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2012-10-02T13:26:55.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like Bernt Hansen's  org-mode setup.  I am not a programmer and I do feel a little lost in Emacs, but I'm having no trouble using org-mode.  I started with Vincent Goulet's Emacs package because I also use emacs to edit latex and R scripts.  Then I added Hansen's code to my .emacs file a few sections at a time where it seemed applicable to my workflow, editing slightly when I could decipher it and see a way to make it more applicable.  It took a couple of days plus little tweaks occasionally since, but very manageable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to what has been mentioned, I use clocking into the different steps of a project almost religiously because I am working on estimating the time I spend on different tasks in order to better plan future projects.  I've been terribly over-optimistic with promises of submitting work in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would highly recommend JabRef for literature management if you want to stay with free open source software.  I've had no trouble with RefTex---I didn't have to do anything beyond Goulet's instructions.  JabRef imports references in the usual way (e.g. Reference Manager, etc) and has a database-like interface, but creates a bibtex file in the background.  Citations in Latex (in emacs) worked perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2752" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T13:26:55.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3541" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:16:59.600" Score="77" ViewCount="56164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to list the journals you have reviewed papers for on your CV? Is it common? Do you think it’s recommended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, it shows that you are engaged in this necessary part of scientific research that is peer-review. On the other hand, it sounds a bit useless, because everyone actually reviews papers for journals, and it is actually an unverifiable information (reviewers are confidential).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T22:25:53.747" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T04:00:15.520" Title="Do you list journals you have reviewed for on your CV?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:24:15.900" Score="58" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the one hand, it shows that you are engaged in this necessary part&#xA;  of scientific research that is peer-review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one of the major reasons why people list it. If your CV is being viewed as part of a performance review or hiring decision, or even for awards, this constitutes &quot;service to the community&quot; and indicates that you're a good citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a noisy signal for the reasons you indicate, and so it doesn't carry a whole lot of weight compared to things like technical committee memberships and leadership roles, but it's part of the larger picture. Moreover, for more junior researchers who haven't yet had the chance to take on leadership roles, this is a good signal of service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T20:24:15.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:29:52.120" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that being asked by a journal to review an article is an indicator of esteem and for that reason, suitable and useful for inclusion in your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to confirming - or otherwise - whether or not you did indeed act as a referee for a journal, I would expect that anyone who wanted to verify this could ask the journal in question. Which specific articles that you reviewed could, properly, remain confidential. However, disclosing the information that you acted as a referee for the journal would not, as far as I can see, break any confidentiality policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T20:29:52.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:30:19.560" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did this in the earlier stages of my career, when every little bit of CV weight helped. But as the number grew, and as I did other more significant things, I removed all traces of reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to show that you are involved in the community when you are young and starting out. Later other aspects will be more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T20:30:19.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3537" CreationDate="2012-10-02T23:44:34.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in Computational Science, which is an interdisciplinary major spanning mathematics, computer science, and engineerning.  We are often pegged with the label &quot;jack of all trades, but master of none&quot; because we are a relatively new major with out well-established guidelines or rules judging the merit of work.  Often, we are required to accept a &quot;home department&quot; whose quality judgment rules dominate.  I'm not sure if this is the case for all interdisciplinary programs, but it helps alleviate the grey area and ensures that the work is evaluated according to a well-established criterion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T23:44:34.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3551" CreationDate="2012-10-03T06:00:22.477" Score="16" ViewCount="9530" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD supervisors usually get paid to supervise. They also have the prestige of having lots of students under their belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common to also have co-supervisor (I think it's mandatory in many fields, in Australia at least). What do these people get in return for their services? Put another way: if I'm asking someone to be my PhD supervisor, expecting them to help me out a whole lot for the next 3-4 years, what do I have to offer them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2755" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T07:35:48.957" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T13:32:36.590" Title="What do co-supervisors get out of a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3545" CreationDate="2012-10-03T06:47:19.050" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Co-supervisors play different roles, which may vary from individual to individual. Sometimes they are there as a backup, either in case things go wrong with the main supervisor, or if the student needs someone else to talk to. They can read the papers (and eventual thesis) of the student and may even participate in the research, adding a different perspective. In some cases, they can be more active than the supervisor (this is often the case if the co-supervisor is a post doc). Often they will be a part of the committee assessing the thesis in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the co-supervisor get out of it? Well, a tick on his/her CV. Publications. Experience dealing with students. Contacts. Ideas. And work. In any case, it is part of what an academic is paid to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question should be: what do I, as a PhD student, get out of having a co-supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T08:04:03.813" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:04:03.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3548" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-03T07:40:17.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions related to research/thesis supervisors and co-supervisors; their roles, duties and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some regions supervisor is also called a guide (research-guide). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T08:04:14.780" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:04:14.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3549" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-03T07:40:17.017" Score="0" Body="Questions related to research/thesis supervisors and co-supervisors; their roles, duties and responsibilities." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T08:04:18.260" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:04:18.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3545" CreationDate="2012-10-03T11:11:01.813" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dave's remark on switching to the student's shoes and contemplating what you can get out of a co-supervisor is, in my opinion, a very useful one and should be of primary concern to students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me put some personal perspective on this. I, as a senior post-doc, act as a co-supervisor of two PhD students (with some international twist to it within the EU context) and have colleagues who do the same, hence my observations below. Of course my view is one of a junior researcher, so take it with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My benefits from being a co-supervisor are the following, in the order of subjective importance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;new horizons&lt;/strong&gt;: the students act as &lt;em&gt;drivers&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;catalysts&lt;/em&gt; of research topics I do not necessarily care for in a very personal and deep manner. It means  that I can broaden my horizons and get somebody pushing me towards learning something new. That is a good thing for me as a curious person, as well as for my career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;publication record&lt;/strong&gt;: given the first point, obviously, if the students work well and our collaboration works well too, since I get as much influence on their work as they allow me, or ask me to, we get together some useful stuff done and get papers published. I would stress the word &quot;together&quot;, where I rather take the passenger's seat and try to help wherever necessary, but the crucial decisions are student's. The finished and delivered projects, as well as papers are obviously a good thing for both of us, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;project leadership experience&lt;/strong&gt;: often the collaboration is in a context of a project, where, as the more senior guy,I would take the role of a project manager, or a team leader. Of course this gives me plus points to the CV as well, not speaking about learning how to do this kind of work. Another good thing for my career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;soft skills&lt;/strong&gt;: by doing the above and by that closely collaborating with people with whom my bond is tighter than just a joint interest (as it would be with a member of my community from a different institution), in a way, we are supposed to work out our ways along each other. At least for me, that is a good training too and good for my life and career, whatever twist should it take in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;should the collaborating partner become a friend of mine during the process, I would add it as a benefit too. But obviously this one is not everybody's piece of cake.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, the points above boil down to a single one: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;being a co-supervisor means for me to become and act as a senior buddy to the student and prepares me for running my own lab/group, should it become reality one day.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T13:32:36.590" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T13:32:36.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T13:34:42.440" Score="26" ViewCount="10904" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've been reading lots of statistics books. Many of them have exercises after each chapter that I'm eager to solve, but I'm a beginner and can't solve most of them, and those that I think I can solve I can't check because there are no solutions and no solution manuals available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the point in providing exercises without solutions is that this way the book can be used in class, where the teacher can use them as homework assignments. However, I'm self-learning and have no teacher to ask/to correct my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This frustrates me. I like solving stuff, but without knowing even if my solutions are correct (left alone anything beyond that) it's no fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to deal with this?&#xA;Are there any resources on the internet where solutions for the more popular books could be found maybe? Should I trust that trying to solve them is the most instructional part anyway and let go of my childish craving for seeing my and the book's answer are identical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-11-02T11:49:27.090" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T12:53:15.530" Title="As a self-learner, what to do with books providing exercises but not solutions?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3554" CreationDate="2012-10-03T14:50:41.833" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;An inability to confidently answer the questions in a text book in general is an indication of not having mastered the material.* If you are not 100% confident that you are solving the problems correctly, go back and read the material again. You will not be able to use the skills in research unless you know the material without an answer key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*For a graduate class I used to teach there was a problem in the textbook that I could not solve. No matter how I thought about the problem, some information was always missing. I am friends with the author so emailed him for a solution set. I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't solve the problem and figured the answer key would be helpful anyways. The answer for the problem in question was &quot;Not possible with supplied information.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T14:50:41.833" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-10-03T15:00:10.090" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will essentially repeat the answer I gave &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2944/inclusion-of-irrelevant-background-on-cv-after-career-change/2949#2949&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The context for what the CV is going to be used for is key. I have a single CV that includes &quot;everything&quot; since I started grad school and selected things from before then. Having a long CV makes it easier for me to create short CVs because it means I need to delete things instead of remember things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I would include this information depends on the purpose of the CV and your previous experience. If you are giving a talk and someone asks you for a CV, then I would leave it off. If you are applying for a job and it is your only evidence of service, I would leave it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T15:00:10.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3562" CreationDate="2012-10-03T19:09:03.483" Score="17" ViewCount="637" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper published in a &lt;em&gt;Angewandte Chemie&lt;/em&gt;, “one of the most renowned chemistry journals”, and realized that the figures have been edited from the version I had submitted. They did not tell us about it, but clearly modifications have been made for typographical consistence with their style guide: some symbols have been italicized, axes labels have been changed from, e.g., “Temperature (K)” into “Temperature / K”, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised, because I know that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1933/what-figure-formatting-can-should-or-will-be-done-by-a-publisher&quot;&gt;most journals don’t typically edit figures&lt;/a&gt;, so I wonder: is &lt;em&gt;Angewandte Chemie&lt;/em&gt; unique in this respect? Do other higher-profile journals, such as &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, edit figures or provide feedback to authors on graphics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:06:34.833" Title="Do high-profile journals edit authors’ figures?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T18:37:01.153" Score="5" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;This summer I graduated from college, majoring in physics, but for reasons outside my academic career, I won't be able to attend graduate school for at least a couple of years. Despite that, I'd rather not neglect my physics education until grad school becomes possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that a B.Sc. doesn't mean I should be able to read all the latest articles coming from the frontiers of research. However, I'd like to keep track of current affairs in physics to both be in touch with my field, and to help me decide on which sub-field I will focus once I return to the academia, and perhaps even decide where to go and under who to study. What would you recommend is the best way to do this, and what are the resources available that I should be aware of? (Note: I will probably not have access to paid scientific publications after I receive my diploma in the next few months)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I wouldn't want my physics skills to rust in the meantime. Apart from participating here on the physics stack exchange, do you know of any good resources for physics questions/riddles/puzzles, hopefully at the appropriate level for a college graduate, so I can spend some spare time solving those to stay in intellectual shape in the next few years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2764" OwnerDisplayName="Benji Remez" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T06:13:54.387" Title="How to keep track of current physics after graduating?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2012-10-03T22:11:50.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated in the comment above, the only way is to stay involved. I would suggest reading as much as you can, particularly in the subfields in which you hope to specialize one day. If possible, try to stay in touch with professors you know from undergrad, and attend their journal clubs to stay in the research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T22:11:50.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3559" CreationDate="2012-10-03T22:57:27.697" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, high-profile journals do typically edit figures for style and consistency. You will find this information on their web sites, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nphys/authors/submit/index.html#Formats&quot;&gt;nature physics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T22:57:27.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3569" CreationDate="2012-10-04T00:31:20.377" Score="37" ViewCount="26142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing to give a conference presentation from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an effective ratio of introduction / methods / results / conclusion slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I balance the details of research without loosing the audience on key points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, 90% of conference talks are dull and there may be one or two at any given conference that are really inspiring. What makes a &quot;great&quot; talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T07:20:17.873" Title="What are the key features of a short (15 min) conference presentation?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T00:38:26.447" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the point of the talk; you want to convey to the audience what it is you did and what your results were. Similar to a paper, you'll want just enough background to bring those who aren't familiar with your subfield up to speed, and barely any conclusions as the audience will draw their own conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, you'll want something similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-2 min — background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5-6 min — methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-4 min — results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 min — conclusions, thanks, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you'll probably want to leave some time for questions, so you should err on the side of shorter rather than longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experiences, you will want to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; prepare for this. As discussed in more detail in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/757/73&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, this is really the main forum for you to sell your work. You'll want to make sure you put forward your best possible face. All the usual points related to public speaking apply here as well: talk slower (yes, slower... slower than that, even), be concise, be clear, make good use of slides, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T00:38:26.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T04:27:06.033" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I balance the details of research without losing the audience on key points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, the key to giving a 15 minute talk is to omit all of the details.  Many audience members don't care, the few who do can read your paper, and in any case it's impossible to convey any serious details clearly and correctly in such a short time.  If you try, then much of the audience will stop paying attention; you'll end up wasting their time and missing a great opportunity to present your work.  Instead, your goal should be to ensure that everyone leaves with some understanding of what you've done, and that some of them are inspired to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you should focus on the big picture.  What did you do, how and why did you do it, and what have we learned from it?  In mathematics, I'd focus on context, motivation, definitions, theorem statements, examples, and intuition.  It's OK to give a brief proof outline or sketch, but nothing detailed or complicated.  If you can't summarize it in a few sentences, it's too complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways short talks can go wrong.  For example, some of them try to compress 30 minutes of content into 15 minutes by talking fast and barely explaining anything, while others simply omit the background and context needed to understand the presentation.  However, there's a common difficulty behind many bad talks: they focus on the speaker's desires and goals rather than the audience's.  Ultimately, you need to design your presentation to fit the background and interests of the audience and the time available, rather than what you wish you could tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T04:27:06.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T05:54:12.633" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;While 15 minutes is on the longer side for what I'm about to suggest, I think it's still useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 15 minute presentation you don't have time to think of things to say on the fly. It's important that you have a story nailed down fairly tight. While you don't need a full script for what you're going to say, you should have a fairly detailed plan of what you're going to say (even upto key sentences and transitions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, you'll have to eliminate most details. &lt;strong&gt;THIS IS OK !&lt;/strong&gt; The audience will only (at best) get a high level idea of what your work is about and only the briefest glimmer of a technique or tool. So in order to decide what to say, you should ask yourself the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why should I (the listener) care about your work ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering this question will help you decide what to keep and what to throw. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your last question, a great talk is a strange mix of details, high level concepts, and inspiration. If it were easy to describe it, all talks would be great :). But if you shoot for a talk that people will remember, that is both more attainable, and easier to construct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T05:54:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2012-10-04T06:13:54.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in this same situation. Here are some thoughts I have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to retain the skills we learned as undergraduates, we have to practice them much like we had to 'practice' problem sets for assignments. I think that the MIT open courseware is an excellent tool for reminding and practicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physicists don't write papers about stuff other physicists know. Most (or all) of what's in a paper could be new and unfamiliar to the majority. A BS does not bring you up to speed with the physics community (my degree barely got me into the 20th century) so there is still a good deal of study before you could pick a paper and read it with ease. Continuing with your own studies by advancing your knowledge of physics will do a lot to help you understand what is in these papers. Reading the titles of recent Arxiv papers is a fun pass time; you can sit down and read any that perk your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2765" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T06:13:54.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3554" CreationDate="2012-10-04T06:22:01.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to deal with the uncertainty is to go through other works (textbooks, videos, examples etc) that contains the subject area for which problem you are trying to solve. Make certain that these works does have answer sets that you can compare your work to. Then, once you have gained the confidence and more experience in solving the problem set, go to the original textbook and do the questions again. In theory you should be more confident that your answers are correct/incorrect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example. Lets say you are working through math textbook1, the algebra chapter. You do all the algebra questions, however textbook1 does not contain the answers for the algebra chapter hence you are not as confident that you have the correct answers. What you should do is to find math textbook2 that contains a chapter on algebra with questions that contains answers. Work through the examples in textbook2 and confirm that your answers and methods you followed to obtain the answers are correct. Once you are confident you have a proper understanding of the work, doing the questions in textbook1 should be easier and you will be in a better position to know if your answers are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative would be to use software to confirm that your answers are correct. E.g. math problem? use SAGE to confirm the answer. Bear in mind that the software may only provide an answer and not the method on how to get to the answer. But this can be used to your advantage in the scenario that your answer is incorrect, hence you could deduce that the you are not following the prescribed solution method correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T06:22:01.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T07:20:27.157" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;(edited to extract the key points from the main reference)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://larc.unt.edu/ian/pubs/speaker.pdf&quot;&gt;Ian Parberry's guidelines&lt;/a&gt; were always essential for me. Firstly I will give a personal replies to your answers and subsequently I will extract the main points of the Ian's guidelines which are the basis for my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Personal perspective&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is an effective ratio of introduction / methods / results / conclusion slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own rule of thumb is to allocate 2-3 minutes per slide, which gives max. 6-8 slides &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; the envelope (the &quot;title&quot; and the &quot;end+questions?&quot; ones). That is, we have about 5 real content slides of which for introduction I allocate 1 for motivation&amp;amp;context, and 1 to problem definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body gets whatever it needs, but shouldn't exceed 4 slides, with at least a single one dedicated to a sketch of a &lt;em&gt;worked example&lt;/em&gt;. The audience doesn't need to know how exactly I am doing the magic, I must however make them trust me and see what I am doing as &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary/conclusion/future work gets 1 slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I balance the details of research without loosing the audience on key points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stress the motivation, the relevance of the problem and only sketch your solution so that an example which you provide will be plausible enough.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your talk is an advertisement for your paper. You are doing your best to assure that people learn something and you &lt;em&gt;imprint&lt;/em&gt; some key points in their heads (the problem description and a sketch of the main idea solving it). You don't need to explain the details, just sketch the main principles. You want to compel the audience to either read your paper that day in the evening and base their own work on it (hence citations!), or ensure that sometime in the future when they will face a problem, they'll remember that there was this guy speaking about something along the same lines, so let's check it (hence possible citations!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What makes a &quot;great&quot; talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's &lt;strong&gt;grounding in reality&lt;/strong&gt;. Show me what impact your stuff has on me. Speak about an application I might care for, even if it will be only a hypothetical one. If the result cannot be framed as a machine, or software, such as a lot of (non-computational) game-theory, then speak about implications to the society. Strike whatever chord, which makes your results &lt;strong&gt;tangible&lt;/strong&gt;. It all boils down to answering a single question for every single person in the audience: &lt;strong&gt;Why should I care?!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you do the all the positive advice right, there's a more important point, namely what you shouldn't do. For example I tend to speak a lot (see my posts at this site :-) ). My main drill during preparation of a talk is to throw away everything non-essential. Moreover, I am often writing down notes about &lt;em&gt;what &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to say&lt;/em&gt;. Many otherwise great talks are ruined by the presenter &lt;strong&gt;speaking too much* and **showing off&lt;/strong&gt;. I don't want to be impressed by your smartness, or charisma per se, I want you to simply &lt;strong&gt;educate me&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;And finally the key points from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://larc.unt.edu/ian/pubs/speaker.pdf&quot;&gt;Ian Parberry's guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for giving a good talk, emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;General advice&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Communicate the Key Ideas&lt;/em&gt;: select 1-2 main high-level ideas and present them in a &lt;strong&gt;crisp and crystal clear&lt;/strong&gt; way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don’t get Bogged Down in Details&lt;/em&gt;: do not even attempt to discuss the details, unless you you have brisk answers to possible questions you open that way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Structure Your Talk&lt;/em&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;em&gt;Use a Top-down Approach&lt;/em&gt;: go the least-surprise path, i.e, the audience needs a story a wants to be able to follow it. The structure should stay crisp: 1) solid motivation/intro, 2) main points/body, 3) technicalities, if really necessary, 4) conclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Know Your Audience&lt;/em&gt;: allows you to skip some common-knowledge in the audience, as well as select what is important to them and what do they care for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Structure of the talk&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added the emphasis to the points which I consider crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define the Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivate the Audience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce Terminology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss Earlier Work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emphasize the Contributions of your Paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a Road-map&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Body&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt; the Major Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the &lt;strong&gt;Significance&lt;/strong&gt; of the Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sketch&lt;/strong&gt; a Proof of the Crucial Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technicalities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present a Key Lemma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present it Carefully&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hindsight is Clearer than Foresight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give Open Problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicate that your Talk is Over&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T14:43:21.087" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T14:43:21.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:30:15.787" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the other answers state it quite clearly: eliminate most details! Some key points I've found across different sources and observed at talks I've enjoyed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; your paper, you want the audience to want to read your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to be comfortable with your talk. I've attended great short highly technical talks, and great short high-level talks. What made the talks great was not the technical content, but the capability of the speaker to convey his/her enthusiasm for the content. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I particularly like AnonynousMathematician's &quot;[bad talks] focus on the speaker's desires and goals rather than the audience's&quot;. At a conference, the audience is not here to judge you, or to evaluate your work, but to attend an hopefully interesting talk. The point is not to show how good you are. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It might depend on the technical field, but a good way to interest an audience is to present them with a problem, usually illustrated with a simple example, and then to give the guidelines of how you solved that problem. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, read many advices you can find on this topic. For instance, I'd suggest you the page of &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simon Peyton-Jones&lt;/a&gt;, recently pointed out by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3529/102&quot;&gt;walkmanyi&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:30:15.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3234" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:41:20.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be proactive. Identify the professor(s) that could be your thesis adviser and keep  asking for advice on how you can participate in his or her research and how he/she can officially become your adviser. You could also talk to the department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time you could look into participating in some open source project, which could score some bonus points for you when applying for PhD or internship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option for bonus points and priming your skills is participating in (programming) competitions that require more than just coding skills but analytical and creative thinking as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, consider applying for a different school, although this may mean time lost. On the other hand, I did retake several classes while in a grad school although I already had a MSc, which was well worth the time spent, offering deeper and more research oriented perspective on the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:41:20.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3579" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:54:55.557" Score="6" ViewCount="886" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor requested that I exchange my paper with another student, to get their suggestions. Every student in the course must exchange their papers in this way, before the teacher will look at it. I have never encountered another professor with such a policy and am concerned of the possibility that a student might claim my paper to be their own. What steps can I take to guard against such a possibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T09:10:13.377" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T11:37:12.737" Title="How to protect against the theft of a paper?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3572" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:59:22.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could ask the other student to be part of the study. If he/she does some substantial thinking about methods, content, writing etc., you can offer him/her to be co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:59:22.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3059" CreationDate="2012-10-04T09:02:29.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book I would recommend is Kosslyn's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/CognitivePsychology/?view=usa&amp;amp;ci=9780195311846&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Graph Design for the Eye and Mind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. What I particularly like about this book is that all recommendations are based on scientific findings and are discussed as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Graphs have become a fixture of everyday life, used in scientific and business publications, in magazines and newspapers, on television, on billboards, and even on cereal boxes. Nonetheless, surprisingly few graphs communicate effectively, and most graphs fail because they do not take into account the goals, needs, and abilities of the viewers. In Graph Design for Eye and Mind, Stephen Kosslyn addresses these problems by presenting eight psychological principles for constructing effective graphs. Each principle is solidly rooted both in the scientific literature on how we perceive and comprehend graphs and in general facts about how our eyes and brains process visual information. Kosslyn then uses these eight psychological principles as the basis for hundreds of specific recommendations that serve as a concrete, step-by-step guide to deciding whether a graph is an appropriate display to use, choosing the correct type of graph for a specific type of data and message, and then constructing graphs that will be understood at a glance. Kosslyn also includes a complete review of the scientific literature on graph perception and comprehension, and appendices that provide a quick tutorial on basic statistics and a checklist for evaluating computer-graphics programs. Graph Design for Eye and Mind is an invaluable reference for anyone who uses visual displays to convey information in the sciences, humanities, and businesses such as finance, marketing, and advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T14:51:58.550" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T14:51:58.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3667" CreationDate="2012-10-04T09:33:54.057" Score="28" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most academics are involved to some level in teaching classes and evaluating students. I never got a proper education in teaching, unlike what we had for research, and neither did any of the lecturers and professors in my community: we learnt on the job, and for the most part reproduce what we have seen others do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one area where I feel this is not enough, and I could be better: evaluations. We mostly do two sorts of evaluations: written exams (exercises with series of questions) and short bibliographic or research projects (ending with a short oral defense). In addition, many high school teacher friends tell me that research on the evaluation of knowledge acquisition (or student assessment) has made huge progresses in the last 20 or 30 years, that have completely changed the way &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; teach and evaluate students. Yet, I don't think things has changed so much in higher education, and I don't find around me any tools (lectures, seminars, tutorials, what-ever) to learn of this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;strong&gt;How can one learn to better evaluate student’s skills and knowledge acquisition? What are good (and modern) resources out there on educational assessment as applied to higher education?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T14:28:17.587" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T06:12:48.377" Title="How to evaluate students? Resources on educational assessment for higher education" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3572" CreationDate="2012-10-04T09:37:04.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sign and date a copy of your work, seal it in an envelope (using tamper-evident seals) and have it received by your teacher (that is, give it to your teacher then have your teacher sign a note that he/she received the envelope).  This will serve as evidence in case another student claims your work is his/hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T09:37:04.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T09:59:52.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nice discussion on this can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://presentations.catalysis.nl/presentations/presentation.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://presentations.catalysis.nl/presentations/presentation.php&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your talk is in mathematics, you might also want to look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/29866/presenting-a-paper-dos-and-donts&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/29866/presenting-a-paper-dos-and-donts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other tips I've heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use one slide per minute.  For a 15-minute talk, use only 15 slides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first part of your talk should be understandable by any adult (if your target audience consists of adults).  The next part should be understandable by your peers (same field as yours, e.g., mathematics, but not necessarily the same subfield, e.g., number theory).  The next part should be understandable by your peers working in the same subfield.  The last part should be understandable by you. (Although some believe this last part is too much).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T09:59:52.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3572" CreationDate="2012-10-04T11:24:29.703" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a reasonable request by the instructor. Without understanding why you are feeling vulnerable, it is not possible to provide an answer. It is worth talking to someone (possibly the instructor or maybe your advisor or a therapist) about why you are feeling vulnerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for protecting yourself, emailing the document to/from your university email account is probably sufficient as documentation. The next level up would be to email the student the document with the instructor cc'd. This way you are proving you shared your paper (and gaining documentation). Anything more and you will likely be revealing your insecurities, which might lead to more insecurities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T11:24:29.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3572" CreationDate="2012-10-04T11:37:12.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Email the work to someone (or yourself) well before you hand it over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to relax. It is not likely someone will try to pass your work off as theirs because they would be aware that you were going to hand the same piece of writing in and that would lead to trouble for both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the reason he is getting you to do it is to get you used to how things work in a research environment. So it is not such a bad thing, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T11:37:12.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T11:38:49.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; conference presentation (whether it is 10 minutes or 60 minutes), there are only two parts that are absolutely necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the problem that you studied.&lt;/strong&gt; Explain it as carefully as possible, in the simplest possible form; make it as easy to understand as possible. Do not assume that some parts of the setting are obvious to the audience; make everything explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the new result that you obtained.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, explain it as carefully as possible, in the simplest possible form. Proceed slowly; even if you could state the result in 5 seconds, spend much more time on it. Make sure the audience has enough time to digest what was your new main contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these parts necessarily take 15 minutes, it is OK. I do not think anything else is absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are lots of things that would be nice to have, time permitting: background, motivation, related work, a very rough overview of some methods that you used to obtain the results, conclusions, etc. But none of these parts are as important as explaining what was the research question and what was the new result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if it appears that this approach results in a boring talk, most likely &lt;em&gt;your own idea of what is your research question is wrong&lt;/em&gt;. Think big, go one level up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; You have studied thingy X (something technical and complicated) and your work shows that X has property Y (something easy to understand), and this is cool, as it is the first example of a thingy with property Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bad:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Problem:&lt;/em&gt; We study the properties of thingy X. (But explaining X takes forever. It is complicated, technical and boring. And why would you want to study it anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Result:&lt;/em&gt; We show X has property Y. (But now you would still have to explain what is Y. You are already running out of time, and you have already lost your audience.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You feel like you would have wanted to talk about motivation, related work, and methods, but you are already overtime, and nobody is following anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Problem:&lt;/em&gt; Is there a thingy with property Y? (Now this was much easier to explain. You have got plenty of time to also mention that this is a famous open question posed by Professor Bigname in 1950s.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Result:&lt;/em&gt; Yes, we give the first example of such a thingy! (That was easy. And now to make sure that everyone gets the big news, you can spends some time explaining that in prior work others have come close, but nobody has been quite there.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now you still have lots of time left, so you can tell something about the particular thingy X that you put together. All of this is extra. You can be sketchy, just give some highlights of the main ideas. Everyone in the audience already knows where you are aiming at and what is the big picture; they can fill in the details or look it up in your paper if it matters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastEditorUserId="351" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T17:12:57.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T17:12:57.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2012-10-04T12:22:02.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Web of Science is a great resource for a historical review or a trend analysis of a keyword or subject. Another resource is Scopus. To use Scopus to search for a review of a phrase, word, or keyword from a controlled vocabulary keyword such as MeSH or EMTREE, enter the phrase, word or keyword in the search box and select the appropriate search filter to the right of the search box. You can search by title, abstract, keyword, or any combination of the three. Results can be filtered by a number of options and also can be exported for further analysis. The caveat to  databases such as Web of Science or Scopus is to check the date range of the materials indexed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2768" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T12:22:02.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3260" CreationDate="2012-10-04T12:37:21.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked the guys at the library of my university about this issue and here is their reply. It looks like if I am member of the research group X, even if I am not among the names on the front page, it counts as a publication for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the ICMJE guidelines on authorship and contributorship (http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html) you count as an author and will have the same rights and responsibilities regardless of your place in the author list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, you also have the right to verify the publication as yours in the bibliometric system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, we are talking about epidemiological research here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To me, Anonymous Mathematician is right and the answer I got was meant to be read as: &quot;If you fulfil the 3 ICMJE conditions, it does not matter if your name is written only in the appendix and not on the front page. You're an author just the same&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt; This is the answer from the library guys after I asked for clarifications&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The part of the recommendations that you quote[*] concern who should be considered to be the author on a paper when it's sent to the journal. All the persons in the author list, even the ones that are in a group listed in an appendix, should fulfill all three requirements. If they don't they should be listed in the acknowledgement instead of the author list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If this is not the case for your article, the responsible authors have not followed the guidelines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] This is what I quoted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="663" LastEditorUserId="663" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T15:01:34.893" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:01:34.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-04T12:46:44.827" Score="22" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a website or resource that identifies the nearest journal neighbours to journal X (any specific journal) in terms of content (perhaps defined by some distance metric defined on article keywords?). In other words, if I am rejected by journal X, which journals might consider the same paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T12:55:28.113" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T16:20:44.397" Title="What is the closest alternative journal to journal X?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3583" CreationDate="2012-10-04T13:05:19.103" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there are tools that create maps of journals in a given area. Most of them are based on citation data, i.e. they consider that citations between articles of journal A and journal B are a good indicator of proximity of the two journals (and it seems like a good definition of “proximity”). If you are interested in the topic of how such maps are created, and how they can be analyzed, you can read on the topic. For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.22631/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Seed journal citation network maps: A method based on network theory”&lt;/a&gt; and related papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding online tools available, a search lead me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vosviewer.com/maps/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VOSViewer&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/dw48316262wp4235/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;), which looks like it contains exactly what you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/plgB8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: while such journal maps can be useful in discovering new journals in a field you don't know well, I will add that each journal is unique, and you have to learn about the journals in your field in order to increase your chances of success at publishing articles. It may, for example, tell you that two journals are very close in scope when they actually have very different editorial policies. &lt;em&gt;Read the editorial guidelines for the journals of your field&lt;/em&gt; and, at least as importantly, &lt;em&gt;read papers of each journal&lt;/em&gt; to get a feeling of what the actual policy in place are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T13:13:33.683" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T13:13:33.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3585" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-04T14:57:01.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Educational assessment can focus on individuals or a group of students or institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in the Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T15:04:10.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:04:10.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3586" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-04T14:57:01.553" Score="0" Body="Queries related to assessment of students for skills, attitudes, knowledge etc." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T15:04:00.697" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:04:00.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3587" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-04T15:11:54.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Illustrations, visualizations, graphs, etc. play a major role in academic publications.  This tag addresses queries related to proper use, format, and suitability of graphical representations in academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Synonymous to &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/graphics/info&quot;&gt;graphics&lt;/a&gt; tag&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T15:18:51.620" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:18:51.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3588" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-04T15:11:54.907" Score="0" Body="Queries related to graphical representations in academic publications. " OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T15:18:56.847" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T15:18:56.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3590" CreationDate="2012-10-04T16:11:11.500" Score="10" ViewCount="1702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently gave a presentation that was poorly received by my PI. I presented a technique that I have been trying to master (Patch Clamp). My PI thought I was not adequately prepared but gave no further feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent three days putting together my presentation and read chapters  (Springer books) and papers, listened to lectures on the subject--over two weeks.  I have been giving presentations since undergrad. I just finished my M.S. I hope to enter graduate school in Fall of 2012. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t know what I am doing wrong. What is a more effective way to prepare a talk or presentation? How much background reading is sufficient? What types of questions do ask yourself when preparing a talk? How do you know you have truly mastered the material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1612" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T16:57:25.937" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T16:57:25.937" Title="How to prepare a Journal Club (or Methods) presentation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3589" CreationDate="2012-10-04T17:18:05.053" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(this is rather long: I wrote it for one of my students, who had a similar question)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BASIC UNDERSTANDING&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When you're processing a paper, ask yourself:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is their precise problem formulation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is their solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what larger issue are they trying to address with their paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do (1) and (2) actually fix (3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(for experimental papers) do the experiments tell a convincing story to bolster their claims. Be suspicious of what they claim unless the line of reasoning is clear. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SYNTHESIS&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Once you've done this for a set of papers, you should start trying to connect them together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there a linear progression of ideas ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do the tools connect up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some way to simplify and explain what groups of papers are doing under a common theme ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CRITIQUE&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Once you have the above, then you can ask    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the gaps in what people are doing        &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these gaps important or minor ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does some union of the papers essentially solve the problem ? if so, why and if not, why not ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these papers even solving the right problem ? (this last point is both tricky and critical - it is very easy for a line of research to be internally consistent but get totally derailed from the original motivation for the problem)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DIRECTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you're ready to suggest new directions and new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note that critique comes AFTER basics and synthesis - you must understand very well before you can judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T17:18:05.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3598" CreationDate="2012-10-04T17:43:49.840" Score="24" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if a referee can reveal the title of the papers he/she has refereed for a journal (either by talking about it in the pub, posting it on facebook or another mean) after the decision has been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for my question is that I have seen some people revealing titles of the papers they referee but I have not found an authoritative reference for judging this behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2774" LastEditorUserId="2774" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T18:00:01.687" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T23:18:43.220" Title="Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3593" CreationDate="2012-10-04T17:53:28.107" Score="10" ViewCount="2181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying for an MSc in theoretical particle physics in Israel. After I finish it I would like to study for a PhD abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK it seems that a PhD degree does not generally require taking any courses. In the US, on the other hand, all of the PhD programs I checked require at least one or two years of coursework as part of the PhD studies, and the actual research only starts after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: do you know whether universities in the US allow students with an MSc degree, who have already done most or all of the graduate courses as part of that degree (and got good grades), to begin research immediately instead of taking the courses again? I really don't want to repeat the courses and waste two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2773" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T00:57:30.667" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T18:27:41.243" Title="PhD in the US with an MSc from another country: coursework exemption?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3592" CreationDate="2012-10-04T18:09:16.817" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the department. I have been looking at various applied mathematics departments in the USA and all of them want PhD students to go through the coursework and obtain an MS, even if they already did a masters degree before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in general, there is no chance to skip coursework. This is probably because different universities have different standards and syllabuses for the same course. And they want to ensure everyone is up to the same standard and have taken the same syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do check with the department, there are always exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it doesn't have to be a &quot;waste&quot; of two years. The level of the course might be higher and you are probably able to choose different courses to get broader experiences. If all else fails and you are able to ace all the courses with no problem, you can always spend the extra time looking for a thesis adviser or find research collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T18:09:16.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3591" CreationDate="2012-10-04T19:15:11.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked up the policy of journals in the fields of physics and chemistry, and their policy regarding reviewers does not directly address your question. Most ethical guidelines say the same thing: &lt;strong&gt;manuscripts sent for review are confidential&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm&quot;&gt;APS Guidelines for Professional Conduct&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for competitive gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the more loquacious &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/ethics/index.html&quot;&gt;ACS Ethical Guidelines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A reviewer should treat a manuscript sent for review as a confidential document. It should neither be shown to nor discussed with others except, in special cases, to persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted should be disclosed to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly covers the case of revealing the part (or any part of it) before it was published, as well as nonpublished parts of the paper (i.e., the published version is of course public, but anything else is still confidential).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seems to me that, narrowly read, there is material that this rule does not cover. For example, the text written by the reviewer is not indicated to be confidential (except insofar as it reveals part of the authors’ confidential material), and it seems clear that you retain the right to publish it. (Whether it's a good thing to actually do is another matter. Except in extreme situations, I would advise against it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, once a paper is published, are you allowed to reveal that you were a referee? I think so.&lt;/strong&gt; Is it a good thing? I don’t think it hurts anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I interpreted your “after the decision has been made” as meaning “after the paper is published”. In the interval of time between editorial decision and publication, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; clear that this information is confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T19:15:11.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-04T19:20:21.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting comment about presentations can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/academic-presentation-tips/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The author is professor of Computer Science, thus some things may not apply in all cases. Moreover, I think that the advice is very extreme, which actually makes it interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the area of management, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/~healdric/Workpapers/Exciting_meetings.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this resource&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful.&#xA;These notes were the result of a session at one of the Academy of Management meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T07:25:51.423" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T07:25:51.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3592" CreationDate="2012-10-04T19:51:29.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer greatly varies. I was in the same situation, and in my school, a Phd student with a previous MSC gets exemption from 3 courses out of the required 12. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other schools (I think it was Stanford, but I might be wrong), the required amount of (real) classes for a Phd student, is 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Legendre said, the best way is to check with the school itself. The Graduate Students Office (GSO) should be able to give you the details or refer you to the right website (yet, many times the website is not 100% accurate..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T19:51:29.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-04T20:04:09.973" Score="0" ViewCount="4921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started a MS program in Computer Engineering. This is my first year and it is a 2 year program. I want to do a master thesis about Machine Learning (I have an artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms background from my MS but I can work on different topics within Machine Learning). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in doing a thesis in collaboration with a company in industry. I'm hoping that working through a MS with them will increase the chance they consider me for a job after the end of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do companies ever publicize masters thesis proposals for students to work on with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2779" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T04:23:03.420" LastActivityDate="2019-01-12T04:19:42.573" Title="How can a masters student arrange to do a thesis in collaboration with industry?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3591" CreationDate="2012-10-04T23:18:43.220" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything related to reviewing is confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will certainly upset some &lt;strong&gt;editors&lt;/strong&gt; if you reveal your identity to the authors without the editor's permission. (Remember that the authors usually know who was the editor. Perhaps the editors did not want the authors to know that they asked you to review the paper?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, there is nothing to gain by doing this, and everything (= your reputation) to lose. You do not want to do anything that someone might interpret as a violation of the confidentiality of the peer-review process. (Even if you had both the authors' and the editor's permission to publish this information, others might not know that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T23:18:43.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3592" CreationDate="2012-10-05T01:54:57.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even at schools that have course requirements, you may be able to satisfy some requirements by taking a proficiency exam instead of an entire course.  Check with the department!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T01:54:57.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3607" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:23:49.977" Score="7" ViewCount="576" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2022/can-i-show-my-co-author-the-final-version-of-an-accepted-publication-i-reviewed/2024#2024&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to a question about the confidentiality of reviews, I basically said you cannot reveal information about the review until the paper is publicly available. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/are-the-referees-of-a-journal-allowed-to-reveal-the-title-of-the-papers-they-rev&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; about revealing information after publication is making me rethink my answer. The question I have is, &lt;em&gt;is the information (e.g., title, authors and abstract) that you are given to decide if you want to review confidential?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the process of agreeing to do a review is NOT &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please review our reviewer guidelines (including confidentiality policies),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you accept these guidelines please look at this abstract and let&#xA;us know if you want to review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, it seems it is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please look at this abstract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it interests you, please consider our review guidelines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests to me that the initial information (title, authors and abstract in a non double blind review) are not confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T19:43:22.567" Title="Are abstracts confidential during the review process?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:35:03.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, professional society memberships generally fall into a gray area due to taxes. It is useful to split them into two categories. The first is where you get no financial benefits that offset the cost. The second is where membership gets you a discount for publication, meeting registration, or access to a journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the first cases is not allowable since it is considered a personal benefit and is tax deductible. I have never been able to charge these to any grant. The second case often results in fights with the finance office. They would prefer to charge the grant the extra money and not pay for membership. With a little bit of fighting, I have never had a problem getting them to pay the membership at the time of meeting registration when they can see the savings fully offsets the cost of membership (as it often does in my field). I have no idea what would happen if it was only a partial offset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T08:35:03.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3600" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:49:07.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as you said, there is no rule that explicitly says that the information mentioned in a “invitation to review” is confidential. Yet, as with the related questions, there is a big grey area around the process of peer-review. Many people would expect this information to be kept confidential… and it does make sense: after all, the reason you gained access to what is (at that stage) privileged information is for the purpose that you may review it. It is part of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see it another way: this situation is not so different from the case where you would accept a review, then drop it (write to the editor to pull out) upon learning that you won't have time to do it. Morally, those two situations are close to one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T08:49:07.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3600" CreationDate="2012-10-05T09:17:55.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I checked the peer review policy of Nature and Science, I guess that should is the best we can get. The policy can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/peer_review.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/gta.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (both Nature) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/review.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bunch of relevant quotes from the Nature policies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a condition of agreeing to assess the manuscript, all reviewers undertake to keep submitted manuscripts and associated data confidential...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nature journals keep confidential all details about a submitted manuscript and do not comment to any outside organization ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referees of manuscripts submitted to Nature journals undertake &lt;strong&gt;in advance&lt;/strong&gt; to maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and any associated supplementary data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some from the Science review policy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers &lt;strong&gt;are contacted before being sent a paper&lt;/strong&gt; and are asked to return comments within 1 to 2 weeks for most papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The submitted manuscript is a privileged communication and must be treated as a confidential document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would read it conservatively. That is, consider an abstract to be &lt;code&gt;a part of the manuscript&lt;/code&gt;, hence the same rules governing general &lt;code&gt;manuscript&lt;/code&gt; should apply. Apart from that, both journals state that &lt;strong&gt;in advance&lt;/strong&gt; to being sent the manuscript, the (I guess still &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt;) reviewers agree to keep the matter confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think an answer may also lie in the exact process handling review. First, a potential reviewer is invited and sees a title and possibly paper's authors. Then he/she has to log-in into a review system, but I guess, somewhere in the process accepts general terms and conditions which established the contract. And only then the reviewer sees the manuscript. I am not sure if all journals do it this way, but those I reviewed for did so. Well, besides some special issues handled outside the journal submission/review system, where the case would be unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just checked the reviewer invitations I received from journals in my field and I found that the only disclosed thing in the invitation e-mails was the submission's title. I must accept/decline to review and only afterwards I saw the manuscript, or its abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T09:40:00.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3597" CreationDate="2012-10-05T12:19:19.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, there do exist occasional Masters and PhD projects which are funded through industry grants; I personally interviewed for (but did not accept) a postdoctoral position based in a hospital funded by a medical device company. However, the position was not advertised as such, and the medical device company did not list this grant publicly. I suspect that any other similar positions (i.e., funded by industry) would not include this information in the advertisements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you try a different tack. A number of companies will sponsor and pay for a masters degree once you've been working with them long enough. You may want to try talking to people in industry and finding whether you can take a job and then work towards your degree at a later point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T12:19:19.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2012-10-05T12:43:30.967" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2011/nihgps_ch7.htm#preaward_preagreement_costs&quot;&gt;The page you linked to in your question&lt;/a&gt; directly addresses memberships for NIH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dues or Membership Fees&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allowable as an F&amp;amp;A cost for organizational membership in business, professional, or technical organizations or societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Payment of dues or membership fees for an individual’s membership in a professional or technical organization is allowable as a fringe benefit or an employee development cost, if paid according to an established organizational policy consistently applied regardless of the source of funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your conclusion about books for NSF grants, and their page oddly doesn't list information about memberships. I would imagine that it could arguably fall under the section related to conference fees, but that's conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T12:43:30.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3597" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:56:37.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where can I find proposals from companies to work with them? Are there lists of such proposals available somewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any such, but around me, several mid- and large-scale projects are done in a very close cooperation with industrial companies, also on machine learning. Even I am employed as a post-doc on such a project, from a large part financed by a company who is also the supposed user of the results. At least in the western EU, this is a frequent model in computer science and related technical disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way, or another, to complete a master thesis you will need a supervisor from your university. In the case there are industrial cooperation projects in the area of your interest at your university, you should speak to the local project consortium member, basically one of the professors, or senior researchers at the relevant department. To find out whether such projects do exist at your university is again something to speak about with your local professors/faculty/research staff. After all, at least in places I am familiar with, working out a master topic without a tight connection to a project/theme at the department of your university is not the way to go, most probably even almost impossible. After all, you need a supervisor and the person needs to have an interest in the work. But of course, maybe in other parts of the world than I am active, things tick differently...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T13:56:37.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3600" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:09:14.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To complement other answers and comments: indeed, as far as I can tell, from a quasi-legalistic viewpoint &quot;consent&quot; cannot be pushed on me by sending me something in email, e.g., an abstract and asking whether I'd review the article. Nevertheless, it is my firm impression that, there is a strong &lt;em&gt;expectation&lt;/em&gt; that any such information is kept confidential in perpetuity, whether or not one agrees to referee/review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I agree, there is something a touch unfair or burdensome about this, since one can imagine that a malicious editor could wreak havoc with one's work by sending a steady stream of one's competitors' as-yet-unpublished work... thus seemingly obliging one to disrupt one's own work... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, something like this does sometimes happen when one served as NSF reviewer (in the older system), especially, where work-in-progress is sometimes portrayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the potential for abuse in having others put obligations upon us, it seems that the potential for abuse, in the line of &quot;conflict of interest&quot;, is substantially greater if confidentiality is not essentially promised implicitly, and in perpetuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T17:54:03.457" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:54:03.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3609" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:11:04.447" Score="62" ViewCount="18158" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is, should it be present tense or past tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should there be a difference between the abstract, main body and the conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the field of publication have any impact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1572" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T14:26:28.893" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T14:37:01.280" Title="In what tense (present/past) should papers be written?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="37" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3608" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:24:46.277" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules of thumb are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Established facts are reported in the present tense (“&lt;em&gt;The path of light follows Fermat's principle of least time&lt;/em&gt;”). However, you should use the past tense when you refer to previous work in the field (“&lt;em&gt;Maxwell et al. demonstrated clearly in a laser cavity experiment that no mirror is perfect&lt;/em&gt;”).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experiments, simulations or calculations you performed are narrated in the past tense (“&lt;em&gt;We dissolved the remaining solid in a 5:1 solution of acetone and benzonitrile, and heated to 200°C for three hours.&lt;/em&gt;”)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion of the data presented in the paper uses the present tense (“&lt;em&gt;The results obtained, shown in Fig. 3, clearly emphasize that the cell colonies grew faster on pink toothbrushes than green ones. We attribute this to the color-sensitivity, or kawai factor.&lt;/em&gt;”)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mathematical proofs are written using the present tense, because going through the proof occurs at the time of reading (“&lt;em&gt;From Eqn. 1, we derive the following system of inequalities&lt;/em&gt;”).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the choice of tenses is actually pretty logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T15:31:58.067" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T15:31:58.067" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3059" CreationDate="2012-10-05T17:51:25.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend David Mcandless's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidmccandless.com/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Visual Miscellaneum&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. The author does information visualization for The Guardian. This book is probably best for &quot;wow, that was a great way of getting this information across visually!&quot; It's a lot less academic than say, Tufte's work but a great tool nonetheless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nathan Yau's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470944889&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Visualize This&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a fantastic book that ranges from the &quot;why&quot; to the &quot;how to implement.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2786" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:51:25.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3612" CreationDate="2012-10-05T22:21:32.573" Score="12" ViewCount="4393" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coursera&lt;/a&gt; online courses have an exam component.  This raises the question:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;How is a Coursera exam typically conducted?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems non-obvious to me how one would conduct an exam involving students who might be on different continents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-03-13T13:46:03.147" LastActivityDate="2020-03-13T13:46:03.147" Title="How is a Coursera exam typically conducted?" Tags="&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2012-10-05T23:03:22.460" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having not used Coursera, I do not know what tools they use. However, I have been a part to online exams from both the student and instructor perspective using the Blackboard learning management system. I suspect that features like many (if not all) of the ones Blackboard supports are present in Coursera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time limits - The instructor has the ability to set a time limit to the exam (which discourages web browsing to find answers). The instructor can also choose to force the student to complete the exam in one sitting or allow students to leave and return.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexible scheduling - The exam does not have to happen at a specific time, but may be accessible over a time period, perhaps 24 hours or more. The instructor can still enforce time limits and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lockdown - The implementation of Blackboard my institution uses comes with Respondus Lockdown (there are other products), which prevents students from navigating away from the exam once it is started. These products can also prevent such things as minimization of the window, opening new tabs, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proctoring - I have proctored an online exam for another instructor. I had to enter my credentials and a code before the student could start the exam, and I had to enter a different code when the exam was completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features like these give instructors flexibility in offering the exam to students around the world, while still making it harder to cheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They will &quot;cheat&quot;, however.&lt;/strong&gt; No online course management system can prevent the student from using their text, notes, or another computer or electronic device to look up answers. The best defense against infractions of this nature are well-written tests (the kind you might write for an open-book or take-home exam).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T23:03:22.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3615" CreationDate="2012-10-05T23:05:49.040" Score="25" ViewCount="1691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new doctoral candidate of information and computer science and about to initiate my research, and typically collaborate with my supervisor and other group members. But seldom will a researcher limit his collaborators to those within the department he's in; he has to enlarge his network. I believe energetically participating in academic activities/events surely brings benefit. As a student, my quick thoughts are, for example, applying for internships at some research institutes, summoning team members for contests, or taking part in open source projects. Can you kindly share other experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2789" LastEditorUserId="2791" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T11:42:58.670" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T15:07:27.853" Title="How can a PhD student enlarge his academic collaboration network?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2012-10-05T23:36:46.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many good answers. I especially like the second half of the answer from @walkmanyi, especially as concerns the structure of a short talk. I disagree with most the time amounts given. I have found great success with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 minutes of background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 minutes combined methods, results, conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 minutes of questions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a separate time is given to questions, then 9 to 6 in favor of background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T23:36:46.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3613" CreationDate="2012-10-06T07:15:58.900" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, you’ll get there by engaging in a lot of activities where you will meet new people and work with people who will learn to know you. I recommend choosing them according to a few criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Activities of a seemingly technical (or practical) nature&lt;/strong&gt;. As a PhD student, you probably don't want to be on boring committees, board-style meetings, interdepartmental seminars. You will meet people, but not in a way that fosters collaboration. (However, you may want to attend these events for other purposes. Meeting key people involved in hiring decisions at a given institution is one such purpose that comes to mind.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Informal settings&lt;/strong&gt;. This favors meeting new people and getting to know them much better. Favor small meetings over big ones. Aim for a few persons you want to meet. Identify people you would like to approach (at a big event), then check what events they attend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manage to invite people for talks at your institution&lt;/strong&gt;. Okay, this one might be a bit difficult for a PhD student in some places, but if you can manage to get someone invited for a day or two, get him to give a talk and discuss your research and his, it will be worth it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not shy away from “learning” events&lt;/strong&gt;: tutorials, “hands-on with XXX library” type of things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I think the kind of events you want to engage in are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open source projects: you listed that one already&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workshops close to your research topic: these typically involve few people and long discussions. Many of my strongest collaborations (and a few friendships) grew out of workshops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tutorials organized on topics related, but not too close, to your research: you will learn stuff, meet people in a relaxed setting. Don't be shy of going to workshops where you already know some of the stuff, if only to put it in practice and discuss with the best experts. Also, be ready to present your own work and identify convergences with lecturers and other participants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T07:15:58.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3613" CreationDate="2012-10-06T10:45:26.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider engaging with scholars whose interests overlap yours via &lt;strong&gt;digital arenas&lt;/strong&gt; as well. Although the degree to which people in a given field varies by specialty, I'd be surprised if there aren't at least a few people in your niche of information and CS who use informal digital spaces to share work in progress, ask each other questions, and communicate about opportunities such as conferences and grants. For example, you might explore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blogging and commenting on others' blogs&lt;/strong&gt;: Start writing short, regular posts about academic questions on your mind or scholarly endeavors on which you've been working. Do short reviews of interesting books and articles you've been reading, or use the space to be thoughtful about what it means to be a Ph.D. student in your field. Leave meaningful comments and questions on the blogs of others in your field, or respond to these posts with a blog post of your own (linking to the other person's post both as a matter of etiquette and because many bloggers automatically get trackback notifications of ho's been linking to their posts).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using Twitter as a Scholar&lt;/strong&gt;: Twitter isn't just for sharing photos of what you ate for lunch! Ryan Cordell provides &lt;a href=&quot;https://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-start-tweeting-and-why-you-might-want-to/26065&quot;&gt;some excellent advice&lt;/a&gt; on getting started using Twitter professionally and effectively. Use Twitter to share the links to those blog posts you've been writing (see previous bullet), cite intriguing articles you've been reading on the web, or ask questions of scholars whose work you admire. If your department doesn't have anyone already using Twitter for academic ends, you might try searching Twitter with some applicable hashtags (e.g. #computers? #infosci? some more specific terms?), following anyone who tweets about these topics and seems to be saying interesting things, and also check out who those people are themselves following. Many people use the Twitter setting that automatically notifies them when they have a new follower, so be sure to fill out your Twitter bio to create the professional impression you desire (e.g. what school are you at? what topics do you study?). Finally, consider asking interesting questions via Twitter and curating the responses via a service like Storify.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2791" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T10:45:26.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3208" CreationDate="2012-10-06T11:46:53.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered directly contacting the admissions committee or a former teacher and asking for advice? They'll probably be wary of saying anything that sounds like &quot;if you do x,y, and z, you'll be accepted&quot;, but even if they're unwilling to share specific advice they might be willing to tell you what other experience (beyond the exams) they consider during the admissions process. A bonus of contacting the admissions committee in a respectful and professional manner is that if you do indeed follow through on any recommendations they give you, you can mention this in you application as evidence of your commitment to improving. &#xA;You might also ask if you can retake the test--either officially (i.e. if they'll replace your old results with your new ones) or unofficially (i.e. your old results will still be the official ones, but at least you have some metric showing your improvement).&#xA;Another option is to talk with a professor in the department with whom you have rapport and ask them about how to frame your rejection in your application when you reapply. For example, is it considered good form in your field to discuss what led you to do poorly on the exams (whether this was some unrelated life experience, or a lack of preparation)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2791" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T11:46:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3208" CreationDate="2012-10-06T13:07:13.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At many schools, particularly those rated highly, the &lt;strong&gt;most important parts of your PhD application are your letters of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt;.  What many applicants don't grasp is that a PhD program is &lt;em&gt;so different from undergrad&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;em&gt;past performance in the latter is only a poor indicator of future performance in the former&lt;/em&gt;.  For most students, the &lt;em&gt;hard part&lt;/em&gt; of a PhD is doing original research.  So, as an applicant, you must convince the committee that you will excel at doing research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to make your case is to have &lt;strong&gt;already successfully done research&lt;/strong&gt; (or some &quot;research-like&quot; project).  In the absence of this, you must somehow convince your letter writers that you will succeed in research (and then they convince the admissions committee).  Meet with your letter writers and ask them what they suggest.  You might even ask them if you could work on some research with them (&lt;strong&gt;prior to being admitted to the PhD program&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T13:07:13.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3172" CreationDate="2012-10-06T19:52:05.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're lucky, our institution have some sort of principal or someone responsible for the graduate students, someone to talk to about exactly these things. A review on the progress should be done at least every year, to avoid being stuck on a problem for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things do no run smoothly, it is a problem not only for you, but for the institution, so it should be in everybody’s interest to solve this, either with a new problem or new advisor. As people mention, it is not really uncommon, &#xA;but I'd say be careful blaming your advisor, sometimes there's just a mismatch.&#xA;Talk to some other professor maybe, they've all been young once, and might have some good advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T19:52:05.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-10-06T20:04:10.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, especially in the beginning, it is easier to measure course progress than research progress, and thus good for the self-esteem. &#xA;Being able to say &quot;I've accomplished something this semester&quot; is crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T20:04:10.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3627" CreationDate="2012-10-07T05:12:00.510" Score="13" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;When interviewing a faculty candidate, how should I structure the interview?  What questions should I ask?  How should I make the best use of the limited time available?  Assume this is for a full-time faculty position at a R1 (research-focused) university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T06:30:34.073" Title="How to interview a faculty candidate?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3625" CreationDate="2012-10-07T06:30:34.073" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a 30-45 minute slot (which is typical for such things), you have to make some decisions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you a 'buyer' or a seller' ? Are you evaluating the candidate, or also trying to convince them that your institution is a good place to work ? In general, you want to do both, but which you're thinking of emphasizing more will affect how you conduct the interview.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the meeting before or after the candidate's talk ? If after, you can do some probing based on the talk. If before, you might choose to ask them about material not in their talk, but in their CV. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there concern about their area and how it fits with what you're looking for ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you heard anything from your colleagues during other interviews that might prompt you to take a particular line of questioning ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, since you can't really get a big read on a candidate in a short session, your best bet is to focus one one aspect (such as one of the above), and explore that in detail. One thing I've also found useful is to ask questions &quot;out of left field&quot; that test the assumptions the candidate's work rests on: if done right, this allows you to explore the candidate's larger views about their field and the direction of the research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T06:30:34.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3629" CreationDate="2012-10-07T07:13:10.043" Score="35" ViewCount="10618" Body="&lt;p&gt;At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously a graduate student in the beginning stages cannot/may not write one. But how experienced does one need to be before attempting to write reviews? Does authoring a number of papers in the relevant field equips one for that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a graduate student publish a review article? Do acceptance of review article (for publication) depends on the reputation of the author or co-authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  As @JeffE has pointed out anyone can &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; a review article; the question is about getting this write-up published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:05:23.920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:05:23.920" Title="At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2012-10-07T07:34:42.713" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'll remark that (at least in fields close to me: physics and chemistry), the process for submitting review articles is typically handled in a different way than other articles (which I'll call “research articles”). Review articles take a lot of effort to write, and that their publication may depend not only on intrinsic quality and scientific criteria, but also on editorial policy: if the journal has already hosted a review on a given topic, it is unlikely to publish another soon afterwards. So, the common practice is to come to an agreement with the editor before writing the full article. Either the editor contacts a scientist to offer him to write a review on a given topic, either an author sends an abstract to the editor asking if the journal would welcome such a review (with no guarantee as to the results of the peer-review process, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has an important consequence for your question: you can actually &lt;strong&gt;ask the editor&lt;/strong&gt; of the journal of your dreams if a review by you and your co-authors would be welcome. Practices may differ between fields, journals and editors, but asking exactly the person who is going to make the decision is the right course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, we come to what I would call the “customs”. It is indeed typical to gain some authority in your field before writing review articles. This usually means &lt;strong&gt;working for a few years in a given field&lt;/strong&gt;, publishing some articles of your own, in short: getting noticed by your community. As such, it is not a typical thing to do for a graduate student. Maybe at the end of your PhD, jointly with your adviser. Most probably, later in your career: either as an experienced post-doc, or after having gained a faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With more than a few years of experience, my personal experience is that you perfectly write reviews (and the editors will accept if the work is good). However, &lt;strong&gt;it gets easier with seniority&lt;/strong&gt;, as you will (i) more easily have your work accepted in more prestigious journals, and especially (ii) more easily get invitations to write reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T07:44:13.033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T07:44:13.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3633" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:30:20.790" Score="18" ViewCount="2895" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of late I have been receiving a number of e-mails with subject 'Call for Paper' and invitations to contribute to new and/or open-access publications. While most of them immediately qualify for the trash bin, some do have a professional looking layout and language. Sometimes their publisher name looks very similar to reputed publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I create a filter to delete and mark spam for all mails with 'Call for Paper' in the subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do reputed publishers ever advertise or invite authors to contribute to their journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T16:16:58.063" LastActivityDate="2017-07-14T08:28:48.180" Title="How should one respond to 'Call for Paper' e-mails?" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;spam&gt;&lt;announcements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3631" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:49:37.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a modern communication medium e-mails are widely used in academia. It is in this context that this tag has relevance; use of e-mails for various types of communications and the style and language to use in these communications are especially important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is on the use of e-mails for advertisements or announcements of publications and conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T08:50:31.387" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T08:50:31.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3632" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:49:37.457" Score="0" Body="Questions on using e-mail for communicating literature and collaborating with peers. Also related to academic advertising or announcements." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T08:50:43.977" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T08:50:43.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3630" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:50:20.903" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every conference and workshop will issue a call for papers. The editors of special issues of journals may issue a call for papers. Editors of books on a special topic may have call for papers. How else will they advertise their conference, workshop, journal, book and get submission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these will be perfectly legitimate and even highly reputable venues. Naturally, some of these might be poorly ranked conferences or even in-it-for-the-money ventures, rather than serious scientific venues. But if you mark them all as spam, how will you know what is out there to submit your papers to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best strategy&lt;/strong&gt; I can think of &lt;strong&gt;is to create a folder to collect these call for papers and use a filter to move them into that folder.&lt;/strong&gt; When you need to submit a paper, you can search through the folder to find an appropriate venue. As most conferences repeat yearly at roughly the same time, you can collect the names of those and the approximate due dates in another file (or calendar), so that you build a good picture of what the major events in your field are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and again you will need to find a new forum or perhaps there will be a book that you could contribute to. By filtering all call for papers, you miss these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you can find most of this information using Google ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering the title question: generally you shouldn't &lt;strong&gt;respond&lt;/strong&gt; to these emails. That said, you could send an email to be asked to be removed from the mailing list, but this is probably ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T17:07:46.447" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T17:07:46.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3634" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:59:06.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refers to publisher, the one who publishes academic journals or books rather than the act of publishing. Academic publishers are usually universities, societies or scholarly institutions. Commercial academic publishers also do exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T09:04:43.397" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T09:04:43.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3635" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-07T08:59:06.573" Score="0" Body="Questions related to publisher, the one who publishes academic journals or books." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T09:04:46.660" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T09:04:46.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3636" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-07T09:05:53.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Queries related to announcements on upcoming conferences, journals, etc. Announcements can be in electronic form or in conventional media. The tag addresses queries related to formats, language and styles used in such communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T09:14:37.317" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T09:14:37.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3637" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-07T09:05:53.910" Score="0" Body="Queries related to announcements on upcoming conferences, journals, etc." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T09:14:33.057" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T09:14:33.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3630" CreationDate="2012-10-07T09:22:57.620" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unsolicited CfP emails are a very bad practice, but there is little you can do. Just ignore and delete the irrelevant CfPs manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reputable conferences and journals &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; send their announcements only to the relevant mailing lists, so that only those who are really interested in the CfPs will receive them. Unfortunately, there are some reputable venues that resort to spamming, and there is also the grey area of people forwarding CfPs to their colleagues, departmental mailing lists, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automated filtering&lt;/strong&gt; sounds tempting, but it is very &lt;strong&gt;dangerous&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, an invitation to serve in the programme committee of a conference may look very similar to a CfP. Such invitations often include the same basic information as a CfP (conference name, location, date, topic, web site URL, chairs, etc.) – indeed, it might even include a preliminary version of a CfP. An automated filter might easily classify it as CfP spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T09:22:57.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2052" CreationDate="2012-10-07T14:31:34.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, under normal circumstances, I would expect the abstract to be as close to the front of a thesis as possible. The reason for this is to make the job of cataloging and searching easier. Abstracts of theses are indexed by services such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://proquest.umi.com&quot;&gt;ProQuest&lt;/a&gt;, and having to wade through additional pages of material makes their work harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, scientifics is correct in that you should follow whatever regulations your university has. But in general, in the absence of such guidelines, I would put the abstract &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the acknowledgments—readers want to know as soon as possible if they should bother to read the rest of your thesis. Burying it after the front matter makes it less likely for them to invest the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T14:31:34.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3021" CreationDate="2012-10-07T15:24:40.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you're in a very tough situation. Most of the &quot;big name&quot; fellowships are moving &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from funding older students, on the relatively flimsy rationale that they're making a bigger impact by funding less experienced students from the start of their program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few programs that do support late-term graduate students; these are typically known as &lt;strong&gt;dissertation fellowships.&lt;/strong&gt; Examples include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/FordFellowships/PGA_047959&quot;&gt;Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowships&lt;/a&gt;, but these also have other restrictions associated with them (for instance, a commitment to a teaching career). Similarly, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rff.org/About_RFF/Pages/JosephLFisherDoctoralDissertationFellowships.aspx&quot;&gt;Fisher Doctoral Fellowship&lt;/a&gt; primarily supports environmental and energy-related research, while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://umsi.uncf.org/sif#ScienceResearchDissertation&quot;&gt;Merck Fellowship Program&lt;/a&gt; is for African-American students in biomedical-related fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are resources available, but they are certainly very limited in scope, and you'll need to make sure you meet all of the qualification criteria. The other problem for you is that these fellowships are typically only one year in duration, so if, as you say, you are two years away from finishing, you will need to find some means to finance one year of study, either through TA's or other sources of funding. In the meanwhile, you should talk with your advisor if there are other resources within the group to help you—at least partially. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T16:49:01.263" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:49:01.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-10-07T16:00:35.643" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For everything that have been reviewed AND permanently archived then the bibliography is fine. For all the rest footnotes are the place to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:00:35.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-10-07T16:33:15.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I think:) &lt;em&gt;Definitely&lt;/em&gt; give a URL if there is one, &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the date you down/up-loaded the paper, and perhaps give a revision date of the paper, if it itself gives one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;AND&lt;/em&gt; give the more traditional reference information as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The URL allows people to find an e-copy, at least for a while. The conventional references do not necessarily produce copies accessible through the internet, though sometimes they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the time being, these two sorts of citations give different information, have different utilities. One may take the pose that one makes the other irrelevant, but I think this is not accurate. The common &quot;objections&quot; to internet-accessible things, that they are &quot;transient&quot;, while physical references are &quot;permanent&quot;, is disingenuous, upon some thought. First, many good things are transient, which is not an argument against them! Second, physical references are equally transient, if in a different way... usually that many different libraries throughout the world maintain &quot;cached&quot; copies. Well, maybe Google has cached the now-gone document at a vanished URL? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, operationally, give all the information you have in citations, even while recognizing that some of it has an expiration date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:33:15.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3644" CreationDate="2012-10-07T17:04:04.587" Score="47" ViewCount="5419" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we know, citation counts are important to judge one's research activity. Is it good to cite one's previous works? Will it be viewed as an act of advertisement or self-promotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T12:36:56.477" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T10:19:20.357" Title="Will self-citation be viewed as self-promotion in academia? " Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2012-10-07T18:30:32.947" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's true that citations are always helpful, there are obviously limits. If the &lt;em&gt;majority&lt;/em&gt; of your citations are self-citations, that's usually considered a &quot;red flag.&quot;  If your paper that came out two years ago has 10 citations, and two or three are from within your group, nobody's really going to have a problem with that. But if your paper gets cited 45 times, and 40 of them are you citing yourself, that's not so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation counts not being &quot;in sync&quot; with the journals they're published in are also problematic. Publishing in no-name, third-tier journal X, your paper is probably unlikely to generate many citations. It looks suspicious when such papers get many citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, much of this can be sorted out by a judicious use of search tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isiknowledge.com&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T18:30:32.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2012-10-07T19:00:11.097" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ethical rule has to be: cite your work if it's relevant, and don't give it preferential treatment over the work of others. In short: &lt;strong&gt;use the same criteria for previous references to your work as you would use for citing others&lt;/strong&gt;. No excessive citation, no self-censorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T19:00:11.097" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1422" CreationDate="2012-10-07T20:08:41.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best practice is to include standard bibliographic information, a relatively stable hypertext link for current readers (e.g. to the ArXiv), and the DOI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T20:08:41.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2052" CreationDate="2012-10-07T22:14:36.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just adding my two cents: around me, people commonly print out and bind their thesis in such a way that &lt;strong&gt;the one-page abstract is on the back cover&lt;/strong&gt;. I think it makes a lot of sense, and allows one to get an idea of what the thesis is about without flipping pages (literally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T22:14:36.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2258" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:35:38.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Moodle&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to try a demo site of Moodle. It would be specially helpful to try one that has content. &lt;a href=&quot;http://school.demo.moodle.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here you can find one&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. You can choose which role to use, so you will be able to see what students see and to see some settings for each activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Main_page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moodle's documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is the bible for using Moodle. You just have to make sure to review the documentation of the current version of your site. For instance, the capabilities of versions 1.9 or lower are much more limited than those of versions 2.0 or higher. However, if you are beginner I suggest you to visit first the demo site. Moodle's documentation could be more difficult to grasp if you do not know how a site works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Contents&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if you are going to use Moodle as a support for classes (&amp;quot;blended learning&amp;quot;) or if you are going to teach an e-learning class. However, regardless of the kind of use, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/869/1575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; you can find interesting ideas and concepts about distance education using Moodle. These ideas will be useful even if you are teaching a blended learning class. This document explains some principles for distance education (e.g., the course interface should be simple and intuitive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Tips&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The module called &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Lesson&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; is very flexible to show and assess content. Some creative users have used it to simulate a situation where students have to make choices. Depending on those choices the module shows them different contents or questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Workshop&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; module allows you to implement a peer review system in a class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Assignment&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; module can be used as an &amp;quot;electronic mail box&amp;quot;. Students can submit their project reports online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the newer versions of Moodle there is an option to create a &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Rubric&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;. So you can quickly evaluate projects clicking on the rubric.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can set up a &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Wiki&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; in the course's page. For instance, you can ask students to use the Wiki to document their progress on a project, so you can directly comment in there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can create &lt;strong&gt;groups&lt;/strong&gt; of students in the course's page. One of the advantages of this is that you can implement forums for each group, so students can exchange messages within their groups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are teaching a class that uses a lot of math, you can write in Moodle using Latex syntaxis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T02:42:53.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-10-08T06:37:01.133" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematica is actually good for making all sorts of graphics.&#xA;Think of it as vector graphics software, but that every control point/coordinate can be specified to the decimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;The syntax is really clear, it is easy to procedurally construct graphics,&#xA;and it has lines, arrows, bezier curves, and of course a bunch of nice builtin plot functions that one can add extra decorations to.&#xA;Furthermore, it IS a programming language, so if you have multiple images, it is easy to share common components, so that a singe change affects all images (provided you use a good programming technique).&#xA;It is also easy to get help with mathematica over at mathematica.stackexchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The included image was entirely produced via a few lines of mathematica code, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r7P3T.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T11:34:12.223" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T11:34:12.223" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1686" CreationDate="2012-10-08T06:40:20.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I constantly discuss my work with my colleges all the time,&#xA;not only may I get some helpful pointers or references, but asking/staring the question helps me in the solving process, similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rubber duck debugging&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T06:40:20.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2012-10-08T10:59:18.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of different types of &quot;review articles.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are book and &quot;show&quot; reviews, but I don't think this is what you mean. These can be written by anyone, but are often written by junior people who are willing to stick their necks out a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also systematic reviews in which the literature is search systematically and the quality of each piece of literature is assessed against a predetermined set of criteria. Systemic reviews often only focus on a handful of studies. If there are more studies a meta-analysis may be conducted. These again are written by people at all stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tutorial&quot; reviews which attempts to summarize a large swath of research. A literature review in a thesis is a good example of this type of review. These types of reviews often are published as book chapters. Many are solicited by an editor, but some are submitted. Again people of all stages can publish these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T10:59:18.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2012-10-08T11:13:45.973" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing your previous work can be both good and bad. The biggest benefit is it might make people more aware of your work and how it fits in with a bigger topic. The risk is that people do not understand the relevance and think you are self-promoting and therefore take a negative view of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst case of this is when a reviewer tells you to cite some piece of work. If it is a big laundry list of articles all by the same author, you tend to get a little angry and think the reviewer is trying to promote that author. If it is a single article that is obviously related and the reviewer clearly states that he/she is an author, I tend to be happy to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you need to ask is: are you citing the previous work to promote it or to help the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T11:13:45.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3657" CreationDate="2012-10-08T14:57:09.057" Score="6" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;As different journals and Conference proceedings have different reference styles, it is very much important to quickly identify the specific reference style they prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, is there any reference style analyzer which can analyze a given example reference style and give the name of the style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T15:10:58.820" Title="Is there any referencing style analyzer?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3655" CreationDate="2012-10-08T15:02:39.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each journal will have a &lt;strong&gt;guide for authors&lt;/strong&gt; that will specify the required reference style. That's the fastest, easiest and most reliable method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T15:02:39.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3655" CreationDate="2012-10-08T15:10:58.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the name of the reference style is in general Journal X's style. Even journals that claim to stick to a standard style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) often throw in little twists. In general I find that if you get close, journals are pretty forgiving and will copy edit you to the correct style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you want your in text citations to follow either an author-number (Vancouver) or author-date (Harvard) style. As for the list of citations, just make sure it has all the information that the journal uses (e.g., DOI if the journal uses it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T15:10:58.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3659" CreationDate="2012-10-08T15:28:31.073" Score="8" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;During coursework, there are sessions where a problem set is distributed beforehand and a TA works out the solutions in front of the class in a stipulated session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the student works out the problems himself and is confident of the material being covered, is it alright to skip such sessions? Is this viewed adversely during grading, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T16:05:31.900" Title="Is it alright to skip problem solving sessions during coursework?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2012-10-08T15:43:01.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, skipping the sessions is not only alright, but is in fact advisable. Will it be viewed adversely during grading, you bet yeah. The key thing to remember is that in grad school grades don't matter. If skipping the session means you can put an extra hour into your research, then that is better time spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it will affect you in grading is you might lose some participation points and the benefit of the doubt for borderline grades. The instructor may be less inclined to write you a letter of recommendation, but ideally your letter writers will be talking about your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T15:43:01.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3583" CreationDate="2012-10-08T16:04:50.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your institution has access to Journal Citation Reports, there is a feature called &lt;em&gt;Related Journals&lt;/em&gt; that will provide a list of titles similar to your selected title, based on citing and cited relationships. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/journal_citation_reports/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal Citation Reports&lt;/a&gt; is a subscription database provided by Thomson Reuters  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2799" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T16:20:44.397" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T16:20:44.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2012-10-08T16:05:31.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should do your best to maximize your gain from grad school, including skipping sessions/lectures which are not profitable, unless it is explicitly against the rules (in some institutions, there are mandatory lectures). If that means you skip some lectures, do it. If asked, be polite but direct about it. Some people will take it badly, most probably won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll reinforce my (and Daniel’s) answer with an anecdote: as a student, the department head welcomed us at the beginning of my first year. He said his institution was a place of science, not of conventions, and independence of great minds mattered above all. “Some people learn best in books, in chats with researchers… not by sleeping in lecture rooms. That's okay.” — Two months later, I went to him a morning because I needed his signature on an application. He gave me hell because I dared skip &lt;em&gt;his own&lt;/em&gt; coursework session, which was happening at the same time with a TA from his group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can skip lectures, you don't have to try to hide it, but don't rub it in either :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T16:05:31.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3666" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:17:11.593" Score="25" ViewCount="5353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching an elective course in which students' grades are determined on the basis of a final project. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year I had to grant a one-week blanket exception to all of the students. However, several students asked for, and received, an additional extension beyond the general extension, based on legitimate issues related to other academic commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, some of these students have still failed to turn in their project, and this is leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. For this year, I have decided on a policy of deducting a full letter grade for each 24 hours beyond the deadline, but this at once seems too harsh (to the individual students affected) and also too lenient (because everybody else managed to turn things in on time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reasonable way to handle tardiness in submissions of final papers or projects, particularly when they are the sole basis for determining a grade? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T04:40:13.003" Title="How do I appropriately penalize late projects?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3664" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:33:55.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an alternative way of thinking about the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some argue that punishing students for late assessment is counter-productive to the learning goals of a course. For instance, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://tomschimmer.com/2011/02/21/enough-with-the-late-penalties/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; presents a good argument for this case. The author argues &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students should be graded on the quality of their work (their ability to meet the desired learning targets) rather than how punctual the assignment is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also read this elsewhere in books such as Biggs' &lt;em&gt;Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student does&lt;/em&gt; or Ramsden's &lt;em&gt;Learning to Teach in Higher Education&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T19:33:55.043" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3664" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:36:50.453" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some ideas of how I try to handle this sort of things. Maybe they will help, maybe you already are aware of these points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As students, they aspire to become professionals, and you want them to. So, to a reasonable extent, &lt;strong&gt;treat them as professionals&lt;/strong&gt;. In real life, finishing a project late triggers penalties, which can range from small to catastrophic (&lt;em&gt;“the missed deadline? come back next year”&lt;/em&gt;). The rules are usually &lt;strong&gt;announced in advance&lt;/strong&gt;, so they know how important each task is, and can weigh their own priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not common, but for long projects, I have once used the rule of “late projects will simply receive the failing grade of &lt;em&gt;incomplete&lt;/em&gt;”. Needless to say, noöne was late.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, as in any professional setting, &lt;strong&gt;there is always room for negotiation&lt;/strong&gt; (as you did). If they realize they will be late, they should come and make an well-argumented pitch, and asking for a specific extension.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not reporting on your progress is the worse possible action. I mean, simply skipping the deadline and coming two days later asking for clemency will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fly. In fact, I wouldn't consider listening to anyone who has not at least come forward on the deadline to indicate they are late, and try to work out a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there always are special cases: hospital, tornado, the usual… :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll highlight another method for evaluating student projects, which I find very interesting but have not had time to put in practice yet (but my wife did). In that approach, you set the project deadline so as to leave the students ample time, and &lt;strong&gt;you allow them to hand you their reports at any time before the deadline, for you to review&lt;/strong&gt;. And you state that after the deadline, they will fail (if they have not given you anything yet), or be graded on the last version of their project you saw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, obviously, grade fairly strictly… because their work will usually be very good, since you already reviewed it once or twice (for most groups). This has been found (don't have the reference right now, I will ask) to improve acquisition of knowledge over the usual method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T04:40:13.003" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T04:40:13.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3575" CreationDate="2012-10-08T20:38:25.773" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good place to start to fill gaps due to lack of teacher training is with a general book or two on the topic. I was surprised when I read these at how different current attitudes and approaches are compared to when I was a student.  Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Biggs and Catherine Tangs' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Quality-Learning-University-Education/dp/0335242758&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student does&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul Ramsden's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Teach-Higher-Education-Ramsden/dp/0415303451&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learning to Teach in Higher Education&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key issues these books talk about regarding assessment is the notion of &lt;strong&gt;constructive alignment&lt;/strong&gt;, which is ensuring that the assessment aligns appropriately with the learning outcomes of the course. In these books (and others) plenty of advice is given to help you better align your assessment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important issue is that assessment guides the approach to learning. If students know that they only need to learn a whole bunch of facts, perhaps based on their examination of past exams, then they will adopt a shallow approach to learning and not really understand the material. Trying to encourage students to adopt a deep approach to learning is extremely important and is strongly influenced by the approach taken to assessment. These books also focus on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading those, &#xA;I recommend the following books, which both focus on assessment. They have given me plenty of ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Assessment-Matters-Higher-Education-Approaches/dp/033520242X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; edited by Sally Brown and Angela Glasner, Open University Press, 1999.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0335221076&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Developing Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Sue Bloxham (Author), Pete Boyd, Open University Press, 2007.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They both written in the context of British universities, but I'm sure the ideas are fairly universally applicable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also plenty of journals of higher education, if you want to get access to cutting edge research in higher education. Some are devoted to assessment, and others are more general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/caeh20/current&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Assessment &amp;amp; Evaluation in Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/121162/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pareonline.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Practical Assessment, Research &amp;amp; Evaluation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_higher_education/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Journal of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Review of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jge/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Journal of General Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://celt.muohio.edu/ject/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Journal of Excellence in College Teaching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that this only scrapes the surface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the Google returned some resources, which lead to more detailed resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aacu.org/resources/assessment/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aacu.org/resources/assessment/index.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/upa/assmt/resource.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/upa/assmt/resource.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T10:06:59.187" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T10:06:59.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3664" CreationDate="2012-10-08T22:35:23.537" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a course in which the final project is the only (or the majority of the) grade, one letter grade (or a 10% penalty) per day is not too severe. Compare to the final exam. If a student needed to make up a final exam due to legitimate extenuating circumstances, how many days would you give that student to make up the exam? Not many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also encourage setting a date after which you will not accept the project. At my institution, and likely at most, final grades are due by a specific date. If the project is not submitted by that date, I would assign a zero grade for the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of severity, most students would respect a policy that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is communicated upfront, preferably in the syllabus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is enforced uniformly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has some small amount of wiggle room for true emergencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T22:35:23.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3671" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-09T07:32:18.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is synonymous to &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/grants/info&quot;&gt;grants&lt;/a&gt; tag. Academic funding is usually non-repayable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T07:34:33.433" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T07:34:33.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3672" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-09T07:32:18.723" Score="0" Body="This tag refers to questions related to source and utilization of academic funding from government or non-governmental sources." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T07:34:39.377" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T07:34:39.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3674" CreationDate="2012-10-09T13:43:49.453" Score="2" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/are-the-referees-of-a-journal-allowed-to-reveal-the-title-of-the-papers-they-rev&quot;&gt;Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you were a single-blind paper reviewer (i.e. you could see the author's name, but they couldn't see your name) and you didn't obviously de-anonymize yourself during the review. If the paper gets accepted and published, and you are writing a review/summary of it (in its published form, not in any pre-publication form you have seen) on your blog after it appears in print. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you mention the fact that you were a reviewer for this paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you make comments about pre-publication versions of the paper?&lt;/strong&gt; For instance: 'when submitted the paper lacked X, but other reviewers and I suggested it to be added and after revisions the author provided a full proof of X'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T13:58:40.997" Title="Can you mention that you were a paper reviewer after it has been published?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-09T13:58:14.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3673" CreationDate="2012-10-09T13:58:40.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd just pretend that you stumbled across a paper, rather than say you reviewed it on your blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; make comments about the pre-published version of the paper. This could be embarrassing for the author, and seriously violates the trust embodied in the reviewing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T13:58:40.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3675" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-09T16:42:07.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Education refers to teaching and learning specific skills. The fundamental aspect of education is in the transmission of culture from generation to generation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T16:50:39.047" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T16:50:39.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3676" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-09T16:42:07.600" Score="0" Body="General questions on higher education." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T16:50:26.927" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T16:50:26.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1275" CreationDate="2012-10-09T21:34:22.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the particle physics world---where we have large organization that operate for decades---&quot;technical report&quot; is one of the several names given to internal documents and communications with the funding agencies that are intended to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communicate important technical details between units (e.g. the accelerator division needs to inform the experimental scientists of the operational limits of the beam position monitors) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;propagate and preserve specialized knowledge and competencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to document details that won't be written up in a paper for many years (large experiments often leave off writing a detailed description of the experiment as built and run until after several data papers have appeared; by the time you get ready to write this &quot;instrumentation paper&quot; many of the people who installed the device may have moved on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provided supporting justification for grant requests and project proposals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;demonstrate readiness to actually start spending money on conditionally approved projects (which is essentially &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; US projects in the post SSC era; and both the Europeans and the Japanese have similar administrative protections)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly most particle physicist will spend some time writing such documents every few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T22:52:04.593" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T22:52:04.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3678" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-10T07:19:59.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A researcher or a graduate student need to use a lot of software to make their life easier and make them more productive. The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt; tag address queries related to such software, but limited to academic aspects of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, questions concerning computer code written or used in the context of a research project or other academic endeavour (including questions on licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of academic source code) should be asked under the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/code&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;code&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;code&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, highly technical aspects shall be posted to relevant specific SE or SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="18124" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T23:26:14.413" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T23:26:14.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3679" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-10T07:19:59.527" Score="0" Body="Queries related to various software used in academia. Questions shall not address highly technical aspects of the software but shall address features/issues highly relevant to academia. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions concerning computer code written or used in the context of a research project or other academic endeavour (including questions on licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of academic source code), use the `code` tag instead." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="18124" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T22:06:16.033" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T22:06:16.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3681" CreationDate="2012-10-10T07:23:11.007" Score="13" ViewCount="2656" Body="&lt;p&gt;People from our group attended some important conferences (Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society, etc) and sent abstracts that were accepted as posters or talks. Later, the abstract appears in a Supplement of a Journal (in this case, Biophysical Journal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, in such cases, can one cite this publication in the CV as a regular paper? Otherwise, what should be the best way to cite it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T08:18:37.193" Title="How to cite conference contribution that appears later in a Journal Supplement" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2012-10-10T08:25:09.207" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not usually listed on the same list as “regular papers” in a CV. The reason for that is that &lt;strong&gt;they are not peer-reviewed&lt;/strong&gt;. In the fields of physics, chemistry and biology, it is most common to list your scientific production in a CV by breaking it down into the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer-reviewed articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Book chapters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference proceedings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invited conference talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference posters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at examples from the &lt;em&gt;Biophysical journal&lt;/em&gt; supplements, and the abstracts are quite short (one paragraph or two). Even though it is published in print, it is too short to be considered proceedings. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;I would list it as either a talk or a poster&lt;/strong&gt;. That is was published as part of a supplement to one journal does not make it very different from any other conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries and in some fields, it may also be typical to further break down between national and international venues (journals, conferences, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biophysics.org/Meetings/AnnualMeeting/AbstractIssues/tabid/461/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;journal webpage&lt;/a&gt; has some information on how to format such citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, R., S.E. Jones, T.J. Smith, (2006) Histone phosphorylation in DNA damage. 2006 Biophysical Society Meeting Abstracts. Biophysical Journal, Supplement, Abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T08:49:31.977" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T08:49:31.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-10T09:10:01.090" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-the-date-left-out-of-some-academic-papers&quot;&gt;Why is the date left out of some academic papers?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scientific paper usually begins with a title, a list of authors with contact information and affiliation, and an abstract. There is usually no date to indicate when the paper was written or first published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, the first questions that comes to my mind when reading a new paper is often: When was it written? How current is this research? Can I expect that science has moved on since this was written? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I suggested adding a date to the header of one of my own papers, my advisors reacted, surprisingly for me, as if this was a quite outlandish idea. The reason given was that it is &quot;unusual&quot;. Is there any rationale behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T09:10:01.090" Title="Why is it unusual to add a date to scientific papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-10T09:15:20.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3686" CreationDate="2012-10-10T14:11:40.113" Score="15" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reviewing a publication, in which the authors give the URL of an online tool (data analysis and sharing) they have developed. This URL has apparently not yet been publicized, as searching for it in Google didn't bring any result. Because of that, I'm worried that the paper's authors may identify me as a referee when I go check their website (after all, the logs must be clear). That probably wouldn't be very ethical, but I have no way of being sure they won't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am supposed to do about it? I thought of contacting the editor asking for guidance, using a private proxy&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;, or logging from an internet café somewhere. Do you have any other suggestions? Or am I just worrying too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know which anonymizing proxy service to use, and I welcome suggestions in comments, but that probably isn't particularly relevant to this site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T14:54:51.363" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T19:37:49.720" Title="Referee access to a not-yet-public URL cited in a paper?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-10T14:43:21.093" Score="22" ViewCount="1681" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ghostwriting is when an author writes a work and attributes it to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this &lt;em&gt;reverse-plagiarism&lt;/em&gt; (someone taking credit for someone else's work, but &lt;em&gt;with permission&lt;/em&gt;)?  I'm not sure it happens in academia a lot, but I've seen instances where a professor &quot;ghostwrites&quot; course notes for another professor.  Actually those notes are really bad and it seems like he doesn't want to take the hit of delivering the course himself.  Instead he ghostwrites it for other people.  It seems wrong to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T05:01:16.540" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T08:09:50.033" Title="Isn't ghostwriting reverse-plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3575" CreationDate="2012-10-10T14:45:50.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on country, your university may provide training. In the UK all teaching staff must obtain a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education. While I still do not fully understand the process, it seems that this is nearly a Masters in Education. I would check with your office of professional development to see what courses they offer. You may also want to look at auditing a course in the Department of Education. Although in my experience Departments of Education are often rated as having poor teaching (this may obviously be due to student bias).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T14:45:50.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2012-10-10T14:49:21.990" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think you are worrying too much. Second, I think it is bad form on the part of the authors. If the material on the website is critical for the paper, it needs to be provided in an archival form that the journal can keep track of. I would evaluate it based on what you have been given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T14:49:21.990" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3684" CreationDate="2012-10-10T15:41:43.150" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unattributed work in academia is generally considered unethical. In my own experience, however, I believe that I've come across very few instances of actual ghostwriting where the real author was unnamed. Normally, at least some acknowledgment is called for, either in an editor's note or introduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer Mankoff's comeent below, by &quot;unattributed work,&quot; it can be okay for authors to &lt;em&gt;choose&lt;/em&gt; to remain anonymous, if they feel it is in their best interests to do so. However, to take &lt;em&gt;someone else's&lt;/em&gt; work and to pass it off as their own is clearly unethical behavior. However, from an ethics standpoint, even if the ghost author is asked about attribution and declines, the &quot;named&quot; author should not attempt to claim sole credit for the work. Instead, the author should make some sort of reference to those who assisted in the preparation of the manuscript. Otherwise, they're passing off someone else's work as their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T19:02:46.773" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T19:02:46.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3684" CreationDate="2012-10-10T17:48:27.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would say that ghost writing does not constitute plagiarism and using one is not an academically dishonest. A scientific writer who is not an expert in a particular field can convert research notes into a manuscript. These words are not the contribution to the field, but rather the research they encompass. While converting the notes to prose could be viewed as worthy of authorship, I think it is also reasonable to say that it is not. If the writer and the researcher agree that the writers assistance is not worthy of authorship, then there is no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do not use a ghost writer, I see this as no different then employing a programmer to write code to control my experiment, an RA to collect the data from the experiment, a graphic designer to create the figures, and a statistician to run the statistics, all of which I do do to varying degrees. To me the contribution is the design of the experiment and the analysis and interpretation of the results. I acknowledge these individuals to varying degrees in the manuscripts, but rarely give authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ICMJE &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for authorship are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ghost writer does not meet conditions 1 or 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T19:38:13.173" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T19:38:13.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2012-10-10T19:37:49.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the technical side, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tor&lt;/a&gt;. That's what I do as a reviewer for accessing on-line supplements to blind reviewed conference submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T19:37:49.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3691" CreationDate="2012-10-11T06:37:23.587" Score="7" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinchem.org/search?tocsectionid=Clinical%20Chemistry%20Guide%20to%20Scientific%20Writing&amp;amp;sortspec=date&amp;amp;submit=Submit&quot;&gt;Clinical Chemistry Guide to Scientific Writing Series&lt;/a&gt;. One of the articles is titled: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinchem.org/content/56/8/1226.full&quot;&gt;“If an IRDAM Journal Is What You Choose, Then Sequential Results Are What You Use”&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered this term in this site also. Can anybody explain this term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.tr/search?q=IRDAM%20Journal&amp;amp;oq=IRDAM%20Journal&amp;amp;sugexp=chrome,mod=0&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; asks ”Did you mean: IRDA Journal”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article I linked, it is explained as &quot;Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Methods&quot;.  I understand its meaning as this readily. What I would like to know following points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which type of journal articles are suitable for this style?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which branches of academic endorse its usage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any other such styles exists? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any other abbreviations exists?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finally but not least, why should I follow this type of sequence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T09:54:08.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T10:24:52.497" Title="What is IRDAM Journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3690" CreationDate="2012-10-11T06:43:03.053" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinchem.org/content/56/8/1226.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, you can see that IRDAM is an acronym for Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Methods. IRDAM is a style/format of presenting results in publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IRDAM format requires a substantial change in how the Results&#xA;  section is organized. Because the methods are listed at the end of the&#xA;  paper, or online, the reader is not exposed to details of the&#xA;  experimental protocols and methods before the results are presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The format used by many high-impact basic research journals, such as&#xA;  Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of&#xA;  Clinical Investigation, and Journal of Cell Biology, is arranged so&#xA;  that the Results section immediately follows the Introduction. The&#xA;  Methods section is placed at the end, or it may even be published as a&#xA;  supplemental data file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T14:11:22.580" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T14:11:22.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3693" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:43:23.093" Score="10" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;It used to be that mostly women would take maternity leave, and in the field where I work it would be accounted for by a hiring committee. Most likely, someone would say “yeah, there is a dip in X’s scientific production during years XX-XX, but that's around the time she got 2 kids, so it's not worrying”. It might not always be put very delicately (I heard of a committee member once saying &lt;em&gt;“so, let's decide in advance: how many papers is one kid worth?”&lt;/em&gt;), but there existed some sort of positive bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, more and more fathers take parental leave (around me, it seems to be usually 6 to 12 months when the kid is young). Thus, the situation is getting more complex. How do hiring committees in academia handle these cases? Should one consider a parental leave as “lost time”, professionally speaking? Or are recruiters in academia more understanding than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; more specifically, I'm talking about the US system. I know that standards of parental leave are more generous in Europe than in a typical “welfare is communism” country :)  So, I am worried about how academic employers might react to a woman having a 2 years parental leave in her curriculum, or a father having taken a 6-month leave in the recent past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the situation in others countries is also interesting… So please don't hesitate to leave comments!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T13:24:47.387" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T03:28:22.120" Title="How do recruiters consider parental leave in one's career path?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3692" CreationDate="2012-10-11T21:09:07.987" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US hiring committees I've been on generally &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; handle this issue, because it's mostly orthogonal to the hiring decision.  We can't legally discriminate on the basis of gender, age, martial status, sexual orientation, parental status, or fertility.  We can and do discriminate on the strength of the applicant's cumulative research record (including &lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt; productivity) and their reputation in the research community.  Short gaps in an applicant's research record are inconsequential; &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; has off years.  Longer gaps, even if they last multiple years, can be ignored if their post-gap work is sufficiently stellar.  (And if their work isn't stellar, even without the gaps, why would we want to hire them?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an issue that promotions and tenure committees have to address.  At my university, parental and other leaves extend the tenure clock, and tenure/promotion decisions are based on the candidate's cumulative record &lt;em&gt;since their last promotion&lt;/em&gt;, not their cumulative record &lt;em&gt;in the last n years&lt;/em&gt; for any fixed value of n.  The committee usually knows &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the candidate's clock was extended, because we can figure that out from their CV, but we are usually not told &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;, because it's none of our business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;many&lt;/strong&gt; reasons why a researcher might take a leave of absence / stop their tenure clock / have a gap in their publication record.  I've seen all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parental: having &lt;em&gt;or adopting&lt;/em&gt; a new child (either or both parents)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medical: serious injury or illness, of either the researcher themselves or a close family member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bereavement: death of a researcher's spouse, child, or other close family member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entrepreneurial: building a startup company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative: holding a service position, either at the university or elsewhere (for example, at a funding agency)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T03:28:22.120" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T03:28:22.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T21:30:03.543" Score="16" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those of you at universities where calculus is taught in small sections with graduate student instructors; &#xA;what sort of structure do you have for supervising/mentoring the graduate students and overseeing the administration of the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., does this duty rotate among tenure-track faculty, do you have a dedicated instructor who does this on a long-term basis, or do you have some other structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jeanne Clelland" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T00:30:54.837" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T00:30:54.837" Title="How to effectively supervise grad student calculus teaching assistants (TAs)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3704" CreationDate="2012-10-11T23:54:48.580" Score="20" ViewCount="2726" Body="&lt;p&gt;While searching through various journals with my library's on-line journal search tools, I have occasionally found short articles which are simply comments on other published papers. These short articles might have various kinds of comments, but generally describe why the first paper's research or theories are flawed. In addition, sometimes I have found replies from the original author of the first paper, responding to these comments, for e.g., to clarify the meaning or perhaps to give further support to their original arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do such exchanges generally only occur within the same journal, i.e. the responses are published in the same journal, or can these occur across journals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any special tools to assist with locating all of these &quot;replies&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T00:45:04.023" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T06:53:35.677" Title="How to find all of the responses to a published research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3698" CreationDate="2012-10-12T00:10:24.857" Score="14" ViewCount="2735" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the responsibilities of a conference's &lt;em&gt;program chair&lt;/em&gt; versus its &lt;em&gt;general chair&lt;/em&gt;? Computer science conferences like &lt;a href=&quot;http://theory.stanford.edu/stoc2013/&quot;&gt;STOC&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://theory.stanford.edu/~tim/focs12/&quot;&gt;FOCS&lt;/a&gt; list separate program and general chairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A guess would be that the program chair is in charge of the technical content (which papers are accepted, etc.) whereas the general chair is in charge of administrative aspects. However, some conferences, like FOCS, list a third group of &lt;em&gt;local arrangements chairs&lt;/em&gt; who sound like they are in charge of the administrative side of the conference. Others only have one group of undifferentiated &quot;chairs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do each of these jobs entail? Are they considered &quot;equal&quot; in terms of service to the community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="993" LastEditorUserId="993" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T01:00:15.300" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T13:39:18.977" Title="What are the responsibilities of a Program vs. General Conference Chair?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3703" CreationDate="2012-10-12T01:43:45.350" Score="15" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science, when we write an academic paper, we often have to include comparative results that our method has some kind of quantitative advantage against some other state of the art results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is sometimes easy to reproduce a cited paper's results (e.g., classification of small datasets), other times it is very time consuming and you could spent the better part of your research time just writing code testing the other methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it sometimes happens that when we reproduce the method, we do not get the presented results. So it can be tricky to do that as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it reasonable just to cite another paper's results at face value?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What suggestions would you give to this conundrum?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T01:53:46.433" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T13:49:38.537" Title="Is it reasonable to cite published computational results rather than reproduce them yourself?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3696" CreationDate="2012-10-12T04:15:17.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conferences in &lt;em&gt;theoretical&lt;/em&gt; computer science like the ones you mention typically don't have general chairs. They have a local arrangements team for organizing the event, and program chairs to manage the review process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many conferences in CS outside theory have a general chair because they have many more activities. The general chair might be in charge of selecting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The workshop program chair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The posters chair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tutorials chair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publicity (and social media) chairs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treasurer &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Local arrangements &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. The general chair can be viewed as being in charge of everything except the technical program and then delegates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this may vary even within iterations of an individual conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T04:15:17.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T04:35:03.717" Score="9" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;While combing through English journal articles and semi-scientific articles, I noticed how problematic it is that in some cases those papers use a romanized, Latin script display of originally Non-Latin script words and expressions. The issue: In my case (Korean), there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_romanization&quot;&gt;several revisions of the romanization system&lt;/a&gt; and some of the texts I work with are either (a) older or (b) the authors simply don't comply to the correct romanization standards. Thus it is very hard (at least for me) to derive the original non-latin script (which is my goal) from an incorrect romanization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, in many cases it is beneficial or even crucial to have access to not only the Hangeul, but also the Hanja, i.e. Chinese characters. At least that is my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I assert that only if I mention the Non-Latin script (in this case Hangeul/Hanja) &quot;as is&quot;, can my academic work be precise, exact and unambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about that? &lt;strong&gt;Are there any standard rules for such a situation&lt;/strong&gt;, that are widely used (i.e. expected from students and academics), e.g. in the USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: Would there be cases in which you would not use the romanized, Latin Script text version at all? (Assuming that we only talk about a few (5-10) words per page.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; The academic results I produce won't be published in any (international) journal anytime soon, but I still would like to follow the highest standard possible, without sacrificing common sense and preciseness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2716" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-04-01T11:21:21.303" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T23:16:37.873" Title="How to choose romanization for non-Latin script in an otherwise Latin script text?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3702" CreationDate="2012-10-12T04:45:46.750" Score="24" ViewCount="1511" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when I am writing a review blog post (or an answer on SE), it is convenient to include a figure from the original paper. Some journals (say &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/q/385/29&quot;&gt;PNAS&lt;/a&gt;) have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/rightperm.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;policies&lt;/a&gt; that explicitly allow non-commercial reproduction of figures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyone may, without requesting permission, use original figures or tables published in PNAS for noncommercial and educational use (i.e., in a review article, in a book that is not for sale) provided that the original source and the applicable copyright notice are cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others, however, seem to explicitly disallow this, of note is the Nature Publishing Group. Today, I had to fill in an online form on RightsLink in order to ensure I could use a figure in my post. I didn't have to pay anything, and the rights were granted instantly after completing the form, but it was still a hassle. The biggest hassle is having to go to each journal's website to check their policies. Hence the questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a general law like fair-use that allows me to place figures from published papers inside blog posts for non-commercial commentary/review purposes?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if your blog has ads that generate revenue, is the use of the figures no longer non-commercial? What about SE that generates revenue but not for the poster?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any extra etiquette one should keep in mind for including figures in blog posts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:50:00.857" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T08:22:24.460" Title="Reproducing figures in blog/SE posts" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3705" CreationDate="2012-10-12T05:17:20.200" Score="9" ViewCount="4163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a master thesis of about 80-100 pages and want to know a good way of structuring my document either using only chapters or chapters and &quot;parts&quot;. f first wanted to post this question to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;TeX Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; but realized that it was too philosophical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As most thesis writers I use LaTeX and I have seen thesis templates that use &lt;code&gt;\part&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/classicthesis/&quot;&gt;classicthesis&lt;/a&gt;) and ones that do not (master thesis template from a university). I think that classicthesis is mostly aimed at PhD thesis documents that are longer and will become a &quot;book&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when is it appropriate to use &lt;code&gt;\part&lt;/code&gt;? Any specific document length in pages or number of chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use &lt;code&gt;\part&lt;/code&gt; then a page is cleared after the text. Is this a style that is used in American PhD thesis documents? Why is this done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also looked at some textbooks and they often do not have something similar to part. Instead these books only use chapters. One of my favorite textbooks (&lt;em&gt;Artificial Intelligence: A modern approach&lt;/em&gt; by Russel) uses parts but no actual pages that show the parts name. Instead they are only visible in the table of contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My two competing ideas are with and without parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   \chapter{Introduction}&#xA;\part{Concepts}&#xA;   \chapter{Background}&#xA;   \chapter{Related work}&#xA;\part{Methods and systems}&#xA;   \chapter{Proposed method}&#xA;   \chapter{Implementation}&#xA;\part{Evaluation}&#xA;   \chapter{Experiments}&#xA;   \chapter{Analysis}&#xA;\part{Conclusions}&#xA;   \chapter{Conclusions}&#xA;   \chapter{Future work}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2822" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T07:18:00.893" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T14:36:26.880" Title="Use &quot;parts&quot; in a master thesis report" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3700" CreationDate="2012-10-12T07:32:24.623" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts on this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use doctrine&lt;/a&gt; is tricky. Assuming you're not ready to hire a lawyer, &lt;strong&gt;play it safe&lt;/strong&gt;. If you're not sure, ask for permission. If you're asked to remove something, do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There has been some noise a few years back on the topic of blogging and reuse of scientific figures. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswager.blogspot.fr/2007/04/fair-use-and-science-blogging.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2007/05/01/fair_use_and_scientific_illustration.php&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/04/26/is-reprinting-a-figure-fair-us/&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; for some links to that affair. The conclusion I would draw is, again: &lt;strong&gt;play it safe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In at least some jurisdictions (France is one), having ads on your web will mean your blog is considered a commercial publication. Asserting fair use for commercial works is typically harder, though this distinction tends to diminish (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Purpose_and_character&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attribute figures (source + link). Always. It's just good manners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll finish by a general observation related to copyright law in academia, as I see it (at least around me): people tend to just do stuff, and then play dumb if they get caught (which rarely happens). Lots of researchers knowingly put up (without authorization) PDF files of their papers on their website, and say “I'll just remove them if I am asked too”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T07:32:24.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3697" CreationDate="2012-10-12T07:39:34.137" Score="14" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I treat &lt;strong&gt;computational results as &lt;em&gt;in silico&lt;/em&gt; experiments&lt;/strong&gt;. They have been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so I trust them by default, unless I have a reason not to. I cite them without a need to recompute them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes, I have a reason to doubt them: they don't match my intuition, or they don't match my own results in a related case; they seem incoherent; they don't match experimental data; etc. Then, I redo them, possibly in more than one way (different software, try checking the effect of some of the assumptions, etc.). If I learn something from it, I consider publishing this study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T07:39:34.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3695" CreationDate="2012-10-12T07:45:37.240" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it may depend on your field, but at least in mine (physics and chemistry), it is rare for papers to generate comments or replies, and really extraordinary for a paper to be followed by multiple comments. (The editor usually lets the original authors reply to the comment, however.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishers provide links to the comments and replies on the webpage for the original paper. Otherwise, you can locate those comments using the following criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are published in the same journal, or in a preprint server (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;their title includes “comment on” or “reply to” (or other such publisher-dependent prefix that you need to identify)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you should get the list of all newer papers citing the original paper, and check them out. If you're investigating a paper in depth, you’ll do that anyway :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T07:45:37.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2012-10-12T08:18:13.730" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when is it appropriate to use \part? Any specific document length in pages or number of chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is appropriate when you feel it appropriate! Seriously though, assuming that there isn't any guideline from your university (otherwise, you probably wouldn't be asking the question), it's really a personal choice, the same than about the splitting chapter/section/subsection/subsubsection/paragraph. The structure of a document is there to help the reader, in particular for long documents. A part could be something that can be read separately (i.e., with no references to the other parts), or could be something containing some huge chapters; tt could reflect a chronological order (before, during, after), or a conceptual separation (theoretical, applied), etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of doubt, talk with your advisor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you use \part then a page is cleared after the text. Is this a style that is used in American PhD thesis documents? Why is this done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Daniel pointed out, this is a rather technical question, that is more likely to be answered on &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;tex.SE&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T08:18:13.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3700" CreationDate="2012-10-12T08:22:24.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also write a blog, and sometimes I also tend to pull images from papers or bookstores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not monetize in my blog, so I'm safe there, and as far as I remember, the current state of the law is that you receive a cease and desist before anything else can happen, so the worst that can happen is that you get a slap in the hand, for the case of the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, other countries like Japan just passed really strict laws, where you are not allowed to host anything that is not copyrighted or you face 10 years in prison (no Cease and Desist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be sure to see where your blog is hosted, and whether you are hosting anything at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suggestion I tend to follow is to publish things from Arxiv and Wikipedia, which are both for free use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T08:22:24.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T11:40:23.780" Score="24" ViewCount="1694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planing to setup a personal academic website. From visiting other researchers websites I have a rough idea of the things I want to put on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- Research interests    &#xA;- List of articles &amp;amp; conference contributions&#xA;- CV&#xA;- Links to affiliated institutions&#xA;- Contact information&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you agree that this list constitutes the information an academic should put on his/her website? Is there anything else you would hope or expect to find? Would you advise against putting any of these pieces of information on the website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T20:07:08.920" Title="What contents should I put on my academic website?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3712" CreationDate="2012-10-12T11:54:49.610" Score="16" ViewCount="9501" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that some journals allow public archiving of publications (making them available for download) on a researcher's personal website. Some of these journals (at least in my field), however, constrict this right by saying that it is only allowed to public archive after one year following publication. &lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: My question is concerned with the time frame of this first year or with the situation where journals do not allow public archiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a publication available to an interested reader, who is unable to obtain the article from the publisher due to institutional subscription policies, does one risk any legal problems on putting the following sentence on his/her website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a copy of any of my publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T14:07:21.303" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T14:12:11.827" Title="Can &quot;Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a copy of any of my publications.&quot; cause legal issues?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3711" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:05:12.563" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will likely vary from journal to journal, but the information should be available in the &quot;authors&quot; section on a journal's webpage. For example, Science provides the document &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lic_info.pdf&quot;&gt;License to Publish—Information for Authors&lt;/a&gt;&quot; document, which clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the Work has been published in Science and provided the Work's first appearance in Science is properly cited, authors may:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Distribute photocopies of the Work to colleagues for non-commercial purposes only (providing that recipients are informed that they may not further distribute or copy the Work). Authors may distribute photocopies or download and email the Science PDF to their colleagues for their colleagues' personal use provided the recipients understand that the copy may not be further distributed or reproduced without the approval of AAAS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This license would allow what you described, as it's non-commercial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T12:05:12.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:18:11.330" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you should have your name, contact information, and a bio of what you do. That's the minimal advertising necessary to serve as a useful &quot;see my site for more details on what I do&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that almost everyone who visits your site will either be looking for someone's name or a paper you've previously published, the next most useful information to include would be: &#xA;- Lab members contact info &amp;amp; bios&#xA;- Publications with downloadable links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely recommend putting pictures up as well, so people will recognize your face when they see you at conferences. Same for lab members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links to other affiliations is nice, but almost certainly not important. Practically no one will follow them. Whether to list your CV is up to you; people who need it will often ask you, but it won't hurt to have it live. Depending on your research, you can have a &quot;recent news&quot; section where you advertise any particularly notable publication or mention in the popular press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you teach, I recommend putting links to the course website (which may or may not be part of your academic website), as many students will find your page by googling and will be looking for course info. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T12:18:11.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3711" CreationDate="2012-10-12T14:53:10.080" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to the specific question of writing such a statement, there is no implication of an agreement that sending you an email will automatically lead to receiving a copy of the publication. If there are specific restraints on your distribution of preprints, then you can explain those limitations when a preprint is not available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could indicate which papers are &quot;embargoed,&quot; and include a statement that says: &quot;Except where noted, preprints are available by contacting the author,&quot; or something to that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T14:53:10.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2012-10-12T15:00:33.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you use \part then a page is cleared after the text. Is this a style that is used in American PhD thesis documents? Why is this done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, the primary reason for this, I believe, is related to traditions in bookbinding. In the &quot;old&quot; days, it was accepted practice to begin each major new section with a right-hand page. Even now, some books are published in such a way that every chapter will start on a right-hand page, whether or not the previous chapter ended on a left-hand page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, the assumption would be that you'd want to have a blank page after the &quot;part&quot; page, and that the &quot;part&quot; page, as well as the first page of the ensuing chapter would both be &quot;right-handed&quot; when the thesis is printed in two-sided format. If you have to submit it in one-sided form, this becomes a bit of a nuisance, but I suspect this is an option that can be turned off in LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T15:00:33.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3697" CreationDate="2012-10-12T15:03:57.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My most-cited work arose because we couldn't reproduce an earlier published paper in the field. We did a much more extensive study, and demonstrated conclusively why the previous results were unreliable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while you don't need to reproduce every single result that has previously been published, it can serve a useful purpose to try to reproduce at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of those results—because then you can be sure that your model is working the way you would expect it to (provided the previous data can be trusted; as my case showed, this isn't always the case!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T15:03:57.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-13T03:34:52.570" Score="29" ViewCount="13341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently developing my dissertation proposal, and am in the process of choosing my committee members.  I have heard that one should carefully choose their committee members, since they ultimately judge if and when your PhD work is done.  As far as I can tell, a committee member should at least have some expertise in my research topic.  I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I want to know what other qualities should I look out for?  What qualities in a committee member should I avoid?  I imagine these other qualities are subtle and difficult to judge at first.  Nonetheless, how do I know if they are a good fit for the success of my PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:23:22.973" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:23:22.973" Title="How to select a dissertation committee member wisely?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3719" CreationDate="2012-10-13T05:18:03.747" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;ask your adviser&lt;/strong&gt;.  He/she likely knows more about most of your department faculty than you do.  You don't have to do exactly as you're told.  But if you don't, this should be an intentional choice on your part, and you should have a good reason for that choice.  Beyond that, I see at least 3 broad areas to consider.  You want committee members who will&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;strengthen your professional network&lt;/strong&gt;: introduce you to potential collaborators, and possibly help with your search for a postdoc or tenure track position; and/or write a letter of recommendation for you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;give valuable feedback on your work&lt;/strong&gt;: you think they'll actually read your thesis (you might be surprised how uncommon this is), and might have something constructive to say &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be &lt;strong&gt;easy to work with&lt;/strong&gt; in the defense process: likely to be flexible on the date of your defense, and likely to sign off on your dissertation without demanding lots of changes (fitting into 4 schedules besides your own can be a nightmare; it's nice to have a few committee members who are easy to work with on this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these contributions you value most will depend on what you're hoping to do after your PhD.  If you're looking to move into industry, many of your professors' contacts may be less valuable to you than if you hope to stay in academia.  Do you plan to stay research active? In the field of your dissertation?  Practically, you may have limited options.  At the very least, you should weigh 1, 2, and 3, and estimate how you think each candidate will contribute in each area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T05:18:03.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3695" CreationDate="2012-10-13T06:53:35.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In pure math, a good paper may be cited only 10 to 20 times.  An excellent paper may be cited only a 100 times or fewer.  As a result, it's &lt;strong&gt;fairly quick to skim the titles and abstracts of all newer papers that cite a given paper&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is easy using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MathSciNet&lt;/a&gt;.  I think Web of Science provides similar functionality for other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T06:53:35.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3722" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-13T08:37:42.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extensive articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Industry&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Enterprise&lt;/a&gt; are available on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions relevant to this tag are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1998/different-cv-for-university-position-and-research-industry-position&quot;&gt;Different CV for university position and research industry&#xA;position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/why-dont-professors-start-companies&quot;&gt;Why don't professors start companies?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/394/what-types-of-industry-positions-favor-phd-over-a-masters&quot;&gt;What types of industry positions favor PhD over a masters?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T08:46:03.653" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T08:46:03.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3723" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-13T08:37:42.910" Score="0" Body="Queries related to enterprise or industry activities of academicians and the  impact of industry on academic career and vice versa." OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T08:46:06.710" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T08:46:06.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3696" CreationDate="2012-10-13T13:39:18.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer varies with the size and scope of the conference. You might have many more &quot;chair&quot; roles, such as e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://aamas2013.cs.umn.edu/node/26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AAMAS&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijcai13.org/committees/conference_comittee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IJCAI&lt;/a&gt;. All depends on the activities the conference runs. In the simple settings when the conference is relatively small, local organizers and program chairs might be just enough. All to do is to organize the venue, catering, registration, finances, etc. (local chairs) and then the technical program (program chairs &amp;amp; program committee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, program chairs are responsible for selecting, approaching and managing the program committee, deal with the basic publicity (calls for papers and participation - that can also go to local chairs, or even publicity chairs) and then, most importantly run the whole submission, peer-review and proceedings publishing process, normally except for the printing part. Similar would hold for all the other &quot;lower-level&quot; chairs, such as tutorial, workshop, etc. chairs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if the conference runs many activities, you need to manage the whole process and there you go with your general chairs. But again, all would depend on the conference type, size, activities it runs and the traditions in the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T13:39:18.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3697" CreationDate="2012-10-13T13:49:38.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable just to cite another paper's results at face value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there are only few limited cases where this would be acceptable. For example, when comparing industrial-scale systems, or comparison of qualitative features of the works. Also in the case there exist an established set of benchmarks and your algorithm can solve some of those the other can't, you do not really need to reimplement. Possibly also when testing the algorithm cannot be done in a reproducible manner (industrial-scale field tests). When it comes to experimental efficiency, however, I think you usually do not have much choice and should reproduce the others results - if possible at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What suggestions would you give to this conundrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you need the cited work for. In the case you developed an algorithm which is supposed to be more efficient than the cited one, to prove your point you need a controlled experiment when both methods are run under same conditions (e.g., implemented in the same programming language, and run on the same system etc.) and with the same set of benchmarks. In such a case, if you want to demonstrate your point properly, your best is to reimplement (or ask the authors for their implementation and adapt it to your conditions) and run head-to-head. Otherwise your performance curves are going to be incomparable. For good examples of how to do this, see for example comparisons/evaluations of experimental performance of planning algorithms, or SAT solvers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T13:49:38.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2012-10-13T14:03:13.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to extend upon eykanal's reply, I'll add a public relations spin to this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, all depends on the mode in which you operate. If you are an established professor, your website is going to look differently from somebody who is striving to climb the ladder. This also depends slightly on the community you operate in, I'll speak for CS/AI, specifically more applied streams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an established member of the community, you rule your time and do not need yourself to be &quot;discovered&quot;. Hence you do not need much bragging on your site and can stick to practical info. In the case you are climbing the ladder, your website is your shop-window. You need to have it up for your potential future employers, potential future collaborators, etc. It's can be used as a personal PR shop window. In that case you might want to break down your CV into pieces and include projects you work(ed) on and their descriptions, possibly even attach publications to these entries to document the rate/quality of the deliverables. Many people list &lt;em&gt;Activities&lt;/em&gt; section, where they keep a list of academic services they perform, i.e., program/organizing/steering/... committee memberships, refereeing for journals and announcements of edited books, etc. As eykanal pointed out, expanding on teaching activities is important. Now, first and foremost, you want to serve your students, but remember also the (future) hiring committees. They want to see indications of those activities as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, anything what can help you in the future, but still won't look as too much bragging about your achievements can be useful, but think about balancing it with practical stuff as well. For example, to add a &quot;human&quot; touch to their academic personas, many people also include &quot;family&quot; section with a handful of links and pictures of their family, pets, hobbies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T14:03:13.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3711" CreationDate="2012-10-13T14:12:11.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;So far, I did not see a copyright transfer agreement, which did forbid an author to distribute pre-prints for his/her personal use by e-mail, or in a printed form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The answer always depends on the particular publication. Whenever you submit your camera-ready copy, you usually also submit a signed copyright transfer agreement, or a document similar to it. Therein, you always have listed which rights to the work in question you are transfering to the publisher and which remain with you. Usually, in my field (CS/AI), there is a section on &quot;Returned rights&quot; where is explicitly stated what (publishing a preprint, distribution to colleagues, figure re-use, etc.) and how the author can, or cannot do it (obligation to include a copyright statement, etc.). Since your question is of a legal nature, I suggest contacting the publisher of the work in question and simply ask whether what you want to do is in line with copyright agreement you, or some of your co-authors signed, or whether you need to handle it differently. But before that, take a look on that publisher's website, all the major ones have these policies quite explicitly, and often including FAQs and other guidelines, listed on their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T14:12:11.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2012-10-13T14:36:26.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from my advice in comments above to ask at writers.sx, I think you might want to consult manuals of style. E.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;, speaks about division of a work in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch01/ch01_toc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapter 1&lt;/a&gt;, subsection 1.47 on division of a text into parts. I do not have the book besides me, so try to take a look at your library. Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/66592034/The-Oxford-Guide-to-Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Oxford Guide to Style&lt;/a&gt; in subsection 1.3.2 speaks about this and says the following:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arranging a work into parts is useful when a lengthy text falls easily and sensibly into logical divisions of similar length.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is, that for a work of 80-100 pages, division into parts is a waste of paper and imposes a too high cognitive load on the reader. Such a text is not &lt;em&gt;lengthy&lt;/em&gt; enough to be eligible for such a crude division into multi-chapter parts. Do you have something like 3 times (parts) of at least 3 chapters each in your thesis? If so, and your thesis is about 80-100 pages, then IMHO, something is wrong with your structure to start with. Parts would make sense for a dissertation, or a similar manuscript if you would for example attack a problem from several aspects, each of a size and structure of several chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal advice: &lt;strong&gt;Keep it simple! This is a master thesis, not a memoir.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T14:36:26.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3735" CreationDate="2012-10-13T15:18:00.527" Score="21" ViewCount="1210" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the challenges of advising students is working with students whose &quot;quality control&quot; expectations do not agree with that of the advisor. When such mismatches occur, how do we encourage them to provide &quot;better&quot; quality work. Note that it's not the number of hours being worked the concern, but rather issues like returning a marked-up manuscript with half of the important suggestions left unaddressed, or leaning too much on the advisor or more senior members of the group for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:09:37.703" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T03:09:37.703" Title="How to encourage students to work more carefully and independently?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3731" CreationDate="2012-10-13T15:41:21.340" Score="9" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do research in the life and medical sciences. If I want to publish in one of the major journals (Cell, Nature *, etc.), would I have to confine a title to something short and snappy, or can I be more verbose so that my title conveys better the output of the research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is this sort of structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;XXX and YYY are AAA and BBB in PPP and QQQ, respectively&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;too wordy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD. I'm not sure if this was the right forum on the stackexchange network, so please feel free to suggest some other site to post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2826" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T06:25:24.050" Title="Wordiness of paper titles in life and medical science journals" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3730" CreationDate="2012-10-13T15:53:59.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copy the pattern that is used most common in your target journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look through a couple of dozen articles. What's the median word-count in titles?  Do a majority have colons, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T15:53:59.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-13T17:16:52.907" Score="10" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just had the revised version of a paper rejected from a well respected journal.  However, one of the reviews is clearly a review of the original draft of the paper, rather than the revised version.  I pointed this out to the editor, and his response was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please revise your paper again, and submit it as a new paper, by mentioning your old paper ID number, together with replies to reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how I can reply to that review.  How should I proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T17:34:58.840" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T17:53:50.237" Title="How do I respond to a review of the wrong version of my paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2012-10-13T17:23:04.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, teaching &quot;quality control&quot; in larger-scale projects is part of the enterprise, since (in mathematics, for example) standard coursework provides no inkling of this. That is, it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; typically the case that sloppy or flawed homework or exams are returned with detailed comments, for iterated corrections, to be repeated until the thing is acceptable. Rather, as we know, schoolwork is presented to students as a high-volume stream of disconnected small tasks, most of which truly do not merit &quot;perfecting&quot;, but, rather, treating as a bulk-processing problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the methodology and style of iterative improvement and &quot;perfecting&quot; a larger, months-or-years-long project is arguably a novelty to the student. The &quot;solution&quot; seems to be to just keep iterating the corrections, perhaps making the auxiliary point of the inefficiency of your making the same point several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had the opposite problem a few times, as well, namely, exaggerated attention to over-perfecting an initial fragment, effectively avoiding addressing the sequel and larger project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I think that imparting a functional sense of editing and quality control is part of the task of the mentor/advisor/supervisor, although, yes, energy allocated to this takes away from the more literal scientific/intellectual tasks. Advisor's firm repetition of the standards is essentially the only constructive response, I think, since, for example, it seems infeasible to hope that novices can sufficiently critique each other, as they usually share the same inexperience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T17:23:04.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3732" CreationDate="2012-10-13T17:53:50.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the pragmatic approach to this issue: &lt;strong&gt;you have already revised the paper according the reviewer’s suggestions&lt;/strong&gt;, so only the response needs to be worked on. (Apart from other comments orthogonal to this main issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you already called the attention of the editor on the problem and he did not follow up on it, you clearly need to weigh carefully your response (unless you want to pick up a fight). I would suggest that you write a very detailed response letter, in which you explain how the manuscript addresses the reviewer's comments and questions. Do it point by point, quoting all the parts of your manuscript that are relevant (and locating them: page and line numbers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just do so by &lt;strong&gt;being slightly evasive about the exact evolution of the manuscript&lt;/strong&gt;. Where you would normally say &lt;em&gt;“we have added a paragraph at the end of section B”&lt;/em&gt;, just say &lt;em&gt;“the revised manuscript includes a paragraph addressing the reviewer's question at the end of section B”&lt;/em&gt;. It's not untrue, though it is not perfectly clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;consider going for another journal&lt;/strong&gt;. If you believe the editor has been treating somewhat badly, you might want to just let it drop and submit somewhere else. It's a complex decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you think it's worth it: &lt;strong&gt;make a stand for it&lt;/strong&gt;. Appeal the editor's decision to the editor in chief, on the basis that a factual error was made. You need to be both strong and diplomatic in your appeal, and back it up heavily with facts. It will be easier if the incriminated review actually quotes some text that has changed in your revised manuscript, in which case the error is evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T17:53:50.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2012-10-13T17:58:21.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard a nice angle on this problem. Computer Scientist Olivier Danvy, adapting Buddhist philosophy, stated in a recent presentation that &lt;strong&gt;you need to inhale before you can exhale&lt;/strong&gt;. What he meant was that in order for grad students to produce quality work, they need to see, read, ingest and understand quality work. Perhaps you can show them the difference between the high quality work and low quality papers you've also come across. Try to get the student to gauge where his/her work fits in relation to these other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also need to explain that even though poor quality work can actually be published, that this is not a good thing. Not good for science. And not good for building a career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many iterations of corrections is important. It takes time. But for every comment that is ignored, you need to find out why it is ignored, and make the student aware that it takes your time and is annoying if you need to make the same comment over and over again. Maybe the student does not understand the comment. Maybe the student is overwhelmed by the vast amount of comments. Maybe that just missed it accidentally. Maybe they just disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T19:04:25.350" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T19:04:25.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-10-13T19:13:26.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Preamble&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote my master's report in Microsoft word.&#xA;Then I moved on to better environments -- I wrote my PhD dissertation in latex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;My take on which to use: MS Word/Libreoffice&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are short on time and are fine with sleepless nights, definitely go for Microsoft word. However, if you have lots of equations in your work, MSWord will just make it look very unprofessional and ugly (but may still be acceptable by your committee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your  grad school may have &quot;how to do it&quot; videos for MS Word. Have you checked with them to see if they have appropriate templates/packages for MS Word? What does the majority of you group use? If you are short on time, do what is tried and tested, do stuff that you have help readily available for (peers, adviser etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Advantages of using LaTeX (I had to provide it just for completion)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option (much harangued obviously &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3062/21&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3084/21&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) is LaTeX. It takes the strain out of writing as you have to only provide content and can concentrate on actually &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt; instead of spending a lot of time on formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a world of difference with LaTeX far superior to Microsoft products, &lt;strong&gt;for academic writing&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, lots (don't quite have a number right now) of people still use MS Office. They write their theses/dissertations/reports, submit it for review to gradschool, it comes back with formatting corrections (even though they use templates provided by the gradschool). So then they spend countless sleepless hours jutting their images around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T05:28:48.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3719" CreationDate="2012-10-13T19:19:12.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly a very important question. Here is the make up of my committee and its pitfalls. &#xA;This isn't the best committee but has its advantages.&#xA;You could easily extrapolate from my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Adviser/Committee member 1:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a fantastic adviser who always stands by me and supports my work. He essentially fights for me if things go awry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is also the PI of the project I am working on so my successful graduation and publications do interest him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Co-adviser/Collaborator/Committee member 2/Extradepartmental committee member:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He champions the the ideas behind my research and has done so for the last 20+ years. So there is no problem that I'll get support from him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Committee member 3:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't have anything invested in my research but since it is generally related to his work, he is on board. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is sitting on the fence as far as criticism goes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Committee member 4:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He doesn't like my work since his adviser didn't like this work and its implications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, since I have a generally pro-me committee, I should be alright but not without breaking a sweat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I convince him of the merit of my work, I'll have no problem in the future convincing any other detractors &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3719/how-to-select-a-dissertation-committee-member-wisely#comment7010_3720&quot;&gt;See comment by JeffE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T19:29:13.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2012-10-13T19:31:08.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents: Put the things on your homepage that you like to see on the homepages of people like you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this is probably not the full story since not only people like you will be interested in your homepage. Maybe you also think about hiring committees, potential referee or the like to have a look at you homepage. However, you are probably to look at the homepages of people like you through the eyes of a hiring committee member, reviewer, student (or whatever) and then have a look at you homepage again. This should give you an impression whether you homepage is cool enough or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T19:31:08.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3730" CreationDate="2012-10-14T06:25:24.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I wrote my first paper, I read this book about scientific writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6529.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words&quot; by David Lindsay&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the book highlighted that &lt;strong&gt;article title should be as explicit on the content of the article as possible&lt;/strong&gt;, as it is the first element any potential reader will read. As today the amount of available articles is growing faster, the skimming step in the article research is becoming more and more important and a good, self-explanatory title is therefore a key element in article &quot;success&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the author strongly discourage the use of non-explicit title such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;XXX as an effect on YYY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and advice to use something more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increase in XXX induce a decrease in YYY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which directly tells the reader what is the article about and the what is its main finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, do not be afraid of wordy title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T06:25:24.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4740" CreationDate="2012-10-14T07:27:16.290" Score="31" ViewCount="15001" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an academic researcher in a theoretical field at a public institution, I am sensitive to the social value of my work (my own contribution to society). I do some teaching, whose contribution to society is easy to identify, but not much. Try to increase that aspect of my job, I have listed some things I can do (some of which I already do, some of which I don’t):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage in collaborations with industrial partners (favoring transfer of knowledge to practical applications).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orientate one’s research goals to match an area of societal importance (green gas reduction, nuclear waste storage, you name it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate science to a wide public, whether it is my own research or the knowledge of my field in general (popular science). This includes writing articles in magazines, writing a blog, developing educational software, … &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get involved in education science: contribute to my national society of physics and chemistry teachers, for example. Offer some software for high-school and university teachers to demonstrate concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Register as an expert with the nearest court of law.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other suggestions do you have to improve one’s social value? (Or should I stop worrying and love the bomb?) I mean, in the short term. I know that I (and my colleagues) contribute to the advancement of mankind in the very long term, but sometimes it doesn't help feel &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T03:45:08.363" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T03:45:08.363" Title="How can a researcher improve his contribution to society?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-10-14T08:37:58.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of thinking increasing my own social value (reputation), I think the other way round. The society is supporting me in carrying out the research (in theoretical field), in innumerable dimensions; from the public transport systems to research grants. I think of the ways that I can, at least in part, repay the tax-payers of my nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the activities that I do, that I think, will be useful to the society include, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helping fellow research scholars in other fields or disciplines in areas where I have expertise. It can vary from a simple installation of a software or help in filling a grant application to active discussion in improving their research  or interpreting their results (that helps me too, indirectly).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;popularize the field among school/college students and common people, so that better ignited minds take up the field for their career. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actively participate in various professional and amateur associations/societies/forums related to my field or where I can make some contributions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide support to enthusiastic people who wish to take up a career in the field or a related field, by helping them in a project or connecting them with a better experienced person. As a researcher, sometimes I have better contacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide administrative assistance  to the needy persons in my institution where I have better exposure/access, like filing an application form or submitting various fees etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the various activities that I involve myself in, improves my social value, as far as I have experienced. The more I try to give, the more I get in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are active in the society and if they feel you are really worth, the society reaches you for help or assistance and they value your suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T09:34:18.367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T09:34:18.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-10-14T10:04:58.870" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered contributing to political life? I refer not to upholding one political view or another, but rather to ensuring that there is informed scientific input on major issues when they are being debated in political circles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know in which country you live, but I am aware that there are far too many &quot;first-world&quot; countries in which the policy and decision makers are poorly informed at best, willfully ignorant - seemingly - at worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best descriptions of a university that I have come across is that it should - must - act as the &quot;critic and conscience of society&quot;. In my view this would include taking part in ensuring those that lead us are well informed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way this could be done is by taking an interest in the advisory process used in how policy is formed in your country. See if you can offer your specialist views via your professional association. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related activity is to take part in advising courts when they are considering issues based on scientific topics. This would include contributing to amicus curiae briefs, for instance. This goes beyond acting as an expert witness in court. An amicus curiae brief presents a reasoned argument using a balanced analysis of facts, reaching a conclusion. A court expert, in contrast, offers answers on specific questions from the court. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T10:04:58.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-10-14T14:28:42.033" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a different note from some of the other answers, try to take to heart that &lt;strong&gt;basic research is directly useful to society&lt;/strong&gt;. Almost all modern pharmacology is based on decades of fundamental biochemistry and biology research. Materials science is based on years of basic chemistry and physics research. Basic math research fuels advances in all types of engineering, from signal processing to computational work to structural engineering. There are many other examples for other fields of research; please edit this answer or put them in the comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, don't underestimate your current value to society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T14:28:42.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-10-14T16:02:10.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although communicating science to a broader audience is important, using scientific principles to solve the basic problems of the community may be even more important and rewarding. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caic.cl/start.html&quot;&gt;chilean innovation center&lt;/a&gt; designed and built a water sanitation system. This system has been installed in poor neighborhoods where the access to purified water did not exist. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/32465233&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you can see a video with english subtitles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the extent to which you can undertake a similar initiative depends on your specialties. Even though being a &lt;em&gt;researcher&lt;/em&gt; you may be overqualified, a more attainable initiative would be to teach high school teachers or the community. For instance, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accionemprendedora.cl/&quot;&gt;chilean NGO&lt;/a&gt; teach classes for micro-entrepreneurs. The instructors are usually university students that volunteer in the organization. The students are owners of small business (e.g., local grocery). The courses include a wide range of topics, such as concepts related to taxation and some ideas about economics and marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have even a greater impact if you distribute contents designed by you on the internet. Similar to what you suggest, you can design an e-learning course and post it on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T16:02:10.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2387" CreationDate="2012-10-14T16:03:18.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious answer here is: if you have very specific programs in mind, and a specific set of constraints that may hinder you, check with the upper-level programs you're interested and find out what their requirements are. If the master's program requires a bachelor's in computer science, then you have your answer. If not, then they may list what degrees they accept as &quot;equivalent&quot; or &quot;sufficient&quot; for their program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, when in doubt, &lt;strong&gt;ask.&lt;/strong&gt; That's what graduate officers and admissions staff are there for!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T16:03:18.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4748" CreationDate="2012-10-14T17:49:07.017" Score="38" ViewCount="1651" Body="&lt;p&gt;How wise is it to collaborate with another professor while working as a staff under one professor? Is there a ethical conflict in doing so even if the other professor is from a slightly different area? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how should one develop his/her own expertise while working as a postdoc under one professor? Is it wise to also work with other professor with slightly different research interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T04:02:43.233" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T04:02:43.233" Title="Is it reasonable to collaborate with a professor when you are employed by a different professor?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4745" CreationDate="2012-10-14T17:53:40.850" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are perfectly honest with all parties involved, then it shouldn't be a problem. Everyone involved knows where they stand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One small point. In the UK, post-doc positions are funded by grant income. It would be strange if a post-doc had enough &quot;free time&quot; for other duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T17:53:40.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3699" CreationDate="2012-10-14T18:33:29.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For things that you won't publish, you can adhere to a standard you choose, for example writing in the Korean script using LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to talk more specifically than that because journals have their own requirements, which can have more to do with their typesetting systems than academic rigor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a journal publishes your work with ambiguous transliteration, you may be able to keep an alternate copy on ArXiV. (N.B. I'm not sure it's kosher to do this but I suspect it's fine as long as the alternate version is designated carefully.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T18:33:29.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4745" CreationDate="2012-10-14T18:54:56.720" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends totally on your status, and what exactly this collaboration entails. You say “working as a staff under one professor”. If you're on a short-term contract (say, post-doc), then it's probably &lt;strong&gt;not okay&lt;/strong&gt; to do independent research on something completely different. You were hired on a project and it's unlikely that you have any significant time left for something else. On the other hand, if this new collaboration is related to your project &lt;em&gt;and you involve your professor in it&lt;/em&gt;, it is okay (and he will welcome this initiative from which everyone involved benefits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the above, there are a few exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who just arrived usually have some unfinished business with their previous institution, and they are given a bit more leeway in finishing it: revisions to make to papers on track for publication, conference attendance, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who are leaving due to their contract ending have to get involved with other projects to get a new job. They have to go fishing around, and this sometime requires a bit of extra work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, if your activity on the side is quite unrelated to your main job, and you manage to do it on your own time without prejudice to your employer, you may do so. Some people write books, some get involved in open source software unrelated to their employment, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working as an longer-term staff researcher in someone's group, then it is expected that they respect your academic freedom. To a reasonable extent, you are free to engage in new collaborations with other people, and not necessarily involve your group leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T18:54:56.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3699" CreationDate="2012-10-14T19:50:31.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's not as hard as it used to be to publish non-Latin characters in journals, especially with the advent of electronic publishing, which reduces the need for &quot;physical&quot; stock required to produce those characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I am now starting to see in some journals that people whose names are normally rendered in non-Latin alphabets (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), now have both the Romanization as well as the &quot;original&quot; versions in the authors' credits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is the question of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want to use those non-Latin alphabets. For something that is already in &quot;common&quot; use and is widely accepted in the language in which you are writing, the use of the original will be unnecessary. It's also optional to cite the name of an author whose work you're citing, if it was published using a Romanization. (Otherwise, it will make it very difficult to find the citation using search engines.) If, however, you are citing something original, and the use of the Romanization will cause confusion, then use of the original language text is fully appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mac389 indicates, you should probably talk to the individual journal you're interested in submitting to. They will likely have guidelines for what is or is not permitted, as you've alluded to in your original question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-01-06T23:16:37.873" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T23:16:37.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4754" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:01:14.047" Score="18" ViewCount="808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in mathematics, and I recently got the question why there isn't a press release to the general public whenever we publish a paper (to advertise mathematics and increase interest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, every paper is a bit extreme, but forced me to ask several questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would arxiv be a good place to put math text aimed to the general public?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(I am currently trying to explain an article in a very metaphorical, but accessible to non-mathematicians).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would it be considered strange to explain research for non-mathematicians either in a separate abstract in a paper, or also writing a shorter non-math version?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(I fear that this is considered slightly odd, &#xA;and metaphors sometimes dumbs down the problem so that the question seems very silly. Also, will professors think it is a waste of time?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A partial goal is to be able to explain what I've done the last five years to my family at the dissertation, but also get some experience in explaining math for grant applications. It would be nice if news from the world of mathematics appeared more often in the news, (local news for smaller achievements, explanations etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:24:57.813" Title="Present math for non-mathematicians" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:07:08.920" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd love to see conjectures and open problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good way to advertise for your field, and maybe someone knows a solution/related problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T20:07:08.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4755" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:25:40.940" Score="24" ViewCount="13253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in Sweden, and will present my PhD thesis next semester, and have several articles accepted/published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I applied (and got admitted) I had only studied at the university for three years, and only written a bachelors thesis. Me being admitted was sort of an &quot;error&quot; from the department, (and I had no idea what really was the requirements, since my thesis advisor encouraged me to apply). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might this look bad on my resumé when applying for a post-doc position?&#xA;(Or is young age an advantage, in my case, 25)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To follow up, I am now 32 and not as young anymore. I had no big issues finding post-doc positions, and I am still in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastEditorUserId="2794" LastEditDate="2019-11-08T21:27:45.700" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T21:27:45.700" Title="I got admited to a PhD program without a master degree. Does it hurt when I apply for a postdoc?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:27:56.440" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great idea, and it does happen.  For years, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner&quot;&gt;Martin Gardner&lt;/a&gt; wrote a column in Scientific American called &quot;Mathematical Games&quot;.  He took interesting mathematical ideas and made them accessible to a wide audience.  Another example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~kdevlin/&quot;&gt;Keith Devlin&lt;/a&gt;, who is known as the Math Guy on NPR (National Public Radio) in the U.S.  A third example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://freespace.virgin.net/ianstewart.joat/index.htm&quot;&gt;Ian Stewart&lt;/a&gt;.  His book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465082327&quot;&gt;&quot;Letters to a Young Mathematician&quot;&lt;/a&gt; explains a typical mathematical career arc to a general audience in a fun and engaging way.  Along the way, he touches on many important mathematical ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;why don't we see more&lt;/strong&gt; of this?  The short answer is because &lt;strong&gt;it's really hard&lt;/strong&gt; to do well.  You have to really understand the math, and you have to be very good at explaining to people who think very differently from the way you've spent the last 15 years or more being trained to think.&#xA;Furthermore, much of the general public doesn't really want to know more about math.  Another reason is that this type of writing is typically not well-rewarded at research schools.  The culture of research mathematics tends to say that exposition is fine, but it's not really hard, like research.  So it shouldn't be rewarded at the same level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with you, that the world would be better off if more people understood what we (research mathematicians) &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;.  The problem is, I don't know how to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T20:27:56.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:32:25.827" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend blogging. This seems like the standard procedure for explaining your papers both to the lay audience and to other mathematicians (potentially ones that don't work on your specific problem). The blog format is preferable over arXiv or journal publications for reaching the lay audience because it is more accessible. Links to blogs are easier to share and faster to read than journals (which might be behind paywall!) or pdfs from arXiv. A blog setting also allows you to interact with your audience through the comments, this is the best way to help guide them through any confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog setting can also be used to provide casual tours through proofs for experts and graduate students. This has recently &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/8869/1037&quot;&gt;started in TCS&lt;/a&gt;. Since this is aimed at the slightly technical audience, it is more appropriate to put on the ArXiv, although I would still advocate blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T20:32:25.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4752" CreationDate="2012-10-14T20:43:16.643" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most places I know (Europe mostly, France and UK in particular), a Master's degree is nothing more than a tiny blip on your CV by the time you have a successful PhD (diploma, publication, good recommendations, involved in your community, …). &lt;strong&gt;Your lack of a Master’s degree will not hurt one bit&lt;/strong&gt; (but it probably will come up in an interview, so you want to have something decent or funny to say about it). I suspect the same will be true in most places: by the time you are a post-doc, Master's degree is not a good predictor of your future success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding age, it's a very good question, and should probably be separate. As a post-doc, it shouldn't hurt your chances (I defended my PhD at the same age you are, so I have given it some thought!). For a staff position, things are very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T20:43:16.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4752" CreationDate="2012-10-14T21:48:11.440" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, nobody would even notice. It is common to enter a PhD program without a masters. A masters degree can be granted along the way to a PhD, but this is not universal, and it is not worth anything if you finish the PhD. In general, people look at your most advanced degree: if you have a good PhD, it would typically not matter if you did not have a Bachelors degree either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T21:48:11.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-10-14T23:32:27.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be considered strange to explain research for non-mathematicians either in a separate abstract in a paper, or also writing a shorter non-math version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would come across as strange to include a separate abstract for non-mathematicians in a math research paper, partly because it's unconventional and partly because it might be interpreted as an assertion that this paper was likely to be of unusual interest for the general public.  That's not to say it's a bad idea, but I'd recommend that grad students not try it, since you don't want readers to focus on this instead of your research contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a companion piece aimed at a general audience is less likely to attract any negative attention, especially if it's in the form of a blog post (as Artem suggests) rather than a formal paper.  If you spend too much time on this, you risk having it look like a distraction from your research, but that's not likely to come up except in fairly extreme cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, will professors think it is a waste of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some will, but others won't.  I'd recommend not focusing just on your own papers: if you advertise other people's work as well to a general audience, they may or may not think it is worthwhile, but they are likely to feel flattered, and it will avoid the risk that this could come across as self-promotion on your part.  Once again, you don't want to let this overshadow your scholarly accomplishments, but it can be a nice counterpoint to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be nice if news from the world of mathematics appeared more often in the news, (local news for smaller achievements, explanations etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly.  If you are a decent writer, it may not be too difficult to get your local newspaper to publish periodically about math news (this would require going well beyond your own work, of course).  That would be a service for the community and an interesting line on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T23:32:27.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4759" CreationDate="2012-10-15T07:53:58.470" Score="16" ViewCount="2522" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've been hard at work for lets say a year on your masters research and you then discover that someone else has been doing the same research as you have. (Let’s assume it’s a coincidence that the same research is done). What do you do in that case? Should you hurry and and get to the “winning line” ASAP? Should you or the other person change their research proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T09:14:46.277" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T08:59:01.247" Title="What to do when you find someone else is working on the same masters research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2012-10-15T08:31:33.040" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Masters projects generally do not aim to produce top-quality original research, rather they give masters students an introduction in the art of doing research. So the fact that two people at two different institutes are doing more-or-less the same thing does not matter. It would only become a problem if &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One student plagiarized the work of the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The two students collude, reducing their workload to produce one thesis that will be submitted twice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both students tried to publish their work – whoever gets in first will receive the credit and the other will possibly not get published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in the last case, it is not unheard of that parallel submissions of the same results by different parties occurs. Sometimes it is worth publishing both, especially if they approach the problem differently. I have heard of one case where the editors asked the two parties to produce a single combined paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T09:15:47.600" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T09:15:47.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2951" CreationDate="2012-10-15T12:54:49.830" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always proofread the full paper, but not necessarily by comparing it word by word with the original. However, I give particular attention to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title, authors, affiliations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract, introduction and conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figures and figure captions&lt;/strong&gt;. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality of the graphics produced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do color and symbols mentioned in the caption match the figure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the journal has black &amp;amp; white figures in print, is the figure understandable in black and white?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the journal has color figures only in the online version: does the caption make sense for both version (color and B&amp;amp;W)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Equations&lt;/strong&gt;: most problems I saw introduced during typesetting were in equations. For many publishers, the text is transformed semi-automatically from your original file, but equations are re-keyed by an operator. People make mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Numbers&lt;/strong&gt;: all tables, all inline numbers. Units (a “kJ/mol” might become a “kJ mol”).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;References (citations are a key part of doing research):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if references are hyperlinked (using DOI number), click on each to check that they match the right online paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if a paper is “in press” or “accepted for publication” or something else, update its status if it has been published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgment: somehow, I often find that I might have missed someone in the acknowledgment when writing the initial paper, and for most publishers it is not too late to add them :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T18:41:44.427" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T18:41:44.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:07:54.723" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obviously, you should collaborate!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your thesis itself, you need be careful to distinguish &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; contributions from your colleague's.  But your thesis is a relatively unimportant administrative hurdle.  Your short-term goal should be to work together on a common result that is stronger than what either of you could produce alone.  Your long-term goal is to develop a network of collaborators.  In the long run, that network will be worth &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more than &quot;winning&quot; the &quot;race&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T15:07:54.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4745" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:39:24.120" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast to F'x's opinion, I think collaboration with people outside your group is not just wise, but actually &lt;strong&gt;necessary&lt;/strong&gt;, at least if you are working toward an academic career.  You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; develop both a wide professional network and broad independent research experience.  As long as everything is out in the open, with everyone's knowledge and agreement, there is absolutely no ethical conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that you should shirk your paid job; any outside projects must be on your own time and must not interfere with your official duties.  Similarly, you can't use your supervisor's resources without their explicit advance permission.  And your supervisor may be happier if there's some chance of involving them in your outside projects.  But ultimately, how you use your own time is your own business.  (Any supervisor who tells you otherwise, or insists that you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; &quot;your own time&quot;, is simply abusing you.  Run.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T15:39:24.120" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4766" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:39:27.707" Score="10" ViewCount="9685" Body="&lt;p&gt;A dilemma that is confronting right now is knowledge versus research. I am a second year physics undergrad, with a strong interest in mathematical physics, QFT, and an even more strong interest in pure mathematics. Right now, I am not sure what to pursue, hence ideally I would like to try out a lot of both the fields. However, most of the people I meet are advising against me saying I should just pick and area and stick to it, and try to publish papers, even if I want a remote chance of getting into the top grad programs in the US. So , I am confused if I should stick to a field, and get research papers published or explore a large number of areas. This boils down to the question how much importance does a uni give to a research publication over the knowledge the person has?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T06:35:33.743" Title="Relative importance of research publications for grad school admissions (theoretical physics/pure mathematics)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4752" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:43:47.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the admission was &quot;in error,&quot; then you should get some documentation of this fact from your department stating such a fact, just in case anyone asks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike what &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4755/53&quot;&gt;F'x says&lt;/a&gt;, there could potentially be an issue in some EU countries if you have a PhD degree but don't hold a master's—provided your bachelor's education was also done in an EU country. In Germany, the lack of a master's degree for a PhD holder can raise a red flag. It did in my case, even though all of my schooling was in the US, where it is not at all uncommon to do a bachelor's followed by a PhD without a master's in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may or may not be a problem for you elsewhere, depending upon where exactly you want to be. But it could also be a disqualifying issue (in other words, cause for termination) if you try to hide what happened and it gets uncovered later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T15:43:47.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4763" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:45:50.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, research publications give a strong indication of not just how much knowledge a person has acquired, but how much has he been able to &lt;em&gt;contribute&lt;/em&gt; to the existing body of knowledge. That, coupled with the fact that there aren't very reliable metrics to gauge a person's knowledge (grades are a very poor metric in that regard IMO), makes it obvious that you would be best served by focusing on churning out as many high-quality papers as you can!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T15:45:50.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4763" CreationDate="2012-10-15T16:13:26.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing that graduate school admissions committees are looking for are good researchers. Publishing papers demonstrates such ability; publishing papers in well-known journals is even better. However, it's difficult, as an undergraduate, to publish papers as first author (which is the most important position when one is applying as a student). Typically, they will be working in consultation with a more experienced student, who will be the lead author. In that case, while the credits are of themselves useful, they need to be &lt;em&gt;coupled&lt;/em&gt; to strong letters of recommendation from the co-authors, testifying to the student's original efforts in executing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, one should not totally sacrifice depth in a single area for breadth; grad schools want to see &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; evidence of concentration, but complete devotion to one area is also too much of an extreme. Try to balance the two somewhat, so that you've explored &lt;em&gt;a few&lt;/em&gt; areas, and worked at least &lt;em&gt;one or two&lt;/em&gt; areas in depth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T16:13:26.090" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-15T18:16:32.750" Score="3" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a B.Tech in Computer Science &amp;amp; Engineering and I want to apply for statistics gradschool. My interest is in stochastic calculus. I'm from india and I have limited exposure to statistics. I have a work experience of 3 years in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will I get rejected from decent level schools ? What should I do to improve my chances ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3838" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T00:34:08.293" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T03:34:07.553" Title="Transition from Computer Science to Statistics" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4770" CreationDate="2012-10-15T19:48:52.007" Score="8" ViewCount="1940" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper where I have a number of sentences across a few paragraphs, all from the same source. How should I use inline citations in this situation? Should I put them after each listed fact in the sentence at the end of each paragraph, or at the end of all of the paragraphs? The paragraphs are all topically related, but each one is different enough to be a sub-topic. In case it's relevant, the topic being discussed is technology, the paragraphs detail how companies using that technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3839" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T20:10:26.850" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:35:26.800" Title="How do I appropriately use inline citations for multiple quoted paragraphs?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4769" CreationDate="2012-10-15T20:19:49.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen, the only situation in which you would use a single citation following multiple sentences is if it's obvious that you're quoting that source verbatim AND the quote is uninterrupted. If you're using your own terminology OR the quote is interrupted, you should cite each sentence separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This becomes obvious when considering the purpose of a citation. Citations are there to answer the question, &quot;who said this?&quot; If you're quoting someone verbatim, and it's obvious you're doing so, then you only need a single citation, as the reader will infer that it applies to the entire preceding quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have multiple claims throughout a paragraph, after each claim the reader will wonder, &quot;what's his source for this?&quot; In most cases, you will be using multiple sources, and you will have a mixture of references. However, even if you have a single source for lots of claims, the reader will still wonder &lt;em&gt;after each claim&lt;/em&gt; what the source is. You should tell them the source of each and every claim separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception I've seen—and that my advisor requested I use in my writing—is in the instance of a single logical thought pattern being followed throughout a paragraph or set of paragraphs. If you're describing someone else's work, it can be justifiable to state, &quot;the following is an overview of Bob (2007)&quot;, or something to that effect. From my experience, though, that usually only happens in review articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T20:19:49.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2012-10-16T05:01:00.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is not answerable at this level of abstraction, because grad school admission is not decided on the basis of easily described rules.  If you're a coauthor on a brilliant and important paper, you may still be rejected if the committee doubts you were a major contributor to the paper.  On the other hand, some applicants with no publications at all may be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, nobody on the committee will read the paper itself.  That would be both time-consuming and unlikely to be fruitful, since the committee probably doesn't even have an expert in this specific area.  They may get a little information from the abstract or your personal statement, but everything else they know about the paper will come from your letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letters need to indicate why this paper should help your case for admission.  Specifically, they need to explain why the paper is interesting, what you contributed to it if you are not the only author, and why your work was impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This task will be easier if the paper is really good, and that's correlated with being published in a top journal, but this is not really necessary.  For example, if an undergraduate makes a major contribution to a solid but not exceptional research paper, then that could mean a lot, even if the paper doesn't get accepted to a leading journal.  Of course the paper needs to meet at least some standards - publishing in a junk journal or vanity press doesn't count.  However, the most important issue is demonstrating that you can carry out good research, not getting your name in a prestigious venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T05:01:00.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4777" CreationDate="2012-10-16T05:37:34.153" Score="14" ViewCount="1670" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some areas, like Computer Science, peer reviewed conference are as important as Journal Papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike most Journals, Conferences have hard deadlines to submit the papers as well as page limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How early should I start writing a paper for a conference?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it reasonable to write and do experiments at the same time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many references should you check? one professor told me: check 200 use 30.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T10:11:13.037" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:22:30.843" Title="When and how do I start writing a conference paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4768" CreationDate="2012-10-16T05:54:35.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on which country you want to apply for the Grad School. In Japan, you have a very Math oriented entrance examination for the Math department, and is usually the most important factor that decides whether you get in or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In USA, the educational system is different, since Undergrad education is often not oriented to a specific area, and you have a good chance as long as you get a high GRE score and have a good set of Recommendation letters (preferably from the Dean of your Univ. if you are not from the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, take a look at Stanford's admission requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/applying/international&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Academic Credentials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For India, you do need some kind of engineering background, but other countries like Japan, can in theory apply as long as they have finished an undergrad regardless the discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind though, that a PhD in statistics has a hefty load of subjects that assume that you have some mastery on math and advanced math(which, to be honest, the GRE does not cover). So you might have to throw in some hours just to level even with the rest of the students that have math undergrads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T02:03:24.797" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T02:03:24.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4752" CreationDate="2012-10-16T05:59:59.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just pitching in with my opinion from Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Japan everything is very structured, and everyone assumes that you either have a masters or spent a very long time in your PhD (if you studied in America).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average age for a PhD grad is 28 years with a razor thin variance (unless you are a foreigner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply for a postdoc here you will be getting a lot of questions on why you got a PhD without the masters, since here the requirement to get into a PhD is to have a Masters beforehand. It may not hurt you if you have a good explanation though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T07:50:27.853" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T07:50:27.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2012-10-16T06:09:54.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would cite one of the maxims in industry. Your people is only as good as your structure. A good structure designed to give incentives to current students and guidance to new ones can do wonders for any organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can streamline a lot if you have a whole system in place where you have older students mentoring fresh students (one to one basis) and a more structured way of presenting the job. This way the students (and the adviser) won't be running to catch deadlines and will be way more efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T09:36:39.947" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T09:36:39.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4769" CreationDate="2012-10-16T08:02:07.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really have only one reference which you take one paragraph to sum up, I'd really advise eykanal’s last item (the “exception”):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tying one’s shoelaces with only one hand is notoriously difficult [1]. Although it seemed like an unsurmountable issue a few years back, the recent breakthrough of Smith et al. [2] relied on a few topological considerations which have been clearly delineated by Brown [3], and are summarized in the rest of this paragraph. &lt;em&gt;[Here your description, with claims from Brown, without repeating the reference number]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, little is known about the influence of the number of fingers used [4] in the tying process. Here, we present a research on tying shoelaces with even-fingered hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is better than having a lot of claims [3] with the same reference [3] written all over one paragraph [3]. However, &lt;strong&gt;you need to make it crystal-clear what part is covered by the reference&lt;/strong&gt;: using the paragraph boundary (and explicitly stating this) is a good way of doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T08:02:07.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4772" CreationDate="2012-10-16T08:32:01.577" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How early should I start writing a paper for a conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there are different approaches. Some people think &quot;there is this conference coming, I need to write something for it&quot;, others think &quot;I have this nice idea of research, let's see where I could present it&quot;. In the first case, you might need to start &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; early, since you need to do all the research, while in the second case, you might just need to start early...&#xA;Seriously though, it depends a lot of the content of the paper, the mechanical action of writing it (i.e., typing and formatting the text on a computer) is not what takes long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable to write and do experiments at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure. Even if you can't finish your experiments by the deadline, it's very likely you can reuse a good part of what you've already written for another conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many references should you check? one professor told me: check 200 use 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't check references because you should, but because they are relevant to your research problem. You should cite what you've read and what you think is important with respect to you work. You should cite the approaches that laid the basis for your own approaches, and explain how you build on them, which assumptions you are challenging. You should also cite the approaches that are similar to yours, and explain why yours is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no magic number: there are excellent papers with only 10 citations, and bad ones with 50 references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T08:32:01.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-10-16T10:04:00.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. I agree with the earlier post that basic research is important but one also has to come to an understanding of what level of feedback you need for the impact of your actions. For some, totally unapplied, ethereal math modelling might be their best way to contribute to the world, others need to feel like they are doing something every day that has a direct impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied complexity theory for my PhD (modelling army ant swarming) and this directly informs my thinking in how I understand the world. But as I finished my degree I felt like I needed my daily work to have a more immediate and direct impact on the world and so I completely switched fields. Now I build gigapixel timelapse cameras for capturing long term environmental change. I chose this because people process information visually and so we should show them environmental change in compelling ways. Army ants and complexity theory are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cool&lt;/a&gt; but I could spend my whole academic career modeling ants and in 30 years there would be no rainforests left for ants to live in. But sometimes even now I feel like I'm tilting at windmills. As an ecologist I think we are at a tipping point in human history because if humans don't transition to sustainability in the next few decades the lives of a lot of the population will be a whole lot worse than they might be otherwise. I often wonder if I should drop everything and become a full time activist... When do things become so dire you drop what you are doing and run to put out the fire instead of making beautiful movies of people who are on fire? But then again you have to go with what you are good at and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall though I agree the best thing to do is to educate the public and find ways to make your skills useful to others. At this point, at least in America bringing thoughtful science understanding of any sort to the wider public is an immeasurable and essential contribution given the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sorry state&lt;/a&gt; of the American understanding of reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we all should be asking ourselves fairly regularly if there is more we could do. Things don't change until enough people are pushing in the same direction that we can overcome the inertia of existing power structures (I learned that studying complexity theory ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3841" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T10:04:00.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4772" CreationDate="2012-10-16T10:09:29.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally areas like CS have plenty of good conferences all round the year, so missing a particular deadline is unlikely to hurt you much. But in case you are targeting a specific conference whose deadline is say, September 1st, then you need to have solid results which you think might fit in well as a paper at least a month before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could take several rounds of copy-editing before a draft can become a neat paper. By experiments, I guess you mean simulations that validate the results in your paper. You could plan to use one section of your paper to present all your simulation results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task essentially involves planning your presentation, loads of typing and copy-editing and some coding for simulations. Earlier is better, and all these procedures could be totally different for a different field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T10:09:29.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2012-10-16T11:21:52.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on how the admissions process works. In my school you need to find someone who is willing to be your primary advisor to have any chance of being accepted. I am much more likely to spend a few extra minutes considering a candidate with a publication. In fact, I would say that I would schedule an informal phone interview with anyone with a publication nearly independent of the CV. Beyond this initial stage, which in my opinion counts for a lot, but not everything, things get too complicated to speak generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:21:52.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2012-10-16T11:29:40.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a practical standpoint, you are a year into your masters, so you are likely close to being done. You need to decide if you need the publication. If you do buckle down, start writing, and find a journal with a fast turn around time. If not, it is no big deal, you can still submit your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before moving forward on an academic career, and maybe any other career, I would suggest stepping back and considering your communication and networking strategies. Getting scooped (or even racing to publish) is a communication and networking failure. Basically, you need to understand why you and your advisor did not know this other research was going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:29:40.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4769" CreationDate="2012-10-16T11:35:26.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not really an answer, this is often an indication of a lack of understanding. The original question used of language like paraphrasing, another indication of a lack of understanding. You should probably show a draft to a colleague asking for specific help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:35:26.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4848" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:39:19.250" Score="11" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently conducting researches that are almost mainly theoretical (I am a TCS researcher gone rogue = I also work on applying theory stuff to real life problems). In the future I plan to conduct several large experimental studies involving technical experiments AND human validation of the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a neophyte in conducting this kind of very large studies involving technicalities and &quot;humanities&quot;. I ask around and search on the web for a textbook about this matter and do not find any comprehensive resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question : do you have any pointer to a book/survey/other explaining the whole process of a large scale experimental study? It can be from any domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T06:32:50.593" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T06:32:50.593" Title="Ref. request : book or survey about conducting experimental studies" Tags="&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4786" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:40:44.127" Score="9" ViewCount="6136" Body="&lt;p&gt;A senior researcher, with whom I worked a few years ago, is writing a book chapter. He contacted me to ask what was the latest work of our group on the topic of his chapter. I gave him a few links to recent articles and the preprint of an article soon to be published. He followed up by asking if “[you] would have a figure to illustrate [topic of the preprint]… preferably something that does not require copyright authorization paperwork”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I thought that was a bit much to ask… I had never asked for figures from anybody who was not an author on the paper. But the situation may be different for a book chapter, and obviously I'm glad to share the news of our most recent results. So, I took an hour tonight to make a nice illustrative figure, and am about to send it. However, I'd like to make certain in my mail that I ask for some sort of acknowledgment. So, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;if someone designed a figure for a book chapter, how would that person be acknowledged? in the figure caption, e.g. “figure courtesy of X”? in another way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T00:45:46.317" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T00:47:44.833" Title="What is proper acknowledgment for figure authorship in a book chapter?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:51:33.290" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the acknowledgements sections, the authors could write:&#xA;&quot;The authors would like to thank F'x for providing us with Figure X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, in the caption of the figure they could write &quot;Figure courtesy of F'x.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are acceptable, as long as you are happy. I don't think they are obliged to thank you in the paper at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T20:51:33.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4789" CreationDate="2012-10-16T22:07:59.363" Score="40" ViewCount="22039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a proposal for my research topic and I want to copy figures from published articles into my proposal document. To put it in perspective, almost all the copied figures are to go in the &lt;em&gt;“Literature review”&lt;/em&gt; section of the document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to send an email to each and every author requesting permissions to copy the figures, even though complete citations and references are included? I referred to the following link:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/sites/scholarly/publishing/copyright-publishing-guide-for-students/reuse-of-figures-images-and-other-content-in-theses/&quot;&gt;MITLibraries: Reuse of content in thesis.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;From what it says, copying images in thesis (with correct citations) seems to be valid under US copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="906" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T09:18:26.377" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T17:07:22.230" Title="Is it necessary to obtain permissions for copying figures from published articles in your proposal/dissertation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-10-17T00:47:44.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many graduate textbooks contain a list of references, either at the end of each chapter or at the end of a book broken down by chapter. I would imagine the citation would be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the best of my (admittedly terrible) memory, I have never seen a textbook include an inline reference for a specific publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T00:47:44.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4787" CreationDate="2012-10-17T06:02:16.530" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;For figures from your own papers, it would depend on the copyright transfer agreement you (or the corresponding author) signed upon publication. However, &lt;strong&gt;all copyright agreements I know explicitly authorize reuse of content for academic theses&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example: the American Chemical Society, which does not leave the authors too many rights, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/copyright/jpa_form_a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;includes this wording&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors may reuse all or part of the Submitted, Accepted or Published Work in a thesis or dissertation that the Author writes and is required to submit to satisfy the criteria of degree-granting institutions. Such reuse is permitted subject to the ACS’ “Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For figures from others’ papers, a thesis is not very different from any other publication (see the related &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3700/2700&quot;&gt;question about blogging&lt;/a&gt;). Unless your institution has a specific agreement with publishers (as MIT seems to have), you have to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for permission; these days, it's all done online and once you have located the appropriate form for a publisher, you can make your requests and get all the answers the next day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rely on &lt;strong&gt;fair use&lt;/strong&gt; in the US, or similar law in other countries; around me, most people actually do that, either knowingly or just out of ignorance :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T06:09:41.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="892" CreationDate="2012-10-17T06:29:35.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Mexico, the grading system is a scale that goes from 1-10 with a passing mark on 6-7 (depends on the professor)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some professors would do global test averaging at least once in the semester, that is, make everyone take the test, and the average of the whole class is the mark for each student for that test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One particular professor wouldn't say which test was this going to be (the first, second or third) so you had people making sure everyone knew the bare minimum to get a good mark for every test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T06:29:35.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4792" CreationDate="2012-10-17T06:49:42.197" Score="19" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently discover the existence of unique digital identifier for researchers (such as the one proposed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://about.orcid.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ORCID&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com/Home.action&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never really heard about it, maybe because it is not common in my field (biological sciences) and I was wondering about the interest and use of such identifier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) What are the interest of using an unique digital identifier as a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Is it commonly used in the scientific community (by publishers, databases, commitees)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: related but not the same question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2981/researcher-id-is-there-non-commercial-alternative&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:00:06.360" Title="Why use unique digital researcher ID?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;digital-researcher-id&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-10-17T07:08:38.797" Score="16" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, search for publications of a John Smith (no middle name), or a Lee Wang, or any common name, and you'll have a hard time identifying them because of the many homonyms… Publishers and database owners are trying hard to help users, by trying to guess who is who (Web of Science calls this “Unique author set”), but their algorithms don't do very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have a colleague who has a paper completely outside her main field. None of these algorithms pick it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, because a researcher’s name is not unique, many people argue that there is need of a unique ID scheme. (Others disagree: “I’m not a number!”). As a researcher, the benefits are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easier for others to identify your articles in databases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easier to keep track of your citations, especially for items other than conventional journal articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;possibilities for cool web hyperlinks, like DOI has brought&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Orcid registry was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2012/10/16/UK201210163120&quot;&gt;launched yesterday&lt;/a&gt;, so noöne uses it so far…&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own concern about it is that I don't know in detail on the ORCID consortium will use the data they will be able to mine. In particular, this worries me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I consent to the privacy policy and terms and conditions of use, including &lt;strong&gt;allowing those who access the database to make commercial uses of the public data&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T07:08:38.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4797" CreationDate="2012-10-17T07:50:46.177" Score="15" ViewCount="2460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to a graduate program, and one of the application's requirements is to select at least one advisor, along with a reason for the selection. Specifically, this is the requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to match you with a faculty adviser, tell us which faculty member's work most closely aligns with your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is a list from which I should choose the advisor's name, and a text field in which I'm asked to write a reason for the selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already know the advisors whom I'd like to work with, and the reason is simply that I'm interested in what they do (based on their recent papers/projects). But I'm not sure if this is what they're looking for, because they've already said this in the quoted text above, and also I will choose more than one advisor, and writing the same reason doesn't seem right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What other reasons that one may have for selecting an advisor, &lt;em&gt;other than having shared interests&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1001" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T15:26:31.993" Title="Why would one choose a particular advisor, other than having shared interests?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4823" CreationDate="2012-10-17T08:06:06.313" Score="5" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick info. I'm a 4th year student (i.e. I'll be doing my masters when I complete my 4th year). Some of the work I'm doing now will however influence my masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my assignment questions in my research module is to come up with a few research strategies that would suit my research project. Whilst I cannot say exactly what my project is, it will in general be a new built system that will make decisions based on what rankings were given by people. (somthing similar to clicking the 'like' button on facebook or giving a review star rating for books as on Amazon.com).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also using the following book (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Researching-Information-Systems-Computing-Briony/dp/141290224X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researching information systems and computing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Briony J Oates) as a guide. I've identified the 'Design and Creation' research strategy as what would be the most fitting research strategy for my project seeing as I would be creating a new system. One of the questions in the evaluuation guide for the 'Design and Creation' research strategy is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes this piece of work research and not 'normal' design and development work?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would one go about answering such a question? What criteria would one have to look at to say that such a research project is an actual research project and just not your normal run of the mill application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="1556" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T09:57:15.140" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T08:00:19.120" Title="How would I justify that my work isn't just 'normal' design and creation" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-10-17T08:08:41.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things I can think of (I'm a PhD student in my final year):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An advisor may be famous in their field, which in turn affects your abilities to make academic contacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An advisor may be known to be good at advising, to prioritise advising PhD students, make time when needed, etc. Having PhD students is good for an advisor, not least because PhD students produce papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An advisor may be a pleasant person to work with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be hard to find someone meeting all three. I know of cases where (1) is met, but where the advisor is so busy that they hardly have time for their PhD student(s) (&lt;em&gt;now I need to write a proposal, please come back in three months&lt;/em&gt;) so that other seniors in the same group do most of the supervision in practice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other factors that I'm not thinking of right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T08:08:41.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-10-17T08:36:54.930" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several purposes for proper and trustworthy tracking of individual's publications. Whether we as researchers like it or not, we are gradually more and more evaluated on the basis of our publications output. That is, our grant applications/proposals and other means of funds acquisition are rated, at least partly, against our publications track and a future projection thereof. If you want to convince the hiring, or grant committees and other fund holders, you show your list of publications. The more trustworthy, the better. Hence a reason for a centralized trustworthy publication tracking service. Also, people change names (e.g., by marriage), affiliations, sometimes fields. Proper attribution by automatic algorithms, such as those at work at WoS, Scopus, Google Scholar, or Microsoft Academic Search is therefore unreliable. Having a real-world and trusted tag which I could use e.g., on my papers to identify myself among the hundreds of John Smiths is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) What are the interest of using an unique digital identifier as a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;trustworthy disambiguation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;central trustworthy register&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;semi-automatic tracking of publications, which however should be customisable by the ID owner to fix all the mistakes/misattributions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;citation attribution&lt;/strong&gt; - often e.g., WoS, attributes citations mistakenly to wrong people, because people make mistakes in references/bibliographies, etc. A central register can help with that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Is it commonly used in the scientific community (by publishers, databases, commitees)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your name is unique, it's easy for the committees to check your track by simply googling you, then these guys don't care much. If you are John Smith of this world, than they are not able to do that and would ask you to prove your track record. And that can be painstaking. Even with just few dozen papers published, I myself am not able to get my WoS record correct. So to set the answer straight: &lt;em&gt;currently, not many people use it for other than personal purposes, but many (including myself) hope, ORCID will succeed and the academic community will start to use the scheme and life will get a little bit easier.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T08:36:54.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-10-17T08:47:53.733" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many don't speak about this too often, but with an advisor you are not only choosing a field of interest, but you are choosing a &lt;em&gt;mentor&lt;/em&gt;. By all means, you want to &quot;tick well&quot; with him/her. There is not much good for a PhD student having a star researcher advisor whom they see once in a quarter and who is a sociopath on a personal level (this is a bit too extreme, but think about it as a continuum between extremes). Choose somebody with whom you will be able to work, whose example it is worth to follow, from whom you want to learn, not only the scientific stuff, but also workstyle, level of quality he/she strives for, etc. These soft reasons are often more important than anything else. For highlighting of all the examples of stuff you don't want to fall into (but will anyway :-) ), go and look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php&quot;&gt;PhD Comics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&#xA;I am speaking with a European-centric attitude, where you choose your advisor, since he/she will be your boss, rather than being assigned to one as it seems to happen in the US system. Still, the point is worth to consider. Germans have a good term for this, your PhD supervisor is your &quot;Doktorvater&quot;, i.e., &quot;doctor father&quot;. That very much speaks how the relationship should end up in an ideal case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T08:47:53.733" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4814" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:08:54.650" Score="24" ViewCount="2669" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I went to college, an old-schooled teacher of mine insisted that, because I was interested in chemistry, I needed to work on my German as it was the &lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt; of that trade. It turns out, there is absolutely no need to speak German anymore to be a successful researcher in chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I somewhat thought that, since at least two decades, English was the only language required to be a researcher in any field (excepting, maybe, literature). However, seeing &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/how-to-prepare-for-the-french-language-exam-as-part-of-phd-program&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; made it apparent that some graduate programs still have requirements for other languages. How useful are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word: &lt;strong&gt;are there some fields where reading/writing/speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Let's exclude fields related to literature and linguistics. Let's also forget about teaching, and focus the question on research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T15:02:19.960" Title="Are there some fields where having skills in a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4801" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:12:36.567" Score="12" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an academic paper, we sometimes have a &quot;Results and Discussion&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon to add the explanation and discussion of the results together with the results section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of both practices from an academic point of view? How do I weigh them for each paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List the results without explaining their significance, which is then explained in the discussion section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List the results with their explanation as they are being listed, and eliminate the discussion section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the second approach more appropriate to understand the results, since the reader wouldn't need to be going back and forth the sections, but then again, that is just my feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T20:31:00.260" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T20:31:00.260" Title="Contents of the discussion section" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:28:23.240" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (mathematical physics), it is certainly true that most research is published in English, although there certainly is a non-trivial amount published in French, for example. Although being able to read French might not be required in many institutions, it still is very useful. I expect that for the other sciences the picture is similar (for the humanities on the other hand, I expect it may be very different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue however that becomes more important when looking for tenure(d) (track) positions are the teaching requirements. In many countries almost all teaching is done in the native language, at least at the undergraduate level. So it is important that you will be able to teach in this language, or at least be willing to learn the language in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastEditorUserId="22" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T09:37:32.747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T09:37:32.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4799" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:29:18.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must say that I would have a hard time listing the pros of the first approach (separate &lt;em&gt;results&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; sections), because I don't like it and it doesn't fit my style of writing. My advice would be: if you can, &lt;strong&gt;write in the style that you like best, because that's how your writing will be most natural/readable/convincing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the choice is not Manichaean as you make it sound. There exist a continuum between those two, because it mainly depends on what you call “results” and “discussion”. When I write for a journal that requires a strict “results then discussion” format, what I usually do is that I put most of my text in the &lt;em&gt;results&lt;/em&gt; part, and leave some general overall discussion for the &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; part. Typically, it would given something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;First result. Discuss its implications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Second result. How it confirms result #1. Consistent with previous observations [ref].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Third result. Again, some discussion of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Altogether, what is the insight given by these results. It changes our view of this phenomenon somewhat. It is in line with work by X et al., but highlights some contradictions of Y’s model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a bit “cheating”, but I've never been asked to reörganize any paper written in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T09:29:18.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2012-10-17T10:39:18.567" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to cherry pick a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the area of robotics, the Japanese have one of the best journals and conferences (their journals were about 10%-20% acceptance rate about 3 years ago).&#xA;Yet, many of those journals are written in Japanese. Here in Japan, students in robotics do not need to present their work at international conferences or journals, since they consider theirs good enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the best robotics work in things like ICRA and IROS (from the Japanese) was presented in some form about 1-2 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I do not think knowing Japanese is necessary for a successful tenure in robotics, but it certainly can help to have some competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T11:16:50.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T11:16:50.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4799" CreationDate="2012-10-17T10:52:08.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My post doc advisor has submitted a number of papers with the &quot;Discussion&quot; section renamed &quot;Speculation&quot;. While the editor/reviewers have always required the section be renamed &quot;Discussion&quot;, her approach rubbed off on me. By treating the Discussion section as if everything is speculation, it becomes clear what goes into the Discussion and what goes inot the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T10:52:08.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2012-10-17T12:19:20.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a really useful habit to get into when you are just starting to read the literature. It lets you look back and quickly refresh yourself about what you found interesting in the paper. I would suggest that as you develop a reference library (e.g., LaTeX bib file or Endnote) that you keep some of the content in that file. As I think grades are less important in grad school than knowledge, use a format that makes it easiest to archive with your bibliographic software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use LaTeX (and possibly in MS Word) you could probably write a citation style and document class that would automagically build the document from the bib data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T12:19:20.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:04:05.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do research in chemical engineering. The journals one submits to depend on field. For the most part, work related to systems, simulation, optimization, etc., are published in English. I am pretty sure its that same way with health/biomedical/medicine type research, since a lot of that is funded by NSF and/or NIH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only foreign journal I've heard of anyone submitting to was &lt;em&gt;Angewandte Chemie&lt;/em&gt; (I think that's German for Applied Chemistry). But, I do not think they submitted in German. Those people did research in the field of self-assembly and nano-scale systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure English is fine for publishing — but hey, a second language is always helpful to know, if you've got the time and commitment it takes to get fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T13:18:31.957" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:18:31.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="892" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:17:47.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a TA last semester for a professor, and we had a pretty good system for giving out grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the exam rubric.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade the exams. The people who did great, the rubric was not applied to. They were just given full marks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For people who did not do so well, we used the rubric to award as many points as we could.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this system, there is no direct competition, e.g., someone doing better does not make you worse off. In fact, with this system, it is possible for a class of good students to all make A's. Of course, that doesn't happen in practice though, since class performance is almost always a bell curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:17:47.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4818" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:19:22.737" Score="17" ViewCount="6332" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow-up question to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1788/are-faculty-salaries-negotiable&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; of mine, where I wanted to know if academic salaries can be negotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does an academic negotiate a pay package that has been offered? What special points in one's profile must be emphasised in order to get a favourable bargain? Are there any standard cards (tricks) that must be played? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The negotiator is assumed to be fresh out of his doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T21:30:41.897" Title="How should an academic negotiate his/her salary?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4772" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:22:30.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't directly comment on computer science, but for chemical engineering, I had to write a conference paper for AICHE. Writing a paper can benefit somewhat from a &quot;forward-backward&quot; approach. Start perhaps with your data, writing out the data section fully, explaining everything. Then move to the introduction, motivating your research, and explaining why your results are new. The conclusion really just summarizes the basic result of your work. Then, the abstract condense the whole paper down - write that last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes practice, but its not too bad once you get the hang of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several rounds of editing are strongly recommended. When you have a first draft ready, let the paper sit for two or three days. Then, print it out double-spaced with wide margins, and read your paper. Look for ways to cut words - e.g. say the same thing with less. Can you understand what you have written? Make changes until you converge upon a tight package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, get a copy of How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper by Robert A. Day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:22:30.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:24:57.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could make Youtube videos as well, e.g. start a video blog. Perhaps not like Khan Academy, which is mainly for instruction, but perhaps just to discuss new and cool ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:24:57.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:31:19.293" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick someone who is good at what you want to be good at. If you want to go into academia, look for someone who has published regularly, recently, and in quality journals. If you lean toward working in industry, find someone who has connections with industry. If you want to become a teacher, find someone who teaches regularly and has good reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I think they are just wanting to make sure you are a good fit for their department. They don't want to accept someone into their program if they're not interested in the type of research that is being done there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you can usually change advisors during the first year. So you probably shouldn't sweat this too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3847" LastEditorUserId="3847" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T18:50:50.853" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T18:50:50.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3242" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:31:41.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rejection can be hard to handle, but a good motivator is to look at people who's work was rejected initially widely, but ended up being immensely popular and profitable. Ghostbusters was rejected by three movie studios. Frank Herbert's manuscript for Dune was rejected by over 20 publishers. Lorenz's seminal paper on chaos was rejected several times if I remember correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:31:41.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4815" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:34:49.867" Score="16" ViewCount="4254" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt; has an endorsement system, where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;during the submission process, we may require authors who are submitting papers to an archive or subject class for the first time to get an endorsement from another arXiv author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I submitted a paper to arxiv for the first time, and I was not asked for an endorsement. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement&quot;&gt;relevant help page&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the initial deployment of the system, we may also give automatic endorsements to submitters from known academic institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this may be what happened to me (I have a verified email address from an academic institution), but this seems weird, because it says &lt;em&gt;“during the initial deployment of the system”&lt;/em&gt;, and this is dated &lt;strong&gt;2004&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: does someone know what is the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; endorsement policy for arxiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T14:06:00.087" Title="What's arxiv “endorsement” policy?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4807" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:54:01.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the first thing you need to ask is do you want a raise. While it may seem obvious that more money is better, I would argue that this is not the case since the raise comes with other &quot;costs&quot;. In the simplest case, would you rather a raise of x, or an increased startup package of 10x? While not directly linked, your total &quot;cost&quot; (including space) is a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two problems with seeking a raise. First, they are hard to justify. Universities want you to do good research. The effect of a raise on research output is hard to see, while the effect of an extra RA for a year is easy to see. Further, a small increase in salary now projects to large future costs for the university. The university will keep that number in their head during negotiation. A raise means you might top out on the pay scale earlier, so your pay may stagnate (meaning the university over estimated the cost of the initial raise). This means that overall the raise is not good value for money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might argue that a raise is the only way increase the money in your pocket. In the short run this is true, but in the long run, better research might lead to more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:54:01.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:55:17.887" Score="28" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there some fields where speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;speaking&quot; and &quot;necessary&quot;.  In mathematics, there is no need to speak any language but English and the language of the country you are working in, but there's a real benefit to being able to read other languages.  It's not strictly necessary, and its importance varies between fields.  In my case, I don't use other languages on a daily or even weekly basis, but probably read French on a monthly basis and German a little less frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, the reason for language exams isn't that these languages are required to be a researcher, but rather that they are helpful.  The best argument I've heard for requiring language exams is as follows.  Learning how to read mathematics in French or German is not very difficult, but it's still a burden if you just want to read one paper.  Usually you can get around it by finding another exposition, finding someone to explain the paper to you, or just deciding the paper is not relevant enough to bother with.  However, even though this is a rational solution to a one-time dilemma, it's a bad idea if you are going to be faced with these dilemmas repeatedly.  At that point, you'll gain a lot in flexibility and convenience if you can read the papers you want to read.  The purpose of language exams is to keep people from repeatedly making short-sighted choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that language skills are more important in mathematics than in most scientific fields, because the mathematics literature has an enormously longer half-life.  In my work, I frequently use and refer to papers that are 50 years old, and sometimes quite a bit more.  These results have not always made it into textbooks, and even when they have the original papers sometimes contain valuable insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:55:17.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4812" CreationDate="2012-10-17T14:06:00.087" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the help page describes the current endorsement policy.  You may also have fallen into the category described by &quot;We may give some people automatic endorsements based on topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, most people are in that category and never see the endorsement system in action.  In practice, it seems to get applied to cranks and to people who look like they might possibly be cranks (e.g., people with no academic affiliation, or who are writing on controversial topics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T14:06:00.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4807" CreationDate="2012-10-17T14:50:26.273" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a first approximation, you have two ways of negotiating for a higher salary, namely fairness and leverage from other offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your offer is not in line with what other people have received under similar circumstances at the same institution, then you can ask them to address this.  If you make a convincing case, they may improve the offer, either out of a desire to do the right thing or out of fear of embarrassment if the details became known (for example, if it suggests discrimination).  However, it's rare for there to be enough information to make an objective case for unfairness.  Unless the offer is really outrageous, you aren't likely to have much success with this sort of argument: probably, the administration will just explain why they think it's fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By far the most successful way to negotiate is based on other offers.  This gives you concrete proof that another university values you more than this one seems to, and you can make a credible threat of going there instead.  You can't necessarily expect to get other offers matched exactly, since the comparison always involves a complicated mix of benefits, cost of living analysis, departmental quality, etc.  However, it at least gives you a powerful way to start the conversation, and you'll have a lot of leverage if you might plausibly accept the other offer instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, the worst mistake naive job candidates make is to accept a job offer and then try to negotiate.  During the period when you have offers but haven't accepted yet, you are in a better negotiating position than you ever will be later.  As soon as you accept, almost all your power disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T14:50:26.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4807" CreationDate="2012-10-17T14:59:10.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases (for example in Germany), most academic positions are paid according to collectively negotiated labour agreements. The universities have little room to deviate from this (at the professor level things are different, though). The wages are paid according to scales corresponding to different &quot;function levels&quot;, and each scale consists of a certain number of steps. The number of steps you get for free is based on your previous experience. It might be possible to negiotate an extra step, but this is usually difficult. In principle you can be placed in a higher scale, but this depends on the specific tasks you will be responsible for. For example, a postdoc leading his/her own group can be in a higher scale than a postdoc without such responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, negotiating salary may be difficult in such a system, since the universities are bound to the collective labour agreements. In the Netherlands the situation is similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T14:59:10.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4807" CreationDate="2012-10-17T16:44:18.237" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to remember that you're negotiating a package, not a salary. In other words, there is a set of things you're negotiating for, and you can play games in that space to get most of what you need. Limiting yourself to salary negotiation is tricky because salaries are often the most constrained part of the package (especially in public universities in the US), and the one the chair/dean has the least power to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So remember that your success at the job depends on your ability to recruit students, procure resources and bootstrap your research program. Which means you need startup money to pay students, lab space and equipment money as needed, teaching relief if that helps you focus on research, and so on. Throw these all into the mix when you negotiate, so that if you give up something along one dimension, you can try to parlay that into a gain along a different dimension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also understand who you're really negotiating with, and what powers they really have to offer you things. This can be found out by talking with your supporters at the department (you must have some, otherwise you wouldn't have an offer) and also folks at other institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T16:44:18.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-10-17T16:45:37.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that this is not a binding selection, especially since you say you're asked to list &lt;em&gt;at least one,&lt;/em&gt; rather than just one. This strikes me as being a &quot;have you done your homework about our department&quot; question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, picking an advisor involves making sure that they are a fit both with respect to your research interests, but also your working style. That also means talking to their research groups: are they the kind of people you can see yourself fitting in with for the next few years? Do you see yourself &quot;meshing&quot; well with your advisor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, those are issues you can only determine after you've been admitted. But making sure you've identified a few people that you can work with will make sure that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're not setting yourself up for disappointment, because you want to work for popular professor X, who can only take two of the ten people who want to work with her, but nobody else.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department can try to match applicant interests with available projects—in part, again to avoid everybody trying to go into the same subfield, and so that the distribution reflects the distribution of available projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T16:45:37.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4822" CreationDate="2012-08-22T07:41:24.813" Score="40" ViewCount="3591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research in computer Science as a PhD student. I have some research ideas and for months I've been continuously thinking about them, developing them and make them more specific. I mean, these ideas continually change until one day they are finalized. Over time they are more specific and complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Evernote to write down my ideas, and sometimes maybe also brainstorm mapping tools like Mindmeister. But I found these tools are not good enough, e.g. not easy to structurize my ideas, or modify, elaborate them, in a word, manage my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any good methods or tools for the organization/management of your developing research ideas? How do professors and professional scholars and researchers deal with this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1512" OwnerDisplayName="Jerusalem" LastEditorUserId="28282" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T16:58:14.303" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T21:01:19.067" Title="Are there specific organizational processes or tools (not necessarily software) that can help in developing and structuring research ideas?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2012-10-17T19:06:18.113" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anytime I get a chance, I try to use the productivity applications. These may be associated with time management or structuring ideas etc. I found out that there is no best way to do this. Every application has some heuristics behind, and these are mostly decided by the developers. Sometimes an app may seem to solve your problem, but later you may realize that it is not what you want or need. In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;you need to come up with your own way to do it&lt;/strong&gt;. However, let me list some ways/advices I encounter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open a google document. Write down your ideas as a list. If you need&#xA;to structure them, nest the list items. Go over the document&#xA;periodically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist&quot;&gt;wunderlist&lt;/a&gt;. They have done a good&#xA;job task/note management. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist&quot;&gt;wunderlist 2&lt;/a&gt; has just released with new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; is another example. It may seem&#xA;to be an project management tool, but you can use for managing your&#xA;ideas on a whiteboard-style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://springpad.com&quot;&gt;Springpad&lt;/a&gt; is another way to    save/organize things online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your example &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;, and others    like &lt;a href=&quot;https://do.com&quot;&gt;do.com&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://todoist.com&quot;&gt;todoist&lt;/a&gt; can be listed also. If you really need    to find the&#xA;right application you need to search hard. Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/evernote/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindmup.com/&quot;&gt;Mindmup&lt;/a&gt; is a online mind mapping tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hiroapp.com&quot;&gt;Hiro&lt;/a&gt; is another newly released tool. Try it &lt;a href=&quot;https://alpha.hiroapp.com&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the best way is to keep a small notebook and write down what I have done in terms of research day by day. I also note the ideas for my thesis. After some point, when you go back and check your progress, you would be amazed how much things changed and become more mature. But the most important thing is that I realized what is best for me is to grep a pen and write down it on a paper rather than some website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="399" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T18:18:10.907" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T18:18:10.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2012-10-17T20:37:43.677" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aibase-cs.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aibase&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has the option to put formulas, mind-maps, bullet points lists, diagrams, sketches, to-do list in ONE document, basically a hybrid software (Evernote + MindMapping) for creative project managment. Best software I ever bought for knowledge and project management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JZmcd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I explained the software &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/a/1600/560&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; more in detail&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.560" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T20:37:43.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2012-10-18T08:00:19.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should've read chapter 8, design and creation properly. The answer is in the textbook (Oates, B., Researching information systems and computing, 2009).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the author, the major differences are that in the typical software industry is that the less that is learnt or the less that needs to be discovered the more successful the project is deemed to be. If all is going according to plan then using existing knowledge, avoiding backtracking and changing of design or avoiding having to redo analysis would be seen as a part success. Having to change your design, backtracking and redoing analysis are perceived as a negative risk which needs to be mitigated. These risks could overrun the project constraints such as time, budget etc. Therefore industrial practitioners often leave out risky or uncertain parts of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A researcher on the other hand focuses on these risky and uncertain items because tackling these risks and uncertainties successfully would lead to new knowledge being created. Hence you can claim to be doing research rather than 'normal' design and creation through the risk taking of your software product or process. You can further claim justification for your design by using theoretical underpinnings such as mathematical formulas and or formal methods from the field. You should also be able to say how the knowledge aquired from your design can be applied generally to other situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T08:00:19.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-10-18T10:34:26.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing journals costs money.  If a university publishes journals itself, it bears the direct costs.  If a university subscribes to journals, it pays for those costs indirectly.  Either way, universities must spend money on journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A discussion of why universities pay fees for some journals that are much higher than what is required to run the journal would be useful but not in the scope of the question as written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T10:34:26.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4827" CreationDate="2012-10-18T10:56:26.970" Score="39" ViewCount="5953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be doing an Internship in USA the following week, in UCLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm studying in Japan, where you should bring some kind of gift to your host professor, if nothing, for his/her kindness for accepting you as a PhD/visitor/etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this practice along Asian Universities (Japan, China, Singapore, India). But only in Japan professors may get offended if you do not bring anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend's professor is actually from the US (in a Japanese Univ), and when she have her a gift, the professor flipped and asked her whether this was some kind of joke or bribe, given that both of them were foreigners. Their relationship did not go so well after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with this background, I'm a bit wary of bringing some kind of gift or souvenir to my host professor, since I'm pointing towards a postdoc in the same lab and I do not want to cause the wrong impression, but I do want to show some form of gratitude, since the Professor payed for all my expenses (lodging and airplane).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T09:13:47.507" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T19:58:08.033" Title="Is it appropriate to bring some kind of gift for a host professor?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;asia&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T11:06:22.107" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A gift to show your gratitude will always be appreciated. People like to know that their efforts in hosting you are not taken for granted, and the token will strengthen the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T11:06:22.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T11:12:33.820" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll tackle the easiest side of the question first: &lt;strong&gt;bringing nothing should not create trouble&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are clearly expressing your thanks for the invitation, both in written before you arrive, and in person when you meet the guy, noöne should take offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;bringing a gift is fine too&lt;/strong&gt;, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be tasteful and suitable for any taste: no &lt;em&gt;sake&lt;/em&gt;, no unusual (by US standards) food… unless you know him well enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not be terribly expensive: people like the attention, but they don't actually care so much about the gift itself. Keep it simple, that way it cannot be understood as a bribe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not academia-related, but still useful to remember: make sure it passes customs (I had my French gift confiscated from me once).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually bring stuff to colleagues who host me when I travel to other places, if only because it gives a starting topic for smalltalk (something which I'm not very good at) in a future occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T12:05:08.767" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T12:05:08.767" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T11:30:37.820" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is all right to give a small gift as a token of your appreciation, but in my experience, it's customary to give it at the &lt;strong&gt;end&lt;/strong&gt; of your internship. If I understand your question correctly, you are asking about giving something at the beginning. I think that might be a bit unusual. Normally, these gifts show that you appreciate the time that someone spent working with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T11:30:37.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T13:29:15.670" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen people bring local sweets, everyone likes sweets, they are cheap, so you stay away from the &quot;bribe&quot; thing and they can easily be shared if there are more people around. They also provide some kind of smalltalk topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T13:29:15.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1698" CreationDate="2012-10-18T13:41:33.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Necessary disclaimer: I have not had to be involved in REF. This is what I summarized from my experience of the recent French evaluation system. Reading the REF guidelines, it seems pretty similar in focus (although to be honest, for all their wordiness, I prefer the very detailed REF guidelines over the French way of not explicitly detailing every rule).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that out of the way, I would say there are two ways to “improve” what is essentially one’s societal impact. Both are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;On paper&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the short-term way of improving your impact: just present it better. Peruse the guidance documents (and possibly other guidance, including documents your local university might issue in order to help its staff), write down the relevant keywords, list all items that can be counted towards “impact”. Then, brainstorm (possibly with colleagues or friends!) for ways to tie your already existing contributions to these items. Sometimes it is just a matter of remembering stuff you didn't think of &lt;em&gt;(in my case, I remembered that we had some colleagues from an industrial company who showed up at a series of tutorials)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;For real&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can also try to influence your plans to include more activities of clear societal impact. There are unlimited number of things you could come up with, and they depend widely on context (which you did not give). Keeping it short and generic, here are a few good examples that I can think of (some of them more applicable in some fields, obviously):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organize panel discussions on your favorite topic, open to the general public&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open lab day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“cultural heritage” research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create visualizations of your research (pictures, movies, whatever), and publish it &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interviews or other interventions in the media (even local)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being listed on &lt;em&gt;experts registries&lt;/em&gt;: courts, journalism schools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all kinds of work with local artists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;workshop or discussion groups involving academic and industrial communities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being a member of a standardization body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like some sort of random list, cause I tried to list diverse activities. I'm sure others will have plenty of ideas to add!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T13:41:33.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4833" CreationDate="2012-10-18T14:16:02.473" Score="6" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here at my university, we have 12-13 week-long summer break for the students excluding summer-school. It is almost as long as a semester. I guess this is roughly the case for other institutions. In fact I often observe that some grad students use this break to work in another research group usually in another country (European countries mostly, USA rarely). Even some others spend entire two-semeter academic term in another university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is as follows: &lt;strong&gt;What would be the pros and cons for using summer-time to work in another research group away from your supervisor and/or your research topic?&lt;/strong&gt; I guess the situation would be different for a masters and a PhD student (I am currently interested in the situation for a masters student, but general ideas covering the situation would be OK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="399" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T18:29:18.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T20:46:07.770" Title="What are pros and cons for using summer-break to work in another research group?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T14:22:12.437" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on state law the professor can accept it.  I think that usually the threshold is somewhere around the $100 mark.  I know that in Illinois if we accept a gift that is worth more than 100 dollars we have the following 3 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respectfully refuse the gift&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the gift and donate it to a charitable organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the gift and then make a charitable donation equal to the value of the gift&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree with the other responses that it should be given at the end of the visit.  The gift is a &quot;thank you for your time and help gesture&quot; and is a more appropriate form of saying goodbye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T14:22:12.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4831" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:10:31.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the obvious things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: the work in another group will build contacts, possibly improving your opportunities for future academic positions (PhD, postdoc, assistant professor position). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: funding opportunities, if you're in need of extra money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: the work done in another group will take up time and energy, and if not related to your current work, won't advance your research (experimenting, publishing, etc.). That should probably be your priority (this is related to the comment on the question about it being strange to get 12-week breaks...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: if you don't coordinate it with your supervisor, this could affect the trust in the relationship (depending on the style of the supervisor).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to pursue an academic career, in some universities respectable journal articles published are worth more than contacts when competing for a job. So don't overestimate the first &quot;pro&quot; I mention above. At the master's level, this is less important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best strategy is to coordinate the &quot;outside&quot; work with your supervisor for maximum benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T15:10:31.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4831" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:20:15.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE: The answer below assumes you have approval from your university and/or employer!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university is closed for 12 weeks, I would argue it's almost &lt;strong&gt;entirely positive&lt;/strong&gt; to go somewhere else and work, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you work more, you get more results. Sounds obvious, but it's the scientific output that counts. You can't afford lingering around for 12 weeks if you want to get a scientific career. The work you do elsewhere might or might not help you directly towards your PhD, but if it results in publications, it certainly will enhance your academic career, even if the publications are unrelated to your PhD work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will enhance your international experience, which will enhance your chances of finding positions later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will improve your academic contacts, which also enhances your chances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you acquire your own funding, you will gain experience in finding sources of money, which should also be greatly beneficial for your career.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I can't think of any reason &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to do it, if the alternative is idling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T20:46:07.770" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T20:46:07.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:26:31.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the answers addressed the funding dimension of an adviser, so I'll add it here. My PhD adviser was well funded, which allowed me to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incur no student-loan or other debt during the 5 years of my PhD (I went from bachelors to PhD, by the way).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Travel easily when I published papers at conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand how research proposals are written, as the professor worked on a lot of them and we were involved in that process. Useful for when you'll have to write proposals IF you become a professor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T15:26:31.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4831" CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:36:24.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are currently &quot;employed full-time&quot; by a research group (you are a student, or a scientific worker, whose funding is from a given research group), then any extended outside work for another research group needs to be discussed and approved by your current advisor &lt;strong&gt;in advance&lt;/strong&gt;. Failure to do so, as Fuhrmanator suggests, will lead to &lt;em&gt;major&lt;/em&gt; conflicts, as you are potentially committing a major breach of etiquette, and possibly violating your departmental regulations or your work contract if you don't secure the permissions in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that said, the best use of spending time in another research group is to develop new skills and techniques that you couldn't learn (or at least couldn't learn as well) by staying in your &quot;home&quot; group. In such cases, I suspect most advisors would support such a move, so long as it doesn't conflict with your current progress timeline and any requirements of your department (or your funding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T16:36:24.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4921" CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:12:02.703" Score="20" ViewCount="2293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among the presentations in a major conference, I attended one where the author cited a paper (of theirs) under review in another major conference. Not only cited it, but showed some of its results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the impression that it should not be possible, since there's the potential risk of influencing reviewers who could also be in the room during the presentation. Or is it only &quot;good practice&quot; not to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T00:17:12.830" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T07:00:27.033" Title="Can I present the results of a paper that is currently under review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4837" CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:21:41.927" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only problem of presenting results that are not published is if someone else &lt;em&gt;steals&lt;/em&gt; the results and writes their own paper about them. (Though this probably more likely only happens with ideas that are shared too prematurely.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally considered a good thing to promote one’s own work, and one way of doing this is by giving presentations at other universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if this work is under review at a different conference, I don’t think it is problematic. When presenting a paper at a conference, you are not necessarily obliged to talk about precisely the contents of the paper. You are advertising the paper, and more generally, your own work, so that people will read it and cite it. If you have bigger and better results, then these will help with your promotion of your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it would be weird, though probably not wrong, to talk entirely about a different paper when presenting at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T07:00:27.033" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T07:00:27.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4837" CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:58:46.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;nothing unethical&lt;/strong&gt; in doing so (including results from a paper &lt;em&gt;of your own&lt;/em&gt; under review). It is not fundamentally different from presenting any other unpublished work of yours. If anything, you are taking a risk because people might jump on the idea, do the research at full speed (knowing what to look for), and publish it before your paper is finally out…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends strongly on the field of research, and the pressure from the competition. In my field (physical chemistry), it has evolved as follows in the last 10 or 15 years: people used to happily report on their not-yet-published results. Then, some colleagues from the US started to stop doing it, especially at the big conferences, citing fear of being “scooped”. Now, in most conferences, you don't hear anything that has not at least been accepted for publication. There are exceptions, usually local conferences, but also for example the prestigious &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Research_Conferences&quot;&gt;Gordon conferences&lt;/a&gt;, which are held under a confidentiality agreement and where unpublished work is favored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T18:58:46.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4841" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-18T19:11:09.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is the unethical practice of taking credit for someone else’s work. It is a major concern both in research, where the most common issue is improper use of citations (or lack thereof), and in coursework assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-plagiarism refers to reusing one's own previously published work (or previously used coursework), without properly citing it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T08:02:04.693" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T08:02:04.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4842" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-18T19:11:09.113" Score="0" Body="Plagiarism is the practice of taking credit for someone else’s work. " OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T08:06:23.987" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T08:06:23.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4837" CreationDate="2012-10-18T19:58:53.287" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one circumstance where presenting results under review elsewhere would be a violation of code. This is when the conference where review is ongoing requires double blind submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, there's usually a clause that asks the authors not do anything overt to violate double blind review, and presenting at a different venue (where reviewers might be in attendance) would be an overt violation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T19:58:53.287" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-10-18T20:42:07.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like others said, a small gift to show your appreciation would be completely acceptable. If you have trouble deciding on what to get, try giving something that your area of Japan is known for (as long as it is in good taste). It would add a nice personal touch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3865" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T20:42:07.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4784" CreationDate="2012-10-19T02:32:38.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the classic in experimental social science methodology is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0395615569&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shadish &amp;amp; Cook's &quot;Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It covers various forms of experimental research design and also go into considerable detail in explaining the logic and practical steps of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1465" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T02:32:38.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4853" CreationDate="2012-10-19T06:37:07.213" Score="15" ViewCount="1702" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we write a research paper, most of the times we need to describe in the introduction what is the merit of the present work (unless is a survey of sorts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many professors, tell me that is enough to write it within the sentences with some context. And is the way I see it in most papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other professors, however, I've seen they especifically list the merits and innovations of the papers in the introduction, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The present work presents cherries using A, which has never been done before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We implemented the mix of berries and bananas, which has never been tried.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I find the approach intuitive and way more explicit than the usual approach, It seems a bit condescending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your suggestion, should I write a list of merits or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T15:20:49.543" Title="Is it important to list the merits of a research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-10-19T07:23:11.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is fine in most formats to finish your introduction by stating your goals. I tend not to over-emphasize the list of innovations in the paper &lt;em&gt;right in the introduction&lt;/em&gt;, usually because &lt;strong&gt;it is already made clear in two places: abstract and conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: if by “specifically list the merits” you mean use a bullet-point list, I'd suggest to avoid it. It's not the same as an oral presentation, where you might want to focus on nice simple messages for an audience whose attention is never to be take for granted. When someone has read your introduction ’til the end, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; interested in your work, you don’t need to resort to oversimplifying your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T07:23:11.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4784" CreationDate="2012-10-19T08:04:07.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best book about experimental studies you can read is surely &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereus_Nuncius&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sidereus Nuncius&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Galileo Galilei&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, the father of modern science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That book was published first in 1610, but it's still very current. It explains to you how Galileo Galilei built his technologies (the telescope) and how he run up his experiments to discover new stars and planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definetely, a &lt;strong&gt;must-read&lt;/strong&gt; book for every scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T08:04:07.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-10-19T08:07:01.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end, the strength of your paper is in a large part defined by its contributions. Therefore, I believe it is absolutely vital to clearly state them. A bullet pointed list is an excellent way to do so. Remember: papers are almost never read from start to end. Therefore, it is important to make your paper visually pleasing, by, for example, making the most important parts (like the contributions) easy to find. Bullet-points serve that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excellent slides by SP Jones on how to write a great research paper (which also covers this question) can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm&quot;&gt; here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link also contains much advice on academic research, for instance on giving talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3869" LastEditorUserId="3869" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T11:48:55.260" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T11:48:55.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-10-19T08:14:50.720" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somehow it is common to start an introduction with &lt;em&gt;a general blah-blah&lt;/em&gt;, basically saying that a field is important and repeating some popular facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my opinion, the most important thing of the introduction is to say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is there,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the actual contribution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and said in a precise way, so reader will know if the content is useful for her. And in such a way as &lt;em&gt;&quot;we prove X1 and X2, under the assumption of Y, and conjecture Z&quot;&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;&quot;we investigate X1, X2 and Z&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, giving the general context is extremely important, but not more that saying what's there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I wasted a lot of time reading papers whose abstract or introduction left me believing that they solve a general problem, when in fact it was only &lt;em&gt;n=2,3,4&lt;/em&gt; case, or just something tangentially related to my research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an incentive to write introduction in a &lt;em&gt;big talk / general blah-blah&lt;/em&gt; style (because it sounds serious, because it may bait uninterested readers, etc), but (IMHO) it is very counterproductive, sometimes verging on the edge of scientific dishonesty (i.e. an implicit overclaim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorDisplayName="user568" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T15:20:49.543" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T15:20:49.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4858" CreationDate="2012-10-19T11:54:35.563" Score="28" ViewCount="14636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a paper, for which my &lt;strong&gt;title&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;core problem&lt;/strong&gt; is spelled differently in American and British English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't worry about my professor preferring one way of writing over the other, as I'm &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; residing in an English-speaking country, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, my paper is being written in English, even it won't be published. Thus I wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a &quot;standard procedure&quot; for such cases, at least in US Ivy League universities or in certain citation styles?&lt;/strong&gt; (I am currently using APA, 6th (our prof. didn't prescribe any specific citation style) as it suits my personal preference of how a reference should be cited and displayed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will definitely mention both words in the &quot;keywords&quot; area, but other than that I will go with one spelling, namely the American English one. The word is &quot;harmonization&quot;, if that should be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for my lack of initial research, I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/332/how-much-should-i-worry-about-british-spelling-when-submitting-to-a-u-k-journal&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; SE question though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2716" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T10:10:56.237" Title="How to approach American English vs. British English spelling in a paper?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T12:15:00.800" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever style guide your use, &lt;strong&gt;citations should be cited exactly in the original spelling&lt;/strong&gt;. Doing otherwise would defeat the whole purpose of citation: uniquely identifying an existing publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no direct quote from APA to justify this (except that, well, they don't indicate that you have the liberty to edit the title of cited works!). However, multiple secondary sources make it clear, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.files.ithuta.net/OpenJournals/SAJIP/Authors/APA%20reference%20style%20guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Notes: Please &quot;copy&quot; the title of a book/an article/whatever (as far as the spelling of words such as &quot;behavior&quot;/&quot;behavioral&quot; are concerned) […] &lt;strong&gt;exactly as in the original&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation style guides tend to be more explicit for foreign language works, where most of them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.uq.edu.au/training/citation/apa_6.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explicitly state&lt;/a&gt; (in some wording or another):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Give the original title, and, in brackets, the English translation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T10:09:22.540" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T10:09:22.540" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4865" CreationDate="2012-10-19T13:15:06.327" Score="11" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to make this as less subjective:&#xA;Till what point do you continue doing exercises at end of the chapter to learn something:&#xA;I do it in Grad school and that's where I really learn. Do professors/post docs learning about new fields do it too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T03:10:28.270" Title="Till what point do you do exercises while studying?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T13:44:09.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For references, F'x is correct: citations should be given in the spelling used in the original publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, however, when writing the main text of your article for submission to a journal (or for any other work submitted to a professional publisher), you should follow the style guidelines they set out. Pretty much every journal should have a statement about which set of spellings they prefer (usually based on its country of origin). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the textbook I am using to teach a course this semester is written by Americans but published by Oxford, a UK publishing company. The word &quot;center&quot; is spelled &quot;centre,&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T13:44:09.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4863" CreationDate="2012-10-19T14:20:26.257" Score="5" ViewCount="1030" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a graduate/fellowship application asks about research activities, am I allowed to talk about expository pieces that I have written? For example, one semester I read a highly influential and important paper in my field. I then wrote a significant length expository piece based on it. Would this be considered a research activity? Or does this imply that it has to be original research? I looked everywhere through the application guidelines for the explicit definition of &quot;research activity&quot; but I couldn't seem to find it anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="816" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T14:43:24.317" Title="What does &quot;research activities&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T14:40:49.077" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I typically &lt;strong&gt;don't worry about this question as a writer&lt;/strong&gt;.  For what it's worth, I'm based in the United States, so I default to &lt;em&gt;American&lt;/em&gt; English.  I always spell check my papers, but in the more than 25 papers that I've submitted, I've never gotten any feedback about using American spelling rather than British spelling; this question is very relevant for me since many of my papers are on &lt;em&gt;graph colo(u)ring&lt;/em&gt;.  It may be useful to note that in the journals that I submit to and read, I've seen both American and British spelling.  (I think many editors typically let the authors choose which they prefer.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion is this: &lt;strong&gt;choose either American or British&lt;/strong&gt; spelling and &lt;strong&gt;stay consistent&lt;/strong&gt; throughout your paper.  &lt;strong&gt;Don't lose any sleep&lt;/strong&gt; over this.  It &lt;strong&gt;will not be the deciding factor in whether your paper is accepted&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, for doing a literature review, I feel your pain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T14:40:49.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-10-19T14:43:24.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing an expository piece is not a research activity. Research activity in general refers to original research with things like systematic reviews and meta analysis falling into a gray area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T14:43:24.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4859" CreationDate="2012-10-19T15:24:55.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exercises fall at various levels in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bloom's Taxonomy&lt;/a&gt;. Exercises at the higher end of the taxonomy are harder to do, but verify more objectives, since they rely on understanding and applying knowledge from the lower levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and answer your question, I'll generalize a bit and say that academics are by nature quick learners for the lower-level objectives (knowledge, comprehension). Exercises at this level are probably less useful than Upper-level exercises (application, analysis, evaluation, creation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whenever I haven't taught material in a while, re-doing some of the knowledge exercises is a great way to freshen up and be sharp for class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T15:24:55.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4859" CreationDate="2012-10-19T15:25:03.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning is a life long activity. Graduating with a PhD is not a license to stop learning, it's a license to (eventually) get paid to do research and learn more :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T15:25:03.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4886" CreationDate="2012-10-19T15:36:16.050" Score="10" ViewCount="2673" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you introduce yourself to an international audience and come from an non-US system, there always is an awkward moment of translating your job title into a form recognizable by the people you introduce yourself to. Here are the options I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using the title in your native language: completely honest, but probably not understandable by anyone who does not know the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing it by the closest US title: complete localization, completely understandable, but some nuance in the function might be lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;translating in a literal way: something in-between&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give a specific example here (from my own system, the French one). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNRS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CNRS&lt;/a&gt; is a research-performing organization, in which permanent researchers hold the title of &lt;em&gt;chargé de recherche&lt;/em&gt; (junior staff) or &lt;em&gt;directeur de recherche&lt;/em&gt; (senior staff). I usually see these titles translated into “research scientist” and “research director”, but I those terms aren’t really self-explanatory. In particular, I don't think it's clear from “research scientist” that this is a permanent position, because that term could also be used in other places for post-docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:05:28.753" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T14:37:08.427" Title="How should a job title be translated?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2012-10-19T15:41:34.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's exclude fields related to literature and linguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that in most Academic Departments you can find a research topics that can be done exclusively in English, but that in many departments you could also find topics that cannot be done exclusively with English. Even with Computer Science (e.g., speech recognition in a non-English language) and Biology (genetic mutation common in a foreign country where you need to collect samples) there are projects where a foreign languages is required. I would venture to say there are more departments where a foreign language could be critical than ones where it couldn't. I am hard pressed to think of a Chemistry or Pyshics research question that would require a foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upenn.edu/programs/academics-degrees-and-programs.php?level=&amp;amp;schoolID=artsci&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;College of Arts and Sciences at UPenn&lt;/a&gt; as a random sample of research fields the following broad categories become apparent. There are language studies (e.g., French, Spanish, German), which to me do not fall into the literature category, where there is an obvious need for a foreign language. There are cultural studies (e.g., Asian Studies and Latin American Studies, but also things like Anthropology, Archeology, Art History) where you are likely required to live in a non-English speaking country for at least a while. I would expect language studies and cultural studies to have language requirements. Then there are research areas in which you may be studying a non-English speaking culture (e.g., Criminology, Economics, Environmental Studies), for which languages are essential for some individuals, but unlikely to be required for all. There are also art topics (e.g., Fine Arts, Cinema studies, Music) where your research topics may not be in English and foreign language skills may be required. There are &quot;old&quot; topics (e.g., History, Classics, and Folklore) where sources are unlikely to be in English so programs often have language exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T15:41:34.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T16:05:00.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is really a non-issue. Any decent search engine will return hits for your paper, even if one searches for &lt;em&gt;harmonisation&lt;/em&gt; (the spelling more common in Britain) rather than &lt;em&gt;harmonization&lt;/em&gt; (the spelling used in the USA, and also valid, though less common, in Britain) as long as a literal search isn't used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=harmonisation%20murchan&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example search&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm amending my answer to address the part of your question about whether specific journals require certain spellings. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;ion=1#bpcl=35466521&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=site%3aedu+%22author+guidelines%22++british+spelling&amp;amp;safe=active&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google search limited to the .edu domains&lt;/a&gt; finds lots of author guidelines that address this issue to various degrees, but nothing shows me that there's a single way to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T17:40:33.453" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T17:40:33.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1322" CreationDate="2012-10-19T16:28:07.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities do not have to &lt;strong&gt;splurge&lt;/strong&gt; on journals.  If you think your university is splurging, then you must consider journals to be a luxury.  However, a university with no journal subscriptions would not be able to attract faculty or students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T16:28:07.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4837" CreationDate="2012-10-19T16:36:13.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no reason to be concerned about this.  Most of my conference presentations are about work I haven't even submitted yet.  And the whole point is to persuade people that the ideas I'm presenting are useful.  All of my papers go on arxiv.org and on my website as soon as they're submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why on earth would it be wrong to influence reviewers (except in case of double-blind review)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T13:51:37.387" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T13:51:37.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4859" CreationDate="2012-10-19T16:42:05.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep doing it as long as it’s useful to you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m a couple years into post-doc’ing, and find exercises just as useful as I did in grad school; and I know professors at multiple stages of their career who appear (from conversation) to still frequently do exercises.  On the other hand, I know at least one person who claims to have never particularly found exercises helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it certainly varies from person to person whether exercises are/remain useful; for a given individual, though, I have no idea how it typically changes over time.  For my part, the main change over the last few years is in how selective I can be about exercises: I can now generally look quickly over a page of exercises and gauge pretty consistently which ones will be essentially routine, and which will require some real thought.    Both kinds can still be of interest (at least to me), but for different purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1277" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T16:42:05.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T20:12:51.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key factor would be who you main audience will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was writing an article to be released in Spain i would not write it in French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for mainly Americans then use American English, and the same goes for if it will mainly be for British then go for English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is for all people who speak English then the correct one to use would be British English (which is known as just English, not British English), this is due to the fact that American English is simply at the most basic level a dialect of British English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also English comes from England not &quot;Britain&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3877" LastEditorUserId="3877" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T21:22:38.777" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T21:22:38.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4882" CreationDate="2012-10-19T20:38:07.703" Score="10" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a computational research lab as a graduate research assistant. We're all funded under various grants to do research in our field and we are also working on a thesis, which may or may not be directly related to the funding source (it is if we are lucky!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our lab is also licensing the software we write to outside companies for their own in-house use. As a result, there are many &quot;niceties&quot; that should be added to the code to make it more user-friendly, but these have no bearing on our research, either the sponsor-funded or thesis-related. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it okay that we are expected to implement these things in addition to our funded/thesis related work? Is it acceptable to ask for additional money (assuming work done on this is &lt;strong&gt;in addition to&lt;/strong&gt; funded/thesis work)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our advisor is considering hiring an outside company to come in and put in these features, but we would be expected to help them through the process of learning and understanding our code so it would be nice to cut out the middle man since we certainly won't get any extra money from advising the consultants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3878" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T23:09:33.857" Title="Is it ethical to request additional money for non-research related work in a research lab as a grad student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-19T20:55:53.153" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing is to pick and choose the sensible spellings from both dialects. I'm Canadian, but I refuse to write &lt;em&gt;neighbour&lt;/em&gt;, a synthetic spelling which has a superfluous letter. On the other hand, the American spelling &lt;em&gt;center&lt;/em&gt; (rather than &lt;em&gt;centre&lt;/em&gt;) holds no advantage of brevity, and betrays only ignorance of the Latin root &lt;em&gt;centrum&lt;/em&gt; in which &lt;em&gt;tr&lt;/em&gt; aren't separated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;em&gt;-sation&lt;/em&gt; endings versus &lt;em&gt;-zation&lt;/em&gt;, these are a favored in a handful of languages like French, Dutch, German. However, not in others like Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Croatian, or Czech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;-sation&lt;/em&gt; is bad etymology. For instance the Online Etymology Dictionary gives us this for the word &lt;em&gt;organization&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;mid-15c., &quot;act of organizing,&quot; from M.Fr. organisation and directly from M.L. organizationem (nom. organizatio), noun of action from pp. stem of organizare, from L. organum &quot;instrument, organ&quot; (see organ). Meaning &quot;system, establishment&quot; is from 1873. Organization man is from title of 1956 book by American sociologist William H. Whyte (1917-1999). Related: Organizational.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the original Latin has a &lt;em&gt;z&lt;/em&gt;. Since we don't gain any brevity, again, we should go with the spelling which respects etymology. In this case, it is the American one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget borders: respect etymology and favor brevity, but do stop short of writing &lt;em&gt;night&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;light&lt;/em&gt; as &lt;em&gt;nite&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;lite&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hang a footnote on the occurrence of a word with a contentious spelling, explaining my position on spelling and that is that. Academics do not have to be tied to other people's conventions based on national borders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3879" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T20:55:53.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4917" CreationDate="2012-10-20T04:06:32.123" Score="10" ViewCount="2985" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that in APA style you treat parenthetical versus non-parenthetical in-text references separately when applying et al. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say you're citing Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. &#xA;  Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith, Jones &amp;amp; Roberts, 2012). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, because in the second line it is the first time you mention the authors parenthetically, you have to restate the authors' names....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought you treat parenthetical and non-parenthetical citations the same.  So it would be the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. &#xA;  Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith et al., 2012). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone confirm or clarify this for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference they gave for this rule is table 6.1 on page 177 of the APA Manual, 6th edition. &#xA;They interpreted the column titled &quot;First citation in-text&quot; and &quot;Parenthetical Format, first citation in text) as indicating that those two formats should be treated separately.  However, this doesn't make sense to me and I think that APA would have made this more explicit if it had intended this interpretation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3881" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T16:13:24.290" LastActivityDate="2020-03-21T04:02:52.623" Title="How should &quot;et al.&quot; be used for parenthetical versus non-parenthetical citations using the APA citation style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-10-20T08:44:48.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith, Jones &amp;amp; Roberts, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; follow the recommended APA style.  That is, I think the correct way to write it is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith et al., 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the first citation is the first citation &quot;in text&quot; and the second citation is the first citation of this work &quot;in a parenthetical format.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at page 43 (figure 2.1) of the 6th edition of the APA manual.  Lines 2 and 3 of page 6 of the sample paper has the first citation of &quot;Hahn, Carlson, Singer, &amp;amp; Gronlund, 2006&quot; in parenthetical form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(consistent with Hahn, Carlson, Singer, &amp;amp; Gronlund, 2006; Mather &amp;amp; Knight, 2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and on lines 17 and 18, a citation of the same work in text is given as Hahn, et al. (2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, Hahn et al. (2006) also found no age differences [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it is not certain that the latter citation is the &lt;em&gt;first citation in text&lt;/em&gt; of this work (because some text in the sample paper is obscured).  But looking at other papers in journals that follow the APA format seems to confirm my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a paper in the &lt;em&gt;Journal for Research in Mathematics Education&lt;/em&gt; (vol. 43, no. 2, p. 133) (which explicitly states that manuscripts submitted to it &quot;should conform to the &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/em&gt; (6th ed.)&quot;) has a first citation in text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their article in &lt;em&gt;Mathematics Teacher&lt;/em&gt;, Cirillo, Drake, and Herbel-Eisenmann (2009) situated their work on curriculum vision as described below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a block quotation from this work ends in the first citation in parenthetical form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Cirillo et al., 2009, p. 71)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T09:06:28.257" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T09:06:28.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-10-20T09:13:36.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From one perspective, adding these niceties to the software increases the likelihood that the software will be used and thereby increases the impact of your research. So although these niceties are not research per se, they help achieve the goals of doing research (at least from a funding agency's perspective), namely making an impact. Such tasks are often a necessary part of the research process (and someone has to do them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it is ethical to ask for additional money to hire people to do this very much depends on the rules of the funding agency and how well your advisor is at selling and justifying the idea to the agency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T09:13:36.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-10-20T15:01:13.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pitching in my own experience in similar issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in 2 research labs as a grad student, and in both of them, aside from my own research I did other tasks like server administration (we had our own local network), a bit of outsourcing, and the ocasional side project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the first lab, all of these tasks were done pro-bono, meaning, I did not receive a cent for it, even though the server in place was really old and prone to failure, which took considerable amounts of time from my research time. The Professor, not even once considered paying me for the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my second and current lab, the professor pays you for everything that should derange you from your research, I did a couple of projects for a company (on behalf of our lab) and I got paid. I also gave some tours in the lab as well as some demos, and I also got paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral is, it is usually up to the professor whether he pays you or not, if he is not paying you, is most likely because he either thinks is within your range of activities or simply he does not have the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would not ask for money unless I had the precedent that other person did it before, other way it could set a bad relationship between you two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T15:01:13.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2012-10-20T16:10:15.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to check the particular policies of each publisher to see what is allowed and what is not allowed. However, it is important to remember that the journal's copyright protections are limited to how the material is &lt;em&gt;expressed&lt;/em&gt; in the paper, and not the underlying ideas themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, that means that you won't be able to &quot;recycle&quot; text and figures from the article into a book. However, an expansion and reworking of the ideas normally is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; subject to copyright violation claims, particularly if you're the author of the paper which was expanded in the first place. (This normally gives you additional privileges, depending on the publishers in question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T16:10:15.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4884" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:30:26.667" Score="22" ViewCount="6096" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sometimes arise that I need to use, for an article, a book chapter or any other written work, figures that I have already published (not figures published by others). These are usually schematic figures explaining what a chemical or physical system look like, how an algorithm works, etc. Thus, instead of reusing the exact same figure, I can easily create another one, conveying the same message with (more or less subtle) differences in presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have no idea how to answer the following question: &lt;strong&gt;how different need two figures be&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid the second one infringing on the copyright of the first? What is a good rule of thumb to be used? Is it enough to change one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;color scheme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;viewpoint of a 3D visualization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;moving around blocks in a 2D diagram (or mind map)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changing axis properties (labels, tick mark positions, etc.) in a graph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T08:52:24.130" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T20:00:10.840" Title="How much do figures need to differ to avoid copyright claims?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:07:23.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not unethical to ask your professor. However, as &lt;em&gt;Leon&lt;/em&gt; pointed out, it could be annoying if not done properly. A couple of perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set your goals.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have enough funding for your research moving ahead comfortably and your goal is to finish your degree and get some solid publications, then focus on that (and be happy the maintenance is outsourced). On the other hand, if you're not funded well enough, and think you can accomplish both the research and get paid to do the maintenance coding, propose it to your professor in a way that is positive. But beware of the risk. I have had a student who, once he got scholarships, stopped doing the teaching assistantships we offered him. The extra money wasn't worth the headache or distraction to him. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funded research work is never 100% research.&lt;/strong&gt; I have always had, at various points of my research career, tasks that were distracting and fell out of the area of what was &quot;research&quot;.  The goal is to keep it reasonable and minimal. Complaining about &quot;not getting extra money for advising consultants&quot; is probably not a reasonable attitude to take with your professor. Negotiate with your professor how many hours/week you can reasonably spend (without taking you away too much from your research) is surely a better approach. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T00:10:40.637" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T00:10:40.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4881" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:13:34.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would argue that the new plot needs to do one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present materially different content relative to the old image&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present the same material in a different context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graphs are generally visual representations of numerical data. The numerical data itself &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be copyrighted (because the data are &quot;facts&quot;), only the presentations thereof. However, simply changing axis labels or colors, and other similar &quot;gloss&quot; changes, don't really make the graph any different. Rotating a 3D graph, or changing significantly the relationship of blocks in a mind map or diagram to show off different features &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; represent a change in the message and presentation, and therefore would be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, chemical structures and mathematical equations are not normally considered subject to copyright, as they represent &quot;facts,&quot; and cannot be arbitrarily drawn or represented; there's only so many &quot;legal&quot; ways to write them. That said, cutting and pasting somebody's figure from another article &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be a copyright violation; recreating it yourself would not. (Otherwise, we would never be able to write &lt;em&gt;E&lt;/em&gt; = &lt;em&gt;mc&lt;/em&gt;^2 without it being a copyright violation!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are doubts, however, you can always try to contact the journal in question. If needed, you can ask for permission to reuse a figure, especially if it's one you've already created. Most journals already permit self reuse, so long as you include an appropriate credit and citation of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T07:26:14.737" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T07:26:14.737" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3694" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:53:17.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not in math, but I have supervised several times multiple sections of a first-year software design course taught primarily by grad students (usually I also am teaching one of the sections).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly meetings are helpful, at least an hour, especially for first-time TAs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborating on course content (presentations, exercises, quizzes, homework, exams) via the cloud (e.g., Google apps) is great&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My policy is to share all my content with new TAs when they come on board, with the agreement that they'll improve and re-share it back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I try to get extra $ for &quot;tutoring&quot; hours for them, outside the course, so as to make the work less painful. Anything that boosts morale and shows you're on their side is great.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I try to nurture leadership within the group, as turnover is high.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I used to pay (out of my pocket) an end-of-semester team-building social outing (I felt it was worth it, to have motivated TAs). However, when the department chair found out I was doing it, he started covering the cost from then on, if I invited him, too (this has become a normal thing, since it's essential to get and keep for a while the motivated TAs). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can approach it as a management problem and apply some management techniques (don't take on their monkeys), it's feasible. Also, I scooped a few good research students (and was able to spot some I wouldn't work well with) thanks to the experience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My department doesn't rotate this kind of responsibility, since courses are generally &quot;owned&quot; by only one or two professors. We are unionized, and have considered having this kind of supervision recognized formally in terms of teaching load (which it still is not). It comes up every time our collective agreement is re-negotiated, but the % of faculty it affects is small. The P&amp;amp;T committees take it into consideration, however. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T01:19:25.363" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T01:19:25.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4866" CreationDate="2012-10-21T11:20:31.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no single right answer here. You should provide the information that you think is most salient in the given situation. In your case, you probably want to say something like &quot;tenured research scientist&quot; or &quot;staff scientist,&quot; as those terms normally give the idea of permanence in a way that &quot;research scientist&quot; or &quot;research associate&quot; might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a CV in English, on the other hand, you could write &quot;Junior research staff (permanent position),&quot; as that gets your title more accurately. In this circumstance, it's probably better to go with a literal translation (or as Federico Poloni suggests in a comment below, the job title in the original language) plus explanation, rather than try to find the &quot;closest equivalent.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T18:49:37.457" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T18:49:37.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T16:58:45.850" Score="10" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just looked at the research proposals of a few people who failed to win the NSF Fellowship, and they actually scare me a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the NSF cares about Broader Impact a lot, and that is where I might actually be strongest at. But the reviews look at intellectual merit first and foremost, and that's what scares me, since how can you convince the reviewers that your idea has more intellectual merit than a huge number of other very strong applicants? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="77" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T23:15:31.330" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T23:15:31.330" Title="How do the &quot;proposed research&quot; essays of those who win NSF Fellowships compare with those who don't win NSF Fellowships?" Tags="&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T17:08:06.503" Score="10" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received differing answers from many people on this. I'm proposing a planetary atmospheres project and while I'm submitting it to Geosciences - Climate Dynamics, I'll also probably include &quot;Physics and Astronomy - Astronomy&quot; and &quot;Physics and Astronomy - Theoretical Physics&quot; as part of the &quot;% of program for Primary Field of Study&quot;. I'm in a geoscience department, but my adviser is a theoretical physicist and I come from an Astrophysics background. I'm slightly hesitant about including panels beyond geoscience though, since the physics/astronomy applicant pool is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; stronger than the geoscience applicant pool, and there may be much bigger expectations expected from people in physics/astronomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One person told me that they might just average the scores of the reviews from both panels, while someone else told me that it can't hurt at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is your proposed graduate program interdisciplinary?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: Interdisciplinary research is defined as a mode of research by&#xA;  teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques,&#xA;  tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more&#xA;  disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental&#xA;  understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the&#xA;  scope of a single discipline or area of research practice. Please&#xA;  provide an estimate of the balance among the Fields of Study&#xA;  represented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T16:36:25.667" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:04:35.007" Title="How exactly does submitting an interdisciplinary NSF fellowship proposal affect your chances at winning it?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4887" CreationDate="2012-10-21T18:11:05.573" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who reviews graduate applications, both for admissions and for fellowships, I can say that the number of strong applications is really large, and now in many cases is almost certainly larger than the number of fellowships being awarded in most of these competitions. The unfortunate side effect of this, which is obvious here, is that in most cases, you could have an application that is &quot;strong enough&quot; to merit receiving the fellowship, but not get it. Unfortunately, you don't get to do multiple stochastic realizations; you have to deal with the events the one time they unfold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, how do you impress the reviewer? By having a clear sense of what your project is, and being able to talk about coherently and convincingly. The reviewers are looking for good ideas &lt;em&gt;and good people&lt;/em&gt; to fund. You need to convince them that you're going to be a good researcher, and you have a good idea to &quot;sell.&quot; If you don't think your research is all that amazing, how are you going to convince somebody else about that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T18:11:05.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4881" CreationDate="2012-10-21T20:00:10.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First up, a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer. This does not constitute legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that your earlier work has been published and that the copyright to that work vests with your publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two relevant possibilities here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Your new work does not differ substantially from the earlier work.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A later work which is &lt;em&gt;substantially similar&lt;/em&gt; to an earlier copyrighted work may infringe that copyright. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (yes, but the reference is to case law):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;See, for example, Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Pub. Group, 150 F.3d 132, 137 (2d Cir. 1998) (&quot;Since the fact of copying is acknowledged and undisputed, the critical question for decision is whether the copying was unlawful or improper in that it took a sufficient amount of protected expression from Seinfeld as evidenced by its substantial similarity to such expression.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What substantial similarity means in your case will turn on the facts. I would not be comfortable saying that your proposed alterations to your previous work would result in a sufficiently different work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Your new work has some element of originality over the first work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, your new work might be considered a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;derivative work&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. The owner is generally the author or someone who has obtained rights from the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written this from a US law perspective. I am more familiar with UK copyright law but the basic points above are broadly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T20:00:10.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4893" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:24:03.923" Score="70" ViewCount="2053" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we may ask and answer various questions on online forums or stack exchange regarding teaching, research, publishing etc; it may reveal our lack of knowledge on any basic topic. This might hurt us in the future as an already established academician. So, should we participate in those online forums or stack exchange sites under pseudo-names to remain anonymous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" OwnerDisplayName="Md. Golam Rashed" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T19:21:21.083" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T23:49:22.777" Title="Academic discretion: Should one participate in online forums or Stack Exchange sites anonymously?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:03:17.617" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Participation in a board such as this is strictly voluntary, and people have the choice to identify themselves by whatever means they choose: with their realnames, with pseudonyms, with login names, or with no names at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are, of course, responsible for their actions and their behavior, but it's not up to us to tell them that they &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be anonymous, or that they &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; use their real names. All we can do is tell the to do whatever they feel is appropriate &lt;strong&gt;in their own situations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" OwnerDisplayName="aeismail" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:03:17.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:09:30.303" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very good point. There are certain questions I'd like to ask, but cannot because I'm not at all anonymous for the reasons you allude to or because current students might read those answers. That said, I chose not to be anonymous and I have adjusted my behaviour accordingly. Maybe my students like the idea that I can answer their questions on such a public forum (well, perhaps one of the more topic specific forums).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" OwnerDisplayName="Dave Clarke" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:09:30.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:34:15.280" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a good question. I don't have a permanent position yet, and I'm aware that anything I post here can potentially be read by future recruiting committee, so I'm also careful of the &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; I can ask questions or post answers. I don't think it's a problem to show that you might lack some knowledge, considering that you're also showing you're aware of it and taking some measures to get that knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, nothing prevents you to log out and ask a question anonymously. Your IP is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; public, so you're safe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:34:15.280" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:54:43.627" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add an answer, because I am one of the posters who chose to participate to SE pseudonymously. I see two reasons one would want to do so. The first would be to set up a really airtight firewall between real-life identity and some online circles. This allows you to ask questions of a more personal or confidential nature, but also severely restricts the information you can give up (and thus your interaction with others on the site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second approach, which is the one I follow, is less stringent: I merely use a pseudonym to make the link between my SE identity and my real identity not immediately Googleable. But, the link can (and has been) established, &lt;em&gt;both ways&lt;/em&gt;. I have given here on SE more than enough information (spread over questions, answers and chat) to uniquely identify my ID. I also know that some colleagues know my account name… in part because, I'll admit to it, I do wear those SE T-shirts at work sometimes :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still pretty much myself, and don't restrict what I say any more than I would do to any person I would meet in the street and discuss with. I allows for some more candor, while still  knowing one can be held accountable for one’s words. I like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" OwnerDisplayName="F'x" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:54:43.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4857" CreationDate="2012-10-22T01:23:52.713" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your question were about the &lt;em&gt;-our/-or&lt;/em&gt; distinction, or the &lt;em&gt;-re/-er&lt;/em&gt; distinction, it would be a real question, but with &lt;em&gt;-ise/-ize&lt;/em&gt; there's no contest: go with the Z form, as it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/4063/1696&quot;&gt;accepted on both sides of the Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Organization for Standardization favours British spellings, and uses the &lt;em&gt;-ize&lt;/em&gt; form. (This is known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/77246/1696&quot;&gt;Oxford Spelling&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:11.743" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T01:23:52.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4859" CreationDate="2012-10-22T03:04:11.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To reiterate and &quot;second&quot; other answers... but to try to re-frame the sense of the question, also, ... I'd agree that one should engage with ideas, but not necessarily on the terms dictated by textbooks. As alluded to in other answers, one of the benefits of experience is knowing which exercises might be worth doing... as opposed to being unable to tell, or merely being &lt;em&gt;compelled&lt;/em&gt; to do a high volume of exercises toward a grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Memories fade with time, even for the best memories, and unused ideas fade out of one's mind. On one hand, this can be an indicator that a highly-touted thing has no genuine utility, at least in one's own professional life. On another hand, sometimes the pay-off occurs so much later than one's introduction to an idea, perhaps decades earlier, that the relevant connections are very dim. To guard against &quot;fatal dim-ness&quot;, occasional &quot;refreshing&quot; of memories is necessary. No, this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; quite the same as &quot;doing exercises&quot;, in the important sense that, at this sort of &quot;later&quot; point in one's life, it often happens that reviewing &lt;em&gt;larger&lt;/em&gt; points is sufficient to revivify specific memories about &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; (as opposed to traditional-pedantic) details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One not-entirely-realistic attitude, but quite useful as an ideal of sorts, is to consider the notion that one changes oneself sufficiently so that the ideas of a subject seem entirely reasonable, simplest-thing-in-the-world... rather than unintuitive and unanticipate-able. That is, the meta-exercise is to change oneself so that no further exercises are necessary (apart from perhaps the &quot;refreshing&quot; of memories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These comments have ignored the hugely significant psychological point that one should as-soon-as-possible recover from the burden of thinking in terms of approval of some authority figure. To say the least, this is not an intellectually honest or psychologically healthy criterion to apply to one's activities. Pity that &quot;school&quot; engenders this so powerfully. That is, don't embark upon a regimen for the approval of others, but to achieve your own objectives. Oop, yes, that entails trying to understand what your own objectives might be. Yes, if you are an undergrad or grad student, or even a postdoc or junior person, this is complicated. But, I recommend, do recognize that issue: one should be trying to think for oneself, but with incomplete information, or bad information, and lack of experience... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, &quot;of course&quot;, one should not use &quot;doing exercises&quot; as an avoidance mechanism to allow avoiding facing more amorphous, real issues. &quot;Doing exercises&quot; is not the stairway to heaven, any more than a stringent exercise program guarantees professional athletic success, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant summary might be to start thinking in other terms than &quot;exercises&quot;. After all, there are no &quot;exercises&quot; that qualify you to buy lunch, or mail a letter... The fixity of novice mathematicians on &quot;school&quot; and its ... mixed... credentialling system is in many ways very noisy and non-informative. Even if one needs to fit into that, one should not think too much in those terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T03:10:28.270" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T03:10:28.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-22T10:37:29.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add few points, let me know if these could be considered as some sort of answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Points in favour for revealing your name:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your name and identity become associated with your reputation, hence telling the world that you're some sort of expert in that domain, area, set of questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can use such reputation for outside StackOverflow: informally, one such question arose on Meta-StackOverflow &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25453/have-you-ever-used-your-gained-reputation-points-to-get-a-job-or-something&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30598/using-stack-overflow-in-a-job-interview?rq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30615/has-your-stackoverflow-reputation-helped-your-career?rq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30578/is-stack-overflow-reputation-marketable&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. How recruiters will use this type of information is still premature to say&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can impress your students, friends and family :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Points in favour for NOT revealing your name:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as an academic, I value the anonymous feedback to my content, being project proposals, papers, or anything else. I would argue that one of the greatest features of the peer-review approach is &lt;strong&gt;not to know who's your reviewer&lt;/strong&gt;, so that she can bash some extremely harsh feedback without the need of expecting some back-slash from it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as a SO user, your name, gender, identity should not matter, the quality of answers and questions should be more important. If you sample SO users, you will notice that the majority of them are not identifiable in terms of their nationality, gender, age or other characteristics. It seems to me that the users of &quot;online communities&quot; have more incentives to reveal such information; whether a Q&amp;amp;A site (as SO) does not strictly need that piece of information&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:31:50.297" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T10:43:01.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4900" CreationDate="2012-10-22T12:01:41.423" Score="13" ViewCount="700" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that I am doing a literature review on a topic, and I read paper A, which makes an interesting claim and references paper B as its source. Naturally, as paper B is then the primary source, I will look up B and possibly cite it in my own paper if it seems relevant. And suppose that it turns out that paper A says nothing else that's relevant for my topic, so I say nothing about paper A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this seems fine if I only discovered one citation from paper A. But if I find several useful citations in the same paper, it starts to feel like plagiarism if I just ruthlessly harvest it for citations without never citing itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's easy to work in a citation in such a case. For example, if it's a review paper I'm reading, I might be able to just write in my own paper something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Qwerty (2009) reviews a number of a results in this field, such as the finding that over 99% of the people who contract cancer wear shoes (Keyes 1999), that pink aliens from the sixteenth dimension dislike chocolate (Pinker 2001), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But often there isn't really any reasonable way to work in a citation, especially not if you wish the citation to make it clear that this is where you found useful sources from. I could include a footnote or a thanks in the acknowledgements, but I've never seen anyone do that for such a reason. Are there any rules of thumb regarding the correct etiquette in such situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T08:15:03.037" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T08:15:03.037" Title="Crediting sources one has found citations from" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4899" CreationDate="2012-10-22T12:16:34.500" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quoted you wrote is actually a pretty good way to include that citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to the fundamental reason you are citing the paper. Citations are used to refer the reader to papers that contain useful information pertaining to your discussion. As such, &lt;em&gt;“because it includes a good citation”&lt;/em&gt; is not a good reason for citing paper A in itself: there are plenty of other ways you could have found paper B (other citations, web or database search, bumping into its author at a meeting, etc.). &lt;strong&gt;Unless paper A adds relevant information&lt;/strong&gt; to paper B, it should simply not be cited. One way it can add information is by performing a review of the literature, or by commenting on the results in paper B… In the first case, your quote is a good way to acknowledge that fact; in the second case, you could simply write that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Qwerty discussed in [21] the original results of Doe [22], showing how the data wasn't corrected to account for the phase of the moon at the time of measurement.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I'd say: &lt;strong&gt;determine whether paper A brings additional information, then either cite it or do not cite it&lt;/strong&gt;. It is not common practice (and I don't think it should be) to acknowledge a paper without citing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T12:16:34.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4899" CreationDate="2012-10-22T12:36:51.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;telling the truth&quot; is a good guide: if one finds a source via another source, it is reasonable to say so. It is true that there is a tradition of a more formal pose, something in the direction that &quot;oh, we knew this all along&quot;, even when this is not so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is an issue of wording, for which we lack good precedents, because such acknowledgements are not typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to be sure to acknowledge all sources is to communicate to the community that this is a reasonable thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the distinction between &quot;citation&quot; and &quot;acknowledgement&quot; is less intellectual/scientific than it is a score-keeping thresh-hold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T12:36:51.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-22T13:07:00.847" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question. There have been several instances when I wanted to clear some doubts about basic stuff, and wondered if it would be appropriate to post it in a way that would be visible on my profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After going back and forth for a while, I created a pseudo-id, but in the end, I decided to just use my regular account. The intention was to make a point, that my students should not feel embarrassed to ask a question, even if it is a very basic question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3891" LastEditorUserId="3891" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T05:55:06.610" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T05:55:06.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T14:48:06.390" Score="42" ViewCount="2749" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academics need various forms of their CV, depending on what purpose it's being used for. In my case, here are reasons I've had to re-format or have a different version of my CV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promotion and tenure, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research proposals (each grant program requires a different format), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;program accreditation for engineering universities, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my official web page at my university (with a French and English version).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot of busy work to maintain these CVs, especially as they evolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Canada, there's a program in government-funded research to have a common format for CVs, called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ccv-cvc.ca/indexresearcher-eng.frm&quot;&gt;Canadian Common CV&lt;/a&gt;. It's a great idea, but doesn't really solve the global problems. Not all funding organizations support it (or the same version of it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend tools that help in preparing academic CVs in various formats? Probably this means centralizing the information in one place and having it output in customizable formats. Obviously, there needs to be some understanding of the elements of an academic CV: publications, students supervised, grants awarded, community service, courses taught, distinguished awards, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3885" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T13:59:34.920" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T13:59:34.920" Title="What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2263" CreationDate="2012-10-22T14:55:48.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pedagogical Patterns&lt;/a&gt; in my courses, namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html#gradeitagainsam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grade it again, Sam&lt;/a&gt; that is part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/patterns/fewpedpats.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some Pedagogical Patterns&lt;/a&gt;. They're oriented towards computer-science curriculum, but could be adapted to other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T14:55:48.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4903" CreationDate="2012-10-22T14:57:36.490" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I maintain CV of various lengths (with more or less details) and in two languages. For a long time, I have used &lt;strong&gt;LaTeX&lt;/strong&gt; for that task, along with a &lt;code&gt;Makefile&lt;/code&gt; that can do conditional compilation of my argument: basically, the LaTeX code was set up so that, depending on the job name of the compilation, different bits of the CV would be included or not (this is not TeX.SE, so I won't go into the full details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used it for some years, but as time passed I progressed along the career track, and now I need more and more types of CV, customized in different ways. Basically, I end up having to manually select the bits and pieces I want to include for each specific use of my CV. Thus, I now maintain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a very brief CV (for which I use the NSF “biographical sketch” as a template)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a full CV in English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a full CV in French&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a list of publications, because these pretty much don't need translation apart from the section titles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use my &lt;strong&gt;word processor&lt;/strong&gt; (MS Word or Apple’s Pages) for the first three, as it allows me to customize a specific CV from each template, and it also allows then pasting the CV into a larger Word document (often a requirement for grants).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still use a custom-made &lt;strong&gt;LaTeX processing of my publication list&lt;/strong&gt;, from which I produce either PDF (if used on its own) or a HTML file, which I then copy into my MS Word CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T14:57:36.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4903" CreationDate="2012-10-22T15:21:41.003" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to using LaTeX with a makefile, I find that using the LaTeX package splitbib is very useful. It allows you to format your publications with different subtitles for different category of publications, and you can pick and choose which entries from your publications (which I maintain as a BiBTeX file) should be included. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since LaTeX allows you to include files, it's relatively easy to create separate files that contain the base material and then include them as needed in different formats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T15:21:41.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4903" CreationDate="2012-10-22T16:03:58.153" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's also the idea of using a &lt;strong&gt;version control (or management) system&lt;/strong&gt; such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://subversion.tigris.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt;. These tools will allow you to keep track of changes to your CV over time. If you use text-based files, it's a much lower overhead than keeping multiple versions of the different files floating all over the place, especially having different filenames for different dates of creation and editing, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T12:53:50.903" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T12:53:50.903" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4903" CreationDate="2012-10-22T16:19:40.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2003 or so, I had a senior-project student try to influence the &lt;a href=&quot;http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XMLRésuméLibrary&lt;/a&gt; project to support academic CV types, but the project didn't move forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a related project called &lt;a href=&quot;http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HR-XSL&lt;/a&gt;, designed to convert XML-formatted CVs into various formats using command-line tools. &lt;del&gt;But I have not used it.&lt;/del&gt; The examples (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/examples/cv.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HTML&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/examples/cv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;) are for a university professor, implying it might be useful to academics. It's customizable, &lt;del&gt;according to the&lt;/del&gt; and has pretty decent documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I gave HR-XSL a shot and it works easily in &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eclipse&lt;/a&gt; (you need Ant and Java). The CV data is stored in an XML file that can easily be edited using a text (or more interestingly) an XML editor (Eclipse has a built-in one that is spiffy). Customizing the output is pretty easy, even though it's DOCBOOK and I've never used it before. I didn't carry out the exercise to the end (creating multiple formats), but feel it is going to pay off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some limitations of the XML schema are that there are no data types for things like &quot;Research interests&quot; or &quot;Grants and Contracts&quot;. However, there's a &lt;code&gt;ResumeAdditionalItem&lt;/code&gt; that supports a user-defined type, e.g., &quot;Grants and Contracts&quot; and all entries there get grouped under that heading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an internationalization dimension, but I don't think it will work to prevent duplicate XML sources for  different languages (e.g., English and French). The reason is that the internationalization works to customize headings, such as &quot;Table of contents&quot; and &quot;Table des matières&quot;. I haven't yet found a way to specify a Job Title in English vs. French, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T02:36:59.197" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T02:36:59.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4903" CreationDate="2012-10-22T17:18:43.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never tried it, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jgm/yst&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yst&lt;/a&gt; was created to do this. There was a nice statement of the problem &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charlietanksley.net/philtex/writing-cvs-in-latex/#comment-1275&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using yst, I can main­tain a data­base of my arti­cles, talks, ser­vice, aca­d­e­mic posi­tions, etc. as a set of YAML text files. I can edit these in any edi­tor. yst then pro­duces my web­site and var­i­ous ver­sions of my CV from this data, using a set of cus­tomized templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar statement by someone else can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/scmbradley/octopress-blog/blob/master/source/_posts/2012-07-01-a-yst-primer-part-i.markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can have, say, my list of publications or my list of conference talks&#xA;  as yaml data. I can then use yst to build a CV page for my website. I&#xA;  can also use yst to generate a .tex file for a pdf version of my CV.&#xA;  This way, I don't need to make the same edits in two different places&#xA;  when I give another talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T09:37:27.337" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T09:37:27.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T17:37:44.500" Score="15" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I never feel done with projects, as there are always a few open projects, in which I'm involved in. (And typically 1-2 which &quot;I should have finished year ago or so&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;what are good strategies of balancing between finishing past project and working on current ones?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, concentrating only on current ones means that there will be a lot of &quot;almost baked&quot; project, in a form of partial results, never published drafts or papers stuck in the revision process. (Assigning second priority to something means that it is never going to be taken seriously.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, focusing only past projects would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look as if I were slacking off (also, as some past projects are from previous afflictions),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have me stuck in working on projects, which are going to be &quot;90%&quot; for the eternity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, being put in situation with constant (internal) pressure and no calm sense of finishing things (as even after polishing results, polishing a draft, going through a few rounds of revisions... there are still &lt;em&gt;n-1&lt;/em&gt; open projects), &lt;strong&gt;is there a way to feel accomplishment and not blame oneself when resting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T18:30:53.680" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T18:30:53.680" Title="Balancing between finishing past projects and working on current ones" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4910" CreationDate="2012-10-22T18:01:39.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few tips that seem to work for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can apply the Google 20% rule and allow yourself 20% of your time to work on projects that have no clear end point, which would include new ideas that you've just had or projects of the sort that you've just had.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New projects shouldn't become current projects unless they are close to finished or you make room in the 80% for them by finishing other projects. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That said, you need to evaluate the projects that you haven't completed and determine whether it is really worth completing them, apart from the fact that you've invested a lot of time in them. At some point you have to cut and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can write up the projects that are incomplete and see what you have in the end, and determine whether it goes into the 80%, the 20%, the bottom drawer, or the trash can. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a few conference deadlines (or create a deadline for a journal paper) and work towards that to finish the work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T18:01:39.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4910" CreationDate="2012-10-22T18:25:00.923" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very broad questions, so I’ll try to chirp in with some of the “tricks” I use to get things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find ways to keep track&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be very easy to feel that you have so many things going that you feel overwhelmed by remembering them or else. There are a number of hardware or software tools to do that. I have a list of ongoing stuff that I keep in the last pages of my notebook, which works pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If something needs to be done, which takes little time, &lt;strong&gt;just do it right now&lt;/strong&gt;. More importantly, the critical amount of time depends on the life of the project: the more advanced the project is, the more you need to finish. This prioritizes finishing older projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I have a current project with a task that requires half a day of work, I'll try to find a time to do it later. If I have a one day task for a project that's almost done (such as revising a manuscript after reviewer comments), I'll just treat it as high priority to do ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When working on a project with others, be clear to assign someone to monitoring progress (and reminding everyone of their contributions). On some projects, you need to take the back seat, and just let someone more concerned about the outcome drive the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If some project isn't seeing any progress, try to break it up into smaller work units. Like: I'll write a detailed outline, then circulate it to colleagues or co-authors, then use feedback to write the paper (instead of trying to write the paper in one big piece).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some advice I have received as a young parent, and that is very applicable to academic life: &lt;strong&gt;academic life is a long-term game&lt;/strong&gt;, you're in it for 40+ years. You being very productive right now, then extenuated for 6 months isn't a net positive. You are a better researcher when you are rested and (relatively) stress-free, so &lt;strong&gt;avoiding exhaustion and stress is actually your #1 priority!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T18:25:00.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4866" CreationDate="2012-10-22T18:40:10.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two times that titles are used. One is when referring to yourself, which seems to be the case the question is focused on, and the other is when referring to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you do not use titles when referring to yourself. If you are in a situation where you need to use titles (e.g., on a CV), then go with the correct, but possibly less informative foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When referring to someone else it is perfectly acceptable (and in my opinion good fun) to butcher the title and then give a general vague translation of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T18:40:10.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-22T18:51:28.857" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that using real names should be encouraged. And if someone feels comfortable with it - just do it. However, when it may refrain someone from asking questions, then it's better to use a nickname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are afraid of asking &amp;quot;too simple&amp;quot; questions (&lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130361/why-did-theoretical-physics-fail&quot;&gt;what may affect life d some SE sites&lt;/a&gt;). But in general, whether offline or online, there are two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pretend that to be all-knowing (knowing that they won't believe you anyway),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask when you don't know, even if it seems simple (and &amp;quot;a simple question&amp;quot; asked in one's field can be in fact very advanced).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, seeing &lt;strong&gt;serious guys asking simple questions may be very encouraging&lt;/strong&gt; for others to ask. So please, if there are any postdocs and professors here, give a good example by using you own name (and not being afraid to ask under it :)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just comparing to regular interactions with TAs and professors - being able to say &amp;quot;I don't know&amp;quot; gives respect (unless someone is totally clueless, but it that case one cannot cover it anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, let me quote a part of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/faq&quot;&gt;MathOverflow FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, as a part of &lt;strong&gt;establishing one's scientific reputation&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also encourage you to use your real name as your username. In your own enlightened self-interest, realise that participating in blogs, MathOverflow, the arXiv, and mathematical publishing are all forms of advertising for your &amp;quot;brand&amp;quot;, even if that’s not your principal purpose (and hopefully it’s not). Since job applications require you to write your real name, you might as well use it everywhere else, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using real names reminds everybody that they are corresponding with real people, and it demonstrates a certain level of personal investment in your MathOverflow identity. If you use a pseudonym and you get into some kind of trouble (e.g. fights in comment threads or spammy-looking posts), the moderators are much less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, &lt;strong&gt;I've never heard of anyone's reputation (or job opportunities) being harmed by asking technical questions&lt;/strong&gt;. Allegedly it may help, but I've never heard the opposite. So, IMHO, the risk here is overvalued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to issues related to talking about frictions with other people, institutions, abuse, etc (and other sensitive things) - then I guess the best approach is to use anonymous post anyway. Or have a nickname only for a few posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T18:51:28.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4920" CreationDate="2012-10-22T23:06:04.723" Score="6" ViewCount="5379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my proposal and I am borrowing heavily from one of my publications. The published paper has a &lt;code&gt;Nomenclature&lt;/code&gt; section at the very beginning (just after the abstract). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the appropriate place for a nomenclature in a proposal/thesis? Or is it more advisable to explain the terms near the place where they are used (considering that if &lt;code&gt;Nomenclature&lt;/code&gt; is published on a distant page it would be too much of an effort on the reader's part to scroll down and up again)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="906" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T14:27:41.577" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T14:27:41.577" Title="Where to define nomenclature in a proposal or dissertation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4915" CreationDate="2012-10-23T00:19:20.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think the biggest consideration is how often the term or symbol is used. If it's used a lot, then a clear definition at the start is probably the best. The reader then knows where to look if they're unsure of the meaning rather than having to find the first place it's used, and it would be ridiculous to keep defining it every time you use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For things that are just used once, it may be more readable to define it at the point of use. The definition is only relevant for that little portion, so splitting the definition and use makes things, as you say, too much of an effort for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question then is where to draw the line; at what point does a rarely used term become common enough to warrant being included in the nomenclature section? This is, I think, becomes a matter of preference. Personally, if a term were used in more than one section, I'd define it at the start. Though, if it really is only used twice, perhaps an in-place definition and a &quot;recall that we define...&quot; kind of sentence would read more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:19:20.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-10-23T00:44:57.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked apastyle.org and received the following response from an Editorial Supervisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your interpretation is correct, and your interlocutor is wrong. Table 6.1 simply gives examples of citations in different circumstances.  The rules of APA Style are stated pretty clearly in the APA Publication Manual; there is no need to deduce additional unstated rules. If something in a table or figure appears to contradict the text, follow the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore my interpretation (and Joel Reyes Noche's interpretation) of et al. is correct.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3881" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:44:57.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-23T01:41:50.087" Score="9" ViewCount="1950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have brought some trouble onto myself I know, but what can be done by someone in my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied and got accepted for a PhD program in Computer Science.  I automatically assumed that I wanted to continue the work I did on my Master's thesis and I identified a professor who would be willing to work with me on that subject.  When I got there, I reviewed the literature (there had been a few years of gap since defending my thesis) and decided I really did not like the direction the field was going in.  I had been developing a new interest anyway, so I changed sub-disciplines.  Now, no one will commit to be my advisor, at best maybe co-advisor with some outside expert.  Part of the reason is because my school lacks experts in that area.  I personally (on a friend basis) know some Computer Science professors, but none are experts in my field.  What can I do?  No advisor = No PhD, I know that much anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3903" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T05:42:17.657" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T14:48:42.343" Title="Changing Interests After Getting Accepted for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4918" CreationDate="2012-10-23T02:45:08.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing a subject during the PHD course is legitimate, and not very rare. However, finding an advisor is a must. I think in that case you'll have no choice but trying to convince professors to be your advisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible way is to find an expert from a different university, that will be your co-advisor. That way you'll just need to find another faculty in your university that is not-too-far from your interests. You might find someone that will tentativly be your advisor, and once you show some progress will agree to take you under..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe the big question is,&#xA;why not moving to the place where the &quot;experts&quot; are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T02:45:08.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4915" CreationDate="2012-10-23T06:53:04.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to group definitions of notation and symbols with the typical &quot;List of ...&quot; elements. You probably already have &quot;List of figures&quot; and &quot;List of tables&quot;, so simple add something like &quot;List of symbols&quot; or &quot;List of abbreviations&quot; after the other lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T06:53:04.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4837" CreationDate="2012-10-23T08:45:34.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;In favour of unrestricted dissemination&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After thinking about the answers provided so far and the discussion in comments, it seems to me that the point of view favouring dissemination of research results  unrestricted by the double-blind peer-review process needs a stronger case. I believe that the answer can be derived from higher-level, rather philosophical, principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Or is it only &quot;good practice&quot; not to do so [to present results under review]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the purpose of developing and disseminating research results?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an idealist in these things and argue, that it is first and foremost the &lt;em&gt;advancement of human knowledge&lt;/em&gt; and ultimately &lt;em&gt;improvement of the conditions of the human society, as well as the world around us&lt;/em&gt; -- regardless of what exactly &quot;improvement&quot; means, I have in mind something like a wider social consensus that the change has a positive vector. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this stance, unless there are other considerations in the game, there is no reason which could obstruct our &lt;em&gt;advancement of human knowledge&lt;/em&gt;, which ultimately rests on dissemination of quality results to the wider public. Of course, we should be careful and act in a good faith so as to be cautious about &lt;em&gt;validity&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;significance&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;originality&lt;/em&gt; of our results. Peer-review process is only an &lt;em&gt;auxiliary mechanism&lt;/em&gt; helping us to filter out ideas/results in violation of these principles, i.e., helps us to recognize and fix our own misjudgements and mistakes, as well as (in the worse case) dissemination of results not advancing knowledge of humankind, but produced for other primary purposes. After all, the ultimate metrics for the results of scientific research is not the outcome of the peer-review process, but rather the long-term impact on the society and the world around us. That is, whether other people will learn something from the results and whether it eventually helps them to build something beneficial to the society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, thanks to the recent proliferation of the publish-or-perish attitude and its intertwining with the need to advance human knowledge, as well as  interactions of these two conflicting forces, gradually peer-review becomes primarily a mechanism to filter bad-faith products - think plagiarism, results falsification and all sorts of other scientific misconduct. Yet, I maintain, &lt;em&gt;the process of filtering should not gain a higher importance than the objective of our pursuit itself&lt;/em&gt;. To conclude, &lt;strong&gt;if executed with caution, restrictions imposed by double-blind review process &lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt; restrict our ability to disseminate our results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T08:50:53.987" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T08:50:53.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4923" CreationDate="2012-10-23T09:08:21.367" Score="3" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many journals of my field, upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication with minor revisions, the editor sets a deadline (4 weeks, in many journals) for submission for the revised manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I usually resubmit these papers as fast as possible, I don't see the benefit &lt;em&gt;for the editor&lt;/em&gt; to set a deadline. After all, once a paper is “almost accepted”, the authors are motivated enough to get it over the final line, aren't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T11:21:19.240" Title="What's the editor's benefit in setting deadlines for manuscript revision?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4922" CreationDate="2012-10-23T09:18:30.890" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editing a journal is a non-trivial exercise, something which tends to drag on forever and requires lots of pushing of reviewers and authors to complete their tasks on time. It is time-consuming. Without deadlines, reviewers and authors will submit their work arbitrarily late, making it very difficult to get each issue out on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors may well be motivated to get over the final line, but when there are other things to do and the possibility of delaying one piece of work yet another day, then it is easy to delay that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T09:18:30.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4922" CreationDate="2012-10-23T11:21:19.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you want predictability in any manufacturing business, and printing press is that kind of manufacturing endeavour. Without deadlines for submissions, you won't have predictability in production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T11:21:19.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4918" CreationDate="2012-10-23T14:48:42.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think changing topics on a PhD research is totally unheard off. In fact, as Ran mentioned, it's probably more common than one would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the advisor is indeed an issue. The problem is that it looks bad on professors if they do not understand what are you doing, and if the field is unrelated to them that might happen. Did you try looking for an advisor in other area, where what you want to do is applied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a nice way to approach the issue is to do a more formal research plan and a good application in mind, that might attract some advisor or at least give a strong case to an outside expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these days distance should not be an issue for a CS research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T14:48:42.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4933" CreationDate="2012-10-23T20:19:07.163" Score="2" ViewCount="2090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently taking graduate algebra as an undergraduate (junior) in University of Toronto Mathematics Specialist, and I just took a midterm today. Since I am an undergraduate, the grade matters. In order to get a good chance to go into graduate schools for Math in Canada and USA, do I need to get a A or A+ in graduate courses as an undergraduate? Or, is A– alright? (In my university, C and below are considered fail for graduate courses only) Or should I get at least an average grade on that course as an undergraduate competing with graduate students, instead of worrying about actual letter grade? (this is about absolute vs relative too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3908" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T18:00:13.903" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T18:00:13.903" Title="Currently taking graduate course as an Undergraduate" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4936" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:20:16.457" Score="19" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spoken with many friends, and they all agree that response letters to reviewers should be written in the most kind, cordial and humble possible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the reviewers are in an error, one should make no major strides to show it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, How do you write your response letters to the reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T20:46:20.417" Title="How to write good Response Letters for the reviewers" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3430" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:27:35.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an adjunct faculty may provide the following benefits (and responsibilities):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a PI grants that require faculty status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advise / mentor students and postdocs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vote in departmental meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participate in committees&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T22:50:41.670" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T22:50:41.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4934" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:40:05.283" Score="9" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a staff researcher at a public research university in the US. While a tenure-track position may be in my future, I would like some of the opportunities and responsibilities now.  In particular, I want to be able to write grants as a PI and advise students and postdocs. I believe that I can do this as an adjunct faculty, but I have a few questions about where to start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are common steps required to become an adjunct faculty?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where can I find additional information (e.g. would a university-wide policy be given at the university website?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming I speak with the department chair, what should I say? Are my justifications sufficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I sell my case, other than my (demonstrated) ability to obtain funding and (undemonstrated) ability to be an advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T12:08:56.750" Title="How can I apply to be an adjunct faculty?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4930" CreationDate="2012-10-23T23:05:41.877" Score="13" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are common steps required to become an adjunct faculty?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where can I find additional information (e.g. would a university-wide policy be given at the university website?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming I speak with the department chair, what should I say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm interested in becoming adjunct faculty.  What's the hiring process?  Why yes, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; happen to have my CV with me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I sell my case, other than my (demonstrated) ability to obtain funding and (undemonstrated) ability to be an advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T12:08:56.750" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T12:08:56.750" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4926" CreationDate="2012-10-23T23:20:29.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to get a good chance to go into graduate schools for Math in Canada and USA, do I need to get a A or A+ in graduate courses as an undergraduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone cares too much about the distinction between A and A+, since the standards for what merits an A+ vary so much between universities or even individual professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, is A– alright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a little more meaningful, but it's not likely to be the deciding factor.  If you have a great application otherwise, nobody will care about an A- or two.  If your application is not so compelling, getting straight A's won't help much.  This could make a difference, but it's really a low-order effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T23:20:29.410" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4930" CreationDate="2012-10-23T23:37:50.103" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be aware, too, that the administrative and departmental conceptions of both the privileges and responsibilities of adjuncts vary hugely from place to place. In many places, adjunct faculty do not serve on any committees, and it would be nearly universal that, in particular, they'd not be on the hiring and tenure committees, and not vote on hiring and tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of being &quot;allowed&quot; to be an official advisor (as opposed to the obvious possibilities of informal mentoring) also surely has different answers different places. In some institutions, it is quite anomalous for &quot;non-tenure-track/tenured faculty&quot;  to be allowed to &quot;advise&quot;. You'd need to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At worst, adjunct faculty are marginalized in terms of job security, voice in departmental matters, and are given the least desirable teaching responsibilities, etc. Hopefully this is not the situation at your institution, but, for example, a move from &quot;research associate&quot; to &quot;adjunct faculty&quot; might be, and might be perceived as, a step &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt;, with unanticipated negative consequences for you. Hard to know without &quot;being on the ground&quot; there in your particular situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, beware that various administrative &quot;official&quot; statements on such things do not match &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt;, so unofficial, off-the-record information may be essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T23:37:50.103" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-10-23T23:47:19.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beware that some universities have ethics rules that make it harder for a professor to pay his/her students -- or if the rules don't bar it outright, the prevailing culture might frown on it.  These rules are often written to protect students, e.g., from a faculty advisor who pressures his/her students to spend time working on his/her startup company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T23:47:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-10-24T00:49:04.403" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the reviewers are in error&lt;/strong&gt;, yes you should show it to them, but &lt;strong&gt;you should often also take the opportunity to revise your paper, so that your readers don't fall into the same error&lt;/strong&gt;.  For example, suppose reviewers say that you could use such and such an approach to get a better result.  If they are right, then you should either do it, or explain why you're not doing it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the reviewers are wrong, then maybe you should address this idea in your introduction.  In one paper I wrote, we included in our introduction a &lt;em&gt;false&lt;/em&gt; one paragraph proof of the thing we took 10 pages to prove.  Afterwards we pointed out the error.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one paper we submitted, we got conflicting referee reports.  Essentially, the referees both wanted us to revise the paper, but in different directions (to oversimplify: one reviewer said &quot;shorten and simplify&quot; and the other said &quot;lengthen and elaborate&quot;).  We agreed with one report, and disagreed with the other.  So in our response, we pointed out that we couldn't do both .  We explained why we preferred the choice we were making, and our paper was accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't have to do everything the reviewers suggest.&lt;/strong&gt; But if you don't, your response letter should &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; why you have chosen to do otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T00:49:04.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4939" CreationDate="2012-10-24T04:41:09.867" Score="32" ViewCount="43003" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious to know whether PhD is the highest degree one can earn? Is there any other degree beyond that, if so what is it and what are the universities offering the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2757" LastEditorUserId="1348" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T20:09:40.830" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T09:15:46.297" Title="Is a PhD the highest degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2012-10-24T05:14:53.997" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The degree you're looking for (at least in the sciences) is called &quot;Doctor of Science&quot; and you can read all about it on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Science&quot;&gt;Doctor of Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; As aeismail noted: Sometimes this degree is considered equivalent to a PhD and sometimes it's considered &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; a PhD.  This distinction typically varies by country (all this is listed on the Wikipedia page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T02:03:27.667" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T02:03:27.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2012-10-24T07:02:47.477" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends highly on your university and national system. The &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Science#United_States&quot;&gt;Doctor of Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; title has already been cited by Dan C, and several European countries have a higher diploma called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot;&gt;habilitation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T12:47:17.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T12:47:17.183" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5038" CreationDate="2012-10-24T10:30:27.587" Score="7" ViewCount="3296" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems funding for a PhD (at least in the UK) is a lot easier to get for a PhD in statistics rather then maths. Provided one can find a supervisor who has the background and research interestes that would allow one to keep extending ones pure mathematical toolbox are there any major risks in going for a PhD in stats ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that at any given stage there is a lot of flexibility with a degree in mathematics. (For instance people seem very open minded to let a maths MSc do a stats PhD). Is it justified to be worried about losing this flexibility if one opts for the PhD in stats rather then maths? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular I am worried about whether it is possible to transition back to the maths departement for a postdoctoral position or something equivalent. So essentially I want to know whether one will get branded to an extend that would make it difficult to go on and work in pure mathematics after the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="52" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T13:05:41.107" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T17:52:32.723" Title="Any risks down the line choosing maths vs. stats PhD programme?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4944" CreationDate="2012-10-24T12:28:25.453" Score="14" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; lets researches publish figures and data for long-term archival and public access. I just found out about it and find the idea sympathetic. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/faqs&quot;&gt;their F.A.Q.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What risks are involved with publishing my data and figures at figshare? What are the disadvantages? Did anyone actively decide &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; doing so, and if so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T13:46:56.703" Title="What are risks or disadvantages in uploading to figshare or related services?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4943" CreationDate="2012-10-24T13:46:56.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, some journals have a &quot;no prior publication&quot; rule in place. These rules often preclude publishing anything that has already appeared in online databases that are freely accessible, so publishing figures in advance of a publication in a medium like this &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be construed as violating such a policy. Since anything publicly posted gets published under a CC-BY license, so this almost assuredly counts with those journals as &quot;prior publication.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, anything that could be considered &quot;confidential&quot; or &quot;proprietary&quot; information definitely should not be posted on such a site until you have secured the necessary permissions from project partners and affiliates. That would also apply to &quot;private&quot; hosting of the figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own university or research institution may have policies that have some bearing on the ability to use such sites, so check with them as well. Better safe than sorry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: Those cautions aside, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think it's a clever idea, and I hope it can catch on!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T13:46:56.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2862" CreationDate="2012-10-24T14:23:34.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind hosting your files online, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SlideShare&lt;/a&gt; is a good solution. You can create an online audio presentation by combining your slides with an audio recording of yourself (MP3 format, for example) and a list of timings at which slides go forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used it myself, and it is a decent tool for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution, which is technically far from optimal but just works, is to convert your slides + audio file into a movie. This can be done with any AV recording/capture software. Then, you encode the movie into a Web-suitable format before putting it online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your OS of choice, there are tools to do that. My wife does it on the iPad, for example, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.explaineverything.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ExplainEverything&lt;/a&gt; and the workflow is quite neat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T15:56:17.680" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T15:56:17.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4970" CreationDate="2012-10-24T15:44:42.827" Score="26" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;The consensus on academic jobs seems to be that we are &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Todays-Faculty-Stressed-and/135276/&quot;&gt;sending far too many students to graduate school to train for jobs that will not be there when they graduate.&lt;/a&gt;  Despite this, most of my undergraduate students have aspirations for graduate school. In part I believe that this is due to a saturation of exclusively academic role models during their time in college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since virtually all of my experience is in academia and I have basically succeeded in getting a tenure track position, I feel ill equipped to advise these students in making decisions about their future and showing them alternative role models.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I get the experience and resources to show students that would potentially benefit from considering alternatives to an academic career that high quality alternatives exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(NOTE: I am in the natural sciences so answers specific to science would be great but if a cross-discipline answer exists, that would be ideal)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:19:33.317" Title="How can I prepare myself to advise students for jobs outside of academia?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4946" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:29:34.823" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our university, we have good experiences with inviting alumni who are now in industry to give career-oriented talks. The students know that the person giving the talk was in the same study program as they are now, and I guess just this alone helps them to see possible role models in the persons giving talks. The best talks are when alumni not only report about the technical points of the project they are working on, but also give a more personal account of their development towards their current job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These talks are organized by the alumni organisation of the study program, which certainly helps getting the contacts to potential speakers. But I can also imaging getting these contacts in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T18:29:34.823" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:59:07.473" Score="8" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must make a difficult decision, so am having to turn to the wider community to gain some perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My situation is the following: I am currently outside USA and am trying to enter academia here. I have been invited as a visiting lecturer at a top US university. However, I am worried that though certainly valuable, a purely teaching position might be a huge negative against me in terms of prospects for a more research oriented position (Asst or Assoc Prof). Or is my trepidation unjustified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3911" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T20:20:16.490" Title="Can it hurt me to accept a brief &quot;Visiting Lecturer&quot; position?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4949" CreationDate="2012-10-24T19:29:34.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of &lt;em&gt;lecturer&lt;/em&gt; does not necessarily imply that you would teach full time. Sure, it usually implies more teaching than research, but that does not mean it's strictly teaching only. Especially for a visiting lecturer position, one could imagine there be arrangements possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: have you checked the exact term under which you would be employed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: how long would be this “brief” position? And what is your current seniority in your local research system? Those factors will play heavily into the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I expect it's a net positive for you if you manage to keep some research activity going on, especially if you can travel relatively often to visit your non-US lab. Otherwise, if it's purely teaching with no opportunity to maintain some research activity, and you are not far from getting a job where you are, accepting might be risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Long absent, soon forgotten”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T19:29:34.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4949" CreationDate="2012-10-24T20:03:08.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days, I believe having experience in foreign countries is considered a plus almost everywhere. Even if you're strictly speaking in a teaching-only position, that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of that to do some research &quot;on the side,&quot; and to make contacts with researchers at the university where you're teaching, and at other schools in the vicinity. You might also have an opportunity for more networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way this is a real negative is if you're in such a period for an extended period of time (say, on the order of several years), and then want to pivot back to a research focused career. Then you will have to overcome the challenge of proving that you'll be able to raise enough money to sustain a research group. Beyond that, however, I can't see any real downside to a short (one year?) appointment. I think if the choice is between that and being unemployed, the job is definitely the better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T20:03:08.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4955" CreationDate="2012-10-24T22:31:49.383" Score="17" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my diploma thesis (old equivalent of master in Germany) in mathematics. It's about a fairly new combinatorical optimization problem which has military applications. In fact, the problem originates from that, even though in the formulation I'm studying it is a bit more theoretical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got this topic without the knowledge of its applications and of course I don't like optimizing the ways of killing people. (Just to clarify: luckily there are other (good) applications too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that my research will end up in a paper, thus beeing widely available. Is it possible to restrict usage of such research to non-military applications only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(side note: Probably no military organization will ever comply with such a restriction. I'm aware of that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3914" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T04:20:56.470" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T04:20:56.470" Title="Military usage of scientific work" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4954" CreationDate="2012-10-24T22:56:21.937" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you have any right to restrict the &lt;em&gt;usage&lt;/em&gt; of your publications. You might retain the original copyright (or your publisher will), and thus prevent that anyone else (including the army) can publish your work on their behalf, but you can't prevent someone to use your idea just because it's published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A legal possibility could be to file a patent protecting your approach, but I'm not sure if it covers all usage or only commercial usages (in which case the army could use it as long as they are not making money out of it). You might want to check this with &lt;a href=&quot;http://patents.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;AskPatent&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also not publish it, and it could be possible to ask your university to consider your thesis as confidential (I've seen some cases where a thesis was confidential, when some companies were involved in them), but your advisor might not agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T22:56:21.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4954" CreationDate="2012-10-24T23:25:33.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was offered an opportunity to work a while back in the same field as you; optimization applied to military applications. It was related to anti-ballistic missile defense. I didn't take the project though, since defense, while perfectly acceptable to me, seemed very unlikely to be ultimate usage of my research. The literature in that field trots out continuously the same bogeymen of Iran and North Korea, but that seems bogus to me. More plausible, is that that research aims to gain us more technical leverage over countries we want to push around; like Russia, India, and China. I'd much rather work on research that has more peacetime applications, the elevate the human condition, rather than empower the worst people among us to impress their personal agendas on not only their own people, but practically the entire planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T23:25:33.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4946" CreationDate="2012-10-25T04:04:37.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university is only engineering, but I'll try to answer. The administration is working hard to allow graduate program internships (coops), as they are successful at the undergrad level. The other angle is that there are two flavors of master's degree: professional and research. The former is not an academic career path. Most students already have an idea where they want to go when they register, and the ratio is about 4:1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T04:04:37.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4959" CreationDate="2012-10-25T04:54:30.180" Score="14" ViewCount="103760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a grad student in Psychology. I have heard that many professors like to see a list of 'Professional Affiliations' on a potential employee's CV, because it is an easy way to see whether the two people have common interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, are there any guidelines for what I can realistically put there? Should I just list conferences in which I am a current, paying dues member; or can I put any conference in which I've paid dues in the past? Or can I be even less strict that these guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3916" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T06:41:31.070" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T05:45:07.870" Title="How do I put professional affiliations on a CV?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-10-25T06:39:06.533" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;By 'Professional Affiliations' it is meant that one is a member of certain professional association such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ice.org.uk&quot;&gt;ICE,&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asce.org&quot;&gt;ASCE&lt;/a&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These professional bodies often arranges conferences which anyone can attend, so registering for the conferences does not mean that one is a member of a organizing body. Conference participation information may be put into your publication list as conference papers and/or given talks section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;You should only list the organisations as professional affiliations of which you are a member.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T06:39:06.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-10-25T06:44:36.533" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, the school provides service for students with disabilities, &#xA;any I have been a mentor/tutor for some of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite fun, and more importantly, I feel like I do something meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T06:44:36.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-10-25T07:20:18.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any professional association in which you have been a member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conferences are not included in that category, unless they imply membership in some association. For example, registering for the biannual meeting of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrs.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Materials Research Society&lt;/a&gt; includes membership fees, so if you participated in a meeting, you were a member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding past membership, I would only include it if you were a member for a significant time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T15:06:51.313" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T15:06:51.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2012-10-25T07:25:46.697" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing high-school or college-level books&lt;/strong&gt; in your discipline. There are quite a few types of books that publishers are interested in and pay young authors for: exercises with solutions, compilations of admissions tests with answers and comments, that sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention it because it usually is a job you can do on your own schedule. In my own experience, it does not pay as much as consulting, but it might be easier to get in. Also, it brings a lot of useful experience if you do it in a good team: learning how to write good pedagogical material is a precious skill!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your language skills, working as a &lt;strong&gt;translator&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;proofreader&lt;/strong&gt; is a good option. It is a rather flexible job in term of work hours and place. Also, if you have necessary technical skills, scientific journals have large needs of &lt;strong&gt;grahics editing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T12:51:17.630" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T12:51:17.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="69" CreationDate="2012-10-25T09:50:17.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a firm believer that if it doesn't lead to a publication, than it is generally not worth the time of a grad student. In my mind the social committee is a no win time suck. The speaker series committee, on the other hand, is potentially worth it for networking opportunities. It might all you to interact a little bit more with speakers. Even mundane interactions (e.g., dealing with their receipts and reimbursement) is good networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T09:50:17.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4968" CreationDate="2012-10-25T13:39:40.537" Score="23" ViewCount="1707" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, modified h-indexes, etc) have a long string of criticism by academics and not (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish_or_perish#Disadvantages&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticisms&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index#Criticism&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of debating (endlessly) on how &quot;not representative&quot; and flawed these numbers are (or howling generic rants...), I would be interested to know if Academia.SE community members have objective &lt;strong&gt;facts&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;reports&lt;/strong&gt; on how academic workplaces are currently using these indicators. For instance in the upcoming REF2014 (UK), academics in my institution are urged to use, as their contributions, the papers accepted in highest impact factors journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, can you trade your h-index for a better paying job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T13:41:29.510" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T01:01:12.323" Title="Are academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, etc) really adopted by institutions? Currently used? And how?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4965" CreationDate="2012-10-25T14:14:56.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Czech Republic, researchers are obliged to indicate their most important publications, together with the number of citations, the corresponding impact factors of the journals, as well as their own WoS-based h-index on major grant proposals to national grant agencies (GACR, TACR, etc.). In a consequence, universities care for h-index and other citation metrics internally as well and in result citations/impact factors are tracked and form a basis for annual evaluation, possibly even leading to end-year bonus calculation. So yes, at least in Czech research space citation metrics, such as h-index and impact factors are a big deal.&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;Later edit:&#xA;Since you ask for objective evidence, I refer to the recent manual for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gacr.cz/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Zadavaci-dok-GACR-2012-ST-final.pdf&quot;&gt;GACR standard projects starting in 2012&lt;/a&gt;, paragraph 4.2.10, b-d (all in Czech).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;Yet another edit in response to ElCid's comment:&#xA;There was an equation for calculating an extra-ordinary bonus taking into account the impact factor of the journal authors get their paper accepted in and then taking into account the stated (percentual) contributions of each individual co-author. In result, the formula spit out the amount of money each department-resident co-author would get for the paper. The bonus was a department-specific policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there was an annual evaluation taking into account the number of papers produced by the researcher, the number of citations received in that particular year (sometimes extremely hard to track), impact factors for journals of the papers concerned (both submitted and those receiving citations) grants received, and other minor factors as well. The evaluation was a faculty wide policy, I am not sure whether it led to direct financial benefit to the researchers, but certainly these metrics were important in the internal university-wide division of funds which also partly hinged on aggregates of the above described metrics. To my understanding, these policies formed an incentive for the faculty to target high-impact journals in their respective fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T14:33:37.817" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T14:33:37.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4965" CreationDate="2012-10-25T14:29:49.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason to look at impact factor (at the schools where I've worked*) is so that a future hire can most probably obtain funding to continue research (support grad students, purchase equipment, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality publications become an important aspect of any research proposals a future hire would submit. Research proposals are evaluated by other researchers within the network of the research program. Those researchers can freely use impact factor of a proposal's publications as a criterion for evaluation. I don't know of any programs that use it as a mandatory criterion, probably because it's still controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors might get hired because they already have good funding, sometimes because of R&amp;amp;D contacts with industry, a good IP track record (patents), and a low impact factor may be a terrible reason to reject a candidate like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for converting h-index to better pay, I'd say if you're at the right institution, you can convert it to a better &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4818/3859&quot;&gt;package&lt;/a&gt; (salary is only one aspect). Impact factor is not the only indicator that you will be successful, but might be an important one for tenure-track (assistant) professor positions. It may not get you a higher salary, but it probably will get your CV higher on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Hiring committees are formed and they are free to set the criteria for selecting candidates. Impact factor has been used on several committees at my institution, but it's not an established policy. I believe this is an issue of academic freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T14:40:53.457" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4965" CreationDate="2012-10-25T14:53:12.403" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the European research market, various opinions have been offered on the use of h-index by ERC grant evaluation committees, and the broader relationship between h-index and ERC funding success. People who provide such opinion can be classified in three categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;affiliated with the ERC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consultants whose business is to offer advice to (potential) candidates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;individuals involved in another way, whose advice is most probably only anecdotal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do the first two categories have to say? The official word from the guidelines is, well… absent. But it is politically correct to assert that h-index is not a good indicator of scientific quality and, as such, not used. This gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=quality%20in%20science%20is%20not%20proved%20by%20accumulating%20quantitative%20points.%20the%20role%20of%20commercial%20impact%20factor%20and%20h-index%20is%20limited.%20overemphasizing%20of%20publish%20or%20perish%20policy%20leads%20to%20a%20gradual%20perishing%20of%20all.&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CB0QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.vscht.cz/document.php?docId=6553&amp;amp;ei=bU-JULSCKoK4hAfrn4HgAw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHlRtZss7A755KIXLGDhbPyzUDSIg&quot;&gt;quotes&lt;/a&gt; like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality in science is not proved by accumulating quantitative points. The role of commercial impact factor and h-index is limited. Overemphasizing of publish or perish policy leads to a gradual perishing of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, practical advice might be a bit more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.science.ku.dk/finansiering/eu/ideas/aktuelle_opslag_ideas/erc_adg_2012/ERC_Advanced_Grant_2013_Call_note.pdf/&quot;&gt;nuanced&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There will also be a new h-index study the successful 2011 awardees in the PE and LS domains. &lt;strong&gt;The h-index is regarded as a background indicator rather than a determining factor&lt;/strong&gt; and the study on the 2010 Advanced Grant awardees showed that each panel made awards across a considerable range and that there were significant differences across the different ERC panels. There was a big variation between different disciplines within the main domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://chaos.if.uj.edu.pl/~karol/pdf/europhys09.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every applicant had to choose his 10 best publications published in the recent decade and add how many times each of these papers were cited in the literature. The total number L of these citations describes well how the scientific community perceives their recent achievements. &lt;strong&gt;These numbers were provided by the ERC in the dossier of every applicant. However, during the evaluation process the panel did not put much emphasis on any bibliometric data. It was the opinions of the experts which did matter, not the bare numbers&lt;/strong&gt;. Only after completing the evaluation process, I realised a correlation between these data and the final outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give another perspective: in France, a new evaluation system for higher education and research was put in place 5 years ago (the newly created agency performing the evaluation is called AERES). AERES evaluates each research group every 4 to 5 years, in order to give it an &lt;em&gt;overall rating&lt;/em&gt;, which could be A+, A, B or C. This had at least two very practical consequences that I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For yearly financial negotiations between each university and the Ministry for research, the ministry started to require a spreadsheet with the number of university teams rated A+, and the number of A team (B and C didn't seem to count). Financial support was then dependent on that number, at least as a starting point for the negotiations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It became customary to include this grade in your French grant applications, because a A+ rating was considered a serious advantage. This was written in the “rules”, however…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, all in all, are bibliometric and, speaking more broadly, academic indicators really adopted by institutions? &lt;strong&gt;Hell yeah!&lt;/strong&gt; They make deciders’ job easier: quantification of research quality makes it easier to make decisions. &lt;strong&gt;Smart decision makers do realize, however, that a single indicator does not make for good decisions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T14:53:12.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-10-25T17:37:57.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4959/73&quot;&gt;Rashed's answer&lt;/a&gt; is correct. In addition, though, it is not uncommon to place other notable affiliations towards the end of the resume, if there is space, under whatever title is appropriate. For example, in my resume, I have a &quot;Community Service&quot; section, where I list my membership on various nonprofit boards of directors. If you hold officer position in any other notable groups you could list them similarly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T17:37:57.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4946" CreationDate="2012-10-25T20:19:33.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here I briefly describe two ideas regarding to what a professor can do in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep contact with former students&lt;/strong&gt;: Frequently, professors establish relationship with students during classes or during an undergraduate or master's thesis. Probably, maintaining these relationships after students graduate may give you some interesting points of view regarding jobs in the industry. You can just send an email to a former student in order to ask her about her job or you can invite former students to give a talk in one of your classes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish relationships with actors in the industry&lt;/strong&gt;: If students are required to take an internship, you can contact institutions that receive students for internship and suggest those institutions candidates that you know. I suppose that if you are able to refer to them good students, you can continue the relationship with those institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative would be to engage in professional activities in the industry. However, this depends on whether you are interested in working as a consultant or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:19:33.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4973" CreationDate="2012-10-25T20:28:41.283" Score="77" ViewCount="184472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know your opinion on citations in abstracts.&#xA;At my university, there is no rule on that matter so it's basically a&#xA;question of preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it's okay to have citations in an abstract or do you &#xA;personally prefer to have the abstract be a ``stand-alone'' piece of &#xA;work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3921" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T21:20:07.680" Title="Are citations in abstracts considered bad style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4971" CreationDate="2012-10-25T20:44:28.467" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An abstract for a paper must be stand-alone, because the bibliography is hidden in the paper itself. The abstract must contain all information required for people to judge if they want to read the paper, and as there is no bibliography, the reader does not know what the citations relate to. Therefore, there should be no citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be a bit different if the abstract is for a conference. Maybe in some situations it's possible to add one or two references at the end of the abstract. In that case, it can be okay to have citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the most important question here is: &lt;em&gt;can the reader use the abstract as a stand-alone unit?&lt;/em&gt; If using citations cause the answer to this question to be &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, don't do citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:44:28.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4971" CreationDate="2012-10-25T20:55:08.673" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not entirely unreasonable to include a citation in an abstract, if the reason you are citing it is because your paper is a major extension, rebuttal, or counterpoint to the cited article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, however, you do have the responsibility of providing the reference &lt;em&gt;within the body of the abstract&lt;/em&gt;. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We extend upon the results of Smith [&lt;em&gt;Journal of Very Important Results&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt;, 374 (2012)] to include the effects of a doohickey at the end of the thingamajig.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, the abstract remains self-contained, with an important citation included. (This is especially essential if an author is well-known for multiple papers, in which case the reference can be used to distinguish the varous works that could be intended.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large numbers of citations, however, should be avoided, as should &quot;secondary&quot; citations. Only the most critical literature for a paper should be cited, and that should normally be limited to one or two. Any more than that, and the abstract becomes hard to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:55:08.673" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4971" CreationDate="2012-10-25T21:00:14.367" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This issue may depend on the academic field of the publication. In the case of the social sciences, abstract are generally written to be independent of the other sections of the paper or manuscript, so citations in the abstract are avoided. You may include a citation, but sometimes you have to include all the bibliographic details. Considering that abstract are usually required to be short, you may be unnecessarily wasting words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, as the abstract is intended to be an interesting summary of the research described in the manuscript, it is not probably useful to include citations. An exception is the case when a manuscript heavily draws on a previous work. For instance, if you are replicating a previous study, then you may have to include a cite. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0266%28199711%2918:10%3C787%3a%3aAID-SMJ913%3E3.0.CO;2-R/abstract&quot;&gt;In this paper&lt;/a&gt;, the author replicates and extends a study. The title and the abstract have a citation of the previous study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T21:00:14.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-25T22:49:32.577" Score="8" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you are going to write a theoretical paper/thesis/book (that is, you're not conducting empirical work). More often than not, I find it troublesome to just start writing right away, especially when I don't know what the results of my investigation is going to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good ways to structure and organize your material, as well as your workflow, before starting to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T23:17:56.950" Title="What are some good ways to structure material before writing a theoretical paper/thesis/book?" Tags="&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4975" CreationDate="2012-10-25T22:52:46.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen Mumford, an english philosopher, has created what he calls &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/stephendmumford/the-mumford-method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Mumford Method&lt;/a&gt;. It is basically a prescription of how to structure your notes as well as how to utilize presentation opportunities to get feedback and redraft the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T22:52:46.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4975" CreationDate="2012-10-25T23:17:56.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's disastrous to be so disorganized that things get lost, work has to be duplicated (even if it's just typing), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I observe that many novice writers over-allocate their time+energy to &quot;planning&quot;. I say &quot;over-allocate&quot; exactly because (as in the question) when one doesn't have too many details about the sequel, it is hard to plan. Further, especially in thesis situations, and, even for more experienced people, in book writing, the very process significantly changes one's viewpoint, so that an initial plan/outline/table-of-contents/statement-of-intent easily becomes grossly inaccurate over time+experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, although it is interesting, and an interesting exercise, to try to write an introduction or preface at the beginning, it will most likely prove wildly irrelevant, and have to be scrapped nearly entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second crucial mechanism is (as suggested in the questioner's self-answer) feedback, and, equally, iteration of the writing/editing cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two concepts combine to suggest that one should not waste time doing nothing, but pretending to be trying to fathom what one will think, and what one will discover, some months in the future. Hesitation delays the very experience that will bring to life one's future viewpoint! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T23:17:56.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4985" CreationDate="2012-10-25T23:47:11.850" Score="26" ViewCount="1083" Body="&lt;p&gt;Students diagnosed with dyslexia qualify for accommodations at most universities. As with other special needs students, they're entitled extra time for work, exams, access or licenses to spell checkers, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these accommodations are in place, and assuming good grammar/spelling is part of the evaluation of work outlined in the university course syllabus, is it reasonable for an instructor to penalize students with dyslexia for making spelling/grammar mistakes as with other students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T09:59:12.117" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T20:45:27.290" Title="Is it reasonable to evaluate spelling/grammar in reports for students diagnosed with dyslexia?" Tags="&lt;language&gt;&lt;disability&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4983" CreationDate="2012-10-26T01:29:39.203" Score="8" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field, education, there are many named theories, for e.g., the “Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model”, which educators often talk about and debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing various graduate papers, my professors have often asked me to cite various named theories to support my arguments. Can theories generally be used to support arguments? Are theories more than just names for ideas? Can any person coin a new theory, or is there some process by which a theory gains recognition and support before it is deemed a “theory”? Can I really cite theories to add support to my papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T03:46:03.293" Title="Is it acceptable to refer to theories to support an argument?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4982" CreationDate="2012-10-26T01:48:59.827" Score="8" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student in various graduate taught programs, but not a research student and I am not receiving any scholarships or grants from my institutions. I have prepared a paper which I wish to publish. The subject is within my field, but far outside of the expertise of any of my instructors, mostly because it deals with a language and other technical details which they are entirely unfamiliar with. As such, I highly doubt they could assist me in writing the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that graduate research students should not publish works without their professor's permission. Is this rule relevant to students in taught programs? Can I submit my paper for credit in a course, without giving up ownership of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T16:49:21.303" Title="Do students in taught programs need to go to their professors before publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4980" CreationDate="2012-10-26T02:01:07.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although a professor's opinion on your paper could prove to be very valuable and save you the trouble of resubmitting your paper again and again to the same journal. I believe, in case your paper is worth a journal's quality and standard, really, there is no need for your professor's permission. Journal editors aren't concerned with your professor's permission, however they would require you to sign a document stating that your research is your own and that you have the authority to publish your data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1517" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T04:14:34.013" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T04:14:34.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4980" CreationDate="2012-10-26T02:48:26.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know that graduate research students should not publish works without their professor's permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little more complicated than that.  Nobody needs permission to publish anything that they did entirely on their own.  If you work collaboratively or as part of a team, then it's not 100% your work and you need your collaborators' permission.  If you do not collaborate but work under someone else's supervision, then it's still polite to ask for advice/permission.  (They might see it as more of a collaboration than you do, and in any case your submission may reflect on their supervision so it is reasonable to get their feedback first.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this rule relevant to students in taught programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no collaborators or supervisors in the research, then you can publish it however you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I submit my paper for credit in a course, without giving up ownership of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any case where you give up rights to a paper by submitting it in a course, so ownership is probably not the relevant issue here.  In the universities I'm familiar with, you can certainly submit for publication an essay that was written for a class assignment (most such papers would not be accepted for publication, but a few could be).  On the other hand, you cannot get class credit for a paper that you previously wrote for another purpose.  The precise rules in your case may differ, but if you plan to use this paper for a class you should investigate your university's rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T02:48:26.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4979" CreationDate="2012-10-26T03:46:03.293" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are theories more than just names for ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, they are just names for ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can any person coin a new theory, or is there some process by which a theory gains recognition and support before it is deemed a “theory”? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can coin a new theory, and the term “theory” does not imply any special status.  For example, the flat earth theory is a theory, just not a good theory.  As a general rule, people don't spend much time talking about theories unless they are valuable or controversial.  If you make up a new theory without some real insight, probably everyone will just ignore it.  But that doesn't mean it's not a theory - it's just not a useful or interesting theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I really cite theories to add support to my papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the point of citing these theories is to show how your work fits into the field.  You are engaging with and responding to certain ideas, refining or extending some of them and correcting or refuting others.  It's important to describe these ideas in a recognizable way, so readers will see the context for your work and can better understand what you mean.  Sometimes the best way to do that involves referring to named theories.  If you can explain how these theories help justify your conclusions, then that will add support for your ideas.  (You're taking advantage of the fact that many experts already understand and agree with these theories.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor that may be relevant in graduate papers is proving that you understand these theories and can explain how your work is related to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While writing various graduate papers, my professors have often asked me to cite various named theories to support my arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly recommend discussing this with them.  People on the internet can offer general comments, but only your professors can tell you exactly what they are looking for and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T03:46:03.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4986" CreationDate="2012-10-26T06:39:27.057" Score="14" ViewCount="2187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I checking my google scholar page, when I noticed that one of my papers, of which I am a co-author, had been cited by an unknown academic. I read the article, which was on gene regulatory networks, and my paper is in computational neuroscience. The reference wording doesn't make any sense though. The only connection is the concept of an attractor network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I met this person at a conference, and he went about relating my paper to his work, I would call nonsense. This must happen to more well known academics all the time, so &lt;strong&gt;is it best just to let these things slide?&lt;/strong&gt; I suppose if I was really famous and getting 200 citations a week it would be too hard to track every bad reference down, but I only have a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3923" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2019-03-01T20:50:54.370" LastActivityDate="2019-04-27T09:00:07.663" Title="Someone cited my paper in an irrelevant manner" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4978" CreationDate="2012-10-26T07:38:12.567" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ll go for a legal answer, at least valid in my current place of employment (France): dyslexia, which must be medically characterized as a learning disability for an individual, is covered by the laws regarding disabilities. As such, students impacted can request that &lt;strong&gt;exam conditions be modified for their benefit&lt;/strong&gt;: most commonly by giving them additional time to “compensate” for their disability, but it could also include changes in setup (such as having access to a dictionary, spellchecker, or even a secretary). On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;no leniency should then be granted on judging the exam paper&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The operating principle in all cases should be that of &lt;strong&gt;equal opportunity&lt;/strong&gt;. (See here a &lt;a href=&quot;http://alyoda.univ-lyon3.fr/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=1168%3aamenagement-des-conditions-dexamen-pour-un-eleve-souffrant-de-dyslexie&amp;amp;catid=42%3alibertes&amp;amp;Itemid=115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt; of jurisprudence by the &lt;em&gt;Association lyonnaise de droit administratif&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T15:25:54.577" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T15:25:54.577" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2012-10-26T07:44:23.437" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, what &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; you do? Not much. I can confirm that it does indeed happen… sometime people even cite a paper of yours to justify a conclusion that you have not reached in the paper, and even one that you strongly disagree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to let it slide. You are not responsible for the content of papers that refer to yours, or the accuracy of their citations for that matter. The paper author is responsible, and to some extent, the journal’s referees. (I tend to spend quite some time checking citations  when I review papers, but that might just be me being overly sensitive to this particular issue.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to contact the paper’s corresponding author, and ask him point blank. You have read his paper, and you are unclear as to the extent of the connection between his writing and yours. See what it gives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in the current way academic research works, you do not really have any mean to call out their behaviour publicly. I do not believe you should, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T07:44:23.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4978" CreationDate="2012-10-26T08:51:59.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;it is in my university (UK). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dyslexic students are given a lot of attention and information around their case, extra time, specific conditions to undertake exams/courseworks/assignments. These include more time to complete the work, using a computer to transcribe their ideas/concepts, personal assistants and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this extra care and information, the idea is to create a plain field with non-dyslexic students, and use the same framework for marking or assessing the piece of work. So advantages in the pre-conditions of an exam, but then the marker will not use any bias in the marking. This includes also a stricter handling of extenuating circumstances: you cannot claim that &quot;you have dyslexia&quot; if you could not complete your work, or if it's incomplete, or has mistakes in it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T08:51:59.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1582" CreationDate="2012-10-26T08:59:11.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to find out how important AACSB accreditation is is to ask some PhD in Business Administration programs. I doubt it is a hard and fast rule since most PhD programs do not need to maintain professional accreditation. I would be more worried about DBA programs since they may need to maintain AACSB accreditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T08:59:11.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2012-10-26T13:39:13.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, here is one more data point to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the early 90s I hit Usenet and fell in love with it. For about a decade I have, under my real name, actively participated in discussions about programming, literature, child raising, the organization of the &lt;code&gt;de.*&lt;/code&gt; hierarchy, and whatnot. During this time, several Usenet search engines emerged, assembled data, swallowed each other like a pool full of sharks, until finally the whole data ended up at google. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's all still there! If you know my real name, you can find my views onto programming, books, and child raising as well as certain personal stories that I now wish I hadn't posted, and a few flame wars I participated in more than a decade ago. While it happened back then, I felt increasingly bad about this, but, being tightly embedded in communities I didn't want to give up, I failed to see how to change that. (Also, looking back at all that always made me think that the worst damage has already been done, and that I wouldn't be as stupid anymore. &lt;em&gt;Sigh.&lt;/em&gt; How silly an idea.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it got to the point that, when I typed my name into google, it would suggest the remainder once I had barely started on my last name, I pulled plug and decided to go into hiding. Out of the likely online handles I picked one that hides behind a big institution at google, I setup an email address that I only use for services where I use that handle, and I became very strict about revealing my identity to members of online communities. (There isn't even half a dozen people, on SE or elsewhere, who know the name behind my moniker.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, google won't suggest my name until I have typed the very last letter, neither my coworkers nor my superiors know my online name, and almost nobody out there knows who's behind &lt;em&gt;&quot;sbi&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I can ask questions, give answers, and state opinions just as I want, without having to consider the opinions of, or the impact on, any of them. I can speak openly about how I feel at work without having to fear my superiors might see it. I can ask questions about stuff I am working on that I could not ask if the company I worked for was known (because it would give clues to competitors), and I can discuss child raising without having to worry what my kids will think about me (or a prospective employer will think about the family they came from) — well, at least there's nothing &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; to worry about now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3927" LastEditorUserId="3927" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T21:42:25.990" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:42:25.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2012-10-26T14:20:07.643" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Additionally to what F'x suggested, I would suggest you to discuss the details of this situation in a &lt;strong&gt;personal website&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;blog&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T14:20:07.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-26T14:21:04.020" Score="14" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was researching for a paper, but the results of my research got me reflecting on my habits: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is at all appropriate for me to use Google (partly also Google Scholar) for academic research, just because I have good experiences with it in my personal, non-professional environment? I noticed I feel slightly too comfortable in sourcing material via Google. As expected, the quality of the resulting materials is &quot;bad&quot;, in the sense that the sources I happen to find are rarely journal articles and often chronically difficult to cite. Of course for many topics this is a non-issue, but for my current topic, a lot of government, international institution and NGO content was &quot;on-topic&quot; and needed, so that is how the situation came about in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I definitely &lt;strong&gt;won't use&lt;/strong&gt; Wikipedia or (online) newspapers, but I also came across e.g. OECD content: while the content itself is strong and academically valid, &lt;strong&gt;by now I sadly had to discard a significant part of it&lt;/strong&gt;, also because I initially didn't (exclusively) use their &quot;iLibrary&quot;. Specifically: The amount of time I had to spend trying to find e.g. the author of such non-journal content (and other source-data), trying to decide if I should invest my time into reading and citing the content vs. discarding it and that I have to enter bibliographic data by hand for such content make me tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my thought is: &lt;strong&gt;Should I intentionally, sternly refrain/refuse to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; (and &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt; cite) any materials that doesn't carry a DOI, ISBN or ISSN?&lt;/strong&gt; There is still a lot of grey literature, manuscripts, working papers etc. and web content out there... My current frustration is so large that I seriously consider such a strict stance going forward, but I fear that I might miss out on crucial facts and that omitting such publication will affect the credibility and well-roundedness of my paper(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the age of Google I am very happy that academic standards are in place, compared to the lack of cite-ability etc. in documents published by NGO's, think tanks, policy institutes and some governments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2716" LastEditorUserId="2716" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T10:39:30.617" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T18:55:18.077" Title="Are there academic reasons to only use journal articles and books when writing?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4991" CreationDate="2012-10-26T14:39:10.743" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you build your work upon other people's work, whether it be a blog post or postage stamp, then you should cite it, otherwise that's plagiarism. This is especially the case if the work is a primary source of the research (which can even be the case for blog posts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are some guidelines you can follow to get the best version of the work to cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find the most recent or most authoritative/official version of the work.&lt;/em&gt; If the paper is an unpublished workshop paper, is there a corresponding conference or journal paper that was later published? Or is the work perhaps written up in a masters or PhD thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find the primary source.&lt;/em&gt; Is the blog post (secondary source) a distillation of some other paper (primary source)? If so, go for that primary source. Is the Wikipedia article (tertiary source) based on some well-known book or article (primary source)? If the report from an NGO is original research (primary source) then you should cite it. If not, determine what it is based on an cite that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T15:31:30.637" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T15:31:30.637" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4991" CreationDate="2012-10-26T15:29:20.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. I think the answer lies in looking for what purpose you cite &quot;anything but journal articles and books&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this respect, it is important to distinguish between primary and secondary sources in research reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primary sources&lt;/strong&gt; are all items which were an object of your research, i.e., your research results directly stem from an analysis of these items. An example would be a text where you studied usage of a specific word. Or a telephone book, if you did a statistical analysis of telephone numbers. Primary references are rather rare in the natural sciences and engineering, but they would be more common in social sciences and humanities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Secondary sources&lt;/strong&gt; are items from which you cite research results in order to support your arguments. For example theories that you base your hypotheses on, reports on the validity of methods that you are using in your research, or other research results which you discuss in relation to yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, for primary sources, it doesn't matter whether they have been produced with academic standards or not. After all, they are the &lt;strong&gt;objects of research&lt;/strong&gt;, and the validity of your research results does (in principle) not depend on the validity of the primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the validity of secondary sources is crucial for the validity of your research results, or at least your interpretation of the results. That's why you only want to use secondary sources which are up to academic standards, i.e. peer-reviewed scientific publications and books from established authors / publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the conclusion is that you should in fact try to refrain from using less credible references as secondary sources, while it will be perfectly fine to use anything as a primary source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T18:55:18.077" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T18:55:18.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4965" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:23:04.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in JeffE's comments to another answer, it is very unclear to me that anyone should be happy that &quot;bibliometrics&quot; assume official stature, especially in the particular situation of &quot;emerging&quot; fields, where one's livelihood thus becomes contingent on opinions or behavior of non-experts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., in mathematics, it seems that this official stature is very recent, in contrast to various places in Europe where (apparently) the bureaucracy was even less shy than here about insisting on &quot;simple&quot; quantification of the &quot;performance&quot; of academics and departments. Of course, presumably, administrations have always simplified their private appraisals of departments and individuals for purposes of &quot;decision-making&quot; (a.k.a., deciding who gets the money), but more recently commercial products (from our buddies the traditional publishers) have been promoted to university administrators, and have been bought and paid for, over the public objections of faculty...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point is that traditional publishers are happy, I'm sure, to have the significance of their gatekeeper &quot;peer-reviewed&quot; publications more firmly ensconced by the effective endorsement of their &quot;rating&quot; software packages.&#xA;&quot;Conflict of interest&quot; comes to mind, for one thing.&#xA;(But I'm not eager to trade this commericalized U.S. manifestation for the systematic, nation-wide version available too often in Europe.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem is that this commodification of &quot;research/scholarship&quot; adds a function-less layer of misdirection and noise to an already challenging enterprise, with already-precarious economics. For those who wish it to be a &quot;revolution&quot; that gets us out from under some old regime, I fear that instead it is merely a different incarnation of the same thing, sometimes owned by the same mulit-national corporate entities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T16:23:04.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4991" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:37:37.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own personal experience, I have cited non-traditional sources that go far beyond the realm of books and articles, and even repositories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://arXiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, these included &quot;trade association&quot; documents that cited chemical compositions for blends that we needed to have in order to set up a numerical model. In that case, the document was &quot;official&quot; enough that it could pass muster as a viable source of the data. Similarly, if one wants to cite a source like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webbook.nist.gov&quot;&gt;NIST Webbook&lt;/a&gt; or an online database like the Merck Index, those are clearly curated well enough that one doesn't necessarily have to worry about judging its validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sites that are not so well curated, then you do have to work as an arbiter of the quality of the website. You'll need to verify if there is sufficient data and evidence to back up the claims that you find in the documentation you want to cite, and if the document is suitable for citation, or if you need to dig further back to find better &quot;original&quot; sources. So long as you can &quot;trace back&quot; your work with suitable confidence, it's probably OK to cite a source from the Web. Once the provenance or accuracy becomes nebulous or tenuous, you should look for alternate (or more primary) sources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go the other way is, of course, also &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;. The challenge will be that if there are very important sources of literature published outside the journal system—for example, government reports or other standard materials that &quot;define&quot; their field, then you will probably be called out if you omit them—and their findings—from your work. Now this may not be true in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; field, in which case this won't be a concern. If you get a referee report with such a request and refuse to make the change on the ground that it doesn't have a digital identifier, you may find yourself with a rejection notice at the end of the day.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T20:19:55.513" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T20:19:55.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4980" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:49:21.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you've answered your own question. If you are not a student in the research group of a professor, and you've written the paper on your own, without outside assistance, then you don't need a faculty member's permission to publish the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that under the circumstances, it would be inappropriate to require the permission of an &quot;advisor&quot;—since you can't even identify who the advisor should be!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one of the other respondents mentioned, you might have to sign a statement declaring this is your own, independent work, but otherwise, I see no reason why someone else's permission needs to be secured here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T16:49:21.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:20:56.437" Score="17" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some research groups, especially the ones at lower tier schools in the United States, contains an excessive amount of students who have the same nationality as the professor. Some Chinese professors' groups solely consists of Chinese students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this go against diversity, considering the fact that Ph.D admissions are not centralized and is not done by adcom members? Is there a constraint on this implied by school to faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3931" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-24T02:58:59.573" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T02:58:59.573" Title="Why are some research groups not so ethnically diverse?" Tags="&lt;research-group&gt;&lt;diversity&gt;&lt;ethnicity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:28:10.310" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student based in Sweden, working in a group where everybody except the PhD students are German. Another group in the same building has several Russians, and a recent Russian PhD student had a Russian supervisor. So the tendency to mono-culturalism is not unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, many institutes have statements  promoting diversity. In practice, these don't mean much, because recruitment depends on academic networks, skills of applicants, etc. There can be different reasons for a group to tend to mono-culturalism. Some reasons I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A professor heading a research group in a foreign country probably has an extensive academic network from his/her originating country. Academic networks are powerful sources of recruitment of new staff, either senior staff or PhD students (e.g. via a Master thesis supervisor recommending them). So applicants might simply be more likely to be from the same country as the head of the group, even if the head of the group is 100% honest in his/her selections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PhD students may appreciate if they can work with a supervisor that speaks their language, particularly if they are not so comfortable speaking English. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's culturally easier to work in a group with several people from ones own country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these factors can contribute to groups in country X with group members primarily from country Y != X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably there are other reasons that I didn't think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T20:28:10.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:28:46.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the fundamental issue is not that the groups go against the principle of diversity, but that they're just too small to speak meaningfully about diversity. A population of three to six graduate students is not large enough to make claims that they are or are not diverse enough. Even if they all come from the same country, there may be other forces at work. For instance, those students might be the ones who get &quot;matched&quot; into the group—they list that group as their highest priority, and others don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, there are no constraints placed by a university or a department on &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; students a faculty member can or cannot take. There may be limits and restrictions that determine &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; a faculty member can take students, or &lt;em&gt;how many&lt;/em&gt;, but never have I heard a restriction about which ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T20:28:46.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4991" CreationDate="2012-10-26T22:23:27.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;DOI, ISBN and ISSN are very useful tool for managing citations, but nothing more. You &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to cite every material you rely on. Otherwise it is strongly against scientific ethics (i.e. plagiarism or intentional lack of acknowledgement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when you use materials without DOI, ISBN or ISSN you need to put special effort to properly identify the cited material and to have any reasonable chance, that it won't disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for example arXiv ids, or even links to MathOverflow answers are good candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you point is &quot;I refrain form citing anything without DOI, ISBN or ISSN just because&quot; then, well, someone can pledge not to cite your journal, or just - any of your works, because why not (and it happens on the same moral ground)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T22:23:27.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1525" CreationDate="2012-10-26T23:01:53.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to design a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubric_%28academic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;rubric&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to assess the work of students. The design of a rubric is difficult and may require a lot of work for the teacher, but it will isolate the grading process from other factors. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1579221157&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you can find a book about rubrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the advantages of using a rubric is that students can easily observe how their work is going to be evaluated. Another advantage is that teachers can easily apply the same criteria across all the work to be graded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T23:01:53.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-27T05:29:14.860" Score="10" ViewCount="2313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do people take time out to go home, meet with family etc. during their PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If yes then for how long and how frequently is it usually?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does one deal with this with one's advisor? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that one basically has just about 2-3 years in practice to do all their PhD work, I don't understand how anything else fits in the schedule except work. The entire idea of a PhD looks quite scary to me that one is expected to produce cutting-edge stuff in that short a time starting from just standard graduate courses!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the question is general, but if it is field-dependent, I am interested in particular in physics PhDs (theoretical high-energy physics specifically)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" OwnerDisplayName="user6818" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T07:21:24.420" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T13:27:27.763" Title="Taking break/vacation during graduate studies/PhD" Tags="&lt;community&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5002" CreationDate="2012-10-27T06:33:55.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD was thirty years ago, and in the UK, so how relevant my experience is these days I don't know. However FWIW I think the only reason for doing a PhD is that it's something you really want to do. Unless you're absolutely fascinated by it, three years of hard work and no money is likely to prove too much for you. I &lt;strong&gt;loved&lt;/strong&gt; the three years of my PhD even though I've only been cited a handful of times and I ended up in a job unrelated to my PhD work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your supervisor is related to the Grinch they'll let you see your family a couple of times in the three years :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3935" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T06:33:55.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5002" CreationDate="2012-10-27T07:11:06.143" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;em&gt;of course, yes&lt;/em&gt;. In fact, you need to take a break to recharge your batteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to the other questions will depend on what the rules are regarding holidays (which is country dependent). I think that our guys get six weeks annually (where as other countries only offer one or two weeks). Our guys can take them in one chunk, but this is sometimes problematic if there are deadlines that need to be met, or tutorials, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to deal with your advisor is simply to ask him with a concrete proposal. It is better that you have &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; bought the plane tickets before you ask, because that will be perceived as an attempt at manipulation by your advisor, which will damage the trust relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When my guys ask for a vacation I simply ask whether it clashes with anything. If not, I grant it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros of taking a couple of holidays is that you will have time to recharge your batteries. The cons of not taking a holiday is that you can burn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T13:27:27.763" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T13:27:27.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5008" CreationDate="2012-10-27T07:51:54.753" Score="56" ViewCount="5709" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many of the research groups I’ve worked at or visited, there is a culture that endless hours in the lab equal successful researcher. (I am in a theoretical field, so requirement of long-running experiments are outside of the picture. Let's ignore them in this discussion.) In chemistry, a widely-known example of this culture is the following letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;               &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/i-expect-you-to-correct-your-work-ethic.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KmIb7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to provide for you in written form what is expected from you as a member of the research group. In addition to the usual work-day schedule, I expect all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends. You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech. On occasion, I understand that personal matters will make demands on your time which will require you to be away from your responsibilities to the laboratory. However, it is not acceptable to me when it becomes a habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I have noticed that you have failed to come in to lab on several weekends, and more recently have failed to show up in the evenings.&lt;/strong&gt; Moreover, in addition to such time off, you recently requested some vacation. I have no problem with vacation time that is well earned, but I do have a problem with continuous vacation and time off that interferes with the project. I find this very annoying and disruptive to your science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I expect you to correct your work-ethic immediately.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I receive at least one post-doctoral application each day from the US and around the world. If you are unable to meet the expected work-schedule, I am sure that I can find someone else as an appropriate replacement for this important project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have fallen prey to this during my PhD, doing very long hours. Now that I manage a research team, what is good advice to help fight this culture in my team? (Obviously, I don't want students and post-docs to get the message that little work is required either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things I already do to that end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a new group member comes in and they get the out-of-hours building pass (for Sundays and late nights), mention that they are not expected to use it on a regular basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid planning meetings at unusual hours (bank holidays, week-ends, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T18:38:06.357" Title="How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2012-10-27T08:12:09.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge gulf between &lt;em&gt;what would happen in an ideal world&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;what the norms are&lt;/em&gt; in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ideally&quot;, you'd get in touch with the author(s), explain that you don't see what their paper has to do with yours; they'd explain why they think it is relevant or agree that it's not, and modify the paper accordingly.  (Almost everything is online, so modification after publication is a possibility.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the actual world, citations are of benefit to you, even if they are stupid.  Journals are mostly not set up to remove citations easily.  No one will check, and if they do check, the detriment will be to the citer, not the cited.  So you &quot;shouldn't&quot; do anything about it, and the author would probably be quite surprised if you did (especially if you weren't discreet about it).  If you really feel like re-calculating your h-index with that paper removed, go for it.  But this sort of thing happens all the time (I think all of my papers with over about 50 citations have been cited stupidly at least once), so you're free to just consider it part of the measurement error inherent in looking at citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, the ideal isn't necessarily the &lt;em&gt;pragmatic&lt;/em&gt; ideal.  Doing anything important on the basis of small differences in numbers of citations is fraught with error even if all citations are sensible ones.  There's a reasonable argument to be made that you shouldn't bother unless the paper &lt;em&gt;is in your field and is citing you in support of something that your paper showed the converse of&lt;/em&gt;.  Getting your work exactly backwards to advance their own idea isn't doing you or them any favors, so you should try to work that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T08:12:09.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5005" CreationDate="2012-10-27T08:18:28.617" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, can your postdocs/grad students/whoever compete with their peers if they only spend 40-60 hours working instead of 60-80?  If the answer is &quot;no&quot;, you're actually doing them a disservice by trying to fix the system on your own.  Some fields don't require much thought or brainpower.  You can plan a thousand hours of experiments in an afternoon, and then you're left to just do it.  In that case, your postdocs/etc. will just be outworked by others, which will negatively impact any future careers they might want in science.  It's not very nice, but that's the way things are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're in a field where quality of work and depth of insight are really important, you should not &lt;em&gt;merely&lt;/em&gt; stress working less, but stress working &lt;em&gt;intelligently&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;efficiently&lt;/em&gt;.  This will help your postdocs/etc. to maintain a less absurd and exploitative lifestyle while still producing results that are as good as or better than those who work under incredible pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T08:18:28.617" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5005" CreationDate="2012-10-27T08:25:28.220" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the different groups I worked in, their respective cultures were always the result of the behaviour of the leader. So &lt;em&gt;lead by example&lt;/em&gt;. In particular, some useful hints from my experience would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;E-Mails:&lt;/strong&gt; don't send e-mails in non-office hours, especially not requests for help with something. No e-mails on weekends and late night are a signal which everybody &quot;gets&quot; after a short while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social activities:&lt;/strong&gt; support group's social life. A group hike to nearby mountains (in office hours on a working day!), or a joint trip to a museum sends a signal that taking time off is an important part of one's life. We used to do it on occasion of having a guest researcher (for a study stay, or just a seminar talk). It's good for group's cohesion and again tells people that rest time is also very useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal relationship:&lt;/strong&gt; care for private lives of your group members. Build relationship with their families. Speak to them about their personal activities, about their vacations, kids, etc. and do not forget to give back and speak about yours. These kinds of discussions send a powerful signal that you perceive time off in a positive way and even encourage it, since you take it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan well ahead:&lt;/strong&gt; clear plans and roadmaps in projects allow people to plan their time off as well. Nothing more annoying than a spurt interfering with one's private life to deliver some report, because the boss didn't care to tell the group ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time in the office:&lt;/strong&gt; being in computer science, where I do not need to spend time in a lab and can easily work anywhere, I was always lucky to have bosses who cared for deliverables, rather than for my time in the office. After all, most of my good ideas are born in weird places, such as under shower, while on a bike, walking in woods, and by reading stuff outdoors. Making it clear with the group members that you care first and foremost for deliverables and are flexible regarding the actual time in the office (within reasonable bounds and respecting the local laws and regulations) works well. My experience is also that people tend to deliver better if they are given the power to plan their time and process, rather being forced to mantinels set by their supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I found it always very comfortable in groups where having kids was something nice and for what the group leader and members cared. Nothing is worse than a group where work interacts negatively with one's family life and where going home before 6pm to care for kids at home is perceived as something bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T08:42:20.507" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T08:42:20.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1525" CreationDate="2012-10-27T09:01:57.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If at all possible, have all papers and/or exams graded by two people independently, for example, two teaching assistants / graduate students. Then the official examiner can browse through the results. Where the two agree, one can directly go along with it. Where they don't agree, the examiner can judge what is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This protects not only against favouritism, but also against simple, honest mistakes in grading. Of course, it's possible that two or even three all make the same error, but that's why students have the opportunity to appeal, don't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T09:01:57.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5012" CreationDate="2012-10-27T09:54:06.333" Score="17" ViewCount="828" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am subscribed to many interesting blogs. Some of them are related to my research field, while others not. Sometimes I am really impressed that some of the posts are in fact real pieces of scientific work (or sociological work, depending on the field), that although they do not follow strictly the scheme of a scientific paper, could be easily converted to a research paper. Therefore I am intrigued why these people do not convert sometime their most relevant and accessed blog post to research paper, do you know why? Besides, do you know successful cases where people have converted them to papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T16:29:36.020" Title="From blog posts to research papers; successful cases?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;blog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-10-27T12:15:51.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it totally depends how you define the term “research paper”. Some people uses a blog in such a way that (some or all) blog entries are actually akin to minimal-size “research papers”, albeit with a nonconventional publication mean and possibly nonconventional format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it also depends where you draw the line between &lt;em&gt;“turning X into Y”&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;“writing X based on Y”&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously, many journals would object to publishing material that has already been published somewhere else, including on a personal blog. Moreover, publishing identical content in two very different media probably means that it is not fully adapted to one of the two (or both): to give only one example, you don't typically have the same language level on a blog as in an academic paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, an example: scientific writer Philip Ball has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://waterinbiology.blogspot.fr&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; on the topic of &lt;em&gt;Water in Biology&lt;/em&gt;, and he also regularly publishes “News &amp;amp; Views” articles for &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7370/full/478467a.html&quot;&gt;one example there&lt;/a&gt;). In both cases, he writes critical reviews the recent literature on the same topic: there is wide overlap, but he does not publish his papers by directly converting blog posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T12:15:51.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-10-27T15:51:02.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This not an exact answer, however &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath_Project&quot;&gt;PolyMath&lt;/a&gt; is an interesting example of a result which was obtain using social tools (not exactly blog, but related...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T15:51:02.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-27T18:52:55.240" Score="15" ViewCount="1347" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK PhD programs are based upon just research for three years, whereas in the US there tends to be substantial graduate course work included. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this difference affect the quality of the PhD thesis, and the quality of work produced in the long term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3939" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:32:10.203" Title="Differences in quality between a PhD with graduate course work, and one purely on research?" Tags="&lt;community&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5018" CreationDate="2012-10-27T20:20:53.847" Score="20" ViewCount="2005" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proofreading documents for orthography is a pain. I consider that I am decent at writing in my native language (on the grammar and orthography side), but proofreading for typos and whatnots is a time-consuming pain. I’d much prefer to have someone else do it for me, but it's a pain to bother other people with it. Also, when I read students’ work, in some cases it requires two iterations (because it's hard to focus on the science when the spelling is… suboptimal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given that a professional proofreader would be much more efficient at this job than me, leaving me more time to review the scientific content or otherwise actually do research, the logical conclusion is that I should hire one. This would work either for my own writing or for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some people actually do that (and also buy more extensive services) for grant writing. However, I wonder: is it ethical to hire a proofreader for theses and academic articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T17:06:23.303" Title="Would it be ethical to hire a proofreader for theses and academic articles?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5015" CreationDate="2012-10-27T20:52:20.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When someone earned successfully and honestly his PhD in a good research group, either in the US system or in UK/Germany (Master degree is often mandatory for starting PhD), there will probably be no strong differences in the overall quality, I wouldn't make here any generalizations based on this fine system nuances. The level and depth of research experience are very similar (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5005/213&quot;&gt;also STEM students in Germany don't work on average 80-90 hours a week, 60 will be rare ;)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, when a student did choose a distinct topic and research field for his master &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; PhD thesis, you can be a bit more sure he is really motivated for this work and research generally, while a US PhD student with a bachelor (and without master) &lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt; is just trying to finish what he started over the years, in spite of vanishing interest/motivation in research generally (see link above) or that distinct topic. During the short time of a bachelor thesis you cannot find out, if you are suited for research and a distinct field in my opinion. In Germany it's hard to get invitations to PhD job interviews at all without a master thesis near to a given research project. Motivation and background is here more important than 0,5 better grade or 3 year younger age. In interviews they mostly check, how motivated, interested, knowledgable is a candidate for that distinct field. So there will probably be no big differences in quality, but you can be more sure about long term motivation and therefore originality/quality of his research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we currently have a (another) case of plagiarism in Germany (our education minister obviously wasn't trained, e.g. by a bachelor nor master thesis, for writing a long PhD thesis correctly), I have to add that somebody who has written a bigger master &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; PhD thesis will also have more practice in publishing, citing, researching literature...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: Personally, I think the german system is more selective, while the US system can afford this system because of a abundance of PhD students and applicants (thats also the reason they have to work 80-90 instead of 60 hours, competition being stronger and teaching of undergraduate students in Germany needs very good command of german language, we are limited in hiring foreign students for those jobs). A very good master and PhD thesis is a strong hallmark for the motivation of a student and future researcher for a distinct research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T20:52:20.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5016" CreationDate="2012-10-27T20:58:13.110" Score="30" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Short answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is ethical&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Long answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Proof-reading it yourself&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking a co-author (for academic article) or a 3rd person (for theses) to proof-read it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pay for a commercial proofreading service.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option (1) is inefficient. You've written the text, read it many times over, and your brain will simply fool you in not seeing the typo's.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option (2) is done quite often in practice. In my opinion, it's most suitable for journal articles; some articles have quite a lot of co-authors, and one could give a section to each co-author and distribute the work. That's what I usually do (my thesis will be quite small, because it's just a summary for a sandwich thesis). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for option (3), I don't see any ethical problems with paying for a proofreading service. I know a number of people (they are not native speakers) who do this systematically for theses and academic articles. They buy commercial services who check and correct the quality of their English writing. This improves the quality of the text and therefore reduces the chance to annoy the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T20:58:13.110" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5022" CreationDate="2012-10-27T21:44:33.677" Score="8" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that a paper was submitted under the &lt;code&gt;&quot;Extremely long and necessary title that explains you are studying pieces of Class A, Class B and Class C of this Bigger (and much more frequently searched) Topic&quot;&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, had to be shortened for publication and now is published and cited under the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Extremely long and necessary title that explains you are studying pieces of Class A, Class B and Class C&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still correct but likely to fly under the radar of many researchers. So, is it ever OK in a citation (APA or in general) to add the &lt;code&gt;[additional subtitles]&lt;/code&gt; when displaying the citation like below? Is it even ethical to adjust the title post publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Extremely long and necessary title that explains you are studying pieces of Class A, Class B and Class C [of this Bigger (and much more frequently searched) Topic]&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a new academic and I appreciate any thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="622" LastEditorUserId="622" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T22:38:02.347" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T22:54:33.713" Title="Is it ever alright to add a subtitle to a title shortened by publication when citing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2012-10-27T22:36:06.467" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myscience.cc/jobs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.myscience.cc/jobs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look for a good research job adverts aggregator. Also adverts in top-notch magazines like Nature, or similar in the field of your interest are relevant. Your nearest library is your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T22:36:06.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5019" CreationDate="2012-10-27T22:54:33.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd stick with the published title.  You definitely shouldn't edit it without indicating that you are doing so, for example with square brackets, and I'd avoid that too.  I've never seen anyone do it.  If you do edit the title, then the best case scenario is that you'll come across as a little eccentric, and you may confuse or irritate readers.  (They may wonder whether you are referring to a slightly different version of the paper than the one they have, for example a longer preprint or working paper that was shortened for publication.  Then they may waste time looking for it, or decide you are being sloppy about your citations.)  It may also throw off citation counts, which is not in your interests.  Incidentally, I assume you are talking about a previous paper of yours - you certainly shouldn't edit someone else's title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of editing the title, you can convey this information in the body of your paper via your citation.  For example, you could write &quot;For background on Classes A, B and C and how they fit into Bigger Topic, see Paper X.&quot;  If you give the reader enough information, then the shortened title really won't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T22:54:33.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4763" CreationDate="2012-10-28T00:32:48.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should try to think just like a professor. Just think that you are allowed to have some students to work under your supervision. So, do you prefer to have a student who is able to conduct research and publish paper or some one who does not know how to do research but have good grades? Graduate school is all about doing research and showing that you are able to do that will surely help you to get accepted by grad schools. They want to know if you are able to cope with such life as a scientist or not. It is possible if you devote yourself to research your grades become low, but it is normal and no one is able to publish great papers and at the same time obtains good grades. All in all, publishing papers surely helps you. A little advice, make a team with your friends and divide the works to be able to make a balance between both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T06:35:33.743" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T06:35:33.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5015" CreationDate="2012-10-28T01:17:21.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there is an effect but it will only become apparent in people who would be borderline cases anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the short run, a given project- be it dissertation or what comes after- will require a very specific set of skills that, in general, need to be acquired on-the-job. However, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the grad school courses are relevant the PhD program with coursework will have a slight advantage. (I'd love to find these programs with useful prerequisites.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, the challenge shifts to choosing the right projects. That requires a broad perspective that classes in grad school &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; give. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A motivated person who lacks the formal coursework can catch up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all these, I think that the difference in PhD programs will only hurt those graduate students who might lack the motivation for life-long learning anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T01:17:21.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4763" CreationDate="2012-10-28T01:19:15.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to other answers... thinking of mathematics: It is difficult to somehow-deliberately acquire intellectual maturity. Attempting to &quot;force it&quot; or &quot;fake it&quot; will produce outcomes worse than doing nothing. A more honest and productive attitude is &quot;engagement&quot;, which may or may not produce papers. Even a very capable novice should not focus on &quot;papers&quot; because this has a corruptive effect on the clarity of one's thinking, and tends to create possibilities to look silly, if not worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Awareness of current events, engagement with them, are the most important. No, the GRE Math Subject Test is essentially completely disconnected from this, but does test for a certain facile cleverness and quickness. Grades and standard coursework are relevant only to the extent that they &lt;em&gt;prepare&lt;/em&gt; one for more serious, &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt; things. Getting a perfect score on a drivers license exam does not mean much about one's capacity to drive in Formula One races, or NASCAR, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an advisor and mentor to quite a few PhD students over the years, I've found that the worst liability is believing too firmly that one has already &quot;arrived&quot;. True, it can be debilitating to doubt oneself too much, but that is closer to sense than believing that no one knows anything, so that one's trivial observations represent publishable progress that should &quot;impress&quot; people. If anything, one should manage to communicate that one is aware that other people have done many things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most essential element in applications is letters of recommendation from experienced research people who know you well, who (hopefully) can attest your &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt;. Being &quot;best in a class&quot; is good, is nice, no downside, but is somewhat tangential to &quot;research potential&quot;. Writing childish papers as an undergrad does not certify anything at all about one's potential for serious professional work, and one should be careful about misunderstanding this! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admission to an elite grad program in math (in the U.S.) is difficult without excellent GRE score (=filter), maybe a good Putnam score to show you're clever, undergrad degree from a &quot;Research I&quot; school with many graduate courses on one's transcript (since undergrad courses at best don't quite get anyone up to the starting line of awareness or knowledge), and &lt;em&gt;glittering&lt;/em&gt; letters from people who are established research people, who've made a contribution themselves. (Otherwise how in the world would they know what they're talking about when they say you have the potential to do serious things?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that... I guess an indirect point is that one ought not &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to have any meaningful publications. Sure, one can probably arrange &lt;em&gt;meaningless&lt;/em&gt; publications, but, if anything, real mathematicians are not moved by that. (Such things are handy for impressing university-wide panels on this-and-that, but that's a different story.) So far as my (limited, but not exclusively anecdotal) experience indicates, a tiny minority of applicants to the best grad programs in math have any &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; publications at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T01:19:15.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T05:58:09.933" Score="3" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having some trouble figuring out what schools to apply to for a Masters in International Relations. There are a number of lists I've seen but many of the schools are very focused on the practical side for mid-career people. I'm interested in eventually getting a PhD and being an academic. Also most lists are only of the top 5 or 10 schools so it's hard to tell how good other schools are. My application is a little mixed, some strong parts some weak parts, so I was thinking of applying to a wide range of schools but I could really use some advice in what schools to look at. My undergrad GPA isn't good, 3.14 (3.5 in the major), but my GRE scores are good, 170V 168Q 4.5. I've been living in China for the past 5 years, but only speak a tiny bit of Chinese. I'd love some advice about where to apply or any rankings to look at. Thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3947" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T08:11:41.620" Title="Where to Apply for International Relations?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-01-19T09:18:56.140" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2012-10-28T06:32:35.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider location-specific job directories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some countries maintain such directions: in this UK, for example, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobs.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most universities have a job directory, so if you have decided on your dream geographic area, you can look at the corresponding listings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some journals have a job listings section (just like your local newspaper):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T06:32:35.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T10:07:04.937" Score="6" ViewCount="1489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I travel a lot and I'm interested in getting a psychology degree but after researching online I still haven't been able to find a good university that offers the choice to complete a psych degree by distance education.  I'm a Canadian citizen so programs that accept Canadians is vital.  With all the current online offerings I'm shocked that I can't find a quality university offering a BA or BSc in psychology online or by distance offline.  Any suggestions? I'm interested in CPA accredited degrees otherwise it's worth nothing in Canada.  And, I'm open to programs with a few on-campus requirements if an accredited degree is unavailable fully online.  I want to be able to pursue a MA or a PhD in Canada after completing the undergraduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="759" LastEditorUserId="759" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T18:17:53.263" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T11:44:58.180" Title="Are there any accredited universities in the world offering students the option of acquiring a BA/BSc in psychology completely online?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T11:31:56.157" Score="6" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;For people applying from unknown schools where one's senior has never hit that department before, what is the evaluation metric for graduate admissions ? Probably all schools are not equal, but what if the applicant's school is unknown or a newly established one without a reputed faculty who are unknown to the researchers in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you judge if the candidate is good enough ? What is the value of GRE Subject Test especially in these situations ? How does top 10 programs approach such candiates, do they spot reject them ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about MS level admissions, please answer considering that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3948" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T22:18:52.947" Title="CS graduate admissions for masters level" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-10-28T12:04:45.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;International relations at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/intrel/home/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of St Andrews&lt;/a&gt; are quite highly ranked. They definitely give you the option of eventually moving on to a PhD. I don't know much about their entry requirements though; I'd suggest that you contact them and ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T12:04:45.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T12:49:20.993" Score="11" ViewCount="11043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to MS / MS-PhD programs in CS this fall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a good GPA (2.86 on a scale of 4). I have experience as a research assistant under a professor and also a couple of good projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm working as a developer, so I have around 5 months of experience. I have a GRE score of 314 on 340. I'm giving subject test to improve my chances of getting into a grad school. What score can be considered 'good'? I don't have much time to prepare and I am a little rusty on some of the topics, what is the good advice for a crash course for subject test in, say a week or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3949" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T11:02:49.940" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T00:25:35.393" Title="How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-01-29T20:12:16.707" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5029" CreationDate="2012-10-28T14:54:54.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any accredited universities in the world offering students the option of acquiring a BA/BSc in psychology completely online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely hundreds of programs. How well they meet your needs will be determined by 1) What you mean by 'accredited', and 2) residency restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accreditation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you interested in accredited institutions or accredited programs? Institutions are accredited by organizations recognized at the government level as being able to guarantee that all programs at the institution meet some minimum standards. In the US, &lt;em&gt;regional accreditation&lt;/em&gt; is king, while the more prestigious sounding &lt;em&gt;national accreditation&lt;/em&gt; is generally viewed as easier to get and less rigorous. In Canada, accreditation appears to be handled through membership in the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, in the US, many of the large flagship state institutions have an online campus to accompany their bricks-and-mortar traditional campuses. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umuc.edu/undergrad/ugprograms/psyc.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Univerity of Maryland University College&lt;/a&gt; appears to offer an online BS in Psychology. UMUC is regionally accredited in the US by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, just like the the bricks-and-mortar campuses of the University of Maryland system. Certainly, some of the larger schools in Canada also have a similar online presence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The on-line for-profit schools in the US tend to be nationally accredited, with the notable exception of the much maligned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phoenix.edu/programs/degree-programs/psychology/bachelors/bs-p.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Phoenix&lt;/a&gt;, which offers an online program in psychology. University of Phoenix is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission as part of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual programs may also be accredited or certified by various professional organizations. If you are looking for an online psychology program certified by a professional psychology association, try starting at the website of the association and look for lists of certified programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Residency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attending an online only institution should not have residency restrictions based on your country of citizenship, but it probably does. For example, I would imagine you would need to have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1270.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US education visa&lt;/a&gt; in order to be admitted into some US institutions, even if the program is entirely online and you never need to step foot on campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T14:54:54.363" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4941" CreationDate="2012-10-28T16:19:53.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot answer about stats/maths directly, but in general the department you get your PhD in matters less than who it is with. This is especially true in places like the UK were there is no course work component. In my current department, psychology, about 50% of the faculty, including myself, did not get our PhD from Psychology departments. That said, if you are only willing to teach in a Maths department, then you should probably go to a Maths department. If you are willing to teach in either Maths or Stats, then it doesn't matter too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T16:19:53.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1992" CreationDate="2012-10-28T16:30:35.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look for a purely taught program (i.e., no research component) terminal masters program and demonstrate that you can, and expect to, self fund. The expectations of self funded students on terminal masters programs are very different from masters programs designed to feed into PhD programs. I would also target smaller programs where applications are looked at more throughly. The US system relies on standardized tests. Take the GRE and a subject test and do well (really well). Finally, think about why you did poorly in you undergraduate studies and what has changed since then. Then figure out how to express that in your statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T16:30:35.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5032" CreationDate="2012-10-28T16:37:35.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; it looks like the CS subject is scored out of 980, so I am not sure what test you are talking about. &quot;Good&quot; is a subjective term. These tests assume you have a strong background to start with, so even a low score could be considered &quot;good&quot;. That said, if you are trying to make up for weak grades to get into a top university, anything less than 90 percentile will likely not cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T16:37:35.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4941" CreationDate="2012-10-28T17:52:32.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Provided one can find a supervisor who has the background and research interestes that would allow one to keep extending ones pure mathematical toolbox are there any major risks in going for a PhD in stats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a small risk, but it can be managed.  The first issue is that you need to make the mathematical content of your work very clear, for example by publishing in journals that could be considered both math journals and statistics journals (e.g., IMS journals).  However, if you're interested in math departments I assume you'd be doing that anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slightly more subtle issue is how mathematicians view statisticians.  There's sometimes a mild prejudice that people in mathematical statistics are overly specialized and outside of the mainstream of mathematics.  For example, it's possible to get a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics while having considerably less breadth of mathematical background than would be considered acceptable for a math grad student.  (Of course, the flip side is that you are expected to know other things instead.)  There's sometimes a fear that a statistician would be unlikely to talk much with other math department members, or might be unwilling or unable to teach anything but statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of statisticians have found jobs in math departments, so I don't want to be discouraging.  However, I'd recommend focusing on mathematical breadth.  For example, if you work with people in combinatorics or algebra, then it will be clear to everyone why a math department is a natural fit.  If you talk only to statisticians, it will be less clear.  It can still work out even then, but generally when the department either has a thriving statistics group or has decided they really need a statistician (and either way this cuts down on the flexibility of your job search).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T17:52:32.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5032" CreationDate="2012-10-28T21:50:24.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;About the GRE General Test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a competitive score in the quantitative and verbal section of the GRE General Test depends on the program, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/stats.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can see the details of Duke University's graduate admissions. The average scores for the last admissions are shown in the new scale of the GRE (up to 170).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the GRE CS Subject Test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/32610/how-to-prepare-for-the-gre-computer-science-subject-test&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you can find some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:56.390" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T21:50:24.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-10-28T22:19:29.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it okay... ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, but it's not without risks (to BOTH sides). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you're a student or a professor, there are a couple of things to help minimize the risk: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=200538509990389#How-do-I-use-lists-to-organize-my-friends?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lists to organize your friends&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and make sure you put your professors/students on the list you want to restrict information to. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario A:&lt;/strong&gt; a grad student is 3 weeks late on a draft, yet the professor can see he's been updating his photo albums of football games for the past three weekends. &lt;strong&gt;Scenario B:&lt;/strong&gt; professor is late at returning grades on the midterm, yet the students can see he's been posting about how fun his weekend bicycle workouts have been. Using lists properly can prevent these awkward situations (&lt;em&gt;but so can not procrastinating!&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;However, even if you put your professors/students on the restricted list, &lt;strong&gt;replies you make to posts with Public visibility will be seen by everyone&lt;/strong&gt;. So, you still have to take a lot of care with this approach at what you say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A less risky (but more distant) approach for professors is to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;create a Public Figure (Teacher) page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Then, students need only &quot;like&quot; that page to be associated with it. In this case, the relationship is not really bi-directional, which is why the risk is reduced both ways. As a professor, I've tied my Google Blog to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Fuhrman-Professeur/131998500267101?ref=hl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook Teacher page&lt;/a&gt;, so that blog updates automatically feed to Facebook. Another advantage is that my &quot;nerdy&quot; posts don't get seen by all the people I'm friends with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, LinkedIn doesn't have the relationship of student-professor, which I find annoying when I get requests. They're not &quot;classmates&quot; even though a lot of students request a link to me using that relationship. In the beginning, I would refuse connections, unless the relationship involved some kind of professional contract (e.g., a TA or lab assistant, funded research student). It makes sense when a student asks you for a review on LinkedIn if that student &quot;worked&quot; for you in some degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, part of the goal of LinkedIn is to build connections, and coop programs are important for undergrads at my school. Saying I know students (even if they're just in my undergrad courses) might help them somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:40:28.870" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:40:28.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5032" CreationDate="2012-10-28T23:32:08.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have a good idea about the GRE subject scores but a &quot;good&quot; general GRE score differs from one school to another. In general it helps if you decide on which schools you plan to apply for before taking the GRE tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS/PhD admission do not just rely on GRE scores. They also look at previous institutions, recommendation letters, research experience and GPA (although not in that order). For many PhD applications students often talk to the professors who they want to work with. From my personal experience students with GRE score lower than recommended can be accepted if they show promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T23:32:08.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1232" CreationDate="2012-10-29T01:09:49.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be a leader!&#xA;Make a research group,&#xA;Know what you want to do and divide the works,&#xA;Do not waste your time on finding friends,&#xA;Be a person whose character is interesting for other people,&#xA;Be yourself, be the guy who has big dreams,&#xA;Then you have a team with people who want to have a role in your work.&#xA;Never try to be the person who follows the others,&#xA;Be the person who is followed by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T01:09:49.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-10-29T01:11:58.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;International relations is a famous major at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.american.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American University&lt;/a&gt; in Washington DC.&#xA;The School of International Relations is the speciality of American University.&#xA;For a nice historical background, it was at American University where JFK spoke:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ask not what your country can do for you....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3953" LastEditorUserId="3953" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T08:11:41.620" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T08:11:41.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5032" CreationDate="2012-10-29T05:37:30.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @davidshen's answer points out, my answer is now moot, because the GRE subject test in computer science is no longer offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most applications to strong departments, &lt;strong&gt;there is no good score on the GRE CS subject test; there are only bad scores.&lt;/strong&gt;  A score below the 50th percentile is a red flag, indicating significant gaps in your undergraduate CS background.  (The raw score is completely meaningless to most people, even those of us who work on admissions committees; only the percentile score matters.)  But graduate school is about research, not standardized tests, so no GRE score is good enough to get you accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few exceptional circumstances where a high GRE score actually gives some useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Daniel says, a score in the 90th percentile or better can &lt;em&gt;partially&lt;/em&gt; make up for a poor GPA.  (It worked for me; my GPA was worse than yours.)  It's probably not enough on its own, though.  (It wasn't for me.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;GRE scores are useful for calibrating GPAs of students from unknown schools.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the gripping hand, many graduate programs (like mine) don't require GREs; their admissions committee may not even think to look at your GRE score unless you point it out in your statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T00:25:35.393" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T00:25:35.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5046" CreationDate="2012-10-29T08:00:25.910" Score="14" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;We started to collaborate with another research group. We make computational predictions and they evaluate them at the lab, for bioactive compounds. We have not yet established a research agreement, just talked in person, but we would like to establish a research contract with them. This is since in our country (Spain) and given the financial crisis, groups that establish such research contracts are more eligible for further funding from national government than those that publish in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;. Since we need as many contracts as possible, price is not important, we think we can offer our services for a very small fee. The point is how to convince the other groups that we need to do this not for the money, but for our future. So the question is, what is the best way to propose them a research contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T08:33:49.430" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T09:13:44.593" Title="From academic collaboration to research contract, best practices" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-10-29T09:13:44.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is probably to talk very openly with them about your situation and especially what research contracts mean for you. Before you make any suggestions, it would also be good to evaluate the funding situation of your partners, and whether they need your contribution so much for their research that they would be willing to put money in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most collaborations between academic groups are seen as something that benefits both sides, so it could be seen as a little bit odd that one side pays the other to do something. Still, if your partners have a good funding situation, they might be willing to (co-)fund a PhD student or post-doc in your group, who works specifically on the collaboration project. But I've mostly seen this between groups in the same institution so far, not among different institutions. If your collaborators are in industry, then it will probably be easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another nice way to get such project going would be to apply for joint funding with the other research group, for example within an EU project, and set up a contract how the money from the funded project will be distributed between you and the other group. If your collaborators have good national funding sources, it may also be possible that they apply for funding with the joint project on their own, and outsource the computational part to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T09:13:44.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5048" CreationDate="2012-10-29T11:06:52.557" Score="16" ViewCount="1548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I receive requests for recommendation many times, but I have received one from a student belonging at a previous affiliation of mine, asking for a favourable letter in view of their achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the fact that if I comment on the performance of the student, it could be used against me, since it is good practice to &quot;erase&quot; all the material, marks, personal information of the students and staff relationship at a previous job. So I am hesitant to go in that direction. On the other hand, I could comment only very generally on the skills of the student, which could backfire their application to a new job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Differently from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2596/does-a-recommendation-have-to-be-from-a-professor-from-your-university&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; I am not looking for a recommendation, but giving one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T14:57:59.050" Title="Should I write a recommendation letter for a student at a previous job/institution?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5047" CreationDate="2012-10-29T11:21:24.760" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you change job, you don’t erase your memory (well, not in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; jobs), nor do you all your responsibilities related to this previous job vanish. It is true that leaving a position creates certain obligations in the data you can retain, and how you can use non-publicly available information pertaining to your older institution. However, in the particular case of a reference letter, I don't think it should cause trouble. Moreover, reference letters are confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I'd go further than saying it should not be a problem. In fact, I think &lt;strong&gt;if you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; honestly write him a good recommendation letter, it is part of your responsibility to do it&lt;/strong&gt;. This responsibility is not to your former institution, but to the student and the academic system as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T14:57:59.050" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T14:57:59.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5047" CreationDate="2012-10-29T12:40:56.023" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to ask the student to send you any material that you need for writing your reference, for example grade sheets and a CV. Bringing in your personal experiences with the student in addition shouldn't be a problem at all. After writing the reference letter, you should erase all confidential material that the student sent you... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T12:40:56.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5053" CreationDate="2012-10-29T15:17:54.447" Score="31" ViewCount="2498" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I came across a problem, say in graph theory, that I need to solve for my application, or a problem that I just created out of the blue. I find that it is not a standard problem by any means. Also, it may not have many applications. I then solve this problem with some algorithm. The algorithm is non-trivial. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to publish such algorithms?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it even make sense to publish it? Since it may not even have any applications. And if it did, it is likely that other people have solved the same problem for their respective applications without ever publishing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry if such speculative questions should not be asked here, but I was curious. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3959" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T16:19:52.510" Title="Publishing an algorithm that may not have many applications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-10-29T15:59:38.127" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't answer (1), but regarding (2), I definitely recommend &lt;strong&gt;publish&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would venture that any individual academic is a moderate-to-poor judge of how useful their own research is in practice. While your situation may seem very specific, there may be more general applications that are not immediately apparent to you. Additionally, there's a non-trivial likelihood that someone else will encounter the same problem that you're currently trying to solve, in which case your work will be more useful. Just because you don't think someone will need it doesn't mean no one will :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:59:38.127" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-10-29T16:42:17.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely consider publishing the algorithm, but not before you could say something more than merely a pseudocode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should start with a proper literature survey of relevant journals to check if the problem has &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; not been tackled elsewhere, even under a different avatar. If that is done, you could try building value to your algorithm by checking its complexity or by considering variants that could speed it up at the cost of some efficiency, maybe. You could then think about extensive simulations which could test and validate your algorithm. Finally you could conclude by thinking up some practical applications where it could be relevant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The applications part sometimes may not be present, but it is perfectly acceptable for a paper to extend the theory alone, leaving it for future researchers to develop it appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T16:42:17.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-10-29T17:26:23.070" Score="29" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to publish such algorithms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not only possible, it's &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more common than the alternative.  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most&lt;/em&gt; algorithms papers do not have real applications.&lt;/strong&gt;  The vast majority are &lt;em&gt;motivated&lt;/em&gt; by applications, but there are usually several layers of abstraction and/or simplification between the problem actually solved and the motivating application.  But even this &quot;motivation&quot; is often post-hoc rationalization, added by the authors to help draw the reader into their paper.  Most people who study algorithms do it primarily because algorithms are &lt;em&gt;cool&lt;/em&gt;, not primarily because they're &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it even make sense to publish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, sure!  Of course, to be publishable, your algorithm needs to be both novel and interesting, not just to you, but to the algorithms community as a whole.  You need to be &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; that your problem hasn't been solved before, and in particular that your algorithm wasn't already discovered and published by someone else.  You also need to &lt;strong&gt;sell&lt;/strong&gt; the problem, the algorithm, or both; it's not enough for your algorithm to be &quot;non-trivial&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;strongly&lt;/strong&gt; recommend running your algorithm past a local algorithms expert, if possible.  They may recognize your problem or your technique under a different guise.  At a minimum, they should be able to help you start the necessary literature search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T17:26:23.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-10-29T21:57:06.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it depends on the &lt;strong&gt;computational complexity&lt;/strong&gt; you get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A naive implementation can always be made for any algorithm, but an algorithm with an efficient (or at least better-than-naive) complexity is always interesting, no matter if the problem it solves is very specific or not: a lot of algorithms are very specific, and generally the most efficient are very VERY specific, sometimes working for degenerate cases that nearly never happens in real life. Later on, somebody else can always enhance your algorithm,  generalize it to other cases or build up on it to solve other related problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my rule of thumb based on what I have read from algorithmics litterature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you can make an algorithm that solves a problem,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the complexity is better than naive implementation (and, if you're not the first to solve this problem, possibly better than any other algorithm for the same problem under the same conditions),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and you can &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; it (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory#Best.2C_worst_and_average_case_complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computational complexity theory&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go ahead and publish it, for example on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://vixra.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vixra.org&lt;/a&gt; which are free scientific papers pre-publishing services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3971" LastEditorUserId="3971" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T16:19:52.510" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T16:19:52.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-10-29T21:59:40.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should publish it. History has shown that articles that have no real-life application at the time of their publication can have a real-world application identified in the indeterminate future. A good example is the prefix/postfix arithmetic operation format. When this was created, computers did not even exist (1920s), but 30 years later it was used by Djikstra and others for efficient in-memory representation of arithmetic operations in computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I repeat, do publish. Maybe someone uses it after you and I are dead, but it will still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3972" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T00:05:44.120" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T00:05:44.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5030" CreationDate="2012-10-29T22:18:52.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most schools are unknown schools; there are just too many for the admissions committee members to have an idea of the quality of all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the standard approach is to de-emphasize the GPA and make the decision based more strongly upon the other parts of the application.  If the GPA would be troubling if it were from a good school, then it's still troubling; otherwise, it's more of a threshold (&quot;Well, that's good enough--let's look at the rest of the application.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is generic advice for all academic fields; there's nothing special about CS in this regard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T22:18:52.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2012-10-29T22:23:18.107" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a faculty member, one of the most challenging things to do is find high-quality people to work in your lab.  Faculty generally will use every trick they can to find good people, including asking friends, colleagues, talking to people at conferences, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the faculty member is more comfortable in a certain language (e.g. if they find it easier to evaluate a candidate who speaks Hungarian than English), or does not have an ethnically diverse set of colleagues/friends in their field, then you quickly get a non-diverse lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; isn't any bias or prejudice going on here; it's just terribly important to get your students right, so many people will not feel like they can go out of their way to promote diversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T22:23:18.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2012-10-29T22:24:54.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might also want to try &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkscape.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;InkScape&lt;/a&gt; for creating presentations with plug-ins, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/jessyink/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JessyInk&lt;/a&gt; or other - simply search for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&amp;amp;q=presentations%20in%20inkscape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;presentation in inkscape&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Besides that, InkScape allows you to render LaTeX math, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/LaTeX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it has the support built in in the new versions&lt;/a&gt;. This solution might sound a bit complicated at the beginning, but you'll get the power to create extremely fancy visual presentations in the style of &lt;a href=&quot;http://prezi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prezi&lt;/a&gt; but locally and you can play them in your favourite browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T22:24:54.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5067" CreationDate="2012-10-30T13:20:39.340" Score="37" ViewCount="28345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently (finally?) had some requests to write letters of recommendation for graduate students. However, it's not really clear to me how long a good letter of recommendation should be. I've seen statements that it should be one page, but many of the best letters I have seen have gone significantly longer than that (two or even two and a half pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really a limit as far as admissions committees are concerned? Or is it &quot;whatever is needed&quot; to get the point across, within reason (nobody's going to read a ten-page letter, even if it's written by Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T02:59:58.453" Title="How long should letters of recommendation for students be?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2012-10-30T13:31:31.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no standardized international exams for mathematics. Strategies for applying for a masters in Maths is no different from any other program. The best, and possibly easiest, way to enhance your chances for acceptance is to find a means to self fund. Specifics on how to tailor an application are very country and program dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:31:31.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3154" CreationDate="2012-10-30T13:34:07.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the major US founders limited their funding of junior people to US citizens/permanent residents. these same funding bodies (e.g., NIH, NSF) will happily allow PIs to hire international people on grants. Your best bet is probably to find a PI who is willing to hire you directly off a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:34:07.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3515" CreationDate="2012-10-30T13:37:28.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of no university that advises you to take a sabbatical. Lucky people have departments that allow them to take a sabbatical every once in a while. Sabbaticals don't generally result in a change in research focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are three indicators about when it is time to change research focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are bored and want to change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can no longer publish in your area and receive rejections along the lines of &quot;This is no longer a relevant area&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can no longer get funding in you area and receive rejections along the lines of &quot;This is no longer a relevant area&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:37:28.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-30T14:56:45.670" Score="16" ViewCount="3655" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend as the best way of approach principal investigators for internship/job positions? I'm undergrad, with a planned graduation this winter and I want to get some experience before grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I try 'cold' messaging? I want to go abroad and I'm not well networked there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've been on exchange and performed rather well. Can I use this experience to my benefit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Somewhat less important) Ideally I'm looking for research experience in Computational Neuroscience. I already have some research experience, I've done graduate work and I majored in cognitive science and mathematics &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; I come from a Liberal Arts &amp;amp; Sciences college. Will my LAS background be seen as a disadvantage?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T16:21:31.297" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T01:45:45.037" Title="How to approach principal investigators for internship/job positions" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5065" CreationDate="2012-10-30T15:03:57.640" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The absolute best way to approach someone to work in his group is to &lt;strong&gt;be recommended by another researcher in his field&lt;/strong&gt;, preferably someone he has heard off previously. So, either a big name or someone with close or overlapping research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would advise you to approach some of the professors in the field you are interested in, at your current institution, and ask them if they know a research group or a professor meeting your criteria. Try to be flexible when you discuss possible names/places with them, to gather a relatively large list, even if you later decide against some of these names. Once you have decided on a few names, either you can get your professors to contact them for you or, barring that, you can contact the abroad PI and mention your shared acquaintance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T15:03:57.640" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2012-10-30T16:00:02.970" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that this depends on the field.  In mathematics in the U.S., one factor is your relationship with the student.  If you are the Ph.D. advisor or a close mentor, then the letter should be at least two pages long (maybe rounding up a little) or it risks looking unsupportive, and three or four pages is not uncommon.  For other letter writers, I'd recommend at least a page, and good letters are often two pages or longer.  Of course these aren't absolute rules, and it's possible to write a great letter that's shorter, but it's a little risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the length is to give a chance to discuss the student's work (you can explain what they did, what some of the background and context is, why it's exciting, why the student's contributions are impressive, etc.).  You can easily fill most of a page with generalities about other things - what your relationship with the student is, what your general opinion is, a paragraph about teaching and communication skills, etc.  It's hard to cover this and say much about the student's work within one page, so a one-page letter sometimes suggests that either the recommender doesn't know the student very well or they don't have much to say about the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I'd say that whatever is needed is OK.  The worst case scenario is that the committee will start skimming partway through, but that's not a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T16:00:02.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5065" CreationDate="2012-10-30T17:36:36.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding (1), the answer is if you're &quot;not well networked&quot;, you'll have to find someone who is. I would try the following, in order of potential usefulness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask professors in your department to introduce you to other researchers you want to work with. They may be familiar with other researchers in your field and may be a good source of contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speak with any other faculty you think may be able to help you, outside of your department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your department's administrators and see whether they can help you find an internship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to contact students in the department you wish to intern and see whether they can help you get in touch with an advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding (2), it likely won't have much of an effect. Once you've actually performed research, the quality of your research output is primarily what's used to gauge your usefulness and potential. University and grades are a good proxy before then, but they're only a proxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T17:36:36.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5029" CreationDate="2012-10-30T20:43:36.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CPA has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpa.ca/students/resources/canadianuniversities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of all accredit universities and departments. The list is of a size that you should be able to check what the online offerings are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T13:12:09.573" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:12:09.573" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5029" CreationDate="2012-10-30T23:39:14.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The University of London has a distance learning programme. You will basically sit the same exam as an internal student at the respective constituent college would sit, and this will be conducted at some GRE / GMAT etc. facilities to guarantee proper exam conditions. In the end you will get a University of London degree just like any other internal student would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/search/?solrsort=sort_title%20asc&amp;amp;filters=%20tid%3A557&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of London International Programmes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accreditation should hardly be a problem in the case of the University of London I would think as it's one of the most prestigious UK institutions with members such as University College, the London School of Economics and King's College London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T13:33:13.283" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:33:13.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5065" CreationDate="2012-10-31T01:45:45.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who has done exactly what you're looking for (an international PI hiring an undergrad as an intern), I can tell you that the circumstances are pretty unique, and it's not an easy road, unless you follow eykanal's or F'x's recommendations, and get a referral from someone who's worked with you and who can vouch for you to the person you want to work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this personal case, the reason why I even gave this individual the time of day was that his &quot;cover letter&quot; email was compelling enough and well-researched enough to get me to take notice. I requested letters of recommendation and got good feedback on those, and had a similarly positive phone interview. More importantly, I already had a research project in mind where I could take advantage of the extra manpower, as well as the resources to commit to paying for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had any of those fallen through, I wouldn't have done it. But everything was properly aligned, and the experience has been successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T01:45:45.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3312" CreationDate="2012-10-31T05:41:55.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do realize that MOOC's provide the full syllabus of their courses, and generally give a percentile ranking of the students in comparison to students from all over the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be more skeptical about a degree/transcript from a university I have heard little about than a MOOC who's syllabus I can consider and depth which I can evaluate, in addition to the obvious motivation for learning FACT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition most MOOC's clearly mention about the amount of grades they require from the students to get a Certificate of Completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70 % was the standard for Most Coursera courses that I completed/audited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if Coursera is asked, they can provide (in the future) to employers information about how a student develops his code and how frequently he changes his code before committing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T13:58:49.980" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T13:58:49.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5074" CreationDate="2012-10-31T06:19:55.450" Score="31" ViewCount="2947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep reading European Conference on Computer Vision, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, and others, and I find so much in common in those papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, half the papers seem like: X Algorithm combined with Y algorithm tested on Z database and was better than A in this category but worse than A in that category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many top journals and top conferences with &gt; 1000 papers, in a year, in this field. In addition to this we would have to go through all the tier 2, tier 3 conferences for lack of a similar piece of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While working on organic solar cells I found the same problem. I saw 20 different papers on extracting parameters from a single-diode/double-diode/XYZ model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do we know if something relevant is already published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T15:19:42.863" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T12:42:08.533" Title="How do we know if something relevant is already published?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-10-31T08:21:52.657" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;That title summarises a large fraction of all research ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to spend a significant amount of time browsing through scientific literature. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=286&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This illustration from PhD comics&lt;/a&gt; illustrates the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MwSx7.gif&quot; alt=&quot;References from PhD Comics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My strategy is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I start with an arbitrary paper with a title that seems relevant. Let's call this paper A.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using an online service such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt; (payment or subscription required), I look for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All &lt;em&gt;references&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. papers cited by A.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All &lt;em&gt;citations&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. papers that cite A.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Both the &lt;em&gt;references&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;citations&lt;/em&gt; can be sorted by the &lt;em&gt;number of citatons&lt;/em&gt;, so you get the most highly cited papers first. Select the papers that seem relevant (at this stage, reading the abstract is usually good enough).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For all relevant papers left in step 3, repeat step 2. You should find considerable overlap already. By now, you should have already found the important papers as well as one or more review articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iterate steps 2–4 until your hard disk is full ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you iterate this process indefinitely, you will soon have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;downloaded all scientific research ever published&lt;/a&gt;. But by being selective but &lt;em&gt;not too selective&lt;/em&gt;, this process &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; lead you to any relevant publications. Even if nobody has cited the relevant publications, &lt;em&gt;the relevant publications themselves should cite other publications&lt;/em&gt;, so via step 2.1 you will still find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat here is that databases like &lt;em&gt;Scopus&lt;/em&gt; are incomplete, probably in particular when it comes to conference proceedings (in my field, those are rarely relevant). Maybe other databases work better in your field. Hopefully, there is a scientific database that is reasonably complete for relevant publications in your area of research!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T12:39:42.463" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T12:39:42.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-10-31T09:39:37.927" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gerrit has given a good summary of how to perform a bibliographic search. On this topic, I'll add two comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review articles and academic theses, when well written, are invaluable. They contain a lot of information and citations, often in a more “relaxed” format than a pure research paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to identify one or two journals/conferences that are central to your field, and a few authors that are big names: then, subscribe to their RSS feeds or set up web alerts for new publications by these teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to direct search of the literature, a good way to keep on top of the papers published in a given field is to &lt;strong&gt;attend conferences and discuss with a lot of people&lt;/strong&gt;. Poster sessions are particularly good for that. Do not hesitate to bring to the poster presenter questions such as &lt;em&gt;“so, in your opinion, what’s the biggest break among the recent literature?”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T09:39:37.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5084" CreationDate="2012-10-31T10:54:04.307" Score="13" ViewCount="1876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a somewhat new-ish member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaggle.com/&quot;&gt;Kaggle&lt;/a&gt; competitions with 1 submission. Do academics research via Kaggle challenges/competitions? If so are there any prominent names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not why? They provide well annotated training data-sets, and typically do not put any publication restrictions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps they consider such challenges trivial. Just a query on an academic's perspective on the challenges here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I've heard about Kaggle from an academic's perspective is from Graduate School Students at Stanford, who need to participate in a challenge as a part of their coursework (which is pretty cool).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="3983" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T16:20:26.147" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:32:35.547" Title="Do academicians consider Challenges on Kaggle to be research-worthy?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5076" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:01:42.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, all competitions on &lt;a href=&quot;http://kaggle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kaggle&lt;/a&gt; are on basis &amp;quot;who is the best&amp;quot;. So there is no limit on skills; and actually if for someone a problem is trivial, then one can safely claim the prize (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heritagehealthprize.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heritage Health Prize&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view it allows both to enter interesting data, compare how one's techniques compering with others and learn other approaches (usually winners disseminate their solutions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;em&gt;the only thing in the academic world which is considered to be a serious stuff&lt;/em&gt;, yes, some works end up as publications, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaggle.com/papers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic Papers - Kaggle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some competitions are research-centric (however, with no cash prizes), e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaggle.com/c/emvic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eye Movements Verification and Identification Competition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This in an official competition for BTAS 2012 (The Fifth IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems, September 23-27, Washington DC, USA) and all results will be published during that conference (and of course on this web page as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are various competitions, so I guess it's hard to make a general statement about &amp;quot;research-worthiness&amp;quot;. And for all what matters the most is the result, not its 'purity'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Out of my personal stuff:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;spam&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;I made &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kaggle.com/c/predict-closed-questions-on-stack-overflow/prospector#211&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an entry (a graph map of tags)&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kaggle.com/c/predict-closed-questions-on-stack-overflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kaggle StackExchange visualization competition&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;/spam&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm starting in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaggle.com/c/DarkWorlds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DarkWorlds&lt;/a&gt;, but more for fun and to practice machine learning techniques, as my field is neither machine learning, nor astrophysics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:32:35.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5076" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:30:45.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the other uses I've noticed (besides publishing papers on a competition itself) is academics using a competition to demonstrate the application of a particular algorithm that they have developed and published.  See Steffen Rendle's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/04/20/viva-libfm-steffen-rendle-on-how-he-won-the-grockit-challenge/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;libFM&lt;/a&gt; (Factorization Machines) winning the Grockit Challenge, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/10/31/merck-competition-results-deep-nn-and-gpus-come-out-to-play/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;winning team&lt;/a&gt; of academics in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kaggle.com/c/MerckActivity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merck Molecular Activity Challenge&lt;/a&gt; with their use of deep learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3986" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T19:28:42.943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T19:28:42.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:45:38.657" Score="11" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;The many upvots on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5074/213&quot;&gt;Gerrit's answer&lt;/a&gt; show how the majority of researches currently does search, filter, read scientific journals and books, as &lt;strong&gt;the best way, a context-sensitive search&lt;/strong&gt;(X Algorithm near to Y algorithm near to Z database) is not available in scientific search engines to my knowledge? A lot of time has to be wasted for filtering out uninteresting content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An google WEB search example would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;etching AROUND(4) redeposition&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=30&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;q=%22etching%22%20AROUND%284%29%20%22redeposition%22&amp;amp;oq=%22etching%22%20AROUND%284%29%20%22redeposition%22&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.12...0.0.0.4864077.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les;..0.0...1c.D83Cj9Vb008&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Search hits&lt;/a&gt; will only show sites where &lt;em&gt;etching&lt;/em&gt; is separated from &lt;em&gt;redeposition&lt;/em&gt; by not more than 4 other words between those two. While many research papers often contain many keywords in intro and abstract of a paper (for retelling recent history in a field), which makes finding papers in a special context impossible (measuring effect X with method Y on material Z), in principle the AROUND(x) operator gives you this power back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, google SCHOLAR hasn't implemented the &lt;a href=&quot;http://googlesystem.blogspot.in/2010/12/googles-around-operator.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AROUND&lt;/a&gt; operator, therefore I currently use it sometimes in google WEB search when searching papers (unfortunately only titles and abstracts are indexed by Google, but main body content isn't searchable) in a very specific context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really wondering if there are secret hacks for free (google scholar, scirus...) and commercial (ISI, scopus) search engines giving you the power of context-sensitive search, as it would make a lot of reading, searching, filtering, rating, sharing unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current way to solve this is downloading many highly-cited papers (withoud reading) as gerrit's answer shows and indexing it with my own desktop search engine (Copernic desktop search software) which has a similar operator. It really ticks me off, that a search technology that is available for years is not brought to the place where it would be most useful?! Maybe we should similar to thecostofknowledge just start to build our own search engines? There are some business reasons (traffic, downloads,..) that make the non-implementation of this operator in commercial search engines very reasonable to me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, am I missing some secret hacks or search engines that are near to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_search_%28text%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;context-sensitive/semantic&lt;/a&gt; search?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T22:10:07.873" Title="Are there hacks or smaller scientific search engines offering you context-sensitive/semantic search?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5089" CreationDate="2012-10-31T21:20:54.747" Score="6" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/loose-lips-sink-paper-on-companys-experimental-pain-drug/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent entry on the &lt;em&gt;Retraction Watch&lt;/em&gt; blog&lt;/a&gt; (“Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process”) highlights the retraction of an article in &lt;em&gt;the Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.4196/kjpp.2012.16.5.367&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retraction notice&lt;/a&gt; has the following wording:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We regret to inform that the published paper included a few parts that disclosed confidential information which should have been protected under patent law. We admit that the request for retraction is due to the indiscretion of the authors, and confirmed that editorial committee of KJPP have not conducted any fault in publishing the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as with all retracted papers, the paper is still &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.4196/kjpp.2012.16.4.237&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;available online&lt;/a&gt;; even if it weren't, it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; available for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given those facts, &lt;strong&gt;what purpose(s) does the retraction serve?&lt;/strong&gt; The confidential information was published, and you can't get the cat back into the bag once it's out. This indicates an ethical failure of the authors, but in that particular case isn't that something they should sort out with their employer and the financial sponsor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It beats me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T22:49:34.770" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T22:49:34.770" Title="Why retract a paper for intellectual property protection?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-31T22:22:16.007" Score="20" ViewCount="6565" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just entered a MS in Computer Science in a mid tier state school.  I'm interested in taking things to the next level, but I just turned 30.  By the time I do the math and everything, I'll probably be 34 before applying.  Is that too old?  Does that essentially eliminate me from top programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3990" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T08:04:40.877" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T10:16:31.603" Title="How important is age in CS PhD admissions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5082" CreationDate="2012-11-01T01:55:47.367" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Age is simply not a factor in PhD admissions in computer science, at least in North America.  As Zenon says, age discrimination is illegal here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;being out from school for a significant period of time&lt;/em&gt; (say, more than five years) is a potential hurdle for PhD admissions, at least in my department.  We typically recommend that those students pursue a MS degree first, to refresh their academic background.  But since you're in an MS program now, that shouldn't be a issue for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T01:55:47.367" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5076" CreationDate="2012-11-01T02:07:42.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason &quot;Academics&quot; wouldn't browse Kaggle to search for research problems is that most academics already have a field of interest, and aren't interested in doing data science research for the sake of figuring out some random problem defined by whoever decided to post the contest. Even if an algorithms researcher is looking to test out a particular technique that he just devised, he would probably first apply the technique to whatever dataset he was using originally before randomly testing it out on a dataset available on Kaggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=public+data+sets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hundreds of publicly available data sets to test on&lt;/a&gt;; if anything, the data available in Kaggle competitions is probably poor relative to the richness in those data sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T02:07:42.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-01T03:01:38.990" Score="9" ViewCount="996" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no choice but to take courses I've already learnt in college.&#xA;So is it a good idea to overlearn? &#xA;Would overlearning help me to get into graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways for me to spend time:&#xA;research, gpa, heavy courseload, or &lt;strong&gt;studying stuff beyond my current syllabus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my course plan, I'm supposed to start learning Multivariable Calculus in about 5 months and Linear algebra in about 11 months from now. In between now and then is just some humanities courses and a bunch of Physics/Math courses I've already learnt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How important is a high GPA and to get into a good graduate school?&#xA;And why is it important to get into a good graduate school? &#xA;note: I'm a Physics major...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3992" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T09:59:13.780" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T19:59:30.607" Title="Overlearn in undergraduate College - good or bad idea?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5088" CreationDate="2012-11-01T03:50:37.267" Score="27" ViewCount="4902" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine who is from Japan told me that his professor in USA puts the feet up while talking to him. He was saying that he felt very bad with that. Is this acceptable culture in USA academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T21:15:27.120" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T21:30:40.963" Title="How to respond to the teacher who puts the feet up while talking to student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5085" CreationDate="2012-11-01T03:59:14.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing about GPA, is that if you want to get into a good Grad School, is one of the few things that basically distinguishes you from your peers (which percentage are you in)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a known American School, having a good GPA is extremely important then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't you have the possibility to take those courses before, I'm not sure about the American System, in countries like Japan, you can actually take the courses in whatever order you think fits you the most (given certain serialization)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also can recommend you studying those topics ahead of time, so when you take those courses, you can ace them, and devote your time to other extracurricular stuff that might pump up your application to a grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many grad schools love it when you have published work before, so having a couple of papers might help you, and you can get this papers from your extra time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T03:59:14.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5086" CreationDate="2012-11-01T05:07:45.757" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done my PhD in Japan, and have had much contact with professors in America and Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academic relationship and work culture in both countries are very different. In America it is generally not regarded as bad when someone puts their feet on the table while talking to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had bosses and advisors in the US who did this. However, in Japan, the advisor-student relationship is more respectful and professional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to tell you that you should ask the professor to refrain from putting their feet on the table, but if they do it in their office, it is pretty much up to them. Since the office is the professor's space, I do not think it is your friend's business to ask them not to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T14:25:31.917" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T14:25:31.917" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5081" CreationDate="2012-11-01T09:29:15.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on an understanding of UK patent law. The UK Patents Act 1977 is based on a &quot;first-to-file&quot; patent system. This means, in part, that an application for a patent may only be validly made if that invention was not part of the state-of-the-art at the time of filing. State-of-the-art includes any information made available to the public as of the priority date of the application, which is usually the date of filing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If confidential information regarding an invention is made available to the public without the consent of the inventor, before a patent for the application is filed for it, then under UK law the inventor may still make an application for a patent without the prior disclosure - the unauthorised release of confidential information - rendering the application invalid for lack of novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, if the journal published the confidential information before the inventors/authors authorised the release of the information - presumably before a patent was filed for the subject matter of the paper - then the retraction of the paper may indicate that the journal is acknowledging that they released the information inproperly, i.e. before an agreed embargo date set by the authors. This may add weight to the inventors' argument that the prior release of the confidential information was made without the consent of the authors and that the authors, as inventors, may still validly apply for a patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a patent lawyer. This is not patent advice. My comment is written from a UK patent law perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T09:29:15.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-01T12:58:00.640" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to notify to the graduate school when taking the free online courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T18:40:39.163" Title="Can international graduate student take the free online courses offered in Coursera?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5093" CreationDate="2012-11-01T13:05:33.387" Score="2" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know whether the international graduate student can also take the exam of professional courses such as CPA,or CFA?Are there any legal restrictions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T17:46:21.707" Title="Is it possible for the international graduate student to take the exam of professional courses?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5090" CreationDate="2012-11-01T15:45:50.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, it's better to check directly with your advisor, who is in the best situation to answer exactly your question. That being said, as Zenon said, you should be able to do pretty much what you want during your free time, including taking online courses. However, if you take so many classes that it prevents you to work normally for your grad school, then it might be a problem. Furthermore, if you expect the online courses you take to count for your graduate program (i.e., to replace other courses you would normally have to take at your school), then only your advisor can answer that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T15:45:50.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5091" CreationDate="2012-11-01T17:46:21.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;if you are in Japan, there are many people that go to Guam to take the CPA. Essentially anybody can do it, but if you graduate from an American University, there are some modules that you do not need to take, pretty much like the Japanese CPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T17:46:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5090" CreationDate="2012-11-01T17:47:43.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think you have to tell your advisor, as long as it does not interfere with your work, you should be free to do whatever you like. Of course you cannot stop doing your mandatory work in sake of the courses, but I do not see a good reason to notify anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always tell your labmates, so you can take the course together and get more out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T17:47:43.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:42:40.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your field and the admission committee. Some fields like mature candidate with lots of industry experience as they can be productive at lab work etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3996" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T18:42:40.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:13:27.890" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/PGF/TikZ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TikZ&lt;/a&gt; was mentioned already, but I think it deserve its own answer. It is different from &lt;code&gt;Omnigraffle&lt;/code&gt; just like &lt;code&gt;TeX&lt;/code&gt; is different from &lt;code&gt;Word&lt;/code&gt;. But, if you're up for the effort, you'll enjoy the freedom of producing extremely high quality figures!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, using &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt; for &quot;heavy&quot; diagrams can lead to lengthy compilations, but this can be solved using the &lt;code&gt;externalize&lt;/code&gt; library of &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt;, or the &lt;code&gt;Standalone&lt;/code&gt; class. See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/142479/412&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; possible approach using &lt;code&gt;make&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt; is not at all WYSIWYG, there are several editors, that enable the use to draw &quot;by hand&quot; the diagram and export it to a &lt;code&gt;Tikz&lt;/code&gt; snippet. Personally, I don't have experience with this kind of combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage of &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt;, that as it is somewhat a programing language (after all &lt;code&gt;TeX&lt;/code&gt; is turing-complete) you can program your diagram and use external data sources and visualize them. To that end, you can use a combination of &lt;code&gt;TeX&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;lua&lt;/code&gt; or other languages of your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and most important; &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt; provides an amazing live community which can help you with everything related to it. A perfect starting point would be the &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;TeX.se&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: You can also have a look at &lt;code&gt;pstricks&lt;/code&gt;. It implements a similar spirit like &lt;code&gt;TikZ&lt;/code&gt; but... Well, I'm not using it so I cannot say much. I can say, that I saw amazing outputs of &lt;code&gt;pstricks&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T13:52:50.863" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5085" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:48:40.160" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; GPA is important; having a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; GPA is not.  Assuming your GPA stays above a certain threshold (about 3.5), other factors like research experience are significantly more important, at least for admission to the best departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, if you get a C in a distribution class because you spent &quot;too much&quot; time on that experiment you later published, nobody will even notice the C on your transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T19:48:40.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5103" CreationDate="2012-11-01T20:30:52.017" Score="5" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;The eigenfactor is offered by ISI Web of Knowledge as an alternative journal score compared to the impact factor. It is explained on &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/help/h_eigenfact.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their site&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Eigenfactor Score calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals.  References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this explanation, I am not sure whether the eigenfactor depends on the total number of articles that a journal publishes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T08:34:44.447" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T08:34:44.447" Title="Does the eigenfactor ranking depend on number of articles in a journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-11-01T21:20:39.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenfactor&quot;&gt;Wikipedia’s article&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eigenfactor.org&quot;&gt;eigenfactor.org ranking of journals&lt;/a&gt; answers your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Eigenfactor score is intended to measure the importance of a journal to the scientific community, by considering the origin of the incoming citations, and is thought to reflect how frequently an average researcher would access content from that journal. However, &lt;strong&gt;the Eigenfactor score is influenced by the size of the journal&lt;/strong&gt;, so that the score doubles when the journal doubles in size (measured as published articles per year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a simple example: the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Physical Chemistry B&lt;/em&gt; is the highest-ranked journal in physical chemistry by this criterion… in good part because it carries the largest number of articles. It is a good journal, but under all other metrics it is not at the very top of its field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T21:20:39.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T03:33:39.757" Score="4" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love travelling and I was thinking of getting my Master’s degree in mathematics abroad (I got my bachelors in the USA). I know that I can get funding if I go to China for my master’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be viewed negatively if I try to apply for a PhD in the United States?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3999" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T10:21:35.100" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T10:21:35.100" Title="Does having a masters degree from a Chinese university have negative view for a PhD applicant in the United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;china&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5107" CreationDate="2012-11-02T05:23:08.687" Score="7" ViewCount="4098" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do professors recommend their students on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt;? If they do recommend, isn't it considered a violation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors are typically required to recommend without fear or inhibition towards the student who he is recommending. A professor will be much more candid with his recommendation when his student waives his rights to see his recommendation. In that case recommendations on LinkedIn are probably a waste for academia right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would your opinion be on taking a letter of recommendation from a professor who has already recommended you on LinkedIn then? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Third, the letter of recommendation, when completed, becomes an&#xA;  education record.  Both the paper copy and e-file are education&#xA;  records… and it makes no difference where they are filed.  Since FERPA&#xA;  grants the student the right to inspect any education record, there is&#xA;  also an unwritten obligation to notify the writer of this right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this latter instance, the placement office, or student, should&#xA;  initially provide each writer with the knowledge that the student has&#xA;  either waived, or not waived, his right to subsequently review the&#xA;  letter.  This knowledge may influence what the writer includes in the&#xA;  letter.  It may persuade the person to whom a reference request was&#xA;  made to politely decline to write the letter.  Unfortunately, letter&#xA;  writers do not have the same rights that students have in the&#xA;  letter-writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore , students generally waive their rights to view their letters of recommendation. Now, when you post a recommendation on LinkedIn, it will be displayed(provided the student accepts the recommendation). This might actually influence the writer of the letter to write a more positive recommendation than intended for the the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, an influenced letter is probably a waste for academia right? Or for any kind of work at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if a professor is candid in his LinkedIn recommendation and mentions the student's performance objectively(say perhaps about the student's grades) then it does become a violation of FERPA right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I'd like to ask Professors in Academia now: If a student asks for a LinkedIn Recommendation , will it hold any value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T21:34:31.077" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T21:34:31.077" Title="Do professors recommend their students on LinkedIn?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5106" CreationDate="2012-11-02T07:27:35.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have, in the past, recommended students on LinkedIn, when requested by them. This applies, in particular, to PhD students shortly before or after their defense, who were looking for a position outside academia and in the private sector. In chemical engineering, the situation of that academics tend not to use LinkedIn for looking up/assessing prospective hires, while it is widely used outside academia (and I believe this is true of other fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, I maintain a small presence on LinkedIn myself, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is one of the ways I can help (by networking and recommendations) my former students find a job, which is part of a PhD adviser’s responsibilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I might want a job outside academia at some point in my career, too!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding FERPA compliance, I am not US-based so I have little knowledge about it. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capd.k-state.edu/about/policies/ferpa-compliance-for-recommendation-letter-writers&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; on “FERPA Compliance [for] Recommendation Letter Writers” implies that compliance mostly puts constraints on the content of the letter (which should not include “education records”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T07:27:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5120" CreationDate="2012-11-02T10:22:19.190" Score="13" ViewCount="3962" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exist review journals that every now and then publish a thematic issue on a given topic. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/chreay/thematic-issues/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chemical Reviews&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; does so: one thematic issue (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/toc/chreay/110/7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;) includes an editorial and a number of invited review on the main topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing the introduction of a research paper, one can start by summing up the recent developments in the field, and then explain the reasoning behind the paper being written (&lt;em&gt;“People have looked at application of molecules X and Y to reactions A, B and C, but so far noöne has evidenced any benefit of using them for reaction D. We here show that they lead to a spectacular 270% improvement over current yields”&lt;/em&gt;). When writing the broader part of the introduction, one might be tempted to include many references to recent reviews on the topic. However, when many reviews come from the same thematic issue of a journal, it becomes a bit ridiculous. So…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it an accepted practice to include a reference to an entire issue of a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Special issue of &lt;em&gt;Chem. Rev.&lt;/em&gt; on “Giant molecules for catalysis”, &lt;strong&gt;2010&lt;/strong&gt;, issue 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, is it adequate to cite the editorial of the thematic issue? Or do individual papers need to be cited, at the risk of making a long string of citations? Like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lots of research has focused on applications of these molecules to A[1], B[2], C[3], D[4], E[5] and F[6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where refs. 1-6 are all to sequential papers in the same issue of the same journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T23:03:36.800" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T02:12:42.320" Title="Is it accepted to cite an entire issue of a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5110" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-11-02T10:23:09.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3628/who-can-write-a-review-article&quot;&gt;Who can write a 'Review Article'?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27348/are-review-articles-the-result-of-original-observations&quot;&gt;Are review articles the result of original observations?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:45:43.550" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:45:43.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5111" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-11-02T10:23:09.517" Score="0" Body="&quot;Survey&quot; or &quot;review&quot; articles are academic publications that organize and summarize the current state of research on a given topic in a novel way that integrates and adds understanding to work in the field. For questions related to the peer-review process, use the 'peer-review' tag instead." OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:45:43.550" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:45:43.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5119" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:35:55.897" Score="14" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for grad school this year and I am considering sending an email to ask a professor to write me a reference. He had previously agreed to write me a letter because I took one of his advanced courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if it'd be okay for me to offer to provide a template to him for the letter. The reason I want to do this is I will be applying for a PhD in a different, though quite related, field, and I want to make sure that he knows what the advisory committee will be specifically looking for in his letter, and make sure that his letter corresponds well with my statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an acceptable practice between professors and students? Or would they consider it offending since he is supposed to provide his independent opinion? And if it is okay, how can I offer it in an appropriate way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="676" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:43:13.707" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:43:13.707" Title="Would it be okay to provide a template when asking reference?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:44:00.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citations along the lines of see X for a review are meaningless in my opinion and should be avoided. I believe, you should only be citing novel and specific findings. I would even steer away from citing the individual articles in a special issue because they tend to rehash old material and you are better off citing the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T12:44:00.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:47:21.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No and yes. I would talk to him and ask what he wants. If he wants a template, then you should provide one. If he wants a bulleted list, give him that. If he wants a draft letter, go with that. Giving him unsolicited information would be frowned upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T12:47:21.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5082" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:51:37.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Age is not a PhD admission facor in the continental Europe, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selection is based on titles, publications, curriculum vitae and generally &lt;em&gt;on what you've done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T12:51:37.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:55:37.360" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would be somewhat offended if a student gave me a template for a letter, and I wouldn't use it.  (Unless I had asked for one, which personally I would not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is perfectly appropriate to say, &quot;I believe that the committee will probably be interested in my ability to dangle participles and reticulate splines; it would help if your letter could address this.&quot;  It is also fine to include a list or resume of your other activities that he may not be aware of, but leave it up to him how to use this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that your professor has written letters for students in this different field before and already knows what is expected.  Also, for letters which are submitted online, the writer normally gets a message from the requesting institution explaining what issues should be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T12:55:37.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2012-11-02T13:20:10.233" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems tempting to cite only the issue of a journal when it contains several articles that you want to refer to from your introduction. Especially so if it is a special issue directly related to your paper. As to your question whether it is an accepted practice, I haven't seen so, but it could depend on the field of research of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would advise against using such citations for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should always try to cite as specific as possible. If you support a stated fact with a citation, the reader should be directed to this fact as directly as possible. In your example of the giant molecules, a reader may be more interested in application A than in giant molecules in general, so it will be helpful if you cite more specifically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations are the basis for many measures of academic impact, and I doubt that citations to journal issues are counted in these measures. The authors of the articles that you intend to cite with a reference to a whole journal issue will certainly not be pleased with this, because you restrain a source of academic reputation for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T13:20:10.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5082" CreationDate="2012-11-02T14:12:14.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field, which is not computer science, we get a number of clinicians who are a few years away from retirement applying for PhDs. NIH institutional training grants track students for a number of years post graduation so accepting people who will retire soon after graduation is bad. Of course these older applicants are never rejected based on age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem arises more for applicants that are nearer 50 than 30 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T14:12:14.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-11-02T14:19:37.100" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will prefer to give template. For higher research oriented studies the reference letter must contain the related information, and each institution has its own taste, so to create more chances of getting admission you need to give the template to the one who is referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4008" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T14:26:43.933" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T14:26:43.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5104" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:38:06.260" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience with Asian Universities, particularly Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, take into account that having a Masters might boost a bit your application to PhD a bit, as long as you publish something over there. Also, if the profesor you are going with is unknown, it might not help you at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, many people think that studying abroad and traveling are similar things, when they are really not. You'll have to deal with the hardships of asian Academic culture, which are very different from the American ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also have to deal with the hardships of life, be sure to know the language at least to communicate basic thoughts and deal with the fact that you might not like food there (Protip: Chinese American Food is somewhat different of real Chinese Food)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put more, but I would be edging on ranting, which I'm probably already are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T17:27:13.043" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T17:27:13.043" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5082" CreationDate="2012-11-02T16:44:00.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from admission (which normally should not be related to age), there is something that's related to your question. I'm going to generalize and say that the older one is, the more that person will have financial restraints tied to lifestyle. One tends to be married, to have children, to have a mortgage, to have debts, etc. You may not agree with this generalization, but many students seeking PhDs at my university fall into this category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, the problem is more about funding requirements related to lifestyle. Funding opportunities are always limited (regardless of one's age), but it might be harder for someone who has financial obligations to manage with the limited funding for a PhD. I know of several cases of PhD candidates who never started, or (worse) didn't finish because the funding was too limited for them as spouses, parents, homeowners, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T16:44:00.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5139" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:23:00.740" Score="14" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of working toward a PhD came to me very late in my Master's program. As such, my primary professors and adviser didn't necessarily coach me into PhD preparation and may have even seen me as somewhat of a black sheep in the academic community. I don't doubt that they would believe in my ability to research, but rather that it'd be somewhat of a surprise that this was an area of interest for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of that, while I believe that they could give me a good reference, I don't believe it would be the &quot;great&quot; reference that would be characteristic of this internationally-recognized expert in their field. With this in mind, are there things that I can do to make myself a more appealing candidate to a PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1107" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T16:43:31.633" Title="In the absence of strong references, on which things should I focus so that I can gain access to a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5130" CreationDate="2012-11-02T21:16:16.827" Score="9" ViewCount="5443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to reference the constitution of Montenegro in an essay. I have set it in the text as (ME Const. 2§4) etc., but how do I reference it fully, at the end of my essay, in a bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4012" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T21:36:27.497" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T21:40:46.853" Title="How do I reference a constitution?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5129" CreationDate="2012-11-02T21:40:46.853" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing: the exact format will depend on the styleguide your are following. However, apart from variations in the exact formatting, just refer to it exactly as you do. The US constitution, for example, would be cited &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/06/how-to-cite-the-us-constitution-in-apa-style.html&quot;&gt;in APA style as one of the following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;U.S. Const. art. I, § 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;U.S. Const. amend. XIX.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;depending on whether you cite an article from the original constitution, or a (possibly since-repealed) amendment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Somewhat tongue-in-cheek edit:&lt;/em&gt; I could not find a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for the constitution of Montenegro (nor for the US constitution, for that matter). If you find one, you might want to include it in your citation (in the form of a hyperlink). If it does not exist, you may petition the Montenegrin government to create one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T21:40:46.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5143" CreationDate="2012-11-03T07:54:07.330" Score="20" ViewCount="739" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/data-fabrication-fells-muscle-physiology-paper/&quot;&gt;now&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/30/us/falsified-data-found-in-gene-studies.html&quot;&gt;then&lt;/a&gt;, you hear stories of data being fabricated by a graduate student (or post-doc) who felt the pressure to publish groundbreaking results was too much. This unethical behavior makes me wonder: What can a PhD advisor (or group leader, or project principal investigator) actually do to avoid that in her own group? What are her ethical duties in ensuring that all published data is genuine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: I'm not singling out graduate students or post-docs because I think they are statistically responsible for more ethical misconducts than others… only because it gives a good case of when the PI would have only indirect access to the data (meaning: she didn't actually do the experiments herself, but was only presented the data by others in her group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T05:12:18.163" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T05:12:18.163" Title="What is the principal investigator’s responsibility regarding data authenticity?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5131" CreationDate="2012-11-03T09:32:43.843" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've talked about this at the institute where I'm doing my PhD, and the best solution seemed the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, make a central database for all raw data, that can be accessed per request. Upload/copy data to it as soon as it's collected, including noisy data that might not enter the final analysis. This ensures that any excluded data has to be properly justified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, let everybody know that every so often a random dataset will be pulled out and some basic checks run on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, run those basic checks. For this you need someone with knowledge of statistics who can tell you what is appropriate for your type of data. A lot of basic aspects of normal data are difficult to simulate without a lot of knowledge on statistics. To give an example, if you take data that have a normal distribution, split it into quintiles, then plot the mean against the variance in each quintile, they should roughly fall on an inverted U-shaped curve. I know of a case where this relationship was perfectly linear, which raised alarm bells. In any case, these checks should be simple and easy to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, decide who will do these checks, because it takes time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, make sure you have some idea of what types of mistakes are honest mistakes, and what constitutes actual fraud. Make sure you discuss mechanisms of dealing with these mistakes (and fraud) beforehand, i.e. don't leave this decision in the hands of the supervisor at the moment it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I guess the main question was what's the PI's responsibility. My reply reflects my opinion that the responsibility should be more institutionalized, and not left just to the PI. On the other hand, the PI could run some of these steps internally if needed / if there is no other help available. But then it might be too elaborate, so perhaps you will get some better answers from other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T19:12:45.960" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T19:12:45.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5134" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-03T09:58:48.397" Score="8" ViewCount="2087" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the advice of a senior colleague, I decided that I do not want to publish the paper anymore and with that journal. I wrote the editor several times; he has received the emails, but refuses to reply. I know he gets the emails because if its on other matters he has replied but not on the paper. I am ready to forfeit the processing fee I gave them but they refuse to reply and have already published the abstract of the paper to their site but not the full paper. Is legal action an option and do I have the right to sue? What are the guidelines in matters like these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T19:48:42.750" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:48:42.750" Title="How do I withdraw a paper from a journal after it was accepted but before it was fully published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-11-03T10:17:32.380" Score="11" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check out the journal’s policy. While they do not always address the issue of what stages a paper can be withdrawn, you can find some indirect information. For example, if the policy says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manuscripts for which page proofs are not returned in a timely manner will be withdrawn from publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(here in the case of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/jacsat/jacsat_authguide.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;JACS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; journal), then you can still withdraw the paper at the proofing stage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leave a bit more time to the editor… it's a time-consuming job, and he might just be very busy. You can send a gentle reminder. Just mind that you are the one asking for something out of the ordinary, so mind your manners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where are you at in the publication process? If you have signed the copyright transfer agreement, paid the processing fee (you mentioned one; no all journals have them) and sent back the final proofs with your corrections, you might just be &lt;strong&gt;too late&lt;/strong&gt; legally speaking. It probably doesn't hurt to ask, but you might not have legal recourses apart from retraction (and avoid that).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you say, don't ask for &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraction&quot;&gt;retraction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Retracting a paper once published is a grave decision to make, and it is not appropriate in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T10:17:32.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5127" CreationDate="2012-11-03T11:36:35.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important if you have papers published by you as one of the authors in the field you intend to run a PhD, otherwise a good academic transcript will be enough. Sometimes some Universities take PhD students that they can groom and nurture in some fields irrespective of how qualified they are or not. I encourage you to believe in yourself and try your hands on some applications. Best of Luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T11:36:35.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5131" CreationDate="2012-11-03T11:48:59.310" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a sad reality. That is why research group leaders should be so deeply involved in their post-graduate students' research that they can detect fabrication of data easily. It is unfortunate when research group leaders only sit in their room and expect the student to do everything for them and put their name for the paper. It is the duty of the leader to scrutinize and question the results and ask for repeats when necessary and go carry out a few experiments too to authenticate results before accepting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T13:17:37.443" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T13:17:37.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2999" CreationDate="2012-11-03T11:56:01.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not typically identical to MS or PhD but some level of relevant competency is expected of you before admission can be given in that field&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T13:18:47.707" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T13:18:47.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5127" CreationDate="2012-11-03T16:43:31.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD programs are looking for &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence of research potential&lt;/strong&gt;.  We'll look for that evidence in your recommendation letters (preferably from people who know the field and know what potential stars look like), in your research statement, and in your academic record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the best references you can.  You write &quot;&lt;em&gt;I don't doubt that they would believe in my ability to research&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, which is excellent.  They may also write about their surprise in your late interest, which will raise some eyebrows, but it's the truth, so you're stuck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your research statement, be sure to explain &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you're interested in a PhD, and in particular, what changed in the late stages of your MS program to spark your interest.  You need to actively pre-empt the perception that you just want to stay in school because you want to learn More Cool Stuff, or that you tried Real Work and you didn't like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to include &lt;em&gt;credible technical detail&lt;/em&gt; about your research experience and your specific research interests.  (Yes, that means you need to &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; research experience and specific research interests.)  Otherwise, readers will wonder if you know what research actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.  That naïveté might be excusable for someone with only a BS, but for an applicant with an master's degree, it's a serious red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T16:43:31.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-03T16:39:53.000" Score="5" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am basically an Electronics student - background in Computer Science (that's where I want to work). I applied for an internship in USA in a research institute where the group is focused in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Chemical Physics, Physical Chemistry, Materials Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got selected. Now, I would like to know where area could someone with CS background  would actually work on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a detailed answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="rahul" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T11:21:58.903" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T11:21:58.903" Title="Where does Computer Science background students fit in Theoretical Physics" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2012-11-03T20:56:50.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given a background in CS, that probably means you have a sophisticated view of software development—at least one that is far more advanced than the average physicist or materials scientist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you would probably find that you would be working as a programmer on a computational project: perhaps a new numerical method needs to be implemented, or the performance or functionality of the existing code base needs to be improved. Or perhaps they want somebody to help prototype new interfaces between experimental hardware and computer hardware or software? There are a lot of possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T23:08:31.973" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T23:08:31.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5131" CreationDate="2012-11-03T23:19:38.753" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PI is responsible for the output of the scientific employees under them, while they are doing work &lt;em&gt;for the PI&lt;/em&gt;. (I think it would be unfair to hold a PI responsible, for instance, for quality control on the work done by a post-doc on a paper submitted with his or her former group.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an ethics standpoint, however, the PI is responsible for encouraging an atmosphere in which errors are caught and corrected, rather than tolerated. If errors are &quot;innocent&quot; in nature, then no guilt or punishment should really follow from catching and fixing those errors. However, a PI is responsible for not sanctioning deliberate lapses. If the PI sets up a culture in which such behavior is viewed as expected or necessary, such failures do lie on the PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the PI's responsibilities extend to ensuring that the work claimed has been performed, and that the data has been correctly analyzed. Some places I've worked at have instituted &lt;em&gt;quality control&lt;/em&gt; procedures for doing so, to varying degrees of formality. While I don't think a full review of all of the data is often required in academic settings, I think most groups would benefit from &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; implementation of such measures. As Ana suggests, if you do &quot;random&quot; sampling of the work produced, then it makes it that much harder to falsify &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, since you don't know if that will be the work that will be checked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PI shouldn't be expected to fall on her sword for a single incident involving an underling. The PI could perhaps be castigated for making a poor personnel decision, but it shouldn't be a career-ender unless the PI is aware of and condones the unethical behavior. Cases such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100929/full/467516a.html&quot;&gt;Bhrigu tampering case at Michigan&lt;/a&gt;, in which a postdoc tampered with the work of a graduate student in the same group, and which led to the PI moving to another university, are unfortunate, and only serve to make things more difficult for everyone. But the aversion should not have been cast upon the PI—which seems to have happened here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T23:27:12.040" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T23:27:12.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5029" CreationDate="2012-11-03T23:52:04.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in distance education and often work with canadian researchers.  I have a very high respect for the quality of the distance offerings up north (I'm in the US).  You have good options at home.  The one that jumps out is Athabasca University.  Fully online and internationally recognized as a research institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://psych.athabascau.ca/&#xA;http://www.athabascau.ca/programs/ba4psyc/&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Public University System (APUS) has both Masters and Bachelors level programs and accepts international students. They are regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://www.ncahlc.org/&#xA;http://www.apu.apus.edu/admissions/program-requirements/psychology.htm&#xA;http://www.apu.apus.edu/admissions/general-information/international-students/&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="622" LastEditorUserId="622" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T13:51:01.283" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T13:51:01.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5152" CreationDate="2012-11-04T11:20:32.010" Score="27" ViewCount="4061" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I work from home, and for security reasons it is not possible to connect to the campus computers. I use Google Scholar for finding papers and so, but from home, most of the journals can not be accessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it there some way in which Google Scholar or another academic search engine searches only in open access journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS1: There is no way in which I can access my campus, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS2: OK, I will give more details, since it seems that PS1 is not clear enough. I am working with other collaborators that are not affiliated to any University. I could do VPN and similar but I can not pass them such information, or any other way of passwords or access to the campus, etc. We can only work with the open access papers they find. If the interesting papers are under a paywall, then they are useless for us. I hope this clarifies my questions, and thank everybody for the useful comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T12:28:23.423" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T17:41:09.057" Title="How to get academic search engines only search in open access journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-04T14:13:48.633" Score="9" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 8 years of IT experience in India, I want to do a Master of Science in the US. &#xA;Would my already long professional experience hurt my chances to find a job after the MSc? I intend to settle in the US instead of coming back to India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4019" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-04T14:34:07.523" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T22:52:56.417" Title="MSc for experienced professional?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-04T15:58:38.410" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure, whether you really meant &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_journal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;open access journals&lt;/a&gt;, because when I'm searching at home and I'm too lazy to use the VPN of our university, I'm usually interested in &lt;em&gt;publications I can access&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rely on Google Scholar alone, because I'm not sure whether they filter the results. When you study the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/advanced_search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;advanced search&lt;/a&gt; of google a bit, you'll see, that some of the switches are really nice. One really important switch is the &lt;code&gt;-filetype&lt;/code&gt; option. If you search for instance for &lt;em&gt;image segmentation&lt;/em&gt; in Google Scholar you get instantly only results with a downloadable pdf file if you use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;image segmentation filetype:pdf&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more handy becomes this approach in a two step method. As you know, when you &quot;put something in quotes&quot; in google, you search for the exact string. This can be used to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find some preview of the article you want to download. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;choose a very specific part of a sentence there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search for this part and use the &lt;code&gt;filetype&lt;/code&gt; option&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-scientific example:&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes I'm searching for piano notes of some popular songs and since everyone tries to make money with this, you often won't find a free, downloadable version. Therefore, I first search for something like &quot;sheet music evanescence my immortal&quot; and look at one of the first links, where you usually can see one sample page. Then I see, what's on the page and I use this information to adjust my search&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;My immortal&quot; &quot;I'm so tired of&quot; &quot;Slowly and freely&quot; filetype:pdf&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://sheets-piano.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Evanescence-My_Immortal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first hit&lt;/a&gt; is a high-quality pdf with all pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same approach sometimes works for scientific publications, because most scientists put their publication on their website. So while you have to pay on the journal website, you may get it for free somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4021" LastEditorUserId="4021" LastEditDate="2017-10-03T10:34:51.020" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T10:34:51.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-04T16:45:07.477" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This exact question has been asked at Webapps Stack Exchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://webapps.stackexchange.com/q/28869/22890&quot;&gt;Is there a way to configure Google Scholar to only show results where the document is freely available?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the (unaccepted) answer there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there isn't an option to restrict results like that in Google Scholar (I appreciate the idea, running into paywalls is very frustrating). I guess the argument could be made that you are limiting the articles/knowledge you could be exposed to be only looking at the free things. That and Google's recognition of what is accessible isn't 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/28897/22890&quot;&gt;over there&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:25.703" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T16:45:07.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5148" CreationDate="2012-11-04T16:48:03.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would expect that it almost certainly does not hurt your chances. Many people proceed their academic education or career after professional experience. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacemaster.eu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;our Master programme&lt;/a&gt;, this is treated as a significant plus, and I would be very surprised if companies wouldn't do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for the non-academic portion of the question (I infer you mean a job outside academia), you might want to ask at &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; and get opinions there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T17:07:09.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5079" CreationDate="2012-11-04T18:32:17.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's disappointing, but here goes: &lt;strong&gt;I am not aware of features allowing context-sensitive search in scientific search engines&lt;/strong&gt;, with two exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK45/help/WOS/ht_operators.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SAME&lt;/strong&gt; operator&lt;/a&gt;, which matches &lt;em&gt;“records where the terms separated by the operator appear in the same sentence”&lt;/em&gt;. Given that Web of Science supports a whooping number of 4 search operators (AND, OR, NOT and SAME), it is pretty safe to say this is sadly the full extent of its context-sensitive search features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cas.org/products/scifinder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SciFinder&lt;/a&gt; attributes some meaning to &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.auburn.edu/content.php?pid=150622&amp;amp;sid=1279395#4004030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prepositions&lt;/a&gt;, which have a role in &lt;strong&gt;restricting results to &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.auburn.edu/content.php?pid=150622&amp;amp;sid=1279395#4004030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;“closely associated”&lt;/a&gt; matches of operands&lt;/strong&gt;. This basically means “same sentence” (details in the linked page).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, these features are poor and we should hope for better search capabilities. At the same time, it's a start and it can be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-04T22:10:07.873" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T22:10:07.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5148" CreationDate="2012-11-04T22:52:56.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will be a very strong candidate in US provided you go to at least a reputable public university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3996" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T22:52:56.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-05T07:59:31.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no way to restrict google scholar searches to only open-access papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have several options, to ensure that you can access pay-for-access journals that your institution has subscriptions for, even when you're off-campus. This neatly short-circuits the question of having to search only open-access journals. And see also the section below on &quot;Hosting on servers other than the journal itself&quot;, which will allow you to find open-access copies of papers that are in pay-to-access journals, by looking on author's homepages and similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Shibboleth / Athens login&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The login name and password you use for your campus network, may also serve as your login and password for one of the access aggregators, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://shibboleth.net/&quot;&gt;Shibboleth&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openathens.net/&quot;&gt;Athens&lt;/a&gt;. So once you're at the online journal page of the paper you're after, look for &quot;institutional login&quot; or &quot;login&quot;, and then search for the login details of your aggregator, and then for your institution. For example, most UK universities are part of the Shibboleth network, and get access via the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/&quot;&gt;UK Access Management Federation&lt;/a&gt;. So the login route is:&#xA;    - a link called something like &lt;code&gt;institutional login&lt;/code&gt; on the journal page&#xA;    - a dropdown for UK Access Management Federation&#xA;    - a select-box to pick the specific university&#xA;    - university login and password&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Hosting on servers other than the journal itself&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've done your usual search, and got the title of a potentially-interesting paper, then you can start looking for PDFs of it. First do a plain (not scholar) google search for the title, &lt;strong&gt;in double-quotes&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;filetype:pdf&lt;/code&gt;. So if you were looking for the paper &quot;Ninja Google skills&quot;, then you'd google for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Ninja Google skills&quot; filetype:pdf&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work, check whether the paper is hosted on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the university homepages of any of the authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the preprint server at each of their universities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any subject-wide preprint archive for your subject area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or email the author on the paper who's nominated as first contact, asking them for a preprint copy of the paper. A couple of sentences about why you're interested, and how you'll use it, will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Remote access to the campus network&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people with this problem will have one or more means to access their campus network (although you do not. This answer is to help others as well as you, and their circumstances will not be identical to yours); a quick chat with one of the librarians, and someone in the university IT support team, should help clarify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;VPN into the campus network, then search; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSH into the campus network, then search; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;log in to the university library network web page, and search from there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Failing all that, get creative&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some of the following, you'll need to check your university's terms and conditions, and official guidelines, to ensure that you play within the letter and the spirit of the rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up an in-campus server process that will receive remotely-submitted requests, search for a paper, and download it, and make it available to you. You might do this via a web-page, email, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://db.tt/VlPlVmL&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share a &lt;a href=&quot;http://db.tt/VlPlVmL&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; folder or similar with colleagues, and arrange that whenever one of you is on campus, and has a spare few minutes, you'll look for new requests in the shared folder, and if you find any, you'll download the paper and pop it in the Dropbox.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your supervisor / department head (as appropriate) to mention to a very senior administrator that the University is failing its staff and postgrads in a key area, and that some form of off-site access is just part of being a university in the 21st Century.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T10:58:30.773" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T10:58:30.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-05T15:56:33.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of journal an article is published does not necessarily have anything to do with whether you can access it for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Scholar very often provides you with direct links to free PDFs of articles published in journals that charge for subscriptions&lt;/strong&gt;.  You can access those PDFs for free because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author posted a copy on his/her webpage;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author posted a copy on an institutional server; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper (or a preprint) is posted on an open-access repository such as arxiv.org.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, none of my papers are published in open-access journals.  But if you search for my papers on Google Scholar, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author%3aDI-ketcheson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first page&lt;/a&gt; has direct links to free PDFs for 6 out of 9 of the hits, and 1 of the remaining 3 is a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T17:33:27.427" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T17:33:27.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3521" CreationDate="2012-11-05T16:03:29.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;em&gt;pure&lt;/em&gt; at our university to register publications. Maybe we also use it for other purposes, but I have only been affected by the publication part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The registration of publications is a necessity, because the university uses this information to distribute money to different research groups (e.g. each year there is a bonus based on the number of published peer-reviewed articles in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recognised journal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally been assigned the task for my group to make sure all our articles were &quot;registered in &lt;em&gt;pure&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and I can say that it works reasonably well. The interface is not superb, and I wouldn't like to work with it all day, but it gets the job done. I don't know anything about the alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does also generate a fancy and completely useless person graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/THpDI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T16:03:29.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-06T02:26:21.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt; the Google search to avoid non-free journal sites using this chrome &lt;a href=&quot;http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57495383-285/block-specific-web-site-results-from-google-searches-in-chrome/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;add-on&lt;/a&gt;. May be after using for a few days, you will come across all the main non-free sites and add them to your blocklist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T02:26:21.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5165" CreationDate="2012-11-06T02:31:47.543" Score="13" ViewCount="1988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked on an interesting project as a PHD student. It was rejected from a top conference with all but 1 reviewer agreeing that it was an ok paper but not good enough for that conference, because more work was required. The other reviewer said it was in top 15% papers. Do the reviewers mean &quot;trash paper&quot; when they say &quot;ok paper&quot; ?&#xA; I don't have the time to finish it because I have switched my research area. In the project, I also collected and processed a large amount of data which would be useful for the computer vision community. Should I just put the paper and associated data/code on my website? Or should I put it on arxiv? In either cases, I wanted to acknowledge and include a link to the reviews from the conference. Is that a bad idea? The review process was double blind and hence the reviews are anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="839" LastEditorUserId="839" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T16:34:58.417" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:34:58.417" Title="Publishing an 'ok paper' to arxiv" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5160" CreationDate="2012-11-06T03:59:49.627" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered submission to a journal? As reviewers are not identified, it is reasonable to trust their judgement that the paper is &quot;okay&quot;, and of course &quot;okay&quot; at a top conference in CS could still be quite good, especially as it's within the top 15%. Although perhaps the top-tier journals would render a similar judgement, there may be a venue where it is appropriate (I'm not familiar with the computer vision area), and you could publish without an excess of additional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alongside this you can (usually) always put a preprint on ArXiv, few journals or conferences take issue with this now, which allows you to make it available in the meantime, regardless of what else you decide to do with it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I would definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include the reviews. Although there is no rule against doing so, particularly as the reviewers shouldn't be identifiable, it contributes nothing to your research - the reader should be assessing the value themselves. The inclusion of reviews would only indicate that you want to boast about your work, or that you want people to accept it because someone else said it was good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T03:59:49.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5160" CreationDate="2012-11-06T04:00:50.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't feel bad if your paper was rejected, if you really want to publish, you could always submit it to another conference in its current form trying to address some of the concerns of the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with conferences (most) is that you don't get a second chance to submit it. There is nothing wrong with putting your paper out there in Arxiv, but remember that if it has not been published before, you could always suffer the danger of  being plagiarized to certain extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Luke mentions, reviewers are most of the time a toss in the air. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T04:00:50.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5169" CreationDate="2012-11-06T07:07:46.067" Score="14" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Condition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been suffering from day time sleepiness (9-10 hrs of sleep and still struggle to stay awake), fatigue, memory loss and lack of concentration. The doctor found that I suffocate in my sleep: I stop breathing several times per hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few days, I will be undergoing surgery to modify my airway (nose, throat) that, according to the doctor, will completely resolve these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My profile is OK: undergrad valedictorian, scholarships, awards, numerous research experiences and skills. But my condition was exacerbated during the masters and I graduated &quot;B+&quot; instead of continuing my straight &quot;A&quot; performance during undergrad. Also, I felt that I could have performed better in standardized tests (GREs), do more research etc without my condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I make this medical condition known in my research/personal statement? I fear the reader might assume that I am not as &quot;able&quot; as completely healthy candidates. Or perhaps there is no benefits at all to bringing this up?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, how should I put it to avoid sounding like I am making excuses or whining?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2015-11-14T02:58:54.590" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T03:32:44.133" Title="Should medical conditions that affected performance be stated in personal/research statement? And how?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5160" CreationDate="2012-11-06T08:44:34.440" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do the reviewers mean &quot;trash paper&quot; when they say &quot;ok paper&quot; ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely no. As Luke points out, since the reviews are blind, reviewers tend to be honest, if not leaning to the negative side. If they were explicit that the paper is fine, though still somewhat preliminary, understand it as a positive feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I just put the paper and associated data/code on my website? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is yes, unless you want to &quot;hide&quot; the paper from the public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think about these things this way: the public (through taxes, NGO's, etc. and the subsequent redistribution to higher education and research) is paying us to do research with the hope that something good and beneficial will come out. Once you do the work, regardless of whether top-notch, or only somewhat significant, as far as it is a result of a serious effort and of reasonable quality (workmanship-wise), the public deserves reporting back on our work, as well as deserves the results. It is up to others to decide whether our work is useful to the society, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or should I put it on arxiv? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do both. Yes, going for arXiv is a good idea in such a case. If you feel so, you can prepend the paper with explanation of why you publish it as it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, my advice is to publish the work. Actually, your situation is quite common. What many people do in a situation you describe, is to publish and present the work in a workshop associated with the (major) relevant conference. Or re-submit it as a poster, or short paper, if the conference has such a track. Those are definitely for quality, but still somewhat preliminary results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In either cases, I wanted to acknowledge and include a link to the reviews from the conference. Is that a bad idea? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. I think you idea is good. Honest and open. How about including the reviews in  an appendix of the arXiv submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T08:44:34.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5172" CreationDate="2012-11-06T10:05:02.687" Score="3" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;When someone is a postdoctoral researcher, is the person directly &quot;above&quot; him in the hierarchy called his supervisor, or his scientific coordinator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4028" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T14:50:11.770" Title="Which is the correct term, supervisor or coordinator?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5168" CreationDate="2012-11-06T10:31:43.540" Score="5" ViewCount="2746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a third year student studying mathematics in Australia, and things have taken a very bad turn in third year. I developed tremors in my writing hand and it meant I wasn't able to use a pen properly and couldn't take good notes during lectures. I was then put on a beta-blocker which had some side-effects and I have seen my grades for maths slide again. I might even fail a course this semester. It looks like I will not be a able to gain entry to honours year. Does that mean the end of my goal of pursuing a career in academia? Would any institution take a student for a masters degree in maths if he's failed a course in undergraduate study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also feel I didn't learn Galois theory well in my undergraduate study. Is there any way to redo the material in a serious way? It seems difficult to juggle a job and reviewing this material at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2784" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T17:41:06.920" Title="Failure to get an honours degree" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5167" CreationDate="2012-11-06T11:16:24.143" Score="10" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, good schools often require 1st class honors minimum for scholarship and PhD applications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered taking an extra year? A similar thing happened to me and I was able to save my academic profile with the extra year. For more details about my medical condition, look at my recent question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be: Talk to your course director or whoever is in-charged regarding your medical condition and ask if they will let you take an extra year and if possible, repeat the courses that you failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not worry about taking a year longer to finish. It bothered me terribly at first, but after a while I realized that it is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T11:16:24.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-11-06T11:50:40.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I make this medical condition known in my research/personal statement? I fear the reader might assume that I am not as &quot;able&quot; as completely healthy candidates. Or perhaps there is no benefits at all to bringing this up? If so, how should I put it to avoid sounding like I am making excuses or whining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can frame this medical condition as a situation you have learned to work through and around, then yes you can talk about it. It makes you sound like you are able to adapt to difficult circumstances. You are under no requirement to bring it up, and, at least in the US, if you don't bring it up, then you cannot legally be judged based on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the condition reasonably or seriously will interfere with the work you are planning to do, then you need to disclose it eventually, although perhaps only after you are accepted and only to your research adviser. Sleepiness is one thing, but what about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;narcolepsy&lt;/a&gt;? A narcoleptic might be a safety hazard in a synthetic chemistry lab for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2015-11-14T02:05:55.090" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T02:05:55.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5173" CreationDate="2012-11-06T14:37:27.503" Score="20" ViewCount="10611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in the Computing and Mathematics School at my university (UK). This year the School has adopted a fairly aggressive policy regarding student attendance. If a student has a poor – or zero – attendance rate, the student is contacted and a dialogue opened. This has many benefits including identifying those students who have possible  undiscovered or undeclared learning difficulties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student’s attendance rate remains poor following a first intervention, a process of issuing formal warnings commences, culminating with the withdrawal of the student if the student does not start to engage with their course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attendance is presently monitored at all laboratory and tutorial sessions. Attendance is not presently monitored for lectures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current system comprises a series of shared Google spreadsheets which contains the details of all students for all classes. Staff members enter attendance manually into the spreadsheet for their class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty with this system is that there is presently no automatic link between the existing official university student record database and the attendance register spreadsheets. This means if students change groups, enrol late, withdraw, change course or units, all this information must be dealt with in a robust manner. Currently, such changes are implemented manually. This means errors are likely to be introduced into the attendance register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice that there are a number of commercial attendance monitoring solutions available which are based on hardware, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telepen.co.uk/onyx_collector.htm&quot;&gt;Telepen&lt;/a&gt;. I would be interested in anyone’s experience with such systems, however I don’t forsee these to be ultimately workable in my case owing to the large cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in software solutions. If your institution monitors student attendance, do you use any specialist software? If so, what do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option – a preferable one – is to work within the existing university data systems.&#xA;All the necessary information regarding student details and activities is available. The problem arises when we try to ensure our ad hoc attendance register contains up to date student information. Ideally we’d use our Virtual Learning Environment to enter attendance data. Our VLE is Moodle. Are there any Moodle users out there who use Moodle to record attendance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T06:59:39.857" Title="What systems are most effective for monitoring student attendance?" Tags="&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-11-06T14:40:34.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your potential advisor is interested in (mostly) one thing: your potential as a graduate student. To that end, your personal statement/interviews/etc. should serve to convince him that you will be able to do excellent research. Any issues that could be a potential problem should be noted and addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that background, do you think this condition could be perceived as affecting your output as a graduate student? From the way you posed it, I would suggest that the answer is &quot;yes&quot;. As such, I would mention the condition towards the end of the letter/interview, but I would state  with confidence that past performance has demonstrated that it will not affect output, and you're confident it would not be a problem in the future. Don't dwell; just mention it as you would a disclosure and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T14:40:34.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5166" CreationDate="2012-11-06T14:50:11.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen the term &quot;Line Manager&quot; used in the context of post-doctoral researchers here in the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen reference made in CVs to the principal investigator for the research project to which the author contributed, e.g. &quot;I worked with Prof. X, Principal Investigator for Project Y&quot;. The term &quot;Scientific Co-ordinator&quot; seems to be most closely related to this.  Perhaps, therefore, the term &quot;scientific co-ordinator&quot; suits your purposes best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T14:50:11.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-11-06T16:29:26.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following eykanal's comment to the question, I have researched the possibilities via Moodle. For the record I have found that Moodle has an attendance module. I haven't learnt yet whether this module has the complete functionality that we require, but it's a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Attendance_module&quot;&gt;Moodle attendance module&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:29:26.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5225" CreationDate="2012-11-06T22:29:20.377" Score="13" ViewCount="1866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in computer sciences, in applied Machine Learning. I often have to switch applications and I find it cumbersome trying to discern the really good and bad works by doing a large survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you are new in a field, how would you direct your survey to find the people doing seminal work in the area, for example in the specific case of Latent Dirichlet Allocation in Computer Science, you can always go to a 2003 paper by Blei, Jordan and Ng. While if you are a seasoned researcher of the area, you already know this paper is relevant, how a newcomer would find such paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you ask experts in the area? Do you go by number of citations (I often find this deceptive, particularly in Bioinformatics)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in this because I'm switching applications now, and I would like to know which group's work I should be following or which person's papers I should be reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T07:08:50.930" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T05:51:05.817" Title="How to find the leading researchers in a new field" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5174" CreationDate="2012-11-06T23:02:56.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, one slightly unorthodox method for finding these might be to find the &quot;society&quot; representing the field, and find who their recent award winners are—particularly if they have &quot;young investigator&quot; awards that will recognize work considered to be of significant impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relative advantage of this approach is that it it represents the consensus of people working in a given field; the disadvantage is that the consensus may be of only a handful of members on a committee. But these are people who in principle should know the ins and outs of their field better than most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T23:02:56.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:16:26.493" Score="10" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some parts of our research fall out of our expertise. We thought about creating a Kaggle challenge just for this part. But we lack fund resources for the reward, so we could not offer any money. We are thinking now about offering co-authorship in a paper, do you think this would work? Otherwise, which other things would you offer as reward in Kaggle apart from money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T15:51:34.493" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T22:34:42.967" Title="Outsourcing your research to Kaggle for co-authorship or other non monetary options" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-06T02:09:58.957" Score="10" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;With today's technology it is very easy to collaborate with people around the world (I totally recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://vyew.com/s/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vyew&lt;/a&gt; for that). When you collaborate with people from different countries, are there any rules for who pays the bills? The expenses could be conference fees, attendance fees, journal fees, etc. For collaborations we use Hardy-Littlewood, but is there any such kind of rules for paying the bills? Or is it just a previous agreement or consensus between your coauthors? How do you normally approach the subject to your fellow coauthors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4041" OwnerDisplayName="Marcos Villagra" LastEditorUserId="4041" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T01:02:14.827" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T02:41:48.113" Title="How to organize a Joint Collaboration Plan and Fees" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-11-07T15:06:04.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds to me like the textbook definition of a potential collaboration opportunity. I would speak with researchers in the computer science, machine learning, mathematics, and/or statistics departments and try to establish a long-term collaborative relationship. I would also speak with other faculty in your department to see how they handle this problem, which they likely have as well. It may be as simple as paying a grad or reasonably bright undergrad a few bucks an hour to crunch numbers. (Actually, you shouldn't take for granted that the grad student is reasonably bright... but I digress.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be beneficial in both the short- and long-term, in a number of ways. In the short term, you'll hopefully get to analyze your data and generate a publication. In the long term, it's very likely that you'll need such expertise again, and you'll have the resources available for the analysis. Additionally, you'll find that having someone with analytics expertise on hand when &lt;em&gt;devising&lt;/em&gt; whatever study you plan on doing can be immeasurably useful, as they will help you determine what measurements need to be taken and what data needs to be collected to ensure that you can get the most out of your dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T15:06:04.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5212" CreationDate="2012-11-07T15:23:14.100" Score="27" ViewCount="4231" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the second time recently, someone mentioned to me the Hardy-Littlewood rules for collaboration (and on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5177/who-pays-in-joint-collaborations&quot;&gt;that very site&lt;/a&gt;). From what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.ufl.edu/misc/hlrules.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I read about it&lt;/a&gt;, they include the following rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And, finally, the fourth, and perhaps most important axiom, stated that it was quite indifferent if one of them had not contributed the least bit to the contents of a paper under their common name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How is it ethical to be a co-author of a paper you have “not contributed the least bit to”?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was flummoxed when I read that, it would be considered a serious breach of ethics in the communities I know. Is that a practice (those “rules”) specific to mathematics? Or are they just not used any more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T10:49:30.627" Title="Are the Hardy-Littlewood “rules” unethical?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-11-07T15:46:37.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some competitions have &quot;Kudos&quot; (or &quot;Jobs&quot;, or &quot;Knowledge&quot;) as a prize, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaggle.com/competitions/search?RewardColumnSort=Ascending&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kaggle competitions sorted from the smallest prizes&lt;/a&gt;. I don't how it does work with proposing a competition (maybe it is not free). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess if the problem itself fits in the Kaggle framework (which is a pretty strong constraint), and you can try it for free (I don't know if it is the case), then why not. Especially as even two &quot;Kudos&quot; competitions attract 50 and 153 teams, respectively. Just it is on you to make it as attractive as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, intellectual contribution requires a co-authorship. But if I had the right expertise, I would run for it :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T15:46:37.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5179" CreationDate="2012-11-07T16:20:56.087" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always interpreted such remarks as meaning that the individual papers were just progress reports on their larger enterprise, to which both made irreplaceable contributions, and that they had no interest in keeping track of moment-by-moment relative contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, &quot;on average&quot;, there was no misattribution or false credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Further, the &quot;not contributed the least&quot; may easily be hyperbole, just to make the point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, if one is in regular correspondence with another, how to attribute ideas that develop gradually? I think their solution was entirely reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T16:20:56.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5185" CreationDate="2012-11-07T23:48:08.277" Score="9" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what are standard practices when words are spelled differently across the literature and/or dictionaries (when these words can be found in dictionaries). A few examples of the kind of discrepancies I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  flow field vs flow-field vs flowfield&#xA;  sub-critical vs subcritical&#xA;  mass flow-rate vs mass-flow rate vs mass flowrate&#xA;  sub-grid vs subgrid&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the most important thing for my own work (i.e., PhD thesis) to be consistent? For example, just make sure flow-field is always hyphenated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4031" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T15:05:11.547" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T15:05:11.547" Title="What are the standard practices for hyphenating/spelling scientific words" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5184" CreationDate="2012-11-08T00:24:43.287" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends upon what's being written. For a university thesis, for instance, you should follow the guidelines of your particular institution: if they recommend a particular style manual, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or the [&lt;em&gt;ACS Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;], then you should follow the recommendations contained therein. If you are publishing in another venue, follow the guidelines of the publisher, if they make those available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you should follow a consistent set of guidelines. Note that this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as saying &quot;always use a hyphen&quot; or &quot;never use a hyphen.&quot; For instance, you would write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the velocity of the flow field increased&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the flow-field variables are . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because &quot;flow field&quot; is a noun in the first example, and &quot;flow-field&quot; is an adjective in the second. There the hyphen links the connected words: &quot;flow-field&quot; and &quot;variable&quot; versus &quot;flow&quot; and &quot;field variable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T09:58:40.640" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T09:58:40.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-08T05:47:17.967" Score="2" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5085/overlearn-in-undergraduate-college-good-or-bad-idea&quot;&gt;Overlearn in undergraduate College- good or bad idea?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm about 0.5-2 year(s) ahead of my course plan* depending on how you see it, but I don't want to waste my time so I want to self study stuff beyond my syllabus. I'm a Physics major freshman now, and I plan to get into research in my sophomore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have self-studied lots of Math/Physics stuff in my freshman year, and get into research in my sophomore. &lt;strong&gt;Will knowing advanced stuff give me an advantage in my research?&lt;/strong&gt; (one of) My goal is to have a good grad school application&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a related question I asked previously on overlearning in college &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5085/overlearn-in-undergraduate-college-good-or-bad-idea&quot;&gt;Overlearn in undergraduate College - good or bad idea?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I was preparing for Olympiad so I learn Calculus and Introductory Physics. But I don't get to skip courses in college. So I'm relearning stuff all over again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3992" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T07:35:13.347" Title="Will advanced knowledge help my undergraduate research?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2012-11-08T14:01:48.317" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-08T06:58:19.040" Score="18" ViewCount="3248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as a contract researcher with a university-affiliated institute.  I ended up doing qualitative analysis and extensive writing for an academic paper. My former supervisor has basically edited and published my work under his name.  The papers are different but only in the way that an interim and final draft are different - the structure is the same and some sentences were either paraphrased or identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis and final recommendations are also identical, he did not supplement my analysis with his own. Although, the analysis process was a collaborative process, I was the one who did the VAST majority of the writing with him chiming in occasionally about what he did/did not like. The basic distribution of labour was: he conceived of the project, did the interviews, made comments on drafts, performed the final edit and responded to peer review questions. I performed the analysis, performed the literature review and wrote the bulk of the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To boot, I feel like this was a punitive action because at various points after the end of my contract he tried to get me to do various forms of free labour for him which I did not do because it was a substantial amount of work and I was busy working another job. Also, I feel that I should be reimbursed for my time because, quite frankly, I need to pay my rent.    I feel that by not including my name on this paper, I am being punished for not being at his beck and call.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this is extremely unethical, verging on just plain wrong. I am wondering what I can do as this is a research institute setting (not a formal university setting but affiliated) and I was on contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What options do I have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4036" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T08:34:01.980" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:37:49.873" Title="My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-11-08T07:18:01.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are a number of things to analyze in this whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Institution you are is an American University, the paper, and all the research coming from it usually belong to the University unless the Institution releases the rights of said research via some kind of waiver. This applies for all research funded from Public funds, if the research was done using funds from a company, it gets tricky and is up to the joint program agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, also, depending on the terms of your contract, the professor might or might not have an obligation to include your name in the paper, ethically speaking, you are right, and your name should be there in the paper, but again, it all comes to the legal side of the agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it came to the legal side? Because you have 3 instances you can go: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The University itself: Depending on the place, I wish you good luck going against a tenured professor of the same institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Journal/Conference it was published, and expose your case to them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Downright demand the professor and the institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably for the 3 cases you need a lawyer and some kind of letter where it was stated that your work had to be recognized in the publication of a paper. Also, some kind of proof that you wrote most of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it helped at least to give some notion on what you are facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T07:18:01.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5167" CreationDate="2012-11-08T07:26:17.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from someone outside of Australia. Do you have plans on going out to do the PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how the honors system works in Australia very well, and fortunately for you neither the Japanese nor the Americans do, for them there is only the undergrad. The Honors is a nice thing to do, but hardly a requirement if you are looking for a Grad Program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In US, they care more that you have some sort of work published, and in Japan they care that you can pass the entrance examination, which for Math I think is the GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have close doors in Australia, perhaps you could try in some other place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T07:26:17.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5187" CreationDate="2012-11-08T07:35:13.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't think of a single situation where having more knowledge than expected or required was ever a bad thing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have to &quot;suffer the system&quot; here and there, that's a sad but simple fact (just because you &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; you know something, does not mean the schooling system will believe you. Nor should they--truth be told, most of the time you actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; learn something from courses you thought you mastered). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, always talk to your teaching assistants/professors about this. Work them a bit, see how flexible they can be. Often, you'll find that some could not care less if you come to class or not, as long as you pass the exams and do all the practical work required to pass the course. Others, unfortunately, will have mandatory attention and the likes, that they consider holy. Going against them and their reules at all costs is pointless and will cost way too much time and effort. Just sit out the classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In time, and when your approach is indeed successful, it will get easier and easier to pull off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's a good idea or not, that depends entirely on how fast you can learn. No matter how good it might make you feel to know so much more than your peers and to be able to skip so many classes, and get into such high-profile research, the time you spend studying should &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; cost you your social/networking/extracurricular life. In time, the stuff you'll have to master will also become harder and harder to learn. Before you know it, sticking to this approach blindly will cause you to you spend all day and all night, all year round, in some dark corner of some smelly attic. And &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, is &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T07:35:13.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5199" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:01:22.333" Score="9" ViewCount="683" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What happens to manuscripts needing revision while the corresponding author is between academic jobs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every academic will always find a new position seamlessly after the previous one. For example, PhD students may still have papers &lt;em&gt;in the pipeline&lt;/em&gt; after finishing their PhD, before finding a post-doc. What do academics do when a manuscript needs revision under such conditions? Note that I'm exclusively thinking of people who do aim to remain in academia; if people leave academia, the situation is different in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some alternatives I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait until one has a new position. This implies a considerable delay, possibly meaning resubmitting a manuscript needed only minor revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make another co-author corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finish it in their own time. This might have practical issues; for example, they will have no affiliation and might not even have an academic e-mail address (depending on how quickly the previous institution removes accounts).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other alternatives that I'm not thinking of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are peoples' experiences about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:44:01.147" Title="Manuscript in pipeline, corresponding author between jobs" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13511" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:18:33.380" Score="24" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently finishing my PhD thesis and, as a great deal of the job was to create tools and protocoles, I am considering putting the different scripts I wrote on open source directories (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net&quot;&gt;SourceForge&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage I see for opening them is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will be available for everyone and can be reused by the scientific&#xA;community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They could be improved (and corrected) by others &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It ensure my authorship for the different scripts (I can prove I put them there)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, I was wondering if there is any drawback of doing so (for&#xA;  future publication, version maintenance, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to precise that not all the work was published yet. My field is biological science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T23:44:22.087" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T16:30:29.080" Title="What are the disadvantages of opening the source of your own science tools" Tags="&lt;open-science&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:20:28.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/975/2700&quot;&gt;generic question&lt;/a&gt; on this topic has been posted already, and you’ll find lots of good information (and maybe some advice) there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there are two facets: legal and ethical. For the legal facet, the solution is clear: &lt;strong&gt;read your contract&lt;/strong&gt;. What does it state of the intellectual work produced during your employment? If you want to pursue any kind of action on the legal side of things, then &lt;strong&gt;lawyer up&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't shudder at this thought any more than you'd be afraid of seeing a doctor if you thought you were sick. Plus, it doesn't have to be expensive: there are free legal consults in many places (local borough, professional associations or unions, local Bar, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the ethical facet, Leon’s answer cover it. I’d add that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should document every action you take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would strongly recommend to &lt;strong&gt;contact the department head or the dean&lt;/strong&gt; if your accusations have standing: it is there job to handle such matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the paper is already published, the only remedial to this issue is &lt;strong&gt;retraction&lt;/strong&gt;: you have to be aware that it is a very grave recourse, and picking up this fight might not earn you a lot of friends. (Sorry, but it is better to know in advance where you're going.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:20:28.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:37:49.873" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a real case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct&quot;&gt;Scientific misconduct&lt;/a&gt; by your former supervisor. By common scientific ethics, everybody who made significant scientific contributions to a publication must be named as an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, violations of this rule occur, and there are several options for you to react to it. In fact, several institutions have a responsibility to follow up on indications of scientific misconduct, any of which you could try to approach on this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research institution itself is responsible for investigating any possible scientific misconduct of their members. The question is of course which organizational level to approach first. The level just above your former supervisor may have conflicts of interest, but any higher levels may suggest that it should be dealt with on lower levels first. This is probably best judged from the local situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journals and conferences must make sure that scientific results they publish were obtained in adherence to standard scientific rules. Editors of the journal have the responsibility to investigate problematic cases, and may take measures such as correcting the author list or retracting the paper. If you want to take this approach, it would be best to contact the editor in chief of the journal (if it is a journal publication).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;National science foundations usually have their own rules concerning scientific misconduct, and investigate cases where violations may have occured. This applies especially if the research was (co-)funded by such an organisation (check the acknowledgments of the paper in question, or it may have directly been your former source of funding), but some foundations also take this role more generally and may feel responsible if the scientist in question gets any money from them. An easy approach will be if the foundation in your country has a contact point for scientific misconduct. Otherwise you could ask the central administration there how best to proceed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, secure your documents. Drafts or analysis results that you sent to your former supervisor will probably be a very important proof of your claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, before you take any of these quite serious steps, it could be helpful to confront your former supervisor with the issue. You can clearly state that you see it as a case of scientific misconduct, and that you are willing to pursue the case with any accountable institutions such as the ones I listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:37:49.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5193" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:43:08.217" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finish it in their own time&lt;/strong&gt; (that is, if they want to) The only downsides you mention are of a practical nature. I'll explain below why they are not actually relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3171/2700&quot;&gt;don't need&lt;/a&gt; an academic affiliation in order to publish in journals. But, I believe you might have a misconception of the affiliations listed on paper: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1078/2700&quot;&gt;affiliations listed are institutions that provided resources for the job&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, while your current employer should in most cases be listed as an affiliation, it doesn't mean that stops when you leave. If part of the work was performed with their resources, they should be listed as an affiliation. In particular, if your performed at least part of the work under their employment, you should list them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a special case: if an author (not just the corresponding author, but any author) has a new employer, but the work was entirely done without their resources, it is not an affiliation but they can usually be mentioned as a footnote with the text “Current address”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:43:08.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5193" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:44:01.147" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in the situation where my past work has been published while I have been between academic research jobs. Here is my view on your list of alternative actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waiting for a new position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Publish as soon as possible. What happens if another researcher, a competitor, scoops the findings? While the work may be relevant still, one has lost the intellectual primacy. Another publication to the author's name can only help in his/her job search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make another co-author corresponding author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to tied up with your third point, where you consider not having an academic email address to be an impediment to publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When between academic research posts, I use as my affiliation the institution where I carried out the majority of the work - the &quot;invention&quot; if you like. I have been in the situation where work that I started was completed and published following my departure - both with me contributing to the completion of the work and also where I did not add anything. In both cases I listed the former institution as my affiliation. I also gave my gmail address for contact purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been a co-author on papers as a member of a large research collaboration, again during a period where I am not in an academic research post. In this case, I affiliate myself with the institution through which I derive my affiliation with the research collaboration.  I also have my gmail address as part of my contact details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal won't accept a non-academic (e)mail address one could make the argument that the research is still to be accepted for review and eventual publication regardless of the present contact details of the author. The majority of the work presumably was carried out in a recognised research institution and therefore should be treated with the appropriate respect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:44:01.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5195" CreationDate="2012-11-08T15:05:21.213" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some disadvantages could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People may expect you to maintain the code. If you don't maintain it, the code may be rendered useless at some point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might feel forced to document the code. This is actually an advantage, but many people would not realise that ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might have to work on cleaning up the code. Exactly the same point as above applies, if you ever want to re-use your code this is actually an advantage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If people start using your code (this is not impossible), they could e-mail you and start asking questions. This takes your time. On the other hand, it also provides you the opportunity to be co-author (so hey! don't document, so people are forced to ask your help ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More points are raised in the very similar question that was asked at Programmers.SE less than a month ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/171332/47323&quot;&gt;Why don't research papers that mention custom software release the source code?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:56.390" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T15:05:21.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5207" CreationDate="2012-11-08T21:19:26.363" Score="28" ViewCount="1180" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, sometimes I really could use access to journals or databases of tables that for some reason my university doesn't subscribe to.  I have friends at other Universities that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; subscribe to these journals and it would be very helpful to have the data.  Is it acceptable to ask them to retrieve the data?  I don't really want to start this if it's going to run me afoul of the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1147" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T21:37:12.927" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T05:42:36.487" Title="Is it ethical to use another university's journal subscription if yours doesn't have access?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5206" CreationDate="2012-11-08T22:14:41.567" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it against the law? Probably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It it scientific misconduct? A breach of ethics? Hardly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is acceptable? It's your decision to make based on risk analysis. If you don't do it on a large scale (i.e. someone supplying many people with papers), it's probably okay. It is common practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, be aware that many journal articles can now be found either in pre-print or post-print form online (though this depends widely on your field), either on institutional repositories or on the authors' webpages. If you're merely missing access every once in a while, you can also nicely ask the corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T22:14:41.567" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5209" CreationDate="2012-11-08T22:45:28.363" Score="15" ViewCount="4742" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at the cusp of finishing my PhD, and my advisor and I have decided that it is time to publish since there seems to be no hole in the theories that I propose. I have always maintained that I'd like to get a publication in the good letters section such as &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt; and then submit a longer manuscript to a more specific journal (in my field that would be the &lt;em&gt;Physics of Fluids&lt;/em&gt;). My advisor isn't a fan of arXiv as he see it only for preprints with little advantage as it would be easier to just circulate my manuscript among 10-15 established people in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is/questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it useful to send in a manuscript to a letters section of a prestigious journal such as the PRL for quick dissemination of my work as well as brownie points for having published in the PRL despite a really high rejection rate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are letters section of journals really quick (with a short submission to publication time)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a contingency plan, a rejection would mean what exactly to my career/immediate future? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have always had a soft spot for arXiv since several important works were first disseminated on it but I find that in the engineering community there is still some resistance to arXiv, any comments?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I have read the several questions about arXiv on academia.SE and somehow I am not entirely convinced that a young academecian would gain much from publishing in arXiv than in a regular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T23:40:09.410" LastActivityDate="2021-04-19T19:32:58.507" Title="Sending a paper to a 'Letters' journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5208" CreationDate="2012-11-08T23:13:53.017" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, let's try to attack your questions in order. I assume from your journal examples that you're working in physics, so I'll focus mainly on that in the answer…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Useful compared to what? Note that not all “letters” journals have a very high visibility, so it really depends. If we're talking &lt;em&gt;Phys. Rev. Lett.&lt;/em&gt; in particular, then I’d say &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, having a paper published in PRL will look good on your CV. Especially on the short term, it can help publicize your results. (In the longer term, you can hope that your results may get the attention they merit, wherever you publish them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It depends which journal, and compared to what. In high-level journals, you will know very quickly (within a week) if your manuscript is sent to reviewers or just rejected by the editor. After that, review time can take 2–3 months, and be longer if your paper is controversial (i.e. if referees aren't unanimous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some letter journals strongly emphasize short review times. The recently-launched &lt;em&gt;J. Phys. Chem. Lett.&lt;/em&gt; has submission-to-publication times of 4 to 6 weeks, which is unmatched as far as I know (and the quality looks good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rejection is not part of your academic record, so it means the same as absence of publication. If you intend to publish in a journal that does not frown upon it, you can put the manuscript on arxiv as well as submit to the journal, that way there is nothing for you to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No comment on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the matter of publishing in &lt;em&gt;Phys. Rev. Lett.&lt;/em&gt;, the best advice you can get will be &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140814080944/http://www.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/gcoe/seminar/PRL_editor_talk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Successful Letters&#xA;in Physical Review Letters: An editor's perspective”&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2021-04-19T19:32:58.507" LastActivityDate="2021-04-19T19:32:58.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5208" CreationDate="2012-11-08T23:30:16.300" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot answer the first question, because it depends mostly of the result itself (if it is strong enough, interesting for reasonably wide audience and can make sense when condensed to 4 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/27606/length-of-publication-cycle-for-peer-reviewed-journals&quot;&gt;Length of publication cycle for peer-reviewed journals&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Physics.SE&lt;/a&gt;; in on of the answers there are mentioned the following slides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thomas Pattard, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phys.nthu.edu.tw/~colloquium/2009F/T2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to publish your work in the Physical Review&lt;/a&gt; or Editors are from Mars, Referees are from Venus, and Authors are from Earth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it takes longer for PRL than most of other PR journals (except for PRE). The difference for Rapid Communications is the highest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iz1Wn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CbIZn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to risk of rejection - AFAIK the only bad thing for you is that you loose some time. There is no &quot;rejected from PRL stigma&quot; - again, AFAIK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; - it may mean a lot for you (remember, you do it not instead of publishing in a journal, but along with):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it becomes visible a few days after uploading,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people actively follow arXiv RSS feed on their topic (or even start each morning with it),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people don't have access to all paid journals,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people even claim that &quot;normal&quot; publication didn't influenced their cite counts once their paper went on arXiv.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even before it gets published (which will take at least a few months, and in case of rejections or slow journals - even years) it is visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And personally, I had a lot of scientific discussions based on my papers that by that time were 'only' on arXiv. If you are going to hunt for a postdoc position there may be a big difference whether they can see your paper (on arXiv) or &quot;you said them that you had sent it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:13.560" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T11:40:44.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5177" CreationDate="2012-11-09T02:41:48.113" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science (which I work in), the most direct answer is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt; bills?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For remote/electronic collaboration, there really are no significant costs.  Each collaborator uses their own computer equipment and their own internet access.  They install LaTeX and Skype and svn themselves.  They typeset and illustrate their own papers.  They each buy their own espresso at their own favorite coffee house.  There are no fees associated with submitting or publishing papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you actually want to &lt;em&gt;travel&lt;/em&gt;, either to give a conference talk or to work in the same physical location as someone else, there are real costs.  For conferences, usually each person (or their grant, or their advisor, or their department) pays for their own travel, lodging, and registration fees.  For collaborative travel, every trip is different, but some common protocols include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The visitor (or their advisor/grant/department) pays all costs for their visit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The visitor (or their advisor/grant/department) pays for travel, and the host (or their advisor/grant/department) pays for lodging. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The host (or their advisor/grant/department) pays all costs for the visit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used all four of these arrangements (and various ad hoc mixtures), as visitor, as visitor's advisor, and as host.  For some visits, I've had small joint grants specifically for collaborative travel; in others, I've used travel money from a larger grant; in others, I've paid (either for myself or for my guest) out of my own pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, F'X is exactly right: &lt;strong&gt;It depends.  Obviously.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T02:41:48.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5179" CreationDate="2012-11-09T05:23:59.970" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, this practice would not be acceptable under today's ethical standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think these rules represented standard practice even in Hardy and Littlewood's day.  They wrote them only to govern their own collaboration; I'm not aware that they ever even suggested that anybody else follow them.  The rules are notable because they are unusual (and, as mentioned by Anonymous Mathematician, humorously exaggerated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your reputation matches that of Hardy and Littlewood, you may find the academic community (and your institution) willing to tolerate idiosyncracies like this.  Otherwise, I wouldn't suggest trying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T05:23:59.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5195" CreationDate="2012-11-09T06:52:51.147" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some objections I've heard. It's up to you to decide how relevant it is to you. This post isn't to say that I endorse all or any of them: it's just to list some of the potential disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You might be giving away your most promising source of future funding: the exploiting and extending of those tools and protocols.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools and protocols are potentially your future career. You've put an awful lot of work into them. Only now, can you start getting value out of them. Giving them away, means giving away all your hard work, for others to leap ahead of you, and free-load off your development work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get the aggro of users demanding more documentation, and the constant nagging of questions. And because they got the tools and protocols for free, their expectations may be even higher, and they'll feel even more entitled to more of your time, than if they'd paid for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weird, I know, but from experience, many users have lower expectations of paid tools than of free tools, because with paid tools, there are well-defined boundaries of what the user gets for their money. As learnt from experience, and from behavioural economics experiments, people tend to value something more, if they've paid for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T06:52:51.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5217" CreationDate="2012-11-09T07:31:30.943" Score="14" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted a paper to a conference whose notification of acceptance/rejection is due to 3 months from now. However I realize that I can extend my results in such a way that it gets much more general and such that the results of the previous paper follows as a special case. The generalization however is non-trivial, in the sense that I will need much more advanced and esoteric techniques, and somewhat more 20 pages to write it properly. It also fits in the scope of a conference whose deadline is in 2 months.  Here are my options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Put the first paper at arxiv. Write the second paper citing it and showing where things get different. Submit the second paper. But then the second paper doesn't get self contained enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Put the first paper at arxiv. Make the second paper self contained by rewriting all results that I need from the first one, but specifying that it is a generalization of the first one. Submit the second paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Write the second paper and wait for the result of the first conference. If accepted, write the second paper as an independent extension of the first one. If rejected, merge everything into a new piece of work and resubmit to a new conference whose deadline is in 5 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) There are two groups working in a very related subject, and I'm afraid putting the first paper in arxiv would lead them to a similar generalization before me. So I wonder If I should wait to put the first paper on arxiv until having finished the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) If I write the second paper and put it at arxiv before the notification from the conference, could this make the first paper be rejected because the program committee would argue that there is a possible generalization of it? Even though highly non-trivial? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) If I submit the second paper to a new conference but don't put it on arxiv, would I fall in the case of double submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to proceed in this case? I believe several researchers might have faced similar situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4043" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T05:38:19.037" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T05:38:19.037" Title="Extending a result submitted to a conference before acceptance/rejection notification" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5179" CreationDate="2012-11-09T08:14:01.157" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the context of the rule is important here. The rules taken together set up a system of trust: that the authors trust each other to contribute fully to the project, and so (as others have pointed out) they didn't have to waste time with the nitty-gritty of specific contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not useful therefore to view this rule in isolation as a license to willy-nilly add authors without contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T08:14:01.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5206" CreationDate="2012-11-09T09:21:25.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it predominately depends on how you are accessing the other university's resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the resource is online and your collaborator grants you access either by sharing his username and password or through a network proxy, this is almost definitely in violation of computing guidelines of his university. To me asking him to knowingly violate a university policy, which is more or less reasonable, is ethically questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the resource is online and your collaborator downloads the resource directly, that isn't ethically questionable. If he then shares that material with you it may violate copyright law and it may be ethically questionable. If for example you chose as a collaborator/employee a student who has access to this resource then it is ethically questionable since collaborating with researchers outside the university is beyond the normal scope of a students &quot;job&quot; description and therefore they are likely misusing the resource. If you chose a member of academic research staff (or possibly a grad student) as a collaborator, then they are really doing there job by collaborating. I see no ethical issues with this. It might even make sense to include them in the acknowledgments of any resulting publication. Something along the lines of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thank John Doe at the University of Good Library for help collecting&#xA;  reference materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T09:21:25.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-11-09T09:22:30.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4837/can-i-present-the-results-of-a-paper-that-is-currently-under-review&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; is relevant to your considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my community it is quite common to publish a (possibly extended/revised) submitted work as a technical report or a pre-print right after, or before the conference submission. The idea is to get a useful reference for future work falling exactly in the period between submission, notification and hopefully publication. ArXiv, or a TR with ISSN is fine for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the option 2 is something I myself often resort to. Also to consider with this option, if the publication date of the &quot;generalization&quot; is after the submission deadline, such a rejection would be baseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you yourself note, option 1 leads to a non-self-encapsulated paper and option 3, even though fine and correct, prolongs the period between invention and publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T09:22:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1967" CreationDate="2012-11-09T09:35:27.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may or may not be helpful in this case, but you may be able to persuade them to publish the data separately, in a dedicated data journal or other data archive. Depending on the field, they may already have done so (some UK funders, for example, are starting to require this as a condition of funding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you the additional option to give credit by citing the dataset directly as well as relevant papers, and also opens up the possibility that others will use and cite the data as well, bringing more prestige to the original researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, some researchers are open to this type of data publication, while others are not, so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to find data to reuse, or to suggest somewhere for them to deposit, there are some lists of archives available to look through, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datacite.org/repolist&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DataCite repository list&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://databib.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Databib&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T09:35:27.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5206" CreationDate="2012-11-09T10:11:05.130" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; explicitly acknowledge people who have helped you access papers that you don't have access to. As F'x pointed out, it's &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; against the law, but it's &lt;em&gt;unlikely&lt;/em&gt; to get you into trouble. The acknowledgement, however, creates more trouble than it needs to, because you're more or less explicitly stating that you got the journal in a clandestine way. So, I would just thank the person and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T14:47:36.147" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T14:47:36.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:40:18.357" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My institution does not monitor student attendance. That is my job. However, we have adopted Blackboard as our Course-Management System of choice across campus, and the student roster in Blackboard is updated every day by the Registrar's Office. We additionally have access to up-to-date course rosters through our implementation of the PeopleSoft productivity software. Presumably, the Registrar's office at your institution keeps up-to-date rosters and should be willing to share them with instructors. Otherwise, what's the point of having them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two methods I use to enforce / verify attendance in a large lecture course, and both require comparison of my data with the roster in Blackboard or PeopleSoft. I could write a short program to sort through both files for matches, but I would rather do it manually to help me remember students' names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quizzes - I give short (and simple) quizzes randomly, but at least once a week. &lt;strong&gt;Fully half&lt;/strong&gt; of the points on the quizzes are for showing up and putting your name on the quiz. For this reason, quizzes cannot be made up for &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; reason, but I will drop three or four of the lowest quiz grades. Since the quizzes aren't hard and the quiz average counts for at least 10% of their final grade, students want to be there for the quiz. I like this method because it allows me to do random point assessments of different topics and to start associating student names with performance. The grading is not unbearable, since i write quizzes that are &lt;strong&gt;simple&lt;/strong&gt; enough to be graded at a rate of 10 seconds per student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clickers - If you use clickers, make each student buy their own clicker (About $40 US these days). At the beginning of class, they have to register their clicker with your software, which records the clicker's ID number. If you have a list matching clicker IDs to student names, then you take attendance every day automatically. It is easy to cheat this system, since a student can also bring their friend's clicker and sign-in for their friend also.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &lt;strong&gt;ensure&lt;/strong&gt; attendance, I would use JeffE's approach: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't the most effective way to ensure attendance is to make the lectures compelling and useful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T12:40:18.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5206" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:20:23.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it would be against the law almost everywhere (because, &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt;, Institutions subscribe the journal / publisher so that its students / researchers / etc will have access to the material. The subscription is based in many factors such as how many persons will have access, how &quot;important&quot; the Institution is and will cite the provided articles etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the Institution would grant the students etc. the access based on the same contract. I don't think that any can give an &lt;em&gt;unlimited right to make copies and distribute&lt;/em&gt; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, who would be breaking the law / the contract ? The friend who provides such access, in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A point that &quot;softens&quot; this is the &lt;em&gt;fair use&lt;/em&gt;, but it has a very tenue line where you (or your friend) is doing a fair use or not of that access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solution: have you asked the Library of your University if they have some agreement with the University of your friend? Sometimes one Library can ask for books / journals / articles / etc from other Universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="815" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T13:20:23.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-09T14:52:58.147" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/854/keeping-track-of-bibliography-references-for-an-entire-research-group&quot;&gt;Keeping track of bibliography references for an entire research group&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a web application which can help the researchers at my group collaboratively manage a collection of scientific papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desired features are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easily upload pdfs and edit bibliographic info&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;query the database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;export the database (or a subset) as a BibTeX file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define subsets/folders of publications (e.g., all papers related to a project, all papers by members of the group etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be accessible only for members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be hosted on our own servers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T17:06:12.037" Title="Web application for managing a library of papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-09T18:24:12.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2012-11-09T16:39:32.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used to maintain our own list on our (sadly now defunct) group website when I was a PhD student. The sources for the group website are in a shared (internal) version control repository to which we all have access. We maintained three shared bibtex-files:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;one for internal references — everything any of us ever published&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;one for external references — anything not internal any of us has ever cited or found otherwise useful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;one for new references; we go through them at our weekly meetings, then merge them into (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple, but works very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2020-11-28T17:15:17.903" LastActivityDate="2020-11-28T17:15:17.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5174" CreationDate="2012-11-09T18:28:20.397" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem is that you hamstrung yourself by eliminating the only correct strategy: doing a long literature survey yourself. You wish to rely on proxies, and sometimes surveys can do that for you, but other people's opinions of &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; are just that: opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to really get a sense of good and bad is to read a LOT, think a lot about what you read, discuss with people who might know more about the area, think a lot more, read more, and repeat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T18:28:20.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5174" CreationDate="2012-11-09T19:44:15.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal technique is to read the introduction to a number of research papers and find the most commonly cited papers/authors/author groupings. This will tell you who is the most &quot;influential&quot;, i.e. whose work is driving the field and causing others to perform research branching of their original findings. This is similar to examining publication count, but more useful in that you can see how broadly the citations are applied, and judge from context whether the citation has merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T19:44:15.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-11-09T23:07:32.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same situation where we proposed a method and then generalized it later. &#xA;What I did (not the best option though) is wrote two papers (yes they overlap in almost 30% of the content) then submitted them for two different conferences. &#xA;still waiting for the feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T23:07:32.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5085" CreationDate="2012-11-10T04:15:53.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research is an awesome way to exploit your knowledge.&#xA;Just join the undergraduate research program in your college: if you know significantly more than your peers in college, you can do much more &lt;strong&gt;advanced research&lt;/strong&gt; which would boost your grad school application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as a Physics major, you'd need some basic knowledge. Knowing introductory Physics and single variable calculus isn't enough: try to learn some computer language (C++), Multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and some upper division Physics courses. Having more knowledge would help broaden your choice of what research project you want to join.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've overlearned so much that you're learning graduate courses while you're still a sophomore, you can join the Theoretical Physics research projects: these tend to need lots of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3992" LastEditorDisplayName="user3992" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T23:45:24.253" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T23:45:24.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25752" CreationDate="2012-11-10T09:39:45.693" Score="8" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished an honours degree in Psychological science in Australia - this is a 3 year bachelors with an additional selective entry 4th year involving 50% coursework and research.  In addition to this I have about a year of research experience across a few different labs and areas.  I'd like to move to somewhere in central / western Europe (e.g. Berlin).  The aim is to eventually do a Phd there (although nobody there ever seems entirely certain whether my degree is eligible or if I need a masters), but ideally I'd like to get some involvement in a lab / institution first.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such an aim seem reasonable and achievable, or would I be generally expected to just pursue a Masters / Phd path?  What is the best way to go about finding such a position?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pursuing the networking angle, but don't have many contacts in that direction.  I have a sporadic collection of mailing lists and web sites I check, and will turn to 'cold emailing' academics of interest at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4049" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T10:10:49.580" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:08:44.173" Title="Moving to Europe and seeking research assistant work after undergrad / masters - best approaches?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2914" CreationDate="2012-11-10T10:36:59.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a similar situation. Based on my research on departments in Canada, Australia, and the US,  as already been mentioned the stipend is always taxed. Sometimes though you are in a lower tax bracket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I found this information about the UK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Income Tax &#xA;58.  Payments  made  as  part  of  a  NERC  studentship  are  not  regarded  as  income  for  income  tax  purposes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Students should note, however, that earnings received during the final year from sources such as teaching &#xA;and demonstrating should be aggregated with income from post-award employment when assessing income &#xA;tax liability for the tax year in which the award ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T18:02:44.710" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T18:02:44.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5233" CreationDate="2012-11-10T11:58:35.623" Score="29" ViewCount="12595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied to PhD programs in ecology in Europe (Germany, Denmark, UK) and Oceania (Australia/New Zealand). Now the deadlines for US programs are coming up and I am debating whether I should apply there as well. Aside from the exorbitant cost to apply to US programs I am interested in comparing the pros and cons as far as career opportunities.&#xA;I have ready a MS from a major US university and I will turn 31 soon. My career goals are to pursue a teaching/research position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the potential advisors satisfy my requirements (good publishing track, personable, successful students, international connections) and that there will be funding. I will consider &quot;rest of the world&quot; and USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rest of the world&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;- can be completed in three years, in this case I will have gained two years for a possible Post Doc, and also make use of my Masters&#xA;- I will be able to just focus on research without being a teaching assistant, from what I understand publications would count more than teaching assistant experience even for a 50%/50% research/teaching position&#xA;- it might be harder in case I want to find a job in the US, especially since I will not be located within the country&#xA;- there are no obligations to complete courses&#xA;- pay rate is generally decent compared to cost of living&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USA&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;-I am under the impression that with a PhD from a top US institution is well-regarded internationally and would be easier to find a job in Europe or Australia&#xA;- the teaching experience could be useful to me as I would like to also be involved in education alongside with research&#xA;- there is more time to explore and think about research questions and goals, as opposed to Europe where you join to develop a certain project&#xA;- the stipend and the US is very low also compared to the living costs especially on the West Coast. It would mean five years of financial sacrifice&#xA;- more chances to perhaps be involved in other projects, it seems there is more of an open research community within departments&#xA;- it might be productive to take some classes that are taught by top profile professors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the extra time spent and the financial sacrifice for a US PhD worthwhile for my career goals and my preparation has a successful educator/researcher? Will my international mobility be limited based on where I graduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T12:59:08.117" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T12:10:53.443" Title="What are the long-term advantages of a US PhD compared to Europe/Oceania?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5229" CreationDate="2012-11-10T12:07:33.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, EU citizen and familiar with Australian degree system, you will have a hard time getting into a PhD program. The honors bachelor cannot be considered at the same level of the Masters degree. Regarding employment in a lab in Europe your first hurdle would be getting a working permit. This might be hard unless you already have someone who can sponsor you. I think you are better off trying to find some field technician or volunteer position to collaborate with some of the labs and then perhaps start networking from there.&#xA;Otherwise you could try and move to Germany with the tourist visa for 3/6 months and start network that way. However German professors seem quite reachable by e-mail, I would start contacting some of them for which you have an interest in their research and see what they suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T12:07:33.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5231" CreationDate="2012-11-10T18:46:13.070" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key question is: What do you want to do after the PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some points that you may consider to choose a programme if you want to stay in the academia. The advantages or disadvantages of the length of these programmes depend on your training/background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your background&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are familiar with the topic you are planning to work on, then you can probably start checking the relevant literature immediatly, in this case a 3 years program may be what you need. But if the topic is unfamiliar to you, then you would probably have to attend lectures and to read textbooks, in this case a 5 years program may be better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your CV.&lt;/strong&gt; A work in the academia usually involves teaching and research. If you have teaching experience, then you can focus on developing your CV in terms of research. In this case I would go for a 3 years programme and get involved full-time on research. If you do not have teaching experience, then you might want to consider a 5 years PhD where you have the opportunity to teach and develop your CV in both lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The topic.&lt;/strong&gt; Some research projects by their nature itself require different amounts of time to develop. For instance if you are going to work on modelling a specific data set &lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt; having to obtain the samples directly in the Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the mobility, I think after the PhD what really matters is your CV. Either if you graduate from Oxford or the University of Tuvalu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3836" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T18:46:13.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5229" CreationDate="2012-11-10T19:14:42.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As somebody working in Germany, I can assure you that starting a doctoral program is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; possible unless you have either a Master's degree or a degree considered &quot;equivalent&quot; to the Master's degree. In most cases, this means that you have to have a Master's degree. To enter a Master's degree program in Germany can also be tricky, because most &quot;traditional&quot; programs require proof of German skills as well as a bachelor's degree that is &quot;equivalent&quot; to the bachelor's degree as offered by three German university in which you wish to enroll. The qualification process for a foreign degree can be very tedious to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a number of &quot;non-consecutive&quot; Master's programs in various disciplines at most universities. Admission to such programs is not contingent on having a bachelor's degree in the same field, and many of these programs are conducted in English. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daad.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DAAD&lt;/a&gt; can help you to find a suitable program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a Master's student, you will typically have to do a thesis project to complete your degree. Until then, however, you won't be able to do full-time research. However, you will be able to act as a part-time worker in a research group. What duties this entails varies greatly from research group to research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T19:14:42.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5237" CreationDate="2012-11-11T21:47:44.543" Score="65" ViewCount="6071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new lecturer in the field of Computer Science. I got my MSc and I would like to go for a PhD. However, I would like to improve my teaching methods and way of thinking before I pursue this goal. Any recommended books or articles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-12T07:49:40.210" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T07:49:40.210" Title="How to improve myself as a lecturer?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;lecture-teaching-method&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="38" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-12T01:33:33.160" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I learned how to lecture was just drawing on things other professors did that were beneficial to me.  If you are going to get a PhD however, teaching will be secondary.  The focus on the program you go in will be teaching you how to conduct research and write papers for publications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said the best way to improve, in my opinion, is to record yourself giving a lecture.  Just audio is fine, make sure you are covering the context... Every lecture I give I make sure I have the following components in it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get to class early to talk to students as they come in and make sure I have all of the equipment ready to go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I bring some anecdotal humor into the lecture. I don't sit there and tell knock knock jokes, but I make it relevant to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use previous material to frame the new material.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them go early if I finish early.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to that I use an Audience Response System, or clicker, and that helps keep the students actively engaged (class of 350 freshmen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T09:13:29.317" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T09:13:29.317" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-12T06:36:20.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my University they had a feedback system for every professor at the end of the semester, where you could evaluate their performance through the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always find that copying is also a good thing, think which teacher do you think were really good or with which teacher did you really learn, and try to figure out what did they have in common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit out of the box, but I found that teaching to little kids (5-6) is one of the best ways to learn how to engage an audience, since if they are bored they will tell you on spot and if they don't like you they will tell you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T09:13:57.367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T09:13:57.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5231" CreationDate="2012-11-12T06:40:54.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can talk from experience there, because 3 years ago I had the same conundrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also did my PhD outside the US, in Japan, where it also lasts for 3 years (usually). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AS long as you do your PhD on some University &quot;with a name&quot; outside its country is ok for your  future if you wish to move away from said country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, here in Japan everybody knows what Keio and Waseda Universities are, and for sure you'll get a nice paid job in the japanese industry if you finish on either one of them, but if you wish to go out of Japan, outside of Tokyo Univ, Kyoto, and maybe Osaka, nobody knows of other universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to pursue a career in US, it helps more to do your PhD over there than overseas, but if you do good work overseas, you have a very good chance to pursue  an Academic career as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T06:40:54.843" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-11-12T09:10:00.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journal-ranking.com/&quot;&gt;Journal Ranking site (www.journal-ranking.com)&lt;/a&gt; aims to rank many (11K) journals, according to their measure of impact (mainly number of citation, but weighted according to the ranking of the citing journal), number of articles, etc. It also let you sort by field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, this is only their point of view, and their way of measuring quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and it only ranks journals listed in the ISI's SCI)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T09:10:00.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2012-11-12T10:03:02.750" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet, so I'm adding it as a separate answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read some articles from the journal (in your subfield), and see how they feel like&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you look at a journal and check that the 5 or 6 latest articles in your domain are of the &lt;em&gt;meh&lt;/em&gt; type, you probably don't want to publish there. If they make you feel &lt;em&gt;“oh, I never quite thought of that, it's clever… I see how I may use it”&lt;/em&gt;, go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T10:03:02.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5231" CreationDate="2012-11-12T12:08:52.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think PhD programs differ in three main aspects: duration, teaching, and coursework. I would prefer not to try and generalize how these aspects vary amongst different countries. That said I think a PhD program with limited coursework and teaching are beneficial, especially if you already have an MS. Some teaching might be useful if your personality is such that at job interviews there would be questions about your ability to engage students. Picking up teaching experience is relatively easy and I would not consider the ability to gain teaching experience as positive in deciding on a PhD program. Similarly for coursework; the ability to take courses is not a positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duration on the other hand is a big factor. The longer the duration the better. As hard as it is to be a PhD student, it only gets harder. Putting off becoming a postdoc, and then again the tenure track, for as long as possible is a good thing for your research output and will help you eventually get tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T12:08:52.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-12T14:11:34.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a beginner lecturer, the University (or other institution) that employs you may offer training courses. In fact, depending on the law of your country, they may even be &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to do so. In all cases, it is in their best interest to help you become a better teacher, so they should be able to accommodate requests for such training. Ask your teaching supervisor or head of department. (One might argue that, even if they can't help you, they will appreciate the fact that you voluntarily working on improving your teaching performance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T14:11:34.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5145" CreationDate="2012-11-12T14:14:19.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you run a search in Google Scholar, the hits are organized in two columns. The left column is for all hits (links + snippets) matching your search string. The right column (links only) is for the subset of those hits which are either free for everyone (OA) or free for you (based on Google's calculation that your institution has paid for access). For many searches, the right column will be sparsely populated. If don't search from an institutional IP address, then Google won't be able to tell what your institution has bought, and the right column will be limited to OA hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is one of the best-kept secrets about Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4059" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T14:14:19.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5174" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:42:46.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the research work should be around good publications not good &quot;people&quot; even if they are highly cited. In almost any field you will find introductory papers and surveys discussing the problems and the current state of the art. Those are the beginning. If you find the text referring to something interesting to you; visit the references mentioned in that section/subsection/paragraph. Also, well-known journals usually have special issue for new/hot research areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T19:42:46.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:56:36.707" Score="16" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I’m looking for a way to manage the text of the quotations  that most certainly I will use (i.e. quote) in the future&lt;/strong&gt;. I’m a philosopher, so this is specially handy —and even required— for the classical texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; to manage my references, which is fine for citations on daily working, but does not allow to add quotations to the library items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have checked &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikindx.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Wikindx&lt;/a&gt; (a PHP-based manager which allow this), but it doesn't seem very consolidated… Currently, I keep my quotations in a mediawiki installation, but it is complicated and unoptimized (but at least gives me readability and long term security of accesibility).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone of you have the same trouble? Which manager can you recommend? Anyone knows if Mendeley has plans to add something like it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4063" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T09:16:07.420" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T03:04:16.333" Title="Searching for a quotation manager" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5246" CreationDate="2012-11-12T20:36:26.147" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://textcite.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;TextCite: Publication Quotation Manager&lt;/a&gt; looks like a thing you are looking for (haven't tried, only googled it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TextCite is a program for organizing and commenting textual citations from texts (books, articles, or other published works) for use in producing scientific or academic publications. You can organize by publication, author, category, or outline. It works with bibliographic management programs like Citation, EndNote, RefWorks, and BibTeX, providing important text/citation management capabilities that these programs lack, while still allowing for rapid footnote and bibliography generation by means of your favorite bibliography manager. It also exports to PDF and Word (RTF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T20:36:26.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5246" CreationDate="2012-11-12T20:52:12.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; for that purpose, there are two ways to do that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using notes for books (i.e. in each book you can copy and paste fragments to notes attached to that book) - a warning, though: there seems to be a maximum character limit to this field; text that gets too long is silently trimmed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using single entries (&lt;code&gt;File -&amp;gt; Add Entry Manually&lt;/code&gt;) e.g. as &quot;book sections&quot; with the quote in the &quot;abstract&quot; field (yeah, I know, it's on the verge on hacking the system).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to less specific solutions, you can use e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; (or any other note-taking software), each note for each textual citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="111051" LastEditDate="2019-07-21T03:04:16.333" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T03:04:16.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:54:02.473" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may work very differently depending on the group size, their skills and engagement. My only experience (when it comes to lecturing, not - giving a talk) is with teaching gifted high-school students, for other cases (less skilled or less motivated students, or stricter plan) it may not hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Never assume that students follow you&lt;/strong&gt;, just because they are silent, nodding agreeably, saying that they follow you or even (especially?) repeating your phrases. By interaction see if they get the idea, sort of get the idea, or don't get it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And &amp;quot;make it slower&amp;quot; is not an universal remedy, because either they may be totally lost at this point, or they may not follow because it is already to slow to keep them awake.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After giving a course ask a few students is person to &lt;strong&gt;name 3 strongest and 3 weakest points&lt;/strong&gt; of it. (It's important to do it, i.e. to force to give 3 weak points, because otherwise they may be not that willing to do so. All courses have &amp;gt;=3 flaws. The questions is if they are minor or serious. And beware that a mean grade of a course (e.g. student gave you on average 7.6/10) is almost meaningless, even if split into categories; only text based comments make sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be inviting so they ask questions&lt;/strong&gt; (compare: &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;exams are a sick thing, when the more knowledgeable person asks question the less knowledgeable one&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;. ) Don't kill the natural curiosity. And remember, if they knew everything, then it would be not point fort them to attend your course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW: One of my friend was giving a candy for every student asking a valid question, regardless if simple or hard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the material goes slower that you want, never (once again: &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cut breaks (without a break many could leave the other part, learning not less),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;just run faster (it makes it even more incomprehensible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just plan better the next one, given you have some feedback. Writing a lot of stuff on a whiteboard may trick &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; into believing that you explained them, but in fact you did a chaotic, unpleasant lesson. Compare (excuse me for an entropy joke):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficiency of teaching is measured by mutual information between you and your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not by entropy of your blackboard nor entropy your created in their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are poor upper bounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;watch others giving a lecture,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;record yourself giving a lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T08:55:30.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-13T05:26:23.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the field of engineering, Richard Felder is very highly regarded. He has a lot of papers on how to be a good teacher/professor. You can check out of some of his articles on google scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205337112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Effective, Efficient Professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Phil C. Wankat has a variety of good advice for future faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3846" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T08:21:21.550" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T08:21:21.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-11-13T08:11:47.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a university which is very low tech (no software, or anything else, for teachers - teachers want it, they bring it). Student lists are passed around on paper. So, I wrote my own (simplistic) app which I use at the start of class calling out names (did I mention it's a bit low-tech?). I can easily print out a report that looks like what the admins need to do their paper-oriented job (and I can get a soft copy from them to import so I don't have to type everything). No clickers, no website, just my laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We, by the way, have a policy that any student missing more than 20% of the lectures automatically fails the course but they do get a chance to enter a 'redo' class...which has the same attendance rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One benefit is that I can see (while taking attendance, every session) who is 'at risk' and I can deal with that as I see fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Integration is handled manually - far from ideal - but if the school ever wants to change things, it's easy to change what I wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T08:11:47.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-11-13T13:52:19.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to identify individuals with poor attendance, paper and pencil is the way to go. Just have students sign in on the way in. After a few sessions hold the stack up to the light and find the empty boxes. Those are your potential low attenders. Email them and ask if any have switched sections. Those who haven't are your actual low attenders. It seems much easier than dealing with an on line system especially if the class size is small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T13:52:19.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5271" CreationDate="2012-11-12T22:24:44.813" Score="42" ViewCount="3740" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started using git for tracking changes in a LaTeX paper I'm writing, and for collaboration with co-authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot find easily private git repositories with reasonable plans for scientific collaboration (I'm not asking about discounts, just about a different workflow, so no &quot;one team of n developers&quot;, but there are &quot;many small project, with different people&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribtex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScribTeX&lt;/a&gt;, but unfortunately they are going down :/.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/plans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; free &lt;a href=&quot;https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;academic plan&lt;/a&gt; with unlimited private repositories and number of collaborators&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/plans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bitbucket&lt;/a&gt; free &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/bitbucket-academic-license.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;academic plan&lt;/a&gt; with unlimited private repositories and collaborators&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.assembla.com/plans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Assembla&lt;/a&gt; free: priv, but no bug-tracking; next ($9/month): n=3 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a (La)TeX-oriented &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; (or, say, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt;) repository service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, I'm looking for a repository (free or reasonably priced - i.e. for one with a PhD student salary, not a programmer salary :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allowing for:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many collaborators,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many private repositories,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but can have strong limits on:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;users &lt;em&gt;per&lt;/em&gt; repository,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;repository size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" OwnerDisplayName="Piotr Migdal" LastEditorUserId="8774" LastEditDate="2016-05-17T11:16:59.870" LastActivityDate="2020-01-20T08:36:06.400" Title="Is there an internet Git-like repository for collaboration on a paper?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5256" CreationDate="2012-11-13T18:07:22.680" Score="7" ViewCount="5762" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been contemplating studying some subjects by watching video lectures, more specifically Topology and Quantum Mechanics. I was wondering, if anyone has tried studying a subject on his own  by watching just lectures. Alternatively, I could work systematically through a book. What are the advantages and disadvantages of learning by watching lecture videos, compared to reading a book? I am more concerned more about courses in Maths and Physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:32:13.513" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T23:32:13.513" Title="Advantages and Disadvantages of learning mathematics and physics subjects through lecture videos" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5255" CreationDate="2012-11-13T18:14:41.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For postgraduate research, neither watching video lectures nor just reading a book are going to help you enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're going to have to actively engage with the subject matter, by solving problems, and keeping up with current research literature in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following on from the OP's comment: I do understand that your question is &quot;which is better - books or videos&quot;. And the answer to your question is &lt;strong&gt;neither&lt;/strong&gt;. It's a false opposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither are necessary, and neither are sufficient. &lt;strong&gt;You have to learn the core content of maths and physics by solving problems&lt;/strong&gt;. And to do postgraduate research, you have to keep up with the current research literature in journals (including preprint archives where appropriate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T07:40:14.733" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T07:40:14.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5255" CreationDate="2012-11-13T18:50:13.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important advantage/disadvange IMHO is personal preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advantages of video lectures: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good video can teach the important ideas in a very fast way. It is not that a book couldn't do that, but it may be easier to start with a introductory video and then dig more in-depth into a book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some things (experiments in natural sciences) can much better be shown by video (and even better in reality)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lectures by design come in &quot;digestible&quot; pieces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be easier to schedule time for video, as it is known how long it will take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advantages of books: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can better set the pace &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can better decide where to stop in between&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easier flip back/forward to recall things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;things that take much thinking/working time of you fit better with the concept of books. E.g. calculation of examples/excercises. In depth study that derives the formulae. Few lecturers take the time to develop the exact formulae. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I find it easier to have a number of books open for quick reference (and papers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The screen is not only needed for video, but possibly also for editor (sorting notes, computing examples, etc.), web pages etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks rather complementary than exclusive to me. Additional self-study (by book) is usually recommended also for (live) lectures. I think it even more important for video lectures, because you cannot ask questions. It will depend on what level of understanding you want to achieve, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T18:50:13.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:04:19.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a simple solution. Depending on class size, set up one/two laptops on the teacher desk, have every student sign-into a simple web interface with their school login and password, this will automatically feed either a spreadsheet or blackboard. With this system it is unlikely that a student will sign-in an absent student. If a student forgets to sign in its his/her fault. You can completely lock the computer so the only thing it can be done is run this login screen. This will also force freshman to use their college id login name. You can also add a beep when a login is done, preventing someone from doing more than once. Late students have to sign in after class, this will put them on the spot and their login time recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T19:04:19.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:24:25.650" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider asking your research institute/university IT services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In terms of fees, I'd consider such a tool as necessary for scientific work as your office chair, or backup disks/servers. My personal experience with asking for a git repository on a file server was that our director immediately answered &quot;if that's what is needed for work, it needs to be installed.&quot; - that was it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The far more important concern is, where research in progress and possibly data will end up. Storing such sensitive data outside the collaborating institutes is by default a big &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, even though lots of people send their research data by skype or dropbox.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You'd be totally screwed up if you run into ownership/privacy problems.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even Bitbucket (who have &quot;academic license&quot;) have write in their terms such statements (there are other statements about you retaining ownership of your data, privacy etc.):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;End User hereby grants Atlassian a non-exclusive license to copy, distribute, &#xA;  perform, display, store, modify, and otherwise use End User Data in &#xA;  connection with operating the Hosted Services.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For some areas of research it is even more &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. I work with patient data...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt; works very well with distributed systems, even if they are only seldom connected. Worst case, people can email patches.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But installing git on a server is easy and people may get an ssh login, and that is all you need to have for your private git repository inside your institution IT structure, which avoids all that privacy trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T19:24:25.650" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5085" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:59:30.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm not familiar with what overlearning exactly is, so I go by what Wiki says it is)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the field of science there are things where overlearning (as in vocabulary) is beneficial or even needed. E.g. I'm chemist. Unfortunately, there are priciples behind chemistry that cannot be explained like you explain how to derive a formula. But knowing lots of these things allows you to extrapolate to new situations. During undergrad studies we all complained that if we had wanted this style of studies, we had chosen medicine and started learning the phone directory by hard.&#xA;It is a bit like learning a language like children do: without being told, structures will emerge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These structures of the knowledge that form by experience are also important for topics/techniques that can be explained in a logical way. They allow you to become fast and efficient. They allow to &quot;automate&quot; certain tasks, and that leaves conscious capacity to think about less well-known things.  In physics, it will certainly be beneficial if you have your intellectual capacity free for thinking about physics &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; you mastered the relevant maths to a level where you &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; possible ways of solving instead of digging through your brain and notes for that. Ultimately, this level of mastering subjects is also what is needed to arrive at truly new connections (&quot;Good mathematicians see analogies. Great mathematicians see analogies between analogies.&quot; - true for physicists and chemists and whole lots of other researchers as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you need to exercise the stuff you learned. Doing textbook excercises is a boring (but possibly efficient) way of doing that at intermediate levels. But of course, you can try to do this with research projects as well. The important thing also with undergrad research is that you train your research/physics skills and not only do what you are told to do, but also take the time to understand why things are done this way. What alternatives would exist, what would be the disadvantage of that etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About studying ahead of schedule: in my university (Germany) it was no problem to participate e.g. in written exams ahead of the &quot;regular&quot; time. If you passed, noone asked you to go to the course. In some subjects, it even gave you the benefit that if you wanted to try again when your year was doing the exam, you could redo it and pick the better mark. Also, noone would have kept you from attending advanced lectures/seminars. Or if you went for subjects that were not strictly on the plan, like another language. I also heard some philosophy, took some computer science and some economics and an introduction to general and patent law - you get the idea. We did not do much research that way, but that was probably because we had research projects on schedule, so the research groups had rather more research students than they could handle (I don't count fetching stuff from the library as research job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T19:59:30.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-14T02:04:59.640" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three books that I found quite useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0495809292&quot;&gt;McKeachie's Teaching Tips&lt;/a&gt; - this is small but dense, packed with good ideas (good to re-read from time to time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0807856037&quot;&gt;The Joy of Teaching by Peter Filene&lt;/a&gt; - good for new teachers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1579222307&quot;&gt;Teaching Unprepared Students&lt;/a&gt;, by Kathleen F. Gabriel - good if you have students who are not really strong academically and you want to help them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from books, you could consider getting a PGCHE (post graduate certificate in higher education) which is normally a 600 hour / one year course specifically on teaching to adults. You can get one via distance learning, if you're not in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T04:42:02.747" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T04:42:02.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5265" CreationDate="2012-11-14T07:19:49.323" Score="8" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in a disjunctive regarding my professional life, and I would like a bit of an advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing my PhD next March (is Japan, so is 99.9999% sure that I will finish), and I have 2 proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is to move away to US, with a very demanding professor in an experimental environment (I do mostly simulations), he seems well connected there with people in good Universities (MIT, Stanford, UPenn, etc). Yet, he himself is not very well known in my particular field, he is in his own application field though. The University is in California with what I guess is a standard PostDoc salary for a one year Post Doc program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is to stay in my current University, with my professor in a more stable and long term proposal (4 years). The problem, is that my professor was never very engaged in my project, and I got mostly marginal help from him. He was always really helpful, and had good resources (conferences, equipment, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the opinion of more experienced people. I would really like a future in academia, so I'm open to any suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T09:35:35.313" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T09:44:30.473" Title="Move from my current university or stay with a longer term proposal?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5255" CreationDate="2012-11-14T07:50:23.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have studied through difficult math topics using basically three approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Videolectures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tutorial Papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get the basics of the topic you are studying and &quot;leveling up&quot; with the other people in the field, I think this three resources are very good. I do not see why would you single one out in favor of the other. I've basically seen like 4 Machine Learning Summer Schools, 3 Online Courses, 3 books, and that was only to be aware of what was happening around me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that I had to engage a lot on Online communities, conferences, papers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that a good practice is to set alerts for authors that you wish to follow and are prolific in the specific area you are doing your research on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T07:50:23.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5269" CreationDate="2012-11-14T08:52:35.307" Score="13" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about copyright. When I make a presentation based on my research (together with co-authors from other countries), who owns the copyright of the presentation? I think, only I have the copyright since I give credit to my co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is now that the university (I'm living in Germany, if that is important) tells me that they have to copyright on my talks since they pay me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any answer for this or any comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T07:59:35.860" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T07:59:35.860" Title="I am preparing the presentation of a co-authored research, who owns the copyright?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5262" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:44:30.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noöne but you can make this decision, so here are a few thoughts that sprang in my mind when reading your description. I hope they can be of help in your decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like your option #1 is more of a gamble (which might be a pro or a con depending on your own character!). It seems that you would go to this new group and change your research topic: if so, you have to realize that a one-year position is quite short for learning/adapting to a different area of research. I think it's good for a post-doc to actually pursue something different than he did during his PhD, but it is more risky on a one-year contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing: if you go option #1, would you be burning bridges with your current place? Or would they welcome you back after your one year of US experience, if you don't find another post-doc in this new (sub)field? If you think you can pretty much fall back to option #2 in one or two year's time, then option #1 sounds a lot less risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, being a rather “independent” post-doc (i.e. working with a professor who's not fully involved) has some advantages if you can handle it and find intellectual support in other ways (collaborations, conferences, visiting positions, …). It allows you to establish yourself as an independent researcher, which is a first step to become a group leader yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T09:44:30.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:52:47.950" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer this question based on my understanding of copyright law in the United Kingdom. The general principles are likely to be the same in German law, however, for a definitive answer, you should consult an expert in German copyright law. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice in any jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of a literary work - in this case your presentation - is usually the first owner of the copyright in that work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that work was created &lt;strong&gt;in the course of employment&lt;/strong&gt;, then the copyright in the work belongs to the employer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &lt;strong&gt;in the course of employment&lt;/strong&gt; requires careful consideration in such cases. I assume that you are an employee of your university, and that you were employed to conduct research. I suspect that you were also expected, as part of your employment, to create presentations of your research. I assume that these expectations were put in a contract &lt;strong&gt;of&lt;/strong&gt; service - the usual case for a university researcher. This is distinct from obligations under a contract &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; service - which would be more common if you were commissioned to produce a specific piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were employed to conduct and report research as part of a contract of employment - the most likely case given what I know of your situation - it would appear that any copyright in your presentation rests with your employer, the University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention co-authors. I assume that these are co-authors of the publication(s) regarding the research which you are describing in your presentation. If this is the case, and your co-authors did not contribute to the creation of the presentation itself, then the copyright &lt;strong&gt;in the presentation&lt;/strong&gt; rests with solely you as first author or, by virtue of employment, solely with your employer (the most likely situation, as I read it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, your co-authors contributed to the creation of the presentation itself, then they - or their relevant employers - may be entitled to be considered joint owners of copyright in the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been discussing the copyright of the presentation - not the copyright arising in any research publication. I assume that you have included in your presentation items such as pictures, plots or graphs which appeared in your research publication. It is most likely that copyright for these works vests with the publisher of the research article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case - that your research has been published (including, for example a graph) and that the copyright in that publication has been assigned to the publisher (again, the usual situation), then the use of that work in another work  - e.g. using a graph from that publication in your presentation - may be considered an infringement of the copyright in the publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an exception to copyright infringement in several copyright laws which permits the use of copyrighted works for educational or research purposes. In this case, your University may well lay claim to copyright in your presentation as a literary work by virtue of their employment of you, however, they may also have to consider that they are able to use the copyrighted works included in that presentation (the plots, graphs etc, the copyright of which is held by the publisher of those works, e.g. the research journal) &lt;strong&gt;if the use is for research or teaching purposes.&lt;/strong&gt; If, for example, the University decides to include your presentation - including a plot published in your original research paper - in a book, and then sold that book, the University is likely to require a licence from the journal which holds the copyright in the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T09:52:47.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-11-14T10:04:59.143" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Post-scriptum: in addition to the answer below, there are a few things that are crystal-clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The copyright of figures already published has probably been transferred to the publisher; copyright transfer agreements &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; allow you to reüse them for academic talks and the like, but you don't own copyright for those.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you use text or figures produced by others (and not already published), then you don't own copyright for those.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Such questions are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; specific and are best answered by a professional, also known as &lt;em&gt;lawyer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact, it certainly depends on the country your work in, but also the type of contract you signed with them. But, anyway…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under US law&lt;/strong&gt;, the copyrightable by-products of research (articles, talks, book chapters, etc.) are generally not considered as work-for-hire, and thus &lt;strong&gt;you retain authorship&lt;/strong&gt;. Citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, articles published in academic journals, or work produced by freelancers for magazines, are not generally works created as a work for hire, which is why it is common for the publisher to require the copyright owner, the author, to sign a copyright transfer, a short legal document transferring specific author copyrights to the publisher. In this case the authors retain those copyrights in their work not granted to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't regard Wikipedia as a particularly authoritative source, but it happens to match the existing practice of requesting &lt;em&gt;authors&lt;/em&gt; to transfer copyright to journal publishers, not their universities.) It's somewhat of a gray area, in that some institutions actually claim such ownership, and the merits of such claims have not (to my knowledge) been much tested in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that situations can be more complex than that. For example, it seems that in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany&quot;&gt;German copyright law&lt;/a&gt; employment grants the employer an exclusive license to your work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While exclusive licences are almost as powerful as copyright transfer, the author always retains some rights to the work, including the right to prevent defacing and to be identified as the author. Employment agreements are frequently construed as granting the employer an exclusive licence to any works created by the employee within the scope of his obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, an exclusive license is pretty much equivalent to a copyright transfers, because the only rights you retain are minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T10:04:59.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-14T14:04:59.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to take some direction from how education schools teach the art of teaching to future teachers. Generally, the curriculum involves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coursework covering education theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice designing semester-long (and sometimes years-long) curricula, as well as individual lesson plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student teaching, where the teacher teaches in the presence of an experienced educator and receives regular feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you'll probably want all three to some extent, note that (2) and (3) involve other, more experienced educators giving you regular feedback, rather than books and articles. I don't think you'll be able to set this up yourself; this is a very involved process which requires a significant time commitment from the mentor. I would speak with your department and see if you can get backing to run a program like this, even if just for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T14:04:59.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-11-14T15:39:18.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;German copyright is very different from UK or US copyright. In German law, copyright always belongs to the author(s), and cannot be given away. What you can give away are the various rights of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question here thus should be whether your university has a right to use your presentations, potentially even an exclusive right to use them. In the case of computer programs, §69b of the German copyright law explicitly states that the employer has the exclusive right to use the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether a lawyer could argue that your presentation is a computer program - maybe he could if it is a tex file :). Otherwise, as F'x writes, it depends on your work contract. If there is not an explicit statement in your work contract that the university has the right to use any copyrighted works that you authored during your employment, they will generally not have such rights. In the typical employment contracts at German universities, such statements are not included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T20:00:31.953" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T20:00:31.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:51:59.883" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aditya's comment should be the accepted answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bitbucket offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlassian.com/software/views/bitbucket-academic-license.jsp&quot;&gt;unlimited private repos for academic users&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T16:51:59.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7512" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:33:40.803" Score="16" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in the field of chemistry, where some of the prominent publishers have very invasive (or restrictive) copyright transfer agreements. Thus, I'm considering the use of amendments (or addenda) to publication agreements, such as the one &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/sites/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-amendment-form/&quot;&gt;proposed by the MIT libraries&lt;/a&gt;. However, I don't really want to spend a lot of time on an unwinnable pursuit, so I was wondering: is there somewhere a decent review of the success of such amendments? I expect that it may vary from publisher to publisher, and from field to field, but is there &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; data at all? (My own searches couldn't turn much.) In particular, what about the “big names”, such as Elsevier, Wiley, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-02T15:17:44.693" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T20:12:57.187" Title="How successful are publication agreement addenda?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-11-14T22:34:42.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true that fitting the Kaggle competition framework is a bit of a constraint, but if you understand that framework and see how your problem fits into it, I'd suggest you e-mail quote@kaggle.com with a description of the data &amp;amp; problem (and ideally sample data), even if you don't have funding. We can see what comes of it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I work for Kaggle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4089" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T22:34:42.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:48:52.443" Score="5" ViewCount="1307" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly I hope this question is appropriate to ask here. I am a third year studying Mathematics at the University of Oxford, with plans to continue to 4th year to complete the masters course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been considering many paths to take so far this year, I started off by looking into finance, this I found however incredibly unintellectuality stimulating. My passions have always been for Maths and Physics, this year I will be studying quantum theory, quantum computing, special relativity and fluid dynamics, which I will continue on into 4th year with the addition of general relativity, theoretical physics and other more general applied courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very interested in applying for a PhD after 4th year, mainly because i've never been more fascinated by the subjects i'm currently learning, Quantum theory in particular is amazing and has really changed the way I look at the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I'm only getting a mid 2.1, however it is from Oxford so I hope that this may carry some weight, but because of this I will be mainly focusing on applying to universities other than Oxford and Cambridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm wondering is is there any point in following this dream? I'm extremely motivated but I feel not having a first might have ruined it for me. Can anyone recommend any strategies I can use to make myself more competitive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently i'm planning on applying to universities for summer research assistant placements, paid/unpaid. I'm also reading the Feynman lectures to boost my background knowledge of physics, to help bridge the gap between physics courses and my mathematics course. Can anyone recommend any other books/ideas that could help me be able to apply for experimental physics? Also universities with departments that would be good to approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up my long and laboured question, i'm extremely passionate about mathematical physics and the idea of stopping learning about it, and say going into a deskjob is sort of horrifying. Any advice anyone can give me I would greatly appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4130" OwnerDisplayName="LHS" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T16:07:25.680" Title="Advice on postgraduate study in experimental/theoretical physics for a 3rd year Mathematics student" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5275" CreationDate="2012-11-14T17:46:23.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't go to graduate school in physics, at least immediately.  The best case scenario is a five year program, followed by three years of postdocs, and then THAT will be followed by five years of tenure review, and THEN you might have a chance at having a stable life.  All of this happens with a tremendous amount of competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use that Oxford degree to find a job somewhere for a few years, and see if you still really want to do physics at the end of that.  If you must absolutely go to school, find a terminal masters program, and learn about research some.  If you don't know whether to prefer experiment or theory, you're going to have a horrible time picking a school that has a compatible advisor, and you want to be looking for compatible future advisors far more than you want to be looking for the Platonic &quot;quality physics programs.&quot;  So, you'll be better suited to start a PhD program effectively (and getting a masters on the way doesn't really slow you down--you are better prepared to start research after that, and the first couple of years between your quals and really starting research is where grad students flounder most frequently).  Additionally, if you are in your current situation, this will enable you to rehabilitate your academic record.  Finally, if you do your two years and don't like physics, you can find something else to do.  As someone who has finished a doctorate, I strongly recommend against immediately entering a doctoral program straight out of college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Additionally, as you go through school, keep some sort of exit plan--sign up for those numerical projects and learn programming.  Take the sensor analysis class and learn how to align a laser.  Learn the basics of data analysis.  There are all sorts of skills that physicists have that are wanted not just in academia, but also in the private sector or government.  Make sure that you have the skills to go out and do something enjoyable, even if it is not academic physics.  Because the odds are really, REALLY against anyone making it in academic physics (and none of these things will hurt your physics career, to say the least).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33186" OwnerDisplayName="Jerry Schirmer" LastEditorUserId="33186" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T16:07:25.680" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T16:07:25.680" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5286" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:50:28.513" Score="73" ViewCount="13144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am following the advice of @Piotr Migdal in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5253/14341&quot;&gt;Is there an internet Git-like repository for collaboration on a paper?&lt;/a&gt;, and I want to ask about version controls: how beneficial are they (specially under LaTeX settings) for writing papers compared to Dropbox and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sugarsync.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SugarSync&lt;/a&gt;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been using SugarSync for almost a year with no pain. &#xA;Usually, I create the paper folder and invite other authors to join, so we can see and edit the last version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T14:44:55.190" Title="Why use version control systems for writing a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="50" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5279" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:23:53.943" Score="4" ViewCount="1577" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I hope this question is not too trivial for this site. It does say in the FAQ:&#xA;&quot;This site is for academics of &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; levels&quot;. Furthermore, this question should be helpful for other novice researchers who want to write a paper or thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked for a good while with my MSc. thesis and what I did initially was to read a lot of related work in the research area of my project and also in perhaps more peripheral areas that initially seemed very interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This initial review is the basis for a related work chapter that I have written. I was fully expecting to prune a lot of this text and have also done this according to what I eventually ended up doing. However, a lot of the descriptions of research that I have in the current version represent very interesting ideas for extensions to the current approach that I want to write about in a future work section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I keep the sections in related work that are about research areas that I have not ventured into, that are not directly comparable but do represent possible extensions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible I would also like someone to explain how &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt; the related work section/chapter should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2822" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-07T19:54:27.303" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T19:54:27.303" Title="Include background to ideas for future work in related work chapter of master thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5278" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:53:58.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While is always interesting to venture in new areas while writing your thesis, the overall advise I usually get is to keep a solid straight line story, this way the readers won't feel confused on why did you put certain stuff that you did not use at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main objective of the related work, should be to put your own work into context with respect to your peers, but your present work, not your future work. You would be basically citing your future work, which would not be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always write a Future work section that can be as long as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My overall advise when writing your thesis (especially for Masters) is to keep it simple and straight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T06:53:58.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-15T07:53:30.793" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how beneficial they are (specially under Latex settings) for writing papers compared to dropbox and SugarSync?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a long time user of version control systems, in fact everything I have (my $HOME folder) is backed up in a VC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried hard to use various version control systems for writing many (10+) research papers all of them written in LaTeX. &lt;em&gt;My experience with using VCs for writing research papers is however mixed, if not outright negative.&lt;/em&gt; Besides the easiness of synchronization with a VC, the main problem is merging the updates. Unlike source code of programs, merging LaTeX is not that straightforward mainly due to line breaking issues. Secondly, even though I have no problem with various VCs, my co-authors (very heterogeneous mix of people) not necessarily have experience with the one I use, or use different one outright, or have no clue about this stuff. Add the quirkiness of setting up passwords, ssh tunnels, installation of client-side software etc. and you see that all in all, using a VC is not a smooth experience (at best).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently (3 papers so far), I gave a try to Dropbox and I am pretty pleased with the result. While it does not solve all the issues, it seems to me to solve at least some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;almost zero set-up, also layman have no problem installing the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no explicit sync, everything just works instantly (no svn/git/bzr/... add/remove/move/... command line stuff involved)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;merging issues are about the same as with a version control system - even with a vc in place I always tended to send explicit write lock notifications to co-authors by e-mail, or IM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dropbox has some rudimentary version control, for my purposes it's pretty sufficient. Writing papers is not about branching, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;moreover, no repository setup is necessary. You just share a folder with a selected group of co-authors and that's it. Nobody else can see it. Few clicks, almost zero hassle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, &lt;strong&gt;my advice would be to stay with Dropbox-like solution&lt;/strong&gt;. For my purposes, at least, it turned out to be the best solution so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;As a follow-up to comments received: consider also the requirements you have for writing a research paper. Why to use a heavy-lifting solutions, such as a distributed version control, when we are speaking here about 1-10 text files, a handful of images and possibly a repository of data (binary, or text blobs). Do you really need to go through all the hassle with a DVCS for that? Maybe, if your research is rather a special case, most of the time, I guess, not. To me, easiness and accessibility to laymen of solutions such as Dropbox by far outweighs the advanced technological features, such as branching, tagging, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T09:10:26.977" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T09:10:26.977" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-15T07:55:22.467" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure how dropbox and sugar sync work, but their main aim is not to monitor change, but to keep files in sync over a multitude of platforms and to provide backup. In addition, a good version control system allows you to &lt;strong&gt;keep older versions&lt;/strong&gt;, but also to &lt;strong&gt;comment on the changes&lt;/strong&gt; explain why they where made. The version control is also guaranteed to keep the chain of change of a tex file even over very long periods of time (say submitting to journal a, getting rejected, submitting to journal b, getting reviews, new version, acceptance: such a cycle could easily be 1.5 years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in a Version Control System (VCS) &lt;strong&gt;you decided when you want to save a version&lt;/strong&gt;, in dropbox I can imagine that the system makes that decision. Being in control yourself is important, for example to be able to generate a difference file when resubmitting a paper (see also my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1325/using-latexdiff-with-git&quot;&gt;this question on TeX SE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a VCS you can also &lt;strong&gt;collaborate easily with people&lt;/strong&gt;. Just create a private repository at bitbucket (supports mercurial and git), arrange for the other authors to have read and/or write access to your tex files in the repository, and they can change the paper or add to it. The VCS will take care of the merging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Mercurial myself for version controlling papers. However, for version controlling a tex file, a VCS might be overkill. I would still recommend Mercurial though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T11:04:59.283" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-15T08:53:23.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the praise received by version control systems in the existing answers, I’ll play the devil’s advocate here for a second and underline what I think is a very important point: &lt;strong&gt;it strongly depends on what your co-authors are comfortable with&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use version control for most of the projects I do on my own, from code to papers. However, you have to realize that not everyone is familiar with this paradigm, and those who are familiar with it may not be familiar with a given piece of software (I myself am a heavy Subversion user, but have never used Git…). This is particularly true of people who don't develop software, as those tools come from the field of software development. So, check out what your co-authors use and what they are willing to learn. &lt;strong&gt;The great thing about a simple synchronization solution (such as DropBox) with no version control is that its learning curve is flat&lt;/strong&gt;: just agree on a few rules (date-stamp all files, add initials, always send an email when you have created a new version). Anyone can understand that in a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'll add another remark: the need for tracking revision history in the short term needs not necessarily require that you record the revision history for the posterity. For example, my incremental backup system (Apple’s Time Machine) creates snapshots of my files history every hour for a day, every day for the past month, and so on. This covers some of the need for tracking older versions in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T08:53:23.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2012-11-15T08:59:01.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You never did &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same work. Never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scenario you describe has happened to my Master's thesis as well as to many times later in my career. Typically you just feel as if they have done the same work but at closer inspection find differences in their approach as well as the research questions that they are addressing. The best thing to do in these cases is to revisit the narrative of your paper and emphasize the parts that make it unique. At masters level a good adviser will help you with that. If not, find some mentor elsewhere. Personally I find it helpful to show both pieces of work to a friend as they are much more likely to see these difference that I ever could. All this is actually simple psychology. After a year of working on your solution, everything looks like your solution to you. Which is also known as &quot;if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4076" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T08:59:01.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-15T10:13:01.123" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many good points in the other answers, but I'd like to add another one, concerning the time/project management. Although you can do version control with Dropbox, the main strength of Dropbox is that everybody works on the same file(s) at the same time, which makes it fast and always synced, and it's quite good for a &quot;rush&quot;, where n people have to work together over a given period of time on a given objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm currently working on 5+ papers at the same time, with different time constraints, different deadlines, and different involvement, and I appreciate to easily have the history of the paper, who committed what/when, and I like to have to commit contributions to a paper. Hence, I know that the version on the main repo is consistent, and I can leave some parts hanging on a local repo without breaking everything, and when I commit, I need to make the effort to understand what has actually changed and what's the interest. In this regard, the fact that you can easily associate a issue tracker to a repo (for instance with &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Using+your+Bitbucket+Issue+Tracker&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt;) can be also quite helpful (for instance, you can add an issue &quot;cite this other paper&quot;, attach the paper, and solve the issue when you commit the paragraph actually citing the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This project management approach might be a bias coming from my programming background, and might be overkill in some cases, but in the end, there is no killer feature from one approach or the other, it's also how comfortable it makes your life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T10:13:01.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-15T11:01:15.203" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: &lt;strong&gt;Version control is harder to set up, but makes it safe to work on the same file, and makes it easy to track history (i.e. previous versions).&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros and cons of syncing files&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the biggest advantage of things like Dropbox (I use it as well for backuping and synchronizing my files) and SugarSync is their easiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may work for collaboration on files, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are not meant for two people editing the same file at once (no merge functionalities - so one guy changing a file can overwrite changes made by other guy, even without knowing that),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you get no history, i.e.:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did anyone worked on that file I want to work know?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did anyone added or modified any other files?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which changes were made?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can I go to a previous version, the one I sent to my supervisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending what you do, it may not be an issue. For example, if only one is editing &lt;code&gt;tex&lt;/code&gt; file, while others are only reading or uploading figures - it's perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, look at my answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1261/simplest-way-to-jointly-write-a-manuscript/1263#1263&quot;&gt;Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript?&lt;/a&gt; with a not technically-inclined collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Version control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version control systems require some technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two the most common version control systems are &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; (with the second one being more Windows-friendly and, arguably, easier to start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both by standard comes only with command line access, but there are some graphical interfaces as well (I really recommend starting with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SourceTree&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the collaborators are techie, just teach them how to use it. If not - there is a way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can keep track of version control by yourself, without engaging others (I'm doing it just now with 2 collaborators).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just you start a repository inside folder you share (the examples are with Git):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;cd ~/path/to/the/folder&#xA;git init                    // start git repository inside this folder&#xA;git add .                   // say git to track all files inside it&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, every time you or your collaborator make some changes (e.g. add some files, correct typos, revise a chapter, ...) you do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git commit -a -m &quot;Fixed typos in Seciton 3&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, you will be able to go back to this version; and also compare, e.g. the current version of your file with the previous one (by default - by line, here - by words):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git diff HEAD~1 --color-words my_file.tex&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://try.github.io/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6188780/git-latex-workflow&quot;&gt;git + LaTeX workflow&lt;/a&gt; at StackOverflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://copiancestral.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/writing-the-phd-thesis-the-tools-part-i/#more-372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing the PhD thesis: the tools Part I&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2012/10/16/collaborating-with-latex-and-git.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collaborating with LaTeX and git at ShareLaTeX blog&lt;/a&gt; - a great and comprehensive tutorial&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1118/what-are-the-advantages-of-using-version-control-git-cvs-etc-in-latex-documen&quot;&gt;What are the advantages of using version control (git, CVS etc) in LaTeX documents - TeX.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=version+control&quot;&gt;https://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=version+control&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And real world example from using diff (it makes my life so much easier :)); commit messages in Polish, but I guess you get the idea: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1sPXj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/liLNz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a strip from PhD Comics&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9HQoO.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T14:44:55.190" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="474" CreationDate="2012-11-15T15:05:27.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess one can take 4 weeks off per year if they want to and can. But you hardly have the time to do so, especially if you are working in a wet lab. I probably took 2 weeks max per year, and that also not all at once (more like one of two days here and there to fit my experiment schedules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4096" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T15:05:27.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-11-15T15:18:49.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think one should read both for breadth and depth. Read all sort of literature around your field, and a few outside your field. One can only come up with good ideas having a good general knowledge of science. When it comes to your own research area papers should be read carefully and critically to understand what is being done, how it is being done and if the interpretations and methods made and used really show that. As my PhD supervisor used to say, read atleast two papers a day even if you are busy with experiments. This gets easier as you go. For me in the first year it used to take a lot to time to read a paper. Towards the end, I was looking at the abstract, results/figures...if needed methods, and where confused check the discussion quickly to see how the authors explained their results. After a while, you rarely need to read the intro in your own field unless you want a refresher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4096" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T15:18:49.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5296" CreationDate="2012-11-11T04:00:12.200" Score="13" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very brief question: Can a professional mathematician publish philosophy papers, essays, etc.? For example, would a leading philosophy journal, nowadays, consider publishing a paper or an essay about philosophy of mathematics written by a mathematician. If so, does any one have proof of such instances? I am of course aware of the fact that numerous mathematicians were philosophers and vice versa, but the standards have changed, so I seek recent publications (as proof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Suppose I wanted to write an article about geometric fallacies and why geometric arguments fail, in general, when we use infinitesimals, limits, etc. or something of this nature. Would this be considered for a publication in a philosophy journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4097" OwnerDisplayName="glebovg" LastEditorUserId="4097" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T16:16:23.220" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T00:17:26.293" Title="Mathematicians publishing philosophy papers and essays" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5290" CreationDate="2012-11-11T18:35:07.223" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just randomly browsed Philosophia Mathematica and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://philmat.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/25.abstract&quot;&gt;To Diagram, to Demonstrate: To Do, To See, and To Judge in Greek Geometry&lt;/a&gt; written by Montelle, who lists his employment as in the department of mathematics. It's from Feb 2012, so recent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9068" OwnerDisplayName="Xodarap" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T18:35:07.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5290" CreationDate="2012-11-15T21:38:16.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you consider that fields of research have to be separated by clear boundaries well-defined? It's not the case, and there are plenty of examples to prove it. Read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bertrand Russell&lt;/a&gt; for example, is he a mathematician or a philosopher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Russell is too old, what about Godel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gödel), Hofstadter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4105" LastEditorUserId="4105" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T07:04:32.970" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T07:04:32.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-11-15T21:43:06.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Researcher does not just stop because you submitted a conference paper. In many fields arxiv is not an option. Waiting when you do not need to is not an option either. But you have another option. Incorporate enough of your first paper in a second one for it to be understandable, and cite the unpublished work for the details. By the time the second paper is published, the first one should be out and the full reference can be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4105" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T21:43:06.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5290" CreationDate="2012-11-16T05:25:59.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Shallit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeffrey Shallit&lt;/a&gt; is &quot;a computer scientist, number theorist, a noted advocate for civil liberties on the Internet, and a noted critic of intelligent design.&quot;  He has a B.S. and a Ph.D. in Mathematics and is currently a Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.  He co-wrote a paper with Wesley Elsberry &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-009-9542-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information”)&lt;/a&gt; which was published in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/philosophy/epistemology+and+philosophy+of+science/journal/11229&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Synthese&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science&quot; on January 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T00:17:26.293" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T00:17:26.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5299" CreationDate="2012-11-16T11:13:44.900" Score="7" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Early Stage Researcher in a bigger project. I am non-native speaker of English and I find my level of English in my articles not satisfactory, especially when I consider that it is not just my reputation but also the reputation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about hiring a proofreader for my future articles or other texts for publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My long term goal is to improve myself enough so I would not need a proofreader in the future. &lt;strong&gt;Does the possibility to see your corrected text help you improve your writing skill in the long term, or are English classes necessary?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T12:56:16.370" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T14:51:20.403" Title="Is hiring a proofreader beneficial in the long term?" Tags="&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5297" CreationDate="2012-11-16T11:59:21.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend both, for exactly the reasons you stated. Hire a proofreader to maintain a high quality &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; professional image, and take English language lessons to ensure that you can maintain a high quality &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; professional image (and to ensure you're not paying a proofreader for the rest of your career).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T10:11:55.707" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T10:11:55.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5297" CreationDate="2012-11-16T12:34:36.623" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What improves most your English level (or help you maintain it if you have reached a certain level which you deem satisfactory) is &lt;strong&gt;usage of the language&lt;/strong&gt; in all its forms: listening, speaking, reading, writing. This is especially easy in this age of globalization and technology: just keep reading texts of all kinds, listening to the radio, watching TV programs in original language (BBC news, series, …), professional podcasts or videocasts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, comparing the proofread text of articles with your original version can help you better understand some of the mistakes you make, the invalid constructions you may use and &#xA;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth&quot;&gt;shibboleths&lt;/a&gt; that give you away as a non-native speaker. However, unless you write (and get proofread) a large number of papers, this might not be enough to improve significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to &lt;strong&gt;pay a teacher to actually review with you, on a regular basis, texts that you have written&lt;/strong&gt;. Although it takes quite a bit of time, I believe it is one of the best ways to improve your written English, along with reading a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T12:34:36.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5302" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:50:11.970" Score="11" ViewCount="1329" Body="&lt;p&gt;What types of methods are available to students today who want to find a University for a Master, PhD, or postdoc program that supports the student's obscure/specific area of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I am looking for PhD programs that specialize in software engineering metrics analysis and process improvement.  I have looked at the websites of about 15-20 universities that offer PhD's in Computer Science.  Sometimes, I'll find &quot;software engineering&quot; listed vaguely as a research area, but as I research the publications and activities of the faculty, there will be just a single faculty member who does work in an obscure aspect of software engineering, like applying CASE tools to data modeling, validation of aeronautic systems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3871" LastEditorUserId="3871" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T04:18:48.820" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T04:18:48.820" Title="Methods for finding graduate programs for specific areas of research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5303" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:53:23.380" Score="56" ViewCount="16461" Body="&lt;p&gt;My earliest PhD graduation date is 10 months away. Funding permits me to stay 1–3 months longer, so the final date is still uncertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is never too early to make contacts for possible post-docs. But how long in advance is too early to formally apply to post-doc job openings or funding opportunities? Depending on the bureaucracy, the path from applying to starting can probably be anything from a week up to a year — someone I know is applying with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esa.int/&quot;&gt;ESA&lt;/a&gt; which had the opening advertised in August, application deadline in October, will have interviews in December/January, and the commencement of work only in September, 13 months after the initial job advertisement. My personal guess is that the long time between interviews and starting is to create a level playing field between those who do and those who don't need to go through a visa application procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm too early in applying for a post-doc, a hosting institution might prefer someone who can start earlier and where the graduation date is more certain. For example, in my case the graduation date is still uncertain, so there is a risk in accepting even if they are willing to wait. Project funding might also require the money to be spent rather soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wait too long, there might be a considerable period where I'm between jobs. Having a long (&gt;6 months) period between jobs is a disadvantage for me. Maybe it's also a disadvantage for a hosting institution (I'm not sure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I find the balance? For example, considering the duration of funding and visa applications, does it make sense to apply e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vsp.ucar.edu/cgc/2013/2013_Program.html&quot;&gt;8 months in advance&lt;/a&gt;? Or is it in any case virtually inevitable to have at least several months before my PhD graduation and the start of a post-doc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T11:52:19.280" Title="How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2012-11-16T15:03:08.533" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look at affiliations in papers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was looking for a PhD position, I systematically did &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5074/1033&quot;&gt;an extensive literature survey&lt;/a&gt;. I didn't really read the articles, looked mostly at the abstracts, but I particularly looked at &lt;em&gt;affiliations&lt;/em&gt;. At the time, I simply wrote down all academic institutes I found that were in Europe. In a more extended version, one could somehow assign a score based on the number of papers coming from a certain institution and the impact of each paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big advantage of this is that one will find mostly groups doing active research in the field. Whether we want it or not, published peer-reviewed papers are (at least in my field, atmospheric sciences) &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; method for determining impact. I won't find groups that fail to publish using this method, but I probably don't want to do my PhD there anyway, so nothing is lost from my perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my PhD I ended up staying exactly where I already was, but now I'm about to do the same for finding institutes with a post-doc. It's one degree more complicated now because of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2633/1033&quot;&gt;two-body problem&lt;/a&gt;, but even there: my significant other and I both make such a list, then we'll plot them on a map and look at pairs that are close to each other. But it all starts with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look at affiliations in papers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T15:03:08.533" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5301" CreationDate="2012-11-16T15:11:49.150" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the type of funding associated with the postdoc position: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If the funding is already there and has a limited duration (for instance a one-year funding within a one-year research project), then indeed, the recruiter might not want to wait 10 months for you, since it would mean that an important part of the funding might be &quot;wasted&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the funding is already there, but can be used later on (for instance a one-year funding within a five-year research project), then it could be possible to start only in 10 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If there is no funding yet, and you need to get it yourself, then you have to start as early as possible, since it can take a long time for the whole process to finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that case 3 is usually a process you started with a potential advisor, rather than answer to a particular announcement. In any case, it's always a good thing to informally contact potential advisors directly to see about the specificity of a particular position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T14:08:52.580" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T14:08:52.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:54:26.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just been going through what you are describing. There is no specific way to go about it. I will be painful and daunting when you don't start from any specific point. I can tell you what I did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Location: if you have certain preferences that might help you make some preliminary decisions. For example initially I decided on certain countries/cities and looked at all major universities there. Then I extended the range to locations that were not a preference. I did find some nice programs , for example in Alaska, but I could not force myself to apply there, I just can't imagine living 5 years in Anchorage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publications and google scholar: I am in ecology so what I did was going into google scholar and type certain species with which I would like to work and a few other keywords &quot;conservation&quot;, &quot;GIS&quot;, &quot;spatial modeling&quot;, etc. I read the abstract and the authors affiliations. I also limited the search to the last 5 years because people change affiliation and also I want to look at latest research. Then I only investigated the ones that were in places/universities where I want to go or interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Specialist groups: not sure how this translates into computer science (even if I am a computer scientist myself), but there are special groups that work with certain species, that was another great source of people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Job posting websites: this came in later but I did manage to find a few positions that were related to what I wanted to do. For example the ecological society of America as a bulletin with PhD position advertised by university directly, nature.com, findaPhd.com.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask people in the field about good research labs, they should know a few.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know these are mostly related to ecology but should give you some ideas. I also wasted time going through school's websites one by one and unfortunately there was no way around that.  It was time consuming and not the most productive way but I didn't want to have any regrets or places I missed. Also, I know have a personal database of labs I like for my future career and I will have to do minimal research for my post-doc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T22:54:26.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2012-11-17T02:24:50.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relevant professional societies may maintain databases of graduate research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate programs in chemistry in North America, the American Chemical Society maintains a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dgr.rints.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;database of graduate research&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The database is searchable by faculty name and institution. However, there are fields for specific topics in the faculty search. If you leave the name fields blank, you can search by topic. For example, a search of &quot;repeating sequence copolymer&quot; gives one hit - my PhD adviser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; specific project in chemistry in North America, you can find it. It's not perfect. A search for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olefin_metathesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;olefin metathesis&lt;/a&gt; doesn't find &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Grubbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert Grubbs&lt;/a&gt;, who received a Nobel Prize for his work in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T02:24:50.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2012-11-17T03:36:20.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A surprisingly effective method (I've tried it) is mailing the people working in your field of interest, something like: &quot;I'll be applying to grad school, I'm interested in areas X, Y and Z. What places for PhD studies can you recommend?&quot; At worst, your email will get ignored [1]. Often, however, you can get quite detailed answers even if you don't know the person you're writing to. Esp. if you are specific in what area you'd like to work in - some people are eager to help prospective grad students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] To avoid being tagged as &quot;spam&quot;, send the mails one-by-one even if you're mailing a larger group of people at once ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4108" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T03:36:20.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2012-11-17T09:12:25.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the CS field, Microsoft academic search, google scholar and DBLP are good resources to give a general overview of different &lt;em&gt;pioneers&lt;/em&gt; in the field.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; Also, look for the research interest of the faculty members and the research groups in the department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing is: &lt;strong&gt;follow with the top conferences in your area&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. ICSE) and see who's doing something interesting to you. Then search for them; see how their past students are doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T09:12:25.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-11-18T00:43:43.340" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2765/joshragem&quot;&gt;JoshRagem&lt;/a&gt; said in the comments of the question, &lt;strong&gt;don't lecture&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Courses/ILT/ILT0004/TheTwoSigmaProblem.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bloom published it scientifically as &quot;The 2 Sigma problem&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways I found to make a class less of a lecture (items marked with a * are covered in &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/teaching-college-level-science/id385156658&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lecture 6 of Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wait 5 seconds after a question (this is an eternity in front of 30+ students)*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use a feedback sheet every class meeting, to learn about your students*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use conceptual multiple-choice questions (individual or small groups)*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use conceptual multiple-choice with lots of discussion (entire group)*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keele.org.uk/docs/PreparingToTeach.pdf#page=49&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;buzz groups&lt;/a&gt; (although not easy to do when you're starting out)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep traditional &quot;lecturing&quot; to maximum 10-minute bursts, followed up with questions, exercises, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/models/IntEng.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interactivity Engagement&lt;/a&gt; takes time during the course, which takes away from presenting &quot;content.&quot; The solution is to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; teach all the content during class time. You'll have to expect students to do the reading for the most material, and use lecture time to validate, reinforce, personalize, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I'm definitely not the best instructor, I know I have improved a lot thanks to some other points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get an evaluation from the &quot;pedagogical resource&quot; person at your institution (hopefully this person exists!). The evaluation was full of small, useful details about teaching. You might want to &lt;em&gt;check your ego at the door&lt;/em&gt;, however, when you get the feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell your students that standard lecturing is not efficient, and that you want to raise the bar. But to do that you expect them to be prepared (to have done the reading) when they come to course for the interactive part. If I find they've not done the reading, I start to give small quizzes on the reading at the start of every course (I have 3-hour courses, so it's once every 3 courses if you have a 50-minute course period). These quizzes are multiple-choice and the questions can be used as the conceptual questions as above. The value of the quizzes is minimal in their final grade, but it engages the students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell your students that making mistakes is essential when learning. Encourage them to vote on multiple-choice questions. Sanjoy Mahajan states that &quot;clickers&quot; allow anonymous voting, which socially doesn't engage the students. It's important to get them to vote, but also to make them feel that being wrong is &quot;more than OK&quot; (because it's how we learn).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep training yourself about pedagogy; try to stay motivated to teach well. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Pedagogical patterns project&quot;&gt;Pedagogical patterns&lt;/a&gt; may be of interest. My students have often said they can see I'm motivated and find it refreshing. They are generally more forgiving when they know I'm trying. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relate material being taught to what students have learned before and will learn/use later. Anecdotes based on your real-world experience (if you have it) are useful. My students always ask me for more of that in my evaluations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply the &quot;repeat without repeating&quot; pedagogical pattern (Google fails me on finding a reference). Basically, it means that different learner styles (are more likely in large groups) respond to different examples, so it's helpful to repeat the same concept in multiple examples. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I recently bought this book and found it very useful because it covers many dimensions of teaching that might not seem obvious to first-time teachers. It's in a kind of check-list style, with references to external sources if you want gory details on certain techniques: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787965677&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2009.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T15:54:25.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5313" CreationDate="2012-11-18T09:46:16.223" Score="3" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told by some that online or distance learning PGCHE's (post grad certificate in higher education - basically a certificate in teaching), and distant learning in general, is seen as not serious and that any qualification done over distance learning is disregarded in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone from Europe (especially CH) comment on whether distance learning qualifications are 'looked down upon' there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T11:38:39.660" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T11:55:54.927" Title="How is PGCHE by distance learning viewed relative to in-class?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5312" CreationDate="2012-11-18T11:55:54.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK many universities require new members of academic staff to obtain a PGCHE. The universities that I am familiar with offer the PGCHE curriculum in house via the School of Education. Since it is presented to new staff as a hoop to jump through, I know of no one outside of university administrators and schools of education that think the PGCHE, in any form, seriously. Further, I have seen many job adverts where a PGCHE is a &quot;desirable&quot; qualification, but never one where it is &quot;essential&quot;. During hiring, we briefly consider the presence/absence of a PGCHE, but never more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T11:55:54.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5321" CreationDate="2012-11-18T13:18:34.960" Score="6" ViewCount="1407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I presented my psychology thesis at an undergraduate conference, an international conference in France, and am now interested in submitting it to be presented at the 2013 APA conference in Hawaii. Since it's been presented to different audiences at each presentation is this unethical? Also, the first two presentations were simply poster sessions. If I elect to present the paper as a 10 minute talk rather than a basic poster session, would that be unethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T21:08:04.367" Title="Publishing the same results at multiple conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5314" CreationDate="2012-11-18T14:03:28.517" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might depend on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no conference proceedings, there is no publication whatsoever. Therefore, it should be no problem to present the same work at multiple conferences. In fact, this is commonly done to reach a bigger audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; conference proceedings, the situation may be a bit more complicated. It depends on how proceedings papers are considered in your field. In my field, they're not really counted as anything at all, therefore it is still fine to present the same work at different conferences. But if they are counted and considered as relevant in your field, the situation may be different. In this case, I would recommend contacting the host of the session to ask for clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T14:03:28.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5317" CreationDate="2012-11-18T14:33:42.127" Score="25" ViewCount="4867" Body="&lt;p&gt;I put on arXiv several months ago a paper that has been submitted at the same time to a conference. The conference paper was rejected, and using the reviews, we have started improving the paper, and one thing leading to another, we have substantially changed the paper, to the point that the title has been changed. However, the new paper is similar in many points to the previous one, in particular about the technical results (the most important changes are rather on the presentation of the results). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We plan to submit in a near future the new version to a journal, and to also put this version on arXiv. My question is therefore the following one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we withdraw the previous version, and submit a new one? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we replace the previous version by the new one, even though the title has changed? The arXiv paper is indexed by DBLP, would the DBLP citation be also updated? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we keep the previous version, and the submit a new one? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T14:55:24.510" Title="Substantial update of an arXiv paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5316" CreationDate="2012-11-18T14:55:24.510" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/withdraw&quot;&gt;You cannot completely withdraw a paper from arXiv&lt;/a&gt;; instead, the system can add a retraction notice on it. So, if you follow option #1, you'll end up with 1. an old paper, 2. with a retraction notice, 3. a new paper. It's a bit of a mess…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider your much-improved version as a new article: get it published, upload it on arXiv. In the arXiv version, you may refer to the older arXiv paper (&lt;em&gt;“This article is based on the same results as …, but the presentation of results and the whole discuss have been reworked substantially”&lt;/em&gt;). Put it either in the introduction or, if you don't want to disrupt the flow of text, as a footnote or “banner” before the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: make a update to your old paper, for a version that links to the new paper. That way, you make it completely clear that a improved discussion is available.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This addressed the only issues I see, namely making sure that people can find your work, and that you're not suspected of duplicate publication (which, on an open platform like arXiv, doesn't make much sense anyway…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T14:55:24.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-18T15:07:30.130" Score="5" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5220/taking-the-gre-and-the-gmat-in-the-same-year-and-applying-for-a-masters-as-well&quot;&gt;attempt&lt;/a&gt; at this question was voted to be closed. Here's another attempt at the same question which I have broken into two different questions/posts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an application programmer with 3+ years software development experience. I already have a Masters in Computer Applications from a reputed university in India. I am planning to apply for universities in the US and UK for the 2014 fall semester as I feel that my job is getting stagnant and I have always wanted to study abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really not sure whether I want to take up another masters degree or apply for business school instead. Considering my indecisiveness regarding what I want to study, I have decided to appear for both the GRE as well as the GMAT and keep my options open. The first step for applying abroad is to take the GRE or the GMAT and I want to get done with this step by keeping all my options open. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to appear for the GRE by March 2013 and the GMAT by June 2013. That will give me enough time to apply for masters as well as business schools abroad. I understand that many business schools have started accepting the GRE but appearing for the GMAT will broaden my options.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above information, What are the pros and cons of applying for graduate study in multiple disciplines? Has anyone taken this path and applied for a masters and an MBA in the same year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:04:09.303" Title="What are the pros and cons of applying for graduate study in multiple disciplines?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5318" CreationDate="2012-11-18T18:13:24.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main issues against such a path are the time and expense involved in doing so. Effectively, you have to complete two different sets of testing requirements, and you'll need to write two very different sets of essays. You'll also probably need to get different letters of recommendation, as the emephasis for different fields are probably not likely to be similar. If you apply to US schools, there is also the cost of applying to the additional schools in the other discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're an international student, it isn't likely that you'll be asked to fly in for interviews, so that wouldn't be a big drain on your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the pros, if you aren't sure which path you want to pursue, this will definitely give you more options. But other than that, I can't think of a &quot;real&quot; advantage to splitting your efforts in such a manner. (I guess one other exception is if there's a special &quot;dual master's&quot; program at one of the school's you're interested in; however, this requires reviewing the information available from each school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T18:13:24.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-18T18:51:15.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have experience with what I'm about to suggest, but it might be helpful. &lt;strong&gt;Use both&lt;/strong&gt;; use both &lt;code&gt;Dropbox&lt;/code&gt; and some &lt;code&gt;VCS&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;em&gt;How?&lt;/em&gt; Well, in the &lt;code&gt;Dropbox&lt;/code&gt; folder that you want to share, start a &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt; repository (see @PiotrMigdal answer). As far as I recall you can exclude a directory from being synced in the &lt;code&gt;Dropbox&lt;/code&gt;, and you should exclude the &lt;code&gt;.git&lt;/code&gt; (hidden-)directory since it is of no interest to your collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you and you collaborators can easily share the data over &lt;code&gt;Dropbox&lt;/code&gt; and you personally can enjoy benefits of real full scale VCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as always with shared-digital work, one of the most important issues is to set the guidelines - they should be clear to all participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T18:51:15.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5314" CreationDate="2012-11-18T21:08:04.367" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the conference organizers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ethics of multiple presentation, parallel submission, and multiple publication vary from field to field, and even from venue to venue within any field.  Only the conference organizers (aka program committee or steering committee) can answer definitively whether they would encourage, allow, accept, discourage, or forbid speakers to present results that have been presented before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the conference has an explicit call for submissions, read it carefully; it may include specific language addressing this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should absolutely &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; do is attempt to hide the fact that you've presented this result before.  Do not seek forgiveness instead of permission.  Even if the submission policy clearly allows you to submit a previously presented result, you should make its presentation history clear when you submit.  If the organizers accept your submission even with this data in hand, you're clear!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T21:08:04.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-19T10:21:51.193" Score="10" ViewCount="3782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a good GPA (over 3.5) from a top 5 CS school. I also have lots of research experience and a few publications. I also expect to have very good recommendations. The only problem is that I did badly on the GRE general exam (just under below average). The exam seems like a big scam, so studying for it felt like a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of JeffE's &lt;a href=&quot;http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/03/re_phd_with_low.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog posts&lt;/a&gt; mentions that schools filter applicants into three piles based on GPA and GRE: MAYBE, PROBABLY NOT, and NO. Will my GRE scores land me in the PROBABLY NOT pile, even though I have an otherwise excellent record?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will my GRE hurt my chances of getting into CMU and Stanford? Should I try to retake them, even though it's getting late? Application deadlines are around December 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; should I say something about my bad GRE scores in the statement of purpose, or do something else if I don't end up retaking them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4120" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:58:14.207" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T03:33:17.493" Title="Applying to top CS PhD programs with a great record but bad GRE scores" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2012-11-19T11:30:06.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite being nearly the exact opposite question, I will give the same answer that I gave about the importance of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3506/929&quot;&gt;GPA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The importance of any single metric is binary and its value (important&#xA;  or not) depends on the size of the department. If the department is&#xA;  big, admissions committees use metrics to weed out candidates.&#xA;  Basically anyone with GPA/GRE below X is triaged (doesn't matter what&#xA;  school you went to, how good your references are, etc). Smaller&#xA;  departments generally look at all applications. Once your applications&#xA;  is looked at, it is considered as a whole. There is no formula by&#xA;  which good GRE scores can offset a bad GPA. Obviously a better GPA&#xA;  doesn't hurt, but you really want to worry about the things you can&#xA;  control. For example, good research experience tends to trump&#xA;  everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T11:30:06.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5353" CreationDate="2012-11-19T11:41:19.680" Score="12" ViewCount="369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a website for my academic profile. The content include academic CV, a little bit about the research I have done, a technical computing related hobby of mine etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to state the URL for this website on my academic CV for PhD applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would the admission committee view the online profile of an applicant when considering his/her application?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, what kind of information would the admission committee like to see on it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Edit) Additional Information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying to applied mathematics departments in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T12:10:11.427" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:35:01.597" Title="What do admissions like to see in online profiles?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5329" CreationDate="2012-11-19T12:52:52.777" Score="15" ViewCount="637" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a version control system (formerly subversion, now git) to write papers, which for me works very well and is convenient. A few times, I even worked with branches for different logical versions of a paper, such as versions submitted to different journals. However, I found branching of little use for paper writing. When I used different branches for different journal submissions, I found myself working only on the &quot;latest&quot; branch anyway, since I can anyway only submit one version per time, and, if it is rejected, will not continue to work on that particular version at a later time. I didn't find any other good use of branching in paper writing, and later skipped it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any advantage of working with several branches when writing a paper with a version control system? How should one organize the writing process in order to profit from such an advantage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T19:53:15.463" Title="Is there an advantage of branching in version-controlled paper writing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5327" CreationDate="2012-11-19T13:06:32.140" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've never used branches (for papers), and would certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use branches for different chapters (WTF? like keeping different branches for different files in a programming project; except for the case when different collaborators edit different parts of documents, then - maybe), but maybe it may work for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arXiv/non-arXiv version (or e.g.: working version with notes vs release candidate) of a paper (the exact use-case of projects with some differences, from minor to e.g. also additional sections, see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1864/arxiv-preprint-and-final-paper-differing-by-sections-and-appendices&quot;&gt;arXiv preprint and final paper differing by sections and appendices&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beamer slideshows&lt;/a&gt; for different talks based an similar slides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/6190412/907575&quot;&gt;git + LaTeX workflow at SO&lt;/a&gt; (so, use &quot;advisor&quot; branch):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Branches are also extremely helpful if you are a graduate student. As any grad student will attest, the advisor is bound to have numerous corrections, most of which you don't agree with. Yet, you might be expected to atleast change them for the time being, even if they are reverted later after discussions. So in such cases, you could create a new branch advisor and make changes to their liking, at the same time maintaining your own development branch. You can then merge the two and cherry pick what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T13:11:37.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5327" CreationDate="2012-11-19T13:26:01.903" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use HG, but it is essentially the same as GIT, in that branching is easy. I branch all the time when working with coauthors. The branches tend to be short lived and merged pretty quickly. Basically, I distribute a copy to my coauthors and each set of comments I get back form different branches. This lets me see each authors comments individually. I then work on merging the comments back into the main trunk. Sometimes the merge is easy and the branch is one commit long. Other times it might take longer if I need to work out something (e.g., math, model, or analysis) which might require a couple of revisions before it is ready to go into the main trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T13:26:01.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5340" CreationDate="2012-11-19T15:07:21.413" Score="28" ViewCount="21870" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a prospective PhD has a high reply rate (90-95%) to first contact emails with potential superviors. He/She has a well thought out e-mail, but a particular professor (here: USA) that is in the top preferences does not reply after two to three e-mails that were sent within a time frame of three months. I also followed the instructions on the professor personal website in the section &quot;prospective PhD students&quot;. The student has already contacted some of the advisor students and has received positive feedback about the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the student just give up and move on? Should the student keep trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the obvious &quot;I have too many incoming e-mails to answer&quot; or &quot;I am out in the field&quot;, what could create a no response behavior from the professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen the simplistic answer &quot;move on, bad advisor, doesn't have time, etc&quot;. But this seems a contradiction in this case. The PhD students like the professor and say he/she is personable and no e-mail response after a few well written emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="2716" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T08:02:09.843" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T01:46:18.380" Title="Prospective PhD contacts potential supervisor but receives no answer after 2-3 emails, what to do?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5330" CreationDate="2012-11-19T15:47:00.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider the possibitity of ending up in the spam filter. (I know a professor whos emails were regularly considered spam by his own university)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(As students of the supervisor are known: could any of those ask the prof whether any of the emails arrived?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students of the supervisor are known: this points to the group not being far away. Drop by in person?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One may use other communication channels  (&quot;just wanted to make sure, my emails didn't get caught in the spam&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T15:47:00.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2012-11-19T18:10:38.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I think if a department throws out a person just based on GRE scores, you should neither apply to such department nor feel bad that you were not accepted. You will be better evaluated somewhere else. I am not sure how the GRE is supposed to rank good researchers. And for admission purposes it is used only in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T18:10:38.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5327" CreationDate="2012-11-19T20:16:03.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, branches seem like a good idea. A potential use case would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working on a draft of a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as we get close to the conference deadline, putting the paper in the conference format and reducing to the prescribed size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding typos in this version and fixing them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;merging the typos back into the &quot;main version&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I've never done this, because I'm not organized enough. Also, svn is not as friendly to this workflow as git is, for other reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T20:16:03.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5330" CreationDate="2012-11-19T21:22:51.690" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say MOVE ON .. Some professors are &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; of students. They are not looking for new prospective students in the next year or so.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Therefore, the simple action to do is ignoring prospective students emails.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best to do is to phone him/her if s/he didn't answer in 3 months after 2 or 3 emails. Try to meet him in conference and try to contact his/her current PhD students..  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T21:22:51.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5338" CreationDate="2012-11-19T23:46:26.890" Score="10" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a book for my teaching and/or research, but my university's library doesn't have this book.  I don't think I'll use it enough to justify spending money out of my own pocket to own it.  What other ways should I try?  I searched Internet, there is no &quot;free&quot; (in whatever sense) PDF of it either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4171" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T04:52:19.720" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T04:52:19.720" Title="Where can I borrow books that my own university's library doesn't have?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5336" CreationDate="2012-11-20T00:27:53.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually I try to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Aks to profs. at the university. Most are happy to lend them for a short time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Public libraries can be nice, but for some scientific literature I must admit they are not optimal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A somewhat grey area is buying them used books online. A online interface to physical 'used books' shops is use often is &lt;a href=&quot;http://abebooks.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abebooks.com&lt;/a&gt;. Buying them a tenth of the price with shipping from Asia most of the time in comparison to the price at the university bookstore does feel like cheating but meh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last option could become illegal in the US depending of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/a-supreme-court-clash-could-change-what-ownership-means/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this court case&lt;/a&gt;, but for now it seems legit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T00:27:53.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5336" CreationDate="2012-11-20T00:43:41.740" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your university librarian.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Usually universities libraries collaborate with each other. They can look whether the other universities have the book (I know this happens within Canadian universities)..   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T00:43:41.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5330" CreationDate="2012-11-20T01:09:55.670" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;To try to make a clear point: there is a range of opinions about how to respond to &quot;cold calls&quot; from people I don't know, etc. I myself find it easy to make a one-or-two-sentence response politely thanking an inquirer for their interest, but (if so...) that I &quot;have no open positions in my group at this time&quot; or whatever is suitable. For me, although I get a good number of these of various sorts, it takes less than 5 minutes a day, and I take the viewpoint that it is a good professional-social gesture to make that quick response (perhaps more worthwhile than yelling over the phone at phone-solicitors on old no-caller-id phones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, at the other end, I know many people who take the viewpoint that sending them email no more obligates them to a response than do credit-card offers and other advertisements. And, indeed, given the ease with which we can mass-email, even with customizations, this is a fair, not unethical, not harsh reaction. Perhaps if my in-mails of this sort reached 10+ per day, I'd give up &quot;trying to be polite&quot;, but my own current scale of &quot;spam on behalf of earnest beginner in the business&quot; is pretty low, so I can easily afford to be (superficially) &quot;gracious&quot; enough to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case people don't reply, I'm afraid you can't hold it against them, even while we admit that it would be great if they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; respond, ... because there just isn't a general social principle that demands a response to all possible inquiries one may receive. Yes, it'd be nice, but it is simply not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T01:09:55.670" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5330" CreationDate="2012-11-20T05:33:15.333" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to assume we're talking about a student who plans to &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt; to the PhD program that the faculty is affiliated with, but has not yet been admitted.  (You didn't say explicitly, but reading between the lines, that is my assumption.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case then the student should not expect a response and should not read anything into the lack of a response from the faculty member.  Many faculty do not have time to respond personally to all enquiries from prospective applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please understand that some faculty receive dozens or hundreds of enquiries from prospective students.  For example, my understanding is that many Indian or Chinese students are under the mistaken impression that they should contact faculty, or think it will help their case for admission somehow (not true; but they don't know, or have been given bad advice, so they write).  Anyway, as a result, many faculty cannot possibly reply to all such contacts.  I've even seen a few faculty post a FAQ on their web page which explains why they cannot respond to such inquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in applying.  In many cases, it is likely that few or none of those who contact the professor will be admitted, so professors may understandable decide that they cannot afford to to spend time responding to such contacts until after admission, in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn more about this, I can recommend some additional reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/advice/prospective.html&quot;&gt;Advice for Prospective Research Students&lt;/a&gt; - a FAQ one professor posts, about how to contact professors&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2011/10/writing-to-me-reprise.html&quot;&gt;Writing to me&lt;/a&gt; - Advice from Female Science Professor (a pseudonymous professor/blogger) about how prospective grad students should write to her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, anything from FSP is worth reading.  Here are some additional posts of her that are relevant, and that may help to understand the professor's mindset:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2011/11/mad-libs-gone-mad.html&quot;&gt;Mad Libs Gone Mad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2011/10/you-can-lead-horse-to-water.html&quot;&gt;You Can Lead a Horse to Water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-they-dont-tell-you-in-non-existent.html&quot;&gt;What They Don't Tell You in the Non-Existent Training for this Job&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have misunderstood the status of this student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student has already been admitted into the PhD program where the faculty is affiliated with, but has not yet accepted the offer of admission, the lack of response probably indicates lack of interest or lack of time on the part of the faculty member.  In this case, my advice would be to move on.  As far as I can tell, though, this response would be a bit unusual: if the student has been admitted, it typically means that at least some quorum of faculty think highly of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if the student is current enrolled in the faculty's PhD program, the student should go visit the faculty member in person.  Faculty have office hours; go use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T05:46:13.873" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T05:46:13.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2012-11-20T05:59:43.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can re-take the GREs without undue burden -- yes, re-take them.  You'll feel better, knowing that you did everything you could have.  (Why spend the rest of your life wondering about &quot;what could have been&quot;?)  And, it might help you a little bit, by eliminating a potential red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, even if you don't re-take the GREs, if you have great qualifications, you'll probably be fine.  If you have great research experience, great letters, and the rest of your application package is strong, it's unlikely that the GREs will hurt you much.  Great research experience and publications will almost always trump poor GREs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your bad GRE scores &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; do is raise the eyebrows of the reviewers.  The reviewers may then read the rest of your application package (contact your references, etc.) that much more carefully, to try to understand why you bombed the GREs.  For instance, if you bombed the verbal GREs, then reviewer might start wondering: can this person write?  are they completely inarticulate?  am I going to have to spend the next 5 years teaching them how to write and remedial English?  And they'll peruse all available information to try to figure out what's going on.  So, if you have any explanation (even if it's just &quot;I screwed up and didn't take the GREs seriously; in retrospect, I know it was a dumb move&quot;), it might not hurt to share this story with your letter-writers so one of them can slip that into their letter, to minimize that sort of speculation.  The other approach is to mention it in your statement of purpose -- though for some people it may feel a bit less awkward if one of your letter-writers does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. A 3.5 GPA is not a great GPA.  My sense is that it is a bit on the low side, for PhD studies in a top-5 CS PhD program.  That said, grades are not the most important aspect of your application, and will be outweighed by research experience and great letters describing research potential.  Research experience that has led to publications is great and a huge plus for your application file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T03:33:17.493" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T03:33:17.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2012-11-20T08:31:52.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I experienced last year, a high GRE score by itself &lt;strong&gt;may not&lt;/strong&gt; directly bring you an acceptance from a grad school. However, low or moderate scores &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; result in an early elimination in the process. I think this is often the case for other standardized tests such as TOEFL (for an international applicant). Plus, you can consider GPA in this respect as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T08:31:52.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5346" CreationDate="2012-11-20T12:56:40.790" Score="5" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider two papers, one by authors A1, A2, A3 and one by authors B1, B2, B3. In the case of two publications by the same research group, some of the authors may be the same, some may be new… Typically, the senior author/team leader is the same, which means that A3 = B3 (in fields where the senior author is typically listed last).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;in which cases is it okay to refer to the earlier work by the words &lt;em&gt;“the authors”, as in “the authors have shown in [ref] that…”&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it only okay if the two author sets are strictly equal? Or is it used when A ⊂ B or A ⊃ B? Or when the first author is the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T13:52:13.800" Title="Referring to previous work “by the authors”" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-11-20T13:30:07.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid &quot;the authors&quot; unless it is exactly the same set of authors (preferably in the same order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see anything wrong with &quot;B1, A2 and B3 have shown that...&quot; even when A2 is one of the authors of the present paper.  It seems a little strange at first, but is quite common.  I have also seen phrases like &quot;B1 and the second author have shown that...&quot; to refer to a paper by B1 and A2 while avoiding mentioning A2 by name, but in more complicated examples it gets pretty unwieldy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T13:30:07.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-11-20T13:52:13.800" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about the passive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been shown that ... (refs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T13:52:13.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5349" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:19:06.380" Score="14" ViewCount="1604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1529/choosing-research-ideas-to-include-in-a-statement-of-purpose&quot;&gt;Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I must describe my past and current research in my personal/research statement or statement of purpose. But do I use technical terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was given the advice that since the people reading my statement are mathematicians (I am applying to US for applied mathematics), they should know what I am talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I am applying to applied mathematics, it would also be nice to hear from other fields (biology, computer science, engineering etc) about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T10:38:35.857" Title="Should the personal/research statement be technical?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5348" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:43:49.777" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in computer science: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, but.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What admissions committees are looking for in your application is strong evidence of research potential.  One of the indicators of research potential is the ability to write about your chosen field in its native language; not just technical terms, but their proper usage and context.  In particular, if you are describing your past research results, or a particular future research problem, you should describe it just as any professional researcher would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is technical language and technical language, and you want the former.  The vast majority of your statements should be understandable to a &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; audience of (in your case) applied mathematicians, not just to experts in your chosen subsubsubfield.  For the &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; technical details, cite the literature or point to your own work on your web page.  (The ability to effectively explain your research to non-experts, demonstrated knowledge of the literature, and willingness to embarrass yourself in public by posting your work to the web are also strong indicators of research potential.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T14:43:49.777" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:58:26.903" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many PhD programs in computer science (like my own) don't require GREs; read the application instructions carefully.  If it's not a requirement, just don't submit your GRE scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you are required to submit your scores, do not mention your GRE scores in your statement.  You want the admissions committee to focus on your &lt;strong&gt;potential for research&lt;/strong&gt;, where you seem to have a very strong case, not your ability to take standardized tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T14:58:26.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:07:59.253" Score="7" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;As illustrated by the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/colleges-turn-to-crowd-sourcing-courses.html?pagewanted=3&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NY Times article&lt;/a&gt;, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have recently gained a lot of attention because of their new model for educating students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the main concerns regarding academic dishonesty in Massive Online Open Courses?  It appears to me that academic dishonesty may be difficult to police for an online course.  Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4128" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T07:02:06.473" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T07:02:06.473" Title="What are our main concerns regarding academic dishonesty in Massive Online Open Courses?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:41:29.523" Score="81" ViewCount="26280" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; is (mainly) a proprietary social network to share basic citation data and research papers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendeley&quot;&gt;see also&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any free and open source substitutes for this service?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A technical possibility: users could collect BibTeX data and a hash and share this information. &#xA;It would be very useful to have such a free service because every journal provides the citation data in a different format. That includes false field entries, broken files and hidden download buttons on the website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4142" OwnerDisplayName="Jonas Stein" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T15:35:46.277" LastActivityDate="2021-01-22T00:45:11.203" Title="Free, open-source substitutes for Mendeley?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="39" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5326" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:35:01.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees are looking for &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence of research potential&lt;/strong&gt;; that's what your web site should give.  At a minimum, your academic web site should have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your academic CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of publications and research projects, with download links.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; want to include a copy of your research statement, but only if you don't tailor your statement to each department you apply to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple.  If your site looks too flashy, you may give the impression that you spend too much time fiddling with your web pages instead of doing research.  (Cough.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that you post on your web site is polished and professional.  Proper spelling, grammar, notation, and technical language counts, just as it does in your research statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, @aeismail is correct: Do not assume that admissions committees will look at your site; some will, some won't.  Your application must stand alone.  But if you mention any publications, independent projects, or other results in your statement, point the reader to your site.  &lt;em&gt;Even if nobody actually visits your site&lt;/em&gt;, your willingness to display your work in public will work to your advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:35:01.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5365" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:38:06.083" Score="34" ViewCount="3538" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student from central Europe and I am teaching an introductory class on programming at my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in the US, humour or a joke is often used at the beginning of a presentation. My first 2-3 sentences are right to the point, but I would like to include also a small joke or humour at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what would be a good joke in this situation? A friend of mine suggested to start with &quot;welcome to bird watching 101&quot;, just some ridiculous wrong title, or starting with a fun fact about myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to start with humour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background info: Last semester my class received a nice award as among the top 5 classes of my rather big university. To some part it was due to the tips I got at stackexchange.com :-) But I would like to constantly improve my teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T11:43:52.900" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T17:09:06.683" Title="How to begin a class with humor" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5374" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:06:56.930" Score="23" ViewCount="998" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing my Ph.D. in mathematics and am currently applying to many different schools. I would like to customize my cover letter somewhat for liberal arts colleges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general, what defines a liberal arts college? What is it like to work at one?&lt;/strong&gt; My university career has consisted solely of reasonably large state institutions with a research focus. I have only the vague notion that liberal arts colleges focus less on research and more on teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kinds of achievements/work should I point out to a hiring committee at a liberal arts college?&lt;/strong&gt; The answer to this may be obvious based on the answer to the previous question, but a little redundancy would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4133" LastEditorUserId="4133" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T17:59:57.607" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T08:31:08.847" Title="Working at a Liberal Arts College in Mathematics" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5357" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:45:52.493" Score="14" ViewCount="5264" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a candidate has met with a potential PhD supervisor and it was rather evident that he would be willing to take on the candidate. You have emailed a lot and met in person a few times, but nothing has been formalised yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose now the candidate decides to take it into a different direction simply because there are better options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most polite way to withdraw ? Is it polite to send an email and explain, or does this come across as arrogant since a PhD candidate is not really in the position to turn down a Professor ? Would it be better simply not to get in touch again ? Is there some standard etiquette in the US and/or the UK ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T06:51:13.690" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T06:51:13.690" Title="How to withdraw from an application process in a polite manner?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5356" CreationDate="2012-11-20T22:10:59.787" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just send a polite email stating that you found another position or that you simply prefer to take a different direction. Be sure to thank the professor for the time he has put into you. The email does not have to be long, but it should give a reason. You do not need to be overly elaborate, though. And don't forget to be polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing you do not realise is that the professor wants to find a student who will be committed to his topic for several years to come. If you are not such a student, it is best for the professor to know that before taking you on as a student. In a sense, you are doing the professor a favour by withdrawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T22:10:59.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5397" CreationDate="2012-11-20T23:17:42.210" Score="28" ViewCount="3636" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the academic approach when your supervisor goes off-topic?  In other words, what is the academic reaction for a PhD student when his supervisor starts attacking the student's religion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say the fact that I'm an international student coming from a different culture. I looked over his publications/current students and everything seemed to be fine. He even interviewed me for admission and everything went fine.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When I started my degree and first met him, I thought we would discuss &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; oriented projects but surprisingly the meeting took another direction when he started discussing with me my religion beliefs and how do I view the world!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuting this was the start. In several subsequent occasions, &lt;em&gt;he started to tell me what he sees good to me and why my culture is a bad one&lt;/em&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right after the interview, I was thinking about withdrawing from the program and finding another supervisor in another school (Yes I answered him in an honest and polite way what I belief).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have nothing against him and he is a very kind professor but I feel I'm not comfortable in his environment. Now, I'm planning to go somewhere else. If it counts, I pay my tuition fees and he pays me nothing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is:  &lt;strong&gt;What to do when your supervisor goes off-topic and discuss your personal issues?&lt;/strong&gt; Not only this but also send you several emails about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T18:39:02.340" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T18:39:02.340" Title="What is the academic approach when the supervisor attacks student's religion?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;religious-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5351" CreationDate="2012-11-20T23:18:00.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest challenges is to perform assessment.  To scale, the most natural approach to assessment  is to use purely automated methods, i.e., automated grading.  However, building good automated graders is difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The path of least resistance is to use multiple-choice quizzes for assessment.  However, multiple-choice quizzes with a fixed question set are inherently vulnerable to cheating: it is easy for people to pool their answers or copy off each other, and difficult to detect such cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can think of ways to defend against this, but in general, I expect that providing high-quality (yet not gameable) assessment may be one of the non-trivial challenges facing MOOCs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T23:18:00.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5361" CreationDate="2012-11-21T00:21:27.103" Score="15" ViewCount="5498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still have 2-2.5 years of my PhD program, but it want to try my skills in programing, especially in the taste of data science (needless to say, I do it overnight for some hobby projects and I like it a lot). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, as working in companies may seem as one of the options &quot;what to do after getting PhD&quot;, I would be nice to test how does it work for me in practice, and to learn skills, network, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a thing as internships (e.g. in data science or programming) for PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, where to search for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If it changes anything, I'm doing PhD in EU; but US would be a nice target.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T17:21:16.340" Title="Internships for PhD students (e.g. in data science or programming)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2012-11-21T01:24:22.760" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Almost every PhD student in my (US computer science) department has at least one summer internship between admission and graduation.  In fact, most PhD students go through multiple internships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, I know CS PhD students who have interned at Google (Mountain View, Manhattan, and Shanghai), Facebook, IBM, AT&amp;amp;T, Yahoo, Motorola, Microsoft Research (Redmond, New England, and Bangalore), Disney, Zynga, Los Alamos, Sandia, Argonne, and Livermore.  Most of these places regularly advertise for interns on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T17:21:16.340" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T17:21:16.340" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-21T04:10:21.637" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you as a personal experience that if you do not feel comfortable, and feel you have no future doing research there, you go before is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is too late? You may realize you've wasted 2-3 years and achieved nothing, or you may realize the research you are doing is not really of interest to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are just starting, I do think is intelligent to seriously assess whether staying there is worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T20:55:17.057" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T20:55:17.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2012-11-21T04:15:28.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not particularly funny, so I don't try to push jokes that I know are not going to come across as witty or well done, and instead will just make an awkward situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I just tell stories that try to relate a disengaged audience with the topic I have at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are going to talk about -for- loops, you might try and start talking about the necessity of having a guy doing the same work over and over, but with the capability of counting up or down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are introducing pointers (man I hate pointers), you might try giving a real life example of how a pointer would work in a city for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've learned that if you try and be funny the results can be bad, but these short stories will allow your students to have a better idea of why the topic is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T04:15:28.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2012-11-21T05:05:03.323" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use humor extensively in class. I do not try to get off topic though. I think it is important that the students see the teacher as 'serious.' I do believe that a teacher can use humor but still be serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I ever &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; a class with a joke. I'm much more likely to start quite directly, giving an overview and stating the importance of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to target your choices to your audience. For example, if your audience is 18-21 then relating something to dating is usually fun for them. For example, if you're discussing for-loops, then you might want to talk about what happens when trying to get someone to go on a date with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;For counter = 1 to 100 (or if you are a girl, perhaps just 1 to 3)&#xA;    if prospect(counter).AcceptsDate then&#xA;        exit for&#xA;Loop&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping on topic is important but there is no reason why you can't keep it fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T13:18:03.627" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T13:18:03.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5373" CreationDate="2012-11-21T06:14:05.477" Score="8" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to cite non academic books in papers, for example, if we are writing a paper on economics, and want to say that &quot;Charles Dickens presents a good portrayal of the English society in his book Oliver Twist&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we cite it as just another paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Charles Dickens presents a good portrayal of the English society in his book [2]&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it enough just to mention it by name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Charles Dickens presents a good portrayal of the English society in his book Oliver Twist&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we do both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Charles Dickens presents a good portrayal of the English society in his book Oliver Twist[2]&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third option looks nicer, but perhaps there is an unspoken standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T17:05:33.843" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T17:05:33.843" Title="Citing non Academic Books" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5351" CreationDate="2012-11-21T07:45:08.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An obvious contrast to the peer grading efforts in Dr. Chuck’s Class&#xA;  title ‘Internet History,Technology and Security’ and ‘Science Fiction:&#xA;  The Human Mind, Our Modern World’ exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) ‘Internet History, Technology and Security’ has a far more lenient&#xA;  rubric to follow in comparison to the ‘Science Fiction’ class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) I’ve observed that the essays in ‘Internet History,Technology and&#xA;  Science Fiction’ are far more thoughtfully written and at-least follow&#xA;  the question for the peer response instead of a brief recap of work&#xA;  covered in the reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’ve had to evaluate responses which describe in a way such as ‘I read&#xA;  Alice in Wonderland was my  favorite story when I was small…….’, for a&#xA;  question which clearly states that you need to form a thesis(or a&#xA;  perspective view) for the reading material/novel/assignment for the&#xA;  week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) A major reason for this might be the obvious. ‘Science Fiction’&#xA;  class releases videos of possible interpretations &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the peer&#xA;  response whereas the ‘Internet History,Technology and Science class’&#xA;  releases videos on the topic, therefore equipping its students to&#xA;  tackle the peer responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also a funny thing occurred on the Coursera forums where ‘I was&#xA;  accused of cheating(plagiarism) from my own blog when I merely&#xA;  submitted my Peer Response anonymously while posting my copy on my&#xA;  Personal blog. The other students did not have an idea of who I was&#xA;  ‘since the peer grading’ process is anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, there were students smart enough to recognize that it was&#xA;  perhaps the blog of the ‘person who submitted ‘ and the issue was&#xA;  clarified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to [person] for bringing this to my notice and arguing the&#xA;  case in my favor. Also a note: Coursera’s plagiarism check systems&#xA;  should probably account for these when it does come into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above block-quote is from my blog. I find it to be relevant to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This accusation of plagiarism happened with me as well. I was luckily contacted  by one of the other students taking the course and I could talk the other student out of down-grading me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be a problem even with OpenAccess accounts as some people may like to post work which they did in classes elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also took part in the programming-based classes such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. NLP was tough, with real life problems to be solved. However, despite being forbidden to share their programs online, a lot of students did so, because it seemed to be the only way to make something out of the course(the certificate would not count).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning being, that if I learn some concepts from these courses, I could use my github account to appeal to an employer about my skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'By sharing programs online, I mean people started public repositories from which any student could cheat and get a working program for submission.' Not even the best auto-grader could possibly prevent this from happening. I don't think this can be stopped in universities as well. Sure you have a honor code, but people can copy parts of code from all over the web. Make it a little original perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the 'theory' that 'don't re-invent the wheel'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Most students would not bother with programming a separate module for&#xA;  Fourier Transform calculations for part of a academic program. or&#xA;  doing this they may use a library from elsewhere to directly import a&#xA;  function.' Would this be considered as copying or plagiarism? Probably&#xA;  not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, some universities(which include mine) think that programming&#xA;  Fourier Transforms is an important part in understanding them. So my&#xA;  university gives us programming assignments in a computer lab without&#xA;  access to the internet. All we are allowed to rely on is the already&#xA;  available libraries on the system. The systems are wiped clean every&#xA;  time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This becomes frustrating when we need to move from AM to FM to delta&#xA;  modulation and so on. We need to repeatedly write the same piece of&#xA;  code for fourier tranforms and this drastically reduces our&#xA;  efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So getting an optimal solution between preventing plagiarism and 'not re-inventing the wheel' is pretty important if Coursera or any online program would need to get. Right now, there is too much focus on plagiarism and not enough effort to realize the problem of redundancy in the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T07:45:08.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-21T08:36:06.383" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different parts in your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, I don't think it's a problem that your advisor wants to discuss &quot;religion beliefs and how do [you] view the world&quot;. After all, academia is a place where you can meet people coming from different places, and a nice part of it is to exchange and discuss about cultural differences. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're not comfortable discussing this topic, then you should tell directly your advisor. If he ignores it and/or attack you on it, then, as JeffE said: don't walk,  run. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a completely different topic, if he's never available for you, and doesn't even answer your emails, then, don't walk, run. But that's unrelated to going off-topic at your first interview. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T08:36:06.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5372" CreationDate="2012-11-21T09:05:29.910" Score="26" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once jokingly included in a thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The equations of motion [1] for a rigid body can be reformulated as…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] I. Newton, &lt;em&gt;Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica&lt;/em&gt;, 1687.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While citing Newton's work for his equations of motion might be over the top, there is a valid underlying question: what criteria can one use to know when a work is “such a classic” that it doesn't warrant citation anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give example in my field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewald_summation&quot;&gt;Ewald summation&lt;/a&gt; is a neat trick, and very widely used by people who perform molecular simulation of charged species. It was initially published by Paul Ewald in 1921.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_functional_theory&quot;&gt;Density functional theory&lt;/a&gt; in the Kohn-Sham formalism, published in 1964 (Hohenberg &amp;amp; Kohn) and 1965 (Kohn &amp;amp; Sham).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nos%C3%A9%E2%80%93Hoover_thermostat&quot;&gt;Nosé–Hoover thermostat&lt;/a&gt;, 1984&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T14:31:50.833" Title="How far back should one go in citing classic works?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-11-21T11:48:29.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What they taught me, is that the main criterion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is  there a standard textbook  covering the topic I want to cite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is, then rather point to it than to the original paper. And only don't point to it, when you are sure, that the reader is familiar with the topic (e.g. equations of motions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you want to point to a very specific observation on discovery, still you might like to point to the original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T14:31:50.833" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T14:31:50.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:44:32.813" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ultimate question is what would the average well-informed bachelor's or master's degree-holder in your field be expected to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that comes up in an undergraduate textbook, or is a commonly known and easily demonstrated fact (for example, the definition of the error function), probably doesn't need to be cited, because everyone in your field would be expected to know it. On the other hand, if you're publishing in a &quot;general interest&quot; journal, then you might want to assume a lower &quot;base&quot; of knowledge, and cite a commonly available source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it's something that's a very specific tool or fact (or a derivation, etc.), then it probably merits a citation in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T12:44:32.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5366" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:51:44.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The third route is the best option, because it does two things at once: it immediately tells the reader which book you're referring to, and the citation will provide information on the specific edition of the book you're working from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is well known, it doesn't hurt to make the reference explicit. If it isn't, then mentioning the title won't make a huge difference. And it's always a good idea to avoid stilted academic writing, so anything that allows you to avoid writing something like the first example is a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T12:51:44.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5355" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:00:19.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I tend to think of the difference between a college and a university is the presence of graduate programs and multiple &quot;schools&quot; at universities, while the focus of a liberal arts college is the teaching and development of undergraduates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research experiences for undergraduates are considered to be important parts of the modern experience, so having experience in those areas are considered useful, but is by no means the dominant concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T13:00:19.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5297" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:51:20.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do decide to get a proofreader, make sure he understands the field you work in. Different fields have very different jargons, and a proofreader who is not proficient in your field will make things worse, not better. I have seen what a native English speaker (but non-psychologist) can do to an English psychology manuscript written by non-native speakers, and the results were not pretty...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may actually be better to identify someone with strong English skills who may not be a native speaker but knows your field's specific jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T14:51:20.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5378" CreationDate="2012-11-21T15:38:12.520" Score="26" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading the other day this &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-peer-review/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;, about &amp;quot;how to peer review&amp;quot;, and one passage struck me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't review like a grad student&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews written by graduate students are among the most negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grad students are often on the receiving end of negative reviews, because they are just learning how to write papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even though I'm no longer a grad student, I sometimes have the feeling that I tend to be a more negative reviewer than others, but it's actually hard to measure (maybe I'm just reviewing mostly bad papers?!), since I don't always have access to the other reviews of the papers I'm reviewing (due to the fact that I've been more often acting as an external reviewer than as a PC member).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the quality of my writing has improved with the feedback I've received from the reviewers of my paper, but because I don't have any feedback on my reviews, it's hard to know if and how I can improve them. So my question is: &lt;strong&gt;is there a way to measure my own reviewing bias?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that would come to my mind would be a set of papers reviewed by many other reviewers, and a result like: &amp;quot;you're in the x% more negative reviewers&amp;quot;. Of course, I'm not implying that I would be automatically less severe when reviewing, but sometimes, in case of doubt, it's good to know one's own bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T19:44:48.940" Title="Measure of review bias" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T16:52:31.480" Score="8" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in Germany studying a Master of Computer Science, and the program has options of Dual Degrees with other Universities from outside of Germany (US, Europe, Asia). I'm thinking of applying to the Dual Degree, but i have doubts about the purpose of getting two degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a defined purpose or career profile for such double degree programs? In what case should I apply or in what case I shouldn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T17:05:02.373" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T04:36:22.600" Title="What is the purpose of a Dual Degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-11-21T16:59:07.113" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There aren’t many ways for your to evaluate how your reviews stand against others, but there is at least one. You can keep a tab of the papers you have reviewed, and look for them a year or so after the review. See if your reviews correlate with the publication (or lack thereof) of the papers in the respective journals… &lt;strong&gt;if papers you have suggested to reject are frequently accepted by the editor&lt;/strong&gt;, then you give typically more negative reviews than other reviewers of your community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is a very black-and-white picture (rejection/publication). But, I don't think you can actually do much better, because “negativity” can hardly be measured quantitatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I wouldn't call it a &lt;em&gt;reviewing bias&lt;/em&gt;. A review is the editor asking you your frankly assessment of a publication. Toning it up or down because you fell that you do not conform to the “mean” of your field would probably diminish your value as a reviewer. If the editor does not think your reviews are helpful to him, he’ll just stop sending you paper to review! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll finish with an anecdote: there's a journal for which I have recently given a series of quite negative reviews (well documented, and justified in my eye), and I have actually received some positive feedback about my reviews from the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T16:59:07.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2012-11-21T19:48:51.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about what's the purpose of starting with humor: a useful rule in teaching is that you need to pick up students where they are now. You have to engage them by attaching to something that is already on their mind or that they already know about, and then you can gently lead them towards what you want to teach. Also, if you manage to create emotions in students during a lecture, they are more likely to remember also the academic content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So humor in a class can serve two ways: To link the content of your lecture to students' everyday lives, and to engage them emotionally. To achieve this, you should pick jokes that in fact link everyday things to the content of your lecture. For example, in a class on research methods I once taught, I started each lecture with a strip of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PhD comics&lt;/a&gt; that fitted to the topic of the lecture. Also earthling's answer has a nice example how to relate students' everyday live to a programming topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you can't come up with a suitable joke, don't worry: there are a lot of other ways to achieve the same purpose. For example, you could link to a recent story in the news, local events on campus, or in fact anything that most students are aware of and that you can somehow link to the content of your class. For example, already some years ago, Mercedes had problems with cars falling over in zigzag driving tests. That would make a nice start for a lecture about vehicle dynamics: &quot;Today we are going to learn how to avoid this...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the emotions, humor creates fun, which is a good emotion to help remember things. Think of other emotions, and how you could create them in a class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T19:48:51.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-11-21T20:12:10.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biology equivalent is eRa commons. As that system is strongly linked with NIH funding, it provides a robust system to tie a paper with a particular author that is independent of the author's name and the multiple versions that may be associated with the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it falls short is that eRa commons isn't associated with anything outside of pubmed and NIH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T20:12:10.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-11-21T21:36:45.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two possibilities, both not ideal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If the paper is revised and resubmitted, it often comes along with detailed replies to each reviewer as to how the authors addressed each review. You may get at least these replies to the other reviews, which will allow you to judge whether they were more or less severe than you. In addition, editors often send the reviews back to the author in ascending order of severity, so &quot;reviewer 1&quot; will be the most enthusiastic and &quot;reviewer 3&quot; the least. If you are significantly more often &quot;reviewer 3&quot; than &quot;reviewer 1&quot;, this may say something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You can always gather anecdotal evidence by simply asking the editor to provide a little feedback on your review. Of course, the best of all editors provide this feedback (in a constructive manner) without having to be asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T21:36:45.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2012-11-21T22:00:36.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(to an extent, this echoing one of the advice by silvado)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I always liked on those better ones of my teacher and what I found myself doing as well (though not preparing for it really) was to cast examples connecting the discussed matter to real world and then twist it in a humorous way. This definitely doesn't mean opening with a joke. I do not find it necessary to capturing the audience with a joke already at the beginning. I need their focus and attention later on, when the discourse becomes rather dense. I am sure in any field it is possible to come up with examples for discussed matter which relate by a metaphor, or in a hyperbole to everyday situations in family, among friends, or in recent news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T22:00:36.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-11-21T22:32:29.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there a way to measure my own reviewing bias?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should even think about such a thing, like &quot;reviewing bias&quot;? Isn't scientific pursuit striving for the maxim of pushing the knowledge of humankind? The only thing we should care for then is whether our critique provided in the review is valid, whether its underlying argumentation is correct, to the point and appropriate with respect to the objectives of the field we are in, etc. - that is, as objective as we can do at the moment. There shouldn't be any bias involved. A review should strive for a pure argument why the presented work advances the state of the art (which should be as close as possible to &quot;has an impact on a scientific pursuit in a given field&quot;), or it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now having said that, of course even for the same honest review you can sometimes  come up with two different final recommendations in the case the paper is borderline. In that case, I consider whether I myself could fix the paper to a clearly acceptable state. If so, I provide the constructive advice to the authors and lean rather to the positive side. If not, the critique stands. We are not in this game to play our career games. We are here to advance the knowledge of the humankind. Point. Of course, sometimes emotions tend to overrule our reason, if that is the case, the reviewer is most probably in a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly oppose to &quot;measure&quot; ones &quot;reviewing bias&quot;. We should rather measure correctness and validity of our argumentation for, or against the presented submission. If 100 reviewers of a given paper give it a thumbs up, but you can by no means agree or get in line with their argumentation, why should you try to accommodate? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of peer-review? I am not saying we shouldn't learn from such encounters of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I really appreciate your question. Of course I do share your concerns very much and very often. But it helps me to put the maxim stated above before this concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T22:32:29.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-11-21T23:23:01.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should apply if you find both the degrees interesting, and they are complementary. For example, Physics and Computer Science if you aim at writing very good quality physics models (e.g. climate models). Maybe it is hard for you to say what you really want, and therefore it might be hard to judge whether or what dual master (if any) would work for you. On the short term I would try and see if you are drawn towards both masters. If so, you could get a dual degree. Do mind that I suspect two degrees is more work. If you are up to it, and willing to dedicate the time, it could be worth it. On the other hand, I would not recommend just doing it because you feel it might look good on your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T23:23:01.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-11-22T04:36:22.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I believe the main questions here are:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the knowledge you will gain from the other degree is of your interest?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it will help you to become a better researcher?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes for the both then definitely worth to try it and work hardly to make it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I found this is useful &lt;em&gt;specially in Computer Science&lt;/em&gt; (as there are many multi-discipline research areas these days). Some Examples are Computational Biology, Decision Science and of course mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T04:36:22.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5389" CreationDate="2012-11-22T05:51:50.250" Score="11" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;My professor recently had a problem, and he asked me for my help to solve it, and of course I ask for yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was made the School of Engineering Dean, an while it sounds important it takes most of is time through an administrative black hole, also, because of this his office is now in another building so he cannot come to the lab as often as he would like to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He started noticing less and less people come to the lab, and some only come for a space of a couple of hours and then leave, while he perfectly understands that research can be done everywhere, he is very big on cooperation and discussion among lab members, which can't be done if there is only one guy in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you impose any kind of restrictions on students going to the lab for a specific time? If you are not able to monitor it, how can you ensure they will come. I was looking into some companies that have IP based checking in systems, but seems like an overkill for a 10 person laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T06:35:21.197" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T13:44:53.863" Title="Monitoring students in the lab" Tags="&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;&lt;lab-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:56:31.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you said that the &quot;research can be done everywhere&quot;, the same can be said about collaborations. As long as things that needs to get done &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; done, you can't really complain. So: make &quot;cooperation and discussion among lab members&quot; one of the things that needs to get done. Enforce a culture where during the weekly meetings you begin by asking a random member of the lab to describe what some other random member did during the past week. If the goal is &quot;cooperation and discussion&quot;, it shouldn't matter whether the lab members do it in the lab, in the office, or over a cup of coffee in the break room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the goal is really to make sure that people come in to the lab and not slack off, then the best way is to tell them to their faces (during the weekly meeting, for example), that &quot;they should come in to the labs regularly and not slack off&quot;. Give them an expectation of &quot;working hours&quot; and chew them out for not following it (if he can notice that fewer people are coming in, he can surely pull out 10 minutes every two or three days to do lab inspections during the expected working hours). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the members of your lab cannot be trusted to behave like responsible adults, then you either really need new lab workers or you should just install one of them &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=video+baby+monitors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video baby monitors&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;code&gt;:-)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T13:44:53.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T13:44:53.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2012-11-22T12:39:09.157" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There’s one obvious way: &lt;strong&gt;to send a signal that lab presence is important, the research group leader and permanent staff must be more present in the lab&lt;/strong&gt;. Most students are looking for opportunities to increase interaction with professors and advisers, thus by being “accessible” in the lab for discussions, you will increase lab presence. In addition to inciting students to come, that will be a even greater stride toward “cooperation and discussion among lab members”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also works with post-doc and the more experienced grad students: you need to avoid the idea that “lab presence” is only for the newbies, while the grown ups get out of there as often as they dare!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T12:39:09.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5393" CreationDate="2012-11-22T13:34:42.373" Score="22" ViewCount="18967" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one &quot;address&quot; the person for whom I am writing a recommendation letter &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the letter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have known John Doe for many years and am familiar with his work. We address each other on a first name basis. I've been asked to write a letter supporting John's application. When I write about him, should I write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr [or Mr, in case of undergraduates] Doe's works are well-written ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or can I get away with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's works are well-written ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel a bit strange writing Dr Doe for someone I know so well, but I wonder if it is better to err on the more formal side? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it is worth, the field is Mathematics. And for future reference, I do not want to limit the question to a particular level of application (for graduate school, fellowships, or for jobs); I suspect that shouldn't make a difference in the answer, but if it does, feel free to indicate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T17:53:28.247" Title="How to address the person being recommended in a recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2012-11-22T15:21:26.317" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen both used in recommendation letters, regardless of the strength of the recommendation letter itself. I would, myself, recommend Dr. John Doe / Dr. Doe for most professional relationships, except when it is clear that you have formed a close professional relationship (PhD student, or long-term collaborator or post-doc). In case you go for the surname, I would still use the full name at the first mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr. John Doe&lt;/strong&gt; was a student of mine at the University of X, where I teach Y, …. He later joined my research group as a Masters, then PhD student. &lt;strong&gt;John&lt;/strong&gt; is an extremely bright student, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(Of course, that's merely an example and not a good letter wording, so do not look at the wording itself, only the use of names…)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T15:21:26.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2012-11-22T16:14:38.430" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two anecdotes that might be useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9:15 coffee time&lt;/strong&gt;: When I was a PhD student, our professor (or the lead assistant) would round-up everyone for &quot;coffee&quot; every day at 9:15am. It was usually only 15-20 minutes, and nobody cared if you went home at 11am. You weren't excused from missing &quot;coffee,&quot; even if you worked all night and went home at 5am. Of course, there was some flexibility for jet-lag, vacations, article submissions, etc. The prof was paying our salaries and this kind of request was simply a question of not being insubordinate. The positive side effect was that people were fairly disciplined and there was a good exchange of &quot;status&quot; during those meetings. It made the lab feel like a family. Everyone knew more or less what was going on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use it or lose it&lt;/strong&gt;: My current university has card-access to all the lab spaces. A few years ago, one of our labs was &quot;physically downsized&quot; by the administration, and their argument was it wasn't being utilized enough, and other researchers needed the space. They had the hard data to prove it. So, many of our students complained they had no more cubes for their books, etc. But in the end, I said it was partially their fault for not &quot;occupying&quot; the space, partially our fault for not forcing them to. It's an argument I use to explain the necessity to be in the lab every day. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T16:14:38.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2012-11-22T18:35:59.477" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot stress enough that you need to take a positive atitude towards this. The people, including the students, are there to learn something and do good work. On the whole, these people are motivated, and if they are not, strict enforcement of some rules will not get the motivated scientists you want. Therefore, reward postive behavior, not punish negative behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example @F'x's suggestion, make the lab a stimulating environment where it is nice to work. This means having senior members (professors, postdocs) present, and stimulate interaction. This can for example be done by organizing literature groups where someone prepares a good paper and the group discusses the content. Or organize weekly sessions where people present their work to each other and discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, make the students and employees part of the solution. Explain that the attendance has dropped, and tell them why you think this might lead to less coorperation and productivity. Suggest and discuss possible solutions with them, and try to improve the situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things said, at some stage people need to get freedom, especially the PhD's and postdocs. Judge people on their output, not their attendance. Although master students might need more monitoring...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T18:35:59.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-22T18:55:47.007" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some scientists religion is hard to mix with science. Science is based on hard facts and on rational thought. Religion on the other hand deals with beliefs which might be impossible to prove. In a scientific environment you can expect to have these kinds of discussions, try to not take remarks too personal and just calmly explain what you believe. If people are respectful the discussion will end with you and the other agreeing to disagree. If you have the feeling your prospective supervisor is not going to stop and will continue to make this a point of discussion, this could be a negative point and play a role in your choice. As an additional test to see what your potential supervisor will do after you are hired is to just confront him with your reservations. If he responds well, you can take that as a postive sign, if not, that confirms that you might not want to work there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T18:55:47.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-22T20:35:20.387" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what the advisor's beliefs are, it's not OK to discuss a student's differing beliefs &lt;strong&gt;AND&lt;/strong&gt; criticize them. It's the criticism that takes this from honest exchange of views into a more dangerous territory: your advisor is in a power relationship with you by definition and it's impossible to have a discussion &quot;as equals&quot; while this relationship is active. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that the relationship and his continuing advising would be beneficial to your career, then you might try to have a chat with him where you indicate that these topics need to stay out of bounds. And I'd erect a high bar for &quot;beneficial&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your assessment of value does not cross that high bar, then I'd follow JeffE's advice and run. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T20:35:20.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-22T21:00:30.553" Score="4" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior computer science student and I am working on my senior graduation project. My supervisor said that I should implement a job search web portal as a graduation project. But I want to make some research oriented project rather than raw coding. My supervisor insists on this because he won't have to spend time with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have decided to get involved in research myself without his help because he is not helping me. I had to register for his project class because other slots were full. He does not want to deal with students but due to school constraints he had to open this class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never done research or I don't know what exactly it means. How do I start this myself ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4147" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T21:21:58.767" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T04:36:25.650" Title="Lack of exposure to research" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5398" CreationDate="2012-11-22T21:47:02.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;em&gt;you have never done research and do not know what exactly it means&lt;/em&gt;, I would suggest &lt;strong&gt;Attending Seminars and invited Talks in your school&lt;/strong&gt; before anything else.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Try to understand how they are related to different subjects you have taken.&#xA;This is a good way to start &lt;em&gt;thinking about research&lt;/em&gt; and identifying interests. You may not like it and directly pursue a career in the industry after graduation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One way to fulfill your supervisor requirements and start being&#xA;researcher is to look for the &lt;em&gt;researchy&lt;/em&gt; problems associated with&#xA;&lt;em&gt;portal implementation&lt;/em&gt;. A good start in this direction is googling with &quot;portal implementation site:.edu&quot;. Try to understand what are the problems in implementing portals and what are the current solutions to them.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might seems difficult. But remember if you want to become researcher you have to read &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; others' work . Actually some master students they graduate by &lt;em&gt;implementing&lt;/em&gt; some systems. At the end, doing implementation is part of many research projects in Computer Science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another better approach (specially if you are interested in theoretical Computer Science)  is to try to find another supervisor for your&#xA;project that has research projects for undergraduates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T01:05:22.647" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T01:05:22.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5402" CreationDate="2012-11-22T23:20:43.903" Score="8" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first research paper in field of computer applications and artificial intelligence. I have following doubts, please answer them to help me out..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) When explaining my research, do I need to include the whole code or just algorithms ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Do I have to upload my code somewhere so that people can verify my research and give link of that code in my paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) I don't know any professor very well. Is it required to get it read by somebody because I am still an undergraduate ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other suggestion from your experience ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4148" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T13:50:08.430" Title="Doubts about writing research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5407" CreationDate="2012-11-23T00:22:19.497" Score="11" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know how can I get some participants for an empirical research study I would be conducting. Does universities have systems in place to call/recruit participants or do I have to find them myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-02T18:28:45.257" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T18:28:45.257" Title="How to choose participants for a study?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-11-23T00:32:24.413" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Definitely not the whole code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is a conference-specific and depends on the conference area. If the&#xA;paper is more data related (which is the case in Data Mining field&#xA;for instance) you are required at least to comment on the data usage&#xA;and from where you get it. If your paper is about a new &lt;em&gt;web&#xA;system&lt;/em&gt; usually referring to it in the text will be&#xA;helpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is not required but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;highly recommended&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; since they will be able to&#xA;provide a constructive criticism for your work. You do not need to know them &lt;em&gt;very well&lt;/em&gt; and usually they will be happy to help students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, students (specially undergraduates) publish papers with the help of a faculty member in the school. This said, there is nothing limit them to publish by their own. It is just more helpful to you to be attached to one of the faculty members and do research under his/her guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T00:32:24.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5398" CreationDate="2012-11-23T04:36:25.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, note that, from my experience, your senior advisor isn't by any means a research advisor. What you're looking for, admirable as it may be, is a good deal more than he's signed up to provide to students. I wouldn't be too hard on him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to simple familiarize yourself with &quot;what research entails&quot;, I recommend simply talking to people. Ask any graduate student if you can meet them for coffee and just ask them what they do all day (other than surf the web and drink coffee). Search through the faculty profiles on your department's website, find someone who looks interesting, and send an email asking to meet with them for 15-30 minutes to talk about research as a career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're more interested in actually doing research, all of the above still apply, but there are two more steps. First, talk to the undergraduate coordinator for your department and try to set up a research internship over the next semester/summer. Secondly, when you're talking to faculty whose research interests you, ask whether they'd be willing to take undergraduate researchers in their lab. Doing research with them, even if just for a few hours a week, will give you the exposure you need to really understand what research entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T04:36:25.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-11-23T09:24:26.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) When explaining my research, do I need to include the whole code or just algorithms ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complete verbose code wouldn't fit into the paper anyway, or would it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, what you need to ensure is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you &lt;strong&gt;clearly communicate&lt;/strong&gt; your ideas and the contribution to the state of the art you claim to have made;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the evaluation that your proposals are feasible and really as good as you claim is plausibly &lt;strong&gt;reproducible&lt;/strong&gt;. In the simplest form, that means that you describe all the conditions and steps which when repeated should yield the same results as you obtained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b) Do I have to upload my code somewhere so that people can verify my research and give link of that code in my paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to, most of the time it is not being done. However, myself, I strongly believe it is beneficial and I hope the field will turn more towards this practice. For ideas about this see also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecodemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science code manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matt Might's CRAPL license&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, think the same about your datasets you used for the evaluation in your paperr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c) I don't know any professor very well. Is it required to get it read by somebody because I am still an undergraduate ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not required, but very much advisable. If you feel ideas are worth anything, try to approach somebody in the field (e.g., an author of one of the most prominent references your work builds upon) and give them time to digest. You might get some good feedback. But even if not, try to submit to a conference/workshop where it would fit, you'll get plenty of feedback in reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T09:24:26.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5401" CreationDate="2012-11-23T10:35:53.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any university run participant pools. I am aware of many departmental run and research group run participant pools. Some charities and companies also run participant pools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that you will not have to recruit the participants yourself. Your supervisor and/or colleagues would be a good place to start asking about participant pools. Failing that, all universities have an institutional review board (IRB) or independent ethics committee that might be aware of participant pools in your research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T10:35:53.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-23T11:31:31.920" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try a general approach to Conflict Management called DAN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describe&lt;/strong&gt; the situation to your supervisor, trying to be as objective as possible. Tell him that you came to his lab to do research, and that you didn't expect him to make comments on your religion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assert&lt;/strong&gt; your feelings, explaining that you feel uncomfortable when he talks about your religion, and that it makes it more difficult for you to work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Name&lt;/strong&gt; what you want him to do, telling him that you would like him to stop talking about your religion, and concentrate only on the research aspects of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that your boss is testing you, to see if you are able to react in a negative situation.&#xA;In any case, see this conflict as an opportunity. If you are able to solve the problem, you will become stronger, and your supervisor will learn to respect you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go to your supervisor and remember the three points: Describe, Assert, and Name. Don't let him speak before you finished all of them. Good luck, and be strong :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2807" LastEditorUserId="2807" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T11:44:04.350" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T11:44:04.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5401" CreationDate="2012-11-23T12:28:35.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will almost certainly have to recruit study participants yourself. As others have suggested, speak with your advisor to out whether there are any participant pools he's used in the past. If you find others that he hasn't used before it's a good idea to make sure he's OK with the pool before you dive in, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, in some fields, the pool of participants can be a significant limiting factor to the generalizability of the study results. Think very carefully about exclusionary criterion before settling on something. Note also that your IRB may require you to provide justification for exclusion/inclusion of certain populations (i.e., children, pregnant women, drug users). Try to make sure your population sample is as inclusive as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T12:28:35.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5413" CreationDate="2012-11-23T13:02:15.897" Score="21" ViewCount="1756" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/45185/pseudonyms-of-famous-mathematicians&quot;&gt;this MathOverflow question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;William Sealy Gosset published a result under the pseudonym Student. (Because his employer, the Guinness brewing company, did not allow their employees to publish for fear of divulging trade secrets.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why isn't publishing under a pseudonym a breach of academic ethics? It seems that the common idea is that publishing under a pseudonym is ethical, &lt;em&gt;unless they are deliberately used with intention to defraud or deceive&lt;/em&gt;. But, given that we don't know who a pseudonymous author is, how can his peers have any trust in that (or even check it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T13:36:27.477" Title="Is pseudonymous publication ethical?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5408" CreationDate="2012-11-23T15:18:07.360" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The worth of scientific work is in the content, not in who wrote it. Therefore, I think publishing under a pseudonym is not necessarily unethical. In the example the OP presented the author was prevented from publishing if he used his own name. If the research was sound and reproducible, I would be fine with this. In practice I would like to know who wrote the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T17:23:41.097" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T17:23:41.097" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5416" CreationDate="2012-11-23T15:26:13.317" Score="84" ViewCount="43982" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are objective advantages or disadvantages of using the markup language &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; instead of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG&quot;&gt;WYSIWYG&lt;/a&gt; word processor like MS Word or LibreOffice Writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please use objective arguments to prevent a flame war...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T21:50:18.677" Title="What are the advantages or disadvantages of using LaTeX for writing scientific publications" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="52" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-11-23T16:32:27.687" Score="43" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Word&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Advantages:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimal learning curve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WYSIWYG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ridiculously high install base; almost guaranteed that anyone can read/edit your file without modifying anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy-to-use reviewing tools (view changes, add comments, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Layout can be a real bear to get correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Math is difficult, slow, and often ugly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Included bibliography editor is virtually unusable for most scientific writing; you'll need to buy a third-party solution to manage your bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;LaTeX&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Advantages&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's just text; anyone can edit your file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have to worry about layout, it's all automatic. Just put the words down there and you're golden&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produces aesthetically beautiful documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to use math, symbols, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once learned, much faster and more intuitive (e.g., &lt;code&gt;\label&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;\ref&lt;/code&gt; for referencing, as opposed to Word's fairly kludgy &amp;quot;Cross-referencing&amp;quot; window which requires way too many clicks to insert a single reference)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fairly steep learning curve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborators unfamiliar with LaTeX will have difficulty reviewing your manuscripts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many features require libraries, which you have to find/be made aware of (view changes, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Layout changes are difficult (i.e., will require time for you to hunt down solution and implement it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T19:30:20.287" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-11-23T16:38:24.223" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is better at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dealing with mathematical notation&lt;/strong&gt;. Layout and entry are generally easier using LaTeX than some other sort of equation editor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistent handling of intra-document references and bibliography&lt;/strong&gt;. As of a couple of years ago the major WYSIWYG editors still had problems with re-numbering cross-references and bibliography items. This is never a problem with BibTeX or LaTeX. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Separation of content and style&lt;/strong&gt;. In principle this means that you can write your document without caring how it is formatted, and at the end of the day wrap it in the style-file provided by the journal publisher before submission to conform to the house style. In practice some of the journal publishers demand special formatting commands that partially moots this process. Furthermore recent versions of Word and LibreOffice Writer, when properly used, should be able to keep track of various levels of section heading separate from the body text, and apply uniform styling to each level. The gap is somewhat closing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tables and illustrations&lt;/strong&gt;. With PSTricks or TikZ, one can produce high quality illustrations &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the document (though the learning curve is a bit steep there). And I've found LaTeX to be better at preparing complex tables. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WYSIWYG (especially Word and Writer) is better at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collaborative editing&lt;/strong&gt;. Without using an online site for collaborative LaTeX editing (such as ShareLaTeX), working collaboratively on a LaTeX file ideally requires some sort of separate revision control software. Word and Writer have very good comments/annotations and edit-tracking features. When a large number of authors are commenting on the writing of one file, this can be very useful. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spell check&lt;/strong&gt;. Admittedly most text editors one uses to edit TeX files also do spell check. But this is generally conveniently built into WYSIWYG editors. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compatibility&lt;/strong&gt;. Unless you work in mathematics, computer science, or physics (and sometimes even if you work in those fields), it is more likely that your collaborators will know what to do with a Word or Writer file than a LaTeX file. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimum barrier to entry&lt;/strong&gt;. If you just care about getting the ideas down on paper, you can use a WYSIWYG editor just like a typewriter. Sure, it may be tedious to fix the formatting later on, compared to LaTeX where one need to first figure out how to setup a bare-minimum file before using, it may be an attractive point. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most journals provide templates for both Word and LaTeX, so there's no real winner there. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestion: if you want to convince someone to start using LaTeX, start them out first in one of the WYSIWYG environments designed for LaTeX first (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot;&gt;LyX&lt;/a&gt;). This will help somewhat to ameliorate the scary entry barrier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="35662" LastEditDate="2016-02-18T17:12:36.810" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T17:12:36.810" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-11-23T16:48:13.483" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;As primary author I usually use LaTeX, most colleagues use word, so I (have to) use that when contributing to papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantage of LateX:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mathematical equations were mentioned already. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More important for me is that pure-text formats work better with literate programming tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/~leisch/Sweave/&quot;&gt;Sweave&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://yihui.name/knitr/&quot;&gt;knitr&lt;/a&gt; (I do data analysis in R)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These tools also produce graphics and automatically put them into the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pure text formats work well with version control&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use &lt;code&gt;latexdiff&lt;/code&gt; to produce versions with highlighted changes automatically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;git diff --color-words&lt;/code&gt; is good for seeing changes and is not confused by changes in the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lightweight in terms of computational resources for typing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publishers have document classes that will format the text. Allows to produce nicely readable author's versions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By loading few packages (or even only setting some option) you can switch back and forth to the ridiculously unreadable format the publisher demands.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bibliography styles: changing the style allows to switch back and forth between e.g. references with title and linked doi and the journal's requested format without.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many coworkers don't use/know it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;believe it or not, but even pdf files can be problematic wrt. printing/display.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lyx provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYM&quot;&gt;WSIWYM&lt;/a&gt; on top of Latex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages of Word&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost everyone has it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource demanding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No/difficult literate programming (Openoffice works, though not as nicely as LaTeX)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problems between versions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Problems with merging versions which is supposed to work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Literate programming and paper.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.1323&quot;&gt;Here's an example.&lt;/a&gt; I didn't go the full length of literate programming for the whole article: the simulation in section 3 took some week on our server blade, so that was done separately and I just pulled in the result graphics. But I wrote section 4 in Sweave, so the calculated numers end up automatically in the text. A slightly modified .Rnw file of the calculations in section 4 (&lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt; version) is &lt;code&gt;supplementary-code.Rnw&lt;/code&gt; in the sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I just saw that I forgot to upload the .Rnw for the whole paper to arXiv, and it wouldn't let me do it when I just tried - I'll correct this, probably when I have the final volume/pages for the journal)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why &lt;code&gt;Sweave&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt;: I prepared the document in &lt;code&gt;Sweave&lt;/code&gt; (and without any caching as two of the coauthors use R as well. So they automatically have &lt;code&gt;Sweave&lt;/code&gt;. I wanted to keep the dependecies low. However it turned out that they did not wish to run it. Next paper will use only &lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt;, and cache longer calcluations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is a trade-off: typing in the numbers is faster than the lengthy &lt;code&gt;Sweave&lt;/code&gt;/&lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt; code. But then you need to re-read the paper so carefully to make sure you have no typo somewhere in there, which takes a lot of time, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T17:14:34.243" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T17:14:34.243" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2012-11-23T18:21:57.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I agree with the &quot;run away&quot; advice (the more so, as I don't really understand how the student can perceive a professor at the same time as being nice and attacking cultural/religious roots that are are deeply integrated in the personality, i.e. perceiving a personal attack), however, there are IMHO some points to consider (also to maybe avoid ending up with similar problems again)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a possiblity that a particular religion conflicts with certain notions of science or creates a conflict of interest. See e.g. Fuhrmanator's comment at the question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or religious notions of one person that are not even necessarily integral parts of the religion. E.g. how will someone cope with doing statistical anayses that try to judge whether an observation occured accidentatlly when (s)he personally and firmly believes everything is predestined?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There can also be cultural difficulties. A famous one:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chinese students in particular often struggle to adjust to Western notions of plagiarism as deference to expert opinion is a deeply routed cultural norm in Chinese society. Indeed, referencing sources has been seen [in Chinese society/culture] as disrespectful to both reader and 'expert' as it presupposes that the source is not widely known and that the audience is unable to recognize source material.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/education/lts/lunch/lunch8.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;See also e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98.7086&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (lots more papers on these topics).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think nowadays international student's offices or international student groups know which points can be critical and can name them. This means that the student can ask himself whether these are an issue and how to deal with them. That would in turn allow the student to have a very informed position and tell the (or: a future/prospective) prof that he/she is aware of these points, considered them carefully and they are no problem because...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or also that (s)he will e.g. not conduct animal studies for ethical reasons (I think there are usually either a) enough alternatives of doing research and b) if there aren't I think the question is why the student did apply for a position that is not compatible with his/her personal ethics in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T18:21:57.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2012-11-23T19:09:31.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Perspective from Germany)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've been programming for an IT start up as undergrad student (got in contact when one of the founders gave a presentation in a series of business start-up talks) and later done data analysis a few hours a week as PhD student for another company. It is done, also in Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Big companies offer positions on their web pages, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merckgroup.com/en/careers/global_job_search/global_job_search.html?jobLanguage=en&amp;amp;collapse=true&amp;amp;keyNumber=&amp;amp;searchString=&amp;amp;jobField1=&amp;amp;jobField2=&amp;amp;jobField3=&amp;amp;job1Location1=&amp;amp;job2Location1=&amp;amp;job3Location1=&amp;amp;jobOrganisation1=&amp;amp;jobOrganisation2=&amp;amp;jobOrganisation3=&amp;amp;jobDate=&amp;amp;searchType=advanced&amp;amp;tab=0%2C1&amp;amp;jobHot=&amp;amp;jobType2=Internship&amp;amp;jobType3=Cooperative&amp;amp;jobType4=Summer+Job&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, if you receive funding for your PhD project (scholarship), that often forbids further work for hire.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PhD may technically be your &quot;private fun&quot;, depending on the field/university/country. If that is the case (here), you often get a teaching assistant part-time job assigned to earn some money. The institues have a real problem of getting the teaching done (to the point that I heard rumours that some departments want to make &quot;did so many hours of teaching&quot; a prerequisite for getting the PhD). These job offers are often not offers the student can take or leave. Refusing to teach may create a lot of bad blood (with the prof, who anyways doesn't have enough people to cope with the teaching workload, and with the colleagues who get a slice more of this work). But it will usually go right to the limit which you need to obey in order not to loose the student status. So in fact, you cannot go for a paid industry job, neither. More importantly, the vacations are the only time when you can continuously work on your research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These rules, however, do not forbid to volounteer in e.g. in open source projects. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Summer of Code&lt;/a&gt; and similar programs (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://teom.org/blog/kde/announcing-season-of-kde-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Season of KDE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It may be easier to convince your funder/employer that participating in such a program has much more importance than just earning some money, and that your contract with them could go dormant for the months in question.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I've been mentoring at GSoC before and hopefully will again. :-)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T18:23:07.293" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T18:23:07.293" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-11-23T19:44:48.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll tackle the other question: &quot;maybe I'm just reviewing mostly bad papers?!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think with the same &quot;right&quot; that lets you ask for your personal bias, you may also ask whether there is an &quot;assignment bias&quot;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Possibly the &quot;nice&quot; papers are reviewed by the more famous people (who refuse to review everything that does not sound extremely interesting because they are always suggested) leaving the not-so-exciting-looking stuff to younger not so famous researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the first thing is maybe to calculate whether you really do &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; negative reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a jounal accepts 1/3 of the manuscripts, and has the policy that if the first 2 reviews conflict, a third is done. Majority wins. &#xA;This situation is in accordance with 50 - 70% of the reviews being negative:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50%: PP for the accepted, PNN for the 2 rejected thirds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;70%: PPN for the accepted, 2 x NN for the rejected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you return less than 2 positive for every 5 negative reviews (or whatever is the acceptance rate for the jounals you review for)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T19:44:48.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5408" CreationDate="2012-11-23T20:05:35.283" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's an absolute answer here. Ethical questions generally have lots of &quot;grey areas&quot; associated with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest question to ask—and the one you indirectly are headed toward—is &quot;why is someone using a pseudonym?&quot; If the answer is &quot;to get around a contractual agreement that both parties have agreed to and accepted,&quot; then it's likely that the use of a pseudonym is probably unethical. (Although one could argue that if this were intended to &quot;correct&quot; a more serious problem, then it might still be ethical—even if contractually messy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the answer is &quot;to avoid potential review bias,&quot; or &quot;because publishing under one's own name would make one's life less convenient&quot; (for instance, there's a negative stigma associated with publishing outside one's &quot;home&quot; field), then it's less clear that there's an ethical violation in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T20:05:35.283" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-11-24T00:47:23.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;LaTeX&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open source free software. Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses&quot;&gt;FSF thinks so&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stable: The current version of LaTeX is from 1994, the underlying program (TeX) is from 1982. You can easily process a document made with LaTeX 2.09 in 1987 with a modern TeX distribution on modern hardware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs on any modern operating system on any hardware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Word&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed source expensive proprietary software (MS Word)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unstable: The document format of Word is constantly changing. You will be hard pressed to open a document from say Word 2003 with a recent version; getting all your formatting from a Word 5.5 document (1991) &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Word#Attempts_at_cross-version_compatibility&quot;&gt;will probably be impossible&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODF&quot;&gt;ODF&lt;/a&gt; created by Open/Libre Office helps here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs only on Windows and OSX (Word) or Linux (Open/Libre Office). Porting Open/Libre Office to a different operating system is a major undertaking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3940" LastEditorUserId="3940" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:14:07.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T21:14:07.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-11-24T02:55:20.173" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently studying for a PhD (engineering, almost done) and I supervised some student projects (diploma thesis and so on). Therefore I experienced both the typical Word and LaTeX workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the points are already mentioned in the very good other answers. I just want to add some general comments. Since I am not a geek I think that I can give roughly an average opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Typical Word User&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost every student was complaining about mysterious behaviour like disappearing pictures or lost formatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, it happened quite often that large documents get somehow corrupted and it wasn't possible to edit/open it again. Then the students had to fall back on one of their backups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The larger the document the harder it is to keep the typography consistent. Because it is so easy to edit the text manually (this one bold, that one italic and so on) the students usually pay little attention to the systematic use of style sheets (don't know if that's the correct English term).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dealing with complex mathematical expressions is painful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many of the settings are done using some menu entry and so it is very hard to document the settings or to make comments on how or why someone did something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only one out of 100 students knows that you can work with vector graphics (in this case EPS) in Word. So most of the figures are ugly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last days of the thesis it is an advantage in Word that you can -- in the case of an emergency -- just draw anything everywhere in order to meet specific goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is hard to reuse content in Word -- I mean reuse it that way, that a change at one instance affects all instances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not important whether all this happened because of a unprofessional use of Word -- the point is, that it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Typical LaTeX User&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a friend!: It is almost suicide to start using LaTeX on your own when you start writing your last and most important thesis at university. This can only work if you have a friend or colleague (like me) who can give you a template and a crash course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost all students who decided to use LaTeX reported that they had fun using it! I think the main reason is that the documents look very professional without doing much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, students find it &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; that the output is directly a PDF with hyperlinks and so on. Most of the normal WORD users don't create cool PDFs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students like the fact that they can easily input PDF files like datasheets to the appendix. This way they even appear in the table of content (TOC). I have never seen a Word document with a detailed TOC for the appendix. This is especially important in the field of engineering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using/creating bibliographies is not fun. But after they figure it out it works fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The concept of using a distribution like MiKTeX or TeXLive is new to most of the students and confusing at the beginning. In addition they sometimes can't distinguish between LaTeX itself and the LaTeX text editor (e. g. Texmaker). Therefore I made a video tutorial for that ;): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL15I-6NQFQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL15I-6NQFQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T20:02:15.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5428" CreationDate="2012-11-24T12:13:15.963" Score="5" ViewCount="1386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am presently doing MSc (Information Technology) in India. I really like teaching and have a passion for it. Based on my Masters degree I will get a designation of Assistant professor (hope so I get it!), but to be a Professor we need a PhD degree, so I was thinking of doing a Phd (Computer Science) not right after the Masters but after some years of teaching experience. At present I don't have much knowledge about PhD (nearly zero). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know we need to publish the thesis in PhD,but my question is do we have to publish books (about courses like Java, Operating System etc, since I am talking about IT/CS i gave these subjects) in PhD? This is because right now in my Masters I was thinking of publishing a book for a local course of Bachelors (BSc IT) in my region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we need to publish certain number books in PhD, then I should wait for writing and publishing that local book till I join a PhD or should I start writing and publish it right in my Masters and this published book will be considered in my PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4080" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T13:26:35.827" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T09:20:03.453" Title="When to publish a book?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2012-11-24T14:45:20.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of when the book is published, if the book is relevant to your doctoral studies and displays a high level of scientific skill, then it is certain it will influence positively the opinion of your eventual PhD defence committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a course book is not a thesis. You will still need to write a separate thesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the chances that your doctoral research topic will be related to the topic of your book are small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1282" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T14:45:20.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2012-11-24T15:58:31.707" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD should be based on an original contribution to knowledge. This is generally published at research conferences and in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Material, such as a book, treating topics that already are well-known generally do not contribute to the PhD dissertation. The only exception is if you were to write an excellent synthesis of a field, then that could be included as a part of your PhD dissertation, as such a thing would be an original contribution to knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a book may actually hinder your progress to obtaining a PhD, because it too will take a lot of time. That said, I do not wish to encourage you on this issue. But there are already plenty of books about Java and Operating Systems, and I questions the value of writing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T15:58:31.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3054" CreationDate="2012-11-24T16:37:33.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the answers, I would definitely NOT use LibreOffice Writer. It is extremely unstable and my Bachelor student and a friend of mine writing his Master's thesis messed up their files completely last minute. The windows version crashes when a large PDF is to be generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to help my friend convert all the thesis to LaTeX last minute, which worked perfectly, and I'm using it right now to write my dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T16:37:33.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5401" CreationDate="2012-11-24T19:00:19.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the universities I've worked in North America, human-subject studies (esp. those funded by taxpayer-funded research) must be approved by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_ethics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research ethics&lt;/a&gt; committee. The ways to recruit participants is something that must be stated and approved. Over the years, committee members have offered lots of advice about how to recruit subjects, as they have seen many projects and many experiments. A professor has to submit a project for approval, so you'd have to coordinate it with an adviser. You can probably consult with committee members before you submit the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies I've managed have recruited participants in simple and effective ways: e-mail lists, university newspapers, facebook, flyers posted on campus, etc. As others have pointed out, the means of recruitment will affect the generalizability of the study results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw one project that had trouble finding enough participants via the declared means (flyers), but it was not possible (because of the ethics committee re-approval) to use another means to recruit (e.g., last-minute facebook campaign) to try to find more participants. Be careful not to lock yourself into a way that's too limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T19:00:19.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2012-11-24T20:35:51.910" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.  Absolutely not.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not even start writing a book until you have tenure&lt;/strong&gt;, unless publishing a book is a requirement for tenure (which would be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; strange for computer science).  Writing books well is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; hard; it requires significant time away from your research (which you need to finish your PhD, get a job, and get tenure), teaching, paper-writing, professional networking, job-hunting, proposal writing, and advising.  And writing books badly can only hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T20:35:51.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-24T22:36:20.963" Score="3" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4903/what-tools-make-it-easy-to-maintain-or-avoid-the-n-versions-of-your-cv&quot;&gt;What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a CV (applying for an academic position, workshop or a scholarship), it's important to include one's list of publications, conference talks and posters, awards, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the list need to be tailored to the respective scope (and with the appropriate fine-graining).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, &lt;strong&gt;is there a specific workflow (or software) to keep tracks of one's academic records, so that later it's easy to cherry-pick the relevant stuff?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T05:27:56.947" Title="Keeping track of one's academic record and achievements" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-25T11:29:58.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5433" CreationDate="2012-11-24T22:49:57.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my website I keep a list of my academic achievements. This only includes journal publications, official reports, and conference proceedings though. When I need to make a list of my most relevant publications, I take a look at that page. A nice way to tracking your papers and such is to create a Google Scholar Citations page. This automatically looks for your publications and keeps record of the number of citations you receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T22:49:57.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5433" CreationDate="2012-11-25T05:27:56.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Research&lt;/a&gt; (also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt; for computer science) collect a decent amount of one's publications (in particular Google Scholar).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you are writing your CV in Latex/LyX, I would suggest finding/creating BIBTEX entries  for your papers then import the &lt;em&gt;.bib&lt;/em&gt; file into your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T05:27:56.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5441" CreationDate="2012-11-25T13:43:11.297" Score="16" ViewCount="31011" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been having this discussion about what actually formulates 'contribution to knowledge' when doing a masters or a PhD in a particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example from my field (Computer Science), say an MS student finds a particularly good algorithm that has not been used to solve a problem in disaster management. He then goes ahead and builds a solution that uses this algorithm to find position of a cell phone in a disaster situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while the student has solved a problem of high interest to many people, he has not contributed to the field of Computer Science, per se. Or has he? Some say that since he didn't contribute to Computer Science as a field, he should not get a Masters degree in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T14:33:24.613" LastActivityDate="2019-12-31T03:55:08.100" Title="What does &quot;Contribution to Knowledge&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5440" CreationDate="2012-11-25T14:27:55.297" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contribution to knowledge means creating new knowledge based on the previous available knowledge by doing extensive and innovative research.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up this related illustrative post by &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot;&gt;Matt Might&lt;/a&gt; on what is a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the said MS student, he should get his degree &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;without any problem&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, because he showed a new &amp;amp; original application of the CS algorithm in a new field. Hence, new knowledge generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="675" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T21:23:13.180" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T21:23:13.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5440" CreationDate="2012-11-25T15:32:51.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of a contribution to knowledge as being a body of work that could be published as a journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T15:32:51.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5447" CreationDate="2012-11-25T18:18:40.590" Score="12" ViewCount="1846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if someone who is reapplying to the same program after it was not accepted the previous year is seen as a negative thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in the application form I am asked if I applied the program in the past, should I state that I did or would that look bad on my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this question been asked? And does not really matter what my answer is? The university clearly states that all application material is destroyed after a few months. Thus the admission commitee look at this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T20:10:25.567" Title="Reapplying to same PhD program after one year, should I state I applied the previous year?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5451" CreationDate="2012-11-25T18:26:17.727" Score="26" ViewCount="18980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that schools are trying to gauge the chances of an offer being accepted by a potential candidate. Similarly to what has been described for job applications and other questions that a lower ranked program might not offer admission to someone who applied to just top schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much should a candidate divulge about the other schools he/she is applying to? If applying to a top school will it decrease your chances if you are stating you are applying to another top school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this kind of questions a bit intrusive and that might even compromise to some degree my application. Perhaps some people that have been in admission commitees can shed some light on the dynamics related to applicants that applied to several schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T06:55:35.440" Title="PhD application asking what other insitution I am applying to, how to answer?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5445" CreationDate="2012-11-25T18:38:39.807" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lying on an application form is a really bad idea, it would probably destroy any chance you could have to be accepted. So, if the question is asked, you probably should answer truthfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why it is asked, it also depends on how a program works. If it's a very competitive program, maybe your application was good, but there were just better candidates than you. In that case, it could be worth applying again. If, on the other hand, the committee just decided that your application was not good enough, then applying again is risky. In any case, you would have to demonstrate that you have significantly improved your application during the last year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T18:38:39.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5445" CreationDate="2012-11-25T20:10:25.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.embl.de/training/eipp/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EMBL&lt;/a&gt; explicitly tells people who haven’t been accepted in the first go (but who passed the initial aptitude assessment) to apply again next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; keep record of your application so lying about it would be very stupid, but re-applying definitely doesn’t harm your chances a priori. In fact, at EMBL you wouldn’t even need to re-take the assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly this is a quite institute specific answer but I’d think that it’s a good rule of thumb. Even if your particular University handles this differently (destroy application material), chances are, somebody will remember you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T20:10:25.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5446" CreationDate="2012-11-25T23:01:03.487" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no really good reason for schools to ask what other schools a student is applying to. I personally make it a point as much as possible &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; to ask people who I'm interviewing or whose applications I'm reviewing what other programs they're considering. I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; ask, however, if they are actively considering other options, this is something that can affect our internal decision-making process, so I ask if students are entertaining offers, but not where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schools are likely to be using this answer to gauge what schools you're applying to, with a view towards planning whom to admit. But again, I do agree that this question is invasive, and isn't really necessary. In addition, schools shouldn't be checking up with other graduate schools about their admissions, so I would answer in whatever way you feel comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, you can always claim that your answer was accurate at the time, but changed following the point at which you submitted the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T23:01:03.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5531" CreationDate="2012-11-26T01:58:00.863" Score="20" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I know that students are encouraged to &quot;tailor&quot; their applications to the particular school or program they're applying to, does the same hold true for the people writing letters of recommendation on their behalf? In other words, is it possible just to change the &quot;addressee&quot; portion, and use a greeting such as &quot;Dear Members of the Admissions Committee,&quot; or is more personalization required?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify here, I'm referring to the &quot;pro-forma&quot; parts of the letter, rather than the actual content of the recommendation &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T02:56:06.277" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T18:40:06.240" Title="How much customization of letters of recommendation is necessary?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5446" CreationDate="2012-11-26T02:42:04.127" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never seen a question like &lt;em&gt;Are you applying to other schools&lt;/em&gt; when applied to different universities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I do not think you are required to expose such information. The committee should evaluate your application &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;regardless&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of your status in other schools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T02:42:04.127" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5455" CreationDate="2012-11-26T04:45:00.277" Score="2" ViewCount="740" Body="&lt;p&gt;In what ways would a Professor's LinkedIn Recommendation differ from his Recommendation for Graduate School(Masters/PhD)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: In what was does the visibility of a Recommendation change a Professor's Recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2018-06-29T06:21:04.463" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T06:21:04.463" Title="A LinkedIn Recommendation as compared to an Academic Recommendation" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5454" CreationDate="2012-11-26T05:11:58.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe they are totally different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LinkedIn recommendation is more towards the visibility of student's soft/technical skills in general while the official letter of recommendation should address the student skills in a more academic/depth way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their audience is different. Recommendation Letter is intended to particular institute/committee while LinkedIn is more to the public general and industry recruiters in particular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LinkedIn recommendations counts nothing for the admission committees while might have good impact on industry recruiters. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Academia:- Recommendation Letters. Industry: doesn't hurt to let your supervisor recommending you - if they do have account on LinkedIn :-)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T05:11:58.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5440" CreationDate="2012-11-26T05:30:15.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding a new and good way to solve a problem in the field of interest is definitely counts as a contribution. What makes it as an &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; contribution is publishing it and making it visible to the peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T05:30:15.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5446" CreationDate="2012-11-26T06:00:48.590" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Repeat after me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;“I'd rather not tell you.”&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T06:00:48.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5459" CreationDate="2012-11-26T06:01:07.327" Score="3" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor once said to me: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;publication is about intelligent copy paste from one field to another&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. His claims were right in a sense that he knew what results already exist in one field and apply it to the other non-mature yet field. Ofcourse he didn't mean a literal copying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are working in a cut-edge research (a new obscure area) and&#xA;  already familiar with another stable mature-enough area, is utilizing&#xA;  one's techniques to the other is a good approach for making&#xA;  contributions to the field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is it count as a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; contribution?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;is it common in Academia? (specifically for Computer Science field) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T19:44:18.737" Title="Transferring knowledge from one field to another" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5458" CreationDate="2012-11-26T06:31:11.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Computer Science has many subfields, I remember that there was a running gag in NLP that people just took algorithms from the 1980's and pushed papers out like a treadmill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other fields like Statistical Machine Learning has a more math oriented approach and you do have to come up with novel stuff most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you do interdisciplinary research, it is very often that many good techniques just don't get tested because many people do not know how to use them, or do not have the time to understand them very well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your question, I think is a pretty valid practice, very good researchers have great papers where what they did was basically apply a widely known math tool to a novel problem that few people were working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example that comes to mind is how Factor Analysis, a widely known CS method (1993) was just applied in 2007 for the problem of discovering Connections in Gene Networks, not only that, people were using linear regression on that just 10 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T07:18:22.907" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T07:18:22.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5446" CreationDate="2012-11-26T06:34:21.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks as it is a practice out of the work environment, here in Japan usually they'll ask you which companies are you applying to, and in UK I got to see similar practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think you'll get down points for not putting anything, I do not really think Admissions Officials are really accepting or rejecting people on the basis of to which Universities are they applying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T06:34:21.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5464" CreationDate="2012-11-26T11:31:46.393" Score="6" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in my current teaching/research position for 4 years. I have just been informed that my contract is research only. I think technically this means I don't have to be teaching. My School and HR want to issue a new contract (which I am sure will take months/years). I would prefer to be research only. I think if there was a screw up and I was listed as teaching only, getting moved to teaching/research would be a real fight with HR. Do I put up a fight about the change? To what extent do contracts matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I took the job with the expectation of doing both teaching and research. I have had a standard teaching load consistent with other new hires on teaching/research contracts. I have been under the impression that I have to teach as part of my job. The contract doesn't say anything about teaching (in fact it says little about specific job duties). This didn't strike me as odd when I signed the contract. Now on an unrelated issue I have learned that this is odd and means I do not have to teach. The university would like to modify my contract to include teaching duties (which I am already doing and am happy doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T12:55:54.863" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T17:41:28.803" Title="Does a contract matter" Tags="&lt;responsibilities&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5462" CreationDate="2012-11-26T12:07:59.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a potential big screw up. If your contract says one thing and you were promise another, you should put up a fight. Certainly, put up the fight before signing anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contracts matter when someone tries to get you to do something you would rather not do. If you don't want a heavy teaching loads, then your research-only contract would help you avoid that. If you don't have such a contract, then you've lost your leverage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informal agreements do not stand the test of time, especially if there is a contradictory written agreement (signed by you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T12:14:33.167" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T12:14:33.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5462" CreationDate="2012-11-26T12:18:22.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, contracts matter&lt;/strong&gt;, as they define the legal obligations between you and your employer.  Note that it is not the contract only, but also the legal framework on which it is built (laws and decrees directly applicable to your situation). But, you have correctly identified the correct question to ask: &lt;strong&gt;even if the law is on your side, is it worth picking this fight? You can only answer by a careful analysis of risks and benefits&lt;/strong&gt;. I list a few ideas below…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have just been informed that my contract is research only.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haven't you been handed your contract when you signed it? If not, that's a serious misconduct on their part and gives you leverage you can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think technically this means I don't have to be teaching&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This probably depends on the exact details of the contract, which we don't know. Read it and have it read by a lawyer, or at least a union representative or counselor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do I put up a fight about the change? To what extent do contracts matter?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is missing most importantly here is your current relationship with your hierarchy (department chair, dean, whatever) and what is their position/wishes on this issue. &lt;strong&gt;Standing up to the bureaucrats is one thing&lt;/strong&gt;, and while you may not get into their good graces, it can be a fight worth fighting. &lt;strong&gt;Standing up to your department chair can open a whole new can of worms&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T12:18:22.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5468" CreationDate="2012-11-26T13:33:57.920" Score="72" ViewCount="100864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently asked to review for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MDPI&lt;/a&gt; open access journal. Is this a reputable publishing company? Their website suggests that they are 15 years old, and only do open-access publishing. The journal has a 3-year impact factor of around 2, which is not unreasonable for my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2021-03-29T22:13:02.657" LastActivityDate="2021-04-16T12:35:12.387" Title="Is MDPI a reputable Academic Publisher?" Tags="&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;mdpi&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5466" CreationDate="2012-11-26T14:08:57.117" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the amount of spam that I receive from them (mostly calls for papers in special issues), the fact that their automated emails do not feature a “unsubscribe me” link, and the fact that I did not manage to be removed from their lists after several complaints, I would say that &lt;strong&gt;they are not a respectable publisher&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how long they have been around, but most of their journals in my field (chemistry) were very recently created: see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/about/journals&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; for a full list, which you can sort by journal creation date. Their older journal, &lt;em&gt;Molecules&lt;/em&gt;, has a less-than-stellar impact factor of 2.4. Its editorial board, apart from the occasional celebrity or two, is unremarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a conclusion: I think they surf on the popularity of open access journals, but I don't consider them serious players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T14:08:57.117" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5466" CreationDate="2012-11-26T15:20:11.750" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;The peer review process generally differs between predatory and non predatory journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given that they have solicited a review from you is a positive sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't know the authors and the work before hand, then that is&#xA;another positive sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the article you are reviewing is good, then that would be a third&#xA;positive sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, if you make comments in your review and the authors address&#xA;them in the published version, that would be a final positive sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you know the authors and work, it is crappy, and the comments are ignored, that would be a bad sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T20:39:08.013" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T20:39:08.013" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5462" CreationDate="2012-11-26T15:23:46.637" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am understanding your situation correctly, when you were hired you had a certain understanding with your department and university about your duties, which included both teaching and research.  Since you don't say otherwise, it sounds like there are &quot;standard&quot; such duties in your department.  Also there was a standard contract, and by some strange mistake you were given and signed a different, nonstandard contract.  After four years of fulfilling your standard duties, the nonstandard contract has been brought to your attention.  Do I have all that right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you are asking whether you should &quot;put up a fight&quot; about the fixing the mistaken contract.  If your question is a legal one, of course get a lawyer who is an expert in the specifics of your situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But are you really contemplating fighting against what you verbally agreed to when you took the job and the job you have been actually doing for the last four years because a contract you signed says otherwise and the difference may work out in your favor?  To me that sounds like horrible behavior.  If your bank had noticed after four years that they had mistakenly added a zero to your account balance, would you also fight the correction of the error?  Do you not have any ethical qualms about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a justification you say that you wonder that if the situation were essentially reversed, correcting the oversight would be &quot;a real fight with HR&quot;.  First of all: is this guess grounded in any kind of history with the HR department at your university?  Have they in fact been difficult with you in the past?  If not it seems like you are simply assuming bad faith.  Here's what &lt;em&gt;I think&lt;/em&gt; would happen if you discovered your contract was all teaching and no research and tried to change it: there would be plenty of red tape, the entire process would take an order of magnitude longer than you felt that it reasonably should and would occupy too much of your time, but the final outcome would not really be in doubt due to the essential goodwill of the various parties, including people like your department chair/head who would come out on your behalf.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from being ethically highly suspect, a decision to fight the change of your contract is likely to earn you the ill will of HR and other administration in your university and -- probably more importantly -- of the department chair/head and other faculty members.  You are contemplating not doing your share of the departmental work because of some technicality that you wonder whether you might be able to get away with.  To me that sounds like you are contemplating whether to reserve the right to try to screw over your colleagues at some later time.  Unless that is your actual goal, I would steer well clear of this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T15:23:46.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-26T17:26:34.113" Score="7" ViewCount="1576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper with a co-author. I need to explain some terms in the preliminaries section. I am copying the definitions from my co-authors previous paper. Afterwards, I want to include the paper into my thesis. If I use the same definitions word for word in my thesis, would that be considered plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4180" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T21:30:53.837" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T03:35:03.223" Title="Transitive copying - plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5471" CreationDate="2012-11-26T17:39:10.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could take two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify the text slightly, rewording, to make it different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or, easier, just refer to the other paper, i.e. &quot;I use the definitions of Doe (2011), which for convienience I repeat:&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that way it is not plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T17:39:10.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5471" CreationDate="2012-11-26T17:41:32.307" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to clearly reference the definitions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example, &lt;strong&gt;Definition 1 [paper_reference]:&lt;/strong&gt;  or &lt;strong&gt;Definition 1 ( as in [paper_reference] ) :&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this, it is clearly your are copying the definition of the other paper..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T03:35:03.223" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T03:35:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5471" CreationDate="2012-11-26T18:10:36.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are going to use their definitions verbatim, then use quotes, or otherwise make it very clear that the words are not your own. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In any case, cite the sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use other peoples' words in your thesis, without making it very clear that they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; other peoples' words, then yes, you would be committing plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, this case would not be extreme, compared with say, including a chapter from someone else's thesis in your own, but it does meet the definition. Given that many universities have adopted draconian anti-plagiarism policies in recent years, you should be very careful to avoid even minor infractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T18:10:36.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5480" CreationDate="2012-11-26T18:34:51.163" Score="23" ViewCount="38319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certain schools give you specific details about their statement of purpose. For example a maximum of a certain number of words, double spaced, two pages maximum, etc. If a school does not provide any of the above-mentioned details, what would be a good lenght in terms of number of words to engage the admission committee? Is a single space statement of purpose too compressed, or is it acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that brevity and conciseness are important, but I find it hard to fit all the information they want in a one page. And I have to list relevant experiences, future goals, research interests, and which people I would like to work with in the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T10:01:35.610" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T13:13:00.060" Title="What is a good length for the statement of purpose in a U.S. PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5458" CreationDate="2012-11-26T19:44:18.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is important in each scientific work is that it adds to the knowledge that already exists, i.e. there needs to be a new element. Applying a known method from another field into a new field, if this has not already been done before, can be a valid new element. In my view, this is a good contribution. Also, this happens quite a lot in research in general. For example, copula's where very populor already in Financial modelling, but only recently got attention for spatial interpolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who come up with radically new ideas, e.g. Einstein, are very rare. Most of us researchers can be happy to add our little addition to the large pool of knowledge, mainly building on existing material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T19:44:18.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5356" CreationDate="2012-11-26T23:10:53.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to write a few such letters in the past and the best way is to simply and politely let them know that you've decided to go in a &lt;em&gt;different direction&lt;/em&gt;. Professors (should) understand that you're looking at a few options during this courting process so in my case, I also mentioned which Professor I ended up working for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @user4050 alludes to, I knew that the other professor would be in the same building as I. Thus, it was extremely important to not burn any bridges. I mentioned something along the lines that I hope that our paths would cross again and that we would continue to interact. To this day, if their lab needed anything from mine, I was usually the point person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice is also true when corresponding with Professors of other Universities while looking at potential graduate schools and post-doc advisors. The world is small enough and I have certainly crossed paths with former potential advisors at conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T23:10:53.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5471" CreationDate="2012-11-26T23:15:49.790" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question sounds like you're asking about a math paper.  Definitions in mathematics are a bit of a strange corner case for plagiarism issues because they're not supposed to be &quot;in your own words.&quot;  My understanding of normal behavior is that you would never put a definition in quotes (unless you're writing about history), that you can nonetheless reuse definitions verbatim, but that you need to either cite the original source or say that they are standard definitions.  A typical way to do this would be by saying &quot;We recall some key definitions from X.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T23:15:49.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T00:38:14.430" Score="14" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a Ph.D. student. I'm applying for a post-Ph.D. faculty job, and so is one of my two Ph.D. co-advisors. I think we have a good relationship, and I am thrilled they are applying, and truly hope they get the job. I think this is mutual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recently decided to apply. Prior to their decision, they agreed to review my application and be listed as a reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we are both applying, they have agreed to review my application, but only after they have finished with theirs, to keep them independent. Furthermore, they suggested they should not be a letter writer, but then said they would remain as a reference if I want, since I don't have that many others to choose from (being somewhat earlier in my career, having collaborated with others a bit less).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've asked the Search Committee head if they are OK with me listing them as a reference. If my advisor and I agree to do it, does the committee have a problem with it? Their reply will guide my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I seek advice here too. Is it OK to keep the advisor as the reference? I trust them to write a good letter, even in the unlikely event that we are both selected, or I alone am selected. Is this unwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4181" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:43:48.743" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:43:48.743" Title="Student and advisor applying to same job - conflict of interest with recommendation letter" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-11-27T00:53:35.047" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the program I would keep it between 1.5 to 2 pages.  I framed mine to answer the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why am I applying to this school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are my research interests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous academic accomplishments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous professional accomplishments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personal story of triumph (optional, I talk about having to drop out of high school to support my family)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your goal after graduation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also target schools that are pumping out the research that matches with your interests... this will help when you are stating why you are applying like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A major factor in helping me choose Awesome University was Professor Awesome's research on being awesome.  I feel that this aligns well with my research interests, and would make for a great fit between me and the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you talk about any abstract ideas be sure to elaborate on them to give a level of specificity.  They want to see you be able to translate abstract ideas into specific thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T10:28:27.917" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T10:28:27.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5479" CreationDate="2012-11-27T08:16:59.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would personally try and find a different reference. There just too much potential for conflict. The situation is somewhat comparable to borrowing a lot of money from family. Your former advisor is working in the same field, so you will be meeting fo the years to come. If this turns out badly, it will remain a nuisance for a very long. Short answer: just prevent the potential conflict of interest and find a new reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T08:16:59.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5484" CreationDate="2012-11-27T10:05:59.217" Score="87" ViewCount="73590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a scientific article and a dissertation in biology, for which I used Python for simulations. Some people in our department, especially the &quot;non-computer-people&quot;, don't know what Python is, so I want to reference something helpful. Open-Source scientific tools such as CellProfiler usually tell you how to reference them, but Python doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is the Python language properly referenced? Are there any articles in journals available I could link to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T09:09:13.650" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T11:52:46.130" Title="How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T10:19:27.593" Score="10" ViewCount="15326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to apply for a graduate program in theoretical physics without having a bachelor's degree in physics or mathematics? &#xA;I'm completely self-taught. I'm half way through Jackson electrodynamics and Peskin QFT. These books are taught to students at a graduate level, let's say that I can pass the GRE exam and graduate level examinations. Is it possible that this would substitute for an undergraduate degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4185" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T11:07:06.897" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T18:19:14.817" Title="Applying for grad school without undergraduate background" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2012-11-27T10:28:58.970" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to cite a programming language, a possible way is to cite the reference manual, including the version of the language you use (your approach might no longer work with the version of Python available in 20 years ...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you can have a citation like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Python Software Foundation. Python Language Reference, version 2.7. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.python.org&quot;&gt;http://www.python.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/python/python/105846&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;, you can also cite the original CWI TR: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;G. van Rossum, Python tutorial, Technical Report CS-R9526, &#xA;  Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, May &#xA;  1995.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T10:39:13.257" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T10:39:13.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-27T11:29:51.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? Maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot will depend on your undergraduate program. If you've done something &quot;related,&quot; such as mathematics or physical chemistry or some engineering disciplines, then it will be easier to convince an admissions committee that you have the requisite background. Otherwise, it will be up to you, in your letter statement of purpose, as well as your letter-writers in their letters, to make the case why you should be admitted to a rogram in physics when you don't have a background in the subject (or anything close to it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a big risk for a department, and especially if the department you're applying to is small and therefore needs to be more selective in who they admit. Anything you can do to show that you won't be a risk for them will help your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T11:29:51.757" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5479" CreationDate="2012-11-27T11:33:13.977" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is helpful that you and your advisor have been in contact and have honest communication about this subject. It's commendable, and doesn't happen nearly often enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said,, for this particular job, if you want to have any realistic chance of getting this particular job, you really need to have someone else replace this particular co-advisor. Otherwise, a rather confused hiring panel may take a look at both applications, wonder what the heck is going on, and throw out &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for any job in which you're not in direct conflict, I think it would probably be OK to have your co-advisor as a letter of reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T11:33:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5489" CreationDate="2012-11-27T11:34:37.897" Score="7" ViewCount="1367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know the connection of researchers. Similar to the connection of LinkedIn. In the field of computer science, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/&quot;&gt;DBLP database&lt;/a&gt; seems to be useful. Does anyone know a tool to generate a FoaF graph out of DBLP data and a FoaF (Friend of a Friend) graph rendering tool?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4186" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T11:54:18.803" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T08:59:19.020" Title="Generating a connection of researchers graph out of DBLP" Tags="&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-11-27T12:19:19.593" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only alternative that comes to my mind is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is open-source, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it comes as a standalone application or as a web-based version with Firefox, Chrome and Safari connectors, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it integrates with Word or OpenOffice, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it syncs with the Zotero server, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it has BibTeX export,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Zotero standalone client is cross-platform and open-source (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AGPL&lt;/a&gt; licence), and it can be run on its own or synchronized with the web version. The web service is free to use up to a fixed storage quota, with paid storage available, and there is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/zotero/dataserver&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;open-source implementation of the dataserver&lt;/a&gt; available if you want to roll your own. The local client stores its data in SQLite format so in principle your data is not locked in, but the database is relatively hard to trawl externally; however, since the client is open source there are relatively few future-proofing concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4187" LastEditorUserId="820" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T13:01:15.307" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:01:15.307" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5487" CreationDate="2012-11-27T14:34:24.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Research&lt;/a&gt; can do something similar for you, you just need to have Sliverlight plugin installed in your browser. Search for the first author, click on it's name (orange background), click &quot;Geanology Graph&quot;, Click &quot;Co-author Graph&quot;, enter the name of the other person on the right and press enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="4186" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T08:40:37.773" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T08:40:37.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T15:02:40.753" Score="17" ViewCount="5975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed a research degree. By the rules of my university, my dissertation was examined by two outside examiners, whose identities were kept secret from me during the examination process. Now that I have received my results, my supervisor has told me who the examiners were (this was permitted by university rules and the consent of the examiners).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to send them each an email thanking them for their efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T16:14:50.977" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T16:14:50.977" Title="Appropriate to thank examiners?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5490" CreationDate="2012-11-27T15:18:34.750" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot of work to examine a thesis and (generally) this is unpaid work done in our own free-time. So a simple &lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt; will make your examiners feel appreciated. This will have the side benefit that your examiners will remember you in a positive light, which may be useful in the future when you are looking for a job, for a reference, for a place to visit to give a research talk, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It never hurts to be polite.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T15:18:34.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-27T15:51:10.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...but I think I'm well aware of my areas of weakness and strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't dispute that at all. But you'd be in the minority. Most students coming into grad school think that they can handle any material, and once they're in a class, find themselves completely swamped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admissions committee's point of view is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this person be at sea in their breadth requirements because we have no idea whether they have the right background ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will they be a drag on instructors in their classes, and in general bring their cohort down (it can be dispiriting to have many students in a batch struggling to make it through the program: conversely, it's great when a batch has a number of bright spots who can pull the others up)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should this person be chosen &lt;strong&gt;as opposed to someone else&lt;/strong&gt; who has a more well-defined profile ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can address the third point clearly (&quot;why should you pick me&quot;) and the first (&quot;I really do know my stuff&quot;), then that will go a long way towards alleviating their concerns. For example, if you can point to independent research projects that would demonstrate your command of the material, that would be even more valuable than course credits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T20:12:10.080" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T20:12:10.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-27T16:42:58.270" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers — admitting a student without formal academic background is very risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first step, I suggest contacting graduate programs asking if they allow &lt;strong&gt;non-degree students&lt;/strong&gt; to take their classes.  If so, taking classes as a non-degree student will let you build up a formal academic background and strong recommendation letters in your chosen field, making your case for admission much stronger.  And if you're admitted to the PhD program at the same university, you may be able to use the classes you've already taken toward your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking classes will also give you a sanity check on your self-assessment.  From personal experience, it can be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard to spot gaps in the knowledge you build from self-study, simply because you don't know enough to ask the right questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But once you get your foot in the door, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just take classes; do whatever you can to get involved in research!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One significant downside to non-degree classes is that you'll almost certainly have to pay for them out of your own pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T16:42:58.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5487" CreationDate="2012-11-27T23:10:12.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bachelor thesis of interest for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remo Lemma, Ebony - Visualizing the DBLP Database. University of Lugano, 2010 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;url : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inf.usi.ch/faculty/lanza/Downloads/Lemm2010a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.inf.usi.ch/faculty/lanza/Downloads/Lemm2010a.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T23:10:12.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5351" CreationDate="2012-11-27T23:59:25.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the question is somewhat misleading. Ethics only factor into a very small percentage of students in Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC's). Most students who participate in MOOC's are only taking the course to learn something. Academic integrity is more of an issue when the students are taking the course for some external reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible external reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enrolled in the course through the university, and receiving credit for the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required to take the course by an employer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking the course as a pre-requisite for another course or program&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these situations, the role of verifying learning seems like it would be outside of the course itself. If students choose to cheat, it does not necessarily reflect poorly on the course or the program, but rather reflects poorly on the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR - Ethical concerns only matter for students who are required to take the course. The people requiring them to take the course are responsible for ensuring their academic integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T23:59:25.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5351" CreationDate="2012-11-28T01:55:58.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I tend to agree with @jelkimantis, I would go a step further. I think the issue of academic integrity is a bit misguided. This is true not just in MOOC's but in more traditional institutions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people want to think that when they see a candidate has a degree from XYZ University that they no longer need to put in any effort into the interview (or whatever) process. Most humans are naturally lazy and if they can skip digging, they are happy to do so. The problem comes in that those people are making some very big assumptions which likely should not be made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the hiring process is one of the most important processes in any company. A bad hire can haunt you for a very long time and a good hire can save you in so many ways. Still, people want to skip as much of the hiring process as they can (on both sides) so if someone has the right degree they are assumed to have the knowledge which goes with that degree. The problems is, they might not have that knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The knowledge might not be there for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have learned and then forgotten due to workload&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have had someone else take an exam for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have cheated during the exams and never learned in the first place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the reason, if the knowledge is not there, it is not there. So, why make any assumptions? The only reason I can see is for those who do not understand to manage those who do understand. However, even in that case, if you don't understand and your subordinate does, then you better give that subordinate a pretty free hand...because you can't check anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, it's a long answer but I think the entire question about academic integrity is not a huge issue. As a teacher, I care a great deal if students are cheating. That said, with the number of students I teach, there is no way I can effectively monitor them all. Even if I could, it doesn't solve the underlying problem. If someone is going to hire someone (or promote someone) based on their taking a course or gaining a degree, then they should be willing to do the work to ensure that what was taught was retained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T01:55:58.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5514" CreationDate="2012-11-28T06:02:12.187" Score="5" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have BSc in computer science and entrepreneurship background with strong technical skills (software) but low GPA and no publication. I have bean away from university for few years and have not been working as employee so I can't provide any letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my previous businesses have not been successful (partly because of country I live in, it is one of the top worst) I'm thinking about starting over by applying for a master program and moving to a better place (preferably US). It can also help me find better ideas and like-minded people for future ventures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I can provide are few links to my previous works, some of them shiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think I have any chance to get admission and grant from a good university? How should I prepare myself for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4197" LastEditorUserId="4197" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T06:54:16.867" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T16:30:13.027" Title="Failed entrepreneur applying for master oversea" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5501" CreationDate="2012-11-28T06:54:22.920" Score="89" ViewCount="45164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using &quot;We&quot; in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should use I, since it is your work, if the thesis were co-written, then it would be a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any standard in your universities, or do you have any preferred practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T14:24:02.920" LastActivityDate="2020-08-06T09:52:58.247" Title="Use of first person in a PhD Thesis" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5500" CreationDate="2012-11-28T07:52:52.647" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally avoid &quot;I&quot; in scientific texts altogether, though some authors are in fact using it if they are the sole author. I can't remember seeing it in a thesis though. In texts with a sole author, I usually understand &quot;we&quot; as meaning the author and the reader, and I'd suggest that it's fine to use it in places where it can have that meaning. For example something like &quot;When substituting a by b, we get ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A generally useful advice would be to read into some of the theses written in your group, department, and university (in decreasing relevance), and see whether there is a common pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T07:52:52.647" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5499" CreationDate="2012-11-28T08:00:15.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries like Japan, it is ok to apply even if you do not have a good publication record. They care mostly about the entrance examination, which is focused on math and computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could apply to some Universities as well as to the Mumbukagakusho Scholarship, which depending in the country might be really easy to get (about 50% chance) or really hard (about 1% chance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T08:00:15.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5499" CreationDate="2012-11-28T08:41:44.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries, e.g. the Netherlands, for a lot of masters there is no problem to get in, as long as you can pay. Ofcourse some have restrictions in terms of prior knowledge you need to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T08:41:44.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-28T09:18:31.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the field and department you are thinking of applying to, one piece of evidence that you have independently acquired a strong background in the proposed field of study can be a strong score on the GRE Subject Test in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computer science, a number of graduate programmes I've looked at recommend this for applicants that don't have a CS degree. For instance, cf. UC San Diego's PhD admissions FAQ: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/node/195&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/node/195&lt;/a&gt; under &quot;Should I take the Computer Science GRE Subject Exam?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know for sure to what degree this would apply in Physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T09:18:31.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-28T10:39:15.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question regarding the GRE is &quot;it will help&quot;. You have not specified if it is for a PhD or Master's. However what will count the most is your research experience if you are going for a PhD. If you want to apply to a Master than it will be definitely easier to get accepted with high GRE scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes students with different backgrounds are actually well seen by the department, especially if it is a interdisciplinary one. However you have to substantially prove how you will be able to apply your knowledge into your new field and how this makes you competitive. Students with a different background might provide insights and different perspectives on how to approach research topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T10:39:15.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5500" CreationDate="2012-11-28T13:05:13.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first rule, as usual, is: &lt;strong&gt;what is expected of you?&lt;/strong&gt; Ask your advisor, read earlier theses from your group, etc. to get an idea of what is the established practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I give, and which I try to follow myself, is to mix the use of &lt;em&gt;“we”&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;“I”&lt;/em&gt; depending on context. Most of the experimental or simulation work is a team effort, so &lt;em&gt;“we”&lt;/em&gt; makes a lot of sense to describe that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the results of the simulation, we have calculated the spatial dispersion of ∆, which is presented in Figure 42&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a PhD thesis should show that the applicant has a clear understanding and autonomy in a given research project, and thus is capable of making technical and strategic decisions (though not always alone, of course). As such, &lt;strong&gt;I encourage the use of “I” to describe such decisions&lt;/strong&gt;, orientations and reflexion. I try to give an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After consideration of the points discussed above, I decided to focus my effort for the most part in optimizing the gigawattage of the circuit, which I consider based on all the data gathered to be the factor with the largest potential for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvado gave an answer that is, in my opinion, perfectly applicable to mathematical derivations, and the discussion of results. In those cases, you can safely use &lt;em&gt;“we”&lt;/em&gt; to mean “the author and reader”, as in “we thus derive theorem X from lemma Y”, or “we see on Figure 42 a clear correlation between A and B”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T13:05:13.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-11-28T15:05:30.717" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a statement of purpose written for one school, you should be able to adapt it to other schools, too. Writing a fully customized SoP is a waste of time, unless you are applying to just three places (and then you are either overconfident, or just don't know what you are doing). If you've done a 1.5-2 page SoP, as JohnB suggested, just change a couple of paragraphs, and that should do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First paragraph: define yourself professionally (&quot;I am a professional golf player who likes to deal with computers. I assembled my first PC at the age of 7, and hacked the school district network at the age of 12. Since then, I have been receiving straight As throughout the school&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second paragraph: define where you want to be after Ph.D. (&quot;I want to become a physicist to understand the nuances of friction between the golf ball and the air, and the ball and the grass. I also want to get involved with biology on the side, so that I could understand the ecology of the golf courses better.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two-three paragraphs: describe why this department is a particularly good fit. It's here where you describe the work you've done, and how it relates to the work other people in the department have been doing. (&quot;I have found the work that Prof. Feynman has performed on the stability of beer foam as a function of ambient temperature and concentration of fine particulate matter  (cigarette smoke) in pubs of Ireland to be very intriguing, and cited his papers on the topic in my own research on flotation of potato chips on beer surface, see Appl. Phys. Letters forthcoming in 2013&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclude with re-stating that you think this is a great program, and you think you are a great fit for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T15:05:30.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T15:38:41.797" Score="39" ViewCount="112318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading this very interesting question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5301/how-long-before-phd-graduation-should-i-start-applying-for-post-doc-positions&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) about &quot;&lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, suddenly I started to reason on the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you were going to finish your PhD program and wanted to &lt;strong&gt;contact a professor&lt;/strong&gt; to express interest for a possible PostDoctoral contract within his group, and wanted to know more information about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How approach him/her in the &lt;strong&gt;best way&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to write in the email to send him/her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T11:47:19.877" Title="How to contact a potential PostDoc advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="40" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5500" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:07:03.800" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Think about the habits and traditions in your field, think about the nature of your field and do not hesitate to take responsibility for your own (possibly not that great) ideas.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let me elaborate more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question encourages personal opinions for a good reason. Various sources on writing research papers differ vastly, though it seems majority does not favor the first person &quot;I&quot; form. For one of the more serious in computer science not in favour of &quot;I&quot;, see e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf&quot;&gt;Knuth's Mathematical Writing&lt;/a&gt; (pg.4) - although later on, the material also discusses the opposite (pg.62 and 113). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to a personal position. I do make use of &quot;I&quot; in some contexts. Namely, when I write a paper as a single author and I did so in my PhD thesis. At the same time, you should have clear rules when to mix it with &quot;we&quot; and how. For the dissertation, I explained those rules very early on in the preface: I use &quot;I&quot; whenever the text speaks about my own decisions and choices I made and is the default voice. It means, that it's me who is to blame for whatever incorrect decisions exposed in the thesis. Only if I can show that there is an external force which would push anybody on my place to take the same route, I would use &quot;we&quot; to mean the (research) community, or humankind. I use &quot;we&quot;, whenever the discourse is explanatory, such as an exposition of a proof. Therein, &quot;we&quot; stands for &quot;me and the reader&quot;. I also strictly use &quot;we&quot;, whenever I speak about an insight, or a result which was produced in a collaboration, such as developed in a joint research paper with somebody else. As a side-effect, since this voice is not the default one, occurrence of such &quot;we&quot; always enforces a citation to the joint work, which is a &lt;em&gt;Good Thing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion also is that third person is very bad writing style, since it &#xA; offloads responsibility for the presented results to some external entity. As if it wasn't me who made the stupid decision to push that other guy from the cliff, but the guy was (somehow) pushed from the cliff. In my opinion, &quot;we&quot; solves that problem only a little bit, because now the writer admits a bit of responsibility for the act, but still dilutes it by taking into the game somebody else (either the reader, or the abstract research community). Saying &quot;I did this and that and by doing it I personally found this and that&quot; for me is fully taking responsibility for my results. It's not about bragging, or so. Now in some fields, this might be inappropriate, e.g., in pure mathematics, one studies a problem and is not pushed into any arbitrary decisions (e.g., regarding experimental setup), so a style &quot;we&quot; = &quot;the two of us, you, the reader, and me, the writer&quot; is more appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T09:09:18.993" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T09:09:18.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5511" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:20:23.600" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on whether you know the person, or not. If you know him/her well, you might go for an informal inquiry. In the case the person is not your acquaintance, you better formulate it as any other job seeking inquiry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the style, this template always worked for me well (as advised in some job-seeking training course I took):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Salutation,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.- me&#xA;2.- you&#xA;3.- us together&#xA;4.- conclusion and a kind request for a reply.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;salutation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the points above should be a single paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you introduce yourself, possibly mentioning how you know each other if that is the case and most importantly articulating the purpose of the e-mail/letter, that is that you are seeking a job. In passing you should mention what you are doing now, position, affiliation, expected date of graduation, etc. Basically you want to motivate the other party to read further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second paragraph should be about the other party. What you know they do, or did in the past and highlighting whatever other positive aspects of their work, which are a relevant reason for your application. Possibly, you can mention that you learn from somebody else/opening, etc. that there is a possibility of an open position in the group, etc. The purpose here is to prepare the ground for articulating why you fit for them in the subsequent paragraph, as well as to show that you mean it and you made your homework well (e.g., read their papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third, most important paragraph, should be about you as a fit for the position, or the group. It all revolves about how you can contribute to their work and why it should be their interest in hiring you. Here you expand on the relevant experience/projects you did, about your abilities to publish papers in top journals/conferences in the field, your abilities to solicit external funding, teaching, whatever. Still you should consider how much bragging is appropriate. The message should be clear and concise: &quot;there is a potential fit between the two of us&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would close the letter by explaining what can be found in the attached documents and possibly what other constraints you might have. When appropriate, I also make it clear that this is of course an unsolicited application, but still I would be glad if the person would find time to review my background and reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attach your CV and the statement of your research interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worked for me. Also you should be as concise as possible. The length of this reply is probably already at the edge of acceptable length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T16:20:23.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5499" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:30:13.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least for admission to strong CS departments in the US, I strongly recommend that you &lt;strong&gt;take the GRE, especially the subject test in computer science, and do well&lt;/strong&gt;.  Otherwise, the evidence that you would complete an MS program is rather thin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have recommendation letters&lt;/strong&gt;.  Otherwise, your application may not even be reviewed by the admissions committee.  (In my department, for example, incomplete applications are automatically flagged by our admissions database system, and applications that are still flagged several weeks after the application deadline are automatically rejected without review.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T16:30:13.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5511" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:45:09.013" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would treat it like a networking exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know each other -- Contact them directly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your advisor know him/her -- Talk to your advisor and get the scoop on the potential advisor. Talk you your advisor and devise a contact plan. Maybe your advisor can provide an introduction at the next conference or a suggestion for a lab visit for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know someone in common -- Talk to that person. Get the scoop on the potential advisor. Then contact the potential advisor dropping the common person's name and saying how he/she thought the potential advisor would be a great fit for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You know no one in common -- Networking fail. Go meet more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Have you cited the potential advisor in a paper -- Send them a reprint as an introduction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. You don't know the potential advisor (or anyone who knows him) and have never cited him -- Before contacting the person, you need to know why you want to work with him/her. If you are confident, send an email introducing yourself. If you are hesitant, ask your advisor for an email introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T11:08:28.693" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T11:08:28.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-11-28T19:41:24.713" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend using version control for writing a paper because my advisers have never been very good at using computers. They often edit the wrong versions of documents and then send them to me. Then I have to figure out what they changed and manually reenter it into my latest version. I work around this problem by keeping track of what version I emailed to them and then comparing what they sent back to me using release tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't assume the boss will ever use your version control system. He doesn't need to.&lt;/strong&gt; But it's still extremely useful to use version control! Our papers are prepared in MS Word because that's all that the boss knows how to use, and that's the file format the journal wants. He often forgets to use the &quot;Track Changes&quot; feature, but you can use the &quot;Compare and Merge Documents&quot; under the Tools menu to determine what he edited. (Just &quot;merge&quot; it with the version you emailed, and the resulting document will display the differences using the &quot;Track Changes&quot; highlighting.) I never have to compare timestamps or worry about which file is the latest version, and even when MS Word destroys one of my figures I know that I can easily recover it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can keep all of your raw experimental data, post-processing code, figure files, and lab notes under version control, too.&lt;/strong&gt; Then you can backup the whole repository and be really sure that you'll never lose anything. I apply repository-wide tags to indicate when I do new experiments, which helps to keep the code in synch with the data; this answers the old question about which method was used to generate the figures. (&quot;Was it method A? We last used that six months ago, but it could've been similar method B that we started developing around that time. Maybe we used A.1? Great, we'll have to do it all over again...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can use the repository-pushing feature as a type of distributed backup system.&lt;/strong&gt; I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/download/index.html&quot;&gt;TortoiseHg&lt;/a&gt; (a Mercurial GUI for Windows) to push/pull the repository to a USB flashdrive to carry between my home and work computers and also to a network share as a backup, and I never overwrite the wrong files or make extra copies of the files. By the way, forget about using the branching and merging features -- they don't really make sense for binary files, but it's valuable to know whether they got accidentally changed. Mercurial works quite well, even with huge binary files in vendor-proprietary formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: &lt;strong&gt;Real world science experiments produce too many files to version manually, and the boss might not be very tech-savvy.&lt;/strong&gt; Version control fixes these problems, and you'll never again have to sort through filenames with random dates hardcoded in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T19:41:24.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5500" CreationDate="2012-11-28T20:09:07.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always view &quot;we&quot; as &quot;you and the reader&quot; and you and your reader journey through the subject together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T20:09:07.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="185" CreationDate="2012-11-28T20:50:22.753" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't get fired, the department can still make you miserable enough to want to leave. Tenure contracts often only guarantee a small salary, say 50% of the base salary when you were originally hired. Years later, that could be a pittance due to inflation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your department could tell you that your research isn't important or significant, and they could require you to do more teaching and service on committees, leaving you very little time to do any research. You could lose your lab space or access to shared equipment. You might not be allowed to take on new students or to hire technicians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you'll want to leave, even if they can't officially fire you. You can read some horror stories on &lt;a href=&quot;https://chronicle.com/forums/&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T20:50:22.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T00:01:52.163" Score="6" ViewCount="2766" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of research experience is a good or satisfactory research experience for grad school admissions ? There are tons of venues even IEEE has some easy to get conferences which has its name attached to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when someone says he has research experience it is very subjective and differs from reading a few papers about ones field to publishing in national level to mediocre international level conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there are places where a professor at a respected institution may get his paper rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am totally confused which research experience is really a research experience ? How do you set the thresold ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if I have easy to get &gt;5 IEEE conference papers which are may be unheard or new ones such as 2nd IEEE conf on X ? Will I get an edge over other people with no publications or who does not want to publish at such places ? Should I lean towards this approach ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good letters from MIT will be a good indicator but what if you have no such recommender or he is tottaly unknown ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4207" LastEditorUserId="4207" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T00:07:09.723" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T04:04:56.700" Title="What is a good research experience" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5483" CreationDate="2012-11-29T03:34:38.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to apply for a graduate program in theoretical physics&#xA;  without having a bachelor's degree in physics or mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I believe it is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;let's say that I can pass the GRE exam and graduate level&#xA;  examinations. Is it possible that this would substitute for an&#xA;  undergraduate degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, depends what you mean by &quot;pass&quot; the GRE.  I'd hope that you had very high scores (90th+ percentile) on at least the Quant. and Analytical parts of it, but hopefully all three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd edit your question to be clear that you do have an undergraduate degree already; just not one in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess would be that &lt;em&gt;if you find the right program&lt;/em&gt; they would be willing to really consider your application favorably if you could provide something like the following list of goodies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very high GRE scores&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A glowing letter of recommendation from a physicist or some &quot;hard&quot; science prof speaking to your abilities to do heavy duty physics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A pristine statement of purpose that goes into specific details about your research interests within theoretical physics and your program of self-study.  Here you'd really want to emphasize your &lt;em&gt;aptness&lt;/em&gt; for that particularly graduate program in physics, based on your interests that match well with what (at least one of) their researchers do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some research experience, if you can get some.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A very strong academic transcript with a significant amount of hard science and math courses and mostly As (or the equivalent) in those subjects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't provide most of a list like this, one might reasonably question why you would want to go on to graduate school in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4209" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T03:34:38.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5522" CreationDate="2012-11-29T04:04:56.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of research experience is a good or satisfactory research experience for grad school admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you set the threshold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no threshold.  Instead, graduate admissions committees judge research experience on a continuum.  At one end are things that hardly count at all (e.g., independent textbook study described as research).  At the other end are extremely impressive publications.  Most undergraduate research is somewhere in the middle, and how meaningful it is can be difficult to judge.  To help the committee, you need to explain what you did, why it is interesting, what your contributions were, and perhaps what you learned from it or got out of it (especially if it didn't lead to a publication in a high-quality journal or conference).  It's also important to have a letter of recommendation that addresses this research, to evaluate your contributions.  If you just mention a paper on your CV, without giving this sort of background information about it, then it probably won't help your application much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will I get an edge over other people with no publications or who does not want to publish at such places?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to predict.  Nobody's going to be counting papers or setting thresholds for impact factor.  Instead, the committee will be looking for two key things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you demonstrated the ability to do research?  (Some people get wonderful grades but do not succeed at research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have enough experience to know what you are getting into in graduate school?  (Some people think they want to do research, but when they discover what research really involves they change their minds.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of worrying about thresholds and quantities, I'd suggest focusing on making sure your application satisfies these criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T04:04:56.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-11-29T04:46:46.000" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really liked Mendeley's potential but got frustrated with both their pricing model (maybe I just never learned how to use the software correctly) and it consistently butchering imported BibTeX entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a pretty happy &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;BibDesk&lt;/a&gt; user for a long time, it is true open source software, but unfortunately it has not been ported outside of the OS X environment, so this is only a qualified answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="404" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T04:46:46.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5452" CreationDate="2012-11-29T13:07:29.400" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it really depends on the culture you are in and the culture you are applying, tailored recommendation letters are generally 'stronger'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in the USA it is recommended to put also the university/department/lab name in the recommendation letter instead of just stating that the student is very good. Even changing the addressee requires the author spend some extra time, which means you are valuable for the author of the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that most of the recommendation letters are not really read. They are there to show whether you can get them. In this perspective, tailored letters mean you have stronger relations with 'worthy people'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T13:07:29.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T18:14:15.640" Score="17" ViewCount="4365" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following ArXiv rules I contacted with an well-known expert in thermodynamics (he is author of a known monograph) we discussed my work during several days and finally he endorsed me. When my work was ready to appear a moderator removed it, alluding to technical problems with my submission (a embedded font problem), although more latter moderators asked me personal and even economic questions! I never answer such questions and forgot the whole issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is accessible in my page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/2216383/Non-redundant_and_natural_variables_definition_of_heat_valid_for_open_systems&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have participated in an Essay Contest with another work, and it has been selected as one of the finalists. It is cited &lt;a href=&quot;http://fqxi.org/community&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; together other three finalist essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted this new work to ArXiV, it has been removed and I received the next response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your submission has been removed upon a notice from our moderators, who &#xA;  determined it to be inappropriate for arXiv. Please find another forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For more information on our moderation policies see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;http: //arxiv. org/help/moderation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;--&#xA;  arXiv moderation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ArXiv already archives several essays submitted to the same Essay contest, such as 1209.0023, 1209.1257, 1211.1917, 1210.3575&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore it is not a problem with the Contest or with the format. Notice that only one of above four has been selected as finalist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the moderation policy I cannot ask to moderators about the details on their decision. The excuse is that &quot;&lt;em&gt;moderators are not referees&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but this looks a bit childish, because it seems that they are accepting that moderators cannot sustain logically the decisions that they take about others' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I write to the advisory committee chair? Would I take some other action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Finally the first work rejected by Arxiv mods was published in the International Journal of Thermodynamics. I no longer care about ArXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4214" LastEditorUserId="52538" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T19:56:35.103" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T19:56:35.103" Title="Arxiv rejection of preprints" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="20" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5452" CreationDate="2012-11-29T18:40:06.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two levels of customization. Firstly, if the letter is for an internship at a lab, or an application to grad school or a job, I tailor the qualities that I emphasize and link those qualities to the specific job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second level of customization is if I have any connection to the institution (for example, when writing letters of recommendation for AT&amp;amp;T Labs - where I used to work - I might mention this explicitly in order to convey that I understand the local culture)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is above and beyond the usual pro-forma customizations for the addressee etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T18:40:06.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2774" CreationDate="2012-11-29T19:55:55.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The implementation is a tenure contract, which specifies a starting salary, starting date, and often a maximum duration (e.g. 30 years). Other possible details include startup funds (e.g. US$1M over 10 years), lab space (dry/wet lab, exclusive use square footage), and access to shared facilities (big experimental equipment). Lab space and shared facilities aren't free, so the cost is often deducted from your startup funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be requirements in the contract about the maximum number of days you can spend off-campus doing consulting work, the minimum amount of lab activity required to be considered active (papers per year, grants submitted/funded per year, students trained per year), minimum service work (hours spent on committees, hours spent writing policy documents), and minimum teaching commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fail to meet the minimums, your department may start to revoke some of your privileges. You may wish to read this other &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/185/in-practice-how-secure-is-a-tenured-position-in-the-us/5521#5521&quot;&gt;question about enforcement of the policies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a wide variation between different universities and departments about what gets written in the contract and what is actually required due to departmental politics. The political part of the equation can be a lot more important than the text in the contract on a day-to-day basis. Consider what could happen if the department runs out of lab space or if you have trouble getting new grant funding for a couple years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T19:55:55.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2012-11-29T20:37:18.257" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said in the comments, the situation seems to be different for each of your papers. The font problem is understandable, but it's hard to see what you mean by &quot;personal and even economic questions&quot;. However, if you didn't answer the questions, it's not surprising that your paper was not published in arXiv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the essay, I quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/moderation&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;arXiv accepts only submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue.&quot;, and in particular, &quot; This excludes [...] papers that contain inflammatory or fictitious content, papers that use highly dramatic and mis-representative titles/abstracts/introductions&quot;. I'm in no position to scientifically judge the content of your essay, but at first glance, it seems quite provocative (assumptions that are not fundamental). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that your essay is &quot;refereeable by a conventional publication venue&quot;, then the moderation appeal is there for this. Although the moderators do not have to motivate their decision as a reviewer would do, by bringing sufficient support that your paper meets the criteria required by arXiv (in particular by demonstrating that it doesn't fit in any of the categories listed under &quot;inappropriate format&quot;, the fact that other essays have been published in the past is not really relevant, you would have to show the quality of your content on its own). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, arXiv moderators are human moderators, and it could be the case that the rejection of your paper was a mistake. However, keep in mind that publishing in arXiv is not a granted right, and that &quot;arXiv reserves the right to reject or reclassify any submission&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T20:37:18.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5511" CreationDate="2012-11-30T15:33:05.837" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I reply to some open position that was announced, I usually keep the email quite short, as I consider it more like a statement of interest, rather than as informal application. I usually assume that the person in charge is busy, and I'm always afraid that a long email might be classified in the folder &amp;quot;to be read later&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My email would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject: Informal query about the position XXX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear XXX, I'm writing to you about the position XXX that was posted on the mailing-list/website/forum XXX. I believe I could be interested in applying to this position, because it seems to fit within my research interests. Indeed, I'm currently working at XXX on the topic of XXX, and the topic [of the position] is something I would like to work on in the next years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, it depends on how precise the announcement was written, but I usually ask all questions I have about the application process itself. Would there be further material to read? If a research statement is asked, what is expected it to contain? If the dates are not given, when would it start? (in particular if you have commitments on your side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many open positions have a formal application process, established by the university/research-centre, so it's also important to keep such an email to an informal level. You can of course finish your email by saying that you are available for any further information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, such emails have been useful for me for two reasons: it made me realize that some positions were actually not really within my research interests, and it allowed me to establish a first contact with the recruiter, and understand better what was expected of me in the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T15:33:05.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5540" CreationDate="2012-11-30T18:24:25.017" Score="7" ViewCount="1273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker. My supervisor and I have read our manuscript at least twice, but after two months the reviewers say the grammar is unsatisfactory. I want to know if there is any software which can check the grammar of my article (either offline or online), or any forum I can ask about grammar questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4216" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T19:24:40.857" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:34:22.110" Title="Article grammar and spell check" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5539" CreationDate="2012-11-30T19:49:59.203" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that, as such, your question is a wee bit narrow and not specifically related to academia. There is, however, a deeper related question which I believe is worth answering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;What language services are worth considering for research articles, for non-native speakers (or native speakers with subpar writing skills)?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the question I will try to answer below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translation software or online services: under no circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spellchecking software&lt;/strong&gt;: good to catch typos, pluralization errors, and the like. Worthless for any other use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grammar checking software: grammar checking modules of nonspecialized software (say, MS Word) is useless. Specialized software is little less than useless, and typically fails to grasp the more complicated sentence structures that are somewhat typical of academic writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thesaurus&lt;/strong&gt;: now that's a useful tool. One of the limitations of non-native speaker is that even if our vocabulary is quite broad, we typically have a much more restricted “active” lexicon (that which we use spontaneously). Thus, our language often sounds dull or unvaried. A thesaurus is a good tool to make you say “yeah, I could have thought of using ‘monotonous’ instead of ‘unvaried’”. To me personally, this is one of the most precious tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Real-life or online discussion fora&lt;/strong&gt;: of course, our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;English Language &amp;amp; Usage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; comes to mind here. Also, remember that you can also ask advice from native speaker friends or colleagues… that invited professor whom you showed the town around on his first week-end will probably be happy to give you a helping hand over coffee on a particular paragraph you have trouble with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proofreader or other comprehensive language service: sometime necessary. If you feel your English level is preventing you from getting the recognition your work deserves, this is a good money investment &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5297/2700&quot;&gt;in the short term&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translater: to be avoided unless your English is really, really poor. Technical translators who really understand your field will be very hard to find, unless you have colleagues who would like to moonlight :)  Non-technical translators are to be avoided, as their translations are very unreliable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bold items above correspond to the combination of tools I use myself. Note that I consider my own level of English to be quite decent for a non-native speaker… whether it is an excess of self-esteem you can judge for yourself ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:34:22.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5543" CreationDate="2012-12-01T05:00:06.760" Score="14" ViewCount="5531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a class with graduate students as an undergraduate student. The grading was on a curve and combined (as in graduate students were graded along with undergraduate students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal in US universities as well? Won't the undergraduate students have a disadvantage competing against graduate students (pursuing 2nd year of Masters/PhD) for a good grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ended up was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 A Grade&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;12 B Grades (7 of which went to graduate Students and 5 to undergraduate students)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;20 C Grades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 D Grades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 E Grades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a class of 25 graduate students and 21 undergraduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:21:19.313" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T23:11:07.057" Title="In a class with both graduate and undergraduate students, is it normal for a single grading curve to be applied for both groups?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-12-01T06:08:14.480" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no uniform set of regulations; every college (and perhaps even every department within a college, or even every instructor) might have its own regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the existence of classes open to both undergraduates and graduate students is in fact quite common, and I know I certainly took several graduate classes as an undergraduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the difference comes in when the class is really a graduate-level class that is also open to advanced undergraduates, or when the course is truly designed to be open to both undergraduates and graduates. When the class is really a graduate-level class, undergraduates are generally not treated with &quot;kid gloves,&quot; and are expected to compete head-to-head with the graduate students. For a truly mixed class, the options are more varied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the specific distribution of grades, I can't really comment on that, as those choices are specific to your course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T06:08:14.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-12-01T07:03:26.230" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've graded the pool together, and have also graded grads and undergrads separately. Ultimately this is a decision made by the instructor, who probably spelt this out in their syllabus before the class started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T07:03:26.230" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-12-01T09:43:17.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, unless a class is strictly made as a undergrad/graduate mix class, graduate classes are made mostly for graduate students. Some universities require the instructors consent to enroll and you won't be able to enroll independently online, other will only let you enroll if there are seats left after graduate enrollment. Since in these cases it is up to the instructor or student discretion to take a course, then there is really no special treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion seniors are more or less on the same level as master's students when starting a class, as usually both wouldn't not have any advanced knowledge of graduate level content. So the gap is not as wide as it might seem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the grading, that is highly subjective, and can change a lot. I know some instructors even have separate assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T18:28:44.530" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T18:28:44.530" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5546" CreationDate="2012-12-01T10:28:08.817" Score="19" ViewCount="3021" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis is a good idea? &#xA;Isn't there a risk of making the idea public?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4219" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T10:49:31.790" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T10:49:31.790" Title="Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis a good idea?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-12-01T10:33:32.383" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should try to publish before you finish your thesis. An idea in a published paper will be recognized as yours, there are more chances of an idea getting stolen from a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T15:36:35.000" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T15:36:35.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-01T10:35:04.900" Score="6" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing my M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering in India and I want to do a Ph.D. in the US. Are any scholarships available for Ph.D. in the US that take care of all the expenses there (similar to DAAD scholarships offered for pursuing secondary education in Germany)? If there are other similar scholarships for other countries please inform me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3883" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T15:01:54.867" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T01:25:18.987" Title="Scholarships for Ph.D" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-12-01T13:32:38.313" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, publishing paper(s) is a requirement for defending your thesis in some universities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The best thing you can do for your thesis and the field is to make your ideas public &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T13:32:38.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-12-01T13:38:42.643" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Four reasons why it's generally a very good idea to publish papers before you submit your thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The earlier you publish, the less likely it is that your idea will be &lt;em&gt;scooped&lt;/em&gt; [1], i.e. that someone working in the same area actually publishes the same idea/result before you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once ideas are published, they are not stolen: they are used, built upon, &lt;em&gt;with proper attribution&lt;/em&gt; (usually in the form of citation). This is not theft. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goal of an academic is actually to disseminate new knowledge, not to lock it into your desk drawers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having papers published (or at least accepted for publication) is very very important for your CV. It may also be a requirement (formal or unspoken) for defending your PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If said publication includes peer review, the peer review is likely to improve your work, both by vetting it thoroughly and giving you new points of view on your arguments. (I edited this in after reading gerrit’s answer; it is an important point.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some specific cases, good arguments can be made against publication before thesis submission. Most are actually not specific to the thesis itself, but generally apply to delaying publication of a research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If research is performed as part of a contract that requires an embargo on publication (say, imposed by one industrial partner). This is a very awkward situation, but it does happen in some fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes, a delay in publication is necessary to protect intellectual property, e.g. in the case of delaying publication until a related patent submission is complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref. 1:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=789&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vhuuN.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T22:25:13.737" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T22:25:13.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5547" CreationDate="2012-12-01T14:59:36.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, if you're doing a PhD in the United States—at least in the sciences and engineering—you shouldn't have to worry about having a scholarship. The department or advisor should be responsible for paying your tuition as well as a stipend for your living expenses. So there aren't a lot of &quot;scholarships&quot; in the same sense as for undergraduate study. However, while there are fellowships which provide &quot;portable&quot; funds for graduate study, these tend to have stringent citizenship requirements, and I can't ever recall seeing one for which Indian students were eligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is probably just to apply to the graduate programs in which you're interested, and see if they have funds to support your graduate work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T14:59:36.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-12-01T15:47:51.577" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add one important point that hasn't been raised yet: if the research that lies at the basis of your PhD has already passed through peer review, that makes it easier to defend against an opponent. You've already replied to two or more reviewers and improved the manuscript and possibly the underlying work. This makes it much less likely that awkward things turn up during the actual discussion with the opponent or the examination committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T15:47:51.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-01T16:27:25.157" Score="4" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;For reviewing papers, some journals ask you to have a PhD degree.&#xA;I want to know, if the PhD degree is the obtained certificate at the end of your PhD, or it could be also be, for example, your third inscription in the PhD (you have previously two succefull years in preparing the degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T10:49:47.063" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T10:49:47.063" Title="Is completing two years of your PhD sufficient to satisfy journal reviewing requirement of having a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-01T16:42:06.127" Score="25" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing papers (and even more - when revising after collaborators', or reviewers', remarks) it's hard to keep track what is done, what needs to be fixed, what cannot be fixed, when opinions of authors are equivocal (and when an issue raised by one author is not supported by the others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it generates to a lot of e-mail traffic, often with a short remarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, &lt;strong&gt;is there a issue tracking software (or workflow) suitable for reviewing academic papers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a side note, I'm familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt;, but never used it for papers. I'm the most interested in answer when someone actually uses a given method, not &quot;well, I never tried but here is [a link to a random issue tracking software]&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2019-01-26T20:57:54.270" Title="Issue tracking when writing a paper" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-01T16:48:22.503" Score="6" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as a software developer. I have a degree in computer science. However, my country, Turkey, is not a technology favoring country, and research in the fields I am interested in is very rare, and only available at a few select schools. From job, location and opportunity perspective (too many applicants for too few places), getting an advanced degree at these schools is next to impossible for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want pursue Ph.D. badly but I need a MS degree first because I don't have any research experience. So I have decided to apply for US schools and do some research there applying for a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is paying for a master's degree a good idea and will I be able to do quality research there? Do master's students convert their degrees to Ph.D., if so is it easy or difficult? What to expect from a MS for getting good research experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4222" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T20:49:29.633" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T20:49:29.633" Title="Is it viable to pay for MS if your future goal is a Ph.D" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5547" CreationDate="2012-12-01T17:00:34.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least 2 such scholarships, which are specifically aimed at international students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceandtech.fulbrightonline.org/eligibility&quot;&gt;Fulbright Scholarships for International Students&lt;/a&gt; (applications have&#xA;to be done more than a year before, and its extremely competitive - though now I find applications for 2013-14 have been suspended)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akdn.org/akf_scholarships.asp&quot;&gt;Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship Programme&lt;/a&gt;, which has the following selection criteria:&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excellent academic records,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genuine financial need, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Admission to a reputable institution of higher learning and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thoughtful and coherent educational and career plans.&#xA;Candidates are also evaluated on their extra-curricular interests and achievements, potential to achieve their goals and likelihood to succeed in a foreign academic environment. Applicants are expected to have some years of work experience in their field of interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T17:00:34.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5562" CreationDate="2012-12-01T17:29:36.100" Score="38" ViewCount="2037" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5426/1033&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, academics should write research articles. In many fields, these are way more important than books. It's original research that counts for getting a PhD position, a post-doc, a tenure-track position, grants, etcetera. Writing a good textbook about an advanced subject is very difficult and very time-consuming. Its advanced nature means it won't sell many copies, so the money can't be much. Then why is anybody writing advanced scientific textbooks at all? What are the incentives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T15:26:30.300" Title="What incentives do academics have to write text books?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2012-12-01T18:42:07.520" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;People around me that wrote a textbook almost always do that because they want to share the course material they developed for, say, an introduction to hydrology course. They are proud of the material, and feel that the specific approach their material takes is not yet represented in the current textbooks. So, I think for a lot of people they feel it is a significant addition to their field. Mind that these almost always already have tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, in the German system there is an additional reason to write a book. Writing a book  (or monograph) is one option to get your habilitation. This is an additional step to take in addition to a PhD thesis, often written with at least 10 years of experience.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="4091" LastEditDate="2012-12-02T19:11:57.327" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T19:11:57.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5552" CreationDate="2012-12-01T18:52:57.600" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Having a PhD&quot; means that you completed the entire degree program—including writing, defending, and depositing a dissertation—and were formally awarded a degree by the host university.  Current PhD students would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; qualify as reviewers for the journal you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T18:52:57.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-12-01T18:53:08.713" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you want to use a version control system, combined with a bug tracker. Luckily, Mercurial combined with an online &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot;&gt;bitbucket.org&lt;/a&gt; repository provides a nice workflow. When remarks or notes appear, you add them to the issue tracker at your bitbucket page (note that bitbucket provides private repositories). See &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/paulhiemstra/scm-latexdiff/issues?status=new&amp;amp;status=open&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt; from one of my software projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working on the paper you can select one of the issues, fix it, add to your repository, with a mention of the issue number in the bug tracker. This sounds like it could provide you with two important things: managing of the growth of your paper, and organizing your workflow of handeling the interaction with the other authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T18:53:08.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5554" CreationDate="2012-12-01T19:03:05.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, a masters degree is the first steps towards a scientific career. At least in my studies it was the first time I really did a major scientific project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining a research question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coming up with a plan how to answer the research question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing the actual research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing it down in a scientific report&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of countries, excluding the UK, it is obligatory to get a Master degree before you are admitted to a PhD position. So, in answer to your first question, if you want to get into science, you need to do a MS. Depending on your financial situation, and how badly you want a career in science, paying for your MS might or might not be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your next question deals with difficulty. In general, if you really enjoyed your Masters research this is a good indicator you would like a PhD position. If you like doing research, a PhD is a nice job, but certainly not an easy job. However, if you enjoy it, it should generally be possible to finish your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to if a masters is a good preparation for a PhD, it heavily depends on where you do your masters. But in general they train you in being a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T19:03:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5554" CreationDate="2012-12-01T19:46:27.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, yes, that's a viable plan.  But there are a few stumbling blocks to be aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: &lt;strong&gt;There are two types of MS degrees in computer science in the US.&lt;/strong&gt;  Research master's degrees have a significant research component, usually ending with a formal thesis.  Professional master's degrees require only taking classes; this is no expectation and little opportunity to get involved in research.  A successful research MS is good preparation for a PhD program, and &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; CS PhDs started by getting a master's degree first.  (I'm one of them.)  But a professional MS is generally considered a terminal degree, even with a 4.0 GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: &lt;strong&gt;PhD applicants with MS degrees are held to higher standards than PhD applicants with only undergraduate degrees,&lt;/strong&gt; because they have had an extra year to build up a research portfolio.  In my department, for example, strong applicants with master's degrees &lt;em&gt;but no formal publications&lt;/em&gt; are usually rejected.  See the previous point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: &lt;strong&gt;Strong graduate programs in the US also get too many applicants for too few positions.&lt;/strong&gt;  Competition at the top departments is fierce.  Even getting a research MS is no guarantee of being admitted to a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the first three points, I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; recommend asking the following question of any MS program you apply to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What fraction of graduates from your program go on to get a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth: &lt;strong&gt;If you don't have any research experience, how do you know that you want a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;  Getting a PhD is not like getting an undergraduate degree; doing research is not like taking classes — it is much more open-ended, much more self-directed, and much &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; riskier.  This is not a question to answer &lt;em&gt;here&lt;/em&gt;, but definitely something to address in your application statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T19:46:27.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2012-12-01T21:13:24.343" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another reason to write an advanced text is that you have developed a body of research around a topic, and it's stabilized enough that you can present the material in a structured form. The incentive here is that the distilled understanding helps you understand your field, and it helps others work in the area as well. In addition, a well-written book can get you lots of citations, impact, and recognition (the same kinds of things you get with papers, but possibly even more). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T21:13:24.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-12-01T21:17:02.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By publicizing an original idea at earliest possible moment, you increase your chances of being the first one to publish it, and thus make it known that this is your idea. So, in fact, this prevents it from being &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't think published ideas can be stolen. The worst that can happen is they can be used without attribution but that is always a possibility wherever you publish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4105" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T21:17:02.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2012-12-01T21:21:33.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One case is where you already have the material (course notes, material you gathered from organizing a tutorial on a topic, etc): publishing it as a book used to make it widely available, a lot more than photocopies. Now, with the advent of the WWW, printed books might be less relevant for diffusion, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another incentive, in case you don't have the material ready, might be the same as for writing reviews: if your book is successful, it will be highly cited and enhances your status in your field. Also, you can try to imprint your own ideas and vision for the field in the next generation of researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4105" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T21:21:33.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5547" CreationDate="2012-12-02T01:25:18.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact potential advisors, if you are really &lt;em&gt;worth it&lt;/em&gt; for them they will provide fund for you (when accepted).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The same when apply to universities: most universities give graduate students scholarship ( with the acceptance letter) in form of Teaching Assistant (TA) or Research Assistant (RA).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some of them &lt;em&gt;don't offer funding&lt;/em&gt; with the acceptance letter but the bottom line is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;if you are good you will get scholarship (either from Gradstudies Office or from department, from supervisor..etc) while you pursue your degree.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T01:25:18.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-02T06:22:14.473" Score="1" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in my second year, pursuing a B.Tech. in Software Engineering, in India. I want to pursue a Masters' in the US in CS/CS-related fields. My area of interest is AI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have two years to go before I will need to apply. So, what should I be working/focusing on in the next two years so that I have a good chance at making it there ? Keeping in mind the fact that i will need scholarships/financing options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastEditorUserId="4227" LastEditDate="2012-12-07T02:16:47.607" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T02:16:47.607" Title="What should I focus on to get admission in a Masters programme in the US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5578" CreationDate="2012-12-02T11:01:11.280" Score="11" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting to do some research in Asia, however, I don't know the local language. I do have some contacts, all of whom speak English, but I'm worried about finding earlier research which was published in the local language. For example, if I don't speak Thai and I am doing research in Thailand, how can I find existing research which was published in Thai (with the intent of contacting the researcher or finding a translator to translate it into English)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be a futile exercise, and I might need to remove the question but in case anyone out there has a creative idea, I would love to hear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T08:54:10.347" Title="How to find / understand research in other languages when you don't know that language?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5566" CreationDate="2012-12-02T11:19:45.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that only a small percentage of Master students get funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's less competitive to get into a Master program than a PhD, mostly because the students pay their own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your grades are not the best you should try to get high GRE, good reccomendation letters, and possibly to some research during your Bachelor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any particular reasons why you chose the US? There are many other school around the world that would cost you less and get a good education as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T11:19:45.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5573" CreationDate="2012-12-02T11:30:11.417" Score="32" ViewCount="83146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to include a &lt;strong&gt;glossary&lt;/strong&gt; in my &lt;strong&gt;master’s thesis&lt;/strong&gt; explaining some technical terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university doesn't make any specifications about the usage or position of glossaries. So I'm asking myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it better to &lt;strong&gt;put the glossary at the beginning of the thesis?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. between the Table of Contents and the main content) That way the reader would see it first and either read it or keep in mind that he can look up unfamiliar terms there. But it would disrupt the reading flow between Abstract, Table of Contents and Content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or would it be better to but the &lt;strong&gt;glossary in the appendix?&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe with footnotes refering to it, each time a new term is used for the first time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current structure of the thesis is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- Titlepage&#xA;- Abstract&#xA;- Table of Contents&#xA;- [INSERT GLOSSARY HERE?]&#xA;- Main Content&#xA;   - Chapter A&#xA;   - Chapter B&#xA;   - ...&#xA;   - Chapter N&#xA;- Appendix&#xA;   - Appendix A&#xA;   - Appendix B&#xA;   - Table of Images&#xA;   - Table of Tables&#xA;   - Table of Literature&#xA;   - [INSERT GLOSSARY HERE?]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4051" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T12:00:41.910" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T22:47:17.380" Title="Where in a thesis should a glossary be positioned?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;glossary&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5567" CreationDate="2012-12-02T12:08:49.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only thing I can suggest you right now is to use google translation services; for instance you can add to your browser some &quot;add-on&quot; that automtically translates from Thai to English. Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T12:08:49.527" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5569" CreationDate="2012-12-02T14:51:58.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put the glossary &lt;strong&gt;after any appendices and before the index&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; This advice is simply based on a very quick survey of the textbooks that I had close to hand. The sample size is therefore small, possibly subject biased (physics, mathematics, astronomy, economics), and therefore subject to argument. Thanks to aeismail for the comment prompting this edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="1424" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T09:17:50.440" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T09:17:50.440" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5567" CreationDate="2012-12-02T14:53:51.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accessing research in a language that you don't speak is pain. If something seems interesting, just ask the author for any related material he/she may have in English. That should help you in a lot of cases. Otherwise, go listen to him/her at English-speaking conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T14:53:51.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5569" CreationDate="2012-12-02T14:56:33.453" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is utterly a matter of style. Just put it where it makes more sense to you. If you expect people actually NEED to read it before they can read your thesis, just put it in front. Otherwise, put it after the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T14:56:33.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5569" CreationDate="2012-12-02T15:18:04.293" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest to follow the order reported on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia – Book design&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the suggested order (skip all that is not needed in your thesis; colophons are only needed in published works, and your publisher will take care of them):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;front matter&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;title page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;colophon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;foreword&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;preface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledgment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dedication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prologue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;body matter&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;content – optionally divided into volumes, books, parts, chapters, sections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;back matter&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;epilogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;afterword&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;postscript&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appendix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;glossary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;index&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;colophon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T17:02:52.497" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T17:02:52.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-02T15:33:50.390" Score="4" ViewCount="3013" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d&quot;&gt;University rank/stature - How much does it affect one’s career post-Ph.D?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do rankings of universities matter while pursuing research or should I be more concerned about finding a suitable supervisor irrespective of the university or institute rankings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4210" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T16:25:44.507" Title="Do university rankings matter for research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-12-02T17:31:56.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2012-12-02T16:07:37.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the importance you have to attach to this criterion (university ranking) when finding a new research job (from your question, it appears to be a PhD) is limited, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What counts if our research output: your results, and how you communicate them to your community. You want people in your field to recognize you as someone who can tackle difficult problems and design creative and efficient solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of course, your research may not be so stellar that everyone has heard of you. So, coming from a well-known group with a proven track record is important. You want your research group to be famous, because it reflect well on you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But it's not that simple… not all group leaders are superstars! Failing that, it is better to be affiliated with a well-known department (or university). You want to be in a university/department that people think is good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But not all people know all universities well enough to be able to judge them. Those who don't rely on externally published rankings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how rankings are introduced only as item #4 in the above list. Thus, even considering only the career advancement side of your question, university ranking is not a primary concern. Sure, it plays a role, but lots of students overestimate that role compared to, say, the importance of your own work and results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T16:07:37.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2012-12-02T16:25:44.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of employers, you will face two types of them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One is interested in only &lt;em&gt;good universities&lt;/em&gt; and will make it as a negative point if your university ranking is not that good. Usually those know nothing about your research. It is also subjective and vague for &lt;em&gt;what is a good university ranking&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;em&gt;is there any threshold to specify good and bad rankings?&lt;/em&gt;. Things are not clear here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another type of employers (specially in academia/research positions) they admire your research (if you did good research) and have zero weight on where you come from. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line here is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;if you see your supervisor is going to help you to be better researcher (and thus publish in good journal/conferences) then why not?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are plenty of good professors affiliated with &lt;em&gt;not-so-good&lt;/em&gt; university ranking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could make the two (good university ranking + good supervisor) then this is the perfect solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T16:25:44.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5567" CreationDate="2012-12-02T19:10:07.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask a colleague which does speak Thai, and ask him if there are any relevant Thai publications you need to be aware of. Ofcourse this colleague needs to be in the same field you are interested in. If he or she does not know of any relevant literature, this might indicate that you are not missing any relevant research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, when you are looking for papers yourself, I would Google translate the titles of the papers, and if they seem interesting I would ask a native speaking colleague to translate the abstract. If it still is interesting then you ask your colleague to read the paper together with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T19:10:07.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5580" CreationDate="2012-12-03T05:32:36.893" Score="18" ViewCount="2770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering pursuing a PhD in computer science one day. &#xA;I guess specializing in (is that the way to put it)?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What I want to focus my research efforts on.&#xA;I am interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manned/unmanned space exploration (writing guidance/navigation systems for the next Mars rover, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding cures for diseases (folding @ home).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Computer models of climate change, as I am very much a person that thinks &quot;Global Warming is real and needs to be dealt with yesterday&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this questions isn't &quot;what should I do research in&quot; but more of &quot;how can I decide what I should do research in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of people will counter with &quot;if you don't know what you want to research then you shouldn't be considering getting a PhD&quot;, but I don't believe in that line of reasoning. I want to do research and to be involved with something that expands the boundaries of Computer Sciences as we know it.  Just because I am not exactly sure what avenue I should go down in doing so, doesn't in any way change how much I know that I do want to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where do I start with figuring out my specialization?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What are my theoretical options?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Where can I see if &quot;getting my PhD to write software to guide probes to Jupiter&quot; is even a viable option?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Must I choose a area that is currently being researched at the university I attend, or am I free to come up with my own?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Can/should I be reading recently released papers on Computer Science topics for some inspiration, and if so where do I go to find those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4234" LastEditorUserId="23646" LastEditDate="2020-03-13T21:42:31.887" LastActivityDate="2020-03-14T02:40:44.610" Title="Choosing research area" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-12-03T08:10:12.597" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the harder questions you'll have to ponder, and one of the most useful. First off, realize that your choices are not (completely) irrevocable. Many researchers shift areas every 5-7 years or so - the changes are not dramatic, but over time you can make useful contributions in a number of different areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, what you are looking for is a broad topic that will presumably take you through the 5-6 years of a Ph.D. To look at your questions one by one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where can I see if &quot;getting my PhD to write software to guide probes&#xA;  to Jupiter&quot; is even a viable option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of people working on this ? maybe at NASA ? Where did they do their Ph.D ? what kinds of topics do they publish in ? What I mean is that one way to figure out if &quot;Ph.D in X&quot; is viable is to see if there are people doing X, and then figure out what their trajectory was by looking at their publications, CV etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Must I choose a area that is currently being researched at the&#xA;  university I attend, or am I free to come up with my own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. You're in an MS program, and you haven't mentioned whether you're planning to apply elsewhere for a Ph.D. An MS is a good time to explore your options with people at the university, burnish your research credentials, and build some background in areas of interest. Obviously it helps if your area of interest is covered, but even if it's not, figure out related background that you need, and maybe look for someone doing research in a related area. Also see which places/people you'd like to do a Ph.D at based on the area, and that will give you a sense of what kind of extra reading/prep to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can/should I be reading recently released papers on Computer Science&#xA;  topics for some inspiration, and if so where do I go to find those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course ! but you should try to focus your search a bit. There's a large body of work in each of the topics you listed, and google is your friend. Once you find even a few papers, you can figure out where they were published, and then look at other papers in those venues, and repeat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T08:10:12.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-12-03T11:11:32.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that I'm going to get downvoted for this, given the preponderance of computer-science people here, but my advice is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do a Computer Science Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quickly work out which are you want to do programming in, and switch to a Masters in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your case, a Masters in Climate Science. Or rocket science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domain knowledge is really crucial for building &lt;strong&gt;useful&lt;/strong&gt; models.  Academically pure programming will help you write code to please the computer-science purists.  But if you don't have the domain knowledge, it will be useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on many many dozens of successful applied programming projects. &lt;strong&gt;None&lt;/strong&gt; of the &lt;strong&gt;useful&lt;/strong&gt; models were written by people with postgraduate qualifications in computer science (but several of the useless ones were).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, finish your Masters in Computer Science, and then do a Masters in Climatology, or rocket engineering, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you'll have the best of both worlds: domain knowledge &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; postgrad-level programming skills.  The best universities are developing in-house Research Software Development capacity, which seek to unit the two, and you could be part of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T14:20:21.023" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T14:20:21.023" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-12-03T12:00:56.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to put in my two cents here. It looks like the type of areas you are interested in are related to Artificial Intelligence. I am not suggesting you jump the AI bandwagon but I do recommend starting to read on this area alongside your normal studies. Find some of the latest AI journals and skim through (at least) the abstracts to see what people are doing nowadays. Global warming and unmanned vehicles are huge issues. You would need to narrow this down to a particular area and make your contribution there. You can't solve world-scale problems all in one MS/PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read up and make a small contribution to the existing knowledge. Maybe you'll one day make a huge difference but, as the saying goes, even the journal of a hundred miles start with a single step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T12:00:56.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5604" CreationDate="2012-12-03T17:12:04.900" Score="24" ViewCount="1446" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title is fairly generic in nature, so I'm trying to elaborate in the body. I'm interested in answers pertaining to Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), but I'm certain the question would be equally relevant in fields which have been around for more than a couple of decades, and hence I hope to get responses from researchers in other disciplines as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to understand is how researchers (who have been working for quite sometime) in any specialized field (like TCS) keep track of results that have already been published - not just seminal results, but also results which have a lesser (but not insignificant) impact on the field but were published years or decades before. At the same time, one has to keep track of results being published in (at least) the notable conferences in the current year as well, in order to absorb the new ideas presented there and incorporate/extend them in one's own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it kind of incredible to believe that all of the above is possible without any kind of disciplined approach to reading and subsequent assimilation of the ideas on a regular basis - which is why I'm asking members of academia about their experiences/practices on this. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How frequently (if at all) do you revisit &quot;classic&quot; results?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you keep written/electronic notes on a regular basis to keep track of continuing progress in a field (say, for instance, inapproximability results for geometric problems) - or do you prefer to keep it all in your mind?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To keep track of current state of art, do you only attend/read Tier-I conferences, or do you get useful ideas from results published in Tier-II/III conferences as well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of time/resources would you typically set aside for reading, as opposed to working on a problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I'm trying to find what kind of things would you expect a top researcher to &quot;know&quot; off the top of his head, and at what level of depth - and how would you go trying to maintain that level of perception over the years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I understand that the question &lt;strong&gt;IS&lt;/strong&gt; subjective, but I'm hoping that it satisfies the guidelines for a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;good subjective&lt;/a&gt;&quot; question!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T17:21:07.720" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T03:20:49.590" Title="How does one keep herself updated with new research without forgetting older results?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2012-12-03T17:45:13.790" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some universities, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2012/06/29/postdoctoral-researchers%E2%80%94facts-trends-and-gaps/&quot;&gt;Post-Doctoral Fellow&lt;/a&gt; is a different title than a Post-Doctoral Researcher due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-12-033.html&quot;&gt;federal regulations in the USA&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Post-Doctoral Fellow&lt;/strong&gt; is paid through a different funding mechanism (e.g., NRSA training grants) and is not considered an employee (thus is excluded from health insurance and retirement benefits) and is treated more like a student (may take classes or do a clinical residency; receives a non-negotiable stipend which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postdocs.cornell.edu/tax-issues&quot;&gt;not ordinary income&lt;/a&gt;). There may be a citizenship requirement for this funding mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Post-Doctoral Researcher&lt;/strong&gt; is an employee (qualifies for benefits but does not take classes or receive training). It may be easier to deal with visa requirements through this position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, postdocs do research. Neither is guaranteed to advance your career to being a professor, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2012/06/22/so-what-does-the-biomedical-research-workforce-look-like/&quot;&gt;pretty much everyone has to do it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T17:45:13.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-03T18:51:01.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very bad at keeping track of things, so maybe all I can share is what NOT to do :), but I find it easiest to keep track of ongoing work in the community (and I'm in TCS too) in three ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By working on problems and being willing to indulge in flights of fancy (which allows me to read beyond the narrow scope of the problem I'm dealing with)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By perusing the list of accepted papers at a conference when it's announced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(more recently) subscribing to relevant arXiv feeds and saving papers to read on my IPad - this works only partially, but I always have things ready to read when I feel like it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system is not perfect - I still miss lots of interesting papers - but I've slowly come to accept that it will be impossible to keep track of all interesting results in the field (let alone the flashy ones). For breadth beyond the above I rely a lot on surveys and slides that I can quickly browse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T18:51:01.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-03T19:33:54.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read review articles&lt;/strong&gt; in your field. That's where someone else already did the hard work of reading and summarizing the literature. Tenured-track professors have a strong incentive to write invited review articles because it's prestigious and gets them a lot of citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintain a library database of papers you've read&lt;/strong&gt; along with the dates you read them. Add your own keywords to them so you can find them later and cite them. Keep this database separate from the new databases you'll make when you start writing a new paper (don't make the mistake of trying to keep it all in the same file -- you'll never find anything when it gets too big). I do this in Endnote, though obviously you could do it in bibtex or some other program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put a repeating monthly reminder on your calendar to &lt;strong&gt;send you an email when the new issue of each journal comes out&lt;/strong&gt;. You can do this easily on Google Calendar or MS Outlook. Delete the email after you've looked through the new articles. (Remember to put the important ones you read in your library database!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also put semi-annual reminders on your calendar with &lt;strong&gt;abstract submission due dates&lt;/strong&gt; for the relevant conferences for your field. I'd suggest putting two email reminders about a month and also a week before the actual due dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carry a notebook (not a laptop or other device) with you at the conference and &lt;strong&gt;write down titles of the important events and what was important about them&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, handwritten notes! You won't have time to type up pretty documents. Managing battery life and surfing the internet is a waste of time when you could be networking with the best researchers in your field. You'll have time after the conference to go back through your notes and then add those presentations to your library database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T19:33:54.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-03T20:36:01.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not &lt;em&gt;experienced researcher&lt;/em&gt; but I will say what I usually do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subscribe for Google scholar alert.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I found this very helpful specially for new topics and to keep you updated. Once google scholar indexed a paper contains your word, it will send you alert. &lt;em&gt;It is simply an awesome feature to know almost every new paper in your subfield.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subscribe in ArXiv&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My goal here is to see the general field papers. (I am subscribing to Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory). You will get the abstracts along with the paper title. If you found this paper is interesting then google it.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow up with Top-conferences and journals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(in Computer Science)&lt;/em&gt; Sometimes visiting the new DBLP page for the conference/journal might be useful. Same goes to visiting the pioneers DBLP pages.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do maintain a plain text file contains some (crazy) ideas/strong statements/question related to the papers I read. When it is the time to look for new project/idea, I usually consult this file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T20:36:01.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-03T20:46:52.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to know everything. Older results only matter as much as they're relevant to what you're researching and writing about now. Also, since research is about discovering NEW things, older results can pretty much just sit there and gather dust until they become relevant for current research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4237" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T20:46:52.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5607" CreationDate="2012-12-03T23:15:24.440" Score="17" ViewCount="13376" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that more and more schools are encouraging their faculty to apply for (and secure) external funding.  I have not yet been awarded any research grants.  If I'm applying for jobs at research schools, should I include on my CV my unfunded grant applications?  The obvious argument against this is that these applications were &lt;em&gt;unfunded&lt;/em&gt;, and will be viewed as failures.  The obvious argument for this is that many administrations are eager to have their faculty applying for grants and reward them (very modestly) even for unsuccessful applications.  Which view carries more weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T04:28:23.967" Title="should your CV include unfunded grant applications?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5646" CreationDate="2012-12-03T23:37:18.803" Score="12" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received an offer to visit a lab for 4/5 months that could lead into a fully funded PhD. In the meantime I have other applications in the pipeline from which I will hear back in either a few weeks or a couple of months (just different educational systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am excited about going to this lab but I want to wait to have all my offers on the table before commiting to a program. Also I am not sure yet if I will be able to develop in this lab the project I have in mind. However the PI of the lab is highly regarded in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to leave the lab I would want to leave in the best note possible not to burn my bridges with this person and institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure the PI knows I might have applied elsewhere and also although it is likely that this visit will turn into a PhD there is also a small chance it will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to handle this situation in an ethical and correct way, and not disappointed anybody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I will get paid in this period but not as much as PhD student. Let me know if more information is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: So apparently by the end of the visit I will present a PhD proposal, so I hope that at that point it will not be too late to answer other offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T09:58:30.063" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T22:36:58.363" Title="Offer for a pre-PhD visit, how to handle the situation with other PhD applications in the queue?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-03T23:48:02.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately as you already mentioned there is no clear answer. One time I was at an AAG conference at a workshop about job hunting, applications, and CV building and the speakers were a mix of young and old academics. The majority I think agreed on not listing failures and avoid to list grants you were awarded but refused. The latter might be used when you don't have many grant application but might show a signs of bad planning. As far as your question perhaps it might be useful to list only if you applied to a very competitive grant. In alternative you could briefly talk about it in your cover letter but just highlight that you have already gone through the process. Even getting a small grant ($1000) is better than an unfunded application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T23:48:02.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5567" CreationDate="2012-12-04T08:54:10.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends also on the fact that you will work on your subject for only a few months or for a very long period of time. Ultimately, in the second case, you will have to learn additional languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sciences and economical/social sciences we are not very used to that, but it is rather common in humanities. For instance, my wife works in Egyptology, and she had to learn (at least for reading) German and Italian in addition to French (mother tongue), English (that we all learn at school) and 3 or 4 ancient languages in order to be able to read the literature of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T08:54:10.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-04T09:01:39.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Success stand for itself, failure needs to be qualified. (A wise man)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only, include failed applications if it tells a story about your research and where it is going. For example, saying that you failed 5 years ago but then hit the jackpot and proved all your detractors wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a very good reason, I think it only serve to confuse people. Most importantly it will may remind folks your area of research is undeserving and uninteresting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the absolute worst message that you can send.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4240" LastEditorUserId="4240" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T04:28:23.967" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T04:28:23.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2012-12-04T09:20:03.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The magazine &quot;The Scientist&quot; has recently published an article about writing scientific books: &#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32654/title/So-You-Want-to-Write-a-Book-/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32654/title/So-You-Want-to-Write-a-Book-/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to read it. It says that writing books requires a lot of time and involvement, and that it is better to wait until you have tenure. I think that the suggestion makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2807" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T09:20:03.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-04T12:11:40.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying to a TT position at a research intensive school, the search committee is going to want to know want your first research project is going to be and who would likely fund it. A failed grant application along with an explanation can go a ways towards providing that information. One line on a CV probably isn't helpful and I would not include failed applications on my CV for such a position. I would however mention one of the proposal in my cover letter. Being able to say that you have a proposal and have identified potential funders (which comes first is a little bit of a chicken and egg thing) is a good thing. Being able to say you applied to funding scheme X and while you didn't get funded got useful feedback and you are now revising the application for funding scheme Y is even better. Obviously tailor this if the funding scheme gave a scores/percentiles/stage and/or allows you to resubmit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T12:11:40.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5594" CreationDate="2012-12-04T13:48:43.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I think so long as you and the PI in question are forthright about your mutual expectations, there should be very few problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PI who is offering you the position is planning on having you become a PhD student, then that should be made clear. Similarly, if you'd like to consider other options, then you should let your potential advisor know that a &quot;competition&quot; will be taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since you said you'd be writing a PhD proposal, it's not clear that you'd automatically have a guaranteed offer for a position at the end of this position if successful. This should also be cleared up before you make a final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T13:48:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-04T18:40:55.463" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few additions to Suresh's list (converted from a comment at TCSgrad's suggestion):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't even try to remember details.&lt;/strong&gt; Just remember that somebody published something related, and use Google (or Mendeley or Papers) to find the paper again when you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chase references.&lt;/strong&gt; Interesting papers tend to cite other interesting papers.  When you read any paper, also look at the papers in its bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chase citations.&lt;/strong&gt;  Interesting papers tend to be cited by other interesting papers.  When you read the paper, find other papers that cite it (via Google Scholar, for example) and look at them, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow whims.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you see a paper with an interesting word in the title, or an interesting figure on the first page, at least read the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't try to read everything.&lt;/strong&gt; That's impossible. Just try to read a little more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop reading.&lt;/strong&gt;  Eventually you have to do your own research.  Don't worry about reinventing the wheel; sometimes the best (and even fastest) way to understand what someone else did is to ignore them, figure it out yourself, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; read their paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T18:40:55.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-04T18:47:35.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask yourself, who will read my CV and what do I want to achieve by tailoring it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case the CV is part of an application for a position in academia, it should make an impression on the people in the search committee. From my experience people usually list only funded proposals in their CV. So including unfunded proposals will be considered as something odd. I don't say this is strictly forbidden, but you should have an extremely good reason for doing this. And I can't think of any. An unfunded proposal will be (from my experience in committees) not considered as an &lt;em&gt;achievement&lt;/em&gt;. On the contrary, if you have a lot of funded proposals you might want to include the unfunded, too show your &quot;success rate&quot;. But I wouldn't even recommend this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to prove that you can write about prospective future research, you should write an excellent research statement. You could address your experiences in this place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, their is no right or wrong. So this is my very personal opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T18:47:35.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-04T18:53:02.260" Score="23" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely list &lt;em&gt;pending&lt;/em&gt; grant proposals.  But &lt;em&gt;rejected&lt;/em&gt; grant proposals should fall into the memory hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do not list your rejected journal submissions, the awards you applied for but did not win, or the graduate schools that did not admit you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T18:53:02.260" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-12-04T19:31:21.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point in your academic career you have to be pragmatic. By this I mean you will &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; a paper when you need to, and you often read the papers only in parts. Still you will read plenty of papers: research, teaching, refereeing there are many occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand you have to keep your eyes open. You should have a rough idea what is going on in your field. But you don't have to know the details, since you don't have the time for this. Many ideas how to do this were already posted. Here is what I do (I also work in TCS and Discrete Math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subscribe to the arxiv's rss feed you are interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the important blogs, they will also list paper accepted at main conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are interested in a journal, subscribe to the newsletter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your peers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I just scan the titles, and the list of authors. If I find something interesting I have a look at the abstract and try to understand the statement of the main result. If you don't already use a rss reader I strongly recommend to use one to keep track of everything in one single place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T19:31:21.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5611" CreationDate="2012-12-04T21:19:42.563" Score="12" ViewCount="4106" Body="&lt;p&gt;if a current PhD student applying to another university &lt;em&gt;within the same country&lt;/em&gt;, is it required to expose the fact that he/she is currently enrolled in another university?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;is it a right for the grad studies office to know my current status?  if yes; why? what is the difference?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specially in case if the student does not want to transfer the credits he/she has taken in the previous university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T21:31:45.260" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T22:23:56.680" Title="current PhD applicant applying to another university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5610" CreationDate="2012-12-04T22:24:04.793" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you are a student, you should say so in your application.  Otherwise, your CV will have an unexplained gap for the time you've been at your current department.  Unexplained gaps raise red flags with admissions committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your statement, you also need to explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you are applying to the new department instead of completing your PhD at your current department.  Moreover, you must do so &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; disparaging your current department, &lt;em&gt;even if you have legitimate cause to do so&lt;/em&gt;; nobody likes a whiner.  Good reasons to move include a change in your own research interests, your advisor moving or retiring, following a spouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, do everything above board.  If possible, you should also request at a recommendation letter from your current advisor; if not your advisor, some other faculty member in your department.  &lt;strong&gt;If you apply secretly, you risk burning all bridges with faculty in your current department.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credit transfer is a completely orthogonal issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T22:24:04.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-04T23:25:09.720" Score="9" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably depends on field, but in Computer Science  it is common for people to publish similar material in workshops, then conferences, then journals.  Each time it is acceptable to reuse some material from one level to the next as long as there is some new material (journals sometimes will publish verbatim but that's anohter matter).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it acceptable to borrow significant text from one &lt;strong&gt;conference&lt;/strong&gt; paper to use in a second &lt;strong&gt;conference&lt;/strong&gt; paper?   In my experience the answer is no, but I'm curious if there are any guidelines, and if so, whether they vary across disciplines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, after posting I came across this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2893/attitudes-towards-self-plagiarism&quot;&gt;Attitudes towards self-plagiarism&lt;/a&gt; ... certainly related to this.  I commented there, and should have mentioned here, that a complicating factor with regard to reuse of text arises from the use of blind submission: if you can't say who you are, you can't admit to copying your own text.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:14:49.520" Title="reuse of text between publications (CS)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5612" CreationDate="2012-12-05T06:27:29.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some papers go from &lt;em&gt;Abstract&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Extended Abstract&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Full Paper&lt;/em&gt;. In this case I see nothing makes it unacceptable. The same goes if you are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;extending your own results&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I often see the same material copied in the &lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt; (and&#xA;sometimes in the literature review) section with the same authors for&#xA;different papers. That is in addition to &lt;strong&gt;Definitions&lt;/strong&gt; and common&#xA;notations as @Suresh said.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I believe in this case it is ethical and valid since &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Background (or Definitions) is not the paper contribution&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  This ,in turn, has a disadvantage (and I really suffered from this): if you were not able to understand some parts of the background in the first paper, you will stuck there. In other words, you will not find another wording of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to the question:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it acceptable to borrow significant text from one conference paper&#xA;  to use in a second conference paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;significant text&lt;/em&gt; is not significant part of the contribution then IMHO Yes. The word significant here is the key and it is ambiguous but let's say its 40% of the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The bottom line is:  &#xA;Removing the borrowing text, does your paper have a contribution by its own?  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen the opposite where some papers are very similar to others and I think this is a bad habit. At the end, you are trying to discover new things not to copy them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T06:27:29.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-05T10:11:57.383" Score="15" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;The topics that have been in my research focus recently have problems with consistent naming and terminology through time and papers, so I might perceive it as a greater problem than I would normally, but still. I am a PhD in Computer Science, Image Analysis -- so while there's a &lt;em&gt;lot of standard terminology&lt;/em&gt;, a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of state-of-the-art &lt;em&gt;terminology has not settled on unique names yet&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until now, at least all the papers made by the same author/research group/under the same adviser (same last author) I've read have been consistent in their terminology (at least the one describing their main contribution). But, the latest article from an interesting author has &lt;em&gt;changed his own terminology on purpose&lt;/em&gt; (he says so explicitly himself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be a good reason for terminology change within the scope of one's own work?&lt;/strong&gt; It's not merging work with somebody -- in fact, the article I'm talking about is the first standalone work from that author after publishing with an adviser during PhD. From my point of view, it just makes it less findable: the key words changed, which might in turn cause less people to read it and in the end cite it. &lt;em&gt;How can this be beneficial?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I am actually interested in a &lt;em&gt;general set of guidelines&lt;/em&gt; for when changing one's own terminology might be beneficial, but let me add the details of the case that inspired the question. It's the terminology to describe a data structure constructed for an image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the first 4-5 publications (during the PhD, before publishing the thesis), the terminology was &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt;, the name was &lt;em&gt;suggestive&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;conforming&lt;/em&gt; to the other terminology from the same filed, but still &lt;em&gt;different than other data structures&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt; purpose and of similar format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The latest publication (1 author only) &lt;em&gt;takes over&lt;/em&gt; some terminology from a related work, and introduces ambiguity. That terminology was &lt;em&gt;first used to regard components of a similar&lt;/em&gt;, but still &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; data structure. No attempt was made to prove that those similar structures were equivalent (and I think they're not -- still didn't get around to proving that). A new term was created, derived from the terms for components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to me a stronger suggestion is that &lt;em&gt;similar but different&lt;/em&gt; data structure used as a basis for terminology, rather than what it was actually meant to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T18:22:48.777" Title="Guidelines for changing terminology introduced by self?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5615" CreationDate="2012-12-05T10:31:01.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also admit to doing this. The reason was twofold. Firstly, the old terminology clashed with existing terminology for concepts that I also needed, and secondly, the new terminology better reflected the concept that I was studying. It is also difficult coming up with a name for something when you invent it. But concepts need names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are obvious pitfalls to this approach, such as making papers harder to read. It is beneficial in the long run, because the accepted terminology (assuming that the newer terminology becomes the accepted terminology) does not clash with other terminology I need to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T10:31:01.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-12-05T22:50:00.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using LaTeX to write your papers, some simple macros can be used to add comments by each author. Moreover, the macro can be put within an &lt;code&gt;\ifdraft&lt;/code&gt; so that all comments can be omitted from the final version by setting &lt;code&gt;\draftfalse&lt;/code&gt;. &#xA;Examples below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;% define a new \if to certain things in draft mode only  &#xA;\newif\ifdraft  &#xA;\drafttrue  &#xA;%\draftfalse  &#xA;&#xA;\newcommand{\mycomment}[3]%  &#xA;{\ifdraft \textcolor{#2}{{\bf\textsc{#1}:}~~#3} \else \fi}  &#xA;&#xA;%% individual reviewer macros.  &#xA;\newcommand{\alice}[1]%  &#xA;{\mycomment{alice}{blue}{#1}}  &#xA;&#xA;\newcommand{\bob}[1]%   &#xA;{\mycomment{bob}{green}{#1}}  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use in the main &lt;code&gt;.tex&lt;/code&gt; as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Thus P=NP. \alice{I dont think this is a real proof.}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantage of this technique over issue trackers is that everything appears in the draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4256" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T13:15:08.067" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T13:15:08.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5624" CreationDate="2012-12-06T12:25:04.390" Score="23" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon change of lab, moving from a PhD student position to post-doc position. During the last months of my contract as a PhD student, I tried to finish everything I started but I still have a few projects in progress. These projects include collaborative paper with other groups, so I am not the only one involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what was the general agreement when changing position with unfinished project.  I see three main possibilities here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the beginning of the new contract, I spend &lt;strong&gt;all my time finishing the previous project&lt;/strong&gt; so I do not have to worry about them for too long (but I do not start right away to work for my new boss)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I spend &lt;strong&gt;one day per week (for instance) working for the past project&lt;/strong&gt; and the rest for the current one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not work at all on the previous project during office hours, but rather after work and &lt;strong&gt;during the week-end&lt;/strong&gt; (which I would prefer not to do)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to precise that my future boss is not involved in the project I would need to finish. I also plan to ask him the question directly when I start the new position, but I thought a little background about what is commonly done could be beneficial before starting this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: this question is different from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/publishing-previous-results-from-a-previous-lab&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; since it does not concern the ownership of the research, but rather on how to spend the time in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T13:00:47.583" Title="Finish previous work during current position" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1280" CreationDate="2012-12-06T12:38:53.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what I do. I distinguish between talks/posters where you basically just applied and paid the conference fee versus any talks where someone invited you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A poster where you just submitted an abstract often just means you paid to attend the conference (there is normally a bit of filtering to exclude any overtly commercial offerings, but this is not peer-review, as 90+% of things are accepted). Things like a department seminar, where every student can or is even required to present, similarly just means that you were attending that school. So, do not have these on your CV as you probably already list which schools you attended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you got invited to give a talk somewhere, this is different as it means someone thought it was worth their time and money to have you come over and give them your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for talks or posters related to peer-reviewed conference proceedings, list them as such (&quot;peer-reviewed proceedings publication&quot; or some equivalent formulation) and not as talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastEditorUserId="166" LastEditDate="2012-12-07T12:23:04.547" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T12:23:04.547" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5622" CreationDate="2012-12-06T12:46:37.603" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an academic working with a couple of post-docs, my rule is &lt;em&gt;you can do what you want with your time as long as you do what is required for the project that employs you.&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;It is also the case that I know (and indeed expect) that post-docs will have work of their own that they'll want to finish up or extend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not be happy with option 1, but option 2 would be good for me. Weekends are your own. If you spend them writing more papers, I will not object. But please do have some rest and relaxation time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a post-doc, you are starting to build your own career, so writing independent papers, and thereby forging your own way,  is a good thing. But there are a lot of benefits to be had from integrating yourself in your new working environment, and working too much on your own stuff means that you will miss that opportunity (and possibly make a bad impression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T13:00:47.583" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T13:00:47.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5626" CreationDate="2012-12-06T13:46:00.603" Score="7" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my master's thesis I am building on two earlier works of myself. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;-&gt; One is a study project I've done together with two fellow students, &lt;br /&gt;-&gt; the other one is an assignment I did on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I'm using results from these, should I include them in the Bibliography?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguments against including them might be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not published, a reader of my thesis therefore wouldn't be able to&#xA;look these sources up. &lt;br /&gt;(They don't qualify as quotable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also the effort involved in this works was much less than the amount&#xA;of work I'm doing for my thesis. &lt;br /&gt;(Some doubts on them beeing worth quoting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And finally I am the author or one of the authors of these works. &lt;br /&gt;(I am not using foreign thought material)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless it feels somehow incomplete to just leave them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4051" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T13:56:40.027" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T16:05:02.170" Title="If I am building on results of my earlier works, do I have to include them in my bibliography?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5625" CreationDate="2012-12-06T14:36:39.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are these works available in any published form or any other permanent online form, such as a technical report? If so then cite. If not, then there's nothing to cite. In my opinion, it would look strange to cite a project done in some previous course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do is put an acknowledgment in the back of your thesis/paper to your previous &quot;co-authors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T14:55:09.257" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T14:55:09.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5625" CreationDate="2012-12-06T16:05:02.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your particular case it would have no sense to cite your previous projects. As Dave Clarke wrote, the reader would have no chance to access the materials anyway, there were not published and probably &lt;strong&gt;there are not recognize by society as a scientific work&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, you should mention the co-authors contributions in the thesis, it is polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we would like to generalize the question a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are building your results on your previous work, you have to cite or you would commit &lt;em&gt;auto-plagiarism&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; which is not acceptable in scientific writing. Simply, to present the same results more times is not allowed even if there are not published in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you know that the &lt;strong&gt;reader would not be able to access your previous work&lt;/strong&gt; (archive of your University where your thesis would be) &lt;strong&gt;you still have to cite&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, you can mention for example the chapter, or the picture you are referring to and put the important fact/results from you previous work to the text you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case none of the 3 arguments you mentioned is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T16:05:02.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5632" CreationDate="2012-12-06T20:37:49.313" Score="9" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;Impact factors of journals are one the most commonly use indicator of their quality. As a consequence when someone is looking for a journal in which publish his results, the highest the impact factor, the better. However, over the years journal's impact factors change depending on the quality of their article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, that is more theoretical then practical, is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I care about the &lt;strong&gt;future impact factor of the journals&lt;/strong&gt; I publish in (similarly as when buying stock market).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be advisable to &lt;strong&gt;keep track of the impact factor&lt;/strong&gt; at the time of publication in a list of paper (a bit like saying &quot;I know to impact factor of the journal I published in five years ago is bad, but it was better then&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is somehow related to the fact that I hear once or twice about examining boards considering only the papers published in journals above a certain impact factor when assessing the quality of a candidate. In other words, papers published in low impact factor journal are not even worth noticing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T23:36:20.710" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T23:36:20.710" Title="How should a researcher manage the fact that Impact factors change over time?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2012-12-07T07:24:58.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be wary of going with Impact Factors as a good metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been recently a couple of Journals that got into trouble for artificially blowing their IFs, they basically asked any submitter to cite at least 3 articles of the same Journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is true that good Journals like Nature, IEEE Transactions, Elsevier, etc will give your paper a lot more credibility than unknown Journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, all of that was good for a pre-Internet era, where Universities had to pick and choose their subscriptions, but now, with all the plethora of information available that is probably less the norm than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T07:24:58.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2012-12-07T11:26:51.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to your last comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;boards that considered only the papers published in journal above a certain impact factor when assessing the quality of a candidate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that such borders are not doing well. As you said, the IF (Impact Factor) varies in time (regardless if we consider it as a relevant measure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to me, there are 2 points of view by which the IF which should be considered in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The point that &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; tried (and &lt;strong&gt;succeeded&lt;/strong&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;to publish a paper in a journal with high IF&lt;/strong&gt;. What  would that fact say to me (if I would be in a committee)? That you were confident about your results and you &lt;strong&gt;trusted your work to be published in a good journal&lt;/strong&gt;. (BUT(!) it does not meat that the journal or the paper is good, it just reflects you, the candidate). In this case relevant is the &lt;strong&gt;IF by the time your article was accepted&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The point that the &lt;strong&gt;IF of the journal you published rises in the next 2-3 years after the time your paper was accepted&lt;/strong&gt;. Why? Lets take a look &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor&quot;&gt;how the IF is calculated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A = the number of times articles published in 2006 and 2007 were cited by indexed journals during 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B = the total number of &quot;citable items&quot; published by that journal in 2006 and 2007. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2008 impact factor = A/B. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, can we say that articles published in 2006 and 2007 will be cited in 2008? Just very small amount of them. Someone reads your article (month 1), then does the part of research related to your article (2-3 months?), approved by co-authors (another month) and goes through the acceptance procedure (12-14 months). It takes about a year and a half to print the citation of your article. So, if the editors decide that they will accept just good articles the resulting rising of IF will be visible in 2-3 years in the future. So if I would be a committee member I would like to know how was the IF 2-3 years after the article of the candidate was printed. That can tell me that by the time the article was printed, also a considerable amount of good articles were printed as well. But keep in mind that IF consider citation just within 2 years back, and that is just too short. I think it should be 3 years at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;add 1.: YES, for the next 2-3 years as it is effectiveness time of IF. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;add 2.: YES, because it reflect the actual state of the author by the time he decided to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But please, all this can help as a indicator but is should be taking into account with caution. I should also say that IF is very tricky and it can be easily misinterpreted (self-citation, how many review articles the Journal publishes,...). If you want to take a look at other evaluating tools, you can visit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot;&gt;Eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt; or&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journal-ranking.com/ranking/web/index.html&quot;&gt;Journal Ranking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;What really matters is how much your article is cited(!)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="4079" LastEditDate="2012-12-07T12:59:24.820" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T12:59:24.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5466" CreationDate="2012-12-07T15:09:17.897" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;strong&gt;very personal opinion&lt;/strong&gt; MDPI is an reputable publisher, but their journals are not first-class. I did a review for them once, and the peer review process was smooth. Also, I knew the field of the reviewed paper very well, so I guess they selected me as a reviewer carefully. But I really can speak only for one of their journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I won't publish in their journals since they charge quite a bit for the open access, and there are other options in my field which are free for authors and subscribers. Also I don't like to be spammed with their &quot;newsletters&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added:&lt;/strong&gt; I have recently seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/12/17/instead-of-a-peer-review-reviewer-sends-warning-to-authors/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; reporting a problematic peer-review case with an MDPI journal. This lets me doubt, if my initial judgement was right. I suspect, it might depend on the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastEditorUserId="1467" LastEditDate="2015-12-24T08:05:42.307" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T08:05:42.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T16:30:45.207" Score="3" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am digging &quot;dead bodies&quot; meaning that i analyse alternatives to the web system which were popular in early 90s and seems to be found the relevant report.              &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is author is constantly refers to some unknown organisation called RARE which i found no information about. It existed 20 years ago and was mentioned in numerous examples such as the following with other famous institutuons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is noted that the rapid growth of WWW may in the future lead to problems through the implementation of multiple , uncoordinated and mutually incompatible add-on features. To guard against this trend , it may be appropriate for RARE, in cooedination with CERN and other interested parties such as NCSA, to encourage the formation of a consortium to coordinate WWW technical development. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who are these RARE was it institution? I was around 3 when berners lee and all these fellas developed the web so i am out of the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link: www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1614.html&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appologise for typos: posting from phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="618" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T16:49:24.407" Title="what is RARE organisation in the context of hypertext systems?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5634" CreationDate="2012-12-07T16:49:24.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little detective work reveals the following. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisadie.wordpress.com/about-me/mini-resume/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chris Adie's Resume&lt;/a&gt; it seems that RARE is now called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terena.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TERENA&lt;/a&gt;, which is &quot;The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association&quot;. Looking at the history of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terena.org/news/fullstory.php?news_id=1969&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TERENA&lt;/a&gt;, reveals that RARE stands for &quot;Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne&quot;, which is a little strange, as it is a Dutch organisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, one of my old pals used to work for TERENA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T16:49:24.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T19:58:28.900" Score="4" ViewCount="1266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a postdoc and I'm planning to apply for faculty positions soon. However, I'm pretty sure that my current supervisor wants me to stay on for another year. When applying for a job, I'm usually required to state 3 referees. Am I expected to state my current supervisor as one of the referees? Is it going to weaken my application if he's not among the 3? Due to the mentioned conflict of interest, I would rather state other people I've been working with...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4268" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T02:56:33.503" Title="Postdoc supervisor's impact when applying for a follow-up job" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5636" CreationDate="2012-12-07T20:07:20.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to list references, you will almost certainly be expected to list your current boss—in this case, your advisor—as a potential reference. At the very least, if you do not, there is a non-insignificant chance that at some point in the interview process you'll be asked at will ask why he wasn't listed. You should have as good of an answer as possible ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that stating &quot;I'm ready to move on, but he wanted me to stay on&quot; may raise flags for a potential employer, as they could wonder whether this reflects a lack of loyalty on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T20:07:20.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T21:21:54.773" Score="9" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of universities nowadays expect professors to be able to provide research experience to their undergraduates. i.e. in job applications for new hires. What do they actually expect- Publications? Senior projects? Funding opportunities for undergraduates? While I agree research 'experience' is a great thing for undergraduates in principal, realistically the vast majority of undergrads aren't going to be able to make progress on real problems - so how will this reflect on a new professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T09:13:50.630" Title="What sort of research experience does a college or university expect a professor to provide an undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5638" CreationDate="2012-12-07T22:25:29.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Faculty in such situations might be expected to provide research experiences commensurate with the size and scope of the institution. Undergraduates usually cannot devote the time to a project that a graduate student does, so the outcomes are different. Publications are not generally expected; conference presentations are more common. Most importantly, the undergraduate gets experience working on a complex problem and develops transferable research skills. What the faculty member gets is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/592/do-professors-benefit-from-undergraduate-research&quot;&gt;not the same as what he or she would get from graduate students.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What an undergraduate does as research depends on the facilities, infrastructure, and culture of the institution. At a major research institution, undergraduates should be working on the same types of problems graduate students work on, but perhaps in a more limited scope. When I was a grad student, we had several undergrads in our lab, one of whom was grad student quality and got some publications. The others contributed valuable (if not always publishable) work to our projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a smaller institution that maybe does not have a graduate progran (like where I am now), you give an undergraduate student work commensurate with the type of grants you are expected to write. My institution (and my department especially) does not emphasize pursuit of large external grants, and so the types of projects I can give to my students are more limited. At the undergraduate stage, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2115/how-to-ensure-a-research-idea-has-not-been-explored-previously/2121#2121&quot;&gt;the process is more important than the results&lt;/a&gt;. I regularly send my students to regional and national conferences, and I hope to eventually have them publish something, but I am not given low evaluation marks. However, if you are expected to apply for and get big grants, then your undergrads should be doing work at that level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, in the chemistry departments I have been a part of (large and small), most faculty have one or more undergraduates doing research and most undergraduates get the opportunity. However, not all undergraduates choose to, nor would their be enough opportunities to support them if they did. The onus is on the undergraduate to choose to do research, not on the professor to guarantee an opportunity is available to all students even if they do not want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T22:25:29.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5638" CreationDate="2012-12-08T01:11:24.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My perspective is mostly Australian on this (with a bit of UK thrown in). &quot;Research Experience&quot; for undergrads here typically means exposure to and training in the methods of research. On one side this includes simply exposing undergraduates to the latest (important) results, but also incrementally introducing them to &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to be a researcher, capped in the final year with an offering of a small research project. Such a project would not be expected to produce new results, but to demonstrate the student's capability with methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there does seem to be an implicit push to get people publishing earlier, which seems to filter down from the increased pressure to publish on academics - but that's another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, in general, it tends to be in my experience about exposure, rather than an expectation that the undergraduate will actually perform (individual) research. The ones that do are just a bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T01:11:24.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5638" CreationDate="2012-12-08T09:49:47.953" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;There's always the masters thesis, which in some instances might include original research.&lt;/s&gt; Also, at my university, some undergraduate TA's gets involved in research a bit by professors giving them some problems to work on, usually involving doing numerics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastEditorUserId="2794" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T09:13:50.630" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T09:13:50.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2012-12-08T19:20:57.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_%28Star_Trek%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lieutenant Commander Data&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datalore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;your brother can but you can't&lt;/a&gt; (or, as you would say, &quot;cannot&quot;). Otherwise: I see that you can use contractions in your informal writing, so it would be very strange if you were not able to use them when writing your thesis. If you can't, maybe contact &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oliver Sacks&lt;/a&gt;: he should get at least an article about this, and maybe part of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously: obviously you can. Should you? Speaking as someone who has both written and carefully read theses in a STEM field (mathematics): one generally needs to worry first that the content is complete and correct and second that the writing is good enough so as not to detract (or distract) from the content. The use of contractions would be at least a level below anything I would worry about when reading a thesis...provided they are used correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best to stick to language within your comfort zone (especially as a non-native speaker).  But your post above indicates to me that you have more than enough facility with English to pull off contractions if you want to.  You'll be fine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T19:20:57.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5653" CreationDate="2012-12-08T22:07:11.630" Score="16" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;My department requires dissertations from all honours students (being England, that's basically all of them).  Some of these are extremely good, even though they are written by undergraduates.  My department for some years created a tech report series, which included undergraduate dissertations with high enough marks and the agreement of the supervisor, but now this system has gotten lost in a morass of web redesigns etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any new norm for archiving good undergraduate dissertations?  We were thinking of just putting it in arxiv.org, is that considered acceptable?  We are writing an article and want to cite the dissertation for the full implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T11:42:16.263" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T11:42:16.263" Title="Replacing tech reports: can we put good undergrad dissertations in arxiv?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5610" CreationDate="2012-12-08T22:23:56.680" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  A PhD is a long-term relationship, taking two people's valuable time – not only for the duration of the dissertation but forever afterwards you will be linked to each other, affecting each other's reputations with your own.  It is an expensive and rare opportunity.  You should be completely honest on an application, and this certainly includes explaining any previous commitments you've made.  You need to explain exactly how and why you have broken them.  Frankly, I took one student who had stopped a previous PhD, and he stopped mine too, so I would be very unlikely to take such a student again.  Though a strong and clear letter of recommendation from the previous supervisor might convince me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T22:23:56.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5594" CreationDate="2012-12-08T22:36:58.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend on all of the institutions involved, but I expect it should work out for you.  I am sure the laboratory making the offer must be familiar with this situation, so the first thing I would do is talk to them about the various contingencies.  Then for the other offers, as they come in, you will have to explain you are getting experience in this laboratory and give them the date you expect to know whether or not you can accept their offer.  If they insist on knowing sooner, then you can take it up with your PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not be easy emotionally (decisions between good offers can feel very hard even though really neither choice would be &quot;wrong&quot;), but I think it is very unlikely that you will be disadvantaged by taking the opportunity to work in a prestigious lab.  Some of the other offers may be willing to wait, and for the ones that can't, they may allow you to reapply if you don't receive the offer you want.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a slight chance that the PI is taking advantage of you this way, but if so I'm sure they will have a reputation for that, and the first person to make you another offer would let you know you are better off leaving even if it does &quot;burn a bridge&quot;.  Then you may need to ask around a little more to be sure who to believe.  But it is more likely you are in a win/win situation – you get experience either way, and if a really nice offer comes along from another lab, probably your PI will be OK with you taking it, and you can finish their work up before going and taking up the new offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T22:36:58.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5593" CreationDate="2012-12-08T22:44:16.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the nature of the grants you haven't received and the type of institution you are applying to.  For example, it is very, very difficult for young researchers to get NIH funding now, so it's no disgrace to fail there, but applications do show you are motivated, and might show you have good collaborators, plans etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that CVs can have free text.  You might just put a line in such as &quot;Further experience in applications to NIH, NSF.  Details available on request.&quot;  Particularly if you are proud of a grant proposal &amp;amp; are planning to resubmit it, or have a good story to tell about how it might be further developed, or might be more successful coming from the institution you are applying to.  If you can talk intelligently about the reviews you got and what you have learned from the experience, then give your potential employees a prompt to bring that up in the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T22:44:16.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="271" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:19:40.060" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO successful and fruitful long term collaborations require at least two important features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mutual trust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;complementary competences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust is essential at various stages of the collaboration: i) you should &#xA;be happy to make a fool of yourself in front of your collaborators during brainstorming &#xA;ii) you should  be fairly certain that they will pay credit to your own efforts &#xA;within the collaboration iii) you should be happy to strongly disagree and fight about &#xA;it without strong feelings for the sake of challenging ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience (and watching colleagues) it is easier to cultivate and develop trust during your PhD and postdocs while socially interacting with your fellow students and postdocs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first advice would then be do not under-estimate extra curricular activities with your colleagues, as they can in fact be the foundation of upcoming shared ideas within long term collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complementary skills is key in order to value what your collaborators provide to the collaboration. If your asset is starting papers, you need to find someone who is good at finishing them or vice-versa.  It also avoids unnecessary competition within the collaboration. On a more positive note, it sheds distinct light on a research project&#xA;which is globally useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on people you can communicate well with: research is about beating about the bush for a long time before seeing the light. Precise understanding speeds things up a bit!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;avoid too large time-zone differences!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I am always amazed how (in contrast to crowds!) collaborators are collectively so much smarter than individually! A difference in perspective is key.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4275" LastEditorUserId="4275" LastEditDate="2012-12-09T19:19:46.537" LastActivityDate="2012-12-09T19:19:46.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5677" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:34:45.793" Score="12" ViewCount="4503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm nearing the end of my graduate studies (1-1.5yrs remain) and have been looking out for post-doc opportunities. I came across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newtonfellowships.org/&quot;&gt;Newton Fellowships&lt;/a&gt;, which provide funding for up to 2 years of research work at any participating university in the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fellowship requirements seem very competitive — a full fledged project proposal and multiple independent evaluations of the said proposal, in addition to the usual requirements. However, in the end, the pay is about 24k £. They do have an 8k £ allowance for research related expenses, but that probably is reserved for publication costs, travel, computer equipment and not a personal allowance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my research into pay scales in the UK, the lower end of the post-doc pay scale begins at about 28-29k £. More over, there is no cost of living adjustments, so if you're in an expensive place like Oxford or London, it's definitely not sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings me to the question — is the fellowship prestigious enough to warrant the low pay? Does anyone have experience with this fellowship (past fellows)? Are there opportunities to supplement the income? Don't get me wrong here... I'm not in it just for the money. Like every academic, the research topic is more important for me. But at the same time, I do not want to be working for well below what's normal and have to severely pinch pockets to support a family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4417" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T03:03:46.087" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T17:20:43.903" Title="Are the Newton fellowships (UK) prestigious enough to warrant low post-doc pay?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5644" CreationDate="2012-12-09T20:47:33.610" Score="24" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any research writing (paper, report, monograph, dissertation, preprint, etc.) approaching publishable quality is welcome on ArXiv, whether its'written by tenured faculty, postdocs, graduate students, undergraduates, high school students, or hamsters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am the ArXiv moderator for cs.DM and cs.CG.  I have not, as far as I know, accepted a paper from a hamster.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T03:46:12.963" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T03:46:12.963" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5644" CreationDate="2012-12-10T02:02:35.190" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding the main point of JeffE's answer, ArXiv is &quot;only weakly moderated&quot;, and makes no demands about status, rank, university affiliation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there appear to be mild expectations about format. Beyond the lowest-level TeX/LaTeX requirements, it seems that papers should be in the format of a paper submittable for publication-in-a-refereed-journal. I can imagine the possibility that formats for undergrad dissertations might or might not be enforced, and/or might be substantially different (even if conforming to a formal requirement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But/and I'd think that a rewritten version of a good thesis would easily be arXiv-able.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T02:02:35.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5669" CreationDate="2012-12-10T05:52:26.880" Score="29" ViewCount="25631" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does someone know what are the different roles between a Program Committee (PC) member and Reviewer for conferences (e.g., in the field of machine learning)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4284" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T06:54:02.940" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T06:54:02.940" Title="What are the different roles between a program committee member and reviewer?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5658" CreationDate="2012-12-10T07:00:57.910" Score="19" ViewCount="1346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a junior PhD student in electrical engineering and I need ideas about how to handle my mentor. Whenever I go to her with an idea she rejects it saying it is wrong or not interesting. But after a few months she comes back with a slightly modified version of my earlier idea and takes credit for the full idea. She asks me to do experiments with her version of my idea. Then when we have results, she publishes them in a conference (includes me as an author), but she gives the talk at the conference saying she came up with the idea and I only did experiments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to stop working with her because I have been working with her for two years and leaving will set me back by at least one and a half years. Can you suggest how to avoid this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4285" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-04T08:22:44.770" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T08:22:44.770" Title="My advisor rejects my idea, but claims that the modified version is hers. What should I do?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5656" CreationDate="2012-12-10T09:15:40.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continue working with her until the end without giving too much ideas. In the meantime, work on your own ideas, but wait the end of your PhD to publish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T09:15:40.217" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5656" CreationDate="2012-12-10T12:54:36.827" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect the advisor is relative young and probably not fully even aware of the problem. Her perception of events may be completely different. She may feel that she contributed the essential part of the idea to make it valuable. She may not even remember that the idea came from you originally. But that does not mean that she shouldn't be corrected and give credit to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can probably be solved by communicating with her, or by communicating with someone more senior, who could have a talk with her. Are there any annual progress meetings where this could be done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not dealing with the problem will only exacerbate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T12:54:36.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5656" CreationDate="2012-12-10T16:51:50.877" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common psychological thing that people treat their own ideas, and others' ideas, on a different grounding. And even there is a strategy of convincing people to make them believe that they genuinely came with the idea. The thing is that in academia, it's not only about &quot;making things work&quot; but tracking who came with the idea first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I disagree with JeffE's &quot;Don't walk. Run&quot; (perhaps for the first time),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would talk to her, especially referring to e-mails or something when you explicitly cam with this idea, but starting a discussion, not an attack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, there are chances that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the idea was different (seemingly subtle differences are actually big), at least in her eyes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;she honestly forgot that she came with this idea (but it is also not that impossible, that she got rather inspired and not only you, but a number of guys),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;she actively wants to get all/most of the credit (perhaps not that uncommon for a group leader, but definitely bad for you).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="4108" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T17:47:10.003" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T17:47:10.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5656" CreationDate="2012-12-10T18:07:46.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would approach this the same way I would have done in any workplace:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In future, all proposals from you to her would be initiated by an email, with explicit copies to an external, personal email account &lt;em&gt;of yours&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the event of any offline conversations, write a summary of your discussion and send it to her (and yourself) in the form of an email - end the email on a note that this is a formal &quot;notes of the meeting minutes&quot;, and that she should reply if there are any discrepancies in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the extreme case, if all of the above do not work, write your idea in the form of a draft paper, submit it to arxiv, wait for it to get accepted (takes a couple of days I think), &lt;em&gt;and then&lt;/em&gt; initiate the proposal (through an email, of course!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I wholeheartedly agree with JeffE - an adviser is your mentor for life, and if this is the foundation of your relationship, you should break it off ASAP (no matter how many years you lose - your peace of mind isn't worth it!). Also, note that while the above steps may stop her from plagiarizing your ideas, she would still be in a position of power and can screw you over in &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; different ways (your defense, recommendation letters, feedback on faculty hiring committees etc). So, use my suggestions in the short-term till you find a different mentor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T18:07:46.880" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5655" CreationDate="2012-12-10T18:55:01.343" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;PC = reviewer + administrative work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning papers to reviewers (marriage problem).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nominate papers for best paper award/journal track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up a program for the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually different PCs monitor different subareas. Also, I believe they contribute on solving conflict of interest issues - if there is any. These are my observations, never been PC myself&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T21:23:09.683" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T21:23:09.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5665" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:42:46.757" Score="70" ViewCount="9375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it common to supervisors to email their students papers to review (which were apparently assigned to the supervisor, and not to the student). The field is Computer Science, but I  would also like to hear from the other fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2016-05-18T08:04:42.180" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T08:04:42.180" Title="Is it common to review papers assigned to your supervisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5666" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:51:54.617" Score="30" ViewCount="2764" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tenured staff are &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/186/1033&quot;&gt;virtually impossible to fire&lt;/a&gt;, why is the urge to find funding so strong? For post-docs and other untentured scientific staff I can understand, for their job depends on it. For a tenured professor it would rather be the joy and honour of doing important research. Apart from a reduction in joy and honour, are there any consequences if a tenured professor fails to get grants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T04:53:35.437" Title="If tenured staff are virtually unsackable, why is the drive to find funding so strong?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:55:30.183" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a conference, PC members are responsible for reviewing papers. However, it's very common that they can use sub-reviewers, that is, delegating their review to another person. They nonetheless remain responsible for the final review. Some reviewing system, such as Easychair, have an integrated mechanism for asking a sub-reviewer, so there is an official &quot;proof&quot; of the review delegation, and some conferences include in their proceedings the additional reviewers (without saying for which paper, of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the frequency of such practice, it's hard to tell. Some supervisors might easily use that as an easy way to not do the reviews, others can use them because they believe the student might be more qualified (and more interested) in the particular topic of the paper, others can do it because reviewing is an important task of an academic, and one has to learn at some point. However, if the student does not feel qualified enough to review the paper, he/she should mention it and refuse the review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T21:16:58.250" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T21:16:58.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-10T20:05:37.050" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon for the advisor to ask a student to review a paper. Let's face it — reviewing is a chore, takes a huge chunk of your time and most people do it not out of interest for the paper, but rather a necessity (it factors in promotions within the organization and recognition within the society) and probably some feigned interest in the &quot;role of an academic&quot; and &quot;giving back to the society&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the papers that an advisor passes on to their students are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tangentially related to their interests &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only mildly interesting or borderline stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are not from top-tier journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student, you should never pass up on these opportunities. It can be a very rewarding experience to review a paper and discuss with your advisor. Some of the things you'll learn are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that you didn't catch on to some inconsistency/mistake after a month of review, but your advisor did it in 15 mins of casual reading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to write an effective critique while at the same time not putting the authors down. Contrary to what many may think, a review is not all about &quot;your math sucks!&quot;. While yes, it should be pointed out if it indeed sucks, there are ways of saying that. If you spend a lot of the review finding faults, then it is also &quot;fair&quot; to throw in a couple of nice things about the paper and balance it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you'll also learn to not nit pick on minor quibbles and focus on the technical content (I hate it when a reviewer makes a huge deal of 'data &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;' vs 'data &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;').&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll learn to do this while juggling other activities, so it's also an early lesson in time management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the quality of the review is partly your advisor's responsibility and he's not going to allow it if it is completely shabby. So, take this as an opportunity to learn about how to write a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking for myself, I reviewed a couple of papers for my advisor in my early years and now, after I have a few publications to my name, I get invited to review papers on my own (i.e., not via my advisor). Recently, there were a couple of opportunities that my advisor passed on to me, but the difference this time, is that he trusts me to do a decent review and so requested the editor to &lt;em&gt;officially&lt;/em&gt; ask me to review, so that I'll get credit for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4417" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T01:30:07.070" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T01:30:07.070" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-12-10T20:36:42.017" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many departments, tenured professors can use bringing in external funds to the department as a means of &quot;buying&quot; their way out of some of their teaching and administrative commitments. Similarly, other departments might use additional committee assignments and teaching loads to &quot;punish&quot; people who &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; bring in grants. They may also have less flexibility in selecting teaching assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other countries, such as Germany, a long-term shortage in funding can lead to the consequence of a chair not being &quot;succeeded&quot; when the holder retires; in that case, the institute (equivalent to a US group) the professor is in charge of is wound down rather than finding a new leader for the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T20:36:42.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-10T20:44:13.670" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common in neuroscience. In my limited experience (consisting of two such reviews), the idea was that it's a learning experience for me. My supervisor did his own review independently, then we compared notes, and he put together the final version. In both cases, he mentioned me by name to the journal editors. In one of the two cases I also saw that it's part of the journal's policy that any such PhD students should be mentioned. This, I would say, is a strong indicator that it's common practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T20:44:13.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5655" CreationDate="2012-12-10T22:08:52.807" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The responsibilities of a programme committee member and a mere reviewer could easily be the same, or differ. All depends on the particular conference/workshop setup. E.g., in computer science/AI there the difference is mainly a result of the venue size. Large first-tier conferences, such as e.g., IJCAI have a four layer programme committee structure. Here PC chairs, the top layer, govern the whole process from recruiting the various types of PC members, through conflict-of-interest handling, bidding on submissions, to notification and proceedings composition and publication. For such conferences the PC chairs recruit Senior PC members who are responsible for larger batches of submissions, or small sub-areas and report to PC chairs. For some conferences, the SPCs recruit regular PC members who in turn report to them and are responsible for the reviews. Regular PC members normally do the reviews themselves, but it's relatively common that they sometimes &quot;subcontract&quot; the job to other reviewers they recruit. These lowest level reviewers would do the review and get credit too, but the actual PC member is ultimately responsible for the review and the discussions among the PC members. Upon completing the review and discussion phases, SPCs give final recommendation for acceptance/rejection and possibly write meta-review summarizing discussion to each submission. The PC chairs would distribute the notifications and handle the proceedings and programme schedule composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for mid-size conferences, or workshops the senior PC members layer is usually missing and regular PC members report directly to PC chairs and take over the tasks of SPCs for large conferences. The mechanics of sub-reviewing stays the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For small-size conferences and workshops, there are virtually no administrative tasks left for the PC members, so they do just the reviewing (possibly recruit sub-reviewers) and the PC chairs finally decide about acceptance and rejection of the individual submissions on the basis of the received recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I describe above is regular scheme of things in &quot;applied computer science&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T08:34:25.233" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T08:34:25.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-10T22:30:19.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is also common for mentors to hand off reviewing tasks to specific group members that work in a field related to the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, a win-win situation is created, since the group member gets to stay on top of current research in their field of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4287" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T22:30:19.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-12-11T00:36:28.010" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most tenured faculty enjoy research (else why would they take a job that requires it?) and most research costs money.  In particular: Faculty who benefit from working with students (or postdocs, or staff) need money to pay them, and faculty whose research depends on specialized equipment or travel need money to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the carrot; @aeismail is describing the stick.  I imagine both motivations can be found at every institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T04:15:00.403" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T04:15:00.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:41:49.363" Score="25" ViewCount="1164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be teaching a graduate-level mathematically oriented class with probably less than 20 students. I have to grade the students (our system doesn't allow for pass-fail grading), and while I don't want to be overly fussy about the grades (this is after all advanced level material and mostly Ph.D students), I would like to provide some incentive structure so students will do the classwork and hopefully learn something in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is &quot;coarse-resolution&quot; grading where in each homework, the possible grades are +, 0, -, where + denotes having done about 75% or more of the work, 0 is between 50 and 75%, and - is below 50%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the semester, the number of +/0/- determines the grade, with &quot;mostly +&quot; getting an A, &quot;mostly 0&quot; getting a B, and mostly - getting a C. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this likely to be effective ? Is there something else I should do ? I'm open to the idea of not grading at all and giving out dummy grades, but I do think that people who put in effort should be rewarded in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T20:24:43.513" Title="Grading schemes to encourage effort" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-12-11T04:53:35.437" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tenure implies you're difficult to fire. It doesn't say anything about needing to pay you. @JeffE described @aeismail's answer as the stick, but there's a bigger one. Especially in soft money positions, a significant portion of your salary, much of the funding for your lab, etc. all come from grant funding. While they might not fire a tenured professor who isn't &quot;pulling their weight&quot; with grant funding, they may find themselves losing lab space to better funded or new faculty, not having the resources to maintain a functional research group, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're comfortable with you, your office, and whatever salary is hard money being the entirety of your research group, you don't need to ever find funding. But if you want more than that, the money has to come from somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T04:53:35.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-12-11T07:42:06.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach is to have a number of clear learning objectives. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the end of this course the student will be able to differentiate functions of a single variable.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then for each of these provide a description of what it means to obtain each of the various grades available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;F: &lt;em&gt;The student does not grasp anything about differentiation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  D: &lt;em&gt;The student is able to differentiate simple functions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  C: &lt;em&gt;The student is able to differentiate many functions, but has difficulty with composite functions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  B: &lt;em&gt;The student is able to differentiate most functions and employ the chain rule.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A: &lt;em&gt;The student is able to differentiate all functions and can apply first principles.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A+: &lt;em&gt;The student employs novel approaches to differentiation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you'd need to tailor these to your course and make them more precise than mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The learning objectives and the descriptions of what each grade means can be given to the student. A course may have different learning objectives, each with their own description. Your assessment can be tailored to measure the learning objectives based on these criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea, apart from making your job of assessing more objective, is to replace scores by learning objectives, so ultimately the course will not be about scoring points, but learning.&#xA;You could even disassociate the grades from the learning objectives and replace them by &lt;em&gt;unsatisfactory&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;satisfactory&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;very good&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;fantabulous&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T18:41:56.697" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T18:41:56.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5678" CreationDate="2012-12-11T09:34:30.607" Score="4" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student applying to grad schools this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was recently told by my friend (who is already in a PhD program now) that I should consider underlining some key sentences in my SoP, and put them in bold font, since the admission committee most likely won't have the time to read every whole statement, and this would be a good way to catch their eyes on the key points I want to express. It can also expedite the reviewing process so in this sense it is also helpful to the admission committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this makes sense, but I am still a bit hesitant since I'm not sure if this would be viewed as a poor writing style. Would this be welcomed from the viewpoint of an admission committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="676" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T04:06:43.730" LastActivityDate="2021-04-07T01:20:08.780" Title="Is it advisable to underline some key points in a statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5652" CreationDate="2012-12-11T12:13:03.457" Score="16" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where did you get your idea that the lower end of the post-doc pay scale starts at 28 - 29k? Most sources I've seen gives 28-29 the average pay in 2010 and 2011, and the low end near 23 - 24. (High end 35). The numbers are a bit field specific (biology tend to be around 25 - 29 for &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; postdocs) so I don't know whether the national average applies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clms.ucl.ac.uk/jobs/fellowships&quot;&gt;UCL webpage&lt;/a&gt; the Newton is tax free. Your stipend would fall into the 20% band were it taxable, so you should compare it to a roughly 30K starting salary for normal PostDocs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At effectively 30K, the pay is &lt;em&gt;extremely competitive&lt;/em&gt; for early career (read first time postdoctoral position) holders, provided you don't live in London. (Oxford is not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; bad.) London allowance is usually worth around 3 - 4k, so if you live in London your pay would be comparable to the lower-end of a reasonable post-doc salary (with London allowance included). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T12:13:03.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5676" CreationDate="2012-12-11T13:20:01.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's your opinion that your readers won't have time to read your whole document, you might want to consider adding an executive summary at the top of your document. This would take the form of a short paragraph which essentially includes all the key phrases or sentences that you would otherwise have highlighted in bold font throughout your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make your summary pithy, punchy and exciting, you are more likely to entice your reader to read through the remainder of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might indeed say that highlighting key phrases throughout your summary is a touch lazy. I wrote a similar document and went through and highlighted key phrases, just as you are considering. Then I wrote an executive summary section as the first paragraph, reusing or paraphrasing the key points.  I removed the text formatting in the main text body, rewriting the phrases relating to the key points given in the summary to avoid repeating them word for word. To my mind, the result looked more professional and read much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T13:20:01.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-12-11T14:58:17.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had mixed experiences with a three point grading scheme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the positive side, grading is easier for you. Also you have very clear rules for who gets which grade. On the downside students tend to find the system unfair. The main concern was the following. When a student was able to solve, say 70% of the assignment correctly, he only gets the second highest grade. The complaint was that they solved 20% without getting credits for it. (I had a slightly different system, I think 1 point for 50% and 2 points for 80%). Let me add that this is not my point of view, since they also get the full score when they only solve 80%. So in the end these effects will cancel out. The next term I used a more granular system and giving up to 15 points per assignment. All students that took both classes preferred the 15 point system. For me it was not much difference (grading was done by TAs), so I stayed with the 15 point system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it depends very much on your students. The first time I had the 3 point grading at MIT and it worked great. In Germany I had these more negative experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T14:58:17.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:20:23.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are describing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubric_%28academic%29&quot;&gt;rubric&lt;/a&gt;. Some rubrics are qualitative, using words like &quot;novice&quot;, &quot;proficient&quot;, and &quot;expert&quot; to delineate student achievement. Some have numerical values attached. Both need to be provided to the students at the beginning with a description of what each level of achievement looks like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my upper level courses and my courses with large independent projects, I use a five-point rubric (technically six, since I can assign a Zero):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 - Exemplary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 - Above Expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 - Meets Expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 - Below Expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 - Deficient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 - Absent, Missing, or Irrelevant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above descriptors, most students earn a 3 with good students earning a 4. A 5 is difficult to earn. However, since I provide my students with examples of each level, I give out very few marks of 2 and even fewer marks of 1. I reserve zero for when the student did not do what was asked, or turned in something else entirely. For example, if you ask for Problems 1, 7, 8, and 11-15 from Chapter 6, and the student turns in several problems from Chapter 5, that warrants a zero for not following directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have a simple and rapid grading scheme that still has numerical information. You can average over all of a student's scores (or weight them or whatever) to then assign a final grade. For an entry level undergraduate class, maybe the following is appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;F&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an upper level undergraduate or a graduate level course, the expectations are higher (and the grading should reflect that, i.e. it should be hard to get a 4 or 5), the following might be appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;F&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A+&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T15:20:23.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:36:33.850" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would never ask someone else to write a review and then put my own name on it, and I don't know of instances of that happening in my field (applied mathematics).  If I am unable to referee a paper, I usually suggest alternative referees to the editor.  Those suggestions might include one of my students, but it would be up to the editor whether to ask the student to referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T15:36:33.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5676" CreationDate="2012-12-11T23:30:06.403" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.  Never underline anything.  Underlining is left over from typewriters.  It instructs the typesetter to put things in italics.  Nowadays, you should put things in italics yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T23:30:06.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T00:30:55.657" Score="3" ViewCount="1189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Bachelor's in EE and Master's in Automation and 3 years experience, including 2 in software development. For me, an academic career would be both more meaningful and professionally rewarding in its flexibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think someone with experience but without formal qualifications could teach a subject such as mechatronics well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I might switch to teaching mechatronics? Should I stay in industry for a few more years and then move straight to being a full-time professor? Or, should I work part-time for a lest prestigious college and try to progress incrementally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&#xA;I don't want to obtain a PhD. Rather, I'd prefer to obtain the necessary qualifications while part-time, while working as a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4298" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T09:35:27.273" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T11:09:05.303" Title="How many years of industrial experience needed for a Mechatronics Professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T10:18:33.117" Score="9" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for any indication of how long should it take to write, let's say, a paragraph, for a non-native English speaker (with a good knowledge of English). I know that for the writing process of a paper or essay one should take in account also the time required for research and mind-mapping, which is not easily quantifiable. I am interested in some reference for the time needed to translate the mind map to a paragraph. The only time indication I found was in  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scripps.edu/milligan/em-journal/pdf/Scientific_Writing.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.scripps.edu/milligan/em-journal/pdf/Scientific_Writing.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (e.g Introduction: 3 days) , but the author clarifies that it is a personal opinion, and anyway it includes the mindmapping procedure. I can spend half an hour writing and editing a couple of sentences (already knowing which concept I need to express), how can I know if this time it's abnormous? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(meta: Feel free to move to personalproductivity if it's the case, I was unsure but then I thought of posting in academia because I am specifically talking about scientific writing) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1596" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T17:07:55.670" Title="Time employed for writing" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5689" CreationDate="2012-12-12T11:39:54.187" Score="13" ViewCount="21534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Computer Science undergraduate student and I am looking for my potential mentor for my PhD study. I guess besides research interest, personality etc., h-index is an important factor one should consider. So I wonder whether there is a way to find out about the precise h-index of an arbitral author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt;. It's cool, it often finds the right person and gives you his/her h-index. However, I believe that this tool has &lt;strong&gt;underestimated&lt;/strong&gt; the h-index of many researchers. (I think so because I've tried typing in some very famous professors' names and the h-index that Microsoft gives is about 10~20 lower than the actually value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, since I am mostly interested in Human-Computer Interaction so I am also referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://hcibib.org/authors&quot;&gt;ACM SIGCHI's Most Frequent Authors Page&lt;/a&gt;. The page is awesome: it gives you the most brilliant professors ranked by their number of publications. However, I think h-index is a better metric than the number of publications alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could, of course, go to the professors' websites and read their publication list. But I want to know whether there is a better, more efficient way of finding h-index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T11:03:30.017" Title="How to find the h-index of a professor?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5706" CreationDate="2012-12-12T12:21:58.627" Score="2" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently taking an undergraduate degree, and by completion, I would have 112 credit hours accumulated. &#xA;This is fine and all if I don't plan to continue my studies or apply to a local university, but I heard some of my seniors getting rejected applying for a master at universities abroad because the credit hours they accumulated were not sufficient, and thus their degree is only acknowledged as a diploma equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am especially interested in universities in US, UK, and Japan, but I am looking for a rather general answer, as in, &lt;strong&gt;is it common for universities to reject an application because of credit hours, even though the degree came from an accredited university?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2: my main concern is, whether I should take extra credits to ensure I won't run into a road block because of difference in the credit hours standard between universities (instead of say, my performance/cgpa/accomplishments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4302" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T02:41:45.500" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T02:41:45.500" Title="Is there a credit hours requirement for applying to a masters course?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2019-02-11T01:11:46.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5687" CreationDate="2012-12-12T12:54:17.860" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;the h-index is an interesting measure, but it changes all the times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;microsoft search does it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google author search does it (see an example &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=cluDFKcAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the freely available tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm#download&quot;&gt;PoP&lt;/a&gt; does it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you could try and triangulate the numbers that you get and find the average, as a possible solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T12:54:17.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5686" CreationDate="2012-12-12T16:29:50.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a brilliant link - thanks. And you have a good question that worries lots of people.  I wrote an answer to a similar question on my blog at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarwriter.com/news/thu-22112012-1054/how-much-can-i-realistically-write-one-hour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScholarWriter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that most people would say that you are jumping to the editing task far too soon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide on your outline - are you writing a narrative, an exposition, a persuasive piece or a scientific paper - and decide what each section is for.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your research and add the &quot;facts and figures&quot; for each section getting as specific as each paragraph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit your work the following day. Don't try to &quot;polish&quot; and write at the same time. Equally writing is much easier if you know exactly what you are trying to convey and have the correct information in front of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one other use for writing, though - to reveal connections and insights.  As much as you know what you think when you say it, you know what it is possible to think when you write it.  Often you only realize what is your main point after you have written a paragraph or section. So you go back to the beginning to structure everything again.  Though that is a lot of extra work, in this situation you are pleased that to do work because now you are so clear about what you are trying to convey and which information it is important to include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps - and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4304" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T17:07:45.327" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T17:07:45.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5693" CreationDate="2012-12-12T16:35:00.327" Score="34" ViewCount="5389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just found that a student has posted one of their assignment questions on a forum and is seeking help in getting a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a good idea who the student is, but no definitive proof. How would you handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T11:03:16.120" Title="How to deal with a student found seeking an answer to a coursework question online?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5692" CreationDate="2012-12-12T16:55:15.537" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Identify the offline equivalent of the observed behavior, and then act as you would normally. Remember, that the burden of proof for academic dishonesty likely resides with you. This includes verifying that the poster is indeed the student you accuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this situation to be pretty common: &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/2753/how-to-derive-partial-gas-equation&quot;&gt;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/2753/how-to-derive-partial-gas-equation&lt;/a&gt;. Most stackexchanges have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework&quot;&gt;homework&lt;/a&gt; policy. I would consider homework questions posted to stackexchanges to be no worse than asking students who have taken the course before you or asking another professor. How you deal with it is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would your response be if you saw a student collaborating on the problem in a study group? How do you respond if you find out that your student asked another instructor or a grad student in your department for help? If you learn the student worked on that problem with his/her tutor? If the student looked up the answer in the textbook or the solutions manual? All of these are common and to varying degrees accepted (if not liked). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess your irritation over this is somewhere more than the student asking one of your colleagues (who being nice will actually do the problem) and somewhat less than the student stealing another student's answer. Identify the offline equivalent, and then behave as you would normally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; - I missed the last part of the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a good idea who the student is, but no definitive proof. How would you handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have proof, then suck it up and let it go - this time. Next time put something in your syllabus. Either write a pretty severe sounding policy that exists to deter the behavior (because your policy will be basically unenforceable), or write harder questions and encourage them to use online forums with the caveat that they document all of their interaction. The second option shifts the burden of good behavior to your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:06.837" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:17:29.157" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5699" CreationDate="2012-12-12T17:12:42.307" Score="12" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our advisor is getting married over winter break.  None of us are super close to him and the wedding is going to be a very private event that none of us are invited to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should all of us (his graduate students) chip in for a wedding gift for him?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the etiquette for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:03:21.680" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:03:21.680" Title="Advisor getting married, should grad students chip in for gift?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5694" CreationDate="2012-12-12T17:25:10.817" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I laughed here; can't imagine my supervisor getting married.  It is just nice to see the supervisor involving in life..  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the question, &lt;em&gt;Why not?&lt;/em&gt; It is a big day for your supervisor. Just make sure the gift come from &lt;em&gt;group of students&lt;/em&gt; not only one student. If you missed the first day after his return (assuming he's going on vacation for marriage), then no need for a gift. Either ways, a verbal congratulations is a must here :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:25:10.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:14:31.597" Score="14" ViewCount="2927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a post doc in theoretical computer science and I have a double digit number of conference publications, about half of which are at so called &quot;tier 1&quot; conferences (SODA,STOC,...). Unfortunately I only have 1 journal publication so far, mainly due to coauthors dragging their feet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the lack of journal publications have a great impact when applying for a faculty job in cs-theory at some point, and is it advisable to try to up this number before applying? Or is this fully compensated by having sufficiently many conference papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4307" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T21:43:49.807" Title="Journal vs conference publications when looking for a job in in computer science" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5696" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:19:17.370" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;CS people know that CS conferences count for more than conferences do in other fields, and although they count a little less than journals in CS, this should not be a problem. Of course there are still rankings between the various forums. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that CS rank conferences higher than other disciplines only becomes a problem if you are compared against non-CS people, which often happens when competing for funding and promotions, in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T13:37:03.860" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T13:37:03.860" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5696" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:49:46.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this will be a problem for your first faculty position. In TCS people will appreciate it if you publish journal versions of your conference proceedings. However nobody will expect, that you will do this immediately. Also, imho, having SODA/STOC and FOCS publications is what counts. Other things (teaching experience, grants, making a journal publications out of your conference contributions) are important but secondary criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that many non-theory CS people are in the hiring committee. In other fields of CS journal publications count even less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T18:49:46.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5694" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:54:21.607" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You must do something. Building social relationships with your work collegagues is really important. If other students are organizing the collection and suggesting an amount, I would give that much. If they are organizing the collection, but not suggesting an amount, I would chip in two beers worth of cash. In some cultures two beers will be on the generous side, while in ther cultures it will be on the cheap side. It won't be out of place in any culture. If no one is organizing the collection and you want to take charge, then I would suggest asking people to chip in one beer worth of money (all students should be able to afford this). If no one is organizing a collection and you don't want to take charge, go out and buy a card and get the other students to sign it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T18:54:21.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5687" CreationDate="2012-12-12T20:08:09.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;h-index&lt;/em&gt; is not an important factor to consider potential supervisors rather recent projects and publications count more for me. Also, &lt;em&gt;h-index&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;might misguide you&lt;/strong&gt; (it has its limitations).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example, if a new professor published 10 articles each cited at least 200 times the h-index will be only 10 ! .. Also, old researchers have advantage over young ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I wonder whether there is a way to find out about the precise h-index of an arbitral author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not &lt;em&gt;aware&lt;/em&gt; of any engine/program gives a precise &lt;em&gt;h-index&lt;/em&gt;. There is no precise h-index out there and finding a mechanism to find it is an interesting work..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T20:08:09.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5704" CreationDate="2012-12-13T00:34:35.213" Score="6" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In writing my thesis in geosciences I have a number of figures with a fair amount of text content. Is there some limit I should adhere to -- say for example max 5 lines -- before I should just write 'refer to text'? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A related question is where citations should go, especially in the case of several needed for one figure (e.g. a plot of n sets of data from n different sources). Again, is there some point where I should say refer to text for citations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1030" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T10:49:21.210" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T10:49:21.210" Title="Are there guidelines for amount and content of text in figure captions for theses?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5686" CreationDate="2012-12-13T02:29:47.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teacher who has taught many non-native speakers subjects in English, I am quite confident when I say that the time will vary by the person. Some people are quite strong and write faster (and better) than some native speakers but others write very, very slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have anything meaningful, there must be some quantifiable tie back to English level (what does 'good knowledge of English' mean to you? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IELTS#Band_scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IELTS 8&lt;/a&gt;?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems you are interesting to know if you are performing well enough compared to some standard, but we would first need the standard (and it does look like you're trying to find the standard) and that standard must take into account more than just the information you've provided (how much experience do you have writing in general? how good is your English? what kind of writing are you doing?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T20:54:30.403" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T20:54:30.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5702" CreationDate="2012-12-13T03:15:18.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would imagine this may vary from field to field, but in the biological sciences the caption text in &lt;em&gt;journal&lt;/em&gt; publications is often verbose to the point of absurdity. That being said, I would simply use common sense; If the description takes more than a paragraph, you should definitely &quot;refer to text&quot;. Generally speaking, the caption is simply a textual guide as to how to read the plot, with (maybe) a sentence drawing the reader's attention to a particular feature of the plot. It should mostly &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; the plot, and only sparingly &lt;em&gt;discuss&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T03:15:18.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5687" CreationDate="2012-12-13T03:48:03.240" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;no such thing&lt;/em&gt; as &quot;the precise h-index&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The h-index is defined as the largest integer h such that at least h of the author's publications have at least h citations each.  But what's a publication?  Do first-author publications carry more weight?  Do ArXiv, technical report, conference, and journal versions of the &quot;same&quot; paper (all of which may have citations) count as four papers or one?  Or does it depend on the difference in content between versions?  (How do you measure that difference?)  Does the quality of the venue matter?  If so, which venues count as &quot;real&quot; publications?  Do survey articles count?  Popular science articles?  Blog posts?  StackExchange questions?*  Do self-citations count?  If so, does a citation to a paper by X and Y, in a paper by Y and Z, count toward X's h-index?  How much (and who) are you willing to pay to make sure you've &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; counted &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; citation to &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different sources of the h-index make different well-reasoned decisions about each of these issues, none of which make sense for ALL areas, even within computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think h-index is a better metric than the number of publications alone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty low standard.  You can do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*At least one of my StackExchange questions has more citations than at least one of my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T03:48:03.240" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5688" CreationDate="2012-12-13T04:13:58.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is no universal standard for what constitutes a &quot;credit hour&quot;, imposing a required number of credit hours is simply impossible.  If you have a degree, you have a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; courses you've taken definitely does matter.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying for graduate school in computer science at X, but your classes have small overlap with the undergraduate computer science program at X, that raises a red flag.  That gap makes your undergraduate program look weak, or at least that it develops a different set of skills than the grad program at X normally expects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you claim in your application that you're interested in (say) artificial intelligence, but you've never taken an artificial intelligence class, that raises a red flag.  How an you claim interest in a field you've never been seriously exposed to?  How can we judge your abilities in a field where we can't see a single grade?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all this is secondary to your &lt;strong&gt;potential for research excellence&lt;/strong&gt;, as described in specific and credible detail in your statement and in your recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm on the graduate admissions committee in a US CS department.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T04:13:58.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5687" CreationDate="2012-12-13T11:03:30.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe for the UK's upcoming 2014 REF exercise the bibliometrics are based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/home.url&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt; database (http://www.ref.ac.uk/background/bibliometrics/). This likely has to do with both Elsevier political power and the quality of the database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T11:03:30.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5756" CreationDate="2012-12-13T13:33:38.270" Score="26" ViewCount="1335" Body="&lt;p&gt;After having written a manuscript and formatted it to the publishers specifications, are there any additional things you do before submitting it (or right after submitting it) that make the review process easier. For example, for journals that I know the approximate time it takes to review, I make a note in my diary to check on the manuscript around that time. I also print out a hard copy and move the digital files into my lab notebook. Are there other things that I should be doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T18:34:04.170" Title="Things to do before submitting a manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-13T14:39:44.037" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pat yourself on the back, put the manuscript in a drawer, put it out of your mind, and move on to the next thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T14:39:44.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-13T15:03:07.347" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is of utmost importance that, immediately after the submission of the manuscript, you bake a cake and offer it to your co-workers. You might also want to invite close family and others who have indirectly suffered from your hard work. Invite all co-authors that are close enough to reasonably travel to your place and celebrate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yJKml.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cake!&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Picture from &lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pound_layer_cake.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia commons&lt;/a&gt;, user &lt;em&gt;Scheinwerfermann&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you don't need to do anything. That's the nice thing about submission: from there on, everything will happen automatically. Reviews, proofs, etc.: everything that comes back comes with a deadline, which means you will do it. Until submission, you can postpone things indefinitely. After submission, you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T12:55:06.120" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T12:55:06.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-13T15:39:15.743" Score="0" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d&quot;&gt;University rank/stature - How much does it affect one’s career post-Ph.D?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a Bacholars from a top university and did quite well, however, I was recommended to a professor in an unknown (read as not highly ranked) university for a PhD program. I had certainly not heard of the university before, and I don't believe that it has much of a reputation. It is not a new university by any means (established 1800s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a degree from such an University likely to add value to me? Also, how do I know whether this is a step in the right direction (before I take it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am considering it because the research that is performed by the professor there interests me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4314" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:42:33.943" Title="Value of a degree from an unknown univeristy" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-12-13T16:47:12.750" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5714" CreationDate="2012-12-13T15:42:33.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your publication record at the end is what will count most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:42:33.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5726" CreationDate="2012-12-13T16:11:41.037" Score="10" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no longer affiliated with a University. In the instance that I publish a paper (co-author or otherwise), &lt;strong&gt;is it appropriate for me to e-mail my old University and ask them for a staff e-mail?&lt;/strong&gt; This journal is highly ranked. I don't know how the University rankings work so maybe they will look favorably upon this if more publications under that University's name means a higher ranking expectation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to have a staff e-mail but they destroyed it when my contract terminated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T19:46:04.723" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T06:54:08.037" Title="Asking for official e-mail address from ex-employer University for publication?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5718" CreationDate="2012-12-13T16:46:36.620" Score="9" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that I've written 10 academic papers. Which CV is the best for academic appointments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 in low ranked (but nevertheless peer-reviewed) journals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 working papers that you disclose on your CV and publish on your website/University profile (assume that these could have been published in low-ranked journals but you chose not to).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 papers that you've written that you file draw away when you figure out they you're not going to be able to publish them in a top quality journal (assume that these could have been published in low-ranked journals but you chose not to).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third dot-point may be &lt;em&gt;unethical&lt;/em&gt;, I'm not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to play with the definition of &quot;mid-high ranked&quot; and &quot;low ranked&quot; in your response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to do a scenario analysis where you consider PhD -&gt; postdoc/assistant prof, postdoc/assistant prof -&gt; tenure as separate cases requiring different analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI this is for economics/finance/statistics, but also feel free to talk about your own areas where you've had the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started wondering about this when I came across some extremely high quality working papers that aren't published and that have hundreds of citations. This makes me suspect that the 1st option is not optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2021-02-27T09:04:55.267" Title="Optimal journal publications strategy (academic career)" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5717" CreationDate="2012-12-13T16:53:36.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;the 'working paper' notion in economics appears unique to that area, so I can't comment on that. The problem with your phrasing though is that it ignores quality issues. Assuming therefore, that the 10 papers are fixed, and the only question is which of the three options to use, then the answer is probably (1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who want to know about the work, either of (1) and (2) are fine, and (3) makes little sense (I also don't understand why that would be viewed as unethical). but even then, there's some low-quality non-zero positive information associated with publication in a journal the reader hasn't heard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who prefer to look at CVs to infer quality, then (1) is superior to (2) (again (3) doesn't make sense). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way in which (2) is superior to (1) is if you're hoping that you get the benefit of the doubt for unpublished work that has no &quot;quality signal&quot; like the name of the venue it appears in. This is unlikely to happen unless you're in an area where it's common to have unpublished manuscripts circulating and valued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T16:53:36.340" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-12-13T17:03:26.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you grading at all?  Do you expect students to learn anything from your grading efforts, or only from attempting the problem on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to give your students feedback on how they did in their homework, then you will have all the information you need to produce a more accurate numeric grade.  Giving detailed feedback can make the students feel that the quality of the work is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not going to pay much attention to the homework, and the three-level grading scheme reflects that you won't know enough to do more, how can you expect your students to care much more about the homework?  If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; care about the quality and accuracy of the homework, your students will.  If you don't, well, you might induce some to, but you'll be fighting a losing battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T17:03:26.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-13T17:06:59.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relax for a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, pretend you're a reviewer and ask yourself if there's a really obvious question to ask (control experiment, comparison with another method, etc.).  If so, maybe you want to get started on it before the reviews come back, so the turnaround is faster then.  But send it out first, then relax, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; get to work on the obvious experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T17:06:59.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5702" CreationDate="2012-12-13T17:11:05.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An expert in the field should be able to understand most of the content of the figure from the figure and caption alone.  The caption should be long enough to admit this, but no longer.  If your captions seem to need to be pages long, then you need to work on making your figure adhere better to standards in the field or to be intuitively clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you run out of time to make it comprehensible, keep the caption comfortably smaller than the figure itself; having a tiny figure with a huge block of text just looks wrong.  It takes a long time to make really clear figures, but you can at least get the superficial style right quickly enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T17:11:05.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1280" CreationDate="2012-12-13T17:15:01.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've seen from faculty candidates and faculty has been a graduation to &quot;Invited talks&quot; after a certain point on their CV.  Invited Talks cuts out talks that you did at conferences (because it's assumed if your paper got in then you went to present your work) and stuff you volunteered to do.  It does include when you've been asked to go somewhere to present (e.g., job talks about your research, when your advisor invited you back to talk about your new research/company, etc.)  So if you feel like that section is getting really long, that's one thing you could do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary depending on your discipline though, this is specifically in Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T17:15:01.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5762" CreationDate="2012-12-13T18:24:41.707" Score="23" ViewCount="8658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied math and economics at a poorly ranked university, and I will graduate in the near future. I have a position lined up at a prestigious, data-heavy research institution, where I'll work with numerous economists for a few years before applying to top PhD programs (Berkeley, Chicago, MIT, Harvard, etc.) I took two courses in analysis and did well, although per the quality of my institution, the courses were not challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also worked as a research assistant and conducted self-guided researched (not published outside my university), so I have several professors willing to write detailed recommendations for me. Apart from a few hiccups in non math/econ courses, my grades are perfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the fact that my undergraduate degree comes from an unranked institution affect my chances of attending a top PhD program? Will it affect my chances even though my experience after undergrad should speak in my favor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4317" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T05:33:34.767" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T15:57:01.483" Title="I attended a poorly ranked school for my undergraduate education. Will this affect my chances for a PhD in economics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:24:43.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one seminar in which I put in most effort and most continuous work (and, not surprisingly, learned most) had as incentive not a grading scheme, but the following set of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;all calculations were done during the seminar (tutor realized that we wouldn't/couldn't put in much effort at home - I found that true throughout my studies, but few seminars would take this into account).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The work was handed out at the beginning and had to be handed to the tutor at the end of each seminar. He corrected it till the next seminar.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most important rule was: if all groups over the whole semester have at least X% (IIRC 80 %) correct, no written exam was necessary. &lt;em&gt;This was the incentive that kept us continuously working hard.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think the required level needs some experience - our tutor probably had some decades of experience with this seminar when I took the course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We formed groups of 3 people at the beginning of the semester which did not change for the whole semester. The 80%-overall-rule makes these groups quite similar in expected performance: there are very good reasons why someone good should be in each group. And why the bad students not cluster together, so that the 80% cannot be reached...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each task, one of the group had to declare himself responsible. There was some rule, that everyone had to be responsible for roughly the same number of questions. And anyways, there were too many tasks for even the best students to solve within the available time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually it took the form that everyone started at &quot;his&quot; task, got the layout of the question and the rough scheme for solving. Then this was discussed in the group. Next step was actually doing the calculations, then explaining to the others. Then showing the result to the tutor, who'd accept the solution or point out mistakes. Then either get the next task, or help some group mate who was stuck (not to waste those precious 20% of &quot;allowed&quot; mistakes...).  In between he went around and had a look that we were progressing with the calculations (I since realized that not needing a written exam is also a strong incentive for a tutor ;-) )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was just a pass/fail seminar, but I think the tutor could have given marks for everyone at the end at least as easily as any school teacher can. I think you'll get a very good idea of the level of understanding if you just listen to a few explanations. And it is far easier to make everyone explain things to just a group of a few fellow students than make them come to the blackboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T20:24:43.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5716" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:42:14.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say whether asking is appropriate depends on whether the paper is still related to what you did at that university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the university gives you such an email address is quite a different question. My experience is: probably not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, when I moved to my new institute I asked whether I could have a &lt;code&gt;.forward&lt;/code&gt; to my new institute for some time. This was not possible, not even with the prof's statement that he would like this, too (the address got prolonged another 6 months, then it was deleted).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The reason for asking was that I wrote a software at my old university and published it with that email address. So it would have been quite in the interest of the old university to stay associated with the software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd think re-activation of an already deleted account is even less probable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T20:42:14.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5730" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:51:53.920" Score="24" ViewCount="2125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year, I applied to a university which is in Europe so a research statement is a crucial part of the application. I was interviewed by two faculty members and then finally got a rejection letter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my research statement, I had a particular idea and described a roadmap for it, though I did not get into technical details. But the idea was there and clearly stated. Recently, I came across a publication where the title is the same as my idea (wording is a little bit different) and is co-authored by one of the members of the interview panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publication has technical details which were not part of my research statement.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I believe there is no clear proof here whether my ideas got used or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this suspicious?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this valid and acceptable? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-01-29T06:38:37.283" LastActivityDate="2020-01-29T06:38:37.283" Title="Research statement ideas got used by interviewing committee" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5727" CreationDate="2012-12-13T22:14:11.360" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the department chair, with a well-documented chain of events, and ask him to verify using the admission materials you ahd submitted to the department prior to the interview. Even if the plagiarist got away this time, he would know that he/she could not pull it off again, as people around him/her had gotten to know of this - and no one would want to work with someone who can potentially steal your ideas, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T22:14:11.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5732" CreationDate="2012-12-13T23:55:56.770" Score="8" ViewCount="2902" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope to enter a PhD program in economics in the next few years, ideally at a top US school (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.) Are there usually opportunities to study abroad during such a program? For example, if I attended Berkeley intending to focus on macroeconomics, would it be possible to study abroad with some of the macro theorists at Cambridge or U of Edinburgh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would not be an opportunity to &quot;experience the local culture,&quot; which many undergraduate study abroad experiences focus on, but more a chance to gain multiple perspectives from academics in different countries. In my opinion the rigors of a top PhD program rule out the former. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4317" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T23:03:02.853" Title="Is it possible to study abroad as a PhD student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5727" CreationDate="2012-12-14T00:25:23.643" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is of course the possibility that the person you've accused actually had the same idea independently.   It's certainly suspicious, the moreso if when you were interviewed that person did not say &quot;I like your idea and have actually been working on something similar&quot;.  I agree with the suggestion that you contact the chair and raise the issue, but &lt;em&gt;be polite and nonconfrontational&lt;/em&gt; about it.  If you say &quot;I think this guy stole my idea&quot; it could be less effective than &quot;I came across something similar to what I had proposed ... since Prof X didn't indicate he was working on this, I found it interesting that he published something so similar to what I proposed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing to keep in mind is that it is a very gray area... this person might have come across your idea, forgotten about it, and later decided to pursue this idea without actually being consciously aware the idea came from your proposal.  And, you say much of the work goes beyond what you actually proposed.  So I think the chair should be informed, but I wouldn't expect much to come of it unless he's known as a repeat offender.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T00:25:23.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-12-14T00:32:44.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the mathematics milieu, there'd be little motivation to do this, and several motivations to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do it. E.g., if one is in a top-ranked program, contact and connections with the faculty &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt;, e.g., one's thesis advisor, are critical, not only to eventually generate letters of recommendation but, presumably, to be exposed to their ideas, their ways of thinking, and many intangibles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scenario in which I could imagine &quot;travel abroad&quot; would be professionally useful would be in which one found oneself in a &quot;second tier&quot; program, but somehow had the opportunity to &quot;visit&quot; a &quot;first tier&quot; program for a substantial bit of time. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; the point would be to pay attention to the ideas and viewpoints of the faculty there... obviously... and eventually elicit letters, maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, merely dislocating oneself from one's base is pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: quite apparently (in light of JeffE's comments and whoever's downvotes and such) there are varying viewpoints on the benefits-or-not of &quot;study abroad&quot;. Presumably this is related to one's mental model for what happens in grad school, especially the role of the advisor, but also the &quot;maturity/responsibility&quot; of grad students. Also, while &quot;travel is broadening&quot;, depending on one's model &quot;broadening&quot; may not be the goal of grad school. Sure, the extent to which &quot;travel&quot; makes provincial prejudices harder to maintain, one might hope that being at one of the best places avoids that already. If one's model views advisor/student as master/apprentice, disconnection seems undesirable. If the model views the advisor as merely an older colleague who's been successful, then very different actions seem reasonable. The latter sort of model-feature is arguably a corollary of the &quot;grad student as independent thinker&quot; principle. (My preferred tweaking of this is to &quot;critical thinker&quot;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, the bottom line is that some of the most interesting projects/issues have enormous and informative backstories very badly documented in the formal literature, so that even a very good grad student has tremendous difficulty assimilating things. Optimistically/ideally, one can get different perspectives on these issues by talking to different &quot;top experts&quot;, hence motivating &quot;travel&quot;. However, a key bottleneck is that it may take a few years of full-time attention to catch on to a mature expert viewpoint. If there were a unique, objective such, then one could get variations on it from various experts. However, it is not at all clear to me that there is such a unique, objective unifying &quot;story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the &lt;em&gt;variations&lt;/em&gt; on what might have been &quot;the standard story&quot; appear to often be fairly critical, and the variations and nuances thereof take a long time to get a grip on. Thus my raising the &quot;apprenticeship&quot; model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As hinted at, if grad school does take &quot;several years&quot;, maybe there is more room to fit in residence elsewhere, but some of the elite programs like people to finish in three or at-most-four years, and then it's harder to see how this would work out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T19:35:04.563" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T19:35:04.563" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-12-14T02:13:15.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think what you're describing is all that common, and I've never heard of any sort of systematic program, but it does happen.  I ended up spending two months abroad during grad school to participate in a once off trimester program in my area of specialty.  There weren't any standard arrangements in place, though: my home university (very generously) moved things around so I could do it.  I think I've heard of other cases, all similarly involving unique circumstances like faculty moving around or particular personal connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T02:13:15.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-14T11:14:00.017" Score="18" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;so I've found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130513220209/http://www.carlboettiger.info/2010/11/07/welcome-to-my-lab-notebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;few open lab notebooks such as this&lt;/a&gt; online. I think the philosophy is great, basically an extreme form of open-access. I work in theoretical neuroscience as a fresh post-doc. I'm also continuing to work for my PhD supervisor, but I plan to look for a position elsewhere ASAP to 'fly the nest' so to speak. I don't have any of my own publications yet, just the publications that came from my PhD. As a general career move I would either like to start publishing myself or with new collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about the advantages vs disadvantages of starting an open lab notebook. A few pros would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased scientific visibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possible feedback, discovering new research directions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The the big danger are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting 'scooped'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting sidetracked from current post-doc &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has any advice for a person in my position, I would like to hear your viewpoint. Specifically, it should relate to an early career researcher looking to make a name for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3923" LastEditorUserId="22768" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T10:04:53.533" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T10:04:53.533" Title="Open Lab Notebook in early postdoc career, advantages vs disadvantages" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-14T11:35:05.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Upload your manuscript to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: you should check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Romeo website&lt;/a&gt; to make sure that the journal you're submitting to won't object to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T18:34:04.170" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T18:34:04.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-14T12:07:30.703" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Send it for approval to all co-authors&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this sounds obvious, but there are so many examples of people breaking this rule in either small (“they read the penultimate version two days ago”) or very big way (there are many examples of people actually learning when the paper is published that they are a co-author), that I think it is good to state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T12:07:30.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-14T12:54:19.557" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting together also some advice from the previous answers, here is my suggested checklist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run a spellchecker :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a cover letter. If the manuscript has a previous history (e.g., it is a modification of a rejected papers; overlaps partially with a conference proceeding), you should state it. Some may want to suggest possible referees in the cover letter; I find it ethically dubious, so I never do it. In case, you may want to suggest referees to &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt;. (maybe we should have a separate question on this point). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submit a preprint, either at your institute or on arXiv, or at least think about it. Check the terms of the journal you are submitting to (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeoinfo.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is a great resource) to make sure you can; often the submission is the best moment to do it, since the journal can have no reasonable copyright claim on what happened before it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you don't submit a preprint, make a backup copy of the .tex and .pdf files. If you use source control, tag the latest version as &quot;submitted&quot;. This way it will be easier to recover that exact version when the referee report mentions &quot;line 4 on page 2&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send a copy to your co-authors, for backup and self-archiving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relax and celebrate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You speak about applying the journal style in the manuscript; I suggest &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do it at this point. Referees won't care; it is really needed only after the manuscript is accepted, or if an over-zealous editor asks you to do it. You might spend lots of time without reason, resizing figures and line-breaking formulas that will be dropped after the referee comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T12:54:19.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5759" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:11:16.820" Score="5" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;How are bad first year marks (i.e., ranked around average among my peers) but outstanding 2nd-4th year marks (i.e., top 2%) perceived by PhD admissions committees in the U.S.? What emphasis is placed onto first year marks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T02:57:59.693" Title="Bad first year marks?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5763" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:20:27.970" Score="12" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across a paper today: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plink It: Paper-Based Links for Cross-Media Information Space Jurgen&#xA;  Steimle, Nadir Weibel, Simon Olberding, Max Muhlhauser, and James D.&#xA;  Hollan. Adjunct Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface&#xA;  Software and Technology, 1969-1974, 2011. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hci.ucsd.edu/hollan/Pubs/p1969-steimle.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious: what does &lt;strong&gt;Adjunct Proceedings&lt;/strong&gt; mean? The paper's style and format looks quite different from Computer Science papers that I used to read. Could anyone explain this to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T14:29:04.033" Title="What's Adjunct Proceedings?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:22:01.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no absolute universal standard as to how this will be perceived, but it's definitely better to be in the situation you describe than the reverse (good in general courses, mediocre in the major)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the issues is where the first-year grades are bad. If you have some poor grades in &quot;general education&quot; classes unrelated to your major (for example, an engineer who gets a &quot;C&quot; in American history and English literature), that hopefully won't matter too much if the admissions committee is actually looking at the transcript, rather than just the overall GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it comes down to how rigid the admissions committee is about reviewing things, as you can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;in this thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T13:22:01.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="224" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:25:27.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering (1):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying at the same place is very uncommon in the US, where there is a presumption against it. It does not mean that it is impossible or never happens, but it counts against you in admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly true when referring to doing undergraduate and PhD studies at the same place. Normally it's fine to do your Masters and undergraduate at the same place, or to move between undergraduate and Masters and then stay at the same place for PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is very different in Europe. In fact, professors may attempt to recruit their best undergraduates to work for them as graduate students and this is seen as a positive thing for all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an increasing stigma against hiring faculty that has no experience outside of a given university (derisively called &lt;em&gt;in-breeding&lt;/em&gt;), but I do not think that it applies to undergraduate-&gt;graduate transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have answered (2) in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T13:25:27.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5753" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:25:50.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about the cons and excited about the pros, why not take a &quot;middle-of-the-road&quot; approach? At first, you may want to avoid publishing everything—at least until you get a manuscript or two accepted. At that point, it will become a lot easier to go ahead with a more &quot;open&quot; approach, because you'll already have some material &quot;in the can,&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also take a &quot;staggered&quot; approach, so that you wait a while before putting a given unit of work online. In this way, I think you're honoring the commitments of open research, while still maintaining some control over the release schedule in a way that will make it more difficult to get &quot;scooped.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T13:25:50.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5724" CreationDate="2012-12-14T13:31:37.777" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the commenters have pointed out, a lot will depend on your ability to get good letters of recommendation. However, there is an important issue to note: a good letter of recommendation does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean the same thing as &quot;a letter from someone famous.&quot; You can get a letter of recommendation from a big name that is completely useless, if it doesn't provide any real information of value about the candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, what you want are people who can testify that you are a good student, and show evidence that you can become a good researcher. Since you have excellent records, and are working with a research group before applying to graduate school, I think you have the right groundwork for getting good letters. To make sure that you do so, you'll want to meet with the people who will be writing the letters, make sure that they are willing and enthusiastic about writing the letters (hint: if they are at all hesitant, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; get a letter from them!), and then provide them with the necessary material they'll need (CV's, samples of writing and research work, citations and awards, etc.) to write the letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the only way attending an unranked school will affect your chances of getting in as a graduate student is if the admissions committee at the school you're applying to shows such a bias. If you're concerned about such a possibility, and have the resources (time, money, motivation) to do so, setting up a meeting with the person in charge of graduate admissions at the department you're interested in probably can't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T13:31:37.777" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5758" CreationDate="2012-12-14T14:29:04.033" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large conferences have &quot;main tracks&quot; where the normal papers are received, peer-reviewed and published/discussed in the traditional format. In these conferences there is more and more often the tendency to provide researchers to write &quot;cutting edge&quot; research, that should not undergo the formal peer-review process, or simply the acceptance rate has a clearly lower bar than the normal tracks of the conference. This second type of papers will be published in the &quot;adjunct proceedings&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One would then have two sets of proceedings, one where the normal papers are, and the other one where more experimental papers are. This separation has got a reason: the program committee of a conference wants to keep the two types of papers separated, since the papers in the normal proceedings will be cited more often than the ones in the adjunct proceedings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T14:29:04.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-12-15T00:01:13.580" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is also anecdotal but I was 32 when I applied to graduate school and started when I was 33.  My observations have been the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the professors that I've interacted with (some of whom are inevitably going to be part of the admissions process) are very positive about accepting older students, especially if they have work experience.  From what I've been able to tell, the reasoning is that having worked and been out in the real world, you probably have a better idea of what you want to do and where you're going.  In addition, you are more likely to be dependable about getting the work done, will bring more experience to the table, and have more realistic expectations and strategies for coping with things.  This can be really good for getting an RAship and it sounds like your research experience will make it even more applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, being a student again means that in many cases people will make assumptions about what you do and don't know and how you will act.  I've had a number of people treat me like I've never worked before, making comments about, &quot;You'll find out once you've actually worked...&quot; and things like that.  This can make a difference in how you're treated, it's disconcerting to be treated like a student again after being more of an equal with all of the people you're working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T00:01:13.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2012-12-15T02:15:06.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try the samsung galaxy note 10.1. With a wacom s pen it seems to be the right choice for people who do write a lot of equations/ want to annotate lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4324" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T02:15:06.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-12-15T02:45:14.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many answers already but I'll add one more for future generations looking for an answer to a very important question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a lot of people who either dropped out of university or never went so they could focus on working writing software. In general, they've done pretty well. Some have difficulties recently because they were bad at managing their money but they made A LOT because they were following their dream and worked 80 hours per week on their dream. This accumulated effort built into a very solid skill-set which was in very high demand from employers. Some started software companies, some just consulted. All ended up making a lot of money (not all of them kept it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think programming for the business world is a bit different from other academic pursuits. In my experience (having consulted to the very large, the very small, and everything in between), businesses really care about one thing: How can you make me money. Academics care about much more. So, if you want to write software for the business world and you don't see the benefit in university, then forget it. You can always go back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, an education is always a good idea. Of course, you don't have to get your education formally, it can be on your own, but a formal education is cared about by some...but in business, people generally care more about your ability to make them money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be conservative/safe, then you should stick it out in school. However, since you're young, roll the dice and prepare to pick up the pieces in case it doesn't work out. Don't give up on your dreams. Dreams drive us to put in more effort and to learn more and that is where the fun is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T02:45:14.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5771" CreationDate="2012-12-15T02:49:54.607" Score="19" ViewCount="6880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for post-doctoral and asst. professorship positions. One of my letter writer is most likely to submit the letter a week late. Some of the positions I am applying to clearly state that &quot;applications submitted after the deadline cannot be considered&quot;. Couple of people (my fellow grad students/post docs) whom I talked to, seemed to indicate that the reference letters can reach late. However, I would appreciate if someone (preferably one who has been part of the search committee and/or has reviewed applications for such positions before) can throw some light on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1162" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T09:10:02.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T09:10:02.013" Title="Is it generally acceptable if reference letters for postdoc or faculty jobs are submitted after the application deadline?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5683" CreationDate="2012-12-15T03:04:24.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your answer seems to confuse &lt;em&gt;teaching&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;being a professor&lt;/em&gt;. One can teach without being a professor. Furthermore, and although this may be controversial, I think the quintessential characteristic of a professor is a scholar who can carry on substantial independent research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither teaching skill nor experience in industry counterbalance the lack of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T03:04:24.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T06:59:00.460" Score="4" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our university has a an annual event showcasing graduate student research projects and has a competition for best presentation.  However, faculty involvement (as judges for the event) was very sparse and we had a difficult time getting enough faculty to volunteer as judges.  I know that faculty time is very precious and this event did demand a lot of time and provided little incentive other than free food.  How else can I encourage more faculty involvement in this event?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T07:59:13.803" Title="How to encourage faculty involvement as judges in a local research exposé?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5769" CreationDate="2012-12-15T07:59:13.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have the same kind of event, and we get reasonable faculty involvement. A few things that help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faculty are likely to show up and get involved if their students participate. Make sure students of many different faculty participate and remind the professors of this fact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remind, remind, remind. Send regular (but not daily) reminders to the faculty. Keep the emails short, and let them know what's expected of them - show up at this place, at this time, and encourage students. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get different people involved in different aspects: some might review the presentations, some might help with pre-screening, and so on. The more people are involved, the more they feel part-ownership, and the more likely they are to participate in other ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do this regularly. It's often hard to do this the first time, but once it's a regular occurrence, people get used to the rhythm of it and how it fits into the calendar. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T07:59:13.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-12-15T08:03:01.417" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the search committee is swamped and is looking for reasons to reject a candidate, a late letter will not tank the application. But here's what can happen: letter requests are sent out for candidate A and B. B's letters are delayed. In the meantime, A's letters come back and they are quite good. The committee starts going ahead with interviews for A. Then, for other reasons, the committee feels that A might suffice to cover the area that A and B both overlap in, and they might move on to other candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would only happen if the letter is REALLY late (multiple weeks). And if candidate B has any level of interest, there's always someone who'll chase down the letter writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall I'd say not to worry greatly, but make sure the letter isn't more than a week or so late. Also it wouldn't hurt to check with the committee on the &quot;hardness&quot; of the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T08:03:01.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2012-12-15T09:00:31.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to all the other excellent suggestions I would like to add something. When you submitted your paper you could invest some time in ordering your files/notes/scripts. Make sure they have a logical structure, enabling you to easily start working on the paper again when the reviews come back. Especially scripts that you use to process data and generate figures can be hard to understand if they are messy, e.g how did I generate figure 3. Ofcourse, it is much better to organize your files/notes/scripts during writing the paper. But if you have not been disciplined (busy, busy), this is a very good time to correct that mistake as everything is still fresh in your memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T09:00:31.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-12-15T09:25:08.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pure and simple answer to your question is answered by asking a question to the committee: when will you start reviewing the applications? Usually it's not the day after the deadline, likely a few days later, and maybe a week later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same happens for PhD applications, some departments don't start until two weeks after the deadline. If all your material is in then I am sure they will look at your application regardless of one missing letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just call the department and ask when they start reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T09:25:08.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5683" CreationDate="2012-12-15T11:09:05.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear where you're writing from, and where you'd like to become a professor. But it's almost certainly true that, given your chosen field (mechatronics), you will need to be working at a four-year university with an engineering program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US and Western Europe, this means that you will almost certainly be required to have a PhD &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you begin your position as a professor; this isn't really negotiable. You would not be permitted to complete the PhD while being a full-time professor. In other parts of the world, this is not a strict requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if what you want is to teach, the rules are substantially different. In such cases, having a PhD is not required, and you can instead work part time as a lecturer or adjunct professor (or other equivalent title, depending on location). You would be expected to teach a certain number of courses per semester, but otherwise you would not be responsible for teaching students, nor would you have many of the other commitments required of full-time faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T11:09:05.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-12-15T14:43:46.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different universities take different approaches to letters of recommendation. Some departments request letters of recommendation for every candidate; others only request letters when they're highly interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, the difference here is that the letters of recommendation are not normally considered as part of the application itself. Thus, a little leeway is certainly possible, particularly when you'll have &quot;N – 1&quot; letters of recommendation in on time. But again, as others have mentioned, the best advice is: when in doubt, &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T14:43:46.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-12-15T18:13:46.117" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The policies for late letters may vary, depending on the sort of position.  My impression is that for most universities (certainly the ones I have been at), slightly late letters are fine as long as they arrive before they are needed.  I.e., your application may suffer if people read it before the letter arrives, but they are unlikely to read it on the day of the deadline.  This is in agreement with the other answers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be certain cases where a single late letter will lead to absolute rejection.  For example, government funding agencies sometimes have very strict rules about deadlines, in order to guarantee a sort of formal fairness.  They may say that nothing will be accepted after the deadline and no incomplete applications will be considered.  (I don't know how common this is, but the NSF graduate research fellowships work this way.)  If you are applying for a postdoctoral fellowship from a funding agency, then I strongly recommend asking what their policy for late letters is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T18:13:46.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-12-15T21:59:17.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Upvoting and reiterating @Suresh's comment: a letter just a little late does not seriously &lt;em&gt;disqualify&lt;/em&gt; you (except, as Anon Math'n notes, perhaps for government agencies, NSF grants...), but may allow other people into the pipeline before you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strategy on job offers is typically to make more offers than a dept expects to have accepted, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to have quite a few of the first offers rejected, because often the most-attractive [sic] candidates have several offers and cannot take them all. Thus, if the delay in your letters is a week or two, it will probably have no impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the potential for trouble grows sharply as the delay increases, insofar as scheduling for interviews is made as early as possible... and unexpectedly high acceptance rate may use of all the offers unexpectedly early. (Not bad from a dept's viewpoint, but bad from not-yet-interviewed applicants' viewpoints, since, in effect, they didn't have the same chance... but through the early error of incompleteness in their file.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T21:59:17.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-12-15T22:32:38.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exactly I had the same feeling like you except in a 3rd world country. The school was bad, professors were not teaching properly and I also had a good income by doing freelance jobs. But when time passes and when you reach upper division courses you will want to stick to school. At least this was how it happened to me and now I want to continue with grad school to further get involved with the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4328" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T22:32:38.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5753" CreationDate="2012-12-16T00:09:25.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like that you put 'scientific visibility' on top of the list. That is one side of open notebook science (ONS) that is often overlooked. Also, one thing I would like to add to the pros part of the list is how ONS really facilitates collaboration between researchers. If you are going to keep several projects going and collaborate with different groups, then I think you'll find ONS really helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4334" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T00:09:25.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-12-16T02:57:59.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you are able to justify what went wrong during the first year in the personal statement,for example, you had a major illness that caused you to miss many classes and thus resulted in average performance, I think adcom will not take it too seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T02:57:59.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5814" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:01:18.577" Score="263" ViewCount="28865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished all of my coursework for my PhD program, and am entering the research phase of my degree with a topic already in mind.  I've already started the research, but I'm already finding that I end up procrastinating a lot of my time away.  When I was taking courses, I felt like i didn't have time to procrastinate because of the pace of the classes and I felt like I had to always keep up with the pace.  But now that I have no specific constraints, I feel like its harder to pace myself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I know it's a bad habit to procrastinate and I should probably devote most of my waking hours to my research.  Sometimes, (especially when I get stuck) I find it's so easy to get distracted on the computer (websites, youtube, text messages, etc.).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some effective strategies to avoid procrastination during this research phase?  How do you stay on task, especially when you get stuck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T09:01:32.227" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T19:16:28.133" Title="How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:56:15.633" Score="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found (and continue to find) two kinds of strategies that have some success in preventing me from procrastinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Silly, but scarily effective:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As silly as this might sound, implement a blocker like &lt;a href=&quot;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/leechblock/&quot;&gt;Leechblock&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nanny-for-google-chrome-t/cljcgchbnolheggdgaeclffeagnnmhno?hl=en&quot;&gt;Chrome Nanny&lt;/a&gt; and block sites that you waste time on. I used to scoff at such things, but once I installed them, I found myself being forced to spend more time working. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Along the same lines, disable email alerts. Once I did this, I found that I could spend many hours working without getting distracted by random emails. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less silly, and also less effective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the procrastination when starting research in grad school comes from the lack of clear structure (as you indicate). So the trick is to &lt;strong&gt;create structure&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, if you're working on one problem, and you've spent a little time generating a few ideas, write them down, and methodically start working through each of them one by one, going as deep as you need to go in order to test out an idea. When you're doing so, try to forget about the larger problem, the context, your Ph.D, your future career, and all other &quot;big picture&quot; matters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely than not, the idea won't pan out (most don't!). In that case, move on to the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with early-stage research is that it doesn't look like you're making any progress, so it's easy to slow down and waste time. But if you can measure progress not in terms of &quot;papers published&quot;, but in terms of &quot;ideas tried&quot;, you'll get some sense of the amount of effort you've put in, and that can help motivate you to try more ideas, and so on. All these failed ideas are teaching you valuable things about your project, and they will eventually be useful because of what you've learnt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T04:56:15.633" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T06:30:51.280" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;A strategy to try is to create/set a &quot;work&quot; environment in a specific location.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove as many distractions as possible from this location (e.g., if you can get away with no internet connection, do that, don't put any decorations or distracting electronics in the area unless they're specifically work related, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to put anything in that location, make it motivational to work.  One of my officemates put a background on his work desktop that said, &quot;Don't be stupid.  Do your work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a &quot;work schedule&quot; now that you don't have classes.  Set a time when you're due at &quot;work&quot; and a time you get to go home.  During your work hours, you go to your work environment/office/lab and you stay there until your work hours are over.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this separate location will put you in the mindset of working while you're at that location.  Setting a schedule for going to that location will force you to sit somewhere where it's hard to distract yourself and where you'll start to form a habit of being productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T06:30:51.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T13:05:17.003" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO to keep the pace, the most important thing is &lt;em&gt;not to work alone&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First,  when I talk about my project on daily basis (which, sadly, it's not the case now), it naturally makes me working (as I don't want to make others wait, and it would be kind of awkward to say &quot;I did nothing, because I was reading blogs&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, often getting stuck happens for a reason - and just 'working harder' does not help. Then it's important to have some other &quot;seed&quot;, or a broader perspective, or just to learn that &quot;it is not me who is stupid - this problem is hard for everyone&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in case you cannot yourself from procrastinating (sometimes I know that it is not a day when I am good at thinking), try do some &quot;white procrastination&quot; - i.e. procrastinate from your duties, but in a way, which is constructive (e.g. learning a new programming language, reading papers in a different discipline, mastering your skills in something else, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In a longer run, it turned out that some of &quot;white procrastinations&quot; were more valuable than my &quot;standard stuff&quot;. Remember, that not always you know in advance what will be fruitful in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T14:36:43.503" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T14:36:43.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T13:37:30.013" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the same situation as you are and tried several things to improve my situation in my PhD. I am sharing few ideas that work for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time Slots:&lt;/strong&gt; I use the concept of time slot or chunk of time (say 1 hour each) for a task where I will only focus or do that task or work. Single-entry-single-exit, no distractions allowed. I know, it's not easy not to get distracted, but I convince myself by reminding that I have other slots for other activities. Large slot of focused work helps me more than small chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most valuable task first:&lt;/strong&gt; Doing the most valuable and productive task early in the day makes a lot of difference and it feels great. I observed that as the day progress, I also do better at other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leverage on self:&lt;/strong&gt; I have found few ways to make me act. Some of my favorite ways are: letting the person I hate most (and who would be most happy in my failures) know about my state;  being an example of such habits to my most loved ones (say kids)  etc &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change physiology and tone :&lt;/strong&gt; I found the way I sit (posture) and the tone of voice with which I speak to myself has lot to do with procrastination. Changing the posture or position, and tone of my internal voice makes a difference. I just emulate a posture and tone when I had been most productive in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Divide and conquer :&lt;/strong&gt; I divide large task to manageable small tasks (of 1 hr or less). When I brainstorm, I list them  in reverse  order (with the goal/final result in mind). To get results, only taking actions will matter. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4340" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T19:38:07.333" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T19:38:07.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T13:42:51.463" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other excellent answers, spending most of your waking hours on anything is not good in my opinion. The amount of hours you can really concentrate on research is probably around 8 (maybe even less). I think working 12 hours or more per day (6 days a week) on your research is not really effective. Working  these kinds of hours is going to lead to procrastination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more effective (and less procrastinating) you could focus less time on research, but try and impose more structure and be more effective in those hours. This will make you feel more effective, and preserve a better balance between research and your private life. Especially with hard problems, you'll find that you don't need to spend more time researching, but some time runnng/reading/etc to clear your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T13:42:51.463" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-16T19:22:49.757" Score="29" ViewCount="9400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never tried to avoid becoming a sub-reviewer, and still, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5662/3926&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; made me wonder. How much time should I, as a PhD student, spend on a review of a paper that my advisor gave me to do? Does the answer depend on whether I'm getting credit for the review or not, that is whether I'm a sub-reviewer or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T03:21:15.127" Title="How much time should I spend on reviewing a paper?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2012-12-16T19:26:58.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 2cts, do note that I have a number of degrees, so I might be biased towards getting degrees :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a degree shows that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have acquired some technical skills (algorithms, software design, data structures), and skills how to learn new things. Ofcourse, you can get these outside an official school, but a degree shows that after a few years a (relatively) objective source (the school) says that you have these skills. Unless you have developed some groundbreaking piece of software that everyone knows, it is hard to convince a potential employer that you really can do what you say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can finish something you started. Getting a degree takes three years of work and perseverance, more if you go for an MSc or PhD. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T19:26:58.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2012-12-16T19:32:42.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no clearcut answer to how long a review takes. I would say that the amount of time spent on it is the time you need to understand the paper and provide good advice on wether or not it is a paper that can be accepted, with some changes or as is. In general, this should take you around a full working day. How long this exactly becomes depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The level and clarity of the paper (very bad paper takes less time, mediocre paper takes more time, very good paper takes less time). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your familiarity with the subject (less familiar more time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The requirements of the journal/conference you are reviewing for, is it a full review, or just a go/no go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T19:32:42.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T16:52:45.867" Score="14" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I read an article that I found through Google. I analyzed it and find that article is correct, and then I prepared a paper of my own built on the basis of that article.&#xA;But when I tried to complete the references section, I realized that the source article had not been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I do not know what to do. On the one hand, the article is correct, but on the other hand, it has not been formally published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to send my article based on another paper that has not been published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="hardy" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T20:10:37.327" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T21:07:14.643" Title="How to build research paper based on a unpublished paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5796" CreationDate="2012-12-16T19:53:09.870" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the paper in question &lt;em&gt;has been published&lt;/em&gt;, otherwise you sure couldn't read it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit that may sound stupid and unhelpful, but I think there is more to it that you recognize. The paper you built upon has been published, but not through conventional means. It doesn't mean you can't use it, but a few specific “rules of thumb” have to be observed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Refer to the paper by its URL and, if identifiable, the owner/editor/publisher of the website. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Link between &lt;em&gt;al dente&lt;/em&gt; cooking time and a change of slope in the pasta fractal length”, A. N. Onym, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bigpasta.com/paper42.pdf&quot;&gt;http://bigpasta.com/paper42.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (publisher: Pasta Inc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because this content may have a shorter lifetime than academic publications, you should quote directly all necessary claims made into this work in your paper, rather than merely using the reference on a vague claim. Your paper should be standalone, and fully understandable even if the other one disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may also contact the original paper author, if possible, to ask how they would like to be cited. Perhaps they have another related work which you missed, that was published in a more conventional way?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T19:53:09.870" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5801" CreationDate="2012-12-16T20:43:33.640" Score="11" ViewCount="1398" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, after submitting a manuscript for publication, I received the following response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your manuscript, referenced below, has been considered for publication in XXX: &quot;Article Title&quot; &#xA;  Unfortunately, this manuscript on a fundamental topic does not fall under the range of topics that are covered by XXX, which focuses on the applied physical sciences. We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the meaning of the sentence &quot;We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue&quot;. To me, it sounds like a terse &quot;good luck with &lt;em&gt;that!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; sign-off. However, that's an odd sentence, as they usually just write &quot;no&quot; in those cases. Does this imply anything particular about my submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4346" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T00:28:16.023" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T07:50:01.747" Title="What does this mean, &quot;We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2012-12-16T20:55:22.310" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should do slightly more reviewing work for the community than the community does for you.  So, as a rough estimate, assuming every paper you write and submit needs three reviews and your average paper has three authors, you should review slightly more papers than you submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way to predict in the abstract how long a paper takes to review; that varies from field to field, subfield to subfield, and even paper to paper.  Answering a similar question in &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/1902/111&quot;&gt;Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, I wrote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Expect to spend about an hour per page, mostly on internalizing the paper's results and techniques. Be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't actually take that long. (If it takes significantly less time than that, either the paper is either exceedingly elegant and well-written, you know the area extremely well, or the paper is technically shallow. Don't confuse these three possibilities.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the answer does not depend on whether you get credit for the review.  If you're not going to write a thorough, professional review, just say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T20:55:22.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5798" CreationDate="2012-12-16T21:00:24.823" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The journal is telling you that the paper you wrote does not fit the type of topics that they aim for. The recommendation at the end is to resubmit your paper to a journal which does fit the topic of your article. Looking at the comments, they are more an applied journal, while the paper you wrote deals with more fundamental issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T21:00:24.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5798" CreationDate="2012-12-16T21:00:40.110" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you've said by itself, it's ambiguous. That is, if your paper really is on a topic not usually covered by that journal, then their remark is completely bland, just meaning what it says. If, at the other extreme, you are pretty sure that your paper's topic is exactly what is covered in the journal, then, yes, their &quot;recommendation&quot; is just a polite form of rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a beginner at this, it is possible that your understanding of what your own paper is about may have some quirks or limitations, or you've presented it in a way that dis-served you, or you've presented it in a way that confused or mis-directed the editors/referee, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, giving inappropriate/inaccurate keywords can get a paper sent to an inappropriate referee, who may think the paper is misguided, while if you'd given different keywords, a different referee might think it was mainstream and wonderful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, unfortunate choices in title, abstract, and introduction can set things off down the wrong path. Getting an opinion from an experienced person about the actual appropriateness of your paper for that venue is necessary before it's possible to understand the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T21:00:40.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5796" CreationDate="2012-12-16T21:07:14.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unclear from your description whether you've just written your own version of the earlier paper, with no new results of your own, or whether you've significantly extended the results in the earlier paper.  In the first case, you &lt;strong&gt;cannot&lt;/strong&gt; publish your paper.  In the second, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; cite the earlier paper, using whatever information would be necessary for your readers to find it, just as F'x describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, I strongly recommend contacting the author of the earlier paper and asking &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; how &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; would like to proceed.  They may invite you to be a coauthor on their paper.  They may invite themselves to be a coauthor on your paper.  They may use your email as a kick in the pants to &lt;em&gt;formally&lt;/em&gt; publish their paper, but without you as a coauthor, leaving you to publish your new results on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T21:07:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T21:15:59.110" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come with one special technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procrastination may have many causes, but often it is from fear of failure, or because the task looks too long / too hard / too boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The special technique is to train for your performance like an athlete. Your mind can be trained into knowing for sure you will crack any such task like nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of training is to face all your fears. What is the nastiest, most horrible, worst possible task you have been avoiding for ages? DO IT! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't believe how much easier the task is than you thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the hardcore part. Sign up to the most hardcore gym in your area, near your house, and start working out through the limits. Soon you become good at breaking physical limits which gives you a lot of fuel to break any psychical limits. You can try weight-lifting, running, boxing, military training (i.e. warrior classes in a top gym / club), and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strengthens your body and your mind so much, that there will be nothing that makes you procrastinate. Procrastination is in other words &quot;giving up&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard training is the best option. The best is one workout early in the morning and one after work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If you get stuck, go for a workout. It won't help you with the task, but at least you are building your physique and a tougher mind for this challenge to figure it out. (Otherwise, ask your advisor if you are really stuck)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4348" LastEditorDisplayName="user4348" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T21:26:39.277" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T21:26:39.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-16T21:52:28.090" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the many excellent answers, I will add: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Just get started,&quot; which is a prerequisite to &quot;Just do it.&quot; When a task seems too difficult at first, if you start trying to solve it, you often find it's a lot easier than you imagined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html&quot;&gt;Not all procrastination is bad.&lt;/a&gt; It can sometimes be good to delay important decisions until you have enough information. It can be good to work on the more pressing things, and put off the things that are less important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T03:23:10.953" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T03:23:10.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-17T00:08:32.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;em&gt;Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance&lt;/em&gt; by Robert Pirsig. Read the whole thing. But pay particular attention to the discussion of gumption traps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will spend many hours reading the book. However, if you absorb its lessons, you will save many more hours in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must learn to understand your problem before you can hope to understand the solutions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4354" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T00:08:32.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-17T01:06:18.250" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, you think you're in trouble now?  JUST WAIT TILL YOU ARE WRITING IT!  Or worse, doing revision #523... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My strategy was switching time zones.  I went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 2 or 3am, got a ton done while it was dark and everyone else was asleep.  You may think it hard to go to bed at 8pm - but that is just because you didn't wake up at 2am.  :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a ton of other motivational hacks; like starting the day with an easy task (warm start) you could have done the night before.  And yes, email/internet off.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take explicit time wasting breaks.  Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique&lt;/a&gt; or whatever.  Mostly, be clear about when you are working and when you are having a break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly, though, I think you need to find your groove.  If you are bored now, maybe you need to reconsider your topic and find something that lights you up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book is pretty awesome (also, the cover lies), but the main point is you need to get at least a solid 15 (actually +1 hour) of time working on your topic a day.  The main idea is that consistent momentum gets you done - working on it one day a week will get you absolutely nowhere. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Your-Dissertation-Fifteen-Minutes/dp/080504891X&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Your-Dissertation-Fifteen-Minutes/dp/080504891X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastEditorUserId="4355" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T18:51:45.823" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T18:51:45.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5811" CreationDate="2012-12-17T02:56:29.757" Score="10" ViewCount="1005" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been under the impression that you're only allowed to publish 1 result in 1 journal. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/economics-letters/0165-1765?generatepdf=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Economics Letters states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, a theorist could submit to Economics Letters a&#xA;  thought-provoking example before the analysis is extended to a general theorem in a fully fledged paper that will go elsewhere. Similarly, an experimentalist or an empirical researcher could submit to Economics Letters some important preliminary results, where perhaps the threshold for robustness, thoroughness or completeness of the analysis is not as high as it would be for a complete paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this stating that you're allowed to submit early results of paper X to Economics Letters, then improve paper X until paper X is longer and more like a full paper, followed by a submission of paper X to an alternative journal? If it is what they mean, why don't more academics do this to boost their publication count? Economics Letters is actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://lamp.infosys.deakin.edu.au/era/?page=fordet10&amp;amp;selfor=14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ranked quite highly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T08:56:59.867" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:58:05.630" Title="Publishing similar/same paper twice? (regarding Economics Letters journal)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2012-12-17T05:01:02.883" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read the entire paper in one go.  For a 12 page* paper, that should take you an hour at most.  This is the first pass.  From this you can now decide how to proceed, now that you have (quickly) covered all the sections.  (edit: The goal on this first pass is not to understand all the details, but rather get an overall feeling of the paper, quality and organization of ideas) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a paper is terribly written and difficult to understand you should reject it outright for being so.  It should not take a reader 12 hours to read a 12 page paper - and indeed, many papers are badly written and do take this much time - and you are still left wondering because it was not clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the basic claims seem sound and sufficiently interesting/important and the idea is clear enough to understand, then you need to dig in.  Depending on the type of paper this means looking at definitions, proofs, or experimental design, hypothesis testing and the analysis of the results.  Likewise for any related work you know of that should be cited (and not just your own - that is too cliche! - if you do recommend your work as a citation at least include some others!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All along, help people out with typos and readability.  As a reviewer, you are the last chance to make this a good read before it is published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if you reject it, don't just shoot people down.  Give them ideas about how to make the paper stronger, suggestions for different directions, etc.  Remember that it is most likely some other student who will receive your review back - so try and help them make the next paper better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(* 12 single column pages.  A 6 page paper with two columns can often contain the same amount of text as a 12 page single column paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastEditorUserId="4355" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T18:54:28.313" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T18:54:28.313" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2012-12-17T06:00:38.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how many reviews you've done and what your experience is.  If you're just starting out and have never reviewed a paper before, you should expect it to take a minimum of several hours to do a decent to good review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary depending on what discipline you're in, but a good review generally will consist of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a summary of what the contribution of the paper was&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a brief list of 1-3 strengths and 1-3 weaknesses that the paper had&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several paragraphs explaining those strengths and weaknesses in greater detail along with constructive suggestions of what would be needed to improve the weaknesses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a brief listing of any related work that you feel is missing from the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a recommendation to the reviewing committee of whether or not you believe the paper should be accepted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;usually there is a part for a numerical evaluation of your expertise and whether or not it should be accepted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more reviews that you do, the less time that you should need to spend on doing the review.  It seems like many professors can knock out a review in an hour or less, but most of the graduate students I've seen will tend to spend at least 1-2 hours per review if they're doing a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T06:00:38.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-12-17T06:36:06.270" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Taken from the comments as per request&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fairly common. For example, in CS, one might publish preliminary work at a conference, and then flesh it out for a journal (there's a &quot;30% new material&quot; rule in many journals to cover this situation). But to answer your question, doing this doesn't boost publication count except for very dumb ways of evaluating a publication list. Most people (except university bureaucrats) will list the conference and journal paper as one entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it is upto the journal editors of the second venue to decide whether the paper is sufficiently different from the first one. They are free to reject it even if you think the latter paper is a nontrivially expanded version of the first one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T06:36:06.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5813" CreationDate="2012-12-17T08:41:06.747" Score="10" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for submitting your&#xA;  manuscript &quot;Article title&quot; which we are regretfully unable to offer to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is YYY' policy to return a&#xA;  substantial proportion&#xA;  of manuscripts without sending them to referees&lt;/strong&gt;. Decisions of this kind are made by the editors of&#xA;  YYYs according to the demanding editorial criteria of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the present case, while your findings may well prove&#xA;  stimulating to others' thinking about such questions, &lt;strong&gt;we regret that we are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of&#xA;  firm advance&lt;/strong&gt; in general&#xA;  understanding that would warrant publication in YYY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are sorry that we cannot&#xA;  respond more positively on this occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why they do not send my work to referees while they  are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4346" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T08:58:08.727" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T12:49:09.810" Title="Why they do not send my work to referees while they are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5812" CreationDate="2012-12-17T08:45:40.373" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;They do not send your manuscript to reviewers because they consider that the chance of it being accepted (with revisions) is very small, so that it's not worth reviewers' time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their phrasing is just a polite way of saying that the manuscript you have submitted is either clearly out of scope, or clearly not good enough. Maybe you are aiming for a too prestigious journal, or maybe your work is not novel enough. It is also possible that your actual work is very good, but that your description of your work is poor, so that the editors concluded erroneously that it doesn't show much advancement. It is not possible to conclude in general what the true reason is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no experience in submitting manuscripts to scientific journals, and you have no cooperation with somebody who does, getting a manuscript published is quite difficult. If you don't already, I would suggest you strike up a cooperation with someone who has experience in publishing scientific articles. They could advise where to publish and how to formulate conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Also read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5812/why-they-do-not-send-my-work-to-referees-while-they-are-unable-to-conclude-that/5813#comment10420_5813&quot;&gt;Benoït Kloeckners excellent remark below&lt;/a&gt;: indeed it is your advantage if you know quickly that your paper won't be published, rather than only after a time-consuming peer-review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T12:49:09.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-17T09:21:49.093" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write both weekly and daily 'to do' lists if I'm stuck in a procrastination routine. The weekly lists are more general, the daily ones as detailed as possible, with essentially everything I should do that day, however small it seems. It feels good to tick things off - it shows me that I made progress and gives me incentive to go on. Usually there's one or two things on the list that I really should not postpone for tomorrow, and many less important ones. I sometimes do the big stuff first, sometimes last, it really depends on my mood that day. I also allow myself to push the smaller things to the next day if I don't feel like doing them. That way I feel that I have some wiggle room, but it's constrained to the stuff that doesn't matter much anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also noticed that I tend to be more efficient when I have something planned at the end of the day, i.e. I know have to leave the office at five and stop working until tomorrow. This gives me a feeling of a small deadline, and deadlines are good at eliminating procrastination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as someone mentioned already, nothing beats working with people. Having weekly meetings with my supervisor, where a decision is made on what I will achieve until the next meeting, tops it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T09:28:58.570" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T09:28:58.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-17T14:08:31.243" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to be really really useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point of procrastination is procrastination is easy, and hence, it is difficult to do not do it. But that automatically implies that avoiding procrastination is a high-energy thing, and it is then obvious that you cannot keep up that high energy forever, and hence, you end up minimizing procrastinating by consuming large amount of energy, and hence then you need a break or you end up actually increasing procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the author of the link suggests, you can use procrastination to your advantage by using it do important things at relevant times. However, one problem with this is that you have to keep in mind thousands of to-dos and that is very exhausting. My solution to this is to use some very good calendar/to-do system and integrate it with your phone/laptop. This way, you can easily track your to-do list and suddenly, you will find that you have a lot of time to actually do stuff rather than thinking of what to do, which will help a lot in preventing getting distracted and avoid procrastination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this works is as follows. Everytime you have a deadline or work, make an entry of it in your calendar with an appropriate date and then reminders. Also, some calendar software allow you to put priorities on your to-dos. Kontact/KOrganizer also allows you to attach files to your to-do or events. So, you note everything you know at the time you get info. And then, whenever you open your to-do, you see a list of all the things you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there is atleast some which interest you, pick the one with the highest priority and the most strict deadline, and do it. This way, you don't have to worry about keeping track of your deadlines since that task has been now transferred to your computer. Also, having all the options of to-dos available in front you &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt;, make you more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people use the post-it notes in their office, but it is an inferior solution as compared to mobile/computer/cloud sync as you can access the latter anywhere, even when you are waiting for you doctor's appointment etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1299" LastEditorDisplayName="user1299" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T14:26:02.717" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T14:26:02.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:01:26.480" Score="7" ViewCount="11073" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2673/under-what-circumstances-can-one-republish-a-conference-paper-presentation&quot;&gt;Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently completed a Masters of Science which I pursued to fill a personal goal and to advance our development of a regional tsunami warning system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read the thread on multiple publishing and presenting I am still confused as this is a new issue for me. Coming from Government we present on special projects or findings any number of times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wish to publish my findings in an academic journal am I precluded from presenting at any conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I present at a localised scientific conference without published proceedings, am I precluded from presenting at a global one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I focus one on localised context and the other on the global implications, then cite having presented at the local level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4376" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T15:18:08.063" Title="Present journal paper at conference or the same work at multiple conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-12-21T13:14:57.580" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:04:30.800" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is partly a response to john k's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the end, the review will go out only under your advisors [sic] name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Farming out a review to someone else -- especially someone who is subordinate to you -- and then putting only your own name on it is a practice that the vast majority of academics would view as unequivocally unethical.  In fact it is essentially plagiarism.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish answerers here would not endorse this practice.  As Jeff E points out in a comment, if this is done only between the student and the adviser then the editor will not even know about it so certainly cannot be viewed as allowing or participating in this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, take this as an opportunity to learn and do not worry that you won't get credit for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly do worry about the practice of advisers passing off their students' work as their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and he's [the advisor] not going to allow it if it is completely shabby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the advisor is going to be involved in the refereeing process anyway, then passing it off to the student is not a clear time savings.  However it sounds like a recipe for a bad refereeing job: one very junior, possibly not fully qualified person actually reads the paper, and then the more senior, qualified person mostly looks at the report that the junior person has written.  There's a lot of room for something to fall through the cracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I would suggest instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If as an adviser you actually feel that your student is fully qualified to referee a paper that you have been sent, and if you feel that it will in some way be more useful for your student to do it than you yourself (e.g. you view it as a learning experience for the student), then contact the editor and suggest your student as an alternate referee, &lt;em&gt;while identifying them as your student&lt;/em&gt;.  Most editors will be happy with this because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) Graduate students can make unusually conscientious and quick referees.  I refereed one paper as a graduate student.  I was very flattered to be asked to do so, so I carefully read every line and even spent a substantial amount of time gaining background knowledge [for the mathematicians: I had to read part of SGAVII in order to do what I felt was a thorough job].  I also did this over a period of slightly less than a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) It's better than asking a very junior person to do the refereeing job out of the blue [as in fact was the case with me in the above situation] because the student can consult with her adviser if necessary, either to ask a key technical question or just to ask for advice about writing the report and dealing with the editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I (formally) passed off a referee job to a PhD student of mine about a year or so ago.  I think it worked out well: he did a good, fast job, and he did consult me a bit for help.  As I recall, most (or all) of the questions he asked me were not about the content of the paper -- on the contrary, after he read it I asked him some stuff out of my own interest and curiosity -- but rather about the mechanics of the referee report: what standards to impose, how to reply to the editor, whether it was okay to request that the authors make a revision doing X and Y, and so forth.  I think this latter part was at least as valuable an experience for him as simply vetting the paper for correctness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you can identify a part of a paper that is sufficiently independent of the rest so as to make it possible to read and judge only that part, then it seems reasonable to contract a &quot;subreviewer&quot; for that part.  Maybe this subreviewer is your student and asking her to do it is saving you some tedium.  Maybe this subreviewer has expertise that you lack and it is because of them that you feel capable of writing a report at all.  With respect to this, I would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) Of course you need to identify by name all subreviewers that you use.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) If you take on a subreviewer, it should be very clear exactly what the subreviewer is vouching for.  You are still the one who is vouching for a paper as a whole.  You need to be extra careful that you are not leaving any gaps.  For instance, if a paper concerns arithmetic geometry and spectral graph theory, then there will probably be a part in which problems in arithmetic geometry are translated to problems in spectral graph theory, or vice versa.  There needs to be at least one referee who understands both of these topics sufficiently well in order to do a credible job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(iii) If the issues in (ii) are at all complicated -- e.g. if you find yourself wanting to enlist more than one subreviewer -- then it may be better to have this subcontracting process done by the editor.  S/he can then, if desired, solicit multiple reports, add/change/remove subreviewers, and so forth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never enlisted subreviewers, and I have refereed more than 30 papers.  But I could imagine for instance being given a paper which had a substantial computational component, and then I might ask to see the code itself and give it to a student of mine who has substantial programming expertise.  The difference here is that doing so would improve the referee process (it is very unlikely that I would look at the code myself in any detail, and even less likely that any good would come of my doing so).  Passing something off to graduate student when you think or know you would do a materially better job already seems slightly ethically suspect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T20:56:20.667" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T20:56:20.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5820" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:30:01.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact answer depends on the topic, but normally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing finding in an academic journal does not preclude presenting at conferences (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5820/present-journal-paper-at-conference-or-the-same-work-at-multiple-conferences/5822#comment10456_5822&quot;&gt;except in computer science!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;). In fact, it's quite common to first publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, then go to one or even several conferences to advertise it. Just be sure to mention it at the conference, because if there are proceedings, there may exist conferences with different ideas, depending on the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presenting at a local conference does not preclude presenting at a global one, certainly not if the local conference has no proceedings, because then there is not really any publication at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The answer to your third question is most likely &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be 100% sure, contact the organisers of the conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5314/1033&quot;&gt;Publishing the same results at multiple conferences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/51/1033&quot;&gt;Submitting the same research to multiple conferences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/331/1033&quot;&gt;Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2673/1033&quot;&gt;Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T09:56:23.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5820" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:39:50.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fields outside of computer science, publishing a paper does not normally prevent you from presenting your work at a conference; as gerrit points out, the two go hand in hand quite frequently, and many people will speak about just-published research in a presentation. (I know I have!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what publishing a paper &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do is change the &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; of the presentation, int he sense that the journal may place some restrictions on how you can reuse the material that has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you may need to provide citations when including figures from the paper in your presentation, as well as citing any text that is taken directly from what has been published. For many journals, however, you may do so without asking prior permission, so long as you include the appropriate citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T15:18:08.063" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T15:18:08.063" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-17T21:57:10.680" Score="10" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student and I am often faced with several ideas to explore. Two criteria often I consider in making a choice between approaches are based on the value proposition/ addition and the uniqueness of the approach. However, in the  process of research (which I don't have any idea about and I am only in the exploratory phase of an idea) I have to make compromises in choosing between approaches which are not unique but add value and vice versa. I am faced with tradeoffs between the two until I find (or modify/improve) approaches that have both the qualities. My question is to the experienced researchers to share their strategies when they had to choose among approaches based on these two parameters. Which one among the two help in quicker publications or acceptance rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4340" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T22:00:15.613" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T22:00:15.613" Title="Value Vs. Uniqueness of Research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5824" CreationDate="2012-12-17T22:02:49.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on the field and the journal you're aiming at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For small, low-impact journals, it could be sufficient that an idea is new. If your ambition is not very high, you can submit to such a journal. You might not need to show that the new idea is all that useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more prestigious journals, new is not enough. You need to show that it's actually useful in practical situations or adds something significant. If you want to aim for good journals, then added value is important. However, it should not be a small added value; it should be a significant added value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not new and the added value is small, probably you'd need to improve the research until you have something more substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T22:02:49.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5824" CreationDate="2012-12-18T01:15:42.410" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two criteria often I consider in making a choice between approaches are based on the value proposition/ addition and the uniqueness of the approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideally, you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; choose.&lt;/strong&gt;  A &quot;unique&quot; approach that doesn't add value isn't worth much.  Solving a problem using off-the-shelf techniques also isn't worth much.  What you should aim for is a &lt;strong&gt;unique approach that adds value&lt;/strong&gt; to the research landscape in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But if you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; choose, work toward your strengths.&lt;/strong&gt;  Do you carry a hammer and look for nails, or do you carry nails and look for hammers?  If you're better at finding new tools to attack hard problems, then you're more likely to come up with unique approaches.  If you're better at finding hard problems to successfully attack with a small suite of tools, then you're more likely to add value to those tools.  I know lots of successful researchers in both camps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which one among the two help in quicker publications or&#xA;  acceptance rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are optimizing the wrong function.  Your primary goal should be to produce the highest quality, highest impact research, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to maximize the number of lines in your CV.  One good high-impact paper is worth far more than a pile of publications that nobody cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T01:15:42.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5836" CreationDate="2012-12-18T02:50:51.170" Score="19" ViewCount="14286" Body="&lt;p&gt;What amount of work should a well compensated research assistant put into a paper before they're included as a co-author? Is there any norm? Suppose this is a field where 1 to 3 authors on any given journal paper is the standard amount (e.g., economics/finance/econometrics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if they do 30% of the paper? What if the paper requires (model building, programming, writing), and each component is about 33% of the paper, and the RA does all of one of these and helps a bit with another one of these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think the answer is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;, unless it was an unusually large contribution or the professor was feeling nice. I think this because otherwise they would've just gotten an experienced co-author who could bring much more to the table who they also don't have to compensate with any $$. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T19:51:05.093" Title="When does a paid research assistant become a co-author?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5834" CreationDate="2012-12-18T03:01:46.923" Score="16" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;My adviser asked me to go over some PhD theses over the weekend, and by some he meant three 200~ pages theses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an effective way to skim through theses that you have figured out, as more experienced academics. I could not go over all of them without taking most of my weekend doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T23:17:42.627" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T23:17:42.627" Title="How to skim through Phd Theses" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5830" CreationDate="2012-12-18T02:49:51.450" Score="7" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a bit unsure whether this question belonged here, but after finding many questions requesting advice with respect to mathematics studies I decided to go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last year I have developed a strong interest in mathematics and would like to pursue it at the university level. The long-term goal is graduate studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original intent was to first pursue a B.Sc in mathematics. I had met with the undergraduate coordinator at a university I would like to enrol in and he recommended that based upon my background that I may be better off pursuing a masters degree with a qualifying year comprised of advanced undergraduate courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Degrees: B.Comm (Economics), M.A. (Economics)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematical Courses: Business Calculus, Mathematics for Economists (includes calculus, linear algebra, set theory, optimization, topology), Introductory Statistics, Econometrics&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research Experience: Four RAships, two upcoming publications (not in mathematics)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self-study: &lt;em&gt;Calculus&lt;/em&gt; (Stewart), &lt;em&gt;Linear Algebra&lt;/em&gt; (Strang), Currently working on: &lt;em&gt;A Course of Pure Mathematics&lt;/em&gt; (Hardy)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask that given an individual with a background in a quantitative field, what are the pros and cons with pursuing either of these options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastEditorUserId="4315" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T03:37:13.997" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T06:24:06.130" Title="Second undergraduate versus masters with qualifying year" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5829" CreationDate="2012-12-18T03:32:32.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible, avoid the 2nd undergrad. To see if possible, pick an online copy of a typical textbook, level advanced undergraduate/graduate, and browse it for fun, and do some of the early exercises. Examples: Artin: Algebra; Munkres: Topology; Spivak: Calculus on Manifolds (or more advanced; Guillemin &amp;amp; Pollack;: Differential Topology); or better yet, browse whatever the curriculum of your chosen university indicated for this fall semester as text books. It doesn't have to appear easy, as you are supposed to learn it; and learning math is hard, no matter what your future classmates will falsely claim: most of them struggle too. But it shouldn't terrify you either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T03:32:32.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-18T03:58:16.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to assess.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What is your advisor's expectations? is it a detailed review of the hypothesis, methodology and results of the theses? or it is just &lt;em&gt;to know&lt;/em&gt; thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For not spending too much, I would suggest going directly to the &lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;. Then there is one or two &lt;strong&gt;core chapters&lt;/strong&gt; discussing the ideas. General sense of what is going on these chapters is good enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it depends upon your advisor's expectations. This said, i'm &lt;em&gt;newbie&lt;/em&gt; to academics.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T03:58:16.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5837" CreationDate="2012-12-18T04:03:42.463" Score="15" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the general opinion among editors about whether my paper should be submitted to review to academics from the same University/department? Will this ever happen? If it does happen, isn't this bad for the quality of peer review because the reviewer might have a good relationship with the person who submitted the paper and may be biased consciously or unconsciously towards giving a favorable review? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T14:38:25.940" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T14:38:25.940" Title="Do journal editors disallow paper from college X to be reviewed by someone from college X?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-18T04:21:49.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just start from the table of contents. Usually, the whole thesis is not applicable to your current research, but only a pocket full of sections are.  Identify the handful of sections that are most relevant to your research, and just read those.  Also, if your advisor specifically requested these particular theses, he/she suspects there's something in particular about them that is of value to your research.  Ask him/her what it is about these theses that is most fascinating/relevant to your research and just read that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt; Don't try to understand everything in it... just find the parts that most apply to you and your research and get the main idea, not the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T04:21:49.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-18T04:28:48.883" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can use existing theses just like you would a journal article where you extract information to guide your research. However, I'd like to focus discussion here on the role of theses as a tool for teaching you how to write your own thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choosing theses to deconstruct&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Assuming you are writing a PhD thesis yourself, it can be really helpful to find a selection of other PhD theses in order to give you a sense of what the overall product can look like. Three is a good start, but I would be aiming to find about six or seven. The best theses are probably those that are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on a similar topic or at least in the  same discipline as your thesis and with a broadly similar methodological orientation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;follow a similar structural framework to your own (e.g., similar length, same in terms of whether it is a large thesis or PhD by publication)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;well written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things to learn from deconstruction:&lt;/strong&gt; Carefully deconstructing such manuscripts can teach you a lot about both what a thesis involves and also what are some of the alternative modes of presentation. For instance you can look at things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How was it formatted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many chapters were there and how was content distributed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How were aims presented and how was the importance of the thesis justified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How was literature, method,results, and discussion distributed (e.g., some in each chapter or over separate chapters)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How extensive or focussed was the literature review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was the overall scale of the thesis (e.g., amount of data collection, sophistication of analyses, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the standard expected of a thesis (e.g., seeing the imperfections of  theses that have passed can be helpful should you fall victim to perfectionism) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When in candidature to spend time deconstructing:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In fact, examining and deconstructing theses can be a useful exercise at multiple stages of your PhD candidature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the very start of your PhD it can give you a broad feel for what it is that you are aiming to produce.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you are moving towards setting out the overall structure of your thesis in terms of chapters and sections it can give you a feel of whether you are on track&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you are making formatting and stylistic decisions, existing theses can provide a useful frame of reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T00:53:03.267" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T00:53:03.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5827" CreationDate="2012-12-18T05:03:04.650" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;The decision of whether someone should be a coauthor is completely independent of monetary compensation: authorship depends on what sort of intellectual contribution each person has made, and it would be unethical to treat them differently based on their job (paid assistant, student, colleague, amateur, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in different roles may be treated differently based on their contributions.  For example, an assistant who does no creative or insightful work, but instead just carries out explicit instructions in a straightforward way, should generally not be a coauthor.  (Still, the assistant should be thanked by name in the acknowledgments.)  When the assistant's work starts to involve exercising nontrivial skill and judgment, coauthorship may be appropriate.  If the assistant is doing a serious part of the creative intellectual work, then coauthorship is mandatory, even if the supervisor's role is deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T05:03:04.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5832" CreationDate="2012-12-18T05:18:12.647" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflict of interest rules vary between journals, and some are far stricter than others.  In general, it's not clear where to draw the line for what's appropriate.  Asking someone from the same department to review their colleague's paper would generally not be done, even if no rule forbids it.  Beyond that it's a little less clear, and you can make up all sorts of borderline cases.  (It's considered fine for people from different University of California campuses to review each other's papers.  What about someone from the Harvard biology department reviewing a paper from the Harvard medical school?  I don't know, and it's not clear to me that there's a simple rule for deciding what constitutes a conflict of interest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handling conflicts of interest responsibly is an important and difficult part of being a journal editor, since there are all sorts of relationships that are not as easy to detect as a shared departmental affiliation.  For example, some people have been best friends since they were in grad school, while others may be enemies or rivals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when evaluating a submission it's valuable to get advice from someone who has specialized knowledge you need, but who also has a conflict of interest. In that case, you should be aware of the conflict and try to adjust for it (for example, by asking the person for objective information rather than opinions). By contrast, it's much more dangerous to rely on someone who has a conflict of interest you are unaware of.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T13:38:26.210" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T13:38:26.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5843" CreationDate="2012-12-18T05:54:04.410" Score="27" ViewCount="1126" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reviewing research papers, I often find that the author's English is not very good. Considering that English is not everyone's native language, I understand their difficulties, and I recognize that they struggle (using dictionaries and translators) to get their work published at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I sometimes find papers that have contain English that is frankly terrible, with a few select fragments in pristine, almost Shakespearean English, using words that sometimes I didn't even know existed. When this happens, a quick Google search will occasionally reveal that these fragments are copy-pasted fragments from textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in these cases? I feel that being too harsh might come of as being mean, but I would really like to emphasize that the practice is very bad for the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T14:28:28.420" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:04:24.693" Title="Should a reviewer critique language and text copy-paste issues?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5839" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T06:05:44.663" Score="27" ViewCount="3394" Body="&lt;p&gt;My supervisor keeps on delaying and postponing my defense date, taking long periods of time between revisions (1 month of &quot;revision&quot; where the document is in his hands).  He has done this 2 times already, so I have been sitting here waiting for a total of 2 months now.  This last &quot;revision&quot; he sent it back to me with six or seven nitpicky grammar errors, (ie places I had left out words such as &quot;the&quot; or &quot;when&quot;), and the content-related comments he had were extremely trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like he keeps on showstopping my defense date due to nitpicky grammar errors, and it is impacting my career (obviously, my Master's degree now has 3 years on it, instead of the expected 2).  At this point &lt;strong&gt;I don't care&lt;/strong&gt; about grammar errors (and I believe we must have found them all already) or clarity of expression or making perfectionist type improvements.  I feel really angry and I feel like writing a letter of complaint to my graduate program director.  Each term I have to stay bleeds more money out of my account, and the situation is making me really upset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I've been very polite and professional and have not &quot;exploded&quot;.  I've hidden my emotions and my anger and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; complained about what I feel is getting quite &lt;em&gt;ridiculous&lt;/em&gt;.  Should I complain? Should I let him know how I feel?  Or should I just keep on going with it and &quot;grin and bear&quot; until it's over? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T11:35:28.313" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T07:19:38.790" Title="Supervisor keeps &quot;showstopping&quot; defense with nit-picky grammar errors" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5829" CreationDate="2012-12-18T06:24:06.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure whether the 2nd undergrad will actually help you at all, because I'm not sure how good Undergrads in math are in the US, you might end up re learning a ton of stuff you already knew to begin with. And that can lead to some frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gone over Stwart's and Strang's books and they are overall very nice. Try to see what particular topic interests you and go over some papers, see what is missing in your pool of knowledge and build a consensus of where is it being thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that most of your deficit can be solved with some Undergrad Courses, and many Grad courses, go for that Graduate degree directly, but if you find that many of your deficits are in an undergrad level, perhaps doing that second undergrad is not such a bad idea, since you would be starting with a handicap against other people coming from a math undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T06:24:06.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5839" CreationDate="2012-12-18T07:18:09.130" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The things you call &quot;nitpicky grammar errors&quot; are often (in my experience) symptoms of a deeper problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that the student has stopped caring about raising the thesis to a suitably high standard, and has not grasped what &quot;completed&quot; means in the context. An unfinished thesis simply can't be marked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, get your own proof-reader, and get help in getting all of these problems fixed - your supervisor is too busy to be a proof-reader, and it's an inefficient use of limited supervisory time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is the grammar sloppy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For different students, the underlying cause will differ; some won't be writing in their native language; some are careless; some have weak language skills; some haven't grasped the importance of good grammar and spelling to clear communication and to academic publishing. I've no idea which of these is true in your case, or if it's something else - that's between you and your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whose problem is it anyway?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't care about your grammar errors. That is &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; problem, not your supervisor's. You are angry. Again, that's &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; problem. Trying to make it your supervisor's problem, will make an enemy of someone who you need on your side. You think your supervisor's comments on content are trivial, and that is also &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; problem, not your supervisor's problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now this post has maybe made you angry too. And that would also be &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; problem, not my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say all this, because accepting that they are your problems, is the first step to fixing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collaboration not conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that I am trying to help you fix, is that your supervisor is telling you what you need to finish, and you seem to resent doing it.  Supervision &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; to be a collaborative partnership, not a battle. Now, in theory, it's your supervisor's job to make it such. However, in some cases, in academia as well as in the real world, you often need to manage your manager - and that can mean &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; taking responsibility for ensuring that it is is a collaborative relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, find out what incentivises your supervisor, and try to put those incentives in place. Is it publishing papers? Esteem within the department? Conference papers? Get your supervisor on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The worst case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And (take a deep breath): sometimes, when a thesis is genuinely bad, it's not apparent at first. All one sees on the first couple of readings, are a few errors here, and a few errors there; but when they're corrected, new problems appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets to be like &quot;Star Wars the Phantom Menace&quot; - the East Coast of the US produced one homebrew re-edit of it, to fix some problems; the West Coast produced a different homebrew re-edit, to fix other problems; but in the end, both re-edits and the original are pretty awful films: fixing the most obvious problems just exposed other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really really hope that's not the case in your case; but as this answer will hopefully be read by many people in your shoes, then at some point, it will be true for one of them. And at that point, that person and their supervisor need to think about a radical rewrite, or walking away from it as a lost cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to go from here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for almost all cases, it's just a matter of getting your supervisor onside, getting a definitive list of the problems, and then you doing what your supervisor says is required to fix them. With them, write a checklist, and then return the checklist to them, with a note next to each one, stating how and where you've fixed it, or how you're defending it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;And finally - this post will inevitably contain spelling and grammar errors - it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law&quot;&gt;Muphry's law&lt;/a&gt; in action. But that doesn't invalidate the advice in any way. With language, &lt;strong&gt;context is everything&lt;/strong&gt;. This post is not academic scholarship; your thesis is.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T08:49:01.747" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T08:49:01.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5838" CreationDate="2012-12-18T07:23:18.340" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is plagiarism. You should at the VERY least point this out to the editor and suggest (s)he insist the authors get language, translation or copyediting assistance if they can't write their paper themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T07:23:18.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5838" CreationDate="2012-12-18T07:42:24.927" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Mikael said, copying and pasting from a textbook (or any other source), unless it's properly quoted and cited, is plagiarism. Now, it's possible that this varies a bit between fields and between cultures, but generally speaking, &lt;strong&gt;plagiarism is one of the most serious academic offenses&lt;/strong&gt;, probably a step below outright fabrication of results. Well-respected tenured professors at major universities have lost their jobs and had their careers destroyed by a single instance of plagiarism. The point is, this is a very big no-no and you should treat it accordingly. You should definitely notify the editor, and see how they would like you to deal with it. I don't know exactly how that process works, whether the editor will just handle the paper themselves and let you know that your review will no longer be necessary, or whether they'll ask you to finish your review anyway and state your objections in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case, I would write an unequivocal recommendation &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; publishing the paper because of the plagiarism. Personally, I would be inclined not to even look at the scientific content of any such paper, although that may not work out in practice. But anyway, just pointing out the plagiarized parts and recommending against publication, in and of itself, is not mean. Just don't get carried away and start attacking the author. You could apply the same principle that is used at Stack Exchange, namely that it's about the behavior, not the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put aside the plagiarism, there is also the issue of sloppy English that you mentioned. In my experience, (nearly?) all reputable journals require papers to use proper spelling and grammar for standard English, or something reasonably close to it. Usually, the instructions for authors will advise non-native speakers of English to get a native speaker to check the paper for grammatical errors before submission. So it's reasonable for you to point out any such errors that you come across. Now, grammatical errors don't have to condemn a paper to oblivion the way plagiarism might, but if the grammar is bad enough, I would think it reasonable to recommend against publication in its current state. If the underlying ideas are sound, and otherwise qualified for publication, then you could recommend that the authors edit the paper to improve the grammar and resubmit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T07:04:24.693" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:04:24.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-18T09:37:06.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I back up what Paul said, but as I had to do something similar just a few weeks back, here's what worked for me: &lt;strong&gt;I found most relevant publications (articles) by the same author&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, there's not that much publications related to a thesis, and there's a possibility that most of the papers are just extensions to the first one. Here's what I think from a Computer Science perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read the first publication&lt;/strong&gt; by the author&lt;/em&gt; related to the thesis topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the following articles are probably &lt;em&gt;application focus&lt;/em&gt; for the (novel) technique presented in the first article, or provide a heavy &lt;em&gt;math background&lt;/em&gt; - these are not really needed to understand the idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There might be an article or two improving the construction algorithm (the concept stays the same, but some implementation improvements)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the end, you'll end up reading the &lt;strong&gt;first + one or two other articles&lt;/strong&gt; and that will give you a good &lt;strong&gt;idea of what the whole thesis is about&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now that you understand the concepts presented in the thesis, &lt;em&gt;you understand the Table of Contents fully&lt;/em&gt;. You can easily &lt;strong&gt;identify chapters interesting to you&lt;/strong&gt;, and read only the selected ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still a lengthy process, but I think faster than trying to read the whole thesis, and gives a lot result-wise: you not only understood the concepts you needed, but did literature research as well, and know exactly where to look for every type of extra details you might need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all said, this is the process that worked for me when &lt;em&gt;I needed to understand the concept presented, the main idea (but not the details) of implementation, and wanted to be able to apply the concept &quot;by hand&quot; and &quot;on paper&quot; for small mock examples&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the process can be adapted for whatever goal you have in reading the thesis: you almost certainly are not interested in &lt;em&gt;absolutely everything&lt;/em&gt; presented in the thesis on your first read-out. So, if you are, for example, interested in the &lt;em&gt;application domain&lt;/em&gt;, you'll read the application focus articles instead, and not math profs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T09:37:06.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5838" CreationDate="2012-12-18T10:16:35.657" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand exactly what you are going through. I have seen it happen many times before. In some culture it is extremely common for students to think that it is acceptable to plagiarize in this way. However, in my experience, even when students think it is acceptable, they still know it is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should call it out for what it is: Plagiarism. In my experience, some students only wake up to the impact of plagiarism when they are shocked into it. I've had students call me mean (and much, much worse) but I've never had a student say that I was unjustified in calling their plagiarism out. They knew what they were doing and they got caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also explained to them how to &quot;right their ship&quot; so this did not cause future problems. In my school, the punishment is quite lenient for plagiarism - just fail (no removal, no academic probation, etc.). But, it is still expected that it is called out when it is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T10:16:35.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5838" CreationDate="2012-12-18T10:36:22.317" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the couple of cases that I have found plagiarism (and that is what has happened here). I always contact the editor directly telling him/her what I have found and that I no longer feel comfortable writing a review. This then puts the burden on the editor to make a decision of how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T10:36:22.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-18T11:06:20.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably field dependent. In my field tables and contain the majority of the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Print the abstract, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, conclusions, and any lists of symbols/nomenclature. You will need these a lot and it is easier to be able to mark them up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the abstract and table of contents. Ideally looking for the things that are interesting to you. If the thesis seems to be well written and well organized, then reading the first paragraph of each chapter might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work you way through the figures and tables. Ideally you will only need the information in the captions, but you may need to refer to the methods for additional information. Use the printed table of contents and the search function to efficiently. Don't read the methods, only use them when you have a specific question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the conclusions. Anything that you don't understand/agree with go back to the figures and tables. If you still don't get it, search the results/discussion for references to the corresponding figure/table. If you still don't get it, decide if you really need it. If so, mark it down to figure out later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T11:06:20.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-12-18T11:26:51.127" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is 'doing research' and then there is 'publishing papers'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You most certainly don't need a PhD to do research.  If you want to make an advancement, like a better algorithm, then you can create your own experiments to show how your idea works better (on the problem you tested) and you have created a meaningful advancement in science.  If you had a PhD you should have learned how to create solid experiments and how to analyse the results (which often leads to more experiments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound a bit jaded, but publishing papers is often about understanding what a particular field cares about (and who the influencers are) and becoming part of that community.  There is definitely a clique element in most fields - by getting your PhD you are invited into the clique under the wing of your supervisor.  It might not be impossible to publish coming from outside a community, but I think it is certainly harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T11:26:51.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5839" CreationDate="2012-12-18T12:14:04.767" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to take a slightly narrower perspective than EnergyNumbers here, and focus on the specific facts of your situation, as you have mentioned them. Note that my conclusions will be derived from this, so if the facts as stated in your question are not correct (either by ellipsis or exaggeration, most likely), my advice would be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;taking long periods of time between revisions (&lt;strong&gt;1 month of &quot;revision&quot; where the document is in his hands&lt;/strong&gt;). He has done this &lt;strong&gt;2 times already&lt;/strong&gt;, so I have been sitting here waiting for a total of 2 months now. This last &quot;revision&quot; he sent it back to me with &lt;strong&gt;six or seven&lt;/strong&gt; nitpicky &lt;strong&gt;grammar errors&lt;/strong&gt;, (ie places I had left out words such as &quot;the&quot; or &quot;when&quot;), and &lt;strong&gt;the content-related comments&lt;/strong&gt; he had were extremely trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I can't consider &lt;em&gt;“nitpicky”&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;“extremely trivial”&lt;/em&gt; as facts, but as statements of your opinion on the validity and scope of these comments. Also, I assume that your thesis is somewhere between 50 and 100 pages in length (if it's 10 or 500 pages, the problem is different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The busy supervisor hypothesis&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you did in fact correct the grammar mistakes pointed out to you (and I'd say that 7 such errors in what I assume is a 50–100 page thesis cannot really be considered sloppy writing);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the content-related comments were few, easily fixed (order of presentation, showing additional data or removing some overly detailed graphs, etc.), and you actually fixed them quickly;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no further comment was made to you on the overall quality or suitability of your thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you should have a calm and professional discussion with your supervisor, highlighting the difficulty of your current situation and the necessity of working together to reach an outcome satisfactory to both of you. Say explicitly that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you understand that a necessary standard has to be met by your thesis,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are ready to hear that it is not yet met,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;however, you need more specific guidance to reach this goal, since you have fixed in a timely manner everything that was pointed out to you, and yet you can't defend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay courteous, base your questions (and answers) on facts, and ask for him to do the same. Reading a thesis and commenting on it shouldn't take one month, and if the modifications to be made are as you indicated, no further work on it would be necessary once they have been discussed and integrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't succeed, and your supervisor seems to busy to devote to you the time necessary or simply doesn't care about it now that the scientific part of the work is over (it happens!), go ask the graduate program director for help. Maybe not by a formal written letter at first, just ask for his advice in a given situation. See what comes out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, &lt;strong&gt;whatever you do, stay professional&lt;/strong&gt;. You should highlight the harshness of the situation for you, whether when talking to your supervisor or to others, without letting your emotions dominate the discussion. (Yes, it can be hard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T12:14:04.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5838" CreationDate="2012-12-18T13:11:58.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would see two situations here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The English is so bad that you cannot properly review the paper. If you suspect that there is merit in the paper, suggest getting the language polished and encourage to resubmit. Otherwise reject the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can follow the story, and provide an in depth review. Just reply as you would normally, and mention polishing the language as one of the additional remarks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just copying without reference is just plagiarism, and should lead to rejection of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T13:11:58.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5856" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:28:29.170" Score="114" ViewCount="77371" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a very new researcher who is exploring the best way to generate ideas, some guidance on this question would be very helpful. I have found that this is NOT easy. Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day and I wonder how he does it. This question is broad;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas? What is your search method (if you have one)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you prioritize research ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any special, generalizable method that you've discovered to sift out those ideas that are likely to be unrealistic early on in the process of idea generation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on small amounts of anecdotal evidence I have reason to believe that there is vast heterogeneity among professors regarding the above questions. For example, economist Steven Levitt says he works on 22 papers at once. A professor I know will have maybe 25% of this at any one time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related but not duplicate: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4820/is-there-any-software-or-tools-for-managing-developing-research-ideas&quot;&gt;Is there any software or tools for managing developing research ideas?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T17:22:26.290" Title="How to come up with research ideas?" Tags="&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-18T20:15:18.583" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, as you say, this is very broad, and possibly argumentative. So, I'll try to section off my answer for your various sub-questions, and talk not so much about how &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; do come up (and organize) research ideas, but how I see it done by everyone (including me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Coming up with ideas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but rather, “hmm... that's funny...” &lt;em&gt;— Isaac Asimov&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably very akin to asking a large number of artists &lt;em&gt;“how do you come up with inspiration?”&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. you can probably get one thousand different answers, and yet not useful answer at the same time. However, there are some elements that I think are common to all. You can't “trigger” new ideas to come into your mind, but you can put your mind into the right disposition to host these new ideas: recognize them and welcome them. Below is a list, certainly partial and limited, trying to detail my perspective in this matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be challenged!&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing sparks ideas more than being confronted with contradiction, healthy criticism, a spirited debate, maybe a bit of competition. Some people manage to do that by themselves, arguing against their ideas and improving them. I myself (and most of the colleagues and students I have seen) need an echo chamber, someone to discuss things with. If they're not exactly from your field, all the better, as they may have unusual/naïve/silly questions or expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, some of the most “successful” ideas I have had came while answering questions, for example from a PhD student or colleague, and replying by “no, it doesn't work like that… in fact, it's probably always guaranteed to be false, because… see, it's linked to X… or maybe it's not? hum…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be curious!&lt;/strong&gt; Ideas come from problems. Identifying worthy problems in your field of research, and dissecting larger issues into of specific problems of manageable scope, is at least as hard as coming up with new ideas. In the end my feeling is that, especially for a researcher, all ideas are the result of one’s curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage to get some free time for thinking (and not: teaching, supervising, tutoring, reviewing, writing, sleeping, …). Body and mind. Sure, an idea can pop into your head any time, but it's probably less likely to happen when you teach basic calculus all day that when you get some time to really &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Know your field, know where a new development need to occur, what is currently missing. Read review papers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.phds.org/2007/1/24/getting-research-ideas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search for such ideas through people's articles or blog posts&lt;/a&gt;, discuss with senior colleagues who have a comprehensive view of the field, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the ways you can come with ideas is by analyzing how different groups work in your fields, seeing what has been addressed and avoided, what big questions are still open, and how you can link between different works to build a coherent global picture… This is not always successful, but it usually generates some good ideas along the way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explore more or less closely related fields, and see if there is something from &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; background that you could apply to &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problems, or ways you could build something together. Such ideas tend to be very strong, because you can oftentimes apply an entire branch of knowledge (ideas, methods, algorithms, etc.) to a very different problem. In that case, the added value comes from your &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; perspective, as you might try things that others would not think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ways have been devised to come up with new ideas on a given topic, either alone or in group sessions. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brainstorming&lt;/a&gt; is probably the best know such method (and might be the most popular, in one form or another), but a really large number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_technique&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;creativity techniques&lt;/a&gt; have been developed. They can be applied both to enhance creativity or to boost problem solving efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Organizing ideas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote often attributed to Kant: &lt;em&gt;“someone’s intelligence can be measured by the quantity of uncertainties that he can bear”&lt;/em&gt;. If that true, that has serious consequences for research. Accepting that your mind can only efficiently support a finite number of ongoing research ideas, you have to come up with ways to write them down, organize them, prioritize them, come back to them later, etc. Just as you cannot juggle with as many balls as you'd like, such “external” tools will help your brain focus on the ones that you assign high priority (or the ones to which &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; gives high priority; the brain works in funny ways).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people use very low-tech tools for that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgu.edu/pages/900.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Notebooks&lt;/a&gt;, either sorted chronologically or thematically; in the later case, open a series of blanks pages for each new project/idea, and flip through the book whenever you want to check on them. I use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moleskine.com/us/collections/model/product?id=61152&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moleskine&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moleskine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WP&lt;/a&gt;) for that purpose; having a nice, leather-bound notebook somehow helps me “value” it more and treat it with care (always have it with me, actually use it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post-it’s scattered through one’s (real or virtual) desktop. Downsides are obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More people than I thought actually don't use any tools, and just keep all in their mind. Apparently it can be done, but I don't advise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more complicated methodologies have been devised, that are supposed to help you with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-mapping&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mind mapping&lt;/a&gt;, either on paper or software-based.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using todo-list flat or two-dimensional todo-list software, or more complex task-tracking software (see, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The software side of this question is already covered (though possibly not extensively) &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4820/is-there-any-software-or-tools-for-managing-developing-research-ideas/5854#5854&quot;&gt;here on this very Q&amp;amp;A site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't underestimate the possibilities opened by delegating: people in charge of a specific project or sub-project (PhD students or post-docs) can be tasked with maintaining a list of ideas by all contributors of the project, to come to later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to your miscellaneous smaller questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most ideas are hardly “traceable” to one source or another. A given idea might have formed in my head during a conference, seeing how people were failing to address a certain issue, then crystallized during a discussion with colleagues, but would never have occurred to me if not for a literature review I had performed a few months before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'll come back a bit later and continue working on this answer :)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T10:57:18.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:01:09.637" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address two points in your question (the overall question is quite broad):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day&lt;/em&gt;: If you've worked on enough problems, you amass a collection of tools and mental shorthands that you can apply to a new problem. It's a matter of experience. You also might see someone else's paper and realize that they are doing something in a clumsy way and you have learnt a better way to do it, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry too much about this: it's a matter of time and experience, and will happen on its own. You're not evaluated on the number of ideas you have in any case. You might want to check how many of these ideas are actually good ones :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas?&lt;/em&gt;: When you're first staring at a problem, it can be intimidating and difficult. While there's no single strategy for getting a &amp;quot;leg up&amp;quot;, some useful techniques (and these might be very math/CS specific) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;simplify the problem&lt;/strong&gt;: can you solve a simpler version ? if not, can you simplify even further ? Often, finding the largest solvable element starts to get your mind rolling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;pattern match&lt;/strong&gt;: does this problem look like something related that has been solved ? can you borrow a method from there ? if not, why not ? again, the goal is to get your mind off the &amp;quot;ZOMG THIS PROBLEM IS TEH HARD&amp;quot; and onto &amp;quot;Here's a tiny piece that I can chew on&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure others will have useful ideas as well. Ultimately, you'll find that getting ideas isn't the problem: it's getting GOOD ideas that is hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T22:01:09.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1950" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:54:20.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't get experience serving on a grant proposal review panel as a grad student.  Sorry; that's just how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; other ways to get experience with the grant proposal process.  The number-one way: talk to your advisor/PI and ask them.   In particular, ask them if you can be involved with the next grant proposal they write.  Ask them how you can help.  Maybe you can read a draft and offer comments.  Maybe you can brainstorm with them.  Maybe they can outline a piece of it and you can try writing a draft of a section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can ask to see copies of past proposals they've submitted (both funded and unfunded).  After you read the proposals, you can ask your advisor for his/her own assessment of the proposal, and even ask to see the reviews of those submissions from review panel, compare to your own assessment, and use this feedback to improve your knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quals proposals are another great form of practice at this sort of thing; they require some similar skills.  Spend time on your quals proposal and try to make it outstanding.  Read other great quals proposals.  Offer to give feedback to your fellow students on their quals proposals.  Learn as much as you can from that process, as some of those lessons will carry over to help you write better grant proposals.  Similarly, getting good at writing a research statement (for a job application or a fellowship application) is a useful skill that has some overlap at formulating and writing grant proposals.  Of course, these are not the same as proposal-writing, but the experience will serve you well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T22:54:20.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T23:08:17.910" Score="8" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NSF has recently released &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/index.jsp&quot;&gt;a new version of their Proposal &amp;amp; Award Policies and Procedures Guide&lt;/a&gt;, releasing their previous guides.  (See their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/index.jsp&quot;&gt;Dear Colleague Letter&lt;/a&gt;.)  This contains a number of changes to the policies regarding grant proposal reviews and ongoing reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is unclear to me whether any of these are likely to be significant in practice for PIs; many of them sound primarily bureaucratic in nature.  The list of changes seems like it was written by a bureaucrat and seems likely to be of interest only to a bureaucrat, and of modest relevance to PIs (e.g., it might change a few section headings in proposals to comply with the new requirements, but not make any fundamental changes to what we propose or how we do research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these changes significant enough that PIs should be paying serious attention to them?  Are there any changes that are important enough that they would make a substantive change to how we write proposals or do research or interact with the NSF, and if so, which changes are those, and what will their impact be?  In short, if a colleague of yours (a fellow PI) asked you what the impact of these changes will be, are there any changes that rise high enough that you would highlight them as important to be aware of? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T20:03:51.900" Title="Are there any changes in NSF proposals/awards processes that are likely to be of special interest/relevance to PIs?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5839" CreationDate="2012-12-19T06:48:12.467" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to graduate, i.e. to get the masters degree awarded to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a roadblock which prevents you from reaching the goal - your supervisor keeps on delaying and postponing your defense date. The reason you stated is that he is taking long periods of time between revisions due to nit-picky grammars errors on the draft of your master thesis. You are asking this question on this board to seek advices on what to do. One of your questions is: should you let him know you're angry or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer your questions by asking you a question first, do you think letting him know you're angry will work? Do you think he will sign on your thesis after you tell him you are angry? Or the situation will become even worse after you express your anger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is the latter - the situation will be even worse. The supervisor is responsible for the quality of the student's thesis. You said in one of your comments, &quot;he doesn't seem to understand the meat of it.&quot; No supervisor would put his signature on a thesis he does not understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading your question a couple of times, I think your English writing is not bad. I cannot say how good the writing of your thesis is because I never read it. If there are any grammar errors, it would take you only days to fix them, not months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the problem? I think there is obviously a communication issue. You said you sent him many e-mails(in one of your comments). No avail. You think he did not give you enough time. I believe there should be ways to talk to him. For example, make an appointment on his calendar and say you need to talk to him to address your concerns. He is your supervisor after all. He would have to give you some time no matter how busy he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what are you going to say in that meeting? Are you going to say you want to graduate, your bank account will dry out, you already spent three years for your masters degree, etc.? Those are your personal issues, not his concern. He is not your parent. He does not care how much money is left in your bank. What he does care is the quality of the thesis. I do believe that he will sign off on your thesis &lt;strong&gt;once he is convinced that your thesis is of good quality.&lt;/strong&gt; Now, we are coming back to your question, why he keeps nit-picking the grammar errors? I think there is something between you and him. I, as an outsider, can only guess. A supervisor/advisor is more like a coach. Every coach has his own style. Some would not directly tell you what to do. Instead, he would make you re-read and re-write the thesis to make it more understandable and better. Is he that kind of supervisor? I don't know. What I do believe is, he wants a good thesis. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update after seeing OP's comment&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The OP put in a comment in response to Jase's question &lt;em&gt;So how does your supervisor respond to those e-mails?&lt;/em&gt;, OP says &lt;em&gt;With progress reports and updates, like, &quot;I'm halfway through this chapter&quot;, but I find he basically skimmed it when I get it back.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is, have a presentation for him. It can be just half hour to an hour long. Pretend you're having a defense. Give him the meat of your thesis. So that he won't need to spend that much time to find them in the thesis draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="4385" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T07:19:38.790" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T07:19:38.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-19T08:02:52.113" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you, when presented with anything related to your research, routinely ask, &quot;Why is that?  How can I tell if that is the case?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, try doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, you probably won't be short on ideas.  Your problem will be sorting the good ones from the bad ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start asking &quot;Is this important?  How can I explain why it is important?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T08:02:52.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T10:33:11.787" Score="6" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1680/dressing-etiquette-for-interviews-in-academia&quot;&gt;Dressing etiquette for interviews in academia&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been invited for a PhD interview day at an institution in the US. I was just wondering how formal/informal these interview days are. I know I will be meeting a few professors for which I have expressed interest. I definitely do not want to be underdressed but also I do not want to overdoit. Especially because I have noticed in my field ecology/biology the dress code is quite loose. (I remember this colleague of mine that would come to work with a shirt full of paint stains because he was painting his house, that cracked me up every time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would nice pants, a buttoned shirt, and elegant black sneakers be good enough? Should I wear a blazer as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T10:33:11.787" Title="How to dress for PhD interview at US institution" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-12-19T12:15:53.993" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5869" CreationDate="2012-12-19T10:40:53.840" Score="14" ViewCount="2646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told that at an interview session for PhD admission I will be meeting each professor I am interested in for about half hour. I was wondering what generally is been discussed. I imagine it would be mostly how my interests are related to the professor's research and why I am interested in his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to prepare for these interviews? Should I read two or three publications for each professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On what am I being judged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T14:44:48.093" Title="How to prepare and what is discussed with professors at a PhD interview session? US application" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5871" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:12:07.870" Score="68" ViewCount="13473" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends submitted a paper to a reputable communications journal and received some reviews a week back. The paper was rejected, but the review comments were abysmal: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The language was so bad in one of them that it was difficult to understand what the reviewer was hinting at. Besides, the comments pertained to trivial things like naming of axes and there was no comment on (or understanding of) the overall work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second of the three reviewers rejected the paper in one line saying it was impossible for him/her to understand what the paper aimed at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third reviewer appreciated the paper and its results and made good suggestions for improving the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor-in-charge has rejected the paper since the vote was 2/3 in favour of that, but my friend feels hard done as he feels the two reviewers did not merit to review the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What recourse does an author have if his paper is rejected by a reputable journal, but the review comments indicate a serious lack of understanding of the paper's work? Should the author write his/her grievance to an editor higher in the hierarchy (an associate editor, for example)? Or is ditching the journal and submitting it to somewhere else the only solution?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T08:18:37.057" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T10:08:45.663" Title="What to do if reviewers reject a paper without understanding the content?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5865" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:47:06.613" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first course of action is to reply to the editor who made the decision. Write to them, say that you are willing to improve the manuscript for publication given some guidance from the referees, but the judgement by referee #2 seems a bit rash and not thoroughly justified. Possibly, send to them a revised version of the manuscript, taking into account comments made so far, and ask them to reconsider their decision. You can also hint that you would like them to send the (revised) manuscript to yet another reviewer (some editors have the concept of an “adjudicating” reviewer, even though the editor should actually ne the adjudicator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second avenue to try, if the first one does not succeed, is to ask the matter to be escalated to the associate editor (or senior editor, or arbitration committee…). The exact procedure will be indicated in the journal’s instruction to authors, but usually one way is simply to ask the corresponding editor to forward it. For example, at the end of your email from step #1 asking for him to reconsider his decision, you could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We strongly believe that you might find our revisions and this justification sufficient to consider our paper for publication in &lt;em&gt;XXXX&lt;/em&gt;. If that is not the case, we would like this matter to be escalated to an Associate Editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that it's somewhat of a strong option, because people usually don't change their mind very easily, and they don't like to prove their colleagues wrong. So, one option you really have to consider is simply publishing your paper in another journal. At least, sketch something like a risk/benefit analysis before appealing the editor’s decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T11:47:06.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:13:31.690" Score="31" ViewCount="10053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently reading a paper on which the author list had an interesting twist: both the first and second author had an asterisk next to their name, with the footnote &quot;these authors contributed equally.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about the practical implications of such a scenario. Obviously, one is listed first and one is listed second (in this case, alphabetical, by last name), and that's how it'll be displayed in citations. However, can the second listed author—who is supposed to be given equal weight to first author regarding credit—list their name first on their CV, even though its listed differently in the journal? Are there any other implications I'm not considering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T14:08:29.067" Title="Practical implications of noting &quot;equally contributing authors&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5867" CreationDate="2012-12-19T14:08:29.067" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would see such a step as a clear indication of authors contributions &lt;strong&gt;for the record&lt;/strong&gt;, so as to make sure this gets accepted as truthful also in the future during promotions, job applications, etc. Technically speaking, in a CV one can write stuff even dishonestly disregarding co-authors (e.g., arbitrarily indicating the percentage of own contribution). This  kind of public indication of the contribution tackles the problem once and forever. In some fields the alphabetical order is a standard (mathematicians I know have that as almost a strict rule) and then you need a tool to make your contribution visible. Especially if your name is at your disadvantage in this game. E.g., when you are called Zhang and co-author paper often with some Adams or so. Also, if alphabetic order is desired for whatever reason and the more senior co-author happens to precede the student who did the actual work, such an indication might be desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is, some journals require such an explicit indication. E.g., Nature does that, although the statement of individual contribution comes as a paragraph at the end of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some national schemes for evaluation of research output require such an indication made in a publication archive system. Having it included in the paper also indicates that authors try to avoid any future disputes regarding individual contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T14:08:29.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5864" CreationDate="2012-12-19T14:44:48.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, the point of the interview is two-fold: to help the professor to judge whether you are smart and have potential (two separate things), and to help you judge whether you want to spend the next 4+ years working with this guy as your boss. To that extent, you're being judged on your &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt;, which means you need to show excitement about his research (in that you've read about it and are familiar with it, see below), and lots of enthusiasm. Knowing your stuff is also helpful so you don't look like an idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, you'll discuss your undergrad work, you'll be asked about your familiarity with the professor's research (basic familiarity goes a long way here), and you'll be told about his current research work. Different professors have wildly different interview styles, so it can be anything from conversational to almost exam-like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to prepare would be exactly as you suggest; read two or three papers from that professor. I would recommend choosing one with a recent publication date (i.e., within the past 12 months) and the one he has with the most citations. Different search tools allow you to find that for different fields; for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.macropus.org/hubmed/&quot;&gt;hubmed&lt;/a&gt; allows that for biology/medicine fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T14:44:48.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5872" CreationDate="2012-12-19T16:46:59.673" Score="7" ViewCount="1429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have BS in Biotech, an MS in Neuroscience and applying MD-Phd next June. I have always wanted to go into academia and eventually establish my own lab. However, I have been receiving a lot of critical feedback about MD-Phd programs. Suggesting that to be a good Physician, you don't need a PhD, and good PhDs don't need the MD. That most MSTP graduates end up utilizing only one degree. I was under the impression to do good translation research--an MD-PhD would be the best option. What are the befits/disadvantages of applying MD-PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the faculty I would like to work with, already. Would contacting them improve my chances during the application process?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1612" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T19:58:18.397" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T19:58:18.397" Title="MD-Phd (MSTP): What are the benefits?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5865" CreationDate="2012-12-19T17:26:43.407" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;F'x has ably covered one possible reason: that it's not you, it's them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to cover the other side of things. That is, starting from the assumption that the editor has made a good decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors should consider rewriting the abstract and introduction. If two peer reviewers didn't understand the paper, the paper may just need a savage reworking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors may also wish to try working with a freelance development editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the authors might want to bring on board a co-author who's been frequently published: I expect that many decent-sized, decent-quality departments have at least one person whose quality of writing leads to get manuscripts getting accepted first time, pretty much every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then submit to a different journal. I don't know the field, but I'm willing to speculate that there are a few reputable journals where the article could be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T18:36:37.160" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T18:36:37.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5870" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:52:09.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing good translational research is hard because it requires a good understanding of clinical issues (both from the patient and carer sides) and a strong research background. In order to obtain those skills you need to spend time in the clinic and time in the lab. An MD-PhD program guarantees that you will have the opportunity to spend time in both environments. It is worth noting that having that opportunity doesn't mean you will capitalize on it. Further, you don't need to do an MD-PhD to have that opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage of some MD-PhD programs is that you can get funding for the MD side. If it is what you want to do, saving 100k USD isn't a bad thing. If it isn't what you want, trading a few years of an MD salary for 100k is a bad investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T18:52:09.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:05:44.300" Score="6" ViewCount="1655" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the significance of undergraduate grades (2.6/4.0) after 5 years of work experience. Do they still carry a value? If your job is not research oriented, e.g. for me I am a software developer on various enterprise Java technologies, how should I project myself to admission committees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your suggestions for me? Getting non degree classes BEFORE APPLYING etc.? Currently, I am in Turkey and I want to enter US Job Market possibly after a MS CS, but if I like I can continue with a Ph.D. So I am an international applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4395" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T20:10:41.850" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T20:10:41.850" Title="Grades and years after graduation" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:55:54.210" Score="16" ViewCount="5274" Body="&lt;p&gt;The head of our department is writing a letter of recommendation for me for MD-PhD (MSTP) programs. I have two graduate level classes with him. He is very busy and writes letters regularly for students. I want to make sure that he does not end up using a canned letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be sending him my C.V., Cover Letter, and letter of intention. What else should I provided? He knows me in a classroom setting--I have not done research in his lab.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1612" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T05:15:17.763" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T06:04:46.177" Title="Letters of recommendation: what information to give to a recommender" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5874" CreationDate="2012-12-19T21:11:34.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send him information about the program and department you are applying to. Also ask him/her if they might know someone in the department you are applying to. It might be beneficial to name that contact person in the cover letter. Finally provide a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T21:11:34.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5877" CreationDate="2012-12-19T21:40:16.867" Score="15" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student at a fairly large university, and I have twice taught a 200 level course for my department. The course is a new course that I developed. All of the lecture and lab content for this course was developed from scratch. As I will be graduating shortly (&lt;em&gt;fingers crossed&lt;/em&gt;), a faculty member is scheduled to take over this course. My question is, &quot;should I pass my course content on to said faculty?&quot; I am primarily concerned about passing my slides on verbatim. Some issues I am concerned about are my indebtedness to the department (I developed some content while a TA and some while an adjunct.), ownership of the slides (What rights do I have to my content?), and distribution of content (How can I prevent the material from being further distributed?). I am interested in the issue of sharing content in general and not just in this one instance. Any guidance is much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit - as a colleauge of mine pointed out, I think there is a power imbalance issue as well. The faculty at my university are generally disinclined to share material with graduate students. Most grad students have to develop their own content. On the other hand, grad students are being asked to pass on material to faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4397" LastEditorUserId="4397" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T23:34:47.430" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:42:51.707" Title="How should course content be shared between instructors?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5876" CreationDate="2012-12-19T22:09:09.900" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, you should certainly pass over all course material&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My colleague took over a course from another colleague who had left. My colleague know much less about the subject than the one who had left, so putting together a good course was a challenge for him. In theory, he had passed over all course material, but in practice, it was not very well organised, and my colleague ended up having to build it mostly from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have probably experienced, the first time you give a course is &lt;strong&gt;by far&lt;/strong&gt; the most work, because you have to create everything from scratch. It helps enormously to have access to earlier course material. You lose very little by giving away course material. It's probably not publishable anyway — and if it is, passing it on to the next doesn't disqualify you from publishing it as a review or textbook, because passing it on is not a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only situation I can imagine where it would be problematic is if the person who you pass it on to claims it as their own and incorporates it in a review paper or textbook. But if you have any trust for the person, they won't do that, and it's much better to simply make all the course material available. Probably for the entire world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T22:09:09.900" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5876" CreationDate="2012-12-19T22:15:54.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases, ownership may be defined in your contract. In the US, intellectual property law usually assigns ownership of works created during the course of expected duties of employment to the employer. The employee may or may not retain ownership, depending on the contract that was signed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your institution may also have ownership over all course materials, since you created them while you were an employee doing expected duties (teaching). Thus, they can do whatever they want with them, including assigning, licensing, or selling their ownership. Your ownership, however, would remain intact, if you had ownership. Your ownership cannot be reassigned or sold without your permission or under court order. You may have already give permission waiving ownership by signing your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T22:15:54.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5883" CreationDate="2012-12-20T06:44:05.600" Score="32" ViewCount="1361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am starting my PhD in Computer Science next semester in a relatively small department (around 20 faculty members). I have been to the university a few times and I noted the collaboration among students is minimal. My prospective supervisor, most likely, is willing to help me in any research activity I propose that will increase the number of projects and publications with collaboration among students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I am asking for different suggestions/tips of activities one can do or propose to increase the collaboration and the knowledge exchange among students/faculty members.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is on two levels:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;1. What activities/set ups can a PhD student do/propose at the group level?&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. between you and other students with the same supervisor). FYI, the group is around 10 students. My supervisor is going to set up a group presentation every two weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. What activities/proposals/set ups can one suggest at the departmental level?&lt;/strong&gt;  (I was thinking of a weekly talk over coffee for graduate students in the department.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T20:16:11.027" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T15:16:11.397" Title="Any suggestions to create and maintain a good research atmosphere" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-20T07:12:53.170" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is some things I found useful:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attending public seminars at the department could spark nice&#xA;ideas (even if it seems not related to your research). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chatting with other graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading deeply with &lt;strong&gt;why?&lt;/strong&gt; in mind. This means reading a lot and also means stopping more than usual in the assumptions hypothesis and results for different papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read future work and conclusions of the papers. Some papers have a real list of future research ideas. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capture the Big Picture. This usually will result in many &lt;strong&gt;whys&lt;/strong&gt; for what you encountered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask Questions&lt;/strong&gt;.. Even what seems as silly and fundamental questions for some can be the key for good ideas. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T07:12:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5828" CreationDate="2012-12-20T07:18:14.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every PhD should at least exhibit explicit &lt;em&gt;contributions&lt;/em&gt; and some &lt;em&gt;validation&lt;/em&gt; of them. The devil is in the details, but you can start from those two dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T07:18:14.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-20T08:43:22.170" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be open/curious to what related disciplines are doing. In some you'll see that the way they solve their problems could also applied to your field but hasn't been tried yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4401" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T08:43:22.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-12-20T09:08:44.263" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many group-binding activities that you can imagine… I’ll try to list just a few ideas specific to an academic setting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_club&quot;&gt;Journal club&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, the obvious choice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Friday’s coffee and pastries&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;Tuesday’s four o’ clock tea&lt;/strong&gt; sessions, followed by flash updates (news from the group, recent awards, publications, maybe one existential technical question that someone raises, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graduate students seminars&lt;/strong&gt;: organizing seminars specifically tailored for graduate students (but inviting all those who may want to come, of course). Possible topics include early career path presentation and advice, motivational speakers (e.g. Jorge Cham from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/speaking.php&quot;&gt;PhD comics&lt;/a&gt; fame), teaching skills (for TA’s), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage participation in group life: elect students’ representative to lab council or other local boards, hold regular meetings to talk about the practical aspects of your life, organize activities centered around your office space (cleaning day, fire safety day, first responder training).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participate in competitions in (or near) your field, if there are any (competitions, olympiads, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All events, even if some seem only remotely relevant to the pursuit of your academic happiness, will increase group cohesion and maintain a good research atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all such events, favour informal settings and try to take as little time as possible. People already have heavy schedules, and they can make room for small activities but probably not a weekly two-hours setting. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_bag_seminar&quot;&gt;Brown bag seminar&lt;/a&gt; is one way of achieving this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T09:08:44.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-12-20T09:33:25.720" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started working in a small lab a few months ago. I don't know if the way our lab is functioning is &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; or even &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;, but I like it, it works for me and I feel good here, so let me explain the lab dynamic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to give some context, the lab is so small that the division to project teams (although it exists) does not make sense for any informal activity. At any given time, there is 7 - 10 PhD students in the lab, maybe 1 or 2 exchange students/interns, and we have some PhD students that are in the lab only a day or two a week. Also, the lab is almost circular, all the offices are very close and we have a habit working with open office doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common topic denominator among all of us is &quot;Computer Science&quot; (very broad), although each of us can find one or two more student-people working a similar topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that &lt;strong&gt;it's much easier for me to talk science to somebody I feel comfortable having a beer and a few laughs with as well&lt;/strong&gt;. Not saying that you have to get your lab drunk, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in the morning, &lt;strong&gt;the first one in makes the coffee&lt;/strong&gt;, and we linger in the lab-kitchen for 20-30 minutes until our eyes are open. Everybody is free to join, heavy coffee drinkers are almost always there, while the others wander in from time to time. Sometimes even the senior researchers have coffee with us.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we all &lt;strong&gt;go to lunch together&lt;/strong&gt; (partially cause we all have partially refunded meals in that resto). We have a guy who talks much and eats slow, so by the time everybody finishes, we usually spend a quality 30-40 minutes talking. We also do a &lt;em&gt;coffee after lunch&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When &lt;strong&gt;somebody's leaving the lab&lt;/strong&gt;, we try to buy some trinkets (last time it was 1euro/person), organize &lt;strong&gt;small going away &quot;party&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in the lab with juice and cookies, and &lt;strong&gt;dinner followed by drinks&lt;/strong&gt; in the evening. Food setting is more inviting to the shy students, and after that the outgoing ones go have a few pints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students sometimes just &lt;strong&gt;wander in other student's offices&lt;/strong&gt; (usually in the lazy afternoon hours) for a few words. This habit is nice because you feel less uneasy when you stroll into somebodies office to talk science, cause you're practically doing the same thing. As a less imposing version, we sometimes just &lt;strong&gt;wave to each other while passing&lt;/strong&gt; in front of the office.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When we have organized (boring) activities / administrative seminars / things that finish early, especially out of the lab, we try to go &lt;strong&gt;sit for drinks&lt;/strong&gt; if we have time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the only nice idea &lt;em&gt;specifically targeted for professional exchange&lt;/em&gt; we did was organize a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;PhD students day&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; where we all presented our subjects in very basic streaks, from 10 - 15 minutes, so that everybody would know which students are working on interesting problems (for them).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;every project team has &lt;strong&gt;team meetings at their own pace&lt;/strong&gt;, where we present our current research, recently accepted papers, exchange students present their topics or students that went to an exchange present what they did. My team does it usually two times a month, in a fairly casual setting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I mentioned all this &lt;em&gt;procrastinating&lt;/em&gt;, let me say something that's always been true for me among Computer Science people wherever I went (studied in Croatia, Austria and now France, and had some holidays with CS people): &lt;strong&gt;you can't stop computer scientists talking about tech&lt;/strong&gt;. Tech talk bleeds through beer, we eat some of it for lunch and drink it in our coffee. When we're happy about our work, we feel comfortable enough to share it with people around us. When we're angry and stuck, we are all around people who saw us in various kinds of settings, so we don't feel that uncomfortable being grumpy and complaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, for some more context: I'm a PhD student in France. I have a feeling that the work environment here is much much more relaxed that in the States, and than a lot of European countries as well. They seem to believe that if you do everything slowly and relaxed (except a day before a deadline), you will do a good job. So, my advice might be only applicable to similar work cultures, but I still think there's some good things there, because, at the end of the day, we all enjoy our times in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T10:11:22.520" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T10:11:22.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-12-20T10:13:41.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I should be contributing to a list like this, but other people seem to think it's okay, so... in addition to what has been suggested in other answers, one thing that I've found quite useful is to have a small research discussion group among the PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this works is that you get about 10-15 students together from different fields within the department, to meet every week or every other week for an hour or less. At each meeting, one of the group will talk about his or her recent research. These talks are normally &quot;beyond informal&quot; in the sense that no prior preparation at all is expected; effectively, you're just explaining what you do to your friends. It works best when the &quot;audience&quot; members feel free to ask any stupid questions that may occur to them, which means two things: it's ideal if the people meeting already know each other in a non-academic context, and also important to do it without faculty involvement so that nobody is tempted to try to impress a professor. Having students from a variety of different fields of research means that you can expect to have some pretty basic questions at each presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T10:13:41.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2012-12-20T10:38:34.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should figure out the reason behind your procrastination and set up a time management to overcome it. You're an engineering student, you should engage yourself to an organization and create projects and portfolio, it'll would make you more productive and it'll help you gain network of friends and develop your skills. Find the motivation to do this and I’m sure it'll be easy for you to overcome procrastination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4403" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T10:38:34.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5873" CreationDate="2012-12-20T12:31:19.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much grades matter depends on the institution you apply to. The larger the department or company, the &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; grades will matter, because they will likely be used as an initial screening criterion to &quot;whittle down&quot; the pool. A GPA below 3.0 is not going to help, and at some places, will earn you an instant rejection, work after graduation notwithstanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the review is &quot;holistic,&quot; and you have outstanding letters from your recommenders, then the impact of the GPA may be lessened. (It will not be completely overlooked, but at the least it won't be a criterion for &quot;bouncing&quot; you without further consideration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also point out that after graduating, depending upon who you work for, your GPA may still matter. At a start-up or small company, it may not be such a big deal, but I've worked for several large-scale employers who had rather strict GPA cutoffs (well above 3.0 for both undergraduate &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; graduate degrees!). If you were way under this level, it was just not in the hiring manager's interest to spend the time necessary to defend the hire, versus selecting a candidate with a better record. So you may be able to overcome your academic record, but you won't be able to bury it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T12:31:19.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5896" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:31:06.333" Score="21" ViewCount="1240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about a “young researcher award” recently being attributed in my field to a colleague who is 40 years old (and has had a permanent research position for 12 years now). It may be viewed as borderline ridiculous, so I must ask: in this context, how young is typically “young”? For the purpose of this special projects/grants/awards, how do research and funding organizations define “young”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T20:25:25.737" Title="How young is typically “young”?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:36:57.260" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The EU has the program &lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-open/ye_en.html&quot;&gt;FET OPEN Young Explorers&lt;/a&gt;, where young is defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project must be led by a young researcher, and the leadership by young researchers of all work packages is also required. No more than six years should have elapsed between the award of a Ph.D. (or equivalent) for each such young researcher and the date of submission of the short proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen postdoc position reserved for people who obtained their PhD less than 5 years ago, but I can't find the reference back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T14:36:57.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:40:41.237" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Young&quot; does in fact have many different connotations. For example, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://erc.europa.eu/starting-grants&quot;&gt;ERC Starting Grant&lt;/a&gt; program, applicants can have been out of graduate school for as many as &lt;em&gt;twelve&lt;/em&gt; years before applying as a &quot;Starter&quot; (or &quot;Consolidator&quot;). So technically, they're still &quot;young,&quot; according to that program, but not what we would normally think of as &quot;young.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, &quot;young&quot; can refer in terms of age (in which case I've normally seen the cutoff be about 35 or so), or in terms of relative experience in the field (typically five years, although it can be shorter or longer, depending on the field or country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T14:40:41.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5873" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:44:06.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add a few points to aeismail's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your work experience counts as positive or negative &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; depends on where you apply.  You express interest in a PhD, which suggests that you are aiming for a research masters degree (with a thesis) and not a professional masters degree (just more classes).  These two degrees are &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/222/65&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; different&lt;/a&gt;.  For admission to a &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; MS program, your non-research work experience is unlikely to count in your favor.  Your work experience is much more likely to help if you apply to a professional MS program.  On the other hand, professional MS degrees are usually considered terminal, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; as preparation for PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to move from industry to a research degree program with a low GPA and industry experience—&lt;a href=&quot;http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/03/re_phd_with_low.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I did it myself&lt;/a&gt;—but you will need strong evidence in your application that counteracts your low grades.  Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You shold take the GRE — both the general and the CS subject test — &lt;strong&gt;and do &lt;em&gt;really, really&lt;/em&gt; well&lt;/strong&gt;, at least in the 80th percentile.  This is direct evidence that you're &lt;em&gt;smart&lt;/em&gt; and that you know the field, counteracting the negative evidence in your transcript.  If you take the GRE and &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; do well, step back, study hard for a few months, and take it again.  (Yes, this can get expensive.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your recommendation letters must imply &lt;strong&gt;strong potential for research aptitude&lt;/strong&gt;, not just your coding ability or your ability to work in a team.  You need to tell your letter-writers to address this issue directly; otherwise, they almost certainly won't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you should consider applying to take courses as a non-degree student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T14:44:06.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:29:16.500" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In economics, the most prestigious award outside the nobel prize is probably the John Bates Clark Medal (most winners go on to eventually receive the Nobel too). It is awarded biannually to only one person, so in a sense is even more prestigious than the Nobel (which is awarded annually to typically more than 1); to who is deemed the leading 'young' researcher under 40. So 40 as a cutoff for 'young' doesn't surprise me much, but there are obviously no hard rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T20:19:08.503" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T20:19:08.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-20T17:51:56.977" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Fields medal also has an age cutoff of 40 (Andrew Wiles being the most recent example of someone who missed the age cutoff for an otherwise sure award). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grant agencies usually define &quot;young&quot; in terms of &quot;years since Ph.D&quot;, or &quot;years in academic position&quot; with the typical cutoff being 6 or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that while for most things*, 40 might not be considered &quot;young&quot;, in many disciplines you might only get your first academic position near that age (especially in biology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;  * politics being the other venue where 40 would be considered young :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T10:29:42.887" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T10:29:42.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-20T21:32:06.957" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1934356050&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware&lt;/a&gt; by Andy Hunt.  This book has some very good tips for coming up with ideas, research or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4405" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T21:32:06.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-21T07:19:51.297" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some awards presented to people aged 35 and below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.a-star.edu.sg/tabid/443/default.aspx&quot;&gt;Young Scientist Awards&lt;/a&gt; of the Singapore National Academy of Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrf.eu/UsersAndScience/users_org/YoungScientistAward&quot;&gt;Young Scientist of the Year Award&lt;/a&gt; of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://csirhrdg.res.in/ysa1.htm&quot;&gt;Young Scientist Award&lt;/a&gt; of the Council of Scientific &amp;amp; Industrial Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmo.int/pages/about/awards/youngscientistsaward.html&quot;&gt;WMO Research Award for Young Scientists&lt;/a&gt; of the World Meteorological Organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://epdic13.grenoble.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article18&quot;&gt;Young Scientist Award&lt;/a&gt; of the European Powder Diffraction Conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more; just use a search engine to search for the terms &lt;em&gt;&quot;young scientist&quot; award 35&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar list of awards can be found with a search for &lt;em&gt;&quot;young scientist&quot; award 40&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T07:19:51.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2012-12-21T15:19:26.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes what is still considered &quot;young&quot; also depends on the specific situation of the individual: I've seen exceptions described in the areas of paternity leaves, compulsory military service, or receiving additional clinical training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4409" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T15:19:26.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-12-21T18:45:51.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few more points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as undergrad students, we had a campfire to celebrate the end of labwork/seminars/lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;now (on the teaching side) we have a campfire to celebrate the end of labwork/seminar/lectures.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(it usually includes some birthdays as well)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in one institute we had quite regularly after-work activities like a bike tour, going swimming, bowling, Xmas market etc. happened. They were &quot;scheduled&quot; every once in a while, so no problem if you'd like to come in general, but just not that day. You could just join in next time (however, next morning at coffee you'd of course hear what you did miss). This included everyone in the institute but the big boss. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Sometimes people signed up for university sports courses together.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:45:51.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2012-12-21T19:21:26.387" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I recommend Org mode? It's free software, and it was created by Carsten Dominik, an academic himself. Its focus is to help you maintain hierarchical notes and to-do lists, but it has &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/features.html&quot;&gt;a lot of other features&lt;/a&gt; that are useful for juggling large amounts of information, such as tags, links, many kinds of summary reports, and capture (a way to quickly add a note in the right place before you forget it), as well as many features useful for scientists in particular, like tables, spreadsheets, mathematical notation, export (as papers, slideshows, or websites), and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/v46/i03&quot;&gt;support for source code and reproducible research&lt;/a&gt;. Perhaps best of all, Org documents are text files, so you can munge them with standard Unix tools at whim. I've moved more and more of my workflow to Org since I started using it in 2010, and I regret nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org has a steep learning curve, which gets steeper if you aren't already a disciple of the Church of Emacs. But as I see it, getting used to Emacs is worth it even without Org mode, especially if you do a lot of programming. I was an Emacs zealot for years before I took up Org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4412" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T19:21:26.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5860" CreationDate="2012-12-21T19:55:31.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the top of a recent NSF Solicitation the following note exists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A revised version of the NSF Proposal &amp;amp; Award Policies &amp;amp; Procedures&#xA;  Guide (PAPPG), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf13001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSF 13-1&lt;/a&gt;, was issued on October 4, 2012 and is&#xA;  effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 14,&#xA;  2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please be aware that significant changes have been made to the PAPPG&#xA;  to implement revised merit review criteria based on the National&#xA;  Science Board (NSB) report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/2011/meritreviewcriteria.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Science Foundation's Merit Review&#xA;  Criteria: Review and Revisions&lt;/a&gt;. While the two merit review criteria&#xA;  remain unchanged (Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts), guidance&#xA;  has been provided to clarify and improve the function of the criteria.&#xA;  Changes will affect the project summary and project description&#xA;  sections of proposals. Annual and final reports also will be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A by-chapter summary of this and other significant changes is provided&#xA;  at the beginning of both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grant Proposal Guide&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/aag_sigchanges.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Award &amp;amp;&#xA;  Administration Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By my reading of the section in the PDF that lists the changes, the following might be of interest to PIs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter II.C.2.f(i)(c), Biographical Sketch(es), has been revised to rename the “Publications” section to “Products” and amend terminology and instructions accordingly. This change makes clear that products may include, but are not limited to, publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, a minor change to the Indirect Costs section w.r.t. international participants, a minor change in the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources listing, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A change in the definition of &quot;New Awardee&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter II, Introduction, has been modified regarding the period of time after which an organization is considered a “new awardee”. Organizations that have not had an active NSF award within the last five years (formerly two years) should be prepared to submit basic organization and management information and certifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior funding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter II.C.2.d, Project Description, has been revised to clarify that, in the Results from Prior NSF Support section, “prior” NSF support includes current NSF funding. This section also was updated to indicate that information should be included irrespective of whether or not the support was directly related to the proposal, or whether or not salary support was provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References Cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter II.C.2.e, References Cited, has been updated to specify that if there are no references cited, a statement to that effect should be included in this section of the proposal and uploaded into FastLane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And various other minor changes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T20:08:54.333" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T20:08:54.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5905" CreationDate="2012-12-21T23:42:14.973" Score="7" ViewCount="1028" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Originally I conceived of posting a &quot;Roadmap for researching x&quot; but I assume that would be too localized for this site.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; After much dilly-dallying, I have finally zoned in to pursue lifetime in Taoist research. I have studied mathematical philosophy, cultural anthropology, symbolic logic and enrolled in Eastern studies class for next semester. I understand the professor for latter class would be an excellent source of reference but currently semester is closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems facing:&lt;/strong&gt; As I learned in English class it is important to take copious notes during research even if it means 24 hours so I am currently photographing everything that pertains to Taoism. But due to the complex nature of the subject itself and the concept of &lt;em&gt;wu-wei&lt;/em&gt;, action in non-action, I am unsure as to how to approach research. I understand if I pursue degree in this field I should familiarize myself with the language and journals and pretty much everything that is related to it. This brings me to my original point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What would be a good strategy to do research on Taoism? Do I conceive of a thesis and work downwards from it? Or do I start from the scratch - so to speak- and bootstrap my way to a knowledge base. Problem with latter and given the complex nature is if I start with no thesis, then it would be an aimless wandering. But- then again, isn't that what Taoism is all about? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: In lieu of JeffE's comment below I am rephrasing the original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a research, is it a good idea to start with a working thesis as early as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="996" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T07:23:50.923" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T07:23:50.923" Title="Research approach for PhD thesis in Taoism: top down vs. bottom up" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-12-22T04:16:34.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I agree with JeffE. Both top down and bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Taoism, there is more - how proficient is your Chinese?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said &lt;em&gt;pursue lifetime in Taoist research&lt;/em&gt;. I am not sure you can do that without knowledge in Chinese language equivalent to at least masters degree in Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taoism is rooted from Laozi's original text &lt;em&gt;Daodejing&lt;/em&gt;. Reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Taoism&lt;/a&gt;. Most native Chinese speakers do not understand that text. If you want to conduct life time research in Taoism, that book is a must read and must understand. Without fully understanding that text, you are at best a second class researcher in Taoism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a native Chinese speaker. How much do I understand the text? Less than 5%. If I spend 20 years or more on it, I might be able to understand 80% of it. Actually, I am bluffing. Some people contribute his whole life in it and then claimed that he only understood less than half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T02:13:27.377" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T02:13:27.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5874" CreationDate="2012-12-22T05:14:33.300" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You won't find a better or more complete answer to this question than the one given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1777&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, by Professor David E. Keyes.  Here is the key paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely reference writers (for instance, well-known professors of core courses) are sought out by many well-qualified candidates. To ensure that such a writer is well primed to execute your reference efficiently, you should create a self-contained packet containing all the information the author will need to dispatch the reference in one sitting: (1) contact information for the recipient of the letter, (2) a description of the position and application closing date, (3) your own application essays and cover letter, (4) a resume, (5) relevant transcripts and scores, and (6) an explanation of the niche of the writer! It is very useful, as a reference writer, to receive a reminder along the following lines: &amp;quot;Professor Keyes, your letter will be the one that comments most authoritatively about my analytical ability, my promptness in completing projects, and my reasons for wanting to pursue X next fall. Remember that you gave me an A– in partial differential equations two years ago and it was your suggestion that led to my summer at Los Alamos with Y.&amp;quot; You should provide this packet in both hard and soft copy. Writers of lots of references maintain files that may be hard or soft, or both, and you should make it easy for those writers to locate your files quickly for subsequent updating and future requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some faculty write many dozens of letters of reference during peak months, and they may even ask candidates for sample text to be incorporated into letters, to ensure that they capture their niches. You should not be flustered at such a request, and should not be modest in complying. You should be aware, though, that your words will not pass directly into the delivered product; they will be used simply to get the author's juices flowing following the formulaic paragraphs of the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T05:14:33.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5860" CreationDate="2012-12-22T06:22:49.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there are no earth-shattering changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some minor changes that you may need to be aware of when you write a proposal, but they mostly come down to changes the titles of sections and that sort of thing.  They may affect some PIs, but for most PIs, the changes are primarily clarifications or modest bureaucratic tweaks.  For example, they are unlikely to change that way that grant review panels review proposals, or to change how you are allowed to spend the money that you receive in a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One change you'll notice is how you enter the summary page.  Instead of preparing a one-page summary page, you now will have to paste your text into three separate textboxes (project overview, intellectual merit, broader impacts), and the length limit is in characters rather than pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a great summary in the Chronicle of Higher Education: &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Dont-Underestimate-NSFs-New/136521/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Don't Underestimate NSF's New Grant-Submission Rules&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T20:03:51.900" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T20:03:51.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5912" CreationDate="2012-12-22T08:08:19.890" Score="17" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am I breaking some kind of rule if I'm adding the arxiv link to the bibitem for an article that's published in a journal? I thought obviously not until I noticed that (link to arxiv) and (page number in journal) are quite mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4416" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:44:04.890" Title="Refer to arxiv version?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5908" CreationDate="2012-12-22T09:33:50.583" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many copy editors will remove arXiv links to published papers, but usually they'll put them back in if you insist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T09:33:50.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5874" CreationDate="2012-12-22T11:44:11.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I agree to write a letter of recommendation for a student, I ask him/her for the information listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.hmc.edu/~orrison/recs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, including most of what David mentioned, as well as a self-assessment of the student's strengths and weaknesses and a list of long-term career goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T11:57:09.530" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T11:57:09.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5908" CreationDate="2012-12-22T11:51:57.060" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  I think giving the arxiv link is &lt;em&gt;fine&lt;/em&gt;.  One alternative is to have two bibitem entries, one for the journal version and another for the arxiv version.  I find it valuable to include the journal reference, because that shows that the article has been refereed (so its claims gain legitimacy).  But I also see the value of including the arxiv version, particularly if the journal is hard to access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T11:51:57.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-12-22T12:20:44.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't help at all specifically on the Taoism part, but as an answer to your final question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a research, is it a good idea to start with a working thesis as early as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are talking about a thesis, and posting here, so I presume you want to do research in academical environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, you have &lt;strong&gt;Bachelor and Master years&lt;/strong&gt; for establishing a &lt;strong&gt;broad knowledge base&lt;/strong&gt; and identifying your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start &lt;strong&gt;as a PhD student&lt;/strong&gt;, you get a &lt;strong&gt;research topic&lt;/strong&gt;, but since it is research, it is &lt;strong&gt;subject to changes&lt;/strong&gt;. The topic was defined before you actually immersed in the subject, so while you are working towards that goal while pursuing your thesis, the goal can change as you learn new things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and you really don't need to familiarize yourself &quot;with the language and journals and &lt;em&gt;pretty much everything&lt;/em&gt; that is related to it&quot; &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; pursuing a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; The precise names of stages and the line between &lt;em&gt;broad&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;focused&lt;/em&gt; research might be different elsewhere, but I think both phases should exist. In case you're aiming to start directly at a &quot;focused research&quot; phase, my (subjective) advice would be to take some time before to do some broad research on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T12:20:44.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5916" CreationDate="2012-12-22T19:01:04.207" Score="18" ViewCount="883" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an academic CV, how much information do you put in the education field for each degree (assume the person is a post-grad/early career)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 1: Degree, Specialization, Department, University, Year, Advisor, Thesis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ph. D.&lt;/strong&gt; in Foo science (2012) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some Named School of Science, University of Bar,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thesis: &lt;em&gt;Qux control in Baz networks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Advisor: J. Q. Public&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 2: Degree, Specialization, Department, University, Year&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ph. D.&lt;/strong&gt; in Foo science (2012) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some Named School of Science, University of Bar&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 3: Degree, Specialization, University, Year&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ph. D.&lt;/strong&gt; in Foo Engineering, University of Bar (2012)&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 4: Degree, University, Year&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ph. D.&lt;/strong&gt;, University of Bar (2012)&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often seen options 1 or 2 and in some cases, where there is a bigger body of work (publications, grants, etc.) to speak for the person than their degree, I've seen option 3. Option 4 is rarer, but one common trait among those that I've seen it with is that they are now working in a field different from what they did their PhD in and do not wish to bring attention to that (lest it hurt any chances). For example, a PhD in Physics now working in Computational Biology. I think CGPAs are pretty silly when it comes to research positions, but I'm not sure if I'm the only one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know what the expectations of the person seeing my CV are. I don't mean random visitors to my website or corporate HRs, but other academics who might be interested in working with me. Granted, if they're an academic, they'll probably focus on my publications more, but there's also &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; that's expected from a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T12:12:58.087" Title="How much info should I put in my CV under education" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5914" CreationDate="2012-12-22T23:04:02.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree that option 1 is the most likely option for someone who is just coming out of graduate school, and is looking to continue in the same field for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be listed when relevant—that is, if the program in which the degree is awarded is different from the specialization in some where. For instance, if your PhD is in engineering, but the department conferring it is materials science, you should say something like number 2, rather than number 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are many instances in which number 4 is very useful, because it looks like you're hiding what you did for a PhD. There are very few circumstances I can think of where this would work—except if the job call specifically required a degree from a particular subset of disciplines, to which you don't belong. But then something will probably come to light from the letters of recommendation, or from some other part of the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd stick with options 1 or 2, for the reasons I've outlined above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T23:04:02.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5908" CreationDate="2012-12-23T00:04:22.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, an arxiv version of a paper is different from a journal version. This can be a problem if you (for example) cite a particular theorem or lemma in a math paper that has a different number (or doesn't exist) in the arxiv version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention why you're adding the arxiv link. If you wish to add a link to a freely accessible document, then you could add a note in the text to that effect and cite the arxiv version in addition to the journal version. Otherwise, if you merely want a link to an online version, then you should be using the DOI link for the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:04:22.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5876" CreationDate="2012-12-23T00:42:51.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complementing the other answers, that are more specific to the text in your question (being a TA and giving up the material), I'll add how I &quot;roll&quot; as a faculty member with my teaching assistants after 10+ years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have amassed a lot of material for several of the first-year courses I was &quot;stuck with&quot; in the beginning. It's true that some academic tradition is to ask TAs to develop their own material without any sharing from faculty. Some faculty I have spoken with feel it's how a TA builds character; others say it's a way to see if a TA has potential as a researcher; others say it's simply &lt;em&gt;tradition&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, my courses are too important to have TAs test out their worth and possibly crash and burn due to lack of support (it happened once that the students revolted, and this problem fell back into my lap, being the faculty member in charge of the course). So I learned my lesson to hand over everything, with the caveat that the TA know the material in the books and not think of the material as being a &quot;pass&quot; at teaching the course. I always encourage TAs to re-do their presentation slides, only because presenting is a personal style, and it's risky to present someone else's material with confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I started sharing, one TA added some exercises that were well done, but he didn't want to give them back, saying it was his property and he was underpaid, etc. Fair enough, since I didn't state any expectations when I gave out my material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now I will give my material out to any new TAs who sign an informal contract (email response) saying that by accepting the material, they agree to improve on it (add exercises, examples, exam questions, multiple-choice questions, analyses, etc.) and render it back to the community (me). This has worked well with many TAs, and frankly the cooperation factor is very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another practical aspect: I ask TAs to cite sources of material they borrow (just as they do in their research reports). The course material is already full of citations, so it's natural. In the distant past, some undergrad students raised a stink (rightly!) about TAs who copy/paste figures/text from web sources without citing them in Powerpoint. In one case, a TA was fired because he wouldn't change this behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to share, today I'm using Google Drive (our school has the academic license). In the past I used Dropbox and both ways are very practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:42:51.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5914" CreationDate="2012-12-23T12:12:58.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would never use option 4 since the most important information (subject!) is missing and in my opinion it is more important than the school or the year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: Maybe a combination of the option 1-3 would be appropriate in such a sense that the latest degree is used with option 1 and the oldest degree is used with option 2 or 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: If you have a PhD and a Master degree in some subject, no one is interested in the name of your Bachelor Thesis or your advisor. People then are normally interested only if you did your Bachelor in the same subject and maybe in which year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T12:12:58.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-23T16:48:36.220" Score="18" ViewCount="2832" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be ethical for students working on the same team to include in their Ph.D. theses results arising from joint publications, ending up in different dissertations containing almost identical chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the students should at least mention that the common chapters are excerpted from a joint publication. However, wouldn't a significant overlap at least indicate that the students have been unable to come up with enough strong and coherent results to make their own independent dissertations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4423" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T07:24:08.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T07:24:08.490" Title="Are overlapping dissertations ethically acceptable?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2012-12-23T19:43:04.107" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think for a PhD thesis it is important the writer has enough original and new contributions to earn the PhD degree. When two PhD's work closely together, and write joint publications this can only work if it is clear that both PhD's have made new and significant contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a publication which has both lab experiments and numerical modeling it is easy to see that both the lab-PhD and the numerical-PhD have done different things, which are put together jointly into a publication. In this case I would think it ethical that both PhD's get their degree based on the same publications. If, however, the overlap is not countered by the fact that the PhD's each have their distinct niche, I would not find it ethical to let two people get their degree based on the same work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the PhD theses the publications could be used as such by both PhD, but they need to have a different introduction and synthesis chapter as they worked on different aspects of the joint papers. In addition, I would explain the situation and how the collaboration worked in the preface of both theses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T19:43:04.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2012-12-23T20:11:09.837" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check &lt;strong&gt;your department guideline&lt;/strong&gt;. In mine, only articles where the candidate is first author, and has accomplished most of the work (you need to provide letter signed by other authors) can be used. Also, it can only be used in one thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T20:11:09.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5925" CreationDate="2012-12-24T05:46:06.763" Score="14" ViewCount="1021" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where can I find a database of impact factors where self-citation has been removed? A journal's self-citations are defined as those citations by that journal's papers towards other papers in the same journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I want to know this is to know which journals are engaged in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6068/542&quot;&gt;coercive citation&lt;/a&gt; so that I know which journals I should avoid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="4315" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T03:35:27.493" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T16:47:42.237" Title="Where to find journal impact factors stripped of self-citation?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5949" CreationDate="2012-12-24T12:41:10.220" Score="13" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a student in a linguistics master's program (in East Asia). He told me that in his country, most master's programs require students to publish a certain number of papers in academic journals in order to graduate. I want to study a linguistics-related degree in the US. Is such a requirement common there as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the US, does &quot;thesis-option&quot; generally imply that one &quot;must publish a thesis to graduate&quot; or does it just mean &quot;must write a thesis&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are such publishing requirements common enough in graduate programs in the US that it should be a question I ask schools when I apply?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T22:45:36.107" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T22:24:24.670" Title="Is publishing a graduation requirement in many master's programs?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5923" CreationDate="2012-12-24T15:21:30.263" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update from March 2016&lt;/strong&gt;: it seems like ISI Knowledge offers citation counts with person-level self-citations taken out. Any of that should be treated as experimental, of course. Don't know if this could work for a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think any of the existing systems take out the self-citations. The publishers and journals are not interested in seeing reduced impact factors, so few editorial boards and fewer yet commercial publishers would be interested in anybody producing such rankings. If a discipline has its independent referencing and citations systems, they might be interested in such more objective analysis -- e.g., economists have their CitEc (Citations in Economics), a part of RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), which does track self-citations (see the 2012 Nobel prize winners, &lt;a href=&quot;http://citec.repec.org/p/r/pro40.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alvin Roth&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://citec.repec.org/p/s/psh559.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lloyd Shapley&lt;/a&gt; as examples... the first one has as many self-citations as the second one, total citations). I would venture a guess that mathematicians might have a similar system. But I doubt that natural or social sciences do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The high impact journals are obviously important for publishing, getting good academic jobs and getting tenured. However, impact factor may only tell a part of the story, and some disciplines have reputable journals that may not have the highest possible IFs. Let me take again economics as an example that I am familiar with. In most US departments, you'd get tenured if you have a paper in either American Economics Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, or Econometrica. (The QJE is often said to mostly publish MIT and Harvard folks.) AER is only 19th in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/content/ranking/ranking-economics-journals-based-impact-factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this list of impact factors&lt;/a&gt; (which may be as good as any other list that's not password protected by ISI), and I have never heard about some of these journals. The AER's impact factor of 2.5 is not even funny for a biologist seeking &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; publications, though -- the impact factors of the latter are what, 30 or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in industry and tend to care little about the journals outside of my area (statistics); generally, statistics journals tend to have IFs between 0.25 and 4. The reality of my particular field (survey research) is that people just submit their paper to proceedings of the annual conferences and move on with their paying projects, and don't have the time to BS back and forth with the reviewers. There are people in academia who need to publish-or-perish, so you would see some typical academic papers with rather small contributions to the knowledge, but their authors either have their own time or &lt;strike&gt;slave labor force&lt;/strike&gt; grad students to write these up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a guiding rule of what journals to avoid, you can start with commercially published journals and respect the professional organizations publish their journals themselves, without Wiley or Elsevier grabbing them as a source of income... although I can imagine that coercive citations is what the editorial boards insist on, which may or may not correlate strongly with who publishes a given journal. I have received requests to cite the given journal more (this is a problem for disciplines with an overproduction of journals fighting each other; again, in my industry, there are probably four or five decent ones, and they don't need to fight), but tended to ignore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T16:47:42.237" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T16:47:42.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5870" CreationDate="2012-12-24T18:02:48.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a lot on the kind of research you envisage doing. Since you say that you want to go into academia, I'll look at it as &quot;what added value does an MD provide&quot;. My understanding of these things is that if you want to do almost anything patient facing, having an MD makes it a lot easier. Others have mentioned access to certain kinds of grants as well. But for example if you plan to work with flies or mouse models, then getting an MD in addition might not be a good time/money trade off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T18:02:48.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2012-12-24T18:35:23.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Whiteboards &amp;amp; (electronic) notebooks.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My notes start in one of two places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On a whiteboard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being jotted down to my to-do list to be thought of more in depth later, usually because I'm away from work. These will then later be thought through on the whiteboard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary benefit of the whiteboard is the freeform mapping. There are many mind-mapping software packages out there; I don't think any are as good as an actual whiteboard. On a physical board, you can write easily, sketch ideas, connect concepts, erase stupid stuff, and leave it there while you type easily. You can do this with a program, but you need to use a mouse and keyboard, which I find overly constrictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically sketch the idea out there, and then just write it down either to paper or to an electronic notes program. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://simplenoteapp.com/&quot;&gt;Simplenotes&lt;/a&gt;, but there are many very similar programs... &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com/&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; is very popular. Unless you're very savvy with the command line, I recommend against just using text files, as there's a huge benefit to having the features that come with these programs: quick searching, tagging, and attachments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T18:35:23.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5948" CreationDate="2012-12-24T22:32:29.930" Score="4" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering studying a master's degree in England, however, the price system is quite unlike the system in the US, at least in wording, so I am uncertain how to estimate the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schools I looked at listed the fees in one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost (2013-14)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;£3,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK/EU: £1,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part-Time: £500&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International: £4,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part-Time: £2,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most schools require that master's degree students complete four 30-credit modules, each taking 8-10 weeks, depending on the school, as well as one 60-credit dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under the price system used in England, how can I estimate the total cost of tuition for an entire master's degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do schools in England often apply additional costs, such as registration fees, technology fees, renovation fees, or special course fees, as is typical of US schools?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T10:17:24.217" Title="How does the pricing system of degrees in England work?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5931" CreationDate="2012-12-25T03:56:58.140" Score="33" ViewCount="2114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it just me or are the published articles a strain on the eyes in general? Has there been(/shouldn't there be) a study on optimal font sizes for reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T10:40:15.400" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T10:40:15.400" Title="Why are small fonts the norm in research papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5929" CreationDate="2012-12-25T05:38:15.337" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journal prescribed fonts haven't really caught up with the digital era. They were optimized for a time of print, where each page had a price. Unfortunately, researchers are required to use fonts specified by the publisher at a conference. But many people usually upload a more readable version on a web page or the arxiv - 11pt tends to be reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T05:38:15.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5929" CreationDate="2012-12-25T05:58:06.553" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a historical anachronism. The fonts are chosen for the print version of the journal.  For a print version, if you use a smaller font, you can squeeze more text onto the same page and print the same paper on fewer pages -- which saves money.  So, for print publications, the small font size arguably makes sense.  However, today print is less important and the digital format is more important, but journal requirements haven't caught up to this fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in computer science, the ACM is a notorious offender: they require papers to use 9pt fonts, which are very small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2012-12-26T01:36:46.433" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T01:36:46.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5874" CreationDate="2012-12-25T06:04:46.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give your letter-writer a packet containing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A copy of your transcript (showing what courses you've taken and the grades you've gotten).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A copy of your personal statement or other essays that go with your applications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A brag sheet, with reminders of things your letter writer might want to mention.  This might include significant acomplishments.  It should also include reminders of interactions you've had with the professor (e.g., you may remember that you suggested I study with wibbly wobbets do or don't wangle their wuckets; see my research paper, where I found that they do, but only on Tuesdays; or, you may remember that I solved two of the optional bonus problems in your class).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A list of places where you are applying, and the deadline for each.  Highlight the first deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T06:04:46.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5865" CreationDate="2012-12-25T06:20:43.580" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an extremely simple rule for dealing with reviews that make you unhappy.   Here is the rule: &lt;strong&gt;it's not them, it's you&lt;/strong&gt;.  This rule of thumb implies, it is never the reviewers' fault.  Rather, it is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; your responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, you say the reviewers didn't seem to understand the paper?  Well, that's your fault.  It is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility to make sure the paper is comprehensible to its intended audience.  If the reviewers didn't understand the paper, odds are that the rest of the readers of that journal/conference won't either.  Maybe you need to do a drastic rewrite to make the paper more understandable.  Or, maybe you submitted the paper to the wrong place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewers didn't seem too excited about the paper, and they gave you a short one-line review, or they focused on nitpicky comments about grammar and didn't say much else?  Well, that's on you.  It's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility to convince readers that your results are significant.  Maybe your paper's results just aren't up to the level of significance expected at that journal/conference, and you should be submitted somewhere else.  Or maybe the paper didn't adequately make the case for why people should care about your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why this rule?  Because authors are notoriously poor at seeing the shortcomings in their own work.  No parent thinks their &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; baby is ugly.  When you get negative reviews, it is natural and human to assume the reviewers are idiots and too blind to see the brilliance of the work sitting before them.  Well, that's fine.  Take a moment to curse the reviewers, and get it out of your system.  Then calm down, and think more rationally.  It is rare to find cases where reviewers are stupid or lax in their duties; it is much more common to find that there is something valid behind their reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, if the reviews are negative, the most constructive thing you can do is improve the paper and re-submit (possibly to somewhere more suitable).  There is almost always some way that you can improve the paper and that you can learn from the reviews you got back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize my rule might seem like an oversimplification.  Well, technically, I suppose it is, but it's a lot more accurate than most folks who are new to the field realize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, complaining to the editor rarely leads to any positive result.  I suppose that in the most extreme of cases, it could be warranted, but I would have a heavy presumption against that.  And, you probably don't have enough experience to form a judgement on that.  Before complaining to an editor or appealing the decision, sit down with someone much more senior and more experienced and ask for their advice.  If they are skeptical or neutral, don't bother complaining; just improve the paper and submit it elsewhere.  Only if they tell you that complaining is the right thing to do should you consider complaining to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T06:20:43.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5940" CreationDate="2012-12-25T08:39:32.677" Score="18" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I studied my bachelor's degree, my professors often let me write papers in whatever area I wanted, even if it was an area completely outside of their expertise. Within master's programs, is this still the case, or must students generally stay within the specific expertise of their professors or advisors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my particular situation, I want to study second language acquisition (SLA), however, none of the programs I can attend have professors knowledgeable in my particular language of focus. Is it likely that I'll face resistance from advisors in trying to write my research papers and thesis about a language which none of the school's faculty are familiar with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T00:53:44.670" Title="Must a master's thesis fall within one's advisor's area of expertise?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5934" CreationDate="2012-12-25T11:54:39.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A master's thesis is an original piece of work by the candidate on any topic that falls within the scope of the master's program. In principle, at least at my university, there is no formal requirement that the advisor be expert of the topic of the thesis, even if this would clearly help a lot from a student's perspective. Going for a topic outside of the professors' expertise requires a strong motivation on the candidate's side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4423" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T11:54:39.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5923" CreationDate="2012-12-25T12:16:24.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The SciVerse Citation Tracker service, available to anyone with a Scopus subscription, allows it to exclude self-citations. However, it is not designed to evaluate journals, but rather to review citations to a particular author or field. Both the Journal Impact Factor (IF) computed by Thomson Reuters and the Scientific Journal Rankings (SJR) computed in Scopus by Elsevier include self-citations. I am not aware of any other database that excludes them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, I wouldn't use any bibliometric indicator as a measure of a journal's reputation, but rather trust the advice of experienced colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4423" LastEditorUserId="4423" LastEditDate="2012-12-26T09:30:38.550" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T09:30:38.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5973" CreationDate="2012-12-25T13:25:10.190" Score="9" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a number of papers within the field of educational research where researchers simply used their own classes for testing. For example, they test one of their classes with a certain type of instruction, but leave another class without this instruction, then: (1) test which group of students did better and (2) collect student opinions about the lesson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I can understand why a teacher might conduct an &quot;informal&quot; study on their classroom, I cannot understand why this would regarded as publish-worthy research. It is possible that I am simply misunderstanding the benefit and purpose of publishing such studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Within educational research, is it regarded as acceptable practice to publish research which is only conducted on such conveniently available groups?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T23:04:03.363" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T16:44:54.207" Title="Are studies centered around one's own students regarded as publish-worthy scholarship within educational research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5928" CreationDate="2012-12-25T14:19:07.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First work out whether the price you're given is per module (such as is done by the Open University) or per year (common for most other universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former, find out how many points you'll need for the degree you want, and the number of points per module. And calculate accordingly. So if it's £1000 per module, one module is 15 point, and you need 90 points, then your total cost is £1000 x 90 / 15 = £6000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, multiply the fees by the course length. So, for example, if it's £2000 per year part time, and will take you three years to do it part time, the total fee cost will be 3 x £2000 = £6000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've seen, the fees will vary depending on whether you're a UK/EU citizen or not. International is lazy shorthand for non-EU.  There may be a residency criterion as well as a nationality criterion (e.g. Bachelors degrees at Scottish universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T23:07:47.943" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T23:07:47.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5923" CreationDate="2012-12-25T15:25:45.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any impact factor database for which citations from a journal to itself have been removed.  One reason why such lists aren't popular (and may not exist at all) is that they would distort the statistics of specialized journals.  In a subfield with a small number of journals, one would expect a substantial fraction of the citations to come from the same journal.  That does not indicate a problem, and it would be unfair to these journals to judge them without those citations.  (Comparing impact factors between journals in different areas is already foolish, since publication and citation practices vary greatly, but there's no point in making it even worse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that such a list would be useful for identifying patterns of coercive citation.  Thomson Reuters already tries to detect these problems and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/06/29/citation-cartel-journals-denied-2011-impact-factor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;punish journals&lt;/a&gt;.  I'm sure the community could do an even better job of detecting fraud if they opened up their entire database, but they of course have strong commercial reasons not to do that.  If the current level of fraud checking is being done at all competently, then providing this additional list would not help much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, as I understand it, the state of the art in citation fraud is &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;networks of several journals publishing review articles citing each other's papers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T15:25:45.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5934" CreationDate="2012-12-25T16:00:18.193" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether an advisor will agree to supervise a master's thesis outside of their area of expertise depends on the advisor.  It may also vary between fields or universities, but I believe the personal variance will be much higher, so the best way to find out is to ask a potential advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether it's a good idea, I see three issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will not receive expert advice in your chosen area.  Of course, there's a trade-off here: would you rather study what you love best without expert advice, or get better advising on another topic?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may receive actively bad advice.  To avoid this difficulty, it's important for you to read extensively and to choose an advisor who is open minded and flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor may not write an enthusiastic letter of recommendation for you.  Sometimes an advisor will let a student choose to do whatever they want, but when the advisor recommends the student, it becomes clear that the advisor is uninterested in the student's work and unimpressed by it.  I've seen this cause trouble for several people, so I strongly recommend trying to find an advisor who is actually enthusiastic about your topic (even if it's not what they work on).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, choosing to study second language acquisition in a language nobody on the faculty speaks sounds like only a mild concern (assuming you speak it fluently or have access to excellent informants), since I imagine much of the advising would be about research methodology or language acquisition theories, rather than language-specific issues.  However, I don't know enough about this area to say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T16:00:18.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-25T21:51:16.430" Score="3" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a researcher, and I would like to scrape a list of scientific libraries sites such as Springerlink.com, ScienceDirect.com, IEEExplore digital library and so on, to analyse them for some purpose. In this task I'm interested in abstracts, and full text of publicly accessible papers, I would like to know the legal framework of this, since that I read before (but I don't remember where and how to find it again) that this is illegal, and if I do that any new request from my IP address to those sites will be rejected. It means that this task will be considered as a Denial of service attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="90" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T07:59:45.190" Title="I would like to build a web scraper for a list of scientific papers libraries, what are the legal limits?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5941" CreationDate="2012-12-25T22:11:13.157" Score="16" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. This is a legal question. Get proper legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The legal framework is contract law, and intellectual property law. There may also be implications for other parts of the legal code if your scraping behaves like, or could be interpreted as, a denial-of-service attack or hacking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read each site's terms and conditions. Understand the contract of use for each site. Interpret each contract within the legal context of the contract's jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take into account intellectual property law within your own country, and the publisher's country. You might also need to consider intellectual property law within the country where the web-server is located, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do bear in mind that there have been recent attempts across several jurisdictions  to bring intellectual property within criminal, rather than civil law / contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. This is a legal question. Get proper legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T07:59:45.190" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T07:59:45.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2012-12-25T23:13:16.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One case of this that's getting a bit old but was highly influential in artificial intelligence was Phil Agre and David Chapman (PhDs at the MIT AI Lab in the late 1980s).  They did everything together, but wrote completely different dissertations.  They agreed in advance how they would divvy up the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a PhD has to have a novel contribution, I think this is the only way it can work. You specify your contributions in the introduction and conclusion, and these can only be contributions by one person, for one dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I had a little bit of overlapping text in two of my dissertations (which for bizarre reasons came out nearly the same time), but it was only the literature review, which at the time I didn't think of as a contribution, and I clearly stated the overlap in the later dissertation.  Also, I didn't claim that the thing I was best known for at that time (an action selection mechanism) was a contribution to &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; dissertation, just to be certain there could be no claim I'd made overlapping contributions (One was in Psychology &amp;amp; one was in Systems AI, so they really were pretty different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, by the time you are ready for a PhD, you should be able to make any number of contributions.  So being productive and publishing articles is the main thing to worry about, and then secondarily following through, and following the rules, so you get your degree.  Your dissertation is not a documentation of your life's work – it's just one coherent document making a very clear academic contribution.  Hopefully two good students working together would make more than enough contributions that they can divide them up and each write interesting dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T23:13:16.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5946" CreationDate="2012-12-25T23:19:00.133" Score="30" ViewCount="25819" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received an application for a PhD position from someone who is already working as a postdoctoral associate. The difference in fields is not particularly large—I work in chemical engineering and materials science, while the applicant originally is coming from computational chemistry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the obvious question is, why would someone want to pursue a second doctoral degree when they already have one in a related field, and why would I, as a potential advisor, want to consider someone interested in doing this? (For instance, it seems obvious that the person wouldn't likely need as much training as a novice, but there would also be the challenge of trying to find such a person gainful employment afterwards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T13:12:29.760" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T10:24:55.567" Title="Why do a second PhD in a &quot;neighboring&quot; discipline?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-12-26T03:04:06.317" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen two reasons for this.  The more worrisome reason is the one mentioned by EnergyNumbers in the comments, namely that some people just collect degrees.  In particular, they may feel having two Ph.D.s would look exceptionally impressive, or they may be unable to settle on a specialization, or they may feel that getting another degree is somehow preferable to getting a job.  These could be legitimate as personal desires, but they are counterproductive for a research career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason is to recover from a bad career start.  Sometimes someone's grades keep them from getting into a good graduate program, or they face other constraints (geographical or financial) in their choice of programs, or they fail to connect well with their advisor.  They may eventually get a Ph.D., but not under good circumstances, and a second Ph.D. might lead to a much better career.  The difference between this case and the first case is that these students don't actually want a second Ph.D. as such.  They regretfully feel they need one to achieve their career goals, but they wish it had been their first and only Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recovering from a bad start is a less worrisome reason to seek a second Ph.D., but of course the challenge is figuring out which students have moved beyond their past difficulties and which have not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T03:04:06.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-12-26T10:04:49.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention what country you are in or the relative standing of the two universities &amp;amp; supervisors involved.  Sometimes people apply for a second PhD because their first one is not sufficiently well respected to get at good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is because the candidate really is just enjoying that stage of life.  In the USA, one can often stay a PhD student for years in a top institution, but in other countries there are hard time limits.  I also know of several people who took multiple PhDs at top universities just because they finished the first one too young to take a chair yet (and one person who didn't let that bother him &amp;amp; took a chair at 18, getting his father an office nearby!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important question though is whether you want this person as a student – will they finish?  Do they know what they are getting in to?  If they have a PhD, they are in some sense a peer, and certainly should have a reputation.  I would spend more time than usual pursuing the references, possibly with phone calls, and I would certainly talk at length with the candidate about whether they would really finish writing up a second time.  I would only take them with exceptionally strong references from others and a very good personal narrative about why they want and would complete a second degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T10:04:49.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5928" CreationDate="2012-12-26T10:17:24.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most UK Masters degrees are a single year.  Even if for some reason you get an extension (e.g. to finish your dissertation), you will only be charged tuition for the taught year, maybe a small fee for remaining registered.  But the International fee will just be it (unless you are from the EU, in which case the home fee is it), and normally includes any bench fees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the fixed tuition costs matters less for Masters students, but is a huge win over US degrees for PhDs – you normally only pay 3 years tuition even if you take 4 or even 5 years to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A part time degree will probably take about twice as long and you will have to pay the fee for double the number of years.  If you are legally allowed to work in the UK, or you can telecommute to a part-time job in your home country, this can be a win.  Though keep in mind that the cost of living is very high in the UK and will probably exceed your tuition even if you are full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, UK universities are very keen to get Masters students, if you just email the contact for a university they will give you full numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T10:17:24.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2012-12-26T10:21:15.623" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of a publication requirement for a masters degree in the USA or UK.  There is not even a novelty requirement for a masters dissertation, that's what makes it different from a PhD.  Obviously publishing is a good idea if you want to continue on to a PhD, it makes your CV look much stronger and shows your promise as a researcher.  But frankly, in the UK at least there is no time to publish before you finish your dissertation (Masters degrees are very compressed one year degrees) and most publications follow the formal completion of the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastEditorUserId="384" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T14:33:01.443" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T14:33:01.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2012-12-26T10:40:17.753" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a very mediocre transcript from a very good school.  I worked five years, then applied to a good school in a foreign country paying international fees for a masters degree.  Then I worked very hard and got decent grades and great letters of reference and got into MIT for my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you work a few years and/or do another degree, your first degree doesn't matter any more, your more recent work does.  This can be for good or for ill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One really excellent thing I've seen:  Northwestern University in Chicago allows you to sign up for night courses no questions asked, then after you've taken five will review your work on their courses and decide whether to admit you based almost purely on those courses.  I assume some other universities might do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T10:40:17.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5969" CreationDate="2012-12-26T12:32:40.917" Score="8" ViewCount="1592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed one term of a master's program before finding it was not what I expected, so I promptly quit. Now, I am sending fall application letters to other master's programs, for which I will be a paying student, but am uncertain how to mention this previous program, or whether that is even necessary. I do intent to send a transcript, as I want to transfer a few credits, however, should I mention this elsewhere in my application? Place a line on my CV? Mention this previous program in my application letters? Offer an explanation upfront describing why I left the program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found generally useful advice in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2498/is-transferring-an-option-for-an-unhappy-grad-student&quot;&gt;Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?&lt;/a&gt;, but the answers do not explain what etiquette one should follow in reporting such a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T13:55:49.417" Title="How to notify admissions that one quit another program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2012-12-26T15:42:22.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is that you realize that you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to report this information to schools to which you will be applying, as it will matter in their deliberations over your application. That said, you do have some degree of latitude in finding the best way to inform the schools of this. If they have a &quot;special notes&quot; or &quot;additional information&quot; question in the application, that might be a good place to put such information. Otherwise, you would want to mention it somewhere in the cover letter (if you get to include one) or personal statement (if you don't). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this information should be provided &lt;em&gt;by you&lt;/em&gt;; don't leave it for the people writing your recommendation letters to mention. That will just raise more red flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T15:42:22.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5955" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:07:39.947" Score="4" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, one can request that the university from which one graduated to send copies of one's transcript to other universities (graduate admissions) or prospective employers. I would like to know what is the provision in the Netherlands, if one needs to send a copy of one's transcript to the university in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2012-12-26T18:18:30.540" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T19:01:40.090" Title="How to request transcript copies from universities in the Netherlands?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5929" CreationDate="2012-12-26T18:40:43.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the old-fashioned way of reading papers: print it and read with text-marker, and I find the usual font sizes OK (sometimes too large when printing on A4 paper). Margins of ca. 4 cm per column are (would be) nice, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitor space is much too valuable for more than taking a glance which paper exactly I want to get from my collection. Where should I edit notes, do calculations and see graphs/images/man pages if most of the monitor is taken up by the paper?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I did print much less when I had 2 monitors, but at my new place I have only one. And anyways, no monitors can hold as much easily accessible information as a bunch of papers laid out on a large table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But I LaTeX my papers, so whoever wants larger fonts is welcome to rerun them with other settings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T18:40:43.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5953" CreationDate="2012-12-26T19:01:40.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is probably to contact the student administration of your university. They can make certified copies of your diploma (and presumably also grade transcripts, etc.). You can also contact the Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duo.nl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.duo.nl/&lt;/a&gt;, which are also authorised to make certified copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may be that &quot;ordinary&quot; photocopies suffice, if you tell them that you can show the originals later if necessary. You would have to check with the admissions office though, I do not know about the situation in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T19:01:40.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-26T22:16:47.320" Score="4" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested about getting a certificate in data mining. I found three so far, and these are the following:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/professional/short-programs/courses/data_models1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT - Data and Models in Engineering, Science, and Business&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scpd.stanford.edu/public/category/courseCategoryCertificateProfile.do?method=load&amp;amp;certificateId=1209602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stanford - Data Mining and Applications Graduate Certificate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.ucsd.edu/programs/index.cfm?vaction=certdetail&amp;amp;vcertificateid=128&amp;amp;vstudyareaid=14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCSD - Data Mining Certificate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone taken any of these courses, and are they worth it? Would I benefit in terms of career opportunities with one of such certificates?  I already have a background in data mining, however nothing is on paper, so I thought it might be good idea to get a certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1226" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T00:55:14.660" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T01:07:30.103" Title="Certificate in data mining" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5956" CreationDate="2012-12-27T01:07:30.103" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any certificate course, it really depends on what you intend on getting out of the program. All of those are well-respected universities, and the coursework will almost certainly be extremely informative. In that regard, you'll learn a lot. On the other hand, there exists a frankly ridiculous amount of high-quality, freely available information online related to data mining from many universities, including &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some of those you listed above&lt;/a&gt;, so you can definitely learn all that without paying a not-insignificant sum for the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding job prospects, it really depends on where you're looking to be hired. &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/7141/595&quot;&gt;This answer from Workplace.SE&lt;/a&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; overview of how useful a certificate can be in helping you get hired, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/44/9824&quot;&gt;this question from Programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt; has many useful answers discussing how certificates like the ones you mention are viewed in industry. Long story short, they're usually not that useful for jobs unless they're industry standards, which the ones you list are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T01:07:30.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-27T07:27:36.313" Score="3" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you reference work, Oxford Style, for a Website without an Author or a Date of Publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T19:39:14.743" Title="How does one reference work in Oxford Style for a Website without an Author or a Date of Publication?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5962" CreationDate="2012-12-27T09:23:15.723" Score="7" ViewCount="2055" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can German Hochschule offer a Ph.D.? I know that some of them can't, but does this apply to any hochschule or does it differ from one to another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T16:34:46.483" Title="Is a German Hochschule able to offer a Ph.D.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5966" CreationDate="2012-12-27T09:35:44.800" Score="6" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took some solitary graduate-level courses as a non-degree student at some US schools and plan to take further modules in England. These courses relate to my other degrees and certificates, but are from more elite institutions and provide more advanced, specialized training not easily found elsewhere. Is it acceptable practice to list solitary courses on an academic CV? What section and in what format might this appear in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T14:21:15.243" Title="Is it acceptable practice to list solitary courses on an academic CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5960" CreationDate="2012-12-27T10:35:42.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should warn that I am not an expert on this, but this is how I understand it. Basically, there are different types of &quot;Hochshule&quot;. There is the Universität, which always has the right to offer Ph.D.'s. Then there are the Hochschule and Fachhochschule. The latter in general is more oriented to learning a trade (as an electrical engineer, for example) as opposed to more research focused. The Fachhocschule don't have the Promotionsrecht, that is, that cannot hand out Ph.D degrees. As for the Hochschule, there it depends. Some are on the same level as a Universität. In that case, they can hand out Ph.D. degrees, otherwise not. Presumably the deciding factor is whether there is any substantial research component at the Hochschule or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hochschulkompass.de/en/higher-education-institutions.html&quot;&gt;http://www.hochschulkompass.de/en/higher-education-institutions.html&lt;/a&gt;. There you can also search if a specific Hochschule can grant PhD degrees or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T10:35:42.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5960" CreationDate="2012-12-27T16:34:46.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One further note to clarify is that using &quot;Ph.D.&quot; to denote doctoral degrees in Germany is somewhat nebulous, as many of the doctoral degree-granting institutions in Germany &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; award Ph.D.'s. Instead, the range of doctoral degrees is somewhat broader. For instance, the institution where I work offers the &lt;em&gt;Dr. rer. nat.&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Dr.-Ing.&lt;/em&gt;, but not a Ph.D. In fact, we are not even allowed to use the term &quot;Ph.D.&quot; in our advertising of our doctoral degree programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are asking &quot;can German universities award doctoral degrees,&quot; Pieter's answer above is correct. However, if you mean literally &quot;can German universities award Ph.D.'s,&quot; I'd have to say the answer is essentially &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T16:34:46.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5971" CreationDate="2012-12-27T16:58:47.537" Score="10" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find an article published in several conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If similar material is published in different conference proceedings,&#xA;  how do I choose which one to cite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4442" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T19:10:17.963" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T19:52:54.110" Title="Choosing which version of an article to cite" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-12-27T18:49:27.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little unusual to have the same or even similar material published in different venues. First of all, you didn't say whether your area uses conferences as primary publication venues or not - I'm assuming it does, otherwise why even cite a conference publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, what exactly are you citing in the article ? If it's a specific result (empirical, theoretical etc), then probably the oldest venue where it appears is the first occurrence of that result, and should be cited. If you're citing background material or motivation, then either the first paper that discusses the relevant motivation, or maybe a survey article ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, the key is to understand exactly what you're citing the article for, and find the oldest occurrence of that concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T18:49:27.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5961" CreationDate="2012-12-27T21:00:30.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptable?  Sure.  Useful?  Probably not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying to graduate programs, then listing these courses would be appropriate.  On the other hand (at least for US schools), you need to submit official transcripts for those courses anyway.  Also, if you expect those courses to play a significant role in your admission, you need to make that case in your application statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying to an academic position that is primarily teaching, then listing the courses might be appropriate to show that you have at least taken courses on the topics you intend to teach.  But if you expect those courses to play a significant role in your hiring, you need to make that case in your application statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying to an academic position that is primarily research (including most postdocs and tenure-track faculty positions), there's no point in listing what courses you've taken.  With rare exceptions, your research record (as listed in your CV, described in your research statement, and judged in your letters) is essentially the only thing that matters for such positions.  Teaching experience might play a role, but classes that you've merely &lt;em&gt;taken&lt;/em&gt; won't.  If you think specific courses significantly strengthen your case—making you one of those rare exceptions—you need to to make that case in your application statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T21:00:30.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2012-12-28T13:55:49.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your CV, don't focus on the fact that you quit the other program, but that you attended it for one term. As such, it would fit best in the section where you list your past education. Definitely send your transcript, because it shows that you achieved some things during that term, and will also count into the evaluation of your current knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more delicate aspect is of course how to explain your quitting without full completion of the other program. However, I don't think that it will be a very critical aspect of your application. Such switches happen a lot, for various good reasons, and reviewers of your application will not automatically view it as negative if you don't push them in that direction. If you have good explanations for switching the program, you can put it in a motivation letter. For example, how, during the other program, you discovered that the program you are applying to know fits much better to your interests and skills. The CV wouldn't be be a good place for such reasons. If you can't offer an explanation that gives your application a bonus point, don't try to discuss around it in your application documents. But be prepared for questions in this direction in a potential interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T13:55:49.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5961" CreationDate="2012-12-28T14:21:15.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The long form of my CV used to include a few example courses to indicate what I'd learned on my various degrees (after the degree I said &quot;courses included: ...&quot;).  I have no idea whether that helped, but I don't see how it can hurt, unless it makes the CV too long &amp;amp; people miss something more significant.  But I think it does show something about your specific interests and level of commitment to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T14:21:15.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-12-28T14:26:11.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally you should cite the most recent version, which is probably also the most prestigious venue (normally republication is done while ideas are working their way up the prestige ladder).  It's possible that only the earlier version contains the material you want to cite though, but unless that's substantially longer than a later version, then I would assume that means the author(s) have recanted that part, and you should probably mention that in your article e.g. &quot;Bryson (1986) claims fish can fly (p. 253), though note later work does not reiterate this claim (Bryson 1991; Bryson 1993).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T14:26:11.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-12-28T16:30:25.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a number of occasions, I found myself knowing the author personally pretty closely, and would ask them which version they want me to cite. On other occasions, I would cite whichever source I read first, and just stick to that. People should not be cited five times for one idea; it is little of my business to untangle their political games of publishing the same stuff in different journals (a very common thing in the social sciences I mingle with), and I would do whatever works for me, not for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T16:30:25.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5937" CreationDate="2012-12-28T16:44:54.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within educational research, is it regarded as acceptable practice to publish research which is only conducted on such conveniently available groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, yes. In fact, some of the most noted and most often quoted work on the psychology of learning was conducted by Jean Piaget &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget#The_model_of_intellectual_development&quot;&gt;on his own children&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, there is a benefit to conducting such small studies of the type you describe. In the type of study you describe, where an instructor teaches two sections of the same course at the same institution to the same body of students that are otherwise identical except for whatever change in pedagogy the instructor desires, many confounding variables are inherently accounted for. Principal among these are the &quot;instructor effect&quot; and the &quot;student-to-teacher ratio&quot;. Additionally, two sections at the same institution should be influenced similarly by demographic, socioeconomic, and academic effects on the student population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T16:44:54.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-28T19:38:25.620" Score="15" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;A usual flow of a project (in my field) commonly looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;having a result -&gt; (1) writing a paper (with all the proofs) -&gt; (2) making a conference version -&gt; (3) uploading a full version to eprint -&gt; (4) journal version&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, (2) is a shorter version of (1); and (3)&#xA; is almost the same as (1) up to some changes that came up during the process of making (2); Yet, the work on (2) and (3) happens almost at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how to deal with maintaining both versions (full + short) of the same paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have been keeping two separate &quot;papers&quot;, but this solutions has its problems: if you make a change to one (say, fixing a typo), you need to remember making the same change in the other one (which you usually forget). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T05:11:45.833" Title="How to handle multiple versions of a paper (e.g. conference and journal version)" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5974" CreationDate="2012-12-29T00:10:48.670" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can change your workflow slightly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write a paper with full proofs, polish it, and upload to arxiv.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prepare the conference version (fairly late). You will use version 1 as your starting point, but you can edit it freely. You can remove proofs and refer to the arxiv version. You can polish the story, introduction, etc. You may spot typos in the arxiv version, but do not worry about those too much. There is no need to revise the arxiv version yet if the typos are minor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prepare the journal version. The key thing is that you will use version 2 as the starting point, not version 1. Of course you will now copy-and-paste the full proofs from version 1, but the rest of the text comes from the conference version. Therefore the main matter has already automatically gone through all the revisions that were related to the preparation of the conference submission(s), addressing conference reviews, preparing the camera-ready conference paper, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can simply revise your arxiv submission by replacing it with the journal version, whenever the journal version is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow this approach, there is never need to maintain parallel versions. You will never need to worry about updating version x when you fix typos in version y. People interested in your work can read the first arxiv version early, and your final arxiv version is as well polished as the journal version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you can start phase 3 as soon as you have prepared the final camera-ready version of the conference paper. When the conference version finally appears, you can already have a preliminary draft of the journal version written, and you can use it to revise your arxiv submission if it seems to be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T00:10:48.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5974" CreationDate="2012-12-29T02:49:37.413" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt; with branches and selective merging. You can selectively merge your typo fixes and stuff between one branch and the other, in whichever direction you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T02:49:37.413" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5974" CreationDate="2012-12-29T14:22:58.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using latex. I use following approach. I define three variables. ArticleTypeAll , ArticleTypeJournal and ArticleTypeConference . I use ArticleTypeAll for parts which is same for all parts (Conference and Journal). In my example authors information. I use ArticleTypeJournal for only journal part. For example introduction to journal may be different than conference one. Same goes for ArticleTypeConference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I split every part to different latex file to easily version control and compare them. If command allow me to conditionally include files. Here I use input instead of include since this is an article. I set variables as.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArticleTypeAll = true&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArticleTypeJournal = true&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArticleTypeConference = false&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}&#xA;\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}&#xA;\author{Atilla Ozgur}&#xA;\title{Conference Journal Together}&#xA;&#xA;\newif\ifArticleTypeAll&#xA;\newif\ifArticleTypeJournal&#xA;\newif\ifArticleTypeConference&#xA;&#xA;\ArticleTypeAlltrue&#xA;\ArticleTypeJournaltrue&#xA;\ArticleTypeConferencefalse&#xA;&#xA;\begin{document}&#xA;\ifArticleTypeAll&#xA;    this place is included in all&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\ifArticleTypeJournal&#xA;    this place is included in journal article only&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\ifArticleTypeConference&#xA;    this place is included in Conference article only&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\ifArticleTypeAll&#xA;\input{Authors}&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\ifArticleTypeJournal&#xA;\input{IntroductionJournal}&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\ifArticleTypeConference&#xA;\input{IntroductionConference}&#xA;\fi&#xA;&#xA;\end{document}&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Output of this document like below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;this place is included in all&#xA;this place is included in journal article only&#xA;Authors&#xA;IntroductionJournal&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2012-12-30T05:11:45.833" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T05:11:45.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-12-30T00:20:54.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most practical way is to go to the Library and look through journals for articles that interest you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have found a selection, then sort them by&#xA;a) Is this a current concern in your field?&#xA;b) Is the prevailing methodology/technique practical - have you the resources?&#xA;c) Will your supervisor(s) find this project interesting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you can answer all three questions as Yes, then do a deeper literature research and assess again whether the project is doable in the time available and publishable (sound and interesting to people in your field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4452" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T00:20:54.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-12-30T15:27:55.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should have two goals in mind when choosing what to cite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give credit, by citing the first person to discover the result, in the form in which it was originally found&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Helping the reader interested in looking the result up and learn it in more depth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either one of them can be more important than the other, depending on the type of your paper and of the context of the specific citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two goals are often conflicting; for instance, #1 might tell you to use an obscure conference proceeding with a clumsy first version of the result, and #2 might suggest to use a clear exposition in a book by another author instead. You might want to go for a tradeoff instead and cite a newer paper by the first author with a better version of the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if your choice is backed up by either of these two rationales, or by a suitably weighted linear combination of them, then in my opinion no one can blame you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T15:27:55.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5981" CreationDate="2012-12-30T19:15:14.873" Score="12" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently one of my profs (other than my advisor) told me that I am not doing well in his subject. Should I tell this to my advisor? Actually the reason of me not doing well is  doing other jobs assigned by my advisor to me like advising undergraduates. Undergraduates don't let me do my work. And whenever I am busy doing my own research and due to this when I politely refuse them, they say that they will go and complain about me to my advisor. Please help I am really stuck as to how to deal with the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T12:46:31.250" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T12:46:31.250" Title="Should I talk to my advisor regarding undergrad advising workload?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5980" CreationDate="2012-12-30T19:38:55.460" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.  Talk to your advisor.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really important you learn to, in a good way, think of yourself. Right now, the undergraduates are happy (they get help) but your work is suffering. I can imagine that helping undergraduates is part of your job description, but not to the point you cannot work anymore yourself. You need to sit down with your professor and your supervisor and discuss that your undergraduate workload is too much. Best is to have a proposal ready yourself, e.g. that you want to spend a day a week helping undergraduates and that that is the limit. Once you get both your professor and your supervisor to agree, no undergraduate can manipulate you into helping him/her. In addition, everyone is clear on their expectations, this is the professional way of dealing with this in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not set boundaries, you will be the only one suffering. The professor and supervisor will feel somewhat bad, but the undergraduates will find a new person to stalk, while you are left without a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2012-12-30T22:13:41.600" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T22:13:41.600" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6042" CreationDate="2012-12-31T07:27:53.620" Score="19" ViewCount="11572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to complete my PhD. My area is functional analytic/ operator theoretic aspects of quantum information. I am applying for post-doctoral  positions in various places. Recently, one group called me for presentation/ interview over Skype. It should consist of a presentation (20 minutes) and 20 minutes interview. My questions are the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the common things one should focus while presenting online, and what I should avoid (say, in my slide, or oral comments etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The people who called me for interview are physicists (my work is connected to quantum information). As a mathematics student, what is the best way to make myself presentable in these cases. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: I have two publications, some old preprints (arxiv, on discrete mathematics, but not published and not connected with my present research) and a few in draft form (not submitted in arxiv yet). Published papers are not mathematically very exiting, but came up in some reasonably good and well reputed physics journals. Also what I am afraid is, they are not reviewed in math review (many papers from the same journal are frequently reviewed though).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a bit afraid, as this is my first time of appearing in such interview (and the reasons mentioned above). Advanced thanks for your helps and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" OwnerDisplayName="rsg" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T12:51:09.460" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:54:31.423" Title="Tips for making online presentation over Skype" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5983" CreationDate="2012-12-31T08:07:44.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not going to ask you why your papers are not in Math Reviews, or why you never published your old discrete math stuff. You can safely forget about both those things. They want to make sure that you are able to communicate your research ideas to them, and understand theirs -- both are very nontrivial questions in cross-disciplinary hiring. If your research that's in the draft stage can be related to what their group is doing, this is what you'll want to get across. Stating every definition precisely is not as important, but you may be asked to give some of them. If you can, make a nonlinear beamer where navigation arrows point to extra slides with definitions and technical assumptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4463" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T08:07:44.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6018" CreationDate="2012-12-31T15:34:32.260" Score="7" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5983/4462&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; by @PiotrMigdal I am putting a separate question regarding the title mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am  a Mathematics PhD student doing work in functional analysis / operator theory aspects of quantum information. My basic training (up to masters) is in so called 'Pure Mathematics' ($C^*$ algebra, representation theory, elliptic curve etc.).  I am about to complete my PhD and applying for post doctoral positions. It seems most of the jobs in this area are for experimentalists and a few for theorists. I do not have much knowledge about experiment. Moreover, my understanding about quantum measurements as very basic. These  can be considered as negative points. Positive sides: I have a few published papers in some reputed physics journal, a few (in discrete mathematics) preprints, and a few works in the draft stage. However the published papers are not reviewed by math. review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what a mathematics student, like me, should focus/emphasise  if he/she go for a job (for me post doctoral) interview in front of physics faculties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also more general question can be regarding the job perspective    of mathematics students in quantum information. Advanced thanks for any suggestion, answer etc.  Feel free to edit and/or retag it, if you think it is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T18:11:26.863" Title="tips for mathematics student giving interview for physics (quantum information)" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-31T20:30:22.787" Score="16" ViewCount="3421" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor wants me to work on two different problems during my PhD. One is the a problem of their suggestion and another is collaborative work with some company. Both the problems are disjoint. I have been given  the option, that if I want to work on one problem  then it should be the problem on for my advisor's collaborative research and I should leave the problem initially suggested. However, I don't want to give up my present problem as that sounds interesting to me and I have already worked for one year on it. When I told my advisor that I don't find the collaborative work interesting, it was suggested that I work on both the problems. However, I am finding it hard to work on two problems. Its like a dual PhD for me. I cannot say anything to my advisor as I'm told I have to work on the collaborative work as my stipend comes from it and else I should leave the PhD. My advisor also does not  advise me when I propose ideas about my previous research. Please suggest what should I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4466" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T18:32:14.810" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T18:32:14.810" Title="What to do when PhD advisor wants student to work on two disjoint projects?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5987" CreationDate="2012-12-31T21:11:00.420" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how committed you are to the research project.  Your Ph.D. thesis can strongly influence your future course in academia and research.  That being said, plenty of Ph.D. recipients have gone on to do research in fields quite distinct from their thesis work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your funding is tied to one of the projects, it would certainly be easier to find the time to complete your thesis by working on that project alone.  However, you should only make this shift if the funded project is also interesting to you.  There few things as difficult as finishing a thesis on a topic in which you are not interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, what matters most about your Ph.D. thesis is that you finish it.  If you think that finding time to work on your thesis will be most limiting, then you should choose the funded topic.  If you think that staying interested in your research is the biggest hurdle, then you should choose the topic you are interested in, even if it takes you longer to graduate on account of your other obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4468" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T21:11:00.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5987" CreationDate="2013-01-01T01:20:11.803" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important line in your post seems to be one that you didn't give much weight to: &quot;my stipend comes from [the collaborative project]&quot;. From my experience, this is a common situation, where the money for your stipend comes from a project you're not interested in pursuing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the only real alternative for you is to write your own grant proposal, which is a significant investment of time for both you and your advisor, and carries the not-so-minor risk that the grant won't be funded, which leaves you exactly where you started, with the added problem that there hasn't been much progress on the existing grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second alternative is to leave the advisor and try to find someone else, but I would recommend against that for two reasons. Firstly, it's hard to find someone else with funding on a project you like. Secondly, the problem you're having now—the funded project is less interesting than the unfunded project—is one you'll likely face again in the future. Your advisor's approach of pursuing both projects is (again, from my experience) a typical way of dealing with this, and it will likely benefit you to have experience with this approach during your PhD years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recognize that it means extra work for you, and I don't really have much advice on that front. Try not to think of it as extra work, but rather as extra publications in different research areas. That helps minimize the sting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T01:20:11.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-01T01:29:04.713" Score="4" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a third-world country. Although I have a second-class degree in IT, I work in the general banking section in a private banking organization. This is possible because, in our country, private banks recruit engineering students (among others) as Management Trainees. They are rotated among various sections in the bank and are trained up for two years. After two years, they are promoted as Executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After joining the organization I found that there is huge amount of study involved to get confirmation and to get promotion. Moreover, I don't know Accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am thinking, since I have to study anyway, why not take the GRE and TOEFL, then study apply for a MSc in IT or computer science and then a PhD degree from USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already been away from academia for almost four years. And, since I am doing a full-time job, I think it will take 2 years more to prepare myself applying for higher education in the USA. At that point I will be 32 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a PhD degree from USA enough to find a job at that age?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T11:39:31.513" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T12:55:21.757" Title="Do I have any potential in the academic field?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-06T14:53:43.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5990" CreationDate="2013-01-01T07:19:00.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a feeling that you want to go for academia or at least r &amp;amp; d of some company, after PhD. If you really really have 'the calling', then and  only then take such a risk. I know only few student who actually took such a risk. Do not come in academia with a very romantic thought and be prepared for hardship, toil and trouble. These things increases, if you can not manage to get in one of the the top places. Also consider the financial matters as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can sponsor yourself, then perhaps you can go to some reasonably good university in USA, without any recommendation (your job experience can help you in certain ways). Since I have never been there, someone else can answer it better. Otherwise, go to the best institute available in your country for getting a MSc(Engg), MSc (by research), MTech or similar degree. Make sure, the the faculties of that place are active in research and (better) have some contact in USA. In this way, even if you do not want to go for PhD after 2 years, you still have some placement options from the institute, you are studying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself never appeared for GRE etc. So some others can tell the procedure better. All the best for your future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T07:19:00.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5990" CreationDate="2013-01-01T07:27:26.147" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;since I have to study anyway, why not go for GRE+TOEFL, MS in IT or Computer Science and then a PhD degree from USA&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're aware of this, but &quot;studying&quot; has little to do with getting a Ph.D. It might suffice for an MS, but a good MS involves more than just &quot;studying&quot; as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if (as stated) your idea is that instead of &quot;study&quot; to get a promotion, you want to study to get an advanced degree, you're in for some disappointment. A graduate degree (especially a Ph.D) involves a lot more &quot;doing&quot; and independent creative thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T07:27:26.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5990" CreationDate="2013-01-01T19:48:23.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not how it works. A degree doesn't mean you will get a job. Actually, a degree only proves you passed a certain education course and wrote your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get a job, you must be proficient / or at least well-familiar with specific requirements of your chosen job posting. Whatever the job requires, you need to know it before applying and have some experience with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree contents is not enough to please your potential employer. You must study also around the curriculum from day 1 to match the real job requirements [as you have found them in job postings]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, a PhD is a highly specialized research degree focused on a very tiny, narrowed-down area, in which you will most likely never find a job in your lifetime [unless you are very clever or lucky and research something that companies or universities dream of].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Master's degree is already an advanced degree. Chances are, you won't even find a position in your Master's specialization because it is too specialized. For example, what you say about your company that makes you a trainee manager, that already means you didn't find a job matching your Bachelor's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding positions in Academia, there are very few, if any, and the number of PhDs competing for one such position might be around 500. This is one thing to consider. There are many extremely bright PhDs who really want to teach and cannot find any university to go. There is also something called &quot;tenure&quot;. When you get it, you can stay at your post for the rest of your life. Professors rarely leave their posts, and when they do, the role may be filled by the associate professor, in some cases. So that you would eventually wait 10 years as a postdoc before becoming the professor that you want to be. During that time, there is often a very low pay as these postdocs are cheap labor working ~55h / week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supply of PhDs is so much exceeding the demand, that I would recommend to re-evaluate the situation and make more realistic goals, such as look at available positions and their requirements before studying. If you study, pay for access to extra contents relevant to your desired profession and learn from these resources as a part of your advanced degree to bridge the gap between real job requirements and the academic curriculum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4348" LastEditorDisplayName="user4348" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T16:55:12.597" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T16:55:12.597" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5998" CreationDate="2013-01-01T21:44:37.977" Score="90" ViewCount="13698" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing the literature review for my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a few recent dissertations on similar topics from the library to get some pointers on references and style. As I was reading some of the articles cited in one of these theses, I discovered that this person had lifted large blocks of text from the cited works verbatim. Although the original works were cited, the borrowed text was not presented as a quote, but used directly in the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked a few more, just out of curiosity, and realized that basically the whole literature review by this author (who graduated with a PhD two years ago) was cut-and-paste verbatim quotes strung together (and who knows how much more of the thesis is plagiarized - I only checked this one chapter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really ticks me off, as I (and many students like me) spend a great deal of time reworking cited information into proper coherent explanations for our projects. I happen to know the offending author's advisor pretty well, as we currently work together outside of my graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I say something or should I just let this person get away with plagiarizing large parts of their dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still don't know what I will do about this -- no-one wants to be a tattle-tale, and it really isn't any of my business how other people go about getting their doctorates. However, as I am currently writing my dissertation, it really irks me when I see someone else getting away with this, as I know from experience how much hard work goes into writing a PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just have one more comment -- I ran the chapter in question through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://turnitin.com/en_us&quot;&gt;TurnItIn&lt;/a&gt; software, which I have access to as an instructor at my institution. The thesis came back as 52% unoriginal. Turnitin only counts exact matches, so the 52% figure doesn't even include some of the paragraphs that I caught, where the author has changed one or two words but kept the sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that there would be any legal consequences, even if I report the thesis for plagiarism -- it is more a question of academic dishonesty and what steps the institution that awarded the degree would take. I will show it to my advisor and see what he says before I do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4473" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T05:25:15.643" LastActivityDate="2020-12-26T14:08:09.320" Title="Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;whistleblowing&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5997" CreationDate="2013-01-01T22:22:42.433" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is of course a sensitive issue. However, the ethically correct behavior is to notify &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; responsible about the problem. Etiquette says to go to the advisor first, as the advisor is the person who, after the author who committed the plagiarism, stands to lose the most from the accusation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you feel squeamish about doing it by yourself, you can talk to your advisor about the best way to proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue on your part is if you will need to rely on the plagiarizer's advisor for recommendation letters. Then you should definitely proceed with caution, and with the support of your advisor, department administrators, or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, make sure that you've done your due diligence before going public with your charges, and to have the evidence &lt;em&gt;with you&lt;/em&gt; when you meet with &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; about this matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T01:13:53.430" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T01:13:53.430" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6007" CreationDate="2013-01-02T00:57:22.947" Score="13" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed my PhD. Although my examiners did not raise any concerns, I have been grappling with an ethical issue for the entire duration of my candidature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue concerns professional knowledge of the field on which my research is based. This is an issue of concern because I am employed in the field and have access to information that is generally not publicly available (but is available to me as an employee) or only found in hard-to-get industry publications (e.g. newsletters). These publications are hard-to-get because of their specialised nature and limited circulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosing this information creates a potential conflict of interest for me (because of reasons associated with commercial-in-confidence, breach of trust etc.). It gets even worse because I am often actively involved in generating this information as part of various negotiations I am required to have with third parties (in my capacity as an employee). As an example, I draft policy speeches for my CEO so this has the effect of quoting my own work in my dissertation (but attributed to my CEO in the citation and bibliography!)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this matter, I have declared (categorically) this conflict of interest (several times in my dissertation) (although I don't identify myself as the ghost writer). I have also put whatever information I thought could be ethically disclosed in the relevant context (e.g. cited the publicly available newsletter, where possible). This was to ensure future researchers could benefit from this 'inside' knowledge. I have stated this as one of the contributions to knowledge that my dissertation is making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must add that the professional knowledge does not contradict or undermine my research, so I am certainly not withholding the information for this reason. On the contrary, this information enhances the main arguments of my study (so omitting it presents a significant dilemma for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i would love to hear how else could this matter be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4475" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T05:56:34.010" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T08:23:02.543" Title="Ethical Disclosure of Professional Knowledge in PhD Dissertation" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2013-01-02T13:30:46.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math at Berkeley this varied by advisor. Some advisors insisted that theses consist only of solo work, while others did not. My thesis consisted almost entirely of collaborative work (though with different collaborators), and I think one chapter may have also appeared in a collaborator's thesis.  The advisor shouldn't sign off on the thesis if the student hasn't done enough work to deserve a PhD, but if you're going to do most of your work collaboratively after grad school it makes sense to me to do so during grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T13:30:46.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5997" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:18:30.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The person did provide the citations, so for me it is not clear if &lt;strong&gt;legally&lt;/strong&gt; this person did something wrong. I would first try and find this out before taking any steps. Of course, I would not accept this kind of verbatim copying if I were a supervisor. The angle on takes in an article is always a bit different than in the cited work. In addition, paraphrasing the text shows that you have understood what was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And be carefull how you deal with this, some people would not appreciate you being a snitch (in their view). However, I agree with @aeismail that it is the scientifically ethical thing to do to at least report this. And do get some backup from your own supervisor/professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="32489" LastEditDate="2020-12-23T17:47:06.743" LastActivityDate="2020-12-23T17:47:06.743" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6001" CreationDate="2013-01-02T16:09:40.450" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've known cases where the thesis itself has &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; restricted circulation for a fixed period (e.g. six years) after completion, to protect the commercial information that went into it. The restriction also meant that papers couldn't be published on the back of the PhD research for six years, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was an arrangement made early on during the writing of the thesis, and it enabled the use of a lot of information that would otherwise have been out of bounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's potentially quite an impediment to one's career, so one would have to get good advice on whether it was a price worth paying. But it doesn't make an academic career impossible: I know of at least one successful academic who's take this path - she's an exceptional talent, and so it's no surprise that her path has been exceptional. It does put an emphasis on diversifying straight after the PhD, to gather material for new publications. Diversification can be a good thing: lots of new post-docs get typecast and trapped by and in their PhD subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T17:54:57.097" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T17:54:57.097" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6012" CreationDate="2013-01-02T17:54:48.960" Score="12" ViewCount="2391" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is it for an undergraduate student majoring in Physics and Mathematics (or any other science) to have experience in research (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, have a peer reviewed paper to his name most probably in collaboration with a professor) at the undergraduate level, keeping in mind that he will be applying for a master's or other postgraduate degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4479" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T04:20:44.133" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T04:20:44.133" Title="Importance of Undergraduate Research" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2013-01-02T19:00:08.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my studies it was relatively rare to publish as an undergraduate. The level of research needed for a peer reviewed publication is imo higher than what an undergraduate can produce. Maybe if the supervisor writes a paper based on your results, and with a lot of help with producing the results, this might lead to a co-authorship for the undergraduate. Therefor, I think that in the Dutch system (my experience) a peer reviewed publication would be a plus, but definitely not a requirement for admission into a masters program. Ofcourse, you need have written a thesis, but it does not have to published in a peer-reviewed journal. I do not know how this experience translate to, say, the US, but I know for countries like Germany it is not even always usual for a PhD to write peer-reviewed articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T19:00:08.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2013-01-02T20:41:19.420" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want admission to the very best PhD programs in the US, prior formal research experience is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important, if not necessary.  Admissions committees are primarily looking for &lt;strong&gt;evidence of research potential&lt;/strong&gt;.  The best possible evidence for &quot;I'll be a good researcher someday&quot; is &quot;Look, I'm &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; a good researcher.&quot;  So having formal peer-reviewed publications is better than having publishable but unpublished results, which is better than having research experience but no publishable results, which is better than having no research experience.  If you're applying to the top PhD programs, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be competing with applicants (yes, plural) who have peer-reviewed publications (yes, plural).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T20:41:19.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2013-01-02T21:31:08.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., in mathematics, it is a bit unusual to have a peer-reviewed publication from an undergrad, despite the recent years' push for &quot;Research Experiences for Undergrads&quot;. In some cases there are group-written papers in second or third-tier journals, but nothing too serious. Or the undergrad gets to be the tag-along on an applied-math research &quot;team&quot;. Indeed, it is exceptional, and only rarely happens, that an undergrad in mathematics has adequate background (disregarding future potential) to make a serious contribution. It does happen, but rarely, and is not at all &quot;expected&quot;. Evidently the situation is much different in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of literal admission to good-but-not-elite programs, the usual &quot;publications&quot; we on admissions committees see are &quot;nice&quot;, but not really evidence of future potential so much as &lt;em&gt;enthusiasm&lt;/em&gt;, ... which is a good thing, for sure! ... but the level of focus and effort required for these little papers is far, far different than the level of commitment required to do a Ph.D., with or without &quot;talent&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T21:31:08.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6046" CreationDate="2013-01-02T22:29:41.847" Score="16" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to PhD programs and want to ask for a reference letter from my former supervisor, who has since moved to a new university, so that his old work email is not working anymore. I've been asking him through his personal email; however, as he rarely checks it, sometime it takes more than a month for him to reply to me. One of the universities to which I'm applying has a deadline coming up in less than a month and I haven't heard from my former supervisor for a while. While panicking, I searched on Google and found his new email address. I wonder if it's reasonable to send email to that address and remind him as he never gave me the address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="17418" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T06:21:59.133" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T06:21:59.133" Title="Should I send an email to the address of my former professor that wasn't explicitly given, but google out myself?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6001" CreationDate="2013-01-02T23:18:12.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And, as a small point, if one's work is confidential for the reason that it is so extremely useful/important/wonderful (!?!), while one cannot claim this directly, it is usually possible to communicate facts about the situation in a way that will be understood by potential employers. One's letter writers would hopefully/presumably comment on the situation, and possibly gossip will lead the way, besides, if it's really something good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least as a starting point, honesty + keeping promises is a good baseline. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T23:18:12.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6014" CreationDate="2013-01-03T01:19:11.427" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a good idea for you to contact your old advisor about the upcoming deadline, particularly if he normally takes a long time to get back to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advisors are busy people, and have a lot of different tasks to complete. Sometimes we need a reminder that things are due, and a well-written note that &lt;em&gt;politely&lt;/em&gt; asks us to take care of something is usually very welcome. A &quot;bossy&quot; or impolite note, however, will not help you and should definitely be avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T01:19:11.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5986" CreationDate="2013-01-03T10:01:12.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of quantum information is a part of mathematics (that is, mathematically well-defined concepts, proper proofs, etc...), with some physical motivation. Many problems can be stated easily as mathematical ones, without providing and physical grounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are a pure maths PhD, then it may be actually beneficial for you, as you: can prove (not only hand-wave) and perhaps have better training (and motivation) in Hilbert spaces, group theory, discrete mathematics, abstract algebra, convex geometry, algorithmic complexity, information theory etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, different groups have different tastes for different problems, different emphasis on physical, mathematical, numerical and experimental content. Just ask them; if it is pure quantum information then maybe even you can go without knowing quantum mechanics (which is worth learning anyway, BTW).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: I am PhD student in geometry of quantum states; a considerable fraction of people working on that topic are mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T10:01:12.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5986" CreationDate="2013-01-03T14:24:55.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be too late for this, but I'd suggest giving a talk for physicists in a lower stakes setting (eg a seminar at a school that isn't interviewing you). Physicists often have different names for things and ways of talking about them, and it can be really nice to have some exposure to the kinds of questions you might get asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T14:24:55.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T17:30:00.473" Score="14" ViewCount="8747" Body="&lt;p&gt;After starting the application process this year, I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://notable.math.ucdavis.edu/wiki/Mathematics_Jobs_Wiki&quot;&gt;wiki page at UC Davis&lt;/a&gt; that lists people who have supposedly been shortlisted, invited for interviews, or given offers for faculty positions in mathematics.  I am listed in couple of places, and I wonder if this can harm my application.  What are the pros and cons of this open source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4488" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T02:33:59.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:33:47.033" Title="Rumor mill and math job" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5987" CreationDate="2013-01-03T18:02:44.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing inherently wrong in an advisor asking you to work on two projects — depending on the subfield you're in, this could even be common practice. The two common approaches are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose a single topic, drill down till you have enough material for a thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're successful, you have a pretty nifty thesis and you can call yourself the absolute master of the subsubtopic X that you focused on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, if you reach a dead end (which sometimes happen after 4 years of hard work), you have nowhere to go! You'll have to find a new research topic, which can take another 3-4 years, which is pretty depressing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start on one project as a fresh graduate student, but gradually start working on multiple projects. Advantages are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you'll have a good pile of publications when you finish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you hit a dead end on one project (or funding dries up), you can focus your attention on a different project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find one project moving faster than the other, you can switch focus to that to graduate on time (or sooner). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the topics are diverse (but connectable by a common theme), you can spin that to your advantage by demonstrating you have broad research interests. (pretty hard to get a position if you only want to do X).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly can find no disadvantage with the second route except for the fact that it can be a bit overwhelming for a graduate student, especially if their advisor doesn't realize that the work load is heavy. I tend to look at it as training for the future — as a postdoc/scientist/faculty, you'll most likely be juggling several different projects of your own, in addition to collaborating, teaching, advising, etc. So this is a good way to start learning efficient time management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I don't think your situation is alarming and you should take this as an opportunity to learn some soft skills (time management, recognizing a hot potato, identifying paths that lead somewhere, etc.). Now, if you're really uninterested in the project, then that's a different issue — you probably have to look for a different advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4417" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T18:02:44.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2013-01-04T00:32:48.143" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professor at a top 20 school in mathematics and I have been on our department's hiring committee for the past several years. I can assure you that we take absolutely no notice of the contents of that particular website when making decisions. We consider ourselves competent enough to form our own judgements on any particular candidate. In the past, we have interviewed plenty of people whose name occurs frequently on that list, and plenty of those whose name does not appear at all.  Moreover, the accuracy of that website is dubious at best; at my own institution it sometimes lists people who are not at all under consideration, and usually doesn't list people who are - including those who have been given offers. The only time I made any attempt to edit the website was when it claimed that we  didn't have any positions available at all (which was false). I suspect that at least on one occasion someone invited themselves to our institution to give a talk and then put their own name on the website as a candidate (they were not). Thus, I suspect that &lt;i&gt;the effect this particular website has on job offers is minimal at most&lt;/i&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4491" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T00:32:48.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6027" CreationDate="2013-01-04T04:48:35.270" Score="6" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently majoring in Physics but I am thinking about changing my major to Mathematics because feel more attracted to it as a subject. However, I have been told that in Physics, one almost always gets a full scholarship to attend graduate school. Is it hard to obtain a scholarship to go to grad school in Mathematics here in the U.S.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4493" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T07:56:22.700" Title="Is it hard to get a scholarship for graduate school in Mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2013-01-04T07:56:22.700" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;At most US universities, Ph.D. students in mathematics usually receive full financial support that covers tuition as well as a modest stipend (i.e. money paid to you directly for your living expenses, usually between $15,000-25,000 per year).  This is normally some combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching assistantship: requires that you teach.  Often this starts with discussion sections for calculus and other introductory courses, and can progress to more specialized courses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research assistantship: requires that working on research (usually your own thesis research, but sometimes a different project).  This often comes from your advisor's grant funds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fellowship: doesn't require you to do any extra work, just your usual coursework or research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the word &quot;scholarship&quot; is not usually used when talking about funding for graduate study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the above only applies to Ph.D. programs.  Masters students generally have to pay their own tuition and living expenses (perhaps via loans), though sometimes a limited number of teaching assistantships, etc, are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T07:56:22.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:05:31.953" Score="19" ViewCount="5768" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where and how can an independent researcher search for research problems in a paticular field, assuming that a person doesn't have direct contacts with anyone knowleageable about that field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once you get a research problem , how can you get an idea about the approximate time that will be required to solve that problem? My area of interest is mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T21:15:47.307" Title="Where and how to search for research problems?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6030" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:40:24.457" Score="6" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Disclaimer: The GRE Program &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;discontinued the Computer Science Test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have already passed a GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to pass the general GRE test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which test should I take first (general GRE or GRE Subject Test) and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T08:24:10.170" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T08:24:10.170" Title="Is a general GRE test required if I have already passed a GRE Subject Test?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6029" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.530" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I have already appeared for GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to take the general GRE test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Likely, yes. If your school asks for the general GRE, then you need to take it. Without the general GRE scores, your application would not be considered complete, and, thus, may never get forwarded to the department's admissions committee. If in doubt, call or email the department(s) you are applying to and ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which test should I take first(general GRE/GRE Subject Test) and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter. Usually the general GRE is offered more frequently than the subject GREs, so many people take it first. There is no reason you have to do it this way. Take them in an order that is convenient for you, but do not wait until just before your application deadlines. Your scores will not get to your schools in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6028" CreationDate="2013-01-04T15:04:26.797" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading recent papers is a good way to come up with ideas for things to work on.  For example, the last section of a paper often lists open problems and possible topics for future research, and they may also be scattered throughout the paper.  Of course the author or other readers may be working on them, but that difficulty is unavoidable for any problem that isn't communicated privately to you.  Some of the advantages of this approach are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have some evidence that the answer isn't already known.  Of course maybe the author just didn't know it, but at least you are getting an expert opinion (which is particularly helpful if you aren't an expert yourself).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your work may be of interest to other readers of this paper.  This avoids the difficulty of making up a topic and then discovering that you are unable to interest anyone in it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The published papers on the topic let you calibrate your level of knowledge.  If you can read them, then you probably know enough to work on extensions.  If you can't, then you need to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's some reason to think progress may be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, I would absolutely avoid working on famous problems.  They satisfy 1 to 3 nicely, but the &quot;famous&quot; requirement specifically filters out any reasonable likelihood of a full solution, and progress towards a solution may be very difficult.  Unless you are extraordinarily talented or lucky, choosing problems because of their fame is a big step in the direction of becoming a failure as a researcher or even a crackpot.  Even if you are extraordinarily talented, there's no harm in starting with a warm-up goal, and this avoids the difficulty that many people have trouble estimating their own abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how long it will take to solve a research problem, this is unanswerable.  If you are really lucky, you might make important progress within a few weeks.  If you get stuck in a rut or are missing some background, you might work fruitlessly for years on a problem that's not actually all that difficult.  And of course problems vary enormously in their difficulty.  With enough experience, you might be able to estimate how difficult or time-consuming certain problems might be, so you could guess what might make an appropriate Ph.D. thesis problem, for example.  However, even experts are sometimes wrong, and developing this sort of feeling takes substantial research experience.  When you are starting out, I don't think there's any reliable way to guess these sorts of things.  This is one reason why Ph.D. advisors are important: they can offer feedback and advice based on intuitions the student is still developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on research without experience or expert guidance, you could use the following guidelines.  Don't give up too quickly: anything worth publishing is worth spending weeks beating your head against with no apparent progress.  (Of course I don't mean staring at a blank piece of paper, but trying ideas and discovering they don't work, looking at special cases and examples, studying background that may be relevant, etc.)  Once you have a solid background in the relevant mathematics, which could take a long time depending on the field, you should probably be getting somewhere over a period of months.  By &quot;somewhere&quot;, I don't necessarily mean clear progress towards a solution, but you should be able to articulate an understanding of the problem you didn't have when you started, you should be coming up with tangential or spin-off ideas that may not solve the problem but could be interesting in their own right, etc.  The ultimate test of successful research isn't whether you accomplish your original goals, but rather whether you find something interesting along the way.  On the other hand, if months go by and you don't seem to be coming up with any interesting ideas or understanding, then this is probably not a fruitful research topic with your current level of background and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you shouldn't take any advice like the last paragraph too seriously.  Research is a highly personal topic, and many people have different research styles.  However, it may give you an idea of one reasonable approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T15:04:26.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T15:15:05.053" Score="8" ViewCount="2088" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to switch from one area of graduate study to another in US universities? For example, suppose someone has enrolled in a computer science phd program. Can he switch over to math(or physics) phd program in the same school later?(or say from applied mathematics to pure mathematics?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the steps for doing for doing that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T06:22:02.650" Title="Switching from one area of graduate study to another?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6029" CreationDate="2013-01-04T15:39:08.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tests are essentially independent, so &lt;strong&gt;you can take either one first.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools want the subject test, but others don't care.  This varies from one school to another.  I got a PhD in computer science from a good school, but I never took the computer science GRE subject test.  On the other hand, I did study a bit to improve my scores on the GRE general.  If you want to know which tests to take (and how heavily they'll be weighted in your application), I think your &lt;strong&gt;best option is to contact the school directly (or just read the application checklist on its website)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T15:39:08.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6032" CreationDate="2013-01-04T16:41:53.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, transferring to a different department requires a fresh application. While many departments will be sympathetic to applications from students alresdy at the university, they will still require all the formalities associated with a new admission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the procedures vary wildly from place to place, and you must check with your local institution (if you have one already). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors that can mitigate or complicate this process: if there's a standard procedure for doing this, if the two departments historically are comfortable with movement back and forth, if the departments are in the same college/school within the university, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T16:41:53.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T16:59:18.177" Score="34" ViewCount="1980" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite often, graduate level research is done by researchers from different institutions, whether different universities or cooperation between a university and a private corporation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do the researchers get to know each other? How does the collaboration begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4497" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-09-10T08:06:37.050" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T08:06:37.050" Title="How do researchers from different institutions get to know each other to begin a collaboration?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6074" CreationDate="2013-01-04T17:16:40.353" Score="16" ViewCount="6481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do understand that citations should be as precise as possible (including e.g. edition of a book or a page number), so that ideally, the reader can find the information exactly as I found it when writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that the problem with citing webpages is that they can change. But how does including the date when I accessed the page help anything? The reader still won't be able to read the same version I did (unless the page includes history, which is very rare). And comparing the accessed date with the current date isn't very helpful either: some webpages change multiple times per day, some aren't modified for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is the accessed date useful for some other purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="323" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T16:59:06.800" Title="Why do citation styles for webpages include accessed date?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2013-01-04T17:50:09.757" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to a conference/workshop.  Ask intelligent questions in talks.  Talk to speakers afterwards.  (Have your advisor introduce you if you're shy.)  Eat lunch with them and their students.  Hang out in the hallways.  Talk about your research.  Listen to other people talk about their research.  Listen to gossip.  Throw in a few dirty jokes.  Grab some coffee, or beer.  Scribble on napkins.  Go out for dinner with the students.  Drink.  Play pool.  Try that new absinthe place around the corner.  Scribble on napkins.  Throw up in the alley. Stumble home.  Sleep.  Grab coffee.  Run into someone you met at the absinthe place.  Commiserate about your hangovers.  Talk about your research.  Scribble on napkins.  Have a good idea.  Skip the next four hours of talks.  Fly home.  Exchange drafts over email/github.  Chat on Skype.  Revise, revise, revise.  Submit to the next conference.  Repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very important:&lt;/strong&gt; Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; skip the first 15 steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T17:50:09.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:08:53.160" Score="17" ViewCount="4715" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I was involved in an engineering research project where I significantly extended the &lt;em&gt;main&lt;/em&gt; functionality of the work. As my other team-mates were not involved in that aspect of the project, I thought I would leave them to do the write-up. I don't want to complicate things but lets just say their contribution matters &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt;, at least according to my advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This work is now being readied for publication and there's the matter of ordering the authors. Initially I thought we may be doing things alphabetically, but on the recent draft the order appeared to prioritize those who are doing the write-up, listing them first. My advisor raised no objection to this. If we are going down this road, it seems to me those who have done the most work should be first authors (i.e. me), rather than those who are doing the write-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to avoid any potential conflict with the people involved, and so I wonder if one acceptable compromise here is to specify the contributions of each author in the paper. Alternatively, we can do the alphabetical thing and make explicit mention of this as a footnote. I don't have any problem with either of these options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, am I correct in thinking that the ordering here is misplaced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, are the compromises I list reasonable enough to propose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4499" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T15:43:50.820" Title="Order of authors in an engineering publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6036" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:10:09.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A URL does not refer to content, it is only an address.  Since you are making a claim about what was written at that address, you must associate a date with it, or it is meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do such a thing, you should also save the content, in case it is not recoverable and you want to refer to it again or support it further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4498" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:10:09.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7266" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:20:24.030" Score="6" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6010/importance-of-undergraduate-research&quot;&gt;Importance of Undergraduate Research&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a physics undergrad interested in pursuing research in string theory/ Quantum field theory for my PhD. I am feeling pressurized by the notion, that you NEED to publish a paper to get admission to a good grad school. I was wondering how common is it for a undergrad to write a research paper in these areas? Do most of the students selected for PhD admission in these areas at top universities already have research publications? Also how much is an undergrad aspiring to pursue these areas know before entering grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T16:06:51.963" Title="Research publications in string theory/QFT by undergrads" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-01-17T08:46:52.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:33:47.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of this open source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see three pros of these types of lists. The first is that it can alert you to jobs that you did not know about. The second is that it can tell you something about where the status of the hiring process is. For example, if the list says an offer has been made and you haven't had an interview, then the odds are not good. The third use is that it gives you an idea of who is getting interviews and offers and with the help of the internet, how your CV stacks up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cons are pretty simple in my mind. In fact, each of the pros has a pretty substantial con. First, there are much better ways of finding out about jobs. Second, the list is not accurate; just because the list says an offer was made, doesn't mean it was. Further, I am not sure of the value of knowing that your application was unsuccessful. It seems reasonable to want to know, but I am not sure how it changes ones outlook. Third, there are better ways to figure out what the weak points of your application are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being listed, I don't see any potential for harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:33:47.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5983" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:54:31.423" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question asks a number of things. I am going to focus on interviewing over Skype/video conferencing since it is extremely difficult to do correctly. The issues associated with interviewing is very different from presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to consider when doing a Skype interview&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location: You need a private setting, a good internet connection, a backup landline, good lighting, and good acoustics. I suggest investing in a off white sheet to use as a backdrop. It is also useful for the camera to be directly in front of you so that it appears you are looking at them when you look at the screen. Make sure you have your notes and a drink within reach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timing: You need to know when the interview is happening including the timezone and who is initiating the call. You also need to know what happens if there is a problem. You do not want to lose your valuable interview time to technical problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attendees: Once the interview starts, you need to know who is in the room and where they are sitting. If there are people you cannot see, ask them to move. Ask each person to introduce themselves and make sure you can hear them. During this stage you need to get a baseline read on their facial expressions. You also need to know where they are sitting so that you can &quot;look at them&quot;. The slight eye shift required to look at them on the screen is likely not exaggerated enough. Practice this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control: Make sure you know who asks each question. Ideally use peoples names so they know you are talking to them. If you don't hear the question, ask them to repeat it. Check that they can hear and see you frequently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gestures: You need to minimize your gestures, pointing, and figitng. They are really noticeable on Skype.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:54:31.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2013-01-04T19:18:51.793" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought I would leave them to do the write-up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the person who writes the initial draft is first author when the author order depends on contribution. There may be discussions/&quot;fights&quot; over who deserves to write the initial draft, but it is generally understood that this person becomes the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T19:18:51.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5959" CreationDate="2013-01-04T19:39:14.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with the &quot;Oxford Style&quot; guide and therefore do not believe that there is a single &quot;standard&quot; style. I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/Oxford&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford style&lt;/a&gt; has a footnote in text citation and a reference list. This makes it similar to Chicago style. While I do not have the CMS to check, &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/949/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prudue OWL&lt;/a&gt; has a nice comparison of MLA, APA, and CMS (all of which have comprehensive and standardized style guides). In CMS it doesn't seem to be a problem since you are using a footnote for the in text citation and the reference list doesn't require an author or date for webpages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T19:39:14.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6028" CreationDate="2013-01-04T21:15:47.307" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent answer from Anonymous Mathematician, I would add another point: finding an interesting problem that is worth spending time on is sometimes one of the hardest part of academic work. It's perhaps a bias from my field (Computer Security), but most researchers I have met are not working on a specific problem they chose years ago, but are constantly shifting between asking new problems/questions and addressing problems/questions (raised by them or others). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course some known problems, but if they are known, it's likely because there is no obvious solution, and perhaps no solution at all. One can choose to work on one of them (I heard there are people working all the time on the P/NP problem), but it's probably better to create your own problems by challenging existing assumptions (X solve this problem by assuming P is true, but I know a case where P is not true, and therefore I want to solve it also in this case), by opening new approaches (would a quantum computer help solve this problem?), by looking at the future work proposed by other researchers, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might again be a bias from my field, but I have always felt that solving problems was never a big problem (and it's actually the funniest part of the job), while finding problems worth solving is actually hard, because it requires to have a global understanding of the field, of what exists, what doesn't, why it doesn't, and what could be possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T21:15:47.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6014" CreationDate="2013-01-05T14:05:18.250" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the formulation of your question, to me it seems your main concern is &lt;strong&gt;if it is polite to send an e-mail to the address you were never explicitly given&lt;/strong&gt;, but instead found it on your own Googling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you found &lt;strong&gt;his/her new work address&lt;/strong&gt;. If that's the case, I'd say it's &lt;em&gt;completely fine to send an e-mail&lt;/em&gt;. All the right reasons for contacting your former adviser before the deadline are already mentioned in @aeismail's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd just like to add that I've been told over and over again that a &lt;em&gt;good letter of recommendation from your former adviser is expected&lt;/em&gt;, and that it's extra great if you can have letters of recommendation from more than one of your former advisers: &lt;em&gt;those are the people who were supposed to be working closest with you&lt;/em&gt; and who &lt;em&gt;continually assessed your progress over a period of time&lt;/em&gt;. If you can't get them to say something good for you, you must be very very special in some other way to get accepted to a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the &lt;em&gt;is it polite&lt;/em&gt; point: it is a work e-mail you found. That's the way he's expecting to be contacted concerning scientific things. It's public and accessible to everybody. That does not mean he'll reply to everything, but if you're one of his former students, he should be glad to reply if you split on good terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've contacted everybody who gave me a letter of recommendation after I got my PhD grant, and &lt;em&gt;I sad &quot;thank you&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I went to visit my supervisor in his office for a few minutes before I moved away for my PhD: those people, and he especially, are who made me love science, and made me look for a PhD in the first place. He often said that &lt;strong&gt;advising students on how to go further with science/research was one of the best parts of his job&lt;/strong&gt;. So, maybe I was just lucky, but in my experience, your former advisers will be glad to help you, glad to know their help mattered and &lt;em&gt;won't mind you contacting them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T14:05:18.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6054" CreationDate="2013-01-05T17:06:16.660" Score="4" ViewCount="956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it is legal, and also advisable to apply for a PhD position at more than one department in the same university. For e.g. I am interested in representation theory and string theory. So would it be possible to apply to the maths and physics department, or there would be inter-departmental clashes leading to my application being disqualified. I guess the rules would be different. SO what are the rules in US and Europe unis resp. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T18:55:38.357" Title="Applying for PhD admission at more than one department in the same university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6052" CreationDate="2013-01-05T17:06:53.727" Score="5" ViewCount="2650" Body="&lt;p&gt;My University is currently on break, so I'd be making the appointment by email, and then meeting separately to discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the email, is it a good idea to say explicitly that the appointment is regarding letters of recommendation? It seems like it would be, but on the other hand that seems tantamount to &quot;asking via email,&quot; which of course is frowned upon when we're in the same city. Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4506" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T17:36:09.990" Title="Making an appointment regarding letters of recommendation" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6049" CreationDate="2013-01-05T17:32:16.847" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write the email right now asking for the letter.  If you feel sheepish about &quot;asking over email,&quot; just say &quot;I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to ask you in person, but because we're on break, I wasn't sure how long it would take to set up a meeting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number 1 courtesy issue with asking for letters of recommendation is promptness and giving your writers as much time as possible to write and submit the letters.  I think that completely overrides any concerns about medium, especially when it's not necessarily easy to meet with the person in question right away.  I'd certainly much rather get an email about submitting letters than to go to the trouble of specially setting up a meeting with some amount of delay. (In fact, when students do ask me in person, I usually tell them to sent me an email about it so I have a permanent record of the request).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T17:32:16.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6049" CreationDate="2013-01-05T17:36:09.990" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may vary between departments, countries (I'm in the U.S.), etc., but I'd say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When making an appointment, it's almost always a good idea to specify what it will be about.  When someone doesn't have a lot of time, this helps them figure out how soon the meeting needs to be scheduled, and it gives them a chance to prepare for it.  The one exception I can think of is very delicate topics.  For example, if you are meeting with someone to discuss an ethical matter, there might not be a short description you can give that wouldn't risk be misleading or omitting important context.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of a belief that asking for a letter of recommendation via e-mail is rude or problematic (although of course this may depend on the local culture).  In fact, I would prefer to be asked by e-mail.  Partly it's just because I generally prefer e-mail for things that can be handled that way, since it's less disruptive.  Partly it's because awkward situations are a little easier for me to handle by e-mail.  For example, if a student didn't do well in my course, I may point this out and ask whether there's someone else who could write a more compelling letter.  It's easier for me to find the right words in writing, rather than on the fly in a conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T17:36:09.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2013-01-05T17:53:28.247" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you specifically asked about math, let me say that in my experience (as a mathematician, reading recommendation letters written by other mathematicians), the pattern of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use the applicant's full name once. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use their first name (generally what you would call them in person) after that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is close to universal amongst mathematicians in the US.  One does find exceptions, usually replacing the applicant's first name with their last name (so, writing &quot;Doe's work has been...&quot;), but they are actually quite rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T17:53:28.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6048" CreationDate="2013-01-05T18:55:38.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You have to ask each university.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there are any &lt;em&gt;ethical&lt;/em&gt; issues with applying to more than one program.  Moreover, I think it's rare for graduate admissions committees in different departments to share information about applicants.  (In the US, that sharing &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; even run afoul of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;, but interpretations of FERPA vary wildly from one university to the next.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at some universities, it is not &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to apply to more than one department.  At my university, for example, all graduate applications go through a central web site that forces each applicant to choose &lt;em&gt;exactly one&lt;/em&gt; program.  Yes, I think this is stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T18:55:38.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2013-01-05T19:05:28.150" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You must discuss this issue with your advisor and all coauthors as soon as possible.&lt;/strong&gt;  The right time to have the discussion would have been &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the first draft is started, but unless you have a time machine, you have to have it now.  Since there are differing opinions, and the outcome matters, conflict is inevitable.  Welcome to adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T19:05:28.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2013-01-06T00:21:12.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in the situation where I have been the primary author on a few papers where others have been the primary personnel involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of those cases, the PI was the primary worker, and therefore allowed me to be first author. In the other case, the primary worker was still the first author, and I was the second author. I was fine with this, because I was getting the credit in exchange for making sure the work got published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do agree that the primary person whose work is being presented &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be first author. At the same time, if you do not have an active hand in writing the manuscript, the claim that slightly less scientific work plus more work preparing the manuscript could be persuasive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T00:21:12.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6075" CreationDate="2013-01-06T01:05:50.663" Score="16" ViewCount="1355" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm a master student pursuing a PHD. I'm currently following a research master program of which the natural path is a PHD program, in which I am seriously interested. I already hold a regular master in marketing and a bachelor in business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is business (specifically, quantitative marketing, but I also like some extensions to strategic topics in management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to spend the summer (break) doing something fruitful for my skills and/or possibly, carreer. I expect to be done with course obligations around week 19, new semester starts in september which gives me at least (in case of resits) 10 weeks of free time but can easily be around 15 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I identified some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in advance for thesis (look for suitable topic, review literature)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summer school (abroad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact someone from my department to collaborate on research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact someone from my department to advise me on extra readings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find an intership or job (may be difficult when regarding my field, experience, and time available)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone give me some advice or other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4507" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T09:34:00.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:28:31.430" Title="Master student pursuing PHD: how to spend summer break?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6064" CreationDate="2013-01-06T13:52:27.830" Score="13" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in Computer Science. I read a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4553339&amp;amp;contentType=Conference+Publications&amp;amp;searchField%3DSearch_All%26queryText%3DA+brave+new+world+synchronization+games&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; today. The author gave such a good result by the end of the article that I think the research question can be called &quot;closed&quot;: the result performance is ideal and I think the problem is not worth researching any more; future developers can simply use the algorithms proposed and things should be fine. However, the &lt;strong&gt;author of the survey&lt;/strong&gt; did not say so -- they did not say that the problem is solved, nor did they said anything about future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe (in this specific case), that the problem is solved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research goal is to reduce network latency. By the time the survey was written (year 2008), the result latency was 100ms. With such latency, human users won't notice a network delay, because that only happens when the latency exceeds 150ms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The authors of the survey did not publish any paper on optimizing the algorithms after that survey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does these mean that the problem is safely closed? If so, why didn't the survey authors say that? If not, why didn't they continue working on it? How would I know whether a research question is solved or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="773" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T01:39:25.397" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T00:56:49.357" Title="When is a research question &quot;closed&quot;?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:29:08.943" Score="13" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;In recent years, several organizations (publishers, arXiv, universities) started pushing for systems of a reliable author identification, gaining considerable traction with the recent launch of ORCID. This works by assigning IDs to persons. In some cases, the person itself can then connect his/her articles to the person ID. In other cases, publishers ask / plan to ask for the ID upon manuscript submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ORCID (supported among others by Spinger, Elsevier, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, IEEE, Institute of Physics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ResearcherID by Thomson Reuters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scopus Author ID&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some obvious advantages of a precise and machine-readable author identification. These pros are strongly advocated by the big organizations, which are of course very interested. But what about the cons? Before all researchers become obliged to using such IDs, we should discuss the cons and potential problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think and what are the biggest potential disadvantages for the authors? Do you know some nice article / blog / discussion about disadvantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related texts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/03/11/the-author-id-dilemma/&quot;&gt;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/03/11/the-author-id-dilemma/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/author-identifier-overview/&quot;&gt;http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/author-identifier-overview/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4509" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T08:00:14.720" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:00:14.720" Title="What are potential downsides of (universal) author IDs pushed for by publishers etc.?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;digital-researcher-id&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6060" CreationDate="2013-01-06T17:04:51.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is long and somewhat argumentative. I'll answer here to a small part of it. You say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Are you sure that you will still be proud of your last paper in 20 years time? In some cases you might prefer to not include a certain article in your next grant/job application.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the sounds very contradictory with the principles and aims of scientific publishing, regardless of how identification is performed. Once something is published under your name, it is part of the academic record and should not disappear, even if you don't like it anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is actually a &lt;strong&gt;very good thing&lt;/strong&gt; that the integrity of the academic record, including published literature, is maintained throughout history. It is even part of scholarly publishers' duties to do so. That it is associated with your name and affiliation(s), or with a unique identifier, doesn't change naught. To given an example, if an academic were to produce a full list of publications (as part of a long CV or grant application) and willingly omit a publication from this list, I would consider it unethical (though I don't think it is something that often happens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T17:04:51.913" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6059" CreationDate="2013-01-06T17:11:29.183" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a research question is every “closed”, as you say, though it's of course a matter of vocabulary. In the example you mention, it seems clearly that there is &lt;strong&gt;no current incentive to design better solutions&lt;/strong&gt;, but unless it is actually proven that there can be none, it's not a solved-and-closed question, it's a “we don't actually need to do better” question. This makes all the difference in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T17:11:29.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2013-01-06T17:28:48.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would to add a review point to the discussion that could imply a negative correlation. Teaching students takes empathy, understanding that they do not yet understand and what makes them not understand. A top researcher has probably not experienced this when he/she was in school. Lesser researchers might be better at understanding why a student doesn't get it. Also, a good mind does not imply excellent communicative skills. I would say the correlation is non-existing or slightly positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T17:28:48.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6060" CreationDate="2013-01-06T18:08:13.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few possible problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Such an ID system seems a little intrusive. It would impose something like an obligatory Facebook for researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Everyone's research output could then be identified reliably (in machine-readable form) and used for all sorts of data mining. Among the possible uses some may not be desirable for everyone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2a) Algorithmic rating of a researcher's output becomes very simple for&#xA;anyone interested. It might reinforce the tendency for people to judge by some computed rank, instead of actually looking at the content of the articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2b) Authors might be tempted to optimize their (machine generated) rankings by annoying tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2c) People could easily study the &quot;graph of your collaborators&quot; etc. (adding to point 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You lose every control over the communication about your publication list. Instead of being able to present it yourself to others it is stored in a public database to which you have no access. Hence, you cannot choose anymore whether you want to present your publication list to others in machine-readable form or not, and whether you want to present the full list, or (for what ever reason) a certain subset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4509" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T18:08:13.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6076" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:46:55.920" Score="25" ViewCount="3328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's list important factors for evaluation of a job candidate (for research post doc, assistant professor, tenure track, etc):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research experience (research articles, research talks, expository articles, perhaps books).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience (tutoring, undergraduate courses, graduate courses, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academic background (grades, the university of graduation, current affiliation, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reference (who is writing reference letter and how he is writing it).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personal (natural) features (nationality, race, language, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Social and family status (connections, marriage, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other factors (you name it).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been in job market for several years. I was always wondering how do the above factors affect my job application in different academic institutions? I would like to know the approximate percentage of importance of these factors in different institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And my second question is How the hiring committees evaluate a candidate? Is it based on reference letters, CV, list of publications, research statement, teaching statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is reference letters are very important at least for the first job after PhD. Am I right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T17:06:52.617" LastActivityDate="2021-04-05T21:17:13.170" Title="Important factors for hiring a young mathematician" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:59:50.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should had discussed this issue before starting the research. For example you could have agreed that anybody who solves the main part of the problem (project) will be the first author. But now that it is done, I think you should talk about it with your advisor and you might have to be a little flexible about the order of authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T21:41:24.600" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T21:41:24.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:22:20.403" Score="7" ViewCount="1973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a question for anyone that cares and knows how to help. I'm a third year physics student, currently enrolled in the &quot;regular&quot;, straight-up physics stream. However, since I've realized I don't want to go into the experimental side of physics, I am trying to avoid having to take a lab course. This isn't possible while staying in the stream I'm in right now, but due to my elective and other choices in regards to the mathematics courses I took thus far, I am still eligible to switch into Mathematical Physics. I've looked at the requirements and the courses I'd now need to take when compared to the ones I'd need to take if I stayed in the regular stream are basically the ones I would use up my electives on anyway. Thus, the only qualitative change arising from switching the programs would be that I would be able to avoid that final lab course, and could take another course, say, biophysics or a maths course, instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern, however, is what impact would this have in regards to my going to grad school or looking for jobs? As far as grad school is concerned, I would assume it wouldn't have much of an impact due to the importance of actual classes I took and not the name on my degree, but what about jobs if an academic career doesn't pan out? Does &quot;Physics&quot; look better than &quot;Mathematical Physics&quot; in certain cases? If so, when would that be? In other words, is mathematical physics looked down upon as being esoteric? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other advice in regards to this switch would also be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4514" OwnerDisplayName="Ryker" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T20:02:10.780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T20:02:10.780" Title="The importance of the title &quot;Mathematical Physics&quot; vs. &quot;Physics&quot; on one's degree for grad school/jobs" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:58:23.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switch to Math Phys. It won't hurt your job prospects at all, since you don't want to be an experimentalist or phenomenologist. Math Phys covers any decent theoretical physics ground anyway. You'll be doing yourself a big favor and it will even help you focus more on one area of research, and put you into a healthier social environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="BrianWa" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T20:58:23.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6067" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:33:09.200" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is fairly general, but the title implies that you want to ask about mathematics. I think the more general question makes sense, so I'll answer that one, based on my experience in computer science in the US&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the criteria you list, (1) and (4) (research and letters) are usually the most important in research-oriented universities. (3) academic background (but not grades) plays a role in initial filtering but usually takes second place to (1)/(4) once people get some familiarity with the candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is rare that (2) plays a role, unless the job calls for significant teaching, or is in a teaching-oriented university. Since math folks teach a lot more than CS folks, this might be one point of difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the factors listed in (5) cannot be considered legally, and rightly so. I seriously doubt that (6) plays a direct role, but personal connections can help open doors, much like (3). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T03:33:09.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6067" CreationDate="2013-01-07T08:44:38.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll second Suresh’s generic answer (I'm a chemist myself), but I'll add a few points: first, one of the reasons that teaching skills usually play little role in hiring decisions is that they are much harder to evaluate/quantify than research skills. Most people in the hiring committee will be researchers or think they know how research should be evaluated. Most of them don't know how to evaluate teaching skills (and if they did, they hardly have time to do it anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding 5, it probably depends on the country, but some of these can be serious barriers for employment: language is the most important one, especially if teaching is involved. At least in France, most university won't recruit at the junior level someone who doesn't speak French, as that is the language in which undergrad courses are taught. Nationality can also be a stopper in specific circumstances (nuclear research, for one thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think an important factor you did not list is the performance of the candidate in interviews with the hiring committee: self-assurance, conveying the impression of someone well-prepared, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T08:44:38.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6036" CreationDate="2013-01-07T10:17:55.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any published accounts of how style rules are developed. If you really want to know why a particular rule was developed, you need to asked them directly. That said, there are a number of different styles for dealing with electronic materials and these styles are changing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MLA: You always need the date of access for electronic resources.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At some point the since 2014, the requirement has been dropped: &lt;a href=&quot;https://style.mla.org/access-dates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://style.mla.org/access-dates/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;APA: You rarely use the date of retrieval, although in previous versions (APA 5) you always did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CMS: You never need the date of access/retrieval. I am not sure if you ever did in earlier versions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2019-01-04T16:59:06.800" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T16:59:06.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6058" CreationDate="2013-01-07T13:05:40.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you're asking is fairly subjective, might depend somewhat on your field, and also, &lt;em&gt;your options and opportunities&lt;/em&gt; can differ greatly according to the country in which you're doing your Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most I can offer, as somebody who just started a PhD, is to tell you &lt;em&gt;what I did during my Masters&lt;/em&gt; (that was outside of regular program) and, more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;why and how I think it helped&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did &lt;strong&gt;two research internships abroad&lt;/strong&gt;, one before my last year of classes, and one during my last semester that played out as co-supervised research for my Master thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I got from that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;em&gt;what research entails in other countries where research is important and valued&lt;/em&gt; (research in Croatia, where I come from, is at mediocre level at best)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;experienced working&lt;/em&gt; in two &lt;em&gt;very different labs&lt;/em&gt;, under very different supervision, different lab dynamics and approaches towards research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I discovered &lt;strong&gt;which setting works best for me&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;which setting I work best in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. I prefer a relaxed, flexible environment and being advised/supervised by somebody openly helpful and &lt;em&gt;talkative&lt;/em&gt; (it's just a thing for me) as opposed to strict working hours, getting tasks without understanding the importance and when the feedback (especially the negative aspects) is constrained because of inherit cultural politeness)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I made valuable contacts who are at various levels in the research hierarchies - some of them gave me ideas, others encouragement, and some even gave me recommendation letters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in informal settings, I &lt;strong&gt;exchanged concrete ideas&lt;/strong&gt; as well as &lt;strong&gt;general attitudes towards research and science&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(and life)&lt;/em&gt; with people that come from different cultural and academical backgrounds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I found out &lt;em&gt;how (very different) PhD students think of their &amp;quot;jobs&amp;quot; and what they think of their career choices&lt;/em&gt; and I was free to make &lt;strong&gt;my own assessment about how happy and fulfilled doing the PhD&lt;/strong&gt; made them and why, so my guess about how happy it would make me was more educated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the proximity to the location where I finally applied for a PhD &lt;strong&gt;got me the PhD grant&lt;/strong&gt; - I would have never gotten that particular one if I wasn't there to have a few informal talks and give my grant presentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;em&gt;summarize&lt;/em&gt;, what you should be aiming to get from your summer activity is &lt;strong&gt;diversity&lt;/strong&gt;. Diversity in attitudes, approaches, contacts and ideas. You're allowed and encouraged to work and thrive in an environment best for you for anything more permanent (several years long), but you can't really know what you prefer if you never tried anything different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to tell you which activity to choose, but I would go to the one that had the &lt;strong&gt;potential to expose me to most new people, ideas and attitudes&lt;/strong&gt;. You can always sacrifice some sleep to do extra work, but no amount of work in the world can measure up what you get from formal and informal interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my (a bit Utopian) view of the world, that's how science progresses: scientists &lt;em&gt;travel&lt;/em&gt; and during those travels, the best of many worlds collides. By the end of those travels, hopefully, all the worlds are a little bit better off. When you're old, wise and grumpy, you travel to give back to the community and spread the ideas you spend a big part of your life to shape. But, since you expect to be giving back later, that entails you to travel when you're young, curious and perky, and get the most of what the community has to offer - little, baby ideas, and chisels to shape your own ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:28:31.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6067" CreationDate="2013-01-07T14:54:25.627" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have anything essentially divergent to say from the other answers, but since you inquired about mathematics specifically and I am a mathematician who has been (and currently am) involved in postdoctoral and tenure track hiring, I thought it might be useful for me to weigh in as well.  Lacking true inspiration, let me just comment on your criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Let me also assume that we are talking about jobs at a &amp;quot;research university&amp;quot;, as it seems you are.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research experience (research articles, research talks, expository articles, perhaps books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematicians are judged on a combination of research &lt;em&gt;promise&lt;/em&gt; and research &lt;em&gt;success&lt;/em&gt;: as you get older, one looks increasingly for evidence that the former has been converted into the latter.  However, for every kind of research job in mathematics, they are hiring you on the basis of the work they expect you to do in the future.  So, for instance, if you have already solved a major problem, you can coast on that for a time but after a while people want to hear what you are working on now.  Research talks are probably the best way of exploring the dichotomy between past and future research: as such, they are very important whenever they exist, which is almost always on the tenure track job market and in a small (but perhaps increasing?) minority of postdoctoral jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expository articles generally do not count towards the research component of your application.  (If someone is counting papers, then if you have 8 research papers and 1 expository paper then people will probably say you have 9 papers altogether, so it counts a little bit.  But &lt;em&gt;if pressed&lt;/em&gt;, its value could contract considerably: e.g. if there are worries that a candidate has too few papers, than a paper viewed as expository will probably not allay this worry.) Strategically it is probably best to advertise expository articles as having some teaching / mentoring / service component, if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to writing books: one of my most distinguished colleagues, Dino Lorenzini, wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Elorenz/book.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an excellent and rather successful book&lt;/a&gt; near the beginning of his career.  He now tells anyone who will listen that junior faculty should not write books.  Of course sometimes the heart wants what it wants, but from a strategic perspective I think this is eminently sound, and I say this as someone who may turn around and write some books now that I am solidly into my mid-career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience (tutoring, undergraduate courses, graduate courses, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Successful teaching experiences&lt;/em&gt; are indeed valued for a research job.  At most research universities teaching is still a main component of one's job and, especially, of one's promotion and tenure packages.  Most research departments are looking most of the time for &lt;em&gt;thoroughly solid&lt;/em&gt; teachers rather than especially brilliant or innovative ones.  Your teaching dossier should convey most of all that the department who hires you will never have to think about your teaching in a negative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some graduate students do not get to do instruction at all (as opposed to TA work: grading, leading problem sessions, and so forth).  There is a big difference between TA work and instruction, and as a hirer I am very wary of candidates who attempt to convince me that they will be a successful instructor based only on TA experience.  I would strongly advise every math graduate student to be the instructor of record for at least one successful undergraduate course (where &amp;quot;successful&amp;quot; means you can get a strong teaching letter out of the experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience at the graduate level is almost unheard of for graduate students and is far from guaranteed in postdocs.  Even within my own department, some of my colleagues feel strongly that postdocs should teach topics graduate courses in their areas of interest, whereas other colleagues feel that it is the job of the tenure track faculty to teach these courses.  I lean more towards the latter, and I don't feel that teaching graduate courses is an important part of a tenure track job application: I would be equally impressed or more with other kinds of interactions with the graduate program, e.g. participating in or organizing seminars, reading theses, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time thinking about how tutoring experience could play a significant role.  If you have founded the Khan Academy or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://euclidlab.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Euclid Lab&lt;/a&gt;, you would probably get some attention / consideration for this.  Much less and your employers are unlikely to care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic background (grades, the university of graduation, current affiliation, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No research university that I know of asks for grades or transcripts for candidates for faculty positions.  Of course your &lt;em&gt;pedigree&lt;/em&gt; -- i.e., where you did your undergraduate and graduate work, and your current institution -- is of some importance, but not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much importance.  Anyway, what's done is done here: presumably you took what opportunities you could to attend / work at better, rather than worse, institutions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference (who is writing reference letter and how he is writing it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or she!  When you are applying for your first postdoc, your adviser's letter may well be the &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; important part of the application: most graduates, even very strong ones, cannot speak about their research accomplishments and near future goals as convincingly as their advisers can.  Later on your adviser's letter gets less important, but you probably get more letters overall, and they are always a key part of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal (natural) features (nationality, race, language, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race.  Nationality is probably a no-go as well.  Language issues are important: if English is not your native language, employers will (or at any rate, should) look carefully at your skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social and family status (connections, marriage, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional connections can be important; e.g. they come out in recommendation letters and in your academic pedigree.  It is illegal for employers to inquire about your marital status, sexual orientation, or whether you have children.  It is not illegal for you to bring these things up, and if you have a &amp;quot;two-body problem&amp;quot; -- i.e., a partner who is also an academic -- than you should do so at some point, and that brings an extra layer of complication to the process.  But if a candidate is not looking for an academic job for her partner, I honestly don't care at all whether she is married, gay, celibate, and so forth.  I can assure you that in most American departments any such talk about these matters in the context of a hiring discussion would be rapidly quelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="31596" LastEditDate="2021-04-05T21:17:13.170" LastActivityDate="2021-04-05T21:17:13.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2013-01-07T15:57:59.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only reference I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feldon et al (2011) Graduate student's teaching experiences improve their research skills. Science, 333, 1037-1040.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1037.full&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1037.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors found a that students who taught improved their abilities to generate testable hypotheses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, I assume that this means that there is a correlation between being a good researcher and being a good teacher beyond the simple point of being able to communicate your findings more effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4517" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T15:57:59.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2013-01-08T00:52:01.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Correlation is not causation. Beware of studies that confuse the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those with non-statistical background, it is like &quot;eating ice cream and &quot;driving a car&quot;. There may be a positive or negative (or no) relationship between eating ice cream and causing an accident but ice-cream in itself does not cause the accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, it is not necessary to be a good researcher because one is a good teacher and vice-versa - a notion that is sort of reflected in the many answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T00:52:01.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6032" CreationDate="2013-01-08T06:22:02.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases you have to apply for admission to the new program, as most American universities admit by department or college for graduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much more difficult to switch from one PhD program to another, as you not only have to apply again and be admitted by the department offering the degree, but you must take the PhD qualifying exam in your new program. Also, depending on how closely aligned the fields are, coursework taken in your original program may or may not be applicable to your new program. It is generally easier to switch Master's programs but still will normally require a new application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many departments or colleges limit the number of courses you can apply to a graduate degree taken in another program. In the Master's program I teach in, it is three, and they must be courses that would have reasonable application to our degree. We routinely accept students changing programs, unless their academic performance was sub-par in their previous program, i.e. any Cs, even if their GPA is satisfactory, and/or any course failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T06:22:02.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6060" CreationDate="2013-01-08T09:04:07.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One downside that hasn't been mentioned yet: &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the administrators of this system collect and record everyone's email addresses, then this has some disadvantages for researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big targeted database with e-mail addresses, research interests, institutes and whatsnot has a great value for advertising companies.&#xA;I am sure we all get enough spam, and a fraction of it is researcher-targeted spam: vanity press, dubious publishers, cash-cow conferences. Wouldn't they all like to have more addresses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, many of us are going to be working actively to keep our profile up-to-date and accurate; we will be basically working for free to build and check such a database. Many of us are already doing this for Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the database contains email addresses, access to them needs to be strictly regulated; any form of machine and automated access in particular. If there is a commercial entity behind it, that is another major concern. A private firm can be sold to evil stakeholders, or can go bankrupt and have to sell the database. Even if the database owners do not do anything, a simple hacker attack can expose a well-structured database of the e-mail addresses of most professional researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T09:06:08.610" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T09:06:08.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6060" CreationDate="2013-01-08T13:38:43.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, we already have a database of this sort - two them, in fact, with in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet&quot;&gt;MathSciNet&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zentralblatt-math.org/zmath/en/&quot;&gt;Zentralblatt MATH&lt;/a&gt;. Both aim to be comprehensive for mathematics publications, going back to the 1940s. It is completely standard for me to use this to get a list of every publication (in mathematics) by a fellow mathematician, and anyone can do it about me.  These data have indeed been used to perform scientific analysis of collaboration patterns, which are somewhat fascinating, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/pdf/news/485.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if there were going to be cons, this might be a fruitful place to look for them. As someone in the field, the main cons that I see are not with the fact that the database is public and complete - after all, the point of publishing is to make a paper public. The main issues I have are with the relationship between the database and my day-to-day workflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, publications outside academia may not be present. For example, if someone publishes a chapter of a popular book, or writes editorials based on their professional knowledge, these may not be indexed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system is still only marginal for getting actual copies of the papers that are indexed. This has gotten slightly better over time, but I generally still have to google the title of the paper to look for preprints, copies on the author's webpage, etc. The system has slowly been adding links to the publisher's canonical page for each paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there is no way for me to add a link to my personal webpage to either system. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Papers only appear in the database after publication, which can be years after they were presented at conferences and well known to the research community. So someone in a distant location would find it hard to keep at the cutting edge of research solely looking at the databases. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4519" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T13:38:43.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-08T23:25:15.947" Score="10" ViewCount="8933" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed a PhD by research, which I think has some merits in being available as a book (This is, of course, my personal opinion). The research cuts across several fields (e.g. sociology, public policy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what I need to do to take the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you turn an academic piece like the dissertation (which is written for the examiners) into a book (which is for the general public)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I find publishers who specialise in my field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T17:42:56.580" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T17:42:56.580" Title="How do I convert my PhD dissertation so that it can be published as a book?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-08T23:40:34.303" Score="17" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research, I've found two articles that are completely identical, except the abstract and authors names. They are published on different conferences, with one year between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should (must) I do in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T04:25:08.283" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T04:25:08.283" Title="What should I do if I find two suspiciously similar conference publications by different authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6087" CreationDate="2013-01-09T00:32:57.330" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The programme committees for the conferences would be the appropriate authorities to contact (it is their responsibility to deal with plagiarism within their conference). This is of course complicated by the fact the conferences are in the past; the current programme committee may have little or nothing to do with the earlier committee, the steering committee may be more appropriate in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither are responsive, contacting the publication venue may be required. If the proceedings are published by a journal or reputable publisher, they should be able to resolve the issue (they have copyright laws to deal with!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T00:32:57.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6086" CreationDate="2013-01-09T00:38:05.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first question is quite tricky (to answer and to do). It depends on what you mean by &quot;the public&quot;. A version for academics needs little change from a thesis. For students you need to consider how to highlight what can be learnt from your work. For the &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; general public,  you'll have to start thinking about rewriting perhaps quite a bit, keeping your language accessible and building a narrative. As I am in a different field, perhaps some or all of this is already a part of your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is simpler, who publishes the books that you read for your thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T00:38:05.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6086" CreationDate="2013-01-09T04:01:21.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a partial answer, Springer used to publish (theoretically) outstanding PhD thesis in Mathematics in its 'Lecture notes in Mathematics' as research monograph. However I do not know how many of the published volumes are Phd thesis.  Definitely a (math) thesis requires a lot of polishing and rewriting before publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T04:01:21.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6096" CreationDate="2013-01-09T05:01:35.323" Score="8" ViewCount="3367" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am finishing my masters (one year) in economics at a Canadian university and am intending to apply to Canadian universities to do a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I have is that in the courses I had taken last semester the professors were closed to student contact making it near impossible to build relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my applications I intended to rely upon professors from my undergraduate university that know me quite well and who I know will write high-quality letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine mentioned that when applying for a PhD program, it is expected that my references will come from my masters university and it is generally not acceptable practice to have references from the undergraduate one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually the case? If so, what is the best course of action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:44:51.830" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T04:02:03.877" Title="Are undergraduate reference letters adequate for PhD applications after a masters program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6001" CreationDate="2013-01-09T08:23:02.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good starting point would be to talk to your research advisor about how to handle this, and follow his/her advice.  This is the sort of situation for which advisors exist to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the way you are handling it seems reasonable and sensible.  You cannot breach your confidentiality obligations.  However, public but hard-to-find newsletters don't seem quite as problematic; you can cite them and quote from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For future reference: I personally try to separate out my research from any confidential commercial work I do, precisely to avoid these kinds of conflicts.  In other words, I try to avoid doing research on the same topic where I also know confidential commercial information, and I try to avoid taking on confidential commercial engagements on the same topic where I am actively doing research.  I personally think that is good practice, but this is a matter for personal preference and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T08:23:02.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6092" CreationDate="2013-01-09T08:26:37.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Ph.D. program is about research.  Have you done research?  If not, how do you know you want to study for a Ph.D.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility to seek out opportunities for research.&#xA;Protestations that your professors were not open to communication are not likely to be viewed positively by an admissions committee.&#xA;If you've had some research experiences, have you considered asking those you worked with for a recommendation letter?  If you haven't had any research experience, that will make it significantly harder to be admitted into a Ph.D. program, no matter who writes your letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you haven't been inspired to seek out opportunities to get involved in research, that would make me wonder whether you will truly enjoy a Ph.D. program.  Going to a Ph.D. program &quot;by default&quot; or because &quot;that's what everyone is doing&quot; is a terrible idea; you should only join a Ph.D. program if you are passionate and excited about doing research, because that's what you are going to be spending most of your time doing in a Ph.D. program, and that is what Ph.D. programs are designed to prepare you for.  So, you might also want to do a little bit of soul-searching to figure out whether a Ph.D. program truly is the right direction for you.  If it's not, it's much better to find out now rather than after spending several years in a Ph.D. program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is acceptable to have letters of reference from a mixture of your undergraduate and your masters university.  People would probably ask questions if all of your letters were from your undergraduate university and none were from your masters university.  That might make the admissions committee wonder: What were you doing with your time at the M.S. program?  Why didn't you seek out opportunities to get involved in research and other activities beyond coursework?  Is there some hidden story?  (For instance, did you completely alienate all the professors in your M.S. program?  Or, do you have little self-drive to do research?  Or, maybe you have little experience with research, and thus no idea whether you are good at and enjoy research, and thus little basis to judge whether a Ph.D. program is a good fit for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the most important thing is to have letters from people who know you well, and who know well how to evaluate candidates for Ph.D. programs.  So, which professors (or other established researchers) know you well and can best comment on your research ability or research potential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T17:29:52.413" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T17:29:52.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T09:59:48.550" Score="7" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/498/scope-for-the-role-of-peer-reviewer&quot;&gt;Scope for the role of peer reviewer&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first time, I have been asked to do a peer review. I have accepted, because the paper is well within my expertise, and I don't have less time than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any established guidelines, checklists, etc. on &lt;em&gt;how to actually do a good peer review&lt;/em&gt;? One might consider it common sense (&lt;em&gt;just read the article critically and raise any issues&lt;/em&gt;), but I think it might still be helpful to have some checklist on things to look for. For example, is it my responsibility to check that the references are correct? Should I mention cosmetics (&quot;figure X hard to read&quot;), or focus only on the content? And if I do focus on the content, are there specific strategies in doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manuscript (draft) is a full length journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T13:40:21.953" Title="How do I write a good peer review?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-01-09T15:26:56.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2013-01-09T10:21:51.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PLoS Computational Biology&lt;/em&gt; editor P.E. Bourne has written a series of very decent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fissue.pcol.v03.i01&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Ten simples rules to …”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; articles. There is no detailed guide to being a good reviewer, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscollections.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0020110&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; sure is a good starting point. Summing it up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do Not Accept a Review Assignment unless You Can Accomplish the Task in the Requested Timeframe—Learn to Say No&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid Conflict of Interest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write Reviews You Would Be Satisfied with as an Author&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a Reviewer You Are Part of the Authoring Process&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be Sure to Enjoy and to Learn from the Reviewing Process&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a Method of Reviewing That Works for You&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spend Your Precious Time on Papers Worthy of a Good Review&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maintain the Anonymity of the Review Process if the Journal Requires It&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write Clearly, Succinctly, and in a Neutral Tone, but Be Decisive&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make Use of the “Comments to Editors”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add: carefully read both the “instructions for authors” and “instructions for reviewers” of the journal you are reviewing for, if you are not already very familiar with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T10:21:51.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2013-01-09T10:55:27.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can also add some other pointer I've come to learn over the years on what constitutes a good reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things you should avoid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rejecting the paper because you did not like the approach (science is not about liking, is about correctness)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rejecting the paper because it has many typos (you can always ask for a spell checking, but if the idea is good, not being a native speaker shouldn't affect you)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Criticizing a paper for not having simple definitions, my rule of thumb is that if a concept pops in a Google search as a wikipedia page, the author does not have to explain it again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that can help the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Grammar is poor, recommend some book for writing styles, like Strunk and White, and give some examples on how the paper can be improved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think the paper has some obscure concepts (that did not come up in Wikipedia) ask for clarification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper, as a rule, should be implementable by someone who has the expertise in the area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T10:55:27.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6101" CreationDate="2013-01-09T11:01:05.163" Score="27" ViewCount="1880" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every journal has strict rules about duplicate submissions, and I do not mean publishing the paper in 2 venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach is mostly from an economics point of view: Given the fact that most reviews take between 2-3 months, plus any number of months for a resubmission, limiting yourself to only one journal seems not only a waste of time for the individual, but an overall drag for the scientific community. Even if you make a groundbreaking discovery, it won't get published until about a year later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple submissions dramatically increase the chances of getting your work published, and if you get accepted in both, you can always pull out your paper. From a marketplace point of view, this makes sense, since in this way, journals would be fighting for authors and not the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Models like Arxiv have proven that this is not such a crazy idea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2018-10-02T18:40:08.930" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T20:42:53.083" Title="Why should the scientific community avoid double submissions?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2013-01-09T11:13:07.557" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible answer is that the referee process of a paper is a very professional and time consuming job (at least I am sure it is in mathematics). Therefore it is not fair you submit your paper to several journals and make them to referee your paper by different experts and then you withdraw your paper just because your paper got accepted by another journal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T11:13:07.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2013-01-09T11:17:37.603" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are three reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the publishers' perspective they want to squash competition.&#xA;They want to know that if they invest the time and resources to&#xA;evaluate the paper that they have a very good chance of publishing&#xA;it. I don't particularly like how the publishing industry currently&#xA;works and I might argue that this is in fact a reason to double&#xA;submit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second reason is about the reviewer and editor resources. These&#xA;are our colleagues and wasting their time is not fair. As a reviewer&#xA;I want to know that if I put time and effort into a review, that my&#xA;comments will be considered. Even if my review leads to a rejection,&#xA;you will likely think about the feedback before resubmitting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having little or no cost associated with multiple submissions reduces&#xA;the effectiveness of the peer review process. You increase the&#xA;chance of finding a set of reviewers who miss flaws and potentially&#xA;ignore reviewers who find flaws.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T12:26:36.553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T12:26:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="498" CreationDate="2013-01-09T13:40:21.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the rough checklist I use for refereeing. I work in mathematics, so it may need adjustment for other areas. When I write a review, I imagine it is for my own paper, and I try to include the things that I would like a reviewer to include for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the paper correct?&lt;/strong&gt; Trivial errors can be corrected in a resubmission, of course. I have not yet received a paper in which I found any serious error.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Part of correctness is clarity. I consider the average readership of the journal (to the extent I can), and any aspects of the paper that would be unclear to them can be raised in the report. There is a difference, of course, between unclarity and writing style. But papers should use standard terminology when it exists, and proofs should be written in a way that is not unduly difficult to follow. Occasionally, a referee can suggest a more streamlined proof, which is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I keep a running list of typos, style errors, and other trivialities, which I list at the bottom of the report with minimal commentary. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not check the correctness of all bibliographic data, but I often refer to one or more of the references when reading the paper. If I notice any errors in the bibliography I note them in the report. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the paper complete?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any obvious gaps in the research? For example, if a theorem has a strange additional hypothesis, the author should address the necessity of this hypothesis, or consider stating it as a question. Nobody else will be able to publish a paper to fill in minor gaps, so it is important for the author to be sufficiently thorough in the original paper, for the sake of the overall literature. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there additional references that should be cited? If I know of additional research that the author has not mentioned, I can raise it in the report. I believe this is one of the more important roles of the reviewer, because no author is aware of the entire research literature. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the paper fit the journal to which it has been submitted?&lt;/strong&gt;  I have a general feeling for the differences between the journals in my area. Most journals have a statement of scope and purpose on their website, as well. For some journals, I think that all professional-quality, on-topic papers are in the scope of the journal. But for &quot;high-tier&quot; journals, the paper needs to have sufficient results (and, perhaps, a sufficient density of results) to fit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The degree of completeness (item 2) can be important here.  The editor will make the final decision, of course, but it is not inappropriate for the reviewer to indicate if they think the paper is correct but not a good fit for the journal to which it is submitted. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it is clear that a paper is not a good fit, I may write a report indicating this without verifying the correctness of the results. This allows the author to resubmit to another journal more quickly than if I took my time with the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did the editor give any additional instructions?&lt;/strong&gt;  For example, one top-tier journal explicitly asked reviewers to raise the quality level required for acceptance, because the journal had a long backlog and wanted to reduce the volume of accepted papers. Other uncommon situations can arise, which the editor may summarize for the reviewer. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attempt to answer questions 1 and 3 in the first paragraph of the review. These are what the editor needs to know. The lower parts of the review are intended more for the author, and may have remarks related to possible changes or additions, particularly if my recommendation is to revise and resubmit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4519" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T13:40:21.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6087" CreationDate="2013-01-09T14:21:39.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the author sets on the two papers are disjoint, then it looks like a case of real plagiarism. If you are not an author on any of these papers, I'd suggest notifying the authors of the earlier publication of the other paper, and leave further steps to them. Alternatively, if the conference of the earlier publication has been sponsored by a reputable organization, you could try to inform this organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author sets are not disjoint, we have what is typically called &quot;self-plagiarism&quot;. I don't like this term, because this is by far not as severe as real plagiarism. Still, in case the earlier publication has a copyright mark by some publishing company or scientific organization, you may consider informing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you are not really obliged to take any action. Just if you want to cite the work, you should make sure to cite the original, not the plagiated work. This would normally be the earlier publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T14:21:39.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6106" CreationDate="2013-01-09T15:30:58.157" Score="13" ViewCount="6421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started a brand new research from start of the year. I would like to know what are the easiest way of keeping track of the academic papers, journals and authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use sites like Google Scholar, informatik.uni-trier.de for discovery of articles and following interesting conferences and people. I have used sites and tools like Mendeley and ResearchGate. I quite like the sites, but I am too reluctant to use them as for each of them I need to find everything by myself, create my own library to suit my interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already got a warning by the stackexchange system saying &lt;strong&gt;The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&lt;/strong&gt; but it would be great help if someone could explain some tools/software which do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you keep track of academic papers, authors effectively?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any tools that can search/scrap the internet by some&#xA;keywords/name and keep track of them? [I know of &#xA;Google alerts, what&#xA;I seek is some kind of tool with a management interface]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4536" LastEditorUserId="37441" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T20:26:07.630" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T20:26:07.630" Title="What is the best way of keeping track of academic readings and persons?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6105" CreationDate="2013-01-09T16:48:42.220" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although you are aware of this already, I feel I need to state how satisfied I am with mostly using google scholar + a feed reader + a bibliography manager for this. Although it is not integrated, I don't currently feel any need to search for a better all in one platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use google reader to subscribe to RSS feeds for online first and published articles for journals I am interested in (any reader which you can organize feeds into folders and search should be fine - I suspect many have better search capabilities that google reader). The vast majority of journals this is not much of a time suck to read all the titles and peruse abstracts I am interested in. The most prodiguous publications (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/rss/current.xml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;) are only borderline annoying with 60+ posts a week, but even that is not that difficult to quickly navigate through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few fairly specific google scholar alerts (as well as general google alerts), so as to not get too much in my inbox. I basically have a few key words in articles specific to my research interest, and I have alerts for specific authors. I also have alerts to people who cite my articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CiteULike&lt;/a&gt; to manage my bibliography + personal database on my local machine to export various formats (e.g. bibtex or specific citation format). This has the added benefit that &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.citeulike.org/index.php/Organizing_your_library#Posting_from_Google_Reader&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I can send articles directly from google reader to citeulike&lt;/a&gt;, but I suspect the same set-up could be crafted for other bibliography managers (Zotero, Mendeley) and possible other feed readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically in a nut-shell,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feed reader to stay up to date with newly published articles in journals I am interested in,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;google scholar alerts for potentially related material that isn't in those journals, and  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a bibliography manager to store articles to read later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T10:37:43.667" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T10:37:43.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6108" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:50:07.023" Score="4" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the harvard referencing style.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One of our assignment instructions is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reference list should be in alphabetical order&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets use the following references as an example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kopecky, J. and Simperl, E., 2008. Semantic Web Service Offer&#xA;  Discovery for E-commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sanvido, F., Sanchez, D., Mendoza, A. and Lopez, A., 2011. Dynamic&#xA;  Negotiation Layer for Secure Semantic Service Oriented Architectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the instruction I was given to order the references, is it generally implied that I should order the references by the first authors surname: Kopecky then Sanvido.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or is it implied that I should order by the paper titles: &quot;Dynamic Negotiation Layer...&quot; then &quot;Semantic Web Service...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T07:36:07.433" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T07:36:07.433" Title="Should I order references on surname or paper title when using Harvard style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6107" CreationDate="2013-01-09T18:20:29.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&amp;amp;pageid=icb.page363223&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard website&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The entries in the list should be in &lt;strong&gt;alphabetical order by the&#xA;  author's last name [sic]&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by aeismail in the comment, the second criterion is the date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Works by the same author should be ordered chronologically, from oldest to most recent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you might have many articles with the &lt;strong&gt;same author and same year&lt;/strong&gt;, in that case, they say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your reference list includes multiple works by the same author in&#xA;  the same year, identify them in your parenthetical citations and in&#xA;  your reference list by a lowercase letter after the year, assigning&#xA;  each letter in alphabetical order by the title of the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T23:07:53.357" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T23:07:53.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2013-01-09T21:57:08.147" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the point of publication was to get it published as quickly as possible, then there might be some merit to your argument. But the point of &lt;strong&gt;peer-reviewed&lt;/strong&gt; publication is to have the community vet your work and certify its basic soundness (not value/impact necessarily - that's a different story). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, the delay involved in publication is a problem that needs to be fixed, but you shouldn't fix it by allowing multiple instances of peer-review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T21:57:08.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T22:02:28.097" Score="24" ViewCount="1927" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you accept a tenure-track position in the USA, how long are you expected to stay? Does it look bad if you change jobs a couple times after a few years at each university? Is there an unspoken standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4539" LastEditorUserId="17834" LastEditDate="2016-03-24T09:47:08.287" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T18:39:22.970" Title="How long should a professor stay?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6110" CreationDate="2013-01-09T22:37:13.787" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be a little tricky.  There are two issues: what your obligations are to the university, and what could look bad on your CV and hurt future job searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your legal obligations may vary depending on the country or the details of your contract, but my understanding of the U.S. social norms is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have accepted a job, you must show up for it.  (I.e., you will offend people if you try to change your mind and accept another job instead.)  You should stay for at least a year, except for health emergencies and the like, and preferably for a couple of years, since it looks bad if you apply for other jobs immediately upon arriving.  Beyond that, the department may be unhappy if you leave, but you won't be doing anything offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you shouldn't make a habit of this.  When a department hires someone for a tenure-track job, they are looking for a long-term colleague.  It's still possible to get hired even if the department knows you are unlikely to stay long, but you have to be extra-brilliant to make up for this.  If you leave a couple of universities quickly, then it will look like a pattern, and everyone else will be less interested in hiring you than they might otherwise have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you end up in this situation through bad luck, then the next time you apply for jobs you should try to explain what happened in a way that makes it clear why it is unlikely to happen again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T22:37:13.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6114" CreationDate="2013-01-10T00:35:49.783" Score="5" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on from my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6086/publishing-phd-dissertation-as-a-book&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, I understand there are many non-traditional methods of publishing a PhD dissertation as a book. One of it is Print of Demand (POD) method. A contributor to the question in the above link gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VDM&lt;/a&gt; as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a close look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; (same link as the VDM) reveals that POD is not peer reviewed and often adds little to a person's publication record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering that if a PhD dissertation is of sufficient standard to be passed by the relevant university (assuming the University is reputable itself), why does it need to be peer-reviewed? Also, if it is reproduced as a book by POD, why shouldn't it add to the publication record of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD is often the first major work of many students (I fall in this category) so making the most out of it is the only way to add value to one's CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T01:21:52.860" Title="Value of Print on Demand Publishing of PhD Dissertation" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6113" CreationDate="2013-01-10T01:21:52.860" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering that if a PhD dissertation is of sufficient standard to be passed by the relevant university (assuming the University is reputable itself), why does it need to be peer-reviewed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, that could be reasonable, but in practice it's unclear what the standards are for a dissertation.  For example, imagine a student who works diligently for years but doesn't accomplish much.  Many advisors, even in very prestigious departments, will eventually let the student graduate with a minimal dissertation.  Or what about a sloppy student whose dissertation is full of minor errors? Hopefully the advisor will put pressure on the student to fix the errors, but sometimes, given the choice between letting the student graduate and keeping on struggling fruitlessly with this, the advisor caves in and approves a shoddy thesis.  Perhaps this shouldn't happen, but occasionally it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course peer-reviewed journals are also far from perfect, but their judgments are somewhat clearer.  A paper accepted by the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society is a more meaningful guarantee of quality than a dissertation from a top-five math department, although on average the dissertations will be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer review can also lead to valuable feedback and suggestions.  A dissertation has often not received many comments from anyone not on the thesis committee, and getting anonymous feedback from other experts can be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, if it is reproduced as a book by POD, why shouldn't it add to the publication record of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it doesn't &quot;add&quot; anything that wasn't already there.  Your dissertation is part of your academic track record, and your decision to let a company print it on demand is not additional evidence of quality or impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly useful to try to get visibility for your dissertation.  In a field where this is considered appropriate, posting it online (for example, on the arXiv) is very valuable.  Far more people will look at it there than via any POD publisher.  Letting someone print it on demand too can't hurt, as long as there are no copyright issues, but it won't help much either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PhD is often the first major work of many students (I fall in this category) so making the most out of it is the only way to add value to one's CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly.  In most fields, you can make the most of it academically by turning it into journal articles or a scholarly book.  Mathematics isn't a book-based field, so I can't speak to this from personal experience, but my understanding is that publishing a dissertation as a book involves a lot of review and editing, and it's really not the same as letting a POD publisher reprint the dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T01:21:52.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6118" CreationDate="2013-01-10T01:35:16.110" Score="7" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand there are a number of specialised ePrint archives or repositories where scholarly works could be posted for wider dissemination (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is a preferred one for PhD dissertations in the social sciences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T20:01:09.707" Title="ePrint Archive for PhD Dissertation in the Social Sciences" Tags="&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6120" CreationDate="2013-01-10T02:01:48.423" Score="14" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an academic in the university, how do you organize your self from the beginning of a  semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you take the absent students names?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do prepare your materials?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you write a syllabus for students and do you hand them out?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What computer programs do you use to plan your lessons?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started my career as a lecturer last semester and I found myself not organized so I need to learn from your experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T09:15:47.677" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T18:29:01.000" Title="How do you get started organizing a class?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6116" CreationDate="2013-01-10T03:08:55.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For teaching it is a must that you prepare a syllabus. Actually you should also have a time schedule for your syllabus. I would also rethink about the order of the topics and the depth of my presentation as well as the example and exercises that I want to give students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Besides syllabus, I suggest you explain your methods of evaluation including your exams, homeworks, class presentations, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving a list of useful books and other reading materials is also helpful, especially in advanced courses. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T03:08:55.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2013-01-10T03:15:05.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can publish an eprint of your dissertation in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researchgate.net&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T03:15:05.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2013-01-10T04:49:05.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always put a copy of your dissertation on your professional web page.  Google will find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T04:49:05.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6116" CreationDate="2013-01-10T05:01:21.637" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you take the absent students names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't.  If a student finds my lectures boring or useless, they shouldn't waste their time coming to class.  &lt;em&gt;(As others point out, there are very good reasons to require attendance in laboratory-, studio-, and discussion-based classes.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do prepare your materials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coffee and LaTeX.  Lots of coffee and LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you write a syllabus for students and do you hand them out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started out, I modified the syllabus from the previous iteration of the course, which was taught by an experienced instructor, so I could be sure to include all the necessary details.  I used to hand out the syllabus on the first day of class, but now I just post it on the well-advertised course web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What computer programs do you use to plan your lessons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write everything in LaTeX (specifically, TeXShop) and distribute everything as PDF files on the course web site.  (See the first question.)  I also use SubEthaEdit to edit the course web pages themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T18:29:01.000" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T18:29:01.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6116" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:53:13.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue is not mentioned above, and is very important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to state and post policies ahead of time for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how you'll deal with late submission of homeworks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what your policy on cheating/plagiarism is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any related university policies that students need to be made aware of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are more important than you might imagine. At the very least, having the policy allows you to be consistent when dealing with student excuses, and prevents you from having to make up policy as you go along. If someone is caught cheating, it will be important to have an up-front policy that you can point to, otherwise it will be difficult to penalize the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T06:53:13.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6086" CreationDate="2013-01-10T08:56:28.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your university does not require you to publish your dissertation as a book, I would be very reluctant to invest the time needed to get your dissertation published. I would put the PDF of your dissertation on your own website, making it available to everyone who wants to look at it. I would spend the time needed to rewrite your book on writing more peer reviewed articles. Either by publishing chapters from your dissertation, or by doing new research. I think publications are more important than a book, especially for someone like you who still has only a few publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T08:56:28.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6116" CreationDate="2013-01-10T09:12:13.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This semester I'm teaching a brand new course at my university. It's an elective course, so I can be much more of the &quot;mad scientist experimenting.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a generic list of topics, and a general plan for the number of lectures during the semester. That means I can organize things loosely, rather than specifying in exhaustive detail what will be covered in each lecture before the start of the semester. Some topics have taken me much less time than I anticipated, and others have run much longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been using a combination of LaTeX and &lt;a href=&quot;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown&quot;&gt;MultiMarkdown&lt;/a&gt; to prepare my lecture notes. I have also made the conscious decision &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to use slides, but instead to go &quot;old-school&quot; and lecture at the blackboard. I've found this makes the pace of the course slower, and allows me to focus on the major concepts, rather than trying to cram too much material into a single lecture. However, I do publish the lecture notes following the end of each lecture, making it easier for students to keep up with the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T09:12:13.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6126" CreationDate="2013-01-10T10:47:13.763" Score="3" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is off-topic, just close or delete this thread if that is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone aware of 2-year Masters programs in mathematics that sufficiently prepare a student for a potential PhD, and accepts students who did not do so well (achieve the equivalent of an Australian honours degree) or did not major in mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me most masters programs in the UK and Australia are done over 1 year, and require at least Honours div. 2A for entry. While the masters programs from the well-known US universities require the same, and some even need students to pass PhD entrance exams for entry. Anyone familiar with programs that fit the description in the previous paragraph? Prestige really isn't a factor here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2784" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T05:46:03.430" Title="Two-year Masters Degree in Mathematics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6125" CreationDate="2013-01-10T11:21:32.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a (nostly) Australian perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want Masters by research, or by coursework? I assume by 2A you mean 2nd class 1st division (normally this would be called a 2-1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most research Masters degrees (in Australia) are 2 years, and you typically need a 2-2 (or a Desmond... geddit?) for entry (a credit average equivalent), a 2-1 is only needed for the vague hope of an APA scholarship (in practice a 1st is needed for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coursework Masters are typically aimed at professionals to enhance CVs and skill-sets, so they're normally not the route to a PhD (especially in maths), and are usually 1 year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience of the UK system is that it's largely similar to the Australian, though I have spent less time in it, a 2nd class degree is all that's required for entry into a Masters (so 2-2 would be sufficient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US system is somewhat different though (but warning, my experience with the US system is from the outside, so take this with a grain of salt). For those looking at a PhD, you typically join a graduate programme, which has 2 years of coursework followed by 3 years of research largely as a single continuous (or at least contiguous) programme. Often the 2 years coursework will gain you a Masters degree, but this is a &quot;Masters in passing&quot;, and is not strictly necessary for progression (this set up is also why the entry exams might turn up at the start in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after all that, what you want to look for is &quot;Masters by research&quot; programmes, normally each department at the university will have some information about it on their website under something like &quot;Postgraduate Study&quot;, or similar (perhaps &quot;graduate school&quot; in the US, but read carefully). These are the ones aimed at PhD preparation, though in Australia and the UK, there is typically no or minimal coursework, so if you need to catch up, it's up to you and your supervisor to ensure that this happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less pleasant part is that if you only have a 3rd class degree, then you're going to have a tougher time of it. In this case you may want to talk to academics at the university you're interested in about what you can do to demonstrate appropriate ability. Another option is to bite the bullet and complete a 1 year masters course to attempt to demonstrate that you have the skills and knowledge required. A really extreme suggestion would be to complete another undergraduate degree specifically in mathematics (many universities offer a specific BMath or similar) to close the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you're in a position to go for a Masters by research, take some care picking a university that offers research in an area you're interested in. Think about what areas of maths you like, see where the people who do that are and talk to them. The vast majority of academics in Aus./UK/US are keen an interested to talk to people who want to get involved in their area and they tpyically don't stand on ceremony, so you don't have to be too worried about formalities (but be polite of course!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T11:21:32.867" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T14:33:30.923" Score="10" ViewCount="4983" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a grant I am writing, I need to describe how I mined data from social media sites. I collected data from sites such as Twitter using each site's API and a Python wrapper. In writing my methods, I assume that I should mention which APIs I used, or at least that I used an API. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to provide a citation if I refer to using, say, the Python wrapper for Twitter's API. If so, how do I do that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T07:39:24.753" Title="What is the proper way to cite the usage of an API?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6127" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:58:03.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll find any documented correct way to do this. Personally, I would write a sentence saying that I did it, a sentence describing what an API is, and a link to the version-specific API documentation website (i.e., &lt;code&gt;https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/&lt;/code&gt; for the API Version 3 instead of &lt;code&gt;https://developers.google.com/youtube/&lt;/code&gt; the general Youtube API help website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're including code in the submission, consider adding the API code in an appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T16:58:03.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6131" CreationDate="2013-01-10T23:30:45.080" Score="6" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not based in academia so unsure what the protocols (and the underlying and unwritten conventions are) in regard to getting my first paper published in a peer reviewed journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper will come out of my PhD dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I start the ball rolling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T03:11:16.227" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T03:11:16.227" Title="How to get started with submitting first peer reviewed paper based on PhD?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6145" CreationDate="2013-01-10T23:41:41.127" Score="28" ViewCount="4039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have now completed my PhD by research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received support from my supervisor in the form of advice on my chapters (for which I am indebted to him; we have a very good working relationship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice mostly related to clarity of arguments. My supervisor was not actively involved in my research and he did not amend or add to any chapters. He just provided broad advice on the contents of each chapter so that I can fulfil the requirements of my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, should I credit him as a joint author in any paper I may publish from my dissertation? I cannot see a case for joint copyright of my work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T22:37:27.690" LastActivityDate="2021-05-04T14:25:36.497" Title="Co-authorship for not very involved supervisor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2013-01-11T00:55:50.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The procedural parts are pretty simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the journal you're interested in submitting to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read their &quot;Instructions for Authors&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Follow&lt;/em&gt; those instructions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound trite putting it that way, but journals are typically pretty good at being clear about what they want, both in terms of content areas and format &amp;amp; typography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you also need to do is identify what you want to take from your PhD, and determine what the &quot;narrative&quot; structure of that material is - a paper that's just a bunch of random things with no through-line is not a great paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to take the time to look at the editorial board of the journal you're interested in, find who is knowledgeable in the topic of your paper and be sure to indicate (in the manner proscribed in the instructions for authors) that you'd like them to be the editor in charge of your paper. A good choice here can help ensure that it's reviewed by the right people for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T00:55:50.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2013-01-11T02:07:58.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason could be- if the paper gets accepted at both the venues, then you'll have to decide which venue is better. You could have thought about this before submitting also, so to avoid loss of time of the reviewers, you should do it before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T02:07:58.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6137" CreationDate="2013-01-11T03:46:55.220" Score="25" ViewCount="24905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been invited to write a book chapter in an edited volume, relating to my field of work. I have a paper ready that I have not published and was planning to submit it soon. So, I am wondering is it worth to use that article for the book chapter, as both are on the same topic, or is it in a sense a waste of a journal paper, as book chapters might not be seen to have the same academic value? What should I do? Should I, instead, send the ready paper to a journal for a review and write a book chapter, based on a couple papers I have published, for instance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, where does a book chapter stand? Is it something between a conference paper and a full-fledged journal article? Or, does does it have the same value as either of the above-mentioned publication types, in your opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T13:14:47.967" LastActivityDate="2019-06-28T06:15:45.073" Title="How does a book chapter in an edited volume compare to a peer reviewed paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6142" CreationDate="2013-01-11T03:51:24.337" Score="10" ViewCount="8062" Body="&lt;p&gt;My course require students to take 2 mid-term exams and one final exam. What should I do if some students didn't attend the first mid-term exam or the second one. Should I mark them Zero or repeat the exam for them? What is the best strategy in this regard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Although I gave them instructions from the beginning of the course. Some of them said that they were absent when I gave those instructions. Some of them said that they were sick and some said that they had an appointment with a dentist at same time of the exam, for example!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="4524" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T04:10:08.530" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T17:56:15.277" Title="How to deal with students who didn't attend the exams?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2013-01-11T04:03:01.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Luke Mathieson covered all the necessary points. I am just adding a few supplementary ones. As a PhD student, I can assure you that opinion of your guide regarding the choice of the journal also matters (I mean, he/she wants to send somewhere and you somewhere else can create conflict and better avoided). If you have followed up works of some earlier works, then you can try in the journals where the those earlier papers were published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more point. Sometimes it is important to get a quick publication. For which you need to sacrifice a little and go for a journal with fast publication. You did not write your field. In Mathematics and some Theoretical Computer Science journals take an year or more for publication. TCS conference proceeding are faster and many of them are referred (and something like FOCS publication can change your life). Physics journals (theory) are generally fast. To be in safer side, keep a copy in arxiv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T04:03:01.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6133" CreationDate="2013-01-11T04:35:52.280" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like a lot of things in academia, I think this will heavily depend on what discipline you're in. In computer science for example, while there's nothing wrong with a book chapter, a paper at a conference or in a journal is typically more valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason normally given is that papers are peer reviewed (as compared to edited), so they are somehow more 'valid'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there's always myriad exceptions. Writing a whole book that everyone uses is much better than a few papers. Later in the career, book chapters perhaps gain value as they're a mark of respect and prestige (once you've already proven your research ability).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counter-point though, from my limited experience, it seems that book chapters are much more common in bioinformatics and operations research, and thus are viewed more highly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to fellow academics in your area, their opinion will be the best guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T04:35:52.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2013-01-11T05:01:10.120" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue for consistency and responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be consistent on how you apply the rule (i.e. what you told your students about missing exams at the beginning of the semester).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the responsibility of students to ensure they meet the requirements of the course (in order to obtain a satisfactory outcome). If there are any adverse circumstances, they need to be able to give you evidence (e.g. doctor's certificate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do remember, though, that we are all humans. A good teacher is also one who understands! (You hold the power in this case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T05:01:10.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2013-01-11T07:36:51.903" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will talk from my own experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being absent in the first class, is by no means a good excuse, back in my student days (before ubiquitous email information and professor's webpages) if you missed the first class, you would at least ask the sensible question of when the hell the midterm exam is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a student, their prime responsibility is to, well.. study! And while I understand that some of them would have conflicting issues if they have to work (which are usually solved if you have a nice enough boss), other scheduling issues like an appointment with the dentist (that can be done any other day) are also not a valid excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being a teacher of a 50+ student class, has a high likelihood that at least one of them may be sick the day of the exam, in those cases (hell, I've had teachers that were sick on the mid term's day), I agree that there should be some kind of Doctor's certificate around. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the absence is somewhat justified, you can always make them retake the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my school, most teachers would make the student do this over finals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T07:36:51.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6127" CreationDate="2013-01-11T07:39:24.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a standard way, some APIs have a notes sections that have things like citations, and things like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the API comes attached to some paper, in which case you should cite the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've mostly seen people citing the webpage itself if no other resource is available&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T07:39:24.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6130" CreationDate="2013-01-11T08:19:40.387" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this kinds of discussions boil down to if a person has had a significant impact on the paper. This can be in either of the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conception and design of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;data collection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;data analysis and conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manuscript preparation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the categories in the quantitative uniform authorship declaration (QUAD) system (Verhagen JV, Wallace KJ, Collins SC, Scott TR (2003) &lt;em&gt;QUAD system offers fair shares to all authors&lt;/em&gt;. Nature 426: 602., or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299064/&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for some information). THe QUAD system quantifies what each author has contributed to. Ofcourse, where you put the line when someone is a co-author or not is debatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor does not tick a lot of boxes, you could put him in the acknowledgements of your papers. Alternatively, if you feel his contribution is significant in either of the above categories, or more than one, add him as an author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, co-authorships come reasonably cheap. You have collaborated on your project, and you make your supervisor happy with an additional publication. Also, your supervisor is probably more well known in your field of study. If he associates himself with this paper that might mean more attention for your paper, although how valid this point is depends on the reputation of your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to copyright, often you sign the copyright of your paper over to the publisher of the paper. Maybe you do not mean copyright, but attribution. You did the work, and adding him as a co-author makes it look like you did not do it alone. If you feel like this, it looks like you feel his contribution has not been significant enough to make him co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="4091" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T08:30:12.470" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T08:30:12.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2013-01-11T08:56:44.033" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the instructions were only given orally, and &lt;em&gt;not recorded&lt;/em&gt; in written form that is globally accessible (either in a printed syllabus, or an online forum), then you don't have documentary evidence of the instructions being given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, I would follow the standard university procedures, if there are some available, governing this situation. If there are none, then &lt;em&gt;For this offering only&lt;/em&gt;, and only in the case where no printed instructions were given, I would allow students to take a make-up exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if there is documented evidence of your policy, then you should follow the policy as it's given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, however, it's always a good idea to allow &quot;documented&quot; reasons (for example, illness, court appearances, schedule conflicts if exams are scheduled outside of regular time slots) to be excused, with a clear policy for what will happen (students can take a makeup exam; other grades are reweighted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T08:56:44.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6130" CreationDate="2013-01-11T09:23:14.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description it sounds like your supervisor was acting as a supervisor, not as a collaborator; however without knowing the exact details of his contributions, and what the etiquette/standards of your field are, it would be impossible for us to assess whether or not he should be a co-author. Why not just ask him? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that in certain fields it may look bad if your post-PhD publications are all joint with your supervisor - people sometimes assume that means the supervisor did all the work, or question your ability to perform independent research. For this reason, even if his contributions to your work were substantial, your supervisor may prefer to forgo being a co-authour to help your career. Best is to just ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4549" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T09:23:14.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6152" CreationDate="2013-01-11T09:38:37.097" Score="50" ViewCount="24288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a student who failed an exam I gave three months ago and was supposed to show up for a remediation exam this week. The date was announced long in advance, and the student neither showed (all the others did show up) nor warned me. Now, she is asking for a new exam date, saying she was absent due to “medical reasons”. She produced a certificate that she was seeing a doctor at the time, but nothing indicates that it was an urgent need (rather than, say, a scheduled appointment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle such a case? I asked the administrative staff at my institution, and they told me to proceed as I saw fit. Should I ask a more specific justification? In what form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-05-18T02:39:40.390" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T03:16:28.960" Title="Student missing exam for “medical reasons”" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6130" CreationDate="2013-01-11T09:43:16.957" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll assume that you have a good relationship to your PhD advisor and that you can have a reasonable discussion with him. If this is not the case, then ignore the following as you will potentially have much bigger things to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if the papers have not been written yet, so I'd suggest you discuss this with him as soon as possible. Lay out to him which papers you want to write, what will be in them, and where you plan to submit them, and ask him if he would like to be a co-author on any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the important thing is that this co-authorship you're offering is &lt;em&gt;not a free ride&lt;/em&gt;. I would assume that a good supervisor knows that this will imply a significant contribution to the preparation of the manuscript and/or any follow-up work that still needs to be done. If he is willing to &lt;em&gt;actively&lt;/em&gt; contribute to the papers, then you have a &lt;em&gt;bona fide&lt;/em&gt; co-author and nothing to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor is not willing to contribute anything to your publications, then there is no reason to add him as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should be open and honest about your intentions. Your supervisor is a very important person in the critical post-PhD phase of your academic career, and even if you leave academia, he is your previous employer. In any case, he will be writing all your letters of recommendation, so don't do anything that may have a negative influence on your relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary&lt;/strong&gt;: Ask him first, and if necessary, remind him that co-authorship implies active collaboration. If he does actively collaborate, you have a good and valuable co-author, and if he does not, he will either not want co-authorship, or you will have a valid reason not to add him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T13:01:19.917" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T13:01:19.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T09:56:25.487" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience dealing with these types of things correctly takes more time and effort then letting them slide. Continue scheduling exam times for her until she takes the exam or the incomplete automatically converts to a fail. I would even reuse the last remediation exam instead of making a new exam. I would only schedule the exam at times that are convenient for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T09:56:25.487" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6133" CreationDate="2013-01-11T10:06:19.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field a peer reviewed article counts for a lot more than a chapter in an edited book. That said, a published chapter in an edited book counts a lot more for job searches than a working/submitted/under review/under revision manuscript. Often edited books lead to a publication in press much quicker than a journal. I would definitely look into the time scale of the book chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T10:06:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T10:09:16.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question, &lt;em&gt;Should I ask a more specific justification?&lt;/em&gt;, I think not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do so, it may constitute a case of intrusion of privacy. She has the right to not tell you any details. And it does not matter what form the justification is. Besides, you might not be able to verify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would fail her. You did everything you could including announcement in advance and the administration allows to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you need to look at this issue from other student's perspective. It's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fair to them if you allow her more chances because she would have more time to prepare for the remediation exam than other students who already took it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody deserves a second chance. The first line of this question, &lt;em&gt;I have a student who failed at my exam three months ago&lt;/em&gt;. I suspect that's why the remediation exam was there for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the OP's question, the student missed it without prior warning. She wants it back. It's &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; responsibility to convince the prof that she has good execuse for missing it. However, &lt;em&gt;nothing indicates that it was an urgent need&lt;/em&gt; on her document. The prof wasn't convinced that she had a good reason. So, he asked the question, can he request for more info? He really shouldn't because of privacy concern. The burden is on the student's shoulder, not the prof's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree that in the general cases, the prof should not fail the student just because of his/her medical conditions. However, in the OP's question, it was a remediation exam already. IMO, one is enough. You missed it. Do you have a good reason? No?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T03:48:01.890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T03:48:01.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T10:31:34.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, your student had previous knowledge of her appointment, and I do agree that perhaps it was an appointment that was hard to get (some doctors or conditions may justify it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that you should not pry, and respect her privacy, and she is entitled not to tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, it seems as it was not a medical emergency, so she had full knowledge at least a day ahead of said appointment. If we were living in 1970/80s with no cellphones/email/sms, etc, she might have some justification on not notifying you. But we are not, she should have sent an email (out of sole courtesy for the time you already set apart so she does not fail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I would fail her, it gives 2 messages, you should do well on your first try and, if given a second chance, you cannot get really picky, it also teaches to respect other people's times. (Oh my, three lessons in one go, that is more of what she gets if you keep giving her chances)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T10:31:34.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T13:07:26.887" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would allow rescheduling, but be sure to use a different exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some other answers indicated, one probably does not want to get embroiled in the details of the student's medical situation, and it may be inappropriate, besides. (I think it would be illegal in the U.S. to ask for details beyond a general note from the doctor.) Thus, one simply cannot have the information to know whether missing the exam was frivolous or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to communication, yes, in principle one imagines that the student would have been able to contact you &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt; to explain that (s)he'd miss the exam. But, again, without prying, one cannot know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the odds may be good that the situation is due to student negligence than medical emergencies... and we should hope so, in the larger scheme of things. But, since we cannot be sure, my choice would be to treat the situation as a medical emergency, whose details I will not know. &lt;em&gt;And&lt;/em&gt; allow further exam retake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether allowing further exam retakes is fair to the students who've managed to do things on schedule... if there was a genuine medical emergency, we are attempting to compare incomparables. If not, my consolation is that, in my experience, students who miss exams due to their own negligence or disorganization similarly fail to &quot;profit&quot; by extra chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I take claims of medical/personal emergencies at face value, and do not restrict re-takes of exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T13:43:02.710" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T13:43:02.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T14:10:21.637" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the university where I teach, a student who fails to show up for a registered exam will be given a failing grade &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; he or she presents a medical excuse. I suspect it works similar where you are (given the system you're describing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think your best bet is to offer an additional remediation exam, but also indicate that there is a time limit to the extensions she can take—if she has not passed the exam by the end of the semester, a &quot;did not take&quot; or failing grade is to be submitted instead, as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T14:10:21.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T14:42:21.423" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you have the answer with regard to procedure. The question now is what you should do in terms of &quot;fairness&quot; or ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Educators and students should approach the work from the same perspective - for the student to learn. Academics should not be punitive, nor should they be a race to the bottom between the &quot;good kids&quot; who do everything right and hand their work in on time and the &quot;slackers&quot; or &quot;hot messes&quot; who can't seem to get anything in on time (flanked by the excuse-makers who suffer heavily from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dunning-Kruger effect&lt;/a&gt;). The most pleasurable students to teach are those who truly care about the subject matter. Unfortunately, a lot of students forget this and are instead overwhelmed by the stress of grades, lack of structure, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to have a frank discussion with the student. Is she currently in danger of failing the class? Is she a borderline case? Whatever you do, don't assume that she's being manipulative. Instead, tell her that you would like to reschedule, but you're concerned that this might happen again. Ask her how &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; thinks she's doing in the class and what she would like to have happen. From there, talk options. Does she have the option to just drop the class (at most places, faculty can get around deadlines rather easily)? What is her worst case scenario? Is she prepared for the final? She should have the option to take the exam, but it might be a good opportunity to talk about actions she can take to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. Talk about learning from failure and taking measures to prevent this in the future. It's possible she's a pathological liar, but it's also possible that she's a kid who needs more guidance navigating the adult world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what, you ought to give her a chance to take the exam again and open communication about her status in your class. Invite her to your office hours to talk and tell her to email you back if she can't make it. If she fails to respond, then you have to fail her, but making sure that it's an emotionally neutral experience is probably your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4553" LastEditorUserId="92909" LastEditDate="2018-05-18T02:34:00.323" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T02:34:00.323" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6086" CreationDate="2013-01-11T14:48:55.100" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For prestige?: publishers who contact you, don't do any review and charge high prices will only increase your prestige to those that don't know them (and these are probably not those you want to impress).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For dissemination?: why not just put the pdf available (as was already recommended)?. Those who are interested will find it, those who are not will probably not buy a PhD thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For money?: I doubt you will really make much out of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation: put it as a pdf on your website / your school's dissertation repository. If you see that lot's of people download it, consider an improved version as book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T14:48:55.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T14:51:03.950" Score="30" ViewCount="5366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often I've come across rules of thumb about maintaining active publication record. The advice I've most often been given is that one should have at least two papers under review at all times? What's your strategy? I am in the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4554" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T19:53:24.663" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T08:33:41.290" Title="Academic pipeline: How many papers should you have under review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T15:20:57.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had friends in this situation -- the thing about medical problems is that some of them are quite chronic (and thus, what happened before could happen again), as opposed to the one-time medical emergency that the system seems designed for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compound this with the hardness of getting THAT doctor for THAT date to prevent medications from running out or to avoid being dropped by that doctor, and even a prescheduled appointment becomes a non-neogitable enterprise (although if that were the case, I'd think she could have warned you!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let her retest, but I see no need to redo the exam unless you have reason to believe she is using this as a way to cheat or otherwise buy time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she does it again, well... you can keep retesting, but I've known professors that failed someone for less. At that point I think it's more a case of whether you like this student enough not to autofail her for something unrelated to the actual material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4555" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T15:20:57.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-01-11T15:43:36.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many as you possibly can (as long as they are quality submissions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3847" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T15:43:36.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1956" CreationDate="2013-01-11T16:00:52.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my professors forbid to take notes during the lecture, unless it helps you learn and memorize during the lecture. The slides were available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4556" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T16:00:52.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-11T16:27:37.513" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in this situation, I just allowed the student to reschedule, but that the exam format would change to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_exam&quot;&gt;oral exam&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found (after a bit of practice) that oral exams are a great way of deciding grades or making pass/fail decisions.  I even started to use them in my regular assessments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content of the oral exam should be based on the remediation exam that the student missed, but can be more free-ranging in terms of what extra questions you can ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest allowing the student to have a companion present in the exam room. The companion can be there, but cannot speak (unless asked by you). Many students get freaked out by oral exams if they haven't done them before, so allowing a trusted companion to be there often (somewhat) alleviates their stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T16:27:37.513" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-01-11T17:46:01.590" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saying you should always have &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; papers under review is foolish. Say &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; = 2. You've just submitted a paper, and then a few days later, the other paper comes back from review with an acceptance notice well ahead of schedule (in two months instead of four). Does that mean you have to submit another one immediately, in order to have two in the pipeline? That doesn't make sense to me, as it makes your work subject to arbitrary deadlines that are orthogonal to producing high-quality publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep a general track of how the work in your group (or your own work, if you report to someone else). You should also keep track of the general expectations of someone &lt;em&gt;at your current career stage&lt;/em&gt;, and make sure that your publication output is consistent with your peers. (Don't worry about exact agreement: producing 80 or 90% of the total output is not really a big deal; producing 25 to 50% is likely to be an issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, however, you should focus on making sure your publications have quality, with a much lesser emphasis on quantity. One &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt; (or equivalent journal in your chosen field) article is probably worth a lot more than two or three publications in other journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T17:46:01.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7617" CreationDate="2013-01-11T17:53:13.733" Score="9" ViewCount="1820" Body="&lt;p&gt;The French &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_preparatoire_aux_grandes_ecoles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;classes prépas&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; system includes, during the first two years of undergraduate (post-baccalaureate) education, a series of regular oral exams, known as &lt;em&gt;colles&lt;/em&gt;. Basically: every week during your first two years, you have two oral exams, each lasting one hour, with one teacher examining two or three students, each using a blackboard. A science student would typically have math and chemistry on week A, then physics and another topic (engineering, foreign language, …) on week B. This system prepares students for national competitive exams after their second year, which includes both written and oral components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whenever I have to explain that system to a foreign colleague, I have to do it from the start (as above) because I do not know any other similar system they might know (especially, I don't know of any equivalent or similar system in the US). Is there one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T08:10:58.480" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T20:39:26.160" Title="Do other countries have a oral exam system similar to French “colles”?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2013-01-11T17:56:15.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the reason they weren't present at the tests, i would take the decision of giving them a Zero unless they provide a plausible reason on why did they end up missing those tests, and apply common reasoning. If they were sick or somewhat binded by &quot;higher forces&quot;, you can lend them a hand, but if they missed because of something else (even a doctor's appointment) and did not justify themselves BEFORE the date was due, a Zero it is. You might be their teacher, but you have to tell them to be open about things and be able to &lt;strong&gt;ASK YOU&lt;/strong&gt; if they need help on something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone already said, you are not at fault for them not showing to your first class (Sylabus class), and they could simply &quot;ask around&quot; for information about your class (at least ask you about some guidelines). Take it like an employee: If someone misses a day of work, they must bring themselves &quot;up to speed&quot; on whatever happened on that missing day, and cannot abide by the &quot;i wasn't here&quot; to cover their asses. University courses should not be considered an exception (you can consider that for students, their courses should be like having a job, and adjust accordingly to those responsabilities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you gave sufficient notice on which dates your tests would be done, and they have the means to contact you and let you know of any problems they might have, then there is no excuse for them to miss your tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4560" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T17:56:15.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-01-12T00:15:49.007" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're simply asking the wrong question.&lt;/strong&gt;  Your goal should be to do the &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; work you can, not the &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; — quality, not quantity.  One revolutionary paper is worth far more than dozens of incremental papers that nobody reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, if you find yourself submitting so many papers that you're worried about being overwhelmed, you're doing something wrong.  Aim higher.  Publish fewer, bigger chunks of work.  Spend less time writing and more time thinking and digging.  Stop just writing papers and develop a research program.  The CV bullets will take care of themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T00:15:49.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6165" CreationDate="2013-01-12T01:41:48.713" Score="6" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an MSc degree and I work at university as a lecturer. However, the university has a  policy where you should do your PhD within a given time frame. The problem is that I'm not interested in any area yet, nor am I interested in doing the work associated with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just go with it because the university forces me to do it, or should I just quit from the university and look for another job? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Can I succeed if I start doing my PhD while i feel that I'm forced to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T00:27:19.780" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T00:27:19.780" Title="Is doing a PhD just for the university requirement is a good idea?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2013-01-12T02:34:36.850" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my university back in Mexico, they had something similar, if professors want to get ahead (income, professional, etc) they had to an additional degree (Masters, PhD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if you do not have the motivation, you'll have a lot of problems, doing a PhD is already a taxing endeavor, in the sense that many times you'll start wondering wether this was a good idea or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in many things in life, if you do this because you are made to (like students that go to college because their parents want to) you'll have lots of resentment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all is lost, you can try looking for something you are really passionate about, and then try to do a PhD on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T02:34:36.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-12T08:48:21.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the involved doctor most certainly is not allowed to tell you &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; she was there, I wouldn't be too surprised if they (or their receptionist) might confirm &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the appointment was made long ago or not. That will of course not protect you from them being somehow related to your student and lie, but it's hopefully unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt; As mentioned in the comments, the doctor/receptionist is not obliged to provide any information and may refuse to do so for their own sake. You could ask your student for a prove &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; she claims it was not planned long ago, but then again, &lt;strong&gt;in dubio pro reo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask her to either wait until the next year's exam (if possible), or invite her to an oral exam quite soon - after all, the visit to the doctor is supposed to have been spontaneous, so she should be prepared enough to manage that while you can infer whether the student was trying to gain time or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while it would suck to later learn she lied, it would suck even more if you turned out to be wrong. She'll have enough other exams to prove her honesty, I suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastEditorUserId="442" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T10:49:36.800" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T10:49:36.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:29:09.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD has the potential to open many doors. Its better to do it when there is some motivation than regret later. Think six years from now and where you want to be and whether it would require a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that it is not easy. It requires hardwork and dedication. There would be many times when you would want to quit. So have a strong reason to pull you through when this happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, in my view you would be better placed in whatever field you choose with a PhD. You may be afraid of sacrificing three years of your life now but what about the rest of the years ahead. As the say, time flies. Only you can make the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T12:29:09.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2013-01-12T14:06:35.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Above all, a PhD is about learning how to become a researcher. You mention that you have a lecturer position, does it include doing research? If you want to become a researcher in addition to teaching, a PhD is the way to go. If performing research is what you want, doing a PhD is logical, and should be worth it. If you have no ambition in being a researcher, a PhD is going to be a very painful process, similar to doing any other job you do not enjoy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it is all about what you want. If you want to be a reseacher, do a PhD. If not, I would not recommend it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T14:06:35.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-01-12T17:53:54.033" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I somewhat agrees with JeffE, but on the other hand it's not like one can just decide to write a ground breaking paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a steady stream of visible work is something positive to get a job, and one should neither publish dozen of small papers nor stall on a very important problem he cannot solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to get a good balance is to aim for a given stream of papers : if you get them easily, then try harder problem, if you don't, then maybe you should try something more manageable. Of course, what you aim at is very dependent of your field (and even sub-field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in fundamental mathematics and personally like to have, at any given time, at least one paper under review, one paper that mostly needs writing, one idea to develop that could make a paper. In that way, I can focus each (non-absorbed-by-other-task-than-research-)day on what I feel like: writing, reading to back up the idea, do the needed computations, etc. Moreover, having a submitted paper makes me feel more comfortable trying things that take time but have a good chance to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T17:53:54.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T20:41:13.963" Score="22" ViewCount="3051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where to ask this so I thought I'd ask you here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in my 3rd year at university doing maths and some of the modules are a bit tricky. I know this and I know the way that I need to work in order to understand the material and pass the exams well. Due to this, I try and spend  a lot of time learning the theory (and recently its been through loads of questions on here). However, what I noticed with some of my friends is that they don't put in the same amount of effort as me (quality wise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the example on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semidirect_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;semidirect products&lt;/a&gt;. A lot of us have been struggling with constructing SDP's, however I've tried very hard to learn the theory on them and what the answer's are looking for and what the methods I need to do (and why I'm doing them) to try and learn how to construct them. A lot of that has been on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathematics.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Math.SE&lt;/a&gt; but I've been referring to online PDF's and lecture notes as well. Now, my friends know that I put this in and try and learn it and so I can do the work properly, so I think they're trying to take advantage of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I showed one person how to do a question regarding compositions on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_transformation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Möbius transforms&lt;/a&gt; and they just refused to think for themselves. I said &quot;think about it, because I'm not going to tell you what the answer is&quot; and they still wouldn't think (just kept saying &quot;I don't know&quot;), so I didn't tell them the answer. Eventually, after some BIG hints, they got what to do. Now I've noticed people are relying on me to tell them how to construct SDP's (as this is a main question in the exam). From my history, you can see that I've struggled a lot with this and I think I'm close to solving this problem now, but at the same time I can tell that my friends aren't going to learn it themselves. Mentally they've given up and so won't even bother learning it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: &lt;strong&gt;Should I tell them the answer, when (it is when and not if because I WILL get it!) I figure out how to do it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel bad because obviously I don't want to lie and say &quot;I don't know how to do it&quot; or mess up their exam, but at the same time, I feel like they had the exact same time as me to do this, and the same resources (online, books, notes, ask the lecturer, etc.) yet they still didn't do it. So it's their own fault. Plus, the time it'd take me to teach and explain it to them, I could spend that couple of hours doing my own work. Other examples, revise another module, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Do you academics have any tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you feel like this sometimes when people ask questions on here clearly without thinking about and just expect you to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4567" OwnerDisplayName="Kaish" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2016-07-14T19:01:10.227" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T19:01:10.227" Title="Teaching classmates who don't put much effort in" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2013-01-12T22:43:27.863" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into this situation far too many times.  You're right to be frustrated, and you shouldn't have to devote your precious time to endeavors that bring you no benefit.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honest and say something like &quot;I'd really like to help you, but I just don't have the time.  If you'd like, I can share with you the resources that helped me understand it, but I have enough on my plate already.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T22:43:27.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2013-01-12T23:06:53.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have found certain resources useful in your quest to teach yourself then create a zip file containing the most useful to pass out to anyone who asks you for help. This is YOUR qualification and if you feel that you need to spend more time on your own studies in order to get the grade you deserve then don't waste that time spoon feeding others that are unlikely to be a part of your life 2 days after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your facility should have some form of online discussion forum so if you really feel responsible for the outcome of your cohorts exam then create a potted version of your findings on there so that everyone can benefit and you can just direct any people with further queries there - the added bonus to this is that your tutor may well add some clarification to what you write so if you have misunderstood something you also gain from doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1098" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T23:06:53.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2013-01-13T00:06:00.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree partially with Paul, when he says that you can feel frustrated and you shouldn't feel forced to answer every question for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, I've noticed to be able to explain something, you need to understand them quite well. Even some times, you are forced to attack a problem from different point of views depending on who asks, since the same explanation won't be convincing to everyone. By doing so, you might make a new link between different part of the material, and increase your own understanding. In my experience, helping other students has almost always a net benefice and is a really good way to improve yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as you continue, having only the answer will not get you much further and especially in math where concepts build upon each others, you will have a net advantage over all the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T00:06:00.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-13T02:45:10.430" Score="5" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student in CS I will have advancement to candidacy soon.&#xA;I am looking for information which helps me on the advancement exam.&#xA;Particularly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does a committee expecting to hear from me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I focus on during me presentation: should I tell them about work I have done or what I am planning to do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I need tell them what I am planning to do, then how to do that? I mean, research is vague, there is no clear guidance, and you don't know what will be in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any comments that help better understand what to expect and how to prepare are very welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4570" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T22:02:25.773" Title="Advancement to Candidacy, PhD in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6175" CreationDate="2013-01-13T04:01:20.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your advisor and the program coordinator&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Usually, each institute has a guide for the candidacy exam. The guide lists some general requirements and the method of examining. The answers to your questions depends upon your department regulations and policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does a committee expecting to hear from me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They expect you to be expert in your field and answer their tough questions. Also, they expect you to agree with their opinions and not try to be too smart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T04:01:20.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2013-01-13T06:09:36.493" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, undergraduate students are a lot like children. They will be as lazy as you allow them to be. They will resist learning. They will resist doing the work and putting in the time. It's human nature...and it is something we, as teachers, must get the students to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I in your shoes, I would make it clear how to do something (as any teacher should) but I would certainly NOT do the work for them. If they keep saying &quot;I don't know&quot; then you should tell them &quot;It's OK. Not everybody gets it their first time. Perhaps you get it when you take this class for a second time.&quot; I usually see my students' eyes open a bit on this one as they see that you are being so compassionate and understanding while still being refused to be manipulated. They also get the clear understanding that they will fail if they don't do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to help students. That includes helping them to not be so lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-01-17T04:38:16.970" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T04:38:16.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2013-01-13T06:19:04.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my school, redo exams have a maximum grade of the minimum grade to pass. The idea is that if a student can't pass the first time, they best they can do is 'just pass' and not more. For medical reasons, maybe consider the first redo an actual first attempt. However, the latest seems like a bit more than reasonable (someone that sick should stop attending classes and focus on her health). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would give her another exam but her maximum grade would be the minimum passing grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T06:19:04.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6175" CreationDate="2013-01-13T06:51:07.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only goal of the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to convince the committee that you deserve to pass the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam.  The passing criteria differ, sometimes radically, from one university to the next, from department to the next, from one research area to the next, and even from one committee member to the next.  It's the academic equivalent of Calvinball, only you don't get to make up the rules.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.picpak.net/calvin/oldsite/images/roz3.jpg&quot;&gt;Do not question the mask.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; way to determine how to prepare for the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to &lt;strong&gt;ask your committee members directly&lt;/strong&gt;.  Individually.  In person.  I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; recommend scheduling a one-on-one meeting with each committee member at least a month in advance of the actual exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense&quot;&gt;thesis defense&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T06:56:41.737" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T06:56:41.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-13T13:37:45.220" Score="8" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This is a junior researcher's question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific publications contain a part discussing related work and the context of the paper. However, it is not clear where to put the section discussing related work of a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where does the section on related work belong in a scientific publication? Is there any universal standard, or is it arbitrary?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4442" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T08:46:05.223" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T08:46:05.223" Title="Related work in an article" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-01-13T14:47:05.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, put it in the introduction. This partly motivates further study of the field, i.e., by showing that previous experts have worked on similar problems, &#xA;and that such problems are well established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T14:47:05.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-01-13T18:39:22.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like so many times, it depends on the field. The options in general are either at the beginning, after the intro; or at the end, before the conclusions. &#xA;Look at previous issues of the journal/conf you are targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, ask your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T18:39:22.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7233" CreationDate="2013-01-13T19:33:22.137" Score="4" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few reference citing formats around but I'd like to know what's the relevant information to put in a reference in general. If I want to cite a book, what should go in the reference other than the title which is obvious, same for other media? By formatting I mean content, punctuation, font, size, typography, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second question is: do references undergo any modifications when the medium in which they are referenced changes (paper, article, tutorial, etc...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4577" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T16:53:46.363" Title="How to reference other people's work" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6184" CreationDate="2013-01-13T20:32:29.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formatting and desired content depend mostly on the publication venue. Most journals have a citation style, and will often provide a style file for the bibliography manager that you use. So it depends on what venue you have in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a venue in mind, then you can use any standard format that's used in your area of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T20:32:29.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-01-13T21:18:29.327" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a conference paper, put it in the same place as it appears in the conference papers you read.  If you're not reading any conference papers, you're not ready to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a journal paper, put it in the same place as it appears in the journal papers you read.  If you're not reading any journal papers, you're not ready to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a dissertation, put it in the same place as it appears in the dissertations you read.  If you're not reading any dissertations, you're not ready to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a &lt;code&gt;$PAPER_TYPE&lt;/code&gt;, put it in the same place as it appears in the &lt;code&gt;$PAPER_TYPE&lt;/code&gt;s that you read.  If you're not reading any &lt;code&gt;$PAPER_TYPE&lt;/code&gt;s, you're not ready to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: &lt;strong&gt;Ask your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T21:18:29.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6175" CreationDate="2013-01-13T22:02:25.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a solid research proposal and present it well. There is no other way to convince your assessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I had to do a public presentation with the assessors sitting in the audience. It was not an easy exercise but I took on the challenge head-on (really, there was no other option). And I prepared, prepared and prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my supervisor what the likely questions would be and how can I make my proposal better. I attended presentations by other students and studied the vibes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be aware that not everything always goes to plan. I had chosen a concept that was highly contested in the literature so had several question on how I would handle it. (One of my assessors was an expert in that area!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, show a willingness to learn. If you cannot answer a question, be honest about it. Say something like &quot;Thats an interesting angle and I will certainly take your comments on board&quot;. And mean it. Be honest and polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confirmation of candidature is to show you are ready to do advanced research. Your assessors would most likely overlook a few flaws in your proposal (no research is perfect) but may not &#xA;be that generous if they realise you are not ready. Believe me, they are amazingly quick at the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T22:02:25.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7225" CreationDate="2013-01-13T22:14:14.270" Score="6" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a peer review exercise and I am not sure when referring to specific parts of the paper whether it is better to quote or paraphrase them. What is the correct protocol on such this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review decides whether the paper gets published in a small magazine, whether that makes any difference to these things, I am not sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T15:48:40.397" Title="When writing a peer review is it better protocol to quote parts of the orginal work or paraphrase?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6188" CreationDate="2013-01-13T22:18:17.113" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a review it doesn't matter that much, but it's safer to quote, so that there's no chance of misinterpretation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T22:18:17.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6192" CreationDate="2013-01-13T22:34:58.027" Score="33" ViewCount="5321" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a week ago, I went to submit the application for the mathematics PhD program at one of my top choice schools.  The form told me I had missed the deadline, which was December 15th.  I had January 5th written down on my list of application information, but when I looked it was indeed Dec. 15 on the department website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I distinctly remembered seeing Jan. 5th, however, so I looked it up again and found the website for general graduate admissions where I found the deadline to begin with.  It said/says January 5th, and is even program specific (under the &quot;PhD in Mathematics&quot;).  So I emailed my application to the mathematics department graduate admissions email address explaining there was an incorrect deadline on another part of the website, provided a link, and requested that I still be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard back from them aside from an automated &quot;we'll get to this eventually&quot; email, and it has been about 7 days now.  I think I have a strong application for this school in particular and really don't want to lose my chance to apply.  What do I do?  Should I try to call the math department?  Submit it to a different email?  Or am I just boned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I should note that this is a big school which will probably get a lot of applications, so hopefully they haven't gotten far through review yet.  Also, everything except my personal statement was on the website before the Dec 15 deadline, but of course the submit button was not hit so I don't know if this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4545" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T09:01:23.660" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T09:01:23.660" Title="I missed an application deadline, but it wasn't entirely my fault. How can I still be considered?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6193" CreationDate="2013-01-14T07:27:25.900" Score="39" ViewCount="12414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a sixth form student, and one day I would like to call myself an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any academic journals that are specifically for students, or would accept work from a student? I would be very much interested to hear about an organisation that does this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4579" LastEditorUserId="14518" LastEditDate="2018-09-12T15:13:15.200" LastActivityDate="2018-09-12T15:13:15.200" Title="Academic journals aimed at publishing work by high school students" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6190" CreationDate="2013-01-14T07:29:54.050" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try and personally contact someone at the school, like @gerrit commented, call them. Try and explain your situation, and say that you hope you will still be considered for the program. Do mention that it was not that you simply forgot the deadline, but that an official document stated the wrong date and include this piece of evidence. Stress that you are very enthusiastic about the program, and that you would be disappointed if this communication error would prevent you from having a chance to enter the program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T15:33:02.040" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T15:33:02.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-14T07:36:39.233" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of an academic journal specifically meant for high school students. There might be magazines directed towards publishing projects of high school students, but I would not call these academic journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to publishing, in principle if you have something that is of sufficient level to be published, you could just submit the paper to any journal. It would then be reviewed. The major hurdle would probably be that you do not work for a reputable institute or university. You could try and remedy this problem by looking for a supervisor who already works at an institute/university who would be willing to collaborate with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, realistically I do not know many 3rd year &lt;strong&gt;university&lt;/strong&gt; students who have the level to write good and relevant academic papers. So, it might be a little far fetched to write an academic paper in high school. Than again, if you feel that your contribution is worthwhile, please feel free to ignore this advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T07:36:39.233" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-14T08:20:25.970" Score="25" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Publishing in early career&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the research is good enough, it &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; get published.  The challenge is to do good-enough research as a sixth-form student. Actually, that's a challenge for any of us, at whatever stage we're at. The best example I know of, of young researchers getting published, is a paper in Biology Letters from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12051883&quot;&gt;a class of 8-10 year olds&lt;/a&gt;. The paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.full&quot;&gt;Blackawton Bees&lt;/a&gt;, is a good bit of research &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; an entertaining read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Principal finding ‘We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, never mind the rest of this answer for now. If you're reading this, whoever you are, and you haven't read the paper before, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.full&quot;&gt;just go read it now&lt;/a&gt; - it's free to view for all. You'll thank me (so remember to come back here afterwards ;-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Journals for students&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as journals specifically for students: well, they all are, really. Pretty much all of us who are reading them, are reading them for study. God knows, they're almost always so dryly written that no one would read them for pleasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions.  For easier reading, there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/&quot;&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;; though the science sometimes suffers in the cause of circulation-friendly journalism, particularly for New Scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;More digestible science&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are quite a lot of science blogs on the web, which make for more digestible reading of recent research. Unfortunately, there's also a much higher number of &lt;strong&gt;pseudo&lt;/strong&gt;-science blogs on the web, that, unless you know a lot about the subject, are hard to distinguish from real science, but contain pure unadulterated nonsense.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realClimate.org/&quot;&gt;Real Climate&lt;/a&gt; is respectable science by respected scientists; &lt;em&gt;Watts Up With That&lt;/em&gt; is unadulterated pseudo-science nonsense; but to the unwary, they are both climate science blogs. So, for finding new science blogs, &lt;strong&gt;reader beware&lt;/strong&gt;. Even well-established science blogs sometimes go off the rails, when they stray outside their area of immediate expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T08:20:25.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-14T09:20:20.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specific answers depend on the field. There exist &lt;strong&gt;conferences&lt;/strong&gt; that have special categories for students. For example, the &lt;strong&gt;European Space Agency&lt;/strong&gt; offers logistical support for students' balloon and rockets experiments, and related conferences have dedicated categories for students of any level. Those conferences include proceedings, which means that it's possible to publish a proceedings paper. This is different from a peer-reviewed paper, and slightly less ambitious because it's not peer-reviewed; it is, however, checked for basic quality by the session convener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of such a conference is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://spaceflight.esa.int/pac-symposium2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ESA PAC Symposium&lt;/a&gt;. As mentioned, this is a quite specific answer for a quite specific field. However, depending on the field you're interested in, perhaps such conferences exist for you too. You're best bet in this case would be to browse websites for relevant conferences and see if they have special student categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T09:20:20.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7199" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:05:35.490" Score="14" ViewCount="2325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I read about a position as &quot;universitetslektor&quot; in a Swedish university. I did some research to figure out what this academic rank means. In my understanding  it is similar to a lecturer in the British system. What I could not figure out is if &quot;universitetslektor&quot; is a permanent position, or if there is a qualification after which this position becomes permanent. Also, does  &lt;em&gt;universitetslektor&lt;/em&gt; refer to &lt;em&gt;lecturer&lt;/em&gt; or to &lt;em&gt;senior lecturer&lt;/em&gt;. What would be the analogue in the US system? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:40:23.760" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:40:23.760" Title="What are the academic job ranks in Sweden?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;sweden&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:37:09.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the others have suggested, this is pretty field-specific. The IEEE organization has two publications aimed at college-level students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/students/potentials.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Potentials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, a journal which discusses both research and careers. The articles are quite thorough and are written in the same form other IEEE journals, but assume less background.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/magazine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Spectrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, a publication which is a cross between a journal and a magazine. There are in-depth articles on engineering topics, but also more light discussions of fun side projects. I strongly recommend this for any high school student interested in engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are both geared towards engineering with a focus on electrical engineering, although other subdisciplines are covered as well. Again, I strongly recommend both of these for any undergraduate or advanced high school student interesting in engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T14:37:09.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7197" CreationDate="2013-01-14T15:23:10.247" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, «Universitetslektor» is the closest the Swedish system has to an «associate professor» in the US system, and is close to a «lecturer» in the British system. The more junior rank would be «Biträdande lektor», and the more senior «Professor».&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some subtleties in play here though; most importantly for the linked position is the phrase «tidsbegränsade anställningar». This means that the position is for a limited time only — they are hiring from March to December, supposedly to fill an urgent teaching need. The limit in time signals several things. One of them is that it is likely to be important to shoulder the teaching required — it might, depending on the department and their situation, for instance be difficult to buy out teaching time with research funds. Another is that it comes with none of the tenure guarantees usual «lektorat» provides. Since the position is time-limited, it will evaporate at the end of the time, to be replaced with a different position if the department finds the funds to hire again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hierarchy to figure out how the ranks work would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tidsbegränsad anställning&lt;/strong&gt;: Time-limited appointment. Not subject to tenure-like employment protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adjunkt&lt;/strong&gt;: Adjunct teacher. Needs not have a doctorate. Fills a teaching need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Biträdande lektor&lt;/strong&gt;: Similar to tenure track; usually time-limited to 4-6 years, at the end of which a review takes place deciding whether to upgrade the position to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lektor&lt;/strong&gt;: The most common of Swedish University teaching/research positions. Obligated to teach, but can usually trade teaching time against research grant money. At every University I have ever interacted with, these come with an obligation for a certain amount of pedagogical qualifications — and if you are hired without pedagogical coursework in your CV, you may have to spend large swathes of your first year studying higher education pedagogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professor&lt;/strong&gt;: Similar to Professor in the UK or Full or even Named professorships in the US. It used to be very rare — one or two per field wasn't uncomomon; but since 1999, Professor is a possible target for promotion from Lektor, which increases the numbers. Before the 1999 reform, a Professor could not be fired, even under usual Swedish employment protection rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: «Universitetslektor» is an essentially tenured position. They all come with heavy-looking teaching loads, but it is common in Sweden to reduce teaching loads with grant money. «Tidsbegränsad anställning» is a non-tenured and likely to be teaching-heavy position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastEditorUserId="519" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T15:30:36.123" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T15:30:36.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7201" CreationDate="2013-01-14T15:37:37.770" Score="116" ViewCount="12419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received a manuscript to review for a journal. The interesting thing is, I had already reviewed this article (exact same title, abstract and author list, almost exact same content) for &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; journal a few weeks ago where I recommended that it be published, but only after major revisions of both form and content. When I first reviewed it, I wrote a two-page review, listing some questions and several “actionable” comments, ranging from some concerns about exactness of the text (some conclusions didn't seem fully backed by the results) all the way down to trivial stuff (grammar, a few typos, graphic issues with the figures, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the manuscript has come to me for review again, but it is almost unchanged from the first version. None of the serious stuff has been addressed, and even most of the trivial stuff was not fixed (there's at least one remaining typo, and the figures still aren't fully legible). However, I think this behavior from the authors is clearly a bad signal, which should be somehow conveyed to the editor: they're not willing to amend their work, and would rather do some journal-shopping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest me to do? Should I just re-send my earlier review? Add a note to the editor about my knowledge of the “history” of the paper? Or maybe even include it in my review, so the authors are aware that people know of their behavior, and maybe feel bad enough to change their ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PS: I wrote it in the present tense, but it's actually a story from my past. I'm not sure I did the right thing at the time, and I think it's better to actually formulate it as an open question…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T13:26:54.493" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:16:57.457" Title="Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-01-14T15:58:57.397" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would inform the editors of both journals. For the new editor, I would attach your earlier review, and recommend rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it's up to the new editor to decide what to do in this situation. This falls in the category of ethical problems, and I think most journals recommend that reviewers contact the editor immediately in such a situation. Perhaps the journal has a policy for this, or the editor may discuss the matter with other editors or the chief editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add why I find it unethical. Peer review relies upon the volunteer labour of anonymous reviewers. Reviewers may invest significant time, and do not really get anything in return. If authors of a manuscript completely ignore reviews, and instead submit an unchanged manuscript somewhere else, I would, as a reviewer, be quite annoyed. At the very least they could reply to the reviews, state point-by-point that they disagree, refuse to change anything and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; submit it somewhere else; but completely ignoring is wasting peoples time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T16:23:08.207" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T16:23:08.207" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-01-14T16:15:02.627" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see nothing wrong with authors choosing to submit to a new journal instead of making changes suggested by reviewers, although not fixing typos just seems silly. I also think that if authors choose to go this route, they deserve to get a new batch of reviewers. While I like to think of myself as reasonable and impartial, I am happy to have authors confirm this by submitting someplace else. When I receive requests to review a manuscript that I have already reviewed, I turn the review down with a note to the AE that I have already reviewed the manuscript for another journal. I do not to say what journal or anything about my recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason I agree to review a manuscript and later find out that I have previously reviewed it, I would immediately contact the AE and explain what has happened. I would offer to provide a revised review. I would acknowledge in the review that I was reviewer &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; for the previous journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T16:15:02.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-01-14T16:28:47.180" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently on the something like the other end of this: a paper I wrote was rejected with a number of comments and one major objection to the content.  I made the small changes, but not the big one, and resubmitted to another journal.    The new journal sent it back to the same referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referee may well have felt I was engaged in journal shopping; in fact, in response to the report, I'd consulted with other people in the area, and gotten very positive feedback in support of the way the paper was written.  I therefore thought it was reasonable to try again with a different journal, since there seemed to be genuine disagreement over the right approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation was handled quite well, and I'd recommend something like it to anyone on the other end: the editor was notified, and made the decision to ask for the report from the original referee, but also got a second opinion from a new referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the story has a happy ending: the original referee didn't just resubmit a variant of the original report, but went above and beyond by explaining their main objection more clearly.  The new explanation actually convinced me, where the old one hadn't, and I made the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral being, the author &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; have actually taken the referee report seriously but honestly disagreed.  That's not always the case, but in that situation you should consider the possibility---and that's why you definitely want to notify the editor, who should probably get a second opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;added&lt;/strong&gt;: Just to be clear, I'm trying to address the general case of a referee in this situation, not just the particular instance that happened to F'x.  There's a range of possible behavior by the paper author which could sound similar to what F'x is describing, and which some future referee reading this question might be experiencing, from the case where the author has resubmitted a paper unchanged to the case where the authors have incorporated many minor suggestions and given careful consideration before not taking some more important ones.  F'x is describing a situation which sounds like it's closer to the first, I'm describing one which leans closer to the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particular referee, in a particular case, may be able to judge which scenario is more likely, but &lt;em&gt;it doesn't matter&lt;/em&gt; for the referee, because the correct answer is the same: notify the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="8" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T17:40:33.553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T17:40:33.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-14T18:04:29.590" Score="3" ViewCount="1584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my Masters' from Penn State University (US) last year in Industrial Engineering and I'm looking to enroll in a PhD. Here's the onion, I do not want to leave my full-time job to enroll in school full-time and complete the coursework requirment (as case with most US university), hence I was contemplating if there exists any PhD degree where coursework (or &lt;strong&gt;on-campus presence&lt;/strong&gt;) is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; required, either in US or Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About research - I've already talked to my boss and he's quite okay with me performing research in-house (in company) for my PhD, better than that, he might even pay  for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5585" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:03:36.913" Title="is it possible to complete a PhD in Industrial Engineering without any coursework? (US/Europe)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7204" CreationDate="2013-01-14T18:32:26.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe it is quite common to do a PhD without course requirements. You will generally have to have a Master's degree though, before you can start. This answer is about the situation in Europe (or at least, the Netherlands).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do a PhD while working for a company can be possible, if you can find a professor that is willing to supervise you. It will be hard though if you are not in regular contact with the advisor. The most realistic option would be to do research on a joint project with academia and industry. I don't think though that this would be feasible if you work in the US, and the university is in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T16:15:20.533" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T16:15:20.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-01-14T19:35:59.067" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add here as an answer the course I did follow, so people can comment on it and help me see its pros and cons (obviously, I saw more pros than cons to it, as I did decide on it after some thought).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went the last option mentioned in my question: I sent a review which consisted of my earlier review, with an added text clearly delimitated at the top explaining that I had already reviewed the paper for another journal (I didn't say which, as it seemed a breach of reviewer ethics). I also insisted that even uncontroversial changes hadn't been made, and I thought this shed bad light on the author's good faith participation in the peer-review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I watched later to see where the paper had been published: after being dropped from journal A to journal B (and maybe others), it ended up being published in a third, obscure journal with very few changes (but at least the typos were removed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a side note: given that I was not such a big name in that particular subfield at the time, and the two editors who picked me for review didn't know me personally, I believe I was twice listed by the authors as “potential reviewer” upon submission of their work. Which means, either they didn't really think it through the second time, or they naturally assumed that the review they had received wasn't my type.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T13:08:33.027" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T13:08:33.027" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7210" CreationDate="2013-01-14T19:37:41.157" Score="10" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two years ago I was a research assistant during my undergraduate and my sole duty was the aggregation of many economic surveys, a very tedious task. This data-set, to my knowledge is one of a kind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in graduate school, I had come up with a research idea, and this data-set that I made would be perfect for my research. My research idea is not related to my previous professors, though as of yet, he has no present publication for the research he was doing when I was working for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, would it be ethical for me to use this data-set for my own research when I had made it while being employed for my previous professor. The obvious response would be to ask him but sadly we had a falling-out just before I graduated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T19:44:53.533" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T19:44:53.533" Title="Is it ethical to use a data-set made as a research assistant?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7209" CreationDate="2013-01-14T19:49:22.440" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any situation, there are many levels to any answer… Mainly, the question is: was the data-set published? If so, who owns the copyright? Probably not your professor, but the university. If it wasn't published, then it isn't ethical to use the records you kept of it for another purpose, without authorization from your employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there might be a solution, regardless of your fall-out before graduation. [1] &lt;strong&gt;Just get your current advisor to ask him!&lt;/strong&gt; One staff researcher to another, the situation is not the same as you dealing with your formed professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] I am amazed at how many times I have read this situation (I cannot speak to my adviser/professor/…) raised in questions on this site! Every time, I think: before or around the time of graduation, aren't you a bit young to make “enemies”? I can sure name many people I thought fools or who annoyed me during my studies and early career, but I always tried as hard as I could to get things done in a manner that no bridge was burnt…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T19:49:22.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7213" CreationDate="2013-01-14T20:10:55.813" Score="14" ViewCount="18022" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Medicine, an Impact Factor of a journal is important indicator (IF) of journal quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="1537" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T13:50:33.977" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:24:11.463" Title="Are there Conference Proceedings that have impact factor?" Tags="&lt;impact-factor&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2013-01-14T20:54:55.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the impact factor being usually the number of citations divided by the number of publications, it's possible to calculate the impact factor of conferences too. I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/index&quot;&gt;Citeseer&lt;/a&gt; used to keep a &quot;Venue impact ranking&quot; in Computer Science, but the link seems to be broken now. I found however a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.iit.edu/~xli/CS-Conference-Journals-Impact.htm&quot;&gt;cached version from 2003 &lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T20:54:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:17:00.143" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing like &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;formal IF&quot;. What you are referring to is probably the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/journal_citation_reports/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Reports&lt;/a&gt; impact factor which is one of the most respected measures in the academic world. As such, to my best knowledge there is no such thing for conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are other sources which could prove useful as an estimate of conference quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As already Charles pointed out, there are exist cached versions of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.iit.edu/~xli/CS-Conference-Journals-Impact.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citeseer's estimated impact factors for computer science&lt;/a&gt;, but this is too old to be useful. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Furthermore, Google Scholar lists ranks of top venues mixing journals and conferences in their listings. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;vq=eng_artificialintelligence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an example of top publications for AI&lt;/a&gt;, as you might see, there are several conferences mixed in. They list &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;h-index&lt;/a&gt; of the venue instead of an impact factor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another very useful, resource for ranking conferences is &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt;, where you can find profiles of conferences, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Conference/64/ijcai-international-joint-conference-on-artificial-intelligence?query=international%20joint%20conference%20on%20artificial%20intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one for IJCAI&lt;/a&gt; and they also publish rankings for different categories of venues, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=5&amp;amp;last=0&amp;amp;start=1&amp;amp;end=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an example here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, you might find useful the Australian Research Council's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2010/archive/era_journal_list.htm#2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ERA conference rankings&lt;/a&gt; from 2010. In 2012 they decided not to rank conferences any more, but the 2010 list is still very useful and at least somewhat authoritative. They would rank conferences into categories according to their own quality metrics, which however (at least in my area) correlate with the community's perception. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T23:24:11.463" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:24:11.463" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7221" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:22:16.423" Score="29" ViewCount="7265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always wondering why is the impact factor of mathematical journals &quot;often&quot; lower than the impact factor of journals in other disciplines?  I come up with some guesses  that I would like to know your opinion about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics papers are so hard to read and follow (or so specialized) that only a few people can read and apply their results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are relatively a large number of subfields and branches of mathematics and only a few people are working in each branch. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The number of journals and papers in mathematics (divided by the number of active mathematicians) is relatively higher than other disciplines.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A mixture of these.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, share your insights about this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T05:44:24.880" Title="why is the impact factor of mathematical journals &quot;often&quot; lower than the impact factor of journals in other disciplines" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7215" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7244" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:26:00.433" Score="3" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;The boundaries between academic fields have blurred to such an extend that many studies today are interdisciplinary in nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD is in the social sciences. It was located in the Faculty of Arts at the university. It is a blend of sociology, organisational economics, public policy and a bit of psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if a term like &quot;social economics&quot; is appropriate to describe my study. (It is neither &quot;social&quot; nor &quot;economic&quot; in the 'pure' sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university will just award me with a PhD but I want my CV to be more descriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the academic community view these types of descriptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:42:53.187" Title="Discipline clarification or field of study" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7214" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:49:19.537" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;why is the impact factor of mathematical journals &quot;often&quot; lower than the impact factor of journals in other disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides your observations 2 and 3, my take on this would stem from the observation that the pace of work in mathematics tends to be a longer shot than in disciplines, such as biology where often there would be several competing groups working on a very close subject. The impact factor is calculated as &quot;recent&quot;, but in disciplines with slow pace of development, sooner than a paper gets cited, it already falls of the considered recent period (2, or 5 recent years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T22:49:19.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-01-14T23:04:22.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're being asked to review exactly the same object that you already reviewed, your task is simple: simply respond with exactly the same review. Your review is a function of the content.  That function should produce the same value when applied to the same input. Just like when a browser is asked to load the same page twice, it can just fetch it from its cache (subject to expiry checks, which are clearly not applicable in this analogy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T23:04:22.813" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T19:10:17.363" Score="81" ViewCount="23478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently an undergraduate math major in my 3rd year (in America). I have taken lots of pure math courses, and anything I put in my resume tells potential employers I'm probably going to be an academic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I still would like to know from current researchers what is it like to be a math professor. More specifically, I have already guessed at basically what they do (research approachable problems, teach zero or one or two classes at a time, go to conferences and seminars to get ideas, life is probably easier after tenure and more stressful before, pay is sufficient but probably less than industry). When I look up career-related questions on this site, I generally get questions dealing with the items mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is the job satisfaction like (people probably get impressions from colleagues)? What sorts of things should one consider before committing to an academic career (as it's a long road)? What is the work environment like (what sorts of people with which one has to interact)? Which types of people generally like an academic environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" OwnerDisplayName="Dtseng" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T01:17:06.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T07:17:27.880" Title="Life as a math professor" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7218" CreationDate="2013-01-03T19:48:50.433" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it really depends on the type of academic job that you want/are able to land. Professional life in (1) a top tier research university, is different than in (2) a medium tier Ph.D. granting department, is different than in (3) a Master's granting department with a more modest research agenda, is different than in (4) a predominantly teaching oriented, four year college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teaching load/research expectation continuum certainly varies across the four. On one end of the spectrum, say at (1)-(2), the teaching load will be light (as you describe) but with research expectations in terms of papers in top tier journals and landing external funding that is very high. However, even if the actual &lt;em&gt;course load&lt;/em&gt; is less, you will spend a chunk of time working with graduate students in reading courses, research seminars, their thesis, etc. As you move from (2) to (3), the research expectations decrease as teaching loads increase. In (4), you very well may have no requirement to produce original mathematical research in the form of journal articles, but instead be expected to demonstrate &quot;continued scholarly activity&quot; which can take a variety of forms. On the other hand, you may be teaching 4 classes a semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay, generally---but not always and certainly not uniformly---decreases from (1) to (4). The autonomy of academic life is usually very attractive and serves to counterbalance a salary that is less than what people in some mathematical specialties could garner in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the type of job one shoots for (and will eventually find success/satisfaction in) is a combination of one's passions (research vs. teaching vs both), innate talents (again, in both research and teaching), aspirations, competitiveness, willingness to deal with pressure, and geography, to name a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a nod to pragmatism, one thing to keep in mind is that the &lt;em&gt;vast&lt;/em&gt; majority of jobs are in (4) and (3). Jobs in (1) and (2) are highly competitive to land. I have many friends in all four categories who are happy and very few (none?) who are unhappy, although admittedly the latter category probably self-selected out of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, since you are a third year undergrad, you will get a MUCH better sense of how much you really like mathematics in graduate school. During that time all of this should crystallize greatly. You will also get to see the profession much more up close than you do as an undergrad. It is great that you are thinking of these things now; keep your eyes and ears open in the coming years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all just my two cents. Certainly others may have very different opinions, experiences, and perspectives...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5591" OwnerDisplayName="JohnD" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T19:55:39.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7218" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:53:02.960" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be useful to read &lt;em&gt;Letters to a Young Mathematician&lt;/em&gt; by Ian Stewart.  It gives a great deal of insight into the mathematical community and the teaching profession in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PolyaPal" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T22:53:02.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7214" CreationDate="2013-01-15T01:18:33.543" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different factors, and I know of no reliable way to determine which is the best explanation.  For example, one theory is that mathematics simply has less impact (in the non-technical sense) than most scientific fields.  I don't believe this, but it's hard to give a principled refutation.  The whole subject strikes me as a little silly, with lots of opinions and numbers with no clear meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important factor is clearly that mathematicians write fewer, often longer papers than most scientists.  Another is the two-year cycle mentioned by walkmanyi (citations after two years do not count for impact factor, which is incompatible with both the time lag in mathematics publication and the time required to carry out research in mathematics in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is the size of the field.  The highest impact factors should occur in an enormous field with some incredibly important research and also a ton of less important papers that cite the great ones.  Mathematics is just not that large a field (compared with biology or medicine, certainly), and it furthermore fragments into a lot of subfields it's difficult to move between.  When someone makes an amazing discovery in algebraic geometry, you aren't going to get a flood of mathematicians from other areas rushing in to take the next steps, because algebraic geometry requires a lot of background.  I don't think that's a bad thing for mathematics as a whole (the things the would-be algebraic geometers are doing instead are probably as valuable as following the latest trends would be), but it cuts down on the opportunities for amassing citations quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I doubt there's any conclusive or satisfying way to determine how much of a role each of these factors plays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some published commentary on impact factors in mathematics, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201103/rtx110300434p.pdf&quot;&gt;Nefarious Numbers&lt;/a&gt; by Arnold and Fowler and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200603/comm-milman.pdf&quot;&gt;Impact Factor and How it Relates to Quality of Journals&lt;/a&gt; by Milman.  The first paper focuses on the flaws of impact factors and their abuse/manipulation, while the second explains how impact factor calculations relate to mathematical publication practices (and some of the incentives for journal editors).  Neither directly answers the question here, but they both shed some light on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T01:18:33.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-15T03:31:48.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What subject are you interested in? In mathematics I know of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/pubs/cmj.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;College Mathematics Journal&lt;/a&gt; published by the MAA and despite its name, I think a good chunk of its material is accessible to high schoolers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4335" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T03:31:48.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7218" CreationDate="2013-01-15T07:17:27.880" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of what JohnD wrote, but let me mention some additional points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many people that leave academia do so less because they're  not &quot;smart enough&quot; and more because it doesn't suit their personality&lt;/strong&gt;.  Research often involves long stretches of work with no clear signs of progress.  To quote Hans Bethe: &quot;Two things are required.  One is a brain.  And second is a willingness to spend long times in thinking, with a definite possibility that you come out with nothing.&quot;  You may enjoy reading Paul Seymour's article: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.math.princeton.edu/~pds/papers/howtheperfect/howtheperfect.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;How the proof of the strong perfect graph theorem was found.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (This is an account of the backstory of solving one of the biggest open problems in discrete math in the last 20 years.)&#xA;Particularly early in your career, this can be scary.  Pre-tenure you &lt;strong&gt;have to balance a desire to hold yourself to a very high standard versus your desire to get tenure, which requires publishing papers&lt;/strong&gt;, even if they don't always meet your ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To succeed in research, you need to learn how to chart your own agenda.  No one tells you what topics to work on, who to work with, how long to spend on a question, where to submit your papers, or which speaking invitations to accept.  Personally, I enjoy making all of these decisions.  But &lt;strong&gt;for some people, this lack of structure is very difficult&lt;/strong&gt; to handle.  It's &lt;strong&gt;essential that you develop a clear vision, perseverance, self-confidence, and the ability to solve odd miscellaneous problems that arise&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T07:17:27.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6188" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:04:09.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends why you are quoting/paraphrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I structure my review in two parts. The first part summarizes the paper, the major contributions, and the high-level strengths and weaknesses of the submission. In this part I paraphrase. This shows the authors, and the editor, that I have read and understood the paper well enough to describe its ideas in my own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second part I get into the details, i.e. you forgot citation X, formula Y has an error, these sentences are confusing, etc. In this part I quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T08:04:09.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:35:17.177" Score="16" ViewCount="1215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in &lt;strong&gt;artificial intelligence&lt;/strong&gt; from an European university. This year I am going to finish my PhD program, so I am looking around to search for a &lt;strong&gt;suitable Postdoc position&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply to an important American university, named X.&#xA;In my research group here I have important professors that follow my work. One is my supervisor, an expert of artificial intellingence, and follows my work. The other is an expert of &lt;strong&gt;operating systems&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. different field from artificial intelligence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This operating system professor in the 90s spent some years &lt;strong&gt;working at the preminent university X&lt;/strong&gt;, and he still has a lot of contact and collaborations in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I take advantage of this and ask him to contact my potential Postdoc advisor at the university to which I want to apply, even if he is from a different field?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Would it be worth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mail would be something like &quot;Some decades ago I worked at your university in the operating systems field, and now I would like to recommed this candidate from artificial intelligence...&quot;&#xA;Would this have &lt;strong&gt;sense&lt;/strong&gt;?&#xA;Would this be &lt;strong&gt;useful&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would it be better that I &lt;strong&gt;contacted personally by myself&lt;/strong&gt; this professor for the Postdoc position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5597" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T09:22:25.980" Title="To ask for a PostDoc position in the university X, is better to do it by myself or to ask to my supervisor?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7226" CreationDate="2013-01-15T09:22:25.980" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in the shoes of the professor: what would they like best in a candidate? Contacting them yourself demonstrates more commitment than having your advisor do it for you. There may be cases where an introduction by a third party is best, but it seems to me it's better to use that only if really needed: guy is a superstar, your introductee knows him very well, or you are just trying to strategically probe whether a candidature would be well-received without actually getting involved yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can get your advisor to follow up if you don't receive an answer, or just to help you when/if they are contacted as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T09:22:25.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2013-01-15T09:51:26.610" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment, there are 56 proceedings-journals which have an Impact Factor according to the only source of Impact factors, the Journal Citation Reports (Thompson Reuters). These journals have the word proceedings in their title, and presumably concern conference proceedings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Later edit:&lt;/strong&gt; This list is just a suggestion which might help to gather some additional information. The titles have not been checked they really are Conference Proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-   ALLERGY ASTHMA PROC&#xA;-   ASLIB PROC&#xA;-   J INVEST DERM SYMP P&#xA;-   MATH PROC CAMBRIDGE&#xA;-   MAYO CLIN PROC&#xA;-   P ACAD NAT SCI PHILA&#xA;-   P AM MATH SOC&#xA;-   P BIOL SOC WASH&#xA;-   P COMBUST INST&#xA;-   P EDINBURGH MATH SOC&#xA;-   P ENTOMOL SOC WASH&#xA;-   P EST ACAD SCI&#xA;-   P GEOLOGIST ASSOC&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-CIV EN&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-ENG SU&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-GEOTEC&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-MAR EN&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-MUNIC&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-STR B&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-TRANSP&#xA;-   P I CIVIL ENG-WAT M&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG A-J POW&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG B-J ENG&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG C-J MEC&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG D-J AUT&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG E-J PRO&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG F-J RAI&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG G-J AER&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG H&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG I-J SYS&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG J-J ENG&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG K-J MUL&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG L-J MAT&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG M-J ENG&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG O-J RIS&#xA;-   P I MECH ENG P-J SPO&#xA;-   P IEEE&#xA;-   P INDIAN AS-MATH SCI&#xA;-   P JPN ACAD A-MATH&#xA;-   P JPN ACAD B-PHYS&#xA;-   P LOND MATH SOC&#xA;-   P NATL A SCI INDIA A&#xA;-   P NATL A SCI INDIA B&#xA;-   P NATL ACAD SCI USA&#xA;-   P NUTR SOC&#xA;-   P ROMANIAN ACAD A&#xA;-   P ROY SOC A-MATH PHY&#xA;-   P ROY SOC B-BIOL SCI&#xA;-   P ROY SOC EDINB A&#xA;-   P STEKLOV I MATH+&#xA;-   P YORKS GEOL SOC&#xA;-   SADHANA-ACAD P ENG S&#xA;-   TRANSPL P&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T08:55:44.580" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T08:55:44.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7214" CreationDate="2013-01-15T10:15:40.927" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must admit that I tend to disagree with the previous answers: while the description of the specifics of the mathematical community are accurate, I do not see why this should affect the impact factor (except for the time needed before an article is cited, whose influence is clear). In particular, size of the field does not have any impact per itself on the average impact factor of papers. In fact, papers are less cited mainly because &lt;em&gt;papers cite less&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me back my point, first assuming we are looking in a field that is closed (only cites itself and is only cited by itself) and stationary (no evolution of the number of papers published or the average number of references per article). Consider the publication graph of a given year : it is a bipartite graph, whose vertices are papers published year 0 (first partition) and years -1 and -2 (second partition) and whose edges are citations from the first ones to the second ones. Then the (article) average of impact factors AIF in this domain is the ratio &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AIF = (#citations from year 0 papers to year -1 and -2 ones)/(#year -1 and -2 papers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is equal to (#edges)/(#papers published in two years), since the field is assumed to be stationary. This is also twice the average number of references to the two preceding years that a paper in the fields has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the article average impact factor of a closed and stationary field is solely governed by the references habits in the field.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; In particular, this is not affected by the overall size of the field (e.g. math as opposed to biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the distribution of references, an expending field will tend to have bigger impact factor, as will a field that is often cited by other ones. I do not feel that speed of expansion is an important factor for math compared to other fields, but fondamental mathematics are probably seldom cited outside itself. This has little impact if one consider maths against the rest of the world, though, since math papers seldomly cited outside the field too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor can be the distribution of papers among journals: for example, if a field has only two journals, one very large and one very small that only gets the very top articles, then the (unweighted) journal average IF will be extremely high. I doubt this explain much of the difference between math and the other fields, since mathematics have a strong hierarchy of journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what we really have to explain is why math papers &lt;em&gt;cite&lt;/em&gt; less papers in the two-years range than papers in (most) other fields. This will explain why they are less cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the answer seems quite clear: maths papers are often long to read, and take time to be digested. The core of a biology paper is usually easy to understand and such papers are more easy to cite. There is also a &lt;em&gt;small subfield&lt;/em&gt; effect: mathematician can work on problems that involve few previous papers. This is different from the size of fields, because it is more about the degree of specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T10:15:40.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7232" CreationDate="2013-01-15T10:41:00.470" Score="67" ViewCount="158325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received a PhD invitation letter from a German University which mentions that my remuneration will be 2/3 of full TV-L 13 position. I do not know what a TV-L 13 position is (Google is of no help here), and didn't want to be rude, so I am asking here first.&#xA;Is this a common position or specific to Germany? If anyone knows, currently how much remuneration corresponds to a TV-L position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5601" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T21:58:48.393" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T23:11:12.483" Title="What is a &quot;TV-L 13&quot; position?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7231" CreationDate="2013-01-15T10:56:24.673" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;TV-L is the German public servant remuneration grade table (&lt;em&gt;Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Länder&lt;/em&gt; (TV-L)). It is how civil servants Germany are graded for their salaries and similar conditions for their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on where your position is, you'll be under TV-L West, or East, or Berlin, or Hessen. Something in your letter might specify this. Either way, there is information on the details at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Öffentlicher Dienst website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you'd be in West Germany, taxed as a single (i.e., not married or living with a life partner or children), this boils down to a basic salary of €2103/month with a net salary after all taxes and health insurance payments of €1383/month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will increase as you remain hired, you'll go up the staircase of salaries, going from 1 to 2 after 1 year, from 2 to 3 after an additional 2 years, etc. Each step is a monthly salary increase of about €150/month net. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-11-10T23:11:12.483" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T23:11:12.483" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6184" CreationDate="2013-01-15T15:53:19.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every publication type has some specific metadata that should be given in any citation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a book, these would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors or editors for an edited book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year of publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information on the publisher (mostly name and address)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a journal article, you should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title of the article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title of the journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volume of the journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page numbers or article identification number for journals without page numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, looking at the required fields for a bibtex entry may give you an idea of what are the required pieces of information for any publication type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some journals don't generally include the title for journal citations, but I find that inconvenient for the reader. There may by additional information depending on the citation style, for example the issue number for citing journal articles, URLs, ISBN/ISSN. But these additional pieces of information, the formatting and even the ordering of the information in the reference generally depend on publication venue, as Suresh wrote in his answer. The key information however should be the same for each citations style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T15:53:19.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6184" CreationDate="2013-01-15T16:53:46.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE citation reference&lt;/a&gt; [PDF] for an example of how the IEEE (Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) does its citations for different media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They definitely change what information appears, depending on the medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T16:53:46.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7237" CreationDate="2013-01-15T20:19:50.353" Score="12" ViewCount="789" Body="&lt;p&gt;In submission forms of academic journals, I often see the possibility to give names of desired / non-desired reviewers for the submitted papers. But very rarely I see fields for choosing an editor who handles the submission from the journal's editorial board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the submission form does not offer the choice of a handling editor, should one indicate a desired editor in the cover letter? Do some researchers (e.g. specific fields) commonly do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:31:25.237" Title="Is it a good practice to indicate the desired handling editor when submitting a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7236" CreationDate="2013-01-15T20:27:14.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only do so if you have a very good reason to want a particular editor (or to avoid another one): while there can exist valid such reasons, it could also be a warning sign for editors. For example, if you ask that the editor not be the “usual” editor for your particular subfield, it may be regarded as you trying to avoid careful scrutiny. So, &lt;strong&gt;if you are not asked about it, and you don't really care&lt;/strong&gt; (or trust them to make the right call) (which should be the majority of cases), &lt;strong&gt;just don't do it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding usage: most of the chemistry journals I know allow you to pick your handling editor directly from a list (although availability and workload management might lead to changes after submission), and some journals allow you to pick both preferred and non-preferred editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T20:27:14.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7240" CreationDate="2013-01-15T22:42:47.777" Score="10" ViewCount="3660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to have my first presentation in some weeks. Therefore I read some papers and now I'm building the presentation with LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the papers, I found some very useful graphics. But for quality reasons I don't like to take Screenshots of the PDF's. So I rebuild the graphics to have them as vector graphics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I cite them just like I took a screenshot, or is there a difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5608" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T13:12:56.613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T13:12:56.613" Title="How to cite a rebuilt graphic" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7236" CreationDate="2013-01-15T22:53:23.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I agree with F'x's answer—special requests for editors beyond the standard process should generally be avoided. The exception to this rule would be if you feel that your paper, may end up being improperly assigned if you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; specify an editor. The primary reason I can think of why this might be the case would be if your paper is multidisciplinary, and you would prefer it to be in a different section of the paper than the one it is &quot;normally&quot; affiliated with. Again, however, this would appear to be a rare enough circumstance that there's little to be gained, and more to be lost (for the reasons F'x has laid out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T22:53:23.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7238" CreationDate="2013-01-15T23:12:41.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;two parts&lt;/strong&gt; to this question: &lt;strong&gt;citation and copyright issues&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding citation: cite the source of the data/graphics/charts/schemes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the copyright part, if the presentation of the data is really identical, most journals liberally give permission for reüse (you have to ask for it), but require an acknowledgement of the form &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Reprinted with permission from …”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. That should cover modifications in format (bitmap to vectorial, or bitmap downsampling, etc.), but I have already seen people actually note the difference by using &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Redrawn with permission from …”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Now, if the figure is based on the first one, but with substantial modifications, you can be happy with only citing the source, or possibly adding &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Figure based on X with permission from …”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T23:12:41.300" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7236" CreationDate="2013-01-16T01:07:02.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, more often than not math journals ask you to submit to a specific editor or indicate which editor is closest.  If you're asked then it's certainly best practice to do your homework and suggest the right editor.  As the other people's answers indicate this seems to vary by field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T01:07:02.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7260" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:19:02.097" Score="23" ViewCount="4244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have more than one hundred pages of handwritten notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made these notes while writing different chapters of my PhD dissertation. The notes include summaries of journal articles, my thoughts, suggestions by others and anything that I thought could be potentially useful for my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what is the best way to organise and store them. Converting them into pdf is one way of doing it but I want to organised them in some way e.g. by chapter, or date or key words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any program or software that can be useful in this regard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4475" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T06:26:05.000" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T01:48:33.627" Title="Saving handwritten notes for future reference" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7236" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:31:25.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually have been in this situation, but it was mostly a &quot;Conflict of Interest Issue&quot;, since my adviser was the appointed editor for the journal I was sending my paper to, and he was also an author on it. There had to be some email exchange, and it did took sometime. I agree that it is quite unorthodox. Mostly because it reflects on the editor as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once, actually, I could not submit for some conference because he was the organizing chair of the session and the conference had strict rules against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:31:25.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7215" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:42:53.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in similar experiences with some friends, and I'm willing to share:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Japan the programs usually have the weirdest possible names, even in the University of Tokyo they have the &quot;PhD on Creative Informatics&quot; (What's that supposed to mean?), when is nothing but a good ol' PhD on Computer Science. Or the &quot;PhD on Frontier Sciences&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my adviser and he told me that those names are usually for the sake of attracting more students. But he also told me something I've been seeing in the Industry looking for a job (Academic/Industry): No one really cares that much about the title in your PhD, but rather on your specialization topic. Usually questions will be directed towards: &quot;What did you do on your PhD&quot; rather than &quot;What's the name of your PhD&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advise you to create a brand around this concept of &quot;Social Economics&quot;, if you know different people doing that, try to be in contact with them (Twitter/Mail/Conference) so you'll get recognized in the field later and when you get interviewed you don't have to explain it all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:42:53.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7251" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:46:26.737" Score="22" ViewCount="12474" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I've already asked my adviser about this, but I just want to see what is the overall idea of the community on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Mexico it is usually required for the student to do this, but that is about the only place I have references of people doing defenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of bringing bottled water, but since is the middle of the winter I thought coffee might be a better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:26:39.957" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T18:07:36.820" Title="Is it appropriate to bring coffee and cookies to a PhD defense?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:48:43.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Endnote, which allows you to take pictures of the notes and put tags/dates/More Notes! on top of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very device independent, and you can do all the digitization process using an iPhone or and Android phone, of course if you have a good camera, it will be better for the resolution issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a company that does OCR for Endnote compatibility, but you have to buy their special paper, which is a bit pricey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T07:54:14.337" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T07:54:14.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:49:01.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the department I would expect. Mine for example &lt;em&gt;bans&lt;/em&gt; food and drink at a PhD defense, both because they think is puts an undue burden on the student (why should you have to cater your defense?) and creates an inappropriate atmosphere. Cookies, generally, are a celebratory food for example, and while you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; pass your defense, having already broken out dessert suggests that its a foregone conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:49:01.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T06:53:52.710" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mine, there are no conventions per se, but I've seen people get food ready for just after the defense. Since it's extremely rare to get to a defense and fail it, I'm not too concerned about the 'foregone conclusion' problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T06:53:52.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T07:28:39.447" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's highly country-dependent. In Italy, it is normal to offer food after defending a thesis (not only phd, also bachelor and master), either directly on the place or by taking all the friends attending to a bar after the defense. Sometimes the university itself even offers a small part of the refreshment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often there is enough food that you can skip your lunch (if it's in the morning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find it weird to bring coffee and cookies &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; the defense, you can simply move to a bar, a common room or another place to celebrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T10:21:02.893" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T10:21:02.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T07:36:20.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another variant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My defense (UK) was informal, but very much an examination and as such there was no food or drink. However in the evening my supervisor invited myself and my examiners to a restaurant (not sure what would've happened if I hadn't passed!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard of situations where the examination was particularly long and the examiners and candidate broke for lunch and came back - again there was no repast &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the examination room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T07:36:20.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T07:39:58.617" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;How I have seen it handle in France: usually, no food and drinks is given out during the defense, except for a bottle of water and a glass who are set on table of each member of the defense committee. However, as you say, it may be cold outside and committee members may be glad for a hot drink and/or maybe something to eat (depending what time it is). So, it is quite customary for the thesis advisor(s) to actually invite the committee members to join him some time before the defense starts, where they can make small talk and drink coffee. If the defense starts early afternoon, they committee can even go to lunch together, giving them an opportunity to discuss practical stuff (who will chair the committee? what order will people talk in? etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, after the defense is concluded, there is a celebratory “cocktail” (buffet and drinks) to which the defense committee is invited, and to which they usually attend at least for half an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T07:39:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7255" CreationDate="2013-01-16T08:06:34.530" Score="31" ViewCount="34885" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I did my undergraduate thesis, my adviser was expected big on students expecting them working really hard, so it ended up as a reduced master's thesis (most of the reviewers said that it was an overkill for a B.E).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So because of this, I did my master's thesis pretty much in the same way I did my bachelor's thesis; the PhD dissertation was a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the principal differences between these three pieces of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T21:48:19.943" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T21:48:19.943" Title="What are the main differences between undergraduate, master's, and doctoral theses?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T08:35:06.687" Score="14" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my MPhys thesis, on a certain dataset. Part of this dataset has been analyzed by my current supervisor during his PhD, with published results. He asked me to expand on that work by completing the analysis on the whole dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I repeat the analysis on the part he had already worked on, I get different results. Unfortunately he has not published any detail about &lt;em&gt;how exactly&lt;/em&gt; he tackled the problem, and instead relied on his memory. He gave me advice like: put this parameter to 50, use feature A, use feature B, disable feature C and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to reproduce his result to within 10%, but yesterday I was horrified when I discovered that this was done without using one of the features he recommended, let's say feature A. I have played with the data since and am totally unable to reproduce the result (it is off by a factor of 2 when using my supervisor specifications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using feature A totally makes sense, so I am not sure on what to do: I am afraid that should I tell him about this problem, he would delay my upcoming viva. This has a lot of unwanted consequences, for example would force me to pay extra money to the University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5609" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T10:27:57.870" Title="Informing my supervisor of discrepancy in the results" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7253" CreationDate="2013-01-16T08:55:46.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should talk to your advisers, and in good faith expect that, since everything is from memory, there is a multiplication by 1/2 missing or some minor detail. Else, falsifying data is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.fr/2010/11/9-circles-of-scientific-hell.html&quot;&gt;9th circle of hell.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T08:55:46.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7252" CreationDate="2013-01-16T09:13:51.483" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Bachelor or Master thesis, you have to show that you are able to apply the knowledge of your field to solve a typical problem in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a PhD thesis, you have to show that you are able to extend the knowledge of your field to solve new problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction between a Bachelor and a Master thesis may be a bit subtle. Generally I think a Master thesis should show a significantly greater level of independent working. While for a Bachelor thesis your advisor could tell you which methods to use to solve a specific problem, for a Master thesis you could be expected to choose the methods on your own, and maybe adjust existing methods to better fit the problem at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the principle differences I see, but of course its also depending on the specific student. A good Bachelor thesis can be better and include more independent work than a bad Master thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T09:13:51.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7253" CreationDate="2013-01-16T09:34:56.110" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my opinion, it is absolutely essential that you are completely open about this&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot reproduce his results, at least one (possibly both) of the following are true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are doing something wrong. You are a student and he is your supervisor. It's his job to help you if you are doing something wrong. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It's better to be delayed with correct results, than on time with wrong results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He was doing something wrong. Don't be afraid! You are not accusing him of anything unethical (*). If his previous results or his understanding are genuinely in error, he should be very interested in knowing this, and grateful if you discover such an error.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) If you do suspect unethical behaviour, the question is entirely different and better asked separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T10:27:57.870" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T10:27:57.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T10:45:16.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qiqqa&lt;/a&gt; might be worth looking at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a PDF / reference management system with particular emphasis (useful, novel features, not found in other such programs) on notes and links between notes on your various research papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and STOP writing notes on paper! Write your notes on digital media and it'll make your life so much easier, especially WRT organization / linking / archiving / indexing... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a scientist and want to keep track of notes you make, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_notebook_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Notebook Science&lt;/a&gt; software solutions may also be worth looking at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend EndNote. It's changed relatively little in years and years. Many of the newer PDF management systems have far better user interfaces and are in general more modern (and often free!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T10:45:16.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T10:58:05.953" Score="14" ViewCount="2172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a postdoc (in computer science) and planning on applying for faculty jobs soon. During my 3 postdoc years I've had a couple of papers with 2 &quot;superstars&quot; in my field, whereas my current boss is somewhat less renowned.  Most job ads seem to require 3 referees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is, who should I list as referee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my PhD advisor + the 2 superstars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my PostDoc supervisor + the 2 superstars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A different combination? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would option 1 or 2 be perceived as unusual?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5611" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T11:14:04.843" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T16:17:41.643" Title="Job after post-doc - Whom to list as referee?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7258" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:05:30.070" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;List all 4! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will find it odd if you PhD advisor is not under the list of referees. The same holds for the host of your last position. If you are limited to 3 references then get rid of one of the &quot;superstars&quot;, but typically job descriptions say &quot;at least x referees&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T11:05:30.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:08:06.903" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's not an answer, but it's too long for a comment…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one word for you in the future: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moleskine.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moleskine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Good quality notebooks, organized either thematically or chronologically, is a great way to store that sort of information. For notes, &lt;strong&gt;long term conservation&lt;/strong&gt; is a big issue, and you have little guarantee that bells-and-whistles software X will still be working on your computer in 10 to 20 years. Simple solutions (both electronic and not) are the best for that purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I have managed my notes electronically for some time (I tried many combinations, including iPad/Evernote/Dropbox, text files, LaTeX), but wasn't satisfied for the reasons above. I went back to dead wood storage (aka paper) with delight!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T11:08:06.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7258" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:19:11.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you have worked for your current boss for at least a year, not listing him as a reference will look weird. Same for not listing your PhD advisor, unless you obtained your PhD a long time ago (say, you have held 3 different positions since then). Thus, I would advise to drop one of the superstars if you are limited to 3 names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider: you have worked with superstars, but if your relationship with you has been less close than your boss/advisor, will they write a glorifying enough reference letter for you? Unless you have made quite an impression on them, or you had an close relationship, I don't think the odds are in your favour (though you have more information to answer this question than I have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T11:19:11.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7258" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:38:58.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure to what extent a letter from a &quot;superstar&quot; is that useful. Often superstars are only stars within their fields and not know more broadly. If you have a publication with these superstars, that will speak for itself. If there is a pending publication, maybe the letter would help. If there is no publication coming, it is not clear why you would want them to write a letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there are odd circumstances you need letters from your PhD and Post-Doc supervisors. These people are going to be in the best position to write a letter for you since they likely know you the best and have the most invested in your success. As for a 3rd letter writer, you need to think about what the perceived weaknesses are in your application and who can best comment on them. For example, if you have limited teaching experience, you might want a letter from someone who has seen you teach or at a minimum given talks. Maybe your research is weak, then a letter from a research superstar might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T11:38:58.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7238" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:47:34.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For presentations, when you are using graphics from other papers, you refer to the paper. The most important think is not to pretend that it's yours and to point to the source (perhaps your whole point of this slide is to refer to a specific paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may add &quot;from [cite]&quot; but usually it's &quot;obvious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the graphical differences are not trivial (i.e. programs almost &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; modify graphics anyway), you can add something like &quot;redrawn from data from [cite]&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T11:47:34.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:46:52.623" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student in the US the tradition in my department was that all meetings involved a snack (usually doughnuts for morning meetings and cookies for afternoon meetings) and coffee. The snacks and coffee were set out before the meeting started. Our thesis defenses included a public and a private portion. The snacks at defenses were sometimes a little fancier (if I recall correctly, I sprung for a $20 cheese and fruit platter and a couple bottles of fancy water). As a post doc in the US the meetings typically only involved coffee. I think this was because a number of faculty in the department had strict dietary requirements (e.g., a number of vegans and kosher people), but I am not sure. In my current department in the UK we never have snacks or drinks. I really miss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you ask other people in your department what is the norm. If the norm is not to bring snacks and drinks, think if you want to start a new tradition: everybody likes cookies/biscuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T13:46:52.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-16T15:08:34.127" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others pointed out, the answer depends on the country, particular university, as well as local habits at the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to complete the international picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany (at places I had an opportunity to observe), it was customary to provide a treat in a style of &quot;wine &amp;amp; cheese&quot; of course modified to local tastes (meat in Germany :-) ) including a glass of sparkling/normal wine (usually &quot;Sekt&quot;), but all that &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the defense. People would normally order the food by a local butcher (many of which specialise in this kind of stuff as a side business). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same would go for some Eastern European countries, like Czech Republic, or Slovakia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Netherlands, at places I saw, there is often a small reception after the defense too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T15:29:44.173" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T15:29:44.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6040" CreationDate="2013-01-16T16:06:51.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not in the same area as you are, so I couldn't speak for students in theoretical physics. However, generally speaking, a publication doesn't make or break a graduate application. They are definitely a plus, but I don't believe any department would simply reject a student because they have no publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to find out if graduate students in your area had journal articles published during their undergraduate, you can browse the websites for the related departments of schools you are interested in. Almost all of them have lists of their graduate students, some of which may have uploaded their resumes. You can check the dates on their publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I said publications don't make or break an application, previous work including internships, projects, research with an advisor in a related area is definitely a must. You are required to show that your interests led you to pursue further work in your fields of interest. This doesn't even have to be the same field that you are applying to graduate school for. But you are required to demonstrate that you are willing to put in the time and effort to go above and beyond in what you like to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T16:06:51.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7258" CreationDate="2013-01-16T16:17:41.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @A.Schulz: List all four.  You &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; get letters from both your thesis advisor and your postdoc advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to choose only one of your superstar coauthors to write a letter for you, consider the purpose of the letter: to help the committee make an informed judgement of your &lt;strong&gt;long-term potential for high-quality, high-impact research and intellectual leadership&lt;/strong&gt;, or to put it more bluntly, &lt;strong&gt;your likelihood of getting tenure.&lt;/strong&gt;  The best recommendation letters draw &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; comparisons between your research ability/quality/reputation and that of other people in your subfield at similar career stages.  For that reason, the most useful letters are from people who have a broad perspective on the field, with &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; experience with &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; other people at the same career stage as you.  For example, someone who has served on lots of recent program committees can offer a good perspective on your &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; competitors.  Someone who has worked in a strong department for many years can offer a good perspective on people who had records comparable to yours in the past, and how their careers progressed.  &lt;strong&gt;The research reputation of your letter-writers is secondary to their credibility in judging &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; potential.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the interests of objectivity, each of your letter-writers should focus as much as possible on the work that they were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; involved in.  In particular, what you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want is a letter from a superstar coauthor that talks about the fantastic paper that the two of you wrote together; such a letter will not be taken seriously, because &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt; they think their own paper is good.  So ideally, you should only ask a superstar coauthor for a letter if they are willing to write a strong letter about your &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T16:17:41.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T17:47:51.603" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student acquires a good score in GRE, does it guarantees that he has a good merit to earn a good grade in a taught graduate program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T18:51:36.973" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:53:13.140" Title="Is a good GRE score evidence of merit?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7271" CreationDate="2013-01-16T17:54:30.780" Score="5" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to enroll in a graduate program completely unrelated to one's undergraduate degree? Additionally, in my case, my undergraduate degree (computer science) is from outside the USA, and I'm applying to graduate programs (in English Literature) within the USA. Will this be a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T14:17:38.610" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T14:24:34.817" Title="Applying to graduate programs unrelated to undergraduate degree" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7270" CreationDate="2013-01-16T19:04:31.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely apply. I have seen many cases where individuals with degrees in tangentially related fields not only are accepted to, but excel in, graduate programs in different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note, though, that if you're applying to be a PhD, it's expected that you'll be doing research in the new field, and you'll have to demonstrate to the application committee that you're up to the task. You may have to be creative about this, given that your background is very different from what they're used to seeing; consider emphasizing any possible applications of computer science to literature (ngrams, maybe?) or anything else which may strengthen your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T14:24:34.817" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T14:24:34.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T19:11:29.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I scan my notes to PDF and then use LaTeX to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11082/adding-table-of-contents-to-existing-pdf&quot;&gt;add a custom Table of Contents&lt;/a&gt; that helps with navigating the PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T19:11:29.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7290" CreationDate="2013-01-16T19:18:34.683" Score="7" ViewCount="1957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my final year research paper for a national level conference as well as international level IEEE conference. I was notified that my research paper has been accepted for the national level conference before 2 weeks ago. And I submitted camera ready papers, registered and ready to present the paper next week on the national level conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But yesterday I received a mail from IEEE conference by mentioning my paper is accepted for the conference and asked for camera ready papers based on their template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this situation normal? Can I publish my paper on national level conference as well as international level IEEE conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that there will be proceedings for both conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5615" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T18:29:12.197" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:29:12.197" Title="Publishing Same Research Paper on a National Conference as well as International IEEE conference" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T19:20:29.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also have a look at Evernote, this does a nice job of organizing notes. I think it even supports making pictures with the Evernote app (android or iphone), and upload it (e.g. for a poster on a conference). I use to store computer typed notes, but you could also upload and store scanned handwritten notes. Evernote has a free account with limited bandwith, so depending on what you want this might or might not be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T19:20:29.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7269" CreationDate="2013-01-16T20:45:37.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; No, not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I understood from the official GRE manual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRE, just like any other multiple choice exam, requires fairly specific preparation. You need to understand how to go about analyzing their standardized types of problems, methods of elimination of the answer choices, and even sometimes think like the person who's writing the question. Getting a good score means that you've acquired these skills and can use them rather efficiently in the 3 hours you took the exam. This is what I understood by reading their official manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My personal opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing well on GRE does probably also mean that you can, in fact, learn how to do other things, given that they are presented to you in &quot;standard packaging&quot;. But so does an undergraduate degree where you get to take classes and prove by taking exams that you can efficiently use what you learned in those classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, none of these (and no other single thing) actually &quot;guarantees&quot; that you will do well in graduate school, regardless of what program you go into. It's just a metric that you should be able to do well, if you are passionate enough to do well in graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T20:45:37.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-16T21:58:52.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would second &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;. They provide really great handwriting OCR, the key is to remember to scan your notes in as JPGs (or convert them to JPGs) as Evernote doesn't OCR handwriting in PDFs. With their OCR, you don't even need to organize in the app, you can just search for keywords to find what you are looking for. If you are looking for an easy way to get your notes into Evernote and you have an iPhone, I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jotnot-scanner-pro-scan-multipage/id307868751?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JotNote Scanner Pro&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T21:58:52.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7252" CreationDate="2013-01-16T22:46:29.620" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would see the differences as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate thesis demonstrates the capacity to apply basic research skills in an area of interest to you. At this level, the focus is on gaining broad competencies (akin to an overview of what research is all about). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Masters thesis demonstrates the capacity to apply advanced research skills (i.e. move beyond basic research skills) in an area of interest to you so that you are able to incorporate some critical insights in your study. At this level, the focus is on developing critical thinking in a subject area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PhD thesis demonstrates the capacity to apply specialised research skills (i.e. expert knowledge of a particular concept or method) in an area of interest to you so that you can make significant and original contribution to knowledge. At this level, the focus is on identifying a 'gap' in knowledge and addressing it, hence you advance knowledge in a field of study.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are are arbitrary descriptions as there are overlaps (i.e. all levels require critical thinking); however, the three levels are distinct and require difference level of competencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T22:46:29.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7286" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:00:42.543" Score="8" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no academic (peer-reviewed) publications to my credit but close to 6 years of industry-based experience. I have just completed a PhD in sociology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work in industry included activities such as developing codes and operational manuals in a particular field to be used by operators in that field (e.g., a health and safety manual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T05:37:43.410" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T02:48:15.473" Title="Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7279" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:54:51.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Academia&lt;/strong&gt; is a question and answer site for academics of all levels. It's built and run &lt;em&gt;by you&lt;/em&gt; as part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; network of Q&amp;amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="4501" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T23:54:51.923" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T23:54:51.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7280" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:55:34.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic careers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requirements and expectations of students, postdocs, or professors,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inner workings of research departments,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic writing and publishing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;studying and teaching at institutions of higher education (universities, colleges, …),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-01-27T19:08:08.237" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T19:08:08.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7281" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:55:42.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything not in an academic setting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the content of research and coursework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recommendations for a university, journal, research topic, or similar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the rules of individual universities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;undergraduate admissions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;undergraduate life and culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;preparations for a non-academic career&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-01-27T19:13:14.520" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T19:13:14.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7283" CreationDate="2013-01-17T00:30:03.653" Score="7" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a naive question but it would greatly assist me in preparing my first paper for a peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can identify at least 4 papers that I can extract from my recently completed PhD dissertation in the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do reviewers look for in order to assess that a paper is suitable for publication in their peer reviewed journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T14:32:17.690" Title="What do reviewers look for in a paper?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7282" CreationDate="2013-01-17T02:40:29.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, they are looking for something &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; which contributes to the current literature of the field.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If your paper fits in this context (i.e. you believe your paper will enhance/improve current methods or even solve particular problem, then you got &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;publishable&lt;/em&gt; work&lt;/strong&gt; regardless of the reviewing output.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a particular journal, other factors are added to the significance of the work (for example journal scope, writing level, paper format and methodology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T02:40:29.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7285" CreationDate="2013-01-17T07:20:32.913" Score="7" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied to PhD programs in US in the area of TCS for FALL 13. I have two unpublished work in the area of theory which was part of my master thesis. I have other published work but they are not in theory. Also it appears that these univ have started contacting their successful candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently one of the unpublished work has been upload on arxiv however the other work is still not there. I can't put it on arxiv as I am not the sole author. Should I mail these two papers as pdf attachments to my potential list of advisors? (3-6 per univ) What should be done? I have mentioned the titles of my work and their contributions in my cv : e.g. this paper improves on paper X and gives 3 approx algorithm using technique Y. However why should anyone believe me if it is unpublished. Or how to gauge the amount of research done/involved in that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5619" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T08:20:16.483" Title="CS PhD Addmission: Contacting prof about unpublished work" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7284" CreationDate="2013-01-17T08:20:16.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand your question, you did already submit your application, but didn't include the unpublished papers nor any reference to them? Because that is what I would have suggested: if you have an unpublished paper with high relevance to the field of your application, you could include it with your application documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, since you didn't include it in the application, I wouldn't send it unsolicited to potential advisors, especially not if you didn't send your application directly to these people. Rather, you could ask the contact where you submitted your application whether you could amend it with a recently finished paper relevant to the proposed research topic. You would have good arguments if the paper was only finished after the application deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't expect too much though. If decisions are already taken, it's unlikely that they will be reconsidered. Anyway, since you mentioned the papers in your CV, I don't think it would be a major factor for your application whether they are included or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these suggestions would only apply to unpublished work which is already submitted for consideration in a journal of conference. If it is not yet submitted, I wouldn't send it with the application nor to potential advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T08:20:16.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7278" CreationDate="2013-01-17T08:27:56.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed research publications, published in academically reputable venues such as research journals, conferences, books with reputable publishers, reputable preprint servers, ... If you get these publications from industry research, you get academic weight. A famous example for prominent research in electrical engineering done in industry are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bell laboratories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Codes and operational manuals are not academic publications, and typically carry little weight. In order to get that, you have to publish academic papers about the codes and manuals, or publish papers about research results obtained with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T18:35:40.637" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T18:35:40.637" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7278" CreationDate="2013-01-17T08:45:46.853" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does industry research carry any weight in academia? It varies. It varies by subject, by institution, by the individuals doing the hiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there subjects, places, people where industry research can get you a post even with no journal papers? Yes. Are such appointments common? Not anywhere I know of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good employer (those are the ones you want, right?) will be able to look past the traditional indicators of a good researcher (PhD, journal papers, career in academia), and look at other, non-traditional ones. But that takes time and effort, and hiring can be a drain on those as it is, so you'd need to give a potential employer some really good reasons up front why they should put the effort in to establishing your abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal recommendation from a senior academic, or from a retired senior academic - one who's already trusted and respected by the employer you're targetting - is the sort of thing that can help open doors for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T08:45:46.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7273" CreationDate="2013-01-17T09:13:39.373" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot publish the same paper at these two conference. For an IEEE conference publication, you have to transfer copyright on the paper to the IEEE, which precludes publication in another proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't have submitted the same paper to two places simultaneously. It's clearly against ethical standards in academics. It is not your fault, if there wasn't a clear indication on the conference submission site, and your advisor hasn't intervened (he should have). Still you have to deal with the consequences now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the consequences are that you have to withdraw your paper from one of these conferences. If you have the choice, it would probably be better to withdraw from the national conference. Call yourself lucky if you don't get into deeper trouble from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T09:13:39.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7282" CreationDate="2013-01-17T10:12:37.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely not a naive question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best you can do is to understand the position of a hypothetical (ideal/unbiased) reviewer and immediately from that you will get answers to your question. Particularities could depend on the field (theoretical vs. experimental, etc.). Hence, look for answers to the question &quot;how to review?&quot;. Already answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/peer-review&quot;&gt;here at academia.SE&lt;/a&gt; provide lots of relevant points. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/498/scope-for-the-role-of-peer-reviewer&quot;&gt;Answers to this question&lt;/a&gt; are probably the best starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T10:12:37.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7296" CreationDate="2013-01-17T10:40:27.763" Score="36" ViewCount="10057" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was talking to a friend of mine, and he just feel in a deep depression due to finishing his PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He will be defending in the coming weeks, and there is a high likelihood he will pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his words, he doesn't really feel he has learned anything PhD worthy, he only has one Journal paper and no conference papers (in his area conf papers are not worth much anyway). According to him, one of the postdocs kept his research at bay by denying him access to the machines he need to do experiments (something CMOS related, not really sure what). And in his own words, the same guy basically did the same experiments he was planning and wrote a couple of papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course he tried to tell his professor, but apparently he couldn't care less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By now, he just feels that he lost 3 years of his life doing a PhD. And he mentioned that he might sue the Professor/University for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take his word for all of this, and I have no real means to corroborate it to be truth. But it kept me thinking about one thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a student entitled to sue/demand a reimbursement/etc if he/she feels like the past years have been an utter waste of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any mechanism in your universities to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of similar cases of professors abusing of students in the same way in some US Universities (big/fancy ones by the way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T17:21:44.647" LastActivityDate="2018-09-14T16:43:57.717" Title="What to do if one has had an unsuccessful PhD (because of others' fault)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;abuse&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7273" CreationDate="2013-01-17T11:04:21.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, they have a loophole for this, and is based on what Silvado mentioned on preclusion. They basically say in the website that the conference is not indexed, and they only give handouts and digital proceedings with no ISBN number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document the IEEE holds the copyrights of is the document you have submitted after doing all of the modifications the reviewers suggested, that is the reason some authors get to publish their papers in their own webpages, as long as it is not the same document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advice against doing any modifications to any of the papers, since it has already been accepted and it is not the papers the reviewers choose, it would be unethical and you can get in more trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree that you should withdraw one of the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I forgot that the IEEE updated its copyright policies, you actually cannot do that anymore&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T05:32:40.330" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T05:32:40.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7269" CreationDate="2013-01-17T11:08:32.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer would be depending on which GRE are you referring to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a specialized GRE, like the one of Computer Science, I do agree that it shows some merit, since it test basic knowledge the students should have in order to start doing useful things as soon as they start their PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about the general GRE, I think it does not reflect well in some abilities like problem solving and scientific comprehension, since its math part evaluates how fast can you make calculations, not how deep is your knowledge of basic math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there are a plethora of factors that will affect whether you get in or not in a Grad Course, as far as I remember GPA also affects in some extent, since top universities want people that were at least in the top 1%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T11:08:32.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7293" CreationDate="2013-01-17T11:56:52.707" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;There sure are cases, every now and then, of researchers (professors or other) abusing students in various ways. As everyone, I have heard stories, and I know at least a couple of people who have been put in dramatic situations during their PhD. However bad the behavior of the advisor is, it turns out that there are multiple venues one can try, during the PhD, when the alarm flag is raised. These depend on the institution and type of employment, but they include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Going to see the PhD program director, explaining your situation (diplomatically) and asking for advice (read: help).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding a friendly researcher/professor in your department, and ask him for advice (and possibly help) with your issue. They know the people and local “politics”, and might have efficient advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your employer's HR department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Going to your professor's hierarchy (department chair, dean, …). As a last recourse, file a formal complaint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get someone to speak for you: a union representative, a member of the local “PhD association”, etc. That can help if you are worried about the fallout of intervening directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing your plans to work on a more “independent” research. In your example, your friend was denied access to a given experiment. If the experiment had broken down beyond repair, he sure could reörient his research, so the same thing could be done in the case at hand (I'm not saying it's easy).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Walking out (or, as JeffE would surely say: &lt;strong&gt;don't walk, run!&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding legal action: I don't think this avenue can lead anywhere, unless there is factual evidence of gross misconduct or unethical activity. The burden of proof relies on your friend, and I think it will actually be harder to complain after the fact if he did not raise his concerns formally during his PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T11:56:52.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7297" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-17T13:05:48.397" Score="24" ViewCount="5151" Body="&lt;p&gt;On one hand, this seems like the obvious thing to do:  no one is going to be able to better testify to your teaching ability than a previous student.  On the other hand, I've never heard of anybody ever doing this, and for some reason, it seems a bit silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the academic community large think about this?  Is it okay to list previous students as references when applying for a teaching position in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5622" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T12:59:44.980" Title="Is it okay to use students as a reference when applying for a teaching position?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-01-17T13:21:11.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you already have the notes written, it seems that mainly what you are looking for is a digital reference management system - akin to the digital card catalogs of the library.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would allow you to search your notes for a key word or subject and then know that it is in notebook A on page 20.  There would be lots of ways to do this but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;zotero&lt;/a&gt; is very flexible and should be able to accommodate your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T13:21:11.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7301" CreationDate="2013-01-17T13:50:40.447" Score="10" ViewCount="2652" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research paper has been accepted for the IEEE ICCSE conference. I am planning to change the title of the research paper before the submission of the camera-ready version. This would be a slight modification which will not affect the context of my research. Would it be possible to do so? Is it okay if I request to change the title of my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5615" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T11:03:57.603" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T11:03:57.603" Title="Changing the title of a research paper before the submission of the camera-ready version" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7325" CreationDate="2013-01-17T13:57:59.083" Score="12" ViewCount="2020" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my research internship experiences (my previous University didn't really focus on research much) and what my current advisers told me, a &lt;em&gt;general flow&lt;/em&gt; of a PhD is like any other long(er)-time project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;familiarize oneself with state-of-the-art on the subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;generate your own ideas (by trial-and-error) and integrate with current approaches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(with this phase becoming a lot fuzzier the more advanced your &amp;quot;project&amp;quot; is)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;write it up for the world to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a fresh PhD student, I'm currently in the middle of familiarizing myself with the state of the art, following the advice of many older students (&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;be a brave soldier in the beginning and do and read everything your advisers throw/send/e-mail your way&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;). And I do understand the importance of it (in fact, more often than not, I love it). But, it does give one an impression of self-uselessness sometimes (I have a talk with myself every few weeks or so to remind myself of my motivation and resolve the &amp;quot;uselessness&amp;quot; issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;Typically, how much time would a fresh PhD student spend on going through state-of-the-art at the beginning of his/her PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some sub-questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it expected/typical to produce some kind of output (articles?) &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; this period?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what kind of output is expected at the end of this period?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what would be some indicators that this period is ending which a student himself can notice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, just to provide some context: I'm doing a PhD in Europe, and we have a limit of 3 years for a PhD (sometimes extended for up to 6 months) and I'm studying Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T13:35:15.183" Title="Familiarizing oneself with state-of-the-art at the beginning of a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7299" CreationDate="2013-01-17T14:12:45.830" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, you can do this, but you need to get an explicit permission from the programme chair(s). I would also suggest thoroughly explaining the change, as such a change request might indicate that you did a lousy job preparing the paper before the submission itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T14:12:45.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:04:00.393" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a clear transition between “familiarizing oneself with the subject” and “being an expert in this topic, and generate new ideas and approaches”. &lt;strong&gt;The transition is gradual, and it's called “the PhD”&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are ways to quantify this evolution. For example, ask yourself: in a discussion with your advisor and a few other experts on a topic related to your PhD, how able are you to make useful comments and suggestions? How often do you come to your advisor saying “I have tried to do X because I read about it and I think it can apply to my issue”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the written “output” of the beginning of a PhD, it pretty much depends on you and your advisor. Mostly, the output is knowledge in your mind, but it can also be useful to make notes (both for yourself and your advisor) on each subtopic you discover. For myself, as an advisor, I ask students to contribute bibliographic notes (written or orally) every now and then, for me and other students of the group who work on related topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T15:04:00.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:14:53.893" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm hesitant to make broad generalizations across disciplines, but I've seen this pattern a few times in a number of fields, so for what it's worth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can expend to spend the better part of a year (or more) familiarizing yourself with the field itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can expect to spend &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; better part of a year (or more) familiarizing yourself with the state-of-the-art in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can expect to spend the rest of your life staying up to date on what's being done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While you're doing all this, you will also be implementing some of the research you're reading about, doing coursework, teaching, grading, writing grants, and doing actual research. This will take time away from simply reading up on stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:14:53.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7297" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:29:30.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see why you couldn't do this, as long as you made it clear what you were doing, but I think it would probably be a mistake unless it is in addition to the usual documentation (teaching evaluations, teaching letter from a faculty member).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you would have to choose an unusually thoughtful and articulate student, someone who could discuss what's distinctive and valuable about your teaching.  Even if you did that, there would be some concern that the student is not someone with a letter writing reputation they have an incentive to protect, or that you may have chosen a student because you couldn't find faculty willing to vouch for your teaching.  However, I think there's a more fundamental difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any half-decent teacher can find at least one student every few years who really thinks highly of their teaching.  Maybe it's because the teaching style is a perfect match for the student; maybe it's because the student deeply loves the class material and is somewhat awestruck by the professor.  However, there's always someone, so getting a great recommendation from a student or two tells little about how the other students felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have broader evidence too, such as strong teaching evaluations from your students overall and a positive letter from a faculty member, then this would not be a difficulty.  (However, if you have these things then the student letter would probably not be needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:29:30.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7269" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:53:13.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I see with the GREs is that the scoring range is highly compressed. The difference between scoring in the bottom quartile and the top quartile tells you a fair amount. The difference between the 90th percentile and the 99th percentile, where the vast majority of graduate students score, tells you very little. It is the difference of a couple of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:53:13.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7311" CreationDate="2013-01-17T19:03:21.247" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting my dissertation in which I'm creating a mobile application for public use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is I need evidences to support my hypothesis and I was informed&#xA;that I will only be allowed to collect data from users inside the company&#xA;for which I'm doing the app, since the application won't be released in time&#xA;of my deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this might invalidate my data since these are users who are aware&#xA;of the application development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I could do some quizzes and try to have &quot;outside&quot; people to fill them&#xA;but I'm not sure if this enough to support my hypothesis since these people&#xA;didn't had any contact with my application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is if using data from quizzes about a possible solution (like&#xA;mine) is enough to support my dissertation since I can't let people try my app&#xA;by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5628" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-01T15:28:08.037" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T15:28:08.037" Title="How to collect data for dissertation if the work wasn't published" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-17T19:03:57.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initially, you should really just seek to understand.  Thousands (or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands) of brilliant people have been working on problems for many years.  If you're going to contribute, hadn't you better understand what some of them did, and why?  So read, think, ask questions.  Your initial goal is not to produce anything except familiarity with the core concepts and techniques.  Or, to put it another way, you should be producing ideas and questions, hopefully to talk about with another lab member or your mentor.  If you skip this phase, you'll either be slavishly following your mentor's directions without understanding why; duplicating work that's already well-established, probably (though not necessarily!) in an inferior way; or working on something that is fun for you perhaps, but not particularly relevant for anything.  (Many Ph.D. students, in my experience, do end up falling afoul of one or more of these.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you ought not expect at the end of this period that you'll have as keen a grasp of the field and directions as your mentor; the point is to start getting the perspective you need to understand why, for instance, your mentor suggests using a bayesian analysis of job-completion times to help with load balancing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point--unless your mentor is highly concerned about this--I wouldn't fret too much about producing papers.  Get yourself in a position where you can produce good papers.  Once you're there, then work out the next part of the plan (you'll very likely find that it depends heavily on what you're planning to do, which you won't know until you understand the literature and appropriate techniques).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T19:03:57.393" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-17T21:38:54.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice: don't read everything otherwise you will never finish! Finishing your PhD should be your goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Become familiar with the dominant themes in your field and continually think how your PhD fits in the scheme of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on what is relevant to your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T21:38:54.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-17T22:05:09.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with the general outline you describe is that it's top down, and doesn't reflect the bottom up nature of doing research. In other words, while it's useful to familiar with the state of the art, you shouldn't necessarily start by assimilating the state of the art in the field. That's too overwhelming !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach early on is to start small, and work on something concrete. Doing a Ph.D is really like doing an apprenticeship to hone the craft of doing research. Starting with assimilating the state of the art is akin to reading lots of books on music theory before touching a piano. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start with a small problem. Try different approaches. Talk to lots of people. Read papers that might have ideas to help you with the problem. Talk to lots of people again. Try more ideas. Solve a piece of the problem. Discover it's been solved before ! Realize that you've been able to recreate someone else's original research. Realize that &lt;strong&gt;this is a good thing&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will come a time when you suddenly realize that you're familiar with most of the state of the art. And that you've been adding to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then it's time to graduate :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T22:05:09.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7307" CreationDate="2013-01-17T22:35:50.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very hard to answer without knowing the details of your work, the app in question, more background, and &lt;strong&gt;what other contributions you can make part of your dissertation&lt;/strong&gt;. But… even if a formal release isn't possible by the deadline, couldn't you &lt;strong&gt;arrange for testing on outside people but on your devices&lt;/strong&gt; (instead of theirs)? That way, you can load the app on a series of say, 10 devices, then have people test it (sort of a focus group)…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T22:35:50.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7297" CreationDate="2013-01-17T23:21:35.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many academic jobs (and certainly ones with a focus on teaching) require a teaching portfolio and statement to be submitted with application materials. It is definitely appropriate to include any correspondence from students with this information. The teaching portfolio will also include student evaluations and any other material and thoughts relevant to experiences in the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think it would generally be a good idea to use a student as an actual reference, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastEditorUserId="5631" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T12:59:44.980" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T12:59:44.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7297" CreationDate="2013-01-17T23:59:03.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The look of horror by my PhD advisor said it all when I suggested I could be a referee for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was in a casual conversation as he was applying to get to the next level and we were talking about our career pathways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hold a senior executive position in the industry so this was not far fetched in my mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell me about professional regrets!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T23:59:03.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-01-18T00:07:10.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a set rule prescribing the food and drinks that are welcome in the doctoral defense rooms/halls but I am afraid it is culture- and convention-dependent. I have never heard of such a thing that doctoral students can bring in any food or hot drinks when they defense their dissertation. Bottled water is ok. However, personally I don't reject any idea of taking food to defense rooms as long as the chair and the committees think it is fine. Food and drinks sometimes ease nervousness and anxiety and may make the whole process an easier one, as we all know. So why not food and drinks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5632" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T00:07:10.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7278" CreationDate="2013-01-18T01:37:20.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is with your use of the phrase &quot;industry research&quot;. Writing codes and manuals isn't actually research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is research: if it is good research, it counts and definitely carries weight in academia.  Research is evaluated by its merit (e.g., intellectual depth, correctness, importance) and its impact (how has it changed practice?  how has it changed the course of research done by other researchers?).  The names or affiliations of who did the research is irrelevant.  It doesn't matter whether the work was done in a university or in a company.  It doesn't matter whether the affiliation on the title is a university or a company.  What matters is the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's good research, it carries weight with academia.  It also carries weight with industry research labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, writing health and safety manuals is not research.  You shouldn't call it &quot;industry research&quot;.  You should call it &quot;writing health and safety manuals&quot;.  And if it's not research, it doesn't count towards your research record and doesn't carry weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good indicator of research is that it is (a) novel, and (b) published in a highly regarded, (c) peer-reviewed forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The question gets more interesting if we are talking about people who do novel, scientific research that could have been published in a peer-reviewed forum, but isn't, because the company wants to keep the results secret.  This kind of research is harder for academics to evaluate, and thus might not carry as much weight with academia, because it isn't published.  In that case, it's not that the research was performed in industry so much as that the research was never published.  In any case, it sounds like that's relevant to you, based upon what you've told us here.  Writing health and safety manuals is most likely not something that could have been published in a peer-reviewed conference or journal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-03-08T02:48:15.473" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T02:48:15.473" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7318" CreationDate="2013-01-18T01:39:32.600" Score="14" ViewCount="1864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a soon-to-be post-doc and am currently sending my resumes to people and applying to places. 4 years ago, I applied for a grant and got funding for 3 years for &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; — meaning my tuition, pay, research, travel expenses, university overhead and then some more, all of which totals to a large $ amount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is it advisable to put the actual $ amount on the CV (to show I'm capable of getting and handling funds) or would that seem like showing off? I've seen some people (usually folks with more experience) list it, but they're also ones that have won several grants and fundings, so there's stuff to list. In my case, this is the only thing so I'm afraid of it standing out and attracting unwanted attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5633" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T05:01:39.603" Title="Is it advisable to mention the dollar amount for grants on a CV?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T04:59:07.227" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5170/what-systems-are-most-effective-for-monitoring-student-attendance&quot;&gt;What systems are most effective for monitoring student attendance?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a simple software package, or online service, whereby teachers can record any students that are late/absent for any of their classes throughout the day. I'm not after a daily attendance system, I need a system that can be easy and quick for teachers to log attendance of students to their classes. Is there any such thing? If not, what do you recommend? a wiki? or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T07:26:00.723" Title="Attendance recording software" Tags="&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-01-18T11:51:38.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7316" CreationDate="2013-01-18T05:01:39.603" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're applying for academic jobs in the US, your ability to acquire funding is one component of your viability as an academic. So definitely add in the information about the amount of money. It will stand out (in a good way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T05:01:39.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2013-01-18T05:26:13.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like something pretty simple. Have you considered just using something like Excel to keep track of this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote my own attendance system but it is for tracking everyone, not just the late/absent students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T05:26:13.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7322" CreationDate="2013-01-18T06:01:54.833" Score="17" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted an article in a Reputed journal in mathematics.  It is in review process.  After 4 months, i realized that there are some trivial mistakes...   Article is still under review with journal.   What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I have a corrected version, should I send that one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should I share this situation with Editor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am feeling very bad because of me editor and reviewer are (will be) wasting their time with wrong article...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5635" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T07:25:46.650" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T18:59:55.943" Title="Wrong article submission" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-01-18T06:20:42.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, when you send a Journal to review, is not a trivial matter, and you must be sure all the math is correct, that is the reason you are supposed to have it checked by colleagues and people who can give you thoughtful insight, it would come as unprofessional to an editor if suddenly an author says: &quot;sorry I made a mistake, lets do it all over again&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the best case scenario, the mistakes will be so trivial that the reviewers will realize it and accept it given that you correct the mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case scenario, is because of these mistakes that the journal would get rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always try and resubmit, put I would try a different journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T06:20:42.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-01-18T06:27:42.697" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should do both. Namely, send an email to the editor, explain the error and how you fixed it, and attach a revised version, and ask them how they would like to proceed. They might&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send the revised version to the referees&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formally &quot;reject&quot; the incorrect version and consider the new version a resubmission &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reject the incorrect version and the corrected version. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, you must contact them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T06:27:42.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-01-18T06:47:06.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not worry about this situation. It happens to best of us. The best strategy is to write a note explaining the mistakes and the modifications you have made to correct them. Then send the note and the revised version to the editor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that it is very important to list all the modifications of the revised version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T06:47:06.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-01-18T08:05:34.757" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends to some extent on the magnitude of the error, and the complexity of the correction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have found a serious error in one of the results, and the correction involves major changes to the proof, or requires a significantly stronger hypothesis or weaker conclusion, then I agree with the other answers that you should contact the editor and ask that the corrected version be sent to the referee (include a list of the changes you made).  Otherwise the referee may waste a lot of time sorting it out, or just reject the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have found some typographical errors, or a stray factor of 2 in a constant, or omitted an obvious hypothesis in a lemma, then I would not bother the editor and referee with it.  Minor errors like this should not affect the acceptance of the paper; the referee should have no trouble realizing what you meant (or may overlook it completely).  If the paper is accepted, you can include the correction with any other revisions requested by the referee (as before, include a list of all changes).  If the paper is rejected, it wouldn't be because of these errors, and you can simply fix them before submitting to a new journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to decide where your corrections fall between these two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T08:05:34.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7300" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:35:15.183" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question likely indicates that you need to work on your communication with your advisor. Hasn't he told you what is expect and how you are progressing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try and keep this answer focused on the question, but I apologize if it strays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some indicators that your are becoming familiar with the field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you talk to your supervisor you are familiar with some of the&#xA;references mention and names start to mean something to you. Better&#xA;familiarity is when this holds when you talk to colleagues and go to&#xA;talks and seminars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you have read/glanced at most of the references in articles that&#xA;you read. Better is when the most exciting thing about reading new&#xA;literature is finding a reference to something you didn't know about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as output, ideally during the course of your dissertation you should become familiar enough with the relevant literature to write a literature review article. You should feel like you could write a review at the end of the familiarization stage. Actually writing a full review is probably a bit premature, since you want the review to tie in with your eventual dissertation. I would suggest that a useful output is a dissertation proposal with a strong literature review based motivation. This is not a publishable output, but it is tangible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T13:35:15.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7328" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:38:36.433" Score="10" ViewCount="83898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my (german) Dipl.-Ing. (FH) degree after 4 1/2 years of studying. After that I started to work and studied parallel via a correspondence course. I'll now shortly (hopefully ;-) ) have the additional title of a MSc. That took me 2 1/2 years but only in part time, so the amount of time I invested was much less, than that for my Diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to reflect the increase in qualification I'd put the degrees like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dipl.-Ing. (FH), MSc.&lt;/strong&gt; Firstname Lastname&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as the Master is sometimes regarded as a higher form of qualification than the Diploma, it might be correct like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MSc., Dipl.-Ing. (FH)&lt;/strong&gt; Firstname Lastname&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's the correct order?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Like it was pointed out the MSc. is written after the name. So the choice is between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dipl.-Ing. (FH)&lt;/strong&gt; Firstname Lastname, &lt;strong&gt;MSc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dipl.-Ing. (FH)&lt;/strong&gt; Firstname Lastname&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstname Lastname, &lt;strong&gt;MSc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4051" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T23:09:33.737" Title="What's the correct order of writing for a MSc. and a Dipl.-Ing. degree? (e.g. on a business card)" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7326" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:09:11.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems there are not strict rules for this (speaking about Germany). There are few ways to deal with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not use titles at all except for documents like your CV. Why to list them anyway, isn't it just vanity issue at play here?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you want to use titles still (well, it's Germany, right?) list only the highest title you achieved as if it superseded all the lower-grade ones. In the case you have several on the same level, choose one. Should be good enough to get all the respect you are after (since you decided to use titles)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you should list the titles of different academic levels, then list them in the order of importance/level: [honorary titles] [prof equivalents] [dr. equivalents] [MSc. equivalents] [BSc. equivalents] [whatever else] Name [whatever comes after the name]&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;well, now it comes to my mind, that how the ordering &quot;after the name&quot; should look like is even more confusing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you live in Austria, list everything you want and need in any arbitrary order (half-joke, of course)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For references check also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmwf.gv.at/startseite/studierende/academic_mobility/enic_naric_austria/faq/fuehrung_akademischer_grade/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080204062132AAZnURQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haktulln.ac.at/ifom/sites/default/files/OeNORM-Aenderungen_Textdesign.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (part Anrede).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T21:23:19.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T21:23:19.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7326" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:49:59.893" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should notice that in Germany academic titles such as &lt;em&gt;Dr., Dipl.Ing, Mag&lt;/em&gt; are writen in front of the name, whereas titles such as &lt;em&gt;M.Sc., B.Sc., M.A., etc.&lt;/em&gt;, a written behind the name (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademischer_Grad&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). So if it all I would say the correct order is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dipl.Ing (FH)&lt;/strong&gt; Firstname Lastname, &lt;strong&gt;M. Sc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would just ignore the &lt;em&gt;Dipl.Ing (FH)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T14:49:59.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:50:50.773" Score="14" ViewCount="1494" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, in almost every scientific field, there are hundreds of conferences. Many call for papers emails fill our mail boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freedom of choice is great, but, &lt;strong&gt;how to choose to which conference send a paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I choose one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;based on the &lt;strong&gt;scientific relevance&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;based on the scientific &lt;strong&gt;vicinity&lt;/strong&gt; to your paper theme?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;based on its &lt;strong&gt;prestige&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;because of some official &lt;strong&gt;ranking&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;because it provides &lt;strong&gt;the best food&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2018-12-05T10:59:41.243" LastActivityDate="2018-12-06T20:11:33.657" Title="How to choose to which conference submit a scientific paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7329" CreationDate="2013-01-18T16:17:24.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, you would like to choose your conference by their relation to your paper's main topic, and the possibility of impact to your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you might be inclined to choose according to other filters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on its &quot;possible attendants&quot;, such as a highly-esteemed&#xA;investigator you might want to know and get feedback from, in a more&#xA;personal way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your own &quot;travel experiences&quot; (such as wanting to travel to a&#xA;far-away location, or to re-visit some beautiful place).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most conferences consider acceptance as a &quot;at least one of the&#xA;authors must attend and present their work&quot; binding commitment, so&#xA;unless you are going with your college's support, you must&#xA;consider the ongoing rates on inscription, hotel rates and&#xA;added values (such as travel expenses or food, among others).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other reasons might apply, but your main filter must be to choose a conference in which your work is closely related to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4560" LastEditorUserId="4560" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T17:24:16.983" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T17:24:16.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7329" CreationDate="2013-01-18T17:01:46.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a complete answer, but is substantially reduces the number of conferences to consider, the first things I consider are: timing, location, duration, cost. It has to fit into my teaching schedule and I have to have results and enough time to write them up, but not so far off that I want them out (timing). A one or two day national conference is much easier to deal with than a week long overseas conference (location and duration). I have to be able to afford it (cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T17:01:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T17:34:01.340" Score="12" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;All content under Stack Exchange is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Does this mean that any academic paper that uses content from Stack Exchange must also be licensed under said Creative Commons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what is the actual rule on this part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5647" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T15:27:33.903" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T15:27:33.903" Title="What licensing concerns are there for using content from Stack Exchange in an academic paper?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7335" CreationDate="2013-01-18T17:49:43.887" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making a reference&lt;/strong&gt; to CC Attribution-ShareAlike content &lt;strong&gt;is always okay&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, referring to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; work is okay, regardless of the copyright status. Only content is copyrighted, not bibliographic elements (including author names and title). For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html&quot;&gt;U.S. Copyright Office says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting is a more complex matter. It depends on copyright laws, and thus your country. In most cases, if the material is quoted raw and the quote is kept short, most academic use should fall under the doctrine of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fair use&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. By contrast, read also the article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;derivative work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to get an idea of these two extreme cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly a theoretical question, however: the scope of fair use is grey are in US Copyright Law, and provided you do it for academic purposes and in a good faith, you won't get into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: &lt;strong&gt;if you really want to quote in a bulletproof way&lt;/strong&gt;, either (a) consult with a lawyer or (b) &lt;strong&gt;ask the copyright holder for a waiver to relicense his content to you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T17:49:43.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7335" CreationDate="2013-01-18T18:16:18.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For quotations that are covered by &quot;fair use&quot; of the copyrighted work, you don't need to get a license. Even if you already have a license to use the work (such as a CC license), you don't need to stick to the terms of the license for this type of usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if your paper may be a derivative work, you don't have to apply the terms of the license, and you wouldn't have to put your work under a CC license. As soon as your quotations go beyond fair use, you would in fact have to put your work under the required license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T18:16:18.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7347" CreationDate="2013-01-18T18:48:54.367" Score="1" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for PhD fundings in UK, but as the competition is rude, I am not sure to be accepted, even if I have very good grades and qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I want to look at other PhD fundings opportunities, that may be less obvious. For instance, I know that the European Commission proposed some PhD fundings (Marie Curie scheme or something like that), but I think it is no longer active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could give me some advice, I would greatly appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field of study : Theoretical Physics&#xA;Country of origin : Belgium, EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not wealthy enough to fund myself for my PhD, even for one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4448" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T03:03:39.087" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:03:39.087" Title="Funding for Belgian student to do a PhD in UK?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7297" CreationDate="2013-01-18T20:57:52.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best references written for me was produced by an A+ student of mine. It featured a great level of detail about my teaching style, and clear explanations as to why he thought I was a good teacher. (This guy went on to work on a Ph.D. in the top US school in his field, computer science; no wonder his analytic skills were top-notch.) He wrote this letter half a year or so after having completed my class, and he mentioned some off-class interactions we've had afterwards when I helped him solve his CS problem, so it was clear that we had an effective work relation. Faculty who came to sit in my class to oblige with the required &quot;peer review of StasK's teaching&quot; would write some crap in their evaluation letters, frankly, as their reviews would be way more superficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was applying for the faculty positions, I would ask the search chairs whether they wanted the teaching letter from my former student, from my mentor on the tenure track, or from the director of a teaching training program I went to in my University (yes, I did have all three handy, and I cared enough about teaching to enroll in such a program). About three quarters said they wanted the student letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T20:57:52.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7297" CreationDate="2013-01-18T21:22:02.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend doing it, for a simple reason: you want your reference letters to be from indubitable experts, who can vouch for the quality of your work. However, &lt;strong&gt;students are not experts in pedagogy&lt;/strong&gt;. True, they can tell the difference between a teacher who care and one who doesn't, someöne who invests time and those who don't, but that's it. A reference from a student would most likely comment on the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, it's hard to find a good reference that speaks for the quality of your teaching. You could consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;asking the head of a specific program in which you have developed course material (or department dean)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;asking a colleague with whom you have taught a lot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not a reference letter, but close: quoting from a professional evaluation of your teaching (if such exist in your educational system), done by an expert (professor in pedagogy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In research, you would definitely consider having a reference from your supervisor. So, do the same for the teaching part!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T21:22:02.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7329" CreationDate="2013-01-18T21:39:25.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why choosin' a conference instead of another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conference is a social event. Even in computer science where conferences really matter, attending and presenting a paper either in a talk, or as a poster is still a personal dissemination of results. With this prelude, I argue that you should choose also (if not primarily) on the basis of what kind of audience you expect to attend your presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sometimes, your paper is a message to the community (incremental works or methodological remarks come to mind). In that case you want to target precisely the community your paper speaks to. So even if it would be a small workshop without proceedings, if your result matters to the small community, you should speak primarily to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most of the time, you have a standalone research result. Q: What are you after with it? A: impact = citations. Hence, go to a place attended by those guys who are likely to cite your work. Usually, that is correlated with the position of the venue on the Top-XYZ ladder = badge (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sometimes, you want to get a badge = have a paper at this prestigious conference which will shine on your CV. Fair enough, there you have the way to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you should go for a place providing both 2 and 3.  Honestly, I see little good from choosing a conference based solely on its focus. Doing so, you might end up at C-tier venue full of people who are interested in the location and the buffet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T21:39:25.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7351" CreationDate="2013-01-19T16:16:50.947" Score="34" ViewCount="14432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a reference letter for a colleague applying for a US green card. Given that I don't know much about the process and expectations of the immigration bureaucrats who will handle the application, I asked around for examples of such letter. Obviously, they are all glowing, and I started writing in the same style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, don’t get me wrong: she is truly a great researcher, I wish her the best of success with her application and hope to help as much as I can (at least, not to let her down). But… at the same time, as I finished writing my letter, I wondered: &lt;strong&gt;is it possible that I went over the top with praise?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it even possible, in such a case? And if so, how can I tell? I mean, I did not  write anything factual wrong, but if read very literal (and outside context), it might sound more like the eulogy of a Nobel prize winner than the recommendation of a mid-carreer researcher (even a very good one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T17:38:40.470" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T18:21:32.957" Title="Is it possible to give too much praise in a reference letter that supports a green card application?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7345" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:01:11.317" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a few signs that you might have gone over the top:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you used many &lt;em&gt;absolute&lt;/em&gt; superlatives (&quot;&lt;em&gt;the best&lt;/em&gt;&quot; rather than &quot;&lt;em&gt;one of the best&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; &quot;the most dedicated&quot; instead of &quot;extremely dedicated&quot;, and so on)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your letter too long or too detailed, given the length of time you have known the person (four pages is probably too long for someone who worked for you on a summer project, unless you've known that person independently in other contexts before then).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and most importantly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would such a letter, if you were the one &lt;em&gt;receiving&lt;/em&gt; it rather than &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; it, cause you to have an unfavorable or skeptical reaction about the candidate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if it makes you think &quot;nobody's that good,&quot; you've probably gone over the top.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T17:01:11.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7338" CreationDate="2013-01-19T18:04:14.270" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The top universities often have a lot of reasonably obscure funding options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example with the University of Cambridge - if you go through the steps at &lt;a href=&quot;http://webservices.admin.cam.ac.uk/camfunds/gfinder.jsp?status=new&amp;amp;reset=reset&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; they list &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; their funding options, you'll see for Physics there are fully-funded scholarships such as these that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be of interest to you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leslie Wilson Research Scholarship (£17,427 per year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Winton Scholarship(s) in the Physics of Sustainability &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thalmann Bequest (covers EU fees only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schiff Fund (upto £20,000 per year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gulbenkian Studentship (specifically for non-UK nationals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gatescambridge.org/&quot;&gt;Gates Cambridge Scholarships&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The equivalent website for the University of Oxford is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/search/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it reckons &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;35 Scholarships were found for a new student from Belgium studying&#xA;  Theoretical Physics (DPhil)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I'm not going to list them all here!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastEditorUserId="651" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T18:14:28.837" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T18:14:28.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T19:37:11.397" Score="14" ViewCount="2268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a masters course at a different university than I did my undergrad (both in maths). I did well in my undergrad but now I'm finding it very difficult. The shock of the change is hard to cope with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not just finding it very difficult, but I get zero feedback: we don't have any tests and I was not able to make friends so I don't know how others are finding it. I'm starting to think that I might be an idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I build some confidence in my abilities at the same time as I rush and struggle to keep up with the massive rate of new material I need to learn?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How might I get myself some reassurance that I can actually pass, or stop worrying about this so much? (I feel terribly guilty using so much money from my family to be here) It's possible that I don't really have a chance at all but knowing that would be fine. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5648" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T08:36:15.710" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T08:36:15.710" Title="How to cope with the change from easy undergrad. to difficult masters?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7348" CreationDate="2013-01-19T20:04:21.393" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feelings of inadequacy are quite common when starting a new graduate program—you are surrounded by talented people (if they weren't, presumably they wouldn't be graduate students!), and there is often a big leap in expectations between the requirements of a bachelor's program and the corresponding graduate program, particularly if you're at a top program in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one of the commenters mentioned, talking to your professors or teaching assistants may be one good way to get help, or to get at least some reassurance about how you're doing. Depending on what your university or department provides, they may be able to provide you with resources to help you study or prepare for your exams. This might be as much as arranging a tutor for you, or as simple as providing you with sample exams from previous course offerings. If your department has a &quot;graduate student council&quot; or &quot;society&quot; or something like that designed to help out the students, then a lot of these may have already been collected by students from previous years for use by students in later years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, don't get too discouraged. It is recognized by most instructors that graduate school is harder than an undergraduate, and the grading tends to match that view. There are very few graduate school courses that are not graded &quot;on a curve&quot;; otherwise everybody would have bad grades! (When the top score on an exam is 60/100, most schools won't let you fail everybody!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T20:04:21.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7348" CreationDate="2013-01-19T20:07:06.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the level of undergraduate courses  at your new university is higher than the ones at your previous univ. So it is better you audit some of the undergraduate courses or you study them by yourself. For example, if you have taken algebraic topology this semester you might need to audit general topology too or you maybe should study some advanced algebra as well. Ask the professors about the background necessary for master courses and how you can get this background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T20:07:06.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7345" CreationDate="2013-01-19T21:02:20.983" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Letters written for a green card application are very differently structured to letters written for other purposes. As was explained to me when I went through the process, the structure of a green card letter is usually &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am awesome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;here are all the ways in which I am awesome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because I am so awesome, you should trust me when I say that this person should get a green card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and oh yeah, they're pretty awesome, which I can tell because I'm awesome. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm only slightly exaggerating here. The point is that GC letters are not read by academics - they are read by lawyers who don't evaluate technical skills so much as achievements and strength of recommender. So there's no way to go over the top really. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T21:02:20.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7355" CreationDate="2013-01-20T05:36:08.953" Score="11" ViewCount="5256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I put on my CV papers (or &quot;talks&quot;) that appeared in (peer-reviewed!) conferences that have no proceedings? Should I avoid duplicates if the same paper also appears in another conference (with proceedings)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I make it clear that the conference has no proceedings, or just list it in the &quot;Conferences&quot; section? If it changes anything, my field is Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;some conferences are peer-reviewed but have no proceedings. Call it workshops if you wish. You submit a paper, and a committee  selects 30%-40 of the papers - each submission gets a slot in presenting the results during the conference/workshop, however no formal proceedings is issued.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(I'm surprised no one heard of such conferences; maybe I'm using the wrong terms; sorry for that)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T14:27:20.613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T17:34:41.920" Title="should one add to the CV papers that appeared in conferences with no proceedings?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7352" CreationDate="2013-01-20T05:46:51.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the conference has no proceedings, it is indeed unpublished. Usually those kind of conferences do not have any problems with you submitting the same paper to a Journal or other conference that do have proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to check with the conference regulations, and if you never did any copyright transfer, there should not be any problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T05:46:51.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7352" CreationDate="2013-01-20T06:06:34.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't quite understand what you mean by &quot;appeared in conferences&quot; but have &quot;no proceedings&quot;, but I'll chalk that up to differences between fields. I'll answer your question of whether one should add this to their CV. In my opinion, you should absolutely add it if you're a grad student or in your early career phase. If it has a DOI, you can list it under the peer reviewed section, otherwise simply list it under conferences (or the equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage in your career, a CV not only conveys what you've accomplished (peer reviewed publications, awards, degrees, etc.), it also is a measure of your &quot;scientific activity&quot;. It answers the question: &quot;Are you someone who is capable of doing research, publishing, attending conferences and presenting your results in front of an audience of your peers simultaneously or are you someone who simply holes up in their office and publishes in solitude?&quot;. It demonstrates that you (possibly) will be someone who networks with their peers, is capable of establishing collaborations, thus broadening their research horizon, etc. It doesn't matter if you've not done these already — it gives a better impression that someone who has done nothing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're an established researcher, you probably might not worry too much about it, as by then there are several other metrics that more reliably demonstrate your scientific worth than conference publications/abstracts/talks. Nevertheless, even they have to indulge in this cat-and-mouse game — the difference being that now they have to tout every mundane activity (membership  on department committees) as somehow demonstrating their &quot;interest&quot; in the university's affairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5633" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T06:06:34.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7352" CreationDate="2013-01-20T10:34:07.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not put such a &quot;paper&quot; in the publications section. After all, there is no publication, apart from an abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, conferences usually &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; have proceedings, and if they do, proceedings papers have very little value. Also, conference abstracts are not peer-reviewed. I've only heard of a single rejected conference abstract, and this was for political reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a dedicated &lt;em&gt;conferences&lt;/em&gt; section, then I would put the &quot;paper&quot; there, as to not suggest that there is a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T10:34:07.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7352" CreationDate="2013-01-20T14:32:05.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In that case, &lt;strong&gt;the text you wrote as part of your submission is not published&lt;/strong&gt; (except maybe in some cases in a book of abstracts distributed to participants, but it doesn't count). So, in your CV or scientific production listing, you can add an item for your talk in the “conference talks” section, but not the same as a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fields familiar to me (physics and chemistry), it is actually very common for early and mid-career scientists to list “conference talks” in their CV. Later in the career, you may list only “invited talks”, though you should still maintain somewhere a complete list of your scientific production, which includes all conference talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T14:32:05.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7352" CreationDate="2013-01-20T17:22:58.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you're in computer science, since otherwise you probably shouldn't list &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; conference papers as publications.  So I'll answer as a computer scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you should not list such papers as publications in your CV,&lt;/strong&gt; because  those papers are not actually published.  Moreover, there is likely an expectation that the same paper &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be published at a different conference. &lt;strong&gt;You must not list the &quot;same&quot; paper at more than one conference.*&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of several conferences/workshops like the one your describe in computational geometry (my home field), including &lt;a href=&quot;http://eurocg.org/&quot;&gt;EuroCG&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/fwcg2012/&quot;&gt;Fall Workshops&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://socg2012.web.unc.edu/computational-geometry-young-researchers-forum/&quot;&gt;Young Researchers Forum&lt;/a&gt; at SOCG.  At all three venues, submissions are &lt;em&gt;lightly&lt;/em&gt; peer-reviewed, only a subset of submissions are accepted, and a booklet of abstracts is distributed to participants and/or on the web.  But no formal proceedings is issued at these events, because it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/alg/eurocg13/cfp.html&quot;&gt;expected&lt;/a&gt; that accepted papers will later appear in more polished form at a &lt;em&gt;more formally&lt;/em&gt; reviewed conference.  (Some early iterations of EuroCG did have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/ewcg/index.html&quot;&gt;formal proceedings&lt;/a&gt;, despite the expectation of later publication, but other conferences were unwilling to accept papers that appeared in those proceedings.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it's perfectly fine to list those talks under &quot;Unpublished Workshop Talks&quot;, especially early in your career.  You might even include the acceptance rate if you want to emphasize that the venue carries some prestige.  Alternatively, if you did publish the paper elsewhere, you might include the phrase &quot;Also presented at ...&quot; after the publication info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*...but journals are different.  In most subfields of computer science, conferences papers &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be published later in refereed journals, usually in a more expanded/complete form.  Even so, I recommend listing each paper only once in your CV, including all publication venues for each paper, rather than listing the same paper once under &quot;conference papers&quot; and again under &quot;journal papers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T17:34:41.920" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T17:34:41.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7345" CreationDate="2013-01-20T23:19:01.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been the recipient of a few recommendation letters when applying for a US Green Card, I can assure you it is impossible to give too much praise.  The letters I received from my colleagues were humbling and, to put it mildly, embarrassing!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T23:19:01.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7361" CreationDate="2013-01-20T23:57:28.913" Score="50" ViewCount="6992" Body="&lt;p&gt;When engaging in research, I know its a good idea to read lots of papers and talk to others about what has been done before and what is currently being researched to avoid &quot;reinventing the wheel&quot;.  That is, to avoid researching/publishing a result that has already been discovered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fields where physical experiments are common, replication studies are necessary.  But in theoretical/computational research, originality is key and duplication seems to be generally frowned upon.  How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered?  What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?  Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T15:03:53.773" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T15:03:53.773" Title="How common is it to inadvertently &quot;reinvent the wheel&quot; in academia?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7360" CreationDate="2013-01-21T03:15:06.043" Score="71" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Far more common than anyone realizes or wants to admit.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy&quot;&gt;Stigler's Law of Eponymy&lt;/a&gt; states that &lt;strong&gt;No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Stigler's law was proposed in this precise form in 1980 by Stephen Stigler, who self-referentially attributed it to Richard Merton, but of course similar statements were made earlier by many others, &lt;em&gt;including Stigler's own father.&lt;/em&gt;)  I wouldn't go as far as claiming that &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; scientific discovery is misattributed, but there are hundreds of examples.  Off the top of my head: Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, Gaussian elimination, Euler's formula (both of them!), Voronoi diagrams, Markov's inequality, Chebyshev’s inequality, Dijkstra's algorithm for shortest paths, Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning trees, the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm, the Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithm (for which Shapley recently won the Nobel Prize in economics), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be brutally honest, both with yourself and with the scientific community.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work has already been published, post a reference to the prior art in your web page listing your publications.  (You do &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a web page listing your publications, don't you?)  If possible, publish an addendum to your paper.  Email anyone who has cited your paper already, giving them the earlier reference.  When asked to review papers that cite your paper, include the earlier reference in your report.  Become a walking advertisement for the earlier work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work &lt;em&gt;hasn't&lt;/em&gt; already been published, try to figure out which parts of your work have actually been done before.  Some of your results will appear verbatim in the earlier work, so you can't take credit for them.  Some of your results will be easy corollaries of the earlier work, so you still can't take credit for them.  But perhaps some of your results will take the old work in a new nontrivial direction.  Build on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your results were previously known &lt;em&gt;in a different field&lt;/em&gt;, there may be some value in bringing those results to the attention of your research community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course not!&lt;/strong&gt;  Now you have evidence that your methods actually work!  Push them further!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T04:39:52.427" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T04:39:52.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7363" CreationDate="2013-01-21T03:57:14.253" Score="12" ViewCount="19668" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a good practice to include an abbreviation in a title of a research paper.&#xA;for example : PC , IDE , RAM &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5615" LastEditorUserId="5615" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T08:02:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T09:38:00.680" Title="Can I use abbreviations in the title of a research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2013-01-21T05:05:46.643" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is acceptable if (Edit: and only if) the abbreviation you are using is common (in your field or in general) and there is no risk of confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two papers whose titles contain the abbreviation (RD) which stands for (Rapid Decay). Since it is an acceptable abbreviation in our field these titles are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to find out is to check similar papers or titles in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T03:09:38.313" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T03:09:38.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7345" CreationDate="2013-01-21T05:17:46.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a recommendation letter for green card application is to convince the application reviewer that the applicant is a person the US wants for its national interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you don't lie, I think you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can say &lt;strong&gt;you think&lt;/strong&gt; she is the best scientist you ever met. This would be your own subjective opinion. You think that way. Others may not think the same. No one can say you lie because it's just your opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can say anything you want. But, be careful. You don't want to step on your own toes. You better have evidences to support whatever you say in your recommendation letter. For instance, she'd better be good enough to be called the best scienist you ever met. The evidences would be something like, she received some outstanding awards from well known organizations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you'll have to sign on the bottom of the recommendation letter and send it to the US government. Would you be careful when you submit a document to any government?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T06:36:52.147" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T06:36:52.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7369" CreationDate="2013-01-21T08:38:13.717" Score="9" ViewCount="2144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been notified by the IEEE organizing committee that my paper has been accepted for their conference and requested to register. and the status of the paper is &lt;strong&gt;AAR&lt;/strong&gt;. Please see the quotation below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[AAR]This paper need thorough revision to be accepted as a full paper&#xA;for the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have attached an image of their review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GvwOa.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GvwOa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;IEEE review processe&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will happen to my paper after the submission of the camera-ready paper? Is there any possibility for my paper not to be published in the proceedings and IEEE Xplore? Or is it guaranteed to be published after the submission of camera-ready paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5615" LastEditorUserId="56594" LastEditDate="2020-06-15T20:38:16.387" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T20:38:16.387" Title="What will happen to my IEEE conference paper if the status of the accepted paper is &quot;AAR&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7360" CreationDate="2013-01-21T08:50:17.017" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the excellent JeffE's answer, I would like to add one more point to the phenomena of reinventing a wheel. It touches more &quot;research towards an already invented wheel&quot;, rather than &quot;publishing a reinvented wheel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a problem and need to crack it. Your problem is practical and novel, you know that. But in order to solve it you need to invent some machinery and you just do not know whether it already exists, or not - simply because you do not have a good feeling for all the subtle aspects and issues of your problem. In such a situation, it is often easier to steam ahead, learn as you go, invent something for your problem and then, when you already are familiar with all the quirks and dark corners  of your problem, look around carefully to find out how's the thing you invented actually called. The odds are, it already exists in some form, most probably invented in a different niche for different purposes, but it happens to be very similar to your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the above does not work for everybody, because it can be a frustrating experience to find that somebody else already invented what you did too (usually already long ago and in a better quality than you). My angle on this is to be always proud of myself, because those early solutions tend to come from very smart people, so if I managed to independently come up with the same thing as they did, it's a reason to feel better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that moment, however, one should realize, his/her approach and angle to the whole issue is slightly different than that of the guys who invented it earlier. You simply came to the same junction from a different direction and you are heading elsewhere. At that point it's just great to proceed in your direction, because you can be almost sure, that your direction is original and unexplored territory - otherwise the earlier work would be cited and that's easy to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process I describe above also partially explains why inventions tend to be named after guys who arrived to the junction later. They simply had a perspective which took them farther in terms of social impact than was that of those who originally solved the problem. Often solutions get named after the guys who popularize them and make their applications bloom, not those who solved them originally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T08:50:17.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:02:33.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a big difference between can and good practice. I can think of no reason why it should be considered good practice and a number of reasons why it would be bad practice. despite this, many journals will allow you to use abbreviations in titles, but you will need to check with the editor to see if you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T09:02:33.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:23:12.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go against the checking similar papers in the field, and more with checking the submission guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the IEEE Trans in Evolutionary Computation will &lt;a href=&quot;http://cis.ieee.org/component/content/article/7/125-ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation-information-for-authors.html&quot;&gt;reject any paper with Acronyms in the title.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, it just happened to us recently, that is the reason I know, however it was our first time submitting to that Journal, and we had no trouble with acronyms before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend even told us that the very same journal asked him to put the explanation of S.O.S. since it was an acronym as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would recommend checking the submission guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T09:23:12.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7365" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:27:23.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the Journal/Conference editor/chair has accepted your paper, it is guaranteed to be published, given that you make the changes. That is the reason they emphasize the &quot;review&quot; part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some papers have only minor revisions, so if the changes are not made, it won't affect that much the quality of the conference. But if the changes are major, it usually indicates that you have to step up the level of the paper following the suggestion of the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, as long as you make the changes, your paper should be accepted in the conference, but if you neglect to do them, probably it wont.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T09:27:23.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7365" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:46:15.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the flowchart in your question is pretty clear as to what happens next. But I'll break down the relevant part of the flowchart into words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to make thorough revisions to your paper, and then resubmit. It will then be reviewed again.  As a result of the review, it may be accepted, and it may be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AAR&lt;/strong&gt;: your paper's current status - accepted after revising. It's now up to you to make the thorough revisions, and to then submit the revised paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REV&lt;/strong&gt; is the status your paper will have once you have submitted the revised paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RVI&lt;/strong&gt; will be its status when the revised paper has been sent out to review. Judging by the flowchart, it will get sent to the same editor and reviewers as before, because a revised paper does not pass through the &lt;strong&gt;WFR&lt;/strong&gt; stage of waiting for review, where reviewers and editor are assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may then be accepted (&lt;strong&gt;ACC&lt;/strong&gt;), rejected (&lt;strong&gt;REJ&lt;/strong&gt;), or conceivably, according to that flowchart, get returned to you once more as &lt;strong&gt;AAR&lt;/strong&gt; for further revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flowchart also suggests that whether it's accepted or rejected, you still prepare a camera-ready version. That would seem to be very unlikely: I find it very hard to believe there's any use for a camera-ready version of a rejected paper; only an accepted paper would need a camera-ready version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T09:46:15.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7373" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:59:59.393" Score="13" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I know that your work speaks for you, and if you have really good papers, you have better chances, but just bear with me, and for the sake of argument lets assume that your research is only one of the points to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my undergrad in what could be considered the best University in my Country (Mexico)and got a Magna Cum Laude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, I did my Graduate studies in the University of Tokyo publishing a couple of Journal Papers (I'm really pushing for that 3rd one!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is directed to people in the US, since I'm looking to find a permanent position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the perception Universities in the US have of foreign Universities? I happen to know that UK Universities like Cambridge and Oxford have no problem (for obvious reasons), but a professor friend of mine told me that other Universities are just not that well known. And having a degree from the Hawaii University was better than having a degree from Tokyo University. (As a side note, he is a professor at Haw Univ, and he wanted me to apply over there)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know how true or false this is, and realistically speaking how hard/easy is to get a position as a postdoc and eventually a full time professor if you are not from a US univ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, do I have the same chances as someone who graduated from a top University (your Ivy leagues, Public Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, etc) or do I least have the same chances as middle range Universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I have a postdoc in the UCLA lined up, so I guess that'll boost my chances a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T10:14:34.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T20:42:50.133" Title="What is the perception of foreign Universities (Non UK) in the US for prospective academic positions (Postdoc/Tenure)?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7371" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:43:35.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's as much of a perception problem with foreign universities as you might think. I'd say the majority of postdoctoral associates are international, and most of them have &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; gone to universities as well known as Oxford and Cambridge. More likely than not, forging personal connections with the advisor you want to work for as a postdoc will matter &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more than the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, individual professors may have a bias toward hiring people from &quot;known&quot; schools, because the risk factor associated with hiring them is presumably much lower than someone from a school they've never heard of. Such a bias is of course understandable, but it also means that they could lose out on some potentially promising candidates as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T16:43:35.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7371" CreationDate="2013-01-21T18:02:17.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postdoc in a US institution with letters from US faculty can &quot;reset&quot; much of the potential disadvantage from doing a PhD from a non-Us university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in addition to the &quot;familiarity&quot; issue that @aeismail brings up, there is also the issue of logistics. The effort involved in bringing someone who is outside of US over for an interview is high, so the potential expected payoff bar gets a little higher. In your case, since you'd be in the US, this would no longer be an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But getting back to the basic question: There are a number of foreign universities that are &quot;well known&quot; in the US, and applicants from those schools will not be perceived as weaker in any way. Also, for specific subject areas this can be even more specific (i.e a weak university might have a strong specialization in topic X, and so students working in X will be highly rated). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how many PostDocs you need, since you work in machine learning (i.e computer science at large) you should read the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/resources/bp-view/best_practices_memo_computer_science_postdocs_best_practices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;best practices for postdocs&lt;/a&gt;&quot; document that the Computing Research Association just put out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T20:42:50.133" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T20:42:50.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7377" CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:59:54.500" Score="19" ViewCount="954" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going to conferences induces some costs on a researcher's personal budget. In all places I know, expenses directly related to travel and accommodation are usually covered (travel, hotels, food), but there are also some indirect expenses that aren't typically covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll only give one example, that is directly applicable to me: when I'm away I have to get a baby sitter for the kids (for the days where my wife can't pick them up, say). However, I'm sure there must be other examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there institutions that cover these “hidden” (or indirect) expenses? What rules do they follow? It must be difficult to know where to put the limit… (&lt;em&gt;“hey, I'm going on a conference in Sweden in December, which means I have to buy myself a new coat! can I get it reimbursed?”&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T03:53:15.457" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T03:53:15.457" Title="What is the limit on reimbursement of indirect expenses due to attending conferences (e.g., baby sitting, winter coat, etc.)?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7374" CreationDate="2013-01-21T21:26:32.837" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, if an &quot;indirect cost&quot; will be reimbursed by the university, it must be a cost that would normally be allowed if it &lt;em&gt;weren't&lt;/em&gt; occurred on travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for instance, something that would be considered an &quot;equipment&quot; purchase—such as a battery for a laptop to replace one that dies—might be allowed, but babysitting costs might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most institutions do have a &quot;travel manual&quot; or regulations that cover what costs are permitted for travelers to have reimbursed. If you have any questions about the policy, you should consult your institution's travel office for guidance. (These regulations often change, usually in response to someone else going overboard and exploiting loopholes in the regulation, which are then tightened for everybody.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct, however, tells me that such policies are probably quite rare for any institution that accepts government financing for its operations. Usually, those funds have significant restrictions on what sorts of expenses can be associated with travel, and thus it's easier to adjust the institution's policies in accordance with that. For institutions that are privately financed, it's a lot easier to institute policies that are more liberal. But you'd probably have to go to an extremely &quot;progressive&quot; institution (maybe a Google?) to find one that will reimburse you for these sorts of costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T22:12:38.953" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T22:12:38.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2013-01-22T01:34:01.980" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started one with that goal in mind back in high school (I'm in college now).  Although it definitely cannot compare to fully funded, top tier journals, we strive to provide a learning experience.  The journal is edited by 2 sets of people, professors and other students.  The professors are there to help teach both the author and the student reviewer about the journal process, and provide his or her experience when it comes to publishing and academic work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check it out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhsjs.com&quot;&gt;The National High School Journal of Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5671" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T07:10:56.383" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T07:10:56.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7374" CreationDate="2013-01-22T01:58:53.340" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual solution is very simple: you will get a daily allowance (&quot;per diem&quot;), which is a lump sum of money that covers all small costs related to travelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concrete example: a researcher at a Finnish university, travelling to a conference in Germany. You will get a daily allowance of 61 euros per day, tax free. This should cover food and all other small expenses related to travelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct costs related to travelling (conference fees, hotel, transportation, etc.) are covered based on the receipts. However, lunch &amp;amp; dinner is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; covered, as they are included in the daily allowance. Corner cases have special rules (e.g., what if lunch &amp;amp; dinner is included in the conference fee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastEditorUserId="351" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T02:10:57.700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T02:10:57.700" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7379" CreationDate="2013-01-22T07:47:39.977" Score="49" ViewCount="3119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about 1, 5-2 years in my Ph.D. studies in the no-man's-land between bioinformatics, systems biology and proteomics. (If you are not sure what those terms are, read: &quot;biomedical research&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a more mathematical/technical background I was thrilled to work in this field, and my M.Sc thesis was pretty successful. Now diving deeper and deeper into the field I feel much less motivated to go on. What frustrates me most, is how little we really understand of complex biological systems, and all our efforts in the field are essentially just waddling in the darkness, trying to find the &quot;holy grail&quot; that may or may not exist. I personally feel that there is an undeniable lack of rigor even amongst the most respectable of scientists out there: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most biologist really have no clue beyond pipetting liquids left and right, as soon as it comes to data analysis they expect something along the lines of: &quot;computer says yes/no&quot; (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4A18tUUb2Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;little Britain's famous sketch&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;computer scientists/mathematicians can't really cope with the uncertainties in the data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;statisticians are essentially the con-artists of the field, rambling on undecipherable monologues. Sorry if I offend someone but it feels like one can prove/disprove anything with some creative use/interpretation of statistics.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting my rants aside, I went up and talked to one of the younger group leaders in our dept. I feel close enough to the person to give my honest opinion and respect his thoughts on the matter. The first thing he asked me after I was done rambling on, however, was how long it has been since I started. When I told him it's been about a year and a half, he smiled and said: &quot;well, it was about time&quot;. According to him, it's common for a Ph.D. candidate to become jaded with his/her work somewhere between 18-months to 2 years in. He claimed that one simply gets deep enough into the field to see all the potential problems/pitfalls in research, and feel negative about it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to my question(s); is there such a thing as 18-months syndrome, in your experience? Could it be a discipline-dependent phenomenon or applicable to other disciplines? How can one avoid getting stuck in a tailspin (negative spiral)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I wanted to tag this question as &quot;research-psychology&quot; but don't have the rep to create a new tag. If someone with more rep agrees with me on the tag, I would appreciate the help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="111951" LastEditDate="2019-10-31T10:56:39.693" LastActivityDate="2019-10-31T10:56:39.693" Title="Is there such a thing like &quot;18-months/half-time syndrome&quot;?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7378" CreationDate="2013-01-22T09:01:39.847" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is possible: I'm pretty sure, from a large enough population of former PhD students, most will tell you that they felt demotivated at some point, but the timing will depend on the individual and the particular circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true, however, that mid-PhD corresponds to a particularly large number of negative factors, and it is common to feel bad about your thesis around that time. Heck, it's common even that there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PHD Comics&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=125&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;highlights it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;      &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=125&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/txcg6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph - Motivation level&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Don't mind the exaggerated &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale. The area highlighted corresponds to mid-PhD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, why is that? Well, among your rants, most of the factors are actually listed in your question: Now, you know the field well enough to see not only the good, but also the bad in it. The initial elation has left, and you are left with the doubts. This is sometimes accompanied by deep questioning about your progress: Have I done enough? Have I taken the right course of action? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the most important point is: how to get out of it? Well, part of the problem is a natural “oscillation”, which means this is probably actually just a low point, a bad moment, and it will actually get better. Don't have too much fear of “spiraling down”: you've made it thus far, and you're aware of the issue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for more actionable advice, I would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now that you are more knowledgeable of the field, you can actually start to make better choices: if you don't like a given approach, just steer away from it. You still have some time to do so, and it is part of your PhD to learn making strategic decisions (if you haven't already).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may not see it, but you will be much more efficient during the second half of your PhD than the first, mostly because you have learnt a lot already and can make better decisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick a few challenges (one or two) that you would like to meet, and focus on those: you'll feel much better if, instead of chasing some holy grail, you can help solve these specific issues that you care about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And remember: completing a PhD means becoming an expert in your field, and that actually means being able to critique its practices, recognize the good and the bad. It sounds like you have actually achieved this goal!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T09:01:39.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7374" CreationDate="2013-01-22T10:29:04.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes conferences actually organize child care services or provide support of child care that you pay yourself. See examples: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hr.cornell.edu/life/support/conference_care.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.hr.cornell.edu/life/support/conference_care.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/childcare.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/childcare.cfm&lt;/a&gt;  The last one says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examples of Allowed Expenses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Daycare expenses at the March Meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Extra daycare expenses incurred at home because the primary caregiver was attending the March Meeting (e.g., cost of a sitter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Expenses incurred in bringing a babysitter (or grandparent) to the March Meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that I don't think many employers explicitly reimburse those costs. &lt;strong&gt;People tend to consider that they are part of the &quot;package&quot; that you accept when you start a career in research&lt;/strong&gt; (I am not saying it is a good thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T10:29:04.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7378" CreationDate="2013-01-22T10:33:39.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For long projects it is common to feel frustrated or even desperate after some time. You cannot continue for years only with the energy that you had originally. Some of the initial magic is fading and you realize there are bad sides. Do not worry. You will also start seeing new good sides on this too. Maybe you and the other researchers in your field are not going to save the world right there right now. But you &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; all part of a collective effort that advances knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T10:33:39.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7360" CreationDate="2013-01-22T11:11:21.710" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reinventing the wheel may be beneficial if you explain something better than the previous studies, release your code/software, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computers science it can be frustrating when people publish a summary of their methods, provide results, but no code so that others can apply this to other data sets. So you end up reinventing the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5676" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T11:11:21.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7374" CreationDate="2013-01-22T11:28:08.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer one. I'm from a big Japanese University with lots and  lost of Money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, like Juka suggests, travelers get paid a daily expense, for example, I went to Australia last year, and I got paid the exact sum for the airplane and a daily allowance that is supposed to cover meals and lodging. The thing is, unless you eat like a king and sleep in a 5 star hotel, you'll usually end up with extra money. (around 200 USD-300 USD more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask my adviser and he told me that this was normal, and postdocs and profs get even more money, because they consider they have families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think is a good practice, but then again, if your University does not have a huge endowment, it may get tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T11:28:08.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:00:06.600" Score="5" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to apply for M.Sc studies in Computer Science to 3-4 universities. Only one of them requires the applicants to take a GRE (general test), and my question is as follows: is it a good idea to send the scores to the rest of the universities even though they do not specifically require it? Will it affect my chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI: I did one practice test and didn't get a good Quantitative Score (only 145), although I took the test without preparation, without paper (soon after taking the practice test I've read that is allowed scraps of paper) and after 4-5 years after finishing undergraduate studies.  I think with 2 months or so of moderate studies I can get about 160. What do you think I should do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5678" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T13:58:16.383" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:58:16.383" Title="GRE score submission" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7385" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:17:45.670" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good GRE score &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; help your chances at admissions; a poor GRE score does not do anything to help your chances, but they can hurt you, particularly if you're already a somewhat &quot;borderline&quot; case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if a school does not require GRE scores, then I would only submit them if they are strong (well above average). Otherwise, you're introducing at best a neutral &quot;fact&quot; into the conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:17:45.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7385" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:39:22.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My philosophy in application processes is what you present should only serve to strengthen your case: &lt;em&gt;&quot;that you should be admitted/accepted to .... &quot;&lt;/em&gt;. If you look at it with this perspective, I would say submit only what's required of you and what you think gives a fair but good image of your intellectual/social abilities. Anything else has the potential of raising questions in the admission officer's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I agree with @aeismail's answer. Submit scores/GPAs/transcripts only if you are confident in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:39:22.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7390" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:21:54.467" Score="8" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;As my field, Computer Science (CS), has many sub-areas and specializations. I found myself having a &lt;em&gt;not-so-good&lt;/em&gt; impression about different areas within CS. For example, I see working on Software Engineering as a waste of time while working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is much more worthing an investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a field-specific question, I wish hearing whether this exists on other fields as well. Is it common in academia for individuals to find some subfields of a more broader research area more interesting and relevant than others? Relatedly, how does one avoid thinking that way?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T22:00:48.510" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T22:00:48.510" Title="Valuing one field more than another" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:11:39.457" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it is somewhat usual for people to think that their particular area of expertise is somewhat more valuable than others. I have seen it in all fields I have heard of…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's not restricted to academic life: I'm sure the cardiac surgeon feels that his work is so much more important than that of the family physician, while the later thinks that he's the one tasked with stopping epidemics and diagnosing the important stuff to save lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But I'm sure you already knew that… so, what is your question exactly?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: &lt;em&gt;how does one avoid thinking that way?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most difficult part, for me, in thinking objectively about other fields is to be able to correctly identifying the challenges they face. I find that it is altogether too easy to think &lt;em&gt;“hey, that's a trivial optimization problem”&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;“know that they know the compound formula, I wonder why it takes them so long to synthesize it”&lt;/em&gt;. Better overall understanding of other fields helps a lot avoid this way of thinking. It takes a lot of effort to acquire such a broad general knowledge: reading, listening to conferences outside your area of expertise, chatting with colleagues, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T18:28:33.880" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T18:28:33.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:45:28.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a part of being a human is assigning different values for different things (or preferring, or choosing something among other things). So I do not worry about valuing some field of study more than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the real challenge is to be realistic. I mean one should know his abilities, his interests and find a (scientifically rigorous) field which matches with his abilities and interests.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T18:45:28.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:47:07.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same thing happens in many different fields, mathematics, physics, etc...  Many in academia criticize computational scientists like myself as too interdisciplinary (i.e. we are jack of all trades, but masters of none).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it naturally emerges from the competitive nature of academia these days.  We're all competing for precious resources, such as funding, tenure track positions, prestige and attention, etc.  To be competitive, we must assert that our work is more worthwhile than others.  In the face of criticism and competition, people of the same field sometimes are tempted to assert their worth by belittling the value of other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no better way to avoid doing this than to distance yourself from others who engage in the &quot;we're better than them&quot; attitude.  Unfortunately, it can be difficult if you're already surrounded by people with this mentality already.  In which case, it might be worthwhile to just get out of your comfort zone and attend research seminars and presentations in completely unrelated fields.  Sometimes, if you surround yourself with others who value a topic that you don't, you can learn how to appreciate it in ways you've never thought of before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T18:47:07.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-01-22T21:50:40.667" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to distinguish &quot;what I find interesting&quot; from &quot;what someone finds interesting&quot; from &quot;what I think is important&quot; from &quot;what is important to others&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly acceptable to find other fields uninteresting - that's just the nature of subjectivity and personal preference. Or more poetically, &quot;vive la difference&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is less acceptable to go from &quot;I personally find this area boring&quot; to &quot;this area is boring&quot;. At that point, as others have suggested, you need to understand why others in the field find it interesting. Ask them ! Put yourself in their shoes. (I will often say, &quot;I'm glad someone is working in area X and I'm glad it's not me&quot; :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T21:50:40.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7396" CreationDate="2013-01-22T23:32:43.510" Score="8" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach an undergraduate course in thermodynamics. In class pop (surprize) quizzes account for about 10% of the grade. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructure#Canvas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;canvas&lt;/a&gt; for my in-class quizzes (and to collect homework assignments, start discussions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class room I teach in doesn't have computers so when I set up an pop quiz on canvas, I generally let the students out of class during the last 10 minutes to log in to one of the several campus computers to take the quiz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I know that our computers aren't top notch and one can easily spend about 5-7 minutes just logging in and another 2-3 minutes launching a web browser to access canvas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these technical issues (that can't be sorted out because of a lax IT department) I generally keep my quiz open for about 9 hours. This also takes into account the other classes that my students may have to rush in to right after mine which might prevent them from attempting the pop quiz until later that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this unfair to students who take the quiz immediately? By keeping my quiz open for 9 hours, it takes away the &lt;strong&gt;surprise&lt;/strong&gt; component of it substantially. Is there a way I can do this without having to have quizzes on paper and in-class?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just be mean and keep my quiz open for only the 20 minutes or so at the end of my class?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; I was thinking about this and I thought of a couple of things that I'd like to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One way to nullify this is by announcing that there would be a quiz in the next 3 days. That way, the students will try and learn and not just haphazardly flip through their textbook as I assume they would if it were a true pop quiz.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could tell them that the examinations which account for 70% of the grade will be tough and it would be sensible to be honest with pop quizzes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Borrowing from Zenon's comment below, why not mix multiple choice questions with single valued answers with only 1 attempt?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T01:02:55.643" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T13:58:55.897" Title="In-class pop quizzes (online) and how to moderate them" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7395" CreationDate="2013-01-22T23:44:30.517" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the limitations of the material of the students and at your disposition why do you do a quiz on internet? You can be assured that students talk between themselves. I think that you should simply do the quizz in class with pen and paper to be really fair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a large number of students, you could do most of the quizz as multiple choice questions and use a device (scantron?) to correct them automatically. As a complement you could have a few questions with &lt;em&gt;one word&lt;/em&gt; answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastEditorUserId="257" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T00:45:20.297" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T00:45:20.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7407" CreationDate="2013-01-23T03:04:36.500" Score="10" ViewCount="637" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does using a bibliography software actually save you time aside from when converting citation style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used refworks and endnote for years and from 3 years ago I decided to ditch them both  and do the whole referencing business by hand because of frustrating problems they caused many times (references showing up incorrectly, having to manually add papers, references suddenly missing etc.). I only dump pdf files in them to keep a record of the references. I have been doing fine and I think it has been pretty efficient in three years I have had two change citation style manually twice which was painful but that was it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided using endnote today again because i am writing a major review article. And already its painful! After inputting 15 references manually as the pdf files that can not be identified correctly (beats me why! clear pdf with OCR) and spending 30 minutes inputting the references, and then searching them to add them back in the paper I am doubting my decision! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone give me some motivation on why to use these tools really? I mean yes style change and finding duplicates can be good. But is that it? I feel like going back to basic but think there must be something wrong with me as it seems everyone else is using them without going insane! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T01:51:20.030" Title="Does using a bibliography software actually save you time aside from when converting citation style?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7420" CreationDate="2013-01-23T06:25:54.313" Score="17" ViewCount="2459" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1192/2700&quot;&gt;how to choose PhD committee members has already been asked and answered&lt;/a&gt; in general terms, but I have the following more specific questions regarding the choice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it more important that your advisor already know your committee members or that you do (e.g., your advisor knows them but you've never met them before vs. you know the member but your advisor doesn't have a strong or pre-existing relationship with them).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to get someone in your discipline or someone doing more related work (e.g., if you're getting a computer science degree, you ask computer science faculty vs. you're getting a computer science degree but everyone except for your advisor is from the English department)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should you pick people who are already invested/interested in you succeeding or is the dissertation process supposed to be a chance for you to win people over to your side?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T20:12:01.040" Title="Should you choose your committee members or should your advisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7399" CreationDate="2013-01-23T06:57:33.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You first have to check to see what the university rules are for a Ph.D committee. Many universities have rules that limit the number of external members, the number of members not from the department, the number of members that are not &quot;regular faculty&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you've checked all those constraints, then you should definitely discuss this with your advisor, who will have more experience in constructing committees in your area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings up another issue: community norms. In your field of research, are there customary roles that committee members play ? that's something you need to discuss with your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, after all of the above, to answer some of your questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should you already know them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, although that helps with the first approach. It helps if they're familiar with your work even if you don't know them personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they be doing research related to your dissertation topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, but they should have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; connection to your work, otherwise they won't be able to provide any kind of useful feedback for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they be in your discipline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely, unless your topic is interdisciplinary and you want the input from someone in the other discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they be selected more for how much they'll help you get a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's definitely a factor. It's not a critical factor for all members of your committee, but it can be a factor when looking for an external member. Ideally, if you're able to do some research with members of the committee, they can write a letter for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to your advisor and discuss all of this with him/her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different members of the committee can play different roles. The mix is what's important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T06:57:33.050" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7403" CreationDate="2013-01-23T07:40:50.963" Score="6" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, I am interested in the research related with &quot;Quantum Hall Effects&quot;, and want to have a list of institutions/universities that have good contributions in this topic, with number of publications during the recent years. Any idea how? Is there any website provide such searching service? Google scholar, arXiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://publish.aps.org/search&quot;&gt;APS search&lt;/a&gt; by searching &quot;Quantum Hall Effects&quot; in Abstract/Title. It shows all related papers. But now I just want to know the statistics of the institutional contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea how? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5717" OwnerDisplayName="Osiris Xu" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T09:14:26.023" Title="How to search for institutions/universities that have good contributions on a certain physics research topic?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7401" CreationDate="2013-01-23T08:43:20.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not that good, but is the closest I can think of something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Academic is very good, and have tons of features like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=7&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=6&amp;amp;last=0&amp;amp;start=1&amp;amp;end=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a list of the most cited institutions on Machine Learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=7&amp;amp;topdomainid=6&amp;amp;subdomainid=14&amp;amp;last=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a list of the most cited institutions in NeuroScience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it only works for preloaded topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other problem is that MS database of indexed papers is rather small compared with Google's one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T08:43:20.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7401" CreationDate="2013-01-23T08:56:59.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Statistics on institutions should be taken with 14,000,000 grains of salt: some institutions have changed name over time (including many recently, e.g. in France many institutions were forking twenty years ago and are now merging back), and affiliation rules vary widely between authors (you'll see below huge contributions from state-wide agencies like “Russian academy of science” or “CNRS”, they are not the same as universities or labs). But, you can do it with many bibliographic search tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how to do with &lt;em&gt;Web of Science&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a regular search (here I chose “title”, but you can do something more complicated)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oJk83.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the results page, click on the “Analyze Results” link&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bs9aF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose your field of interest (here, organizations)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YAHtr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xVamY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T08:56:59.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-01-23T10:12:33.523" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Is valuing one field over another is a common behavior in academia?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers clearly answer &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. There can be &lt;em&gt;subjective&lt;/em&gt; reasons to such an observation (e.g., a cardiologist could feel more superior to a gastroenterolog), but there might be also an objective part to the observation (as you example goes, the results produced in software engineering are somewhat &lt;em&gt;shakier&lt;/em&gt; than those in graph theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How does one avoid thinking that way?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides an excellent point by other answer saying &quot;you should try to better understand the challenges of the other field&quot;, I also argue that you should &lt;strong&gt;better understand the dynamics of scientific pursuit in general&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kuhn, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions&quot;&gt;Structure of Scientific Revolutions&lt;/a&gt; argues that scientific work in any given field has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions#Three_phases&quot;&gt;three phases&lt;/a&gt;. The first, &lt;em&gt;pre-paradigm&lt;/em&gt; and subsequent transition to &lt;em&gt;normal science&lt;/em&gt; are relevant for this answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first phase, which exists only once, is the &lt;em&gt;pre-paradigm&lt;/em&gt; phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, &lt;em&gt;normal science&lt;/em&gt;, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we observe somewhat substandard results and works in fields which clearly fall into the category of those still being in the pre-paradigm phase. Your specific question is relevant to this due to the fact, that whole of computer science is still a young field and many problems we are solving are new, often vague, or ill defined, etc. This is is especially the case for the fields and communities tackling applications of applied-mathematics-style computer science to real-world applications, i.e., software engineering. Your reference to software engineering is clearly the case here, large parts of artificial intelligence fall into this category as well, and I am sure other fields and subfields too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Even if you find yourself working in a &quot;soft&quot; field, it does not necessarily mean the niche community is not tackling a sound problem (though sometimes it is the case, but you need to look very carefully into it). Sometimes working on such can be even more demanding/challenging/satisfying than routinely solving puzzles in the normal-science context.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T10:12:33.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7397" CreationDate="2013-01-23T10:39:45.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;How easy it is to manage references depends a lot on your working conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for instance, you're an academic in a humanities field, where the &quot;standard&quot; bibliographic style is the Harvard or MLA styles, where you just quote an author's name and the page number, then bibliographies are relatively simple, since citations are straightforward, and the bibliography itself is simple and can be created on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you are working in a field such as mathematics or physics, which uses the &quot;numbered&quot; style, putting together the bibliography can be a royal pain in the neck. You need to add a new reference at the beginning of the document, and now &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the reference numbers have shifted throughout the rest of the paper. Then having a tool that will do the referencing for you automatically is a major help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IF you need to use a package, and your choice thereof is up to you—you should find one that best suits your needs. But the important thing is finding a method that works both for you as well as for any colleagues you might be working with in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T10:39:45.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7397" CreationDate="2013-01-23T10:41:21.443" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what you mean by using bibliography software. I think of bibliography software as doing three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They help you organize, search, and find your references. While&#xA;Pubmed and Google Scholar are quite efficient at finding references&#xA;for my field, I often prefer to search my own library of papers I am&#xA;familiar with when looking for a reference. I use JabRef for this&#xA;purpose and it saves me loads of time even when not converting&#xA;citation styles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They help you create a reference list at the end of a&#xA;manuscript/grant/etc. If you have a database you simply need to tell&#xA;the software what papers have been referenced and what format you&#xA;want the reference list in. This saves you time when you convert&#xA;styles (and the first time you create a list). I don't think it&#xA;really does anything else. The key is that in my opinion ALL&#xA;bibliography software does this stage well for ALL styles. I see no&#xA;reason not to use bibliography software to create a reference list&#xA;at the end. This is the section where it is easy to make minor&#xA;mistakes and can waste a lot of time getting the style correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They help you with formatting in text citations. This is where most&#xA;of the software falls down. In text citation styles have a lot of&#xA;variability (book, chapter, article, first time citation, subsequent&#xA;citation on a page, citation in a foot note, etc) that make&#xA;automation hard. Defining an automated system that can implement an&#xA;in-text citation style is no small task. Even if you can create such&#xA;a definition, many publishers have small in house tweaks. Create&#xA;software that is fully compliant with a style and allows for tweaks&#xA;to be made easily, is even harder. If you are lucky enough that your&#xA;software has the style you need, or that your target publishers are&#xA;easy going enough, then using bibliography software for your in-text&#xA;citations is a no brainer. If you are not so luck, you may not want&#xA;to use that feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I would always use bibliography software for 1 and 2, but only for 3 if I am lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T10:41:21.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7411" CreationDate="2013-01-23T10:49:36.687" Score="25" ViewCount="5218" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research lab organizes monthly “internal” seminars, where we give the opportunity to talk to PhD students around the middle of their PhD, as well as newly arrived post-docs (who can talk about what they did before and present their project). However, attendance is a big problem, and it's the same people who never show up, unless the speaker is from their group. I suppose good team leaders encourage their whole team to show up, while a few others have told me point blank that they consider it “wasted time”, because it decreases the time students can work at the lab bench. So, while they cannot forbid them to attend, they just discourage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am wondering what we can make to help increase student turnout. What do you use to attract people to seminars? We have tried coffee and sweets, which didn't work very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specifics, if it can help: research lab is about 25 permanent staff, and between 2 to 3 times that number of students and post-docs. Seminars are held every month, rotating between teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T13:26:57.473" Title="How to encourage seminar attendance?" Tags="&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7408" CreationDate="2013-01-23T10:59:57.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my university, we have the students seminar around 12pm with pizza at the end. Using a time slot when most people are free usually helps. And although sweets are good you can't survive on that, free lunch on the other side is always a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Else we also have seminars friday around 4pm with snacks and beers afterward. It is a time when most people are not as productive as the rest of the week, and the ability to socialize afterward with the rest of the department is always a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the best way would be to engage the &lt;em&gt;leaders&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe invite them to give a talk and try to make it worth their while so they can see that the goal of those seminars is not only giving the talk but the discussions that can flow out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T10:59:57.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7408" CreationDate="2013-01-23T11:12:10.610" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, I am wondering what we can make to help increase student turnout. What do you use to attract people to seminars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;Make the seminars useful for the group members.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First, the diagnosis:&lt;/em&gt; The group members are probably too narrow-minded and do not understand that getting insights from currently irrelevant topics does in fact become often very useful in the long-run. The group members seem to optimize in a greedy manner for their short-term interests, shooting themselves in foot in the long-run. It seems, they do not understand that &lt;strong&gt;seeing connections between dots at some future timepoint is much much easier if you saw the dots and their contexts before.&lt;/strong&gt; But this does not come by direct explanation, they need to realise it by themselves. It's your task to set the example and at least showing how at least you benefit from the seminars. This is a long-haul task and has to do with your general attitude to world. In the short term, you can perhaps do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;push for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; group members (including the professor(s)) giving &lt;strong&gt;conference rehearsal talks&lt;/strong&gt; - if you are in an area where going to conferences makes a difference. At the talks encourage giving the speaker not only content-relevant feedback, but more importantly methodological feedback on &lt;em&gt;how to speak&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invite &lt;strong&gt;external speakers&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;actively support networking&lt;/strong&gt; of the group members with the speaker. Especially in informal interactions (which are often started by interactions during, or right after the talk), people tend to find common interests and receive feedback on their own work. Possibly start even a small collaboration. The idea here is to, over time, show the group members that attending tangentially relevant talks is useful for &lt;em&gt;cross-breeding of ideas&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T11:12:10.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7408" CreationDate="2013-01-23T11:13:15.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I suppose good team leaders encourage their whole team to show up,&#xA;  while a few others have told me point blank that they consider it&#xA;  “wasted time”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I wouldn't put a quality judgment on the team leaders. Hopefully all the team leaders are &quot;good&quot;. Further, hopefully all the team leaders have done a cost-benefit analysis of their staff attending and have simply come to different conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem does not seem to be the junior staff, but rather the example set by the senior staff. I would argue that you do not want to encourage the junior staff to &quot;disobey&quot; their team leaders by offering sweets. The permanent staff needs to come to a consensus as to whether or not these meetings are useful and who should attend. The possible outcomes are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meetings are a waster of time and should be canceled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meetings are critical for all groups and attendance should be&#xA;mandatory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meetings are useful for some groups but not others ant those&#xA;that want to attend should attend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meetings are critical to some groups and require participation&#xA;from all groups and attendance should be mandatory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a decision is reached, it is the lab director (the person responsible for the 25 permanent staff) to see that it is carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T11:13:15.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7408" CreationDate="2013-01-23T12:07:38.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you can do is also use this time slot to present additional information that people will want to hear. For example, you can add a 5 minute &quot;news cast&quot; about the lab: who's new, who is leaving soon (and what they will be doing), general announcements, lab babies, whatever announcement people will have. We are doing this at my group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T12:07:38.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2013-01-23T12:15:23.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the best place to ask for a travel grant is the conference itself. I see, for example, that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://apsdfd2012.ucsd.edu/?page=Key_Dates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APS DFD 2012 meeting&lt;/a&gt; had a travel grant program (sure, now it's too late to be useful). Many big conferences have such programs and those that do not may have &quot;fellowships&quot;, which give a reduced registration fee for select students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you want to look at framework programs in your field encouraging the mobility of students. It is true that it might have been easier if you were actually located in India, because of binational exchange programs and such, but you also have to realize that the travel costs would then have been greater!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T12:15:23.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7395" CreationDate="2013-01-23T12:39:42.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First it is only unfair if not all students had the same information. If you say &quot;the quizz will be open for 20 minutes&quot; and leave it open for 9 hours, it is somewhat unfair. If you are clear, then they have equal chances. However that does not solve your other issues such as students chatting or cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your real solution is: &lt;strong&gt;if you don't have the resources to make them take the online test in a decent way, just do it the old fashioned way&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;I have never worked with scanning machines, but if they work fine it sounds like a good solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of not having to grade everything is to have students take the test, then shuffle the papers so that another student grades them. You cannot have all your evaluation performed in this way, but you can do some. If you want to further decrease the chances that they do not grade tests honestly, you can announce that you will perform yourself a second correction of 10% of the tests, and that graders found cheating will have their own mark diminished or invalidated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T12:39:42.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7408" CreationDate="2013-01-23T14:32:41.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the needs/wants of the people you want to attend.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are currently phrasing the benefit of these seminars from the perspective of the speakers (i.e., to provide an opportunity for PhD students and postdocs to present their work).  This is a noble goal and I would keep it as a goal but if you are having attendance problems then perhaps the other members of the lab do not see this as a useful activity (you mention that some have clearly expressed this).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to identify what they would want from the seminars.  Perhaps more informal chalk-talk discussions, a journal club where each paper is based around the work of a student or postdoc, etc... would generate more interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those that do attend are consistently talking about how useful the experience is, then attendance will go up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T14:37:13.970" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T14:37:13.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7441" CreationDate="2013-01-23T16:02:27.857" Score="16" ViewCount="9989" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, University of Maryland, Baltimore County &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland,_Baltimore_County&quot;&gt;is said to be&lt;/a&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;research university&lt;/strong&gt;. (Same thing for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_University&quot;&gt;Rice University&lt;/a&gt;, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there &quot;non-research universities&quot; also? What is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="4331" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T18:35:12.157" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T11:18:26.637" Title="What does it mean by a &quot;research university&quot;?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7417" CreationDate="2013-01-23T16:19:55.000" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US context (and many other countries) the difference can be somewhat foggy. However, in the past (1900-1930's), US university landscape adopted that invented in Germany (c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=xbztTkGKOHEC&amp;amp;dq=pasteur%27s%20quadrant&amp;amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here, Chap. 2&lt;/a&gt;), therefore looking how Germans do it can be indicative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, Austria and Switzerland you would see a distinction between a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Universität&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/a&gt; (or sometimes just called &lt;em&gt;Hochschule&lt;/em&gt;), also translated as &lt;em&gt;University of Applied Sciences&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citing from&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It (Fachhochschule) differs from the traditional university (Universität) mainly through its more application or practical orientation and less research. ... The Fachhochschule represents a close relationship between higher education and the employment system. ... Nevertheless, in Germany the right to confer doctoral degrees is still reserved to Universitäten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess, the difference applies to different countries as well, though the nomenclature would differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T11:18:26.637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T11:18:26.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7417" CreationDate="2013-01-23T16:21:00.100" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/&quot;&gt;Carnegie classification&lt;/a&gt; is used to describe different kinds of academic institutions. The system  changed in 2005, but under the previous incarnation, universities that had significant research components were called &quot;R1&quot; universities. Under the new system, universities with research components are called &quot;RU/H&quot; or &quot;RU/VH&quot; (Research University/(V)ery (H)igh research). It's most likely that the term 'research university' is an indirect reference to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: The &lt;a href=&quot;http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/basic.php&quot;&gt;Carnegie classification&lt;/a&gt; has many categories of institution: only three of them are predominantly research-focused. So there are many more &quot;non-research&quot; institutions than there are research institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T05:52:35.090" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T05:52:35.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7399" CreationDate="2013-01-23T21:38:40.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to build PhD committee, which depend on the local system (country, etc.) and your field. But, here are some general principles that should apply broadly. You need to bring a mix of &lt;strong&gt;highly competent yet diverse&lt;/strong&gt; evaluators, with &lt;strong&gt;not too much proximity&lt;/strong&gt; to yourself or your advisor lest it be thought that you are cherry-picking a partial (friendly) jury for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it more important that your advisor already know your committee members or that you do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a very important part of the decision-making. Certainly, you don't want the advisor's best friend (or yours!), that could make people think you're scared of unbiased questioning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it better to get someone in your discipline or someone doing more related work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one of the factors that play a very important part, for me, in picking committee members. First, all members need to be able to have a good understanding of your work. However, it is good that not all of them are precisely expert in particular field of expertise. It helps to have people from other (related) fields, because they will bring a different perspective, and give you the opportunity to highlight not only the very technical details of your work but also its significance for other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is the dissertation process supposed to be a chance for you to win people over to your side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; It's good to bring people who don't necessarily agree with you on everything, but you should also avoid as committee members anyone overly critical of your approach of things, &lt;em&gt;unless you know them well and they can keep it under control&lt;/em&gt; and agree to disagree. Otherwise, you risk that person actually coming to your defense to win you over. I have seen defenses being “derailed” (though all ended well) by a committee member who was overly argumentative, and it wasn't a nice experience for anybody involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T21:38:40.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7422" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:13:38.377" Score="24" ViewCount="7209" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is an expectation that the PhD would make an original contribution and/or advance knowledge  in a given field. I understand this is a universal assumption for this level of study across all universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my friend's research experiment has not produced a single positive result. This was a science experiment, so it is easy to quantify whether the result is positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[It is a bit different in the social sciences, where the outcome (result) would be that either the null hypothesis is supported or rejected (with some analysis on the effect size to make the analysis meaningful in a given context). In other words, the data analysis either supports or does not support the proposition that is being investigated.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What should a student do if none of the research outcomes or results are positive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply writing that nothing new was found does not add or advance knowledge other than to just confirm the status quo (which I guess is a form of contribution, but there has to be more than this at this level of research!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T11:20:21.787" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T16:43:15.363" Title="What to do with negative research outcomes (results) of PhD research experiment?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;negative-results&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7421" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:54:39.403" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your friend might not want to hear this, but there's nothing you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do except for start over - with a different experiment. Research fails - and should  ! If there isn't a risk of failure, you're not out on the cutting edge doing research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in most failures, there's a grain of something to build on (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062803/&quot;&gt;from the ashes of disaster come the roses of success&lt;/a&gt;&quot;). Maybe the student is too demoralized right now to see it, but almost always there's some clue in the failure that leads to a different research question worth asking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T00:54:39.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7421" CreationDate="2013-01-24T02:12:58.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is a case to be done to report negative results, since it gives at least a blueprint of what does not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Suresh mentions, usually a PhD is measure on its contribution to expand knowledge. If your friend is already 5 years into his PhD however, I think there is some adviser's fault, since he should have had some kind of insight that this thing was not working and a different course might have been wiser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T02:12:58.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7421" CreationDate="2013-01-24T05:33:25.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, you have nothing to face failure except doing &lt;em&gt;another experiment&lt;/em&gt; as @Suresh said, Consulting supervisor and other acknowledgeable people and carefully looking again to the problem &lt;strong&gt;formulation&lt;/strong&gt; and to your solving method. Here the goal is to identify the error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, at least to me, is the non-technical reaction for such failures. I reward myself by relaxing, playing more with the kids, sleeping early; playing some games or sometimes watching movie. I try my best to forget the problem for one or two days.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T05:33:25.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T07:17:13.350" Score="5" ViewCount="1801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international PhD student currently at a university in the US (F1 visa). My professor is moving to the University of Toronto, and has invited me to move as a part of his research group. While I understand that my decision to move should depend on the advisor and not on the school, the following question bugs me since the school is in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How easy or difficult is it for an international student in Canada to find an internship or employment after graduation in the US? I'm interested in CS companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft Research and start-ups in Silicon valley. If its difficult to get work in the US, what are equivalent opportunities in Canada?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5699" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:45:47.360" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:45:47.360" Title="How hard is it for a graduate from Canada to find an employment in the US?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7429" CreationDate="2013-01-24T10:16:26.740" Score="52" ViewCount="85409" Body="&lt;p&gt;This situation is not uncommon; in my case, I have to submit abstract for conference in September by the end of January already. But the problem is I have no results yet. I'm pretty sure that in those 8 months I will get pretty interesting results. But..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to write smooth abstract without reporting results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started something along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This and this is an important factor ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, few studies on this topic have been done ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In our study, we compare this and this &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;??&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem comes in point 4, where I should report some results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I go around that? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What formulations should I use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shall I speak in present, future, or past tense? The studies are usualy written in past tense like &quot;we analysed, we compared...&quot;, but in this case I would tend to present tense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your help. Examples are welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/drbecca/2012/05/09/the-art-of-the-ambiguous-conference-poster-abstract/&quot;&gt;this is an interesting discussion&lt;/a&gt; however didn't give me actual guidelines of how to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="410" LastEditorUserId="410" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T10:29:13.123" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:01:14.573" Title="How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="37" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-01-24T10:47:16.883" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't write results you don't have&lt;/strong&gt;. Neither in the present, past or future tense. Just don't do it. Yet, I agree with you that there are circumstances where you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to write an abstract on on-going work. For example, many big conferences in my field now ask for abstracts to be submitted up to 10 months in advance of the conference itself! If you are a post-doc staying on a 12-month project, you want to present something but you might not yet know how things will turn out. So, two techniques I propose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just write about the methodology, and present your goals in a general way, without “predicting” particular results but insisting on the importance of the topic. That is, &lt;strong&gt;emphasize strongly your points #1 and #2, and then describe point #3 as you would your “results”&lt;/strong&gt;. Things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this particular study, we compare the efficiency of methods A and B on given subsets of a reference database. We use a large number of different criteria for measuring efficiency, including …, … and … We also discuss in detail the implementation of subprocess X in method B, because its has not been specifically optimized in the existing literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it sounds vague, but that's the best you can achieve honestly, without pretending to know what you expect to find.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bait and switch: if you have existing results in a closely related study, you can incorporate them as part of your results. Mix this approach with above, so that you have at least a few specific results to list in your point #4. Then, when you will make your presentation, just present your new results alongside the old (some people would remove completely the old results, but that makes it too much of a “bait and switch” for my taste). It is, after all, quite common for people to include newer results in orals/posters that they obtained after the original submission. It is not frowned upon, as long as you keep a decent agreement between the original abstract and the final content.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T10:47:16.883" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7763" CreationDate="2013-01-24T11:21:19.310" Score="24" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many professions, academia is a challenging environment for women. In some disciplines (e.g. computer science), the number of women remains low despite efforts to increase it. Have there been any academic studies on the ways of improving the working conditions for women, specifically focussing on women in academia? As an academic working in hard sciences (i.e. not gender studies), what book or review could I read on the topic, to help me get a better understanding of these issues (and possibly improve my own behavior)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in “advice” (in part because I am not a woman), but in studies of how effective are various possible ways of improving the working conditions for women (in academia). Like “we study universities implementing policies X and Y, and show that they do increase gender diversity bu xx%”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1363/2700&quot;&gt;“Women in academia”&lt;/a&gt; is related, but I'm asking for material with a totally different perspective.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T14:55:37.817" Title="Reading material on working conditions of women in academia" Tags="&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7430" CreationDate="2013-01-24T11:58:45.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Athena SWAN Charter&lt;/a&gt; which&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;recognises commitment to advancing women's&#xA;  careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine&#xA;  (STEMM) employment in higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a number of reports that could be of interest including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/sites/default/files/Athena%20SWAN%20Impact%20Report%202011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Measuring Sucess&lt;/a&gt; and a whole section devoted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/content/good-practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good practice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T11:58:45.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7434" CreationDate="2013-01-24T13:17:15.547" Score="14" ViewCount="9055" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an inteview day for a PhD program at a US institution. I met 4/5 professors and a few phd/post docs students. Should I send a thank you email to my host professor or not? What about the other professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the interaction we had that day was good enough so I am not sure if an email follow up is really that necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T14:01:24.127" Title="Do I need to send e-mail to follow up a PhD interview day?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7432" CreationDate="2013-01-24T13:54:20.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit, I guess... I personally think that it's always nice to send a mail and thank the person for the hospitality. I don't think it will increase your chances for the position but hey it's good manners :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you get a position is often related to not only how good you are as an individual, but also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether or not you will bring some new expertise/perspective to the lab/group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether or not the group leader believes you will fit into the existing group (socially/culturally etc..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether or not it will cause them an extra effort to get you there (in case you'll require work/residence permit, specific equipment etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether or not they already have a more suitable candidate in mind (it's pretty mean for the individual but also very understandable for professors to have interviews with other candidates when they have already made up their mind about a particular one. Motivation behind something like that could be to plan for future projects or bureaucratic reasons)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only a couple of factors I can think of. But to come back to your question; I think you'll have nothing to lose and if anything it'll show that you have appreciated the chance to visit the lab and talked to people, which is a positive thing. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T13:54:20.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7432" CreationDate="2013-01-24T14:01:24.127" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A polite and courteous thank-you email is never inappropriate. Also, if you've left anything out of your interview day (or promised to follow up on something), it's a good opportunity to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you shouldn't turn this into an opportunity to go overboard and plead or beg for a spot, or oversell yourself. That is unlikely to go over well, and can undo the good job you did on your interview day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T14:01:24.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-01-24T15:40:16.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You cannot predict the future&lt;/strong&gt;. You may obtain the results you hope for&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. But things can also both go horribly wrong (your laboratory burns down, your samples mysteriously evaporate,...) or extremely interesting - you may happen to measure something beyond your dreams. Let your abstract only tell truths - what your (vague) setup is, what you want to measure and what you &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to happen. But don't pre-claim results when you cannot even foretell their existence for sure. Just be honest - say that you will present the results obtained by them, whatever they may be. I don't like &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CliffHanger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cliffhangers&lt;/a&gt;, but they tend to work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1 &lt;/sup&gt;But make sure you don't &quot;accidentally&quot; measure only what you expect to be measured!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T03:06:11.550" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T03:06:11.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7437" CreationDate="2013-01-24T16:56:32.507" Score="6" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry if this is a bit subjective, but I really don't know where to find the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my hometown, lecturers usually will only approve research in computer science &amp;amp; information system where the result is new software.  The goal is creating a software that can be used directly by business.  Usually, research that can't be 'seen' and used directly will be rejected and considered useless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in my university, lecturers said that creating new software is a type of research called a quasi experiment. Students are expected to perform the following activities: gathering requirements, designing UML models, and implementing the source code.  In the seminar (final exam), lecturers will ask a lot about business process and customer satisfaction.  No maths.  Most questions are subjective and hard to prove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that creating a fully functional software or web site like this is a kind of quasi-experimental research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5702" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T03:44:07.680" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T03:44:07.680" Title="Is creating fully functional software considered to be a quasi experiment?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7436" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:10:30.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As undergraduate research, you mostly don't have the time, experience nor support to create a full fledge project from scratch. By that I mean creating original work in you field. Thus, given the scope of the project, implementing a software is a valuable exercice that can also be really useful for research. For exemple, in my domain (bioinformatics) there is a special issue of NAR (Nucleic Acids Research) solely devoted to webservers. The latest issue can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/W1.toc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one of the big issues you are facing (in almost every field) is that the amount of knowledge you get when leaving the bachelors has been pretty constant for the past 50 years. At the opposite, the level of new research has grown exponentially in these time. Thus, the gap to create something new is constantly growing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastEditorUserId="257" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T17:50:39.540" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T17:50:39.540" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7436" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:15:22.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends what your definition of an experiment is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; 1. a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This covers scientific programming, but not a lot of other areas of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; 2. a course of action tentatively adopted without being sure of the eventual outcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, for sure all software development is done without being sure of the eventual outcome! You have hopes, you try stuff, you analyze its consequences, you find a way of improving the software or mitigating the issues, and you learn something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T17:15:22.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7443" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:28:31.247" Score="35" ViewCount="17282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a paper and have questions about the details of the procedure described. I have read other papers by the same team but they don't explain too much about that procedure anyway. I think it might be common, but my supervisor doesn't know it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am stuck and I want to get out of it. As a student working on my master thesis, can I email the contact author for the manuscript cold out, or should I ask someone to contact him for me? I would ask my supervisor but I don't want it to imply that I'm avoid taking initiatives when I could do it on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T08:49:00.927" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T17:24:50.153" Title="As a student with questions about a paper, can I email the author myself or should I ask someone else to contact him?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7417" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:43:58.407" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; universities and there are &lt;strong&gt;teaching&lt;/strong&gt; universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research universities have graduate programs and their focus is on doing research. This means most professors teach one or two classes (some have 0!) but have other obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching universities on the other hand don't typically have graduate programs (if they do, it is just a Master's program) and the professors have full teaching loads (I think 3-4 courses is the norm) with little expectations to publish. Two examples off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Montclair State University. If you google this school the first result's description says, &quot;With an enrollment of 13500 students, MSU is New Jersey's only public &lt;strong&gt;teaching&lt;/strong&gt; university.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Austin Peay State University, where I did my undergrad is considered a teaching university. Every professor has a full course load and not a single one of the professors I had has published in the past 5 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; chronicle.com defines &lt;strong&gt;teaching university&lt;/strong&gt; as one where professors have &quot;a standard teaching load of four courses a semester&quot;, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Interviewing-at-a-Teaching-/45217/&quot;&gt;Interviewing at a Teaching University&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="746" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T06:07:12.620" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T06:07:12.620" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5327" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:58:46.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to branching in some cases, especially for short lived branches like for journal submission, is using patch queues. Mercurial has &lt;code&gt;mq&lt;/code&gt;. I believe Git has similar things, but I'm not a git user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the question says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I used different branches for different journal submissions, &#xA;  I found myself working only on the &quot;latest&quot; branch anyway, since I can&#xA;  anyway only submit one version per time, and, if it is rejected, will&#xA;  not continue to work on that particular version at a later time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had similar experiences when using different (named) branches for submission to different journals. The problem is that one ends up having dead branches which correspond to journals the paper was rejected from, or perhaps journals you never ended up applying to. These live forever in history, which is annoying and sub-optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of using patches, at least with &lt;code&gt;mq&lt;/code&gt;, is that one can maintain multiple patch queues, each of these can be managed as a distinct mercurial repository, and they do not become part of the main repository's history unless you want them to, though of course you can push them to remote since they are regular repositories. Also, one can use them with general non-vcs tools like &lt;code&gt;patch&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;quilt&lt;/code&gt;, which is occasionally useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when applied, these patch queues are a bona-fide part of a mercurial repository, and can be treated as (anonymous) branches. So, suppose one has two patch queues &lt;code&gt;Q1&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Q2&lt;/code&gt;. Then if wants to work with both versions simultaneously, one can make a clone of the main repository, thus resulting in two identical copies of the repository. Then one can apply Q1 and Q2 to the copies, and then work with them as one would with regular branches, using mercurial's merge machinery and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another use of patch queues which is very useful, and not specific to paper writing, is to queue up small changes in the queue till one is ready to commit them. I usually just stick everything in one patch, though one could divide the changes into multiple patches. Then, when one is ready to apply some or all of the changes, one can do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;hg qref -X .   # apply the patch as local changes, making the patch empty&#xA;hg qpop --keep-changes  # pop the patch&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) the patch being applied as local changes to the working directory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) the mercurial queue patch becoming empty and being removed (popped) from the repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the patch is now local changes to the working directory, we can easily commit what parts of it we please. When done one can resync the patch with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;hg qpush --keep-changes    # push the patch back onto the repository&#xA;hg qref                    # put the local changes back into the patch&#xA;hg ci --mq                 # commit the changed patch (to the mq repository)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the patch is recreated with the portions of the local changes that were not committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the loosely related questions &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/5016862/350713&quot;&gt;What's the Git approach to publish a patch queue?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/952651/350713&quot;&gt;git equivalent to hg mq?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T19:53:15.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7439" CreationDate="2013-01-24T17:59:20.200" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely contact a paper author. They might be of the 'it obviously follows' == after 5 pages of calculations kind, or the empiricist who published the 20 successful regressions or simulations out of 200, with 180 contradicting their result or being inconclusive; and in either case ignore your question. From personal experience though, it can even lead to breakthroughs: in my case, someone sent me his lecture notes which clarified something I was stuck with, and related to the submitted question. However, if your advisor knows the author, or simply is well-known in their field, do mention that you are their student, as it should increase good will on the author's part - after confirming with your advisor that they are cool with it. Showing that you are active, interested, and independent should also go down well with the advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T17:07:23.497" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T17:07:23.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-01-24T18:21:25.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Writing something you didn't do as the time of submission is a &lt;strong&gt;lie&lt;/strong&gt; even if you are sure you &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; have it eventually (I believe uncertainty exists everywhere).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's simply not your turn this year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, target another one or wait for the next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I would speak from Computer Science (CS) perspective.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Submitting an abstract in CS conferences is one of two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting to the abstracts (short papers) track of the conference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting an abstract (i.e. 250 words) first then submitting the full paper. For example, these days AI has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijcai13.org/submission_instructions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;big guy&quot;&gt;big guy&lt;/a&gt;  submission deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean the first case otherwise you will have no time for preparing your results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the missing results is one of two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part of the contribution (method)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluation (support) of the contribution (method)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, I really recommend not to submit at all unless your results are ready. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;You just do not have something new in this case&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case I will be more tolerated about it.  In CS, you can &lt;em&gt;play around&lt;/em&gt; it by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In case your missing results are the experiments of your method, you can do initial experiments and believe its the general case. Thus write your abstract based on it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illustrate with examples and/or real world scenarios. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T19:03:27.437" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T19:03:27.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7430" CreationDate="2013-01-24T18:42:29.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awis.org/&quot;&gt;Association for Women in Science&lt;/a&gt; (AWIS) website. There's a resources area on the right side of the page which includes publications and factsheets. Elsewhere, there's a link to relevant committee or groups for different STEM fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5705" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T18:42:29.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7439" CreationDate="2013-01-24T19:55:09.460" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely contact the author. Collaboration is what research is all about. Authors expect these sort of emails when they publish. Also, sending email like this lets people know your name, one person at a time. This way, when you're at a conference later on, you can go over to the author and say, &quot;hey, I emailed you a while back, nice to meet you in person.&quot; It's always good to network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be good form to mention your advisor in the email, whether he's well-known or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T19:55:09.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-01-24T23:48:57.010" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge with ever-earlier deadlines for conferences (sometimes six months &lt;em&gt;or more&lt;/em&gt; in advance of the actual date!) makes planning for a conference a very difficult prospect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're left with only a handful of options, none of them particularly appealing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submit an abstract on incomplete research, and hope that the work is completed in time for the conference. In this case, you say something like &quot;we will present our work on X, Y, and Z.&quot; You make no claims about the &lt;em&gt;findings&lt;/em&gt; related to your work in those areas, though. You also try to edit the abstract, as appropriate and if possible, to better reflect the subject material that you will &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; present at the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submit an abstract on already completed work. The advantage is you know you will have the results and you can put together a good presentation. The downside of this is that it means you will be presenting last year's results at this year's conference. If you are in a &quot;hot&quot; field, this can mean ceding significant ground to your competitors if they get just a little bit luckier than you, and they have findings just before a deadline and you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there's no right answer to which option to take. You have to decide this based on what is expected of you in your field, and what impact this will have on you and your career (if you can opt for the safer track, or if you have to go for the higher-risk option). The only thing that you should &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; do, as I said above, and as other posters have mentioned, is make claims that you have not obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T23:48:57.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7459" CreationDate="2013-01-25T02:27:20.973" Score="18" ViewCount="36530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering, for full time university teachers (not those who also have research responsibilities), what is &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; the number of hours per week that they teach? I currently teach 20 hours per week and find the load quite heavy giving me little time to prep new modules with quality. Adding to that the responsibility of marking and it is not uncommon that I end up working more like 50-60 hours per week to teach 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these numbers average? High? Low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2020-09-17T03:00:33.643" Title="How many class room hours does the typical university teacher teach per week?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2013-01-25T03:24:48.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;20 hours per week for most teaching only positions is normal. I have seen Profs with major research responsibilities that at times have had 20 hours of teaching as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb for a course: You will spend 2 to 3 times the amount of teaching you do preparing the first time you teach a course and this decreases as years go on for that same course (a new course requires considerable amount of time for preparation again). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First time I was teaching advanced thermodynamics and fluid mechanics courses I was spending two full days per 2 hours of teaching actually! but then after three years it was down to preparing 2 hours for 2 hours of teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your numbers seem right to me. In short 20 hours of teaching = virtually no time to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T05:02:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T05:02:38.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7461" CreationDate="2013-01-25T03:33:16.087" Score="4" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the university Master degree transcript, if it is written that accreditation of program is valid until Jan 10, 2016, then what does that imply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:27:04.727" Title="Expiration of accreditation of the program" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2013-01-25T03:52:40.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends to different parameters, but university generally expects each academic staff works &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;40% research &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;40% teaching&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;20% involvement in committees and university meetings&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, different personalities have different interests to focus on either of research or teaching activities. That's why, some take more courses than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to personal interests, needs of school is another issue. For instance imagine one of the lecturers needs to stay at hospital after injury in accident. Head of school asks one of the academic staff to cover his/her absent colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T03:52:40.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2013-01-25T06:07:20.620" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a freelance writer, writing mostly articles and fiction, and I prefer LaTeX over Word for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work much faster in Vim, which is perfect for editing LaTeX markup &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I write in a modular fashion, so LaTeX's \input{} (command/markup/whatever) is indespensible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can convert LaTeX markup to any format I need, most of the time directly: pdfs, docs, html, epub, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word's graphical nature is too much overhead when I can simply open vim, type what I need, add a preamble, some markup and a style file, run the document through aspell and be done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5712" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T06:07:20.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7439" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:55:13.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will give the point of view from Eastern Asian Universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the Lab culture is too focused on the professor as the head and only public face of the laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, many students are not used to being asked directly about their research, and usually they do not know what to do about it, and will end up asking their professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best case scenario is that the professor won't mind and will give the student authorization to mail you back, but the worst case scenario (it happens!) is that the professor will get offended because you contacted a student and not him, and you won't get any answer at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mostly applies to Universities in China, Japan, Korea, etc. I would recommend mailing the professor and asking him directly, it will take time, but is usually your best bet. Even more, it is way better if you get your adviser to contact him for you, and then he can ask for his permission for you to contact the student directly (I'm really not joking about this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the guy writing the paper is foreigner, then go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T10:08:03.097" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T10:08:03.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:01:15.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, we submitted a paper to an IEEE Journal, the student in charge, apparently copied large parts of the text from a previous article we had in an IEEE conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We got a response letter from the editor that said something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every IEEE paper is checked for instances of plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), and we found that you made extensive use of copy-paste from your previous article BLA to write the current article BLA.&#xA;  I'm afraid I can't accept the paper with so much previously Published text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a word of caution for these practices in IEEE Journals and Conferences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:01:15.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:19:32.157" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no “typical” number in this matter. Let's take a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UK, lecturer: it's usually a full-time position, so you have to put in 35-40 hours per week. The ratio of lecture time over all the rest (preparation, departmental committees, etc.) depends on the contract, but I have rarely seen it pushed past 1:1 (which means roughly 20 hours of teaching, maybe 25 at most).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France, &quot;PRAG&quot;: this is the position of a high-School teacher detached to a university, and the closest one to a lecturer position. Their nominal teaching load is 384 hours per year, with a weight of 1.5 for lectures and 1 for exercises sessions. But for one the year is very short, from about 23 to 26 weeks, so that means about 15 hours per week, and this is only the nominal amount. In any cases, they (voluntarily or not) have to teach additional hours, which are paid in addition (to a &lt;strong&gt;lower&lt;/strong&gt; rate than nominal hours).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a point of comparison: a French high-school teacher would have &lt;strong&gt;18 teaching hours&lt;/strong&gt; per week.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other comparison points, less relevant to the question as they are for teaching+research positions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France, associate professor (&lt;em&gt;maître de conférences&lt;/em&gt;): junior-level position, supposed to be half teaching and half research. This has a fixed number of &lt;strong&gt;192 teaching hours per year&lt;/strong&gt;. If you consider that those are spread on 30 weeks, it gives &lt;strong&gt;6.4 hours per week&lt;/strong&gt;. Even considering it is not a teaching-only position, that number is lower than the one you quote.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France, full professor (&lt;em&gt;professeur des universités&lt;/em&gt;): same number of hours in theory, but as you gain seniority you can do more full-class teaching (with bigger groups), of which every hour counts as 1.5 hour in your yearly total. Through this, and other mechanisms, senior professors usually have fewer hours to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T11:37:06.097" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T11:37:06.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:26:09.887" Score="13" ViewCount="3207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had started my PHD last year on a topic that has several interesting problem to solve in the area, however I don't find the problem interesting enough to spend 4 to 5 years. As time went by and I came across a new problem through my course work and interactions with various professors. I have started liking a different topic that is not very related to the original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a wise thing to do in such situation? Is it a common situation (changing topics midway)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4340" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T09:32:51.557" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T20:58:20.853" Title="What to do when your research interest changes to a new topic half way into your PHD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:27:04.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For you, who hold the degree: nothing&lt;/strong&gt;. Your degree does not have an expiration date. It will remain valid for all uses after Jan 10, 2016.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the department: if they want to continue enrolling students in this program and handing out this degree, they will have to renew their accreditation. This means justifying to a local or national regulating body (depending on the country and local law) the value of the degree, the seriousness of the degree-granting process, and many other such assurances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:27:04.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:36:31.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I've yet to meet a single PhD candidate that actually did what he proposed in his research plan in the first place. Unless he entered for some particular project (and still)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is not uncommon to look for different topics and think that it may suit you better, and in all fairness, you should be doing something you like, not some topic other person imposed on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, switching topics, specially if they are unrelated, will have the consequence of delaying your PhD graduation considerably. I switched topics on my PhD 2 year, but I mostly changed the application, while the most fundamental part (in my case, it was the math) was pretty much the same, so I got to use most of the foundations I learned over the first couple of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:36:31.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7464" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:47:43.030" Score="5" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to be up to date with published articles on my research topic. I saw that pubmed allow to subscribe to a research (there is an RSS link just below the research box), so I added the RSS to my Outlook account. The problem is the new feeds seem not very frequent, and the articles are not  even recent! (I added the RSS feed in November, today I got an update with a paper published in September 2012, which by the way I had already read).&#xA;Do you subscribe to this kind of RSS? Is it a problem of Pubmed, or maybe of Outlook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1596" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:58:17.800" Title="PubMed RSS Feeds" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7463" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:58:17.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, it's a PubMed issue, but it's actually an issue that most of the online aggregators and literature databases share: for some reason, which I have never managed to understand, &lt;strong&gt;databases update is slow&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I take a given journal indexed in PubMed, &lt;em&gt;Phys. Rev. Lett.&lt;/em&gt;, let's see what are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Phys%20Rev%20Lett%22%5Bjour%5D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most recently added articles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CBkPz.png&quot; alt=&quot;pubmed results&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see that they are two months old (dating November 21, while I write this answer on January 25). Both the web search front-end and the RSS use the same database, which is not fast to pick up papers from some journals. Your mileage may vary, however: the most recently added &lt;em&gt;PLOS One&lt;/em&gt; articles are dated January 16, a mere 10-days old:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IScXn.png&quot; alt=&quot;pubmed results again&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say that most databases I know have the same issue. From experience, &lt;em&gt;Web of Science&lt;/em&gt; has the slowest update, while both &lt;em&gt;PubMed&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/em&gt; are better. For my field (chemistry), &lt;em&gt;SciFinder&lt;/em&gt; has the fastest update speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T09:58:17.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7466" CreationDate="2013-01-25T10:08:37.903" Score="6" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering where I could find global statistics on the flow of students between countries. This would include numbers such as &quot;how many students with US bachelor went to UK for a master&quot; and &quot;how many Spanish master students went to US for a PhD&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They always say that the academic world outside US suffers from brain drain towards the US, i want to find way to quantify this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T10:24:03.843" Title="Where can I find statistics about international movement of students/academics?" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7465" CreationDate="2013-01-25T10:11:39.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the statistics at hand for the case of students. But there was recently a publication of mobility statistics for scientists on 16 countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w18067&quot;&gt;The report is here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade&quot;&gt;The IEEE also made an infochart that was a bit more explicit using some of the data in the report.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T10:24:03.843" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T10:24:03.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:25:49.513" Score="5" ViewCount="1754" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask if there is some algorithm how to arrange courses to timetable. I study at the university and we can choose a few different lesson times for each subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is how to coordinate all subjects with student's requirements, for example to have school only 2 days a week and/or to select some hours based on capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One subject - you have to select one from the first table and one from the second table (it's lecture and seminar). There can be only one table to select from (only seminar/only lecture):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V1bBP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tkEoM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Course timetable&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5714" OwnerDisplayName="Dacesilian" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T12:46:09.257" LastActivityDate="2020-10-02T09:00:46.470" Title="How to arrange courses to timetable?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2020-10-08T15:15:42.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2013-01-25T10:53:46.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start with a disclaimer. I generally subscribe to the free software community perspective that proprietary software is questionable ethically, and best avoided if possible. I realise this perspective is not commonly held in scientific circles. Having said that, sometimes proprietary software is a necessary, or at least not easily avoided evil, and I'm generally pragmatic about using proprietary software when no good alternatives exist. I've used proprietary software in the past, though currently the only proprietary software I'm currently (sporadically) using is Skype, for which no good free alternatives exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, special considerations apply in a scientific context. One of thse has already been covered by @David, namely that in general you can't &quot;see inside&quot; proprietary software to see how something is implemented. Having said that, sometimes proprietary software is written in an interpreted language, as in Splus, and one may be able to see part or all of an algorithm implementation. Regardless, the point holds generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A separate and obvious issue, which I don't think anyone has raised, is that using proprietary software forces others who want to use your software to buy the proprietary product you use. These products can be quite expensive, especially for people from poor countries. For example, Matlab, which has been mentioned in this thread, runs to thousands of dollars if one has to pay for a license oneself. Western academic institutions often have site licenses for such popular software, so researchers don't have to pay for it themselves. I personally am quite unhappy when I am expected to use a piece of software written using some proprietary language or package that has to be purchased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related issue is that much, if not most research, is done using public funding, i.e. taxpayer money. It seems undesirable to me to use such funds to buy proprietary software, thus adding to the profit of some corporation. In general, there is some movement to make academic work that is done using public funding free. And one can easily make the argument that the usage of proprietary software makes ones scientific product less free. For example, I believe the NIH now has some such policies in place. Similar arguments could be applied to the usage of software tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tangential technical issue is that it is often difficult to get proprietary software to play nice on free software platforms such as the free Unix-like systems currently popular in scientific circles, e.g. the Linux based systems, and the BSD systems. These difficulties include, but are not restricted to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) ABI problems. If one wants to compile a C/C++ extension for Matlab, for example, one has to use exactly the version of the compiler that the Matlab program has been compiled with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) The program requires obsolete libraries or requires libraries to be in non-standard places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention this issue in part because my understanding of the question is that it is asking about proprietary vs free in the context of pragmatic usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to respond to the question directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm starting a new project and I wish to make it as&#xA;  reproducible as possible. Should I be using relatively unpopular free&#xA;  software or extremely popular proprietary ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a clear answer. If there is no viable alternative, then one would have to use the proprietary software, as I do with Skype. If there a viable free version, I would use it. Bear in mind that if more people start using the &quot;relatively unpopular free software&quot; it will become more popular. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2016-12-04T21:56:54.937" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T21:56:54.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7477" CreationDate="2013-01-25T10:58:28.290" Score="36" ViewCount="211014" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received an invitation to nominate students for an award that could be for &lt;em&gt;an undergraduate, a graduate or a post-graduate student&lt;/em&gt;. I've seen those terms used before, but never been sure what they mean. I know &lt;em&gt;Bachelor&lt;/em&gt; student, &lt;em&gt;Master&lt;/em&gt; student, &lt;em&gt;PhD&lt;/em&gt; student and &lt;em&gt;post-doc&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a Bachelor student → Getting the Bachelor degree → Being a Master student → Getting the Master degree → Being a PhD student → Getting the PhD degree → Being a post-doc → ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then what do &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;post-graduate&lt;/em&gt; students refer to? Are &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; students exclusively students studying to get a &lt;em&gt;Bachelor&lt;/em&gt; degree, or can it also refer to students studying to get a &lt;em&gt;Master&lt;/em&gt; degree? After all, that's a graduation that they don't have yet. Literally speaking, it could also be &quot;under&quot; the PhD degree, but that's surely never used as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; student, is that then someone studying for the &lt;em&gt;Master&lt;/em&gt; degree, er is it used only for people studying for the &lt;em&gt;PhD&lt;/em&gt; degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then what is a &lt;em&gt;post-graduate student&lt;/em&gt;? Is this a &lt;em&gt;post-doc&lt;/em&gt;? But &lt;i&gt;post-doc&lt;/i&gt;s aren't students anymore, so then it could only refer to &lt;em&gt;PhD&lt;/em&gt; students. Or are post-docs considered students, too? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2020-05-24T04:52:00.117" Title="Undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate student — is that Bachelor/Master/PhD or Bachelor/Master+PhD/postdoc?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7469" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:09:42.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many American Universities, the concept of a Master student is that which is enrolled purely in a Master course, and is expected to leave the school after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Graduate student is usually enrolled with the objective of doing a PhD, many Graduate students, provided they have the coursework and thesis, might get a Masters degree in the middle of the program along with the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually for postgraduate students I also think is for post docs, but I'm not sure. In Mexico (and maybe France, because we share some characteristics of the language) a postgraduate student is one doing either a PhD or a Master, and a Graduate student is one doing his Bachelor degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:09:42.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:11:32.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are talking about in term time teaching per week and not total teaching per year/52. I have never heard of a permanent full time position having a heavier teaching load than a 5-5. Some people then choose to teach summer courses (but this wouldn't effect you teaching hours per term week). Often this type of load includes some repetition so you might only have to prep 7 courses of which only 1 might be a new prep. The amount of classroom contact time for each course might be as low as 3 hours but could climb to 6. There might also be some office hour contact (which you might count as teaching contact). Many full time teaching jobs have lighter loads and can be as low as 3-3. Research intensive departments can have typical teaching loads as low as 1-1. Adjuncts often teach as high as 6-6 in order to make ends meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is so much more than just the number of taught hours that influence teaching load. I think you need to look at number of classroom hours, number of unique preps, office hours, and marking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:11:32.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7467" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:18:03.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are algorithms for timetabling, but I doubt that you would want to get into the level of detail required for understanding them and applying them to your - as I take it - one off situation. Timetabling is a difficult problem for a computer to solve when there are many activities and people to timetable. It is an NP-hard problem, and a hot topic of current computer science research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timetableonline.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; would help you? I haven't tried it so I can't comment on whether it is a useful/competent solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:18:03.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7474" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:29:41.710" Score="14" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder: everyone in academia handles a lot of email, on all aspects of their work. I mean, emails about conferences, emails about journals and papers, emails about research, teaching, supervized students, and so on. So if you have a big announcement to send to many people (eg seminar or conference) does it matter WHEN you send it? I mean, is it better to send it on Wednesday afternoon (middle of the week) rather than Saturday evening (middle of week end)? I imagine if people receive the email at time they are busy they possibly will overlook it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:53:35.497" Title="Does timing of emails matter?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7473" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:36:07.400" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;I don't think it makes much difference.&lt;/strong&gt; Researchers deal with information, and a lot of that information is communicated through emails nowadays. So, most researchers I know are very careful about their emails and read them thoroughly. Especially if you write to people who know you, your name should be enough for them to read your email through anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I can understand if you have an important announcement to make to a large list of people (who don't all know you personally), you may want to “micro-optimize” this. I have done it in the past: having a call-for-papers email ready on Saturday, and waiting ’til Monday afternoon (US time) to send it, thinking people who read it with a fresh mind, and not alongside the batch of “week-end email” that they might triage on Monday morning. (Some people stay connected during week-ends, of course, and for those it makes no matter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:36:07.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:36:57.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commented on the original question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't do it. No results means no abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this received many upticks, I have also been told&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That sounds incorrect. Any references or related experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that statement also has some upticks. While this is not an answer to &quot;how to write an abstract&quot; it attempts to clarify my comment (but is too long to be another comment). Hopefully it is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are so many things wrong with writing an abstract without results that it is difficult to explain my thinking. The apparent reason for wanting to write an abstract without any results is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No abstract means missed opportunity; I cannot afford that. I have to present results I'm sure I will have by the time of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which has recieved essentially the same number of upticks as my comment not to do it. I disagree with &quot;I cannot afford that&quot;. I have never seen or heard of someone being denied tenure or a job because they didn't present at a conference one year. Hiring decisions are never so close that a single conference presentation (no matter how prestigious) sways the decision. I would argue that there are very few upsides to submitting an abstract without results and potentially some downsides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitting an abstract without any results will not get you a place at a highly prestigious conference or a keynote address. It will get you a place at a conference that essentially accepts all abstracts, but not much more than that. In fields that I am familiar with conferences happen at least every 6 months and more often every 3 months. This means that by not submitting now you are merely delaying your presentation by 3-6 months. Therefore the cost of not submitting is a 6 month delay and a slightly different conference that is potentially slightly more prestigious (e.g., with results you might be able to get a talk instead of a poster).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In slow moving fields 6 months is essentially meaningless. In fast moving fields, 6 months is a long time, but in the fast moving fields I am aware of you don't present results until they are about to be published. This means you don't want to submit an abstract of results you don't yet have. Therefore I see very little cost of waiting for the next conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the benefits of waiting. Again they are not great. The abstract will actually represent what you are going to talk about. You will likely get put in the correct session. There is a higher chance of getting a talk. If everything goes tits up, you will not have to withdraw. While most people will not remember, some of your close colleagues will and this could hurt future references. Withdrawing also screws over the conference organizers and they will not forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the issue of how long do you need to get results. If the abstract was due the day of the conference, presumably you would want to have results before submitting the abstract. What about a week? A month? 6 months? Where is the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally there is the issue of integrity. While one can write the abstract to make no promises and only state the current truth, this is in fact difficult. If you do this frequently enough you will likely eventually make a statement that is a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to answer the question, what about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don't have any results yet as it is still N months before the conference. By the time the conference rolls around we are sure we will have something interesting. If not, we will present some old data or just not show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:36:57.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7473" CreationDate="2013-01-25T12:07:37.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My short answer is that I only send important email within working hours avoid early morning late afternoon hours. I usually get a very high reply rate with this technique as opposed to send email at midnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T12:07:37.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7469" CreationDate="2013-01-25T12:36:54.107" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am almost certain that post doc is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; what is meant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English speaking systems outside of North America, and especially referring to Europe under the Bologna accords, an &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; refers to someone who is studying for, but has yet to receive, his &lt;em&gt;first post-secondary education degree&lt;/em&gt;. Typically this degree is some equivalent of Bachelors, but in some cases students maybe enrolled in accelerated programs with a longer term of study that leads directly to (the equivalent of) a Masters degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; student can, but not necessarily, refer to someone who is studying for a &lt;em&gt;graduate diploma&lt;/em&gt;. In many countries having a Bachelors (or equivalent) is not sufficient in itself to qualify one for starting a postgraduate degree. One often requires a &quot;good enough&quot; Bachelors degree (such as one with honors). The graduate diploma is an intermediate step in which a student who has already received his first post-secondary degree studies further in order to qualify to enroll in a masters (or sometimes doctorate? I am not sure about this) degree program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;postgraduate&lt;/em&gt; student refers to someone who has already obtained a first degree, and is now pursuing a second, third, or Nth degree beyond it. See, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgraduate_education&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A postdoctoral researcher is generally &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; considered as a student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English speaking North America, an &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; typically refers to someone studying for a bachelors, since almost all (if not all) degree programs go through that stage in North America. And a &lt;em&gt;graduate student&lt;/em&gt; refers to any student studying for any degree beyond that of the bachelors (so that would be typically the masters or the doctorate). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T12:36:54.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:32:14.480" Score="7" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the master's student is working on a research problem. I am a PhD student. I have an idea which I proposed to my advisor on the same problem. Now he wants me and the masters student to work on that idea and publish a paper. Would I be treated as a first author in that paper or would I be a second author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T16:46:51.163" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T16:01:40.427" Title="Doubt regarding authorship" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7478" CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:47:01.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You give a partial version of the story using pejoratives instead of trying to stay based on facts. So it is difficult to answer your question with that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we can say is that authorship is something to be discussed with your advisor. It will be his decision, in the end. A good way to help yourself is to work hard on that idea, and clearly make your point. The best way to help yourself be first author is to write the paper, or at least the more significant portions of it! Start already with introduction and methods, and as soon as results are gathered, write it up and then submit it to your advisor. If you have done a large part of the work and wrote the manuscript, you should have no problem being first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T14:47:01.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7478" CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:55:33.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authorship is always controversial, but the general rule is: &lt;strong&gt;Contribution of authors determines the order of the authors on the scholarly publications&lt;/strong&gt;. The first author is the one who has contributed the most and usually writes the paper. The last author is usually a professor or senior researcher who leads the team, and his role is almost supervisory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, how significant was your idea to produce outputs? If you had a significant idea, you have designed the research. Even if the MS student has made many experiments, you can make a contribution by writing and preparing the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can ask a senior researcher to judge between you, if still there is any controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T16:17:31.860" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T16:17:31.860" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7478" CreationDate="2013-01-25T18:03:16.260" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD student insisting on being the first author on a master project is something not welcoming sometimes. &lt;strong&gt;Specially if the master student understands the problem and she can solve it by &lt;em&gt;herself&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, unless you will bring a new major perspective to the solving method, you won't be the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with master students and my role was very clear from the beginning. I was involved either as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;supporter to the master student&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(i.e. checking the literature, suggesting improvements, studying the problem, brainstorming for better ideas, help with writing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the master student is supporter for me&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(i.e. doing code implementation, graphic design..etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If the research problem is the student thesis&lt;/em&gt;, then most likely you will not be the first author (it is the student thesis, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authorship thing is the supervisor responsibility. If you are very concerned about it (i.e. you wouldn't work unless you are the first author), then you should speak with the supervisor before starting. Tell her why you want to be the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, if you took the leading position as an experienced researcher you might be the first author without asking for it (unless alphabetical ordering took place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T20:28:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T19:12:30.450" Score="6" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been looking at some universities abroad (I'm from Norway) like in Hong Kong (HKUST), but the academic staff to student ratio seems dreadful compared to others with 1:23. Still, people seem to think it's a really great place to go. Also, it's ranked 19th in the world in the course I want to take, Mechanical Engineering, despite this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is, how much weight should I put in this ratio? Will it impact my education greatly when the ratio is so high?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5716" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T20:01:03.483" Title="How important is the academic staff to student ratio?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7482" CreationDate="2013-01-25T20:01:03.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the ratio is about undergrad students, I wouldn't worry too much: those figures may vary wildly without the quality of the education dispensed being affected. For one thing, academic staff may not be all teachers, proportion of research vs. teaching time may vary, degree of implication of PhD teaching assistants (which do not count as academic staff) is not included, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The value given, 1:23, makes me assume that's what you mean)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the ratio is about “grad students” and/or “PhD students” to academic staff, then yeah, you should give it a careful look. If the ratio is too low, run away fast! There are places that take too many grad students, if they can manage the funding, but won't have the human resources to advise/tutor/supervise them as they should. Trust me, you don't want to be in such a place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T20:01:03.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T20:54:57.883" Score="49" ViewCount="7269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently on the academic job market, and scheduling on-campus interviews with institutions that might want to hire me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am invited to an on-campus interview at the University of X, and must travel there by air.  They handle travel on a reimbursement basis: I buy the plane ticket, and then they reimburse me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the interview is a few weeks away.  Since the job market sometimes moves fast, there is a chance that by the time of the scheduled interview, I may have already accepted another offer (say from the University of Y).  Of course I should then decline the interview at X, but I would have already bought the plane ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I plan for this contingency?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could buy a refundable ticket to X.  However, these are normally several times the price of a non-refundable ticket, and if I do end up traveling to X, they might balk at reimbursing me for such an expensive fare.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could buy a non-refundable ticket to X.  If I end up not going there, I could ask X to reimburse me for the cost of the ticket (or at least the &quot;change fee&quot; charged by the airline to let me use the ticket's value for a future flight).  However, I suspect they will be reluctant to reimburse me for a trip I'm not making, and might refuse to do so altogether, in which case I am out-of-pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could wait until the last minute to buy a non-refundable ticket for X.  But it may still be expensive for them (or may exceed their limits), and the most convenient flights may be sold out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could contact University of X and ask them for guidance.  I'm a bit hesitant to do this, as I am afraid that if I bring up the possibility that I might accept another position, they might think I am not seriously interested in theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a standard way to handle this situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in the United States, if it matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T21:55:59.547" LastActivityDate="2019-07-07T22:31:06.187" Title="How to buy plane tickets for job interviews?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-25T21:06:26.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always best to ask. You can use another pretext as a reason for your “hesitation”. Say, for example (in short):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wonder what the restrictions are on travel reimbursement. I could buy a ticket X right now but I am not fully sure about the exact timing of the flight (due to family arrangements not yet settled). However the price might increase if I wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not want to ask you have no possibility other than 1 or 3. Depends on how you evaluate your chances of finding a job before the interview. Probably 3 is worse than 1: if you have a cool new job you will not mind so much losing a plane ticket. I do not think universities would accept option 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T21:06:26.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7505" CreationDate="2013-01-25T21:32:47.250" Score="8" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Observation:&lt;/strong&gt; According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=RFOREIGN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD stats&lt;/a&gt;, the number of international students at US higher education institutions is the highest in the world and still rising (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_student#United_States.2C_United_Kingdom_and_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia here&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/article/1546399.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;What are the main factors underpinning the observation above?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in (partial) answers pointing to studies, or sources of statistical information on the topic, not solely opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a reformulation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7455/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T22:33:35.100" Title="What are the main factors driving popularity of US higher education among international students?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-25T21:49:02.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the cost of buying the plane ticket is expensive, I would look at it as an &quot;opportunity cost.&quot; If you wait until the last minute, and &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; get a job offer and &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; get reimbursement, then you have the worst of all worlds: no job offer, and a very expensive plane ticket to pay for!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is therefore much better to ask the schools for guidance. However, if the issue is a financial one, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; mention to the school that you might need a travel advance in order to help pay for your ticket. Normally they can work out some sort of arrangement if it is a problem for the candidate to pay for her own ticket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; correct, however, in thinking that the school would not appreciate having to ask what happens if you need to cancel because of accepting another job. If you do that, you can save yourself buying the plane ticket, because you're probably not getting a job at that school anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T21:49:02.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-25T23:03:29.133" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in similar situations recently, and I have to say first that most of the time, the university was directly taking care of buying the plane ticket for me, so it somehow simplifies things. Nevertheless, I would say that the first point is that whenever you schedule an interview, you should somehow commit to attend it, meaning not accepting any offer  before scheduling the interview. If you are expecting soon an answer from a place that you would definitely take if accepted, then wait until having received the answer before scheduling the next interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth mentioning that in many cases, an interview is not just an interview, and you might also give a seminar, meet and talk with people there, so it might be interesting to go there in any case, even if you have been accepted to another place. However, it's quite important to be open about it with the interviewing institution. I have been in this situation, i.e., going to an interview while having accepted another offer before, and mentioning only at the last minute, and it was clearly a rude thing on my side (to my defense, I didn't fully realise it was an actual interview, and thought it was just a seminar to make contact with the team there. It was however a clear fault on my side). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, let's assume you've already applied to A, and you're waiting for their answer, and you need to schedule an interview for B. Two cases are possible: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;either A is your preferred place, and in that case, wait until you have received their answer before making any arrangement. Ask A when they plan to give the answer, and if the expected date is close to the interview for B, then explain the situation to B. Academia is a competitive market, and there is nothing wrong in applying for several positions at the same time. Excellent candidates are usually accepted in several places, and as JeffE would say, if you're not excellent, why would they hire you anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;or B is your preferred place, and in that case, schedule the interview regardless of the date when you receive the decision from A. The only tricky part might be that you receive the answer from A before the interview to B, and that you have to make a decision, but that's hope to you to know the trade-off between accepting A and losing for sure B, or refusing A and risking for B. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in both case, go for 3: wait until the last moment to make any arrangement. You should finally consider the fact that academia is a small world, and that if you apply to both A and B, it's very possible that they are both aware of your double application. Anyway, I wouldn't expect a recruitment committee to believe that you have only applied to their opening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; Apparently, I wasn't as clear as I wanted to. In no case I'm suggesting not to &lt;em&gt;accept&lt;/em&gt; any interview offer, but simply to try, if possible, when you're waiting for an answer from A, which would be your first choice, and you receive an interview offer from B, to wait to have the answer from A to schedule the interview at B. If you can't wait, then schedule it anyway, but be clear with B that you're expecting an answer from A that might arrive, and that you might have to formally accept before the interview at B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T23:23:11.837" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T23:23:11.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-26T00:11:55.263" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've bought the ticket for an interview that you honestly intended to go for, and you get an offer in the meantime, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should decline the interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might be pleasantly surprised by the place and realize that it's more in contention than you think. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might make useful contacts that will help you later on in your career even if you don't go there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you might get an offer from this place, and having two offers improves your negotiating position tremendously. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T00:11:55.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7491" CreationDate="2013-01-26T02:06:25.177" Score="7" ViewCount="15647" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Q&lt;/em&gt;: How common is it for a faculty/school to request/demand the good PhD applicants to come in for an interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For someone that lives outside of the U.S. and wants to apply to do a doctorate in the U.S., should that person temporarily relocate to the U.S. (at the correct time and for the correct duration of course) with the expectation that they'll have to interview in order to get in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do top schools vary from mid-ranked schools when it comes to interview frequency? Does it vary by faculty? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T04:09:16.587" Title="How common are PhD interviews in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7490" CreationDate="2013-01-26T04:02:10.807" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's typical for a US university to invite PhD applicants for a visit only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; they have been accepted for admission. The purpose of this visit is primarily for the school to make a good impression on the student and try to convince the student to accept their offer of admission. An interview is not normally a required part of the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of the best things you can do to increase your chances of admission to a particular graduate school is having a professor there who wants you to work with them, and who will lobby the admissions committee on your behalf. In order to get this kind of connection with a professor, you will need to meet them and establish a rapport well in advance of applying to the university, and it's possible that the professor will want to meet you in person as part of that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T04:02:10.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7490" CreationDate="2013-01-26T05:32:00.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rare to demand an interview. Having said that, I know that in some disciplines (parts of bio, for one), students are brought in BEFORE the final decisions to meet with faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T05:32:00.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-26T06:12:17.067" Score="21" ViewCount="3202" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my advisor's students asked me how frequently I have meetings with him. And since at that time we had very few meetings I replied: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We have a very few meetings and the advisor does not allocate time to me.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advisor heard it and has started retaliating by reducing those few meetings to zero and complaining about me to other faculty, etc. Do you have suggestions about what I should do now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T14:55:25.500" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:58:08.720" Title="How to deal with advisor not allocating time to me?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7493" CreationDate="2013-01-26T08:32:31.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you can't switch advisors. Have you tried having a heart-to-heart with your advisor about this matter ? Failing that, maybe you have members of your committee who can help mediate ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T08:32:31.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7493" CreationDate="2013-01-26T08:42:31.540" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;do not assume bad faith&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;go talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt;. There is an issue which you feel threatens the successful continuation of your PhD, the natural person to talk to about it is your advisor. In this case, it so happens that the problem involves him too, which means you have to be diplomatic about it, but he's still the right person to hash it out with.  &lt;strong&gt;Behave professionally&lt;/strong&gt;, do not accuse him of anything, just state the problem factually (&lt;em&gt;“I need more involvement from you in order to successfully overcome this problem”&lt;/em&gt;), and see what he and you can come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not assuming bad faith at first is good advice in most professional situations. In this particular case, the elements you mention are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of time, which could be completely explained by other factors such as the advisor being swamped (don't get me wrong, it still needs to be fixed somehow, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's being an ass)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rumor (&lt;em&gt;“complaining about me to other faculty&lt;/em&gt;”), which might be just that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if after trying in good faith to solve the issue with him (give it a few tries), the situation doesn't improve &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; it is hurting you &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you think he is of bad faith: I listed several possible recourses in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7296/2700&quot;&gt;this related answer&lt;/a&gt; (and another write-up &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5849/2700&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;But don't jump the gun&lt;/strong&gt;, because a lot of the options on this list will mean burning a bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T08:53:58.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7493" CreationDate="2013-01-26T12:51:55.233" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my first day of PhD school, our department chair said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never say anything bad about your advisor; he or she will hear about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all laughed, but it's invariably true--people talk, and word gets around. I've found that the best ways to repair a damaged relationship with your advisor are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to him or her directly about the problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce the best research you can with frequent updates (in person or via email)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T12:51:55.233" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7493" CreationDate="2013-01-26T14:47:35.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go with the other commenters on approaching the matter diplomatically and courteously as a means of getting the feedback and support you need—up to a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience of academics is that though often bright and accomplished, they can sometimes be a precious lot, flinching from the mildest bit of constructive criticism, often taking things personally.  If I could turn the clock back I would have seriously considered changing supervisors.  I often think I got my PhD in spite of and not because of him.  When you are just starting out in research you need the feedback, support and encouragement.  So try not to be stoic about it, look for potential avenue out of your problem: have a chat and get it in the open, or change supervisors if your differences are irreconcilable. It helps to be on the same wavelength, personality-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is saying they are not human beings.  But if you are being neglected, then the issue needs dealt with sooner rather than later.  If it is a PhD you are doing this may well seriously delay getting your research out in good time for your final viva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5723" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T21:58:08.720" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:58:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7486" CreationDate="2013-01-26T15:26:06.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is interesting me so I did an hour or so of internet search for academic studies of the reasons behind brain drain in recent years. I will give here some results which I found. It is not a total answer to your question and I do not think anybody can completely answer your question because it is a very complex and highly studied issue. Reasons (driving factors) depend on each individual. Paper 2 makes useful distinction between PULL and PUSH factors and gives a list of useful examples of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;em&gt;Brain Circulation Replacing Brain Drain&lt;/em&gt; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2012/09/brain-circulati.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science CareersBlog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Brain circulation,&quot; meeting attendees noted in a consensus statement issued 6 September, is the &quot;mutli-directional flow of talents, education and research that benefit multiple countries and regions and the advancement of global knowledge.&quot; In an era when many scientists and scholars move between several countries to pursue training and research, the statement suggests, &quot;brain circulation&quot; often more accurately describes international mobility than &quot;brain drain,&quot; which implies a unidirectional flow that only benefits certain countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in agreement with Charles comment. Maybe the situation is not so disymmetric than it used to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;em&gt;Analysis and Assessment of the “Brain Drain” Phenomenon and its Effects on Caribbean Countries&lt;/em&gt; at &lt;em&gt;FLORIDA ATLANTIC COMPARATIVE STUDIES JOURNAL&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to understand how the “Brain Drain” happens, we must spend some time discussing migration and the reasons people leave their home countries in the first place. The reasons many Caribbean natives go abroad and fail to return home fall within two categories often referred to as pull and push factors. Push factors are circumstances or events in the home countries that result in persons leaving. Examples of push factors are the structural adjustment programs enforced by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on developing countries that increased unemployment and reduced government funding on social programs in these countries which then led to increased migration. Pull factors are the incentives in the receiving countries that encourage persons to seek employment opportunities there. Examples of pull factors are the immigration incentive policies of the receiving countries that tend to attract higher educated, skilled and trained personnel. For example, the H-1B visa system in the U.S. is often used as a stepping stone by immigrants who want to acquire employment-based permanent residence there. The current immigration policy in the U.S. enables those applying for the H-1B visa to have the dual intent of attaining temporary work status but intending to apply for permanent residency (Kapur and McHale 2005). Other developed countries have similar immigration policies that continue to attract highly skilled workers from developing countries. Currently in Australia, employers of immigrants are not required to prove that domestic workers will be adversely affected by the employment of foreign employees, in fact, all they need to show is that employing the immigrant will be, in some manner, beneficial to Australia (Kapur and McHale 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;em&gt;China's brain drain&lt;/em&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://shanghaiist.com/2009/07/28/dang_brain_drain.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; on a Gallup survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This article argues that education, employment and family are the main reasons behind China’s brain drain. The article also provides useful statistics concerning the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;em&gt;Thai Diasporas and Livelihood Strategies in Thai Society&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trf.or.th/TRFGallery/Upload/Gallery/Documents/Files/%201000000022.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This article uses traditional definitions of Diaspora to examine the phenomenon of the brain drain in Thailand.  It also considers the reasons for emigrating to another country in terms of personal livelihood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(last few examples are taken from here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/BrainDrain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/BrainDrain/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T15:26:06.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7502" CreationDate="2013-01-26T17:04:28.340" Score="6" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Chemical Engineering major in undergrad, and I currently have two internship offers this summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is a 10 week summer research internship at a top-10 program in petroleum and chemical engineering. The internship concludes with a poster presentation of the work you've done. My work here could potentially turn into a publication. It's worth noting that I've technically already accepted this position. I didn't get the offer for the next one until after I had accepted this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second offer is a full summer semester research internship at the uni I currently attend. I'd be working on the research I'm doing now all summer; as a result, I'd almost certainly be published by the end of the summer, possibly twice since my PI has a couple of papers that just need one more topic covered before they get fully published. It's worth noting that this internship would get me almost twice as much money by the end of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: which should I take? I have a very good shot at the Goldwater next year, so I need to know if it would be better to be published, or to have a letter of rec/research experience at a top university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also meeting with my PI next week to see if I could possibly postpone the one at my school to next summer, so I'd have a chance at doing both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5724" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T20:07:51.870" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:52:53.857" Title="Which Internship should I take?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7501" CreationDate="2013-01-26T17:47:33.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a situation not many people find themselves in—having to choose between several very good options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic issues to ask yourself are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;high-quality&lt;/strong&gt; letters of recommendation for your future needs? If you're doing fellowships, you will definitely need &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt;, and may need &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt;. Again, these should be people who can comment on your abilities &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; simply just reciting grades in lectures. These must be people you have had an ongoing working relationship with. Ideally this is a full-time research mentor, but realistically also can include people such as part-time research mentors (such as REU-like work during the semester), instructors for whom you've worked as a teaching assistant, industrial employers (for an internship), and possibly your academic advisor (if it's someone who's advised you for multiple years).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the letter writers: are they all at the same institution? If so, then it might behoove you to find one at another institution. This will be helpful to you, as it shows you're not just a &quot;system&quot; product. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the research that you're doing something that you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; you want to do, or just &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you want to do? You will in general be more likely to have real success if you enjoy the work you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will the pay for the &quot;away&quot; program be sufficient to cover your living expenses and needs? If so, then you should neglect the difference in pay between the two programs, and focus on the relative benefits of the two programs for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no right answer to this question; you just have to choose which option is easier for you to live with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T21:52:53.857" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:52:53.857" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7486" CreationDate="2013-01-26T19:12:02.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a full-fledged answer, but there was a post (by &lt;a href=&quot;http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/04/why-is-u-s-higher-education-so-dominant-and-why-is-harvard-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marginal Revolution&lt;/a&gt;) pointing to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isb.edu/faculty/upload/Doc23820121635.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; [1] that reports &lt;em&gt;alumni control&lt;/em&gt; of the Board of Trustees as a key factor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All this is made possible by a model that transfers control to those&#xA;  who value it most, that is the alumni, who then drive competition for&#xA;  students, faculty, facilities, research, programs, global ties, sports&#xA;  coaches and rankings. Conversely, they also provide funds and guidance&#xA;  to maintain uniform excellence in all these pursuits. This maximizes&#xA;  the value of the degree or the “sheepskin” that the alumni are&#xA;  figuratively cloaked in for the rest of their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] “Why is Harvard #1? Governance and the Dominance of US Universities” – Working Paper 2012, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T19:12:02.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7493" CreationDate="2013-01-26T21:35:20.300" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others: &lt;strong&gt;Talk to your advisor.  Do not assume bad faith.  Be professional.  Be an adult.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do not expect the situation to be resolved in a single talk.  The response you describe is completely out of proportion to your offhand comment; &quot;threatening&quot; a student is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; appropriate.  It's impossible to tell — &lt;strong&gt;and it's none of our business&lt;/strong&gt; — whether your advisor is actually being childish and abusive, or you are just perceiving her (justifiable) annoyance as an attack.  But in either case, your student-advisor relationship is dysfunctional.  Even if you can resolve this particular situation, you may be better off finding a new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:35:20.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7486" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:33:35.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Abstract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the answer will tackle the question's false assumption that the US is the most attractive destination for international students. Secondly, I will cite some of the factors making a country/region's education system attractive to international students. Finally, to tackle some of the comments, I will present a chart showing number of international students per capita in selected countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;USA is not the most attractive destination for international students&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/10/01/04/index.html?contentType=/ns/StatisticalPublication,/ns/Chapter&amp;amp;itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-84-en&amp;amp;containerItemId=/content/serial/18147364&amp;amp;accessItemIds=&amp;amp;mimeType=text/html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD Factbook 2011-2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics&lt;/a&gt;, the number one destination of foreign students among OECD countries is Europe followed by Northern American region:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;European countries in the OECD were the destination for 38% of foreign students in 2009 followed by North American countries (23%). Despite the strong increase in absolute numbers, these proportions have remained stable during the last decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put the numbers above to global perspective, observe also that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Foreign students enrolled in G20 countries account for 83% of total foreign students, and students in the OECD area represent 77% of the total foreign students enrolled worldwide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Factors driving attractiveness of higher education in OECD countries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/10/01/04/index.html?contentType=/ns/StatisticalPublication,/ns/Chapter&amp;amp;itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-84-en&amp;amp;containerItemId=/content/serial/18147364&amp;amp;accessItemIds=&amp;amp;mimeType=text/html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same source&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Language&lt;/em&gt; as well as &lt;em&gt;cultural considerations&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;quality of programmes&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;geographic proximity&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;similarity of education systems&lt;/em&gt; are determining factors driving student mobility. The destinations of international students highlight the attractiveness of specific education systems, whether because of their &lt;strong&gt;academic reputation&lt;/strong&gt; or because of subsequent &lt;strong&gt;immigration opportunities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commenters to the question cite the ratio of international students per capita as an indicator of attractiveness of education system for foreign students. While I do not see any direct correlation between attractiveness of an educational system and the ratio of foreign students per capita (countries can be arbitrarily protective, or non-protective w.r.t. their own citizens), I prepared the following chart from the OECD data (relevant to year 2009):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O12gl.png&quot; alt=&quot;foreign students per capita - OECD countries, 2009&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart was constructed by merging data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=RFOREIGN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD.Stat&lt;/a&gt; with OECD countries population data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932502638&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD population 2009&lt;/a&gt; as published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/02/01/01/index.html?contentType=&amp;amp;itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-9-en&amp;amp;containerItemId=/content/serial/18147364&amp;amp;accessItemIds=&amp;amp;mimeType=text/html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;corresponding section of the OECD Factbook 2001-2012&lt;/a&gt;. The computation is done on non-citizen students column for the year 2009, except for United States it is the number of non-resident students (due to lack of a non-citizen students datapoint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T22:33:35.100" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7473" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:19:25.163" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marketing experts advise to send emails on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They also advise to send the email early in the morning, so that they will be at the top of the pile for those that check their emails right after waking up/arriving at the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunday afternoon is also a good choice. If the receiver reads emails during the weekend, you will be one in a very few, and if the mail is read on Monday, it will be at the top of the pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T23:53:35.497" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:53:35.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-27T06:08:56.640" Score="15" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a different set of professors every semester and as batch sizes are pretty big ~80, and with every professor dealing with 3-4 separate batches of equivalent size, for barely 3-4 months at a time, it has been hard to develop one to one relationships with professors. In such a scenario,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I decide whom to approach for a recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should I go about this to get a good recommendation, in this specific scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T13:43:35.957" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T04:46:55.330" Title="How do I get recommendation letters?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7508" CreationDate="2013-01-27T08:07:31.893" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the OP’s situation explained in his question and the following comments that he has trouble with getting recommendation letters written by his professors themselves, if I were him I would&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Find the professor who would write the recommendation letter himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Find the professor who taught the class which I had very good grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Find the professor who taught the class in which I was most interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, I need three recommendation letters. Now, I have three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that I tend to have good grades when taking the class I am very interested. If I had good grade in a class I was interested, the chances are the professor would remember me and more willing to write the recommendation letter himself for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T02:42:25.720" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T02:42:25.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7508" CreationDate="2013-01-27T13:47:08.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7509/3&quot;&gt;scaahu's fine answer&lt;/a&gt;, even though I know it is difficult in some places, I would emphasize that students should begin to develop personal relationships with professors &lt;em&gt;long before&lt;/em&gt; you need one to write a recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is even with mass lecture classes like you describe (and those aren't even that massive - but 3-4 mass lectures are quite a few per semester) if you take the time to meet with the professor, ask for extra curricular work (e.g. to be involved with projects the professors are conducting), or be very active and engaged within class you can develop that relationship a professors needs to write a quality recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T13:47:08.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5272" CreationDate="2013-01-27T13:47:33.577" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I finally managed to take a bit of time today to research this question further, so here goes:&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there hasn't been much data compiled on the topic. Science Commons's &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecommons.org/resources/faq/authorsaddendum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ on publication agreement addenda&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources reveals that many scholarly authors have had success over the years in altering the terms of a publication agreement. Sometimes this has been done by marking up the publisher’s agreement; other times the change has been done through use of an addendum. &lt;strong&gt;However, we are not aware of any statistical data concerning the success rate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while the more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Science&lt;/a&gt; page fails to mention success statistics at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we can measure the “success” of such addenda (or its influence) by looking at the reactions of various publishers to it. The MIT Libraries actually maintain &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/sites/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-policy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a list of publishers and their stance&lt;/a&gt;. In a similar vein, the useful (and by now, well-known) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php?fIDnum=%7C&amp;amp;mode=simple&amp;amp;la=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SHERPA/RoMEO online database&lt;/a&gt; maintains a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;publishers statistics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;                  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KkAwz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;SHERPA/RoMEO statistics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at these lists of publishers/journals, and you cross that information with the hottest and most common journals in each field, you see that things are &lt;strong&gt;very field-dependent&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, the status of publications is quite different from the other hard sciences listed below. I do not feel competent enough to comment on it, but it seems to be working okay, with most mathematicians able to publish preprints or postprints on their personal websites, or to publish outside the “conventional model” (read: arXiv). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201203/rtx120300436p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This summary&lt;/a&gt; of various publishers' policies in the field is quite good (and recent).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physics: due to the success of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; and the open-friendly stance of physics publishers (both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Institute of Physics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Physical Society&lt;/a&gt;), physics seems to be one of the favorable fields for open publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Traditional biology journals tend to belong to the big-money editors, who don't favor open publishing. However, open journals seem to have made good progress in this field in the last few years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemistry is simply a nightmare&lt;/strong&gt;. Most quality journals in chemistry are published by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.rsc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Royal Society of Chemistry&lt;/a&gt;, Wiley and Elsevier. All four of them have taken a hard stance against the open publishing movement. Open access journals have very little (read: absolutely no) success breaking through in the field of chemistry :(&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above are the fields I felt comfortable enough discussing. I welcome edits (or comments) that add information on other fields (including humanities)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, all in all, statistics pertaining to publication agreement addenda specifically are hard to find (if they exist). But, we can measure the success of the open publication model, and it  varies widely between fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T20:12:57.187" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T20:12:57.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7478" CreationDate="2013-01-27T16:01:40.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not see this as an opportunity to supervise an able student? Prod them, needle them, cajole them. Do whatever it takes to get the student to generate a good result.  It seems to me your adviser is giving you an opportunity to grow your professional capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the master's student does all the research work, then they should be first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T16:01:40.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7519" CreationDate="2013-01-27T18:55:43.727" Score="22" ViewCount="7838" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's perhaps a better title for this question, but I can't immediate think of one - suggestions for amendment welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to clarify the purpose of reading textbooks. It sounds obvious at first, but what I mean is opaque to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reading a textbook describing ~35 problem-solving and improvement methods, as part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/t889.htm&quot;&gt;this course&lt;/a&gt;. It is densely packed with definitions, ideas, procedures etc. I'm highlighting as I go through and occasionally making notes in the margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I finish reading, I barely remember what I've just read, let alone what I've learned. If I was asked to describe the characteristics of a technique I've just read about, I would struggle to put forward a coherent and strong answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if I condense my notes and read through them, the problem remains - there are too many 'facts' to learn, remember and regurgitate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads me to ask what the purpose of reading textbooks is. Is it to learn and understand 'facts' &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; be able to remember them? Or is it to learn and understand? That is, it doesn't necessarily matter if you can't remember, so long as you can understand ideas when you revisit them and can argue them in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity, I'm a distance-learning student with The Open University, so the textbook I'm referring to isn't a &lt;em&gt;traditional&lt;/em&gt; textbook, but one that is perhaps closely identified by F'x as a &lt;em&gt;coursework book&lt;/em&gt;. These books are used in place of lectures, and so are meant to be read in a linear fashion on a week-by-week basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1484" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T06:36:31.187" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T20:49:28.597" Title="How to read a textbook for distance learning coursework - do I need to work on fact recall, or is understanding enough?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-27T19:06:52.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be getting several things out of this on the first pass&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That there are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; variation on this theme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the problem has odd corners where a specialized approach is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; better than a general approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should recall some of the more important ways of categorizing the problem in order to select an approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should probably remember a couple of the most general methods &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; their limitations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On subsequent reads--and you won't master a complicated field without going over it several times--you should have a better idea of what to be looking for and should start concentrating on either the kinds of problems you expect to deal with (if you know and/or are doing independent research) or the kinds of problems that your instructor indicates will be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T19:06:52.553" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-27T19:18:19.290" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might helpful to change the question slightly, into &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of writing a textbook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a textbook is written to lay out a fairly well codified body of knowledge about a topic. The &quot;well codified&quot; part is important: it's expected that this body of knowledge has some lasting value. The textbook is also written (hopefully) in a way that *&lt;em&gt;teaches&lt;/em&gt; this knowledge, as opposed to merely dumping it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds like the book you're reading is of the second kind (a dump of facts). Such a textbook is better treated as a reference book, like a dictionary. No one reads a dictionary (unless they're trying to pass the GRE or win a spelling bee :)), but they will refer to it to get the meanings of words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, with a book that describes 35 problem solving methods, maybe reading it cover to cover isn't the best strategy. Rather, you should focus on a few techniques (or even one) and try to understand that well. Then put the book away and revisit it from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A textbook can be a collection of facts, but often it's more than&#xA;  that: it's a path through the facts that provides a structure with&#xA;  which to process the facts. The goal of reading (and learning) is to&#xA;  acquire both the facts AND the structure. The facts will be easier to&#xA;  remember if you have the structure in place, and the structure makes&#xA;  more sense with the facts as examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T19:18:19.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-27T20:08:26.050" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many many different types of textbooks, and they have very different goals. Off the top of my head, I can list the following three main kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coursework book&lt;/strong&gt;, used as reference material for learning a rather broad topic. You expect it to bring a general introduction of the techniques in one field, broad overview, enough to understand the challenges in the field, identify the most common solutions and be able to work them on your own. This will surely include many problem sets, with or without solutions. It is also typical for this type of book to “highlight” some of the content, which the author deem essential for the reader to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“State of the art” book&lt;/strong&gt;. They can be very different in scope, content and style of presentation. They exist to give a summary of the extent of knowledge on a given topic. They are written for experts and wannabe-experts, so more attention is usually given to correctness than than pedagogy. Such work is useful not only because of the text itself, but also because it usually offers a large number of references to seminal and important papers in the field, which offer you a good way to get started. As such, they're also useful to people who are already experts, they give good references for common knowledge (&lt;em&gt;“hey, I know it was established in the 1980’s that co-enzyme X accounts for a nontrivial part of this metabolic pathway, but I wonder who did that work… let's check”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference book&lt;/strong&gt;. In the most extreme case, it's like a dictionary: examples of such are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abramowitz_and_Stegun&quot;&gt;Abramowitz and Stegun&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_Physics&quot;&gt;CRC Handbook&lt;/a&gt;. Those are not usually called “textbooks”. This is not something you're supposed to read from A to Z, but rather open when you have need.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first two cases, &lt;strong&gt;if the textbook includes problem sets (or exercises), you should do them. &lt;em&gt;For real&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, without looking at the answers until you're finished. If you're stuck, give it some time, then come back. Don't give up. This is where you'll learn the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T20:08:26.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-27T23:43:49.247" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is that there is no point in &quot;brute forcing&quot; through a text book in this manner, unless you're cramming for an examination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not read textbooks in this way, especially if you do not own them. If you borrow a textbook from the library, and then read it cover to cover, and not remember anything, that is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good textbooks are worth owning, which implies that they will be in your possession for years. You can use them for reference, and study them over the years in piecemeal fashion as your wandering interest returns to the topics from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to absorb the material in your textbook, &lt;strong&gt;you must do the chapter exercises&lt;/strong&gt;. You can give yourself a course by going through the book, or you can spread this over years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the book is a real &lt;em&gt;tour de force&lt;/em&gt; on the subject matter and requires a lot of commitment, such that if you put in the commitment, you become an authority on those problem-solving methods. Is that something you want for yourself, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to memorize from your textbooks is just enough of a summary of the ideas that when you encounter some idea in the world, you can remember which of your textbooks has something to say about that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, this book, let's call it Foobley and Bings, has 35 problem-solving methods.  Can you remember enough about the gist of the methods so that when you see a problem, you can think &quot;Aha! This problem has a general pattern which fits one of the problem-solving methods in Foobley and Bings.&quot;  Even if you don't remember the details of the problem-solving method, this can be a big time saver, and the fact that you recognize the pattern shows that you have knowledge. (Even Foobley and Bings themselves may have to crack open their own book to solve that same problem, if they haven't touched the material in years. Maybe the wrote the book to &quot;unload&quot; it from their brains to &quot;make room&quot; for something else, while having something to refer to.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="3900" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T23:50:36.493" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T23:50:36.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-28T07:03:01.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read something about this issue a long time ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you read a book and then forget all the content, what remains is &lt;strong&gt;Intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I do not remember the name of the person who wrote this;-)) Do not worry about forgetting details, something will settle in your mind. Besides, reading a book (whatever it is) is an exercise for your brain and makes you smarter over the time. But I agree with others, most of the time it is not wise to read a text book from cover to cover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T07:15:37.597" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T07:15:37.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7521" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-28T07:40:42.060" Score="17" ViewCount="3684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to graduate with a B.S. in mathematics and will (hopefully) be attending a PhD program somewhere starting in the fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is one supposed to do the summer between?  I don't have any money, so I can't &quot;travel.&quot;  I would love to do another REU, but I don't think they generally admit graduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5735" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T02:07:26.480" Title="What does one do the summer between graduation and graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7521" CreationDate="2013-01-28T07:55:55.090" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who jumped keenly straight from my undergraduate into graduate school (we could start at any time), my advice is to rest. Even if you cannot travel, spent time with your parents or grand parents or anyone who will give you a room to sleep in. Maybe help out at a local charity. Clear your mind. Read some novels. Go hiking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be the last extended break of your life (before retirement). &lt;strong&gt;Enjoy it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T08:02:49.663" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T08:02:49.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7526" CreationDate="2013-01-28T08:43:33.823" Score="126" ViewCount="10231" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you do a research presentation, what is usually the focus that you take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors tell me to make the slides as self explanatory as possible, and I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone should be able to understand your slides without you being there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this approach seems counter intuitive to the principle of a &quot;talk&quot;. After all, you already wrote a paper that meets that objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people, for example in things like TED talks or (please bear with me) presentations by Apple, have very bare bones slides, where they only focus on transmitting the main message of the talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your take, should the presentation be made as didactic as possible or just a cold transference of information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T12:50:51.660" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T23:13:47.237" Title="Should the slides in a presentation be self-explanatory or be as minimal as possible?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="22" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="54" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:01:02.540" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Matt Might, a rather young professor, has an interesting style, encompassing the minimalistic approach. Have a peek at this video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaPsYmOmgcI&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaPsYmOmgcI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also provides some useful guidelines for preparing a presentation: one of the most important is considering your audience: &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/academic-presentation-tips/&quot;&gt;http://matt.might.net/articles/academic-presentation-tips/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to engage your audience, not necessarily to tell them every piece of information, and, in a way, advertise your work so that they will read your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are aiming to get feedback, then you need to focus your story on what you want to get feedback on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are teaching, you will need either more details in your slides or accompanying notes. Perhaps in this case, you might want people to be able to understand your slides without being present. But for regular scientific presentations, I would not aim to make the slides all encompassing. That's what the paper is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T09:01:02.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:05:17.820" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to take the point of view you refer to, but I don't believe in it any more. In my current way of thinking, slides for a talk are a dynamic accompaniment to the story that you're telling - they're visual aids for what you're saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike TED talks or the Apple talks, a technical presentation necessarily has more content on slides, because even a visual aid needs to lay out notation, formal statements, diagrams and so on. But I don't think it's necessary to make the slides completely stand alone. Make the slides relatively clear and uncluttered, and make sure they flow along with your story, and you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T09:05:17.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:09:43.913" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say the two most important points are to make slides you are comfortable with and not to limit your oral presentation to reading your slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if you are presenting a research paper, i.e., where more written material is available to the audience, then the objective is usually to make people want to read your paper, instead of explaining the entire paper in 20 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people prefer to have full slides, arguing that when members of the audience are not understanding English very well, it can help them to have both the oral presentation and the slides, especially when the speaker does not speak a perfect English. It is also helpful for members of the audience who got distracted at some point, and who can quickly read where the speaker is. Other people prefer minimal slides, arguing that having both the full text and the oral presentation might confuse the audience. In particular, whenever a slide is displayed, the audience tends to read it immediately, and during the reading, to be less receptive of any spoken words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the only &quot;bad&quot; presentation would be to have full slides, and to limit your presentation to reading them, because you become basically useless. However, you can have long slides, as long as you consider them as an aid for the audience who haven't followed what you said (for whatever reason), and not as your script to read. You can also minimal slides, containing only the key points. In the end, you need to be comfortable with your slides, and to give a presentation like one you would like to attend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T09:09:43.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:20:26.670" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;A slide being self-explanatory? Why would you be presenting then? What's the purpose of YOU being there? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO the slides should enhance your presentation not be the presentation. &lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt; are the presenter and the slides should help you convey your message better. Having self explanatory slides takes away the attention from you which is a nonstarter for a good presentation. At any given time during your presentation you should aim for having sufficient material on the slide (sometimes just a picture or a formula or at times a couple of bullet points, etc.) to help you convey your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T09:20:26.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:28:13.017" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question, and actually the source of much debate when preparing or discussing a presentation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7526/495&quot;&gt;Charles&lt;/a&gt; mentioned, you should feel comfortable with your own slides. Different people have different presenting styles, and will rely on different types of slides. It also depends, to a certain extent, on what you are presenting, i.e. if it actually makes sense or not to use pictures instead of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually make more-or-less self-supporting slides. I put statements in full sentences, equations, and the odd figure. I even have statements in there that I will repeat almost verbatim to the audience. This is a huge no-no for many people, but it all depends on the delivery: If you repeat the statement without reading it, if it just flows with the rest of what you're saying, then there is, in my opinion, no shame in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two personal reasons for making my slides self-contained. The first is that the slides contain the points/statements that I absolutely need to make, i.e. the stuff that I don't want to forget because I got distracted by a question or some detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second reason is that usually the slides are all that's left after you've given the talk. Unlike TED talks, which are available as videos, most conferences will only put your slides online. If your slides are just a collection of images and keywords, they will be of very little use to anybody who goes over them without you in the foreground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:24:00.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7521" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:38:39.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree completely with Dave on his answer. There is one instance that I think is worthwhile to do some preparation and that is if you are doing a particular grad program and in one of the fundamental areas relating to it you don't have a good foundation. Lets say you are going to do a Master's in Applied Mathematics and you are not good at dealing with differential equations. If that's the case then put in some time now and sort it out rather than later when you will be drowning in coursework, exams, projects and all the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T10:07:06.937" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T10:07:06.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-28T09:47:32.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase what I was often told at university: a good higher education won't teach you everything you need to know, but it will teach you how best to find it. Even a passing familiarity with the literature on any given topic is a good start down that path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5737" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T09:47:32.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7521" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:50:41.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your mention of REU makes me think you are in the US and you say you don't have any money. My suggestion would be to get a job. You will come out anywhere between 5-10k ahead. US stipends tend to be low. Not having credit card debit at the outside of grad school is really nice. A small amount of savings will provide a large percentage increase in your monthly budget. Dipping into your savings for 1k extra per year will give you something like a 10 percent increase in your monthly budget. Having savings/reduced debt might be the difference between having to or not having to take a non-academic job. It might also allow you to afford a laptop or self fund a conference trip or buy some much needed reference books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T10:50:41.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T11:18:15.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, a &lt;em&gt;wall of text&lt;/em&gt; in a slide that you're just going to read is boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no added value in reading it unless your audience is under 6.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Most people read faster than you can speak which means they are ahead of you and don't care about what you're saying.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gives an impression that you don't know about your subject because it doesn't give you opportunities to elaborate.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It keeps your eyes attached to the wall where you should be facing your audience and looking for eye contact.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It also removes everything that is enjoyable in a natural speech like rhetoric questions, pauses, small jokes, suspens, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best (in fact only but there may be others) resource I know of for making presentations that avoids this concern is the book from Garr Reynolds : &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321811984&quot;&gt;Presentation Zen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5740" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T13:31:37.920" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:31:37.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T11:36:34.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends strongly on your audience. I agree that keeping the slides simple is nicer, and more engaging. Your not tempted to just read your slides, but they serve as a visual anchor for your audience and help them follow the talk. If your doing a sales presentation or similar, a Steve Jobs-style presentation can help you &quot;wow&quot; the audience. Also, you can use slides mostly to convey information that you can't with speech, e.g. graphs, screenshots, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I said, you have to consider your audience. In my field (particle physics), typically half of the audience is staring at their laptops during a talk. Some of them are following your slides there, some are doing something completely different. There are dozens of plots and numbers and technical details that you have to show, so the slides are typically pretty dense. In fact, the whole purpose of many talks is to &quot;present plots&quot;, so your talking is auxilliary to the slides, not the other way around. You explain certain features of the images, guesticulating, and answering questions. The other thing is that our slides serve as documentation for the talks, so people expect to understand the gist of the talk by looking at the slides afterwards. As an (advanced) student, people would even give me their research talk slides instead of papers or books to learn from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, giving a &quot;nice&quot;, &quot;best-practice&quot; talk in a work meeting of physiscists, you'd probably confuse and disappoint them, if they are listening at all. If you are in the humanities, you'd probably not use powerpoint at all, or just one or two slides with important quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tip is to look at what your colleagues are doing, and to start from there. It can never hurt to clean it up a bit, make it concise and legible, but at the same time try not to alienate your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5741" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T11:36:34.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T12:14:46.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are valid arguments for both sides. What you need to decide is which arguments make sense to your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;were you asked to make your presentation slides available after your presentation? Is it expected? In that case, you should probably add more information to your slides than bare bones (somebody who looks at your slides 6 months after you gave the presentation should find complete coherent ideas inside).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;are you invited as a guest speaker? that implies that people are more interested in &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; and what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have to say than your slides (keep your slides minimalistic)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;are your slides going to be used as documentation later? Are they going to be reference lists? That gives you two options: use minimalist slides with an accompanying document (text / images / movie / whatever) or use an exhaustive presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we are often asked to &quot;prepare some slides&quot; in the absence of a presentation (in my current workplace). That means making exhaustive slides, with explicit exposition of ideas and as much context as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have internal presentations (organized as one hour seminars), presenting general aspects of new technologies, summaries of conferences, the ideas behind some of our projects etc., to our colleagues. Those presentations are made to capture and hold attention and contain images, sometimes a joke or two and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the most relevant questions here are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what is the scope of your presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;who is your audience?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5742" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T12:14:46.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T12:15:14.797" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to play devil's advocate… while I agree in general with the other answers that it's not a good idea to put too much information on slides, I will list &lt;strong&gt;a few of the reasons why &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt;, you might want to have self-explanatory (or at least, rather dense) slides&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meeting of a technical nature, with some participants absent but who will be able to read the slides afterward. In such meetings, the slides serve not only as a support for your oral presentation, but also as a &lt;strong&gt;written reference for what was said in the meeting&lt;/strong&gt;. As such, they will be consulted later, both by persons who missed the meeting and some who were there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, ideally you would make two different contributions (two versions of your presentation, or a presentation and a “technical note”). However, that's more work, and a good compromise can be to simply have self-explanatory slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Language issues: &lt;strong&gt;if you fear not being understood by everyone&lt;/strong&gt;, either because their language may not be strong enough, or yours may not. I advise this sometimes for students who do not feel sure enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Language issues, take two: having self-explanatory slides allows you to make a &lt;strong&gt;dual-language presentation, with oral in language A and slides in language B&lt;/strong&gt;. I often do that myself, working in a French-speaking country where there are a number of students and post-docs who don't master French. For national seminars/conferences, it is sometimes considered more polite (especially by senior professors) to present in French, yet having slides content in English helps those who do not speak French follow your presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you feel you may get lost, and want to be sure to have a backup under your eyes. I see it as a &lt;strong&gt;last resort&lt;/strong&gt;, and prefer in that case to have &lt;strong&gt;a few keywords per slide&lt;/strong&gt; displayed on the presenter screen (maybe your laptop).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T12:15:14.797" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T12:40:48.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say the slides should be &lt;strong&gt;as concise as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. Absolutely no formulas or sentences that go more than 2/3 of the line width. If you can put one picture and spend one minute talking about it, it makes a much better slide than one with the points of what you are saying written there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have reasons against texts in slide. The obvious exception being presentations on things that are text in nature, for example programming languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People read the text while you are speaking. If you are going to &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; that, why make them &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; it too?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Text is distracting&lt;/strong&gt;. Text and speech are of the same form in our minds. You may listen to music and read a book, you may see a picture and listen to a talk, but &lt;strong&gt;you can't read and listen to a speech at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;. You may have had noticed this, if you often found yourself forgetting what the speaker was saying while you were reading his slides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Text usually gets long. That means, unless you have a bullet point like &quot;- Scalability&quot;, anything else you write there becomes a whole at least 10 word sentence or phrase. This makes the effect of the previous points stronger.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slides do not replace notes/books. Many teachers do this! They make the slide as if it's a summary of the book they are teaching and students study the slides and pass the exam. That's horrible. There are far better formats for summarizing a book than using slides. That's worse than watching a 100 hour documentary over 10-minute youtube pieces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding formulas, they are boring and no one is going to pay attention to them anyway. It may be the most important thing in your work, but again, no one cares. The only exception is during a university course, where the professor may want to explain in details how the formula is derived. If not, again simply presenting it is quite useless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just that full slides are terrible, but also that slides are not created for it either. If you have ever tried to talk without slides, you would understand me better. Traditionally, we would use blackboards (or whiteboards!). If during your talk you felt like something would be better drawn, you would use the blackboard. Slides were created so you wouldn't have to waste time during the talk to draw a possibly elaborate image. Or, like I said before, in case of presentations on all things text, you wouldn't want to write by hand a 4~5 line piece of code if you could just type and format it with a computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I would like to emphasize again that &lt;strong&gt;slides assist the speech, not carry them out&lt;/strong&gt;. They are there to &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you (as the speaker) demonstrate what you are trying to say, rather than &lt;em&gt;replace&lt;/em&gt; you by being completely self-sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final note is that, some amount of text is usually inevitable. My point is to try to get them to the minimum possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T12:40:48.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7521" CreationDate="2013-01-28T13:16:58.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally agree: &lt;strong&gt;Take a break and enjoy it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I changed from my masters to doing my PhD on a weekend. The last exam was on Thursday, the first day on monday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regret it. I also moved to a new country during that weekend, so this was a very stressful time, with finishing the thesis, a breakup and all. So, compared to that, the first couple of days in my new job where relaxing, even if this was and still is a really hard time. But, with slightly less adrenaline powering me, I immediately became ill. Not a good first impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beginning of a PhD is not a walk in the park, especially if you change topics like me. You want to be fit for this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospect I should have taken a little holiday, even if it meant taking up a small loan. Doing my PhD I earn enough to be able to pay something back. A simple relaxing holiday does not require a lot of money. You need a place to sleep, some food and maybe a couple of beers. Try to empty your ToDo-list as much as possible, or it will haunt you in the years to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this time for preparation is probably a bad idea. You will have time to get to know your topic. If you start relaxed and undistracted (ToDo-list), then you will have a great start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5744" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:16:58.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T13:43:21.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase the Bard: &quot;The talk's the thing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've already written (and published) a paper about the talk contents, then your aim for the talk is to get across the information to the people in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, think about what slides will facilitate you oral delivery.  Clearly, this will depend on the audience.  Some areas of study appear to require 1,000 words per slide; others get away with zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Larry Lessig&lt;/a&gt; has a very minimalistic approach to slides that works very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:43:21.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:46:05.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read a textbook, I read through an entire chapter quickly, just getting an overview of what will be shown and then go back through the chapter section by section, doing exercises (if the book has them) and trying out each idea to make sure it fits in with what I already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to link it to something I already understand well, so that the knowledge &quot;sticks&quot;. Drawings at this stage nearly always help me. Especially if they're strange links; My mind seems to be better at remembering very odd things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I'm done with a chapter, I revisit it about 20 minutes later, then an hour later, then a day, a week, and a month later. Once the month repetition is done, I tend to find that I can remember everything in that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a little long winded, especially the repetition, but it has been said that repetition is the mother of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Scott H Young&quot;&gt;Scott H Young&lt;/a&gt; has some excellent resources on how to study textbooks. He seems to be very, very good at learning. His free chapter of &quot;Learn more, study less&quot; has some excellent tips in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5761" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T16:46:05.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:48:06.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading a textbook is reading for academical purposes. In many ways this is very different from reading for leisure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, they don't teach you that in your first days at university, thus many students still try to read ALL books on a reading list from A to Z - and fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really differentiates academic from leisural reading is, that you have four phases: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare what you will read - What questions should the textbook answer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic Reading itself - Read only the text that may answer your questions. Read it, mark elements, take notes, read again until you got the gist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post-processing of what you read - Did the text answer your question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Application of what you read - Academic reading is the basis for academic writing, so archive your notes, tag them, classify them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5758" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T16:48:06.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T18:13:46.817" Score="28" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you do a research presentation, what is usually the focus that you take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talks are advertisements for papers and (more generally) for research agendas.  They are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; substitutes for papers.  &lt;strong&gt;The primary aim of a research talk is to provide the audience with the &lt;em&gt;intuition and motivation&lt;/em&gt; to get involved in the described research, at a minimum by reading the paper.&lt;/strong&gt;  Technical detail should be kept to the minimum necessary to provide that intuition and motivation.  (How much detail is actually necessary depends on your audience.  If you give too few details and focus entirely on intuition, your technical audience won't be motivated; on the other hand, if you give too many details, you'll obscure the intuition.  But since almost everyone errs on the side of giving &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; too many details, it's better to aim for too few.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talks are not papers; they're performances.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone should be able to understand your slides without you being there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly disagree.  Slides are an augment to the talk, not a substitute for it.  Again, the point of the slides is to help provide motivation and intuition.  Text should be kept to a minimum.  Technical details should be kept to a minimum.  There should be lots of pretty pictures that provide intuition.  It's perfectly fine to include complex formulas or charts or graphs &lt;em&gt;as pretty pictures&lt;/em&gt;, but don't expect the audience to absorb the fine details.  It's also fine to have complex pretty pictures that you can (&lt;em&gt;literally!&lt;/em&gt;) point to during the talk, to keep the audience engaged in your story.  But the slides shouldn't &lt;em&gt;distract&lt;/em&gt; from your presentation, by (for example) giving the audience something to read instead of listening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slides are not talks or papers; they're props.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T18:13:46.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T18:36:52.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slides should be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;minimal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;goal oriented&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;not full of text&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graphics and Visualizations&lt;/strong&gt; are highly appreciated &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key in preparing slides is to &lt;em&gt;know your message&lt;/em&gt; and try to approach the audience without burden them with big portion of text slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T18:36:52.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T19:08:43.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slides in no way have to be &quot;self explanatory&quot;. Theres nothing worse than punctuating an energetic presentation with a slide that takes more than 10 seconds to understand. Full sentences on a slide force the viewer to read them, while you are saying them (have you ever watched an english movie with subtitles?). This is pointless and can be distracting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slides are there to enhance the talk by adding info that is best presented visually. Graphs and pictures are the most important examples of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike what other have said, I believe you should not incorporate what you are saying, into text on a slide. Yes, it might help people with language barriers...you could present the slide in multiple languages, and have have someone doing sign language as well. But back in the real world, the objective should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presenting the information, as clearly as possible, to the &quot;main&quot; audience, while captivating them throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you accept this objective, you can focus on the presentation itself, not how your slides will hold up on their own or in other languages etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning to give a lecture is best done through experience. It is important to actually pay attention to your audience. You have to give new information time to settle in, which may not be natural because you (the presenter) already know the information. You will begin to get a feel for your audience and find a good tempo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something didactic, it should be put together separately than the talk and have its own clear objectives in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5763" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T19:08:43.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-28T21:29:07.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less Wordy &amp;amp; Short&lt;/strong&gt; Statements / Points on Slides - &lt;strong&gt;Concise, Brief, Clear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crisp well-defined visual representations&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Diagrams / Charts - they can eliminate the need for many slides &amp;amp; needed text&lt;/em&gt; - as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even better if you have the ability to &lt;strong&gt;create InfoGraphics&lt;/strong&gt; or similar visual representation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, for &lt;em&gt;when you are not around to talk about the slides&lt;/em&gt;.. Some &lt;strong&gt;presentation notes below the Slides could possibly add a little fencing or meat&lt;/strong&gt; to the &lt;em&gt;brevity of your concise slides&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For academic paper presentations, You can &lt;strong&gt;tune up or down the level of detail/ depth &amp;amp; breadth&lt;/strong&gt; based on who is the &lt;strong&gt;audience and what/ how much you want to expose them to&lt;/strong&gt;.. based on your audience psychology.. It's a fine judgement call&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, I cannot stress enough on great &lt;strong&gt;VISUAL representations&lt;/strong&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;consolidate CLEANLY&lt;/strong&gt; what &lt;em&gt;could have taken many slides of text / points&lt;/em&gt; - A great diagram will take effort to build but pay off many times over:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It also &lt;strong&gt;forces you&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;clearly organize, sanitize and align your matter&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's possible to for different parts of your STORY to not align or flow well when spread over many slides, but &lt;strong&gt;a diagram will force you to refine it&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;will just look wrong&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;become a disaster&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: These are some quick thoughts after a long night flight that can be refined on another fly by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5771" LastEditorUserId="5771" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T15:49:13.443" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:49:13.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-28T23:29:54.037" Score="49" ViewCount="174556" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have works that are almost submitted to journals, or are in journal review, is it appropriate to include these on my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5776" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T17:43:25.700" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T18:27:24.690" Title="Should I post publications in preparation (or just submitted) on my CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7549" CreationDate="2013-01-29T00:13:07.293" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't put anything in your CV you cannot justify if asked. A CV is not just a list of your accomplishments, it's a list of material you can provide to a recruiting committee in order to help them make a decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a same way that if you claim to have a given degree, you should be ready to provide the corresponding credentials, if you claim to you have a paper under review, you should be ready to provide the submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you can list in your CV your submitted work, but not the pieces of work that are &quot;almost submitted&quot;, unless you're ready to provide the draft if asked (the question is: if the draft is not submitted, that probably means it's not ready, therefore can you provide it?). If it's possible with the journal/conference policy, you can even put your submitted version on a pre-print site, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On going work can go into the &quot;research statement&quot; part of your CV, where you can explain the different ideas you're working on, and even give the key concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="4385" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T00:46:17.170" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T00:46:17.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7549" CreationDate="2013-01-29T05:21:05.233" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will usually list things that are on the arxiv. They can be viewed as tech reports, so I don't see the harm in doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it gets tricky is if (for example) you submit to a double blind conference. In such a case adding the paper to your CV might be viewed as a breach of the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general my view is that if you have the paper posted on your web page (and you should!) or on the arxiv, then it's perfectly fine to list it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T05:21:05.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7555" CreationDate="2013-01-29T09:05:30.127" Score="45" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I mention my Stack Overflow (and other Stack Exchange sites) reputation in my CV while applying for a post-graduate position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5790" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:35:50.587" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T21:10:42.810" Title="Stack Overflow reputation in CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-01-29T09:41:36.177" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I was to hire a Postdoc, Phd student, a Master student or a programmer for my project and that position had a related component (lets say Programming, GIS, Maths, CS, Mathematica etc.) and someone had a very good reputation in the site that I understood, I will definitely see it as a strong indicator. Of course it's easy to check the type of questions that have been asked/answered and the calibre of the person =&gt; if someone develops a strategy to just get points by answering easy questions and asking general questions that are bound to get a lot of up votes that would not win a lot of brownie points. Nevertheless I will never penalize anyone for it. It's active participation which is always positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T19:32:37.977" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:32:37.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7549" CreationDate="2013-01-29T09:51:12.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Okay, it seems I have to play devil's advocate again… because my position on this is different from Charles' answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My CV lists my scientific production separated between peer-reviewed articles, non-peer reviewed articles (I have none, but it could happen), invited conferences, oral conferences. As such, I would &lt;strong&gt;definitely not put a non-published paper&lt;/strong&gt; among the “publications”, especially not among the peer-reviewed ones. In my field, it is rare to publish (in the sense of “make publicly available”) a manuscript before it is accepted (chemists don't use arXiV much, because most journals prohibit it), so I find it weird to list unpublished material in a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, because you didn't tell us your field, I would say &lt;strong&gt;beware&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if your manuscript is &lt;strong&gt;unpublished&lt;/strong&gt;, it's not a publication, &lt;strong&gt;don't list it as such&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if it's published (arXiV or your website or other) while in review, clearly mark it as such (and don't list it as &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the “under work” manuscripts do not add much information anyway. The topic they cover is surely already covered by your research statement (or list of research interests), so why would a hirer care about whether you are writing this paper or that paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T09:51:12.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:09:22.580" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you shouldn't. Not yet, anyway&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;       &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/irU5P.png&quot; alt=&quot;List of user&amp;#39;s SO/SE accounts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think it's perfectly fine to list that information on a CV for an academic position. Depending on the profile of the position itself, I would feature it more or less prominently. Say, if you apply for a scientific programming position (or a position with heavy coding), you could list it under a “Skills” section where you would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C/C++/Fortran with a focus on shared-memory and distributed memory parallelism (OpenMP/MPI)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Received formal training at XXX National Lab, taught parallelism course at University of YYY, involved in StackOverflow (username: zzz) on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(if the format allows it, like a PDF, consider including a hyperlink)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the position is not one heavily involving code-writing, you could tone it down, or even list it in a “Hobbies” or “Personal” section. Many people like to list hiking or book reading or civil war reënactments, so why not list Stack Overflow!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But…&lt;/strong&gt; in all cases, only do it if your account is of the &lt;em&gt;wow!&lt;/em&gt; type. You don't have to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet&quot;&gt;Jon Skeet&lt;/a&gt; (it may take years of therapy to accept that, but that's the sad truth), but you don't want someone to look up your profile and think &lt;em&gt;“meh”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T14:51:46.733" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:21:45.633" Score="51" ViewCount="3332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not understand what good it does them. A professor said it gives opportunity to read papers he would not read on his own. I am sure there is more to it but I do not see what they gain by participating in peer review process. It takes time, it is not paid and not even publicly acknowledged. Why do they do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T11:18:28.320" LastActivityDate="2020-07-15T14:33:51.040" Title="why do academics write peer reviews?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7557" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7558" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" Score="0" Body="About research projects performed by (or involving) undergraduate students" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:44:29.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7559" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7560" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" Score="0" Body="About oral examinations for academic job applicants or students" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:45:49.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7561" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7562" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" Score="0" Body="Questions pertaining to academic resources found on the World Wide Web" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:46:16.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7563" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7564" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" Score="0" Body="Copyright issues: publication agreements, copyright transfer upon publication, legal status of work-for-hire in academia, etc." OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:46:56.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7565" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7566" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" Score="0" Body="Oral presentations: preparation of slides, preparation of the talk, delivery…" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:47:45.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7567" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7568" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" Score="0" Body="Tenure is a guarantee of permanent employment, typically as a professor, achieved after a certain time in a “tenure track”" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:48:44.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:54:37.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. If you are going to present the slides, you can keep it minimal and still self explanatory as much as it can be. Because since you are presenting it, you know it in and out so you can explain during the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to share the slides with people who could not attend your session or altogether it is for distribution only then it should be self explanatory obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5796" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:54:37.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:57:01.897" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of at least five reasons why doing peer reviews gives an advantage to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get to read recent research results before everybody else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gives you a good opportunity to think really critically about a potentially interesting paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can put it in your CV and it will show that you are a known expert in the fields of journals you review for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to stay on good terms with the editor, who may judge your submission to the journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to get an editorial position with the journal, which is highly prestigious. For this one typically needs reviewing experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T20:14:40.937" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T20:14:40.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T11:28:06.560" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;academics are paid to perform peer review, in the same sense that they are paid to do research&lt;/strong&gt;.  I don't have a boss telling me what to research and paying me when it's complete; rather, my university expects me to perform research that is judged significant by my peers.  In the same way, my university expects me to perform peer review.  In my annual reports to the university, I report my research outputs and I report the journals for which I have performed peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may argue that my continued employment and promotion depends more heavily on my research than on peer reviewing, but the same could be said when comparing any of my service or teaching duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, academia is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gift economy&lt;/a&gt;, and if you want to be part of the community, you're expected to do peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2020-07-15T10:21:11.303" LastActivityDate="2020-07-15T10:21:11.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T11:31:42.307" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;silvado gave a good list of “short term” answers, i.e. the reasons why one would accept a given review. Maybe I'll summarize the first two of them, because they are the ones that motivate me the most: &lt;strong&gt;curiosity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe curiosity killed the cat, and I'm sure it killed a bunch of scientists too, but for sure it is what makes most of us tick. Whenever I receive a request for review, even if I don't have much time for it, my first instinct is to read the abstract and think &lt;em&gt;“hum, cool, how did they do it in detail?”&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;“I wonder if they thought about this and that”&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;“hey, I thought that was guaranteed not to work, how did they manage?”&lt;/em&gt;, or even &lt;em&gt;“oh, I had never thought about that”&lt;/em&gt;). In all cases, it makes me want to accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's a long term component to it. Even though the commercial publication model is &lt;em&gt;deadly sick&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;peer-review is a very good part of academic publication&lt;/strong&gt; (and I mean “good” in the moral, ethical meaning). In days I am fed up with the system, I sometimes think peer-review is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; good part of academic publishing. So… &lt;strong&gt;by submitting papers for review, you opt in this whole peer-review system&lt;/strong&gt;, and it becomes a moral duty to do your fair share of the reviewing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong, you're not contractually obligated to do so. But, if you send papers for review and never accept to review any, your colleagues (and the editor) will see you as a free-rider of the system, and will resent it. And I would too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T11:31:42.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T12:08:32.533" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers do a good job of laying out the practical benefits and the roles of curiosity and obligation.  However, I think there's an additional psychological factor: being asked to review a paper shows that the editor values your expertise, and that feels good.  This is a shallower reason, but I think it plays a substantial role in encouraging reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can remember the first time an editor I didn't know personally asked me to serve as a referee.  It was really exciting, and I thought &quot;Wow, this famous person has actually heard of me and is interested in my evaluation.&quot;  Of course it's not as exciting the hundredth time, but it still feels good to be a valued member of the research community, and I would be unhappy if the requests stopped coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T12:08:32.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-29T12:57:35.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heartily vote for &lt;strong&gt;(mostly) self-explanatory slides&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One conference I attend usually has eight parallel tracks. I frequently am interested in different talks held at the same time, attend one of them and afterwards read through the slides of the others. And it is extremely frustrating to then get slides that are unintelligible on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I understand that I am supposed to just read the paper in this case. To which I reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often the paper is not yet available (or even written) when the authors present work in progess. After all, that is what a conference is there for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading a few slides is a lot faster than even skimming a full paper. I will usually decide based on the slides and the abstract whether investing the time to read the full paper is worthwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, suppose that three months after the presentation, you get into a conversation about the topic you presented on. With (mostly) self-explanatory slides, you can just send the other guy the presentation for a first idea and then follow up if he is interested (related to the second bullet point above). With a minimal presentation, the best you can do is to recreate the entire verbal talk... &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you still remember what exactly you said back then, since a self-explanatory presentation also serves as a reminder for the author himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, preparing a (mostly) self-explanatory presentation also forces me to think beforehand about what I am going to say, how I am going to structure my talk and allocate my time, and it helps me not to forget about important details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, I do understand that slides will never be completely self-explanatory, which is why I called them &quot;(mostly)&quot; self-explanatory. On the other hand, neither will the published article be - a lot of stuff is not documented even in the best published articles. I believe that (mostly) self-explanatory presentations yield a good balance between communicating a rough outline and not going to the whole trouble of writing resp. reading a full article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T12:57:35.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:04:34.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other excellent posts here, I find that reading a manuscript in order to write a review is different than reading a published article just to see what is in there. When you write a review, it forces you to actually think about the manuscript, about its internal logic, about possible weak points. After all, it have heard it said that &quot;the job of reviewers is to kill bad papers and to make good papers even better&quot;, and to make a good paper even better, you first need to understand it and think about the subject matter in a way that not even the authors did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that I learn a lot more from papers I review than from other papers I consume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T13:04:34.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7549" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:13:46.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thing to think about is the rules of funding agencies and other people to whom you might submit these CV's. In German and EU funding applications, only &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; papers can be listed as part of an author's &quot;publications&quot; list. Work that is in review, no matter how far along the review process, cannot be listed until an acceptance notification has been given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's also not clear what stage of your career you're in. If you're applying, for instance, for a &lt;em&gt;post-doctoral&lt;/em&gt; position, then it would probably make some sense to mention manuscripts under review. Normally, in such cases, the CV isn't going to a committee—usually it's just the advisor himself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T13:13:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-01-29T14:44:38.120" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say not to.  As a hiring manager I really care most about the relevant details such as work experience academic focus.  Although SE/SO is pretty darn popular it's also a website and, although we may disagree about this :-), not seen as a professional/peer-reviewed/authoritative/juried/etc. source.  I would just see it at fluff and wonder why it was there.  If you're going for a research position keep in mind that these people haven't seen sunshine in months, much less a computer that doesn't have Matlab open on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, however, be interested if somebody explained to me (in the interview) what this whole thing was when I asked the &quot;so what else are you into&quot; question.  As a hobby this shows that you are a technologist first and that you make your geek part of your life.  I would take that into consideration for an academic or a professional position because it shows where your interests are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general; I would say that if you feel strongly about something- don't put it on your resume. Save that for the interview and make a good impression with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 2cents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Nate Eldredge made a good comment below.  Although it should be obvious, it is worth pointing out that this post is made from an industry perspective.  It is provided to frame the topic within the larger context of an interview; any interview. My experience has been that there is very little difference between my professional and academic interviews, ymmv - of course, and therefore I submit that the commentary is germane.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-reading my comments I realize that, yes, I was being a bit flippant for comedic effect.  No offense intended.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="45081" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T21:10:42.810" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T21:10:42.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:34:57.890" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the field. Unless you're sure that it's well-known and valued in your field, don't write it as a claim of competence — but you can write it as a hobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's not over-estimate the value of Stack Exchange. Stack Overflow, by far the largest website, has an Alexa ranking of 86. It's probably well-known among programmers, but probably not among others. Stackexchange.com in its entirety has a ranking of 469. That includes Stats, GIS, Maths, CS... &lt;code&gt;superuser.com&lt;/code&gt; has a ranking of 1620, &lt;code&gt;serverfault.com&lt;/code&gt; a ranking of 2159. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, an academic reading your application will not know the website you are mentioning. A CV should focus on the important parts. Any space wasted is harmful to your cause of grabbing their attention. Mentioning a high score on a website they haven't heard about is a waste of space. Therefore, I would not put it on your CV, unless you're sure it's going to impress them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I've heard of people writing in their CV that they're among the top 200 in World of Warcraft. It's perfectly fine to write hobbies in the CV — but if you're trying to convince someone of your competence by citing your score on a website they're not familiar with, you might do more harm than good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T15:34:57.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7583" CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:43:35.097" Score="12" ViewCount="1367" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any ways of getting to know about new PhD positions in CS other then just looking trough university/research groups web sites? Maybe people from different branches can name some specialized mailing-lists where PhD positions announcements are quite usual. I am particularly looking out for computer systems, mainly dealing with cache problems, scheduling problems, multicore architectures, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of websites that I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurosys.org/jobs/#doctoral&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EuroSys — European Job Openings in Systems&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.phdportal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhDportal.com&lt;/a&gt; (formerly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdportal.eu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.phdportal.eu&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarships4phd.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research Grants | International Scholarships&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarship-positions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholarship Positions&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;del&gt;http://youngbrigades.com/&lt;/del&gt; (site has new, unrelated owner; verified on 26.12.2020).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any help. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5807" LastEditorUserId="62311" LastEditDate="2020-12-26T22:01:53.373" LastActivityDate="2020-12-26T22:01:53.373" Title="Monitoring PhD positions in CS" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T16:41:33.030" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody mentioned quality yet.  One reason I like to review papers is because I can encourage authors to make better papers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sucks to read badly written papers.  By reviewing them, you can make the world a better place! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T16:41:33.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7467" CreationDate="2013-01-29T16:47:47.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why did this get moved to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://academia.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; ?  This is an algorithm question!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it so happens some friends of mine have one of the top timetabling algorithms, based on competition wins.  Here is a link to the paper (which will include references to other state-of-the-art timetabling algorithms)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An automatically configured modular algorithm for post enrollment&#xA;  course timetabling Chris Fawcett, Holger H. Hoos, and Marco&#xA;  Chiarandini - Technical Report TR-2009-15, University of British&#xA;  Columbia, Department of Computer Science, 2009. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/tr/2009/TR-2009-15.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[pdf]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T16:47:47.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7579" CreationDate="2013-01-29T17:06:47.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know the field you want to study and have read some good papers, contact the authors and ask them what mailing lists are good for their field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also state your motivation: they are generally good at knowing who has funding and may even be looking!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T17:06:47.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-01-29T18:52:58.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to talk about it with your advisor (naturally). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was narrowing down subjects I, too, was struggling with how much &lt;em&gt;interest&lt;/em&gt; I had in various topics. I got some advice from someone who was working at ABB and had recently finished a PhD. It went something like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A PhD is as much a long process as it is becoming an expert and contributing in a field. If you pick a topic you're enthusiastic about at the beginning, chances&#xA;  are, you'll become tired of it before you finish. If you pick a&#xA;  topic that seems less interesting, after working on it for a long&#xA;  time, you probably will come to love some things about it you didn't see at the start.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, the latter was true. I was more interested in finishing on time than having the topic of my dreams. But I finally enjoyed my topic a lot, even though at first it seemed boring and not up my alley.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T18:52:58.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T18:54:54.320" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I asked the same question, the answer was &quot;control and public relations&quot;. While the second one is obvious, the first is a little more subtle and evil. Having someone's else paper in advance it allows you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establish a &quot;give and take&quot; relationship with peers you want on your side. anonymity is easy to break, if you want to and know what is going on in other researchers' offices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;slow down the publication of a peer by dragging the review process or demanding additional science to be performed, especially if they are scooping you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get a sniff of what's going on in someone's else plate, thus granting you a head start that might be useful if you want to attack the same field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;indirectly control the quality of a journal to reduce its score. In some universities, the current score is used to evaluate the paper production of a researcher to grant him funds. If you can have an effect on the overall quality of a journal, this will reduce the total score of a researcher's past effort, and give an edge to someone else to get more funds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T18:54:54.320" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-29T20:17:21.113" Score="31" ViewCount="5233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished my thesis, it's been proofread by my advisor and myself, yet I have 24 hours to make last-minute changes to it. What should I be looking for? I will not make any substantial changes to the content, but what about the form? For such limited amount of time, where should I focus my effort? Or, said another way: what’s in your last-day check list for a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Major modifications to the original question. Thanks to F'x for the advice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5630" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T22:36:08.950" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T22:36:08.950" Title="What is a good checklist for last minute changes before submitting a PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-01-29T20:58:20.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the only &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; answer to this question would be, &quot;throw everything away and start over&quot;, and there may even be some (rare) situations where that approach is justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is basically varying shades of &quot;right&quot;, depending on your specific situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your advisor about pursuing your alternate interest as a side project, with the ultimate goal of a few publications on that topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with your advisor to identify other labs doing similar work, do a collaborative project with another lab with the goal of publishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On a similar vein, if your program allows it, do a &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt;-month (&lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; &amp;lt; 1 year) rotation in a different lab that focuses on your new-found interest, with the goal of familiarizing yourself more with the intricacies of that field, readying you for a postdoc or professorship role in that subfield.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down your ideas as possible ideas for grant applications for the future (postdoctoral tenure, professorship positions).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T20:58:20.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2013-01-29T21:02:57.930" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to state something explicitly that was part of all the previous answers: &lt;strong&gt;Reviewing papers is part of being a good academic citizen.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to other jobs, academia is not something you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;, it's a system you &lt;em&gt;enter&lt;/em&gt;. It's a community, an ecosystem of sorts, that provides &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt; for those who are part of it, at the cost of some &lt;em&gt;duties&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These duties, in academia, usually consist of publishing, teaching, supervising students, organizing and attending talks and conferences, doing some outreach, and, yes, refereeing publications, research plans, and grant proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as in most communities and ecosystems, there will always be &lt;em&gt;bad citizens&lt;/em&gt; who enjoy the benefits without the duties, and if their numbers grow too large, they end up destroying it. Fortunately though, most of us see being part of this community as a privilege and actually enjoy the extra work (see the other comments above), so that risk is, in my opinion, relatively small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you need an analogy, think of this site: You can ask questions and post answers. People usually do both, and actually more of the latter. You yourself invest your time in answering questions and, as an implicit trade, can rely on others to answer when the question is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T21:02:57.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7590" CreationDate="2013-01-29T22:07:29.873" Score="10" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past two years, I've been collaborating with a PhD student. He did experimental work, and I did modeling and data analysis based on his experiments. Now that my colleague is about to write up his PhD thesis, in which way can he ethically include the modeling and data analysis results in his thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need any of these results for a thesis on my own, and we are currently writing a paper on this together, so there are no worries from my side about misuse of these results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the related question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/are-overlapping-dissertations-ethically-acceptable&quot;&gt;Are overlapping dissertations ethically acceptable?&lt;/a&gt;, but I am more explicitly asking about how my colleague can present the results which are more based on my work in a good way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T22:40:47.440" Title="How can my colleague use our joint results in his PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-01-29T22:20:22.650" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't worry, be happy (and be truthful)&lt;/strong&gt;. There's nothing wrong in including in one's thesis stuff that you didn't do yourself, as long as the delimitation between what the candidate did and what others did is clearly marked. And by that, I mean no lies, but also no half-truths either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the presentation will thus depend on the interaction between you two and his part in the analysis (which ranges from “nothing” to “he suggested ideas that I tried” to “he ran my code himself”). In the first case, he could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As part of project X, I sent these results to Dr. John Doe at Big U. for him to perform his widely acclaimed topological Bayesian half-filter analysis. This analysis revealed that …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with presenting results obtained by others from your work, as long as they shed light into the phenomenon you're studying. I once had a student who published a work, which was built upon by another group during his PhD, and he presented this at some length (and critiqued their extension) in his thesis. That's part of the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the collaboration was closer, just make sure the thesis clearly indicates its nature and the contribution of everyone. Then, no fuss!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T22:20:22.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7586" CreationDate="2013-01-29T23:05:00.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to present a viable thesis to your examiners so perhaps there is a need to change your thinking about not making &quot;substantial changes&quot;. I know this is a difficult call at this late stage but if you discover a gap in your thesis, it is better to address it before submitting it to your examiners, rather than getting the examiners to point it out to you. If the latter happens, you will have to substantially revise your thesis and this will tax you emotionally to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the checklist, I have the following suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that you have really built up your case for the research. Your examiners will not be convinced if you present a flimsy case. Ensure there is a strong reason why you conducted the research (i.e. define the gap in knowledge that you are addressing). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that you have actually answered your research questions. I am unsure in which field you are situated but in sociology the answer is often not that clearcut. However, you can still make a strong case for or against your research proposition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have done statistical analysis, make sure you demonstrate that you have a good understanding of what you did (i.e. you understand the assumptions that underpin the technique, for example Pearson's r is for linear relationships). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that you have a section (in the concluding chapter) that spells out in black and white what contribution your thesis is making in your field. Often we just assume that the examiners will understand the contribution. We know our research so well (after doing it for 3 or so years) that the contribution is apparent to us, but it is a different story for the examiners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate critical thinking with a blend of personality. This is a bit controversial but your thesis is a reflection of your interests and a little bit of personality in your thesis will not hurt (only a little bit, though as this is academic writing). In my case, I incorproated my experience as an immigrant to explain why I chose to study what I studied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you will not get a poor result because of typos (though many typos will create a poor impression), so focus on the bigger issues if you can. All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T23:05:00.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7586" CreationDate="2013-01-29T23:08:09.707" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, if you've already proofread it recently, a second try will most likely not help. You won't see the typos and weird sentences anyway :)  I'll advise to focus on specific short parts that can make a difference in the reading. It's also the right time to get someöne else on board to give these specific items a second look (with fresh eyes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without further ado, I suggest you limit yourself to checking the following items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Text&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main check here is not really for typos (although be sure to fix those you will see), but rather for &lt;em&gt;clarity&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General introduction, general conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction and conclusion of each chapter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary/abstract, if one is included (sometimes it's written in 10 minutes in a haze, in which case it's worth extra checking in the end)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledgments, if it's already present (some people only include it after the defense is over). Make sure you're not forgetting someöne important, like your wife or your bonsai.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figures and figure captions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of the graphics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do color and symbols mentionned in the caption match the figure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you intend to have black and white figures in print, are the figures understandable in black and white? Do the captions make sense for both version (color and B&amp;amp;W)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Equations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check your equations. Again. Typos there are typically hard to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Numbers &amp;amp; tables&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All tables, all inline numbers: make sure they include units, make sure the number of significant digits displayed is reasonable and consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bibliography&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not care to much about the formatting: if most of it is okay, noöne will really complain about one or two missing page numbers or lack of italics in one title. However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If references are hyperlinked (using DOI number), click on each to check that they match the right online paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a paper is “in press” or “accepted for publication” or something else, check if it has been published since and update its status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The starting point for this was &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4760/2700&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2951/2700&quot;&gt;“Examining paper proofs”&lt;/a&gt;, but it is now significantly different)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T23:08:09.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7600" CreationDate="2013-01-29T23:26:15.443" Score="10" ViewCount="3852" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received an admission offer for a PhD at a prestigious US university. However I am also currently working in another lab outside the US with a potential to also receive PhD admission there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the deadline to respond to the US school is April 15 but the professor asked me politely to give an answer within a reasonable amount of time, also my former supervisor (which has no interest in the matter) suggest not to string along the US school and try to make a decision well before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel it might be unethical to wait the last minute because I respect the professor and he might lose good potential candidates. On the other hand I want to wait and see if there is a concrete possibility of pursuing a PhD at this other place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T21:24:13.643" Title="How much time should someone take to respond to a PhD admission offer?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-01-30T00:57:47.393" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't think of a situation where it would be helpful to list SE reputation on your CV.  Most people won't know what SE is, and so will either not care or think it's weird.  If your reputation is not very high then it's also going to look bad.  Finally in the one situation where it might help you (the person reading your CV is active on SE and you are a SE superstar), there's no point in listing it because the person will already know who you are.  I don't need a CV to tell me that Qiaochu Yuan is a major contributor to MO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T00:57:47.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7608" CreationDate="2013-01-30T01:26:07.637" Score="9" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my undergraduate study in computer science outside of the US. I hope to obtain a PhD degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the US, but I don't feel that I am qualified enough (in terms of research experience). So I am hoping to find a research internship opportunity in US/Canada. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could probably find relavant projects in my own country, but I feel that trying US/Canada first is more straightforward. After all, it's in US/Canada where I am looking for a PhD degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few HCI professors in mind, with whom I would like to work very much. Should I contact them for internship opportunities? What are my chances and more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;how can I improve my chances&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some facts that I think are relavent to the question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a US resident so I will need a VISA. I don't expect assistantships (it's up to the professor). I have already learnt the basics of HCI and I know the fundamental research methods (through reading and auditing classes). My undergraduate university is not &lt;em&gt;the best&lt;/em&gt;, but it's surely one of the best universities in my country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T10:37:57.377" Title="Chance Of Getting A Research Internship In US/Canada For Non-US Residents?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-30T01:41:30.140" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you're applying for tenure track jobs here.  The value of a tenure track job is enough more than the cost of a plane ticket, that I really don't think it's worth doing anything that could compromise your odds at University X.  If it's a matter of buying a ticket today or in a couple days, then you can easily drag your feet on buying the ticket without them even knowing.  But otherwise, just buy the plane ticket and deal with the tricky situation if it comes about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T01:41:30.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7601" CreationDate="2013-01-30T01:48:04.810" Score="14" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that as an undergraduate student, when you apply for a PhD degree in the US, you have to demonstrate adequate research capabilities, such as publications. But will areas matter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that a undergraduate student Q has been working on a networking project and she published a paper about that work. But Q is applying for PhD study in human-computer interaction. Will that paper help Q in getting the HCI PhD she wants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T02:26:47.460" Title="Will a paper in A help PhD application in B?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7594" CreationDate="2013-01-30T02:22:35.923" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As soon as you are sure, or April 15, whichever is sooner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; ethical obligation to answer before the April 15 deadline, especially if you are waiting for an offer from another department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it would be &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt; to answer earlier if you can.  So it would be &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt; of you to contact your current department's admissions committee (either directly or through your lab director), tell them that you have another admission offer but would prefer them, and ask if they're likely to offer you admission.  If they haven't decided, it would be &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt; of you tell them about your April 15 deadline and ask them when they expect to make up their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm assuming that you prefer to stay in your current lab.  If you'd rather accept the pending offer, even if you got an offer from your current lab, then what are you waiting for?  If you're not sure, then what more information do you need?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T02:22:35.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7599" CreationDate="2013-01-30T02:26:47.460" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees are looking for evidence of research potential.  Having a research publication in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; area is direct evidence of that potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One of the first hurdles that I encourage my own PhD students to jump early is &lt;em&gt;publish something&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;em&gt;Anything.&lt;/em&gt;  The point is for them to see the publication process — writing, editing, submitting, reading reviews, revising, resubmitting — and to kill off any doubts in &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; minds that they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do publishable research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T02:26:47.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7605" CreationDate="2013-01-30T05:45:56.907" Score="64" ViewCount="10640" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, there has been recently some cases that came to light of very well known scientists that have fabricated their data out of thin air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some instances these papers have been cited many times by other researchers and some of them have even been praised. Thus, when the truth came to light, it also appears to the  public that scientists have bad peer-review processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the presented reasons, how can a reviewer make at least some sanity test that the data is (most likely) not fabricated? Suggesting so could come as a great injury to the researcher, but I think there should be some kind of mechanism to control this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T04:23:05.813" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T04:23:05.813" Title="What should raise red flags to detect fabricated data" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:36:12.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember one of the most important thing form presentation skills training. Normal human brain is capable to remember 4 things. This means to have simple, goal oriented slides with approximately 3 strategically selected points. Just two is a waste of energy and four can be already to much for some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of info about this topic. Check this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/04/the-limits-of-m.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Limits of Memory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And drawings, pictures, schematics....picture is worth a thousand words. This doesn't apply to super heavy duty cliparts and similar stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no simple guideline &quot;how to make perfect presentation&quot;. Can't be. Every presentation is different, even about the same topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5819" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T06:36:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7596" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:43:01.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assistantship is upto the professor (Research Assistantships) as well as the department (Teaching Assistantships). It is highly likely that you will be supported by both over your phd life. That being said, I don't think US universities make distinctions among PhD applicants based on their nationality (in general) in terms of funding or admission. Best of luck for your application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might mail professors who you have in mind, but do check in their website whether they explicitly prohibit that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5820" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T06:43:01.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-01-30T07:18:19.883" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one reliable way to do it, which is to try to replicate their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unreliable, but not completely useless way, is to see if the numbers fit Benford's Law.&#xA;Benford's Law describes the distribution of the &lt;strong&gt;first digit&lt;/strong&gt; of many very diverse data sets. This is the distribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L9ehW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;(public domain chart from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rozklad_benforda.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andreas Diekmann describes this further, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02664760601004940&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Not the First Digit! Using Benford's Law to Detect Fraudulent Scientific Data&lt;/a&gt;, a paper in the Journal of Applied Statistics from 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T07:18:19.883" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-01-30T07:33:48.533" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the nature of the data. If the data presented is in form of pictures (such as photos of biological experiments, like Western blot), you can check for traces of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091009/full/news.2009.991.html&quot;&gt;image manipulation&lt;/a&gt;. Guidelines to examine photographic data are available from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3646&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T07:33:48.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7596" CreationDate="2013-01-30T10:27:11.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should simply &lt;strong&gt;send an email&lt;/strong&gt; to the supervisor you are interested in. Your &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; help to be accepted to any program is to have the support of a professor. In US/Canada you should just start by, &lt;em&gt;Dear Mr/Mme, X&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to convince the professor that you are a good fit, you need to convince him that you are have &lt;strong&gt;research potential&lt;/strong&gt;. This is what the university will be looking for too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could talk to him about your interests, and how they recoup his (assuming they do by OP post). If you have done any research in that field you could mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find and read first a relevant paper he wrote and have questions about it, ask. I you can't because they are too complicated (which may really happen), or behind a paywall to which you don't have access, you could ask for a few classic references to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastEditorUserId="257" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T10:37:57.377" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T10:37:57.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-01-30T10:55:54.873" Score="38" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Edit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After thinking about some of the points raised in the comments, I would like to expand on my answer, but also defend its form against the criticism that it is so vague as to be unhelpful. [In case you are wondering what the original answer was, it is roughly the sections 'Looking for mistakes' and 'Trusting your feelings'.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benford's law&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7605/5830&quot;&gt;mentioned by @EnergyNumbers&lt;/a&gt;. The answer is very popular; however I don't think that it is particularly helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benford's law is only one of many statistical techniques that can be and have been used to detect fraud or bias. It has become widely known, probably partly because it is simple to apply, but also simple to justify in a 'hand-waving' way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, its validity is much more limited than @EnergyNumbers (who calls it &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; unreliable way) implies. As originally formulated, Benford's law said that if you take a large range of numbers which have different sources, contexts, meanings or units, the logarithmic distribution emerges. This is a very interesting statement, but has little utility in detecting fraud. The statement that Benford's law, whether applied to first or second digits, should apply to a particular set of observations of a single variable, is an extremely strong statement. There are many, many natural examples of well-formed non-fraudulent datasets to which Benford's law does not apply. Several other digit distributions could reasonably arise in bona fide data. You may or may not be able to justify the assertion for your own data, however what you should not do is blindly apply Benford's law to various sets of numbers, and start forming opinions about their reliability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a serious statistical technique and requires non-trivial statistical understanding to apply. The same thing applies to checking for normality. Unless you have a good understanding of how normal distributions arise, you will not be able to form a theory as to why some distribution should be normal. If this is the case, then any test for departure from normality will be useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper that really examines this for Benford's law is &lt;a href=&quot;http://vote.caltech.edu/content/irrelevance-benfords-law-detecting-fraud-elections&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Irrelevance of Benford's Law for Detecting Fraud in Elections&lt;/a&gt;. [Hat-tip to @Flounderer who linked this in his comment.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why this answer doesn't go into any statistical detail&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original answer I gave, below, tries to err on the side of &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; handing 'formulas' over to people who possibly don't understand their use. I tried, perhaps not very successfully, to suggest starting places for thinking about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; and maybe &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; people either fake results or unconsciously introduce bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of forensics is in some ways very similar to other stats, but has some very important differences. If you are looking for a signal in some noise, you might form two hypotheses, both of which imply that data is random, but with say different means or distributions. If you are looking for cheating, you have to remember that fraudulent data is not in any sense random. Spotting it involves teasing apart (possibly) three elements: the real numbers, the deliberate adjustment, and any pseudo-random perturbation that might have been made to mask the adjustment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in order to properly apply some forensic test to a set of data, you need to first develop a proper theory of why the test might be meaningful. This entails hypothesing about exactly how the data might have been manipulated. For example, Benford's law was successfully used to investigate whether China's GDP growth in % was being rounded up if it had a high second digit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/01/14/1333552/chinas-non-conforming-gdp-growth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/01/14/1333552/chinas-non-conforming-gdp-growth/&lt;/a&gt; (registration required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a whole battery of tests and applying them to some data might allow you to get to the stage of theorizing, but it can't get you any further. This is why in the first few paragraphs of my original reply, I talked in very general terms about how faked data might differ from genuine data. These are supposed to give you places to go looking for anomalies, which you later investigate rigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Looking for mistakes cheaters might make&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting points can be things like testing to see if the numbers fit the conclusion too closely. If an experiment was done on several groups of test subjects, all of which are supposed to be identical, then you would expect the success rate in each group to be close to the overall average, but not too close. Some researchers who have made up their results had all group success rates equal to the average success rate to the nearest integer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get someone to make up the results of 20 successive coin tosses, they deviate from statistical likelihood because they don't put eg. enough sequences of 5 heads in a row. People usually think things like this are less likely than they are. Look out for things which are 'too random' or 'too regular'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers into election fraud have had some success looking at the last two digits of numbers to see if double sequences like '11' or '22' occur less than they should, because humans who make up 'random' numbers tend to avoid them. This applies in the specific case where you have enough digits that the trailing digits should be uniform, but that no rounding should have been applied. This test wouldn't have detected the Chinese GDP rounding, or manipulations where leading digits are adjusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mathematician Borel weighed the loaf of bread that his baker gave him each day and decided that the average was too far below the standard weight of a loaf to support the hypothesis that the baker wasn't making underweight bread. He confronted the baker, who promised that he would make the loaves heavier. After that Borel continued to weigh his bread. The average weight was now high enough, but he studied the distribution of weights and realized it corresponded to that which you would get if you always took the maximum of several observations of a normal distribution. He concluded that the baker always gave him the biggest loaf from those on the rack, but that the average was still below spec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a classic illustration of how someone might falsify results - by taking the best result from several runs. In order to reason about the distributions, it was first necessary to understand how this method of cheating works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or suppose that someone had a bunch of results but threw out those which they didn't like. Has this introduced unlikely biases in the selection of the original test subjects? Eg if patients are supposed to be chosen at random but there are fewer old people than one might expect. In general if any data were rejected you should test for dependence between rejection and other variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes real data has a particular bias or noise which is lost in faked data. In the Simonsohn paper cited below, he looked at a psychological study where subjects were asked to say how much they would pay for a T-shirt. Unlike other, genuine studies, the results didn't cluster around multiples of $5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which can be hard to look for but which is very damning is to figure out what the results might be if no effect was present and see if eg a single digit has been changed, or a round number has been added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometime people genuinely do introduce biases unconsciously because they believe in their theories or want to succeed. This could mean that they make very small adjustments which can have a large cumulative effect, such as rounding up numbers which should be rounded down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trusting your 'feelings'&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you need to try, is to get a 'feeling' for something dodgy, outside of the actual numbers. Again, all this does is give you a place where you try and build a proper statistical hypothesis and then test it against the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mathematics professor once said to me that you can spot false proofs by two things: either the work becomes very complicated at the point where it is wrong, or the wrong step is skipped over as obvious. Not quite the same situation I know, but very complicated data handling procedures could be designed to be difficult to replicate (or could be the point where the researcher manipulated data until she got what she wanted). Saying something like 'cleaning' or 'normalization' without explaining exactly what was done could also be a red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a very very standard source of data of a particular type and someone didn't use it, or used it but not in its original form, why not? People often give a citation justifying some supposedly straightforward manipulation they perform on the data to clean it or get it in a more convenient form. Usually but not always, this reference should be to a standard textbook on stats or experiment design, or to some paper which everyone in the field knows. If it's to something extremely obscure is this justified by the obscurity of the topic? Does the cited work actually say what they claim it does?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to proceed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to promote the general skill of trying to understand how people fake things, why and how they mix the truth with fabrication (or sometimes are subject to unconscious bias), and what constitutes strong evidence of anomaly. Looking at case studies, of which &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2114571&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simonsohn's paper&lt;/a&gt; is a great example, can help. Stephen Jay Gould's famous book 'The Mismeasure of Man', on the face of it a political tract critical of biological determinism, is also a collection of many case studies of deliberately or accidentally biased scientific work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that something is fishy, but you don't have the analytical tools you need to prove it, then you need to do research into specific statistical tests that apply to those cases. Among academics, most stats isn't done to detect fraud, and even if you have good quantitative skills you might not have this knowledge. The example of Borel is a good one in that many of us don't know offhand what the distribution of the 'biggest loaf to hand' &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be, given some reasonable assumptions for the distribution of the loaf sizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a researcher you should definitely have the skills to go and find this out from a book. Asking a statistician is a very important technique which may or may not be a last resort, depending on how friendly your statistician is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T12:32:00.390" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7594" CreationDate="2013-01-30T11:11:48.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe there is no 15th of April deadline and nobody cares about US deadlines (if anything the top institutions would want to put pressure on people to make decisions quick so that they don't loose them as good PhD students are not that many (yes its sad but true)). There are many early cycles e.g. Oxford and Cambridge give people offers before the application deadline date for many US departments. And lets say if you get a funded offer in November if your supervisor is keen you can arrange to start by Trinity term in April.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this can be the case if the offer was made in irregular time of the year which is not that uncommon (e.g. in Sweden you can start Phd anytime during the year as soon as the guaranteed funding is available for the entirety of the PhD). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many places you will be interviewed and asked whether you will accept the offer or not just to make sure you are not going to waste their time for a long time. You might say this is unethical behavior and I agree but it has happened to myself a couple of times. You will be expected to make a decision within reasonable amount of time and that is specific to the institution and how they run their business. Back in the day I had offers that gave me less than a month or ones that were open for a couple of months. If the position is funded and there is an expectation to start ASAP especially if there is a company behind the project you might be called in and be given an ultimatum and I have seen offers being retracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advise: talk with the institution that has given you the offer, explain the situation, and get a date by which you can reply. If it is close enough you might be able to stretch it a bit by asking politely for a week or two more time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T11:26:52.680" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T11:26:52.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7648" CreationDate="2013-01-30T11:30:24.653" Score="9" ViewCount="1635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often end up frustrated over the pace of my work, or rather the lack of &quot;worthy&quot; results. During my feedback talks with my colleagues and superiors I usually get good feedback but I find it distressing that most of it is qualitative arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes feel like I have not progressed as much as I would have liked to, but not sure how to assess whether or not I have developed &quot;enough&quot; over time. Which led me to wonder if it is possible at all to measure how well a PhD student is progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual measures in the community appears to be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which journals the publications appeared in (or rather the impact factor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of hours in the lab (regarding how &quot;hard-working&quot; one is)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of credits taken from courses during phd studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find none of the above to be a good measure. Publications are a fact of research, or the goal rather. But they should not a be measure of how well a PhD candidate is doing in research. I believe the pragmatic demand on &quot;more publications&quot; has essentially lead to overall lower quality and novelty in individual publications. But even without that subjective comment, it should not be a revelation to anyone here that the amount of publications (and especially in which journals they are published) is more dependent on the seniors on the paper rather than the grad student who wrote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other two measures I point to, they are just too naive variables to mean much. I mean you can be in the lab for 18h a day, but not learn much new or even worse not even remember those things you have learned. Besides one can also argue whether or not it's actually better for a grad student to be obsessed with number of hours in the lab, or courses taken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there a good way to measure your progress through-out your studies? How can I evaluate my development as a scientist, in quantitative (and unbiased) terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T13:56:22.050" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T14:28:38.447" Title="Is it possible to measure/evaluate one's progress or development in quantitative terms?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-01-30T11:41:02.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fabrication of data is not easy to find out as a reviewer. You may try tricks for raw numerical data, if they come in large numbers and can be expected to have normal distribution. But even if the tests say there is some likelihood the data was fabricated, it is still not &quot;proof&quot;. You would need at least strong likelihood to prevent publication. That is not easy to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at accounts of retracted papers and retraction process, you will find out that the culprit is usually identified not by the numbers alone but other facts: he has very rapid publication rate compared to field studies, he has weird behavior and does not allow coauthor to see raw data, things like that. In most cases there was nothing a very diligent reviewer can do. Taht is sad, but that is the truth of it in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T11:41:02.917" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7616" CreationDate="2013-01-30T12:00:13.220" Score="28" ViewCount="2561" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started my Masters thesis one advice I got for getting good material to read was to subscribe to several journals' alerts system, so that I would get mails with eTOC (electronic Table of Contents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was pretty cool then, for months I could stay on top of what's been published out there and was up to date in my own little narrow area. Now almost 3 years later that list of journals have expanded a bit, and the more work I have at the lab more mails that accumulate in my mailbox. What used to be no more than 10 unread mails is now about 900. The output is more than I can handle, what more restrictive method can I implement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it is pretty clear that this way of following literature is not sustainable in the long run. So I wonder if there are other and perhaps better ways of staying on top of recently published articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I have checked the following two questions prior to asking this one. I do feel though my question differs from these two in its essence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/50/am-i-reading-enough-of-the-scientific-literature-should-i-read-for-breadth-or-d&quot;&gt;Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5073/how-do-we-know-if-something-relevant-is-already-published&quot;&gt;How do we know if something relevant is already published?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T14:52:59.633" Title="How to stay on top of recent literature?" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7615" CreationDate="2013-01-30T12:37:22.023" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my PhD, I subscribed to the RSS feeds of the journals I would regularly read (started with 6 of them, ended up with a dozen). I would skim through titles of all new articles, and read abstracts of those whose title drew my eye. I then found out that some journals (&lt;em&gt;J. Chem. Phys.&lt;/em&gt; in that particular case) offer specific RSS feeds for each of their sections, in addition to the “whole journal” feed. That helped reducing the number of journals I was skimming through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after the end of my PhD, my research interest are broader, the number of journals I like to watch is larger but my time is more limited. This system didn't work anymore, and I set up a new system, which has worked well for a few years. I use bibliographic databases (&lt;em&gt;SciFinder&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Web of Science&lt;/em&gt;; but I'm sure Google Scholar and PubMed have the same features) to create &lt;strong&gt;publication and citation alerts&lt;/strong&gt;. Here's what I have set:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation alerts for all my own papers&lt;/strong&gt;: if someöne cites my work, there's a good chance I'll be interested in their paper. This one has two additional “strategic” bonuses: you get to keep an eye on your competition, and you can suggest newer work to other authors when relevant (&lt;em&gt;“hi there, I saw your recent paper citing my 2008 article on X, I thought you might be interested on a new extension of this algorithm that we published this year”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publication alerts for major players&lt;/strong&gt; in the field of interest: I have 10 to 20 of those, watching all papers these people publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation alerts for some seminal or high-impact papers&lt;/strong&gt; by others in the field: a good way to see how a new idea is adopted/improved by the community. Those tend to trigger a massive number of cites, so you may want to get rid of them after some time. I have between 5 and 10 of those alerts at a given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only drawback to this method: database updates tend to lag somewhat behind the RSS feeds of the journals themselves, so you get papers that are 2 to 8 weeks old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, use &lt;strong&gt;conferences&lt;/strong&gt; to stay on top/catch up with the literature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at contributions made, see what's new and go check the relevant recent publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not at the conference, look at the online program and see what looks new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're attending, talk with people… you can also use that opportunity to ask some people (whom you do know well enough):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you seen that new technique by the team at MIT? it seems to work really well… I was wondering: what has caught &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; eye in the recent literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T12:37:22.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2013-01-30T14:56:59.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct answer to this question is either &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. To answer &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; one would simply need to provide a single example of another country with an oral exam system similar to the French system. To answer &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; we would need confirmation that no other country uses a similar system. To start the alphabetical list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Kingdom: Undergraduate students at the top universities tend to begin their studies immediately following their A-Level examinations which do not have a substantial oral component.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United States of America: Undergraduate students at the top universities tend to begin their studies immediately following their high school/secondary education. Admission is based upon performance throughout high school and standardize test neither of which have a substantial oral component.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T14:56:59.500" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-30T14:56:59.500" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4888" CreationDate="2013-01-30T15:04:35.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsfgrfp.org/how_to_apply/choosing_a_primary_field&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NFS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your application will be assigned to the field of study you list first&#xA;  in the Proposed Graduate Program section. ...&#xA;  Therefore, you should choose which field you list first carefully,&#xA;  with consideration of which panel has the most appropriate component&#xA;  fields. ... All interdisciplinary applications are clearly marked as such during&#xA;  the review process. Many panelists have interdisciplinary expertise&#xA;  and are capable of evaluating interdisciplinary applications.&#xA;  Additionally, if necessary, the panel can transfer your application to&#xA;  another panel for either a full review or for commentary and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in some cases they might average the scores, this does not appear to be a requirement. I would suspect that in most cases they would do the review within a single panel and rate you accordingly and only seek expertise outside the panel if absolutely necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:04:35.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7611" CreationDate="2013-01-30T15:30:17.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;posdef, this is something that I've struggled with as well. Instead of knit picking over what the definition of 'is' is, I would like to offer the approach which I have used.  Your mileage will vary but I've found this approach to work well for me and it may work for you as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the crux of the problem for me was that progress is either analog or digital, qualitative or quantitative, right?  This is what we are led to believe and I think that in the case of education, it is not true.  There are discrete quantitative measures by which you can, and have, gauged your progress.  40 classes to get your Bachelor's degree.  If you complete 20 classes, you're half way there.  Quantitative progress.  If you're half way through and your GPA is 3.5 then you can make a qualitative assessment of your empirical data.  50% complete, doing well with room for improvement.  So throughout our undergraduate work there is a pretty consistent set of standards and metrics by which to measure our progress and the quality of our work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate school, for me at least, has been somewhat different.  With a Masters program you've usually have either seven-eight classes and a thesis or ten-twelve classes and some kind of a project.  For the first portion of the program you can track as before, but then you get into the core of your research or development and encounter something, which I think you are alluding to, 'the perception of quality'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How many papers did you write?&quot; 10 - High(Quant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How good did people think they were?&quot; 4 - Low(Qual)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How many hours did you spend in the lab?&quot; 100 - Low(Quant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How good was your lab output/finding?&quot; 10 - Exceptional(Qual)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't started the doctorate yet, but I can make an educated guess that this only intensifies with candidate work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it really boils down to at this point in your academic career, at least in my experience, is 'how well is your work received?' and how to do you track that to evaluation your own progress. What I've done is to take a two pronged approach to each aspect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the quantitative side I've set up a simple database with my course work, grades, number of publications, number of lectures, number of citations, everything I can think of to track my progress.  You could also do this with a spreadsheet pretty easily.  The basic tenet of this approach is 'What do I have to accomplish &amp;amp; what have I accomplished.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the qualitative side I've asked professors, facilitators, leads, reviewers, even peers in some cases, to evaluate my work against the task objectives.  Usually you get something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;you're doing fine&lt;/em&gt;&quot; but if you can get more detail, do so.  A question that I like to ask is &quot;&lt;em&gt;Would you feel comfortable with me teaching your syllabus?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;  This seems to get their attention.  It's interesting because it puts the qualitative assessment back on to themselves and forces them to think of your mastery of the material in terms of dissemination rather than assimilation.  &quot;&lt;em&gt;Do you feel comfortable with me teaching this material/running this lab/managing this team  that has your name on it?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;  Good bad or ugly I write it down and give it a 1, 2, 3.  1=no faith. 2=some faith. 3=complete faith.  If, after 6 courses (for sake of argument) you have a qualitative score of 15+ then you know that more than half of your superiors have faith in your mastery of the content that you are consuming or presenting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair... I'm a bit of a numbers junkie and this may not be the kind of system that works for you but it has worked for me so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T12:46:58.933" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T12:46:58.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-30T15:36:05.217" Score="78" ViewCount="108485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching a freshman science course for the first time and I am doing also outreach activities in high schools. To be able to attract the young generation to science one has to connect the concepts with everyday applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I build my power point slides using pictures from the textbooks which we officially use. Unfortunately when one does a Google search on any subject by images, one gets much more appealing and fascinating pictures. Some of these pictures are even related to simple applications which are explained in popular science sites on very recent discoveries. The problem is that I cannot use those pictures from Google sites in my slides because they are copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do then? Should I stick to the boring-looking textbook pics to avoid copyright problems, or bring life to my course by using images Google shows up (but then I might go to the jail!)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something that says one can use images shown by Google for educational purposes with no copyright issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5831" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T08:09:41.070" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T12:42:50.927" Title="Can I use images showing up in Google search for my presentation slides without violating any copyright?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7615" CreationDate="2013-01-30T15:44:06.480" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I subscribed to the math arXiv, i.e. I signed up to be sent an email every day about the articles posted to the math arXiv (the email contains titles and abstracts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first did this, I got very excited and subscribed to lots of areas that were interesting to me - geometric topology, general topology, algebraic topology, group theory, etc etc. and I swiftly got completely swamped and ended up reading nothing. I decided that this wasn't getting me anywhere, and I unsubscribed from everything except one subtopic (geometric topology) which was most relevant to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also made it a part of my morning schedule to go through the arxiv email (usually sent around 5a) - wake up, read my morning webcomics, go through the arxiv emails, make a note of anything that sounds relevant to me to read later in the office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subscribing to the arxiv instead of a journal gives me a manageably small list of articles per day (as opposed to a long list of articles on a more spaced-out schedule)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArXiv allowed me to focus in on a small field of research - this might not be possible for journals, since they potentially include articles in a range of subject matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making it a part of my daily schedule (particularly for a time when I'm potentially procrastinating from making the bikeride to school) made me more likely to actually do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least in mathematics, it might take quite a bit of time for a paper to make it to the publishing stage, and reading the arXiv lets me be more up to date. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:44:06.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7620" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:05:20.903" Score="43" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find an interesting image.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check for licensing conditions. If license has generous terms (like Creative Commons license) allowing free reuse of the image, or reuse under conditions that you meet (like attribution or absence of modifications), use the image.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think your use is covered by fair use: use the image.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Otherwise, contact the copyright holder for explicit permission to reuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is not clear who is copyright holder, it is orphaned work. In some European jurisdictions it can be used (but not in the US).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Educate yourself with this nice website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teachingcopyright.org&quot;&gt;http://www.teachingcopyright.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document for teachers is a good resource too: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm&quot;&gt;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be noted: many people follow the algorithm below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find image&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screw it! Just use image&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realize that nobody came to put you in jail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not mean it is right, but they are not going to jail. And if their use is not to make money they probably will not meet issues at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T16:05:20.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7620" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:08:10.960" Score="25" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there something that says one can use Google images for educational purposes with no copyright issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope, there is no such principle in general, although it depends on the particular country.  In the U.S. the closest concept is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt;, which covers some cases.  Unfortunately, there's no simple way to tell when it applies.  For example, it's not true that all educational uses are automatically fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if you reproduce a figure from a paper so you can criticize it, then that's certainly fair use, but if you decide to illustrate your cryptographic protocol using Bart and Lisa Simpson, then that's likely not.  Of course many cases fall in between these extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, though, you are unlikely to get in any trouble for using copyrighted images in slides for an academic presentation.  People do it all the time, and I've never heard of any legal action.  Posting the slides online is a little riskier, but even that is sometimes done.  [Don't interpret this as legal advice, of course: it's still illegal if it's not covered by fair use.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be careful, you can choose to use only public domain images or those available under a suitable Creative Commons license allowing re-use.  The web page &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;http://search.creativecommons.org/&lt;/a&gt; can help you find such images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Creative Commons licenses typically require attribution, and that's a good practice in general.  If you use any images you don't create, I'd recommend a little note giving credit off to the side somewhere.  After all, it's good to model high ethical standards for our students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T19:48:02.913" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T19:48:02.913" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7625" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:11:08.680" Score="17" ViewCount="12861" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's come up in our lab that we should probably have business cards for when we attend conferences, however, we've been given very little guidance for what is appropriate for a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions that have come up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we be trying to standardize the cards to look like the official university's cards? (e.g., with the university logo, etc)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related to the first question, should we be going for standardized or for something that will make us stand out?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we be putting our current status on the card?  It seems like if we haven't hit ABD yet then it might be counterproductive because then we'd have to buy new ones each time we made progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we be adding our research interests directly on the card?  What about advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other information (other than contact/website) that we should be including or tips on this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T16:31:04.920" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T20:12:39.620" Title="Business cards for graduate students" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:20:37.047" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would standardize them and simply put the most relevant information on them. My (dated) business card looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e82qj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I think it has a little bit more information than needed; fax is almost certainly not needed, but there might be circumstances where it's handy to have the mailing address. But important are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University + department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic homepage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-mail address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps phone number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that you're a PhD student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't add too much information on them. Business cards are for core info, nothing more; they might get crowded otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own business card is outdated: a university reform means I'm no longer at the &lt;em&gt;Department of Space Science&lt;/em&gt;, but at the &lt;em&gt;Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Division of Space Technology&lt;/em&gt;. But I don't care, because the e-mail address is still correct, and the new department/division wouldn't even fit on a business card ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T16:38:58.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T16:38:58.537" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:23:29.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presentation style is something that I have made a conscious decision to change. When I started doing presentations at the start of my PhD I used to put everything on the slide so that I didn't forget anything. Every graph had about 5 bullet points of text explaining what it meant. Although this is an effective survival mechanism for those new to presenting, it hardly makes the most engaging talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soon after I started my postdoc I attended a conference, and on the way home I found I couldn't remember the message from a single talk, out of the many I attended - almost all of which used the same style with lots of text and information on every slide. At the same time, a senior colleague of mine always gives memorable presentations - partly due to his lively personality but also because he concentrates on a single important idea on each slide, and no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a postdoc I now have quite a lot more experience of giving talks, and so I was determined to experiment and learn how to give better presentations which engage with the audience. Before I usually had very few questions, which is a sign of either the talk was boring, or that nobody understood what you were trying to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What follows are my general guidelines for conference presentations to specialists in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule number 1 is avoiding information overload. Stick rigorously to trying to present no more than three ideas in a talk. It is important to highlight those important points/results and often tell the same idea in different ways if possible to give it chance to sink in. The objective here is to convince a largely captive audience that your work is relevant to them. If you achieve this then they will invariably follow it up by looking at your relevant papers and hopefully citing them. Also important here is to focus on the executive summary. The full details are available in the paper, so focus on the highlights. Researchers will invariably give you the benefit of doubt, so don't waste time asserting your cleverness by putting up complicated equations or algrithms - you will just lose your audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid putting more than a single equation/figure/phrase on a slide. Some ideas are complicated and can take a while to explain, but what you want is for the audience to process the minimal information on the slide and focus their attention back on you and what you are saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presentations which are minimal are much harder to write, as you have to know what you are going to say with minimal prompting, so practise is a necessity. But since adopting this style, I have had a lot more engagement with the audience and questions about the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T16:23:29.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:24:26.843" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check with your University's communications/pr department before printing up anything that reflects the institution's trademarked materials but I think it sounds like a pretty good idea.  You just want to make sure that you don't step into any legal quagmires. Anytime that you produce collateral that associates you to an organization you can get into dangerous territory.  For example- if you hand out your Awesome U. business cards at a pro/anti &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt; rally, then you associating that activity with the institution.  Obviously, they have reason to control such materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds especially for nice for full time students that are attending conferences and the like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you could have personal business cards that say what ever you want and just say &quot;Grad Student&quot;.  I'd check first but that seems like a reasonable compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T16:24:26.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7620" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:31:29.207" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use images showing up in Google Search if and only if the license allows for it.  Therefore, you might be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advanced Google Image Search&lt;/a&gt;, where you can &lt;strong&gt;search by copyright status&lt;/strong&gt;. More information about the &lt;em&gt;Usage rights search&lt;/em&gt; can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=29508&amp;amp;rd=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;as_q=mars&amp;amp;as_epq=&amp;amp;as_oq=&amp;amp;as_eq=&amp;amp;cr=&amp;amp;as_sitesearch=&amp;amp;safe=images&amp;amp;tbs=sur:f&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=930&amp;amp;sei=p0oJUe3AMYvJswbe-IHwCg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;freely useable images searching for &quot;Mars&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  Notice how many of them are from NASA or the Wikimedia Foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is an example &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;as_q=IBM&amp;amp;as_epq=&amp;amp;as_oq=&amp;amp;as_eq=&amp;amp;cr=&amp;amp;as_sitesearch=&amp;amp;safe=images&amp;amp;tbs=sur:f&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=930&amp;amp;sei=p0oJUe3AMYvJswbe-IHwCg#hl=en&amp;amp;safe=images&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;as_st=y&amp;amp;tbs=sur:f&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;sa=1&amp;amp;q=IBM&amp;amp;oq=IBM&amp;amp;gs_l=img.3..0l10.29944.30237.0.30401.3.3.0.0.0.0.126.334.0j3.3.0...0.0...1c.1.r-4TDHePhjg&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&amp;amp;bvm=bv.41642243,d.Yms&amp;amp;fp=6c5f0053a270bafc&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;searching for &quot;IBM&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; See the important remark by @jb. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7620/can-i-use-google-images-for-my-presentations-without-violating-any-copyrights/7628#comment13031_7628&quot;&gt;in the comment below&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; —&#xA; you should verify with the original source (1) that the picture really is free to use, and (2) under what conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T12:25:14.867" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T12:25:14.867" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-01-30T20:12:39.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everywhere I have worked so far, there have been standard templates from the University for how their business cards should look, so I've simply used those, ordered through the University press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My titles have been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Assistant (during my undergrad)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter / Research Assistant (during my PhD studies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postdoctoral Scholar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific Officer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postdoc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and everything else has been dictated by the University graphical manual and policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T20:12:39.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-30T20:42:04.077" Score="27" ViewCount="1731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first year PhD Student, writing a conference paper with an Italian Professor, very senior and renowned in our field. Every commit he makes to the SVN is riddled with spelling and grammar errors. I have been fixing the errors and also trying to improve the expression but I have this impression he is not very happy about me doing it. (Maybe something to do with him having dozens of publications and me having a total of Zero)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On occasion, he actually reverted my changes to stick with his wrong or inferior-quality expression. How to deal with this? I would hate to see this paper go with an inferior quality language when I could have improved it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5838" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T08:36:55.563" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T08:37:20.407" Title="How should I deal with a professor whose weak language proficiency is disturbing our paper's writing quality?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7620" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:14:54.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case the search engine does not matter to you, you could also search in Flickr instead of using Google. The advanced search on Flickr has an option to search for pictures with the Creative Commons licence only, which is a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, check the individual licence terms. E.g. some pictures require that the photographer is mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5839" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T21:14:54.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-01-30T22:15:25.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have learnt very fast not to be a perfectionist! So perhaps you can be less judgemental (not saying this in a bad way). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you still need to be rigorous and if there is something that is dramatically wrong, you can then discuss it with your professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps giving him two or three correction options may help. Let him choose which version he likes. In any case, you would be preparing the options, so whichever option he chooses will be ok for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As F'x said, talk to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T22:15:25.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7620" CreationDate="2013-01-30T22:24:48.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We publish an industry magazine (very colourful and attractive piece!) and we use all our images from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkstockphotos.com.au/?countrycode=AUS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ThinkStock&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a free site but once you have subscribed to it (for a year or a month), you can download the number of images in your package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no copyright restrictions and you can manipulate the images in any way you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this too: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morguefile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MorgueFile&lt;/a&gt; Its free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stockxpert.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StockExpert&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4475" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T22:57:55.737" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T22:57:55.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2013-01-30T23:14:47.717" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing to disagree with Charles Morisset's answer. (I signed up just now, and am unable to comment.) At least, I would consider part of his answer to be poor advice for applying to TT jobs in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I believe you should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; accept invitations to interview if you think they're in your best interest -- i.e., if you would be happy to take a job there, and if you are not absolutely confident you won't get better offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose that I had scheduled an interview at A, and I get an interview offer from B. I prefer A to B, but I also really like B. Then I would &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; accept the interview offer at B, even if you might get an offer from A in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this as someone who was on our hiring committee this year. It is a difficult and stressful process for us, but surely it is much more difficult and stressful for candidates. We understand that candidates want to get the best job possible and expect that they will look out for their own best interests. We expect honesty, but hesitating to accept an interview offer at a school you like, under almost any circumstances, seems unwise to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you accept an offer from A before your interview at B, and the plane ticket is bought? I would contact B, tell them you had accepted another offer, offer thanks and apologies, and offer either to come and give your lecture, or to simply cancel the trip. Most hiring committees, I think, would be gracious and kind, would ask you not to come, and would refund your plane ticket. Perhaps they would like to meet you anyway, and give you the option of giving your talk. In the unlikely event that they are rude, this will give you reason to be grateful that you will be working elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5843" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T23:14:47.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-30T23:23:34.527" Score="6" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my actual research work, I need some functionality that is not supported natively by any existing solid tools. So I have two choices: rather I implement this functionality my self, or I use an emerging tool which is in beta version. &#xA;So, can this have a negative impact on the acceptance of my results by the research community? (I mean when I publish it in a scientific paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="90" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:49:22.547" Title="Can I use tools in beta version in my research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7636" CreationDate="2013-01-31T00:51:56.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no simple rule about what sort of software is acceptable.  What you do needs to be reliable, publicly documentable, and justifiable.  Some beta software satisfies this, and some does not.  Ultimately, you need to be able to make the case that your methodology (including the software you use) is trustworthy.  Even assuming it is, you need to be able to convince other researchers.  If you aren't sure, then you should consult with experts about the particular software.  If you're a grad student, then asking your advisor would make sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T00:51:56.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7636" CreationDate="2013-01-31T01:31:45.837" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the main requirement is that you can trust the tools you're using. If you're using open-source software, then you may want to double-check that the algorithms are written correctly. If you're using proprietary software, then you may want to consider verifying results with other software for at least some samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is true with any open-source package. For my thesis work, I used a particular open-source analysis toolkit which was very popular in the community. They were regularly releasing updates as people investigated the software and found small glitches. During my regular use, I even helped uncover and report a moderately serious bug that would have resulted in bad output — and possibly erroneous conclusions — in a particular edge case. Always know the limits of your tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T04:49:22.547" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:49:22.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-01-31T04:00:54.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have better things to do like focusing on getting that PhD and the first paper. The guy is renowned as you so at this stage it doesn't matter for him that much. No editor is going to reject a paper you write with him because it had mistakes. At most people will say that the language should be improved etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical advise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't piss the guy off its not worth it. Be more politically savvy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your field but in some fields you have to write in a very specific manner and what might seem inferior quality to you might be the standard way to write in that field. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only raise the issue if its a titanic of a mistake! Do it gracefully. Next time don't change it put a polite comment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T08:37:20.407" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T08:37:20.407" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7649" CreationDate="2013-01-31T08:27:53.210" Score="13" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm teaching a programming course with ~20 students, guiding them through coding assignments and helping them understand what they are doing, and why it works or doesn't. Tasks expected of them range from trivial to medium-complexity in the range of a 40-hours curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, toward the end of the course, they know enough to solve moderate programming problems. In order to get them to work on a few things more &quot;exciting&quot; than what we offer them, I am considering asking them to join an online coding (or problem-solving-through-coding) competition, such as Project Euler. I wouldn't expect them to be able to solve all problems, of course, but I could select a list of problems for them to pick from. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For this session, you are expected to solve between 5 and 10 problems from the following selection of Project Euler numbers: 1-10, 13, 15, 20-24, 26-29, 33, 35-38.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, I could just copy these problems and make them &quot;assignments&quot; for them, but I think it could bring some fun for them to see it as part of a competition. Also, why I don't understand why, it seems that to their generation, doing anything &lt;em&gt;online&lt;/em&gt; is vastly more exciting than doing the same thing otherwise. Finally, I have some hope that a few students might actually get into it, and continue doing it for fun after the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, comes the question: &lt;strong&gt;what downsides do you see&lt;/strong&gt; to requiring them to participate in one of these online challenges? (I'm most interested in the specific case I detail above, but generic advice/answers for other types of online participation might be interesting too!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T13:12:50.820" Title="Requiring student to participate in online challenges to complete coursework" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7641" CreationDate="2013-01-31T08:44:40.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing my entire Bachelor course by distance (online) from an interstate university in Australia, when I live in antother state. To check that we've done all the related online module readings, etc, for most subjects we have 10-20 marks of the total marks for the subject set out for forum participation. &#xA;You could allocate a small percentage of marks for this which would hopefully give your students the incentive to do this online task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5847" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T08:44:40.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7694" CreationDate="2013-01-31T09:12:51.730" Score="10" ViewCount="3709" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7484/how-to-buy-plane-tickets-for-job-interviews&quot;&gt;How to buy plane tickets for job interviews?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it mean to accept a job offer? Or maybe more accurately when have you accepted a job offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest and most conservative might be when you sign a contract. This seems a little late in the game as often contracts, especially in the States are slow to be generated. The earliest might be when you go for an interview. In the UK it is pretty standard for universities to not reimburse candidates to whom offers are made and subsequently turned down. Middle ground might be when you enter contract negotiations or verbally agree to the terms of your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T16:54:23.087" Title="What does it mean to accept a job offer" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7643" CreationDate="2013-01-31T09:31:24.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different takes. “Accepting” a job offer is pretty much that: &lt;strong&gt;if you tell the person who offered you&lt;/strong&gt; (your HR contact, the hiring committee, any person of authority in the hiring process) that you accept their offer, that you take the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it mean there's not turning back? Of course not!&lt;/strong&gt; The question then becomes: how binding is that agreement? And again, there are answers on many different levels: legal, moral, diplomatic…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Legal: as always, better ask a lawyer, union representative or knowledgeable and trusted friend. Everything depends on the local law, the type of offer made, what you said and/or wrote, etc. It may sound logical that nothing's set in stone until you have signed a contract, but that may not always be the case. Some institutions might, for example, require you to write and sign a binding letter of engagement before the contract is drafted (which, as you said, can take time). In some jurisdiction, the simple fact of showing up for work on the first day of the contract &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a binding, implicit contract following the terms of your offer. (Though I would say it should be obvious to all that actually &lt;em&gt;coming to work&lt;/em&gt; is pretty binding.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moral: that's the most variable of all. Turning down an offer you had accepted orally, because you now have a better offer from some other place, is not &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; in itself. The important thing is: being of good faith, and being diligent to inform them that you have changed your mind. If it turns out that you have accepted the offer, knowing all the while you would end up turning it down, that would be unexcusable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diplomatic: people understand the position you're in, as they have most probably been through it themselves some year back. So, they will be sympathetic, as long as they feel you are of good faith, diligent and show acceptable contrition (not sure that's the right term for what I'm trying to describe… let's say you look/sound apologetic enough). Otherwise, well, you risk make enemies and that may not be the best thing to do early in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is: the game is played by both sides. Hiring committees don't dismiss all other candidates immediately when they offer you a position, and they know that Stuff Happens. In a competitive environment such as academia, they surely have a plan B (and probably C and D).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: if that's a tenured or tenure-track position, you'll probably stay very long (life?) there. It's an important choice, and thus you shouldn't find yourself bound by promises made too fast, or you may come to regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T09:31:24.430" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7646" CreationDate="2013-01-31T12:50:13.110" Score="24" ViewCount="3908" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does it mean when it says under a journal article that it has been communicated by &quot;XYZ&quot; where XYZ is not the author but some other scholar with a very strong reputation? What is the relationship to the actual author and/or the content? Is this some sort of seal of approval to get results out and known quickly? (I am specifically wondering in the context of mathematics and mathematical physics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-09-15T06:37:55.920" LastActivityDate="2018-09-15T06:37:55.920" Title="Article &quot;communicated by&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7645" CreationDate="2013-01-31T12:57:10.540" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, XYZ refers to the editor that handled the paper at the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T13:42:00.740" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T13:42:00.740" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7645" CreationDate="2013-01-31T13:54:51.227" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/41871/what-does-communicated-by-mean-in-math-papers&quot;&gt;this question on Mathematics.SE&lt;/a&gt; and its very good answers for full details, which I will summarize below. It should be noted that this information is part of the journal format, and added by the publisher itself (along with the publication timeline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some journals published by learned societies or national academies require that “communications” be presented (or sponsored) by a member of the society. This was the case, for example, of the &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences&lt;/em&gt;) until July 2010; the top of an article looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5yWQp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some journals use this formulation to denote the handling editor: the one who makes the editorial decision (or recommendation to the full editorial board), after having selected referees and received the referees' reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not common practice: most journals do not indicate who the handling editor was for a given article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T13:54:51.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7611" CreationDate="2013-01-31T14:28:38.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To reduce anything to a quantitative score, you need a valid metric. There are very few valid metrics you can use in research, as you state in your question. The only other half-common metric that you didn't list above is &lt;strong&gt;Papers read/annotated&lt;/strong&gt;. We all know reading is really useful, and you should definitely aim to read X papers a week (where X is some random number that makes sense in your field). That said, the goal of reading is to gather information, and how much information was gained (and retained) is a lot harder to measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I have two half-answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make up your own metric based on &lt;strong&gt;hours of productive work.&lt;/strong&gt; At the end of each day, just write down in an excel sheet or something how many useful hours you worked that day. You can use some service like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rescuetime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rescuetime&lt;/a&gt; to help you in this, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt;, or just simply buy a stopwatch and keep track yourself. At the end, do a simple &lt;code&gt;# useful hours/total hours worked&lt;/code&gt; to see how productive you think you're being. That'll probably be more useful than anything else you'll come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make &lt;strong&gt;task-specific metrics&lt;/strong&gt;. I tracked my progress on my thesis using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/4683189&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;custom shell script I wrote&lt;/a&gt; that tracked how much text I added in a given time period and plotted it out. (Yes, I probably spent more time making the shell script than I gained in motivation from using it. Whatever.) I tracked progress on one of my projects by how many datasets I had analyzed. I tracked progress on another project by how much coding I completed each day. These are much more useful than broad, overarching metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T14:28:38.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7641" CreationDate="2013-01-31T14:41:48.100" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a great idea to me overall, but I can see a few potential issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that one or more of your students might already be a participant, which could raise issues of fairness.  (Other students may complain that he/she got a head start.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the fact that these problems are widely distributed on the web may make it easier to find solutions online.  I haven't looked at the Project Euler solutions online and don't know if they are any good, but it's not hard to find purported solutions.  This could also be a pain for you: if you make it easy to cheat, then you're more likely to have to figure out how to deal with cheaters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T14:41:48.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7653" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:18:39.577" Score="10" ViewCount="2569" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a grad student, I participated in a bunch of conferences, and sent papers to journals and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I'm no longer in academia. I've been out for more than three years, and I still get a few emails a week notifying me of new conferences, hotel discounts for those who register, extended deadlines and the other usual stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that none of these emails offer contact information or ways to unsubscribe from the mailing list. And it's not like they're from organizations I previously interacted with, but they are certainly about my former line of research. They are probably worse than spam, because I don't even think you could report them as spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I removed myself from all site registrations I can remember, such as IEEE and ACM, but these keep coming and coming and coming and coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a former academic get himself removed from all these mailing lists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5857" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T16:13:45.850" LastActivityDate="2020-02-04T21:19:48.623" Title="How do I remove myself from academic mailing lists?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;spam&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7650" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:28:04.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also get these mails, and I have the impression there is no way to cancel these kinds of emails. Your email address is associated with an academic context, and available in public. This makes it fair game for all obscure conferences and journals who want to lure you in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution I see is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a new mail address &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try filter out any mails mentioning conferences and such. Gmail has facilities for this kind filtering based on keywords.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a spam filter and let it train on filtering this kind of mails. Thunderbird and other mail programs, and probably gmail have these kinds of self learning spam filters. You just keep flagging it as spam until they are automatically removed from your inbox. Do check your spam box once in a while to catch errors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T15:28:04.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7650" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:58:38.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, that sounds like spam, and you should treat it however you'd treat spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure you should assume good faith on the part of the people sending you those e-mails.  I'm an active academic with an e-mail address accessible on my university website, and I receive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legitimate conference announcements over e-mail lists used by people in the area, which I could unsubscribe from if I wished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Announcements from people who actually know me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unsolicited announcements from scam journals and conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I receive several of the last category every week (and more, unsurprisingly, than any other category).  I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; get legitimate mass e-mails that are not in the first two categories.  It's possible that in other fields there are some legitimate announcements sent the way you describe, but I'd guess very few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: spam is spam, and you should feel no compunctions about treating it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T15:58:38.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7641" CreationDate="2013-01-31T17:02:33.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One potential problem, if you're within the US, is running afoul of your University's interpretation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;.  My university forbids me from &lt;em&gt;requiring&lt;/em&gt; students to participate in an publicly-accessible forum using their real name or university email address, because &lt;em&gt;the fact that someone is a registered student&lt;/em&gt; is considered a protected educational record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T17:02:33.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7666" CreationDate="2013-01-31T18:13:18.470" Score="10" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often publications resulting from funded research are published after the grant ends. It seems nowadays more and more publishers are requiring fees (submission fees, page charges, and open access fees). How does one pay for these fees after a grant ends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T05:57:56.633" Title="Paying for page charges after a grant ends" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7658" CreationDate="2013-01-31T18:17:04.317" Score="36" ViewCount="1257" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the issues we have at my English-language institute is the problem of getting our doctoral students to write papers in English. For some, writing isn't a big challenge. For others, however, the process is about as pleasurable as pulling teeth or a lobotomy (without the benefit of anesthesia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we've found is that there are a few problems that tend to creep up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students don't know how to commit their ideas into paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are afraid of writing poorly, so they don't write at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm wondering is if there are any resources available that can help—particularly international students—with overcoming the &quot;academic&quot; version of writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-16T09:51:38.477" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T12:09:04.710" Title="Resources on how to overcome writer's block, especially for non-native English speakers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-01-31T19:06:09.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an international student, I have suffered a lot from writing academic papers. I believe &lt;strong&gt;It is an advantage to be English-native speaker in the academia&lt;/strong&gt;. Well, I mean mastering the language not necessarily a mother tongue. Each time I submit a paper, I expect some comments on its english. I remember first time I submitted a paper it was rejected because of what so called bad english on it. Now after five years of writing and submitting and with the help of the supervisor and continuing reading papers, I got minor comments (in most cases its the reviewer style more than the language itself).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is up to the students, If they want to have a career in academia they should push themselves by reading and writing in English. They will notice their skills will be developed over the time. Also, proofreading ,&lt;em&gt;to know your mistakes&lt;/em&gt;, is a good thing specially in the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students don't know how to commit their ideas into paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why you should push them. You want them to have successful careers after PhD, this will be very difficult without a good sense of writing academic papers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to write first draft and hand it to you. You can comment on it and send it back to them. This is how it worked for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T19:06:09.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-01-31T19:33:49.290" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course there are plenty of resources about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;output=search&amp;amp;q=overcomming%20writer%27s%20block#hl=en&amp;amp;q=overcoming%20writer%27s%20block&quot;&gt;how to overcome writer's block&lt;/a&gt;, however for different people different techniques work. The advices I always found very useful as a PhD student (although I cannot find the original sources, it's been years) were these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;do not aim high at the beginning. Crappy and hasty first draft is perfectly fine, iterative improvement will come later&lt;/strong&gt;: as the author &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/brainstorm_block.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; points out, inexperienced writers tend to have too high standard on themselves. Since I am in a formal field, I therefore refrained to start with the paper's motivation, but rather tried to work out the mathematical flesh first. That one is easier in terms of language since the form can be copied/learned from good papers of others. But this differs across disciplines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;block time every day for writing and do nothing else at that time, even if you should stare at a blank wall&lt;/strong&gt;: this is my way to kill the procrastinator in me. Simply three hours every day a week for writing. Even if during that time one would really just stare at a wall and write nothing, it's better than procrastinating. Eventually the boredom is so high that writing becomes welcomed activity. It is imperative not to do anything else, especially not to study, read or otherwise consult any literature, also get disconnected from Internet and colleagues, etc. The best for me was to go for this to the department's library where was no wifi connection. I read somewhere that this technique is used by some novel writers, but can't find any source of this advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another powerful technique is &lt;strong&gt;use public commitment wisely&lt;/strong&gt;: that is, publicly commit to delivering an artifact at a precisely specified deadline. E.g., first draft of the paper next Friday. Tell to your boss, tell to your office-mate, whatever. The higher the authority you tell, the better. For many people this has a magic effect, because we tend to value our commitments, however painful it sometimes is to stand up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, different techniques work for different people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T08:38:10.683" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T08:38:10.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-01-31T19:42:57.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for asking this question addressing what appears to be a sadly widespread problem in academia. I'm an international student (from India in US) myself, and it's been a great boon for me to be able to communicate fluently in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly re: international students, our Office of International Students organizes (spoken) English classes, which are free for all international students and scholars. In addition, at Rice we used to have a group of grad students get together for lunch on Fridays and converse in English (this was a registered student organization called 'English Corner', and they had funding from various sources for the lunches). I realize that you were referring to resources for writing as opposed to speaking, but I believe that particularly for non-native speakers confidence in speaking can translate to confidence in writing. In terms of the actual writing process, there are some online resources, such as  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishforums.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Englishforums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for resources for a more general audience, in certain departments around here I've heard of a thesis-writing class that grad students are required to take for credit. Our Office of Graduate &amp;amp; Postdoctoral Studies has recently been trying to put together some professional development workshops and courses, which often focus on the 'communication' aspect of academia. Another possibility is that the beginning courses in the doctoral program (1st and 2nd year classes) could be made to have a strong (or at least non-trivial) writing component. For example, one might require students to write an expository term paper or something along those lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that roughly everything I've mentioned above has to do with resources available at my university, so perhaps my answer consists of 'Here are some resources that might already exist at your university, or might be put into place there'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T19:42:57.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-01-31T20:08:48.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always better to be diplomatic in academia, especially when you are a first year graduate student, and your advisor is a well-known person. That is &quot;never piss off your advisor&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He can do whatever he wants if you piss him off. After you work with a professor for 2-3 years, your will only have two reasonable options: (1) quit the program, or (2) suffer and somehow get the PhD. The other option is to switch advisor, but if you are in the middle of the program, that is almost a no-option. Note that, even if your advisor doesn't become angry when you point out language mistakes at the moment, he may choose to stay calm, and find a way to react to you in future. My high level point is: be diplomatic. That is how academia works. If you piss off your advisor, you are not going to succeed in getting a PhD or a good job after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming to your specific question, may be you should leverage the fact that your advisor is well-known. After you submit the article to a journal (they may see his name and may be they won't be harsh), the editors will likely ask for improvements to the language, and may be then you can tell your professor that you will handle improving the language/grammar. Then it will show up as &quot;taking responsibility&quot; and he will appreciate you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4285" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T20:08:48.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:51:11.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rowena Murray is very good on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MURRAY, R., &amp;amp; MOORE, S. (2006). The handbook of academic writing a fresh approach. Maidenhead, England, McGraw-Hill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MURRAY, R. (2006). How to write a thesis. Maidenhead, Open University Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MURRAY, R. (2005). Writing for academic journals. Maidenhead, Open University Press. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding perceptions and fears about judgement (external and internal) and the difference between performance/learning orientations are sometimes useful conversations to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5688" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:51:11.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:57:09.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers assume that the professor is OP's advisor, which seems not to be the case. I would advise to avoid working with this guy in the future (if he's stubborn on such small matters, it's unlikely to end well), and if he was your advisor, the standard JeffE's response would apply: &quot;Don't walk, run!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am somewhat appalled that most answers seem to recommend the &quot;play safe, don't mess with powerful people&quot; approach. The language errors themselves might not seem like a big enough deal to pick up a fight, but by choosing to be &quot;politically savvy&quot; now you make it easier for yourself to compromise in the future on more serious matters. Yes, to fight over such issues requires lack of self-preservation instinct, but by choosing to do a PhD instead of an &quot;honest job&quot; you've already shown that's not a problem ;). Sorry if this is a bit off topic/argumentative, but I've seen this kind of answers also in other threads and I think the advice goes in exactly the wrong direction - there is a lot of excellent jobs outside academia, so contrary to other answers in this thread you are actually full of options (being smart enought to be doing a PhD gives you a very strong hand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4108" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:57:09.153" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:57:36.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a French native speaker whose English was gradually improved over the years, I've been on both sides of this kind of situation, and there are different aspects to consider: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your collaborator does not like you fixing &lt;em&gt;typos&lt;/em&gt;, then there is a real problem; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is usually accepted that papers are not written in British-English, nor in American-English, but in &lt;em&gt;Global&lt;/em&gt;-English, and being a native English speaker yourself might not be strict advantage. If your collaborator has successfully managed to publish dozens of papers, then either his style is somehow accepted, or all his papers have been written by others, in which case he wouldn't mind letting you write the paper in your own style; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The style of an author is personal, and changing it can be seen as touching the ownership of the text, and can also be seen as offensive, especially when the gain of the modification is not immediately perceived (which might be the case for non native speaker, a &quot;better&quot; expression does not necessarily strike as an improvement). This is particularly true if you only change one expression: if you were to rewrite an entire paragraph, to change to some extent the content, it would probably be easier, since you've clearly improved the text. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least for me, there is a clear notion of trust of people I'm working with. There are some people I completely trust, and I don't care a second if they modify my text, but I would be reluctant to see my text modified by someone I just started working with, especially if it's only for cosmetic purposes, like picking the best expression or word when the original one is understandable/correct, or changing a notation, or reformatting the paper, etc. I'm not saying I would be against, but I would need to understand and agree with the gain. In my opinion, this is mostly a notion of trust rather than seniority. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, let it slide, as long as it does not impact the overall clarity of the paper, especially in the first stages of the paper (some expressions you don't like might disappear naturally after a while, replaced by new content). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:57:36.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7655" CreationDate="2013-02-01T00:05:41.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I refuse to publish in a journal that charges me for publishing my years of sweat and labour for their financial gain and asks me for money as well. Its against my principles.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I was asked to pay 500 dollars for color pictures. I asked them to revert them back to black and white and just have them in colour online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open access is a different story and I see it as being legitimate on their part to ask for money for it. It you don't have the grant money =&gt; no open access. Put a preprint somewhere and publish somewhere that allows preprints or at least turns a blind eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T02:19:48.770" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T02:19:48.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7655" CreationDate="2013-02-01T05:57:56.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way it works here in Japan, is that each professor has an amount of money called &quot;discretionary spending&quot;, from there, they get money for these kinds of things. And is usual that if a professor has his name in the paper , he should use part of this money to pay for the submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That money does not comes form a grant, but the University's endowment, so I guess it depends on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T05:57:56.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-02-01T06:03:36.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a strong line in professional writing that suggests that there is no such a thing as writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for a Journal should be something mechanic, not some work of art that should come from the depths of your hearth, at the end, it is a skill, and a skill that you have to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many professors are really bad writers, because their own professors were also very bad, there are few writing courses in a grad student's curricula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These and other very valid points are presented in &quot;How to write a lot&quot; by Paul Silva, I find it to be a very useful book, and full of great advice both for students and professors alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1591477433&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to the book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T06:03:36.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7670" CreationDate="2013-02-01T07:57:14.870" Score="68" ViewCount="16755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past few days, my advisor and I had been going really hard. We got a really good idea and the preliminary results looked good, so I started spending long days in the lab, going home only to sleep. My advisor saw this and he started spending a lot more time with me and we had long meetings whenever I requested. This has been going on for about 4 weeks and although I loved it while I was in it, I feel burnt out now. There are still really exciting things I need to try but I don't know why I can't get myself to do any of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good strategy to escape this burnout phase? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Playing an instrument I was good at&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just taking some time off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limiting my work hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of these and others seem to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5869" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T19:19:08.660" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T15:06:40.043" Title="What can I do to recover from a short term burnout?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T08:14:12.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, having a structure is usually something that brings a good balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons PhD students can get very disorganized and end up wasting a lot of time is the lack of a fixed schedule, this is both needed to have a productive life and a balance between your work and personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just try to keep by an schedule, and you'll see you will get more relaxed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T08:14:12.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T08:25:19.250" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a true burnout you will need to stop working, rest, and seek counseling/medical help. You need to lower your expectations of yourself and virtually eliminate what others expect from you. Ultimately, because work is about expectations (either self-imposed or set by others), I doubt that you can continue working and recover from a burnout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you state that the burnout occurred over a short period, rather than a sustained year-upon-year effort, my advice is to take a vacation. Three weeks should do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, life is about enjoying it, not earning money, because in the end you will take nothing with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T12:40:59.970" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T12:40:59.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7736" CreationDate="2013-02-01T08:43:29.033" Score="52" ViewCount="37732" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many times when I am faced with the task of extracting data from a published graph (usually a bitmap image in an paper). For example, a scatter plot from which I would like to get a list of individual (&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;) coordinates for the points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to ask the contact author for raw data. Most will do it, sometimes in nice ASCII format, sometimes in Excel files, sometimes in formats that I cannot open (chemists are fond of software like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.originlab.com&quot;&gt;Origin&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wavemetrics.com/products/igorpro/igorpro.htm&quot;&gt;Igor Pro&lt;/a&gt;). Some authors never reply, or ask questions like “what do you want to do with it?”. In all cases, it takes time. Sometime, it's not even possible (I can hardly email the author of a 1936 paper!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is to extract the data. I currently use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.originlab.com&quot;&gt;g3data&lt;/a&gt; to do that, but for large scatter plots &lt;strong&gt;having to click on every single point is tedious&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, I am looking for a data extraction software that could &lt;strong&gt;recognize individual points automagically&lt;/strong&gt;, and possibly filter them by point color or symbol used. Is that even something that exists? What other tools can you recommend to work around this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I don't think it'd be appropriate to have extra requirements on the software, so I'm happy with free or commercial solutions, running on any OS. Of course, if given the choice, I'd prefer open source software running on Linux and Mac OS.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T23:56:53.293" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T11:06:33.573" Title="Software for extracting data from a graph without having to click on every single point?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T08:48:52.943" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find burnout a reoccurring effect, and to some extent it comes with academic research as you are continually trying solve problems and come up with new ideas. In this respect I find doing science like doing art - if I am not in the mood for doing it then the results won't be good and productivity is low, so the only solution is to stop completely. If you have got the research 'bug' (you normally love research and it preoccupies pretty much every waking hour of your day) then when you are ready you will come back to thinking about it and want to get back in the lab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to do nothing until you are ready - don't think about the lab at all or worry that you are not doing anything, just rest completely - go for walks, watch moves, kill zombies, whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a post doc I have learnt to organise better, and back off if things get too hectic, taking an afternoon off for example. I still suffer a little at the end of the year, where I take a fortnight off but usually I am itching to get back after a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T08:48:52.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T09:28:49.477" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an addition to the current suggestions, I can highly recommend adding some exercise to your daily life. Lab life, especially when intensive, makes as sedentary life style. You sit in front of the pc, by the wetlabs... etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of exercise you do is a preference thing, I personally love high-tempo ball sports like football (soccer) or squash. There's nothing like the endorphine high you get after wearing yourself completely and take a shower afterwards. It will help you get troubles off your mind as well. I can highly recommend squash for this purpose; when playing with an even opponent, an hours workout will get you to a point where forming shorter sentences is as complicated of an intellectual task as you can manage, which means no time/place for daily worries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important thing is to get good sleep. Not just the hours in bed but the quality of sleep. If thoughts and worries about work are haunting you in the sub-conscience, it really doesn't matter how long you are in bed. In this aspect you'll have a positive synergy between physical workout and better sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps, and you'll start feeling better soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T15:06:40.043" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T15:06:40.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-02-01T10:09:17.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.beeminder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;beeminder&lt;/a&gt;. It allows you to set goals publicly. If you go &quot;off track&quot;, it penalises you in a few ways you can choose (charges you money, posts to your facebook account, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it has been very effective to get me to write. I use it according to the following rule: I count writing sessions, where a session is at least 5 words. In fact, most of the time, I will end up writing hundreds of words, and beeminder just forces me to go over the activation barrier and start typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T10:09:17.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7681" CreationDate="2013-02-01T12:37:44.063" Score="15" ViewCount="2546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student at a US university and I have a fantastic, caring and supportive adviser who I find fosters a happy work environment for all his students to grow in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the drawback to this happily unfolding story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He advises 9 students, 5 of who are PhD students (I am one of them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 out of the 5 PhD students are in the final stages of their PhD program (me included).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 out of these 4 PhD students have families and should have graduated at least about 5-6 months ago but because of &quot;family pressure&quot; they haven't. I don't relate to that because I don't have a family and &lt;strong&gt;I want to defend and graduate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser has always had goals that are generally considered unattainable in my group. I had been given 3 weeks to finish my dissertation in 2012 with the dangling carrot that I could defend and then focus on writing papers perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met this goal one whole week short of the 3 week goal. However, my advisor has been postponing my defense for a variety of reasons (all of which are true) and  is being pulled in several directions at the same time because of an important position in the research area of fuel cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So these constant vacillations have led to my defense being pushed to the end of Feb 2013. Now I'm told they don't know when I'll defend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that this is rather unfair and considering that I generally have a good rapport with my advisor I am unsure of how to broach this topic. Why am I so worried? I come from a country where demanding things from your adviser is sinful and gets you kicked out of graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to say that I want to defend and figure out the next step in my life! I am not talking getting a job necessarily but just life in general — get married, have kids, find a job, move to a different place (in no particular order) what have you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice or similar experience that I can draw from? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-16T19:56:51.953" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T19:56:51.953" Title="Unable to defend and graduate because of advisers fickle mentality" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;abuse&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7679" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:03:02.167" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to him&lt;/strong&gt; (I'm gonna make a template out of that one)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be professional, stay fact-based, don't say it as a criticism (veiled or not) of him, and you should be in the clear. Say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wanted to ask you, given your experience on this matter: I had expected that the final period of my PhD, between finishing the thesis and defending, would be quite short. Given that it's not the case, I was wondering: what is, in your expectations, a typical schedule? Am I doing something that hurts my ability to defend sooner? Could I do something to speed the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should open up a dialogue about your expectations, his expectations, your constraints and his, and possibly help unknot the tie you're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're not giving us much information about the exact nature of the core issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he has been postponing my defense for a variety of reasons (all of which are true)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all the reasons given for postponing the defense are valid (I assume “true” here means “valid”), I don't see why you expect to defend. Do you think he's setting the bar too high? Is it merely a scheduling/timing issue? You say that your thesis is ready, has he gone over it, commented, critiqued, discussed it with you? Is the problem with putting together the committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T13:03:02.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:08:38.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also a first year, non-native English speaker PhD, but I've been doing some writing with my Master thesis adviser (native speaker of my language, not English, but very well versed in English and ~2 more languages). In any language, I often have long causal (is that the right word?) sentences, and he sometimes wouldn't agree with my style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I was the one doing most of the writing, I still feel like I can offer some useful tips. And, before the list, I &lt;em&gt;support everyone arguing strategy and being careful that your actions aren't &lt;strong&gt;misinterpreted&lt;/strong&gt; as disrespectful&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if it's just &lt;em&gt;typos (spelling)&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;obvious grammar&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;It's advantage&quot; vs. &quot;Its advantage&quot;), just correct it on your own and &lt;em&gt;accompany it with an SVN comment&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;Ran text through spellchecker&quot;, &quot;Spotted and corrected few minor spelling mistakes&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like your professor has an easily-bruised ego, make it sound like not a big deal. Just some routine check-ups and tune-ups you did, nothing major you changed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;request &lt;strong&gt;in person meetings&lt;/strong&gt;, or (in case it's not possible to meet in person) &lt;strong&gt;video-conference/phone-call meetings&lt;/strong&gt; or at least ask the guy (nicely!) if it would be okay to &lt;strong&gt;collect and send&lt;/strong&gt; your opinions and confusions on the paper &lt;strong&gt;via e-mail&lt;/strong&gt; once or twice a month or so&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keep track of&lt;/strong&gt; passages and expressions that &lt;strong&gt;you would change&lt;/strong&gt;. Rank them if you want, from the ones that are just plain confusing you and which you can not understand, to the ones that sound strange language-wise to the ones you just think you have a better expression for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you sit on that information for a few days, you'll come to terms with some of them, realize that some are really a matter of personal style, and which parts are just simply confusingly written and hard to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;communicate with the professor&lt;/strong&gt;, respectfully and diplomatically expressing your concerns. Some suggestions that I would feel comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I'm not sure if I understood what you meant in this passage here (...). I have interpreted it as (...), is that correct?&quot; (slip your suggestion here)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;As a non-native English speaker, I am not too familiar with this expression or weather it can be used in this context. Do you think it would be a good idea if we / I checked for an alternate expression?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I had a very hard time to understand this part (...). After going through it and understanding it, I have re-written it in a way that sounds clearer for me. Would you have time to go through this and offer your opinion?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Would you mind interpreting this couple of sentences for me? I do understand the gist of it from my practical work, but I can't seem to put the pieces in place after reading it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this way, you're not imposing your style or writing, and it can not be misinterpreted as &quot;I think my writing is better than yours.&quot; But, as papers are written to be understood by others, &lt;strong&gt;you expressing your concerns might prompt him to re-think the part of the text&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he tries to explain on the spot, and looses himself in the explanation, that should be a clear hint even to the professor that it's not really clearly written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no chance of you changing the meaning of something you misunderstood. Also, you showed that even though you would write something differently, you respect his style, reasoning and opinion. My ex-supervisor always told me, it's always okay to have an opinion of your own if you can back it up and defend it. If you can both concisely explain to each other how and why you've written a portion of text, it will be easier to reach an understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;always offer him the chance to do it (&quot;we might&quot; -- it means you) but say that you can implement the changes yourself (&quot;or I can write the potential changes&quot; -- it means you again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offering them to do it shows respect of their opinion, and offering to do it yourself shows commitment and respect of their time. Very diplomatic :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; say you think &lt;strong&gt;there is a problem&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=848&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Saying you have a &quot;problem&quot; is a sign of weakness in academia&lt;/a&gt; - so you definetely shouldn't accuse a professor of having one. Look through my post, go ahead: I never used the word &quot;problem&quot; before this paragraph. Not once.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, shortly, I strongly advise diplomacy. But also, &lt;strong&gt;talking to your supervisor&lt;/strong&gt;. If you offer your suggestions in a way that tell your professor that you value what he's written, his opinion, and his work, he shouldn't have problems doing the same with you. And if he still does have a problem with it... &lt;strong&gt;Don't walk. Run!&lt;/strong&gt; (by @JeffE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T13:08:38.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:11:09.207" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really see this as a problem specific to non-native English speakers. I know plenty of first-language English speakers who are absolutely rubbish at writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems I've personally witnessed go much deeper than correct use of the language: It's mainly about organizing your thoughts and what you want to say, and then saying it in the clearest way possible. This usually does not involve any in-depth knowledge of the English language. In fact, being &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; good may make your writing worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use and preach an incremental writing approach which consists of the following steps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start identifying the &lt;strong&gt;one statement&lt;/strong&gt; that your paper will make, e.g. &quot;&lt;em&gt;here is a new method to solve problem X&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, or &quot;&lt;em&gt;method X is better than method Y for problem Z&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you're clear on what the message will be, write a rough sketch of your paper in terms of the statements you will make. This should be the &lt;strong&gt;main story&lt;/strong&gt; of your paper. Each statement should really only make a single point, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solving problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is very important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most people use method &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; to solve problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Method &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; has this/that weakness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Method &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt; avoids this weakness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show on an actual example that &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt; is better than &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; for problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point you should start worrying about &lt;em&gt;consistency&lt;/em&gt;. What you have to look out for is dependencies between your statements, i.e. have you really stated everything you need to state such that I can make the next statement? Will you be using words/concepts/methods before introducing them? It is important that you get these things right at this early phase, where ironing problems out is still relatively easy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you've nailed your story line, you can start &lt;em&gt;fleshing-out&lt;/em&gt; your individual statements. Here too, I would recommend sticking to bullet points and making only one statement of fact per bullet. The first statement above, for example, can be expanded as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List several instances of problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a concrete example of where solving problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State benefits of solving problem &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; more efficiently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here again, dependencies are crucial! Make sure you don't use any information without having given it in a previous statement. Also try to keep dependent statements as close together as possible. Remember that you're trying to tell a story and need to keep your reader on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that I haven't said a thing about sections. It is usually only at this point that I would start placing section headings and grouping different statements. Doing so too early may cramp your story-telling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should now have a somewhat complete story-board of &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you're going to say, and you still haven't had to worry about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're going to write it. What you need to do now is turn the &lt;strong&gt;bullets into text&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I usually go about this is to turn every statement/bullet into a paragraph of text. The first sentence of said paragraph should be the statement, followed by at most one or two sentences either explaining it in more detail or giving an example of what you are saying. If you need an example, almost every paragraph in this answer was written this way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The final phase is &lt;strong&gt;refinement&lt;/strong&gt;. Your paper, at this points, will probably consist of a large number of very short paragraphs that don't necessarily flow into each other. This is where you start merging paragraphs and using connectors between them, e.g. &quot;Thus&quot;, &quot;However&quot;, &quot;Furthermore&quot;, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This final step is not something you do once, it's something you repeat until your paper looks, feels, and reads like a regular paper. I usually go through a paper with a red pen and fix things by hand while reading, then implement the corrections, and then wait a day or two before iterating again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the process I've just described is &lt;strong&gt;completely mechanical&lt;/strong&gt; and does not involve any in-depth knowledge of the underlying language. The only language ability you need is to formulate clear statements. If you do anything fancier than that, you'll risk loosing any reader whose level of English is below your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very much aware that there are many people who can just sit down and write beautiful, precise, consistent, and easy to read papers. Good for them. For the rest of us, I suggest using the approach I describe. At least it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2017-12-16T12:09:04.710" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T12:09:04.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7687" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:20:01.810" Score="4" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone I know (nationality French) has accepted a six-month post-doctoral fellowship in the United States. The hosting institute will sponsor a J-1 visa; my understanding is that J-1 visas are much quicker to process than H-1B visas, and since she should start as soon as possible, they opt for J-1. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/professor-and-research-scholar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;J-1 Research Scholar visa&lt;/a&gt; has the following limitations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor and Research Scholars must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not have participated in a J-Visa program for all or part of the 12-month period immediately preceding the start date of a professor or research scholar program unless they meet one of the following exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The participant's prior physical presence in the U.S. on a J-visa program was less than six months in duration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she &lt;em&gt;physically&lt;/em&gt; leaves the United States one week before the end of her contract (having been in the US for 5 months, 3 weeks), for example to attend a conference in Europe or for working from home, can she still apply for a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; post-doctoral fellowship (&lt;em&gt;NB: I'm not talking about an extension of the existing post-doc&lt;/em&gt;) at a new J-1 research scholar visa, or will a H-1B visa be the only route still accessible for a new post-doc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T13:34:58.840" Title="Six-month post-doc on J-1 Research scholar visa, can one apply for another J-1 if physically departing before end of contract?" Tags="&lt;visa&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7685" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:29:41.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such documents may be required for academic work in other countries than the home country. For example, for temporary work in the US, one might need a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-1_visa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J-1&lt;/a&gt; visa or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;H-1b&lt;/a&gt; visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T13:32:39.477" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T13:32:39.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7686" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:29:41.387" Score="0" Body="Legal document authorising entry to, exit from, and/or employment within a country." OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T21:44:44.307" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T21:44:44.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7684" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:34:58.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yale University has a very nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yale.edu/oiss/immigration/common/j1scholars/bar.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explanatory page&lt;/a&gt; for those 12 and 24-month rules, which are more complicated than the excerpts you quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;           &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FGSHv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to contradict your quote. Note that it says specifically &lt;em&gt;“for any amount of time (one day to five years)”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T13:34:58.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:41:44.823" Score="13" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume you are knee-deep in a project, going through a series of papers that are seemingly relevant to your project. You found this ~10 year old paper, which looks very promising indeed. A lot of interesting results, good discussion, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, I think it's obvious that you should check whether or not the results and conclusions in the paper are still valid by searching for any correspondence related to the article (e.g., pointing out that some claims do not hold, etc). However, I have yet to find anyone that digs into such information. You normally find a paper, read it, find more interesting papers through references and keep on digging in this manner until you have accumulated &quot;enough&quot; articles to form an educated opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this (or any other) type of quality assurance process, when it comes to cited literature, common practice? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to streamline this process? PubMed does not seem to include all correspondence related to each article.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I should perhaps note that, if you are in biomedical sciences (especially related to complex diseases), about half of the publications turn out to be wrong or misleading after some years, and perhaps a quarter more are shown to be incomplete in its findings. I believe it's in the nature of biology, in contrast to more human defined sciences like mathematics or computer science. There are no formulas or calculations to check the integrity of the work published.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T18:38:17.573" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T18:38:17.573" Title="Verifying that cited results are still current before publishing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7688" CreationDate="2013-02-01T14:20:22.933" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you're looking for are the papers that cite a given paper. This is often listed as &quot;Cited by&quot; in various databases. If paper B shows that paper A is incorrect, paper B will almost always cite paper A. In that vein, you can look at all the works that cite a given paper to see if any disprove the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More typically, though, if a paper published 10 years ago is still relevant today, there are other more recent papers on the same topic which will either cite that paper or derivative works thereof, and you would use those more recent papers to ascertain the current state of the research. Old papers, particularly in quick-moving fields, tend to either fade away pretty quickly or serve as foundations for other research. If no one else has cited it in the interim period, it's probably worth taking a very critical look at why that is the case before throwing in all your chips on that single paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T14:20:22.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T16:05:47.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with a lot of the other answers, but I have a few additional ideas that haven't been suggested yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you find yourself thinking about this project at odd moments, even when you're supposedly resting or doing something else?  You need to reset your mind by clearing out this project and replacing it with something else for a while.  It needs to be sufficiently compelling to get your attention away from the thing that has filled your mind for 4 weeks.  Then, after a bit, your enthusiasm for your old project will regenerate and you can be excited about it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get sick of working on a particular project, one thing that can sometimes be helpful is to spend some time (perhaps a week or two, maybe more) working on a very different project of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is that you are not actually burned out.  You may instead have conditioned yourself to associate this project with working very long hours.  Now, whenever you think about working on it, you subconsciously feel like if you work on it, it will consume your life again and you don't have the energy for that.  This is a bit harder to deal with.  To continue to work on this, you have to break the conditioning.  If you can force yourself to work on the project, but with more reasonable hours, that may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2746" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T16:05:47.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-01T16:52:53.527" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burnout is a word of many meanings. But basically, it is characterized by a very strong physical exhaustion, a general anxiety and the feeling that you are a failure at work, that you will never meet the expectations of the persons you work with/for. This last feeling is strengthened by the fact that a person in burnout thinks she owes something to the others. A last symptom is depersonalisation : you have the feeling of living outside you and the world, you are a spectator of your life, not an actor of it anymore. If you have this last symptom, you should go to the doctor right now, not asap, now !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, a burnout becomes a real medical problem (as a strong anxiety syndrom) and needs that a medical doctor takes action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides giving a medication, a MD will give life advice such as :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop completely working for a while, do a sleep cure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid any activity that relates to work (you're in academy, don't read complicated stuff, you're a plumber, don't do any home improvement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change your environment : go visit your old uncle who is a farmer in Ohio (or a fisherman in France, or ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify the way you live, be more involved in your own life. Sometimes, we (=people in academy) don't take the time to cook, to do sports, to rest without activity. Even if one can live happily with a 100% focus on work, it increases the odds of being burned out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And my last advice : at first try to avoid seeing people from work. It is necessary, so that you can realize that they don't really need you and you don't really need them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T16:52:53.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7643" CreationDate="2013-02-01T16:54:23.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like customs depend on the field and country, but here's my experience based on mathematics in the U.S.  I'll answer based on customs rather than laws, since that's generally more relevant: one can get a bad reputation for doing something perfectly legal, and one can get away with things that aren't legally justified if nobody is willing to enforce their rights in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short version:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance is understood to be a final decision that commits you to showing up for a year.  You can ask to be released from that obligation, but you shouldn't just announce you aren't coming.  If you give a good enough reason for your request, they'll grant it.  If your reason isn't compelling to them, they won't try to force you to show up but you'll really damage your reputation (not just at that university).  Saying you got a better offer afterwards is not considered compelling, and you are expected to withdraw other applications upon accepting an offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The long version:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negotiating does not imply accepting an offer, and in fact you should always try to negotiate over whatever you care about before you accept, since your leverage will never be higher.  (Some candidates don't like the idea of having leverage, but you can think of it as a benefit to the department as well: it's much more effective for the department to tell the administration &quot;We need to do X to get our wonderful candidate to accept&quot; than &quot;Our wonderful new hire wishes we would do X&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accepting an offer just amounts to saying you accept it.  In principle, this could be tricky: people's memories of an oral acceptance could be disputed later, and it's possible to write things that sound like an acceptance but might not be meant that way (&quot;Great, I guess we'll be colleagues next fall then&quot;).  Of course I'd strongly recommend avoiding anything that might be ambiguous or confusing, just in case, but in practice I've never seen this actually cause a serious problem.  Any sensible department will follow up to get an unambiguous answer in writing, so if the situation remains ambiguous it's because both sides screwed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is how binding an acceptance is, assuming both sides agree the offer was accepted.  In the communities I'm familiar with, you cannot unilaterally change your decision once you have accepted.  You could presumably get away with it, since the department isn't going to sue you if you don't show up, but that would be very bad for your reputation.  Instead, the standard approach is to explain how things have changed and ask the department for permission to withdraw your acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In certain cases, this is perfectly straightforward.  Suppose an unexpected problem has arisen in your life: for example, one of your parents was just diagnosed with cancer and you want to live close to them for the next year or two.  Surely any reasonable department would understand and approve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, most cases are less clear cut, and amount to personal preference.  This is more likely to arise after a deferral, where you accepted a job but then went on leave for a year first, since the extra time allows for more things to change.  In general, departments will be pretty unhappy if you defer and then change your mind.  It's important to ask to be released from your obligation rather than simply announcing you won't come; the department will often agree, since they understand you would likely leave after a year anyway.  It's not good and you should try hard to avoid this situation, but occasionally it happens.  If it does, you should feel a little guilty for making it harder for other candidates to get deferrals, by contributing to the impression that people with deferrals might change their minds in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, you might simply change your mind within a single yearly job market cycle and decide you prefer another offer you already had at the time of your decision.  This is probably not even worth asking about: when you accept an offer, it is understood to be a final decision, and you can't just re-evaluate your options.  You should officially decline all your other offers when you accept an offer; if you aren't ready to do that, then you aren't ready to accept a job yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the trickiest case is when you get an offer with an early deadline and have to make a decision before other universities you might prefer can make an offer.  Most departments don't want to pressure people into making this kind of decision, and it's always worth asking for an extension of the deadline.  Many departments will agree, but a few will not (I know of one department that strategizes about how to put time pressure on people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are caught negotiating with a department that is trying to pressure you in this way, then you should be as tough as they are.  On the other hand, their behavior does not mean your acceptance becomes non-binding, and unilaterally changing your mind will still look bad throughout the community.  If the department refuses to grant an extension or show any other flexibility, then they are clearly indicating they want a definitive answer now, and you'll have to give them one.  It's worth considering whether you even want to work for a department that would treat you that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you have accepted an offer, you should withdraw all your other job applications.  Partly this is so they don't have to waste time evaluating a candidate who is no longer available, and partly it is because if you don't withdraw them, then it looks like you are still hoping for a better offer.  That is what will really offend people, because it will look like you tricked the department whose offer you accepted by giving them what was understood to be a final decision while still staying on the market to see what other offers you could get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T16:54:23.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7697" CreationDate="2013-02-01T22:08:27.970" Score="15" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I find myself currently reviewing a paper where I find that many of the criticisms I have are addressed in papers in which I am an author (and often as lead author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to make my identity known to the writers of the papers—but how do I make my points clear without breaking the &quot;anonymity&quot; of the review. Even if I cite a bunch of papers each time, it will probably be obvious what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T07:37:01.470" Title="How to avoid identifying myself in a review?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7696" CreationDate="2013-02-01T22:50:47.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently reviewed a paper in a similar situation. The paper was good but some relevant publications I was aware of (not mine) probably should have been cited. When writing the review I simply suggested the specific topic which should be referred to, rather than specific papers. That way the suggestion is there and all they have to do is look. They got a couple of papers that I had in mind, and some others, so all was well in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't personally agree with suggesting citation of your own papers directly in a review since as you point out this leads to suspicion of the identity of the reviewer, but also because reviews should be impartial as far as possible. If a paper that I authored is the most relevant work then any proper search will find it, if not then something else equally suitable will probably be ok for most readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastEditorUserId="4503" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T23:05:00.943" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T23:05:00.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-01T23:39:40.387" Score="10" ViewCount="700" Body="&lt;p&gt;In business (e.g. IT industry) remote work (aka &quot;telecommuting&quot;) can be relatively common (see e.g. a recent StackOverflow &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-believe-in-working-remotely/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;). It is exceedingly rare (or even nonexistent) in academia, even though most part of academic work consists basically of thinking and writing, which can be done in any environment. Are you aware of any successful implementations of &quot;remote work&quot; in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are many factors making it less feasible - an academic employee usually has other duties (e.g. teaching) which can't be done remotely, there is also the social aspect of research, meetings etc. (although this is not that much different from similar aspects in a programming job, unless we argue that doing science is &quot;more creative&quot; than mere programming and thus requires more physical presence). Also, currently available tools still make e.g. making a web seminar or math meeting difficult (no blackboard), although this too is changing (see e.g. G+ Hangout seminars: &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/plustcs/&quot;&gt;TCS+&lt;/a&gt;). However, given the scarcity of jobs, &quot;N-body problems&quot; etc., it seems to me that the potential for remote work (even part-time) is, as of now, underutilized in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4108" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T14:53:43.330" Title="&quot;Telecommuting&quot; in academia" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2013-02-01T23:53:57.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my subject area (computational physics) telecommuting is certainly possible, and in fact I am very lucky to be able to spend a significant fraction of time working off campus. As a post doc I generally find that when it comes to research (in terms of developing and running code and writing papers) I am much more productive working in an isolated environment without distractions. However, it is also very important to maintain links with other researchers and students in the group and department. This can partly be done with tools such as Skype, but the importance one-to-one interaction should not be underestimated, as well as just 'being around'. Many problems are solved over coffee, and this interaction is a critical part of collaborative research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall though I think that telecommuting, at least for researchers for some of the time is a good thing, particularly in conjunction with flexitime for those with families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T23:53:57.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2013-02-02T00:48:05.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing it part-time is rather common at least in places i have worked. At moment me and most of my colleagues work from home two days of the week (usually Mondays and Fridays for most and Thursdays and Fridays for some) on the days that no teaching is involved. If there is an important meeting we will show up otherwise we skype. I think i generally work on average 6.5 days in a 22 day work month from home.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T00:48:05.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7721" CreationDate="2013-02-02T01:46:41.487" Score="10" ViewCount="2137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Chair is writing a major proposal and me and my colleague are on-board (both non-tenured)... Chair has asked for a meeting next week to work on the bid for a centre and this colleague of mine has replied back to both of us accepting the meeting and on our behalf and has suggested working two-three full days for the Chair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I replied to the Chair saying &quot;sure lets meet&quot; and didn't acknowledge anything else that was said. &#xA;I am tempted to write to the my colleague and say I know they had the right intention but please never ever talk on my behalf again as its not professional. Is this the right thing to do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried if I don't react this will continue as I am new in my current job. On the other hand I am worried if I react by sending an email or verbal communication and asking them not do it they might just forward/talk with the Chair with some lame excuse like suggesting that I am really busy and unhappy and they will do it themselves to make me look bad or with the genuine intention of correcting their mistake which in both cases will make me look poor! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T13:55:03.160" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T13:55:03.160" Title="How should I deal with a colleague talking on my behalf?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7696" CreationDate="2013-02-02T05:00:28.847" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you believe that there are papers that the author should cite, list them in your review.  Yes, I mean the specific papers, with complete bibliographic information.  If you include some of your own papers in that list, the author of the refereed paper may &lt;em&gt;suspect&lt;/em&gt; that you're the referee, but so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you believe that the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; papers that the author should cite were written by you, you're probably wrong.  Look harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T05:00:28.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-02-02T05:03:18.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a very similar problem at my old job: we had to scour a huge literature database containing literally thousands of papers for any data showing the solubility behavior of different species. A lot of this data was from the 1950s through 1970's, and was data we could not reproduce for a very large number of reasons (time and now safety regulations being chief among these). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colleague who was responsible for collecting all of this data used a package called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datathief.org&quot;&gt;Data Thief&lt;/a&gt; to remove the data from graphs. It seemed to work well, but is also (from what I recall) commercial software (or rather shareware, but still technically not free). It is cross-platform and written in Java, so perhaps satisfies a decent amount of your criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T08:04:57.477" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T08:04:57.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7710" CreationDate="2013-02-02T10:02:10.767" Score="6" ViewCount="913" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have graduated from a Masters program recently. After graduating, my Masters thesis supervisor and myself decided to write a paper based on my dissertation. I have a question about the format in which my name should appear in the paper, given that I am now an ex-student of the university. Is something like below acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe, MS in XYZ, University of ABC, Current&#xA;  Residential Address, me@gmail.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to remove/add anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5900" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T10:15:52.313" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T06:02:14.697" Title="Author title for ex-student in research paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7708" CreationDate="2013-02-02T10:15:04.467" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a definitive answer: check issues of the journal you will submit to, see what they do. If you still have doubts: contact the editor (I would wait until after acceptance of the paper, because it's not such a big deal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, it's very rare to mention the diplomas hold by the authors. Even the titles (Dr, Prof, etc.) are often not listed at all. The exceptions seem to be (at least in my field) some journals edited by German societies, academies or publishers (&lt;em&gt;Angewandte Chemie&lt;/em&gt; lists all titles, for example, in a footnote along with full affiliations). So, I'd remove the “MS in XYZ”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, your main affiliation is the institution where you carried out your work (or most of it). This means, list “University of Nowhere, Department of Procrastination” as your main affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, you can indicate your “current address” in the author list. Depending on journal style, it might be a footnote or listed as other affiliations. It will start with: “Current address: University of Big Name, Department of Corrections”. But… given that you don't have a new institutional address, I would advise you to skip it altogether. Simply don't list your home address in the paper, it's not really useful for readers. If they want to contact you, they will use email anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally: if your former university didn't provide an email address that will last, using your gmail address is perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this covers it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T10:15:04.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7727" CreationDate="2013-02-02T11:17:58.863" Score="11" ViewCount="1341" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This question is based on some observations which could be wrong (in that case, let me know).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying to PhD program in various universities in US in theoretical computer science (TCS). Some of the things that I heard is that getting admission in TCS in top 15 theory universities is tough. The toughness is obviously due to the large volumes of applications that these universities receive (I don't know how much?). However one of the big factors is limited funding available with professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who funds the students? Professors or universities? In some cases I heard, that it is the professor who funds the student. Then in that case, why is the admission process centralized (the professor who is actually funding may not be in the committee)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5619" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T08:25:08.323" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T08:25:08.323" Title="Why is the admission process centralized, when the professor who is actually funding may not be in the committee?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-02-02T11:40:33.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several models for funding graduate students: often times the professor is responsible for funding. However, in many cases, the system has &quot;joint&quot; sponsorship—at first the students are sponsored by the department (while they do teaching service or are taking classes, for instance). After that, they are then paid for by their advisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of centralized admissions is to cut down on the cumulative workload. Especially with the ease of submitting applications electronically, if each professor were responsible for selecting his or her own students, faculty would be swamped by applications. Having a central pool makes the process simpler for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T11:40:33.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7715" CreationDate="2013-02-02T12:19:54.143" Score="47" ViewCount="2938" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing academic papers, I am really bad at improving what I have already written. I have heard that most of the time writing should be allotted to revisions. I know a few academics who are really good at keeping on revising until they are happy, but I simply can't do it. Knowing that a sentence/paragraph/section can be improved but not being able to do so is very frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My partial self-diagnosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I refuse to make big changes, probably since it is a lot of work. (This sounds like I'm just procrastinating.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If write with collaborators (almost always), I do not want to change what they wrote or revised, unless it is obviously wrong. (This sounds like I lack confidence in my writing skills. Or I just don't want to upset my coauthors?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before rewriting, I can't even re-read properly. I don't want to re-read the paper carefully and create a current copy of it in my head. I tend to skip parts. Even after I have re-read the manuscript, it is not always clear what the current state of the paper is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure I have many weaknesses that I am failing to verbalize in this question, but I'd like to hear &lt;strong&gt;what others did to train their rewriting skills&lt;/strong&gt;. Also, I want to hear &lt;strong&gt;how you rewrite&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, I am not a native speaker of English but I have seriously written only in English. My field is science and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T21:29:01.870" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T23:09:16.273" Title="How do I improve my rewriting and editing skills?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2013-02-02T14:04:00.813" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the more efficient way would be to start reading and focusing on how to write in the first place and then focus on editing your work. This approach is going to save you a lot of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the fastest way is to get some professional help which often is free in academic institutions in the form of academic writing courses. If you get the opportunity through these classes to show your writing to a linguist you can gain a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not an option then some classics on writing are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;White, E. B., &amp;amp; Strunk, W. (1972). The elements of style. MacMillan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zinsser, W. (2006). On writing well: The classic guide to writing    nonfiction. Harper Perennial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps then you should start focusing on editing and I recommend these for the start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cook, C. K. (1986). Line by line: How to edit your own writing. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ross-Larson, B. (1995). Edit yourself: A manual for everyone who works with words. WW Norton &amp;amp; Company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt; personally the most important guide for me was the edits/comments that I got back from my supervisors, mentors and senior collaborators during the years. I checked their edits over and over again to systematically diagnose what was wrong with my writing and I think those edits/comments were the most helpful resource. I went as far as creating a corpora of literature relevant to my fields of research to know how exactly people write in my domains of interest  in engineering and social science but well that's going a bit too far in the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also one thing that I have noticed which makes a major impact on my editing is switching the edits on screen and on paper. I usually first do a round on screen. Then print and do it offline and then switch again! I don't know about others but in my case I tend to focus on completely different issues on when checking the scree or printed material and if I only do one I will miss a lot more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2014 EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; One additional method for editing your work is listening to it. Text-to-speech software are really helpful here and you will pick up issues that you might normally neglect. There is something magical about listening to your writing which is totally different from reading it. I definitely recommend trying this as well. Obviously higher quality text-to-speech software that have more and better natural voices will enhance the experience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T03:46:57.257" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T03:46:57.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2013-02-02T15:30:20.283" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently posted a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/resources-on-how-to-overcome-writers-block-especially-for-non-native-english-s/7683#7683&quot;&gt;lengthy answer&lt;/a&gt; for a similar question a few days ago, the essence of which was to separate &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; you're going to say from &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; you're going to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've done this for a paper, you can edit it focussing on writing style alone. This is a good way of avoiding the &quot;big changes&quot; you mentioned in your question: You will have made all these before actually formulating the text.  As a consequence, you should also know precisely &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; it is you are trying to say in each paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteratively refining a text can get you stuck in dead ends, e.g. if you choose a certain formulation and then can't make it sound right. One thing I often do when I get suck with a paragraph or chunk of text that I don't know how to fix, is to just &lt;strong&gt;delete&lt;/strong&gt; it and &lt;strong&gt;rewrite&lt;/strong&gt; it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get stuck on the specific formulations themselves, i.e. you don't know &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to re-write a certain paragraph, you could try explaining it (remember that you know &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you want to say, but not &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to say it) &lt;strong&gt;out loud&lt;/strong&gt; to an imaginary listener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading a paragraph out loud is a good way of forcing yourself to re-read it. It's also a great way of checking if something sounds silly or is not really comprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble reading to yourself, you may want to try pairing-up with a colleague or co-author, and reading parts of the paper to each other. Granted, this may feel a bit awkward, but just look at it as editing the paper together. Working in pairs is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;known&lt;/a&gt; to improve motivation and productivity, and will basically &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; you to concentrate on the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have problems concentrating in general, I can give you a few tips from my own experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break down your editing into short bursts of at most an hour, and focus only on a part of the paper, e.g. the abstract, a figure, or any specific section.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first few hours in the morning are the most productive for me. Try to find out where your own &quot;best time&quot; is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coffee. In certain cases, the caffeine can help you focus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T09:48:27.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-02-02T16:17:34.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the university, funding for students can be allocated in different ways.  From what I've seen in Computer Science, you can be guaranteed funding, which usually means that your tuition will be covered to some extent and you may receive a living stipend.  You can receive no funding, which means that you have to pay your own tuition and your own living expenses, or you can receive partial funding which is some subset of guaranteed funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities or departments don't admit graduate students unless they are guaranteed funding by either the department or by a professor.  In these cases, sometimes the department/school might have some money set aside to fund graduate students, usually as TAs, but professors will have their own funds through grants.  This allows professors more latitude in choosing graduate students that they think are promising and who share the same research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other universities/departments will admit students without guaranteed funding.  Students that are admitted without guaranteed funding will need to find their own funding sources through scholarships, fellowships, or finding their own paid positions (e.g., research assistants, project assistants, or teaching assistants).  If the student is unable to find any of these, footing the bill for tuition will fall directly on them.  This can be very stressful and can lead to students needing to drop out because they can't find funding or a mad scramble/funded positions being very competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My observation, and your mileage may vary depending on university or department, is that if the university does not offer all graduate students guaranteed funding, they still try to limit the unfunded students that are admitted to be balanced against the number of funding opportunities that may become/be available.  Departments also tend to admit slightly more students than they have positions for in anticipation of some students choosing to go to a different university after they receive all of their admittance letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why it's centralized, what people said about uniform standards and saving on administrative costs makes sense, and there's also an argument that many universities like to keep statistics and information on how many students are applying and being admitted to each department, what their demographics are, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T16:17:34.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7696" CreationDate="2013-02-02T16:21:01.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the author is an unknown nobody, then you don't need to worry about hiding your identity. The author probably has a lot to learn from you anyway, your papers will help him, and the author might even be happy to learn that his paper was reviewed by such an experienced expert in the field. (The number of relevant publication which you authored clearly indicates that you are an experienced expert in the field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is different, if you know the author quite well. In this case, the author might have been well aware of your publications, but intentionally didn't cite them. In such a case, I would rather avoid reference to my own publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is, if you think your publications will help the author (and that he will take at least a cursory look on them), then reference the publications that you think are relevant. If you just want to complain that the author didn't cite you, then let it be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5903" LastEditorDisplayName="user5903" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T16:36:04.780" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T16:36:04.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2013-02-02T16:55:19.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you aware of any successful implementations of &quot;remote work&quot; in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes: quite a few people I know are (or claim to be) more productive working from home than going to campus; they only go there for teaching, when they need a lab or when they need to talk to someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, it depends on the area where you are working; engineers will eventually need labs, test equipment etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1607" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T16:55:19.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-02-02T18:58:11.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] then in that case why the admission process is centralized (the prof who is actually funding may not be in the committee)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because the top universities (you said top 15) want to maintain their high standards of admission into the graduate program and would not &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; want to allow a candidate with rather poor qualifications on paper into the program just because someone is willing to fund them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that a top university will also most likely have a very rigorous curriculum, which the student will have to successfully complete (at least in the US) before they can advance, and this is independent of the student's research work with the faculty that is willing to fund them. So if a candidate's qualifications do not convince the committee that they are capable of advancing the program after 2 years, they will most likely not admit them because it will then be a drain on the university's resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is possible for such candidates to still get in, but the faculty and their references will have to make a &lt;em&gt;really strong&lt;/em&gt; case for them and they must have some redeeming quality/ability elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5633" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T18:58:11.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7696" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:09:10.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to make my identity known to the writers of the papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(Yes, also in my field reviews are supposed to be blinded on one side. But often very good guesses to who was the reviewer are possible. Sometimes it is obvious, and oftentimes I believe I could track down the reviewers at least to their groups because of the specific use of certain terms. And, yes, you could probably track me down because I also have typical questions. Personally, I'd prefer receiving review swith the reviewers' names (it is useless to thank reviewers A and B, as those two review all my papers, and everyone knows it - but I'd like to acknowledge reviewers by name) and to write reviews under my name as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see several possibilities here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As was suggested already, &lt;strong&gt;name the issue, not the paper&lt;/strong&gt;. You can also &lt;strong&gt;guide the authors to search terms&lt;/strong&gt; that will lead to relevant papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There may be &lt;strong&gt;valid exceptions&lt;/strong&gt; to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes one wouldn't know from title and abstract that the paper is relevant, e.g. when some methodological point was presented in a paper about an application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes it is impossible to dig out relevant papers between other papers that use the terms differently or some combination of search terms happens also in irrelevant context* &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your question sounds as if you are well-known for the topic which you found missing in the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are The Big Guy&lt;/strong&gt; for this topic, &lt;strong&gt;pointing to your publication does not compromise your anonymity&lt;/strong&gt; - any other reviewer who is aware of the issue would have done it, too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are not The Big Guy, but maybe the only one in that field looking into this topic, odds are still you were asked to do the review &lt;em&gt;because of this expertise&lt;/em&gt;. IMHO, the quality of the review matters much more than semi-existent (see above) anonymity.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In that case, I'd &lt;strong&gt;write the review so the authors can understand and address the issue easily&lt;/strong&gt;. If you really think that this compromises your anonymity, you may &lt;strong&gt;write to the &lt;em&gt;editor&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that you think your review is not anonymous, because ..., and possibly that he may decide to give your email to the authors and that they could contact you in case of further questions (IMHO it is much less work to answer a few questions that to have to review an additional time).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* e.g. &quot;soft classification&quot; in remote sensing is used ina certain way, which I took over into chemometrics. However, one very important classification method in chemometrics is SIMCA, the &quot;S&quot; for soft. It could be used as as soft classifier in the remote sensing meaning. But is usually isn't. So I got tons of hits with SIMCA. No hits excluding SIMCA, and after looking into a certain number of them and never finding it used in this &quot;soft&quot; way, I gave up and had to say that I didn't find any such application. If anyone knows such a paper, please tell me the proper citation. I don't mind if you're the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T20:09:10.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7702" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:30:25.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest putting in those days - they may or may not be lost, but losses occur*. No use crying over spilt milk. Writing the time down as lost means, you can be happy if something good comes out of them at the end. OTOH, aking a fuss creates a serious risk of a trench war that would cost much more time.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd also talk to him in a calm minute. I may be taking a line saying that he luckily foresaw the way my opinion went, yet I'd wish him to quickly ask me beforehand in the future.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Talkin calmly may need that you know &lt;em&gt;exactly why&lt;/em&gt; you are so angry that you have to post in a public Q&amp;amp;A site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* partiuclarly in writing proposals. There's a rumour here in Germany that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrechnungshof&quot;&gt;Bundesrechnungshof&lt;/a&gt; once estimated that for different kinds of public grants from a national economic point of view (i.e. including all proposals that are written: accepted as well as rejected) about as much money/effort goes into writing grants as is distributed by the different grant programs (estimates ranging from 1 : 2 to 2 : 1 are mentioned).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T20:30:25.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7724" CreationDate="2013-02-02T21:41:04.870" Score="12" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some papers to review and I am wondering whether I should do an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;in-depth inspection&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; over the whole paper format? I see nothing major but there might be some tiny format errors here and there.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the organizing committee &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; reviewers to check submissions&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  against the conference format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T06:02:50.207" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T21:42:30.467" Title="Is checking the format of a paper an expected part of the reviewing process?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7723" CreationDate="2013-02-02T21:52:03.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say the responsibility of the reviewer is to judge the content of the paper. So, checking if the format of the journal/conference has been followed is not part of this job. Very large and obvious deviations can be pointed out, but for example spotting that the font of the caption is in size 11 and not 10 is not part of a reviewers task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T21:52:03.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7723" CreationDate="2013-02-02T21:55:36.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewers check content. Copy editors, prior to publishing, check format and adherence to publication style guides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Milage May Vary based on the expectations of your committee.  If you have a question about what you are supposed to be checking don't be afraid to ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T21:55:36.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2013-02-02T22:15:34.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're question is a VERY good one and one that impacts a lot of people. Because of that I upvoted it. However, the answer, which I think you at least have an idea of, is &quot;suck it up and get to work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing well takes a lot of time. Writing well includes planning, writing, reviewing, revising, reviewing, revising (ad nauseam - and I do mean nausea). If you look at great writing, you'll see it's often written by great writers. You should not think that they get it right their first time. When I (I consider myself an OK writer, not a great one) write for publication I usually write the piece and then end up editing it 10 times. In the end I spend much, much more time in the editing processing than in the initial writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing takes time. Writing well takes more time. If you want to write well, you need to be willing to push through the discomfort and keep working on it. That said, don't try to do it all at once. Edit several times spread across several days (or weeks, if you have the time) - a fresh mind helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T22:15:34.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-02-02T22:21:59.407" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a theoretical computer scientist currently serving on the admissions committee of a large top-15 computer science department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the things that I heard is that getting admission in TCS in top 15 theory universities is tough. The toughness is obviously due to the large volumes of applications that these universities receive (I don't know how much?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year my department received about 50 PhD applications from people whose &lt;em&gt;primary&lt;/em&gt; interest is theoretical computer science and probably another 50 with &lt;em&gt;secondary&lt;/em&gt; interest in theory, out of 750 PhD applications overall.  We've offered admission to about 10 theory PhD students (out of about 200 PhD offers total).  We realistically expect three or four theory PhD students to accept our offer (out of about 80-100 total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However one of the big factors is the limited funding available with professor. So who funds the students? Professors or universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's complicated.&lt;/strong&gt;  A typical PhD offer from a strong department includes guaranteed funding in some form.  My department promises five years of funding to every incoming PhD student, assuming they make steady progress toward their degree.  (Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; accept a PhD admission offer without funding.  If they really want you, they'll pay for you.)  Most of our students take 6 years to finish, but in practice, (100-ε)% of our students are funded for their entire stay.  A typical theory student in my department is a TA for 2-4 semesters and an RA of fellow for the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a student is admitted, the &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; is making a contractual commitment to funding that student, assuming they make adequate progress toward their degree.  In practice, most of that funding comes from individual faculty grants, most of the rest comes from the department's budget for teaching assistantships, and a small fraction comes from fellowships (university, NSF, DOE, NDSEG, Hertz, etc.).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; of students that each group is allowed to admit depends primarily on three factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advising capacity:&lt;/strong&gt; How many students can each faculty member in the group reasonably advise?  The limiting resource here is faculty &lt;em&gt;attention&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;money&lt;/em&gt;.  Theoretical computer science faculty tend to have relatively small groups, compared to some areas in CS.  Steady state in my group seems to be about 3 PhD students per faculty.  This is the most significant factor, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funding capacity:&lt;/strong&gt; How many students can each faculty member reasonably expect to fund?  This isn't just a function of the faculty's &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; grants; a typical grant lasts only 3 years, but each student needs 5-6 years of funding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teaching demand:&lt;/strong&gt; How many TAs does the group need to support its teaching responsibilities?  Conversely, for how many semesters are students in the group expected to be TAs, as part of their PhD training?  The ratio of these two numbers basically determines how many students the department is willing to pay for on its own dime.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In some cases I heard, that it is the professor who funds the student. Then in that case, why is the admission process centralized (the professor who is actually funding may not be in the committee)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In US computer science programs, &lt;em&gt;departments&lt;/em&gt; offer admission, not individual faculty.    Students are completely free to change advisors or even research areas, even if their existing advisor is funding them.  (Of course, they have to fulfill their funding obligations, but that's an orthogonal issue.)  Formally, students in my department do not even choose their thesis advisors until the end of their first year.  (One of my recent PhDs entered the department as an RA in distributed systems/sensor networks; he switched to algorithms at the end of his first year.)  For that reason, it's crucial that the admissions decision does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; rest entirely with a single faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T08:23:57.057" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T08:23:57.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7723" CreationDate="2013-02-02T22:58:38.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I agree with the other two answer but somehow in every paper that I have ever received a review for there has been some sort of comment on something formatting related from at least one of the reviewers. These have ranged from suggestions for changing the fonts of the formula or captions to spotting that font for footnotes should be 9 instead of 10 for that journal etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is some sort of a code that if you find something you don't neglect it and ask for correction but in general that's not your job and you don't actively seek them you just &quot;catch&quot; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T22:58:38.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2013-02-02T23:48:49.197" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My simple strategy is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft your paper. Make it as complete as you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give yourself atleast a12 hour period in which you dont look at the paper, no matter how tempting it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a read-back program that can read the paper back to you loudly. Mac has a free built-in program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen and note which sections need reworking.&#xA;If you don't like what you hear, its likely to be poorly written.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revise as if you are writing the paper for someone with little knowledge of your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I have got while writing my PhD dissertation was to focus on the arguments in the drafting stage and on the details in the revision stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T23:48:49.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2013-02-03T00:20:10.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, noone here can know what is really the matter with you. So we all find it rather alarming, because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not getting yourself to do exciting things&quot; &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a symptom of serious medical problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after a &quot;work-sprint&quot; you may just be exhausted in a perfectly normal way. E.g. after I had handed in my Diplom thesis, I needed two weeks of basically doing nothing and sleeping a lot (incidentally and very typically, I got a cold as well). It's just paying back your debts in recreation, in the very literal meaning of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Things to do:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your advisor. From what you wrote, you have a very good relationship. If you think you are in the normal need-for-holidays, tell him, and get the holidays.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During the holidays, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sleep much&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spend much time outdoors.  Sun (in case it's winter now where you are) and  excercise is good for everyone and you may need to catch up due to the work sprint. Doesn't need to be real sports, for me personally it would be better to do &quot;excercise&quot; on a non-exhausting level, but longer. 5 - 8 h of walking, biking or slow cross country skiing would sound good to me, but your marks may vary of course. I'd say, a good amount of fresh air is when you fall into your bed at 8 pm and sleep till next morning...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you eat lots of vitamins  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are afraid (i.e. you are not 100% sure that it isn't) something more serious may be the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't wait until you know it is serious!&lt;/strong&gt; By then, it will be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; serious, and you may not be able any longer to seek the help you need. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also talk to your advisor. If you think, holidays may help, take them. However, here are two additional &quot;saftety lines&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule a meeting for after your holidays to discuss whether you are again in working condition. Ask him &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; that he should get you to medical help if you are not in working condition after the holidays. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him to &lt;em&gt;come and get you to medical help&lt;/em&gt; if you don't show up after holidays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition (before the holidays),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;find out whether your university has some kind of psychological counselling (not sure about the correct English name), examination offices usually know that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, find out a psychological clinic (university hospital?) with emergency counselling hours (again, someone please correct my English)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't get yourself to doing this &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; (till Monday noon), go to your advisor (or very good friends/relatives), tell them you have a psychological emergency and that they should get you to medical help immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Normal exhaustion after intense work:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I know and love these exciting periods of intense work. However, they are exhausting, and you need the recreation afterwards as you'd recreation after a mountain tour of several weeks. Also, they don't happen every day (I think one couldn't survive that, even though they are incredibly good). BUt from what I know from fellow researchers, these a serious driving force for quite some of us. Welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even though you are now exhausted, remember how good it is. I think a healthy balance is if you are exhausted like you are exhausted after a big physical effort. I remember them like physically strenuous tours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are not an every-day experience, but odds are that this wasn't the last experience of the sort :-) And, while this one may have been too much of the good, you can learn knowing when it is enough (and/or to plan for recreation afterwards). For me, this got easier once I had the experience that new such spells of incredibly good work do come.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T00:20:10.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7734" CreationDate="2013-02-02T21:46:59.417" Score="10" ViewCount="10802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematics major without any undergraduate level courses in physics. I am lately interested in physics. Is there any chance for me to go into good theoretical physics graduate program without any background in physics? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this kind of question is acceptable here, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDED&lt;/strong&gt; My concern is do Universities even accept students with math majors into physics department without physics courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7266" OwnerDisplayName="user5907" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T07:46:04.183" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T07:46:04.183" Title="Is there any chance for a person with BSc in mathematics to get into good graduate level theoretical physics program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7733" CreationDate="2013-02-02T23:00:12.170" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are students with math major (and other major) go to physics graduate school, but I think all of them have taken physics courses. The first question you should ask yourself is that &lt;em&gt;why you are interested in theoretical physics&lt;/em&gt;. If you were the admission committee and see an applicant said that they are interested in physics but taken no physics courses, what do you think? You must explain it in somewhere in your personal statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should do is to take physics courses and get good grade on all of them. Also, you should try taking few graduate courses. There are no need to take courses on all topics, you should only have strong interest in few topics such as QM, EM, SM, QFT and string theory. Some of them are very mathematical (that good for you). Doing so can demonstrate your interest in physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you might try to apply for master program in physics. It is easier to get in and after 1 or 2 years you can apply for PhD in physics to continue your study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more options is to apply for math department, in particular, you should look for applied math. There are usually few professors studying mathematical physics. It is particular true for some countries that the theoretical physicists stay in the math department and experimental physicists stay in physics department. Assuming you have good background in mathematics, it should be the easiest option for you to get in those school and start studying theoretical physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4277" OwnerDisplayName="hwlau" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T23:00:12.170" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7696" CreationDate="2013-02-03T07:37:01.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question.  I've run into this situation several times, and I'll tell you what I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First choice: Post a comment visible to authors.&lt;/strong&gt;  If I'm lucky, the program chairs have chosen reviewing software that allows me to post comments (which are separate from my review) that will be made visible to the authors.  Then, I mention that the citation in a comment that's visible to the authors.  This way, the citation/comment can't be linked to my review.  The authors might guess that I was one of the reviewers, but they won't know whether I was one of the folks who wrote a positive review or a negative review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the best case, but sometimes you get unlucky and the program chairs have chosen reviewing software that doesn't support this feature.  In which case, my second choice is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fallback: Contact the program chairs and ask for their help.&lt;/strong&gt; I contact the program chairs, explain the situation (that I have a comment I'd like to share with the authors, but I don't want it to be linked to my review, because it might identify me), and ask for their help.  Often they have a way that they can accomodate this.  For instance, most online reviewing software these days can accomodate external reviewers.  In that case, the program chair can send me an invitation as though I were an external reviewer, and I can supply an external review whose only content is the citation.  As another example, the program chairs might be willing to manually send an email to the authors mentioning this additional comment, or they might be willing to submit a review of their own mentioning the relevant citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Last resort: Don't mention it in my review.&lt;/strong&gt; If none of the above options are available, then I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mention the citation in my review.  I believe reviewers have the right to remain anonymous, and don't have any obligation to the authors that supersedes that.  Instead, I mention the related work in a comment to the program committee, to justify my recommendation on whether to accept or reject the paper.  Then, I might include a general comment in my review that the authors have not done sufficient review of the literature and that they should do a further literature search; and I might even include some tips, like the conferences or journals that they should be reading.  This is not as helpful to authors as I would like, which is why this is my last resort.  And, if I'm forced to this last resort and the program chairs aren't able to help me get my message through to the authors, then I tend to view that as a shortcoming of the arrangements that the program chairs have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is great that you are thinking about these issues and doing your best to provide authors with detailed comments and reviews.  Kudos!  That's the kind of spirit we should all applaud and encourage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T07:37:01.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-02-03T07:38:39.760" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague suggested I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arizona-software.ch/graphclick/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GraphClick&lt;/a&gt;, a Mac OS software that includes (according to its website):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Automatic detection of curves (solid, dotted or dashed), symbols, bar charts, or perimeters of areas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Frame-by-frame digitization of QuickTime movies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later is something I had not thought about, but might actually be useful for some teaching needs (analysis of motion from a video). My first experiences are good: the software is easy to use, includes a nice magnification UI, and automatic curve detection works fine if the graph is “clean”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's a list of other possible software from &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/14440&quot;&gt;this answer on Cross Validated&lt;/a&gt; (link thanks to @AndyW and @Paresh):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://markummitchell.github.io/engauge-digitizer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Engauge Digitizer&lt;/a&gt; (free software, GPL license) auto point / line recognition. Available in Ubuntu repository (engauge-digitizer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getdata-graph-digitizer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Get Data&lt;/a&gt; (shareware, free trial version, $30 for personal license) has zoom window, auto point / line recognition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitizeit.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DigitizeIt&lt;/a&gt; (shareware, free trial version, $49 for personal license) auto point / line recognition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T17:17:59.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7749" CreationDate="2013-02-03T09:31:11.233" Score="12" ViewCount="1694" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals sometimes publish &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festschrift&quot;&gt;Festschriften&lt;/a&gt;, i.e. special issues in honor of a distinguished (but still alive) researcher in their field. Articles for such issues are typically invited articles by other groups in the same field, and current and former collaborators of the researcher honored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague told me that such articles are peer-reviewed, much in the same way regular papers are. I somewhat suspect that this might not be entirely true, and that the standards used by the editor (and even reviewers, if they are aware of the context) are lower for these special issue invited papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote on Wikipedia (from one Endel Tulving) seems to agree with me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a Festschrift frequently enough also serves as a convenient place in which those who are invited to contribute find a permanent resting place for their otherwise unpublishable or at least difficult-to-publish papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions are: &lt;strong&gt;in your experience, are reviewers given a hint by the editor that the paper they review is intended for a special issue? and is the review process and editorial decisions typically as strict as they would be for a regular paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T09:05:39.327" Title="Festschrift articles: is the peer-review as strict as for other papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-03T09:37:19.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In two such instances that I have been involved since November (invited papers for special issues but not Festschrifts) no indications were given to the reviewers and strict double blind procedures were followed. I would go as far as we had even stricter procedures because of the notion that special issues are not of the same quality to the point that I found it frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is entirely dependent on the editor and the practices vary significantly depending on the journals editor, the special issue editor, and the relation between the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T10:33:17.750" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T10:33:17.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7430" CreationDate="2013-02-03T11:17:43.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you read French, so there is this book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.fr/Parcours-femmes-luniversit%C3%A9-Perspectives-internationales/dp/2296010482&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Parcours de femmes à l'université : Perspectives internationales&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and also this study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efigies.org/wp-content/uploads/2007-11-24_je-efigies-anef_formation-doctorale-rapports-pouvoir_actes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Les femmes à l'université:&#xA;Rapports de pouvoir et discriminations&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T11:34:20.287" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T11:34:20.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-03T12:33:31.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is a difference in the peer-review process, but not so much on the reviewer end. In general, when I review a manuscript, I do not consider the target journal. I attempt to point out the good and the bad and leave it to the editor to decide what to do with my reviews. The difference then arises with what the editor does. While the topic of a manuscript might not fit in with the journal in general, hence making it difficult to publish, it might be a perfect fit for a special issue. Similarly, the manuscript might not have as much data as typically required for the journal making its scope narrower, but it still might fit fine with the special issue (especially give the time constraints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T12:33:31.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-02-03T12:44:45.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datathief.org/&quot;&gt;DataThief&lt;/a&gt; years ago. From what I remember, it is not fully automated. You start by loading a digital image and identifying the axes, some tick marks, the axis limits and the scale (i.e., linear/log/polar). This lets it handle bad scans (e.g., rotation and warping). Once it knows the bounding box of the plot, you then tell it what to extract (curves, points, errorbars, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is written in JAVA so should run on most OS's. I believe it is free as in beer (and it might be open source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T12:44:45.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2013-02-03T13:10:18.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are advantages to remote working for individuals, my feeling is that it is used too much and leads to a bad work environment. Unlike industry, academics are not evaluated as frequently or in as meaningful of a way. When some people work remotely and others don't this can lead to resentment and a feeling that they are not pulling their weight. Academic departments are often on the verge of dysfunctional and generally have cliques each representing their own interests. Extensive remote working exacerbates these problems. Problems can often be solved much more efficiently over a coffee/beer than the telephone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T13:10:18.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-03T15:09:15.497" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience in mathematics, papers submitted to a Festschrift are held to the same standard as any other papers as far as correctness and novelty go, but there is definitely some flexibility regarding importance.  The Festschrift is often considered a good place for articles that would be of particular interest to the person being honored, because they build on this person's work or involve topics close to their heart, even if the papers are not particularly important in absolute terms.  Referees know the paper is submitted to the Festschrift, and I think this vision of which papers are appropriate is broadly shared among authors, editors, and referees.  An embarrassing or inappropriate paper would be rejected, but for example a minor observation related to the honoree's work could be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say how this compares with typical journals, since there's a range from low-end journals that will publish anything arguably new and correct to high-end journals that regularly reject excellent papers because they aren't quite wonderful enough.  A Festschrift will never match the very most prestigious journals (there simply aren't enough thematically-appropriate papers at that level to fill it up), but it can be comparable to a middle-of-the-road journal or occasionally better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in Stephan Kolassa's comment, a large majority of the Festschrifts I've seen are monographs, rather than journal issues.  When they are special issues of a journal, it's generally not a particularly prestigious journal.  (However, it can happen: the Duke Mathematical Journal published a Festschrift for Nash.)  My interpretation is that prestigious journals generally don't want to publish Festschrifts because they know the papers won't all meet the highest standards of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T15:09:15.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-03T15:40:55.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the difference is whether the Festschrift is its own book (then the quality solely depends on the editors) or in a renowned peer-reviewed journal (who'd have a reputation to loose with a bad special issue). And I'd have a look what is the title and what the subtitle - the impression of &quot;Festschrift for Big Guy&quot; is entirely different from &quot;Scientific Subject&quot; subtitle &quot;dedicated to Big Guy&quot; or &quot;collected in honor of Big Guy's scientific work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, special issues of peer-reviewed journals about conferences or concentrating on a certain subject are common. The idea behind the conference issues is to ensure the normal peer-review process because conference proceedings have a bad reputation of no or no real review after the contribution is accepted (by  abstract only). To the point that many people do not submit conference proceedings because they see them as a complete waste of time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The indications I have are that the peer review process is up to the usual standard of the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09242031/38/1-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this table of contents&lt;/a&gt; of a special issue dedicated to Prof. Mantsch, you'll see that the special issue consists of original research, there isn't even a review article in about the historical development of the field in that issue (there is an editorial, though). Also, it is primarily a conference special issue, and this conference (of a regular series) also had the dedication (which came out most at the conference dinner speech, not at the scientific sessions).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Our paper had a two-line dedication before the abstract, and besides that it is a normal original research paper that underwent peer-review. I have not seen in my field a special issue that was primarily dedicated to someone and not primarily thematic with a dedication.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(thematic special issues):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether the reviewers know that the paper is intended for the special issue, I never had a review to do that indicated anything of the sort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my experience not only the normal quality but also the normal subject criteria apply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the invitation takes place only after the peer-review process is over: after the acceptance of a paper we were asked whether we'd like it to be published in a special issue that was upcoming and where it thematically fit in. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, special issues are not filled by invitations, but the fact that a thematic special issue is planned, is circulated. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T15:40:55.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-03T21:38:13.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have reviewed a few articles for special issues. At some journals, you know that there's a difference, because you're recruited as a reviewer by the &quot;special editor&quot; for that issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the &lt;em&gt;standards&lt;/em&gt; used, I would say that there &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be no difference between the two. However, I think it's fair to say that some allowances might be made for special issues that would not apply under normal circumstances. At the same time, I think that the awareness of this is fairly widely known in academic circles, and therefore some allowances are made for this. These tend not to be the &quot;super groundbreaking&quot; papers, but often tend to be &quot;current progress&quot; or &quot;latest but perhaps not greatest&quot; work out of the labs submitting them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T21:38:13.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7723" CreationDate="2013-02-03T21:42:30.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As grauwulf comments, your job is to focus on the content. However, when poor formatting clearly affects your ability to understand the scientific formatting, it should be commented upon. For instance, when somebody writes &quot;x^2&quot;, but really means &quot;x (Ref. 2)&quot;, that's a problem that should be commented on (because a copy editor might &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; catch that!). Similarly, if the way a graph is formatted makes it difficult to interpret (labels or legends too small to read, or are garishly presented), then it behooves the reviewer to mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T21:42:30.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7757" CreationDate="2013-02-03T22:29:59.837" Score="4" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why are a majority of jobs in academia offered on a fixed term basis?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that most teaching or researching positions have a contract term (e.g. 3 year contract). Some contracts may be renewed, subject to additional funding, while others simply end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is an &lt;strong&gt;academic reason&lt;/strong&gt; for this system (akin to the system being designed to compel the incumbent to continually publish in order to remain in a position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T06:32:26.043" Title="Contract versus ongoing positions in academia" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-03T23:20:15.457" Score="25" ViewCount="33011" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried asking this question in cstheory.stackexchange.com but it was closed and it seems like this question is more appropriate here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate and an American citizen who recently applied to Computer Science PhD programs in the US. Based on conversations with friends and posts on gradcafe I am very likely to be rejected from all the programs I applied to (I haven't heard anything while others have gotten acceptances and interview requests from all the schools I have applied to).  I am now trying to brainstorm ideas for what to do after my graduation in order to improve my chances of getting into a PhD program when I try to apply again next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option that seems to be brought up a lot is to attend a master's program.  However, unless I can get funding, or transfer credit will lower my tuition significantly (I'll have 6 or 7 graduate level cs courses that will not count towards graduation requirements by the time I graduate), I'm not sure if I can afford such a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another popular option is to be a lab technician or something similar.  I'm not sure if such positions are available in theoretical computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything else I can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5913" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T05:58:48.747" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T01:52:47.740" Title="What should someone who has been rejected from all PhD programs do to improve their application for later admissions cycles?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7758" CreationDate="2013-02-04T01:11:51.790" Score="8" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a &quot;publishable&quot; thesis?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often heard this term thrown about in conferences and even as advice to new grad. students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I know, it is indeed rare for a thesis to be published entirely as a book, though one can publish papers out of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T07:44:20.813" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T07:44:20.813" Title="What is a &quot;publishable&quot; thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7752" CreationDate="2013-02-04T03:01:42.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a product of various reasons that are academic, economic, legal and institutional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many jurisdictions, it's easier and cheaper to remove staff at the end of a fixed contract: it can be very very expensive to remove staff on a permanent contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough able people are willing to work on fixed contracts that universities don't need to offer permanent contracts for every post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Track record, CV and references are not enough to tell how good someone really is, nor how productive they'll be in your team; that needs an extended probation, which a fixed-term contract effectively functions as.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding tends to come in bursts, with no guarantee of follow-up funding; so while it can be possible to ensure a post can be funded for 6 months or 5 years, at the end of the funding, there may not be the money to fund that post. On a permanent contract, the resulting severance can be very expensive for the university. The fixed contract gives clarity to both employer and employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity changes over time. Some employees are more productive when they have a lot of job security; others are more productive when their future employment depends on the current performance.  I'd love to see some studies on the impact on productivity of needing to repeatedly apply for funding: oddly, it seems to be one area where we academics don't take a scientific approach to analysing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T03:01:42.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-04T05:25:43.963" Score="8" ViewCount="2251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of designing a major. However, I am worried that using a self-designed major can make an application look bad. As it stands, this potential major is about 70% computer science classes, 30% psychology and neuroscience classes. As such, this leads me to the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these self-designed majors seen as &quot;weird&quot; or simply unacceptable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general, are self-designed majors unattractive for graduate admissions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For computer science specifically, do majors matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5914" LastEditorUserId="5914" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T08:38:06.070" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T03:03:59.110" Title="Will a self-designed major lower my chance of acceptance for graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7752" CreationDate="2013-02-04T06:32:26.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that there are many positions in academia that are fixed term. However, I would question your claim that a &quot;majority&quot; of positions are fixed term. Presumably this varies a lot by country and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my casual observations in Australia, some positions tend to be fixed term or casual. E.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post docs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research assistants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Positions filling teaching gaps (e.g., related to maternity leave, short term increases in demand for subjects, filling-in while)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A selection of lower-level teaching positions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research only positions funded by external grants or contracts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while others tends to be continuing positions most notably&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standard faculty positions that combine both teaching and research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard faculty positions are often funded broadly out of revenue from teaching even if there is an expectation that you will secure additional sources of research funding. Teaching revenue is generally more stable than research funding that tends to be linked to particular grants of particular duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing academic positions in Australia typically have a probation period lasting several years as one means of encouraging performance. That said, the promotional system means that there are other extrinsic rewards to continue performing well once a continuing position is acquired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As can be seen from the earlier list pure research and lower tier positions tend to be fixed term. This can be because the funding is inherently uncertain or perhaps because the employer feels that they can recruit an adequately skilled employee without incurring the additional costs associated with continuing positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T06:32:26.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7754" CreationDate="2013-02-04T06:36:05.933" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases it might mean that the thesis could be published as a book. However, I'd generally interpret the phrase to mean that the thesis could readily be adapted and published as one or more journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T06:36:05.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:10:14.327" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage of having a &quot;made it myself&quot; degree is that in situations in which you are being compared with your peers (i.e. graduate admissions), you are comparing apples to oranges, and the admissions committee only know apples. A committee sees two applicants with CS degrees, even if they come from different universities, they can be somewhat certain that both have covered a certain number of bases. In these situations, your degree compared to a CS degree can look like 70% of a degree vs. 100%, even if you have a higher GPA (and this may read as &quot;they have a higher GPA because they took psych classes instead of Operating Systems, Databases, Compilers, Networks, Computer Architecture, and Theory of Computation&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees are less concerned with whether you took classes &quot;related to your interests&quot; than whether or not you passed or exceeded the same thresholds as your peers. If you're worried that people wont give your transcript a good look, most won't (especially if you end up entering the workforce). Don't get a degree in anything that will take more than 30 seconds to explain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at all of the people who are doing the work that you some day want to do. Look at all the professors that you might someday want to work with. What did they get their degrees in? (here's a not-so-big secret: most professors hire students who remind them of themselves)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get in touch with professors at research universities, admission committees, grad students, and get their opinions. Ask &quot;What are you looking for in an incoming student?&quot; People will be pretty forthcoming with you. Ask your professors if they have any contacts at research universities that you could talk with. Also, your professors all got into grad school - ask them how they did it. Find the youngest ones, they'll have the best idea what admissions are like these days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T07:10:14.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7753" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:10:33.423" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you intend to do a PhD, then you're tackling the academic career path, so you're at the right place here :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am as well applying for a PhD currently, and went through the process of applying for a masters, here're the things I learned the hard way,&#xA;In general, there are two phases in acceptance, the university acceptance and the departmental acceptance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should avoid applying to programs directly without contacting anyone in the department you want to work in. So first, check the faculty's members, see their research interests, and contact one of them, telling him that you would want to work under his supervision for your masters because you find his research topics matching your interests and expertise. That person may then make the departmental admission easier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of us google for the top most universities and apply there, which makes our chances lower. Try to look for the 100-200s or search for new offers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you contact faculty members, NEVER COPY PASTE EMAILS! these will be very easy to detect, and will result in considering you a spammer. Make sure you tailor your email on the person's research interests and write your most interesting qualifications in the body of the email (not as an attachment, because usually they are too busy to check that, unless you really impressed them through the email's body)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to target funding organizations that give out scholarships based on minorities, ethnic groups etc.. these are easier to get accepted in, than the ones available for all the public&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Narrow down your focus of the research area that you like most and would love to work in. If you have worked in that area before, it will make your application more unique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take care of the above points the next time you apply. As for the skills you can work on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some research, try to publish scientific papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on a research proposal, learn how to write a good one as it will help you in future applications and when contacting faculty members. Try to contact your undergraduate university's professors and try to join a research group or work with one of them on a topic that you can publish papers from.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the GRE General test, that is a must in most of the universities in the US&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the GRE computer science test, which is optional in most of the applications but distinguishes your application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not from an English speaking country, make sure you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the TOEFL exam, most programs require 80/120, in US they usually ask for 90, which is pretty easy for you from what I can see in your question (take care as the score expires in 2 years, it has to be valid till the time of being admitted, not just the application time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure all certificates/transcripts are translated to English (by a trusted entity)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually difficult to get funding for your Masters, because it is mostly studying and not actual working, and you're just staying for two years, thus not contributing that much to the funding organization, but keep trying, never underestimate yourself and go on applying. And remember that even if you keep failing, you are still a long way ahead of those who never tried.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T07:10:33.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7645" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:24:53.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that &quot;Communicated by&quot; can mean a direct submission of a paper by a scientist who is not (in most cases) directly involved in the paper itself. It was designed as a way for  established scientists to give a &quot;leg up&quot; to their younger colleagues by allowing them to circumvent the normal review process. This means you may have to give these types of papers a bit more scrutiny as a reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PNAS is the publication where I have most commonly seen &quot;Communicated by&quot; publications, but this feature was phased out in 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until July 1, 2010, members were allowed to communicate up to 2 papers&#xA;  from non-members to PNAS every year. The review process for these&#xA;  papers was anonymous in that the identities of the referees were not&#xA;  revealed to the authors. Referees were selected by the NAS member.&#xA;  PNAS eliminated communicated submissions through NAS members as of&#xA;  July 1, 2010, while continuing to make the final decision on all PNAS&#xA;  papers. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proceedings_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sciences_of_the_United_States_of_America&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T17:03:44.090" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T17:03:44.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:31:17.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, it is very unlikely that it will hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit a paper to a conference, you get to see the reviews that will tell you what needs to be improved or not. If in the end it was accepted while being a low quality paper, it is the conference committee's problem not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In researchers' profiles, you can write down: &quot;Selected publications&quot; instead of putting the whole list. Most of the time people will just appreciate that you've written a paper, and even more so if it is at a reputable conference. No one has the time to read the paper unless he/she is actually interested in the topic. There's no sort of &quot;Hall of Shame&quot; for publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will learn, that's for sure. It is very unlikely that it will hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T05:21:49.763" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T05:21:49.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7430" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:52:36.957" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most recent paper to make a big splash on this subject was &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, by Moss-Racusin et al.  You can start there, and dig backwards through the references - you'll hit most of the major reports on this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few notes on the topic of this paper itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the same gender biases that academics have towards their students that they also demonstrate against their peers, so don't narrow your research too much. And if your question is &quot;why are there so few academic women in the sciences?&quot; you need to look at the problem from top to bottom. Women aren't going to want to become professors if they are already noticing the bias in undergrad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T03:09:57.277" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T03:09:57.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2919" CreationDate="2013-02-04T13:28:30.997" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I  do indeed have some direct experience with them.  I've &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102&quot;&gt;written about it on my blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: The SCIRP journal &lt;em&gt;Advances in Pure Mathematics&lt;/em&gt; provisionally accepted a randomly-generated nonsense paper.  This seems a clear indication that their peer-review process is a sham, and that they are essentially a vanity press, and not a &quot;serious outfit&quot; at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T13:28:30.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-04T13:59:40.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this would hurt your chances. From the point of view of the admissions committee, there's no guarantee that the 70% of CS (or 30% of psych/neuro classes) that you chose to include in your custom major covers everything you'll need in graduate school, and you may have large holes in your fundamentals that would give you a distinct disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much better approach would be to simply choose a standard major and fill all your electives with a concentration of psychology and neuroscience courses. This would still give you multifaceted knowledge while still providing the admissions group a way of measuring you against your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T13:59:40.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7776" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:36:36.883" Score="23" ViewCount="7518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to cite something that I have learned from a Wikipedia page. However, I'm loathe to cite Wikipedia because of the perception of it by my tutors, so I try to cite the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the correct thing to do when I'm unable to have sight of the primary source myself, or find it in a collection (for clarity, I should add that I have the details of the source - I just can't find it in collections available to me)? Should I just cite as much original information as I can, or should I defer to citing Wikipedia? I'm hesitant to do that, because a glance at the citation would suggest that I was 'too lazy' to source original material or just dig deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For additional clarity - I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that citing Wikipedia is 'bad' etc.  The emphasis is on how to cite something that has been learned via Wikipedia (as an example) but for which the original material cannot be seen or retrieved from available collections or searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1484" LastEditorUserId="26682" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:28:28.427" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T06:23:57.607" Title="How should I cite something learned second-hand (eg, from Wikipedia) when I haven't seen the primary source?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:46:34.197" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I would &lt;strong&gt;try harder to get the primary source&lt;/strong&gt;. Really. But, if that isn't possible (price, availability, etc.), you may have to do without. In that case, a few solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find another secondary source&lt;/strong&gt;, possibly one that is more “academically acceptable” than Wikipedia. For example, try to find a textbook on the topic that make mention of the fact you want to source, or a review article, a book, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If not possible, what I have usually seen people do is cite the primary source anyway. That's bad, but people do it. If you write for a journal, where the reviewers might not allow a reference to Wikipedia, you might not have any other choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend, if the format and/or editor allow it, is to cite both the primary source and the secondary source, possibly indicating the relationship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J. Doe, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Failed Experiments&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt;, 1024-1028 (1971); as cited by &lt;em&gt;secondary source&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T14:46:34.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:46:42.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you intend to go into an interdisciplinary grad program, it may actually help your chances of being admitted. For example, my Ph.D. is in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Engineering. My research had a heavy psychology component. A hint of neuroscience in my background would have certainly benefited me. In HCI, the combination of CS, Psychology, and Neuroscience could make you a quite attractive candidate. Importantly though, it depends if you see yourself applying to one of the truly interdisciplinary programs vs. just applying to a CS program to research HCI. There may be other interdisciplinary programs out there as well that would be interested in such a combination, though HCI seems to be a fairly perfect fit with that background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern I would have is that you are still early in your academic career and your grad school plans may change by the time you are done earning this degree. In this case, a traditional major would probably be a better choice. Keep in mind there are also options for double majors and minors that are well-known degrees as opposed to a build-your-own degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastEditorUserId="5631" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T20:52:32.473" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T20:52:32.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:47:10.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can cite something to which you have no (original) source. I mean anyone can edit Wikipedia (or any other similar webpage) so that would practically be citing a random person, without any way for a third party to check up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily Wikipedia articles usually have references you can check (to see whether or not they are actually accurate and relevant) and cite accordingly. If there is no reference then you should probably not be citing (or trusting) that piece of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T14:47:10.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:53:43.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good science starts from good definitions. You have not given your definition of &lt;code&gt;remote&lt;/code&gt;, and I personally can think of at least three different scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in office some days, from home some other days, but the office is withing commuting distance. It is true that academia does not care which computer you write your papers on, especially if you work is only on a computer (pure math, theoretical sociology, may be some computer science). Many companies allow their staff to work like that, especially if their roles are well defined and can be performed off-site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate remotely: you write a paper together with somebody in another university, in another country, etc. At the extreme, you meet the person with whom you published that paper only a couple years later at a conference where you are presenting it. I think nearly every paper with more than one author is written that way... although in some disciplines, a team of 10 authors means the personnel of a single lab.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work from home full time, with the nearest office being a few hours away. (My worst commute was get up at 4am, drive 2hrs to the airport, take a flight with a connection, total 4 hrs, spend 3 hours in meetings, take an 8pm flight, drive back, back home 1 am next day. Don't want to do this very often, thank you.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the responses so far addressed options (1) and (2). To me, &quot;remote&quot; means (3): I am sitting at least a time zone away from the rest of the company (I work in a private sector). There is absolutely no freaking way this could work in academia even if your work only involves a computer. (Obviously, if you are a biologist with a lab to attend every day to look at your mice, your question simply does not make sense.) If you raise a question like that in a job interview, you can bid it farewell, pack and go: there are dozens Ph.D.s waiting in line, and nearly each of them will take a job on any condition. (Yes, there's overproduction of Ph.D.s, which they probably did not tell you when you applied for that highly coveted degree. If there were no over-production, there would be no point to have this website, as university managers will be hunting Ph.D.s, not Ph.D.s hunting jobs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you what you seem to see from your Ph.D. student perspective about academic work seems to be research (which is of course doable across continents if needed), you will HAVE to teach, and you will HAVE to do some service (department committees, qualifying exams, colloquia, campus involvement, etc.), and then later on take graduate students that you are supposed to pamper and educate. If you are thinking about post-doc options, then again the expectation is that you learn from your mentor, their lab and their department by being present there and working with them. You can't do this remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T14:53:43.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-04T15:46:50.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're at a school where self-designed majors are fairly common, there may be records of what sorts of jobs people with self-designed majors have gotten (and whether/where they went to grad school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T15:46:50.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:20:04.597" Score="45" ViewCount="2282" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields of academia, a professor must get grants to fund his research (e.g., medicine, biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early in academic career, a scientist can have naive expectations about how things work in academia and later may be surprised by the reality. One such surprise is the compete and collaborate paradox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in career, it may be not so simple to collaborate and share fully your ideas, since twice a year (or so) we all submit grants and we suddenly are less friendly colleagues who share ideas, but we compete with each other or between &quot;groups&quot;. For example, we don't let anyone see our full grant submissions. (e.g., NIH medical grants - full text must be requested by freedom of information act and only abstracts are on the web).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle in every day life, at conferences, in hallway conversations this paradox of collaborating and competing at the same time in academia? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you determine what to share? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you avoid colleagues who are known to 'tell only the minimum' at congresses and then surprise later with an accepted grant?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philosophically, it is impossible to collaborate and compete at the same time and one has to have some ethical structure but everyone's boundaries seem to be different!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T14:08:52.643" LastActivityDate="2021-01-07T12:41:45.990" Title="How do academics reconcile simultaneously collaborating and competing with colleagues?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7777" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:20:27.893" Score="10" ViewCount="6322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a project in which I have a direct supervisor in addition to the head professor of the lab. The direct supervisor only agrees to being written first or last on the article we are writing. Needless to say, my professor won't agree to be anywhere but last. He also feels that I deserve to be written in the first place. Is it possible to write both of them in the last place as co-last authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5927" OwnerDisplayName="Alexandra" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T18:50:33.850" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T18:50:33.850" Title="Authorship allocation - is it common to grant equal credit to two last authors?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:49:47.517" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're referring to is an &lt;em&gt;indirect source&lt;/em&gt;. In general, you should always work as hard as you can to find the original source. If that is not possible, all of the major style guides include a way to cite indirect sources. Note that you should not cite Wikipedia (see the &quot;do not cite Wikipeida&quot; note at the end of this answer). If an indirect citation is absolutely necessary, it should come from a reputable, peer-reviewed journal or other academically respected source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue University&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;MLA rule&lt;/strong&gt; is to name the author of the indirect source in the text and cite the work you have in-hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For such indirect quotations, use &quot;qtd. in&quot; to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as &quot;social service centers, and they don't do that well&quot; (qtd. in Weisman 259).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Williams College&lt;/a&gt; further clarifies that the indirect work should be included in your Works Cited list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...include the indirect source in the Works Cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;APA rule&lt;/strong&gt; (also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue University&lt;/a&gt;) is to &lt;em&gt;exclude&lt;/em&gt; the indirect source (called the &quot;original source&quot;, below) from your reference list and only include the work you have in-hand (called the &quot;secondary source&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...name the original source in your signal phrase. List the secondary source in your reference list and include the secondary source in the parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Johnson argued that...(as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 102).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Also, try to locate the original material and cite the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Chicago rule&lt;/strong&gt; (once again, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/03/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue&lt;/a&gt;) is to cite the indirect source, followed by the in-hand resource:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Chicago discourages the use of [indirect sources]. In the case that an original source is utterly unavailable, however, Chicago recommends the use of &quot;quoted in&quot; for the note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ian Hacking, &lt;em&gt;The Social Construction of What?&lt;/em&gt; (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 103, quoted in Manuel DeLanda, &lt;em&gt;A New Philosophy of Society&lt;/em&gt; (New York: Continuum, 2006), 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;do not cite Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in a formal document (unless, perhaps, you are actually writing about Wikipedia or collaborative editing techniques). I love Wikipedia, and I believe it is reasonably well-maintained and has a lot of good information. However, you have no way to verify if the information in an article is true -- or, if you do have a source to verify it, you would just cite that source. Aside from the tired, &quot;Anyone can edit it!&quot; complaint, two severe issues with Wikipedia as a citation source are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get whatever version of an article stands at the exact moment your web browser fetches the page. No matter how hard Wikipedia's editors work, they can't stop a bad edit from reaching your web browser if it was made seconds before you fetched the page. Wikipedia doesn't undergo any kind of pre-publication review; all review is post-publication, which means you may see totally unreviewed information. (You can mitigate this by citing a specific past revision, but it still stands that a post-publication review process means that any given revision of an article could have claims that have been reviewed by absolutely no one except the author.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order for a reader or reviewer to ascertain the usefulness of a source, it must have an identifiable set of authors (or, for anonymous works, at least a consistent, reasonably small set of authors). Wikipedia makes that requirement incredibly difficult to satisfy. (Again, it's &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to satisfy this requirement if you cite a specific revision of a page and find out what contributors wrote each part of a page, but it is still difficult since a potentially huge number of contributors have helped build that revision.) It's hard for a Wikipedia article to be &lt;em&gt;reputable&lt;/em&gt; where there are no clearly identifiable authors to which a reader could attach a reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5920" LastEditorUserId="14938" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T06:23:57.607" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T06:23:57.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7775" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:16:27.617" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write both of them in the last place as co-last authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As expected, an author list is not a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_%28data_structure%29&quot;&gt;tree&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28mathematics%29&quot;&gt;weighted graph&lt;/a&gt;, but a simple flat (one-dimensional) list.&#xA;There is exactly one last author. Possible solutions or mitigation of the issue include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alphabetical author list&lt;/strong&gt;. This happens in some field, and is totally unheard of in some others (including chemistry and biology, which is your field, so this might not be a possibility).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having &lt;strong&gt;two contact authors&lt;/strong&gt;, or have the professor who is not last author to be the contact author. In the past I have used this as a way to “pacify” a co-author who wasn't happy with his spot on the author list. (Needless to say, it's a perversion of the system, and should only be done if the author can actually act as contact author.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &lt;strong&gt;statement indicating the contributions of each author&lt;/strong&gt; (“X and Y contributed to this work equally”). Some journals require such statements, some will refuse to include them, so your mileage may vary. &lt;strong&gt;I doubt this will pacify your reluctant supervisor&lt;/strong&gt;, though: people who are worried about their rank in the author list are most probably thinking about how it looks like on a publication list or CV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have the head professor take responsibility for the final decision&lt;/strong&gt; (as senior professor and project instigator). That's the most sound solution, but it does not mean it's an easy one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your negotiation! And remember that they're not yours to handle (see my last point)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T19:14:05.347" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T19:14:05.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7774" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:17:03.833" Score="36" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you handle in every day life, at conferences, in hallway conversations this paradox of collaborating and competing at the same time in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ignore it, except around known jerks.  I'm lucky enough to work in a research community that generally values collaboration over back-stabbing.  There are a few exceptions, of course, but they fall under the category of &quot;known jerks&quot;.  I'd much rather gain a coauthor and get the result out together than to keep secrets and risk being scooped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have developed coauthors this way.  Yes, I have published papers this way that might not have been published otherwise.  Yes, I have been scooped, but only by people I had &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; discussed my ideas with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you determine what to share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't share ideas or problems that students (either mine or not) are actively working on, without the students' explicit permission.  Otherwise, I'm open about everything, except around known jerks.  In particular, if you want my latest grant proposal, just ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you avoid colleagues who are known to 'tell only the minimum' at congresses and then surprise later with an accepted grant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  Why should I?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T18:17:03.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7775" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:19:25.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens in biology quite frequently.  Take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jlr.org/content/early/2007/06/25/jlr.M700077-JLR200.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;§&lt;/sup&gt; Both authors contributed equally to this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it can be any two authors on the list.  If the notes are on the first two or last two authors, then this is often viewed as the two primary and equal collaborators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5921" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T19:09:51.350" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T19:09:51.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7783" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:27:27.663" Score="7" ViewCount="2022" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing short descriptions of research experiences as a student (undergrad or postgrad), what are the key points that professors, potential collaborators and admission committees would like to see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These might be very short descriptions in a space constrained academic CV, or slightly less short descriptions on an online profile or research statement. What are the key essentials (in the CV case) and the additional points (statement/website case)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T20:32:58.593" Title="What are the key points in short descriptions of research experience?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7906" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:42:00.823" Score="3" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed several academic programs that require, or accept in lieu of more traditional entrance evaluations, industry credentials for admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a comparative analysis of programs that allow industry licensing/certification versus those that adhere to more traditional entrance requirements like the GRE?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific credential that I'm thinking of is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isc2.org/cissp/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CISSP&lt;/a&gt; (1).  This certification has been eligible for transfer credit equivalency for some time (2), but I've only recently seen the certification as an admissions requirement (3) for an academic program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some data points that I would would be interested in are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do examinations, such as GSE/CISSP/CISM/etc, compare to the GRE in terms of overall academic preparedness?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there is measurable difference in the comparative difficulty between the different categories of examinations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you've taken both types of examination, industry and academic, is one class of examination better or worse for gauging candidates, and why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isc2.org/cissp/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)&lt;/a&gt; is an industry standard credential and certification.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apus.edu/TransferCredit/accepted/graduate/internal-policies/isc2-cissp-grad.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Public University System&lt;/a&gt; (private, for-profit) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walshcollege.edu/mastersinformationsystems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Walsh College, MI&lt;/a&gt; (private, non-profit)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capitol-college.edu/prospective-students/graduate/steps-applying-graduate-admissions/program-specific-requirements-docto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Capitol College&lt;/a&gt;, just one of several examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T22:12:14.683" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T12:05:50.073" Title="Industry certifications as program entrance requirements?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T18:56:44.883" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This is written from the perspective of a postgraduate student in applied mathematics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Do not cite Wikipedia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about perception or laziness but rather, your thought process as a researcher. Suppose I read about a mathematical fact that might be useful to my research. I need to verify that the fact is true and have some ideas about why this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By stating that the mathematical fact has been published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal or in a reputable textbook, I demonstrate that I have at least verify its authenticity, and perhaps even read technical details about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I cite Wikipedia, it demonstrates that I accept facts off the internet without verifying or having technical understanding about it (Wikipedia usually don't go into deep technical details). This does not bode well for my reputation as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Try to find an academically acceptable source to cite the same information from.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I want to use an equation. Random example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullback-Leibler_divergence#Definition&quot;&gt;Kullback-Leibler Divergence&lt;/a&gt;. But lets pretend there is no source or citations on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I will do is to search directly for &quot;Kullback-Leibler Divergence&quot; using search engines like Google, Google Scholar or Google Books. I will also try to search for the term in my university or local library's search tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this fails. Then, I would look at topics that the Kullback-Leibler Divergence is in or is related to. For this specific example, I would look for textbooks or materials on &quot;Information Theory&quot; and look up their index or table of contents for &quot;Kullback-Leibler Divergence&quot;. If this fails, I will dig deeper: think about what this equation does and search for similar topics. For this example, it compares two probability distributions. I will then look for ways to compare two distributions in Information Theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I find a paper or textbook talking about it, it shouldn't be too difficult to locate the source or pick a suitable paper/textbook to cite the equation from. If after all these searching and perhaps asking my supervisor/professor, I cannot find anything acceptable to cite from, I would ask myself these questions: Is this equation valid? Why should I believe in the authenticity of this equation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T18:56:44.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7780" CreationDate="2013-02-04T20:32:58.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a one-sentence statement, I want to state as precisely and concisely as possible as much relevant detail about the project I was working on. For instance &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of Widget Manufacturing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doesn't tell me much about what you did. On the other hand&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In-situ XYZ Experiments and Numerical Modeling of the Parametric Influence of Temperature, Humidity, and Cooling Time on the Strength of Widget X under Load-Bearing Conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tells me much more about the problem you're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have perhaps a paragraph, then I went a short summary of your work. You should provide: a motivation for the problem, an overview of what you did, and a summary of the main methods, results, and conclusions of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T20:32:58.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T20:42:04.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to many good points made in other answers: while I agree that Wiki is not an acceptable &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; &quot;authority/source&quot; for nearly anything, the better articles do give external references that can put one onto the right track for more primary sources, as well as giving internal links via other keywords... As to how-to-cite, I have gotten more and more into the habit of at least footnoting that I &lt;em&gt;found&lt;/em&gt; a reference (to a primary source) via Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course, in one's primary &quot;specialty&quot;, one should have better pointers to the &quot;official&quot; literature than Wiki, but with regard to necessary but peripheral topics for one's work, often Wiki can provide hints, which can then be &lt;em&gt;verified&lt;/em&gt; afterward, after one has become aware of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I use Wiki to begin to get a grip on keywords and vague ideas in things unfamiliar to me, to get started. Also, sometimes historical pointers are more readily accessible there, and then subsequently verifiable on MathSciNet, &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; one knows what to look for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that &quot;peer-reviewed&quot; stuff should also be viewed skeptically/critically, especially with regard to recognition of prior art, and also simple correctness, since except for significant results, often referees are encouraged to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; worry about certifying correctness, but more &quot;novelty&quot; and &quot;interest&quot;. And history and prior art are often either omitted due to disinterest or ignorance, or pushed out by editing-down considerations, so that papers often do not give an effect look &quot;backward&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due: when I find Wiki useful, I don't pretend that I didn't! Not that I view it as authoritative, either. A new category of information, perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T20:42:04.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-04T22:37:10.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that if the Wikipedia article doesn't have the original source for a claim, then that section of the article is a work in progress that is below the Wikipedia standard. It requires a &lt;code&gt;{{citation-needed}}&lt;/code&gt;, otherwise it could be &quot;original research&quot; which properly doesn't belong there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably a bad idea, in your academic paper, to quote Wikipedia material which the Wikipedia itself disavows!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should never be a need to cite the Wikipedia, since anything credible is supposed to have references to the outside. In serious work, you always borrow the citations from the Wikipedia, not the text. Citing from the Wikipedia itself is good for cafeteria arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you make any kind of citation, you are basically expressing trust in the author. This is because you are not reproducing all of the research, such as experiments. You trust that the data haven't been falsified and so forth. There is some safeguard in that the paper appears in some trustworthy publication, and that it has been peer reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose that the Wikipedia is actually the only source for some paper. Firstly, that situation is wrong and blatantly violates the Wikipedia's rules about original research, so the page will probably be deleted. Secondly, the Wikipedia isn't a journal that reviews and publishes material, so you would have to take that paper completely at face value. The Wikipedia cannot lend any credibility to anything, according to its defined mission and scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="3900" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T02:59:24.203" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T02:59:24.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-04T22:49:17.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are these self-designed majors seen as &quot;weird&quot; or simply unacceptable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In general, are self-designed majors unattractive for graduate admissions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For computer science specifically, do majors matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a self-designed major is definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a problem for graduate admissions in computer science.  We don't care what your major is; that's a stupid administrative hurdle.  We only care what you've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, an undergraduate transcript that does not cover the foundations of a computer science major &lt;strong&gt;might be&lt;/strong&gt; a problem.  My department commonly admits graduate students with non-CS undergraduate degrees, but if they haven't taken at least the core of a computer science degree and a few advanced CS classes, we're more likely to admit them to one of our master's programs instead of to the PhD program directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your transcript will look different to different departments.  The mixed major you describe might actually give you a slight advantage in departments with research programs in HCI and/or some branches of AI, or with interdisciplinary programs in (say) psychophysics or cognitive science.  It might also hurt you at departments without researchers in those areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real issue, at least for PhD admissions, is whether the admissions committee is convinced that you have &lt;strong&gt;strong potential for research in computer science&lt;/strong&gt;.  At the top CS departments, what classes you've taken really a second-order concern (unless your grades are bad or there are glaring gaps).  Your research potential and experience, as described in your statement and recommendation letters, are much more significant.  If an applicant has a strong research record, and their research interests match our faculty, we may admit them without even looking at their transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T22:49:17.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T01:15:47.113" Score="5" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked at the same place for the past two summers doing software development, and very much enjoyed the work and practical experience.  I was recently asked if I would consider a 1-2 year contract position. If they would have asked a year ago, I probably would have said yes... but I began graduate school this year.  So instead they are offering me a summer position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm waiting to hear back from an internship and my advisor, but neither seemed particularly hopeful last I checked.  I am currently doing research part-time in AI, so this job would not really be relevant to that at all.  But, it's a job, and I like the place.  So my question is, should I accept (conditionally, if the internship does not work out), or continue looking for something more relevant?  Is it &quot;okay&quot; to work in an unrelated area your first summer as a graduate student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T07:17:41.030" Title="Summer plans for first year computer science grad student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7768" CreationDate="2013-02-05T02:06:31.683" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you consider citing Wikipedia, &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;, as others have explained, but IMHO you should at least acknowledge it as being helpful, either with just a mention like that or a list of &quot;non-cites&quot; that could be used as starting points for others wanting to review Wikipedia's (latest) views on your topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5930" LastEditorUserId="5930" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T01:03:22.807" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T01:03:22.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-02-05T03:03:59.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just a grad student with no real insight into admissions processes, but I do believe that this wouldn't hurt you if you wanted to go into cognitive neuroscience. The reason is that neuroscience is such a multidisciplinary field that everyone eventually needs to learn something outside their field. Having that hurdle out of the way before beginning graduate studies would be seen as a plus (in my opinion), but it would be wise describe the  combination of courses a bit in your letter of motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extrapolating from this, perhaps self-designed majors are less of a problem in multidisciplinary fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T03:03:59.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7800" CreationDate="2013-02-05T04:28:35.380" Score="19" ViewCount="3560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently noticed that the tense of paper titles can be somewhat odd. This previous question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3608/746&quot;&gt;In what tense (present/past) should papers be written?&lt;/a&gt;, has some great information but it doesn't directly answer for titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some random titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving source code search with natural language phrasal representations of method signatures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A comparison of stemmers on source code identifiers for software search&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using Formal Models to Objectively Judge Quality of Multi-Threaded Programs in Empirical Studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modeling Programmer Navigation: A head-to-head empirical evaluation of predictive models&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most titles (in Computer Science) look to be present progressive. Is there a rule/reason behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T19:15:55.517" Title="What tense should paper titles use?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7552" CreationDate="2013-02-05T05:42:41.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is a good idea because the value of a &quot;SO rep point&quot; is unfamiliar to most of your audience (and varies across sites). Still, SO provides a useful public record of thinking, learning, teaching, dialogue, and social skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to leverage this would be to point to examples of your teaching, learning, and problem solving - with perhaps a well chosen example in the research and / or teaching statements; if your published results benefited from SO, a reference to a SO question could tell an interesting back-story behind a paper, and be a launching point for anyone who is curious about your other contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T05:42:41.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7808" CreationDate="2013-02-05T05:54:04.133" Score="4" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a PhD and I was looking for some guidance on what I could expect in the following years, more specifically, what is the recommended way to progress, how should I allocate my research hours and other responsibilities, and , finally, when and how should I start writing my PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any book written on how to conduct yourself during the course of a PhD? What would be your overall recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T07:42:01.607" LastActivityDate="2021-01-23T21:01:19.653" Title="What are good resources on how to carry oneself on a PhD course?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T06:50:32.507" Score="7" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're currently putting out a Call for Nominations for graduate research and historically we've received very few nominations. What are some good strategies to get more nominations. Should we be more specific or broaden the qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The award is from a minority organization for &quot;doctoral candidates who have demonstrated excellence in research or in teaching&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T08:28:41.837" Title="Ideal ways of making a call for nominations" Tags="&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7787" CreationDate="2013-02-05T07:17:41.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will obviously vary by country and subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with the idea of graduate students taking summer off from study. That's OK for undergraduates, but not for higher degrees. A multi-year higher degree is a full-on commitment, and doesn't leave time, space or energy for summer jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm going to take a leap here, and read a little more into your question than you've written. Now, this may apply to you, or it may not. It will apply to someone in the future who reads this question and might have asked the same thing themselves. It sounds like you're questioning whether you should be continuing this further degree, or getting out there into the workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's time for you to review, with your advisory / supervisory team, and with your trusted friends / family, whether to continue the degree, or to join this company as a full-time employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only you know what your reasons were for starting a higher degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it was to help you land the sort of job you're now being offered, then perhaps it's already served its purpose - in which case, you're done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was for much longer-term reasons, if it has to be done now rather than later in life, if it's the love of pure research, if you're considering a career in academia rather than industry - then your research degree is much bigger and more important than this job offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T07:17:41.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7798" CreationDate="2013-02-05T07:48:22.983" Score="25" ViewCount="1471" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I started my life in Academia, I sometimes found that there are some seminal papers to which I cannot get any access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either they are very old, and the journal that published them charges for it, or they are simply not to be found anywhere in the internet. I have to admit I never went to look for the physical copy in the library, but I'm not sure they would have it either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I asked a labmate about a reference he had in his paper and I could not find, and that seemed to be ubiquitous in any other paper in the area, he mentioned me he had never read it, but that reviewers usually demand that you should put that seminal reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you try and solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T19:21:41.397" Title="What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-02-05T08:24:46.690" Score="36" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search the web for it: open archives, search engine, authors webpages, whatever (you've probably done that already…)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the contact author for a copy&lt;/strong&gt;, which she'll usually be very happy to provide. I regularly get such requests from other researchers in my field, and it feels very good to know that people are actually interested in your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the contact author doesn't respond, try the senior author, then other authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try your &lt;strong&gt;local library&lt;/strong&gt;. Look into their database, and also ask the librarian there if the document might be available through loan from other libraries. I've never had much success doing that, but you never know…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask a few &lt;strong&gt;colleagues at different institutions&lt;/strong&gt; if they can get it for free (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5206/2700&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;). If you have friends at large/famous/well-funded US universities (Princeton, Harvard, …), they probably have a more comprehensive access than you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a really important paper, &lt;strong&gt;pay for it&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever happens, make sure you &lt;strong&gt;make a copy for others in your lab/group, and archive it&lt;/strong&gt;. When I started my PhD, there was a folder (the heavy paper type, not the computer type) labeled “important but hard to find papers” that the group had accumulated along the years. It was the most treasured object in the whole lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T08:24:46.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7795" CreationDate="2013-02-05T08:28:41.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Improve the reward. If you're not currently offering money, consider doing it. Other forms of reward I can think of can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the opportunity to give a talk at a prestigious venue, to a nice audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the opportunity to give a talk alongside a famous speaker (say, allowing the awardee to give a 15' talk just before a 1 hour talk by some famous person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an introduction to some influent people, possibly looking to hire researchers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T08:28:41.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7791" CreationDate="2013-02-05T08:54:13.180" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: the usual (read: boring) way of writing academic paper titles is indeed without verbs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A study of&lt;/strong&gt; acquired growth hormone deficiency&#xA;  and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or using gerunds (which is a verb form, but in that case is used to construct a present progressive but a noun phrase):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding&lt;/strong&gt; acquired growth hormone deficiency&#xA;  and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think include a verb is possible, and oftentimes makes the title much catchier and appealing to the non-specialist reader. For example, the titles I “quoted” above are of my own making, but the real title for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmaj.ca/content/171/12/1433&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article&lt;/a&gt; (and believe me, you want to read it) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma, or &lt;strong&gt;Tintin goes to the neurologist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There: even if I know nothing of “acquired growth hormone deficiency” and “hypogonadotropic hypogonadism”, I know what the paper is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you use verbs in article titles, they are mostly going to be about &lt;em&gt;established facts&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;generic questions&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;mathematical proofs&lt;/em&gt;, … which means &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3609/2700&quot;&gt;you should write in the present tense&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Vitamin C enriched diet can prevent scurvy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Minesweeper is NP-complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I particularly like to use questions in titles, as they make quite clear the problem you're tackling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How hard is the measurement of quartz hardness? A review of the commercial available apparatuses and their robustness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How fast does the swallow fly? Reexamining the impact of the bird's geographical origin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few cases, you would talk about a historical event, and then you'd use the past tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How World War One was won: the role of time travelers from the twenty-second century&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The CERN measurement was not a fluke: finally establishing the Higgs discovery at the 10-sigma level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T08:54:13.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T11:05:32.630" Score="4" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5301/how-long-before-phd-graduation-should-i-start-applying-for-post-doc-positions&quot;&gt;How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm about to start a Postdoctoral program of 1 year, after that, there is a high possibility that the project won't go on. Hence, I have to find a new position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would it be a good time frame to start contacting professors to find a second postdoc, I found that applying very early usually ended up in me being not a suitable candidate because I had no immediate availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that there is no one size fits all time frame, but in your experience, what would be a better practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T11:28:35.097" Title="What is the most appropriate time frame to apply to a Postdoc?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-02-05T11:57:41.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2013-02-05T11:28:35.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Charles answer here (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5303/4231&quot;&gt;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5303/4231&lt;/a&gt;) applies to your case. Some positions will start right away and some positions will have a fixed start date set in the future. I suggest you start looking around 6 months into your 1 year postdoc, at first focus on positions starting later: that info should be in the job advertisment. Then, if you have not found something suitable, focus on positions starting right away when you approach the end of your postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not wait until your postdoc is finished to look for a new position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T11:28:35.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-02-05T15:32:00.290" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your school participates (and most do), you can get scanned copies of articles through interlibrary loan.  You should be able to get access to just about any article ever published in a journal that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, talk to your librarian.  It's what they're for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T15:32:00.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T16:23:23.113" Score="15" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, academics are almost always expected to contribute some of their time to activities beyond their principal teaching or research roles. These extra tasks include, for example, attending open days, visit days, serving on one or more committees, acting as head of a student year group, admissions officer - the list is long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this should be the case is not in question here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my previous institutions, there was in place a &quot;brownie-point&quot; system which was supposed to keep a track of how much extra administrative/organisational/outreach or otherwise &quot;extra-mile&quot; work an academic had taken on.  When a new task required action, the academics could use their accumulated points to argue why they shouldn't (or indeed should, in some cases) be allocated the task. Setting the value of a task relative to all the others, as you might imagine, raised some difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: has anyone experience of any other kind of formalised system of evaluating and allocating these &quot;extra-mile&quot; tasks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T05:39:44.480" Title="How to formalise the &quot;extra-mile&quot; work done by an academic?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-02-05T16:41:44.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking for a paper I first look on line to see if it is available. If it is available for free I download it, if not I then look in my library's on-line catalog. If it is available on-line, but not in my library's catalog I request an inter-library loan (ILL). I have never been unable to obtain an article via ILL that was available on-line, but if I wasn't able, I would just buy the article. If it is in my library's catalog I go to the library and photocopy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article is not available on-line, I look in my library's on-line catalog. If it is available in the library catalog, I go to the library and photocopy it. If it is not available in the catalog I file an inter-library loan request. The success rate of these requests is lower than I would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article is not available on-line, in my library, and ILL failed then things get difficult. The first step is to email the authors. The second step is to talk to the reference librarian and see if you can find a library which is not part of the ILL service which has the paper. If you find one, talk to the librarian about how to obtain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field also has a number of email lists where hard to find paper requests are not uncommon, it might be worth trying these. Similarly, you can ask colleagues directly if they have a copy. It might be worth doing a reverse citation lookup to find colleagues who have cited the paper (most people try and read what they cite).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T16:41:44.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7805" CreationDate="2013-02-05T17:30:43.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, we have this system for PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student. In my contract, I have &quot;up to 20% department duties&quot;. When I get assigned tasks not related to my research — teaching, administrative tasks, presenting our institute to visitors, etc. — I write down the hours. At the end of the semester, I report to my boss how many hours I have worked on such duties. Then, a corresponding fraction of my salary is funded from a different pot of money. At the end of my PhD, this means I will have an equivalent amount of time extra to finish my research before my contract finishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the system is quite fair, although some tasks — most notably teaching — don't get the actual time assigned, but according to a certain formula. So in practice, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; lose research time by doing teaching, because teaching takes more time than the formula accounts for, certainly if it's a first time. However, it's still much better than a system with no accounting at all, such as I have understood to be common elsewhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T17:30:43.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7794" CreationDate="2013-02-05T20:28:20.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this excellent memoir by a recent CS PhD: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm&quot;&gt;The Grind by Philip Guo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although written from a CS perspective, many of his experiences transcend disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T20:28:20.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T21:49:26.640" Score="14" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this stackexchange seems to be a little hostile towards metrics (especially when they are about research productivity), it is still sometimes fun to indulge in a little bit of arbitrary measurement and quantification. Sometimes it can help you set targets, or let you know what is possible. In this case I am curious about blogs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/616/66&quot;&gt;web-presence is important&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;how do you know if your academic blog is doing a good job?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/first-5/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my own experience&lt;/a&gt;, I have noticed that my blog gets a lot more readership and mention than any of my papers. I usually find this encouraging, and at times it helps me increase productivity by incorporating blogging into my research work-flow and feeling like I am able to communicate with people before having complete results. Sometimes even receive feedback (although my blog is not at the level of regular commentators, and nowhere close to the comment activity I see on popular blogs that I follow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, getting more mention than my papers is not a fair standard. In fact, I have no standard by which to decide if I am doing an alright job blogging, and what I should aim for to improve the ability of my blog to engage other researchers or interested readers. Having some hard data is also useful for converting people new to blogging to the online community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any statistics on typical readership, posting rates, and commenting frequency for small (non-superstar) academic blogs?&lt;/strong&gt; I would be especially interested in statistics that are broken down by area, since I expect a nutrition or cancer blog to inherently get more readership than one dedicated to Stone-duality. Of particular interest to me would be information about blogs in theoretical computer science and/or mathematical modeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:50:39.103" Title="Statistics on readership and posting habits for academic blogs" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;blog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7754" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:12:08.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that, once again, this probably depends on your field and country.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the Netherlands, apparently, it is required to leave a large quantity (&gt;100) with your university. Also, an ISBN will be assigned, according to my contract. This should mean that anyone could quite easily order a copy. I don't want to know the costs of such an order though.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sometimes you can also find them on Google Scholar. Although I'm not sure how i will have to proceed to have mine appear there (in years), I like to read them. They usually are well written and give a very good overview of the field in a concise manner. Reading papers to achieve that kind of overview usually takes a lot longer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This would be my answer to the title question. A well written overview of the work, done during your PhD, in relation to what is known in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5744" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T23:12:08.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:16:22.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it is the answer you are looking for, but I would be cautious with looking at blog views (or even likes/tweets): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, they may be superficial. You don't even know if someone actually read it (maybe (s)he entered just because of a sexy title, or a nice picture, or - misleading keywords).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, they is are measure of popularity, not necessary quality, with a lot of mechanisms making scaling exponential (e.g. snowball effect). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I often look at stats of page visits of my various sites... but I cannot make much sense of it. But what I find important is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often I can send someone a link to my post, so it save my time of explaining something once again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much I learn something from readers, or make new contacts through it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I hearing feedback, especially from strangers or people I don't know very well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, then I can compare blogs to regular articles on this ground. Still it's apples to oranges... but now they are quantized fruits. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T12:03:57.417" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T12:03:57.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7794" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:19:36.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot written on the 'PhD journey' but there are some things I learnt along the way that took me across the void (so as to speak!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am listing them in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be true to yourself and your supervisor. Keep your end of the bargain. Meet deadlines. Keep your supervisor in the loop (even on trivial matters - the matter may be trivial from your point of view). Respect him or her. Of course you can have friendly arguments. Follow his or her instructions/suggestions/advice closely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't know, ask. You can ask your supervisor or email other scholars. My dissertation benefited from several prominent thinkers in the field. I simply emailed them and asked for assistance. There is no shame in asking. It is a learning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celebrate your big and little achievements. When you finish writing a difficult chapter, give yourself a treat. Set small goals - you cannot finish your dissertation in a day but you can draft a section of your chapter in a day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn and try to become an expert in your field. After graduation, you would be expected to have advanced knowledge in your field. Be genuinely interested in what you are doing. Think of new ways of addressing the issues. Discuss your approaches with your fellow PhD students. They are often your first audience. Have a network of support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most importantly, recognise that there would be some good days and some bad days. Make the most of them both. On bad days, give yourself a break. I think the literature says that most PhD student will start enthusiastically and then lose interest in the middle years and then gain momentum again. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My overall recommendation is to never lose sight of your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T23:19:36.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2013-02-06T00:08:51.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't say much about statistics, as I have not come across any, but in my experience blog readerships are usually small and most likely by specialists in your area. However, I view a blog as free advertising for my research, as blogs are generally more highly ranked than academic papers by google and the like. I also view a blog as an ideal platform to put your research into laymans terms. From my blogs I have had an out of the blue invited talk, and also requests from numerous researchers who I hadn't met for copies of papers or general queries about my work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find maintaining a nice website and blog well worth the effort, and I try and spend a couple of hours a week on new content, but usually concentrated when new articles are published. Ultimately it's all about raising the profile of your research, and having more accessible material is always helpful, even for specialists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T00:08:51.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2013-02-06T00:24:07.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to track my stats compulsively, but no longer do so. this is mainly because I get lots of readers through an RSS feed, which doesn't directly impact traffic. Sometimes I'll monitor the relative hit rate of specific posts, and I have seen dramatic jumps (for example if I do business meeting blogging, or if I post on something controversial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, the more technical the post, the less traffic it gets. The more buzzwordy, the more traffic. I had some thoughts on deep learning recently and that got huge traffic in comparison to some of my more technical posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, because of G+, twitter, and blogs, my &quot;visibility&quot; is diluted across all three media, and while I'm sure there's some way to monitor all of them, I haven't paid that much attention. Ultimately, I blog because it's fun, and the more I get distracted by audience response, the more I find myself distorting the things I post about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T00:24:07.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7860" CreationDate="2013-02-06T02:56:12.570" Score="6" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some guidelines and best practices for PR statements and releasing a project summary to the general public? My first tendency is to always shorten the project summary, reduce the length of sentences and use more &quot;crisp&quot; words. But what else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any pragmatic/practical/ advice and is there any sort of tool out there aside from the likes of MS Word readability stats that gives you suggestions to what to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &#xA;Came across this tool today which is inspired by XKCD (what is not?):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT'S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://splasho.com/upgoer5/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://splasho.com/upgoer5/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be something on these lines available to help with simplifying the language for instance (perhaps with 5000 words rather than THE TEN HUNDRED which is very limiting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T04:30:59.560" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T07:08:25.433" Title="What are some guidelines and best practices for releasing PR statements and project summary to the general public?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7794" CreationDate="2013-02-06T03:42:35.953" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what is the recommended way to progress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steadily.  Make small progress every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how should I allocate my research hours and other responsibilities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when and how should I start writing my PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now&lt;/strong&gt;, and in LaTeX.  Write down everything you read, everything you do, everything you prove, everything you try that doesn't work, every crazy stupid idea you have.  Write, write, write. Always in LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: &lt;strong&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; PhD.  &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; have to hunt it down and kill it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T03:42:35.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7816" CreationDate="2013-02-06T10:33:39.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be worth looking to see if your university has a press office. My university has a press office. They are happy to meet with research groups to talk about the press release process in general. They are also happy to edit copy to make it more likely to be picked up by the press. I believe they also are willing to work one-on-one and write the actual copy with you. They also have all the contacts and know how to get press-releases actually published in useful places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T10:33:39.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5015" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:01:33.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The courses on research methodology greatly improved the value I got from my PhD. Sure, you can make it through yourself to get the research done, but a PhD implies having research skills and deep understanding of the scientific method, which can be taught formally. Tough US-style courses can only benefit. That said, I experienced a massive difference in the quality/relevance of PhD courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have a beef with the German PhD system (in reply to another post here). At least in my own field (social sciences), many German practitioners do a PhD in 2 years (often part time) by writing a &quot;big book&quot; which is defended in front of one's own adviser plus 1 external (generally). There is thus a glut of PhDs in the workforce but few if any German PhDs publishing in my field in ranked journals. Fortunately I think this is not the case for STEM subjects where the level is excellent in Germany. Still, the pressure to be &quot;Herr Doktor&quot; in order to move ahead in a political or management career in Germany seems to have lead to many low-quality dissertations written on the weekends with no formal teaching support (hence all the intentional or unintentional plagiarism popping up recently in Germany). Where there are PhD courses, there is support and structure, a research community, and a greater likelihood of higher quality and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5939" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T13:01:33.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-06T14:50:19.203" Score="11" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of post about peer review of papers, but how about graduate/undergraduate thesis?&#xA;Is there somewhere on the vast internet, where one can submit his thesis for a peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am asking this is because I am finishing my master's in engineering and so far my advisor has not seen my thesis even once. The only &quot;review&quot; I got was a friend who found out only grammatical and punctuation errors and I did the same for her. But the fact that we know nothing about each other's research stops us from performing a quality peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5623" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T00:56:18.070" Title="Thesis peer review &quot;service&quot;" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5015" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:07:55.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, you can normally do a PhD only after completing a master's degree, i.e. you begin with research after you have already done a year or two of graduate level coursework. In the US, graduate studies normally begin begin with courses and end in research, at the end of which you have obtained a PhD. You can enroll directly after your bachelors studies. Overall the two are quite comparable in terms of time spent in courses and on research once you have your PhD. There are exceptions of course, but I understand that this is the default situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect on the thesis itself probably depends on how closely related the courses are to your research topic. In my experience, research topics are usually about adding new knowledge to a field, so it's hard to find more than a few courses (if even a few) that overlap much with your research. I see courses more as a way to gain some general expertise in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T16:32:10.203" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:32:10.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7828" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:15:21.443" Score="7" ViewCount="14065" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the name of the Default Referencing Style that Wikipedia Uses? Specifically, I'm looking for the name of the style that is used when you use the referencing styles use by default when you click one of these four options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/46lBI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4438" LastEditorUserId="26682" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:29:01.193" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T21:29:01.193" Title="What's the name of Wikipedia's default referencing style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:20:35.873" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is a full-blown, high-quality peer-review process for a thesis&lt;/strong&gt;: it's called &lt;strong&gt;the thesis committee&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean a service where you can get help improve your document before you submit it to your committee, that is something that one's advisor(s) tasks. Maybe you can actually get help from friends, colleagues, or in the most severe cases your advisor's friends, but there is not much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that may be closely related is that, in some systems (the French one at least), there is a person that is responsible for validating the PhD student's manuscript &lt;em&gt;before it gets sent to the committee&lt;/em&gt;. Then, it's that person's responsibility (in theory) to do a basic check of your manuscript and your work, and decide if there is enough to gather a committee. I say “in theory”, because this person will probably get dozens of theses per year (at the very least) and can only perform the most basic checks. In practice, they most often do not check the manuscript content, but its form (does it follow the University's standards), as well as some simple indicators of your research (has the candidate published? how many times? did he attend conferences? that sort of stuff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T15:20:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7826" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:33:43.640" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;   &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gUimY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see above, references to journal articles from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nos%C3%A9%E2%80%93Hoover_thermostat&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; are styled in the following manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, First A.; Author, Second B.  (year). &quot;Title goes here&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Journal of failed experiments&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;volume&lt;/strong&gt; (issue): pages-pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is documented &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Example_style#Journal_articles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;It corresponds to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/apa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA citation style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, with additional quotation marks around the paper title (which are not present in the standard APA style). Also, the references are styled as footnotes rather than “(author year)”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, note that it is not a strict Wikipedia requirement: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Example_style#Journal_articles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt; I quoted above says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is currently &lt;strong&gt;no consensus on a preferred citation style or system for Wikipedia&lt;/strong&gt;. If you cannot decide on which style to use, or if you do not know what information to include, an example partially based on the APA style is given below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T16:03:33.280" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:03:33.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-02-06T19:21:41.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some countries have library networks with a common catalogue that you can search to find out which libraries have it. This is what your favorite librarian uses to get the paper for you. However, it could also tell you, which friend or friendly lab you could ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;E.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dispatch.opac.d-nb.de/DB=1.1/LNG=EN/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;German and Austrian libraries' journal data base&lt;/a&gt; will tell you which 6 libraries have the 1930 &quot;Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego&quot; where Łukasiewicz and Tarski published the &quot;Untersuchungen über den Aussagenkalkül&quot; and whether it is available via inter-library loan. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A similar catalogue exists for &lt;a href=&quot;http://gso.gbv.de/DB=2.1/LNG=EN/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(feel free to edit and add more such catalogue links)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T19:21:41.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-02-06T20:32:54.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation suggests that your relationship with your adviser has broken down. Fix it. I usually find  going out for coffee and just talking, not necessarily about your thesis, always helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always get editorial assistance but you want expert assistance. This is where your adviser comes in. Make it easy for him or her. Submit perhaps a chapter at a time. Then meet and have a good honest discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the above, search for a newly minted PhD candidate in your department, perhaps a former student of your adviser, and ask him or her to review your work. Believe me, this does wonders because of the motivation that the newly minted PhD candidate brings to the review. By newly minted PhD, I mean a person who has already completed his study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4475" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T00:56:18.070" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T00:56:18.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7836" CreationDate="2013-02-07T01:22:38.983" Score="18" ViewCount="8307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading that many students have a PhD committee. I assume this is a group of experts supervising the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, and I think this is quite common, I had two people. One was the principal supervisor and the other was the associate supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all my contacts were with the principal supervisor. The associate supervisor was a back-up resource if and when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a simple one-on-one contact between me and my principal supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just wondering how does a PhD committee work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:21:30.377" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:21:30.377" Title="What does a PhD Committee do?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7833" CreationDate="2013-02-07T01:43:45.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question differs based on the country, university, faculty, department and the particular members of the committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general universities and departments have regulations and procedures that describe in exact detail the roles and responsibilities of the PhD committee. No one in here can give you anything but some general idea which is already described in more detail in those documents. PhD committees have completely different roles in US and UK for instance. In US they are the ones that assess you but in UK your examiners assess you and then report back to the committee in the department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T03:21:13.087" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T03:21:13.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7840" CreationDate="2013-02-07T01:54:10.490" Score="13" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;No textbook is perfect. So if I want to supplement my course with some material (a few pages from different references every now and then, on topics I find lacking or weak in the textbook):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it legal to make copies of those a few pages and give them to the&#xA;students as hand outs? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it legal to scan them and upload them on&#xA;the course site? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should I email the authors to take their permission&#xA;1st? what if one author is dead? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in case the above is a violation of copyrights so what should I do then? asking the&lt;br&gt;&#xA;students to go read those parts in the library? (the students would need to keep a copy&#xA;of the reading/supplementary materials)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2719" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T20:16:58.363" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T21:14:09.163" Title="Can I hand out students a few pages from books as supplementary materials?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7833" CreationDate="2013-02-07T02:02:44.067" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, a Ph.D committee will have 4-5 members, and there are rules about the composition of the committee (there might need to be at least one person from an external institution, and at least one person from a different department, or variations thereof). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The committee's formal job is to assess the Ph.D student's dissertation proposal, determine that the work being proposed is sufficient for a dissertation, and then evaluate the final dissertation defense and decide whether to grant the student a Ph.D or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, a Ph.D committee provides a set of resources/expertise for the student to tap into for advice, research directions and even contacts for future work (yes, there's life after a Ph.D :)). There's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3719/how-to-select-a-dissertation-committee-member-wisely&quot;&gt;prior discussion&lt;/a&gt; on how to choose your committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T02:02:44.067" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2013-02-07T02:03:23.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's interesting to consider the relative value to society of blog posts relative to more traditional forms of content distribution, such as book chapters, text books, journal articles and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Obtaining Benchmark statistics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RSS counts: Many blogs, particularly popular ones, show their RSS subscriber count. You can use the Explore Search feature in Google Reader to search for blogs you know. This returns the number of Google Reader subscribers. This is less than the total reader count, but it can give you a rough ball park.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page views: Some blogs occasionally post their site statistics. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/search?q=jeromyanglim.blogspot.com&amp;amp;r=home_home&amp;amp;p=bigtop&quot;&gt;Alexa&lt;/a&gt; can provide a very rough estimate of the popularity of a site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments: It is straight forward to look at other blogs to get a sense of how many comments they typically get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My rough rules of thumb&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been blogging since 2008 and have kept an eye on RSS feeds and page views over timeon my own blog. I've also picked up information from other blogs that I follow.&#xA;My main observations are that it takes time to produce content, get indexed by Google, obtain RSS subscribers and so on. These would be my rough benchmarks for academic blogging. In the fields that interest me (e.g., psychology, statistics, R) I can think of specific blogs that fall in to one or other of these categories. This helps to inform the benchmark. Anyway, these are just my casual rules of thumb; of course, they aren't anything definitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;RSS subscribers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 to 10: Not popular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 to 100: Just getting started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100 to 500: Moderate levels of popularity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500 to 1000: Relatively popular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1000 to 10,000: Popular Blog &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10,000+: Superstar blog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Annual Page Views&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 to 1,000: Not popular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,000 to 10,000: Just getting started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10,000 to 50,000: Moderate levels of popularity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50,000 to 300,000: Relatively popular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;300,000 to 2,000,000: Popular Blog &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2,000,000+: Superstar blog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What does a page view mean&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a little difficult to know what a page view means in terms of achieving broader blogging goals. Only a proportion of page views correspond to a person reading the entirety of the page. And only a proportion of those page views have any meaningful impact on the reader. In order to get a sense of what these proportions might be, I reflect on my own browsing. For example, I might be searching to diagnose a software error, do a tutorial on something, or get a review of a product. It might take a few search results to find what I'm looking for. That said, perhaps something between 1 in 10 and 1 in 2 search results provide useful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, even if only 1 in 20 pageviews helped someone in some meaningful way, if you're getting a hundred thousand page views per year, that's still 5,000 instances of people being helped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T05:50:39.103" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:50:39.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7753" CreationDate="2013-02-07T05:13:31.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How are your grades? Grades are a large factor when it comes to Ph.D admissions and it may be worth taking courses that enable you to increase your grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, you are applying to a University abroad, but if there is a local University that performs research where you are, then you may want to work with a professor at your institution for a summer. The chances of getting this type of position may be slim but if you do get one, it gives you some research experience that you can put on your application materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of these are good options, then you will probably want to spend your time reviewing related work in the area and working on your research statement. Write it using principles from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/07/05/dr-karens-foolproof-grant-template/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;foolproof grant template&lt;/a&gt;. As a potential student, you might not use all of the elements (as you are limited in both experience, as well as getting about a page's worth of writing) but you should follow the structure for the &quot;first two paragraphs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:13:31.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7753" CreationDate="2013-02-07T06:15:43.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied for FALL 13 in US and awaiting results. Therefore what I am writing here is a mix of my own experience and the accumulation of my understanding of others (includes forums/blogs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied to all colleges which I thought were good in theory (my area of interest). This list was basically influenced by - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i) the papers I read during my master/undergrad and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ii) the fact that each of the college in the list must have at least 3 potential advisors in theory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the BIG problem was : am I a good fit for these colleges? Frankly, these colleges never disclose their candidate profiles and mostly, the home-pages of the current PhD students do not exist. So I went to forums like gradcafe where there is ton of data but very little useful information but still worth a visit. Some people suggest to mail prof before you apply. In my case I have been advised to not to contact them unless I have strong reasons. Plus, I do not expect any prof to evaluate my profile and see if I am a good match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do the admission committee look into any candidate? - research potential. If you have published work then it speaks for itself. Otherwise we have typically three recommendations and statement of purpose (sop). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For recommendation letter, two things matter - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i) Is your recommender known in your area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ii) How good he knows you? (your association)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now ideally you should have done some research work with your recommender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOP is important and can be seen as you recommending yourself. It also shows your proficiency of writing and communicating with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRE,TOEFL - Some basic cut-off should be cleared. I do not have any idea about the cut-offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funds - If you can manage funds then you cost nothing to college and therefore would be preferred by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5619" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T06:15:43.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7835" CreationDate="2013-02-07T09:24:37.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, in most cases, the channels through which you distribute the material to your students (hardcopies, restricted-access course website) is not important. Secondly, the copyright holder for each work is (again, in most cases) the publisher, not the author. Thus, getting permission from the author is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the surest way to avoid trouble is to secure the permission to reproduce the content from the publisher. Publishers should have an online page (e.g., see &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/permissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here for the American Chemical Society publications&lt;/a&gt;) explaining how to obtain this permission. Many academic publishers nowadays rely on a centralized online service called &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/rightslink.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RightsLink&lt;/a&gt;, where you can directly select the material you want to reproduce and the conditions in which you will use it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;       &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uSpAT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool then tells you if you can get a permission to reproduce at no charge (it usually is if you want to reproduce only small parts, a few figures) or if you would need to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, under US law you may qualify for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;fair use&lt;/em&gt; right to reproduce parts of a copyrighted content&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T09:24:37.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2013-02-07T11:19:19.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just had this question asked by a customer (dietary requirements for conf.dinner), and included it in our solution rConf&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isn-oldenburg.de/en/products/applications/rconf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isn-oldenburg.de/en/products/applications/rconf/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;try the demo there.&#xA;Generally, rConf has been used for rather large as well as small conferences.&#xA;We guarantee the foolproof operation of the service, give support and add specific asked for add-ons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5945" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T11:19:19.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7844" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:31:29.537" Score="30" ViewCount="3506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that some conference have different deadline for paper submission: an &quot;abstract&quot; submission deadline, before the usual &quot;paper&quot; submission deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iswc2013.semanticweb.org/content/call-research-papers&quot;&gt;International Semantic Web Conference 2013 webpage&lt;/a&gt; you can read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Submission dates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Abstracts: May 1, 2013&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Full Paper Submission: May 10, 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do they need the abstract before the paper?&#xA;To estimate how many papers they'll get?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T18:27:11.407" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T21:34:59.137" Title="Why do some conference have an &quot;abstract submission&quot; before the &quot;paper submission&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7843" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:39:40.847" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I have observed, having a specific deadline for abstracts is used for two main reasons: &lt;strong&gt;having a rough idea of the number of submissions&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;organise a bidding for the reviewers&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the number of submissions can help deciding of a possible deadline extension and possible to &quot;recruit&quot; more PC members or reviewers if the number largely exceeds the expectation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organising a bidding based on the abstract allow the PC members to indicate their preference for each paper (e.g., I want to review this paper, I could review this paper, I couldn't review this paper), so that when the actual papers arrive, the distribution is already organised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="379" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:22:24.363" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T17:22:24.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7833" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:55:29.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to clarify a point about your first paragraph: at least in the US, the PhD committee does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; usually supervise the student very much.  A PhD student has an advisor, who is typically on the PhD committee, and may be its chair, who supervises the student.  The committee's main role is to determine whether the thesis gives adequate grounds to grant a PhD.  At some schools the committee convenes only once or twice---perhaps once to approve a plan for the thesis, and once to approve it.  At others, the committee might meet once a year to consider whether the student is making adequate progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, at least in the US, it's unusual for the committee to have a formal role beyond that.  Of course it's possible that committee members besides the advisor might be involved in supervising the student, but the causation is more likely to run the other way: because they're involved in supervising the student, they're invited to be on the committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T14:55:29.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-07T18:49:41.000" Score="34" ViewCount="4519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a research position coming from the industry. I am supposed to work on an ongoing project and branch it out to a new direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one member of the research group that did quite a lot of work on what I am supposed to modify. So I asked him if he could share his work and code with me. He told me that it is still unpublished work and there is no way he is going to give me his code. He said this is the way he does research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sort of stumped and don't know what to do. He told me that I should go and do it on my own what he has done for about a year now. My supervisor agreed to my suggestion that I should work with this person, but when I told him that he wouldn't share the code with me, he was just laughing nervously and didn't say anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that I can persuade this person to collaborate with me, or am I banging my head against a wall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just to clarify. My supervisor is (one of) the project lead. I first talked to the supervisor suggesting, then talked to the person who rejected, then to the supervisor again. This project has been going on for a year. There are about 5 people working on it in this lab. I joined the lab to extend on the work done here and to contribute in the final stages of the project. To my surprise, there is no shared code repository, but rather each person does their own thing and in meetings discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I told the person that I will not steal his code. He replied to me that he doesn't share the code because I will not understand it. I told him that it helps me understand the work by looking at the code. He told me that no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my plan is to read the draft papers again and try to understand it that way, then try again in a few days. I don't want to re implement the same thing he has done...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was given access today to the research group server and I could view everyone's work (around 15 people) and all project material... except his directory and implementation which is permission denied. I talked to him again, and clearly he is afraid that I will steal his work and possibly has to put one more name on his paper if I find something interesting, thereby diluting his achievements. He kept telling me that this is his work, and he is the first person on the paper and I should do something else or re-implement the whole code on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T20:21:11.570" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:21:11.570" Title="How to deal with non-cooperative team mate?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:00:05.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using some &lt;strong&gt;versioning control system&lt;/strong&gt; (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Subversion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SVN&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt;) for your paper. These tools gives you the freedom to change what ever you want with you paper, and have all the history recorded. You could practice any kind of change, and still keep the ability to revert to older versions. Even better, you could merge &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; elements from old version into newer versions. By reviewing your history and seeing what you changed, you can learn what types of mistakes you tend to make, and you can work to avoid them in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some popular note-taking tools, such as Evernote or Simplenote, also keep track of previous versions of your notes, although it's more primitive than Git or SVN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;DropBox&lt;/code&gt; provide a (terribly) simplified notion of versioning control. The advantage, however, is that it works &quot;out-of-the-box&quot; - no learning curve, or fancy tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="3926" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T08:19:28.033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T08:19:28.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7849" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:36:36.103" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My supervisor agreed to my suggestion that I should work with this person,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why you suggest someone who is not willing to collaborate with you?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you had the initiative and suggested his name, I think its clear that &lt;strong&gt;your mate is not motivated for your project&lt;/strong&gt; so not giving the code is an expected behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mate is either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part of the project team&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, his role should be very clear. is he supposed to supply the code? if yes raise it to the supervisor and ask for help. If supplying the code is part of his project contribution, then the supervisor should play his role here and ask the student to do so.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Participating in the project&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, he's doing a favor if he supplied the code to you. You should do the implementation yourself but make sure not to include him in the project later on!.. or &lt;strong&gt;try to convince him that &lt;em&gt;it is beneficial to him&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to supply the code (i.e. co-authorship in the resulted paper). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either ways, it is the supervisor responsibility to scope/assign work to students in team projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T20:49:39.633" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T20:49:39.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7849" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:36:42.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to the other person. Yes, talk not email. Find out what his or her concern is. Perhaps his or her concern is that you may just use his or her work and not give him or her credit. Assure the person that this would not be the case. This is the right and ethical thing to do. Prepare to put this in writing if it could save 1 year of your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to acknowledge that there may be other people who could also assist you. Ask. This is part of the learning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all fails, be pragmatic and modify your project scope if you can in consultation with your adviser. There is no point wasting your time in anticipation the cirumstances may change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T20:36:42.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7843" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:44:12.033" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (chemistry/spectroscopy/chemometrics), the abstract decides whether you'll get an oral presentation or a poster (total rejection is extremely rare).&#xA;The paper submission deadline is usually after the conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once submitted, the paper undergoes &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7749/725&quot;&gt;normal peer-review&lt;/a&gt; for the journal it is submitted to, which doesn't have anything to do with the presentation at the conference. The only connection is that the conference organisers have spoken with the journal editors that they'll collect papers about topics presented at the conference in a special issue of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the paper deadline is needed by the journal editors to make people submit in time so that the special issue will be ready at the specified date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T20:44:12.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7849" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:01:19.907" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This attitude is very common in academia, as the academic environment is often highly competitive. That said, I've never seen someone do that &lt;em&gt;within a team&lt;/em&gt;. I agree with seteropere that if this person is indeed on your team, you will likely have to raise this issue with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, there's likely a reason why he's unwilling to share, and if you can find the reason for that you may be able to convince him to be more of a team player. Is he worried that giving you access will hurt his publication chances? You can work with your supervisor to convince him that he will still get authorship even if the code is shared. Is he afraid you'll ruin the code? Suggest using some sort of versioning to keep track of changes. Is he just being a jerk about it? If so, then it just comes down to seteropere's answer, and you'll have to hope your boss has enough of a backbone to help you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T21:01:19.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7835" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:14:09.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Germany, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;§53 of UrhG&lt;/a&gt; allows actually a lot (compared to other countries' fair use policies). The deal is that flat fees on copying machines, scanners, printers, etc. (as well as on paper) are collected and redistributed to authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find §53 &lt;strong&gt;slightly ambiguous for the university teacher&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) says rougly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is allowed to make copies of small parts of works, of small works, or of single articles that are published or made publicly available in newspapers or journals for personal purposes  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to illustrate in teaching at schools, non-commercial facilities for education and advanced training as well as in facilities for professional training in the numbers required for the course participants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for state exams or exams in schools, universities, non-commercial facilities for education and advanced training as well as in facilities for professional training in the numbers required.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &quot;universities&quot; are missing in 1. Usually, I'd say they are covered by those other categories, but they are explicitly listed in 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for sure the &lt;strong&gt;students are allowed to make a copy&lt;/strong&gt;: (2) 1. runs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) It is allowed to make or have made single copies of a work  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;for personal scientific use, if and as far as copying is needed for this purpose and does not follow commercial purposes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T21:14:09.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7430" CreationDate="2013-02-07T23:44:14.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Google Scholar search of &quot;academia women&quot; seems to reveal a number of potentially-relevant studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are primarily retrospective/introspective qualitative articles, but some quantitative articles exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘We make the road by walking’: a collaborative inquiry into the experiences of women in academia&#xA;Elizabeth Drame, Jennifer Mueller, Raquel Oxford, Sandra Toro, Debora Wisneski, Yaoying Xu &#xA;Reflective Practice &#xA;Vol. 13, Iss. 6, 2012&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F14623943.2012.732939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F14623943.2012.732939&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspiration From Role Models and Advice for Moving Forward&#xA;Michelle G. Newman, Lata K. McGinn&#xA;Behavior Therapy, Volume 43, Issue 4, December 2012, Pages 721–723&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.03.001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.03.001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kleihauer, Sarah, Carrie Ann Stephens, and William E. Hart. &quot;Insights from Six Women on Their Personal Journeys to Becoming Deans of Agriculture: A Qualitative Study.&quot; Volume 11, Number 1–Winter 2012 (2012): 64.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silander, C., Haake, U. &amp;amp; Lindberg, L. (2012). The different worlds of academia: a horizontal analysis of gender equality in Swedish higher education. Higher Education (18 december), 1-16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O’Brien, K. R. and Hapgood, K. P. (2012), The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research. Oikos, 121: 999–1004. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.20601.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-Institutional Study of Women and Underrepresented Minority Faculty Members in Academic Pharmacy&#xA;Marie A. Chisholm-Burns, et al.&#xA;Am J Pharm Educ. 2012 February 10; 76(1): 7.&#xA;doi:  10.5688/ajpe7617&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also wish to check out well-known blogs and sites that discuss the academic environment, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://theprofessorisin.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phinished.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.phinished.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T23:44:14.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7753" CreationDate="2013-02-08T04:52:01.573" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; answer your question without actually seeing your application, but here's some general advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember that the admissions process is random.&lt;/strong&gt; — There is &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; you can do to absolutely guarantee admission &lt;em&gt;anywhere&lt;/em&gt;.  The most you can do is maximize your &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; return.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Calibrate your expectations.&lt;/strong&gt; — Are you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; a good candidate for a top-5 department?  (Hint: Do you have a STOC/FOCS/SODA paper?)  For a top-10 department?  For a top-25 department?  &lt;em&gt;Really?&lt;/em&gt;  Be respectful but brutally honest with yourself.  Ask your letter-writers or other faculty mentors to be brutally honest with you as well.  Listen to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify potential advisors.&lt;/strong&gt; — Every department you apply to should have &lt;em&gt;at least two&lt;/em&gt; faculty, preferably more, whose &lt;strong&gt;specific&lt;/strong&gt; research interests closely match yours.  Your research statement should not only name those faculty but explain why you think they'd be a good match.  Ask your references (or other mentors) for feedback and advice.  Listen to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spread your applications.&lt;/strong&gt; — The rule of thumb I heard when I was applying was apply for four schools where you have a reasonable chance of being admitted, one or two backup schools, and one dream school.  &lt;em&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; let the backup schools know that they are backup schools!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get good letters.&lt;/strong&gt; — Your letters &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; address your &lt;strong&gt;potential for research&lt;/strong&gt; in personal, specific, and credible terms.  A letter that only describes your performance in class is worthless.  Your letters must come from research faculty — not PhD students, not postdocs, not lecturers, not managers.  If possible, your references should have direct experience with strong PhD students (either as a reference or as an advisor) to make direct comparisons.  If possible, your references should be well-known active researchers, but this is actually less important than experience with students.  Since you've taken half a dozen graduate classes, you should be in good shape here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a good statement.&lt;/strong&gt; — Your research statement (or &quot;statement of purpose&quot; as everyone bizarrely insists on calling it) &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; address your &lt;strong&gt;potential for research&lt;/strong&gt; in specific and credible terms.  Do not start with an inspiring quotation.  Do not write about how computers are changing the world.  Do not write about how you've been programming since you were in the womb; nobody cares.  Write about your &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.  Describe your experience.  Describe your specific interests (not just &quot;theoretical computer science&quot;).  Describe a problem that you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; want to work on, with enough background and technical language to convince the reader you know what you're talking about &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that you actually care.  Bonus points if you correctly cite one of your potential advisor's recent papers, but don't force it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get feedback.&lt;/strong&gt; — Send the &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; version of your research statement to your letter-writers (or other faculty mentors) and ask for their brutally honest feedback.  Give them plenty of time.  Expect to get your statement back soaked in red ink.  Expect different people to give you conflicting advice.  Listen to all of them.  Lather, revise, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But this is all about the &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; of the application.  The best way to improve the &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt; of your application is &lt;strong&gt;DO RESEARCH&lt;/strong&gt;.  Get paid to do research if you can, but do research anyway if you can't.  Find a mentor (at your undergrad institution?) if you can, but do research anyway if you can't.  Post technical questions &lt;em&gt;and answers&lt;/em&gt; to cstheory.stackexchange.  Follow CS theory blogs and read the papers that they write about.  Keep a copy of the most recent STOC or SODA proceedings nearby to read while you're compiling, or waiting for the laundry, or riding the bus, or whatever.  Talk regularly with your letter-writers about your progress.  Write, write, write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T04:52:01.573" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7816" CreationDate="2013-02-08T05:17:00.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than making the text crisp and understandable, you should work to make it &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt;. Typically your &quot;press releases&quot; are in the form of articles for the research community, which understands why you find your work relevant; you're advancing the field. When dealing with the general public, you can make no such assumption. You have to state very explicitly why your work is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having a hard time with this, I've had success looking back at the grant proposal which is funding my research. In some proposals, the introduction will have some overarching, practical goal, which will be easily understood by a layperson. Couch any achievement or research breakthrough in this context and the press (and the general public) will have a much greater significance for what you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T05:17:00.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7753" CreationDate="2013-02-08T07:01:46.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing you can do to strengthen your application is: &lt;strong&gt;get additional research experience&lt;/strong&gt;.  PhD programs focuses on research.  This means that the most important criteria for admission is arguably: &lt;em&gt;likelihood for success at research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to demonstrate the likelihood that you will be successful at research is to provide evidence that &lt;em&gt;you've already been successful at research&lt;/em&gt;.  To do that, you need to get involved in an active research and do some serious research.  So, my recommendation is: go do some research.  If you've already done some, do some more.  The more successful research experience you have, the better your odds of being admitted in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, it's hard to give more specific advice without understanding why you were rejected and what were the weakest aspects of your application.  Therefore, my recommendation is: contact a mentor you trust (a faculty member who is active in research at a Ph.D. program) and ask them to review your application and give you advice about how to strengthen your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T07:01:46.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7816" CreationDate="2013-02-08T07:03:09.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to someone at a media relations, public relations, or press office at your university.  Most universities will have folks who work in this area; they are the experts and have a ton of experience, and you should take advantage of them.  They will likely be glad to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips that I have learned from public relations folks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify your message.  What's the takeaway lesson?  Can you write it in one short sentence, in a form understandable to the average person on the street?  Take a lot of time to craft this carefully.  Then, your entire press release should be centered around supporting this message.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for three facts or points that support the message.  Numbers and statistics are very powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stay on-message!  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Everything you talk about should be focused on your message.  Avoid the temptation for digressions or  tangents.  Yes, you are a witty raconteur and can wax on enthusiastically for hours about your work, but this is not the place for it.  Avoid unnecessary details; give a spare answer that provides just enough for folks to understand the message.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know that you and your fellow researchers are fascinated by all of the details of your experimental methodology, the alternative hypotheses you considered and rejected, the details of why your finding is correct, your calculations, and so on.  Sorry, but the average person on the street doesn't care.  Your top priority is to explain your bottom-line finding, why the average person should care, and &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; a teeny bit of something to give some intuition about why your finding is true (enough to make it sound plausible to an average person).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit ruthlessly.  You want as many eyes on it as possible, and ideally people who are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; involved with your project.  Lean heavily on your press office.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many universities, the press office will help you draft a press release.  They'll talk to you informally, ask you a bunch of questions, and then work with you to write a press release.  If they're available to do it, grab the opportunity; it can be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brainstorm a list of about 10-20 questions that you expect reporters might ask you.  Next, for each question, draft a candidate answer.    Your answers should be concise (at most a few sentences) and simple; and, the chance to throw in an analogy or fact or figure can help, too.  When you are talking to a reporter on the phone, have this list in front of you. This way, when they ask you a question, you can refer to the list and give your honed, crisp answer -- or at least, you have it to refer to if you need it.  The reporter will never know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the purpose of talking to a newspaper reporter is not just to educate them about your project.  It is also to supply them with as many pithy quotes that they can use in their article.  The more quotable you are, the more likely it is that you will be quoted.  They will be listening for those great quotes.  Take the opportunity to brainstorm in advance a few short quotes, and make sure to throw them into every conversation with every journalist.  Read a bunch of newspaper articles in advance so you can see what kinds of statements tend to get quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The public relations folks may also be able to offer media training.  If you can get the chance to take a media training course, take it!  This is especially important if you might be on TV, where you have to make every second count.  There are some powerful but non-obvious techniques that they can teach you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T07:08:25.433" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T07:08:25.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7348" CreationDate="2013-02-08T07:11:12.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to befriend a second year or older grad student. &#xA;I was in the exact same spot as you are now and unfortunately for me, there was nobody there to help me (I am in a foreign non English speaking country, where people were anything but friendly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in my 3rd in grad school and I have learned the following golden rules (the hard way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are not sure what is expected of you - ask as many people as possible. No one will come and tell you what you need to know. If you are not confident doing this in person, an email is also acceptable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a problem you don't know how to solve, always approach the person you are going to ask, with a possible solution. Nobody is going to do your work for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grad school can be a lonely place. Find some colleagues to share the pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My lack of confidence was usually a direct result of the complexity of a certain task. Just because something seems too complex, doesn't mean that there is no solution. &#xA;When I find myself in such situation, I like to step back a bit and clear my head. I usually go out with friends or do some sports. This should jump start your motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next step is to break down a task into smaller junks that are easy to swallow. I use a free web tool called &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;, it also has a smart-phone app and supports collaboration.&#xA;Decide on a deadline for the big tasks and try to fit the smaller once into a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A series of small successes is relatively easy to achieve and can do miracles for your motivation and overall confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5623" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T07:11:12.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2013-02-08T09:43:09.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes it is too late. The long answer is that usually only top programs have only one round of admission and other schools actually have also a spring round of admissions so you could trying going for that. This is not common but I found a few schools that do that, and some of them are actually decent schools. But I would say 85% don't accept late applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about getting a lab tech position at your current school and get more experience/pubs under your belt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T09:43:09.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:03:44.757" Score="19" ViewCount="2330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the kind of graduate student that finds many research topics interesting and wants to participate in lots of student organization activities related to science and academia. But recently, one of my professors warned me against &quot;doing too much&quot; beyond my research focus, both in terms of publications and in terms of extra-curricular activities.  As I see it, your goal as an academic is to develop a &quot;specialty&quot;, so it is important to focus on one narrow topic and pass over opportunities to research other interesting, but unrelated topics.  But can research outside of your particular focus in graduate school really negatively affect your ability to get hired in an post-doc or tenure track position in the future?  How can &quot;doing more&quot; reflect negatively on one's self?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T19:15:09.977" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T19:15:09.977" Title="Do extracurricular research/activities in graduate school negatively affect your future?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;extracurricular&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7865" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:24:04.170" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is fundamentally that of &quot;categorization&quot;: people want to have a box to put you in. &quot;Dr. X is an expert in field Y.&quot; Early on, if you're all over the map, people don't have a clear sense of what your focus really is. That makes it harder for them to feel that you're going to be focused on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; needs in your next position. Instead, the worry is that you'll continue to be all over the map. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also a problem for young faculty: they need to have a broad enough profile that they aren't trapped in a particular &quot;niche,&quot; but not so broad a profile that they don't have depth in any one specific field. If someone can't be recognized as &quot;the expert in her field,&quot; where 'her field' is somewhat arbitrary in scope, that makes for problems when it comes time for promotions and tenure cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T19:24:04.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7865" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:43:55.253" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true in an abstract sense that doing more is better than doing less, but there are psychological factors at play here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding extracurricular activities, hiring committees are unlikely to value them much, and they will come across as a distraction from research.  For each activity mentioned on your CV or website, someone may read it and wonder whether you might have written another paper if you hadn't been doing this instead.  It's not really fair, but you don't want people to be thinking about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But can research outside of your particular focus in graduate school really negatively affect your ability to get hired in an post-doc or tenure track position in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partly it depends on how good it is.  If you add a truly excellent paper to your CV, it should only help.  However, research outside of your specialty or done on the side is probably less likely to be excellent, and someone who looks at just that paper may end up with a lower opinion of you than you would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T19:43:55.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7865" CreationDate="2013-02-08T22:08:40.920" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Read broadly, publish &lt;strike&gt;narrowly&lt;/strike&gt; deeply.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is roughly what I've been telling my students. Now all of this depends greatly from area to area, but here's what I believe to be true. Having a broad background in your area might slow you down initially when trying to publish. But over the long term (your entire career), a broad base will help you more - it will let you be flexible about topics of interest, it will allow you to see connections where others might not, and it will help you place your work in a larger context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from your question, you appear to be referring not just to &quot;exposure to outside topics&quot; but &quot;activities related to the larger enterprise of science and academia&quot;. With those activities also, you should be careful. Maybe choose one or two outside activities and devote your extracurricular efforts there. The advantage is that by focusing, you're more likely to be able to do something meaningful, and it also prevents you from frittering away time in busy work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T20:45:55.173" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T20:45:55.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7883" CreationDate="2013-02-09T04:44:10.857" Score="15" ViewCount="1929" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a physics undergrad who has worked with profs mostly on areas in Quantum field theory, string theory. However, my interests have changed slightly over the areas, and now I want to pursue a PhD in Pure Mathematics, perhaps in algebraic geometry or topology. Is it OK, if I apply for a math grad school with recommendation letters from physics profs, or would this diminish my chances to get selected? Should the recommendation letter be given by a prof working in the same area as that you want to apply to? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T01:45:38.463" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T01:45:38.463" Title="When changing fields from undergrad to PhD, which department should recommendation letters come from?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7870" CreationDate="2013-02-09T05:46:39.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; I don't think you need to worry about it as long as you have a good track record and evidence for your interest in the other field which is demonstrable. If you get good recommendation letters (not the boilerplate type) from people who know you well and can provide evidence for their recommendation and can talk about your merits objectively you will not be at a major disadvantage. Of course it would be great to have people who can provide recoms in the same area but this is a common thing for people to change their field when they pursue higher level degrees so you will not be the first one having this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would definitely not diminish your chances if you get strong recommendation putting you in top percentiles of your program and supporting you in your decision. It also comes down to having a very good statement of purpose and explaining in detail why you are interested in changing field and painting a clear picture for your reasons and why you think you will be capable of doing what you want to do it. I have done this personally twice and encourage you to pursue your interest because in graduate school if you want to be successful you really need to be interested and love what you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise is to talk with your profs and explain your decision for changing your field. They will most likely support you and provide justification on why you can manage (if they think you have the capacity). Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I also want to point out that I have had many friends who have jumped from Math to  Physics and vice-versa (and also to CS). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T07:08:42.920" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T07:08:42.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7873" CreationDate="2013-02-09T07:21:24.900" Score="29" ViewCount="40258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fairly new chemical engineering graduate student.  I've been doing research for one semester so far (in molecular dynamics) and in the process have learned about journals and &quot;impact factor&quot; (a concept I didn't even know existed in my undergrad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor has told me that getting in Nature or Science is very difficult to do.  I don't think anyone in the department has a paper in that journal.  In fact, looking at the professors' research in my undergrad school (a top 5 engineering school), I don't see Nature papers either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after reading the journals themselves, I have to say that I'm kind of confused on what makes the articles published in them different than those published in something like JACS or ACS Nano.  They seem more general in scope, and maybe some of them are &quot;groundbreaking&quot; in a sense, but the other articles, I just can't really tell...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of research would I need to do in order to successfully submit a paper to one of these journals?  I've got 4 years left and have some sway in what I would like to research, so I think this would be a good goal for grad school (even if I don't reach it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T15:56:22.680" Title="How do I get published in Nature or Science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7872" CreationDate="2013-02-09T07:53:25.477" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;don't obsess about it&lt;/strong&gt;. In chemical engineering, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; papers are rather rare, and probably even more so if you're doing theory. So, while a paper in those very high profile journals can give your career a great boost, not having one is not a career-breaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you want to know how to orient your research to things that get you a greater chance of being published in such venues, my first advice would be: &lt;strong&gt;do something you're excited about&lt;/strong&gt;, something you think challenging and you want to address. If you enjoy solving the problems you work on, you'll do much better work and get a better chance of getting that shiny paper. Also, you might just be happier doing stuff you like, obviously, even if you don't publish it in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is true that some fields and subfields are over-represented in journals. This depends on journals, but very high profile journals tend to prefer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hot topics. In your field, it used to be carbon nanotubes. Nowadays, I'd say “nano” is a good keyword, metal-organic frameworks are a widely published system. But… that's not entirely foolproof, because this will change and it's not certain that the choice you make right now will still be a hot topic in 4/5 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theoretical work that addresses very basic questions that are not yet fully answered: dynamics of water, the nature of the hydrophobic interaction, the Hofmeister series, that sort of stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Controversies, work that challenges common assumptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Oh, and if you make it, I claim co-authorship based on the above contribution!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T13:18:28.150" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T13:18:28.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7849" CreationDate="2013-02-09T08:19:16.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you said you sit next to him, I would suggest you to be patient with him and wait for some days...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start your research work as you are supposed to do, and in the mean while try to be helpful and good in behavior with him. During your research if you would require some small help then surely consult him and he will answer you... I am quite sure after some days of being helpful + good behavior to him + asking and sharing some knowledge with him will surely change his attitude towards you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid suggesting you to consult your supervisor for the same again and again because you will eventually bother him and spoil your impression. Handle things by yourself, Be cooperative. Be patient for few days and there is a chance to save one years effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5959" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T02:18:15.317" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T02:18:15.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7878" CreationDate="2013-02-09T09:27:55.107" Score="17" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read research papers I often come across many things that I'm unclear about and would like to talk over with someone. My advisor is not available to do this with me as she does not have time. I'm not sure with whom should I discuss these research papers with, in order to help me understand the papers better. I am the only student who is currently being advised by my advisor.  How should I go about finding people to talk through these things with, so I can better understand the research papers I'm reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T04:31:23.220" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T13:04:29.777" Title="Whom to discuss research papers with?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7885" CreationDate="2013-02-09T11:09:40.317" Score="10" ViewCount="28895" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question expands a bit on my previous one &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2685/acknowledging-funding&quot;&gt;Acknowledging funding&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure how to write proper acknowledgments at the end of a research paper. The wording that I read most often is &lt;em&gt;Author XY is [partially] supported by...&lt;/em&gt;, which does not correctly describe my situation unless one stretches the meaning of these words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in detail, here are the two sources with which I have trouble:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a foundation that used to give me a postdoc grant. I did part of the work of this paper while living off this grant, which expired six months ago, and part of it under my new employer. How should I write this? If I write &lt;em&gt;is supported by&lt;/em&gt;, I give the impression that I am currently being paid in full by the foundation; if I write &lt;em&gt;partially supported&lt;/em&gt; I give the impression that I just got a smaller grant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a research institute that paid my travel expenses for a conference. While this funding is not directly related to the paper, I met my co-author there and had a chance to discuss its state. And, besides that, it is basically my only occasion to acknowledge this grant. How should I write this? Is &lt;em&gt;partially supported&lt;/em&gt; the correct wording, or is there a better expression?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T16:49:15.450" Title="How to acknowledge funding" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7876" CreationDate="2013-02-09T11:21:29.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;if I write partially supported I give the impression that I just got a smaller grant.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. It can mean different things like one of the co-authors was funded by them or  your situation in which they funded some of it before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if I would mention the research institute that provided the travel expenses. If you feel like you want to do it its a different story. Then I would write that the &quot;collaboration between the co-authors would not have been possible with out the financial support from research institute blah blah blah&quot; or &quot;The co-authors would like to acknowledge the support of research institute blah blah which resulted in blah blah blah&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T11:21:29.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7875" CreationDate="2013-02-09T12:08:40.047" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your advisor is not the only person to go to, to get answers to the questions that research papers are raising for you. Talk to other researchers, in your department, or online with peers at other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it does sound like you are getting insufficient advisory support. Do you really just have the one advisor? Time to build up your supervisory team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your advisor about what's expected of you, and what's expected of them. It sounds like you've got a mismatch between your need and their resource, and it's important to get that fixed as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also find a lot of good, relevant advice on these questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/670/96&quot;&gt;skimming a paper&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/797/96&quot;&gt;running a reading group&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T12:08:40.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7872" CreationDate="2013-02-09T12:18:28.183" Score="21" Body="&lt;h2&gt;For &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/author_resources/how_publish.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/authors/author_resources/how_publish.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nature journals comprise the weekly, multidisciplinary &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, which publishes research of the highest influence within a discipline that will be of interest to scientists in other fields, and fifteen monthly titles, publishing papers of the highest quality and of exceptional impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who decides if the research is &quot;of the highest influence&quot; or &quot;of the highest quality and of exceptional impact&quot;?  The editors.  If you want to know what they consider publishable, then you should ask them.  &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; allows presubmission enquiries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers may obtain informal feedback from editors before submitting the whole paper. This service is intended to save you time — if the editors feel it would not be suitable, you can submit the manuscript to another journal without delay. If you wish to use the presubmission enquiry service, please use the online system of the journal of your choice to send a paragraph explaining the importance of your paper, as well as the abstract or summary paragraph with its associated citation list so the editors may judge the paper in relation to other related work. The editors will quickly either invite you to submit the whole manuscript (which does not mean any commitment to publication), or will say that it is not suitable for the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info.xhtml&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info.xhtml&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; seeks to publish those papers that are most influential in their fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers should present novel and broadly important data, syntheses, or concepts. They should merit the recognition by the scientific community and general public provided by publication in Science, beyond that provided by specialty journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In certain cases, reviewers are satisfied that a paper's conclusions are adequately supported by the data presented, but the general interest of the findings is not sufficient to justify publication in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;. [...] Conversely, some papers provide provocative new concepts, but are not thought to be sufficiently persuasive to be appropriate for a general-interest journal like &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I do not think a person should do research with the goal of having a paper published in a certain journal.  A person should do research with the goal of advancing knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T12:41:51.973" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T12:41:51.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7872" CreationDate="2013-02-09T12:36:19.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be publishable in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, your subject needs be interesting for a broad audience, i.e. it needs be sexy. It also helps if you write more speculative, and thus the rate of papers that turn out to be not correct is quite high. So, although publishing in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; is good for your career, it might very well not be your most scientific work that ends up in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, but rather the most popular sounding. So write a paper on how you intend to solve the.climate problem using nanotechnology, and you'll be certain to get published ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T12:41:20.787" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T12:41:20.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7876" CreationDate="2013-02-09T12:40:33.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: check if the institution who provided the funding requires a specific sentence for acknowledgment. Some do! Otherwise, read on…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many large research projects nowadays are supported by more than one funding source, especially if you include the institutions you are affiliated with (although, being already listed as affiliations, they need to be acknowledged specifically). Saying &lt;em&gt;“partially supported by”&lt;/em&gt; does not have any negative implication to me, and saying &lt;em&gt;“is supported by”&lt;/em&gt; does not imply that this is the only support received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to avoid this particular phrasing, it also common to simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acknowledgements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  We thank the John Smith Institute for funding, along with the William and Melinda Bates Foundation for post-doctoral fellowship (to F. P.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of the sentence makes it clear what was the support, while the first part is more ambiguous. Frankly, noöne cares! That is, except for the funding agencies: they want is their name mentioned for their statistics, but probably don't care how it is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T12:40:33.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7870" CreationDate="2013-02-09T15:38:10.173" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with blackace that you should probably be OK, but let me sketch what some of the drawbacks are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, an application to math grad school will have recommendations from mathematicians.  The further you get away from that, the less meaningful the letters are.  (For example, at least once per year I see a letter from an English professor, which is utterly unhelpful.)  The basic issue is that you need recommenders who really understand what it takes to succeed in math grad school and as a mathematician.  Fortunately, physics is close enough that physicists can do a pretty good job of judging this, so you should be OK.  In my experience, the admissions committee will worry about two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is that physicists may not appreciate certain math-specific issues.  For example, the expected coursework and background.  A physicist may not fully understand the extent to which someone's background is nonstandard or deficient for the math program they are applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second reason is the belief that most people's standards go down a little when making recommendations for other fields.  If someone is applying to the top schools in your field, you know very well what the standards and competition are like, and you have something invested in the system and your own reputation as a recommender.  In practice, recommenders from other fields seem to be a little more cavalier about making strong recommendations based on a feeling that the applicant is smart, rather than a comparison with the rest of the applicant pool.  This means recommendations with be taken with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have equally good prospects for letters writers from math and physics, you should choose the mathematicians for math applications.  On the other hand, a physicist who knows you is still a good choice, much better than a mathematician who doesn't know you.  (But a mathematician who doesn't know you is a better choice than an English professor who does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T15:38:10.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7876" CreationDate="2013-02-09T16:49:15.450" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I write &lt;em&gt;is supported by&lt;/em&gt;, I give the impression that I am currently being paid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Work by this author &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; partially supported by the Hitchcock Institute and by the Norman and Norma Bates Foundation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if I write &lt;em&gt;partially supported&lt;/em&gt; I give the impression that I just got a smaller grant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonsense.  Unless the institute was your &lt;strong&gt;sole&lt;/strong&gt; source of income and equipment during the &lt;strong&gt;entire&lt;/strong&gt; research and writing process, &quot;partially supported&quot; is correct.  Also, it's standard idiomatic language; nobody will think twice about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T16:49:15.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7887" CreationDate="2013-02-09T19:05:42.890" Score="53" ViewCount="11059" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at a North American, state-run university (not an elite institution), which is relatively modern in terms of supporting mobile devices. The school is proud of its WiFi coverage in every classroom, and recently rooms were updated to have electrical outlets at every student's seat (even in auditoriums), so they can charge their devices. All courses are three-hour periods, once a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mobile-friendly environment is great when integrating mobile technologies in class. I make use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mentimeter.com/&quot;&gt;Mentimeter&lt;/a&gt; (real-time quizzes), the students can follow the PDF lecture notes and/or electronic copies of texts, take notes on their laptops, look things up on the web when I ask questions or when they do exercises, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it makes for a challenge during courses when students use these devices in distracting ways. Definitions of &quot;misuse&quot; are situational, but for this question, I'll call it any use that detracts from a healthy learning environment. Concrete examples include watching a video or playing a game on a laptop (distracting neighboring students), texting, using Facebook rather than working an exercise in group, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laptops and smart phones in class are not new; in the past I was able to deal with their &quot;misuse&quot; relatively easily. A student would be easily embarrassed and close his laptop if you called him out when you saw that 5 students around him were all looking at his screen and smiling. I ask a lot of questions during my classes, so I could &quot;pick on&quot; students who caused disruptions with their mobile device (or otherwise). Drawing attention to one student in large groups is an effective way to change behavior, usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, last semester was more difficult than ever, with 40+ students in an newly-electrified auditorium. During one class interruptions occurred 3 times, and I had to talk to offending students during the break about it. During the mid-term, I had one student argue with me at the start because he wanted to keep charging his iPhone at his desk in front of him. He insisted he wasn't going to use it during the exam to cheat, but I cited the policy barring mobile devices during exams and mentioned he'd have to explain that to a discipline committee - he complied. Needless to say, those &quot;correctional&quot; situations don't win points for the professor in the course evaluation. On the other hand, I learned that if I don't intervene (early in my career I would ignore these behaviors), students who feel distracted will complain during evaluations (most are too shy to say something during the semester).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution it seems is to add yet another item in my already lengthy syllabus and explain the desired behavior during the first lecture. My school has no official policy as far as I know regarding mobile device use, apart from an IT security policy that doesn't address the distraction issues. I did some searching on the web and found that some schools have policies, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://secureweb.mcgill.ca/secretariat/sites/mcgill.ca.secretariat/files/Mobile-Computing-Commun-devices-MC2-guidelines-11June2010.pdf&quot;&gt;McGill&lt;/a&gt;. What is not clear is how effective the policies are in large classrooms, how easy they are to enforce without becoming the &quot;text police&quot;, how well they work in non-elite universities, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I contrast all this with the fact that my students almost never misuse the &quot;phone&quot; part of their devices (they don't ring during lectures and they don't talk on them except at the breaks). None of that is in my course plan and I never have to explain it at the start of the semester or take action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how to reduce misuse of mobile devices in large classes while maintaining a friendly atmosphere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/870812/_I_Get_Distracted_By_Their_Being_Distracted_The_Etiquette_of_In-Class_Texting&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; for the students' perspective of the problem, and why it's not like other classic forms of distraction. In the conclusion, they state it could be useful for institutions to define policies about proper behavior in the classroom regarding mobile devices. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QduJl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T20:00:45.777" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:22:06.083" Title="Effective way to deal with misuse of mobile devices in class" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;technology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7886" CreationDate="2013-02-09T20:03:53.313" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing new in what you describe. As a student who oft got bored during lectures, I have done some distracting things during them, even though I didn't have access to any electronic device at the time (I'm young enough that they existed, but it wasn't accepted practice to bring them to class). We did crossword puzzles (collaboratively), we played &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;cadavre exquis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, we read newspapers and discussed them, we flirted, we worked on other stuff, … &lt;strong&gt;What makes you think the situation you are experiencing is specific to mobile devices?&lt;/strong&gt; The cause of the distractions is different from other situations, but I think the issue is the same and the solutions are, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I would suggest is: warn your students that while what they do is their business, you expect that their behavior does not interfere with other's study or the general class atmosphere. Tell them that mobile devices are useful, but that they should be careful not to abuse them. Handle non-compliance as you would a typical incident: talk to them, give fair warning, but clearly set the limits and enforce them if it comes to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T00:17:58.207" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T00:17:58.207" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7865" CreationDate="2013-02-09T21:01:59.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll echo what the other answer have suggested and add a little more. On the academic job market you want to be able to explain what you do in a way that people can understand in a sentence or two. Your question seems to imply that already understand that having &lt;em&gt;a focus&lt;/em&gt; is important and excelling in it is of utmost importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways that work or research outside of this core/focus can hurt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Peripheral work may leave you with less time to make the core/focus really shine. You may simply have less achievements or publications than you would have if you had focused more on your core research. The issue is not only that people reading your CV might think this. It might really be true!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is that this peripheral work might be seen as a signal that you are not serious about your core body of research. Do you really care about devoting your life to the field, topic, or question that you are asking someone to hire you to work on? Are you likely to leave your career for this other thing? The core of your work might be seen as less focused than it actually is if it looks like you've got all these others things going on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This second issue is a real risk, but it's possible to deal with this. Basically, it's your job to convey to people that although your extracurricular work is there — and although it may even constitute some impressive achievements or skills — &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; don't treat this other work as seriously as you treat your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This often means leaving irrelevant stuff off of your CV and website — although there are limits to what you can leave out. It also means organizing your CV so it's clear that the central thrust of your research is your priority. Many people have &quot;selected papers&quot; on your website or other personal materials. You can get to make that selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have written several technical books, served on several non-profits, and given hundreds of talks at (non-academic) technical conferences. I mention these things in brief and in passing at the end of my CV and on other pages on my website reserved for my non-academic work. I don't hide these achievements as I think they speaks to my skills and qualities as a researcher. But I make sure that when speaking to academic audiences, I — quite literally — place the core of my academic work first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T21:01:59.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7875" CreationDate="2013-02-10T01:12:35.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things not clear in your question. For example, is the paper something that your advisor has asked you to read ? Or is it just something that you're browsing for your own edification ? Did the advisor say that she cannot or will not help, or that she's busy ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand an advisor finding it difficult to spare the time to explain papers that maybe even she hasn't read. But if it's something related to your work with her, then I'd expect her to help a little more. You have to realize though that just because someone is your advisor, it doesn't mean that they know more than you about every single topic :) - in fact, part of your evolution as a student will be to get to the point where your advisor asks you for help ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the general answer is as EnergyNumbers indicates: find other students in your department to discuss these papers with. That's really the best way. Also, realize that working through a difficult paper, on your own or with others, is the best way to learn new material. It's a normal part of the training process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T01:12:35.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7886" CreationDate="2013-02-10T02:20:28.503" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is quite a common one and one that I face all the time. It is easy to see the benefits brought by laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. and for those of us who were focused students, it seems like a benefit we want to give the younger generation. However, there are a lot of non-focused students who do use these devices to distraction, both their own and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I try to make the class more interactive, less stand-and-deliver. That is, I tend to call on students all the time and I asked one student to comment on the opinion of other students. If the students are unable to give any meaningful answer (e.g., if they simply say 'yes, I agree with his point') then I dig until it is clear that the student was not paying attention. If that's the case, then one warning if I'm in a good mood and none if I'm not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make it clear that they have the choice to be there or not. University is not for everyone. If they don't want to be there, get out. If they do want to be there, then act like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually don't have to do it too often but I do have to do it from time to time to remind them that school is not relaxation time. Keep the classroom a little tense...it will keep them on their toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T02:20:28.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7805" CreationDate="2013-02-10T05:39:44.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is similar to the answer from @gerrit but after the comment from @F'x I thought I would write it up separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think the best way would simply be to track how many hours are spent on each of these tasks by each person. If task A takes person A 2 hours and task B takes person B 4 hours, then it seems clear how much effort people put in. Though, one does need to watch out for padding any time people log hours for any purpose but that's management's job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to do this in industry and while I would have preferred to avoid it, I didn't find it maddening. It simply added about 10 minutes to each day to log everything I did and who should be charged for it. It would be VERY maddening if task A was allocated 2 hours and task B was allocated 2 hours just because of some formula (like the teaching example from @gerrit)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that person A might be able to perform task B in 2 hours, in which case, person A should do it. Quantifying other than by number of actual hours invested is only going to lead to resentment and ill-feelings within the department (whether you're talking about academia or industry). As far as knowing who is better at something, that's also management's job. I say this after being in management for more than a decade before moving to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T05:39:44.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7875" CreationDate="2013-02-10T05:49:43.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest that you form a reading group! (As also suggested in passing by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96/energynumbers&quot;&gt;EnergyNumbers&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What helped me out early during my PhD was to create a series of reading groups around literatures I wanted to learn. A model I often followed was to organize a weekly meeting to read 1 book or 3-5 papers with 2-5 other students. We'd usually meet for 2 hours or so. I found other students in my cohort/program and others in the university who had similar interests. Ask around! If the papers you are reading are the kinds of things that are likely to be on your general or qualifying exams, chances are pretty good that others around you will have to be reading them as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T13:04:29.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-10T05:55:02.227" Score="9" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any significance of having received multiple &quot;best paper awards&quot; (in the field of theoretical computer science) when applying for faculty positions after a postdoc? Do the hiring committees watch out for such awards or do they fall into the category of &quot;nice to have but no one cares&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5964" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T05:57:46.917" Title="Awards when applying for faculty jobs" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1189" CreationDate="2013-02-10T06:32:31.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just bring up the idea of staying in your current lab with your advisor? Without mentioning money straight off the bat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor claims it's not possible to keep you around due to funding, then you can mention that you would be willing to do it without payment. And if you are willing to do it for free — and if you're already trained and have a good relationship — I can't imagine she/he would say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, keep pursuing other options. If you work out something else, neither your advisor nor anyone else is going have hard feelings (or any sense of shock or surprise) if you leave for gainful employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T06:32:31.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2013-02-10T06:33:24.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the prestige of the conference or journal that you have got it from. If it was a 20 person workshop I would say no but if it was the paper of the year award in a leading journal or best paper in the leading conference in your field then it is definitely an indicator of the relevance of your research and recognition of your contribution and its quality. It is one of the factors that my faculty looks into when hiring so the quality of the publications, where they were published and these awards do matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T06:43:51.500" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T06:43:51.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2013-02-10T06:44:12.390" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best Paper Awards — especially at top conferences — count for a lot in computer science and can certainly help you stand out on the job market. I've seen people introduced multiple times in computer science venues as having won &quot;many best papers awards&quot; or &quot;multiple best paper awards.&quot; People notice and people care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of other things matter as well and will matter more. A best paper awards at a conference nobody has heard of is unlikely to help much. In that sense, I don't think that hiring committees are &quot;watching out for&quot; best paper awards in any systematic ways. But I think it's absolutely normal to note your award winning papers as such in your CV and I think you &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; should. Having your work recognized as among the best at a conference will only help so there's no reason not to mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T06:44:12.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7901" CreationDate="2013-02-10T08:55:05.617" Score="62" ViewCount="5590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to reproduce published results in a paper. Those results come from numerical simulations. The original authors and I do not use the same software, and theirs is proprietary (I don't have access to it). I have tried to reproduce their results, and it works qualitatively but not quantitatively: the differences between their results and mine on typical quantities of interest are between 2 and 5 times the expected accuracy of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have communicated with the original authors, trying to clear out all possible sources of error I could think of (checked that I got the tricky parts of the algorithms right, checked that the “usual” parameters that were missing from their paper had the “usual” values, everything I could think of). They are forthcoming enough, and reply to my questions quickly, but it's clear they don't want to invest time in doing any serious follow-up on their side. And without access to their software, it appears I'm stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my question is on how to proceed. The “ideal case” for unreproducible results is to make a detailed analysis of how and why they cannot be reproduced, and possibly find out a source of failure (or at least plausible issues). This advances the field, and is probably publishable (not in a very high-profile journal). Here, this is not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I have, however, nice results that I have obtained (extending their work far beyond what was already published), and if I didn't have these differences with their paper, it would make a very attractive paper. What can I do with those?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it possible to publish them, merely noting the different with their paper without more comment? Or are my results simply unpublishable? I welcome any comment, especially from people who have found themselves in such an uncomfortable situation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T05:33:45.003" Title="What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-10T10:40:52.397" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just publish. Publish your attempts to replicate the findings, documenting the discrepancies, together with the nice results you've obtained by extending their work. Consider sending a draft to the original authors for their comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T10:40:52.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7926" CreationDate="2013-02-10T11:12:13.927" Score="8" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to start running a group seminar, with talks scheduled regularly, at my institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seminars might be of interest for people in neighbouring areas, too, so I would like to have an &quot;archive&quot; website with all the abstracts and a calendar of the upcoming seminars, and of course I'd like to send out e-mail notifications (and optionally also a RSS feed/calendar widget for the more tech-savvy users).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any software or service that can help me automate some of this setup? I thought of opening a blog-type site on some hosting site, probably either Wordpress or github/Jekyll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have experience working with similar tools? Do you think they would really save me some time? Or maybe is it better if I just add a page to my academic website, send the mails manually and forget about the other fancy addons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T11:43:44.133" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T13:46:35.877" Title="Website management for group seminar" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-10T11:31:28.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you/are you willing to throw a bone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be worthwhile to discuss having them as an author on the paper. Perhaps you can strike a deal to get what you want (get access to their software, results, etc.) in return for including them in your publications and having some level of collaboration. You might be surprised just being honest about this and talking about it openly might work! My best two papers to date come from doing exactly that and then developing working relation with the people that were not that forthcoming. After that we have published two additional papers together. Who knows you might actually end up collaborating and doing bigger and better thing together if it works. I would give it a try before deciding to just publish the results the way you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:31:28.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7872" CreationDate="2013-02-10T11:39:58.320" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As somebody who is working in essentially the same field as you—with many more years of experience—I can assure you that it is indeed very difficult to get a paper on molecular simulations published in a journal like &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;. Usually it requires some sort of accompanying experimental effort, and generally needs to fit the focus of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be pointed out that journals like &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; are both heavily slanted toward biological sciences: of the 30 editors for &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, only about five work in physical science areas. &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; is slightly more balanced, with about a 3:2 split between biological and physical science. (But then, remember &quot;physical science&quot; means &quot;anything not biology,&quot; and extrapolate how thin the coverage really is!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my advice is: don't worry about &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to get published in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;. Instead, focus on doing the highest-quality research work you can, and then submit it to the most appropriate journals for the particular area you're working in. (Talk with your advisor about how to figure this out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:39:58.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7902" CreationDate="2013-02-10T11:43:13.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A site hosted by your university, on your university website, will probably be a better choice than an externally hosted website. This is because you'll be able to immediately identify the seminar series with your university, and that will help to improve its branding. (It also looks a lot more professional!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for software, there are a lot of different options. I can't really offer a lot of guidance on this, as we have staff whose job it is to maintain our websites. Which one you pick will depend &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; upon the kinds of features you want, and how steep a learning curve you're willing to negotiate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:43:13.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7781" CreationDate="2013-02-10T12:05:50.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a comparative analysis of programs that allow industry&#xA;licensing/certification versus those that adhere to more traditional&#xA;entrance requirements like the GRE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of a formal analysis of the differences. One could probably divide graduate programs into two camps, with some gray area between. In a really general sense, academic research doesn't prepare you for industry jobs and industry jobs do not prepare you for research. Therefore, the two type of graduate programs are research targeted and industry targeted. I would argue that any program that accepts/requires/weights industry certifications falls into the industry targeted camp. The two camps are so different that trying to compare across them is silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your other questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do examinations, such as GSE/CISSP/CISM/etc, compare to the GRE in&#xA;terms of overall academic preparedness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there is measurable difference in the comparative difficulty&#xA;between the different categories of examinations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've taken both types of examination, industry and academic, is&#xA;one class of examination better or worse for gauging candidates, and&#xA;why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standardized tests in general are pretty rubbish metrics and that is why most admission committees also request transcripts, essays and recommendations. The GRE is likely marginally better at predicting success in research targeted programs and the industry exams will be marginally better at predicting success in industry targeted programs. As for difficulty, it really depends on the experience of the individual. Is an History exam more or less difficult than a Math exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but it depends on the individual. Individuals with an industry background will likely find the industry tests easier than the GRE, while those following a research based academic career path will likely find the GRE easier than the industry exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T12:05:50.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-10T12:23:09.873" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing results that contradict previous publications can be awkward, but if you can show that your method is correct beyond reasonable doubt, then it shouldn't be a problem. No code is guaranteed to be completely free of errors and no result is guaranteed to be correct just because it is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't say much about the nature of your computations/methods, but do you have any test cases for which analytical solutions are known or can be derived? If you can show that your code reproduces these results, then you can make the case that your code's results for the specific problem in question should be reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, if you have such a test-case, you could ask the other authors to run it with their own code, and see if they also produce correct results. They may not want to, but that's their problem, not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if you go to reasonable lengths in your paper to demonstrate the accuracy of your code/method against known analytical solutions, you shouldn't be too worried about not matching other people's results. At least that would be my opinion as a referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="495" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T14:53:58.400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T14:53:58.400" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7913" CreationDate="2013-02-10T12:47:38.837" Score="37" ViewCount="2437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been approached by an international student about doing a PhD with me. As an MSc student in his home country he has published 3 articles in pay-to-publish venues, that are known to have little peer-review process, with his supervisor as second/senior author. These articles are not particularly good and likely would not have been publishable in more traditional venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am struggling with how to evaluate these articles and the candidate. Should I simple ignore the place/type of publication and evaluate the work on its own? Can articles in pay-to-publish places really be fairly evaluated? I am worried that changing his behavior will be difficult. I don't want to accept a student whose goal is to publish things in pay-to-publish places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T19:46:28.540" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T19:46:28.540" Title="Value of light-to-none peer reviewed pay-to-publish articles" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7908" CreationDate="2013-02-10T13:04:52.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is indeed a tough question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would raise the most red flags for me is the fact that he does not have any articles in regular peer-reviewed journals. This raises, again in my opinion, the question if the candidate has simply bought himself/herself a publication list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student's &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt; merits should definitely be judged based on the content of the articles themselves, irrespective of where they were published, no question about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would worry me, though, is this student's views on research, publishing, and the academic process in general...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T13:04:52.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-10T13:16:08.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be very wary of publishing and as a reviewer I would be wary about recommending publication. The unexplainable difference in results hints at a mistake. That mistake is either yours or theirs. I would like to know for sure that it is their mistake before publishing. Even though you cannot compare the two methods directly, you could still publish your method independently showing that it gives the &quot;correct&quot; answer in a battery of test cases and then noting that it gives a different answer in the non-testable case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could then refer to this paper when you publish the real work. The advantage is that it removes the need to dilute the message of the real paper with the details of the method. A second advantage is it may result in the original authors running the test batter with their method. This is especially true if you call them out in an earlier draft and send them a copy prior to submission. You could also request them as reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different strategy might be a lab visit (physical or virtual) to use their software on your test battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T13:16:08.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7908" CreationDate="2013-02-10T15:01:54.703" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Pedro's answer, but I note that it's not actually clear from your description whether the journals they published in had peer-review. Note that some well established peer-reviewed journals charge publication fees to the authors. One example of relatively high-profile journal following that policy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://publish.aps.org/authors/publication-charges-physical-review-letters&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (flat publication fee of $690 per article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the articles in question were not peer-reviewed, then &lt;strong&gt;you should treat them as any non peer-reviewed publication&lt;/strong&gt;: book chapters, arxiv papers, blog posts, etc. Read them, see what they're worth. (Well, you'd do the same thing for peer-reviewed articles.) In addition, it probably depends on your field, but at least in mine being a MSc student without peer-reviewed publications is not a hanging offense :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T15:01:54.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-10T20:42:48.397" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Disclaimer: I have no personal experience with such a situation, so I'm just going off plain common sense.  That said...)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've already taken every reasonable step to discover the source of the discrepancy, and you're now left with just an &quot;unexplained deviation&quot; between your results and theirs.  You also say that the discrepancy doesn't actually affect the qualitative conclusions drawn from the results in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, if I were you, I'd just go ahead and publish your extended results, and just briefly note the discrepancy when you compare your results with prior work.&#xA;As long as you're reasonably certain that your results are correct (up to expected limits of numerical accuracy), you can't really be expected to be able to explain any inaccuracies in other people's results.  Of course, you definitely should make sure that others can easily reproduce &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; results and verify the correctness of the methods you used to obtain them, e.g. by making your software freely available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really think that merely documenting the discrepancy between the two sets of results would be publishable on its own, doing that and then citing that publication in your main paper could also be an option.  Generally, though, I'd expect that to be practical only if the precise quantitative values in dispute are actually of importance to others working in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T20:42:48.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7908" CreationDate="2013-02-10T22:25:27.680" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description, it sounds like the problem is more likely to have been the MSc supervior than the student.  As evidenced by some of the questions we've seen here, it's very hard for people new to academia to figure out which venues are reputable on their own---and the advice we give usually includes talking to someone in academia.  If the supervisor's name is on the publication, that presumably means the supervisor encouraged publication in these venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if it's a journal which does a small amount of peer review, I wouldn't assume, without further evidence, that the student has any idea that the papers weren't fully peer reviewed.  If the supervisor isn't active in the international research community, I'm not sure I'd even assume the supervisor knows that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T22:25:27.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7915" CreationDate="2013-02-10T23:45:06.747" Score="9" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am wondering if it would hurt me (professional creditability etc.) if I publish my dissertation on an interest / advocacy group's website.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dissertation is in one of the areas that this group has been advocating for a long time. Obviously, there are many other contrary views to the views of this interest group. The interest group is known nationally and, in essence, functions as a political lobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am employed in the same industry, so chose to study in this area from a well respected university. It was easy to identify this gap in knowledge and to address it with robust research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been no issues to date but now that the dissertation is approved, I am thinking of making it more widely available, hence the above option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T07:43:39.640" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T07:43:39.640" Title="Issues with publishing dissertation on an interest/advocacy group's website" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7914" CreationDate="2013-02-11T00:57:22.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be cautious. That said, I think there are easy alternatives that don't involve giving up exposure of your work through their advocacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you value credibility as an independent researcher, you will be well served by not being perceived as shilling for any particular organization or political cause. I think the interests of the organization that is requesting permission to republish your dissertation is in line with this. If your research is findings that are politically expedient for them, they benefit from the enhanced credibility &lt;em&gt;that you garner&lt;/em&gt; from perceived intellectual independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish your dissertation on your own website or in your institutional archive. (If you don't have a website, now would be a great time to set one up!) It should only take a day or so to get set up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you've done that, suggest that the organization write a summary of your work on their website — clearly in &lt;em&gt;their voice&lt;/em&gt; — and to link to or repost (if they feel that is absolutely necessary) your work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will benefit from the traffic to your website and they will benefit by having your work seem like the work of an independent researcher and not something done by someone inside. And indeed, it sounds like this is exactly the case!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T15:20:27.213" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T15:20:27.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7908" CreationDate="2013-02-11T01:08:35.080" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have one addendum to the great answers by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/fx&quot;&gt;F'x&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/495/pedro&quot;&gt;Pedro&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8/henry&quot;&gt;Henry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe the work is good and your lingering concern is about that the student has some miscalibrated idea of what publishing should entail, &lt;em&gt;talk to them about it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she/he is a Masters student, she/he probably isn't particularly set in their ways in terms of how they want to publish. A conversation with them — about this anything else that is worrying you — is a very sensible thing before you agree to spending the next &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; years working with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T01:08:35.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-11T01:32:12.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with others that have suggested that publishing the new results are OK. Mention that there is a difference with the old method but that it is not qualitatively different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals have a policy of asking for a comment/rejoinder from the author of any study whose work directly contradicted. If the editors think your comment within the paper qualifies, you might finally get the answer you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would also urge you to think hard about how much you want to put on the line for this discrepency and how much time you want to spend on it. It sounds like the results are qualitatively the same. If you end up being 100% correct on everything, the contribution from a paper that only talks about the difference will be a slightly better estimate. In some situations, that can be worth a lot. In lots of others, it doesn't count for much. You'll know how important this is for your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once found a small methodological problem in a paper in my second year of grad school. I asked a similar question to yours to a professor who asked me if the methodological error was likely to change the result or invalidate the core findings. When I said it was very unlikely, he told me that it was probably not the best use of my time to work a lot on a rejoinder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's tough. I think you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; say something. A note in the paper is probably enough. For this sort of thing, I think a research note on Arxiv  that you can cite might be an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T01:32:12.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7902" CreationDate="2013-02-11T01:40:47.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always hosted reading groups and seminars using a page within a wiki. There are a bunch of firms that will provide you with a wiki for free or for a small price and many that specialize in doing it for Academia (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://pbworks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PBWiki&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikispaces.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiSpaces&lt;/a&gt; and I'm sure there are many others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have to send out your own email announcements but that burden is pretty minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T01:40:47.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2013-02-11T04:41:02.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I taught high school physics for seven years before heading to PhD school, and the most important method for improving my own teaching was to &lt;strong&gt;observe as many other teachers as possible.&lt;/strong&gt;  In both my teacher education masters program and at the high school where I taught, it was mandatory for new teachers to observe other teachers multiple times per week.  In fact, new teachers were given class observation duties that replaced other duties (e.g., cafeteria or study-hall duty) because it was deemed so important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found great value in observing all teachers, from the terrible (I once watched as a teacher ignored all raised hands and simply lectured in monotone for the entire class--the students looked like they wanted to jump out the window because they were so bored) to the outstanding, and everything in between. Obviously, you'll incorporate certain teaching methods into your own teaching based on your own style, but the more you observe, the more you'll see different variations and methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if you do want to figure out who the best teachers are at your school, you just simply have to ask the students.  It isn't a secret, and the students see so many teachers every year that they will gladly tell you who is the best (and worst).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you do want to visit other teachers' classes, it is probably best to ask ahead of time.  While I wouldn't say it is rude to show up and ask to observe, it is courteous to do so ahead of time in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T05:17:37.837" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T05:17:37.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7902" CreationDate="2013-02-11T04:47:48.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider using google groups combined with a google calendar. It can be set up to provide email alerts and a calendar, and you should be able to extract an RSS feed as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T04:47:48.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2013-02-11T05:57:46.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  Best paper awards at top conferences like STOC, FOCS, and SODA—especially multiple such awards—are taken &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; seriously by faculty hiring committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm a theoretical computer scientist currently serving on my department's hiring committee.  So I probably know who you are.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T05:57:46.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-11T05:59:20.400" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the publications in the scientific journals should be reproducible and accurate. It is very important task to examine others' results. Original authors get lots of credit if an independent researcher verifies their theory or model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all journals have a section named &lt;strong&gt;Comment,&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;em&gt;Letters&lt;/em&gt;* or &lt;strong&gt;Letter to Editor.&lt;/strong&gt; Below are some links to these columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comment&lt;/strong&gt; in IEEE Trans. Antennas. Prop. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=6193149&amp;amp;contentType=Journals%20&amp;amp;%20Magazines&amp;amp;refinements=4291944246,4294956607&amp;amp;sortType=desc_p_Publication_Year&amp;amp;searchField=Search_All&amp;amp;queryText=comment%20on&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Comment on “Joint elevation and Azimuth direction finding using L-shaped array”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Letters&lt;/strong&gt; in PNAS &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/6/E445.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Genome composition, caste, and molecular evolution in eusocial insects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correspondence&lt;/strong&gt; in Nature &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v8/n3/full/nnano.2013.31.html?WT.ec_id=NNANO-201303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reply to 'Measurement of mobility in dual-gated MoS2 transistors'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can send your findings to the same journal and explain all of your finding. Then the editors send your comments to the authors, and they need to provide appropriate response to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is tricky, and you need to be careful. If you think everything is precise in your code, comment on the paper is an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="5644" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T05:33:45.003" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T05:33:45.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7936" CreationDate="2013-02-11T12:34:16.570" Score="11" ViewCount="4369" Body="&lt;p&gt;While peripherally related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2448/flying-with-a-poster-tube-as-a-hand-luggage/2488#2488&quot;&gt;Flying with a poster tube as a hand luggage&lt;/a&gt;, I am trying to avoid this. I would like to print my poster at the conference. I am considering this for two reasons. First, it means I don't have to fly with the poster. Second, it gives me a few extra days to work on the poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see three potential drawbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being unable to print the poster when you get to the conference. I&#xA;have lots of experience printing posters at my university, but no&#xA;experience in the conference city&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being prepared/able to return with the poster to hang in the lab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting reimbursed for printing charges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for point 1, the conference is in a major US city with at least 4 Kinkos (large scale professional print shops) within reasonable walking distance of the venue. My poster is not until day 4 of the conference and I am arriving 1 day early. On point 2, I do not plan on hanging this poster in my lab. I am a little worried about getting reimbursed, but our on-line reimbursement system has a category for printing charges. If I cannot get reimbursed, I am willing to pay out of pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing anything that can go horrendously wrong with this plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T02:02:41.217" Title="Printing a poster at the conference" Tags="&lt;travel&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7900" CreationDate="2013-02-11T12:41:06.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add one point that has not been mentioned yet. It may or may not be applicable to your situation, but it might be in the general case. You mention that the output from the numerical simulations don't agree. Therefore, I suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two models can't be made to agree, it's time to do &lt;em&gt;measurements&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, this is a good idea even if they do agree, but if you can do measurements, you will be able to confirm that at least one of the models is incorrect at least for the specific situation of the measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is not always possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T12:41:06.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7902" CreationDate="2013-02-11T13:46:35.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having once been the guy making a site for a lab only to have it abandoned because I made it too complicated, I would strongly recommend that, whatever you do, you make it &lt;strong&gt;simple to maintain&lt;/strong&gt;; unless you're the lab PI, the site you build will likely outlast you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wordpress is very easy to use, with lots of built-in functionality, freely available themes, and tons of tutorials online describing how to use it. Other CMS packages have similar benefits. Unless it's strictly necessary, I would avoid &quot;rolling your own&quot; software; almost all lab websites are the same few pages, and you don't need something complex for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with @seismail that you should check whether your department will make the page for you or at least agree to host it. It will definitely improve branding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T13:46:35.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-11T15:15:03.233" Score="18" ViewCount="3415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Physics undergrad who is interested in pursuing a PhD in pure maths in the future (algebraic geometry/topology) but I am a bit unsure. My question is quite general, and I don't wish to provide more background for fear of bias in the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is it is advisable/possible/unfavorable/favorable to apply for a PhD in a field, different from that in which you have done most of your undergraduate research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research (includes just reading and understanding papers, writing summaries until now, I havent published anything) mostly includes Quantum field theory, and gauge theory. Would the selection committee turn down an application to a pure maths field, if I have no research experience whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to ask the question other way round. What if I concentrate my undergraduate research SOLELY on topics in pure maths such as algebraic geometry/topology and take other physics courses, would I be able to apply to a string theory PhD with a high chance of success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I consider spending time on both of these (which is almost an impossible task), to improve my chances in both the areas or would research in one area, and grad level courses in the other suffice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In brief: Should the PhD field you are applying to be the same as your undergraduate research area?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-21T00:11:41.607" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T00:11:41.607" Title="Undergraduate research field different from PhD field" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7927" CreationDate="2013-02-11T15:47:29.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should do what makes you happy and you find interesting. PhD is a considerable investment and it is worthwhile only if you are highly interested in your research. It is quite common for people to change domain from undergrad to grad studies (between math/CS/physics/Bio-info).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T15:47:29.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7927" CreationDate="2013-02-11T16:08:11.427" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely apply in a different field than your undergraduate. Some major fields of research don't even exist as undergraduate majors in most colleges (e.g., neuroscience), so it's understood that many students will come from different backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more similar your major is to the new topic, the easier the learning curve. If your major is significantly different you may want to take some post-bachelors undergraduate courses before beginning the PhD program to bring yourself up to speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T16:08:11.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7940" CreationDate="2013-02-11T16:11:08.260" Score="3" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there an advantages of doing courses in pure maths (master level) courses, if you want to apply to physics grad school for a phd in areas such as string theory, or high energy physics? Apart from the obvious advantage, that you get better at math, which is used a lot in this areas, I am asking about the direct advantage for grad school applications on the transcript? Does the selection committee like to see more grad level physics courses in maybe slightly irrelevant areas, or pure maths courses which have use in these areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T23:18:54.257" Title="Advantage of pure maths courses in transcript for physics grad school" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7934" CreationDate="2013-02-11T16:34:12.587" Score="19" ViewCount="774" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking for approaches to include interesting, but not perfectly fitting results in a dissertation or a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my PhD project I have made an accidental discovery, which is what I believe you call &lt;em&gt;serendipity&lt;/em&gt;. The finding is related to the overall topic of my dissertation and certainly interesting, but it interrupts the &quot;leitmotif&quot; of my argumentation, as this discovery is really just the result of a stupid mistake. So my question here is: &lt;strong&gt;How do you eloquently include stupid mistakes (aka accidental findings) in a dissertation or a paper without sounding stupid or breaking the flow of arguments apart?&lt;/strong&gt; Is there even a generalizing answer to this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T07:42:52.790" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T07:42:52.790" Title="How do you thematically include accidental findings (&quot;serendipity&quot;) in a dissertation or paper?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:07:44.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had your problem 1 when I accidentally forgot the poster tube in the taxi when I arrived at my hotel. The problem was I arrived on Saturday and the poster session was on Sunday. For your case, where you have four days, there probably shouldn't be a problem, especially with so many print shops within walking distance. You could even perhaps arrange for the poster to be sent online &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; your arrival, and pick it up when you get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:07:44.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:18:14.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not worried about transporting the poster or getting reimbursed, and the destination city has the same facilities as your home location, then there's no functional difference between printing locally and remotely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, once you define away all the differences, the two scenarios are the same :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:18:14.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:20:06.647" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...”&lt;/em&gt; (Isaac Asimov, thanks to EnergyNumbers for reminding me of it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried that it will distract the flow of your thesis, why not &lt;strong&gt;put it in a “special” part of your thesis (e.g., an appendix) and refer to that from the main text, at the point that would be most logical&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Following the description of your experiment.]&lt;/em&gt; In the next few sections, I describe the results obtained from operating the Pocket Helium Flux Positron Annihilator on a variety of samples: metals (section II.B), graphene (section II.C) and heavy water (section II.D). You will also find in Appendix A a description of the observations made following an accidental operation of PHFPA without a helium flux &lt;em&gt;[you may not want to be specific and say: some moron forgot to replace the bottle]&lt;/em&gt; which allowed to check what happens when electroneutrality is violated on the µm scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An appendix is a good place, or maybe a small section as the end of the relevant chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T21:07:05.310" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T21:07:05.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:48:42.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thesis is a good place to place things not yet developed enough to make a full paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is at least tangentially related to you thesis topic, just add a relevant (sub)section (e.g. in further discussion, or near to the place where it is the most related). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: Many groundbreaking discoveries were accidental. So I don't see a reason to value them less than ones planned in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if &quot;accidental&quot; means than some values were set such as a mistake - again, mentioning such is related to motivation/story, not the value of results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:48:42.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:59:35.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reimbursement is related to a particular institute's policy; and taking by plane - to a particular airline's policy, so I won't speak about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being unable to print the poster when you get to the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible problems with printing facilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they may by further from the conference venue than expected (or not as easy to get to them, or masked so it's they are not easy to find even if you are nearby),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delays larger than you expect (at least assume &quot;the next day&quot;, in general or due to other prints ordered),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;page can be out-of-date, or they may be not working for some reason,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they may not print A0 format (permanently or temporarily),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;local holidays (or local customs related to working hours) may be different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I printed posters on-site two times, and it went almost without problems; some of people I knew had problems, especially with instant printing and poster sizes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:59:35.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:27:08.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not to scare you but what if you fall sick and lose the 3 or 4 extra days you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember it is a new place you are going so things may not be as familiar as at home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its good to prepare in advance. Perhaps you can forward your poster in advance and collect it on your arrival. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T20:27:08.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-11T22:42:01.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see any reason why you would not be able to print your poster at arrival. In the past, I have used fedex (or whatever is easy) to ship the poster to my hotel. That way, the poster is waiting for you when you get there. You do not have to carry it on the plane and no need to stress about Kinkos not wanting to print your posters...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T22:42:01.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7930" CreationDate="2013-02-11T23:18:54.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the real answer is that it depends on what it is that you're planning to do. The more closely your courses align with your proposed field of study, the easier it is for the committee to evaluate. So, taking pure mathematics courses makes more sense if you're going into a theory-based field than if you're doing something more experimental in focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should also keep in mind that a strong grade in an upper-level mathematics course will at best be &quot;neutral,&quot; and it might be possible to explain away a bad grade; a bad grade in any physics course will not go over so well. So you should factor your interest level and ability to handle the courses in your selection process. You should also consider if the course in physics is considered a &quot;standard&quot; course for undergraduates pursuing graduate admissions. If so, then it makes more sense to take that class than an elective mathematics course. (Otherwise, the question will of course be &quot;Why didn't you take course X?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T23:18:54.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-12T00:21:05.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Printing at a conference is absolutely no problem&lt;/em&gt;. Many conference centers and associated hotels have print shops and Kinko's sprinkled around specifically for people at conferences and meetings to use for print posters, handouts, and other things. You can usually call and in advance and send in some material if you like and it will be ready to print out when you arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the times I've gone to Kinko's near a conference on similar errands, there were other people from the conference waiting in line to do the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're presenting the first morning of the conference and getting in the night before, you might want to roll it up. Otherwise, you'll lose no sleep and shouldn't have an issue. The only real downside is that it will probably be more expensive than doing it at your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T00:21:05.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7924" CreationDate="2013-02-12T02:02:41.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The plan's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to check if you only need to submit the poster to print and then return to get it, or if they require you to verify a proof first. Some print shops may refuse to print unless you sign off on the proof first, so be sure you ask about that so you can plan if you need to make more than one trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be the local hero, buy thumbtacks and scotch tape for your poster while you're out and be the envy of all of the poster presenters, as well as the conference organizers, who will undoubtedly have forgotten to bring one or both of those things. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T02:02:41.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-02-12T02:06:49.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional ways people introducing important or interesting peripheral information without breaking the flow or core thrust of a manuscript is with footnotes/endnotes or with an  appendix as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/fx&quot;&gt;F'X&lt;/a&gt; has suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a short aside, consider making it a long footnote. If it's longer, put in in an appendix and reference it either in the footnote or in the text. Long — even paper-length — appendixes are not abnormal in dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T02:06:49.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7946" CreationDate="2013-02-12T02:52:54.520" Score="16" ViewCount="2004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unsure for books but I know for certain that selected journal articles are peer-reviewed.  (This just shows I am not in academia!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do books go through a peer-review process? If so, how does this happen?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is approached by a small publisher, does it matter if this publisher does not have a peer-review service (if there is one for books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T19:54:43.997" LastActivityDate="2020-09-17T15:17:07.987" Title="Are books peer-reviewed?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-02-12T05:10:32.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the social sciences, there is traditionally a section in the concluding chapter that discusses limitations of the present study and scope for future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can include your 'discovery' in this section. In this way, you are presenting your 'discovery' and suggesting some ways in which it can be researched - two-in-one, I suppose!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other section in which you can include your 'discovery' is where you highlight what contribution your research is making to the body of knowledge in your field. This is traditionally another section in the concluding chapter of a social science dissertation. You can 'wrap' your 'discovery' as an accidental but important contribution to knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I talked to a number of people in my field as part of my stakeholder consultation. I soon discovered that they were telling me far more than what was needed for my topic. I summarised this information in my concluding chapter and said that it represented an important contribution to knowledge because it would lost if not captured in writing (the stakeholders were mostly from the older generation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are many ways to include it in your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T05:10:32.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2013-02-12T06:27:52.283" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, after an author presents a book proposal to a publisher, the publisher will circulate the proposal to some selected reviewers to vet the content. This is not like peer review in the usual sense: the reviewers only get to see the outline and maybe a chapter or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the publisher decides to go ahead with the book and it goes through the editing process, it might undergo further review, but nothing like a journal review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T06:27:52.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5246" CreationDate="2013-02-12T08:56:07.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citavi.com/en/features.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citavi&lt;/a&gt;. It is a bibliographic (reference) manager and a knowledge manager. Citavi organizes references and respective PDFs (or other files) like Mendeley. Additionally, it stores quotations that you can directly copy from your PDFs (which links them automatically to the right reference), pictures and your own ideas. Furthermore, it has a Word Add-In and a so-called &quot;Publication Assistent&quot; which can also paste your quotations and references into OpenOffice or your favored TeX-editor.&#xA;The Citavi Free version can only edit Citavi project files with up to 100 references, but you can have as many projects as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5976" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T03:38:16.923" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T03:38:16.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7950" CreationDate="2013-02-12T09:50:40.633" Score="32" ViewCount="1330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I quite enjoy paying attention to how I design my documents and presentations. I usually spend hours thinking over and designing my slides for a workshop or presentation, so that they are aesthetically pleasing and as intuitive as possible. Likewise I recently started revising my CV I figured and I wanted to make it stand out a bit more. (Just to make it clear I don't mean making a clown of a document but just better use of colors, contrast and design elements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have long wondered whether or not this is something that can backfire, since most documents in academic context are extremely plain, at least in my experience. It's very common to see the default Powerpoint slides (white bg, black arial text) or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.se/search?q=terrible%20powerpoint%20slides&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;tbo=u&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;source=univ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=HxAaUe3PBM74sgb70IC4Aw&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQsAQ&amp;amp;biw=1282&amp;amp;bih=1065&quot;&gt;something as hideous as that&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is as follows: is putting time and effort into design of academic documents something that can backfire? Will I risk being prejudged with first impressions such as &quot;well he put much effort in the presentation his documents, perhaps because the content is sub-par&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the question might be somewhat subjective from person to person but I encourage everyone to consider it in terms of this SE blog entry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good subjective vs Bad subjective&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T22:56:18.707" Title="Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-12T10:33:16.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some scientists don't know how to properly layout a thesis, a presentation or a poster. They probably never learned it and too often don't care about it. This doesn't mean that you have to follow this bad example. I always appreciate when my students care about readability of text and figures, and think for a long time how to present something in the best way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your question, I'd say this really depends on what you consider 'unconventional'! If your CV bursts with colours and Comic Sans, it will certainly backfire. If it's a sleek design with understatement, it certainly won't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T13:35:52.690" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T13:35:52.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-12T10:36:50.790" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. But, there is little risk to improve the design, graphics and typography of your documents (theses, figures, presentations). There is little risk that it backfires if you present a higher-quality document. In fact, the only case I can think of is if it seems that form took over content: i.e., if you have a very shiny designed presentation with just-meh scientific content, the contrast might draw attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that might be a problem is if you put too much theatrics, 3D effects, animations, cartoons… I had a colleague who used every single “animation” possible (it was the early days of Apple's Keynote and its nice 3D effects) in the same presentation, and it was simply too much. It distracted people from his message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, coming back to the cost/benefit analysis: I believe that as in everything, 20% of the work can get you 80% of the reward if you choose wisely. People will have different pet peeves, but the areas which I think you should polish for presentation slides are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graphics quality&lt;/strong&gt;: no pixelated crap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistency between graphics and text&lt;/strong&gt;, and self-consistency of graphics: same quantities reported and plotted, same units, consistency between graph scales (as much as possible), etc. Sometimes you take pictures from an earlier paper, and they don't quite match what you are showing with them. Avoid things like “graph on the left is concentration, graph on the right is volume fraction” when they can be converted straightforwardly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Careful about background colors&lt;/strong&gt;: to me, this makes the different between decent slides and good slides (for the presentation, not for the scientific content). If you use a colored background (not saying you should), don't include graphics with white background. Try to use graphics with transparent background (easy with vector graphics, use PNG with alpha channel for bitmap images).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If visualization requires it, use movies&lt;/strong&gt; to show a complex system: time evolution of spatial distribution, autorotation of a structure you present if it makes it clearer, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T10:36:50.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-12T10:37:23.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kind of academic documents, and it might change from one field to another. For instance, journal/conference papers often have a required style, and so there is little room for improving the overall design of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the CV, I have seen many places asking for a specific style for the CV (i.e., they give you a Word document to fill in ...), but when they don't, as long as the content respects the traditional Education/Experience/Publications, then it shouldn't be a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to presentations, I would say it's a bit trickier. The overall impression I've had when talking with colleagues at a conference, is that the quality of the &lt;em&gt;speaker&lt;/em&gt; matters first. I've attended excellent presentations where the slides where black and white powerpoint, because the speakers were merely using them as a support to put the keywords and the important formulae. Conversely, I've attended boring presentations where the slides where very nice, just because the speaker was not comfortable speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I don't think putting time and effort in the design of slides will backfire,  and it will not necessarily bring you bonus points, what matters is the quality of the presentation itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T10:37:23.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-12T11:59:49.510" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good design is invisible.  The goal of design is to increase understanding/clarity. If your design is truly good then it will go unnoticed but your content will be better understood.  If your design is noticed and distracts, then it is bad.  I feel these principles are universal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, yes, good design is worth it (it increases the amount that your content is understood), but just adding &quot;design&quot; elements without a good understanding of the audience and their expectations will not likely result in good design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastEditorUserId="248" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T13:59:46.417" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T13:59:46.417" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2013-02-12T13:33:20.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As aeismail said, there are no truly universal rules and the bibliographic reference styles differ across scientific disciplines, and even within these there is often large variation. So normally, you need to consider the journal/conference/... the publication you are writing is aimed at and consult their rules. Most of the time, you will find quite strict requirements articulated in the venue's &quot;submission guidelines&quot;, or &quot;author's corner&quot; sections - usually on their website. If still not sure, contact the responsible editors/PC chairs to advise you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T13:33:20.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2013-02-12T14:05:38.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any software tools available that are specifically intended to augment collaborative learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strongly depends on the setting (i.e., the aim of the learning experience) and consequently expectations the teacher and the students have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For collaborative knowledge-base management and/or note-taking, e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikis&lt;/a&gt; are an effective tool. There exist a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plethora of various flavours of wiki's&lt;/a&gt; for various purposes, depending on the exact requirements you might have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are after e.g., collaborative writing, then tools similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; might be of some use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case you would be after something more complex, such as collaborative exercise sheets, that would be trickier of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also might be useful to start from Wikipedia's entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Supported_Cooperative_Learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer-supported collaborative learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T14:05:38.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-12T14:38:10.047" Score="12" ViewCount="15840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying to faculty positions, primarily teaching positions at 4 year colleges and universities. I am told many of these jobs have more than 100-200 applicants. Some of the jobs ads themselves say they get hundreds of applicants, and go on to say something to the effect 'you probably aren't going to hear anything from us', which says to me - 'don't bother us'. I have 3 questions, which overlap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I don't hear back from them at all, is it appropriate to contact the department?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I hear back that they got my application and materials, is it appropriate to contact the department?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People that I know from the business world encourage me to be more aggressive by calling the departments to check in, and even asking if I can come visit the department. I am concerned that this sort of attitude can have a backlash effect. Is this sort of aggressive approach accepted in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T14:59:45.877" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T18:11:09.257" Title="Is it appropriate to follow up on a faculty application?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7955" CreationDate="2013-02-12T14:44:48.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly appropriate to ask whether they got your application. It is also appropriate to enquire about how the process is progressing. I would avoid being too pushy about it, as this will not influence anyone, at least not in a positive sense. And sometimes these application processes take an extremely long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be appropriate to visit the department to give a presentation, as this is one thing academics do anyway, even when they are not applying for positions. Give a good presentation and this might help your application – though it could be the case that the people judging the application are completely disjoint from the people in the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T14:44:48.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:06:18.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only other note I'd have to add is that you should also remember &lt;em&gt;who your audience is&lt;/em&gt; when designing your documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a fancy version of a CV or a presentation template, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, as an example of where this could backfire: assume you have a LaTeX'ed CV that is being sent to an HR department of a large company. The text of the CV will probably be tested against some set of keywords for &quot;appropriateness&quot;; if it can't match because of ligature issues, you're out of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the documents will need ti be scanned in on the receiving end (perhaps because they require an actual signature), then the design should be one that doesn't make the scanned version illegible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T15:06:18.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7204" CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:14:19.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Pieter says, at many European universities you can get through PhD without any coursework. That, however, is a different issue than not being present on campus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Coursework&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, in countries like German, it wasn't customary to complete coursework during PhD. The idea was that a PhD student was being trained by the supervisor and the pursuit of doctoral degree was meant as a true &quot;assistantship&quot;. It is however changing in the recent years and more and more students are introducing graduation colleges, or other lecture programs aimed specifically at PhD students. So times are changing, but it still is possible at some places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;On-site presence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some countries, like Slovakia or Czech Republic (not sure about others) have a form of a distant PhD study. How efficient that is, however, is another story. In Germany, it also is possible to be a PhD student without being employed at the university, this is quite normal for students enrolled at a Universities of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule). The idea is that the student does everything as any other PhD student would, however, since the institution he/she is employed at does not have accreditation to award doctoral degrees, he/she has to be additionally enrolled at a university which has this right. I know that this is how it works also in e.g., Norway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a possibility to be a PhD students and at the same time being employed at a company. I know of few students like this in the Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now with both options discussed above, there always is a requirement of presence on-site. It is not strictly necessary to be daily, but at least part-time is mandatory. I did not hear of a place where it wasn't, though there might be instances where this would fly. The underlying idea is anyway that the student in the end produces dissertation and research supporting it in the same quality as an &quot;in-house&quot; student would. You won't escape this one and this is the main problem you should try to solve. Your question rather is: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;will my non-presence and no coursework allow me to produce quality research to finally deliver a good dissertation, or not?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T15:14:19.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7955" CreationDate="2013-02-12T18:11:09.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should keep in mind that the people running searches are busy academics who are doing this as service to the department. Checking-in aggressively — following your intuition for how this would work in business — &lt;em&gt;will annoy and will be very unlikely to help&lt;/em&gt;. At the moment (early/mid- February), it is still early enough in some job markets that interviews have not been scheduled so asking for updates might be seen as pushy. I think it's unlikely that your chances will &lt;em&gt;go down&lt;/em&gt; if you ask, but it still might be nicer to wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are many situations where contacting in normal and you might to do it through one of those channels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have another offer from somewhere with a deadline, it is normal — and a good idea — to contact other departments to let them know that you will have to move forward without them. I've had friends who have had interviews offers &lt;em&gt;within hours&lt;/em&gt; of telling a department this. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you have updated material on your CV (e.g., a paper accepted, positions changed, an award, whatever) go ahead and send your updated CV. You can mention in that email that you're excited to hear about any updates from their search.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contacting search committees in this context is normal and can signal that you continue to be very interested in a job. I was told by a search committee that ended up making an offer that they thought I might be unlikely to accept an offer and that one of these update emails rovided a useful signal. Of course, if they're not interested, emailing will probably just be noise and extra work for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that emailing or not-emailing is unlikely to tip the scale either way. They're going to make a decision based on the intersection of the quality of your work and what they're interested in having in their department. But out of kindness for the work of the search committee and its chair, try to do it as little as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T18:11:09.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7204" CreationDate="2013-02-12T18:23:19.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that course works is nearly always required for US PhD programs and very often not required for UK and other European PhD programs. For many European programs, you essentially apply to the program with a PhD proposal and you can think of it as almost starting the PhD post-qualifiers or generals. You'll be expected to have a Masters and to be an advanced student before starting and you'll generally do this by finding a particular advisor and applying directly to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, not wanting to be on campus at all is going to be a challenge — especially if you want to end up in a top program. In theory, this will be possible but most potential advisors may be afraid that by trying to maintain a full time job, you won't be able to put an adequate amount of energy and effort into your program. Honestly, I'd share those concerns as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add that although I know about a number of fields, I don't have any specfic knowledge about Industrial Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T18:23:19.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2013-02-12T18:41:43.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer is no.&lt;/strong&gt; Within fields, there are often a single style which makes some approaches and components more common or even that makes a single style dominant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get yourself some software like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BibTex&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endnote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EndNote&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://zotero.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; (my personal favorite), or similar so that you can simply rely on someone else to automate importing the data into a database and outputting according to whatever rules a particular journal or venue requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T18:52:28.537" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T18:52:28.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-12T21:17:15.343" Score="12" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;My department has several non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty in teaching-only positions.  My department is also hiring at the tenure-track level this year and these non-tenured faculty are taking an active role in the search, even voting with the tenured and tenure-track faculty on who should be hired.  Is this appropriate?  Is there a precedent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5981" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:51:57.207" Title="Should non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty be permitted to vote on tenure-track hires?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7962" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:13:17.363" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While on the job market this last year, I talked with top departments that gave all their full time non-visiting members of the faculty a vote in tenure-track faculty hires. So there is definitely precedent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm not thrilled by the shift at many universities to having a larger proportion of the active faculty be non-TT. But when this means that the &lt;em&gt;responsibilities&lt;/em&gt; of non-TT jobs are similar, it is only reasonable that the &lt;em&gt;rights&lt;/em&gt; should be similar too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits of doing so include all things that come from a work environment that is perceived as more democratic and where all faculty get a vote in determining the future directions of the department. The drawbacks are much less clear to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T19:51:57.207" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:51:57.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7962" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:38:36.490" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, there's a wide variety of latitude given to hiring processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At both of the universities I attended as a student, undergraduate and graduate students were involved in the selection processes for new &lt;em&gt;university presidents&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, at the school where I currently work, undergraduate students regularly sit on the hiring committees for faculty hires, and can actively sink a nomination if they have concerns about his teaching credentials. (Normally, however, this implies that the other committee members have a bone to pick with the candidate as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to me that there would be nothing wrong with a policy that lets non-tenured faculty vote on such a hire. After all, they are going to be colleagues, and it makes sense that there's a consensus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T22:38:36.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:54:21.253" Score="13" ViewCount="25941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just an undergraduate math student, and I need to make a CV for a research application. However, from the CVs that I have already seen I have nowhere near enough to fill probably half of a page. I mean I can really only put my education history which is 3 schools. What else should I put?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5983" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T12:45:04.417" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T08:29:39.827" Title="How should I go about making CV as an undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7965" CreationDate="2013-02-13T01:21:59.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider looking at resume samples. &#xA;My university has some great samples that students of all levels have used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.students.ubc.ca/careers/students/get-career-guidance/job-search-skills/resumes/&quot;&gt;http://www.students.ubc.ca/careers/students/get-career-guidance/job-search-skills/resumes/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that many of them make up for their lack of experience by providing specific examples of work they had done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose you had done an empirical project for an applied mathematics course. You could list that on your CV and provide information on how you had gone about doing the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most undergraduates, I find have lots of experience relevant to the position they are applying to from experiences that on face-value appear to not be connected. Think of anything that utilizes skills that would be relevant for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of something I used awhile ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research Experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honours Thesis - Aging, Risk Aversion, and Stock Investment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compiled and arranged data from the Survey of Financial Security.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Constructed statistical models to analyze trends in investment over Canadian's life-time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Controlled for violation of statistical assumptions, such as: auto-correlation, non-normality, and multi-collinearity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T01:21:59.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-13T04:04:07.787" Score="17" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I hope this isn't the wrong place to put a question like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very specific graduate school question. I graduated last spring with my BS and intended to go to graduate school. I accepted an offer from (Big State School). However, during the summer before I could go, one of my parents became terminally ill; so I ended up declining the offer (well after the acceptance deadline) to move back in with my parents and help them out. At the same time, I also arranged it with my undergraduate institution to continue towards my masters there (since I had already acquired a bit of graduate credit) with the intention of transferring to complete my PhD elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering mentioning in my statement of purpose the reason why I graduated as an undergrad, have a semester gap, and then started taking graduate classes again at my old institution (I've heard going to grad school at the same place you did your undergrad looks bad?). But I'm also not sure if it's relevant to applications or even the sort of thing that belongs in a statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be in poor form to do this, or should I leave such things out of application materials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(reposted from MSE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5986" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T09:25:44.053" Title="Statement of Purpose in Graduate School Application" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7968" CreationDate="2013-02-13T04:47:59.937" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, you should mention your situation in your statement, briefly and unapologetically.&lt;/strong&gt;  Omitting any explanation might raise a red flag with admissions committees, and most people will be sympathetic to your family situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also get back in touch with (Big State School) to see if they would be willing to reactivate your earlier admission.  It's a long shot, but it couldn't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T04:47:59.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7968" CreationDate="2013-02-13T06:20:01.587" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @JeffE's answer, but would reiterate that you should mention the situation briefly.  You may want to consider a short addendum to your statement of purpose so as to keep the statement of purpose completely on topic.  As to your concern about &quot;going to grad school at the same place you did your undergrad look[ing] bad,&quot; your situation will cover that, but it is not uncommon for students to get their master's at their undergraduate school and their PhD elsewhere.  That said, some of the best scientists I've known have received their PhDs at their undergraduate institutions, and ultimately it is your publishing record that will make or break future employment opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T06:20:01.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7973" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:29:03.523" Score="32" ViewCount="12704" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a usual problem of mine, I have a page limited conference (usually 8) and my paper is 15 pages long, or in a less dramatic case 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you go about taking stuff off the paper. Do you have any rule&#xA;of thumb?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you know what is &quot;irrelevant&quot; enough for you to take it out&#xA;of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T08:27:11.783" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T08:27:43.407" Title="How to reduce a paper's size for a page limited conference?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7965" CreationDate="2013-02-13T08:13:36.227" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before starting research, An undergraduate student really only has a résumé. A &lt;em&gt;curriculum vitae&lt;/em&gt; is generally intended for someone who is intending to pursue a career in research, and has a somewhat &quot;standardized&quot; format (although there are still many variations). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a young student just beginning to do research, I would recommend that you focus on listing skills that you have that would make you appealing to someone interested in hiring you. If you have more than the standard training for someone at your level in university (more courses, have already done research projects, etc.), then you should list that information. Similarly, if you have special skills (programming languages, familiarity with specific techniques or tools, etc.), then those should also be listed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any jobs that you've held that might also prepare you for such an experience would also be of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T08:13:36.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-13T08:21:13.983" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you go about the longer process of deciding &quot;what to delete,&quot; have you first tried to remove the &quot;dead weight?&quot; Academic writing is often quite leaden in style, and can be trimmed quite substantially. Following Strunk's commandment to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk5.html&quot;&gt;&quot;omit needless words&quot;&lt;/a&gt; can often cut down a page or two out of your manuscript &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; sacrificing &quot;actual&quot; content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, having pruned your text, you find you still need to reduce things, ask yourself the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What information do I want my readers to retain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What sections of the paper do not provide information necessary for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those should be a fairly good guide about what to delete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T08:21:13.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-13T09:23:42.330" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I do when trying to cut material is to make a backup of the paper (or a branch in your version control system). Cutting 20% is relatively easy while cutting 50% is much harder. For a 20% cut, the first place I look is the methods section. In my field we often include descriptions of methods that have previously been published. You can often save some space by simply referring to a previous published account of the method. In my field the methods section might be 10% of the paper and if you are lucky you can cut that in half, saving you 5%. The second place I look is my figures and tables. In my field figures and tables take up 25% of a paper. If you unneeded figures and tables, combine a couple, reformat and scale the rest, you can save another 10%. The third place is the efficiency of the writing. Obviously being succinct helps, but I find it helps to read your conclusions and then prune anything that is not directly relevant. These steps can help reduce a paper without changing the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I still am not under the limit, I look at my conclusions and decide which one I want to cut. I then go back and remove the portions of the paper that lead to this conclusion. there is usually some setup in the introduction, a piece of results, and some discussion. This obviously changes the content of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T09:23:42.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-13T10:12:58.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many technical ways to reduce paper length without affecting your content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use LaTeX for your papers (I highly suggest it), there are many web pages that help you reduce the number of pages without changing one bit of text.  Do a Google search for &quot;squeeze space latex&quot; and you'll find plenty of information.  My favorite one-liner command is &lt;code&gt;\linespread{&amp;lt;factor&amp;gt;}&lt;/code&gt;, where &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;factor&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; is a decimal number, such as 0.99 or 0.98.  I've reduced a twelve page paper to ten pages without any noticeable difference in formatting using that single command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you must stay within the paper formatting guidelines, but I've never had a problem with conferences and judicious use of re-formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other tricks that don't require significant content changes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find all paragraphs that have one or two words at the end and find a way to rephrase the sentence to make it fit on one line.  This is relatively easy in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure any figures are tight (while still looking good).  For instance, don't have a title on graphs with captions -- the caption takes care of the title.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure paragraph/section titles are a reasonable font size, and limit the space between the titles and sections.  Make sure your titles fit on a single line.  Sometimes you can get away with bold titles in the same font size instead of larger titles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce the font size for references.  I've used &lt;code&gt;footnotesize&lt;/code&gt; references without anyone batting an eye.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T10:21:43.613" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T10:21:43.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-13T10:15:57.500" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, a convenient approach is to &quot;publish&quot; the long version as a technical report or as a preprint (e.g., on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;). In this way, it is always possible to refer to missing parts in the shorter version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are only a few pages too many, then it's probably possible to &quot;tweak&quot; the paper to fit within the page limit: scale the pictures, inline the equations, use only acronyms of the conference in the bibliography (e.g., &lt;em&gt;in POPL&lt;/em&gt;, instead of &quot;in Proceedings of the 40th Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages), transform subsubsections into paragraphs, rephrase some paragraphs, move the proofs into the appendix, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have too many pages, and you actually need to cut some &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;, then it might probably be better to directly cut an entire section rather than some bits and pieces in each section. For instance, I've rejected some papers because &quot;due to the lack of space&quot;, the authors didn't provide any illustration of some quite complex notions, making the paper not understandable. Similarly, I've rejected a paper that was addressing many different points, but never in depth, due to the lack of space ... so it was quite hard to see the contribution (it was not a survey paper). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't find a proper section to cut, i.e., you make a single contribution and you need 15 pages to explain it, then the venue is probably not suited, and you might rather look for a venue with a larger page limit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if you have a 15 pages paper and a 8 pages limit, write &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; papers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T10:15:57.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7204" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:03:36.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few more points on German PhD programs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;universities are more and more moving towards PhD programs with course-work, the ones without are usually the &quot;old&quot; programs.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The old programs usually take the point of view that the PhD thesis is your &quot;private fun&quot;, you usually do not get paid for the research work. This leaves you free to have whatever daytime job you have. However, the experience is that unless your daytime job is to do the research, such theses often took/take &lt;em&gt;decades&lt;/em&gt; (I'm speaking of 10 or 20 years; which is reasonable if you consider that the &quot;modern&quot; 3 years of 8 - 12 h / working day correspond to (4 - 6) x 3 years at 2 h / day).   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the programs without course-work will require you to take a final exam, which can be replaced by the exams of course work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your search term would be &quot;external PhD student&quot; (externer Doktorand)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As walkmanyi already wrote, external PhD students are usually in research projects that involve a collaboration between industry and university. And external PhD students usually have to show up every few months to give their presentations, and they may be asked to attend the research group's seminar regularly. With seminar hours outside &quot;normal&quot; work schedules, this is possible if you live reasonably close. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the old &quot;PhD is private fun&quot; programs, PhD students are not paid for the research. However, they are/were frequently paid for teaching.  Some PhD programs now require teaching experience - which means on-campus presence. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, Italian PhD programs require the students to have a special kind of working contract with the university, so no external PhD there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:03:36.913" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7984" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:09:21.317" Score="20" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;In recent years, there has been a number of quality peer-reviewed open access journals launched. Some of them are what I would call “mega-journals”, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org&quot;&gt;PLOS|One&lt;/a&gt; and the newly-launched &lt;a href=&quot;https://peerj.com&quot;&gt;PeerJ&lt;/a&gt;. However, most of those mega-journals which boast broad scope focus in fact only on medicine, biology and health sciences (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://peerj.com/about/aims-and-scope/&quot;&gt;PeerJ’s Aims and Scope&lt;/a&gt;). Why is that so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other such open access journals with high-quality, focussing on other topics (Physical Sciences, the Mathematical Sciences, the Social Sciences, or the Humanities)? If not, what is the specificity of biology and related sciences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T11:14:18.193" Title="Why do many recent open access “mega-journals” only cover biological sciences?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:40:10.593" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the major issues here has been the existence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; in all its various incarnations. Since there was already a major open-source distribution network—even if it eschewed important parts of the publishing process like peer review—it made the need for a &lt;em&gt;PLOS|One&lt;/em&gt;-like journal much smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A secondary issue is that many of the journals in the mathematics and physics communities have fairly liberal policies on the use of open-source repositories to distribute papers; for instance, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aip.org&quot;&gt;American Institute of Physics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://publish.aps.org&quot;&gt;American Physical Society&lt;/a&gt; allow publication within their journals, while still allowing authors the right to &quot;self-publish&quot; using their own version of the materials. Similarly, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt;, while having slightly more restrictive policies than AIP or APS, still effectively allow open access after one year of &quot;exclusive&quot; access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ultimately, I think the emergence of &lt;em&gt;PLOS|One&lt;/em&gt; and similar efforts is an attempt to move more in the direction &lt;em&gt;that already exists&lt;/em&gt; in the various physical sciences communities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add&lt;/strong&gt;: One additional issue that may explain the state of activities are some of the recent decisions by the NIH to require that manuscripts published with NIH financing (thereby including the majority of biomedical research in the US) had to be made publicly accessible within six months of publication. This is a development that has &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; been matched by the NSF and other major funding agencies, nor is it a rule in most of the European Union, as far as I can tell (although I believe the UK is haltingly starting to move in that direction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, there is a strong impetus for open-access in biology and biomedical science that is not matched by the other fields (which might not have nearly as much money and therefore would not have the clout of the NIH).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T20:59:20.010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T20:59:20.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7948" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:47:47.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that we have similar concepts of what good design is (clarity, readability, ...), the only point I can see where it could potentially backfire is if there is a mandatory layout and you choose not to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thesis formats are often mandatory, and you don't want to risk failing because of not meeting formal requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The call-for-papers that comes with an ugly Word template that &lt;em&gt;is to be used&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many universities have a corporate design that is mandatory for public/outside presentations.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, my complementary experience is that judicuous changes that leave the overall impression of where you belong intact, but e.g. allow better contrast in diagrams are usually not backfiring. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:47:47.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:59:25.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other examples in the social sciences if you look hard enough, although they may not be as publicized as PLoS ones. For instance I know it is becoming more popular for journals to make back issues freely accessible after a certain time period (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/epidem/pages/issuelist.aspx?year=2007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1538-4632&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geographical Analysis&lt;/a&gt; before 2004 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?Service=UI&amp;amp;version=1.0&amp;amp;verb=Display&amp;amp;handle=euclid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Euclid&lt;/a&gt; journals). Also Springer has there open-access venues &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(BioMed central)&lt;/a&gt;, which is mostly biological sciences related but has a few social science journals (also Springer has the option to publish an article open-access for a fee, although the fee is pretty hefty). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, I'm not sure why there is a popularity in the bio-medical sciences (perhaps because of the sheer size?) but it is certainly a trend across academia for both contemporary publishers to open the archives and for new open-access journals to form (and existing ones to become more reasonable and respected alternatives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7981/3&quot;&gt;aeismail's reponse&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssrn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SSRN archive&lt;/a&gt; is heavily devoted to Law articles, and many of those journals are entirely open access as well (see for one example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbialawreview.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Columbia Law Review&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:59:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2013-02-13T17:50:40.933" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'm not sure I believe that it is true to say that, &quot;&lt;em&gt;most of those mega-journals which boast broad scope focus in fact only on medicine, biology and health sciences&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; This might be true of &lt;a href=&quot;https://peerj.com/&quot;&gt;PeerJ&lt;/a&gt; but it is not true of PLOS ONE. I have read sociological experiments, physics-based  network analyses, and pure computational work published in PLOS ONE. I get the sense that bioscience makes up the core of their editorial board and bulk of their publications, but it's far from the whole thing. Also, there are other &quot;mega-journals&quot; that serve other communities and fields. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sgo.sagepub.com/&quot;&gt;SAGE Open&lt;/a&gt; focuses on the humanities and social sciences. There are others and new ones being created frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is true that the first and biggest mega-journals are more focused on bioscience than they are on other fields. I think that the reason is because the &quot;mega-journal&quot; model is closely tied to the modern open access movement which has its largest amount of support in biological and health sciences.  Basically, I think that PLOS ONE attracts so many biological articles because they have a biological heavy editorial board. They have a biological heavy editorial board because they have leveraged the network that exists for PLOS. PLOS' flagship journal is, of course, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/&quot;&gt;PLOS Biology&lt;/a&gt; and the organization was started by a group of bioscientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm&quot;&gt;Peter Suber's open access timeline&lt;/a&gt; is instructive. Although OA has a broader history, folks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Varmus&quot;&gt;Harald Varmus&lt;/a&gt; have used institutional support at places like the NIH to push for a set of norms around open access through projects like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/&quot;&gt;PubMedCentral&lt;/a&gt; and requirements from funders to publish OA. The result is an OA movement that has simply been much more successful and influential in the biosciences than it has been in other fields. There are structural reasons this might be the case. Pay-to-publish models are easier to swallow in fields that are largely grant based. Biological and health sciences makes up an enormous proportion of grant funded research through the NIH, NSF, and other private and public agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my sense is that, fundamentally, PLOS ONE has provided the inspiration for most mega-journals because it quickly became the largest journal of the world and, through that process, managed to maintain a surprisingly high impact factor (~4 in 2011!). To the extent that PLOS ONE has created the mega-journal model, there may be a bioscience bias — especially early on — that comes simply from PLOS ONE's own roots in bioscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T22:35:01.930" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T22:35:01.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7988" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:13:02.303" Score="7" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in going back for my masters.  While I have been accepted by a masters program (quite a while ago) previously, I am looking at another university and require a fresh set of references.  I have lost track of my previous advisors and am unable to get work references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I need to prove myself at this point to somebody.  There are some optional courses in the undergrad that I am interested in, but to be honest I could just read the textbook and save some money.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is it ethical/acceptable to take courses for the sole purpose of getting a reference letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I inform the prof before taking the class of my intent if this is a gray area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  I know that it is still the prof's choice if I get a letter and this method is nowhere near ideal.  Just the best I could come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6003" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T19:26:50.330" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T19:26:50.330" Title="Is it ethical/acceptable to take courses for the sole purpose of getting a reference letter?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7985" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:29:28.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, this is ethical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life is about proving yourself, and if you want to take a challenge to make a statement, there is nothing unethical about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would absolutely go ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a reference letter is for someone to make a character or professional evaluation of an individual.  The reason as to why the individual needs the evaluation should not make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6005" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T18:29:28.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7985" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:34:00.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you take a class for the express purpose of getting a letter, are you sure the class is to your interests ? If it isn't, and you aren't good at the material, you're not going to get a letter (or worse, you'll get a tepid letter). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you're taking the class because you like the material AND you hope that you can impress the professor enough to get a letter, then that's perfectly normal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T18:34:00.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7985" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:34:09.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Students have lots of reasons for taking courses and I don't think I want to be in the business of telling students that there are right and wrong reasons to take a class. I certainly think it's a good idea for prospective PhD students to think about who might be good letter writers early on in their program and to make sure they work with some of them — not doing so can make the academic job market very difficult. I don't see this as being substantively different. If you take the class, do well, and then ask for a letter, you might get a good one. Or you might not. So I'd say go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is something very mercenary about the way you have phrased your question that makes me skeptical. Do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; think that working with faculty wouldn't teach you &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;? If it's true that the &lt;em&gt;only reason&lt;/em&gt; you want to take a class is because of the letter you might get, something seems off. Maybe your interests are different enough from the professor's that I'm skeptical that this person would be such a great letter writer &lt;em&gt;for what you want to do&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to excel in a Masters program means not resenting the idea that you may have to learn from professors when you could &quot;just read the book.&quot; I think it's OK to take a class for a recommendation but you should use this as opportunity to learn something you are passionate about in ways you could not with just the textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the professor. Let them know you are an advanced and passionate student. Get feedback on your work. Go beyond what is just in the book. If you do that, you will get more than you would otherwise. In the process, you will also earn a much stronger letter. If you can't get over that hump, I suspect that your recommendations — and your experience in grad school — will underwhelm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T18:34:09.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7985" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:35:01.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a completely personal decision. Is it ethical? Sure. People audit courses for all kinds of reasons.  You're not the first person that has needed to get references so if you want to do that then just make sure that you're ready to give that course 110% to ensure that you get a 'good' reference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, however, another implied question in your post: 'If I just go back for one class to get a reference will it have any value?'.  Again, this is highly subjective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and here is why I didn't flag this question as being off topic)&#xA;Your references should provide the admissions board with enough relevant information about your work, accomplishments, intellect, and character, to support your admission to the program.  Taking one class, after a long academic absence, does not provide any frame of reference for your professor to make these types of assertions about you.  You may find it better to solicit references from managers or people that you've done research with.  Those people have the context to make a legitimate assessment of you and your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least you should consider how your references support each other.  If you need to have an academic reference and you don't have access to your previous references then taking a class to get one should be fine, just don't forget to support that as appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T18:35:01.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7991" CreationDate="2013-02-14T00:58:51.990" Score="8" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering about the following (after reading this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7980/why-do-many-recent-open-access-mega-journals-only-cover-biological-sciences&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; that discusses open access journals):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it easier to publish in one of the open access journals (when compared to the traditional journals)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does publishing in one of the open access journals affect the academic value of an article? (Unsure how to put this, but I mean does it affect your reputation etc?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that some of the open access journals are peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of open access is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=home&amp;amp;uiLanguage=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Directory of Open Access Journals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T13:33:48.833" Title="Status and selectivity of open access journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7990" CreationDate="2013-02-14T01:31:27.737" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open access vs. closed access is a totally separate issue from quality of journal.  There are high quality open access journals and low quality ones, and high quality traditional journals and low quality ones.  There may be some correlation because open access journals tend to be newer and so less established, but nonetheless if you want to determine the quality of a particular journal you should look at that specific journal not try to extrapolate based on whether it's open access or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T01:31:27.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-14T01:33:09.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know a single academic who's been able to get close to deadline and not say, &quot;Look we're right on the page budget!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some strategies;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't cut too early. Cutting too early is a good way of losing some important numbers or paragraphs that your co-authors will keep asking you about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cut stuff that doesn't fit the story. I'm in computer science, so conferences are archival, but in general, if something isn't important to the overall contribution, then it goes away. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make really nice tables and figures. Much of the time, having these separated and somewhat self-explanatory may actually save you the space of having to explain what's in each figure. As above, if your figure/table isn't related to the story, then cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write more concisely. You could either write, &quot;The participants we recruited for the study were students who came from a wide variety of majors including computer science, electrical engineering, chemistry, nuclear engineering, and physics.&quot; Or, you could write, &quot;Our participants were science/engineering majors&quot;. Different details, but functionally equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T08:27:43.407" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T08:27:43.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2013-02-14T02:45:20.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are definitely some good tips already listed, in addition, here are some things that I've found really help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go back through your sections and write a bullet point outline of what you want that section to say.  Assign 1 bullet point per paragraph and put it right above that paragraph.  Go back through and re-read that paragraph making sure that each sentence supports your paragraph's point.  If it doesn't, remove it or put it someplace else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go through your work keeping an eye out for terms that you use repetitively in each section or throughout the paper.  If it's appearing more than a couple of times, consider creating an acronym or abbreviation for it (unless it's really going to make your paper difficult to read).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask someone else to read your paper and tell them that it is too long.  Ask them to cross out or to mark parts they thought were unnecessary.  If possible, have several people do this.  Sometimes as the writer it is difficult to decide where to cut because you're too close to it.  Having others read the paper and cross things out gives you a fresh perspective on if you're being repetitive or if some parts don't need to be there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a break.  If you have the time to do it, try not looking at your work for a few days or a week and then on your first time re-reading it make sure to mark any parts that stick out to you as unnecessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T02:45:20.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7965" CreationDate="2013-02-14T09:22:45.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;CVs and resumes vary greatly by field and level of experience. A CV of an undergraduate applying to graduate school is very different than the CV of a associate professor applying to become a full professor. I would suggest talking to your classmates and the career services at your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T09:22:45.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7968" CreationDate="2013-02-14T09:25:44.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better than just mentioning it in passing in your application would be to reflect on the illness and how that life experience has helped prepare you for graduate school/research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T09:25:44.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8003" CreationDate="2013-02-14T15:50:35.130" Score="28" ViewCount="11315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the following situation: In 3 months, I'll finish my PhD in theoretical physics, and I'm certain that I want to pursue an academic career. However, I'm just as certain that my PhD research is a dead end. (My advisor doesn't think so, but I disagree with him.) Thus, I seek to change the direction of my research, but I need a few months to obtain the necessary skills. Anyway, I missed the main application period for post-doc positions (in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given the following options (feel free to expand this list), which do you think provides the best perspective of leading me to a interesting post-doc position?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish my PhD. Get any post-doc position. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. After 1-2 years, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish my PhD. Get a well-paying job in the software industry. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abort my current work. Find a new subject and a new PhD advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Live on unemployment money as long as possible. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the PhD title sooner. Stay in the scientific community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the PhD title sooner. Earn lots of money (6 figure). In a 9-to-5 job, have more spare time for private research than on a post-doc position, where work is never finished. Go to a foreign country.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's what I should've done 2 years ago. I'll have the education I want when I finish my PhD, not later (but be older anyway).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No immediate advantages over the other options.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a logical continuation of my PhD work, I'll suffer from demotivation. My next advisor will not want me to work on other topics that I'm not paid for. Might have to stay for 2 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll move out of the scientific community for some time. I know it's hard to get back in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll be even older when I finally get my PhD. Not sure if I would find another advisor. Open fight with my current advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't want to live on unemployment money for long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particular question concerning the options above: &lt;strong&gt;Does being out of academia for a year kill your prospects of obtaining a postdoc position later?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have some collaborators who will help me to keep publishing, provided that I put enough work into my research. Also, I'm willing to familiarize myself with other topics on my own (a prerequisite for an academic career anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next application period will be from October to December 2013, which isn't far away. I'm sure I'll have most of the skills I want by then (and a paper published proving that), but still would have to work until summer 2014 wherever I am applying now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give me honest answers, even if they hurt. I'll provide more information as soon as possible, if anyone has questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T16:54:33.670" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T04:54:15.517" Title="Transition from PhD to postdoc with an intent to change field" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7997" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:21:18.273" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, when you start a post-doc, you will start working on a topic that is rather different from what you did in your PhD. This is often simply the case because you will be working for someone new who has different research objectives. Some shifting of topic is not only permitted, it is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in computer science, if you did your PhD on programming languages you could continue your post-doc research on another aspect of programming languages, though it would be less likely that you could do a post-doc in machine learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think broadly about what your skill set is and be willing to learn new skills on the job when you start a post-doc. Your new boss will expect that you know how to perform research (at a high level), though s/he will generally not expect that you know every single detail about the research you will be employed to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the application position for post-doc positions. In Europe, for example, these are heavily tied to various funding bodies, and in my experience, these are available (at different places) pretty much all year round. The season(s) for each country will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T16:31:15.413" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T16:31:15.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8000" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:43:42.870" Score="4" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this is very common, to do a presentation to your lab. I wonder how I can cite in my slides that the presented work will be part of a future paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember to see in past presentations a footnote with &quot; Author A &amp;amp; Author B (in preparation)&quot;, but I am not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or I should forget all this and just present the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T17:44:25.707" Title="how to present a talk on work in preparation" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;lab-meeting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7999" CreationDate="2013-02-14T17:44:25.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the work corresponds to a paper submitted to a conference, I put in the slides &quot;submitted to conference X&quot;. Otherwise, you can put &quot;ongoing work with Author B&quot;. If you present the work in part of a seminar, you can put &quot;Seminar of the department X&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But mainly, you don't &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; put anything, especially if the slides are not put on the web or distributed. The only important point I would say, is to indicate if your work has been done with other people, in which case, you can write &quot;Joint work with B&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T17:44:25.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7997" CreationDate="2013-02-14T21:57:55.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some postdoctoral advisors have a policy of intentionally making their postdocs do something radically different from their previous experience. I know that was certainly the case with my postdoc—I had to start on a brand new technique and a completely different problem than the one I was expecting to work on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there really is no problem with jumping into a new field, if you find the right advisor. I also don't believe that there's an absolute &quot;window&quot;—some people may still have spots available; it's a question of being the right fit for the right project with the right advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also have some other options available to you at your current department—is it possible that they can keep you on as an instructor? That way, you could have a little bit more of a cushion to look for your postdoctoral position, while not having to worry about having to take a job out of total desperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T21:57:55.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8094" CreationDate="2013-02-14T22:15:54.797" Score="46" ViewCount="7955" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any guidelines, sources, or examples of good practices for maintaining theorist's research notebook?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Motivation and context:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintaining a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_notebook&quot;&gt;lab notebook&lt;/a&gt; is a much advised (if not a vital) tool for doing research. Many do that nowadays also in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_lab_notebook&quot;&gt;electronic form&lt;/a&gt;. While the methods for writing and maintaining a labbook might differ in details, in &quot;dirty-hands&quot; (no offense!) experimental, or field disciplines, the basics are relatively straightforward and clear. The advice tends to boil down to keep a labbook per single topic one works on and then record all the experiments and thoughts related to those experiments into the notebook. Simplifying a lot, in the end, the researcher (team) would compile a paper from the notes in the notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now situation of a researcher in a more theoretical discipline is strikingly different. Usually one engages in research on several topics at the same time. The problems a researcher works on are often intertwined and one's view on them changes over time, often merging originally separate streams of thought into a single one, or vice-versa. The work revolves not around experiments which would have a clear objective, but rather around currently prepared papers and then &quot;a cloud of ideas&quot;. In summary, theorist's workstyle tends to be very non-linear. Maintaining some kind of a notebook is still a good thing, if for nothing else, then for not forgetting about stuff. My question is about how to go about doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am after a practical tool helping me to &lt;em&gt;archive&lt;/em&gt; my thought process for &lt;em&gt;long-term&lt;/em&gt;, as well as efficiently &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;keep an overview&lt;/em&gt; of the evolution of the several interacting topics I engage in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T13:31:11.240" LastActivityDate="2020-12-21T21:54:29.053" Title="How to manage theorist's &quot;labbook&quot;?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7997" CreationDate="2013-02-15T04:54:15.517" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one of my advisors once told me,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best dissertation is one that is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tounge-and-cheek as it may be, I would strongly advise finishing up your PhD first, especially if you can do it in three months.  If you have doubts about whether your committee will approve your work, then you should be having that conversation very frequently (at least once a week, if not more) with the committee members that you think will have an issue with the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are indeed &quot;certain [you] want to pursue an academic career,&quot; choice (2) may be the hardest path.  I've known a number of people who were certain they wanted to move back into academia after working in industry, but they didn't publish enough once they had a full-time non-academic job, and they weren't competitive for future academic positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice (3) would be a soul-killer if I were in that position.  To see the finish line three months away and then scrap it for 2-3 more years of work?  Not for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice (4) would probably be the worst decision -- every day you stay unemployed lessens the chance someone would eventually hire you (although maybe there are a ton of post-docs in your field).  Proving that you've learned these things on your own is difficult, although you would have more time to publish (but will you have a university association still?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tough choices all around, but I suggest finishing up the PhD at least.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T04:54:15.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8009" CreationDate="2013-02-15T05:50:55.903" Score="18" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of developing two new state-of-the-art graduate courses. In the past five years I have been heavily involved in these fields and will use my own research and research from other relevant groups. I am also looking at new course developments in other universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other resources that you use when developing a new courses from scratch? Can anyone give me additional pointers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T06:59:33.890" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T03:46:46.327" Title="What resources do you use when developing a new course from scratch?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8002" CreationDate="2013-02-15T05:58:55.387" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot say that this is the perfect way to do it, but I'll cover how &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background on my perspective: I'm a mathematical/theoretical epidemiologist who came up not through applied math or one of the related fields, but through a circuitous route from laboratory biology. So, as far as I can remember, Science Is Done In Lab Notebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple work patterns I've developed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My lab notebooks are actually notebooks. I experimented with a Wiki for awhile, and just using something like EverNote, but I found they didn't work for me. They didn't capture the same feeling of permanent documentation, and freedom of notation. So now I use notebooks from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blacknred.com&quot;&gt;Black and Red&lt;/a&gt;. Mainly because the generic black-and-white composition books remind me too much of undergrad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Like wet-lab science, I keep one notebook per topic - but to address your problems, I tend to broaden the topics. A particular focused project (like something I'm being hired to consult for, or a one-year RA, etc.) gets its own notebook. Projects involving the modeling of a particular type of disease all get a notebook. Side projects involving a different aspect of theory...you guessed it, get a notebook. I've also got a small notebook that is literally &quot;random musings and paper ideas&quot;. So rather than one lab notebook, I have several. These are identified in ways that are sometimes logical (a GitHub sticker on the very code-heavy project book) and governed by whimsey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always have the book out&lt;/strong&gt;. Just like a wet-lab notebook, if you're working on a project, you should have the book out. Don't be afraid to write random musings. If you've done some math in your head, &lt;em&gt;write it down&lt;/em&gt;. See also diagrams and sketches. Print stuff out and tape it in the notebook, just like one might do pictures of a gel or western blot. In the notebook currently on my desk, I've got several graphs, and even a printout of a question over at CrossValidated that makes up some portion of my thoughts at that point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference yourself. Occasionally, as you've noted, ideas cross-polinate. I page number all my lab notebooks, so occasionally I will end up referencing myself. &quot;See Lab Notebook X, Page 47.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T05:58:55.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8010" CreationDate="2013-02-15T06:00:12.343" Score="52" ViewCount="3973" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;strong&gt;Tenured Full Professor&lt;/strong&gt; and given your long experience in Academia, what valuable lessons have you learned over the years that you wish somebody had shared with you earlier when you started as an Assistant Professor? Given these experiences what would you do differently if you had the chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T02:01:35.703" Title="What lessons have you learned over the years as a TENURED FULL Professor that you wish somebody had told you when you started as an Assistant Prof?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8050" CreationDate="2013-02-15T07:15:00.573" Score="6" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does participation in Google Summer Of Code help when applying for a Master's program ? Irrespective of the fact whether your project is directly related to the area for which you are applying or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T08:59:39.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T09:05:53.823" Title="Does previous participation in Google Summer of Code help when applying for a Master's program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8004" CreationDate="2013-02-15T09:08:16.997" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go back and consult one of those &quot;How to teach&quot; books you've probably got lying around and focus on doing a good job of stating the course's &lt;strong&gt;Learning Objectives&lt;/strong&gt;. Then, I'd make sure that the &lt;strong&gt;course material&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;the learning activities&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;assessment tasks&lt;/strong&gt; are properly aligned with those objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would then make sure the students get to see those objectives and to understand how what they will be doing fits with those objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would design some sample assessment activities, such as sample exam questions (if that is one of your planned means of assessment). Then I would make sure that the content of your course is sufficient to enable students to do such assignments or answer such questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mckeachies-Teaching-Tips-W-McKeachie/dp/1133940552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1360919237&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot;&gt;Mckeachie's Teaching Tips&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent resource for helping you do this. And it never hurts to refresh your didactic skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T09:08:16.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8006" CreationDate="2013-02-15T09:11:07.790" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learn how to say &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy to say yes to every PC invitation, every paper collaboration, every committee, every this and every that. But this spreads your time too thin and means that you perform far less than optimally at everything you do. Ultimately, work encroaches too much on family time, and life becomes less enjoyable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, learn how to teach properly. Take a teaching course or two. It will make your job easier and increase the amount you enjoy teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3327/what-is-expected-of-a-postdoc/3328#3328&quot;&gt;What is expected of a postdoc?&lt;/a&gt;. Many of my comments there are applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T13:20:31.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T10:14:26.453" Score="20" ViewCount="2096" Body="&lt;p&gt;I reviewed an article and submitted my review along with a short letter to the editor. As a service the journal permits to see the decision letter and the other review. However, I am also able to see the other reviewers' letter to the editor, which is signed with a name. My own short letter to the editor I did not sign with my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this supposed to be? If not, should I do anything in particular if I do find out by accident?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is somewhat addressed in some of the answers for the question &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1609/1033&quot;&gt;Are reviewers allowed to discuss their review with each other?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1611/1033&quot;&gt;One answer&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;em&gt;you're not meant to find out&lt;/em&gt;, while &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1910/1033&quot;&gt;another one&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;em&gt;once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews&lt;/em&gt;. There are two different issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing the other reviewers' identity &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; the reviewing process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing the other reviewers' identity &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the reviewing process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is case (2) normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I might add that the policy of the journal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a double-blind: the full list of authors and affiliations of the manuscript were purposefully disclosed to the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:57:08.317" Title="Are reviewers supposed to know each others' identity, after the reviewing process is finished?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-02-15T12:27:34.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, its not normal to know who the other reviewers are if the journal has a &lt;strong&gt;double-blind&lt;/strong&gt; review policy ( my background is Engineering disciplines, might be different in other fields). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have experienced in the double-blind review process both as a reviewer and the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the other reviewers' identity during the reviewing process? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, not normal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the other reviewers' identity after the reviewing process? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, not normal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowing whether the editor accepted or reject the paper? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; (a very good practice as I have learned).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T15:57:08.317" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:57:08.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-02-15T13:27:11.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no good answer to that, and that's once again an example where the answer is discipline-specific. Many disciplines insist on double-blind review: the reviewer does not know who the author is, and the author does not know who the referees are. (Of course, in most specific enough topics, you hit a circle of about ten people who understand a given topic, and you kinda figure out whose paper it is even without googling it; likewise, you can often figure out the reviewers from their suggestion to cite their work.) Some disciplines, or some journals, just send you the original submission with the author's name on it. Some journals disclose the names of the referees after the paper is accepted, but they would warn you of that. Most journals would publish a thank-you list of all the referees in the past year in the last issue of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some interesting twists. I had a referee from a math department contact me directly with his opinion on my paper that was submitted to a psychology journal. Now, psychology is very tight-lipped, and it was on a boundary of a scandal for the journal. But this seemed to be the standard and natural practice in the home field of the referee. Moreover, on some mathematicians CVs, I have seen not only the papers authored, but also the papers reviewed, so it's the opposite of double-blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T16:56:40.987" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T16:56:40.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2013-02-15T13:39:10.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://piazza.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piazza&lt;/a&gt; with some success.  It provides a collaborative discussion forum for a course.  The best thing I can say about it: my students actually use it.  Caveat: it doesn't include the capability for students to upload files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Piazza website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (Free) Efficient Way to Manage Class Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this better than email, newsgroups, and discussion forums?&#xA;Students actually use Piazza, they love it. This difference stems from how we built Piazza. We've personally met with and spoken to thousands of students and instructors. The result is a beautifully intuitive and simple product that students love and use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;a href=&quot;https://piazza.com/why-piazza-works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;why Piazza works&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T13:39:10.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-02-15T14:12:51.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been related work in survey research on how to detect interviewer falsification of survey responses, sometimes referred to as curb-siding (when an interviewer is allegedly sitting on the curb next to the house where they were supposed to be doing an interview). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amstat.org/sections/srms/falsification.pdf&quot;&gt;a collection of practices&lt;/a&gt; from the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rti.org/pubs/paper-detectingintrvfalsifi.pdf&quot;&gt;a system for detecting interviewer falsification&lt;/a&gt; from RTI, one of top 3 US survey research organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general findings usually run along these lines: interviewers are OK with getting the first moments (means, proportions) about right, but are lousy in the second moments (variances and correlations): they avoid extreme answers, thus reducing variance, and are lousy at correlations (may not know well enough how things go together).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not much of that may be applicable to natural sciences, though. I would suggest enlisting a local statistician. Many stat departments run consulting courses for their grad students that welcome requests for expertise from other disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T14:12:51.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T14:37:11.593" Score="12" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have lots of research papers, but can I tell which of them are peer-reviewed. Also, on Google Scholar, is there any way of finding only peer-reviewed articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6017" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T20:03:31.840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T20:03:31.840" Title="How do I recognise a peer-reviewed journal article?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8019" CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:08:29.990" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the journal is listed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Scientific_Information&quot;&gt;ISI&lt;/a&gt;, it has an impact factor and the chance is high the journal is peer reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, proprietary search engines like Scopus seem to be more critical to its sources. Google Scholar picks up more, e.g. also the deliverable report I wrote for an EU project, which is not a reviewed paper. Using something like Scopus thus, imo, increases the chance of finding reputable journals. This comes however at a hefty fee, although is probably paid already by the institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T19:12:26.367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T19:12:26.367" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8019" CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:38:18.593" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cynical answer is that in borderline cases it's impossible to be certain what is peer-reviewed without a lot of investigation.  Fraudulent journals claim to be performing peer review, and it's hard to disprove their claims (you have to distinguish between no peer review, incompetent or corrupt peer review, and genuine peer review with a very low requirement for how interesting the papers have to be).  Sometimes someone gets a clearly absurd paper accepted (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/&quot;&gt;SCIgen&lt;/a&gt; and follow-up projects such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/185&quot;&gt;Mathgen&lt;/a&gt;), in which case we know something is terribly wrong.  However, there are other cases where we just don't know for sure, even though nobody really trusts the journal.  It takes a lot of work to investigate, and there are tons of ridiculous &quot;journals&quot; operating on the web, so nobody has the time or energy to look into every case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this doesn't come up except with pretty weird journals.  Everyone working in a field has a pretty good idea of which organizations and journals are reputable; if an expert doesn't know what to make of a given journal, then that's a bad sign.  I don't know of any systematic way to make this judgment other than based on experience and mentoring, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; is a useful tool to flag highly questionable publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I know of no automated tool to do searches only for peer-reviewed articles, and I see no prospects for building a reliable tool of this sort (given that some publishers are simply lying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes the situation sound much worse than it is.  I've never run across a paper I was even remotely interested in where I had any doubt about its peer review status.  However, it's a hard problem if you go dredging through junk journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, in mathematics it would be a bad idea to limit your reading to peer-reviewed articles.  Preprints are not yet peer reviewed, and if you ignore them until they are formally published, you may never catch up to the state of the art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T15:38:18.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:40:17.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many kinds of masters programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often students intending on going into industry in a technical field will get a masters degree.  Many schools have masters programs specifically designed for such a student; they are usually focused on coursework rather than research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are degrees like the MBA (Master of Business Administration) that are designed for business people who have no interest in academic careers, and do not lead to a doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some fields the masters degree is terminal, and doctoral degrees are rare or nonexistent.  For instance, in the fine and performing arts, the masters (MFA) is the highest degree offered by most institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A masters degree is typically the minimum requirement for faculty at two-year community colleges; some students in masters programs are headed for such a career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many states, high school teachers are encouraged to have a masters degree in their subject.  Some universities have masters programs in fields such as mathematics, history, or English, that are specifically designed for prospective or working teachers in these areas, and are not preparation for a Ph.D.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T16:40:17.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8028" CreationDate="2013-02-15T17:06:53.010" Score="10" ViewCount="4883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished my PhD and am currently a postdoc. Since receiving my PhD, I have not worked with my PhD advisor. I am planning to apply for jobs for after I finish my postdoc — mostly tenured-track positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering not asking my PhD advisor for a letter of recommendation. I feel this might be appropriate because I plan to ask my postdoc advisor to write a letter, because my PhD advisor may not have kept up with my current research, because my coauthors know my work better, and for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of not having my PhD advisor as a letter writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6019" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T18:13:19.357" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T18:13:19.357" Title="Pros and cons of not having PhD advisor's letter of recommendation after postdoc?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:53:00.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, reviewers are not supposed to learn the identity of other reviewers for the same submission. As mentioned in the comment by David Ketcheson, this looks like an error from the journal's side. It could also be the other reviewer's error, if he typed his letter to the editor into the wrong field - but the journal should have checked this before letting other reviewers see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I never heard of reviewer names or their letters to the editor being revealed to another reviewer for the same submission. In my field, the letter to the editor is often described as &quot;Confidential comments to the editor&quot;, and I always interpreted this as only the editor being allowed to see these comments. It is common though in many publication venues that as a reviewer, you get to see the other reviews for the same submission - but always &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; you submit your review and surely without the reviewers' names being shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T19:53:00.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8023" CreationDate="2013-02-15T21:45:28.073" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only time that you shouldn't ask for a letter of recommendation from your PhD advisor is when you are &lt;em&gt;not allowed to&lt;/em&gt; ask for one. This is not often the case, but it does arise in a few instances. The best-known one I can think of is that in Germany a &lt;em&gt;Doktorvater&lt;/em&gt; (supervisor) is not allowed to write a letter of recommendation in support of an applicant whose PhD he supervised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, you should have your PhD advisor write a letter; it is expected by just about everyone that the supervisor &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; write a letter, and it will definitely raise questions for you if you do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; submit such a letter. If there is a particularly compelling reason, then, you should have that well in hand at the time when you are writing your applications. Otherwise, you'll have a lot more explaining to do, and probably a lot of potential postdoc supervisors may not even bother giving your application a second look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T21:45:28.073" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8027" CreationDate="2013-02-16T01:05:21.367" Score="11" ViewCount="7526" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was ignorant as an undergraduate and didn't focus heavily in any specific area. I finally graduated with a single math/computer science degree that consisted of 5 math classes beyond multivariable calculus and a few relatively basic computer science classes (algorithm analysis, SQL database design, etc.). My only research experience is in economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I work at a research institution in economics where I primarily write Stata/MATLAB code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to get more mathematics under my belt over the next few years in order to either enroll in a PhD program in economics/finance or a M.S. program in finance. What are my options for getting more math experience that I can use in graduate school admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Options&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the options I thought of so far, but I would like to know more if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Study enough courses through a system like Open CourseWare to gain enough experience to enroll in more advanced undergraduate classes part time, which my employer might pay for, and then ideally move into an M.S. program in applied math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Return to my alma mater for a M.S. degree in math that would at least give me a basis to either move into another math graduate program with higher rankings or a lower-ranked graduate program in the fields of my choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Join the Air Force and hopefully take advantage of the GI bill to take more courses somewhere and gain entrance into an M.S. program in applied math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Sadly) Forgo advanced mathematics and find a consulting job, which although unpleasant in the field of economics (in my opinion), wouldn't be difficult to obtain given my research background in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have any other options? I also plan to take the GRE subject test in mathematics to prove that I have at least minimal knowledge, regardless of what course I pursue (since many graduate programs will require it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4317" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T09:39:49.560" Title="How can I enter into the mathematics field at the graduate level when I only took a few math courses as an undergrad?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8026" CreationDate="2013-02-16T03:13:44.227" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your best bet would be to contact the graduate officers at the economics and finance programs you're interested in attending, and ask them what their minimum entrance requirements are. It's a much more efficient route than just deciding to take more math courses, and spending significant time, energy, and money on a quixotic goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T03:13:44.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8023" CreationDate="2013-02-16T03:45:26.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask your supervisor for a letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having your supervisor write a letter is going to raise red flags. People are going to ask themselves, &lt;em&gt;why isn't this candidate's thesis supervisor writing a letter?&lt;/em&gt; If you don't have a letter, you need to answer that question. Unless there's a very good reason to not have that letter, I think that it's better to avoid the question altogether. The reasons you've given so far do not seem good enough to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You suggested that (1) there may be more appropriate letter writers and that (2) your advisor might not be up-to-date on your current research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these are not good enough reasons to not ask your thesis supervisor to write a letter and I think you can easily address these concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;should also&lt;/em&gt; ask your postdoc supervisor to write you a letter. Not doing so will also raise red flags for similar reasons. If there are other great letter writers, ask them as well. For the tenure-track jobs I applied to, each expected &lt;em&gt;three or more&lt;/em&gt; letters. There's room for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can prioritize the more important or relevant letters. In your cover letter, it is normal to list the names of people writing you letters and it is normal to list those names in the order that you want them to be viewed. You can also specify in the letter which letters reflect more recent relationships, closer collaborations, or relationships closer to the core of your current research efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is not a critical problem if your advisor is not up to date on your current work. Presumably, their letter will talk the work that they know about and about your qualities as a researcher, colleague, and person that will not change. Also, you can point your advisor to or summarize the work you've done more recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I provided a copy of a draft cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement to each of my letter writers so that they could see how I was pitching and framing my work. I didn't do this because we were out of touch, but it seems like something similar would help address your concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T09:04:03.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5724" CreationDate="2013-02-16T04:20:38.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It will probably affect your chances. But it's not a show-stopper.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a top school means students are more likely to get that second look and it means that students are more likely to have recommendations from people than the folks on the admission committee already know and trust. For those reasons, coming from a top school affords a real advantage over unranked schools. It's not fair but there are lots of reasons to believe that an applicant from a top school will get more bites than an identical one from an unranked school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you think you can put together a solid application, you shouldn't get too hung up about the status symbols you won't have and others might. Nobody is making decisions based &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; on where the applicant went to college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have great test scores, a history of excellent academic performance (sounds like you do), a demonstrated ability to do solid research, and a glowing set of letters from a good set of letter writers, you have a good chance at a top program. Focus on the things you can change, improve, and build on and not on the stuff you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW: I did my undergrad at an unranked liberal arts college and graduate school at a top school — although not in economics. Moving up the status hierarchy is always harder than lateral or downward moves, but it happens all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T04:20:38.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8026" CreationDate="2013-02-16T14:27:24.597" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several schools that offer a post-baccalaureate or &quot;postbac&quot; program in mathematics.  These are typically one-year programs intended for students in precisely your situation: interested in pursuing graduate study, but lacking sufficient preparation from their undergraduate degrees.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the top few I saw when googling &quot;math postbac&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.smith.edu/center/postbac.php&quot;&gt;Smith College&lt;/a&gt; (aimed at women)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/math/certificates/postbaccalaureate&quot;&gt;George Washington University&lt;/a&gt; (transitioning to a similar &quot;Graduate Certificate Program&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iuk.edu/academics/majors/science/graduate-programs/pbc-mathematics/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Indiana University Kokomo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T14:27:24.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8035" CreationDate="2013-02-16T14:31:20.883" Score="10" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading papers authored by professor A's PhD students. I have read about a dozen of papers by now, and realized that all of them are &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; 10 pages long. These papers were written by different PhD students and they were published in several different venues (very good ones). Is 10 the magic number for paper-length? (at least in professor A's field, which is computer science - human computer interaction)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T03:10:26.260" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T03:10:26.260" Title="Why are all these papers exactly 10 pages long?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8031" CreationDate="2013-02-16T15:19:01.963" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conference papers often have fairly strict page limits; however, there is no uniform consensus even between different conferences in the same field, and certainly not between fields! For example, one fairly extensive series of conference papers (whose conferences I attend semi-regularly) limits contributions to &lt;em&gt;six&lt;/em&gt; pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, many journals—such as &quot;letters&quot; journals—have even more severe restrictions (four or five pages), while other journals have (seemingly) no page restrictions at all: I've known papers in both engineering and mathematics journals that have gone for 20, 30, or even 40 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T15:19:01.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8023" CreationDate="2013-02-16T16:19:34.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to reemphasize something that Benjamin said in passing.  If they're asking for n letters, they mean at least n letters.  So asking your advisor for a letter doesn't mean that you'd need to not ask the other people.  Ask your advisor for a letter and ask the other people who know your current work better for letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T16:19:34.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8036" CreationDate="2013-02-16T16:49:32.423" Score="22" ViewCount="6508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of self funding a PhD in Applied Mathematics at either the University of Oxford or Cambridge. Would employers, both for academic (postdoc etc) and industry (research) jobs think less of a PhD holder if he or she is self funded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Would they feel that because I failed to secure funding for their PhD, I am inferior to students who did? Although I am planning to self fund to UK schools, it would be nice to hear about views from across the pond (USA) as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T16:54:41.023" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T17:51:40.520" Title="Will self funding a PhD hurt employment chances?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8031" CreationDate="2013-02-16T17:00:36.203" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most American computer science conference papers are precisely 10 pages long, because most ACM conferences have a strict 10-page limit on proceedings papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional society for computer science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T17:00:36.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2013-02-16T17:15:57.990" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing on your CV that needs to indicate exactly how you were supported during your Ph.D. In fact, if you were self-funded, and managed to get an occasional fellowship or other form of support, that's a plus !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All a recruiting committee should (and does) care about post-PhD is the quality of your work (for faculty positions there are additional issues). No one cares about how you were paid to do that work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T17:15:57.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2013-02-16T18:32:36.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-funding alone need not be visible in your applications and is unlikely to hurt in any case. That said, getting outside funding &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; likely to help and you should pursue it if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it's not clear how any potential employer would know that you were self funded. Although it's normal to list fellowships or funding that you have received, it's just not normal (in my experience) to list the amount of money you received from a particular fellowship/grant unless it was a very public award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a list of grants, fellowships, and outside funding will help build a stronger CV. One thing many search committees are looking is a demonstrated ability to bring in grants and funding. Although that can be hard to discern in a graduate student/post-doc, the ability to apply for and get student fellowships can bring a little comfort. Being able to point out in your coverletter that you've thought about grants will inspire a little confidence in your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the standard answer to questions of the form &quot;&lt;em&gt;does x matter for the job market&lt;/em&gt;&quot; still applies. The quality of your work, your publications, your letters, and many other things will weigh &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more heavily than the fact that you don't have fellowships that others do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T20:04:46.813" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T20:04:46.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2911" CreationDate="2013-02-16T19:05:50.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answer that this is a normal occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid any confusion, be clear and cite the previous publication as the source/original presentation of the data. It is &lt;em&gt;not citing&lt;/em&gt; (even yourself), which is an ethical breach, as it makes it seem that have done more than you really have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T19:05:50.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8042" CreationDate="2013-02-16T22:18:36.753" Score="17" ViewCount="21783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been hearing different views about my likelihood of getting accepted into a math graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which of the following factors contribute most to the acceptance of a &lt;strong&gt;non-math&lt;/strong&gt; undergraduate into a math graduate program (please order them)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;GPA         &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Recommendation letters  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Publishing math papers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am an engineering student I only registered basic math courses (such as calculus, linear algebra, etc.). However, I studied a lot of other more advanced courses by myself. My GPA is about 3.5. A lot of people have told me that I need to raise my GPA in order to get accepted into a decent math graduate program and this is worrying me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courses that I self-studied: Undergraduate abstract algebra, real analysis (with an introduction to measure theory), first 4 chapters of Munkres' &lt;em&gt;Topology&lt;/em&gt;, elementary number theory, graph theory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courses that I am self studying: Hungerford's abstract algebra, algebraic topology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courses that I plan to study: algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, complex analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also managed to finish 2 math papers. So the question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do I stand now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6034" OwnerDisplayName="Amr" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T03:49:44.167" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T03:49:44.167" Title="Acceptance into graduate math programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8040" CreationDate="2013-02-16T22:44:48.187" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;3,1,2 .&#xA;And high GRE (subject) score may help.The content and level of your papers is crucial.&#xA;And your goal will determine your chance.By the way ,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this math-gre website&lt;/a&gt; lists many applicant profiles and admission results.&#xA;Definitely worth a look..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6025" LastEditorUserId="6025" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T23:33:19.393" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T23:33:19.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8040" CreationDate="2013-02-16T23:55:11.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are an engineering major who took only the standard math courses, I infer that your overall GPA is driven by your engineering coursework. I don't think that graduate admissions will learn much from your grades in engineering, good or bad. The GPA of 3.5 is not that bad in engineering, especially if (as it seems) your heart was not really in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-studying is great, but the knowledge acquired from it needs to be evaluated by someone. Acing GRE Math would send a signal that you indeed learned something. If during your studies you kept in touch with math professors in your school, and they know enough about you to write an informed letter full of specifics, that would be even better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opinions on undergraduate papers in math are divided: e.g., not everyone considers them a good way to spend time as an undergraduate. I would not expect the admission committees to seriously read papers sent with an application, though they will glance at them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my order is: letters, GRE math, papers, GPA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4463" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T23:55:11.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8006" CreationDate="2013-02-17T00:35:06.517" Score="56" Body="&lt;h3&gt;You do not have to accept responsibility without appropriate authority.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a classic problem in any organization, and it's related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8010/3859&quot;&gt;Dave Clarke's answer&lt;/a&gt;. Some concrete examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rather than extend the deadline for homework when the bookstore doesn't have enough copies of the course textbook, give the students the email of the manager of the bookstore so they can write him directly about their situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rather than ask meekly for a bigger classroom when there aren't enough seats for the 47 students enrolled in your class, give the email of the department coordinator who's responsible for assigning classrooms and say this is the person to whom you should vent your unhappiness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rather than teach a course that is watered down because it has no prerequisites, teach to the higher level students and explain clearly in the syllabus what you expect people to know. If students complain, explain to them your predicament (if you teach the basics, half the class will feel they wasted their experience). Students have more power to change an academic program by organized, constructive complaining than a non-tenured professor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the department chair doesn't involve you in selecting TAs for the course you are responsible for, and students are not happy about the quality of the TA (or the TA hounds you for a lot of help because he wasn't qualified to teach the course), encourage the chair to allow you to be involved in the selection process (refer to the principle of authority and responsibility).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're asked to be on a committee, insist that the committee have a clear mission that's feasible within the authority of its members. If a mission cannot be clarified or you can't identify with the mission, then minimize the amount of time/energy you put into it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T20:13:54.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8040" CreationDate="2013-02-17T00:53:15.663" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see this question as being definitively answerable without a lot more information, both about your background and qualifications and about where you are applying.  Grad schools differ enormously in their approach to admissions in unusual cases.  Some lower-tier schools are eager to take a chance on smart but nontraditional applicants who will be rejected by more prestigious universities.  Others have established rigid rules after having had bad experiences with admitted students who had inadequate backrounds or didn't understand what they were getting themselves into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding grades, keep in mind that the world has seen a lot of grade inflation, and there are startlingly large numbers of applicants with nearly perfect grades.  You generally cannot impress an admissions committee by having excellent grades, although poor grades can hurt your chances.  Math departments typically care a lot about grades in mathematics and heavily mathematical fields (e.g., theoretical physics or CS), a little about grades in other scientific or engineering fields, and not at all about other grades, except that exceptionally poor grades in any field suggest the applicant is not good at getting things they don't care about done (which is not a good omen for their career).  I.e., math departments don't care if you get a B- in history, but getting an F in history could be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters are absolutely crucial.  In my experience they are by far the most important factor: other aspects of the application could hurt your chances even if you get good letters, but those other aspects cannot get you admitted by themselves.  If you can't arrange for enthusiastic letters that the admissions committee will trust, then you have no chance at all of being admitted at a higher-ranked school.  It's possible that a lower-ranked school might take a chance on you, but as I understand it every graduate program cares a lot about letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for math papers, it's unfortunately not hard to write a near-vacuous or unoriginal paper and get it published somewhere obscure, and carefully evaluating a paper can take a lot of time and effort (refereeing is hard).  If you simply list a paper in your application, with no evidence of its quality, then it's unlikely anyone will have the time to investigate carefully.  The important thing for graduate admissions is not the publication per se, but rather the research experience that led to it, and you need a letter of recommendation that talks about this research and vouches for it.  (In fact, having such a letter can be very valuable even if the research did not lead to a published paper.)  This means you need a letter from your supervisor or mentor, or at the very least from someone who has read the paper and knows something about how it came about (for example, someone who can single out your own contribution if you had coauthors).  In principle, if you publish in an especially prestigious journal and without senior coauthors, then the journal's high standards might serve as enough of signal of quality by themselves.  However, this very rarely happens with undergraduate research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bad grades could hurt you but good grades won't serve as a strong argument for admission.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters are crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research experience could help you get great letters but is very difficult to judge except through the letters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I said in the beginning, there are a lot of graduate programs out there, with different approaches to admissions.  If all goes well, you'll get strong letters from math faculty and will be admitted in more or less the usual way.  Otherwise, you may have to find a school that is willing to take a chance (usually because they have trouble attracting strong students with conventional backgrounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T01:42:28.340" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T01:42:28.340" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8040" CreationDate="2013-02-17T02:25:09.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earlier answers make good points...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I would say, in your situation, most likely the &quot;papers&quot; are of little consequence in admission-or-not, and a 3.5 GPA is fine. No one cares beyond that. &lt;em&gt;Letters&lt;/em&gt; matter a great deal when I recommend-or-not admission. What I read &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, however, is the personal statement. Do be aware that in many programs there is a dominating impulse to &quot;mechanize&quot; admissions, which obviously has difficulty making use of either letters of recommendation or personal statements. But, still, if you explain your interests, your self-study, this can have a huge, repeat &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt;, impact on admission chances. I suspect you've not had much contact with math faculty in the course of your self-study, so can't get letters from math faculty. (If this is not correct, so much the better!) Letters from engineering faculty about students' mathematical talent are typically nearly worthless, since there seems to be a general tendency for &quot;engineers&quot; to believe that &quot;mathematics&quot; is &quot;just a tool&quot;, and that they've mastered it, etc. Nevermind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point is that you should not expect even glowing letters from engineering faculty to have much impact on admission to math grad school, exactly because the prejudices of many engineers are very familiar to mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject-test GRE may help your chances, and you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; take it, because a low-ish score is vastly better than the cluelessness indicated by having no score at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for a person approach mathematics with genuine enthusiasm, but &quot;belatedly&quot;, the personal statement, explaining unapologetically how you came to your present course, is the most important thing. Very few people choose to self-study mathematics... (although quite a few seem to believe that they have special gifts that require &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; study...!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain yourself in your personal statement. Get letters from the people who think well of you who have the best idea of what professional mathematics entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit/addition: very literally, it is best to have letters from people who have been to math grad school themselves, preferably at better places, so have an idea of what that entails. Many or most math grad programs have &quot;breadth&quot; requirements apart from the eventual goal of &quot;original research&quot;=thesis. So it's not so much a question of your letter writers' &quot;peer-reviewed publications&quot; so much as their first-hand experience with math grad school. (These days some people who've done PhD's in math do end up in engineering depts, and vice-versa, but this is still unusual.) Thus, a recommendation letter should perhaps literally say something like &quot;From my first-hand experience in math grad school at X, and observations of math grad students at Y and Z, [student] will be a success.&quot; That's the kind of thing that leaps out at me when I read these letters. (No, don't have your letter writers send CVs or publication lists.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T18:32:07.330" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T18:32:07.330" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-17T03:06:53.780" Score="12" ViewCount="2173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my MS in mathematics 5 years ago.  Over these years I have been teaching at a community college (primarily calculus 1,2,3 with analytical geometry and Ordinary Diff. Eqs).  When I was in my masters program I was having trouble narrowing my interests and decided to stop at my masters and start teaching. During this time as an instructor I have become very interested in some applied mathematics (biology in particular).  I plan to apply to several PhD programs in the near future.   With that said, I didn't keep in touch with too many people from the university I attended.  I did stay in touch with a couple of my professors (on a minimal basis) and plan to ask them for letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a letter of recommendation from my department chair at the community college be of any advantage (and even suffice as 1 of the 3 required)?  Or should I call a professor from 5-7 years ago that may remember the grade they gave me?  To me the latter seems very generic and I feel my department chair could say more about my dedication to mathematics and teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6029" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T17:55:45.067" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T22:13:43.630" Title="Applying to PhD programs in mathematics: would a letter of recommendation from my department chair at the community college be of any advantage?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8048" CreationDate="2013-02-17T04:14:18.847" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, the letter from your current department is likely to be more meaningful than a letter from someone who barely remembers you. The people reading your file will immediately recognize you as a &quot;non-traditional&quot; applicant (i.e., not straight out of undergrad), and will not be surprised that the letters in your file do not follow the pattern of traditional applicants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many employer letters are utterly dispensable in graduate admissions, it's a different story when the employer is a math department, &quot;even&quot; at a CC. Chances are that some of your target departments (at least those that combine pure and applied math) are struggling to staff their remedial courses. Slightly cynically speaking, they will be happy to have an instructor with faculty-level experience and TA-level salary (in addition to research prospects).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4463" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T04:14:18.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8007" CreationDate="2013-02-17T09:05:53.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applying to Masters Program does not really depend on one single factor but a variety of factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above sentence is very important before we move on to the answer. The decision on your admit depends on your application as a package and will be evaluated in its entirety. If your are a local student and then you attend Google Summer Of Code as part of the general trend of your location, then its obvious that most of the people from your school would have done so as well. In that case, what factors in is your school an its culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But say, if your are an international student and from a non-reputed institution, then the grad schools does not really know a lot about your institution, but then what matters is how you have excelled in your institution. Are you an student, who just want to finish of your course work or wanting to do beyond something? Here what you have done matters a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the school where you are applying counts in as well. Some programs in a school would need a certain kind of attitude to survive. So it all boils down to how you project your resume, SOP (statement of Purpose) and how can good you have come up with what you have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So most of grad schools know students dont have the luxury of doing all things needed for a program, but will seek to know how the applicant has fared in his life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it does matter a lot unless you did study in school where just most of them would have done something beyond just academics or apply to a program where you expect to see a lot of these performers apply too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just highlight them in way that is appealing to the school. Like 'I am 2 of 100 people in my school who participated in Goodle Summer of Code'. Strike it like its still hot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Personal Experience/Opinion when applying.&#xA;I did focus on highlighting things I did and my other folks in college did not.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T09:05:53.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2013-02-17T09:25:01.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; I would say self-funding shouldn't hurt your employment chances, as there's not necessarily a reason to report how you were funded as a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I have found that some people who have an external funding source not tied to a particular project/professor/etc. have two major problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not particularly urgent that you find a project to fund you, which means there's more time spend exploring, &quot;finding yourself&quot;, concentrating on classes, etc. This is a double-edged sword - it can slow things down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard for any particular professor to &quot;take ownership&quot; of you - responsible for funding generally comes along with feeling responsible for other things as well, like your aforementioned progress. There's also less pressure to get involved in the early stages of grant writing, since you don't need to worry about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those aren't necessarily reasons not to self-fund, but it's something to consider. None of those will impact &lt;em&gt;employment&lt;/em&gt; chances, but they can effect your experience in ways that have downstream effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T09:25:01.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-17T09:43:19.350" Score="4" ViewCount="8140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received this comment from a reviewer: &lt;em&gt;“ It is better to add a nomenclature section with a list of all the used symbols and their meaning as example (DVB-T, DVB-S2, BCH, OSFBC, LDPC...), consequently the paper should be re-arranged eliminating all the definitions given in the sections”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any specific position for this section ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3845" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T08:08:00.050" Title="What is the location of the nomenclature section in a scientific paper?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2013-02-17T10:20:32.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you add such a section, it would need to be directly after the abstract. This way, any nomenclature is explained before it is used in the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T10:20:32.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:24:31.937" Score="7" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do community colleges have good mathematics libraries (with advanced books)? I am sure that it is different from place to place. I am interested to get some feeling of the general situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6036" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T14:18:29.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T15:20:35.993" Title="Do community colleges have good math libraries?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8060" CreationDate="2013-02-17T14:09:38.073" Score="9" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to find academic collaborations between two locations (e.g. Berlin and Australia) occurring within a certain field / topic?  Some variety of massive, searchable, citation / co-author network map would be ideal, but the examples I can find so far seem quite limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4049" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T14:33:05.173" Title="Finding academic collaborations by location" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-17T14:20:05.793" Score="25" ViewCount="1689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in my second year as an Associate Professor (with tenure) at a top research university (listed among top 20 in &lt;em&gt;US News &amp;amp; World Report&lt;/em&gt; in my field). My publication, teaching, and service records are all very good to excellent. I have also received numerous awards such as Sloan Fellowship and NSF's Career Award. In general, I am happy with my current institution, but sometime wonder if I can move to more prestigious university. There are other personal reasons as well that makes me ponder about such possibility. Would it be a good idea to apply other universities for someone at this stage of their career? How do search committees feel about hiring someone who has a tenure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6037" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T16:21:52.180" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T16:21:52.180" Title="How hard is it for someone who already has tenure to find a tenured position elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8055" CreationDate="2013-02-17T14:30:37.037" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, as Dave Clarke says, every institution is different.  However, in general I would expect the answer is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Community colleges typically offer only lower-division courses and don't expect their students or faculty to carry on research.  Moreover, they are usually publicly funded and charge only nominal tuition, so they are not likely to have a lot of extra money.  Given this, it's difficult to see why a community college librarian would want to spend money acquiring advanced mathematics books or journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a community college library would almost certainly have access to the interlibrary loan network, allowing one to (eventually) acquire any resource of interest.  Some might also have a reciprocity agreement with a nearby research university library.  It is also quite possible they would have access to online databases that could include a lot of material in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T14:30:37.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8057" CreationDate="2013-02-17T14:33:05.173" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can, to some extent, use traditional publications databases for that. For example, with Web of Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(CI=Berlin) AND (CU=Australia) AND (SU=Chemistry)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;will give you the list of publications with affiliations listing both Berlin and Australia in Chemistry. You can then skim through the list, or analyze it further, for example here by institution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uj1rF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to find a destination for your next holidays can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with a senior colleague you know well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to see who he's been working with recently: find papers, sort by institution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tNafh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick your location and ask him to put you in contact with them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T14:33:05.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8066" CreationDate="2013-02-17T14:42:28.047" Score="18" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a US institution that manages grant programs (such as NSF) suddenly sees its funding cut, as will be the case after the US sequester takes effect in March, &lt;strong&gt;how long does it take for that cut to trickle down onto grant programs and grants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namely: &lt;strong&gt;Can grants already started get cut&lt;/strong&gt; (like, they tell you you'll lose 20% funding for the last year)? What about &lt;strong&gt;grant programs where the selection was already announced&lt;/strong&gt;, can they make changes to that? Or will it “merely” impact the number of grants they can fund from now on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I know that the government will move, and though the situation is stupid, it's not as much of a dead-end as it is pictured… this question assumes that the sequester goes in effect, and not deal is made to lessen its impact.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was spurred by today's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhD Comics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1561&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w1UUw.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T01:04:32.423" Title="How much time before (possible) effect of US sequester is felt on grant funding?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8055" CreationDate="2013-02-17T15:20:35.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fully agree with Nate Eldredge's answer, but here are some resources for exploring what sorts of mathematics books you might find at primarily undergraduate institutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are specific community colleges you are thinking of applying to, you can look for an online library catalog, or visit the library in person and check it out.  This is by far the most reliable way to tell whether you would be happy with the library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mathematical Association of America provides a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/?nodeId=959&quot;&gt;basic library list&lt;/a&gt; of books recommended for undergraduate libraries, annotated with how essential they feel the book is.  Decades ago the list had two-year and four-year sections, but nowadays it is probably aimed more at four-year colleges. Still, it will give an upper bound for what one can reasonably expect of a typical community college.  You won't find research monographs on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges apparently had a similar list, at least as of 1993 when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amatyc.org/documents/Guidelines-Position/GuidelinesforMathDept.htm&quot;&gt;these guidelines&lt;/a&gt; were written (see D.1), but I cannot find it online.  You could probably learn more by asking them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, underfunded institutions may lack even the most essential books on the basic library list, while fancy schools may have all of them and more.  Note that while there are some pretty fancy liberal arts colleges out there, you don't generally run across community colleges with big budgets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T15:20:35.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2013-02-17T17:12:55.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I have a couple of questions, and suggestions for ways to try to avoid self-funding your PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you already have a Masters?  If not, it could be a better idea to self-fund a one-year research masters and then try for funding for a PhD after that.  That would not leave a 'gap' in your CV, except that probably it's actually too late already to apply for next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you actually applied anywhere else than Oxford and Cambridge for a PhD?  If not, that may be the reason you were unable to obtain funding.  There are a lot of other very good universities in the UK (which specific ones are the best will depend on your subject), and doing a PhD with funding at one of those would surely be better than doing one without funding at Oxford or Cambridge.&#xA;Or if you were not set on doing your PhD in the UK, you could also choose a country (for example the US or Canada) where PhD students are offered funding as a matter of course. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;By the way, if you only applied to Oxford and Cambridge, then Noah Snyder's point, which I think is a good one, doesn't really apply, since it's not the case that you couldn't find anyone willing to fund you, it's just that you didn't try enough possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be possible to apply for funding again once you have already commenced your PhD.  I know a few people who self-funded their first year and managed to obtain funding for the rest (these were all in the UK).  At least one of them is now a lecturer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you should only try this if you can afford to fund the whole PhD (i.e. &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; take out a loan for it!), and even then only if you are very passionate about your subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to my opinion on your actual question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You needn't mention how your PhD was funded in job applications, but I suppose that in applications for academic jobs in the UK, employers might notice if no funding source is mentioned.  I highly doubt this would count against you at all, &#xA;as what is really important for your first job after your PhD is the work you have done in your PhD (although an ability to attract funding &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; highly valued in academia!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T17:51:40.520" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T17:51:40.520" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-02-17T18:06:22.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is normally no process to inform reviewers of their respective reports. Some journals may relate back the editor verdict based on the reviewers comments to the reviewers but not even that is commonplace. In journals with an open discussion format (see e.g. Copernicus' journals), reviewers may become aware of each other and certainly raed each others reviews after they have been posted. But, as long as reviewers are allowed to be anonymous, it is unlikely that journals will adopt such an exchange. It does not appear as if electronic submission systems have such structures built in (not the ones I have been involved with). To keep reviewers unknown to each other and keep their review reports &quot;sectret&quot; until the review is done is of course sound since it ensures independent reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T18:06:22.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8048" CreationDate="2013-02-17T18:58:02.263" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was accepted into a number of Computer Engineering PhD programs with recommendations from the following people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My then-current department chair at the high school where I taught physics and computer science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A professor from the graduate education program where I got my Master's degree in teaching.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A professor who taught &quot;how to teach physics&quot; courses at another university, where I had been taking a series of the courses in order to become a better physics teacher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have loved to get recommendation letters from professors from my undergraduate engineering curriculum, but my degree was from 15 years prior, and no one would have remembered me, nor been able to write anything substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letters I did get gave detailed information about my work performance from a teaching perspective for technical classes, and from a learning perspective in (somewhat) technically-minded classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: get letters from people who can comment on your ability to do research, if possible, but more importantly from people who know you well and can add information to help a committee decide on whether or not to accept you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T18:58:02.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2013-02-17T20:12:36.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the NIH answer below on what's happening to grant budgets, at least for their agencies. It sounds like there is some budget trimming for the amount awarded for new grants, but they're trying to mitigate that somewhat. Where I think there's going to be a much greater impact is with &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; awards - with less money, and not wanting to hamstring grants with further cuts, they're simply likely to make less awards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how much time before the possible effect of the sequester hits? It already has. Several people I've spoken to who do program planning, grants work, etc. for the Federal government have expressed the feeling that, because of the level of uncertainty about what money they'll have in the future, funding agencies are being very conservative about what they commit to spending. We could see this in the last budget cycle and the near shut-down - funding slowed to a crawl for a bit, and then when the continuing resolution got passed, there was a small &quot;bump&quot; as agencies spent out money they hadn't yet promised &quot;just in case&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the sequester goes through, what that will really do is make those conservative, &quot;We better not spend $$$ until we know we'll have it&quot; plans a reality, followed by more severe paylines etc. in the next grant cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So worst case: It's already here, we're just not committed to it yet.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Best case:  The next funding cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The actual answer has come from the NIH:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-13-043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-13-043.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NIH continues to operate under a Continuing Resolution as&#xA;  described in NOT-OD-13-002, and therefore all non-competing&#xA;  continuation awards are currently being funded at a level below that&#xA;  indicated on the most recent Notice of Award (generally up to 90% of&#xA;  the previously committed level).  Final levels of FY 2013 funding may&#xA;  be reduced by a sequestration.  Despite the potential for reduced&#xA;  funding, the NIH remains committed to our mission to seek fundamental&#xA;  knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the&#xA;  application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and&#xA;  reduce the burdens of illness and disability.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a sequestration occur, NIH likely will reduce the final FY 2013&#xA;  funding levels of non-competing continuation grants and expects to&#xA;  make fewer competing awards to  allow the agency to meet the available&#xA;  budget allocation. Although each NIH Institute and Center (IC) will&#xA;  assess allocations within their portfolio to maximize the scientific&#xA;  impact, non-competing continuation awards that have already been made&#xA;  may be restored above the current level as described in NOT-OD-13-002&#xA;  but likely will not reach the full FY 2013 commitment level described&#xA;  in the Notice of Award. Finally, in the event of a sequestration, NIH&#xA;  ICs will announce their respective approaches to meeting the new&#xA;  budget level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2013-02-23T01:04:32.423" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T01:04:32.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8058" CreationDate="2013-02-17T20:28:32.927" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Poaching&quot;—&quot;stealing&quot; a tenured faculty away from one department to another by offering a more lucrative package—happens in academia with some frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if the position you're interested in applying for is a tenured position, then there might be a chance that the search committee will consider already-tenured candidates for the position. However, it is not a guarantee that this will be the case. (It depends a lot upon the candidate and the relative &quot;fit.&quot; Also, a candidate who is fairly close to retirement may not be at the top of their priority list—simply because that means the search may have to be repeated in a few years anyways!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing to keep in mind—the working relationship you have with your &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; faculty may be significantly strained if you handle this the wrong way. You may want to see what you can find out on a confidential basis &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; committing to applying for positions. Once you've sent it out, it's out there—and could cause problems for you if word gets back to your present department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may therefore want to have a discussion with your department chair, but I would strongly recommend &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; using &quot;these schools are more prestigious&quot; as a reason for applying to them. If that's the only reason you're doing it, then you may want to reconsider, as switching schools is a time-consuming and nontrivial process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T20:28:32.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2013-02-17T20:30:30.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct position for a nomenclature section is the location normally used by the journal in question. While as Paul suggests, the logical location for this should be at the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; of the paper, in many journals, the nomenclature section is placed at the &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt;, largely because it does not &quot;look as good&quot; to have the nomenclature section right on the first page (which is optically the &quot;prime real estate&quot; of the paper). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T20:30:30.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8058" CreationDate="2013-02-17T22:43:00.117" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rare that a search to fill a tenured position proceeds along the usual lines (post an ad, interview candidates, make an offer). Because of the delicacy involved in poaching, it's usually a lot more &quot;under the radar&quot;. Which is to say that if someone hasn't approached you yet, they might not be interested in what you have to offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, one strategy (if you're really interested in moving) is to drop hints in the right places with the right people. Contrary to what aeismail says, I'd argue that &quot;moving to a much higher ranked place&quot; is probably the ONLY reason to move that won't create hard feelings (in that people usually can understand the desire to move up the rankings). Even then, the shift should be significant, else moving between universities that are similarly ranked doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have other reasons (geographic, two-body, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized I didn't answer the question in the title. The short answer is: it's very hard, but not impossible. It depends much less on the availability of positions in general, and much more on the specific match between the institution and you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T22:54:28.297" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T22:54:28.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8002" CreationDate="2013-02-17T23:50:34.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem I struggled with for three years. My background is computational physics, and like you I have many active projects at any one time. My work involves three main activities: scientific research, software development and paper writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my first post-doc position of three years duration, I managed to come up with many different ideas for research and features for the software package I was developing, but simply lacked the time to progress with them all. I flitted from one to another, trying to devote a little bit of time to each idea, but never making real progress on most. I also never kept a proper lab book, just having a directory on my computer for each project. This meant that I often left work untouched for weeks, and couldn't remember what I did last, often having to rely on time stamps to see which data was newest - very unsatisfactory indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I recently made two changes which have made a massive difference to my ability to effectively deal with many projects. The first is dedicating large blocks of time (3 hours generally) to a single project and focussing on that one task exclusively - no email, no meetings, no Internet if I can avoid it. The other change is setting out a master plan for each month. I prioritise the best quality ideas and time critical work such as project reports, conference abstracts and talks. Other projects are put off until I have free time or they develop into something better, at which point it becomes a priority anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tool of choice from a practical perspective is Evernote. The ability to group collections of notes and restructure/combine them as needed is crucial to dealing with many related ideas which may converge or diverge at different points in time. Also when I finish a block of work on a project I religiously add my thoughts and results to the lab book, so that next time I come back to it (which potentially could be weeks or months hence), I know exactly where I got to. I also refer to specific directories on my computer so that I can always recreate the data/figures at a later date, without having to hunt for the right directory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have a new idea I start a new notebook under Research, which contains a few bullet points about the idea - enough that I can recreate the thought should I completely forget about it (it happens!). Later I will usually come back and add a project plan, from which point things are usually pretty linear. Given each idea/project has its own directory of notes, I always have an overview of what is going on, while the linear series of notes catalogues the thought processes and data. Using this approach I find it much easier to keep control of my research and its direction, and I am much happier and productive for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me an electronic lab book is essential. As others have mentioned if you travel a lot then physical notebooks are suboptimal. I still have a book for quick notes and equations, but they get typed into the lab book/LateX as soon as I get to the computer. Although my lab book is currently quite small, as it grows I want to be able to search for data and text. There is of course a potential downside with my current solution - it relies exclusively on the existence of Evernote. If the company fails for some reason then I potentially lose all my notes (since they are hosted on their servers). I am always on the lookout for new software which does the same thing, and preferably open source which takes away the heavy reliance on a single commercial entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastEditorUserId="62311" LastEditDate="2020-12-21T21:54:29.053" LastActivityDate="2020-12-21T21:54:29.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8071" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-18T00:55:50.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A library is an organized collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, and other formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:28:46.143" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:28:46.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8072" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-18T00:55:50.957" Score="0" Body="Questions about libraries, librarians, and the resources and services they provide." OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T04:52:40.537" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T04:52:40.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2013-02-18T04:16:55.783" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a rather new service (compared to ArXiv) that is just starting to gain momentum. I haven't used it personally, but they have partnered up with some other Open Access players, most notably and recently with PLoS (Figshare will host supplemental data for all PLoS journals). As far as I know, there is no restriction regarding the fields the submissions must be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a repository, the service is free (unlimited public posts, 1GB private posts). No review or moderation; the submissions will be posted immediately under CC-BY. Each submission is given a DOI. I cannot find info about how many submissions they have received and posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; Just checked with Figshare through twitter, and after one year they have 200,000 files shared by users (could be papers, figures, charts, data, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: just realized I should also mention the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://peerj.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PeerJ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; was just launched very recently (like in the last month or two I think). It's a journal but has its own pre-print system. You can submit unlimited number of public pre-prints in their preprint server &lt;a href=&quot;http://peerj.com/preprints&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PeerJ Preprints&lt;/a&gt;, which has its own ISSN number. You will be able to submit your pre-prints subsequently to their peer-reviewed journal. The journal is gold OA and charges what I believe is a one-time membership fee. The journal has limited scope (does not publish in the Physical Sciences, the Mathematical Sciences, the Social Sciences, or the Humanities ), not sure what the pre-print service will look like yet and it is worth checking out later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T21:45:45.370" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:45:45.370" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2219" CreationDate="2013-02-18T06:01:31.110" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a perhaps different view, I guess, from most people here...hopefully my experience can be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Louiqa said, it is better to think about it now than later. And it is not about whether you are good in research, of whether you are smart enough (don’t underestimate yourself!). It could come down to what you see yourself doing in the future, perhaps in the next 5-10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be very sure that I wanted to be a researcher for the rest of my life. I did quite well, and actually went straight into a PhD program after undergrad. But I am a very project/task-oriented person (like to “complete” things) and I really enjoy talking to people about science - the basic science research work I did didn’t give me many of such opportunities (long hours at the bench not talking to anyone else). I also don't see myself becoming a post-doc and do more research work. It took me a while to realize that it is not just another PhD student day (and this happened after I passed my PhD qualifying exam with flying colours). I decided to wrap up my project and apply to graduate with a MSc instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After everyone went into shock, I freaked out for a week, and then started to look into my past experiences, trying to combine what I liked doing with what I had the skills for. I now work as a Communications Coordinator at a physics dept and I LOVE my job (despite occasionally hating the fact that I don’t have a PhD and cannot lead my own research project) I cannot be happier that I decided to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, everyone is different. Another friend of mine just finished PhD, and became a research scientist for a hospital and loves what she does now (she said she also had some really bad moments). In the end it comes down to you. My advice is to start looking at your plan for the next 5-10 years. Do you want to stay in research in academia (post-doc, faculty position, etc). Do you like teaching and inspiring students (teaching only positions?)? Do you want to go into industry?  Perhaps you have other skills (a lot of what I do now depends on the soft skills I acquired during grad school, so still time well spent) that might lead to something that you want to do? What are the qualifications required for what you want to do? These are questions that you can ask yourself now, instead of later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and I wish you the best!&#xA;(btw, a lot of the other advices you got here are also very good, and were found useful by my other PhD friends)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2014-11-13T23:52:41.603" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T23:52:41.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8002" CreationDate="2013-02-18T08:01:26.030" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First, the fact that you're asking the question is already a good step forward. Being a researcher is about managing ideas and data, and some researchers don't fully recognize it!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few years as a researcher in theoretical chemistry (all computer, no wet lab), I have seen pretty much every kind of notebook possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Single notebook documenting your progression linearly. I started with that, it hurt a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No notebook, everything in files: put a 00README file in each topic/subtopic directory, then simply write in there to document your progress. In meetings, either type directly (if you have a mobile device) or write meeting notes then scan them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thematic notebooks (well described in other answers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is &lt;strong&gt;something that works for you&lt;/strong&gt;. Draw inspiration from the examples above, the other answers, and &lt;em&gt;try it!&lt;/em&gt; If at first you don't succeed, change the way you do, identify things that prevent you from fully using the workflow you set out to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, important factors to be considered are: &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;how much do you travel? where do you work from?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; For me, thematic notebooks are a no-go because I work from the office, work from home, work from conferences, work from hotels and planes, work from vacation (&lt;em&gt;I know, I know…&lt;/em&gt;). Thus, I can't carry around 5 or 10 notebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, the combination I have seen used very efficiently (by me or people around me) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One single “take everywhere” notebook&lt;/strong&gt; (I make it a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moleskine.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moleskine&lt;/a&gt;: because it feels special, it makes me &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to write in it). Each lasts about a year. They are organized as follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;at the back, few pages reserved for key information (important dates we set, strategic research decision, contact numbers for project leads, that very funny quote that had me laughing throughout an entire hour)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;at the back, just before that: a few pages &lt;em&gt;per project&lt;/em&gt;, with very high-level tracking of the progress (I write about one line or two per week, when the project is running). This allows me to remember&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;from the front: everything else, chronologically but clearly dated and labeled. Notes during meetings, notes about important stuff running and its analysis when it has finished running, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;everything else (long math derivations, paragraphs of text I started to write, full meeting minutes, detailed graphs): electronically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can further refine: a colleague of mine uses small colored sticky index-tabs on the top of the notebook to index the content that turns out to be the most important (important results on each project, color-coded). I cannot force myself to do that, but I must admit that it really helps her access older information quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T08:01:26.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-18T09:34:31.347" Score="31" ViewCount="8516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year master student currently taking courses on the second semester. For the most part I did pretty good on the first semester except that I got behind in one course which is specially demanding and hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm taking the equivalent amount of work as before plus I'm trying to finish my assignments for the other class in order to get my grade. And I'm also collaborating in a research project which I wasn't doing last semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time trying to manage my time in order to accomplish everything. As I don't want to get behind in another course I try to be on top of what I'm seeing in class. However I find that this consumes a lot more time than I expected and I never accomplish the goals I set for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if I have some class the next day I try to really understand everything we saw the previous meeting, and by the time I manage to do that (if I do), there is only about 3 hours left to do everything else. In a normal day I expend all the time doing my &quot;academic stuff&quot; and I only stop for eating and sleeping. Where the sleeping time could vary from 0 to 6 hours depending if I feel I'm getting too far behind or if I managed to finish all I wanted for that day (rare). I have to admit that I always try to get the most miniscule detail and expend a great deal of time thinking how to go from point A to point B on the text which in some sense is a pedantic attitude. However, I find that if I don't do this, then the ideas are very shaky (there are holes in my understanding) and I tend to forget those very easily, which is not good for doing exercises or taking an exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to split the day in blocks and only expend a fixed amount of time doing an specific task. However, this way I feel I go so slow that I'm not accomplishing anything. So basically what I end up doing is working nonstop in one task (which can take more than one day) and then try to compensate for the other tasks I didn't do by cutting sleeping time or further delaying other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes think that if I'm working that hard at this level, I have no chance of getting a PhD or continuing in academia. I see that some of my peers have time to have fun, go out and still get good grades while I barely have time to enjoy a meal. I also get good grades (I have to in order to keep my scholarship) but I feel that the effort I'm putting is too much for the reward (not exceptionally good grades).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5894" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T23:37:17.493" Title="How to get back on track after falling behind" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-02-18T10:20:08.403" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest challenges in any professional career is mastering time management. It's a tough assignment—and in recent years has become even tougher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to realize is that there is &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; enough time to do everything you want to do perfectly, unless you tackle a very small number of things in aggregate. For instance, if you are a professor, your list of tasks probably includes some combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervising research of your students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching classes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing committee work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing grant applications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Networking with colleagues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing, revising, and reviewing papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there may be a whole host of other administrative duties that eat up a lot of time, but don't otherwise help you get things done. Unfortunately, the day is currently limited to 24 hours [1], and you still have to figure out how to do all the other tasks of daily living (eating, sleeping, exercising), and having some semblance of a social life as well (so that other people know you're still alive!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do many things well; the trick is to realize that you can't do &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; perfectly. After a certain amount of time invested in working on something, you will hit the &lt;em&gt;point of diminishing returns&lt;/em&gt;: an additional unit of time spent will yield a smaller incremental gain than the preceding unit. That's the point at which you should start moving on to other activities. It can be frustrating to have to stop working on something (it's certainly intellectually unsatisfying!), but it's the only real way to get everything you need done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing to think about: most of your tasks (in academia, at least) are known somewhat in advance: classes have an established duration, papers are in progress for a while, meetings with multiple groups do not happen at the drop of a hat. Thus, you may be able to at least get a rough schedule for your week planned at the start (or at the end of the previous week). Leave yourself a few blocks of time that aren't completely scheduled, and schedule a block of &quot;personal time&quot; (whatever you choose to do with that that helps you to &quot;recharge your batteries,&quot; or get in touch with your inner self, or however else you relax). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Days &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get longer eventually, thanks to the slowing down of the earth's rotation, but not quickly enough to help us out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T10:20:08.403" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-02-18T11:32:07.517" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to give you one piece of advice which I think is very important:  Sleep more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't get enough sleep, your brain won't work as well and so it will take you longer to understand things.  You will be able to work much more efficiently with enough sleep.  Also, your brain does a lot of important work during sleep, helping reinforce connections made during the day etc.  So the time spent sleeping is not at all a 'waste of time' as far as your study is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to view sleep as something optional that you can leave out if you don't have time.  Have a go at sleeping at least six hours &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; night for a couple of weeks (I need at least eight most nights, myself, but six would be a good start at least) and see if you feel a lot more on top of things after that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my Honours year I found that it was hard to get to sleep if I had been doing maths within the last two hours before going to bed, so I made a rule that I had to stop doing maths at 10pm every night.  I mostly stuck to it, and it worked very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd like to offer some encouragement that having to work this hard now doesn't mean you couldn't do a PhD or continue in academia if you wanted to.  I am now doing my second postdoc, and have never worked as hard as I did in my Honours year (that's like the first year of a two-year Masters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T11:32:07.517" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:49:49.043" Score="12" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seek contact to other people that work on the same tasks or have solved similar tasks before. An active communication about what you are working on can be a lot of fun, can accelarate learning and productivity a lot, and open a bunch of new chances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your best at the moment, don't worry about lost time or chances, since the only time where you can act and use real chances is now. Learn from the past and focus on the future, but don't get obsessed with analysing and planning. The mind set of 'now is the moment' can be both relaxing and motivating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some time management. Instead of focusing on tools and life-hacks, I would recommend to focus on the following principles:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a long term perspective (meaning: picture your own funeral) what you want to achieve in life. Your intermediate goals should have some connection to your long-term goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize your activities and goals. Priorization should be dependent only on YOUR goals, not what someone else wants to make you believe is important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reserve a lot of time to socializing, because most goals you cannot achieve without the interaction with others. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't exploit yourself, don't ignore your needs. Reserve enough free time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6043" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T13:49:49.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-02-18T16:06:40.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I've found that awareness is a key part of time management.  Here are some tips that can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; Take the time over a week or two to really log exactly where your time is going, what you're doing, and how long it's taking.  While sometimes it is the case that you're working at 100%, often there are snippets of time here and there that you could be using more effectively.  It can be difficult to adjust how you're managing your time until you really understand where your time is going.  As an example, I know a guy who says he works at least 16 hours a day, but after working in the same room as him I came to realize that it can take him 4 hours to write one paragraph because he is constantly getting distracted with browsing the web, answering his phone, replying to e-mail, and talking to other people.  While he is technically &quot;working&quot; the whole time, it makes it easy to understand how he's always missing deadlines and complaining that he doesn't have enough time in a day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; Based on that log, look at what is taking the most time and think about why.  For example, maybe it turns out that you spend 120 minutes a day answering e-mails.  If you notice trends, consider whether there's anything that you can do to decrease that time or spend that time more efficiently.  In the example, maybe you could designate &quot;e-mail time&quot; at two points during the day to aggregate your work in it rather than constantly checking and being interrupted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorm other resources that might help you to reduce some of the larger blocks of time.  For example, if you're spending a ton of time trying to understand your classwork, can you form a study group that's a set amount of time and perhaps cover the material faster?  Are there on-campus resources to help with difficult concepts such as tutoring?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the beginning of each week, start a prioritized to-do list to manage what really needs to get done and what it would be nice to get done.  As others have said, it's normal to have too many things to do and not enough time.  However, you can definitely order your time so that the things that need to get done, get done.  Don't be surprised or shocked if you always have carryover for the next week.  There are some great online tools for this such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://teuxdeux.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;teuxdeux&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;.  These tools can also help you track what you've accomplished each week.  Sometimes it's easy to think that you haven't gotten anywhere but I find that an archive of the things that I've finished can help to dispel that impression.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lay out what your ideal schedule would be like.  Make sure to prioritize blocking out time to sleep (you work more efficiently if you've had some) and time to eat.  You don't need to go overboard on these and there will be times where you'll have to skimp on them, but you should have a baseline to aim for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last, learn to know when your schedule is blown and set a goal or deadline for when you will get back on track.  Sometimes you have a deadline that makes it impossible to get enough sleep and you need to put in 110%.  This is normal, but you also need to have a plan/date for ratcheting the workload back down to manageable levels or you will burn out.  Once you've burned out, it can be very difficult to get back on track, so don't think that you can just keep working at maximum levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an added note, when I first started graduate school a senior professor told me, &quot;Done is better than perfect.&quot;  Sometimes this really helps me to figure out what's a priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hang in there and I hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T16:06:40.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8084" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:09:02.260" Score="4" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished my MSc in Physics and my average is within the absolute 1% of the whole institute where I study. I really like programming and numerical work, so my thesis was also concerned a lot with this, but there was also some experimental work to &quot;justify&quot; the numerical results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to continue with a PhD and my thesis-advisor offered me a PhD project. However, the project is mostly experimental and the amount of programming is quite limited. The project is still interesting, because a large part of it is realizing the setup I proposed and simulated in my MSc thesis. It should be noted that the project is partly funded by a relatively large space agency, so (besides looking good on my CV) there are good chances of getting new contacts through this specific project. I thought that I could use this opportunity to see if it possible to spend 1-2 (or more) months at this agency during my PhD, working with them on their programming-heavy work. This wouldn't be directly related to my PhD project, so I'm not sure I'm &quot;allowed&quot; to do this, but this should be an option for me to investigate further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I should accept this experimental PhD project, because I worried that doing too much experimental physics may not be where my interest lies. On the other hand, I don't have any other offer and it may very well take some time before I find an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding my future, then I definately see myself having a job which is based on programming/numerical work. This is another motivation for finding an alternative project, but would an experimental PhD make me less &quot;attractive&quot; for such a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides looking at my future, are there any questions I can ask myself to clarify this decision I have to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T20:21:01.317" Title="Doubts about an experimental PhD project" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8083" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:21:01.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; spend several years of your life pursuing a PhD project that you aren't enthusiastic about. If you do not want to be an experimentalist, it won't do you much good. It will be a lot more difficult to overcome the challenges and setbacks you will face if you don't like your project. Moreover, it's harder to become &quot;an expert in the field&quot; if you're not highly motivated to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that said, it is possible for people to move back and forth between computational and experimental work. It's perhaps somewhat more complicated now than it used to be, but it's still certainly doable. Unfortunately, it may take some additional convincing to show people that you want to be a modeler if you've only done experimental work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T20:21:01.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8092" CreationDate="2013-02-18T21:18:09.927" Score="8" ViewCount="1688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to describe my situation briefly.&#xA;The university I'm currently studying at offers a 4-year Bachelor program in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in my 3rd year and the program for the 4th year consists only of optional courses (which I choose). As I have taken a rather high amount of optional courses so far, I can satisfy my ECTS requirements for the whole program in 3 years. The university, in this situation, would allow me to graduate at the end of my third year. Then, I could pursue an MSc. degree at the same university for a year and graduate with an MSc at the end of my 4th year of study in the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to note that this has been done before by other students here and I'm not fantasizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intention is to apply for a PhD at a university in the USA after the 4th year. (I am not a US citizen and I haven't studied there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: would getting an earlier BSc and MSc degree affect (negatively or positively) my chances for admission in a top university in the USA?&#xA;Should I just graduate with a BSc. in math?&#xA;I know that sometimes having a MSc. from the same university can be a negative sign. Should I be worried about that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other background:&#xA;My current university is not really &quot;elite&quot; of any sort; it barely enters the top 600 in the world. I have a few published articles and I have participated in conferences. I am also currently pursuing an internship in a research institute in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T06:09:40.397" Title="Would getting a faster MSc instead of just BSc affect admission chances for PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8085" CreationDate="2013-02-18T22:12:57.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue to keep in mind is that in the US, the PhD program includes the coursework phase associated with the Master's degrees in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this wouldn't be a negative factor in your admission, you may or am not be able to get a waiver for the coursework phase, even with a Master's already in hand. In some cases, they'll let you place out of courses, in others, they might not. Therefore, you should contact the individual schools you want to apply to and inquire about their policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However a Master's degree will help you if you do well; if you struggle, it probably won't be of much benefit at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T22:12:57.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-02-18T23:37:17.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your primary issue is not as much &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I don't have time to finish what I &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to do.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; as &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I don't have time to finish what I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined from your original post and your comments this is what you currently are undertaking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal current course load for your program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catch up from last semester's &lt;em&gt;exceptional&lt;/em&gt; class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional research (expanded syllabuses) on your normal course work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your additional research, you are adding extra work for yourself on top of what your peers are doing and then wondering why you don't have time to finish what you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to do.&#xA;That you have the interest to dig deeper is wonderful thing, but it seems you are getting carried away, and you may not see any long term benefit for your efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this doesn't usually get reflected on the grades but I&#xA;  feel that in the future (when doing research) I won't waste too much&#xA;  time trying to understand the fundamentals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be true, in the short term you are killing yourself. I say &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; because by this supposed point in the future, through the normal &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; course work for your program, you might find yourself with the same level of expertise. Unless this extra work is done under some guidance, it seems highly unlikely you are choosing the best sources for your research. Worse, you may also be spending all your extra hours mastering some techniques that are &lt;em&gt;even now&lt;/em&gt; obsolete by the state of the art but are taught as stepping stones for future topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, why are you are doing something that is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; reflected in your current grades at the cost of something that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; reflected in your current grades? Your grades are Academic currency as you said yourself you need them to keep your scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention your peers discuss problems that give them trouble or would ask the the professor or course assistant for help. How often do you? There is limited class time so some things don't get full treatment, or they have to choose the manner a topic is presented out of many options, one of the other options may make a troublesome topic just click for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you continue with the extra research. Discuss it with your professors, they should be able offer advice as to what is worth exploring, what is a waste of your time, and what would be better left for a future point in your studies. For what is worth your time, they'll be able to point you in the direction of the best resources to use. Discussing with them will also make them aware of the extra work you are doing which cannot hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I see that some of my peers have time to have fun, go out and still&#xA;  get good grades while I barely have time to enjoy a meal. I also get&#xA;  good grades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may very well be that they see better outcomes for the time spent because they take time to enjoy themselves.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As others have pointed out, we need an appropriate amount of physical rest to be at our best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We also often need time for things to soak in mentally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long term retention works best with many short study sessions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relentlessly cramming on the same subject without break until you master it is almost never the most efficient way to learn. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mental focus is a finite resource. It can be divided between foreground (conscious) and background (sub-conscious) processes. Both are required to learn. If you work relentlessly, you don't give the background processes a chance to do their part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By taking time to have fun, they give themselves time for it to settle, for their brains to run those background processes. They give themselves a chance for the 'Ahh Ha!' moment where it all falls into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, most 'Ahh Ha!' moments came away from the books, away from actively working on the related topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3934" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T23:37:17.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8089" CreationDate="2013-02-19T00:58:33.340" Score="8" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed several &lt;em&gt;special&lt;/em&gt; professor titles and I was wondering what are the exact details behind them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stan Franklin, W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing this is some sort of award but what type of awards come with a title like this? Are these internal or external? Does it last forever or is it tied to funding and then no longer applies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T01:06:18.780" Title="Special professor titles?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8088" CreationDate="2013-02-19T01:06:18.780" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_endowment#Endowed_professorships&quot;&gt;endowed chair&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T01:06:18.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-19T02:46:37.883" Score="3" ViewCount="4290" Body="&lt;p&gt;APA Format: When writing the name of a program I used in a study (MyFriendQuest) do I need to italicise the name or add a trademark sign? I am not sure how to stylise the name of the program or if I even need to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6053" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T21:48:05.377" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T21:48:05.377" Title="APA style for program used in a study" Tags="&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8006" CreationDate="2013-02-19T05:37:49.890" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;While on the interview circuit I ask this question of almost every faculty member I meet with: &quot;What advice would you give to a new assistant professor who's starting up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the universal, non-conflicting advice I've heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put enough time into your teaching to do an adequate job, not an excellent job. Save the rest of the time for research. It was emphasized that you want to teach courses that involve the minimum amount of preparation as well. You can have a tenure case stopped in its track for poor, unacceptable teaching, so you want to ensure that it's maintained to a minimum standard, but it is rare to have a weak research program that's propped up by teaching excellence. (Yes, it's somewhat unfortunate that this is the state of things in the United States's higher education, but that's the culture). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop your research program so that it is deep, rather than spreading out into too many research areas peripheral to your main research. Stay focused and specialize first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be aware of how you select students and especially how the department selects students. This varies from department to department, but in general I was given advice to be reasonably careful when choosing students, and to consult with other faculty members to see if others know the student who's looking for an advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One faculty member I spoke with mentioned concern about getting all of the hardware set up (for computer science), and mentioned that was something that took a little longer than expected, so have a contingency plan to continue research while your own hardware's going through purchasing. This faculty member used another faculty member's cluster until he got his own up and running.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T05:37:49.890" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8085" CreationDate="2013-02-19T06:09:40.397" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm on the admissions committee of a top-10 US computer science department; my advice may be way off base for mathematics PhD programs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All else being equal, getting a master's degree in one year would probably count &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; you.&lt;/strong&gt;  You're far better off taking some graduate-level courses, and possibly getting some research experience, while staying in the BSc progam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in my department, PhD applicants who already have master's degrees are held to a significantly higher standard than applicants who only have bachelor's degrees.  While having formal research experience is an &lt;em&gt;advantage&lt;/em&gt; for undergraduate applicants, it's a de facto &lt;em&gt;requirement&lt;/em&gt; for applicants with an master's degree.  One year is not a lot of time to get some real (meaning publishable) research experience, especially since most one-year master's programs have heavy coursework requirements.  And you'll be competing with other MS applicants who've already spent two years in graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department steers PhD-oriented undergraduates &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from our 5-year BS/MS program for this precise reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T06:09:40.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8090" CreationDate="2013-02-19T10:16:28.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to cite my online university references in APA, and know that the journal article/book title has to be in italics, to make it stand out. I'm not as sure about a program like this, though it could be in my 15-odd page style guide I have to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5847" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T10:16:28.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8002" CreationDate="2013-02-19T11:18:32.050" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Supplementing &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8075/49&quot;&gt;F'x's answer&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Physical notebook&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use it all the time, as it is the quickest way to write mathematics and jot diagrams. It's low tech, so it's &quot;always on&quot; (e.g. I cannot run out of batteries). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one A4 notebook (so I take it anywhere), with removable pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to devote a single page only to a single project. On each page I note 3 things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;date,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;title (or, actually, a pictogram) of the project,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;page number&quot; for pages on the same project in a given day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time (could be the same day, could be never) I take off pages, to fit them into thematic folders (and usually throwing away most of things, because they are &quot;non-recyclable&quot; rubbish; if it is &quot;recyclable&quot; then I scrap the important things, writing them on a new page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, such operation has trade-offs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(+) sorted by topic,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(+) higher valuable content density,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(+) can be viewed &quot;all at once&quot; by putting pages on a desktop,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(-) I cannot take all of them anymore,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(-) it's somehow easier to loose it, unsort, or torn/coffee split/... it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Electronic notes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electronic content is much more linkable, searchable, easier to share, more polished etc. However, it takes much more time to write formulas or draw diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different things work for different people, but some kind of personal wiki (or a well-organized text file system) seems to work the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not settled down, but I'm switching from &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiddlywiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt; (very neat but requires a browser to run) to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gitit.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gitit&lt;/a&gt; (so I can write in Markdown, with LaTeX inclusions, in any text editor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; as well (and I'm using it for other content) but for highly-linked content it does not work for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/1785/how-do-you-keep-your-research-notes-organized-closed&quot;&gt;How do you keep your research notes organized? - MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109/non-linear-note-taking-software&quot;&gt;Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1085/software-app-for-electronic-research-notebooks&quot;&gt;Software/App for electronic research notebooks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T14:43:51.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2013-02-19T15:43:27.817" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://csweb.ucc.ie/~dongen/LAF/LAF.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;LaTeX and Friends&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Difficult to learn and use.&lt;/em&gt;  True, but it will save you time in the long run, even if you're writing a minor thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not WYSIWYG. True, but there are many IDEs. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tug.org/texworks/&quot;&gt;TeXWorks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/&quot;&gt;TeXMaker&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.org/mactex/&quot;&gt;MacTeX&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot;&gt;LyX&lt;/a&gt;, ....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Little support for physical markup.&lt;/em&gt;  True, but this is a good thing.  It ensures your document style is consistent.  Also it saves time because fiddling with style &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; cost you time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Using non-standard fonts is difficult.&lt;/em&gt;  This used to be true but nowadays installing new fonts is relatively easy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;No spell checking.&lt;/em&gt;  True, but some IDEs support it. Also you can spell-check at the command line level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Too many packages.&lt;/em&gt;  Yes, it may be difficult to find the right package.  However, asking a question in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;TeX Stack Exchange&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/comp.text.tex&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;comp.text.tex&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  will quickly give you an answer.  Also you usually only need a few core packages, which you can package as a user-defined library.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;LaTeX is for techies only.&lt;/em&gt; False, LaTeX is used in mathematics, computer science, physics, life sciences, humanities, ....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Encourages structured writing.&lt;/em&gt;  Some people don't like this. Others do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Separation of style and content.&lt;/em&gt; LaTeX is a procedural markup language sitting on top of a typesetting engine. You make the purpose of your writing explicit by annotating (marking up) your writing. LaTeX uses the markup to typeset your writing in the right style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trust.&lt;/em&gt; In a recent &lt;em&gt;TUGboat&lt;/em&gt; (Volume 33, Number 3, 2012) Boris Veytsman writes an interesting paper that shows that using &lt;em&gt;Computer Modern&lt;/em&gt; (the default LaTeX font) increases the level of trust people have in written statements: it came second, closely following &lt;em&gt;Baskerville,&lt;/em&gt; which came first. At the lower end of the scale of trustworthyness is &lt;em&gt;Comic Sans&lt;/em&gt;. (Results based on results from Morris.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Generation of plots and tables.&lt;/em&gt; LaTeX has packages that automate the generation of plots and tables. You provide the data and the packages do the typesetting. If done properly, this ensures that all plots and tables are typeset in the same consistent style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technical diagrams.&lt;/em&gt; LaTeX has packages that can generate technical diagrams such as trees, state transition machines, petri nets, and so on. Using these packages guarantees a consistent presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;High-quality typesetting and good automatic hyphenation.&lt;/em&gt; This inludes kerning, real small caps, common and non-common ligatures, glyph variants, .... LateX's hyphenation is second to none.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Many conferences and publishers accept LaTeX.&lt;/em&gt; This is useful because it guarantees your paper will comply with the conference's formatting guidelines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Turing-complete programming language!&lt;/em&gt; This lets you compute things that you can then typeset (similar to a spreadsheet with input and output columns).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write notes/book/presentation in same source file.&lt;/em&gt;  This is related to the previous item.  LaTeX can make decisions and this lets you write several output documents in one input document. For example you may have a presentation version and a notes version. You can share text for both versions and use some text for just one version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;LaTeX is highly configurable.&lt;/em&gt; For example, you can define your own book/paper style and package the settings as a library so you can use them over and over again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;You can translate LaTeX to &lt;code&gt;html&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;ps&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;pdf&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;DocBook&lt;/code&gt;, ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatic numbering of sectional units, figures, ... This guarantees consistency of the output document. In addition LaTeX provides a consistent and easy cross-referencing mechanism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Excellent Bibliography support.&lt;/em&gt; LaTeX automates the typesetting of the citations and the generation of the bibliography/references.  It lets you control the style of both citations and references. The result is a perfect bibliography and consistent citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Very stable, free, and available on many platforms&lt;/em&gt;. Who doesn't want that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Large and active, friendly, and helpful user-base.&lt;/em&gt; Ask a question in  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;TeX Stack Exchange&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/comp.text.tex&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;comp.text.tex&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and you usually get a detailed answer in minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;LaTeX has comments.&lt;/em&gt; So you can remember why/how something worked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can produce &lt;a href=&quot;http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349&quot;&gt;coffee stains&lt;/a&gt; on your papers.&lt;/em&gt;  So you have &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt; coffee stains on your papers!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most importantly: LaTeX is fun!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T17:30:34.233" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T17:30:34.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2013-02-19T15:55:32.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently switched to LaTex whilst at university and the response has been great. I have written an number of reports regarding projects and tutors were happy to see somebody using the proper software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that with larger projects that it can be split up into sections and I'm currently writing a document that is split up into a number of chapters which is very easy to manage the document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to technical documentation such as tables, diagrams and equations it does require some learning but it is very useful indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to note is that the document structure is kept consistent throughout, sections and chapters are correctly numbered as well as the references, footnotes and figures all being correctly numbered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, use BibDesk as it helps out tremendously when using a number of citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6063" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:55:32.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8112" CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:00:40.263" Score="14" ViewCount="4379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a report and I have been compiling a list of references (from IEEE mostly) and I also have a number of websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best way to note a website URL? Would it be to reference and cite a URL, would it be adding a footnote? An example would be a reference to google.com. Would it be the correct to just create a footnote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've started to just add a footnote each time a website is mentioned (using LaTeX) so for example if a javascript plugin is mentioned then a footnote would be added to the website URL. How would be best to do this as it would not suffice as a reference as it is just noting a website for further reading. I do not have time to waste be writing the whole report to then have to go back through and edit the document hence my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6063" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T10:30:57.927" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T10:30:57.927" Title="How should I cite a website URL?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8100" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:31:49.620" Score="15" ViewCount="737" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, some of the reviews I received mentioned their decision at the end of the review (i.e. 'I recommend acceptance of the paper'), while others do not have such statements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the point of adding the decision statement while the overall evaluation (i.e. on EasyChair system) explicitly says it? Is it just the reviewer's habit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="3985" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T13:55:12.790" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T13:55:12.790" Title="Why do some reviewers mention their decision explicitly?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:47:54.053" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically I include an explicit recommendation in the report to be shared with the authors when I have a strong opinion, but not necessarily otherwise.  In the former case, the editor can still decide either way (referees make recommendations, not decisions), but if they disagree with me at least the authors will know for sure what the referee thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what is the point of adding the decision statement while the overall evaluation (i.e. on EasyChair system) explicitly says it? is it just the reviewer habit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be habit, and it may reflect uncertainty about what information from the web form will be available to the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T20:47:54.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2013-02-20T02:10:37.100" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only reason I can think of to include a outright recommendation the authors can see is if the &quot;feel&quot; of my comments and the decision don't necessarily align naturally. For example, if I've issued a lot of criticisms, but most of those are &quot;With fine tuning, this would be an outstanding paper&quot;, or hoping to see what is an adequate treatment of really spectacular data turn into a great treatment, I might not that despite the page of suggestions, it could probably fly as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I've reviewed a paper with a very small number of comments, but in those comments have been tempted to use words like 'fatally flawed'. So including a 'I would reject this paper' comment might help with &quot;There are only three things you need to change, but you need to take them seriously.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T02:10:37.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2013-02-20T12:42:42.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see there are two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor usually isn't an expert in every area. Adding an explicit recommendation (accept, reject, ...) may help the editor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An explicit recommendation (accept, reject, ...) is the reviewer's ultimate summary. The reviewer should only provide it if they can defend it and feel it's fair. In that sense adding the recommendation strengthens the review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastEditorUserId="1194" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T12:51:38.140" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T12:51:38.140" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8127" CreationDate="2013-02-20T13:21:15.097" Score="21" ViewCount="4792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished an MBA in the UK. It included a research dissertation (about 18,000 words) and a research methods module and adviser to go with it. However, my adviser made it clear during my research that it was my project and my responsibility and not his. It was clear that he was happy to mark my dissertation but didn't want to be bothered by actually helping me to learn much about research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I did the research on my own and got distinction on the paper, which I was happy about. However, now I'm thinking more and more about pursuing a PhD, perhaps in intercultural management, and I feel like a highly respectable school would not consider me because I do not have much research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: What can I do  to gain research experience, now that I've finished my MBA, with an eye towards getting into a good school for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have read, publications will help a lot but I feel like I don't have the experience to do the kind of research to get into a good publications. I really think I need to build my research skills...and would like to know how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another related problems is when doing business research (I get the feeling most people here are from the science/math side of academia) is gaining access to companies (to gather data) and I'm not sure how to do that without an adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1136/how-can-i-improve-my-research-experience-for-phd-application&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5522/what-is-a-good-research-experience&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7780/what-are-the-key-points-in-short-descriptions-of-research-experience&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question but I think my question is different from each of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6073" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T02:58:22.510" Title="How to gain research experience after master program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2013-02-20T13:39:03.130" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HaL&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;hyper archive en ligne&quot;) is a French open archive repository that covers all fields. As far as I know it is open for submission beyond people working in French departments. It can automatically deposit on arXiv for papers whose topic is covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T13:39:03.130" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8090" CreationDate="2013-02-20T14:00:32.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Section 7.08 (page 210) of the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the APA,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not italicize the names of software, programs, or languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reference entries are not necessary for standard software and programming languages, such as Microsoft Word or Excel, Java, Adobe Photoshop, and even SAS and SPSS.  In text, give the proper name of the software, along with the version number.  Do provide reference entries for specialized software or computer programs with limited distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a reference entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (Version 2) [Computer software]. Englewood, NJ: Biostat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T14:00:32.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2013-02-20T14:35:37.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across your post as I was looking for information on the same subject - too much pressure from my supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all it's good to know I'm not alone... and the comments from all the others really helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that helps me is to think that in the end, it's not my supervisor who's going to evaluate me. I'm going to present my thesis to a jury,not to him. He'll probably won't even have any word to say in my final presentation. He's suppose to be a help to get me through, not the person who will judge me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So try to keep your eyes on the goal instead of making all this efforth to adapting to your supervisor and ending up writing and researching as if him was the one I have to impress. He's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6075" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T14:35:37.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8115" CreationDate="2013-02-20T19:56:07.813" Score="14" ViewCount="1996" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/122374/where-to-find-nsf-reports-for-mathematical-expository-purpose&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on mathoverflow…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I just found out that to see full proposal or later reports. One needs to file a FOIA request, as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/policies/foia.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am curious if anyone has done so? And how is the process like?&#xA;In particular, can the requester remain confidential after the request (so other people will not know that I made the request)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional follow up question: What kind of people can file FOIA request? Does it have to be US citizens? Or just anyone working in US? etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6078" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T23:41:32.360" Title="FOIA request for full NSF awards proposal and report" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2013-02-21T01:30:32.467" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose the easiest way would be to use the &lt;code&gt;\newcommand&lt;/code&gt; command in LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put something like this before your &lt;code&gt;\begin{document}&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\newcommand{\jquerynote}{\footnote{\url{http://jquery.com}}~}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;We used JQuery\jquerynote to build the user interface.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to change the reference to a citation or another format, you can replace the contents of the &lt;code&gt;\newcommand&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as to &quot;What is the best way to cite a website URL?&quot; the answer generally is that there isn't a standard. Personally, I use web sites as a citation if it contributes some kind of important intellectual argument to the paper. If I use web sites as a footnote, it's because it has to do with some kind of tool I used and is there simply to inform the user that I used Tool XYZ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example, if I said in my paper, &quot;We used the Google search engine to identify evidence of bias in search engine results&quot; I'd probably put that as a footnote, whereas if I said, &quot;Company web sites from Google, Microsoft, and Apple about employment all state that having fun at work is important&quot; may be citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I should finally note that this is a personal convention rather than anything spelled out in a styleguide, but maybe it helps you?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T01:37:01.067" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T01:37:01.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8106" CreationDate="2013-02-21T01:47:28.563" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an immediately short term solution and would require some time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get in touch with a professor who does what you like to do for your Phd. Like here clearly explain your situation. If you get a response continue the discussion, you might be offered to go and visit the lab or if after a couple of exchanges you feel it’s the right time offer to go and see them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to see if you can do some work for them part-time. If they say day don’t have money etc. if you can offer a day or two of part-time unpaid if it works for you from home/weekend etc. If you get lucky they might offer you paid work if they get money later. From the beginning discuss publications and research experience and hopefully over time you can get a paper or two under your belt and get recommendation letter as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who knows they might offer you a Phd position after some time as well if you work well together. We have done this before and in fact this happens a lot. Someone with a master does some paid or unpaid work and if we are happy with him or her and money comes in later we will get in touch and ask if they are interested. Now that I think about it is quite common with many of the PhD students we have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T03:57:10.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T03:57:10.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2013-02-21T02:13:12.920" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of the requester does not remain confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was recently on the other end.  NSF contacted him to tell him that an FOIA request had been made for a copy of his proposal, told him the name of the requester, and asked whether the proposal contained any sensitive information that he wished to have redacted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general feeling was that making such a request, rather than contacting the PI directly, was unprofessional and borderline creepy.  I second JeffE's comment: &lt;strong&gt;Ask the PI first.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T02:13:12.920" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T04:40:11.203" Score="7" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a research assistant in a neuroscience lab at MIT and I'm considering pursuing a PhD in math or theoretical computer science. The RAs in my lab who want to eventually become neuroscientists are in a perfect place - a large, collaborative environment where they get paid to work closely with neuroscientists and learn hands on what the entire research process is like in that field before committing to a 5 year grad program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want an environment as close to this as possible in math or theoretical computer science to solidify my belief that I would be happy pursuing research in these areas. Is this kind of opportunity available in these fields? What is the closest I can get? I did an REU program in undergrad and loved it, but want more if it's out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so much for your advice, this is a great community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6084" OwnerDisplayName="user63255" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T05:17:22.780" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T13:29:22.237" Title="Is it possible to be a paid RA in a math or computer science lab in order to be immersed in the academic research context?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8116" CreationDate="2013-02-21T07:40:49.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opportunities to work in specific labs are abundant, but you need to start up a conversation with the professors who run individual labs or research groups to see what is available at your school.  Whether or not you can get funding for a position will vary per lab/RG.  It is generally more difficult to get a funded position in a math or theoretical computer science research lab because without experience, there isn't much you can do to justify getting paid (whereas in an experimental lab you can at least help out with the menial work that is inherent to experimental labs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: make appointments to see professors or lab directors in the labs or groups you might like to work in.  Plan on working for free for at least a year, in order to prove your worth.  If that means taking a second job elsewhere, so be it.  Be prepared to discuss why you think you will make a valuable team member to include a discussion of your long-term goals.  This should be more than &quot;I might want to work in theoretical computer science.&quot;  Do some pre-reading of recent papers that have come out of the lab, and know something about the professor's background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, jumping into a theoretical research group probably isn't the best way to test the waters for a particular field (esp. without a good background already), so you may get more worth out of continuing to take courses in those disciplines you find interesting, and doing a good deal of reading on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T07:40:49.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T09:48:59.350" Score="11" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I obtained my PhD about five years ago and immediately took up a postdoctoral position at a national lab in Japan to continue my research in computer engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over those five years I worked with the person who is now my supervisor, and trusted him in the same way I would trust any ordinary person, only to learn (too late!) that my trust was misplaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After working on a large project of his for about two full-time years, he forced&#xA;me to &quot;leave the project&quot;. Now that the large project is nearing completion, I have since discovered that he has started to present my ideas and my work as his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The administration vacillates between feigning ignorance and admitting there is a problem but then claiming that they are powerless to do anything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do? What &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; I do - and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6082" LastEditorUserId="6082" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T11:17:13.177" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T09:54:14.743" Title="How to encourage administration to handle plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1836" CreationDate="2013-02-21T10:04:51.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities in the US prohibit awarding of duplicate or comparable degrees. For instance; one might have earned a PhD in Management from Papua New Guinea University, and planning to earn another PhD in Management from Yale. In this particular case, Yale won't admit that student. Similarly, HBS, NYU Stern, Berkeley Haas MBA program FAQ sections clearly state that they won't accept students who already hold an MBA degree from another institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;University policy prohibits awarding of duplicate degrees. If you have an MBA or comparable degree from an institute of higher education, your application will be ineligible for consideration.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/faq.html&quot;&gt;http://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/faq.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6081" LastEditorUserId="12860" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T01:18:11.573" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T01:18:11.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2013-02-21T11:15:18.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use footnotes because they are disruptive. Also this may lead to an abundance of repetition in your document, with the same footnote appearing over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I suggest you treat URLs as normal references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;biblatex&lt;/code&gt; packages provides support for URL references. Another advantage of using the package is that it lets you create a separate bibliography for the URLs. This is not explained here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The package supports values for &lt;code&gt;url&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;date&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;urldate&lt;/code&gt; keys in your BibTeX database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;url&lt;/code&gt; describes the URL.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;date&lt;/code&gt; describes the official date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;urldate&lt;/code&gt; describes the date you visited/retrieved the URL.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The package also lets you customise the text in the bibliography that precedes the value for &lt;code&gt;urldate&lt;/code&gt;. For example, you can set it to &lt;code&gt;Visited&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Retrieved&lt;/code&gt;. Customising the string is done by setting the &lt;em&gt;bibliography string&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;urlseen&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is based on an example from &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/51079/add-retrieved-last-accessed-or-similar-information-to-authoryear-in-biblate&quot;&gt;Marco Daniel&lt;/a&gt;. It shows the basic mechanism. Save it, run LateX on it, then &lt;code&gt;bibtex&lt;/code&gt;, and LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\documentclass{article}&#xA;&#xA;\RequirePackage[style=authoryear,&#xA;                useprefix=true,&#xA;                backend=bibtex,&#xA;                block=space,&#xA;                language=british]{biblatex}&#xA;\renewcommand*{\bibopenparen}{[}&#xA;\renewcommand*{\bibcloseparen}{]}&#xA;\renewcommand*{\finalandcomma}{,}&#xA;\renewcommand*{\finalnamedelim}{, and~}&#xA;% 3em recommended by Bringhurst, p 80.&#xA;\renewcommand*\bibnamedash{\rule[0.48ex]{3em}{0.14ex}\space}&#xA;&#xA;\usepackage{filecontents}&#xA;\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}&#xA;@Online{ctan,&#xA;  label       = {CTAN},&#xA;  title       = {CTAN},&#xA;  subtitle    = {The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network},&#xA;  date        = {2006},&#xA;  url         = {http://www.ctan.org},&#xA;  urldate     = {2012-04-07},&#xA;}&#xA;\end{filecontents}&#xA;\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}&#xA;&#xA;\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%&#xA;urlseen = {Retrieved},&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;\begin{document}&#xA;I always get my {\LaTeX} packages from&#xA; the Comprehensive {\TeX} Archive Network~\parencite{ctan}.&#xA;&#xA;\printbibliography&#xA;\end{document}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;\parencite&lt;/code&gt; command is for parenthetical citations. (&lt;code&gt;biblatex&lt;/code&gt; also provides other kinds of citation commands.) The &lt;code&gt;filecontent&lt;/code&gt; related stuff makes the example a standalone example (so you won't have to create the BibTeX file). The command is not recommended for day-to-day LaTeX.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AMK1A.png&quot; alt=&quot;sample output&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1194" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T07:57:59.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8122" CreationDate="2013-02-21T11:47:05.560" Score="17" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an apprentice employed to do mechanical engineering but my real passion has always been computing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently came up with IMHO a good idea to help mitigate DDoS attacks on web servers. I would like to do a write-up of my idea to help contribute to some personal portfolio perhaps so it would help me get into a career in computing if/when I decide to take that path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no exposure to University resources etc but feel a white paper on this topic is probably the best way to present it. So how should I go about writing an academic paper as an outsider to academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:49:02.927" Title="How to write a white paper for a non-academic?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2013-02-21T12:06:31.747" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically no restriction on &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; can write a paper, so, clearly you can. If you have no affiliation, it might be hard to go publish a &quot;free&quot; paper (e.g., a technical report or a pre-print on arxiv), but you can always consider submitting your idea to a workshop/conference. However, you might have to pay the conferences/travel fees (although some conferences might help you, if you can't afford it). You can also submit your idea to a journal, as many don't charge anything to publish. You can of course also just write a PDF and put it on your website, or even do a long blog post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one thing you might need to be careful of, since you might not be used to write academic paper: a good paper is not just a good idea, this idea needs to be &lt;em&gt;validated&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, you can't just write: &quot;here is a cool idea I had&quot;, you also need to describe how it differs from existing approaches (perhaps your idea has been already published), and you need to describe &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it's a good idea. There are many approaches to do so, for instance by presenting your idea in a formal setting and &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; that you can mitigate DDoS attacks (probably under some assumptions). You can also run some experiments, and show that your approach mitigated x% more attacks than some known approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in eventually pursuing a career in academia, showing that you can explain and validate your work might be as important as having a good idea (because not only you have a good idea, but you can convince others that it's a good one!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that another approach in your situation could be to implement your idea as an open-source software, and if it's adopted by the community, then it's another form of validation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T20:49:49.830" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T20:49:49.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8118" CreationDate="2013-02-21T13:20:55.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is harder to deal with plagiarism in oriental countries than in the western world. It's even harder when your employer is a national lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, how to &lt;strong&gt;encourage&lt;/strong&gt; the administration to handle plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is something you need to know (I suspect you already know it to some extent), orientals tend to treat their faces much more seriously than anything else. This is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things may not be that serious as you would think. So far, he only presented the idea and the work as if they were his. But I agree that it's a bad sign. You need to deal with it as soon as possible before he goes any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; (I would like to argue that we do not have sufficient information to tell if plagiarism will happen or already happened.)&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;End of Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you described in the comments, your supervisor seems to have personal issue with you. You might have some conflicts with him without you even knowing it. The key word &lt;em&gt;face&lt;/em&gt; is the most probable reason I could think of. There is probably some cultural thing buried somewhere you would need to figure out if you want to resolve it. It may not be that serious as you think, could be just misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some different thinkings between oriental and western world. In the &lt;strong&gt;western&lt;/strong&gt; world, &lt;strong&gt;people take individual ownership&lt;/strong&gt; for what they think and do. In the &lt;strong&gt;oriental&lt;/strong&gt; world, some tend to think the ideas and the works are products of the &lt;strong&gt;whole team/group&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, the head of the group would present the idea and the work as &lt;strong&gt;the head of the group&lt;/strong&gt;. This could be construed as plagiarism in the western world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said &lt;em&gt;they are powerless to do anything about it.&lt;/em&gt; This is probably due to that thinking. I must say that changing a culture takes huge efforts and long time. If you want to talk to them to encourage them to handle plagiarism, you need to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talk to them politely, professionally and &lt;strong&gt;discreetly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T12:57:41.353" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T12:57:41.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8116" CreationDate="2013-02-21T13:29:22.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A word about your terminology: a &quot;research assistant&quot; at many schools is &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; a PhD student. If you mean getting the opportunity to be a &quot;research affiliate&quot; or &quot;associate&quot; or some other position that implies you are working for the professor &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you enroll in a degree program, this becomes a challenge, largely because of the &quot;culture&quot; of mathematics and computer science. There are very few large-scale mathematics and computer science groups, in part because there isn't a need for an extensive support staff. Thus, the positions that you're describing typically aren't available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T13:29:22.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8207" CreationDate="2013-02-21T14:16:04.627" Score="11" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my PhD now for 1.5 years and was recently asked by my supervisor to assist him with a review. The reviewed paper was also written by a non-native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my first publication I bought a book on English writing skills for research papers, which was very helpful for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I suggest this book to the author of the paper I got for review, so he can improve his English? I do not want to critize him, only to give him an advice I also give my colleagues.&#xA;I am not sure if this exceeds my responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T22:00:18.180" Title="Can a reviewer suggest literature for improving the language?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2013-02-21T14:56:02.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly, poor English is a significant problem, one that hinders communication, and undoubtedly has an impact on one's ability to publish top-quality articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound a bit rude to make such a suggestion, but in extreme cases I think it is warranted. It's probably better and more cost effective than trying to improve the English yourself and better in the long run than  simply ignoring the problem (and suggesting to reject the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T14:56:02.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8106" CreationDate="2013-02-21T14:56:38.417" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am only familiar with the UK system, but here are some points about getting research experience in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Find a supervisor for your PhD.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of UK departments prefer to admit PhD students who has found a faculty member who is willing to supervise and has a research proposal written together with that member. If doing a PhD in the UK is part of your goal, you could start by looking at departments/people you want to work with and contact them as a prospective student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some patience is required as they might not be looking to supervise a student at the moment. But I have found that most are willing to give prospective students a research project to work on before admissions or while working on the proposal. In fact, all those who were willing to supervise me ended up offering me a research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) &quot;Cold calling&quot; for projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find that some professors, lecturers, postdocs or research fellows etc are very happy to have students with the experience to work on their projects. You can try emailing people with a very short version of your academic CV, asking for research opportunities. I have successfully gotten projects this way too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Official Internships/Studentships.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some UK universities have official internships or studentships for someone to work on a research project for 3-6 months. These may not be advertised so you need to do point 1) and 2) or simply ask. I have successfully gotten these before and they were willing to at least help pay the rent (400-500 pounds I think) or given you a token sum. I cannot be more precise about the pay because I turned down the payment in order to keep my part time job. Do note that getting paid or being in an official position will come with the requirement/expectation that you report to work daily and stay in the office for some minimum number of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) General advice.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are incredibly busy people, especially famous tenured professors. Also, they might have a steady stream of students to work with. I think I was quite lucky to get around 30-40% respond rate when emailing people asking for research experience. Most of them are because I am asking as a prospective student. So please do not be too disappointed that people don't get back to you. And don't spend all your time trying to get just 1-2 famous faculty to give you research opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be prepared to travel and meet them, paying for all the travel fees yourself. You should also not talk about reimbursement/payment first. In my humble opinion, you need to be prepared to work on a project for free, making it clear that you want the experience on your CV and a possible paper. Then, they might arrange for payment for you. It is your responsibility to show that you are serious and trustworthy and not a waste of their precious time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it helps a lot (with regards to funding) if you are from the EU as funding in the UK is usually restricted to EU citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T14:56:38.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8130" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:21:46.887" Score="29" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got my PhD one year ago; I am looking for a position (e.g., postdoc).&#xA;I am going to a fairly attended conference, and was pondering about how to make audience aware that I am on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An explicit, dedicated slide (maybe at the end)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A verbal statement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A caption on my T-shirt? :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you find any of this appropriate? &#xA;What would you advice me to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;In case you think it's not a good idea, I'd be interested in knowing why. &#xA;Otherwise, I'd be interested in any additional implementation advice (how to formulate that, or whatever comes to mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6086" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:45:53.483" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:45:53.483" Title="&quot;Looking for a postdoc&quot; ad inside a conference talk?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8128" CreationDate="2013-02-21T16:08:21.367" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add to the end of your conclusion a simple statement: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm looking for a postdoc position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen it done before, and I don't think people minded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A T-shirt could be a fun way of broaching the topic when talking to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T16:08:21.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8128" CreationDate="2013-02-21T16:20:13.350" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be shy about advertising. As you and Dave suggest, place it at the end, but you don't need to be very subtle about it. I've seen a number of talks where people advertise the fact that they're on the market, and everyone understands the need to do this. Presumably you're worried about it seeming desperate, but it isn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T16:20:13.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:59:17.970" Score="18" ViewCount="10674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some jobs ask you to submit 'teaching evaluations'. Assuming the school doesn't have any preference for how I submit the materials, my issue is that I literally have hundreds of teaching evaluations - If I just send them all I know no one is going to look through them all, but if I do any sort of condensing I feel as though I will be clearly cherry picking the good comments. Any suggestions for making the most out of these materials in a job application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T21:41:20.933" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:41:20.933" Title="How to submit 'teaching evaluations' for a job application?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;course-evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8131" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:29:29.907" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a modicum of cherry-picking is a bad thing in this regard.  What you need to send is a set of teaching evaluations that describes what is significant about your teaching -- the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Great teacher!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;comments aren't particularly worth it, but the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. X constantly provided clear examples of the material, and it made the difficult topics more concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;samples can provide the insight that will be helpful to a hiring committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The committee is trying to get a feel for &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you are a good teacher (be that the case), and that's why they want the evaluations.  I have provided bulleted lists of evaluation comments, but I have also provided a link to all of my comments from multiple classes.  The evaluation website at the university where I taught recently actually provided a statistical breakdown of the survey questions on each evaluation topic, so I was able to highlight the statistical takeaways from the surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T05:59:45.910" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T05:59:45.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:09:20.100" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echoing the comments and other answers, citing a website is no different to citing any other resource, such as a book, or a paper. Depending on your favorite text editor and reference manager, you would like to produce bibliographic entries, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... for the implementation of the prototype, we used the &lt;em&gt;Ruby&lt;/em&gt; programming language [23] and ...&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Bibliography&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  23. Matsumoto, Yukihiro. &lt;em&gt;Ruby Programming Language&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;code&gt;http://www.ruby-lang.org/&lt;/code&gt;, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In BibTeX, there's @misc entry for that. You would use it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@misc{links/Java,&#xA;        author = {{Sun Microsystems Inc.}},&#xA;        title = {{J}ava{\texttrademark} {P}latform, {S}tandard {E}dition 6},&#xA;        howpublished={\url{http://java.sun.com/}},&#xA;        month{jun},&#xA;        year = {2006}&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA; @misc{links/xml,&#xA;        author = {{W3C}},&#xA;        title = {{Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0}},&#xA;        howpublished = {\url{http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/}},&#xA;        publisher = {World Wide Web Consortium},&#xA;        year = {2008},&#xA;        month = {November}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since websites are a dynamic resource, you should always include the date (year/month) of the last retrieval. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the url, the code above would assume &lt;code&gt;\usepackage{url}&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technical issue with this is whether your chosen bibliography style would include the URL in the reference, or not. You might want to consult &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/36248/url-of-cited-web-site-in-bibliography&quot;&gt;this questions at tex.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T20:09:20.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8134" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T05:09:07.433" Score="27" ViewCount="43040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to get citations (with complete info including authors, journal, date) to all my papers.  What's the best way (hopefully without too much manual copy &amp;amp; paste) to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What i so far tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar seem to give more complete list of papers that cite my paper that it includes papers in non-English language journals etc.  But i can't see how to get authors, journal title, volume number etc quickly from the Google Scholar search output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4171" LastEditorUserId="4171" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T05:18:23.417" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T12:02:12.463" Title="How to quickly get complete list of citations to all my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2013-02-22T10:10:10.633" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt; to do that, but only if you / your institute has access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for an article that you (or someone else) has authored, click on the author name, then click on &quot;citations&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TYmLx.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scopus screenshot&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Scopus screenshot, author page&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;If you click on the &lt;em&gt;13&lt;/em&gt; link, you will see a full list of documents citing Gerrit Holl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xeg9K.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scopus screenshot&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Scopus screenshot, author citation page&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;In my experience, Scopus doesn't have many false positives, although it might miss publications in new or unknown journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if Scopus deeplinking works, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?origin=resultslist&amp;amp;authorId=31267510200&amp;amp;zone=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;try this&lt;/a&gt; for a direct link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T10:19:20.433" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T10:19:20.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2013-02-22T10:39:03.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I read today in &lt;em&gt;Chemical &amp;amp; Engineering News&lt;/em&gt; an &lt;a href=&quot;http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i8/Spending-Cuts-Set-Kick.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that gives good, fact-based information on the issue. It seems to indicate that &lt;strong&gt;already accepted grants would be cut down&lt;/strong&gt;, not only current and future proposals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the National Institutes of Health, for example, sequestration is expected to cut $1.5 billion of its funding for 2013. The cuts would amount to a 5.1% reduction for each of the agency’s 27 institutes and centers. “That translates into hundreds of grants that would have been funded in this fiscal year that simply won’t get paid,” says NIH Director Francis S. Collins. As a result, several thousand research positions could be eliminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T10:39:03.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8128" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:14:48.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be personal (if possible). Try to research the person or people that may be interested in you and approach them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6092" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:14:48.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2013-02-22T12:58:25.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to scopus, you can use Web of Science. It's also subscription based though, and your institution may or may not have access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.webofknowledge.com&quot;&gt;http://apps.webofknowledge.com&lt;/a&gt; , select the tab labelled &quot;Web of Science&quot;, and enter your name in the search field for the author. When the results show up, you should see a link labelled &quot;Create citation report&quot; near the top right corner of the results list. Follow that, and in the results table you will see an element &quot;Citing Articles[?] :   nnn&quot;, where nnn is the number of citing articles. Click on the number, and you are taken to a list of all citing articles from the Web of Science database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the result list after searching for your name has false positives, you can exclude them from the citation report either by setting a year range, or manually excluding them one-by-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T12:58:25.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2013-02-22T13:44:02.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harzing's Publish or Perish&lt;/a&gt; software is the tool which will probably help you most. It is a Windows application, which allows you to specify queries and then goes to Google Scholar to retrieve and sort the references, citations, etc. Besides computing h-index and a host of other bibliometric indices, it allows you to produce reports from your searches and this is what you seem to be after. Even though running only on Windows, installing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winehq.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wine&lt;/a&gt; emulator to run it is worth the hassle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T13:44:02.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8155" CreationDate="2013-02-22T14:26:00.957" Score="31" ViewCount="1463" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back when I was in graduate school and as a post-doc, life was fairly blissful. Only one big responsibility: research. Now as a faculty member I find &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; many things to do. Teach, supervise undergrads and grads, publish papers, perform research, participate in service/administrative activities, get funding, etc. Plus throw in family life, friends, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked at all sorts of productivity systems over the years (GTD, 7 Habits, etc.), and have settled on a simple todo list method, where I have a master list of tasks in a todo list  that I periodically review. The problem is the list just seems to get bigger and bigger. More gets on  the list than comes off, especially during busy seasons, like when teaching or when grants are due. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that &lt;em&gt;busy&lt;/em&gt; is part of the game, but how do you keep track of everything and not go crazy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T14:52:37.307" Title="Keeping track of all you have to do in academia" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:30:51.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a Todo List manager called &lt;a href=&quot;http://culturedcode.com/things/&quot;&gt;Things&lt;/a&gt; on the Mac. It syncs via the cloud with my iPad, so in principle I always have my lists. Lists can be tagged and sorted and categorized and so forth, so with some discipline, it can be a really helpful too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I still have lists of major &quot;deliverables&quot; on my whiteboard and lists of daily activities on scraps of paper. Ideally, what I need is less work, not a better tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: not going crazy: go on vacation, go cycling, stop thinking about work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T15:30:51.903" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:38:46.767" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another nice todo list system is &lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; which lets you do things like add mini-check lists to items, make separate lists for each thing, add notes to items, add pictures to items, and add other people to items.  The ability to add sub-items helps a lot in that it makes it feel like I'm getting somewhere on large projects that take a lot of time and hang around in my to-do list for weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trello is also really nice for sharing/collaborating/delegating work.  In our lab, we have a Trello board for any projects where multiple people are collaborating so everyone is able to keep track of who's responsible for what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, it lets you move your items around so that you can prioritize them.  Stuff that you need to get done sooner goes on the top while less critical stuff is on the bottom.  I also have a bit of a garbage cleaning policy where if it's been sitting in the low priority for a while and I still haven't gotten around to it, it goes into a theoretical &quot;someday when I have free time&quot; list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T15:38:46.767" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:08:09.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For things that can be decomposed into tasks, I use (and recommend) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rememberthemilk.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Remember The Milk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing is that you can set task with everything (date due, priority, tags, ...) with their markup, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;check references #work #writing #qft-project ^tomorrow !2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works on web, and as an application for mobile devices, with which it synchronizes (the only bad thing is that in free version you can do it once 24h). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there are larger goals (e.g. &quot;finish a paper&quot;) they need to be split in smaller tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T17:08:09.390" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8150" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:21:32.727" Score="15" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received a paper for review that does not have a single citation (in the text) of its references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is common in other areas non-CS related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is a conference, I don't think I should contact the editor, but I do think it should lose many points in its evaluation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall the paper is well written, and they do not seem amateurish people writing their first paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T17:03:56.673" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T15:03:10.237" Title="What to do with a paper with references but no citations?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:38:36.573" Score="23" ViewCount="25898" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the advantage of becoming a full professor if you are already an associate professor with tenure? Why not just stay an associate professor for life? What is the key difference between an associate professor and a full professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure? Can't a tenured associate professor stop writing papers and still have a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6096" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-02-23T02:05:01.893" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T23:39:49.107" Title="What is the advantage of becoming a full professor if you already have tenure as an associate professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:58:06.323" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key difference is that full professors are paid more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T17:58:06.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-22T18:06:30.907" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One could say that a full professor has a more prominent position in its department, but that is somehow more trouble (e.g. you can have to be chair) than entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the real point is that becoming a full professor is a recognition of your qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T18:06:30.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-22T18:13:47.053" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Netherlands, you need to be a full professor before you can be the main supervisor (promotor) of a PhD student. Otherwise you can only be a co-supervisor (co-promotor), and thereby miss out on all the credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T18:13:47.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-22T18:50:22.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is often also that full professors have their own group or department. Associate professors often have just a few PhDs and postdocs. So, getting full professorship is a means of really creating your own group of people, and direct them towards research that you think needs to be done. In that sense it is comparable to rising in the ranks of any ordinary company, you start as a business unit manager, and then go on to be CEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T18:50:22.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2013-02-22T19:59:45.307" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No work exists in isolation. The authors need to position their work in relation to existing work, and this requires more than just putting a bunch of papers in the bibliography section: it requires a detailed comparison. The authors failed to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In any case,  there will always be another conference for them to resubmit to.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T19:59:45.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2013-02-22T20:53:53.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am one of the developers of SlideWiki and would suggest you to use that (&lt;a href=&quot;http://slidewiki.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://slidewiki.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SlideWiki &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WYSIWYG slide authoring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logical slide and deck representation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX/MathML integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multilingual decks / semi-automatic translation in 50+ languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PowerPoint/HTML import&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source code highlighting within slides&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dynamic CSS themability and transitions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social networking activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full revisioning and branching of slides and decks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-Learning with self-assessment questionnaires&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6099" LastEditorUserId="6099" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T13:31:24.803" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T13:31:24.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-22T21:03:00.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with the answer provided by Noah Snyder, and following from the OP's comments to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to an increase in pay, full professors often have a different expectation for &lt;strong&gt;service&lt;/strong&gt; - to the department, institution, professional, whatever. Usually, these sorts of activities are undertaken to gain promotion and/or tenure. As a full professor, there are few options for advancement, and so fewer expectations that you do things to earn yourself a promotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, slacking off after becoming a full professor will cheat you out of that better-paying named professorship or named chair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T21:03:00.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2013-02-22T22:04:41.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My initial reaction is that they merely have encountered a set of issues for which there are no relevant papers they could cite. For example, where would you expect citations in there? Citations for the sake of citations are a Bad Thing. Citations should advance the position of the paper in a meaningful, shoulders-of-giants kind of way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And initial reactions are often the right one&lt;sup&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But upon further reflection, it occurs to me that with the vast multitude of papers out there, the likelihood of not having a single paper that could help advance this paper's position in a meaningful way is probably very, very small. What is much more likely is that the authors either did not do their due diligence in looking for work that could have advanced their position and/or saved them time, or worse, specifically excluded other research because glaring similarities. Both are common, and either is bad for the authors and the scientific community as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing that concerns me is... where did they get the idea to do whatever is in the paper? Was it not at least &lt;em&gt;partially&lt;/em&gt; based on some published work that they're either challenging or advancing? That is the most troubling thing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="877" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T15:03:10.237" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T15:03:10.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2013-02-22T23:41:32.360" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK. Now I have some &lt;strong&gt;very clear answer&lt;/strong&gt;. The list of all requesters is in fact &lt;strong&gt;PUBLISHED&lt;/strong&gt; on NSF website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, for example, all NSF FOIA request in 2010 (PDF)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/policies/2010_FOIA_LOG.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.nsf.gov/policies/2010_FOIA_LOG.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link is found at the bottom of this page:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/policies/foia.jsp&quot;&gt;http://www.nsf.gov/policies/foia.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6078" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T23:41:32.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-23T00:26:08.983" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit similar to other answers - keep a good list - but that's not going to fix your problem. Your problem is that employers, academic or industry, will always try to get more and more out of you. That is just the nature of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, keep a list of what is important and what is urgent and learn to drop the other stuff. It is natural to try to do more and more things, especially when some seem really interesting, however, you have to decide what you can do and what you cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The life of an academic is not one of punching the clock and working 9-5. The good news is that we do get a bit of flexibility. However, sometimes we do need to fight for that flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might read a recent book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307465357&quot;&gt;The Four-Hour Work Week&lt;/a&gt;. There is a lot which does not relate to academic work (at least not to teaching) at all (like trying to work from home). However, it does include some very good reminders to simply do the important stuff and drop the unimportant stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T00:26:08.983" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-23T00:35:50.570" Score="52" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure? Can't a tenured associate professor not write papers and still have a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general answer is simple: most of the people who would quit doing research after tenure in fact quit before tenure.  The ones who make it to tenure generally care about research and intend to continue at it for a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reaching an associate professor position in a research university is a long journey.  At this stage you could stop writing papers and lead a comfortable life, if you were willing to live with the disapproval of your department chair (which is not an easy thing: there are many ways they can make your life unpleasant even if they can't fire you).  However, if that's all you wanted, you could have had it with much less effort along the way.  By the time you reach tenure, you have let many opportunities to change your career go by, and you have repeatedly passed through filters intended to measure your talent and ambition.  This selection process means tenured professors at research universities generally really want to do research.  Now, sometimes people change their minds or burn out, and a few might never have intended to maintain their research programs.  However, on the whole this is a group that has been selected for research enthusiasm and ambition, so it's no surprise that on average they maintain the desire to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T00:35:50.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2013-02-23T01:33:43.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from your question, whether they simply don't regard other papers in the field, or they do have related work etc. but they omit the in-body-citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is the first case, I'd second Dave's answer (unless it's a brand new question with a brand new technique that solves it, and they clearly say that no related work can be found to the best of their knowledge).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it is the second case, it seems quite technical issue that can be easily fixed, and in this case you can just mention in your review that references are missing and this should be fixed (also note this to the PC chair; s/he can condition the acceptance on fixing this issue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that it's a conference, in my eyes, makes it more flexible -- papers should be considered mainly by merit and not by technicalities. I can think of the opposite case, where the paper has all the citation, gets accepted, but in the camera-ready version all references are removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T01:33:43.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8006" CreationDate="2013-02-23T02:01:35.703" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I give advice as a former Assistant Professor who did not get tenure? Here is where I went wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be quick to change. It takes a lot of time to change into a new field. If you feel you may need to do this to secure more funding, don't delay. Make time to continually evolve. Sticking to one thing may have taken you to where you are now, but successful academicians are continually branching into new fields and collaborations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate early and often in your career. Do not isolate yourself (and be careful going to a department where you are the only person doing what you do). You will need collaborators to get consistent funding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire the best graduate students and postdocs. It's tough when you're new, because you feel like you have to grab the first student that expresses any interest. The problem is you may waste more time and money training a bad student than it's worth in the end. The difference between a success and a failure in academia often hinges on getting the right trainees. Do not underestimate the importance of this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry about teaching for your first few years. Do as little as possible. Same goes for service (i.e. committees). Most departments will give you a break your first few years anyway, but some make the mistake of volunteering time they really should be spending on research and securing funding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to play the game. A lot of the effort to getting funding these days is about marketing yourself and your projects. Figure this out early. Why should people care about what you're doing? Why do you deserve this million dollar grant? Not everyone is trying to cure cancer, but you need to be able to justify your research to anyone. You need to be able to generate excitement about your research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think long-term in addition to short-term. There are short-term goals everyone has to accomplish, but make sure your long-term strategy makes sense for your chosen career path.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what you're good at. Before you become a professor, everyone is always patting you on the back, but that's before there's real money at stake. When you start to apply for $1M grants, you need to be an expert in your field. One of my biggest issues was I tried to do a little bit of everything, but in the end, I wasn't a true expert in anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6101" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T02:01:35.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-23T06:19:59.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Gmail user and prefer &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=106237&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gmail Tasks&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=qrka_3jui8M&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Watch a short video about it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a personal email and work email, so I separate the task lists naturally on both accounts - it allows me to focus on work while I'm &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; work, without distractions about home stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Tasks integrate into Gmail, as many tasks originate from an email. A great way to remove an email from the inbox is to create a new task with the email (if you can't take care of the task straight away). Gmail has keyboard shortcuts with tasks, so &lt;kbd&gt;SHIFT&lt;/kbd&gt;-&lt;kbd&gt;T&lt;/kbd&gt; makes a new task with the current email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an iOS app called Go Tasks that syncs to Google Tasks, with support for multiple accounts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no priorities, but I either put deadlines (which cause tasks to show on a Google calendar) or shift them up/down on the task list. Tasks can be hierarchical, so I define themes (courses I teach, articles, committees, etc.) and tasks within them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the growing number of tasks, many items every year get closed without being done, but that's life. They're lower priority and you can't do it all. Often a task becomes OBE - overtaken by events. Some items, like course improvement tasks, stay on the list until the next time I teach the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T00:18:14.490" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T00:18:14.490" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2013-02-23T09:03:17.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it helps to have a list system that allows you to prioritize the important and temporarily ignore the less important.  I use Omnifocus, though it's not everyone's cup of tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, as more and more gets added to the list, eventually you have to realize that there are things on the list that will never get done.  Those things are only burning up your mental energy.  I periodically review my lists and delete things that I don't believe will get done.  After doing this for a while, you start to sense which things won't get done, even &lt;strong&gt;before they get onto the list&lt;/strong&gt;, and you start saying no to them in advance.  You have a finite amount of time, so you have to be selective in what you choose to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a few years ago I wouldn't have dreamed of saying 'no' to any interesting research collaboration.  But nowadays doing so is absolutely essential to my sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same advice is given in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8010/81&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T09:03:17.057" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8162" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-23T13:54:51.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latex-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; is a document preparation system based on the TeX typesetting language developed by Donald E. Knuth. LaTeX was first developed by Leslie Lamport in 1985 and is available as free software under the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.latex-project.org/lppl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX project public license&lt;/a&gt;. LaTeX is thus short for Lamport TeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;a Stack Exchange site dedicated to LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;, which is a good place to ask any (La)TeX-related questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great many problems can be solved by selecting the right existing macro package from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CTAN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Popular Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5414/what-are-the-advantages-or-disadvantages-of-using-latex-for-writing-scientific-p/5424#5424&quot;&gt;What are the advantages or disadvantages of using LaTeX for writing scientific publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3940" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2020-06-26T00:46:16.800" LastActivityDate="2020-06-26T00:46:16.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8163" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-23T13:54:51.700" Score="0" Body="On the LaTeX document preparation system based on the TeX typesetting language. Note that http://tex.stackexchange.com is specifically dedicated to (La)TeX related questions." OwnerUserId="3940" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2020-06-26T00:46:03.260" LastActivityDate="2020-06-26T00:46:03.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-23T19:08:11.603" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is fun?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some academics forge a rewarding career from teaching and administration, for most academics research is what provides a substantial part of their job satisfaction.  If research is not something you actively &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do, academia might not be a good career path, especially not being a senior academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T19:08:11.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8145" CreationDate="2013-02-24T01:25:58.797" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yet another reason to seek promotion to full professor is &lt;strong&gt;political influence&lt;/strong&gt;.  Especially in larger/older departments and universities, administrative positions (department chair, dean, etc.) and membership in influential committees may be restricted to full professors.  (For example, in my department, only full professors may serve on the promotions and tenure committee; similar restrictions apply to college- and campus-level committees.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the flip side of the &lt;strong&gt;service&lt;/strong&gt; expectation that Ben Norris mentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T01:25:58.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8167" CreationDate="2013-02-24T08:27:30.100" Score="5" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;How related two conferences are if B is sponsored by A? If A is a top conference, does this make B a worth-trusting conference also? For example, SIGCOMM is a top conference in computer networks &amp;amp; communications, and CoNEXT is sponsored by it. Does that automatically make CoNEXT a quality conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T18:16:44.570" Title="Conference sponsored by a top conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8166" CreationDate="2013-02-24T09:00:06.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The top conference has reputation to keep up, so if they associate themselves with the other conference this indicates that they trust the organizers of the other conference to do a good job. So, I'd see the endorsement as a sign that the level of the conference is probably good, although there are no guarantees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T09:00:06.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8166" CreationDate="2013-02-24T10:21:15.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what it means for one conference to sponsor another. In the particular case you mention, &quot;SIGCOMM&quot; is both the name of a conference and the name of a group within the ACM that sponsors that conference. So it's likely that SIGCOMM (the group) is sponsoring CONEXT, rather than SIGCOMM (the conference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T18:16:44.570" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T18:16:44.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-24T10:34:34.067" Score="11" ViewCount="1455" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a good thing for an undergraduate student to publish in a low-tier conference as first author ? Or should the student avoid from such places and only publish in atleast reputable places ? If it is a good thing, how should the student present his study in graduate admissions process to admissions members, since the conference name is mostly unknown to much of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, by low tier, I mean the conferences which are ranked at &quot;&lt;em&gt;C level&lt;/em&gt;&quot; according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au/cms/images/downloads/conference/08sorttitleERA2010_conference_list.pdf&quot;&gt;ERA&lt;/a&gt; (Excellence in Research for Australia). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6113" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T13:33:55.193" Title="Having a low tier publication as an undergraduate student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8176" CreationDate="2013-02-24T10:46:59.647" Score="12" ViewCount="30822" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried googling around for this but I haven't really understood how the British grading scheme works. I am specifically interested in knowing the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a 2:1?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a level A?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I convert from and to A, B, C grades to numerical grades?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6109" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T15:48:47.160" Title="Converting from and to British grading scheme" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8169" CreationDate="2013-02-24T11:52:27.333" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer the important parts of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a good thing for an undergraduate student to publish in a low-tier conference as first author ? Or should the student avoid from such places and only publish in at least reputable places ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, especially if the venue is peer-reviewed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6010/importance-of-undergraduate-research&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; suggest, graduate schools look for evidence of &lt;strong&gt;research potential&lt;/strong&gt;. The undergraduate research experience is about developing some basic skills and demonstrating that you are capable of handling a research project. Publishing at a third-tier conference, so long as there is some level of peer review, is better than no publications. Would publishing at a higher tier conference be better? Sure, but it might not be worth the effort or the risk of rejection. Publishing at a third-tier conference would look better than being rejected from a first-tier conference. Being first author on a paper at a lower tier conference should hold more weight than being a middle author on a paper at a higher-ranked conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your research adviser probably has some wisdom about the level of conference at which your work should be presented. Choosing a lower tier conference is not about making your work seem less important. The choice might be about guaranteeing you get the change to present it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it is a good thing, how should the student present his study in graduate admissions process to admissions members, since the conference name is mostly unknown to much of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present your work and conference presentation the same way you would present any other similar experiences. If you have to provide a personal statement as part of your application, write about the experience and how it benefited you. If they ask for a list of relevant accomplishments, include this presentation in that list. Put it in on your resumé. Ask your research adviser for a letter of recommendation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use any negative language or derogatory language when describing your experience. For example, don't mention that the conference is lower tier or that you thought you could have presented at a better one. If the admissions committee knows about the conference, then they already know about its ranking. If they do not, then you should not be the one to give any hint that you think your experience might have been sub-par. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T11:52:27.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-23T04:50:12.390" Score="29" ViewCount="6720" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to a prestigious university in the States for my PhD but was unfortunately rejected. I had a great undergraduate track record... but still didn't quite make it. The faculty I really, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to work with are at this University... I really don't know what to do. I spent the whole day refreshing my email, waiting on the off-chance that an acceptance would come... but it didn't. I'm honestly devastated right now. I know I shouldn't feel so strongly about this, but I'm an incredibly competitive person my nature and I've wanted to attend this institution since I was a freshman in high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my options? I did apply to some backup schools...but I don't know if I should consider going to one of them or just waiting a year and reapplying... Any help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user31458" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T05:57:29.533" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T05:57:29.533" Title="I was rejected from my dream graduate school...what should I do?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-23T07:22:57.473" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I will try to form an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week I set through a three hour memorial presentation for the 25 years since the death of Feynman. The person who was presenting the way the Feynman Lectures series ( red books) caught the imagination of physicists made the following comment: &quot;.most of the real students in his audience left physics&quot; . I tried to find a link but did not succeed. But I had some personal experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in 1964, when I was a graduate student in a nascent school in Athens, Greece, after a semester of field theory from the book by Bogoliubov went to a Cern summer school in Yugoslavia. There &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martinus_J._G._Veltman&quot;&gt;Veltman&lt;/a&gt; gave three weeks  of lectures where the scales fell from my eyes and I realized in my gut feelings what all the fuss with operators was about: crossections.  Enthused by this I managed to get a place at the Erice meeting of 1964 where Feynman would lecture. I was severely disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize now that I joined at the time the students from his feynman series course :). The reason? At the time we were all excited about the eightfold way and quarks and tantalizing SU(3) . Feynman spent his time in showing us how HE derived the same things in what was for me not a particularly elegant way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also followed a series of lectures he gave in 1981 in a Crete workshop when QCD was all the rage, and again , he derived for us QCD in his own unique way. This time I could appreciate it having become sophisticated enough to admire how he could think out of the box still at his age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My anecdotes are to show that a physics personality may be very attractive to an aspiring physicist but that does not mean that being a student of Feynman would allow one to develop as an independent thinker next to his shade. If you are competitive, you should think of this .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your place I would choose one of my alternate universities, looking at how the graduate students from there were placed as post docs, and not waste time : most original thoughts come before 30 for physicists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my two cents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94323" OwnerDisplayName="anna v" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T07:22:57.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8118" CreationDate="2013-02-24T13:10:26.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've mentioned, a paper trail is always harder to deal with in presentations—and taking credit is a lot harder to define than on a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, you have a few key challenges: you will first need to find a new job as soon as possible. Secondly, you will need to establish the paper trail that shows that the ideas and results that you have obtained are in fact yours. This requires having a clear email trail, plus any relevant lab notebooks and supporting evidence that shows such work was in fact yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you have already done due diligence in that you have alerted the administration to the possibility of academic dishonesty on the part of your advisor, and you have also informed him of your intentions in this matter (by email, which he has received). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done both of these things, then you should be able, as you suggested, to work directly with the editors of any journals in which your advisor chooses to publish this work without you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one other thing that you could do is write up your work independently. Presumably, you are much more knowledgeable about the specifics of the methods and techniques that you've performed, and would be able to write a better paper on this topic than he can by himself (which he would need to do in order to publish without you). You could then offer him to publish those manuscripts. (Before sending him such a manuscript, however, I would be sure to watermark the PDF, and lock it down so that it can't be printed, edited, or copied. Alternatively, I'd only send part of the paper—by withholding the methodologies and conclusions sections, for instance.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T13:10:26.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8177" CreationDate="2013-02-24T14:38:50.160" Score="27" ViewCount="2743" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prof. X added me as a coauthor on a paper , although my contribution was minor. I told him so, he insisted and said it was necessary for me (I can't give details). Later my relation with Prof X seriously soured. I asked that he remove my name from the paper: I already have an OK publication record (about 100 citations) and I didn't want to pollute it with an undeserved paper, especially in view of the souring of my relation with Prof X.&#xA;I had an essential contribution in all my previous papers. Prof X said it was impossible to remove my name since it was already submitted. I reluctantly accepted. The paper was rejected. Prof X wants to resubmit it to a less prestigious journal. I definitely don't want my name on it. Prof X insists to keep my name, saying that re-submitting the paper without my name might harm his reputation in the community. I can't claim to be white as snow : It's clear that I should never have accepted to have my name on this paper in the first place. I don't want to antagonize him further, but what should I do now ? Is it true that resubmitting without my name can harm his reputation ? Isn't there some way around this ? (My field is Math/Physics/Engineering. I can't give more details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6114" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T13:31:14.900" Title="Should I keep my name on a paper in which I have no important contribution?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-02-24T14:51:43.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK system uses the notation of 1st, 2.1, 2.2, 3rd as degree classifications. Most individual modules/classes are grade on either an A, B, C, ... scale or a percentage scale. I believe the conversion of A-=70=1st and B-=60=2.1 is pretty universal. At reasonable universities, approximately 10% of students get a first and 60% get a 2.1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under no circumstances would I advise converting your own marks on an application. State the marks you got and if it is a particularly bizarre system provide a link where they can get more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T14:51:43.257" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8175" CreationDate="2013-02-24T15:07:45.163" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standards (and customs) for coäuthorship depend heavily on your field, but if you contributed to the work reported in the paper, you might first want to consider actually accepting coäuthorship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you think the work is actually crap, there is no downside (having a few not-so-great papers doesn't actually hurt, even if it doesn't help your career).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you worked with prof. X, it might be nice to have something (a paper) to show for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The relationship may have soured, but are you ready to burn that bridge? If he insists on coäuthorship, a flat refusal will annoy him, probably because it would hurt him for some strategic reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the other hand, it's entirely your choice to make. Nobody can force you: if it comes to that, just flatly state that you do not wish to be a coäuthor on the paper. After that was made clear, and in writing, there is little chance prof. X will submit it with your name behind your back: that would be a very severe breach of ethics, and grounds for immediate retraction of the paper when you find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, on the question of whether resubmitting without your name can actually hurt him… yeah, it could be an annoyance. There are a few people (editor and referees for the first paper) who would have knowledge that the same paper was submitted twice with different author lists, which definitely gives a bad impression of the senior author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T15:07:45.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-24T16:10:27.137" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that your question has been migrated, and therefore it might not be obvious whether you want to have your career in academia. But if that's the case, not being accepted to your first choice is probably not as bad as it first seems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you don't need to be in the same university to collaborate with the faculty you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to work with. Perhaps it would be easier if you were in the same department, but you're starting a 45+ years career, you will have plenty of opportunities to work with him/her in the future. Getting your PhD is just the first step, not the final one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some comments say, in the end, &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; you did your PhD is not the most important, &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you do during it is. If you can find another nice place to work, then consider it as a challenge to work hard enough to get a permanent position in your dream university later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, just to look at the bright side of things, not getting there might be a chance: a very important aspect to measure the quality of a PhD is to show how you can do &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; research, i.e., without your main advisor. Hence, doing your PhD with someone you admire (I'm extrapolating here), although very rewarding on the short term, might tie you to work only with him/her, and thus reduce your visibility as an independent researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer shortly your question: since you're competitive (and many people are in academia), go do your PhD where you are accepted, do the best PhD ever witnessed in this university, get the best publications, and then people will look at your work more than the place you did your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T16:10:27.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-24T16:15:49.890" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disappointment is a real part of life, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My belief is that, in order to succeed in academia, one needs to maintain a &lt;em&gt;concrete yet ultimately attainable set of goals&lt;/em&gt;. These goals should be things that have a realistic probability of being achieved, but allows you some room to maneuver around in which to attain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying &quot;I want to go to graduate school to get a PhD in [insert field of choice here]&quot; is reasonable and gives you several routes to get there. Saying &quot;I want to go to graduate school X to work with professor Y on topic Z&quot; places way too many constraints on yourself: first you need to get into graduate school X, then hope that professor Y is still offering projects in topic Z, and prefers &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to other applicants in the program. This is a way of setting yourself up for disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I would recommend is regrouping. Find an alternate strategy for yourself. What do you want to do in graduate school—beyond working with Prof. X or Y (who by the way, might not be a very good graduate mentor)? Figure out what the goals you have are, both for your graduate degree and beyond, and then figure out what options, among the ones you still have available, will be the ones that best get you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T16:15:49.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-24T17:42:05.357" Score="14" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What minimal responsibilities can a student expect from their day-to-day supervisor?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my institute, we usually have the head of the institute as the formal supervisor, followed by another day-to-day supervisor.  In fact, the head of the institute does nothing, and the day-to-day supervisor is the one who is supposed to do the PhD supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few institutions do codify the responsibilities of advisors and supervisors.  See, for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/policies/codeofpractice.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Code of Practice for Supervisors, Advisors and Research Degree Candidates&quot;&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mcgill.ca/study/2015-2016/university_regulations_and_resources/graduate/gps_gi_guidelines_policies_grad_student_advising_supervision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Policies and Guidelines on Graduate Student Advising and Supervision&quot;&lt;/a&gt; from McGill University in Canada.  Are these guidelines universal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6117" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T17:39:06.907" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T17:39:06.907" Title="What is the minimum one should expect from the day-to-day supervisor?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8175" CreationDate="2013-02-24T17:50:01.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relationship may have soured, but are you ready to burn that bridge? If he insists on coäuthorship, a flat refusal will annoy him, probably because it would hurt him for some strategic reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens more than you think (user6114), it is common. Again the choice is yours. A know a few students that had this &quot;offer&quot;. Offer to put someone has co-author or offer to be co-author...the decision is 100% yours.. but ... if the paper was alreday submitted you shouldn't ask to take out your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6117" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T17:50:01.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8131" CreationDate="2013-02-24T20:49:59.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, in most cases you have summary pages that give your overall statistics and even compare you to other teachers in the department. By all means, submit those (juts scan them all into a single PDF). Those are not cherry-picking in any way, so that would remove your main concern. Second, on the top of it, sift through the hundreds you have to choose the most meaningful and nice comments and scan 10-15 of them (you shouldn't be shy and afraid to show your best in your application: after all, if you tell me that you always dress as neatly and behave as nicely as you do on your interview day, I'll just laugh). That should be more than enough for any hiring committee member unless he has a strong prejudice against you for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T20:49:59.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-02-25T00:58:29.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An A is 70% upwards (this is also known as a 1st)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2:1 is 60%-69% (also known as a B or upper second)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2:2 is a C 50%-59% (lower second)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 3rd is 40-49% (a d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T00:58:29.840" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:39:18.443" Score="13" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very new to this grad school process and currently overwhelmed to the point of tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated from Stony Brook with a degree in Sociology in 2010. I was also admitted to Alpha Kappa Delta that year. I was a teaching assistant for 2 classes and had a 3.28 gpa overall but a higher gpa in just sociology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took time off to earn money and just give myself a break. I work as a babysitter, make pretty decent money, and I enjoy what I do but I want to go back to grad school now. I have no research experience, I am currently studying for the GRE, reading up on some information and I honestly don't know where to start or if I have a snowball's chance in a furnace of getting in anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to go back Fall 2014 (giving myself time) and I am looking at programs like Cornell, Rutgers, and Syracuse (probably more as time goes on) and thinking the only way I am getting into any of those is if the faculty has pity on me. I feel I am intelligent and could do grad work, I just don't know how I can prove to admissions I can so they will let me in. I'd really like a Ph.D but if I have to start off with a masters to get into the school, I will. Although my fear of asking this question is currently taking over since I fear someone will squish my dream of grad school like a slow moving spider, if I don't ask, I won't be able to go forward since I don't know where to begin...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honest advice or information would be much appreciated. I want to go to grad school and I am willing to find ways to make that happen, just no idea where to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so very much ahead of time...^^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6121" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T11:25:48.350" Title="Need help and advice concerning how to apply and look for grad schools" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8184" CreationDate="2013-02-25T03:04:33.217" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first advice I have to give you is perhaps the most important: in the immortal words of &lt;em&gt;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;DON'T PANIC&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, identify the schools to which you'd be interested in applying. You should find a reasonable number (6 plus or minus 2 is typical), and plan on some &quot;long shots,&quot; some &quot;typical&quot; schools for you, and one or two schools which you would have as a &quot;fall back&quot; option—in case none of the &quot;long shots&quot; and &quot;typicals&quot; work out for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also find people who can write letters of support for you. This is perhaps the hardest part for you. Luckily, you've finished relatively recently, so you should be able to find people in academia who can write some letters of support for you. If you have a few people such as employers who can vouch for your work ethic, that could also work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing well on the GRE will also help, but it isn't likely to make a huge difference except in &quot;borderline&quot; cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that might help your case is to get directly into contact with people at the various schools you'd be interested in attending. If you can organize a meeting with some of the faculty there and present your case in person, that can leave a more positive impression than just submitting an application &quot;cold.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you can do to help your case is to have a &lt;em&gt;clear and compelling explanation&lt;/em&gt; for what you want to do, and why you feel a master's or a PhD is the right way to accomplish those goals. I see far too many applications from candidates who otherwise might be viable who can't elucidate a single reason to go to graduate school beyond. Having a compelling plan can go some ways toward convincing skeptical faculty members that you are serious about graduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you can consider all of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;the advice about getting a bad transcript past admissions&lt;/a&gt; as additional suggestions for how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T03:04:33.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-25T03:13:59.130" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go to grad school at the best place where you were accepted&lt;/strong&gt;, and work hard to take advantage of whatever opportunities that school has to offer (even if they were not what you first envisioned).  At the same time, keep in mind the &lt;strong&gt;possibility of transferring after you finish a masters degree&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is fairly common in mathematics (my field).  It can be a great way to &quot;move up&quot; to a higher quality school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're considering transferring, you should immediately begin working (at your first school) to &lt;strong&gt;network&lt;/strong&gt; and to &lt;strong&gt;develop relationships with professor who can write you letters of recommendation&lt;/strong&gt; (obviously, you should also &lt;strong&gt;publish good papers&lt;/strong&gt;).  In fact, you should do all of these things regardless, but now you will have more urgency.  One advantage of this approach is that your work will be valuable whether you transfer or stay at the same school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it sounds like you had your (academic) life planned out, and now you must make a new plan.  One weakness of your first plan is that it was &quot;fragile&quot; in the sense that it depended on many things outside of your control.  &lt;strong&gt;You will be happier (and generally more successful) if you focus your plans and energies on things &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; your control.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T03:13:59.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8184" CreationDate="2013-02-25T03:25:24.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me recommend to you Phil Agre's &lt;a href=&quot;http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/grad-school.html&quot;&gt;Advice for Undergraduates Considering Graduate School&lt;/a&gt;.  This essay is about 12 pages, with sections such as &quot;What is Graduate School?&quot;, &quot;Do I want to go to Graduate School?&quot;, &quot;Research&quot;, &quot;Applying to Graduate School&quot;, &quot;Letters of Recommendation&quot;, and &quot;Getting Accepted to Graduate School&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T03:25:24.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8180" CreationDate="2013-02-25T09:21:47.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is reasonable to expect two things from a day-to-day PhD advisor. The first is a willingness to meet in a timely manner and discuss expectations and the second is a willingness to deliver on agreements in a timely manner. If there is something you need/want from your day-to-day PhD advisor, then ask him/her about it. If you are concerned that your request is unreasonable, then ask colleagues or here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with answering the question in general is summed up in the &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/policies/codeofpractice.html&quot;&gt;UTS link&lt;/a&gt; you provided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the outset it is important to acknowledge that the nature of the&#xA;  student-supervisor relationship cannot be mandated, largely because it&#xA;  needs to be flexible and take into account the particular&#xA;  circumstances of the research project, the student and the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the universality of formal guidelines about expected behavior in regards to advising students, all universities provide a faculty handbook that has some minimal guidelines, but generally it is not as long or formal as the links you provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T09:21:47.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8118" CreationDate="2013-02-25T09:54:14.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start with plagiarism/academic dishonesty is a serious offense and it should always be dealt with. You said, &quot;After working on a large project of his for about two full-time years...&quot; this immediately puts us into a gray area. Did you discuss authorship at the start of the project and if so what was agreed then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I employ someone to work on a grant, that doesn't guarantee them co-authorship on everything they work on. Often I need someone to turn a crank and there just isn't the opportunity to make a contribution worthy of authorship. Other times I may not trust the person enough to do anything independently enough and therefore spoon feed them. In my opinion the extent to which supervisors &quot;steal&quot; the work of their advisees is often overrated by advisees, especially ones who have had a falling out with their supervisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a sour relationship with your former advisor and the first thing you need to do is to repair the relationship. Accusing a former supervisor of academic dishonesty by brandishing words like plagiarism is not helpful in this regards. Talking to him and explaining that you need to publish the work is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest creating a list of all the projects that you worked on while in his group. From this list, you need to identify the publications that you can generate without needing any resources from him (i.e., access to HIS computer/software) and ones that you need to collaborate with him on. The goal is to identify all potential publications and establish authorship (i.e., what should have been done at the outset).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each publication that does not need any additional resources, write a short description/abstract about the key findings, propose an author list and order, provide a time line until submission. For these publications, you should be the only one responsible for anything on the time line (apart from providing feedback on drafts). Ask him to provide feedback on the key findings, author list, and time line so that you can tailor them to better fit his needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each publication that requires additional resources, you need to remember, he can ignore your previous work and just regenerate it and write the publications on his own. What you are offering is a collaboration. Again, you need to write a short description/abstract about the key findings and the additional work required, propose an author list and order, and provide a time line until submission. For these publications, the more you expect of other and the more resources you need, the less enticing the collaboration is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T09:54:14.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-25T10:21:06.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A similar thing happened to me, although I did get the academic position at first, but not the funding a few months later. I was absolutely gutted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm writing from the comfortable position of a PhD student at a place (another place!) which is great in almost any respect I can think of. In retrospect, here is what I learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By enrolling in grad studies, you're entering a whole new arena. In good schools, nearly every student who comes in is used to being in the top 10% of his year. Of them, in grad school, only 10% will have this distinction. Sometimes, dealing with this disappointment starts with the admissions process. But wherever you're admitted to, it will continue: a good part of being a scientist is about becoming genuinely interested to hear more whenever you're told you're doing something wrong. This goes against every gut instinct you have, and takes time to internalize. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Universities have rankings, which gives an impression that they're in competition with each other. But great science comes from having many different people poke at a problem from different angles. This means that there is normally good collaboration going on between labs (i.e. universities) working on any given subfield. It is not uncommon for a student to be shared between supervisors from different universities, so you still have the opportunity to collaborate with the lab you were initially interested in even if you go elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can always try again at the original university, either by transferring during your graduate studies, or by applying for a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have great passion about a particular area of research, it will very likely be ignited once you come in close contact with some other area of research. Mastering new concepts, and pushing the boundaries of your field with exciting new research, is just intrinsically pleasing. So if you like research, you will likely enjoy any lab you get into.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, your chances for remaining in academia will mostly depend on your publication record. If you do well in that respect, nobody will take it against you if you didn't go to a particular school. On the other hand, a one-year break in your studies could look bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So hang in there: it's not easy being rejected, but not so many options are closed to you as it may seem at this moment. I would just go for another school and work my way from there if I were you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T10:21:06.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8172" CreationDate="2013-02-25T10:22:32.890" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really want to study in particular place, you can consider doing PhD another place (where you get admitted) and then apply again. But beware, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8179/49&quot;&gt;aeismail&lt;/a&gt; says, putting too many constrains is risky (typically people apply to at least a few different universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may depend on your priorities, but one friend of mine applied to a few PhD programs in US (from EU)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one year he got rejected everywhere,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the next year he got admitted everywhere (and they were only top-tier universities).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what was the difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime he has learnt how to apply (e.g. how to write a research statement, how to get an appropriate guy for a recommendation letter) and got external funding (Fulbright fellowship). He spent the extra year doing research in another institute, so it was not wasted in any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW: The story / &quot;how to&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://kni.wikidot.com/gdzie-doktorat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://kni.wikidot.com/gdzie-doktorat&lt;/a&gt; (in Polish), and research statements &quot;before vs after&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://kni.wikidot.com/moja-historia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://kni.wikidot.com/moja-historia&lt;/a&gt; (links on the top - at least they are in English :)).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:21:36.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8180" CreationDate="2013-02-25T12:38:01.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Based on my experiences...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on those I know, the guidelines you link to are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The day-to-day supervisor approach is typically implemented passively because the main supervisor (i.e., the guy in absentia most of the time) is too busy to actually manage the students. For this approach to be practical, the day-to-day supervisor must have expertise in your research and must be aware of the general research path of the group (i.e., can provide not only advice but direction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, most labs with a day-to-day supervisor in addition to the main one will be more difficult to work in as a graduate student. The only case where this can be a benefit is where the formal advisor is some ridiculously well-known figure in the field, and your just being in their lab will lead to opportunities down the road. For the majority of labs with this setup, though, it's simply because the formal advisor is too busy to deal with (or otherwise disintereted) the graduate students, and has set up someone else to deal with them. This typically leads to communication issues, lack of guidance, long delays in your advisor reviewing your work &amp;amp; publications, and frustration. I would approach these setups cautiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit based on comments:&lt;/em&gt; The main reason these setups tend to fail is that the supervisor's unspoken job description is one that will never be filled; replicate the domain expertise and research experience of the advisor while essentially being a graduate student counselor. Anyone who can do that will be running their &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; lab, not helping you manage your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that those who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; take the job either don't have the relevant domain expertise to adequately answer student questions, or relevant research experience to design, run, and analyze data from a complete research project. Any lacking expertise translates into &quot;lets just wait until your next advisor meeting&quot;, which adds long delays to &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T14:54:49.767" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T14:54:49.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8196" CreationDate="2013-02-25T13:22:31.660" Score="236" ViewCount="38648" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my students is an escort/stripper and she has offered me (and other faculty in my department) her &quot;services&quot;. I am pretty sure my initial reaction of &quot;thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the standard deviation&quot;, may not have been the best reaction. The offers have continued. My head of school is aware of the issue, and has asked if I want him to do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the student doing anything wrong by offering her services to me? For what it is worth, prostitution is legal in the UK. Is this any different then a student telling me she works in a restaurant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct response in a situation like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2019-09-24T21:33:29.547" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T21:40:51.697" Title="Sex worker student offering her (lawful) services" Tags="&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="33" FavoriteCount="40" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8169" CreationDate="2013-02-25T13:33:55.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to extensive Ben Norris's answer - as far as I know, ERA has been discontinued, but, Brazilian CS community did a conference ranking for their internal evaluation purposes. Here is the list (explanations are in Portuguese, but the names of the conferences are from all over the world) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capes.gov.br/images/stories/download/avaliacao/Comunicado_004_2012_Ciencia_da_Computacao.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.capes.gov.br/images/stories/download/avaliacao/Comunicado_004_2012_Ciencia_da_Computacao.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, A1 is the best, B5 is worse - that is essentially based on h-index of a conference computed via this tool: &lt;a href=&quot;http://shine.icomp.ufam.edu.br/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://shine.icomp.ufam.edu.br/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be the conference where you published is of better position there:)? There are also several community-driven rankings but I cannot post links to them as my reputation is not enough for posting more than 2 links;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T13:33:55.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8194" CreationDate="2013-02-25T13:40:50.053" Score="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;em&gt;“thanks for letting me know”&lt;/em&gt; is not an unambiguous &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. I suppose most people would actually get it, but she already appears to have boundary issues, so you should make it much clearer. The best thing to do would be to make it clear to her that you consider &lt;strong&gt;her propositions to be out of line&lt;/strong&gt;. You can add, that while you don't think badly of her because of it, &lt;strong&gt;such offers have no place in the classroom&lt;/strong&gt; (or in a student/teacher relationship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you would probably do the same if she insisted on asking you to come have dinner at a restaurant she worked at: you'd be annoyed by it, because it is detrimental to her (and others) attention. I regularly have students who ask out-of-line questions, and I try to be firm: while I'd be happy to discuss if we were friends, we are not and my class/practicals/whatever is not the right place for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a distinction between talking about sex and dining: the law makes a distinction in many countries, including UK. From UCL's HR webpages (as an example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sexual harassment can take the form of ridicule, sexually provocative remarks or jokes, offensive comments about dress or appearance, the display or distribution of sexually explicit material, unwelcome sexual advances or physical contact, demands for sexual favours or assault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which clearly covers your case, whether the sexual advances are of a paid or an unpaid nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, regarding your head of school: &lt;strong&gt;the student clearly has boundary issues&lt;/strong&gt;, probably for making the offer in the first place and definitely for renewing it multiple times after you declined. So, yeah, &lt;strong&gt;I would suggest your head of school or a counselor having a talk with her about it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T05:59:18.273" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T05:59:18.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8194" CreationDate="2013-02-25T14:35:05.673" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think her offer is more than just a simple bribing. It is an intentional act to jeopardize your career and put you in trouble. Unfortunately it is a method used by some women to disturb and manipulate men and when they get disappointed they can easily pretend they are the victims of sexual abuse. Due to the fact that sexual relationships between people are not as simple as other relationships, her offer cannot be compared with inviting you to a restaurant. I think it is better you not only reject her offer but also report her offer and try to document it.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user80161" LastEditDate="2017-09-23T16:12:26.517" LastActivityDate="2017-09-23T16:12:26.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8194" CreationDate="2013-02-25T14:57:16.217" Score="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your initial reaction was &lt;em&gt;thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the standard deviation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is ambiguous and at risk for misunderstanding. I guess you mean &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, but you're not saying &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. If taken literally, this answer says neither &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; nor &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. Myself, earlier in my life, would have interpreted &lt;em&gt;thanks for letting me know&lt;/em&gt; as an expression of interest, which explains the repeated offers. In sensitive cases like this, I think it's important to be very explicit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am not interested in your professional services and please do not offer them again.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this, at least it is beyond doubt that you have replied negatively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2019-12-09T21:40:51.697" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T21:40:51.697" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8180" CreationDate="2013-02-25T15:46:11.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add that Guidelines, Codes, and the like are almost meaningless in academia, simply because it is easier to herd cats that to get a bunch of independent, highly-intelligent group of people to follow some set protocol or rules. Try attending a faculty meeting and you'll see what it's like. An institution may have guidelines, but there is probably very little chance of enforcing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find supervisors/advisors on both ends of the spectrum. Some will want to be in the day-to-day operations, micro-managing all the details. Some will meet with you, then say &quot;Come back in a few weeks when you have progress&quot;. The most common method seems to have weekly meetings to discuss progress and provide insight/expectations on advancing the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the interesting part about academia. You aren't really taught how to supervise others, or people skills in general. Most academics seem to just go with their instinctive, personality inclinations, or they simply do what their previous supervisors/advisors did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that if you're not getting along with your supervisor, either you need to discuss the problems, or plan a move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:46:11.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:04:50.647" Score="21" ViewCount="3146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that while there's no alternative to going through the actual paper in detail, it often helps if I've gone through the presentation based on the paper, which the authors had used while publishing their papers. (Mostly because, the few presentations on TCS papers that I've seen have good geometric examples/illustrations which may have been instrumental in getting the intuition in the first place, but the brevity required by CS conferences mean very few of them make it to the published paper!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a few authors graciously maintain the links of such slides on their web-pages, most do not - and I haven't even seen a single CS conference maintaining such documents on their web-page!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I've the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since I'm ultimately interested in understanding their work (and extending it if possible), is it considered OK to email the authors for the slides (if they still have it)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is, do I have to justify/explain why I want the slides, or would just a polite request do (with minimal explanations on my part to keep the mail short!)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would making such a request more than once make the author feel offended, and/or make them think that someone who can't read papers at the highest level without &quot;assistance&quot; isn't exactly someone worth helping out?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are 2 authors listed, without any implications about who is the corresponding author, should I mail both of them at the same time (which may lead to both of thinking the other would be responding), or separately (which may lead to duplication of efforts!)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what to tag this query with - feel free to re-tag/add more tags as you see fit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T18:07:55.993" Title="Is it acceptable to email the authors of a paper for the slides they used while presenting it in the conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:15:20.170" Score="19" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's never a problem to ask. In particular if you are interested in extending their work, they should be interested in providing you with more information. Perhaps the extension will happen in collaboration with them, but at the very least you're going to cite their paper. In my experience, views on sharing slides vary, but the objections I've heard related to unpublished material; I understand that in your situation, the material is already published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would explain why. It's polite to do so. But do keep the mail short. You could write that if they're interested, you can provide more details on your ideas; like that, you don't swamp them with unrequired information, yet you're open from your side in stating your ideas. Such an offer shows that you trust them, and as they need some trust in you if they share their slides, that is probably a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think they would feel offended. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depends on the field. If there is no clear first or corresponding author, I would contact either one of them. They would probably either reply or forward the e-mail to the other author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="5810" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T18:07:55.993" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T18:07:55.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:16:57.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think it is reasonable to make such a request but your success will depend on how it is done. If you clearly express your interest and reason for asking as well as express your understanding if they were to decline, you have made a humble request which should not offend anyone. If you can I think it would be even better to try to talk to the person directly (putting a face on the request). This takes some guts but is clearly worth it if you think you have significant use for the results of the paper. If you get a no, you might be able to ascertain what the reasons of the no might be, there might be personal or copyright reasons. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The answer to this is perhaps given by 1 already. Yes, short but with enough details to give the person the clear reasons why you would benefit from the presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turning it into a habit is probably not advisable unless the person you ask becomes more of a mentor than just a source for information. I think most people want something back and perhaps admiration might just not be enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would say, yes, contact both with the same mail. Sending two separate requests would probably just be seen as fishy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, be brief clear and polite in your request and be honest about your reasons for the request. Just remember that the response will vary from person to person so there is no guarantee for success in every case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T16:16:57.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:18:15.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless there are reasons that a presentation is considered proprietary (the ground rules of the conference, or it occurred in a non-conference setting, such as a presentation at a corporation or program review), it is unlikely to be a problem to email the presenter for a copy of the slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short note with the email indicating where you saw the presentation, and why you're interested in it, is never remiss, as it shows active interest in the researchers work. With respect to how often to ask, I'd wait a few weeks between requests; otherwise, you will be seen as being a bit too &quot;pushy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to coauthors, usually the first author is the presenter, unless otherwise indicated. It's probably best to contact the first author initially, and then move to additional coauthors if there's no response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T16:18:15.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8175" CreationDate="2013-02-25T17:06:41.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to (and emphasizing parts of) the answers by Fx and MaybeAnotherPhD: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First there seems to be two issues: (1) you were added to a paper by the first author where you did (and still do) not think you deserved it and (2) you now are in conflict with the first author and may not want to be associated with him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can approach this from another perspective. Based on the assumption that you pursue an academic career, does this paper hurt you by, for example, it being bad science, or the first author being a &lt;em&gt;persona non grata&lt;/em&gt; in the community? If the answer is no to these questions, I would as a general rule say, leave it. To follow up, there is not much you can do without raising a lot of commotion and probably risk being branded yourself even if that is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand your feeling of not being worthy of co-authorship, and my only comment there is that it is of course not good to be part of a paper if you cannot defend its content in some way or another. But, I think many end up being added to papers where their input may be marginal. I see it as a natural part (problem) of the process. Of course to add people left and right as a rule is something to be combatted, so save your energy for those cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then to cap off by the uncomfortable truth, the system we live in pushes us to publish or perish (as was the title in a Science debate article some time ago). With time this paper is just one of many in your list and simply adds to your publication list. If it is good you may benefit from citations and that might be your reward in the end. In other words being a little pragmatic doesn't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T21:21:04.980" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T21:21:04.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8175" CreationDate="2013-02-25T17:12:35.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't know if people care for a change in the list of authors as long as its length does not become ridiculous compared to the length of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want your name on that paper, have him remove it and go all the way! If he refuses you can always go past him and approach the editors directly. Explicitly stating to the editors &quot;I had no part in this contribution&quot; would hurt his reputation more than anything else by a long shot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6132" LastEditorUserId="6132" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T18:41:34.523" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T18:41:34.523" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2013-02-25T17:57:27.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As editor in chief of an international journal I often come across these problems. There are several ways forward (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the journal publisher offer links to services to improve the language? Cite those to the author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can start correcting the English for about a page or two and then state that the authors must seek the help of a native English speaking person (I have found that this is unfortunately not always a sure way to success). By high-lighting the level of problems, it is harder to ignore by anybody. It is after all the author's responsibility and most journals state this very clearly. Remember that the editor is also part of the publishing procedure and you may express your thoughts to him/her to get assistance in your requests. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the problems are less severe and you think the paper is very deserving, do the work. But don't make it a habit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the first author has an identifiable native English speaking person as a co-author there is no real excuse and you should point that out to the &lt;em&gt;editor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The suggestion of providing references may seem like a good one but make these suggestions to the editor. I really do not think such books will be of much use other than in the long term for authors who have problem grasping the English language; and in some cases never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T17:57:27.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5889" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:25:25.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NSF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CAREER&lt;/a&gt; award (Faculty Early Career Development Program) is a grant for &quot;young&quot; scientists, and requires that winners have the title &quot;assistant professor.&quot; This typically means that the person has spent &amp;lt; 6 years in a tenure track academic position. Of course, such a person need not be &quot;young&quot; -- someone who worked 2 years in industry before grad school, spent 6 years doing a PhD, 2 years of postdoc, and then spent 5 years as an assistant professor might win one of these awards and be nearly 40. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T20:25:25.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2013-02-25T22:00:18.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is anonymous reviewing? If so, absolutely! A book may be helpful. There are also a number of companies/services (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageediting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/english_language.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt;) out there aimed at helping non-English speakers prepare scientific publications. I routinely suggest that authors revise their writing before something gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T22:00:18.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8218" CreationDate="2013-02-26T03:33:39.323" Score="20" ViewCount="1177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to start, truly, but lately I've been involved with some projects in pure mathematics and I've grown frustrated and disappointed. I don't think that pure mathematics is so inspiring; my intent is to move on to study some applied math but most teachers in my department aren't that dedicated to it. All I see are theoretical approaches to problems &quot;that applied sciences may be interested some day&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By talking to a colleague of mine who is seriously considering moving on from Math to Physics, he told me of some engineering departments who might accept someone with a master's degree in their Phd programs. There are some areas I like that might have a connection with what is studied in some Engineering Phd programs, like applied ODE and Dynamical systems and I'd love to put some programming on what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But every teacher I talked about this so far tells me to avoid this kind of migration, since it brings a loss of academic focus and it might be hard for me to find a job later as a teacher. There is no strong tradition in Mathematical Engineering as there is in other countries (I know that such courses exists in Italy and some other European contries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd like to know some thoughts from more seasoned students and researchers out there. Any advice is welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6087" OwnerDisplayName="Gustavo Marra" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T03:03:09.633" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T03:03:09.633" Title="Graduate math student migrating to engineering?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2013-02-26T05:02:56.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most CS graduate programs would be quite happy to admit a math major. It might be tricky early on if you have zero programming experience, but depending on the kind of work you're interested in, you could be in a strong position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:02:56.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2013-02-26T05:13:25.720" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in your shoes, as I migrated from mathematics to computational engineering.  While my math background gave me some advantage, I remember it was difficult to make the transition because I was very unfamiliar with a lot of the key concepts in engineering.  What really helped me was watching online courses (MIT, IIT, etc...) in the material I was missing... Of course, I had an entire year to prepare for it.  If you have a lot of time to make the transition, by all means do so and you shouldn't have &quot;too much&quot; trouble.  But if you're pressed for time to make up for a lack of engineering background, it can be quite overwhelming.  It's best to hit the ground running in graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:13:25.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2013-02-26T05:13:53.653" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most likely domain of interface for a mathematician with engineering would be in the realm of &quot;computational engineering,&quot; in which numerical algorithms are used to study physical and engineering systems. This work is highly interdisciplinary, and requires close collaboration among all of the different researchers involved, as very few are experts in all of the areas with which they are concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a certain amount of logic to the idea of staying in one's &quot;home&quot; discipline. It makes it easier to figure out &quot;who you are,&quot; which can make starting your career a bit easier. One possibility might be to pursue a degree in &lt;em&gt;applied&lt;/em&gt; mathematics, in which you study problems relevant to engineering, rather than remaining in &quot;pure&quot; mathematics. This might be a reasonable compromise that keeps you in the mathematics field, while still allowing you to pursue topics in areas that interest you more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:13:53.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2013-02-26T06:35:10.853" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only problem with switching to a particular field of engineering is that you'll be missing a core set of knowledge particular to that discipline that will hinder your progress for a while.  For instance, you would probably do great in many electrical engineering sub-diciplines, but if you've never taken a circuits or signals course, you're going to be lost for a while before you can learn that material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have research experience, that will count for a lot, but I would suggest finding an engineering program that would allow you to take a few undergraduate courses during your first year or two in order to get up to speed.  If you find a professor that is looking for a mathematics-savvy graduate student to fill in the gaps in his/her lab, that might be the best way to get your foot in the door.  You've got skills that could be very valuable to the right lab, and if you use those as leverage to join a particular lab/research team, you'll be able to fill in the missing pieces to your new field and move forward with your own degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T06:35:10.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-02-26T09:05:39.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that this may differ quite a lot between individual journals and, I venture to guess, may also differ between journals with different status. A basic &quot;rule&quot; for a journal (upheld by its editors) is to make the journal as good as possible, to attract good and high impact papers. To have an issue that is sub-par is therefore not favourable. Hence each editorial board will impose restrictions on such &quot;festschrift&quot;s. In the journal where I am Editor-in-Chief, we have had a tradition of such &quot;schrift&quot;s but we decided to not accept such themes. We do run thematic issues with guest editors but in all cases the papers and their reviewing is transparent to the Editors-in-Chief which means we can intervene and ensure a fair review process and uphold the quality we strive to ensure. In my opinion the &quot;festschrift&quot; is something which is generally not looked upon favourably since it signals that there may be dodgy reviewing or just buddy-reviewig involved. Most journals probably stay clear of such issues for this reason. In the end the local traditions will determine whether such &quot;schrift&quot;s will be produced. So the bottom line is that certainly editors would be cautious about such journal issues. This means that the review process may not be any different, in fact sometimes more strict, while in some cases anything could go through and it is this uncertainty which on the whole makes the &quot;festschrift&quot; concept unattractive to any journal which tries to uphold a good reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my (probably unsatisfactory) answer is: yes and no, it will vary quite substantially between journals. Such differences should not exist but they do and it is difficult to know or judge in each individual case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T09:05:39.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T09:58:42.440" Score="44" ViewCount="4099" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in a few high profile research institutes for my PhD and postdoc, and find myself a little intimidated by the &quot;strong opinions&quot; and arguments that seem to crop up at the principal investigator level.  My personality is somewhat more laid back or agreeable, and I find myself wondering if this would be seen as a &quot;personality flaw&quot; in the somewhat cutthroat funding and scientific world (or at least that part I am exposed to).  I'm sure it helps to have a strong opinion of one's own work, but I sometimes find it hard to do so, as I tend to be more self-critical and more concerned about stating something correctly and figuring out what is &quot;right&quot; than necessarily being self-promoting and overconfident in my own abilities, but I feel like that ends up manifesting as some sort of fundamental flaw in relation to others I see advancing into the faculty ranks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6174" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T15:53:02.370" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T14:09:22.297" Title="Is a &quot;big ego&quot; necessary for a tenure-track faculty position?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-02-26T10:20:36.967" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure a psychologist could provide an indepth analysis to a large part of this question. I am not a psychologist so I will try to stick to what I think I can answer. First, it is usually the big and loud heads that stick out and are seen, there are probably just as many quieter academics in similar positions that you do not see or hear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure it is possible to talk yourself into a top position but not without showing excellence in your science, usually reflected in a publication record and funding success (sadly to a lesser extent teaching). But, the academic record on paper is typically what counts and it would only be in an interview situation between two equally talented candidates that things can be swung. But even then, I do not think the ego would necessarily have an advantage. Then there is the question what happens after you are employed and how one develops as a person but that is out of scope for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem more timid persons experience is to strike the right tone in pushing ones own merits. Taking advice from entrusted clleagues is a good way forward. But, as a whole a &quot;big ego&quot; in the negative sense is not necessary, a good academic record is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T10:20:36.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8224" CreationDate="2013-02-26T10:55:54.500" Score="25" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;When meeting some scientists in person, I've had good conversations with decisions upon interesting plans for research cooperation and personal visits. But then, subsequent contact by e-mail is difficult, where the other party either doesn't reply at all, or very slowly (several weeks +). However, when I then meet them again at a later date, they are still enthusiastic about the project (where the bulk of the work is mine) and a short in-person discussion makes more progress than the past months of (lack of) e-mail have. So it appears that a lack of interest in the project does not explain the lack of response. The project is scientifically interesting, fits with my PhD, and the visit enhances my chances of finding a post-doc after my PhD (it's a very good institute for my field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that many scientists are very busy and flooded by e-mail, but it feels sad to abandon a potentially interesting project just because communication by e-mail is not working well. I'm quite sure it would work if I were in the same building. What strategies exist to mitigate this problem? I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to ask a common acquaintance to poke him/her (my local colleague has a shared friend with him/her). Pro: Might get indirect feedback as to why the irresponsiveness. Con: involves 3rd party (may or may not be on-site) not necessarily involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send reminder e-mails (&lt;em&gt;did you see my e-mail from 20 February?&lt;/em&gt;). Pro: increases chances of being noticed. Con: may be considered annoying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phone. Pro: hard to run away. Con: I don't like phoning and I don't like being phoned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-mail someone sitting in the neighbouring office. Pro: neighbour has small step to irresponsive scientist. Con: a bit strange to involve someone I don't even know&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give up on the project. Con: means no project and no visit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to do the project without their input. Pro: no need for communication. Con: might waste a lot of time by trying known dead-ends that I'm not aware of. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other options exist? What advantages and disadvantages have I not thought of? What is wise to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:13:17.340" Title="Dealing with irresponsiveness from far-away scientists" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8223" CreationDate="2013-02-26T11:23:23.567" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: that situation is common. Actually, that situation is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; common. You listed a large number of options that come to mind, let's discuss them a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For me, that's the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reminders don't cost you much, but they can only go so far before you risk being annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would strongly advise phone or Skype&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't get me wrong: I hate phone too. It has the inconveniences of both verbal communication (you need to reply fast, and have no time to smith your words precisely) and written communication (you don't see the other person's face and non-verbal indicators). However, it helps if people are unresponsive to email. Also, consider that maybe &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; like phone better than email (some people do!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, Skype (or any video-chatting tool) might be a useful alternative to phone. Some people hate it, some people love it, so be sure to ask if they would consider it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. You can ask a friend or common acquaintance to poke them, but don't use someone you don't know well. &lt;strong&gt;Unless it's their job&lt;/strong&gt;, of course: if you communicate with a big boss or dean or whatever, it is fine to use his personal assistant or secretary to check up on things or remind him of deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and 6. It's your choice to make, not much we can say here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your (already good ideas) I would add an important one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;   7. &lt;strong&gt;Set yourselves&lt;/strong&gt; (or give him) &lt;strong&gt;a goal and a deadline&lt;/strong&gt;. On one occasion where you actually meet him, use his enthusiasm to set an (achievable) goal, possibly with an associated deadline: decide that you want to present this work at this occasion, or submit to a given special issue that has a deadline in 6 months, or want to have the project finished by September to hire a post-doc with funding from the John Doe Foundation, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the deadline is, it will spur contributions from his side. The research environment puts people under a lot of pressure with bureaucracy and deadlines. If your project doesn't have any visible deadline, he will never get it done. So, create one, even if it's more of a pretext. Then use that deadline as a hammer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T11:23:23.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8223" CreationDate="2013-02-26T11:23:33.960" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recognize this all too well and I do not have a patented solution. This is in part because the reasons will vary from case to case. I have found that collaborations will be easier in two cases: The first is when the collaborator is driven by their own agenda and can see a strong personal gain apart from the collaboration. This might seem a poor excuse for a collaboration but, I think, reflects the stress most are under. The second is when you strike up a true friendship and simply enjoy each others comåany apart from the science. This should not be underestimated even if it is hard to chose collaborators based on such premises. Over to the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you have a collaborator where a mutual interest to collaborate exists according to the above, the best way is to arrange to visit for a couple of weeks. This can be folowed up by a returnvisit at some stage. Under suchcircumstances you can work in relative pace and you can set up short and unintrusive meetings under a short period with your collaborator. Such a visit can be preceded by some homework but expect to do most yourself if the initiative is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A visit is certainly possible in all other cases as well but if the personal chemistry/interest is not strong to begin with, I do not know how successful you will be. Uncertain in any case. You will also likely end up doing most of the work throughout the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that unless the project (paper) is priority one on everyones list, you run the risk of not getting much response and certainly not much drive from your collaborators. It just seems to be the nature of things. I am sorry if this sounds negative but the times when I have done work during visits (going away or receiveing a visit) have seen a much higher success rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T11:23:33.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:03:46.007" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a &quot;big ego&quot;, or at least a healthy dose of self confidence, is necessary for survival as an academic. Our jobs are one of repeated failure. Success rates on grants, publications, experiments, and job applications are often less than 10%. In the face of such frequent failures an abundance of confidence is a require for maintaining ones sanity. Further, many departments verge on dysfunctional and there is generally someone looking to push you down to get ahead (I am not saying everyone is out to get you, but there is generally at least one person in every department looking to get ahead at your expense.) Being confident, outspoken and to an extent self prompting is useful for dealing with these people. The difficult part is not being too self confident and too outspoken and being able to admit when you are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T12:03:46.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8223" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:15:56.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the fine answers here already, I've found helpful to get the ball rolling to &lt;em&gt;do work on my own&lt;/em&gt; and then send that along to the colleague. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that often a substantial block is if project has some ambiguity, and if a person can't devote a large amount of time to it they will put it off in favor of more concretely defined goals. Doing some work on your own can frequently help to refine the goals of the project and how the collaborator fits in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you can't do the whole project on your own and need feedback, but often there are substantial amounts of work you can do on your own. A literature review, an extensive outline, writing particular sections of a paper, preliminary data analysis etc. are almost always good candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T13:15:56.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:22:28.993" Score="13" ViewCount="3279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose after graduating from a PhD program, you don't do a post-doc. Are the chances of getting a tenure-track position severely reduced? Also is it possible to do a post-doc after a completion of a masters program (probably should be called a &quot;post-masters&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T14:17:51.617" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:51:04.737" Title="What is the downside of not pursuing postdoctoral fellowship position?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8175" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:31:14.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gift authorship is unethical.  At my institution it is explicitly forbidden by policy.  Check if your institution has a similar policy; you may be able to use that as justification for your request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since you made a minor contribution, I would ask him to simply put your name in the acknowledgments.  If he's worried the editor will view this change badly, you can offer to write a note to the editor explaining that you requested the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T13:31:14.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8229" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:33:19.323" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;What people expect from a candidate for a tenure-track faculty position is the ability to guide research and to set up an independent research group. The candidate will have to prove extensive (almost) independent research experience and a research vision to last for many years. A post-doc candidate will be stronger in these requirements than someone just graduating with a PhD. It is not impossible to get a tenure-track position directly after the PhD, but I think chances are better with a post-doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if you just graduated and there is a position announced which fits your profile, by all means apply for it. Even if you're not successful, it may give you valuable experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All types of faculty positions I know of have a formal PhD requirement, so usually it is not useful to skip that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T13:33:19.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8229" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:35:14.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us start from a different perspective. What is required to get a tenure-track position? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that two things are primarily used as criteria in the selection process: number of publications and ability to secure funding. Related to the publication list is of course aspects of publications, publication rate number of citations and the impact factor of the journals in which you publish. Exactly how these aspects are weighted is varying. Note that rates are important so it is not exclusively a matter of pure numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases time is an aspect and obviously you will standa a better chance the more merits you can accumulate which takes time. I do not know what other possibilities might exist to get some time to improve your merits. In some cases you might be temporarily hired to do teaching. Teaching will of course also be a merit but not on the expense of research. and under such circumstances contnued research output may be a challenge. So obviously a Post-Doc should give you a head start but I would not see it as an exclusive prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Post-Master&quot;: Since this concept does not formally exist, I could see there being opportunities to partake in research by being a lab-assistant or something similar. Any opportunity to widen your experience and possibly getting you into the research activities, especially publishing would be beneficial fo r the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T13:35:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8229" CreationDate="2013-02-26T14:16:32.107" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a postdoctoral fellowship is simply to gain the skills detailed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3328/73&quot;&gt;this answer to a similar question&lt;/a&gt;, notably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get involved with obtaining funding &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build an international reputation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start collaborating with external parties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to manage projects and a lab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start to devise a strategic research plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve your publication record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have all those things from your work as a graduate student, then you should have no problem finding employment and furthering your academic career immediately after you earn your PhD. Most students don't, which is why they try to find a postdoc position to help them  gain these skills before attempting to run their own lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T14:16:32.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8223" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:13:17.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point that I would like to stress is to set a new date for a live/skype/phone talk at the end of each meeting. In this way you avoid having to email someone for a new date, and you minimise the risk of your communication dying down until the next live meeting. There is still the risk of the appointment getting rescheduled, but at least a rescheduled appointment is more concrete than waiting for an email back that never shows up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:13:17.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:21:39.477" Score="19" ViewCount="5282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in knowing what percentage of math phds actually succeed in landing a tenure track academic job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does a phd from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/group_i&quot;&gt;AMS Group 1&lt;/a&gt; guarantees you an academic job in top universities? If not what other factors come in to role to play?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T19:17:46.923" Title="What percentage of phds in math actually get a tenure track academic job?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8236" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:39:37.307" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; No one single factor guarantees you an academic job in a top university.  Whether or not you land such a job is a combination of many things.  These include, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talent &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hard work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motivation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality of research &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality of teaching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to network and get along with people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to communicate (both orally and in writing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;success in securing external funding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;luck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want such a job, here's what I recommend.  Choose an area that you're passionate about, go to the best school (most challenging and &quot;highest rated&quot;) that you can get into, and work with an adviser with a strong publication record.  At each step along the way, surround yourself with (and learn as much as you can from) the most successful people possible.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a partial answer to your question about percentage by reading the annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences (by the American Math Society):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T15:48:38.923" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:48:38.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8229" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:51:04.737" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I believe this is a very field-dependent issue. In physics, for instance, it would not be possible to get a faculty position without a postdoc (or even &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; postdocs) unless you're an Einstein-level talent. In some fields, such as engineering, it may still be possible to get a position directly after a PhD—but in such cases that candidate is usually told to take a year or two, do a postdoc, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; start the faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think that it is in general a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; bad idea to just &quot;take some time off&quot; if one is planning to pursue a faculty position. Working in industry or doing something that keeps one active in research is probably OK, but a &quot;sabbatical&quot; that doesn't contribute toward a CV in any way will likely set off some hackles on the part of the search committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:51:04.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8243" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:53:58.910" Score="11" ViewCount="2199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently going through an article (which I was told is fundamental in the area of my new project) published in a respectable medical journal. In short, the paper is about the similarities between a particular sub-type of tumor cells versus a particular type of stem cells in the body, then they go on to investigate what that similarity might indicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barely two pages in and I realize that the authors omit what I consider to be critical data when motivating the use of two particular proteins as markers in establishing their fundamental assumption, that their immunohistochemistry findings are representative of the reality and that their model is valid: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Accordingly, we screened all known ..... markers against our ..... data to determine which, if any, decrease with differentiation (data not shown). Of all the potential ... markers, we found that X and Y are the best candidates, and they were therefore used in this study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it might not be a big deal to some but I find it important to see that omitted data, since: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not that informed in that particular type of biology&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seeing that their &quot;real&quot; findings are built on the results of the aforementioned screening, the validity of their research is practically depending on the decision of using those two markers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to my question: &lt;strong&gt;Are there any cases where not showing &quot;critical&quot; data in such a manner is acceptable or common?&lt;/strong&gt; I know that some journals do not accept &quot;data not shown&quot;, but obviously it does happen in better journals as well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T17:52:26.997" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T01:26:13.873" Title="Are there any acceptable reasons for omitting data in a publication (i.e. &quot;data not shown&quot;)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8239" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:06:18.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Critical data&lt;/em&gt;?  Probably not.  But, I have seen many papers with data left out simply because of paper length restrictions, and in all cases other graphs and data appropriately contributed to the papers' fundamental arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the cases where I wanted to see the data that was omitted, I've written one of the authors and they have almost always forwarded it along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:06:18.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8239" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:08:41.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is of course difficult to judge this particular paper without having seen it so I will stick to general terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see any reason for not representing all data in some form. When I say represent I mean that the complete data set can be given in terms of, for example, statistical measures which would at least provide some way to see or judge whether the subset shown is truly representative. But, I still have a hard time seeing a good reason for omitting it without clearly explaining on what grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals allow supplementary information and so it seems reasonable to use that option if it exists in th eparticular journal. In very old papers where plots were mae by hand, there may be some excuse if not everything is included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it one of the fundamental principles of scientific publication is reproducibility. That requires access to all data. There are of course instances where this i snot possible such as when patient journals are involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:08:41.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:10:00.500" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to distinguish inner from outer perspectives here. Someone that is perceived as 'having a big ego' might not feel that way inside, and might be compensating for a bad case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;Imposter Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;. Or they just might have a big ego through and through :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, what you really need is a thick skin, in order to deal with the constant rejection you'll face (jobs, papers, grants, awards, ...). You can acquire a thick skin by having a big ego (&quot;People are too stupid to appreciate my genius&quot;) or by being bull-headed (&quot;I don't care what people think: I think this is interesting&quot;), or by other coping mechanisms. This is an &lt;strong&gt;internal&lt;/strong&gt; focus: it doesn't matter what you show on the outside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally though, it's helpful to &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; an aura of confidence and assuredness, most commonly when you're interviewing, or when you're psyching yourself to write a grant or pitch a project. Again, this is an &lt;strong&gt;external&lt;/strong&gt; focus: it doesn't matter how you feel on the inside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you'll (hopefully) find a harmonious balance between what you project to the outside world, and how you feel on the inside. They don't have to necessarily be the same view though: they rarely are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:10:00.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8239" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:18:14.007" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is perfectly reasonable to not &quot;show&quot; data. For example, consider a multivariate randomized control trial with two groups. If there are a large number of partially correlated dependent variables, the data are not suitable for graphical or tabular presentation. What we are potentially interested in is if there is a difference between the two groups. We can &quot;see&quot; that from a single sentence about a statistical test and a comment that the data are not shown (so people do not go looking to find the figure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a biology example, maybe you are counting the number of intact cells after two different treatments. There may be hundreds of slices that result in two numbers. What exactly do you want to see? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:18:14.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8236" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:32:02.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I said in the comments: The success rate of the population will tell you little about YOUR chances of success. You are better off focusing on ways to improve YOUR chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the second part of the question, most hiring committees at top universities for tenure track jobs primarily considered your publication record, your ability to secure funding, and your fit to the department. The fit to the department is tricky. It generally includes either research area or ability to teach a class, but may also include departmental politics. Sometimes an applicant can be such a poor communicator (often discovered during the interview) or be a known pain in the ass that this can influence the decision, but generally the decision is based on publications, money and fit. I would venture to say that more often than not the rankings do not chance based on the interviews/campus visits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:32:02.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:52:23.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need an ego. In fact, ego just makes life more difficult in many ways. All you need is to able to project confidence, and the ability to assert yourself. A simple ability to stand your ground and stand behind your opinions, even if quietly so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the guy or gal you know who doesn't talk too loudly but everyone listens when he or she speaks. Try to emulate &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; person, not the egos in the room. People generally dislike people with big egos, but they love people with genuine confidence. People will respect the hell out of you for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many resources online regarding how to project confidence--I suggest looking there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6190" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:52:23.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:01:43.127" Score="31" ViewCount="116050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that some universities have academic positions known as lecturers. Are these positions different from professors? Are transitions from instructors to the professor track relatively easy. This position seems similar to the adjunct professor position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am talking about universities in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T06:16:06.370" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:09:12.743" Title="How do &quot;lecturers&quot; differ from &quot;professors&quot; in large universities?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:18:07.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The terminology of positions differ from country to country. Lecturer has its origins in the British system. I know that when positions in other (non-English speaking) countries are announced internationally they may use this terminology. This is of course because each language have their own words for different positions. There is no straight translation between these systems including the system used in for example the US consisting of Assistant, Associate and Full Professors. The form of the employment also varies from country to country for historical reasons. A Lecturer is probably similar to an Assitant Professor, whether it is a permanent position or not probably varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T17:18:07.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:51:21.663" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, I've mostly seen the title &quot;Lecturer&quot; applied to non-tenure-track, mostly non-research teaching positions. For what it's worth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecturer#United_States&quot;&gt;wikipedia agrees with me on this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T17:51:21.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:52:07.263" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many places in the US, thinking of research-oriented universities, &quot;lecturer&quot; or &quot;instructor&quot; is not at all like assistant, associate, or full prof, and is not tenure track. &quot;Lecturer&quot; and &quot;instructor&quot; are closer to &quot;adjunct&quot;, and are teaching-oriented. Sometimes the positions are effectively long term, but most often just year-by-year, or even term-by-term. Any transition from these positions to tenure track would be unusual, although in the more recent economic upheaval, sometimes people take such positions just to be employed for a year, waiting out the job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T17:52:07.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:53:11.443" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to be a lecturer at a university in the southwest USA.  As a lecturer, I was charged with only teaching lower division undergraduate courses (freshman &amp;amp; sophomore level).  In general, research and service is not a requirement for lecturers (unlike professors), but we are required to teach a larger load than professors.  And we were generally yearly appointments with no chance of tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T13:59:42.007" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T13:59:42.007" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8253" CreationDate="2013-02-26T18:00:32.263" Score="7" ViewCount="2030" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 schools I applied to accepted me in early Feb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other schools I applied to have yet to respond and their sites say their admission decisions typically occur mid-march.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it accepted to contact the departments ahead of time requesting information on your app status given that you don't want to make the other schools wait too long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apologies if this is the incorrect forum to ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6192" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T19:22:48.483" Title="Phd Decision Date Gaps?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8236" CreationDate="2013-02-26T18:29:44.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understood in the Netherlands somewhere around 5% ends up in a research position. This also includes people who after their PhD leave academia, so the percentage for those willing to continue is a bit higher. Ofcourse, as others already said, these general statistics do not say what your chances are, but it does illustrate that it is hard to find a position. In the Netherlands, it is important to get, apart from a good publication record, into a prestigious grants system (Venice, Vidi, Vici system). The first step is essentially a prestigious postdocs, the second leads to assistant professorship (fixed position), and the final one to full professorship. Getting into such a winning streak is important, successful projects make it easier to get new ones, I.e. the successful become more successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T18:29:44.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8251" CreationDate="2013-02-26T18:46:10.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most graduate schools in the U.S. follow a policy that accepted candidates are not required to make a decision until a set date agreed upon by the schools (April 15th, I believe).  This means you can (and should) take as much time to make your decision as you need.  It sounds like you do need to make your decision earlier than that deadline (but it might be worth finding out if the other schools do follow that policy and simply asked you to make a decision earlier), so contacting the other schools is probably a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, however, you are making a decision that will at the very least directly affect the next four to six years of your life, who you work and collaborate with, future contacts, where you live, and what your future employment prospects are!  So, I'll reiterate: take the time you need, and get as much information as you can if you are up against a hard deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T18:46:10.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8236" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:17:46.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;An additional parameter to consider is &lt;strong&gt;fashion&lt;/strong&gt;: some research fields are deemed sexy and some aren't (and that assessment changes with time unpredictably!), and your chances of finding a position depend on the current perception of your field by the senior faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5829" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T19:17:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8251" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:22:48.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Chris mentioned, USgraduate programs have a common deadline. International programs have different deadlines and operate on a very different system. Sometimes this is unfortunately used as a cudgel to get students to commit to a particular group by giving a short window in which the offer is valid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you are faced with such a dilemma, I would recommend accepting the best offer you have at the time when the decisions are due. If a better offer comes along, u can reconsider your decision. You should note, however, that rescinding your acceptance is not something that is appreciated, particularly if you are planning to join a particular professor's research group as part of the admissions process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T19:22:48.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:08:12.763" Score="24" ViewCount="1760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started a PhD recently and seen a few students from other universities visit our lab for a few days or maybe few weeks. The other university pays all expenses which many times amount to thousands of dollars. Most of the time, the visiting student gets a place, brings her/his own laptop and does research the way he does it at his university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the point of this? Couldn't the visiting student just stay at his university and discuss his research with our lab on Skype? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One explanation I thought of is face to face networking but the cost seems to high for that. Or it may be an excuse to travel and see the world, but that's quite ridiculous. I also asked the visiting students, but they told me they didn't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T16:40:55.113" Title="What's the point of visiting students?" Tags="&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:36:08.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with the other answers, &quot;Lecturer&quot; is often the title given to full-time non-tenure track (i.e. contractual) faculty who typically only have instructional duties. Depending on the style of the institution, it may or may not be possible to move into the tenure-track. Lecturer, however, is not always a &quot;dead-end&quot;. Some schools have a separate promotion system to reward and promote their non-tenure track faculty (similar to the way you would reward and promote staff). At these institutions there might be ranks, like Lecturer I, Lecturer II, Senior Lecturer, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disagreeing with the other answers, the term &quot;adjunct&quot; usually refers to a part-time instructor. Adjuncts usually have few if any opportunities for advancement. At many institutions, adjuncts may be distinct from Lectures (as a Lecturer is a full time appointment). My institution confusingly calls full-time and part-time instructors &quot;Lecturer&quot;, but then proceeds to treat them as very different types of employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T20:36:08.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8256" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:55:26.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, one of the main goals of visiting the grad schools I was interested in was to figure out whether the location was somewhere I'd want to live for the next 5+ years. If the research is a good fit at a given school, but you'll be mugged, or miles away from civilization, or miles away from the nearest Thai restaurant, or whatever else that'd make you miserable, that's something you'll at least want to know when making your decision, and I think spending a few days at each of the places you're (seriously) considering is helpful in that regard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think you're underestimating the value of face-to-face networking. Walking around the department, chatting with the grad students, professors, etc. you bump into is much easier than scheduling a Skype session with everyone you might conceivably talk to, and yes, there are certain non-verbal cues that you'll miss when video chatting. And the general atmosphere is something to take into account too; do the grad students seem to get along, hang out together, help one another? Does no one come to their office because the building is too depressing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="222" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T20:55:26.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8256" CreationDate="2013-02-26T21:00:36.080" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main goal, from my experience, is the facetime with many different people. Skype is nice, but it's primarily intended for conversations with very few people. A visit allows students to to talk to many professors and students face-to-face in a short timespan, get to know the place, interact with students in a lab, and get a sense for what the place is like, something which is impossible over the 'net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this gives the university a good chance to see what the &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt; is like. It's easy to look good on paper and can put on a clean shirt (pants optional) for a skype interview. It's a lot harder to keep up a fake act in front of dozens of faculty and students over a one-or-two day period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T21:00:36.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8264" CreationDate="2013-02-26T21:28:18.013" Score="30" ViewCount="56702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the teaching assistant for a course in economics, and one of my responsibilities is marking examinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had just finished marking the midterm, and the grades were very poor. The details are (approximately):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean: 23%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Standard Deviation: 5%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Min: 4%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Max: 68%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Number of Students: 84&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon consultation of the professor, I was told to scale the grades. The method he had given me  was to add a fixed amount to each student's grade such that the mean would be 72%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this seems to be an inadequate way to correct the distribution of grades and would be unfair to the students who did score much higher than the class mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;strong&gt;what is the best way to rescale the grades for an examination such that the it is fair to all the students in the class?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2015-03-14T01:55:03.847" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T22:13:50.053" Title="How to Scale or Curve the Grades for an Examination?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8261" CreationDate="2013-02-26T21:59:06.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways you could scale the tests. You could take the top score, make it 100%, then add the same amount to everyone's scores. You could take the average, add a certain amount to everyone's score so that the new average is some value you desire. You could have a sliding scale so those with lowest scores get most added, while those with highest scores get least added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the desired outcomes or what constitutes an &quot;A&quot;, &quot;B&quot;, or &quot;C&quot;, it is hard to say what you should scale your scores to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T21:59:06.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8261" CreationDate="2013-02-26T22:08:21.853" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let's acknowledge that this was a &lt;em&gt;horrible&lt;/em&gt; test.  You have almost no power to discriminate between the different abilities of the students with a mean of 23% and a standard deviation of 5%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to decide what to do.  Personally, I'd decrease the weight of this test in acknowledgement that it was a poor test (or allow students the option of letting something else count for more).  But if you just want to solve it numerically, there are the following constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can't have a top score of more than 100%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The mean is required to be 72%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want all differences to still mean something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add 49% to the grades, you get a mean of 72% but your top score is now 117%.  You could cap it at 90-95% or so, but the top students would be indistinguishable.  So you'd have to scale back by squashing the grades also, e.g. by multiplying the difference from 23% by (28/45) to get it back in range.  This will make the students distinguishable but not &lt;em&gt;meaningfully&lt;/em&gt; so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really the best option is to change the grading scheme so that you have a higher mean and more distinction between different scores (to the extent that this is possible).  For example, you can give a number of points for attempting a problem at all, a number of points for writing down anything which has a bearing on the right answer, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can just directly transform your old scores into new scores with the mean and deviation you like, however.  Let &lt;code&gt;icdfG(p)&lt;/code&gt; be the value at which the probability of getting a lower percentile score &lt;code&gt;p&lt;/code&gt; from a Normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation is 1.  Then you can just calculate percentiles and map&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;new score = 72 + icdfG(percentile)*10&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something to get a mean of 72 and a standard deviation of 10.  (Your top student in a class of 84 would have a percentile of 83.5/84 if you did it this way.)  Your top student would have a score of 97 under this scheme (and the second to top a score of 93)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you're probably best off using a nonlinear transform; &lt;code&gt;arctan&lt;/code&gt; is a nice function for that since it will squash down the tails; and you probably want a SD of at least 10 not 5, so you could do something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;new score = 72 + 50/Pi * arctan((score - 23)/10)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which would give a max score if 93.5, a min score of 54.7, and one standard deviation up and down would give 79.4 and 64.6 respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, the better options are to devalue the test as a bad test, and to change the grading scheme (an awful lot of work, but it will give fairer results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T22:08:21.853" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8268" CreationDate="2013-02-26T22:17:35.957" Score="7" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean both the salary a department offers to new hires and to already hired faculty members. I would prefer answers specifically about math departments, but I would also be interested in answers about departments in other STEM fields as well as other fields such as the humanities or the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My motivation for this question came from another question I asked recently on another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/197oit/how_do_university_math_departments_improve/&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;. I had asked specifically how math departments improve and received the answer that with enough money, a math department could hire and keep the best researchers in some specific field. Now I'm asking here to confirm that that is indeed the case for math departments, but I am now also interested in seeing if this applies to all departments in academia in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;I cannot give a specific criteria for &quot;quality&quot; as I assume this may vary from field to field. What I can say somewhat concretely, though, is that research productivity should be weighted above attention to teaching. Of course, if a department happens to have one or two extremely productive researchers in some specific field but does not offer a PhD program, then I would not considered that department a top department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5985" LastEditorUserId="5985" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T22:23:20.803" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T01:22:45.393" Title="How significantly does the salary amount for tenured faculty impact the quality of a deparment?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;stem&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8239" CreationDate="2013-02-26T23:00:47.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the way you've described it, it sounds like the choice of markers was somewhat arbitrary.  Presumably they had figures that demonstrate that the markers they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; choose are good at marking whatever-it-is that needs to be marked.  Thus, the fact that they looked at howevermany others is immaterial to the scientific content of the paper and is rightly omitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that data could well be useful to someone else for whom markers X and Y are inadequate (maybe because of expression problems or tissue type or whatever).  It would be useful to the scientific community to know what that data is (if indeed it was done carefully enough to be worth anything--maybe it wasn't, but it didn't matter because X and Y checked out).  But there's no requirement to be especially helpful to the rest of the community (or to avoid being sloppy in some areas as long as you go back and do it carefully/right once you know what you're doing).  So it seems reasonable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Again, inferring from what you've said.  If that screen was what &lt;em&gt;told&lt;/em&gt; them that X and Y had the properties that they thought, and there is no other confirmation, then they'd &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; show that data in convincing detail!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T23:00:47.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8265" CreationDate="2013-02-26T23:08:50.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know people who have changed their mind about where to go for ~20% increase in salary.  It wouldn't make them go to a terrible place instead of a great one, but it was enough to weigh advantages.  I also know people who have not changed their mind about where to go for a &gt;30% increase in salary, but that this was viewed as somewhat surprising by people who heard it (given that the places were otherwise not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this very limited data set, I would speculate that in the 20-30% range you'd have substantial power to attract faculty members a tier higher than your reputation would otherwise allow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T23:08:50.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8265" CreationDate="2013-02-27T01:22:45.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several main &lt;em&gt;financial&lt;/em&gt; factors faculty candidates must consider when weighing offers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salary and resultant standard of living&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall compensation package (health, retirement and pension, other benefits)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institutional support (resources, personnel, infrastructure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two are with respect to the financial resources committed directly to the faculty member; the last is the amount of resources committed to the professor's working group. It is difficult to say how much the different factors are weighted, as this is highly subjective and personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would caution against considering &lt;em&gt;absolute&lt;/em&gt; salaries as a metric; salaries always have to be considered relative to the cost of living in one's environment. (Would you rather have $50,000 in New York City or $40,000 in Akron?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T01:22:45.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8239" CreationDate="2013-02-27T01:26:13.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What constitutes &quot;data&quot; is a highly subjective issue. If &quot;data&quot; means &quot;all scientific output,&quot; in many cases this exceeds what can reasonably be shown in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In molecular simulations (my particular field), we may generate &lt;em&gt;gigabytes&lt;/em&gt; or even &lt;em&gt;terabytes&lt;/em&gt; of data for individual papers. This data needs to be crunched down and represented in figures that process the data and make sense of it to the reader, as it is plainly impossible to show the reader the same data over and over again. Thus, we choose to show only the most essential information, rather than deluge the reader with more information than can be handled either visually or in tabular form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T01:26:13.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T03:34:54.027" Score="12" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard for the second time today that a discipline is &quot;superfluous&quot;. This comment was made by a young assistant professor, who does not do research in this discipline. Just to be fair to the commenter, that was not a serious comment, but just a casual remark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think deep in his mind he believes that this discipline is &quot;superfluous&quot;. And deep in my mind I have the same doubt from time to time. Can a discipline be superfluous? How do you know whether a discipline is worth researching or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: In this case this discipline is HCI (human computer interaction), but you could replace it with any other discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T08:57:52.683" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T08:48:41.687" Title="A discipline being superfluous?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-10-27T19:20:06.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-02-27T04:11:43.247" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can give the Australian context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Lecturer&quot; is a rank in Australia.&#xA;The typical hierarchy is &quot;Associate Lecturer&quot;, &quot;Lecturer&quot;, &quot;Senior Lecturer&quot;, &quot;Associate Professor&quot;, &quot;Professor&quot; (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_%28Australia_and_New_Zealand%29&quot;&gt;discussion&lt;/a&gt;). Thus, on the academic ranking scale from A to E, lecturer is B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also common for anyone who gives lectures in a university to describe their job in terms of &quot;being a lecturer&quot;. In this sense &quot;lecturer&quot; is an often informal job title that may be used by an academic at any academic rank. For example, someone might ask you what you do for a living and you might answer &quot;I'm a lecturer at a university&quot;. Such a response could be given by someone at any academic rank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T06:08:16.360" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T06:08:16.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8270" CreationDate="2013-02-27T04:37:45.237" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Superfluous usually means unnecessary. So the person is claiming that a discipline is unnecessary. Presumably, this is a claim that can be investigated further: does research in that discipline have any kind of external impact ? does it affect other related disciplines ? Is there at least a path from the questions being asked to some future impact ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact these are all good questions to ask about any discipline, whether it's deemed superfluous or not. And these are good questions to ask about one's own research in a discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s While this is off topic, there's a common feeling among CS folks that HCI is either fluffy or superfluous. All of these people are also forbidden from using a Kinect, any video game console, a tablet interface, or even a smartphone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T04:37:45.237" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8270" CreationDate="2013-02-27T05:16:15.660" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question is open to the typical mathematician's answer: Can a discipline be superfluous? Yes, of course it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;. More usefully however, I think there's a more nuanced version which is also interesting: can a discipline &lt;em&gt;as an academic research area&lt;/em&gt; be superfluous? This is a different (though not completely disjoint question): an area can be very important, but conducting research &quot;in it&quot; is unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your HCI example, it's clearly not superfluous in the general sense, but is it necessary to devote academics to it when there's plenty of corporations who are going to perhaps do the work anyway? (I do have an opinion here, but the phrasing here doesn't necessarily indicate it, and it's not really worth discussing in this forum.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is much, much harder though (in the general case). If you can tell, reliably, if a discipline is superfluous, you are worth a lot of money in many, many fields. The obvious example is large swathes of mathematics, sometimes the uses that make them relevant don't appear for centuries. Other areas seem really important, but produce nothing that ever proves relevant (or to really emphasise the point, &lt;em&gt;hasn't yet&lt;/em&gt; proven relevant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2017-10-27T08:48:41.687" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T08:48:41.687" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8276" CreationDate="2013-02-27T07:52:55.607" Score="10" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just graduated with a Ph.D. in Asia. And I'm considering to look for a postdoc position in US in the field of computer science (to be specific, machine learning and computer vision). But I don't want to go for a faculty position (at least I don't want to at this moment) in the future. I'd prefer to find some research position in industry or some research institute in US. My question is that do you think one or two years' postdoc experience really helpful for a research career, considering it may not be that easy for an oversea student to directly get a research position in industry or research institutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the advantages I can think of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Postdoc's supervisor's networking with other people in industry or researh institutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More publications before job hunting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to know more people in my area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope to hear some advice from you. Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4284" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T15:54:39.053" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T15:54:39.053" Title="Is one or two years' postdoc experience helpful for a (nonacademic) research career?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8274" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:13:58.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although CS post-docs are somewhat rare compared to many other fields, you have the right idea that it is a good idea as a stepping stone for further research or faculty positions down the road.  If you're willing to take a position and can find one, I don't think there are any downsides if you do indeed continue to publish and make contacts.  I would also suggest broadening your search to European positions, as there are many excellent opportunities at outstanding institutions there, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T09:13:58.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8274" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:56:25.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to define &quot;helpful&quot;: yes, it's better to do a postdoc in a top place rather than staying at home, but if you want to work in research industry, it might be better to do some development for a year rather a completely unrelated postdoc in the middle of nowhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to apply for a position, you have to understand the competition you might be facing: positions in the top research labs (public/private) are highly attractive, and you would be facing people with good achievements in academia (publications in top venues, PI for important grants, extensive network for collaboration, etc), and/or people with good achievement in industry (project managers, success for a specific product, good contact with academia, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is not whether it's good or not to do a postdoc, but what will a particular postdoc bring to you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a different research topic, increasing your multi/inter-disciplinary skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a very promising research topic, potentially increasing your visibility by publishing at top venues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a collaboration with industry, thus increasing your academia/industry network&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good approach could be to check, when available, the CVs of the people working at a research lab you could be interested to, as it could give you a good idea of what they did before joining the lab.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T09:56:25.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8281" CreationDate="2013-02-27T12:56:40.690" Score="25" ViewCount="7232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have gotten an idea in the field of Computer Science that it can result in a research paper. The problem is that I lack the adequate background in one part needed for this research, mostly mathematical stuff. I have contacted one professor in Europe by email, and asked some mild questions about some topics that could be helpful. The doubt that I have is if I should better tell to that professor about my whole research idea, so maybe he/she would be able to help me more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually I am a university lecturer and independent researcher, but in the university that I am working they do not give any salary or benefits for making research. I am doing this mostly because I like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I tell to that professor my whole idea? or maybe that person could steal it and because he/she has research funds can do it and leaving me aside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T23:41:17.320" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T17:05:06.940" Title="Worry about stealing of research ideas" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:03:05.187" Score="5" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my paper back from a reviewer. The main point is that a quality of the image is not good enough for the publication. I reproduced this image from another paper (with permission) but the only thing I could do, was a print screen of the original and paste into graphical software. I improved the quality by smoothing, but it is still not good enough for the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewer comment: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quality of the figures 1 and 2 is still not good. I recommend authors convert the schematics into vector graphics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find what and how to do it. Did you have a similar problem and solved it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to explain what is on the figure:&#xA;The figure shows elements of a vehicle with dimensions (numbers), different coordinate systems, force... it is rather complicated and maybe I could redraw the arrows (alhough many of them) but the background is a photo of the element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T15:14:55.773" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T15:14:55.773" Title="Quality of an image for publication reproduced from another source" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8279" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:17:26.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to provide a detailed reply without knowing more about the figure, for example if it is a photograph or a line graph. I will therefore concentrate on the general aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the best would be if you could get some form of original from the author (or whoever) has the copyright). Screen dumps are clearly not sufficient since printing requires high resolution (300 dpi in final reproduction size is a commonly quoted resolution in journals)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if it is a line graph, and it sounds as if that is the case, I would argue that the best way is to put the image in the background of a vector-based drawing program such as Inkscape/Illustrator/Corel Draw and manually redraw the figure. This is done by placing the illustration in a background layer and then draw lines in the program to reproduce the background. This requires learning a vector-based software and is a tough solution for the short-term but one I strongly recommend for the long-term. If the plot is based on data, for example a scatter graph, then you could digitize the data and re-plot it as long as you think of the re-plot as a version of the original plot and not use data points for additional analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course numerous kinds of complicated plots where the second approach will not work so trying to get the source would be the first choice. Screen dump quality bitmaps will be rejected by most if not all journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T15:03:02.570" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T15:03:02.570" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8278" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:37:17.797" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to consider what role you want the math professor to take: are you looking for a co-author, a collaborator, a consultant, or a service provider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you lack background in one area and are working in a place that does not prioritize publications, I would consider bring the individual on as a co-author. If that is your decision you need to provide the co-author with everything you are planning on doing so that he/she can make an informed decision. This obviously puts you at risk of being scooped. This then leads to the question of how to minimize the chances of being scooped. The first thing to remember is most researchers do not want to get into a publish first race. Scooping tends to be accidental and a result of two people independently starting the same/similar projects. You can minimize your chances by contacting an established person who is known to play &quot;nice&quot;. The second thing you can do is to bring the research along as far as you can without the collaborator. This means they will be starting from so far back that it is unwise to enter the race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T13:37:17.797" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8278" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:37:28.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common in most fields, I am not a mathematician and hear it occassionally in my field as well. The simple answer is that there are never any guarantees against that someone will/can &quot;steal&quot; an idea. I write quotation marks because there is a grey zone between really taking it and getting own similar ideas based on pieces of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to establish &quot;ownership&quot; of the idea is to provide something tangible that provides documentation of the idea with your name on it such as an abstract from a conference, poster contribution or something similar. I cannot see if this would be possible in your case, given that you say you are lacking some pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaching another scientist to establish a collaboration is a good idea. I would not use the suspicion that the idea will be stolen as a basic assumption, the large majority of scientists do not steal ideas in my opinion. So the problem is to increase your knowledge about the person(s) you intend to contact. Does someone in your neighbourhod know the person(s)? Try to hear if they have a reputation (good or bad, no partuclar reputation is also good in my opinion). Then write and ask about the interest in collaborating, specifying what expertise you seek in the collaoration. How much you wish to reveal of your complete idea is difficult to say but you will have to provide enough detail to clearly explain why the sought expertise is required. If you then have some way to indicate the your idea is known as your idea by others, it may work as a deterrent but I would avoid being to &quot;paranoid&quot; in the first approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if this will help you in your quest but getting to know your possible contact will help to remove the unknowns which are instrumental in building your uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T19:46:04.993" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T19:46:04.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8279" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:49:17.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without going into the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; of your question (which @Peter Jansson answered succinctly), I would say that going forward you should always try to have the best quality graphs when you provide a submission.  That means they should either be vector graphics (i.e., graphics that do not rely on bitmapped representation but rather are scalable), or high DPI (dots per inch); I try for 600dpi in all images that aren't vector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tips: if your graphic has a .jpg, .gif, .png, or .tiff extension, it is not a vector graphic.  If it has a .eps or .pdf extension, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be a vector graphic, but you need to zoom in to ensure that the lines are not turning fuzzy.  If it is a .svg, it is (I think) a vector graphic, but I always do the zoom test to make sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, always do a zoom test on all your graphics in your PDF submissions.  I've had vector graphics turn into bitmapped graphics during the conversion-to-PDF stage.  If that happens, you need to figure out where the problem is taking place and fix it (e.g., it could be that your conversion from .eps to .pdf for an individual figure changes the image, and another conversion tool might be able to handle it properly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T13:49:17.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8270" CreationDate="2013-02-27T14:54:52.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a tricky subject really... The questions are clearly very subjective, or rather any possible answer to these questions would be subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think that a field can be superfluous, in the meaning that a field might get outdated, or &quot;deprecated&quot;, based on the assumption that more money (and time) invested in that field will most likely not yield any significant results. One such example I can think of is, anatomy. It used to be a critical area of research within medical faculties, but during the second half of the 1900s anatomy research has shrunk and eventually died out in many, if not all, medical research institutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not a field is worth researching is a HUGE question, in my humble opinion. Even deciding on whether or not a specific idea within a field is worth the trouble is tricky, and I believe it's a quality that a few of us may have, or develop after many years in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T14:54:52.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8279" CreationDate="2013-02-27T15:10:12.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many PDF viewers (including Adobe Acrobat, Skim, and Preview on the Mac) can be used to copy regions out of a PDF file as independent PDF files.  (A typical workflow is to select a rectangle with the marquee tool, Copy, and then New from Clipboard.)  In particular, you can extract pixelmap graphics from PDF files at exactly the same resolution as they appear in the source PDF, and you can extract vector graphics.  If there are undesired elements of the paper that overlap the figure, you can usually remove them in Adobe Illustrator, which reads and writes PDF files natively, so editing will preserve vector graphics and pixelmap resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T15:10:12.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8278" CreationDate="2013-02-27T15:38:40.380" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a big academic experience yet, but would like to share what I learnt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all if you have an idea you can write a technical report where you describe what you doing, what you found up to that point. If you place the technical report on the University website, you can always say that you started with the idea and you wanted to develop it to a research paper but you have a trace that it is yours. (If you don't have data and results yet, you can write technical note where you describe what you going to do)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing I learned is that if you have a good name on your paper just after your one, the paper will be somehow &quot;stronger&quot;. Probably researchers will look first for the name of a well known professor and his publications instead of your one if you don't have many. Your name should be first anyway as it is your idea. In future your paper will be cited more often and will get better score. As far as I know it is worth to have co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T15:38:40.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:00:28.677" Score="19" ViewCount="1709" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit of background: I am an Indian citizen with an undergraduate degree in Electronics from India and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science (Funny, it is called a minor, given that 60% of my credits are from Computer Science Dept.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as a software developer with a company in Boston, MA. I was involved in some research work during my grad school, but however, nothing materialized and I decided to graduate with a coursework only option (with many projects as a part of coursework). Needless to say, I burnt a lot of bridges along the way which eliminated even the minutest chance for a strong letter of recommendation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to, however, apply for a PhD in Machine Learning and/or Algorithms, at least 2 to 3 years from now. The job I am at currently is not a research oriented job. I am doing a bit of research by myself with the data sets available online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that all of the PhD applications in the US, most in Europe need strong letters of recommendations, if not publications, how can I now set things straight in the coming years. What should be an ideal line of action and is a PhD with a good adviser, possible, at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am currently working on some Machine Learning related open problems on large data sets, but I am not sure how much can I get done, while working full time in a non academic environment.  Also, I do not have any reputable papers as yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6208" LastEditorUserId="6208" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T16:10:52.443" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T02:33:56.170" Title="How do I plan for my PhD now that I have graduated with a Masters degree without thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8293" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:18:03.570" Score="3" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for a PhD degree and has received an offer for it! However, I have to wait until next two months to know whether they give me a scholarship as well. I'm very nervous as the number of scholarships is limited and it's highly unlikely that I can join the programme without it. I am also applying for other universities as well but none of them offer scholarship covering everything for international student like the one I'm waiting for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything that I can do while waiting in order to strengthen my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T16:21:27.487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T16:21:27.487" Title="Is there anything that I can do while waiting for the decision on scholarship" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8288" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:49:57.487" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the most important thing what you can do to make some doors open is to write a peer-reviewed research paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any chances, find someone in academia, try to structure your interest and do some bit of research which you can publish under the academic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Form another point, I know there are some Universities, which value &quot;business&quot; contacts and experience. Don't give up and apply, apply, apply...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T16:49:57.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T17:17:48.633" Score="14" ViewCount="11948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel awkward addressing myself as Dr. X or Prof X. I know that this is common practice (e.g. in emails, letters, etc..). In emails, I prefer to just use my initials or first name. Is this a common experience (i.e. not wanting to be addressed as Dr. or Professor)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6210" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T04:43:49.173" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T17:57:36.873" Title="Whether to use Dr or Prof when addressing oneself in an email?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8291" CreationDate="2013-02-27T17:36:32.133" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use whatever you feel comfortable with.  That said, you should also tailor it to the type of correspondence when necessary.  A formal letter should include a formal address for yourself, and less formal can be more or less whatever you'd like.  In dealing with students, I generally sign school related emails as &quot;Dr. G.,&quot; (with just the first letter of my last name) but I've also taught classes where I've gone by my first name exclusively, and let the students decide how to address me, after telling them it is fine with me if they use my first name.  More formal student correspondence (e.g., if I'm cc'ing another instructor, or if the matter involves the administration) gets my full last name, and correspondence to colleagues is almost always my first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have a signature block, that includes my title, full name, email address and (sometimes) my telephone number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T17:36:32.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2013-02-27T17:40:58.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The period between admissions and scholarship decisions is not really any different from the period between submission and acceptance notification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any &lt;em&gt;major&lt;/em&gt; changes in your status—if you receive a significant award (&quot;Best paper,&quot; teaching award, or similar), or if you have made a notable research contribution (&lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; a paper, or at least submitted one), then that would be relevant information for the department. Otherwise, you'll just have to bide your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T17:40:58.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8278" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:45:32.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Collaboration (and co-authoring) is generally a good thing in science.  Very few people can be a real expert in more than one field, so if you lack the skills needed to write a solid paper, recruit someone as a collaborator (but always make sure that their contribution is appropriately rewarded or other researchers won't want to work with you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would tell the prof that you have a good idea for a paper, but that you need to work with a mathematician and ask him/her if he/she would like to collaborate, and then decide whether to tell him/her the details once you hear what sort of terms would suit him/her.  Be direct and up-front about what you want; it may not go down too well if the Prof. gets the idea that you are trying to milk them for the information you want via the &quot;mild questions&quot; without them getting due credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience though, the easiest way to get a mathematician you can trust is to marry one. ;o)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T18:45:32.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:14:56.697" Score="17" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking with respect to decoding a job ad for an assistant professor position at a US University. The ad essentially asks how my talents and goals relate to a 'liberal arts environment'. Previously I associated 'liberal arts' with the major that goes by that name, or thought that it simply meant well-rounded, which is something a student could get at any school. So I guess another version of my question is, what isn't a liberal arts environment at a US university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" OwnerDisplayName="DJBunk" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T14:55:57.013" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T14:55:57.013" Title="What are the aspects associated with working in a 'liberal arts environment' in academia?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8295" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:03:18.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I don't mean to make these binaries -- because they really aren't and there is a lot of fluidity in humanistic endeavors involving technology and likewise technology that is deeply invested in humanistic thinking, etc --  what &quot;&lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;liberal arts environment&quot; is a STEM environment (science, technology, engineering, math).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working in a liberal arts environment in general means there is room for and the expectations of independent and outside-of-the-box thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving, rather than what some might call more rigid practices and procedures.  Often, a premium is placed on one's ability to communicate opinions and interpretations effectively, and to listen to and consider alternatives -- sometimes to the point where the conversations and the path toward problem-solving ends up more important and useful to the organization (and yourself) more than the actual answer itself.  Projects and research tends toward better and fully understanding human nature and society, rather than tangible products, per se. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, it could simply mean you'll be working with a bunch of English and History professors instead of Biology professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: This answer was written when this question was at &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;The Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt;, and it did not have specifics about the position itself as it does now. This answer is more appropriate for someone taking a general staff position within a college or university and not for a faculty position that is already in a specific field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6194" OwnerDisplayName="jcmeloni" LastEditorUserId="6194" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T13:53:32.377" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T13:53:32.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8312" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:02:41.090" Score="51" ViewCount="4921" Body="&lt;p&gt;First some background. Two years ago I joined a research group as a research associate. My intention in obtaining that position was to publish with the group and build some academic capital, but in the two years I have been there, I have been steered toward support work and software development, and away from research.  I have not been included in any of the group's publications and have had to publish unrelated work on my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I subsequently found out that to justify the Ph.D. requirement for the position I hold, my employers added a few sentences to the job description to suggest that research would be the central focus of the work. Within my group I am seen as a system administrator and IT specialist. This is apparently what my employers really wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m also acutely aware that I lack the superior eloquence of my more persuasive colleagues. (This inability would hamper me not only in academia but in virtually any career.) My superiors cannot be persuaded that the system I have been assigned to create, intended to demonstrate (nonexistent) technical capabilities to a skeptical funding agency, has already been executed by several competent, experienced and well-funded teams of more than one person. The project is an all-consuming, deeply anxiety inducing death march for which I am underqualified. Against this, I have at least three competing projects which cannot receive the exclusive, full-time attention each deserves, and I am continually interrupted with trivial software installation requests and technical failures rare enough not to have been documented in the ever-expanding global online archive of technical minutia, to which StackExchange is a prominent contributor. The perspective is that information technology hasn’t specialized in the past 30 years–nothing is too trivial to undertake (except for them) or too specialized and technical to require immersion and consistent practice. It is the menial and urgent work of cleaning digital bedpans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t have a family or children–I did not want them. I wanted to work in an environment where I could be paid for research. The compensation is $24K less than the administrative position I previously held. I feel that it is self-defeating for me to continue supporting professors, postdocs, and postgraduate and undergraduate students. There is little incentive to promote an individual assigned to projects that provide funding for the group, and to activities that support the research efforts of others, but which are unlikely themselves to result in publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since my work as a mental technician is valued, I'm wondering whether I might as well seek better compensated employment outside of academia, where I would not have the indignity of supporting persons whose career opportunities are foreclosed to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T20:28:59.867" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T20:28:59.867" Title="What to do when you are a promised a research-based research associate role but are required to act in an IT support role?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8295" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:21:06.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A liberal arts environment generally focuses on teaching, research, and service. Teaching seems to be the biggest component of a liberal arts environment. Service is also important. A good research program is important also, it is just that more time is spent teaching and honing teaching skills. Usually, teaching evaluations have more weight than publishing in high impact journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6210" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T19:21:06.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8297" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:29:48.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds terrible and also highly questionable on the part of the research group. To provide help is difficult since the question really is one for you to solve in the sense that you need to think about your options. As I understand you stand very good chances of getting employed if you decide to leave your current position so employment does not seem to be the issue. This is a positive aspect of the situation because you have a &quot;way out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is whether you value to continue with research (in its true sense). Added to your will is also the market of research positions. A careful check of what is out there and also possibly some contacts with groups/persons that are working on topics that within your sphere of interest. this allows you to sound out your possibilities so that you could set a time frame on your decision, when to pull the plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So i think the decision is exclusively yours and it hinges on probing your interests and the possibilities around you. I hope this is of some assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T16:41:46.137" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T16:41:46.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8297" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:53:30.100" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing certainly does not betray a &quot;lack of eloquence&quot;; in fact, it's probably better than most of the computer scientists I know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as JeffE has indicated, you are being mishandled by your employers, and I would strongly encourage you to find a new position as soon as possible. However, it is important to point out that your situation is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; academic versus industrial, but instead good employer versus bad employer. The distinction is crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any position, there will be parts of your job that are less appealing than others; the absolute &quot;dream job&quot; which you're happy about 100% only exists in Utopia. The key is to make sure that the important parts of your job give you more satisfaction than the less desirable aspects take away. Here, this clearly isn't the case. That does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean that you can't find what you're looking for, either in industry &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; in academia. What it does mean is that you need to find it somewhere else than where you are, because it's clear the job isn't going to change in any sort of meaningful way in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T19:53:30.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8295" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:57:34.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an important distinction to make between a &quot;liberal arts &lt;em&gt;college&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and a liberal arts environment in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former indicates a particular kind of school, normally without graduate schools and professional degree programs, which specializes largely in undergraduate education. While faculty and students do participate in research activities, they are not nearly as extensive or as important as at research universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The liberal arts environment, on the other hand, is the tradition in which essentially all modern Western university operates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T19:57:34.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8315" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:23:25.990" Score="11" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I help with typesetting of one scientific journal: I recieve the articles in the form in which they were finally accepted, and I re-format them etc. to make them ready for publication. Currently, my title in the journal colophon says: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Graphic Design and Typesetting: M. Name&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I get the impression that this position is in the scientific jargon usually called &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Copy Editor&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, which would suit the colophon quite well since there are other &quot;Editors&quot; listed there (Language, Guest, Editor-in-charge, etc.). I want to make sure whether this is appropriate or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;em&gt;Who am I?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T21:10:06.413" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T21:10:06.413" Title="Who am I? A &quot;Copy Editor&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8305" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:36:28.600" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A copy editor is usually the person who runs through the manuscript checking that it adheres to the style of the journal. this includes checking references, checking figure numbering but also spelling and language, in short almost everything. The copy editor improves the paper from these formal/technical points of view. It is not usually the copy editor that typesets the paper because that is usually done by a typesetter involved with the printer. Having said that, with purely electronic publication it is more likely that this task would also end up with a copy editor. Thus the old demarcation lines between copy editor and printer may be less and less clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editors usually handle scientific content and managing contacts between reviewers and authors on matters of the scientific content as well as making decisions. The name for this varies a lot between journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who are you? Your current &quot;title&quot; may be OK but if you also improve the formal and technical quality of the paper, copy editor would be most appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T22:40:31.250" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T22:40:31.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8291" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:46:06.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using my initials as the &quot;sign-off&quot; for my emails as long as I've had my email account. The difference between a formal email and an informal one is whether or not I include the &quot;name block&quot; or if I leave it out, which greeting I use (&quot;Dear Prof. X&quot; or &quot;Dear Y&quot;), and which valediction I use (&quot;Sincerely&quot; versus &quot;Thanks&quot; or &quot;Cheers&quot; or the like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I don't know many people who sign their full names to an email. For an &lt;em&gt;official letter,&lt;/em&gt; however, your address should be your full name, unless you know the recipient well enough to be on a first name basis with them. (And even then you might still opt for the full name!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T22:46:06.997" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8305" CreationDate="2013-02-28T00:02:47.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically, copy editing involves correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar, terminology, jargon, and semantics, and ensuring that the text adheres to the publisher's style or an external style guide [...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that you &quot;re-format&quot; articles.  I assume you mean things like changing font and paragraph attributes.  If you do not change the text (e.g., correct the errors), then perhaps the title &quot;copy editor&quot; is not the best fit for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Wikipedia states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of the copy editor varies considerably from one publication to another. Some newspaper copy editors select stories from wire service copy; others use desktop publishing software to do design and layout work that once was the province of design and production specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last statement supports Peter Jansson's comment that &quot;the old demarcation lines between copy editor and printer may be less and less clear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T00:02:47.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8278" CreationDate="2013-02-28T04:04:32.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already asked him some mild questions. Obviously, you feel that the answer from him is not enough for you to go on. You need more info for you to carry out your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethically speaking, if he participates in your research, you need to give him credits for his contribution. At the very least, you need to mention him in the Acknowledgement section in your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you can cite his contribution in the paper. I have seen authors do this by saying some thing like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;J. Doe (private communication, 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be even better to include him as a coauthor. It’s up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be the single author of the paper and worry that he might steal your idea after you tell him details of your idea, then I would suggest you to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrow down the math stuff to general math only questions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are working on CS related research, he may or may not know what you are up to. He may not even be interested in your CS subject. Most mathematicians just want to do math stuff only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can narrow down your questions to math only, not only you can ask him but also you can ask your questions on public forums such as our sister site Math SE or MathOverflow. (I see that you already asked a question on Math SE. Have you tried MO?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T07:01:56.273" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T07:01:56.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8297" CreationDate="2013-02-28T05:23:28.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the situation in Ireland is different from other parts of the Commonwealth.  But I would have thought that the role of &quot;research associate&quot; would be that of a support person and not on the track to acquiring a PhD nor a means of building up &quot;academic capital&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, you'd first need to acquire a PhD as the first step to building up your &quot;academic capital&quot; - another term for publish or perish (aka get funding or perish)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of more information it would appear that there is a difference between what you thought you were being hired for and what your employer hired you to do.  Another point ... you say &quot;employer&quot;; is that an academic institution?  or some enterprise undertaking research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6215" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T05:23:28.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8297" CreationDate="2013-02-28T07:55:59.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are being taken advantage of.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check the rules at your institution relating to authorship.  It sounds like you have made a significant intellectual contribution to the papers that were published, so you deserve to be listed on them as an author.  There are means by which you can have yourself rightfully listed as an author on the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of more established academics taking advantage of postdocs and research assistants is widspread in university departments worldwide.  Your situation is all too common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however sound like that you &quot;walked into&quot; the situation a little bit, and that you should have been more assertive and forthright from the start about your role in the team, your contribution to the papers that were published, and your rights as an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should move on and view the situation as a learning experience for next time, and improve your self confidence and assertivenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw not sure what not having a wife and kids has to do with anything apart from you are able to take more risks with your career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6216" LastEditorUserId="6216" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T08:19:53.520" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T08:19:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8297" CreationDate="2013-02-28T08:44:20.660" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers so far have many good points: you are being abused, you have been misled, you would do well to seek employment elsewhere, perhaps you were not assertive enough, and so on. But I believe &lt;em&gt;none of that matters much compared to your decisions from this point on&lt;/em&gt;. You sound like a person who prefers to think ahead and plan important decisions rather than improvising&amp;mdash;many researchers are thinkers who want to weigh their options and take their time to come to decisions. If you wish, you may plan for retribution and for taking a fight, but in the end this will not make your current workplace any more healthy for you to work in. I would suggest the following concrete steps of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find the job advertisement you responded to, the written job description, your letter of application with any supplements (even if it was just an email), your employment contract, and any other documents (including emails) that pertain to the decision to accept your current employment. File these together in a place where they are safe and where you can find them if needed. Make copies. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you were promised something that was not delivered.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gather the articles you have written or started to write, regardless of whether they are published or not. Also, make a list of other work you have performed during your employment. For example, list the features you have implemented in the software system you described. File them together in a place where you can easily find them. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you have performed well in your work despite the situation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for a new job that is certain to either include research opportunities or to be totally unrelated to research but limited enough to allow you the mental capacity you need to conduct research on your own. Perhaps this position can be found within your current university, but in another group. Choose carefully and ask direct questions about what is most important for you: &quot;how many days a week will I be able to work on research?&quot;, &quot;how many days a week will I have to do overtime?&quot;, etc. Ask to meet one or two of your potential co-workers and ask them if they believe you would get what you are looking for. Be friendly and remember it is not their fault your current supervisor is misbehaving. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you can consider the options in your own time and that the responses to your direct questions are what matters in your choice, not feelings that you are fabricating out of previous bad experiences.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agree on the date when you will start in the new job, taking into account the conditions of your current employment. When you have signed the contract for the new position, immediately notify your current supervisor that you will move to another job and ask for a prioritised list of tasks that you should complete before leaving. Complete these tasks to the best of your ability and ask for a letter of reference. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you have fulfilled the conditions of your employment and are entitled to a reference.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor asks for a reason for you leaving, or becomes unreasonable, explain shortly that based on the job description, you thought you had a research position but it has turned out to be a technical position. Your supervisor is likely to try to bargain with you, and try to promise you more research opportunities in the future. Don't trust this promise&amp;mdash;it comes from the person who misled you and who cannot be trusted. Stay firm but polite and state that you feel it is time for you to move on. Keep repeating this if the supervisor insists: you wanted to do research but the position is technical, and it is now time for you to move on. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you have no obligation to explain your personal choices.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor does not write the letter of recommendation, politely but shortly remind him a few (three) times (do it over email and save the emails), but then let it be. He will owe you one, and if you ever meet in the future, he will be the one who didn't behave properly. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you have resolved the situation by your own actions and that any remaining problems are not yours.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you got a new research position, engage frequently with your new supervisor and agree on writing a joint article. Make it something simple that you can complete soon. Focus on getting that article out, even at the expense of other assignments. Then keep repeating the exercise, taking on larger and larger projects, involving other members of your group. &lt;em&gt;Share your successes and failures in your new job with your supervisor and your peers, and listen to their encouragement and advice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't get a new research position, relax in your new job. Don't take on new things and just let your supervisor assign tasks to you. However, always carry out those tasks well. In your spare time, you can now complete the work you had started before, and build a small portfolio to support you in applying for a research position. &lt;em&gt;Assert to yourself that you are not going into the game that your supervisor went into&amp;mdash;you proceed in your own pace.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing after getting out of your current situation is not to bring with you any maladaptive behaviour that you may have developed as a result of the stressful and unreasonable environment you have worked in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2645" LastEditorUserId="2645" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T03:46:56.957" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T03:46:56.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8305" CreationDate="2013-02-28T10:03:42.527" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer your question, let me explain my view of copy editing and typesetting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, after an article is accepted it is copy edited and then typeset. The role of the copy editor is to check for consistencies with the journal style, find grammatical and typographical errors, and provide guidance to the typesetter.  The copy editor often produces a short list of &quot;author queries&quot; where the copy editor has found &quot;inconsistencies&quot; (often unused references or undefined abbreviations). Generally I receive a copy of the double-spaced manuscript with the copy editors markup and the typeset article. We are then expected to make sure the typeset manuscript is &quot;correct&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a difference in prestige between copy editor and typesetter, they are really different roles (or different perspectives of the similar roles). You say in your comments that you do not like the title, I would talk to the publisher/editor-in-chief about changing it. You can either approach this from a graphic design vantage (the list will look better) or from a professional prospective (I edit I don't do graphic design). The key is you need to know what you want to be called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T10:03:42.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8317" CreationDate="2013-02-28T11:31:19.570" Score="15" ViewCount="12186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title says it all, but here it goes. I am a final year PhD student in pure mathematics. My PhD has been running smoothly and I will graudate on time next summer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year I started applying for postdoctoral/assistant professor positions in Europe and in United States. The reviewing processes for these positions have already started, for example the earliest one started in mid December. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As times passes I start to worry that the reviewing process will take longer than I expected. I understand that the people in the search committees have other things to do an that they may have large numbers of applicants to review. But as someone who will be unemployed next September, I am worried that there might not be enough time for me to look for alternatives if these applications turn out to be unsuccessful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I would like to ask what the normal period of time is for a recruiting process to finish. A side question might be if I would be notified if my application was unsuccessful. In a few job announcements it is stated that only the successfull candidates will be contacted. Hence if it is not stated otherwise in the job announcement, can I assume that I will be contacted no matter the outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6221" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T14:42:05.307" Title="How long does it take for a recruiting process to finish?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2013-02-28T13:04:13.150" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, timings are very different in different countries. I have experience applying in Germany, UK, US and Sweden, with radically different time scales. The US runs on a very steady clock, where there tends to be a season for applications, for interviews, for notifications, and relatively few events happen outside this rhythm, while elsewhere is much more anarchic with respect to timing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortest time periods I have had in the UK where a polite refusal has shown up as quickly as within about 2 weeks after the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, you would usually apply during September-January, interview January-March, and be offered a job February-May or so. Slightly different timings are in effect for postdoctoral positions versus professorships, and there tends to be a second round of applications when schools scramble to cover teaching needs for the fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with the US also indicates that you should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; expect full information from everyone. Finding out you were not considered by simply not hearing anything from the school for several years is not an unusual situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK schools have been diligent about letting me know one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German schools have sometimes delayed up towards 2-3 years before letting me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the Swedish system is a beast almost entirely unto its own. For one thing, the process is utterly transparent: the list of applicants, as well as external reviews of the candidates and the minutes of all the committee meetings are all a matter of public record, and is usually distributed to all candidates directly as a matter of courtesy. The process is one of the lengthiest I have ever seen — it is in no way seen as unreasonable that well over 1 year passes from application deadline to notification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T13:04:13.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2013-02-28T13:04:20.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen, the time highly depends on the formality of the recruiting process. For some postdoctoral position where the recruitment only depended on the PI of the project funding the position, the process was very short, i.e., a couple of weeks between the deadline and the interview. On the other hand, I've witnessed, for a lecturer position, a deadline in June and candidates for the interview contacted in late September (but I guess the summer break does not speed up the process). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, when they mention that only successful candidates will be contacted, they also mention a notification date: &quot;If you haven't heard from us by the X, then consider yourself as unsuccessful&quot;. I've also seen cases where the announcement didn't say that only successful candidates would be contacted, and yet they didn't contact unsuccessful candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if there is a position you're particularly interested in, do not hesitate to contact the recruiters, if only to know when you might get an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T13:04:20.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2013-02-28T14:28:23.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention that you are worried that you will not have enough time to apply for alternative jobs if you are unsuccessful in your primary choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am in job seeking mode, I apply to every job that I would find acceptable, irrespective of what other jobs I have applied for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume the worst for any given application - even those for which I can tick every box and satisfy every criterion. I do not live in hope. I apply, consider my application a ticket in a lottery, and look for the next job to apply for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T14:28:23.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:01:33.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I think it is best to assume that unless you are successful you will not hear about any decision. In other words rejection letters are fairly uncommon. This is not a good thing, but it is a fact of academic life. From a university prospective the hiring process is not finished until they have a signed contract. This might not happen until months after a formal offer is made and verbally agreed to. In the cases where HR sends out notifications, it is often not until the search is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reasonable coping strategy is immediately after submitting the application to assume that you have been rejected and not think about the application again. If you miraculously get an interview you will then be happy. Immediately after completing the interview, you should again assume you have been rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the uncertainty influencing the job search, you need to be applying for everything and anything. If you are lucky enough to get a position, you then need to decide if you want to accept it. Unfortunately the job market is so competitive that a position in hand is almost always better than a position applied for or a position yet to be announced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T15:01:33.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8291" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:27:10.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be two questions/issues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people I know do not use Dr/Prof/PhD when referring to themselves and in email signatures. I would say that this is quite common and perfectly acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final statement you make is &quot;not wanting to be addressed as Dr. or Professor.&quot; I think this is quite a bit rarer. I know a lot of people who tell students that they can call them by first name or Dr, or whatever they are comfortable with. I also know people who say &quot;please call me by by first name&quot;. I don't know anyone who ever says &quot;please don't call me Dr. or Professor.&quot; I would go so far as to say that demanding someone not use an honorific, or being offended when they do, is uncommon and not proper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T15:27:10.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8325" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:43:18.153" Score="12" ViewCount="5534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have a degree as a Master in Computer Sciences, and i was always wondering on how to call myself in a more &quot;short&quot; manner. For example, a PhD might introduce himself as a &quot;Doctor&quot; to other people, but how does a MSc call himself: &quot;Master&quot;? &quot;Mister&quot;? &quot;MSc&quot;?. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking to some PhD and MSC acquaintances, they had the same doubt about it, and i think this might be a good place to inquire about such topic, and i could not find another related question to answer myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4560" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T16:32:51.713" Title="Proper way of refering to yourself, according to graduate level" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:56:26.650" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to proper etiquette you may use &lt;em&gt;Master&lt;/em&gt; as a title (as in “Master Segovia”) if and only if you are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the heir apparent of a Scottish viscount or baron&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a boy not old enough to be called “Mr.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;New Oxford American Dictionary&lt;/em&gt; (which gives the above information) also lists the archaic use as a  “title for a man of high rank or learning”, but (a) that is archaic, (b) it was not linked to a specific degree, just a courtesy title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no formal title&lt;/strong&gt; in British English or American English to designate someone who holds a Master's degree. &lt;em&gt;Get over it, and earn a PhD! :)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T16:06:08.170" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T16:06:08.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2013-02-28T16:14:38.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would not address yourself as 'Master so-and-so' but there are circumstances where is it not inappropriate to include your graduate degree with your name; 'So and So, MSc'. The obvious examples of this type of use are publications and presentations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T16:14:38.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2013-02-28T16:32:51.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While my Internet search has come up sparse, I think most etiquette guides suggest that you do not refer to yourself with honorifics. There are some exceptions where the honorific carries immediate pertinent information. For example, it might be acceptable for a medical doctor walking in a exam room to introduce herself as &quot;Dr. Jane Doe&quot;, to indicate their role in the relationship, although I prefer &quot;Your doctor Jane Doe&quot; since it clearly separates honorific from role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to refer to an individual with a masters degree, there is no associated honorific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T16:32:51.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8106" CreationDate="2013-02-28T17:19:56.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel like a highly respectable school would not consider me because&#xA;  I do not have much research experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of research experience, there is a big difference between much and none. Most grad schools I know of are wary of applicants with no research experience, but do not go so far as to require &quot;much&quot;. Yes, more is generally better, but some is often enough. I would generally classify an MBA with a research dissertation as being enough to be considered, especially one awarded distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get more experience is to volunteer in a research group. Most research groups need someone to do data entry/analysis and general lackey work. You need to be prepared to enter as low man on the totem pole and do some boring tasks to get access to better tasks. Even boring and menial tasks in a research group can be good experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T17:19:56.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-28T23:41:48.230" Score="10" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a B.S. in mathematics but have always had an interest in chemistry. In particular, I enjoyed the labs. In fact, in the near future I plan to become involved in a Food Science program. It would be greatly advantageous to me to be able to do work in a research lab. Unfortunately, my actual lab experience is weak (Gen. Chem, physics. My Organic chem had no lab section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like some suggestions on how to improve one's usefulness in the lab without &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; working in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple ideas I had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn Statistical analysis / database software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice identifying spectroscopy (NMR, Mass, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading about technique or experimental set-ups anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything else? Is identifying spectra even useful, or is it all done by computer now? Are there (free) online resources for any of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, for my case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to work in a food science lab. So the main focus would primarily lie in organic chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology. Possibly in flavor chemistry or food analysis, but I don't yet have a more specific research area in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6228" LastEditorDisplayName="user6228" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T00:48:23.397" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T21:13:10.230" Title="Making myself an attractive candidate for a research lab (no prior lab experience)" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8333" CreationDate="2013-03-01T10:07:07.317" Score="30" ViewCount="186147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Belgian colleague who is &lt;strong&gt;“Prof. Dr. ir.”&lt;/strong&gt;. What does it mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T11:13:44.897" Title="What does “Prof. Dr. ir.” mean?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8330" CreationDate="2013-03-01T10:47:08.727" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries you use all of the titles one holds (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In plain English it means someone who holds the profession of engineering (can be just bachelors or masters) who has a PhD and who is a Professor (senior ranked, depending on the system can mean a full professor or even an associate prof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;The tricky bit is what constitutes holding the professing of engineering. In Netherlands/Belgium it is automatic once you have the degree from a technical uni (e.g. Delft or Eindhoven). In some places you need to be a certified engineer to hold it (e.g. Malaysia or Mexico as I understand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T08:31:56.340" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T08:31:56.340" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8330" CreationDate="2013-03-01T13:46:20.433" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ir. means a masters degree in Engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source : Belgian Education :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added a &quot;reference&quot;. This Prof. Dr. Ir. received a M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Belgium&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from wikipedia:&#xA;Belgium&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Belgium, there are two types of engineering degrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Burgerlijk Ingenieur&quot; /&quot;Ingénieur civil&quot; or &quot;Master of Science in Engineering&quot; (abbrev. &quot;ir.&quot;) - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Bio-ingenieur&quot;/ &quot;Bioingénieur&quot; or &quot;Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering&quot; (abbrev. &quot;ir&quot;) - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Industrieel Ingenieur&quot; or &quot;Master of Science in Industrial Sciences&quot; (abbrev. &quot;Ing.&quot;) - 4 years study (3 BSc. + 1 MSc.)(3 BSc. + 2 MSc. in 2013-future) (for the Flemish Region)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Ingénieur industriel&quot; or &quot;Master of Science in Industrial Sciences&quot; (abbrev. &quot;Ing.&quot;) - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.) (for the Walloon Region)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~jswevers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastEditorUserId="31487" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T11:13:44.897" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T11:13:44.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2013-03-01T14:42:05.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the timetable in Europe is a little more chaotic, but if you haven't been told you're under consideration at a job in the US in mathematics by the end of February, it is extremely unlikely that you are going to get it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This not to say that lots of offers don't go out in March and April, but those are usually to people who already know they are on a short list or have been interviewed by this point.  You might want to inquire with committees about whether you are still under consideration (it's fine to do this &lt;em&gt;once&lt;/em&gt; by this stage, I think).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are exceptions (there are even a few jobs being posted now), but I would definitely start looking into alternatives.  My personal perception is that this was a very tough year for postdocs in mathematics in the US, so lots of good candidates have had trouble finding jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T14:42:05.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8336" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:17:05.010" Score="4" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a thesis abstract to PhD consortium and my submission was accepted.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I just noticed that one of the program committee is well known professor on my thesis area. &lt;em&gt;Actually, many of the paper citations contain his name&lt;/em&gt;. Now, I believe he was not a reviewer for my submission (I know because I didn't get critical -deep- questions about my work) but I don't have hard evidence for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what is the right way to get his attention to comment on my work?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;is it adequate to email him my submission?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T21:19:09.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T12:24:43.937" Title="How to get a PC member's attention to comment on or review my submission?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:55:03.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PC member may be a professor, but I promise, they are human just like you and me. In your place, I'd find out the email address of professor and write a polite email making your case that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are both researchers in the same field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you noticed the professor is actively participating in that special PhD consortium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your submission to that consortium was accepted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have been following/citing that professor's work, but be very brief and direct about it! you're a researcher, but neither fan nor worshipper!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you care for a meeting at the conference to which that consortium is associated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you appreciate that professor's opinion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you really just care for feedback on that submission, you can flat out ask for an opinion on your submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These worked quite well for me. Also, direct approaches during coffee breaks are opportunities as well, but (T)PC members often have closed meetings during those so you would have to take your chances ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But seriously, experts in their research areas care for the work of other researchers ... or you needn't care for their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6132" LastEditorUserId="6132" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T12:24:43.937" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T12:24:43.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8338" CreationDate="2013-03-01T23:50:25.917" Score="13" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a third year PhD student. I'm not getting much guidance from my adviser. We only meet once a month, and he keeps giving the same general advice. As a consequence of that, we have had to cancel one project since I have no motivation at all for that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now having the new project, things are getting the same. I'm worried about my progress as some of my lab mates are about to graduate. What should I do? I realized my responsibility in driving the project by myself, but most of the time my idea are discarded. Recently when I showed my result, he claims that's garbage without any reasons. What should I do? I'm really thinking of dropping out if situation is not getting better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6233" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T00:31:49.950" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:19:21.247" Title="Not enough guidance from advisor" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8337" CreationDate="2013-03-02T00:12:09.060" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;we have had to cancel one project since I have no motivation at all for that project&quot;. What exactly is the relation between having a meeting once a month and not being motivated? This to me sounds more like an excuse rather than a good enough reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third year of your Phd having one meeting a month is not too bad. Your supervisor is assuming that you know your way and at this stage you should be left to figure it out yourself rather than him spoon feeding you. Of course he will still have strong opinions and might say what you have done is not the right way. It might be that he is busy/not happy with you/thinks he has mentioned to you before how you should do it and you are not listening or that you have a problem in your relation that you don't even know of. If for instance you are just not motivated the way you described its not unnatural for your supervisor to not be so happy with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time you meet him once he rejects your idea ask him for suggestions and guidance on what to do. Ask politely and genuinely, and if he is not forth coming explain that you need help to figure it out. If he says your results are garbage ask him given his freaking awesome powers and knowledge how he would have done the work differently. He is only human and sometimes complementing somebody can go a long way. At all costs try to be more motivated and don't exhibit the behavior you described in the first part of your message. That's not going to do you any good and might be the root cause of all of this pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why you should drop out after investing so much time and effort. It is in the interest of both of you to sort out the situation and no PhD advisor would like to see someone dropping out after three years (at least for their selfish interests). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T09:00:13.710" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T09:00:13.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8337" CreationDate="2013-03-02T12:44:48.613" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried about my progress as some of my lab mates are about to graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really thinking of dropping out if situation is not getting better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you pull the nuclear trigger and drop out, I strongly suggest that you take some time to figure out when you want to graduate and &lt;em&gt;what you have to do to accomplish that goal&lt;/em&gt;.  Be very specific (e.g., &amp;quot;I will prepare the following work for conference X, which has a submission deadline of Y;&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I will be ready to propose to my committee on Z&amp;quot;).  Once you put this on paper, you can go to your advisor and ask him to review it with you, and to make suggestions or provide other guidance.  If you can't get your advisor to agree to the plan, at the very least go to another professor (possibly the ombudsman, if there is one) and talk over the plan with him/her.  You need something concrete or you could linger forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was lucky in that my advisor forced me to come up with a plan early on (within the first year of working with her), and we came to an agreement on what that plan was going to be.  The proposal stage of your eventual PhD work is a similar agreement with your committee.  I had a tacit agreement from my advisor that if I met all the goals, I'd be ready to graduate, and I worked hard to make all the deadlines I had set.  That in itself was a big motivation, and it worked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as your projects go, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be personally invested in getting them done.  That's one of the driving factors in &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; Ph.D, and you (hopefully) have an intellectual desire to work on the project, so I suggest trying to get into the mindset that you really want to find the answer to the questions posed in the project.  That's the fun part of being a scientist, after all! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T12:44:48.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-02T18:51:40.337" Score="1" ViewCount="4936" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably only relevant to the UK, because in the USA, PhD funding usually come from the department/university through fellowships/TA/RA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied for PhD at a UK university and got admission. The university also runs an extremely competitive named scholarship competition (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/prospectivegrad/scholarships/university/felix/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; - not the one I got, just an example) that offer holders can compete in. I was fortunate enough to have won the scholarship. However, I am going to turn it down for a funded PhD at another school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it alright to state that I won this scholarship on my academic CV but turned it down? If this was a typical USA PhD funding offer (fellowship/TA/RA), I would not consider stating it on my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a similar but slight different question from the &quot;duplicate&quot; because I am not asking about the &quot;typical&quot; PhD fellowship/TA/RA that is awarded to candidates admitted to PhDs in the USA. I am talking about competitive/prestigious scholarships like Rhodes and Gates-Cambridge scholarships that one has to apply for outside of the regular admissions process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2013-03-03T17:37:52.770" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T07:24:58.263" Title="Stating PhD scholarships that I turned down on my CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8340" CreationDate="2013-03-02T19:00:01.120" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth mentioning this while you are applying for PhD positions. But after you have obtained a PhD position, it will be fairly meaningless, as what will matter is how you perform in your PhD studies (ie, number/quality of publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T19:00:01.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8340" CreationDate="2013-03-02T20:16:35.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the information that you have won several competitive PhD scholarships is by itself meaningless: you have won one, this is enough information to ensure that you have a potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real interesting information is why you chose one specific scholarship amongst the ones you won. If you state on your CV all the scholarships you won but didn't take, be prepared to answer to the &quot;why this one&quot; question. And be very careful on your answer if you don't know the profile of the asker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T20:16:35.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8327" CreationDate="2013-03-02T21:13:10.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like some suggestions on how to improve one's usefulness in the lab without actually working in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not be possible, but I would love to be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience in the (chemistry) lab is about using your hands to perform specific and often complex tasks with dexterity and proficiency. Many of these tasks also have associated hazards, which through experience can be avoided or minimized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that if you are interested in pursuing a career in chemistry or another lab science, you will need to get some experience in the lab. The easiest way would be take a few courses. Given your interests, you should at minimum take and organic lab course and a microbiology lab course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take as an example a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#Simple_distillation&quot;&gt;simple distillation&lt;/a&gt;, a common organic lab technique. No amount of reading about the technique prepares you for the many things that could go wrong. At least one of these has potentially disastrous consequences. If you take a course where you do several (as a good introductory organic chemistry lab should), you have the opportunity to learn how to do distillations in the presence of another person who will catch your mistakes. At the graduate/professional level, you are supposed to know what the common mistakes are and avoid them entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that could negatively impact a simple distillation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The joints are not sealed and the vaporized liquid escapes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No means of encouraging nucleation during boiling is used and the liquid in the still pot bumps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your still pot has a star fracture and shatters when heated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your variable transformer blows a fuse, and you have no heat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your variable transformer is set too high and you superheat your liquid (and it bumps) and apparatus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your thermometer is not placed low enough into the neck of the 3-way adapter and you do not record accurate temperatures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You forget to turn on the water in your condenser and you collect no distillate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You (against someone's better judgement) try to distil something that thermally decomposes and the apparatus catches fire, explodes, or something otherwise disastrous occurs. At the very least you do not get the distillate you though you were getting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You distil to dryness, and the apparatus superheats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You distil an ether to dryness and the residual peroxides explode.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You start to take apart your apparatus before it has cooled (hot glass looks identical to cold glass and has a high heat capacity so it does not radiate a lot of heat) and give yourself second degree burns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You fill your still pot more than halfway, which prevents there from being enough room to establish a good liquid-vapor equilibrium, causing the liquid to superheat and bump.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get the idea. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to be a total downer. If you had told me that you were interested in theoretical or computational chemistry, I would have told you to read up on analytical and physical chemistry and apply to a program in theoretical and computational chemistry. You do very little wet-lab work in those subfields of chemistry. However, since food science involves a lot of wet-lab work, you need to have some preliminary hands-on experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T21:13:10.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8340" CreationDate="2013-03-03T11:38:28.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the award is sufficiently prestigious then you should list it, otherwise you should not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you declined a Rhodes scholarship you would be very foolish not to list it on your CV.  In the US you should list declined NSF or DoD graduate fellowships.  However, you do not want to look like you are padding your resume with extraneous information, so I would advise against listing more than one declined award, and would advise against listing any declined awards that are not well known.  In most circumstances the declined scholarship isn't going to give any important information that couldn't be gotten from just listing the scholarship you did accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T11:38:28.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-03T16:17:11.200" Score="16" ViewCount="26431" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the appropiate position for the 'Acknowledgements' in a paper? Are there policies by (mathematical) journals where to put them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, is it common to make acknowledgements a \paragraph (in Latex), rather than a \subsection or a final \section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T17:16:38.460" Title="Position and prominence of 'Acknowledgements' in a publication" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8349" CreationDate="2013-03-03T16:26:12.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgements generally go a separate section after the conclusion.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/research-policy/0048-7333/guide-for-authors#48000&quot;&gt;You can see the Elsevier advice on acknowledgements sections here&lt;/a&gt;. If you have a specific conference or journal you are submitting to, and want to know what other authors have done, browse some of the previous volumes' papers or proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T16:26:12.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8349" CreationDate="2013-03-03T16:26:54.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure the position may differ slightly beween journals but commonly it is placed after the conclusions and before the reference list. In some cases the Acknowledgement may be a note at the end of the paper. The journal would hopefully clearly indicate where they want such information in the manuscript. Please refeer to the &quot;Instructions for Authors&quot; (equiv) for any journal you are considering. If you are unsure, ask the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the (La)TeX question, the formatting will obviosuly differ depening on the instructions for the specific journal you are targeting. Many journals also have specific (La)TeX classes for manuscripts which may provide further insights into hpow the journal wants the paper structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T16:26:54.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8349" CreationDate="2013-03-03T17:16:38.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally make acknowledgements their own &lt;code&gt;\section&lt;/code&gt; and place it at the end of the paper's body, before the references or any appendices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really don't think it matters.  The referee is not going to care, and it won't affect the acceptance or rejection of the paper.  If the journal has a preference, you will hear about it from the copy editor when the time comes to correct the proofs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might as well check the Instructions for Authors to see if it addresses this, but otherwise, just pick something reasonable and don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T17:16:38.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8447" CreationDate="2013-03-03T22:53:32.360" Score="10" ViewCount="2214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an industry based researcher. I research and write policies mostly relating to workplace issues such as codes and manuals. I have just completed my PhD in a related field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my CV, I can include about 10 years of industry research (plus my qualification as above). As far as I know, industry research is not considered in the same light as peer-reviewed articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How do I make industry research a selling point in my CV (in the academic world)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I have no peer-reviewed articles to my credit and there is no possibility of publishing my industry based research outcomes in the wider sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T19:30:22.433" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T14:12:50.060" Title="How do I put industry research in an academic context?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-03-04T01:41:47.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relevant issue is how to make your research meaningful to your application. Since this would typically not get much attention in a CV, the best place to do this will be either in your cover letter or in the introduction to your research statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your industrial research has informed your choice of problems to study as an academic, or has expanded your skill set, this is information you should relate to the committee. However, if the work is completely unrelated, you may have a hard time convincing a committee that it's worth considering as related experience (beyond the traditional justification of industrial experience in and of itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T01:41:47.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8106" CreationDate="2013-03-04T02:58:22.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your MBA dissertation had some scientific method to &lt;strong&gt;validate&lt;/strong&gt; the research results, then leverage that in your PhD application. Try to publish the results on your own in a peer-reviewed conference or workshop. To me, lack of that kind of culture is the big risk when taking on a non-research master's student for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research methodology courses are mandatory for research master's students at my university, and PhD supervisors can force PhD candidates to take this course if they didn't get it elsewhere. There are some decent textbooks on the subject. See if you could audit such a course someplace. However, to make up for the experience of a research master's, you will need to focus the methodology on a specific area of expertise (few textbooks do a good job explaining this, and it's where a supervisor is crucial in my opinion). From your original question, it almost sounds like you did this already, but with little guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T02:58:22.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8360" CreationDate="2013-03-04T04:51:25.447" Score="28" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Archiving of papers and projects is very important for most of the people, and everyone has a method of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, try to have different folders for different papers. In the folder of each paper, in addition to my manuscript, I keep my simulation files, experimental data, program codes, etc, in different subfolders. Also, I try to keep track of my revisions on the paper, reviewer comments, my response to reviewers in different subfolders. My method has the advantage of all the related material for a paper are together, and I can quickly track the whole process from initial submission to the final proofreading. However, this usually leads to duplicated files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with both my office desktop and my personal Laptop. I transfer my files between these systems by a flash memory. I agree maybe cloud technology is a better choice in this age, but I postponed it because of my poor internet connection at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious to know how others approach to archive their works. I also hope to find some methods more efficient than mine, or get some tips to improve my method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit at 2 Apr 13:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Thanks to these great answers, it is almost a month that I use &lt;strong&gt;Git&lt;/strong&gt; for my version control. Also, I manage my repositories in the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot;&gt;Bitbucket&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, which gives me unlimited storage for unlimited number of projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T21:35:12.160" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T21:35:12.160" Title="Archiving papers, simulation and experimental data, etc?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;backup-archiving&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8359" CreationDate="2013-03-04T06:06:58.380" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar approach with folders, with two additions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everything goes into a revision control system.  In my case, I've got some things in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Subversion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt; repositories, and others in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mecurial&lt;/a&gt; repositories (I've also dabbled with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt;, but haven't made the final transition).  The benefits of revision control are that you can always go back to a previous version, you won't have old versions littering your folders, and sharing with collaborators is relatively easy.  This should take care of your duplicated-file problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also use Dropbox extensively, in order to have my files available on any computer at any time.  Dropbox provides a modicum of version control (30 days worth), but it should not replace a proper revision control system.  It does provide a cloud-based backup of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, regardless of how you're keeping your work arranged, make sure you keep an off-site backup (e.g., via Dropbox or personally-controlled media).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T06:06:58.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8359" CreationDate="2013-03-04T08:15:53.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of archiving and synchronizing is a good one and for me relates also to backup and storage as key questions, particularly when working on more than one computer. I will describe what I do without implying it is THE solution, it works for me. I have my work computer as well as a desktop at home. I also have several laptops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the two desktops at home and work, the data resides on the harddisk, organized in a folder system that has developed over time. I have two 600 Gb 2.5&quot; portable harddisks which I carry between work and office and which I use as shuttle/backups by synchronizing with the desktops at home and work. I use a software called Total Commander (shareware), which works fine for me but I am sure others can be used. This way I have three copies, at work, at home and on the portable disk(s), at all times (except in the worst case antyhing produced between syncs).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not have any data on my laptops but use the 2.5&quot; as an external hard disk when I am away from home and work. I keep a second 2.5&quot; for backup if I am away for longer periods and try to transport the two disks separately, one in carry on and one in checked in luggage. (I have to add I do not have any secret data so I do not worry about disks being stolen apart from my own losses). I could have all data on the laptop as well but have opted for having a faster but smaller SSD disk in the laptop so my data will not fit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I use drpbox to keep a limited number of files that I use frequently and most often need to share with others. I also use Dropbox to deposit files that I think I might need for specific purposes when out of the office as an extra backup and to be able to access quickly. I do not use Dropbox as a backup but rather backup dropbox occassionally, particularly collaborative files.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works for me and the solution has developed over time and now the synching is a natural begin-end of the work day and I live with three (four when I synch the second, pure backup, hard disk) exact copies. I could go for an automatic backup as well but have not felt this was worth it at this stage. With this system, I always carry with me all files I have ever produced. I clearly see this will be impossible for some activities but will be quite feasible for most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T08:32:17.980" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T08:32:17.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8359" CreationDate="2013-03-04T08:52:08.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do something vaguely similar, however I also use a makefile to integrate the simulations with the LaTeX source code for the paper (generally there are also a set of MATLAB files that generate the contents of tables and the figures).  Then if necessary, the experiments can be repeated and the results stitched in to the paper again, just by typing &quot;make&quot;.  However, more recently I have been having to make a lot of use of my universities High Performance Computing facility, which makes it much more difficult to do this.  It works nicely for more simple projects though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T08:52:08.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8340" CreationDate="2013-03-04T09:50:24.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having easy access to your complete funding application history is critical in the UK. It is not uncommon for funding agencies to ask if you have every applied before. Some of the research councils are now tracking the number of unfunded/triaged applications you have made. As part of my annual review, my university wants to know how many funding applications I make every year (both funded and unfunded). Since I need information about both my successful and unsuccessful applications, I need a place to keep it. For me, the obvious place is the long version of my CV where I keep every piece of information about my academic life. My feeling is if something doesn't make my &quot;long&quot; CV, it gets forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to remember that most people don't want to see an unedited version of your long CV. You haven't said which version of your CV (you have more than one right?) you are thinking about including this information on. If you are talking about a 1-page summary CV for promotion to full professor, hopefully you have many more relevant things to include. If you are applying for a research support job where your job might be to help students apply for PhD fellowships, then it is probably of critical importantance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T09:50:24.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8366" CreationDate="2013-03-04T09:59:10.920" Score="19" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are invited to give a departmental seminar and the department offers to put you up for up to two nights, how long should your visit be? I find it a little rude when our speakers arrive an hour before and leave an hour after the seminar. Do you have to spend a full day at the host department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T14:55:42.687" Title="What is the etiquette about the length of a visit when giving departmental seminars?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8364" CreationDate="2013-03-04T10:04:41.657" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of this as an opportunity, rather than an obligation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find people in the department who are doing interesting work and try to organise a short meeting with them. Volunteer to hang around after your presentation to talk to PhD students (and ensure that your presentation has some appeal to keep people around). Ideally, try to have a fairly full schedule to maximise the benefits gained from the opportunity, though avoid having every minute planned so that you can have spontaneous extended discussions with people, should the opportunity arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning ahead is probably key, as not everyone will be able to accept an unannounced visitor for a lengthy discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T10:04:41.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8364" CreationDate="2013-03-04T13:38:13.653" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is not rude to make only a brief visit, especially if you accept with, e.g. &quot;I would love to come, thank you, but I'm afraid I can only come there for the afternoon - I hope that is okay?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly I agree that it is as great idea to stay for the whole day if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that perception of etiquette seems to differ a lot from person to person. Whether or not it is okay to recommend a taxi from the airport (as opposed to picking up the visitor yourself), whether or not to take visitors out for a late drink (or karaoke!), whether to put them up in a hotel or your house, how long to encourage them to stay... these are all aspects where I've seen things done differently. But a small minimum of communication beforehand and flexibility during the visit seems to suffice to guarantee a good visit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're the one visiting, I would certainly recommend at the very least hanging around the department some and going out to dinner with your hosts (assuming they invited), but it's more or less up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T13:38:13.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8364" CreationDate="2013-03-04T14:46:39.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;People who give invited seminars are quite busy. It is frequently the case that they may have to come late or leave early. However, unless the guest is local, it is usually considered normal for a guest to spend a day visiting the department. The reason for this is that many times there are people who wish to meet with the visiting speaker, and thus an extended schedule is necessary. Cutting the visit short may also deprive &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; of meeting people who might valuable future collaborators for your work efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in circumstances where the visit does need to be curtailed due to length, the more important it is to communicate this with the host organization &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T14:46:39.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8364" CreationDate="2013-03-04T14:55:42.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the one organizing the trip, telling the visitor that you are covering one or two nights' stay is enough of indication that the department wants to host a long enough visit that would allow meeting with other faculty, post-docs, and possibly grad students. If the visitor does not take the hint, you may have to ask them, &quot;So basically you are refusing to meet with our department?&quot; -- and you can actually take it to the chair and ask whether it would make sense to withdraw the invitation, as this visit is the event that is supposed to benefit the department, not just hit the financial bottom line. Basically, whoever is paying for the trip should be fine with an abridged visit. If the department is paying for it (the round-trip ticket will be a fortune for the same day trip), it has all the rights to have the visitor to themselves to ask questions and promote the young researchers of the department. If somebody's grant is paying for the trip, then let have them waste the money. I ran a department colloquia series for a year, and never had an issue like that with any of the visitors, including some biggish wigs. (We are sort of ways away from big airports in a US midwestern college town, so there is little physical opportunity for the visitors to escape; it's not like you are taking a train ride from one university in Boston to another.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the one visiting... well, if you don't take the hint, you will lose respect of that whole group. If you are a young researcher, that may be a big hit to take: people talk, and in a year or so, the rumor may spread to half of your discipline about your rudeness. If you are a named prof with $XX million of external funding, you don't have to give a s$%t about anybody, and by now everybody else in the discipline knows that much about you already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T14:55:42.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8372" CreationDate="2013-03-04T18:28:17.713" Score="35" ViewCount="33871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in mathematics working on functional analysis of quantum information (basically using matrix techniques in some well-known problems). I am presently applying for postdoctoral positions (in both Mathematics and Quantitative Physics departments). However, I am not getting any reply from most of the places and got a few rejection letters as well. Since I am from Mathematics, I cannot apply to experimental groups (where there are more openings). Again, being a Mathematics student and working in Physics (even though there are obvious connections between them) is not seen as a good example among certain parts of the physics community and the majority of the Mathematicians in this part of the world (personal opinion based on certain bitter experiences). I do not know whether it is the same in other places as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that I have not projected myself by writing a good research statement. I have written it after reading the first few entries of Google search results as well as advice from the AMS. I have mostly highlighted my present work, with only a short discussion of future ideas.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make my life more complicated, I want to move out of the present problems which I am working presently and choose some new problems for my postdoctoral research. I have a peripheral knowledge about the works of different groups. However, modifying my research statement according to the research work of each group is, I think, difficult (as I need to spend time to read their works and spot exactly where my knowledge can be used in their problems and so on). The reason for not having time is I am simultaneously working on some research problem as well as writing my thesis, which I need to submit in the coming months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, how do I write a good research statement? I want to convey the message to potential employers that, while I have not done research on their problem yet (though I know them to certain level), given an opportunity I can learn and do work in their areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastEditorUserId="48519" LastEditDate="2018-10-18T17:11:47.090" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T18:47:03.173" Title="How to write a research statement for a math postdoc position?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;research-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8369" CreationDate="2013-03-04T21:55:56.300" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a postdoctoral research statement should not be a huge exercise. Unless you are applying for a major postdoctoral fellowship, I would not necessarily expect a huge research statement. In many cases, in fact, you may not need a research statement at all to apply for a postdoctoral appointment; a cover letter, CV, and list of references may suffice. (When I hired my current postdoctoral associate, those were the materials I asked for.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, your statement should provide a few pieces of information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief description of your current project, and any major research skills or tools you have acquired as a result of your training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief summary of the kinds of problems you would like to study as a postdoctoral associate. If these are aligned with the interests of the group you are applying to, this is even more helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, however, when you are applying for a postdoctoral position, you are applying to a specific individual, who will be the one reviewing the applications. What I am looking for is someone who has actually responded to &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; job posting, not just &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; job posting. That means I want to see a clear statement that the applicant has thought about what we do in my group, and how her skills will contribute to the project for which I'm advertising. If there's no such indication, I'm much less likely to take the application seriously, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; there are mitigating factors (lots of publications in top journals, strong recommendation letters from colleagues I know, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I should also point out that the quality of your written English could be improved. While this might seem to be a minor issue, a poorly written statement can be enough for me as an advisor to think twice about hiring someone, simply because I would worry about my ability to communicate with the candidate. (Furthermore, someone whose communication skills are somewhat deficient will have a harder time finding a position than someone proficient.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T18:47:03.173" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T18:47:03.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8369" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:12:44.533" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I have written [my research statement] &lt;strong&gt;after reading the first few entries of Google search results&lt;/strong&gt; as well as advice from the AMS.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read your research statement but I would suspect that reading the first few entries off of Google may have been insufficient to fully support your consideration for a post-doc position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, get someone to test read your research statement.  Get some feedback on how to improve your documents and revise-revise-revise.  Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T22:12:44.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T00:42:19.097" Score="11" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any special provisions provided for students who have schizophrenia (for example)? Is there an &quot;adjustment&quot; to grading? Or perhaps there is no adjustment to the grading process &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but only to the due dates? Is there anyone here who has been in this type of situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T02:23:09.463" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T02:23:09.463" Title="Disabilities in the Classroom" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8374" CreationDate="2013-03-05T00:58:10.847" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every university I have been affiliated with (in the U.S.) has had an office of disability services, tasked with evaluating individual cases and making (binding) recommendations to instructors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university has such an office, then you should refer this case to them and avoid judgement calls of the type you ask about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T00:58:10.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T06:14:46.160" Score="16" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journal impact factors are averages of samples of a power-law distribution (most papers are not cited, lots are highly cited). Wouldn't you expect the year-to-year impact factor to vary widely...? At least for journals publishing few papers? What is the catch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6253" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T07:47:42.777" Title="How much does the impact factor vary from year to year?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8376" CreationDate="2013-03-05T07:47:42.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For completeness, I will start by stating the underlying calculation for the impact factor (&lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/impact_factor/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total cites in year X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year X cites to articles published in the two year prior to year X (this is a subset of (1.))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of articles published in the two years prior to year X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;= (2.)/(3.) = impact factor for year X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most journals the number of papers published per year is relatively constant (item 3.). This means that what in most cases really changes the impact factor is item (2.), how many times papers in the years prior have been cited. This number will vary according to how successful the journal is to attract good papers that can accumulate citations. Under normal circumstances the influx of papers probably follows some form of distribution in terms of &quot;quality&quot; (whatever that is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we accept this as the model (deviations are likely to exist), then a journal with a small number of papers per year will likely be more sensitive to changes in citation rate of a few papers whereas a journal with a large publication rate will likely be less sensitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To change the citation rate of papers in a journal is not easy. The reputation of a journal takes time to build and can be destroyed in a minute. To increase the index is therefore likely more difficult than lowering. Being editor of a small to medium international journal, I have seen that introduction of thematic issues can significantly raise the index. This comes from the fact that such issues constitute a concentration of paper on the same topic which will strongly help each other to attract referenceing; as opposed to a single paper &quot;hidden&quot; in melee of other unrelated papers. So there are means (strategies) to change the index, but for business as usual it will vary but not fluctuate widely. If you find journals where the index varies strongly (more than on the decimal level) it might be interesting to take a closer look and see what factors have influenced the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T07:47:42.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8359" CreationDate="2013-03-05T14:03:25.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I generally write in LaTeX and do statistics in R so those can be easily versioned in a Git repository on BitBucket. On a sidenote, I chose BitBucket over GitHub that because collaborating is easier as it allows you to set up repos that can be forked but you can still prevent the forker from sharing it publicly. GitHub on the other hand (at least when I last looked) required you to tightly integrate into teams. Also, using Git submodules allows me to include common parts (such as my BibTeX files) into multiple projects without duplication of versions (though technically it does reside in multiple places on the drive), however this sometimes causes me some grief because I'm not very skilled with Git.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to acquire additional space in every way I can for Dropbox. It is now large enough that I can generally keep 100% of my active projects (some of them are the Git repos from above) in it. This way everything is always backed up offsite with no intervention. Because I work out of Dropbox as opposed to &quot;My Documents&quot; or the like, I also can seamlessly move from my Windows box at work to my laptop running Ubuntu or OSX. This also means that my stuff is not only backed up in the cloud but also on my other machine's hard drive. One tricky thing for me is the sharing between the two OSes on the laptop. For that I keep the Dropbox in a shared partition, to avoid wasting 2X the disk space.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I do an incremental backup every week or so when I think to plug my external drive in. That external drive is well cared for in a fancy case with fans and it is usually powered off except when I'm backing up. It never leaves my home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have the storage part pretty well worked out. However, I'm constantly trying to tweak the organization part. Right now I keep a projects directory in my Dropbox with multiple subprojects labeled like &quot;2012-XXX_YYY_ZZZ&quot; in some attempt to sort them. In these directories are generally subdirectories for study materials (I work with human-subjects), analysis, notes, and any products such as papers that came from the work. In the analysis directory is generally a subdirectory with the actual R code. I try to name that directory something like R_git, as I generally use the ending to signify that something is backed up elsewhere in another repo. My system gets difficult when I create a product (such as a paper) based on two projects (perhaps two studies). In that case I usually just move the paper subdirectory out to the main projects directory to avoid duplication. I do sometimes find myself searching through directories trying to remember where a given paper was stored, so clearly my system needs more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-01-03T22:11:39.067" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T22:11:39.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T15:16:34.200" Score="25" ViewCount="48198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading the following article by Mathew Might. &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw the following the paragraph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What doesn't matter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it's a research lab, it's not important. I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Mathew Might telling the truth?&#xA;For me it's very hard believe that GPA, GRE scores and undergraduate school don't matter. I used to think that they play an extremely important role in grad school admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T09:08:58.783" Title="Importance of GPA and GRE scores for grad school admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:04:13.977" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not doing my PhD in CS or maths but based on my experience, I believe it's a &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, more specifically: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... is an accurate assessment of the situation. Being a grad student is sort of waking up in a different world, what you have done previously isn't really indicative of what you are capable of doing during your PhD. Most PIs are aware of that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, I don't think this is all that common. How a professor chooses a student varies a lot, and I don't think your GPA etc will be irrelevant to some profs. Especially not if you are in a number-driven, cold-heart-competitive place... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more common however is that your grades won't be the only criteria. They will most likely not be a deal-breaker. You will most likely get a chance to explain why you did good on some courses and worse on others. Primarily you will get a chance to explain what you &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to do with your career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T16:04:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:48:51.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is highly dependent on the program. Two programs that I applied to were polar opposites and demonstrate the variety in a very succinct way, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;School 1: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA south of 3.5? don't bother applying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE quant scores south of 700(1)? don't bother applying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never published or fewer than 5 years professional experience? Seriously, why are you wasting our time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;School 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA north of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE scores should be submitted if you have them and they are still valid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is strongly recommended that you have relevant academic or industry experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real difference between the program admissions is that school 1 accepted baccalaureates on a straight path to PhD and school 2 requires a recent masters degree in one of a few rather specific fields.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was my experience but your mileage may vary. As I say, it's very dependent on the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) I don't claim to understand the new-fangled system, sorry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T16:48:51.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8359" CreationDate="2013-03-05T17:00:51.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several great answers here already, but here's a few more things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsync.samba.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rsync&lt;/a&gt; (graphical interfaces are available) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unison&lt;/a&gt; for synchronising data/documents between different computers (and/or a USB memory stick). Rsync is simpler but unidirectional, though you can effectively do a full sync by rsyncing in one direction then the other. Unison is much more powerful and results in the two copies ending up identical, letting you specify which files to ignore, how to resolve conflicts, etc. I use unison every day to keep my laptop and desktop in sync.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't discount your own university's networked storage if available, which will usually take care of backup and give you a level of protection against most problems short of a nuclear bomb. This can be slow when accessed offsite, for example, but for ours I find it doesn't matter too much as long as your files aren't enormous. If nothing else, it can be useful as a &quot;master&quot; copy that you synchronise your other copies against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, however you choose to organise your files and folders, spend a few minutes writing down &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're organising them in a read-me file so that, if the worse should happen, your colleagues can understand how to access your files and your work won't be wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T17:00:51.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2695" CreationDate="2013-03-05T17:47:47.057" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add an editor’s perspective even though it partially duplicates the other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having seen the effect of preferred reviewers in the journal where I serve, I am not altogether happy about these options. The non-preferred category is one that I take seriously because conflicts can lead to bad or poor reviews for reasons other than the science. My problem is instead with the preferred reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I assign reviewers I basically steer clear of the preferred reviewers as a rule. In the past when I have selected from this list, I have been extremely disappointed. Almost exclusively I have received &lt;em&gt;accept&lt;/em&gt; reviews (accompanied by &lt;em&gt;rejects&lt;/em&gt; from other reviewers), which I have been forced to deem practically useless and look for additional reviewers. I do not mean to say that all persons put on these lists provide poor reviews, but what I perceive as the original purpose namely to provide examples of names of persons whose objective opinion the author highly values is rapidly being drowned by names of friends. This has led me to stay clear of this list unless I myself recognize a name as somebody with integrity. I will nevertheless scrutinize that review with a hint of suspicion based on the experience I have. One way to avoid this could be to add a line or two stating why you have selected these names as preferred. This would help evaluate the usefulness of such reviewers. Sadly many submission systems do not allow for such comments except in the submission letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I agree with the others answers, provide particularly non-preferred names but feel free to add also preferred but do not count on the preferred names to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-08-02T10:11:11.033" LastActivityDate="2020-08-02T10:11:11.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2013-03-05T18:23:00.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more popular the school and program, the more likely it will use test scores and transcript grades as &quot;screening tools&quot; to weed out uncompetitive applications. However, there are probably reasonable thresholds that exist on both measures; exceed those, and your exact GPA and GRE scores probably won't be taken into much consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, GPA should play a much stronger role in GRE, if only in the sense that somebody who does outstandingly in the core classes but struggles in &quot;general education&quot; classes that don't pertain to the field will probably have an easier time than somebody who has a better overall GPA, but weaker grades in the major. GRE scores are only correlated with performance in coursework; I don't think it has much to do with actual aptitude for research (although it may have some correlation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T18:23:00.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:15:05.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching in University (Mongolia). In our country calling every person who is teaching in university, first &quot;Lecturer&quot;. We are starting from assistant lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer going on. If you have PhD degree you can go to next level: Associate Professor and Professor. But in generally all calling like lecturer. If you are already in Professor position your teaching hours is reducing and increasing hours for research and projects.&#xA;Different between Lecturers and Professors in our meaning sounding like, have academic degree or not. But not every body can become Professor who have PhD degree. You have to be lead some main research direction or field, you have to write books about your field. &#xA;Big difference from European countries Professor position in our university is not lifelong. After every 3 years you have to be accredited. If you are enough good by this process you can keep your position, if not your level is reducing.&#xA;I am agree that Professor have to concentrate more to research and Lecturers can be focused for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6257" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T21:15:05.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:31:31.080" Score="3" ViewCount="116520" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your country have any academic degrees after the PhD? If yes, what is it called and how graduating this degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, what is a Post-Doc? Is it a degree or something else? I have seen some people refer to a post-doc in their CV as they would a degree. Is this acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6257" LastEditorUserId="948" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T22:42:54.480" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T00:04:51.873" Title="What is academic degree after PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-03-05T22:49:20.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:35:48.973" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, a PhD is the highest degree you can get. A postdoc is simply a research position that is not permanent, i.e. no fixed contract or tenure. There are some exceptions, for example in the German system where you can get your Habilitation, which is a degree after you get your PhD. But in most systems there is nothing beyond a PhD in terms of degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T21:35:48.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:56:21.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Paul Hiemstra pointed out, the highest degree level is a Doctorate (Dr) however, with this in mind, there are different academic titles that you can gain if you work at a University or high-educational institute. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senior Lecturer (Usually appointed to a academic with a level of experience, this is usually how many years they have been at a University).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Master Lecturer (This is usually a rank about a Senior Lecturer) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reader (This is someone who usually has a vast amount of knowledge and a strong academic background who is employed by the University not so much to lecturer, but, to carry out research for the university).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professor (&lt;em&gt;I believe this title is different in the US&lt;/em&gt; but this title is given to an academic who has an outstanding background in research and has published books, received a lot of funding for the particular University.) A Professorship is not something that can be studied for, it is something that is achieved and you are selected for by a special panel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more about titles &lt;a href=&quot;http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/titles/titlebook.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6258" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T21:56:21.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:19:13.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many countries have higher degrees than the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/calendar/section3/regs%28awards%29/doctor-of-laws,-of-letters-and-of-science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In the UK&lt;/a&gt;, there's&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Litt.D Doctor of Letters / Literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DSc Doctor of Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LL.d Doctor of Laws&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D.D. Doctor of Divinity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these typically requires the submission of a body of work - a research portfolio - together with a critique of the work. Or they may be awarded as honorary degrees; see the links above for the requirements for the degrees from the University of East Anglia (Litt.D, DSc, LL.d), and the University of Oxford (D.D.), accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A post-doc is just an academic research job that's typically done after attaining a PhD. It's not a degree in its own right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T00:04:51.873" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T00:04:51.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:33:35.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only answer your second question, being in somewhat same kind of situation. (job in algebra)Let me first start with a job link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/3432&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/3432&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the European jobs have later deadlines. You can apply there. Try euro-math-jobs, nordic-math-jobs, and don't forget to write to people asking about whether there are groups having funding for postdocs.And do look at the mathoverflow question they mentioned above (I did too, and it helped).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check this:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://homotopical.wordpress.com/jobs/postdoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://homotopical.wordpress.com/jobs/postdoc/&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;(You will find it very informative).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T22:33:35.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2013-03-06T08:02:11.577" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many countries have higher degrees than the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/calendar/section3/regs%28awards%29/doctor-of-laws,-of-letters-and-of-science&quot;&gt;In the UK&lt;/a&gt;, there's&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Litt.D Doctor of Letters / Literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DSc Doctor of Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LL.d Doctor of Laws&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D.D. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/31-67_General_Regulations.shtml&quot;&gt;Doctor of Divinity&lt;/a&gt; (the highest)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these typically requires the submission of a body of work - a research portfolio - together with a critique of the work. Or they may be awarded as honorary degrees; see the links above for the requirements for the degrees from the University of East Anglia (Litt.D, DSc, LL.d), and the University of Oxford (D.D.), accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T08:02:11.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8401" CreationDate="2013-03-06T09:17:57.880" Score="10" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine an education model in which teacher/supervisor/mentor does not teach the syllabus to students. Instead, just pushing them towards key topics, and students must study by themselves. The teacher only control/supervise students to keep studying in right direction, but no professional teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something like supervising academic research projects at graduate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious if there is a pedagogical model/category/method of this kind for education (at lower levels)? For example, is there any example for teaching by this method in any school or university around the world? If yes, what is it called? I had no appropriate keyword to search for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T09:23:22.177" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T09:57:25.127" Title="Supervised self-study" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8399" CreationDate="2013-03-06T09:50:45.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, USA. There are two ways in which this can happen. We have an independent study in which the student will learn about a topic with some guidance from a professor and write a paper about it, this has a broad variety of possibilities only some may fall into your category. One thing that everyone does is a senior design or capstone project where there is generally a faculty adviser but the student works to apply what you he or she has learned and present at the end of the year. This is in many ways similar working on a thesis, but as an undergraduate will take less time and be less intense. This is used in at least in the engineering school and physics department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is somewhat a third way, but does not contribute to the students transcript unless the student specifically does an internship for a research group. This is undergraduate research, and the student will contribute to research projects ongoing at the university that have faculty overseeing. In this scenario you may be mentored more by graduate students than faculty or staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T09:50:45.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8399" CreationDate="2013-03-06T09:51:23.133" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem-based learning is one approach that fits your description. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of problem solving. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge. The goals of PBL are to help the students develop flexible knowledge, effective problem solving skills, self-directed learning, effective collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation. Problem-based learning is a style of active learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related approach is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning&quot;&gt;inquiry-based learning&lt;/a&gt;, which allows the idea to be used on a much smaller scale than problem-based learning, which, based on what I have read, tends to be rather resource intensive and require vast amounts of planning from the teaching staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T09:57:25.127" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T09:57:25.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8414" CreationDate="2013-03-06T10:28:30.217" Score="23" ViewCount="938" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost every US university states on its job advertisements that the university is an equal opportunity employer. Based on federal law, this means that applicants not be judged by their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the guarantee for this fair strategy in action? If the committee is influenced by negative personal views to underestimate the qualifications of an applicant, how can s/he prove/appeal/claim/complain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, certain criteria are given for an academic position. If an applicant believes that the winner of this competition (the one who is finally appointed) is less qualified than her/him, how can s/he claim that the selection was not &lt;em&gt;equal opportunity&lt;/em&gt; in practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one detect/prove this violation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one proceed in case of a possible violation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2018-04-01T06:32:20.493" LastActivityDate="2018-04-01T06:32:20.493" Title="How is US law on equal opportunity enforced in academic recruitment?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;&lt;diversity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-06T10:49:35.920" Score="13" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I have been noticing some postdoc open position announcements that, besides the usual prerequisites (PhD, an excellent CV, programming skills, etc.), asked the candidates to have publications in the most important conferences in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mine.kaust.edu.sa/Pages/JoinUs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Candidates need to hold an earned Ph.D. (or be near completion)&#xA;  in computer science or in a related field with good programming skills&#xA;  in C/C++/Java/Matlab. Successful candidates are expected to be&#xA;  self-motivated and have &lt;strong&gt;a good publication record (at least have one&#xA;  paper accepted by premier conferences or journals like KDD&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;NIPS&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;ICML&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;IJCAI&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;AAAI&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;SIGMOD&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;VLDB&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;ICDE&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;TKDE&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;TKDD&lt;/strong&gt;, etc.) and good&#xA;  command of English. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was quite surprised to read announcements like this (if one made an excellent research, who cares where it has been published?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are cases like these rare or quite common?&#xA;To get hired for an academic position (like postdoc for example), is it so important to publish in top-level conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the conference fame considered &lt;strong&gt;more important&lt;/strong&gt; than the paper scientific relevance for a hiring process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T16:30:23.777" LastActivityDate="2021-03-22T01:27:19.900" Title="Can the publication conference choice affect one's admission to a new academic job?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-03-06T11:18:01.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment on whether the practice of explicitly pointing out that publishing in top conferences makes a stronger record is common, although I suspect it is taken for granted rather than spelled out.  But, from the perspective of a hiring committee, being published in a top conference generally indicates that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research is excellent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work has been peer reviewed by other top researchers in the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these indicators will give a hiring committee a better feel for a candidate's potential for future top quality work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By publishing in a lesser conference or journal and without those indicators, a closer reading of the publication would be necessary to make a better judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To comment on your question about whether the conference is more important than the work: for most people, I would assume (and hope) the work itself is more important.  But the reality is that hiring committees need to differentiate candidates, and judging by conference/journal quality is one way to accomplish that goal.  Additionally, trying to read all candidates' papers, and then trying to judge the worth of the research without necessarily being an expert in the sub-fields themselves, would probably be futile at worst, and frustrating at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, strong letters in support of the candidate are probably almost as important as the research itself, especially if the letters point in particular to example publications that demonstrate outstanding work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T11:24:18.717" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T11:24:18.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-03-06T12:22:03.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it is not rare, at least when considering the &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/browse.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBWorld&lt;/a&gt; calls. CS is oriented towards conferences and people value top conferences more than anything else. Although I am just young researcher, I may say &lt;strong&gt;people are going crazy for publishing in top conferences&lt;/strong&gt; in CS. I saw some professors target only and only top conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know whether this is a good thing to the field and I wish to hear from experienced researcher in the field how things was before 10 or 15 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T12:22:03.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8413" CreationDate="2013-03-06T12:27:41.433" Score="6" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the opposite factors described in answers to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2457/what-makes-securing-faculty-positions-difficult?rq=1&quot;&gt;What makes securing faculty positions difficult?&lt;/a&gt;, I came to conclusion that an application for an academic position should be balanced. It is understandable that there is a high competition for faculty positions, and a qualified applicant may be not even invited for interview; thus, everyone tries to even overestimate his/her achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the interesting points in answers to the above-mentioned question was that too good application might scare the committee, then preferring not to take a risk. Thus, an exceptional application will be simply ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to obvious evidences in the CV, how to highlight exceptional features in the cover letter? For example, potential research achievements, which are not obvious in the CV, promising plans, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the strategy must be in this direction to convince the committee that this &lt;em&gt;superstar applicant&lt;/em&gt; is a good chance for your department!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T15:31:39.160" Title="How to balance application for a faculty position between exceptional and ordinary?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8411" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:46:02.397" Score="32" ViewCount="2606" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all let me apologize for the title, as it is perhaps very vague. The issue is as follows; I have stopped printing my articles and instead starting reading them on screen via my library manager software (Papers2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I find it's MUCH harder to focus when I am reading on screen and thus takes much longer for me to read articles on a screen. It's almost like I get some sort of digital dyslexia... As possible reasons, I figure small things like new mail notifications, screen brightness, sitting/standing posture etc all weigh in somehow. But I suspect that the subliminal association of &quot;how I normally read stuff on a screen&quot; might have a larger effect. In other words since I am normally skimming through stuff when I am in front of the screen, my brain might try to take in information the same way when I am trying to read an article, which of course is a recipe for failure...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it's just me or if this is a common phenomenon? Additionally I would appreciate if I could get some tips on how to tackle this problem. Obviously printing all papers is an option but it's neither elegant (creates a mess on/around my desk) nor is it environment-friendly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2021-04-08T10:51:07.763" Title="Any pointers for reading articles digitally (on screen)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-06T15:01:34.717" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have terrible eyes and this is a very real problem for me. Although I'm not an eye care specialist I can say anecdotally that there are a few things that have really made all the difference for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: if you wear glasses, get the computer lenses. Usually they are some kind of an off yellow to cut glare. These really help to reduce eye strain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: look away from the screen every few minutes. Try to focus on objects away from the screen that let you change your focal distance. I find that doing this for just a few moments at the end of every paragraph really helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Use natural light if you can. I've found that turning my desk so that the ambient light from the window illuminates my screen has also helped me a lot. You have to be careful of glare but when I finally got everything situated it made a notable difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: media counts a lot. If you're going to use a tablet or eReader look for something that has front/side lighting. Many people like the new Kindle paperwhite but I prefer the Kobo glo. If you're looking for a more stationary solution then I highly recommend a good projector. Prices have come down quite a bit and you can now get an 'OK' projector for just a couple of hundred dollars. It will take a little bit to acclimate yourself to the new reading format but once you do I think you'll find that you like it.  I know that I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T15:01:34.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8408" CreationDate="2013-03-06T15:31:39.160" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One non-surprising way to help your application rise to the top is to have your advisor or another letter-writer contact a colleague they know at a school you're interested in and give you a good word in person (obviously not always an option). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really in the position where you are &quot;too good,&quot; then you should follow the advice in the other thread you mentioned, and explicitly spell out in your cover letter why you want to work at a particular institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T15:31:39.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8402" CreationDate="2013-03-06T15:54:01.827" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an equal opportunity employer means that the institution abides by the US federal law on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity_employment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Equal Opportunity&lt;/a&gt; - basically that the employer cannot consider race, color, religion, sex, or national origin when making personnel decisions. Additional protected classes, such as age, have been added to Equal Opportunity over the years. Equal Opportunity does not force an institution to hire someone they would rather not hire on the basis of being a member of a protected class, but it means they cannot artificially exclude that candidate. &lt;strong&gt;Equal opportunity means that all applications must be evaluated fairly.&lt;/strong&gt; It does not mean that the best candidate on paper always gets the job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in contrast to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Affirmative Action&lt;/a&gt;, which in the US is &quot;positive discrimination&quot;. In other words, the institution is forced to artificially maintain diversity in its staffing if it does not happen naturally. Affirmative action can mean that you would have to hire your second (or third) choice over your first choice to maintain diversity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; - to address some comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of an applicant, EO violations can difficult to prove, and the burden of proof is usually on the applicant. Most of the information collected during a hiring process is not (and never will become) public. It is shredded/deleted once the position is filled. An applicant's on paper qualifications are nearly impossible to know, unless you are a close acquaintance of the person. The CV that person posts on their website might be abbreviated, incomplete, or out-of-date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, most hiring committees often consider important intangibles that are assessed during the interview. Academic positions are different from positions elsewhere. Most academic committees are assuming that they are hiring a person who will stay at that institution, get tenure, etc. They need to assess if the candidate is likely to do so, if the candidate is likely to thrive in the current culture of the department, if the candidate will get along with the faculty personalities, if the candidate is likely to start looking for something bigger and better five-ten years later, if the candidate is likely to survive the tenure process, if the candidate's specialty/expertise fill a current void in the department, if the candidate is likely to meet service expectations with enthusiasm, if the candidate is amenable to the crappy teaching load he or she will get the first semester, if the candidate's research plans are feasible given other expectations and institutional resources, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have more awards, publications, conference presentations, fellowships, grants, letters after you name, or whatever on-paper metric you are using, but you may not have met the needs of the department or institution as well as the other candidate. You may feel more qualified, but someone else was a better fit overall for the position. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8408/how-to-balance-application-for-a-faculty-position-between-exceptional-and-ordina&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; and the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2457/what-makes-securing-faculty-positions-difficult?rq=1&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; suggest that applications that look too good may not be considered seriously because hiring committees are afraid of a bad fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, as may happen, the department you applied to may have always intended to hire the person they hired, but to meet legal and institutional requirements they conducted a search. They interviewed several other strong candidates from diverse backgrounds to satisfy EEO requirements, and then they hired the person they wanted to hire. I won't pretend that such behavior isn't shady, but it can be common, especially for administrative positions, and it is legal. The best way for a hiring committee to prove they are following EEO guidelines is to interview a diverse array of qualified candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To allege that your application was artificially rejected because of your membership in a protected class, start by getting a lawyer. Don't risk jeopardizing your case by inadvertently proceeding without one. Then, do whatever your legal counsel advises. That is what they are for. The only real proof that the hiring committee discriminated against you is if no members of your protected class were interviewed. If you were interviewed, that means they either 1) considered you a strong candidate or 2) went out of their way not to exclude you. Either way, you have almost no case. It may make you angry if the second thing happened, but there is little you can do except to warn people you know away from applying at that institution. If they discriminate against you because you are not the one person they really want for the job, it is not illegal, it just sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T02:37:09.747" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-06T17:13:47.530" Score="7" ViewCount="8393" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I formulate research interests in my CV?  When talking about my field, I like to include some context, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The climate of planet Earth is a complex system. Detailed observations are needed for improving our understanding of individual components and their interaction. Additionally, long-term, large-scale monitoring is required to study the climate system in its entirety. Observations from space are important for both kinds of observations. I am particularly interested in applying space-based observations the atmosphere, for example, for the hydrological cycle. Additionally, I think foo is important because of bar, and would like to research foo deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a CV, space and attention are scarce.  An alternative would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Space-based observations of the atmosphere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Foo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this appears a bit bald to me.  I think the context, the motivation, should be relevant: &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; are my research interests as they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a better alternative for describing research interests on a CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T22:49:31.627" Title="Formulating research interests — context/motivation or not?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-03-06T17:58:25.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An advice I got when I started worrying about how to form my CV was to include a short paragraph under the title &quot;Profile&quot; which would practically be the only freetext bit of the CV, where I &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; myself in short and to-the-point sentences. The rest of the CV was supposed to be sort of an enumeration of what I have done, what I can do etc etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think if you want to have your research interests in your CV, it would make sense to purify the core of what you want to say and plug that into such a &quot;profile&quot;. Alternative, or rather a complement, to that would be to mention your research interests in a cover letter which you would most likely need to write for any position you'll be applying to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it all depends on what kind of a CV you are going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T17:58:25.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-06T19:13:53.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a Nook/Kindle I've found it surprisingly easier to read on those devices. Kindle allows you to email files to that device and it appears in just a few min. There are glitches of course, but I find it a good middle ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T19:13:53.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-03-06T19:36:39.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't even use bullets; just provide a list of keywords/phrases identifying your subfield.  At least in the US, departments ask for a separate research statement in addition to your CV.  That's the place to explain your research interests in detail and give them context; there's no need to do that in your CV, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when I applied for faculty positions, my CV included the following lines between my contact information and my education history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research Interests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Algorithms, data structures, and lower bounds; computational and discrete geometry; computer graphics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've served on the faculty recruiting committee in my (top-10 US computer science) department for several years; this approach seems both standard and effective.  Personally, when I read a CV, I only spend a second or two on the self-declared research interests and jump straight to the publication list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Posdef's answer suggests giving more context in your cover letter, but I think this is pointless.  I don't know anyone who has ever read a cover letter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T19:36:39.217" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2013-03-06T20:52:57.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends greatly on the field. I have been in graduate admissions committees in two different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field A: the subject GRE in this field is a joke. The committee doesn't look at it, and doesn't look much at the regular GRE's. It's all recommendation letters and grades in the relevant courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field B: the subject GRE in this field is very difficult. The committee is very reluctant to take anybody who scored less than the 90th percentile on the GRE. (Of course, you have to have good grades and recommendation letters as well.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T20:52:57.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8337" CreationDate="2013-03-06T20:53:28.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are want to have this degree You have to motivate you by yourself, too. Just wait hints from supervisor is not enough. You have to work in your research idea and you can request a bit your supervisor by diplomatic way. You write to him email every week and can give to him update reports, what you doing and how is your progress. Of course, you will nee hints. But I must have some own idea about your future thesis and you better have to work on this idea. You can try write paper to conferences. Conference reviewer evaluation is always good impact to researcher. If just you want you can find way and your method how you can handle situation. Just give to your self some time. And please think, what is important for you! If PhD is important you have to move... You must work by yourself, first...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6257" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T20:53:28.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-06T21:00:09.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar issue with reading on screen. There doesn't seem to be a commercial A4-sized e-ink reader, which is what I'd ideally read digital copies on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when I'm onlu skimming a paper, I'll do it on-screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whenever I'm serious about digesting a paper, I've switched back to printing it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T21:00:09.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-06T22:22:08.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest a number of things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you're suffering from glare issues or similar, try to reposition yourself so that the light comes from behind your monitor and reduces glare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) As has been suggested in comments, try a tablet. I personally use an iPad for much of my paper reading and it works well. Some advocate the smaller tablets because of their lighter weight (the iPad does feel a little heavy over time, and it's hard to hold in one hand for long amounts of time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of an iPad or another tablet is that it feels much more like reading paper than sitting at a computer does. You can sit down at a couch or in a chair and lounge back. In addition, the iPad has a high-quality screen. You can also easily make annotations with good software. I personally use iAnnotate, but there are many options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Many computer monitors, and especially laptop screens, are poor quality. If you want to do a lot of reading on the computer but do not want to try a tablet, consider getting a good-quality external monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most monitors are TN monitors, which have good response times, but have poor contrast ratios, poor viewing angles, and poor color accuracy, as well as limited refresh rates. IPS panels, in contrast, have much higher everything, but are more expensive. The vast majority of laptop displays, for example, are TN panels, as are the vast majority of computer monitors under $350 (at the 24&quot; size). It may be worth looking at a higher-quality monitor if you believe that it will help your reading and you want to persist reading on the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to read on a television-as-a-monitor, don't. Television screens aren't good for text reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A benefit with getting a monitor is that larger monitors generally make people more productive, so even if you buy a monitor and still decide not to read from the screen, you're probably going to still benefit from it work-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, your mileage will vary. I've heard of people who have no problems with reading on screens (I'm one of them, though I did get some strain after a while and ended up switching to iPad for much of my reading). I've also heard of people who see flicker and get eye strain viewing certain monitors, with varying severity - some had severe pain after minutes of ANY monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel that if you're still struggling to be productive after a week or two with new hardware (and, hardware is NOT cheap) then I'd consider just going back to paper. While the amount of paper that you have to archive and throw out can be sometimes rather depressing, it's actually a rather cheap alternative compared to purchasing a $500 tablet or monitor which has toxic waste, metal, and unrecyclable materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T22:22:08.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-03-06T22:49:31.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a better alternative for describing research interests on a CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;include a brief (1-3 sentences) free form blob, basically a research statement&lt;/strong&gt;. Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work to remedy the effects of human air pollution of natural environment. I focus on monitoring quality of air and water quality in urban areas, especially XYZ. My main achievements include A, B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;include a list of keywords of your research interests&lt;/strong&gt; underneath the blob.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blob and keywords should fit to the first page of the CV package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T22:49:31.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8438" CreationDate="2013-03-06T23:33:11.977" Score="10" ViewCount="4192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sabbatical leave is very common as it is nice to spend a year as a visiting professor in another university and experience a new environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very beneficial for the host university to have temporary faculty members free of charge (no salary is normally paid by the host university). &lt;strong&gt;(1) How do host universities attempt (if they do) to attract visiting professors?&lt;/strong&gt; Of course, there are job advertisements for hiring visiting professors, but I think they are paid positions and different from normal sabbatical leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visiting for research purposes should be arranged with the leader of the host research group. Thus, the arrangement is at a personal level (somewhat similar to hiring a postdoc researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visiting for education purposes should be arranged at the level of the department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(2) How can a professor find a visiting professor? Is it chancy? to meet a colleague interested to host?&lt;/strong&gt; Or s/he must contact many professors and department chairs to find a vacancy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(1) &amp;amp; (2) Who should actually initiate this process? The guest professor or host university?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(possible 3) Is there a system to facilitate this process, as it is of mutual interest, or everything is left to chance? For example, European Union emphasizes the mobility of students/professors through different programmes. Is there such a system for sabbatical visits (in its classical form of completely working at the host university for a period of time, not guest lecturing as it is common in Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2019-09-18T21:17:02.717" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T21:17:02.717" Title="How to arrange sabbatical leave?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8432" CreationDate="2013-03-07T00:12:39.013" Score="17" ViewCount="27249" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the discussion made in comments to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8330/what-does-prof-dr-ir-mean&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, it has been stated that in France, it is possible (though improbable) to become a professor without having PhD. It made me curious if there is such possibility in the United States. I know that in 1970s there were leading professors in the US university who had only MSc. However, I think the main focus was on knowledge in the past, but now formalities are much more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I am curious if the current regulations in the US universities allows this at all? For promotion to full professor, one needs to be assistant/associate professor. In the past, having a PhD was privilege, but it is now mandatory for holding any assistant/associate/full professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the current regulations allow a professor without PhD to teach PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is about impossibility vs. improbability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T09:29:11.317" Title="Professorship without PhD in the United States" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-03-07T01:04:37.273" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Casson&quot;&gt;Andrew Casson&lt;/a&gt; never completed his Ph.D. and is a Professor at Yale University (and was previously a Professor at UT Austin and UC Berkeley).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T01:04:37.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-07T02:06:38.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write long policy documents and instead of printing them, I tend to proof-read them on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use perhaps the most inexpensive way: the 'text to speech' program. This is inbuilt in the Mac computer. I aware there are better programs available but they are not free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically highlight the text and press the key combination and the computer reads the text back to me. All I do is follow the document on the screen without too much effort. No eye strain etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite relaxing as you can hear the words and in the case of proofreading you can gauge the quality of the pros etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works with all types of documents (pdfs and even webpages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T02:06:38.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-03-07T02:48:05.927" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;At most US institutions, you need the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_degree&quot;&gt;terminal degree&lt;/a&gt; in your field. For many fields this is a PhD, but in some it might be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Education&quot;&gt;EdD&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Musical_Arts&quot;&gt;DMA&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Public_Health&quot;&gt;DPH&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Theology&quot;&gt;ThD&lt;/a&gt;, etc. However, all of these degrees are considered to one level or another to be research doctorates. Presumably faculty positions at a medical school require an MD or equivalent. Likewise for other professional schools. Positions in the visual arts, theater, dance, creative writing, cinematography, etc., may only require the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Fine_Arts&quot;&gt;MFA (Master of Fine Arts)&lt;/a&gt; degree, as it is considered to be the terminal degree in those fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Regulations&quot; about the requirements to hold certain academic ranks and perform certain academic duties (like mentor graduate students) are made at the institutional level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T03:17:54.893" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T03:17:54.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-07T07:38:12.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even I had similar problem, I asked few people I know &amp;amp; I came to know about this software called F.Lux. It provides a different lighting according to the time. And you can set it as per your convenience. I suggest you to give it a try : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stereopsis.com/flux/&quot;&gt;http://stereopsis.com/flux/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a freeware, available for Windows/Mac &amp;amp; even for iOS (jailbroken) &amp;amp; Android. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second suggestion is to look away from screen for ever few mins. Currently I use a timer to remind me (sometimes I even forget this lol) &amp;amp; I make sure to look away from screen for every 30-45 mins. For this I use Time Out app in my Mac. Similar app should be available for your OS too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T07:38:12.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-03-07T09:10:39.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there might be some confusion.  If you write policies, codes, and manuals, that most likely does not qualify as (scientific) research as the term is generally understood by the research community (or the academic community).  In our context, (scientific) research generally refers to systematic investigation that leads to new knowledge.  The end result of (scientific) research is some new knowledge that was not previously known before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in other contexts, people sometimes use the word &quot;research&quot; in a different way.  For instance, they might talk about &quot;researching an issue&quot;, by which they mean, go find newspaper articles, scientific papers, policy briefs, etc. on the topic and read them to get up to speed on the topic as quickly as possible.  That's a fine meaning of the term &quot;research&quot;, but it's not research as the academic or research community mean it.  That kind of activity generally is not a replacement for what academics call (scientific) research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Scientific) research is also usually published in a peer-reviewed conference or journal.  Academics may give credit only to published work.  There are good reasons for this.  For one thing, academics value discovering new knowledge and making it available to humankind.  If you haven't published, you haven't advanced that agenda.  For that reason, if researcher X discovers something new but doesn't publish, and then a year later researcher Y discovers the new thing and publishes, we usually award credit (&quot;priority&quot;) to researcher Y, because researcher Y published.  Also, peer-reviewed publications are one of the ways that we evaluate the quality of work.  Typically, folks on a search committee are not expert in your area and may find it difficult to directly evaluate the quality of your work.  If it has been published in a peer-reviewed conference/journal, that speaks to its quality; and the more selective the conference/journal, the more of a testament to quality it is.  If your work hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed forum, it's harder to know whether it's any good (and there may even be a suspicion that it wasn't published in a peer-reviewed forum because it wasn't good enough or would not have been able to survive peer review).  So, publications matter for hiring.  I'm not saying that unpublished work is never taken into account, but it's a much higher hurdle if none of the work has been published, and you need to be honest with yourself about the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that you asked a similar question about a month and a half ago (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7278/705&quot;&gt;Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?&lt;/a&gt;).  You got similar answers, and some very good advice, at the time.  Perhaps it'd be worth starting by reviewing the answers you go to the earlier question, and then editing your question to provide more context and detail, taking into account what you've read there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you haven't given us much to work with: for instance, you haven't told us what field you are working in; you haven't told us why your work wasn't published and cannot be published in a peer-reviewed forum; you haven't told us what aspects of the industry research you think might be relevant to your application or what options for how to include it in your CV you have considered; you haven't told us what was the work you did in industry, or what the novel scientific contributions were, or what its impact on industry was.  The less information we have, the less likely it is that we can provide useful advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T19:38:08.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8437" CreationDate="2013-03-07T09:48:34.390" Score="17" ViewCount="3615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis and came across an image on Wikipedia that I would like to use. The licensing on this image is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.&#xA;  In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:&#xA;  I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I still include a reference to indicate this image is not my own work, if so, who should be given credit (the author is not known in this case)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4533" LastEditorUserId="26682" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:42:33.880" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T21:42:33.880" Title="Should I include a reference for an image that is released into the public domain?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8436" CreationDate="2013-03-07T10:05:05.000" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I still include a reference to indicate this image is not my&#xA;  own work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt; If the idea is not yours, you need to reference it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who should be given credit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a harder question. Ideally, you should find the original author/source. Given a reasonable attempt to find the original author/source fails then reference the secondary/reproduction (i.e., wikipedia/wikimedia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T10:05:05.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8427" CreationDate="2013-03-07T10:45:38.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have direct experience with sabbaticals, however the professors I've known that have taken them have been explicitly sought out for the respective sabbatical at a particular institution (as a visiting professor), by colleagues that they personally know professionally (i.e., from being in the same field and interacting via conferences, collaborations, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it boils down to networking, and almost certainly doesn't come out of nowhere.  If a professor is planning a sabbatical, he or she will probably already have colleagues willing to host, or will start the process by calling up a colleague and pitching the idea.  I would gather that it isn't likely that there are too many successful cold-calls to departments that lead to sabbaticals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T10:45:38.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8441" CreationDate="2013-03-07T13:45:32.973" Score="7" ViewCount="2526" Body="&lt;p&gt;A school that I am applying has a list of available topics, along with their descriptions, which I can choose from. I already select one topic which matches my interest and background, I also contact a professor who will supervise on that topic and he encourages me to go for it. However, as the application process, I need to write a research proposal. It makes me confused as the topic and research description are already defined. I can add some comments on the topic and then relate my background to it, but it will be a personal statement instead of research proposal. So, I wonder in other universities, what students are expected to write in their research proposals when they select a pre-defined topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T14:01:31.770" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T14:01:34.500" Title="Research proposal for a pre-defined PhD topic" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:01:25.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask the professor who encouraged you to apply what the best strategy is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, a good idea is to take the topic proposed in the list you mention and write about that. Make it your own. Try to develop your own approach to the topic. Elaborate more on what needs to be done. Explore some related work a find out what has been written. This will help demonstrate that you have what it takes to be a (top) PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid simply writing a personal statement on top of the research proposal. They probably want to see how you think about the research topic and would approach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, get the professor to help you out. Not by doing the writing, but by providing comments and possibly related work. (Note that professors are busy, so s/he may not have time to do this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T14:01:25.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:01:34.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A research proposal should address several things, whether the topics are predefined or not.  Yes, you propose a topic but you also want to address: why you selected your topic, any background you might have in that area, how you intend to approach your research, methodologies you intend to employ, relevant standards and rigor, and (possibly the most important) how your research on the chosen topic will advance the related body of knowledge in your discipline. Of course this would all be at a very high level but it should all work toward advancing your argument.  I think it also helps to keep in mind that any research proposals or statements that you write are intended to be persuasive in nature. When the reader finishing reviewing their proposal there should be no doubt that you're the best person to do what you want to do, and if you don't do it there will be a potential void of knowledge in your discipline.  All you have to do is convince them of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final tips: edit often, get lots of test readers, revise-revise-revise, and when you submit it - let it go and don't let it get to you.  I've seen people drive themselves nuts waiting to hear back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T14:01:34.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8446" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:34:05.043" Score="16" ViewCount="9523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had two papers approved for a workshop in a IEEE conference and I'm going to send the camera-ready version soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to have one paper cite the other? If it's OK, do I have to reference the other paper as &quot;to appear&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6275" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T18:43:59.960" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T18:43:59.960" Title="I have two papers in an up-coming conference. Is it appropriate to cite one in another?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:38:27.307" Score="-6" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the post relating to this topic &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51/submitting-the-same-research-to-multiple-conferences&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. However, it doesn't say anything for the paper relating to the economics. I would be glad if seasoned econ colleagues could clear out the confusion in this regard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T01:47:21.633" Title="Submitting the same paper to more than one conference in economics" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;economics&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-03-11T13:09:18.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:47:42.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is okay for each paper to cite the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be better if more accurate publication details were given. Sometimes the published will add this information (this happens at Springer for LNCS volumes). Perhaps you can alert the editor of the fact, and they might be able to make sure that you have the right information for the citation or they can ensure that the publishers do the right thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T15:47:42.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2013-03-07T16:04:17.637" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is acceptable, and fairly common. You cite as usual, and the citation itself would be identical to a standard citation with the exception that the date and page numbers would be replaced by the phrase &quot;in press&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historians.org/PUBS/Free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm#Reputation&quot;&gt;American Historical Association's &quot;Professional Standards&quot; page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The AHA suggests the following lexicon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;In Press&quot;: the manuscript is fully copyedited and out of the author's hands. It is in the final stages of the production process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Forthcoming&quot;: a completed manuscript has been accepted by a press or journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Under contract to . . .&quot;: a press and an author have signed a contract for a book in progress, but the final manuscript has not yet been submitted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Submitted&quot; or &quot;under consideration&quot;: the book or article has been submitted to a press or journal, but there is as yet no contract or agreement to publish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T16:04:17.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-03-07T21:04:48.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emphasize strengths that mirror what would be expected for a 10-year Academic career:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No peer-reviewed publications? List instead all the internal white papers you've written. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mention any academic collaborations when describing roles. (No collaborations? List internal cross-departmental collaborations.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List trainees/interns you've mentored.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List any important talks/presentations you've given related to your research. It won't be the same, as the level of discourse when talking to other researchers is different than when talking to senior managers, but it does demonstrate presentation experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get very strong letters of recommendation attesting to your strength as a researcher, communicator, and mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T21:04:48.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-07T23:14:23.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lisa has a good point but I'll just go into a little more depth with my experience (perhaps a little too much for a comment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a Kindle DX (e-ink, big) and while it's not perfect it is so much better than a tablet. I find that reading on a tablet or monitor my eyes become quite tired quite quickly, but not with e-ink displays. The problem is that the Kindle (at least mine) does not zoom well into PDFs. However, the Nook (e-ink) did (sister has one) and even for my Kindle I can use Calibre (free) to convert PDFs to the native Kindle format. Calibre does work well for text-heavy articles (if there are not too many columns - the simpler the better) but if you have a lot of creative formatting, it's not quite so great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about the Kindle DX is that you can hold it on the side and you can read PDF articles well by jumping back and forth (read top 1/2 of first column in one view, then next page to view the bottom 1/2, then previous page to read the top 1/2 of the other column, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T23:14:23.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2013-03-08T00:20:14.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's fine.  I would probably cite it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First Author and Second Author.  This is the title of this paper, which is also found several times in the paper itself.  These &lt;em&gt;Proceedings&lt;/em&gt;, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T00:20:14.260" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8452" CreationDate="2013-03-08T00:40:52.687" Score="5" ViewCount="3544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professor and researcher in mathematics and my research is kind of on the theoretical side.  Online, I discovered a mathematician who had written some papers with ideas similar to mine, and we corresponded and discussed possible collaboration.  Then he wrote an entire paper, listing both of us as authors on the front page, and sent it to me.  I didn't think it ethical to take any credit for a paper I had no part in writing, so I discontinued all contact with this person.  Has anyone here had a similar experience?  How common is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am becoming very disillusioned with the pure research game.  People spend huge amounts of time on self-promotion because there just isn't that much demand for their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-08T01:58:49.393" LastActivityDate="2020-11-24T13:30:13.797" Title="Has anyone ever written a paper and put your name on it?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8450" CreationDate="2013-03-08T01:15:40.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard stories about some (mostly weak) young mathematicians include the names of some people (influential enough) to facilitate the acceptance of their papers or to help them for employment, grants, etc. In fact, two years ago, an almost innocent case of this was going to happen to me. In Iran, most departments of mathematics have this (written or non-written) rule that a master or a PhD student should have at least one paper with his/her supervisor, otherwise she cannot graduate or she misses some points from her thesis grade. I had a master student and she wanted to get the highest grade and therefore she asked me if I allow her to write a weak paper and include my name as a co-author of the paper. I deny it and she missed 1 (out of 20) from her thesis grade. Of course, to compensate the 1 point unfair reduction, I defended her and asked the jury to not reduce any more points from her grade.       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T01:15:40.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-08T02:37:55.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above suggestions, I find problems with text that stretches too far across the page. In that case, I do a copy and paste to a Word document, then put the text into columns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6279" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T02:37:55.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8450" CreationDate="2013-03-08T03:08:21.467" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing too many details of your situation, could you perhaps give the other author the benefit of the doubt? Cutting off all contact does seem harsh (unless you have other reasons) for what could simply be a misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the conventions of your field, but it seems in many science fields that authors are added if they contribute intellectual ideas on the research, not necessarily for doing the research. Other authors simply add support in some fashion, so get added. It is not uncommon to have many authors on a science paper. It does in fact get tricky because one can offend others by not including co-authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm of the opinion that it's probably better to include someone who contributed in some fashion than not include them. You could argue that this dilutes research and is a &quot;pure research game&quot;, but honestly, one paper is not going to make or break anyone's career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this author simply have been trying to extend kindness, or perhaps thought you had a bigger role in the research than you actually felt you did?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T03:08:21.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-03-08T03:24:18.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer - it depends. You mention teaching PhDs, so I assume you don't mean community or state colleges where a PhD may not necessarily be required. If you mean tenure-track or tenured professor at a &quot;University&quot;, then I would say it's difficult, although certainly not impossible. To make a blanket statement applying to all U.S. institutions would just be silly. But I would consider it a rare occurrence for a non-PhD to step into the tenure-track role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of non-tenure track professorships (adjunct, teaching, practicing professional, or whatever title an institution gives them) that don't necessarily require PhDs. Note that these professorships are typically focused on teaching rather than scholarly research and usually don't come with any tenure guarantees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T03:24:18.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8457" CreationDate="2013-03-08T06:01:58.383" Score="27" ViewCount="3119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate research assistant in a biology lab. I was having an informal conversation while working at lab with my professor and a colleague of him. In the middle of our conversation, my professor passed a racially insensitive remark at me (I can reproduce here if someone wants to know). However, he realized it and walked away immediately. I am very upset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after few hours, he came back and he was conversing with me like nothing happened, but I am still upset. Can you all tell me how to handle this? My options are to ask him if he did that unknowingly or to keep quiet. But I really want to know if he feels sorry for what he said. I really don't want to complain to his superiors, but I want him to apologize to me for what he said. Is this unreasonable? if not, how should I go about dealing with this person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6280" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-03-08T08:00:03.923" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T14:57:43.357" Title="How to deal with racial insensitivity in an academic environment?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8456" CreationDate="2013-03-08T06:47:47.520" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question, &lt;em&gt;However, he realized it and walked away immediately.&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;But after few hours, he came back and he was conversing with me like nothing happened&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;indicate to me that he felt sorry and didn't know exactly how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors are also human. They make the same mistakes others do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to talk to him in person about this incident &lt;strong&gt;politely and seriously&lt;/strong&gt;. Tell him that you are upset with the remarks he made earlier and explain to him why. Don't be emotional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not he will apologize is up to him. If he doesn't offer apology to you after you talk to him, then talk to his superiors if you want the apology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T06:47:47.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8456" CreationDate="2013-03-08T06:49:43.977" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on the personalities to a certain extent but it's always good to talk to the person, to weed out any misunderstandings and/or give that person a chance to explain him/her-self. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I would start by asking the person if you can have a 1-to-1 meeting, during which I would take up: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what you heard him/her say&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that it bothers you for reasons: A,B,C ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and that you wonder if he/she meant what was said, or if it was untimely and insensitive joke. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the offense is really bothering you, I personally wouldn't advocate for keeping quite and letting it go. Insensitivity aside, if your boss has racially-demeaning or insulting opinions, then it's probably not the kind of place you want to work at anyways. It would be better to know that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to stress that even though my suggestion might seem confrontational, with right tone and choice of words I am certain it would not appear so to the professor in question. For reference, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T06:49:43.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8461" CreationDate="2013-03-08T10:39:18.903" Score="19" ViewCount="1210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach quite a few 'unprepared' students and I find they struggle with finding source material on which to base their reports. Basically, they need to read a lot and apply theories to different companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should I draw the line when giving them advice? I certainly do not do any searching or reading/filtering for them but if they choose a company and need to report on it, is it acceptable to give them some ideas about famous events at that company which might have happened a decade ago (or more but would still be acceptable for the purposes of the report)? Or, should I require them to do search, even for old events, and if they can't, then they can't and fail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T06:42:01.200" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:33:21.830" Title="Drawing Lines when Giving Ideas to Undergraduate Students" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8460" CreationDate="2013-03-08T11:00:07.177" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of teaching, which includes both your lectures, later guidance on their projects &lt;em&gt;and also includes evaluation&lt;/em&gt;, is for them to learn new skills. So, the question you should ask yourself is: &lt;strong&gt;what skills do I want them to learn, and how do I achieve that best?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, it seems to me that (if you have enough time for it), it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important to teach them not only to read, filter and digest information, but also to search for it (Information Age and all). So, you might want to make “searching for relevant information” a required skill. But that doesn't mean you should help them acquire it. In fact, you probably should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advertise it as an important part of what they are expected to learn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help them learn it, i.e. show them how it's done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evaluate them based on their performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However… even if you do all that, it still doesn't mean you can't help them if they miss something. After all, if you are teaching them how to best look for information, they might realize it's a good idea to come to the expert they know in that particular field… &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, their teacher. So, maybe they will come asking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;here are the relevant events I found about X in the archives… do you think I missed something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or even:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I see a spike in the data around the fall of 1974, and I have searched but couldn't find any event possibly related to that company, do you know of anything that might explain it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in which cases you might want to answer them, if it seems they did their due diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T11:00:07.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-08T14:07:57.690" Score="32" ViewCount="10083" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had to grade quite a few essay papers in the classes I've taught, and I've suspected some may have plagiarized but I never really pursued check on them because it would be too time consuming to check their sources and pursue any/all possible sources where they may have copied from.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the easiest way to check for plagiarism?  Is there a search engine tool that one could use to upload a paper and check for it?  I doubt it, but other than that, I don't know of any other way to check for it than to put in more effort than I have time for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T06:24:51.017" Title="What is the easiest way to check for plagiarism in student essay papers?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8464" CreationDate="2013-03-08T14:17:27.017" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department/university we have access to some systems for checking for plagiarism but most of us end up using Google, believe it or not. The reasons are that the plagiarism systems (we have access to) seem to work on a limited subset of work and that Google is extremely easy to use. My suspicion is that the existing systems may be tailored to specific subjects and may be excellent within these. So I would simply say, test your suspected essay by inserting sentences or even larger (key) parts of paragraphs into Google and see what comes out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T14:17:27.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8464" CreationDate="2013-03-08T14:22:37.603" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of tools out there. The best 'seems' to be TurnItIn. It's costly so if the school won't pay for it, you might not be interested. My school does not so I found other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/software/wcopyfind/&quot;&gt;Here is a tool&lt;/a&gt; called WCopyFind that is very good at finding plagiarism when one student copies from another but it will not find something online. After collecting papers for several semesters it has been catching more and more and most students take the same easy way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other options if you search for online plagiarism checking but they are not as robust as this tool above...however to really see the benefits, you need to maintain a library of old papers to compare against. What I like about it (besides being FOSS) is that it is highly configurable (consider a match 6 words in a row, or consider a match 9 words in a row where 70% of the words match). It all runs local (since there's no internet search) so it's quite fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T14:22:37.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8456" CreationDate="2013-03-08T14:54:00.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He didn't mean it&lt;/strong&gt;. I am not sure whether it is a good idea to bring the issue again.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think your professor felt sorry about it and thats why he left and came back (&lt;em&gt;a good indication he has nothing against you&lt;/em&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I really suggest not to make it public nor bring the issue again&lt;/strong&gt; and as long as he is a fair and kind professor, that is what you need.  If the racial issue comes again, then that is another story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T14:54:00.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-08T15:17:03.307" Score="7" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;I expect to be graduating with a maths BSc (with an honours year, in Australia) in the not-too-distant future. I’d like to pursue a PhD in pure maths, with the view of becoming a research mathematician. I’ve found it quite difficult to find information on what exactly the application process entails, and when I need to start worrying about it. I have some specific questions, but what I’m really interested in is if there’s a compiled source of advice and information for math PhD applicants internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems that many universities have a specific (December in the USA) deadline, does this mean PhDs have to start at a particular time of year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see that occasionally people advertise a particular PhD position they’d like to fill, on some particular research topic. Is this kind of PhD different from the “generic” kind and have a different application process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6282" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T21:00:41.983" Title="Math PhD application process" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8468" CreationDate="2013-03-08T15:38:56.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It seems that many universities have a specific (December in the USA)&#xA;  deadline, does this mean PhDs have to start at a particular time of&#xA;  year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, students apply on December for the Fall entry (August/September of the upcoming year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.I see that occasionally people advertise a particular PhD position they’d like to fill, on some particular research topic. Is this kind of PhD different from the “generic” kind and have a different application process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really can't ansnwer and it is case specific but usually such advertisements contain information about how to apply, expected time to start, minimum requirements and expected stipend (if there is any). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T15:38:56.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8456" CreationDate="2013-03-08T20:50:40.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you have two options - to ask or to ignore. Actually you have many options - infinitely many. One of these would be to get to know your professor better. This I recommend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are compusive disorders that impell people to say shocking things. Tourette's syndrome is an extreme case, but there are others. Sometimes we just do stupid things.Some people find it terribly hard to apologise. We humans are very complex.&#xA;Nobody knows what it feels like to live in inside another's skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6289" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T20:50:40.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8468" CreationDate="2013-03-08T21:00:41.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main models of organizing doctoral programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The American system: graduate students proceed through a combined master's and doctoral program, usually starting with coursework, then taking some sort of &quot;qualifying exam&quot; to become doctoral candidates within the department. Admissions are handled at the department level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;German&quot; system: doctoral candidates are &lt;em&gt;employees&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;students.&lt;/em&gt; Candidates for a position must apply directly to the group of the professor who is sponsoring the project. There is no coursework phase, as applicants are expected to have already completed their master's degree. (However, they can &quot;audit&quot; courses if needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suspect that these represent the &quot;poles&quot; of the spectrum; most other systems I'm aware of fall somewhere in between. [Note that even the German system is adopting some features of the American system, and is thus starting to become a hybrid.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T21:00:41.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8456" CreationDate="2013-03-08T22:37:43.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;See if your campus offers &lt;strong&gt;diversity training&lt;/strong&gt; (a Google search of &lt;code&gt;allintext:diversity training faculty site:edu&lt;/code&gt; shows that many US institutions offer this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, go to the organizers of the courses and ask for advice about what to do. Before you mention the name of the faculty member to them, ask what would be the consequence of giving that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T22:37:43.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2013-03-09T01:29:06.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally I found &lt;code&gt;I, librarian&lt;/code&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://i-librarian.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://i-librarian.net/&lt;/a&gt; which is a kind of mixture between Filestorage-Server, JabRef and a personal open source Mendeley server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interested users may try the demo account on the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4142" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T10:48:35.380" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T10:48:35.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8464" CreationDate="2013-03-09T05:46:13.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your school uses blackboard, d2L, or something of the sort...plagiarism  detection (if that's what we can call it) is built into the system.  For blackboard, the program is called safeassign.  Students submit their papers through safeassign (I'm convinced that just telling them about this program cuts down on plagiarism), and then the program gives you a report (ie 23% plagiarized).  A couple of great things about the program:  it gives you the source where the student lifted the information and keeps a running database of papers so that students cannot use each others assignments.  It makes the process totally objective, and you won't have to worry....the program does all the work.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6296" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T05:46:13.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8480" CreationDate="2013-03-09T08:04:15.287" Score="20" ViewCount="8569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a thesis for my M.Sc. dissertation, and I am struggling to identify how big the contribution of my paper has to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard professors in our campus saying &quot;you don't have to save the world, just add a little bit of something to an already existing work.&quot; But that is vague and seems too little for an M.Sc. program. Do you have any advice on what could be considered a sufficient contribution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps. My field is distributed systems (cloud computing) and it would be nice if you could explain it in that context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6299" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-30T19:06:25.073" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T14:29:32.370" Title="What is the minimum contribution expected from an M.Sc. thesis?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8479" CreationDate="2013-03-09T08:07:37.890" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion and experience, it is relatively rare for an MSc thesis to yield truly original research resulting in a paper. The primary goal of a MSc thesis is to teach you important research skills: come up with a general idea of what to do, researching literature, coming up with a specific question that you want to address, performing research (computations, fieldwork, lab experiments), and finally writing it down in a thesis. If you successfully complete this cycle, I think your MSc thesis is a success. If the thesis, after some editing, is original enough to end up as a journal paper this is a big bonus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T08:07:37.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8484" CreationDate="2013-03-09T09:15:19.533" Score="8" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;No starting point for scientific collaboration is better than face-to-face conversation. Conferences are good places to meet potential collaborator, but another way is to invite them to visit your institute/group and negotiate for possible collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when inviting a colleague from long distance (e.g. crossing the Atlantic), it is difficult to cover the cost of the flight (particularly as it significantly varies and hard to justify its necessity). Sometimes, the visitors has better access to available fund to cover his/her trip. Of course, it is easier to cover the cost of accommodation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you invite a potential collaborator to visit your institute when you cannot cover his/her flight cost? Isn't it rude to invite someone and quote you must come on your own expenses as we cannot cover it? Note that the relationship is quite formal with least personal acquaintance (no joint work yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T22:42:24.280" Title="How to invite potential collaborators for personal visit?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7514" CreationDate="2013-03-09T09:36:52.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I follow this cycle. YMMV. For me, if I am able to solve all exercises then I am good about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First I start with reading Wikipedia page [for ex. Process Synchronization]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I try to think about it in practical scenarios&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I read the course book which is suggested by my university. I underline important points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I start solving exercises. Usually I will have answers manuals too, so first I just check whether I am doing correctly or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am not able to solve a question, then I mark down the words which are specified/related to the question &amp;amp; read them all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try solving the question again. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat it till you get the idea, doesn't matter actually if you come up with a wrong answer, but approach should be right&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read reference books on same topics &amp;amp; underline new points found&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare short notes of underlines points &amp;amp; important keywords&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to write everything in own words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T09:36:52.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8481" CreationDate="2013-03-09T09:40:16.600" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;With apologies, and a firm understanding that lack of funding may be a dealbreaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would certainly help if you can cover part of the expenses: &quot;If you are ever in [Country X], I hope you will also visit [my institution] and we would be happy to pay for your hotel [or else do you have a couch?] and pay for around [small number] towards your travel expenses. You are of course very welcome to make a special trip but I regret that funding is tight and we would be unable to pay your international travel expenses.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T09:40:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8481" CreationDate="2013-03-09T09:48:01.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some schools do offer certain amount of money to help in invited speakers' expenses. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have any sufficient fund to cover this, you can ask your&#xA;colleagues (i.e. other faculty members) to help you out. Note that if they won't benefit from the speaker then most likely they will not participate in this. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet him/her in a conference; this seems to be a very realistic option. Actually, I think it is a better idea to meet him/her in the conference even if you are able to cover the expenses. Meet over cup of coffee and discuss the potential contribution and if needed settle another appointment at the hotel lobby. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T09:48:01.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8479" CreationDate="2013-03-09T12:10:55.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is largely depends on your supervisor expectations.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some professors have certain requirements for their MSc students to graduate (i.e. publishing one paper) others do not have contribution requirements and knowing the literature is enough to them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even if you do have publishable work, some professors will keep pushing you and you will end up with three years MSc thesis similar in away or another to a PhD thesis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you are required to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; the current literature of your subfield/problem area &lt;em&gt;very well&lt;/em&gt; and summarize it in a thesis. It is definitely better to implement/compare different techniques, trying to identify challenges and trying to tackle one of the challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For example, your general area is cloud computing, your thesis topic is about materialized views or query processing under cloud computing infrastructure. This requires finding the current literature of query processing, how it is different under cloud computing settings and what are the main research challenges&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-09T19:44:47.103" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T19:44:47.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8479" CreationDate="2013-03-09T14:15:08.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;MSc thesis requirements vary. It is best to ask your course director.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some students in the UK getting distinctions for literature reviews, while other departments only give a distinction if the work is publishable or potentially publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in fact at an UK university where MSc dissertations quite regularly gets published either during or a little after the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T14:15:08.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8494" CreationDate="2013-03-09T16:37:36.330" Score="42" ViewCount="2474" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in physics and every other month or so I get an e-mail from someone who wants a grad school or even postdoc position. These e-mails often start out &quot;Dear Professor (&lt;em&gt;my name&lt;/em&gt;),&quot; (I'm not a professor) and go on to explain that they are a motivated student looking to do a PhD with me, sometimes referring to a position that I am supposed to have advertised (I didn't). In the past I have often sent a reply in which I try to be disinterested but helpful, pointing them to the jobs section on our website which explains clearly who to contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking because today I got another one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would be pleased to join for the PhD Studentship position into your institution for (&lt;em&gt;field that has nothing to do with my institution&lt;/em&gt;) research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddly specific and inaccurate at the same time. I don't mind just deleting it. However, I'd like to help if I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do people do this? To me, it seems counterproductive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I help them onto the right track?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6301" LastEditorUserId="6301" LastEditDate="2013-03-09T22:45:01.713" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T13:41:22.767" Title="Unsolicited CVs from grad school applicants - ignore or try to help?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8487" CreationDate="2013-03-09T16:58:39.110" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe is a form of academic spam. As any spam, people do it because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the cost appears low&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can do it in bulk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the success rate is indeed horribly low, but if the number of emails sent is large, the product of (success rate) x (number of emails) can be non-negligible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the above analysis is probably true if you're selling sildenafil citrate, I think it does not hold in academia, because hiring decisions are typically a well-controlled process, and not an “on the spot” decision by a single person in power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My policy regarding such emails is: my time is precious (in fact, it is most probably the main limiting factor in my scientific productivity). So, if there is at least one blatantly untrue or gross discrepancy in the email I receive, I do not reply. (That can include: getting my affiliation wrong, getting the research field wrong, referring to a position I didn't advertise, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Added for clarification:&lt;/em&gt; getting the title wrong does not, in my own system of value, consider a “blatant error”. Obviously, emailing a graduate student with “professor X” is weird, but you have to consider that honorifics, titles, etc. depend on country/research system. Thus, many people use “professor” when they refer to permanent staff, when they are not sure if the actual title is “Dr.” or “prof.” or whatever… It is, in my view, a really minor issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T13:41:22.767" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T13:41:22.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8487" CreationDate="2013-03-09T17:00:02.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a fair number of these letters as well. Some see more genuine than others but as you state some do not even hit the main subject in which my department work. I see these as desperate attempts to get a foothold somewhere. In some cases, and I must emphasize that I cannot support his with hard proof, it seems having some form of official documentation may provide enough basis for persons to get the necessary background for visas and hence possibility to travel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are all kinds of reasons for these mails ranging from the perfectly honest, however misdirected, to the pure opportunist with alternative motives. The true tragedy is that the genuine contacts may become rejected because of the sheer number of mails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that each department/graduate school set up some form of standard reply, perhaps pointing at a web page stating how to apply. In our case PhD positions are offically advertised so contacting the department (me) is of no use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-03-09T17:59:32.653" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T17:59:32.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8497" CreationDate="2013-03-09T17:20:31.620" Score="5" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have studied Physics (Diploma) and since 3 years I work as a Software Engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am starting to miss the high degree of intellectual challenge. So I am thinking to go back to academia. Unfortunately my Diploma grade was B (German 2), likewise the grade of my in-depth elective Theoretical Particle Physics. I think I could have done better, but my mother died of cancer during my Diploma thesis and this didn't leave much focus and time for me. Plus I started working on a Web App in the last 2 months of my studies. Other grades were better, my Math elective (Functional Analysis) was A+, likewise Theoretical Physics. My undergraduate studies' grades were mixed, between A+ and B-.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thesis also does not look so well. Because of a lack of time it has orthographic errors, discussion of results is too short and the source code snippets in it look ugly. Once I applied for a job through a head hunter and after they saw my thesis they completely lost interest in me as a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So question: how hard is it in such a situation to apply for a PhD Programme and is it a good idea at all? What would be a good strategy when applying? I am interested in Mathematics, Theoretical Physics, Mathematical Physics or Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6302" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T12:27:21.613" Title="Getting into PhD programme when having not the best grades due to personal issues" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8490" CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:36:49.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany even some renowned research institutes mention in the job offers that people with at least grade B should be encouraged to apply for a position. So I don't see here a major problem for you. No one looks on your pre-diploma grades, this is now different with the bachelor AND master degree. But you have to make a presentation of your diploma work for the job interview. I don't know what speaks against adding results that you worked out after that thesis to make the work more impressive, as you didn't have as much time as other students with a scholarship or rich parents and were forced to work besides your diploma work, especially as the diploma needs 12 months in germany. If they want you to send them your diplom pdf, than of course you have to look for another group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major problem I see is that you wrote your thesis now 3 years ago, and 2-2.5 years is also a deadline I saw several times in such german PhD job offers, as after some time you simply loose knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless you should try it, write a few dozen applications and look how much invitations for a job interview you get and in what fields, but be clear what your motivation is. Your question does sound to me like you a bored and desperated in your current job, that is not the best reason for a Prof. to hire you, you should show interest in a specific topic, related to your diploma work would make your motivation to do a PhD more credible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6239" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T18:36:49.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2558" CreationDate="2013-03-09T19:07:59.080" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graduate as soon as possible, The fact that this is with high or low grades is not relevant here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply for a postdoc position in a place where PhDs are not graded (France for instance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish the (very good) stuff that you intentionally kept hidden until your graduation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After step 3 your record will be clean, and all this &quot;hell stuff&quot; will be far from you. To obtain a position in academy, the only thing that matters is the quality of your research (that can be seen in the papers) and of your teaching (for that you requires references), nobody will care about what happen during your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T19:07:59.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8481" CreationDate="2013-03-09T22:42:24.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to arrange their visit close to a conference in your field that is held on your continent&lt;/strong&gt; (domestic or intra-European flights are cheap, so you can probably cover that). Either have the visit just before or just after a big conference which the visitor will attend anyway means easier funding &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; easier scheduling for them (most people can only schedule so many around-the-world business trips per year). I have used that “trick” a lot, both when inviting people and when visiting other groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look for binational grant programs that may be awarded for such purposes, there are some (but it obviously depends on the countries involved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T22:42:24.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8487" CreationDate="2013-03-10T08:36:03.227" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we all get these emails and being famous and more senior probably means getting more of them. I am not famous or senior so I get one/two of these a day. &lt;strong&gt;I reply to them all. I am not sending man to mars and and can spend 30 seconds to reply to someone who sent an irrelevant one or spend a bit of time helping someone who was genuine and/or had a high calibre and went and studied my work. Naturally the quality of my reply depends on the quality of the email I have received.&lt;/strong&gt; Thats the least that I can do. I must confess at times it has been a one liner saying &quot;at least do a bit of research and see what I do instead if this generic meaningless email and have attached my boilerplate text explaining why this is not helpful and what they should do&quot; but also sending a three pager, correcting mistakes I have seen in CV, cover letter and/or proposal and calling people I know to help somebody out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I do this? Yes it takes time and we are all busy but I enjoy the fact that I am in a position to guide someone and help them out in bettering themselves. &lt;strong&gt;Many have done this for me before and believe it or not those guys who replied were really helpful&lt;/strong&gt;. I do the same in hope that it might inspire someone, help him/her succeed and give them the sense that people do care about you and want to have your back. Same way many people are in this community who give their time and help strangers they don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now answer to the question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Write a boilerplate text for the ones who send you random stuff. This is not the last time you will get something like this. Explain why this is not going to help and what is the correct way. You only have to do this once and whether they take your advice or not is their choice...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In future if you become an academic please do try to help people and don't see their efforts as SPAM if you feel they are genuine and have tried. Also give the benefit of the doubt to the ones who send random emails. They might just be desperate and need some help. Preparing some text to explain the above might actually help someone. It might be that he/she has got bad advice about how to go about finding positions etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="4467" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T08:43:13.580" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T08:43:13.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8464" CreationDate="2013-03-10T11:52:28.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also do it yourself using google. Pick a single idiosyncratic phrase from the manuscript and search for it in quotes. It is amazing how often you will find search results have that same phrase followed by and preceded by the same words as in the paper. If so, you have found plagiarism. I once found a term paper substantially ripped off from a MS thesis (from a small schol in Australia) using this technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T11:52:28.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8427" CreationDate="2013-03-10T12:04:59.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each time I've taken a sabbatical, it has started with an email (or, in years past, a letter). Write to the person (or people) you would like to collaborate with, and let them know you have a sabbatical coming up. Of course, knowing them already will make it much more likely to be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T12:04:59.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8490" CreationDate="2013-03-10T12:27:21.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're serious about getting into a grad school, then you need to take the initiative. In your situation, just sending off applications is unlikely to be enough. What you need to do is to get someone on the inside of an institution to want to work with you. So -- contact individual professors and let them know that you are interested in working with them. This means you need to figure out who they are, what they work on, and, when you contact them, you need to make it about why you can be of help in their research area. It's a lot of work, but the process will probably be good for you as well, narrowing down what it is you really are interested in, what your abilities are, and what kind of work you want to do. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T12:27:21.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8479" CreationDate="2013-03-10T12:34:22.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who supervises MS and PhD students, your question makes me very nervous. Why are you now, at this point in your career, trying to sneak by accomplishing as little as possible? You are at the age and time when you should be envisioning great things and trying to create new knowledge (or at least add to it). I always tell my students that the aim of the MS is to generate something publishable (conference or journal paper). The reality is that not all achieve this (and I still let them graduate) but this is what you should aim for. It is for your advisor to know the field, but you need to ask him/her the question: where is this topic publishable? When can we take it to a conference (or to a journal)? If the advisor can't see how your work could be publishable (if it works out as you plan), then find another topic or find another advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T12:34:22.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8500" CreationDate="2013-03-10T12:54:43.250" Score="13" ViewCount="3580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assisting with a research paper about a single business. The business owners agreed to participate in the study on condition that their name remain anonymous. What is the proper or common way to anonymity the business? Should a fake name be used? Should readers be told that a fake name was used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-24T06:14:20.087" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T06:14:20.087" Title="How to anonymize a business in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8499" CreationDate="2013-03-10T13:38:27.897" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your introduction you can explain the context of your study, and the research questions you want to treat. Then, in the last sentence of the introduction you can write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the research question, we treat a case study dealing with a&#xA;particular company. For privacy reasons we cannot give the exact name&#xA;of the company, so we will simply refer to it as &amp;quot;the company&amp;quot; throughout this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in the paper you can use sentences like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity in the company was boosted by increasing the light&#xA;intensity at the workstations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company that is the focus of our study is a tech company of 500 employees which has grown very much in the last 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way everyone is aware of the fact that a fake name was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps I haven't written any papers that involved this kind of dilemma, but this is what I would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T13:38:27.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-03-10T14:12:50.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry research experience, like almost all research experience, only counts if there is a tangible outcome (e.g., grant income, patents, or peer-review publications). In the absence of a tangible outcome, the research experience (industry or otherwise) and contact (industry or otherwise) are nice, but not worth very much. If you want to make you past experience a selling point, you need to create some tangible outcomes. If the experience is valuable in an academic setting, then 10 years of experience should allow you go generate a tangible outcome quickly. Maybe one of your industry contacts will fund a study or provide you with unique data that could be used in a peer-reviewed publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T14:12:50.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8512" CreationDate="2013-03-10T16:50:08.907" Score="6" ViewCount="2115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just learned of the 'PhD by published works' which appears to be a fairly common program for schools in the UK. Is this similar to an honoris causa conferral or is it some separate program? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reviewing materials on the Oxford Brooks &amp;amp; Warwick sites it appears that the entire program is just preparing a defense, which sounds a bit like Habilitation at first pass but it also seems that these programs are not restricted to current PhD holders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed a little light on this for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T13:10:39.467" Title="Difference between 'PhD by Published Work' VS 'h.c. PhD' VS 'Dr hab'?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-03-10T17:01:03.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A doctorate &quot;honoris causa&quot; is awarded by universities to recognize a person's outstanding contribution to science, or sometimes also society. It is a honorary degree (so you cannot apply for it), and not very common. Usually the people who receive such a degree already have a doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dr. habil. is a degree that only exists in some countries, such as Germany, Austria, France and Russia. Basically it gives you the right to teach courses at a university. You can only get it after getting a PhD, and usually requires writing another thesis and giving one or two lectures on topics in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know what a &quot;PhD by published works&quot; is, but it sounds to me like a PhD program where the thesis basically is a collection of published (presumably peer-reviewed) articles by the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T17:01:03.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2013-03-10T18:59:46.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;F1000Posters (&lt;a href=&quot;http://f1000.com/posters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://f1000.com/posters&lt;/a&gt;) is an open access repository that hosts posters and oral presentation slides in biology and medicine, and can also be considered a pre-print server.&#xA;It allows researchers to extend the visibility of their work outside of the conference hall, maximising the return on the time, effort and money invested in creating each presentation. Many of the posters are submitted with their subsequent research article added to them when it is eventually published. It also completely free to submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6312" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T18:59:46.643" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-10T19:23:34.883" Score="10" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible benefits: More grant money through other departments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible drawbacks: A significant fraction of their research might not be seen as research that benefits the department's standing in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:42:00.853" Title="What are the benefits and drawbacks of a professor being interdisciplinary when they seek tenure?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8514" CreationDate="2013-03-10T20:02:42.683" Score="60" ViewCount="11542" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before deciding to do one's PhD under a certain professor, what questions should one ask of his/her former and current students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many students (including me) are not sure what exactly to ask. May be a community wiki here might be a general source for such students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please recommend &lt;em&gt;phrasing&lt;/em&gt; of the question(s) also.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a related question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/158/how-to-evaluate-potential-advisers-on-grounds-other-than-their-research-publicat?rq=1&quot;&gt;How to evaluate potential advisers on grounds other than their research/publications?&lt;/a&gt; but it is much broader. I'm looking for specific questions to be asked to the students. Also manner in which to ask :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I have accepted an answer, but feel free to add more answers if you think they differ than the ones already given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T00:25:06.983" Title="What questions should one ask to the former/current students of a professor before deciding whether to do PhD under him/her?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="42" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="854" CreationDate="2013-03-10T20:02:46.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The solution is the open source &lt;code&gt;I, librarian&lt;/code&gt; server. It manages bibliography for groups. You can try it out online here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioinformatics.org/librarian/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bioinformatics.org/librarian/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Look for &quot;demo&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4142" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T20:02:46.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8515" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:22:25.233" Score="30" ViewCount="7214" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper was rejected from a journal. However, remarks of one of the reviewers were useful, and I incorporated them into the next version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a general pattern of acknowledging such contribution (in the Acknowledgement section)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I leave it, not to advertise information that the paper was rejected from a particular journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a side note, this paper was rejected two times, each time with one positive review, and one of type &quot;OK, but I think it is not of general interest&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case (as in general in my field) reviewers were anonymous. (Otherwise I would just use their names.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in my case the helpful comments were in positive reviews (but I doubt whether it changes anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T22:01:31.003" LastActivityDate="2019-12-21T17:03:50.357" Title="Acknowledging a reviewer from a journal from which the paper was rejected" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:39:04.710" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a student. I am the &quot;potential advisor&quot; (PA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For current students: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does PA have time to meet with you when you need help ? Or does PA want too many meetings ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much guidance are you given ? Too much ? Too little ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the relationship &quot;work only&quot; ? Do you talk about non technical academic issues ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For former students, the comment by Anonymous is dead-on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T21:39:04.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:41:22.590" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think it is good to acknowledge reviewers as you consider doing. It is the editor who rejects any papers based on the results of reviews so the reviews may still be very constructive and indeed helpful in improving a paper. So I would suggest something like the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We/I (gratefully) acknowledge the (critical) review by X on an earlier&#xA;  version of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to express it and what words you wish to use is up to you and the way you wish to express your gratitude. I would not add the name of the journal(s) where the reviews were conducted (other than in the letter to the journal editor accompanying your MS submission).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also would like to take the opportunity to add that the following issue, not that it applies to your case but more to point out some bad practices for the community. The poor behavior concerns when someone acknowledges a famous persons review just to gain leverage in resubmitting it to another journal. I have seen how persons have used reviews stating that the paper should be rejected because it is &quot;crap&quot; as a &quot;most valuable input to help improve the manuscript&quot;. Since no-one typically knows what this review did, the gut reaction is to think it must have been valuable since the reviewer is well known. For this reason it is good to provide the review/revisions from the old MS when re-submitting it so that the review-revision work becomes obvious to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point, I would not add the acknowledgement of any reviewers new or old until the time when your MS has been (hopefully) accepted in the new journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Based on the good comments by Tara B on anonymous reviewers and how to distinguish reviews from old and new MS I would write something as the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We/I (gratefully) acknowledge the (critical) review by two anonymous reviewers as well as the (critical) review by another anonymous reviewer on an earlier&#xA;  version of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words in parenthesis are optional and can be exchanged for others that better suit your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="117604" LastEditDate="2019-12-21T17:03:50.357" LastActivityDate="2019-12-21T17:03:50.357" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:42:12.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it may be common for universities in the UK to &lt;em&gt;offer&lt;/em&gt; such a degree, I'm not sure it's at all common to obtain a PhD in this way (i.e. 'by published works').  I think it is mainly aimed at people who have been involved in research for some time (especially as university staff members) without a PhD, but who have published material equivalent to a PhD thesis.  (As you will have read, for the Warwick program one must be either a member of staff at Warwick or have graduated with a Bachelor's degree or equivalent at least seven years ago.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Generally someone applying for such a program would have already published the works they are planning to submit, and therefore as you say the program will consist primarily of preparing for the oral examination (often called 'viva' in the UK).  Although you probably have to prepare some kind of extra document as well (in the Oxford Brookes program this is a 'critical appraisal' of the works being presented).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, as Pieter has already explained, very different from either a habilitation (which is at a higher level than PhD) or an honorary PhD (which in general can honour any kind of accomplishment and doesn't require the holder to have done research at PhD level or indeed to have a university education at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-03-11T13:10:39.467" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T13:10:39.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8506" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:42:35.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think either of the points mentioned above are relevant. If there's the potential for more grant money there should be evidence of it by tenure time. As for &quot;benefit to the department&quot; the real question is how good the work is, and if it's recognized in the larger communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the tenure-seeker's perspective, one potential benefit is a much larger pool of letter writers. A downside is the &quot;jack of all trades&quot; problem, where each community can only comment on a portion of the work, and the work itself is not perceived as excellent in any individual community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T21:42:35.740" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:54:39.777" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most important is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you happy with your PhD in general?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It covers a lot of issues, but usually you don't want to do a PhD in a place where students are unhappy and frustrated. The good thing is that if students feel really bad, they rarely hide it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next things are related to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General contacts on the line student-advisor (How much contact and support can you expect, both for research and administrative stuff?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Funding (Is it a problem or a non-issue, e.g. for attending a conference?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research (What the actual research looks like? What is the toughest part, biggest emphasis on, the most time-consuming part, etc?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time does it &lt;em&gt;typically&lt;/em&gt; take to finish PhD? Does it happen often that someone drops out?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other questions will depend of things &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; consider important. You may expect a lot of autonomy, or a lot of guidance. You may expect a very ambitious programme, or a PhD-life balance. You may like to teach, or you may like to keep it at minimum. You may be eager to travel a lot, or prefer to stay mostly in one place. You may be more into a particular branch of science or methodology, or into another...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-03-11T19:09:33.540" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T19:09:33.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-03-10T22:56:08.240" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Piotr has asked that I add one of my comments as an answer.  Please note that I am a fairly inexperienced academic, so don't take anything I say too seriously!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'll reiterate one of my comments on Peter Jansson's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really really should not mention journal names or the fact that the paper was previously rejected. The journal you are publishing in would not appreciate it! (It makes it clear they were only your second, or in this case third, choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you say that the helpful remarks of the earlier reviewer were about grammar, typos and a few small changes throughout the document rather than something that substantially changed the exposition of your paper, I think that conveying your thanks directly to the reviewer via the journal's editor (which you say you have already done) is probably a more appropriate acknowledgment, especially given the difficulty of making it clear you are thanking a reviewer from a different journal while not mentioning any names or the fact that the paper was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T22:56:08.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-11T00:58:37.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Link to the urch.com forum discussing exactly these kinds of issues: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/63673-questions-ask-current-graduate-students-prospective-schools.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Questions to ask current graduate students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems people have differ greatly by field, e.g. the funding issue depends on whether students are supported by grants of their advisors (sciences and engineering) or by the university. Also whether the courses in the field are popular among undergrads (many teaching assistant positions available) or unpopular (the opposite). The questions you should ask should address the common problems in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: forgot the shameless self-promotion: I wrote about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sanderheinsalu.com/ajaveeb/?p=142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Suggested questions for admitted graduate students&quot;&gt;suggested questions for admitted graduate students&lt;/a&gt; once in my blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6313" LastEditorUserId="6313" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T00:25:06.983" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T00:25:06.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8444" CreationDate="2013-03-11T01:47:21.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, ask the conference organizers about their policies. I have seen people give essentially the same talk at multiple conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6313" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T01:47:21.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-11T03:00:40.393" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of variations on Anonymous's fabulous comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What do you want to do when you finish?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How is your advisor/department helping you prepare for your eventual job search?&quot; — Be wary of confused blank stares, even from the younger students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Where did your advisor's former students go after they finished their PhDs?  Where do they work now?&quot; — Be wary of &quot;I don't know.&quot;  Compare with the answers to the first question and with your own career goals (even if they're not well-formed).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T03:00:40.393" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8527" CreationDate="2013-03-11T04:19:40.357" Score="9" ViewCount="2305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an amazing time at my REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) last summer.  I would really love to do another one this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, I am about to graduate, so I will technically not be an undergraduate this summer.  I do intend to continue my education in graduate school in the Fall, and have been admitted somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told that I should just kick back and relax this summer so that I'm fully unwound for grad school, but I don't have any money to travel, all my friends will have left for their grad school already, and there's really nothing that would stress me out more than sitting around and doing nothing for three months.  I love to travel, make new friends, and learn cool stuff, so I think doing another REU would actually be the perfect way for me to unwind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my last REU, we had a student who had graduated that year and was about to go into a Master's program.  It was rumored that she had omitted/lied about this on her application and the admissions people just didn't look into it carefully.  I don't know if this is true, though.  It seems possible that the program staff simply felt her application was strong enough to warrant making an exception - after all, she wasn't &lt;em&gt;going&lt;/em&gt; to grad school yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to be admitted to a mathematics REU the summer between undergrad and graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, would offering to go without pay (for only room and board) make any difference? What about REUs in physics, or compsci, or other sciences which might want somebody with a math background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5735" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-11T04:34:03.093" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T13:20:39.360" Title="Are mathematics REUs absolutely limited to undergraduates?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-11T05:03:06.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;#1 question (for former students):  How long did it take for you to graduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T05:03:06.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-03-11T05:15:54.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the phrase &quot;I thank an anonymous colleague for [providing an important idea].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that the idea came from someone else, but it doesn't explicitly mention that the paper was previously rejected or reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T05:15:54.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-11T06:31:33.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your advisor planning on going on sabbatical any time soon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My horrible advisor did this during my second year (he spent the year in Ireland instead of the US) and it did not help my efforts at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6322" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-03-11T08:49:29.610" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T08:49:29.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:48:41.903" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13542/nsf13542.htm&quot;&gt;NSF REU guideline&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Eligible Student Participants&lt;/em&gt;: Undergraduate student participants&#xA;  supported with NSF funds in either REU Supplements or REU Sites must&#xA;  be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or permanent residents of the United&#xA;  States. An undergraduate student is a student who is enrolled in a&#xA;  degree program (part-time or full-time) leading to a baccalaureate or&#xA;  associate degree. Students who are transferring from one college or&#xA;  university to another and are enrolled at neither institution during&#xA;  the intervening summer may participate. High school graduates who have&#xA;  been accepted at an undergraduate institution but who have not yet&#xA;  started their undergraduate study are also eligible to participate.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Students who have received their bachelor's degrees and are no longer&#xA;  enrolled as undergraduates are generally not eligible to participate.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  For REU Sites, a significant fraction of the student participants&#xA;  should come from outside the host institution or organization. Some&#xA;  NSF directorates encourage inclusion in the REU program of K-12&#xA;  teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Please&#xA;  contact the appropriate disciplinary program officer for guidance.&#xA;  Within the framework of the basic eligibility guidelines outlined&#xA;  here, most REU Sites and Supplements further define recruitment and&#xA;  selection criteria, based on the nature of the particular research and&#xA;  other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this means that (a) your host will not be able to receive funding for you from the NSF if s/he accepts you into the program (b) on the other hand if you and/or the PI of the grant is able to secure funding otherwise, there's generally no rule saying that a student in your position cannot be involved in research in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to individually contact the REUs you are interested to find out whether they'd be willing to grant you the leeway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T13:48:41.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-03-11T14:53:12.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;REUs are almost all a specific NSF program which, as Willie points out, generally doesn't allow students in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the programs called &quot;summer schools&quot; (not to be confused with credit bearing courses offered by universities in the summer) often do allow graduate students (and some have graduate students as their main target).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T14:53:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-11T15:04:37.990" Score="15" ViewCount="1879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not seen this question before, so I'll ask it after feedback I received on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8106/how-to-gain-research-experience-after-master-program&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've finished my MBA in the UK and was awarded distinction but would like to find a research group to work with. I'm no longer in the UK (or even Europe) and would like to find a research group with which I could work on a telecommuting / remote basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal here is not for income (though it's OK if it led to some). My goal is to build my research experience with the thought of pursuing a PhD (business / intercultural management / something in that general area). My MBA didn't result in a lot of research guidance  for me so I feel like there are so many things that I don't know and I want to 'fix' that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas how someone can find a research group who would be interested in working with someone remotely for free (obviously there is a time and attention commitment from both sides, which is not exactly free)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6073" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T06:44:57.567" Title="Finding a research group where I can work remotely?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-03-11T16:25:40.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There do exist programs for this period of time (between undergraduate and graduate programs). The ones that comes to mind are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edgeforwomen.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EDGE&lt;/a&gt; (which you can see on their webpage is limited to women) and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcmi.ias.edu/program-ugss/2013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PCMI summer school&lt;/a&gt;. I believe there are others, as Henry points out one should google 'summer school' instead of 'REU' to get at them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T16:25:40.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-03-11T16:33:12.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider doing an internship (for statistics openings, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amstat.org/education/internships.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amstat.org/education/internships.cfm&lt;/a&gt;), although doing this mid-March is jumping on a train that had left the station, judging by the deadlines. You also need to have something more applied in your resume than pure math to be of interest to industry folks, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T16:33:12.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8506" CreationDate="2013-03-11T16:49:44.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've been doing interdisciplinary research for five years, and now approach the tenure process without a clear idea of how to sell your case, consider it failed, and start looking for a job elsewhere, before you are under an immense pressure of finding a good job in a one-year grace period after the end of the world as you know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were hired specifically for interdisciplinary research, and your offer letter stated that, and your time was split &quot;50% + 1 hour in computer science + 25% in department of Roman languages + 25% in agriculture&quot;, with a clear explanation as to how you are to be evaluated by each of the parties involved, then these explanations should have served as the guidelines to build your research program. If you were hired to do the theory of parallel computing, but later decided that it would be cool to do some extra work in Roman languages because you liked their research questions, and thought you could contribute with your data mining algorithms that would uncover nuances of how Latin and French are interconnected (and you did, by their standards); and you proposed some GIS tools for horticulturalists to use that have become the industry standard software -- that's all fun and fine, but if you did not discuss that with your CS chair, this was likely a waste of time, as in terms of parallel computing, this time was as good as playing squash. Your annual reviews in the main department should have indicated so, if your department would ever care to guide you (not all departments do, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending time in another discipline is very fruitful for finding interesting research problems (as typically most disciplines don't talk to one another, and there's a wealth of problems to be solved using other disciplines' tools), but it also means that you have had less time to spend in your home discipline, which nearly inevitably means a weaker CV: fewer grants, fewer publications, lower quality research. (That's essentially &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8513/739&quot;&gt;Suresh's last point&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T16:49:44.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-03-11T17:05:26.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been waiting for a chance to pull a prank like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to thank 15 anonymous referees from 5 journals to which this paper was submitted for their helpful comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but, as many people said, few journals will appreciate this sort of remark. It is true that this is what happens with most papers, so if we are to be honest and transparent, we should just state this sort of history. And it happens to the top researchers, too, although some people, judging by their productivity of 10+ papers a year, never get even requests for revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be a weaker form would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to thank the three anonymous referees and the associate editor of [THIS JOURNAL], as well as several other anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it happens that the most important revision was actually a couple of journals ago which really improved the paper, but that journal still did not accept the paper, so it cruised through another editorial board or two with just minor language remarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T17:05:26.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8555" CreationDate="2013-03-11T19:46:14.533" Score="5" ViewCount="9523" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://grad.berkeley.edu/policies/guides/f1-4-transfers-of-unit-credit-toward-the-master%E2%80%99s-degree/&quot;&gt;graduate policy handbook&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A master’s student may transfer up to 4 semester units or 6 quarter&#xA;  units of course work completed as a graduate student at another&#xA;  institution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, does &quot;4 semester units&quot; refer to 4 credit hours or 4 graduate courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6334" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T10:01:07.180" Title="Semester units versus credit hours" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-11T20:00:22.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every professor is unique, every student is a bit different. The most important thing in a grad student/prof relationship is that you can work effectively together. If the professor can work well with his current students, then he can probably work well with new students. So what you want to find out is: does the professor give the students the environment they need to flourish? Do the current students work together extensively, or do they compete with each other? (For example, do students collaborate on papers or does everything funnel through the prof)? Are the current students excited about their research projects? (You can figure this out by asking them to describe what they do). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T20:00:22.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8543" CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:19:16.640" Score="133" ViewCount="11806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing a PhD in Sweden this year and seeking a post-doc in the United States (atmospheric remote sensing).  It is clear that a job in academia is not a &lt;em&gt;nine to five job&lt;/em&gt;; nor do I want it to be.  I often work late in the evening when I'm on a productive spur.  When an important dead-line is coming up, one needs to work harder, and there is no overtime paid.  I accept that.  However, no matter how much I'm interested in my research, I do enjoy and need a reasonable amount of spare time, too; relaxing on the weekends, occasionally a long weekend away, and sometimes a longer trip, such as three weeks in the wilderness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the normal work ethos for early-career academics in the United States, I have a hard time judging what is normal and what is excessive.  Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2010/06/22/something-deeply-wrong-with-chemistry/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Erick Carreira letter&lt;/a&gt; warning post-docs that he &lt;em&gt;expects all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My apparent naïveté in believing that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8427/how-to-arrange-sabbatical-leave#comment14691_8427&quot;&gt;a sabbatical means not working&lt;/a&gt;, despite Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatical&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;describing it&lt;/a&gt; as &lt;em&gt;a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year&lt;/em&gt;.  I was thinking of my friend, who spent a year between his PhD and his first post-doc travelling from France to Mongolia mostly on foot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1816/do-interviews-require-taking-vacation-days/1817#comment2888_1817&quot;&gt;commenting&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;I am not a good role model, but when I don't work on a Sunday, I count that as a vacation day&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/description/faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA postdocs&lt;/a&gt; having &lt;em&gt;no employment-related benefits such as paid vacations, sick leave, or unemployment compensation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5005/1033&quot;&gt;How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have such a work-ethos where I'm at.  I belief that working too hard risks stress and burn-out, and does not increase productivity in the long run, nor human well-being.  I want to do science.  Doing science makes me happy, but having time to relax while not doing science is important for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the selection of examples I gave above represent a normal situation in U.S. early-career academia?  Should I expect an attitude where asking for a 3-week holiday during the summer is considered as being not serious, or is the situation in practice usually not as bad as the examples above make it sound?  How hard to early-career academics in the United States work, really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T08:11:06.470" Title="How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="52" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8542" CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:57:53.627" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL; DR: 51 work hours a week with 12 vacation days a year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to assess how hard someone works. It is relatively easy to quantify the input (number of hours worked and the number of vacation days taken) and the output (papers and grants). In 2003 the Sigma Xi post doc society in the US began collecting data from 7600 post docs across 46 different US institutes about a number of issues including hours worked, vacation days taken, papers published and grants submitted. A summary report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaxi.org/docs/default-source/Programs-Documents/Critical-Issues-in-Science/postdoc-survey/highlights&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Doctors without Orders&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is available. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20091108011347/http://www.sigmaxi.org/postdoc/all/your_research_short.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aggregate data&lt;/a&gt; is available via the Wayback Machine. I believe this is the best data set available to answer questions regarding the input and output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The self reports suggest 12 days of vacation a year and 51 hours a week on average with 25% taking less than 7 days and working over 60 hours. The self report of the publication rate is around 3 with one grant application.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While self reports of hours work and publications are potentially biased, they might be a better measure of the perceived &quot;hardness&quot; of work than the actual hours worked. Obviously it would be nice if the publication and work rates were objectively verified. Obviously, publication rate and hours worked may not be the best metrics of how hard someone is working. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2008.16551.x/abstract;jsessionid=CC804A06C2CF1F16CA61EAFA01AC2962.d03t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; found that alcohol consumption was negatively correlated with output. It is not clear if high alcohol consumption is positively or negatively correlated with how hard one works, but it might be relevant. Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/01/03/the-least-stressful-jobs-of-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; has a report that University professors have the least stressful job, so maybe despite the hours, we don't actually work that &quot;hard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments to the questions suggest that understanding the input/output function would be desirable. This should be possible from the raw data of the Sigma Xi study, but not from the aggregate data, to determine if the inputs (hours worked) predict the outputs (papers and grants). I would be surprised if there was not a strong correlation, but also wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of outliers (i.e., lots of input and little output and little input and lots of output). Now, publication rate may not be the best measure of output as it doesn't consider quality. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17470248&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychology study&lt;/a&gt; found that impact factor is not correlated with publication rate suggesting that quantity and quality, as dubiously assessed by impact factor, are not correlated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-10-16T08:11:06.470" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T08:11:06.470" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8529" CreationDate="2013-03-12T05:29:40.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is actually of mutual interest, but really hard to find an opportunity. Although, you are offering your time for free, group leaders are reluctant to take this risk to leave their research somewhere that they do not have direct (everyday) control. Note that you should work on a research project currently funded at that research group. In other words, the group leader should complete that project in the corresponding timeframe. Thus, too conservative to put the project completion at risk in favor of having a researcher free of charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for this negative answer, but IMO (maybe others have better approaches), the only possibility is to directly contacting some research groups and negotiating about this possibility. Remember that the judgement will be merely based on your experience and potentials. Once again, IMO, the only chance is if the group leader can find your profession useful for a part of the project, which is not critically sensitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: there is no system for this, you need to convince the group leader personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Another solution can be finding an independent researcher like yourself for starting a personally funded research project, but I think this is not what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T05:29:40.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8549" CreationDate="2013-03-12T06:26:13.537" Score="7" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times, the page number in pdf is different than the printed page number. How to make sure the other person doesn't get confused when we say &quot;it's on Nth page&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="2643" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T08:35:42.863" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T12:33:54.973" Title="How to refer to a page number in a pdf?" Tags="&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-03-12T06:35:23.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refrain from referring to the printed/PDF page number at all, and refer to something more concrete, like &quot;in section X&quot; or, of course, a particular figure number if you're referring to a figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T06:35:23.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-03-12T06:49:53.840" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about the PDF of a paper published in an academic journal, then the answer is unambiguously: &lt;em&gt;refer to the journal page numbers&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. the numbers at the bottom of each page. Those are the ones features in (almost all) citation styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if the document is a random PDF found on the web (not coming from a journal), just avoid referring to pages. If you absolutely must, refer to the page numbers printed on the paper, as it is the only thing that makes sense to someone who would print the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T06:49:53.840" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8542" CreationDate="2013-03-12T06:50:24.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to follow the &lt;em&gt;@F'x&lt;/em&gt;'s advice on avoiding &lt;em&gt;easy answer&lt;/em&gt;, but I had to add some points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no constant working style across the United States. In academia, the working fashion significantly varies from university to university, from department to department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IMO, there is much more emphasis on effectiveness in Sweden. Instead, in the United States, there is more focus on timeframes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, it is rare to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; post-doc and other researchers to work during weekends, though many of them normally work during off-hours to be successful in the forthcoming competition (in continuing their career).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Duties during sabbatical (simple teaching and lecturing) is much less than official duties at home. In other words, an academician needs a long refreshment leave far from heavy duties, but not completely off. It is similar to working holidays (in immigration terminology).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if it is a post-doc position, the working rules are mainly defined by the group leader, and for assistant professors, this is the university atmosphere, Dean, and department chair controlling the working fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Once again, this answer is based on personal experiences rather than statistical data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T07:30:54.647" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T07:30:54.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8542" CreationDate="2013-03-12T07:45:39.493" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is this question being singled out for a higher standard of &quot;statistical&quot; reasoning than any other post on this site? I offer my experiences as an early career engineering professor in the US as &quot;anecdotal&quot; evidence, and do so with at least as much credibility as respondents on an anonymous survey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's not at all about how &quot;hard&quot; you work (i.e., the number of hours per week) - it is about what you accomplish. In my first year as an academic I attended 7 conferences, authored or coauthored 4 journal articles, wrote three NSF grants (one of them successful), began projects with 2 grad students (both of whom eventually graduated with PhDs), taught three classes (two of them new to me) and served on the curriculum committee. That's the kind of involvement you should be expecting. With that said, nobody is going to look at how many days of vacation you take, how many hikes you take in the mountains, or how many times you spend an extra day or two at a conference location exploring the area. It is about managing your time effectively and accomplishing things (that will appear on your CV). Finally, the day of truth arrives at the tenure decision, and no one will care about weekends or vacations: but about your contributions to the field (papers, conferences, grants) and academic reputation (as evidenced in your letters of recommendation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the sabbatical question, it is not a vacation. Most academics who take sabbatical go to another institution (industry or University or lab) and work with new people in an effort to learn about new things. Sure, there are fewer responsibilities (no teaching, no committees) and fewer distractions, but this is why it works! The last sabbatical I had, I finished writing a book and entered a new research field (helped by my new colleague-friends). At my school we have a laughable method of oversight: at the start of a sabbatical one writes a two or three page description of what the planned activities are and why they are beneficial to the researcher and the school. At the end of the sabbatical, one writes a two or three page summary of what has been accomplished. As a whole, professors are self-motivated, love their work, and care about the intellectual legacy (the works, students, and influence) that they leave behind. Sabbatical is an effective way of getting out of ruts, of opening new doors, and of expanding knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T08:21:20.260" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T08:21:20.260" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8540" CreationDate="2013-03-12T10:01:07.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Semester units&amp;quot; are up to the definition of the school. Some people call a &amp;quot;unit&amp;quot; one course; some people call a &amp;quot;unit&amp;quot; a fraction of a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, just among the US schools that I have been affiliated with (or visited for an extended period of time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yale: 1 semester course = 1 unit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harvard: 1 semester course = 1/2 unit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Princeton: 1 semester course = 1 unit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MIT: 1 semester course = 9 or 12 units&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UConn: 1 semester course = 3 or 4 &amp;quot;credit hours&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; need to consult the &lt;em&gt;individual school catalog&lt;/em&gt; to see what system they're using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T10:01:07.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8330" CreationDate="2013-03-12T11:52:55.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is true for Germany, but I am not sure about other countries.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The doctoral title you hold, unlike other titles, can be a voluntary addition to the name. It is therefore the only title you can add to your passport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the situation, you can leave it out though. Most colleagues left it out on their doorbell, some add their field (like the engineering in this case); partially to avoid people with the flu ringing at their door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding your field to your title can help in other situations as well, since it simply conveys what you are doing in three letters or less. People from your, or related, fields can then simply judge what subtopics best to look into, while talking to you at e.g. a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The addition of the Prof. tells people that you are (also) holding a teaching position, or at least where at some point. This shows people even more of what you do. Being yet another bar to pass, some people don't like it being left out, when addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: trying to tell people more about him, your colleague added eight letters and three dots to his name. Pretty neat, for a CV, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Changed, based on information given by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22/pieter&quot;&gt;pieter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5744" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T12:40:38.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8559" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:29:05.247" Score="27" ViewCount="20901" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatical&quot;&gt;Wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt; of sabbatical doesn't match how I think of an academic sabbatical. What does it mean to go on academic sabbatical, and does it depend on the country? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T05:47:20.383" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T05:47:20.383" Title="What is an academic sabbatical?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:33:54.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In informal communication like email I use a notation along the lines of &quot;page X (PDF page Y)&quot;. By providing both numbers, it is easy for whoever is browsing the PDF to figure out if X or Y is referring to the internal page numbers or the PDF page, and then use whichever one they want to find the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T12:33:54.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8557" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:46:26.460" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of sabbatical in Wikipedia refers to labor terminology rather than academic sabbatical leave. As a privilege to employees, they can have temporary unpaid leave (for any personal reason) without losing their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, academic sabbatical historically is somehow different. When a scholar needs peace of mind to focus on a challenging issue, s/he will visit a new institute to experience a new atmosphere. While still being in the academic environment, not having heavy official duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several motivations for a sabbatical leave (at least as I have seen):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A manager finishes an administrative position (e.g. Dean), and wishes to rest in a different atmosphere, but not far from academia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A researcher working on a new idea, prefers to focus on his/her work somewhere with less commitments on everyday responsibilities (e.g. teaching, advising, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A researcher is exploring new possibilities and opportunities, spend some time in a new department to live with new colleagues for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A researcher is collaborating with another group and spend a year in the host research group as a visiting scientist/professor while being on sabbatical leave from his/her institute.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A professor in a mid-level university finds a temporary position in a top university. This is the base for many visiting professors in the US universities, e.g. international professors can experience working in the US universities. Even there are associate/assistant professors who find a post-doc position in the top universities, and use sabbatical leave, not to lose their job at home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, sabbatical allowance mainly depends on the university employment rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T13:12:52.947" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T13:12:52.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8557" CreationDate="2013-03-12T13:34:14.877" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situations will depend widely on country and on the employer, because a sabbatical leave is something between you and them: &lt;strong&gt;it's an arrangement between an academic and her employer  that lets her “take a break” without fully losing the benefits of their position&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The nature of the break, the activities one has during the sabbatical, and the benefits retained during the length of the sabbatical can vary completely&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, a sabbatical can take the form of an unpaid leave for six months or a year, during which the researcher will sail around the world. However, in the modern research system, sabbaticals generally consist of periods where the academic gets time to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus full time on a given research project (most often, an emerging project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visit another group to advance an existing project or help create a new collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spend part time or full time launching a research-related business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common for universities to support those researchers who are granted sabbaticals with some income, typically somewhere between half salary and full salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can browse the web to see sabbatical policies at various universities. Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://academicaffairs.uoregon.edu/academic-and-sabbatical-leaves&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;description&lt;/a&gt; at U. Oregon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sabbatical leave is a paid period of released time designed to reinvigorate and restore one's academic energies, and to provide a base for future intellectual development and achievement. During the leave period, a faculty member may receive between 50 and 100 percent of salary depending on the length of the leave and the school, college or other administrative affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T12:21:02.727" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T12:21:02.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2013-03-12T13:53:28.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A standard workaround is that you post a draft of your paper on the arxiv and assign the copyright in the final version to the journal. You can't update the arxiv with your final version, but the journal publishers will only be able to enforce their copyright on those parts of the final version which are not already present in the arxiv prior art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you will almost inevitably make some revisions as part of the submission process, you don't have to explicitly plan to leave anything out of the arxiv version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T13:53:28.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-12T16:59:16.947" Score="21" ViewCount="8472" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem is a bit unusual and I would love to get some advice…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year PhD student in social-sciences and I already got my proposal approved. I moved back to my home country (where I am currently doing a PhD) after completing an undergraduate and an MSc. I am very unhappy here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to have a future as an academic. The only reason I decided to a PhD in my home country and not abroad was because I was determined to try, stay, and make it work here, but recently I been thinking it was a mistake. I am thinking more and more about discontinuing my program here and applying for doctoral studies in the UK, as a new student (after a bit of online research I found that they rarely accept a transfer and it is best to start as a new student). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to get your thoughts regarding my situation, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am considering sending an email to a potential supervisor but I am not sure how to explain why I want to drop-out of my current PhD program without talking my university down? How do you suggest I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did anyone had a similar experience or have some advice?      &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6123" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T06:05:42.187" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:05:42.187" Title="Unhappy with my PhD program in my home country, thinking about applying to another university in UK" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-03-12T22:01:05.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a large (22&quot; or 24&quot;) display with 16:9 aspect ratio that has a mount that will allow you to put the display in portrait mode.  You'll also need a video card that can support portrait mode display (most do this nowadays).  This is ideal for reading PDF journal articles formatted for print because you can see a whole page at a time without wasting screen real estate or squinting to read tiny fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4530" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T22:01:05.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2919" CreationDate="2013-03-12T22:27:45.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have preprints posted on a preprint server or on the arXiv, they will ask you to remove them before reviewing your work. I am unaware of other open access publishers who insist that all prior revisions of a work be removed before the current version is reviewed. Submission to a preprint server such as the arXiv is encouraged by some journals in some fields (e.g., mathematics). Removal from the arXiv is all but impossible after submission. The refereeing process does not strike me as serious, e.g., referees have been known to ask authors to remove citations to personal communications from submitted manuscripts. There is nothing wrong with citing correspondence; disallowing such citations is bizarre, goes against accepted scholarly practice and, at worst, encourages plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T00:39:43.963" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T00:39:43.963" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8564" CreationDate="2013-03-13T04:47:40.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PhD without challenge is meaningless,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most of us don't know what is PhD until we are broken in like a baseball glove,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will never escape politics in academia, in your household, and elsewhere.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should re-evaluate if spending the next 4+ years of your life pursuing your studies is worth the effort; and if you have an actual desire to pursue your studies. There aren't many benefits, and the major contributing factor should be your interest in the subject matter, field/area, or potential position as faculty or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one year is not enough time to have an opinion, and by the time you are able to have one it will be too late to change!! Last thing you want to do is upset your PI, and odds are they will make you pay in the short or long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, many frequently change labs due to advisors departure or other reason. You can certainly find a lab, but I think anyone would be concerned your jumping ship to their own, and want to bring your baggage too! There is such a thing as integrity, and it is uncommon for another advisor to pick up someone's project out of the blue as they are mostly concerned on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5815" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T12:50:59.213" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T12:50:59.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-03-13T08:58:59.803" Score="12" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do/Did you (the current/former PhD) enjoy working in this supervisor's research group?  Do research group members work with each other collaboratively and help each other? And ask the PhD student to elaborate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question tries to get at what the research group dynamic is. This is fairly important in my opinion - the last thing you want to concern yourself with is politics in the research group. I have seen PhD friends frustrated by this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should ask this question in a less formal setting (some grad school visits will have time for social events). And sometimes you meet grad students who are comfortable sharing their experience openly. If you are not comfortable asking this question, as it can be an awkward question for the supervisor's current PhD, you can simply observe the interaction between group members, and between group members and the supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the supervisor generally available? Does it take a long time to arrange a meeting to meet with the supervisor (used to be the case with my supervisor because he was so busy)? Does the supervisor respond immediately and effectively (another friend's supervisor tend to leave questions to last minute)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are group members expected to work 24/7 or 9-to-5? Some supervisors expect you to reply to emails immediately, and some work strictly business hours. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the supervisor take a hands-on or hands-off approach? Are students expected to be really independent with lots of freedom, or are they guided/directed along the way with less freedom?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the supervisor support his/her students to consider career paths outside of academia? Some supervisors only want their students to go into academia, and it will be harder to discuss options with such supervisors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Q2-Q5, the right answer will depend on your own preference - what you want is a supervisor whom you will work well with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, I know you ask specifically about questions, but make sure you watch their body language and see if the lab members seems comfortable with the supervisor or not. This says a lot about the supervision style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastEditorUserId="5988" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T22:31:06.387" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T22:31:06.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T11:22:59.257" Score="15" ViewCount="1098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I catch myself too often thinking about how to become more visible and present online instead of doing Great Research™.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how important is it to be very visible online for academics and researcher anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my assumptions, numbered only for easy referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tenure committees and such don't care for twitter follower  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public bodies that provide funding don't care how many people have you in your circle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colleagues might look down on you, because your blog posts are not scientific enough&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing a blog can be a good exercise in writing about your topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are looking for a job or position, it can be helpful &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if&quot;&gt;iff&lt;/a&gt; your potential boss is also an 'onliner'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes it easier to network and getting in contact with other people who work on the same problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It might help you to get work, invited to talks and book contracts in the normal world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(For CS) Uploading and advertising your code will make your research results more used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are my assumptions correct? What did I miss? How do handle your online reputation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2698" LastEditorUserId="2698" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T11:42:22.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:15:01.450" Title="How important is a online reputation for academics?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-03-14T14:39:14.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8570" CreationDate="2013-03-13T11:49:42.810" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first general answer that comes to mind is that it depends on what you do online. Adding professional material into the public domain will probably be very positive if it is good and useful. Engaging in academic discussions (through a blog for example) on what might be considered serious topics such as ethics, scientific fraud, pedagogics, your research etc. would probably not construed as negative either. At least as long as you treat the writing there as seriously as you would do any academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;lightweight&quot; activities such as Facebook and Twitter may have its points especially towards students and attracting students towards scientific activities and thinking. But, ones reputation in such medias would probably not be of much value unless one builds up a reputation that is leading. I suspect you may have to become a leading scientist before anyone really takes notice of your social media contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What single persons find positive or negative of the points in your lists will likely be very variable but I think the different media have their (almost) separate audiences. Social media might be excellent to communicate science to the public. The problem is that it will always be your personal communication and not yours as a representative of your department/university etc. unless the activity is somehow endorsed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom  line as I see it is that what is good or bad highly depends on what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; communicate not in which way you do it. Keeping a high academic standard should not be negative anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming buddies as you suggest in &quot;Good 2&quot; sounds almost bad to me since in the case of academic employment, that employer will likely be thought of as having a conflict of interest. On the other hand being visible and not &quot;buddies&quot; is probably only a plus in such a case. About &quot;Good 3&quot; and &quot;4&quot; I doubt anyone will hire you or invite you to give talks based on internet visibility unless you have something solidly academic to back it up. It is your core academic reputation that will open doors for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T11:49:42.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8570" CreationDate="2013-03-13T12:36:50.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a job in academia, having a presentable website is a plus.  If you put your website address on your CV and you also have Google Analytics for your website, you'll notice an explicit spike in your website traffic when (if) hiring committees are looking at your site (unless, of course, your site is popular enough to reduce the extra hits to noise).  Google Analytics even has a fancy mapping tool so you can see, for instance, that the Cornell hiring committee is looking at your website when you see fifteen extra hits from Ithaca within a couple of days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, having a website is a good place to put your publication listing (and, of course, your CV) with links to all of your papers.  When someone meets you at a conference and wants to see what you've produced, searching for your name to find your website should be easy.  Many faculty members also have their class listings and curricula on their websites, and those resources can provide other indicators to your hire-ability if you're looking for a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T12:36:50.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8570" CreationDate="2013-03-13T12:42:07.387" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, online presence is not so important &lt;em&gt;with respect to your career advancement in academia&lt;/em&gt;. Your professional stature is based on your publications, presentations, connections, and ability to obtain grant funding. When you look for positions, you'll be judged primarily on these criteria; blogs and media appearances are a very minor factor, if considered at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it may be beneficial in other respects. A strong online presence can significantly boost your visibility to those &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the academic environment. This can lead to consultation opportunities, collaboration opportunities with those outside of academia (think business ventures), and possibly job leads in industry. To the extent you're interested in those, you may want to invest in creating a strong online presence to help you advertise yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T12:42:07.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8585" CreationDate="2013-03-13T14:31:06.263" Score="40" ViewCount="4239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper several years ago and its referee process took about three years and I had to revise the paper six times to get the final approval. The paper had two helpful and knowledgable referees and I appreciate their comments and suggestions, but I have also had the following problems with their suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sometimes their comments contradicted each other. For example, one of them wanted me to add a discussion and when I added that part he wanted me to remove it in the next revision. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they often wanted to expand the scope of the paper, but due to some technicalities I had to consider some restrictions to get the expected result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they gave me new comments and proposed new modifications after every single revision, while they could suggest all their comments in their first report and this made the referee process this long. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one of the referees wanted me to address some related works in other papers in my paper, which was actually unnecessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pretty much obeyed all their suggestions and comments and finally the paper was accepted and now it has been published. Although I learned a lot during the referee process, I wished I could negotiate with referees and do not have to obey them in every little detail. Besides I had this feeling that I have somehow lost my freedom as the author of the paper during this process and I have no control on my paper any more. I had to do whatever they asked me even if I was not completely convinced it is a right thing to do. I have also had some of the abovementioned problems with the referees of my other papers. You perhaps know that journals often have this policy that you either should implement all the changes suggested by referees or withdraw the paper. This policy leaves little room for negotiation. So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An author, in order to discuss his/her points with referees and do not obey some of their suggestions and comments  or ask them to not delay the referee process further, what is the best strategy to negotiate with referees? Is there any diplomatic way for this negotiation or we have to obey referees all the time? Have you ever had similar problems with referees of your papers? How did you overcome these problems?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:35:00.680" Title="How to negotiate with referees of your paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:03:16.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;computer science/software engineering and human-computer interaction&lt;/strong&gt;, the first author is generally the person who both had the &quot;main idea&quot; and led the effort to ensure that the efforts to carry out the research and write the paper occurred properly. The authors are generally then decreasing in order of their contribution. There is generally no consistent policy of putting the PI last in SE or HCI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the policy is very similar to the Applied Mathematics answer posted above and quite different from the theoretical Computer Science areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:03:16.953" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-13T15:03:16.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8574" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:13:01.543" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You perhaps know that journals often have this policy that you either should implement all the changes suggested by referees or withdraw the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which journals have such a policy?  I don't think this is the case for any AMS, MAA, or SIAM journal, for example, and I'm not aware of any journal with such a policy (although of course I have direct experience with only a small fraction of the journals in mathematics).  Here's how it works in the cases I'm familiar with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any changes suggested by the referees are merely suggestions, which do not need to be followed if the author and editor are in agreement.  If the change involves fixing a mistake or correctly attributing work, then no responsible editor will accept the paper until the situation is resolved (either by making the change or establishing that it is not needed).  Matters of clarity are also taken seriously.  However, some referee suggestions are just opinions that the author may reasonably disagree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly reasonable to write to the editor and say &quot;Here's a new draft of my paper.  I've made changes A, B, and C proposed by the referees, and I'm grateful to them for identifying these issues, but I have not implemented D and E.  I think those changes are not truly needed, because ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what is the best strategy to negotiate with referees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd think of it instead as negotiating/discussing with the editor.  The editor is the one who makes the decision, with the referees providing advice and expert opinions.  Ideally, you'll be able to convince the referees that not all of their proposed changes are necessary, but the editor is the only person you need to convince if the referees are stubborn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors are used to this.  As an editor, I've occasionally written an acceptance letter (conditional on revisions) that says explicitly that only some of the changes are really needed, and even when I don't say so authors certainly don't always make all the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:13:01.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8570" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:15:01.450" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt; on having a web page. In some communities it would seem laughable NOT to have a personal web page (and in parts of CS it's considered silly not to have your own domain!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that the general issue of an &quot;online presence&quot;, whether it be blogs, twitter, or other social mechanisms, will become a non-issue as everyone starts placing their material online by default rather than by choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used to joke in our department that we only want to hire people with active blogs (because a few of us blog actively). But now that isn't even a distinguishing factor: more than not, people have personal blogs and other forms of online presence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, don't force it. Understand that an online presence is something you should become accustomed to having, but take advantage of the fact that it's not yet the norm. Experiment with what works for you. Don't write a blog if it's not something you find comfortable. Or try it and see if you like it before deciding to do it. An online presence is not An Online Presence: it's merely another method to express yourself. If you don't have things to express, it doesn't matter what medium you use :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:15:01.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8580" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:35:45.193" Score="15" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bit of a meta-question about academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student and teaching assistant.  I often find myself flipping, organizing, and searching through stacks of hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper, whether I'm grading, reading, or doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to have an issue where my hands get dry quickly, and I find myself licking the tips of my fingers to get better friction.  Sometimes I have to do this quite often, and I am wondering if there is a better way.  I tried using hand moisturizer, but that wears off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there special gloves, lotions, or anything that can help with flipping through huge stacks of paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3871" LastEditorUserId="3871" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T16:13:28.223" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T16:13:28.223" Title="How to physically handle hundreds and hundreds of papers" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8583" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:55:36.743" Score="15" ViewCount="5098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently taking a brief course in Technical/Academic Writing. At one point, in passing, the lecturer (who's a researcher in linguistics himself) mentioned that one should not confuse a conference abstract with an article abstract, with the exact phrasing &quot;... that's a whole different story.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, at that moment in time I did not reflect on what those differences might be, but now I am writing a conference abstract I realize that I have never really paid much attention to the fact that I am not writing to a journal. Besides the fact that a conference abstract is preamble to a primarily spoken form presentation (poster/oral) instead of a written one, I don't really see why it would be &quot;a whole different story&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that there are no differences in requirements and limitations, what are the fundamental differences, between a conference abstract and an article abstract, that one should be aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: if it matters, the field I'm mostly concerned about is medical research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T16:02:50.367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T13:56:39.157" Title="How exactly does a conference abstract differ from an article abstract?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8578" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:55:37.627" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some 20 years ago before all the electronics changed our ways of dealing with stuff, post and bank employees who had to deal with piles of paper (or banknotes) throughout day used a device which was essentially a piece of a wet sponge in a small bowl. They had this on the desk and whenever were about to touch paper, they would simply brush their fingers through it. Something like that could help you... To construct it, I would use a plastic travel-soap container and a small sponge for dishwashing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Later edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;amp;q=wet%20fingers%20bank%20post%20sponge&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;tbm=isch&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is what I had in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:55:37.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:56:21.890" Score="3" ViewCount="1266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apply for a PhD position, with my own research proposal, at one university and receive an offer already. However, as I cannot fund myself, I have to wait for the scholarship whose result will be announced at the end of April. In the mean time, a university is advertising an industrial funded PhD project whose deadline is the end of March. My background matches the requirements for the project which is quite interesting to me as well. I wonder if I should apply for a project as if I am accepted and receive a scholarship from the first offer, I have to choose one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm asking this question as I'm worried if making 2 applications to 2 supervisors from the same research group may impact the outcome of both applications, i.e. whether I receive scholarship from the first application and/or be accepted into the 2nd project. Since, I believe both supervisors are not very happy if they know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="4481" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T22:40:07.863" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T23:40:28.603" Title="Should I make 2 applications to the same university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8579" CreationDate="2013-03-13T16:07:01.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your professor was talking about &lt;strong&gt;extended abstracts&lt;/strong&gt; (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1351/66&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for more discussion). For many conferences, especially those that don't publish their proceedings, people submit an extended abstract instead of a paper. Thus, in that case the 'abstract' is basically a short paper that summarizes results you are working on or planning to publish soon. It is much more detailed that an abstract for a paper, but less detailed than a whole paper would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your conference publishes its proceedings though (as many in computer science, do) then you should treat your conference submission like a journal one and write the abstract accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T16:07:01.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8579" CreationDate="2013-03-13T16:07:10.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me an article abstract summarizes the entire article including the overarching questions through methods, results to the major conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A conference abstract will of course also summarize whatever is presented at the conference. The differences lie in several aspects of variable weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conferences are often focused on a specific topic so one can be less stringent with the background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference presentations may involve work in progress and as such the final conclusions maybe quite hazy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conference abstract may be written before most of the work has actually been done (this is quite common with some conferences in my field) and becomes an &quot;advertisement&quot; for what might come.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conference contribution may in some cases involve a paper but can also be a poster or an oral presentation. depending on which abstracts may contain varying levels of finalized conclusions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T13:56:39.157" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T13:56:39.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8622" CreationDate="2013-03-13T16:42:00.033" Score="8" ViewCount="5229" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would getting a non ABET accredited degree in Software Engineering put a person at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to employment, or applying for graduate school?  I ask because I was accepted into San Jose State Universities Software engineering program and have learned that it's not ABET accredited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6348" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T17:54:17.303" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T17:54:17.303" Title="Is ABET accreditation important for a bachelors degree in software engineering?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;&lt;abet&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8574" CreationDate="2013-03-13T16:56:51.193" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a response drawn from my combined editor/author/reviewer experience (for what it is worth). As has already been stated, you negotiate with editors not with referees. In most cases (there are likely always exceptions) the reviewers provides reports to the editor who makes decisions based on these and should, in my opinion, also evaluate the review reports and provide you with some direction for how to proceed. Reviewers will also provide the editor with comments that you will not see and which can influence the editors final remarks. I think some editors are not taking their responsibility seriously when they let the reviewers &quot;dictate&quot; changes. A review is an (educated) opinion (in the best case) and not a truth (we have to remember that as reviewers). The editor is not a god (or a semi-god) either and it is always possible to disagree with him/her (I have to remember that). Keep in mind that the editor still has the power to reject papers if he/she thinks it is in the best interest of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If reviews conflict, a good editor should provide you with some guidance. You can also weigh the conflicting views against each other. Sometimes one or the other are based on misconceptions which may result from unclear writing so always explore that avenue when you disagree with a comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expand the scope. Again, I would expect an editor to provide some final direction. If none is given I think it is fair to approach the editor and state your opinion and ask for clarification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extending the process. This sounds quite unacceptable to me. I can possibly see this happening when getting new reviewers in after each round but again, the editor should put an end to the process at some point (sooner rather than later). I wonder what your expected turnover time would be for the journal you describe. Several years is completely unacceptable to me and within my field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requests to quote. If not necessary then they are not necessary. I would make my case to the editor and hope that it is clear why no additions will or should be made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your journal is run well, you should be able to get some direction out of your editor by asking short direct questions about whatever issues you have (suggest how you would like to solve them as well). If you have severe problems like what you describe, I think you need to re-evaluate where to publish in the future. As with all of us include some self-evaluation as well to see if you can improve from any of the problems you have encountered. I certainly have learned and hopefully improved my writing and publishing skills from publishing experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T17:02:14.293" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T17:02:14.293" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T12:53:15.917" Score="37" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;To explain, let me pick a particular statement: &quot;the electrostatic force is mediated by the exchange of photons&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a physicist (or a lecturer) says this, they mean one thing: the process described in detail by QED. When a student (or an amateur) hears this, they think of two electrons, and they imagine photons flying between them. You can imagine what follows: questions like &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/197/how-are-forces-mediated&quot;&gt;&quot;how do they know where to fly&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/19015/what-frequency-photons-are-involved-in-mediating-physical-force&quot;&gt;&quot;what is the frequency of these photons&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, or &quot;where does the energy to create those photons come from&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was growing up, I had no access to anyone who really understood physics. All I had were books filled to the brim with phrases like the above. It is nearly impossible &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to misunderstand something when such loose statements are used, as popular literature tends to omit the extremely important &quot;but&quot;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the statement above, the &quot;but&quot;s omitted are &quot;but we don't actually mean photons, in fact we don't mean any particle at all; what we mean is a mathematical tool we use to calculate how the interaction works, which is reminiscent of actual photons in so many ways that we can often treat the calculations as if they involved actual photons&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most effective way to educate students about such phenomena, where our language we use to describe them risks obscuring the reality, and/or misleading the students? Is there evidence in the pedagogic literature on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6367" OwnerDisplayName="romkyns" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:13.560" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T08:54:24.287" Title="Is physics taught using phrases that are too easily misinterpreted, and can this be improved?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8586" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:25:27.330" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is a real issue and yes, we are obligated as a community to address it because we ourselves are the source of so many of the misconceptions and errors we so often complain about. The higher the level, the greater the accountability should be, but frequently isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are nearly innumerable examples of faulty language all throughout the physics literature and physics textbook at all levels. I will list some here. Before doing so, I also want to point out that science, ALL science, is based on progressively sophisticated models. Each new level of sophistication brings deeper understanding, and the process never ends. It's okay to use simplistic models and accompanying simplistic language as long as we warn the listener that in simplifying things, we're introducing errors that will be addressed in the more sophisticated models. We frequently neglect this warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Vectors are quantities that have magnitude and direction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the case that every quantity that has a magnitude and direction is a vector (e.g. finite rotations). There are also different kinds of vectors, and unfortunately this is rarely mentioned in introductory courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Vector components are scalars.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, not always. Components can be vectors as well. In fact, what we call scalar components are really pseudoscalars because of their behavior under coordinate inversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Energy is the capacity to do work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a model of meaningless circularity if ever there were one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The potential energy of the ball...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single entity cannot have potential energy assigned to it. Potential energy is a property of a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Energy or momentum flows...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither is a concrete physical substance so they can't flow. What we really should say is that we treat them mathematically as though they flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Charging a capacitor...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charge is a fundamental property of matter, and yet we routinely use it as both a noun and a verb, which is a huge potential source of confusion. When we use it as a verb, we really mean and should say &quot;accumulating&quot; because that's the physical process we're trying to describe. &quot;Charging a capacitor&quot; simply means &quot;accumulating charge on the capacitor&quot;. Actually, upon deeper thought, it amounts to a &quot;redistribution of charge creating the appearance of accumulation of charge on the capacitor.&quot; Sometimes more words enhance the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Electricity is...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of the following words used by students to complete this thought: charge, current, potential difference, electric force, power. Electricity is really a meaningless word used as a substitute for lack of understanding of the concepts behind all those other words. If you mean power, then use the word power. If you mean current, then use the word current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Newton's third law says two objects exert equal and opposite forces on each other.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This directly contradicts the definition of force as a vector because two vectors cannot be equal if they have different directions. The term &quot;equal and opposite&quot; is inherently self-contradictory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Dot products and cross products are two ways of multiplying vectors.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are very different from students' conceptions of multiplication. Dot products require both multiplication and addition (and sometimes subtraction). Cross products also require more than trivial multiplication. We shouldn't use the simplistic &quot;multiplying&quot; UNLESS we warn students that we're redefining what &quot;multiplying&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Moving clocks run slow. Moving rods contract.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are very misleading. Time dilation and length contraction are nothing more than consequences of measurement from different frames. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Time...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This problem took too much time. (time as a quantifiable concept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distance is the product of speed and time. (time as a duration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What time is it? (time as a clock reading)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Six times three is eighteen. (times as repeated addition)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please time the oscillations of this pendulum. (time as a verb)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That was a very timely remark. (time as an adverb)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is a time-dependent function. (time as an adjective)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are a few from introductory and intermediate physics. Perhaps we should create a community wiki of more examples from advanced physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6350" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T17:51:31.463" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T17:51:31.463" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8578" CreationDate="2013-03-13T19:53:45.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to walkmanyi's wetting solution would be to employ &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=rubber%20finger%20tips&amp;amp;aq=1&amp;amp;oq=rubber%20fi&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.3.0j57j5j0.14822&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot;&gt;rubber finger tips&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the plus side:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They protect from drying out of the natural oil from your finger tips, and protect against paper cuts.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;On the negative side:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Well you are wearing little caps on the tips of your fingers and you lose some tactile feedback. I imagine it would take some getting used to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3934" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T19:53:45.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:33:21.717" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Earth Sciences&lt;/strong&gt; (Physical Geography, Geology etc.). Authors are listed according to their intellectual contribution to a paper. The first author named on the paper is thus the person who has contributed intelectually the most to the paper. The second, third etc, names have decreasing importance (contribution). If more than one person can be  considered first author, those names are listed alphabetically and a note to the fact is made in the acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only persons who have contributed intellectually to the paper are included. Lab assistants, techncians etc, are thus not included (although it still happens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a leading scientist, project leader etc. is not first author the lead role may be indicated by refering to that person as &quot;Corresponding Author&quot;. This is common when first authors are junior contributors (students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T20:33:21.717" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-13T20:33:21.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8581" CreationDate="2013-03-13T23:40:28.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no right answer to this and it depends on the institution that you are in and the people you are dealing with. You are the only one who can decide on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principal I don't see any problem with this if you manage it correctly. IMHO talking with the first guy to understand the consequence of your action and then making the decision is the right course. Second guy has the money and that makes the situation entirely different for him. The reality is that if you are good people will always assume that you have your own interest in mind and will try to get the best offer. So thats not new. &lt;strong&gt;What matters is how you play your cards and behave.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I would say is go to the &lt;strong&gt;first guy&lt;/strong&gt; talk about the scholarship situation and your prospects, see what he says, if you feel its right bring up the other project &lt;strong&gt;ask him &quot;given the uncertainty of the situation and what would you do if you were in my shoes&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; and take it from there... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he says something on the lines of well i am not sure what will happen with scholarship and nothing is guaranteed then go ahead and apply for the second one but if he is saying its a tough situation and you have to make your own mind it kinda indicates that his is not going to be happy about it and is really not understanding you/caring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think right now you need to test the waters first and need to do it very delicately... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T23:40:28.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8594" CreationDate="2013-03-14T00:19:01.390" Score="4" ViewCount="1347" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD student has started his research about two year ago by research scholarship from university. His supervisor won a huge grant on a topic very close to his research project couple of months earlier. He and his supervisor submitted a 6 page paper to a journal for publication. Editor's decision is that the paper should be published as a communication rather original research. This means that they have to &lt;strong&gt;reduce the manuscript to 4 pages or pay about 500$ for extra pages&lt;/strong&gt;. The adviser asked the student to shrink the paper to the shortest possible version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can they pay the publications fees from the grant budget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can student ask the adviser to pay for the publication from the grant?&lt;/strong&gt; What is the best polite approach for such request?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should supervisor expect to put the grant number in the acknowledgement while he does not pay for the publication fees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="5644" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T01:09:24.117" LastActivityDate="2020-01-06T14:57:39.093" Title="Shrink the paper or pay for extra page charges?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-03-14T00:50:18.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You already have the answer from your advisor. He is the one who knows the circumstances and can make the call if he want to. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can ask, but be careful how you do it. Remember, if he wanted to do it, he would have done it already instead of asking you to cut the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if its close enough, and he feels that grant has been supporting his activities... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T00:56:19.003" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T00:56:19.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-14T01:27:55.193" Score="8" ViewCount="1719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I handed in my PhD thesis for examination. From reading the examination instructions it appears that if I get my degree, it could be between 6 weeks to a year. It all depends upon the comments I get back from the examiners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan during that time was continue work on my research, get more results and publish more papers. Also, help out other PhD students in their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the time-frame is so variable, is there anything else I should be doing or planning? The only advice I was given, was don't take a holiday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: I am quietly confident that the examination results I will get back will be positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5630" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T22:49:56.937" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:49:56.937" Title="Is there anything to do while waiting for results of a thesis examination?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8586" CreationDate="2013-03-14T06:58:43.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking of this exact topic from a pedagogic standpoint for years.  I taught high school physics where I had classes that ranged from 9th grade Conceptual Physics, to APB (non-calculus) physics, to APC (calculus-based) physics, to a 12th grade second physics class for students who wanted more physics but didn't want the rigor of the AP classes.  I'm about to begin teaching a college-level Physical Science class where I'm faced with the same problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I teach the students &amp;quot;physics&amp;quot; (quotation marks in bold) without (a) saying something misleading, and (b) so they get a clear understanding that won't hinder them in future classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer to that question relies most importantly on the level the students are at (teach to their level so they understand), and also with the explicit caveat that &lt;em&gt;the teacher must tell the students that there are subtleties that will become apparent in future classes.&lt;/em&gt;  Indeed, some of those subtleties are more than that -- saying that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Energy is the capacity to do work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may be circular and meaningless (as JoeH replied), but to a first approximation and definition it works for the time being, and can be improved upon in later classes.  When I give that definition to my students, I always caveat it by saying, &amp;quot;Guess what?  This definition isn't perfect, and in future classes you'll learn a more refined definition that involves other concepts that aren't within the scope of this class.&amp;quot; (I say that a lot in introductory classes!) To the students that want more information immediately, I point them in the direction of other resources, or move the conversation to office hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest part about proceeding with this method is to make sure that you don't lead the students into an incorrect conceptual understanding that is hard to break in future classes.  Joe's example of &amp;quot;the potential energy of the ball&amp;quot; being incorrect without the idea of a system is a good one -- there are many times when simplifying too much leads to a fundamental misunderstanding, and as teachers we have to avoid that as much as possible.  Learning what does and doesn't lead to misunderstanding takes time, but being able to formulate precise assessments (whether test-based, or clicker-based, or on homework, etc.) goes a long way towards determining whether or not a student has a proper understanding that doesn't involve misconceptions.  If those misconceptions arise during the assessment, it is the teacher's duty to go back and clarify, or re-teach if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JoeH listed a number of physics concepts that take a concentrated effort to teach properly, but I think all disciplines have those problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemistry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1224&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electrons do not orbit in &amp;quot;shells,&amp;quot; despite what millions of students learn every year in elementary school.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer Science: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Ewwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_cs;action=display;num=1264652087&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in some cases, bubblesort does beat quicksort.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrich.maths.org/1434&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the internal angles of a triangle do not always add up to 180º.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=hex%205%20times%20hex%205&amp;amp;oq=hex%205%20times%20hex%205&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3j62l2.3611&amp;amp;sugexp=chrome,mod=17&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=0x5%20*%200x5&amp;amp;oq=0x5%20*%200x5&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...3323.5222.0.5666.9.8.0.0.0.0.886.3535.2-2j3j1j1j1.8.0.les;..0.0...1c.1.5.psy-ab.vJBN_m1-F2g&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;bvm=bv.43287494,d.Yms&amp;amp;fp=205d418cd8aed20b&amp;amp;biw=1401&amp;amp;bih=968&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Five times five does not always equal twenty-five.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English: &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/top-ten-grammar-myths.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;passive voice is not always wrong.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plentyquotes.com/authors/Philip-Howard/Philip-Howard.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a historian does not always have to be unbiased&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(apologies for examples that aren't perfectly clear -- I'd be happy to amend my answer with better examples!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T09:07:44.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8598" CreationDate="2013-03-14T09:36:29.013" Score="12" ViewCount="4159" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8593/shrink-the-paper-or-pay-for-extra-page-charges#comment15088_8593&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8593/1033&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;em&gt;but spending some money to publish in a high rank journal can open more funding opportunities in future, doesn't it?&lt;/em&gt;.  In another post, JeffE writes &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8420/1033&quot;&gt;in this answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personally, when I read a CV, I only spend a second or two on the self-declared research interests and jump straight to the publication list.&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a candidate (either for hiring or for a grant) has good science but the publications are not in the most prestigious journals, but in slightly less known journals (but still journals that are not obscure), does that significantly hurt their chances?  Or is it really the content that matters and is the venue of publication less important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that my question is &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; about the &lt;em&gt;venue of publication&lt;/em&gt;.  These related questions do not answer my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1743/1033&quot;&gt;What can I do as a graduate student to maximize my chances of obtaining a professorship?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2080/1033&quot;&gt;How important is number of publications and prestige of the publication outlets for getting a tenure-track job?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/933/1033&quot;&gt;How important are citations when applying for jobs or promotions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T11:31:44.383" Title="How important is the publication venue for academic hiring and grant applications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8597" CreationDate="2013-03-14T09:58:46.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is probably not a single truth here but I would make the following statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Having a good publication record is the basis for basically everything in academia&lt;/em&gt;. The question is then what is good? As a fresh PhD student citations will be near zero (I am guessing in most fields). Having publications in citation index listed journals is therefore a definite plus. Having several as first author is a must (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2467/4394&quot;&gt;What does first authorship really mean?&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion) I would also argue that having papers not part of the PhD (even if not first authored author) is a plus since it indicates activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a new post-graduate you need to improve the publication record as best you can. You need to show that you do your own new work but also be part of collaborations in some mix. Building a publication record takes time and will partly be up to your own efforts and in some way also by chance (you never know what opportunities lie ahead). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get employed, you can basically only compete with a good publication list. Everyone knows this takes time and I am guessing all fields have their own &quot;standards&quot; as to what is a reasonable publication rate. In my field where papers are based on field investigations, 2-4 papers per year is considered acceptable, the longer-term average should be towards 3-5. The rate is thus an aspect that should not be over-looked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically you will have a dip post-PhD because it takes time to build or get into a new environment and to start writing new papers. Having something on the back burner for that period may thus be useful to bridge the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, the citations will be more and more important after a few years. In my field it usually takes a few years to start getting citations because the results will inspire someone to apply for money, go into the field for new investigations, and then write papers. In a lab or theoretical environment such response times may be lower so check with seniors in your field what applies. A good question to ask is perhaps if there are ways to promote ones work to increase citation records, I do not have the answer to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: publish in as good journals as possible. Good quality counts but a reasonable publication rate is also necessary. Citations will come with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T11:31:44.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-14T10:03:22.857" Score="18" ViewCount="4466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an adviser who wants to know every minor details of my work and spend countless amount of time arguing with me over insignificant things. Basically, she tries to control everything I do, from number of hours I spend on homework, what books/papers I read, what font/color I use in my presentations, to whom I talk to with regards to research. Is this considered normal? If not, is this a good reason to change the adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Sorry for the lack of details.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Status&lt;/strong&gt; I'm an MS/PHD student in my second year of MS. Probably 3 more years of PHD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt; I've tried to communicate my concerns; but she usually has the &quot;my way or the highway&quot; attitude&quot;. If I insist on something, she ends up sarcastically saying, &quot;if I don't like it, I should consider finding another research adviser&quot;. Unfortunately, I'm not the only one in this situation; she seems to be having the same problems with her other students as well. I once mentioned to her that I might leave her group, but she told me &quot;she's the one who's admitted me and no one else would work with me.&quot; Indeed, she's a very big name in her field, and it seems to me almost impossible to leave her influence if I choose to continue the same line of research/department/school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6355" LastEditorUserId="6355" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T12:30:36.873" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:15:57.970" Title="Very demanding adviser" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-03-14T10:21:56.897" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advisors come in many flavors, from those who are very hands-off, to those who micromanage.  If you are really spending countless hours arguing over details that are seemingly unimportant (although what books/papers you read is most certainly not unimportant!), then you need to have a serious conversation with her about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That kind of conversation is difficult as the advisee -- if she is paying for your degree, then you work for her, and she has a lot of leeway to determine what she thinks is important.  You have to tactfully lay out for her why you think she is micromanaging you too much, and see what she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, if you don't agree with how you are being advised, you have a number of possible avenues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to another faculty member (probably the department chair).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the faculty ombudsman, if there is one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do nothing, and carry on.  PhD programs don't last forever (though they often seem like it), and if you can still produce good work while working for the advisor, it can still work out in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to find another advisor (or, possibly, another school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing advisors is not a trivial thing, although many people do it early on in their graduate career.  That also involves tact, as professors generally don't like other professors poaching their students without a mutual discussion about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: before you make any long-term decisions, have a discussion with your advisor about your perceptions, but be tactful and have a plan on what you are going to say before the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T10:21:56.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:24:23.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this considered normal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. The professor is supposed to &lt;em&gt;guide&lt;/em&gt; the student in an academic way not inspecting every tiny thing &lt;em&gt;irrelevant&lt;/em&gt; to the student research. However, &lt;strong&gt;some professors do have their own &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and want their students to follow them.  If their &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; is related to academia then no issue here. Sometimes their &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; is overlap between personal interests and academic interests in this case remember you are required to follow your supervisor style only as long as you are working in her lab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, is this a good reason to change the adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends whether you find her helpful through out your research. If she gives you enough time to meet with her and discuss your research in an active manner then I believe this is the most important thing and no need to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T11:57:31.163" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T11:57:31.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8611" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:57:48.043" Score="35" ViewCount="13773" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to publish under a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; (pen name, pseudonym)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... and still take credit for the work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have a chance to publish with the professor I am working with soon and if I am on the list of authors I would like to use a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt;, but I would also like to use the publication to apply to graduate schools next time. Is it possible to have my cake and eat it in the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Sorry for missing this out; The reason for wanting to publish under a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; is that I would merely want my career to be tracked under a different name. Not to hide identity; I am perfectly fine with what EnergyNumbers was suggesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6357" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-08T23:31:56.197" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T23:31:56.197" Title="If I publish under a pseudonym, can I still take credit for my work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8603" CreationDate="2013-03-14T12:58:29.517" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. You cannot simultaneously be anonymous and still receive credit for your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically, your pseudonym could get the credit, but you can't invite a pseudonym to be a collaborator, or to give a lecture, or to apply for a grant, so I'm not sure how useful that would end up being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T12:58:29.517" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-14T13:54:48.497" Score="9" ViewCount="1005" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor introduced a model 15 years ago, published a lot of papers (including PNAS). Now, he makes me incorporate this model into well-established model from the neighboring field of research. I think he just tries to stay in the known waters (cite his own papers, etc). Of course, he is well aware (but not proficient) that everything we try now to research was already published in this neighboring field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to reinvent the wheel with minor modifications (people from the neighboring field will probably laugh)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to switch the project (although it will be hard)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freelance in the &quot;spare&quot; time ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited after Piotr's remark. Hope that nailed it down a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastEditorUserId="6346" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T15:03:46.590" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T17:51:25.317" Title="My advisor wants me to reinvent the wheel" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8597" CreationDate="2013-03-14T14:16:49.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what it is worth, this question is discipline specific. In natural sciences, you have to go through 5-8 years of post-docs, and the question of how to get a professor position is such a distant future that you shouldn't even bother at this point, and have to concentrate on getting into a productive post-doc position (rather than the one that will simply suck up all of your energy on 60+ hour work weeks, without giving much in return). In some fields, like economics or statistics, you get a tenure track position right after the Ph.D. In some other fields, like some branches of sociology or anthropology, there is no &quot;research&quot;, but there is &quot;scholarship&quot; instead, and the first question you are asked is not &quot;How many Nature papers do you have?&quot; but &quot;What is your book about?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, my impression (I am a statistician, also worked with psychologists and economists) is that generally the perceived order of importance is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The prestige of the top journals that you published in as the first or the solo author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether you have papers in top journals in the field, no matter what order author you are&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The share of top journals in overall record: if you have 20 publications with only 1 being in a top journal, that's arguably a worse record than 10 publications with 3 top journals (although it depends on a particular university; in some academic incentive systems, you are better off publishing 5-6 crappy papers a year without every attempting top journals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations will hardly come into play until you are about 5+ years into the game post Ph.D. (going for tenure in economics or statistics; going for tenure track positions in physics or biology, although I can only speculate about these fields). For some departments, citations may never come into play if you have publications in top journals, which are assumed to generate citations semi-automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a grad student, you are still learning the rules of the game. Treat academia as such; don't assume that good research will prevail -- it might, but it could be too late for you. You have to be aggressive in pursuing top publications, invited presentations, etc., and a lot of people just don't have it. You have to recognize whether your personality suits academia, and try to seek other venues if it does not. (I don't know if there are psychoanalysts specializing in placing people into academia, but that would be a golden niche for somebody :) ). In many disciplines, there is as much or even more good quality research being done in industry than in the university setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T14:16:49.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-03-14T14:36:30.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are already very far along in your PhD (which I assume you are doing) I would finish the PhD. If you are still at the beginning, and feeling like this is not where you want to go, and it does not teach you the skills you need, I would consider trying to switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But first and foremost, try and talk to your supervisor about your frustration. Of course, keep it civil and professional. You might be able to give your current research a twist that makes it more appeal to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T14:36:30.603" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8603" CreationDate="2013-03-14T14:47:12.817" Score="28" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to use a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt;, but I would also like to use the publication to apply to graduate schools next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, you could do this.  You would need some way of demonstrating that you really were an author (nobody will believe you if you claim &quot;Andrew Wiles&quot; was just a pseudonym you used for your proof of Fermat's Last Theorem), but a letter of recommendation from your supervisor would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, why would you want to?  You would need to explain in your application why you had used a pseudonym, and I can't think of any explanation that would sound compelling.  Even in the best-case scenario, this issue would be a distraction from the actual substance of your grad school applications, and it would probably hurt your chances of admission.  Whatever you say, people are going to suspect it's because you are embarrassed by the paper or by your contribution to it, and that won't look good on an application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming here that your &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; is intended to hide or disguise your identity.  If not, then it should be fine.  Some people use different names professionally and socially, and this is OK as long as you are clear about it.  (It may cause some confusion in your career, but it isn't considered an ethical problem.)  If this is the case, then you should include a brief note of explanation, for example &quot;I legally changed my name to Smith-Jones upon getting married in 2012, but I have decided to continue publishing under the name Smith.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T14:47:12.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-03-14T15:00:40.663" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would do is improve/repair your personal relationship with your adviser. You should be comfortable in discussing your concerns about being micromanaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your adviser may be correct in her recommendations. For example... We all can assume the font you use in your presentation is appropriate, but we may have the same opinion as your adviser if we learn you are using 33 different font styles and sizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is chill out and communicate your concerns to your adviser. You two need to be in a a functioning professional relationship where you can communicate effectively and talk out issues. If it turns out that that there is absolutely no chemistry between you two, then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6359" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T15:00:40.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8603" CreationDate="2013-03-14T15:35:03.257" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking it that your asking about a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; (aka &quot;pen name&quot;) for reasons of conspicuousness, rather than for reasons of anonymity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to publish under something other than your legal name.  A &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; isn't that unusual in academia, particular for folk with common names who would otherwise be unfindable in literature databases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to make sure that your legal identity is sufficiently tied to your &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt;, so that there's not going to be any arguing about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people adopt double-barrelled surnames for their &lt;em&gt;noms de plume&lt;/em&gt;: others add a distinctive first or second initial. As long as its sufficiently close to your real name, that should be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this will entail your &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; effectively &lt;strong&gt;becoming&lt;/strong&gt; your name for academic purposes: it's what will be on your email correspondence, your web page, your conference name-badges, and so on. You'll just have to do a bit of tweaking with university administration so that payroll, legal, and travel arrangements are all in your real name, not your pen name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T15:35:03.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-03-14T15:46:05.390" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue seems to be that your advisor isn't willing to acknowledge that the problems he's attempting to work on have been solved. I would recommend bringing the relevant papers to him and discussing with him how his proposed projects differ from what already exists in the literature. This way, either (1) he'll clarify how his projects are different from the literature, or (2) you may be able to demonstrate to him that the problem is indeed solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T15:46:05.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-03-14T16:25:32.850" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is early in your PhD studies, your adviser could be giving you this task knowing that it is solved to test your capabilities. Generally, when you are new to research methodology, you will want to try to repeat previous work to make sure that you know that you are doing it correctly. A test where the correct answer is unknown is a poor test. Your adviser could be taking this approach with you while not explaining his purpose in doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, none of your three alternatives are really appropriate, although the first is the best. If you are being evaluated on how you solve a known problem, then you need to solve it very well. Then you will be given better and more exciting work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your adviser genuinely thinks this is a worthwhile novel problem to pursue, then see the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T16:25:32.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8597" CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:15:41.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the importance of hiring, many departments do not devote all that much energy to it (at least, not until the field is narrowed down to a handful of top candidates being invited to give job talks).  For these departments, it can make a big difference if they know that you at least passed the (often considerably greater) scrutiny afforded by publication in a top journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having publications in top journals will not necessarily sink your chances, but it will &lt;em&gt;limit&lt;/em&gt; your chances to those places that don't make it a de facto requirement.  Check out the publication records of recently hired faculty members at institutions you're interested in to get a hint of what your CV ought to look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: getting a good postdoctoral fellowship is typically much less publication-dependent, at least in those areas of the biological sciences with which I am familiar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="669" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T11:29:14.017" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T11:29:14.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-03-14T23:15:26.350" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have frequently had to micromanage my students' presentations and writeups. That's part of Ph.D training. The tricky thing for an advisor is telling the difference between style choices that are bad, and style choices that are just different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also will suggest which papers to read, and will often rule out other things that my students want to read. Of course I can't force them one way or another, but if I feel that my students are consistently making inexplicable choices about what to read or not, I might come down a bit more forcefully, or at least try to talk to them to understand their choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, as others have said, what you have here is a failure to communicate :). Talk to your advisor and try to understand why she's asking you to do things a certain way. If you're concerned about how to approach the topic, you can lead off by saying that you're quite happy to listen to her recommendations, but you'd like to know the reasons so that you can understand the context she's bringing to the discussion, and so you can learn for the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T23:15:26.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8631" CreationDate="2013-03-15T02:07:56.523" Score="3" ViewCount="2948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether this question is suitable for academia, if not it would be great to know the site where I should ask this. I am a finishing Ph.D. student in Mathematics at a decent school in the US, and my postdoctoral job applications so far have gone in vein, although I do have published paper in recognized journal. Also, I had to switch my advisor and subject in the middle of my Ph.D., so I think I would have been better off with more experience in the field I am working on or a related field. That would mean even if I get a postdoc, I would feel a little bit inferior to other postdocs or might seek a little more help from my mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed the postings by some European Universities for postdocs where they mention that they are looking for postdocs and Ph.D. students both. Although I will be applying for postdocs in these universities, I was thinking of having your opinion on the following, somewhat irregular backup plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say University U in Europe has a postdoc position P for salary x for 2 years, and Ph.D. position D for salary y for 4 years, where x&gt;y. If I can get P, great, but if not, can I also talk to and try to come to an agreement with the university (e-mail them with explanation etc.) for a visiting position where I will be learning some more stuffs and will be researching as well, but may be with less salary than P but the same (or little more) salary as/than D? In other words, I feel like I need to gain more knowledge in my area, so if I don't get P, I will be happy with almost the same salary y as D, but will try to bend the rule from 4 years to just 1 year? So it will be like a visiting position with less salary, of less time period, but I will like to be treated like a Ph.D. student (that means less independent research, more learning compared to a postdoc). Will that be a ridiculous thing to try? So, I will be somewhat like an advanced Ph.D. student but not expert like a postdoc and so I am willing to negotiate with the salary, I won't need another Ph.D. since I will have had one(if they give another, fantastic!) Do you know whether it might work or create complications enough so that the hiring committee will be offended? Should I try to send an e-mail explaining this situation and see whether they will negotiate with me on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much in advance! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T20:48:54.767" Title="For a postdoctoral/Ph.D. position in Mathematics in Europe, can I make this somewhat irregular request?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8620" CreationDate="2013-03-15T03:42:57.640" Score="29" ViewCount="3536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing research into graduate programs and have noticed that some departments have a representation of their own PhD graduates as professors while others have an absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a department I have looked at in a top university in Canada had a faculty completely composed of PhD graduates from top American schools, but none from its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see this as a signal of either two things -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the department may not want to be seen favouring its own candidates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the department may not have as much faith in its own graduates as that from other schools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this may differ from field to field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, &lt;strong&gt;what is the majority view-point on a department that has no representation of its own graduates on its faculty?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastActivityDate="2021-03-30T06:00:56.750" Title="Is it peculiar for a department not to have any of its own PhD graduates as professors?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8618" CreationDate="2013-03-15T04:10:25.960" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partly, it depends on the size of the department.  In a small or even medium-sized department, it means nothing.  I wouldn't read anything into it until the department reaches a size where it has five or more graduates of a single school on the faculty (if they have no more than a few from any given place, then random fluctuations could easily push the number to zero).  If they have hired five or ten from another school but none of their own, then it's clear they have a preference for that school.  It's sensible to set up some barriers to hiring your own graduates, so a modest preference for other schools is actually a good sign.  If it gets extreme, it's may be because they think the other school's students are genuinely stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't worry about this too much.  Even if you run across an unambiguous case, it's hard to know what to make of it.  Sometimes a department has an incredibly strong research group in a certain area but hires none of their own graduates because they simply don't need any more professors in this area.  In that case the lack of hiring is no reflection on the graduates from this group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T04:10:25.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8618" CreationDate="2013-03-15T04:22:39.327" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common in computer science for a university to have few if any of its own graduates as faculty, and should not be taken as a bad sign by itself. This low representation is for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best five or ten universities in the United States produce a disproportionately large number of strong academic candidates.&lt;/strong&gt; In practice universities that have research departments &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; (let alone the exceptionally strong ones) tend to be filled with professors with Ph.D.s from the elite few.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Going somewhere else leads to cross-fertilization of academic thought.&lt;/strong&gt; Presumably after 5+ years of graduate school one has spent a lot of time learning from the expertise available in their department. Going somewhere else allows a professor to transfer her knowledge to a different group of researchers, and to get fresh insight from them in return.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="993" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T04:22:39.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8621" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:08:00.343" Score="12" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose you write a paper and you post it on arXiv. If a paper is sent to a journal for peer-review, should you always include this information in the paper comments (including the name of the journal where the paper was sent)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is accepted, is it necessary to include in the comments that the paper has been accepted for publication in... (and include the name of the journal)? Or it is better to wait until the paper is published and then include in the comments &quot;Published in... [name of the journal].&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it may take some for a paper to be published once accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6364" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T12:52:56.860" Title="Is it necessary to include and update the status of a paper on arXiv once it has been accepted for publication in a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8584" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:17:36.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is that ABET accreditation is generally not very important, in the fields of software engineering and software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the University program is well-regarded by employers, ABET accreditation is not important; their positive impressions will outweigh any accreditation.  If the University program is poorly-regarded, ABET accreditation is not going to make up for their poor impressions.  If the University program is unknown to employers, they will probably look at other measures first (like past projects you've done, your performance on a phone interview, etc.) before they care about ABET accreditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important is the quality of the undergraduate program.  Since you are choosing among multiple universities, you should be looking carefully at the quality of their programs.  While it's true that ABET accreditation is potentially a signal or indicator of quality, I don't think it's a very good measure of quality.  (I know of some extremely high-quality computer science programs that are not ABET-accredited.)  Instead, to decide where to study, I'd be looking closely at the programs, to assess their quality in as many ways as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T05:36:00.843" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T05:36:00.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8621" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:37:03.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you should never include &quot;Submitted to Journal of Blah&quot;; it conveys no information and it's tacky. (And just because Terry Tao &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6372&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;does it&lt;/a&gt; doesn't make it okay.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't post a new version of a paper just because it has been accepted. However, if I do upload a newer version, I'll include in the comments &quot;Final version, to appear in Journal of Blah&quot; (here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2360&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; from one of my papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the paper is published, with page numbers and everything (which can often be years -- my paper above was accepted in April 2010, published January 2013), there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/jref&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;form&lt;/a&gt; you can use to add the journal reference and DOI to the arXiv page. Conveniently, this does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; generate a new version, so there's no reason not to (you can see this on my paper above -- the reference and DOI were added last week, but no new version of the paper was generated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T12:52:56.860" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T12:52:56.860" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8621" CreationDate="2013-03-15T06:47:12.053" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My practice is to replace the initial preprint with the postprint as soon as it is accepted.  After it is published (electronically), I go back and add the DOI and such.  The reason for this is that the paper is often significantly improved during the refereeing process, and I'd rather have people reading the improved (postprint) than the original preprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T06:47:12.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8618" CreationDate="2013-03-15T09:34:15.067" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, will be my short answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a matter of &quot;culture&quot;. In my Alma Mater in the US, the department did not hire its graduates as faculty. It was perfectly normal. Where I now work, in Europe, the opposite was the norm; it was unusual to recruit faculty from elsewhere. This has, however, changed and I think we have a healthy mix now. To a large extent this has to do with mobility, in the one case mobility is the norm, in the other it is not. You stay where you were born to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the No means that in some fields and countries it is perfectly natural not to recruit from your &quot;own ranks&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A follow up question to this might be what the benefits of internal vs. external recruitment might be. I am sure this differs substantially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-04-07T06:18:56.453" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T06:18:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5440" CreationDate="2013-03-15T09:55:52.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a researcher uncovers an evidence hitherto unknown to a large number of people within and outside the Academia, this could be seen as a contribution to knowledge because it is a discovery or an uncharted course made possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6366" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T09:55:52.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T11:51:13.923" Score="9" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of many mailing-list and RSS feeds advertising about calls for papers/participation, available positions, events, etc, but I find it much harder to know about funding opportunities, such as calls for proposal, grant applications, etc. I'm based in the UK, and there are many funding agencies, including of course EPSRC and the EU, but also many smaller ones, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing interesting opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question: are there some website/systems where I can register my interest, and get to know about existing or soon to come opportunities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it matters, I'm in Computer Science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2019-12-16T15:29:20.853" Title="Repository for funding opportunities" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8627" CreationDate="2013-03-15T12:12:29.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem with such repositories is that someone has to maintain them. All the small funding agencies/foundations are usually obscure and will be hard to find on such a webpage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, are you familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchprofessional.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Professional&lt;/a&gt;? I use it from time to time, set up alerts for funding possibilities in my fields, so I get mails when someone new comes up. Might be worth a try...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T12:12:29.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8635" CreationDate="2013-03-15T12:23:40.323" Score="12" ViewCount="4560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a physics undergrad, who is also interested in pure mathematics. I am not very sure what I want to pursue for my PhD. Though I have specific interests in each of the two, and also inter-linked interests, in general I am very confused. My question is it legally and practically allowed for you to chose a guide from another department different than that which you are affiliated to? If not, can someone from another department become a co-guide? In particular, I am looking for laws and practices in the US and Europe (may differ from country to country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2734" LastEditorDisplayName="user2734" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T16:02:51.847" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T17:47:43.820" Title="PhD Research under guide/advisor of a different department" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8617" CreationDate="2013-03-15T12:41:56.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several European countries, for example Germany, Switzerland, or Austria, it will be possible to fill positions in part-time. Whether you then actually work only part-time or not is a different question. In these countries, there is in most cases not a big difference between PhD students and post-docs regarding organizational details of employment, or even salary on a full-time position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the way I see your plan possibly working is as follows: A professor has funding to employ someone full-time for 2 years. You could then try to argue that in addition to working on the particular project, you also need time to educate yourself further and get only a half-time position, but stretch that to 4 years. You may want to communicate that it still means that you are working or studying full-time on project-related topics. If the funding is flexible regarding the year when it is spent (which is sometimes, but not always, the case), then I'd guess you have good chances that people are willing to make that deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This plan is probably best discussed with the professor offering the position, informally before you apply for the position, or when you go for an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T12:41:56.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-03-15T13:17:45.143" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen co-advisors a number of times.  At least three of my computer science colleagues were co-advised by biologists who were working on projects that needed complex and novel data manipulation and/or novel algorithm design (see, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.2342v1.pdf&quot;&gt;LUMPY: A probabilistic framework for structural variant discovery&lt;/a&gt;).  There aren't any specific &lt;em&gt;laws&lt;/em&gt; regarding this (at least in the U.S.), but specific university departments may have guidelines or rules regarding the practice--you would have to check with the schools you are applying to for individual policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your interests bridge two departments, you should probably figure out which department you'd most likely fit into, and contact professors in that field to ask for their opinion on being co-advised.  It may turn out that you need higher level mathematics to inform your physics research but that you won't be &lt;em&gt;creating&lt;/em&gt; new math (for example), in which case you probably wouldn't need separate advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T13:17:45.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T13:35:02.293" Score="3" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took an nontraditional track to academia. I went from the professional world, to full time community college educator (media/communications). Now as I plan to go forward, I realize that I NEED a PhD to move on.  Problem, my GRE scores is awful and my Masters was a tacticians degree rather than a theoretical one. So I have no publication history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to get into a decent PhD program (I will have to change fields from Communications to Education since there are no PhD programs in my field in proximity to my tuition reimbursing institution), should I focus on pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt? While the second sounds like a lot more fun, I wonder if a good set of publications would matter if my GRE is abysmal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6271" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:41:06.150" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T14:05:23.560" Title="Pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-03-15T13:54:52.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioning &quot;homework&quot; makes me think that you are possibly in BSc or MSc programme, but not PhD yet (although, you sound like you're heading there). So, I'll try to concentrate my answer on advice useful to somebody just starting off as a (potential) researcher. Sorry on long text, but since the answer is based on experience it wouldn't have any value without an explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, would have loved if my supervisor from my first standalone bigger project was micromanaging me. Moreover, I explicitly told the guy &quot;I'm very new at this, and would appreciate instructions and directions on how to approach such a big project efficiently&quot;. He left me more-or-less alone, I was a beginner, and didn't handle the situation very well: but one important lesson was that that specific type of adviser was not a good match for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the professor that was my primary adviser during my BSc and MSc was a very smart, eloquent and confused scientist. When I first told him I am considering continuing with academia after MSc, very often I would get a feeling &lt;strong&gt;he was paying way too much attention to &quot;useless&quot; details, such as&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;asking me to understand the literature to impossible details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making me justify using (sub)methods, (sub)approaches and other sub-parts of approaches &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; made me study, which were chosen by the authors of the papers &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; suggested for reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;correcting and re-writing my written works as one non-native English speaker to another, where I was sure my grammar was fine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making a loud point of small spelling mistakes in &lt;em&gt;Drafts V.001&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What helped was, as most people here suggested: &lt;em&gt;talking to him&lt;/em&gt;. He got to explain to me that &lt;strong&gt;I have to be able to argument my choices&lt;/strong&gt;, not by saying (cf. John Doe: &quot;Important work on the topic&quot;), but by properly explaining the idea behind the approach, and then properly explaining why it is applicable to my situation. He explained that, he, as an expert, &lt;strong&gt;does not know answers to all questions, solutions to all problems&lt;/strong&gt;, but is in a &lt;strong&gt;good position to give an educated guess&lt;/strong&gt;. A bigger picture here is that if you learn how to express yourself clearly and with arguments, the scientific community can understand you, and build on your work. Bottom line, they can help developing your idea. In the end, in academia today, it is not enough to have a good idea, &lt;strong&gt;you have to explain your idea to everyone&lt;/strong&gt;, and it's surprisingly hard to do even after you feel like you understand everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from that point of view, what &lt;strong&gt;he was doing was actually&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching me critical thinking, and how to properly read scientific work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching me that just because something is published, does not make it correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching me that just because something grammatically correct, does not mean it is clear, simple and understandable: and understandable is always your goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching me that everyone looks down on lazy-asses who don't spell-check their work. It's not nice, but that's how it is :/&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In return, since he got my critical thinking working, he would do the same for me: &lt;strong&gt;explain and argument his choices and recommendations&lt;/strong&gt;, tell me why something might not seem important now but will be good in my field later, hinting me on his methods to read scientific literature, explain before recommending literature what he is expecting me to learn from it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, from the &lt;em&gt;professors side&lt;/em&gt;, I think &lt;strong&gt;it is very hard to develop a good &quot;scientific style&quot; in somebody, unless you're imposing your own&lt;/strong&gt;. It's different with somebody with experience and a (semi-)established style, it's different (and possibly more difficult) when starting with somebody new to it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, from &lt;em&gt;student side&lt;/em&gt;: If you're still advancing, doing good work, and learning, it's not bad. If you're just in the beginning and will soon change supervisor anyway (e.g. from MSc to PhD), it's even better: you get expirience working with different kind of people, and it will be easier for you to find an adviser with a style compatible with yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it all comes down to &lt;strong&gt;communication&lt;/strong&gt;: if you are on good terms with your adviser, just the explanations on why she's recommending what she is carry invaluable information that assimilate for years. If it's not just mindless task-giving, it teaches you things in very fast and simple (although sometimes annoying) manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T13:54:52.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-03-15T15:16:57.020" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, it is quite common for PhD students enrolled in department X to be advised by faculty in department Y, either alone or with a co-advisor in department X.  Off the top of my head, I can think of PhD students in my (computer science) department who are advised or co-advised by faculty in electrical engineering, mathematics, and industrial engineering.  Similarly, faculty in my department who advise PhD students in mathematics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you enroll in the PhD program in department X, you will have to satisfy the degree requirements (courses, comprehensive/qualifying exams, etc.) for department X, even if your advisor and your eventual research interests are in department Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T15:16:57.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8647" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:09:44.490" Score="7" ViewCount="1939" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard of this rule/recommendation (or may be its opposite) - &lt;code&gt;Always let the figures come after they are described in the text.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct rule? What's the logic? Is it always followed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if (in a single column format) there are two smaller figures side-by-side and second figure's description comes later in the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="2643" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T18:23:20.797" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T21:09:21.140" Title="Standard for figure description in main text and its placement in a report/paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8651" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:22:50.110" Score="17" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw an ad in mathjobs.org about an opening in a Catholic university, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/4682&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I am not christian. So I was wondering to be eligible for employment in a university or college affiliated with a specific religion, should the applicant  have the same religion, or other people from other religions (or even non-religious people) are eligible to apply as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T19:21:11.397" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T06:39:41.393" Title="Are employments in universities affiliated (or named) with a specific religion restricted to people with the same religion?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;religious-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8640" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8644" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:25:25.777" Score="42" ViewCount="4253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reviewing a paper whose work is quite related to some of my early PhD work, that was about 2 years ago. I have a paper published in a Journal that proved that method A had good solutions for the problem X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm asked to review a paper that does a variation on method A, although they never cite my paper at all, is not exactly the same, but I think there should be a reference, if not because it is my paper, but because by the time I did the survey no one else had used that method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, is it a breach of interest to ask the authors to cite my work, or at least read it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T20:22:16.703" Title="Is asking an author I'm reviewing to cite me a conflict of interest?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:39:28.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict of Interest usually deal with people that you are at the same institution with, or have collaborated with in the past, or have some kind of financial investment in, and if there's a conflict of interest, you generally decline to review that article. The journal or conference you're reviewing for likely has reviewer guidelines for what constitutes conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a risk that you can &quot;out&quot; yourself as an anonymous reviewer, but if you're able to suggest a few papers from various authors, that risk decreases. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T18:39:28.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8638" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:42:45.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had it as a requirement by an editor at a journal (after mention in text). I guess the rational is that figures are catchy, if you see one, you will probably want to know why it is there and parse the text to find the reference in the text. Doing so, you might omit reading part of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T18:42:45.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:56:19.907" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course there is a conflict of interest in this situation.  Reasonable people may differ in their opinions on how the conflict of interest should be addressed in this circumstance, but I think it's obvious that a conflict exists.  You are in a position of power over the authors of the paper in your role as a reviewer.  If the authors were to cite your paper, that would be of some benefit to you.  Therefore, asking them to do it inherently involves some element of conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4530" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T18:56:19.907" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-15T19:24:23.620" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would ask myself the following question:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it better &lt;strong&gt;for the paper&lt;/strong&gt; to be aware of my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is the main question you need to ask. If you see your work is relevant to the problem and can &lt;strong&gt;enhance&lt;/strong&gt; the paper content, then you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to point to it. If you see your work as a &lt;strong&gt;complement&lt;/strong&gt; of the paper just &lt;strong&gt;reference&lt;/strong&gt; it in the review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T19:24:23.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8639" CreationDate="2013-03-15T20:04:21.577" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend on the institution. This one in particular states that they do not discriminate on the basis of religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seattleu.edu/policies/nondiscrimination/&quot;&gt;http://www.seattleu.edu/policies/nondiscrimination/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seattle University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, political ideology or status as a Vietnam-era or special disabled veteran in the administration of any of its education policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, athletics, and other school-administered policies and programs, or in its employment related policies and practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some exceptions for religious organizations but it may depend on the state laws and/or the particular job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T20:04:21.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-15T20:06:04.323" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't agree that this is a conflict of interest. The reviewer can point out related work, and recommend that the author cite it. if the work is in fact irrelevant, the author can point this out, and the editor can adjudicate. Referees are supposed to be experts on the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scenario has happened to me a few  times. I've recommended that the author cite the relevant papers (including my own as needed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T20:06:04.323" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8638" CreationDate="2013-03-15T21:09:21.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figures should appear at the first possible place after they are referenced in the text and thus also in the order they are referenceed in the text. (the physical placement of the figure follows typographical rules). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A figure may be placed before its reference if they are on the same page. Figures are normally place at the top of pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figures must be ordered according to the order in which they are first referenced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The same system also applies for tables. It is however, not necessary for figures and tables to be placed in the order they appear relative to each other, they are two independent series of inclusions and placement depends on typographiccal rules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic is that the order figures are needed in the text also determines their location. Having such a rule makes the location predictable. Thse rules are followed by all journals typeset by professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case of the figures is dealt with as follows. If a figure has two panes, they would count as one figures but be labelled (a) and (b). thus one can reference figure Xa in one place and figure Xb in another. Combining panes into larger figures is a way to save space but most importantly to group plots that relate to each other in one place. ths is one way in which the order of figures according to the list above can be circumvented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important aspect is that figures should make sense and provide the reader with as much information as possible. Placement is done according to a logical and predicatable rule so that we all know what to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T21:09:21.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8652" CreationDate="2013-03-15T22:17:58.313" Score="5" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started teaching three courses at small medical training college: anatomy and physiology, medical terminology, and microbiology. Most of the students have a weak background in the sciences, and come from varying professional/educational backgrounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently end up preparing 4-5 hours for each hour that I end up lecturing. But find it difficult to keep the students engaged for the duration of the lecture. Any advice on improving teaching/ lecturing methods? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1612" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T04:53:58.493" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T12:56:52.497" Title="Lecturing (teaching methods) for a diverse group of students with weak science backgrounds" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;lecture-teaching-method&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T00:29:53.787" Score="7" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my masters in Computer Science last year and it was a taught masters so I didn't do any type of 'Research'. The problem that I encounter now is that I'm going to start my PhD in the next few days and I don't have any idea about how to do it (I don't know how to write a literature review, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Is it possible to do it or will be very difficult in my case? And do you know any books that can help in building the foundation for me to be able to do the research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6377" LastEditorUserId="6377" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T00:40:24.623" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T19:58:47.570" Title="I'm going to start my PhD with weak foundation in research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-16T00:59:40.513" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking whether something is or is not a conflict of interest is generally a misleading question, since it suggests a sharp cut-off rather than a continuum.  It's very rare to be so completely detached as to have no problematic incentives (for example, many other authors are friends or rivals).  Instead, the question is how troublesome the incentives are and how to handle them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommending that the author cite your own papers certainly has the potential for abuse.  However, people generally don't worry about it very much, since the worst-case scenario of a few borderline unnecessary citations is not so terrible (if the referee asks for many citations or they are really not relevant, then the editor should notice and intervene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's tricky about it is that some papers must be cited to give appropriate credit.  If you discovered X, but the author mistakenly credits it to a later paper based on your work, then you have an obligation to tell the author about your earlier paper.  The difficulty is in distinguishing what must be cited from what you wish would be cited.  I don't think there is any standard rule for how to make this distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do in practice is to make explicit recommendations to cite my work only when I can give a clear factual reason.  I.e., if the author says something historically incorrect or gives the wrong attribution, then I correct it.  However, I'm reluctant to ask the author to include a citation if everything in the paper would be correct without it.  For example, sentences like &quot;Previous applications of Smith theory include X, Y, and Z&quot; are still correct even if I wish W were also included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the next best thing is to say something like &quot;The author may find the following related papers interesting: ...&quot;  There's an implicit suggestion that citations could be appropriate, but it's less pushy than saying it explicitly, and the author can decide whether to include citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't really solve the conflict of interest issue.  After all, the implicit suggestion is pretty transparent, and the author may still feel some pressure.  However, it seems to me like a reasonable compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T00:59:40.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8639" CreationDate="2013-03-16T02:53:42.807" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the answer is usually &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; but occasionally &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note: This answer is specific to the United States.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most employers in the US are forbidden by law from discriminating on the basis of religion; they have to give equal consideration to candidates of any religion or no religion, and generally they will avoid asking about religion at all.  This includes non-denominational academic employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, religiously affiliated employers (such as churches, religious charities etc), are &lt;strong&gt;exempt&lt;/strong&gt; from this rule, and may use religion as a criterion for employment if they so choose.  This includes religiously affiliated academic institutions.  Each such institution will have its own policy on whether they consider religion and what the criteria are.  These policies will usually be mentioned in job postings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most intentionally choose to not consider religion as a factor, usually giving the justification of creating an inclusive community.  These may be institutions that were founded by a church and may still receive funding from them, but operate mainly as a secular institution, accepting students and faculty without regard to religion.  Job postings will often indicate this with phrases like &amp;quot;equal opportunity employer&amp;quot;.  They may have a &amp;quot;mission statement&amp;quot; with religious wording, and a tradition of religious activities on campus (such as regular church services), but nobody is obligated to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are others which choose to be more overtly religious.  They may accept students and faculty only if their religious beliefs align with those of the institution.  These are more likely to have formal religious activities on campus, and sometimes strict moral conduct codes.  Their job postings often ask explicitly about the applicant's spiritual beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The institution's name is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; always a good indicator of where they fall in this spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nebraska Wesleyan University&lt;/a&gt; describes itself as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;an academic community dedicated to intellectual and personal growth within the context of a liberal arts education and in an environment of Christian concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nebraska Wesleyan University provides equal educational opportunities to all qualified persons in all areas of university operation, including education and decisions regarding faculty appointment, promotion or tenure, without regard to race, religion, age, sex, creed, color, disability, marital status, national or ethnic origin or sexual orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dordt.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dordt College&lt;/a&gt; included this wording in a recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/4467&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;job posting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science department at Dordt College has a history of preparing students for graduate school, industry and K-12 education. This preparation is infused with an unashamedly Reformed Christian worldview, in order to prepare students to be global citizens in God’s service.  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We look forward to receiving applications from candidates who wish to join us in [...] teaching mathematics from a Christian perspective in the context of educating the whole person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualified persons committed to a Reformed, Biblical perspective and educational philosophy are encouraged to send a letter of interest and curriculum vitae/resume [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, institutions that will only consider applicants of a certain religion will make this clear at the outset.  However, even if not, you will have to decide if the religious environment (or lack thereof) on a particular institution's campus will be comfortable for you.  This is an appropriate  topic to ask about during an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T02:53:42.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8648" CreationDate="2013-03-16T06:54:05.900" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching 'unprepared' students is always a challenge and prep takes a lot of time (four to five hours of prep for one hour of lecturing sounds about right...and maybe a bit low). So, overall, your numbers seem to be inline with norms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make your teaching more effective, you should read some books about teaching (there are many). You should read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for some ideas on improving yourself as a lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, 'active learning' - where the student is the focus of the learning process (as opposed to the lecturer being the center) - focuses on engaging students, putting the load on their shoulders. Group work is particularly useful. I've seen studies (not handy) that say that in every learning situation, group learning (e.g., group discussion) always improves the learning effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do more prep and you should do less in class (they should do the work in class) and they should do work outside of class. All of this needs your careful planning but some students will think they you are not doing anything...but they will end up learning more in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T06:54:05.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8639" CreationDate="2013-03-16T09:53:53.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same applies in Australia - schools/universities often state that employees do not publicly mock or degrade the religion on campus, even if they don't agree with some aspects of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be mentioned in the employment ad itself, but occasionally a place will be granted a 'lift' from the discrimation act, to employ someone of a specific religion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5847" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T09:53:53.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-16T13:38:01.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking the author to cite your previous work is not a conflict of interest, but it may indicate a lack of impartiality on your part. In other words, there is always conflict of interest whenever you act as an expert reviewer and editors implicitly assume some small conflicts exist, they also believe you can be impartial despite the conflict. If you are concerned that by asking the authors to cite your previous work that you are not being impartial, there are 3 things you can do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can reveal you identity and say &quot;for what is it worth, you may want to cite MY work&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can write the review in such a way that the recommended citations can be easily deleted. You can then inform the editor that you have recommended some citations to your work and you are concerned about your impartiality and ask the editor to use his/her judgment about removing the recommended citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can leave them in and say nothing. If the editor thinks you are being unfair or too self prompting, they won't ask you to review again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T13:38:01.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8639" CreationDate="2013-03-16T14:13:18.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to look up what the catholic church says about its universities in order to form an opinion whether you agree with their views before applying: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae_en.html&quot;&gt;Apostolic Constitution of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II on Catholic Universities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;With a work contract with catholic church you agree with their ethical standards. Depending on close your personal ethics is to theirs, this may be anywhere from advantageous (it may be easier to deny conducting certain research because of ethical objections) to a huge source of conflicts (the typical topics, see below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, the requirements they put on applicants will depend on the faculty and on the job, in particular for catholic theology restrictions may apply that do not apply for other faculties (IMHO quite naturally).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt;, churches (i.e. institutions that have an official status of being religious community) are allowed to ask much more duty of loyality from their employees than normal employers. In practice most conflicts about that arise from catholic etics, e.g. employees of the catholic church may loose their job if they try to remarry after a separation (because they cannot be considered leading an exemplary life according to catholic ethics). Also, they may be homosexual, but you may not practice homosexuality (catholic church). &#xA;And you may not leave the respective church (if you are member to to begin with).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This tends to me more pronounced for employees in the &quot;core church businees&quot; (theological staff, parishes), that educate (kindergardeners, school teachers) or have a publicly visible position.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Another practical consequence is that the employees of churches are often paid lower wages compared to &quot;normal&quot; employers as working there is also considered service (in the christian religious sense). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T14:13:18.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-16T14:32:15.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure it is a conflict of interest. However, this particular type of conflict of interest IMHO cannot be avoided and is quite probable due to how the review process works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers are chosen according to their expertise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, chances are that they have been publishing relevant papers (how else would the editor know of them?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manuscripts are not perfect, otherwise we'd not need the review process. One important point of the peer review process is that someone who's an  expert in the field can actually check that the references are adequate (this is often explicitly asked for). People who have been publishing in the field usually know best whether references are adequate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In consequence, you want exactly these people for the review, even though it creates a conflict of interest. It is a trade-off between the chance to get a better review from someone who is an honest player in that field compared to a &quot;stranger&quot;, and the risk that the reviewer exercises undue power over the authors to advance his citation count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So you'll face this quite regularly once you have been making meaningful contributions to your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, usually it is possible to ask that references on this-and-that topic should be given instead of asking to cite your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to look at this related discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7696/how-to-avoid-identifying-myself-in-a-review&quot;&gt;How to avoid identifying myself in a review?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;which discusses a similar situation (though the perceived conflict is slightly different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: the very fact that you ask here is probably a very good indicator that you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; abusing your power as reviewer. Those who do most probably neither ask nor answer here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T14:52:48.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-16T14:54:12.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is a yes and no question. Furthermore I note that it seems the journal editor is not seen as part of the loop. So from my editor point of view I would make the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking authors to cite one's paper is generally risking to be considered distasteful (by the editor and by the authors). Most of the cases I have encountered is not about improving the paper, but to promote ones own research. Hence, a perspective on the reasons is important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your research is not referenced it could be a sign that more relevant literature is missing. In such a case you are better off briefly researching if that is the case and point that out to the authors and to the editor. Your paper along with others can serve as one of perhaps several examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not forget the editor. Point out that your paper is not referenced but please provide a detailed account for why it should be. Appropriate cases could include: it is a first, it is the latest building on earlier work, it contains key information not found elsewhere. If the paper is one of many possible to be cited, your case is probably not strong enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I see it, &quot;conflict of interest&quot; applies if you ask about adding references for the wrong reason. If you do ask something to be added, make the point very clear why your paper (hopefully along with others) is invaluable and how it would improve the paper. Make your argument primarily with the editor. An editor should evaluate reviewers reports and provide feedback on what should be done to the authors. If you do not have a very strong scientific reason to do it, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2020-04-24T20:22:16.703" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T20:22:16.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:07:40.837" Score="5" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;Master studies start per semester, and in some places PhD studies do, too.&#xA;What about post-docs or other positions that do not heavily rely on teaching?&#xA;Does the time of year make any difference for openings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:33:26.317" Title="Do academic seasons matter post-PhD?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:52:41.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tl;dr version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of course it's a conflict of interest--you stand to benefit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should do it anyway if the work is highly relevant since good citations are important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T17:52:41.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8658" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:56:30.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because many labs have limited space and/or funding for people, postdoctoral hiring is influenced by Ph.D. program cycles at most institutions.  Thus you tend to see the most openings in the summer/fall (in the northern hemisphere), but the trend is not as strong as for Ph.D. programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T17:56:30.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8658" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:56:56.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on my experience in mathematics in the United States (other cases may differ):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, a postdoctoral position could start at any time if grant funding is available.  In practice, it is generally tied to the academic calendar the same way other positions are, and any deviations from that schedule would be unusual.  If you are doing an advertised search for a candidate, then there are enormous advantages to timing it with the usual job market cycle (at other times of year very few applicants will be available), so off-season hiring typically takes place only when a perfect match is made through personal connections.  The other issue is that most Ph.D. students get their degrees at the end of the spring semester, and most faculty positions start in the fall semester, so academic-year-based postdocs are convenient for most applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T17:56:56.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8658" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:58:15.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. They will operate on whatever system (quarter, semester) the university operates on. So pre-docs and post-docs (at least in my field) are awarded and start at the beginning of a semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1135" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T17:58:15.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8658" CreationDate="2013-03-16T19:08:26.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our institute, post-docs can be funded almost any time of the year, but it depends generally on when funding agencies hand out their funding. There are three or four periods in the year where that occurs (January, March, September, come to mind), but generally positions remain open until they are filled by a good candidate. In any case, the timing of these hiring periods are independent of the academic semesters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:33:26.317" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:33:26.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8649" CreationDate="2013-03-16T19:35:15.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, Is it possible to do it or will be very difficult in my case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the faculty in your new department are negligent sociopaths, they would not have admitted you to their PhD program without a firm belief that you could succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your lack of research experience could make your PhD more difficult than for other incoming students, but mostly because it will take you &lt;em&gt;more time&lt;/em&gt; to settle into a research pattern.  If you want to speed up the transition, &lt;strong&gt;get involved with research as soon as possible.&lt;/strong&gt;  Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fill your weekly schedule with standard homework- and project-heavy classes.  Sign up for independent study/research credit.  You're unlikely to produce publishable research in your first semester, but that's okay; your primary goal is to develop research &lt;em&gt;habits&lt;/em&gt;, not research &lt;em&gt;results&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I'd suggest getting in touch with faculty in your new department &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt; to arrange for independent study time in the fall and to ask for reading suggestions.  If you know who your new advisor/supervisor will be, ask them first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:35:15.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8649" CreationDate="2013-03-16T20:26:19.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even some of the most clever students are completely lost when it comes to starting out with research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of good books out there that provide general guidance on how to get a PhD and conduct research. These are of course no substitute for first hand experience, but they will provide you with a framework within which to conduct your research. As disciplines differ, it is probably a good idea to find one that is written by someone in a discipline close to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one general one that Amazon (and its reviewers) recommends: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to get a PhD: a handbook for students and their supervisors&lt;/em&gt; by &#xA;  Estelle M. Phillips and Derek S. Pugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems also to be such a book devoted to Computer Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Art of Getting Computer Science PhD&lt;/em&gt; by Emded Ahmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon has no reviews, so who knows what it is like. From what is available on Amazon and Google books, it looks like rubbish. (The title isn't even grammatically correct.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T19:58:47.570" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T19:58:47.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8617" CreationDate="2013-03-16T20:48:54.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For France, this will likely not work : for administrative reasons we cannot pay a postdoc with a PhD salary (or a &quot;little bit more than PhD salary&quot;), in fact we must follow some strict salary guidelines.&#xA;However, there exists a position in between PhD and Postdoc, this position is called &quot;research engineer&quot;. This is not officially a postdoc position, but it could be unofficially a postdoc position, with a lower salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, because there is always a but, I advice you not to tell a person that you are ready to work for less money than the salary offered by this person. This is not likely that you will obtain any position if you follow this strategy. &#xA;When I have money for a postdoc, either I don't really &quot;need&quot; (=for a specific project) a postdoc and then I will hire someone who is independent (and it is unlikely that this kind of person is ready to work for a lower salary because independence comes mostly from experience); or I really need a postdoc, and in this case there is no way that I will accept someone I refused previously, even for a lower price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T20:48:54.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T23:35:08.560" Score="7" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here I am talking about teaching positions in Mathematics. In the US, we know of many positions in the US (also in Canada?) that is teaching position or teaching-oriented position. For example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Some universities need 'regular postdocs' like other places, but they have more teaching load (3+2 courses or 3+3 courses for a year)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)some are called 'teaching postdocs'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Positions in liberal arts or community colleges etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any such equivalent position in Europe? I have never been to Europe so far, but I hear there is no concept of 'colleges', they only have universities or institutes. I know there are some places in the UK where they advertise positions for teaching purposes. But for Europe minus UK, say Germany, Austria, Scandinevia etc. is there any such position for teaching at a higher level than high school (could be undergraduate courses, beginning masters courses etc.). Where can I find out about these positions? Mathjobs and euro-math-jobs don't seem to advertise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know any source for it, could you please provide me with the link(s)? And do you have any idea whether these positions are permanent or temporary and how much normally do they pay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="6259" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T04:54:47.767" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T10:24:33.243" Title="'Teaching position or teaching oriented position' in Mathematics in Europe?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-03-16T23:46:45.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose you mean the GRE general test, as opposed to the subject tests. The general test is easy enough to study part time, and there are openings to take the test almost everyday. Plus, you get to send only the best score now, via &quot;Score Select&quot;. So, there shouldn't be a problem doing both at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO research experience greatly trumps GRE scores. Great GRE scores won't help you get admitted and bad scores won't necessarily cause your application to fail. Good research experience, from my experience applying to grad school twice and speaking to professors, is solid gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that during the PhD, you will have to juggle coursework, teaching and keeping up with research in order to find an adviser during the first 1-2 years. In comparison, studying for the GRE while doing research is almost trivial. One trick is to not spend too much time actually studying for the GRE. Instead, get a book like Princeton Review, learn the tricks and game the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tl;dr - Do both at the same time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T14:05:23.560" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T14:05:23.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8670" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8671" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T00:04:11.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8668" CreationDate="2013-03-17T00:58:56.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure I understand your question but I'll try to answer it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of tertiary teaching positions in Europe. There are universities and trade schools in every country and all of these need teachers (permanent and temporary) to teach their students (undergraduate and graduate). How much they pay depends on the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T00:58:56.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8668" CreationDate="2013-03-17T08:24:04.550" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience in the Netherlands, there are no teaching (oriented) positions on the university level (assistent prof level and up). There used to be an option to primarily be a teacher at university, without the requirement of a PhD even, but nowadays such a position always includes a mix of researching, teaching, and grant proposal writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At tradeschools (we call those HBO) there are (almost) full-time teaching positions, but these are not on a university level, and require you to speak fluent Dutch. This makes these kind of jobs hard to get for foreigners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T08:24:04.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8649" CreationDate="2013-03-17T09:28:13.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me say what I believe in here.  Doing research is a skill you gradually acquire over years of reading,  experimenting and criticizing others work. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is no magic here&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are dedicated to learn, you will be able to do research. The main keyword here is &lt;em&gt;critical thinking&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T09:33:40.830" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T09:33:40.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8676" CreationDate="2013-03-17T11:07:24.873" Score="19" ViewCount="4458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences do maintain a percentage for the number of accepted papers to the total number of submissions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does this mean some good papers will be &lt;em&gt;inevitably rejected&lt;/em&gt; just to maintain the acceptance rate? How conference chairs deal with the acceptance rate? or it is not related at all to the acceptance/rejection process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T16:27:12.527" Title="How does the acceptance rate affect papers decisions?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8675" CreationDate="2013-03-17T16:52:16.270" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it would be more accurate to say that conferences have a fixed budget of papers that they can accept, due to scheduling constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At most computer science conferences, every accepted paper is presented in a 20-minute talk; for a three-day conference with no parallel sessions, this practice imposes an upper bound of about 50 accepted papers.  Of course larger conferences have parallel sessions, but program committees generally do not have complete freedom to add another parallel track, partly because of &lt;em&gt;space&lt;/em&gt; constraints at the conference venue (which is planned long before the submission deadline), and partly because major changes to the conference organization usually require input from the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So inevitably, if a conference attracts a large number of strong submissions, it must reject some of them.  This is generally considered better than the alternative, which is that the conference must necessarily accept some bad papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer is specific to computer science.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T16:52:16.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8595" CreationDate="2013-03-17T19:30:57.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From reading the examination instructions it appears that if I get my degree, it could be between 6 weeks to a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you talked with your advisor about the time frame you should expect?  University policies often allow for a wide range of possible schedules, to account for differing circumstances.  The advisor generally has a clear idea of which part of the range a student is likely to end up in (although of course there are no guarantees).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you reach the point of graduating, there should be little uncertainty left about the quality or value of your work, because your advisor should have been offering feedback and guidance along the way.  If your advisor is genuinely unable to predict whether it will be closer to 1.5 or 12 months more, then it is a worrisome sign (suggesting inexperience or negligence on the advisor's part, or that they suspect something may be wrong with your dissertation).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering the time-frame is so variable, is there anything else I should be doing or planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comments above about job applications.  In the cases I am familiar with (mathematics in the U.S.), academic job applications are due around December, which is typically about six months before graduation occurs.  This includes both faculty and postdoc applications.  Practices may differ in other fields or countries, but it's almost always a good idea to begin looking substantially before you actually graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T19:30:57.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-03-17T22:16:31.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generally yes (depends on whether the grant is tied to any specific spending though, e.g. staff costs, equipment, etc.) - but if the advisor suggests to cut down the paper, it is probably best to follow that suggestion. An alternative would be to provide the longer version of the paper as an official technical report by the university, which should not clash with publication restrictions of the journal. I have seen a number of publications that have a technical report with the same title. (This is in computer science.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See above - but this also depends on the relationship with the advisor. If they're generally friendly, suggesting it sounds reasonable (&quot;would this be an option...?&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6388" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T22:16:31.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5662" CreationDate="2013-03-17T22:26:22.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely common in our group, but it is more seen as an exercise for the PhD student, as we generally discuss the review with our supervisors and they make sure it's suitable. That way, the PhD student gets practice in paper reviewing and the supervisor has less work (hopefully).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I absolutely agree with some of the other answers that sticking your name on an &lt;strong&gt;unread&lt;/strong&gt; review by someone else or having your supervisor send off your review without discussing it first would be negligent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: computer science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6388" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T22:26:22.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8689" CreationDate="2013-03-17T22:49:33.710" Score="21" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently deleted a response on Academia.SE because many people thought my response was supporting the idea of a 'diploma mill'.  My understanding of the matter was that a diploma mill is simply a business that provides a piece of paper, and possibly some kind of shady verification service, for a fee.  That's it.  Money in, diploma out.   This does not seem to be the case for many of this community, however.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done a bit of research, cursory to be fair, and the most clearly defined line that I can find between a &quot;real&quot; school and a &quot;fake&quot; school is that of regional accreditation.  Beyond that it appears to be a subjective melange of opinions, ultimately boiling down to the idea of 'second class schools'.  Clearly, I am out of touch with the general consensus on this matter so I put it to you SE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the defining characteristics of a 'diploma mill'?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T20:47:38.630" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T20:47:38.630" Title="What is a &quot;diploma mill&quot;?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8640" CreationDate="2013-03-18T02:05:49.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the work is in your area of interest/expertise, there is always a potential for conflict of interest.  If the work is a competing approach that you don't agree with, there is conflict; if the work is a similar approach to your own, there is conflict; if this is a journal or conference you submit to with limited spots available, there is conflict; if it is an application for funds you also are eligible for, rather than a paper, there is conflict; if it is a paper that might be used as evidence in such a grant application, there is conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you or an editor suppress &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; references from your report (whether your own, others you know, or the work of people you have never met) you are compromising the value of the paper if accepted, and impacting the citation chain, and committing a form of indirect plagiarism - people who find this paper will find it more difficult to find the others, and will tend to give attribution to the authors of this paper rather than the original inventors of the ideas (yourself or others). If you are an expert in the area, as your selection as a referee suggests you should be, then you should have a familiarity with the literature and part of your job is to assess the comprehensiveness of the literature review.  It may be ideas have been reinvented, it may be an early paper was read or referenced and the idea planted but the citation forgotten or lost, it may be overt plagiarism that the author knows of the work and the similarity, but wants the glory alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you include requests to cite &lt;em&gt;irrelevant&lt;/em&gt; references (whether your own or others or others previously published in the same journal), that is again a nepotism-like form of misconduct.  Conversely, I have seen reviewers/editors reports that discount relevant work because it wasn't published in a venue of sufficiently high reputation, this is a form of plagiarism and chauvinism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work should stand alone on its merits irrespective of who wrote it or where it was published. You as a reviewer have a responsibility to judge the work, and whether it has dealt properly with the literature, to add missed citations, and potentially to remove miscitations (often self-citations by the authors that are of no relevance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="6390" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T01:08:54.167" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T01:08:54.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7425" CreationDate="2013-03-18T02:40:45.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly an advice, but just based on what I know of my friends working in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with international visa issues, but I have at least 2 Canadian friends (as far as I know they don't have US citizenship) who graduated from Canadian schools and now work for Google and Twitter (actually one of them has BSc). So I agree with scaaahu's comment to your question, that it is much more important to have the skills that your potential employer wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T02:40:45.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8697" CreationDate="2013-03-18T03:00:51.477" Score="11" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an engineering student, however, my graduate research is more inter-disciplinary (computational science).  Which is good for me in some ways, because one of my better skills is programming, since I've been doing it avidly as a hobby for a very long time.  Because of this, it would be much easier for me to create a widely used computational science software tool rather than a highly-cited journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the specific aim of getting a post-doc at a top-ranked university, how does creating a useful piece of software (like an original, optimized quantum monte carlo implementation for example) compare to a widely-cited journal article?  In other words, if done well, both would be highly-cited, but do frequent citations of software carry the same weight as top-tier research articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastEditorUserId="5958" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T03:36:58.767" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T09:41:38.447" Title="Contributions of indirect research toward getting a post-doc" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8686" CreationDate="2013-03-18T03:47:19.983" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a thresholding effect for software. If you create a piece of software that has a huge number of downloads and has visible impact, that will count for something. However, with papers, you wouldn't need to have the same level of impact to have the same effect on interviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem really is that academics don't know how to evaluate the impact of software development, and would need help doing so. I imagine that if your potential post-doc advisor has used your software, you won't need to do much explaining. But if not, and your research credentials are otherwise weaker, it might be difficult to justify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T03:47:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2013-03-18T04:41:34.453" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;We should start with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill&quot;&gt;Wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A diploma mill (also known as a degree mill) is an unaccredited higher education institution that offers bogus academic degrees and diplomas for a fee. These degrees may claim to give credit for relevant life experience, but should not be confused with legitimate prior learning assessment programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student doesn't have to do any academic work for a degree, or the student is given credit based on &quot;life experience,&quot; it qualifies as a diploma mill.  Another key indicator is whether there are actually any &lt;em&gt;teachers&lt;/em&gt; that work for the business.  While it is probably not illegal in most cases to claim a degree from such a company (and I deliberately do not use the term &quot;institution&quot;), there have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earnmydegree.com/online-education/learning-center/fake-degree-disasters.html&quot;&gt;many cases&lt;/a&gt; of employees being disciplined or fired for using the degree to either get a job or to obtain a higher salary based on claiming a degree from a diploma mill (esp. teachers whose salaries are based on the level of a degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Wikipedia article notes, there are legitimate schools that have a system for awarding credit based on other formal education, such as military education obtained while on active duty or in the reserves (see, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Military-Transfer-Guide.aspx&quot;&gt;this guide to transferring credit&lt;/a&gt;).  This type of credit transfer is rare for graduate work, although certain rigorous post-baccalaureate programs in the military, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_School&quot;&gt;U.S. Navy's Nuclear Power School&lt;/a&gt;, may qualify for some post-B.S. programs.  This type of credit should not be confused with work obtained at the military's post-graduate schools, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School&quot;&gt;Naval Postgraduate School&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Institute_of_Technology&quot;&gt;Air Force Institute of Technology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diploma mills should also not be confused with for-profit education, such as the infamous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Phoenix&quot;&gt;University of Phoenix&lt;/a&gt;.  Arguments over the merits of for-profit education are not really within the scope of academia.stackexchange, but for what it's worth, degree-granting institutions of this type do require students to follow a curriculum, take actual classes (many times online), and give grades based on assessed performance (and charge a good bit of money per credit-hour).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: if you have to pay a nominal fee for a &quot;degree&quot; that requires no official classes or research, you got your degree from a diploma mill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T05:01:08.980" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T05:01:08.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8716" CreationDate="2013-03-18T05:01:04.047" Score="5" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received a rejection letter from one of my top colleges for graduate studies. In addition to the standard rejection letter(for Program 1), I got another note from the chair of another program(Program 2) at the same university, suggesting that I opt for that program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two programs is that Program 1(which I was rejected from) usually gives out funding while Program 2(while being identical in all other ways) strictly says no funding. Is this usual in US colleges? I always thought that if you're going to get an admit without funding, you will at-least get an admit letter or is there any other reasoning behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="3983" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T08:59:42.747" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T04:39:45.943" Title="Asked to Apply to another Program" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8686" CreationDate="2013-03-18T08:05:23.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attitudes are slowly but surely changing--here is an indication. As of January, the NSF required that the &lt;em&gt;Publications&lt;/em&gt; section of NSF biosketches be changed to &lt;em&gt;Products&lt;/em&gt;. It is remarkable how important names are to bureaucrats; in this case, the change reflects the awareness that the publications category excluded much of the work of scientific programmers, inventors and the producers of data sets (data sets are routinely referred to as products in the geo and social sciences). The previous biosketch format tended to make the inclusion of software and data sets (not to mention other contributions) under Publications often seem forced. The practice of citing technical reports and papers on software instead of directly citing it ought to be questioned. Given the ever increasing importance of software and data set production for many kinds of scientific research, it is a welcome development not to have to diminish significant and specialized contributions by citing published reports on products that could be cited directly (in contrast to certain inventions) or by hiding them under Synergistic Activities.  In time, administrators will get the message that software production ought to count more than it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T09:41:38.447" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T09:41:38.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8704" CreationDate="2013-03-18T09:47:59.857" Score="22" ViewCount="55448" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way we can get money for our research paper? Do research journals pay us for a research paper? Or can we sell the research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T16:47:21.470" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T18:51:11.180" Title="Can we earn money through a research publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T10:18:33.473" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of a field where journals pay the authors for articles. In the humanities original research is often published as books and publishers will often pay, or at least provide a commission, for books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T10:18:33.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T10:23:26.163" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;can we earn money through a research publication?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good publications make you a stronger candidate when apply to grants. It also help you in securing a job; if you do not have one. Also, collaborating with industry could be another way for earning money. &lt;strong&gt;Selling&lt;/strong&gt; publication is something I never heard in my field (computer science). I do not even think it is possible in other fields.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking only for money then doing research is one of the bad choices you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T10:35:36.033" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T10:35:36.033" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8686" CreationDate="2013-03-18T12:48:16.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following applies to the neuroscience and the biological sciences.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In almost all cases, the article will win. This is typically due to the attitude that writing software isn't research; it's implementation. In some cases, you will have to overcome technical challenges when implementing the software, but for the most part you'll simply be coding up techniques that were developed and iterated upon by a different research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there do exist labs that both developing analytical techniques and then have a team as part of the group who translates that into software development. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Wellcome Trust Center in UCL&lt;/a&gt; comes to mind here; they have developed a number of techniques used for detecting brain activity, as well as brain mapping, and they maintain a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/&quot;&gt;software suite&lt;/a&gt; that allows researchers to use their techniques. There are a number of similar groups in different fields (e.g., medical image analysis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itk.org/itkindex.html&quot;&gt;(project)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itk.org/ITK/project/parti.html&quot;&gt;(group)&lt;/a&gt;, MEG analysis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinos.org/mne/&quot;&gt;(project)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/meg/index.php&quot;&gt;(group)&lt;/a&gt;). These labs have typically demonstrated over time their strength in developing research software, and are able to obtain grants to specifically support development of their software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T12:48:16.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T12:52:16.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this Scholarly Open Access &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/28/oa-journal-pays-authors-for-their-work-2500/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra: The Business and Economics Research Journal&lt;/em&gt; pays US$2500 for each paper published and also pays US$500 for each peer review.  It also seems that the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Information Ethics&lt;/em&gt; used to pay US$50 per article published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T12:52:16.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8564" CreationDate="2013-03-18T13:02:00.413" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens that people change their PhD programs (I know a few.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically what you lose is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time (usually you need to start from the scratch),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relationship with advisor (the latter is not always the case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for any reason, the first year was bad, it is rather unlikely that the next ones will be better (I have never met anyone who is enjoying PhD more and more with each year...). Moreover, if you don't like it, maybe your advisor does not like it either and eventually you won't be able to finish at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beware - &quot;grass is greener...&quot;. You can experience the same problems in other places. So here are the most important things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is not working?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any reasonable argument that in the target place such thing is better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Anyway - if you are &lt;em&gt;very unhappy&lt;/em&gt; after one year (of 3-5 more years to come), then just change it to another PhD or to something different (don't disregard other careers). It's better to end up with &quot;wasted&quot; years or a &quot;suboptimal&quot; career than hanging on a tree.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOW to do that is a different question (or questions - because it involves both application to a new program and quitting your current one). See e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5610/current-phd-applicant-applying-to-another-university&quot;&gt;current PhD applicant applying to another university&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1243/apply-to-phd-after-expulsion-from-another&quot;&gt;Apply to PhD after expulsion from another&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6032/switching-from-one-area-of-graduate-study-to-another&quot;&gt;Switching from one area of graduate study to another?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T09:55:49.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T14:01:00.833" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;Patents.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you register your idea as a patent, then everybody who wants to use your idea has to pay to you. However, universities (companies) usually claim the intellectual property of the patents, which means the inventor does not get that much incentive out of a patent. It is an exception if you work independent or self employed. Also, you can negotiate with university to have keep the intellectual property of your invention or discoveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="5644" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T04:06:31.973" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T04:06:31.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T14:02:06.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vgwort.de&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;VG Wort&quot;&lt;/a&gt; collects copyright fees put on copy machines, electronic library copies, etc., and redistributes these fees to authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors of research papers published in print can give note about their publications to the VG Wort and will then participate in the distribution of these fees. The calculation of what each author gets depends on the length of the articles and the number of authors, and in my experience one should expect a one-time payment of about 20 to 40 Euro per journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T12:15:51.157" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T12:15:51.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8789" CreationDate="2013-03-18T14:20:37.007" Score="14" ViewCount="1593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student studying Education. I am currently working on my thesis, am about half-done with this and I expect to finish in one year. For the research, I am visiting classrooms at various public schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, one such public school asked that, in exchange for letting me visit, I share my advice about teaching. Since they welcomed me their classroom, I did not see much of a problem with this and did not think that would present any problems. I prepared an outline for a 90-minute discussion covering some areas, drawing somewhat on my findings related to my research. After sending this off to them before the lecture, I found they are quite disappointed and want far more from me, essentially they want the very core of my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable practice for graduate students to be guarding of their work? Is this common enough that I can cite it as a reason for wanting to avoid sharing the details?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="12050" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T04:00:49.217" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T04:00:49.217" Title="How to decline answering details about my thesis?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8702" CreationDate="2013-03-18T14:45:46.563" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable practice for graduate students to be guarding of their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without saying &lt;strong&gt;acceptable to whom&lt;/strong&gt; it should be, you won't get any good answer. Is that acceptable to you? Is it acceptable to your adviser? Is such a behaviour acceptable in the context of your &quot;contract&quot; with the subject of your research, namely the school you speak about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this common enough that I can cite it as a reason for wanting to avoid sharing the details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be perhaps a bit field-specific, but as far as I can say, this is not a common practice, nor I would accept it if somebody would use it as an argument. &#xA;In my opinion, this stance is very much against the purpose of publicly-funded research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, realize, doing research has a highly ideal objective: generate, advance and maintain knowledge of humankind. If this does not appeal to you, then ask yourself who pays for your research. If it is general public, i.e., taxpayers of the country you reside in, then they deserve to see your results upon request. If it is so, that includes the officials of the school in question. There is your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, what is the benefit of you keeping the results private? Are you worried about being scooped? On that, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=scoop&quot;&gt;elsewhere on this site&lt;/a&gt; and build an opinion for yourself whether that is a real threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as a graduate student, you should be rather happy that somebody is interested in your research. Most of your peers do not get that kind of attention at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To sum up:&lt;/strong&gt; Unless you are paid from a resource which contractually forbids you to disclose your research results, there is no &quot;objective&quot; reason to refuse sharing your results. It will of course remain your freedom not to share them, but in that case you must stand up to your decision and attribute the refusal to your own personal decision without hiding yourself behind some &quot;common practice&quot;. Take responsibility for your decisions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T14:45:46.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8693" CreationDate="2013-03-18T15:58:51.703" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly Yes. There are two ways of earning money from publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indirect as @seteropere explains by improving your visibility and getting higher chance of being recruited in higher quality institute with higher payment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Direct: In many academic or even industrial institutes, researchers are being paid and are bound to perform research and publish paper in certain journals or conferences (mostly journal). If they fail, either they will be fired or will be punished. In order to avoid such experience, many are hiddenly searching for an opportunity to buy a paper in high price. Moreover, there are some universities that pay incentive to publish in journals (like US$ 2000) for each paper published. For instance, I know several people at such universities that need to improve their world ranking via publication and hence pay good money to publish in high-quality journals. But, selling or buying paper is considered unethical because we believe research is something we cannot buy. If we can buy research, it will not be research and will be a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T16:51:23.440" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T16:51:23.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8675" CreationDate="2013-03-18T16:27:12.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In very large number of conferences, acceptance rate is not really important since authors are paying high for getting their works published. In general, acceptance rate is used as a metric to claim/show reputation and popularity to encourage authors for more submission. I came a cross situations where authors write to the program committee to inquire if the paper is in the scope or not and they are encouraged to submit. Once submitted, they get quick rejection. By doing so, the conference is getting lower acceptance rate which is likely collecting more credits for future. The more submission, the better visibility, the less acceptance rate and higher competition for the next year. I personally believe the acceptance rate is more like a business trick to tempt researchers to submit. Because, if the conference organizers are bound to certain number of publication, they can simply - in plain language- announce the number of papers acceptable for publication rather than saying, we have only 10% acceptance rate. By putting rate, authors are encouraged to submit. If the limit exceeds, the organizer rejects the likely good works and the authors of rejected paper have an excuse that the acceptance rate was very low and nothing wrong with my paper!!! So try harder for next year and this circle goes infinite. Who wins? orgaznier ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T16:27:12.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-03-18T16:48:32.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the answers presuppose that your advisor knows what he is doing and that perhaps &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; need to change your attitude.  Perhaps they are mistaken. No good advisor would waste his or your time by &quot;testing&quot; you on well-covered ground. There are some stubborn people around who may have a distinguished publication record and who may lead the peripatetic life of the in-demand speaker, but have an acute Achillies heel when it comes to having underlings implement the superannuated visions they cannot implement themselves.  The important point is that this is academically low-value work for them, but your time is not valuable. This situation is more likely to arise if your advisor is not paying your salary; it's less likely if you are on soft money. I don't know what advice to give you, except to say that I have been in this position, have rolled with the punches, and in the end there were no publications. And this was a case where the advisor announced to his team that others (better funded and staffed groups) were implementing the kind of thing he wanted (with some minor differences). No matter--he still wanted his team implement his &quot;vision.&quot; It was professionally damaging for all parties involved. I decided it was pointless for me to work supporting professors and their students on low academic value, poorly remunerated work if I was not getting published, and made plans to leave. I hope that others in similar situations do likewise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T17:51:25.317" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T17:51:25.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8712" CreationDate="2013-03-18T19:51:04.830" Score="38" ViewCount="12720" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have witnessed (heard or read) about the birth of new academic journals many times. I have a vague idea how that happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A scientist or a group of scientists recognize the need for an academic journal in a specific field or a new scientific society considers to publish a journal, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they choose a group of experts as founders and/or chief editors, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they determine a scope and some basic rules for the journal, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they decide about the number of issues in each year and similar things, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they find a publisher or decide to publish the journal entirely on web, they establish a web site for the journal, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and then they announce the new journal in the related scientific community. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I miss any stage? But I suspect there are lots of discussions, negotiations, arrangements and cooperations behind the curtain, which public (the rest of the related scientific community) doesn't know. So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a typical procedure for establishing a respectful academic journal? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do financial considerations play a key role? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the founders be top experts (to some degree) in the field? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it important the new journal be affiliated to a scientific society or be published by a recognized publisher? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why are some new journals published only on-line?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the influential factors for the success of a new journal? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do the founders choose the editors? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What else should one consider for initiating a new academic journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please share your partial answers too if you don't have all the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am just curious and I don't intend to initiate any new journals in the near future.;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T10:10:43.493" Title="How is a new academic journal born?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8710" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:25:57.483" Score="27" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that it is 'bad' to continue to publish with your adviser after you get your PhD. Or is this something that is debated in the academic community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my situation, after my PhD, I can get a job in industry, but I am allowed time (half a day a week) to continue my research at my local university. This allows me to continue researching something that I am interested in, rather than researching something that someone else is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that every publication should not be between myself and my adviser. And I can understand that I should show that I am an independent researcher. But does that mean I should stop publishing with my (ex-)adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5630" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T20:46:10.037" Title="What is wrong with continuing to publish with my PhD adviser?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8709" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:45:18.813" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;By continuing to publish with your advisor, you are not showing that you are an independent researcher. People will always question whether it is possibly your advisor that is doing the work, coming up with the ideas, guiding the research plan, and simply by looking at your publication record, there is no evidence that this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand, you publish papers alone or with different coauthors, and you have a clear research plan, independent of your advisors, then you will start to demonstrate your independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is okay to continue publishing with your advisor – I still do – as long as your record says &lt;strong&gt;I am independent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T20:45:18.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8709" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:46:10.037" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing “wrong” with continuing to publish with your (ex-)adviser. You have correctly identified the issue to avoid: &lt;strong&gt;after getting your PhD, the next step in your career is to establish yourself as an independent researcher.&lt;/strong&gt; Thus, of course: &lt;em&gt;depending on the context,&lt;/em&gt; publishing with your adviser might send the wrong signal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you should continue to publish with her, but you should make sure that it's not 100% of your research (and publications). Another point that makes a big difference is if you can, maybe now or maybe after some time, take the lead in that collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T20:46:10.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8708" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:56:05.420" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a first attempt at providing some short suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to identify the scope of the journal and it is best if it does not directly compete with others. Competition is more detrimental if the scope is narrow, it is unavoidable if the scope is wide. You need to make sure it has an international audience (a local journal would probably not end up prestiguous). Find a set of editors that is international in composition, preferably with well known active researchers at the helm. And then you need to look for publishers. I would say that Open Access is what you should go for. Many government funding agencies in Europe now request researchers to publish in Open Access.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Financial in what sense? If you manage to get a commercial publisher to publish your journal they will most certainly set up a budget of some sort. This question is the most difficult to answer. You need to get some finances in to support review systems, type-settings (and by the way, LaTeX would be your way to produce consistent high quality journal papers most easily; you also need someone to design the journal for you). In Open Access journals people usually pay to submit papers, in commercial cases, published papers are charged per page. Many review systems take a fee for each paper submitted. So there will inevitably be some finances involved but they will be determined by the systems you chose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, without having the journal stamped as serious by established scientists, it will not be easy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scientific Society would help but they will probbaly then take over the journal. A publisher/distributor (commercial, society, other body accepted by the community etc.) is a must. You need systems for submitting, managing and publishing manuscripts as well. Getting branded through a publisher is a good way to become recognized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that it is only a matter of time before all journals are on-line only. Printing is no longer necessary and really only a waste of time and funding (not to mention resources). Any new journal will almost certainly be on-line only.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A strong line-up of editors and then try to get established scientists to commit to publish in the journal to set a good base-line. You need to work up citations to make the citation index, which takes effort and some time. The citation Index, whether you like it or not, is a hurdle that will make or potentially break any effort. In the long-term people will not published in journals that are not ISI listed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chosing the editors should probably be done as publically as possible. I can imagine getting names of persons that are willing to run together and then put them up for a public vote within th ecommunity. This way everyone (who will hopefully send their papers to the j) can feel they are part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure it is a communal effort and not a private enterprise. Get as many as possible involved by starting discussions early on in public. Use conferences and listservers (if the community has one) as vehicles for this. Facebook, twitter etc. might also be possible to involve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-cryosphere.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cryosphere&lt;/a&gt; is a good and successful  example of a new journal (Open Access). It became ISI listed after a very short time because it received the support of the community in terms of good papers to establish it. It is now a key publication in the field. (and I am not paid to say this!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2018-03-27T10:10:43.493" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T10:10:43.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-18T22:43:40.807" Score="27" ViewCount="1791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new assistant professor in my department. While all faculty members have been welcoming so far to me, I find there are two or three distinct groups or &lt;em&gt;coteries&lt;/em&gt; within the department. The coteries are distinct and comprise set of people who wouldn't mingle with people from another coterie. It is a bit awkward for me because there are even senior professors in different sets, and I want to be affable with everyone in my department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I handle this sense of discomfort? Should I talk with the Chair? But the sectoring is pretty well-known and prevalent for a long time and there is little the Chair can do about it (or so I think!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do academic departments handle this situation of clash of egos usually? I am sure mine is not the only place where this clash is seen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="6397" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T23:48:11.030" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:36:51.420" Title="How to handle ego clashes within an academic department" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8713" CreationDate="2013-03-18T22:55:59.893" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice anyone can give you, in my opinion, is: &lt;strong&gt;Don't get involved&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're entering a new environment and it's in your best interests to just get along with everybody, as you already suggest you are trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue pops up in any discussions, just avoid it. The last thing you want to do is get caught-up in a territorial dispute of which you probably don't want to know the origins, and that serves no purpose to anybody, least of all to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only advise discussing things with the Chair if these divisions start negatively affecting your work, and only discuss it in terms of how it affects your work. As you've pointed out yourself, chances are he/she can't do anything about it, or worse, he/she may be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things like this can happen even in the best departments, and the best thing that can happen in such a case is that new staff bridge whatever divide may be there by ignoring it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T22:55:59.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7849" CreationDate="2013-03-19T01:06:25.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this point I am a broken record: this is one of the situations I found myself in. None of my colleagues have been forthcoming, with techniques, code, documentation--nothing. One of the team members insists that he does not document code because it should be evident how his code works by reading it. This is patent nonsense--he has forgotten what his code does or else does not want to say. He absolutely refuses to provide a conceptual overview of his system--even the postdocs complained that he wastes their time with the minutia of command line options and stories about the old country instead of describing the main algorithms and the necessary configuration to get his model to work. I have been forced to reproduce or rewrite code. It turned out to the PI's surprise that my code was better, but I must say I intensely disliked being in this situation. The other comments suggest being optimistic in the face of intransigence. I myself decided (details are scattered around this site) to get out, for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my colleagues were not forthcoming and preferred that I duplicate their work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the once case that I managed to persuade my teammates to share some work they did, they were gratuitously patronizing as they grudgingly handed it over, although it was completely obvious they should simply have shared the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the work was essentially unpublishable and of low academic value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was misled about my role within the research group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the pay was abysmal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was pointless to continue working for little money without being included in any of the group's publications. I might as well work in industry for more money and no publications. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first applies in your case--be prepared not to receive any cooperation from your team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T01:38:02.880" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T01:38:02.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-03-19T02:21:53.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no golden rule that I've heard of that since you're not funded that you would be automatically accepted. There are not-for-profit and for-profit institutions, and each may receive public and/or private funding to do x, y, and z. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds to me you were going for a program where you'd receive a stipend, and are being coerced to apply to the program that you would have to pay out-of-pocket (not really clear from the way you wrote it above). In any case, there are some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How competitive is the program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about your transcripts or personal profile can you improve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about applying to more than one school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you received an offer, should you take it and see if you can receive a stipend in the near future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't provided much information, yet it will be hard to tell you what to do because there's an absence of the representation of what it is you want to do, and how much you want it. If it's something you've already spent your entire adult life to work on and have the acceptance letter, maybe it's worth considering taking the opportunity. Conversely, if you're right out of school and would benefit from some work experience and improvements to your transcript then it may be worthwhile to take a step back and try again soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5815" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T02:21:53.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-19T02:52:09.920" Score="9" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I require photocopies of &quot;Archival Manuscript/Mixed Formats&quot; from the Library of Congress. They have a collection from one author which has otherwise unpublished technical documents that are very relevant to my area of expertise. Judging by the indicies, there are at least 20 boxes (out of 106) that are relevant. None of these are digitized and most are very technical documents with information not seen by people in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure the best way to attack this problem because travelling there is far from where I live now (6 hrs by plane) and the librarian I spoke on the phone with didn't think that our library could request it. LoC seems very restrictive about working with their material, that is they won't let me personally go the stacks and browse the boxes, and they say they only allow 5 books to be reviewed at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tips or alternative ways to get the materials? Our research team is rather large for an academic team, so would it be worthwhile to ask a Congressperson to request it on our behalf? Just looking for input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6398" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T10:15:29.673" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T20:57:42.500" Title="How can I get copies of library of congress's archival manuscripts?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-03-19T04:39:45.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The golden rule in getting fund is to demonstrate and ensure that you and your background knowledge and works are good enough to successfully undertake the project or work. Bear in mind that there are always better or worse competitors around. In funded positions, usually there is a tight competition, no matter if it is in US, Asia or Europe. Moreover, the person responsible for final funding decision is always looking at a person he/she knows well (in terms of achievements and commitments) because he is responsible to the funding agency in case of failure. If there is no applicant familiar with, he/she may look after others. Whereas in non-funding positions, the competition is not high and if the applicant has minimum requirements, he will be given the seat. Don't blame anyone except the competition, luck, and your achievement. Try to increase your networking with influential people and raise your visibility by taking part in public talks, organize a workshop (if you have certain knowledge or proficiency), publish a conference paper and so on. I was listening to a radio station few days ago about recruitment, they revealed the result of a survey conducted among 300 worldwide recruiters. The recruiter (work or study) are always giving better chance to volunteers, I suggest to do that as well. By doing so, you will be given very high chance of getting position with good stipend next time. You should be a glorious competitor to shine among others. If not, no luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T04:39:45.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8717" CreationDate="2013-03-19T05:12:13.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is not an answer, but too long for a comment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to live around Washington DC metro area. I went to Library of Congress very often. They don't have open shelf policy. You sit in one of their reading rooms and pick a desk. You request for materials to read. The librarian will find them and put on a cart. Somebody moves the cart out to the desk you sit. After you finish, they'll put them back to the shelf. I never checked out books from them. Don't know their check out policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember there was a certain limit number of books for the request. 5 seems to be correct because you can only load a certain number of books on the cart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is definitely worth while to ask a Congressperson to help if you live in the US. But, it sounds like it's worth making a trip there to examine everything they have. 106 boxes is a lot. It takes half a container. I am afraid no libray is willing to take such a huge task - I assume you're thinking of inter-library loan. My 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T05:12:13.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-19T06:01:33.677" Score="6" ViewCount="4026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my Computer Science thesis. I have a two solution proposals until this moment, and I've been wondering about the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes &lt;strong&gt;you know&lt;/strong&gt; that if you implement it correctly, it &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; work (eg. when building a website or a desktop app for some trivial purpose, etc), but some other times you try to solve your problem with some specific solution proposal. A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will do some preprocessing, I'll represent the documents that way and use this metric, and then I'll apply this clustering algorithm. Theoretically, it &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will use &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; computer vision technique for breaking the captchas, and then... In theory, it &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but when you implement it, you don't get the expected results (eg. bad text classification in the corpus you're using, low-rate successfuly captchas solved, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those cases, &lt;strong&gt;is it a valid work?&lt;/strong&gt; I mean, is it good to publish your work, saying that &lt;strong&gt;your solution proposal doesn't seem to be good when solving some specific problem&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6399" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T11:16:38.417" Title="What if my research does not give the expected results?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-03-19T08:14:24.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;theoretically it should work&quot;. The examples you refer to are cases where you're positing some kind of model for the data. That the experiments failed suggests that the implied model is wrong. The question then is: what is a good model, and what went wrong with the model you tried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's that kind of investigation that will set you on the path to a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T08:14:24.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-03-19T08:22:07.193" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In those cases, is it a valid work? I mean, is it good to publish your work, saying that your solution proposal doesn't seem to be good when solving some specific problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least two advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't succumb to the urge to publish immediately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always a venue to report about your work, however little significance it bears. Workshops collocated with conferences are places where you can honestly report your work, including dead ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recognize a more important thing going on here. You embarked on a research, from what you wrote, it seems you are convinced that the problem is sound and worth pursuing, but so far performed an experiment in the field only to find out you reinvented a wheel, or the thing is not good enough. One way of seeing what happened is that it is a kind of a failure. That's what you seem to suggest. Another optics applicable on your situation is that you embarked on something worthwhile, but since it is not an easy problem, the first approach did not yield a result. There are two observation to make here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your problem is probably a good one. Easy problems, or non-problems yield a result usually very quickly (any approach is good enough);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are on the right track to discover something. Eventually. Realize that the path from nowhere to the bleeding edge of human knowledge (state of the art) is never an easy one. You started and did not arrive to the edge yet. Expect few more experiments of &quot;reinventing a wheel&quot; flavour. After a while you'll get to the boundary and since you walked the path the hard way, you will have all your weapons sharp and enough insight to push the boundary. That's the positive message about your situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T08:22:07.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-03-19T08:42:10.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not every solution method is a valid approach for solving every problem. When you believe you have a tool that is universal, then you start running into the &quot;hammer complex&quot;: when all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail, even if it's actually a screw. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by this is that this is a reasonable finding. Acknowledging the benefits and disadvantages of your strategy is an important part of open science. It makes it easier for others to follow on, adapt, and adopt your work. If you declare a problem &quot;solved,&quot; it makes it much more difficult for others (including yourself) to continue to work in the same &quot;problem space.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T08:42:10.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-03-19T11:16:38.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting unexpected results is not problematic&lt;/strong&gt;, it happens more times than you think. Note that with these test results you have achieved something, even if different from what you expected, but it is something that may be relevant to your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T11:16:38.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1199" CreationDate="2013-03-19T14:35:20.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following national rankings were used as a baseline in the construction of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi/haku.php?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Finnish ranking&lt;/a&gt;. Hence they are &quot;global&quot; in the sense that they have been at least somewhat useful abroad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Norwegian ranking (general): &lt;a href=&quot;http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/?search=advanced&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/?search=advanced&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Danish ranking (general): &lt;a href=&quot;http://fivu.dk/forskning-og-innovation/statistik-og-analyser/den-bibliometriske-forskningsindikator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fivu.dk/forskning-og-innovation/statistik-og-analyser/den-bibliometriske-forskningsindikator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australian ranking (general): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;European ranking (humanities): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T14:35:20.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8735" CreationDate="2013-03-19T18:46:01.097" Score="19" ViewCount="2263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently started my PhD studies. My advisor, as member of a program committee, has delegated a the review of a conference paper to me. This is my second peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have not done research in the area of this paper, I find it very hard to review. Not only does it require much effort for me to grasp the content. First and foremost, I do not think that being able to understand the content of a paper is sufficient for reviewing it. Ideally, reviewing would mean &lt;em&gt;judging&lt;/em&gt; the paper for its scientific merit as a peer, considering content, presentation, relevance and relation to other work in the area. Especially the latter aspects I feel unable to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider declining to review, but this seems like a drastic step with conflict potential. Certainly, there is an incentive to formally complete the assignment and write a review of little value to the authors, the venue and the scientific community in general. Would it be acceptable or prudent to decline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="704" LastEditorUserId="704" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T18:51:24.947" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:13:51.983" Title="Is it acceptable to decline to review a paper due to lack of familiarity?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8732" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:01:54.393" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is much better to decline as soon as you realise you're not up to the review, than to write a useless review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, you first get an abstract based on which you accept or decline.  If you accept, the editor may be annoyed if you decline based on seeing the manuscript, but sometimes it's inevitable; only so much can be judged from the abstract.  If you do decline, however, you should let the editor know as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read a publicly reviewed paper where both reviews clearly did not really understand the topic, but still handed in a review.  To me it was quite clear that the paper needed a statistician, which neither of the reviewers were.  One reviewer didn't get much further than pointing out that the introduction was too long, with not a single comment on 10 pages of detailed description of advanced statistical methods.  When reading the reviews, I found it a bit embarrassing that the peer review was so clearly insufficient, and the paper virtually got published without proper peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know someone who accepted his very first paper review, only to discover when he received the manuscript that it had &lt;em&gt;130 pages&lt;/em&gt;.  He returned it to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T19:07:46.717" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:07:46.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8732" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:12:19.440" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your advisor assigned the paper to you, I suspect that your advisor believed that you were either able to do the review, or capable of getting the information you need to do the review, or simply wanted a second opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's rather normal for advisors to assign to their students papers they get from being on committees. A conscientious advisor will also review the paper by himself/herself though and double-check the student's work, as well as providing feedback to the student about how to write good reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in your case, your review may not actually go back to the authors - your advisor would take your review and his/her own review and integrate them (or write a new one). In that case, I would do your best to review the paper and then speak with your advisor about how to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however you still feel extremely uncomfortable about reviewing the paper, I would speak with your advisor about it. Your advisor may have some advice about where to look or what to consider; alternatively you might get a different paper as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: If you were reviewing as a PC member or as a journal reviewer, I would instead agree with gerrit above and decline the review.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:12:19.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8732" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:13:51.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to gerrit's answer (which I completely agree with), if you are in the situation where it would be hard to decline (conferences sometimes have very short deadlines), you might review this paper as a &quot;non-expert&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's indeed quite common (at least in Computer Science) that the review should indicate both the score (i.e., reject/accept) and the confidence of the reviewer. If you indicate a low confidence score, then your decision has a lower weight than those with higher confidence. In that case, you can review the paper from a more global point of view (like any non-specialist reader would see the paper): is the problem well explained, does the solution seem consistent with the problem description, is the language correct, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, it would be better to decline the review, but if the paper is also reviewed by two or more experts, then your review could bring a good non-expert vision. If the paper is reviewed only by non-experts, then either the paper is off-topic, and it's the author's problem, or the PC chair didn't do the job correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:13:51.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="935" CreationDate="2013-03-19T21:07:30.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the reply from aeismail to which I agree you need to add several other aspects. First, let's emphasise that good indepth knowledge of the field is vital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first stage for an editor is to assess whether the paper is appropriate for the journal, that it follows instructions for authors and is of reasonable technical quality to go to review (figures in order, language ok etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second stage for an editor is as was already stated to identify and assign referees based on the content of the papeer and reviewers speciality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third stage is to assess the reviewers comments and provide the author(s) with an educated summary of the reviewers work and possibly help by providing guidelines as to how to handle the reviews, emphasising some comments and possibly de-emphasising others. It not uncommon that reviews differ widely and in such cases the editor must be able to mediate, alternatively assign additional reviewers. This means apply objectivity and evaluate reviews. It also means you need to understand (at a deeper level) the paper and the comments that go with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth stage concerns the revised work. Once the revised version is back from the author you need to evaluate the authors response to the reviewers comments. The author may not agree with the reviewers comments and it is the editors job to judge the revisons and make appropriate decisions (for additional review or accept/reject).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be appropriate to point out here that the editor is not just an evaluator but also a mediator. Disagrements between authors and reviewers are common. Some reviewers may have good points but terible ways of conveying them. In such cases the editor must place him/herself above the infected views and convey the essential points being made to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fifth stage concerns final decisions. This can be a formality but to have an editor sign off on a paper for publication means it has gone through peer review/revisions in a satisfactory way and is sound. So it is an important final step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T21:07:30.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-19T21:27:18.077" Score="10" ViewCount="1297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to become a Ph.D student in mathematics. I am having some doubts about where I should do my Ph.D and I would appreciate some advice, or anything really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could do research with a very competent professor that is internationally well-known and is also very interested in me succeeding, having helped me with much already. He is also a really kind person. The area he is working in is one of the most fascinating areas in all of mathematics to me. However, it is in a different city from where I live now. As I live now, I have a really good apartment and a girlfriend too who lives here. She would be OK if I moved, although a bit sad. I am afraid of moving to a new city, and more than that, also somewhat scared that if I am not as good as my advisor belives me to be, it will all go terribly wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could do research where I live. However, the advisors are not as competent as he is, nor as interested in me (so far, I am not their student yet). Further, the areas are not as fascinating (although very fascinating!). I could continue with living my life as of now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should I think about regarding these choices when it comes to making a future career? I am a bit vague here, since I want general advice to think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6405" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T17:31:44.083" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:31:44.083" Title="Can I allow my personal life to influence where I do my PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8739" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:07:50.660" Score="12" ViewCount="1115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made the question a bit more specific (location:US, discipline: CS) as I'm interested in answers pertaining to those details, but I can make it completely generic if the community so suggests...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By funding, I mean grants awarded to faculty as PI/co-PI for supporting Research Assistant-ships, travel to conferences, equipment acquirement etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My motivation behind the question, if its relevant, is whether I can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch&quot;&gt;NSF website&lt;/a&gt; as an exclusive source for looking up whether a particular faculty can support more students - if there are other sources of grants, doing just that would not paint a complete picture! As to my reasons for looking up faculty funding, its just so that I can answer emails from prospective applicants to the PhD program which ask &quot;Do u know if Prof. X in your dept. has funding for new students&quot; with a one-liner - look it up on the NSF page!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T16:14:14.707" Title="What sources of funding do faculty in Computer Science dept. in US universities have other than NSF?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8738" CreationDate="2013-03-19T23:26:55.573" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, I can think of American CS faculty who have been supported by grants, contracts, or gifts from each of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;US funding agencies: DARPA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Instutites of Health, Department of Homeland Security, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, Department of Education, NASA, ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Foreign funding agencies (usually in concert with NSF, for international collaborations): Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft (Germany), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France), Israeli Science Foundation, Danish National Research Foundation, ... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Private foundations: Sloan, Packard, Simons, Fulbright, Guggenheim, ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Industry: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco, Boeing, Adobe, NVidia, ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T23:26:55.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-20T03:47:51.627" Score="14" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since reviewers don't check the experimental results by trying to reproduce the experiment, is it possible for someone to submit a paper which basically says &quot;Method X was proposed in paper Y and according to them it improved performance by 15% as compared to baseline. However when we tried it, it didn't work so well (only 2% improvement). Hence we propose its modification which actually achieves 14% improvement as compared to baseline on the same train/test data.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T07:10:43.097" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:23:56.120" Title="Has it ever happened that one paper's findings were contradicted by another?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-03-20T06:31:15.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. To improve on others findings is a common situation. The fact that the first paper overstated performance may not necessarily be wrong from th epoint of their experimental setup but they may have missed some component that negatively affected their experiment. I would say that this reflects &lt;code&gt;incremental improveents&lt;/code&gt; in the development of ideas in science. As someone once said: &quot;If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T08:42:01.930" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T08:42:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2013-03-20T06:41:50.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a published departure from conventional scientific professional etiquette, see the survey article “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200905/rtx090500586p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential&lt;/a&gt;,” in which Walter Willinger, David Alderson, and John C. Doyle criticize scale-invariant network models of the Internet. The article is unusual for its polemic, insulting tone. While it is not unusual for researchers to insult other researchers in private conversation, it is unusual to see this in print. Its authors spare no opportunity to criticize their competition, as well as mathematicians and physicists generally, whom they regard as foppish, insular ivory tower aesthetes, whose nostrils are unacquainted with the bracing scent of an expertly soldered electrical connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors deploy a literary reference to insult their competition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What about replacing power-laws by the somewhat more plausible&#xA;  assumption of high variability in node degrees? While the answer of&#xA;  the scale-free modeling approach consists of tweaks to the PA&#xA;  mechanism to enforce an exponential cut-off of the power-law node&#xA;  degree distribution at the upper tail, the engineering-based approach&#xA;  demystifies high-variability in node degrees altogether by identifying&#xA;  its root cause in the form of high variability in end-user bandwidth&#xA;  demands (see [33] for details). In view of such a simple physical&#xA;  explanation of the origins of node degree variability in the&#xA;  Internet’s router-level topology, Strogatz’ question, paraphrasing&#xA;  Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “… power-law scaling, full of sound and fury,&#xA;  signifying nothing?” [52] has a resounding affirmative answer.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors seem to suggest by this literary reference, which would not be lost on readers of the AMS Notices, that a model of the internet that predicts a power law node degree distribution is a “tale told by an idiot.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors suggest that mathematicians and physicists must get their hands dirty, do some engineering and then contemplate the authors’  HOT models of Internet connectivity, which they assert, will be more mathematically interesting “… and certainly more relevant and hence more rewarding than that of the scale-free models of the PA type.” This sentence combines a dubious claim about what mathematicians should find interesting with a swipe at scale-free preferential attachment models of the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors conclude with these remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“In this article, the Internet has served as a clear case study, but&#xA;  the issues discussed apply more generally and are even more pertinent&#xA;  in contexts of biology and social systems, where measurement is&#xA;  inherently more difficult and more error prone. … Although the&#xA;  Internet story may seem all too obvious in retrospect, managing to&#xA;  avoid the same mistakes in the context of next generation network&#xA;  science remains an open challenge. The consequences of repeating such&#xA;  errors in the context of, say, biology are potentially much more grave&#xA;  and would reflect poorly on mathematics as a discipline.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would mathematics be at fault? The authors do not cite the literature on the independent history of debate over the applicability of power law models in biology and the social sciences, e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/im2004a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Brief History of Generative Models for Power Law and Lognormal Distributions&lt;/a&gt; by Mitzenmacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I mention this as an unusual example in print of what appears to me to be a departure from conventional scientific etiquette. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T05:05:55.990" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T05:05:55.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8737" CreationDate="2013-03-20T08:44:41.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't make a definitive recommendation one way or the other here. What I can tell you is that you need to consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't change jobs to get away from your present situation.&lt;/strong&gt; Running and hiding somewhere else is neither productive nor psychologically healthy. (In other words, make sure you are &lt;em&gt;going to&lt;/em&gt; another opportunity, not &lt;em&gt;walking away&lt;/em&gt; from a situation—although it doesn't sound like that this is an issue here.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the cost of what you're leaving behind worth what you're gaining?&lt;/strong&gt; You seem to like living where you are. Is the opportunity for you to work with the big-name advisor important enough for you to give that up?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before beginning a PhD, make sure that it's something you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to do.&lt;/strong&gt; Is the project you will be working on something that fascinates you enough that, even if your work doesn't go well for a long time, you'd still want to go in day after day to get things back on track?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T08:44:41.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-03-20T08:47:21.987" Score="10" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the &lt;strong&gt;difference&lt;/strong&gt; comes from the experimentation &lt;strong&gt;not from the&#xA;adopted technique/method&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have the &lt;strong&gt;same settings&lt;/strong&gt; as the other paper. Sometimes&#xA;people make assumptions for the sake of simplicity in&#xA;experimentations. For example, I remember I did experimentation&#xA;assuming acyclic graph exists.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have some kind of &lt;strong&gt;randomness&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. generating random&#xA;instances of the problem)? If yes, revise&#xA;its output. Sometimes you examine easy instances while others base&#xA;their experimentations on hard instances of the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some areas, there are &lt;strong&gt;benchmarks&lt;/strong&gt; and robust solvers for particular&#xA;problems/structures. If your field have benchmarks, try to compare your method against it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I am sure you have important parameters to control the experimentation (i.e. number of variables..etc). check their role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, you need to &lt;strong&gt;theoretically&lt;/strong&gt; justify why your method will save 14% while other method saves only 2% in practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T09:32:17.633" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T09:32:17.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8750" CreationDate="2013-03-20T09:52:59.820" Score="94" ViewCount="280641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it achievable to perform a doctorate while working in a private company (not in college) full time (8 hours per day, 5 days per week)? Or is it too much work or stress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6394" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T09:57:58.277" LastActivityDate="2019-12-18T14:07:48.140" Title="Is it possible to work full time and complete a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:03:29.117" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The universities that I am familiar with in the US and UK have regulations about the number of hours that can be worked for full time students. These rules would prevent you from being both a full time PhD student and having a full time job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://psychology.sas.upenn.edu/graduate/manual&quot;&gt;UPenn Psychology policy&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Department expects full time effort in return for its support during the five years of the program. Thus, students may not engage in outside employment while on departmental support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://odge.mit.edu/gpp/assistance/employment/conflict-of-interest-commitment/&quot;&gt;MIT policy&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The student interested in working part time off campus, and who is a US citizen or permanent resident, should first speak to his or her research advisor about the nature of the proposed work. The advisor must be assured that the work will not compromise the time that the student is expected to devote to research at MIT, and that the outside work does not compromise or infringe upon patent or intellectual property rights related to the student’s MIT research. The student also must ensure that the outside work does not violate any departmental policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many universities that take part time PhD students and expect them to be working full time. So yes, one can get a PhD while working full time, but as for the second part of the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can be too much work, stress, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only can it be, it likely will be. This is equally true for both full time students without family commitments and part time students with other work and family commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T09:11:03.990" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T09:11:03.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:05:08.970" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Virtually Impossible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD is a full-time job that requires vast amounts of commitment in terms of mental effort and time. If the PhD research comes in number two position, then the results will never be very good. Also, not being available in the department to interact with your colleagues and supervisor will severely reduce the benefits you gain from the experience. Even if you finished the PhD, it may not be really worth anything, because you won't have been able to fully commit to doing it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you may have staggering genius and be ridiculously productive and have a fountain of energy, and then it should be doable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T13:51:14.827" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T13:51:14.827" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:11:49.730" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each situation is different, and it might be hard to generalise, but roughly speaking, you can see a PhD thesis as requiring about 3-4 years working full time. For some people it might be a bit less, for others a bit more, but that's a good average. In addition, a PhD includes of course &quot;technical&quot; work, but also &quot;academic training&quot;, such as learning how to write a paper/thesis, presenting papers at conferences, supervising students, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, two cases are possible: either you already have some technical material from past work (e.g., you've been working 20 years in industry), in which case you have already completed some of the 3-4 years, and you mostly need to focus on how to output your work; or you don't, in which case, you still need to complete all of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known some people in the first case, and they managed to do a PhD while working full-time. They would usually come in half a day per week (in agreement with their company), and work at home in the evening. In the second case, it seems unrealistic to do both a full time job and a full time PhD. In some fields, you might be able to do a PhD over 7, 8 or even more years (I've heard about someone in history who wrote his PhD in 7 years, while working full time as a school teacher in the mean time), but it might not be the case everywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Daniel's answer, and including Sylvain's comment, I'd add that some French universities forbid starting a PhD without having some source of income, either through some funding or through a full-time job. Most funding forbid to have a full time job on the side, and if your full-time job is completely unrelated to your PhD topic, then you might have the green light from the administration, but not from the academic institution in charge of the PhD programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I somehow forgot to mention that the indicated amount time in my answer concerns &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; PhD, and by good, I mean a PhD that will allow you to get a job in academia afterwards, which mean not only getting the degree, but also getting good publications, good collaborations, good reference letters, etc. If you only care about the title, then you might find some universities happy to make you pay tuition fees to deliver you a diploma after a few years. If you want to go to academia later, then you need to be a &lt;em&gt;junior researcher&lt;/em&gt; for a few years, in order to demonstrate that you might be worth hiring as a &lt;em&gt;confirmed researched&lt;/em&gt;, and then later as a &lt;em&gt;senior researcher&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T17:59:06.147" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:59:06.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:43:04.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some fields deal with exact numbers in which case you don't have a contradiction, you have identified an error. When you are dealing with inexact numbers that have &quot;measurement error&quot;, you need to be careful. As much as I dislike statistics, they can be, and really are, your friend when dealing with measurement error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say Paper Y found that Method X was 15% better than baseline. Did they do a statistical comparison to see if Method X was better than baseline, or did they calculate confidence intervals and really say that it was 15%+/-0.000001 better than baseline? Is your 2% difference from baseline statistically reliable? Is your 2% difference from baseline statistically different from 15%? Then we have your statements about the modified methods. Is the 14% statistically reliably different from the 2% improvement you saw?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is measurement error then all you can say is that it is extremely unlikely that your implementation of their method is the same. This doesn't really contradict them, and it definitely doesn't say they are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T10:43:04.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T13:24:19.040" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big question here is what you mean by &quot;completing a PhD&quot;.  At one extreme, there's completing a minimal PhD: choosing the least demanding school that offers a PhD in your field, finding a flexible advisor, and doing only what is absolutely required to get the degree.  This could be worth doing in certain circumstances: to develop greater expertise in a personal interest, or for certain sorts of career benefits.  (For example, in the U.S. high school teachers with doctorates often receive extra pay, but they are not expected to do any research or really make use of the degree, so there is no need to write an outstanding dissertation.)  Completing a minimal PhD can certainly be done while working full time in an unrelated job, if you are very diligent.  That's a big if, though.  The danger of working full time is that you won't make progress without constant effort.  If you slack off or become distracted from your dissertation, nobody will complain since it's not your real job, and you can easily let months or years go by with very little progress.  This is a common pattern, with an enthusiastic start that gradually trails off and never actually leads to a completed dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, you might aim to become a well-known researcher and have an academic career at a top university or industrial research lab.  This requires doing far more than the minimal requirements, which is almost impossible while spending 40 hours per week on something else, since you'll be competing against people who are similarly talented and hard working but have an extra 2000 hours per year.  It's possible in principle, if you are really exceptional, but most people will just find it too difficult to catch up.  For example, imagine a competitor who spends 60 hours per week for 5 years on a PhD.  If you can spend only 20 hours after work, it will take you 15 years to put in the same number of hours.  Even if you do this, you won't really be in as good a position, since many of your hours will have been spent 10-15 years ago and won't reflect recent research trends.  The only way to catch up is to work harder or more efficiently than your competition, and that's difficult if you are competing against the smartest, most diligent people in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most paths lie somewhere between these extremes, but generally closer to the second case (since all academic or research jobs are very competitive).  I would not recommend holding a full-time job while working on a PhD unless you have very modest goals for what you intend to do with the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T13:24:19.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8737" CreationDate="2013-03-20T14:00:55.447" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention your &quot;future career&quot;, and the answer to your question also depends on how you consider your career &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; your PhD. If you don't want to stay in Academia, and go for instance working in a bank or in some international organisation, then it's likely that the content of your PhD or the quality of your advisor does not really matter. In that case, if you think you can reasonably enjoy working where you currently live, it might not be worth changing location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to stay in Academia, then it's very likely that you will keep facing the problem you're facing now. Perhaps you'll be lucky, and the best PhD topic will be in the place you are, and then the best Postodc, and then the best Assistant Prof. position, and then the best Prof. position ... but it's quite likely that you might need to move, at least if you want to get the best position. I know few academics who work in the same place where they've done their graduate studies. I'm not saying it's impossible, but if you want the best opportunities, you might need to consider, at some point in your career, to move across the world.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy answer, and it's entirely up to you, but if you don't have a clear priority yet between going for what you might think is the best work opportunity for you and your personal/private life, you might not enjoy Academia ... (this is of course a pessimistic view, and plenty of academics have a remarkable career and a great personal life! but I'd rather point out the negative aspects so that you won't be disappointed later). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T14:00:55.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8756" CreationDate="2013-03-20T14:23:12.417" Score="19" ViewCount="27416" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Nature's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/&quot;&gt;Getting Published with Nature&lt;/a&gt;&quot; guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nature has space to publish only 8% or so of the 200 papers submitted each week, hence its selection criteria are rigorous. Many submissions are declined without being sent for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads me to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: What proportion of the papers submitted to Nature actually get sent for review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be nice to know if, in general, the &quot;biggest hurdle&quot; in getting a paper published in Nature would be simply getting it to the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T08:14:22.837" Title="What proportion of papers submitted to Nature are actually sent for review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8755" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:19:26.160" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I found a better answer to the question, the original indicative answer is left below.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, we have a statement from December 2006 regarding the number of submissions, rate of editor rejections and ultimate acceptance number. While slightly outdated, the acceptance rate of &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; journal does not seem to fluctuate widely between 2006 and 2012 (always around 7-8% of submitted articles), hence I believe the number is significant and valid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; receives approximately 10,000 papers every year and &lt;strong&gt;our editors reject about 60% of them without review&lt;/strong&gt;. ... ... In the end we publish about 7% of our submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that we have, that in 2006 about &lt;em&gt;40% of submissions were sent out for peer-review&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;The original indicative answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Not a precise answer, but can be indicative also for &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; journal itself: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v11/n9/full/nmat3424.html#/f1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a statistics of a decade 2002-2012 of publishing in Nature Materials in numbers, various stats are presented. Specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v11/n9/fig_tab/nmat3424_F1.html&quot;&gt;this graph&lt;/a&gt; shows that the ratio of peer-reviewed vs. submitted manuscripts is floating around 13%. Out of peer-reviewed, about 60% get accepted. This shows that their first filter, the editorial decision whether to review at all, is extremely aggressive and in fact is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; filter in the publishing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a note &lt;a href=&quot;http://network.nature.com/groups/askthenatureeditor/forum/topics/721?page=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, Nature Neuroscience sends about 30-35% papers for peer-review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T08:14:22.837" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T08:14:22.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:47:03.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be tangential, but as an Associate Editor of a reasonably good journal, I once received a note from one of the authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reading your comments I found that there is a clear gap between your understanding and&#xA;  mine on what has already been in the literature, and what makes the contribution of the paper.&#xA;  I made multiple changes following your comments. But I did not follow those that are out of&#xA;  context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with a personal email stating that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also never have  experienced so much misunderstanding by either reviews or AEs in the history of my submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on a paper that I gave my own review before sending it to other reviewers. So sometimes a rather strong language is being used. This particular author has published upwards of 50, may be close to 100, papers, which is a lot by the standards of the discipline we are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T15:47:03.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8737" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:55:31.053" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard for anyone to tell you what to do. Ultimately your decision comes from within your own blend of views, feelings, and priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are common patterns of thought that we've all encountered, and it helps to understand how others have dealt with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fear of change.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very natural feeling to have. Whenever you're thinking of moving out of a comfort zone into a new situation, it's easy to focus on the fear of the unknown, because there's nothing else to focus on. In  your case, there's fear of the move to a new city, and fear of how this will affect your relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of addressing this is to try and find out more about the new situation and how the change will affect you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where will you live ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what will your work schedule be like ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what will your office look like ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how will you and your girlfriend manage the distance in the relationship ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Right now, your ability to make a decision is clouded by uncertainty. Thinking concretely about these questions will help make the new scenario more real, and you'll be in a better position to evaluate whether the move is worth it or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imposter syndrome&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other fear you've expressed is that &quot;your advisor will discover that you're not as smart as you/they thought&quot;. This feeling is called the I&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;mposter Syndrome&lt;/a&gt; and is typically associated with academics or those preparing for advanced study. Ironically, your feelings of inadequacy might qualify you already !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the imposter syndrome is just that: it's a psychological filter that's caused by a focus on negatives and a dismissal of positives. It sounds like your advisor-to-be is very supportive and wants you to succeed. While it's possible that you might find a Ph.D is not for you, it's also entirely possible that you'll do very well for yourself. What will make the difference is not some fate stamped on your head the day you were born, but the work you do, the effort you put in, lots of luck, and many things that are beyond your control. &#xA;Here again, getting more information can help - if you haven't already done this, maybe you can talk with the prospective advisor and map out what the first year or so of your Ph.D might look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately whether or not you choose to move depends on many factors, and there's no wrong answer here. But it's helpful to recognize where some of the thoughts you express might be coming from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T15:55:31.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:56:08.820" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing that right now.  I have a full time job and am working on a PhD in Computer Science.  It is definitely possible, but has been the hardest experience of my life.  I am past the hardest part and am wrapping up my first publication.  I've also been at it for 3 years (already had my masters degree), so it's taken me much longer to get to this point than it would be for a full time student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been extremely stressful and you can kiss your life outside of work+school goodbye.  You will also need to be very good with time management and be aware that over the course of several years, there will be life events that pull you away from school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was deciding whether or not to do it, I vastly underestimated the amount of time and energy required.  I'm very glad I stuck with it so far, but I have to say, if I had an accurate picture of the workload I probably would have opted against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a huge amount of dedication to the goal in order to pull this off.  If you have only a casual interest in the degree, then you will probably fail.  I think I remember somewhere that the graduation rate for PhD's is around 50/50.  Add a full time job on that and the odds are against you.  But it is absolutely possible to overcome that with enough effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6413" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T15:56:08.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8737" CreationDate="2013-03-20T16:38:33.280" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm just some random stranger on the internet, but you asked for advice, so here it is.  Given only the information in your post, I think you have a difficult choice ahead of you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move or propose.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a strictly professional standpoint, you make a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; strong argument for moving.  Having a more competent and more supportive advisor, and working in a field that excites you more, will have a &lt;em&gt;tremendous&lt;/em&gt; impact on your several-decades-long mathematics career.    As Dan C &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3091/65&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2712/65&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to do math for a living, you should enroll in the strongest PhD program you can.  (I'm assuming here that you actually &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; a career in mathematics; otherwise, getting a PhD in mathematics is kind of stupid.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a personal standpoint, you make a much weaker case for staying put.  It's just another city; you'll be fine.  You can always find another apartment.  Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome; &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; is afraid that they're not good enough.  Your girlfriend is OK with your moving.  There's some possibility that your current relationship won't survive the move, but the fact that you call her your &lt;em&gt;girlfriend&lt;/em&gt;, and not your &lt;em&gt;wife&lt;/em&gt; or even &lt;em&gt;fiancée&lt;/em&gt;, suggests that you don't really think of the relationship as permanent anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I know, that's harsh.  And maybe I'm totally off-base.  Maybe your current relationship really &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; more important to you than the rest of your professional life.  If that's true, tell her so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who knows?  Maybe you can do both!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whatever you decide, &lt;strong&gt;don't base your decision on fear&lt;/strong&gt;.  Instead, ask yourself: What do you really want?  What really matters to you?  Fear of change and Impostor Syndrome are completely natural, and &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more common than most people think, but they're just voices in your head.  Letting them control your decisions is not healthy.  You have people in your life who believe in you, who support you, who want you to succeed and be happy, and who know you far better than Some Random Stranger on the Internet—&lt;strong&gt;listen to them!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T16:38:33.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T16:51:06.670" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done it and do not recommend it. While I did not require an extension of the time required, working a full-time job will generally prevent you from travelling to conferences and from establishing contacts essential for success. You are more likely to end up in a backwater than a vital research area. You become less identified with your research than with your work, which in my case is involves specializations often considered necessary within academia and which are remunerated well outside of academia, but which have low academic value themselves. It has been a struggle changing this perceived identification--I might as well attempt to retrain Pavlov's dogs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider yourself fortunate to have access to academia.stackexchange.com. My relatives were unaware of the commitments involved and provided well-meaning but uninformed advice (&quot;you're smart enough&quot;), not recognizing that scheduling has to be considered independently of ability, effort and experience [see Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino and Nicola Persico. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502&quot;&gt;Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion&lt;/a&gt; NBER Working Paper No. 16502]. Employers often don't recognize or choose not to recognize the independence of these factors either, so I cannot blame my relatives for bad advice. Most of all I blame myself. I am not proud of the outcome. I had published a paper in the beginning in graduate school, but left the field. It was a mistake not to build on early successes, but the distractions of full-time work made it difficult to absorb the right lessons at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastEditorUserId="6211" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T17:04:32.137" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:04:32.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T16:52:46.500" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the first year of my doctoral studies I had no departmental support and kept myself indoors and fed by working about 2.5 part-time jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put bluntly that situation was not sustainable: it was physically wearing me down  notwithstanding that I did &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; but work, study, eat and sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, later in my studies I needed to devote &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; time to school than I did that first year. Perhaps there are exceptional individuals that could manage it, but if you are merely smart and productive you should not count on managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T16:52:46.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T17:03:52.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That heavily depends on your PhD mode, if you have to attend classes it would almost impossible, if your PhD just a research then that will be between you and your supervisor unless the university is hiring you as a full-time researcher, I am working on my M.Sc. the first year I had to attend classes and it was impossible to find job, even my part-time job at the time was hard to handle, however, once I've started my research phase recently, I could find a full-time job which I'm starting tomorrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:03:52.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T17:23:08.193" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That's possible in some fields, impossible in others&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in TCS, and I know of several high school teachers who obtained a PhD in TCS after a few years. Basically, they were able to work 1 full day on week-end for their research + a few hours during the week. Of course they needed more than 3 years to graduate, but this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife is in history/archeology, and many (more than half of them) PhD students work full-time in library or other places since there are very few fundings. We have friends who graduated after 10 years. In this field it is difficult for those who work full-time in a place unrelated to their studies since access to old sources is needed for doing research. Most of these students took their holidays to go to libraries/museums/field archeology places in foreign countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have relatives in plant biology and in animal biology. It is impossible to complete a PhD in these fields without working full time in a lab. Indeed, most of the time is spent in doing heavy experiments, with living things, which means being available when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="43" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T17:29:34.060" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:29:34.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8767" CreationDate="2013-03-20T17:54:03.863" Score="33" ViewCount="3363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently travelling for faculty interviews. Some professors and other interviewers have asked me where else I have interviewed. Should I tell interviewers where else I've interviewed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively I would like to give them less information, but I also don't want to appear guarded and defensive as a person, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:23:54.557" Title="Should I tell other interviewers where else I've interviewed?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2013-03-20T18:13:38.603" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak for faculty interviews personally and this may be redundant information but I interviewed at multiple &quot;top ranked&quot; schools for PhD admissions and in everyone of them I was asked where else I was interviewing and I told them the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, nowadays, most job talk notifications are available on the website of the university or college or institution where you are interviewing and it is relatively easy to determine this from a google search of your name. For instance, this year our department is hiring for 2 different job lines and there are quite a few faculty candidates giving talks every week. We always Google their names to find out where else they are interviewing. In the case of one particular candidate it was very useful to find out that that that candidate had put up a list of other institutions where he/she was interviewing this particular season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think personally that giving them information about where else you are interviewing will add or subtract from your overall job application materials and probabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck for getting a job !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T18:13:38.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-20T18:23:05.467" Score="5" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined a phd in electrical engg 2 years back. But requiring physics, I did log of physics courses and I have now developed a deep interest in mathematical physics and condensed matter. But that has lead me to undergoing coursework in maths dept as i had already finished lot of basic/masters level courses in physics and which gave me a feeling that doing math courses thoroughly first is the right way to do any physics. But my supervisor now is terribly disappointed with me. Also I am confused about shifting university as I am already 2years + into a graduate program. Also there is a feeling that once am through the coursework , I might find some problem interesting to electrical engineers that I might solve with the new skills. But a few professors and my current supervisor are discouraging me saying it is a vague plan. So what should I do, any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6418" LastEditorUserId="6418" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T06:13:41.027" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T06:13:41.027" Title="3 years into my phd program, want to shift to theoretical physics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2013-03-20T19:30:29.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may depend on your discipline, but I've noticed that faculty candidates for Computer Science that interview at my university tend to list their job talks on their CVs as invited talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, being cagey about where you're interviewing or trying to obfuscate it would be counter-intuitive.  You're probably already leaving a pretty obvious trail from your job search, people in your field probably know others in your field and communicate with them, and it wouldn't be difficult information for anyone to find out, so it would seem like being up front and honest about it would be the best path?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T19:30:29.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2013-03-20T19:51:02.590" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to disclose that, you can simply say: &quot;I'd rather not discuss this&quot;, and you can look straight into your interviewer eyes with that. I've seen candidates do that; it may have looked harsh, but there's no obligation on the candidate's side to tell anything beyond the contents of the job talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to convert this into a joke like &quot;Enough to earn me a free roundtrip this year&quot;. An American faculty should take that as a hint that you don't want to talk about it. An international faculty may need a more straight answer like the one I gave above. (I am talking about the US here as the largest academic market; in UK, as far as I understand, you won't have more than 30 minutes face time with the faculty of the hiring institution, and they probably have more important things to ask than the # of interviews you have.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you need to weight in the benefits of telling vs. not. For one thing, you may not have all the invitations out yet on your first fly-out, so you really don't know yet what other interviews you might have. On the other hand, by the time you reach your sixth destination (if you are lucky to get that many), the first place may already have told you, &quot;Sorry, we made the offer to somebody else&quot;. So nominally you may have interviewed there, but really you won't get an offer from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bottom line, you need to do what others in your discipline do. You don't want to look like a fool in the environment where everybody keep their secrets by telling left and right about your choosing between Harvard and Stanford (and thus losing a chance to get a far more realistic offer from Alabama); and you don't want to look like a fool hinting at many undisclosed interviews when your adviser had told them that this is the only interview you have when they called him/her, or your other interviews were posted on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econjobrumors.com/&quot;&gt;job market rumor website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T18:29:24.987" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T18:29:24.987" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-20T19:59:06.057" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was able to complete my PhD while working full time as a consultant.  Based on that experience ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a mentor that's done it, preferably one at the school you're thinking about attending.  A lot of the 'for profits' have very interesting models for keeping students on track.  For me, it was someone who remains an important mentor in my life.  Prior to applying, I spoke with her and she mentioned she earned her PhD while working full time as a consultant and then provided some sound advice and encouragement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some programs do a better job then others at scheduling graduate level courses so they don't conflict with normal working hours.  You might have better luck with a metropolitan university or one that accommodates non-traditional learners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a trade off related to there only being 24 hours in a day.  The university experience includes many talks and presentations that enrich all scholars, whether or not the scholarship being presented relates to your area of expertise.  The more flexibility you can find in your work schedule to take advantage of these unique opportunities the better you'll be for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan 2-3 hours out of class for every hour in class except during final project time.  Then, plan lots more.  Also, the academic calendar and many industry calendars are tied in subtle manners.  The client wanting a project completed before everyone goes on varying summer breaks means extra work during final project time for classes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a fairly good idea of what you want to study and/or who you would like to study with sooner rather then later.  Find out which professors are able to graduate their students in a timely manner.  A lot of time can be spent trying to figure out what you want to write about, and that is time that could be spent either writing or working towards the end goal of graduation with PhD and job still intact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a detailed plan/schedule for your day once you transition from classwork to dissertation work.  Practice the plan the last semester you're taking classes.  Stick to the plan, even when the alarm goes off at 4am and you were up until 2 taking care of something else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some might be luckier, but for me, for both my master's thesis and my PhD dissertation, I had to scale my work hours way back - 6 months for Masters and 12 months for PhD - to be able to produce work at the level I was demanding of myself.  This is something that needs to be planned for re material needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have responsibilities to others (spouse, parents, significant others, kids, some combination of) make sure they're on board as well.  I am grateful for the 2 am bottles fed to children as I read through thousands of lines of code because I was up anyway. I'm also forever grateful to my teachers and committee members who understood the work-school-life balance issues and worked with me to be as helpful as was fair.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, know there are a lot of us that viewed earning a PhD as an important milestone in the senior part of our careers.  For me, it led to a teaching position in a regional public university that was more rewarding and fun then I had imagined.  Hang in there, take it a day at a time, and enjoy what you're learning.  Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6417" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T19:59:06.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-20T20:08:36.987" Score="2" ViewCount="1437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student who has recently been officially admitted to a prestigious school in USA as a PhD candidate. I have sent them my transcript except my last year, which I was passing my courses by the application time. I am now in the second semester of that year. I haven't failed any of my courses in the first semester of that year, but I have failed the semester. The failure grade for a course is 10 from 20 and the failure semester GPA is 12 from 20 and my semester GPA is less than 12. The truth is I had too much work, TOEFL, GRE, IELTS, national entrance exam and also I was hospitalized and lost one of my courses in medical drop and other exams as a matter of fact to being ill! &lt;strong&gt;Please also do note that I will be matriculated in time and without any problems!&lt;/strong&gt; In my admission form there is a sentence where it is said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This admission is offered subject to your maintaining your present level of academic achievement. If you have not already done so, you must provide proof of satisfactory completion of any studies in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the conditions of admission part: --verification of all your previous post-secondary degree(s) earned outside of the United States is required. You must satisfy this condition of admission by engaging the International Education Research Foundation or World Education Services to verify your credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what this sentence means. Does it mean that in my case, which I have had a rough semester, I should be worried about my admission and they will reject me because of my first semester bad GPA? Does a bad semester in the last year of B.S mean that you will lose your admission? Or is it just saying that you should finish your B.S and attend your new university in time? I should say that I have received my I-20 form and official admission!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will they consider my case or will they just reject me even if I bring evidence of this fact? I am asking this because I have other admissions and it is best to know where to put the eggs. My question is how much should I be worried. It is also useful to say that this happened before my admission came and it is not because of having a good time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6421" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T22:10:49.440" Title="Issue on conditional PhD admission" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8772" CreationDate="2013-03-20T20:53:08.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know what they will do in your case. However, in general, the procedure is such that when the application process for PhD happens, most students doing Bachelors or Masters degress in other countries are in their final year and do not have grades to send. However, if you do fail, then the offer of admission no longer stands, &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a PhD program, the minimum required standard is a bachelor's degree and if you fail that degree then why would they allow you entry? Having said that, now consider this. In certain countries, there are make-up exams for failed courses in a particular semester. If these make-up exams are taken before your offer of admission stands, i.e. Fall 2013 then you are good to enter. If not, then its bad luck for you. An offer of admission to a doctoral program only stands (&lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt;) for that mentioned semester. You could potential defer the offer of admission another semester or year in order to take the make-up exams and then join the program. However, your chosen program may not allow this or may not have funds for you if you choose to join at a latter stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it all boils down to this. Contact the department immediately to ask for advice and tell them what options you have to finish your BS degree at home and whats the fastest route thats possible. Then see, what they have to say and take it from there. I speak from anecdotal evidence of a close friend who was forced to leave the offer of admission because he failed a couple of courses in his final year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not&lt;/strong&gt; try to &lt;em&gt;fake&lt;/em&gt; your way through. I-20 or visa means nothing really for this problem and you will not be checked &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt; for proof of degree during your visa application process. But, be rest assured that you will be asked for proof of bachelor's degree once you join the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T20:53:08.037" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2013-03-20T21:48:42.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to other good answers: I'd try to avoid &quot;engaging&quot; on such an issue, either directly with the author or with a third party. Anything else risks being interpreted as either being an &lt;em&gt;overt&lt;/em&gt; jerk, or merely a passive-aggressive jerk. Only when you are a big-shot of some sort can you perhaps &quot;get away with&quot; being a jerk. But these dynamics are much more reminiscent of grad-school common-room wrangling among first-year grad students than of collective working toward a common good. If you must say something (because you think that others are being disserved by bad work being mistaken for good), I'd advise being extreeeeemely apologetic, and not sounding sarcastic when you say &quot;I'm sorry, I don't understand how ...&quot; and then &quot;Ok, maybe I'm just being dense, but I still don't see...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the interpersonal model that would keep you out of trouble best would be the mental image of a student of &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt; who has made a large mistake, but with good intentions, and whom you hope to steer back to something more sensible ... or else discover your own error ... but in either/all cases without &lt;em&gt;alienating&lt;/em&gt; anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, here, again, the situation is that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; stand to profit by the errors or failings of competitors, so, although on one hand your judgement may be expert, and, thus, trustworthy, on the other hand you have some incentive to be hypercritical, and, thus, mistrusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other parties have some motivation to &quot;stir the pot&quot; just for recreation, so... watch out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T21:48:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-03-20T21:51:26.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;JeffE commented: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's obvious that it should happen at least 5% of the time, but my impression is that it happens a &lt;strong&gt;LOT&lt;/strong&gt; more often than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5% aren't all that obvious to me: if I understood correctly, the 5% are the (in)famous p-value.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That is, of every 100 false null-hypothesis, 5 are rejected (&quot;we found something&quot;) by  mechanically rejecting H0 when the p-value indicates that the probability of observing such or more extreme results as we got reaches 5%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;                        | what the paper does       |&#xA;                        | reject H0   not reject H0 | sum&#xA;------------------------+---------------------------+------&#xA;truth |  null hypotesis |   5                  95   | 100&#xA;      v  alternative h. |   ?                   ?   |  ?&#xA;------------------------+---------------------------+------&#xA;sum                     |   ?                   ?   |          &#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of contradicted papers, however, should depend on the number of falsely accepted hypotheses among all &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; hypotheses (whether true or not). The problem is, we'd need to know the number of correctly accepted alternative hypotheses to calculate which percentage should lead to contradictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This we don't know, but of course it depends on the number of true alternative hypotheses among all hypotheses, which we may call the &quot;prevalence of good ideas&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If we stay in analogy to medical terms, the percentage of contradicted papers should be (1 - predictive value of rejected null-hypotheses). And this will be much larger than 5% if lots of &quot;bad&quot; ideas are tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ioannidis, J. P. A.: Why most published research findings are false. PLoS medicine, 2005, 2, e124&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Der-Schein-Weisen-Fehlurteile-t%C3%A4glichen/dp/3499614502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Der Schein der Weisen&lt;/a&gt;  [popular science; in German]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two comments from pharmaceutical companies reporting on the issue for (mostly oncological) drug development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrd3439-c1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prinz, F. and Schlange, T. and Asadullah, K. Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets? Nat Rev Drug Discov, 2011, 10, 712&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Only for about 1/5th (14/67) of the projects, the reports from literature could be reproduced, of which 1 was reproduced directly, 12 after some kind of adaption.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Begley, C. G. and Ellis, L. M. Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research. Nature, 2012, 483, 531-533&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Confirmed findings from 6 out of 53 &quot;landmark&quot; papers. The authors also report how often the studies got cited: no difference between the studies they could not confirm and the confirmed ones (huge spread, if there's a difference, non-reproduced articles got cited more often).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T23:52:50.680" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T23:52:50.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8702" CreationDate="2013-03-20T23:32:59.860" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one valid point I can see here(*) for not sharing the state of the thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the research, I am visiting classrooms at various public schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should not share the preliminary details of your thesis if this could affect the outcome of your study.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As I understood the question, the school (or some teachers or students) may be the &lt;em&gt;subjects you study&lt;/em&gt;, so they should be as little influenced by you as possible (that is, don't tell them that they are in the placebo group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) things would be different e.g. if you were in an engineering field and working towards a patent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T23:32:59.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8784" CreationDate="2013-03-21T02:13:33.317" Score="11" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to submit a paper to a IEEE transaction. I am a student member of IEEE. In the auther line of the paper, do I append &quot;IEEE, Member&quot;, &quot;IEEE, Student Member&quot; or nothing after my name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5718" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T18:25:38.463" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:25:38.463" Title="Is a IEEE student member counted as a member in a submission to a transaction?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8768" CreationDate="2013-03-21T03:38:14.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find many areas in microelectronics which are closely related to the condensed matter physics (i.e: Electronic band structure, semiconductor, Conductors,  Superconductor, Ferroelectric, etc). My recommendation is to &lt;strong&gt;find a specific field in condensed matter that is also interesting for your supervisors,&lt;/strong&gt; and pursue your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, moving to another department is just burning two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T03:38:14.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8783" CreationDate="2013-03-21T03:48:12.793" Score="0" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using different programming books for extracting problems to be applied to a group of students for practices and exams. I would like to know if its necessary to put from where I took the exercises. I always reference the material in my lectures, but in exams is this necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="2643" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T04:17:06.963" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T06:31:47.350" Title="about referencing of exercises?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-03-21T09:43:21.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8782" CreationDate="2013-03-21T06:31:47.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your specific question: I would not worry about referencing questions on an exam.  Although exams could end up on the Internet if a students posts them, I find it hard to believe that &quot;fair use&quot; does not cover using the questions for internal educational purposes, and referencing the questions is almost certainly not necessary.  That said, I am not a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger question might be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one come up with good test questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It used to be (and may still be) that fraternities kept a filing cabinet full of course exams used in a class from year to year, purportedly simply for study purposes, but also in the hope that professors would re-use questions from year to year and this would provide a huge advantage to those studying from the prior exams.  These days, it would be trivial to have a web page dedicated to scanned copies of old exams.  Therefore, I would advise against re-using too many questions on an exam, or at the very least modify old questions to make it difficult to simply re-apply the exact same methodology to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crafting good questions is always challenging, but some would argue that it is fun developing questions that test the students ability to problem-solve in a format that works on a timed exam.  Questions that have a single answer are easier to grade, but could limit the ability for a student to think outside the box, or to solve using alternate methods.  Depending on the subject, this isn't always possible, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the opinion that the best tests have many different types of questions, so students can show their own strengths in different ways.  For programming tests, there might be a few questions asking students to describe what blocks of code do, others that ask the student to find syntax errors, others that ask for algorithm deficiencies, still others that ask the students to draft short snippets of code, and finally some questions that demonstrate that the student knows when to use certain constructs (e.g., when is a &quot;do while&quot; loop appropriate, and when is a &quot;for&quot; loop appropriate?  How could you turn the following &quot;do while&quot; loop into a &quot;for&quot; loop?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bottom line answer to your question: I would not worry about referencing the questions on the exams, but if you are worried about students cheating by looking up the references for future exams, it is probably worth trying to obfuscate the questions themselves, or to at least change them enough that studying the questions directly from the references will not give an unfair advantage to the students that do find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T06:31:47.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8780" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:08:54.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published in the IEEE and &quot;Student Member, IEEE, &quot; is what you should write after your name (if you care to), because you're &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a full member. Note that it doesn't have any benefits to it — you don't get a discount/additional copies/favorable review/faster review/muffins/... nada. It is exactly the same as if you had listed nothing at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the only advantage might be for senior members, who want visibility (as a member) in order to be elected a Fellow, and for Fellows, if they want to show off (but by that point, you probably don't care).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T08:08:54.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:14:34.090" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is completely commonplace, particularly in finance publications, to fabricate results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A previous thesis adviser of mine actively encouraged not reporting results which did not support the story he was trying to tell, and to completely change test design and the statistical tests performed when it was possible to get results which did support the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should come as no surprise that papers report results which contradict each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6216" LastEditorUserId="6216" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T20:23:56.120" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:23:56.120" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2013-03-21T09:45:10.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about regulations here. Personally, I think that being open and honest is the best thing (and this is how I handled it). Telling that you have been interviewed for some other positions shows that other committees consider you as a possible candidate which is good for you, especially if you have been interviewed at places with higher prestige. One the other hand, I do not think that a committee will think &quot;Oh this guy has been interviewed there, so we should hire him...&quot;, but probably I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I agree that it does not harm to say that you do not want to disclose your other interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T16:41:21.933" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T16:41:21.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8787" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-21T13:15:39.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is about students' attending of a class or a seminar in the Department: the need to attend, the need to track and the means of tracking the attendance if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T13:26:55.480" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T13:26:55.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8788" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-21T13:15:39.910" Score="0" Body="On students' attendance in classes, seminars and talks." OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T13:27:52.390" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T13:27:52.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8702" CreationDate="2013-03-21T14:23:53.373" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually a bit surprised by the harsh comments here. I do come from Computer Science, so the situation might be a bit different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still, I know more than one student with advisers that &lt;em&gt;explicitly prohibited presenting ongoing &lt;strong&gt;unpublished&lt;/strong&gt; work&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes it is a bit more relaxed (e.g. it is okay to present it to the people in your team or lab), but in general, &lt;strong&gt;it is not uncommon &lt;em&gt;in my area&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The explanation I got once is that if a senior researcher with a lot of resources recognized an idea as potentially good and gives it to multiple junior students to work on, he can develop the idea faster than the &quot;original idea holders&quot; (i.e. 1 PhD student + his/her adviser).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I personally believe that the &lt;strong&gt;whole point of research is to expand and share knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;, so I frown upon being too protective of one's work. Also, putting a date on your presentation, and making it available online, diminishes the chances of stealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think offering a 90-minute presentation, with discussion, based at least partially on your work, is a very nice offer. The only reason I can think of why they would not be pleased is that they expected a talk on some specific topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions about what you could do as an alternative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prepare an in-depth exhaustive talk about &lt;em&gt;just one problem/theory&lt;/em&gt; from your thesis, preferably something already published in an article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prepare a talk about &lt;em&gt;motivation&lt;/em&gt; for your theories, problems that dictated the research direction and reserve some time for a &lt;em&gt;discussion session&lt;/em&gt;, where you do offer your own theories as solutions, but other attendees are expected to participate as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;offer to come back after finishing your thesis, and presenting everything in-depth (possibly over several sessions) when all the work is finished, published and peer reviewed (see both  my points below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should give you enough flexibility to avoid talking about any sensitive areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some &quot;guarding&quot; explanations that seem quite reasonable to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a PhD thesis is a 3+ year long effort, often a compilation of many works and ideas by the author. Even though it is centered around one subject, it probably deals with several issues, approaches, angles...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it is &lt;em&gt;a lot of material&lt;/em&gt;. Explaining everything is something what is expected at a PhD defense: and even then, in that 1+ hour talk, some students can't cover all their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, explaining that presenting everything simply requires &lt;strong&gt;too much time&lt;/strong&gt;, and offering the school to &lt;strong&gt;choose a issue you deal with that is of particular interest&lt;/strong&gt;, does not seem bad or disrespectful or overly protective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you are against disclosing details of your ongoing work, you should be able to come up with some legitimate reasons. If the work is ongoing &lt;em&gt;and unpublished&lt;/em&gt;, you can argue that you do not want to present &lt;strong&gt;ideas that did not go through peer-review process&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer-review is the process that (should) ensure excellence and relevance of published research. Judging the relevance and correctness of your own work is something &lt;em&gt;not left to the author&lt;/em&gt;, and it &lt;em&gt;should be fine if you do not want to present something in detail that is not yet accepted by academic community&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, even in this case, and after such an explanation, offering to include some of this work &lt;strong&gt;as a smaller part&lt;/strong&gt; of your presentation (e.g. ideas for future work, or discussion), with a &lt;strong&gt;beforehand explanation&lt;/strong&gt; that those are just &lt;strong&gt;discussable, underdeveloped ideas&lt;/strong&gt; and should be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, &lt;em&gt;it is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; acceptable to guard your research just because others do it&lt;/em&gt;. But, if you look at &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; others do it and understand their reasons, you can decide whether that reasoning applies to you and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="20580" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T03:26:49.650" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T03:26:49.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="324" CreationDate="2013-03-21T14:53:02.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have good connections. I.e., a senior, well-respected person in the field who can put their word for you. Or a terrific work experience -- being say the top 10 person on Obama's or Romney's election team would certainly speak for itself in your field. Bad grades + mediocre work experience + bland letters = wasted time and money on the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A former student of mine whom I taught at University A applied to the department I used to work at in University B. He got rejected on the grounds of having a D in the one of the classes in our department's major in the University A. (He later retook the class and got something like a B.) About 20% of our faculty got their degrees from University A, and another 40% are in the same narrow field that the said University A department specializes in, so that bad grade was certainly a big &quot;no-no&quot; for them. I think that student was even bringing some outside federal fellowships money with him, but it did not matter. The student got accepted a year later to University C, which is a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; program than University B, and finished his Ph.D. a few months ago -- went to work in industry, never had much thrust to work in academia, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other approach you can try is to find the PoliSci department with a heavy computing component, so that you could leverage your computer science experience. These would be the top departments, though, which would make it even more difficult. Pick a computation-heavy book published recently by a department member, go through it, replicate some of the results, think about some of the extensions and/or computational efficiencies you can develop, email back to that guy -- that could be your stepping stone towards the good connections that I started with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T14:53:02.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2013-03-21T15:29:29.850" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some professors and other interviewers have asked me where else I have interviewed. Should I tell interviewers where else I've interviewed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is very likely in your best interests.  If you have other interviews at comparable schools, then you will benefit from saying so.  If you don't, then it's not so clear.  However, departments will assume your job search is not going well if you are reluctant to address the issue and they haven't heard impressive rumors about your interviews, so avoiding discussing interviews won't really help.  Instead of saying something awkward like &quot;I'd rather not talk about that&quot;, it's better to be up front and optimistic.  &quot;This is my first interview&quot; is better than &quot;This is my only interview so far&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few reasons why telling about other interviews can help your case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, people want something more if they know other people also want it.  Valuing a second opinion is rational behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even when it doesn't change the outcome, competition can speed things up.  If a search committee member is trying to make an offer and still needs some final committee or administrative approval, it's helpful to be able to say &quot;Let's move fast, since she is also interviewing at X, Y, and Z, and we'd like to make a good impression by coming up with the first offer.&quot;  If it's too late for that, they can say &quot;She already has an offer from X, so we need to act before she decides.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, you could hurt your chances if you list a lot of schools typically considered much more desirable (which could make the school you are currently interviewing at feel they would just be wasting their time trying to compete).  However, in this case you are probably already in trouble, since the rumors of your busy interview schedule may already worry the search committee.  Instead of trying to cover things up, it's better to acknowledge that you have these other interviews.  If you are worried about this risk, you can address it by making your interest clear throughout the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T15:29:29.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1599" CreationDate="2013-03-21T18:23:13.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble understanding why a conversation with someone whose work you don't think highly of should be all together different than conversations with others. Sure you may disagree with their work, but unless you are a real leader in your field remember that someone is looking down on your own work (and probably even if you are a leader!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found most academic types to be cordial and get along fine. There are a few &quot;rough&quot; people that seem to bark a lot and act rude towards others, but they get a reputation pretty quick. You don't want to be that person, especially young in your career. Call me naive, but I guess I believe that what goes around comes around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T18:23:13.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-21T19:43:54.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing it now. The big issue for me was learning how to balance school work with the rest of my life. That's something that needs some thought prior to beginning your program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your significant other is TRULY onboard. School takes a lot of time, and resentment can build, if otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know how much you can take. I was taking two courses a semester in order to satisfy a university requirement. It was killing me. I'm only taking one course a semester now, but I'm much happier than I was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand how long your coursework stays valid. Coursework only lasts for several years, so plan accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your faculty will give you the attention that a full-time student receives. In some programs, part-timers are second-class citizens. Not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and graduate prior to the fall semester. Appointments usually begin at the beginning of the fall (winter) term. Don't want to wait too long for a position to show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6436" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T19:43:54.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8713" CreationDate="2013-03-21T20:36:51.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to coteries there is no difference between a university department and any workplace, corporate board, political party, sporting team, primary school playground, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coteries are just a fact of life everywhere one goes... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point in time you will start collaborating with people in your department on research in which you have a shared interest.  Hence, by default you will eventually drift into one of the coteries, otherwise you'll be a loner in the department...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you'll have to eventually choose one of them, and to be a successful academic the correct choice should be based on shared research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6216" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:36:51.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8803" CreationDate="2013-03-22T09:15:38.133" Score="4" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to pursue M.S. from USA.&#xA;I know that it is required to have a background of publishing technical papers for getting admit in a good University.&#xA;But I wanted to know whether is there anything else apart from publishing a paper that constitutes as &quot;Research&quot; by the Admission authorities?&#xA;Thank You.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6392" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T17:39:59.293" Title="Factors contributing to Research apart from publishing Technical Papers" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8816" CreationDate="2013-03-22T11:15:16.437" Score="18" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a post-doctoral researcher, I am employed directly by a university. Due to the economic crisis, funds are not overabundant right now, and a lot of expenses have been scaled back or even cut out completely in the last few months (library access, public hall lighting, building opening hours, research consumables, etc.). Now, it's already a week late on my monthly pay check (or more precisely, wire transfer), and we received a collective email from the departmental head. Quoting part of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it is not possible for us to pay as usual on today's date, the salaries because of liquidity in our bank account. I apologize for this inconvenience which we are trying to overcome as quickly as possible. Although we cannot precise the exact date when the issue is resolved we are hoping to make payments during the current month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you analyse this email? My initial reaction is very, very negative: &lt;strong&gt;the first two duties of an employer, it seems to me, are to ensure workplace safety and pay salaries&lt;/strong&gt;. So, when I read this email, my first instinct is to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;run away&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (I already hear JeffE saying “don't walk, run”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's a bad time to look for a new job, so: what are my options? Is this a breach of contract? Should I just wait, and how long? &lt;strong&gt;What do you read between the lines of this email, that perhaps I haven't?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T09:43:53.680" Title="Bad departmental funding, when do you leave the ship?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8800" CreationDate="2013-03-22T11:40:29.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 0&lt;/strong&gt;: Document all your efforts to find a solution to this situation. Save a copy of that email from your chair. If you need to resort to Step 4: Hire a Lawyer, a paper trail is invaluable. Also, as @JeffE noted in the comments: &lt;strong&gt;stop working until you are paid.&lt;/strong&gt; This is your most powerful negotiating tool. Don't worry about breach of contract; your employer did it first by failing to pay you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Meet with your immediate supervisor. As a postdoctoral researcher, some/most/all of your salary probably comes from grant accounts, and not the department's general payroll. If there is a financial problem in your department you should still get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unless&lt;/strong&gt;, in order to pay you, money has to be transferred from the grant account to the payroll account. This is how it works at my institution. If the payroll account is wonky, then you cannot get paid, regardless of where the money comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Meet with your department chair, one-on-one. He/she may be more willing to be forthcoming with the details in a personal setting. There could a rational, if scary, explanation for what is going on. It may be outside of the chair's power. It could be that the department was expecting payments from grants that did not happen. It could be that an allocation from the institution or state or whatever has not arrived due to budgetary problems. If meeting with the department chair is not satisfactory, go on to step three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Contact your institution's central payroll or human resources office. Ask about the situation nicely and politely, but make it clear that you want to know what is going on and when you will be paid. As these folks are either 1) removed from the situation if it is department specific, or 2) closer to it if it is institution wide, you will likely get an answer. Indicate that you believe the department/institution to be in breach of your contract and that you are consulting legal counsel (even if you are not yet). Sometimes, that will grease the wheels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3.5&lt;/strong&gt;: Sit tight for a little while and see if it does not go away. If your institution/department does not have a history of such shenanigans, this could be a one-time, but very annoying, blip. Also, look for another job. Be honest with your supervisor about why you are doing so - this financial snafu has you worried about the security of your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4&lt;/strong&gt;: Hire a lawyer. By failing to pay you per an agreed upon schedule, your employer is in breach of your contract. I would only go this way if you are desperate. 1) The litigation route is likely to take away a large portion of your time that you should be spending doing research or looking for another job. 2) Depending on the ratio of legal fees to missed pay, you might lose money overall. 3) The heavy handed approach may alienate your department, robbing you of recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T18:51:23.100" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T18:51:23.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8815" CreationDate="2013-03-22T12:02:30.397" Score="19" ViewCount="10396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how many research interest should be included in a statement of purpose. Is it better to include just one core interest or to include up to three as in my case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6291" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T17:29:57.593" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T18:23:07.833" Title="How many research interests should be included in a statement of purpose/objective" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8798" CreationDate="2013-03-22T13:26:36.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;senior thesis&lt;/strong&gt; (or, if you're engineering, your senior project, if you did one) would probably be a good thing to showcase, as it demonstrates both your ability to perform work in a group as well as your ability to write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Internships&lt;/strong&gt; are great. They show that you can work and it also can serve as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've done anything else particularly notable (e.g., won a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nationally recognized science fair&lt;/a&gt;), you can mention it, but the number of people who've done stuff like this is pretty miniscule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T13:26:36.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-22T13:34:02.467" Score="48" ViewCount="217357" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I write a report and a whole paragraph is based on one source but not cited verbally it seems unnecessary to include the reference after every sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua &lt;strong&gt;(source 1)&lt;/strong&gt;. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat &lt;strong&gt;(source 1)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I found a Phd thesis that puts the reference after the last dot of the paragraph to indicate that it is based on this very source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. &lt;strong&gt;(source 1)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice? Is it generally understood? What are other ways to add the reference for a whole paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastEditorUserId="6444" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T15:05:30.963" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T06:37:22.933" Title="How to add citation for a whole paragraph?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-03-22T13:43:32.787" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally it is sufficient to cite each source only once in each place where you refer to material from this source. &quot;Place&quot; may be one sentence, one paragraph, one definition, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cite a paragraph verbatim from another source, put it in quotation marks or in a quotation block and add one reference to the source at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a whole paragraph referring to one source but don't actually quote it, it gets a little bit more tricky. You have to make sure that a reader clearly understands that the whole paragraph is based on the source you are citing. A simple citation in parenthesis just added at the end of the last sentence may not be sufficient to make this clear. One way to cite in this case is to write something like &quot;The following argument is based on (source)&quot; at the beginning of the paragraph in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="93254" LastEditDate="2019-10-02T06:37:22.933" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T06:37:22.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8802" CreationDate="2013-03-22T13:50:24.843" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One big problem with writing research interests for graduate school is that you barely know what's being researched. How could you state definitively what your interests are when you aren't familiar with the field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, if you're a member of the minority of undergrads who actually performed undergraduate research and knows what you want to research, feel free to list a single field of interest. If you can list specifics (e.g., &quot;Following up on both the research I did in last summer, as well as the research from the Smith lab in Princeton, I would like to examine...&quot;) that would be even better, as it would demonstrate that you know what you're talking about. (Pro tip: make sure you know what you're talking about when writing it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're like the rest, though, you don't know the field, and that's OK. It would probably be better to give a really vague statement than to list a few things. Compare the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm interested in furthering my knowledge of the biomedical engineering field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the fields of brain-computer interfaces, tissue engineering, and medical device design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is subjective, but to me both statements say the same thing, with the first one being concise and the second one sounding like buzzword soup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T13:50:24.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-03-22T14:24:09.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The clearest way to show that the entire paragraph is taken from someone else is to set that paragraph off in some way. The two most common ways are to indent the entire paragraph or set the entire paragraph in italics (or both).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing should make it clear that the author is not claiming any part of the paragraph as his/her own work and the example in your question simply does NOT accomplish that. The sample could mean that the last sentence is cited and the rest is not, meaning the author is claiming the first sentence is actually his/her own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite messy to cite each sentence individually and it does not help readability so, better to indent/italicize the entire paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T14:24:09.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8809" CreationDate="2013-03-22T14:53:24.133" Score="33" ViewCount="2200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had my first paper to review. Since it was the first one, I took great care to be as constructive as possible and to formulate correct and accurate questions / suggestions. At that time, I recommended two major changes for the paper and a couple of minor ones (figures, typos, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just received the revised version of the paper, with the response to reviewer. One of the major changes I recommended was not fully taken into account by the authors. They did provide a very short answer, but it did not convince me. I read the new version of the paper carefully, to see if the content was changed to fit my suggestion, but it was not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what I should do now? Should I resend the same suggestion, pointing out it was ignored by the authors? Or should I let it go and tell the editor all the other changes were done according to my review? How should I tell the author they did not take my suggestion into account without being rude?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="481" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T13:23:00.047" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:23:47.640" Title="Author did not make the major changes asked during the review process" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8808" CreationDate="2013-03-22T15:13:04.107" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three possibilities: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors think they have addressed your major comment: in this case, since you think they haven't, either they haven't understood your initial comment, or they believe that another change they have done is enough. It might be your fault (because you didn't explain your comment well enough) or theirs (because they didn't understand it). It's ok to point out that you believe your comment has not been addressed, and explain it in a different way, to avoid any possible confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors disagree with your major comment, and did not change the paper accordingly: in this case, they should have explained it in the response to reviewers. It's ok to mention that your comment is not addressed, and it's up to the editor to decide whether the authors should comply and change the paper accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors did not see your major comment in the original review, or simply forgot to address it. It's ok to mention that your comment is not addressed, and if you believe that it could be addressed quickly (e.g., some references missing), then perhaps it can go as a minor change for the next version, to speed up the process. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it's ok to mention that your comment has not been addressed. You might not know the exact reason why, so it's always better to assume that it's just a mistake. The responsibility to accept the paper as such is not yours, it's the editor's. You simply mention that you believe something is wrong with the current paper, you explain why you believe it's wrong, and whether you think it should published without changing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical response in this case could be: &quot;The new version of the paper addresses most of my previous comments, with the exception of XXX. Indeed, it is not clear how the authors address the fact that YYY (another version of XXX) in the new version.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T18:28:11.423" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T18:28:11.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8808" CreationDate="2013-03-22T16:55:07.250" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is necessary to keep in mind that your review is likely not the only one, there should at least be a second reviewer. On top of that, thee editor can make suggestions to the author on what must, should or could be changed. I completely agree with the points in the answer of Charles, I also find it strange that you apparently did not receive an explanation to why or how your suggestion was not changed from the authors. It is, however, common that reviewers and authors disagree but what is right and wrong is another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should do is to reiterate what you think is necessary and if possible support your statement with more arguments. Since it still is up to the editor to make choices and there are also likely other reviewers to consider, you will never have the full picture yourself and you can only provide your view. It is possible the paper will go to publication without your points being met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases (journals) it might be possible to write a &quot;Letter to the Editor&quot; where one brings up the remaining questions. Such letters will be published along with an open response from the authors. Since you are relatively new to these processes, you could discuss the paper (after it has been published(!), if it is) with colleagues and consider writing such a letter alone or with someone. It is, after all, an open scientific discussion with differences in opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T23:23:47.640" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:23:47.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-03-22T17:05:07.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This problem is one that I commonly come across. In some disciplines one puts a reference after the last sentence in the paragraph, after the final period. I personally do not like this way of doing it and it may not even be formally correct in most disciplines. Instead I would suggest that you start the paragraph (or paragraphs if appropriate) by simply stating where the material has been sourced in the first sentence of the pragraph(s). Exactly how you formulate this depends highly on the content and what you need to write. It can be something dry such as &quot;The following information is from XXX (1979)&quot; but you can probably see how you can weave in the reference in an introductory sentence or two so that it makes sense and clear that you extracted the information from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is of course to make it clear to the reader where the information comes from. Clarily will be more important than nice formulations in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T17:05:07.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8814" CreationDate="2013-03-22T17:17:31.337" Score="10" ViewCount="1778" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/general/argue/citation/subtopics/sec7refsvsbibl.htm&quot;&gt;small difference&lt;/a&gt; between a bibliography and a reference: the former includes all works consulted and the latter only those that are cited in the paper. Should we maintain this technical distinction when writing a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journal templates require the title of the last section to be 'References'. Does this mean all the references must necessarily be cited in the paper?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T15:18:58.260" Title="Should the distinction between bibliography and reference be maintained when writing a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-03-22T17:41:49.833" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a practical point of view, whenever you send your paper for a peer review, they check if you have all citations both in your text and in sources. It means that &quot;yes&quot; they must be cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying so, there is normally clear advise from a journal how to cite and produce bibliography. You should do what it says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last you can always solve the problem by adding one sentence in your text: &quot;Additional information about ... can be found in [your references].&quot; With this sentence everyone should be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T17:41:49.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8802" CreationDate="2013-03-22T18:42:39.430" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be as specific as possible.  Do not bluff.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that admissions committees are looking for strong evidence of research potential.  One of the markers of that potential is a deep interest in your intended research area.  For that reason, it's important to describe your potential research interests &lt;em&gt;in specific and credible detail&lt;/em&gt;.  Why are you interested in field X?  What specific problems are you interested in working on?  What projects have you done?  What papers have you read (or written)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter all that much &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you write about.  We know that your interests will change over time.  Nobody is going to limit you to the specific research topics you describe in your statement.  Your statement is at least as much a demonstration of intellectual maturity as it is a description of research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eykanal's observations are correct.  Most graduate school applicants &quot;barely know what's being researched&quot;.  A list of buzzwords mined from faculty web pages is not &lt;em&gt;credible&lt;/em&gt;.  You can't effectively describe what your interests are when you aren't familiar with the field.  But I disagree with his conclusion; just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.  &lt;strong&gt;Don't be most applicants.  Know what's being researched.  Don't be vague, and don't just list buzzwords.  Make yourself familiar with the field.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've done that, writing about your research interests is easy, because you actually &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T18:42:39.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8800" CreationDate="2013-03-22T19:21:54.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Ben suggests, you'll probably want to find out some things. Many such legal aspects are country specific, but I'll put in some points about Germany which could give you an idea what to look for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your post sounds as if the wages were usually paid mid of the month. Is that actually legally fixed? (In Germany, if nothing is specified in the contract, wages are due at the last day of the month.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out whether your social insurance fees were paid on time.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out what general rights you have and equally important: what deadlines apply&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out whether your social insurance covers this case.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. in Germany, the unemployment insurance would be the ones to talk to as they cover at least some cases where no wages are paid though a contract still exists (&quot;insolvency money&quot;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And make sure whatever actions you take that they do not cancel your rights there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have the right to stop working (so you can use the time to look for a new job)?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In Germany, if you stop working after the employer is too much back with the wages (&gt; 2 months IIRC) you retain the right to receive wages (plus interest if the employer finally pays. If he goes into insolvency, this is still important as it affects the money you can get from the unemployment insurance).  IIRC, you have to warn your employer in advance that you'll stop working if he doesn't pay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have extraordinary rights to cancel the contract (so you can tell potential employers that you can start right away)? Again, find out if you  need to warn your employer that you may use this right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out what is happening around you. How do other universities deal with payments? Is it the university or your funding agency who don't pay? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany universities often have an extremely bad reputation for delaying payments (and have had that for years): Years ago (i.e. before anyone started to speak of any kind of European crisis), I started working at a German university, and it took them 2 1/2 months to wire the first money. It was quite less than a full month's wage and they even had the nerve to call it an advance payment... I also remember that at a certain point later they deceided to shift paying wages from mid to end of the month - IIRC there wasn't anything that could have been done against that (there may have been an extraordinary right to cancel the contract). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you ask what we read between the lines. What I read between the lines is that this office is not nice to you staff. With &quot;not nice&quot; I do not mean that they are not wiring the money (assuming that it is not the accounting staff that defrauds you), but what they could tell you in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The text is extremely vague about when/whether the payments will be forthcoming there is hope that they will pay, but I'd have appreciated in your situation if they were hoping to pay &lt;em&gt;full wages&lt;/em&gt; by the end of the month. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course they cannot write &quot;run and get yourself a new job&quot;, but they could have explained whether you are insured in some way, what you need to do in order to get that insurance, what else you could do, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In short, I'm missing somethins that shows that this employer is still &lt;em&gt;trutworthy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the accounting staff is probably under extreme stress already for a while, so this may explain why they don't manage to be nice.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When you talk to them, try to let them know that you understand this and know that right everyone is putting pressure at them, and they didn't get their wages, neither.  In short: try to be nice to them - being nice doesn't cost any money, and having a good standing there may actually help. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T19:21:54.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-03-22T23:35:15.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, all references must be cited. To skip the citation process is to engage in plagiarism. If you put a reference in your reference list but you do not cite it in your text, then you must ask yourself why is it in your references (since you actually do not reference them)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (business) you would never add a publication to your reference list unless you actually cited (in the text) from that publication. To do so would be to produce a bibliography which I've never seen anyone outside of primary and secondary school require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T23:35:15.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-03-23T13:00:57.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens to me often. I have several tips that I use when writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the placement: it should not be in a section / chapter explaining &lt;em&gt;your work, algorithm, method, findings&lt;/em&gt;. Probably, it'll be in Discussion, Related works, Introduction or Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if it deserves a whole paragraph, it deserves a sentence. Some examples:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed method can be compared to the work of [John Doe, 2006]. The work in [1] addresses the problem (...) while the method proposed here (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this chapter we introduce a related problem examined in [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first important step in this direction was made by Doe [1] and here we summarize the most important findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in general, you are putting some reference in relation to your work. Be &lt;strong&gt;precise&lt;/strong&gt; with expressions referring to each paper like &lt;em&gt;the work proposed here&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;the previous results&lt;/em&gt; and similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you have more than 1 reference to compare with, &lt;em&gt;introduce them one by one&lt;/em&gt;, paragraphy by paragraph.. If you mix them, you'll have to cite every sentence or two to avoid the confusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you don't have to cite at the end of each sentence, you can cite at the end of each &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt;. If you're making a logical conclusion and just add a cite with the concluding sentence, you're giving proper credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T13:00:57.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8808" CreationDate="2013-03-23T15:09:19.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were in your situation, I'd talk to my supervisor before taking action. All of the advice you already got here is quite sound, but it is also a fact of life that people who are new to the review process tend to be more strict than average. I would thus ask someone else in the field whether your suggestion seems reasonable, and if it does, then I would write about it to the editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing this from personal experience - I'm also new to the review process, and I tend to overestimate the importance of the points I'm raising. My own current solution is actually to go easy on the authors once the revised version is in, as a way of balancing this tendency of mine out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T15:09:19.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8833" CreationDate="2013-03-23T15:12:36.143" Score="17" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had my first paper accepted for publication (hooray!), but I'm wondering how copyright works for the paper. I know that for this publication, the publishing house owns the copyright of the final version, but I'm wondering if that means that I still have rights to distribute earlier versions (e.g., on academia.edu).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, which version? I.e., how different does it have to be from the final version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T18:23:25.610" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:23:25.610" Title="What versions of a paper do I still hold rights to?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-03-23T15:18:58.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are different and should be marked as such.  For my thesis, I am required to have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a list of works cited and an annotated bibliography.  As mentioned, the list of works cited (reference list) should only contain references that match-up to citations in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, my thesis also has an annotated bibliography as an appendix.  Essentially this is where I can place works which may have influenced my paper, but may not necessarily have been cited in the text.  Each entry also has an annotation describing how it is relevant to the paper itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this, is that one of the books (which I read while doing research for my thesis) provided insight I used to prototype the testing framework for my project.  I did not end up actually using anything from the book for the written portion.  But, it did influence the project overall.  Therefore I put it in my annotated bibliography, but not in my list of works cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1508" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T15:18:58.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-23T15:25:43.140" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little more googling would have served me well - another answer directed me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo&lt;/a&gt;, which looks a good resource for determining rights for each journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T15:25:43.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-23T16:07:47.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose you've just answered the question yourself, but I'd like to add that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) it seems very common to make a copy of the paper available on your own site (or something like academia.edu) so I would think most journals do allow this (at least in CS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) it is good practice, too, since it makes it a lot easier for people who research your work to be able to download the paper straight away rather than having to go through institutional logins or have no access at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6388" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T16:07:47.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8831" CreationDate="2013-03-23T16:36:49.417" Score="14" ViewCount="1745" Body="&lt;p&gt;My engineering university offers a relatively new option to do an article-based dissertation, where the primary research is submitted (and hopefully published) in several scientific journals (at my university it's 3). The dissertation is then shorter than a typical PhD, because it describes how the articles fit together to form the thesis, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a relatively new idea (for engineering PhDs and for me), which I find interesting as an advisor because it engages PhD students more in the research experience (publishing). Also, it is theoretically more efficient for the advisor and student (as a co-author), since time and energy spent on revising could be more focused on getting publications, and not only on a big PhD dissertation that few people will ever read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other advantages described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ul.ie/pdf/324176726.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (not my university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is not about whether it's good or bad, but how the role of an advisor on co-authored papers might change in such cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when students write a traditional dissertation (masters or otherwise), they often struggle with communicating. Students grow and improve written communication and contents of the dissertation in an iterative and incremental process (draft revisions after feedback from the advisor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional grad-student co-authorship setting, I would take a more active role as an editor (as my advisor did when I was a PhD student) on a paper, mostly because of experience and to increase chances of getting an article published. Sometimes that role is minimal, if only a workshop or conference is targeted, since it might be easier to publish there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with an article-based PhD, it seems that the active approach in editing co-authored journal papers is essential, and in effect &lt;em&gt;writing a big part of the dissertation&lt;/em&gt; for the student. I realize every case is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be happy to know from experienced advisors in this setting to know if and how an advisor's role must change in article-based PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T15:23:10.900" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T08:57:13.097" Title="Article-based PhD and advisor's (new) role?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-03-23T16:49:49.533" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to finish a thesis composed of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. I am the only author to half of the papers, and the others are coauthored with my advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process is as you describe, we do research together, discussing ideas, proofs (I am in mathematics), computer experiments, etc. and I usually write most if not all of the text, any my advisor makes suggestions on improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really think this process is superior to writing a monograph, since you get experience in the submission/review process, and being published really counts for something. Also, being the single author on some articles is usually a requirement for getting the phd, so people will know that you did some research yourself (of course, you discuss the progress with your advisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T16:49:49.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-03-23T16:52:06.690" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system of article-based theses has been the norm in my field and university for as long as we have been in existence, although monographs are also accepted. We therefore lack experience with monographs, although I wrote my thesis as a monograph in the US system once upon a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main differences, as I see it, between monograph and article writing is that with articles, you must reach a high level very early during your PhD study. With a monograph you can work on all of it until the very last moment. With an article-based thesis, articles must be planned and written up early on. I would say that it is both common and useful to have the first paper being mainly written by the advisor so that the student can learn from scratch in every part of the article write-up. Since the goal is to make independent researchers out of the PhD students it follows that the advisor involvement should gradually decrease over time. This is of course good in theory but difficult in practise. The point is, however, that it is important to get an early start with the writing and the structure of the work has to be such that it is clear that publishable results can emerge after the first or second year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article-based these need to be thought through so that papers can be produced. We let the advisor and student write up a time plan for the PhD work which also outlines the basic research work and the resulting papers. The plan is filed by the subject responsible. This plan is followed up annually so that changes can be discussed between advisor, student and subject responsible. This is useful since everyone needs to think things through on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T15:17:37.427" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T15:17:37.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8798" CreationDate="2013-03-23T17:39:59.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question, it is not clear that what MS do you referring to and seeking advice for. If you plan for MS by course, the admission committee do not usually evaluate you based on publications, because they don't need you to do research and therefore, it is not needed. They are looking for the university from which you did your UG, your marks, and your final project TITLE and your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are after MS by research, the story is slightly different, but still publication is not the only requirement. I guess, it is okay to have UGs without publications since UGs are busy with large number of subjects to take (depends on the universities they study) and CS is one of the majors that needs mini project for majority of subjects. Hence, you may not have enough time to be exposed to the research and publication, especially if your university does not approve research project as final project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For MS by research, the main piece of evidence to show you know research is to prepare a very impressive research proposal. If you can impress them, you have the position. Sometimes looking at recommendation letter also works. If you have a good rec letter with some research-based recommendations and the admission committee know the person issued the recommendation letter, it may change their idea and cover some of your weaknesses. &#xA;Also, doing vulonteer job is also important to demonstrate your ability to work in a new domain with different people in a team or as an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T17:39:59.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-23T17:48:49.057" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;After accepting the article, the journal will ask you to sign a copyright transfer.  This document should describe in detail what rights the publisher gets, and what rights you retain.  If it isn't acceptable to you, you can try to negotiate; your institution may have an intellectual property office that could help. If all else fails, you can withdraw the paper and submit it to a journal with different policies (perhaps even an open access journal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is pretty common for the author to retain the right to distribute preprints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your paper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T17:48:49.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-23T17:55:31.433" Score="16" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor sets the problem. I implement the solution for this particular problem and for the set of similar problems using a programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I put the code in the public domain, if I decide to do so. And can I run the code for other people in exchange of co-authorship for their papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, my advisor did not ask me to write the code, he asked me to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastEditorUserId="6346" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T01:42:08.230" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T02:21:29.417" Title="Ownership of the code" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;public-domain&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-23T18:36:20.880" Score="19" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like the answer to this question should be obvious, but it doesn't seem to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in my second year on the tenure track, I find myself more confined to my corner of the ivory tower than I intended to be, and would like to branch out and meet other faculty in other areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research (in theoretical math) is very specialized, so I don't have collaborations in mind. Also I would rather not volunteer for university-wide committees, as these look rather boring and I don't find myself inspired by the administration's pet projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, I have in mind something intellectual and &lt;em&gt;fun&lt;/em&gt;, that recaptures some of the enjoyment of being an undergraduate and hopefully leading to making new friends. For example, semi-public lectures on chemistry, theology, art history, virtually anything intellectual, ideally followed by discussions and debates over beer... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the first step is to do a better job of carefully looking for opportunities at my particular university. (These have been a bit hard to suss out, but I could stand to look harder). Nevertheless I would be interested to hear success stories. What have people done to make connections outside their own field of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T02:15:18.997" Title="How do you make connections to faculty outside your department?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;community&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-23T18:59:57.510" Score="5" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking this on behalf of a relative of mine. He has a PhD with a concentration in Policy Analysis and Environmental Science and is trying to get a position in either a university/public sector or the private sector (research/policy analysis). He has been searching for a while and has had little success and is getting pretty discouraged. I recently looked at his CV and it seems like it needs a lot of improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the catch though: he is not able to look for a position in the US at the moment due to visa requirements. Therefore, he is limited to looking outside the US (anywhere really).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone have any recommendations or advice as far as CVs go for academic positions outside of the US, particularly Canada or Europe (what should be avoided, what helps/hurts your chances, etc)?&lt;/strong&gt; Any advice regarding online resources or CV editing services that cater specifically for someone with a PhD would also be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6455" LastEditorUserId="6455" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T20:38:19.850" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T16:00:27.507" Title="Curriculum Vitae advice for PhD (non-US)" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-03-23T19:14:58.200" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the universities I've worked for have been quite explicit that they consider such material as &quot;work for hire&quot; meaning that they own the rights. In that case you need to find out what the university policy is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you are allowed to open-source the code, but you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T02:21:29.417" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T02:21:29.417" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8835" CreationDate="2013-03-23T19:51:22.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this problem is very common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm no expert in making new friends but I can tell you what work out for me in my internship at UT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting from the lab, we use to hang out for coffee and talking about everything, most of the time it was not about the lab work. This was awesome, especially for an better understanding of the culture, food, girls... stuff like that. Dinners are also very good for socializing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The housing service was also cool, they organized movie streaming sessions and social events, usually with free food (which means a lot a people and something to talk about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when I did more and much stronger friendships was at church (I'm Seventh Day Adventist), people received me really, really well. Not directly related with the academia, but there lots of students in church and we talked a lot about our field of expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most important thing here is find things you have in commom with other people so you have something to talk about and find more stuff, and so on. Sometimes is right in our faces and we don't see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5755" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T19:51:22.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8835" CreationDate="2013-03-23T20:53:41.213" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I organized a beer night for tenure-track profs in our department (and this was later expanded to related departments). the basic rules were: it's once a month, anyone is welcome, and it happens even if I'm the only one at the bar :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have one person from a different department you can start this up with ? set up a mailing list and ask around to get maybe another 1-2 people involved. Start doing this regularly, and never lose a chance to mention this when talking to professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word will spread. Tenure-track profs need support groups. Our beer night is very popular :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T20:53:41.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:00:41.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really have to ask someone at your department, or take a look at the employment agreement you signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that I often just discuss with my advisor what we are going to do with the code, release it or not, and if so, under which license. A lot of the more general code I wrote is released under a GPL2 license. The problem of ownership often only arises when money is involved. The institutes where I worked until now where very positive towards making any software available under a public license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T21:00:41.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7843" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:34:59.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unspoken reason is to enable conference presenters to prepare their abstract months before their paper or poster is ready, while they are still doing their research. Some large conferences, such as the American Geophysical Union, request abstracts months in advance of final submission. What's a struggling (or highly distinguished--both find themselves in the same predicament) researcher to do? Write something, and hope that by the time of the conference, the research meets or exceeds the statement of the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6211" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T21:34:59.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8837" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:47:35.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, there isn't &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much of a difference in the structure of a CV for US-based positions versus positions in other countries. There are a few items related to HR-type issues that you would &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; put in an American CV (such as photo, citizenship status, date of birth, marital status, or number of children) that can appear in an international CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be issues with respect to the kinds of positions that your relative is applying for. Are they appropriate with your relative's accomplishment level? (That is, you're not applying for a full professorship in Germany directly out of graduate school, or the like.) Plus, there is always the issue of demonstrating a match between the candidate and the position in general, as well as the quality of the work being performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T21:47:35.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-03-23T22:02:11.780" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright differs a lot between countries. However, here I'd recommend to come to a mutual agreement without thinking about copyright fights in the first place.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That is, try to convince instead of trying to win a copyright fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, in academic context some strong arguments for FOSS licensing are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reproducibiliy is becoming more important. And this includes calculations. Questions about correctness can easiest be answered by &quot;look at the code&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The academic currency are citations. It may be much easier to convert a software into citations (by requiring users to cite you) than into money (this requires a whole lot of infrastructure)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if it is a larger software: in academia people change institutions fairly often. FOSS licensing is a way to make it clear and legal that you have the right to maintain (and use) code even after you leave that university.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you stay in science, this makes a steady state of technology clear and legal: when you change institution, your new institute profits from the work you bring, and your old institution can profit from the fact that you can still look at this work. You profit by not re-writing wheels.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can I run the code for other people in exchange of co-authorship for their papers?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only &lt;em&gt;running&lt;/em&gt; code IMHO is something that would be acknowledged, but it isn't enough of a scientific contribution for becoming co-author. So: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, what you can do: write a paper and require users to cite this paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few points about the  &lt;strong&gt;German&lt;/strong&gt; copyright in this situation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copyright for computer programs is &lt;em&gt;the one topic&lt;/em&gt; where German copyright is similar to the UK/US copyright systems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if you write the program in order to do work related work, the right of use automatically belongs to your employer (i.e. they automatically get a license), and your wage is considered to include the appropriate license fee.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-recht24.de/news/urheberrecht/312.html&quot;&gt;It doesn't matter where and when you do the programming (it can even be in your spare time at home), what matters is whether it is to &quot;fulfill the tasks and directives [of your employer]&quot;(rough translation from the court decision).&lt;/a&gt; IMHO the employer doesn't need to specify that you should program this, it is enough that you decide to solve the task he assigned you by programming.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is different from UK/US I think, and of course it doesn't apply to programs that are not related to your work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, things can be different in academia. Lots of German PhD students have working contracts that do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cover the scientific work (the work for hire is looking after lab practica, teaching seminars, etc.). In that case, IMHO the university doesn't hold the copyright automatically. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T22:02:11.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9047" CreationDate="2013-03-24T08:05:52.017" Score="15" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a research group in Spain. For first year postdocs and PhDs from other european countries that want to come to our lab, there is no support for spanish ministry of science. Therefore we wonder where can we find information about such funding from any other country in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="284" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T11:45:18.013" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T09:13:26.910" Title="Sources of information about postdoctoral/PhD grants and funding" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8837" CreationDate="2013-03-24T16:00:27.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While people often spend a lot of time tailoring the format of the CV, the two most important things are: do you have the experience the employer is looking for and can the employer easily find it. So while I agree that career services often suggest a cookie cutter CV one size fits all mentality, it really is a pretty god approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately what really helps you get a job is a strong track record and not how that track record is presented on the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T16:00:27.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8850" CreationDate="2013-03-24T16:24:04.267" Score="12" ViewCount="1634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speculative applications, i.e. application without a job announcement being published, are common (well, at least normal) in non-academic jobs. But I am not sure the situation is the same in academia. Somebody has suggested me to send speculative applications to different departments for teaching or research jobs. I was thus considering the pros and cons of this type of applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros are almost evident (more exposure). However, I worry about potential downsides. In particular, how would potential employers look at such an application? Could it make me look bad? Is there any other downside I haven't thought of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T21:10:23.020" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T21:28:18.110" Title="Are there downsides to speculative applications for academic jobs?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-03-24T18:22:30.190" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a specific email folder for speculative applications, whether it's for jobs of any grade, PhDs, or Masters courses. It's called &lt;strong&gt;Spam&lt;/strong&gt;, and all the speculative job applications go in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm feeling exceptionally generous, I reply with a link to the University vacancies page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's because one of the defining elements of academia is &lt;strong&gt;rigour&lt;/strong&gt;.  That means, among other things, being able and willing to follow experiment protocols.  If the first thing I learn about a potential colleague is that they can't be bothered to follow our recruitment protocols, even though they're well-documented and linked to from our recruitment pages, they've pretty much already disqualified themselves from being an interesting candidate, unless they're really exceptional. (And as we know from Dunning &amp;amp; Kruger, the ones who think they're really exceptional, typically aren't; and the ones who are, typically think they're not.). Those guidelines are derived from legal advice in the jurisdiction of England and Wales. Other employers in the same jurisdiction might interpret the law differently; other jurisdictions will have laws with different implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as someone sending out speculative applications, at best you spend a lot of time (that could have been better spent researching, publishing, networking at conferences) customising your CV so that it's targeted uniquely at each recipient, taking account of their unique position, and eventually you find a place that has slacker rules, or you find someone willing to break them. At worst, you send the same application to dozens or hundreds of recipients, showing each of them laziness and contempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone wanted to get on my radar in a positive way, they &lt;strong&gt;wouldn't&lt;/strong&gt; send a speculative application. They'd send me some research they'd done that was likely to be of particular interest to me. They might ask for feedback on an article before submission, or flag it up to me after publication, in a short, concise, email with a link to the article. They might arrange to bump into me at a conference or seminar. They might invite me to work with them on a paper they have in development, that overlapped with some work I'm doing or have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T09:38:48.790" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T09:38:48.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-03-24T18:54:08.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on mathematics in the U.S. (I have no idea about other scenarios).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before electronic job applications, submitting speculative applications was common.  It never had a high success rate, and it would be foolish to waste time carefully customizing an application for a job that probably doesn't exist, but occasionally a job opens up unexpectedly.  For example, a temporary replacement for someone going on leave.  Last-minute openings generally aren't great jobs, but the job market is tough and it can be worth positioning yourself for whatever is available.  Receiving speculative applications was only a small burden for the department, since there's no need even to read them unless they are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, now that most departments have moved to electronic applications, often centralized through mathjobs.org, speculative applications seem to be much less common.  One reason is that electronic applications often require the applicant to specify which positions they would like to be considered for.  If there's no appropriate opening, then it may not be possible to apply at all.  (Another option is to apply for an inappropriate position and indicate a willingness to be considered for any other openings that arise, but this is rude and counterproductive since it wastes the time of the search committee for the position that actually exists.)  Most departments still accept paper applications, but they are much more painful for everyone involved, so I would not recommend sending out speculative paper applications.  Another reason for the decline in speculative applications is that mathjobs.org makes it much easier to advertise a position on short notice in a location every job seeker is aware of, so speculative applications are simply less helpful than they were decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T18:54:08.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-03-24T19:13:29.847" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my standard advice to PhD students applying for academic jobs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, look for departments that are advertising for faculty in your subfield.  &lt;strong&gt;Apply there.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, look for departments that are advertising for faculty, but not in your subfield.  &lt;strong&gt;Apply there anyway.&lt;/strong&gt;  There is no way to tell &lt;em&gt;from the advertisement&lt;/em&gt; whether the listed fields are requirements, preferences, or mere examples, or if they just recycled last year's ad without reading it first.  (Yes, I have seen all these alternatives.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Third, look for interesting departments that are not advertising for faculty.  &lt;strong&gt;Apply there anyway.&lt;/strong&gt;  There is no way to tell &lt;em&gt;from the lack of advertisement&lt;/em&gt; whether they are really not hiring, or they just aren't advertising widely, or they just haven't posted their ad yet, or they &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; they posted the ad but didn't.  (Yes, I have seen all these alternatives.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before anyone objects: Obviously, I'm not talking about &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; department.  Everyone  knows that &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; department's advertisements are precise, timely, and highly visible.  I mean &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you're thinking of applying to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; department, whether they're advertising in you subfield or not, it's a good idea to contact someone you know in that department to find out what they're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; looking for.  If your contact says &quot;No, really, we aren't hiring X,&quot; you can save yourself the trouble.  But if you (or your advisor) don't know anyone well enough to ask?  Fire away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T19:20:46.810" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T19:20:46.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-03-24T20:35:05.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an employer, I'll give a feedback somewhat opposite to EnergyNumbers: if I receive what you call a speculative application&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;, I will not consider it spam &lt;strong&gt;as long as it is relevant&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. if I would really consider the candidate if I had an open position. I have a ready-made reply for such cases (I must receive one or two a month), and I add these people to the email list to which I send announcements of job openings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best inquiry, though, is indirect: if you know someone in that department, ask &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; rather than the other professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] which I call a “job inquiry” or “spontaneous application” (the later is the common term in French, but probably not used in English)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T20:35:05.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-03-24T21:08:32.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible: yes - I personally know two persons who did it. The question is if YOU can do it, not if its possible. If you want to finish your PhD, I'm sure you will somehow get the time to finish. But if you are doing your PhD just to get the title, then you will probably not finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: After 7 years, the last 4.5 of them working full a full time job and raising 4 kids, I managed to finish my PhD. So yes, it's possible :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="828" LastEditorUserId="828" LastEditDate="2018-10-08T04:28:26.483" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T04:28:26.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-03-25T02:31:05.630" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic is near and dear to my heart, as the number of days until I finish exactly such a thesis is measured in a single digit number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you field is dominated by journal, rather than book, publications, I think its a vastly superior system, leaves you better prepared for what you'll actually have to do in the future, and leaves your CV in hopefully a stronger place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But with an article-based PhD, it seems that the active approach in&#xA;  editing co-authored journal papers is essential, and in effect writing&#xA;  a big part of the dissertation for the student. I realize every case&#xA;  is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has not been my experience - even the most active members of my committee who are co-authors on papers can't really be said to have written a significant portion of my work. Generally speaking, I would send them a fully fleshed out draft paper for their comments (which is exactly what I tend to do as first-author on a non-thesis paper), and then we'd iterate through the draft several times as they tinkered with language, added their own pet sentences, asked for additional analysis, etc. But the paper, in its final form, is very much dominated by my work and my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the keys may be to not wait until the end of someone's graduate career to work on their writing. If someone needs you to fundamentally rewrite massive parts of their dissertation papers, in my mind they're &lt;em&gt;not ready to defend&lt;/em&gt;. They should be at a stage of maturity where they can produce largely independent writing, in need of only the usual modifications a co-author would provide to a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T02:37:21.483" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T02:37:21.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8856" CreationDate="2013-03-25T07:41:43.563" Score="34" ViewCount="3681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started teaching undergraduate students using the case method (management subjects). However, I'm finding that most of the students simply don't do the reading at home. Even though I (so far) have used only short cases (just a few pages), they still just don't do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those unfamiliar with the case method, if the students do not do the reading before coming to class, there is little to discuss in class. In the end, I feel like the class time is wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the design of the course, I actually don't have the flexibility to have this affect their grade other than to simply fail them. I cannot, for example, reduce their grade by 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone uses the case method with undergraduate students, I'd love to know how you get students to actually do the reading / thinking work required before they get to class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T06:41:13.947" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T23:32:53.763" Title="Undergraduate not doing homework (case method)" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T08:29:20.880" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience with lab practice in physics and chemistry, where we routinely ask students to read up on the work planned and do some preliminary calculations &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they can come to the lab, in order to maximize their use of actual lab equipment. It's sometimes hard to motivate students for things that should be done &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt;, but there are ways you can improve their involvement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that &lt;strong&gt;the amount of material is compatible with the time they have to study it&lt;/strong&gt;, and the demands on their time by other courses. If you're going to require something of them, it should be within reasonable limits. Also, make sure you convey that point to them: I have, on a few occasions, had to reschedule things to give them more time, because the material was very heavy and taking more of their time than I had assumed, or because they just had many other things to do (e.g., a full week of exams).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be crystal clear&lt;/strong&gt; that reading the material &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; classroom is actually one of the &lt;em&gt;requirements&lt;/em&gt; of the class, and that it is entirely necessary to actually pass the class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want further motivation, &lt;strong&gt;introduce some sort of evaluation of their reading at the beginning of the lecture&lt;/strong&gt;: get two or three students to come up, and argue the case (or whatever it is you do in those lectures) before the others. Then, give them a frank assessment of how they fared, including “you failed miserably because you didn't do your homework”. Even if that evaluation doesn't count for the final passing/failing grade, it will motivate them and might introduce some &lt;strong&gt;friendly competition&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If some of them still don't do a thing, &lt;em&gt;fail them&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. After all, you had told them (and more than once) that reading the material is a requirement for passing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T08:29:20.880" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8800" CreationDate="2013-03-25T09:43:53.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the comments I suggested &lt;strong&gt;Walk, don't run&lt;/strong&gt; as opposed to &lt;strong&gt;Run, don't walk&lt;/strong&gt;. Obviously, at some point you will need to get a job that actually pays you, hence you need to be looking in case things go even further awry. If however, during the next pay period you get paid everything you are owed, I would just let the &quot;one time&quot; screw up slide. A university level screw up doesn't really tell you anything about what your advisor thinks about you. I would talk to your advisor to make sure he/she thinks everything will be fine going forward. If you continue to not get paid, or are forced to take a pay cut, you need to decide if what you have is better than what is out there. As a post doc I would have rather had a few months of unemployment, or unpaid research time, than taking the first available job. You want to make sure you land in a good job, so don't go running off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T09:43:53.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T11:02:33.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach courses that include lecture and discussion. If reading is not completed it is difficult to get the most out of the material. One thing to try is to begin with a 'low risk' reading assignment - something more fun and popular, or pepper your reading list with scholarly and more popular reading. There has been a lot of scholarship on the value of using graphic novels with college students. Decoding images and text at the same time is good for developing brains and can serve as 'bridging' literature to more complex readings. Fun reading can be a hook.&#xA;I also have all my students on Twitter. This is new for me this semester. I have seen increasing participation from students if I ask them to post a discussion question, based on the readings, on Twitter. I was able to assess the depth of their knowledge of the materials based on the relative sophistication of the question. Most posted something, which I measure as engagement, what I am seeking.&#xA;I allow the use of social media in class as well - Storify is a fun way to get students to summarize readings by harvesting multimedia from the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6462" LastEditorUserId="6462" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T11:07:39.743" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T11:07:39.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T15:05:28.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a graduate course in immunology a couple of years back. The requirements to pass the course were simple:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;each student made 2-3 presentations in front of the class of basic research studies from a provided list.  We had to create our own powerpoints, include the paper's graphics or provide our own, understand every line of the article, follow the footnotes, and possibly read related studies for perspective.  Be prepared to answer questions from the class and the professor.  Describe the research in our own words to prove we actually understood it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;while others are presenting, we were expected to have already read the article being presented, and be prepared to ask intelligent questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write a paper based on other peer reviewed articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these requirements was worth about 1/3 of the grade.  You couldn't pass if you slacked off on any of them.  Everyone had to show up for class prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this is a graduate level of responsibility, but I feel strongly that undergraduates can be just as responsible when properly motivated.  Presenting a case study in front of their peers and professor is a strong incentive, and it can even get a bit competitive in a healthy way; someone showed up with a $3 laser pointer they bought on ebay, and suddenly everyone was getting one.  The powerpoints got fancier and fancier as the semester went on.  People really got into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For pass-fail I suppose you would simply make #1, #2, and #3 into requirements to pass the course.  Why should someone pass if they didn't learn stuff?  Anyway, this is just one data point and in a different field probably, but hopefully it might spark some ideas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I love Cailin's use of Twitter.  Best use for that thing that I've heard of to date!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6470" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T15:05:28.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8868" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:02:53.063" Score="19" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a young academic and don't yet have any first author publications (several 2nd authors, though) but have several either submitted or very near being submitted. I am in a quantitative/scientific field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about whether it's OK to describe (and cite) finished research projects that are not yet published in a research statement for a faculty job. On a similar question, if the application requests copies of papers, can you attach &quot;in process&quot; papers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any opinion/experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6471" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T16:56:09.023" Title="Citing/Attaching unpublished papers in a Research Statement/Profile for a faculty job" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8866" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:56:09.023" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your task is to make the strongest possible case for your expertise as a researcher.  Your case would likely be stronger with a few first-author publications, but having compelling first-author work in the queue is certainly better than &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; having compelling first-author work in the queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, even if you have first-author publications, your research statement &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; describe your ongoing research agenda, in specific, credible, and compelling detail.  Faculty hiring committees are just as interested in your future research plans as they are in your past research accomplishments.  Preprints and submitted papers that support that agenda are definitely appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T16:56:09.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T17:01:37.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this could work for you. I once took a course where every lesson started with a brief quiz. We would get a very simple, very general question from the reading material, and use 5 minutes to answer it in writing, signing our names on the top of the paper before handing it in. It was made clear that this was not part of the grade, i.e. that the only purpose was to ensure we read the material. It worked well though, because nobody felt comfortable handing in an empty paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T17:01:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8872" CreationDate="2013-03-25T17:53:15.723" Score="33" ViewCount="38413" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would names with 'van', written in the Dutch style - e.g. van Beukering, J., be ordered in a  bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we count the 'van' element so that e.g. van Beukering, J. would be some point after Campbell, S. - or do ignore the 'van' element so that the first letter is  and would therefore come before Campbell in a bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this depend on whether the author uses the Dutch 'van X' style or the American 'Van X'? Obviously concatenated forms such as Vancouver, C. would be counted as .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4012" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T05:42:19.840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T19:28:11.337" Title="How should 'van'-names be ordered in a bibliography?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8870" CreationDate="2013-03-25T18:12:22.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are varying conventions, obviously. Pick one, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you might have biblio entries &quot;van B (see B... van)&quot; or vice-versa, especially if you have a large bibliography. That way you serve everyone. (I don't know whether automated biblio software can be immediately configured to do this automatically, but there are obviously work-arounds.) That is, functionality trumps everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T18:12:22.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8870" CreationDate="2013-03-25T18:19:59.580" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the specific style or country. In the Netherlands, surnames are sorted by the &quot;main&quot; part, so van Beukering would come before Campbell. On the other hand, in Belgium it is sorted by the first letter of the surname. There capitalization is also dependent on how the name is registered in the passport. In the Netherlands, one would write &quot;Van Beukering&quot; if the first name is omitted, and &quot;J. van Beukering&quot; if the initials or first name is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it may be difficult to tell if you are not a native speaker. It is probably best to just pick one of the alternatives and stick with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T18:19:59.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T03:23:06.647" Score="12" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading the &lt;strong&gt;PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH&lt;/strong&gt; section of some completed NSF award abstracts, I expected to find papers only within the limited scope of the goals of the proposal.  To my surprise, I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0914840&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some papers&lt;/a&gt; in completely unrelated topics credited to the research grant that funded it.  It doesn't even seem like a serendipitous finding or semi-related tangent either, but rather a complete deviation from the grant's intended purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure that there are other justifications for attributing research grants for publications as stated in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2685/acknowledging-funding&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, but it made me wonder...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one justify using grant money to fund research outside of your intended purpose of the grant?  Is this a common practice?  Are there any negative consequences to using your grant to fund extracurricular research activities?  Under what circumstances is it valid to do so and when is it inappropriate to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T06:02:27.020" Title="On the use of grant funds for extracurricular research" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-26T03:56:51.973" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;encourage and praise&lt;/strong&gt; are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Encourage&lt;/strong&gt; them to say things even if they have no idea what they are talking about. If they say something wrong, point out why it is wrong. And tell them this is exactly why they need to take this class - they are there to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they say things right, &lt;strong&gt;praise&lt;/strong&gt; them. Particularly, to those weak students. Everybody has his own weakness and strength. The weak students will get things right sometimes. Praise them when they did right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initiate the discussion in the classroom is your job. Find some hot, interesting topic to start your class. The topic may seem to be unrelated to what you are going to discuss in the classroom in the first place. Lead them to discuss the issue you want them to discuss. Encourage the discussion. Praise them when they arrive at right conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they are used to the discussions in the classroom, it will be &lt;strong&gt;natural&lt;/strong&gt; for them to do their homework. This is because they are afraid of embarrassing themselves. They know they must prepare enough so that they can have something to say in the classroom and say the right things so that they would earn the praise instead of embarrassment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you need to tell them if they keep quiet throughout the whole semester, you'll have no choice but fail the ones who never say anything because you have no basis to pass them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd like to use this place to thank JeffE. I remember he said &quot;scaaahu's excellent advice&quot; in response to one of my first answers here. I was very much encouraged by this remark. I felt like my answer must not be a bad one. Otherwise, why did he say that? Thus, I continue to participate. You can see how important is &lt;strong&gt;encourage and praise&lt;/strong&gt; to a mature adult. Not to mention undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T08:29:44.070" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:29:44.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8873" CreationDate="2013-03-26T04:38:57.540" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've also been funded by NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences, so I can respond personally.  To first-order approximation, the only resources that research grants in mathematics (and similar fields, like theoretical computer science) provide is money to buy food to supply brain cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my brain cells (or my students' brain cells) produce research results during the active period of a grant, I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; acknowledge the grant in the resulting paper and I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; list that publication in my reports to NSF.  It doesn't matter whether the work is directly &lt;em&gt;or even tangentially&lt;/em&gt; related to the research outlined in the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that seems inappropriate, consider the alternatives: (1) Shut off any part of my brain that is not thinking &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; about the proposed work.  (2) Allow myself to think about other stuff, but don't acknowledge the grant if I actually make progress.  The first alternative requires irreversible  surgery that I am unwilling to perform on myself, and the second is &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T04:38:57.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2013-03-26T05:55:53.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectnudge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;projectnudge.com&lt;/a&gt;.  They have a website that allows researchers to post and apply to research opportunities.  I think in your case you can post a statement that you are a master's student interested in XXX and looking for collaborators to write a paper.  If you want a collaborator who is a grad student or interested in a particular topic, just say so in your post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6475" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T05:55:53.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8873" CreationDate="2013-03-26T06:02:27.020" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A grant is not exactly the same as a contract. When you propose a set of research tasks, you're basically saying that you hope to make progress on a set of problems with plausible directions. Reviewers fund you AND the work. It's common to hear people say in a panel, &quot;This seems like a hard problem, but good things will come out of funding researcher X&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least with the NSF (and I don't have experience with other agencies), there's an understanding that you'll work on topics related to the grant, and that you'll work on other things as well - maybe even to fuel the next grant !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T06:02:27.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:44:16.353" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is really to widen your connections and make yourself known, and this can be done in several ways. To socialize in meetings (a la JeffE) is certainly one way. Personally I have never found collaborators that quickly, sometimes you strike up a conversation (at a meeting or through other means) and maybe years down the line, the right idea comes up where this collaboration gets started. So as with many scientific discoveries, collaborations may start where you least exepct it and with persons you have known for long for other reasons. Hence making yourself known for good science may attract other persons to contact you as will you with those you can see common ground. Becoming a &quot;known player&quot; (however you want to interpret it) in the field is also likely to provide results in the long term. I would also add that you should listen and learn from colleagues about other people. I do not mean gossip, but rather the way other scientists are thought of. This will prepare you for contacting them. Another example of get known and know your surroundings. Finally, also remmeber that we are all different in how we interact and there is therefore no single way to strike up collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:44:16.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:48:13.260" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/info&quot;&gt;GeoGebra&lt;/a&gt; is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Constructions can be made with points, vectors, segments, lines, polygons, conic sections, inequalities, implicit polynomials and functions. All of them can be changed dynamically afterwards. Elements can be entered and modified directly on screen, or through the Input Bar. GeoGebra has the ability to use variables for numbers, vectors and points, find derivatives and integrals of functions and has a full complement of commands like Root or Extremum. Teachers and students can use GeoGebra to make conjectures and prove geometric theorems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add something that I personally liked a lot, it has the ability to generate TikZ code for any drawing made using the software! Also, the community recently completed a kick-starter campaign, in which they raised enough funds for an IPad version of the software, to be also available for free! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] - The tablet app is available now, both in App Store and Google Play!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6478" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T19:07:15.790" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T19:07:15.790" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:00:35.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All ways that allow you to produce the graphic you want is what you should use. I have used many different software over the years. I have gradually abandoned ones when I found better alternatives. I usually make &quot;raw&quot; data plots using Matlab and then use Adobe Illustrator to put the finishing touches to them (Inkscpe or Corel draw would work equally well). The benefit of doing things this is, for me, that I can add material from different sources or plots in layers and change them as I see fit. I am sure this can be accomplished in other ways but I have found my way to the final product. I also happen to like messing with graphics so that helps me to explore new ways. I also use LaTeX and TikZ (which has been mentioned in replies) and so as I see it there is obviously no single way to generate the graphics but you need to chose the best ones. In my case: Illustrator (alt. Inkscape, Corela Draw), matlab, TikZ, and Photoshop (alt. Gimp) for photographic manipulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T08:19:19.267" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T08:19:19.267" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8887" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:16:05.870" Score="23" ViewCount="6754" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a handful of students in my course who came to class, did acceptably well on the midterm, and contributed to the (group) assignments, but did poorly on the final exam. The exam was a combination of multiple choice and long-answer &quot;problem solving&quot; questions. The class is heavily applied and has a strong emphasis on team project work but there was also a 50% exam component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These students were surprised that they did so poorly in the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an indication of a poor exam or poor instruction on my part? Is there something that I can do throughout my course to avoid this situation in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some articles (ex: &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Stop-Telling-Students-to-Study/131622&quot;&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/Stop-Telling-Students-to-Study/131622&lt;/a&gt;) advocate moving away from summative evaluations altogether for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T11:19:24.287" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T11:19:24.287" Title="Students who did poorly on the final exam" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8886" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:49:11.683" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the natural response of blaming someone else for one's shortcomings (as students often do), it is difficult to see where the problem may lie. I have studied under a summative system and always found my grades were very clear and understandable to me, particularly if I understood why answers were graded as they were. Now I usually did not question someone's judgement unless I felt it was absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, many years later, I am teaching in a system where courses are set up with learning objectives. At first I found this quite strenuous since each objective must be underpinned by clear grading criteria for each of the grades A-E and F. Note that the major difference is that the learning objectives means you do not grade on a curve but in terms of how students fulfill the goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with goal oriented criteria demands a lot from the teacher in first setting up the appropriate goals and then to make sensible criteria for how to judge fulfilling them. At first it seems tempting to describe the fulfillment as good, better, much better and outstandingly good or something of that sort but the point is to pinpoint what characterizes the standard for the specific grade. Since many criteria make up a final grade one must also explain the ways in which the different criteria are weighted together but that is a only a minor problem reminiscent of the summative system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found in the end is that not only should the criteria give the students better ways to understand where they stand but they actually provide me with more fuel to explain why they got the result they did. I now have a thought-through list of arguments for a specific grade which is not relative to others but relating to a set of goals and how to fulfill them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is manageable everywhere is beyond my horizon to speculate on but I must say that after battling with the system (after it was imposed on us) I have found that it actually works in my favour—and hopefully also the students'). It makes the grading transparent. It is also possible to stake out issues that may reduce grades such as spelling errors in essays or missing labels in graphs or whatever details may matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now so far this concerned the setup of the course in terms of grading. It is of course necessary to also add structure to a class that forces students to work with the new knowledge during the course. This could of course be any activity that makes students read the literature and reflect on its content. As an undergraduate I was in a system where studying was mainly done during a few 24-hour days before the exam. Once it was passed most was forgotten. As a graduate student I was in a system with lots of homework and other activities and I found that I really did not have to study that hard for the exam. So activities may play a role to help students reflect on the material. Exactly what activities can and should be used depends on the subject but the main objective should be to have students digest and reflect on the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final issue concerns examination. Does the examination reflect the type of knowledge in the course? This is a big question and one which needs thought. There are many alternative ways of examining apart from written exams and since I hate correcting exams I try to test other ways. Again, what works depends on the type of course but look into other ways of examining the course to see if that will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if this is helpful as an attempt to answer your question but the topic of learning outcomes is difficult and whereas the learning at university level really IS the student's responsibility, it is the learning activities and assessments we make that can help them reach results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T19:08:40.477" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T19:08:40.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8890" CreationDate="2013-03-26T17:46:13.853" Score="18" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of completing my dissertation. &#xA;I am a big fan of unit tests, so I would like to implement a procedure that corrects my writing ( or removes bugs so to speak.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check spelling of all text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do all figures have a description that is up to date with the picture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search for &quot;like&quot; and replace it with &quot;as&quot; or a better sounding word&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has every head and subhead one or two sentences of introduction &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are the figures at the right place in the pdf?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a lot more of these &quot;Bugs&quot; that I was unfortunate enough to introduce into a text and found them only at the last-minute check. What else are common bugs that need to be eliminated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1568" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T13:09:07.630" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T06:54:10.107" Title="Final check for dissertation; what are some common bugs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8886" CreationDate="2013-03-26T17:58:32.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just speaking with another instructor and received this advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grades are non-negotiable unless there's a clerical mistake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency will help avoid issues at the end regarding mistakes. One way to easily post marks is to assign each student a unique number at the start of the course, which enables you to post marks as they come in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted it as an answer to my own question because I believe it's helpful advice to know and something I wish I had considered more strongly at the beginning (especially regarding transparency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T17:58:32.127" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8888" CreationDate="2013-03-26T18:41:46.407" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't cover everything you want, by any means, but it is an attempt to automate similar things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-words-duplicates/&quot;&gt;http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-words-duplicates/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could probably accomplish some of what you want with similar scripts.  Some of the checks you wish to do are easily scripted as long as your thesis file(s) are plain text.  If you're using Word, automation will be more challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T18:41:46.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8898" CreationDate="2013-03-26T19:47:04.030" Score="52" ViewCount="4916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to the journal publishing world, and I can't but help wonder why the review process isn't completely blind?  By blind, I mean the reviewers don't know who performed the research or (more importantly) what university the research came from.  It seems that knowing the identity of the authors could influence the review such that the quality of the research no longer stands by itself. You should be able to read an article and, assuming that the experiment was conducted accurately and ethically, decide if it is a significant scientific advancement. Why are reviews not routinely double-blind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T15:58:21.150" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T13:53:19.823" Title="Why don't all disciplines follow a double-blind review system?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8888" CreationDate="2013-03-26T20:20:29.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The python &lt;code&gt;unittest&lt;/code&gt; framework is very good for this sort of thing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html&lt;/a&gt;.  You would need to extend it to include the particular set of features you are looking for; I am not aware of a library that has the specific ones you mention already built it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a lot of free dictionary lists for spelling (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/&lt;/a&gt;) that would be fairly easy to incorporate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for putting the figures in the right place, you would need some kind of specification to check against.  I assume you are doing this in TeX?  There are a lot of good packages available for that sort of thing.  Check out this question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/553/what-packages-do-people-load-by-default-in-latex&quot;&gt;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/553/what-packages-do-people-load-by-default-in-latex&lt;/a&gt;) on the TeX stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6482" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T20:20:29.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T20:34:38.537" Score="33" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, submitting a teaching statement (also called teaching philosophy or similar names) is part of the application package for any teaching jobs (and most research jobs). I suspect it is a part of the application for academic jobs in other disciplines too. I have written a teaching statement and I rewrite and modify it every now and then. Since I wrote it myself I think it is perfect and I cannot detect its possible flaws and mistakes. Therefore, I am looking for tips and advice for improving my teaching statement. I particularly appreciate any advices from people who are involved in hiring committees. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which topics would members of search committees like to see in a teaching statement? or alternatively, which mistakes in a teaching statement can ruin an applicants' chances for getting an interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make this Q&amp;amp;A useful for others, I didn't restrict it to mathematicians. However, I'll appreciate if someone has a specific advice for writing teaching statements for mathematics jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T15:39:18.667" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T15:39:18.667" Title="Which topics should be covered in a teaching statement?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;teaching-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2013-03-26T20:52:08.393" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is at least partly that many research fields are small enough so that most people know what other researchers or research teams are doing. Anonymity is thus impossible because it does not take much to figure out who wrote the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers are (in my field) often anonymous. I personally do not like this because it is easier as author to judge the comments when you know who delivered them. When you get anonymous reviews you cannot easily judge the tone if it is just the way someone expresses themselves or if it is rude (positive reviews are usually not difficult to deal with for some reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen in journals with open reviews how anonymous posts are full of abrasive (unprofessional) comments and hence not very constructive. I pesonally think anonymity brings out the worst in some people and openness forces one to focus on the constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, double-blind reviews can be done but I do not really see the benfit, at least not in my and related fields where communities count a few thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T20:52:08.393" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-03-26T21:28:18.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you could do that's similar to a speculative application, but better in some ways, is to email people in your field to express your interest in their department and ask them to keep you in mind if there are any openings.  This can be helpful if there's a late opening, a visiting position which is not widely advertised, or even just to keep people aware that you're interested in case they have an opening the next year.  Furthermore, they may be aware of jobs at other schools that opened late or were otherwise poorly advertised.  My impression is that this approach makes sense if you are willing to consider a temporary job and if it is relatively late in the hiring cycle.  It also can be more effective for your advisor to make these inquiries on your behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T21:28:18.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="51420" CreationDate="2013-03-26T21:32:56.560" Score="13" ViewCount="2669" Body="&lt;p&gt;An academic usually is a member of a professional association. E.g., a professor in meteorology can be a member of American Association of Meteorology. Sometimes, the fee can be something like $300 per year. Is it always the case, that such membership fees are covered by the University (department) or a research institute? Are there exceptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to understand the prevailing norm (e.g., 40% (or 60? or 80?) of universities usually cover single association membership up to $500/year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T06:45:23.827" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:44:59.640" Title="Are professional association membership fees usually paid by one's institution?" Tags="&lt;fees&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2013-03-26T21:38:49.763" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fields with a vibrant pre-print culture (e.g. Physics or Math), most papers are already publicly posted on the internet with the authors name attached before the paper is submitted and reviewed.  In that context, double-blind reviewing isn't even a sensible option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without pre-prints the same is true of talks in some fields.  For many papers, many potential referees will have already seen a talk at a conference on the results in the paper.  This may be especially true of math where the process of writing up a paper in full detail is especially onerous, so it's common for people to be giving talks on topics while the paper is in preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T21:38:49.763" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2013-03-26T22:14:54.407" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theoretical computer science uses single-blind reviewing almost exclusively.  Reviewers know the authors of the papers they review, but authors do not who reviews their papers.  (As with many things, we copy this attitude from mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main reasons we don't use double-blind reviewing are that (1) we never have, (2) we have a habit of posting preprints (although not to the same extent as math and physics), and (3) there's a general consensus that it's just not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard argument that double-blind reviewing is &lt;em&gt;unnecessary&lt;/em&gt; is that the decision to accept or reject a given paper is more objective than in other fields.  There isn't an experiment to judge.  Either the algorithm is faster or it isn't; either the theorem is true or it isn't; either the proof is actually a proof or it isn't.  (I don't  buy this argument, especially for page-limited conference submissions, but there it is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to read an article and, assuming that the experiment was conducted accurately and ethically, decide if it is a significant scientific advancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not the only criteria by which scientific research is judged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; As @a3nm points out in his comment, theoretical computer science is slowly transitioning toward a &amp;quot;lightweight double-blind reviewing&amp;quot; protocol that is already common in other computer science research areas.  &amp;quot;Lightweight double-blind&amp;quot; requires the authors to submit their papers without identifying information, citing their own work in the third person, but it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; prevent either posting preprints to arXiv or presenting work at seminars and workshops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.siam.org/conferences/cm/conference/alenex21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ALENEX&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disc-conference.org/wp/disc2020/call-for-papers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DiSC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://algo2020.di.unipi.it/ESA2020/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ESA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://facctconference.org/2020/callforpapers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAccT&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://easychair.org/cfp/FODS-2020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FODS&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://lics.siglog.org/lics20/cfp.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LICS&lt;/a&gt; already follow this protocol, as do several conferences at the intersection of theoretical computer science and machine learning.  Major conferences like SODA are at least seriously discussing the idea, but change is slow, and many (especially senior) researchers are strongly opposed to the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.geomblog.org/2018/01/report-on-double-blind-reviewing-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report on double-blind reviewing at ALENEX 2018&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://popl18.sigplan.org/track/POPL-2018-papers#Submission-and-Reviewing-FAQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this FAQ from POPL 2018&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T13:53:19.823" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T13:53:19.823" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8886" CreationDate="2013-03-26T23:07:39.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you believe these students understood the material (based on other measures like projects), but they did badly on the exam, then it's a problem with the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was in college, problems like this came up a couple of times, and the professors handled it with one of the following solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not having the exam, or removing the exam from final grades.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grading students with and without the exam and giving them the higher grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing the grading scale for the exam (not necessarily on a curve).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offering a chance to re-take the exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your class already has projects, the first two seem like good options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is all based on the assumption that you think they understand the material and just did badly on the exam. If they also did badly on the projects, then there's a good chance they're just trying to avoid responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2810" LastEditorUserId="2810" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T20:04:09.543" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T20:04:09.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-03-26T23:51:25.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I'm basically just reiterating the earlier answers here, as most of these points have already been raised in one form or another (by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8856&quot;&gt;F'x&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8874&quot;&gt;scaaahu&lt;/a&gt; in particular), but I'd just like to add my summary of how I'd approach the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;Note: Oh, wow, this answer turned out way longer than I thought it would.  If you don't want to read all of it, I've &lt;strong&gt;highlighted&lt;/strong&gt; the key parts so you can just skip the rest.&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some background, I'm a graduate student in Helsinki, and I've grown up and studied in Finland.  While Finns generally aren't quite as focused on &quot;face&quot; as people from some Asian cultures are said to be, we do tend to be rather shy and quiet, and sayings like &quot;&lt;em&gt;talk is silver, silence is gold&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt&lt;/em&gt;&quot; definitely find resonance here.  Thus, getting a lively classroom discussion going here can indeed be hard, something which I've heard several teachers from other parts of the world comment on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as you correctly note, you will need to make the students understand the importance of the assignments, and vague threats of &quot;I may have to fail you&quot; aren't going to do it.  It's completely natural for students to try to minimize their workload, and if they think they can pass the course without doing the homework, most of them (except the few truly motivated ones) won't do it.  And if enough of them think so, it's likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, unless you're actually willing to fail the majority of your class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address that, I'd suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;introduce a points system&lt;/strong&gt; and make it clear to the students that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; points total are required to pass the course,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each exam / project (out of &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; during the course) is worth up to &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; points,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each discussion class (out of &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;) is worth an additional &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt; points, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting any points for a discussion class requires &lt;strong&gt;active participation in the discussion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having all this clearly set out in advance lets the students make their own informed decisions about how to prioritize their tasks.  In particular, setting a definite pass/fail threshold means that they'll know exactly how much work they need to do to pass the course, and that if they don't meet that threshold, they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, some students will probably use this as an excuse to skip some fraction of the discussion classes, figuring that they'll still score enough points in the exams to pass &amp;mdash; but those are the same students who otherwise probably wouldn't bother with the homework at all, figuring that you wouldn't fail them just for that as long as they did reasonably well in the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing the point scores and thresholds is up to you, but a fairly common choice around here seems to be that the exams make up 50% of the possible points, and 50% of the total is also the minimum level needed to pass.  Thus, in principle, one &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; pass the course without any classroom participation... as long as one is confident of getting an absolutely perfect exam score.  (FWIW, as a personal anecdote, I did that once as an undergrad &amp;mdash; I signed up for the final exam of a course with such a grading policy, mistakenly thinking it was a stand-alone exam, and managed to just barely pass.  Got the lowest possible passing grade, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much for the stick; you'll also want a carrot to go with it.  I'd suggest telling your students that the aim of the course is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to stress them out, and that you're willing to &lt;strong&gt;adjust the homework to fit their workload&lt;/strong&gt;, within reason, as long as they'll tell you in advance when they expect to be busy and when they'll have more time.  Depending on how varied your students' schedules are, this might even involve some personalized assignments for students who, for some reason, won't be able to attend as many classes as they want or need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such small kindnesses go a long way towards building goodwill and motivation, but there's a more subtle trick involved here as well: &lt;em&gt;asking for adjustments to the homework is itself a form of classroom participation&lt;/em&gt;.  Sure, it doesn't actually involve the &lt;em&gt;subject&lt;/em&gt; of the course in any direct way, but as scaaahu notes, an important part of the process is to &lt;strong&gt;just get the students to speak up in class about &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason why discussing the appropriate amount of homework with the students can help is that, psychologically, &lt;strong&gt;being involved in making a rule makes people feel invested in it&lt;/strong&gt;, and thus much more likely to follow it than if it were simply imposed on them by an external authority.  I'm pretty sure there's actual psychological research on this, if I just knew the right keywords to find it, but it's definitely an effect I've noticed in practice.  Effectively, by setting up a mutual agreement with your students about the appropriate level of homework, you're depriving them of the mental excuse that &quot;there's way too much stuff for me to do, I'll never have time for this.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I already wrote above, I also think scaaahu's suggestion of encouraging classroom discussion in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; form, just to get the students used to it, is a good idea.  In particular, while stressing that active participation is necessary to earn points for a discussion class, I'd also suggest explicitly noting that having read or understood the material is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required (albeit highly recommended), &lt;strong&gt;as long as one is willing to ask questions and discuss the topic&lt;/strong&gt;.  Of course, you can still make demonstrated familiarity with the material a requirement for getting the &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; points, if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way in which that could help is that, just possibly, some of the students who say they haven't read the material (but can't say why not) actually &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; read it, but just don't feel that they've understood it well enough to discuss it without &quot;appearing stupid&quot; or &quot;losing face&quot;.  If you manage to convince those students that they'll &lt;em&gt;at least have to ask questions&lt;/em&gt; about the material, they may even come to realize that their understanding of it is neither as poor nor as embarrassing as they thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, since I mentioned my background in the beginning, let me include a couple of tips and traps I've noticed specifically regarding Finnish audiences.  I can't say whether or not these might apply also to your students, but they may be at least worth considering.  (There are also some implicit assumptions about classroom style in the way I've presented things below, but the general points should be adaptable to different teaching methodologies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, just to be clear, by &quot;Finns&quot; here I really mean &quot;me, and some other people I've observed in class&quot;.  Of course, as with any cultural or ethnic group, there's a huge amount of within-group variation, so nothing here should be construed as universal rules.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is that Finns generally don't like to interrupt when someone else is talking; it's considered rude.  By the same token, if they do feel the need to interrupt you, they're likely to just politely clear their throat (or, in a classroom setting, raise their hand) or say &quot;excuse me...&quot; and wait for you to stop.  Thus, &lt;em&gt;one way to kill off any hope of an active classroom discussion is to just talk too much yourself.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going off on a long uninterruptible monologue whenever someone asks something remotely relevant is particularly bad &amp;mdash; you may think you're rewarding the asker by seizing on the topic they brought up, but it's more likely that you're just teaching everyone in the class not to ask too many questions if they want to get on with the course.  Engaging the asker in a back-and-forth discussion is a much better approach, both because it gives them a better chance to participate, but also just because it gives them a chance to tell you &quot;oh, I get it now, thanks!&quot; without having to interrupt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trap is that Finnish students tend to be quite reluctant to answer questions which they consider trivial &amp;mdash; there are several reasons for that, but I suspect it's partly a side effect of the early school system, where the teachers generally try to learn the progress level of each child and to direct questions of different levels to different students.  While this is generally an excellent way of dealing with a heterogeneous group of students and making sure everyone gets to participate, it does have the side effect of teaching the more advanced students (who, of course, are the ones who mostly end up in academia later) not to even bother raising their hand for questions they feel are below their level, since they won't get to answer them anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that, if you don't already know your students well, you can end up asking a question and getting no answers, and having no idea whether the question was way too easy or way too hard (or just possibly both).  My suggestion for dealing with that situation would be to ask something like &quot;OK, so you all know this?&quot; and seeing who nods.  If not all do, direct the question to someone who didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third point, somewhat related to the first, is that Finns stereotypically don't like asking questions if they believe they can find the answer by just listening or reading more instead.  (If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/178805/ilmari-karonen&quot;&gt;my Stack Exchange profile&lt;/a&gt;, you'll see that I'm a perfect example of the stereotype; I just counted that, excluding meta sites and code golf, I've posted well over a thousand answers and just &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; questions across the entire network.  And most of those are self-answered.)  If your students are like that too, they may be much more likely to speak up if they believe they have a reason to &lt;em&gt;disagree&lt;/em&gt; with you than if they just don't &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; something (even if they might actually phrase their argument as a question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One rather cheap, but potentially effective, trick to encourage student participation in situations like that could be to deliberately make trivial mistakes, like replacing a plus sign with a minus in a simple equation, and see if your students spot them.  If they do, thank them and encourage them to keep an eye out for anything else that might seem funny.  If they don't, you can always just &quot;notice&quot; the mistake yourself a little later and correct it.  Either way, you end up looking a little less like an infallible authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yeah, I realize that I've gone way off on a tangent at this point, so I'll just stop here.  Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T23:51:25.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3613" CreationDate="2013-03-27T00:44:54.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a biochem post-doc and just tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectnudge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;projectnudge.com&lt;/a&gt; for this exact situation.  The site appears to be beta testing social science collaborations.  I was told my posting will appear on the site soon when they start releasing the science collaboration proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6485" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T00:44:54.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2013-03-27T04:12:57.980" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one thing that helps me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Block out &lt;strong&gt;work time&lt;/strong&gt; and allocate &lt;em&gt;relaxation time&lt;/em&gt; for each day (relaxation does not mean sleep).  You cannot work 100% of the time, but you need to be vigilant about &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; engaging in leisure activity during a work time block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intersperse designated &lt;em&gt;play time&lt;/em&gt; in between work times, &lt;strong&gt;but do not let the two types of time periods overlap and become blurred&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you find an interesting website during working hours, &lt;em&gt;bookmark it and come back to it during the next play time period&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically work during the work time, play during play time, and maintain consistent waking/sleeping patterns (try to go to bed on time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I forgot to add was &lt;em&gt;don't squander your prime time hours&lt;/em&gt;, whether it's by self-distraction or by others distracting you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example if you get your best work done in the morning &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; noon, schedule all appointments and meetings in the &lt;em&gt;afternoon&lt;/em&gt;.  Minimize breaks during your prime hours, since you probably don't need as many.  If you're an evening type of guy, then take care of events and social activities earlier in the day whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="2745" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T02:17:08.450" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T02:17:08.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2013-03-27T04:46:24.307" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html&quot;&gt;this article by Kathryn McKinley&lt;/a&gt; is quite old now, it provides a much more nuanced view of the processes that would support a double blind review process. In brief, it's not as simple as &quot;make everything double blind&quot;. There are stages where it's important, and there are stages in the review process where it's useful NOT to be double blind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, you want double blind review when doing the initial evaluation, because people are more likely to jump to conclusions on a first look. But later on, it's helpful to know who's doing the work because even in mathematical work, there's an element of trust that goes into evaluating a paper (especially in theoretical CS for example, where papers are way too short (and deadlines too close) to do a rigorous evaluation of proofs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T04:46:24.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2013-03-27T07:17:36.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the age of Internet is not very difficult to get the name of the author (at least with a high probability), especially in a field with few practitioners. For instance see this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/12/the-journal-reviewing-process-isnt-anonymous-did-you-really-think-it-was-think-again.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/12/the-journal-reviewing-process-isnt-anonymous-did-you-really-think-it-was-think-again.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in practice only the reviewer remains anonymous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T07:17:36.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8897" CreationDate="2013-03-27T07:56:38.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've already seen from the comments, there is no single solution to this problem. The rules vary greatly from country to country, institution to institution, and even department to department. You will have to check with the specific rules for your funding agencies, department, and other &quot;revenue sources&quot; to determine precisely which sources of funding can be used to pay for these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For instance, in Germany, a professor's &quot;discretionary budget&quot; could definitely be used to pay for such things; in the US, this may or may not be the case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T07:56:38.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T09:03:17.983" Score="27" ViewCount="5010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to apply to a Ph.D program in mathematics. I was going to apply last year, but ended up getting cold feet because I wasn't sure how having a &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; disability would affect (1) being admitted (application process), and (2) if I were to had been so fortunate, whether faculty would treat me any differently (be less willing to take me on as one of their students, for example). I especially worry about (2) because I have experienced a few awkward situations with professors as an undergrad (at the university I attended, it was quite uncommon to find a student with a learning disability studying maths).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of simplifying the issue, let's assume that my understanding of mathematics is roughly equivalent to those who I would be &quot;competing&quot; against in the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I explain my situation in my application and can it affect my chances of getting in? (I do not mean to ask if it is legal or not).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are graduate students with disabilities seen from a professor's point of view? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would happen if I were to need a year or two more than other students needed to finish their doctorate? Would they consider this matter in the admission process? What about funding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if I don't provide a clearer picture, but I'm not very comfortable providing too much information. I would really appreciate hearing from those in academia (though others are obviously more than welcome to provide responses) who have either personally been through a similar situation or dealt with a student with a learning disability. Lastly, please don't worry about &quot;softening&quot; any responses, I'd like responses to be as honest as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am looking into programs both in Europe and in the United States (there are programs in both countries I would very much like to attend). I've noticed some programs in the United States state on their website they would like students to finish in 4 years (perhaps this is due to economic constraints in recent years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2015-11-14T03:56:01.753" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T11:43:28.700" Title="Graduate school and students with learning disabilities" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8911" CreationDate="2013-03-27T11:55:23.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt;: For some reason I mis-read the question as &quot;physical&quot; disability, rather than &quot;learning disability.&quot;  I've amended the answer appropriately, although I suppose it still has a slant towards physical disability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I explain my situation in my application and can it affect my chances of getting in? (I do not mean to ask if it is legal or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is up to you.  If you approach it as &quot;how I've overcome my disability to do well in Mathematics,&quot; then it could positively affect your acceptance.  If you do put it into a statement of purpose, make sure you have someone else read it over and criticize whether or not it sounds like you're forcing the issue (you don't want to do that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are graduate students with disabilities seen from a professor's point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a high school teacher, I had many students with varying disabilities, and I approached each student's situation differently, always with the goals to (1) make the student feel comfortable, (2) to make the other students feel comfortable, and (3) to minimize any effects on the classroom because of the student's disability (e.g., one student had a pace maker and it affected the types of electrical experiments and demonstrations we could do during physics class, so I had to plan around it to minimize the issue).  As a college instructor, I've had students with hearing disabilities, and I wore a microphone during lectures that the student could tune in to with a radio.  I've also had students with eyesight disabilities, and we made sure that front-row seats were available, and that they had access to any slides before class (a good idea for any student, actually!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students with learning disabilities, I've always encouraged them to use the resources available through the school.  As long as a student has a documented disability, they get the benefits of that diagnosis (e.g., extra time on tests -- although I almost always give everyone extra time if they need it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never felt any ill-will towards disabled students (physical or learning), and we worked around the challenges mutually.  I'm sure you've already handled this individually with many of your previous teachers and professors, so I would continue to do that when you get to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would happen if I were to need 5 to 6 years to finish my doctorate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://math.stanford.edu/graduate/admissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You'd be the average!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my first response, I didn't really focus on what might be different in grad school (vice undergrad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll have many more one-on-one interactions with your advisor and other professors -- if your disability might somehow affect these interactions, consider that carefully when you decide on your advisor.  For example, if your disability involves poor memory skills and you need to read notes before answering your advisor's questions, don't pick an advisor that gets upset when you don't immediately have answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will most likely have to give presentations in class and at conferences and workshops, which you may have gotten away with not doing in undergraduate school (and certainly if you have to defend your thesis before your committee).  If your disability will prevent you from doing that effectively, you need to think about how to mitigate it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll spend long hours at school, in an office or lab, or the library.  Consider this if your disability will be affected by it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll read a lot.  A LOT.  If you thought you read a lot in undergraduate school, stand by.  Again, if your disability limits the amount of time you can read or the ability for you to read, you will have to figure out how to mitigate it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T13:08:35.283" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T13:08:35.283" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8911" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:09:03.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: My answer is about research based PhD in UK from real experience, not from a leaflet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all it depends where do you want to study. I can tell you my experience from my UK perspective (I do PhD at the moment in Engineering, I finished undergrad Math with Stat).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD is completely different than Undergrad. You do not have to much contacts with Professors even with your supervisor quite rare. At least it is completely different than an undergrad level. You do your own study. They expect you to write some forms every three months. After about a year you should have written Literature Review (about 20-30 pages), after that start to produce some results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim of PhD is to make an input into knowledge. You need to find something new and nobody will do it for you. Do not expect that you will go to someone and ask how to do that because nobody will know. After your first year you should be the best expert in your small piece of the field and nobody will know better than you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember PhD is about writing. You have to write articles and only this can give you strong diploma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your skills counts and there is no perfect candidate. You can have something what other don't have and this can be your strong point. I think nobody really cares about learning difficulties, because you do not have exams, do not have coursework, but your job is to write articles, if you can do that in your time and space, you fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get funding usually for three years. After that you have a year to write your thesis but you do not have money. After that they push you to finish, so you need to pay the fee by yourself. Nobody will give you more money because of your difficulties. It is your choice. You can do your PhD part time and have founding for six years or you can try to find some sponsorship.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To finish I would like to tell you what one of the professors told me about his recruitment strategy. I asked him what is the most important factor if he have to chose his postdoc.&#xA;He told me that he does interview and ask himself if he would like to spent 15 hours fly to a conference with the guy who is interviewed. &#xA;There are all different reasons why one person is selected and another not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep applying, keep in mind you will not get your first, probably not second or even third position, smile and don't give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2015-11-14T03:58:20.170" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T03:58:20.170" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:31:09.700" Score="3" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently gave a entrance exam for a graduate program, MS (by course) in computer science. Since I did well in exam, now I am being offered for MS by research. In first semester I can attend 3-4 subjects, at the end of my semester I have to chose my research area and a adviser. I do not have prior research experience nor have published any papers, so I believe it is a wonderful opportunity for me to get into research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what exactly constitutes an MS by Research? What are my responsibilities? What should be my minimum contribution for thesis to graduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6491" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T03:13:53.103" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T03:13:53.103" Title="What exactly goes into MS by Research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-03-31T03:12:07.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:38:43.077" Score="24" ViewCount="3426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a very early stage researcher and my first two conference papers could have been better, but that doesn't stop new journals spamming me with offers to publish my work. This morning I received two emails from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of Communication and Computer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidpublishing.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.davidpublishing.com/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International Journal of Advanced Computer Science (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ijpg.org/index.php/IJACSci&quot;&gt;http://ijpg.org/index.php/IJACSci&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is clearly spam, they know nothing about my research area or they wouldn't be asking me, and my first reaction is to not waste my time reformatting work that I've already done. But am I missing something here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel that publishing in these general purpose repositories dilutes the (our!) publishing model and makes it harder to find related research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is, if anything, being done about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6492" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T02:46:40.453" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T02:46:40.453" Title="What can/should be done about journals that spam potential contributors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;spam&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:52:53.377" Score="8" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new faculty member at a medium-sized liberal arts university that focuses on undergraduate education.  I have recently been contacted by the university public relations representative and he would like to set up a meeting to meet with me and talk about what I am doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recognize that this is a good opportunity to get exposure for me and my lab so I want to make the most of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I prepare/present to the university public relations representative for this type of informal meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: As background, I am brand new at the university so I have just begun developing my research and teaching here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T06:25:06.027" Title="What should new faculty focus on when meeting with the university public relations representative?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:41:37.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some years ago Thomson Reuters decided to drop Proceedings from their regular citation index list and start a separate proceedings index. This caused a lot of problems for journals that published papers from meetings but where the review procedure was as stringent as in a regular journal. I guess Thomson Reuters thinking was that proceedings would be lower quality in general. The solution to the problem for one particular journal (that did not have any wordings in its title that referred to proceedings) was to state in the journal &quot;selected papers from the 'so-and-so' meeting&quot;. It would then pass as a proper journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how the proceedings index faired but obviosuly this meant that many journals were dropped from the index and they were thus not resulting in impact factors any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the point of Thomson Reuters, they wanted to separate possible lower quality proceedings journals from higher quality refereed journals and create a separate index for the proceedings. What the main reason for this was in unclear since it struck both higher and lower quality journals without distinction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I must admit I feel awkward using high and low quality in this reply but think of it as a relative term)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T14:41:37.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8915" CreationDate="2013-03-27T15:30:36.977" Score="39" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what is, if anything, being done about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ignore them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you are not missing anything.  These journals are scams, not serious scientific literature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to publish a longer version of your conference paper, send it to one of the journals that your paper cites, or at least to a journal where you recognize a significant fraction of the editorial board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, trying to &quot;doing something about&quot; these scammers is as futile as &quot;doing something about&quot; fake email quota warnings, diploma mills, exiled Nigerian princes, international email lotteries, and three-card monte.  Set up your mail program to blacklist their emails if you can, but then move on with your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T15:30:36.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-27T15:38:24.897" Score="0" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose one has published his results in a journal, then uses them in his dissertation, is it legal or duplicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if one tend to publish some important results in his dissertation to a journal, is it legal or duplicate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know to publish same results in two journals is duplicate, but what about it between dissertation and a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1064" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T16:37:22.517" Title="Legal or duplicate to publish results in both dissertation and journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-03-27T23:03:59.360" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8897" CreationDate="2013-03-27T15:57:14.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, you are generally not allowed to use department funds for membership dues. However, some societies allow discounted membership for the remainder of the year (sometimes, even free) if you register for one of their flagship conferences (usually the spring/summer conference), especially if you're a student or an early career scientist. The registration charges can be easily paid via grants/department funding and you just need to fork up the rest yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done this successfully for a few years now (with the department's knowledge). I do not know what ramifications this might have as to the &quot;continuity of membership&quot;. In other words, I'm not sure if they count the past six years as a single block from 2007–2013 (i.e. member for 6 yrs) or six blocks of memberships ranging from between 6–10 months each. At this point in my career, I do not care for length of membership (it really doesn't count for squat), but I can imagine that if you're a senior researcher, the length might matter if you're being reviewed for possible election to the Fellowship of the society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T15:57:14.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8920" CreationDate="2013-03-27T15:57:50.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First it is important to state whether a thesis is published or not. In some countries theses are formaly published under an ISSN and ISBN number, in others it is a pile of printed paper that is seen by a very few. I am sure anything between these etxremes exist as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a published paper and need to put it into your thesis, either as a reproduction of the printed version (the pdf from the jorunal) or you reset the final revised manuscript, you defintely must get permission from whoever holds the copyright. This could be author and publisher or publisher only, it varies between journals. The reason why the copyright applies also to re-typeset manuscripts is because the copyright covers any corrections the copyright holder has made to the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, I doubt many publishers care, but on the other hand it never hurts to get the permission in writing. since a thesis is usually published in very few copies, it usually is not a problem. But, if the thesis is also freely available as a pdf it may again be questionable and a too obvious infringement on copyrights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part is quite tricky, is it a duplication to publish both in a thesis and a journal. If the thesis is an official  publication, then yes it would be a duplication per definition. I know some journals are very strict about these things. To be more pragmatic, I wold say that it depends on how the thesis is distributed. If it is printed in a very small number and not freely available as a pdf then publishing in a journal should be possible. But I am sure this can be controversial and no consensus exists as to what is a reasonable middle way. In my field, manuscriprs are published in a thesis with ISBN and ISSN numbers (printed in about 200-3000 copies) but not available as pdf. These manuscripts are then later improved and sent off to journals. I think journals in general tend to turn a blind eye to the cases where thesis materials are recirculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T16:37:22.517" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T16:37:22.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T18:50:07.597" Score="30" ViewCount="1887" Body="&lt;p&gt;En route to academia, are professional society memberships useful? So far, I feel like I have been paying ~$100/year for a few societies (with student discounts), just to receive copies of their monthly magazines that I only end up skimming over once. I get tons of emails that are vaguely aimed towards keeping people up to date with current research, but one can do that by reading papers anyways. So I don't really see a point to being a member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody else feel this way? Are there actual benefits to being a member for societies like these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:46:18.343" Title="How useful are professional society memberships?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8923" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:21:25.390" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my area, (computing and information science) there are 2 primary professional organizations that one is a member of. The first is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt; and the second is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/index.html&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own context as a graduate student, there are 2 major reasons why someone is a member of ACM or IEEE or both as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives me access anytime, anywhere to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/index.html&quot;&gt;ACM Digital Library&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/guesthome.jsp&quot;&gt;IEEE Digital Library&lt;/a&gt;. This is important because it allows me 365 x 7 x 24 access to papers and citations and references in my own area of work that are very relevant and important for me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It reduces the cost of attending conferences (sometimes by 15-25%) whether one is presenting a paper or poster or not (even though the culture in our area is that the adviser pays for conference attending funds but its good to reduce his/her financial burden).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third, ancillary reason is that you can create your own Author webpages on these websites which is a good supporting place for listing your publications since they appear automatically in your author webpage once you publish and also tracks citations and references to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there are no other practical reasons for being a member of these two organizations. Of course, this may and probably will differ from discipline to discipline but I just wanted to point out the reasons for being a member of professional organizations in my research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T19:21:25.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8923" CreationDate="2013-03-27T21:32:24.143" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the individual benefits they offer (subscriptions, electronic journal access, discounts, the possibility of distinguished or honorary grades of membership, etc.), professional organizations also contribute to the research community more broadly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They organize conferences, publish journals, and support other activities, for example in employment, education, outreach, and public awareness.  The academic community would be very different without these services, many of which need financial support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They represent their field to the outside world, such as government funding agencies, and make the case for its importance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They intervene in crises.  For example, when the University of Rochester abruptly decided to cancel its graduate program in mathematics in 1995, the American Mathematical Society helped coordinate a very effective response, which led to the program's reinstatement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They monitor the health of the field and help members address any concerns (for example, by investigating ethical complaints).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They help shape how the field is viewed within academia, through publicity, prizes, leadership positions, invited lectures, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Membership dues help pay for these activities, which are also more effective when the organization represents a large fraction of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody has an obligation to belong to any particular organization, but it's a simple and valuable way to support the field as a whole.  I'd recommend that every grad student join a couple of professional societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T21:32:24.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1260" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:54:01.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I  agree that the more practical working experience you have, the more useful your MBA studies will be. That being said, the purpose of the MBA and the related timing will also be important. I assume you want this MBA to further your career (move outside of the technical/engineering side of your work and into management, marketing, etc.). If you think the MBA is going to help you do that and you want to move into the business side sooner rather than later in your career then it might be advantageous start the MBA sooner, especially since your undergraduate degree is non-business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the school I imagine, but when I did an MBA all of the students with non-business undergraduate degrees had to take a set of core business courses before being allowed to proceed on with MBA courses. If you were working during the day and going to school at night I imagine this would add some time to your total time in the program, so getting started early might be a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you have to pass a test to get into the MBA program (GMAT, etc.) then taking that soon after you graduate might be advantageous as you are still kind of in the &quot;study mode&quot; of school and preparing for the test will be simpler than if you let years go by without having taken an exam. You should check, but I believe the GMAT is good for X number of years after you take it so if you pass it early after graduating you can still wait a while before actually applying. You say you want to go to a top level school as well, so I imagine a high score on this test will also be important. Starting early if you think it will take a few tries to get that high mark would also be smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6494" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T23:54:01.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8923" CreationDate="2013-03-28T05:19:29.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give for receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a member of a professional society you can contribute, create projects, connect/meet people, improve skills, etc. In the other hand you can get/receive benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professional prestige&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;international spot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professional collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;economic (commissions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;training/organizing for events/congresses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;society funding projects (graduate courses, infrastructure improvement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usefulness of a professional society membership depends on your personal interests, society capabilities and is harvested with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6498" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T05:19:29.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8916" CreationDate="2013-03-28T06:25:06.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you should focus on: think through what of your work might be of broader interest to the public.  Is your research interesting and on timely topics that the public cares about?  If so, be ready talk about that.  Are you innovating in teaching in a way that might be of interest to the public (maybe, teaching an unusually large class; teaching a MOOC; teaching a topic of broad interest; trying some innovative new experiment)?  If so, be ready to talk about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not plan on giving a talk.  Don't rattle on.  The PR rep will ask questions and ask for more details.  But be prepared to give a few highlights (a few sentences) on one or more areas like this, if they might be of broader interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have anything that might be of broad public interest, that's fine, too.  Go in to the meeting preparing to learn something from the PR rep, rather than the other way around.  Ask them to give you a brief tutorial on how to interact with the press.  If you're interested in it, ask whether they have a media relations training program.  Meet the person, and treat it as a networking opportunity to build a relationship you might use someday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall: Don't overprepare.  It's not worth spending a lot of time preparing in advance for this one.  Go into the meeting, see how the PR rep can help you and how you can help your university, and move on to something else in your busy life as a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T06:25:06.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-28T08:42:59.823" Score="107" ViewCount="14585" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem is the following: I teach  an honors course in an engineering discipline at a small university. (It is not exactly that, but &quot;teaching an honors course&quot; is a good approximation to what I do). Large US companies sometimes ask me to recommend the best students for an interview, and they are often hired. The policy of the University in general is that it doesn't discriminate on political opinions or religious beliefs or anything of that sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have a student who is a very nice person and has a great academic record but he supports an ideology that many would find abhorrent. (Again, this doesn't mean he is a bad person. For example, the famous mathematician and Fields Medalist Stephen Smale supported Stalinist communism in his youth, in reaction to unjust practices in the US:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200011/rev-kirby.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/200011/rev-kirby.pdf&lt;/a&gt;   ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I recommend him, I think there's a reasonable chance he gets hired because he's pretty good in technical matters. But then I think he might really get into problems there because he supports his &quot;bad&quot; ideology in a rather ostentatious manner, and I'm afraid that this will reflect badly on me and on my ability to recommend other students. I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of employees would be hostile to his ideology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind you, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second to give him a recommendation for graduate study, people are usually much more understanding of that sort of stuff in academia, and the only person he really would have to please in that case is his advisor, and if the student's research is good, the advisor would probably forget about all the rest. But working in the industry necessitates interaction with a lot of people, and I think his ideological views may cause problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think I should do ? Recommend him or not ? If I don't, I feel it would be a kind of betrayal; especially since he wouldn't even know why he's not getting the interview some people less qualified than him are getting. I also have the impression I'm not the only one to have this issue with him, as he has been already &quot;overlooked&quot; for several positions where less qualified people succeeded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6480" LastEditorUserId="6552" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T21:58:23.697" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T11:09:16.830" Title="Should I recommend a student with a bad ideology?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="20" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T09:00:25.027" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommendations are an inherently subjective practice: people are free to support whomever they choose (or not to support, as the case may be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not feel that you can give someone a positive recommendation for any reason, then you are better off not doing so. If you believe that giving a positive recommendation to a candidate will damage your credibility, that of itself, I believe, is sufficient reason not to recommend someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if a company asks you simply to list, for instance, the top &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; students in your course, then you should not omit someone from that list for personal reasons; then the onus is on the company to decide who they want. Your job is to provide the objective information the company asked for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:00:25.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T09:32:47.597" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find your question very intriguing. I have never had a problem of this magnitude but are frequently asked to write letters of recommendation and sometimes for people who I do not think are very capable and so the conundrum is there, what do you do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asked to rate people for a job where their academic merits are what counts then I think it is pretty clear that you cannot omit this person. After all, what if you recommend someone who has similar ideas but that you do not know about? The question becomes somewhat philosophical in the sense that it becomes: who's responsibility is it? Yours or the company's that hire the person? And add to that, where do you draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not? Other's may set different limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the job involves tasks were the ideology might be key to the company the situation is of course worse and then it may become necessary to state the facts. But again, it is loose grounds on which we move and tactfulness is paramount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asked to write a letter of recommendation, you can of course deny based on whatever grounds (you can come up with). It is also possible to make subtle points through what you do not say in a letter. Whether such points are picked up on th eother side is difficult to say of course. But it would be possible to stress that &quot;&lt;em&gt;academically&lt;/em&gt; the person is very good&quot; and other points along the same lines, circumventing the parts that are not something you endorse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:32:47.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8460" CreationDate="2013-03-28T09:33:21.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem most students are facing is &lt;strong&gt;too much information on the net&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your assignment for them is to figure out the &lt;em&gt;Impact of 2008 financial crisis to GM&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they google for &quot;2008 financial crisis GM&quot;, they would get about 4,030,000 results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one on the list is, &lt;em&gt;Scholarly articles for financial crisis 2008 GM&lt;/em&gt;. If you click on that, you get 300,200 results. Do you expect them to read through all of them? I don't believe so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe most undergrad student today do know how to search. But, they may have trouble with filtering them out because of the large volume of info they get on Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to help them, you need to figure out how much time it would take them to find the info you want them to find, assuming they would do the search themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you need to do the homework first. Pretend you know nothing about the subject. Search on the net. Find the info yourself. If you can do it in a reasonable time, then you can expect them to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example above, I cannot find the document you want me to find in a reasonable time frame unless you tell me specificly what you are after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line you want really depends on the assignment and student's willingness to learn. I don't think typing keywords is a problem, how to choose keywords and what to do after the search are what's troubling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:33:21.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8923" CreationDate="2013-03-28T09:46:18.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might sound controversial to some but my understanding of it all is that the whole society concept is a bit outdated. I have a feeling that most of those organizations or societies have older roots and try to live on the reputation of what it once was. In my own field I don't know a single person who's a member of the national/regional/global organization. I know some who used to be, though... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only benefits I have figured out so far are discounts on journals, conferences and in some specific cases travel grants for younger scientists. The &quot;problem&quot; here is that the first two never really mattered much, in my experience. I don't know how it is at other institutes but we normally get access to a wide variety of journals via the university library network (in other words, I never had any reason to subscribe to journals) and likewise we are required to apply to travel grants in order to go to conferences, so having some percent discount does not make a huge difference (we either get the money to go to the conference, or we don't). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To refer to some of the points mentioned: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as I mentioned in a comment to Shion's answer, providing access to relevant literature should be a responsibility of the department/university/research institute. It is such a fundamental part of the work so that not having access to literature would be a service-professional not getting a hammer/screwdriver from his employer. Access to literature is as much of a vital tool for us as a chisel might be for a carpenter..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;some of the other benefits, such as representation towards policy makers, could be extremely region-dependent. For instance; as a European resident, I see absolutely no reason to be a member of ACS, which is one of the biggest societies relevant to my line of work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;organizations/societies do organize conferences but you still have to pay to attend, plus I have yet to come across a society-exclusive conference so far. Note that I do not dismiss the possibility, but rather stress how uncommon it is. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, I do not advocate that societies are useless. I only suggest that given the meager salaries we get as grad students, I think you can come  up with better use of the money that would have been spent on the membership fee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T09:46:18.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:06:23.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although aeismail's answer is excellent, I will add my opinion that if the student's ideology would cause problems in the work (as implied) that is also a good reason NOT to recommend the student as it means the student would contribute negatively and would harm the company (harm team spirit or other group dynamics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you recommend someone who you could foresee having a negative impact on the company, then your reputation would naturally suffer (rightfully so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes more than just good technical understanding to work well in a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T10:06:23.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:12:55.940" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an adherent of Objectivism (an ideology I'm sure many many academics would consider &quot;bad&quot;), I never had a problem with this kind of issue because I am not ostentatious about my beliefs, or the kind of person David Brin would call a &quot;lapel grabber.&quot; It sounds like this student either is not aware or does not care that his manner of touting his beliefs makes others feel uncomfortable and alienated from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the hard part: whether you write the recommendation or not, for the student's own sake, I suggest that you bring up this issue to him. He may decide to throw it back in your face (a pretty likely outcome if he's really in the grips of a true believer phase), but he can only benefit from hearing that his methods of pushing his beliefs are holding him back professionally and socially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6501" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T10:12:55.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:13:29.857" Score="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated in the other answers, no-one can coerce you to provide a recommendation, you are free to not recommend a student for any reason you choose, or no reason at all - if you are not comfortable recommending this student, then don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from your description, I would suggest that it's not the ideology at issue, but the student's interpersonal skills. I guarantee you that I have opinions that you would find absolutely abhorrent, and you have opinions that I would likewise. The point is that in a professional context we usually have the good sense to keep these things to ourselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear what your opinion of the student, and their suitability for the role, actually is. If you think that the way he expresses his ideology interferes with his ability do the job well, or his ideological standing is in some way relevant to the job at hand, then there is no conflict here. (For example, a raving misogynist would be completely inappropriate in a supervisory position.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that he nevertheless really would be an asset to the company, then you can either (i) informally suggest to your contact: &quot;Here is a brilliant student who will produce technically excellent work, but be careful; he has a bit of a problem with appropriate boundaries at work.&quot; and/or (ii) write a letter that expresses his technical skills and omits any mention of personality or social skills. The omission will be  loud and clear. In the end, it is up to the company to decide if the tradeoff is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6502" LastEditorUserId="5670" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T03:03:23.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T03:03:23.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:22:48.047" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different levels of ideologist people. When I was a graduate student, I had friends from other religions and I had very close friendships with them, and on the other extreme, I had a classmate from the same religion as I had at the time, but I did not feel safe around him and I usually avoided any discussions with him. So I think an individual should not be judged only based on his political or religious point of view. Here the important issue is what that person is capable or willing to do because of his ideology. Is he an extremist? Is he an activist who is connected with questionable organizations? Does he have a criminal record? Is he bothering people with comments or discussions coming from his ideology? Is his actions (and his productivity) in the workplace is affected by his ideology? If I have seen one of these issues (or similar issues), I'll think twice about writing recommendation letter for him. Otherwise, I simply ignore his ideology. After all, the company is going to interview him and it is interviewers job to find out if he is a good fit for their organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to respectfully disagree with you about one thing you mentioned in your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;people are usually much more understanding of that sort of stuff in academia...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what your experience is in academia, but I have several very bad experiences about being judged in academia because of my point of view, my nationality, my religion, my personality, even because of my very personal issues like being single. On the contrary, I have worked and had several interviews with non-academic organizations and I have never seen such prejudices in these organizations. The reason is very simple. In business people are trying to make money and as long as you (as an employee) can help the organization to make money you are accepted and nobody cares what your ideology (race, religion, etc) is. But, in academia, money or advancement is not the first priority, and certain people can impose their will against &lt;strong&gt;&quot;officially accepted&quot; academic goals&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore it is easy to be judged in academia just because you think differently. Ironically, the fact that you have recognized this student as a person with a bad ideology shows that in academia people notice and judge people based on their ideology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T16:38:19.900" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T16:38:19.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:32:43.413" Score="52" ViewCount="63101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of getting my M.S. in Computer Science. I chose C.S. because I enjoy programming and because its a solid choice, career wise.  Low unemployment, good pay, all that jazz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my real passions has always been math and lately I have been thinking about swapping and going for my graduate degree in Math. If I went the math route I would probably go full PhD (since I don't think there is much you can do with just a Masters in math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as much as I love math, I can't see myself being a math teacher. I would want to work in research or industry, applying math to solve real world problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of non-academic jobs are there for someone with a PhD in math (or what is the best resource to see what jobs are out there)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4234" LastEditorUserId="4234" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T09:41:49.227" LastActivityDate="2020-10-19T15:22:14.500" Title="Non academic career options for PhD in Math" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:39:05.933" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think for an appropriate answer I'd need to know exactly what the 'bad' ideology is. If it is something that could potentially be illegal or criminal, then the answer is clearly: don't recommend this person. However, if the ideology is something that is political, religious, or otherwise legal, you really can't bar this person simply because you don't agree with their allegedly 'bad' ideology.&#xA;I'd even go so far as to say, if you don't recommend this person on the basis that they 'hate gays' or support socialism, you might be legally considered to be discriminating against this person.&#xA;Ultimately, be subjective about this students work and objective about their qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6505" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T10:39:05.933" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8939" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:40:20.030" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certain branches of applied mathematics look very promising regarding the job market. For example financial mathematics. However there are also companies which are interested in hiring pure mathematicians to work on real world problems. As an instance, I suggest you look at the web site of &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinktankmaths.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ThinkTank Maths&lt;/a&gt;. Their webpage for &lt;a href=&quot;https://thinktankmaths.com/join/mathematicians/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mathematician - Mathematical Researcher&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are particularly interested in applicants with highly abstract or pure mathematical backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="21026" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T12:51:11.983" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T12:51:11.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T11:38:15.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can't recommend him whole-heartedly, don't recommend him.  A lukewarm recommendation will be damaging for him and raise questions about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6508" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T11:38:15.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T11:45:55.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should try and figure out what your &lt;strong&gt;primary&lt;/strong&gt; concern is; to protect your (former?) student from a potentially hostile work environment OR to protect your reputation towards companies that you have been in contact with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you are primarily concerned about how the student would feel going into an environment that might turn out to be hostile towards him/her, just try to explain that his way of thinking, his belief... might not be appreciated and indeed might create tension in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's the latter, in other words if you are concerned about whether or not your reputation would be effected negatively; then I think you should not recommend a person that will likely not be appreciated by peers and employers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet again another perspective to this is whether or not you can distance yourself from the candidate in question. I mean if company A comes to you and asks whether or not you have any talented student, you can recommend whoever, given that their academic/intellectual merits are top-notch. In that case I don't think you would be liable for any personality traits and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student wants a recommendation towards a specific company, then by giving that recommendation you essentially vouch for that person. If you don't think the student is a good fit for the company/institute, you should not recommend him/her obviously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if my answer is a bit too vague, I feel I used too many &quot;if&quot;s there, but in my defense the question is pretty vague as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T11:45:55.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T12:33:32.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as you will send the recommendation letter directly to the companies, can't you simply warn about this concern in your letter? &#xA;Then it is their responsibility to talk about it with your student, during the interview; and to decide if his positions and attitude is acceptable to them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6511" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:33:32.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T12:35:11.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion recommend him. Whatever his ideology, for you he is a best student and as per the university norms and your academical valuation he is eligible. So let him live his own life. by not recommending you cant help him to escape from &quot;same situations&quot; in future. May be he will change when he get into the work environment. The college life and professional life is different in my perspective. may be he will adapt with the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6512" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:35:11.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T12:38:43.993" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question, you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Large US companies sometimes ask me to recommend the best students for an interview, and they are often hired.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to underline the words &quot;&lt;em&gt;for an interview&lt;/em&gt;&quot; here.  It doesn't look like the companies you're recommending these students for are just blindly hiring them based on your recommendation alone, &lt;em&gt;and that's a very good thing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really is the interviewers' job to filter out candidates with unsuitable attitudes or insufficient interpersonal skills &amp;mdash; that's the point of having an in-person job interview, rather than just hiring the candidate based on their CV and maybe an e-mail quiz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, it's possible that the student you're concerned about may try to be on their best behavior during the interview and downplay any problematic aspects of their personality &amp;mdash; most people do, after all.  But that's something any reasonably experience interviewer will know to account for.&#xA;Also, if the student has enough self-awareness to know that they may want to downplay their ideology during the interview, they'll hopefully also be smart enough not to flaunt it excessively in the workplace either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And conversely, this also comes down to &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; personal preferences regarding their work environment as well &amp;mdash; if they don't feel they can be comfortable at a job where they cannot openly profess their ideology, to the extent they feel they need to, then it's unlikely that they would &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; suppress any mention of it at the interview, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not, well, I would hope that the company also has a trial period for new hires.  Most do, precisely because there are some workplace issues which may not always be caught at the interview stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming at the question from another direction, it looks like your main &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; concern here is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm afraid that this will reflect badly on me and on my ability to recommend other students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much doubt that will be the case, unless you're actually being asked to personally vouch for the suitability of each recommended student to the job &amp;mdash; a rather heavy and unusual responsibility for someone not actually working for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that you don't say anything untrue in your recommendations: if a student is lazy, don't call them hardworking, and if they are abrasive and prone to conflicts with others, don't say they're a great team player.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd suggest just writing up a fair recommendation of this student, focusing on their technical skills and any other aspect where they actually excel, and leaving those areas where they do not unmentioned.  In particular, if you're not &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; the student's personality would be a good fit for the company, you can just explicitly recommend the student &lt;em&gt;for an interview&lt;/em&gt; at the company based on their technical skills, with an implied &quot;just talk to this guy and see if you want him or not.&quot;  Who knows, the company might be just fine with his attitude, or at least might have a slot for him where he can exercise his technical skills without it interfering too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, it's different if you're just being asked to send a list of names.  But in that case, the company is definitely accepting the full responsibility for evaluating the candidates anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:38:43.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T12:41:06.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly there should be a means to describe emotional intelligence in people and elements like violent or hateful ideologies should be part of that profile.&#xA;As to your immediate dilemma, I think you should make it open information in a draft format and give the student a chance to respond.&#xA;I think its very important to make this sort of information available &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4162" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:41:06.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8965" CreationDate="2013-03-28T14:25:31.920" Score="15" ViewCount="18374" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is closely related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/how-to-cite-a-website-url&quot;&gt;How should I cite a website URL?&lt;/a&gt; but more concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my master thesis. In the section &quot;related work&quot; I give an overview which also includes concrete products (normally software). Usually there is no academic paper published about this work and often there is only a product homepage, a git hub repository or a manual available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, if at all, should I cite this &quot;products&quot;? I thought about adding the URL just after the name of the product, adding it as a footnote, cite it as usual with a MISC BibTeX entry or not mentioning a URL at all (usually they are easy to find with Google). I'm a bit worried too blow up my bibliography to much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give a few examples to stay concrete, my thesis is about a pattern matching algorithm (well, very simplified) so I want to show tools that help programmers with writing regex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The software RegexBuddy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regexbuddy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.regexbuddy.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The online tool RegExr (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gskinner.com/RegExr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://gskinner.com/RegExr/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Statically Checked Regex (a software artifact) in the Git Hub repository &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/retronym/macrocosm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/retronym/macrocosm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The function ctRegex in std.regex (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dlang.org/phobos/std_regex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dlang.org/phobos/std_regex.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please also please also answer if it's OK to include a lot of citations (around 20) to mention this products although the text is only around one page, respective one sub chapter (in a work that is expected to have something around 100 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6514" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T17:31:31.257" Title="How should I cite products?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T14:27:35.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your only worry is a possible negative reflection on your judgement, I suggest a recommendation mentioning the students Ideology and his eagerness to share it. I'm sure the recipient will be thankful, because he won't miss out on a qualified candidate and can decide to assume him and handle the situation according to his best knowledge and/or the companies possibilities. Nowadays more companies than one would think have professional coaching services for their employees!&#xA;Hope you will recommend him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6518" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T17:01:58.350" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T17:01:58.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3613" CreationDate="2013-03-28T15:07:27.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the humanities, at least, websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; are useful for following research trends and for connecting (and &quot;following&quot;) the work of others. I've found it especially useful both for meeting folks with similar interests, and, when I've presented in or organized panels at conferences, for putting a face to someone's name while also seeing what else they get into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6523" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T15:07:27.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T15:10:25.680" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have to ask yourself this question says to me that you should not recommend him...At this time.  Being a teacher of any sorts has many responsibilities beyond the conveying of the subject matter of your class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think this person has potential, I believe you have a responsibility to approach him on this matter.  Try to keep your own feelings on his &quot;belief system&quot; out of it and focus on the issues with his interpersonal skills.  Perhaps recommend a course or book that would help him improve in this area.  This world needs good minds now more than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T15:10:25.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T15:28:13.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main question here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is he doing something against the law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If NOT then judge him &lt;strong&gt;based on the field merit&lt;/strong&gt; nothing more nothing less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really hate it when academics judge students based on their ideology/race/religion..etc.&#xA;Academia is diverse; you will see different students from different cultures, now If you feel uncomfortable with one culture/ideology, then do not let that affect your fairness to the students. If I were you, I can't let my believe in an ideology affects supporting my brilliant student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T15:28:13.017" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T15:35:15.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think he/she deserves being recommended, then do it. And don't be afraid of putting into your recommendation any peculiarities this person might have that you think are of interest to whom the recommendation is addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I'd rather &quot;warn&quot; people at a slaughterhouse that the candidate is a vegan activist than either send a blind letter of recommendation or not sending it at all. Of course assuming the person fits the job and is recommendable &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you think that kind of warning might avoid future problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you treasure that person, then you want a good &lt;em&gt;lasting&lt;/em&gt; position for her/him. Sending a recommendation that you think it will be misleading, will not have any benefit for your referee. If anything try to express why this peculiarity will not be a problem or even beneficial. &#xA;If you don't think it will... then don't recommend him/her at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6525" LastEditorUserId="6525" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T11:09:16.830" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T11:09:16.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8939" CreationDate="2013-03-28T15:35:16.813" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the kind of mathematics you do. For example, if your work involved probability/statistics, or even certain kinds of topology, you could get a job at pretty much any tech company doing machine learning. If you were doing stochastics, then Wall street will beckon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Ph.D has a computational side to it (say in numerical methods for example) the national labs in the US are interested in your expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on and so forth. The fact that you're doing an MS in Computer science makes your profile look even stronger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this might be viewed as a strongly biased suggestion, you might consider a Ph.D in Computer Science: there are many parts of computer science that are all mathematics, and you'd get to do what you love, as well as getting the CS branding that will make getting an industry job way easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T15:35:16.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8948" CreationDate="2013-03-28T16:03:20.803" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not cite standard office software (e.g. Word, Excel) or programming&#xA;  languages. Provide references only for specialized software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Ludwig, T. (2002). PsychInquiry [computer software]. New York: Worth.`&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Software that is downloaded from a Web site should provide the&#xA;  software’s version and year when available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Hayes, B., Tesar, B., &amp;amp; Zuraw, K. (2003). OTSoft: Optimality Theory&#xA;    Software (Version 2.1) [Software]. Available from&#xA;    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IEEE style is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cite/ieee/ieee_swarea.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;almost identical&lt;/a&gt;. (I'd reproduce it here, but it's in a stupid flash file which doesn't support copy/paste.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I notice that you cited software for parsing and understanding regular expressions. While there is no official rule that I know of for acknowledging software, it is typically only used for software crucial to the development efforts (i.e., an analysis tool). To bring a somewhat extreme example, while everyone uses some form of operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux), no one cites their operating system. Recall the purpose of citations; to enable others to understand your frame of reference and replicate your work. You should only cite tools that are specialized to your research that others would need to continue your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I've seen many neuroscience papers where some software is listed but not cited (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001267#article1.body1.sec4.sec6.p1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Matlab reference here&lt;/a&gt;). This is typically done for tools developed outside of an academic environment. Here, Matlab is a non-academic commercial, but both SPM and Fieldtrip were developed using grant money, and both specify exactly how they should be cited in publications (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fieldtrip&lt;/a&gt;; I can't find SPM's now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2017-11-27T17:31:31.257" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T17:31:31.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8958" CreationDate="2013-03-28T16:44:14.383" Score="7" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;The referencing style I am using for online newspaper articles is thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Karlsen, T.-K. (2013) For scouts, the South American youth tournament is hard slog, not high life. Guardian [Online] 28 January. Available at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/mar/28/scout-south-american-youth-championship-football&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/mar/28/scout-south-american-youth-championship-football&lt;/a&gt; [Accessed on 28/03/2013]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do I reference an article with no obvious author? For example, this is posted on the news website Balkan Insight, but has no author. So far I've been including Balkan Insight where the author name is, but also where the publication name is - i.e. where 'Karlsen' and 'Guardian' are in the previous example. And putting the in-text reference as Balkan Insight (2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4012" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T17:02:26.333" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T17:50:37.217" Title="How is an online article referenced if there is no obvious author?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8957" CreationDate="2013-03-28T17:08:46.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably several answers depending on the situation and on the standards in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First there are papers published in journals with no authors that are referenced as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anonymous, yyyy. Paper title ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases an organization can be the author. this is true for, for example, governmental organizations, NGO's etc. In these cases the publications are offically published. References would be listed under the organization (often abbreviated) such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WMO (World Meteorological Organization), yyyy. Publication title ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reference online material is always a bit more complicated but I guess the anonymous author can be used and the source organization listed as the &quot;Publisher&quot; such as the &lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; in your example. The point is that the source is known but not the author. If you have a lot of these sources there will of course be many &quot;anomymous&quot; floating around in th etext and reference list which may be awkward. In such a case you may consider using the organization as author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T17:08:46.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8961" CreationDate="2013-03-28T20:57:29.030" Score="63" ViewCount="6523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student with, so far, one published article in a peer-reviewed journal.  Since the article came out, I've been receiving increasing amounts of &quot;academic e-mail spam&quot; from people wanting me to attend their conferences, publish in their (usually pay-to-publish) journals or order research supplies from them.  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(The latter kind tend to be the easiest to filter out &amp;mdash; even though my field is &lt;i&gt;bio&lt;/i&gt;mathematics, it doesn't mean I have any use for frozen mouse embryos whatsoever.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, an e-mail turned up asking me to review a manuscript, conveniently attached to the message, for a pay-to-publish open access journal in a somewhat related field.  Googling for the name of the publisher, I found them described as e.g. &quot;a borderline vanity press&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time, I wasn't really sure how to react.  On one hand, I could think of several reasons to just go ahead and review the manuscript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main complaint about the publisher seems to be that their peer review is insufficient &amp;mdash; a claim supported by the fact that they seem to be picking random grad students as reviewers.  Still, given that they're at least making &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; effort at peer review, surely I should encourage them in that?  After all, if nobody agreed to review manuscripts for them, how could they ever improve their review process?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Declining to review the manuscript might deprive the authors &amp;mdash; who, if the journal is indeed a &quot;scam&quot;, are presumably the victims here &amp;mdash; of useful feedback.  Surely they at least deserve that much return for their time, efforts and money?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the manuscript did get published in a scientific journal, no matter how dubious or marginal, it would enter the body of scientific knowledge, and might be used as a reference by others.  Given that, surely it is my duty as a scientist to try, given the opportunity, to do what I can to ensure that it is at least correct?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, despite these arguments, I initially found the idea of willingly &lt;em&gt;responding to spam&lt;/em&gt; to be deeply unsettling at a fundamental, almost visceral level.  Also, I felt concerned that, by doing volunteer work for a possibly unethical publisher, I'd be supporting their business model and perhaps lending them an undeserved appearance of legitimacy.&#xA;In particular, given that the subject of the manuscript wasn't &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; close to my own field, I worried that it might have errors that I would not be capable of spotting, and that, even if I made this clear in my review, the publisher might still use the review to support the publication of a possibly flawed article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: Just to be clear, I wasn't worried that they'd reveal the names of reviewers, just that, even if I was the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; one who sent back a review, they might still use it to claim that &quot;yes, the paper was peer reviewed.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the decision was actually rather easy: after a cursory glance at the manuscript, it became clear that there was &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; I could support its publication as written, especially given that large fragments of it were clearly plagiarized, and I wrote back to the journal stating as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I ever receive a similar request again (and I assume I probably will, sooner or later), what do you think I should do with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:14:30.703" LastActivityDate="2019-09-17T07:55:02.577" Title="Should I accept review requests from dubious journals?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;spam&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8959" CreationDate="2013-03-28T21:18:35.873" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply say &quot;No, I'm too busy at the present time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one will be hurt or offended, and it is not like you'll be lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T11:57:38.790" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T11:57:38.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8959" CreationDate="2013-03-28T21:18:49.517" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no obligation to accept reviews from any journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long term, you should of course accept review tasks, since the review system is built on everyone doing their part in return for the reviews you get on your own papers. But if you think the journal is not serious, there is no need to waste your time on a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem will lie in identifying what is real and what is not. Apart from researching the journal yourself, as you have done, you should also ask more senior scientists of their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Following up on the request for additional input on whether reviewing for dubious journals could be harmful in some way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the greatest risk is that you may provide legitimacy to a journal that is not legitimate. It may be harmful to you if the journal in some way represents, let's say, creationism, in that you may become associated with something you really do not support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see any clear problem for the authors whose paper you review. Their greatest problem, assuming they are common scientists, should be that they submitted it there in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I delete all e-mails with requests from journals I do not know of. I know the journals in my field, and the new serious journals that have sprung up have a firm basis in the community, so they are also &quot;known&quot;. I do check on some of these unknown journals occasionally, out of curiosity, and I particularly check the sort of papers they publish and the editors of the journal. That usually tells me if the journal is of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these journals may be legitimate, but they end up being extremely narrow regionally in terms of the origin of their authors and editors, and thus probably also their readership. A new journal is a difficult thing to get accepted unless you start with a wide base in the community, so some of these journals may be very legitimate but still have to prove themselves somehow. The problem is how to distinguish good from bad, and that is truly not easy in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T16:11:07.403" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T16:11:07.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8930" CreationDate="2013-03-28T23:59:02.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supporting an ideology &lt;em&gt;in an ostentatious manner&lt;/em&gt; (rather than privately or discreetly) is a &lt;em&gt;personality&lt;/em&gt; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discrimination based on personality issues is fair game. Personality is relevant to employment and employability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who preaches ideology in the workplace clearly has no idea that ideological fanaticism has no place in the workplace. But that could just be because he is a student without much exposure to that world, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this person is a student and you're the mentor, you can perhaps &quot;fix&quot; this person. Have a meeting and say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, I want to recommend you for some potential employment. You have a great academic record and are qualified. But as your professor, it is my duty to you to also prepare you and all your young colleagues for the so-called &quot;real world&quot;, in whatever little way I can. Now please stop me if I'm telling you anything you already know. What I'm concerned about that your, shall we say, exuberant enthusiasm in supporting Ideology X will create difficulties for you, if you carry it into corporate environment, which is not as tolerant as the academic environment. Modern workplaces have certain rules of conduct in place which rule out promotion of ideologies (including religions) as a form of harassment.  Those rules are not intended to suppress the ideologies themselves, mind you, but only certain &lt;em&gt;behaviors&lt;/em&gt; which lead to an uncomfortable workplace. So if I send some letters of recommendation and those people are interested in working with you, can you keep in mind what I just said? What you ultimately do is up to you, but I'd like to see you, and all of my students, succeed, and therefore I want to warn you of any potential stumbling blocks in your future such as this, okay?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, this can be seen as an opportunity to step into the role of educator/mentor and help the student. You and your institution helped to prepare the student so that he is recommendable for these jobs on technical grounds. (Five years ago, you could not have recommended that student yet, right?) So help the boy with something non-technical for once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the student's fanaticism could just be a phase of youth. A few years down the line, he may well have forgotten all about it. People can experience major ideological shifts in their life. When he owns a big property and a sizeable portfolio of equities, he will perhaps think differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="3900" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T02:45:58.380" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T02:45:58.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8957" CreationDate="2013-03-29T00:08:52.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing online articles without a clear author depends on the citation format. The format you use should have clear guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Harvard Referencing (the most common in my field) if there is a publisher but no clear author then the publisher is considered the author. In your case, Balkin Insight would be the author. Following this, you are doing it properly (according to Harvard Referencing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T00:08:52.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8948" CreationDate="2013-03-29T01:39:09.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just give as much information as you can to uniquely identify and date the product.  To quote one of my own recent papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear Monkey Software. &lt;em&gt;Narbacular Drop.&lt;/em&gt; Video game, 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. &lt;em&gt;Matrix Revolutions.&lt;/em&gt; Warner Bros., 2003. Motion picture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T01:39:09.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8835" CreationDate="2013-03-29T02:15:18.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just start showing up to seminars in other departments. At my university, there are several different email lists that send out &quot;Events this week.&quot; Seek out some talks are interesting and go. Maybe start with closely allied departments (CS, Stats, Physics). Then talk to the speaker if it was interesting, even if it's just to say &quot;Hi, I'm [XYZ] from the department of [ZYX]. I really enjoyed your talk.&quot;If the speaker is internal then all the better, if from off-campus then there will certainly be other local people talking. I've had a blast doing this at talks completely outside of my field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the very best things about being an academic is the sheer number of different interesting things that are happening on a university at any time. Academics are driven by curiosity, and a university is a smorgasbord of things to learn. You say that your research won't lead to collaborations, but you never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to stick your neck out, start an interdisciplinary seminar series. Seek out connections between disparate departments and fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note: junior faculty should avoid committees above the department level if at all possible. Your department should shield you from these responsibilities. Your job right now is getting tenure. Those committees are for those with tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T02:15:18.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8967" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T04:20:20.327" Score="5" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a proposal to acquire funding for a competition to be hosted at my university.  The competitors are restricted to graduate students who are engaged in &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; under the auspicies of a faculty advisor from my university.  In the process of making my proposal more clear and precise, I find myself struggling with the problem of defining what exactly is (and more importantly, what &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt;) research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I equated &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;publishable&lt;/em&gt; in a peer reviewed journal, but I soon realized that the terms &lt;em&gt;publishable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;peer reviewed&lt;/em&gt; would have to be defined... And even if I do that, then I would have to define the words that I used to define those words, et cetera ad nauseam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to approach it the same way I would approach mathematical set theory:  it's either research or it's not, and there should be no room for ambiguity.  But I suspect that any attempt to define &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; this way will certainly either circumscribe or inscribe the set of all things we call research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is necessarily the best way to approach defining what is research, especially for my purposes.  Is there another way I can approach clarifying what constitutes &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to other publishable works in the context of academia?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T14:57:02.543" Title="On the definition of research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8969" CreationDate="2013-03-29T05:13:42.193" Score="13" ViewCount="1092" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any standards in higher education (any country) on when lecturers (any level, any field) have a private office or a shared office?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's a good idea to provide 'consultation time' for students as one-on-one teaching helps the student in so many ways. However, in a shared office it seems that some of the benefits of one-on-one teaching disappear. For example, the student is less likely to be concerned about how they look in front of others if it's in a private office but if there are other teachers (perhaps with other students) then your student will have those issues again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any standards about private vs shared offices for university lecturers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T19:00:32.200" Title="Are Shared Office Common for Lecturers" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-29T05:31:12.030" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're going to find answers all over the map for this one (i.e., there probably aren't &quot;standards&quot;).  I personally like having a private office so I can get the most work done, but I'm generally comfortable with a shared space if it doesn't get too loud.  I have found that it is rare for students to worry about how they perform if they are just trying to get help figuring out the material.  If there are conference rooms or open classrooms available, that's sometimes a good place to tutor students, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I never have closed door meetings with students because that has the potential to lead to allegations of improper relationships, etc.  If a student does have something private to discuss, I'll ask them to take a walk around campus where we are visible but can't be heard, or to go into a conference room that has windows into the hallway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T05:31:12.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9693" CreationDate="2013-03-29T08:06:58.840" Score="10" ViewCount="4473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed Bachelor in IT from a third world country in 2008. I have achieved 49% marks.&#xA;I am 30 and working in a bank.&#xA;Now I want to study MSc in CS in the USA and eventually PhD.&#xA;I believe that this world is not all out for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I prepare myself so that I can improve my chance of admission in post graduate level?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money/GRE/TOEFL/IELTS/Vendor Certification....what should I need?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how can I show that I have potential research capability?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T19:08:13.593" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:23:58.477" Title="As someone with low grades how can I prepare myself to study MSc in CS in USA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2013-03-29T11:07:14.273" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about trying to define research would it help to spcify &quot;Scientific Research&quot;. Since research is a search for new knowledge it is thus a wide term. Since &lt;code&gt;Science&lt;/code&gt; is defined as &quot;the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally explained&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shamelessly stolen from the wiki page for Science&lt;/a&gt;) the word scientific would exclude everything not included in the definition. Or, is there any academic research that does not qualify as science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T11:07:14.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2013-03-29T11:07:31.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For purposes like this, I would define &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; as &lt;strong&gt;loosely, broadly, and generically&lt;/strong&gt; as possible. If your definition is too strict, then you exclude valid efforts, and you will likely be bound by the language in your proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you define research to be &quot;scientific investigation,&quot; then you exclude the humanities. If you define research as &quot;investigative work leading to a peer-reviewed publication or conference presentation,&quot; then you may inadvertently exclude unpublishable and unpublished results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirements of the agency do not specify the need for a definition of research, then do not supply one. If you are writing to an agency that regularly supports research proposals, then there is no need to define research - they know what it is. If you are writing to an atypical funding source, like a business, local government, or charity, then they would probably rather you be inclusive (and thus generic) unless you have specific instructions otherwise. Leave the job of deciding whether an entry is qualified research to the judges of the composition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that you absolutely need a definition, then &quot;investigative work&quot; is probably generic enough. Your institution's Office of the Provost may also have an &quot;official&quot; definition of research for your institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T11:07:31.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8970" CreationDate="2013-03-29T11:08:37.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question, &#xA;TOEFL is a must, GRE would be helpful most of the time, in the US universities, different departments really have a huge variation of admission requirements. &#xA;For instance, some departments in MIT admit students without bothering the GRE scores - as long as they want you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate studies, you need to show your mathematical skills - the fundamental for logical reasoning and calculation. &#xA;The skill for programming - needless to say it is fundamental and essential. &#xA;The skill for doing research - state any related experience, including academic contest, publication, Bachelor thesis, etc...&#xA;Some skill for engineering - highlight some of them, but keep in mind that research comes first when considering the ability for potential academic successes.&#xA;So fill your personal statement( or statement of purposes depending on the university ) with mathematical skills, research experiences while leaving a few place for your best engineering experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And standard test score really varies from time to time and from department to department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to find out the requirement is to visit your dream school's website an call them directly.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6587" LastEditorUserId="6587" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T17:11:40.460" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T17:11:40.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8948" CreationDate="2013-03-29T11:14:03.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The software manufacturer may be willing to provide a few more details, like the lead developer's name(s) and so on for academic purposes. Software written for academics may already have a citation ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gaussian.com/g_tech/g_ur/m_citation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citation for Gaussian 09&lt;/a&gt;. Note that they already have a bibtex starting point also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gaussian 09, Revision A.1, Frisch, M. J.; Trucks, G. W.; Schlegel, H. B.; Scuseria, G. E.; Robb, M. A.; Cheeseman, J. R.; Scalmani, G.; Barone, V.; Mennucci, B.; Petersson, G. A.; Nakatsuji, H.; Caricato, M.; Li, X.; Hratchian, H. P.; Izmaylov, A. F.; Bloino, J.; Zheng, G.; Sonnenberg, J. L.; Hada, M.; Ehara, M.; Toyota, K.; Fukuda, R.; Hasegawa, J.; Ishida, M.; Nakajima, T.; Honda, Y.; Kitao, O.; Nakai, H.; Vreven, T.; Montgomery, Jr., J. A.; Peralta, J. E.; Ogliaro, F.; Bearpark, M.; Heyd, J. J.; Brothers, E.; Kudin, K. N.; Staroverov, V. N.; Kobayashi, R.; Normand, J.; Raghavachari, K.; Rendell, A.; Burant, J. C.; Iyengar, S. S.; Tomasi, J.; Cossi, M.; Rega, N.; Millam, J. M.; Klene, M.; Knox, J. E.; Cross, J. B.; Bakken, V.; Adamo, C.; Jaramillo, J.; Gomperts, R.; Stratmann, R. E.; Yazyev, O.; Austin, A. J.; Cammi, R.; Pomelli, C.; Ochterski, J. W.; Martin, R. L.; Morokuma, K.; Zakrzewski, V. G.; Voth, G. A.; Salvador, P.; Dannenberg, J. J.; Dapprich, S.; Daniels, A. D.; Farkas, Ö.; Foresman, J. B.; Ortiz, J. V.; Cioslowski, J.; Fox, D. J. Gaussian, Inc., Wallingford CT, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T11:14:03.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2013-03-29T12:09:05.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you verified that the definition isn't provided by the competition itself? Typically, there are pretty well-defined guidelines as to who is and is not eligible to apply for a given contest (i.e., &quot;only full-time students&quot;, or &quot;only students currently funded under a research grant&quot;). I would definitely either contact the competition sponsor or check their website to ensure that they haven't already defined what does and does not count as research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T12:09:05.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8981" CreationDate="2013-03-29T14:03:57.163" Score="12" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the case at other institutions but at my university dissertations are published as A5-size books/booklets. There are some regulations on how the formatting is supposed to be but it's pretty relaxed otherwise. Common practice is that the PhD candidate designs the cover themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically these covers feature an image relating to the work the person has done in the lab; a molecule, a graph, a microscopy shot etc. Recently a colleague of mine put a painting of herself on the cover. Just for the sake of clarity, not a painting she's done, but rather a painting of her made by someone else. This has raised some discussion among the younger students, such as myself. Thus I wonder, how much of a personal touch is OK really? Would something like I described above be seen as an ego-thing by a potential employer? I am of the opinion that it might be seen as a lack of modesty or &quot;self-distance&quot; (quotes are there as I am not sure if this expression exists in english).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I being too critical? As it's a multi-cultural international group of academics here, I wonder if there is a consensus regarding such &quot;customization&quot; of the dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T19:10:51.053" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T19:10:51.053" Title="How much of a &quot;personal touch&quot; on dissertation is OK?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-03-29T14:24:11.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, you want as few &quot;personal touches&quot; on your dissertation as possible, as each one will increase time between your submitting it and the university accepting it. There are many places to assert your individuality within the research community (your speaking style, your writing style in your publications, the types of research problems you tackle, your mentoring style), but this is not one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T14:24:11.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7886" CreationDate="2013-03-29T14:35:04.463" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the policy I will try in my course next semester:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Policy for the use of electronic devices&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To promote a better learning environment in my classes, I established this policy of using electronics devices (EDs). Allowing EDs in my classes is a privilege and not a right. That is, until my university establishes its own policy in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDs offer several advantages in my classes. The lectures may be richer and more dynamic, you can perform Internet searches, answer questionnaires given by the teacher to validate comprehension immediately, do exercises with UML tools, take notes in an electronic document, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a less positive side of the use of EDs in a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Several studies on multitasking [1] [2] show that students who focus on a single task in a course to learn more and have better results than their colleagues who work on multiple tasks simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study [3] shows that the time to read a text is greater when responding to text messages during the reading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to surveys at several universities [4] students find laptops distracting during lectures. I have personally received comments in written evaluations for my courses that showed students were disturbed by other students who attended the course with a computer, but who used it to do other tasks during class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Code of conduct&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should minimize the use of EDs for tasks not directly related to the course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must not access (or leave plugged into an electrical outlet) EDs during any kind of evaluation (quiz, exam, etc.), without my permission.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must put your ED in a &quot;silent&quot; mode during the course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must place the screen of your ED to allow eye contact between you and me and other students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must close your ED when I ask, for example when doing team exercises.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Enforcement of the policy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some indicators of possible non-compliance with the policy that are easy to detect and for which I have given several warnings in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A student with his hands between his legs who looks down occasionally, smiling...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many students staring at the a computer screen of a colleague...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A laptop fan running at full speed...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of non-compliance with the policy, I will give you a warning. After a warning, you may lose the privilege of bringing your ED to class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Hembrooke, H., and Gay, G. &quot;The Laptop and the Lecture: The Effects of Multitasking in Learning Environments.&quot; Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 2003, 15 (1), 46-64.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Young, J. R. &quot;The Fight for Classroom Attention: Professor vs.. Laptop. &quot;Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2, 2006, 52 (39), A27.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] L. L. Bowman, L. E. Levine, B. Mr. Waite and Mr. Gendron, &quot;Can students really multitask? An experimental study of instant messaging while reading, &quot;Computers &amp;amp; Education, vol. 54, no. 4, p. 927-931, May 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Joan A. Williams, Helen Berg, Hannah Gerber, Melinda Miller, Donna Cox, Nancy Votteler, Carwile Dixie, and Maggie McGuire, &quot;'I Get Distracted By Their Being Distracted': The Etiquette of Texting In-Class&quot; Eastern Education Journal, vol. 40, no. 1, p. 48-56, 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T14:38:19.507" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T14:38:19.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:19:37.763" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably depends a lot on how things work at your university.  In the cases I'm familiar with (U.S. math departments), there are only four types of people who have an opinion about your dissertation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis commitee, particularly your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The bureaucrat who measures the margins and decides whether your paper is fancy enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Family members and friends who will want to take a look at the nicely bound volume and make polite comments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody else will pay any attention to your dissertation, unless you do an inadequate job of publishing its contents (in which case someone might be forced to look it up), you become very famous (in which case it will be an interesting historical document), or you do something so weird in it that people pass around copies for the amusement or shock value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The painting on the cover might fall into the last category if it looks pompous or strange enough.  However, most personal touches are not a problem if the four groups mentioned above don't care.  Furthermore, the bureaucrat won't care unless you violate a known rule or do something so awful that they feel the need to dig up an obscure rule, and your family doesn't get a vote (you'll just be embarrassed if they think you've done something silly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short answer is &quot;ask your advisor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T15:19:37.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:47:17.523" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are likely to be any standards that address this issue specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwccu.org/index.htm&quot;&gt;Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities&lt;/a&gt;, one of the recognized &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation&quot;&gt;regional accrediting agencies&lt;/a&gt; in the US, has published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwccu.org/Standards%20and%20Policies/Accreditation%20Standards/Accreditation%20Standards.htm&quot;&gt;its standards&lt;/a&gt;.  The closest they come to discussing office space is Standard 2.G.1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consistent with its mission, core themes, and characteristics, the institution creates and maintains physical facilities that are accessible, safe, secure, and sufficient in quantity and quality to ensure healthful learning and working environments that support the institution’s mission, programs, and services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this leaves a lot of leeway.  If an institution were to assign 17 professors to a broom closet, an accrediting agency might take note, but private offices versus shared isn't likely to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, I have seen places where everyone from graduate instructors on up gets private offices, and I have seen places where even full professors share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for arguments to convince your dean that your department needs more office space, I doubt that standards are the way to go about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T15:47:17.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:56:20.860" Score="12" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;My name is Jorge Fernández de Cossío Díaz. In my country, we have two last names: the first (Fernández de Cossío) comes from the father side, and the second (Díaz) comes from the mother side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been suggested various signatures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;J. Fernandez-de-Cossio Diaz&quot;, without the accents, since I've been&#xA;told that this helps search engines locate my paper. The hyphens supposedly help the        search engines to not mistake Fernandez-de-Cossio with two or three last names.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;J. Fernández-de-Cossío Díaz&quot; (with the accents, since that's how my&#xA;is actually name spelled)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;J. Fernández de Cossío Díaz&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Jorge Fernández de Cossío Díaz&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can suggest new ones. I want to make sure that the search engines and citation indexes, etc, do not get confused. Also, if in my CV I write my name as &quot;Jorge Fernández de Cossío Díaz&quot;, will it be ok if the papers are signed as &quot;J. Fernandez-de-Cossio Diaz&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6593" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T21:00:48.690" Title="How do I sign my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T16:35:28.647" Score="52" ViewCount="100322" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, what I have is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;First and Last Name &#xA;Title&#xA;&#xA;Group/Lab Name&#xA;School Name&#xA;Address and Phone&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm especially confused about the &quot;title&quot;. I'm not sure if it should say &quot;Graduate Student&quot;, &quot;Research Assistant&quot;, or &quot;PhD Candidate&quot;.. What do you think is more appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T16:53:46.220" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T15:31:13.827" Title="What should a proper email signature look like for graduate students?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-29T16:48:40.913" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keeping it short, simple and provide only useful information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;John Doe&#xA;PhD Candidate / Teaching assistant&#xA;Squaring the Circle Research Group&#xA;University of North Vermont&#xA;http://unv.edu/circle - 1-761-861-1324&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four lines is already a lot, don't exceed it. You may not want the phone number (people from inside your university probably have access to a corporate directory, and people from outside would not usually call you except if you set up a call meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T20:23:56.077" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T20:23:56.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-29T16:53:22.843" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mine looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- &#xA;Ilmari Karonen, M.Sc.&#xA;Biomathematics Group, Department of Mathematics and Statistics&#xA;P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b), FI-00014 Univ. of Helsinki&#xA;Tel.: +358-41-456 3263, E-mail: &amp;lt;ilmari.karonen@helsinki.fi&amp;gt; &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's basically all the relevant information, packed into the traditional 4 lines / 80 characters and preceded by the correct &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block#E-mail_and_Usenet&quot;&gt;dash-dash-space-newline&lt;/a&gt; sequence.  (Yes, I know that academic signatures often break that old rule these days, but I'm kind of a traditionalist about that.  Besides, not having a foot-and-a-half-long e-mail signature is just plain common courtesy.  The dashes help many e-mail readers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/faq?faqid=1552&quot;&gt;recognize the signature&lt;/a&gt; and render it differently, and also omit it when quoting the message.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't actually included any mention of my position in the group, although there would be room to append &quot;&lt;code&gt;doctoral student&lt;/code&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;code&gt;graduate student&lt;/code&gt;&quot; after &quot;&lt;code&gt;M.Sc.&lt;/code&gt;&quot; if I wanted to.  It's not really as relevant as noting that my current highest degree is Master of Science, though, which already implies that I'm probably a grad student and not e.g. a postdoc or a faculty member.  Anyone who wants to confirm that can just look me up on our group's website, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have a shorter signature, which just says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- &#xA;Ilmari Karonen &amp;lt;ilmari.karonen@helsinki.fi&amp;gt;&#xA;University of Helsinki, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use that mainly for informal correspondence with people I already know, who don't really need to be reminded of all the extra details in the full signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T20:23:14.550" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T20:23:14.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:06:53.620" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- Name&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;em&gt;initial&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt; communication with people who don't already know you, adding a bit more identifying information is reasonable, but keep it short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- Full Name&#xA;   http://website.university.edu/~userid&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't think that's enough, introduce yourself in the body of the email.  If somebody wants your physical address, they'll ask you (or Google).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:06:53.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:19:51.260" Score="8" ViewCount="7590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my dissertation (word-limit 10,000 words) and am wondering if I should include a separate &lt;em&gt;List of Figures&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;List of Tables&lt;/em&gt; Section after my Table of Contents? The university guidelines do not specify whether they're required or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will have about 3 figures and 4 tables when I'm finished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4012" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T13:38:30.950" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T13:38:30.950" Title="How necessary is a List of Figures and a List of Tables in a dissertation?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8983" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:20:53.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, you can use any professional name you like to sign your papers.  I have a few colleagues whose &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; (or perhaps &lt;em&gt;nom de LaTeX&lt;/em&gt;?) is not the same as their legal name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by default, I would recommend signing your papers &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; as you sign anything else, including spaces and accents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jorge Fernández de Cossío Díaz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be helpful for people citing your papers to state, somewhere in your CV and on your professional web page, that your last name contains three spaces.  And you'll have to correct copy-editors who incessantly abbreviate it as &quot;J. F. C. Díaz&quot;, but you'd have to do that with the other suggested variants anyway.   Modern search engines have no trouble with accents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:20:53.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:32:26.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a very similar practice here, although I think our booklets are usually a little bigger (B5-sized instead of A5).  Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yliopistopaino.fi/fi/vaittelijan_palvelusivut/ulkoasuohjeet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;local university press guidelines for dissertation writers&lt;/a&gt; (in Finnish, sorry; there's an English version, but I couldn't find anything similar there), they say (translation mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The cover should describe the content of the thesis and invite one to read it.  The cover may either be purely textual, or it may include pictorial elements.  For textual covers, it is worth paying attention to typography and text layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a picture on the cover, it can be either a picture from your thesis, a picture chosen by yourself or an illustration selected by our graphic designers.  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the thesis is published as part of a series, however, the cover must follow the graphical guidelines of the series.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a picture of yourself on the cover of your thesis seems a little unusual, because the cover is normally supposed to illustrate the &lt;em&gt;thesis&lt;/em&gt;, and the person presumably didn't write her thesis about herself.  However, as long as there's nothing clearly inappropriate about the cover (I &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; it was a picture of her &lt;em&gt;face&lt;/em&gt;...), it seems to be her choice to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean you should follow her example?  Probably not, at least unless you believe there's something for you to gain by doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean you should try to come up with a nice, elegant and unique design, illustrative of your chosen topic, for your thesis cover?  Certainly, if you can!  (Having friends or relatives who happen to be artists or graphic designers can help here.)  At least, it won't hurt, and it just might increase the chances of someone picking it up and reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean you should stress about it?  Certainly not — &amp;quot;a molecule, a graph, a microscopy shot etc.&amp;quot; are all perfectly good choices for a thesis cover, and a text-only cover is a perfectly fine choice too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:32:26.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8988" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:44:38.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, with a short dissertation with only a few figures and tables, it probably doesn't really matter one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your institution's dissertation guidelines say anything about it, follow them.  If not, I'd say just include the lists, unless you feel you have some good reason not to.  In which case, don't.  Your advisor should let you know if they believe such lists should be added or removed, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could just ask your advisor about it to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:44:38.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8983" CreationDate="2013-03-29T18:06:56.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this decision should really be up to you, and all that you need to ensure is that you're consistent in using the same name, I'll share an anecdote, which might give you a different perspective on long names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a researcher who, presumably from a similar culture/country as you, had a long name, which for the sake of anonymity, I'll call &lt;em&gt;L. Ipsum Dolór de Sit Amét&lt;/em&gt;. In many journals, the rule for truncating multiple authors to &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; is (if using author names in citations, instead of numbers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 authors — explicitly name both&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 authors or more — explicitly name first and truncate the rest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Some publishers name all authors if up to 3 total and name 2 and truncate the rest if 4 or more, etc., but the general idea remains the same)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now someone I knew, had to cite a few papers of Dr. Ipsum Dolór de Sit Amét. Although the primary papers were by &quot;J. SingleLongName and L. Ipsum Dolór de Sit Amét&quot; and &quot;L. Ipsum Dolór de Sit Amét and P. SomeoneElse&quot;, there was a closely related followup/auxiliary paper written by &quot;P. SomeoneElse, L. Ipsum Dolór de Sit Amét and J. SingleLongName&quot; which also briefly touches upon (as a background) the material in the other two and cite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this person was in a dilemma. Referring to the first two explicitly where ever they needed to, took up about three-four lines in a two column journal paper, leading to repeated breaks in the flow of reading. On the other hand, &quot;SomeoneElse et al.&quot; was short, memorable and saved space and also contained the relevant idea being referenced to. So in the end, the person chose to cite all three once in the introduction, and use &quot;SomeoneElse et al.&quot; everywhere else in the article (effectively making it seem more important than it is). You'd be surprised, but this is not an uncommon occurrence at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there are different ways to look at it — some might say it was unethical (extreme) or unfair to not cite the canonical article just because of the length of their name. Some might say that while they probably wouldn't do it, there is no &lt;em&gt;real harm&lt;/em&gt;™ done, because regardless of the number of times it is mentioned in the body, it appears only once in the list of references and the web spiders will pick it up correctly. Few more might say that it doesn't matter since it's the same set of authors and if you drill down, it is obvious which is the canonical reference. Well, I'm not here to argue for or against any of that. But I will point out that a big impact of someone doing this is that &lt;strong&gt;your name loses visibility&lt;/strong&gt; (not an issue in journals that use numbers for references) and people will only remember it as &quot;SomeoneElse&quot; and a bunch of others. Perhaps you're a special cookie that remembers all 5 authors of every paper, but I don't and many others I know don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if this is a concern, you can use it in full, but abbreviate it to a short one. For instance, use Jorge Fernández de Cossío Díaz in the author list under the title, but in the &quot;cite as&quot; section, use &lt;strong&gt;J. F. C. Díaz&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;J. F-C. Díaz&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastEditorDisplayName="user6431" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T21:00:48.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T21:00:48.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-29T18:58:05.373" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not in academia, but my email signature looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone wants to know my name, it's sent in email headers and shows up at the top of the messages. If someone wants to know where I work, they can look at the part of my email after the @ sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, if I'm contacting someone for the first time, I'll tell them who I am and why I'm contacting them in the body of the message, so there's no need to repeat it at the end of the message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140917123332/http://daniellang.net/please-stop-using-email-signatures/&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; similar to the one that convinced me to stop doing this. Basically, by including a signature, you make it harder to read an email. This is normally just annoying, but it becomes extremely frustrating in long email chains or mailing lists, since no one bothers removing signature when they quote people. So, save everyone the trouble and don't send it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2810" LastEditorUserId="2810" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T17:37:48.807" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T17:37:48.807" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2055" CreationDate="2013-03-29T19:09:38.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The beginning and the end of your account contradict each other, so I do not understand if you got this message many times, from several different addresses, or once or twice, from the same person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, it definitely seems a spam-like behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second, it could be a honest message from a grad student with poor English knowledge. Check if the names are compatible with this explanation; if so,&#xA;I would definitely answer. It could even earn you a citation. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T19:09:38.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8996" CreationDate="2013-03-29T19:27:06.107" Score="12" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm publishing my first paper soon with three collaborators.  We made a conjecture towards the end of the paper and intended to publish with the question still open.  Another mathematician heard of the problem and found a solution to the conjecture.  Now we have two options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;publish our current paper on our own, with the conjecture open, after which our friend would publish their solution as a separate paper, or&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;include their work at the end of our paper and make them a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though our paper is pretty good already, the new work is strong and would make a nice addition, so the first option seems nice.  On the other hand, I'm an undergraduate senior (entering graduate school this Fall) and so are two of the other collaborators.  Thus it seems like adding another professor as a co-author may make my contributions (which I have worked very hard on) appear less substantial.  Also in favor of option 2: if the other professor publishes separately, the citation may make our paper look good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5735" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-16T20:01:10.280" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T20:01:10.280" Title="Is it better for a mathematical paper to have a citation or a nice theorem + another coauthor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8995" CreationDate="2013-03-29T20:25:48.170" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is not important which option makes your paper look good, but the best question here is &quot;what is the right thing to do?&quot;&#xA;If you are such a talented and hardworking undergraduate student who can write a publishable paper, you will certainly have a very bright future in grad school and later as a researcher. So, don't worry how your first paper is going to be evaluated or cited. Hopefully you will write better papers and you can prove yourself in the future. Regarding publishing research papers, the right thing to do is that you publish your paper as perfect as it is possible for you at the moment, which means it is better you add the solution (and one more co-author) to your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T20:25:48.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-30T00:47:20.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I hate signatures, I see it as trying to make a superficial impression based on a title. Better to have a personal friendly connection with the people you work with both clients and colleagues, they will know you and the quality of your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on my last work place my boss demanded that I add a signature, because it creates superiority in his words ( i believe he is a jerk but that's beside the point), which looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FirstName LastName | Title | Company&#xA;email | mobile phone: work phone | Blog Address&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to ask yourself what is the purpose of your signature based on who is your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's for applying for work, you have all your information in your cover letter and CV. If I were you I would drop the signature, but if you insist on having one than the &quot;Research Assistant&quot; is your best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6611" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T15:08:24.483" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T15:08:24.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8893" CreationDate="2013-03-30T02:25:17.077" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since I wrote it myself I think it is perfect and I cannot detect its possible flaws and mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is imperative that you have someone else read over your statement with a critical eye and with the experience to provide quality feedback.  You'd be surprised at what you can miss in your own writing, and how the tone may come across different to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which topics would members of search committees like to see in a teaching statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be dependent on the type of department you are applying to -- at many institutions, research ability trumps teaching, and your statement might not count for much (see below for a caveat about being too gung-ho).  Assuming the reason you are asked for a teaching statement is because the department that is hiring does value teaching, I suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrate your understanding that math is difficult for some students, particularly as it gets more abstract.  If you can, provide a brief example of a topic that was hard to teach and how you ended up teaching it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide examples of how you changed your teaching based on student feedback or your own assessment.  Showing that as a professor, you'll continually try to improve your teaching goes a long way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk about curriculum development -- if you have ever designed a course, make sure you mention it.  Describe what you enjoyed about the course development process, and how you addressed the challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to convey your passion for teaching -- some of the best teachers are the most passionate, and if you can get that across (only if it is true, of course!), all the better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which mistakes in a teaching statement can ruin an applicants' chances for getting an interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As with any writing, poor grammar demonstrates a lack of attention to detail (or ability), and that will torpedo your application.  Again, have others read it over and provide feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a school where teaching takes a back seat to research, don't make it sound like you live for teaching; you don't want to say that you've stayed up all night crafting the perfect lesson when you should have been doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be boring!  This could be a difficult one depending on your writing style. I've seen teaching statements that made it sound like the teacher would be the most boring professor in the world.  Again, examples from your own teaching can help make the writing more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, your teaching statement can be more personal than your research statement, so it is okay to let that come out a bit more.  Demonstrating why you'll be a good teacher is the most important part, and this should be apparent in the essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt;: I should add -- as with any other letter or statement, you should feel free to craft different letters for different jobs.  If you're applying to a college where professors teach three or four classes per semester, you can expect they will pay more attention to your teaching statement, and you should taylor it appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-03-30T05:17:04.897" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T05:17:04.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8988" CreationDate="2013-03-30T02:45:29.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely ask your advisor but normally you only need a list of tables or a list of figures if there will be more than 5 items in the list. For three or four items, I would not include a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the schools I am familiar with, there are clear dissertation guidelines so it is understood what is expected. If it is unspecified then I would go with what I said above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T02:45:29.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T02:46:38.267" Score="35" ViewCount="20960" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife has publications under both her maiden name and her married name. How should she indicate that this is the case on her CV, if she wants to mention publications from both time periods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="701" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:00:15.427" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T19:35:15.387" Title="Indicating a name change after publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9003" CreationDate="2013-03-30T04:37:20.597" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know 2 female professors personally who clarify this fact very similarly. What they do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They cite the relevant publications as they were with her maiden name and her new last name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They add a * at the beginning of the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Publications&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section in their CV which refers to a footnote to that page which then says something like this &quot;* Last name changed to Smith from Doe in 1988&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to work very well so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T04:37:20.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7508" CreationDate="2013-03-30T04:46:55.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While both saaahu's answer and Andy W's answer are on target, I will add my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make yourself known to the prof from whom you want the letter. You can do this in many ways. If you sit in the front or are particularly active in that class, the prof will naturally remember you (and naturally feel more comfortable that he/she know enough about you to write a recommendation letter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a letter from someone whose class you took a while ago and you did not do anything to stand out, then you must take up some extra work now (see if you can help that prof with some projects so he/she can get to know you more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I don't expect students to develop a relationship with me long before they need a letter but I do expect them to make their abilities known to me. I've had students who are silent in my classes then come to me and ask for a reference. When I tell them 'sorry, I don't know enough about you' they get a little sad but they also understand quite quickly when I explain things to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want a letter, help the prof to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T04:46:55.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9003" CreationDate="2013-03-30T07:54:41.763" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short answer, I think one can write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;full present name&quot;, born &quot;maiden name&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;full present name&quot;, formerly &quot;maiden name&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and put this in the top of the CV where you have personal details and/or also as a subheading for the publications list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also bold face my name in all publications, This way it should not pass anyone where I am in the publications list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T07:54:41.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2013-03-30T14:57:02.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that, for your question to be properly answerable, you'd first need to define what you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to mean by &quot;research&quot;.  In particular, from what you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The competitors are restricted to graduate students who are engaged in &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; under the auspicies of a faculty advisor from my university.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gather that your university also has some graduate students who &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; do anything you would call research, or you wouldn't feel the need to be so specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is it that these students, which you want to exclude from the competition, do instead?  Just coursework?  If so, why not just write &lt;strong&gt;&quot;research (not merely coursework)&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; or something like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want a fancy definition of &quot;research&quot;, I'd go with something like &quot;original work intended to contribute to the body of academic knowledge&quot;.  But you'd probably be better served by just explicitly stating what kinds of student activities you want to include or exclude from your admission criteria.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T14:57:02.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-03-30T17:07:58.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A link to a profile page that makes it clear you're a grad student should be enough. Putting your phone number and address in every email seems unnecessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd stick with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Name&#xA;Email address&#xA;Group/Lab Name, University&#xA;Link to web page&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6619" LastEditorUserId="496" LastEditDate="2013-03-30T18:28:59.150" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T18:28:59.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T18:40:23.297" Score="-4" ViewCount="1014" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I go through the &lt;code&gt;Abstract&lt;/code&gt; section of a research paper and find a subject that I'm interested in, then I go through the whole paper. But going through the whole of it, takes lots of extra time getting things, that I'm already familiar with, to get familiar with other similar things, and to grasp the author's overall idea. Rather, I found, &lt;code&gt;Presentation Slides&lt;/code&gt; very helpful to me to quickly grasp everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found lots of presentation slides at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slideshare.net&lt;/a&gt;. Are there any other site where I can get the &lt;code&gt;Presentation Slide&lt;/code&gt;'s of research papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6621" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T18:40:44.317" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T18:40:44.317" Title="Where can I get presentation slides of research papers" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-07-11T09:50:33.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9009" CreationDate="2013-03-30T19:42:07.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common problem, when you're starting to familiarize yourself with academic literature, is getting stuck on a particular detail which you don't fully understand.  If you don't allow yourself to read further before you've understood the difficult bit, you may &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; manage to finish the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I've most often been given for such situations, which I would also strongly endorse from personal experience, is to set the problematic point aside (maybe making a note in the margin, if you're reading a paper copy, or the electronic equivalent if your reader supports such) and just keep reading.  There are several reasons to do that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The issue you got stuck on might be explained later in the paper, or it might become clear from context what the confusing part actually means.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If something seems wrong, it might actually be: mistakes do creep into even the best papers.  Often, the errors that do slip through are the ones that more experienced readers may not even notice, since they know what the text is clearly &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to say, and thus automatically and unconsciously correct it while reading.  In such cases, reading the rest of the paper might make it clearer whether what looks like an error actually is one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you get to the end of the paper, and still feel like there's something you haven't understood, it may be clearer once you come back to it.  Or, if not, you can always show the paper later to someone more familiar with the topic and ask if they can explain the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's also possible that, even if you never do manage to understand some detail of a paper, you may still get something else useful out of it: the detail might not actually be essential to the main conclusion of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I'd go further and suggest that, on your first pass through a paper, you shouldn't even &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; to understand everything in it.  Just skim the paper briefly to get a general feel for how it's structured and what the authors are aiming for, maybe stopping to look at any interesting figures.  Once you've done that, you can go back and read any interesting sections more carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, many academic papers tend to follow a general structure where the introduction describes the context and the problem, the &quot;conclusions&quot; section at the end describes the (proposed) solution, and everything in between just documents the (often tedious and abstruse) process of getting from one to the other.  To quickly go through such papers, it's often a good idea to &quot;eat the dessert first&quot;, skipping to the conclusions section immediately after (or even during or before) the introduction.  Once you know what the authors have actually concluded, it's often much easier to follow the description of how they got there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T19:42:07.777" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9013" CreationDate="2013-03-30T19:50:30.657" Score="18" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a master's student currently deciding between two different Ph. D. programs in mathematics.  The two programs have very different teaching opportunities as a grad student.  One of the two programs I'm applying to allows (and encourages) students to teach a first-year calculus course, and the other one does not.  However, I would be able to teach a college algebra or precalculus course at the other school.  Would it reflect badly on me as a job applicant if I have no experience teaching calculus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6623" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T14:11:58.423" Title="Is teaching calculus important for getting a job as a university professor in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9011" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:22:34.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the answer depends on your prospective area of expertise. Usually math professors teach the undergraduate courses that are closer to their research area. So, if you work in analysis, you will likely be assigned a calculus course; if you study algebraic geometry, you will probably get an introductory abstract algebra course; if you do research in Riemannian geometry, linear algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would not worry much about which course you teach at this point. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;This distinction should not be your primary concern&lt;/strong&gt; in deciding between two PhD programs. Any teaching experience will do for now, and you will have many opportunities to compensate in future. Moreover, most hiring committees will focus more on your research activity than on your teaching in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T14:11:58.423" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T14:11:58.423" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9011" CreationDate="2013-03-30T22:11:32.170" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be truly shocked if any hiring committee cared at all about whether you taught calculus versus pre-calculus.  Doing well at either would show that you can adequately handle teaching service classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T22:11:32.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9022" CreationDate="2013-03-31T06:43:53.867" Score="130" ViewCount="33559" Body="&lt;p&gt;An annoying aspect of working with a &quot;strict&quot; grading system (e.g., 90%+ = A, 85% = A-, 80% = B+, etc.) is what I call the &quot;grade grubbing&quot; phenomenon: the people who feel compelled to raise complaints about the grading because they didn't get the final score they want—but have no real argument in support of a higher grade. This is not about legitimate requests to reconsider because of a mistake but instead students searching for any reason why they deserve the X points they need to get a better grade. It’s exemplified by the kind of argument that begins “I know it’s wrong but . . . .”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have the power to change the grading structure—that is imposed from higher up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any satisfactory methods of discouraging such behavior? I don't want to stop people with legitimate issues from asking for regrades (mistakes happen!), but I would like to avoid having to deal with the student who tries every which way to get the few points they need to move up a level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T04:05:24.073" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T20:59:11.713" Title="What to do about &quot;grade grubbers?&quot;" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="39" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T07:26:29.060" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three primary methods for dealing with this behavior:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the first day of class, I mention that I won't tolerate grade-grubbing.  I say that I am firm and will treat everyone equally.  What I don't say is that students are much more likely to see leniency if they showed a good effort in class, and are nice about asking me to review a grade.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I admit that I make grading mistakes (and so do the TAs), and we'll fix the problem if they occur.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a policy that if you ask for a re-grade, I'll look at the whole assignment and if the end grade is actually lower, that's what you'll get (I don't think I've ever lowered a grade this way).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to avoid having to deal with the student who tries every which way to get the few points they need to move up a level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll always have to deal with a couple.  If you set the ground rules on the first day, you'll see fewer on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T09:45:50.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T09:45:50.490" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T10:09:54.000" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider all requests for re-marking. As said many times here, mistakes do happen and I'm only human. However, when I find a student who is being unreasonable, I tend to be even stricter in my interpretations than I was the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the difference between 85% and 86% is not normally significant (either in the quality of the work or the overall impact on a student's total grade for the module) but for those who think they can push for a 1% 'bump up' in grade may well find themselves with a 1%-2% 'bump down' (85% to 84%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teacher reputations spread quite quickly between students and I believe the students will act more appropriately once they realize they are not in a 'no lose' situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T10:09:54.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9051" CreationDate="2013-03-31T10:16:49.913" Score="1" ViewCount="1107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an Undergrad student from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology and I still have a year left to complete my Dual-degree course in Computer Science(offers me M.Tech &amp;amp; B.Tech by the end of June 2014). I've a not-so-proud-of gpa of 7.5/10 which is around 3.0/4.0 which I assume is pretty low when compared to my seniors' gpa who've taken up a PhD. But, what I've experienced from a last summer's industry internship and the previous summer working under a professor doing research is that I really can't work in the industry for a longer time writing Software as making money is the least of my concerns. The research work yielded in a rejected publication though I was way more satisfied than the internship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked under another professor the next winter, published an article in a highly reputed journal in the field of Complex networks and working on another publication this fall. I'll be working along with IBM in a research internship this summer and hoping to do well. A bit of a late realization haunts me day-to-day. Needless to say, my transcripts suck. So, to dodge all the obstacles that I created myself, I'm planning to do research work extensively for the rest of my Undergrad time. Also, I'm thinking of joining the industry after my graduation for about a year or two before PhD for two reasons. One being, my work experience can be of help and can make up for my poor transcript and second being that I can reinforce the industry-is-not-so-interesting belief. The second being not so important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is pursuing PhD from a reputed university still in my scope? What suggestions can you offer for increasing my chances that I can do during my last year? Reading a lot of questions in this forum site, I believed this might be a good place to vent my rant. Thanks a lot in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6631" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T10:23:14.063" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T04:53:18.453" Title="Should I pursue my PhD dream based on my Undergrad experiences?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T11:50:17.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have a strict grading policy; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;90%+ = A, 85% = A-, 80% = B+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then let epsilon be a margin of error such that you would be surprised if a regrade changed things by more than epsilon points.  For this example, let epsilon be 1 point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now apply this algorithm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;while (cutpoint-grade&amp;lt;epsilon)&#xA;    regrade&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your initial grading will generate grades like&#xA;84.99&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then after applying the algorithm it might change to&#xA;85.01; or 83.99&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the grade grubbers point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;84.99:  asking for a regrade is a no-brainer.  If the regrade results in just a slight improvement, the grubber moves from B+ to A-.  Even if the regrade results in a lower grade, the grubber will still most likely receive a B+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;85.01:  not asking for a regrade is a no-brainer.  It is unlikely the regrade will result in the 5 additional points necessary to move from A- to A, but there is a good chance the regrade will move the student to a B+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;83.99:  not a no-brainer, but hopefully inertia will lead the grubber to inaction.  Regrading will change the grade to somewhere in 82.99 - 84.99, -- solid B+ territory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3849" LastEditorUserId="3849" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T12:23:32.973" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T12:23:32.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T11:58:05.547" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a prof who solved the problem by giving a free point to all the people who are just one point below the next grade. That way there are no students whose grade is on the boundary (e.g. nobody has 89%), so it is more difficult to get sufficient additional points for the grade above via grubbing. In effect this means the grading criterion is lowered, but since this depends on other factors as well (say, how difficult the test is), it hasn't led to administrative problems. The students are also happy with this sort of arrangement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on how you give points. If you stick to multiple choice questions on a test, it's much harder to bargain for points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T11:58:05.547" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9017" CreationDate="2013-03-31T12:30:56.447" Score="-13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academia is broken ([1] and other articles).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, you need to show your future employer that you are not just a Adderall user [2].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I would get a Master's degree in ECE. Now, why ECE and not CS. I consider CS (as well as physics, chemistry, etc) to be a fundamental science. Industry usually is looking for more applied field, which in the case of CS is ECE (IMHO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in US, is possible to get Master's degree in ECE for free. Apply for PhD school, then drop out with Master's, preferable with thesis option. This way you will show your future employer that you can do: independent research; describe and present your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5429651&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5429651&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/01/health/drugs-adderall-concentration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/01/health/drugs-adderall-concentration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T12:30:56.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-31T14:19:44.913" Score="6" ViewCount="4492" Body="&lt;p&gt;How difficult it is to switch between different graduate departments within the same graduate school? And how can a student initiate the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some have told me that it's easier than getting into a graduate department via PhD admissions. But I do wonder - does it depend on what school it is? (I'm at Brown). What other factors determine how easy it is to get into another graduate department? Would they look at your transcript/GRE scores/etc? I have GRE scores of 96th percentile Verbal/96th percentile Math/99th percentile Analytical/89th percentile Biology. My grades are weaker though. I'm currently a student in a Geoscience department and am considering switching to Physics or a Biology-related field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, one has to convince someone else to be able to take them on. Most of my experience is with Physics and Scientific Computing, however, and a lot of fields really value the skills that people in Physics/Scientific Computing have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T15:01:17.183" Title="Switching between different graduate departments within the same graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-04-24T15:15:36.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T14:59:07.380" Score="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually say that my rule for regrades is like the NFL's rule for replay challenges: there must be &quot;indisputable visual evidence&quot; that the original grade was incorrect.  For instance, scores were added incorrectly, or a correct answer was marked wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the score was a &quot;judgment call&quot; (for example, I deducted two points for some error and the student thinks it only deserved one point deducted), I won't change the grade, unless I did something really egregious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the policy &quot;We regrade the entire assignment and your grade could go up or down&quot; but it makes me a little uncomfortable.  It suggests an element of randomness or caprice in the grading, which I don't want to promote, especially for younger or weaker students who may already feel like their grade is random.  I don't think students should feel like they have to roll the dice to get a genuine error corrected.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T14:59:07.380" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9021" CreationDate="2013-03-31T15:01:17.183" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this differs between departments or schools, but in my experience transferring between departments is exactly the same process as applying from the outside.  If faculty in the new department know you and are familiar with your work, then you may have an advantage (or disadvantage), but there is no advantage from being already enrolled in another department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do something interdisciplinary that could fit in either department, it's usually easiest not to switch (so you don't have to deal with applying again, fulfilling different class and exam requirements, etc.).  Instead, you can try to arrange a thesis committee with representatives from both departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to start over in a new field, then the only option is to apply to the new department.  You'll need to convince them of two things: that you are changing departments because you now understand better what you would like to do (rather than because you are doing poorly in grad school), but that you will complete the new program rather than changing interests again in a few years.  This means you need a compelling story to explain the shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T15:01:17.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T16:33:49.177" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best approach to these types of situations is honesty.  I would never refuse a request to explain why how I arrived at a student's grade but if I feel that a student is going about the process in a non-constructive way then I tell them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student's approach appears unprofessional to me then it likely does to others, so this is an opportunity for professional development.  Focusing on the positive I would explain how education is about much more than grades and in addition to the other good reasons to strive to become an educated person, an over emphasis on grades damages their image to the faculty who will have to provide references etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastEditorUserId="248" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T19:26:53.847" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T19:26:53.847" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T17:54:19.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a clever teacher in high school who responded to grade grubbing (with respect to a particular exam or assignment) in an effective way. He presented the student with a wager:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I will be glad to mark that exam over again. However, you may end up with a lower grade. I will mark the entire exam, very carefully and strictly. You do not get to cherry pick which answers are reconsidered. Therefore, you may lose marks in places where I had been generous which may more than offset any gains. It is like a bet! Do you want to take the bet and have me check the exam?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether the students always declined the wager, but they did in every instance that I witnessed. Those students were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in fact confident that they deserved more marks, only that they deserved more marks in some particular question or area. More importantly, they knew very well that, overall, the teacher marked fairly, with a slant toward generosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="3900" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T21:47:44.087" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:47:44.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9033" CreationDate="2013-03-31T18:13:14.510" Score="26" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I created a project report for the project that me and my classmate are working on. The project report goes to the external examiner to whom later we have to give a demo on our project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me being inclined to designing (web designing, graphic design, etc) I decided to make the project report look really good. A nice clean report with good choice of paper. And care taken while choosing font etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turned out to be much much better than anyone else's report. BUT! The first thing I heard from other classmates was. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Making project report look good is of NO USE. Your project (Application) should be good enough and it's all that matters&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? from a general perspective of people. Does &quot;making it look good&quot;  matter at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any other section more relevant enough to discuss this question. Please let me know if there is any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6635" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T16:29:28.843" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T16:29:28.843" Title="“making it look good”- is it always important?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-03-31T18:22:31.017" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your content is as good as the cover you used, it is ok. But if you are trying to create a good looking report about a badly implemented project, it is just a waste of time and shows that you concentrate on the trivial things rather than on important ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who judge your work won't judge it by its cover, I hope. That said, if the report is about a project aptly implemented, it shows that you are a perfectionist and is a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6310" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T18:22:31.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-03-31T18:31:47.697" Score="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never had issues like that but I've heard the following solution by a colleague: The students inspect their works in the presence of the professor of TA. If they have any complaints they have to &lt;em&gt;write them down and hand them in&lt;/em&gt;. There is never any discussion going on, but only written complaints are accepted. All written complaint are treated carefully and there may be a next date for inspection and even a next round but this can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; consider the thing which have been addressed in the first round. I.e. you can't &quot;grub for a point at exercise 1&quot; in the first round and then try to &quot;grub for another point at exercise 2&quot; in the second round. All complaints have to be submitted in the first round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've heard is, that this dramatically reduces grade grubbing and especially makes &quot;grade grubbers&quot; think hard about their mistakes (which can be considered as a good side effect). As a matter of fact, it's much harder to articulate why you think that you deserve another point for some exercise if there is no clear &quot;misgrading&quot; if you have to do this in written form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit some years later:&lt;/strong&gt; Now I have some personal experience with this system. I did this at least six times and it works awesome. Were I am we have an official &quot;grade grubbing date&quot; called &quot;Klausureinsicht&quot; i.e. there is one date at which all students can have a look at their exams. I usually have 10 students in one room who can have a look at their exams at the same time. I answer all questions related to the content of the exam, but as soon as the grading is in question I hand out a paper and a pen and ask the student to write down their complaint. I even encourage writing complaints down. It further helps to cut off the discussion if I add that &quot;I can't answer questions on the grading as I would have to look up how our general grading for this kind of solution/error is&quot; (I actually have one but do not bring it to the Klausureinsicht). I collect all replies, keep them with the exams, check them and reply to the students via email on the spot or the next day. Answering the complaints is usually pretty easy. Most of the time I just write &quot;The grading/deduction of points corresponds to our grading system.&quot; or &quot;What you have written down does not show what you are complaining about/what you may intended to write and we can only grade what you have written.&quot; Only one time (out of several dozens) I had a student trying to continue grubbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the fact that you can not change the grading system at your place is &lt;em&gt;a big plus&lt;/em&gt; in my eyes, at least when it comes to grade grubbing. (One the other hand, you have to be more careful and work harder when producing the exam so that you can be pretty sure that the difficulty of the exam is ok.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T08:32:22.143" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T08:32:22.143" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-03-31T18:35:38.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer by Abraham is spot on. I would just like to add the following: Good design will not kill anyone but bad design can. By design I am primarily thinking typography and illustrations. I am not so concerned about reports made during your studies but rather when you are in the work place. A report, no matter how well conceived can become overlooked if it is hard to read and if illustrations are not clear enough. There is of course a risk of over-doing the design and a somber tidy look is usually the best. So if your work is good and your design of the report also allows people to grasp the content with ease, you are doing very well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6635" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T08:02:19.160" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:02:19.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-31T19:36:12.447" Score="6" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're citing a personal correspondence, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Cats are vicious&quot; (Bill Bobson, personal correspondence, March 12, 2012) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you continue to use this personal correspondence with a cat expert, do you refer to them simply as Bobson, or Bill Bobson?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4012" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:26:13.220" Title="When citing a personal corespondence, is the full name always mentioned?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9031" CreationDate="2013-03-31T19:48:59.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continuously referring to personal correspondence sounds like a bad idea… if many parts of the discussion come from unpublished comments from your correspondent, he should probably be a co-author rather than simply cited. Otherwise, you can quote the personal correspondence once and explain its context at first point of use. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of ideas developed in this paragraph were inspired by a series of discussion with cat expert Bill Bobson, over the spring of 2002. In particular, he drew our attention to the viciousness of cats and their unwillingness to comply to their master's will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T19:48:59.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-03-31T20:23:40.310" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good-looking report will put me in the mindset that you took the assignment seriously, and aimed to turn in quality work. I think that counts for something, not nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if a report is just that – good looking, with little substance behind it – I will see through the façade very quickly, and all those superficial niceties might even count against you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that's not the case, though, if two people turn in equally good work, yet one is formatted much more professionally than the other, that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; earn an extra point or two – assuming I'm grading with some level of subjectivity, and not merely following a strict rubric. Shame on me, though, if I let mere appearance carry much more weight than that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said, your classmates seem to be very shortsighted. Okay, maybe your extra effort will get you a 94 instead of a 93. Or maybe you'll just get a 93, with nothing more than a mental note that I thought your report looked really good. However, what you do in my classroom might – and perhaps should – extend far beyond my class. Presumably, you're in my class for an education, not merely for 3 or 4 credits. Get in the habit of turning in good work, and that might turn into something that translates into a valuable life skill.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thought: what's going to happen after you graduate, when all those folks from human resources ask you to include the names of three professors on your job applications?  One of them might well call me, and ask, “What do you remember about this guy?”  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'll answer, “Oh, I remember him. He always turned in exceptional work.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two sentences might prove to be worth far more than an extra point or two on an assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I had one student bring her term project into a job interview. They hired her, largely based on what they saw in that class project. Just a couple weeks ago, another student asked if my name could be listed as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I hope they call me,” I replied in my email. “I distinctly remember how your work always seemed to go above and beyond what everyone else was turning in.” Imagine how that will sound in the ear of a corporate recruiter who is sifting through a pile of job applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's your call. It's also your future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T22:37:48.217" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T22:37:48.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2013-03-31T20:40:18.683" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;33 is not old. We had 40+ year olds in my Ph.D. program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest hurdle might actually be that your study habits are rusty.  You might consider taking a single class in the field as a continuing ed student just to get back in the studying grove. A good grade and reference from your professor won't hurt either and will show you're on top of your academic game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6636" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T20:40:18.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9031" CreationDate="2013-03-31T22:18:39.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @F'x' good points, depending on the nature of the communication, if it is &quot;preservable&quot; (an email, a PDF, or a conversation for which you have a transcript) it may merit a bibliographic entry [Bobson~2012] or Bobson (2012) depending on your style. Certainly do give a date or dates, and the disposition of the records, such as they may be. That is, as in other situations, being honest and helpful to the reader is a good guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T22:48:06.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T22:48:06.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-03-31T23:20:13.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my honest opinion,it's impossible to separate content from presentation. They may be two separate aspects of one thing but they are not two separate things. Taking your classmates' view to extremes would have us turning in work without bothering to check for spelling or grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6637" LastEditorUserId="3983" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T03:26:53.293" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T03:26:53.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-04-01T00:50:18.363" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good answers here, especially Nate's, which most closely matches my own grading policies.  One item that I want to highlight that hasn't been included in other answers is the &lt;em&gt;time factor.&lt;/em&gt;  You must put a strict time limit on regrade requests.  My course policies are that I will accept regrade requests up to one week after the exam/homework/lab/etc was handed back to the students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason for the time limit is to keep a student from grubbing too much at the end of the semester.  When someone discovers that they have a B in the class, they often try hard to find a few extra points in the hopes of getting over that cutoff into A-grade land.  I want to put most of the graded events of the semester out of bounds for such searches.  If those 2 points weren't important enough for a student to request the regrade back in September, then they aren't important enough in December, now that final grades are being calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T00:50:18.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-01T02:54:01.557" Score="56" ViewCount="14281" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I did my bachelor's at a top-notch college, because of low GPA I had to settle down for PhD at a low ranked university. Now I see that there is lack of intellectual atmosphere and very few people to discuss academic stuff in and around my area of research. I discuss with faculty, but it would have been nice if there was a good graduate student atmosphere which is lacking. Now I get frustrated often with the fact that it was my low GPA which led to all this. Also in general the graduate student atmosphere is very discouraging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do to make my life better? Some people tell me to mind my own business and not worry about the environment. But to me no peer level discussion leads to feelings of loneliness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6418" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T05:41:58.043" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T05:41:58.043" Title="How to deal with the frustration of doing PhD at a low-ranked university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9039" CreationDate="2013-04-01T03:14:05.227" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are indeed substantially better than your cohort, prove it by far exceeding your professors' expectations, and then ask them to support transfer applications to more prestigious universities next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, make the best of the situation you're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T03:14:05.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9039" CreationDate="2013-04-01T04:13:05.540" Score="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop whining and start kicking ass.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work hard with faculty (and undergrads!) that you respect, do some awesome research, and then (if you are very lucky) move to a better department, either as a PhD student, a postdoc, or even a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, own your past mistakes, but forgive yourself for them.  You put yourself in this situation, but holding onto your frustration and loneliness, instead of doing the best with what you have now, is only going to keep you frustrated and lonely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My undergrad GPA was 2.4/4.0.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T23:48:07.087" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T23:48:07.087" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-04-01T04:27:56.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You heard &lt;em&gt;from your classmates&lt;/em&gt; that the look of the report is of no use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your report was better. I.e. they turned in work inferior to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In life, you can generally disregard the worthless advice and nay-saying of your inferiors, and just do it your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T04:27:56.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9039" CreationDate="2013-04-01T06:24:17.633" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD is often, a very lonely beast. I go to a &quot;top&quot; school but often, I feel that there is no one to discuss my work with at a high level other than my adviser. Often, I feel that everyone around me is much smarter than me and can contribute so much to my general academic knowledge just by having a high level discussion over coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with my school or my department but everything to do with me. If I cannot make other people, especially my peers understand what work I am doing and have a broad level discussion with them, my science communication skills need to be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have already pointed out, if you are indeed better, prove it by being the very best at where you are and you will soon magically see that there are plenty of people to discuss your work with no matter where your university or department is ranked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T06:24:17.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9052" CreationDate="2013-04-01T06:27:16.333" Score="12" ViewCount="4225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently doing some research on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; and I noticed that, in my field of research (plant science), some articles are referenced and others are not, even for two articles in the same journal...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does everyone know what is (are) the condition(s) for a paper to be listed in PubMed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T07:50:34.943" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T20:25:29.123" Title="Why aren't all research articles on PubMed?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;pubmed&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8845" CreationDate="2013-04-01T15:48:11.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student trying to find a good postdoc position it's in my interest to help you find funding for places. These links may help as they all currently have open calls for projects/fellowship funding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Awards &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.google.com/university/relations/research_awards.html&quot;&gt;http://research.google.com/university/relations/research_awards.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marie-Curie Actions &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ERCIM &lt;a href=&quot;https://fellowship.ercim.eu/&quot;&gt;https://fellowship.ercim.eu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you manage to get some funding ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6492" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T15:48:11.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9050" CreationDate="2013-04-01T16:41:39.917" Score="4" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking part in a seminar-course given to graduate neuroscience students.&#xA;The students come from various backgrounds; mainly - Computer science, physics and life science (biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the current course format, each student chooses an interesting neurobiology subject and gives a short (1 hour) literature overview of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This format works well, but I feel the course does not fulfill its full potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to think of a new, better format for this course - suggestions would be warmly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example vision is of a medium sized project that could be divided into a few sub projects, each would be assigned to one or a small group of the students. Ideally :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project would have some impact on \ helpful to the science community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each sub-project would allow its student to shine by using his unique background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sum of all the mini-projects would be greater of its parts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of such a project would be to create a new or expand an existing (wiki-like) open knowledge-base of a specific subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your ideas would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6645" LastEditorUserId="6645" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T07:17:54.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T07:17:54.013" Title="Creating a collaborative project for a group of 10 graduate neuroscience students from various backgrounds" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2013-04-01T21:13:11.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/j_sel_faq.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Library of Medicine uses an NIH-chartered committee, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), to review all new biomedical and health journal titles and recommend those to be indexed for MEDLINE®. The NLM Fact Sheet titled &quot;MEDLINE Journal Selection&quot; provides information on the role of the LSTRC and critical factors considered in making the decision to recommend a journal title for indexing. It is intended only as a guide since there is no one set of characteristics that will guarantee selection. The LSTRC considers the quality of the scientific content, including originality, and the importance of the content for the MEDLINE audience throughout the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T21:13:11.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2013-04-01T22:09:14.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out what the project should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a large-group project for one of my classes, and I've started soliciting faculty in certain departments with an email a few months before class gets underway.  Essentially, this email states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My class will be working on a semester-long project soon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would rather the students work on something real-world, as opposed to a toy project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because these are students, there are no guarantees you'll get a useful result when they are done. However, you won't pay anything, either, and you might get lucky.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have something that might be a suitable idea, contact me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result has been a big success. Students tend to work harder when they feel like something useful and tangible may come from their efforts. Moreover, this set-up requires the students to work with real &quot;customers&quot;, which is sometimes one of the most valuable parts of the learning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T22:09:14.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9017" CreationDate="2013-04-02T04:53:18.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 3.5+ is generally preferred but a 3.0 and some solid test scores (GMAT/GRE) can really bump you up in the admissions line.  Keep working on your publications and when it comes time to write your personal essay talk about how you have published already but really want to develop those skills so you can be a prolific researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you love research, and the creation of knowledge, then go for the PhD it will give you the best training and opportunity to advance your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T04:53:18.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2013-04-02T07:56:22.873" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because PubMed is about biomedical literature and life science journals. Things are blurry, however, because of two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously, there is no strict definition of what is (or is not) &lt;em&gt;biomedicine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PubMed does not select “article by article”, but has a list of indexed journals, from which all papers are indexed. Yet, a single journal's scope can be very varied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combine the two, and you get the idea that there is a lot of variability in whether an article on a given topic is published. For example, my own research field is materials chemistry, and about two-thirds of my papers appear to be indexed in PubMed: probably because those were published in generic chemistry journals, which also happen to publish some papers of relevant to life science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T07:56:22.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9057" CreationDate="2013-04-02T11:52:49.440" Score="6" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got an offer for a PhD position which, due to my financial status, I can only accept if I am awarded a scholarship, which is currently in consideration. Recently, I receive a job offer which have to be answered before the scholarship announcement date. I cannot delay on that because there are few other potential candidates for that position. Although I find it interesting but it's OK if I turn an offer down as I currently have one already. Moreover, the PhD is much more important to me. So my question is whether asking the university to speed up in their consideration affects the chance to get the scholarship. If it's possible, can someone let me know how university deals with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I cannot quit a new job early as it has a fixed-term, more like minimum term, contract because I will receive 3 months oversea training at the beginning so they don't want me to leave too soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="4481" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T12:33:24.390" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:33:24.390" Title="Does requesting to speed up on application process affect its outcome" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2013-04-02T12:11:39.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are already a lot of answers and I feel a little silly about adding yet another one, but I think my view is very different. I would classify all the other answers as taking a carrot/stick approach to provide an extrinsic motivator. I would push for trying to use an intrinsic motivator. You need to demonstrate to the students that class is better and that they will get a lot more out of it if they read before hand. I would devote some time at the beginning of the next few classes for the students to either read the material or be lectured. You could either use a show of hands or an electronic &quot;clicker&quot; type quiz to decide when to move on. This will allow you to get to the &quot;good&quot; stuff, but obviously isn't sustainably. Stress throughout this initial period that the later portions of class would be better if they spent time before hand doing the reading. Further point out that less material will be covered if they don't do the reading before hand, or that you might have to switch to a less desirable teaching method (e.g., lectures or presentations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:11:39.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9053" CreationDate="2013-04-02T12:16:11.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could accept the job offer, and quit your job if the PhD position works out. Especially during your trial period at that company it is surely ethical to quit, this period is meant for you to see if you like the company and vice-versa. If you find something more to your liking, switching jobs is normal. After your trial period you probably have some kind of period you need to stay after resigning, say a month. The PhD will probably not require you to start the second you get the scholarship, so you have ample time to deal with the last bits at the company, and start at your PhD position a month later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:16:11.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9031" CreationDate="2013-04-02T12:26:13.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think every style is going to be different. &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt; doesn't add it to the references at the end. It also only uses initials and not the full name in text. Additional reference to the same communication would still include the initials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing to remember is to be consistent and let the copy editor enfore the style rule. Nobody is going to reject your work because of slight stylistic deviations,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:26:13.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9053" CreationDate="2013-04-02T12:31:43.240" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking to speed up the process will not hurt your chances. They may not be able to speed anything up, but if they do/don't, they will not hold it against you. Likely what they will do is take a look at where you stand and then be able to judge if they can definitely fund you. If so they will tell you. If not, they will tell you they don't know yet. They also might tell you it is unlikely. Something like you are currently ranked 25 and we have funding for 8. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T12:31:43.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9062" CreationDate="2013-04-02T13:34:36.820" Score="11" ViewCount="26759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out the equivalence between grade schemes in different countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some Google results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are a U.S. citizen, you need a GPA of 3.2+ (it varies, some say 3.2 and some others say 3.6, etc) to apply for a position in the UK (job or university) where the prerequisite is to have a minimum grade of 2:1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In UK 2:1 is earned if you have a 60-69% of the points. I've read that 2:1 is the same as 67%.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Spain we use a grading scheme of 10 points. So according to (2), for have a UK 2:1 you need to have 6-6.9 points.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are Spanish and have 6.7, when converting it to GPA the result is 1.5.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you take the above points and treat them as a math equation, the final result will be GPA 1.5 = GPA 3.2, which doesn't make any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;GPA 3.2 = UK 2:1&#xA;UK 2:1 = Spain 6.7&#xA;Spain 6.7 = GPA 1.5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replacing now...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;UK 2:1 = GPA 1.5    &#xA;GPA 3.2 = GPA 1.5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if someone has a better explanation on converting grades obtained in different countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6651" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T06:00:47.967" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T09:16:08.807" Title="How to convert from one grading scheme to another?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:56:35.723" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of discouraging grade grubbing the traditional way (by making it harder), you could also choose to discourage it by making it less necessary. Students are much less likely to fight you over a few points if one or both of the following are true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have so many course points available that it would take an an entire&#xA;assignment's worth of grade grubbing to move up a letter grade in&#xA;the course. For example, if there are 1,000 points, and each exam is&#xA;100 points, then it would take on average about 10 exam points to&#xA;increase your overall grade by 1%. To move up from a course grade of&#xA;87% to 90%, the student would need to find 30 points, equivalent to&#xA;increase from a 70% to a 100% on an exam. All but the most ardent&#xA;grade grubber will have trouble finding that many.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop the lowest assignment(s) in certain (or all) categories. If you drop one out of 5 exams, two out of 10 quizzes, 5 out of 25 homework assignments, and so on, grade grubbers are less likely to come and try to make a deal over one low grade. They will focus more on doing better on a later assignment so that they can drop the bad assignment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these options lowers the marginal benefit of each additional point on an exam or assignment. At a point where the effort outweighs the benefit, most students will stop grubbing and only come complain when it is serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alternatively, all of your assignments could be multiple choice with one correct answer and no partial credit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T14:56:35.723" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9039" CreationDate="2013-04-02T15:12:25.690" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok 1st of all I think you're delusional about what you &quot;think&quot; you're missing out on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everywhere you go, academia is a very independent vocation.  That is, even at a top notch school, &lt;em&gt;your peers probably wouldn't want to chit chat with you about physics much&lt;/em&gt;.  They'd want to go do their own research.  Life at a top notch institution isn't some all-day sitcom with witty exchanges about subatomic particles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friendships and conversations can be had with people in other disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I think you don't understand is&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;nobody cares about your research problem&lt;/strong&gt;, not even your peers and equivalents &lt;strong&gt;because they are too busy with their own problem&lt;/strong&gt;.  The intellectual load of academia is such that if you don't narrow your focus, you'll never succeed. Simply because there is too much to know, and if you start exploring too many fields, all your time will be lost.&#xA;If they are researching the exact same thing as you, &lt;em&gt;then they are in competition with you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also have a superiority complex that you need to overcome. You very obviously think you're smarter than everyone around you, and you look down on your peers. You have to stop doing that, and instead work independently, chat with peers on break times on common grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the Internet for peer discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="2745" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T17:42:58.367" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T17:42:58.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9058" CreationDate="2013-04-02T16:23:50.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no clear answer for conversion between grading schemes in different countries. Sure, you could numerically try to convert using ratios and proportions as you are currently tying to do but they don't really mean anything because of the following two salient reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grade Inflation and Deflation:&lt;/strong&gt; Grades mean differently in different institutions across different disciplines and in different courses. For instance, certain highly ranked universities in the USA are very well known for grade inflation. A 3.5 overall GPA is what almost everyone gets. On the other hand, certain other highly ranked universities suffer from grade inflation where getting a 3.0 GPA in certain courses and in certain majors is very different. Hence, merely using some base metric to convert between grading schemes of different countries is not a very good idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Differential grading within the same country:&lt;/strong&gt; Not every country has a standardized grading system. For instance, India has at least 5 different grading schemes that I am aware of including but not limited to absolute CGPA's on a 4.0 scale, a percentage system on 100 and a relative CGPA system on a 10.0 scale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't convert between different grading schemes unless it is explicitly mentioned what minimum grades you need for your own country. Just apply and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T16:23:50.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9058" CreationDate="2013-04-02T17:38:56.250" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize that you mainly mention translating grades between Spain-UK-USA but the final statement of your question is about converting grades in general, so that's what I will refer to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most countries have their own system which doesn't really make sense as you try to &quot;translate&quot; them to some other system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in Sweden two grading systems exist at university level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;U/G/VG which stands for fail/pass/pass with distinction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;U/3/4/5 which stands for fail/pass with grade 3/4/5 (5 being the best possible grade) used primarily in technical (such as engineering) universities/faculties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our neighbouring Denmark however seems to have a 7-grade system with a scale from -3 to 12. In Germany, however, the best grade you can get is a 1, thus you would want a &quot;GPA&quot; as low as possible. So much so that if you apply to an institute with 4+ GPA from a Swedish engineering school, they don't even bother to reply (personal experience). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to this grading madness, consider the effect of the curve bell; in some countries university exams are graded based on a bell curve, so a certain percentage of students get the best grade no matter how many points they get. In other words if you are in a class of overambitious students, well, your 80% in the exam might be barely enough for a pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a standardised grading system was attempted in the EU (with some extra countries) in connection with the Bologna Process, with the ultimate goal of facilitating internationalization amongst European countries. But it died out due to the resistance from many different institutes. When the standardised grading system introduced with the Bologna Process was trashed later on (at least in Sweden), the solution was to supply a diploma supplement, for instance upon enrolment in exchange program, where statistics (how many students were enrolled, how many passed with what grade etc) for each course the student has taken is denoted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up, what the grades are supposed to reflect typically gets lost in translation. Trying to convert them back and forth does not make any sense, and even if it did, there is no guarantee that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;country A&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;country B&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; will value a certain grade &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;G&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; from a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;country C&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the same way. In clearer terms your 6.7 Spanish GPA might not weigh equal when judged by the American and the British authorities/companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T21:37:52.103" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T21:37:52.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-04-03T00:03:08.013" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;See these resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://brownmath.com/stfa/raise.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://brownmath.com/stfa/raise.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130705093554/http://www.rochester.edu/College/phl/gradechange.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20130705093554/http://www.rochester.edu/College/phl/gradechange.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted the latter form on my door, and referred students to it when they came grumbling. They were furious the first couple of times, but then learned that it was a moot point to argue with me. (Although there was a case when I screwed up the final grade computation, and had to submit a few dozen grade change slips).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more serious side, I stopped doing the 60-70-80-90-100 cutoffs in the latest courses at all. Think about this: you are spending 70% of the test material and volume to test for a C, and then another 10% for a B, and then another 10% for an A. A much better use of your test problems is to have 1/3 of the problems address the grade of C, then another 1/3 of more complex problems to address the grade of B, and finally the most difficult 1/3 of problems address the grade of A. So in my exams, I would state something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 12 problems on this test marked at level C; you need to get 10 of them right to get the grade of C. There are 10 problems on this test marked at level B; you need to get at least 8 problems at level B or higher, and at least 15 problems total, to get the grade of B. There are 8 problems on this test marked at level A; you need to get at least 6 problems at level A, and at least 20 problems overall, to get a grade of A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, out of 12+10+8 = 30 problems, you need to do two thirds, pick and choose, to get a full A, and only a third to get a C. You got 4 A problems, 4 B problems, and 8 C problems? That's a B+ in my books; you are a far shot for the required 20 problems for A, but you fulfilled the B requirements, and slightly exceeded them by having completed a bunch of A problems. The problems would be clustered, on most occasions: a given &quot;big&quot; problem would start with two-three C points, progress to one or two B points, and then culminate in an A point. Some A problems would be stand alone ones. So there would be 8 to 10 &quot;big&quot; problems and items within it. The smartest students would work on 6 problems, get everything right, and leave early. Not so bright students would attempt everything and fail at everything, and walk away with a C. I've seen all of the different ways that students approached it, which showed their learning styles and testing strategies -- pretty interesting per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While initially confusing (I train students to it by giving like three quizzes based on this system in the first three weeks), this system works very well in the end. Before each test, I also give students rubrics stating what they need to know at C/B/A level (C level: know the formula; B: determine which formula to use in a given simple context; A level: know where the formula breaks down, and how), so there was very little arguing about grades: either you've done the problem to my liking, or you haven't; and then you just count the completes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="22995" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T14:57:50.780" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T14:57:50.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9065" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9087" CreationDate="2013-04-03T01:21:13.173" Score="5" ViewCount="2388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to learn about the state of the art in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;network science&lt;/a&gt; and which problems researchers are actively working on. In particular, I'm interested in the applications, but the theory is also interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found papers on scholar.google.com, and if I'm not mistaken most of the papers are published in application-specific conferences. For example, if network science is used to understand something related to cancer then the results are published in a medical journal. This is making it hard for me to get a consistent view and it's hard for me to get access to such a broad section of the literature (I'm not at a university so I keep hitting paywalls).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Where can I find conferences and journals that focus on network science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6655" LastEditorUserId="6655" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T01:52:19.017" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T02:12:47.997" Title="Conferences and journals for network science?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;network-analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9065" CreationDate="2013-04-03T02:13:30.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say you are approaching it in the wrong way. Since network science (as Wikipedia defined it) is multidisciplinary concept, then I really doubt finding a consistent venue (conferences/ journals) for it.  This is specially true if you are interested in the &lt;em&gt;application&lt;/em&gt; side.  If you are interested in the theory behind it, I see Graph Theory is the way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked in different applications of what so called &lt;em&gt;network science&lt;/em&gt; including bioinformatics, social networks. I only knew graph theory (I had no clue what genes really are). &lt;strong&gt;So this largely depends on the application domain.&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So simple steps to go:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick an area/interesting problem related to your expertise/background. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read its literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you saw a good paper related to your work, then keep an eye on the authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T02:18:41.087" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T02:18:41.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2013-04-03T04:13:28.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The results for my project were not a pretty as expected, but I had months to optimize. Unfortunately the abstract had to be submitted asap. So I added great detail to background and methodology, some vague noises about the results, and ended with &quot;preliminary results are discussed.&quot; It wasn't perfect, it sucked actually, but it did the job, and the results are now where they need to be for the conference in the summer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this feed was originally discussed in January, but figured anyone desperate on Google would see this and maybe see a glimmer of hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6657" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T04:13:28.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-03T05:51:44.037" Score="9" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;research portion&quot; of my paper is mostly done, but I'm having trouble putting together my research. (Keep in mind this is at the undergraduate level). It's not so much that I don't know how to organize my thoughts; in fact, I've written a very detailed outline. I seem to have a two questions I'm wrestling with (I apologize if this is a tad long-winded)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The monotonous proof-theorem-proof-theorem style that essentially consists of a list of facts with no exposition seems to be most accepted. But will this really make my paper stand out? When I think about texts with proof-theorem-proof-theorem, I think of the color gray. If I try to be clever and witty, it could certainly backfire on me, but such papers are the most memorable papers I've ever read! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what should the tone/style of my paper be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling &lt;em&gt;very much&lt;/em&gt; with how detailed my paper should be. By no means am I writing a textbook, but I need to show the audience (namely admission committees) that I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what I'm talking about.  On the other hand, I have a deadline! There's always this looming thought in the back of my head that says &quot;But you can't leave that out!&quot; when I debate if I should skip something just to speed up the process -- it's as if I have a hoarder living in my head. I have this same issue with considering how much background/prerequisite math I should include for the reader -- it is &lt;strong&gt;confusing&lt;/strong&gt;, to say the least,  writing to an audience that is more knowledgeable than the author. This is certainly very difficult for me to figure out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how detailed should my paper be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to hear feedback from professors and/or admission committees members. But, of course, feedback from anyone with research experience is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6489" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T12:05:58.023" Title="How to get a research paper all together" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9068" CreationDate="2013-04-03T06:31:34.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current field is not mathematics, but I am certainly not a real stranger to the field as I did my diploma (undergrad + masters) education on applied mathematics. Anyways here's my two cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The regular structure and tone of research articles is pretty much the same; unless there is a good reason you stick to IMRaD (Intro, Mat&amp;amp;Met, Results and Discussion). Unless there is a good reason, you avoid passive tone, and changes in tense etc. This structure has the benefit of being familiar and intuitive to practically anyone out there. The &quot;RaD&quot; part is typically what's most important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's different in &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; case is due to the fact that research om mathematics is more &lt;em&gt;inductive&lt;/em&gt; than &lt;em&gt;deductive&lt;/em&gt;. What that means is that you have to make sure your introduction is watertight, all your assumptions are valid. Since the value of your results depend on what you have built them on, the introduction becomes much more important than a &quot;normal&quot; introduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the tone or style; the reason why some people can write witty is most likely because the same person has written many more articles, perhaps even book chapters. The experience really shines through in academic writing. Besides an established/respected professor isn't likely to be judged for humor in writing, the same way a junior scientist would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively the person in question might be &quot;witty&quot; in his/her personality, and that wittiness passes on to the writing. As a young, aspiring academic you should be more worried about getting it &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; than getting it pretty/witty. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's usually hard to decide on that sort of stuff without having any more information. How much did you write? How much work are you presenting in that paper? It's usually a good idea to stick to the upper limit for the paper. Any journal (in my experience) will give you an upper limit on number of words/characters/pages for manuscript submission. I can only imagine admission committees would do the same. If there really isn't a defined limit, ask a more experienced colleague/friend perhaps, or a professor? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it works out fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T09:44:32.153" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T09:44:32.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9075" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:11:48.790" Score="6" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;What effect does a good research paper have on a university's worldwide rankings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:07:31.643" Title="What effect does a good research paper have on a university's reputation and worldwide ranking?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9071" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:25:47.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None.&lt;/strong&gt; One good paper makes its author(s) look good, but does not make the university more or less remarkable (either in term of perception by the research community or rankings). It takes a lot of good output (papers, conferences, etc.) for people to start saying “hey, that university has great research done in so many research groups, it looks like a great place”, and for whatever rankings to be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless by “good” you mean “outstanding”, not in the academic sense &lt;em&gt;“quite okay but I’m writing in hyperbolic style”&lt;/em&gt; but in the meaning of &lt;em&gt;“exceptionally good; clearly noticeable”&lt;/em&gt;. One groundbreaking (Nobel level, if you wish) discovery made at a single institution will help it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T07:46:44.333" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:46:44.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9078" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:27:06.747" Score="2" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave an application for a funded project to a student as reference material for his Masters thesis. He wants to put a reference to this text into his bibliography. What is the necessary &quot;bibliographic&quot; information to include in this case, and what would be the recommended way to format such a reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T21:32:20.063" Title="Citing a funding application in a student thesis" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9080" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:35:08.337" Score="0" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing research for my masters and also doing a full time job from 10 to 7 excluding the weekends.By the end of our research ,all of the students would get at least one good paper. I am also expected to get one. I have two more opportunities for research.&#xA;One comes from one of my semester projects on computer simulation.My professor told me that I might get a good publication out of it if I extend it a little.I have done most of the work on this project.I only have to do about 20 or 30 percent more work on it.&#xA;The second opportunity is regarding GPU acceleration.I haven't started work on this one.&#xA;I was wondering that will it be worth the effort if I choose to go ahead with these research opportunities? I am free on the weekends but I am worried that I might get burned out if I work all the time. Would it be beneficial for me if I plan to go into teaching in a few years? Would it be beneficial if I plan to go for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:43:50.217" Title="Doing extra research worth the effort?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9076" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:37:18.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule with citation of “unusual” references is always something like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you really want to cite it. &lt;em&gt;(In your case, it sounds okay, but most cases of students trying to cite “unusual” stuff end up with me telling them not to cite it)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include just enough information that the &lt;strong&gt;cited item is uniquely identifiable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the item is not publicly available, include additional information that hints at its content (such as the title).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Aristotle (341 BC). &lt;em&gt;Exploring the impact of introducing a fifth element in Empedocles’s classification of principles&lt;/em&gt; [Grant X1FH25 proposal to the Macedonian Science Fundation, Agency for Philosophical Research].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:37:18.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9093" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:40:48.567" Score="2" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are people doing research for Microsoft, Apple, Intel experienced researchers/scientists or just experienced programmers using other people's research? Do they hire full time researchers for their research or do they take experienced/skilled professionals who are familiar working with java, C++ and other commercial technologies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-04T21:01:16.907" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T21:01:16.907" Title="Are researchers for big digital companies experienced researchers/scientists or just experienced industry programmers?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9077" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:43:50.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing more research and get publication are always good, especially if you want to go for PhD and/or follow academia path. However, as you're working full-time, I wonder if you can do intensive research as it's a very hard work. So, my answer is: Yes, it's worth to do more research but you need to reschedule your time and prioritize which activity you want to do most: work or research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:43:50.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9083" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:56:24.437" Score="2" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;When do you call a researcher a computer scientist? Are Master degree holders computer scientists? Are Phd degree holders computer scientists? Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T08:39:58.390" Title="When does a researcher become a computer scientist?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-07-06T15:53:32.957" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9088" CreationDate="2013-04-03T08:37:40.073" Score="15" ViewCount="26841" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my CV, I include my dissertation topic within my education part like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;From start-time to end-time&#xA;Master of something, University at somewhere&#xA;Dissertation title: something&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also see some people include their dissertation in publication part even though it's not published publicly. So, I wonder if doing that is acceptable and advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastEditorUserId="6064" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T20:07:09.110" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:22:45.007" Title="Can dissertation be included in publication part in CV" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-04-03T08:39:58.390" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When do you call a researcher a computer scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A runner is someone who runs; a writer is someone who writes; a researcher is someone who does research; a computer scientist is someone who does computer science.  So if you're doing computer science research, &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; will call you a computer scientist and a researcher, even if you aren't yet published, even if you work full-time as a plumber, even if you're still in junior high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  There is nothing you can do to make other people call you anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to call &lt;em&gt;yourself&lt;/em&gt; a computer scientist, the only requirement is that you are doing computer science.  So in that sense, yes, there is a certain required level of experience: &lt;strong&gt;More than zero.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T08:39:58.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9068" CreationDate="2013-04-03T08:49:52.393" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies for stealing scaaahu's comment into this answer, but I wanted to stress that it is really the only possible answer to this question: ask your advisor! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a hang for the appropriate level of detail is a very tricky thing, and only comes with experience. Also with being clever and witty; if you can pull it off, great, but if you can't, then it distracts from the content of your article. There are no general rules for this, you need advice from a more experienced mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would write up a quick draft without stressing &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much over these issues, and go over it carefully with your advisor; they would be able to tell you whether your humour is working, or where you need more or less detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a few general tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at the papers you cite; if they all treat some theory as standard or well-known (&quot;By class field theory....&quot;) then you probably can too. Same goes for tone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often you can save space and omit details by rephrasing your results in a way that suggests how the proof should go. For example, let's say I have a lemma about a linear operator that gets proven by choosing a basis and then something straightforward; I might then state the lemma in terms of the matrix, so it would be more obvious to the reader how to complete the proof. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(and the most important, imo) Engaging papers are not engaging because of witty one-liners, they are typically engaging because a great deal of effort went into organizing them well. The key is to ensure the reader always knows where they are, where they are going, and how they're getting there. This is not at all easy to do, but if you practice writing with this in mind early on, it will serve dividends later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6660" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T12:05:58.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T12:05:58.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9091" CreationDate="2013-04-03T09:30:51.620" Score="43" ViewCount="102353" Body="&lt;p&gt;After lecturing for 3-4 hours my throat is often quite sore. Some days, I must lecturer for 6 hours (in past semesters, I've had some days which require lecturing for 8 hours). The problem is that for my later classes I have difficulty speaking comfortably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I drink a lot of water, don't smoke, and use lozenges from time to time (when I'm in pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other known (scientific or folklore) solutions to this problem of getting a sore throat after lecturing for 3-4 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T15:44:56.660" Title="Keeping your throat comfortable after hours of lecturing" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9082" CreationDate="2013-04-03T09:35:11.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people publish their theses as part of a monograph series. In that case, it could appear under &quot;books,&quot; but should still be identified as the PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other circumstances, I would not include it under &quot;Publications,&quot; but instead list it more or less as you suggest. (Under &quot;Dissertation Topic&quot; as part of &quot;Education.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T09:35:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9065" CreationDate="2013-04-03T10:10:32.207" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Seteropere completely, &quot;Network Science&quot; is a very broad subject. I work with the theory of &quot;dynamic networks&quot; which involves a lot of graph theory, complex networks, and time series analysis, but also in protocol design for Delay Tolerant Networks which is another application you might like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.network-science.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.network-science.org/&lt;/a&gt; it has plenty of links that I rate very highly. Including links to Alain Barrat's work (check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sociopatterns.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sociopatterns.org/&lt;/a&gt; it has some wonderful illustrations of dynamic networks). There is also a conference devoted specifically to Temporal and Dynamic Networks &lt;a href=&quot;http://tdn2013.wix.com/tdn2013#!contributions/cmc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tdn2013.wix.com/tdn2013#!contributions/cmc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the tips I sent to a recent new student in our department, most are free in that there are no paywalls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the references on the most recent papers you are reading, and also look at the conferences and journals that the authors are involved in by visiting their personal websites. This will tell you where people are currently submitting to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are some websites devoted to finding conferences too, but don't rely on them. Some examples:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conferences&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conferences&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a conference you like the look of, look at their &lt;strong&gt;calls for papers&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;past proceedings&lt;/strong&gt; to see what they are asking for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mailing lists! Sign up to (but don't spam) well known mailing lists. Again this will be dependent on the area you are interested in. In computer networking the biggest mailing list for calls for papers is probably the IEEE TCCC mailing list, &lt;a href=&quot;http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/mailing_list/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/mailing_list/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social networks. Sign up to Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/etc. A lot of Phd Students, PostDocs, lecturers, research groups, and conferences are on Twitter. When you find someone or something you like, look for it on social networking sites, look who is following, what they are talking about, and get involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6492" LastEditorUserId="6492" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T14:37:44.557" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T14:37:44.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9082" CreationDate="2013-04-03T10:20:03.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is best to put your dissertation under its own heading &quot;Dissertation&quot;. Even though this wastes a little space it makes the thesis easily identifiable. The value of a dissertation will diminish with time after the PhD so you can change its location later you want to conserve space. But, particularly in your early career many want to be able to clearly see what you wrote up for your thesis work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T10:22:45.007" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:22:45.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-04-03T10:21:35.943" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very often overlooked piece of advice: maintain &lt;em&gt;correct posture&lt;/em&gt; while you lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are, for instance, looking down at your lecture notes while talking, this places additional pressure on your throat and vocal cords, making you more tired as you go through the day. It also helps in the sound production itself—the sound will carry better when it's being projected outward instead of downward, which means you don't have to speak nearly as loud to be heard. (This will again help you over the course of a long day of lecturing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T10:21:35.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-04-03T10:24:18.280" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it sounds terrible to do so many hours straight, it is not really a good situation. I otherwise think voice coaching could be part of a solution. Many professional singers (particularly classical ones) need to go through rigorous training to be able to cope with a concert day after day (my partner is a singer so I get good tips from her). But, no training can prepare you for sustaining so many hours in the long-term. I am in the fortunate position of setting my hours myself and I never do more than 2 hours straight and then max 2 before and 2 after lunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So advice: talk to a voice coach or singing coach to see what they suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T11:21:54.030" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T11:21:54.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-04-03T11:19:56.910" Score="28" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you can &lt;strong&gt;lecture without having to raise your voice&lt;/strong&gt;, ever. When I did lecture a lot, I sometimes used a microphone even if the group was rather small, if only to be sure that I wouldn't raise my voice more than the minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drinking is good: I find that &lt;strong&gt;hot beverages heavily loaded with sugar&lt;/strong&gt; are the best. I usually drink some light-flavoured tea (green tea, jasmine tea, …) with lots of sugar or honey. If the weather is hot, lemon-based drinks make you salivate more and help preventing dry sore throat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Deal with your boss to avoid those horrible teaching conditions in the first place. He might not care that it's not in your best interest, but explain to him that &lt;strong&gt;it's not in the students' best interest&lt;/strong&gt; either! (Sore throat aside, I don't know anyone who can teach with as much passion on the 8th hour as on the first.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T11:37:49.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T11:37:49.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9071" CreationDate="2013-04-03T11:35:49.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A single good research paper typically has a &lt;strong&gt;very small impact&lt;/strong&gt; on the university's ranking and prestige. However, universities are very large organisations. Any one university may be producing thousands of publications each year. Thus, the presence or absence of one publication is unlikely to change the ranking of a university on some prestige or publication based league table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, each publication (and especially the &quot;good&quot; ones) does play its role in the overall evaluation of prestige. Thus, if a single good publication contributed .01% or .1% of the total citations (or other prestige generating effects) that a university received in a given period, then that is still important. I remember hearing that a study that received a lot of publicity was supposed to have generated $200,000 in free advertising exposure for the university. Presumably similar quantifications could be applied to university prestige. While the contribution of one publication relative to the prestige of an entire university is small, the absolute value may still be substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore the influence of one good publication on prestige naturally amplifies as you go to smaller groupings from nation to university to faculty to department to research group to individual researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T12:07:31.643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:07:31.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9079" CreationDate="2013-04-03T12:41:13.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft has a prominent research arm, &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/&quot;&gt;Microsoft Research&lt;/a&gt;.  Intel has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intel.com/intel-labs/.htm&quot;&gt;Intel Labs&lt;/a&gt;.  Both organizations hire research-focused PhDs from both industry and academia, and both employ researchers that have joint appointments on research university faculty.  Employees at both organizations also routinely publish fundamental research at peer-reviewed conferences and workshops, and in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple is a tougher nut to crack -- they spend truckloads of money on R&amp;amp;D, but rarely publish in peer-reviewed venues.  However, they do hire plenty of PhDs who do focused research on products that sometimes turn into the next iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three companies file many patents, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many other big companies also have research labs, and openly hire researches specifically working on fundamental research.  However, as with any company, research tends to be focused in the direction that could eventually produce profitable products -- if you are considering a research job at a company, you should take this into consideration.  For what it's worth, Microsoft Research seems to be closer to the &quot;research for the sake of science&quot; than some other labs, although there are others (notably, labs such as (formerly) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_%28company%29&quot;&gt;Xerox PARC&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs&quot;&gt;Bell Labs&lt;/a&gt; are famous for groundbreaking fundamental research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T12:50:09.687" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:50:09.687" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:25:12.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you're &lt;strong&gt;well hydrated&lt;/strong&gt; at all times just before, and during, the lecture.  Lecturing while thirsty means bad lubrication for your vocal chords.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you're lecturing in not-too-much-louder-than a normal speaking voice.  This means using a microphone if the room is large.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You also have to learn to &lt;em&gt;talk from the diaphragm&lt;/em&gt;.  It's the same thing good singers do.  Google searches will help you with this concept.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T13:25:12.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9079" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:30:58.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a discipline-specific question. Computer science may have Google, Microsoft, Bell labs -- what do other disciplines have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in survey statistics, and while there are about four or five Ph.D. programs in the world producing survey statisticians and methodologists (Univ of Maryland, Univ of Michigan and Univ of Nebraska, Lincoln in the US; Southampton in UK; Iowa State has a statistics program that is traditionally strong on the survey side; other Ph.Ds come from scattered academic survey statisticians, about another 10 or so people in North America), the papers published in academic journals in the discipline split about evenly between government, industry, and academia-proper. I've heard from friends in chemistry that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of good chemistry research is being done in industry these days, rather than in academia. Don't quote me on this though. National Institutes of Health (US) have a tenure-like system for their researchers, as they are expected to produce top-quality research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T13:30:58.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:31:30.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you need to understand that as her student, &lt;em&gt;you represent her&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said she was a big name.  Do you trust her?  My advice is to just follow her advice.  After you speak your point about something, &lt;em&gt;don't argue with her&lt;/em&gt;!  Just take her advice and apply it as best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's that unbearable, consider looking for a different supervisor for your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T13:31:30.827" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9082" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:55:53.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your method (thesis title in the education section) is the standard one. Though I notice your example doesn't have the advisor's name, which should be there too. If the thesis was published separately as a monograph, or several articles, I would still list the thesis title in the education section as well as the papers/monographs in the publication section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T13:55:53.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9082" CreationDate="2013-04-03T14:58:28.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I argue for including the dissertation explicitly as a publication item&lt;/strong&gt;, preferably in a separate section &quot;Theses&quot;, or &quot;Theses, technical reports and pre-prints&quot; (including other theses, such as master thesis, if publicly available). Of course the solution also marginally depends on the habits and regulations of the country where you completed the thesis. In countries like Germany, a dissertation thesis is required to be submitted to the university library, subsequently it is catalogued by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnb.de/&quot;&gt;German National Library&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnb.de/DE/Wir/Kooperation/dissonline/dissonline_node.html&quot;&gt;Dissonline section&lt;/a&gt;) and receives an ISBN, hence it can be treated as a proper publication. As far as I know, also in the Netherlands, dissertations are published as books with proper ISBN assigned, hence proper archival publications too. In the past (not sure about current situation) some other countries, such as Slovakia, even master theses were required to be archived and made publicly available on request by the university libraries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T15:57:58.027" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T15:57:58.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-04-03T15:44:56.660" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While other answers are largely prophylactic, here are some thoughts on the cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remedy&lt;/strong&gt;: For any throat infections, &lt;strong&gt;gargling&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; way to go. There are many ingredients one could add to gargling water: common salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, ginger, etc. &lt;strong&gt;Cayenne pepper&lt;/strong&gt;, for example, supposedly contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://folkpotions.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/cayenne-pepper-for-sore-throats/&quot;&gt;capsaicin&lt;/a&gt; that could alleviate pain receptors and diminish the pain. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/265676-ginger-honey-for-a-sore-throat/&quot;&gt;Ginger&lt;/a&gt; is another antibacterial and antifungal analgesic that could work wonders on your throat. Given &lt;a href=&quot;http://jellybelly-shanavi.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/inji-kashayam-home-remedy-for-stubborn.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldofsujana.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/kashayam-herbal-remedy-for-cold-flu.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; are the recipes for a common Indian potion for sore throats made using ginger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-a-Sore-Throat-or-Laryngitis&quot;&gt;This Wikihow&lt;/a&gt; article has comprehensive list of treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rest&lt;/strong&gt;: Nothing is more efficient than a few days of rest: if not physical absence from the school, you could at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Remain-Silent-for-a-Whole-Day&quot;&gt;rest your vocal chords&lt;/a&gt; - they deserve it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T15:44:56.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9114" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:30:21.087" Score="15" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;A researcher in my field has written to ask me high resolution files for 5 figures from 3 different papers of mine. He states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently I am revising one review article where I have used several figures from some of your excellent papers. Due to the editor and the reviewer ask me to provide them with high qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no problem in sending him the figures in high resolution. One thing is worrying me slightly: if you write a review with 5 figures from someone else, it's either a very long review, or you may simply not be the right person to write it, it seems to me. Should I be worried about plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when I write him back, and presumably send him the request files, what should I be mindful of? I see the following (nonexclusive) options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask to know a little more about this review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give him links to my few very recent articles related to this topic, trying to make sure he's not forgetting anything relevant (some papers are only a few weeks old, so it is understandable that they may not have appeared on his radar yet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;insert here others options I haven't thought of&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I will definitely do anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him to send me the review once it's published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remind him that he needs copyright permission from my papers' publishers, in addition to my files.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T03:37:02.200" Title="Request for high res figures: what should I be mindful of?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9101" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:35:56.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds very fishy to me. If an editor has asked them to provide them with high quality figures then presumably there is a copy of this paper that you can read to make sure you're not being copied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd ask whoever this is for a copy of the paper before sending them anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6492" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T18:35:56.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9101" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:50:54.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that five figures sounds excessive (no offense!). In addition, I ask myself if you alone have the copyright or if the journal (or whatever publications) in which the figures are published holds a copyright (usually the publisher). It is of course possible that the author has asked about copyright directly with a publisher. It does, however, seem odd that the person has already used the figures for a reviewed version of the manuscript. I think it would be pertinent to ask where the paper is to be published and depending on the situation regarding the copyright, ask why you have not been approached before. I would also contact the editor of the journal where the paper is to be published if there are remaining uncertainties after contacting the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T19:03:11.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T19:03:11.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-03T19:21:53.640" Score="36" ViewCount="2293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=beer&quot;&gt;number of answers&lt;/a&gt; in this site where building contacts over a glass of beer is encouraged. Moreover the cream of academia belongs to the Western world, where beer culture is common. Unfortunately though, I am a rigid teetotaler and I do not know about the ins-and-outs of the preferences of drinking friends of mine. I confess I'd make a terrible company at a public house. But I hasten to add that in general, I am amiable and move around quite well with people within my limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does my being a teetotaler put me at a grave disadvantage when it comes to establishing intelligent academic contacts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T15:06:07.077" Title="Is it more difficult for teetotalers to develop academic contacts?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-04-03T19:29:20.597" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. What really helps in building academic contacts is not beer, wine or any other alcohol, but the ability to generate informal discussions in relaxed settings. Fortunately, there are many ways to achieve that goal that do not require the intake of alcohol!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without going very far from drinking, sharing a nice lunch or dinner in an appropriate setting is one good way to establish contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T19:29:20.597" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-04-03T20:50:20.473" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had suggested the beer night idea, and you're right that this would be uncomfortable for teetotallers. As it turns out, we do have people in our group who don't drink: they usually order juice or something else, and no one really notices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard of gatherings (typically in more business settings) where there's some posturing about the kinds of whisky/beer/wine one drinks: that's not at all what I had in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T20:50:20.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-04-03T23:22:08.203" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, I will say that unfortunately the answer is yes. i.e. it puts you at a subtle disadvantage because you are different from the rest. Note I am saying 'subtle' because no one will readily admit treating you differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol serves a social purpose and is often used to create instant connection between two people. Its part of the cultural landscape. It is easy and acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just let your ideas speak for themselves and then it will not matter if you drink or not drink alcohol for those who are serious about working with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I try to socialise in the morning because coffee is the only option then! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T23:22:08.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9119" CreationDate="2013-04-03T23:39:28.520" Score="4" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does a research panel look for in the research proposal of an early career research fellow applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An early career research fellow is defined as a person who has completed PhD within five years of the application deadline. A small university in my area is calling for applications for early career research fellow application. The research proposal is part of the application process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T06:49:55.993" Title="Early Career Research Fellow Application" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-04-04T01:06:50.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only academic teetotaller that I know of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Koothrappali&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Raj Koothrappali&lt;/a&gt; (which probably tells something about my circles). Have you ever tried non-alcoholic beer? You can find quite good, actually (my wife is pregnant now, so we have the fridge stuffed with it), although an average bar may not carry it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I believe you are way overthinking the drinking culture. Do your socialization in the morning over coffee, or around the lunch time; excuse yourself at night by saying that you are a strictly morning person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, by being/converting to a morning person, you can hit a very good stratum of physically active academicians who jog in the morning. I generally hate running, but whenever I go to conferences, I know that I will generally be overeating throughout the day, oversitting the calories at the talks, so I just have to run. Find other people who do run, too, and socialize with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T01:06:50.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9116" CreationDate="2013-04-04T02:30:21.510" Score="13" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the not completely unusual position of having an eight year period between my Master's and PhD degrees. During this time I was gainfully employed in a completely unrelated and non-academic field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now graduated from a PhD and am looking for work.  Many good post-doc and academic jobs require three referees to speak on one's behalf, and to be competitive these references must surely be academics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a great relationship with my Master's supervisor, including co-authoring papers together, and I believe that despite the 12 years since I was her student she could still speak credibly, confidently, and highly favorably on my behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the non-academic world it would stretch credibility to call upon a reference from such a distant point in the past.  But for an academic position, I think things could be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of using her as personal reference?  Are potential post-doctoral supervisors or hiring committees likely to discount her reference as stale and irrelevant?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6670" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T08:17:50.950" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T08:17:50.950" Title="What are the consequences of a recommendation from someone in the distant past?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8618" CreationDate="2013-04-04T02:55:52.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It almost never happens in Finance and Economics, well, except at Harvard, MIT and U of Chicago. This is mostly because there are more people graduating than there are tenure track  jobs and people usually wind up  upto 50-75 ranks below where they graduate. The top 10 schools graduate enough students to fill the positions in the top 50 schools and so on. Sometimes you hear of some stellar people who move up because they have done great work and are very visible but the general traffic is downwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T02:55:52.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9101" CreationDate="2013-04-04T03:37:02.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if you write a review with 5 figures from someone else, it's either a very long review, or you may simply not be the right person to write it, it seems to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you just think that person has amazing figures.  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author's university and the journal publishing the review are both reputable, then I doubt you have much to worry about.  If they aren't, then it is more worrisome.  If the author hasn't already specified where the review article has been submitted, then that's strange in itself, although it could be awkwardness rather than dishonesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will it be a mediocre review article?  There's not much you can do about this: you presumably can't stop the article from being published, so the only question is whether the world would be better off if it didn't include your figures.  (That outcome would be worse for you, and I can't see why it would be better for the rest of the world, so I'd be inclined to give them the figures.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there no actual review article, and this is just a setup to get copies of your files for use in plagiarism?  It would seem crazy to draw your attention if there's plagiarism involved, but sometimes people are crazy (or it could be someone using a fake address or hacked account).  I wouldn't worry about this too much: the chances of plagiarism are not so high, and the chances the plagiarizer will actually get away with it are even lower.  Besides, you might end up with an amusing story about the time a plagiarizer asked you for copies of your figures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remind him that he needs copyright permission from my papers' publishers, in addition to my files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely, and you could even cc the permissions e-mail addresses for your publishers, to help speed the process along and make sure the author doesn't forget or lie about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T03:37:02.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9112" CreationDate="2013-04-04T04:07:32.377" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If research is a substantive part of the jobs you are applying for, then you should be wary of asking your Master's supervisor for a letter.  It could work out OK, but there's a serious risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that hiring committees want information about your current research, rather than what you did for your Master's degree.  If your Master's supervisor has read some of your recent work and is capable of discussing and evaluating it in detail, then it will be a useful recommendation.  However, you don't want a letter that focuses on the past and just includes a brief paragraph saying &quot;And the Ph.D. research seems to have gone well, but I don't really know anything about it.&quot;  That could actually hurt your case by suggesting that you couldn't find three people who understand and think highly of your more recent work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong letter that focuses on the past is certainly better than a weak letter, so it could be your best option.  You might also talk about this issue with your Master's supervisor, and see how compelling and up to date a letter she thinks she can provide.  If she has read or wants to read your recent work, then that's great; if she is hesitant about the idea of writing a letter, then I would ask someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T04:07:32.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9118" CreationDate="2013-04-04T04:29:42.777" Score="8" ViewCount="6799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a PhD interview at a university in the US. The application procedure didn't involve submitting a research proposal, so I am not very sure what kind of questions I should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor contacted me to schedule an interview, I wanted to ask what kind of questions are expected, because I do not know the project they think I fit in, in fact, one of the purposes of this interview is to tell me about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it okay to ask the interviewer what to prepare? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T05:18:52.790" Title="Asking a PhD interviewer about preparation" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9117" CreationDate="2013-04-04T05:18:52.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I want to point out that my opinions are based on my own experiences. Having said that a few years ago I interviewed with professors form several &quot;top&quot; ranked computer science, information science and business programs for potential doctoral admissions. Second, I have an admissions season's worth of experience from the &quot;other&quot; side where I have interviewed potential PhD applicants as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need a research proposal. In fact, treat this &quot;interview&quot; as a conversation between an academic and a potential future colleague. There is nothing to &quot;prepare&quot; per se. Basically, what's going to happen is that the professor is going to ask you about your research interests and experiences in greater detail than what can be evidenced from your CV or publications. You will have the chance to tell him all about yourself. Do not mis-represent yourself or veer off paths you have not trodden before. What's also going to happen is that this professor will tell you about his project or his lab if he a potential adviser or person whom you want to work with during your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing ask him about preparation. Just be ready to discuss your own works and have some questions ready to ask him. Just treat it as a discussion between two professionals and you will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T05:18:52.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9110" CreationDate="2013-04-04T06:49:55.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For very early career (few years after your PhD), most people will value signs that you are carrying good research &lt;strong&gt;independently of your Phd advisor&lt;/strong&gt;. You gained you PhD, and presumably you did good (because you found jobs since then, you haven't left academia). Now, as an early career scientist, you need to show that you can design, implement and manage your own research projects. Basically, they want to see you as a &lt;strong&gt;leader with high potential&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in general these are the most watched points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the candidate able to put up a good and coherent research project, explaining its context and impact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did the candidate publish without his advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did she mentor/advise (or even work with) younger students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has she created new collaborations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T06:49:55.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-04-04T06:50:30.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not drinking alcohol and it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; prohibit social interactions in academia: just order an orange juice and nobody will think bad of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, socializing requires to find a common base for discussion. Being different in common aspects (e.g. drinking alcohol and commenting on how good or bad the beer is, speaking English with a strong accent, etc...) generally does not matter if you are prolific in other aspects shared with others (e.g. international politics, latest results in your field, latest gossip in the field, etc...). Once established a base of common interest, differences even make a good discussion topic, as researchers are generally open minded people interested in learning new topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the last conference I attended, the social event was at a pub and the conference dinner at a restaurant with an open bar. I had orange juice and self-assigned the mission to take pictures of the event, which in itself helped to start various discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T06:50:30.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2013-04-04T08:39:38.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was doing my bachelor degree, my department had a policy which made students more serious about asking for re-marking: when a student submit a formal request, he has to pay a small fee which will be refunded if his grade changes after being re-marked, otherwise the department will keep that money. Although I doubt that this solution can be applied everywhere, but it actually makes students to think carefully instead of blindly asking for re-mark all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T08:39:38.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T09:03:36.953" Score="5" ViewCount="5103" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I have heard it is not possible to get a second PhD in Europe if you have obtained first PhD in Europe. Is it true? My 1st PhD is in Theoretical Physics which I won't find a fair job related to that. so I am trying to apply for second PhD in Mechanical engineering or applied Physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6678" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:05:33.333" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T02:05:33.333" Title="Is it possible to obtain a second PhD degree in Europe?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T19:06:15.953" Score="11" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;My daughter has a strong interest in theoretical computer science, and she has just been  admitted to several different universities as a freshman.  She is just a bright student, not a genius, with a bit of research experience in cryptography and randomness stuff, and a semifinalist in a couple of national competitions.   She intends to continue graduate study in theoretical CS, or a closely related subfield, after finishing her undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given her strong interest in eventual graduate study, what criteria should we take into account in choosing where to enroll as an undergraduate?  How can we tell which undergrad programs best prepare their students for graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15415" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T08:41:03.253" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T08:41:03.253" Title="How to evaluate undergrad CS programs when eventually aiming for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-03-29T23:30:24.073" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;here are some standard rankings/surveys that might be helpful. for very elite schools, they are all highly rigorous, and maybe unique nonacademic features  particularly appealing to your daughter (eg &quot;culture/atmosphere&quot;, which is difficult to objectively characterize) might shift the balance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the last 2 links are based on Shanghai Jiao Tong University's graduate school of education which recently ranked the world's best universities in computer science, based according to their academic or research performance in each subject field. it ranks 9 of the top 10 in the US. good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/best-universities-computer-science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Worlds best universities in computer science, USNews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;best grad schools / computer science, USNews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/computer-science-colleges-2012_n_2694930.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer Science Colleges' Best Programs, As Ranked By 'Academic Ranking Of World Universities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/best-university-computer-science_n_2439697.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Best Universities: Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12098" OwnerDisplayName="vzn" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T23:30:24.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-01T10:29:41.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best researchers go to Universities where they get the best students to teach, and the best students go to Universities where they get good education and enough attention from the faculty.  So, things balance out.  Departmental reputation and standard University ranking tables are perfectly fine to use as a guide to decide where to go.  Pretty much all the top departments will have good strength in Theoretical Computer Science.  You will need to look closely only if you are looking at lower-ranking Universities, which might have strength in some areas but not others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no conflict between good undergraduate education and good grad school, because the grad students do contribute to teaching.  They run tutorials/discussions and help students with questions and exercises.  So, a department that is good at grad school is also likely to be good in undergraduate teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be a bit of difference between private Universities and State Universities.  Because private Universities are more dependent on the tuition fees and alumni donations, they are likely to spend more effort on undergraduate teaching.  State Universities also tend to have larger class sizes, something to consider if you are looking for &quot;personalized attention&quot;.  You can't ask for too much personalized attention because, if that is what the faculty are engaged in, they are not going to have much time for research and, as a result, the quality of the department would go down in the long run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really after personalized attention, then you might consider Liberal  Arts Colleges rather than Universities.  Undergraduate teaching is their No. 1 focus.  They don't normally have a grad school.  While the faculty would engage in some research, research is not considered the top priority.  Teaching is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9746" OwnerDisplayName="Uday Reddy" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T10:29:41.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:07:46.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Selecting a school is a very challenging thing to do.  Just because a school has top-quality research faculty doesn't necessarily mean they have top-quality teaching faculty (brilliant researchers are not always the best communicators, unfortunately).  The best way to get one-on-one time with a professor is usually to corner them during their office hours and keep asking questions until they insist they need to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever your daughters ends up, encourage her to start making a connection with individual faculty members as early as possible.  Faculty are almost always happy to bring new students into their labs, and there is funding available for undergraduates who are interested in research.  Many universities offer REUs (research experience for undergraduates).  The primary issue I've come across is that these programs have difficulty finding undergraduates to give money to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as grad school goes:  tell her to make good grades and get involved with a lab.  Everything else will fall into place (and that's a long way off, anyways).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Chance" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T21:07:46.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T09:47:48.950" Score="7" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a entry-level web developer for approximately a year now.  I am looking to go back to school to get a Master's Degree in hopes that I will be able to teach programming/development at the community college level (which requires a Master's Degree).  I'm not interested in a PhD because I have to work full-time to support my family and I'm not interested in doing research.  I have narrowed down my options to 2 programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brandeis University has a Master's in Software Engineering, which teaches a lot of very specific, high-level courses (primarily Java programming and development).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boston University Master's in Computer Science - Web Development, teaches a more holistic approach that spans several domains, but doesn't go into as much detail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you find that a particular academic background makes one more marketable for teaching at the community college level?  I feel that having a deep mastery of a specific technology is great, but community college courses generally do not get that deep into the material.  I'm also a little nervous that if I take a more general curriculum that introduces me to many topics, my transcripts may not show that I have a deep enough understanding of a specific subject to teach at the college level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any recommendations/insights or experiences with this type of career transition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you and have a great day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6659" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T10:32:28.837" Title="Master's Degree Curriculum and its Effects on Teaching Opportunities" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9039" CreationDate="2013-04-04T10:14:36.280" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;nobody cares about your university, the only important thing at least in Europe is your CV. If you can publish paper in good journals then nobody will think about your university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6678" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T10:14:36.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-04T10:52:45.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly said that the only university that counts is the one you've graduated from last.  If your daughter wants to eventually earn a PhD, the graduate school she attends will most likely figure more importantly to her future employability than her undergraduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it is also true that many undergraduate schools with some of the top &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; schools in CS also produce excellent candidates for graduate school, primarily because the number of undergraduate research opportunities are greater, and also because it can be assumed that there is a good deal of correlation between the quality of the graduate program and the quality of the undergraduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However,&lt;/em&gt; it would be wise to also consider the strength of the undergraduate program from the standpoint of all the normal factors that go into choosing an undergraduate school, e.g., (1) the kind of student your daughter is, and (2) whether the undergraduate program will give her what she needs as a student holistically.  For example, some phenomenal CS programs are at schools where class sizes can be in the hundreds (e.g., UC Berkeley), but if your daughter thinks she would get swallowed up in a giant class, that probably isn't the place for her.  A smaller school with smaller classes might be more appropriate, even if the CS program is weaker as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the top two (in my opinion) factors that will affect your daughter's success in getting into graduate school are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her grades (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9039/how-to-deal-with-the-frustration-of-doing-phd-at-a-low-ranked-university/9041#9041&quot;&gt;despite what some prominent and highly successful members of this community have achieved&lt;/a&gt;).  Getting a 4.0 from any decent school in a particular major is better than a 2.5 from the best school in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate research, with published results.  Just doing research is important, but having published results will help her case significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: I suggest choosing a school where your daughter feels comfortable, and with enough of a research program that she could get involved with research as an undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T10:52:45.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-04-04T11:40:41.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...in hopes that I will be able to teach programming/development at the community college level (which requires a Master's Degree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is technically true for many community colleges, it is also true that with a Master's degree vice a PhD, you will be less competitive for positions, as many PhDs also apply to community colleges.  A friend of mine from graduate school worked successfully as a programmer at Microsoft for 20 years, and when he started looking for teaching positions (with his Master's already) at community colleges, he was told that he would not be competitive for available positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further caveat: because community colleges generally do not have research requirements for instructors, they tend to rely on teaching experience as much as a particular degree when hiring instructors.  I would suggest that you consider trying to get some computer science teaching experience as well (if you don't have any).  You might want to see if either of the two schools you mentioned will allow you to TA classes -- you may not be able to get paid, but you could do it for free for the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to consider approaching the graduate school of education at BU (if you attend there) to see about education courses -- they have a number of teaching classes, and taking one of those would also bolster your resume.  You could also see about trying to get adjunct teaching positions at various community colleges -- teaching a one-off class may be possible, and you'd be able to leverage the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: unfortunately, there probably isn't a short path to being competitive for teaching positions at community colleges.  If you are going to go down the MS route, your best bet is to do as well as you can in a program, and to try to get some teaching experience under your belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T11:40:41.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:22:59.433" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am most familiar with the situation in Germany. There it is in fact possible to get more than one PhD degree. Different departments award different types of PhD degrees, depending on the academic field. In physics, you will typically earn a &quot;Dr. rer. nat.&quot; (PhD in science), while in engineering you will get a &quot;Dr.-Ing.&quot; (PhD in engineering). While most dissertation regulations will explicitly exclude the possibility that the same degree can be awarded twice, it is of course possible to earn a &quot;Dr.-Ing.&quot; degree even if you already have a &quot;Dr. rer. nat.&quot; or vice versa. Then you would have two PhD degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there are honorary PhDs, which are awarded independently of and in addition to real PhD degrees. But I assume that your question wasn't aimed at those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that it is possible to get two PhD degrees does not mean that it is a wise thing to do. To others, it may just be a sign that you didn't take the next steps in an academic career after getting your PhD, but didn't leave academia either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:22:59.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:37:07.393" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I'm sure you already realize this, you shouldn't let a laser focus on your daughter's professional development control her choice of which school to attend.  (Influence, sure, but not control.  And yes: &lt;strong&gt;HER&lt;/strong&gt; choice.)  Given your daughter's background and experience, she will likely be very successful no matter where she enrolls.  I've seen &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; successful theoretical computer scientists come from a huge variety of undergraduate programs, not all of which were associated with strong graduate CS programs.  It is at least as important for her to find a place where she feels (and not just &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;) supported and challenged, both by her faculty and her peers.  Otherwise, no matter how strong the department is &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt;, it won't be a good fit for her personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no substitute for a personal visit to each campus, if you can manage it.  Let her drop into the comptuer science department, get a feel for the community vibe, sit in on a class, talk to a professor or two if she can, hang out in the dorms.  Meanwhile, you go somewhere else.  Go'way.  Shoo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you really want hard data, I recommend that you—or better yet, &lt;strong&gt;your daughter&lt;/strong&gt;—directly contact the computer science departments at the schools where she's been admitted, describe her experience and her goals (which should make them &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; eager to attract her), and then ask questions like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many students graduated from your program in the last five years?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many / what fraction of those students are currently enrolled in strong computer science PhD programs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many / what fraction of your current undergraduates are involved in research with your faculty?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many of your faculty do research in theoretical computer science?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[The Hail Mary:] Would you mind asking one of them to contact me?  I'd like to ask some more questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware the answer &quot;I don't know&quot;, or qualitative waffle like like &quot;quite a lot&quot; that really mean &quot;I don't know&quot;.  Ask for numbers.  Ask for examples.  Channel your inner Cuba Gooding Jr: &lt;strong&gt;Show me the data!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first contact will almost certainly be answered by someone on the administrative staff, who may not have the data you want at hand.  Be prepared make an appointment to speak over the phone (or Skype or whatever) with the director of undergraduate programs or another faculty member.  If you do speak over the phone, try to keep your conversation short and to the point; these people are &lt;em&gt;very very&lt;/em&gt; busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't bother asking admissions officers these questions; Chances are very high that they just don't know.  You really need to contact the departments directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good place to look is the list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/awards/undergrad-current/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;current&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/awards/undergrad-archive/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;past&lt;/a&gt; winners and runners-up for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cra.org/awards/undergrad/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; award, which specifically recognizes undergraduate research.  A significant fraction of winners did their undergraduate research in theoretical computer science.  Also, a significant fraction of winners were &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; enrolled in departments with a top-10 graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Anonymous Mathematician notes in a comment, you shouldn't take the CRA list &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; seriously; some departments are more interested in awards like this and push hard for their students to be selected.  The fact that some prominent departments have few or no students on this list may reflect a disinterest in this particular &lt;em&gt;award&lt;/em&gt;, not in undergraduate research in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm a theoretical computer scientist at a top-10 CS department; I serve on my department's graduate admissions committee.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T14:43:54.027" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T14:43:54.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9155" CreationDate="2013-04-04T18:04:34.723" Score="34" ViewCount="2681" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university (in France) is having a debate about the relevance of taking rules for preventing too many of its PhDs to be recruited here, or asking them to have some postdoc outside the region before. The same rules are also debated about the promotion to full professor (from what is called maître de conférence and is a tenured associate professorship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people have strong opinion on these issues (me included), and I would like to gather a comprehensive list of arguments (in both directions) on this matter, if only to clear my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some arguments may apply only under particular circumstances or in specific fields, please say so when it applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T04:40:20.683" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:40:20.683" Title="Why should (or should not) a university have a policy of not hiring its own PhDs?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-04-07T19:01:55.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9133" CreationDate="2013-04-04T18:46:58.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A policy of hiring your own graduates is probably a good indication that you &quot;take care of your own&quot;, making sure your graduates get jobs, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhDs from a university likely already have mentorship and support networks set up, there will be less time adjusting to a new place, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming they found an advisor to work with to get their PhD, their own research goals likely align with those of the institution - there are likely grants they could be made Co-PIs on, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You lose the opportunity to hire outside talent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring exclusively from your own PhD pool creates an echo chamber - it's hard to get novel, outside perspectives, or take things in interesting new directions if everyone does what's already there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may lock junior faculty into something kind of like a &quot;postdoc+&quot; status - sure they're faculty, but there's no big transition to make them take the leap into doing their own research, establishing an independent lab, etc. Instead, they kind of soldier along as some status above student but decidedly below the other faculty in the department, at least for awhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T18:46:58.557" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9133" CreationDate="2013-04-04T18:50:40.297" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not come far in my career but I have a family of academics, this question certainly came up a number of times over the years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the main point of having a formal requirement of foreign exchange/post-doc period is two-folds: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to avoid the drawbacks of &lt;em&gt;academic inbreeding&lt;/em&gt;. Academia is partially built on a strong tutor-pupil, or rather mentor-protégé, relationship. While this is a great way to pass on the experience and good skills, it can also be the cause of conservatism in the form of sticking to what you know only. Likewise it's truly important for young academics to experience different cultures, and I don't mean it like a charter trip to a warm place, only to hang out with friends/family. To learn, adapt and eventually appreciate a foreign culture is beneficial for any person, let alone for those who are supposed to keep an open mind to the unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;going to a new lab somewhere else is also a fantastic way to improve on your professional skills. It's another reason why young academics are often expected to go somewhere else, learn something new and overall improve intellectually. In the corporate world this is encouraged in terms of changing jobs, those prodigies who are groomed for high level executive positions usually end up switching jobs every 3-5 years, often taking on a new but not completely unfamiliar role. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also note that our department has a similar issue, in the form of internal recruiting. A significant portion of the PhDs are recruited from those who have taken the course our department gives for undergrads in a particular program. What that leads to then is that the department becomes more or less an alumni hangout. While it may be nice for those new recruits to feel more &quot;at home&quot;, for anyone else who does not have the same background it creates a BIG barrier to overcome in order to get familiar with the people in the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was my two cents, I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T00:15:07.600" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T00:15:07.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T20:13:36.147" Score="13" ViewCount="2109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see sad students who meet may be once in a month and they complaint of not having enough progress. I have seen systems where the prof meets almost every few hours on weekdays and the prof is basically continuously working with the students. I see students who meet every 2-3 days or every week.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the &quot;right&quot; frequency if at all?&#xA;What is the good frequency? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the weekly(instant) gratification of getting full scores on the course homework is removed it is quite a challenge to keep a gauge of whether one has made any progress during the week. How does one measure progress during the week during one's PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:55:30.243" Title="What is the optimal number of times one should meet one's PhD. advisor?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2013-04-04T20:26:04.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People already see this as a problem and try to go from PDF to a list of DOIs. See the project here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.crossref.org/pdfextract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://labs.crossref.org/pdfextract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:26:04.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9136" CreationDate="2013-04-04T20:27:56.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;right&quot; frequency is probably &quot;enough&quot;. Whereas this may seem like a joke, it is not. The frequency with which you need to meet your advisor will primarily depend on you, your advisor and your project (work conditions). If someone complains about not meeting enough, it can be because of two things, either they do indeed not meet enough or maybe the student is not independent enough. It is important to be self-critical on both sides. The problem is, in other words, that each student-advisor relationship is different and enough may not be what either the student or the professor thinks is enough. A minimum should from my perspective include meetings to iron out the really difficult points in the work and to provide feedback on thesis revisions, prepare for lab or field work or the equivalent and to simply touch base on a regular basis (perhaps monthly). If there is a social environment where you meet, that is fine but not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally had a weekly &quot;show-and-tell&quot; with the research group my advisor ran. These meetings were awful and more stressful than anything else. I could have done better without them. I probably met and discussed my thesis once per month on average, certainly more when writing up. I doubt my story is neither unique  nor typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:27:56.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9136" CreationDate="2013-04-04T20:55:30.243" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on Peter's great answer, I'd also like to throw out the idea that the &quot;ideal&quot; frequency varies not only case-by-case, but also may change &lt;em&gt;during the course of one's graduate education&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A beginning graduate student will very likely need much more supervision than a student in the middle of her program. Similarly, the student who is finishing up may need more frequent contact, but only because changes are probably happening at a very rapid pace, and it's important to make sure deadlines are completed on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my own experience, I started out meeting weekly with my advisors; after about a year or so, the meetings became every two weeks, but then toward the end became weekly again (for the last two or so months before the defense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within my current group, I use a similar scheme: new students have weekly meetings, while older students (and the postdocs) meet every other week, or as needed. (Some of my students get along quite fine meeting with me only once every three to four weeks, and I'm fine with that, because they are independent enough not to need more &quot;face-to-face&quot; time.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing, I think, is that the PhD student should know that the time is &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt;, if she needs it. However, it's also been my belief that it's when the student &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; want to meet that it's actually most important to do so. This usually means that something's not quite right—and that's when intervention can make the most difference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:55:30.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9141" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:21:54.923" Score="38" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the somehow recent past, teaching evaluations have become obligatory in many universities/departments in Germany. I've also heard that sometimes these evaluations are used in formal ways to decide about salary raises or even hiring. For me it is pretty clear that a purely formal use of teaching evaluations is not a good idea, but my questions goes in a different direction. From time to time I read in newspapers and other kind of media that a side effect of these teaching evaluations is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the solicitous professor who aims at good teaching evaluations usually lowers the level in class and gives good grades in general.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself I never did it like that and I have the feeling that giving an &quot;easy&quot; course where everyone is able to score good grades but does not learn very much will not be appreciated by the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you know of any evidence for the claim that teaching evaluations encourage professors to lower standards and give better grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not trying to deduce that the use of teaching evaluations in a formal way to decide about hiring or salary is a good thing; I am just not sure that &quot;lowering standards and pampering students&quot; is a major side effect of teaching evaluations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T21:41:10.360" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:41:10.360" Title="Do teaching evaluations lead to lower standards in class?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;&lt;course-evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9140" CreationDate="2013-04-04T22:45:59.440" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jacob and Levitt have an article in the quarterly journal of economics that looks at teachers cheating in public schools due to compensation based on their class performance. They find that teachers will do things to help their students get higher grades if it effects their compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article by Nelson and Lynch look at the relationship between grade inflation and teaching evaluations suggesting professors buy better teacher evaluations with grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grade Inflation, Real Income, Simultaneity, and Teaching Evaluations. The Journal of Economic Education. 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T22:45:59.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9144" CreationDate="2013-04-05T02:48:27.680" Score="15" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a post-doc and I get regular requests to referee papers, largely because of a review paper I published as a grad student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am yet to turn down a review request--It is rewarding, an opportunity to immerse oneself in another topic, and it feels good to give back to the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I am peri-employed, and the rational decision maker with non-infinite time resources is regrettably obliged to consider her CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point will listing another journal (or another instance of refereeing for a given journal) on your CV generate negligible returns for an early-career researcher? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point does the rational actor say no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6670" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T10:28:26.783" Title="When has an unemployed post-doc refereed enough papers to decline another?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9159" CreationDate="2013-04-05T03:50:34.223" Score="8" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When I have a choice to take only one of two possible sequences: A theoretical one which aids my research and an applied one that aids my employability, which one should I opt for? (I must do the other on my own)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in a PhD program for Applied Math. I have finished all my core courses but am now required to take any (from a list) of courses which span Econ (Micro Econ, Time series type stuff), Management (Business Intelligence) and Statistics (Mathematical Stats, the gnarly stuff). My research is on Big Data Analytics from a Mathematical perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep my options for engineering (Electrical/Industrial Engineering) and Business (Data Analytics) faculty positions open. I want to join academi and in my department, senior students have gotten jobs in all of the three quoted above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that standpoint, what courses should I be taking? My time is constrained and I have to choose one of the three. I know for my research, I will benefit from a more rigorous mathematical training in Stats but I don't know if this will help me get a business school job. If I choose one, I know I can (&amp;amp; will probably make time) do the other two on my own but I am confused which one to pick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I think :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I do stats, I will have a rigorous background in any kind of statistical inference which is gold for what I do but I will have no clue about microecon, finance or business intelligence. All three are big application areas for my research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I do econ/business intelligence, for my research, I might get stuck at times when I am trying to interchange an expectation with a gradient and wondering &quot;under what conditions can I do this&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T14:53:32.107" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:53:32.107" Title="Taking courses as a PhD student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9142" CreationDate="2013-04-05T04:08:21.410" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple criterion is that if you have refereed more papers than the number of referee reports you have received for your papers, perhaps even divided by the number of coauthors you have for each paper, then you are ahead of the game and shouldn't feel guilty about turning requests down.  Ultimately, if your career goes really well you should expect to do substantially more than your share of reviewing, but you aren't obligated to do this while still a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you haven't reached this point, it's reasonable to put your career development first for now.  Strategically, you should referee a paper if reading it will be valuable for your research, if you can impress an influential editor, or if it's for a particularly prestigious journal (so it will stand out on your CV in the list of journals you have reviewed for).  Beyond that, you can do what you reasonably have time for, but you should feel free to decline review requests when you are busy with other things.  If you feel guilty about this, you can make up for it by reviewing more papers than you would otherwise like someday when you have a stable job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what point will listing another journal (or another instance of refereeing for a given journal) on your CV generate negligible returns for an early-career researcher? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say the returns become negligible pretty quickly.  Adding a really fancy journal can look impressive, but even doubling the number of run of the mill journals will make only a small difference.  (People want to see that your reputation leads to review requests, but don't care much beyond that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent refereeing helps your career, it's more likely to be because you impressed the editor than because a hiring committee liked the line on your CV.  However, writing papers and giving talks will reach a much broader audience than refereeing can, so extra refereeing is not an efficient career boost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T04:08:21.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9142" CreationDate="2013-04-05T04:08:21.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (mathematics) it is not usual for CVs to mention referee assignments, and I don't believe they are considered at all in hiring decisions, so the direct returns are negligible at any level (not counting the indirect benefit that you may learn something from reading the paper carefully).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that every referee is busy and has other things to do that would be more directly rewarding, but they do it anyway.  However, if your situation means it would be a drastically larger burden for you than for an average researcher, then by all means decline with a clear conscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T04:08:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="363" CreationDate="2013-04-05T04:10:37.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advice given by some is misleading. A PhD is psychology is almost always a &lt;em&gt;paid&lt;/em&gt; position. So while you may be earning less than you would in industry, you will earn a stipend (albeit often minimal) while you complete your degree. A Masters degree in psychology, on the other hand, is typically paid for out of the student's pocket. If you are interested in doing research, as you say, I would be hesitant to get a Masters unless you are very confident in a specific career path that requires an MA (and not a PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, all of the criticisms that others have raised still apply. For social psychology in particular, I would not recommend applying for a PhD without having a decent amount of research experience. Consider applying for a research assistantship at a university. The purpose of this is two-fold. Most importantly, it's to know what you're getting yourself into and make sure you would enjoy doing research full time for several years. Additionally, it greatly improves your application when applying to mid- or top-tier universities. They want to know that you are both capable of doing research and enjoy doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6684" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T04:10:37.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9142" CreationDate="2013-04-05T07:11:07.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the plus minus statistics of &quot;you do for other what they do for you&quot; I think there are two points yu could ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing keeps you in touch with the field. Do you think it helps you stay in touch with developments until you find a position (assuming that is what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing keeps you on the radar within the field. By reviewing you will &quot;advertise&quot; your expertise which may not hurt in the future. So do you wish to be seen as an active player aiming for a position?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly none of these are make-or-break for the future but it involves assessing your own interests for the future. If you clearly think you will look for employment outside of academia and association with research, then you simply pick and chose your reviews based on interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T07:11:07.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9149" CreationDate="2013-04-05T07:18:18.560" Score="29" ViewCount="6211" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there are circumstances when not everything goes right in a student's PhD career, or there can be personal circumstances that require doctoral candidates to withdraw from a PhD program before they have completed the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what is not clear to me is how to handle this situation from the &lt;em&gt;advisor's&lt;/em&gt; perspective. What should an advisor do to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help the candidate, should she wish to apply elsewhere?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss the situation with the group, to maintain morale?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Handle the &quot;transition&quot; process (during which the student is still officially on the payroll)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T08:05:50.980" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T08:05:50.980" Title="What should advisors do if one of their PhD students has to withdraw?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9148" CreationDate="2013-04-05T07:34:06.597" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without additional details, it will be impossible to provide very detailed answers so from a general point, each case has its own solutions. The first question I would ask is, what is my part in this and how can I best help out (best may be = nothing). In general I would try to help out as much as I can unless the problem lies in the realm of a conflict or personal problems. Then there is not much you can do except suggest professional help. If the candidate is a good student then I would certainly support with any letter of recommendation I could. Since you mention morale issues in the group, it suggests some form of non-trivial problem. In some cases too much help makes people fall into a false sense of security so to be shaken can be useful as long as the reasons are very clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So without trying to read too much into what is between the lines, I think the degree of help depends on to what extent help can or should be given (seen from an objective point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not the most satisfactory answer but being responsible for the research education at my dept., I have seen how difficult these matters can be. In our case, I would also be a resource to help out, if nothing else just to discuss the matter. (This does not mean I run a research group completely without problems myself!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T20:34:03.950" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T20:34:03.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T09:10:16.380" Score="2" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some graduate (PhD and Masters) students in Turkey, Nigeria, Malaysia etc that can not work in the university they study. In fact I am one of them as I am about to finish Msc mathematics and computer science in Turkey and planning to start PhD in USA. My question is, is it a policy of most universities in the world that post graduate students can not work in the institution they are studying and earn their living? Even to work as graduate assistant perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6686" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T11:59:40.380" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T11:59:40.380" Title="Can post graduate students be forbidden to work in the institution they are studying?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9150" CreationDate="2013-04-05T10:23:58.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Degree programs need to produce a whole lot more graduates than instructors in order for the programs to be economically viable. Student to staff numbers of around 15-1 are not uncommon. If the average staff member works for 30 years, this then becomes 450-1. In other words, for every 450 students that graduate one position becomes available. Even in the &quot;best&quot; situation of a 5-1 student to graduate assistant ratio and a 2 year average &quot;career&quot;, you are talking about 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T10:23:58.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9142" CreationDate="2013-04-05T10:28:26.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming unemployed means you are looking for an academic job and not moving to a new field, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;NEVER&lt;/strong&gt;. Since you are unemployed, your chances to network are greatly reduced. I would suggest taking every review possible and consider adding my name to reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would actually suggest contacting editors to request that they consider you to review articles in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T10:28:26.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9150" CreationDate="2013-04-05T11:53:37.650" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In North America, at least in science and engineering, PhD students are generally &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to work for their host universities as either teaching assistants or research assistants, except for the relative few who win full-ride fellowships.  This expectation is strong enough that it is considered foolish to accept an offer of admission to any PhD program &lt;strong&gt;without&lt;/strong&gt; a simultaneous offer of a fellowship or assistantship.  Sometimes these assistantships are also available to Master's students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T11:53:37.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8995" CreationDate="2013-04-05T14:27:13.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can add that the timing issue is also important, especially to that established would-be coauthor. Sometimes someone decides to write a paper, and it never comes to life. &#xA;However, it is also important how adding the proof to the existing paper would slow down the process of getting it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6688" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T14:27:13.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9133" CreationDate="2013-04-05T15:00:31.477" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers, there is a perverse effect to local hiring: a professor can promise to her PhD students/postdocs a permanent position later on, which in turn tends to &quot;tie&quot; the student/postdoc to her professor, perhaps preventing her to develop her own research agenda, and doing more administrative/teaching/supervision tasks than normally required (to basically look good in the eyes of the advisor). This then builds a stack of postdocs, waiting  for the next permanent position, which would be awarded not to the best candidate, but to the one who has waited long enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm on purpose exaggerating the description, and this is no way can be generalised: many, if not most professors will actually recruit the best possible candidate, local or not. But I have observed this behaviour several times, in different countries, and although forbidding local recruitment wouldn't solve every problem, it would perhaps solve that one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T15:00:31.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2013-04-05T17:06:24.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, by all means use a Wacom (any device).  You need screen capturing s/w and audio capturing.  You can then post the video afterwards (which will just be the computer screen, and your voice talking over it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Windows:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use OneNote for your notes + Camtasia for audio/video capturing.  You might also use an external MP3 recorder for sound if your PC mic is not good and then blend them yourself after (more tedious).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mac:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use a series of Pixelmator images for &quot;writing&quot; math on a Mac. Create a 4096x4096 image gives you a fairly large canvas.  A new page can be added by adding a new &quot;layer&quot;.  To record what you're doing, if you combine &lt;a href=&quot;http://cycling74.com/soundflower-landing-page/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SoundFlower&lt;/a&gt; + QuickTime you can have screen+audio recording (see youtube for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaXe75qiSY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;videos on how&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T17:06:24.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9148" CreationDate="2013-04-05T18:32:25.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, most advisors seem to simply shake hands and part ways; I've seen a number of students leave, and in no case did the advisor do anything for the student. I view this as appropriate. Consider a work relationship, where an employee decides to leave because they (got married/got sick/won the lottery/will likely be fired for poor performance/dislike their job/dislike their boss/etc.). It's almost unheard of for the employer to assist the quitting employee to find new employment. (Note I'm not talking about firing someone, where local laws may require some sort of employment help.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a similar situation here. You have a student who decides to leave for whatever reason. At that point, your work relationship is simply terminated. You can continue to interact as professionals, but you are under no obligation to assist in future endeavors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I don't think any grad student would turn you down if you offer to help. It would definitely be a nice professional gesture. Just realize that you are under no obligation to offer such help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T18:32:25.323" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9143" CreationDate="2013-04-05T19:01:52.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is still very localized, but as somebody with Ph.D. in Statistics and MSc in Economics, working in industry after an unsuccessful start in academia, I would suggest taking the courses in the discipline you will be aiming at. I am not sure as to who is going to hire for Big Data Analytics; I rate statisticians as unlikely to do that (except probably for Carnegie Mellon and Stanford), and I am nearly certain that economists won't (they won't hire an Applied Math Ph.D. no matter how good you are), so business schools are your best shot -- some of them may hire people with wildly different backgrounds; UPenn has a Stat department housed in the business school, although that's a legacy issue rather than something deeply profound; Chicago has a small but strong statistical group; you might be able to find statistical groups in other places, too. Thus you would want to take Management courses in the mean time. An average business school faculty won't tell expectation from the gradient, except for a tiny fraction of quantitative finance people doing high frequency financial econometrics. My feeling is that an average Big Data architecture computer scientist/engineer won't tell an expectation from a gradient, either. (The only I thing I know about it is that at least one of the limits has to be uniform :) ). I may be entirely wrong with my assumptions about business schools, and if you don't see any Math/Appl Math/Stat Ph.D.s hired in the past 10 years in the top 30 schools that you've looked at, you don't have any chance, either, and should just announce your intention to go to industry, take all the classes you can, and apply to Google asking for a $3e5 starting salary ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest career suggestion I could give is to move to Bay Area; I don't really know how  to do Big Data if you are not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T13:15:58.927" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:15:58.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9140" CreationDate="2013-04-05T19:45:50.740" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what they are evaluating, and how. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied at a university in a mess of a country that was recovering from a period of war. The educational system was not just depressingly dated, it was also falling apart at the seams. Enthusiasts were trying to reform the system, and one of the bigger pushes in the right direction was achieved through course evaluations. This evaluation had questions such as these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often does the lecturer show up for class? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does each lesson have a clear topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it clear which parts of the printed course materials are covered in which lecture? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were all the exam questions linked to some printed course material?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the lecturer answer students' questions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the lecturer available to students at any point outside the lectures? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the lecturer use e-mail to correspond with students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you feel that the lecturer treated you unfairly at some point? How so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you feel that the lecturer engages in any problematic behaviors during class? Please describe. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the lecturer ask you for any favors in return for a higher grade?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are, in your opinion, the good aspects of this course?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the bad aspects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were more questions - many were about lecturing style for example; these are just off the top of my head. Now, this evaluation made lecturers begin to come to class, made them finally pick textbooks, forced them to pick a topic for every lesson (rather than just rambling on), forced them to tell students which part of the book corresponds to which lecture so that students could read the materials in parallel. It also rapidly cut down on truly problematic behaviors such as smoking in class. Furthermore, it helped lecturers improve their performance through providing feedback on the strong and weak points of the course, at least as students saw them. Here, I think the evaluations very clearly helped improve standards in class, especially in truly problematic departments. The reason they helped was twofold: (1) there was a lot of room for improvement, and (2) the questions were well thought out, i.e. each question was linked to a particular goal in the educational reform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also studied at a wonderful, well organized university where most of these questions would be completely ridiculous. There, the evaluations had questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many hours per week did you study for this course?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important would you say this course is for your overall academic development?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you say this course was easy, just right, or difficult in terms of content?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think the lecturers evaluate students' knowledge fairly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly have no clue what is gained by such an evaluation, and I hope nobody's salary depends on it. With the right (i.e. wrong) questions, I'm sure you could lower teaching standards by giving financial incentive to score well. The question, then, boils down to what the evaluation sheets look like. To the best of my knowledge, these are not standardized across universities, so the results may vary a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T10:34:23.180" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T10:34:23.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9148" CreationDate="2013-04-06T01:33:46.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the circumstances, but I certainly help the student if I'm able. We had one student who wanted to transfer to a Ph.D. program closer to home, and another who wanted to take a crack at programs better than ours. I was happy to support them both, including writing rec letters. I put a third student in touch with some people who worked at a software company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some students blow us off, in which case general well wishes and respectful silence seem to be what is called for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Ph.D. is 5+ years of backbreaking work, during which you make poverty-level wages, with uncertain job prospects at the other end. I can hardly blame a student for leaving, if his/her heart is not in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T01:33:46.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8599" CreationDate="2013-04-06T13:15:57.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's normal, but I also think it's the wrong question to be asking.  The right questions are: are you enjoying research? are you being productive? or are you miserable because of your advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the success of an advisor-student relationship is a function of both the advisor's style, the student's needs, and both their personalities.  Some people don't mind being micromanaged, others (like me) would, in your shoes, run.  Only you can know what it is that you want and need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to first do what it takes so that you're enjoying research, not only because it's terrible to be miserable for years, but also because you won't be as productive while unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:15:57.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T13:52:21.883" Score="11" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I independently wrote a number of math articles, and published some of them in refereed journals. I wrote the draft of the thesis, and contacted a Prof., and started a PhD program under his supervision. After being accepted, the supervisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asked me to change all notations and terminology. I hesitate, because I used the terminology in use in the domain, I kept at minimum new terms, and I already used these terms in the published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asked me to make him coauthor of some of the papers I haven't yet published, and which I wrote previously, without any suggestion or discussion with him. He motivated his request by saying that my articles need to be polished (ie terminology changed with an invented one), and that even when they will be ready, nobody will accept them with my name only (although I already published some articles as single author).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is very assertive with these requests, and I feel like he is putting pressure on me. Normally, I would like to have him as coauthor, and maybe it will be good for my career. But I am affraid that he will make my results unrecognizable, and incompatible with the other papers in domain, including my owns. And, frankly, his only contribution is that he suggested to change the terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6695" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T15:31:10.830" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T15:47:26.057" Title="PI coauthorship on previous papers" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2013-04-06T14:12:01.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I try to &quot;sneak in&quot; DOIs into reference lists even if the journal's instructions are for short citation formats. Just as I try to sneak in the title of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As reader and reviewer, I find it horrible to have no clue at all what the paper by J. Doe &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, Some Jounal, 42, 5678-91 is about. Particularly, when seeking a particular kind of information. That is for the title.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As reader and reviewer, I find it very convenient to just click on the link to get to the paper. So please, do not only spell out the DOI, but use its inherent hyperlinking capability. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that broken citations are fairly common already with the traditional &quot;Author, journal, volume, pages&quot; format. Usually it is possible to arrive at the paper with some effort. Having the title is then the most useful information to get to the paper. Having only a DOI with typo pretty much prevents any possible correction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: I think both title and DOI are worth the additional ink.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if the journal insists on their more compressed format, I'd like to have at least the reviewers the benefit of immediately seeing what papers I refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've never had a reviewer complaining about this information in the references.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm using mostly biblatex, which makes it easy to automatically have both title and the DOI (already properly linked) output together with the rest of the information. No effort at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't care if you prefer to store your literature database as DOI only, and expand the DOI list when writing the paper. However, personally I perfer to have a searchable base, and more meaningful citation keys (I use mostly AuthorYEAR Bibtex keys, for books the title), so I can remember them more easily when writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T14:12:01.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9082" CreationDate="2013-04-06T14:31:32.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;yes, you can include it &amp;amp; you should include it because many persons would be eager to see an information regarding your dissertation. &#xA;btw If you are using LaTeX to write your cv, BibTeX provides an entry regarding dissertations - phdthesis. &#xA;when having an ISBN, then you can use the (BibTeX) book entry and your publication part. &#xA;without an ISBN, use (BibTeX) phdthesis entry within the education area of your cv which was proposed in another prior answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T14:31:32.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9165" CreationDate="2013-04-06T14:37:55.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a purely objective point of view, I would say that co-authorship should be granted only if someone has a scientific input to the paper (such as significant reworking, polishing (whatever that is) is not enough) or if the prospective co-author is the originator of the ideas in the paper (also a scientific contribution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case I can see that the professor could be part of a paper if he puts enough work into it. I think it is very unattractive to force oneself onto a paper the way it sounds in your case. On the other hand, you could consider whether having a &quot;big name&quot; on your paper could benefit you in the long-term? I know co-authorships are viewed differently in different fields so I dare not say what would be appropriate in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nasty part of the story is of course what might happen if you do not put the Professor on your papers. That is something which only you can assess. But, you could possibly get some insights by talking to others who knows the situation in your department/research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T14:37:55.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9165" CreationDate="2013-04-06T15:47:26.057" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;We cannot tell you what the best decision is, but I get the feeling from your post that you already have some course of action in mind: &lt;strong&gt;politely decline, with your arguments, and if he insists too much, find another advisor.&lt;/strong&gt; I would agree with that being the best solution for you, but only &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;assuming that your assessment of the situation is correct&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take it badly, but I have seen it happen before. An established researcher gives advice to a newcomer (or more junior researcher), who disagrees and concludes that such bad advice can only be motivated by self interest. That sure is one possible explanation, but another might be that the advice is (partly or fully) correct, but the student doesn't recognize it (yet). Take a second look at his advice... There can be good reasons to suggest nonstandard notation: trying to make the paper more appealing to the community of another field, by using their notations. Or making the case that existing notation doesn't properly cover the cases considered. Or maybe what you consider standard notation actually isn't, and you are currently using a notation used by a prolific research group (bias in your reading list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying that it is your case. I'm only saying that you should seriously consider it before taking any action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T15:47:26.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9133" CreationDate="2013-04-06T15:56:57.237" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;One con that hasn't been mentioned yet is &lt;em&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/em&gt;.  Ideally, departments want to hire the best people and provide the best opportunities for their graduates.  Hiring from within skews the calibration of both of these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we know we're doing a good job hiring? Well, just look at all these great people we hired! How do we know they're good? They came from a great department! And if they weren't good, we wouldn't have given them PhDs. And how do we know our PhD standards are high? Just look at how many of our PhD students get jobs in good departments! Well, sure, none of them get jobs in &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; good departments, but so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T15:56:57.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9178" CreationDate="2013-04-06T16:51:28.293" Score="27" ViewCount="3686" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this site, I quite often see answers containing this &lt;em&gt;&quot;Publish or perish&quot;&lt;/em&gt; sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it really mean?  Is it limited to a particular academic system (i.e. U.S.) or it is the general case all over the world?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, is it possible to be a researcher without concerning about &quot;Publish or perish&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2020-01-23T03:41:03.793" Title="What does &quot;Publish or perish&quot; really mean?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T17:37:52.857" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;For graduate students, it means &quot;Publish or you won't get an academic job.&quot;  In many parts of academia, not getting an academic job is considered equivalent to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For assistant professors, if means &quot;Publish or you won't get tenure.&quot;  In many parts of academia, not getting tenure is considered equivalent to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lastly, is it possible to be a researcher without concerning about &quot;Publish or perish&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T17:37:52.857" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T18:06:34.767" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will add to JeffE's answer by stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For researchers, it means &quot;publish or you will not get more funding&quot;. Funding is evaluated based on the strength of a proposal but if you are not showing a strong regular publicationr record, the interpretation might be that &quot;you use money but do not produce&quot;, hence a risk not worth taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lastly, to answer JeffE's question (thereby emphasizing his implicit statement): No!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T18:06:34.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T19:33:19.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to prior answers, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publish or Perish application&lt;/a&gt; can be mentioned, which is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents the following statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Total number of papers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Total number of citations&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average number of citations per paper&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average number of citations per author&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average number of papers per author&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average number of citations per year&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hirsch's h-index and related parameters&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Egghe's g-index&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The contemporary h-index&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The age-weighted citation rate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two variations of individual h-indices&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An analysis of the number of authors per paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for pasting into other applications) or saved to a variety of output formats (for future reference or further analysis). Publish or Perish includes a detailed help file with search tips and additional information about the citation metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastEditorUserId="6696" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T21:02:04.353" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T21:02:04.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T19:56:32.957" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to be a researcher without worrying about PoP only if you're not being paid to be a researcher. If you are being paid to do research, then publication is the most basic way of measuring whether you're doing anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T19:56:32.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T19:58:13.553" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;First a disclaimer: I personally do not agree with some &quot;ways of life&quot; I am going to describe and already upvoted other answers :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it possible to be a researcher without concerning about &quot;Publish or perish&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, albeit probably only in atypical settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;firstly, at this site, we tend to forget that academia is not only the first league of the few top-notch research universities, but includes a MASS of smaller universities and research institutes in all sorts of small, hidden corners of the world which tend either not to produce academic output in terms of journal articles, books, conference papers, etc., but at which they live and breath by e.g., primarily education, local politics, etc. Yet, on paper they claim to do research, so working there, you would be officially a researcher. I am speaking for instance about universities in countries, where rigorous science and high education, for whatever reasons, does not have a very strong tradition. At such places, doing research would resemble a kind of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult&quot;&gt;cargo cult&lt;/a&gt;. Most often, at least at some stage in the career, you still need to publish something. E.g. a dissertation would probably suffice. But often an interview with such a researcher in a local newspaper would count at the place more than a first-class academic journal. Being coined an expert on X by the local media a single time would allow you to survive at such a university for a decade (at any level from a PhD student to a Full Professor) without being concerned with perishing. If there is a desperate lack of teaching staff, then you do not have to care even for being any good teacher either and you wouldn't perish. I know personally people who are are doing some research  (or at least everybody around says so) for decades without moving from a place and without publishing even a technical report and do not perish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to a more optimistic note, though being pedantic now, you can easily be a researcher and not publish in the industry. Many  industrial researchers do not primarily work for the benefit of the humankind (as you could see said in academia), but for the benefit of a company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finally, I speculate there could be some special professorship positions where you do not have to worry about publishing anymore, because you are not about to perish anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T19:58:13.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9076" CreationDate="2013-04-06T21:32:20.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i know that we are not on the LaTeX / TeX  site, but when thinking about BibTeX your headache will gone away and it should be rather clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@format: That will be made when choosing a bibliograhystyle within your tex file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@required information: Various bibliography items are demanding different fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BibTeX overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T21:32:20.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9148" CreationDate="2013-04-06T22:02:12.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Handle the &quot;transition&quot; process (during which the student is still officially on the payroll)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&#xA;If you are talking about a PhD student who was employed at an institute, then maybe the advisor should think what he/she has made wrong concerning advising. &#xA;From my point of view, a retrospective would be worth for both - student and advisor. For instance, can you remember the first time when an expectation and an actual state of the student's work was rather different. Talked the advisor with the student regarding publications and interesting conferences? Which intervals were scheduled for meetings? Did their meetings worked out? If not, why not? (agenda, interruptions during the meeting). Which method was used by the student to assess his/her progress? Were these &quot;story points&quot; observed a little bit by the advisor?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Discuss the situation with the group, to maintain morale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but firstly the advisor needs to know the actual reason concerning the end of the student's work. Talking in front of a group about a reason which was not the actual reason could be not the best when having persons in the group who are friends of the student who ends his study and work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Help the candidate, should she wish to apply elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she has achieved a certain level within her scientific field, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastEditorUserId="6696" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T22:32:59.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T22:32:59.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9187" CreationDate="2013-04-06T23:13:27.917" Score="31" ViewCount="9575" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate student, I have worked on some projects for my own interest, and recently a professor said that one of these works can be published (in a Elsevier journal with impact factor of about 2). I personally think that this work is not &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; enough to be published and included in my resume. (I don't have any prior experience in publishing and related stuff.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a weak research article published in a journal affect my application for graduate school in a negative way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="6618" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T21:17:08.470" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T21:17:08.470" Title="For undergraduates, is publishing &quot;weak&quot; research better than not publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9173" CreationDate="2013-04-06T23:59:26.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish_or_perish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Publish or perish&quot; is a phrase coined to describe the pressure in academia to rapidly and continuously publish academic work to sustain or further one's career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T23:59:26.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9181" CreationDate="2013-04-07T00:46:26.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your supervisor may want to extend the research with more experiments, data, etc. This will lead to an much stronger paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good journals often reject weak papers, or ask authors to make major changes to their manuscript. So it is hard to publish a weak paper in a good journal. But always remember that &lt;strong&gt;Many weak papers are improved to strong papers in the review process.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="5644" LastEditDate="2013-04-07T08:21:29.697" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T08:21:29.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9189" CreationDate="2013-04-07T03:20:45.253" Score="7" ViewCount="6217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in an MS program at a big university in the US, where I pay my own tuition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not happy with the quality of education I am getting at this university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking that after this quarter is complete, that I want to officially withdraw from the program and go somewhere else. I think I can get much better education and for much less cost as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Will this affect me in any way for future admission to other schools? I am an A student, and I'll be withdrawing after the quarter is over, not in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the transcript contain some negative marker in it because I did not complete the MS program?  Has anyone been through this and found any negative effect when not completing a program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6705" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T19:51:09.700" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:51:09.700" Title="Will withdrawing from a graduate program, affect my future admissions applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9181" CreationDate="2013-04-07T06:15:28.943" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are very few circumstances under which I think it's a bad idea for undergraduates to write research papers. These primarily have to do with the quality of the journal: so long as it is a &lt;em&gt;reputable&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed&lt;/em&gt; journal, I wouldn't be too concerned with the &quot;strength&quot; of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that publishing while an undergraduate—particularly as a primary author—demonstrates that you have already started to learn the basics of how to do research in your field. This means that you're less of an &quot;unknown&quot; quantity, and therefore less of a risk for a department reviewing your application. If you don't publish the research, then there's no tangible proof, and then you need to rely on your research supervisor to make that point in a letter of recommendation. (But then the question becomes: &quot;if she could have written a paper, why didn't she?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the exceptions above, so long as you don't publish in &quot;vanity&quot; journals (those which will publish basically anything, so long as people pay the appropriate publication &quot;fees&quot;), you should be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T06:15:28.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9185" CreationDate="2013-04-07T06:23:37.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your transcript will very likely have a notation that shows you withdrew from the program; to claim that you are still enrolled when you are not would be dishonest (if &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; you &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; the university said so!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, this will be something that you will need to explain to schools to which you apply in the future. Just saying &quot;it's not good enough for me&quot; is a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; reason to withdraw from the program, because it suggests a &quot;diva-like&quot; attitude that is not particularly desirable (in just about any circumstances). If you're responsible for paying your tuition, and found you could no longer afford it, that would be a more tolerable reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; need to explain this, and it can definitely have an impact on the decision of future admissions committees.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T06:23:37.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9185" CreationDate="2013-04-07T07:13:29.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is possible, you may want to consider applying to a new program while you are still in your current program.  In some sense it will be like a transfer, which may come across as a better move than to withdraw and re-apply to other schools later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that you will need recommendation letters again, and you should be cultivating relationships with professors now with the hope of getting good recommendations.  While you can ask the people who wrote your last recommendation letters again, you would need to explain why you didn't get recommendations (at least one) from a professor from your current school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in the midst of fruitful research, I would also advise you to try to finish up and put together a paper for publication -- if published, this will also help in future applications, and you don't want to waste the effort if you can help it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One further caveat: graduate schools sometimes have a cap on how many courses you can transfer from a previous school, and you may find that you have to re-take a number of courses you've already passed (and paid for).  The financial benefit from withdrawing now may not be as good as you hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T07:13:29.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9181" CreationDate="2013-04-07T08:17:57.010" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fully concur with the reply from aeismail but will add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing means your paper will go through peer-review. With a journal with impact=2 (reasonably respectable) you are likely to get a good set of revieweers. This will either lead to rejection or to suggestions for improvements. If publsihed the paper will likely be better than when it arrived at the journal. So remember that publishing includes more work than just sending something to be printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T08:17:57.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9199" CreationDate="2013-04-07T12:28:09.773" Score="67" ViewCount="29469" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marriage is a recurrent topic in the lives of most PhDs. The meagre pay and the burden of responsibility could make marriage in the middle of PhD look like a terrible idea. But on the positive side, marriage gives one an intimate companion in a long and bleak journey. The pay hurdle could also be overcome if the partner finds a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While eventually it is a personal decision for the couple based on their commitment and readiness, what are the points to remember when one thinks of getting married in the middle of a PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T08:02:50.550" LastActivityDate="2016-10-30T09:21:44.760" Title="Points to consider when deciding whether to get married during a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:09:11.773" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the actual question (&lt;em&gt;“ what are the points to remember when one thinks of getting married in the middle of a PhD?”&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are a woman, and live in a country where you are expected to take the surname of your husband, make sure that doesn't interfere with other people's ability to keep track of your publications. (Some women I know, though they use their husband's name for daily life, use their maiden name for academic purposes. That or using both surnames.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, that's about the only academia-specific or PhD-specific real advice I could think of. Everything else is just, well, the usual stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning a wedding can become really time consuming. Organize efficiently, or delegate, or simply choose to do something simple. (Elope?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The honeymoon may be tricky to arrange, especially if your spouse has high expectations (some people would expect the happy couple to take a 3-week vacation starting the day after the wedding, which might be hard to schedule).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And obvious reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1296&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8jX45.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the question, the only thing I have to say is: &lt;em&gt;oh man, you've got to get your priorities straight!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T13:09:11.773" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9212" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:11:13.027" Score="18" ViewCount="4599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to quote the following passage (actually, the original passage as somewhat longer but let's consider this a minimal working example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awareness of others, can address affective needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the misplaced comma bothers me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common &lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt; is not only often perceived to be impolite due to its overuse as a way ridicule the original author of a text, it also seems overkill in this case and – worst of all – it might not be clear that it relates to the tiny comma that comes right before but might be understood to refer to &quot;awareness of others&quot; instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awareness of others, [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] can address affective needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A missing comma could just be put in square brackets itself as a way to more or less silently add it to the quotation without misquoting but the least distracting way to remove a comma that I could come up with is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Awareness of others] can address affective needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course silently dropping the comma would be even less distracting but it might also constitute a misquotation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awareness of others can address affective needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion on this? Is there a standard or otherwise widely accepted way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4184" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T08:45:50.953" Title="How to quote a passage with a punctuation error?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:25:28.383" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having gotten married more or less exactly in the middle of my PhD, I would say emphatically no, it is not a bad idea at all!  (I expect you just meant 'during' by 'in the middle of' though. =] )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the 'meagre pay': at the time my PhD scholarship was about twice as much money as I had ever had in my life before, so I felt comparatively wealthy.  We were not interested in having a lavish wedding anyway, but we did manage to afford a very nice wedding with 80 guests, paid for out of money saved from our PhD scholarships.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course PhD students might not be similarly well-paid in many countries (we were in the UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the 'burden of responsibility', I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, so I'll ask a question in a comment and wait until you reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will potentially need to lower your expectations about what kind of wedding you can afford, but if the point is to achieve the state of &lt;em&gt;being married&lt;/em&gt;, I don't think that's a big problem.  You can always throw a big anniversary party at some point later when you have more money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Potential name change (as mentioned by F'x):  If a name change is going to be involved, it can be very convenient to have this happen before one has any publications, which is a lot more likely to be the case during the PhD than afterwards.  (I did change my surname, and had no publications yet at that point, so there is no problem with using my new surname for academic purposes.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Honeymoon:  There's a lot more chance of getting enough time off for a proper honeymoon during a PhD than once you have a job, although this is going to depend completely on your supervisor, of course.  [Added because of F'x thinking the honeymoon could be a problem:  My supervisor allowed me a month after my wedding.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Companionship, as you mentioned:  This is obviously especially relevant if you are from a culture/religion where living together before marriage is not usual.  Definitely having 'an intimate companion' during the PhD journey (not that mine was that long or bleak - but my husband's was more so) can be a huge help, and I don't see any reason for a couple to wait until after a PhD to get married if they are ready now. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may add more later if I think of anything else.  There is more I would say if I wasn't trying not to stray too far into 'discussion' or 'off-topic'ness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-04-07T14:11:16.610" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T14:11:16.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:45:00.967" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Love is nice and all, but you want to make sure your career decisions do not result in resentment for either you or your partner. There are two big issues with marriage/relationships that I think are unique to academics and especially relevant for PhD students since they are just starting down the academic road. It is critical that your partner (whether he/she is an academic or not) understands that as an academic we often chose to make substantially less money to take a high stress level, time-consuming job. Many people find that a difficult decision to understand and it can lead to stress/resentment. The second is that until tenure, academics often have a series of one or two year jobs with periods of unemployment in between and cross country/international moves. Rarely do we get to decide where we get to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T13:45:00.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:50:18.403" Score="1" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a lecturer (I have an MSc) at university. The university wants me to do my PhD at another country (the UK). However, I didn't think about PhD before and now it is a must or they are going to change my job to something other than teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking now what value will the PhD give me after I get it? I mean what are things that will become special in my life? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6707" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T01:48:57.193" Title="What value will PhD give me?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-04-08T05:25:47.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-07T14:10:18.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any emendations you make to a quoted text should be made in square brackets. These emendations should be limited to corrections necessary for grammatical do not include skipping over parts of the text, which should be done with ellipses (and then only sparingly, and not in any way which will change the meaning of the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, then, I might write the passage as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author X's assertion that &quot;[a]wareness of others [] can address effective needs&quot; is motivated by . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the first &quot;a&quot; in awareness has changed capitalization, and therefore should also be placed in brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T14:10:18.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-07T14:42:34.017" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've found the right person to marry in graduate school, what's the alternative?  Getting married as a postdoc or tenure-track faculty member is also difficult, since you still have a lot of career pressure and uncertainty.  It won't go over well to say &quot;I love you, but let's wait until I have tenure to get married,&quot; since that's way too far in the future, and I don't see any real advantage to saying &quot;let's wait until I'm a postdoc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before marrying a non-academic, it's important to make sure they understand some of the basic parameters of academia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The job market is incredibly competitive.  Harvard probably won't hire you even if everyone agrees you're really smart, and getting a job at a less prestigious university is not a form of career failure.  Indeed, just the opposite is true: any career progress in academia is a success that should be celebrated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a national, and even international, job market with universities in many locations, but that doesn't mean you can choose where you want to live.  Instead, it means you need to apply everywhere and take what you can get.  Unless you are really lucky, having an academic career may require living somewhere you do not consider desirable, and you won't even be able to predict in advance where that might be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having a successful research career requires a lot of work, but it's a little different from many demanding jobs because the work is mostly self-imposed.  You need to do it, but nobody is specifying what, when, or how.  This can lead to resentment since everything you spend time on seems like a choice, rather than an externally imposed requirement.  So you need a partner who is not inclined towards jealousy over time commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these issues are not an obstacle, then it's reasonable to get married whenever seems appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T14:42:34.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9202" CreationDate="2013-04-07T14:55:01.693" Score="48" ViewCount="3241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on research, trying to get grants and publish papers and the like, I really like my job, could not think about doing anything else. When the weekend comes, or just free time I have the problem that I can not stop thinking on research, it does not matter what. Sometimes it is that I feel so relaxed during the weekend that new ideas come to my mind and then I can not avoid to write them down or think a bit more about them. My wife obviously does not like this, but I try my best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you experience the same and do you know how to avoid this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-10-29T18:44:26.467" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T18:44:26.467" Title="How to avoid thinking about research in free time?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2013-04-07T15:09:56.603" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it comes with the territory. Since being involved in research means exercising your imagination and intellect, it is hard to stop the stimulation. I personally have no problems relaxing from my research when I do other stimulating activities such as hobbies. I personally do not find thinking about my research much of a problem but I have noticed that I have a tendency to start thinking more about my science when I am in the company of what I might consider dull people. That will probably make me seem dull too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to look at it, and explain it, by comparing with an elite athlete, you need to keep at it constantly to be on top. Many can see and appreciate the (intellectual) similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6318" LastEditDate="2013-04-07T15:22:19.480" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T15:22:19.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2013-04-07T15:43:51.693" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @PeterJanson's answer, but I'd like to add my 2 cents on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, I find myself &quot;constantly&quot; thinking about a problem when I'm stuck or I'm not sure how to approach it.  Often, it's because I've got &lt;em&gt;tunnel vision&lt;/em&gt; on the problem.  That is, I'm only thinking about it from a limited number of perspectives and can't think of other possible approaches to the problem.  I used to spend long hours thinking about a problem (even outside of normal work hours) without ever really getting anywhere on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When that happens, I find it's good to pursue other activities that stimulate my brain to think outside of the box.  That could be anything from reading semi-related research papers to playing video games to engaging in stand up comedy!  When I challenge my brain to approach other problems from new perspectives, I find those same skills help loosen my brain to engage in research in new ways as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I never really stop thinking about research, I find these other activities help me engage in research with fresh eyes and renewed energy.  And ultimately, that has lead me to better research results and liberates me from &quot;overthinking&quot; the problem during my leisure time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T15:43:51.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2013-04-07T20:25:32.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of thinking about your work is typical if a) you like your job, and b) you do work that involves a lot of creativity. Going with the flow of your mood can help greatly in getting work done as doing creative work when you feel inspired goes much much faster. Ofcourse, a big danger is that the lines between personal life and work become vague, and you turn into a work-a-holic (if this is a bad thing entirely depends on you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you yourself do not have a problem with this, and that it is mainly the people around you that experience it as a problem. This is imo best dealt with by communication. Setting some ground rules together with your spouse about when you act on your creativity may lessen the irritation she experiences from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could organise it like this: when you feel 'the urge' you can propose to your spouse that you take some time to work out a problem. She than has an opportunity to say no (&quot;we have to go to the store/beach/parents&quot;, or &quot;you haven't spent a lot of time with the kids today&quot;). Of course, in a healthy balance she will also sometimes allow you to follow your urges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="4091" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T11:06:39.460" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T11:06:39.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2013-04-07T20:29:29.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large part of the motivation to be a scientist, or a researcher, is to exercise your curiosity and let it drive you. I find that I very often thing about “research” in daily life, but not necessarily of “my day-job research”. To some extent, it is a way of thinking and approaching daily life. So, there are many non-academic research projects that can occupy one's mind, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Trying to find symmetry patterns in wallpaper or train departure times, doing a side experiment with your curry to see what is the maximal concentration of peppers one can reasonably ingest, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(A comment more than an answer, but a rather long one. Sorry!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T20:29:29.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9197" CreationDate="2013-04-08T01:48:57.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Mechanical Engineering PhD, Electrical Engineering MS, Bioengineering MS, Electrical Engineering BS in USA. I was an international student and I met my wife who was also an international student when we were B.S. In order to keep our relationship, we stayed in US as students. Last year I got my green card (No green card is very difficult to find job in US, even if international student may apply working visa. Not much company is willing to hire a temporary working visa people). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am a contractor in a small private company. My hourly paid is as same as a B.S. student that I taught when I was a PhD student. My previous labmate who is a US citizen got a government job, the other one also citizen got a position at NASA.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD is almost no value to most of industries. I used my PhD title to get my current job, but this job is totally unrelated to my research. Small and middle size companies do NOT spend time to train you. They need someone knowledge more than creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use a PHD title, so that you can a professor. At least in USA, you need to have a few years of post-doc training first. Moreover, there are 400 applications per assistant professor position open in my previous university (Top 100 NOT Top 10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do NOT do a PHD if you don't have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6715" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T01:48:57.193" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-08T03:14:07.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just delete the offending comma. No one will accuse you of misquoting; if they track down the original quote and notice that you've made a minor grammatical edit, they will not dwell on it long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T03:14:07.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-08T04:09:22.657" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marriage is only a momentary distraction of what one might presume to be a state of cohabitation both before and after.  There may be some ancillary health coverage and/or tax benefits as a result.  Other factors would dominate the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A baby or babies on the other hand would likely either significantly slow down the completion of the Ph.D., or put a big strain on the relationship.  That perhaps would make for a more interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cohabitation could and should be a benefit while pursuing a Ph.D. with lower living costs and reduced time spent on mundane things through the sharing of chores (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, etc.).  But you don't need to be married for that.  Of course, the significant other would need to be tolerant of the time not spent with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T04:09:22.657" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-08T04:44:29.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have her go to the school where she would be least distracted. Princeton is better than NYU, as it is farther from Broadway (1 hr vs. half-hour). Yale is even better (3 hours). Urbana-Champaign is impossible to beat in that regard -- cornfields for hours to drive (and you can still deny her of a car), she would have nothing else to do but study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I would also want to make sure that the university's regular math program is good. If she can get a credit for non-math AP courses, that's great, as it will clear some time to do real work in college; math and CS will have to be retaken, or taken at a higher level of expectations, and/or in the honors college. Some good quantitative bridge courses like biology or psychology may be something else to pique her interest to do something CS-related that is funded by another substantive field (many of the great discoveries are being made at the disciplinary boundaries). Knowing what you are going to do for the rest of your life at 18 is &lt;strong&gt;incredibly boring&lt;/strong&gt; -- sounds more like a lawyer than an academician!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T04:44:29.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-08T07:10:46.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I do think, this is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about&quot;&gt;boat question&lt;/a&gt;. Aren't those concerns about career and pay valid for all early-career knowledge workers (i.e., people in non-manual occupations)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your question, as somebody who married in the middle of PhD, I think I have evidence, a sample set of size 1, which allows me to conclude that doing so is a &lt;strong&gt;good thing&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many young people nowadays ask questions (as you do) &lt;em&gt;What are the reasons to marry/have kids/etc. in my situation? When is a good time to start a family?&lt;/em&gt; There is never the right time and there almost never is a good reason to change your life in whichever way. You should ask differently. &lt;em&gt;What are the reasons &lt;strong&gt;not to&lt;/strong&gt; marry/start a family now? Why not to start family right now?&lt;/em&gt; Things will never be better than right now. You think that being a post-doc you will have more time and less stress in the career? Or when you will be assistant professor? Or associate? Or full? Yeah, you can wait till the time when the waters calm down. Good luck starting family when you are 80 (if you will be lucky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:31:50.297" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:05:00.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9213" CreationDate="2013-04-08T07:50:07.313" Score="75" ViewCount="13600" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this comes up quite often in educational context. There is a student who attended a seminar where they were supposed to study an assigned research paper and deliver a presentation to the class. The presentation delivered by the student was very low quality as was also reflected by the low grade given by a group/committee of seminar tutors (from post-doc to associate professor level). The evaluation turned out to be a big blow to the student's ego and even after several weeks, the person can't digest the failure, despite very careful explanation on the spot, as well as several interactions and (failed) attempts to &quot;better the grade by performing some extra work&quot;. The student is all the time coming back with requests for additional explanation of particularities of the failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is/are the right pedagogical technique(s) to handle such a situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clearly, the student has a high self-esteem and opinion about him/herself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;probably did not face a situation of a miserable failure before in the past&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the student does not seem to see/accept the relative difference in his/her performance and the rest of the peer group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the committee of tutors was very careful in assigning the grade and went through a thorough discussion. This is not a question of the grade fairness, but a question of student's self-perceived feeling of receiving an unfair treatment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T09:27:29.590" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T09:39:59.653" Title="How to explain a bad grade to a delusional student?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:12:43.080" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;[Let's make an answer out of my comment to Jeff's answer with which I agree]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative solution could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to use the corrected quote without any indication of what changed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to the end of the quote append a footnotemark&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the footnote explain that punctuation was slightly changed in the quote with respect to the original phrase, but without changing the original meaning of the sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:12:43.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9211" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:32:22.610" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first question to you would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you lay out the assignment expectations and how the grade would be determined when you gave the assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &quot;yes&quot; (and I expect that it is), I would use that as a starting point for explaining to the student why he/she did poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That aside, it seems that either (1) the student didn't understand what was expected (regardless of the question above), and/or (2) the student isn't prepared for the type of work required, and/or (3) the student had a bad day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like the answer is firmly #2, as repeated attempts to improve the grade hasn't worked.  Given that you've already spent a good deal of time with the student, it might be time to have a heart-to-heart discussion and say that &lt;strong&gt;it is time to stop thinking about that grade and to move on&lt;/strong&gt;.  Obviously, you need to do this diplomatically, but (as they say), to make an omelet you need to break some eggs, and sometimes a firm and diplomatic &quot;get over it&quot; is appropriate.  I would pose the following questions to the student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a clear set of goals that you are working on for the class?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know what other grades are going to be part of the final grade for the class, and do you have a plan for making sure you are ready for each assignment / talk?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you conduct practice talks with other students in order to get constructive feedback? (if not, you should!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(If the problem is English language skills) Have you sought out on-campus help with your writing or speaking skills? (this is available at many larger universities in the States)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much time you are willing to devote to helping the student improve, you could also offer to sit in on any future practice talks to give pointers and feedback.  Likewise for written work -- you could offer to pre-read assignments.  This is a slippery slope, so tread carefully.  You want to avoid having the student see you as an always-available tutor, but there are times when providing such support is just part of the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would stress to the student that one bad grade does not make or break a student, and it is better to make mistakes while in school than later when they might mean more in the bigger picture.  School is about learning, and you learn from mistakes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:32:22.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9211" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:32:59.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An all too familiar situation. I will focus not so much on what to do about this particular student but what can be done for the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my university system we use grading criteria, which I think can also be referred to as &quot;rubrics&quot;. The main point here is that you set up careful critiera for what should be met for each grade. You can then tick off what is fulfilled as a basis for grading. You also need some weighing system to add the different criteria into a single grade. This is also important and can be done in different ways. In some systems aritthmetically, in others by stating rules for what is a specific grade (such as to get a B you need nothing lower than a B on all criteria). Room for experimentation and discussion!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students should know (be carefully informaed about) the grading criteria and how they are weighted to the final grade by the time they start the course. When the grade is set it becomes very easy to explain why the grade became what it became and it will be up to the student to argue why they have met a higher criteria than what they have been given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the caveat, this will not work better than how carefully you have done the ground work with putting together the criteria. So while rubriics involves quite a lot of pre-course thinking to begin with, rewards for all concerned are large at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final remark: I find that the grades I provide are more or less exactly what I would have given by just reading it and setting the grade based on my impression. The criteria provides an explicit basis for that judgement. I have interpreted this as &quot;we know what we are doing but we may not have expressed it explicitly to ourselves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search on some combination of &quot;rubrics&quot;, &quot;grading criteria&quot;, &quot;essay writing&quot; etc. should give plenty of ideas. I do not have a good starting resource to provide at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:32:59.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9211" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:42:27.067" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer properly, it is important to know if the student is asking about &lt;em&gt;explanations&lt;/em&gt; for his grade or just &lt;em&gt;demanding/requesting&lt;/em&gt; a better grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case seems &quot;easier&quot; to me because then one can just ask for a specific reason why the student thinks, that a higher grade would be appropriate (or just reply that there is no negotiation about grades).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, when the student asks for explanations, one has to distinguish again: Is the student interested in &lt;em&gt;explanations, to learn from failure and to improve&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;to prove that the grading was not appropriate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the first case is easy as soon as you can make sure that the student understands your points. In the second case one could, in principle fall back to the case above: Ask for specific points and don't negotiate about grades. I think that most difficult part is to ensure that you do not have to repeat yourself too often. You could work with written notes for you and/or the student on which you can build for a next discussion. If you see (from the notes) that the discussion is not evolving you can communicate this to the student. If you have the notes of the last session available, and the student raises a point which you have discussed, you can point to the notes and ask what is still remaining about this point. If he repeats the same issue from the last session, answer that there is no negotiation about grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding self-esteem and experience of failure, it is important to communicate that science and also learning science if a lot about failure. There is this famous quote from Samuel Beckett:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, failure in a learning task shall not be related to self-esteem in any way (sometimes hard to accept for students). You can help the student by talking exclusively about his performance in relation to the task he had to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:42:27.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9216" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:33:44.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/grading&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;grading&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;grading&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns different problems associated with grading course work. Grading involves how to assess work performed and how to provide objective/fair measures  of a student's ability to fulfill requirements in a course context. The tag can be used for questions regarding the use of different assessment systems, problems when setting grades etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tag should not be used when discussing grades, for example comparisons between different grade systems (between countries etc). Then the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/grades&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;grades&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;grades&lt;/a&gt; tag should be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T22:12:17.107" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T22:12:17.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9217" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:33:44.073" Score="0" Body="Grading concerns various questions regarding the assignment of grades to course work" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T22:12:17.107" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T22:12:17.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9218" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:40:22.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag concerns questions of grading systems and on grades. Typical examples include comparisons between systems in different countries or other comparisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T10:50:37.623" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T10:50:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9219" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:40:22.090" Score="0" Body="Assessment of a student's academic education which appears as a quantitative or descriptive form." OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T10:50:16.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T10:50:16.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-04-08T11:12:34.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better ask your to be wife/husband, if he/she agrees with your thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how well we justify, if your partner does not agree to a thought! no one on the earth make him/her agree to the same(with some exceptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take his/her consent in detail with all possible conditions after marriage with PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he/she approves than follow the same as receive approval(I believe it will have some conditions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither PhD is easy nor marriage, both requires good amount of efforts for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6723" LastEditorUserId="6723" LastEditDate="2016-10-30T09:21:44.760" LastActivityDate="2016-10-30T09:21:44.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9224" CreationDate="2013-04-08T12:16:27.530" Score="11" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;MIT's OpenCourseWare has many &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/&quot;&gt;video courses&lt;/a&gt;. They are very helpful, but compared to the majority of MIT  curriculum they're only a small part. So, how much effort does it take to record video courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6179" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T04:45:00.943" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T17:42:05.627" Title="How much effort does it take to record video courses?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9223" CreationDate="2013-04-08T12:23:57.187" Score="6" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have previously been involved in a course, where we (the students) were supposed to use a specific style, when presenting our graphical data. By &lt;code&gt;style&lt;/code&gt; I mean the size/color of legends, thickness of datapoints, layout of the figure, etc....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does similar guidelines exist when publishing data in a peer-reviewed journal? Or is it entirely up to me to decide, how it should look?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T10:23:11.453" Title="How to present data in a paper in terms of style" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9222" CreationDate="2013-04-08T12:35:24.407" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of any style when presenting graphics should aim at making the information as easy to read and comprehend as possible. I do not think any journals would provide specific style recommendaions except provide information on, for example, the thinnest posible lines, smallest possible font sizes to be reproduced in printing, color models etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to think about how you present data in any scientific or professional communication. It will be largely up to you to make decisions on the material you visualize. My recommendation is to look at the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte&lt;/a&gt; and then to learn by example. This book, in my opinion, like no other, provides a good basis for understanding graphic display of data. Look at what others do and critically evaluate how successful those attempts are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T15:25:46.437" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T15:25:46.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9221" CreationDate="2013-04-08T12:41:11.340" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the middle of recording lectures for a class now, and I'm doing all the work (recording/processing/uploading) myself.  Luckily, I like doing the technical part of it, because it is rather time intensive.  I've also taught a course that had dedicated software to take care of the entire process (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.blackboard.com/platforms/collaborate/overview.aspx&quot;&gt;BB Collaborate&lt;/a&gt;).  I'd walk into class, log into the system, push &quot;Record&quot; and lo-and-behold the videos (with everything I had on my computer desktop at the time) were uploaded to the site a few hours after class (and were available live to the students who wanted to watch and participate remotely).  So, the effort varies depending on what situation you are in at your school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no supporting system (like BB Collaborate), plan on at least an hour or so per class of your time (not to mention render and upload time, which can take many hours depending on the length of your class and your Internet bandwidth), and this is once you get everything figured out.  Oh, and that doesn't include editing bells and whistles; I basically put raw class footage online and take as little time as I can for post-processing and editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a self-built system, you'll need a number of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B006UMMP2I&quot;&gt;A decent Camcorder&lt;/a&gt; ($200-300 will get you one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B003VNKNF0&quot;&gt;Flash based media&lt;/a&gt; ($25 for a 32GB card)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000V7AF8E&quot;&gt;A tripod&lt;/a&gt; ($25)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00006JPD5&quot;&gt;A remote microphone&lt;/a&gt; ($150 for a decent one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video editing software (I started with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/&quot;&gt;iMovie&lt;/a&gt; on my Mac ($15) and have since graduated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/&quot;&gt;Final Cut Pro X&lt;/a&gt; ($300) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/compressor/&quot;&gt;Compressor&lt;/a&gt; ($50).  I assume you already have a computer, but you'll need that, too ($500-1500).)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005ELBSWO&quot;&gt;External hard drive with a fast connection&lt;/a&gt; (Firewire or USB 3, $100 for 1TB).  This isn't strictly necessary, but you'll find that you may run out of disk space quickly without one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A YouTube account (free), with a relatively fast internet connection (I'm currently faced with a molasses-slow upload speed in Djibouti, Africa, so that hasn't been fun).  Make sure you verify your YouTube account so you can upload videos longer than 15 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get the equipment (total cost ~$1000 without the computer), you'll need to learn how to use everything.  You have to remember to record all your lectures, and plan on spending five minutes or so setting everything up before class, unless you have your own classroom.  I simply focus the camcorder on the board and me, with a bit of room on the sides for me to move around.  If you want panning and zooming, you'll have to rely on someone else to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting up to speed with the editing software can take time, especially if you haven't done it before.  You could spend months editing a 1-hour class, but as I say, if you keep it bare-bones you can get the editing down to an hour or so of your time, including setting up all the steps to upload to YouTube.  I record all my videos at 1080p, but I upload to YouTube at 480p because of my slow connection (and my students have the same slow connection).  I find that the board is difficult to read, even though the camera is only 10 feet away -- I also upload my slideshows and try to write big!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: either convince your school to invest in a professional system so you don't have to do much work yourself, or plan on spending a good bit of time (and money, if your school won't pay for it--I bought everything out of my own pocket, but as I say, I'm enjoying it) to learn the setup and edit/upload videos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T12:46:42.620" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T12:46:42.620" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9227" CreationDate="2013-04-08T13:11:10.860" Score="0" ViewCount="3039" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take de Broglie &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;De Broglie had intended a career in humanities, and received his first degree in history. Afterwards, though, he turned his attention toward mathematics and physics and received a degree in physics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Edward Witten,a very famous theoretical physicist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore (class of '68), and received his Bachelor of Arts with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971. He published articles in The New Republic and The Nation. In 1968 Witten published an article in The Nation arguing that the New Left had no strategy.[citation needed] He worked briefly for George McGovern's presidential campaign. McGovern lost the 1972 election in a landslide to Richard Nixon.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Witten attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out.[citation needed] He returned to academia, enrolling in applied mathematics at Princeton University[citation needed] then shifting departments and receiving a Ph.D. in physics in 1976 under David Gross, the 2004 Nobel laureate in Physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In china,student major in history or literature won't study mathematics &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;,and almost everyone think it's impossible for someone receive BA then turn to science,so how did someone receive BA and then become a scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6179" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2015-12-29T10:15:58.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T10:15:58.730" Title="How did someone receive an arts degree and then become a scientist?" Tags="&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9225" CreationDate="2013-04-08T13:18:54.100" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was supposed to be a comment, but it got just a little long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in both of your examples, the person did a second undergraduate degree.  There's no indication that they necessarily studied any mathematics or science in their first degree.  So I don't see that there's anything very surprising going on there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in some countries (such as the US and New Zealand), undergraduate degrees can be fairly broad, so a person who is mainly studying humanities might very well take some science courses as well (in fact, they might even be required to).  [My first degree was a BA - however one of my majors ended up being mathematics.  I only took two maths courses in my first two years, though, before deciding to change from music to maths.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T13:18:54.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9225" CreationDate="2013-04-08T15:29:16.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not impossible if you try hard (and a little bit of luck). I did my undergraduate in urban planning (had math), masters in bio-physics and will be getting a doctorate in CS and finally joining a lab modeling and studying arctic ice melts for my post-doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was it hard? Yes, absolutely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did I have to learn (and struggle with) certain concepts much later than those that did their undergrad, masters, doctorate, all in X? Yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some people not give my resume a second look because they think I'm a drifter? Yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, while it is a weird path on paper, I never took something up because it sounded fancy. In all the cases, I was genuinely motivated by something unsolved in the new field. While it was easier to switch fields as a grad student, it's a lot tougher now, as a post-doc and early career scientist, because one needs to cozy up to the funding managers and build a rapport etc., which is not possible if I'm changing, so I probably won't (I'm happy where I am now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all have things and topics that interest us in other fields (that we aren't working in), but are constrained by various factors such as funding, inability to relocate, etc. I just happened to get lucky with a couple of internships (where the PI said he chose me because I went to a top school), which gave me the necessary boost to get to the next stage. That, and I performed exceedingly well at them, to get glowing recommendations which then got me the next one, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must also note that I don't think any of this would've been possible if this were in Europe or Asia (where I did my UG). I have observed that in general, in North America (as far as grad school goes), people are more willing to consider your potential rather than what you've done so far (if you've already done something impressive thus far, then it counts more). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T15:29:16.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9232" CreationDate="2013-04-08T15:43:54.990" Score="7" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a PhD in computer science or informatics, are there good reasons &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to choose an area of research in which very few (3 or 4) known (small- to middle-sized) research groups work in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T17:19:45.403" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T07:38:38.027" Title="Very few research groups: continue doing PhD in this area?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-08T18:38:32.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, i would just drop the comma, it's a minor correction and i doubt anyone will accuse you of misquoting. Dwelling on this minor grammatical error will obfuscate the meaning of your text and could confuse readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure is good, but in this case it does not add any new information for your readers. It might even do the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6730" LastEditorUserId="6730" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T18:58:16.330" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T18:58:16.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2013-04-08T18:52:58.617" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't ever &lt;em&gt;stop thinking&lt;/em&gt;, much in the way that you shouldn't tell someone to &lt;em&gt;stop feeling&lt;/em&gt; sad/angry/upset/whatever. But, if there are actions you're doing that interrupt your relationships with others, you can take steps to try to reduce the effect of these actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to &lt;em&gt;not think&lt;/em&gt; about research, I would try to curb activities that you may act upon as a result of thinking about research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep a notebook on you that you can &lt;em&gt;quickly&lt;/em&gt; write your thoughts down in. Dump your brain in about a minute and then move on with whatever you're supposed to be doing. The key word here is quickly - you don't want this to turn into a five minute exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Concentrate heavily on what you're currently doing and focus. Easier said than done, but the key is not to let yourself get distracted with your thoughts. Even if you're not fully focused, try your best to appear focused.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit your discussions about research with others if they're not interested in them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Excuse yourself if you want to think or write more in a way that might appear rude or inappropriate to others. Thus, rather than trying to write things down extensively while in the middle of a nice dinner, excuse yourself, go to the washroom, and write things down there. If you're out walking and get a great idea that you want to think about, ask to stop for a break and think then.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key point here is to differentiate the things that you can control (your actions) compared to things that are much more difficult to control (your thoughts) and to ensure that your behaviors are not disturbing others. Take time for yourself too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T18:52:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-04-08T20:18:56.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are there good reasons not to choose an area of research in which very few people work worldwide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a research clique might be at work&lt;/strong&gt;: sometimes, often unintentionally, you can observe a bunch of researchers starting to push some topic and ending up absorbed in their own little world proposing extensions of extensions of extensions and not noticing that they became irrelevant. Usually because something is wrong with the problem they work on. But sometimes such a niche might be actually very healthy, except the topic did not caught up more popularity in the relevant mainstream community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;something might be wrong with the problem they tackle&lt;/strong&gt;: sometimes a group of absorbed (as above) researchers looses connection with reality and pushes towards solving a problem which does not exist anymore because somebody else solved it just by the way along a route to some other problem and everybody else recognized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;something might be wrong with the method the small group applies to the problem they tackle&lt;/strong&gt;: sometimes the problem is &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; (see below), but the bunch tries to hopelessly push a method which simply does not yield anything. Often this is accompanied with use of a highly specialized terminology so that it is difficult to see that the method they use and the problem they tackle is in fact very much related to something else what yields more healthy research in the relevant mainstream community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, don't worry about the size of the field. What matters is whether the problem at the core of the niche is real and sound. Real means that solving it can have an impact on the society at large. You need to believe in your cause. For the sake of this blob, let sound mean that you see a solid way to articulate it and get a grip on it, most preferably including a method to measure progress. If you have the two, you are set even if the community tackling the problem is relatively small. All the rest is up to your capabilities and the difficulty level of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trust your judgement.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T07:21:48.170" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T07:21:48.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9222" CreationDate="2013-04-08T20:52:25.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be journal-specific guidelines, but none of the journals I dabble in have specified such. I tell students that journal articles require &quot;professional&quot; looking graphs. This usually translates into simple graphs. If you take something like the Excel defaults you will see the opposite of professional looking. Excel puts lots of colors, too small fonts, lines everywhere, titles, unlabeled axes, etc. Simple black and white plots work just fine for most plots. Your job is to present the data for easy access to the reader. If you want to understand this, just grab some recent journal articles in top journals and look at their graphs. You'll see what good graphs should look like.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6093" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T20:52:25.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9234" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-08T21:16:19.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the process of submitting a paper for review or publication by a conference or journal. Typical questions with this tag relate to selection of preferred or conflicted reviewers, timeline of the submission process, and typesetting or compilation by the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T01:12:18.973" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T01:12:18.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9235" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-08T21:16:19.470" Score="0" Body="On the process of submitting a paper for review or publication by a conference or journal. Typical questions with this tag relate to selection of preferred or conflicted reviewers, timeline of the submission process, and typesetting or compilation by the publisher." OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T01:12:18.973" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T01:12:18.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9236" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-08T21:27:04.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/metrics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'metrics'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;metrics&lt;/a&gt; tag is a general tag used to tag different forms of quantitative measures in academia. Examples of specific metrics are &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/h-index&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'h-index'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;h-index&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/impact-factor&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'impact-factor'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;impact-factor&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/metrics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'metrics'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;metrics&lt;/a&gt; can be used in conjunction with these more specific tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T21:28:58.930" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T21:28:58.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9237" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-08T21:27:04.120" Score="0" Body="[metrics] is a general tag for different ways of quantifying measures in academia" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T21:32:50.583" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T21:32:50.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-09T00:06:01.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Phrase it in such a way that you don't need the direct quotation, and just cite instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In related work, Doe claimed that awareness of others addresses affective needs, and that (other stuff here) [1].&#xA;&#xA;[1] Doe, John. &quot;How to address affective needs.&quot; Doe Publishing: London, 1989&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comma doesn't introduce ambiguity, so I don't see a need to point out its prior existence. Phrasing it as above also avoids you having to [sic] or footnote it or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T00:06:01.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9242" CreationDate="2013-04-09T00:08:12.313" Score="5" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to search all openly published theses online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is a way for Google Scholar to ignore other types of articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of SCOPUS and Web of Knowledge, but unfortunately I do not have access to these services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I talked to my librarian and we found a service called &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EThOS&lt;/a&gt; and additionally a service called &lt;a href=&quot;http://openthesis.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;openthesis&lt;/a&gt;.  Openthesis requires people to upload submissions, which would cover nowhere near as many as Google has indexed.  EthOS is for the UK only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6733" LastEditorUserId="6733" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T00:32:45.243" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T14:47:21.397" Title="Search all Theses online" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9211" CreationDate="2013-04-09T01:13:28.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although &lt;a href=&quot;http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&amp;amp;rubric_id=1925241&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this rubric from Rubistar&lt;/a&gt; is certainly not tailored to the university level, it is an good example and a useful tool in regards to the rising need for teachers to &quot;prove&quot; a grade (in any sense, not simply &quot;good&quot; vs.&quot;bad&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is on the rampage, and rubrics seem to be the safest way to show students (and parents...and administrators...) what is going on in our heads as educators evaluating based our own (formerly self-evident) assignment criteria.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving students, their classmates, and TA's similar rubrics, rewording with &quot;I showed&quot; or &quot;SWBAT&quot; can prove, if you will, how delusional any party may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T01:13:28.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3664" CreationDate="2013-04-09T01:46:23.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my high school in the US, every English and Social Studies class (two courses certain to have term papers) required both students and parents to sign a document at the beginning of the year acknowledging a &lt;strong&gt;ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY&lt;/strong&gt; for missed deadlines on projects and papers as well as the late policies for homework.  These deadlines were established at the beginning of the term in the syllabi, much like university policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students could turn in any paper ahead of time without gain or penalty, but without &lt;strong&gt;documented family/medical/extenuating circumstances,&lt;/strong&gt; no work was ever accepted past the deadline. Zero tolerance = 0%.  This was the perfect timing for a wake up call on making excuses for &lt;em&gt;high school students.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in university in Québec, there were even more explicit reasons defining extenuating circumstances, which could take months of arbitration, i.e. your name in a mass-media, published obituary being the burden of proof necessary to miss a deadline as a result of the death of a family member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most recently, as a middle school teacher, I hit the middle ground of the -10% per school day (not per class period) for homework assignments.  Otherwise, I need a note from a parent or guardian excusing the tardiness by the due date or upon the day of the student's return to school from an excused absence.  I'd like to require a doctor's note in some notorious cases, but we all have to conform to the school handbook, don't we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T01:46:23.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9239" CreationDate="2013-04-09T04:10:56.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I can think of given the lack of other details is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/pqdt.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; They claim to be &quot;the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses.&quot; While that is not &quot;ALL&quot;, it certainly is &quot;MOST&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T04:10:56.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-09T05:17:32.953" Score="11" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;In STEM (In USA), the coursework duration of the PhD typically lasts about 1-2 years beyond that, students take 0 (or in certain cases, very few) courses in their subsequent PhD years. I work in applied math with a lot of applications in every field imaginable : Finance, Economics, Energy, Healthcare, Services etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my coursework phase (owing to the breadth requirement), I was made to take courses in different departments and each time I attended a course in a new department I would think &quot;Wow, this field could really benefit from extensions of my research&quot;. I would chalk out a few ideas and read up a few papers, find out that it's already done but be glad that I generated a new idea nonetheless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am nearing the end of my coursework phase and I am wondering : How do I keep my ability to &quot;see&quot; applications in fields other than mine alive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Global Question : After a student's coursework phase, how does he stay aware of applications of his research field besides the ones discussed in papers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor encourages me to attend as many seminar talks as possible (in all allied fields) which I do but it's not the same level of enjoyment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T23:41:19.370" Title="Learning new things after coursework duration of PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9244" CreationDate="2013-04-09T05:56:28.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, unless there is a policy against it, you should feel free to enroll in subsequent courses even though you are done with your requirements.  The caveat is that this will take time, and &lt;strong&gt;your primary responsibility after finishing those requirements is to do research in your specific area to make progress on your PhD&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a first approximation, a PhD program is designed to have you focus on one particular problem until you are the only person in the world that completely understands that problem.  That is not to say that you won't find research inspiration from those other seminars, and in fact you might find that you will tailor your research based on one (probably not more) of those other fields.  But, if you continue an academic career after you get your PhD, you'll have more flexibility to collaborate outside your particular field, and that is probably a better time to do it than right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question: you're on the right track by going to seminars, and if you can justify the time, taking subsequent classes is not out of the ordinary.  You could also get on mailing lists for other fields that interest you, and nothing is stopping you from becoming a member of professional organizations outside your immediate field (and, they're cheap when you're a student!).  You could also consider collaborating with folks from other departments on projects, bearing in mind that you'll need to be able to differentiate your contributions if you want to use that work in your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T05:56:28.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9244" CreationDate="2013-04-09T06:44:55.193" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will add and expand on Chris Gregg's good answer. I think the key to your question is &quot;keeping up to date&quot;. What I mean is that by keeping up with what is going on in a field wil also show you the trends, needs, open key questions etc. Now, taking a course, to me, does not sound like getting to the forefront of a subject, typically courses (unless at very advanced levels) will cover core material in a field. I think this is why you find that the ideas you got already may have been solved. So, in my mind course work is not the way to research ideas, it may form a good and perhaps necessary basis for understanding research papers etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, even specialists have a hard time keeping up in their own field, I therefore think that it will be hard for you to keep up with several. Your notion that your own research could help others in other fields is most likely spot-on! But, you probably need to get to know people in some fields who have the solid basis and can jointly with you identify the research questions where your knowledge can be of use. So if you can spare the time, try to go to research seminars in other departments and even if you may not know the details, try to pick up what is going on, ask questions. Obviosuly I am not suggesting you should go to seminars at random but you can probably identify fields where you have some interests. Browse through some higher ranked journals from those fields as well to see what the research is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then finally, you should not worry about getting all this done as a PhD student. I am sre opportunities will come after your PhD to broaden and find colaborations. I will say that finding colaborators in other fields is usually hard and if your knowledge is in demand you will probably get sucked in to many interesting projects if you make yourself and your expertise known. and that I do not think happens with course work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T06:44:55.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-09T07:06:32.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question may vary depending on whether you are dealing with a simple punctuation error -- as you surmise -- or with a punctuation variant that, in the time or cultural context it was written, would have been considered acceptable. In your example, setting off a subject from the rest of the clause with commas, or setting off prepositional phrases from their head nouns, used to be unremarkable in written American English of a few hundred years ago. (Cf. Amendment 9 to the US Constitution: &quot;The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's indeed a simple error, I would second walkmanyi's suggestion to just correct and add a footnote about having made minor changes to punctuation without relevance to meaning. If it's a historical variant or a text from a different cultural context - say, Indian colonial - I would hesitate to make changes as they would necessarily introduce inauthenticity. You could then leave the text as-is and add a footnote &quot;punctuation as in original&quot;: less intrusive and smug than &quot;[sic]&quot;, but fulfils the same purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6738" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T07:06:32.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-04-09T07:38:38.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key thing is that there might be no open position for your to continue your line of research, if you wish to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here it is an important question, whether there are growing, or are in decline. And, more importantly, if you like and believe in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise importance of the problem they are solving lies on a different axis than number of groups. Not every important topic is popular (and vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T07:38:38.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9194" CreationDate="2013-04-09T08:45:50.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to add this screen shot of what I ended up doing. It's essentially walkmanyi's suggestion but instead of using a footnote I wrote the remark directly underneath the block quotation in a smaller font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xIXPW.png&quot; alt=&quot;example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4184" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T08:45:50.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-04-09T10:32:28.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you go for a Masters degree,if you wish to teach in a community college. Where I live ,Industry experience is also a big plus for teaching.Lets say if two candidates applied for teaching a java course and one of them has industry experience as well as a Masters degree then he would be the preferred candidate for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ofcourse , phd candidates are still preferred over the Masters.But where I live ,phd candidates are considered more suitable for the theoretical courses like Automata,Operating Systems etc.Guys with industry experience are considered more suitable for teaching programming languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, a Masters degree is very important for teaching positions.So I suggest that if you wish to go for teaching then go for Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T10:32:28.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9255" CreationDate="2013-04-09T11:25:13.053" Score="5" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be off-topic but I thought I would try here since I know we have people who will know the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received two documents from a prospective teacher. They seem to be German diplomas but I do not understand clearly what they really mean. The names of the diplomas are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diplomurkunde, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diplom (Diplomlehrer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) translates (via Google) as Diploma Certificate. This is a bit confusing because I normally think of certificates as something and a diploma as something else (which requires more studying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) translates as Graduate Teacher. This seems to be quite different from what I'm used to as a graduate teacher is something you are (or something you do) rather than something you've achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a more detailed explanation which would tie back to the UK or US educational system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T15:27:42.937" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T15:00:08.450" Title="Diplomurkunde and Diplom (Diplomlehrer) in English?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9264" CreationDate="2013-04-09T11:26:56.900" Score="15" ViewCount="3842" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to encourage and motivate students to work harder and study more, it seems the teacher can use various competitions in class or after class. But on the other hand, competitions could cause jealousy and other destructive emotions among students and therefore affect the performance of some students adversely. Due to my doubts and my lack of experience, I haven't used competitions in my classes as a means of motivating students yet. But I would like to know if there is an experienced and useful method to do that. So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have you ever used competitions in your classes? What are the pros and cons of students compete in the class for higher grades? Which points should I consider before encouraging students to compete with each other?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T18:04:24.303" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:07:18.750" Title="How to use competitions to encourage students to work harder and study more" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-04-09T11:43:27.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key thing to consider is whether you are encouraging your students to do better for themselves or if you are encouraging them to harm other students to look &lt;em&gt;relatively&lt;/em&gt; better. Clearly, you must decide how to structure the class to achieve what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many teachers take the stance: I will give 10% A's, 50% B's, 20% C's, 10% D's, and 10% F's. Their rationale is that this is the way the real world works: There are only a certain number of management positions and if they want it, they must work harder and step on others to get it. However, I've found this is not great for the classroom and it is not the way the real world works either. It is clearly possible to grow a company so that there are &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; management positions available (indeed, growth is the goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have come to the point where each student should be judged on his/her own merits so I never run the kinds of competitions discussed above. That said, I have been known to offer prizes in class which are clearly limited. Prizes might include money (I don't generally offer a lot but students do seem excited about even small things, perhaps because they simply like something to represent them winning) but could easily be something else. What I offer comes out of my own pocket (though I don't tell the students this...and I'm not sure they would care either way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T11:43:27.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9251" CreationDate="2013-04-09T11:59:59.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Diplom' is the standard academic degree in Germany (slowly being replaced by a bachelor/master system). In the German system, it is roughly equivalent to a master degree. It usually takes about 5 years to complete. &#xA;Teachers-to-be in Germany usually take a combination of two subjects. Their studies include courses on teaching/education as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since schools are subject to special federal law, teachers usually end their studies with a state-controlled exam (&quot;Staatsexamen&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the word &quot;Diplomurkunde&quot;: The word simply denotes the piece of paper confirming that the person holds the respective degree. It is the one you want to see.&#xA;I'm not so sure about the other one, but from my own experience, I would guess that the &quot;Diplomurkunde&quot; simply has the applicants name, place of birth and a date one it, while the other document has a bit more information but basically grants the same degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cf the article on Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplom&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6013" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T11:59:59.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9251" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:00:33.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pre-Bologna process, a German &lt;em&gt;Diplom&lt;/em&gt; (which &lt;strike&gt;is no longer being awarded, and&lt;/strike&gt; [see cbeleites's comment below] is mostly replaced now by a Master's degree) was generally the rough equivalent of a US Master's degree, attaining it is one of the requirements to start Doctorate studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your applicant sent you two documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Diplomurkunde&lt;/em&gt; is roughly the Master's diploma in the US. It is called a &quot;certificate&quot; (Urkunde) to distinguish it from the &lt;em&gt;Diplomzeugnisse&lt;/em&gt; which also includes the transcript of grades. It is the one that one may consider framing and putting on the wall. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Diplomlehrer&lt;/em&gt; tells you what subject the applicant received his &quot;masters&quot; in. In particular, he received it in &lt;em&gt;Lehrer&lt;/em&gt;, which translates directly to &lt;strike&gt;Lecturer&lt;/strike&gt; Teacher. Or, as we may say, it tells you that he received something like a Master's in education. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clear up any doubts, though, you could just ask your applicant to ask the &lt;em&gt;Akademisches Auslandsamt&lt;/em&gt; of the place where he received the degree to send a letter attesting to the equivalency of the degree. (That shouldn't be too hard, since now they should've converted to a Bachlor/Master system anyway.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T15:00:08.450" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T15:00:08.450" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9262" CreationDate="2013-04-09T13:23:57.750" Score="5" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Not sure if this is the right SX site, but math.sx seemed to have no questions concerning DOIs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything I cite in my thesis has a DOI or URL (I think that's important), but I'm citing an article that was the first to mention a kind of problem,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arkadi Nemirovski. Nonparametric estimation of smooth regression&#xA;  functions. In: Tekhnicheskaya Kibernetika 3 (1985)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which seems to be quite obscure, it's not even listed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~nemirovs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the author's website&lt;/a&gt;. It's not in our library (or any catalog I searched), but just a handed-down copy of unknown origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal doesn't seem to exist any more (or it doesn't have a website), and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crossref.org&lt;/a&gt; yields nothing. The article is translated, there are some inconsistencies with transliteration, i.e. the author's last name is sometimes written &lt;em&gt;Nemirovskiĭ&lt;/em&gt;, the journal is sometimes written as &lt;em&gt;Techničeskaja&lt;/em&gt;, the title might be completely different, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any pointers where I could find some canonical information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6739" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:13:12.173" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:13:12.173" Title="How can I find the DOI for an old mathematical paper which is not in English?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-04-09T15:39:43.300" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A competition is almost by definition a zero-sum game, and thus has the destructive aspects described above. But if you want to reward overachievement you can provide extra credit work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick here is to use the extra credit only to improve the grade. Practically what that means is that you assign grades based on your system, and then add in the extra credit and see if that moves people. In other words, allow the extra credit to change your position in the curve, but not the curve itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, doing extra credit will benefit the overachievers, but not doing it won't hurt the others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I want to reiterate one point, because I think it's important. As you state in your question, the goal of the competition is to &lt;strong&gt;motivate students to work harder and study more&lt;/strong&gt;. Students are motivated by many things, but the goal of the competition has to be &quot;to work harder and study more&quot;. If the way to &quot;win&quot; the competition is by being better than others, then you're not achieving the goal you set out to achieve, and you're vitiating the class atmosphere. Artificially placing constraints on who can win doesn't make sense, because there's no reason that ALL students can't work harder and study more and &lt;em&gt;get a reward for doing so&lt;/em&gt;, and in fact that's a great outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T17:09:39.300" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T17:09:39.300" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:33:34.367" Score="4" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of trying to decide on which graduate program to attend.  I am pursuing a Master's level degree in Computer Science in hopes of furthering my web development career.  I would love to be able to teach web development/programming at a community college someday after getting a few more years of industry experience (teaching requires at least a Master's degree).  Previously I taught secondary science before transitioning into web development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been accepted to the following programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Boston University&lt;/strong&gt; - Master's in Computer Information Systems / Web Application Development  (U.S. News ranked #51 nationally)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brandeis University&lt;/strong&gt; - Master's of Software Engineering (U.S. News ranked #31 nationally)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Bridgeport&lt;/strong&gt; - Master's of Computer Science (not ranked nationally)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep going back and forth in regards to which program I should choose.  University of Bridgeport seems to have a good curriculum and it looks like it will be cheaper (I may get a scholarship), but I'm concerned that it's not viewed as a &quot;top&quot; school.  I would be happy to pay for a more expensive school if it helped provide greater opportunities in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you find that going to a &quot;better&quot; school has affected your resume to the point that you may have more teaching opportunities after school?  I realize that a certain school won't earn me the actual position, but having a highly regarded school on my resume MAY lead me to getting more interviews.  Any insights are greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks and have a good day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6659" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T16:55:01.873" Title="Does your Alma Mater and U.S. News Rankings Really Affect Future Job Opportunities?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9263" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:44:17.453" Score="1" ViewCount="4371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in my junior year of undergraduate work at Creighton University and have found out that my employer may possibly pay for me to work towards a Master's degree. I don't know all the specifics yet, but I have been browsing schools that offer Graduate programs in software engineering (or computer science with a focus in software engineering). It appears that the only school near me is the University of Nebraska-Omaha, so I have been checking out online programs as well, since I would have to stay in the Omaha area. It looks like USC has an excellent program in computer science, and I have also looked at Penn State and Drexel. So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How difficult are these programs to get into?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it to work towards a Master's Degree right after undergraduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other programs should I be looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have a 4.0 GPA in my Computer Science Major, but I still have 4 classes left to take. I am also minoring in Business Administration and Interactive Web Development(basically Graphic Design classes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks ahead of time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6742" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T15:21:29.567" Title="Difficulty in admission to online software engineering graduate programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9256" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:44:27.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: The full name is &lt;em&gt;Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Tekhnicheskaya Kibernetika&lt;/em&gt;. As you inferred, it looks like it was terminated, doesn't have a web site, and all that was before the advent of Digital Object Identifiers. So, what are you asking for exactly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is a longer answer to that question. As you said, it is unfortunate this content doesn't have a canonical URL, or even a Digital Object Identifier. The good news is that you can actually fix that problem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create and incorporate your own company: &lt;em&gt;Lost and Inaccessible Academic Content, Inc.&lt;/em&gt; (actual title may vary). Depending on local legislation, this might not be so hard as it sounds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/doi_handbook/8_Registration_Agencies.html&quot;&gt;DOI Registration Agency&lt;/a&gt; to register a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/doi_handbook/9_OperatingProcedures.html#9.1.1&quot;&gt;DOI prefix&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Register the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/doi_handbook/9_OperatingProcedures.html#9.1.4&quot;&gt;DOI name&lt;/a&gt; and associated metadata.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down that DOI name in your thesis bibliography.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bathe in the joy of the world now being a (slightly) more organized (and thus better) place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T16:44:27.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:55:01.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Industry Jobs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, &quot;brand&quot; is more important in the industry than in academia. E.g. in general, the HR department is more likely to forward a CV with Harvard on it. Also, people in the industry are probably not able to understand the academic content of your program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Similar Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3089/how-does-the-ranking-of-a-university-relate-to-a-future-career-in-mathematics?rq=1&quot;&gt;How does the ranking of a university relate to a future career in mathematics?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d?rq=1&quot;&gt;University rank/stature - How much does it affect one&amp;#39;s career post-Ph.D?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these are for PhD programs, there might be interesting bits in there with regards to industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Look&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be helpful or informative to look at the CVs of the companies or positions you are interested in. This might give you a clue if only the &quot;branded&quot; universities are hired or if there is a wide range of backgrounds. E.g. with regards to mathematics departments, if you look at the CV of professors, a lot of them are Ivy League or MIT, Stanford etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would pick the most &quot;branded&quot; program I can get into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T16:55:01.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9256" CreationDate="2013-04-09T17:01:12.680" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, not every (old) article has a DOI or a URL. However, in mathematics every article since 1940 has an MR number which uniquely identifies it. So go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/&quot;&gt;mathscinet&lt;/a&gt; and look up this article. I just did, it has MR number MR0844292. The bibliographical information on mathscinet (like the transliteration of the author's name) would also be considered the &quot;canonical information&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6743" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T17:01:12.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9259" CreationDate="2013-04-09T17:13:32.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kgvnova,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on all of your success so far and your decision to consider furthering your education.  I'm in a very similar position as you and I'm currently considering distance education for a Master's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering.  I'll do my best to answer your questions the best that I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  The difficulty of getting into programs varies, but I would say it's probably easier to be admitted into an online program than the live/in-person program.  I was accepted into all programs that I applied to.  (I graduated with a science degree at the top of my class, have good test scores and work experience, so I'd say I'm a strong candidate for most programs.)  Just be careful about some &quot;diploma mills&quot;.  Some schools are &quot;for profit&quot; and let everyone in.  Just try to find an established school that has a distance education component and you should be in good shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Whether you go straight to a Master's degree or not depends on you and your life situation.  You can consider your situation from a few angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job Opportunities/ Return on Investment&lt;/strong&gt;:  I think that most computer related careers are available to people with a technically-oriented bachelor's degree so the return on your investment might be neglible since you already have a bachelor's.  You mentioned that your employer may pay for it, so your investment might just be your time and energy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timing and Other Life Events:&lt;/strong&gt;  If you are willing and able to invest 20-40 hours per week for the next 2 years or so, then getting a Master's could be a good idea.  If you're planning on having a family in the next few years, maybe it's a good time to get this done.  If you're just starting a family or have other commitments, then maybe you should wait.  Graduate schools aren't going anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Certainty:&lt;/strong&gt;  How certain are you that this is the career/industry for you?  Do you have significant experience working in software engineering?  I just ask because you may find that this is not what you actually want to do, especially if you've never done it before.  I've changed my mind a lot in the past.  Since I've graduated a few years ago, I've worked in sales, health services, teaching, insurance, and web development.  I always thought I was going to enjoy those fields until I actually worked in them.  Once I started doing web development and LOVING it, I decided it's worth pursuing an education to take me a step further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  There are a lot of programs to consider.  I started by looking at US News to see a list of highly-regarded schools.  I then visited their websites to see if they had distance programs in Computer Science.  Another few schools that I've considered are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brandeis University - Master's in Software Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Bridgeport (CT) - Master's in CS with Software Engineering Concentration (ranked in top 10 online CS programs nationally)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harvard Univerisity - they have an Extension School where you can get a Master's in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Software Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also consider the finances and &quot;pacing&quot; of programs.  Some programs are really expensive.  Also, some degrees are accelerated and take 18 months, while some programs take 3-4 years to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long response.  I just wanted to give you the information I've been researching this for several months.  I wish you the best of luck with everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6659" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T17:13:32.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-04-09T18:07:18.750" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often have competitions in class. I try to use them primarily for motivation, not assessment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give an example: I was teaching an image processing class and we had some images of x-rays of &quot;old master&quot; canvas paintings. The goal was to create an algorithm that could count the density of the thread weave patterns. The quality of the answers could be assessed by comparing the algorithmic answers to manual counts, and I had about 200 locations where I knew the answer. I gave them 100 to train the algorithms. After about two weeks, there were 25 different algorithms submitted (most people worked in pairs) and then I ran the submitted codes on the 100 &quot;unknown&quot; locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I called it the &quot;2010 Thread Counting Olympics&quot; and made a big deal about giving out &quot;medals&quot;. I created several different ways of measuring the quality of the algorithms: closest in least squares error, number of answers within +/-1 mm per thread, number within +/-2 mm per thread, closest in absolute value of error, closest on the canvases by Van Gogh and closest on the canvases by Vermeer. Then there were bronze, silver, gold, and titanium medals in each category. As I presented the results to the class, I described the various approaches and pitfalls of each of the algorithms, and often asked for clarifications and comments by the authors of the algorithms. By the end of the competition, well over half of the students had won &quot;prizes&quot;... plus they had the recognition of their peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of effort that the students put into this project and into the class were amazing, and I think the &quot;competition&quot; aspect was a prime motivating factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:07:18.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9225" CreationDate="2013-04-09T21:29:11.330" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to remember is that an individual is more than their degree classification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every person has their own interests, hobbies, skills, and personal projects.  While a BA in one field may be an indicator of a person's interests, it does not mean that the person in question knows nothing outside of what was required for that degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is very possible that a person receiving a BA in philosophy may:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enjoy a STEM discipline, leading them to take classes in it for their own enjoyment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enjoy a STEM discipline or topic and choose to learn about it on their own&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;end up in a job that requires that they learn skills that are applicable to a different discipline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apply to graduate school for a STEM discipline and be willing and able to invest the time to catching up on the material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be naturally gifted at whatever the STEM discipline is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, in cases where people change disciplines, it's a combination of several of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I got a BFA, but continued taking calculus as a free elective in my undergraduate degree.  I had to learn programming for work after graduating and ended up in graduate school for Computer Science.  I entered graduate school with the knowledge that I would need to work at least twice as hard to catch up on the material and just went ahead and worked at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be completely different in other countries, but even in those countries, I can't imagine that anyone is completely limited to only knowing things that are required for their degree.  There are a lot of situations that can force you to learn new skills, and that's without taking into account that some people have hobbies that are cross-discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of looking at it is: would you be surprised if a famous physicist played the violin well enough to perform?  There's no logical reason why someone who plays the violin shouldn't be able to do the same the other way around.  Both require a progressive learning of skills and a large time investment, unless you're naturally gifted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T21:29:11.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T02:23:12.613" Score="5" ViewCount="1682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that there are often summer courses through TAing, but those are much rarer. Many departments don't even offer summer courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, are graduate students over summer always supported by RAships? And does an adviser &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to have funding in order to support these students (in US)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these standards also vary between professors at public schools and those at private schools? Especially schools that have guaranteed five-year funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T11:02:27.700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T11:02:27.700" Title="How are graduate students funded over the summer (in US)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9267" CreationDate="2013-04-10T02:50:37.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience in math in the US it is not expected that the school or the advisor provide summer funding.  Many people do make money in the summer in a variety of ways, but it's much less formalized than during the year.  Personally, I was funded by the NSF half the summers I was in grad school and worked at a summer math program for the other half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T02:50:37.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T03:03:30.303" Score="7" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or is it usually not possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this also depend from department to department? I'm in a geoscience department, and I was recently advised that due to a limited number of positions, students can only expect to be TAs for 1/4 of their time here. Geoscience does tend to have significantly fewer courses than most other fields though, so I wonder if it varies from field to field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it also vary depending on whether the school is public or private?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="77" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T11:35:21.597" Title="Is it possible for a student to TA their entire way through graduate school?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-04-10T03:33:49.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ability of a department to fund TAs depends on the courses being taught, the number of students in a class, and the overall budget. Often, a department will use this number in combination with the amount of funding faculty are pulling in as well as other sources to decide how many students to admit and how much TA funding support to provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independently, a department might make a determination of how long any one student might be guaranteed a TA position (this is often detailed on the admissions letter), with the expectation that students will look to be supported by research funding, or are expected to support themselves. Again, this depends from department to department and from university to university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any area-wide standard. In computer science, I see all kinds of models, ranging from full support through the entire program to no funding at all (although this latter model is rare). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question: maybe, it depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T03:33:49.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-04-10T03:34:24.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does vary from school to school and field to field, and it would be difficult to classify public or private schools as being in one camp or another.  I have known people who never TA'd and I've known people who have TA'd for their whole graduate career.  Here are some plusses and minuses (and certainly my own opinion):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plusses to only TA'ing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You spend more time teaching, although some TAs spend all their time grading, which can be tedious and not particularly beneficial to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor isn't paying you from his/her grants, you could have more leeway for a more self-directed PhD.  Obviously, your advisor still has a large roll to play, but ultimately less control if you want to push the issue.  This is generally more true if your funding comes from an external fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a field where grant money is limited, this is a good way to get funding for your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minuses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;TA'ing takes up time that could be spent on your own research.  The point of Research Assistant fellowships is explicitly for you to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a corollary to #2 above, your advisor might not feel as much ownership of you, and you might find that he/she isn't as willing to spend the time to help you with your research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other students might wonder why you can't find research funding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know students who love being TAs, and they actively try to find new TA positions because of that and not because of the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T03:34:24.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9267" CreationDate="2013-04-10T05:42:36.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Noah mentioned, I don't think there is a binding contract to provide funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few points  (US Specific)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Within my school itself, there are variable policies across departments. Certain departments provide 9 month guarantees and if you want to hang around in summer, either convince your advisor to find money for you or find your own. Certain departments guarantee funding for all 12 months, if you take an internship or decide to take a break or whatever, you don't get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are an international student, AFAIK, You have two (realistic) options : Convince advisor, get an internship. Finding your own summer funding can be quite tough for international students in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually, (at least in my experience), if you are doing good work and your advisor doesn't want to lose momentum, he will get you funding. In my field, it's not hard to get internships even for international students but most advisors will try to get funding so as to not break flow of things. But again, this is experience, not fact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user107" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T05:42:36.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9267" CreationDate="2013-04-10T08:49:04.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an engineering discipline, it is not hard to be funded for most/all of grad school. I was a research assistant almost my entire time (at 2 different universities), minus one semester as a TA. Most of the time this was working for grants that my professors had already secured. While TAs may not have as much work in the summer, RAs can work whenever as long as the advisor has money. This works best if you have an advisor who is well-connected and has a large group with several grants from which he can shuffle money around. Newer professors may simply not have available funds for all of their students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T08:49:04.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9251" CreationDate="2013-04-10T10:45:36.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(answering the comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 years separation would be enough to do the teaching program after the &quot;normal&quot; subject. And it would definitively not be the parts of one Diplom (Zeugnis + Urkunde), they have the same date.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And, by the way, till now I was always required to show/hand in both Urkunde and Zeugnis of my Diplom. As I understand it, the Urkunde certifies that I have the &quot;title&quot; of Diplom-chemist, the Zeugnis certifies the grades of the final exams, and possibly other legally relevant additional exams (the examn that allows me to handle chemicals according to the German laws).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering a bit about the teaching Diplom - usually the teaching studies end with &quot;Staatsexamen&quot; (state exams, also includes one or two theses). But this can differ a lot depending on the state, and I don't know that much about the teaching studies. AFAIK, if you have a master/Diplom in some subject and then do the teaching studies for this subject, you can get the master/Diplom recognized as the first state exam. Otherwise, what you write sounds like 2 separate Diplome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it boils down to asking and getting the Diploma Supplements - AFAIK they explain what the Diplom is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T10:51:53.957" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T10:51:53.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-04-10T11:35:21.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible for a student to TA their entire way through graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is possible&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did it. I'm betting most academics can list someone they know who did it for whatever the reason might be. I did it partly because I enjoyed it and partly because the grant money was tight. I was able to do it because there were not enough first year graduate students to fill every open TA position. I suspect that the situations the lead to someone teaching their way through grad school have some features in common with my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't say so, but the tone of your question implies that you might want to do this. If so, ask the appropriate person who controls such things - the chair, assistant chair, undergraduate coordinator, or even the professor of the class you want to TA for. If you are good at it they might let you &lt;strong&gt;with your thesis adviser's support.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extra teaching experience will be beneficial if you intend a career at a 4-year liberal arts school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there are a limited number of TA positions, those will go to the first year graduate students because those students 1) are not likely to be supported by grants or fellowships, and 2) probably have a TA requirement to complete the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T11:35:21.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T12:56:30.310" Score="22" ViewCount="1203" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How is Google Scholar compared to other academic search engines and catalogues such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, and universities' own online catalogues--in terms of the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;comprehensiveness of search&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. can fetch all the ever published relevant titles, whether the user have access to full-texts or not)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;accuracy and precision of results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;advanced search features&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;usability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there good reasons for (or against) using Google Scholar as the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;literature search tool&lt;/em&gt; for PhD research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the answer of (2) depend on the research discipline?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="36320" LastEditDate="2015-12-30T20:38:17.890" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T12:48:04.863" Title="Google Scholar vs other academic search engines" Tags="&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9259" CreationDate="2013-04-10T13:02:11.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How difficult are these programs to get into?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is going to be different with every school.  Some will require you to take the GRE or GMAT, while some will admit you as long as you had a halfway-decent GPA in your undergraduate program.  Some won't admit you unless you have a few years of experience working in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it worth it to work towards a Master's Degree right after&#xA;  undergraduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it depends.  Is it going to advance your career?  Perhaps.  Having a Master's Degree as a software developer (assuming that is what you are aspiring to be) does open some doors that might otherwise be closed to you.  Will you get a raise or better pay increases because of it?  Probably not.  And I don't know if I agree with going to graduate school immediately after finishing your bachelor's degree, but that is a decision you need to make for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I needed 13 years before I was ready to go to school again...and it paid off.  I found that I had  an easier time with my classes, because I had already worked with most of the technologies that I studied in grad school.  Not just because of familiarity either, but because I had worked with them enough that I already understood &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they worked the way that they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What other programs should I be looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all computer science/software engineering/IT-based graduate programs are created equally.  Many are geared more towards IT management, and go little into the technical side.  If a technical deep-dive is what you want, you need to look really hard to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many programs will be either practicum or thesis-based (or give you an option to choose).  A thesis-based master's program may sound daunting, but again, it opens doors for you.  If you are considering an academic career path at some point, you will want a program that requires a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider, is to work at least a year before going back to school, just to get used to your workload.  You will probably find that your employer will want 45-50 hours per week out of you (maybe more).  Going home on a Friday night to work on a paper is a lot tougher to do after you've already been writing code for 10 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1508" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T13:02:11.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9278" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:07:30.450" Score="4" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given a (rather large) list of authors, what is the best way to find the number of publications by each author?  The big problem here is author ambiguity (which John Smith, etc.) - the author list we have doesn't even include middle initials!  What we do have is the full name of a FDA Committee on which they have sat, which has some useful key terms (e.g., arthritis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, some sort of API/automated search could be used given the large number of authors!  I've heard about some databases (eRA Commons, for example) but these don't seem to have a visible search page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to figure out publication number given these constraints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="555" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T20:46:12.317" Title="Author Ambiguity in PubMed Search" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;pubmed&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9280" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:45:59.117" Score="17" ViewCount="4593" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/is-it-advisable-to-mention-the-dollar-amount-for-grants-on-a-cv&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't believe a duplicate since the dollar amount there was impressive, whereas mine are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been awarded several intra-University small grants ($2-4k each), about one a year, during my Ph.D.  These were funds to cover research expenses, rather than to cover my stipend, and I believe I've used them productively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I list the dollar amounts of these on my C.V.?  On the one hand, listing them shows they're not just honorary amounts.  On the other, the amounts are not enormous either, and there are all the usual disadvantages of listing (setting the wrong tone, etc.).  Plus it just makes me a little uneasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background here is: headed into a soft money position eventually, and my stipend is fully covered without conditions, so I've had no need to apply for any of the big extramural grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T18:45:11.457" Title="List dollar amount of small grants on C.V.?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:55:43.730" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes. I have done so from when I received my first grant/stipend. I ceased listing once I received a permanent position (or thereabouts) and started getting multiyer grants from national sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you think adding it shows that you are active and competitive (well merited) in terms of receiving the trust to receive money it will be a good thing. You need to constantly evaluate the possible pros and cons of adding informaton to your cv, including funding. I would imagine that being in a soft money situation, listing funding will only be a positive. But, be aware that gaps in your funding stream may become question marks unless they are explicitly explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T15:55:43.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-04-10T18:09:10.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it depends on who the CV is going to. In most cases, I would think that listing dollar amounts leaves the wrong impression: first, that your primary thought is of money, and second that you're not very good at it. It is probably more impressive sounding, in general, if you list the award, the donor, the purpose. For example, the &quot;Susan B. Lovemoney award for student creativity&quot; is more impressive sounding than &quot;$1K departmental stipend.&quot; Let the reader imagine that you might have received some large amount of money, and if they ask, say that it was a modest amount, enough to enable you to accomplish your research goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T18:45:11.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T18:45:11.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T18:14:08.397" Score="26" ViewCount="2739" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do we use F for failing on an otherwise arbitrary alphabetic grading scale? Isn't E just as meaningful for failing as A is for excellent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more interested in a response on the history of how the current scale came to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: prompted from the comments below, I am asking about this situation within the context of the American grading system.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6756" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:11:23.923" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:11:23.923" Title="Grading system: Why A-F and not E?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:14:02.843" Score="15" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a major flaw in reasoning in a psychological experiment, but I am not even related to psychology, I just attended to that course at my university in my spare time. The flaw I found is strictly logical, and also quite tricky, so I think it is feasible that no one noticed it yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mistake (if it turns out to be an actual flaw) has huge consequences since a few studies validated the results (by repeatedly committing this mistake) and many psychological sub-fields referenced the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want someone to validate my concerns about that study, and then if possible I want to discover the consequences of that error, and make humble suggestion on how to deal with the situation. If my notice would be published anywhere, I want to make sure my name will be seen in that article. (It would be awesome)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the way to go in my situation if such things can be published at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Little Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The error is highly controversial but my point of view should be true. It is similar to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem&quot;&gt;Monty Hall problem&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6758" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T19:12:28.777" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T19:12:28.777" Title="Can I publish a critique of an experiment in a field in which I am not an expert?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9285" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:51:11.433" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for this to happen, you need two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to communicate with specialists and convince them that you have identified a logical flaw.  You might worry that they will take your idea without giving you credit, but you shouldn't worry too much about that: the more worrisome scenario is that neither of you will be able to convince the other and it will end with a stalemate.  Without expert advice, it's unlikely that you can present your idea in a way that would be publishable, so talking with experts should be the first step.  (Of course unlikely is different from impossible, but it's best to plan on getting advice.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once they understand you, the experts need to care.  Many experiments have loopholes and caveats that are well known to experts but not described in popular accounts or even introductory college courses.  You may end up hearing &quot;Yes, that's logically possible, but it's not a possibility we think is important.&quot;  Or &quot;Yes, Jones and Smith pointed that out in a paper last year, but I still think the conclusions are true and the experiment is illuminating.&quot;  Using an argument that is not 100% logically air-tight is not in itself a problem outside of pure mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest starting by talking with someone from the course you took (the professor or a teaching assistant).  If all goes well, either you'll convince them that this is new and serious, or they'll convince you that it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T22:51:11.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9276" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:57:22.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has already been much scholarship on the comparison of different academic search databases. I leave it to you to ascertain the usefulness of Google Scholar versus all the other usual suspects. &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.rclis.org/8605/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://crl.acrl.org/content/70/3/227.full.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2012.00992.x/abstract&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2000776/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/2/338.full&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; are some of the prime literature on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real answer of course, to all your sub points is, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;it depends.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T22:57:22.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-11T00:17:41.650" Score="1" ViewCount="1266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of choosing a Master's program.  I have been approved for one program, but I'm still waiting to hear back from two other schools.  The school that approved me said that they need me to fill out my Master Promissory Note as soon as possible so my financial aid can be ready for my summer courses next month.  My only concern is that I may choose a different school if I get accepted into it.  If I'm not accepted into the other programs, however, I would like to have my financial aid taken care of so I can attend summer courses without any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I sign the Promissory Note for my currently accepted program and then sign another Promissory Note for a different school if I am accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you and have a good day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6659" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T20:01:45.767" Title="Can you sign more than 1 Master Promissory Note Concurrently?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-11T08:36:05.233" Score="19" ViewCount="1629" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any tutorial class some students seem to get frustrated with little tougher questions. While tackling them is important to learn the subject. How to motivate the students to attempt tougher questions without getting discouraged ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6418" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T10:24:34.643" Title="How to motivate a student to attempt solving tough questions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9290" CreationDate="2013-04-11T09:14:17.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hints&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;extra credits&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention &lt;em&gt;some students seem to get frustrated with little tougher questions&lt;/em&gt;. They are students. They don't have enough knowledge/skill/experience to crack tough problems. Hints will get them the starting/entry points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student spend hours or days to solve tough problems and get nothing afterwards, he would lose interests quickly. If he knows he would get some extra credits after solving those problems, he would be more inclined to finish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they get used to those happy (accomplished) feelings after solving tough problems, some will automatically jump to those tough problems without your hints/extra credits. They become &lt;strong&gt;self motivated&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T09:14:17.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9290" CreationDate="2013-04-11T09:28:55.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tough questions look scary and student get hopeless when they don't even know how to start thinking about the solution. That's why they get frustrated. My suggestion to prepare students for tough questions is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teach them various ways of approaching questions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teach them to review (or rewrite) the data and assumptions of the question to understand what has been given and what has been asked to show (prove, compute, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Solving tough questions usually require a combination of different techniques, formulas and applying them in several steps. Make sure you give a hint about these techniques and steps or teach them to guess these steps. It is also useful if you teach them to break down long and complicated questions to several smaller and easier questions (of course if it is possible).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Solve some examples of tough questions and explain them how you start thinking about the solution and how you proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T09:28:55.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9290" CreationDate="2013-04-11T09:49:53.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just would like to amend Vahid's answer, which I think goes in right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is not that students wouldn't have the required skills, often they do not see a way forward. This is more about being &quot;brave&quot; enough to wage the war on the problem. To help with that, I think the following is essential:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;guide them through examples of the problem to show them that the problems of that kind are indeed approachable and solvable,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more importantly, help them help themselves. Consider a discussion in which the class, or groups, or individuals would solve the problem themselves, but the teacher guides them through it. I.e., when they get stuck, asks the right questions, answers to which will put them back on track, or point out a mistake in their reasoning to fix a mistake they made. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T09:55:05.143" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T09:55:05.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9290" CreationDate="2013-04-11T09:52:54.990" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question and one that teachers have struggled with throughout the history of pedagogy.  Sometimes, students need to find within themselves the curiosity and drive to plow forward despite the frustration.  So, don't be discouraged when you see frustrated students, as every teacher has to deal with this.  Philosophy aside, here are some tips I've found helpful over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scaffolding is immensely important.&lt;/strong&gt;  Build up to the harder problems, and give students the time they need to process how typical problems are solved.  E.g., If you're studying friction, have the students do plenty of problems that involve friction on a flat surface, then move to friction on a ramp, then work on friction on a vertical wall (by a sideways force), then move to centripetal friction that keeps a turning car from sliding off a road, then move to cars on banked hills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't try to cover too much material in one sitting.&lt;/strong&gt;  Students can only process so much at once, and many really do need time to process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive feedback goes a long way.&lt;/strong&gt;  When a student makes progression on a problem, acknowledge it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be available for help, but not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; available.&lt;/strong&gt;  Some students like the easy way out, which is to ask you how to do the problem!  Don't be afraid to turn a student away until they've given it a decent try.  That said, judicious pointers in the right direction can help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Encourage them to work in groups.&lt;/strong&gt;  This does run into the &quot;easy way out&quot; for some students, but more often it can lead to good ideas being generated, and students can learn from the collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give them lots and lots of examples.&lt;/strong&gt;  The more they see problem-solving techniques, the better they will become.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, given the time constraints of college teaching, it isn't always possible to use all of these strategies--I found that it was easier to find the time when I taught high school.  That said, students in college should be willing to work harder on their own, anyway (but we all know that isn't always the case!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T09:52:54.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9290" CreationDate="2013-04-11T10:24:34.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of class I announce the handling of exercises. Where I am we pose weekly homework exercises and collect and grade them. The student have to collect enough points on the exercises to be allowed to take the oral exam (or, obtain a &quot;attended&quot; certificate. However, the threshold for &quot;enough points&quot; is set be each instructor. I usually set 50%. However, I communicate that there will always be tough questions and easier questions and that I do not suppose that any student has to solve all questions. If they want to work for 50% and make it, that is enough. If they want to be ambitious, they can go for 100%. I also communicate that there will be tough (and very tough) questions because &lt;strong&gt;I want that also very bright student can learn something&lt;/strong&gt;. This often serves as a motivation to work on tougher questions. Of course, there are a lot of students who are comfortable with less. However, I set the 50% hurdle and have to make sure that everybody who passes it &quot;has learned enough&quot;. On the upper end, the very tough questions ensure that the very good ones also learn something interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T10:24:34.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9298" CreationDate="2013-04-11T14:23:36.447" Score="8" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of simple questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Books are not peer reviewed in general. Are book reviews that appear in academic journals peer-reviewed? Since they represent personal opinions, I would think they cannot be peer reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about news articles? For example, journal Nature has various short news focus and research highlights that discuss other peer-reviewed research articles in a broader perspective. Are those peer-reviewed? Due to time pressure, I would think it would be difficult to peer review these in time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T23:11:35.140" Title="Are book reviews peer-reviewed? Are news articles peer-reviewed?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9297" CreationDate="2013-04-11T15:15:33.857" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Book reviews, opinion pieces, and news articles are generally not peer reviewed.  That's not to say there's no review at all: editors read and approve these contributions, and they may request changes before publication if they feel it is necessary.  It's even possible that an editor would ask for an opinion from a third party.  However, peer review (by an external expert) is not a standard practice for these sorts of articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Books are not peer reviewed in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books can be an intermediate case.  Acquisitions editors often solicit external reviews of book proposals or manuscripts, to decide which ones to accept and how they should be revised.  However, you are right that the level of review is generally not as comprehensive or detailed as it is for journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T15:15:33.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9310" CreationDate="2013-04-11T15:43:55.977" Score="5" ViewCount="1969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of applying to business schools and I notice that nearly all of them have general MBA degrees and MBA degrees with different areas of concentration or specialization. I currently work in the IT industry doing some project management and customer support, though I'm on the fence about whether the IT industry is where I'd like to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going back and forth between the general MBA and something like an MBA in IT Management, but I'm having trouble deciding. What are some things I can consider during this process so that I can make a good decision and not get a degree that's either too general to be useful or too specific to give me options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6762" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T11:03:50.430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T00:52:32.107" Title="What factors should I consider when deciding between a general MBA vs. a specialized MBA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9285" CreationDate="2013-04-11T16:01:08.287" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no way for you to publish this without understanding the psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You won't know the significance of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will receive rebuttals that require you to have domain-specific knowledge.  (It might even be that your argument does not hold due to some domain-specific reason.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can discuss it with experts, but &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; need to know what it is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are actually claiming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal example, I spent the last 2+ years, along with my co-author, writing a paper where we discredit the typical statistical analysis used in network motifs.  Writing this paper changed me as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel there would have been no way to write this paper without understanding the biological side (my research was in pure mathematics and computer science).  Time and time again, I would be asked questions that required knowledge from biology, and &lt;em&gt;I don't know&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;I don't understand the question&lt;/em&gt; are not appropriate responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, I would say biology (or, at least, computational biology) &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a field I study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T16:01:08.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-11T19:00:21.170" Score="65" ViewCount="182046" Body="&lt;p&gt;The above question is self explanatory, still I would like to break it into two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1.&lt;/strong&gt; What is the difference between abstract and summary/conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q2.&lt;/strong&gt; What is the difference between summary and conclusion ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T15:08:04.207" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T06:08:04.227" Title="What is the difference between Abstract, conclusion and summary?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="39" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9301" CreationDate="2013-04-11T19:13:26.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A1&lt;/strong&gt;: In the context of a journal article, thesis etc., the abstract should provide a brief summary of each of the main parts of the article: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. In the words of Houghton (1975), &quot;An abstract can be defined as a summary of the information in a document&quot;. The Conclusions (in some cases also called a &lt;em&gt;Summary&lt;/em&gt;) chapter is a summary of the main ideas that come out from the discussion (e.g., Katz, 2009) and hence only a subset of the abstract. Usually, the Conclusions sum up the discussion whereas the abstract only reiterates the most important of the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A2&lt;/strong&gt;: The difference between a summary and the conclusions is less clear. First, it is not clear if the summary is to be compared with the Abstract or the Conclusions. A summary may also be more appropriate as Conclusions when writing an overview where the conclusions may not be easy to identify. As stated above some journals use the word &lt;em&gt;Summary&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes this can also be labelled &lt;em&gt;Synthesis&lt;/em&gt; and cap off a lengthy discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Houghton, B., 1975. Scientific periodicals: their historical development, characteristics and control. Hamden CT, Shoe String Press. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Katz, M.J., 2009. From research to manuscript. A guide to scientific writing. Second edition. Berlin, Springer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="23580" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T07:18:39.523" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T07:18:39.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9301" CreationDate="2013-04-11T19:37:10.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A conclusion section might for example include speculations about some patterns in the data, or proposals for future research.  It basically is really the only place to put your opinions. A summary I expect would not include any opinions and just re-iterate the findings and weaknesses in the study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answer mentioned, the abstract should include all the main aspects of the paper in an abbreviated form - the topic, the hypotheses, the participants and study design, and the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T19:37:10.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9313" CreationDate="2013-04-11T19:43:27.547" Score="12" ViewCount="3276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a senior who wants to get a PhD in physics. However, I may only have the chance to go to a school which has a strong professor in a certain area, but the school itself is not highly ranked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other option is, one of the professors I'm working with at my current institution is favorably disposed towards me, and could support me for another year while I do more research. If I did this, I will push out publications (including at least one first author) before I apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another professor I know has told me that he thinks I should not waste my time, and get started on the PhD, especially since I might be able to hit the ground running there. However, I am aware that getting a degree from a non-top 10 school will hurt my prospects for future positions. I'm also keeping in mind that I could also head to this school next year as well if everything goes sour again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do the members of the community think? I would really appreciate more viewpoints on this matter. Thanks for your time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I understand that questions asked here should be of a general nature, and not just apply to an individual's unique situation. However, I don't think this situation is all too uncommon, and this question may be useful to those who are looking for information in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6764" LastEditorUserId="6764" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T15:38:04.250" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T15:38:04.250" Title="Delaying grad school vs. going to lower-ranked school" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9304" CreationDate="2013-04-11T19:57:00.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing outstanding research is what ultimately matters, not the rank of the university.  High quality research is not exclusive to top tier universities alone.  If you find an advisor with whom you can publish top quality research in your topic of interest, then go for it.  The rank of the university is less important than your advisor's ability to help you carry out and publish good quality research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T20:03:58.607" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T20:03:58.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9288" CreationDate="2013-04-11T20:01:45.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the way this is done normally goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You apply to as many schools as you want. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You hear back from them in a couple of months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are told that you have until a specific date to accept the offer,&#xA;which may be slightly different for all the schools you got accepted to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives people a chance to evaluate (ideally) all their options before they agree to commit to a particular school. These deadlines are usually included in the acceptance documents you get in the mail, if they aren't listed online already in their admission timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T20:01:45.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9301" CreationDate="2013-04-11T20:11:36.783" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;abstract&lt;/strong&gt; is written for the potentially interested reader. While writing it, keep in mind that most readers read the abstract before they read the paper (sounds obvious, but many abstracts read like the authors did not consider this). The abstract should give an impression of what the paper will be about. Do not use jargon or &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; abbreviations here. It should be understandable for non-specialists and even for people from fields somehow far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; should conclude the paper and is written for the reader who already has read the paper. In other words: most readers have read the paper when they read the conclusion. Again, this sounds obvious but, again, a lot of conclusions do not read like this. It does not make sense to write a conclusion like &quot;we have shown this and that by using this and that method&quot;. Well, this is what the reader has just read (and what he may know since he has read the abstract). A proper conclusion should tell the reader what she can or he could do with the newly acquired knowledge. Answer the question &quot;So what?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt; sums up the paper. I am not sure if a paper needs a summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written some tips for abstracts some time ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid jargon.&lt;/strong&gt; Although this sounds obvious, most abstracts contain jargon in one way or the other. Of course one can not avoid the use of specific terminology and technical terms but even then there is an easy check if a technical term is appropriate: Try to find a definition on the internet (if the term has a fairly stable wikipedia page, there it is not jargon) – if you do not succeed within a few minutes you should find a different word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use buzzwords.&lt;/strong&gt; This may sound to contradict the previous point and in part it does. But note that you can use a buzzword together with its explanation. Again, the example from the previous point works: “Funk metric” may be a buzzword and the explanation using the name “Finsler” is supposed to ring a bell (as I learned, it is related to Hilbert’s 23rd problem). This helps the readers to find related work and to remember what was the field you were working in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General to specific.&lt;/strong&gt; In general, it’s good advice to work from general to specific. Start with a sentence which points in the direction of the field you are working in. So your potential audience will know from the beginning in which field your work is situated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer questions.&lt;/strong&gt; If you think that your work answers questions, why not pose the questions in the abstract? This may motivate the readers to think by themselves and draw their interest to the topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don’t be afraid of layman’s terms.&lt;/strong&gt; Although layman’s terms usually do not give exact description and sometimes even are ridiculously oversimplified, they still help to form a mental picture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T06:08:04.227" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T06:08:04.227" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9259" CreationDate="2013-04-11T21:56:38.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to check out Virginia Tech Online. They have Master's degrees in Computer Engineering and Information Technology (in which you can specialize in Software Development) and it doesn't look like their admissions process is too hellish. I actually spoke with the Director of Admissions for their IT program and he's a really cool guy. Spent time going over the whole admissions process with me and answered all of my questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vto.vt.edu/programs.php?prog_type=9,12,11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Virginia Tech Online Master's Degrees&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6762" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T21:56:38.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9304" CreationDate="2013-04-11T23:17:29.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in almost the exact same situation you describe. My scenario was choosing between a top 20 (but not top 10 school) vs. delaying a year and doing research and then re-applying. Like you, I would've been able to raise my pGRE score and put out a couple of first-author publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided instead to just go to the PhD program at the slightly lower ranked institution (but this school had two world-famous professors working in an area that I was interested in). Why? Well, it's because people only care about your advisor, not the quality of the school (usually; there are always exceptions). Generally, the statement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, I am aware that getting a degree from a non-top 10 school will hurt my prospects for future positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is false. There are of course exceptions, but I've received much more recognition at conferences for being Prof. X's student rather than being a student at Y institution. In the end, I realized it was more important that I learn from a good and well respected advisor than worrying about attending a top 10 school. I'm just a grad student finishing up his final year (received some very nice postdoc offers), but just my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6765" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T23:17:29.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9299" CreationDate="2013-04-11T23:18:06.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you already have real world experience in IT but are unsure it is where you want to stay, a general MBA should be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stay in IT, what most companies care about is actual experience - and it seems you have that. Having an MBA and experience in IT is a great combination and having experience in IT is far more useful than having a specialist MBA in IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that IT management is usually not a challenging place to get to if you are interested. I've worked with quite a few people in IT and it was the rare one who wanted to be in management. Most wanted to keep their hands in the technology. For this reason, IT management is different from many other fields in business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T23:18:06.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9312" CreationDate="2013-04-11T23:43:05.800" Score="4" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a BA and an MA in biological anthropology/bioarchaeology (as well as all my PhD coursework done, go me). I left that field and academia in general several years ago and ended up landing a job as a web dev/computer programmer, which is a skill set I learned in high school and never once studied formally in college or grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really in love with my current field however, and would like to get a degree in comp sci. After looking around, it seems a lot of local departments don't admit students at the undergraduate level who already have bachelor's degrees, so my option is to go in at the graduate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biggest problem is my first two degrees don't do much for me in terms of satisfying prereqs for admission into an engineering MS program. I had to take lots of stats, for example, but no calc or discrete math. Additionally, I need to knock out a whole bunch of comp sci courses, many of which are either upper division or not available at community colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone out there done this before? If so, how did you get the upper div or otherwise difficult-to-find-outside-of-a-major-university prereqs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6766" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T00:30:50.343" Title="Doing upper division pre-requisites for a second master's degree - need advice" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9311" CreationDate="2013-04-12T00:30:50.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An anecdotal answer -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in an identical situation; I had done a bachelors in business admin and then an M.A. in economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My passion later turned out to be mathematics and I was unable to get admitted to an undergraduate program (or at least one where they would allow me to skip the electives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did to overcome this was select some universities I wanted to attend and made appointments with the graduate program directors. I then went to see them in person and explained my situation and what I was hoping to accomplish. I then asked what options would be available to someone in my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the graduate directors was very receptive to my case and admitted me into something called a &quot;Qualifying year.&quot; I am technically a graduate student, but will be taking upper-level undergraduate courses for a year to get the background necessary for graduate level course-work. After this year, I have the option to apply to transfer into the full graduate program or apply to a different university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar option may be available to you, though I imagine every university handles these things differently. Could be worth just going in and asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T00:30:50.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9304" CreationDate="2013-04-12T05:00:16.440" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't entirely disagree with the two previous answers: taking the offer you have now may be a fine choice.  However, I'd give serious consideration to strengthening your application and trying again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest differences between departments is the strength of the peer group.  You will ultimately spend &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; more time talking and working with your fellow students than with faculty, and being part of an amazing cohort is incredibly beneficial.  You'll spend countless hours in detailed discussions, going into far more depth than any faculty member is likely to have time for, and you'll organize student seminars and study groups.  Depending on your field, you may write papers with your fellow students with no faculty involvement.  In the end, you'll learn far more from them than from courses or meetings with faculty, and these relationships will last for the rest of your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have this opportunity, you can certainly still become an excellent researcher, but you are less likely to reach your full potential, and even if you do it will be harder.  To maximize the benefit, you need to be surrounded by lots of wonderful students, many of whom are just as talented, hard working, and ambitious as you are, and some of whom are destined for even greater things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, as you move down the prestige scale the average level of the students drops off much faster than the level of the faculty, because there are many more students than faculty.  There can be exceptions, such as a department that attracts much stronger students in one subfield than overall, but you shouldn't count on it without concrete evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few ways you can gauge the students in a department:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you visit, do you have really interesting discussions with current students, which leave you feeling excited about further interactions?  (Don't take this too seriously, since if you're shy it may be difficult to connect quickly, but it's worth thinking about.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the department regularly produce graduates whose careers you would be happy with?  (Take this one very seriously.  If you are aiming for a job at a major research university but few people from your Ph.D. program get such jobs, then either your goals are unrealistic or you'll really stand out compared with your peers.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to both questions is yes, then that's a good sign, but otherwise you should be cautious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to the original question, this might help you judge the offer you have already.  For the option of spending another year where you are, I'd ask three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How likely are you to get better offers next year?  Of course there's no way to be sure, but perhaps a mentor could help you make an informed guess.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will you enjoy the next year?  It's not worth doing if you're going to be stressed out and miserable.  Besides, unhappy people rarely do their best work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will you look back on it as a valuable intellectual experience, regardless of its effects on your grad school applications?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T05:00:16.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9449" CreationDate="2013-04-12T06:08:48.593" Score="6" ViewCount="6013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am told that one of the best ways in which to disseminate information/knowledge/findings from doctoral research is to put your dissertation on-line. By default, many universities make the dissertations of their students  available on their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what are the merits of putting your dissertation on Facebook. I am unsure whether this is possible or there is just an ability to create a link on Facebook that goes to the university's website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is particularly appealing for anyone who does not want to create their own websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T03:57:48.470" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T03:57:48.470" Title="What are the advantages of putting your dissertation on Facebook?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9314" CreationDate="2013-04-12T08:11:32.410" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why Facebook, in particular?  I know you didn't want to do it, but I do suggest setting up a minimal website with your pertinent information (CV, Bio), and then hosting the dissertation there, with a link.  I would be very surprised if you can't get a free website through your university, and setting up a small site is relatively painless.  If you're going to link anything on other sites (e.g., Facebook), I would link your homepage.  I do not think you will get extra traction by simply hosting your dissertation on a particular website, social or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T08:11:32.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9314" CreationDate="2013-04-12T10:18:06.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The suggestion made regarding setting up web sites as a tool to reach out with your research by others is very good so I just want to expand a little on the social media side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use social media as a vehicle fryour career I would suggest you join something intended for professionals (in the sense of work oriented) such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt;. There you will be able to get in contact with people who may be interested in your field and your publications (incl. thesis) more efficiently than with Facebook. Since it is geared towards the work part of your life, it is also taken more seriously than facebook. You would however still need some repository for pdfs etc. but that can be done using for example dropBox or some other free storage service. Using these kind sof services means that nothing can be considered permanent but on the other hand contenst should be updated and refreshed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T13:49:22.987" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T13:49:22.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T14:00:52.110" Score="24" ViewCount="3284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a PhD related to my supervisor's research area. Sometimes, I think about problems that I do not immediately know the answer to. Naturally, I come to Stack Exchange and other forums and ask :) But on some occasions, the question is rather specific so I email my supervisor instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often do you generally email a supervisor about research questions? I know he has other PhD students plus his own research to do. I have a weekly 45 min meeting with him, so I try to save questions for that and give a report to him about what I did in the previous week. On very rare occasions, he comes down to the lab and we talk in person. I usually email him when there is some administrative stuff we need to talk about, but I'm asking about research questions here or about giving updates about the progress of my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="477" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T14:06:20.560" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:53:20.130" Title="How often do you email a supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9329" CreationDate="2013-04-12T14:05:47.667" Score="5" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper in which I refer to a database maintained by a learned society. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We performed this analysis on 7,195 structures taken at random from the Poisonous Substances Database [1] maintained by the Democratic Chemical Society [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref. 1 will be the URL of the database, but I am wondering about the learned society: should I include its URL as a reference? Or should I simply not give any citation along with its name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T10:54:07.197" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T10:54:07.197" Title="Should you provide citation for an professional organization or learned society?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-04-12T14:11:32.270" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you email him, at your current rate, how often do you get responses? Has he indicated that it bothers him? (either directly or by showing signs that it annoys him) If not, why are you worried about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that the right question to ask is probably not &lt;em&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;how often&lt;/strong&gt; can I email him?”&lt;/em&gt;, but rather &lt;em&gt;“am I emailing him with the &lt;strong&gt;right questions&lt;/strong&gt;?”&lt;/em&gt;. What will definitely annoy your advisor, and pretty much any other person, is if you ask them series of questions to which you could have found the answer yourself, or questions whom they are not the right person to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T14:11:32.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-04-12T15:07:13.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention a weekly meeting with him. At the very least this means that when you have a research question you will have to wait 6 days before having an answer. My 2 cents is that you can wait, you cannot ask for help with only a few days of work on a research question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you call a research question is not really a research question (for instance how to make a specific experiment), you may consider asking to other students and postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit : and as for the updates, if your supervisor decided on a weekly meeting, don't send him email about updates, except if you have a revolutionary breakthrough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T15:07:13.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T15:29:31.420" Score="18" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the usual expectation of a student by an alma mater? Usually students quit after becoming a part of the alumni association. The contacts are by and large severed a few months after leaving a school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways in which one can give something back to alma mater? Is monetary support the best way? One can also be a point of contact to current students. Are there other ways of giving back to our teachers and institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6770" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T21:08:59.333" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T05:59:04.907" Title="Giving back to alma mater" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;alumni&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9322" CreationDate="2013-04-12T16:45:43.190" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you concerned about &lt;em&gt;expectations&lt;/em&gt;?  After you get your parchment, your school no longer has anything to give to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you give is purely &lt;em&gt;from your own generosity&lt;/em&gt; -- because &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; feel by giving back to the school, others will benefit.  You give because you feel it is the right thing to do.  You give because you want the school to purchase that lab upgrade.  You give because you want to fund this research because you think it's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Expectations&quot; from an alma mater are not only irrelevant, but it is wrong to think that you &lt;em&gt;owe&lt;/em&gt; them something.  You paid tuition, they gave you your parchment.  That deal is orthogonal to &quot;donations&quot; and post-grad support of alma mater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T16:45:43.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9322" CreationDate="2013-04-12T17:41:11.260" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the more obvious choice of making donations of money (for which there is practically no upper bound, and the entire expenditure may not be as transparent as you'd like it to be), there can be an equally valuable way of helping your alma mater: &lt;strong&gt;Your time&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be as simple as giving a graduation speech (for the more famous/successful alums who have good oratory skills), or as sustained as acting as mentors for a group of freshmen who'd share your career interests. With regard to the latter, you can make a visible, personal impact in multiple careers, which might be more satisfying and help create a stronger alumni network in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T17:41:11.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9328" CreationDate="2013-04-12T18:44:38.993" Score="12" ViewCount="7979" Body="&lt;p&gt;While technical papers are generally considered to be &quot;non-archival&quot; and journal papers &quot;archival&quot;, I couldn't find a clear statement about papers that appear in conference proceedings. Does it matter in which for the proceedings are published, e.g. only online, on CD/USB drive, or printed with/without ISBN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1084" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T14:17:38.287" Title="Are contributions to conference proceedings considered to be &quot;archival&quot; publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9325" CreationDate="2013-04-13T03:09:32.520" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the reason you can't find a clear statement on this issue is because there isn't one.  The answer depends heavily on the field and the particular conference, and there isn't necessarily an absolute answer even in a specific case.  It may depend on why you care:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may care yourself, because you want your paper to be carefully archived and made available in perpetuity.  In that case, it depends on whether a long-lasting, trustworthy organization has committed to providing access forever (and whether they have archiving contingency plans in case they go out of business).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may need to make this distinction to assist in evaluating your CV.  In that case, the evaluators probably care primarily whether the papers are carefully refereed and in their final form, but the only way to know for sure is to ask them what their criteria are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may be wondering whether you can publish an updated version of your conference paper in a journal.  This depends on the customs in your field, and it requires agreement from both the conference and the journal.  The publishing agreement for the conference should specify what sorts of further publication are allowable (if it does not, then you should be sure to ask, since saying nothing suggests they do not expect any further publication at all), and the submission instructions for the journal may also address this issue.  If your submission is a revision of a conference paper, you should always specify this fact clearly and give a precise reference somewhere on the first page and in the cover letter, to make sure nobody could accuse you of hiding the previous publication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to these questions can vary.  For example, major theoretical CS conferences are archival in sense 1 (permanent archiving and availability) but not 2 or 3 (papers are not necessarily intended to be in their final form and definitive versions may be published elsewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T03:09:32.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9319" CreationDate="2013-04-13T03:31:10.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It usually depends on how well the data source/database is known in the field. In some cases the database is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; primary source of data for nearly all publications in that field that no one ever cites it &lt;em&gt;formally&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., it's a waste of space). Usually, they just mention in the article that the data was obtained from Foo and perhaps again in the acknowledgments, if they're feeling generous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, check with your specific data source/society to know what they require from you in terms of citation. As an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iris.edu/hq/publications/iris_citations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these guys&lt;/a&gt; only expect a blurb acknowledging them, not a full citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T03:31:10.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9334" CreationDate="2013-04-13T05:30:45.183" Score="21" ViewCount="2724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finally realized that there is a term for the situation I am in,&quot;&lt;strong&gt;burned out&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7668/what-can-i-do-to-recover-from-a-short-term-burnout/7692#7692&quot;&gt;What can I do to recover from a short term burnout?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at the the last four months of my MSc program and I haven't started my thesis yet. The reason was complicated, the MSc program was quite different from the one I had in mind. So, from the start I felt I was wasting my time by continuing at the program. The only reason I didn't quit is because the scholarship is sponsored by the company I used to work. I am still their employee and I am expected to join them once I finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I quit, I wouldn't get promotion not to mention the &quot;he wasn't able to graduate&quot; rumor. Besides, I am supposed to serve three years as a pay back for the scholarship they gave me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my adviser's genuine effort to help, I am not able to pull myself and do something. I continually failed to see my adviser despite having an appointment with him.  The only thing that crossed my mind for months as a solution is SUICIDE. I am deeply stressed and have presumably stress initiated headache that lasts for weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would you do if you were in my position?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6310" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T07:54:53.943" Title="Too burnt out to continue MSc" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9359" CreationDate="2013-04-13T08:34:35.280" Score="1" ViewCount="9588" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software engineer with 2 years of experience. I am very passionate about software and technology. I code the whole day, creating applications that my friends and I can use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have left my job because I was not finding it challenging enough (intellectually) and wanted to do something of my own. I feel that I need to study and gain more knowledge in a more systematic way. Thus only option which I feel has the maximum return to investment ratio for me are the MS programs in USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this year I am taking the GRE General Test in May (2013). The problem is that I am not good at words plus I am not very passionate about learning them also. I also feel that they should not really matter considering I want to do research work in the field of Computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - &#xA;Can I still get into a university?&#xA;If yes then what should be the right approach?&#xA;I am really scared about what I should be doing right now as the dates for my exams are getting closer. Please Help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I saw this video on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_ryan_ideas_in_all_languages_not_just_english.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TED&lt;/a&gt; trying to explain why being good in english is not required (Im being even more liberal by saying what is the point of learning so many words?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6542" LastEditorUserId="6542" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T15:05:55.840" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T15:05:55.840" Title="Is GRE really required to get into a good university for MS in CS" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-15T14:16:37.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9322" CreationDate="2013-04-13T09:32:05.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The customs about alumni associations &lt;strong&gt;depend very strongly on the country&lt;/strong&gt;: alumni donations in US institutions (for example) contributes in part to their funding, while in France it ranges from nonexistant (for small institutions) to negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one role of alumni associations which has not been detailed in the other answers is the role it can play in &lt;strong&gt;network building&lt;/strong&gt;. By participating in the alumni association, you may get good networking opportunities, and also help the younger/less connected members of the association. I'll also point out that &lt;strong&gt;participation does not need to take the form of checks or wire transfer&lt;/strong&gt;: you can play an active role in other important ways, such as organizing and hosting events, helping maintain a newsletter or website, act as a representative in your field/industry/community, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T09:32:05.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9331" CreationDate="2013-04-13T09:41:37.437" Score="26" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to people.&lt;/strong&gt; Here, elsewhere on the internet, but most importantly in real life, whether it's with people from your program (if you feel like opening to them) or at a local discussion group or whatever. Don't isolate yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recognize what you are experiencing: describe its symptoms, put a name (or names) on it, identify it. Recognize that it is quite common, and that there are solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make some time, even if it's not much, to do something else (vacation, volunteer work, some time with family, …) to put things in perspective. This should help you evaluate your overall goals, and decide what you are willing to do to achieve them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to key people involved (advisor, your boss at the company), and let them know in a professional way that you have hit a bump in the road.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From you post, it sounds to me that you've made a great deal of progress on that path already! You'll get through that hard time, believe us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll maybe add something more personal, regarding the “if I quit, I wouldn't get promotion” part: advancement in your work is not the ultimate goal, it is only worth pursuing if it makes you (and the people around you) happier, directly or by achieving other goals. If it makes you miserable, you have to realize (and accept) that &lt;strong&gt;failing &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an option&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T09:41:37.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9331" CreationDate="2013-04-13T09:44:02.587" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds as if you might have depression. I'm no expert though, I just have a few friends with depression and so have read a little about it (most effectively by playing a game called Depression Quest, actually!). It might be worth seeing a doctor about it if you think that could at all be a possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hesitant to give any further advice because of this.  A lot of advice that ordinarily might be helpful just for burn-out might turn out to be unhelpful if you are actually depressed.  (Although all the advice given by F'x looks fine as far as I can tell, except potentially you would have to be quite careful with what you chose to do for 3, as some options might make things worse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T09:49:07.243" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T09:49:07.243" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9332" CreationDate="2013-04-13T10:49:25.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of different exams that comprise the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE).  There is also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/toefl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TOEFL&lt;/a&gt; exam, which may be required if English is not your first language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each university has its own set of requirements, and you will have to look on the websites for individual programs to find  out this information.  Here are the exams you may have to take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about?WT.ac=grehome_about_b_121009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GRE General Test&lt;/a&gt;, comprised of three sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Verbal Reasoning (i.e., English reading and analysis skills)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quantitative Reasoning (i.e., math skills)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Analytical Writing (i.e., English writing skills)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about?WT.ac=grehome_gresubject_121017&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GRE Subject Test&lt;/a&gt;, which (in your case) would be the Computer Science, but it looks like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about/content/computer_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the computer science exam is being discontinued as of this month&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger question is not necessarily which exams you have to take, but &lt;strong&gt;which exams will make a difference&lt;/strong&gt;.  In computer science, your verbal and analytic writing score will count for much less than the quantitative score (which in some case is a shame, because analytical writing skills are very important for reading and writing papers...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should be the right approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Study for the exams.  There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=gre%20practice&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;oq=gre%20practice&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.0.57j61j60l3j0.2196&amp;amp;sugexp=chrome,mod=17&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many online study guides and practice exams&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&amp;amp;field-keywords=gre%20prep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books to purchase&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take it as many times as you can before applications are due.  This can get expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am not good at words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to work on that, and it is very possible to improve your skills and ability with hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...plus I am not very passionate about learning them also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to change this attitude if you want to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also feel that they should not really matter considering I want to do research work in the field of Computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said above, the quantitative exam will matter the most (and the CS exam will matter more if you take it).  The verbal and writing exams will matter, but you can afford to do worse on them than on the other exams.  Unfortunately, your personal feelings on the matter won't get you accepted, and you have to work within the system and do the best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T10:55:57.103" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T10:55:57.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9338" CreationDate="2013-04-13T11:42:47.003" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think about starting studies towards Master Degree in Computer Science abroad, I finished my bachelor studies few years ago, but I didn't stop studying, during these years I finished few courses of master degree in the domestic university, as result I have transcripts for all of them in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what is is the common practice is there any chance that abroad university will consider credit on the courses I already finished, the point is if it's possible I want to lower the pressure to get credit on courses and mostly investing my time in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked this issue with few another universities in  my country, all of them taking into account the credit I already have with promise to give exemption from studying theses courses if there are requirement of the master degree and to give a credit for all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="312" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T20:10:43.723" Title="Taking into account courses from another university" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9337" CreationDate="2013-04-13T12:57:08.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer to this question is Chris Gregg's comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to check with each individual school or even each individual program.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schools you already checked with will allow it. Chris's program allowed a maximum of two courses. My graduate program accepted transfer credits infrequently. Some programs may not accept any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T12:57:08.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9331" CreationDate="2013-04-13T14:06:18.080" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, suicidal thoughts are very serious.  Many universities have counselling centres that are free for students.  Walk in and tell them you've been contemplating suicide and they will get you immediate help.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://suicideprevention.wikia.com/wiki/International_Suicide_Prevention_Directory&quot;&gt;International Suicide Prevention Wiki&lt;/a&gt; might also help you find resources in your area.  If nothing else works, go to the emergency room.  Suicide qualifies as an emergency!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, be honest with your adviser about what's going on.  If you've been avoiding meetings, it's possible that he thinks the worst: you aren't interested in the work, or you're lazy, or whatever.  If you tell him that you're depressed and struggling, he will be much more sympathetic and will try to help.  (You mentioned that he's already trying to help, but if he doesn't know the real problem, his help might have been ineffectual.)  If you don't think you can say it in person, send an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: curing burnout.  One common suggestion is to take a vacation, but I don't recommend this.  If you're already stressed out about the work you aren't doing, sitting on the beach thinking about it will probably make it worse.  I would instead suggest diving into something totally new, and preferably not related to your thesis at all.  Learn how to make a perfect omelette, or read a photography book and go out and practice (even if your only camera is your cell phone), or learn how to change the oil in your car.  The specific thing you learn doesn't matter that much as long as it's new to you.  Universities often have clubs for people interested in rock climbing, chess, learning languages, you name it, so you might see what your university offers.  This can also help you make friends -- isolation is a big problem for grad students and can contribute to stress and depression.  Do your new activity for a week or two and you'll probably find yourself getting interested in your thesis problem again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to exercise and eat reasonably well.  When you're depressed, exercise is the last thing on your mind, but even a walk around the block can be helpful.  Eating nothing but ramen is depressing in itself, so although you might not have a lot of spending money (I don't know exactly what your scholarship is paying for), buy ingredients for some healthy meals if you can.  Fruit, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, etc.  If you don't know how to cook, make that your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to echo F'x, remember that the worst case scenario is manageable.  If you are truly miserable, dropping out &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an option.  The completion rate for most grad programs is low, often in the neighbourhood of 50%, so many other smart, hardworking people decided it wasn't for them.  There's no shame in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope some of this advice helps you.  Good luck.  You aren't alone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T14:06:18.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9331" CreationDate="2013-04-13T15:57:07.703" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I continually failed to see my adviser despite having an appointment&#xA;  with him. The only thing that crossed my mind for months as a solution&#xA;  is SUICIDE. I am deeply stressed and have presumably stress initiated&#xA;  headache that lasts for weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this, I would strongly recommend seeing your university's psychologist or counselor immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not rely on advise over the internet. Probably, no one here is qualified to help you. Even if there is a qualified mental health professional here, he/she will not be able to assist you without talking to you in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T15:57:07.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-13T21:05:31.213" Score="24" ViewCount="6497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask Prof. X, a distinguished scholar at a top school, for a recommendation for a tenure-track academic position. However, I only want him to write me a recommendation if he is going to write a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; one. If he will write me a mediocre or just insufficiently positive recommendation, I would prefer to have someone less famous than X but more positive about me write the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I simply ask Prof. X for a letter, there is the possibility that he will agree and  then  write something that is not as positive as I would like. I want to avoid this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to solve this problem would be for me to ask Prof. X if he is sufficiently familiar with my work to write me a strong letter. If he does not wish to write me a strong letter, he can simply reply that he is not that familiar with the whole body of my work. By giving him an easy way to decline, this makes it more likely that he will write a strong letter if he accepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, in this case this little strategem will not work, as Prof. X and I have been working on the same questions for years, so there is little question of him being unfamiliar with my results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible solution would be to have someone else approach him to ask whether he can write me a strong letter. Sadly I have no one who could do this for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good strategy to use in this situation? More broadly, what are some general tips for asking people for recommendation letters which ensure you only get strong letters, besides the two I mentioned above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited&lt;/strong&gt;: Maybe I should mention a couple of other strategies that crossed my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Mention to Prof. X that I'm going on the job market in unrelated conversation and see if he volunteers to write me a letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Ask him for a letter in an email and see how he responds. If he responds enthusiastically, e.g., &quot;It would be my pleasure to write you a letter...&quot; or &quot;I'd be extremely happy to...&quot; this is good. If he only responds neutrally, e.g., &quot;Sure, I can write you a letter&quot; then simply neglect to follow up with him and ask someone else for the letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these strategies are decent, but they are not perfect. They might work, but they also might cause me to miss out on a good letter from a well-known scholar. Anyway, I'd welcome thoughts, corrections, additional strategies to use that I haven't thought of, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6786" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T12:12:38.917" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:01:26.757" Title="How do I make sure I get strong recommendation letters for faculty positions?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9325" CreationDate="2013-04-13T22:19:12.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editor of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tse/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING&lt;/a&gt; asked the same question in editorial to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=05739157&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VOL. 37, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011&lt;/a&gt;. He did not provide an answer, but it might be interesting to consult your university library and check the issues right after this one, I am sure there was a discussion in the journal. The archive does not seem to hold other than regular paper contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal take on this (informed by the research field culture and research community I live in) is that &lt;strong&gt;a publication is archival whenever it comes with an assigned &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISBN&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISSN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. That makes the publication, be it a book, journal, or proceedings uniquely identifiable and thus it makes its source identifiable too. Whether that will make the publication physically, or digitally available on request is another story (publisher going bankrupt, etc.). I would consider this the minimal requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your concrete question regarding archival nature of conference proceedings, note, many conference proceedings come with an ISBN, or ISSN number. Even many technical report series at some universities do. In my field (CompSci/AI et al.) all the relevant top-tier conference proceedings have an ISBN. The lower tier conferences and more prominent workshop series tend to publish their proceedings and post-proceedings as Springer LNCS/LNAI series and thus get an ISBN too. I personally treat all such publication as archival and of course refrain from resubmitting such results elsewhere. This is however not the case for really small workshops (usually one-of), which only print their proceedings and bind them. In all conferences/journals I care for, these are treated as mere non-archival technical reports and thus can be further disseminated, or resubmitted to a better venue, such as a good conference. &lt;em&gt;But again, your mileage might vary. In different fields, there are different habits regarding such results dissemination strategy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T22:19:12.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9341" CreationDate="2013-04-13T22:38:17.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume here that Prof X knows you (and not only your work). I also assume that you work is strong enough to ensure that you are eligible for a tenure-track position somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you can do is contacting Prof X, asking him for advice regarding your application. More specifically, you can ask him to read your research project and giving you some hints about what can be done to make it &quot;sexier&quot;. That way, you will certainly have a good idea of his opinion on your work. Afterwards, you can decide to ask him for a letter (in the best case scenario, he will volunteer before you ask). If he doesn't even want to read your research project, this is a good clue that he will not write a very good letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T12:11:05.207" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T12:11:05.207" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T08:20:40.380" Score="11" ViewCount="12020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have graduated nearly 5 years ago and I want to get a Computer Science Master's degree from an above average school in U.S. or Canada, preferably a thesis based degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am having difficulty in getting recommendation letters since I graduated long time ago. And, even if I get any letters, my professors are not professional, they ask me to write them myself. Long ago when I asked for a position they did so and sure they will do the same now. So I got stuck in an handicapped position for my future grad school pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please recommend me some ways to overcome this situation. Should I go for a one term non-degree program in U.S. or Europe to get a letter from a professional member of an academic community who is capable of doing this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End Note: I am in a third world country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6789" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:32:24.880" Title="Recommendation Letters for MS CS programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9344" CreationDate="2013-04-14T09:42:10.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not necessarily assert that professors asking for you to write your letter for them are 'unprofessional'. It's quite possible, and even common for professors to request this for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know you better than they know you - a letter written by you has the full depth of your experience available to be written about. This is especially important in a circumstance like yours, where their direct memory of you might have faded with time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You likely have a better understanding of what parts of your CV, studies, etc. you'd like to be highlighted. For example, while they might think X about you is important, if you're trying to craft a narrative in your application materials that's all about your skills in Y, it's important they know that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professors are busy people, and crafting a good letter requires a great deal of effort. Providing them a framework with which to work off of as they add their own language, opinions, etc. will save them a great deal of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't automatically assume it's a sign of unprofessionalism. I've been asked to write my own letter by professors who I worked extremely closely with because of some of the reasons I outlined above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T19:32:24.880" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:32:24.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9344" CreationDate="2013-04-14T14:55:35.323" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to have at least one letter from a former professor, but especially for a professional master's degree, strong recommendation letters from work supervisors can also be effective, as long as they're tuned correctly.  &lt;strong&gt;I did this.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's probably best to ask someone with an advanced degree if possible — not for the pedigree, but because they might remember academic culture/goals better than someone who hasn't spent time in the ivory tower.  It's important that your letter does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; simply praise you as a &lt;em&gt;programmer&lt;/em&gt;, but as a potential &lt;em&gt;computer scientist&lt;/em&gt;.  The letter should emphasize your intellectual and creative contributions, your problem-solving skills, and your potential for further academic study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that writing academic recommendation letters is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a standard part of most industry management jobs; you are asking for a significant favor.  Nevertheless, you should strongly resist requests to write the letter yourself.  Have an open and frank discussion about the purpose of the letter, their perceptions of your matching strengths, the points that you think should be emphasized.  Give them your CV with appropriate points highlighted.  &lt;strong&gt;Then ask them again&lt;/strong&gt; if they are willing to write you a strong recommendation letter; be sincerely willing to take no for an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signing up for a short non-degree program in U.S. or Europe is an excellent idea, but it's important to take proper advantage.  Don't just sit in class and get an A.  Talk with your instructors &lt;strong&gt;early&lt;/strong&gt; about your goals for graduate study.  Try to get involved with faculty research, or at lest an independent study project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd recommend pursuing both of these avenues simultaneously.  Give yourself as many options as possible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T14:55:35.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9331" CreationDate="2013-04-14T16:51:43.357" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While others have commented on the number one concern you should have right now (get professional help, be it in the counseling centre at school, a clinical psychologist, or whomever), I will make one comment with respect to the academics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably have more time to finish than the &quot;four months&quot; you mention. Even if you miss that deadline, you will probably be allowed to turn in your thesis later (especially because this is a health related delay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your advisor. He will probably appreciate you coming clean with him. Many students finish later. It's not a race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastEditorUserId="166" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T07:54:53.943" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T07:54:53.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9341" CreationDate="2013-04-14T18:22:13.183" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One way to solve this problem would be for me to ask Prof. X if he is sufficiently familiar with my work to write me a strong letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.  Do not play mind games.&lt;/strong&gt;  The best approach is to be completely straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that he is &lt;em&gt;familiar&lt;/em&gt; with your work, suggesting otherwise is dishonest and potentially insulting.  What you really want to know is whether he's &lt;em&gt;impressed&lt;/em&gt; by your work.  &lt;strong&gt;The only way to find out is to ask directly.&lt;/strong&gt;  If possible, ask in person, preferably over coffee/beer or in some other informal neutral setting; conferences are really good for this.  Be straightforward about your desire for a strong letter, but use the opportunity to develop a stronger collaborative relationship.  Ask for honest feedback on your work.  Ask about future opportunities to work together.  Ask where he thinks you should apply.  Be sincere in asking whether he can write you a &lt;strong&gt;strong&lt;/strong&gt; recommendation letter; he knows what that means.  Be sincerely ready to be turned down.  Listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not comfortable asking him directly, or you think that he might not be comfortable answering you, ask your advisor to informally sound out Prof X's opinion of you first.  (Ideally, your advisor already has some idea what Prof X will say.)  But the actual letter request must come directly from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If he only responds neutrally, e.g., &quot;Sure, I can write you a letter&quot; then simply neglect to follow up with him and ask someone else for the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.  Do not play mind games.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, unless you already know Prof X &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; well, you should not attempt to read his mind through email.  &quot;Sure, I can write you a letter&quot; says &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; about his level of enthusiasm.  If his response to your request makes you hesitant to use his letter, ask him again.  Second, if you decide, for &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt; reason, that you don't need his letter after you've asked for it, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; tell him directly, so that he doesn't waste his time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T18:36:42.840" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T18:36:42.840" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9341" CreationDate="2013-04-14T18:36:29.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's another variation: email prof X and tell him you are thinking of applying for faculty positions. Ask if he has any suggestions of who might be willing to write you a letter of recommendation to help you achieve your goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty straightforward. If he is willing to write a strong letter, he will offer. If he is not willing to write a strong letter, he will not offer. And he might have some good suggestions for other possible letter writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T18:36:29.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9332" CreationDate="2013-04-14T23:07:13.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of ways to look at this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the commentators who point out that any grad program worth its salt requires good communication skills (involving reading and expressing non-trivial ideas), but I suspect thats not what you are objecting to - its the word-list aspect of the General GRE that you find pointless. In that context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feel thankful that you would be taking the &lt;em&gt;Revised&lt;/em&gt; General GRE, which as wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations#Verbal_section&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, has a much more reduced emphasis to rote memorization of uncommon words, than the older version (which I had to take, unfortunately)! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, I've read on blogs/heard from seniors that top CS programs don't look &lt;em&gt;too closely&lt;/em&gt; at your verbal scores: a good score would not get you too far ahead, nor would an abysmal score totally gut your chances (this does not apply for quantitative scores - I'd been consistently advised by seniors that scores below 780-750, out of 800 in the old scale, would definitely get your application rejected!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are some schools in US where the applicants are encouraged, but not required to submit, General GRE scores. If you feel that other aspects of your application are strong enough, you can opt for those schools only - but IMHO, its not recommended, as almost every other applicant would submit GRE scores, and the absence of one on your profile may seem suspicious and may do more damage than a mediocre score.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, the Verbal section and the AWA sections are radically different - whereas the former may have limited utility in a grad program, the latter is much more relevant, as it tests your ability to reason and express the same within a short time-frame. Preparing for the AWA does not involve any rote memorization, so you shouldn't be complaining about it!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T23:07:13.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10149" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:33:23.277" Score="14" ViewCount="2075" Body="&lt;p&gt;Important scholars (e.g. Nobel laureates) regularly receive honorary doctorate from different universities. I know that the Board of Trustees (or a similar board) reviews available nominations and awards an honorary degree to a person, but I wonder how the nomination process is conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be very chancy, as there are many universities and many famous scholars. Usually there were no previous relationship between the awarding university and awardee.&#xA;For example, it is common for a Nobel Prize winner to receive honorary doctorate from 30 universities. He/she could have previous connections (e.g. collaboration, contribution, etc) with only a few of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a nominator suggest awarding to an eligible but irrelevant scholar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-09T04:07:28.510" LastActivityDate="2020-02-11T00:02:10.093" Title="How does a university award honorary doctorate?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:43:38.627" Score="33" ViewCount="14244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received an invitation to a conference and I'm trying to determine how reputable it is. Is there a good way to go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T05:52:46.643" LastActivityDate="2020-07-25T06:34:11.867" Title="How can I determine whether a conference is reputable?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9314" CreationDate="2013-04-15T14:12:23.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would support a suggestion regarding setting up a small website AKA your academic homepage, you can also do it via your university or various free hosting services (googlesites, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once your dissertation is online, and you have a link to PDF (either on your homepage or in your institutional repository) do use ANY social media to spread the word. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate - they will help you to reach various people (and I do agree that Facebook is probably the least professional out of those).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your dissertation is superb, you can consider publishing it with a reputable publisher (people and especially evaluation committees do see value in such publications w.r.t. just putting sth online)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T14:12:23.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9325" CreationDate="2013-04-15T14:17:38.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more thing to consider - are you requested to sign copyright transfer form (or sth similar, like consent to publish). If you are - then the publication is most likely archival and you can read on the copyright form if and under which conditions you can reuse the material. E.g., in the above mentioned LNCS-LNAI copyright form it is explicitly mentioned that you can re-publish it only with apprx 30% of new material (more or less standard condition in Computer Science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T14:17:38.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9367" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:14:31.393" Score="23" ViewCount="9944" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing an abstract for talks at conferences, workshops, etc., I often wonder if it would be considered a self-plagiarism if I copied a few sentences from a paper that is already published. Sometimes those abstracts are &quot;published&quot; in one form or another (proceedings, workshop schedule in print and/or on the web, etc). What is a general guideline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:51:59.510" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T22:12:57.753" Title="Is it considered a self-plagiarism to reuse (published) abstracts for talks?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:27:44.577" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, do not copy from your previous publications. At the same time, I would say that the severity of &quot;self-plagiarism&quot; depends on what you copy. If it is a description of a tool or site, it is not very problematic (after all there may be only so many ways to describe it). If you copy conclusions and items of creative importance then I would say it is more severe. I personally rewrite everything just because I am fine with that, even site descriptions. At some point I will have to go through and see if I unknowingly copied myself in those trivial sections at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, don't copy, rewrite. Who knows, you may find that you improve your formulations that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T15:27:44.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-04-15T16:33:36.597" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In papers themselves, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever copy any previously published text (including yours) without explicit acknowledgment, along the lines of &quot;The background material in this section is a nearly verbatim adaptation of Section 3.2 of X&quot;.  Assuming you make it perfectly clear what you have copied and from where (not hiding this information in a note later in your paper, for example) and you have permission from the copyright holder, then this is ethical, while it's not ethical without these conditions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course talk abstracts are not quite the same.  Let's assume we're talking about relatively ephemeral abstracts.  I.e., they might appear on the web or in the conference program, but they aren't carefully archived, citable contributions to the research literature.  (This distinguishes them from &quot;extended abstracts&quot; in CS conferences, which are actually short research papers, and there may be other intermediate cases.)  These sorts of abstracts generally don't list any references within the abstract, and they aren't considered published or treated nearly as formally as published material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, I doubt anyone would get upset about recycling a paper abstract for this kind of talk abstract.  Customs vary greatly between fields or sorts of abstracts, so you should seek advice from colleagues in your area, since &quot;someone on the internet said it was OK&quot; is not a compelling argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about self-plagiarism, you can simply append something like &quot;(adapted from the abstract of &lt;em&gt;paper citation&lt;/em&gt;)&quot; at the end of your talk abstract.  However, that might stand out in its formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably a good idea in any case to rewrite the abstract at least a little, since a talk abstract has different goals from a paper abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T16:33:36.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9337" CreationDate="2013-04-15T20:10:43.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is how long ago you took those other courses. Some schools are more likely to accept recently-taken courses, but might balk on courses taken, say, over a decade ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some schools will want to see an official course description before accepting the transfer credits (or, before letting you use those credits in place of requisite courses in their programs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T20:10:43.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9297" CreationDate="2013-04-15T22:47:50.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends entirely on what you mean by peer review.  Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovation.gov.au/Research/ResearchBlockGrants/Documents/2012HERDCSpecifications.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australia's Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) criteria&lt;/a&gt; for the collection of publication information, peer review amounts to substantial review by appropriate experts.  Books are either reviewed by proxy by commercial publication in this research data collection scheme, reliant on the habit of scholarly monographs being sent out for readers and scholarly collections being edited by the book's editors, or they have to be explicitly peer reviewed if published in an electronic only format.  The quality of review of monographs varies considerably from field to field and from publishing house to publishing house.  It matters quite a great deal for my discipline as my discipline is monograph driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book reviews are sometimes peer reviewed.  Book reviews of more than one work which advance original scholarly arguments are regularly peer reviewed in my domain (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chass.org.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HASS: Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences&lt;/a&gt;; the converse of STEM).  These reviews contribute either a critical reflection on current practice, or they contribute a substantive account of the field (literature review / review article / field review).  HERDC recognises this to the extent that reviews of more than one work which otherwise meet the criteria of a journal article (contribution to scholarly knowledge, peer review) are accepted as full journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some news articles in journals formally meet the standard for peer review of HERDC, but fail other criteria, such as an original contribution to scholarly knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T23:11:35.140" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T23:11:35.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T01:27:25.097" Score="8" ViewCount="886" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is related to my &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9136/what-is-the-optimal-number-of-times-one-should-meet-ones-phd-advisor&quot;&gt;previous question: “What is the optimal number of times one should meet one's PhD. advisor?”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to know of specific details of advisor-student meetings, frequencies, patterns in very high-end theoretical subjects like say algebraic geometry or string theory. Like if anyone knows of accounts of how it goes for say students of Vafa or Witten or Nima or Seiberg or Xi Yin or Kiran Kedlaya or Mattihas Zaldarriagga or Bjorn Poonen and such. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In such subjects how does one keep oneself motivated since publications aren't so regular probably and progress is possibly very &quot;slow&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, in such subjects how does one measure progress on a daily/weekly basis to understand if things are going well? (once the instant gratification of homework scores are removed, in full time research mode how is progress measured on weekly scales?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T07:10:19.867" Title="Advisor-student meeting patterns in very high-end theoretical research" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9375" CreationDate="2013-04-16T02:16:07.823" Score="15" ViewCount="3072" Body="&lt;p&gt;Textbooks take a lot of time and effort to write, so why would a university support their faculty to do so? The author can make a good profit from a textbook and I am guessing the institution doesn't get any of these profits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the grad students that edit and also work on the textbook? It seems as if they are working to fill the faculty member's pocket while being [partially] supported by the department/university and expected to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this seems odd to me since it seems like the author is just using the university's resources to generate personal revenue, so &lt;strong&gt;why do universities support/allow their faculty to write textbooks?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need context, I am talking about in the US and specifically a freshmen/sophomore CS course's textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T06:51:38.510" Title="Why do universities support faculty writing textbooks?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9372" CreationDate="2013-04-16T02:29:14.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Australia's university system, a centrally funded multiple university system, quite simply does not support staff doing this.  Australia had prior to the late 1980s a broad based academic publishing culture that included diverse ancillary publishing by academics in terms of social opinion, literary and arts engagement, and text book publication.  However, under the Dawkins era reforms, Australian higher education research output became subject to a measurement metric (the &quot;Publications count,&quot; a quantity count, currently known as the HERDC publications collection) which then informed the distribution of a significant pool of money.  The metric was originally described as a &quot;proxy&quot; for real activity, but increasingly the metric is taken to be the indicator of real activity.  As the metric, funding, and fund seeking imperatives have become tighter—in part as a labour discipline / productivity effort—since the late 1980s, the level of University management intervention into the publishing mode of academics has increased.  Currently, research activity measures within Universities, modelled strongly on the federal funding metric, strongly motivate academic staff to not publish uncounted books such as undergraduate textbooks.  The penalty for failing to achieve the metric includes increased teaching loads and (eventual and sometimes constructive) dismissal.  The effect of this has been academic disengagement from social and aesthetic opinion forming, and a move away from textbook authoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By inverting the above example, the reasons why institutions may tolerate staff producing textbooks would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an absence of external funding drivers dictating publication modes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an absence of internal management pressure dictating publication modes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the presence of external funding or internal management pressure, but measured against a metric that accepts textbooks as worthwhile activity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further work can be found in &lt;em&gt;Vestes&lt;/em&gt; / &lt;em&gt;Australian Universities Review&lt;/em&gt; on the metrification of academic output and funding changes in Australia.  The relevant federal department, and other bodies, have a variety of reports on the actual publication measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T02:29:14.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9371" CreationDate="2013-04-16T02:35:44.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the instant gratification of homework scores are removed, in full time research mode how is progress measured on weekly scales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three ways to make progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The big picture: identifying problems to work on, conjectures and consequences, outlining potential proof techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The little picture: examples, computations, completing the proofs of individual lemmas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Background reading/study: figuring out what you need to know and learning it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any given week it's reasonable to expect some progress on at least one of these.  It might not be dramatic or important progress, but at least you can work out some more details for a key example or read another chapter in a book you need to get through.  You can also refine your ideas, for example by identifying obstacles or additional ideas for a proof outline.  This sort of progress is on a much smaller scale than a research paper, but it lets you measure your progress and ensure your research is on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might occasionally happen early in grad school that you spend a week feeling bewildered and completely unsure of what to do, but at that point your advisor should intervene and help you find something productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to know of specific details of advisor-student meetings, frequencies, patterns in very high-end theoretical subjects like say algebraic geometry or string theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this would be as illuminating you as hope.  There's not a lot to learn from these patterns, and what you do learn could even be misleading: one advisor's approach might be a poor fit for another advisor, and a famous researcher may or may not be a wonderful advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are looking for examples, &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucsd.edu/~kedlaya/notes_students.shtml&quot;&gt;Kiran Kedlaya&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/potentialstudents.html&quot;&gt;Ravi Vakil&lt;/a&gt; have descriptions on the web of their advising styles.  (As one would expect, they differ in some respects, for example on meeting schedules.)  Some of the details are probably relevant only if you are considering them as possible advisors, but both pages contain some excellent advice that is more broadly applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T02:35:44.120" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9372" CreationDate="2013-04-16T04:38:31.953" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Textbooks take a lot of time and effort to write, so why would a university support their faculty to do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why wouldn't they?  Writing textbooks is an important form of scholarship, with great influence on the field, and this is something universities should strongly encourage.  The only reason I can think of not to support textbook writing is the profit issue, but this is not generally an important factor, since very few textbooks make a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that U.S. faculty are allowed to keep the royalties from textbooks they write is a historical contingency, and there's no reason why the system has to work that way.  However, I think it's a good system in practice.  Overall, the incentives to write good textbooks are too low, since both the financial rewards and the academic rewards are generally small compared with the time commitment.  Removing the (small) profit motive would leave the incentives even lower, and I think the net effect would outweigh the tiny increase in university funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about the grad students that edit and also work on the textbook? It seems as if they are working to fill the faculty member's pocket while being [partially] supported by the department/university and expected to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If grad students are being enlisted as unpaid labor, then that's a real problem, but in my experience it's not common.  If there's any prospect of nontrivial royalties, then it's unethical to ask students to work without compensation.  Furthermore, the arrangement needs to be formal enough to include a copyright transfer (otherwise, the students will own the copyright to their contributions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T04:38:31.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2013-04-16T04:38:50.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman&quot;&gt;Wiki page&lt;/a&gt; for Richard Feynman,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Feynman has been called the &quot;Great Explainer&quot;. He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that, if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood. Feynman &lt;strong&gt;gained great pleasure&lt;/strong&gt; from coming up with such a &quot;freshman-level&quot; explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My undergrad major is math. Among all the mathematicians, the ones I remember most (good and bad) are the authors of the math textbooks I used in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the more advanced scientific textbooks, I believe that the efforts putting all the research results together and organizing them are &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; less valuable than the individual articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T08:45:51.103" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T08:45:51.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9372" CreationDate="2013-04-16T07:03:04.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To widen the perspective (fully understanding the limitations imposed by the OP), I will try to be more general in my reply. All university systems do not support writing text books. In some systems it is up to the researcher to either try to find funding to at least cover some costs or simply try to squeeze it into whatever time can be found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also different scenarios for what to write. If one intends to write a basic introductory text, it would involve providing lots of examples and figures over a broad area. While the text may be relatively simple to write (subject matter not on a difficult level) the amount of text and illustrations will make it an arduous task. If, on the other hand, one writes an advanced textbook, the volume of text is smaller and, I would assume, more focussed on ones own research field. I would therefore think that it is relatively easier to write such a book than an introductory one. Having only written one book, a intermediate level specialist text on my research topic, I have little to compare it with, but it took 2.5 months (in parallel with full time work) to write, and I had someone paid to do the illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the situation will vary quite a lot between systems, which is also reflected by the types of books that come out of them. Advanced books come from almost all systems, while introductory texts probably are more commonly produced in systems where such book production is supported at some level in the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T09:11:04.697" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T09:11:04.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T08:05:11.830" Score="12" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues told me authors after acceptance can negotiate about the intellectual property (IP) rights. It is frustrating to wait for peer review long times, and after acceptance publisher asks you to agree with his copyright without any modification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am keen to know &lt;strong&gt;when is the best time to negotiate my IP rights?&lt;/strong&gt; Can I write to the publisher when the paper is under review (or even before submission)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T08:42:48.727" Title="Negotiating with journal publishers about intellectual property of the paper?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9378" CreationDate="2013-04-16T08:41:41.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not try to negotiate author rights before the paper is accepted, for two reasons.  First, from the point of view of the editor and the publisher, it is premature and may be a waste of time (since, statistically at least, your paper has a significant chance of being rejected).  Second, this negotiation could, in principle, influence the decision about whether to accept your paper (though of course it shouldn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, educate yourself on what the publisher will allow, beforehand.  Use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot;&gt;Sherpa/RoMEO database&lt;/a&gt; to know what rights a publisher will allow you, before you choose where to submit.  If you choose a journal that already allows you the rights you want, then you will avoid the problem altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, after acceptance use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sparc.arl.org/author/addendum.shtml&quot;&gt;SPARC addendum&lt;/a&gt; to assert the rights you intend to retain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one story of negotiations where I didn't follow my own advice -- but things turned out fairly well -- see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidketcheson.info/2012/12/06/reproducible-research-standard.html&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T13:10:13.803" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:10:13.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T11:55:42.303" Score="6" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, if someone is working as a Phd in computer-science, but on a neuroscience related topic, she might need to take some neuroscience related courses. And some CS courses might not be any help at all for the area she is interested in. Do universities put a lower/upper limit on the number of courses one can take?&#xA;Also, does this differ from university to university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T13:10:34.130" Title="How much flexibility does one have in selecting their PhD coursework in the first year?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9386" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:02:03.043" Score="38" ViewCount="2885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to get some advice on what may or may not be a problem, namely the lack of unique identifiers for scientific authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is a researcher with the same first and last name as myself, who works in a different field (physics vs computer science), but is in a similar stage of academic career (PhD candidate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there potential problems? Is there a danger that publications are associated wrongly, with negative consequences for either one of the authors? Will this cause confusion in databases like arXiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't care?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;disambiguate by adding middle initials to future publications? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I add initials for future publications, is there a change that I might somehow &quot;lose&quot; 3 earlier publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="704" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T02:47:27.387" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T02:47:27.387" Title="Is a researcher with the same name in a different field likely to cause confusion?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:22:04.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem. First, I would make a decision on how many initials to put on the papers and then stick to it. There are many different &quot;standards&quot;, some use two initials (US?), some three (British?), while in, for example, many central European countries one intial seems ot be the norm (there may be more to it than this). In any case, you can use as many as you feel comfortable with and so that you feel you can be distinguished from others in the same or related fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have namesakes in other, to yours, non-related fields, it would normally not be much of a problem since the article titles would give it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to make a choice and stick with it. It will then be easier to find your references in databases etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An associated problem may occur if you marry and change name for that reason. You then have a different problem to sort out. See for example the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9003/4394&quot;&gt;Indicating a name change after publication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T12:22:04.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:22:59.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely do what you can to ensure lack of ambiguity. It will make so many things easier: getting promoted, finding number of citations, etc. It is better to have a unique name, even if you lose 3 earlier papers. It is only 3. The future has more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T12:22:59.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:34:51.503" Score="7" ViewCount="7004" Body="&lt;p&gt;Especially if you are someone who is entering a PhD with very broad interests and little depth of knowledge in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T13:51:08.350" Title="How long do PhD students typically take to come up with their research proposal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:40:07.567" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you don't lose anything by adding initials. They will make it easier to search for your name in databases, until the day comes when academia has a unique/canonical researcher ID scheme in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a middle name (or middle names), you can use those. If you don't, &lt;strong&gt;just choose a &quot;pen name&quot; by adding initials&lt;/strong&gt;, chosen to make the combination of your name + initials unique (for now, of course… you cannot do anything about someone having the same name and starting to publish in a few years). I recommend doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can happen is that other people searching for your publications in the future might miss your first three papers. But if you have a publication list on your webpage (you have a webpage, right?), it's no big deal. Also, three seems like a large number now, but it will not always be that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="5803" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T15:35:37.057" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T15:35:37.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:56:00.087" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open Research Contributor ID (analog of DOI to researcher names) has been proposed recently to solve the problem. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://orcid.org/&quot;&gt;http://orcid.org/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;However, it is just out and is not yet widely adopted in industry. If you change your &quot;academic name&quot; to disambiguate then you can always contact arxiv and other systems asking to merge two authors. I did that for DBLP which is very important in Computer Science.&#xA;But in general, if you are not John Smith, having not so unique name is not a problem in academia:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T12:56:00.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:58:01.313" Score="4" ViewCount="964" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone has bad grades and limited programming experience, can they afford to rely on their first year of coursework to come up to speed with the field? Or is it a better idea to take some time off before starting your PhD and improve your skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:03:24.610" Title="What level of knowledge and expertise is usually expected from someone just entering a PhD in computer science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2018-07-07T04:12:52.803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9381" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:58:32.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to be school- and program-dependent.  In my Computer Engineering program, we had to take two 1-credit overview courses (not intensive) our first semester, and then my advisor told me the courses he expected me to take during that semeseter.  I ended up taking three full classes, which was probably excessive.  Of course, then I took three the next semester, too... After the first semester, I chose courses that fit in with my research, and also courses that were required for the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some pros and cons to taking multiple courses and courses outside your field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plusses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you take more courses when you haven't yet begun research, you will have more time for research when you're more advanced (if you fulfill any requirements early).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taking courses tangentially related to your field or outside your field leads to a greater body of knowledge in which to find interesting problems.  This can lead to better research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll meet more professors, and this can lead to other research opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minuses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can easily become too busy to get research done, and research is what will get you the PhD.  One of my fellow student's advisor tells his students, &amp;quot;No A plusses!&amp;quot; and what he really means is, you can study too hard on a course with a detriment to the more important research.  During grad school, I only had one semester where I didn't take any courses (and it was nice, I'll admit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could lose focus entirely.  Remember, getting a PhD is all about focusing on a particular problem until you are the expert on that problem.  Spread yourself too thin, and you'll have a harder time reining in that one problem.  This really is a minor minus, though, especially during your first year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you need to tailor your schedule to account for a number of factors, including your own sanity and your ability to do research.  How your schedule is determined will largely be up to you, but each school will have its own individual requirements and policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:33:29.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9381" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:59:53.047" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies dramatically, by university, field, and country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be any of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a fixed curriculum that everyone takes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are a few required courses and the student can choose the rest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student has a committee which recommends courses to take&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student can take any courses but has exams to pass&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No coursework at all (I understand this is common in Europe, where Ph.D. students come in with a Masters)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually there are upper and lower limits on the number of courses to take.  In the US, one usually has to take at least 3 or 4 courses to be considered a &quot;full time student&quot; and be eligible for funding.  (But one can often count research as one or more of these courses.)  And it is often not allowed to exceed 5 or 6 courses without special permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T12:59:53.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:00:57.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;After having just one publication out of my MSc and during the early years of my PhD studies, I married. One of my decisions was to change my name; from Mikael Johansson to Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, adding my wife's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the larger reasons I did this was because there is already a well established Mikael Johansson in a nearby field of research, with whom I had already been confused in academic contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:00:57.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:12:20.567" Score="25" ViewCount="3434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some days ago I was talking with a friend of mine, who is currently a post-doc at the illustrious &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iit.it&quot;&gt;Italian Institute of Technology (IIT)&lt;/a&gt; working on humanoid robotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was quite disgruntled because he recently spent a lot of time testing his latest discoveries and writing a scientific paper to submit to an important artificial intelligence conference, but on the day of the deadline, his supervisor asked him not to submit the paper. Indeed, his supervisor felt the experiments were not good enough, or the results were not excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, he did not want him to submit the paper, and so he did not do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We discussed about it and we both stated that, even if the paper and the discoveries were not excellent, they should have sent the paper anyway. The eventual rejection maybe would have come later, by the reviewers, together with the important review notes.&#xA;This way, they would have &lt;strong&gt;probably&lt;/strong&gt; got a &lt;strong&gt;paper rejection&lt;/strong&gt;, but they would have been able to &lt;strong&gt;treasure the reviewers' review notes&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Instead, with his supervisor initial rejection, they won't get anything except their opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we thought that his supervisor had a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;why did his supervisor suggest him not to submit the paper?&lt;/strong&gt; Why did he not think about the possibility of &lt;strong&gt;getting at least the reviewers' comments&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a paper rejection so &lt;strong&gt;grave&lt;/strong&gt; a fact?&#xA;Is it so &lt;strong&gt;dishonorable&lt;/strong&gt; to get a paper rejection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T13:39:36.897" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T18:03:31.190" Title="Is it a bad idea to submit a paper merely to elicit reviewers' comments?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9427" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:18:55.680" Score="10" ViewCount="1198" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, when forming student groups in class I've always allowed the students to form their own groups, which has certainly made them happy as they tend to form around social circles. As a side note, students at my school go together as classes so they have years where they know all the other people in their class quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm considering doing things differently this time. I'm thinking to actively form the groups in such a way that strong students are in groups with weak students and average students - that is, groups are balanced and there are no 'strong' or 'weak' groups. I believe I can simply randomly pick students for each group and as long as strong, normal, and weak exist in roughly equal numbers, I will naturally achieve my goals, at least for the most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm really wondering is if anyone knows the effects of student groups being formed by teachers as opposed to being formed by students themselves when those students have a strong social connection because of traveling though university as a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: The class size is 70 and the group size is five.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit(2): While the studying will be done in teams, individual members are assessed individually - social loafing will hurt the loafer the most.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T14:36:58.587" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T15:23:43.593" Title="Effectiveness of grouping students to balance skills" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;group-dynamics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:21:51.593" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;One, which is a common solution, it to have a webpage and make it explicit who you are (and who you aren't). See e.g. contact info at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/&quot;&gt;(one of) Mark Newman's webpage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am not the only professor called Mark Newman at the University of Michigan. I'm the physicist who works on networks. There is another Mark Newman in the UM School of Information who works on human-computer interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:21:51.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:23:31.873" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several other scientists named &quot;Noah Snyder&quot; and I've never had any problems with confusions.  Obviously if you were in the same field you'd need to do something, but my 2 cents is that since you're in different fields why worry about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One simple thing you can do is set up a google scholar profile, so that google scholar will be able to distinguish which papers are yours.  Note that you'll need to do that even if you add initials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:23:31.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9398" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:28:33.803" Score="65" ViewCount="4732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://mor.journal.informs.org/content/37/1/111&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; titled &quot;Optimal Symmetric Rendezvous Search on Three Locations.&quot; While talking about the history of search problems, the author mentions the following anecdote in passing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2007 a letter writer to the Guardian newspaper queried, “I lost my wife in the crowd at Glastonbury (a music festival). What is the best strategy for finding her?” A reader replied, “Start talking to an attractive woman. Your wife&#xA;  will reappear almost immediately.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I found it quite amusing to read this, I do not often come across papers with such witticisms. Is there an unwritten rule about the tone of sobriety that is considered appropriate in academic papers? Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:37:53.407" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T22:08:52.337" Title="Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:32:43.550" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start from the latter questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a paper rejection a so grave fact? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Unless you are not resilient enough and ready to become depressed because of a paper rejection. Happens in early PhD, later it usually gets easier to swallow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it so dishonorable to get a paper rejection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;why his supervisor suggest him not to submit the paper? Why did he not think about the possibility of getting at least the reviewers' comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't know what the particular reasons were, but here are my own personal considerations in situations like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer I value my time. I am very frustrated with papers which are obviously substandard and I have to waste my time to deliver a high quality review. Remember, also low quality papers deserve a high quality review. A review is a standalone artifact too and as such it has to be crafted too. Over time we develop a good feeling what is the required standard for a given venue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My name is connected to a paper when I submit it. You are submitting and delivering a piece of work. Most people with high personal integrity attitude want to deliver only their top pieces of work. I certainly do not want my name to be attached to a piece of work I am ashamed for. Therefore, sometimes I stop myself and don't submit a paper when I know it is not up to scratch. It happens to me quite often. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice, &lt;em&gt;as a frequent reviewer, I very well know what the reviewers' response would be&lt;/em&gt;. If you are desperate and in a need of a yet another publication, OK, frivolous submissions is a game you can play. If you have a high standard on yourself and your surroundings, playing this game is no good. Delivering good work is what counts, delivering yet another insignificant paper doesn't. In this case we do not speak about rejection on the ground of correctness, or projected  significance, but on the ground of not being up to the minimal standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later edit: the above stance is about subjective attitude to things, therefore point 2 applies also to conferences with double-blind review policy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T13:40:34.203" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:40:34.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:38:53.667" Score="54" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, there is a single measure for this: &lt;em&gt;does a sentence X contribute to the paper, or not.&lt;/em&gt; If the answer is &lt;code&gt;no&lt;/code&gt;, it shouldn't be there at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To apply the principle to the joke: &lt;em&gt;if the joke illustrates a common problem which needs a solution, or illustrates a common (perhaps insufficient) solution to a well stated problem, then it certainly has a place in a research paper.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand scientific writing as a form of literature. I do not see any reason for literature (including scientific discourse) not to be entertaining as well, when appropriate. But everything has its time and place. However, it shouldn't be forced and has to fit the main contribution of the paper, hence the filter rule above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:38:53.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9140" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:44:31.720" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grade inflation has been an issue in the US since mid 1970s, so welcome to the club. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endgradeinflation.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.endgradeinflation.org/&lt;/a&gt;. None of the attempts to curb it have been successful so far; the practice of student evaluations is deep-rooted in US colleges, and cannot be easily modified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The uphill battle against grade inflation has been spearheaded by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, one of top 5 large public US universities. They put a rather extensive research effort into figuring out the patterns of grade inflation. The cause, as you observed, is what economists call market failure, when the self-motivated actions of the players lead to outcomes that are worse for everybody. The employers of the graduates, and the grad programs they apply for, suffer the most, as they cannot distinguish good students from bad students. Organizations and student societies that rely solely on GPA (grade point average) discover great differences between disciplines: the humanities end of the spectrum have been hit the hardest by grade inflation, while engineering and sciences that have more specific assessment and evaluation criteria tend to produce lower grades. The opening page of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/reports/1999-00/R2000EPCGrdInfl.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 2000 report&lt;/a&gt; provides a specific figure to answer your question: &lt;strong&gt;about 15% increase in student evaluations associated with 1 standard deviation increase in the course average grade&lt;/strong&gt;. This standard deviation was 0.4 on the American scale that goes from 0 to 4; at the time of writing the report, the average GPA at UNC was 3.18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mid 2000s, UNC came up with an idea of an effective grade, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/~pcg/grading/AIPrimer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;achievement index&lt;/a&gt;. In very simplistic terms, it essentially normalizes each class to have the same GPA. Each student is mapped onto a percentile implied by his grade in a given class, relative to the distribution of grades in this class; percentiles across all classes that a student took would be aggregated; and the ultimate student's achievement GPA would be reported based on the normative judgement of what the university wants to see as the average GPA and the range of grades. &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?view=body&amp;amp;id=pdf_1&amp;amp;handle=euclid.ss/1030037959&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This idea&lt;/a&gt; is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_response_theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;item-response theory&lt;/a&gt;, or can alternatively be explained using Bayesian methods (a maximum a posteriori estimate of student ability). As you can imagine, this literally caused a student unrest that UNC has not seen since the civil rights movement of the 1960s (o tempora o mores... how petty motives are these days), so the faculty chickened out and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/minutes/2006-07/M07FC04.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ruled&lt;/a&gt; against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, UNC has found a way to put the grades into the context by &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/To-Give-Clearer-Picture-of/127204/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;augmenting the transcript&lt;/a&gt; with the average GPA of other students who took this particular class, student's percentile in a given class, and the &quot;schedule point average&quot; = average GPA of all the students in the classes that a student took. The above link shows a clear picture of somebody who had a nominal GPA of 3.6, way up from the average GPA of classmates of 3.0, consistently performing above the median (7 grades above the median, 5 at the median, 0 below), vs. somebody who has only be able to achieve GPA of 2.5 in easier classes with average GPA of 3.2 (1 grade above the median, 3 at the median, 9 below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dramatic timeline (if you know how to read between the lines... I grew up in Soviet Union and have this unfortunate skill) of UNC attempts to deal with grade inflation is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/reports/2009-10/specrepts/20091002GradingTrendsTimeline.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Some other institutions are likely to use these or similar ideas, including another high-profile public school, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailycal.org/2013/03/11/uc-berkeley-may-combat-grade-inflation-through-new-grading-system/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;. (The administrator's claim that the university's computer system cannot handle the additional evaluation method is ridiculous; I could do these numbers on my laptop.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T18:30:35.607" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T18:30:35.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:51:06.873" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to walkmanyi's good answer: To make jokes in a scientific article is &quot;dangerous&quot;. It is similarly a bad idea to use &quot;quotes&quot;! In both cases the reader may interpret the written text in many different and unforeseen ways. It is particularly problematic since readers come from many different cultures and different ways of expressing themselves, for example, figuratively. Since clarity should be a key aspect of an article, it is best to stay clear of jokes and such, keeping the somber tone you refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="33010" LastEditDate="2018-05-20T12:39:38.043" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T12:39:38.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:57:27.520" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewers almost universally volunteer their time, and if you are sending a paper that you feel will be rejected because it isn't ready for publication, and/or has serious flaws, then you'll waste the time of a number of people trying to get one or two nuggets of feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blind review is not the time to elicit feedback on your work; it is meant to ensure a forum for reviewing &lt;strong&gt;publishable&lt;/strong&gt; work.  If you want feedback on your work, make the contacts with the right people who will help you, and don't try to abuse the review system by submitting immature work under false pretenses or with an ulterior motive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. There are places for work that isn't quite ready: conference workshops.  Many times they are blind review, but with a high acceptance rate and with the hope that workshop attendees will provide good feedback on the work and it can be improved for conference or journal publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T13:57:27.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:58:21.757" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writing-papers/write-professionally/&quot;&gt;Terry Tao:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overly philosophical, witty, obscure or otherwise “clever” comments should generally be avoided; they may not seem so clever to you ten years from now, and can sometimes irritate the very readers you want to communicate your result to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you'll always be a little embarrassed looking back at yourself, so this is a pretty mild warning.  I think there's nothing wrong with a little humor in papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, your example joke is definitely inappropriate to put in a formal paper because it's a joke that assumes the audience is all straight men.  There may be a place for mildly sexist humor, but that place is not the workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T15:38:07.743" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T15:38:07.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-04-16T14:10:37.533" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paper rejections are far more common than one might think. A rejection rate of 50% is not uncommon in most average journals that I know about. In some high-reputation journals it may be over 90%. So rejection is not uncommon. There are of course different reasons for a rejection, some worse than others (incomplete and in approximately falling order): the manuscript (MS) content is not appropriate for the journal; the MS (and/or figures) is poorly formated (to the point that it is hard to follow); the MS has severe language problems; the science is poorly supported by references and/or the discussion; the MS contains scientific errors or misconceptions; and then more shady problems such as falsification and plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to send in a MS just to get comments from reviewers. As an editor, I really would resent this behaviour. After all what is happening is that the Ms would take up at least one editor and a couple of reviewers (free) time (none are usually paid for the work). There are authors who send in their half-baked manuscripts just to have reviewers help them iron out things they were too lazy or incapable to do themselves. I know such cases personally. The risk is that the paper gets rejected but if not then someone pours in a lot of work for very little credit (which in turn is taken up by someone else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the description above, I would say that the advisor may have done the honest thing and wanted to prepare the paper as best he/she could, you be the judge. It is of course a grey zone when something may be good enough to become accepted for review or just not good enough and head for rejection. Where one draws this line is perhaps personal but it is far better to stay away from the grey zone altogether. I would therefore suggest that discussing this matter with the advisor may prove to be both a fruitful and interesting endeavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T14:10:37.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-04-16T14:24:05.590" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers mention that submitting a paper only to get some feedback is a waste of time for the reviewers, and it can be particularly damageable for your reputation when the submission is not double-blind. Remember that academia is a small world, and reputation a very important aspect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, submitting a paper to a venue usually prevents to submit it to other venues, at least during the reviewing process. When you're pretty sure that the paper will be rejected, you might miss other opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is another risk: the paper might be accepted! Of course, at first, you might think it's a good thing, but if the results are not good enough, it might hurt your reputation, and there is of course the possibility that you're wrong. Publishing wrong results (and I'm only talking about mistake, not fraud) is far worse than getting a paper rejected. On top of that, if the paper is published, it might be harder to publish only the improved results, as they might not consist a novel contribution on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T14:29:42.243" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T14:29:42.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9388" CreationDate="2013-04-16T15:01:03.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is phrased as a question about first-year coursework, but it's actually a question about admissions.  Specifically, a department won't offer admission to someone they feel has inadequate preparation, so this situation should not arise (assuming the admissions process works well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this perspective, the reformulated question is: if you have bad grades and limited programming experience, is admission to a CS PhD program still possible, or do you need to take some time off to improve your skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this level of detail, there's no way to say for sure.  If your application shows nothing but bad grades and lack of programming experience, then admission is presumably out of the question.  On the other hand, why would you even want to enter a PhD program without some other background that indicates it's a good idea?  In which case the admissions decision comes down to what that background is and whether it outweighs the grades and programming experience.  It would take something impressive, but it's possible in principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T15:01:03.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2013-04-16T15:27:20.663" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who is working on an advanced textbook, I've had to ask myself that question. It's certainly not for the money (which I expect will be not nearly enough recompense for the time spent working on it). Here are the answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citations:&lt;/strong&gt; Not a big factor for me, since I expect citations to my book will displace a lot of citations for my older papers and shorter expository work on the subject, but as other people have noted, for a lot of people it is an important factor.  A book that becomes the &quot;standard reference&quot; for a topic can garner huge numbers of citations.  (Also true of review articles.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creating a textbook:&lt;/strong&gt; It can serve as a textbook for a class I have taught before and may well teach again.  This is a class for which there is no existing good textbook.  In this sense, for a big investment of time now I make my life easier in the future by creating a good resource for students taking my class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New research ideas:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing it presents an opportunity to organize my thoughts about the field, and to go through and find and fill holes -- or just things I think haven't been done the right way -- in the existing literature.  In this respect, it is an extension of my existing research program and inspires new research to fill the holes that I find.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding existing literature:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing the book also provides a good incentive for me to go back and understand other peoples' results that I think should be included in the book.  There's one paper in particular which is important, but very difficult to understand, and I've put off making the effort to figure it out for many years.  The book provides an additional motivation to actually do it, and furthermore make it accessible to others as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teaching new people about my field:&lt;/strong&gt; This is partially altruism and partially self-interested. The altruism part is probably self-explanatory.  The self-interest part is that if I can provide a good introduction to the field, I may convince more people to work on an area I am interested in, and furthermore can get them to think about it in the ways I like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one or two of these reasons would probably not be enough by itself, but the combination makes it, I think, a good use of my time.  I've written these answers as they apply to me, but I think the same mix of reasons, with different weightings, apply to other people who write advanced textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2746" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T15:27:20.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:39:59.583" Score="7" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently finishing up my J.D., and I plan on practicing law for at least a few years. However, I'm also considering returning to school to study CS. In the meantime, I plan on researching and attempting to publish at least a few articles - perhaps some related to cyber law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the less rigorous nature of law review, how would an admission committee view these? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does the prestige of the journal matter - i.e. &lt;em&gt;Harvard Journal of Law &amp;amp; Technology&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;Michigan State Law Review&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6815" LastEditorUserId="6815" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T15:32:33.030" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T15:32:33.030" Title="Are law review publications helpful for gaining acceptance into a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:43:49.143" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humor should be used sparingly, and when used, should not be obviously offensive. If you can imagine that someone could &lt;em&gt;reasonably&lt;/em&gt; take offense to something, then it shouldn't be included in a formal research article. I would even avoid such a joke in a formal talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, humor &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have its place in a scientific delivery. I often include a few wry remarks in my classroom lectures, but they are used sparingly, and only to lighten the mood. (I might make reference, for example, that you could do something, but only if you want your work to end up in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jir.com&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Irreproducible Results&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But tasteless and overly lewd jokes should be saved for a stand-up comedy routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:43:49.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9408" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:46:37.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The higher the quality the journal you can publish in, the better—but that's a truism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I don't know how much weight an admissions committee would give to a law review publication, because these tend to be &lt;em&gt;synthetic&lt;/em&gt; papers rather than &lt;em&gt;creative&lt;/em&gt; papers: that is, a law review acts much like a literature review paper, instead of a paper where you've done original research and found an interesting result. Consequently, it's not fully reflective of what you would be doing as a researcher, and thus may carry less weight overall than a traditional research article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:46:37.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:47:05.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this SE website mostly attracts people from more technical and scientific fields which progress through research articles, there are whole areas of academia where the first question that comes up to junior faculty is, &quot;So, what is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book about?&quot;. In social sciences (at least in the less technical programs) and humanities, you are expected to publish your dissertation work as a book, so by the time you go for tenure, you need to have at least one, better two -- another one based on your more recent work (which, by the way, is called &lt;em&gt;scholarship&lt;/em&gt;, rather then &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;). You can easily tell by looking at the CVs of professors in say sociology whether they are in a &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; department or &lt;em&gt;scholarship&lt;/em&gt; department: the former list papers first on their CVs, while the latter put books first (and may not have any papers at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in the technical fields, it is often valuable to have the material summarized in one source, sometimes even for your own reference. That's how some of the advanced textbooks are formed. Some books are produced as edited collections of invited papers from a specialized topic conference, and it may have been a part of the grant funding that you, as the conference organizer, promised to the funding agency, so that your results are disseminated as widely as possible to the people who could not make it to the conference. (Other people mentioned other obvious ways for the books to shape up, mostly from lecture notes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of books are written on sabbaticals, when top folks move away from the daily routine and can concentrate on what they enjoy most: playing in their dirt, moving around their Greek letters and integral signs around, etc. Publishers often approach high profile people and suggest to send their books to them; even I get these generic emails from Wiley or CRC or Springer from time to time. Of course, for publishers that's their business and a way to generate money; I don't think the authors are compensated even remotely enough for the trouble of writing a book. At my consulting rate, writing a book is an undertaking worth a new BMW X5; if somebody else is paying for that, as is the case with sabbatical professors, then this may be an entirely different business :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your own field moves through research papers, then you simply won't have the time to work on any books, unless this has been discussed with your chair and faculty, and everybody unanimously agreed that you are so good and so famous in your subfield as to afford spending a whole year away from the programmatic research writing a stupid book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T08:46:32.140" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T08:46:32.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:54:19.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uhm... discipline specific tag missing??? In economics, you can often see an acknowledgement like &quot;I would like to thank [the list of 15 specific people, may be a Nobel prize winner or two thrown in], audiences at [10 universities in which this talk was given] and [4 more international conferences] for their helpful comments&quot;. So an economist won't even get what it is that you are asking; presenting the same stuff over is their daily business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I think it is basically your own self-discipline and commitment to moving research further with new work (as opposed to just selling your name with one or two successful papers that everybody keeps wanting to hear about). I usually present the same research two-three times, which means copying and pasting the abstract, but once I hit all the major audiences with it, I move on to something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:54:19.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:56:09.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about the writing of a formal proposal document, the rules vary from department to department. If you are talking about the idea for a project, then that needs to be developed very early on—the tentative idea should already be in place by the time work starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my department, for instance, students had roughly one year from the completion of the qualifying examination to submit the research proposal. This was a fairly substantial document (25-30 pages). Other schools I considered required the submission as late as the third or fourth year (in what was nominally a five- to six-year program); in that case, the research proposal was almost a first draft of the thesis, as it was typically anywhere from 50 to 100 pages in length!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current department, students receive fellowships to work on projects with their advisors. In such cases, the advisor typically plans the basic outline of the project, and the start of the work plan. Later years are left for the student to devise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:56:09.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:59:26.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; much on who holds the copyright to the published work you're copying. Some publishers may give you the right to reuse the text however you see fit. Others may not be so liberal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, the longer the snippet you want to reuse, the worse the idea it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:59:26.353" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9408" CreationDate="2013-04-16T17:00:56.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I don't agree much with aeismail's assessment that &lt;em&gt;review articles “may carry less weight overall than a traditional research article”&lt;/em&gt;. A &lt;strong&gt;good review article&lt;/strong&gt; is very hard to write, because this requires a very high level of understanding of the existing research and literature, as well as strategic thinking to discuss what will be of importance in times to come. To me, this is actually very much harder for a PhD student to have than publishing a “regular” research article. I think most committees would agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how will the committee recognized a good review article? Ideally, by reading it and being impressed at the clarity and level of the discussion it displays. &lt;strong&gt;In the real world? Probably by the name and prestige of the journal it was published in.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my advice is: publish good stuff, in good venues. It matters more that you get to publish things, than what exactly you publish, as long as it is good! &lt;em&gt;(Yeah, that sounds trivial, but you asked for it!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T17:00:56.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9381" CreationDate="2013-04-16T17:03:17.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will likely piss people off at your major department if you take more courses outside than at the department itself. This will be viewed as lack of respect to them -- what kind of know-it-all are you??? One course is probably OK, especially if you &quot;negotiated&quot; that upfront by stating your multidisciplinary interests, but I wouldn't risk any more; not at least until you are done with the comprehensive exams, or whatever they may be called in your program. Passing them should be your top priority. You can also excuse yourself by declaring a Ph.D. minor in an additional field, or working towards an MA/MSc in that field. Again, that's something that needs to be discussed with your Director of Graduate Studies and adviser (which you may not have in the  first year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my program, I took about 15-18 courses in my main department (statistics), another 6 in a graduate certificate program, and a scattered number of 1-2 courses in four or so other departments (economics, biostatistics, sociology, taking their [whatever]metrics courses), and graduated with some 70+ credit hours instead of required 45 or 48. I don't think they liked it very much... but then my tuition coverage came from another research center on campus that appreciated my breadth. Do as I say, not as I do, though, as I now work in industry after having failed the tenure track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T17:03:17.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-04-16T18:03:31.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was 16, I had a rather nice idea for a quantum mechanical experiment. At the time, my theoretical foundations were shaky, and I just wanted to know if there were any flaws in it. Unfortunately, I didn't have any contacts in the physics academia, so I had nobody to talk to. Instead, I went ahead and submitted it, and mentioned that I only wanted input. Here's the mail I received:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Prof. Manish Goregaokar,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have received your submission [id] entitled [title]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before entering a submission to the reviewing process, we check&#xA;  whether it obeys criteria such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is the topic of research suitable for this journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does the paper contain original ideas and new&#xA;   results?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are the arguments and calculations accurate and&#xA;   correct?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is the exposition sufficiently well organized, and&#xA;   worded well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does the overall quality agree with our very tough&#xA;   standards?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I regret to inform you that the editors had to conclude that this work&#xA;  is not suitable for publication in Foundations of Physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to thank you very much for forwarding your manuscript to&#xA;  us for consideration and wish you every success in finding an&#xA;  alternative place of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With kind regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gerard 't Hooft Chief Editor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specific comments from a member of the Editorial Board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is not considered a task of the editorial office to evaluate&#xA;  unpublished, or unpublishable, research.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine, I have removed references to the specific paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had not mentioned that I was only looking for input, then I may have gotten a more detailed rejection. However, it is clear from this that the priority of the editors is not to help researchers along, but rather to focus on publishable stuff -- which is perfectly understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your specific situation (different from mine since you were planning to submit &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; mentioning that you only wanted an eval): My guess is that the supervisor did it out of courtesy. He did not feel that the editors should waste their time on something which does not benefit them -- sure, helping others is a good thing, but forcing (or tricking) someone into to helping you isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't know much about whether or not paper rejection is dishonorable, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T18:03:31.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T18:10:33.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a physicist(?) in the Soviet Union who always sited a non-existent paper by Cheyne and Stokes (&quot;irregular respiration brings relief&quot;?) in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; his publications (and also thanked them in acknowledgements). He was imprisoned in the GULAG in 1953 when it was announced (on March 5th) that Stalin had &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cheyne–Stokes respiration&lt;/a&gt;. Another inmate, a physician, explained to him that this meant an inevitable death, and, thus, a hope for a change in their fortunes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this qualifies as &quot;humor&quot;, but I see no problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point, you want your paper to be read to the end, and you want the readers to understand and appreciate the results. If a joke would illuminate your point, making it clear and unforgettable, go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5829" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T18:10:33.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T18:46:25.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The truth is that it depends on your institution. My college required us to keep a somber tone, avoid dressing up how we presented things, etc. In other words, it had to sound incredibly boring. We were taught that academic papers were meant to deliver factual information. These other things didn't contribute to the facts or analysis, so they were unnecessary. I'm sure many other institutions might have variations of these rules. Break the rules, your paper doesn't make it. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why I think that's ludicrous. ;) The purpose of any written work (excluding entertainment) is to convey a message. The writer must get the reader's attention, adequately get the message across, HOLD reader's attention while doing so, and (optionally) leave a lasting impression. Requirements 1, 3, and 4 are all in the presentation. So, it stands to reason that a witty, funny, or just somewhat unique presentation of content is entirely justified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The irony of it is that many other classes taught us these principles of effective writing and captivating penmanship, then the academic papers we wrote were to avoid these things to be more successful. Makes a lot of sense, yeah? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus thought. Academic papers also don't usually happen in a vacuum: many papers published in journals are competing with others. Different institutions want to make the best papers, find greatest discoveries, have highest acclaim, etc. It's not all that different from people publishing books. In light of this, I think academics have even more justification for going the extra mile to make their work stand out. Just a thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6821" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T18:46:25.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T22:41:36.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The driest book I ever read was the revised report on Algol 68. It was liberally salted with quotes. The best one was the &quot;Merely corroborative detail&quot; line from the Mikado, used to introduce pragmas (a kind of semantically meaningful comment). Quotes like this stopped one wanting to slit ones' wrist while reading the meat of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6823" LastEditorUserId="6823" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T17:33:51.893" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:33:51.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-04-16T23:33:37.140" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering from a Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) focus, to contrast the STEM focus of previous responses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humour may play a vital role in both the dissemination of, and methodology of HASS discoveries.  HASS fields tend to deal with multiple overlaid meanings, whether they reference social meanings or cultural meanings or pure ideas.  Things that simultaneously mean many things tend to be funny.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Umberto Eco's sly fable, &lt;em&gt;In the Name of the Rose&lt;/em&gt; is a useful case here.  Eco is otherwise a scholar in a field where multiple meanings are vitally important.  His novel is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, a piece of pulp fiction, while also being a sly attack on Stalinism and Academic life.  Perhaps most importantly for this question, the issue of whether the innermost nature of reality (God, art / the least worst empirically tested description of external reality) can only be approached in a reverent and serious fashion, or whether the seriously funny kind of levity also gives us access to reality?  Now &lt;em&gt;In the Name of the Rose&lt;/em&gt; may not have been the best way to communicate new linguistics findings; but, a serious exegesis of &lt;em&gt;In the Name of the Rose&lt;/em&gt; as a post-modern novel might reasonably try to recreate some of the levity of its evidentiary text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't suggest writing a paper full of the Big Bumper Book of Jokes, but if your evidence is naturally funny (anti-government jokes as representative of public sentiment); or, if there's an obvious irony in the case study that you can state clearly for the reader; or, if the proper presentation of your findings calls for wit; then, use it within the broader genre conventions of your discipline's writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T23:33:37.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9393" CreationDate="2013-04-17T03:43:44.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure this is a good idea in your case,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;em&gt;go together as classes so they have years where they know all the other people in their class quite well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is a long story in their social circles. You really don't want to be part of that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if student A and student B happen to be dating the same person, where do you put A and B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to balance skills, I can understand one of your purposes is to let them work together as professionals regardless their personal relationships. In the real world, it would work if there is a good group leader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, how do you find 14 good leaders from 70 students? (group size is 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you mention strong, average and weak students. I would like to emphasize that it is not too hard to find 14 strong students from 70 students. However, it is not an easy task to find 14 good leaders from a 70 student class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T06:16:20.000" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T06:16:20.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9393" CreationDate="2013-04-17T05:30:06.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you choose the groups, then in a sense you have taken responsibility for their success. A group that perceives themselves as &quot;weak&quot; will subconsciously or consciously blame you for their predicament, absolving them of the need to work hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also open yourself up to charges of favoritism or worse. Again, your perception of strength and weakness might be quite different to the students' own perception, and this has little to do with what the &quot;right&quot; answer is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear that the pedagogical benefits of explicit grouping (even assuming you're able to separate weak from strong, which I am dubious of) balance all the downsides of grouping in this manner. While your goal is honorable (balancing groups so that they're of roughly equal strength), it's a doomed goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can never force equality in the classroom. What you can aim for is fairness. A group formed by students is fair in the sense that the students can't complain that you forced them into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T05:30:06.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9393" CreationDate="2013-04-17T05:33:50.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My armchair researching dug up a lot of articles about this. I'm not an education scholar but here's a brief slice of some results from some research in the business education literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;Randall S. Hansen (2006)&lt;/em&gt;: Benefits and Problems With Student Teams: Suggestions for Improving Team Projects, Journal of Education for Business, 82:1, 11-19&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their related work section, their works surveyed suggest that professor-selected groups appear to have a more positive experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, Muller (1989) stated that student preferences are not&#xA;  necessarily the most important criterion for successful group work,&#xA;  whereas Koppenhaver and Shrader (2003) suggested that&#xA;  instructor-assigned teams lead to more stability in membership, and&#xA;  that stability enhances each team’s ability to perform effectively.&#xA;  Contrary to earlier researchers, Hernandez (2002) stated that student&#xA;  teams should be formed by the instructor, and that students are more&#xA;  likely to have a positive learning experience when groups are selected&#xA;  by the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an empirical study by &lt;em&gt;Praveen Aggarwal and Connie L. O'Brien (2008)&lt;/em&gt;: Social Loafing on Group Projects: Structural Antecedents and Effect on Student Satisfaction, Journal of Marketing Education. 30:255, they hypothesize that self-selection of groups might reduce social loafing, based on some related work below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] This prediction has some precedence in the pedagogical&#xA;  literature. Groups formed by the students instead of random assignment&#xA;  by the instructor are assumed to be more cohe- sive, more productive,&#xA;  and experience a lower incidence of social loafing (Strong &amp;amp; Anderson,&#xA;  1990). Mahenthiran and Rouse (2000) found that paired groups of&#xA;  friends had less incidence of social loafing than randomly assigned&#xA;  groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after their empirical study of 420 students in marketing and marketing-related fields, they conclude that there's no effect of student self-selected teams on social loafing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study we proposed four such factors: reducing the scope of the&#xA;  project, reducing group size, allowing students to self-select group&#xA;  members, and including multiple peer evaluations. Three of the four&#xA;  factors were found to have an impact on social loafing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only one that didn't have an impact was self-selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So one paper says that self-selection is worse, another says it generally doesn't matter. This might suggest that there are other factors that you may want to consider first with respect to making teams perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as mentioned, I'm not a business education researcher, and these projects might not generalize to other domains either. For example, the fact that these two papers don't cite a similar body of work might suggest that there's a lot more stuff out there. If someone out there is able to expand on this that would be excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T05:39:55.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T05:39:55.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9372" CreationDate="2013-04-17T06:51:38.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think the Universities are for improving the skills and knowledge of the mankind not only for financial growth :) its their duty to make the knowledge reachable to everyone and also make the knowledge grow, find more and develop more.. The books are the medium which all of these are possible. And also in the view of financial case, may be a university dont get any profits straightly but they will get it via the fame of the author who is a faculty of that university. He will attract more students. thus it will help the university :D :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6512" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T06:51:38.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9393" CreationDate="2013-04-17T08:56:17.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a practical suggestion based on a course I used to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a natural continuation of another course (which was a requirement), and the majority of the student body from the first course was proceeding to take the second course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;only team leaders were picked by the professor&lt;/strong&gt;, in a sense that the best students from the previous class were team leaders, and were &lt;strong&gt;free to form their group&lt;/strong&gt; as they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ensured several things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;no &amp;quot;elite&amp;quot; team with only the top students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the groups were formed mostly to students liking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;some degree of balance was naturally present&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. we grouped on purpose with 6:4 in favor of &amp;quot;stronger&amp;quot; students, because we were allowed to distribute the assignment grade on our own, and that way non-perfect score still meant everybody got approximately the grade they wanted &lt;em&gt;which coincided mostly&lt;/em&gt; with their effort: non-perfect project was not a tragedy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;on the previous class, a small number of students were actually &amp;quot;pushed&amp;quot; to go the extra mile, do exceptionally, and provide a team leader for their social group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the student perspective, at least, it worked pretty well. If you say the student body is not changing that much from class to class, maybe something similar could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside might be that an &amp;quot;elite&amp;quot; group is clearly identified, but if it is based on objective criteria, and not seemingly the random whiff of a professor, it does not seem so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T09:06:19.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:08:12.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For PhD in the United Kingdom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon for students submit a PhD research proposal as part of their application for the PhD program. They can also find a supervisor to work on the research proposal together before submitting it as part of their application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have applied for a PhD in another field before and was able to write a proposal in 2 weeks that was good enough to get an interview for the program. This was with the help of a supervisor who gave me the research area, open problems he is interested in, relevant literature and he read several of my drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T13:08:12.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:51:08.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the department where I got my degree at, the proposal was expected in the third year, had to represent about 30% of dissertation work, and qualified as a Master's defense should the student drop out of the program and yet being able to walk away with &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; in hand. In the department where I worked, the proposal was expected half a year before the defense (i.e., in the fall of the fifth year), had to constitute about 80% of the work, and basically was a rehearsal for the job market talk (the winter of the fifth year). So yes, rules and traditions vary from department to department and from discipline to discipline. Ask your Director of Graduate studies (or chair if the department does not have a designated officer for this role) as to what the expectations are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T13:51:08.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:24:26.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, and this is really only conjecture since I don't know the history, is the potential conflict with the ESNU system where E stands for excellent. The ESNU was (and potentially still is) used in US based elementary education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T14:24:26.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9378" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:52:55.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only submit a manuscript for publication when I was confident that there will not be any IP/copyright issues. For some types of publications, for example books, publishers will need to see the manuscript, and possibly get it reviewed, prior to making decisions about IP and royalties. I am not aware of any journal that needs/wants to see the manuscript prior to discussing IP. There tends to be things they will do and things they will not do, and it doesn't matter how good the manuscript is. The reason for dealing with IP issues (and publication fees) up front is that you do not want to waste time waiting for a publication decision that you might ultimately turn down. Further, as a reviewer, I would be completely pissed if I spend time reviewing a manuscript to see the authors publish someplace else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T14:52:55.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9393" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:23:43.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Balancing skills is very different from balancing past performance. Strong students will, by definition, be strong at most things. Weak students on the other hand will have different strengths. For example, a group of weak students who are all bad at X, will form an extremely weak group. A group of weak students where student A is bad at X but excellent at Y, student B is bad at Y but excellent at Z, and student C is bad at Z but excellent at X could actually form an extremely strong group. Better than grouping on past performance might be for students to rank their strengths at X, Y, and Z and create groups based on this. This will alert students to the strengths required to do well and also allow them to see the strengths/weakness of their groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative, which was used during my undergraduate education, is to use a personality test to create groups. This way the students are aware of the benefits/difficulties of personal interactions, which is of high importance to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T15:23:43.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9278" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:11:33.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a little bit shaky, but let's give it a try. Apart from a programmatic solution where you would have to write your own &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web-scraping&lt;/a&gt; scripts which would construct appropriate URLs for each authors and extract their publication statistics, there might be another, though still quite tedious and technically involved approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harzing's Publish or Perish&lt;/a&gt; program (PoP) has a feature called &quot;Multi-query center&quot;. It allows you to create a set of queries and then generate publication/citation statistics for each of them in bulk. It is meant to periodically re-generate the citation statistics for a set of queries so that you do not have to laboriously write the queries again and again. Now the technical steps towards your solutions would be the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;produce a set of queries corresponding to the list of authors you are interested in;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update all these queries at once by a single button click;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;save the statistics for all the queries e.g., into a CSV file; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;extract the numbers you are interested in in your favorite spreadsheet program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most technically involved step is to produce a set of queries corresponding to the list of authors you have. If the list is not too long (e.g., up to 50), the easiest method would be to enter the queries manually. In the case you have a very long list of authors (several hundreds), then I would try to generate the set of queries programatically. The PoP program stores the queries you enter in it in a file &lt;code&gt;Queries3.xml&lt;/code&gt; in the corresponding &lt;code&gt;Program Files&lt;/code&gt; folder. The queries are organised into folders, the XML is easy to read. Producing a correct XML file with the queries is a little bit try-error process, but you can easily succeed when you create an empty query with an authors and then using a small script (or you favourite text editor/spreadsheet) copy the query entry and only change the Author attribute of the &lt;code&gt;PoPQuery&lt;/code&gt; element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T20:11:33.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9443" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:25:36.513" Score="19" ViewCount="6475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, I read the name “Howard University” on a list, and since I had no idea where it was, I looked it up. I was amazed from their website because, well, most people on the photos there are black!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I assume it does not reflect the ethnicity of the local environment (Washington DC), I went to search for an explanation. Wikipedia says it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_and_universities&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“historically black university”&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;established before 1964 with the intention of serving the black community&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I understand that segregation-era black universities might have a predominantly African American faculty and student body after the end of segregation, but it's now almost 50 years ago. So, &lt;strong&gt;what factors explain how an institution such as Howard University didn't get more ethnically/racially diverse, while multiculturalism seems an important part of academic way of life?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-24T03:19:25.173" LastActivityDate="2020-10-27T18:56:12.050" Title="Why is Howard University still predominantly black?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;&lt;ethnicity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:29:31.700" Score="10" ViewCount="12380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I decided fairly late in life (21) that I feel like studying mathematics. I've always been interested in higher maths, I've just been daunted by some of the esoteric notations and theorems. But, no longer a philistine, I'm infatuated with pure mathematics. Right now I'm pursuing a Bachelor's degree in English. Is there a way I can get a Phd via an MSc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I'm really asking is this: &lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to get into a Masters program without having a Bachelors in the field?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user88526" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T18:04:27.257" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:04:27.257" Title="Math Major and Grad School -- Necessary?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9439" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:02:34.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, it is possible to get into a masters program without a bachelor in the field. What you do need to do though display an aptitude for the subject. Also, if you were to be admitted into a masters program, you would likely be required to take undergraduate courses to get &quot;up to speed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are still in undergrad studies, why not make the switch now by taking mathematics courses. The additional advantage to this is if it turns out that you don't like the area, you had not invested a significant amount of effort and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T21:02:34.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9438" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:31:31.703" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The excellent book &quot;Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?&quot;, by Beverly Daniel Tatum, offers an explanation of -- well, the question posed by the title of the book, but as a general phenomenon, for example why HBCU's continue to appeal to African-Americans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T21:31:31.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9452" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:50:29.187" Score="37" ViewCount="4880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to stay in academia after finishing my PhD. My current research field is not exciting to me anymore, but also I am too old to change fields. Although my research and my interest were so far quite theoretically focussed, I would like to find a more applied job in R&amp;amp;D in a big prestigeous company, helping improving future technologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now: How do I tell my supervisor? I want to avoid leaving the impression I think our research field is boring.&#xA;My supervisor tries already finding Postdoc positions for me, and probably thinks I'm quite qualified for staying in academia. So I fear to be disappointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7758" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T21:54:08.787" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T04:11:03.457" Title="How to tell my advisor I don't want to stay in academia" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9438" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:47:54.050" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just don't think HBCUs are all that unusual in terms of having a student body that's not a random demographic sample of the United States.  Brandeis has a higher than average percentage of Jewish students, Cardiff has a higher than average percentage of Welsh students, and Duke has a higher percentage of southern students.  Students pick schools in part by cultural and social match, and ethnicity plays a role there.  Furthermore, people go to schools that their family members and friends went to, and a black kid is more likely to have grown up hearing &quot;keep up the good work and you'll get into Howard/Morehouse/Spelman&quot; from their alumni parents and teachers while a white kid's role models are less likely to be Howard alums.  Finally, demographic shifts happen slowly: Sarah Lawrence has been coed since 1968 and it's still 3/4s female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T22:47:54.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9442" CreationDate="2013-04-17T23:32:10.340" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different fields have very different attitudes about academia vs industry. In computer science, for example, research jobs in industry have a lot of respect (and pay incredibly well). Moreover, given how few academic jobs there are out there, it would be foolish not to look for opportunities wherever you can find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to go into academia just because your advisor thinks you should. And you &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; should not take a job that you're not interested in pursuing. As an advisor, I'm happy when my students get good jobs anywhere, and I'd imagine that your supervisor would be that way too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely your advisor is in &quot;default mode&quot; assuming that you'll continue in academia. If you were to tell him/her that you'd like to explore other options, I wouldn't be surprised if he/she had good contacts to help you find good industrial jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T23:32:10.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9446" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-18T03:16:59.497" Score="7" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some journals, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BBS&quot;&gt;Behavioral and Brain Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, that publish a single target article per issue, followed by 20 to 30 commentaries on that article, and then a rebuttal/synthesis from the target article authors. Their rough workflow seems to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors submit a target article.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target article is peer-reviewed as in a normal journal, with a focus on if it is of sufficient interest to warrant discussion in such a forum setting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If accepted, the editors send a massive number of invitations to associates of the journal, soliciting commentary proposals on the target article. A dark-net link to the final version of the target article is included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors submit commentary proposals, and the editors review them, selecting a subset that would make a good discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected commentators write their articles and submit them to the editors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editors do a quick review of commentaries and pass them on to the target article authors for a rebuttal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target article authors write a rebuttal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything is published at the same time (this is the stage that BBS makes anything directly publicly available from their site).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At stage [3], the number of commentators contacted is significantly in excess of what you would for soliciting peer review. A link to the post-review paper that is accessible without any logins is also distributed, but this link is on the 'dark net' -- nothing on the main site links directly to it. The contacted associates are encouraged to share the article with their colleagues and bring non-contacted collaborators on board if they want to write a commentary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;to what extent can the sharing in step [3] be taken?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you share the article privately as much as you want? I.e. can a non-associate that was sent the article by an associate (but not the editor) then forward it to another non-associate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you contact the authors of the target article with questions or comments that make it obvious that you've read the article? (Note, that you wouldn't be able to do this for an article you are peer-reviewing)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you write a blog post about the article before it comes out, making a summary of it, and referencing it as (to appear)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you share the link that was emailed to you publicly (say on your blog)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the target authors often have a preprint of the target article linked from their website, kind of like a white paper (although it isn't always exactly the same version as is sent out by BBS). I am interested in answers to the above questions in both cases: when a preprint is available from the authors and when only the BBS dark-net link exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T09:19:20.037" Title="How much can you share unpublished forum articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;community&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9442" CreationDate="2013-04-18T03:51:09.837" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you are going to do after PhD is &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; business. You &lt;strong&gt;own&lt;/strong&gt; the decision. Nobody else does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to avoid leaving the impression your research field is boring, then don't say it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell him it is your will to go to industry. It is your future at stake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would like to &lt;em&gt;find a more applied job in R&amp;amp;D in a big prestigious company, helping improving future technologies&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;This is good enough reason to go to industry.&lt;/strong&gt; Tell him that. If he disagrees, ask him why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he had the impression that you are interested in staying in academia, it's time to tell him the truth. Honesty is the best policy. Tell him you will be much happier if you work in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honest. Be frank. Be polite. He is your advisor after all. If he disagrees with you. let him convince you otherwise. Listen to him. He would provide the opinions from his perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use his advice as the opinion from your advisor (the person who advises you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, make your own decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing for you right now is to &lt;strong&gt;find a job to do whatever you want to do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T04:11:03.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T04:11:03.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9314" CreationDate="2013-04-18T04:37:19.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best option is to set up your personal page and have your file hosted there. It is better to have your own independent site (independent from your university) in case you are to move to another university (post-doc, faculty position, etc) and cannot host your file there anymore. Once you have the dissertation hosted somewhere, you can share it through social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not a possibility for you, another option would be to share it online in an open access database like Figshare (&lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://figshare.com/&lt;/a&gt;). Note that you should double check guidelines from your university to ensure it is okay, and consider if you plan to publish your dissertation in a journal in the future (some journals do not like it if the pre-prints are available elsewhere publicly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an online post about why one decides to have dissertations hosted there.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.tdl.org/fuse/?p=347&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sites.tdl.org/fuse/?p=347&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T04:37:19.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9439" CreationDate="2013-04-18T05:05:25.457" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's possible to get a graduate degree in mathematics even if your undergraduate degree is in a completely unrelated field.  (Everything I say will be assuming you are in the U.S.; otherwise, I don't know.)  In practice, you'll need to acquire much of the knowledge from an undergraduate degree in mathematics before starting, although you can fill in a few gaps during a master's program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have unlimited time and money, then it's straightforward.  You take undergraduate courses until you have completed most of a math major, either by delaying your graduation or by taking courses as a special student (i.e., not in a degree program) after your bachelor's degree.  At that point, even thought you won't have a degree in mathematics, you'll be able to make a compelling case that you have equivalent background.  You may not have a strong enough application to get into a top Ph.D. program directly, but you should be able to get into a master's program in a decent department, and if you do well enough there you can apply to even stronger departments for your Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawback with this plan is that it's slow (you might spend two years or more taking courses before even applying to master's programs) and expensive (you'll be being charged tuition for these courses).  Instead, the real question isn't whether it's possible in principle, but rather how to get to a Ph.D. program as quickly as possible, since at that point you'll no longer need to pay anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How efficiently you can do this depends heavily on your background and experience.  If you are just starting to take college math courses, then it may take several years to prepare yourself for a master's program.  If you already have a lot of experience, then you might be ready to apply this fall.  I'd recommend consulting with faculty in your math department to see what they think of your background and what they would advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exist certificate or post-baccalaureate programs designed to prepare people from other fields for math grad school.  (See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/math/certificates/gradmath&quot;&gt;http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/math/certificates/gradmath&lt;/a&gt;.)  Such a program could be useful, depending on how well it fits with your background and preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T05:05:25.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5301" CreationDate="2013-04-18T05:36:38.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't hurt to apply. Sure, in some cases the hosting institutions might want to consider someone with a definite graduation date, but that's their decisions. It could also be that the hosting institution loves you and is willing to wait until whenever you are done, given that the funding will be available later still (I have seen one case like this). Just be honest/realistic about when you expect to graduate. Post-doc positions are pretty competitive these days and it is better to look for more options than less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not comfortable applying formally early on, then at least make sure to use your informal contacts so that they know you are actively looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T05:36:38.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9442" CreationDate="2013-04-18T07:31:00.893" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I tell my supervisor? I want to avoid leaving the impression I think our research field is boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers are already very good. You don't have a specifically academic problem, yours is a communication strategy issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;be honest:&lt;/strong&gt; in your specific case, tell your advisor as soon as possible in order to avoid a situation when too individuals want/wish each other only good and due to a misalignment it ends up in a clash;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;focus on the positive side:&lt;/strong&gt; Communicate that &lt;em&gt;you are motivated to go for an industry position&lt;/em&gt;. It's easier than to focus on why you &lt;em&gt;don't want to stay in academia&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always two sides of a coin. Your question sounds as if you wanted to avoid something (staying in academia) and that is always difficult to communicate, since it &lt;strong&gt;pushes&lt;/strong&gt; you to defend your decision. Try to formulate it as if you were positively &lt;strong&gt;pulled&lt;/strong&gt; to somewhere else. Then it's not you who is on defense, you took the active part in the conversation and usually it will be the other party to defend their position why not to do something (going to industry) is a bad move. As pointed out by others, you own a decision to do something (subjective, hence any reason is good enough), but there usually arises a need to explain why you don't want to go the default route (calls for more objective arguments, which are much harder to formulate). Your motivation for being pulled somewhere can stay vague, I wouldn't even hesitate to invoke emotions, such as &lt;code&gt;I feel like I would like such a job and want to give it a try&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T07:31:00.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9461" CreationDate="2013-04-18T08:12:37.943" Score="8" ViewCount="534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that the copy editors of at least two publishers (the American Institute for Physics and American Physical Society) do something weird when they copy-edit my submitted papers. For all references to papers in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, which I include in my references as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;J. W. Doe, Nature &lt;strong&gt;197&lt;/strong&gt;, 412 (1974)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they replace “Nature” by “Nature (London)”:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;J. W. Doe, Nature (London) &lt;strong&gt;197&lt;/strong&gt;, 412 (1974)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not understand why they do that! I know it is customary in they style for &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt; to have a city next to the publisher name (though I don't think it is very relevant in this day and age), but why do it for journals? Are there multiple &lt;strong&gt;different&lt;/strong&gt; editions of &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T09:07:00.973" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T13:54:38.367" Title="Why does the copy editor want Nature to be “Nature (London)”?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9455" CreationDate="2013-04-17T18:48:48.670" Score="46" ViewCount="30258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting a Ph.D. thesis fairly soon and my supervisor has flagged my use of capitalisation in &quot;Section&quot; and &quot;Chapter&quot; as possibly incorrect. I have googled about a bit and I see mixed opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, when writing a computer science Ph.D. thesis, what is the correct way to capitalise &quot;Section&quot;, &quot;Chapter&quot;, &quot;Appendix&quot;, &quot;Figure&quot;, &quot;Table&quot;, ... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, what is the correct capitalisation for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;In Chapter 3, it was shown that...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;In the previous Section, a method was presented to...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The graph in Figure 3 shows...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6838" OwnerDisplayName="vext01" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T11:06:23.830" LastActivityDate="2018-11-07T14:18:40.290" Title="Capitalisation of &quot;Section&quot; and &quot;Chapter&quot; in a Ph.D. Thesis" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-04-17T19:04:29.347" Score="59" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In Chapter 3, it was shown that...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems correct. &quot;Chapter 3&quot; is the name of the third chapter. Names are capitalised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In the previous Section, a method was presented to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems wrong. &quot;Section&quot; is not referring to the previous section by name, therefore no capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The graph in Figure 3 shows...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct. Same as the first example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the rule (I use) is, if it is a proper name, then use a capital. This means, if it is of the form &quot;Section $n$&quot;, where $n$ is a number, then it needs a capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" OwnerDisplayName="Dave Clarke" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T19:04:29.347" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9458" CreationDate="2013-04-18T08:48:10.787" Score="11" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in the physical sciences working towards my Ph.D and planning to finish in less than two years from now. In this age, where data mining/collection/analysis and then selling/using it for profit has become ubiquitous and quite easy because of the internet and the ever increasing plethora of electronic devices, I have become a little paranoid and worked quite hard over the past decade to keep myself anonymous and to stop anyone from piecing info about me as much as possible. I do regularly google myself and see what I can learn about myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the thing is, I don't have a webpage of any kind. No blogs! Certainly no social sites. No professional/connection profiles like on LinkedIn. Even the university provided webpage/space is unused and I try to control where my university email is published. Only the people who know me and have met me face to face (personally and professionally like at a conference) have my info to get in touch with me. It would be quite difficult for someone who I don't know to get in touch with me even if it is research related. A potential employer will have a very hard time trying to find anything about me on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is how detrimental is this behavior to my professional future? Just how bad is it really, assuming it is bad? Do I really need it? Will this hurt my chances in the future when I try to get a postdoc or a job in the industry? I haven't published anything yet but I will very soon and then I expect to have at least another paper before I graduate. Furthermore, I really don't know what will I be doing after graduation. I might do a postdoc at a lab but then after that I don't plan on staying in academia. I might just stay at a lab or go to the industry working for a R&amp;amp;D somewhere. I am also toying with the idea of just starting my own small business. It could be something completely unrelated to my degree like a bakery or a bookstore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's stay that even if I decide to stay in the field like working at a national lab and publishing regularly, can this be done without a public online presence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I am in the USA and I don't plan on ever moving out of the States so the postdoc/lab stuff will be here in the States if I decide to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4335" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T09:27:57.613" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T09:41:59.237" Title="How important is to maintain an online/digital presence for a graduate student?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-04-19T10:05:27.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2013-04-18T09:41:59.237" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it hurts your chances. It does not make you unemployable, far from it (I have recruited post-docs without web presence): when you apply for a position, your application file will include all the information that should be necessary for the hiring committee to decide, so they do not &lt;em&gt;strictly&lt;/em&gt; need to see your webpage. As long as you appear on the departmental or group-level web listing of researchers… (otherwise it just looks weird)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, look at the bigger picture: you're trying to make yourself a name in academia, so why do something that prevents it to some extent? There are good reasons for people to look up your webpage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They saw you name, and wondered who you are, where you are, what you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want to see what you have recently published, and find it easier to have it grouped on your web page that through a citation database (where your name may not be unique)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They know you, and thought about you for an open (or soon-to-be-open) position, and they want to check out if you have moved, if you recently accepted a position, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are two things that are absolutely needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People need to find that minimum amount of information about you when they search your name&lt;/strong&gt;, and possibly some research-related keywords. A personal webpage, even a terse one, may be better for that than your departmental web page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your list of publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for myself, I maintained a webpage composed of exactly 1 HTML file, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my &lt;strong&gt;name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;status&lt;/strong&gt; (“PhD student at South Laponia U.”)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;research keywords&lt;/strong&gt;, link to my &lt;strong&gt;publication list&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-8329-2010&quot;&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;link to my &lt;strong&gt;CV&lt;/strong&gt; (so I lied, I have a second file on that website: my CV in PDF format)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;email address&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;link to my departmental website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. (It used to host my Master's thesis, but it is now hosted on an open archive, with a link from my publications list.) No picture of me or my pets, no blog/tumblr/twitter, no social websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T09:41:59.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9453" CreationDate="2013-04-18T09:53:32.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, according to both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/pubservs/style/4thed/AIP_Style_4thed.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AIP style guide&lt;/a&gt;, as well as &lt;a href=&quot;https://publish.aps.org/files/styleguide-pr.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APS style guide&lt;/a&gt;, references to journal articles should be referred to without a place of publication. However, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bk-2006-STYG.ch014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACS style guide&lt;/a&gt; on page 9, you can read the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For some periodicals whose CASSI abbreviation includes a place of publication, you need not add the place of publication unless its omission would&#xA;  create ambiguity. If CASSI lists only one journal with a given main title, there is no ambiguity in omitting the place of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And indeed, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cassi.cas.org/search.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CASSI&lt;/a&gt; tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://cassi.cas.org/publication.jsp?P=LglBQf5Q2NQyz133K_ll3zLPXfcr-WXfgiNFJ_JXtGlPxOTvACeoFzLPXfcr-WXfimSBIkq8XcUjhmk0WtYxmzLPXfcr-WXfOVmSOhs8-IG1XmrSkgbolw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entry for Nature&lt;/a&gt; reads as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Displaying Record for Publication: &lt;code&gt;Nature (London, United Kingdom)&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T11:54:14.723" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T11:54:14.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9453" CreationDate="2013-04-18T13:54:38.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For these journals, the copy editor is correct.  &quot;Nature (London)&quot; is listed in the American Physical Society's house style for &lt;a href=&quot;https://authors.aps.org/STYLE/style_jabbr.html&quot;&gt;abbreviations&lt;/a&gt;, which makes it the standard abbreviation for APS journals, and it is also in the American Institute of Physics's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/pubservs/style/4thed/appg.pdf&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt;.  It's not part of a general pattern of including locations, but rather a special case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably the inclusion of &quot;London&quot; was originally intended to avoid some long-ago ambiguity, perhaps with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Nature&quot;&gt;La Nature&lt;/a&gt;.  It sounds like La Nature was more of a popular magazine about science than a modern scientific journal, but then again &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/npg_/company_info/mission.html&quot;&gt;so was Nature&lt;/a&gt; in its early history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no serious ambiguity about the name Nature today, but publishers are reluctant to change abbreviations, partly out of fear that if you've been using a specific abbreviation for many decades, a careful reader may wonder whether a different abbreviation is a mistake or even refers to another journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T13:54:38.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9439" CreationDate="2013-04-18T15:36:05.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got into MSc program in Economics having my base degree in Engineering, and then moved to get a Ph.D. in Statistics with these two degrees. But all of them are highly math-intensive. You are at about 5-8 years disadvantage compared to Chinese and Korean applicants, and at about 3-5 years disadvantage compared to US applicants (again, assuming that you are in the U.S.). While Anonymous Mathematician, obviously, has a more in depth knowledge of what kind of applicants are being admitted to his or her department, I would say that it seems very difficult to me given your non-technical background. You can take courses in math, but if you have not been trained to think as a mathematician, you won't be able to fit into math world. (A girlfriend who was majoring in math dumped me when I was an undergrad saying &quot;You don't think like a mathematician&quot;. So be prepared that this is a different bunch than the people you are used to in your English classes.) This had to happen throughout your secondary school; if you start math in college, you could still do engineering and economics, but pure math is nearly impossible. Furthermore, you would have to seek proof-based courses, and you may not see them until the senior year even if you major in math. (I was stunned to hear from one of my students that he only saw epsilon-delta formalism in calculus as a senior in college; I had it as a junior in high school.) If you apply to a graduate math program with just three semesters of calculus, you won't be taken very seriously. I personally think that one cannot seriously call themselves mathematicians unless they know abstract algebra and complex analysis, as these keep reappearing in pretty much every field of mathematics. (Folks at math.stackexchange might be able to give you better pointers as far as specific courses go, though. Your question being moved to Academia made some sense, but it is still very much discipline-specific.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a glimpse of whether you are prepared to work in a math grad program, take GRE Math subject test. If you don't get some 80+%, you are not ready yet (folks &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=1003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with scores below 60% don't go anywhere; even folks with 80+% percentile don't get accepted left and right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T15:36:05.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:34:13.733" Score="14" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did not get accepted into any good graduate programs.  For various reasons, I feel I could do much better if I reapplied next year.  This question isn't about the &lt;em&gt;feasibility&lt;/em&gt; of doing so, but of the affect on my professional reputation and network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an investment for the university to give me funding, so it would be a jerk move to transfer simply for the increase in prestige.  But &lt;strong&gt;how much&lt;/strong&gt; of a jerk move would it be?  Would it burn my colleagues and advisors so hard that I would scar my reputation for the rest of my career?  Would I simply lose these people as connections, but have no lasting affect other than that?  Or would everyone be understanding that this is a professional choice, that I am looking out for my future?  (If so, could I request recommendations from professors in the program?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I transfer to a better school either at the end of my first or second year as a graduate student, how much will this piss people off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am talking about transferring from a mid-ranked state school to somewhere good, at least top 20 hopefully top 10.  And since I am sure this matters, the discipline is mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6843" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T06:19:17.590" Title="Would transferring to a better school in the middle of a graduate program irreparably hurt my professional connections and academic reputation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2013-04-18T17:54:39.920" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fine. Don't feel guilty at all. I say this as a math professor at a mid-ranked state school, who has written rec letters for students who, for various reasons, wanted to transfer out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure not to speak ill of the place you're leaving, but you owe it to yourself to seek out the best opportunities available. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T17:54:39.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-04-18T18:13:09.880" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a question of style. The most accepted custom is that given by Dave: you capitalize logical divisions if you refer to them by number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've never believed that there is any real logic behind that rule, other than emphasis. Identifying things by a number doesn't make them proper nouns: as an example, you don't commonly capitalize “page” as “see Page 10”…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:13:09.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1199" CreationDate="2013-04-18T18:39:22.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies by discipline. In Medicine, conferences are not as important as journal articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Computer science, [some] conferences are very prestigious &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:39:22.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9278" CreationDate="2013-04-18T20:46:12.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is a supplement to walkmanyl's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I suggest you to go through &lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1998076.1998122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; paper? It is a very nice paper which gives you an algorithm to disambiguate author names and can be used in conjunction with the method described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I know that it has been used in a number of scientometric/bibliometric studies already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T20:46:12.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-18T20:50:57.930" Score="8" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been wondering recently about how graduate schools and in general anyone who reviews my academic record views coops. By coop, I mean a semester taken off from undergraduate studies to work in a related industry. If the student takes more than 8 semesters to graduate, is it a problem? Should the student (if they can) extend their studies by an additional semester so that they graduate in the spring, or is a fall graduation equally acceptable. Do grad programs accept students to start in the spring, or only the fall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to keep the question above general pursuant to the guidelines in the FAQ, however I will appreciate anyone who is willing to review my specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a sophomore in CS at a strong US engineering school. I have 2 summer internships, and now a coop under my belt. My problem is, I do not like any of the work I have experienced. I don't mind programming, but it is not something I can do for 40 hours a week without getting really bored. I only really enjoy the difficult math problems, which don't come up that often for most CS jobs,and I absolutely hate wires, soldering, network-admin and low-level computer work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to switch to Math and pursue a graduate degree in either data science or applied math. I can graduate on time by dropping to a math major and a cs and stat double minor, or I can add a semester and get a double major in math and cs or stats, or take graduate classes. I should also mention that my GPA is currently at 3.2 largely because I have tried to alter the CS curriculum to incorporate the things that interest me (a realistic expectation is a 3.4-3.5 graduating GPA). My final consideration is that the math dept at my school is somewhat low on most academic rankings, whereas my CS dept is in the thunder-weight category trailing the likes of MIT. It would not be hard for me to find research opportunities in either department, which I intend to do either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6848" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T13:51:40.457" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T13:51:40.457" Title="Expected undergraduate semesters and requirements for graduate students" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2013-04-18T21:39:04.303" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; degree.  As long as you are honest with &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; about your intentions and your motivations, and you don't speak ill of your old department in your application, nobody has cause to label you a jerk.  I recommend asking your current advisor for a recommendation letter, so that the program you're applying to knows (1) that you're not trying to sneak out, and (2) that your current department isn't kicking you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, changing departments is no reason to stop collaborating with your old advisor; that collaboration can pay off handsomely later.  Strong recommendation letters from faculty &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; your PhD institution are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; helpful for the post-PhD job search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I did this.  Some of my former students have done this.  We're all fine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T21:39:04.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9471" CreationDate="2013-04-18T21:58:07.997" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been wondering recently about how graduate schools and in general anyone who reviews my academic record views coops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coops are fantastic.  Especially for programs in computer science / applied math / data science, &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; industry experience is a strong advantage in graduate school applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the student takes more than 8 semesters to graduate, is it a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  &lt;strong&gt;Nobody cares.&lt;/strong&gt;  Even if someone on a grad admission committee &lt;em&gt;noticed&lt;/em&gt;, the longer time would quickly be explained by your coop semesters and your change in majors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the student (if they can) extend their studies by an additional semester so that they graduate in the spring, or is a fall graduation equally acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptable to whom?  If you mean graduate admissions committees, then I repeat: &lt;strong&gt;Nobody cares.&lt;/strong&gt;  In particular, graduating in the spring is no barrier to starting a graduate program the following fall.  (Of course, you have to eat, but that's a separate issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do grad programs accept students to start in the spring, or only the fall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some do, some don't.  &lt;strong&gt;Every grad program is different.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point: You mention coops, GPAs, and program reputation, but those are not the most significant bits.  Graduate admissions committees at top departments are primarily looking for &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence of research potential&lt;/strong&gt;.  Assuming my quick Google search correctly identifies your university, you should have &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of opportunities for undergraduate research experience with world-class faculty.  Take advantage of them!  &lt;strong&gt;Start now!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T21:58:07.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T02:59:08.287" Score="6" ViewCount="20211" Body="&lt;p&gt;For something I'm applying to, I need to know if I'm considered a student, a part-time employee, or a full-time employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate research assistant with a yearly stipend.  No other employment is allowed.  20 hours a week of research is expected according to the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T08:08:59.977" Title="Is a research assistantship considered full-time employment?" Tags="&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9474" CreationDate="2013-04-19T04:38:58.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your purposes, I would use either &quot;full-time employee&quot; or &quot;student,&quot; depending on which answer gives you the most benefit.  Because you aren't allowed other employment (the legality of whether that is enforceable is disputable), your position is full-time because it implies that the other 20 hours a week of 40-hour a week employment* will be spent on studies.  You can certainly claim to be a student, as I assume you have a student ID that demonstrates that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*if you make it through graduate school working only 40 hours a week, you're either brilliant, or not working hard enough, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T04:38:58.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9478" CreationDate="2013-04-19T04:45:46.717" Score="22" ViewCount="1684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a conference paper of the first time, and the conference I am targeting requires anonymized submissions for the peer review. But at the same time, we (as in, my research group) are required to acknowledge the grants and support of our funding agency in all our publications. Plus, I also need to refer to a previous work of our group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate for me to &lt;em&gt;leave out&lt;/em&gt; the acknowledgements section and the reference to my work while sending the paper for review, but &lt;em&gt;add these details later on&lt;/em&gt; if and when the paper gets accepted? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is appropriate to add details (the acknowledgments section, for instance) which were not a part of the paper when it went for review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could think of this as the only way to satisfy all concerns. Are there better suggestions from more experienced people in academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T06:11:07.393" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T06:11:07.393" Title="Add acknowledgments and self citations to paper only after the blind review?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-04-19T04:54:13.877" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your best ability, you should remove all identifying information for the blind review.  This includes removing author names and affiliations, avoiding phrases such as &quot;in our previous work,&quot; and removing acknowledgements.  During the camera-ready portion of the review process (should your paper be accepted), you will add in that information.  You'll almost certainly have to make some changes to the paper, so if you are concerned about leaving space for an acknowledgements section, don't be, as you can't really predict the exact text right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for referring to your previous work, make it as anonymous as you can.  In general, you should refer to your other work as if it was any other work--i.e., don't link it directly to yourself at all.  Although it may sound odd for an author to talk about himself/herself as if he or she was a different person, it's acceptable and expected in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T04:54:13.877" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-04-19T07:45:49.820" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're required to acknowledge grants and grant agencies in your &lt;strong&gt;publications&lt;/strong&gt;. Right now, all you have is a &lt;strong&gt;submission&lt;/strong&gt;. If and when the submission becomes a publication will be the time to add the grant information in, especially if the venue has a strong anonymization policy for submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T07:45:49.820" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9474" CreationDate="2013-04-19T07:54:59.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For something I'm applying to, I need to know if I'm considered a student, a part-time employee, or a full-time employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer could heavily depend on the country you are located in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is obvious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you have a proper work contract with the university? If yes, then check your contract and see what kind of employee you are;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are you officially enrolled at a university as a student? If yes, the program you are enrolled in tells you what kind of a student you are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the non-obvious part. As pointed out by others, in some countries you would be a either a full-time, or a part-time employee, but despite that, for many purposes (grant applications, student fellowships, conference registration, etc.)  you could be considered a full-time student. This is the case for Germany (among others) where your contract would stipulate an amount of hours you are paid for, but you would be nevertheless expected to work full-time as a PhD. student and the university would have no problem issuing a certificate about your &quot;studentship&quot; for you. So to tackle your question, the first instance to consult is your supervisor/adviser, and the second one would be your department/faculty administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T07:54:59.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9474" CreationDate="2013-04-19T08:08:59.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have citable information to give you but being a doctoral student and usually being on a research assistantship, anecdotally, I can tell you that in the United States, if you are a full time MS/PhD student and are on a research assistantship then it is not considered a full time job. Your full time job is that of a &quot;student&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was confirmed by an HR representative of my university because I asked her this exact question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T08:08:59.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2013-04-19T09:33:31.323" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field, which is not mathematics, externally funded studentships are quite common. Leaving an externally funded studentship is completely unprofessional and very bad form. If a student withdraws the PI will generally lose the remainder of the funding and potentially be band from applying in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T09:33:31.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9485" CreationDate="2013-04-19T10:46:47.480" Score="24" ViewCount="4992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just got into a PhD program and was asked to give a presentation to my juniors regarding grad school applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my country (Asia region), people are fanatical about non-academic extra curricular activities that are totally not related to their topic (sports, debate team, run charities etc). E.g. A student with good grades and is the captain of the school's basket ball team can get picked for a mathematics PhD scholarship over the top mathematics student with zero non-academic activities. The belief is that scholars should be &quot;all rounded&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the situation is different in the USA. I would like to encourage my juniors who have excellent academic records but without significant non-academic extra curricular activities to try for the USA because of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand there are scholarships like the Rhodes which do look at non-academic achievements. But is my general understanding of non-academic activities for USA PhD admissions correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T22:35:01.640" LastActivityDate="2019-12-19T10:09:02.443" Title="Do non-academic extra curricular activities matter for grad school applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9484" CreationDate="2013-04-19T11:15:04.920" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general. non-academic activities are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; considered for admissions for schools and most fellowship programs in the US. The primary reason for this is that graduate programs are looking for people who will become excellent scholars and researchers (and sometimes even good teachers!). Success in sports and other highly non-academic activities is less likely to have significant influence in assessments of one's ability to do research, and therefore is not strongly considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; exceptions. People can choose to fund activities however they choose, and can place whatever restrictions on the use of the money they donate. For instance, an alumnus could fund a fellowship for PhD students who play the tuba in a college marching band. While this doesn't happen often, it can be done. But typically admissions committees aren't concerned with such issues, and don't take them into account in making admissions decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="1190" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T19:33:21.807" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T19:33:21.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9442" CreationDate="2013-04-19T14:44:20.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be completely honest, I faced a similar situation towards the end of my PhD - I wasn't exactly bored with the research field but simply felt I should try out the non-academia. And I am glad I took that decision. But beware: there is a definite getting-used-to phase wherein you need to come to terms with your ego satisfaction etc. I also know of instances where people have gone back to academics after a 2-year stint at the industry. My 2 cents will be to pitch your am-getting-bored-of-this-stuff down and promote a wanna-try-this-out-too.&#xA;HTH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6853" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T14:44:20.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9442" CreationDate="2013-04-19T14:59:23.510" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to mention it is to go ahead and actually discuss it with your advisor frankly. You should be prepared to explain why you don't want to go into academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may just be the case that your professor assumes you want to go into academia because you haven't told him otherwise! It's quite possible that if you mentioned wanting to go down an alternate career path, he'd help with that, too. (Although that does depend on your advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also need to have this conversation more than once. I've known a few fellow graduate students who have had that issue with their advisors not &quot;getting the hint&quot; and continuing to recommend academic positions, &lt;em&gt;even after they've moved on&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T14:59:23.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9494" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:17:15.180" Score="7" ViewCount="1863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished reading a textbook of about 250 pages. For my personal reference, I created a summary in note form of about 30 pages. Formulations are close to the original text with some variation on my part, and there are literal quotes. I don't consider it a replacement of the book (obviously?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do with this summary? Is it fair to give it to friends who are interested in the topic? What about students? Can I even publish it online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that laws may play into this. The book has been published in the U.S., I live in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:03:56.010" Title="What can I do with a book summary?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:53:20.613" Score="8" ViewCount="989" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Ph.D. student, and I am writing my first proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for a research grant in the field of chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that I have found &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; confusing is the format of my written proposal.  Specifically, what sections should I include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/&quot;&gt;U.S. NSF&lt;/a&gt; distributes a very detailed (76 pages) set of guidelines (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpgprint.pdf&quot;&gt;The National Science Foundation Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide: Part I - Grant Proposal Guide, available in PDF here&lt;/a&gt;).  Section IIC2 is about &quot;Sections of the Proposal,&quot; but this section only enumerates the following sections that I should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a. Cover Sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;b. Project Summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;c. Table of Contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;d. Project Description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;e. References Cited&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;f. Biographical Sketches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;g. Budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;h. Current and Pending Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;i. Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;j. Special Information and Supplementary Documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;k. Appendices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the Project Description -- at least from the intellectual merit and broader impacts perspective -- will contain the &quot;meat&quot; of my proposal; the Project Description has a 15 page limit.  It is here, I think, that I will discuss my plan of work, the scientific rationale, and the methods that I will apply.  I should also discuss the related work in the literature in this section.  Finally, I should discuss broader impacts of the proposed work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, beyond this, the NSF Guidelines do not seem to be all that specific about sections or section headings within the Project Description section.  &lt;strong&gt;Am I free to make my own sections/section headings &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the Project Description section?&lt;/strong&gt;  For example, could I make a section &quot;Previous experimental work,&quot; followed by a section &quot;Previous theoretical work,&quot; followed by a section &quot;Proposed model description,&quot; and so on and so on?  These section headings would be quite specific to my proposed work and the chemical system that I propose to investigate.  Thanks for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6854" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T17:30:36.733" Title="What sections should I include in the Project Description section of my NSF grant proposal?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9490" CreationDate="2013-04-19T17:30:36.733" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NSF doesn't specify any rules on what goes into the project description, but each community has its norms and expectations. If you wish to get a good review, it's probably a good idea to understand the norms and standards of your community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, what you should do is find peers in the area that have written proposals for this program and look at what are standard templates (and isn't your advisor involved in this ? In my corner of the NSF, students can't be lead PIs on proposals). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sound of it, you haven't seen too many examples of proposals (successful or otherwise), and I'd strongly recommend that being your first step. If that's not possible, talk to faculty within your department (again, where's your advisor ?) to get help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T17:30:36.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-04-19T18:30:40.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criticise it:&lt;/strong&gt; Do you disagree with the authors about some topics/methods? Do you have some ideas on how to enhance the book? Discuss them with your peers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rephrase it:&lt;/strong&gt; You can rewrite the summary with your own words and publish it as &lt;strong&gt;Notes on XXX&lt;/strong&gt; where XXX is the book topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370209001325&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Book Review&lt;/a&gt; out of it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;KEEP it to refresh your knowledge about the topic. In case you forgot or its not directly related to your research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depends on the topic, you might write a blog about it; if you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T18:39:43.950" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T18:39:43.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:03:56.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two questions, namely what you can do legally and what the community would consider acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, distributing such a summary is probably a copyright violation if you borrow too much from the original; in the U.S., it would be considered a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot;&gt;derivative work&lt;/a&gt; (the legal definition includes &quot;abridgment&quot; and &quot;condensation&quot; as forms of derivative work).  In that case, it would be illegal to distribute it without permission from the copyright holder.  On the other hand, you are not likely to get in trouble unless you offend the author or publisher.  The easiest way to offend the publisher would be if they view your summary as competition that might decrease sales of the book, but they might take a strict approach to copyright enforcement in any case (it depends on the publisher, and I would guess that a nonprofit publisher might be more understanding than a big commercial publisher).  In practice, the worst case scenario is probably being forced to take down any copies you had posted online.  You could be sued, but that seems unlikely to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research community is likely to take a less strict approach than the law.  If you distribute the summary privately (e.g., just to friends or students), then nobody is likely to find out or care.  If you post it online, then it's more likely to attract attention, but it won't necessarily be negative attention.  That depends on how you've written it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep several things in mind to avoid causing offense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should be absolutely clear about what you have done: what's a direct quote, what's a mildly reworded version of the author's words, what's a summary in your own words.  You need to be careful about distinguishing your own interpretaton from the author's, and you can run into trouble in two directions, either by seeming to take credit for observations that are explained in the book, or by seeming to attribute your own ideas or organization to the author.  This is a difficult balancing act, which is easy to mess up.  Even if you are very careful, the author may still feel that you are distorting the emphasis on different topics, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should be very careful about correctness.  I would be unhappy if someone circulated a summary of a book of mine that had mistakes in it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; recommend asking the author for permission, since that would put the author in an awkward position (of having to either endorse or object to your summary).  If the author discovers your summary and complains, then I feel professional courtesy requires you to make changes or take it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would probably not post it online, but opinions could differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:03:56.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:32:30.910" Score="8" ViewCount="2253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize that this sort of question has been asked before and I have read through some of the other threads but I figured I'd see if there are any more perspectives out there. I am currently a research embryologist for a small fertility clinic with a Bsc in molecular biology. I have about 2 1/2 years of experience and have been accepted into an Masters in Bioinformatics program. I am very excited to begin taking classes but l have recently begun second guessing whether I should have tried to get into a PhD program. I will not be able to continue working at my current job while I am in school so I will likely be paying for school with loans unless I'm able to find a job after I relocate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those of you who have Masters degrees, would you do it again or go for a PhD? From what I have found searching around the site many people say PhDs are more academically focused while Masters degree holders tend to find more positions in industry. Is concern over the cost of a Masters degree a good reason to consider a PhD instead or do most of you find you were able to offset your education costs with the job you eventually found? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6855" LastEditorUserId="6855" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T19:00:26.243" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:10:37.383" Title="Is it Worth the Risk of Going into Debt for a Masters Degree Versus a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:37:16.923" Score="10" ViewCount="1144" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marking exams can be long, boring, and un-engaging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important one remain focused though to ensure that the evaluation is fair to each student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some methods one can employ to maintain focus and not zone-out while reading answers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4383" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T22:30:20.813" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T22:30:20.813" Title="Techniques to remain focused while marking examinations" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9496" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:51:43.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;True story: a bottle of wine (well, maybe just half a bottle). Spirits are not a good choice since they go quickly to your brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if I hurt feelings with my answer but the truth is that this technique is more common in the academia than I would like it were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique consists of splitting the marking into several short sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6856" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:51:43.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9496" CreationDate="2013-04-19T21:25:38.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your own website says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My primary area of research is the application of mathematical methods to educational testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I'm sure you have much more experience (first-hand or second-hand) and have given it more thought that you let appear in your question ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it heavily depends on the type of examination being marked, but unless it is very short, I tend to simply split it into many short bursts, and do those at a time when I am well rested (morning) and when I am outside my regular “work” setting: public transportation, waiting room of a doctor, café, in a garden when it's sunny, etc. The mood of the place I'm in helps, and gloomy settings just get me bored faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T21:25:38.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9496" CreationDate="2013-04-19T22:28:24.467" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is two issues in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to be fair to each student when it comes to this boring task of evaluating them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own policy is the &quot;mark-one-question-and-shuffle&quot; : I correct the first question/problem for all the students, then I shuffle the whole stack and go for another question that I also pick at random. This way if I am tired or in a bad mood, it will impact everybody, so it will be fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to stay focus for a long marking session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot answer to that and I guess it depends of many personal factors. Personally, I find marking tasks boring but easy to do and easy to focus on. It's like driving, some people can drive for hours, others can't. To tell the truth, marking is somehow relaxing for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T22:28:24.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9496" CreationDate="2013-04-20T00:09:34.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect my answer will be less applicable to math (your subject) but your question is not specific so I'll cover my subject (business management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I find the more I can process in a single session the more fair my marking is overall. In my field, answers are not so clear-cut. That is, there is rarely a right and wrong answer but rather the process of application/evidence that is evaluated. Because of this, there is a risk of being inconsistent when marking in different sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I try to process 10 or so exams before actually marking any of them. The reason for this is that I need to understand the general level of the group. If I don't do this, I find that I am much stricter on the first few exams and get easier as I find everyone is at a lower level than I had anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, I try to give my eyes a break between exams. That is, stare at a point some ways off so that my eyes are not constantly focusing on a point to close (which causes strain and can cause lasting problems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T00:09:34.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-20T10:30:42.483" Score="8" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have looked at this thread &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/897/travel-grants-for-international-students-in-the-us&quot;&gt;travel grant&lt;/a&gt; but it talks about when the OP already was pursuing his PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am from India and have a different scenario as I have just received my PhD offer in Computer Science. Does anyone know if there are institutions that can fund my going there (even just the flight)? (As a background I do have good academic records as well as papers published).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched on the internet and have found one from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.srtt.org/individual_grants/education_grants.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tata&lt;/a&gt;. But, I was hoping if others here are aware of any others that do provide support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6860" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T13:48:30.450" Title="Are there grants available to pay for travel to my PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9508" CreationDate="2013-04-20T11:10:45.137" Score="14" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering are there any PhD programs (specifically in machine learning) in the US that are structured more like the European ones, i.e. where you immediately start doing research and don't spend your first two years or so on something very similar to Masters' program (lots of coursework, less research).&#xA;I have already a Master's degree and research experience and would like to start working on my thesis from the start. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also I'm wondering are there any non-university research institutions in the US that grant PhDs? (For example, something like German Max Planck research institutes)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6861" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T00:01:26.277" Title="European style PhD in the US" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9504" CreationDate="2013-04-20T15:37:58.027" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that the reason for the difference between the US and European style programs is primarily &lt;em&gt;philosophical&lt;/em&gt;, and has to do with the way master's degrees are considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe (or at least those countries part of the Bologna treaty), master's degrees &quot;follow on&quot; from the bachelor's degree program, and usually programs are designed so that students who complete the bachelor's degree will continue on to the master's at the same institution before beginning a doctoral program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, in the United States, the master's degree is very weakly coupled to the bachelor's program. Instead, in many places, it's viewed either as a separate degree in its own right, or as a stepping stone to doing a doctoral degree. Moreover, because the bachelor's degree program is only four years, while the European bachelor's-master's system includes five years of coursework, there is a bit of a discrepancy between the coursework a bachelor's degree holder in the US would have, versus that of a master's holder in Europe. Consequently, most schools tend to require roughly a year of coursework for students entering a doctoral program, as it acts as completing the master's program at a European university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, because graduate admissions are almost always organized at the &lt;em&gt;departmental&lt;/em&gt; level in the US, rather than the research group level, there is usually a &quot;qualification&quot; procedure which must be completed at American universities that aren't found in European universities. The coursework phase of the doctoral degree often figures into the material tested in the qualifying exam, and therefore schools often are reluctant to waive these coursework requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, reluctance is not necessarily the same as refusal. If you have questions about how things work, and whether a particular department would be willing to waive some of the requirements for you, you should contact them. If you can demonstrate that you have most of the work already in place, they may be able to let you skip some of the classes, or at least replace them with other electives (which may be of benefit—you shouldn't assume you're done with classes and learning just because you have a master's or even a doctoral degree!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T00:01:26.277" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T00:01:26.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9507" CreationDate="2013-04-20T15:38:05.927" Score="26" ViewCount="17628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know peer-reviewing research papers is a lot of work, but it is something that as a scientist in academia you must do. However, you are not required to become an editor of a journal. It seems to be tons of work, and I am trying to understand what people gain from it and whether it is worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, I can understand how being an editor for Science or Cell would be helpful in terms of prestige, connections, and exposure to top science, but what about for lesser known journals? And how is that integrated with research and other duties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T20:36:19.980" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T17:13:33.383" Title="Why become a journal editor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-04-20T15:44:24.950" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you alluded to in your question, there are several things to be gained by being a journal editor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater familiarity with ongoing research in your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Credit for &quot;service&quot; within your department institution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater visibility within your research community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some cases, monetary compensation (some editor positions are paid, some are unpaid)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a journal editor &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a very time-consuming job, and it's certainly not for everyone. However, it can also be an interesting and rewarding experience, even if it's not a journal at the level of &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Cell&lt;/em&gt;. (Then again, many of the journals at the level of &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; have in-house professional editors, rather than part-time staff from academia!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing a minor journal can also offset other forms of outreach service, particularly if you are still developing a tenure dossier. In those situations you may find editing more (or less) rewarding than the duties you would take on (or be assigned) otherwise. (You should check with your department chair, however, that such service would be considered acceptable before committing to a position!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the connections are worth it at a particular level of journal is not something we can directly answer. You should consider the time commitments relative to other priorities that you might have, and make a decision accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T00:05:25.953" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T00:05:25.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9504" CreationDate="2013-04-20T22:22:13.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many graduate programs in the US allow you to either waive coursework by claiming prior credits, or waive coursework by taking a series of examinations. If that's a primary concern, you should look into programs that offer such a format for what's usually called the &quot;breadth&quot; or &quot;comprehensive&quot; requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to your second question, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ttic.edu/&quot;&gt;Toyota Technical Institute in Chicago&lt;/a&gt; is a non-university research institute that offers a Ph.D program in Machine Learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T22:22:13.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-20T22:50:11.183" Score="15" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;When establishing yourself as a researcher, the importance of independence from your PhD supervisor and focusing on a niche area (to establish popularity in a particular sub-field) are fairly well-established. For longevity of research career the polar opposite criteria of collaboration and breadth have been suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining the terms field and subfield etc. is important, so taking the following hypothetical example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Subfield - PhD research uses a common computational method applied to a number of closely related problems. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related Subfield - Other PhD students in the group apply the same method to different problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Field - Computational methods related to PhD yet distinct applied to any problem in the super field&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Superfield - Broad area of research encompassing theoretical, computational and experimental work, eg superconductors, photonics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After PhD and prior to tenure, how specialised should one aim to be and how closely related to the PhD should the specialty be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If given the choice, is it best to focus exclusively on a related subfield topic (generally project based research typical of most post doc positions), or take on another topic in the field, or to develop breadth by researching multiple related sub field topics in collaboration with other groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T16:20:25.540" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T16:20:25.540" Title="How specialised should research prior to tenure be?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9511" CreationDate="2013-04-20T22:54:27.170" Score="12" ViewCount="1619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a BSc degree from a private university in Egypt. The university offered me a scholarship at the beginning of the program but that scholarship applied only partially to a subsequent MSc degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an overlap in the degree requirements for the BSc and the MSc, which means that the 5th year of the BSc is also the first year of the MSc. By doing research for 6 more months, the MSc degree is complete. The scholarship applied to everything but those 6 months, yet the tuition for that was very expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I was a top ranked student, my dean said that if I did research at an associate research institute abroad he will ask the university's top management to  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;officially enroll me in the program,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delay payment of the tuition,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and consider offering me a scholarship for the remaining tuition &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with one caveat: He will not know their decision until the very end of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took that risk, and successfully defended and submitted my thesis at the end of the program. While the university agreed to #1 and #2, my dean's attempts at #3 were fruitless. I have proof that I was enrolled as an MSc student and the university printed my degree's certificate but they will not hand it to me unless I pay the full tuition, which I can not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;Do I have a MSc degree or not? How should I address this on my CV/Resume?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6864" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T21:51:15.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:51:15.617" Title="Do I have a MSc degree if I did the work but did not pay tuition?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9510" CreationDate="2013-04-20T23:00:35.130" Score="30" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your university is willing to provide proof that they granted you a degree, they didn't.  Listing an MSc degree on your résumé that your university is unwilling to confirm invites accusations of fabrication, which would be nearly impossible to refute and which could cost you your job &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; years in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, nothing stops you from publishing your thesis, or asking your dean for a recommendation letter explaining the unfortunate situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T19:27:11.607" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T19:27:11.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9509" CreationDate="2013-04-20T23:23:42.313" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer warns against being too narrow; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9513/65&quot;&gt;aeismail's answer&lt;/a&gt; for reasons not to be too broad.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The precise answer is going to depend on your institution and your field.  But as a first order approximation, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; establish yourself as an independent intellectual leader in a broad enough research area to attract good tenure letters.  An obscure subsubfield beloved by only ten researchers probably isn't going to be enough, because not all of those people will be credible references — well-known, active, full professors (preferably with named positions and Academy memberships) at top-ranked US departments (assuming you're at a US institution) who are not your advisor (and preferably are not your coauthors or from your PhD department either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your question becomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How large a field do you need to consider to include a sufficient number of viable tenure writers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How you establish a world-class reputation within that field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule in my field, you should move as far away from your PhD thesis as possible while still being visible and productive.  But other fields may have different expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T21:16:53.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9509" CreationDate="2013-04-21T00:12:13.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advice that I've received from my own PhD advisors, as well as from my interim review, was not to broaden one's activities &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much before tenure. There needs to be a convincing thread to the work efforts that you're doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger of spreading your efforts too thinly is that nobody knows which &quot;box&quot; to put you in. This is a problem, as JeffE suggests, because you need to be able to get good letters of recommendation in your tenure case. However, spread out over too broad a region, you won't have nearly enough papers in any one area to make a significant dent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having many subfields is probably a bad idea. If, however, you can find and exploit a common theme to these different subfields, you can probably make a much more convincing case (perhaps because you will be addressing a problem that they all have in overlap?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T00:12:13.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-21T00:29:56.417" Score="2" ViewCount="6488" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a question repeated many times, but I want to know your opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted a journal paper for an algorithm (Computer Science). Fearing that the review process take too long, I decided to submit a short-version conference paper, while the long version is under-review. I received the journal review comments, and re-sent the modifications to the journal. Meanwhile, the conference paper was accepted. But the camera-ready is not sent yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that both papers are about the same idea. There is also some copy-pasted parts in both papers. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) the editor of the journal was not informed about the conference paper (I heard that I should tell the journal about any published papers - but note that the conference paper is not yet published - not even the camera ready is submitted), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) the organization organizing the conference, is not the same that manage the journal. I have been told that there are conflicting copyrights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed solutions (that colleagues told me about): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) submit both as is ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) submit both (but with change in text). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) do not submit the conference paper (but I heard this can be harmful)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d) tell the editor now (but honestly, the journal is way more important than the conference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T12:14:15.610" Title="Publishing a conference version of a journal paper at the same time ? (copyright issues)" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-22T11:06:18.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9514" CreationDate="2013-04-21T00:49:04.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;easy answer&quot; here nor is there a &quot;right answer&quot;. You can &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;take the high road and say &quot;It's unethical of me to publish similar papers in two competing publications, so I'll withdraw one&quot;, which might make you feel good, but leaves you 1 paper less. You don't get brownie points for &quot;feeling good&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;publish both the conference and journal paper and do your best to have some differences between them (i.e., they're not word-for-word identical or don't have passages copied wholesale).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, the most important issue here is that you're not copy-pasting content verbatim and submitting to multiple journals hoping that neither knows of the other and get it passed through both review processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would have (and have)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submitted a conference paper discussing the objectives, a brief sketch of the methodology, significance of results and some figures if any, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submitted a journal paper with a deeper literature review, in depth explanations of methodology with proofs, if any, detailed figures &lt;strong&gt;that are different from the conference submission&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a perfectly acceptable practice and strikes a fine balance between the need to disseminate information quickly, stake your claim to being &quot;first&quot;, and being fair to the academic process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, also be aware that if your field of research is narrow/small, then it is highly likely that there is an overlap of reviewers among journals. I recently reviewed a manuscript for journal A which eventually was rejected, because although 3 reviewers (including myself) gave it an &quot;acceptable&quot; rating, the fourth reviewer who happened to also review the authors' previous similar submission to journal B (which was accepted a few weeks prior), notified the editor. It turns out, that they tried to do something similar to what you're doing, except that journal A would've been preferable to journal B, but things didn't turn out as they had hoped (i.e. 2 publications). So be wary of this happening to you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6431" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T00:49:04.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9538" CreationDate="2013-04-21T01:04:56.227" Score="39" ViewCount="1461" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some friends and I were discussing a certain conference that has a &quot;rebuttal&quot; phase, in which the authors can see the reviews and reply to them. We realized that this rebuttal phase probably couldn't happen before e-mail was common, which lead us to think on the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How did conferences &quot;work&quot; before everybody had e-mails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about other fields, but in computer-science, some of the conferences are dated to early 60's. Back then there was no email and internet (were fax machines common enough?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have plenty of questions about how the process worked back then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did one submit a paper? (I assume one had to print the paper and mail it? Was the &quot;deadline&quot; determined by the post-date, or maybe there was no deadline?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did one get the reviews back, if at all? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where did one send his paper? To the program chair? How did the reviewers get a copy of the paper (I assume the chair would first need to look at the abstracts and then assign to other PC members/reviewers? or maybe the entire committee would get copies of all the papers, and there was no sub-reviewing?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time did the entire process take (seems like the overhead of mail adds quite a lot to the already-long process)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(maybe I'm taking it all wrong, and conferences back then were not peer-reviewed, and anyone that came could give a talk??)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things that I (think that I) know, and might help to complete the atmosphere of 'making science without the supporting technology':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would the program committee make the decision? - they'd meet in some place together, and decide.. Which means that one had to travel quite a lot to be on a committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proceedings were sent to print months &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the conference, so they actually described what had happened during the conference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentations were done using a projector and transparent slides (it's funny to think about it..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="324" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T06:56:27.440" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T15:35:21.277" Title="How did conferences &quot;work&quot; before the e-mail era?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;technology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9516" CreationDate="2013-04-21T04:32:14.893" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many stories of people rushing to the FedEx station at the airport to ship off papers at the last possible minute. I've also heard stories of grad students driving from Boston to New York with all the submissions from MIT to submit them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T04:32:14.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9529" CreationDate="2013-04-21T06:00:39.617" Score="28" ViewCount="8949" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has quite a few journals titled &quot;(something) of the AMS&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research journals include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of the AMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proceedings of the AMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transactions of the AMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Memoirs of the AMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do these journals differ in terms of scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some information about the roles of these journals can be found on the AMS &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/journals&quot;&gt;journals website&lt;/a&gt;. However the only distinctions given are that JAMS is for &quot;research articles of the highest quality,&quot; while PAMS, TAMS, and MAMS are for short, medium, and long articles respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there further differentiations between these journals? If a mathematician wants to submit a paper to an AMS journal is the decision process for which one really as simple as &quot;If my paper isn't good enough for JAMS I'll check its length and ship it off to the appropriate one of the other 3?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="993" LastActivityDate="2018-11-23T04:11:47.647" Title="The differences between AMS research journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9516" CreationDate="2013-04-21T07:44:48.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some vestiges of the pre-electronic era still out there. For instance, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org&quot;&gt;American Physical Society&lt;/a&gt; continues to this day to have an annual &quot;Sorting Meeting&quot; for their conference, where anyone interested in helping to organize the meeting comes together. At that meeting, all of the abstracts, which have been printed out, are available, and need to be &quot;sorted&quot; and collected into groups that would become different sessions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also sometimes see references to manuscripts needing to be &quot;camera-ready&quot;; this is also a reference to how production of conference proceedings worked. The manuscripts were photographed and then turned into material that the publisher used to make the final printed copies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, even after the advent of the fax, many things would still have to be done by mail. However, I think that ultimately things had to be done &quot;on site,&quot; as it was simply too impractical to mail everything around to all of the reviewers. However, I also think it would have been much more difficult to ask for full papers, just because of the logistics of having to deal with so much material in one sitting. You would need to rely on abstracts (regular or &quot;extended&quot;), and then ask for full papers from the accepted papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, because of the poor quality of faxes, anything that would be submitted to a publisher would have to be done by mail. Note that this was true even after the advent of the email era!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T07:44:48.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9518" CreationDate="2013-04-21T09:41:31.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~hildebr/reu2009/journals.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mathematical Journals&lt;/a&gt; by A.J. Hildebrand&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of the American Mathematical Society is one of the elite journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proceedings of the AMS and Transactions of the AMS are society journals &#xA;come in pairs that have a single editorial board, and which complement each&#xA;other in that one specializes in shorter articles, whereas the other publishes&#xA;mainly longer articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are interesting descriptions for other math journals in that paper as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_the_American_Mathematical_Society&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society (ISSN 0065-9266) is a mathematical journal published in six volumes per year, totalling approximately 25 to 30 individually bound numbers, by the American Mathematical Society. It is intended to carry papers on new mathematical research between 80 and 200 pages in length. Usually, a bound number consists of a single paper, i.e., it is a monograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2018-11-23T04:11:47.647" LastActivityDate="2018-11-23T04:11:47.647" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9514" CreationDate="2013-04-21T12:14:15.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you have painted yourself into a corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have made a very serious mistake by submitting simultaneously to a conference (with formal proceedings) and a journal. Most likely &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the conference &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the journal have explicit rules forbidding this, and in any case any kind of simultaneous submission is highly unethical: you are abusing the peer-review system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you do, someone will be upset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a student, perhaps the best approach is to play stupid. Contact the conference organisers, apologise sincerely, explain that you were not aware that simultaneous submissions are not permitted, explain that you are just a student, apologise again, and withdraw the conference paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference organisers will be upset. But maybe this is much better in the long run than proceeding with the publication of both versions, in which case you will make your mistake &lt;em&gt;public&lt;/em&gt; and anyone is able to see it (conference submission &amp;amp; acceptance dates are public information, and journals typically publish the submission &amp;amp; acceptance dates of the articles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T12:14:15.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9518" CreationDate="2013-04-21T12:54:54.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an answer, but it is too long for a comment. I am not going to compare the quality and scope of the AMS journals, but I would like to share an experience. Once an editor of PAMS told me that he receives about 100 papers every year and he can only accept about 10 papers each year, so he has to reject so many of (good) submissions. My estimation is more than half of the submitted papers (to PAMS) contain some interesting results and deserve publication in a respectful journal, but most of them will be rejected, just because there are better papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding this point of view, I think one should submit a paper to an AMS journal only if he is sure that his paper is among the top 10% papers submitted to the journal. Otherwise, he is wasting his time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many other nice mathematical journals which provide authors with professional services and have way less traffic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T12:54:54.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9525" CreationDate="2013-04-21T13:10:07.950" Score="23" ViewCount="3064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reviewing the second revision of a paper and am getting tired of this incredibly slow process of me pointing something out that requires clarification just to hear back from those authors two or three months from now (at the earliest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think I would insult gravely the academic spirit and / or authors of that manuscript if I just e-mailed the corresponding author saying &quot;Look I still don't understand X because of Y can you please explain?&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that doing so would just be what science is about: a bunch of people interested in similar scientific topics talking to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="907" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T08:44:59.970" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T08:44:59.970" Title="Is it acceptable as referee to contact an author on a paper you review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9527" CreationDate="2013-04-21T13:12:08.077" Score="17" ViewCount="21876" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reading about people who have studied at Oxford the word &quot;read&quot; is used instead of study. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why when discussing study at Oxford (and maybe other universities) is the word &quot;read&quot; used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:33:29.363" LastActivityDate="2020-12-26T23:18:12.480" Title="When referring to study at Oxford why is the word &quot;read&quot; used?" Tags="&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9523" CreationDate="2013-04-21T13:16:40.547" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you should not, but there is of course no law that prevents it. Peer review is a process where the editor appoints reviewers because of their expertise to provide independent and knowledgeable views on the submitted manuscript. As such the reviews should pass through the editor since they are not only made to improve the manuscript from the point of the author but also prepare it to be worthy of publication in the journal to which it is submitted. Making such contact is thus breaking an understanding with the editor/journal and integrity of the journal review system and quality assurance. The correspondence needs to go through the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T13:16:40.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9534" CreationDate="2013-04-21T14:17:31.250" Score="-1" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one call postgraduate studies in countries where the appropriate degree is not PHD? It can't be PHD scholarship. Can I use &quot;postgraduate studentship&quot; in this sense in official papers? Maybe &quot;postgraduate scholarship&quot; is better or there are some other variants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6866" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T23:04:23.140" Title="Question on terminology (postgraduate studies)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9524" CreationDate="2013-04-21T14:28:27.773" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just a peculiarity of British English that &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; can have this particular meaning. The &lt;em&gt;New Oxford American Dictionary&lt;/em&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3. &lt;em&gt;chiefly Brit.&lt;/em&gt; study (an academic subject) at a university: &lt;em&gt;I'm reading English at Cambridge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    [ no obj. ]: &lt;em&gt;he went to Manchester to read for a BA in Economics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's more about language itself than the official title of the diploma or an academic custom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;— Hey, wait, but where does this idea come up to associate &lt;em&gt;“read”&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;“learn, understand”&lt;/em&gt;? Surely there is a reason? And why is it English only?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, as it turns out, &lt;strong&gt;the meaning of &lt;em&gt;“learn, understand, think, explain”&lt;/em&gt; is actually the original meaning of the Old English word&lt;/strong&gt; from which we inherited &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;! The Old English word is &lt;em&gt;rædan&lt;/em&gt; (“explain”, amongst its meanings), from Proto-Germanic &lt;em&gt;raedanan&lt;/em&gt;, from Proto-Indo-European root &lt;em&gt;re(i)-&lt;/em&gt; (“to reason, count”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in many languages, the words derived from this root kept their original meaning. In German, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/raten#German&quot;&gt;raten&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; means “to advise, counsel”; in Icelandic, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/r%C3%A1%C3%B0a#Icelandic&quot;&gt;ráða&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; means “advise, decide, solve”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, at some point something in Old English went sideways. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/read#Etymology&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; states very clearly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The development from “advise, interpret” to “interpret letters, read” is unique to English&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=read&amp;amp;allowed_in_frame=0&quot;&gt;Etymonline&lt;/a&gt; is more specific:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Transference to “understand the meaning of written symbols” is unique to Old English and (perhaps under English influence) Old Norse &lt;em&gt;raða&lt;/em&gt;. Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of &quot;gather up&quot; as their word for &quot;read&quot; (cf. French &lt;em&gt;lire&lt;/em&gt;, from Latin &lt;em&gt;legere&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the original meaning of the word &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; is retained in some contexts in British English, but was lost in other forms of the English language, such as American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a summary, the hard question is not really “why can &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; mean &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt;”, but instead: &lt;strong&gt;why did &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; come to mean “read”?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(source for the above: my memory, which is backed by the most excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=read&amp;amp;allowed_in_frame=0&quot;&gt;Etymonline&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T21:33:04.413" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T21:33:04.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9523" CreationDate="2013-04-21T14:31:15.833" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am reviewing the second revision of a paper and am getting tired of this incredibly slow process of me pointing something out that requires clarification just to hear back from those authors two or three months from now (at the earliest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to e-mail the authors directly to get the information you want.  The several month delay you are talking about is the time it takes to collect all the reviews, send them to the authors, and wait for a revised version of the paper.  However, in the journals I'm familiar with you could request clarification by asking the editor to send a short message to the authors now and relay the response to you.  Going through the editor might slow things down by a day or two, but not by months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think I would insult gravely the academic spirit and / or authors of that manuscript if I just e-mailed the corresponding author saying &quot;Look I still don't understand X because of Y can you please explain?&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrasing of your question is hyperbolic, but yes, this is something that could be considered offensive or unethical.  Sending queries through the editor slows things down only slightly, while it avoids various difficulties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers might bypass the editor on requests they would rather not call to the editor's attention (for example, suggesting that their papers be cited).  Along similar ethical lines, announcing to the authors that you are reviewing their paper might help you pressure them for favors elsewhere.  For example, it would be unethical to write &quot;Dear X, I'm a reviewer for your recent submission to Y.  I'm having trouble understanding it, so I fear it might take a while to arrive at a decision, but it could help to know blah blah blah.  Can you supply any additional information?  Regards, Z  P.S. Have you reached a decision about participating in the joint project I proposed?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's important for the editor to be aware of all relevant information.  If several reviewers request clarification about something, then that is itself informative about the clarity of the manuscript, even if they all agree in the end that it is correct.  It's also valuable for the editor to see and judge the response itself (and not just to know whether it convinced the reviewer).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Daniel Shub pointed out in the comments, you can always ask the editor whether it would be appropriate for you to contact the authors directly (it may depend on journal policy, customs in your field, or the editor's judgment of the particular situation).  If the answer is yes, then you are all set.  However, if the answer is no or you don't ask, then you should relay all communication through the editor, and I would expect that to be the usual answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T14:31:15.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9518" CreationDate="2013-04-21T14:56:05.917" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a mathematician wants to submit a paper to an AMS journal is the decision process for which one really as simple as &quot;If my paper isn't good enough for JAMS I'll check its length and ship it off to the appropriate one of the other 3?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, more or less.  Journal of the AMS is a special case (as you observed) because of its extremely high level, and Memoirs of the AMS because it will consider incredibly long papers.  In both cases, there are only a small number of competing journals with these properties.  On the other hand, Transactions and Proceedings have substantially more competitors.  The primary distinction between them is length, but from my perspective there's also a difference in prestige.  Proceedings of the AMS gets some great submissions, but the length cut-off is pretty short for mathematics papers and this means it gets fewer great submissions than Transactions does, so the prestige level is a little lower.  Other than length and prestige, they are pretty much identical, for example in topics covered (a broad spectrum of pure mathematics, but limited coverage of applied mathematics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for Proceedings/Transactions papers, there's a four step decision procedure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is your paper on an appropriate topic?  (To a first approximation: is it pure mathematics?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How long is your paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a realistic shot at acceptance?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the journal prestigious enough that you would be happy publishing your paper there?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T14:56:05.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9523" CreationDate="2013-04-21T15:13:13.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think I would insult gravely the academic spirit and / or authors of that manuscript if I just e-mailed the corresponding author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are &quot;hired&quot; as a reviewer by the responsible editor hence by default you should obey the journal editorial board/conference programme committee rules. In your particular situation, I do not think contacting authors is appropriate. Obviously, &lt;em&gt;they did not communicate their ideas/results clearly enough for the target audience&lt;/em&gt;, which is a reason for rejection (or at least subtracting &quot;points&quot; in the review). As a referee, that's just about what you need to care for. &lt;em&gt;You are not supposed to do the authors' job, or invest more energy than any other interested expert reader would.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication with authors:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Generally speaking, sometimes there are sound reasons for starting a communication link with the authors (for example when the referee process is friendly, such as for invited contributions to journals, or chapters in an edited book). If that is the case, then you have at least the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;anonymized channel&lt;/strong&gt;: preferrably channel all the communication between you and authors via the responsible editor who will &quot;anonymise&quot; your messages. Of course the editor has to be OK with such a setup;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;direct communication link&lt;/strong&gt;: ask the responsible editor for approval whether establishing a direct communication link is fine with her/him and if so, obey by whatever restrictions (s)he puts in place and keep the editor in the loop too - you need to keep a good track of the communication should there be a dispute later on. Sometimes communicating with authors is outright forbidden in guidelines to referees. Check the journal's rules carefully! Or finally,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;after-review contact&lt;/strong&gt;: you can finish the review on the basis of what is submitted as is usual, but you identify yourself in the review. Again, ask the responsible editor for approval first. Authors might choose to contact you, or not. It will be their decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I went the route #3. It worked well. But remember, reviews are blind in order to allow reviewers to be frank. Sometimes (most of the time?) such a feedback causes pain and friction. You need to think twice about this and &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; obey the editor's guidance. The reason is, &lt;strong&gt;sometimes with a best intention, you might cause harm!&lt;/strong&gt; Such as rejection of the paper on the grounds of a mismanaged review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T15:13:13.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9526" CreationDate="2013-04-21T16:24:45.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on where you are going to use this term. The goal is to make clear to people what kind of degrees you have. So if you communicate with people from the US, you can just say you are working on a PhD. If you are communicating with people form your own system, just use the title that is appropriate int that context.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, until recently the Netherlands did not have the Bachelor-Master system. This did not prevent people from using the MSc title abroad when that was the title people where familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T16:24:45.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2239" CreationDate="2013-04-21T16:47:30.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is software that will help to better format an academic PDF for a 6-inch reader screen.  See the MobileRead.com PDF forum (sticky entries):  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=184&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=184&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6868" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T16:47:30.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9510" CreationDate="2013-04-21T17:35:18.453" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I agree 100% with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9511/&quot;&gt;everything JeffE wrote&lt;/a&gt;, so I won't repeat it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how you should describe this in your CV / résumé, I'd suggest describing your M.Sc. studies as &lt;em&gt;in progress&lt;/em&gt;, with a brief parenthetical note explaining the details (e.g. &quot;studies completed in 201&lt;i&gt;X&lt;/i&gt; with GPA &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt;, thesis approved with grade &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;; formal completion delayed pending resolution of financial issues&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, that's what your situation technically is: you haven't received your Master's diploma yet, but you've completed some of the requirements for it, and may receive it in the future once you complete the rest.  The fact that, in your case, the missing requirements are financial rather than strictly educational does not affect this main point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't dwell too much on the specific details in a CV, since it's supposed to be a &lt;em&gt;brief summary&lt;/em&gt; of your experience.  In particular, you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want to come across as bitter or accusatory, nor as financially irresponsible.  A short and neutral phrase like &quot;financial issues&quot; is probably best: if the prospective employer is curious, they'll ask you about it.  (Do expect it to come up in an interview, if you make it that far.)  Or just do as JeffE suggests, and get someone else, like your dean, to write a letter of recommendation for you explaining the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T17:35:18.453" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9526" CreationDate="2013-04-21T19:58:00.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one call postgraduate studies in countries where the appropriate degree is not PHD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be precise about which term for the title/degree you would use. In the follow-up comment you reveal that the degree is &quot;candidate of sciences&quot;. In Eastern Europe there were such degrees given in the past, in most countries this was one way or another changed to PhD, or similar. In the past, the process towards the &quot;candidate of sciences&quot; (CSc. degree in a country I am familiar with) was called &lt;code&gt;candidature&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;code&gt;&quot;I work on my candidature.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; Just like that. You would also call it &lt;code&gt;postgradute studies&lt;/code&gt;, but see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7469/undergraduate-graduate-or-post-graduate-student-is-that-bachelor-master-phd-o/&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for potential caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Paul Hiemstra points out, you would use this in your system, but when communicating with the world you should use the equivalent term. Most countries have a signed international treaties regarding education and professional degree recognition and equivalence with most other countries (at least in Europe and OECD). In those treaties (usually public material) you should be able to find the exact tables of equivalent degrees, possibly with various stipulations about their use. Look for such a treaty which your country signed with the country where you want to use your title/study term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Scholarship&lt;/code&gt; is usually the funding you get to perform your &lt;code&gt;studentship&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T23:04:23.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-04-21T20:58:28.280" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aeismail have listed several gains as reasons for becoming a journal editor. I think there are also several personal reasons which likely vary between persons. For me, I found that my experience as guest editor for several issues of journals was extremely rewarding. I found I was involved in handling new science at a detailed level unmatched by other venues. I also found myself getting new contacts in the form of authors and reviewers. All along the lines of Aeismail's answer. I strongly recommend trying to get involved in guest editing a single issue if the possibility arises. This might give you an insight into what is involved and how you might like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before continuing, I should perhaps point out that editorships comes in several flavours (with varying names). Editors that are responsible for journals are often called Chief Editors, whereas a staff of other editors may handle reviews and not be involved in making the final decisions for publications and the journal itself. This will vary from journal to journal. The point of saying it is because getting involved as an editor can happen at different levels with differing tasks to perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the opportunity came around for me to shoulder a journal as Editor-in-Chief, I did not need much convincing, but the reasons were more personal than anything else. One could say it is a position of power (to ultimately decide the fate of manuscripts), but I rather think of it in terms of responsibility. I saw it as a challenge to improve the journal and its standing, and to get a chance to implement several ideas I had developed over the years. Assembling a team around me and the second co-chief editor of the journal was also awarding and interesting. So more than anything else, the rewards now come as I can see the Citation Index rising and (hopefully) the standard of the journal improving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case I (really &quot;we&quot; since we are two) get reimbursed for the editorship corresponding to one half day per week. The job is literally 365 days a year, and so far I have not seen this as a problem. The compensation is by no means corresponding to the time I spend on the task but more of a symbolic sum for the responsibility involved. Money is certainly not a reason for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sign up as chief editor likely means signing up for a longer period, at least 3-5 years, to be able to fully embrace the flow of articles and handle all problems that may occur. This is particularly true if you wish to see any results of your work while you are still associated with the journal; it takes time to influence the reputation of a journal in a positive direction. I am not planning to stay forever, so somewhere between 5 and 10 years is likely a maximum. To sign up as review editor (or whatever it may be called) may not require such a long period since the task is more hands on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as you can see I think becoming an editor is not something you just choose, you need to see if you personally get something out of the job that makes it worth your while. For me, just money or personal credit would not be enough, the challenge and sense of contribution associated with leading and improving a journal is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T21:01:52.523" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T21:01:52.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9523" CreationDate="2013-04-21T21:10:36.233" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am reviewing the second revision of a paper and am getting tired of this incredibly slow process of me pointing something out that requires clarification just to hear back from those authors two or three months from now (at the earliest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what?  Your understanding is not one of the required outcomes of the refereeing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think I would insult gravely the academic spirit and / or authors of that manuscript if I just e-mailed the corresponding author saying &quot;Look I still don't understand X because of Y can you please explain?&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not, but you would subvert the whole point of refereeing, which is to &lt;strong&gt;judge the paper on its own merits&lt;/strong&gt;.  The typical reader is not going to have access to the authors to clarify any confusing aspects of the paper.  If the paper is confusing, it is simply not ready to publish; contacting the authors would not change this fact.  If the authors have not addressed your concerns despite multiple rounds of reviewing, the appropriate response is to &lt;strong&gt;recommend rejection&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have raised additional ethical issues, so I won't repeat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T21:10:36.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9516" CreationDate="2013-04-21T21:54:15.777" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conferences were organized pretty much as they are now, only slower and with lots more paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conferences would advertise by &lt;strong&gt;physically mailing paper fliers&lt;/strong&gt; to potential authors (primarily past attendees) and perhaps some department chairs.  Postage was a significant portion of the conference budget.  Professional society publications (like &lt;em&gt;Communications of the ACM&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;SIGACT News&lt;/em&gt;) would include several pages of calls for papers with upcoming deadlines.  These calls for papers were typically prepared and sent to publishers/printers about a year in advance of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Authors would send &lt;strong&gt;multiple physical paper copies&lt;/strong&gt; of each submission by post (or FedEx, or whatever) to the physical address of the program committee chair.  Typically, the author would send one copy for each member of the program committee.  Papers usually had to be &lt;em&gt;received&lt;/em&gt;, not merely &lt;em&gt;postmarked&lt;/em&gt;, by the submission deadline.  (Hence the probably-not-apocryphal stories of grad students flying to the PC chair's city with a box of last-minute submissions from their home department.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submission deadlines were typically about six months before the actual conference date, just as they are now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PC chair (or more likely, their secretary and/or students) would collate the received submissions into boxes/binders, which would be &lt;strong&gt;physically mailed&lt;/strong&gt; to each program committee member.  Thus, each PC member would receive a copy of each submitted paper.  Shipping costs were a non-trivial portion of the conference budget.  (Having never been on a committee organized this way, I don't know how review assignments were done.  I assume the now ubiquitous practice of sub-reviewing was very rare.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A couple of months later, the entire program committee would fly to a &lt;strong&gt;central physical location&lt;/strong&gt; with their submission boxes/binders, to decide which submissions to accept.  Conference budgets &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; included travel costs for the program committee, but not always.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PC chair (or more likely, their secretary and/or students) would send &lt;strong&gt;a physical letter&lt;/strong&gt; to each submitting author informing them of the committee's decision about their paper.  Often this was the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; feedback from the program committee.  Authors who wanted more information about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; a paper was rejected often had to contact one of the committee members directly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About three months before the conference, authors of accepted papers would &lt;strong&gt;physically mail&lt;/strong&gt; camera-ready copies of their papers to the publisher, after following formatting instructions received by physical mail.  The publisher would duplicate (using an actual camera!) and bind these papers into books, along with front and back matter prepared by the PC chair and also physically mailed to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The publisher would ship &lt;strong&gt;physical books&lt;/strong&gt; containing all the camera-ready papers, which would be distributed to the conference attendees.  (Again, shipping costs were a non-trivial portion of the conference budget.)  Faculty attending the conferences would often buy extra books to distribute to their students who could not attend.  Other copies of the same book would be physically mailed to hundreds of university libraries and other subscribers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T21:54:15.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9541" CreationDate="2013-04-22T04:39:46.790" Score="32" ViewCount="3253" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a technical stand point, what do I need to show up to a conference with (in general) to ensure that my presentation will go smoothly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation remote &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equipment to connect my laptop to the projector&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remote is simple enough, it just needs to work with my computer and be reliable. Connecting my computer to the projector is not trivial since a lot of laptops don't come with DVI or VGA output any more (mine doesn't!). What kind of output do I usually need, DVI or VGA? Do I need something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/B00ABNLEWO&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which supports all output methods (seems like over kill but might be a good investment)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything else to make sure I am prepared to deal with the technical aspects of a presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="746" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T04:55:52.670" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T22:11:18.303" Title="What do I need to ensure my presentation will go smoothly?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9540" CreationDate="2013-04-22T05:04:48.390" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;From less esoteric to more (I've seen all these things happen):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you know how to &quot;send the image to a projector&quot;. Not all laptops do this automatically, and I'm surprised at how many people don't know how to do it. I've also seen people be confused by the mirroring feature on Macs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verify that there's a power outlet or some place to plug in your laptop. Driving a projector eats power, and you don't want to drain your battery during the presentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn off screen savers. at the very least it's annoying, and sometimes the screen saver does wonky things to the projector display.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn off your notifications (mail, facebook, twitter, skype...). It's amusing for an audience (but not for you) if during a job talk they all get to see a subject header of the form &quot;Interview at University X&quot; where X is not where you're at :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have the right display converters. Usually something that converts your laptop to a VGA is standard. Macs are particularly difficult in this regard. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watch out for resolution issues. Most laptops are smart enough to drop resolution to deal with a projector, but sometimes they're not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a backup copy of the slides in a portable format (PDF or PPT) on a usb stick. In the worst-case you can always borrow a laptop (from the previous speaker even) and load up the slides. Dropbox/a web page is ok but not great because it requires an internet connection. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And above all, as David M. R. says, check the setup beforehand if you can. Even that doesn't guarantee a smooth presentation, but it eliminates a lot of the potential problems listed above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T05:04:48.390" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T05:50:04.203" Score="120" ViewCount="54740" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student, I just find it tremendously frustrating when emails are ignored by faculty (both at my institution and at other places). Is this acceptable? I'd be content with a simple response with one line along the lines of &quot;I have read this email and am busy right now, will respond in X days when I can write a more detailed email.&quot; I understand that, as a first year student in my field, I'm not really in a position to request anything of anyone, but it just seems like common decency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I never hear back, as if my email has been jettisoned off into oblivion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6876" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T13:53:24.947" LastActivityDate="2020-01-16T23:36:08.167" Title="Is ignoring emails acceptable in academia?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9542" CreationDate="2013-04-22T06:05:49.383" Score="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that it can be frustrating, but this  is not uncommon in a big organisation (I don't think this is specific to academia). People get a lot of e-mail, and are very busy. Answering each and every email can be a lot of work in an already fully packed day. This either leads to people forgetting, or simply ignoring their e-mail to some extent. Also remember that something might be a really high priority for you, but a relatively low priority for the person you mail. So I don't think ignoring mails is acceptable, but sometimes understandable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to deal with it is to try and work with the system. If you see that professor X is very unresponsive to his mail, approach him in person. If a department does not return your mails, give them a call. This kind of personal approach makes it harder for those persons to ignore you, an email is very easy to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T06:41:53.167" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T06:41:53.167" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9542" CreationDate="2013-04-22T07:20:41.590" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;E-mails are not easily ignored in all systems. In Sweden, e-mails sent to public agencies and organizations must be answered in &quot;due time&quot; (mostly meaning within days). Since many or most of our universities are public, we as faculty fall under the same rules and must answer all mails sent to us. In our case, this of course only concerns matters dealing with university matters, no need to worry about spam etc. We are even requested by law to file all correspondence although there is no clear indication on how this should be done with electronic correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have kept tally of my e-mail correspondence for years and receive about 10k mails per year and send about 2-3k. If I do not respond to mails relatively quickly they may soon become forgotten even though they are marked as not read. But, I do not miss more than probably around a few tens of mails every year, a pretty ok &quot;percentage&quot; in my own opinion. I believe all senior staff have similar numbers regarding e-mail harvest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my department I have colleagues who's e-mail discipline ranges from &quot;may occasionally answer&quot; to &quot;seems to use e-mail instead of a telephone&quot;. In the first case, the persons are by no means not answering out of malice. The persons in the latter category are simply annoying. So regardless of the circumstances, some people are notoriously poor regarding answering, even to relatively close colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as was stated by Paul Hiemstra, try to catch the person who is unresponsive in person. it may turn out this is their preferred way to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T14:38:13.300" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T14:38:13.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9542" CreationDate="2013-04-22T08:26:11.283" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within limits of my experience as an administrator, who regularly asks large numbers of academics for responses by email (eventually, by deadlines, or immediately with harsh consequences):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you directly address correspondence on a topic to a person who has no competence or responsibility for that topic, they are likely to ignore your email as spam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emails can cover both &quot;please action X&quot; and &quot;please action X in a manner which requires response.&quot;  Some email cultures do not respond to the first, as a response is not implicitly or explicitly required; other email cultures explicitly respond to the first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your email may lie within your correspondents' area of discretion, for example, in my University system requests to discuss research are normally considered to be discretionary—people are unlikely to discuss research with members of the general public, and most likely to discuss research with colleagues in coaligned fields.  Your correspondence may fall into the gap between &quot;must answer&quot; and &quot;don't have to.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my experience of general society is that most cold calls fall flat; this tends to be true in academia unless you have something to give someone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic work is a high stress and &quot;sweated&quot; industry in Anglophone countries at the moment.  Out of the hundreds of things academics are obliged to do, answering emails often comes last out of the immediate obligations.  The penalties for not answering email are low and eventual.  The penalties for failing to deliver coursework or publish research are more immediate and severe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;following on from the above, one long term coping mechanism for many academics is to push deadlines and delay.  Some academics rely on these time bargaining tools.  Email is an easy victim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;that Guy&quot; still exists in the academy.  Your correspondent could just be that guy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even the harshest consequences for failing to answer emails won't necessarily summon a response from someone on sabbatical or funded research relief from teaching.  An academic's line manager in the immediate chain of management can't always summon responses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T09:32:53.923" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T09:32:53.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1450" CreationDate="2013-04-22T08:57:05.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not mind getting a résumé attached to e-mails. However, a tendency I have noted is that I also tend to get scanned copies of assorted certificates sometimes numbering several tens of Mb files. There is no way I will run through such quantities of information. So if you send a résumé, make it brief and to the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Aeismail points out, also make the mail itself concise and clear as to what you are looking for. It may seem like a lengthy mail may be more polite but remember that e-mails are typically used for brief messages. Your mail will end up as one of perhaps hundred on a particular day and a lengthy mail may be put in the &quot;to do list&quot; and postponed until enough time is free to read it (which usually does not happen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T08:57:05.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9551" CreationDate="2013-04-22T09:15:04.690" Score="8" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I apply for a job I write a new cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement. While each statement is personalized for the specific job, I tend to do a lot of cutting and pasting and little new writing (yes I have a whole collection of past statements). This seems like something that might be useful to keep under version control. how do people manage the different versions of the cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T16:49:37.500" Title="Version control for research and teaching statements" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9542" CreationDate="2013-04-22T09:29:49.857" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a grad student/young people/etc the amount or received mail counts in dozens per day (100 emails a day is something that I've never ever seen in my inbox)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, people with larger academic networks, industry links, or just a bit older, receive thousands emails per day (this is actually common place, not strange exception). It means that just reading them all may take hours each day, not to say writing an answer. (Even hundreds emails is a bit too much to handle)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even among those who are not flooded by emails, there are many that do not 'catch up' with technology - they have a default email address but never or seldom use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people use smart tools to help them manage the deluge (automatic filters, canned responses, secretary, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are simply overwhelmed, and just ignore most emails, except those for a weekend beer with an old friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you cannot blame them (you'll be in their shoes soon). What you can do about it is to follow some of Paul Hiemstra's recommendations and use some other, less busy channel to contact them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T09:29:49.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9555" CreationDate="2013-04-22T09:36:28.703" Score="13" ViewCount="925" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academia values &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom&quot;&gt;academic freedom&lt;/a&gt;. However, there may be some practical limitations on academic freedom. What repercussions might an academic face for voicing unpopular or offensive views in the name of academic freedom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how might a professor's academic reputation be impacted by publicly expressing views that support dictatorships (and other type of politicians) and their established crimes and violation of human rights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T11:26:43.017" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T18:32:50.000" Title="Academic freedom and unpopular or offensive views" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;academic-freedom&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9547" CreationDate="2013-04-22T10:18:54.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I keep my correspondence in version control, I don't have the same document for cover letters that go to different schools.  I simply prepend the name of the school to all of my correspondence for that school, and/or file everything into folders with the school's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you point out, you end up personalizing almost everything (even CVs), so we aren't talking about one document for which you need version control.  You want version control for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the documents, but each document has its own identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you do have a unique document that will be sent to different schools, you would want to create one document, and then create a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;symbolic link&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (or an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_%28Mac_OS%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alias&lt;/a&gt;) from one original to each school folder where it will be sent.   Then, when you update the original, all the symbolic links point to the same file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you may want to consider using a word processor that has the ability to use templates, but I find that is sometimes just as much work as simply duplicating a file and changing the duplicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T10:18:54.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9547" CreationDate="2013-04-22T10:29:38.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research and teaching statement have a lot of commented text (I write in LaTeX). This is because I amend each document specifically for each job application - as you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The detail in which I describe each topic changes depending on what job I am applying for.  I comment out text which is too detailed for the job to which I am applying. However, for other job applications, I might like to have that text put back into my statement, or write new text, to be perhaps commented out in a future application for a different job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now have documents with a lot of phrases from which I can &quot;pick and choose&quot;, depending on the specific job to which I am applying, and amend appropriately. It isn't really version control, I know, but I find it useful to have a selection of wordings to choose from &lt;strong&gt;in one place&lt;/strong&gt; so that I can compare and contrast things like the level of detail and the tone. This isn't particularly onerous as these documents do not total more than 2 - 3 pages in my case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T10:29:38.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9540" CreationDate="2013-04-22T10:41:40.717" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Suresh comprehensive answer, and understanding you are referring primarily to the technology, would add the following which concerns the presentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not include media (video, sound etc) in your presentations unless absolutely necessary. If you do, make sure in advance (before the conference or some time before your talk that everything will work. This is particularly true if you need to switch platform from whatever you use to whatever the conference might run (unless they let you use your own computer (which is rare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make copies of your presentation in alternative formats. for example. if you make a presentation in PowerPoint, save it also as PDF (and make sure the PDF looks ok). Moving PowerPoint files between Win and Mac can be far from trivial. Not even PDFs are fool proof, particularly if media players need to be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add a technical item:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that older projectors may not resolve the color space you have in your presentation. This may render certain colours invisible and make other look identical. Therefore be careful and avoid choosing too many similar colours in plots etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T10:41:40.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9540" CreationDate="2013-04-22T11:14:35.237" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Suresh's and Peter's advice, there is one other unlikely scenario to consider. Be prepared to give your presentation without the assistance of technology. Depending on the venue, if the projector fails, it may take longer to get a new one in place than you have to speak. If the talk is for an interview, being able to seamlessly switch to the low-tech version is a big plus for you. If you are at a conference, then the attendees at your session will still get to hear about your work. If the presentation is your thesis defense, then you absolutely must be able to continue in the analog fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:14:35.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9580" CreationDate="2013-04-22T11:49:57.023" Score="5" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the main websites teachers look to when searching a new university teaching job? If it varies by discipline, I'm talking about finance in particular but business in general would also be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as location, I'm looking for teachers from the US or from the UK (but anyone with decent English skills would be considered) to come to beautiful Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1068/are-there-any-good-job-directories-for-academic-work&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; but it seems focused on research jobs (PhD positions, postdocs, etc.). I'm really looking for teachers to teach financial subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T15:09:45.660" Title="Job Websites for University Teachers" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9549" CreationDate="2013-04-22T12:23:28.197" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;academic freedom&lt;/strong&gt; as it is commonly understood does not refer to one's views and publicly stated opinions, but to the freedom in which they conduct teaching &lt;strong&gt;in the classroom&lt;/strong&gt;. The reference in US is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom#In_the_United_States&quot;&gt;1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure&lt;/a&gt; stating that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a rule, &lt;strong&gt;academics do not get special treatment outside of the classroom with regards to freedom of speech&lt;/strong&gt;. It's certainly not the case in the US, and I am not aware of any other country where it might be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding the impact of unpopular or offensive views on reputation, it will heavily depend on your colleagues! I personally find that, while freedom of speech is highly valued in academic circles in general, Academia as a system is a rather conservative institution and I suspect you would not find much more sympathy for extreme views than in any other workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: Academic freedom is also used to refer to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom#Academic_freedom_for_colleges_and_universities&quot;&gt;US jurisprudence applying to universities and colleges&lt;/a&gt;; in that sense, it is unrelated to rights and duties of an individual teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T12:23:28.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9549" CreationDate="2013-04-22T12:36:01.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to getting flak from your colleagues, some views might also get you fired or forced out of your position. For example, if you publicly state that the best solution for Africa is to drop a few nukes, the university might force you to resign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what is important is that you can provide rational arguments for your opinion, as science is based on facts (and the interpretation of those facts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T12:36:01.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15190" CreationDate="2013-04-22T14:56:18.453" Score="14" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I receive about 10k emails per year and send about 2-3k. In my department (the sphere I can influence) there are those who almost never respond and those who respond as soon as I have hit the send button. There are also those who send mails on weekends, in the middle of the night, seemingly expecting answers fairly immediately. The record was probably the mail that was send shortly after midnight on a Sunday night about stuff that needed to be sorted out by Monday morning. In short, different person have different views on how and for what email should be used. I should add that in my system, the university email is strictly not to be used for private emailing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am therefore interested in hearing about if and if so how one can establish an email policy which provides guidelines for reasonable emailing practices within a department.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard about guidelines against sending mails from off duty hours, about avoiding disputes over email, and about reasonable (expected) response times, etc. but have so far failed to locate any good sources for such practices and guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T18:11:25.793" Title="What should be included in a departmental email policy?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9542" CreationDate="2013-04-22T14:59:39.517" Score="40" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who are super busy don't have the time to spend minutes first reading, then processing (and/or rereading), then responding to your email. This is simply life, there is only so much time in a day, and some people have way more constraints on their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending lots of time parsing/processing/understanding/formulating responses/replying to emails from people they don't know or have reason to care about? Probably not high on their  list of priorities - which for the record is probably already completely overloaded anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write shorter emails (or electronic content) which are easy to answer. This ability is an art, get used to practicing it if you want responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt; for someone to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Practical advice from this question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that even in this question, the important part&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;was buried in a large paragraph (assuming this is even your primary question, which I'm &lt;em&gt;assuming&lt;/em&gt; it was). Plus, it was filled with irrelevant information which suggests other things are what you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm a really busy person getting hundreds of emails a day, you just made me read, then reread the email after finishing to figure out what you want a response to. You can't do this if you want responses consistently - and this is relatively SIMPLE with minimal text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just find it tremendously frustrating when my emails are ignored by&#xA;faculty (both at my institution and at other places) and I don't hear&#xA;back at all.  I understand that I'm not really in a position to&#xA;request anything of anyone, but it just seems like common decency to respond rather than say nothing at all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is this behavior acceptable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is considerably more clear and makes it easier to respond to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not naturally able to write clear, concise, and easy to respond to emails, practice and spend time rewriting them until you feel they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T14:59:39.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9549" CreationDate="2013-04-22T15:06:58.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For propagating unpopular view (which can be considered offensive) a professor may lose a position (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Controversies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Watson's case&lt;/a&gt;). And in general, sensitive topics (e.g. like gender and ethnicity) may be risky, regardless of the scientific value of a statement one is making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, sometimes there is a particular ban on some ideologies (e.g. propagation of Nazism in many European countries). However, it this case it is (usually) not a limitation on academic research, but only on political activity. (Similarly, &quot;encouraging or assisting crime&quot; is an offence and it does limit what one can say.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, a humoristic slide from a presentation &lt;a href=&quot;http://offtopicarium.wdfiles.com/local--files/v2:program/beauty.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beauty and the beast&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://offtopicarium.wikidot.com/v2:program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2nd Offtopicarium&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/298Pc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T18:32:50.000" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T18:32:50.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9540" CreationDate="2013-04-22T22:11:18.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are all great. Also keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't know what kind of room you'll be presenting in, keep all the vital info in the slides on the top half or top third of the slide. You never know when you'll get a room where the screen is at the same level as the audience seating. When that happens, no one behind the first row will be able to see the whole slide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When microphones are provided, do a sound check before your presentation starts. Use the microphone. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared to present on a machine other than the one you bring. Have your presentation materials on an external drive AND in the cloud. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you created your presentation on a mac and you'll be presenting on a pc, or vice versa, try to do a practice round on that operating system. Even if both OS's are running PowerPoint, certain features or slide transitions might not be supported.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6088" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T22:11:18.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9575" CreationDate="2013-04-23T00:28:25.907" Score="5" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many universities provide funding covering only part of the tuition fee or living expenses, especially in the UK where tuition fees are different for UK/EU and international students while most scholarships only cover the first one, i.e. international students have to pay the difference. My question is whether it is possible for PhD funding to be updated/upgraded (to cover more expenses) if a student performs well, e.g. produce high quality publication, while doing his PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T11:16:16.660" Title="Is PhD funding updatable?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9557" CreationDate="2013-04-23T00:59:25.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of a few trainings that help new employees get integrated inside a large organization. In my case, it was an offshore division of a large, IT company who was training its employees on how to communicate effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the goals of your organization, a University, would be very different from a multinational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, here's some of the notes from that training:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you write email, write email about one topic only. If you need to discuss another topic, that should be in a separate email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that the contents written in the body of the email are about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write very clear, descriptive subject lines. (&quot;ex: Problems with implementing FooBar&quot; vs. &quot;Got a problem&quot;). Often it is helpful to include square brackets that describe the project of your email as well. Ex: &quot;[Budget 2013] Need review of the FY03 proposals by Friday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone asks you for help and you know who to contact, instead of just telling them to contact John Doe or Jane Doe, reply to the original sender and CC John and Jane as part of your reply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if these are helpful at all - this is mostly a list of examples rather than an actual straight-up policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T00:59:25.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9557" CreationDate="2013-04-23T03:20:18.770" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do issues like this really need a policy to govern them?  If someone in a department has a problem responding to emails in a timely manner, it seems to me that it would be better to counsel them directly.  Creating a policy for it may come across as passive-aggressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corporations may have formal policies about how to answer email, and how to organize your desk, and how to change the toilet paper in the restroom.  But academics are used to a considerable degree of autonomy, and dislike being micromanaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My humble opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T03:20:18.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9565" CreationDate="2013-04-23T03:47:36.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak for the UK/EU but in the US, your funding is not generally &quot;updateable&quot;. It always increases by a non significant inflationary rate amount every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way in which funding is generally updated is if you acquire for yourself some other funding sources which replace your base funding because they have a higher stipend level eg. NSF graduate fellowship, MSR fellowship, Facebook fellowship etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way in which my funding has been supplemented at least in my case is my ex-adviser used to give me some more funds as research expenses out of his discretionary funding (or other grant funding, I am not sure) because I was involved in extra projects (not directly related to my own but I was brought in as an analyst) on his request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that publishing in great journals/conferences will bring in more funding for you (&lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T03:47:36.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9572" CreationDate="2013-04-23T09:02:16.877" Score="32" ViewCount="2823" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several times in the past, after publishing a paper, I have sent email to several people which I thought might be interested in the results obtained in the paper. Usually I have emailed some of the people whose result I was citing in my paper and to people who were working on related problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I such a practice ok, or do people consider emails like this too intrusive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I did this in the past, some of the people answered to me with a brief email (along the lines of &quot;thanks for letting me know&quot;). In a one or two cases the answer indicated that this person is interested in similar emails in the future, if I have some updates on that particular topic. And in one case I was even asked about possibility of collaboration on some problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from these answers it seems that it was ok. But if there were some people who did not like receiving such emails, they probably did not bother to answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T09:10:01.110" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T12:12:12.793" Title="Is it ok to send an email informing about your new paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9571" CreationDate="2013-04-23T09:27:23.920" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two important factors to keep in mind when writing &lt;em&gt;unsolicited email&lt;/em&gt;, which could be taken as spam by the person who receives it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether &lt;strong&gt;you believe, in good faith, that the receiver will find the information useful&lt;/strong&gt;.  That test is not as easy as it may seem, because what seems obvious to you (&lt;em&gt;“this guy in field Y will be happy that we're developing somewhat related concepts in field X that may generate a new vision of his field”&lt;/em&gt;) may not be to him (&lt;em&gt;“why is this X specialist writing to me to promote his recent work I don't care about?”&lt;/em&gt;). Messages need to be tailored, so that people can immediately see how your paper can be of interest to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;frequency&lt;/strong&gt; of such messages: if you write 5 papers a year on a given topic, and send a nice informative email each time, that is a lot of mail! Consider doing this only once in a while, maybe for high-profile articles or reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding whether it's accepted practice (and common practice): I receive a dozen such emails of this nature per year, from colleagues in my field, and every time I am actually interested in their paper. I have not yet received spam of that sort, i.e. notification of new papers I couldn't care less about (I receive lots of spam job applications, on the other hand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also do it myself, once or twice a year: sit back, think about my recent papers, and ask myself “what colleagues do I have that may be interested in this and that?”. Usually, I then write a few different emails, depending on the specific interests of the colleagues in question, so that the email is personalized. I also use that occasion to ask questions to them , if I have any of relevance, asking their opinion on recent developments (by them, me or other groups) in our field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T09:27:23.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T09:56:49.423" Score="9" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a professor who works part-time at a university as a moderator of one of their student groups. He does not teach any actual classes but spends a hugely considerable amount of time with the members of the group outside of class hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical that he uses his position to scout between those members for a company in which he is either a founder or a senior-level position (currently cannot recall which). He does not offer them jobs but instead constantly pushes and offers them to become &quot;interns&quot; with no pay, bad hours, and extremely heavy workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not very well versed in business ethics but this sounds very wrong to me, and something of a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the university have grounds to officially respond to this such as sanctioning him? I know that this professor was previously warned to stop doing so but nothing official/major was ever done despite him continuing to do so behind the administration's back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6903" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:28:54.850" Title="Is it ethical for a part-time professor to use his position for other interests?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9573" CreationDate="2013-04-23T10:28:54.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you remark, it is probably not okay, although it is always a fine line to draw: it's ethical (and highly encouraged) for a professor to help students procure good jobs and/or rewarding experiences outside the university (where “rewarding” covers not only monetary gains, but also experience learnt, etc.). He can do that through his network, and first and foremost in that network is the company he knows best. However, it is not ethical for him to abuse his position at the university and the student–professor interactions to the good of his own company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how active are universities in taking action against such behavior? It probably depends on the field, the country, the local situation and power of the professor, but in most cases I would say they will be willing to close their eyes, and it would really take a lot of evidence and someöne pushing them very strongly before they take disciplinary measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do something about it, discuss it very openly, and very calmly, with the director of your program, the students' representatives, the dean or departmental chair, etc. And document everything in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:28:54.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9565" CreationDate="2013-04-23T11:16:16.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? YES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be likely? NO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funding model depends entirely on the institution who is funding you. It is ultimately up to them as to how you will be compensated for your time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about sustaining yourself through your study there are other avenues which candidates pursue such as lecturing/tutoring, marking and being a research assistant. Additionally there may be other scholarships available to you from the university or from external institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T11:16:16.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9571" CreationDate="2013-04-23T12:27:15.023" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think this is absolutely acceptable, and indeed if you are at the beginning of your career, highly encouraged. When I was a graduate student I was shocked when my advisor asked me to e-mail my paper to most of the famous people working in the field. I was even more surprised when several of them wrote back with very substantive replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make sure you're not being intrusive (which I recommend if the recipient is famous, and/or you don't know him/her personally), word your e-mail in such a way that suggests that you would welcome, but don't expect, a reply. i.e., &quot;If you have any comments I would be grateful to hear them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T12:27:15.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9571" CreationDate="2013-04-23T12:36:41.813" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is indicated by other answers, the practise is acceptable in general but there is a fine line when it becomes intrusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to what has been stated already, I would add that if your paper is published in a journal that is well known to anyone in the field, the paper is less likely to come as a (pleasant) surprise. If it is published somewhere where it is less likely that many would normally find it, then the information is more likely positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is how you write your mail. If you send the paper to persons who do similar research you could point out the common interest from your side and use that as an &quot;excuse&quot; to provide a copy of your paper. It is easier to accept getting stuff if the there ios a clear reason or coupling explicitly stated in the mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst that can happen is otherwise that someone tells you not to send more material, I doubt anyone would get annoyed to the point where it may affect you negatively (unless you persists despite wishes to the contrary). Despite internet access, RSS feeds etc, I still find that I miss good papers, particularly from journals more peripheral to my subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T12:36:41.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T14:51:15.670" Score="5" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an Australian maths undergraduate student, and our academic year ends at the beginning of December. I understand that PhDs in the USA (and elsewhere?) generally start before this time, about September. So, if I want to pursue a PhD overseas, I have a long time to kill in between my undergrad and postgrad degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently I've been investigating the possibility of cramming the remainder of my undergraduate degree into one fewer semester, so that I can graduate at the beginning of July (2014), just in time to start a PhD overseas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this would mean I would have to send out applications in December this year, before I have actually finished my degree. I am particularly concerned because in Australia the last year of an undergraduate maths degree is an &quot;honours&quot; year, which comprises the main research component and the most serious coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have advice or experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would I be substantially more competitive for a top university if I delayed for a year and had an honours thesis and good results from many advanced classes under my belt, compared to applying early and having only a promise of an honours thesis? Or, would it be a minor issue with good letters of recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6282" LastEditorUserId="6282" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T16:49:11.827" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T18:20:48.027" Title="Advantages of delaying/accelerating PhD application" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2013-04-23T15:00:13.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first part of your question suggests that you want to find resources on how to find jobs in Asia. That's easy. Googling &quot;Academic Positions Asia&quot; found me this website (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unijobs.asia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.unijiobs.asia&lt;/a&gt;), (on the first hit) which claims to be &quot;Asia's University Jobs Portal.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be what you are looking for. The site seems to have a fairly comprehensive set of search tools, with the ability to do keyword searching or to search by position type, by discipline, or by location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end of your question suggests that you really want to find people to fill positions that you have. Listing on sites like I just found and like what you found will help, but in general, you need to advertise. The best advertising is to be had in the publications or on the website(s) of the professional organization(s) relevant to your discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T15:09:45.660" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T15:09:45.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T15:18:12.223" Score="7" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my PhD recently and am waiting for the oral examination. Though I have started looking for postdoc positions, the possibility of being without a job, even if for a small period after the viva, is quite frightening. How can I cope with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6904" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T22:49:00.073" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:49:00.073" Title="How to cope with gap after PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9579" CreationDate="2013-04-23T16:01:02.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The academic year does start around September in the USA and I think most European countries.  At least in Europe, this doesn't necessarily mean that you would have to start your PhD in September.  For example, I did my PhD in the UK and started in June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that your 'competitors' won't have finished their degree yet either when they are applying.  They will be slightly further along, having already started their final year, but not significantly so, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is cramming the rest of your undergraduate degree into one semester less at all a realistic option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think you are likely to get stronger letters of recommendation once you are in your final year, because you will have been doing more advanced work and will probably have closer contacts with faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that having some time between your honours year and your PhD is necessarily a bad idea.  My husband started his PhD only two weeks after finishing his MSc, and he really could have done with more of a break.  I had almost a year between my MSc and PhD, but I spent six months of that doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my friends from Australia managed to get part-time teaching work at his undergraduate university until he went to the UK for his PhD.  Or if money isn't too much of an issue, you could take the opportunity to go travelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I'd just like to add, along the lines of Dave Clarke's comment, that you should bear in mind that your honours year will likely be a lot more challenging than previous years, and so 'accelerating' this year might turn out to be a bad idea.  I certainly worked harder in my fourth year of university (honours in New Zealand, so quite a similar system to Australia) than I have in any year since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T18:20:48.027" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T18:20:48.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9579" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:11:30.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not accelerate things, to avoid getting worse grades that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you have a half year of free time, fill this usefully either by working (earn some cash, gain some experience), travelling (spend some cash, gain some experience) or by doing research (perhaps a professor will even pay you to do something useful for 6 months, or maybe you can get a 6 month RA position). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting good scores will obviously help you. Working or travelling ... well, you'll thank yourself later. And research experience will help your application (and CV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T17:11:30.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9362" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:21:12.627" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you are really asking how to check whether a conference is &lt;em&gt;reputable&lt;/em&gt; (meaning not a scam), not how to check whether a conference is actually &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;If you don't recognize the conference or its organizers, stay away.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should already know a relatively short list of established, reputable conferences in your research area.  If you don't, ask your advisor to give you such a list.  (If your advisor doesn't know, you need a new advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this conference isn't on that list, it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; still be reputable, but either very new or slightly outside your research area.  In that case, take a serious look at the organizing committee.  If the members of the organizing committee are well-known active researchers, the conference is probably fine.  Otherwise, it's probably a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that you were invited to submit to the conference.  At least in computer science, such invitations are almost unheard of; conferences are normally advertised by impersonal calls for papers.  Did the invitation come from someone you already know, at least professionally?  Does the invitation mention specific technical details of your work (more than just a paper title)?  If you answered &quot;No&quot; to both these questions, the conference is almost certainly a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T17:21:12.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9362" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:42:01.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I usually do is look at the list of speakers in the current and past years. If the conference is in my field, I usually can tell if the speakers are well-known and what the level of the conference will be. If the conference is not in my field, I google some of the speakers and check out their websites to get an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which is often helpful to do, is to simply ask someone with knowledge of the field which conferences are good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T17:42:01.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:46:42.403" Score="-4" ViewCount="1098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a teaching assistant for a class in which students use tablet computers to advance their projects. Yet, sometimes, we need their attention and it can be difficult for them to focus on what I tell them with such distracting tools in hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a way to monitor student iPads from a teacher's iPad or computer (restrict web browsing, being able to blank the screen and etc.). Any ideas that are relatively cheap? I know similar software exists for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanschool.com/ipad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;computers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6905" LastEditorUserId="11633" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T01:12:29.680" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T01:12:29.680" Title="Are there inexpensive tools to monitor student iPad’s?" Tags="&lt;technology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-01T04:52:07.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9586" CreationDate="2013-04-23T18:23:51.153" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent, I think &lt;strong&gt;you may be asking the wrong question&lt;/strong&gt;. The students you are talking about grown up adults, fully capable of making choices and understanding the consequences. I wonder if your &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; question is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7886/2700&quot;&gt;What are effective ways to deal with misuse of mobile devices in class?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice there are quite a few answers on this question, which may solve you real practical problem, yet none of them involve monitoring the students’ devices or anything else. I suggest that you address your problem directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tell the students your expectations,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up rules that will govern the use of electronic devices,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enforce the rules when you are aware of a violation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, &lt;strong&gt;the fact that a student would be using an iPad for purposes other than you had planned, if it doesn't prevent him or the others from learning, is not a bad thing&lt;/strong&gt;. You can't think of everything, and surely some of the students will come up with creative yet constructive ways to use the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T18:23:51.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9362" CreationDate="2013-04-23T18:38:26.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I will add to JeffE’s answer. I agree with him that, &lt;em&gt;in your field&lt;/em&gt;, you probably have established your own list of reputable conferences after a few years. However, it does happen that you get invited or submit a paper to a conference that's outside your natural “comfort zone”. One reason is because of a joint work with other authors from that area, another may be that you are shifting the focus of your research, or you published a paper that has potential applications in another field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if that happens, you want to check out the &lt;strong&gt;organizers and speakers&lt;/strong&gt; (keynote speakers if it's a large conference). One or two serious people doesn't mean anything though, especially if the conference is held in an attractive touristic area (Caribbean islands?). Some people accept conferences that they know are not good, if they see a nice opportunity for a holiday in them. However, if half the organizers or speakers are well known, or have well established research groups, then you're probably good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T18:38:26.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T18:46:01.013" Score="36" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could have written this question in some other stack places, but prefer to do here because the affinity with the audience. I am the head of a research group, 38 years old, engaged in a lot of things and working on average 12 hours per day on research and all related stuff. My son (first one) was born last week and we really enjoy it. My only concern is: how will I be able to cope with my workload and scientific output after my paternity leave (in two weeks)? I really never thought about this and wonder whether other academics could give advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T19:15:21.890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T21:42:56.820" Title="Maintain scientific output after having a baby" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9589" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:45:20.110" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was close to vote to close for this question, however, in view of the upvotes, I'll give my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are asking yourself the wrong question. You should not ask &quot;How will I be able to keep up with my workload and scientific output?&quot; but rather&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I am willing to do for my work and for my family? How do I and the rest of my family should arrange our life including work hours, family time and all the rest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may come to the conclusion that a reduced scientific output may be a &quot;good price to pay&quot; for a richer family life. On the other hand, if you are pre-tenure for example, you may also reach the conclusion that a year or two of &quot;not so rich family life&quot; and more hours at work are worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T19:45:20.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2013-04-23T20:11:19.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility to check about—which I took advantage of at the end of my own graduate career—is that of being hired short-term as a teaching assistant. The good news is that you would have extra time to find a new position. The challenge is that you would be making a commitment to teaching for an additional semester. It would have significant ramifications if you were to  skip out on this duty if you obtained a job offer to start immediately at a company, or a postdoc offer at another university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T20:11:19.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T20:16:02.217" Score="6" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Philips and Pugh's &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k-K8SzpEaRgC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;pg=PA54#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to get a PhD&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the authors describe the general philosophical concept of &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; 'in all disciplines'. I have two questions in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A.&lt;/strong&gt; They said that an activity that tries to answer a question like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'What are the age, sex and subject distributions of doctoral students in&#xA;  British higher education?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is considered descriptive, intelligence-gathering activity, but not research. This is pretty clear and agreed upon. However, they attribute that to the &lt;strong&gt;'what'&lt;/strong&gt; nature of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, they said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research goes beyond description and requires analysis. It looks for explanations,&#xA;  relationships, comparisons, predictions, generalizations and theories. These are the &lt;strong&gt;‘why’&lt;/strong&gt; questions. Why are there so many fewer women doctoral students in physics than in biology? ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All these questions require good intelligence-gathering, just as decisionmaking and policy formulation do. But the information is used for the purpose of developing understanding – by comparison, by relating to other factors, by theorizing and testing the theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it sound to consider only 'why' questions as research? How about some 'what' and 'how' questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B.&lt;/strong&gt; In the same text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All research questions have comparisons in them&lt;/strong&gt;, as the words ‘fewer’, ‘different’ and ‘less’ in the examples above illustrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should all real research questions really contain &lt;em&gt;comparison&lt;/em&gt; (explicitly or implicitly)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="4018" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T05:08:39.523" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T20:03:16.340" Title="On the definition of research - are 'what' and 'how' questions also considered as research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9589" CreationDate="2013-04-23T21:42:56.820" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you &lt;em&gt;produce&lt;/em&gt; as much, or even more, with less time available? Yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it easy? No.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What generic advice can be given? Little, especially in such short space. Numerous entire books have been written on the topic of time management. Read the advice of others, decide whether it can apply to you, try it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the above isn't very helpful. Not in the short term, at least. Below are a few tips from my own experience, maybe you will find them helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;decide what your priorities are&lt;/strong&gt;, what you are willing to compromise, what you aren't. When I read &lt;em&gt;“engaged in a lot of things”&lt;/em&gt;, it sounds like a warning to me. Honestly, the first two years of a baby's life are hard on the parents. Social life is hard to maintain, work output too, etc. Decide which you want to keep most, and focus there. &lt;strong&gt;Don't set your expectations too high across the board.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, learn to say &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. People at your department probably ask you to participate in all sorts of research-related work (committees, etc.). If you have been playing ball ’til then, probably they can understand if you say &lt;em&gt;“I'm sorry, right now is not a time I can take some extra work, I need to focus on my family”&lt;/em&gt;. Don't use that as an excuse to get out of every commitment, or avoid anything that is thrown your way, but strategically get a bit more time that way. &lt;strong&gt;Most people are quite understanding of the hardship of having a newborn baby&lt;/strong&gt;. (Or my colleagues and bosses are extraordinary people; knowing them, it's also quite possible!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delegate stuff&lt;/strong&gt;. You lead a team, so you have some responsibility in sharing the load. You can try to offload yourself a bit, by getting others to step in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work whenever you can (read: when the baby sleeps). Adjust your work style.&lt;/strong&gt; I'll give only one example: when the baby gets to cry real bad in evenings or at night, I noticed I could get her to sleep if I had her in a sling against my chest and rocked from one foot to the other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K0KB5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the sling was as in the picture, except I needed to be standing and rocking). Well, I put my laptop on top of a high table (bar table), and quickly adapted to type and rock the baby. That way, I had time to work at night, while her mother could rest. I wrote quite a few grant proposals and articles that way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T21:42:56.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T22:27:57.990" Score="7" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm using Zotero to organize my paper collection and for my current work I'm very happy with it's possobilities to organize content (folders and tags).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, working on bigger projects a hierarchical tag structure would come in handy where subtags can be assigned to lead-tags (or something similar). Is there any reference program that can do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T16:28:32.610" Title="Is there any reference management software that supports hierarchical tagging?" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9592" CreationDate="2013-04-23T23:01:31.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Australian &lt;em&gt;Higher Education Research Data Collection specification&lt;/em&gt; (2012)[1] (ie: HERDC) defines research as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing &#xA;  knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, &#xA;  methodologies and understandings. This could include synthesis and analysis of &#xA;  previous research to the extent that it leads to new and creative outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and uses the OECD Frascati Manual[2][3] to support that definition as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;consistent with a broad notion of research and &#xA;  experimental development (R&amp;amp;D) as comprising of creative work undertaken on a &#xA;  systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of&#xA;  humanity, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new &#xA;  applications&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HERDC and the Frascati Manual focus on the generation of new understandings, of new knowledges.  There's a commonly agreed purposive utility to knowledge that is lacking in the generation of data and information.[4]  I would suggest that as knowledge lies in a network of other knowledges, that any production of knowledge is implicitly or explicitly comparative to the existing body of literature.  HERDC goes on to suggest that apart from &quot;increasing the stock of knowledge&quot; and being in a form suitable for the dissemination of knowledge, that research publications must &quot;evidenced by discussion of the relevant literature, &#xA;an awareness of the history and antecedents of work described, and provided in a &#xA;format which allows a reader to trace sources of the work, including through &#xA;citations and footnotes.&quot;  This explicit comparison between the production of understandings as knowledge and the past production of understandings as knowledge would be the basic comparison at the heart of scholarship and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the HERDC specifications are normative, and punative (they're about divvying up a pot of government research money), there has at least been an attempt to cover them with a fig leaf of collegiality, and for them to reflect academic practices.  The absence of protest over their unfairness is an indication that they &quot;work&quot; as a punative practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: HERDC (2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovation.gov.au/Research/ResearchBlockGrants/Documents/2012HERDCSpecifications.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.innovation.gov.au/Research/ResearchBlockGrants/Documents/2012HERDCSpecifications.pdf&lt;/a&gt; at page 7-8, 1.3.10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2]: OECD (2002), &lt;em&gt;Frascati Manual: Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development&lt;/em&gt;, OECD: Paris. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3]: Cited in HERDC (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4]: DIKW models, Zins, Chaim (2007). &quot;Conceptual Approaches for Defining Data, Information, and Knowledge&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology&lt;/em&gt; 58 (4): 479–493. doi:10.1002/asi.20508 cited in Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T23:01:31.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9594" CreationDate="2013-04-23T23:57:14.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question which has often come up on the webz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not really sure of your exact requirements but Mendeley has &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the functions or you could develop a workaround. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-Papers-and-Mendeley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mendeley.com/academic-features/searching-vs-filing-managing-your-library-the-modern-way-with-tags-and-filters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. I have also heard good things about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joachim-scholz.com/academipad/2012/04/09/sente-papers-best-pdf-management-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sente&lt;/a&gt; but I have not used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are solutions for Macs though. I am not sure about Windows and do not know if that is a constraint which you have. Personally, I use a hierarchical folder system in Mendeley and export to BibTeX and add tags - which, so far, seems to work well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you seeking more, in general of optimizing your academic workflow? In case you haven't heard of it, I suggest visiting &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.macademic.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; blog. It updates sporadically but most of the good stuff is in there. I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T23:57:14.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9594" CreationDate="2013-04-24T07:19:39.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JabRef&lt;/a&gt; is a reference manager using the BibTeX format. It uses the concept of &lt;strong&gt;groups&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. papers can be put into groups, and it allows to create a hierarchical group structure. Since one paper can be put into any number of groups, it is essentially hierarchical tagging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With JabRef, one can even configure for individual groups whether a group will automatically include the content of any subgroups (analog to tagging), or will include the content of any supergroup (refining), or just include the papers assigned exactly to this group (as in a classical folder structure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T07:19:39.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9592" CreationDate="2013-04-24T07:56:43.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of different types of research. Some research is hypothesis driven other research is not. &lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; questions generally are not hypothesis driven while &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; questions usually have a related hypothesis. Comparison words are useful to indicate both sides of the hypothesis (i.e., the null hypothesis which you are often attempting to reject and the alternative hypothesis which you are often attempting to provide support for). Hypothesis testing is the basis of the scientific method. Typically doctoral research leads to a thesis/dissertation which historically has been about hypothesis driven research. Things like design based research in the sciences and performance based research in the arts, however, are now often being submitted as dissertations. Whether this is a bastardization of the term dissertation is not clear to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the wider realm of research, the quoted material is wrong. Within the realm of getting a PhD the quoted material may be historically and technically/etymologically correct, but it is clearly a dated view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T07:56:43.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9610" CreationDate="2013-04-24T08:35:23.033" Score="146" ViewCount="58016" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a well-known paper in academic circles that features a rediscovery of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezoidal_rule&quot;&gt;trapezoidal rule&lt;/a&gt; for numerical integration by a medical researcher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves”, Mary M. Tai, &lt;em&gt;Diabetes Care&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;1994&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;17&lt;/em&gt;, 152–154.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the paper's only figure says it all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;               &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PkAiP.png&quot; alt=&quot;trapezoidal rule in action&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find comments on many blogs about it, most of them along the lines of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/11/10/apparently-calculus-was-invented-in-1994/&quot;&gt;“turns out calculus was invented in 1994”&lt;/a&gt;. I think it truly is a bit sad that the paper made it past the researcher, her immediate colleagues and friends, a Yale professor of electrical engineering who is thanked for “his expert review”, and most importantly reviewers, without someone giving the author a hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the most optimistic view is to see it as an educational paper: the method is not new, but that particular medical community didn't know about it, so it was worth publishing. However, that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; what the paper states: the author clearly presents the method as new and names it after her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I think I have explained the context. My question is: &lt;strong&gt;after that peer-review failure was exposed, what should have happened to the paper?&lt;/strong&gt; What happened is that the same journal published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/10/1223.2.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;series of comments&lt;/a&gt; on the paper, and a reply by the author to the comments. Was that the correct/ethical way of handling the issue, as an editor? Or should the paper have been retracted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T23:39:57.467" Title="Rediscovery of calculus in 1994: what should have happened to that paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="54" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9606" CreationDate="2013-04-24T10:10:41.660" Score="34" ViewCount="86550" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with background: I'm European, don't know much about undergrad educational systems, and especially grading, outside my own area. So, I receive a CV from an Indian undergrad with the following section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;             &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5o6Cv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have no idea whether the scores displayed here are dismal, average, good or excellent. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_India&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; doesn't know what CGPA is, except in Nepal (and the student in case was not educated in Nepal), so I turn to you, Academia Stack Exchange, to help me solve this riddle!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2018-03-17T06:35:17.427" Title="How do you judge an Indian CGPA score?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9607" CreationDate="2013-04-24T10:37:09.387" Score="13" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen quite a few research publications where the literature review section doesn't compare past work to the author's work. It's like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] did this using X technique. [5] used Y technology. (etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of literature reviews are easier to write as I don't have to read similar works in extreme detail to create a list of things that we are doing and they are not. I can understand their technique by reading their abstract but it won't matter too much as long as I am using a completely different technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen some good publications which compare each and every work in literature review section to their own work and say &quot;They did not do this&quot;, &quot;Their work couldn't do that&quot;. While, of course, this looks a lot better but it's a lot harder to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I using queuing theory for a similar work which has been done using some other technique. I can easily state that they used this technique in their work instead of trying to find drawbacks in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which approach is better when writing the literature review section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T08:39:19.943" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T08:39:19.943" Title="Is it necessary to show what improvements you have made to similar work in literature reviews section?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2013-04-24T10:38:55.437" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two factors can be used to get a broad idea about an Indian engineering student - one is the college and the second is the CGPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;College&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institute_of_Science&quot;&gt;Indian Institute of Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technology&quot;&gt;Indian institutes of technology&lt;/a&gt; are top technical institutions in the country. Of late, multiple IITs have been set up, leading to (arguably) diminishing quality. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technology#Institutes_of_Technology_Act.2C_1961&quot;&gt;original seven IITs&lt;/a&gt; boast of excellent faculty in most departments and are understood to be better than the newer ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, there are regional colleges like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Technology&quot;&gt;National Institutes of Technology&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Engineering,_Guindy&quot;&gt;Anna University&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITS_Pilani&quot;&gt;BITS&lt;/a&gt; which are also among the top engineering colleges in the country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grading System&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the above colleges use the CGPA system for grading. Students are awarded grades ranging from S (=10) to D (=6) in various courses that they enroll over a period of 4 years. In a course, the top performers could expect an S, the students who have scored 80%-90% could score an A and so on. Obviously, the exact grades depend on the instructor and the overall performance. A student that scores S in all his courses  over 4 years ends up with the perfect CGPA of 10.0. A 9-10 CGPA indicates mostly excellent track record and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be clear that the CV in the question reflects a mediocre score in a top college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T10:38:55.437" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9605" CreationDate="2013-04-24T10:44:22.963" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contrasting your work with earlier work&lt;/strong&gt; on the same topic (same or related questions) &lt;strong&gt;is a crucial part of a scientific publication&lt;/strong&gt;. You have to explain to the reader what makes your approach better (or worse) depending on the exact problem to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether you should do this in the section devoted to review of the existing literature is debatable. There are no strict rules, so as long as you do it somewhere and the paper is clearly readable, just do what seems best to you. If you have trouble writing, I would suggest you separate the content into a simpler form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State of the art: review of the existing literature. What problems are solved, what are remaining questions, where can we make progress. This is the motivation of your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion of how these results compare to earlier work: you're doing better than A and B on large matrices, but the approach means that you will be slower than C on sparse matrices, that sort of stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T10:44:22.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9602" CreationDate="2013-04-24T10:51:41.690" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, if I had anything to do with the acceptance of a paper such as this, I'd want to suppress any knowledge that I had anything to do with this paper at all as thoroughly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would certainly hope that in such a case the author in question would be so embarrassed by &quot;rediscovering&quot; something known for hundreds of years that the author would willingly retract the paper. But if that has not happened, there's not much that can be done. The peer-review process failed, but it would be up to either the journal editor or the author to demand retraction. Newton and Simpson are dead, and nobody else could realistically make a claim to be &quot;injured&quot; by this momentous &quot;discovery.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to ask the question &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; the paper be retracted, then the answer is no, unless there was actual bias or foul play in the peer review process. If the reviewers &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; there was a problem, and intentionally allowed the paper to move forward, then a retraction is necessary. Otherwise, though, the paper should not &lt;em&gt;de rigueur&lt;/em&gt; be retracted. It should be shunned by the academic community, however, and people should refrain from citing it (except perhaps for articles and works showing how &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do research!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T10:58:18.760" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T10:58:18.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9602" CreationDate="2013-04-24T11:07:25.140" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question depends on what we should term a &lt;strong&gt;peer-review failure&lt;/strong&gt;. There are tons of journals in the academic market: some journals are happy to publish results as long as they are correct even if they do not push the boundary of innovation. There are some journals that are happy to publish unsound experimental work, and on the other hand, some that encourage theoretical models that are severely impractical and are essentially mathematical mumbo-jumbo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing something blindingly obvious even to a high-school student is ridiculous, but we could infer two things: one, the editor and the reviewers had not found this so obvious, and two, the journal did not (or does not?) have high standards on innovation anyway. Given it is a field that potentially could have practitioners who know not a thing about calculus, the publication should not come as a big surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality is that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7360/how-common-is-it-to-inadvertently-reinvent-the-wheel-in-academia&quot;&gt;publication of known facts&lt;/a&gt; is not all that uncommon in academia. The hoo-ha over this paper is basically because of the elementariness of the concept. One could expect apologies from journals for wrong results but not necessarily for stale ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T11:07:25.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9616" CreationDate="2013-04-24T11:08:38.397" Score="9" ViewCount="9875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Masters degree holder in Computer Science. Where I live, the most popular way of receiving research grants is from the government. There are two problems with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, You have to be enrolled in a Masters or doctorate degree program at the time of applying for funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the researcher only gets a small amount of pay from the grant(Like about 2 or 3 percent). About 10 to 15 percent is for research supervisor. And remaining is equipment and other costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any way of applying for research funding as an independent researcher? &#xA;I am currently enrolled in a Masters program and am very close to getting a grant for my research. But I would like to continue work as a researcher after completing my Masters and would like to apply for funding independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="6273" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T11:27:50.597" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T17:22:01.170" Title="Applying for research funding as an independent researcher?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9611" CreationDate="2013-04-24T13:17:44.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be very difficult to get government financing depending on where you reside. For instance, here in Germany, only qualified workers affiliated with a &quot;recognized&quot; institution, such as a university or a government research organization, can apply for grants. Moreover, only PhD-level staff can act as a principal investigator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the basic upshot is that you need to see what the official rules are in the country where you are working. In general, you cannot work around the qualification rules for such programs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T13:17:44.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9611" CreationDate="2013-04-24T18:06:54.357" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having only a MSc (and not doing a PhD) it might be hard to get an official research funding (although, there are many different programs and maybe there is one for someone with your status; especially if in some way you are still affiliated with an university of institute).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, (as Paul Hiemstra pointed out) there no such thing as a scientific freelancer. Science market is very far from an unregulated, free market (and the supply is higher than demands, so it is not a place for freelancer jobs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are two options which may make sense to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doing a part-time PhD, or some PhD where you are not expected to be at the univ. all the time; effectively, it may work for you (though, then it will need to be rather at a low-rank univ.; most likely the most important thing is to find a univ. with no to low teaching load + an advisor who does not care (sic!) or one who understands your situation &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; is willing to participate in such relationship),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;considering crowdfunding - i.e. describing you project on a website and gathering from all interested people (like on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kickstarter.com/&quot;&gt;Kickstarter&lt;/a&gt;); here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.okfn.org/tools-for-open-science/&quot;&gt;a list of sites for crowdfunding in science&lt;/a&gt; (then it is not from government).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T20:23:23.853" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T20:23:23.853" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-24T18:43:00.647" Score="5" ViewCount="14967" Body="&lt;p&gt;As my bachelor's thesis, I'm developing some software (a mocking framework for MATLAB). As such, I often need to reference software documentation - both from MATLAB and the software which serves as my inspiration. It would also be nice to be able to reference the documentation of the specific feature I'm referring to (the analogue of referencing a specific page in a book). However, I mostly access this documentation online and by its nature it tends to exist just in electronic form, which is not really recommended in publishing. So far, the best I've come up with is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@misc{mockitoFeatures,&#xA; author = {{\em mockito} developers},&#xA; title = {Features and Motivations},&#xA; note = {\url{https://code.google.com/p/mockito/wiki/FeaturesAndMotivations}},&#xA; urldate = {2013-04-24},&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ok strictly speaking, this isn't part of the official docs but it serves the same purpose: it's a specific page and it's only available online)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who should be the author?&lt;/strong&gt; In the case of MATLAB I guess it's Mathworks or somesuch; I guess listing open-source projects as &quot;xx developers&quot; is the best I can do. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I mention the version?&lt;/strong&gt; Urldate helps in general, but if I'm referring to a particular software version, where should I put this info? In the title?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any &quot;official&quot; MATLAB citation recommendations?&lt;/strong&gt; MATLAB is used in research a lot, perhaps there's a suggested way of doing it and I'm just missing it. The rest of the question still applies for other software, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6920" LastEditorUserId="24064" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T14:53:12.410" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T14:53:12.410" Title="How can I cite software documentations?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9617" CreationDate="2013-04-24T19:17:40.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would treat software documentation depending on how it's distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's published in book form, then it should be cited as a book. The version number goes where you would put the edition, and the company that manufactures the software is the &quot;publisher.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the manual is distributed electronically, then you should cite the website from which it is obtained as the &quot;source.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An exception to this is if you are asked in the documentation to reference a specific work (for instance, a research article, or a website) when citing a code. Then you should follow the specific guidance provided.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T19:17:40.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9611" CreationDate="2013-04-24T20:01:33.947" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest obstacle is that you haven't been through a Ph.D. program.  Not (just) because of formal qualifications, but also because a Ph.D. program is where one learns how to manage an independent research program.  The reason Ph.D. programs are a de facto requirement for research positions is that very few people learn how to do this in a bachelor's or master's program.  It's not impossible, but it's certainly rare.  (It's already difficult for recent Ph.D.s to get research grants in competition against much more experienced researchers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from appropriate research experience, what you need is a formal affiliation with a university.  In the U.S., it's called a &quot;soft-money position.&quot;  This is a position paid for entirely by research grants, without salary or funding from the university.  (Soft money is money that depends on outside grants, while hard money is budgeted from the university itself.)  If you can get the grants in the first place, it's much easier to get a soft-money position than a regular job, since there's no risk for the university: as long as your grants continue, they can collect overhead to pay for office space, computer and library access, etc., but if your grants end then so does your job.  Of course nobody will give you a soft-money position unless they are impressed with your work and think you would be valuable to have around (and would not hurt the department's reputation), but this is a much lower bar than convincing them to spend their own money on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A soft-money position is the closest thing I'm aware of to applying for funding as an independent researcher.  (It's not completely independent, but about as close as you are likely to come to independence.)  However, in the U.S. it would be nearly impossible to get such a position with just a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this path is feasible at all depends on your research area, and of course your funding agency's policies.  In the U.S. it's pretty common in medical research, but almost unheard of in mathematics (where there is much less funding available).  In computer science it's somewhere in between, depending on the specific subfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T20:01:33.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1261" CreationDate="2013-04-24T21:36:50.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do token passing and some kind of method to exchange the files. I think this method was covered in the comments but let me elaborate it here. I'll use Word as an example, since chances are if you're doing manual token passing, it's because you haven't been able to convince anyone in your team to switch to LaTeX, and people who don't want to switch to LaTeX are probably the type who don't want to deal with version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;shared folder&quot; is the mechanism  you use for sharing files. It could be a Dropbox folder, email, WebDAV, a remote directory on an SSH-accessible server, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Locking&lt;/strong&gt;: Person who starts with the file renames it so that their name is on the end. They send an email to the group saying, &quot;I am locking Section 1.&quot; List the locks in the email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unlocking&lt;/strong&gt;: This is a multi-step process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. If no one else &lt;strong&gt;unlocked&lt;/strong&gt; a section before you unlocked, then you can rename the file to the current date and time, then put it in the shared folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. If another collaborator &lt;strong&gt;unlocked&lt;/strong&gt; a section before you unlocked, then you must take the latest version off of the shared folder, copy the section you were working on, and paste it into the latest version you just downloaded. Rename the just-edited file to the current date and time, then put it in the shared folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you do it this way and not the other way (copying and pasting everyone else's sections into your document) is because doing so means you have to keep track of what everyone else did, whereas this way you only need to keep track of what you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's basically it. The biggest problem is when someone's not paying attention and doesn't merge properly, or when two people try to lock something at the same time (since Email has a delay) but usually you'll have to have someone who knows the process keep an eye out for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T21:36:50.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9592" CreationDate="2013-04-25T02:00:51.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In biology, &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; questions are extremely popular, even though they can be largely descriptive. The point is, that knowing descriptive details of a system is the first step in understanding how it works, and can often raise many interesting hypotheses. In fact, this trend of questions is increasing as high-throughput experimental methods are used to collect more and more data (which by itself is only descriptive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some famous examples of such &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; questions are &quot;what is the structure of DNA?&quot; and &quot;what is the sequence of the human genome?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T02:00:51.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9602" CreationDate="2013-04-25T04:52:21.890" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Online publishing, at the face of it, should be giving editors some room for maneuver. In this case, they could append the online version of the paper with an editorial note like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EDITORIAL NOTE: Citing this paper as &quot;Tai's method&quot; is strongly discouraged, as the method is actually known under the name of trapezoidal rule. See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/10/1223.2.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;Comments&lt;/a&gt; for further explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academic community affected by this rediscovery should have taken actions accordingly, and editors in other journals should have made sure that citations to the paper are only given if something other than the trapezoidal rule is being discussed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Paul II &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apologies_made_by_Pope_John_Paul_II&quot;&gt;apologized&lt;/a&gt; for a number of misdoings by the Catholic Church. The editors should've apologized to their research community for committing this peer review failure. It's OK to be wrong from time to time; science moves by rectifying things that come into contradiction with other bits of knowledge. However it's not OK to withhold knowing that you are wrong and insisting on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T04:52:21.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9627" CreationDate="2013-04-25T06:02:23.593" Score="10" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was starting out in my Masters degree, I had an idea of a publication that could be completed in a small amount of time. I was starting out and I felt it would get me at ease with research after publishing this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea was like a comparison between two different techniques of solving a problem and the paper could be completed in a week. However, My supervisor told me that I could get a publication for this idea but he recommended me not to waste my efforts on a low quality publication and focus on a long term high to medium quality publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is would it have badly affected my research career if I had published that paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="6273" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T07:25:42.893" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T15:05:14.807" Title="Can a research publication have a bad impact on your career?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9625" CreationDate="2013-04-25T06:11:41.627" Score="32" ViewCount="3631" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I invented a system to solve a problem. To run this system, I made my own algorithm.I also created some other things for that system. The main contribution was supposed to be the system.So is it a good idea to have as many research papers out of the project as I can? Or to publish a single research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a lot of researchers where they were targeting a single problem and they proposed a single solution. Now, what they would do is write a research paper for every component separately. Then they would write a single research paper showing how all the components would fit together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it a good idea to try and increase the number of publications you can have out of a single research project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own personal opinion is that the quality of your research matters not the quantity. But I have also seen a number of institutions requiring a specific number of publications to even apply for their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-04-14T03:08:10.250" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T03:08:10.250" Title="Whether to publish one big paper or many smaller papers for a given research project?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9624" CreationDate="2013-04-25T06:38:40.257" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, there are a number of factors at play: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your goals: Do you want your paper to be published in a high-impact journal? If so they will most likely be interested in the whole story rather than a small piece of it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Readability/General appeal: Can you make a coherent story with individual components? Will they all be interesting for wider audience on their own? In other words, if you opt for multiple papers out of one project; can you make sure these will be able to stand on their own? I personally think going for multiple papers is only valid when combining them into a single big paper would push aside some of your interesting results (or methods) to a metaphorical corner&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limitations imposed by the target journal: Can you actually put together all that in a single manuscript? In biomedical research you always get a limit on the number of words in the manuscript, and there is only so much you can put in supplementary. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to quality-vs-quantity, I heard that early on in your career quantity is more important while as you become more and more senior, quality becomes the main concern. I am often told that as a PhD student I can, and should try to get involved in as many papers as I can. Around the time I do post-doc, however, it's time I pay a lot of attention to where I put my name and try to work on a good paper, preferably in a high-impact journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T06:46:37.440" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T06:46:37.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9624" CreationDate="2013-04-25T07:23:00.550" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we all want fewer but high quality publications but many aspects of academia seems to favour quantity. We should also not forget that apart from numbers of publications, the impact of them through different index measures such as the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot;&gt;h&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and number of citations play a vital role in evaluating your output. A paper with no citations is not &quot;good&quot; for your record. I think one has to consider when our publications count and I can think of two and a possible third case (in the following I am concentrating on numbers/quality not impact/h but one could (should?) argue that quality = high impact/h):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications count when you seek employment. The publications will be scrutinized by peers and in this case the quality definitely counts since the publication will be the key evaluation parameter of your scientific capacity, possibly in parallel to your ability to attract funding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications count when you apply for funding. In this case it is not likely that your publications will be read and evaluated; your proposal will. And, your publication list will be looked at as a sign of productivity. So in this case I would argue that numbers count (not even first/leading authorship may be critical although must be present).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications may be important when it comes to promotions and particularly salary discussions. Here it is less clear if quality or quantity counts but I would argue that quantity is more important since your productivity can be shown as a statistic ( by the dept. and univ.) whereas quality is more difficult to quantify directly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are likely to seek funding more often than switch jobs, one might suspect that quantity is a must. In my funding system, a certain productivity is expected and in this case it is merely a number/year (on average; if you fall short it will be taken as a negative). At the same time you may lose opportunities when applying for jobs if quality does not enter the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is need for a balance between quantity and quality. Very few can survive in the long term by writing few but high profile quality papers and it is also not likely you will survive only on quantity if that is at the expense of quality. We of course need to remember that all papers that count are peer reviewed and as such have formally passed quality control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal reflection is that most of us do as much as we can to produce good quality science. If one were to try to constantly push low-quality manuscripts to gain quantity, ones reputation would probably soon suffer, so there may be additional equalizers at play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the question: yes quantity counts but cannot be gained at the expense of quality. To &quot;squeeze&quot; as much as possible out of your research is good in the sense that your experience gets out to the public but negative if your research becomes fragmented across several publications that are lost in the background noise. Finding a good balance and seeing how many quality publications can be produced from a project idea is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T09:12:05.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T09:12:05.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-04-25T07:50:35.610" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, regarding your comment that &lt;em&gt;“if [the paper] was so bad it would not have been published”&lt;/em&gt;: in my experience, pretty much anything is publishable, it all depends on the journal. Don't overestimate the field: there are journals out there that publish absolute crap. And that is not only my opinion, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in many cases, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentham_Science_Publishers&quot;&gt;Bentham Open journals&lt;/a&gt; publish articles that no legitimate peer-review journal would accept&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the initial question is: &lt;em&gt;how bad can it be?&lt;/em&gt; Well, it can be bad. As a researcher (or wannabe researcher), &lt;strong&gt;your publications list is like an artist's portfolio&lt;/strong&gt;. When you look for a job, apply for a grant or try to recruit new team members, this is what they will judge you on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;strong&gt;for a young student&lt;/strong&gt; (say undergrad or MSc level), &lt;strong&gt;one &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; paper would not completely freak me out&lt;/strong&gt;. It would mostly speak to me about the quality of the tutor/advisor/program director: a newbie can sure get a wrong idea at some point, but how come noöne was there to tell him it was a wrong idea? On the other hand, if he was told and did not listen, it might speak to his character!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T07:50:35.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T08:00:48.450" Score="2" ViewCount="10960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that if someone sends his paper to two different conferences and is somehow caught, then there would be severe consequences for the researcher.I did not know that before but I heard two supervisors talking about it yesterday.&#xA;So is it okay to send a research paper to different journals at once?( I am talking about sending to all,not publishing in all).&#xA;My field is computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T10:12:42.593" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T10:12:42.593" Title="Can we send our research paper to multiple journals at once?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-25T11:52:37.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9628" CreationDate="2013-04-25T08:16:40.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No. Then to expand on the different aspects of your question, acceptable or not and effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is generally not acceptable to send the same paper to two journals (in your question your title states &quot;journals&quot; but your text talks about &quot;conferences&quot;, I will focus on journals). Typically you sign or agree to a statement that the work is not under consieration elsewhere when you submit work. If so then you are clearly violating an understanding you have agreed to. This does not prevent people from doing so. I have experienced (as editor/reviewer) a paper that was submitted to three journals at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no way to provide formal punishment if you break the rules but you will become &quot;known&quot; for this behaviour quite quickly and you do not want a bad reputation. Again, this does not prevent the problem from happening but I guess some authors think the world is too big for anyone to notice and prior to Internet and its search capabilities, this was probably at least partially true; now it is much easier to trace duplicates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your final commnet confuses me a bit. why would you send a paper to a journal if you do not intend to try to get it published there? If this is to get free feedback to improve the manuscript, I would strongly advice against such behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final comment: I deliberately did not consider the case of a conference since all conferences may not lead to a publication, but then you would submit an abstract and not a complete manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T08:16:40.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9624" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:20:23.720" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK is rapidly moving to a low quantity high quality model. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an exercise that is conducted every 4 years and is used to rate the research quality of &quot;departments&quot; (they are not truly departments, but the details are irrelevant). For the REF each researcher is expected to return 4 items (i.e., 1 per year on average) and these items are rated on a 4 star scale, with 4* being the best and encompassing about 10-20% of the submitted work. Given how REF computes value, an person who publishes a single 4* paper and nothing else over a 4 year window is more valuable than an individual who publishes 100 3* publications. For the REF quantity above 4 is completely valueless and quality trumps all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research councils in the UK are following suit saying that they are uninterested in funding 2* research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T09:20:23.720" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9632" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:35:35.223" Score="14" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have once, some time ago, received a rejection notice in which the journal editor made what I thought was a peculiar comment. The reviewers all found that the work was good, but one emitted a doubt that I had chosen the right journal for it, saying the paper might not appeal to the broad readership of the journal (it was a general physics journal). So far, nothing out of the ordinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the editor indicated that his judgment to reject the paper was based on the fact that &lt;strong&gt;very few of the citations in the manuscript actually referred to the journal I had submitted it to&lt;/strong&gt;. (Like, 2 citations out of 35. Some of the other citations were to other general physics journals, some to more specific journals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back then, this looked very weird to me. To some extent, &lt;strong&gt;it could be interpreted as a push by the editor to increase self-citation of his journal&lt;/strong&gt;. It has never occurred to me since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common practice? When does it become ethically wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T19:23:52.223" Title="Favoring citations in the same journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9631" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:45:26.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering as editor of a journal (albeit not in Physics) I have never heard of such comments. It seems misdirected. The one possible and reasonable (in some sense of the word) reason for it might be that the editor considers the journal so specialized that most relevant literature in the field would be published in the same journal. As a result, one could conclude that if the manuscript lacks references to papers in the same journal it is peripheral to the field. I am by no means suggesting that this would be a good way to make such assertions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, and I am now speaking in my experience as an author, I have felt that such comments are excuses for other reasons to reject the paper. Without seeming too paranoid, I think this can be the result of a rash decision by the editor based on confidential comments by a reviewer but which cannot easily be conveyed. As an editor, I see different comments from reviewers which almost say that I (as an editor) would essentially be stupid if I did not reject the paper and where it seems clear some personal reason rather than scientific arguments are the basis for the judgement. What I am trying to say is that there may be reasons that are far from clear as to why you receive such comments. Unfortunately there is not much one can do about it unless you feel comfortable asking the editor to provide some background for why? I think such a question is reasonable, if for no other reason than to avoid &quot;burdening&quot; the journal with &quot;off topic&quot; questions in the future (quotations meant from journal/editor perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T19:23:52.223" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T19:23:52.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9631" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:53:02.743" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unheard of. For a journal that I submit regularly to the instructions for authors state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that the Journal has been in existence for over 80 years and has&#xA;  published of the order of 35,000 papers on a wide variety of&#xA;  acoustical topics over its lifetime, the absence of any references to&#xA;  previously published papers in the Journal raises a flag signaling the&#xA;  possibility that the paper lies outside the de facto scope of the&#xA;  Journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it really is a scope question and not a self citation question. That said, the handling editors of this journal often alert authors during the later stages of review of potentially relevant in press publications within the journal. Most have been relevant and I am happy to add the sentence or two to the background, but I also think of it as a clear attempt at increasing self citation counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T09:53:02.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T06:32:57.497" Score="8" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is in spirit a very general one. When a person (say in CS) is choosing among multiple options for gradschool, which one would experience and prudence point towards? Along with research interests and all that, things to factor in would be the extra strain involved, to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choice A: PhD advisor in the field of computer vision and machine learning. My undergrad experience was mostly in image processing, with one instance of training a rather vanilla backprop neural network. So this would be pretty much be building on the base of undergrad research experience. Yeah, the school is a tough one, and my math background is rather sparse. lots of catching up to do on the maths front.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choice B: PhD advisor does work in graphics. mostly interactive graphics, lighting models and all that. These are topics i am vaguely familiar with, never having taken a graphics course during undergrad. Nor did any research project on that. Its a fresh topic for me, but I am not qualified enough to judge whether to pursue this or not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="84905" OwnerDisplayName="AruniRC" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T13:41:02.133" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T14:31:18.200" Title="Is it safer to carry on undergraduate research areas to gradschool or start from scratch in an unknown area?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9634" CreationDate="2013-04-25T12:59:59.633" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you start by thinking about what's &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt; as an undergrad/grad, I think you may experience (unpleasant) surprises down the road. &lt;strong&gt;Do what you like best!&lt;/strong&gt; Grad school is not an easy path, and motivation is sometimes hard to maintain throughout, so the best way to help your chances of success is actually to do something that you enjoy (and hopefully will enjoy for the next few years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T12:59:59.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:02:48.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it seems we have trouble finding a true history of the A-F my guess would be the following. Many scales rely oon an odd number scale because then something can be in the middle. It is also then possible to think of C as the center of a normal distribution, if that is how grades should be distributed. We used to have a grading system from 1-5 with no intermdiate steps in schools in Sweden where 3 was considered an ok grade and 1 and 2 were poor. There was also a fail whioch was a dash instead of a number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By accident or by construction, F became Fail. It is possible that a five grade scale was chosen to make F Fail but my guess is that it was more a fotunate coincidence rather than deliberate choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T14:02:48.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9634" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:31:18.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think grad school is as much about learning than it is about doing research. Don't be afraid to learn new things and expand into new fields - grad school is exactly the time do that. My main regret from my own graduate studies is that I focused too much on doing research and not enough on learning. Of course it requires hard work, but if you don't want to work hard I would say grad school is probably not the right choice for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Fx writes in his answer, you should pursue whatever interests you the most. Of course it is also important to have a good advisor - so if you have no knowledge of the field you might like to ask around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T14:31:18.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9624" CreationDate="2013-04-25T16:28:21.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on many factors. People may love to have a single &quot;great&quot; article, but there can be obstacles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many institutions or countries have objective measures such as the number of publications, being published in a journal which is indexed in Web of Science, and has a high rank among the competitors, etc. These limit the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journal limitations. I personally love to have perfect articles. But those will be very long, Journals would not love them very much because the reader gets bored. So a way is to split it. As a matter of fact in some instances, it was the reviewer or editor who asked me to remove many parts of my article. I could not stand seeing they are going to be flushed away forever, so I published them as another article.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And finally, note that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to &quot;subjectively&quot; judge the quality of a paper and say &quot;well this paper is high-quality and is worth three average papers&quot;... I have seen strange judgments from senior researchers. For example, I have seen the results of a nation-level contest, where a very poor paper was selected as #1 by 5 judges and another paper which was absolutely unique in its field and very high-quality, was chosen as #2, because the judges were not familiar with the content of the latter (or whatever other reasons they might have) [they later changed their minds when the researcher explained the research to those idiots! but the grant was already given to the poor research!]... So in such situations, objective scores are the only tool for qualification, and the notion &quot;quality&quot; is not even applicable! This is why some researchers would prefer split&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T16:28:21.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T16:39:09.293" Score="16" ViewCount="1031" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to attract more discussion, comments or reviews of my papers and so would like to add the ability for comments or reviews to be made by the public in relation to my papers. Ideally I would like a comments section similar to those found in blogging software which allows comments to be moderated. I would like to provide this ability in an easy to maintain way but also maintain mediation control. I would rather not use blogging software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way of allowing open comments/reviews on my work? What are the pros and cons of allowing open, but moderated comments like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6915" LastEditorUserId="6915" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T18:01:35.000" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T19:08:53.193" Title="How can I invite open comments or reviews of my published papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9670" CreationDate="2013-04-25T17:53:42.300" Score="16" ViewCount="25177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a potential advisor for possible research projects but I haven't received a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the appropriate thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reply with my previous mail quoted, and say something like I having heard from you... and try to arrange a personal meeting to discuss the topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or simply forward my previous email hoping that somehow my email wasn't read the first time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5894" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T13:34:55.430" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T14:07:24.553" Title="What to do when emails to a potential advisor are not replied?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9642" CreationDate="2013-04-25T18:04:39.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that blogging would technically be the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, realistically speaking, I don't think you are going to get many comments unless your papers are truly outstanding. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;Terry Tao's blog&lt;/a&gt; -- one of the best-written and widely admired math blogs out there -- the number of comments is often in the single figures. Presumably that is an upper bound for what you should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get comments, in my opinion, is to e-mail your paper to individually selected people and invite them to offer comments. Most people won't reply, but you might get a couple of interesting responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T18:04:39.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T18:58:06.420" Score="5" ViewCount="508" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a follow-up to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9624/285&quot;&gt;Whether to publish one big paper or many smaller papers for a given research project?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose one wants to generate a number of publications from a single research idea or project, because other things being equal, more publications is better. What is a reasonable way to do so; one that does not dilute or compromise the quality of ones papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T15:47:07.553" Title="If one wants to generate several papers from a single research project, what is a reasonable way to do so?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9646" CreationDate="2013-04-25T19:03:17.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a specific research question/problem, and devised a technique, method, algorithm or system, to address it, then I think it makes more sense to showcase that method in a way that seems natural, in a single self-contained publication, to the extent that it is possible within space limits, rather than artificially breaking it up across multiple publications solely to increase the number of publications. This will, first, annoy readers, who don't care about your publication rate. It will likely also make editors/reviewers unhappy. Of course, if the method &lt;em&gt;naturally&lt;/em&gt; breaks up into more than one paper, than that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To generate multiple publications around a single method, I think a good way to go would be to write additional papers that supplement and possibly enhance a single major publication. For example, suppose you were to devise a new technique to analyse some data set(s). Then additional publications could be, for example, an extension of that technique to analyze additional, different, data sets. Also, you could have a separate publication which just describes the details of the software implementation. This would not fit well into a (say) statistical research paper, but could be a perfectly viable publication on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T19:03:17.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T19:09:28.023" Score="10" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does the scientific output of PhD’s who work in industry compare to that of PhD’s who stayed in academia (professors, mainly). I mean, in terms of number of publications, conferences, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6930" LastEditorUserId="22520" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T16:17:04.273" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T16:17:04.273" Title="Scientific output of researchers in industry and academia" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9642" CreationDate="2013-04-25T19:18:38.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, this is totally &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an answer to your specific question, but I think it is an interesting answer to the broader question of getting comments and feedback on your published papers…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go to conferences, present your work&lt;/strong&gt; (either at oral or poster presentations), and make sure you stick around and are welcoming enough so people will ask questions, give you feedback, engage in discussion about your methods and results, etc. I have received tons of insightful comments on my own work in conferences, and still find them an extraordinary tool to gather feedback on your published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;do not hesitate to engage with other researchers&lt;/strong&gt; with research interests close to yours, and after you get to know them, &lt;strong&gt;ask them clearly what they think about it&lt;/strong&gt;. I mean, if you discuss with top-notch people in the same area, they will have read your paper (unless it's really very recent); I have started very insightful conversations with lines like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello, professor Smith, it's nice to meet you. Since the 2011 conference, when we last met, I saw your nice paper on X in &lt;em&gt;Flagship journal of your field&lt;/em&gt;. It was really an improvement over existing methods. Actually, there was a question I wanted to ask: you may have seen that we published a different approach with the same goal last year in &lt;em&gt;International journal of our field&lt;/em&gt;, and we are getting slightly different convergence properties. I haven't had yet the opportunity of asking you what you thought of our approach and the way it may prevent the issue of Y…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, that's not a conversation everyone is willing to have. So, if it looks like they are trying to bail out, help them get out easily! Manners, always :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T19:18:38.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9648" CreationDate="2013-04-25T19:37:01.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: this answer applies to computer science. I suspect things are dramatically different in the natural sciences&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to measure these things, and a bit unfair. If you work as a professor, publications are the base unit (along with funding) for measuring your performance as a researcher. You also are encouraged to grow research groups that in turn will produce more and more papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work in industry (even industrial research labs) (and I've done both), you are evaluated not just in terms of paper output, but in terms of internal metrics relating to how you help the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the incentive structure in industry is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, since I haven't really answered the question: I expect that the average number of publications/researcher will be slightly less in industry than in academia, but the average will get closer as the lab characteristics become more &quot;university-like&quot;: think MSR vs (say) Walmart Labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T19:37:01.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17110" CreationDate="2013-04-25T20:24:36.143" Score="27" ViewCount="2945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been told by the professor of a particular course of mine, that our final grades will be withheld (given as an &quot;Incomplete&quot; which is later replaced by the final grade) until we individually submit our semester papers in the course to a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a few issues to go with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I defended my MSc and passed, however without this credit I will not receive my degree this semester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not want a low-quality publication on my record, especially since it appears past students in the course published in pay-to-publish conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am far, far from an expert in this field. I took the course to learn about the subject and have only been spending the last few weeks on this research paper. To give more context, I don't even have a publication in my PhD work yet and I am 2 years in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation prompts two questions from me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it &lt;em&gt;ethical&lt;/em&gt; for the professor to &lt;strong&gt;require&lt;/strong&gt; a student to submit a paper to a conference for a course? (This requirement is not mentioned in the syllabus.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; for a professor to require this? Are there any rules or regulations in the US (state school) to prevent it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="746" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T20:40:43.010" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T16:36:22.707" Title="Professor withholding course grade until submission of conference paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9651" CreationDate="2013-04-25T20:35:08.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is missing the following info. Obviously, you have approached the professor and talked to him about the specific issue you are facing: your paper is ready, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; submit it to a conference, but what you really want is to be able to get your degree this semester. There is no reasonable expectation that, if all the work is done, you should just postpone your degree waiting for an upcoming conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the missing information is: what did he answer about your specific issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T20:35:08.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9648" CreationDate="2013-04-25T20:36:16.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I voted Suresh's answer up because its holistically very good and just wanted to add that in the field of scientometrics (a field I am somewhat familiar with and still getting familiar with), there has been some past work done on this general topic including academia-industry productivity and collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading some of these literature might be useful for you if you are looking at quantitative evaluations of such productivity and impact. Mind you though that quantitative evaluations do not always yield the complete or &quot;true&quot; story behind things. Regardless, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/p685537285403341/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733399000554&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497207000697&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/y7525125557242k7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B%3aSCIE.0000041651.26664.14#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; might be useful for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This is only a small sub sample of such scientometric research and is not meant to be comprehensive or representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T20:36:16.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T20:49:46.200" Score="5" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do a lot of qualitative coding and assessment as part of my research activities. Usually my colleagues and I simply use generic tools for this process like text editors and spreadsheets, but I know that there's a lot of software out there (NVivo, Atlas.ti, etc.) that is designed for making qualitative data analysis &quot;better&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these pieces of software were inexpensive, I'd probably buy a package and try it out, but they're very costly (about $600 per seat) and appear rather intimidating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can anyone with experience in qualitative data analysis comment on whether these tools are useful (or not useful) and are worth the high price?&lt;/strong&gt; (And you get a cookie if you can describe a use case that really highlights why the tool is powerful!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T15:43:14.977" Title="Do you find a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool useful?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9654" CreationDate="2013-04-25T21:11:16.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer might not be as useful to you because it only deals with my personal experience. I often deal with mixed methods work and qualitative data analysis is something I do about ~25% of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used Atlas.ti because it is provided free on my school server. However, realistically, I used Excel to code themes, categories etc. following a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grounded theory approach&lt;/a&gt; (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). I don't find much use for it but I know significant numbers of professors and graduate students who swear by it. It seems to be the SPSS of the qualitative world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;em&gt;powerful use&lt;/em&gt; of Atlas.ti that I can attest to is organization, search and visualization of categories, codes, themes and performing some simple reliability measures (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronbach%27s_alpha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cronbach&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krippendorff%27s_alpha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Krippendorf&lt;/a&gt;) etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the same can also be done in Excel with some elbow grease. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T21:11:16.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9651" CreationDate="2013-04-25T21:11:18.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little odd to require something that is not mentioned in the syllabus. I understand that things can change in the course of a semester. But this is a rather draconian requirement and as such should have been specified up front in the syllabus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (as appears to be the case) the professor is willing to &quot;soften&quot; the requirement, then this entire question might be viewed as an overreaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T21:11:18.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9668" CreationDate="2013-04-25T22:14:52.657" Score="16" ViewCount="5379" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is the story:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After working on a project for a couple of months, I put the results in a scientific paper format in case I would submit it to a conference or yet this is a good practice for my writing. The paper is about a specific software engineering topic for which you could not find many scientific events to submit. However, I sometimes check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicfp.com&quot;&gt;www.wikicfp.com&lt;/a&gt; to not miss any deadline if there is one. Finally I found one, read the details about the conference and submit the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This week I got the results. It was positive, I think this is great because I am warming up for academia. However, when I received the review (only one), I felt that this conference could be fake or bogus. They sent me a text file that has the following review (with the name and some strange gmail address as the reviewer email):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;paper quality is good different models are explained but this is not a&#xA;  result oriented paper no comparison results for different models with&#xA;  graphical point of view&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank God I had a paper rejected before. I had submitted it to a workshop on a different topic and the reviews were detailed, well explained without reviewer strange email addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the acceptance email has details more about the registration details, bank accounts, fees etc., than preparing final draft or other scientific related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So right now I am a bit confused about what to do next or how to react. But my question is the following:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;What are the good indicators of fake/bogus conferences?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T14:35:49.713" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T14:35:49.713" Title="What are the good indicators of fake conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-04-27T20:06:39.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9657" CreationDate="2013-04-25T22:28:52.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many years of academic experience and I have been a reviewer of submissions for conference presentations and scientific journals.  Speaking from experience, often times the reviews given in response to a conference abstract submission can be extremely brief.  This is often due to the reviewer having way more submissions to review than they ever dreamed of and a deadline of say &quot;tomorrow&quot; - YIKES!  Serious though... Okay so moving past that, to judge the merit of a conference, I would make most of my decision based on the conference hosts or sponsoring group.  If they have a large or influential membership within the discipline, who is directing the group of conference and their professional reputation, the size of the conference venue, etc... if that is all positive then I would go for it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might call up a colleague or two of yours in academia within your discipline and ask them if they would like to attend the conference with you. Sometimes those that are currently in the academia loop have insight about the &quot;perceived impact&quot; of a conference or sponsoring group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6931" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T01:43:52.813" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T01:43:52.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9660" CreationDate="2013-04-25T23:45:04.313" Score="6" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new PhD student in Canada. Recently my university nominated me for the Ontario Trillium Scholarship (to my surprise), which I eventually won. I originally come from a country which do not use the system of scholarships and awards, so I do not know much about the benefits of scholarships. As I see there are three potential benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More money for living ($40.000 each year for four years in this case, for living and tuition)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scholarhip pays for tuition and other fees, so your supervisor/institute do not need to pay anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looks good on a CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not much advantage of the point 1, since my institute usually gives higher PhD salaries than standards in Canada and therefore I only receive slightly higher salary relative to that (people from other institutes will of course benefit from the extra cash). Number 2 seems to be a really good benefit of scholarships, since they make you more free and able to pursue your own interests even more (since your supervisor is not paying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is primarily about point 3. How big a role does Scholarships play when applying for a post doc position? I generally see many people in North America, especially the US, which have a lot of scholarships and awards they have won. This is my first ever, since we do not have awards in my original country. Is there any real advantage to be able to mention previously won scholarships? And my final question is, how good is the Ontario Trillium Scholarship in this regard? Is this a standard type of scholarship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry for asking this anonymously rather than using my stack exchange profile. My profile contain my real name and I would rather stay anonymous for various reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6932" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T02:09:48.133" Title="Scholarships in general and Ontario Trillium Scholarship in particular" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9659" CreationDate="2013-04-26T02:09:48.133" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Trillium scholarship is very good.  The only scholarship I know of that's worth more is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanier.gc.ca/&quot;&gt;Vanier&lt;/a&gt; ($50,000 for two or three years).  The Vanier is open to both Canadian and international PhD students as long as they're studying at a Canadian institution, so it's extremely competitive.  The Trillium is only open to international PhD students studying in Ontario, so the applicant pool is a bit smaller; however, only 75 are awarded each year, so it's also very competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other typical scholarships are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/PG-CS/BellandPostgrad-BelletSuperieures_eng.asp&quot;&gt;NSERC PGS/CGS&lt;/a&gt;, which pays between $17,300 and $35,000 a year, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://osap.gov.on.ca/OSAPPortal/en/A-ZListofAid/PRD19842319.html&quot;&gt;Ontario Graduate Scholarship&lt;/a&gt;, which pays $15,000.  In my department, about a quarter of the people who apply for these scholarships will win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the the other part of your question, when applying for a post doc position, scholarships certainly won't hurt you.  Your publications are more important, of course, but since the Trillium application includes a &quot;plan of studies&quot;, winning it suggests that you will be able to win grants in the future.  A scholarship won't make up for a lack of publications, but it can give you an edge over a similar applicant who didn't win one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T02:09:48.133" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-26T02:55:55.407" Score="32" ViewCount="2258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a research project that all total will probably end up lasting about two years.  As the research progresses, I am writing articles about each new discovery/study, with each article becoming more relevant to current interesting trends (for lack of a better description).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by this is that in the plan for publications my group has, the first article discusses just the structure, dynamics, etc. of some new interesting carbon/silicon/etc. system.  The second article will elaborate on this for an even more novel, more developed structure than the first.  Then the last article will (hopefully) provide a deep new insight into how this structure can be used for energy storage/transport/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm sure you can tell, each article gets more interesting, and thus I think each article has a better chance than the previous one of making it into a more highly ranked journal.  Our current strategy is to submit the article to a succession of less prestigious journals (each getting rejected) until it eventually gets into one.  This way, it ends up getting into the journal it probably deserves to be in, and not something lower,  and there's always the chance it is accepted into a highly ranked journal as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am curious if this is a bad idea in the long run.  Will editors remember &quot;Oh, they already submitted articles to us twice and got rejected; what are they doing it for again?&quot;  Will they be quicker to dismiss the next article they receive even though it is higher-quality/deeper research than the previous one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do the editors give each new submission a fair chance for acceptance, with no memory of previous submissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some of you all are journal editors, so any insight you can reveal to me about your thought process would be quite appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T10:32:32.383" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T10:32:32.383" Title="Strategy for submission of articles to highly ranked journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2013-04-26T03:16:19.130" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an editor so I don't think I can definitely say how editors treat this, but I suspect that if you keep sending manuscripts that are not appropriate to the journal, it won't be helpful in promoting your next submission and won't gain you respect. Consider the fact that you have to convince the editor why your manuscript is important in the cover letter - you don't want to keep sending a paper every week saying it is the most important paper of the decade. Even as a reviewer I can tell you it is annoying to review a paper that is clearly not suited for the journal (although maybe it is the editor's fault that it passed to review in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your manuscript fits a high-impact journal, it is fine to try a few journals to increase your chances. But try to be sincere with yourself - many papers belong to specialized journals, and that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fact you might want to consider is that high-impact journals tend to get recognized experts in the field as reviewers. You probably don't want to gain a bad reputation in those circles. Second, the pool of experts can be pretty small which could mean that when you resubmit to a different high-impact journal, you will get the same reviewer or someone who already heard about the paper and is biased (yes, sometimes reviewers mention papers they review to colleagues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the bottom line is: &lt;strong&gt;it is ok to resubmit a few times, but be careful not to overdo it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T03:16:19.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2013-04-26T06:59:47.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general answer is to try to go for a higher ranked journal first and then successively go to less prestigeous journals IF you get rejected. I think such a strategy is sound. The problem lies in identifying what would be your highest ranked journal where the specific manuscript (MS) would be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as an editor; I do not think editors remember if you get several MS rejected unless they somehow are sub-par. Remember that rejections come in different flavours ranging from MS being unsuitable for the journal (non-critical) to the science (or description thereof) being really poor (critical). In the latter case, the editor will certany remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (and I just state this to make the answer more complete) make sure your paper is in really good shape, follow instructions for authors (IFA) to the point and has a clear conclusion that fits the journal scope. This relatively sinple step is missed by many! In your case, you need to try to assess why your MS get rejected and try to improve whtaever aspect might be at fault. A well written paper with a well-conceived idea and properly defined conclusion, should be publishable in my opinion. If you get a rejction on av unclear basis where the reason is not clear, ask the editor for clarifications so that you can improve the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, (and this is more difficult) assess what journals may be appropriate and if you have the time, send it to a higher ranked journal, understanding the risk of getting a rejection might be higher. Do not forget to check out journals that is farther from you home base (Europeans look at US-based journals and &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt;); there is a tendency to stick to &quot;home&quot;-journals in some fields. In th eend the journal should be indexed to give you the official credit you may want/need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T06:59:47.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9669" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:07:13.193" Score="6" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my project I rely on several sources of information including such that is not peer reviewed (conference proceedings, industry reports, master thesis, interviews). I wonder if I should mark them as being not peer reviewed in the bibliography, for example adding the nature of the publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boo 2013: &quot;A question on grey literature&quot;. Stack Exchange April 2013. &lt;strong&gt;Forum post&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boo 2013: &quot;A question on grey literature&quot;. Stack Exchange April 2013. &lt;strong&gt;(not peer reviewed)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those sources included within the list of peer reviewed articles or is a separate chapter within the bibliography necessary (as is often done for websites)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T08:32:03.607" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T23:58:52.827" Title="Grey literature, point it out as such in the bibliography?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;grey-literature&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9657" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:16:30.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no definitive way to understand if a conference is a fake or not, but here I can suggest  you a strategy.&#xA;Surely the most important indicator is the &lt;strong&gt;experts' and community's opinion&lt;/strong&gt;: if you know someone expert in your field (maybe your supervisor?), you can ask him/her information about that conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can ask also to online community members, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T08:16:30.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9657" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:31:27.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your description, there are three telltale signs that the conference might not be very good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reviewer email is revealed: &lt;strong&gt;a conference that doesn't protect reviewer anonymity&lt;/strong&gt; (blind review at least) &lt;strong&gt;is probably not very good&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The review itself is, frankly, not high quality. It may make sense for a standard conference scientific committee to appoint another reviewer if the first one didn't do his job properly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Financial details appear very important to the organizer…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your final decision, see answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9362/2700&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;: check out the organizers and invited speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T08:31:27.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9664" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:35:27.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;References are references, and the reader already has all the information needed to make his decision on the quality of the source (the trust he has in the source) without you adding information. You don't need to separated references in different “sections” (which would make it much harder to read), or adding information. It is clear from the reference itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;boo2060, “A question on grey literature”, Academia Stack Exchange (&lt;code&gt;http://academia.stackexchange.com/&lt;/code&gt;), 26 April 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that it is not a peer-reviewed journal paper, which would have a very different style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;T. T. S. Boo, “A question on grey literature”, &lt;em&gt;Academia SE Monthly&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;17&lt;/strong&gt;, 13-14 (2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T08:35:27.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9644" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:41:33.760" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first: whenever you write again or otherwise contact your potential advisor, stay polite and respectful. Conduct yourself in the most professional manner you can. &lt;strong&gt;While you might feel your correspondent is acting unprofessionally in not responding at a rate that pleases you, asking again in anything that looks like a demanding tone is not going to reflect well on you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many possible reasons why your correspondent hasn't replied to your first email yet, even 10 days down the line. You are probably already quite aware of the possibilities, but here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He/she is simply busy. Is it a busy time of year? Is it examination time? Is he/she likely to busy marking/providing feedback. providing lectures?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is he/she on holiday? A quick check with the Department/School/Institute administration should answer this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There could be personal reasons. You don't want to appear a demanding person when the academic is making preparations for a family member's funeral - for example! Extreme sitation, yes, but not impossible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these possibilities in mind, you could write again to your potential advisor, reminding him/her that you are very keen to work together. &lt;strong&gt;I do not advise simply re-sending your original email unless you have good reason to believe that the original didn't reach its target&lt;/strong&gt; - e.g. you have received a mailhost error relating to an undelivered message. I suspect this is not the case. In your follow-up email, &lt;strong&gt;refer&lt;/strong&gt; to your previous email. Resending an email is similar to saying to someone &quot;I SAID....!!!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your follow-up email, I would acknowledge that the academic might well be very busy and that you would gratefully appreciate any time the academic could spend talking with you about research opportunities. Offer alternatives - you've hinted at this - such as arranging a meeting or a telephone call at a time convenient for the academic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At this stage, be reasonably formal. Your spelling and grammar should be as good as you can make it. This indicates that you are taking this correspondence seriously, as should he/she.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy to appear demanding, annoying or otherwise negative in an email, even if that is not your intention. &lt;strong&gt;Turn up the politeness up a few notches&lt;/strong&gt;, even if you think it's starting to be sickly and ingratiating. In emails, it is extremely easy to appear demanding or accusatory. You don't have the advantage of being present in a conversation to send all those little non-verbal clues which make up the vast majority of human communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is appropriate to &lt;strong&gt;mention that you have some expectations&lt;/strong&gt; when you'd like to have this interaction. You could mention that you are meeting with other advisers (if true) and that you'd like to be in a position to make a decision in one/two month's time. For this reason, you'd like to have a meeting sometime in the next 1-2 weeks, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You be unfailingly polite and professional,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You put effort into your next email - don't just resend a previous one,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You suggest as many alternatives for an interaction you can think of,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You provide some kind of time-scale for action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T08:41:33.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9671" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:51:21.813" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T08:51:21.813" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T08:51:21.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9672" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-26T08:51:21.813" Score="0" Body="Any source of information that has not undergone a peer review process, but is publicly available. This may include, but is not limited to: white papers, tech reports, other project reports." OwnerUserId="6444" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T20:10:19.507" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T20:10:19.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9657" CreationDate="2013-04-26T10:22:03.647" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seek the opinion of third parties.  Here are some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if the conference is indexed by a major digital library, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if the conference is sponsored by a reputable professional organization, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org&quot;&gt;IEEE Computer Society&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt;.  Although these societies sponsor all types of conferences, from top-rank to less illustrious ones, I haven't heard them sponsoring &quot;fake&quot; ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au/index.php/categories/conference%20rankings/1&quot;&gt;Conference Ranking Exercise&lt;/a&gt; that has been performed by the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE).  If the conference is there, you'll get a (subjective) rank of its importance as a publication outlet.  Note that the list is somewhat dated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~zaiane/htmldocs/ConfRanking.html&quot;&gt;conference ranking list&lt;/a&gt; compiled by Osmar R. Zaïane at the University of Alberta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consult the &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=0&quot;&gt;automatically-compiled list&lt;/a&gt; created by Microsoft's Academic Search engine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~wp/beware_of_VIDEA_mail.txt&quot;&gt;alternative approach&lt;/a&gt; that a group of researchers followed back in 1995 is to submit silly or gibberish papers  (e.g.  &quot;The Footprint Function for the Realistic Texturing of Public Room Walls&quot;, &quot;Visualization and Intelligent Design in Engineering and Architecture &quot;, &quot;Distributed Multiprogramming System for Pen Selectors with Error Probability&quot;) and see whether they get accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6934" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T10:22:03.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9676" CreationDate="2013-04-26T12:35:48.607" Score="34" ViewCount="2867" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I write a paper and submit it to a conference. The paper gets some weak rejects and weak accepts and lots of criticism, but the conference is not that prestigious, so they accept it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if I agree with the reviews, I will want to change the paper (which is in part what the reviews are for). But how far can I go with these changes? If the paper is computer science, for instance, I may easily run additional experiments, or slightly change the setup and re-run the existing experiments. If I submit the paper with these results, I will basically be publishing experiments that have not, in their current form, been peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point do changes to a submitted paper post peer review become unacceptable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T05:12:20.850" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T05:12:20.850" Title="What changes after peer review but prior to final submission are acceptable for a conference paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9617" CreationDate="2013-04-26T12:50:02.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @aeismail's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my field it is common to refer to Matlab in the text &quot;Matlab version X.Y (The Mathworks, USA)&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as @Bitwise comments, scientific FOSS often specifies how cite. So we refer  e.g. to R as a normal book. R's recommended citation includes the version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the version is not included in the recommended citation, I put it into the note field (Bibtex) - that's the R way of putting together such citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; citation (&quot;cbmodels&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;To cite package ‘cbmodels’ in publications use:&#xA;&#xA;  C. Beleites (2013). cbmodels: Collection of &quot;combined&quot; models:&#xA;  PCA-LDA, PLS-LDA, etc.. R package version 0.5-20130417.&#xA;&#xA;A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is&#xA;&#xA;@Manual{,&#xA;    title = {cbmodels: Collection of &quot;combined&quot; models: PCA-LDA, PLS-LDA, etc.},&#xA;    author = {C. Beleites},&#xA;    year = {2013},&#xA;    note = {R package version 0.5-20130417},&#xA;  }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there's a &quot;normal&quot; publication, I combine the normal citation data with  additional URL and version information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; citation (&quot;softclassval&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;To cite package 'softclassval' please use:&#xA;&#xA;  Claudia Beleites, Reiner Salzer and Valter Sergo: 'Validation of Soft&#xA;  Classification Models using Partial Class Memberships: An Extended&#xA;  Concept of Sensitivity &amp;amp; Co. applied to grading of astrocytoma&#xA;  tissues', Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 122&#xA;  (2013), 12 - 22, DOI: 10.1016/j.chemolab.2012.12.003, arXiv:&#xA;  1301.0264, R package version 1.0-20130318,&#xA;  http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org.&#xA;&#xA;A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is&#xA;&#xA;  @Article{,&#xA;    title = {Validation of Soft Classification Models using Partial Class Memberships: An Extended Concept of Sensitivity &amp;amp; Co. applied to Grading of Astrocytoma Tissues},&#xA;    author = {Claudia Beleites and Reiner Salzer and Valter Sergo},&#xA;    year = {2013},&#xA;    number = {122},&#xA;    pages = {12 -- 22},&#xA;    journal = {Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems},&#xA;    note = {R package version 1.0-20130318},&#xA;    url = {http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org},&#xA;    doi = {10.1016/j.chemolab.2012.12.003},&#xA;    eprint = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0264},&#xA;  }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Here, I don't need an additional date, because the release date is included in the version number.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've been using other FOSS software where I did not find a specification, so &#xA;I asked the developers how they want to be cited.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The experience is that the developers usually are very happy about this kind of question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T12:50:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-04-26T12:50:11.187" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the acceptance of a paper, I would not make any changes that go beyond &quot;editorial&quot;—that is, improving the grammar, or adding a recently published citation. These do not change the &quot;technical&quot; content of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything where you make edits that change the actual research or results presented in the paper should be presented to the editors of the journal or conference in question, with a request for guidance. The individuals in charge can then make a determination whether or not additional peer review is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T12:50:11.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9651" CreationDate="2013-04-26T12:54:29.250" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is highly suspect behavior—particularly when it is not published in the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; course syllabus, or written down anywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, this requirement seems highly impractical—most conferences operate on a schedule far longer than a typical semester. Therefore, it would seem that almost every student's grade would be held up waiting for the work to be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I can understand (perhaps) the logic behind such a move, I don't agree with this. A scientific conference presentation is a serious undertaking, and should be an &lt;em&gt;option&lt;/em&gt;, not a requirement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whether it is allowed will depend upon your university's regulations. You should check first within the department, and escalate only if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(However, under such circumstances, if there are no proceedings published, and no formal record, I would be entirely comfortable leaving such a presentation off of my CV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T12:54:29.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-04-26T13:12:06.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you submit a manuscript (MS) and have had it reviewed, you are not supposed to make any substantial changes such as adding data, running additional model runs or anything that would negate earlier reviews and make new reviews necessary unless specifically asked to by the editor, for example, in response to reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you receive reviews, no matter of what sort, but so that the editor allows you revisions, you should make the revisions necessary to sort out the problems. This could mean rewriting to clear out fuzzy formulations or improving figures and potentially remaking calculations, runs whatever. But, remember that typically there is a specific time frame for such revisions and any experienced editor would also judge if the revisions necessary may fit in such a time frame. If they don't rejection would probably be the proper verdict. This means that revisions cannot be extremely large and thereby time consuming for a MS to be revised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your necessary revisions need a lot of work you should possibly withdraw the MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence the editor will (or should) determine what changes are sufficient and provide you with directions. If you think (significantly) more is necessary you MS may become so different that it essentially is a different MS. You do need to discuss this with the editor to make sure this is acceptable. After all, the editor should be able to tell you what is within reason and the time frame of the publication of papers for the conference or journal to which you submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T13:12:06.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9648" CreationDate="2013-04-26T13:25:25.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ability of industry and other non-academic personnel to publish and present papers can often be restricted by intellectual property concerns, security restrictions, and other concerns. Therefore, even though the amount of high-quality scientific research being performed in non-academic settings may be comparable, the &quot;measurable&quot; amount—as seen in conferences, papers, and other &quot;recorded&quot; means—will often be somewhat lower than an academic group of comparable size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T13:25:25.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9646" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:57:31.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it depends how narrow or wide you define what a &quot;project&quot; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm chemometrician working with vibrational spectra of biological samples.&#xA;So there are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applications (e.g. a particular biological/medical question)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org/2011/2011-07-01-ABC-Glioma-paper.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;We write papers about medical diagnostics&lt;/a&gt; or biochemical characterization of samples or biochemical changes that occur with some disease, ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even within this &quot;application&quot; topic, there may be distinct subtopics. E.g. basic research about a disease is different from developing a diagnostic method.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As chemometrician, I develop data analysis methods (often triggered by the application).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org/2013/2013-01-03-ChemomIntellLabSystTheorypaper.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;We write methods/theory papers.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We also develop instrumentation to measure our samples.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00216-013-6726-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;We write papers about that as well&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These separations are sensible to me: &#xA;A reader who wants to learn about a particular disease may not want to dive into chemometric theory development but instead wants to see biochemical findings. Another reader may be interested in the chemometric details but not in the particular disease. Readers looking into instrumentation details may not care about the disease or the particular statistical model applied to our data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T14:57:31.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9646" CreationDate="2013-04-26T15:06:58.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one trend that I see around me, which is in some cases to &lt;strong&gt;split a piece of work in two pieces: a high-impact letter, and follow-up full paper&lt;/strong&gt; with all the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons why this might be a good idea. Increase in number of publication is one of them, but there are others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you work in a rapidly developing and highly competitive field (i.e. you risk being scooped if you wait 3 more months to publish your idea), this allows you a fast publication of the idea and first results (proof of concept, if you will). Also, letters tend to be reviewed more rapidly, which also decreases publication time. Then, you will publish all the details, influence of method parameters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your work would be interesting to a wider community, it allows you to deliver two different messages (or at least, the same message at two different levels) to two communities. This increases the overall impact of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T15:06:58.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9646" CreationDate="2013-04-26T15:47:07.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will probably vary from field to field, but I've seen instances of publishing different analyses in different papers. One rich data set can yield many different analyses which may be largely unconnected with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of example, a single longitudinal study of depression may collect data on a number of fronts; information about the participants (gender, age, location, etc), their depressive episodes, family history, genomics, neuroimaging, etc. Each of these can result in a different set of analyses, many of which would be of interest to completely different fields. A neuroscientist interested in activity patterns in the brain would not necessarily be interested in a study examining instances of suicide in high-SES vs. low-SES populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By thinking carefully about study design &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; collecting data, you can position yourself to examine questions in many different fields, leading to numerous publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point, I'll just briefly mention that cross-disciplinary collaboration is a wonderful thing, and is very relevant to this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T15:47:07.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-26T17:05:18.083" Score="8" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic scholars have written many books guiding managers at different business/industry positions. I wondered that I was unable to find any noticeable book describing the roles of a department head, dean, vice presidents, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic scholars always guide managers in different sectors to use academic (scientific) methods for managing an organization; then, why there is no academic advancement to classify the role of university managers/administrators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main resources, as I searched, are few scholarly journals devoted to higher education in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know any book/resource on this matter, feel free to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; if someone is just appointed as a department chair or decided to implement changes to his management system, where he can find books/guides on this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:29:02.767" Title="Any book/guide for university managers?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9683" CreationDate="2013-04-26T19:12:37.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this is helpful since I don't know for which academic system you are asking. Anyway, this question may also be found by other people searching for an answer to the same question, here is an answer for the German academic system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the book &quot;In Forschung und Lehre professionell agieren&quot; by Lioba Werth and Klaus Sedlbauer. A German description is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hochschulverband.de/cms1/?id=828&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't read the book myself, but it has got a few good reviews &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/In-Forschung-Lehre-professionell-agieren/dp/3924066973&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T19:12:37.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9683" CreationDate="2013-04-26T20:51:26.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674057333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment&lt;/a&gt; might be very helpful for you although it does not answer your question directly. However, it generally critiques the thought and decision processes in academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T17:29:02.767" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:29:02.767" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9688" CreationDate="2013-04-26T21:18:33.860" Score="27" ViewCount="5077" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you want to conduct your undergraduate classroom in a more creative way and introduce practical projects as a part of the final grade. However, students are lazy to embrace extra activities, and all of them decide not to deliver any report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department does not like the trouble of failing all students in a course because of an extra project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do to implement change when students are widely resisting?&#xA;Or as &lt;code&gt;@JeffE&lt;/code&gt; suggested, How to deal with a department that does not give its instructors autonomy in assigning grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional Description:&lt;/strong&gt; In fact, I want to change the grading system to reduce the weight of final exam, and add to small projects (e.e.g writing a one-page about the topic under consideration). The lazy class prefer to deal with one final exam instead of continuing homework. The school does not support this method, but they do not stop me as long as there is no trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="71639" LastEditDate="2018-05-15T14:40:44.100" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T13:53:16.310" Title="How to deal with a lazy class?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-04-26T22:56:15.983" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first: what did your syllabus say, and what did &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; say when you assigned the project?  If the assignment was a part of the final grade, and getting a zero on the project means that all the students will fail, and they &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; this when the class began and when the project was assigned, and the project was assigned with enough time for them to produce an adequate result, then no one should complain when you fail them (or at least no one should have a legitimate reason to complain).  I have a feeling that if this is not a hypothetical case, there is more to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been guilty of deviating from the syllabus in various ways over the years, but the students knew the ramifications of that deviation, and I was always fair in my grading because of it.  I find it hard to believe that an entire class skipped an assignment that guaranteed they will fail, unless of course &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/12/students-boycott-final-challenge-professors-grading-policy-and-get&quot;&gt;it guaranteed they all receive an A&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to provide more information for a better answer, but the bottom line is that if the students failed the class legitimately, then fail them.  Just make sure you've got the means to back up your reasoning for those failures if it is indeed the entire class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T22:56:15.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-04-27T02:26:07.580" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a very difficult position you are in. The school does not want you to fail all the students and it seems the students might know that and are cooperating to overrule you. This is the like the two prisoners (in the Prisoner's Dilemma) finding a way to coordinate their actions. In this case, as I said, you have a very difficult situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that three major issues in this case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The school says they give you power but they really don't. If this is the case, then you must deal with your boss (or higher) to find out what you can do and what you cannot. One way to test that power is to tell your boss that you will fail all the students because they are actively resisting course requirements. If your boss says that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; find a way to get the students to do the work, then you know you do not have any power and you must decide if this is acceptable to you or not. If not, go somewhere else (if you can). Otherwise, you have to live with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may be out of touch with what the students are capable of doing. This is quite common for new teachers. For myself (when I was starting to teach undergraduate students), I thought the students would all be hard-working and dedicated to their studies but later found that they were just like most undergraduates trying to get around the work and they didn't understand the importance of studying or the importance of their university degree. I was comparing them to my graduate-level classmates (since those were my most recent memories) but that was clearly wrong of me and I was far too expecting and too strict. If you are putting on them more than they can do, then perhaps you need to reflect on the requirements you've created. Are they really reasonable for the students you are teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The students might simply not understand how to do what you are asking them (this is related to point 2). Some students (especially 'unprepared students') need more attention and more explanations in order to do the work required in higher education. You might need to spend more time on general study skills (inside and outside of class) and less time on course content. That is, teach them how to research, how to write a lengthy report, etc. as opposed to simply teaching them about Theory A, B, and C.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fourth issue which I raised in the initial paragraph and that is the students might be working together to overpower your authority. If this is the case, you must balance between finding out why they feel the need to do that - see points 2 and 3 above - (and solving the underlying problem) and maintaining your own power of authority (which requires you to challenge them back but then you're back to dealing with point 1 above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="14198" LastEditDate="2018-05-15T07:42:35.413" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T07:42:35.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9683" CreationDate="2013-04-27T14:04:23.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematician John B. Conway has written a book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=AHEAD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On Being a Department Head, a Personal View&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-27T14:04:23.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-04-28T06:19:21.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My US high school had a grading scheme where A-D were all passing grades, and E and F were both failing grades (E is between 50 and 60, F is less than 50).  I believe the difference was that an E class could be retaken, whereas an F could not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4469" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T06:19:21.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8970" CreationDate="2013-04-28T07:36:24.890" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you intend to do it on CS I want to point out that the GRE Subject Test on CS (the one usually asked) will not be administrated anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the ETS website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last administration of the GRE Computer Science Test will be in&#xA;  April 2013. The test will be discontinued after the April 2013&#xA;  administration. Scores will continue to be reportable for five years.&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about?WT.ac=grehome_gresubject_121017&quot;&gt;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about?WT.ac=grehome_gresubject_121017&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to say this in a comment (since it's not exactly an answer, but I think it's an important information to you), but I can't since I don't have enough reputation on this website to do it :( &#xA;Therefore, even though I think you wanted more a opinion from people already in academia, I feel obligated to put some more thought on my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a student, currently undergrad (will graduate at the end of this year) and I'm &quot;kinda on the same boat&quot; (from a third world country, wanna do a Ph.D. on in US in CS and I've being somewhat lost regarding what to do).&#xA;Here is a compilation about what I have found so far that may be helpful to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notions of PhD and MSc in the US may be somewhat different from what you are used to. Quoting from something I've read in a university website (can't remember which one right now) &quot;Masters is about breadth, PhD is about depth&quot;.&#xA;At least in my country (and I'm guessing it may be the same for yours), both are pretty depth-oriented. &lt;strong&gt;-&gt; Keep in mind that, some MSc are breadth oriented, these may not be the droids you are looking for.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the programs vary a lot from place to place... (And if you are used to the fact that you have to do a MSc prior to the PhD, this is not true for a lot of PhD programs in the US, you can join then directly if you have a bachelor's degree).&#xA;Example: At CMU, the masters degree is &quot;breadth-oriented&quot;, meaning that you take a lot of advanced courses in various topics, and the PhD is totally research-oriented (average 6 years, in contrast to the average 2-year MSc + 4-year PhD in my country). But in MIT, as far as I've understood, you apply for grad school, if you are accept and you don't have a MSc, you are put on a MSc program, if you already do, you are put on the PhD program (so, seems to be a lot research oriented on both programs). &lt;strong&gt;-&gt; Make sure you read thoroughly how the programs in the universities you intend to apply are, cause there's no &quot;standard&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the &quot;money&quot; part of your question, as far as I've seen, it goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSc: You have to pay for tuition, you may get a paid TA-ship&#xA;(Teaching Assitant paid position), you may get an RA-ship (Research&#xA;Assistant paid position), but nothing is guaranteed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PhD: Top universities usually pay you monthly and if the professor    that is orientating your research doesn't have funding, you need to      get an RA or TA job. On other universities,you may need to narrow       your options to professors that have funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;-&gt; Keep in mind that, PhD is a better option money-wise, but harder to get in.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed on the comments, research capability is a must (for the &quot;depth&quot; programs at least) and matters even more than grades. Quoting from a CMU professor on the &quot;Grad School Talk&quot; available at their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It does not help you, in my opinion, to be closer to 4.0 [GPA] as&#xA;  opposed to 3.5. It’s a much better idea to spend your time on research&#xA;  than on optimizing your GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Keep in mind that proving your research capability matters a lot.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;But another important quote from this same pdf regarding grades is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your grades may be somewhat low – under 3.0 – because you were having&#xA;  a good time in college and you may therefore be having trouble getting&#xA;  into a Ph.D. program. In this case, you may want to do an MS and use&#xA;  the time to boost your grades and reapply after the MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important thing to note: The things that each program prioritize when looking at your application seem to vary a lot, even among programs at the same university/department. &lt;strong&gt;-&gt; Try to figure out what the programs you are aplying prioritize.&lt;/strong&gt; (eg: by reading their websites well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About &lt;strong&gt;TOEFL&lt;/strong&gt;: It matters a lot, but as far as I understand, it &lt;strong&gt;matters in a sense that it prevents you from getting in a program if you don't have the minimum score needed.&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;em&gt;Each university asks for a different TOEFL score.&lt;/em&gt;* &#xA;The top universities (regarding CS programs) usually ask for 100 on the IBT (internet based test, out of 120), an exception being Stanford, that asks for 110.&#xA;Regarding IELTS: All universities seem to accept TOEFL, a lot of them seem to accept IELTS, but you need only one of them, so I suggest you go for the TOELF (for US universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;strong&gt;plan of action&lt;/strong&gt;, I suggest this one (which is kinda what I'm doing myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Boost your ability to prove &quot;research capability&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt; It's VERY important that you have some prior research experience. Have you ever done research as an undergrad? Do you have professors that can write a recommendation letter for you? If you don't, you are (probably) gonna need to pursuit this kind of stuff. My suggestions if this is the case: Pick a professor that does research in a area that you are interested (better if it's a professor that may remember you from university) and try to contact then to see if they can let you assist on any research projects (even if voluntarily), or take some time to read his recent published papers and understand then, then go talk to him about this. Also, try to see if getting a job at any private research company is an option (in case they exist in your country, in mine &quot;private research&quot; is pretty much nonexistent :( ).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure out what your &quot;level&quot; is:&lt;/strong&gt; What universities/programs that you want to get into that you can realistically hope to get in. This can be done by reading the programs/universities' websites, search for some information about the qualifications of people that got in, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a list about the programs you are interested in:&lt;/strong&gt; After figuring out your &quot;level&quot;, what universities from this set have programs that you are interested to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read everything you can about this programs and pick the ones you want to apply:&lt;/strong&gt; Learn what these programs prioritize on applications, what options do you have regarding money, etcs. Finally decide which ones you are going to apply and see what each of then require.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get ready for the aplications:&lt;/strong&gt; Taking the GREs (or whatever they are gonna use, now that the CS subject test is gone), TOEFLs and bla bla bla takes a lot of time. Prepare for the stuff you need to take, search for example tests on the internet, study for them, etc... and take they as soon as you are ready.&#xA;FYI: As far as I've seen, the deadlines for applying for grad programs are usually in December, for pretty much all universities (they gotta have something in common, after all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some useful stuff to read:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CMU's &quot;Grad School Talk&quot; www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf -&#xA;The one I quoted a lot in this answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demystifying the American Graduate Admissions Process: nlp.stanford.edu/~rkarthik/DAGAP.pdf - I found this paper extremely&lt;br&gt;&#xA;helpful, it's written by a guy that worked on Stanford's admissions&lt;br&gt;&#xA;committee, he also has a blog where he talks about this stuff (link at the end of the paper).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In case you are unfamiliar with how the GPA works in the US, here is&#xA;some explanation:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4619318_a-gpa-work.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4619318_a-gpa-work.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your grades are low, it may be hard to enter the top universities (although I don't see it as impossible) but keep this in mind: A) A lot of &quot;not the top, but good ones&quot; are very good, and may even be very strong in research at an area you are interested in. B) I believe that any recommendation letter saying something like &quot;This guy showed up out of nowhere wanting to assist in my research (even though he was out of academia for some years and was working on a regular job) and helped a lot&quot; shows a lot of &quot;research capability&quot;, a lot of self-motivation and can be VERY strong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6947" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T07:36:24.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9696" CreationDate="2013-04-28T08:55:25.983" Score="18" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my bibliography, I want to link the ISBN number to an actual website. My question is: which website is recommended to be used? Is there some 'neutral' source that I can expect to be still functioning in 5 years and that will return reliable results? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IBSN numbers are apparently provided by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbn-international.org/&quot;&gt;International ISBN Agency&lt;/a&gt;, so this would clearly be the best source. Turns out, however, that they do not offer an ISBN lookup! I am currently considering two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Books: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.comco.uk/search?tbo=p&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;q=isbn:0060930314&amp;amp;num=10&quot;&gt;http://www.google.comco.uk/search?tbo=p&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;q=isbn:0060930314&amp;amp;num=10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBNSearch.org: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbnsearch.org/isbn/0060930314&quot;&gt;http://www.isbnsearch.org/isbn/0060930314&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both appear to have their commercial interest, but they appear to be reliable enough. I would prefer Google. Or is there any other more recommended website? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6949" OwnerDisplayName="user" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T11:59:24.083" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T11:59:24.083" Title="Good, neutral source for ISBN linking? (on citing books)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9694" CreationDate="2013-04-28T09:49:31.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Books is a great website and there’s nothing wrong with using it for your purpose. But if you don’t want to be dependent on Google you could use the following sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ABookSources&amp;amp;isbn=0060930314&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ABookSources&amp;amp;isbn=0060930314&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside for Wikipedia is that it doesn’t show the book title and one has to search another time for the book. But it’s ad free and certainly still online in five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I’d suggest OpenLibrary:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://openlibrary.org/search?isbn=0060930314&quot;&gt;http://openlibrary.org/search?isbn=0060930314&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-profit, ad free, part of the Internet Archive. Also high possibility of availability in five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6948" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T09:49:31.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9694" CreationDate="2013-04-28T09:49:54.567" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org&quot;&gt;worldcat.org&lt;/a&gt;, it is built and maintained collectively by the participating libraries around the world (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcat&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article). &#xA;They offer ISBN search, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn:0060930314&quot;&gt;www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn:0060930314&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4187" LastEditorUserId="4187" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T08:05:34.257" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T08:05:34.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9644" CreationDate="2013-04-28T14:07:24.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to seek the advice of someone at your institution: the director of graduate studies, an older graduate student, anyone with more experience than you whose experience you trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that institutional cultures and advisors' personalities vary widely, and also some professors are notorious for ignoring their e-mail. Someone who knows the advisor in question will be able to better guess what this &quot;means&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T14:07:24.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9701" CreationDate="2013-04-28T16:27:28.960" Score="27" ViewCount="5046" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published some papers in some conferences, but the problem is that the people in charge put them in bibliographic repositories, such as DBLP, and they take too much time to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how I can allow more people access to my publications, so they would be able to review them, use them if they want, maybe bring more ideas or even suggest that I correct something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, I was putting them in a personal webpage that I have created, but I took them off because I also got some papers accepted by ACM and IEEE and they require a payment to see them. In this last case, if I upload them for free (on my personal webpage) could I be charged with something by these institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T09:34:44.197" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T08:29:10.403" Title="How to make my papers accessible to other researchers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-04-28T16:50:40.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One direct way to solve this problem it would be to put in the final exam questions related to the projects that you have assigned. Of course, you should tell this before hand so your students know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem of changing the weight of the final exam would be that if you have not say that clearly, at the beginning of the course; some students will take it that is not a fair measure, because maybe other lecturers are assigning a great weight to the final examination and that is also a policy of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other advice would be to write reports informing to your Faculty coordinator or Dean about what is the current situation, but also proposing solutions. In some institutions when the number of falling students is very big they blame directly to the lecturer, and that can bring problems to your academic development in that place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T16:50:40.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9698" CreationDate="2013-04-28T17:29:13.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to check with the specific rules of the journals to which you submit to determine what is or is not allowed. For instance, journals published by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aip.org&quot;&gt;American Institute of Physics&lt;/a&gt; allow you to publish preprints that are not created by the journal on servers like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arXiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; without having to pay any fees and without other major limitations. By contrast, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt; journals do not allow you to post preprints, &lt;em&gt;even on your own homepage&lt;/em&gt;. You can link to their site, and after twelve months, the link becomes effectively &quot;free.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, beyond that, if you want to advertise your work, you will have to do it yourself. You can mention in it in presentations, and cite it in abstracts that you submit to other conferences. You can email colleagues or use social media (sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.edu&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://linkedin.com&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://facebook.com&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; to announce your paper. If you have specific colleagues you think would be interested in the paper, you can send it directly to them as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T17:29:13.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9698" CreationDate="2013-04-28T19:20:24.827" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the context of your question, I assume you are a computer scientist graduate student.  (Computer scientist because you mention DBLP, and graduate student because you're worried about people finding your research &lt;em&gt;quickly&lt;/em&gt;.) My answer is specific to computer science, &lt;strong&gt;especially the first two points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just post your papers on your web page already.&lt;/strong&gt;   Among other things, posting your own papers will allow Google Scholar to find and index them after only a few days. Despite scary legal language to the contrary, neither ACM nor IEEE (or SIAM, or AMS, or Springer, or Elsevier, or...) has any interest in suing individual researchers for providing copies of their own papers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post preprints of your work to the ArXiv and/or your institutional preprint server.&lt;/strong&gt;  Again, despite scary language to the contrary, granting a license to the ArXiv to publish your papers does not deprive ACM or IEEE (or SIAM, or AMS, or Springer, or Elsevier, or even ACS) the right to later publish peer-reviewed version of your papers later.  Many publishers explicitly allow you to publish post-reviewed but pre-copy-edited preprints on the ArXiv and similar servers.  Posting camera-ready versions is technically illegal, but neither ACM nor IEEE has any interest in suing individual users for such violations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post publication announcements on Facebook/Google+/Twitter/your blog.&lt;/strong&gt;  Yes, this works.  Really.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give lots of talks.&lt;/strong&gt;  At a minimum, you should give talks about your results in an appropriate local seminar.  But especially for really strong results, you (or your advisor) should also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/how-to-invite-yourself-to-present-at-another-university&quot;&gt;arrange to have yourself invited&lt;/a&gt; to a few other institutions to give a talk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Send copies of your work directly to a few colleagues.&lt;/strong&gt;  Just send them email with a link to your web page.  (&lt;em&gt;Don't&lt;/em&gt; blindly send papers as attachments; remember that some people read email over the phone and pay by the byte.)  But don't just spam the whole world.  Limit your email to the small handful of influential people that you are &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; will be interested — other researchers working on the same problem, people whose results you directly improve or extend, your advisor, and—&lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; you're nearing a point like graduation or tenure where you need letters—a few potential letter-writers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take the long view.&lt;/strong&gt;  It really is not important that see your results RIGHT NOW THIS MINUTE ZOMG NOW NOW NOW !!!!111¡¡¡CXI.  Relax.  Yes, DBLP and other indexing services operate with a delay of several months.  (Although my impression is DBLP has gotten faster, thanks to some outside funding that allowed them to hire more than one human being.)  And yeah, that's frustrating.  But in the long run, those few months of publication delay are not going to make a bit of difference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T19:20:24.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9698" CreationDate="2013-04-28T19:57:29.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check the conditions of your journal using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SHERPA/RoMEO&lt;/a&gt; list. Most journals allow to publish your &lt;strong&gt;final draft&lt;/strong&gt; (designed and typeset by yourself) on your institutes server right after publication and on open-access servers like &lt;a href=&quot;http://arXiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt; 12 month after publication. Your institutes open-access server will also be found by e.g. Google Scholar.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Many journals will also send you an &lt;strong&gt;authors copy&lt;/strong&gt; of your article which you can share with colleagues (e.g. via email) but you should not publish that one on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4187" LastEditorUserId="4187" LastEditDate="2013-04-28T20:02:44.410" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T20:02:44.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9710" CreationDate="2013-04-29T05:32:41.613" Score="3" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Masters student in Computer Science. I am planning to write two papers. The first is based on computer simulation and queuing theory. I have written its literature review and everything else. The second paper is parallelization of my first paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just making the code for my first paper parallel in my second paper. The problem is I don't know what to write in the literature review section as this paper is just an extension of my previous paper. I can't write about past attempts at computer simulation and queuing theory because I already wrote about it in my previous paper. I also can't write about previous attempts at parallelization because nobody has tried to parallelize my work before and I don't think it would be relevant to list other parallel speedups in the literature review of my paper. What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T16:24:27.097" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T16:24:27.097" Title="How should I write literature review for a paper that is an extension of my own research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5716" CreationDate="2013-04-29T06:54:08.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing stopping you asking for your staff email to be retained. You've lost nothing by asking. In particular, some universities have various forms of affiliate academics, which may allow you to maintain an email. And as you say, if you make the case that this is needed for a publication, then this may add an incentive to approve the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More broadly, your affiliation for a publication is distinct from your email address on a publication. Thus, if you still felt it was appropriate you could still put your former university down as the affiliation, while using a different contact email address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T06:54:08.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9707" CreationDate="2013-04-29T07:29:51.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best approach is to think of them as two completely separate papers. When you write the second paper you should write it as if you have read but not authored the first. You therefore need to add the necessary background and literature review to make it stand on its own. The reason for this is that anyone who finds your (second) paper once published will not necessarily know of the connection, may not have read the first, and will need a reasonable introduction to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, each paper should be an entity of its own. The only clear case where this may not be necessary is if you publish two papers back to back as part 1 and 2 of a series with the same main title but differing sub-titles. Then it is clear that the papers belong together and you may expect people to note and read both papers to a larger extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T10:09:39.010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T10:09:39.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9719" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:43:50.900" Score="28" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9706/journalscomputer-science-that-are-suitable-for-low-impact-publications&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9651/professor-withholding-course-grade-until-submission-of-conference-paper&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; suggest that it is not uncommon/unheard of for departments to require publication by students (generally masters and doctoral) either to get credit for a course or graduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me like a way of off loading the assessment of students to peer reviewer, and therefore it seems ethically questionable. Is there a pedagogical reason to require externally peer-reviewed publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T17:13:52.577" Title="Is it ethical for departments to have publication requirements for students" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9715" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:54:46.757" Score="10" ViewCount="54349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Final Year Mechanical Engineering student.&#xA;I want to do my Masters in the &lt;strong&gt;Design Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; field.&#xA;Currently I can see 2 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Master of Science&lt;/strong&gt; - offered in many Universities ex: &lt;strong&gt;GeorgiaTech&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;It deals more with research. It requires a research thesis most of the times.&#xA;It gets completed in about 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Master of Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; - offered in few Universities ex: &lt;strong&gt;Cornell University&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;It deals more with developing your skills required for doing a job in that field.&#xA;It does not require a research thesis. It gets completed in a year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is:&#xA;1. What exactly do we learn/develop skills/improve/do, etc in each of these programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to get a clear picture as to what exactly will be the change in me brought by each of these programs?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What distinguishes a M.S. Graduate from a M.Eng. Graduate &amp;amp; vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And which one of these Graduates get jobs in Companies easily in the related field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6392" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T06:51:12.493" Title="Master of Engineering vs Master of Science?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-04-29T09:02:04.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grades are best used as a formative tool to highlight areas in which students need to improve and not as a proverbial stick to punish students. You should be commended for introducing a project that you thought would be a proverbial carrot, but the problem is the students didn't see it that way. It now sounds like you want to beat the students with the stick for not liking the carrot. Instead of punishing this years students, I would suggest you talk to them so you can figure out what they did not like about the projects and work together to make the project work in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T09:02:04.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2013-04-29T09:26:38.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem certainly seems fishy and whether it is unethical or not probably depends on  what the (local) rules and regulations governing courses will be as well as the possible ramafications of the process relative to those regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue for me is what will be the purpose of having publications as a requirement for students (not at graduate level). There is of course nothing wrong if undergraduate papers can be published, and experiencing the publication process can be valuable. But as one of the posts referred to in the question states, it seemed as if the requirement was to submit, not to publish. I do not see any particular value in that experience that could not be replicated within the department itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since any publication process requires quite a chunk of time I can see a major problem in the timing. In my system, a course should be possible to complete within the stipulated time (corresponding to the number of credits). Imposing a system where publication is part could (really would) clearly violate such limitations. So, a follow-up question would be &quot;are there systems where courses can be open ended?&quot; or &quot;can courses be required to last until an un-controllable goal is achieved?&quot;. If the system allows such cases, then the requirement would be ok from a legal point of view. I would still think it is in a grey zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your point of off-loading the assessment is part of the shady picture. I would have thought that each university regulatory system would have some, at least, recommendations on how quickly assessments must be done and, again, assessing through journal peer review would require at least as much time as the length of a typical course itself. So as a whole, I think that using paper submission and/or publication as part of course requirements can be violations of local assessment regulations and very poor behaviour. I would call it unethical if it means unnecessarily prolonging the students graduation or impacting on their ability to get student's loans (equivalent) due to not getting credits in time (impacting their ability to take responsibility for their timing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T09:26:38.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2013-04-29T10:04:44.127" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main practical difference between the two degrees, as you point out, is the requirement of a research thesis for the MS degree.  Generally, if you have aspirations of eventually getting a PhD, you should strongly consider the MS, as research experience or potential is a large factor in being admitted to a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question, you should be a better researcher after completing an MS, and you will be better prepared for further graduate work.  With an ME degree (considered a &quot;terminal&quot; degree), you'll simply have a Master's degree and (potentially) may have spent more time on your coursework.  Whether or not this prepares you better for a position in industry is debatable -- as you say, many ME programs are one year, which may actually include fewer classes than an equivalent MS (although I've generally seen ME programs that have one or two more classes as a requirement than the equivalent MS degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to which degree leads to more jobs in industry, I'd say it's probably about the same.  Getting an MS will certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; limit your competitiveness for industry jobs, while (as I already mentioned), an ME may limit your competitiveness for PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T10:04:44.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9698" CreationDate="2013-04-29T10:42:08.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;read the copyright transfer contract&lt;/strong&gt; that you have signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the major publishers tend to be fairly permissive nowadays as regards to online posting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Retained&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACM conference publications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, you can (and &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt;) do all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Before&lt;/em&gt; you submit the paper, post it to &lt;strong&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;After&lt;/em&gt; your paper has been accepted, post your &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; version of the paper (with an appropriate copyright notice) on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your own &lt;strong&gt;personal web page&lt;/strong&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your &lt;strong&gt;university's open access repository&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Later&lt;/em&gt; you can prepare a journal version (&quot;major revision&quot;), and you can do with it whatever you want — for example, submit it to an &lt;strong&gt;open access journal&lt;/strong&gt;, post it online, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/copyrightmain.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IEEE conference publications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the main idea is similar: you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; post your work to &lt;strong&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/strong&gt; before submission and to your &lt;strong&gt;own home page&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;university-wide open access repository&lt;/strong&gt; after revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some details are a bit different. My reading of the policies is that with ACM you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; update arXiv.org with a revised version, while IEEE &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; that you update arXiv.org with the accepted version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, don't take my word, read the copyright transfer form (and additional explanations available on the publishers' web pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T10:42:08.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-29T12:56:34.427" Score="15" ViewCount="3232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelor degree in Computer Engineering. I worked as a Research Engineer in a Research Center. It was a fully paid Engineering position funded by European projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my contract ended, and because there are not any more projects available at the moment, I can't be re-contracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for someone to work as a freelance researcher? I have an idea of a platform I would like to work on. The idea, I think, could easily even become a paper. Is it possible that I could continue to work in the research center without being paid, and try to perform some research of my own? Of course I could ask my supervisors about it, but the thing is, I don't know how to ask it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I was thinking was they could provide me tools like the computer, mobile devices and a working desk to develop my idea (things that I was provided while working there). In the end it would be something that the university could present, but I would get credit for it for my CV, and it could be especially helpful in getting a good candidate position next year, in a Masters program I am aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I present an idea like this to my supervisor? Is it something that actually happens? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notes in response to comments to clear things a bit: The problem is not that I need any kind of equipment to make my idea reality. At work I was provided a simple laptop and some mobile devices, that I can easily have access on my own, so nothing special there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I would like to continue work there is as simple as that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to propose an idea of a platform that I would like to create and according to my estimates would be 9-12 months of work. I could do that from my house or by going to work at the research center. &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I need my supervisor to draw public/scientific attention, make a paper with him out of it etc. I want to be able to write in my CV that the last 9-12 months I was working on a project at &quot;that&quot; research center in cooperation with &quot;that&quot; researcher and not that it was a &quot;home&quot; project that I developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't made the proposition to my supervisor yet for the following reasons :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that my supervisor could simply use my idea with the engineers that still have a contract there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I would like is to be the only one working on the project. Like a PhD thesis. I want to get credits of it. Not the research center. I want to get the credit as the main developer/author of this thing, and of course my supervisor be the one that would present it and his name next to mine. Is this even possible? I mean I don't want any other engineers sniffing their nose on it, I don't want my supervisor to demand things on the project. I am thinking of proposing  a complete solution of exactly what I have in mind, let me work on it with my time, without any funding, but the supervisor be the one to present it and draw attention on it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end all I am saying is to have this project on my CV to open some doors on the future and my supervisor being the mentor of this thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T07:14:18.263" LastActivityDate="2020-04-27T20:49:14.400" Title="After my employment ends, can I keep working without pay at my current research center, on independent research?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2013-04-29T12:56:56.083" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an individual course (assuming a time-limited scenario, e.g. a semester, quarter, or even year), it's certainly ridiculous to have a publication requirement.  The timing is far too variable, and even the best researchers can have papers rejected or discover before submission that they've been scooped.  If it were possible to reliably publish a worthwhile paper within the timespan and amount of effort required for a typical course, then there would be a lot more papers published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A requirement of submission is not as absurd, but still unreasonable.  I see no advantages over a mock submission sent to the professor teaching the course, but there are severe disadvantages: it can put pressure on students to make inappropriate submissions, and it can waste the time of editors and reviewers on submissions that may be withdrawn once the course requirements are complete.  My cynical interpretation is that submission requirements deliberately use the threat of professional embarrassment to encourage students to work harder, and that seems unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one scenario where publication requirements can make sense is for a degree program.  For example, some PhD programs require that a dissertation must be based on peer-reviewed publications.  Of course that's reasonable only in fields with a sufficiently rapid publication cycle, and even there I'm not fond of this idea personally (but I wouldn't call it unethical).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T12:56:56.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9718" CreationDate="2013-04-29T13:17:09.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see any reason why you could not be a freelancer as such. Since researchers are usually employed by an academic institution or a (even one person) company and you could have your own company if you will, there obviously is no problem from that perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is obviously a big question regarding how you sustain your life. Are you planning on doing this in your spare time? In any case, supposing financing for living is not a problem I would turn the focus on affiliation. If you want to publish the material/product at some point, having an affiliation would greatly help. You mention talking to your former advisor and that is probably a good idea if you think you have a good connection there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before contacting a person/organization to which you would like to be affiliated, you should try to work up a good plan for your project so that there is a clear path for what you will do, where you want to arrive and also provide an analysis of how your work fits in with other work. This is essentially a project plan as you would expect from a doctoral or masters candidate. Having such a text and preliminary work/results would make the project easy (easier?) to assess and hence provide your target person/organization with a good foundation to build your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to add that I have not heard of anyone doing this but if someone came to me with an well-founded idea and told me they needed an affiliation, I would seriously consider it. If that person needed office space and resources it may be a little trickier since in my case, no office space comes free, and so there would be a financing problem. This would vary hugely between organizations and persons so I cannot say what could be expected. You do of course need to provide any requests for support in the form of office space, computer/computing facility etc clearly. How such &quot;demands&quot; would affect your success would have to be evaluated against how interesting the project is to the organization/person. In the case of an academic advisor, I think how closely the idea ties in with existing work affects your chances. If it is completely off the beaten track of the person, I deem chances smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T17:00:36.310" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T17:00:36.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9723" CreationDate="2013-04-29T13:32:56.287" Score="5" ViewCount="3000" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some months ago I finished my MSc. I immediately started to send several applications for Ph.D vacancies.&#xA;So far I've spent a lot of time in doing this, but there is only one place that did not reject me. This place was actually the least interesting for me in terms of the job, therefore I was not keen from it at all.&#xA;I believe almost no one applied for the place I was not rejected by...&#xA;As for all other applications, I'm seriously thinking the problem is my final MSc mark.&#xA;To tell the truth with my mark I can access to most of the Ph.D programs (it's a UK &quot;merit&quot;). &#xA;However if I know there are almost no chances for me to do what I would like to do then I resort to something else and avoid waisting my time in writing cover letters that no one bothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6957" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T15:03:59.757" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:03:59.757" Title="How important are the grades compared to the cover letter when applying for a Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9725" CreationDate="2013-04-29T13:50:07.283" Score="9" ViewCount="2836" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had prepared the paper and applied for National Conference. After some days came to know about the International Conference and improved the paper and applied for it. After a month we got an accept mail from Springer Conference(Not expected as we are beginners). Today we presented our paper in the National Conference and our paper was selected as the Best Paper as well as got shortlisted for the International Journal. Now we are totally confused what to do ? Can we accept for publishing in the Journal but the Slight Modified (Improved) paper will be getting published in Springer Conference in July this year. Will this lead to any problem ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would help a lot in boosting our resume and also getting an Admit from Good University for my Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6958" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T15:10:46.160" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:53:09.690" Title="My paper was accepted in Springer International Conference and National conference. What to do?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-04-29T20:42:22.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9721" CreationDate="2013-04-29T13:51:15.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I look at an application there are four aspects that count:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grades&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cover letter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;earlier written work (BS/MS thesis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendation letters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of these, I focus most of my attention on the latter two: if the thesis is well-written, has received a good grade, and the letters of recommendation support the candidate in terms of ability to do research (from reading up on the field to writing everything up) and independence (how much (or little) support the candidate needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover letter would not make the application, but could break it if it is unfocussed and does not show any skills in expressing the interest in a structured way while avoiding irrelevant information. The grades would, in most cases, be the least interesting since they primarily show one's ability to read and understand, not necessarily reasoning and deduction. The exception is the grade for the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question, I am not sure which might be more important but anything that supports your ability to do research is of prime interest to anyone evaluating an application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To follow up on Gerrit's suggestion, my personal ranking list would be (in falling order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earlier written work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendation letters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cover letter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grades (although the grade on the written work is included in 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, all parts are useful and in the end some mix of all will be used. I would also add that 1 and 2 will &quot;make&quot; the application while 3 and 4 will mainly help to &quot;break&quot; the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T14:11:09.303" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T14:11:09.303" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2013-04-29T14:09:57.503" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first: a doctoral student &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be expected to publish something other than a thesis. Even if she has no desire to enter into a research profession after the PhD, publication of scholarly articles should be an important milestone in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, however, expecting that a student—whether a master's student or a PhD student, or even worse, an undergraduate—publish a paper as part of a single &quot;course&quot;—is absurd for a multitude of reasons. First, in the context of a single educational course, the time spent will almost certainly be unsuitable for the preparation of a manuscript; moreover, given the lag times in between submission of an article to a journal or conference and its acceptance, it is unlikely that it can be completed within either a trimester or even a semester, which means that incomplete grades will likely be par for the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, since it serves no real valid educational purpose for the students—since the work isn't being evaluated by the educational staff whose job it is to provide instruction—such behavior is extremely questionable, and very likely unethical. This is doubly so if the only criterion for grading is the acceptance of the paper in an external journal, particularly since there are so many &quot;pay-to-publish&quot; journals out there that will publish anything, given the page charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; require that students prepare something like a research article for one of the courses I teach. However, I do that as an exercise in &lt;em&gt;preparing&lt;/em&gt; them for writing research articles. I have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; expectation that they would bother to submit these papers to actual journals—the material just isn't sufficient for that. However, in terms of learning how to write a paper—mentioning relevant literature, explaining their methodology, clearly demonstrating and illustrating their results, there is nothing comparable. You learn to be a  researcher by &lt;em&gt;doing research&lt;/em&gt;—and that includes writing about research!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T14:09:57.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2013-04-29T14:15:17.823" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing you can really do here is to contact the organizers and publishers of both journals, and indicate what is going on. More likely than not, you will need to withdraw one of the papers, as publishing both papers under very similar titles with identical scientific content (or very nearly so) is considered inappropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T14:15:17.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2013-04-29T15:53:09.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; withdraw the second conference submission.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simultaneous submission of the same paper to multiple conferences or multiple journals is completely inappropriate.  If you do not withdraw, you run the very serious risk of having &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; submissions rejected and your invitation to the International Journal rescinded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This would help a lot in boosting our resume and also getting an Admit from Good University for my Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it wouldn't.  In the long run, publishing the same paper in multiple equivalent venues will only hurt you.  To put it bluntly, that's a form of academic fraud.  If I discovered that a graduate student in my department had done this, &lt;em&gt;even before they were admitted,&lt;/em&gt; I would recommend immediate dismissal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:53:09.690" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9718" CreationDate="2013-04-29T16:10:55.153" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course anyone can be an independent researcher.  Just do it.  But that's not what you're really asking.  The question you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; asking is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I convince my former supervisor to let me continue using their equipment and resources after my current contract ends?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the only reasonable answer that question is to turn in on its head.  &lt;strong&gt;What's in it for them?&lt;/strong&gt;  How would &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; benefit from giving you an office and access to their equipment?  Is the payoff &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt; worth more &lt;em&gt;to them&lt;/em&gt; than the resources that you would expend?  The fact that the project is good for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; isn't enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an even more basic question: &lt;strong&gt;Do they have resources that they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; give you access to?&lt;/strong&gt;  The equipment that you want access to may be tied to the specific project.  They may not be &lt;em&gt;able&lt;/em&gt; to give you access.  But the only person that can answer &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; question is your former supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some updates in response to the updated question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However , i need my supervisor to draw public/scientific attention , make a paper with him out of it etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you don't.&lt;/strong&gt;  You can write and submit a paper yourself.  You can publicize it yourself.  You can ask your former supervisor to help you publicize it; if your supervisor was your &lt;em&gt;advisor&lt;/em&gt; and not just your boss, they'll be happy to help you, because your success makes them look good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am afraid that he could simply use my idea with the engineers that still have a contract there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't trust your supervisor.  So don't work with him.  Your mistrust is probably misplaced, but that's your call. To quote Howard Aiken: &quot;Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;of course my supervisor be the one that would present it and his name next to mine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why &quot;of course&quot;?  Just do it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i dont want my supervisor to demand things on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that's not how it works. If you want your advisor to put his name on something, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; give him partial responsibility for that something.  That's what coauthorship &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am thinking of proposing to him a complete solution of exactly what i have in mind , let me work on it with my time , without any fundings , but he ll be the one to present it and draw attention on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you want to do all the fun stuff, using your supervisor's resources, and leave the hard work of writing and presenting to your supervisor, but not allow them any actual input, and then claim credit for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just not going to happen.  If you want something from someone else — working space, laptops, Internet connection, help with writing and presentation, anything — you have to offer them something in return.  Either offer to make your supervisor a full partner, including veto power, or you do the work yourself, including all the writing and presentation, with your own equipment, on your own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the project on your CV will open more doors if you do it &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T00:40:12.150" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T00:40:12.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9736" CreationDate="2013-04-29T16:48:12.817" Score="10" ViewCount="3124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student doing independent research. My research work is selected for presentation at a very reputed conference in the US. I am from India. &lt;strong&gt;I cannot afford to attend the conference at all. How should I fund my trip?&lt;/strong&gt; The travel grant for students available from the conference is very low. It can hardly buy me a one way ticket. What are my options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6959" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T02:08:31.057" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T02:08:31.057" Title="Travel grant for undergraduate researcher for attending conference" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9718" CreationDate="2013-04-29T16:57:49.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;About doing Research (without being payed)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whereever I have worked so far, we'd have gladly let an office table for a good student who wanted to stay. (Computer may be more difficult, in many places students prefer to bring their laptops which are better than the university computers).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Actually, where I'm now we try to keep the good students with small paid jobs between their research practica / theses, because it is a lot of effort to train a student. Of course, noone wants to keep a bad student. But wanting to go on with research has a strong positive correlation with being a good student.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;=&gt; talk with your supervisor about possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just BTW: I was lucky enough to experience workplaces where the supervisors considered it unethical to let people work without payment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is insurance. As long as you sit just somewhere with a computer, things are usually fine. However, without a proper contract (work or research practicum), you usually cannot work in any kind of lab. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the kind of work you propose, there may be possibilities to get some funding (if it is programming rather than scientific, maybe &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GSoC&lt;/a&gt; would be worth trying). Talk to your supervisor. Search the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;About Freelancing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to check the freelancing rules in your country. You mentioned only that you were previously &quot;funded by european projects&quot;. Maybe someone can tell you more if we know your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A first step towards successful freelancing could be attending start-up business lectures/courses at your university/local vocational school/&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IHK&lt;/a&gt; (though as a freelancer you'd want to avoid joining them). My university offered such lecture series in the evening, so people could attend regardless of their studies/job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out whether/how much jobbing/business your university allows (you don't want to loose the possibility to enter the master courses)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out what formal rules you have to follow: e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you need to get a particular tax number?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what information needs to be written on your business communication/invoices (e.g. said tax number)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;tons of other things to be aware of&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;E.g. in Germany unless you have private health insurance you want to be careful that your health insurance doesn't put you into the full-time freelancer category: this comes with a &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; fee that corresponds to a gross wage of about 1900 €/month!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As student, you want either to stay in the student (lowest &amp;amp; fixed fee) or in the PhD student category (lower minimum fee).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, if you want to be a freelancer and work exclusively for your university, you'd better learn about &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scheinselbständigkeit&lt;/a&gt; and how to convince the social insurance that this is not the case with you. Best way to do that is being able to point to another customer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is another point why your supervisor may not want to enter such a business relation with you: if that suspicion comes up, not only you but also he'll have a lot of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many German universities have a very bad reputation wrt. paying late.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I can attest to that from experience, and I also know some closeby resaurant who'd not allow university to pay by bill - normal companies could, but university had to pay in cash for exactly this reason. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T16:57:49.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-29T17:38:51.553" Score="15" ViewCount="13932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am actually working for two different universities in my country, and the problem is that they do not give too much support to academic research. I mean for paying the costs of tickets, travel expenses or accommodation when one paper get accepted for a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually work as an independent researcher, but the problem that I have is that if I put my author affiliation as Independent researcher maybe I will be not be considered &quot;serious&quot; enough for the reviewing program committee of the conferences that I plan to submit my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what should I do? should I put the name of one of the universities that I am working at random, and at the end change my affiliation and put the name of the university that will give me the funds for the travelling expenses of the presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would we the best way to act in this way? I remember that for one paper that I was submitting, the Dean of my past faculty told me that he could give me the money, but if I put him like a co-author. Actually it was his way to get publications to his name without working on them. Of course, I did not accept that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion would be of great help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T17:34:25.750" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T17:34:25.750" Title="Academic affiliation: which to choose?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9731" CreationDate="2013-04-29T18:00:54.047" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;My immediate reaction is to put them both on; It is not unusual to have two affiliations. I then mean to state &quot;A and B&quot; to show a shared affiliation. That way both departments could benefit from your publication. The question is then how to get the different departments to losen up their purses. In my system no such funding is typically given out by departments/university, one has to apply for money from different sources oneself. I could possibly convince my head to provide the money if the reason was particularly well deserving. So I cannot comment on how such support would be provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest communicationg with both univesities stating that you will publish the paper with them as an affiliation to see if anyone would provide funding. I would obviously put any funding source as my first affiliation afte the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to get a request to put an extra name on the paper in order to get money sounds terrible, in fact unethical. It is of course easy to say that when you are not facing the situation so thumbs up for standing up to that behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T18:00:54.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9642" CreationDate="2013-04-29T19:02:37.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact, a number of scientific publishers are experimenting with online comments on their publications. Examples are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biomedcentral.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BioMed Central&lt;/a&gt;. This is of course mostly suitable for online-only journals, and depending on your field they me be more or less reputable. I guess the publishers are also moderating comments on these articles. So a good approach on getting comments on your articles is publishing with a publisher that offers this functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you check on a few articles with comments enabled, you will quickly learn that the typical number of comments is: &lt;strong&gt;zero&lt;/strong&gt;. I think it is just not that suitable for scientific communication, and the approaches mentioned in F'x's answer would be more useful to get into scientific debate about your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe in the future the scientific culture will change to have more public online interaction, but at the moment this possibility doesn't seem to draw much attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T19:02:37.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-04-29T20:10:29.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only option I can see is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start a PhD at a place that will have money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get them to pay for your trip.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may not be enough time to carry out this plan. But having a paper accepted at a reputed conference certainly will contribute to you getting a PhD position at a good university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes that you want to do a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T20:10:29.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-04-29T20:42:41.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several solutions to problems like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask someone else to present it. Your supervisor, or another professor at your university may be able to travel. Alternatively, they may know someone else nearby who is attending the conference already. As a final alternative, they might know someone in the US who is planning to go. I have seen people add the presenter as an additional author on papers. Not sure about the ethics of this, but it could be used as an incentive. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the conference organizers directly, and explain your situation. Their general travel grants budget may not be the only source of funding available. You might be able to get some funding in exchange for helping with the conference registration desk, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your paper made it into a top tier conference in the US, it is likely it will be accepted at other top tier venues. Consider a journal publication (no travel required). I also see many top tier conferences in places like Beijing these days, so you might be able to find one closer to home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T20:42:41.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-04-30T00:14:43.600" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several strategies for this in addition to the usual ones outlined previously. I assume you are in CS/IS/IT from your profile. Your primary costs are conference registration fees, air fare and living expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If its a top conference, it will have student volunteer positions. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2013.acm.org/organizers/student-volunteers/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cscw.acm.org/participation_sv.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. This defrays cost of registration (free) and some of your living expenses (food and some cost of living). Apply for it immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You mention that you are getting some travel grant from the conference. Thats a good thing. Keep it for airfare.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If its a ACM/IEEE conference, it will be sponsored by a SIG. SIGs have their own funding. For instance, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.websci12.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SIGWEB-StuTravel.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.podc.org/student-travel/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. If you are an ACM/IEEE member then you can apply for these funds which are independent of conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, in limited ways, industrial research labs and other government labs have funding. Search for and apply for these. For instance, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/meetings/da10/mstsupport.php&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://dbtctep.gov.in/index.php?option=proposal_instructions&amp;amp;proposal_type=50&amp;amp;instruction=1&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and especially &lt;a href=&quot;https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/global/india/travel_grants.aspx&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was once a poor student and had to make use of multiple sources of funding to go to conferences. You can also do it ! Basically, apply for everything that you find and see. Of course, the best way is to simply ask another co-author or someone actually visiting the conference to present the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to just pay the registration fee (which is comparatively less). That way your paper is still indexed in the ACM DL or IEEE Xplore etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T00:14:43.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9642" CreationDate="2013-04-30T01:36:59.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the topic of your paper aligns with a StackExchange site, you could post questions related to your paper on that site.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if you you wrote a paper in a psychology journal you could post a question about it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://cogsci.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;cogsci.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; . As a moderator and active user of cogsci.SE, I'd like to see academics posting questions about their papers on the site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine this would take some thought. You'd have to understand the norms of the site and you might want to post on meta if you felt that this format was a little different to usual questions. You'd also want to be upfront about your motivations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the stackexchange format provides an excellent commenting, spam management, and quality sorting system, and there is often an active community around the topic. That said, you might need to encourage others not familiar with StackExchange to direct their comments to particular pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the post, you'd want to provide a link to the full-text of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd also need to think about how to frame a given question so that it is not too open ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T01:36:59.043" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9718" CreationDate="2013-04-30T03:56:37.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;JeffE's answer is absolutely correct and excellent. I want to say more about what you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i dont want my supervisor to demand things on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my supervisor being the mentor of this thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;contradict to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want a mentor and you don't want him demand things. &lt;strong&gt;Why would somebody spend time and resources for you without knowing what you're doing? How would he know your platform idea is really good and workable without you presenting the idea to him first?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to make a choice between the two options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Either&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want him to be the mentor, present your platform idea to him. He and you can work together to decide what to do next. You want to do something like a PhD thesis. Do you realize that every PhD student have to go through admission procedure (you need to be admitted) and most PhD students have to pass qualified exams  (you need to be qualified)&#xA;  before doing thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you don't want him demand things on the project, you work on your platform idea &lt;strong&gt;on your own&lt;/strong&gt;. Go all the way by yourself. All you need are &lt;em&gt;tools like the computer, mobile devices and a working desk&lt;/em&gt;. You should be able to afford to them. At the end, write a paper, put it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;. Once you have the arXiv version, go to your former supervisor. You two can work out how to present it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T04:20:03.727" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T04:20:03.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9743" CreationDate="2013-04-30T17:02:48.970" Score="22" ViewCount="5271" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; one can license a preprint on one of the following (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/license&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a note on arXiv on licenses&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article&lt;/a&gt; (Minimal rights required by arXiv.org. Select this unless you understand the implications of other licenses.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution license&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For cases when it is fine to submit a paper on &lt;em&gt;arXiv.org perpetual&lt;/em&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7/does-publishing-a-paper-on-arxiv-prevent-me-from-submitting-it-to-a-non-open-acc&quot;&gt;Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?&lt;/a&gt;), when I can safely use &lt;strong&gt;CC-BY&lt;/strong&gt; (Creative Commons Attribution license)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I would use it all the time, as it is the most permissible (=open) license, which requires attribution. (However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I used it only once&lt;/a&gt;, it a case where I don't intend to send it to a journal; so, except for that case, when one should (or shouldn't) be afraid of using CC-BY on arXiv?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Here the emphasis is on &lt;strong&gt;arXiv perpetual&lt;/strong&gt; vs &lt;strong&gt;CC&lt;/strong&gt;, not on choosing between CC licenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T20:50:29.957" Title="When can I safely use CC-BY license on arXiv?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-04-30T18:28:21.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no way to know except by checking with the journals you have in mind. In mathematics, almost all journals will be OK with the default arXiv license, but most of them have copyright terms that would be incompatible with the CC licenses. Some may make an exception for you, but I would guess that many commercial journals would not (and probably some non-commercial ones, too - for example, the ACM is not friendly towards this sort of thing). Because this would often involve an exception to posted policies, I don't think there's any way to find out systematically besides asking individually. They may also be reluctant to make any general statements that could be interpreted as a precedent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in mathematics, I would be wary of the CC options unless you are sure you will submit only to the minority of journals that allow this. (And, of course, you should never choose any license without agreement from all coauthors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T18:28:21.297" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-04-30T18:28:53.193" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a &lt;strong&gt;CC-BY&lt;/strong&gt; license on arxiv.org will be fine whenever you don't need to retain exclusive rights. &lt;strong&gt;CC-BY&lt;/strong&gt; is a non-exclusive license, and you are free to grant as many non-exclusive licenses as you wish. However, you won't be able to grant a exclusive license thereafter, which is what most commercial publishers are looking for. The typical &quot;&lt;em&gt;transfer of copyright&lt;/em&gt;&quot; would essentially be an exclusive license in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to publish the paper submitted to arxiv.org with an open access publisher, it should generally work with a CC-BY license. Most open access publishers require only a non-exclusive license to publish a paper, so there would be no conflict here. It may however not be possible to go to a publisher which requires either an exclusive license or a copyright transfer afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, a copyright transfer may be less restrictive than an exclusive license in this case. In principle, it should be possible to transfer copyright even if a license have already been granted to someone else (that's how a company would buy software from another company that has already been licensed). So, why not try the following with your next paper: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit it to arxiv under a CC-BY license.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit to a commercial publisher, and add a statement like this to the copyright transfer agreement:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This agreement is with the understanding that a non-revocable, non-exclusive license under the terms CC-BY has been granted to a arxiv.org.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how they'd react...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T18:28:53.193" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9664" CreationDate="2013-04-30T23:58:52.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sectionalised bibliographies are very common in history, where a variety of different literatures are brought together at the same time.  For example, a standard bibliographic section headings I'd contemplate would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major archival sources (&quot;Deposit A from archive B&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondary archival sources (&quot;That one letter from file X collection Y archive Z&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Published primary sources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondary sources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I felt there was a benefit in breaking down Secondary sources by white / grey / black; theory / non-theory I would.  I probably wouldn't consider doing this, because I would assume a reader would know how to tell if texts are theory or pop-history or &quot;grey.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking down a bibliography like this may be field specific due to the sources being the &quot;evidentiary&quot; or &quot;empirical&quot; element of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T23:58:52.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9751" CreationDate="2013-05-01T03:35:12.780" Score="10" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about how to improve attendance in my classes as well as how to get my students do the expected work outside of class. I've tried a lot of sticks but the weak students care very little and I end up failing what seems like too many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, my mind has turned to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gamification&lt;/a&gt; (that is, using elements of the gaming world such as badges, points, and similar things used even here on SE sites) to encourage student engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While reading in English, a lot of what I found is about students in western countries. There has been plenty of research showing that there are significant differences introduced by culture, and to paraphrase Blaise Pascal, what is true in one country is false in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I teach in Asia, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any studies (or has any experience) using gamification in Asia to improve students' performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorDisplayName="user68958" LastEditDate="2018-07-27T21:06:56.697" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T21:06:56.697" Title="Gamification in Asian Classrooms" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;asia&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9745" CreationDate="2013-05-01T03:43:57.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any citations or literature for you and I can only base this off personal experience. So, consider this answer as a single data point and completely anecdotal. I went to one of the top Indian schools for statistics as a masters student. Usually, it was all about doing math in each one of our courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in one of courses, we had a really cool professor who had just returned after spending about 10 years teaching in various other universities internationally. He didn't use any techniques like badges etc. However, we had a online running tally of points based on certain things in class - homework, data analysis, coding etc. - based on the understanding that he would take the top students out for lunch as a reward for doing well all semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, it was a lot of fun. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T03:43:57.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9749" CreationDate="2013-05-01T05:14:48.360" Score="37" ViewCount="3789" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a first-year graduate student, now in the process of figuring out who I'd like to have as my thesis advisor. Of course, compatibility of research interests is quite important, but personality and work style are too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I'm currently facing (though it sounds odd to cast it in a negative light) is that the professor with whom I'm most compatible research-wise, is the most polite, nice, and soft-spoken person I've ever met. In lecture and  in conversation, he is self-effacing, will go out of his way to make things comfortable for you, never says a bad thing about anyone, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even though I love my field, I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, and my concern is that I'm eventually going to lose my focus / energy if my advisor is constitutionally unable to say things like &quot;You ought to have read more this week&quot;, &quot;You should do a better job of this write-up&quot;, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I opt for Professor Tough Love whose research I like slightly less, but who will do a good job of keeping me working, or should I go with Professor Nice Guy? If I do go with Professor Nice Guy, what strategies could I employ to make sure the effect of his coddling is minimal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've discussed this with peers, and I received the following advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts about these? Any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize there's some overlap with  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5786&quot;&gt;How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?&lt;/a&gt;, but I suppose I'm asking specifically about what to do when my advisor is not automatically going to be a resource for helping me avoid procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all of your help in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6966" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T00:50:25.710" Title="Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2013-05-01T05:34:14.770" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the number of questions on this forum about dealing with intransigent advisors, I'm surprised you even have to ask. I understand your concern about Professor Nicenik, but ultimately the first and third pieces of advice you mention are what I'd suggest as well (ie you're going to need to be self motivated, and you can ask your advisor to help, as long as you don't rely on it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't necessarily recommend consulting with Professor Toughski on a regular basis, although informal chats from time to time might help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T05:34:14.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2013-05-01T05:39:26.063" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be sure, &lt;strong&gt;chooosing your advisor is one of the most important decisions in your academic career&lt;/strong&gt;.  That is not to say that people don't switch advisors for one or more reasons (they do), but it's probably best to take the time to figure it out now (which it sounds like you are doing by asking the question in the first place!) so you aren't faced with that decision later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you may be asking the wrong question, to some extent.  Relying on your advisor to push you is more or less the opposite of a good way of growing into being an independent researcher -- who is going to push you when you become that assistant professor and you're on your own?  Furthermore, the last thing you want your advisor writing in his/her recommendation letter is, &quot;Great researcher when pushed to complete the work!&quot;  You also don't want your advisor to think that he/she &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to push you -- this may just lead to a poor working relationship between the two of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to ask Professor Nice Guy to be your advisor, but also start working now towards limiting the procrastination on your own.  That advice is predicated on your comment that your research matches his the best; that should be the driving factor and not some grand idea that you'll get pushed harder by one prospective advisor or another.  Tips for how to get a good plan together are outside the scope of this topic, but at the very least you could start by fixing a date you'd like to graduate and working back from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for meeting with the other professor regularly, by all means do that if he is amenable to the idea.  I met regularly with my advisor and another professor and all parties were happy with the arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T06:36:19.587" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T06:36:19.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9745" CreationDate="2013-05-01T08:29:49.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not exactly an answer to your question ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should start by saying I am not an expert in the field of education or learning sciences, but it appears your gamificiation strategy is based upon extrinsic motivators. In my opinion, Malone and Lepper (1987) make a pretty clear case that intrinsic motivators are the way to go. Therefore, asking a question about how to optimize extrinsic motivators seems like a premature optimization problem. The framework that Malone and Lepper (1987) set out with individual motivators (challenge, curiosity, control and fantasy) and interpersonal motivators (competition, cooperation, and recognition) seems like it should be universal, although how to achieve those motivators, and the relative strengths of them, will likely vary with culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T08:29:49.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9745" CreationDate="2013-05-01T08:30:07.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any study on using gamification in Asia to improve student performance. The following is based on my observation of college education in Taiwan in Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gamification can certainly be used as a tool to assist you with encouraging the student engagements. I don't know how effective it will be and how long its effects can last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone knows that students' motivation is the key reason for students to learn. Gamification will make the game awards to be one of the motivations. You make them learn for the game points they earn. I am not too sure this is a good thing in your environment. There is one difference between Western world and Oriental culture. Gaming is generally considered a not serious good thing. Some students/parents/school officials would resist it. You could get back fire when you use it. You need to be careful. I would use it as the last resort when everything else fails if I were you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Taiwan students attend college because their parents want them to. They are in your classroom not by their own will. They lack motivation to participate in your class. All they want is to graduate to make their parents happy. And then they can do the things they truly want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those students, I seriously doubt gamification would do any good. I don't believe their parents will be much happier when they see that their kids earn some game points in the classroom. What they truly want to see are degree diploma and good transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my suggestion as how to encourage the students to learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to them to find out what they truly want to do after graduation. Convince them what they learn in your class will be helpful to their future.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, many college students in Taiwan want to run coffee shops after they graduate. (Please don’t laugh, this is for real. I don’t understand why either.) As a business professor, you can tell them they need to learn business management so they can run coffee shops successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have reasons to believe whatever happen in Taiwan may have happened in other places in Asia because the cultures are similar. The problem you are seeing in your area may be different. I believe my suggestion would still be helpful, that is, talk to them to find out what’s the best interest for them. Once you find the root cause, the solution will be right there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T06:09:16.833" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T06:09:16.833" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-30T12:03:31.347" Score="3" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in industry and some interesting idea has struck me. This is a conjecture which will take a year or two of full time research work to confirm it although it looks very realistic. Unfortunately I cannot apply for post doctorate or a grant due to my work commitments but I would be glad to publish an article if a reputable CS journals would be interested. This may solve very hard practical problem but surprisingly it is difficult to monetize so I cannot do it in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Question" LastEditorUserId="160" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T10:56:17.313" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T11:13:53.207" Title="Can I write an article in a reputable CS journal not with results but conjecture?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9752" CreationDate="2013-05-01T11:13:53.207" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly publish an article based on a conjecture.  (One famous case is Subhash Khot's 2002 paper introducing the Unique Games Conjecture.)  On the other hand, you need to include some supporting information in the paper.  Why is your conjecture plausible?  Can you supply examples or applications?  What are its implications or connections with related work?  Answering these questions may be much easier than resolving the conjecture, but they can still require some serious work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're most likely to be able to publish the conjecture if there's no straightforward way to resolve it.  If it's clear in principle what you should try, and the only issue is that you don't have time to try it, then you're more likely to meet resistance (it may still be possible, depending on the publication venue, but this would probably rule out many of the more prestigious conferences).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T11:13:53.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2013-05-01T13:48:19.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it depends on the ultimate outcome you want? Academia is one of the most unstructured professions you can find, so I'd say that unless you can overcome some of the procrastination, it'll be pretty difficult to keep going with it. On the other hand, I have friends who intentionally picked supervisors that would push them, for exactly the reasons you described, and were in technical fields with intention of going to industry. I don't see anything wrong with that course of action either. It depends on what works for you too. Personally, I find encouragement really motivating, but hate being told what to do, so actually think that Prof Nice Guy sounds better all around. That's a personal choice though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a PhD with the intent of going into academia, here's an excellent article with a few more factors to consider too: &lt;a href=&quot;http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/4/114&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/4/114&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6970" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T13:48:19.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-01T14:24:41.103" Score="33" ViewCount="14188" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for post-doctoral and faculty positions you are typically asked for three (sometimes more) reference letters to support your application.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that it is competitive out there, it also makes sense to apply for all positions that are good matches to your qualifications and career development goals (in the case of post-docs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this may mean asking for several reference letters (or pre-application &quot;can you support me if required?&quot; requests) in a short space of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there may only be a small pool of people (i.e. 3 or 4) who know your work sufficiently well to give an excellent reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been told that referees want to help you out, and that there is no reason to fear asking them.  And, that in many cases once a letter is written it can typically be quickly repurposed.  But there must be a breaking point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I manage this without being disrespectful?  How many requests in a given unit of time is too many, or harms my credibility?   I am asking this question in this forum, as I am interested in the norms in the academic world, which are often somewhat different than the rest of the working world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6670" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:42:41.187" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:42:41.187" Title="How frequently can you ask for a personal reference without being disrespectful?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-05-01T14:49:13.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what would be called a norm since it is likely to vary from place to place, but more importantly person to person. I think a person is more liely to write many letters if you have worked more closely with that person, through for example thesis work etc. If you ask someone who has had little contact then the number is less. The basis for this i sof course that a person with whom you have worked much has more to say than someone you have barely talked to duing, say, a class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach would be to actually talk this over with the persons you wish to have writing letters. Explain what you will do and ask if they would be willing to write provide the letters for you. If you are open and frank about it they could provide you with a routine around the job that would work for both of you. What I personally feel frustrated about is if I am pressed into writing letters over-night, but if I have a say in when and with what head time I can expect then it is less of an issue. So, provide the basisi for a good working relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final point is that what is too much in this case highly depends on how you communicate your wishes or expectations and showing that you understand that writing these letters takes time and effort on behalf of your references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, sorry, no number can be given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T14:49:13.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9764" CreationDate="2013-05-01T15:15:07.367" Score="12" ViewCount="5418" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the expected level of paper to be submitted to top level conferences in theoretical computer science (FOCS/SODA/STOC)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there should be four main concern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a novel results?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How hard is the paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generality and extension of the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it an interesting topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But actually I cannot imagine how reviewers are going to measure above concerns, e.g, If in some paper there is 10 mediocre result means is good? ...., also I don't know is there any other important thing that we should be careful about it for top conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually someone can try to send the paper to the FOCS/SODA/STOC and see if is rejected then send it to some other conferences, but IMHO this is not appreciated. It's good if referees to related conferences help to understand what did they expecting for top conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S1: Actually one of an important things in all the conferences is writing style, but suppose all preliminary stuffs like writing are OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S2: I could talk about this with my adviser, but also it's very appreciated to see other top conferences reviewers/participants/... opinion about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S3: Also experience of reviewers in similar fields would be very appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6972" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T18:46:40.443" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T12:51:36.410" Title="What's the expected level of paper for top conferences in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2019-08-21T20:52:28.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9761" CreationDate="2013-05-01T15:44:35.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I review a paper for a conference or a journal, this is how I answer these questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a novel results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I know something equivalent? Do the authors make a good job to compare their approach with related work? Is the difference with related work important enough? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How hard is the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;hard&quot;. If I read a paper where everything seems obvious/trivial, then I might question the actual contribution of the paper (and I'm talking about obvious/trivial here, i.e., where every result in the paper does need any justification). Of course, a paper can be extremely simple and elegant, and be a very powerful contribution.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;On the other hand, if I can't understand the results of the paper, then I'm probably not the right reviewer for this paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generality and extension of the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I reuse the results of the paper for something else? Are the simplifications/assumptions of the authors reasonable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it an interesting topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the authors make a good case to motivate their contribution? Am I personally interested in this topic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course many other aspects to take into account. Personally, the only difference I make when reviewing a paper for a top-conference compared to a small workshop, is that in the latter case, I understand that &quot;the authors leave that aspect for future work&quot; more often. The other different is the threshold: for FOCS 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lamsade.dauphine.fr/~sikora/ratio/confs.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;169 papers were &lt;em&gt;rejected&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. So, if I classify a paper as a &quot;weak accept&quot; for a small workshop, it might passes, whereas the competition might be much tougher for a top-conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write the best paper you possibly can within the deadline, and don't think &quot;hum, this level should be enough&quot;: if you can improve it, do so! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T16:17:30.910" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T16:17:30.910" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9767" CreationDate="2013-05-01T16:35:33.157" Score="6" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been recently involved in a Program Committee, and I was wondering what exactly was expected of the PC members from the PC Chair. Once all the reviews have been collected, are the reviewers expected to engage in a discussion about the paper? Or do they need to wait for specific questions from the PC Chair? Are the reviewers expected to comment on the other reviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it matters, we are using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://easychair.org&quot;&gt;EasyChair&lt;/a&gt; system, so everything is done online, and I don't know the identity of the other reviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T21:29:08.127" Title="Final round of reviewing for a Program Committee" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9761" CreationDate="2013-05-01T16:48:16.523" Score="40" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the expected level of paper to be submitted to top level conferences in theoritical computer science (FOCS/SODA/STOC)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top.  The top level.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience on program committees for STOC, FOCS, ITCS, SODA, SOCG, etc., is that there are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;FAR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; more submissions of publishable quality than can be accepted into the conference.  By &quot;publishable quality&quot; I mean a well-written presentation of a novel, interesting, and non-trivial result within the scope of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was on the STOC 2013 program committee.  We accepted 99 out of 361 submissions.  Program committee members were specifically instructed to limit the top rating to only the top 20% of the papers we reviewed; at least for me, that meant some &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard choices.  Most of the discussion in the last week of the review cycle revolved around papers that were clearly very strong, but were not obviously &quot;competitive&quot; with other papers that were already accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several questions that come up over and over in the FOCS/STOC review cycle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How surprising / novel / elegant / interesting is the result?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How surprising / novel / elegant / interesting / general are the techniques?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How technically difficult is the result?  Ironically, FOCS and STOC committees have a reputation for ignoring the distinction between &lt;em&gt;trivial&lt;/em&gt; (easy to derive from scratch) and &lt;em&gt;nondeterministically trivial&lt;/em&gt; (easy to understand after the fact).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the expected &lt;em&gt;impact&lt;/em&gt; of this result?  Is this paper going to change the way people do theoretical computer science over the next five years?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the result of general interest to the theoretical computer science community?  Or is it only of interest to a narrow subcommunity?  In particular, if the topic is outside the STOC/FOCS mainstream—say, for example, computational topology—does the paper do a good job of explaining and motivating the results &lt;em&gt;to a typical STOC/FOCS audience&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, for a paper to be accepted to STOC/FOCS, at least one person on the program committee must be willing to pound on the table and &lt;em&gt;demand&lt;/em&gt; that the paper is accepted, with strong answers to all these questions.  Which means that as a minimum, &lt;em&gt;the authors&lt;/em&gt; must have compelling answers to all these questions, even if professional modesty forbids writing those answers into the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific criteria vary between different conferences, and not only because of the obvious differences in topical coverage.  A well-written paper that combines existing techniques is a surprising way to obtain an elegant proof of a novel and interesting result, but does not introduce new techniques or require much technical sophistication, is much more likely to be accepted at SODA than at STOC or FOCS.  (I've seen more than one paper rejected from STOC and accepted to SODA with precisely that review summary at both conferences.)  ITCS favors conceptual contributions — new approaches, new models, new problem areas — over technical difficulty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at its core, conference reviewing is a random process.  (As Baruch Awerbuch put it: &quot;...whose expectation depends on the submissions, and whose variance depends on the program committee.&quot;)  Every submission is a gamble.  Your chances of winning the lottery may be small, but they're infinitely larger if you actually buy a ticket than if you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the best papers you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your target audience in mind when you write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Especially if you're submitting to a conference for the first time, get feedback on your paper from a community expert well before you submit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you believe you have a &lt;em&gt;reasonable&lt;/em&gt; chance of acceptance, submit it.  Be respectful but brutally honest with yourself.  Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regardless of the outcome, take reviews and other feedback seriously.  Don't just revise your paper; also revise your writing habits &lt;em&gt;and your mental model of the audience&lt;/em&gt; for future submissions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rejection is not the end of the world.  It's only one paper; you'll write dozens more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually someone can try to send the paper to the FOCS/SODA/STOC and see if is rejected then send it to some other conferences, but IMHO this is not appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit more subtle than that.  Submitting a paper that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; get in is fine.  What PCs really don't like is being asked to review submissions that are clearly below threshold, especially papers that were previously submitted to comparable conferences but were not updated to respond to previous reviews.  (Even when a paper is submitted to several different conferences, it's not uncommon to have overlapping sets of reviewers.  I've been asked to review four different submissions of the same paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-05-03T12:51:36.410" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T12:51:36.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-05-01T16:53:20.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will the same letter do for many of the jobs to which you're applying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In math, many jobs are on MathJobs, the recommender can upload a single letter, and the applicant cannot read it but can have it sent anywhere. I also know that some departments maintain files of letters on behalf of their students, with a similar purpose. There are also commercial services that do this, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interfolio.com/services/recommendations/&quot;&gt;Interfolio&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend seeing if similar services are available to you, and are acceptable to the institutions to which you'll be applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T16:53:20.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9718" CreationDate="2013-05-01T20:29:36.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your research contract ended, and there is no option for renewal. You want to work on a project which is your idea, but you need some technical and human resources from your position to realize the idea. You want to self-motivate your work, which is not related to an idea of the institution or your advisor, but you then want him to author a paper with you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need to do, I think, is nail down exactly what this is that you are building, and decide what you want to get out of it. In academia, the standard deliverable is a paper or conference discussion, but in freelance, you are typically trying to build a specific working product for a customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to build this product, and think it has value for other customers or users, then go right ahead. It sounds like, though the institution would be helpful, you can do it on your own. If that's the case, and you believe you have a novel, valuable product, then you have no time to waste: pack up your desk, open your home office, and get coding. Maybe you start an open source project, maybe you sell a proprietary application. By being out of the institution, you make sure that you have complete control of your invention, in case it takes off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I'm asking is, if you have a great idea, is an academic paper really the best place you can put it? Of course, academic researchers have to publish their work: it attracts funding and attention to their work, and allows their ideas to spread. If you're not an academic researcher, though, why publish (in a journal)? Microsoft doesn't publish their findings, they publish software on disks. CocaCola doesn't publish their secret formula, they bottle it and sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming out of undergraduate, I can see why you feel pressure to publish. Published papers seems to be a litmus test for a researcher's efficacy. Do you think, however, that your having started an open source project or software company will look bad on your future job or grad school applications? Of course it won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that you'll get from being straight from undergrad, is the idea that you will be able to write a publication quality paper, one that your advisor will be comfortable with his name on, without any external support. Mentoring a paper is not simply a side job or friendly favor from your advisor. Even if your advisor did agree to mentor you on your paper, do you think his supervisor would want the institution's time, name, and resources going to something which does not have the institution's approval or funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are still feeling that you'd like to go for an academic publication, then by all means, do so. Many, many students decide they'd like to work on full-time research after undergraduate. What do they do? They go to grad school, where a research mentor advises them on a publication, which sounds exactly like what you're looking for. If you already have an area of research and a project in mind, you can set yourself apart from many other applicants. Look for schools or institutions with closely related research, contact the researchers and see if they have spots!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6976" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T20:29:36.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9763" CreationDate="2013-05-01T21:29:08.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, usually the PC chair sets expectations by providing explicit instructions and guidance on the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, the deadline for submitting all reviews is usually a week or two before the PC meeting.  That last week or two is reserved for a &quot;online discussion phase&quot;.  During the discussion phase, reviewers are expected to read the other reviews on the papers they were assigned and discuss what to do on each paper, to try to reach consensus on the final discussion.  This might involve some discussion on points where reviewer opinion differed or on technical points of disagreement, for instance.  Each reviewer is expected to take the lead on beginning the discussion, without waiting for the PC chair to prompt you or ask you a specific question.  The goal is to try to reach a clear decision before the PC meeting in as many cases as possible, or at least reach agreement on what the strengths and weaknesses of the paper are so that a final decision can be made on an informed basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no in-person PC meeting, the online discussion phase becomes especially important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's just my personal experience and my field.  Practices may vary in other fields, for all I know.  If your PC chair did not instruct you on what he/she expected, it is completely reasonable to contact him/her and ask what he/she should like you to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T21:29:08.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9780" CreationDate="2013-05-01T22:53:31.497" Score="4" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities have a job section and invite prospective applicants to submit their CVs that (as I understand) are placed in a database and sourced if a part/time tutoring or marking role comes up. The database (as I understand) is searchable. There is no deadline for this submission (i.e. ongoing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of the university (lecturers searching the database), what are some key things they look for when employing a recently minted PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T08:47:22.800" Title="Details to include on the cover letter for sourcing part-time tutoring/marking positions" Tags="&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9778" CreationDate="2013-05-02T00:47:04.877" Score="47" ViewCount="3858" Body="&lt;p&gt;The essential gist of my question relates to what the real, unvarnished realities are of graduate, post-graduate, research, fellowship, and professorship attainment - &lt;em&gt;when you aren't a single person with no pressing demands other than feeding yourself&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;I am humbled by the incredibly helpful and thoughtful responses so far, all of which are +1 from me. I'll leave the question open a few more days before clicking 'accept' on any one, but you all have my gratitude and I hope others will benefit anywhere near as much as I have.&lt;/em&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I don't know&lt;/strong&gt; is what succeeding in this path truly requires in time committment and family support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I can handle a 12-14 credit course schedule with 3.7-4.0 GPA (in the top 5-10% for college and program, dean's list, etc), work part-time, and still have time to be home and not have a burn-out/breakdown - and the academics are the easy part by far! I could do more, but I need to work more too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I really need to know&lt;/strong&gt; is how sharply different is the time/dedication curve of graduate work and above. I realize each step is a filter that removes most of the entrants (most people don't get a degree, most who do don't attend/finish graduate school, most who do don't seek a PhD,  most who do don't seek/gain professorship...and on and on). But I don't know how severe the stepping is - I'm not talking &quot;tenured professor at MIT or bust&quot; - I realize that bar is many orders of magnitude higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background Details:&lt;/strong&gt; As an &quot;adult, returning&quot; undergraduate student with a (disabled) wife and kids, I'm halfway through a bachelor degree now. I've located a field of study (in a focus of Industrial Engineering) that has made me very interested in altering my life path to include seeking a Masters and maybe even a PhD/professorship (my father was a professor, so its not a purely novel concept to me). I've met and spoken with my advisor and 2 other professors with experience in related fields, and all is encouraging; I have a graduate school in mind, I've received lots of great advice on preparing for school (on this forum and in person), I test well (no GRE fears remain), good grades/class rank, good prospects for future strong referal letters, etc - a comparitively charmed existence for which I am very grateful! I just have to investigate whether I can make it through with an intact, cared for family!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any guidance you could provide me, and other aspiring &quot;non-traditional&quot; students alike, would be appreciated immensely - thank you! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6977" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T18:05:22.057" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T18:05:22.057" Title="Can one excel in graduate school with a demanding family life?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9769" CreationDate="2013-05-02T01:17:27.427" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot resist the urge to answer this question or at least provide some insights based on my experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an adult and married with two kids, both of them born during my candidature. I work full-time in a high pressure advocacy company. I have been in my adopted country for less than 10 years (so that brings the question of settling in, finding your way around etc.) To cap it all, English is my fourth language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completed my PhD on a part-time basis and I have now graduated. The key is to enjoy what you do, so choose a topic that grabs your attention. There are long and lonely periods of solitary work and unless you like what you do, you will never get through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look after your family and fit your studies around their needs. This may mean not starting your study until after 9 pm when the kids are in bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy the little things in life, like going to the park and spending some quality time with your family. You still have a life even if you are studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your study relates to your work, it makes things a lot easier as you can continually think about what you need to do and when it comes down to studying, you can start with a bang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adapt. Go to your work an hour early and leave an hour late so that you can use that time for studying. If you have one hour lunch, take a nap to compensate for your sleepless nights!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a supportive supervisor. Do not be afraid to make non-traditioanl arrangements. Instead of going to the university (which was 3 hours drive from my workplace), I found that my supervisor made weekly visits to a place near my home (to visit a relative). So I offered to have coffee with him every now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be kind to your self and careful of your self talk. Give yourself a break or a reward or whatever motivates you. If you don't feel like studying, make a conscious decision and spend the same time with the family. In this way, you will not have regrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't lose sight of your end goal which is completion of your study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it is possible and even though the reality is harsh, it is worth it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T01:17:27.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9772" CreationDate="2013-05-02T01:58:55.120" Score="13" ViewCount="2106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student in physics, and I sometimes tutor undergrads in introductory physics classes on the side. Now, there's widespread agreement among people who teach or tutor physics that the only way to effectively learn the material is to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; it, generally by working through practice problems in homework assignments and sample exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recently I was contacted by a student who was interested in &quot;tutoring,&quot; where by use of the quotes I mean that what she wanted was for &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; to do problems, and she would watch and ask questions when she was confused about something. At one point this student wrote a long email full of what seemed like psychological mumbo-jumbo trying to justify her assertion that she actually learns that way, and that the normal method of having &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; do the work would not be effective. I didn't believe it (thus I declined the tutoring assignment), but was I wrong? Are there actually students who don't learn by doing the work, and for whom it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a more effective strategy to just show them how to go through a problem? I would definitely appreciate pointers to educational psychology research on the matter, if anyone knows of any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not talking about how to teach a topic for the first time, to a group of students who have never seen it before. In that case I know a bit of demonstration is necessary. The situation I'm asking about is reviewing for a final exam, where the student would (or should) have already learned the material in class and completed a homework assignment or two on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T07:21:41.907" Title="Are there actually students who learn by watching?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-05-02T02:12:05.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in cognitive science or psychology but I have a few years of teaching assistant experience behind me so I will have a go at this one and I suspect that a few others might even agree with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general roles are in leading discussion sections and in lab sessions (information science: so combination of coding and data analysis in context with social science literature)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now learning by watching aka &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_learning&quot;&gt;observational learning&lt;/a&gt; is not a &lt;a href=&quot;http://psuc0e.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/learning-by-watching/&quot;&gt;new&lt;/a&gt; concept. Scientists have been studying this for a long, long time. However, note the example literature cited in the previous links. There is a marked difference in learning how to strike a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_doll_experiment&quot;&gt;Bobo doll&lt;/a&gt; and acquiring a complex &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill&quot;&gt;skill&lt;/a&gt; such as deriving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_7804623_derive-newtons-laws-motion.html&quot;&gt;Newton Law's of Motion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having laid all of this expository work, I would like to argue that personally, I &lt;strong&gt;believe&lt;/strong&gt; that observational learning exists and happens in the natural world around us. I just don't believe that one can acquire complex mathematical notions and concepts just by observing (unless this girl is some sort of a savant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this student was just trying to make you do her homework problems for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T02:12:05.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-02T02:16:14.403" Score="26" ViewCount="1836" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in my 4th year of PhD. Few months ago I presented my thesis proposal which already included some of the results (that are actually published). I proposed to add another chapter (call it Chapter x). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the committee members told me that the results presented are sufficient for a thesis. He said that chapter x is not necessary, or it can be replaced by a literature survey (instead of presenting original work - as I proposed during the thesis proposal). He said that original work can be done during a post-doc instead.  My thesis supervisor agreed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I am in the middle of of the Chapter x [and some other stuff] (and I think I have original results that are not complete - they would be complete, if everything goes fine [which is never the case in research]). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My question is:&lt;/em&gt; should I write my thesis without novel results in Chapter x and then do a postdoc based on Chapter x ? Or: should I continue working on Chapter x even if this will result in a longer PhD ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The source of my confusion:&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;Wouldn't adding novel results in Chapter x improve my research CV ? but at the same time, will the long period of PhD negatively affect the research CV ? Plus, will I find the chance to work on this topic as a postdoc ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T16:13:56.437" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T16:13:56.437" Title="Prolonging a PhD to improve research CV, is this good ?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-05-02T02:39:08.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student myself, I can't be entirely sure, but I would look at it like this: based on the information you've given, it sounds like the only significant difference between the two options is whether this new research is part of your PhD thesis or not. In the long term, I don't think it will matter. The project will show up on your research CV either way, whether you do it as a PhD student or as a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you choose to do it as a postdoc, then you will be partway through a postdoc in, say, two years, whereas if you choose to do your research as part of the PhD, you will not yet be a postdoc in two years. All other things being equal - and I think they are in this case - I would think it is better to advance through the stages of your career (PhD, postdoc, professorship) more quickly. By this logic, you should go with your committee's recommendation and omit this project from your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also read things which suggest that completing a PhD more quickly is correlated with greater academic success later in life, although I can't remember a link to give you. I'm not even sure it matters, though, since there isn't necessarily a causal relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T02:39:08.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-05-02T03:24:26.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should just ask.  I'm sure the professors have all dealt with this many times, and will not have a problem with it; it's understood that sending out letters of reference is part of the job of being a professor and that candidates will be applying dozens of places.  I'm sure your references will already have solutions they're comfortable with.  If you're in a field where many physical letters need to get sent out, it's quite normal for a professor to simply give a copy of the letter to a secretary and have him/her make copies and send them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T03:24:26.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9769" CreationDate="2013-05-02T04:31:11.590" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Javeer has provided a great answer.  I did a little searching around for any studies that might address pursuing an advanced graduate degree while supporting a family, but I was unsuccessful (and if there aren't any, it sounds like low-lying fruit for a budding social scientist!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider checking out the lively discussion on the Chronicle of Higher Education Forums: &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=81697.0&quot;&gt;Having a baby while in a PhD program&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in graduate school, one of my Electrical Engineering professors with a wife and three children had a strict 9am-5pm policy, which he had apparently also kept during his PhD studies at MIT (though I do recall him telling stories about all-nighters the day tape-outs were due, so it couldn't have been set in concrete!).  Bear in mind, he is also the most efficient person I have ever met, and when he was at work he was &lt;strong&gt;at work&lt;/strong&gt;.  I never once saw him dilly-dallying around, and for every hour that us graduate students put into real work, he probably put in three times as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I know it is doable for the right person, but it almost certainly takes an extremely high level of concentration while at work to pull it off successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. To address your actual question, I found that graduate school work comes in stages (at least in the U.S., and for me): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, you have a number of hard classes, which takes most of your time, but not more than undergraduate school (except for the projects...).  If you get an advisor early, you may start research immediately, or at least have other duties such as reviewing papers, and, of course you may have TA responsibilities.  You're definitely busier than in undergraduate school altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you finish your classes, research really takes over, and the work can come in spurts, especially around the time conference and journal submissions are due.  I've seen graduate students disappear for weeks at a time, and they don't seem too harmed by it in the end.  Keep in mind that summers will be taken up by research or internships, too, so you don't have much of a break (although academia definitely slows down to some extent during summer, with lots of people out of the office).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The spurts continue until you really get down to writing your dissertation, which is a constant weight that you could spend every hour working on.  I got some reprieve when I sent my advisor chapter updates (and you have to take breaks for sanity), but there is always that next chapter to work on, or the bibliography to fix up, or the figures to modify, or the defense presentation to practice.   It can be a rough time for many students, just because your dissertation can seem like the Eye of Sauron looming in the distance.  This is probably the time where you need to tell your family that Dad might be more stressed than normal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The few (possibly longer) weeks after you graduate are some of the most relaxing days of your life. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T04:48:02.410" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T04:48:02.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9769" CreationDate="2013-05-02T05:37:00.790" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel for once I am somewhat qualified to give an answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of background to know where I am coming from and hopefully give some insight to my situation.  I am currently finishing my second year in a MA Mathematics program and beginning my first year of my Ph.D. in Mathematics in the fall.  I am married with two children(a 3 year old and an 8 month old).  I had my first child during undergrad and my second child came two weeks before the current school year started.  I attend a smaller department that is most certainly less intensive in regards to the expectations that another school would have(such as a top tier research university).  I've been a Research Assistant for the past two years doing active and successful research with an amazing supervisor.  This past year has been the most stressful since I decided to take three core year long sequences, which is a great deal of work to keep up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Above all, put your family first&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hope this goes without saying, but it can be easy to lose sight of this when you're up to your neck in homework/deadlines.  When something comes up with my family, I drop my schoolwork to deal with it.  I make it a point to always put my family before school.  I'm sure there are professors out there who would argue otherwise, but I'm grateful that my professors seem to (hopefully) understand the situation and that I just can't put in the hours that other students can.  I generally score lower on average than other students but I think I do fairly well.  Could I do better?  Absolutely...if I were to put in the hours and sacrifice time with my family I could score better on my tests and homework, but that isn't what really matters in the long term to me.  Of course I want to do well in school(and I generally do!), but sometimes I have to make a choice and school gets the axe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you choose your own priorities, and I would suggest opting for spending time with your family over finishing that HW.  You just can't get those moments back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Having a Strong Support System&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;absolutely not&lt;/strong&gt; be able to do this without the support of my wife, family, and friends.  Without my wife to help out with the kids and pick up some extra housework when studying for tests/finals/my oral MA exam, I would certainly have dropped out or (worse) ruined my marriage or become a terrible father.  I make sure to try and do extra work whenever the stressful times pass and try to make it up to her as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are lucky to have family close that can help out with childcare and babysitting when I need to go in on an off day or want to stay late for a seminar.  Without the support system we have in place, I'm not sure I could physically do it.  If you have a similar support system, then it will be a huge relief to your stressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also mention that without some amazing people at my department, I wouldn't be able to succeed.  Professors have been amazing with deadlines if the time just wasn't there for me some week.  My RA supervisor has been absolutely amazing as well.  She's extremely understanding with the kids and even being cool with me bringing the little one to meetings if everything just fell apart for that day.  If I had a less understanding supervisor, I probably wouldn't have made it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Time Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the trickiest part.  Time management is always important, but it's extremely important to successful manage school and family.  You just don't have all the time that other students do so when it's time to work you need to remove all distractions and get as much done as possible.  I arrive at school between 8-9am and in between classes I work nonstop on homework or studying until I leave at 3-4pm.  I have a computer in my office, but I purposely keep it off unless I absolutely need it on.  I disable the wifi on my smartphone and removed nearly all the time wasting apps(facebook, games, etc..).  I check my e-mail probably twice, once near the beginning of the day and once around the time I'm getting ready to leave for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do take small breaks from work to socialize with other students or check in with professors as needed, but I strive to make sure that I don't waste an hour doing absolutely nothing in someone else's office.  Socializing is an important part of graduate school, so don't neglect it but don't let it consume all your precious time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I come home after school I shut off school mode.  I spend the rest of the night with my family, eat dinner, and help get the kids into bed.  Once the kids are in bed then I'm free to do homework.  I don't always go straight into homework though because it's important to me to spend time with my wife relaxing and watching an episode or two of TV shows to wind down.  It doesn't happen every night, but I usually make an effort to take it easy on weeknights when I don't have school the next day.  The &quot;school nights&quot; I usually retire upstairs to work on homework.  I'll work until midnight or later depending on how early I have to get up and I'll average around 6 hours of sleep.  It's not great, but sacrifices have to be made somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;give yourself the weekend&lt;/strong&gt;.  Once I leave school on Friday, I'm done with math until at least Sunday night.  The weekends are prime family time and we spend every weekend visiting the zoo, science center, art museum, the park, or virtually anything else the kids would enjoy.  I initially thought it would be impossible to take the entire weekend off schoolwork and still succeed, but I've been doing it for 2 years.  This past year was the worst, but I stuck to it and I can safely say I managed to survive it and do just fine in my courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dealing with Stress&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's face it, you'll be stressed.  Grad school is stressful as all hell to begin with, but then you go and toss kids into the mix?  It's insanity, and you have to handle it somehow.  I'm a fan of exercise, which takes up that precious time but is totally worth it.  You have to feel as good as you can and any sort of activity is a great way to relieve stress.  You could also do another hobby, or something that you do to relax.  I'm also an avid reader, so losing myself into a book every now and then is great.  The time I have to read varies, but it's one of my top hobbies.  Find something you enjoy and do it frequently to relax.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it just can't be helped.  If you find yourself &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; freaking out, you really should seek out the school's counseling center.  They are no doubt used to overworked students and having a place to lay all your problems on the table and have a trained therapist help you sort it out is probably exactly what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up, I put my family before everything else.  School takes a high priority but there are far more important things in my life than getting an A in every course.  Schedule your time wisely, remove distractions, and work when it's time to work.  Do something relaxing for yourself on a regular basis.  Give your family the attention and time they deserve.  You can't get those moments back and no letter grade in the world is worth that sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Above all, make sure you are happy.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's such a small thing but I've seen students absolutely miserable hating what they are doing.  &lt;em&gt;Don't be that person&lt;/em&gt;!  Life is too short to waste it being miserable.  I suggest every 6 months or so, take a step back and evaluate how you feel about your situation(this should apply to anyone, not just graduate students).  For instance, I vow to myself that if there ever comes a time when I begin to genuinely dislike what I'm doing, I will quit and find something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and don't forget what's really important.  Grad school has a way of giving you tunnel vision and destroying you emotionally...just don't let it do it too often. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T05:37:00.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-05-02T08:20:41.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done almost all of my math learning so far this way. Consequently, I know a whole lot of math and I know a whole lot &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; a lot of areas of math, but I suck at proving things, and my knowledge isn't terribly deep. Thankfully, I am finally going to be taking some pure math courses where I will have to prove things and develop my skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less generally, I think that one can learn facts and knowledge and problem solving strategies by watching, but they will not develop skills. For that they need practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6983" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T08:20:41.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9768" CreationDate="2013-05-02T08:47:22.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Key things to include are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relevant experience - such as tutoring, teaching, marking,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educational achievement - you have a PhD, presumably this is in a field related to the field in which you will be marking/tutoring,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other experience relevant to the role, e.g. working with students in any role such as mentoring, personal development, group work, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some evidence-based statement relevant to the proposed work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For number four, this is an opportunity to show that, for instance, you are able to work alone or as part of a team, that you are able to work to deadlines (important for returning marked scripts), and that you have excellent written and oral communication skills (important for feedback). Your comments in this statement must be backed up with evidence drawn from your past experience, work or training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T08:47:22.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3210" CreationDate="2013-05-02T10:22:05.297" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dan C gave a tremendously good response to this question, but I thought I'd add one more idea:&#xA;with the preponderance of online classes, it is very much possible to follow a set of lectures online as you teach a class for the first time (especially for introductory classes), and many times you can find full semester classes for free on YouTube, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.khanacademy.org/&quot;&gt;Khan Academy&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm&quot;&gt;MIT OpenCourseWare&lt;/a&gt;.  I've done this for an Astronomy class that I taught, and I not only learned a lot from watching the class, but I was able to set up my own classes with a good idea of class-long topics.  Furthermore, I've said it at least once on Academia.SE before: observing other teachers teach is one of the best professional development methods around; you learn the good and the bad, and you see what works and what doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality is that sometimes, staying one step ahead of the students is the best you can do, even if it isn't ideal from a pedagogical perspective. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPgljRvzQw&quot;&gt;As DR famously said, You &quot;go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T10:22:05.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-05-02T15:15:16.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For faculty positions it is not uncommon to ask for letters to be sent to dozens of institutions; I know someone who applied for around 80 positions, for example (which was noticed to be rather a lot by the people who wrote him letters, but they still sent them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For postdoctoral positions, you should plan on fewer; in most cases, the letter is not the first step.  You have a CV and presumably publications; you may have met your advisor-to-be at conferences; and so on.  If the person/people in charge of hiring you seem potentially interested and you are serious about the position, go ahead and ask for a letter.  If you are merely curious, try to do your part of the work first, especially if your former advisors etc. will have to tailor their letter each time.  Sending one letter to eighty institutions is easier in most ways that writing five letters with different details.  Still, that said, as long as you're pursuing reasonable opportunities and you're gracious, most people willing to write you letters will send as many as it takes.  (Keep in mind, though, that if you ask for dozens of letters for postdoc applications and are never offered a position, it is probably not the case that you just need to ask more!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T15:15:16.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-05-02T15:23:02.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've known of a few cases of people prolonging their Ph.Ds to improve their CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have spoken with professors and students who &quot;felt their students had not published enough&quot; and held them longer to ensure that their CVs would be strong enough so that someone would hire them for a postdoc or a faculty position - the reasoning being that if someone zips through their Ph.D in a few years but doesn't have enough work on their CV, then that student is going to be damned as far as an academic career goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, one thing to ask yourself is if that work you're doing for your dissertation will eventually become a paper that might have some impact. In other words, if you write about this in your dissertation, will you eventually publish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as part of your academic &quot;development&quot; so to speak, you should have a good idea of how much is &quot;enough&quot; as well, and that is to know what is &quot;important&quot; and what is not. In your stated case, maybe X isn't that important of a research gap if both of them think that you can investigate it with related work instead of doing research work to that end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible reason that it's mentioned as not being necessary is because they both feel that it will take much, much longer (in other words, the investment isn't worth the reward). Or, if the results merely incremental, they may not be enough of an improvement to warrant a new publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this isn't an answer and it's more of &quot;things to consider&quot; but I hope it helps you eventually come to a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T15:23:02.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-05-02T16:00:34.650" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I manage this without being disrespectful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just ask.&lt;/strong&gt;  Ask &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; a month before your first deadline.  (Ideally, your writers should be people who know you well enough not to be surprised by your request.)  If possible, ask in person.  Give them as much information as you can about where you're applying, including your &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt; application package — CV, statements, sample papers, names of your other references, everything.  Ask for feedback.  Listen.  If they agree to write you a letter, keep them regularly updated as your CV and application targets change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: &lt;strong&gt;Given your references a way to tell you which letters they've sent.&lt;/strong&gt;  This could be as simple as &quot;Please send me email when...&quot;, or a private Google doc listing your application targets and deadlines.  (From personal experience: Having a common Google doc for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your letter writers is particularly effective, since each writer can see when the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; writers have sent their letters.)  Check regularly that your references are actually sending their letters, &lt;strong&gt;and bug them &lt;em&gt;mercilessly&lt;/em&gt; if they haven't yet.&lt;/strong&gt;  This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; being disrespectful; this is helping them to do the job they agreed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, keep your references updated whenever you get an interview, get a job offer, or accept a position.  &lt;strong&gt;Don't forget to say thanks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many requests in a given unit of time is too many, or harms my credibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's entirely up the the individual writer.  But as Rex says, it's common for one applicant to apply for dozens of positions.  When I agree to be a reference for someone's faculty search, I generally expect to send letters to &lt;strong&gt;30–50&lt;/strong&gt; different targets.  I can use (nearly-)identical letters for most targets, but inevitably there are major variations.  For example, tenure-track faculty positions, industrial research lab positions, and postdoc positions all require different letters, even when the applicant is applying to all three types of jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, there is no standard mechanism for submitting letters.  Some places want letters submitted in parallel with the application; others ask automatically when the application is submitted; others ask only when the application passes an initial filtering stage.  Some places want letters by email; others use standard services like MathJobs; others use home-grown web pages; a rare few still require paper letters with wet signatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is what agreeing to write a job letter &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  Most faculty already know this and won't agree to act as your reference unless they're willing to do this much work.  Still, just as it's important to ask &quot;Can you write me a &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; letter of recommendation?&quot;, it's important to be completely up-front about the &lt;em&gt;scale&lt;/em&gt; of your request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T16:00:34.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9769" CreationDate="2013-05-02T18:04:53.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting excited about a field of study is a great intrinsic motivator. But, as a grown-up, you know that the things that get your children excited (ice cream?) may have side effects (sugar rush that the parents have to manage? longer-term obesity risks?). So unlike a 20-something out of undergrad who can afford spending a few more years in school, you have a different perspective on what works in your life, and how things &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; work. While it may be true that Ph.D.s pay better, if you are say in your mid-40s, it is not entirely clear if the 5-7 years you will spend on the program with an income of $15-20K (losing $50-60K opportunities) are worth the gain from $50K to $80K that you will only enjoy for about 15 years. Having a better mid-age income may be especially important to get your kids through college (unless you really get a professor job with accompanying discounts; that's probably 10-15 years down the road for you, and may be worth factoring in.) You must realize that few research schools will hire Ph.D.s of age to tenure-track positions -- by being burdened with a family, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage of not being able to put 100+ hour work weeks like single fresh Ph.D.s in their late 20s would be able to (or ship your kids to China to be brought up by grandparents, as some married profs can do). An example of an MIT grad with a strict schedule that Chris gave is terrific, but is likely to be an exception; in some places, if you try to pull something like this, you will be asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/i-expect-you-to-correct-your-work-ethic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to correct your work ethics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking to professors is all fine -- they all will be very happy to see you go in grad school, get a Ph.D. and become one more professor (more so important if we are talking about a country native working on an STEM field; you have seen all sorts of discussions of how bad the shortage of STEM qualified personnel is in the US -- I assume we are talking about US here by your references to MIT :) ). To put it differently, they will want &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to become one of &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, and frankly I would not expect any different answer. Keep in mind that they are the success stories, at least in the sense of academia. To balance things out, find a few Ph.D. working in industry in your designated field (industrial engineering, heh?), and ask them (i) if the degree really helps in their jobs; (ii) if the degree was necessary to propel them to where they are (things are changing here: you must have a Ph.D. to hold some of the higher positions, and you hit a glass ceiling at some point with lower degrees); (iii) why they went to industry rather than academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I taught at a university, I used to have a much greater respect for adult learners in my classes than for the &quot;mainstream&quot; students. These students are way more focused and have a much better idea of why they are in college, to begin with, and what they are going to do with their degree. They obviously have better social skills, which is important in every walk of life, and more so in engineering which is traditionally considered a nerdish discipline. You would want to play to these advantages that you have over the teenagers surrounding you in your classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of qualifications for this particular question: my wife and I came to do our Ph.D. programs with a 1-year old son, and we had another daughter the year before the job market. My wifeis a tenured professor now, I work in industry, and have a great degree of skepticism about academia, as you can easily tell :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T18:04:53.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2506" CreationDate="2013-05-02T18:08:53.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can trust them all, equally. Each index has a precise meaning that is well defined (once the database used is given). For example, if a researcher has h-index 3, you know that she has at least 3 papers with at least 3 citation each, and that she has not 4 papers with more than 3 citation each, and this is quite reliable informations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what you probably mean is whether we can trust some index to say something else; but what? Research productivity? Academic success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just like the number of books sold by a novelist. You can trust it to tell you how many books she sold, and it may help you decide whether you want to publish its next one if you are only interested in sales. Of course if you want to decide whether she deserves the Nobel prize, you might not want to base your decision on this index. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T18:08:53.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-05-02T19:35:36.533" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Irwin suggests, prolonging the PhD to improve your research track record is a standard strategy, especially for students who are interested in pursuing an academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The minimal requirements to get a PhD are fundamentally weaker than the minimal requirements to get an academic job.&lt;/strong&gt;  Despite all high-falutin' talk to the contrary, the only &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; requirement for completing a PhD is convincing your thesis committee to sign the requisite paperwork.  Most faculty have an image in their heads of the necessary work; for example, in computer science, a minimal PhD thesis is roughly equivalent to two solid conference papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the academic job market is a true competition.  Only people with truly outstanding research records (and strong recommendation letters) get invited to interview for faculty positions, or accepted for research postdoc positions.  It doesn't matter whether you're &quot;good enough&quot;; lots of people are &quot;good enough&quot;. What matters is how you compare against other people on the market.  So it's actually quite rational to delay completing the PhD past the point where you have a viable thesis, in order to improve your research record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, phrasing the delay in terms of &quot;making your thesis stronger&quot; is totally missing the point.  &lt;strong&gt;Your PhD thesis is an administrative hurdle.&lt;/strong&gt;  At least in computer science, if you're lucky, three people will &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; read your thesis, including you and your advisor.  (The standard joke ends &quot;...and your mom.&quot;)  Your colleagues will see and judge your track record through your peer-reviewed publications in conferences and journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the short answer is: &lt;strong&gt;Do more original publishable research, and then publish it.&lt;/strong&gt;  And then I guess you could show off to your committee by including those results in your thesis, but whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, please slap your advisor for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T20:12:39.897" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T20:12:39.897" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-05-02T20:19:28.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of details left unmentioned in your psot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many papers have you &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; published? Is it only the three chapters of the thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long would you extend your PhD program to add the additional work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many publications or conference papers would you get out of this work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have four or five major publications after four years, then prolonging your stay for, as an example, two years for one paper might not be worth the time. However, if you only had to extend a year to get two or more publications, and you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that they will be accepted into top conferences or journals, then it would well behoove you to take the extra time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there might be other reasons behind the sudden change in attitude. Do you know how the remaining time would be financed? Is it clear that your advisor would be able or willing to support you for the remaining time you'd want to spend? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T20:19:28.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9795" CreationDate="2013-05-02T20:31:22.623" Score="14" ViewCount="3859" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than the possibility of waiving registration fees, What is the objective of graduate students volunteering at conferences?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For instance, I am considering volunteering at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijcai13.org/students_mentoring/volunteers&quot;&gt;IJCAI&lt;/a&gt; these days and wish to do it at least once (never done it before) but do not really have  a clear motivation for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T08:19:50.440" Title="Why do PhD students volunteer at conferences?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:29:20.017" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; No registration fees, networking and attending relevant sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some talk and background informationabout this already. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://s2013.siggraph.org/volunteers/student-volunteers&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2013.acm.org/organizers/student-volunteers/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://2013.icse-conferences.org/content/student-volunteers-0&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/student-volunteers&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for some background. With this background, IMHO, the primary reasons why PhD students should be volunteers for major conferences in their line at least once are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First up, no registration fees. Yay ! Primary reason one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Networking with other PhD student volunteers who are likely to be PhD students in similar departments working on similar stuff. For instance, most student volunteers at CHI 2013 are PhD students from HCI/CS/IS/ischools working on HCI stuff. Its great to meet with peers and bond with them. [Yay for student volunteer party !]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Possible networking with relevant faculty. This could be someone from the organizing committee or the program committee or someone else who you come in close contact with for the duration of the conference. There might be a certain someone who is a good researcher in your line and whom you might want to keep in touch with in the future. Getting in touch as a student volunteer in a conference might be one such strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Picking and choosing conference sessions/tracks to attend. You could, with some dexterity be the student volunteer in charge of a track or a session or a panel which you are really really interested in watching. As a student volunteer pretty much, you stand and assist and you do get one of the best seats in the house, albeit by standing. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T21:29:20.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-05-03T01:58:34.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, this is one of those things that might be different from conference to conference, but in the ones that I frequent, here's how it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only local students, in particular, students from the local organizer's university (if there's more than 1 university in the city) get to volunteer. It's not that others are barred, but just that the email gets circulated within the department. If you manage to hear about it and contact the organizers, then you can be a part too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You agree to be a room help/PA support/IT support/etc. for different sessions. If you're interested in the sessions, you get to pick and choose which ones you want to go to (i.e., you can help out at a session you were going to attend anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best part — you get paid &lt;code&gt;$minimum_wage_in_state&lt;/code&gt; for the hours you work. That meant that if you managed to pitch in 3-4 hours/day for a 5 day conference, you get something like 120-150 bucks for attending something that you like. Considering that PhD pay (in the US) is only a little above minimum wage and that local students don't get per diem compensation, this is not a bad proposition at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6994" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T01:58:34.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9813" CreationDate="2013-05-03T05:39:50.993" Score="6" ViewCount="8423" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teachers in primary and secondary school usually are called as Mr.[surname] or Miss/Mrs.[surname]. However, cases in universities are more complex. It seems we need to call a teacher who is a professor professor or prof.[surname], and a teacher who is not a professor but a doctor Dr.[surname]. But not all teachers are professors, so what about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)one whose name we know but neither a professor or a doctor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)one whose name we know but we do not know whether he/she is a professor or a doctor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)one whose name we do not know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1064" LastEditorUserId="1064" LastEditDate="2013-05-04T03:18:09.287" LastActivityDate="2021-05-23T16:24:44.227" Title="What are polite appellations for teachers in British universities?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9802" CreationDate="2013-05-03T06:50:23.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mr/Ms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why not ask what they prefer to be called?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, ask them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T06:50:23.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9802" CreationDate="2013-05-03T07:50:36.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within an academic setting while you might run into a Dean or a Duke, generally Professor is the highest honorific you will need. Therefore, I suggest calling everyone you do not know Professor. If they are not a Professor, or do not want to be called Professor, they will correct you. It seems to me to be a lot less pompous to say &quot;actually, I am only a doctor&quot;, then it is to say &quot;actually, I am a Professor/Dean/Duchess/King&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T07:50:36.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9802" CreationDate="2013-05-03T20:05:47.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everywhere I've attended and worked in Britain, I've called teachers by their first name and been called my first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on what you mean by a college. Most universities are not called college (and if they are going to, say, Birkbeck College, one would say one is going to university.  Most colleges are technical colleges, or colleges of further education (I've attended or taught at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burton-college.ac.uk/%E2%80%8E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.burton-college.ac.uk/‎&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nulc.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nulc.ac.uk/&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southstaffs.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.southstaffs.ac.uk/&lt;/a&gt;), which have no professors, and few staff with PhDs - although there are also colleges of higher education which would have professors and where most staff would have PhDs (but most of these have become universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-05-23T16:24:44.227" LastActivityDate="2021-05-23T16:24:44.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9811" CreationDate="2013-05-03T21:50:25.327" Score="4" ViewCount="37768" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is I completed a work earlier and did another work which extends this work. However, I haven't got the earlier work published. I plan to send these two papers to a conference but I do not know how to cite the work of first paper in second paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6998" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T22:06:04.833" Title="How do I cite an unpublished work in my paper? which incidentally is my second submission to the same conference" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-05-03T22:47:56.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9809" CreationDate="2013-05-03T22:05:30.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know or have information about the writing style or style guide that is usually followed in your field and you should follow those style guides to find out how to cite unpublished works . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get you kickstarted in the right direction, I have provided information about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Style_Manual&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA&lt;/a&gt; styles and how to cite unpublished works. Of course, your field may use completely unrelated style guides but they should have typical information for unpublished works. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/APA14.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nova.campusguides.com/content.php?pid=114919&amp;amp;sid=992797&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2315829_cite-unpublished-sources-chicago-manual.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_4450351_cite-unpublished-work-mla-format.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T22:05:30.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9809" CreationDate="2013-05-03T22:06:04.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people, including myself, use the following style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author. “Paper Title,” manuscript, year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;e.g.:&#xA;  [13] A.N. Author, “Paper Citation Rules,” manuscript, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's your paper you can also cite it as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author. “Paper Title,” submitted, year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper citation style may depend on the conference you submit your paper to. In my area, theoretical computer science, there are no strict citation rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T22:06:04.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-05-03T23:39:49.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Volunteering can be fun, it's a change, you get to meet new people. Volunteering is good for you - you feel a part of something bigger, and like you've achieved something useful and immediate (unlike, say, a thesis or a paper).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably good for your career in the long term - getting a reputation as a person who says &quot;Yes&quot; to things is always going to help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T23:39:49.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9802" CreationDate="2013-05-04T00:30:02.140" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an answer based on my experience in the United States.  I don't know how well it generalizes to other countries, but some issues may be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't go wrong calling someone Professor or Doctor unless you know for sure that it is inappropriate and they know that you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the college level in the U.S., it's common to refer to your teacher as Professor X regardless of whether their official job title includes the word professor.  (The primary teacher of a college course is considered to be acting as a professor for that purpose, even if their official title is visiting scholar or postdoctoral associate or whatever.)  This may not apply to grad students, but it can cover just about everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When possible I'd avoid gendered titles like Mr. or Ms., and specifically Ms.  The issue is subconscious sexism: some people tend to use fancier titles to address men than to address women in comparable positions, and calling someone Ms. may make her wonder whether you are one of those people.  (If you are such a person, then you should mend your ways, and even if you're not you could still be mistaken for one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Miss and Mrs. are far worse than Ms., because they indicate marital status.  You should never address an academic as Miss or Mrs. unless she has explicitly indicated that this is what she prefers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T00:30:02.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-05-04T08:19:50.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the IJCAI link you provided, I found the following on the travel grant application web page,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the event that travel grant applications exceed available funds, preference will be given to students who have an accepted technical paper, and &lt;strong&gt;then to students who are actively participating in the conference in some way&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take it to mean that you have more chances to get the grant if you volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Send the application form now before it's too late if you did not get support from your department and you don't have an accepted paper. I would run to register for volunteering if I were you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T08:19:50.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9823" CreationDate="2013-05-04T18:33:17.047" Score="3" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a research group from some private university and we offer research contract services. The problem is that when we get customers, the contract is signed by the highest authority of the university, and we appear on the contract as second players. Also they get 20% on the budget, and all intellectual property that might come from our work. I do not know whether the same situation is in public universities, but we do not like this and we are thinking about other alternatives, for instance, since we have now a lot of potential customers and contacts, to sign the contracts through a smallest possible company that we would create, so that our university would never know about this. The problem is that with this approach, we can not hire people for working on the projects in our university, so they should work out of academia, and we would never get officially recognition for this work. So it seems we have only two options, we stay in this university and accept the situation, or we leave completely and create a spin-off. I would like to know your opinion or advice about this, or what would you do in our situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T10:50:39.067" Title="Sign research contracts in a private university or create a &quot;ghost&quot; company" Tags="&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9822" CreationDate="2013-05-04T18:36:50.803" Score="20" ViewCount="19820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always wondered why a person is given the title of Dr after completing a PhD in a non-medical field. This is especially because of the confusion over the medical title of Dr. Why hasn't a better distinction been formulated by now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T17:47:37.003" Title="Where does the title Dr come from for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9820" CreationDate="2013-05-04T19:20:27.527" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the real question should be &quot;why the title of doctor seems to be now more associated to medical sciences than other fields&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctor comes from doctum, that is a derivative of docere, Latin verb for &quot;teaching&quot;. &#xA;The first doctors in the very first universities studied in four faculties: arts, medical sciences, law and theology. We still use PhD (Philosophiae doctor) but the meaning of the word philosophy has changed over the centuries. During the renaissance, the word philosophy had a broader meaning since philosophy at that time encompasses the whole spectrum of science.       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries (France for instance), it is forbidden to use the title of Dr for those who are not MD. In this case, Dr is a degree but not a title. Why do we not use MD everywhere instead of Dr (which seems to be the way to suppress the ambiguity while respecting history)? I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="43" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T20:02:47.017" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T20:02:47.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9820" CreationDate="2013-05-04T19:22:40.390" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's actually exactly the opposite: &quot;doctor&quot; is Latin for &quot;teacher&quot; and the title originally had no special connection with medicine.  Instead, a doctor was anyone qualified to teach at a university (in medieval Europe teaching qualifications were typically determined by the church).  The concept of a formal PhD degree came much later, but it continued this earlier terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion in English is irritating, but not problematic enough to make universities give up a 1000+ year old tradition.  It's not clear why this situation arose.  One natural explanation is that if you want to emphasize your medical skills, you can do it by explaining that you are not just a healer, but in fact someone qualified to teach other people the healing arts.  In other words, you're a doctor of medicine in the academic sense of the word &quot;doctor&quot;.  Until very recently universities were fairly exotic, and most people didn't talk about academic doctors very much, so the medical usage was much more salient for the general public and for most people it became the standard meaning of &quot;doctor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this difficulty with this story is that it doesn't explain why, for example, German does not confuse the terms the same way English does.  Maybe it's just chance, or maybe there's some cultural reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, though, academia had the title first and is reluctant to change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T19:22:40.390" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9819" CreationDate="2013-05-04T21:22:48.897" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is fairly typical of research contracts—if you are employed at a university, then normally the university is the one that negotiates contracts on your behalf. This is usually for legal reasons, although it does, as you indicate, usually come at the cost of having to give the university some of the money in the contract as &quot;overhead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you also indicated, however, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to form a start-up company; there's nothing wrong with doing so in most countries, and such companies can engage in contract work with private firms. However, there are often restrictions on receiving government research awards unless they're partnered with universities or other approved non-profit organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much of your business leads are the result of the identification of your group with your host university? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you have enough outside business to support your staff through this outside research income?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is quite likely that much of what you save in overhead payments to your university may go out to your government in the form of taxes as well as to pay for other business expenses you have. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; expect to run a company while on-campus, using university resources. If this is discovered, you can almost certainly expect to be terminated for misuse of university resources (and worse, possibly public resources as well, depending on what country you're in). At a minimum, you would expect to have to have off-campus resources, and employ your contract employees separately, if you want to maintain this arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T21:22:48.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-05T03:15:41.333" Score="69" ViewCount="103950" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: Young graduate student in his first year of a PhD program who has lost a passion for the academic world. Seriously considering quitting but don't know what to do. Science background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I'm 21-25, with a Science background, B.Sc in Physics. Took a year off between Undergrad and Grad school and worked full time as a research scientist. Theoretical background (most of my work has consisted of modelling). Strong quantitative and computer skills. Excel in presentation/project focused environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General Information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I am currently finishing the second semester of my first year in a PhD program at a top tier US school in an engineering program. I have a full scholarship that pays for all of my tuition and a living stipend (typical graduate student stipend ~$1800 a month after taxes, so quite enough to live off of). I'm not a US citizen (from Canada), so I'm here on a student VISA, so if I decide to stop I have 2 weeks to leave the country. I cannot hold any other employment in the US while here on my VISA. My PhD consists of ~1.5 years of combined coursework and research, followed by a qualifier at the end of that period (research based), then into your thesis (doesn't have to be related to what your qualifier research was on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current Academic Situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I came first semester ready to start a new life...(first time moving away from home- did my undergrad where I was born). I did very well first semester (3.9/4.0 GPA) and research was on track (mostly lit. review). By the end of first semester however, I noticed that I was losing interest very quickly in both my coursework and research - it started to become very hard to get myself through to work on a daily basis. Went home Christmas break for a few weeks and came back to start my second semester and immediately noticed a big change. I started to struggle in my classes and fall behind on research. It wasn't that the material was too difficult, I just had no motivation to do it. No excuses here - just didn't really want to do it so I didn't. I reached the end of the semester and realized just how far behind I was. I am likely going to hit ~C average this semester (A last) and am drastically behind on research. I had weekly-biweekly meetings with my supervisor all semester, but I sort of hid just how bad things were going. Had a long meeting last week where I basically came clean on everything (said I was struggling in classes, behind on research) and the supervisor was very supportive. The supervisor believed in my potential and suggested I speak to a school counsellor and emphasized that this kind of thing was common for doctoral students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal situation/feelings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I come from a family where both my parents have PhDs. Although my parents have always been supportive and open to my life, I feel as though they would be very disappointed if I quit and this pressure is very real to me. I have tried to have the conversation with them and their attitude is mostly: &amp;quot;just put your head down and work through it, it's just a phase&amp;quot;. Quite frankly most people seem to think it's a &amp;quot;phase&amp;quot; when I tell them. Outside of school my life is great. I'm not unhappy or depressed, I have hobbies, friends, I work out - it's just school that makes me feel this way. I just don't like the academic world at all any more. I HATE classes (always have) and where in the past research has been the saving grace keeping me interested in school, it now is losing a lot of it's appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I feel no passion or drive for what I am doing any more. This for me is a huge problem. I'm not the kind of person who lacks passion in life. Quite the opposite in fact. Right now I have no such drive for school. I have a long term long distance relationship with someone from home that is incredibly happy and stable. They visited here many times since I moved and we are doing great. I would be lying if I said it wasn't a factor in me wanting to quit. (Having my partner move here is a lot more complicated). The relationship has been incredibly supportive and is very aware of my current situation and has maintained a very neutral stance, trying to play devils advocate wherever possible and trying to make sure it doesn't influence the decision. I should state that I am pretty sure if I had to choose between school and the relationship, I would choose the relationship  immediately with no regrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just reached a point where I find myself doing just about anything else but school work. I'll get groceries, clean the apartment, watch TV etc... before doing any work. I'm trying to stick around for a couple of months for the summer (to see if not having classes changes anything) but since talking to my supervisor I'm already having doubts about even that. At this point, I feel like moving home and getting any job would make me happier than what I am doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Financial situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I have a few thousand dollars in the bank (enough to get me home /move out etc...) and zero debt. If I move back home, I can likely live with my parents for the first month to get back, then I'd be looking for a job and moving in with my partner. I realize having no debt puts me ahead of a lot of people and I'm not particularly concerned about the situation financially - I'm very lucky to have what I have and am aware of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the deal? I know I have this amazing opportunity. I'm at a top tier school on a full scholarship. I wake up every day and get to work with the top minds in my field doing important research. I'm doing something a very small % of the population ever gets a chance at and yet still I have no motivation to do it. I'm not sure if I'm doing it for me any more, or I'm doing it so I don't let down other people in my life. My parents, mentors, friends, all the people who keep telling me how amazing this opportunity is. The more I look back, the more I realize that Grad school was what I did because I basically just didn't have another plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would I like to do&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I'd love to find a job. I don't need to make a lot of money to be happy - I live off of 22k a year right now and am perfectly comfortable. Money isn't a major motivator for me. Working in the financial sector, doing quantitative risk analysis, banking, DoD, just about anything sounds more appealing than school to me. I know I'm smart and I've got a strong quantitative background combined with very good personal skills. I'm great with people and one of the things I HATE about the academic world is how under-used that part of my skill set feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what to do. I want to quit, but I haven't. Maybe I shouldn't? I've been looking into options, but quite frankly I'd much prefer to have some kind of plan before quitting - at the very least this pays my living right now. I'd love advice from anyone. Someone who's been in this situation, someone who hasn't It doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that what I am doing does not make me happy. But I don't know what will. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update two years later&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose to leave school, and came home. My relationship fell apart but I found a decent job working for a tech startup and did that for about 1.5 years - I saved some money and took some time off and now I'm doing full time analytics consulting work for a website - It's working out well so far and I enjoy the freedom of it (work from home) etc. Though I do often wonder about what would have happened if I stayed, I don't regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7007" LastEditorUserId="79875" LastEditDate="2021-03-10T15:28:42.833" LastActivityDate="2021-03-10T15:28:42.833" Title="I am currently debating whether to leave my PhD program- any advice?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="38" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-05T04:42:42.930" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my general advice for graduate students who are thinking about quitting graduate school (and I'll sprinkle in some specific advice):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At one point or another, almost every graduate student wants to quit, so &lt;em&gt;you're not alone&lt;/em&gt;.  The fact that you're not alone doesn't solve any problems, but it may give you some peace of mind.  The advice from your supportive advisor to seek out counseling is a very, very good one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The decision to get a graduate degree is personal and different for everyone, but regardless it is a long-term decision that will probably have a significant effect on your future.  The five or six years of your life spent doing it could open up many doors; that is not to say that other opportunities aren't worth considering.  You really do have to do what is best for yourself, in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting a PhD really does require passion (and in your case this is weaning right now).  You can push through a pretty good chunk of time without it, but if you don't find the passion, it's going to be a long haul.  If you were passionate and lost that, try to figure out what it was that you were passionate about before, and see if you can get back in the groove.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html&quot;&gt;One of my favorite Richard Feynman stories is about how he rebounded from a slump because he watched a spinning plate in the dining hall&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you hate classes, make it a priority to finish them up quickly so you can concentrate on the research!  Classes, while important, are not why you are in graduate school.  A friend's advisor told his students that he would be upset if they were getting A+'s, meaning that they weren't spending enough time on research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can take time off from graduate school and come back later.  This is hard to do (particularly if you have to leave the country), and you can't necessarily expect the same financial support when you return.  But, you can do it, and if you need time off, take it.  My suggestion for you if you are still on the fence about staying in grad school is to look at an internship somewhere for the summer where you are away from school and can clear your head.  Then come back next semester.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of my advice is kind of ignoring what may be your most important statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to quit, but I haven't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've thought through all the reasons why you want to quit, and this is the answer, then you should take time off -- 'quit' is a harsh word, and not really a necessary one (see point 5).  Your point is well taken that you shouldn't try to stick it out for anyone but yourself -- we all go through worries about disappointing others, but most people want you to be happy, and they will understand.  You will almost certainly find a big weight lifted from your shoulders, and not extra pressure from those around you.  Yes, having a plan before moving on is always a good idea, but I've been in a number of places in my life where I decided to do something before having a definite plan, and it all worked out in the end.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T04:42:42.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-05T08:50:39.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know how you feel because even as an undergraduate, I once packed my bags. But a friend prevailed on me and I'm still thankful for not quitting. Consider the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you start a count down to finish date and get really excited about seeing the day approach, you'll know time passes really quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our emotions/feeling/circumstances are temporary/passing but our achievements (good or bad) are permanent. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creative/innovative people (like you) get tired of routine. If you take interest in something around you that requires you to learn something challenging (say music) or something alien to you, your PhD vital signs may be positively influence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert at these things but I know that when I get tired of routine... I stimulate my creativity somewhere else... Not for the gain but for the challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck man... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7008" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T08:50:39.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9819" CreationDate="2013-05-05T10:50:39.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also they get 20% on the budget, and all intellectual property that&#xA;  might come from our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only 20%, that is a dream rate, are you sure it is right? For research related activities from fedral agencies in the US 70% is not unheard of. See this table from &lt;a href=&quot;http://osp.fad.harvard.edu/content/fa-cost-rates-federal-sponsors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard&lt;/a&gt;. Charitable foundations often get discounted &lt;a href=&quot;http://osp.fad.harvard.edu/content/fa-cost-rates-non-federal-sponsors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rates&lt;/a&gt;, while industry partners often have to pay extra. At my country university industry contracts usually carry at least a 100% overhead rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the IP, universities tend to be willing to let you give away the IP, they just want to make sure they get a cut if you try and make money on the IP. Whether or not the support the university puts in makes them a reasonable investor is a hard call. You have to make a business case to determine if you are better off going independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T10:50:39.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9495" CreationDate="2013-05-05T12:48:52.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was studying for my MBA I also thought about this choice. However, a PhD is long and I was looking forward to working with my new-found knowledge sooner than a PhD would allow. For me, I prefer to balance practice with theory. That is, I did not want to wait for longer than I had to before being able to use my knowledge in the 'real world.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'm now looking seriously at a PhD and I certainly do not regret my decision. I could work while I was studying during my MBA. Now, I do understand that one can take some time off during a PhD but I wasn't really looking forward to starting something which would likely require a break. I prefer the clean completion which the master gave me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I could work while studying my MBA, finances were not much of an issue. The cost of my education was easily offset by the higher salary which came with the degree. The payback period (considering the increase in my income directly related to my additional qualification) in my case was less than 18 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a little different from your situation in that many people who study business for work in the real world do not go beyond an MBA. I will, but I also teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I'm glad I got my MBA before pursuing a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T12:48:52.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-05T13:29:44.710" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide to do, just keep in mind that leaving a Ph.D. program because it's just not right for you does not represent any kind of failure on your part. I know plenty of people who didn't leave graduate school because they thought quitting would mean admitting that they couldn't hack it; &lt;strong&gt;this simply isn't true&lt;/strong&gt;, and if your only reason for staying in school is that you don't want to disappoint your peers, parents, or advisor, then you should think long and hard about taking some time off from school and reassessing what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T13:29:44.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-05T15:04:41.233" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel any passion or motivation after the second semester, I'd say you have to really take a hard look at if graduate school is something for you as you'd still have a few years to go. If you should quit or not firstly depends on what you want. You need to try and find out why you lost your passion. Was it there first, and did something cause it to leave? Where you ambivalent about graduate school, and now you found out it was not for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not stay just because you might disappoint others, live is just too short for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T15:04:41.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-05T18:42:19.840" Score="2" ViewCount="3476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student of electronics and telecommunication engineering in a govt. college in India. But I am extremely interested in physics and mathematics. I want to pursue a research career in physics and mathematics. I generally receive suggestions like taking the GRE test. But I have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the minimum amount of physics I am supposed to have mastered at the end of my engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much of physics or physics related subjects should I have in my UG course?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much is an adequate grade (What puzzles me most is that if I am intending to do physics why should my grades in engineering should be considered?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7014" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T13:41:24.497" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T13:41:24.497" Title="To pursue research career in physics; How much physics courses should I pass in my undergraduate engineering degree?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-05-05T19:24:41.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe Engineering (communication) gives you a good amount of mathematical tools. It gives you basics in Physics like electromagnetic for instance. In Physics and Math, they concentrate more on the physical aspects and mathematical aspects of Physics and Math. In engineering, they focus more on applications. Moreover, they focus much more on theoretical aspects. For instance, there is a big difference between a probability course for mathematicians and that for communication engineers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can compete, since engineering students are usually smart. Perhaps you will need to take few courses before being able to compete with students having undergrad degrees in Physics or even Math.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I have an engineering degree (electrical), and then moved to Computer science. I can't really answer your question precisely. But when I started my Master I needed to do study 2-4 CS courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T19:24:41.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-05-05T20:25:29.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cross-disciplinary movement does happen fairly frequently, particularly between engineering and the mathematical and physical sciences. Unfortunately, as the academic disciplines themselves become more cross-disciplinary, it becomes much harder to say what &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; training one needs to move from one field to another between the undergraduate and graduate levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to check for the qualifications you are likely to need is to examine the course requirements of schools you're already interested in attending as a graduate student—if your undergraduate program has sufficient depth in math and physics to allow you to take those courses as a graduate student, then an admissions committee will likely be OK with the lateral movement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have questions about what is necessary, you can contact the person in charge of admissions at some of the departments you're interested in for further clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T20:25:29.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-05T23:00:00.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your issues are real and I do not want to discount them in anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, you are in a privileged position and if you can make the most of it, then it would be not be a loss (as you tend to describe your experience now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a simple test: think of where you want to be in (say) five years from now? If you want to be in a place which requires a PhD, then start working on it now, other wise get out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is simplistic but it works when the issues are complicated and there are no easy solutions. At least in this way, you will make an informed decision and will not have the guilt later on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T23:00:00.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-06T04:57:05.813" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most graduate students are in their 20’s. Many have boy/girl friends and are away from their partners while in school. Many graduate students are international. They go abroad to study. They are away from their home countries. They study in a different environment/culture. They may have language problems. Fortunately, your situation is not that bad. Many graduate students go to graduate school as a family tradition. Their parents/relatives are academics. They were raised to be academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most (if not all) graduate students have trouble with their course/research works in school one time or another. Many graduate students lose their interests in the school. Some quit. Some stay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your long post seems to suggest to me that you mixed your personal life with the graduate school life. We are human. We have emotions. We let our personal life interfere with other aspects of our life sometimes. We know we should not let it happen. But, it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did well in the first semester. Everything changed in the second one. Something happened. No one knows what happened except you. In other words, you are the only one who knows the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to take a break, long or short, to figure out what you really want to do. Then, make your own decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are good answers and commentaries here. I will not repeat them. I would emphasize something very important, your future is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T06:29:14.407" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T06:29:14.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-06T08:05:17.827" Score="6" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been discussing with friends and colleagues about the strategy to use to decide, in a research group, who has to go to a conference and with who. &#xA;The issue is: if someone in the research group submitted a scientific paper to a conference, and it was accepted, should he/she go all alone to the conference, or with other group members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I found two different way of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) since money is always lacking, and it is important to broaden the scientific discoveries and to have new professional relationships, &lt;strong&gt;only the main author of the paper should go to the conference, all alone&lt;/strong&gt;. If everyone goes to a different conference, the team works will better scatter, and they will get more visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) since to work as a group, it is important to think as a group and, above all, to team up (if there is enough money), &lt;strong&gt;all the paper authors or all the research group should go to the conference&lt;/strong&gt;. This way the group will team up and personal relationships between the research group members will strengthen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Which school of thoughts do you stand for?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T08:07:29.523" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T09:04:05.707" Title="Going to conferences: all the research team members together or everyone alone?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9840" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:01:20.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems pretty simple. If the only reason you are attending the conference is to present the paper, then only one person (the presenter) should go. If there is value to the conference beyond that to more people in the group (i.e., other interesting research is being presented, it's possible to setup helpful meetings), then more people should go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastEditorUserId="6984" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T09:04:05.707" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T09:04:05.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9840" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:05:17.507" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;had the time, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;had the money,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go to every conference directly related to my field that I could.  They are a fantastic way to find out where the tip of the spear is in your field, to network and meet new people, and to see parts of the world you might not be able to see otherwise.  Additionally, many conferences have workshops, expos, and special speakers that all add to one's professional development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I bring all that up?  Most, if not all of the time, it is professionally advantageous for everyone involved with a paper to attend conferences.  Practically, this rarely happens (at least in my field), simply because funds can't support it, and time commitments make it difficult to travel to various parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my answer is, &lt;strong&gt;send as many people as can practically afford to go,&lt;/strong&gt; because they will almost certainly gain from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T09:05:17.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9840" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:33:09.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Chris Gregg explains the importance of going to conferences. I will not repeat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest some practical solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only have one accepted paper this year. Send as many as you can. Find cheaper airfares, share hotel rooms. Talk to your supervisor to get support. Apply for travel grants else where, for example, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9814/546&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term wise, write more papers. Get more accepted papers. Then you guys can take turns. For example, half go to this conference, the other half go to the next one. As a group, you can work it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't miss the conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T09:33:09.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9844" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9848" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:29:17.570" Score="12" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my PhD research as an industry based researcher. My employer was fully aware of my research. There was no support given by the employer other than encouragement. However, I used the company information which I had access to as part of my role. My employer had no objection and I was extremely careful of the disclosure I made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now completed my PhD and graduated. My  dissertation is publicly available on my university website. A google search can bring it up too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QUESTION: If my employer wants to use my dissertation, would it be ethical for me to ask for a payment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To clarify some comments below, my company wants to use my dissertation as part of an advocacy campaign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T19:39:44.230" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T19:39:44.230" Title="Can I ask for payment if my employer wants to use my dissertation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9840" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:33:25.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any answer should work for research groups of all sizes.  Sending the entire research group does not: in a large group, people will be spending all their time at conferences and none actually doing work, or people with conference-worthy work will avoid going simply because it takes too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, everyone who is an author can be too many; there is some very good work done where very many people are on each paper (due, for example, to many different skills being needed, and the required skills being provided by people who specialize in different areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if funds permit, the &quot;everyone goes&quot; answer is not a good answer in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, going to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; conference is a very valuable way to keep up with the field you're in.  Thus, a sensible strategy is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the group goes to at least one conference a year--that one which is most relevant to what they're doing.  There is usually a default conference that is obvious if a more specialized one does not apply.  For example, in neuroscience one could choose to go to the Society for Neuroscience conference if one wasn't working in an area where some other meeting made more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most critical person/people go to any additional conferences that are valuable and where they are presenting.  In addition to going because one is presenting, people should go (funding available) when it will be very useful to them, either because they've done the work, or they ought to be doing work in that area so they get up to speed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to not treat this as a purely social event.  It is to an extent, but you're also trying to develop people's skills and increase their exposure / interaction with peers, and neither simpleminded model of &quot;go yourself if you are presenting&quot; or &quot;everyone goes&quot; adequately accomplishes these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T11:33:25.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9844" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:37:56.993" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your Ph.D.!  You have contributed to humanity's lasting store of knowledge.  To a first approximation, this knowledge is now freely available to everyone on the planet who is interested (and, perhaps, who can afford reproduction costs and/or to travel to your university), including your employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are still employing you, and they found your Ph.D. work valuable, your employer may find it in both your and their interests to increase your salary to retain you and encourage you to perform more similarly useful work for them.  But asking them to pay you for using something that is freely available strikes me as counter to the principle of the academic pursuit in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T11:37:56.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-06T12:21:38.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the glut of PhD's I would suggest that you get a real job. A PhD is worth only if you are really interested in doing research otherwise you'll waste 4-5 years (then another 3-4 years doing a postdoc). Faculty positions are few and far between and then you'll have to worry about getting funds/tenure. So unless you're highly motivated by research/academia you'll mostly be miserable. In the industry a PhD doesn't make much more then a Masters and significantly less than a MBA, so there is no financial justification. Also there is a very good chance that you'll be working on things which don't even require a PhD. Some are lucky to find a good research environment but not everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side if you do quit now then at some point you'll regret not getting a PhD. So think about what you want to do in life (besides having and providing for your children). A (PhD) degree is just a means to an end. People sometimes get emotional about it but they should not. Talk to your parents and I am sure they'll understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7021" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T12:21:38.910" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9844" CreationDate="2013-05-06T13:00:22.407" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your question is best rephrased as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; wants to use my dissertation, would it be ethical for me to ask for a payment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are asking about using the &lt;em&gt;intellectual content&lt;/em&gt; of your dissertation, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.  Whether or not that &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; is your employer is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your actual &lt;em&gt;presentation&lt;/em&gt; is protected by copyright, which for dissertations is normally completely held by the author.  So if &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; wanted to use your specific words and/or figures beyond the limits of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt;, then you have the right to seek compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T15:55:09.253" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T15:55:09.253" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:18:40.330" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;See if you can get a Master's in your second year, so that your graduate studies are not completely wasted. This is but too common in doctoral programs that they let students who are admitted to doctoral programs without being the &quot;doctorate material&quot; to finish the required number of courses, take the qualifier as the bottom line as far as qualification goes, and let you off with a Master's degree. They don't like that, but that's likely flight overbooking: you know that some people are not going to make it. Discuss this with your adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I see on the earnings curves, there's a notable jump at 4 years of college/getting a Bachelor's degree, where the average earnings jump up by may be 15% from &quot;Some college&quot; to &quot;BA degree&quot; category. After that, the incomes are pretty flat, with a very modest 2 or so % return per year of education. So you ain't losing much in income, but an unfinished degree puts a big &quot;L&quot; across your forehead. I mean, if you drop out and found a Google or a Facebook, that's fine, but the probability of that happening is about 1e-6. (You don't know how funny that 20k figure is going to look like when your new wife asks you: &quot;As I am expecting a baby, we need a bigger house... and also please open the college saving account for our baby&quot;, so your bold statements about income are totally out of line with real life. Or at least the life you will have in 10 years time.) The engineers that I taught seem to be starting off at $40-50Kpa, and I see no reason why a guy with a decent quant background should be making less than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T14:14:50.037" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T14:14:50.037" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9850" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-06T21:30:21.443" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T21:30:21.443" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T21:30:21.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9851" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-06T21:30:21.443" Score="0" Body="On interacting with students with disabilities, accommodations for those with disabilities in an academic setting, and any other issues faced by academics with disabilities. " OwnerUserId="3969" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T01:36:36.117" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T01:36:36.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1668" CreationDate="2013-05-06T21:34:59.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the &lt;em&gt;request&lt;/em&gt; certainly isn't rude - I'd almost consider it your responsiblity to let teaching staff know the best way for you learn. How much effort the teaching staff put into servicing the request is dependent on the policies in place at your own institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I work, we'd co-ordinate with the educational support office, who would have met with you in the first instances, worked at the best process, and come to us with some recommendations (so they are looking after things like assessments and reports and the like).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3969" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T21:34:59.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9844" CreationDate="2013-05-06T22:20:09.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that it isn't unethical to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; for anything. It's just a question of how comfortable you are, and your relationship with that company.  If you have some figure in mind which is can be justified somehow and you feel comfortable asking, then send them an invoice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and can I have fifty bucks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, that wasn't so hard at all, and I don't feel dirty or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the real question is &quot;do I have a moral basis for asking for compensation&quot;? Based on your description of the situation, I would say yes, especially if in their campaign they make it appear that the material from your thesis is associated with them, through you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information that you used in the research is worth something, and use of the research in the campaign is worth something. Dollar figures can be put on it, and a difference can be computed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="3900" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T22:43:36.357" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T22:43:36.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9844" CreationDate="2013-05-06T23:22:21.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to address the title itself - how to benefit from wider distribution/usage/awareness of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, congratulations on your PhD - and your job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is very reasonable to want to get more benefit - financial or otherwise - for your work, so I hope I can suggest some ways you can make that happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your dissertation, I believe your full compensation will be considered already paid. You were on staff when you made it, and from the wording I assume your employer let you spend &quot;company time&quot; on your work without threatening your pay or position. They also allowed you access and data that would likely have been unavailable to other researchers, and the quality of the data was likely high enough that you would have had to pay a significant sum of money for access to it - unless they have an open-data initiative, which almost no one seems to have in private industry (or at least its very rare). So your employer will almost certainly consider you paid in full, and consider any extra request ungrateful at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you are in a very good position - not only has the company employed and supported your work for years, but they are now expressing their opinion of your research and the value of it in a very positive way. They are saying its worth additional investment of time and money not just from you, but from other people as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, your potential is in the future work - not your past products. That's the only reason companies employ people anyway - for work to be produced, not out of gratitude for past accomplishments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you are already the subject matter expert, so what would you like? Would you like to do some travel, presentation work, advocacy? How about more ambitious research which could be of even higher value to the company? Can a reasonable case be made for more generous expense accounts, a (larger) research budget, more latitude/authority in data collection or process improvement/alteration? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else you are in a good position for salary negotiations in the coming year, as you are now officially a PhD, and if they want to embrace and use your research then presumably they have a high opinion of you with good performance evaluations. If you want an administrative role, assistant(s), etc, now would be a good time to start brainstorming and dialog with your employer to see what plans they have for you, or if you just want to do more research you should all be on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to just focus on your research and go back to work, that's fine too! If you will be doing post-doc work and therefore aren't simply done with school entirely, that's fine, but if you are done and it is implied that you'll be focusing/working with the company more then that is more support for increased pay going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can very well get an extra payoff for your accomplishments, but its not likely to be in the form of paying to use your dissertation. You might qualify for a bonus, but that is usually something discussed before the fact. Its also possible that their use of your dissertation is a minor issue to them, so don't think it's worth millions if they are just trying to make use of something they feel they already paid for in a minor campaign that's &amp;lt;1% of their ad/PR budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; Collect your data, have a bullet-proof case of your value now and increasing value in the future, and I really suggest you not focus on trying to get more pay for past performance but rather take your pay in future salary/bonuses/prestige/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T23:22:21.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T00:09:49.257" Score="8" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us suppose one publishes an article in a peer-reviewed journal that is archived, indexed, etc. in databases such as Zentralblatt, ResearchBib, etc. Does the author have to manually submit his/her information and his/her journal article to those databases, or this is done automatically by the journal or by such databases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7026" LastEditorUserId="7026" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T00:29:38.380" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T02:47:56.020" Title="Does an author have to submit an article to Math databases once it has been published in a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9855" CreationDate="2013-05-07T00:40:22.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Zentralblatt or MathSciNet, which are by far the most important databases in mathematics, there's no need to manually submit anything.  I would assume the same is true for any comprehensive database (if you depend on author submissions, you won't get anywhere near complete coverage), but I suppose it could depend on the particular case.  I've never heard of ResearchBib, so I can't say anything there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T02:47:56.020" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T02:47:56.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9859" CreationDate="2013-05-07T01:13:47.710" Score="23" ViewCount="113301" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a correct or preferred format for indicating 'Dr' or 'PhD' (or both) on a professional business card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I am employed in the industry and I have just earned my PhD (in social science). My company wants to update my business card. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dr Name, PhD, University Name &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name, PhD, University Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am told that it may be a sign of arrogance but I am also told that if you have earned it, you deserve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T09:31:37.060" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T08:18:40.580" Title="What title to put on a professional business card, for a person with a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9857" CreationDate="2013-05-07T03:17:36.887" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;My time in industry is longer than in academia. I would like to provide you with my  opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Name, PhD in Discipline name, University name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Job title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think university name is optional. The discipline name is necessary because people want to know what you know. PhD in physics is very different from PhD in social science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be aware of the possible negative effects of adding the PhD title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are quite a bit anti-academia attitude in industry. Some people dislike academics. They believe the academians know nothing but theory. They rather do business with non-academians. For me, I deeply respect academics. I believe a company can offer me good quality products if they have PhDs as some of their employees. So, I am more willing to do business with them. However, I think I am minority. Many industry people do not think that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your employer is a consulting company, your title can be helpful. The PhD title can convince your clients you can offer them high value services. If your employeer is a constructing company, you might want to think twice before you update your business card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T03:17:36.887" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9857" CreationDate="2013-05-07T04:03:22.017" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dr Name, PhD&quot; is redundant, so this usage is often discouraged.  If you are going to indicate the degree, I'd recommend &quot;Name, PhD&quot; rather than &quot;Dr Name&quot; since it's more informative (at the very least it will keep anyone from thinking you are a medical doctor).  In the U.S. it's not common to indicate the university, but I think I've seen it more often in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest thinking carefully before indicating your degree on a business card.  Some people without PhDs may respond bitterly, like you are bragging about your accomplishments or implying that your expertise is more valuable than theirs.  At the same time, some people with PhDs will look down on it as well, in a status hierarchy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some insecure people without PhDs feel resentful and don't want to be distinguished from PhD holders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some insecure people with PhDs try hard not to be confused with group 1, thereby irritating those people all the more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some better-established PhD holders aren't worried about being confused with group 1, but now they don't want to be confused with group 2, so they pointedly denounce emphasizing your degree as being tacky and in poor taste.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, I would omit the degree from your business card unless it's important for your credibility (i.e., the skills from your PhD are professionally important and people would otherwise assume you don't have them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one situation in which you should absolutely not indicate a degree is if it's irrelevant.  For example, if you're an accountant with a PhD in literature, then your business card should not read &quot;Name, PhD.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T04:03:22.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9863" CreationDate="2013-05-07T05:27:52.397" Score="4" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what are the advantages/drawbacks of sharing a dissertation on a specialised website (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/resources/phd-theses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Social Capital Gateway&lt;/a&gt;). There are a number of repositories available and they seem to be more widely known. Are these sites more for the benefit of the facilitators than the contributors (who in this case are the PhD researchers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T15:50:31.470" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T20:20:54.723" Title="Pros and cons of sharing dissertation on a specialised website?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9860" CreationDate="2013-05-07T12:03:06.737" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt there are any drawbacks to posting on such a site, other than the time required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also doubt there are very many advantages.  I don't think very many people will look on such sites for theses.  If I need something from a PhD thesis, my algorithm would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for published papers by the student which discuss the work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google the student's name and thesis title.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for the student's website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look on the department's website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look on the institution's library's website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to contact the student (via website or Google search) and ask if they will send me a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to contact the student's advisor and ask if they have a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact someone else I know at the institution, and ask if they can find the thesis in their library.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to get a copy from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/&quot;&gt;UMI&lt;/a&gt; (last resort).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching other repositories would probably come somewhere between steps 8 and 9.  So if you can try to make sure your thesis is findable at some earlier stage of this process, you probably don't need to bother with much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:03:06.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9865" CreationDate="2013-05-07T12:16:07.693" Score="3" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical paper for my college project. This is my first time so I don't have much experience in this arena.&#xA;I am writing about a philosophy used by Mechanical Engineers while designing a product. Now there is a situation where I have to mention a product and the company whose product it is.&#xA;I am saying this by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;... so popular that it has been incorporated by ABC Company in their XYZ Product suite ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to ask whether I should mention that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ABC &amp;amp; XYZ are registered trademark of ABC Inc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes then where and in what format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6392" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T20:07:33.227" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T20:07:33.227" Title="Mentioning Products of Companies in Technical Paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9864" CreationDate="2013-05-07T12:59:59.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No need to mention the trademarks in a technical paper, although you could certainly cite their website if it talks about the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally cite anything that I think the reader could get more information about that is pertinent to the topic.  That said, a paper isn't a web page, and you shouldn't litter it with gratuitous cites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:59:59.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9857" CreationDate="2013-05-07T15:16:09.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would suggest &quot;Yes, put &lt;em&gt;Javeer Baker, Ph.D&lt;/em&gt;&quot; on your card. You could optionally put &quot;in social science&quot; on it if you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak about the culture in Australia, but in the United States and Canada, it is appropriate to put your title (Ph.D) on your business card if the industry generally is supportive of or respects academics, or in which high degrees are not common. I might guess Australia's culture is similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Industries that would want to be proud to have a Ph.D on staff especially would be non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, research think-tanks, and consulting. As you said that your employer was an advocacy group, I believe that putting your degree on your business card is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Industries in which you would NOT put your degree on your business card would probably be software high-tech (because no one cares) or in academia (not because no one cares, but basically any assistant professor and up basically has a Ph.D and therefore it's not impressive), or, as mentioned above, a construction management company or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As an aside, a whole bunch of people at a conference I was at rolled their eyes when they saw one of the authors wrote &quot;&lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt;, Ph.D&quot; on a paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T15:16:09.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T23:13:30.810" Score="10" ViewCount="4268" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine applied to a PhD program and luckily they called her for a presentation. They said that the presentation should be a maximum of 10 minutes long and should consist of three slides. These slides should include past experience and research interests, they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are trying to prepare an optimal presentation. We think of,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Presenting a brief CV, including academic background, education etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Past research experience, especially during the MSc thesis,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to research experience, we want to emphasize the teaching experience and the experience gained from the courses taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the problem is that research experience and work experience significantly overlap with each other and we are concerned about not using slides optimally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to hear advice from you about this type of presentations. Or if you know any sources on the web that are specifically for these type of situations, we would be very happy to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the presentation should be ten minutes long with three slides and should focus on interests &amp;amp; past experience of the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7031" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T00:10:33.540" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T00:10:33.540" Title="Individual presentation for a PhD application" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9868" CreationDate="2013-05-07T23:47:51.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not been in this situation so my answer below may be at odds. I was required to have a chat with a potential supervisor and then lodge a detailed application. The fact that the supervisor endorsed my topic was a sure indication of acceptance by the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that you are being over cautious (and I can understand why - you only get one shot at this!). My advice is to follow the simple rule of presentation i.e. keep it clear, concise and relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would suggest the following for your three slides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slide 1 - Tell them what you want to do and how you will do it (i.e. topic and methods)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slide 2 - Tell them why you want to do it (i.e. gap in knowledge you are addressing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slide 3 - Tell them how qualified you are to complete it (i.e. your skills and experience)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents and presentation skills go hand in hand, so prepare thoroughly. Unless you have a good reason, don't be too defensive of your approach. Give the impression that you are ready. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T23:47:51.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9864" CreationDate="2013-05-08T05:39:36.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned, then you can say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;... so popular that it has been incorporated by ABC Company(R) in their XYZ(TM) Product suite ...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with appropriate glyphs for &quot;registered&quot; and &quot;trademark&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that said, I don't think it's strictly necessary to mention trademarks unless you have a compelling reason to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(An example of a comeppling reason to do so would be if you had to run the paper by the company's lawyers first and they want you to refer to the product in a specific way. If so then in the best interest of collaboration you should do what their lawyers say.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T05:39:36.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9802" CreationDate="2013-05-08T09:38:45.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK a professor is higher status than a Dr. and not nearly as common So a Dr. won't be offended but they might be snippy about the lack of local knowledge about them if get that wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent a while worrying about this when I first got to university as it seemed like a minefield. With that in mind I can tell you UK universities usually list the staff on their websites and often a Dr/Prof will have their own page which tells you all about them and their publications etc. So, you can usually find the answer to this without having to worry. Just in case though, I'll give you an answer for each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) one whose name we know but neither a professor or a doctor?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr/Ms (Ms is best for women because it can offend someone if you assume anything about marital status when you don't know them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and sign off your mail 'Yours Sincerely,')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) one whose name we know but we do not know whether he/she is a professor or a doctor?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case google is your friend. You will be able to find out. I would not advise emailing an academic to ask them for anything without first finding something out about them (or their research at least) first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and sign off your mail 'Yours Sincerely,')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) one whose name we do not know?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Sir or Madam (and sign off your mail 'Yours faithfully,')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three cases how they end their letter to you will tell you how you can relax. If they sign off as 'Jim', you can lose the formality (especially if that's not even their real name ;-))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1248" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T05:28:23.050" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T05:28:23.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9877" CreationDate="2013-05-08T10:53:51.323" Score="12" ViewCount="4578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied in Master's programmes in Europe / Asia (mostly Germany) this year and most of them were rejected or are still pending. My GPA in the Bachelor's is 7.19 / 10 while my TOELF iBT score is 100 / 120. Most of the Universities stated on their websites that the GRE (General or Subject) is optional, so I did not take the GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After getting so many rejections and still being unable to figure out why, I am now thinking of strengthening my application to apply again in fall 2014. I have mailed universities / professors inquiring about reasons for rejection / shortcomings of my application, but none have replied. The only reply I get is that there were a lot of applications and mine just failed to compete with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to know more about why my applications failed and how to improve? Also, as I don't know anyone around, I prepared my Statement of Purpose, Letter of Recommendations, Research Proposal, etc by going through the internet and information on website of universities (I did not copy-paste, but used the tips on how to write and stuff). I have no idea if the reason for my failed applications were because of low GPA / no GRE score or ill-prepared statement / research plan. Also, where can I get these checked and get suggestions on improving them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very passionate about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Ubiquitous Computing. I am planning on quitting my job at Oracle Financial Services (where I'm working as as Associate Consultant, writing code since SEP 2011 after my Bachelor's) to prepare for my application and dedicate full time and energy. I am aiming for admission in top 20 universities for Computer Science of the world and also aiming for a good scholarship. I want to appear for GRE later this year and get very good scores to try to compensate for my low GPA. But, when I checked few top universities (like MIT), it was mentioned they don't accept GRE scores. How can I try and get into such universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to complete my Master's, PhD and then continue researching on my areas of interest. Furthermore, the Subject GRE for Computer Science has been discontinued as per the ETS website!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any hope of getting in top universities with a Bachelor's degree from an unknown university which is practically nowhere in the rankings? What to do now and how to do it, I am pretty confused and hope that someone here can help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rahul&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7036" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T10:23:00.797" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T18:39:31.340" Title="Admission in research based Master's/Doctoral programme with a bachelor's from a low-ranked University in India" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9868" CreationDate="2013-05-08T11:27:50.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also have not been in this situation, but my advice would be to focus on the work done during the MSc--what was the thesis on, why was it interesting, how would you extend it (to research, if it was not a research-based thesis; or to further experiments/work if it involved a significant research component already).  If the work experience was related either to what the MSc was on, or to what the PhD will be on, go into that also; otherwise just mention it in passing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admissions committee already has all the information they need from the CV about what your friend's background is.  What they don't know is how she can think about a research project, and how she comes across in person (in a formal setting like a brief talk).  The latter will happen regardless of the choice of topic, so the former is, in my opinion, what to aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your friend should make sure that the presentation is tailored to the appropriate level for the people present!  A bit of high-level why-is-this-important is good regardless of level, but if it's a very focused program in the same topic, she should go into more depth than if it's a broad one (e.g. computational neuroscience vs. biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if I were listening to such a presentation, I would be trying to figure out: is she interested in research?  Does she understand it?  Is she enthusiastic about it?  And, since the near-universal advice is &quot;show, don't tell&quot;, I'd be looking not for her to say that she does/is any of these things, but for it to be implicit in the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'm assuming she'll be talking one-on-one with a number of people also.  That's probably more important!  Stressing overly much about the presentation to the point of e.g. getting inadequate sleep is almost surely the wrong way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T11:27:50.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9875" CreationDate="2013-05-08T14:22:14.153" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focusing on test scores will not get you into MIT.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need research experience — real, world-class, publication-quality, independent research experience.  A paper at a recognizable (from MIT) conference or workshop would be a big plus.  The top students from the various IITs have such experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a statement that clearly and compellingly describes your research interests, experience, and vision, with enough specific &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; detail to be credible.  As an example: Describe a recent result (not just a paper title!) of your potential advisor, and suggest a credible strategy for applying or improving it.  Also, your statement should frame your ambition in terms of &quot;doing great research&quot;, not in terms of &quot;getting into MIT&quot;.  The top students from the various IITs write such statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need recommendation letters from well-known (at MIT) academics that praise your research potential in personal, specific, and credible detail, with positive comparisons against other students from your home institution who have gone on to a top-10 PhD program.  Your recommenders must write the letters themselves; you should never even see them.  In particular, you should explicitly waive your right to see the letters later, if such a waiver is possible; most US schools offer such a waiver in their recommendation forms.  The top students from the various IITs have letters like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need contacts.  Or more accurately, your recommenders need contacts.  &lt;strong&gt;Coming from &quot;an unknown university&quot; with a &quot;low GPA&quot;, there is a serious risk that nobody will even open your application.&lt;/strong&gt;  If one of your recommenders knows someone at MIT, either personally or professionally, ask them to send a quick email (or have a hallway conversation at a conference) saying &quot;Hey, we have this great student Rahul Thakur who's applying to your department; you should take a look!&quot;  Sending such an email yourself is unlikely to help.  CS professors get &lt;em&gt;tons&lt;/em&gt; of emails from random students at unknown universities; we call it &quot;spam&quot;.  The top students from the various IITs have these contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need some strategy.  &lt;strong&gt;All else being equal, it is harder to gain admission to top CS PhD programs to study AI than to study other areas.&lt;/strong&gt;   AI seems to be the default areas for really smart, talented, qualified students who really have no idea what they want to do.  Machine learning is either a subset or a superset of AI, depending on your religion.  (Theory suffers from the same effect, to a smaller extent.)  In your case, you're probably better off emphasizing your interest in ubiquitous computing in your statement.  But remember, you need specific and credible technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you need luck.  Graduate admissions is an inherently random process; &lt;strong&gt;no one&lt;/strong&gt; should apply to MIT &lt;em&gt;expecting&lt;/em&gt; to be admitted.  Coming from an unknown university, your chances of admission are smaller than someone &lt;em&gt;with exactly the same application&lt;/em&gt; coming from a highly-ranked school.  Aiming only for MIT is foolish; limiting yourself to top-20 departments may be foolish as well.  Don't rob yourself of opportunities!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, your &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; goal is to do great research, not to get into a top-20 program.  Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T14:22:14.153" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-08T23:01:00.400" Score="8" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite common (in some areas) to see the reference to the paper, which is cited as &quot;to appear&quot; or &quot;in prepapation&quot; but never actually appeared. Such citations are treated in the same way as references to unpublished results, conference talks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this approach doesn`t really work for references to preprints. The results &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; published. The problem is that old preprints (say, from 1985) are now inaccessible, they are often not digitized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is not clear how to treat such old preprints and papers based on results from them: should I believe the authors citing it or consider it as non-existent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7042" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T14:53:22.297" Title="Do old preprints actually exist?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9878" CreationDate="2013-05-09T03:12:00.907" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should try to track down the preprint.  Having to track it down is annoying, but it's usually not hard to do by asking around.  If your friends don't have a copy, and the author can no longer be contacted, then you should feel free to write to someone who has cited the preprint to ask if they know where to find a copy.  (You can also try the author's collaborators, thesis advisor, students, etc.)  When I've done this, it has generally led pretty quickly to a copy, and I've always found one eventually, even for unpublished work from 40+ years ago.  If necessary, you can also do things like post online requesting a copy from anyone who has one, but this is typically not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't find a copy, I would suggest giving the citations you have seen the benefit of the doubt and mentioning the preprint in your paper; it's possible that the citations are mistaken, but not likely.  If you can't verify the claims, you can note that you have not been able to track down a copy, but it is cited in X, Y, and Z.  (You should only say this if you have seriously tried to locate one but failed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some purposes, seeing the preprint doesn't really matter.  For example, you may be citing it merely to assign credit, in a situation where all the factual content can be obtained from elsewhere in the literature.  In that case, it's perfectly reasonable to follow the consensus in the field about credit, without worrying about investigating it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your work depends on the actual content of the preprint in a way that cannot be verified without a copy, then you really need to track one down.  Some people may be lazy about this, but that's not a responsible scholarly approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most frustrating situation is when you're told that something you've discovered may be previously known, but you are unable to access the paper that might contain it.  In this case you need to try especially hard to find a copy, to counteract your natural incentive to give up and decide the paper doesn't exist or isn't relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T03:12:00.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-09T06:24:18.567" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised that both the question and the existing answers talk little about what &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; to motivate you to do research. You wrote, &quot;where in the past research has been the saving grace keeping me interested in school, it now is losing a lot of its appeal&quot;. So what was that appeal, and how did it get lost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some possible answers, from my own experience; I'm sure there may be others in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you get disillusioned about your field of research? Perhaps in the beginning you thought that if problems in this field were solved it would make a difference in the world, and now it seems that the big problems can't be solved and solving the small problems won't make a big difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you get disillusioned about academia? Did you have experiences that changed your view of academia? Did you come in the pursuit of truth and found that a lot of it is about the pursuit of publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you get disillusioned about your own abilities? Perhaps you were used to often being the best at what you were doing, and now you're surrounded by more smart people and your abilities seem less exceptional (and thus less motivating) in comparison?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps your motivation had always been to please your parents and now that's not enough anymore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think having a clear understanding of what used to motivate you and why it stopped motivating you is a necessary and sufficient basis for the decision you're trying to make. If you lost interest in this particular field, you might have to look for a new field. If you lost the motivation that comes from a strong belief in your exceptional abilities, you might have to learn to enjoy being among the best and not necessarily the best. If your view of academia changed, you might try to find a place where academia is more how you'd like it to be, or if there doesn't seem to be one, perhaps academia isn't the right place for you. If you were only doing it for your parents, perhaps you should just leave. And if you lost interest because it turned out to be harder than you expected, then perhaps you should indeed &quot;just put your head down and work through it, it's just a phase&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key to sorting this out for yourself is to keep an open mind about your own motivations. Some of them may have been very pure and just got lost along the way and perhaps you can tap into them again; some of them may not seem so desirable now that you take a new look at them, and you may be glad not to have them anymore; but whatever they are, what's important is that you're honest about them to yourself and figure out how and why they changed, and that might allow you to see where they're leading you and whether staying or leaving is more in line with what's important to you now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7043" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T06:24:18.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9882" CreationDate="2013-05-09T11:23:01.433" Score="4" ViewCount="9422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm carrying out a research work as part of a big research project. How to mention this in the abstract for an article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best I can is &quot;This research work was conducted as part of the project #xxxx-xx&quot;, but I believe there's well-known phrase to replace &quot;as part of&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7047" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T10:47:53.517" Title="How to say that research work was done as part of research project?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9881" CreationDate="2013-05-09T11:50:29.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Updated to address comments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Project XYZ is simply a funding agency or entity that may have provided funds or materials but no intellectual contribution, then you use the phrase &quot;We acknowledge Agency XYZ (Grant #) for financial support&quot; or &quot;Funding provided through Project XYZ (Grant #).&quot; For example, if your work is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Funding for this work was provided by the NIH, Center for Work on Really Interesting Science (#1234567890)...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If project XYZ has defined the research problem/scope, you could say &quot;This research was inspired by Project XYZ&quot; or &quot;This research follows from Porject XYZ.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Project XYZ is an institute, center, or other entity that worked with you on your project, then you use the phase &quot;in collaboration with&quot;. For example, if your computational model was run on at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psc.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center&lt;/a&gt;, you might say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This work was conducted in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center [ref]...&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if the intellectual contribution from someone at Project XYZ was large, that person needs to have their name on your paper (with placement in the order according to the customs of your field):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grad Student who did the work*, Grad Student who did less work*, Grad Student at Project XYZ&lt;sup&gt;#&lt;/sup&gt;, Collaborating PI at Project XYZ&lt;sup&gt;#&lt;/sup&gt;, Your PI*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;*Department of Epic Awesome, University of Cool, 123 Street Road, CityTown,&#xA; ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.&#xA;#Center for Statistical Mayhem, International Project for &#xA; Enhancing Statistical Literacy through Academic Research, 456 Boulevard Ave,&#xA; CityTown, ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T10:47:53.517" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T10:47:53.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9878" CreationDate="2013-05-09T14:53:22.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I completely agree with Anonymous Mathematicial, it is generally acceptable in my field to say &quot;Jones found x (1945, cited in Smith 1985).&quot; This makes it clear that you did not verify the information (from Jones) yourself but someone else (Smith) did claim it to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T14:53:22.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9885" CreationDate="2013-05-09T16:28:58.323" Score="8" ViewCount="13053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have contacted a professor (in Europe) informally and asked for a PhD position. She answered in positive manner and asked for a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I include?&#xA;Do people in academia care about the usual 2-page restriction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T17:11:21.047" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T05:58:48.413" Title="Curriculum Vitae in application for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9884" CreationDate="2013-05-09T16:48:52.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally I would say No, people do not put restrictions on CVs unless specifically asking for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a case such as the one you decribe you should send a complete CV that lists everything that can be meriting for the position you will apply for. The following would be of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief description of your drive and interest to pursue a PhD &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course work includig grades&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific/equivalent experience is a given of course. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any publications and scientific/equivalent reports you have written. If you have some significant report/thesis that you have written during your education, you can list that as well. I would say that any report longer than, say, 10 pages of text might be useful to list. In such cases you should perhaps add inwhat context (Course) the text was written. In the end what a person looking for a PhD position will be looking for is someone who can successfully complete work and write it up in written form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific/equivalent presentations in a public context, open department seminar, scientific meeting etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any academic work experience such as working inlabs etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General work experience. This can be listed to highlght work experience of any kind. This shows how active you are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else that you think will be meriting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have written a paper (thesis) of some sort, provide a copy. Only one, the most important though. If you do not have one that is fine, no one would expect you to have written much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the length of the list try to make it brief and clear so that it can be assessed with ease. ry to find a good layout that make sthe structure easy to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T05:58:48.413" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T05:58:48.413" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9884" CreationDate="2013-05-09T17:31:29.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone else had mentioned this on a related question here: the words &quot;curriculum vitae&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;are taken from the Latin&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;course of my life&quot;. So there's not much point in a page restriction :), unlike a corporate resume, which is often required to be one page or one sheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what you should put in it, Peter's answer is very comprehensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T17:31:29.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:06:02.867" Score="14" ViewCount="1501" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone is a reviewer and recommends major revisions to a medical journal paper, the review can be quite lengthy. (e.g., list of 10-15 points to work on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, how detailed should be the rejection review. Are you expected to provide more than 2 paragraphs justification for the rejection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study on length of reviews that reject the paper. I would guess it would be most likely under 2 paragraphs of text. Is that correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T03:51:55.537" LastActivityDate="2021-01-05T22:32:35.317" Title="How long and detailed should be the rejection comment when reviewing and rejecting a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:14:48.580" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be long enough that the shortcomings of the paper are immediately obvious to the editor and the authors, but not too long that it becomes your own little personal project, sucking away your valuable time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't really give a generic quantitative value for the length of the rejection review — I've rejected papers with 1 paragraph when I find that the premise/assumption for the work done in the paper is fundamentally flawed and the authors have have insufficient background and/or proceeded without knowing/addressing it at all. In other words, there's no point in me saying anything more when it is clear from the second section that everything that follows in the paper is junk (and I'm not going to spend my time on junk). On the other hand, I've also written 3 page rejection reviews when I felt that the topic was good, the authors have a basic grasp of the subject, but for other reasons such as inferences from insufficient data, sloppy writing, insufficient background/literature, incorrect methodology, etc., the paper had to be rejected as is (some journals allow for a resubmission with major overhaul). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7052" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:14:48.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:15:49.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in a medical field and my experience is limited to being a reviewer for a good journal in my field (computing and information science) for the past 2 years. I am also not aware of any studies on journal reject recommendation lengths so my answer is &lt;strong&gt;anecdotal&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;personal&lt;/strong&gt;. With this disclaimer, I would like to say that the true answer is probably, &lt;strong&gt;it depends.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have always given a list of points where I have found a paper lacking and elaborated upon them in great detail. Even if the paper is really bad, i.e from the introduction itself you can make out that you are going to recommend a reject for it, I think it my duty provide as much honest and constructive feedback that I possibly can. This is because peer reviewing comes under the third pillar of the academic tripod - &lt;strong&gt;service&lt;/strong&gt; (with the other two being &lt;strong&gt;teaching&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt;). Maybe its because I am not a very experienced reviewer or I only review 1-2 papers at a time or I have more time than most to devote to this. This has been my personal, &lt;em&gt;limited&lt;/em&gt; experience. I do not think that one can generalize here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure others will weigh in on this in meaningful ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:15:49.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9495" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:20:18.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, disclaimer. I'm not sure I'm qualified to be giving anyone advice of this nature. But since you asked, here are my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that people do a PhD if they want to do research. Otherwise, probably not. I believe this is true in both academic and industry circles - if you want to do research type stuff, you need a PhD. I could be wrong about industry - if people know of counterexamples, please comment. So, a relevant question is whether you want to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that in practical terms, at least in the applied sciences, research translates into more autonomy pursuing questions which you find interesting. In general, not having a PhD means less autonomy. Of course, having a PhD does not mean anything like total independence - there are always people you have to answer to. However, with just a Masters, you are much more likely to be taking direction from people in the choice of projects you pursue, and how you pursue them. You should try to figure out how happy you will be doing this. I used to think I would be Ok with that, and discovered later that I really wanted to be making my own decisions. So, you might think now that you are happy to do what you are told, you you may later discover that you do not consider these decisions that others make for you to be all that great. It really depends on your personality and inclinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems ridiculous that people will treat you differently on the basis of a piece of paper, but that is how human beings, at least the more bureaucratic variety, are constituted - they like to pigeonhole and put labels on people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of the above, of course, if you do a Masters and then decide you want to do a PhD, you can always do it later, but I suppose you are trying to figure out the more efficient path to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One fairly obvious question - is there some reason you can't go into the PhD program and leave with a Masters if you decide you don't want to do a PhD? I have done that (left a PhD program with a Masters), and it seems like a relatively common thing to do. I think that some Masters degrees do require a thesis, but others may just require coursework which you will be doing as part of the PhD program anyway. You can check with the programs you are considering what the rules for pursuing these options might be. If you could do this, it might be your best option. You can leave yourself some space and time for figuring out what you want to do, not pay lots of money in tuition, and not burn any bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in Statistics, and know a fair amount about programming and related things (check my SE accounts), though my primary background is mathematical. I've also done some bioinformatics work. Given that, I'd say the comment by @Bitwise above is right on the money. With a big interdisciplinary field like bioinformatics, you need a lot of background and a fairly substantial and diverse skill set to get moving - cramming all that into a masters degree will be brutal unless you know a lot already. After a masters degree you might not know enough to do anything really interesting. Of course, you might be able to get an industry job where they will be willing to give you the space and time to learn more and develop. I don't have any experience of industry jobs; however from what I have heard, those sorts of conditions are more easily met in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, personally I would not consider the cost of a MSc as a major factor when making such a decision, though of course it is a factor. I would think bigger picture, myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:20:18.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:21:00.717" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rejection &lt;em&gt;recommendation&lt;/em&gt; should contain a strong and clear motivaton for what is failing in the reviewed manuscript (MS). Since it is not up to the reviewer to make decisions, any review will be a recommendation to an editor. Therefore, a review of the MS should be made to point out the perceived shortcomings of the MS. A review which essentially contains only a recommendation to reject is most likely not considered by the editor since it will be unclear why such a decision should be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as a reviewer you should make a normal review and point out the weaknesses of the MS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor should normally make sure a MS is ready for review before sending it out for review, but mistakes may happen. I think it is fair to leave detailed comments and focus on the larger issues that you think makes the MS unpublishable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:21:00.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9893" CreationDate="2013-05-09T22:18:22.747" Score="38" ViewCount="2653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a paper that challenges some long-standing practices within my field, but am questioning how to title the paper. Basically, the old view in the research field is &quot;we do Y instead of better method X, because X takes too long.&quot; We show that X is usually just as fast as Y, and often is actually faster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the fact that we're taking what could be a &quot;controversial&quot; stance, does it make sense to put the controversial idea directly in the title, or should it be saved for the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the question is if a &quot;traditional&quot; title, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using New Method X to Improve Solving Problem Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is preferable to directly mentioning the issue in the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using New Method X Makes Assumption Z Obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is finding a title that suggests superiority without questioning relevance a satisfactory compromise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T23:01:29.133" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:23:14.070" Title="Choosing the title of a paper: are provocative titles better?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9892" CreationDate="2013-05-09T22:50:01.703" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be viewed as incivil to refer to someone else's work as &quot;obsolete&quot;, whether or not one could defend such a claim. An editor or referee might object to the title, too, and, perhaps even be subliminally biased against your result because of a too-aggressive title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, &quot;provocative&quot; in the sense of more-vividly-descriptive, without too-direct negativism about prior work, might be a very good thing. But I think if &quot;provocative&quot; too much means &quot;antagonistic&quot;, the net would be counterproductive and regrettable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asserting that you've made progress is already a bit aggressive, suggesting, as is inevitable, that previous work is being superceded (even if still relevant as some sort of historical/dialectic record). My own taste is that winners can afford to be generous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: in light of edits to the question... I'd still encourage a sort of &quot;innocent&quot; -seeming, or almost-apologetic seeming, self-description. My point would be that people who understand the situation will see the implications of even a very-modest statement. Descriptiveness is good, yes, but perhaps not &quot;judgemental&quot; phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T23:49:50.660" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T23:49:50.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9903" CreationDate="2013-05-10T00:42:57.177" Score="7" ViewCount="2655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just published an article and, when I saw the journal, I was surprised to discover that they put my article on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I update my CV to make special note of the fact that my article was not just published but is the cover story in a particular journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T11:42:42.927" Title="Should CV include special note about published 'cover articles'?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9892" CreationDate="2013-05-10T01:32:50.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or is finding a title that suggests superiority without questioning relevance a satisfactory compromise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supplementing Paul's fine answer, I agree that if by &quot;provocative&quot; you are directly attacking someone else, then you should not do it. Be provocative in stating the benefits of your method. Ignore the inferior method in your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also include a descriptive subtitle so that we know what your paper is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ma400123r&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; has the title &quot;Sequence Matters: Modulating Electronic and Optical Properties of Conjugated Oligomers via Tailored Sequence&quot;. The first two words are provocative, but not antagonistic. They suggest that those who might believe that sequence does not matter are incorrect, but it does not say so explicitly, nor does it specifically accuse any previous research/method of being deficient. It is followed by a descriptive title that then tells you what the paper is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your case, you might go for something more like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Simplifying the Solution to Problem Y: A New Metric-Based Analytical Methodology for Enumerating the Variance in Substandard Models.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first part of the title gets at what you want (that previous solutions to Problem Y are not as good as yours) without specifically targeting any previous method. Save that for the body of your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T10:50:30.720" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T10:50:30.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9892" CreationDate="2013-05-10T02:51:03.907" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A significant fraction of papers in theoretical computer science describe results of the form &quot;we describe an algorithm for problem Y that is faster than every other algorithm known.&quot;  But it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; rare, and would be considered quite rude, for the &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of such a paper to specifically call out a previous method as &quot;obsolete&quot;, especially if that previous methods was strongly associated to a single person or group.  In fact, I know of ony one example: Volker Strassen's seminal paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF02165411.pdf&quot;&gt;Gaussian elimination is not optimal&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which was published centuries after Gauss was safely dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provocative/evocative titles are fine.  Challenging conventional wisdom is great.  Insulting your colleagues, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T02:51:03.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-05-10T04:18:16.840" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Short answer:&lt;/em&gt; I think it is very disrespectful (or not good) to reject a paper by writing one single paragraph. If a reviewer thinks that there are obvious flaws that cannot be described clearly, then the reviewer shall simply not review the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reviewer may have not understood the paper well:&lt;/strong&gt; Personally, many times I get a first negative impression of a paper. I try then to write a summary of the paper. Then I realize that &quot;Oh the author meant this !&quot; or &quot;Oh, this actually works !&quot; -- this usually lead me to realize at the end that the paper is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The authors spent a lot of time writing the paper (they are looking for constructive comments most of the time):&lt;/strong&gt; From another point of view, put yourself in the authors shoes. They have spent a lot of time (obviously) writing the paper. They are smart people (otherwise, they would have not reached this level to write a paper). Then obviously, there is something to get from them.  If the reviewer thinks that this is not enough, then strong comments should be written. In any case, a reviewer should spend a relatively long period of time in each page of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reviewer may not have treated the problem from all perspectives&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Note also that - in some cases - the reviewer may have experienced the problem from one single perspective, whereas the paper attacks the problem from a different perspective. Treating a problem with a different perspective is the best way to solve the problem IMHO. It only enriches the literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T19:34:45.113" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T19:34:45.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9892" CreationDate="2013-05-10T04:40:54.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers that &quot;obsolete&quot; is too confrontational.   You could still directly address the issue in the title, though.   How about something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using New Method X challenges Assumption Z&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using New version of Method X challenges assumptions about problem Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7055" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T04:40:54.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9901" CreationDate="2013-05-10T07:17:57.320" Score="33" ViewCount="4481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student doing my Masters (in Computer Science). I am much interested in Ph.D and I know to do Ph.D I really need to read and understand a lot of papers. (I also know that its not all about reading papers, but doing something new and useful) but I find difficult to understand papers, especially mathematical. There are lots of things (like bloom filters, k-means algorithms, and a lot lot much more terminologies) which we, normally, don't encounter (except if you are a Ph.D or doing one) but are really crucial to understand papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not very good at understanding such stuff (atleast quickly, if given time I can but it takes time). Are there people like me who have done/are doing a Ph.D and had the same problem? If yes, how do you overcome it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7056" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T00:24:02.233" Title="Reading (&amp; understanding) a lot of papers is hard. How to deal with it?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9899" CreationDate="2013-05-10T08:52:17.167" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think very many people come into academia with the ability to parse tons of math-heavy articles quickly. It's a skill that develops over time from reading lots of papers, asking someone in the know to help you understand confusing parts, and getting through relevant coursework that will build up your skills and intuition. If it's a matter of speed of getting through things, that will undoubtedly improve in time. If it's a matter of you simply not understanding them at all, then you may want to reconsider your options before diving into a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T08:52:17.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9899" CreationDate="2013-05-10T09:42:59.867" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is that you have a good 4-6 years of time to learn how to process that sort of material, and you aren't expected to be able to do it immediately.  A professor once told me (about physics papers, but it translates into mathematical and CS papers fairly well) that eventually you start to read the math-heavy parts a bit like music -- you see familiar patterns, and you get the general idea without having to dig deep into the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you'll find that the more classes you take, and the more reading you do really does prepare you for that next paper and that next step.  You'll find that as you start specializing on a particular topic, most of the papers in your topic will become easier to read, simply because you have the experience and have gained the knowledge about the particulars over time.  Furthermore, you'll start coming up with your own ideas in the subject, and this just happens to be the goal of graduate school!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are lots of things (like bloom filters, k-means algorithms, and a lot lot much more terminologies) which we, normally, don't encounter...but are really crucial to understand papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty is that you will start encountering them more, and you'll start understanding them more and more as you continue your education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your particular question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there people like me who have done/are doing a Ph.D and had the same problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have difficulty getting through math-heavy papers (in CS), but I either re-read sections closely until I figure it out, or I ask someone to help, or I simply move on and hope that the rest of the paper fills in the details.  I don't expect to understand everything technical that I read, but it becomes easier over time to get what you need out of a particular paper even if you don't get each and every detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T09:42:59.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9906" CreationDate="2013-05-10T11:24:08.087" Score="6" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to behave when you have the feeling of working on something innovative? What to do if there is a chance (even the 1%) that your&#xA;  work is leading you to something original?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example what if I don't know mathematicians I trust to ask? Is a good idea to talk about your results (even if are not real results) to someone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you do if you have this feeling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a &lt;strong&gt;list&lt;/strong&gt; (or links to related SE questions/guides/books or others)&#xA;  of &lt;strong&gt;practical tips&lt;/strong&gt; to use while studying a certain subject you&#xA;  have the feeling of having found an innovative approach that can&#xA;  provide a new solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested too in books about the mathematicians' way to research. (I think is related)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I already asked this question on Math.SE but was closed two times. Here the link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/386520/practical-tips-mathematical-research-and-discoveries&quot;&gt;MathematicsSE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7050" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:18:33.943" Title="Practical Tips: Mathematical research and discoveries" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9894" CreationDate="2013-05-10T11:42:42.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A cover article is noteworthy, but not all noteworthy material goes on all CVs. I include a note about cover articles on my CV iff I am also including citation counts. I only include this extra information if the CV is for something that is trying to evaluate the &quot;impact&quot; of my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T11:42:42.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9503" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:17:20.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any relocation only independent grants, but there are a number of other ways relocation expenses could be covered. There may be funding available via the University, Department, or PI. If you are being funded by an external grant relocation &#xA;expenses may be allowable (e.g., the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2011/nihgps_ch7.htm#preaward_preagreement_costs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt; allows relocation costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:17:20.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9902" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:18:33.943" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;0.&lt;/code&gt; To give original contribution to the understanding of mathematical objects is what mathematician do, and talk about all the time. There is &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; no need to fear for ideas being stolen; if you want to play secure, you can publish a preprint to ensure priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the wording of your question, I assume that you are an amateur mathematician, and that you feel that you may have found something about an important, well-known question. Sorry if this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As most mathematicians, I receive demand for advice of this kind from time to time, so here is my usual answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared to have made a mistake,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be prepared to have found something known for a long time,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be prepared to have found something that will not attract interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound very negative, but these are the worries that are much more likely to be relevant than seeing your contribution stolen. I have seen recently an amateur publishing on viXra after seeking advice from me, that was afraid of having her ideas stolen. It turned out that her contribution was a few hundred years behind current knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers in mathematics only succeed in advancing knowledge because they spend much time learning their specialty and keeping up with what is being proven, and we do sometimes reinvent the wheel (I got scooped by 130 years once, realizing that Camille Jordan already solved a cute problem I was interested in), or make mistake, or do things that do not interest our colleagues. It is tremendously difficult to avoid this pitfalls when you don't have access to the literature, don't have colleagues to speak with about your research, don't have a regular seminar to listen to, don't have had a PhD advisor to guide you through your first problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for a positive piece of advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;4.&lt;/code&gt; learn the field you are interested in (e.g. read books, from the point you are in your knowledge to the field you are interested in). Be prepared for this step to take much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:18:33.943" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:28:01.253" Score="10" ViewCount="3823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to submit a paper for an ACM conference and I see that there are two dates like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full Papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstracts due: May 10, 2013&#xA;Papers due: May 17, 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that I am still working in tabulating the results from my experiments and I do not think that I will reach the deadline of May the 10th. Can I skip the presentation of the Abstract and submit the full paper on the other date? or should I prepare the abstract and only submit that in the first date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice will be great, thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-01T08:39:17.277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:23:07.970" Title="When a conference has an abstracts and a later papers submission date, is okay to skip the abstract submission and just submit the paper?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9907" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:37:14.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of having of an abstract submission first is for the organisers to have a rough idea of the number of submissions and organise a bidding for the reviewers (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7843/102&quot;&gt;Why do some conference have an &amp;quot;abstract submission&amp;quot; before the &amp;quot;paper submission&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it depends on the organisers of the conference, but if you don't submit an abstract, you might not be able to submit the full article later on. You can always submit an abstract first, and then withdraw your submission if you cannot make it by the full paper deadline. So you haven't much to lose in submitting an abstract first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't submit the abstract, you can always try to submit the full paper by the final deadline by contacting the conference organisers and explain why you weren't able to submit the abstract first, however, note that pretty much all authors are in the same situation, in that the paper might not be finalised by the abstract deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:37:14.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9899" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:05:25.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by not reading papers straight through. Most research papers are difficult to follow if you read through start to finish without a loooot of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I read them in approximately this order to begin with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract/introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion/summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Future Work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to understand what the paper is about first. Generally speaking, unless I know a topic well, the beginning section doesn't do a good job answering the, &quot;what is the point of the next X pages&quot; but a conclusion and summary do. Future work helps me understand, &quot;why is this research even relevant&quot; and then going backwards results helps me understand what they did, and then, once I have context, I read through methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, too, I don't care about understanding detailed methods unless I see a value in understanding them. Reading for the sake of reading is hard, so I &quot;incentivize&quot; myself by showing &quot;oh, there is value in understanding the details of what they did!&quot; and basically trick myself by how I read through things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how well I must understand a paper sometimes I stop early in that process or reread sections, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, make sure you don't read every paper word for word. You don't have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also determine if you are able to read on your computer or if you need to print them off. Some people cannot effectively read on a computer. Some can. Find out your personal abilities here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T13:05:25.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:39:41.887" Score="9" ViewCount="35865" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a journal (such as one of the Nature family) asks for information about authors' contributions, what is the most effective way to answer this, to ensure that the co-authorship is assigned as intended, and to ensure that reality is represented: that &lt;strong&gt;the work is a product of the intellectual environment of the whole team; and that all members have contributed in various degrees to the analytical methods used, to the research concept, and to the experiment design&lt;/strong&gt;. Is what I've just written there sufficient, or is there a more judicious phrasing that is accepted by heavyweight journal publishers such as the Nature Group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The context&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary context is publications from a team that works on the principle that all members of the team are to be named authors on all papers coming out of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm very specifically looking for answers from editors who handle such papers; or from members of teams with similar rules.&lt;/strong&gt; Answers from others are of course possible, but I'd value direct personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vancouver Group's (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) statement on the subject&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The caveats&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; 1. My field is not medicine: I've used the Vancouver Group's guidelines, as I haven't yet found any in my field.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; 2. note that this is emphatically not about the ethics, pros and cons of such a rule. If you want to discuss that, please do so in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2496/academia&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt;. I may join you there as time allows&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related literature:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/11/post_12.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Author contributions audit&lt;/a&gt;, by Maxine Clarke on the Nature Nautilus authors' blog, lists example contributors' satements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2805%2964090-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drummond Rennie discusses &amp;quot;Authorship Credits&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3407&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academia and Clinic, by Yank &amp;amp; Rennie&lt;/a&gt;: Disclosure of Researcher Contributions: A Study of Original Research Articles in The Lancet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and lots more at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3407&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Council of Science Editors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2019-11-07T10:52:35.153" Title="How to phrase authors' contributions when the convention is that all team members are authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9907" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:39:49.227" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a deadline.  Follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Program committees ask for abstracts early to streamline the reviewing process.  Asking them to make a special exception for you because you're not ready yet is unfair to the program committee, who would have to do extra work (however small) to accommodate your late submission, and to the hundreds of authors who got their abstracts in on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The issue is that I am still working in tabulating the results from my experiments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tabulated results of your experiments are not going to appear in your abstract anyway; only the &lt;em&gt;conclusions&lt;/em&gt; from your experiments will.  If you don't know yet what those conclusions will be, you're not ready to submit.  So don't.  There's always another conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But!&lt;/strong&gt; Remember that you are allowed to revise your abstract in the week before the paper submission deadline.  It is perfectly acceptable to submit a tentative abstract, which describes your results &lt;strong&gt;in enough detail to assign reviewers&lt;/strong&gt;, and then include a more detailed/updated abstract in your paper submission.  If your conference is using EasyChair or HotCRP, you can change your abstract in the electronic submission form, and the committee will no longer see the old abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make &lt;strong&gt;significant&lt;/strong&gt; changes to your abstract in the paper submission, you risk angering the program committee members who were assigned your paper, who could (legitimately) reject your paper without review.  So don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T13:39:49.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9503" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:48:30.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have already been in contact with your future (potential) advisor, you might raise the issue with them.  They might have funding they can use, or (more likely) they might be able to pull strings with the department or university to provide travel funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; recommend raising this issue as your &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; contact with a potential advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T13:48:30.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T14:26:15.907" Score="12" ViewCount="2723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 2nd year undergraduate student in Aerospace Engineering, in India. I am really willing to go into Academia as a researcher. I am specifically interested in Aerospace Controls. Some points to consider :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I love the fast internet access in university, so that I can research and learn all I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I have read up a few research papers regarding error reduction in GPS measurements, when I was doing a Supervised Project under a professor. Reading research papers are gruelling, but after 2-3 days of bending your mind over them and finally understanding what the author intended to say, I feel elated.&#xA;In this specific case, I read up a few algorithms and got excited on the prospect of developing my own algorithms for error reductions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I have a fair academic standing with a cumulative grade point of greater than 9 out of 10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would like a few pointers on what I can do now, as an undergraduate student to prepare for my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7059" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T14:47:52.610" Title="I am a 2nd year undergraduate student. What should I do now to prepare for my PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9913" CreationDate="2013-05-10T14:30:28.970" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate student, the best thing you can do to help your admissions case is to &lt;em&gt;get involved in research&lt;/em&gt;. This will allow you to demonstrate that you have the capability to do good research, which is one of the biggest things admissions committees and individual professors are looking for when choosing among applicants. Maintaining a solid academic record is also useful, and having an understanding of the literature in the field you're interested in is also good. However, direct experience will let you see if academia really is what you want to do or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T14:30:28.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9495" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:10:37.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a side note from a central european (Germany) perspective. Although things have similar names now (Bachelor, Master), things work a bit different over here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we know that this is possible in the anglo-american education systems,  people here wonder whether someone who has not completed a Master (or Diplom) is actually fit for tackling a PhD project (in terms of  subject knowledge, working techniques, and experience you learn during the Master's).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, most PhD projects here have a Master's or equvalent degree as prerequisite. In your case you may argue that your work experience in research should be counted as equivalent. Over here, this would likely lead to an invitation to take a bunch of oral exams before you are officially accepted into a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:10:37.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9910" CreationDate="2013-05-10T17:04:18.760" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is a requirement to list the contribution of each author, it seems the ethical way to handle it is, well, to list the contribution of each author.  If some authors did not contribute directly to the paper, you should state that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unethical to try to conceal that some authors did not make a direct contribution.  Please note: Your team policy is what it is, and I'm not trying to judge the ethics of your team's policy.  I'm just saying that, whatever your team's policy is,  you must disclose it forthrightly, without evasion.  That's exactly the point of disclosure requirements!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you're not comfortable stating your team's policy explicitly, that might be a hint that it's time to consider changing the policy -- but until then, you must disclose it frankly and honestly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T17:04:18.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T18:13:46.533" Score="4" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for reference letters, I have come across distinct policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some recommend to only give a reference letter for a particular application - it might be tailored to the particular position which the applicant soughts for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other do not seem to have a problem with providing generic reference letters. I personally prefer this one, because it is clearly less work for all parties involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which kind of reference is appropiate to ask for from your supervisor? Which one is socially accepted? (I am a former student that needs a letter of reference from his former professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T00:27:24.090" Title="Should I keep generic reference letters from my supervisors?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9917" CreationDate="2013-05-10T19:27:51.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be reasonable to ask for letters tailored to specific &lt;em&gt;kinds of jobs&lt;/em&gt; but unreasonable to ask for letters tailored to &lt;em&gt;specific jobs&lt;/em&gt; assuming that you're applying to many jobs.  Many people are already writing dozens of letters a year, so writing say 10 different letters for one of those people is clearly unreasonable, but two could be fine.  For example, if you are applying to both tenure-track liberal arts jobs and research jobs then you may want to ask certain recommenders for two different letters (e.g. for your teaching letter, or if your thesis advisor co-supervised an undergraduate research project with you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T00:27:24.090" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T00:27:24.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9917" CreationDate="2013-05-10T21:23:04.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer the question in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I keep generic reference letters from my supervisors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  You should not keep copies of reference letters, generic or otherwise.  Your supervisors should send whatever letters they write directly to the jobs to which you apply.  Those letters should never pass through your hands at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's entirely up to your references what kind of letter to write.  You should always ask for strong letters individually tailored to each position you apply for, but there's no way to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; anyone do that, or even to check whether they have.  Ultimately, you just have to trust the people you ask to do a good job, which implies that you should only ask people you trust to do a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T12:16:38.580" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T12:16:38.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9910" CreationDate="2013-05-10T21:34:51.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your phrasing is fine, but you could be more explicit. Let's say there are four authors: ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL. You might say something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL designed the study, developed the methodology, collected the data, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems nitpicky, silly, and egregious to go through a paper that may contain dozens of experiments/simulations and list which person did which. That would be akin to noting who wrote each sentence. However, if there is a key component that only a subset of your team participated on, then, as D.W. suggests, it would be unethical not to list it that way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL designed the study, developed the methodology, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. ABC and GHI collected the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T21:34:51.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9923" CreationDate="2013-05-10T22:38:07.340" Score="5" ViewCount="3837" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lecturer tells students six sections of material to study for the exam, but the exam only covers two of those sections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice exams are completely different to actual exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answers to the exam are in the lecture notes, but not the notes pointed to by the lecturer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it ethical for a lecturer to mis-indicate exam study material by instructing students to study material which is not on the exam?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are reasonable expectations regarding the relationship between what a lecturer says is assessable and exam content?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7065" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:27:17.037" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T21:16:00.323" Title="Is it ethical for a lecturer to mis-indicate exam study material?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2013-05-10T23:03:00.113" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will address the final question you ask—if it's fair for instructors to write an exam but point to other material to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary ethical issue here is the question of intent: &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; did the instructor tell you to review the particular material. If this was an &lt;em&gt;intentional&lt;/em&gt; effort to mislead students, and to feed them &quot;false&quot; information in order to catch them unprepared, I would say that it is somewhat unethical. (In other words, if you were told you wouldn't be responsible for something on the exam when the instructor &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; it would be, that's wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the instructor gave &quot;recommendations&quot;—along the lines of &quot;it might be good to know X, Y, and Z&quot;—then there's really nothing wrong with that. Telling you &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what to do defeats the purpose of a university education, which is to learn &lt;strong&gt;how to learn&lt;/strong&gt;! Ultimately, the instructor should not be spoonfeeding you information which you then regurgitate on the final exam. And I would further argue that if all you're doing is memorizing information, as you suggest, then you're also not really accomplishing much, since such information is very likely to be &quot;dumped&quot; from memory once the semester is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T23:03:00.113" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-11T00:13:40.397" Score="16" ViewCount="1694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading through a journal article by an author. Let's call him &lt;code&gt;Author X&lt;/code&gt;. The author while referring to some of his own journal articles cite them as &lt;code&gt;Author X et al.&lt;/code&gt;, even though &lt;code&gt;Author X&lt;/code&gt; is not the first author in the cited article. Is this allowed or should it be treated as academic dishonesty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1162" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T10:18:56.187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T02:06:36.000" Title="Is it ethical for an author to cite their own work with themselves as first author when they are not first author?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9927" CreationDate="2013-05-11T02:46:00.100" Score="47" ViewCount="168901" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just passed my dissertation defense. This means there is nothing left but paperwork to get my doctorate. Among the various congratulations I've received a couple have termed me: Dr. My assumption was that I'm not really a doctor until I go through the graduation ceremony, but now I'm wondering. Is there a convention as to when exactly I can call myself Doctor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5922" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T01:43:54.650" Title="When can you call yourself doctor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9924" CreationDate="2013-05-11T04:02:31.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how literally you are using the word &quot;cite&quot;.  If you mean the articles are listed in the bibliography with the authors in a different order from how they were published, or the author order is changed in a formal citation such as &quot;(Author X et al. 1994)&quot; even if the bibliography is correct, then yes, it would be considered dishonesty, because it misrepresents the author listing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it's possible to give correct formal citations to some papers and then go on to talk about &quot;Author X et al.&quot; without actually implying that this represents author order at all; instead, you are just highlighting X among the researchers who have worked on these problems.  Overemphasizing a particular author's role could be offensive, but it's not necessarily dishonest in the same sense as misrepresenting the author order on a specific paper.  (And it might even be appropriate in some unusual cases.  For example, imagine that X has been working in this subfield for many years and has published a dozen papers, each with a different student as first author.  If you need a brief way to refer to this group of researchers as a whole, then &quot;X et al.&quot; might not be crazy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T04:02:31.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9925" CreationDate="2013-05-11T04:29:39.313" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing as an Administrator: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is appropriate to use the title when you are a graduate, ie, &lt;em&gt;when the degree is conferred&lt;/em&gt; either in notice by letter or by ceremony (which ever comes first).  Prior to that your status is that of a graduand.  If you've been using the work-title PhD Candidate you might consider changing to PhD Graduand to indicate this status: that you're awaiting conferral but you've met the substantive criteria for fulfillment of your degree.  Additional source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swinburne.edu.au/studentoperations/graduation/postnominals.html&quot;&gt;Swinburn on Postnominals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations by the way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T07:17:02.127" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T07:17:02.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9925" CreationDate="2013-05-11T04:33:49.267" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, Congratulations!  Second, in about two weeks you'll forget about the whole issue with when to call yourself a doctor, simply because it will have been overcome by the events of your actual graduation.  That is to say: at this point, it doesn't really matter, and no one is going to care one way or another; the gray area between when you pass your defense, and when you are officially conferred the degree is a short, finite time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger question may be, When &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; you call yourself a doctor (even after graduation)?  Or, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8291/proper-way-to-address-yourself&quot;&gt;What is the proper way to address yourself&lt;/a&gt;.  I recommend being tactful when considering introducing yourself as &quot;Doctor X,&quot; because that can come across as pretentious, and you don't want that as a first impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a lighter note, a professor I know stopped selecting the &quot;Dr.&quot; salutation for airline flights after a flight attendant asked her to help with a medical emergency.  Her reply to the request was, &quot;unless the medical emergency can benefit from intricate knowledge of computer architecture, I'm not the doctor you're looking for!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T04:33:49.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9924" CreationDate="2013-05-11T07:51:26.403" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only reason I would use a formulation such as this is if the work being &quot;cited&quot; were multiple works performed by a changing group of members with a &quot;constant&quot; member who was probably the group leader. And, even in that case, I would use the formulation &quot;X and coworkers,&quot; rather than &quot;X et al.,&quot; to indicate that the it's not a &quot;direct&quot; citation, but a matter of convenience. The reason for this is that it's quite distracting to have to write: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as discussed in A et al. [cite], B et al. [cite], C et al. [cite], A et al. #2 [cite], . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when there's a bunch of different references that are all part of the same research effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T07:51:26.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9913" CreationDate="2013-05-11T09:55:42.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of pointers that are distinct from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9913/i-am-a-2nd-year-undergraduate-student-what-should-i-do-now-to-prepare-for-my-ph/9914#9914&quot;&gt;aeismail's answer&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;research is the most important thing you can be doing to prepare for and to be competitive for graduate school&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read as many papers as you can from high profile conferences and journals in your field.  Even if you don't understand everything right now, you'll start to get a feel for where the cutting edge is, and and also about how to write good papers.  You'll probably also start to see which schools publish the most papers, and if you're looking for top programs, these are probably the ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take hard classes, and get good grades.  Eventually, if you have the right prerequisites, try to take a graduate-level course or two and excel in it/them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start talking to your professors about graduate school, and try to form relationships where you will be comfortable asking for letters of recommendation.  They all went to graduate school, and some will have good advice on your path.  If you are doing research for a professor, especially make sure you discuss your future plans with him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;.  Although this seems like a little thing, you'll certainly find it helpful to be competent in LaTeX during graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to track down former students from your school who went on to graduate school in a similar field, and ask them about their experiences, and for suggestions about applying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your research leads to good results, attempt to publish those results.  Even if you get rejected, you've at least gone through the sometimes-obtuse submission process, and it is a worthwhile exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start looking into scholarship and fellowship opportunities now.  Even if you don't apply for a couple of years, you'll know what you may qualify for, and can start tailoring your application materials now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T10:05:06.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9924" CreationDate="2013-05-11T10:16:33.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a hard time seing any other answer than NO, it is not ethical. If the paper referenced is published it is very clear. If one neds to reference an individual other than the first author, it is always possible to quote the name followed by the refeence for (a very hypothetical) example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... X made the Y analysis (Z et al., yyyy)  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is unpublished, it typicaly should not be referenced using typical references so then the &quot;personal communication&quot; or whatever for would be pertinent could be given in any way relavant to the particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is of course to give credit where credit is due. so,if it is clear that someone has performed a very specific task (indicated in the paper referenced) then it might be ok to point that out but never to change the original citation which has to match the reference in the reference list, which in turn has to match the published article. So for me exceptions to the general rule are vanishingly few and I have never encountered a case where this has happened either as a reader of journals or as an editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T10:16:33.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9936" CreationDate="2013-05-11T14:32:32.333" Score="8" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_typeface&quot;&gt;Euler&lt;/a&gt; typeface for mathematical typesetting, especially compared with the standard Latin Modern. I feel somewhat justified in changing to Euler for a paper, but Euler doesn't usually look very good with the default body text typeface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a small thing to change that as well (\usepackage{charter}, for instance), but at that point you're really messing with the official style supplied by the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some conferences also allow submissions from Word documents, so the visual unity is unlikely to be maintained anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How unusual and frowned-upon is it to change the math typeface?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How unusual and frowned-upon is it to also change the body text typeface?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T15:17:17.647" Title="Changing the typeface from the official style in a conference paper" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9913" CreationDate="2013-05-11T14:47:52.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on where you're getting your PhD, but in countries (like the Netherlands) where a PhD position is treated like a job that you interview for, I would say &lt;em&gt;get published&lt;/em&gt;. This is encompasses aeismail's answer, but I would focus on the specific goal of getting a paper published. Every student project you do, ask yourself what kind of results would make your professor say &quot;we should publish this&quot;. This has the following advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing a paper takes some psychological development. You need to be able to deal with the drudgery of finishing a project without procrastinating, and getting it to a certain level of quality. If you can show that you've already mastered this skill, you will be a much more valuable PhD student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It forces you to work to a higher standard, so you'll learn more, and you'll focus on the details that are important for research work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gives the person evaluating you for a position something to look at that is much more informative than a grade list or a CV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the threshold to PhD-ship is an exam rather than an interview, you should study with the exam in mind, but the goal of publishing while you're still an undergrad will help you be a better PhD student once you get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T14:47:52.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-05-11T15:17:17.647" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general you are not supposed to make any such changes. Most journals and proceedings have some form of either &quot;instructions for authors&quot; or template, or both, which you are supposed to follow. If you submit something with a different type face, the most likely result is that it will be changed to whatever the journal/equivalent requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit to a conference which do not have any specifications on paper formatting, I doubt that anyone will make complaints about your formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point I would make is: if there is a set of instructions/template which you are supposed to follow/use, then you should do so. Otherwise trust your instincts and experience of what consitutes good formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T15:17:17.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2013-05-11T18:51:28.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's in the gray area between unethical and simply poor teaching pedagogy, if it happened as you described.  (My typical experience is that neither the instructor nor the students* quite have an accurate account of what happened.  I have sat in on enough classes as a disinterested party to notice this....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason it is poor teaching pedagogy is that you reward students who ignore you, and penalize those who do what you ask.  &quot;Review X&quot; might indeed be good advice for mastering the material, but if you do this before an exam it's implicit that this is going to not just help you with the material but also help you with the exam.  Not &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; the lecturer mentions might be on the exam--after all, the exam has length limits--but if it's almost a complete mismatch, the lecturer has just badly undermined their credibility.  Maybe they only mentioned the parts that they thought students might overlook (knowing the rest is so obvious it &quot;doesn't bear mentioning&quot;, perhaps!), but it still speaks poorly of their judgment and the value of paying attention to them.  Even if they honestly wanted to improve the students' knowledge, this isn't the way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unethical if it gets to the point where it's downright duplicitous; where the lecturer knows full well that the advice is bad advice for the exam (rather than e.g. just advising that the students cover everything, or not really knowing what they'll pick out to cover on the exam), and is using students' drive to do well on an exam to get them to study material that the lecturer for some reason feels is very important to know and yet not important enough to test.  This is about the same as holding a big gold coin casually in one's hand while asking someone, &quot;Hey, if you give me $20, I'll give you a gold coin!&quot;, then collecting their money and pulling out a pinhead-sized gold coin and giving it to them.  It's duplicitous even if the duplicity occurs entirely within the realm of inference/implicature.  I wouldn't necessarily assume any particular lecturer was doing this instead of just being a bad teacher, but if they were it would be unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, randomly sampling from all topics covered is a fair and even expected way to deal with having more material to cover than can reasonably be assessed during a test.  It's not &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; fair in that it is an error-prone measurement of student ability (people who particularly struggled with those areas but excelled at the others will do anomalously badly, and vice versa for those who had problems elsewhere but got what was tested), but alas, in a group instruction setting it's extremely difficult to be completely fair.  Mostly fair is about as much as you can hope for (on a reasonable budget).  From what you've described, I cannot distinguish the lecturer's behavior from this, so I would tend to give them the benefit of the doubt (and tend to give you the benefit of the doubt that you haven't yet encountered this sort of style and thought about why it may be necessary).  And if there's another exam to come, well, there's a good chance that some other portion of the material will be covered then (this is also extremely common practice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;sup&gt;(Aside: when teaching, I have had students honestly come up to me and complain that an exam is &quot;nothing like&quot; a sample exam when the sample contained a question analogous to &quot;If Jim has five oranges and Sally has two oranges, and they share equally between themselves and Jane, how many oranges does each get&quot; and the actual exam contained, &quot;If a puppy has a bowl with two cups of water, a kitten has one with one cup of water, and they and two lambs all drink the water, sharing it equally, how much water will each drink?&quot;.  In this case, the problem is that the student is too fixated on the particulars--&quot;there's no Sally!  No oranges!&quot;--to actually know the material at all.  So of course, when the irrelevant details change, the student is completely flummoxed, and yet the test is a good test of their skill, and the practice test should have been good practice.  Part of learning how to learn is understanding how not to become one of these students--understanding when you're capturing the material at the right level of generality and with the right number of details.  A really good teacher will help bring this out, but it's really difficult to teach, so it's mostly up to you.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T18:51:28.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-11T23:55:31.530" Score="14" ViewCount="1175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of hiring a contact/freelance editor to help me improve my paper, before I submit it.  I'm looking for someone to perform proofreading and copy editing as well as broader, substantive editing services, to save me some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I find and select a suitable editor?  Should I look specifically for a technical editor with knowledge in my general area, or will any editor be able to help?  Does anyone have any recommendations for how to make this most effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification: the term &quot;editor&quot; is potentially confusing, because it has multiple meanings.  The meaning that's likely to jump to your mind is that of an Editor at a journal, but that's not what I'm referring to.  Instead, I'm referring to professionals who help with editing manuscripts.  Many folks are familiar with copy editing and copy editors; that is actually just one type of editing service, and other editors may offer other editing services (e.g., developmental/comprehensive editing).  I'm trying to be a bit more general and not limit this question to just copy editing -- but if you're not familiar with the editing profession, you can think of my usage of the word &quot;editor&quot; as referring to a &quot;copy editor&quot; and you won't be too far off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T21:05:24.650" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T23:27:30.007" Title="How to hire editor to improve my paper" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9860" CreationDate="2013-05-12T00:31:17.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should make the thesis freely available somewhere that Google will  find it, and that there are no paywalls or clickwalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a web site and you plan to keep it available, putting your Ph.D. dissertationon your web site is a perfect solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a personal web site that you will keep available, then another great solution can be to &quot;tech report it&quot;: make it available as a tech report through the institution where you graduated.  Many institutions make their tech reports freely available on the web and commit to ensuring they remain available.  So, that's a great solution.  (If your institution doesn't make their tech reports available over the web, you might want to bug your institution to suggest they do so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of those is applicable, a third choice can be to make your dissertation available via arxiv or some other preprint server that is appropriate for your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T00:31:17.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-12T01:43:45.917" Score="8" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any source that details the ratio of journal submissions that come from developing countries to those that come from developed countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see extremely low acceptance rates in my field and wonder about the contribution of developing country submissions to this high rejection rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Feel free to answer the slightly different question of the ratio that comes from extremely low ranked institutions (e.g. below 1000th in the world). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="4315" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T05:25:51.010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T17:58:08.037" Title="Proportion of journal submissions by developing countries" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9941" CreationDate="2013-05-12T03:22:22.000" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question straight out of the domain of scientometrics - a field I have had some limited experience in. There is no one source which gives you your answer; rather this is a &lt;strong&gt;contextual&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;complicated&lt;/strong&gt; and rather &lt;strong&gt;nuanced&lt;/strong&gt; question which you have asked. The true answer is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;it depends on the field.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; For instance in the field of ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), the proportion of articles is very high (which makes intuitive sense) but this may not be true for other fields. Remember also that the term &lt;em&gt;developing countries&lt;/em&gt; has a very shifting definition and is therefore &lt;strong&gt;temporally bound&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this exposition, here are some studies which I can point you towards which have looked at  answering some, sub-section of your question. I also include studies on conferences (because certain fields are more conference centric) and also broadly scientific productivity and impact among scientists and researchers in developing countries. This is because these are all highly related and in total, might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057231702901827&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study tells us that only 7.9% of articles in the top 21 Library and Information Science journals are from developing countries or eastern european countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/x2187qu7w3321822/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study tells us that articles from developing countries tend to cite other articles form other developing countries and thus, creates a vicious cycle of citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/w041733438x851qg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study attempted to define a special collaboration metric for articles from developing countries. It recommended usage of this metric to measure productivity and impact from developing countries instead of the usual suspects (h-index etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/t8427g775p65t5l2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study, specific to Chile attempts to find out root causes of low scientific productivity (i.e. publications) from Chilean authors in Chilean universities. (eg. low priority of funding, lack of interest in research, corruption etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/k7k86072312ng267/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study is a meta-level article into looking at the scientific productivity in developing countries across the world. It presents a socio-historical approach and also attempt to quantify certain key characteristics of developing countries' scientific productivity and reasons behind the low numbers of article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.akademiai.com/content/r5h4p84517616483/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study points out that the present measures of bibliometric/scientometric analysis is skewed towards developed countries and as such is not a good indicator of research productivity in developing nations. The authors point out that alternative sources of databases, specifically presented as a case study of Cuba might provide better insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also request you to take such quantitative studies with a pinch of salt because they do not often paint an accurate or holistic picture of what's actually going on behind the scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T17:58:08.037" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T17:58:08.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9939" CreationDate="2013-05-12T03:26:29.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably not going to be an answer you might like specifically but here's what we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a doctoral student and in our department, it is pretty common for students to iterate pre-submission and post review drafts with each other (especially before the deadlines of major conferences). It works pretty well. I have also seen tenured and un-tenured faculty doing this in our department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, my bigger recommendation is, circulate drafts among your own departmental colleagues. Surely someone will give you sanity checks on your submission material? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T03:26:29.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9939" CreationDate="2013-05-12T06:12:04.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, to avoid any confusion, an &lt;em&gt;editor&lt;/em&gt; is typically a person associated with a journal or a publisher. The purpose of an editor is not to primarily to work on improving a paper but rather to judge if a paper is up to the standards of wherever it is supposed to be published. It seems in your question, you are looking for someone to help you with the writing process. This means you might go very wrong if you contact an editor for the tasks you describe. A &lt;em&gt;copy editor&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;proof reader&lt;/em&gt; is usually also part of a publishers chain and the purpose of such persons is to make sure everything adheres to the publishers standards before going into print; they are part of the end of the publishing chain, not the beginning. So, persons professionally working under titles like these are not likely of interest to you at a manuscript stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So typically, what you describe you need help with is part of what we all have to do to get published. We all should learn this process through our (primarily graduate) education but, in the end, there will always be room for further improvements for as long as we live. The first source for help should be your peers, or simply friends,  in your research environment. They should have enough insight to check the science and general writing aspects. What may be more problematic if not an native English speaker, is language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of language there are numerous specialists that can be hired to check and correct your paper if that is also what you need. Many publishers have associated such specialists and it is probably necessary to find some service that specializes in scientific writing; remember that threre is much need for other types of translations, legal, fictional literature etc., so that many specialize and may not be suitable for science writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, try your peers, you will probably have a hard time finding a person to hire to proide the services you require, with the exception of language corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T06:19:03.820" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T06:19:03.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9939" CreationDate="2013-05-12T07:35:39.527" Score="12" Body="&lt;h3&gt;How to find an editor&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfep.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there's the Society for Editing Professionals (SfEP)&lt;/a&gt; - get one of their members who meets the criteria for selecting an editor (below). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfep.org.uk/directory/directory.asp?zoom_query=academic%20consultancy&amp;amp;zoom_cat%5B%5D=0&amp;amp;zoom_per_page=50&amp;amp;zoom_and=1&amp;amp;zoom_sort=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This search for Advanced SfEP members in academic consultancy&lt;/a&gt; should give you a lead (disclosure: the editor I work with is on that list). If you're not in the UK, your country may have a similar organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try asking the journal publisher of your choice, as some now keep a list of recommended editors for pre-submission work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your peers for recommendations too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your employer has a department of Research Services or similar, they may be able to recommend someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to select an editor&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some criteria for selecting an editor for pre-submission services, based on my own experiences of hiring technical editors over the last 7 years, and working with one as a publishing strategist too over the last year or two. These criteria are in no particular order - I recommend finding someone who meets all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone with a good track record in technical editing / publishing. Everyone's got to learn some time, and so every new editor needs their first client. But you don't want to be that guinea pig, unless saving money or helping their career along is more important to you than getting the best result. Someone with a track record will already have thir editing-macros / tools and ready, and have streamlined their workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A gamekeeper turned poacher. That is, someone who's been an editor on the post-submission side, working within journals. They'll know the rules and the etiquette from both sides. They may even have a helpful network at your target publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone you can communicate clearly with: you'll only find this by actually doing it, at least via phone / skype / emails / tweets / whatever. Clear quick communication will save you money and give you a better result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who understands your speciality at least enough to get the gist of what's required. As a minimum, that means if you're in the humanities, you want someone from the humanities; if you're in sciences / tech / engineering / maths (STEM), you want someone with a STEM background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone fluent in your writing medium. So if you write in LaTeX, you want someone fluent in that. Ditto for MS-Word, LibreOffice, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find might be using a good editor a lot, it's probably worth finding someone who you could develop a longer-term professional relationship with; in that case, pick someone who'd be able to help you develop your publishing strategy over time, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T09:14:56.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9948" CreationDate="2013-05-12T08:55:28.447" Score="11" ViewCount="4980" Body="&lt;p&gt;In trying to plan for the future and decide on preferred programs and career paths, I'm trying to figure out the seemingly Byzantine nature of how academic funding sources interact. I am particularly confused about how departmental/institutional funding effect fellowships or grant money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a specific example to illustrate the general point that I'm asking about, consider this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/student_info/prospective.html&quot;&gt;FAQ for Prospective Students&lt;/a&gt; at Carnegie Mellon, where it is stated anyone accepted into the PhD program can expect their tuition to be paid by the program/waived, and a stipend of ~$24k per year. The page also suggests applying for a fellowship like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmu.edu/pier/program.applic/program.app.html&quot;&gt;PIER Program&lt;/a&gt;, which states it provides about a $30k stipend + $10k towards tuition. Another possibility would be something like the SMART Scholarship, which provides tuition assistance, stipend, and allows non-interfering fellowships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all well and good individually, but what happens if you get department funding and a fellowship like this PIER program? Does the department keep its funding entirely and you only get the greater of the two? If your tuition is paid because of your position, does the contribution of a fellowship towards tuition just give your school some extra funding but does not effect your financial situation individually? And how does a SMART scholarship factor in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note I'm not solely interested in this limited example (as it would be of interest to so few people), but more generally how this works in academia across programs and institutions. I'm in the US, though surely how this sort of thing works in other countries would be valuable to know anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a second example, consider something like a SMART scholarship and then getting a TA/RA position (which they allow) which earns tuition remittance. Does the scholarship funding source get the tuition remitted back to them, or does any part of the tuition remittance get returned to the student? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is deciding the real affordability of various institutions and living areas if you expect to need significantly more than a single stipend amount (raising a family, helping kids pay for their college, etc), and of course to help to decide if seeking certain scholarships and fellowships has a sufficient potential ROI for the time required to seek them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for any help in unraveling this Gordian knot of academic finance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T02:17:17.347" Title="Can departmental funding combine with fellowships/grants?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9860" CreationDate="2013-05-12T09:45:43.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sharing the dissertation on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;specialised sites vs. widely known repository sites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of specialised sites is that you get experts in your discipline to read your paper. I believe that's the purpose of sharing your dissertation in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, widely known sites would have more visitors. You would have more interested readers. Whether they are experts is another matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would like to raise an issue here. Many sites have paywall/clickwall. In particular, many require sign-ups. I often have trouble with links provided by users on this board. I follow the link, then find out I need to sign in to read the full text. More often than not, I give up at that point. I simply don't want to sign up unless I am really interested in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I truly like arXiv because I don't need to sign up to read the papers. The time I need to sign in is when I upload my papers there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T09:45:43.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9946" CreationDate="2013-05-12T13:26:07.830" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the rule of funding in graduate programs is that external money is used to replace internal money. That is, if your department gives a stipend of, say, $20,000 per year, and you win a fellowship that pays $15,000 per year, the $15,000 will be used to offset part of the $20,000. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most departments that I'm aware of will also guarantee that fellowship and grant holders don't suffer relative to their peers by bringing in outside money. That is, they guarantee to make up any shortfall between the value of an external award and the department's standard. (In the sciences and engineering, I would steer clear of any department that &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; have such a policy!) Many departments will even incentivize bringing in outside award fellowships by giving a premium or bonus that supplements the outside award. This might be done either by multiplying the standard award by a percentage (so, for instance your total would be 125% of the department's standard), or by giving a lump sum on top of an outside award (if it exceeds the standard, for instance). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to watch out for, however, are &lt;strong&gt;restrictions&lt;/strong&gt; placed on the outside fellowship: your department may have to certify, for instance, that you will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be assigned teaching duties or other non-research duties during the fellowship period. If you are unable to attain such a certification, the award may not be given out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the PhD phase of a program, the tuition should be covered by the department and the outside fellowship; however, in general the student does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; receive part of the tuition payment back. In general, the tuition charge is a negotiation between the university and the fellowship program, as this is at the graduate level usually a financial transaction. Also, if the student were to receive the tuition payment which was then forwarded to the school, this could be called taxable income, which would make things very messy for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T13:26:07.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9939" CreationDate="2013-05-12T13:33:13.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be able to use &quot;any&quot; editor to help with simple matters of grammatical constructions and general structure and clarity. However, if you require a lot of technical jargon in your paper, you may find it more advantageous to seek out someone who works in your specialty. Otherwise, they may want to change words that have specific meanings in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university has a &quot;writing office&quot; or some other service that it offers to students and staff, I would begin by inquiring there. They may either have some professionals on staff who can help out, or provide you with recommendations for professionals in your area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T13:33:13.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-12T14:33:08.827" Score="1" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelors degree in computer science and am going for PhD or research MS, but I do not have research experience.  Can I expect to successfully obtain a PhD?  What are the major problems faced by a student who has no prior research experience but has good technical knowledge in computer science (but perhaps less so in mathematics)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6958" LastEditorDisplayName="user6958" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T16:23:19.060" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T16:23:19.060" Title="Going for PhD or MS in research right after under graduation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9951" CreationDate="2013-05-12T15:07:06.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain disciplines it's very common to enter a Ph.D/MS+thesis program straight out of an undergraduate degree. Computer science is one such discipline. Usually you spend the first year or two in the Ph.D program getting up to speed and doing research. For an MS+Thesis program, things are more compressed, but you also aren't expected to produce research of the same &lt;strong&gt;scope&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's always better to have some research experience as an undergraduate (and this helps your grad application) it's not a requirement for success at the graduate level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T15:07:06.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9946" CreationDate="2013-05-13T02:17:17.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is: &lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt;.  It depends upon the rules of both fellowships.  This will be allowable only if both fellowships allow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often external fellowships will have a &quot;no double-dipping rule&quot;.  For instance, NSF Fellows are not allowed to receive full funding from an alternate source: if you accept the NSF Fellowship, you can't also accept any other fellowship, including an internal fellowship.  However, it may be allowable for NSF Fellows to receive a limited supplement/bonus on top of the NSF Fellowship, as a bonus and thank-you for receiving an external fellowship.  Other fellowships will have other rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For internal fellowships, typically the intent is that you don't receive both an internal and an external fellowship: external funding replaces internal funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is cut-and-dry, and there are exceptions to everything.  If you have been offered two fellowships, you should contact both fellowship programs to find out about the rules they impose on fellows; that will tell you what you can and can't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T02:17:17.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9959" CreationDate="2013-05-13T08:26:01.847" Score="10" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked by a peer-reviewed journal whether I'd be willing to act as an associate editor for them. The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/935/how-to-act-as-an-editor&quot;&gt;How to act as an editor?&lt;/a&gt; has some useful hints as to the tasks associated with that. But I am still wondering how much time these tasks would typically take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The form where I accept to be an editor allows me to indicate &lt;strong&gt;how many papers per month&lt;/strong&gt; I'd be willing to handle, and I am not sure what number to give there. My questions is how much time I should expect to take for each paper in the first or second year as editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T05:52:22.650" Title="How many manuscripts should I agree to handle as an associate editor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9968" CreationDate="2013-05-13T08:44:42.857" Score="44" ViewCount="6758" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of professors provide their full papers published by scholarly journals on their personal website (in the university official domain). PDF files of their final papers published by different publishers are available online. However, this is against the copyright transfer agreement, and the authors have no right to distribute their papers publicly. In other words, the authors have the same right as well as others to distribute their own papers publicly, as this is the marketing right of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clear violation of the US copyright law, like distributing cracked software programs or movies without copyright. Why the university officials do not take action over this copyright violation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may say that this is their personal website and they are legally responsible, but if someone distribute an illegal item on his/her personal website, the university will not allow this because it is part of the university domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think universities ignore this because it seems to be &lt;code&gt;less criminal&lt;/code&gt;, but why? as it is still illegal. So much the worse, it is even common in top universities where considering legal issues in different aspects is quite serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T17:22:04.303" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T20:21:15.583" Title="Why do universities tolerate uploading papers on their websites?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9957" CreationDate="2013-05-13T09:00:52.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by asking the journal rep how many manuscripts (MS) other have agreed to, or what is typical. I would think that is what the journal reps would consider &quot;normal&quot;. You probably have a sense of whether they need you for something very specific, in which case a lower number might be quite acceptable. Once you know what they tyically load on their editors, you should think hard about whether you find the workload acceptable. There is usually no guarantee that the workload is evenly distributed unless all editors are able to handle pretty much all submitted MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As editor you will likely need to at least browse the MS when you receive it, chase after persons willing to review, read the reviews and the MS carefully to provide feedback to the author, review the authors revisions, poissibly run the MS around again and then make a suggestion or decision on accept/reject. All this is within some time frame and chasing late reviews and authors who do not return revisions will take some time. I can also add that it will be the problematic papers that will take up most of your time, the good ones usually are not difficult to handle. You thus do not know how much time you will spend on any particular MS. A really good one could take half a day in total; a poor may take at least a day or more. So having slightly scared you with this, I will add that the work also has potentially tremendous rewards (reading brand new research and getting in contact with new persons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, how many MS per month is really impossible to answer, it will strongly depend on how you feel about the work and how you think you can accommodate the workload in your own time. I will leave you with this slightly unsatisfactory answer, but urge you to try to get a sense of what the journal expects and what they consider normal. You could also ask to how much time they think the workload corresponds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T09:00:52.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9958" CreationDate="2013-05-13T10:24:17.897" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you sure those &amp;quot;lots of professors&amp;quot; you're talking about are infringing copyright holder's right? Because of the way you put it, your &amp;quot;question&amp;quot; sounded to me as if you were claiming that posting your own paper on your personal website was always copyright infringement no matter what, which is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here's an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/authors/transfer-of-copyright-agreement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terms and conditions associated with the American Physical Society Transfer of Copyright Agreement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author(s)... ...shall have the following rights (the “Author Rights”):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*3. The right to use all or part of the Article, including the APS-prepared version without revision or modification, on the author(s)’ web home page or employer’s website and to make copies of all or part of the Article, including the APS-prepared version without revision or modification, for the author(s)’ and/or the employer’s use for educational or research purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can upload the final, published version of your paper published in, say, Physical Review Letters on your personal website. It's perfectly legal from any perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, not all journals have the exact same policy, so what kind of right you have as the author can vary greatly from publisher to publisher and maybe from journal to journal as well. For instance, unlike APS, IEEE allows authors to upload the final, published versions &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/open_access.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;only if they chose the open access option by paying a fee&lt;/a&gt;. (Note that this doesn't mean IEEE forbids any online distribution of your results on your own. For example, you can still post your final accepted manuscript on your personal website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;without paying the fee&lt;/a&gt;. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory even encourages authors to upload your manuscript to arXiv when submitting to the journal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with other publishers' policies, but as far as I know, many mathematics journals allow authors to upload final accepted manuscripts on their personal websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you substantiate your claim by providing links to the many examples you're sure are the kind of copyright infringement you're talking about? Maybe this is peculiar to my field, but I don't remember many instances of such copyright infringement and am having very hard time believing this is prevalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, assuming there are actually many such ilegal cases, what makes you think that universities ignore this problem for the reason that it looks less criminal? I don't see why this explanation is the most plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-11-08T15:34:43.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9958" CreationDate="2013-05-13T12:24:34.773" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is legal for a copyright holder to do whatever the holder wants to do with the work. The issue at hand is just who owns the copyright. Copyright can be owned by multiple parties, and some of those parties can sign away all or part of their rights. Doing so does not limit the rights of the remaining parties. The authors of an article may sign away their rights, but they generally do not have the authority to sign away any copyright that belongs to their employer. In the US, and perhaps elsewhere, work you perform for your employer is also copyright to your employer. In fact, depending on the terms of your contract, you may have already completely transferred copyright of any work you perform as part of your employment (and academic research likely applies) to your employer. Thus, publishers may be asking you to sign away something &lt;strong&gt;that is not yours&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that by top universities, you mean institutions like MIT. MIT encourages employees to fight total transfer of copyright by &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/sites/scholarly/files/2010/10/mitamendment2008rev1.pdf&quot;&gt;amending the copyright transfer agreement&lt;/a&gt;. The gist of the amendment is that MIT contends that the authors' copyright to the material is nonexclusive - it also belongs to MIT. Thus it cannot be completely signed away by the authors to publishing companies. MIT will extend its privileges back to the authors regardless of what the publisher intends. Thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Author shall, without limitation, have the non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works including update, perform, and display publicly, the Article in electronic, digital or print form in connection with the Author’s teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and for all of Author’s&#xA;  academic and professional activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the Article has been published by Publisher, the Author shall also have all the non-&#xA;  exclusive rights necessary to make, or to authorize others to make, the final published version of the Article available in digital form over the Internet, including but not limited to a website under the control of the Author or the Author’s employer or through&#xA;  any digital repository, such as MIT’s DSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Author further retains all non-exclusive rights necessary to grant to the Author’s employing institution the non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, distribute, display, publicly perform, and make copies of the work in electronic, digital or in print form in connection with teaching, digital repositories, conference presentations, lectures, other&#xA;  scholarly works, and all academic and professional activities conducted at the Author’s employing institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these rights are &lt;em&gt;non-exclusive&lt;/em&gt;, they don't prevent the publisher from providing high quality print and online versions of the article to their subscribers. They also do not prevent the authors and MIT from making the article publicly available in a noncommercial way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While MIT has taken steps to explicitly assert its rights to do so, many institutions likely have such rights implicitly (for example, they may be stated in employee contracts) and see no need to limit or infringe upon their own rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T12:24:34.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1547" CreationDate="2013-05-13T12:33:42.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would double-check on that statement of your friends. If you are not employed by someone to produce some intellectual property, then &lt;strong&gt;you will own the copyright&lt;/strong&gt; to all texts and other material that you create. You are then free to transfer that right to someone else (at least in the UK), or give out licenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have a &lt;strong&gt;work contract&lt;/strong&gt; with your university for this project, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you signed an &lt;strong&gt;agreement&lt;/strong&gt; that the university will own the rights to your project,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that you retain all rights in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one caveat: Any &lt;strong&gt;material that is provided to you by the advisor&lt;/strong&gt; of your project is of course not your intellectual property, and you would have to deal with it as with any external source. This may include even the initial project description, if it is of substantial intellectual value!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T12:33:42.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T13:41:58.433" Score="15" ViewCount="2157" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writting an article with outputs (by outputs I mean a big dataset created), how do you share them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you ask the readers to contact the main author? Should I pput them in a university website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T07:35:32.063" Title="how to share to mention/publish large datasets?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9964" CreationDate="2013-05-13T13:53:17.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedata.org/&quot;&gt;http://thedata.org/&lt;/a&gt;, which provides free, permanent hosting of data allowing you to cite a specific iteration of a dataset in your printed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T13:53:17.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9964" CreationDate="2013-05-13T14:28:03.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends. Some journals have online depositories for supplemental material such as data tables and multimedia files that are not appropriate or impossible to be included in main articles. For example, here's an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/info/polprocl.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the official website of Physical Review Letters&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supplementary material associated with an article (e.g., data tables, color-image files, multimedia files) may be submitted electronically for joint review. If the article is published this material will be deposited as Supplemental Material. Information about Supplemental Material is available via the Supplemental Material links on the Information for Authors subpage at &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/author-information/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://prl.aps.org/author-information/&lt;/a&gt;, in the Authors, General Information section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen many mathematics papers that cite authors' websites for computational results, and actually I've written one where I gave a link to my co-author's website for mathematical objects found by a computer search. Different journals may have different policies about how you should present and maintain such material. So you should check that on your own before submitting your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T14:28:03.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9958" CreationDate="2013-05-13T15:14:23.950" Score="114" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why the university officials do not take action over this copyright violation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because they can't.&lt;/strong&gt;  There is no way to tell whether a given electronic preprint violates the publisher's copyright-transfer agreement or not.  Different publishers place different restrictions on authors' rights to redistribute their papers.  Some allow posting pre-edited versions; some allow posting the official camera-ready version; some allow neither; some only require an exclusive publication license and leave copyright in the author's hands.  These restrictions change over time, and may depend on whether the author paid an open access fee to the publisher.  The only way to determine whether an electronic (p)reprint is posted illegally is to read the actual copyright-transfer/publication contract.  But this contract is directly between the authors and the publishers; &lt;strong&gt;universities have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; record of these agreements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because they don't have to.&lt;/strong&gt;  At least within the US, university web sites generally fall under the &quot;safe harbor&quot; provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires copyright holder to request removal of the specific items to which they claim copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because the publishers don't care.&lt;/strong&gt;  Scary legal language notwithstanding, academic publishers &lt;strong&gt;in many fields&lt;/strong&gt; have &lt;strong&gt;zero&lt;/strong&gt; interest in pursuing legal action against individual researchers for posting copies of their own papers in violation of copyright transfer agreements.  (I have heard this said specifically about ACM, IEEE, SIAM, and Springer, by people with connections inside each of those organizations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because it's not in their best interest.&lt;/strong&gt;  Both universities and the public benefit materially from the public availability of research by their faculty, students, postdocs, and other researchers.  Universities have no incentive—aside from a potential legal threat that they know will never materialize—to proactively censor that research.  Many universities, and more recently many &lt;em&gt;governments&lt;/em&gt;, have adopted open-access policies that either encourage or require their members to amend publication agreements and make their work publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because researchers would revolt.&lt;/strong&gt;  Even &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; academic publishers started sending DMCA notices to universities, and even &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; universities required their members to take down copies of their papers, &lt;strong&gt;in violation of research community expectations&lt;/strong&gt;, the people whose research is being censored would simply take their business elsewhere.  Those publishers would receive fewer papers, and those universities would receive fewer graduate school and faculty applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="32575" LastEditDate="2018-05-26T15:52:20.930" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T15:52:20.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9964" CreationDate="2013-05-13T17:57:21.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answers outlined previously, I would like to add that some authors/researchers just share the datasets freely on their own websites or on their university's data repository. For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://snap.stanford.edu/data/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (an example of multiple datasets shared on the author's website and referred to in subsequent papers) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/30908?mode=full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (example of dataset shared on the university e-commons repository).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T17:57:21.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2013-05-13T18:10:00.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the instructor telling his/her students &lt;em&gt;&quot;You better know this material, because it is going to be on the test&quot;&lt;/em&gt; when, in fact, the material is not going to be on the test then I would say that it is unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In situations like this, examination of consciousness and of motives is a way to come to conclusions about whether or not something is &lt;strong&gt;ethical&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;moral&lt;/strong&gt; for that matter.  Lecturer's are in a position of power in that students will listen to them and expect to be able to take what they say at face value.  If a lecturer is abusing his student's trust for personal satisfaction it would be unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, a lecturer misleads his students in such a way that they believe all the given material for that period is to be covered on the test - &lt;strong&gt;in an effort to ensure that the students learn everything, with the motive being for the students educational gain&lt;/strong&gt; - than I would say that it is not just moral, but a good practice.  All too often students try to skate by studying only what will be covered on the test.  Making sure your students learn as much as you can, even if it means lying to them about what is on the test, is surely a noble deed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6151" LastEditorUserId="6151" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T16:59:56.587" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T16:59:56.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T20:36:34.393" Score="4" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first started college out of high school I attended a university for a few months before withdrawing. I received all W's on the transcript from that school. I am now about to graduate from a different university and am applying to different graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to send the transcripts from this first school where I received the W's or do I only send transcripts from schools where I earned credit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7081" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T07:41:17.653" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T07:41:17.653" Title="Should my withdrawals be included on my transcripts for graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9972" CreationDate="2013-05-13T20:46:42.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend on the schools that you're applying to. The best bet is going to be to call the admissions office and just ask.  Every application I've sent in has specifically stated &lt;em&gt;all colleges &lt;strong&gt;attended&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, but I suspect that your mileage may vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House-keeping note: Welcome to Ac.SO! Your question is fairly specific to your circumstances and so would be generally frowned upon as it doesn't really adhere to the format of the site. Check out the FAQ for more information on what a good SO question looks like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck with your applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T20:46:42.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9976" CreationDate="2013-05-13T22:15:50.483" Score="10" ViewCount="11723" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, there is no grading on a PhD transcript. There is no exam or predefined coursework (i.e. you can work on any aspect of the dissertation and in any order, which is not assessed but reviewed by the supervisor). At the end of the program (three years), the candidate must submit a dissertation for examination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD dissertation is examined by internal and external examiners and their reports give either a  pass or a fail. There are various shades (e.g. pass, pass with minor revision, pass with major revision, fail, fail but allowed to resubmit, fail with a lesser award, fail with no award etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final transcript states &quot;satisfactory progress&quot; for each semester of enrolment and &quot;pass&quot; for the final semester. The graduation then takes place and the degree is awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently had a request to provide the transcript of my PhD. The problem I have is that &quot;satisfactory progress&quot; and &quot;pass&quot; can both be seen as equivalent to a &quot;C&quot; grade (as per the key to grading that explains the grading for all university programs e.g. bachelors degree) I know this is not the case for a PhD. (I got some outstanding feedback from the examiners!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I reconcile this situation?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can alawys provide the examiners' reports but each report is close to 10 pages, with positive and negative comments. The award of the PhD is subject to the candidate making changes to the dissertation as per the examiners' comments (or otherwise defending why the examiners' comments are not valid in regard to the study). The final dissertation is not the same as the one the examiners assessed and in almost all cases it is a better product (hence the examiners's comments are no longer a true reflection).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does the grading of PhD work in other universities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; The 'issue' with no grades being available is that the Official Academic Transcript lists the six semesters (three years) with &quot;Satisfactory Progress&quot; for the first five semesters and &quot;Pass&quot; for the last semester. On the back is the grading information (i.e. what &quot;Satisfactory Progress&quot; and &quot;Pass&quot; mean). &quot;Satisfactory Progress&quot; is coded SP and means meeting all requirements to progress to the next course in a sequence of courses in a postgraduate research program and &quot;Pass&quot; is coded &quot;C&quot; and means demonstrated satisfactory levels of achievements in all objectives designated as essential for passing the course. The grading information also provides information on the highest grade which is HD (High Distinction) through to the lowest grade F (Fail). In this situation, why shouldn't a person see &quot;Pass&quot; as a C grade for a PhD!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4475" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T01:35:14.363" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T02:41:22.663" Title="Making sense of PhD Transcript" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9964" CreationDate="2013-05-13T23:21:34.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (chemistry/spectroscopy), it is so far rather uncommon to make the data directly available, so the strategy is &lt;strong&gt;email the author&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my 2ct about the reasons for storing the data in private repositories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a research institute, not in a university. Public release of data here has to be decided the same way as licensing for produced software is decided. However, here this is rather easy from a legal point of view, as basically the institute owns the data. At universities this is often far more difficult as the ownership can be shared between several persons and institutions, e.g. if not all people involved in producing the data set had a working contract that includes this data collection (e.g. PhD students, guests).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The data set is often the primary product of a researcher. Collecting samples and conducting experiments can take lots of effort (I'm talking of years).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there is sensitive (e.g. patient) data. In that case, better be on the safe side. What if later on a flaw in data anonymization is found in a publicly accessible data set?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is often difficult to share the data anyways (that is: in the way that would be most valuable for us spectroscopists) because it can be extremely hard to combine data sets acquired with different instruments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These points together usually mean that if someone is using someone else's data for new original research it is usually done in the form of a collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who do offer data for sharing often like to keep at least approximately track of how many people get their data because this number is useful for all kinds of end of the year / end of the project reports and  number of people who asked about the data is a much more convincing number than download counts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All in all, we have a central server here, where raw data and source and possibly intermediate results are stored together with the final version of the publications.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The size of such a package can easily be of a size that would mean that a few downloads would equal the monthly internet traffic of the whole institute. This is outside the supplementary material policies of the journals in which I have published so far. Some friends in another institute in the neighbourhood share their data with collaboration partners by mailing hard disks...  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least: there's also a question of reliability - will, say, github still be there in 20 years? Will your university web page still be there in 5 years? (OK, the corresponding author's email may vanish just as fast..., but it is usually not that difficult to track down the new email or the email of another of the co-authors).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T23:21:34.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9974" CreationDate="2013-05-14T00:15:59.520" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I reconcile this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be clear to the anyone reading you transcript that your university does not provide grades for preliminary stages of your PhD.  &lt;strong&gt;Most likely, what they're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; asking for is merely proof that you have the degree.&lt;/strong&gt;  If they actually want more detailed grades, that's too bad for them, because those grades don't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does the grading of PhD work in other universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the US, dissertations are not graded; you either get the degree or you don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the way to the degree, PhD students may take classes (either by requirement or by choice), and grades for those classes typically show up on the transcript just as they do for undergraduates.  US PhD students also typically sign up for research credit hours as a &quot;class&quot; during semesters when they aren't taking real classes, but those &quot;classes&quot; are almost always graded pass/fail or equivalent (for example, at my university, &quot;satisfactory/unsatisfactory&quot;).  The actual dissertation and defense never shows up in the transcript, even if a student fails their defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any circumstance where anyone (at least in the US) would even look at the transcript of someone's completed PhD program.  Proof of degree, sure, but &lt;em&gt;grades&lt;/em&gt;?  Never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this situation, why shouldn't a person see &quot;Pass&quot; as a C grade for a PhD!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because PhDs don't have &quot;grades&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T02:41:22.663" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T02:41:22.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9964" CreationDate="2013-05-14T01:57:39.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on your field. If you're not aware of major repositories, ask a librarian who specializes in your field.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fields in most countries are getting field specific repositories. For example, I'm currently working on a project building a repository for Australian Archaeological Data (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fedarch.org/wordpress/mission/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as well as collecting it&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're forking our repository from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tdar.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tDAR&lt;/a&gt; in the United States, and are cooperating with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Archaeology Data Service&lt;/a&gt; in the UK. The list just goes on (&lt;a href=&quot;http://opencontext.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Context&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ochre.uchicago.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OCHRE&lt;/a&gt;, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When trying to investigate data publishing, always try to check for other countries as well. There are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; data publishing projects getting off the ground. It may be worthwhile engaging a research librarian for this task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never try to reinvent the wheel, here. You are not experiencing a common problem, and local university library archival storage is... sometimes very much a mixed bag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T01:57:39.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9980" CreationDate="2013-05-14T03:05:03.657" Score="17" ViewCount="1385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm used to a system in which all important exams or pieces of coursework are marked anonymously. (That is, papers are identified by candidate number, not by name, and the examiner does not know which number corresponds to which student, at least until the marks have been submitted.) This has obvious advantages in terms of reducing bias by making sure marks are awarded based only on the quality of the work and not influenced by the name of the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised when I joined my current department to find that no attempt is made to keep work anonymous -- students hand in their final exams with their names at the top and their lecturer marks them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any advantages to knowing which student's paper you are marking? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a system where students' names are on their papers, what do people do to prevent bias while marking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T14:02:55.083" Title="Keeping marking unbiased when work is not submitted anonymously" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grading&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9978" CreationDate="2013-05-14T07:55:26.840" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked both ways and I'm unsure which way is best. There are clearly benefits to each way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already understand the benefits of 'blind' marking - you are more likely to be unbiased. However, by knowing the student behind the writing there are some benefits (along with the danger of bias).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One benefit is that you can authenticate more easily. That is, if you keep reading papers from one student and you see a sudden jump in quality (up or down) it can alert you to the possibility the work is not theirs (hired writers, etc.). Another benefit is that you can watch the development of each student over time. This is a little more difficult if you do not know while you are marking. Of course, you can go back over the papers after you submit the grades but that requires double reading (and not many want to do that for each student). There is the added benefit of seeing something which jumps out, like a special quote or comment you made in class. You can see who is getting it and who is not while you are marking. This last point is less of an issue because for stand-out cases you are more likely to read twice and it would be less work since it's a one-off event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For exams, there is less of a benefit to the authenticity point above (since they were in the exam room) but it does still allow you to keep an eye on students. There is the obvious administrative benefit of not having to anonymize the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for preventing bias when papers are not anonymous, I consider each mark quite carefully and ask myself if I am being biased. When I look over all the marks and I see that I passed students I cannot stand and that I failed students I really like, then I feel fairly confident that I am keeping my bias in check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T07:55:26.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9983" CreationDate="2013-05-14T09:42:03.297" Score="15" ViewCount="4858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a research article and later realized that it has a slight error.  The paper is now under review. I have proposed a few theorems; one theorem contains a slight error that can easily be removed. The methodology is correct. Would this cause the rejection of my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T13:09:02.883" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T13:09:02.883" Title="What should I do if I realize there is a minor error in a paper I submitted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9982" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:31:18.010" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer this question, we need to define some magnitudes of errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; error does not affect the conclusions and if the manuscript was accepted as is could be fixed in the proof stage before the manuscript goes to press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;minor&lt;/em&gt; error does not affect the conclusions but requires too many changes to be made that it could not be fixed in the proof stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; error affects the conclusions and would require the manuscript to be re-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have found a substantial error, you need to contact the editor and request the manuscript be pulled from the review process. You do not want to waste the time of the editor and reviewers. A small error can either be ignored or reported to the editor if you think that the correction will help save the reviewers time. Minor errors are the real problem. There is no easy way to tell the editor/reviewer what is wrong, but an unclear manuscript is likely to get negative reviews. I would suggest contacting the editor and explaining and apologizing for the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question should be how did you find the error? What are you doing looking at a manuscript after it has been submitted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T13:31:18.010" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10042" CreationDate="2013-05-14T19:13:45.720" Score="14" ViewCount="5646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an offer from one university and still awaiting results from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to approach other universities and ask them about my application status so that I receive my selection / rejection before the deadline of accepting the offer? Is it rude to inform the universities that I have an offer from another university and will be accepting if the results are not announced before the deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the universities are in the same region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7036" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T19:40:21.867" Title="How to ask an university for application selection result before accepting an offer from another university?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9978" CreationDate="2013-05-14T20:13:51.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe a bit different than the types of exams that you are thinking about, but notice that for some classes like for instance art classes where the exam is based on something they have worked on for a longer time in class, or acting, it is actually impossible to have an anonymous exam (unless of course if only external persons are used to give marks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, I have always had anonymous markings on the paper bases exams I have taken, but for my practical acting exams the marks were set by both the teacher and one external person, so I guess that gave the best of both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="738" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T20:13:51.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9694" CreationDate="2013-05-14T20:58:56.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookfinder.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bookfinder.com/&lt;/a&gt; has been around for a long time and they claim they never charge a markup from search results, so although not neutral as such maybe useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openisbn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.openisbn.com/&lt;/a&gt; which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OPENISBN is a personal project dedicated to provide its users ISBN search services and ISBN data, introduction, book reviews, book preview, free ebooks and book price comparison for your specific book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly something that will not be around for decades, but it sounds at least very neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="738" LastEditorUserId="738" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T21:15:23.707" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T21:15:23.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9899" CreationDate="2013-05-14T21:17:17.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it helps, I was two years' into a full time research degree in psychology (no courses) in which I read all day long and one day I suddenly realised that I was reading an economics book with very little effort.  I could read!  I still feel the excitement.  You do just get better and better but it is like going to the gym - constant application is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing took much longer to get easier and I strongly recommend that you make a habit of writing daily.  Make sure you always have a writing project on the go and add something every day, no matter how bad.  Get a calendar; cross off the days; and don't break the chain. You needn't spend long - under an hour will do. But constant application is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are lucky, you will have mentors who demand papers from you.  It is a lot easier to write if you have deadlines. But if not, start a blog and start building up a portfolio.  The feeling of pressing the publishing button and seeing your blog grow makes up for disinterested supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick with it - in few years you will marvel at the ease with which you find your way around 'heavy' material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4313" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T21:17:17.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T01:00:02.703" Score="10" ViewCount="4830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering, in the field of Computer Science, if there is a convention for acknowledging that author ordering for an academic paper is by alphabetical order, not contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in CS, alphabetical ordering, isn't all that common, however due to a lack of internal consensus, alphabetical ordering would be preferred in my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in fields outside of CS, is there a convention for perhaps indicating in a footnote that the author list is alphabetical and NOT by contribution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To elaborate a bit more, after examining the question posted &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2467/what-does-first-authorship-really-mean&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, our field would likely be considered 'computer systems' (rather than theoretical computer science) where it is stated that the first author is usually the team lead. However in our situation, as I said, we are having internal disagreement over which person would be considered 'leader', and I was wondering what the best way to indicate equal contribution, or perhaps use alphabetical ordering to avoid the issue all together. We weren't really expecting to submit our work for publication (we're undergraduates), so this all has been rather unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7090" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T16:48:23.097" Title="Alphabetical Order for Authors in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9990" CreationDate="2013-05-15T01:09:08.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical CS, alphabetical order &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the norm - see the relevant wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship#Authorship_in_mathematics_and_theoretical_computer_science&quot;&gt;entry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T01:09:08.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9996" CreationDate="2013-05-15T04:21:16.157" Score="15" ViewCount="4233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a post doc (in theoretical computer science) and the only teaching experience I had so far was to teach some tutorial classes for undergraduate courses and giving some &quot;guest lectures&quot; in some graduate classes. It seems that most positions for assistant professor require you to show some teaching experience, i.e. at least co-teaching some courses. The problem is, my current department is quite inflexible giving such assignments to postdocs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the positive side, I got some pretty good student evaluations for the tutorials I've been teaching, whether that is considered helpful without teaching a &quot;real&quot; course, is of course a different matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my research record (several tier-1 publications) beats my teaching record (by far). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will my lack of teaching experience be a showstopper when applying for follow up positions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7092" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T04:43:37.627" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T00:30:56.940" Title="Will lack of teaching experience be a major hindrance for a faculty position?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T04:33:11.023" Score="19" ViewCount="7227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a research proposal for some (post doctoral) fellowship (for Mathematics/Mathematical Physics). The authority wants me to submit a short research proposal (preferably in two pages which includes bibliography). Can someone suggest what one should consider while writing such a proposal with a length restriction? I believe, I just have to highlight the main points of the the research and give a bibliography with it, but I may be wrong. The idea in my mind contains several steps. Should I give a time frame as well to finish each one? Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reconsidering once again, can someone tell me how to write good research proposals in areas like pure mathematics (I mean, like Non-commutative geometry, K-Homology etc. where, unlike some other subjects, number of papers, an average researcher can produce at the time of graduation, is less). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T07:28:19.960" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T10:25:29.550" Title="How to write a postdoc research proposal in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9993" CreationDate="2013-05-15T04:50:45.977" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems that most positions for assistant professor require you to&#xA;  show some teaching experience, i.e. at least co-teaching some courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really ? We all ask for teaching statements, but it's rare to see committees in &lt;strong&gt;research-oriented&lt;/strong&gt; departments pay more than lip service to this at application review time. For sure, if a candidate can't deliver a good lecture, it's unlikely that their job talk will be excellent. But that's only an indirect signal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you're talking about departments with a heaving teaching focus, then I'm sure they expect more in the way of provable teaching skills, and may even ask you to give a class lecture as part of the interview process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T04:50:45.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9993" CreationDate="2013-05-15T04:53:50.023" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised to hear you say that &quot;most positions for assistant professor require you to show some teaching experience, &lt;em&gt;i.e., at least co-teaching some courses.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;  If you are applying to positions in the U.S. where research will be your primary duty, your prior tutorial and guest lecture experience should be sufficient to get you past whatever minimum you need, especially if you have evaluations to back this up.  Of the five colleagues of mine who received tenure-track offers at Reasearch I universities, only one of them had co-taught a class, and the others had one semester of TA experience which was, primarily, grading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are other ideas for getting teaching experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creating your own course or seminar to teach in the summer or during a January term.  If you pitch it as a non-credit course, it might be easier to convince your department to let you teach it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for adjunct work at a local community college.  You'll probably be limited to introductory courses, but this gets you experience.  You may need the buy-in from your faculty boss at your current school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talking to individual professors about helping with their course -- I find it hard to believe that everyone has all the help they might like already, and you may have more luck getting your foot into a classroom without trying to be officially assigned to it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T04:53:50.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2013-05-15T05:59:59.993" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure this depends wildly from area to area, and while I work in the theoretical side of CS, I claim no expertise on math research proposals. Having said that, there are some general guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're applying for a fellowship, it's competitive. So you have to make a few points in your proposal: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;WHY&lt;/strong&gt;] that the problem you're studying is interesting and worthwhile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;HOW&lt;/strong&gt;] that your line of attack (briefly sketched) is plausible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;WHO&lt;/strong&gt;] and that you have the right skills to execute this plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and all of this in 2 pages ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless specifically asked for, I'd be surprised to see a timeline, especially with open-ended research. However, if the postdoc is for a fixed time, then the work being proposed should expect to produce some tangible results in that time frame if the plan works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T05:59:59.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9990" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:47:42.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the subfield.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/science.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andrew Appel has a nice paper working this out&lt;/a&gt; for different conferences.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/19987/math-paper-authors-order&quot;&gt;Hat tip Dylan Thurston on MO&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T08:47:42.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2013-05-15T09:10:20.087" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this might be useful as complementary to the questions mentioned by Suresh. I heard for the first time about &lt;strong&gt;Heilmeier Catechism&lt;/strong&gt; in one of the grant writing workshops. Since then I always think to Heilmeier questions while writing a proposal or paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I copy Heilmeier questions from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DARPA website&lt;/a&gt;, however another version is available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Heilmeier&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. What is the problem?  Why is it hard?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who cares?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're successful, what difference will it make?   What impact will success have?  How will it be measured?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the risks and the payoffs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much will it cost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long will it take?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the midterm and final &quot;exams&quot; to check for success?  How will progress be measured?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="48519" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T13:59:21.830" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T13:59:21.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9993" CreationDate="2013-05-15T11:36:39.753" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chris and Suresh answer for research-intensive institutions. At a primarily undergraduate institution, teaching experience is more important, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; search committees (being composed of people who went through the process before) know that most PhDs and post-docs have very little teaching experience, and most of it is the type that you have listed. What most committees are probably looking for is any evidence of teaching potential. Teaching experience does not always mean good teaching. If you do not have a lot of experience, then you should ask your references to address &lt;em&gt;teaching potential&lt;/em&gt; in your letters (and you should have difference letters for primarily undergrad institutions than for research institutions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does more teaching experience help you get a phone interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably.&lt;/strong&gt; It's one of the few things that can make you stand out on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does more teaching experience help you get an onsite interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; Once you make it to the phone interview, it's all about you, your personality, and how you might fit with the department. In addition to teaching experience/potential, you need to show that you are interested and capable of starting a research program with undergraduates, and that you have a project reasonable to the resources of the institution. If your research requires use of one of only a half-dozen specialized instruments in the world, you will likely not get called back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does more teaching experience increase your chances of getting the job once you do the onsite interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; The onsite interview likely will include a sample lecture. If you are interviewing at a primarily undergraduate institution, and you mess up the sample lecture, you're done. The sample lecture is how your &lt;em&gt;teaching potential&lt;/em&gt; is measured. I've seen people with very little experience do a fantastic job (i.e. engage the class, work examples, answer questions, etc.), and I've seen people with 5+ years of experience stare at their PowerPoint slides, read them word for word, and never look at the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T11:36:39.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10002" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:55:34.047" Score="13" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have published a paper and in order to get and analyse the results for my research I created some software. I want to make my software open-source, so that anyone can do research with it and change/improve it for their purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would like people to cite my paper if they are going to publish anything using my software. So if someone is just using it for fun, I do not care, but if someone modified it and used his modified version to collect/analyse the results, which he publishes in any paper, I want him to cite the paper I have wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an appropriate software license or other means for this purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7096" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T12:18:05.727" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T13:37:40.217" Title="How can I ensure that my software is correctly cited?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:28:07.020" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try adapting one of the existing open source licences, with help from your university's Legal IP team.  &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; a software licence is the wrong tool for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do it, is to write a &lt;strong&gt;methodology&lt;/strong&gt; paper. That's the paper that then gets cited by anyone using your code, or an adapted version of your code, to produce material for subsequent papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the paper you published was just about the results you got from the software, I've got some bad news and some good news for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad news is that you've got to write another paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that this new paper will use work that you've already done. It will be a methodology paper where you describe the software in detail, providing the source as supplementary information. And that's what will get cited, by those who use your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also include something such as a bibtex file in with the distribution of your software, to make citation easier: &lt;strong&gt;the more you can do to reduce hurdles to citation, the more chance you've got of getting those citations&lt;/strong&gt;. Once you've got the above paper written, the bibtex file should describe that paper. And before then, you can do &lt;a href=&quot;http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Citing-R&quot;&gt;what the R-project does&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To cite R in publications, use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; @Manual{,&#xA;   title        = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical&#xA;                   Computing},&#xA;   author       = {{R Core Team}},&#xA;   organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},&#xA;   address      = {Vienna, Austria},&#xA;   year         = 2013,&#xA;   url          = {http://www.R-project.org}&#xA; }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citation strings (or BibTeX entries) for R and R packages can also be obtained by citation(). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T08:46:23.170" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T08:46:23.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10004" CreationDate="2013-05-15T16:14:03.547" Score="15" ViewCount="4138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a manuscript that is under review in a major journal which is a main result out of a few recent years of my research. When applying for faculty positions, I would like to send the draft as a part of my writing sample. But since the material is not yet published, I am not sure if it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the foreseeable disadvantages of sending an article in review to the faculty search committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My area is neuroscience / biomedical engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: The paper got into a high-profile journal, and I got a job at a different place which did not require a writing sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T16:17:53.180" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T16:17:53.180" Title="Is it a bad idea to send an article under review as a writing sample? (faculty job application)" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10003" CreationDate="2013-05-15T16:25:21.417" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, From a legal point of view I do not think you will have any problems sending out a pre-review version of your manuscript since your have the intellectual rights to your own work. Usually most publishers' copyrights start when they have processed the material in some way but even then, if you are not using the material for any commercial purpose or for being reproduced publically, I cannot see any problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I cannot really see any problems sending a pre-reveiw manuscript to a search committee unless it is of poor quality. Sending your work allows people to see what you are doing and a manuscript (in very good shape) will allow people to see your latest work in detail. Naturally a manuscript will not carry as much merit as a published paper since it has not been through peer review. But, if it is interesting, well written and in impeccable order you will be showing your skills in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it could provide a slight positive in a search situation if good but be very negative if bad and your judgement is what will be at stake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T20:32:22.037" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T20:32:22.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10003" CreationDate="2013-05-15T17:34:10.530" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although your question is specifically for faculty job applications, I would like to generalize and add to Peter's answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For doctoral program admissions, I often sent out an article under review whenever asked for a writing sample. Not all programs ask for this ; for some its optional and for some its not but I sent them anyway. Usually, when I was interviewed for the position after having made it through some of the initial cut-offs, my writing sample was alluded to and often, questions were centered around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would like to say that sending it in anyway will not detract from your application but might even add to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T17:34:10.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9993" CreationDate="2013-05-15T19:12:24.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if it would exactly be a major hindrance, but at every school I interviewed at this past season, all of them asked me about what I've taught before and what kind of courses I would teach and develop at the school if they hired me. I believe that answers to these questions are things that you can work on even if you don't have teaching experience. It's not exactly difficult to say, &quot;I want to teach &lt;em&gt;topic 1&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;topic 2&lt;/em&gt;&quot; for courses if that's what your research was in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, actually teaching a course is quite different from doing guest lectures and teaching assistantships. One professor advised me, &quot;You might want to teach at least one course to make sure that you can, at least, tolerate teaching before you commit to academia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T18:41:51.923" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T18:41:51.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T20:23:23.533" Score="8" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm using Web of Knowledge, ScienceDirect, etc. to find papers to read and get some metadata. My university has a subscription, so this is nice. As far as I know these databases simply have a selection of journals, download all of the articles from those journals, and display them for me, updating every time the journal publishes. My question is: what percentage of journals are actually represented here? Some people say there are between 10,000,000 and 100,000,000 published academic documents in the sciences. Web of Science has about 50,000,000, and it's not clear how many ScienceDirect has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good comparison would be: if you take everything that Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and Nature have, combined, and subtract everything that Web of Knowledge has, how many things are left?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to phrase it: Of the major publishers (like the ones I listed above), how many are represented in these databases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7099" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T23:13:59.417" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T23:36:18.227" Title="How complete are academic databases?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T20:42:12.763" Score="26" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this reasonably interesting graphic regarding journals and open access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7YZ2v.png&quot; alt=&quot;Year of Transfer: 2006 to Open Access with BioMed Central&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many of you know, there is a large discussion about open access. It appears to be most strong within &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7980/why-do-many-recent-open-access-mega-journals-only-cover-biological-sciences&quot;&gt;biological sciences, though that may be more of a side-effect of their style of publishing&lt;/a&gt;. An interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;timeline of open access&quot;&lt;/a&gt; unfortunately stops at 2008. Obviously the graphic, while interesting, is a single data point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence regarding the effect of going open-access and a journal's impact factor? I am especially interested in utilizing resources that have undergone some kind of peer review and scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:56:14.613" Title="What is the effect of a journal going open-access on its impact factor?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10012" CreationDate="2013-05-15T23:21:16.713" Score="1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given Lotka's law's general applicability to publishing rates and bibliometrics; what computations of the Lotka function exist for the meta-disciplines in the humanities?  (Philosophy, History, Literary Criticism by language, Film criticism, Anthropology, History and Philosophy of Science / Science and Technology Studies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to test cultural assumptions (&quot;work culture&quot;) about publication rates of sole authored papers against Lotka values to check managerial assumptions, and my own assumptions, about productivity levels and &quot;workload&quot;.  Yet I have no adequate grounding to find computed Lotka functions for discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T08:02:23.780" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T08:02:23.780" Title="What computations of the Lotka function exist for publications in humanities meta-disciplines?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1301" CreationDate="2013-05-15T23:28:14.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my impression, the nearest equivalent would be an academics' text source repository.  This could be a library of theoretical works personally owned (and almost certainly monographic rather than papers).  It could be a set of commonly referenced canon texts spread across four or five libraries in their region that they consult.  It could be the items above plus documentary series such as archives, cultural texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objects manipulated, day to day, in conducting humanities research are texts; whether these are straight texts, or the meanings developed from physical records, or the meanings developed reflecting on terse problem statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, some scholars keep detailed notes, and others don't.  I try and keep my notes and sources in a deep text searchable database with what meta-data I can cheaply acquire.  There is no standard for keeping a repository, and the way in which a scholar learns to keep an adequate repository is idiosyncratic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a disciplinary standard for keeping a repository, above and beyond &quot;study skills&quot; type courses which aren't mandatory or systematised.  To evidence of the adequacy of the &quot;experiment&quot; equivalent scholars demonstrate their mastery over the relevant texts by providing evidence of firmly supportable readings through citation and footnoting, or by quality argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T23:28:14.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10010" CreationDate="2013-05-16T00:00:49.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a few papers published in this space by bibliometricians/scientometricians already. Having said this, why would you need pre-configured values of lotka's law for certain sub-disciplines in the humanities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would collect data (perhaps using Web of Science/Google Scholar/Wiley/Elsevier etc.) ; then do empirical testing with the generalized Lotka's law on particular sub-disciplines and then control against your cultural assumptions and other variables. This is because every discipline changes over time and a paper published on this in the 1970's may yield different results now with the same methodology. Most of my references cited below point this (or some variation of this) out as limitations of temporally specific computations of these laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, there are a few papers which might help you in this task if you haven't found them already:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630240607/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper specifically looks at generalizing Lotka's Law in the humanities and formulates the same queries that I laid out earlier about it being spatio-temporal specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630370105/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper is the Pao's modification to Lotka's law for humanities and has some empirical evaluations from certain humanities literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306457386900762&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper is an empirical modification of Pao's variation (see above) to Lotka's Law in certain humanities disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630280115/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is an editorial response to Lotka's law applicability in the humanities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.175.4378&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a general paper which looks at quantifying author productivity and impact specifically in the humanities. It is a very good read for approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, do some up-to-date empirical evaluation and then perhaps, run your study. The first could actually make for a fine empirical paper by itself in the scientometrics world. Pre-configured function values are like using empirical regression estimates ; they are fine and &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; study but may not be generalizable across all studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T00:00:49.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10015" CreationDate="2013-05-16T04:31:01.880" Score="1" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is kind of like the google story. We are currently doing an project individually. The idea I came up with can be used as a website that can make profit. My question is, let's say I was able to make money with the code I am writing, since this is a university project that I will submit for marks, do they own a piece of that profit. I know that the Google guys had to pay about $300 million to Standford but it seemed to me like the &quot;patent issue&quot;. And they dropped out so I really can't say much about their case. The facebook story is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So am I obligated to share the profit with the university or does this differ from institution to institution? After all, even if they take my code, since I wrote it, I can rewrite it with ease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; It's kind of like inventing something that can be sold or used as a service. Does the institution own a piece of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7100" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T06:49:33.060" Title="What if I can make a profit for an assignment/project I did similar to &quot;Google&quot;?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-05-16T07:33:16.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-16T05:02:29.247" Score="12" ViewCount="1714" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genealogy.ams.org/&quot;&gt;Mathematics Genealogy project&lt;/a&gt; has existed for many years. It currently  has 170,235 records as of 15 May, 2013. I understand there are many computer scientists in that database since computer science is generally considered a branch of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found several other similar efforts. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy_of_theoretical_physicists&quot;&gt;Academic genealogy of theoretical physicists&lt;/a&gt; Wiki page consists of about 100 theoretical physicists. I cannot find Physics Genealogy project in general. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mainzv/Web_Genealogy/&quot;&gt;Chemical Genealogy Database&lt;/a&gt; does not appear to have built a very large database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there genealogy project for other disciplines?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a general academic genealogy project somewhere? If yes, where? If not, are there efforts to construct it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T14:49:57.367" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T11:33:40.107" Title="Academic Genealogy" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10013" CreationDate="2013-05-16T06:49:33.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This cannot be answered in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the contract you have with the institution and the applicable law in your jurisdiction. It may depend on how you were funded as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of examples from both extremes: your university owns 100% and your university owns nothing, as well as everything in between. Some intermediate setting is probably more common, but, as I said, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T06:49:33.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2013-05-16T11:05:54.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot guarantee that people will cite the paper. All you can do is make it easier for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rather obvious idea: why not write on the software's web page something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you use or adapt this software in your research could you please cite it as follows: &lt;strong&gt;[details of citation, such as bibtex]&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include this message also in the README file, the user manual and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T13:37:40.217" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T13:37:40.217" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10020" CreationDate="2013-05-16T11:14:46.897" Score="5" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my master thesis and would like an opinion on whether or not to use a cover illustration on the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed many students around me do not take the time to make the cover page attractive (e.g. a simple title is all). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the &quot;standard&quot; convention regarding the cover page of a master thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I have no restrictions from my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T17:37:25.367" Title="Master Thesis - use of cover illustration" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10018" CreationDate="2013-05-16T11:28:28.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's your thesis, and if your committee approves it with beautiful cover art, then you're all set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For professional theses, the standard is a plain cover with pertinent details about the thesis.  Departments or universities generally have a template document or provide specific guidance, but if that isn't true for your school, then I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: I would discuss it with your advisor, and other committee members.  If you want it to be a surprise to them (not advisable), then by all means give it a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T13:13:49.563" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T13:13:49.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10018" CreationDate="2013-05-16T14:08:49.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary reason for not having a &quot;pretty cover&quot; is simple: practicality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that many schools will have &quot;official&quot; copies of the thesis bound; for archival purposes, and to keep production costs down, the covers don't typically have illustrations, but are usually monochromatic standard bindings. The cover art would therefore not be obvious to anybody looking at the thesis—and the low traffic for theses means it's usually not worth the effort to produce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Chris points out, if your school &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; have a policy, you can do what you'd like. On the other hand, I'd focus on the quality of the material presented in the thesis before worrying about the cover art!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T14:08:49.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10034" CreationDate="2013-05-16T14:38:10.680" Score="8" ViewCount="690" Body="&lt;p&gt;The normal UK process to hire new academic staff would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The position is placed on job adverts, websites, specialized magazines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The curricula and forms from prospective candidates are collected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A filter is applied and a short-list produced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The short-list candidates sit in a workbench for an interview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The position is assigned to the most qualified candidate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happen to know of a case where the position is &lt;strong&gt;already assigned&lt;/strong&gt;, but the job avert has been published, so it should be open to all candidates. Since the position has already been assigned, steps 2 through 4 are a waste of time and paperwork as other responding candidates will not be seriously considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is this superfluous search process legal?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T19:50:04.040" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T19:50:04.040" Title="Is it legal to run interviews for an academic job when the post has already being assigned?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9990" CreationDate="2013-05-16T16:48:23.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We ended up making a note with the author's list that names were in alphabetical order an not indicative of contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7090" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T16:48:23.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10026" CreationDate="2013-05-16T18:18:37.343" Score="8" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be starting my PhD in the next fall. I already looked over the internet for advice for a beginner, even read two books on the subjects. Still, there is one point I haven't seen discussed as I wanted, it's the time and the way the student should be investing in catching up on his field and his specific topic, I'm speaking about the bibliographic part. For sure a student needs a lot of (continuous) input, but at the end he'll be solely judged on his output. From my previous research project, I'm not really confident in my way of balancing between going through articles/textbook material and trying to solve my own problematics. To be honest, it sometimes feels like a sneaky way of procrastinating: I'd tell myself that I'm still not ready to tackle my problem and that I need to make a little &quot;detour&quot; by existing works; and when it's done I don't feel more at ease to answer my questions. Or is it a normal aspect of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my specific case, I'll be working on a quite new subject (string theory) when I only had advanced lecture of quantum field theory and general relativity; so I'm thinking about going through the canonical textbook on the subject during the summer, do most of the exercises and derivations in there (which already represents hundreds of hours invested), maybe revising some mathematical tools I need to be really familiar with. Once I'll have a general idea of the topic I'll jump to the main articles in relation to my thesis. I also know that I will be using numerical tools (Monte Carlo methods) and will need to get conformable with that. So far I only have a superficial knowledge and use of the tool.&#xA;Does it seem like a good use of my time? I already know that time and willpower are limited resources in grad school and I really don't want my desire to do well to burn me out from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7108" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T22:06:11.320" Title="How to tackle the bibliographic work as an entering PhD student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10023" CreationDate="2013-05-16T20:14:12.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That you are thinking about these matters is a very good start. You need to remember that exactly what you need to know and to read up on will only be known in a genral sense. your PhD project theme will provide this general direction. What details you need to pick up in terms of numerical methods etc. will to a lrger extent develop as your research develops. So you do not need to worry about what you could possibly have use for. You probably know key areas relavant to the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to lay a broad foundation and read up on the topic and supporting areas (fields). If there are key methods or equivalent you can start looking at that as well. However,I ould expect your advisor will also provide guidance in setting up direction through course work and suggesting reading. I would personally not expect a student to have a complete background by the time he or she starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as I state earlier, that you are thinking about this is very good but you should not worry too much because you will not know the details until you have the PhD project clearly defined and started woring with your future advisor. So any knowledge you can gain will be a bonus but you are not expected to finish your PhD until you have completed your PhD studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T20:14:12.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10023" CreationDate="2013-05-16T22:06:11.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be honest, it sometimes feels like a sneaky way of procrastinating:&#xA;  I'd tell myself that I'm still not ready to tackle my problem and that&#xA;  I need to make a little &quot;detour&quot; by existing works; and when it's done&#xA;  I don't feel more at ease to answer my questions. Or is it a normal&#xA;  aspect of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably the most common way that new grad students attempt (consciously or otherwise) to avoid doing research :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to remember that prior knowledge is an ocean you're swimming in, not a cup that you have to finish drinking. There's literally no way to &quot;read all the prior literature&quot;: there's always something more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General reading is perfectly fine, but when you have a problem to work on, it's best to break down bibliographic research into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what does prior work say about your problem and what's the key open question (and this is something your advisor can help you with)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you start thinking about a specific problem and are trying to apply some specific tools, is there material to help you understand those tools better ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're writing up, what &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt; (not &lt;strong&gt;prior&lt;/strong&gt;) work should you be aware of ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At each stage, read only as much as you absolutely need to, in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. And remember, as a new Ph.D student, it's not a terrible thing if you reinvent something that someone discovered before, and only learn of this after the fact. You just don't that happening at your dissertation defense :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T22:06:11.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-05-17T01:42:16.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the student is reasonable, up to a point, then she is unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When tutoring a student (teaching of any kind, really), you should give some examples in order to give her the key information she will need in order to do the work which will be expected of her. However, after you have covered the key points, which includes showing her how to work through a problem or two (or three, depending on the situation) then you must assess her learning (and your teaching).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The natural way to assess is to have her produce, for example by solving problems. If she only wants to watch you and does not want to produce then it seems she is not interested in you assessing her and she is not interested in assessing herself. I would not start (or continue) tutoring this kind of student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, perhaps she does learn best that way...but part of the educator's job is to see if the education is actually taking hold and the only way to do that is to have the student produce something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T01:42:16.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10032" CreationDate="2013-05-17T05:26:57.573" Score="0" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;What options are there, and how do they compare against each other, for digitally publishing (for example, a series of short stories)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the issue of format management (producing whatever electronic file formats are appropriate) any information about distribution would also be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a teacher in a graduate-level literature program and am looking for solutions I can pass on to my students, so this is not just for my own use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T14:19:46.120" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T16:39:37.253" Title="E-books and e-publishing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-05-17T06:42:24.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one were to wager, the smart money is that it's a con. However, in principle, an exceptional person certainly does not need to be subjected to the orthodox fake-rigor fake-serious pretense. That is, a person with some natural talent catches on very, very, very quickly, while other kids are effectively resisting and thinking of something else anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this point in my life, I am inclined to give people a chance to &quot;be talented&quot;, rather than to doubt that they are, even while I might privately bet against their self-estimate or pretense. After all, letting a few people &quot;game&quot; the system while we treat serious people well is better than brutally policing everything, crushing sincere talented people, just to be sure that no one &quot;gets more credit than they deserve&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, I think it's not about &quot;learning styles&quot;, but about degree of engagement, optimistically. (Or else it is a con, but it's better for all of us to try to believe it's not...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T06:42:24.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-05-17T07:21:41.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to provide another perspective to this question; regardless whether or not the student is trying to fool you into doing her work for her, you can take a look at it from a practical perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You (=tutor) are required to teach to her (=stuent) and presumably to many others like her. Likewise you are expected to read articles and do research. I would even argue that your primary task is to do research, not to teach undergrads. So, while your responsibilities are to prepare material and give lectures etc, their responsibility is to go through the material and do the work (hw/assignments). Given that you provide enough examples during the lectures, I don't see why you should go through the review or homework assignments for the student(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all it's probably not feasible (time) or reasonable for you to do all that. Are you going to have individual sessions for every single student, so that their thoughts don't get disturbed by others who might ask questions? A compromise could be to hold &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; lecture where you solve old exam questions for the whole class. Our calculus teachers used to do that. THey would take an old exam, and solve each question, explaining as they go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am all for helping people with special needs (hearing aids, dyslexia etc) but &lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't want to do the homework assignments, you do them for me and I watch you solve them&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is not a special need, it's good old laziness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T07:21:41.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10029" CreationDate="2013-05-17T08:18:32.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is that once you've got a text in one eBook format, it is relatively painless to publish it in additional formats (PDF being the notable exception, though it is generally easy to get a document into PDF format--you can do a decent job with a converter such as Calibre--see below--but translating the format properly is sometimes tricky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you should publish in PDF format.  While not a particularly good format for reading on portable devices, it is a universal format that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be read on any any modern eReader, and, of course, on a PC screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest formatting the book in the open &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt; format, and in a Kindle format (either &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Format_8#File_formats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;.MOBI, AZW, or .KF8&lt;/a&gt;).  I would then link to all of the formats on your web page, possibly with instructions on how to get the volume onto a particular device.  You could also consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin/187-5862717-6823129&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;self-publishing the volume to the Kindle store&lt;/a&gt;, but bear in mind that there may be restrictions, and I believe you will be forced to charge for the volume.  The iTunes Store is another possibility, but comes with its own restrictions and formatting / conversion guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should definiltely download the fine E-Book manager, &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt;, which can convert between formats and is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, there isn't one true standard for eBook formats yet, but it is not difficult having a few different formats on your web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T08:18:32.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9222" CreationDate="2013-05-17T10:23:11.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest just using a good graphics program and using its defaults. This would normally look good enough, I imagine most journals would not be too fussy about such things. You probably also want to use a scripting language for reproducibility and efficiency. The following packages are reasonable choices, produce high quality graphics without much work, have reasonable defaults which can be tweaked if necessary, and export into the common image file formats like PDF, PNG etc. &lt;code&gt;ggplot2&lt;/code&gt; in particular is designed to be very high level and flexible, and is based somewhat on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.uic.edu/~wilkinson/TheGrammarOfGraphics/GOG.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammar of Graphics book by Wilkinson&lt;/a&gt;, which describes a high level approach to data visualization. Specifically, high level implies ignoring the small details of your graphic and letting the program taking care of it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The R package &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ggplot2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;ggplot2&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; already mentioned is quite popular. You could also try &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGF/TikZ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;PGF/TikZ&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and the plot package that uses it, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pgfplots.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;pgfplots&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matplotlib&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;matplotlib&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is another possibility, though I have not used it much. Also note that both &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;matplotlib&lt;/code&gt; have &lt;code&gt;PGF/TikZ&lt;/code&gt;backends. For &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Sharpie/RTikZDevice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;TikZDevice&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; though it does not seem to be actively developed. For &lt;code&gt;matplotlib&lt;/code&gt;, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://matplotlib.org/users/pgf.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;matplotlib: Typesetting With XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T10:23:11.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10021" CreationDate="2013-05-17T10:26:45.830" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases, academic institutions will be &lt;strong&gt;legally obliged&lt;/strong&gt; to fill positions according to the procedure you described. This usually requires publishing a call for applications in a suitable medium, and putting together a short list of selected candidates based on qualification for the position and fit to the announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there may be the &quot;problem&quot; that the person or group that will select the candidate already has a specific candidate in mind and want to &quot;assign&quot; the position to that candidate. However, simply hiring that candidate without going through the formal process would in fact be illegal. So the typical workaround in this case is to make the announcement so specific that the desired candidate will be the best qualified person for the position. It may be ethically questionable, but I fear &lt;strong&gt;it is totally legal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, even for other candidates, this approach seems to be better than allowing the institution to just fill the position without the formal process. Especially if there is a committee deciding on the short list, this may even be different from the group that made up the announcement, and there may be people pushing for candidates they deem more qualified than the originally desired candidate. Chances for other candidates will clearly be rather low, but still higher than zero as in the case without announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the question whether it is possible to find out about such a situation in advance, I fear it is not that easy. It works best when one has good contacts to people in the committee, and can ask informally about the situation. Otherwise, a reasonable approach would be to phone a contact given in the announcement and discuss details of the position. In many cases, one should be able to figure out whether the other person is open to applications or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T10:26:45.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10018" CreationDate="2013-05-17T10:57:01.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to provide a counter to the &quot;content is what matters&quot; advice. Of course the content is what it's all about, but I think that a great many people in academia underestimate the importance of presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the way people decide whether or not to read a paper. They look at the title. If that suggests that it's interesting to them, they read the abstract. If that's interesting enough they read the introduction and maybe the conclusion, and so on. That means that of the 4000 or so words in the paper, the five that make up the title are the most important. You're fully justified in spending as much time on the title as on 1000 words of the description of your method. The presentation of your paper is not just gloss, it determines the size of your audience. If your presentation is bad, your results have to be really exceptional to find even a small readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This translates directly to your Master's thesis. A nice cover shows that you care. What's more, the largest group of people that will come into contact with it, will only pick it up, look at it and put it back down again, without even really reading the title. Your cover illustration is the only opportunity you have of communicating with them and enticing them to read the title properly. From that, the summary, and from that the first paragraph of your introduction and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't mistake presentation for gloss. Academia is all about communication, and communication is worrying about the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T10:57:01.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9985" CreationDate="2013-05-17T13:19:03.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A related, but not truly duplicate, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9057/929&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just ask. Tell them you have been accept at X, but Y is your first choice. The admissions committee does not need much explanation since it happens all the time. Asking to speed up the process will not hurt your chances. They may not be able to speed anything up, but if they do/don't, they will not hold it against you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T13:19:03.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10008" CreationDate="2013-05-17T13:38:57.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not very. For example, Elsevier is a large publisher, but only still publishes a fraction of the total number of journals and articles in the world. By my count, they publish at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/title/a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2,797&lt;/a&gt; journals. They also market &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/electronic-products/scopus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed&#xA;  literature and quality web sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By my count again, and you may need a subscription to access this information, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=BrowseListURL&amp;amp;_type=title&amp;amp;_title=A&amp;amp;md5=fcab2d7552e90ca57f4fa29a391c7e48&amp;amp;applyBrowseFilters=Apply&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3230&lt;/a&gt; journals indexed by Scopus. So unless Elsevier publishes 87% of all the journals in the world, Scopus is missing some. In fact we know they are since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/num_titles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pubmed&lt;/a&gt; indexes 5,064 journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, most &quot;reputable&quot; publishers spend the money and/or produce quality products that they get included in the major indices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T13:38:57.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10014" CreationDate="2013-05-17T13:49:12.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://academictree.org/&quot;&gt;Academic Tree&lt;/a&gt; qualifies as a general academic genealogy project. It includes the fields of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology, Linguisitcs, Primatology, History,&#xA;  Philosophy, Music, Law, Theology, Economics, Advertising, Ingestive Behavior,&#xA;  Physics, Chemistry, Oceanography, Drosophila Genetics,&#xA;  Fission, Yeast Genetics, Mycology and Fungal Genetics, Evolutionary&#xA;  Biology, Marine Ecology, Terrestrial Ecology, Developmental Biology, Cell&#xA;  Biology, Telomere and Telomerase, Infectious Disease, Neuropathology,&#xA;  Computational Biology, Science and Techology Studies, Biomechanics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;a href=&quot;http://neurotree.org/neurotree/&quot;&gt;neurotree&lt;/a&gt; subtree is the largest of the areas covered with 40,000 people. It allows me to trace my academic linage back to Jesus Christ (thanks to the philosophy tree) in a mere 88 steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T16:54:53.143" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T16:54:53.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10044" CreationDate="2013-05-17T14:03:52.437" Score="10" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that in Asian universities, there is a concept I am unfamiliar with: The monitor. The monitor here is not someone who monitors but rather one student, usually elected by the other students, to speak for the group and to perform administrative tasks. This is a position of leadership and signifies that this student is special (and might get preferential treatment from the teacher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my other university teaching experience (outside of Asia), I have never seen this. I'm wondering, is this common across Asia to have these 'monitors?' Is it common in other (non-Asian) parts of the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any insights on things to be concerned with (for someone new to the idea of monitors)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: It seems the monitor position starts in the earliest years (pre-K) and are not just at the university level but they also go up all the way to graduate-level classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T06:20:22.120" Title="How common are 'monitors' (class leaders)?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;group-dynamics&gt;&lt;asia&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10008" CreationDate="2013-05-17T17:17:50.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The precise extent of scholarly publishing is unknown, difficult to estimate, and the subject of some debate. That said, there is lots of evidence that &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScienceDirect&lt;/a&gt; are likely only the tip of the iceberg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is sort of the takeaway from an article I found in from &lt;a href=&quot;http://lj.libraryjournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Library Journal&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2004/02/technology/online-databases-online-scholarly-journals-how-many/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Databases-Online Scholarly Journals: How Many?&lt;/a&gt; (Google WebCache because the LJ copy seems gone) by Carol Tenopir and published in February 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, one of the best sources online is &lt;a href=&quot;https://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ulrichsweb&lt;/a&gt; which is a serials tracking website that is part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://proquest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProQuest&lt;/a&gt;. I just did a search for &quot;Academic / Scholarly&quot; and &quot;Journal&quot; and came up with more than 107,000 different results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T23:36:18.227" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T23:36:18.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9985" CreationDate="2013-05-17T17:23:58.210" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like everybody else is saying: &lt;strong&gt;Just Ask.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do it sooner rather later. Telling a university that you have an offer already will signal that other schools' further along in the process think you're great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And anyway, you have absolutely nothing to lose by asking. If they want you, they're not going to think it's annoying and will be afraid that will lose you to your other offer. If they don't want you, asking can't hurt. If they are on the fence, a signal that you're admittable will only help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T19:40:21.867" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T19:40:21.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10018" CreationDate="2013-05-17T17:37:25.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many students, there are strict guidelines that describe how a thesis can be formatted. If you're not restricted by guidelines, and if you have the time and inclination to have your thesis be a beautiful object, there's no reason not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the content matters much more than any amount of fancy layout, great presentation can make a difference. As in food, the first bite is always with the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T17:37:25.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10040" CreationDate="2013-05-18T05:03:05.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can provide details in Taiwan. I know the situations in many other countries in Asia are similar. Hopefully users from Asia on this board can confirm this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Taiwan, the role is called class leader in elementary school, middle school and high school. They are usually assigned by the teachers of the classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In college, it is called the class representative. The representatives are elected by the students. The length of the term usually is a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon entering college, students already select their major. The university groups all the students having the same major into one or more classes depending on the number of students (the standard class size is 50). &lt;strong&gt;They take all the required courses together if possible.&lt;/strong&gt; The students in the same class know each other very well. The class is like a big family. Naturally, you have a representative who speaks for the class and handles all the administrative matters. You also have a deputy representative in case the rep is not available. There are other students responsible for other duties such as purchase, sports, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rep gets elected usually because he/she is popular in the class or a good student. I would not say he gets preferential treatment from the professor/department because he is the rep. Sometimes it is the opposite. I once declined a rep nomination because I wanted to concentrate on my study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, being a rep can be advantageous. You learn how to be a leader. You learn how to communicate with other people who are sometimes superior, such as the professor, department chair or even the dean. Leadership is not something you can learn it all from the books. You have to do it. Two of the four reps in my college class are very successful in their late career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be much easier for the professor to talk to the class rep when he wants the whole class to do some unusual assignments. Once you can convince the rep it's the right thing to do, the rep would then pass the message to the whole class. You are more likely to get the cooperation from the students. I would not recommend you to use him very often, though. He represents the class, not you. He would lose the trust from his classmates when he becomes your pet student. In general, &lt;strong&gt;the class representative concept is more like the department chair of a university department&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T06:20:22.120" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T06:20:22.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10046" CreationDate="2013-05-18T06:23:20.620" Score="15" ViewCount="3524" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper, I usually face the problem of deciding whether a sentence is cite-able or not. Let's say I am writing about optimization of an algorithm. And I used Java to implement it. So, in the introduction, I would say something like &quot;Java is a class based object oriented language...&quot;  This information is available in many java books and online tutorials. Does the ubiquity of the sentence make it un-citeable? Or do I cite that fact. I have read many prominent papers that simply use that sentence without quoting a source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do we only cite numerical facts that go like &quot;Java is x times slower/faster than c++&quot;. I once read an article that says &quot;when writing a paper, you should cite every sentence that you happen to read some where.&quot; But this is unrealistic; and we might have almost as many citations as the number of sentences in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any rule that dictates on what is quotable or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6333" LastEditorUserId="6333" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T15:18:38.123" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T06:10:33.740" Title="How to decide whether a statement requires citing a reliable source" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10045" CreationDate="2013-05-18T06:51:27.357" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are rules on what requires citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, publicly-known information (widely known, common knowledge, etc.) does not need to be cited. Your sentence about Java being class-based would fall under this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information which is based on someone else's work (analysis, research, pictures, etc.), whether quoted or paraphrased, should always be cited. Your sentence about Java being x time slower/faster than C++ would fall under this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsure, cite it to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T06:51:27.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10045" CreationDate="2013-05-18T08:47:16.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends of the audience at which is aimed the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, in a scientific document you must explicitly list the basis for all your assumptions, and defend them. If the correctness of the thesis described in your article depends on fact $A$, then you either prove $A$ or give a reference to someone who proved $A$. In practice scientific reports skip some references assumed to be common (e.g. definition and properties of the logarithm): it used to be important to save printing space (not so true now with electronic proceedings), it stays important to keep the article uncluttered. Given the reasons for skipping some references, there cannot be any absolute rule about which ones to skip: the decision depends of the audience you are aiming at, and in particular of your evaluation of the knowledge in common between you and them: put references when they are necessary &lt;em&gt;to your audience&lt;/em&gt; (and do not clutter your article when they are not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, your sentence about Java being class-based would be unwelcome (in addition of unnecessary) in an article aimed at researchers in computer science, because this fact is supposed to be well known (and agreed upon). But it might be welcome in an article aimed at students (in computer science or not), or researchers in other fields than computer science (e.g. biologists). On the other hand, the fact that Java is slower than C++ might evolve in time (e.g. java compilers getting better), or be argued against (different type of applications):  you should always give a reference for this kind of statement if you did not argue or prove it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastEditorUserId="1318" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T06:10:33.740" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T06:10:33.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10050" CreationDate="2013-05-18T10:06:05.727" Score="47" ViewCount="4804" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Editor in Chief of a journal ought to be proud of their journal and consider it a good place to publish their own work, so not publishing in the journal that they edit suggests a lack of confidence in the journal.  On the other hand, is publishing regularly in your own journal ethical?  Can we reasonably expect the editor in chief's papers to be handled with the same rigour as for anybody ese?  Wouldn't there be implicit pressure on the action editor to accept a paper that might be rejected had it come from an external author?  It seems to me that it would be better to be seen to be fair by publishing elsewhere (or al least only publishing occasionally in ones own journal), but I was wondering what the balance of opinion was on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="2827" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T13:45:53.163" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T22:04:23.693" Title="Should an Editor in Chief publish in their own journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-05-18T10:36:48.910" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are of course no laws against it but as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) myself I would never do (or at least think twice about doing) it, particularly not as first author. My reasoning behind this is that it could reflect badly on both me but particularly the journal and send signals that all is not necessarily well. I have to point out that in my case we are two and we have an agreement that we do not touch manuscripts from our own spheres of influence (basically departments). Nevertheless, what actually happens within a journal and how people perceive it are two different things and it is my opinion that as EiC one must safeguard the journals reputation as objective. So if the community expresses some form of trust in the editor to publishing in their own journal this could be perfectly fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when an EiC publishes in &quot;their&quot; journal it is not wrong but potentially &quot;dangerous&quot; and can be perceived as poor judgement. They would jeoparize the journals reputation. So even if thetre is no legal problems there are ethical problems. I doubt anyone would have second thoughts about the quality of a journal if the editor does not publish there, after all if the editor has a solid reputation, associating with a bad journal would jeopardize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I see any exceptions? Well, co-authorship may be less serious but in the end even that should be avoided. I also think that if an editor publishes a single paper in a thematic issue of the journal (where someone else has suggested a theme) and this is the only paper by that editor in the journal for years, I would not think much about it. Obviously frequency of publications is also a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, I consider it unwise under most circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7004" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T22:04:23.693" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T22:04:23.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2013-05-18T11:09:28.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not quite the same thing, but I was once requested by the EIC of a journal to add some references to papers published in the journal in question to a paper that I had submitted, explicitly to promote the journal by improving its impact factor.  I did not comply with this request; the papers that were relevant were already in the reference list.  Sadly this sort of thing is becoming increasingly common (as is manipulation of review times etc.), although rejecting a paper on such grounds would be taking things to another level!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T11:09:28.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10045" CreationDate="2013-05-18T12:08:59.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are not rules but the way I think about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if the information is basic introductory text book material, you may not need to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the information can be found in advanced text books (not intro-level), cite a book that you are familiar with and that supports that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the informaiton is only found in research papers obviously those are what you reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yu are uncertain, you simply quote a higher level: uncertain if it goes into (1.) then do (2.) etc. It is worse to miss referencing than providing a citation/reference &quot;too much&quot;. In the worst case someone might suggest removing the refence/citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T12:08:59.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-05-18T15:21:09.583" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been only a few times in my career when I've run across an EIC who regularly published in his/her own journal, and in each case it looked like something was seriously wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first constraint, it's absolutely unethical for editors to play any role whatsoever in evaluating their own papers.  I.e., they should not suggest referees, solicit or have access to referee reports, participate in the decision making, or even discuss the decision with other editors.  Furthermore, this lack of involvement should be made clear to the referees when the reports are solicited and to the public (for example, by including a paragraph in the journal's web site about how editorial submissions are handled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, there should be strong safeguards.  For example, one journal I'm associated with takes the following approach.  If the editor in chief submits a paper, the journal's sponsoring organization appoints a few associate editors to evaluate the submission anonymously and make individual decisions.  If any one of them recommends rejection, then the paper is rejected and the rest of the editorial board never finds out who rejected it.  This avoids the danger of feeling pressure from the EIC, but it leaves open the possibility of favoritism or bias, perhaps even subconsciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it's difficult to avoid bias and impossible to avoid the appearance of bias, editors should rarely submit papers to their own journals, and EICs almost never.  Aside from special cases such as issues in honor of someone, the only time I think it really looks good for an EIC to submit a paper is if the paper is amazing, far above the usual level of the journal, and it's clear that the EIC is trying to raise the journal's profile by sending a paper there that could easily have been published somewhere more prestigious.  This is risky: it can come across as condescending or self-aggrandizing, it looks strange if done more than very rarely, and others may disagree on how amazing the paper is.  However, if the paper is indeed great then it at least avoids controversy over whether acceptance was appropriate.  The really dangerous scenario is borderline-appropriate papers, where reasonable people could disagree about acceptance and it's natural to wonder whether favoritism might have tipped the balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T15:21:09.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-18T16:35:45.150" Score="32" ViewCount="2627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a little statistics about my review decisions. I found out that I reject way more papers than I accept. I honestly try to accept the reviewed papers, I read them carefully and my review are always long. But most papers I review are low quality (in my opinion). Some colleagues told me that I should be more gentle in my review, as this will affect my profile somehow (negatively of course). Is that true ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: should I adapt the toughness of my review to the quality of the journal/conference I am reviewing for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T06:59:10.457" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T06:59:10.457" Title="Will rejecting more papers than I accept reflect negatively on me as a reviewer?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-05-18T16:49:07.443" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many more papers are submitted than accepted at top venues/journals, so statistically speaking, you should reject more than you accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harsh reviews are ultimately good for science, so long as they filter the crap and help improve papers with potential but are not there yet. If your review is able to help the PC/editors decide whether or not to accept the paper and help the authors improve their paper, then you are doing your job correctly. If you are harsh but unhelpful, then you need to change your approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your reviews can change a bit depending on the venue. If you are reviewing for a workshop, your goal would be to help choose papers that are likely to generate interesting discussion. This is especially the case if there is no associated official publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T16:49:07.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-05-18T16:50:02.947" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is of course impossible to say if you are overly critical. But, some statistics might help. With prestigious journals the rejection rate might be 90% (very high in any case). I am Editor in Chief of a smaller journal and we have a steady 50% rejection rate. The extremely high rejection rates in some journals come from limited space, in my case we simply impose strict guidelines and the rejections come from reviewers assigned by associate editors. So the rate in our case is fairly certainly upheld by what the community sees as acceptable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you end up finding you reject large numbers (at least around 50%) I would not say that it is out of the ordinary. I do not of course know what typical rejection rates are in the journals for which you do reviews, so the number may of course vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So getting to the question of how this affects you. I very much doubt that you get a negative effect by being a fair reviewer. If you do many reviewes over time and you are not considered fair, I am sure you would notice the numbers of appointments dropping. If you get re-invited by the same journals/editors, I think they appreciate your work and I would take that as a sign that you do fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you try to adapt to the journal? In general, no. You should apply your knowledge and understanding to provide a critical review of the submitted work. An editor should take your comments along with comments from one or more additional reviewers and provide a recommendation to the authors. You are not solely responsible in this process! If the journal is such that it publishes material with which you are familiar but where its audience is in a  different field, you may consider handling the paper differently, but obviously not ignoring errors and misconceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T18:15:30.593" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T18:15:30.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-05-18T16:59:36.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals allow you to see the reviews provided by the other reviewers of the paper, which is often a good way of monitoring your own performance as a reviewer.  If you are harsh to an unreasonable degree, I suspect that editors will stop sending you papers to review, so if they are still sending them, that is an indication of sorts that there is not a fundamental problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you are happy that you are applying a standard that you feel is reasonable, I'd stick with it.  You probably review too few papers to know whether you are being unduly harsh or that you have just been sent a series of bad papers by random chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I get a rejection, I am generally fine provided that the reviewer does a good job of explaining what they (incorrectly ;o) feel the problem is and what needs to be done to the paper for them to be happy with it, in sufficient detail for me to be able to do so if it is actually possible.  The problem I have with negative reviews is when they make vague criticisms that can't be addressed as there is not enough information to actually act on, or where reviewers raise additional issues on the second review to reject your paper that could have been raised on the first review.  So if your reviews are detailed and constructive, they are probably good reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, it is ultimately in the author's best interests not to publish poor work, and if it can be usefully improved, then the reviewer is doing them a favour in not accepting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T16:59:36.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-18T17:00:40.240" Score="24" ViewCount="6377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was on an internship with professor A at University B in China. We were working on a computer science project. During the internship I implemented professor A's idea and got some results. Three weeks ago I finished a paper draft and left University B for a new internship. Me and professor A were planning to submit the paper draft to a conference (deadline: May 20). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until yesterday (May 17), the order of authors was: me, professor A, other students &amp;amp; collaborators in the lab... And professor A had no objection with that. However, last night I received an email from him. He said he wants to be the first author... His reason was for intellectual properties and patent issues. My understanding is that because I was merely an intern at University B, if the first author was me, it would cause IP troubles for him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I feel deceived. But, should I feel like this?&lt;/strong&gt; I was counting on a first-author paper because I'm planning to apply for a PhD program in the US. One paper may not mean a lot to someone who's published a lot. But for someone who hasn't published yet, it means something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking on the Internet, I found something that might explain professor A's motivations: &#xA;In China specifically, corresponding authors are often underappreciated by universities and research institues. This might be the case for University B. Given professor A is relatively young, he may want first authorship for promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary of my questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I go discuss with professor A and try to persuade him to let me be the first author?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I want to apply for a PhD program in the US, would being the first author be more helpful or being the second author is as well helpful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My affiliation for the paper has always been University B. I didn't mention my current university or internship in any sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I emailed back to professor A yesterday, saying I think I should be the first author, because I did most of the work; because the idea was originated from him he should be the corresponding author. He replied this morning, saying he agree with what I said. He explained that because I was doing an internship in his lab and not a student of University B, putting me as the first author could cause IP and patent troubles for University B... So this problem is fixed now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="773" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T07:35:16.627" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:15:26.660" Title="Mentor trying to be first author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10059" CreationDate="2013-05-18T17:13:50.207" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer to whether you should feel deceived is yes and no. Strictly speaking, if you have an agreement, it should stand. That is the easy part of the answer. Then comes different traditions and personalities, which makes the territory almost impossible to negotiate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could simply send a reply stating you disagree with the reordering. The point of having intellectual property involved is certainly true and merits co-authorship. The problem is of course the weight between your work and the original idea. If you have worked on this on your own without any help or assistance, first authorship seems clear. If you have had help through discussions etc. through the process it becomes less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end the matter will be up to you, if you think you will gain much from taking the fight. You can ask to add something in the acknowledgement to make clear who contributed what. Another possibility, if the paper is mostly about your work, is to add yourself as corresponding author (which can be different from first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T15:15:26.660" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:15:26.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10059" CreationDate="2013-05-18T17:43:14.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible the professor is trying to take advantage of you, but it would help to clarify things if you would expand on your answer to include the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is implied that the paper is based on Professor A's idea. What this a full-blown idea, or just the kernel of something. Or, putting it differently, did he just point you in the general direction of something, or was this a relatively finished idea that just needed to be worked out in detail? Was this an idea you expanded on, or significantly improved? Did he provide significant intellectual input while the project was ongoing, or did he leave you to your own devices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you talked about implementation. Does this mean code, or something else? Did Professor A participate in the implementation in any way? If not, did he look at the implementation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the paper itself? Did he participate in a substantial way in the writing of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is that you did most or all of the work, and did much of the working out of the idea, then it sounds like you should be first author. If he contributed substantially, it is less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paradigm in general is that the junior person gets the first authorship, because they need it for career reasons. Most people are willing to abide by this. I know someone whose PhD adviser put himself as first author on his (the students) papers, and the person in question regrets it now. If you go along with this, you may also regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't work for this person, the question is whether you have to do what he says for some reason. If you are hoping for a good reference, a first authorship on a paper might be worth more than a reference. Does he have any other hold on you? Do you need his further input on the project, or are you hoping to publish further papers with him? Also (perhaps not very important but serves to indicate tone) was the email polite or not? Personally, I think a conversation would have been more appropriate than an email in the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I find the argument about intellectual properties and patent issues less than compelling, but it would also help if you could say more about how these things work in your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T17:43:14.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10065" CreationDate="2013-05-18T17:50:17.937" Score="54" ViewCount="29034" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10059/mentor-trying-to-be-first-author&quot;&gt;Mentor trying to be first author?&lt;/a&gt;, I got the impression that (at least in the writers' field) the &quot;corresponding author&quot; flag could carry an implied meaning, such as &quot;did more work than the other authors&quot;, or &quot;is a more senior author&quot;. Is it the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in mathematics, a field where we typically sort the authors alphabetically, and I've never given any importance to that role (apart from &quot;this author is willing to answer a couple of extra e-mails, if needed&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2020-09-22T12:43:31.630" Title="Does &quot;corresponding author&quot; carry an implied meaning?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2013-05-18T18:15:09.060" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure it can be used for many meanings. I will provide the ones with which I am familiar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, corresponding author means it is the person to contact if you have questions about the research. The reasons for this is what varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first author(s) are not employed at a university or are students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first author has done much of the legwork but someone else (a senior scientist) has provided the original idea, funding etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone is specifically responsible for a project in which the work for the publication has been made. There may be legal requirements that a specific person should handle correspondence, for example in a company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some fields the most important author is not first, in which case the flag can be used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you will see first authors stating they are corresponding author. This is mostly implied by default in fields where the first authorship means also doing most of the intellectual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are additional examples which hopefully are added by additional posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="115262" LastEditDate="2020-09-22T12:43:31.630" LastActivityDate="2020-09-22T12:43:31.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10059" CreationDate="2013-05-18T19:33:18.050" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really understand what the motivation here for the professor is. Since you did all of the work for this paper at University B, you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; list your new affiliation (whether it's an internship or another school) as an &quot;active&quot; affiliation for this paper. It &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be listed as a &quot;current address,&quot; but not as an active address for this paper. In that way, the professor still gets credit for your work, with your affiliation showing as being part of his group. (I suspect that the professor's concern is that, if you are at another institution and list &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; as your address, he won't get credit for his work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that if you are not going to present the paper at the conference, he may have felt it was in his interests to list himself as a first author. How appropriate this is I have to leave to the CS community to judge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, the first author &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be the person who has made the largest contributions to both the research and the writing of the paper. Deviations from this need to have a very good foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T21:42:22.577" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T21:42:22.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2013-05-18T21:49:25.407" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Corresponding authorship is often used to signal the person who is the primary contributor to the work. I've seen this in fields like economics where there is a relatively strong norm of listing authors alphabetically. In these cases, the primary contributor is signaled with the &lt;em&gt;corresponding author&lt;/em&gt; designation. I've seen people go so far as to list corresponding authorship on their CVs when they list their papers although I think this is far from the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fields where authorship is not simply alphabetic, I've seen the &lt;em&gt;corresponding author&lt;/em&gt; designation used to flag the second author as a major contributor because, even in cases of so called &quot;dual-first authorship,&quot; &lt;em&gt;somebody's&lt;/em&gt; name has to come first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In lots of other fields, it caries little signal value and really is just used to mark the person who is in the best position to answer questions about the work. Of course, the person marked as best able to answer question will, mostly likely, be someone who was involved in a wide variety of the research reported in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T21:49:25.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-05-19T04:45:32.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on the same path as of yours. I am thinking of taking IELTS test. Well actually I did Electronics and Comm bachelors and worked for 2 years in embedded systems and now planning for physics masters.To bridge the gap, I am right now taking courses in coursera.org and edx.org. Perhaps you can consider this too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7120" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T04:45:32.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2013-05-19T11:20:10.580" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science, &quot;corresponding author&quot; does not carry any implied meaning related to who is the primary contributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coauthors are listed in alphabetical order. The corresponding author might be, for example, the coauthor who took care of the interaction with the publisher, or a coauthor with a fairly permanent mailing address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In pre-prints, conference abstracts, etc. we do not usually mention any corresponding author. This is just a piece of information that is required by journal publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no prestige related to it. Certainly you will not list this kind of information in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T11:20:10.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-05-19T12:20:45.473" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important thing to be aware of, is that (as far as I can judge) editors tend not to send papers on which they have a bad first impression to experienced people. It follows that junior researchers tend to receive a relatively large proportion of demands to review papers that are below average. That might explain your feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T12:20:45.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10059" CreationDate="2013-05-19T14:05:54.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I go discuss with professor A and try to persuade him to let me be the first author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least you would like him to explain to you why he changed his mind. He had no objection with you being the first author in the first place. Then he sent you e-mail saying he wants to be the first author a few days before the submission deadline. There must be some important reason for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intellectual properties and patent issues make some sense to me since you are no longer with University B. They might cause some trouble for Prof. A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not convinced the corresponding authorship in your case makes a difference. First authorship does matter in China if you are also a professor at the same level, say both of you are assistant professors. He could be looked down because you made more contribution than he did. But, you are an intern. He can explain to others that you did all these under his supervision. I think he would actually earn extra credits by helping interns/students to publish papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the same suspicion as aeismall does. Your active affiliation may be an issue for Prof. A. Which institute will you represent when the paper is presented at the conference? Who will present the paper? I think these questions are his concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After talking to some researchers knowledgeable about the corresponding authorship in China, I learned more about the issue. Some authors don't want to be the corresponding author because they are busy with other research interests. Some are just shy away because English writing is hard for them. Some are interested in the role because they would be more widely known in his area. In most cases, the first author or the one who makes the most contribution to the paper is the corresponding author. So far, no one is able to explain to me why corresponding authors are underappreciated. It seems to have little to do with your issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T06:57:41.107" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T06:57:41.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-05-19T16:38:12.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to points made in other answers, and strengthening Dave Clarke's first sentence: not only the best, but even &quot;medium-good&quot; journals receive far more &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; submissions than they could possibly publish ... at least within the traditional &quot;page limit&quot; constraints, and possibly within some tacit constraint about appearing sufficiently selective. (That is, even if all the papers were quite good, a journal that publishes 10,000 pages a year will be suspect...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the job of &quot;editor&quot; tends to degenerate into trying to find reasons to reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There simply are not enough &quot;prestigious&quot; journals to publish all the (good!) work done by all the good young people... who now can typeset things much faster and get them submitted. (In contrast, pre-TeX, pre-internet, getting something sufficiently presentable to send to a journal was much more of a hassle... Also, the number of researchers has grown much faster than the number of good journals, at least in my field, mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to the literal question: as others have said, indeed, try to be constructive and helpful, rather than merely a gatekeeper. At the same time, you cannot count on corrective feedback from editors if you are &quot;too harsh&quot;, because they may not realize this, and in fact have incentive not to worry about that exigency, because you are making their job easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one should note that in recent times many respectable journals explicitly declare to referees that they, the referees, are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; responsible for &lt;em&gt;correctness&lt;/em&gt; of an article. It is supposedly the author's responsibility. This is obviously strange, but can be understood when we realize that the gatekeeper function of journals, editors, and referees is at least as important as the scientific function... as disillusioning as that might be. But it does explain situations that are otherwise baffling and counter-intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T16:38:12.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-05-20T01:48:24.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to chime in with a slightly dissenting answer - I think it's perfectly acceptable for an EiC to publish in their own journal, given some caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think they should be very careful in doing so, and the journal should have a mechanism for handling their submissions that doesn't involve their input in any way - one of the other answers mentions a panel of reviewers to evaluate whether or not the paper gets over the &quot;editorial interest&quot; hurdle, or possibly purely anonymous review. The reasons I think that being the EiC alone is not cause to not submit to your own journals are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Publish elsewhere&quot; doesn't necessarily work - first, you've cut the number of journals by one, and for some specialty fields, that's a rather big deal. Additionally, the EiC of a journal is likely working in a field that is particular suited to that journal - &quot;publish elsewhere&quot; forces scholarship into potentially awkward fitting publications for the sake of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. I'd much rather any such risk be addressed head on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about collaborators? For fields where papers often have one or two authors, perhaps this is more clear, but my field routinely has papers with a great many more authors than that. Is any study that recruits one of the finest minds in their field (presumably) then inevitably doomed not to be able to publish in the journal that might fit their work best? What about their graduate students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many journals are society journals - you are effectively denying a scholarly society the easiest access to the work of one of their most prominent members (again, presumably). Yes, it could get published elsewhere. But there's no promise I &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, drawing a hard line and saying &quot;No&quot; is counterproductive - I'd rather have a journal come out with a clear and open policy that says &quot;This is how we handle submissions from our editors&quot; - all of them, than to issue blanket bans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T01:48:24.353" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10078" CreationDate="2013-05-20T02:47:55.493" Score="4" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate working on a small project with an esteemed scientist, whom I met through a connection. I'm communicating via email due to distance. The problem is that I'm having a lot of troubles with this project, and the last time I asked him a question he just told me to re-read the information he sent me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to tell him that &lt;em&gt;it doesn't make sense&lt;/em&gt; (I think he made an error), but to do so without appearing arrogant or ignorant. He's intimidating and it always seems like he's two seconds away from declaring me incompetent. Yet, I am very interested in his field and this project could yield a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what to do; should I just keep asking questions (if so, how do I word them in a way that shows that I'm not just being lazy), or find a way to drop the project? I don't want to close doors on future collaborations when I'm more knowledgeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6071" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T03:44:25.573" Title="How to talk to a project advisor as an undergrad?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10076" CreationDate="2013-05-20T03:37:34.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to tell him that it doesn't make sense (I think he made an error), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to write an e-mail to him to explain the error you found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do re-read the information he sent you earlier before you write the e-mail. Verify the error is indeed an error. Then write the e-mail in concise manner. Explain the error in details, step by step. Don't just say there is an error. Use evidence, theory to support your claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, etiquette is important. However, this has nothing to do with arrogance or ignorance. It has everything to do with finding the truth. Every scientist I have met would like to know any error found before the research project is finished, the earlier the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T03:37:34.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10076" CreationDate="2013-05-20T03:44:25.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think your advisor made an error, then I would suggest you figure out how to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; he made an error. This is the first step to showing someone they've made an error without being ignorant or arrogant (the rest follows from general customs about politeness, but you absolutely must do this first bit. He supposes, presumably in good faith, that he proved something to you; the &quot;burden of proof&quot; that he's wrong now lies in your hands). Besides, this is a good exercise. Lots of things don't seem like they make sense until you yourself figure out how to make them make sense to you. This can be a lot of work. This act of &quot;hacking&quot; someone else's grand idea until it makes sense to me is how I spend most of my time. Thankfully this often leads to totally new ideas and directions that the first guy didn't see (or thought too trivial or obviously wrong to mention, yes that happens too...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that, in very many fields, undergraduates &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; actually extremely frustrating to work with. They don't yet speak the language, or have the baseline knowledge that all of your colleagues share. But nonetheless, this person is not the ideal advisor if he lacks the patience to put up with a lot of questions -- this is &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt; normal behavior for an undergraduate advisee, totally to be expected and many advisors find the interactions quite rewarding!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand though, you have some hard questions to ask yourself. Basically, you say that you want to ask questions without sounding lazy, but you must be honest with yourself about whether or not you are in fact asking lazy questions. The research process (again, at least in fields I'm familiar with) is most emphatically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;do exactly what some famous guy told you to do.&quot; It generally involves painfully slogging through material that &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; really understands and proving everything you think you know to yourself repeatedly, and then to others, and then occasionally having it pointed out that you made a really silly assumption, or that some obscure paper already solved everything you had set out for. Again, the point is to create new knowledge, and so you have to know your tools inside and out. In fact, if your advisor is explaining &lt;em&gt;anything at all&lt;/em&gt; clearly and to your satisfaction, what he is explaining is, by definition, old knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6820" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T03:44:25.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T03:53:55.417" Score="8" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that the trendiness of your area of work is one of the important factor that has am impact your chances of getting job in academia. How far is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how do I decide what areas are trendy and what areas are not in the field I'm interested that is mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T11:24:17.127" Title="How does your area of research affect your chances of getting job in academia?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-05-20T04:21:11.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; difficult, almost impossible, to enter into a good graduate program in the US with an undergraduate program in engineering from India. So, instead of preparing for the GRE, you should try to get into the Masters program in Math at &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isical.ac.in/~deanweb/sample2013.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISI&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmi.ac.in/admissions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMI&lt;/a&gt; or maybe at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gate.iitd.ac.in/jam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IIT's&lt;/a&gt;. If you're interested in physics you should try to get into a Masters physics program at IIT through JAM. So, you should start preparing for their entrance tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to choose either physics or math because preparing for both the entrance tests at the same time can be really difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you asked about grades and courses I think these pages will give you a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&amp;amp;t=1847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&amp;amp;t=1847&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=1003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=1003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=685&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T06:42:27.423" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T06:42:27.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T03:33:10.473" Score="9" ViewCount="6821" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to enrol in a mathematics PhD program with a bachelor degree in Business Administration? Have you heard of someone doing something similar and if yes, how did they do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a BBA student. I found that I love mathematics after taking some analysis courses and want to keep on studying mathematics and doing research. However, since I didn't really enjoy studying BBA, I have a poor a GPA and I suspect I won't be able to enrol in a competitive mathematics PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have some background in analysis, including metric space topology, some basic differential manifold, functional analysis, real analysis and of course some other basic math courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is the best way to continue my academic career in mathematics coming from an unrelated field?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="johnny" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T13:57:37.773" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T13:57:37.773" Title="Is is possible to study mathematics PHD with another bachelor degree like Business Administration?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-08T11:27:53.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10079" CreationDate="2013-05-20T04:58:12.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trendiness can be factor, but a much more important factor is what needs the hiring department has. If they're chock full of topologists, it doesn't matter how &quot;trendy&quot; your work in topology is: there's a good chance they might be looking to expand in other areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if they're looking in your area, then being at the cutting edge can't hurt. The danger of course is timing: trends rise and fall quickly, and what might be trendy right now might not be so in a year or two (maybe in mathematics, trends move more slowly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd argue that trendiness, while one potential factor, is not a universal key factor at all. Every department has their own needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards your second question, usual measures of &quot;trendiness&quot; include the relative frequency of publication in that subarea. In CS, it's relatively easy to determine this via conference acceptances, but in math I'm not sure how you'd go about measuring this frequency. It also helps to attend big meetings and listen to where the buzz is. An advisor can also be helpful in this regard (especially if they're pre-tenure and need to keep track of trends themselves :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T04:58:12.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9769" CreationDate="2013-05-20T05:39:36.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can share my personal experience as it relates to your question. I am 42 years old and hav decided to return to the world of academia to pursue a PhD in Computational Science part-time after earning my BS twenty years ago in Computer Science and Math. My wife and I have been married twenty years and we have four children ranging in age from six to eighteen (the oldest is actually starting college in the fall at the same college I am attending). Oh yeah, I have a full time management job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other posters have commented, time management is a must. It takes a lot of planning; we had to work out a schedule of who is going to bathe at what time, what time dinner is, what time each child gets help with homework, and so on. And as one person mentioned, it means not starting your class work until the family tasks are dealt with - even if it is 10 PM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still in graduate school, but have a few real world bits of advice to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research your program's requirements on completion time and lay out your class schedule ahead of time. We had to submit a proposed course of study at the beginning. Our program had a time limit of ten years, and I paced myself to finish in seven. This leaves a few years of breathing room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for any residency requirements. The program I am in requires two consecutive semesters &quot;in residency&quot;. Basically you have to take a full course load (nine hours) for two semesters. My plan is to do those with my Dissertation hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a good advisor who has a schedule that works with yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honestly I have found the coursework easier overall. This might be a maturity factor and not procrastinating as much as I did as an undergrad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your employer. My boss is pretty understanding, and I can deal with a lot of work-related tasks in the evening. This gives me the freedom to go to campus to deal with homework and projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't forget your family! Sometimes you have to make sacrifices, and it is easy to cut family time in order to finish an assignment. This is okay every once in a while but do not make it a habit! Don't forget to bring your wife flowers and tell her thank you for putting up with your late nights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your instructors. Tell them about your situation. I was pleasantly surprised by how understanding they are when I needed to turn an assignment in late because I had to go out of town for business or when I skipped class to take a child to the doctor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve your family! There are numerous family oriented activities on our campus, and the kids enjoy going to campus and seeing where you go to class, do research, etc. Let them meet some of your professors. Our campus has a movie theater and a Dunkin Donuts - two instant wins for my kids! My wife enjoys walking around campus and reminiscing about our years as undergrads and showing the kids where we went when we lived there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take advantage of every second of spare time. Going on a trip? Take a paper to read or notes to study. My two youngest kids love going to McDonald's to play on the indoor playground when the weather is bad outside. I carry my laptop and work on homework or research. Sometimes you also need to find a few minutes just to relax!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this bit of insight helps! Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7127" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T05:39:36.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9875" CreationDate="2013-05-20T05:53:20.387" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting into a top-20 university with a GPA of 7.1 from WBUT is an &lt;strong&gt;unrealistic goal&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead of trying to get into a phd directly you should think getting a M tech degree first in India. I'll suggest that you should sit for the GATE examination and take admission for M tech in &lt;em&gt;old&lt;/em&gt; IITs or IISc. Once you're in IITs or IISc, maintain a &lt;em&gt;very good gpa&lt;/em&gt; and try to do some very good research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To just give you a hint how difficult it is, even students from IISc (which is the best institute in India) with GPA of 6.5/8 with publications don't get easy admissions in top-10 programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After getting your Mtech from IITs or IISc you will be in a much much better position to apply for Top-20 phd programs in Computer Science. Many faculty members of IITs and IISc have got their phds from top-20 universities. So, they can give you very good letters of recommendation as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T08:56:31.250" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T08:56:31.250" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10079" CreationDate="2013-05-20T06:51:37.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you work in an area of mathematics where big theorems are currently being proven. That usually means that lots of moderate theorems are also being proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways to see what these areas are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to national conferences; for example attend the (US) Joint Math Meetings and go to the hour-long invited talks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to your department colloquium every week, if you have one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browse through the tables of contents for recent issues of the &lt;em&gt;Annals of Mathematics&lt;/em&gt;, and see what areas are getting lots of papers published. (This is a sign not only that these areas are &quot;trendy&quot;, but also that they're seeing significant ongoing progress.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at colloquium schedules for top-10 institutions, and/or institutions similar to where you hope to get hired. See what kinds of topics the speakers are lecturing about, i.e., what kinds of topics the professors there want to learn about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browse the Math Jobs Wiki, click through to the web pages of successful job candidates, and skim their papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(The most important) If you are in grad school, and have not yet chosen an advisor, find out whose students have gotten jobs similar to what you hope to get, and/or are doing interesting work now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T06:51:37.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T07:57:17.947" Score="2" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second-year undergraduate majoring in mathematics. In my first year of studies, I didn't do really well on my exams and therefore my results were not good, with a GPA at around 2. I didn't really put time into it, but when I started learning advanced probability, I found that I am interested in it and want to study more and am even thinking of doing research. Also I think I have found my way to study math as I didn't quite do before. In that semester, I got 2 A+. In my school, I heard that people who apply for a master's degree normally have a first-class honors degree. Is there another way to get into more advanced study of math, even with a low GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7129" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T18:00:14.517" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T21:39:13.087" Title="Is there other way to get into more advanced study of math, with a low GPA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T08:46:01.683" Score="8" ViewCount="1188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes read student assignments  where the grammar and writing style is poor. Paragraphs don't really flow. Sentences go on for ever. The ordering of words is awkward. Instead of concisely introducing the subject of the sentence, it goes on forever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to be able to recommend resources to such students. Ideally, such a resources would be available online so I could just give them a link or two to some writing style and grammar materials with exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a good resource (preferably online) for teaching English speaking university students how to improve their writing style?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T16:41:32.843" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T16:41:32.843" Title="Resources for English speaking students with poor command of grammar and writing style" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T09:34:32.010" Score="6" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many, if not most, disciplines methods age, get old and eventually become more or less obsolete, in the sense that some other method perhaps using a different technology becomes common-practice for a particular type of experimentation. One such example could be Edman sequencing, which used to be &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; method for sequencing peptides, but is pretty much outdated nowadays, not because it does not work, but because it's costly in time and labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, these old/obsolete techniques are taught both at Masters and PhD level, primarily to give a deep understanding of the field, albeit being more theory than practice. &lt;em&gt;Are there any other benefits in learning/studying older methods, rather than only studying the state-of-the-art?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how often, if at all, such old methodologies come back (perhaps following a breakthrough in overcoming some original limitation) and regain popularity. &lt;em&gt;Are there known examples?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a follow-up; is such change in methodologies a phenomenon observed in experimental research, or are there equivalent scenarios in theoretical research as well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T14:52:17.430" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T20:03:14.457" Title="How often do techniques/methods that are considered old or obsolete become relevant again?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10093" CreationDate="2013-05-20T10:07:46.733" Score="19" ViewCount="1443" Body="&lt;p&gt;One subject I teach is also taught by another teacher at my university. Usually we do not both teach this subject during the same semester but sometimes we do. Students do not get to choose their teacher, the are assigned into one class or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has introduced a strange dynamic in that some of the other teacher's students have come to me asking for information about the subject, since they know I also teach it. So far, I've been quite hesitant to answer any such questions because I am worried about getting in between the other teacher and his students. I can imagine that I might have an answer that is different than the other teacher (perhaps my answer is wrong, perhaps my answer is right, and perhaps both of us are right but we have different ways of looking at a problem). The issue is compounded by the fact that I am from the West but the other teacher is Asian so there are cultural issues at play here (and I'm in Asia so it's not my culture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine this would be less of an issue in subjects like math where there is a specific formula but in management subjects the perspective of the teacher can change things significantly, especially if one teacher might be less strong in the subject than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should a teacher in this situation do? Refer the student to their teacher? If they feel they cannot get an acceptable answer then refer them to a search engine? Should I jump in if they feel they are lost and their teacher is not helping them understand (this seems like it could cause serious problems, even if handled well)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T04:37:12.840" Title="Getting in between another teacher and his student" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10079" CreationDate="2013-05-20T10:16:10.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the third point of Anonymous's suggestion, here's an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201011/rtx101101421p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Topical Bias in Generalist Mathematics Journals&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Joseph F. Grcar in the december 2010 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many branches of mathematics, the so-called &quot;generalist&quot; journals are perceived more prestigious and publish many of the best results. Typically they claim that they publish papers of the highest quality in all branches of mathematics. However, they don't necessarily accept papers from each field equally likely. In fact, as the linked article's figures clearly suggest, there are clear biases for/against certain branches if you count the papers of a certain topic published in generalist journals and compare the number with the total number of papers of the same kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since good generalist journals are among the most prestigious publication venues in many branches of mathematics, by looking at statistics like this, you may be able to detect prejudices about branches among mathematicians, which is mentioned in the linked article. So, if your definition of &quot;trendy&quot; is highly correlated with this type of prejudice (which I think it is because, all else being equal, the number of publications in prestigious journals in your CV increases your chance of getting a job in academia), it can be a fairly reliable measure of trendiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Annals of Mathematics Anonymous mentioned is definitely among the very top generalist journals. So checking the latest issues may tell you something about what's hot in mathematics now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big caveat, however, is that it only publishes 50 or so articles in each year. So, if you only look up in recent issues, your statistics can't be extremely reliable. Using a record of several years defies the purpose of knowing what's trendy right now, so you're in a bit of a conundrum. Making things more complicated, each generalist journal has their own bias as well; different journals tend to publish papers of different topics more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it might be better to take samples from multiple generalist journals which are considered among the top journals by many. Those journals typically publish an extremely small number of papers though. For example, the Journal of the American Mathematical Society published only 32 papers in 2011 (and 35 in 2010) according to ISI Web of Knowledge. Some prestigious generalist journals publish even fewer papers. (I'm not going to talk about which journals you should use for this purpose because it's inevitably controversial and subjective.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you want to check what kind of topic is discussed in a given journal, you can do that quite easily by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MathSciNet&lt;/a&gt;. The American Mathematical Society classified branches of mathematics and gave a code number to each branch. And they've been keeping track of publications in mathematics. Just search for the MSC code of your field with a specific journal in MathSciNet and see how many hits it returns. This way, you can see how trendy your field is as well as which prestigious generalist journal likes your kind of mathematics more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method doesn't always work equally well though, e.g., if you're interested in applied mathematics or mathematical sides of computer science, what the Annals of Mathematics loves nowadays may not be the most reliable measure that reflects what's trendy right now. Another example is when your field became fashionable relatively recently so there isn't a good catch-all MSC code yet. For instance, arithmetic combinatorics has seen a miraculous revival in recent years in mathematics. Ann. of Math. and other prestigious journals are publishing papers in this field, but there isn't a good MSC code to capture this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="7075" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T11:24:17.127" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T11:24:17.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10087" CreationDate="2013-05-20T10:17:53.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that this can be the source of great frustration for teachers, especially when they do not teach writing. However, writing is one of those things, like other communication skills, that I think we all need to teach (at least a little bit) if for no other reason that our students will fail if they cannot compose a well-reasoned essay, even if they understand the material from our subject quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of universities which provide very good source material for this. &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/&quot;&gt;Here is one from the US&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/index.htm&quot;&gt;Here is one from the UK&lt;/a&gt;. I have used materials from both (and many others) but I do not find that I can simply point the students to these sites and expect everything to work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As educators, sometimes we need to teach things which are more fundamental in nature. Unless your school has a 'writing center' so you can direct students there for help (my school does not). I find I need to spend 1-2 hours per semester to cover core writing issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T10:17:53.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-05-20T11:04:59.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to page 5 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/short%20guide%20to%20ethical%20editing%20for%20new%20editors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Short Guide to Ethical Editing by New Editors&lt;/a&gt; by the Committee on Publication Ethics,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Can editors publish in their own journal?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors should not be denied the ability to publish in their own journal, but they must not exploit their position. The journal must have a procedure for handling submissions from the editor or members of the editorial board that ensures that peer review is handled independently of the author/editor. This process should be detailed once the paper is published (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wame.org/wame-listserve-discussions/should-editors-publish-in-their-own-journal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wame.org/wame-listserve-discussions/should-editors-publish-in-their-own-journal&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in my experience, people tend to look down on editors who publish in their own journals.  The implication is that they published their papers in their journals because other journals wouldn't publish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T11:04:59.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-05-20T11:33:19.543" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first question is, why are you (the faculty) both teaching the same class at the same university without talking to each other?  I can understand the cultural differences, but this is even more of a reason to talk to your colleague about the class!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest (as posdef does in his comment) to talk to the other instructor about the class, offer to have him sit in on your class, and ask about collaboration.  You could also ask to sit in on his class if you'd like, but you need to be careful to phrase your request so it is clear that you're there to gain insight into his class and not to provide criticism.  I can't tell from your comment, &quot;...if one teacher might be less strong in the subject than the other&quot; if you believe he is the weak one or if you are, but regardless, you can both learn from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is in the best interest of both classes of students that you collaborate with the other instructor -- if both courses are listed as the same in the course catalog, the students should be able to expect that the class will cover roughly the same material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T11:33:19.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2013-05-20T11:34:54.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field of Physics, there seems to be no implied meaning - the 3 papers that I have got published recently, I have been the first and corresponding author, primarily due to, as Jukka and Peter have mentioned, to doing most of the legwork and having the responsibility for the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it can be seen as a logisitcs thing, where the corresponding author is the port-of-call during the proofing/editing stages by the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T11:34:54.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9899" CreationDate="2013-05-20T12:28:48.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that reading papers of a specific topic within my research, then looking at Google Scholar to track down similar articles helps.  I always have a relevant dictionary handy and write down questions related to the topic that I am not to sure about for follow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking regular breaks to reflect on the information is also useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T12:28:48.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T13:48:19.510" Score="18" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, I've been getting the impression that before I can conduct cutting edge research, I have to first master state of the art methods/techniques.  Often, this requires spending (i.e. wasting) lots of time trying to replicate the results that others have already established (i.e. make sure that I can do what others have done first before moving on to other territory).  When I try to master a new technique, I often find that it is extremely difficult because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research papers don't seem to disclose enough details to replicate their results easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no advisors/colleagues that are familiar with these methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emailing the corresponding authors with questions about specific details about their research tend to go unanswered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only advice i've been given thus far is simply to read and re-read the research paper and dissect every little detail until I figure it out.  But are there any other general strategies I can use to replicate others' results more quickly?  In particular, I'm looking for strategies for replicating numerical results that require very careful implementations of mathematical algorithms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:46:13.060" Title="How to replicate others' results quickly?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-05-20T13:54:49.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Edit]&lt;/strong&gt; I'm assuming the questions asked are not ones where there is a consensus about the answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the advice I give to students who come to me from the another instructors of the courses I also teach (sometimes the other instructors are teaching assistants): The person grading your exams is the other instructor, therefore it's in your best interest to get the answers from the other instructor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer sounds perhaps like we're brushing off the student, but if we contradict the other instructor, it won't help the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in the shoes of the other instructor. What if a student answered an exam question according to advice from the other instructor, but out of context, or according to another perspective. How would you grade it if you disagreed with the answer or point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I teach software analysis and design at an undergrad level. Some students rarely come to class and answer questions based on analysis or design methods they used before. Some get upset when I qualify all questions &quot;according to the process learned in class&quot; because they can't write any old answer from their past experience. One instructor's style or method could be different (not necessarily wrong). But much of the evaluation in a course is based on what the student learned in that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T15:41:27.640" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T15:41:27.640" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10086" CreationDate="2013-05-20T15:34:37.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees (at least in the US) are generally forgiving of low grades in your first year, especially if you (and your recommendation letters) tell a compelling story about hitting your groove/finding your passion for the material in your second year.  Keep your grades up, &lt;strong&gt;get some undergraduate research experience&lt;/strong&gt;, and you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T15:34:37.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-20T15:35:35.033" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhDs are not for everyone. That's why most top-tier schools have about a 50% retention rate, some closer to 25-30%. You need to discover what makes you passionate, and it might not be what a PhD will get you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is currently getting his Bachelor's degree. His father is a rocket scientist for NASA, so naturally he went into the Physics program. It took only a couple semesters of C's and D's for him to realize Physics isn't for him, so he switched to Computer Science. Then he realized he hates Math, so he wanted to switch majors again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this time, though, he has had a creative outlet. He makes things, sometimes out of leather, sometimes out of steel; the other day he came to class with a clay pot he'd just finished. Toward the end of this last semester he went through with changing his major one last time. He already has too many CS credits to give up on that major altogether, but he's dropping the Math minor that comes &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; and is picking up an Art minor instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen him happier than he is now. He found what he's passionate about, and it's not what his father did. You have to discover your passion. And it sounds like the job you had back home is just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T15:35:35.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T15:53:10.640" Score="10" ViewCount="3841" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper which, as an aside, talks about the design of a user interface on a particular piece of software, can one insert a (correctly labeled and referenced) screenshot of the software to help readers understand - or does that cause copyright issues? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I wouldn't use a photo unless I held the copyright, or a diagram - but I'm unsure of the legal position of a screenshot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3969" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T20:14:41.323" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T21:53:38.083" Title="Using a software screenshot in a paper" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10081" CreationDate="2013-05-20T16:00:03.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: &quot;yes, but it won't automatically be easy&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, every department of every school in every major has a set of preferences - things they like to see in an applicant. This list includes GPA, GRE, sometimes subject-specific GRE, specific coursework, specific reference letters, and the rarely-ever-listed undergraduate research/term papers that lots of people here give great advice about but that I didn't previously know was a 'thing'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking over the admittance pages of prospective programs can give you an idea of this at times. In your case, I looked at a few schools math departments I'm familiar with, and using this one as an example because its not terribly atypical (but you should research your own preferred institutions): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.wisc.edu/graduate/applying&quot;&gt;University of Wisconsin Mathematics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) A GPA of at least 3.0 overall and substantially higher in mathematics courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) 18 or more credits of mathematics beyond calculus. The 18 credits should include at least one semester of both rigorous analysis&#xA;  (sometimes called advanced calculus) and abstract algebra, and&#xA;  preferably two semesters. Advanced undergraduate courses in other&#xA;  topics further strengthen your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6) A “Supplemental Application Form” is required after submitting your&#xA;  online Graduate School application. It is important that you include&#xA;  all advanced mathematics courses you have completed, are currently&#xA;  enrolled in, or intend to take...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7) Three letters that address the question of mathematical promise.&#xA;  These letters should be from mathematics faculty, or other faculty&#xA;  familiar with the demands of graduate work in mathematics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now keep in mind that any published outlines are a &quot;wishlist&quot;, and they don't automatically toss anyone. But every area you don't fit requires explanation or some other counter-balancing factor. Some programs give a list of x requirements, then say they'll waive 1-2 of them without further explanation needed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are missing all of these, then you need to look at a different program, but you might find no program that's a fit. If this happens, that doesn't mean you can't do something, just that you might have to go about it sideways or backtrack a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are missing just a few things, like a course or two, some programs have probation where they'll tentatively admit you on the demand you complete X courses on your first semester and get at least Y GPA, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you might need to make arrangements to take advanced math courses at an undergrad/graduate level. It's harder to get financial aid for this sort of thing (you can't qualify for a Pell grant anymore, etc), but you can still get loans or pay for it outright. If you need this route, you need to talk personally with professors in advance to discuss what your goals are and make any possible arrangement to do extra work, write an academic research paper, etc. You need to find people you can have enough contact with to be willing to go to bat for you in writing strong reference letters if you don't already have math professors who are familiar with your past work. Join math clubs, go to math study labs, volunteer, whatever you can manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you go running off and doing any of this, however, you should make contact with math faculty at your present school and/or at a target school, and get an opportunity to talk with them about what you want to do and get their advice. Sometimes just showing &quot;mathematical promise&quot; can get a magic wand waived over your application, which maybe you already have - but only someone familiar with what you've done can tell you that. If you have a piece of mathematical &quot;best work&quot; from your most advanced class, bring it with you to such a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've gotten a few honest appraisals of where you stand, be kind to yourself in looking for programs that will fit YOU, not some imaginary ideal program for someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, one last piece of advice. Keep your mind open to hybrid possibilities. There are whole fields of study you might really like that you aren't aware of, including applied mathematics study offered by business schools, economic fields that emphasize mathematical theory and/or application, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we have to try to mold ourselves to fit an existing mold a little better, but sometimes its trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Talk to people and investigate the possibilities, get a clearer understanding of your relative shape, and seek out openings with geometry congruent to yours. Good luck in your journey!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T16:00:03.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10100" CreationDate="2013-05-20T16:01:22.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, but one major issue will be resolution. A screen shot will typically yield a very low resoluton image which for most journals will be too low (recommendations are ypically 300 dpi in the final published figure size, which is usually impossible to achieve with screenshots. I would therefore recommend to make use of any possibility to zoom the window and then make a screen shot of the window as large as possible on the screen. If you are designing your user interface as you state in the question you could consider making a mock-up of the interface that is identical in every respect but which is based on higher resolution graphics, vectorized or bitmap based. Since you have access to all the original graphics elemnts this should not be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T16:01:22.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10116" CreationDate="2013-05-20T16:29:34.143" Score="6" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to self-archive papers on my homepage in the institute where I was doing phd. I just noticed that my homepage and the reprints were removed -- that's normal, I'm not working in that institute anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can legally self-archive these papers. For example, J. Appl. Cryst. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.iucr.org/services/authorrights.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;allows authors&lt;/a&gt; to post reprints&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;on their own personal website, on their employer's website/repository&#xA;  and on free public servers in their subject area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the best &quot;free public servers&quot; to upload electronic reprints?&#xA;(IIUC arXiv is for pre-prints rather than post-prints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7135" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T06:34:56.660" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T06:34:56.660" Title="Where to upload a reprint (post-print) of my publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10100" CreationDate="2013-05-20T16:35:17.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're displaying the screenshot as part of a paper on user interface, the use of the screenshot will almost certainly fall under &quot;fair use.&quot;  Make sure you cite the software properly, and you should be all set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T16:35:17.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10108" CreationDate="2013-05-20T17:19:32.623" Score="32" ViewCount="3176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my masters and am currently working as a research assistant before starting a PhD in applied mathematics. I was doing some preliminary work for a possible project and derived some minor results which I find interesting, but in the end, we decided not to go ahead with the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still find the minor results interesting and thought of digging a little bit deeper by myself. However, since the group is no longer interested in this, I would have to do this by myself, unsupervised. Is this a very bad thing? Or a good learning experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a bad experience doing unsupervised research (wasted a lot of time for no results). However, I know that as a PhD student, I must eventually publish first-authored papers. How do I know when to make the switch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1190" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T19:59:28.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T13:19:47.120" Title="When should a student attempt unsupervised research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-20T18:09:34.207" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common thread - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Go rogue too soon/too late&amp;quot; in 10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D.&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Going-Rogue/134896&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Going Rogue at The Chronicle of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;. An excerpt from the first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early on, the advisor should be hands on, doling out specific topics and helping to craft early papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toward the end, the student should know more than the advisor about her topic. Once the inversion happens, she needs to &amp;quot;go rogue&amp;quot; and start choosing the topics to investigate and initiating the paper write-ups. She needs to do so even if her advisor is insisting she do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is getting the timing right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going rogue before the student knows how to choose good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions and a grumpy advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start seeing a &amp;quot;return&amp;quot; on an investment of time and hard-won grant money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their field. They should be capable of selecting and attacking research problems of appropriate size and scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have a lot of experience with unsupervised research (yes, usually &lt;em&gt;wasted a lot of time for no results&lt;/em&gt;), starting from high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, doing advisor's project is much safer (as, in some sense, (s)he is responsible for the big picture, references, judging which result is &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt;) and allows to forget about doubts (for good or bad) and concentrate on work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what I've discovered after 1.5 of my PhD (mostly &amp;quot;going rogue&amp;quot;) is that there are two important things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;asking experts (or peers), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;day-to-day collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you can have an expert &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a collaborator in the same person of your advisor, but as long as you are not afraid of talking to other people and have some knowledge in the topic, it shouldn't be hard to ask experts appropriate questions.&#xA;When it comes to collaboration - it may be trickier (but not if you locally have people with an interest overlap).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On contrary, working alone for months on a theoretical problem, with little feedback, may be very hard (both technically and psychologically). &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5790/49&quot;&gt;I've learnt it the hard way&lt;/a&gt;. It is not a problem for one research line, but it is when all research is done alone (may be inefficient and depressive, &lt;em&gt;perhaps&lt;/em&gt; unless you are in a &lt;em&gt;deep love&lt;/em&gt; with it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T13:19:47.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-20T18:09:39.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, the only restrictions are issues related to funding. If your funding is intended for you to work on a specific topic, then your primary efforts should be given to the designated topic. However, you can, if so motivated, pursue the research topic independently. In mathematics, this might not be such a huge issue, as the infrastructural demands are not so large (except for some applied math projects). However, in other disciplines, where this &quot;unsupervised research&quot; may require experimental supplies and other resources, this is a &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; bigger issue. In the latter case, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; obtain approval from the PI whose equipment, material, and other resources you will be using!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your time is &quot;unrestricted,&quot; in the sense that it is not tied to any particular project or program, then you should talk with your supervisor to see if you can use some of your &quot;normal&quot; time to devote to the &quot;side&quot; project. If you can, great; if you can't, then again, this needs to be &quot;on the side&quot;—beyond your main project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the question of doing &quot;first-authored&quot; research, well, that transition process, in many respects, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the goal of the PhD! If you are to be a successful researcher, then during your doctoral studies you will learn how to do research independently, and eventually unsupervised. (Moreover, you will hopefully also have the chance to learn how to supervise others!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T18:09:39.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-20T18:11:58.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessarily a bad thing to forge ahead on your own and it will certainly be a learning experience. It is definitely a good thing to try this, because it will demonstrate and help reinforce that you are an independent researcher, something which you need to be at the end of your PhD studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not without some &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the role of the supervision that would otherwise be provided is to improve your skills as a researcher and writer of scientific texts. Without this guidance, your skills at the end of your PhD may not be as good as they could be.  You may have gaps in your knowledge that would need to be filled. The presentation of scientific material in your writing may end up being suboptimal, because you won't have someone to proposed better ways of writing. And worse still, your ideas may not end up being the best they could be, because you won't have someone questioning them and your assumptions, ultimately forcing you to produce better versions of your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen it before. Some highly independent students I've seen in action fail to follow recognised mathematical conventions, produce new notations for existing concepts, miss key references and lack understanding of key concepts that would help improve their work, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independence is a good trait, but try to take advantage of opportunities to receive guidance from your supervisor(s) while you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T19:48:33.493" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:48:33.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:09:41.497" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My former Ph.D. advisor's philosophy is that a student should become a teacher of their supervisor. He seems to give the green light when the student&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explains their own research problem clearly,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shows a clear sign of familiarity with all relevant work,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;puts their work in context,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gives a convincing argument about why it's important and interesting,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;looks they can make it, and, somewhat more importantly,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chose a topic that isn't too unfashionable to the extent that devoting their time during their Ph.D. student phase to that kind of topic is a career suicide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote my first paper when I was a second year grad student, and my first joint paper with my  former Ph.D. supervisor is after I got my degree. My friend who got his Ph.D. from the same advisor at the same time as me was also like this, and he's doing pretty well in academia. So probably all that matters when it comes to starting your own math research is if you're ready for it. And if you're ready, I don't think your advisor can talk you out of it anyway. At least, randome guys on the internet like us surely can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say if you're being honest to yourself and still confident that you know about your research topic better than your advisor, and if you can get him interested in your research, it should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:09:41.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10096" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:42:48.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you can't quickly and effortlessly do this is &lt;em&gt;exactly why this is not wasting lots of time&lt;/em&gt;, assuming that you do in fact mean to build upon this very same research.  You're learning how to solve problems in this arena, given an outline that you know works, but insufficient detail to actually implement it fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, for numerical results you simply need to do lots of testing to make sure at each stage the calculation comes out to be what you expect (and tests any important corner cases).  For example, if something's piecewise polynomial, and you drop three points at random into every piece, and it's accurate to within machine precision, you've almost surely got it right, and if it's not you've almost surely got it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, once you're already well-versed in a field, you may write a paper which referees want you to compare to some other new result in the field.  Replicating someone else's poorly-described new methods really &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a waste of time; you don't learn anything except that they left out a lot of fiddly details.  (Editors may be sympathetic and let you skip it or e.g. use a common dataset instead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:42:48.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10100" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:49:21.840" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally yes, you're allowed to use screenshots that you create yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the publisher, they might ask for copyright approvals on the screenshots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that, as long as you yourself created the screenshot, you're the owner of it (just as if you take a photograph of something, you hold the copyright, not the creator of whatever you're photographing), but this is still, I believe, a legal grey area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, be sure that you provide a proper citation to the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:49:21.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3271" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:49:54.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internet is there for us to help and collaborate. &lt;a href=&quot;https://banyan.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Banyan&lt;/a&gt; recently launched a public beta version. It is for &quot;sharing, collaborating &amp;amp; publishing research&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think this product, or a similar product that applies open source idea (which is working pretty good for software development) into research, can both help with getting feedback of an ongoing work and establishing a long-term co-authorship as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:49:54.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10104" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:56:38.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; is not only for preprints (actually, updating after publication is highly encouraged). So if you can self-archive*) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you have an intersection with an arXiv discipline, it is the best place to place it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) The only objection to post-publication is in case where you are not allowed to self-archive and don't wan't to mess with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other disciplines, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84/preprint-services-other-than-arxiv-for-other-fields&quot;&gt;Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or (maybe even better) just - putting them on &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; repository. It is a stable service + makes it easy to upload work with source code (tex + figures) (much alike arXiv, but on GitHub it is more convenient). Just make sure to link the pdf file in the &lt;code&gt;README.md&lt;/code&gt; and reference it properly (i.e. the full citation, the best with a DOI link) so to have its status clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T20:13:28.510" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-20T21:05:58.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of research as a learning paradigm, whenever you learn something new spend time asking yourself how you would develop it if what you just learned was the state of the art, and what interesting directions would be. As you learn more about the topic you can see whether you were right. This makes learning to do research a constant part of your life rather than something you are learning to do when you start your thesis or dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6319" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T21:05:58.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10120" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-20T21:12:06.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On standards or conventions specific to computer science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular computer science questions, visit our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://cs.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Computer Science Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33097" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-29T18:48:59.243" LastActivityDate="2020-10-29T18:48:59.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10121" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-20T21:12:06.280" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to computer science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular computer science questions, visit our sister site Computer Science Stack Exchange." OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-29T18:49:02.337" LastActivityDate="2020-10-29T18:49:02.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10100" CreationDate="2013-05-20T21:53:38.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer, like many copyright questions, is complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the images of the software interface is almost certainly copyrighted. As a result, the exclusive rights to reproduce images of the applicatoin lie with the copyright holder (i.e., the creator of the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, as another answer has suggested, the use of a single screenshot of an application should almost certainly qualify as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair Use&lt;/a&gt; under US copyright law or something similar and analogous under other systems. In other words, it's a small and relative inconsequential reproduction that you can do without having to ask for permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, fair use is notoriously tricky and subjective. there is a multi-prong balancing test at the heart of fair use that is complicated and that makes it hard to know for sure whether a use if fair or not. As a result, many journals are risk averse and will systematically block many types of &quot;probably fair&quot; uses. I've had difficult conversations with production staff members and editors about the use of software screenshots before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say go ahead and try to have the conversation with your journal editor or production staff. The worst thing they can do is ask you to take it out.   This, of course, is what you would do preemptively now if you choose not to include it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T21:53:38.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10096" CreationDate="2013-05-20T22:02:46.727" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE points out, trying to reproduce existing results before embarking on new endeavors is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a waste of time. It can be particularly useful, especially in tracking down issues that you have within your own code—or, perhaps, in the existing literature. My most-cited paper, and much of the research work currently ongoing within my group, came about precisely because I could &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; replicate an existing paper. As it turned out, there were some significant methodological problems in the existing literature, and this led to a fair bit of digging around, plus a lot of careful analysis to demonstrate what had happened and why. As I've also said, the issues we uncovered there indirectly led to a different line of inquiry that has already led to half a dozen additional manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are determined to speed up the process, however, you might try to consider simplified versions of the research cases presented that can validate what you're working on. For instance, can you find a &quot;prototype&quot; problem whose solution would be known with your method as well as the existing methods? Can you find one or two test cases which can test most of what you're looking for? Can you devise a new problem that compares the two better than the existing cases, and is also simpler to execute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T22:02:46.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T22:34:32.590" Score="11" ViewCount="1964" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computer science doctoral student working on machine learning (ML) research. Meanwhile, a startup approached me to consult/advise them in areas related  to algorithms in ML. Needless to say a lot of work that I do as part of my research encompasses ML deeply.  They want me to sign a mutual non disclosure  agreement (NDA)/ non compete clause before i engage as an independent  consultant with them, while pursuing my program full-time. In this context, they know well that I will be pursuing my program for at least the next 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few problems here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The confidentiality information covers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...techniques, know-how, processes, algorithms... related to current and future proposed products and services... and includes, without limitation, their respective information concerning research, experimental work, development, design details and specifications, engineering...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried about this part mostly. Most ML research uses some form of classification or clustering in various domains. Every other startup is mining some patterns that they may use to their advantage. The methods used are generally known in the ML community and published in existing literature. Can a startup claim that an &quot;algorithm&quot; (which already exists in the literature) was used by me in some form at a later point of time for work unrelated to that domain? Additionally, I intend to use or publish research methods developed as part of my doctoral research during its course or in future. Does &quot;without limitation ...respective information concerning research, experimental work, development&quot; restrict me from doing this i.e can the organization restrict me from publishing work done in my doctoral program by claiming that I was also working with them during this period, so they have a right to what i publish during this time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding confidential information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...if orally disclosed, designated as confidential at the time of disclosure and marked in writing as “confidential”.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that anything said orally related to ML is considered confidential?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Non-Compete clause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...with a direct competitor of Company while engaged with Company and for thirty-six months following the termination or completion of this engagement...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an ML researcher, I will be working on ML in the future years to come. Asking me to stop working in ML for 36 months is equivalent to asking &quot;don't work for 3 years&quot;. Additionally, the startup does work which is similar to the kind of work a lot of analytics/data science related firms do. Most of ML research broadly falls into pattern mining in some form which almost all organizations engage in. In this context, does 36 months not seem a bit unreasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What exactly can i get them to write in the NDA which informs that they are aware of my research position and do not expect IP for my academic research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7142" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:12:42.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:12:42.450" Title="Dealing with consulting agreements where NDA conflicts with research interests" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T23:11:40.797" Score="8" ViewCount="1154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if here is the best place to ask that but I'm finishing my master degree in pure mathematics and I would like to travel and know another countries before enter into a doctorate school. In my country with a master degree you can teach in a private university or even in a public university with tenure in small villages or in public universities with 2-years contract in bigger cities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if in your own home country is easy to work in a temporary job as a &quot;professor&quot; or be a permanent professor with tenure in smaller areas with a master degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remark&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that is impossible to teach pure mathematics with only a master degree, but there are a lot of faculties of civil and food engineer, actuarial sciences, computer sciences, etc... which have logic, calculus, linear algebra, etc... courses, i.e., simpler courses with doesn't necessarily need a PHD professor to teach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7151" OwnerDisplayName="user74141" LastEditorUserId="4360" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T02:42:45.993" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T11:03:45.357" Title="Teach in a university with a master degree" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2013-05-20T23:17:24.070" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, a master's degree typically qualifies you to teach at the junior college or community college level, and also to teach as a lecturer at the university level.  However, you should know that in mathematics there is substantially less supply of these jobs than there is demand for them.  That is, they are hard to find and don't pay very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7143" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T23:17:24.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10124" CreationDate="2013-05-21T01:15:47.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are dealing with a legal document, and you are asking questions about legal language. &lt;strong&gt;The only way to get answers to your questions is to consult a legal expert.&lt;/strong&gt; Any advice you receive here will necessarily be inferior to that dispensed by the legal expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you're asking good questions, and during the negotiation part of the discussion you can and should discuss your concerns with a legal expert and with the company representatives. Negotiations are a normal part of any contract discussion. The document you have was written by their lawyers to provide his client—the company—with maximum legal protection, in their best interests. The job of your lawyer is to provide yourself with the same protection, in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; best interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about the cost of hiring a lawyer, do the math; the total amount you expect to receive from the consulting should be significantly more than the cost of the lawyer, and the potential cost to you of not hiring a lawyer may be pretty large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding finding one, speak with the faculty in your department; chances are at least one of them has consulted in the past and can provide you with both advice and hopefully the name of a qualified lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T01:15:47.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10124" CreationDate="2013-05-21T03:36:59.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-disclosure documents are almost always trying to squeeze the employee. Here are a few specifics that I can glean from the snippets that you've posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but honestly I don't think you need a lawyer to interpret much of the language in an NDA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;ONE: The NDA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the NDA claiming that it covers processes and know-how relating ML methods refer to anything that you are working on &lt;em&gt;related to current and future proposed products and services&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's say Company X is working on, let's say, movie recommendations and uses, for example, SVM (support vector machines) and collaborative filtering for the bulk of their recommendations. This does not mean that you can no longer talk about SVM and collaborative filtering with anyone - it DOES mean that you cannot talk about their particular implementation of SVM, you cannot tell people how they're doing collaborative filtering (ex: their features, their weights), you cannot mention what's in their databases and so forth. In fact, you probably can't tell people that the company uses SVM and collaborative filtering unless they tell you that you're allowed. If you develop some new technique of doing a movie recommender, you cannot tell people outside the company about it or publish it unless you get permission from the company. The key part of non-disclosure is that you basically need permission before you can talk about certain things, but common knowledge is common knowledge - it's not like the company can restrict you from talking about SVM and collaborative filtering. But if that's on their &quot;super secrets&quot; list of stuff, you better not go to a conference, give out your business card, and then say, &quot;Well I know a lot about collaborative filtering and SVM&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, &quot;without limitation&quot; &lt;em&gt;DOES&lt;/em&gt; cover stuff that you work on outside of your work hours if it's directly relevant to the company. If there's a remote chance that your dissertation work and your publications might be inspired by, let's say, solving a company's problem or working with the company's data, then they actually do have the right to restrict you from disclosing your work without their permission, and may in fact claim copyright as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the bright side, there are possible recourses for you. You can talk to them and ask them explicitly that you want to &lt;em&gt;retain&lt;/em&gt; your copyright and that you want to &lt;em&gt;reserve the right to publish&lt;/em&gt; about algorithms and so forth that you develop while you're there. You can promise to not disclose the company name and line of work. You can ensure that any papers you write go through their legal department so they can rubber-stamp it before delivery. These are things though that you want to ask about before you sign the NDA. Often, you CAN negotiate on terms like this, but it depends on their legal team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TWO: Confidential&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that this is pretty clear. We've all taken formal logic, yes? That would mean that if something is orally disclosed to you, told to you that it's confidential, AND marked in writing as confidential, then you cannot talk about it. Unless they tell you, &quot;Our implementation of SVM is confidential&quot; and then point to the document that says, &quot;The company's SVM implementation is confidential&quot; then presumably you can talk about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it seems like their lawyers made a mistake here, because you'd think it should be an 'OR' relationship here - &quot;mentioned as confidential at time of disclosure OR mentioned in writing as confidential&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, since SVM is basically public knowledge, most of what I mentioned under 1 would apply here. SVM and collaborative filtering and other stuff like that is public knowledge. However, don't say &quot;Company X does SVM and collaborative filtering&quot; in public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;THREE: Non-compete clauses&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really comment as well on this as I have no experience with non-compete clauses, but in some states they're not even legal (ex: California) and if they're phrased incorrectly to be unenforceable you might be off the hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be more concerned about &quot;who their main competitors are&quot; rather than how long the agreement is. Such an agreement wouldn't prevent you from working in ML research, but it might prevent you from working at Netflix if your current company is in movie recommendations. Much of the time the non-complete clauses are made to prevent an employee from stealing corporate secrets and other implicit knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;FOUR: Exceptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about where you'd put that stuff, you're not going to be writing the NDA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should bring all of your concerns with them though. The main thing is that you've brought it up with them and possibly written it down, maybe in an email, so that they can get their legal department to put it in the right location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, I think your main concern is that &quot;I can't talk about machine learning while working at this company.&quot; I'm 99% sure that isn't going to be the case. They don't care that you talk about general ML techniques or continue to do ML research, but will care if you're exposing corporate secrets, developing algorithms that might help their business with their data but not keeping it secret, or going to work for their competitors right after you finish with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before hiring your own lawyer, I'd simply advise asking theirs about every clause in the NDA. That would save you some legal fees. If they are unable to answer, or if the answers aren't satisfactory, then you can consider getting your own lawyer to go through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T03:36:59.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9299" CreationDate="2013-05-21T09:35:08.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are saying that you have working experience in project management and customer support in the IT sector, in that case you can choose MBA specialization, that means MBA in IT. This specialization will give more fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for non working person I want to suggest to all go for general MBA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7149" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:35:08.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10107" CreationDate="2013-05-21T09:39:57.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performing unsupervised research is also a great way to develop the self-discipline needed for a PhD and developing your own research strategies.  This time could be considered a valuable time for personal and academic growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:39:57.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10096" CreationDate="2013-05-21T09:46:13.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must agree with the answers posted above - it most certainly not a waste of time at all - my current supervisor explained to me that in a way, it is analogous to the saying &quot;Learning to walk, before you can run&quot; - if you can master what has been researched before, particularly learning the methodologies used - then you would have a greater chance of improving these methods and potentially further refining the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that when the papers don't give much away, that this is a prime opportunity to develop your problem solving skills within the field that you are researching.  I am doing the same, with a unique Android app as part of my research, I am entirely self taught from learning how other apps work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't give up - keep on persevering, it is worth it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:46:13.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-21T10:41:58.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, you have to look out for you, and only you.  By this, I mean your well-being, your happiness and your own future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many have said, rather than quit at this stage, take some time out from the study.  If I may suggest some things to do in your hiatus - volunteer work, teaching in a high school, perhaps try something completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are definitely not alone - I am a PhD student and have found myself in the exact some situation, took some time - concentrated on my job (teaching), travelled, lived overseas, even did some acting.  I felt rejuvenated and ready to tackle the project.  In my case, I returned to study.  But, all situations are very different - you have to give yourself some time and space to work out what it is you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T10:41:58.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2013-05-21T11:03:45.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I've understood your question correctly, you are asking if you can work with your master's degree as an instructor in mathematics while you are touring the world before beginning a doctoral program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is indeed the case, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt;, although it would be very difficult to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that you would likely have to surmount visa issues, which can make it difficult for foreign nationals to gain employment in another country. You'd probably have to line up the position &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you traveled, which would complicate things even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, another thing to keep in mind is that in most universities, the math courses are taught out of the math department—including &quot;service&quot; courses taught for other departments, such as CS, engineering, and physical science. Even in these cases, first priority likely goes to faculty, existing teaching staff, and graduate students within the department. Only if there remains a need for additional teaching staff will they be likely to offer you a contract. And, as Stirling points out, they're unlikely to pay very well. (But then again, I suppose this is just a means of supporting yourself during your travels, in which case this might not be such a bad deal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T11:03:45.357" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10168" CreationDate="2013-05-21T11:32:14.977" Score="7" ViewCount="36634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10117/is-it-possible-to-get-admitted-to-a-m-sc-degree-in-the-u-s-if-you-already-hold&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt; where the OP asks whether or not a second Masters degree is possible, I realized that I am not sure what the difference is between &lt;em&gt;Master of Science&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Master of Technology&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have graduated from a Swedish university and after 5 years of studies (Bologna process) I got my undergrad (&lt;em&gt;kandidat&lt;/em&gt;) and masters (&lt;em&gt;examen&lt;/em&gt;) together as it is very common here. I double checked my diploma now and even though I have graduated from the technical faculty and an engineering program, I am given a &lt;em&gt;Master of Science&lt;/em&gt;. I believe there is no &lt;em&gt;Master of Technology&lt;/em&gt; degree in Sweden, so I am not sure what it means. To make the matters worse, I stumbled upon another similar degree, &lt;em&gt;Master of Engineering&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate some insight into the differences of these degrees, and whether or not they would be considered interchangeable abroad (read: outside Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T10:21:00.763" Title="What are the differences between M.Sc, M.Tech and M.Eng.?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-05-21T12:54:27.600" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just suck it in and get it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you pass all the formal requirements, you will have a mini-tenure for 3/4/5 years (depending on the Dept you are in). I was thinking to quit first two years but now (in the mini-tenure period) I'm enjoying my life and research (from 9 to 5 only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it, if you don't like it, you can always quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T12:54:27.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10139" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-21T15:15:52.757" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T15:15:52.757" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:15:52.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10140" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-21T15:15:52.757" Score="0" Body="Questions on the process of advertising, selecting, interviewing, and possibly hiring individuals for academic positions." OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T19:56:53.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T19:56:53.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10136" CreationDate="2013-05-21T15:30:48.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some schools, there may be differences in the formal degree requirements, such as the requirement of coursework or completion of a thesis; at others, including the graduate school I attended, the distinction is purely a departmental issue—engineering departments give out M.S. or M.Eng. degrees, while science departments give out only M.S. degrees. I think, from an admissions perspective, in most cases, these would be viewed as largely interchangeable. Some schools may have very particular entrance requirements, but these would be noted as part of the admissions instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I now work, we don't specify the nature of the master's degree required for enrollment as a PhD student; any relevant master's degree will suffice, and the exact title of the degree is more or less immaterial. (We do have to petition if it's a foreign degree, but this is mostly a &lt;em&gt;pro forma&lt;/em&gt; process.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:30:48.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10142" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-21T17:41:52.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On standards or conventions specific to mathematics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular mathematics questions, visit our sister sites &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Math Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; and (for research-level questions) &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33097" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-14T02:10:28.640" LastActivityDate="2020-10-14T02:10:28.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10143" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-21T17:41:52.867" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to mathematics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular mathematics questions, visit our sister sites Math Stack Exchange and MathOverflow." OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-14T02:10:45.483" LastActivityDate="2020-10-14T02:10:45.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-05-21T18:24:20.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mine looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- &#xA;\\//_ Live long and prosper.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to keep email a bit more casual. Granted, most of the people I email are folks with whom I am already acquainted, so there is no need for introductions. But I typically leave the signature even when contacting someone for the first time, if for no other reason than to convey a bit of my personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T18:24:20.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10146" CreationDate="2013-05-21T19:04:40.970" Score="12" ViewCount="6315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am entering my senior year of undergraduate study in Computer Science at a small, primarily undergraduate institution. I plan to attend graduate school and pursue a PhD in Computer Science and Mathematics, my main goal to teach. The school I attend is quite small, and is all but unknown outside our geographic region. As such, I've attempted to add as many positive bullets to my CV as possible, mainly because I feel I will have to fight harder than my colleagues at larger universities to get into a great program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things I have attempted to add to my vita is teaching experience. I have had the opportunity to tutor in our Mathematics Tutoring Center for a couple years now, and have fallen in love. I have also had the pleasure of assisting a professor in her Freshmen CS labs. Last fall I spoke with her about increasing my duties to more than just fielding questions as the students type their programs. I wanted to start grading lab submissions, and perhaps even hold office hours. She was delighted that I wanted the increased responsibility, but sharply objected to calling it a &quot;TA&quot; position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a stigma of assigning the title TA to an undergraduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T16:12:15.857" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T06:59:28.390" Title="Is there a stigma of assigning the title TA to an undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10145" CreationDate="2013-05-21T19:18:53.163" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A teaching assistantship (TA) is a formal job category at most universities, which implies that you are being paid a specific wage for teaching duties while a graduate student. Consequently, you would be misrepresenting your work on the CV if you called yourself a teaching assistant, because you are not formally a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university level, another issue may be that while many undergraduates do participate in teaching responsibilities at many schools, this is often in the form of tutoring programs and informal arrangements. Part of the reason for this is that many universities want to be able to claim a higher percentage of teaching duties are done by faculty than is really the case. Calling undergraduates graders and tutors helps to shift off the balance, since they are not officially &quot;teaching staff,&quot; and therefore wouldn't be included in such time accounting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T19:52:44.480" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T19:52:44.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10088" CreationDate="2013-05-21T20:03:14.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some important examples of techniques and problems being &quot;revived&quot; after having lain dormant for many years. For instance, in my own field, one of the cornerstones of computer modeling was originally derived in the 1920's, and then basically remained undeveloped until the 1970's, when it was brought back in fashion. (It has since been replaced by faster methods, but it is still regarded as the &quot;touchstone&quot; for high-accuracy calculations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, entire fields of research may have been developed before the applications caught up with them. Again, bringing up an example from my own field of research, the class of materials known as &lt;em&gt;ionic liquids&lt;/em&gt; was known as far back as the early 1900's, but again were forgotten until the 1990's (or so) when they were &quot;rediscovered&quot; because they were nonvolatile materials and could be used as replacement solvents in the chemical industry. (It also offered the ability to do &quot;combinatorial chemistry,&quot; which was also coming into fashion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THe point of these examples is that sometimes theoretical and even experimental techniques may be developed in one era, but the ability to exploit the technology to its fullest extent has not yet been attained. Keeping awareness of such methods thus can have some use. Whether it should be taught to every student of a field is a different issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T20:03:14.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-05-22T02:08:56.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities allow faculty to nominate those chosen for honorary degrees. From what I understand, some even allow certain members of the graduating class and/or student council to nominate &amp;amp; vote. At other institutions, the senate, department heads, deans, president or chancellor may pick the candidates. Some institutions may have a nomination body and a voting body. I would think that it depends upon the size of the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find out for sure, check out websites for specific universities. Often times universities have focused areas of research or a campus wide research goal for which they have TONS of funding. On most occasions, honorary degrees are awarded to those who are conducting research in that field. They often award honorary degrees to those who are active in their communities as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common thing with honorary degrees: once an individual has been granted one other institutions will sometimes scramble to recognize that person as well. This is especially true if both institutions are located in the same area, or if they largely focus on the same research matters. People who make a difference on a global scale are often chosen as recipients of honorary degrees not only because they've made a difference, but because a university is, after all, still a business. If they give someone famous an honorary degree, you can bet it will be on the news. It will even get better coverage if other universities have also awarded the person with honorary degrees! Sometimes they look for a unique person to give an honorary degree to- because that will also get more coverage (for example, people from minority groups or from third world countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each university has their own policy regarding nominations and different criterion, but they're all about creating a buzz. They may pick a First Nations community leader as a recipient in hoping that they will attract more students from that community. They also use honorary degrees as a way to network. If they want to meet their idol, they award them with an honorary degree so that person has to come and meet them to accept it (it is, after all, only polite, right?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're curious about individual schools, you can look up the honorary degree recipients - they will often state why the person was given the degree. The key thing to remember is that they could come across anyone and find a reason to nominate them. They may see a firefighter on the news who saved the lives of people by rushing into a burning building. They attribute great courage to that person, so they nominate them to receive an honorary degree in emergency service operations. Their spouse, friend or neighbor may tell them an inspiring story which urges them to do more research on the person. Then that person ends up nominated! Yes, they have criterion, but it is flexible. They can word their statements for nomination in such a way that anyone would be fit for an honorable degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7157" LastEditorUserId="100381" LastEditDate="2020-02-11T00:02:10.093" LastActivityDate="2020-02-11T00:02:10.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9446" CreationDate="2013-05-22T02:17:55.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are unclear on the matter, I would ask the person who sent you the article. Asking the editor or authors may get the person who sent it to you in trouble. In most cases, the first answer is probably no. However, it may be true in some cases where there are no provisions on the confidentiality of the article. When sent out to be peer reviewed, they usually stamp the title page of the article with the confidentiality clauses. I don't think you should contact the authors until the peer-reviewing process is over, but that doesn't mean you can't. They might just refuse to comment. The last two questions you have posted... You most definitely cannot do that. You could get in major trouble for early distribution of research, especially if the project is not finished. You may face academic dis-accreditation which would make it very difficult for you to ever be involved in the academic community. This would be especially true if you wanted to peer review articles for that journal in the future or if you wish to publish articles with them. You would likely also face difficulties publishing in related journals, which may be problematic if you choose to work in an academic setting. If the author has a link to the article on their webpage, I would suggest you contact them and ask for their permission to post it on your blog. Doing so without their permission is an infringement on their property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7157" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T02:17:55.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-05-22T04:37:12.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned you’re from the West teaching in Asia. The school invited you from the West to teach while they already have instructors who can teach the same subject. I would think they all want to learn from you. Here, &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are not only the students but also the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As posdef suggested in his comment, I would talk to the other instructor in some kind of informal meetings if I were you. You can talk to him about the class, the students and the department. You two are teaching the same course. There must be a lot of things you can share. In particular, you can ask him exactly this question and see what kind of solutions he would recommend. I think he would have a more insightful answer than most users on this site because he is in the same environment as you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the other instructor is willing to talk to you is another issue. From what I know, most Asians are nice to the guests. If you are  there for a tenure track position, he might see you as a competition. Then I think you should handle this matter in a formal manner. If you are not there on a permanent basis, I think informal meetings would be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is, what is the best interests for the students? Many Asian students believe there is always only one standard correct answer for every question. We know this is not always the case. Even for math related subjects, you can have multiple approaches to solve a problem. I suspect the students from the other class came to you to confirm the answer given by their instructor is the standard one. If that’s the case, you and the other instructor need to coordinate. Both need to explain to the students that there may not be only one standard answer per every question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the students came to you because they doubt their instructor or they don't get acceptable answers, you need to handle this with care. Respecting the teachers is an integral part of Asian culture. However, the best interests for the students is even more important. Talking to the other instructor in person is the first step to resolve this issue. You two together need to figure out how to tell the students the correct answers. Again, learning together is everybody’s goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T04:37:12.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10161" CreationDate="2013-05-22T05:57:49.857" Score="4" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (biology), the end of the introduction in a research article generally ends with a list of hypotheses that the researchers tested. A common structure of this part of a research paper is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; 'We tested (1) hypothesis X (2) hypothesis Y and (3) hypothesis Z'. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research papers I read often test between two and four hypotheses. I'm interested in how the researchers generally arrive at this list of two and four hypotheses. Do they start with a list of 10+ hypotheses, and tick off the ones that they fail to say anything useful about? Or do they stick with the same two to four hypotheses throughout a research project? Or do researchers not begin with any hypotheses, and fit some suitable hypotheses after checking their results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T10:43:57.380" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T10:50:48.657" Title="How do researchers handle hypotheses?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10152" CreationDate="2013-05-22T06:49:33.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field, Physics, I have only focussed on a single, yet detailed, hypothesis.  This has been true for my thesis and published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that it has been and is easier for me to concentrate and explore one single hypothesis thoroughly, any new hypotheses that arise from from this form the basis of several sie projects and further research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T06:49:33.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10152" CreationDate="2013-05-22T07:37:43.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In social science, there are often a number of formalized hypothesis in every paper. This is because in human behavior study, there are often a number of nuances which are being studied at the same time (which allows you to reach aforementioned hypothesis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way in which I, as a current graduate student (not in social science but intersecting with it in my work) have been trained is through the following two approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I am doing qualitative research then I often adopt a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_Grounded_Theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grounded theory approach&lt;/a&gt; in which there are no pre-determined hypotheses. There could be research questions instead.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I am engaged in quantitative inquiry then I adopt formalized hypothesis from the existing literature. e.g. existing literature says X contributes to Y. I think Z is another variable which might contribute to Y ergo, I might develop H1: X + Z contributes to Y.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T07:37:43.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10158" CreationDate="2013-05-22T08:12:37.150" Score="58" ViewCount="7254" Body="&lt;p&gt;When evaluating and grading students' work in technical fields (like computer science or mathematics), I often face ones that are really messy, sometimes even unreadable (I mean structure, not - handwriting). It's not clear at all what part belongs to what or what is the final result. Instead of spending a lot of time trying to figure out if there is a good result buried somewhere in the mess, I'm tempted to just fail such a work as unreadable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While these (I'd say) formal aspect don't reflect the ability of the student to solve the problem, it strongly reflects his/her ability to present the solution. And in their future professions, it won't be much good that they can solve problems, if they're not able to present the solution to someone else. Or for example grant agencies simply reject proposals that fail even slightly given formal criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the evaluation include evaluation of readability, proper structure etc. for example in a textual form (without impacting the final grade perhaps), something like &lt;em&gt;&quot;The solution is completely unreadable.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or for a larger work &lt;em&gt;&quot;The solution lacks a proper structure - there is no introduction or conclusion of what have been accomplished.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should such deficiencies be also reflected in the grade? If so, how much? Would it be acceptable to even fail a work just because it's completely unreadable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1531" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T16:19:58.913" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T01:52:02.093" Title="Should unreadability or sloppiness of students' work be reflected in their evaluation?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grading&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T08:28:17.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, no. The main problem when evaluating is expressed by a saying in my native language &quot;muddy writing, muddy thinking&quot;. Essentially, if you cannot decipher what is written, either because it is sloppy writing or poorly expressed, then one faces problems when grading. Students often complain about grading where they sense they are misinterpreted etc. This is when we cannot understand what they are writing. Often, I believe, we also give people the benefit of the doubt and grade more leniently than what the verbatim answer would state. This is, of course, never picked up by a student. Hence a catch 22.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do? The problem lies in the examination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we can provide clear guidelines about clarity of language and writing. This should be pointed out long before the exam, in fact early in their education. A study of Swedish students showed that they learn two ways of writing in pre-university levels. In languages, focus is on grammar, spelling and language but not content; whereas in other subjects focus is on content and not language. When they arrive at the university they do not realize that both are important; we need to tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, we can chose other means of examination where those with poor hand-writing can do better. Examples can be many: from essays through take homes to verbal and of course highly depending on the course, contents, level etc. Examples of the means of grading is to have external graders (more resources!) or to do as one of my teachers did; ask students to request everyone writes the exam with the pencil, and then after the exam use a pen to add corrections to their own exame as the teacher went through the exam. The exam was then collected and graded by the teacher. I mention this as an example, fully realizing it would not work in every situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer for me is no, but our assessment is always tainted by many factors whether we want it or not. To reduce the element of subjectivity is what we would be looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T09:27:12.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T09:27:12.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10152" CreationDate="2013-05-22T08:58:13.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In (cognitive) neuroscience, most often there is either a single hypothesis in the introduction, or two competing ones. The Journal of Neuroscience, for example, limits introductions to 500 words, which doesn't allow for much space to describe the theory behind many hypotheses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the results and discussion section, however, it is common to offer alternative hypotheses which could explain the obtained pattern of results, and to then proceed to discard them through control experiments, additional analyses, or on theoretical grounds. There is no real limit on the number of alternative hypotheses tested, but usually, the stronger the journal, the more analyses you need to persuade the reviewers that your explanation is the most likely one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T08:58:13.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T09:11:47.783" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most important part of your post is in your comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or for example grant agencies simply reject proposals that fail even slightly given formal criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student isn't corrected for sloppy work while in school, when will he or she improve? The question really boils down to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How best can we as instructors give guidance to students so that they will succeed in the future?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluations in an educational setting can serve many purposes, but fundamentally they should be used as a tool to help students succeed.  Obviously, you have to be careful because a poor grade on a transcript can have long-term ramifications, but ignoring sloppy or unreadable work by trying to see through it is doing a disservice to the student on a particularly key issue: &lt;em&gt;communication of an idea is as important as the idea itself.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1. Should the evaluation include evaluation of readability, proper structure etc...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  To ignore this would be bad pedagogy.  Determining &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to relate this to the student without causing a misunderstanding about the idea itself is the difficult part.  Encouragement or direction to seek out writing help is a good idea, as is having students re-write or re-submit work that is sloppy.  Hopefully the work improves throughout the course; being picky at the beginning of a course can set a good standard for the rest of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. Should such deficiencies be also reflected in the grade? If so, how much? Would it be acceptable to even fail a work just because it's completely unreadable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this ties directly back into the first question.  I would suggest letting students re-write or submit material without penalty (or with minimal penalty) early on in a course, with the understanding that they must improve by the end.  If your only assessment is a final project, consider allowing a re-write with an incomplete grade.  But, if that is your policy, I'd strongly suggest providing a time for draft review well before the final project is due in order to minimize the need for this route.  As always, I would also spell out in a syllabus your policy and the fact that presentation is a part of the course, and I would also discuss this on the first day of class (with examples of past work that is sloppy!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've posed a hard question, but an extremely important one.  I probably suggest rejecting 30% of the papers I review for conferences simply because they are unreadable.  Most of the time I don't even get to the idea behind the work before I realize that it doesn't matter what the idea is because it is too poorly written (and this ends up in the review).  I want more papers that are well presented, because I'm certain some of the papers I give poor reviews to because of this problem have great ideas behind them!  Teachers that encourage students to improve their writing and presentation are necessary for this to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T04:37:46.553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T04:37:46.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T09:19:38.110" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I do agree with Peter Jansson's answer that we should make it completely clear to students what they need to do to have their work understood, I feel differently about the impacting on assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In industry, the ability to write readable (which means maintainable) code is critical. The ability to write a really cool, super efficient block of logic which nobody can understand is simply producing a ticking time bomb which will explode as soon as someone else goes to edit it. Students need to know that you are not just being a 'stuffly old prof' but rather that there are certain expectations from the profession and they must live up to them. Coding is not just about making a solution - it's about making a solution which will not explode 12-18 months later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the academic side, I also have students who have similar problems where they do not care much about being careful in their writing. I generally handle them like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I can understand it, but it is difficult, then I will mark them based on the overall quality of their work. If it is difficult to understand then the quality of their work is not great. Even if they are far smarter than me, they should be able to write in such a way that they can be understood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I cannot understand it, then I simply fail them. They are responsible for showing me that they understand and if they do not do that, then I must fail them - this is my responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, educate them. However, I would not let poor quality slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to remind my students of the story of the family. Every happy family is happy in the same way. Every unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. The students are usually lost at first, then I explain to them that for the family to be happy they must get 100 things right. But, get anyone of them wrong and the family is unhappy. If they want to be happy then they must get it all right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T09:19:38.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T10:43:13.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proper presentation of results is a vitally important part of modern research. It's also a necessary skill for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; field of work into which an academically trained individual will enter after graduation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one does not learn how to exchange information with other people and organizations, the results can be catastrophic. Edward Tufte's &lt;em&gt;Visual Information&lt;/em&gt; uses the &lt;em&gt;Challenger&lt;/em&gt; explosion as a case study in exactly what can go wrong when communication skills are ignored at a fundamental level. The launch was not aborted because the engineers just provided a bunch of disorganized data to management, who couldn't parse it out to understand that it was too cold to launch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as much as possible, presentation and organization of material &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be considered when assigning grades. Now there are situations when it would be unfair to penalize: for example, in the context of a timed exam, where students may feel rushed and may not be writing neatly. (However, I also feel that this is a largely contrived circumstance, which doesn't reflect true understanding in many important ways.) In any situation where they have had time to independently prepare their work and submit it, then presentation and writing style should definitely be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the same time, unless the class is a writing class, then it's unfair to fail or strongly penalize a student who has turned in work that would otherwise be satisfactory, but was not put together well. Personally, when I am grading project reports, I &quot;control&quot; for this by making a decision on what the grade for the technical content of the project. I then give a bonus &quot;partial&quot; grade level for a well-organized and well-written report, and similarly deduct a &quot;partial&quot; grade if it's substandard. So, for instance a report that would have gotten a B+ could become either an A- or a B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T10:43:13.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10152" CreationDate="2013-05-22T10:50:48.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that in many fields of study, the hypothesis is &quot;implicit,&quot; in the sense that we're not explicitly writing down a statement such as &quot;we believe that effect Y is the result of cause X.&quot; This is especially true in fields associated with &quot;inverse&quot; methods, where the idea is to build a model that explains a result. In such cases, you know what the &quot;answer&quot; is (the phenomenon you're looking to explain or quantify), but you might not necessarily predict in advance what causes the result you want. Even if the model is successful in reproducing the result, you may not be able to predict &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; that model worked without deeper investigation of the data that is produced. Hence, any attempt at formal, explicit hypotheses is largely guesswork. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T10:50:48.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10087" CreationDate="2013-05-22T11:17:51.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teacher, I teach 'science literacy' to all year levels as part of my overall curriculum.  Alongside this, I have the students continually practising these skills, as well as peer reviewing their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes time, but the overall benefits make the effort worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T11:17:51.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T12:46:52.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I set marking rubrics for my students' work, I usually include two main areas: Clarity and Contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt; specifically addresses whether the student has communicated their ideas (or answered the questions) in a clear and unambiguous manner.  As such, poor presentation or (really) bad grammar impacts this portion of the mark.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally don't detract from the student mark for &lt;code&gt;speeling errurs&lt;/code&gt; [sic]; even though I am a native English speaker, I am an Australian working in the US and am frequently in a quandary over whether to use Australian or American spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My present students are generally from non-English speaking backgrounds, and I find their clarity generally very good, even though their turns of phrase sometimes seem awkward to me.  I give feedback on this awkwardness but, unless it impacts the clarity of their presentation, I don't dock marks for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contribution&lt;/strong&gt; is used to address the correctness or fitness for purpose of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also add a further C, &lt;strong&gt;Collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;, if the work is a group project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To directly answer your questions: Yes, and Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-issue:  Because many of my students are non-native English speakers, I also tend to allow double-submission of assignments.  The students may submit their assignments twice before the due date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give an undertaking that I will do my best to give early feedback on an early submission (because I am an adjunct, I make it clear that &quot;early&quot; means the submission has to happen before a weekend before the due date).  The students can then take my feedback and implement it on their new submission.  I find this improves the quality of the presentation (clarity), but not so much on the contribution (unless they were really, really out of line on the first submission).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the students do a complete re-write, the second marking is usually just a &quot;delta&quot; / &quot;diff&quot; on the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastEditorUserId="3965" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T14:16:25.987" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T14:16:25.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10087" CreationDate="2013-05-22T16:52:17.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've progressed in my writing ability as I've progressed in my reading commitment. Have you tried assigning papers to read, followed by a short essay describing what they read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T16:52:17.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10136" CreationDate="2013-05-22T17:06:24.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some differences, especially in the concept of the programs M.Eng./M.Tech. and M.Sc (and M.A. obviously too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states this also, the M.Eng./M.Tech. degrees are rather given by Universities of Applied Sciences (at least in Germany, Canada, Finland etc,) and seldomly by Universities focusing on research. Any program that is research oriented will thus very likely give M.Sc. degrees.&#xA;The M.Eng. is even given as an undergraduate Master in the UK (see the Wikipedia Link) that gets granted immediately (without a bachelors in between).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the career of a graduate, the title itself is not too important as aeismail mentioned, since any employer will have a look at what's inside (= the student track record).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there are so many slightly different programs, especially in computer/information engineering/technology/sciences I am not sure where universities draw the line regarding the &quot;not granting a 2nd masters degree in the same field/area/discipline&quot; policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T17:06:24.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T18:40:13.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your evaluation measuring?  Are you grading a 2nd grade math test, or are you evaluating a doctoral thesis on neuroscience?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the former, then no; sloppiness and structure take a backseat to getting the subject matter correct.  The reason is your focus should be on evaluating the crucial element of the subject being evaluated.  At early levels of development, there must be some leniency given to presentation in order to focus on the fundamentals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is a reasonable limit to how sloppy or unreadable something can be before the evaluation ceases to be useful.  Intentionally sloppy responses relying on confusion in the hopes of gaining partial credit don't deserve any credit at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're evaluating a student in a near-professional setting, e.g. university and higher, then it makes sense to consider presentation as part of the grade.  Well structured, carefully written responses should get more credit than sloppy and careless ones.  Presentation becomes important because in the &quot;real world&quot; people evaluate you based on the whole package.  Nobody is going to buy a bottle of Tylenol with a hand-scribbled, barely legible label.  Likewise, even superficial details should be considered important in high level evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a sloppy student through primary school and even most of high school.  Many teachers simply refused to grade some papers that were unacceptably sloppy, and others graded what they could within reason.  None of those teachers who refused to grade a paper stick out in my mind, nor did their insistence on neatness change my behavior.  I excelled in the subjects where my understanding of the core materials mattered most, and did not focus my attention on subjects where presentation was considered more important than the concepts being taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I graduated in the top 5% of my high school and went on to a good college.  By the time I got my masters degree, my value of structure and presentation has improved sufficiently that I can survive in a professional environment.  Becoming a professional, I believe, is the goal of &quot;teaching&quot; organizational skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7186" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T18:40:13.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T18:47:44.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a teacher, but I am in my second year of my associates working toward my bachelors. My opinion is that yes you should, it will only hurt them later in life. In high school I passed my classes with C or a C+, now in college I am getting As and Bs. The reason is not that I am magically smarter, it is that I apply myself at least twice as hard.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; There is so much information out there to learn anything, APA or MLA, and sites like &lt;em&gt;Grammar Girl&lt;/em&gt; and reference generators. I think spelling should and grammar should be graded hard, maybe not at the first of the semester.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; If they are bad at first, correct them and give them places to go for examples of the correct way(s) to do it. If by mid-term they have not figured it out then grade them hard. All work should flow; if it does not, let them know now because in their career they will not get a nice correction and time to fix it. I work my butt off in school and feel as if I get graded hard, but it is when the teacher gives good feedback that I learn and make the change. So giving them a grade lower than an A needs an explanation of what they need to fix.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; This is why we are seeing on job descriptions -Bachelors from a reputable University- teachers need to be hard so that the student walks away with a real education not just a piece of paper that cost them thousands of dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7184" LastEditorUserId="5689" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T01:52:02.093" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T01:52:02.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-22T22:54:15.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You as an instructor may see hundreds upon hundreds of papers a term.  The students do not have that same luxury for comparison.  If penmanship and other elements of style are important to you as an instructor, then as a student, I suggest you express your standards and expectations up front, even if it seems that is something I should know and do coming into your class.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect no less from an employer as an employee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note the degree of impact for presentation on the syllabus, even if there is no plus points for exemplary, and only negative points awarded for substandard. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a sanitized modicum of 'bad', 'passable', and 'exemplary' presentation for comparison.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage them to seek clarification or special consideration up front, as opposed to seeking remedy to penalties after the fact.  They may have certain existing conditions which precludes them from generally meeting those standards.  Or more commonly, they may not have been exposed or acclimated to the technical writing style you are accustomed to in that particular field..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7195" LastEditorUserId="7195" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T23:00:11.783" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T23:00:11.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10197" CreationDate="2013-05-22T23:22:41.970" Score="8" ViewCount="10471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand &lt;strong&gt;honour societies&lt;/strong&gt; have been around for years and it is a tradition more prevalent in the western world to recognise outstanding academic talent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The largest honour society is perhaps the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goldenkey.org/&quot;&gt;Golden Key&lt;/a&gt; which operates worldwide and has over 2 million members. It provides a range of services to members, including leadership training, networking and the opportunity to do good. Membership is by invitation only and only those who are in the top 15% of their class or high performing graduate students are eligible. The eligibility is based solely on academic performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume being invited to join a honour society is an 'honour' in itself, as the mere mention of this affiliation on the CV would indicate that you are a top achiever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Does membership of honour society carry any professional weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i.e. does it give any additional advantages?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Honour society is not the same as professional society. The latter, as I understand it, is open to all persons in a particular field (irrespective of their academic achievement but as long as certain criteria are met, e.g. successful registration as a teacher to join a teacher's union).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there other honour societies in addition to the Golden Key (which seems to be the most dominant one)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; I am unsure of the tag, so putting CV. Please update!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not associated with Golden Key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="269" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T13:40:38.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T09:40:04.947" Title="Does membership of academic honour societies carry any professional weight / recognition?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;honor-societies&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-05-22T23:27:54.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I think honor societies (including Golden Key) carry very little weight. One exception is Phi Beta Kappa, which (unlike Golden Key) does not require paying a fee to be inducted. I would be suspicious of any honor society that requires payment for membership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T23:27:54.393" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10087" CreationDate="2013-05-23T01:08:28.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A selection of the best online writing sources from different universities is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www144.griffith.edu.au/en/improve-your-english/improve-your-writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. In addition to writing, resources are available for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www144.griffith.edu.au/en/improve-your-english/assignment-resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;assignments&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www144.griffith.edu.au/en/improve-your-english/improve-your-grammar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grammar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, library of some universities have books (hard copy or ebooks) for these purposes which are very useful. Personally, I liked &lt;em&gt;Writing academic English by Alice Oshima, Ann Hogue&lt;/em&gt; as a start point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T01:08:28.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T01:22:31.517" Score="11" ViewCount="979" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to write a short note that includes comments about the impact and importance of a colleagues' work over the course of the past year - for a pre-tenure review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could discuss a notable recent publication, a conference he is organizing, inspiring discussions we have had over the past year, and his public outreach at a recent conference. But it is not clear how I do so in a way that most effectively supports his work, and would appreciate advice from more experienced academics who request and review such letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I most effectively frame and focus these points while keeping the letter brief and genuine? In addition to these points, what are the key features of such a letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorDisplayName="user7123" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T05:44:50.190" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T07:06:19.490" Title="What to include in a letter of support for an academic assessment?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2013-05-23T03:25:27.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The impact factor is what, 3-year moving average? 5-year moving average? Cite something that is 17 or 20 years old, let them have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, though, if you can find any suitable wording in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amstat.org/about/ethicalguidelines.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Ethical Guidelines of the American Statistical Association&lt;/a&gt;, say,  that would indicate the editor stepping over them. Article A.10 requires&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclose conflicts of interest, financial and otherwise, and resolve them. This may sometimes require divestiture of the conflicting personal interest or withdrawal from the professional activity. Examples where conflict of interest may be problematic include grant reviews, other peer reviews, and tensions between scholarship and personal or family financial interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the editor is paid more for the greater impact factor, or is more likely to get promoted, then of course this constitutes a clear conflict of interest. This is not as ridiculous as it sounds: if editorship of a prestigious journal is considered to be a part of the service component of a university professor evaluation, and the said editor claims in their annual report that the IF of the journal went up last year, and finally that on the basis of this claim the professor gets their annual raise, then the causal chain does link the greater impact factor with money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles H.4 and H.5 state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support sound statistical analysis and expose incompetent or corrupt statistical practice. In cases of conflict, statistical practitioners and those employing them are encouraged to resolve issues of ethical practice privately. If private resolution is not possible, recognize that statistical practitioners have an ethical obligation to expose incompetent or corrupt practice before it can cause harm to research subjects or society at large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognize that within organizations and within professions using statistical methods generally, statistics practitioners with greater prestige, power, or status have a responsibility to protect the professional freedom and responsibility of more subordinate statistical practitioners who comply with these guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the editor, being in the position of power, has this responsibility to protect your professional freedom of citing whatever you consider relevant. You, however, also have the ethical obligation to expose the corrupt practices... which you are doing here on this website, and I commend you for reaching out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is appropriate to send an email to the leader of whatever professional organization you expect the editors to be members of, and inquire whether the request for citations would constitute a breach in the ethics. Knowing a little bit about how ASA works, I can help you identify the relevant person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T03:25:27.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10029" CreationDate="2013-05-23T05:06:17.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using iBook Author (free).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Drawbacks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The drawback is that e-books created with this software are only&#xA;viewable as PDF or on an iPad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As someone who has used InDesign for&#xA;page layout projects, I find the layout capabilities are limited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As @Chris Gregg points out, this application is only available for &lt;strong&gt;Mac running Lion&lt;/strong&gt; or higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Advantage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The advantage is that this format allows teachers to add chapter/unit review quizzes, embedding of 3D objects, image galleries,presentations, &amp;amp; even html.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Feel free to contact me if you need more information about this.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T16:39:37.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10177" CreationDate="2013-05-23T07:06:19.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest by starting with a general statement about your colleague as an academic (quality of work, productivity etc. relative to others, in general, in the specific sub-discipline) following that you could exemplify this with the points you mention. Tiyr second paragraph could almost be copied into such a letter but with some more detail. A second item may be to set the last year performance in perspective of the longer term. This seems not to be asked for but I think it is a valuable step to set the year's performance in perspective both relative to what has been achieved earlier and relative to what can be expected visavi the person's job siuation (teaching load, admin load etc.. For tenure, I suppose personal traits and activities within the department are not of interest since they would be known internally. Other wise such points should be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T07:06:19.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T08:10:16.893" Score="31" ViewCount="6908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to compose a recommendation/reference letter for a Computer Engineer that works as a Researcher in the Research Center I am supervisor. I don't know if Academia is the right site to post , but since the nature of the job is Research and people involved &quot;Research Engineers&quot;, I believe is the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I need to write a great recommendation/reference letter, but the problem is I have never written a letter of this kind before. I've seen many of them, and even more on the web but the problem is that they all look &quot;copy-pasted&quot; and not written in a way that would make me believe that the author of this letter really spent time on it, believing in the skills of his employee and really wanted to recommend them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already written the letter, the best I could and I will like to ask about some parts of it, how they sound and if they could be any better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a first paragraph, I wrote who I am, the position I have in the Research Center and what is the purpose of this letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is... I am a ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The purpose of this letter, is to serve as a reference to my cooperation with Mr ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the second paragraph I wrote about the position of the person (Research Engineer) and for how long he worked with us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. X  joined our team in the X Research Center as a full-time Research Engineer under an ongoing X month contract...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I don't know how I could point out better the fact the the person was under a normal full-paid contract and not just given a &quot;European Grant&quot; to work with us. I wrote they were &lt;code&gt;full-time&lt;/code&gt;, but still there are many people that join programs after studies that work for a few months as Engineers in Research Centers. In this case, I want to stress that they were working as a normal Research Engineer, especially chosen for skills and paid a normal salary for the position as Engineer. Maybe add something like &lt;code&gt;&quot;full paid contract&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the 3rd paragraph I wrote under what framework the person worked (European project) and a few words where and how they were involved. I didn't want to go into great details here as I believe this stuff could be easily read from their great CV. Is it wise to describe exactly what he did (Names of real-life applications that was part of developing etc). I pointed out that they deeply involved in what they did, how well they integrated with the rest of the people and how motivated they were and that they actively contributed in the project. Anything else I could add here?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a last line I would like to show that I can't recommend them enough, but without getting &quot;too excited&quot;. I want it to be serious, I want it to leave no doubts. Also since the person is young and is interested in continuing with post graduate studies, or working as a Researcher or even getting a computer engineer position in a private company. Is it okay if I mention all of them? Usually we recommend someone for one type of position. But this position, working as computer engineer doing research (aka Research Engineer), leaves no doubt that he would be great as a PhD student, as a researcher or as a software engineer. So I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For all the aforementioned reasons I would like to highly recommend X, as a strong candidate for future postgraduate studies, research and employment offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about it? How could I make it better and is there something I should change? If you don't like some part and you give me an alternative please point out why you don't like the part, as some times its a bit of personal taste and not that something is wrong. Would be great, if you could post some examples of letters you composed or parts of them, or an example from the web that you consider great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7204" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T21:02:38.567" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T21:02:38.567" Title="How to compose a great recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10183" CreationDate="2013-05-23T11:08:58.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what I would recommend and it is not far off from what you have outlined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming your will start the letter cordially to whomever will receive the letter (&amp;quot;Dear so-and-so&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;To whom it may concern&amp;quot;). I also assume you're writing on letter head where your name and contact information and date for the letter is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1st part (paragraph)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First state that you write the letter on request by the applicant. Follow up by stating who you are in terms of your professional status (expertise) and your relation to the applicant. The purpose is to make the recipient aware of your standing relative to the applicant, it makes it easier to value your comments. This paragraph should obviously not be very long since it is not you who are to be evaluated, but still long enough to provide a fair picture of your qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2nd part (one or more paragraphs)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline the most important aspect of the applicants merits that are sought for the position, if it is a teaching job then etaching experience, if it is research then research related. It may end up more than one paragraph because you may need to discuss the research done (type of research past and present) in one paragraph and then follow up on the person's ability to attarct funding and colaboration in a second (depending on length). You also need to value the publications briefly in terms of journal impact factors and citations, in other words the quality of the published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3rd part (one or more paragraphs)##&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to write about the personal side of the applicant, starting out with for example ability to collaborate and contribute to the research and work environment. This can be followed up bu more personal aspects and &amp;quot;soft values&amp;quot; that descfibes the persons pesronality at work and elsewhere. You obviously need to focius on aspects that may be relevant for evaluating the applicant as a colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Final Statement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish of by summing up the major points above and express your personal support for the person in terms of how the person would fit the announced position. You can for example tie back to your own expoerience and position and value in terms of how you see the applicant relative to others you have worked with and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Final  Points to Consider&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length of a letter can vary greatly. Honesty is what everyone expects. I think it is valuable to also mention weaknesses as long s they are done fairly and with insight. The employer will want to know the person, not just the glossy exterior. This part is always trickiest to write and also very personal so additional advice is hard to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T17:00:31.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10185" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:32:56.213" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T12:32:56.213" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T12:32:56.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10186" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:32:56.213" Score="0" Body="Behavior that may be construed as sexual misconduct (without implying judgment that it is so). This includes forms of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, but also in general advances, comments or actions in situations that may be inappropriate --- for instance, between a student and their instructor." OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T07:40:46.313" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T07:40:46.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10187" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:34:22.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On standards or conventions specific to higher education in Asian countries, in ways that differ in structure and style from the systems in other parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T04:25:31.053" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T04:25:31.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10188" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:34:22.313" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to higher education in Asian countries, in ways that differ in structure and style from the systems in other parts of the world." OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T04:25:31.053" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T04:25:31.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10189" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:37:10.417" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T12:37:10.417" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T12:37:10.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10190" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:37:10.417" Score="0" Body="Regarding how people relate to each other in groups." OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T12:54:23.697" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T12:54:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:00:50.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I particularly like the answer that suggested having rubrics to identify criteria such as clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to a situation where work is completely unreadable, I apply the pedagogical pattern known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://extras.springer.com/1999/978-3-642-63632-5/OFFLINE/PPP/PP55.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grade it again, Sam&lt;/a&gt;. Very often, the student who submits unreadable work is simply not making an effort. When I refuse the work using this pattern and give the student a second chance to improve readability, the second work is always better and subsequent works are usually also better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T00:26:33.827" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T00:26:33.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10183" CreationDate="2013-05-23T18:33:27.417" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a good link that I'd found on this topic, while applying to graduate school:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Memos/Grad-School-Recos/&quot;&gt;Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above link is a pithy list of points to be kept in mind by new letter writers. As a summary, I'd like to highlight some sections of it that I've found repeated in other such articles as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be Concrete&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you take away just one piece of concrete advice, let it be this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The single biggest problem with most letters is that they are filled&#xA;  with abstract generalities and infinitives. If we don't know you or&#xA;  your institution, we can't judge what any of these statements mean&#xA;  relative to our standards. Always consider the illustrative anecdote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Due to deadline pressure, I asked him to grow a pumpkin in just one month. As you know it takes over 100 days to grow a pumpkin, but over the weekend he devised a new method to accelerate their growth. On Monday morning I arrived to find not just a pumpkin but a steaming, flavorful pie. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anecdote about acts of raw coding are only so helpful in understanding&#xA;  research potential, but they're better than nothing (see the section&#xA;  on Corporate Letters, below). An extra book or paper they read, and&#xA;  demonstrated understanding of (again, be concrete about why you&#xA;  believe this), goes a long way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Corporate Letters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An important special case is the corporate letter: when you, the&#xA;  letter-writer, work in industry and have no academic affiliation. Many&#xA;  corporate letters (like many academic letters, but more so) tend to be&#xA;  vapid, clearly written in a different culture and for a different&#xA;  audience. Unless they actually did academic research with you, here&#xA;  are some suggestions for improving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A common mistake is to focus on teamwork. This is important even in&#xA;  academia, but often this is the primary focus of the letter, which&#xA;  makes it less valuable. Of course we care about it, but it's secondary&#xA;  to their technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tell us if they learned something particularly quickly, mastered a&#xA;  complex technology, or solved a problem others were stuck on. Give&#xA;  us a paragraph of details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you have a concrete reason to evaluate research potential, do so concretely. Otherwise, don't bother.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Give us a brief bio-sketch, including educational qualifications.&#xA;  4.Put the applicant in context, and tell us the context. It's fine to relate it to your own student days, or to your experience hiring students.&#xA;  E.g.&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Compared to the students I studied with at Cucumber and Melon University, and the ones I now recruit from there, I would put him in&#xA;  the top 10%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T18:33:27.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-23T19:25:35.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you discuss formatting constraints of the grant application process, you're getting close to a solution, I think. There are really two components here; one of these is structural/formatting criteria, and the other is clarity. When you're in a situation where structural requirements and great care are part of the lesson you're teaching, I find it best to refuse to grade work until it has been presented in the proper format, and apply whatever late-work structure you normally use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This teaches the lesson that formatting is not optional fluff, but is instead a precondition to being taken seriously. That said, if you're going to follow this method, your instructions on format should themselves be crystal clear and unambiguous. Ask a competent peer to follow your formatting instructions and see if they can arrive at the right format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question about messiness is more troublesome, and to some extent your response should depend on where you're situated within the broader track your students will follow, and what constitutes messy/sloppy. I think your response should be two-pronged:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't advocate failing students outright for unreadable work, but let them know you can't grade the assignment until you can understand it, and ask them to discuss their work with you one-on-one. Like above, allow your late-work policy to degrade the value of their work if they don't come address it swiftly. I ran into a few students who had a sense of what academic writing should sound like, with the result that they were completely incomprehensible when trying to parrot a voice they had no real command of. But they were able to explain it in person. This method allows you to show how imperative clear communication is--it's a precondition to being graded--and avoid invalidating what may have otherwise been good work. The ultimate penalty is based on how quickly the students resolve the problems with their work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include some metric of style/quality/organization on your rubric. While I understand the inclination to see writing as something students should already know how to do--and that you probably don't see yourself as an instructor of writing--I think rubrics should always always always reflect the qualities you actually expect of good work in your field. Your rubric telegraphs your own priorities, and if you don't communicate clarity and style as a concern, it shouldn't come as a surprise when students think it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5668" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T19:25:35.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10003" CreationDate="2013-05-23T21:27:34.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the existing answers, I'd note that in some fields, the review process can be very long.  If you stick only to papers that have been published, you'll be giving the committee a picture of your research that may be years out of date.  Committees will understand this; sometimes they &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; ask for preprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're confident in the quality of the article, and have a reasonable expectation of eventually getting it published, send it along.  Conversely, if you don't feel the article represents your best work, don't send it, even if it has been published already!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T21:27:34.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-05-24T04:50:31.277" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does membership of honour society carry any professional weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not in general.  At a very early stage in your career, for example when applying to graduate school, it may be useful as a quick indication that you have received high grades.  However, the grades themselves are more meaningful than the honor society membership, and in any case grades only matter so much.  It's worth mentioning the honor society on your CV, but it won't make a big difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are more than a few years past undergraduate studies, neither grades nor honor societies matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T04:50:31.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10145" CreationDate="2013-05-24T08:52:55.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the answer is:  teaching assistantship (TA) is a formal job category at most universities, which entails a specific combination of job duties.  Those job duties go beyond what you are doing.  Therefore, you would be misrepresenting your work on your CV if you called yourself a TA, because you have not been formally appointed as a TA (and because a TA would be expected to take on additional duties beyond what you have been doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is a little different from aeismail's answer.  In many institutions, undergrads can be appointed as a TA, under certain circumstances.  That doesn't mean that you can just call yourself a TA if you feel like it.  For instance, assisting informally or helping with grading papers doesn't necessarily make you a TA; it's not unusual to hire undergraduates to help with those tasks, under some other job title -- but not as a TA.  A TA is a very specific job title, and unless you've been appointed under that job title, you should not call yourself a TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think you're misinterpreting the situation, when you presume there is a stigma against hiring undergrads as a TA.  I suspect it's more likely that there is a different explanation: that your instructor reacted negatively because you were proposing to describe yourself as a TA when you have not actually been formally appointed as a TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T08:52:55.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10213" CreationDate="2013-05-24T09:00:34.617" Score="5" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a university lecturer in a local university in my country. I am sharing one course with another lecturer who has been teaching that course for approximately 3 years for now. A problem began when some of my students complained that they were not able to cope with the material. The dean was not willing to lose those students (as they pay a monthly tuition here); so he decided that myself and the other lecturer should switch groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually this situation has transformed in something worse. The other lecturer wants me to strictly follow the problems and solutions that he has on-line. I particularly do not agree with that situation mainly because I have a higher educational background, apart from research in my field of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a complaint to the academic coordinator, explaining my situation. I feel the students here are treated like some kind of stocks in a bursary market. The university loses money if they leave. What would be a good thing to do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T13:34:54.700" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T14:57:16.730" Title="Differences in opinion when teaching a course jointly with another instructor" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2013-05-24T11:20:04.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a current student of computer science (master level) I can say that commenting on the readability of work from students, providing pointers and even taking it into account when grading is of great importance. It will benefit the student a lot in the long run.&#xA;At my university, many professors point out bad readability and incoherent structure, although mostly on project/paper type assignments and less on weekly homework assignments.&#xA;However, it is considered important in all cases. I'm now writing my thesis and have written two research papers as part of research projects (for publication) and the comments I got on structure and readability greatly improved my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I see from fellow students that they write solutions without providing reasoning and without introducing the topic and the problem they are solving. I believe this is very bad style (for group work this has unfortunately led to me rewriting the group documents many times simply to improve the structure). However, students don't often see a problem because it gets accepted by the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important note though is that I think grammar and spelling should be of significantly less importance. For instance, the Chinese students in our class often forget the word &quot;the&quot; in writing (all documents are written in English for my master). Although this affects readability and is often pointed out by teachers, it is generally not considered an error significant enough to deduct points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line between decreased readability due to grammar/spelling and actual incomprehensibility is hard to determine, and should be determined on a case by case basis. Still it is important that students also learn this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, definitely help students in improving their structure and on communicating their ideas and force students to do so by making it affect the grade! It will only help them like it helped me! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As a side note, handwritten solutions are generally not accepted where I study, but if YOU are requesting handwritten solutions, it would be unfair to deduct points for bad handwriting. Some people just don't have a nice handwriting, an unfortunate result of the modern computer era. If students CAN but don't have to hand in handwritten solutions, then it should affect the grade as it is the students choice to write instead of type (if it significantly affects the readability of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6332" LastEditorUserId="6332" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T11:27:57.980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T11:27:57.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10203" CreationDate="2013-05-24T11:57:11.183" Score="18" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started publishing papers this year - 3 so far, of which 2 are in an international journal, the 3rd in a local journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there any particular disadvantage with publishing the majority of papers in one or a very limited array of journals? Or is it a case that it makes no difference either way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T13:26:57.090" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T00:11:37.273" Title="Publishing in one vs. many journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T11:58:06.447" Score="15" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits for the universities and particular professors  in recording online courses (MOOC)? Do they get paid by Coursera and similar sites? Do they pursue publicity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that they are providing a useful service by spreading education to everybody in the world, but what do they get in exchange? Do they hope to get more students enrolled, or more public exposure for the university? Or do they do it out of the kindness of their hearts, or for some other reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7216" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T13:41:55.590" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T19:52:28.407" Title="What are the benefits for universities/professors to record online courses?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10201" CreationDate="2013-05-24T12:33:47.807" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure opinions and traditions vary concerning this question. For me the quality of the journal (say, impact factor) is the most important, you try to get published in good journals. In some cases, the field may be so narrow that only one or a very few journals may be good. In such cases the selection may result in a single journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To publish in a variety of journals seems to be a means by itself for many but I think the reasons still vary. There may be advantages in getting published in many journals to show that the research has wider applications and is accepted more generally. It may be a way to avoid the suspicion that you have a back way into a single journal (not that that would be true). In some cases, you may select different journals because you know your ideas are not favoured by someone in a specific journal's editorial board (strategic reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So reasons for spreading the publications may vary quite substantially. The main point for me is, however, still that primarily the quality of the journal will decide. I would not chose a different journal just to get a new journal mentioned in my list of publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="675" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T13:25:29.223" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T13:25:29.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2013-05-24T12:56:12.687" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I record my lectures (when possible) for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Easier access for students who can't attend class.  While I generally want students to come to class, there are valid reasons for being absent (e.g., I'm currently teaching classes to military members who often have duty that preempts class attendance).  I can also point students to a video to review if they ask me questions explicitly covered in class (and also for general review).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Open access.  I think it's pretty cool to live in a world where it is possible to get free access to videos that enhance knowledge.  I feel like I'm playing my little part by putting my lectures online.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introspective review.  It can be extremely beneficial to review your own teaching methods, although I don't have time to do this for all of my classes.  I have gone back to particular sections to review, and I almost always find something I could improve upon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(minor) The America's Funniest Videos factor.  I've had clips that have been unintentionally hilarious, either because of something I've said, or because of something students have said. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities have their own reasons for putting classes online, and you've already listed a number of them.  I'd like to believe that most of the reasons are altruistic, with sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm&quot;&gt;MIT's OpenCourseWare&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.stanford.edu/about&quot;&gt;Stanford's Online Courses&lt;/a&gt; providing no-strings-attached courses for free.  I would also hope that someone is doing research on these types of course offerings, to see if they are really having benefits to the people that watch them.  I don't believe the bottom line at extremely selective schools will ever be hurt by offering free course material, but if they do start feeling the pinch I imagine they will change their models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sites like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/&quot;&gt;Courseara&lt;/a&gt; are for profit and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/08/coursera-begins-make-money&quot;&gt;starting to make money&lt;/a&gt; by offering to verify certificates of completion for a cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why, then, some [Universities] charge enormous fees for attending courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of college expense is a can of worms that has as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=why+is+college+so+expensive%3F&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;oq=why+is+college+so+expensive%3F&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.0.57j60l3j59j62.4484j0&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot;&gt;many differing answers as there are people asking about it&lt;/a&gt;.  Selective colleges charge what they do because (1) it is expensive to run a brick-and-mortar college, and (2) the applications keep rising and kids can still get loans, grants, and other aid.  Obviously it is much more subtle than that, and it would take &lt;a href=&quot;http://freevideolectures.com/University/UC-Berkeley/Economics/Subject/Page1&quot;&gt;more than a few free economics courses&lt;/a&gt; to get to the bottom of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T12:56:12.687" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T13:09:45.863" Score="5" ViewCount="6203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to attend a competition\seminar with my teenage son. He needs to create a project for this competition on a 36&quot;*48&quot; trifold poster board. Now the dimensions of this trifold poster board do not make it eligible for taking it as a carry on luggage and its not safe to send it in Checked in luggage for risk of damaging the project that he has done. What are the options for carrying this poster board as a carry on luggage ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7218" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:47:38.497" Title="Travelling for an academic seminar with a 36*48 inch poster board on a flight" Tags="&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10206" CreationDate="2013-05-24T13:18:58.243" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common option is to print or create the poster on a large sheet of paper and carry it in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2448/flying-with-a-poster-tube-as-a-hand-luggage&quot;&gt;poster tube&lt;/a&gt;.  After you arrive at your destination, buy a blank poster board, and paste your paper onto it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T13:18:58.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10211" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:07:44.540" Score="7" ViewCount="8385" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postdoc, postdoctoral research assistant in a university on a contract has a supervisor or a boss. They may not be the PI on the grant which pays the salary as it may contain other universities as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conversation and in email, what is the best term to use for your postdoc boss? Something doesn't seem correct with the term boss or manager, or even supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T04:20:19.590" Title="What is the best way (terminology) for a postdoc (PDRA) to refer to their 'boss'/'supervisor'?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10208" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:17:38.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is really up to you (both you and to some extent the &quot;boss&quot;). The term &quot;boss&quot; to me is too managerial. I don't like the sound of &quot;my PI&quot;, even if the boss is a PI, they are not really your PI. I prefer advisor over supervisor, I think it sounds more supporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, since you think it is an issue, just refer to the boss as Dr. Smith and then say you are a post doc for Dr. Smith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T14:17:38.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:20:12.943" Score="4" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals now are open access only and every article published (authors) must pay a fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, this info can be hard to find. The journals does not put it visibly on the front page (next to impact factor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to compare 80 journals in the medical field and their charges - it is not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a site that would 'monitor' this and have data on many journals. (any list with 50+ journals and prices listed will be a good answer) (even if domain specific) (medicine domain is preferred)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T15:17:35.047" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T15:17:35.047" Title="Is there a website that lists for a set of at least 1000 journals OpenAccess fees for publishing an article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10208" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:44:26.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard &quot;supervisor&quot;, &quot;advisor&quot; and &quot;mentor&quot;.  They can be clarified as &quot;postdoc advisor&quot;, etc, to avoid confusion with a Ph.D. advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the simpler &quot;I work with Professor Smith.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T14:44:26.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10218" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:44:50.500" Score="12" ViewCount="9696" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm just wondering - I'm writing my bachelor's &quot;thesis&quot; in information-systems management, which should in theory be a paper about a hypothesis I make, an experiment and an evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an &quot;experiment&quot; which is comparing reality of information-systems management to various theories of information-systems management.&#xA;I have my evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my &quot;thesis&quot;... is basically my assumption based on experience that says: &quot;theory is based on assumptions that practice do not always exist&quot;. And my &quot;experiment&quot; neither proves nor disproves this triviality, but is supposed to show how you can tailor the management theory for it to be useful under economic constraints to a real specific problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;What should I call this thing, since it isn't a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7220" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-09-03T08:48:35.613" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T19:10:45.873" Title="What do you call research that has no hypothesis?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10199" CreationDate="2013-05-24T14:57:16.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some things which are unclear in your question. However, I'm going to make a few guesses and if any are wrong then you might want to disregard this answer altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have more education but less teaching experience than the other instructor. If you are new to teaching, one very common issue that new teachers often overestimate students' abilities. If the other instructor has more teaching experience then you might be better off 'going with the flow' for this first semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to go with the flow is, as Chris Gregg pointed out in his comment above, students once given a syllabus should not have it changed on them mid-stream. It's bad enough (for them) to have to deal with a change in instructor, they should not also have the syllabus changed on them as well. Consider what you could learn from the way the other instructor designed the course - we can learn things from those with less education than us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what you mean by &lt;em&gt;treated like some kind of stocks in a bursary market&lt;/em&gt; but, of course, without students there is no point of teaching so, yes, they are important. Nobody wants a large group of students to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my suggestion is to try one semester following the other teacher's guidance and next semester consider taking everything you know, and everything you learned, and improve things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T14:57:16.730" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10215" CreationDate="2013-05-24T15:11:05.403" Score="13" ViewCount="3591" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10202/what-are-the-benefits-for-universities-professors-to-record-online-courses&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, and specifically &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10204/15723&quot;&gt;Chris Gregg's answer&lt;/a&gt;, I started to think about recording my lectures in order to help students review, help students who missed class, and generally provide a way for people to learn about the subjects I teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do teachers (with the same goal as I wrote) record their lectures? Do they simply ask someone to record them with a video camera? Do they go in and do more serious editing like you see in Coursera videos where the video transitions between the lecturer's face and slides being drawn on by the lecturer (as described &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2853/device-for-writing-a-lecture-with-a-stylus-for-video-lecture-recording&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious what my options are, considering my university provides zero support for this idea of recording lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T09:54:06.793" Title="How do you record your lectures?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-05-24T15:44:22.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If my lecture is done via a presentation (not my preferred method, but necessary for some classes), I record the audio of my lectures along with a &quot;video&quot; of the slides I use. I use Camtasia to record everything, so the only other thing I need is a microphone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I give lectures at the blackboard I don't record them. However, for those lectures I provide a fairly detailed set of course notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T15:44:22.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10208" CreationDate="2013-05-24T15:54:30.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would lean toward &quot;advisor,&quot; as that encapsulates the role best in normal circumstances. You should be an independent researcher as a postdoc, so you shouldn't need much more than advice from your PI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally reserve the term mentor for someone who advises you about (and throughout) your career, not just for a particular project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T04:20:19.590" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T04:20:19.590" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:19:14.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference for teaching undergraduate courses (in physics) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audio-record the lecture using a small MP3 player hung around my neck, and provide the file to students as a MP3 file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write coherent notes on the blackboard that students can use as the basis for their own notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I specifically do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do the following, which I believe is harmful to students' learning in such courses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide detailed printed notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use slides (except for occasional complex Figures and animations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7221" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T16:19:14.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10212" CreationDate="2013-05-24T17:38:38.850" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a thesis. From what you've written, your hypothesis is that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you can tailor the [information-systems] management theory for it to be useful under economic constraints to a real specific problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also be doing &lt;strong&gt;exploratory research&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;blue-skies research&lt;/strong&gt;, where you don't start with a research question, you start with a direction, subject or area, and go wandering off looking for interesting problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T17:38:38.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10212" CreationDate="2013-05-24T19:13:08.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It almost sounds like a &lt;em&gt;literature review&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;critique&lt;/em&gt;, where you have a particular lens or perspective from which to observe and interpret other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T19:13:08.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10201" CreationDate="2013-05-24T19:30:46.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (mathematics), the quality of journals is a quite fuzzy notion; we do not rely very much on metrics like the impact factor, but have a subjective and qualitative sense of prestige of journals. Inevitably, the way a given journal is regarded changes from one person to another. As a consequence, publishing in a variety of journals increases the odds that someone looking at your publication list will think &quot;whao, she published in X!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that if one publishes a large fraction of its research in one journal, people can wonder whether she has a friend in the editorial board that help her getting accepted there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it seems preferable (and possible, given the large amount of journal in the field) to publish in a variety of journal for hiring, promotion and more generally evaluation matters. Of course, the picture is certainly different in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T19:30:46.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-05-24T21:50:02.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system my department uses for large lecture classes captures two video feeds: One showing the lecturer and the screen, taken from a camera mounted on the ceiling, the other showing whatever is currently being projected onto the screen, captured on route to the projector.  (I normally lecture with a document camera, printer paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharpie.com/Pages/GlobalLanding.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sharpies&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;occasional&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Non-cubic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;small&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prop&lt;/a&gt;.)  Audio is captured separately from a microphone on the instructor's lapel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department's playback system allows the students to show either or both videos, at adjustable sizes, with synchronized playback, and to slow down or speed up playback.  The capturing system automatically locates transitions between slides (or, in my case, new pieces of paper) and provides navigation landmarks for the students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system is almost entirely automated.  In particular, the lecture videos are not edited at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also provide detailed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/teaching/algorithms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;course notes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T13:44:42.950" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T13:44:42.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10208" CreationDate="2013-05-25T01:09:01.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One &quot;clean&quot; way is to use &lt;code&gt;host&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm a Postdoc at U of U., hosted by Prof. P.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sometimes it might indicate that that's the guy who pays your money, but not necessarily serving as your mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T01:09:01.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10226" CreationDate="2013-05-25T02:00:10.393" Score="6" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a list of references in my CV. One of them happens to be the Dean of the graduate school and the other a Vice Chancellor. Both of these roles are administrative and their primary position is that of a Professor. Would listing these referees as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;John H. Doeberg&#xA;Professor and Dean of the Graduate School&#xA;University of Foo&#xA;&#xA;Jane Q. Publicowski&#xA;Professor and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs&#xA;University of Bar&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;be better (give more credence/weight) than simply listing them as a Professor. I know that ultimately what they write in those letters is what matters, but for the purposes of this question, it can be safely assumed that both letters are going to be stellar recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7224" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T04:31:00.943" Title="Should I mention my reference's university role (administrative) when listing?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10223" CreationDate="2013-05-25T03:26:14.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't said what the letters are for. If it's for a position based on academic credentials (whether in academia or industry), I doubt it makes much of a difference. If the position involves administrative responsibilities, then mentioning this would help, so the people requesting the letter would make sure to ask them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T03:26:14.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10206" CreationDate="2013-05-25T03:28:39.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option that goes beyond Nate's idea and that would work in an American city: take the poster as a PDF, find a local Kinko's and then print it out. Then apply Nate's solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T03:28:39.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10223" CreationDate="2013-05-25T04:31:00.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to remember here is that your reference letter writers will be providing official letters, and therefore will be including their full titles (presumably the letterhead will list this). In such a case, it doesn't really seem to make much sense to &quot;hide&quot; the status of the person writing the letter. Moreover, if the position is one which will include some administrative duties, a letter of reference from someone doing university administration might even be a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T04:31:00.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10231" CreationDate="2013-05-25T14:39:18.640" Score="10" ViewCount="29096" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD position for which I am planning to apply notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants should have (or expect to achieve) a minimum of a First Class or 2.1 Honours degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The position is in the UK, but I live in another EU country. What does &quot;First Class or 2.1 Honours degree&quot; mean, and how do I know if I satisfy that condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grades at my university are given as fail, 3, 4 and 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7226" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T00:13:27.150" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T00:13:27.150" Title="What does &quot;First Class or 2.1 Honours degree&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-25T15:09:28.790" Score="4" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Situation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am soon (maybe...) going to graduate with a thesis-based MS in a technical field. The past year and a half has been incredibly frustrating from a research perspective, as my advisor has insisted on telling me exactly what and how to research, essentially prohibiting me from exploring any of my ideas which are not approved by him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is because I unfortunately chose a research area for my MS directly related to his PhD work from some time ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have, for purposes of finishing my degree program, simply acquiesced to his requests in the hopes of finishing as this degree has dragged on for far longer than I want and my current goal is to simply be finished with school officially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working full-time (after working in research on campus for ~2.5 years) and have no intent to pursue a PhD in the near future and if so, absolutely not with my current advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have personal interest in my research and can see myself exploring my own interests post-graduation, which could result in publishable material. I have no interest in giving my current advisor credit for any of this, should it happen. I also understand he likely would be pretty upset should I actually publish related to my MS work without his involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there standard etiquette, unspoken rules, or things to be aware of, within either the academic world or research world which address this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am posting this anonymously but will be able to clarify&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:34:09.390" Title="Etiquette of publishing (continued) research after graduation with an MS degree?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10234" CreationDate="2013-05-25T15:22:09.163" Score="3" ViewCount="3156" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like most PhD applications require at least two reference letter. One of my Master's thesis supervisors (a PhD) has written me a reference letter. Can I ask my other supervisor (a PhD student) to write me the second one, or would that be redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other alternative letter writers are all professors who have only seen me in class and can't really comment on my research potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7226" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T19:17:13.677" Title="Can I have both my supervisors write reference letters?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10228" CreationDate="2013-05-25T15:25:56.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big issue here is the following: will you need to have your master's thesis advisor write you a letter of recommendation in the near future? If so, then it will be potentially a big problem to publish material from your thesis without his involvement. This will provoke a response, which could be damaging to, for instance, job applications or graduate school admissions. So tread carefully before trying to publish the MS work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However,&lt;/em&gt; since your advisor has proscribed work in other directions as part of your thesis, you could certainly explore those on your own. In such a case—since it isn't an outgrowth of your thesis work, but essentially a &quot;parallel&quot; work, you wouldn't need to share co-author credit with him. This is especially true if you write the paper and direct the research yourself; in such cases, he has no real claim to being on the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T15:25:56.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10227" CreationDate="2013-05-25T15:33:30.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;definitions,&quot; such as they exist, of the different degrees, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification&quot;&gt;are available from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, &quot;first-class honours&quot; and &quot;2.1 (or 2:1) honours&quot; are the top two categories of honors degrees in the UK system—sort of like the &lt;em&gt;summa cum laude&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;magna cum laude&lt;/em&gt; in American universities. Although the requirements for awarding them appear to be fairly uniform between schools (with the possible exception of Oxford and Cambridge—see dbmag9's comment below), given that each university may have different standards for how they &quot;translate&quot; degrees from other countries, your best bet is to contact the university's international office (or equivalent), to determine if they will consider your degree to be comparable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-26T12:28:26.070" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T12:28:26.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2013-05-25T15:39:06.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main point of the letters of recommendation are to comment on your abilities, and to place them in the context of other people the recommender has known and worked with. The better they can comment, and the larger the number of people the recommender has worked with and therefore can compare you to, the better the recommendation will likely be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, it is not nearly as helpful to get a letter from a PhD student as from someone who is more experienced and has likely worked with more master's students. On the other hand, if the option is to get a letter who can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; comment on your class work, I would opt for including the PhD student's recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have had a non-academic person (perhaps an internship supervisor or similar) in a related discipline who could comment on your work, this might be a suitable alternative. (See wsc's answer below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T19:17:13.677" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T19:17:13.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2013-05-25T16:21:08.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it was mentioned before, you can obtain reference letters from your supervisors, in case that you have done some internship job for obtaining your master´s.&#xA;Also you can talk directly with one of your past professors, and explain them about your research interests (try to check first which professors have the same research interests). Then you can ask, in a nice way, if they can give you a hand with a recommendation letter. Most of the time they will agree to help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T16:21:08.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2013-05-25T16:46:04.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've sat on my department's graduate studies committee during application season, and so I can provide at least one point of anecdata for how PhD application recommendation letters are used, at least in my tiny corner of the academy. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, These letters are among the last things that are looked at. We don't have rigorous thresholds for grades, GRE scores, subject GRE scores, publications, etc. But all of those things are used to &quot;objectively&quot; sort the pool. First the obvious admits are skimmed off the top, and fellowship offers are made to some of them. This is the first place where letters are important, since quotes are mined from those letters to try and win funding for these students from the University (i.e., we entice the student with a prestigious award, and the department doesn't even have to pay for her!) The money quote is usually a ranking and/or direct comparison -- &lt;em&gt;&quot;In my twenty years at Giant State University, I've seen no more than 5 students of X's caliber. I would say her talents remind me of Y's at that age, who is now a professor at Prestigious U&quot;&lt;/em&gt; -- and this is why even a mediocre teaching letter is more useful for this purpose than a nice letter from a PhD student (who can not be counted on to have a reasonable intuition for another's future potential).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, we work our way down to the marginal cases; this is much more difficult since the marginal cases require a more holistic take on the application package. No one gets immediately thrown out just for bad grades or a bad subject GRE score, but we expect some explanation of a mitigating circumstance (not an excuse!) in the personal statement, and hopefully reflected in the letters as well. For example, if you were dinged in the first pass for a low GPA, we would like to see that it was a bad first year (and not a bad fifth...); that you are on an upswing. If you think you might be a marginal case for whatever reason, the letter from the PhD student might be helpful -- perhaps you don't have any publications, but the PhD student can vouch for your work and verify that you have something in preparation, or explain why your project failed (projects often fail!) but that nonetheless you mastered some state-of-the-art technique on the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the other hand&lt;/em&gt; it is a big waving red flag if those things are then &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; pointed out by your actual boss (the PhD holding supervisor). If you think the student will write a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; letter, then you're probably best off having that student lobby on your behalf with the professor, to make sure the &lt;em&gt;professor's&lt;/em&gt; letter is strong, and then get a second letter from someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend you do not ask for a letter from a non-academic unless it was an actual research position (and even then, these can be iffy if the supervisor has no letter-writing experience). On occasion we see glowing letters from a student's supervisor at their summer construction job, or a call center for a political campaign. Well-rounded students are great, but such letters are almost useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6820" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T16:46:04.603" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-25T19:01:45.847" Score="0" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't necessarily consider it a hardship to teach calculus or the like to students whose preparation in prerequisites is weak, but but I am offended by the practice of making it a personal policy to treat learning the material ONLY as a price paid to get a grade to put on one's resume, rather than as the thing they're there for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm wondering how to identify instances of such behavior quickly when they occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can one identify institutions that tolerate or encourage my position as outlined in my first paragraph above, and those that are hostile toward it?  I think the latter---where that hostility may exist---often include respectable institutions in which lots of students want to get degrees in law or business or the like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7229" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T04:04:17.607" Title="Identifying students' purposes and institutions' purposes" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10235" CreationDate="2013-05-25T19:49:56.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's an easy eay to identify this behavior without students directly approaching you and making it clear through questions like the ever-popular: &quot;Will this be on the exam?&quot; and grade-grubbing for every possible point. Without obvious signals, it's not really clear who's in it for a grade and who's there to learn—and it would be imprudent to try to prognosticate. The results may surprise you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as an institutional perspective, I again don't know if there's a way to really lay things at the feet of the institution for &quot;encouraging&quot; such behavior. It can vary a lot from department to department, and even faculty member to faculty member. However, one issue can be to see how seriously the department you're interested in takes teaching duties. Is it something people are doing their best to get out of, or are they trying to do the best job they can with it? Does the department encourage &quot;out-of-the-box&quot; thinking in how to teach classes, or is it just something to get over and done with each semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a lot of it also relies on your attitude. If you make it clear to the students that you're serious about them &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt;, rather than just &lt;em&gt;regurgitating&lt;/em&gt; for the purpose of an exam, the students who stick with you will probably be more motivated than if they don't think you are invested in their learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T19:49:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-25T21:47:39.877" Score="5" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently appointed to be a reviewer for a congress in my specialization field. The problem that I got is which affiliation should I put? Actually I am working as a lecturer in two universities, part time, but also I am making my first year of Doctoral studies in a third one. I was thinking to put the last one, should that be correct? or should I talk with my supervisor first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T13:40:23.490" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T13:40:23.490" Title="academic affiliation for a congress" Tags="&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10235" CreationDate="2013-05-26T04:04:17.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that you are offended by students who do not take your subject as seriously as you do but that is just the way some students are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are students who are really interested and there are those who are not. In the case of calculus, if a student is required to take it for their non-math major then you will certainly have students who just want the grade. One way around this is to only teach elective classes but that will not work for everyone (I'm not sure it would work for any teacher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, your questions are clear. How do you find the students who don't really care? I find that they usually bubble to the surface quite quickly. I tend to be quite interactive with my students, asking lots of questions. I also give them additional 'required' reading. Even the required reading doesn't get read by the students who just want to pass and be done with it. So, those students who actually read the material and can answer it meaningfully in class are the students you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as for identifying institutions I will say that I have read a lot and talked to a lot of teachers and one thing EVERY serious teacher wants is to teach a class of highly motivated students who care deeply for their studies. This is simply unrealistic and I have never heard of a teacher who actually achieves that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the better question to ask is: &lt;strong&gt;How can I motivate a deep love of my subject in my students?&lt;/strong&gt; By stimulating their desires, you will naturally end up with what you want. However, this is not easy and it takes a lot of time and effort. However, you seem like a serious teacher, so perhaps you can make the investment. Certainly the results, if you succeed, would likely be very rewarding for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My perspective is that a great teacher has no bad students. By this, I mean that a great teacher is able to motivate their students to &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to learn the material. By this measure I am not a great teacher, but I keep trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T04:04:17.607" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10240" CreationDate="2013-05-26T10:14:20.297" Score="9" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my research, asides from getting papers published, I have been interviewed for the radio and newspapers. My question is, are too many media 'appearances' a potential hindrance to someone early in their academic career?  Or is it also a case of 'all publicity is good'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main concern is being misquoted, which thankfully has not happened, though they exaggerated one (minor) point a tad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-26T10:38:42.580" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T13:55:52.560" Title="Do media interviews enhance or potentially spoil academic reputations" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10239" CreationDate="2013-05-26T10:38:00.933" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is that it depends on in what context the appearance occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you become visible as an expert in your field your appearances will build your reputation among the public as an expert. As such you will gain a positive (trustworthy) reputation which I am sure will be seen as positive in many respects. The university will gain credit by having employees appear as experts In my country all faculty also are mandated to convey science to the general public and appearances in media is one way to do this. So my guess is that the department and the university as well s your own discipline will see this as beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you appear with politically incorrect views it will all be negative. Another problem that I am sure will appear is jealousy from colleagues who do not appear in media. In the end your success depends on how you get portrayed in the media. My university runs media training to ensure that faculty represent the university in an appropriate way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end positive media visibility is not likely to strongly affect your research career in terms increased funding, the systems should not really be influenced by it but we all al human. Media visibility will mainly affect the way you, your discipline, the university etc. is perceived by the public. It may, for example, influence the way politicians distribute research funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, media interviews can potentially both enhance or spoil a career depending on the context in which you appear. I believe it is important to know how media works and universities often have programs (and sometimes also rules) to help in such contacts. Depending on the type of question to which you are requested to respond you need to be able to assess how answers will be used or perceived. If the interviews are on non-controversial topics, it is probably not problematic but if you are approached on a burning issue, be aware and be savy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T13:55:52.560" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T13:55:52.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10237" CreationDate="2013-05-26T13:05:56.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you only adjunct at the other two institutions (my assumption based on saying you do it part time), I would list your affiliation with your doctoral program. Of course your CV should include these adjunct roles as well, they just aren't your main affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have developed a more intimate relationship with either the two institutions you teach part time at (like say you've been an adjunct for many years) you might consider listing them as an affiliation. Those part time adjunct gigs though don't typically support research activities that would result in outside roles such as a reviewer (for anything) or even being considered a specialist in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T13:05:56.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10242" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-27T00:21:04.360" Score="1" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just done my Bachelor in computer science and got an offer to a software engineering position. Some people told me that a master degree is very beneficial for my long-term career development. Unfortunately I do not think I can get into any good master program because of my terrible undergrad gpa + no academic references. A postgraduate certificate program requires nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is your point of view on postgraduate certificate in software engineering? Is it just a joke comparing to master degrees? What about starting salary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7232" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T06:20:23.327" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T15:31:51.160" Title="Postgraduate certification/diploma in software engineering" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2013-05-27T03:49:34.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short term wise, the postgraduate certificate will help you to find a better job with a higher salary because the certificate shows that you have some skill printed on the certificate. However, whatever the technology you learn while getting the certificate could become obsolete in a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term wise, the master degree proves that you know more fundamentals than just a bachelor. It may not help you that much when looking for a job with better salary. Some employers would think you don't have the skills they want immediately. However, you'll learn those needed skills faster and better because you know more fundamentals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to find a job as of now, you want to have certificates. If you want to be an excellent software engineer in the future, you should get a master degree&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T03:49:34.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10246" CreationDate="2013-05-27T03:54:24.227" Score="37" ViewCount="27760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a CS conference presentation and wondering how can I handle the references. I am thinking about three different possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore them!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just list them at the end of the presentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List them &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; cite them within the presentation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose the first option since anyone interested can go and check the whole set of references in the actual paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean not crediting the others for their work? How this is usually handled in CS conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T05:45:19.287" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T14:49:10.250" Title="Should I add references to conference presentations?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2013-05-27T05:31:40.727" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there is a specific way within the CS community but the way most established seniors seem to do in my field is to note down the reference at the bottom of the slide where they refer to someone's results/figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a better approach than to list them all in the end, because the audience gets the reference together with the content, that way you don't have to puzzle the references and the content 6 months after you attended the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people you are referring to are people you have had collaborations or communication with, it would not hurt to have them listed in a &quot;thanks to&quot; or more formally &quot;acknowledgements&quot; slide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T05:31:40.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2013-05-27T05:44:46.347" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the slides you're using are going to have &quot;independent life,&quot;—in other words, if you're going to make them available separately from the conference paper (on your website, for instance), then the citations should be included as part of the presentation. I would follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10245/18238&quot;&gt;posdef&lt;/a&gt;'s example and place the citations on the same slide as where it's needed; this will save the reader from having to flip back and forth between different parts of the presentation or between the presentation and the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not including the citations is a bad idea, because it means you are potentially failing to give people the credit they deserve for ideas that were originally theirs. Even though it's &quot;just&quot; a conference presentation doesn't mean that the rules of crediting people for their work should be ignored. (Citing the work of others is also the right thing to do from the perspective of &quot;playing nice with others.&quot; Taking credit for other people's work can make them leerier of working with you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="18238" LastEditDate="2020-06-08T14:49:10.250" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T14:49:10.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10270" CreationDate="2013-05-27T06:29:11.613" Score="60" ViewCount="4157" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching a topic area I have come across a number of papers that claim to improve on the state of the art and have been published at respected outlets (e.g. CVPR, ICIP). These papers are often written in a way that obscures some of the details and their methods can be lacking in detail. Upon contacting these authors for more information and asking if they would kindly make their source code available they stop replying or decline the offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why are computer science researchers reluctant to share their code?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have expected that disseminating your source code would have positive effects for the author, e.g., greater recognition and visibility within the community and more citations.  What am I missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the future, what are some better ways to approach fellow researchers that will result in greater success at getting a copy of their source code?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T04:45:31.803" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T14:56:26.127" Title="Why are CS researchers reluctant to share code and what techniques can I use to encourage sharing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;public-domain&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2013-05-27T07:28:59.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not including citations would be a very bad idea, asides from the reasons given above, there is a risk that someone would claim that you are plagiarising their work - even though you aren't.  I have seen this happen before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps place an in-slide (akin to in-text) reference on each slide and a slide at the end with the references, or if possible, make a clear citation to the main reference used on the slides where necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T07:28:59.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2013-05-27T07:32:09.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a CS researcher per se, but I am writing Android code for my research in Atmospheric Physics, so my view is somewhat limited.  However, I can say from my own experience that much of the code that I am developing and testing is part of a greater project that the team I am part of is developing. It is a mix of the rules I am bound by and the need to keep a portion of code under wraps for the time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="7239" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T18:51:39.403" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T18:51:39.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2013-05-27T08:19:44.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In sharing code there are several issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first issue is the copyright matters, since some of CS researches/projects are funded by certain industrialists/funding organizations that discourage sharing sensitive information such as algorithms, code, or software while publishing in public periodicals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there are papers based on certain data (collected from code execution) that unfortunately are manually modified by the authors. If they share the code, catching their mistake/error/modifications becomes very easy leading to failure in either their MS/PhD or research project which is undesirable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In CS research and especially publication, developing code, particularly a lengthy, complex code is a non-trivial task and in most of the cases is considered money-making and paper-generating asset. By sharing the code to the public, they are unveiling facts in very much detail which may degrade their contribution in future researches. Also they may not be the only one who can regenerate article and make credit of that particular research and code. In most of the cases, master students pick an algorithm or method, slightly change it and submit a thesis and paper based on it, that may contradict with the findings and claims of the first author. Remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Herndon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thoma Herdon&lt;/a&gt; a graduate students who criticized findings of two eminent economist of Harvard university(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is the link ). If the codes in CS are revealed the consequences are likely catastrophic (it might not be too many cases, but if happens it will be catastrophic).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Codes are vital property to most of the researchers to conduct experiment and research. If you have a code, you can simply play with it and modify it to generate new set of findings that might be more valuable than the initial findings. Without having authorship of the initial author, there is no credit to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Elsevier recently introduced a new feature using COLLAGE called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-networks/news/introducing-executable-papers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executable Papers&lt;/a&gt; that is currently available for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00978493&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computers &amp;amp; Graphics&lt;/a&gt; journal by which codes and data are available and researchers can modify the code and input values to play with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T14:56:26.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T14:56:26.127" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-27T08:24:25.793" Score="22" ViewCount="2595" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elsevier has recently lunched a tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal Finder&lt;/a&gt; by which researchers can use paper's title and abstract, and field of study to find a suitable journal for their manuscript. Here is the sample &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WrOoZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; in which the editorial time is 12 weeks. They surely maintain database for their own, but is there any other source we can do this for other non-Elsevier journals, like IEEE or ACM? I know WoS provides some information about it, but WoS's database accuracy is not yet clear to me since I have seen lots of inaccurate information in WoS reports (for instance, number of &quot;review article&quot; published is often inaccurate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T16:06:10.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:56:29.027" Title="How to find out the editorial times (for article review) of CS journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2013-05-27T09:18:57.067" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen, I have just the same experience as you do, and my explanation is that the benefit/cost ratio is too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Packing a piece of software, so that it can be usable by another person, is difficult - often even more difficult than writing it in the first place. It requires, among others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing documentation and installation instructions,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making sure the code is runnable on a variety of computers and operating systems (I code on Ubuntu, but you may code on Windows, so I have to get a Windows virtual machine to make sure it works there too), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answering maintenance questions of the form &quot;why do I get this and that compilation error when I compile your program on the new version of Ubuntu&quot; (go figure. Maybe the new version of Ubuntu dropped some library required by the code? who knows).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking care of 3rd-party dependencies (my code may work fine, but it depends on some 3rd-party jar file whose author decided to remove from the web).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I should be available to answer questions and fix bugs, several years after I graduate, when I already work full-time in another place, and have small kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all this, without getting any special payment or academic credit for all that effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible solution I recently thought of is, to create a new journal, &lt;strong&gt;Journal of Reproducible Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;, that will accept only publications whose experiments can be repeated easily.  Here are some of my thoughts about such a journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitted papers must have a detailed &lt;strong&gt;reproduction&lt;/strong&gt; section, with (at least) the following sub-sections:&#xA; - &lt;em&gt;pre-requisites&lt;/em&gt; - what systems, 3rd-party software, etc., are required to repeat the experiment;&#xA; - &lt;em&gt;instructions&lt;/em&gt; - detailed instructions on how to repeat the experiment. &#xA; - &lt;em&gt;licenses&lt;/em&gt; - either open-source or closed-source license, but must allow free usage for research purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review process requires each of 3 different reviewers, from different backgrounds, to go through this section, using different computers and operating systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the review process, if the paper is accepted for publication, there will be another &lt;strong&gt;pre-publication step&lt;/strong&gt;, which will last for a year. During this step, the paper will be available to all the readers, and they will have the option to repeat the experiment and also contact the author in case there are any problems. Only after this year, the paper will be finally published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This journal will enable researchers to get credit for the difficult and important work of making their code usable to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I now see that someone already thought about this! &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scienceexchange.com/reproducibility&quot;&gt;https://www.scienceexchange.com/reproducibility&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Science Exchange, PLOS ONE, figshare, and Mendeley have launched the Reproducibility Initiative to address this problem. It’s time to start rewarding the people who take the extra time to do the most careful and reproducible work. Current academic incentives place an emphasis on novelty, which comes at the expense of rigor. Studies submitted to the Initiative join a pool of research, which will be selectively replicated as funding becomes available. The Initiative operates on an opt-in basis because we believe that the scientific consensus on the most robust, as opposed to simply the most cited, work is a valuable signal to help identify high quality reproducible findings that can be reliably built upon to advance scientific understanding.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="787" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T07:51:53.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T07:51:53.650" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10256" CreationDate="2013-05-27T09:22:07.327" Score="3" ViewCount="705" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often I learn about conferences, even in my own country, when it is too late to submit papers. Is there a mailing list, or another way to get information about conferences in a specific location and domain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I am mainly interested in computer science and game theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="787" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T09:55:42.037" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:13:14.220" Title="mailing list for local conferences" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-07-14T08:25:10.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2013-05-27T09:37:07.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a wiki devoted to call for papers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&quot;&gt;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling can help you find earlier editions of conferences and so forth. Make a list of the ones relevant for you and when they occur – each edition of a conference will occur at the same time of year. Keep this list on your wall, perhaps sorted by month of conference (or better, month of deadline). Google will help find the current edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T09:37:07.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2013-05-27T09:51:38.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @scaaahu that having a Masters shows that you have a strong understanding of important concepts. As you probably know there are commonalities between programming languages such as input/output, conditionals, loops, etc. the difference lies in how they are each implemented. However, by knowing one language(i.e. Java) you could learn another(i.e. C#) efficiently and in a shorter time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that some employers might think you're overqualified since you have a Masters but others will recognize the added value your advanced knowledge could bring their company and the compensation may even reflect that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T09:51:38.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2013-05-27T10:04:19.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conferencealerts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.conferencealerts.com/&lt;/a&gt; to locate academic conferences in your desired country. These listings are sorted by a &lt;strong&gt;topic or country&lt;/strong&gt; which you can select on the first page. Once chosen you will get a list of the various conferences &lt;strong&gt;organized by month&lt;/strong&gt;. Moreover, you have the option of subscribing and thus receiving &lt;strong&gt;email announcements&lt;/strong&gt; about those events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T10:04:19.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2013-05-27T10:42:30.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applied mathematician here; my solution is putting them on the same slide as the material. I use formats such as [Someone '99], [Lin WW, '00] (initials are almost mandatory for some common surnames), [Doe &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;, book '04], [P and SomeoneElse, preprint '12] (my name is always abbreviated to an initial, which is a common convention). I find it a good compromise between clarity and shortness: I don't need to include a full sentence, but only the names in brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a different color or font to differentiate them visually from the text --- preferably something light but readable, a color that does not attract much attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use them sparingly nevertheless --- overall I have typically less than 10 such citations in a 15-20 slide talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes immediately clear whether I think that a theorem is new/mine or not. Its original authors could be in the audience, so I think it's important to acknowledge them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your slides are already so cramped that these citations won't fit, then you have a much bigger problem. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T10:42:30.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2013-05-27T11:05:00.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a policy, it is a far better idea to always add a relevant citation, in small font, below every figure, formula, quotation, etc, that is not yours and which you are building upon. I do this even in lectures, which students always get after.&#xA;The cost of adding a citation in small font is really small, but by not doing it you &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; exposing yourself to unnecessary troubles because you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give the impression of being careless or oblivious about the work of others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enrage the occasional professor attending your lecture, when s/he sees her/his work is not acknowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create unnecessary tensions with colleagues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be accused of plagiarism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do yourself a favor: cite even in presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7116" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T11:05:00.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-27T11:08:37.697" Score="1" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Mechanical Engineering student &amp;amp; want to pursue Master of Science with specialization in Design/CAD. Recently I have come across white papers on website of some companies about their products. My friend told me that publishing a white paper would be beneficial for my MS applications. So I wanted to know:&#xA;1. What exactly is the scope of a white paper?&#xA;2. What sort of topic/information must one put in the paper?&#xA;3. How to publish a white paper (I mean is there a Journal for white papers or any other standard)?&#xA;4. How much effect does it have in showing my research aptitude compared to a scientific publication/ research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6392" LastActivityDate="2020-02-22T12:08:09.530" Title="White Paper &amp; MS in Mechanical Engineering?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10009" CreationDate="2013-05-27T11:40:36.263" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago there appeared a nice article in Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5917/1025.abstract&quot;&gt;Open Access and Global Participation in Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors convincingly show that going Open Access widens the readership of journals and improves citation counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some interesting references in that article too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7116" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T11:40:36.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10262" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:00:51.473" Score="2" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleages has published a couple of papers in the CS congresses organized by:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isca-hq.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isca-hq.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I saw that the papers that got accepted in their conferences, are indexed in DBLP and INSPEC. Actually I would like to submit one paper in the conferences that they organized, but I am a little dubious about it. My main concern is to know if it would be a good idea to submit to that conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody give me his straight opinion about those congresses that they organized? do they seem good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T19:58:06.513" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T06:04:31.087" Title="How to know if these congresses (i.e. organized by ISCA) are good?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10261" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:30:02.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consulting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au/cms/images/downloads/conference/08sort%20acronymERA2010_conference_list.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australian Computer Science Conference Ranking&lt;/a&gt; reveals that one of their conferences, CATA, is ranked C. I did not check any others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indicators   that the conferences are not good include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The conference is extremely broad. CATA covers topics including Algorithms, Programming Languages, and Multimedia. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The conference is in an exotic location (e.g. Hawaii).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People involved in the conference are not the leaders in their field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conference is not well established.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conference does not appear in the Conference Ranking list, even though it has been around for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that conferences satisfying some or all of these criteria are not necessarily poorly ranked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T06:04:31.087" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T06:04:31.087" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10206" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:47:38.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have shipped posters to my hotel before. UPS/FedEx/...will drop your poster at the lobby. It will be waiting for you when you get there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:47:38.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1407" CreationDate="2013-05-27T22:59:39.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is going to be anecdotal. One of my good friends in university right now is a senior (graduating next semester). He was a professional musician and learnt a trade as an apprentice for many years (I think about 7 years). Then he went to community college for 2 years and transferred to my current university as a sophomore. He has distinguished himself very well and has been an undergraduate research assistant for the last 3 semesters. In fact, now he wants a PhD and is doing all that he can to get into the best school that he can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;anecdotally,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I can tell you that prepare the best you can ; perhaps by even going to community college (its cheap !) and taking relevant courses and then either applying as a freshman or sophomore to the university you really want to go to. I think that (as others have pointed out), your experiences will serve you in good stead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; This is in context to the USA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T22:59:39.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10365" CreationDate="2013-05-28T00:07:44.977" Score="92" ViewCount="6301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently come to accept that I'm transgender (MtF, male-to-female).  I won't go into the exact details of this as it's personal, but I have a &quot;girl mode&quot; where I identify as a female.  I'm also a researcher/lecturer at a respectable university.  I'm yet to reveal this side of myself at work, but it's not impossible that my colleagues or students will run into me in girl mode e.g. at the mall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: What are typical experiences of openly transgender academics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be particularly interesting in examples of successful academics who are openly transgender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are both legal protections and university policies which prohibit discrimination based on being transgender, but no policy can make people like you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;: As things developed, I gave an answer to my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/41850/8469&quot;&gt;below&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8469" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2021-05-27T20:52:22.913" Title="Typical experiences of transgender people in academia?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2013-05-28T01:07:28.133" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/top-ten-reasons-to-not-share-your-code-and-why-you-should-anyway&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; in SIAM News sheds some light on the first question, so it might be worth a look.  It argues, for a mathematical audience, why researchers &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to publish their source code, and lists many of the reasons you might hear why researchers do not share their source code.  It does so by a clever analogy, one that compares the sharing of mathematical proofs to the sharing of  source code.  Take a look; it has quite an extensive list of reasons why researchers might prefer not to share their source code (as well as some responses arguing that those reasons are not good ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top Ten Reasons To Not Share Your Code (and why you should anyway). Randall J. LeVeque.  SIAM News, April 1, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1174" LastEditorUserId="14399" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T14:22:36.463" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T14:22:36.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2013-05-28T02:10:05.933" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two transgender academics in biology at Stanford University (both of whom transitioned during their tenure there I believe). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Barres&quot;&gt;Ben Barres&lt;/a&gt; has written extensively about his experiences (female to male). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~rough/&quot;&gt;Joan Roughgarden&lt;/a&gt; is another example (MtF). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T07:24:59.913" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T07:24:59.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10210" CreationDate="2013-05-28T04:40:11.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Sherpa/RoMEO list&lt;/a&gt;, which is the most definitive list of open access journals that I know of.  It covers many different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know why you are set on 1000 journals.  You can only publish your paper in one journal.  What's important is not the number of journals, but finding one good journal that is a great fit for your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T04:40:11.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2013-05-28T04:59:46.483" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why researchers might be reluctant to share their code:&lt;/strong&gt; In my experience, there are two common reasons why some/many researchers do not share their code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the code may give the researchers an important advantage for follow-on work.  It may help them get a step ahead of other researchers and publish follow-on research faster.  If the researchers have plans to do follow-on research, keeping their code secret gives them a competitive advantage and helps them avoid getting scooped by someone else.  (This may be good, or it may be bad; I'm not taking a position on that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, a lot of research code is, well, research-quality.  The researchers probably thought it was good enough to test the paper's hypotheses, but that's all.  It may have many known problems; it may not have any documentation; it might be tricky to use; it might compile on only one platform; and so forth.  All of these may make it hard for someone else to use.  Or, it may take a bunch of work to explain how to someone else how to use the code.  Also, the code might be a prototype, but not production-quality.  It's not unusual to take shortcuts while coding: shortcuts that don't affect the research results and are fine in the context of a research paper, but that would be unacceptable for deployed production-quality code.  Some people are perfectionists, and don't like the idea of sharing code with known weaknesses or where they took shortcuts; they don't want to be embarrassed when others see the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second reason is probably the more important one; it is very common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to approach researchers:&lt;/strong&gt; My suggestion is to re-focus your interactions with those researchers.  What are your real goals?  Your real goals are to understand their algorithms better.  So, start from that perspective, and act accordingly.  If there are some parts in the paper that are hard to follow or ambiguous, start by reading and re-reading their paper, to see if there are some details you might have missed.  Think hard about how to fill in any missing gaps.  Make a serious effort on your own, first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are at a research level, and you've put in a serious effort to understand, and you still don't understand ... email the authors and ask them for clarification on the specific point(s) that you think are unclear.  Don't bother authors unnecessarily -- but if you show interest in their work and have a good question, many authors are happy to respond. They're just grateful that someone is reading their papers and interested enough in their work to study their work carefully and ask insightful questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do make sure you are asking good questions.  Don't be lazy and ask the authors to clear up something that you could have figured out on your own with more thought.  Authors can sense that, and will write you off as a pest, not a valued colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very important:&lt;/strong&gt; Please understand that my answer explaining why researchers might not share their code is intended as a &lt;em&gt;descriptive&lt;/em&gt; answer, not a &lt;em&gt;prescriptive&lt;/em&gt; answer.  I am emphatically not making any judgements about whether their reasons are good ones, or whether researchers are right (or wrong) to think this way.  I'm not taking a position on whether researchers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; share their code or not; I'm just describing how some researchers &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; behave.  What they &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to do is an entirely different ball of wax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original poster asked for help understanding why many researchers do not share their code, and that's what I'm responding to.  Arguments about whether these reasons are good ones are subjective and off-topic for this question; if you want to have that debate, post a separate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please, I urge you to use some empathy here.  Regardless of whether you think researchers are in right or wrong not to share their code in these circumstances, please understand that many researchers &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have reasons that feel valid and appropriate to them.  Try to understand their mindset before reflexively criticizing them.  I'm not trying to say that their reasons are necessarily right and good for the field.  I'm just saying that, if you want to persuade people to change their practices, it's important to first understand the motivations and structural forces that have influenced their current actions, before you launch into trying to browbeat them into acting differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appendix: I definitely second Jan Gorzny's recommendation to read the article in SIAM News that he cites.  It is informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T16:24:41.100" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T16:24:41.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T14:27:10.767" Score="24" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine (I'm in mathematics) has shown me a splendid note. He took some of the results from a confusing, hard to read, and important paper from the 1970's, which have not yet appeared in book form, and gave them much cleaner and simpler proofs, and explained them in a very clear way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I urged him to publish his writeup, and to submit it to a very good journal. But he feels that, because the results are not (strictly speaking) new, the paper would be unlikely to be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly I feel that work such as his is extremely valuable, and I think the mathematical community ought to encourage more of it. Was I right to encourage him to publish? Or was his pessimism more on target?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T23:52:59.490" Title="Can one publish papers which give an improved presentation of old results?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10271" CreationDate="2013-05-28T14:30:19.193" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the proofs are genuinely new, and genuinely simpler, then this is a contribution.  And if proper attribution is given and the relationship between the old and new work clearly explained, then this should be publishable, assuming that the results are still interesting for the wider community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T14:30:19.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10283" CreationDate="2013-05-28T14:37:07.790" Score="2" ViewCount="1628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergrad from India from a good university( not IIT,NIT).&#xA;Our GPA is calculated on a different percentage scale and mine is 73-75%&#xA;which is a very good score according to our system.&#xA;My GRE score=1600.&#xA;I have an internship at a major company.&#xA;I am thinking of writing a research paper but have no research experience. &#xA;Do I have a chance at the top colleges like UC Berkeley,or Michigan or even Carnegie Mellon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T20:45:05.807" Title="Do I have a chance to get into a great cs grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10273" CreationDate="2013-05-28T14:55:53.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Top PhD programs in Computer Science are very selective. Just having good or even excellent grades is not enough. At least, you need to have very strong recommendation letters and preferably some undergraduate research experience. I would suggest applying not only to top schools but also to second tier schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T14:55:53.280" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T15:53:19.707" Score="4" ViewCount="2119" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this application cycle, I got a PhD offer from Nanyang Technology University at Singapore and will study in the field of programming language. However, I recently received a mail from my supervisor which is said that he will soon leave NTU for some reasons. After searching the faculty list of NTU I found there is no other professor who works in programming language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to compromise on the topic I will do during my PhD. Maybe it is a good choice for me to find a matching supervisor in some other universities.&#xA;But I have to go to NTU to do my PhD because I have no alternative choice now since this application cycle is ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is that is it possible to transfer my PhD from singapore to US if I re-apply for some American universities after my current supervisor's leave?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise will be so much appreciate for that I somehow don't know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7249" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:29:19.877" Title="Ph.D Transfer from other country to US" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10275" CreationDate="2013-05-28T16:02:18.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly is possible, even across countries. Some of my students are following me on my move from Belgium to Sweden. To ensure that this was possible, I needed to enquire with the administration on both the source and target of the move. There were some restrictions on both sides – for instance, if a student is too close to finishing, both sides are reluctant to let the move happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T16:02:18.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T16:18:09.843" Score="8" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a followup to  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10247/285&quot;&gt;Why are CS researchers reluctant to share code and what techniques can I use to encourage sharing?&lt;/a&gt;. That question specifically asked how one can succeed in obtaining researcher's source code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As discussed in the answers to that question, the reasons largely boil down to competitive advantage and people thinking their code is not good enough. The former issue is difficult to address. However, one could try to address the latter issue, making the reasonable assumption that this behavior stems from the surrounding academic culture. There may be additional aspects of the academic culture that discourage code sharing, and which do not relate to competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one could instead ask the general questions what concrete actions one can take to change this culture? Or, to put it a little differently, how can I help change the academic world so that more researchers are willing to share their source code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:24:33.777" Title="How can we change things so more researchers are willing to share their source code?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2013-05-28T16:36:10.270" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the long term, this will only happen if you change the culture (just as you say).  How do you change the culture of a field?  Very slowly, and only with enormous effort.  You talk to other researchers.  You articulate your values, and seek allies who share your values.  You patiently make the case to your fellow colleagues, perhaps by writing opinion pieces.  You don't harangue or attack them; instead, you gently lay out the reasons why it is good for science and good for them to share their code.  Remember, in all likelihood you all share the same common values: the love and dedication of science and the pursuit of truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You lead, by acting as a model for how you would like others to behave.  You do what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think is right, and set a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You try to persuade referees and program committees to value and reward researchers who do share their source code.  Recognize the amount of extra effort this takes, and (if you believe it is valuable) reward it accordingly: bump up your rating of their paper correspondingly, and make the case why others to do so.  When you write letters of reference or evaluation for another researcher, if they share their source code, give them kudos and explain why the hiring or promotion committee should view this positively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is not something that a single individual can change.  Only the entire community, acting as a whole, can make this kind of change.  Individuals can catalyze and facilitate that change, but like any other kind of reform, it takes extraordinary patience and effort, as well as buy-in from your colleagues.  It's not unusual for this kind of change to take a generation or two.  But keep your chin up: remember, you're doing this because you believe it is good for science and good for your field!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T16:36:10.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2013-05-28T16:54:41.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO talk about &quot;cultural&quot; impediments are overstated. Academics are as rational agents as any, and currently the academic system (mainly publish/get grants or perish) provides little &lt;strong&gt;incentive&lt;/strong&gt; to publishing the code or making analysis entirely reproducible. Some fields have started intiatives to encourage this by making either analysis and publicly releasing data mandatory or strongly recommended for publication (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucema.edu.ar/journal-applied-economics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Journal of Applied Economics&lt;/a&gt;) or for funding (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nij.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIJ&lt;/a&gt; grants frequently have stipulations to post the data to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/landing.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICPSR&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greater awareness of technical computing skills necessary for reproducible analysis will help (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger/research/repro/JAE-RER.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Koeneker &amp;amp; Zeileis, 2009&lt;/a&gt;), but on its own won't spurn greater compliance, even if the already discussed negatives are largely mitigated. It still will be more work to publish the code than to not publish the code. When it helps your tenure case, then it will become more commonplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T16:54:41.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2013-05-28T18:55:23.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Researchers are unwilling to share their code because it's a lot of extra work -- for which there is little or no recompense. When I write some to simulate an experiment or an algorithm to verify numerically the result of a calculation, it is not production-ready code that can be  easily run in another environment: at the very least another researcher needs Matlab or Mathematica, they need whatever special toolboxes or auxiliary code I am using, they need the data files in the right place on the hard drive, they need to understand how to program themselves so that when some small glitch arises, they can deal with it. When I try to run my own code from a year ago, it almost needs some massaging: perhaps a needed file has been moved from one directory to another, perhaps a toolbox has had its code base &quot;updated&quot; and no longer works exactly the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So -- here's what usually happens. Someone contacts me and wants to try out my code. I warn them of all the above issues, but they insist that they know what they are doing and will get back to me with any problems. I spend 2 or 3 hours preparing things, checking stuff out so that they will have an easier time, explaining to them how to put things together so that it will all work. I mail it to them. And I never hear back. It happened again last month. So -- how likely am I to &quot;share&quot; code in the future? Just a little bit less likely than last month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the question: how can you get researchers to share their code? First, when you ask, follow through - don't &quot;take the code and disappear.&quot; Second, try to get the researcher interested in &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want the code, what you might do with it. Third, the burden is on you to take research-style code (poorly commented, bad error checking, disorganized structure) and to make it do something. Fourth, return something: when you do make some progress, let the researcher know. Fifth, don't ask for impossible things: can I compile the code for your machine (that's different from mine)? (Hint: no). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T19:24:33.777" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:24:33.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10275" CreationDate="2013-05-28T19:29:19.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it is difficult to &lt;em&gt;transfer&lt;/em&gt; between universities in different countries &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; one is moving with the thesis advisor. This is in part because of funding rules: usually, money in one country cannot be used to fund graduate students working or studying in another country. (In the US, for instance, graduate fellowships are normally valid only at US universities.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to attempt to transfer on your own, the most likely scenario is that you would be expected to start the PhD over; depending on the department, they may not recognize coursework completed at your old school, or at best may choose to give you placement out of the equivalent courses, but still expect you to complete additional electives. It would be even more challenging to move your project over, if funding isn't available to work on the same project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are just starting, perhaps it would be possible to complete a master's degree in Singapore, and then try to transfer to another university for the doctoral studies. (I'm not sure how doctoral programs in CS handle an international master's. In my department, though, students with master's from abroad were still expected to complete the &quot;core&quot; coursework requirements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:29:19.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10286" CreationDate="2013-05-28T20:37:45.807" Score="23" ViewCount="2263" Body="&lt;p&gt;This thought came into mind when I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v10/n5/full/nmeth.2444.html&quot;&gt;Points of view: Elements of visual style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a lot of questions on software and strategies to make and edit figures, I am more curious about what are the things to consider (design rules) while laying out figures. Factors that come to mind include typography, color template, and proportion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T10:01:10.783" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T08:50:55.540" Title="What are good principles for creating figures?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10273" CreationDate="2013-05-28T20:45:05.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe.&lt;/strong&gt;  There's really no way to tell without looking at your complete application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you applied to my department's research MS program, your good grades and GRE scores would &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; attract enough attention that someone would actually review your application.  Most of our MS applications are rejected without review.  But that's as far as grades and test scores will get you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you claim not to come from an IIT or NIT, there might be some question about how good your university is.  If we've never admitted someone from your school before, we don't know how to calibrate your grades or recommendation letters.  Every year we seem to get applications from two or three new schools in India that even our Indian faculty and graduate students don't recognize.  We do sometimes admit one or two &lt;em&gt;truly outstanding&lt;/em&gt; students from unknown schools as a way of gathering data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having an internship is definitely good, especially if you did something creative and independent, and not just &quot;My boss told me to implement this thing, so I did.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the admission decision would really depend on your research statement (or &quot;statement of purpose&quot;) and your recommendation letters.  As I &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2722/65&quot;&gt;have&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7601/65&quot;&gt;written&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/974/65&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9877/65&quot;&gt;times&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5349/65&quot;&gt;before&lt;/a&gt;, graduate admissions committees at top departments are looking for &lt;b&gt;potential for research excellence&lt;/b&gt;.  My committee would judge that potential from the content of your statements and letters, and from the credibility of your letter-writers.  Research &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; is certainly helpful, but it's not necessary, especially for an MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is really an question for your letter writers.&lt;/strong&gt;  Ask them directly if they can write strong and substantial letters &lt;em&gt;that focus on your research potential&lt;/em&gt;.  If they look uncomfortable (or they don't know what &quot;research potential&quot; means), you should probably aim a bit lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T20:45:05.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T20:54:42.697" Score="17" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it can be appreciated from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy&quot;&gt;list of journals with varying preprint policies&lt;/a&gt;, certain journals consider a preprint to be &quot;prior publication&quot;. In other fields like Chemistry, there is a strong policy against preprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about those reasons, if there are other reasons, and if they hold weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T06:00:05.600" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T08:04:56.447" Title="What are the reasons for journals to have a policy against publishing material available as a preprint?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10282" CreationDate="2013-05-28T20:57:40.083" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many aspects of designing figures/illustrations that are covered extremely well by the books written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/&quot;&gt;Edward Tufte&lt;/a&gt;. I would strongly recommend his &lt;em&gt;The Visual Display of Quantitative Information&lt;/em&gt; as a starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some basic notions are to strive for simplicity and clarity. This may seem very obvious but there are many pitfalls and Tufte provides good examples and ways to think about even simple graphics. Design issues such as fonts, line weight, color etc. and thinking about what it is that should be conveyed in a graphic helps to understand how to design efficient graphics. There is a defintion of graphical excellence by Tufte that says that an illustration that provides the reader with as many thoughts as possible in as short a time as possible by using as little ink as possible consitutes such excellence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it is impossible to provide a full answer here particularly since it would repeat what is already in print. My personal view is that the book mentioned above is a good foundation to start critically view and discuss illustrations you encounter. Discussing with peers can be very useful. At the same time there is also much tradition in graphics so new ideas may not necessarily fall into fertile soil rigt away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T20:57:40.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10282" CreationDate="2013-05-28T22:01:31.527" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many books on this subject, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10285/495&quot;&gt;Peter Jansson&lt;/a&gt; points out, as it is something of an Art/Science in its own right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't feel like buying and reading one or more books on the subject, here are a few basic things that I consider both important, and easy to follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistency&lt;/strong&gt;: While people can generally argue for hours over the merits of one colour scheme over the other, what is more important is that you use a consistent one for all your figures. Same goes for fonts and line styles. Also, if you're going to use blue squares to represent some &lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt; in a figure, be sure to use blue squares for nothing else throughout your entire paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conciseness&lt;/strong&gt;: Try to reduce each figure to making a single point, i.e. try to think in terms of &quot;what is this figure trying to say&quot;. It's tempting to pack more and more data into a single figure, but in the end this will usually dilute the message. One figure, one statement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt;: Once you've decided what it is that your figure will say, remove anything from it that does not contribute to this single statement. E.g. do you really need every data point/curve you've drawn? If your statement refers to part of a flow chart or class diagram, do you really need all the other, less relevant boxes/labels/methods there too? Also, if the salient feature of your figure is not immediately clear, don't shy away from adding an arrow or something to highlight it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completeness&lt;/strong&gt;: Holding the balance to clarity's minimalism, make sure there is also nothing &lt;em&gt;missing&lt;/em&gt; from the figure which is needed for the statement you want to make. Figure axes labels are a favourite. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny how they all start with &quot;C&quot;. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; intentional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T22:01:31.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10282" CreationDate="2013-05-29T00:28:04.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I rather like the framework presented by Dan Roam in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Back of a Napkin&quot;&lt;/a&gt; as a guide for  S (simple/elaborate) Q (quality/quantity) V (vision/execution) I (individual/comparison) Δ (change/as-is) and the who/what (portrait), how much(chart), where (map), when (timeline), how (flowchart), why (plot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, these two dimensions (technically 3 dimensions but some aren't used) are presented in a matrix to demonstrate the basic forms of diagrams you can use for communicating concepts. The book is a little more high-level than many books on this topic for scientific presentation but I think it's important to be able to select the right picture for your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get down to nitty-gritty details, then Justin Zobel's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1852338024&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Writing for Computer Science&quot;&lt;/a&gt; has a number of really good specific pieces of advice for how to lay out diagrams and tables, including how to typeset them so that people remember how to find them and how to make it so that tables don't look all crowded. The book's title says &quot;computer science&quot; but much of the advice is reasonably general to most quantitative research fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T00:28:04.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10290" CreationDate="2013-05-29T02:22:34.213" Score="3" ViewCount="12119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got accepted into two universities for the Fall 2013, and both of them asked for me to submit the enrollment intent. I submitted the intent for one of them but then one of my friends said that since I did that, it means I HAVE to go there. But I am still deciding where I want to go. The other university has asked me to send in the form within 2 weeks otherwise I would loose a seat. So let's say if I send an intent to them too, would I be able to pick which one I want to attend when I make my final decision in a few weeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7261" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T03:18:48.540" Title="Does submitting an enrollment intent mean that I am commiting?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10289" CreationDate="2013-05-29T03:18:48.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities typically consider such intent statements to be binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit these statements to multiple universities, they will all hold seats for you, seats which could otherwise go to someone from their waiting list.  This hurts those other applicants.  It is also a serious inconvenience to the department's admissions committee, as they need to meet their enrollment targets as closely as possible; failure to do so can affect their funding, and in extreme cases, the survival of the graduate program.  So this is at least inconsiderate on your part, and arguably unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the institutions find out that you have done this, it is possible that they may rescind their acceptances; this is uncommon but has been known to happen.  In addition, you would certainly forfeit any deposits that you paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the undergraduate level, where deposits are almost always required (in the US), this practice is called &quot;double depositing&quot;.  The National Association for College Admission Counseling, in their &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nacacnet.org/research/PublicationsResources/Marketplace/Documents/GCAP2011_Web.pdf&quot;&gt;Guide to the College Admission Process&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Colleges view dual or multiple deposits by students&#xA;  as serious violations of trust and may revoke a previous&#xA;  offer of admission from any student who is found to have&#xA;  sent tuition deposits to more than one college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is this: at this point, you should plan on attending the university X to which you've announced your intent.  However, if you are absolutely convinced that doing so would be a &lt;em&gt;huge mistake&lt;/em&gt; (not merely that you think Y is a little bit better), then you could contact the admissions committee at X, explain your reasons, apologize, and ask to be released from your agreement.  If you do this, you should do it as soon as possible (ideally within days - don't stew about it for two weeks), and know that it will probably burn your bridges with X, as well as forfeiting your deposit.  If X says it's all right (they probably will - if you don't want to be there, they don't want you there), then you could send your intent to Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people might argue that you are also ethically obligated to inform Y of the situation.  I think it's kind of a gray area, myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also discuss the matter with an advisor or other professor at your current institution.  They might offer some perspective on X that would help reassure you.  In general, most people say that it isn't so crucial which institution you attend, within reason - your own skills and motivation are a much greater factor in your success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T03:18:48.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10259" CreationDate="2013-05-29T03:38:47.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the research field a white paper is not so important. However, if you plan to work in an applied field,a white paper is valued highly because it shows you are aware of the current issues in your field. In general, white papers are issue-oriented.&#xA;For example, in the field of architecture &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; building materials are valued over traditional. But why? A white paper could present facts on &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; building materials versus traditional materials in terms of cost and performance. Other factors could also be weighed such as customer preference. Therefore, when the executives of a firm read the white paper it could help them make a major decision on materials they will buy in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See below the definition of white paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;White papers in business-to-business (B2B) marketing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the early 1990s, the term white paper has been applied to documents used as B2B marketing or sales tools. Far more commercial white papers are now produced for B2B vendors than political white papers for governments[citation needed].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B2B white papers are long-form content designed to promote the products or services from a specific company. As a marketing tool, these papers use selected facts and logical arguments to build a case favorable to the company sponsoring the document. B2B white papers are often used to generate sales leads, establish thought leadership, make a business case, or inform and persuade prospective customers, channel partners, journalists, analysts, or investors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many B2B white papers argue that one particular technology, product or method is superior for solving a specific business problem. They may also present research findings, list a set of questions or tips about a certain business issue, or highlight a particular product or service from a vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7262" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T06:30:16.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-05-29T04:01:34.123" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try video recording your classes then upload them to Big Marker. You could then provide your lectures to more people. At Big Marker you can invite people to your online class. You could invite 100s or 1000s of people to your online lecture.&#xA;It's just an idea. I used Big Marker when I used to tutor groups of students online. It is very easy to use and you can even monetize your lectures. (Although it could be against university policy. Maybe not because they are your lectures.)&#xA;Good Luck!&#xA;Kim   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7262" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T04:01:34.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10318" CreationDate="2013-05-29T07:59:57.360" Score="7" ViewCount="803" Body="&lt;p&gt;While trying to select the journals I can submit my present work and future work, I realize the time between the date the authors send the article to the journal and when the revised article is submitted. Usually this is something between 6 months and more than 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Althought I am focusing on the Impact Factor (IF) to select journals, I think that 12 months to have a feedback that might include &quot;add more variables analysis&quot;,&quot;this article will be more valuable if you test also model x,y and z&quot;, can have a huge impact on you work. It will make you stop what you are currently doing and possible spend up to 2 months making the changes. This might make a big mess on your work if you have deadlines to respect, however this happens to everyone in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, besides the IF journal based selection, how can we select a journal with enought quality with lower IF? What alternative criteria should one use to select the journal? Should we choose newly created Journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T12:08:51.217" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T15:28:51.377" Title="Journals selection - alternative criteria to impact factor" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10297" CreationDate="2013-05-29T08:14:26.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, the published times between when a paper is submitted, revised and published should be taken with a pinch of salt.  Some journals these days have changed the review process so that there is no longer a &quot;revise and resubmit&quot; option, and instead the paper is rejected but with an encouragement to resubmit a revised manuscript as a new paper.  This means the &quot;submitted&quot; date on the published paper is the date of the submission of the &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; version, not the initial submission of the paper.  I personally think this is unethical and no longer review for journals that have this policy as I think it is unfair on the authors, firstly because it deceives them into thinking the journal has a more rapid review process than it actually does, but more importantly because it deprives the authors on priority on their discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as well as IF, I would say that the review process is a factor to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to choose a journal is to see where the leading figures in your field publish their papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T08:14:26.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2013-05-29T10:55:01.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The web is everywhere and if you would like to be known, you need to have a strong presence on it. Anyone who is curious about you, will &quot;Google&quot; you and you must have control over what comes up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four key players in creating a solid web presence: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+. Each site should link back to your website and your website should link to each service. I suggest maintaining public professional accounts and private personal ones to keep your presence prisitine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the website, a simple 3-4 page site will suffice or you could have one very long page with headings to separate the sections and quality content.&#xA;There are many content generation tools to assist with this such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.layzilla.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.layzilla.com/&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blended-html.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.blended-html.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T22:53:26.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:53:26.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-29T11:04:33.943" Score="7" ViewCount="2010" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I want to go to graduate school to study physics and am a math major, how bad is it to have recommendation letters from math professors, mostly? The problem is that I just have four physics courses and after being picky about professors, I might not end up with all physics professors. Further, math professors know me better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, will it hurt if my recommenders are more mathematicians than physicists? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7265" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T13:33:34.770" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T23:41:17.660" Title="Should recommenders be from the same discipline as the program one's applying to?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10302" CreationDate="2013-05-29T11:24:10.247" Score="8" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Faculty tend to fall into these groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;early adopters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hesitant but willing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refusing to adopt b/c no time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refusing to adopt b/c not technically inclined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what strategies I can use to bring the &lt;strong&gt;3rd &amp;amp; 4th group&lt;/strong&gt; on-board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new learning management system has been adopted where instructors are encouraged to post their slides/lecture materials online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T21:08:11.070" Title="What strategies can bring technology resistant faculty on-board?" Tags="&lt;technology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:20:19.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you need to make it exceedingly easy for the Luddites to put their material online.  If it is hard to do, or if it takes a particular skill other than &quot;go to this website and click a few links&quot; than you're going to have a hard time ever convincing them to get onboard.  If they absolutely need to be trained, you may have to have a mandatory training session where they get their first set of lectures or whatever online (but don't expect any other forthcoming material to be posted without more prodding--then again, they may see the light if it is easy enough and they can see the results online).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest one or more of the following four suggestions, in order of preference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask for student volunteers to help these faculty put their material online.  Whether these are TAs for the class, or paid/hired students not already assigned, or strictly volunteers is up to you and budgeting concerns.  You may have to continue this process for subsequent classes if the faculty aren't willing to learn how to do it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Automate the system (which goes back to my original comment).  If paper is involved, have someone set up a scanner to handle loose-leaf material, or via a photocopier/scanner.  If it is just soft-copy document uploading, this can be automated with a drop box on a shared drive -- just drag materials into the box and it ends up online.  This won't make for a particularly organized system, but at least the material will be online.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait them out and let attrition work its magic.  You may always have reluctant faculty, but as older Luddites retire you should find this less of a problem.  If there are only a few faculty that don't want to come onboard, this is definitely the easiest method, and you're really not losing too much by waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make posting the material mandatory.  I can almost guarantee this won't be possible for tenured faculty, but maybe you can provide some incentive rather than simply encouraging them to put the material online.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll get very far with a simple plea for coming into the 21st Century -- if they are refusing to adopt, they probably feel they are too busy, or don't like the whole idea of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T12:43:32.880" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T12:43:32.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:42:08.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good tips above, I have one more:&#xA;* Collect good search words, e.g. in a mind-map. Maybe different synonyms are used by slightly different authors? Try to think of different ones, check which actually really work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T12:42:08.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10300" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:54:39.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is no, it won't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you prepare your application, however, will likely depend on the type of research you want to do while working on your PhD. For your case, if you want to pursue theoretical research, then I think recommendation letters from mathematicians will be a good asset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you want to work in experimental physics, then I still don't think it would hurt, but I would work extra hard at highlighting relevant skills and experiences, such as experience working in a machine shop or with electronics, in other parts of your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You still want your references to be good judges of academic performance, however. By academic, I mean that they should work in academia or be experts in research, critical thinking, and other important academic traits in your field. A life-long high school teacher, for example, may not be a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, having letters of recommendation from academics outside of your major field should not hurt your chances of getting into graduate school. The letters should speak to your character, work ethic, and natural abilities, not to the skills you possess. Those can be highlighted in your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualifications: I'm a senior (sixth-year) graduate student in a physics-related field and frequently assist my advisor in taking on new graduate students. We've taken on people with engineering, physics, materials science, and &lt;strong&gt;mathematics&lt;/strong&gt; backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7270" LastEditorUserId="7270" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T13:34:54.077" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:34:54.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10210" CreationDate="2013-05-29T13:52:26.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no comprehensive list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some partial lists are listed below: (please update when new are found)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:52:26.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2013-05-29T15:58:11.157" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question has a hidden assumption: that the technology has no problems and it's merely the faculty that need to be convinced. Having used a few different learning management systems (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, homegrown stuff), I can tell you that this is rarely true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people resistant to change are probably resisting because they've seen different incarnations of this technology come and go, and find it annoying to have to keep learning a new system &lt;em&gt;that doesn't present any significant advantages over what they're doing&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; part is important. There's a cost to making a change, so the new system can't just be as good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'll add to Chris's excellent suggestions as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;make it seamless not just to import, but to &lt;strong&gt;export&lt;/strong&gt; easily. In the world of online software, it's important not to have things be gated. I want assurances that if your new system goes away tomorrow, to be replaced by the next new system, that I can easily transfer material from the old system to the new with a few clicks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;demonstrate why this new system isn't going away in a year to be replaced by something else. How you do that is up to you and depends on the system you're pushing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: the perceived attitude in the question is that the faculty are at fault for not adopting new technology, but the truth is that most new tech is crappy and short-lived, and it's natural to want to wait things out. So you have convince people that the new approach is not crappy and will last. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T15:58:11.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2013-05-29T16:30:38.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of three strategies, which complement each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Win Group 2 over first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are external reasons for using the technology, make them clear. For example, you might not persuade faculty that using this software is intrinsically a good idea, but you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to persuade them that making the dean happy is reason enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take the time to listen to their objections. They will be more willing to listen to you if they feel that you have listened to them, understood them, and respected them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T16:30:38.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10300" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:22:31.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To point out one pitfall in kmdouglass's answer, there is one situation in which getting letters from out-of-discipline people &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; affect an applicant's chances: if the letter writers do not directly support the candidate's application to the specific discipline. In other words, if you're a mathematician applying to physics programs, your math professors should be explaining why you will be a great &lt;em&gt;physics&lt;/em&gt; graduate student, not a great &lt;em&gt;math&lt;/em&gt; graduate student. (Or why you will be a great graduate student in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; department.) &quot;Dissonance&quot; between the letters of recommendation and where you're applying could make some reviewers question if you're seriously interested in applying to physics departments, which could hurt your chances (albeit perhaps only slightly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T20:22:31.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10300" CreationDate="2013-05-29T23:41:17.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to speak to this issue in terms of applying to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;interdisciplinary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; programs like information science, HCI, communication etc. It matters little what the specific home department the professor belongs to as long as they can point out 2 things - 1. How are you as a potential researcher in &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; particular discipline that you are applying to and 2. How can they (the recommenders) recommend you in context to &lt;strong&gt;(1)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in my case, my recommenders came from civil engineering, statistics and computer science and I was applying to an information science department. I don't know what their recommendations contained but they could very well certify that I was doing &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;interdisciplinary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; work corresponding to most areas in information science during my masters degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T23:41:17.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10315" CreationDate="2013-05-30T04:25:18.373" Score="14" ViewCount="8752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read and been told that research is the single most important factor for applying for PhD programs in STEM fields. But, I also hear that GPA and GRE scores are the first cutting point for adcoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is actually more important, grades or research? Will committees look at applicants with low GPAs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my scenario, I have a ~3.4 GPA overall, ~3.7 in Major (CS). This is not stellar. But what I do have is 1 first-author conference publication (Best Paper Award at conference) and 1 first-author journal publication as a Junior, with more other work/papers in progress. And my GREs are 158V/170Q/4.5W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very interested in top schools, but I'm worried my GPA will hold me back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will admissions throw away my application at sight of my GPA? Or will they take the time to review my whole application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastActivityDate="2020-07-01T02:09:41.097" Title="PhD Admissions Importance: Research vs. Grades" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10314" CreationDate="2013-05-30T05:31:53.770" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate admissions committees should, in principle, be able to review all of the applications they receive in full; this is not like undergraduate admissions, where a small team may be responsible for 10,000 or 20,000 applications. That said, some of the larger graduate departments may receive several hundred applications per year, and it may be necessary to do a preliminary screening before deciding which applications will be examined in further detail. However, what gets through such a screen can vary strongly from school to school and department to department. For instance, if you're at a school whose alumni regularly go on to graduate schools and have a track record of success, that can also be a &quot;plus&quot; factor. If you're near the top of your class, that can also mitigate &quot;weak&quot; grades somewhat (because it indicates that your school resists grade inflation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hope that graduate admissions flag applications with publications listed, but it depends on whether or not the database reports that summarize applications actually can do a screen for the presence of publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your specific case, however, is unfortunately in the &quot;no man's land&quot;—not a clear &quot;read no matter what,&quot; but also not an automatic &quot;throw away,&quot; either. It is probable that you will have a tough time if you look only at &quot;top 5&quot; or &quot;top 10&quot; departments, but you should be able to get considered by many good programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T05:31:53.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2748" CreationDate="2013-05-30T07:16:43.960" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.distancelearning.com/degrees/computers-and-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tool&lt;/a&gt; and refine your search, and also checkout this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/the-top-online-colleges-u_n_1194479.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Huffington Post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T07:16:43.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10297" CreationDate="2013-05-30T07:57:07.150" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I largely prefer to talk with people about what they think of the various journals, see who is in the editorial board, and look at what they publish to determine which journals I consider as good. IF can be very biased even at the scale of a journal (Chaos, Soliton and Fractals had a pretty decent IF...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other criteria include price and politics of the publisher (e.g. see the cost of knowledge pledge and the blog posts around it), quality of the publishers work (do you have to check proofs in three days with no indication of what has been changed in your paper?), dissemination (is the journal subscribed by a lot of libraries? is it open access? Is it read by many people?), editorial standards (ranges from &quot;any editor do what she wants and takes decisions alone&quot; to &quot;all the editorial board must approve a paper for it to be published, and the name of the handling editor appears on the paper&quot;). All of them may be difficult to determine, that is why talking with other people in your field about journals is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T07:57:07.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10327" CreationDate="2013-05-30T11:28:16.717" Score="2" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a high school teacher for coming on 14 years, in 8 schools, in 2 countries. While teaching still is enjoyable, I feel with the near completion of my PhD (in physics), that I am ready for a new challenge in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no illusions though, it will be challenging to even get into academia.  I know I also have to be published (have 3 peer reviewed papers published).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the skills developed in high school teaching be touted to be relevant for academic postions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T02:07:36.740" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T02:07:36.740" Title="progressing from high school teaching into academia" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10322" CreationDate="2013-05-30T12:57:57.463" Score="11" ViewCount="10560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing an astrophysics thesis with a lot of programming in Python. I'm currently using gnuplot for my plots, but I wonder if this is actually looking quite professional. Are there other options which look better and are still easy to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here an example of a figure in my thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pappK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example Figure&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vertical line I got with the following command:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;set arrow from 4861.3,-1200 to 4861.3,2000 nohead lc 2  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it reaches out of the figure, but I use this command for all of my script and I know only at the end what the upper and lower boundary of the y-axis will be. Every peak is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7281" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T09:33:46.387" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:06:07.517" Title="Gnuplot in thesis and articles or not?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:40:02.290" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do the programming in Python, you could also do the plotting in Python with &lt;a href=&quot;http://matplotlib.org&quot;&gt;matplotlib&lt;/a&gt;. With a little adjustment of the plotting parameters, it is possible to produce publication-quality plots with this software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you need fancy annotations etc., I can recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pgfplots.sourceforge.net&quot;&gt;pgfplots&lt;/a&gt; package for tikz/LaTeX. You could export data from your Python program to a csv file, and then use that as data source for plotting with pgfplots. If you are also using TeX for the main text, it allows to to produce graphics which nicely fit the formating of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:40:02.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2013-05-30T15:55:18.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The choice of plotting choice will depend on several factors. First, it is important to state that there are many options, from GNUPlot, through commercial plotting packages such as Grapher and Origin, plotting capabilities of Matlab and R to plotting using specific packages such as pgfplots (LaTeX) or graphics packages accompanying programming languages (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nova.edu/ocean/psplot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PSPlot&lt;/a&gt;). What you chose will depend on other factors such as what your peers use, what you may have become familiar with and perhaps what you can afford (thinking of open source vs. commercial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience has been that there is no single software that can do everything and so for me the key has been to identify what I need done and to minimize the number of software I need to accomplish it. This has led me to choices that are not common to my peers and has also left me to find my own solutions, not dreawing so much from other pesons experience (thank heavens for sites such as stackexchange)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So stick to what you know as long as it can do what you want but always keep an eye out for new solutions and try to figure out what others are doing that may impress you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T16:00:25.753" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T16:00:25.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-30T16:28:01.547" Score="8" ViewCount="1979" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply for a PhD position, and I have found the following requirement in their web page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An application letter that includes at least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contact information of the applicant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the topics of interest in ranked order &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;names and contact information of two senior academics available for reference per e-mail,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;information whether the application can be used in filling other vacancies at the Department and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from which source the applicant received the information regarding the current call.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking to put all these items in a list and fill them like some type of survey, but I am dubious if I should do that. I mean I have found templates for cover letters, but not for application letters. Is there any format for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T12:00:36.737" LastActivityDate="2015-01-04T12:00:36.737" Title="What are the differences between a cover letter and an application letter?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2013-05-30T17:52:26.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to produce professional-looking output from Gnuplot (even harder than it is from Matlab, which I also wouldn't recommend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're already using Python, &lt;a href=&quot;http://matplotlib.org/&quot;&gt;matplotlib&lt;/a&gt; is the obvious choice.  You you can even make a decent attempt at producing &lt;a href=&quot;http://neuroscience.telenczuk.pl/?p=331&quot;&gt;full figures&lt;/a&gt;, not just one panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically astrophysics doesn't have much reference to astronomy these days.  However, if your thesis does, you might also want to check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://aplpy.github.io/&quot;&gt;APLpy&lt;/a&gt; which adds on to matplotlib.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T17:52:26.600" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10319" CreationDate="2013-05-30T20:51:07.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are near completing your PhD, then I assume you also have some papers coming out soon. If not, then your dissertation will probably be worth 3 papers, so I wouldn't worry too much about that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conveying information to an audience with varied skills and backgrounds is always a valuable thing in academia. Whether in written manuscripts or conference presentations, this is usually the problem to be solved. My advisor was fond of constructing lectures, no matter the audience, as if they were to be given to college freshmen. I'd say a lot of freshmen are not too different from high school students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful PhD defense signifies that you have the ability to do novel work in your field, but your teaching skills will enable you to tell others about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7287" LastEditorUserId="7287" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T21:01:06.273" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T21:01:06.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10325" CreationDate="2013-05-30T21:16:18.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question, and has been something that I have been thinking about also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digging around, I found a few articles that may be of assistance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/info_8065585_application-letter-same-cover-letter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This eHow article&lt;/a&gt; (Even though it is more trained towards work, rather than academia), and &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/cover-letters/tp/types-of-cover-letters.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thi about.com article&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both links state that there are subtle differences - specifically, an application latter explains what qualifies you for the position/study, and the cover letter goes into more detail as to what qualifies you and explains your interests in the position/study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps (and best wishes with your application and studies!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T21:16:18.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10201" CreationDate="2013-05-31T00:11:37.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @PeterJansson that impact factor is certainly an important factor in selecting a journal. But I would also think about who you want to reach with your paper. Although Google Scholar and similar search engines now ensure a much higher probability of finding your paper based on its title, abstract and keywords, it will only be found by people actively searching for terms associated with your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most researchers still subscribe to specific journals in their field, even if only through e-mail alerts, so I target a journal also for its audience (while trying to select the highest impact factor from this subset). This is especially important if your work bridges several fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my research is about human-robot interaction, so I have to decide whether to publish an article in a journal that is read primarily by roboticists or social scientists/psychologists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it is also vitally important to adjust the paper to its target demographic. Psychologists don't know (and likely don't care) about my implementation details while roboticists are more likely to be interested in nitty gritty details about the code and less about the nuances of the social psychology theory behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4125" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T00:11:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T01:08:26.113" Score="8" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book was not published in English, and I am using a different perspective in the paper, but the same qualitative data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7290" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:57:36.023" Title="Can I publish research in a peer-reviewed journal if parts of it have previously been published in a self published book?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10331" CreationDate="2013-05-31T03:46:06.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't find any formal policies addressing this specific case, but my intuition is that it would probably be all right.  It could be analogous to publishing sections of a thesis, which is generally accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a journal in mind for the paper, you could contact the editors and ask their position on the issue.  If and when you eventually submit the paper, you should include a note to the editor explaining the situation, and probably mention this in the text of the paper as well.  If you disclose everything, there won't be any ethical issue; the editor can make the decision, and I expect there would be some good journals that won't have a problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factors that might be relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was the book offered for sale publicly, or distributed privately among colleagues?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many copies were produced/sold?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you retain the copyright on the book?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T03:46:06.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10335" CreationDate="2013-05-31T04:54:10.477" Score="17" ViewCount="5429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a high school senior about to graduate in 1 month. I have a strong passion in math, and I want to be a mathematician. What is the best path to getting into a top grad school? How many REU's should I try to do? Any publications? How about graduate level courses? Do you need a 4.0 in undergrad? I'm also self studying as much math as I can, from Artin's Algebra, Munkre's topology, and baby Rudin. How much math should I know by the time I apply for grad school? I would greatly appreciate your feedback!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7310" OwnerDisplayName="1mathboy1" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T04:32:15.500" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T00:40:23.610" Title="Path to a good grad school in math during undergrad?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10334" CreationDate="2013-05-31T05:40:51.110" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my suggestions, having just finished a year of graduate school in math. It's therefore mostly anecdotal and should be taken lightly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REUs:&lt;/strong&gt; Try to do as many as you can! You get to meet other people who like math, learn new stuff, practice struggling with research, travel a bit, and get some cash to boot. They also, of course, look good on applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publications:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't personally have any publications. I wrote a few papers during my REUs and projects, but they were only published on the REU websites. So they're not necessary to get in. However, I did have a great deal of trouble getting acceptances. Maybe a publication would have helped, but I think it's very rare for an undergraduate to actually publish a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graduate Courses:&lt;/strong&gt; I took several of these as an undergraduate. I enjoyed them, but realize now that I should have taken them a little more seriously! I've forgotten a great deal of what I saw in them. However, I have noticed that I'm quite strong in the area I took graduate courses in compared to my peers. So they definitely give you an edge! However, don't become too obsessed with loading up with graduate courses. Three of them is quite a lot of work, if you give them justice. Since most graduate courses are graded very lightly, you can make high marks in them without putting forth as much effort as you would in an undergraduate course! (At least, this was how it worked at my undergraduate institution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, keep in mind that some of your time in college should be spent having fun, too. Don't become a math robot just yet! You have time for that in grad school. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading Textbooks:&lt;/strong&gt; The fact you're already reading the &quot;core&quot; undergraduate books before even entering the university puts you far, far ahead of the curve. Many people won't learn those things until sophomore or junior year. I certainly didn't. Make sure you're doing the bulk of the exercises in those books, especially Rudin. Try to prove statements you come across without looking at their proofs. I feel that this is where most of the learning happens. You can easily read things and not understand them, so just watch out! Other than that, finish those books and then you should be set to take the advanced undergraduate/first year graduate courses at your institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Math Subject GRE:&lt;/strong&gt; I hate this thing and did very poorly on it. You'll blow the math portion of the general GRE out of the water. It's easy stuff for any math major. However, if you don't spend a little time reviewing, you can really mess up the subject test, since it's timed and covers things you might not have thought about for several years. The topics are almost completely disjoint from what a student taking graduate courses has been doing. Look at a few practice tests, identify what sorts of questions are asked, and train yourself to quickly answer such questions. Speed is key. You don't want the subject GRE to be a weak point on your application, especially since it's an easily prevented weak point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do REUs, take graduate courses, don't sweat not having publications (but if you can get some do), and study for the subject GRE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T05:40:51.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9026" CreationDate="2013-05-31T09:01:21.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two key elements in a report: content and structure. These can boost each other. A better content will make a judge (referee, reviewer, etc.) feel that the person has something to say, and thus the judge can overlook small mistakes in structure, and only ask for corrections. On the other hand, when a moderate content is prepared really good, the judge will give credit to the work and instead of rejecting it, (s)he would ask for betterment of the content. Usually those who prepare a very good-looking project, pay sufficient or professional attention to other aspects (the content) of the work too. At least they show they are fond of this work, no matter how their content is moderate or even not so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggest you keep up the good work and always make your (important) reports super good-looking. That works most of the time. It has worked for me all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, it is normal for people to try to underestimate people who are very superior to them. :) So don't take them seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T09:01:21.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10344" CreationDate="2013-05-31T09:03:00.723" Score="16" ViewCount="7808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper which is accepted without any minor or major revisions in a good journal (lucky me). It is fully published. Since I had no chance to revise it, many small mistakes slipped into the proof. During proofreading I tried my best to catch any mistake and correct it. But these were two problems: 1) There were too many small mistakes so at least one of them slided my attention. 2) I couldn't ask the copy-editor to remove a whole &quot;sentence&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had the chance to revise it, I would easily fix that up. But now the erroneous sentence is there in my beloved paper. It is now fully published (as online and hard copy). I am tempted to send a corrigendum on that paper, saying that the line is incorrect and should not be there. But on the other hand am afraid that it would make my paper look not-perfect or even ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you suggest me sending a corrigendum? Or should I wait until someone notices that and writes a letter to the editor and then I answer in a reply to that letter, saying that &quot;yes you are right, that sentence should not be there in the first place&quot;? And if no one noticed that, I leave that error alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which other ideas do you have about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T16:29:46.160" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T16:29:46.160" Title="Is it necessary to send a corrigendum? Does it make my paper look ugly?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2013-05-31T09:30:38.813" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can test them yourself. This procedure will speed up by your experience. There are signs during submission and during review which shows which journal is really good and which is not. But there is another way too: look at the objective information below. It is possible to judge a journal based on the COLLECTIVE information you obtain from these factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their editorial. You don't know them? Ok pass to the next ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their publishing country (India? no thanks unless the paper is not good or the journal is an exception).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their publisher (yes good publishers usually select good journals, although some weak journals with a lot of money can again hire a good publisher)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time passes since you submit and they respond&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above factor SHOULD be considered along with the amount of manuscript they receive. Good journals receive thousands of manuscript a year, but still do not waste authors' time by keeping them waiting for too long before a rejection decision. Bad journals receive sporadic manuscripts and keep the authors wait for months until they tell the author their decision. It is a pain when you see some of them have &quot;lost&quot; you paper, or some of them reject your paper with a couple of lines of comment, after 6 months. Good journals do the same in less than 24 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indexing databases. Look where the journal is indexed in. ISI Web of Science? Medline? or what? The scam journals usually are not indexed in any accredited databases (not Google Scholar or Scopus). If a journal is accepted to be indexed in ISI or to a lesser degree, Medline, it is unlikely to be able to have low quality. Otherwise, ISI would have booted them out. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other factors too. But these will give you 90% insight already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T09:30:38.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10341" CreationDate="2013-05-31T10:18:15.360" Score="19" ViewCount="3845" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in my university days, I got into the habit of saving papers I had to read to my hard disk. At first I did this simply to organize them more conveniently, and have quicker access to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my reasons for saving those papers to disk gradually changed as graduation approached. In the end, I saved &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of papers, because at one point I realized that I had unrestricted, unlimited, free access to an absolutely fantastic source of richness, and that soon after graduation, I'd lose all of that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years later, I now frequently end up in discussions, or get asked questions, or otherwise end up at a point where a common access to one of those papers really helps to progress the discussion. I often just send that paper around without thinking twice about it, more because I believe that's how science should work than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe most of those papers are however &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in the public domain, meaning, people not associated with a university or other institution that has access, can &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; access the paper without some payment to its official publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is any of this legal? If not, what are the possible repercussions for me personally, and for the people I sent it to? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a touchy issue, and there are many initiatives to open scientific publications up for the general public. A related question would be: do these initiatives (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.okfn.org/tools-for-open-science/&quot;&gt;all of these&lt;/a&gt;) exist partly because of this reason? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T08:50:44.040" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T08:50:44.040" Title="Is it illegal to share publications not in the public domain with collaborators?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10340" CreationDate="2013-05-31T10:44:33.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is any of this legal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your sharing falls under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt; in your particular country (and with the Internet, sharing online is a tricky business anyway), you should not share the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to share the papers, linking to the original source is the best option, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; or other online repositories can get you pretty far with a lot of material.  If you can't find an online source, you are limited to providing a cite and hope that whoever wants to find the article can use their library to source it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, what are the possible repercussions for me personally, and for the people I sent it to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically?  Unless you are sharing the files openly to a broad audience (i.e., so they are available online), no one is going to track you down to sue you.  I would avoid linking directly to articles that aren't behind a paywall, but emailing them to people you are collaborating with is unlikely to cause you any trouble.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T10:44:33.640" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10346" CreationDate="2013-05-31T12:19:33.973" Score="8" ViewCount="1999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I must be stranger than usual sometimes, I always seem to take on topics that are somewhat more difficult than the mainstream, in very trying conditions - but the outcomes are very much worth it (not for me per se, but the benefits for everyone, potentially).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to instill this in my students, by 'gently' mentoring them and encouraging them to push their own limits a little further each time.  Also, I teach them that 'failure' is just another step to success.  For the most part, my students take on the challenges and the work, ideas and enthusiasm from them, frankly humbles me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am always wishing to learn new techniques to encourage my students to push, and even exceed their limits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies are most effective for encouraging students (and colleagues for that matter) to take on the difficult topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T15:40:55.160" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T23:38:18.097" Title="Motivating students to push their limits" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10337" CreationDate="2013-05-31T12:33:58.273" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your clarifications &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10337/is-it-necessary-to-send-a-corrigendum-does-it-make-my-paper-look-ugly#comment18761_10337&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10337/is-it-necessary-to-send-a-corrigendum-does-it-make-my-paper-look-ugly#comment18762_10337&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10337/is-it-necessary-to-send-a-corrigendum-does-it-make-my-paper-look-ugly#comment18763_10337&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, I would suggest leaving it alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The modern trend is for the &lt;em&gt;corrigenda&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;errata&lt;/em&gt; to be used more for &quot;serious&quot; stuff, and less so for &quot;cosmetic&quot; changes. The guideline, for example, given by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apsstylemanual.org/formattingAPSJournalArticles/corrigendum.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Physiological Society&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if the author determines that it is scientifically necessary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/corrections.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; uses the following definition for a corrigendum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Corrigendum.&lt;/em&gt; Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the venue in which you published your work states otherwise in their publication guidelines, a stray sentence that is not factually false, does not invalidate your claims, and does not impinge on the efforts of other researchers to reproduce your work is likely not &quot;scientifically necessary.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you insist on perfection, you should also be aware how corrigenda are viewed by other researchers in your field. If in your field the prevailing view is that corrigenda are used for &quot;scientifically necessary&quot; changes to your article, then you need to be prepared to answer questions about your correction in the future (usually of the form, &quot;Why is there a corrigendum issued for your paper? Are you &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; it doesn't change your conclusions?&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, a minor point is that if you published in a journal which charges publication fees, quite often your corrigendum will come with a not-so-small price-tag also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T12:33:58.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:06:07.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the plot you've shown, I have a couple of suggestions to make it look more &quot;professional&quot;.  (Maybe you're already doing some of these in the actual document.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a vector-based file format; your lines will look smoother, up to the resolution of your printer.  I suggest &lt;code&gt;set terminal pdf&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set a meaningful title for the curve: &lt;code&gt;plot &quot;tkrs.txt&quot; using ... title &quot;Dilithium flux density&quot;&lt;/code&gt;.  Or omit it completely: &lt;code&gt;plot &quot;tkrs.txt&quot; using ... notitle&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If plotting a mathematical function (rather than a dataset), &lt;code&gt;set samples 5000&lt;/code&gt; or something similarly high for your final output.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to choose a font for the labels that matches the paper's text as closely as possible.  See &lt;code&gt;help term pdf&lt;/code&gt; for more info, and other interesting tweaks.  You can also use non-ASCII characters (e.g. &lt;code&gt;Å&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;angstrom&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set the plot to a size and aspect ratio that fits nicely on the page, preferably so that your word processor (or LaTeX) doesn't have to rescale it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For your vertical line, you could cheat and use a parametric function, so that it will be clipped to the boundaries of the plot.  It's a little tricky because if you make the line extra long, by default the plot will be rescaled to fit all of it.  But there is a way to avoid this:&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;set xrange [ ] writeback&#xA;set yrange [ ] writeback&#xA;plot &quot;tkrs.txt&quot; ...&#xA;set parametric&#xA;set trange [-1200:10000]&#xA;set xrange restore&#xA;set yrange restore&#xA;replot t, 4861.3 notitle&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:06:07.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:25:46.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reflection on my own experience as a teacher, I am convinced that motivation is not a static, unchangeable property of particular students, but it is a multifaceted concept, a variable state of mind, created through the interaction of the student with the subject matter in a particular environment (teacher, group, topic, etc). A good teacher arouses the motivation indirectly, by creating the right environment for learning. The students' effort ensues almost magically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this interesting article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linnenbrink, Elizabeth A., and Paul R. Pintrich. &quot;Motivation as an enabler for academic success.&quot; School Psychology Review 31.3 (2002): 313-327.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7116" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:25:46.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10349" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:58:47.463" Score="5" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paper-based exams are not fully representative of knowledge, and it is good to consider oral presentations of students as a factor for the final grade to some extent. This is somehow the case in graduate courses, where the number of students is lesser, but how to follow this strategy for crowded classroom of inexperienced undergraduate students. I mean a classroom of 50+ size with students who do not have experience in scientific discussion!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T21:26:32.653" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T21:26:32.653" Title="How to engage students in oral presentations?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10334" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:16:11.600" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add one point to Zach's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your primary goal should be to &lt;strong&gt;collect strong references&lt;/strong&gt;.  Admission committees in top departments are looking for evidence of research potential.  Aside from actual published research, the most compelling evidence is a strong letter from a well-known active researcher, who writes about your research potential in specific and credible detail, based on direct personal interaction.  To get those letters, you need to engage with professors as a &lt;em&gt;potential colleague&lt;/em&gt;, not just as a &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, take advanced and graduate-level math classes, but don't &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; sit in the back and quietly get As.  Ask (and answer) intelligent questions in class and in office hours.  Don't limit your questions (in office hours) to course material.  Ask about undergraduate research opportunities (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just REUs) with the explicit goal of peer-reviewed publishable research (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just reports on some REU website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that becoming a published mathematician can take several years of effort, and there's no guarantee that you'll get there before you graduate.  But the sooner you start, the closer you'll get, and the more chances you'll have to impress the faculty you work with.  &lt;strong&gt;So start &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first three profs you ask may tell you that publishing mathematics research as an undergraduate is impossible, because you need to take a five more years of classes before you can even understand the problem.  They're wrong; ask a fourth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T08:04:05.893" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T08:04:05.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10347" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:35:18.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had classes of this size where I have each student do an individual presentation. It is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; time consuming but I also feel it can be &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give each student 10 minutes to present some information and you have 50 students then you will have 12-13 hours for presentations (allowing 15 minutes total per student including Q&amp;amp;A, changing students, etc.) If you teach in 2-hour sessions then it will consume 6-7 sessions. If you have 30-32 sessions per semester it is doable but it also removes a significant chunk of time from lecturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I lectured for several weeks (giving the students time to do their research and giving them the foundations they needed for their presentations) and then had the students give their presentations. Then I continued lecturing with other assessments later on. The module was not about presentation skills but I do feel that in each subject, we need to teach the students some general skills (structuring an argument, how to format text, how to research, giving a presentation, etc.) in addition to the module content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students ended up understanding the material quite well when judged by their presentations and I found many of them quite eager to learn how they could improve their presentation skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I was happy with the overall results and plan to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:35:18.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10284" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:44:51.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are commercial reasons for journals to be the only place where the article can be obtained. (advertising on the site or in the print journal). So simply violating their policy (if stated clearly) is one valid rejection reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I personally disagree with this reason but such is life)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:44:51.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:52:40.540" Score="4" ViewCount="1928" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a case of a new researcher that does not know well all possible journals and has no access to human advice (from colleagues). (please do not comment that this is the best - out of scope of the question!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or one journal rejected the paper and the author is looking for outside the box candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.&#xA;E.g., in medicine, one can use this tool (ETBLAST) by submitting full text of the article &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etest.vbi.vt.edu/etblast3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://etest.vbi.vt.edu/etblast3/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals even require top 3 similar papers (found by ETBLAST) to be pasted into a form during submission (making sure authors well addressed related literature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.&#xA;Or Elsevier JournalFinder service.&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T07:47:38.350" Title="How to find the best journal to submit a paper to (when having written the title, abstact and full text)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10356" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:06:38.270" Score="9" ViewCount="2042" Body="&lt;p&gt;At most scientific conferences and talks I have attended, the speakers generally present black text on white backgrounds, which I personally find rather dull. Is there any reason / explicit convention which should stop one from presenting light coloured text on a dark background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7296" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T12:04:30.647" Title="Scientific presentations - black or white?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10359" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:16:47.370" Score="15" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a year away from completing an undergrad degree in Computer Science and I find myself increasingly interested in more advanced subjects from pure mathematics that sometimes lie outside the scope of my major, and I think I would enjoy doing graduate work in pure math. But I feel like the amount of formal education I've had the opportunity to have in my undergrad isn't quite sufficient for graduate work in math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to go and buy a book or two on some subject I'd like to learn more about that I can't take a course on (say, Abstract Algebra or Number Theory), and spend this summer getting comfortable with it, is it likely that a graduate admission committee take my efforts into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My situation is worded specific to a CS --&gt; Pure Math trajectory, but it's part of a more general question. Do graduate school admissions take into account personal study, or do they only care about formal university education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7295" LastEditorUserId="7295" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T20:22:04.787" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:14:16.710" Title="Do graduate school admissions appreciate individual &quot;free time&quot; study?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10354" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:31:33.630" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conferences tend to take place indoors in dimly-lit rooms.  Dimly-lit rooms are a good place to fall asleep.  Using a white background helps avoid this.  Also, dark text/lines on a white background are easier to read (I've seen more than one study showing this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to be showing a lot of astronomy or fluorescence biology images, where the image is mostly black with some interesting colorful things in it, you probably want a black or dark background for at least those slides; at some point you should just switch over.  Also, if it is essential to understanding for the viewer to discriminate many shades of color, it's easier with a black background because you can use a wide variety of discriminable pastel colors that would be washed out to invisibility on a white background. You can't even use saturated yellow or cyan on a white background and expect it to be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for most scientific presentations there are good reasons for a light colored background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T17:31:33.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:37:06.467" Score="6" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some literature written by Chinese authors who I would like to attribute in my bibliography with their names in Chinese characters (汉字). The problem is that, as the literature itself is not in Chinese, their names appear only in their romanized form (Pīnyīn or Wade–Giles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What resources can I use to find out the correct characters for their names, e. g. library catalogues with both forms given, author lists, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not only looking for Chinese names but Japanese ones as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pao, Erh-li / Ying Cheng (1982): &lt;em&gt;Wörterbuch der chinesischen Redensarten. Chinesisch–deutsch; Tetragramme des modernen Chinesisch&lt;/em&gt; [= 漢語成語]. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huang, Yankai (1964): A dictionary of Chinese idiomatic phrases. Hong Kong: Eton Press.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hisa, Michitaro (1896): Some Japanized Chinese Proverbs. In: &lt;em&gt;The Journal of American Folklore&lt;/em&gt; 9, 33, pp. 132–138.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7297" LastEditorUserId="7297" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T16:41:24.793" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T16:41:24.793" Title="Find out author’s name in foreign writing system (Chinese, etc.)" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10354" CreationDate="2013-05-31T18:06:32.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In HCI/information science many conference presentations, especially in the best conferences like CHI or CSCW, tend to have nice colored backgrounds. I would even argue that in certain sub-fields of HCI or information science, just having a vanilla black or white colored background tends to be the exception rather than the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html#chi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a brilliant compilation of best paper awards in many sub-disciplines of computer science. A simple google search will often yield the conference presentations and slides of them. Under CHI, you will find that very often, the slides are rather innovative when it comes to the color scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T18:06:32.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10355" CreationDate="2013-05-31T19:39:10.810" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have limited knowledge about this and I speak from experience as a graduate student who has gone through a similar situation &lt;em&gt;(from the outside)&lt;/em&gt; as well as being the student representative on our graduate admissions committee &lt;em&gt;(on the inside)&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously, a professor or academic with much more experience than I have can attest to this in better ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;general,&lt;/strong&gt; formal education is given preference. Grades in relevant courses are given more importance than others. Note that there is a lot of competition for slots in a PhD program. Self study is a very fuzzy area and there is little scope for the graduate admissions committee to evaluate it. There exists of course, two mutually non-exclusive ways exceptions to this general norm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A respected recommender in the area attests to the fact that you did engage in significant amounts of self study and that has contributed to your overall knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You do self study. Then you do research based on it. Then you publish in a non trivial journal or conference. That automatically attests to your knowledge in certain ways.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, ask yourself this, why would graduate admissions committees believe you, especially when there is usually bound to be a few more well qualified applicants with good scores in relevant courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T19:39:10.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10347" CreationDate="2013-05-31T19:43:16.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add to earthling's answer. If you have &lt;strong&gt;teaching assistants&lt;/strong&gt;, please do make good use of them in this aspect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a TA, I have had excellent experiences in mentoring undergraduates to prepare research presentations, final papers, projects and proposals for these papers and project. Of course, we were generally in a class of 120-160 students so that speaks to a classroom scale higher than what you are suggesting. There were 3 graduate TA's, usually and we each had about 50 students to mentor. We found that we could devote significant amounts of time to each student when we met them on a one-on-one basis. Of course, the professor also met them one-on-one and there were a couple of rounds of iteration of their final presentations - which was very, very useful for the professors, the TA's and the students. As mentioned previously, it was a time sink, but very well worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T19:43:16.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T19:55:52.063" Score="0" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm searching for an online source that is considered &quot;scientific&quot; to look up some well-known quotes such as &quot;There's no such thing as a free lunch.&quot; (Milton Friedman).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may want to use kind of an insinuating quote about risk in my term paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7298" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T20:40:48.177" Title="Is there a &quot;scientific&quot; online source for famous direct qoutes?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10361" CreationDate="2013-05-31T20:40:48.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotedb.com/categories/science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quotedb&lt;/a&gt;? It seems awfully relevant although risk might be quite a specialized area to be included in it. Quotes tend to be rather general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T20:40:48.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T21:31:17.513" Score="3" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I want to continue mathematics into a PhD program, would doing a bachelor's and master's combined program be a good idea? Would I be required to retake some graduate courses in the PhD program? This would add only one year to my degree from my current uni as opposed to the two from doing a BS and MS separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of background information: I am a dual enrollment US student who has completed two years worth of college courses, and so I'll be entering as a freshman with junior standing taking upper division undergrad math courses. Thus, a standalone BS would take me only two years, leaving me to graduate at age 20. Is this too young to start applying to grad school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I plan to do an undergrad thesis; is one year of familiarizing myself with the faculty too little to choose an adviser? I'm not even sure which math I would want to write about. Will three semesters of intro analysis and intro algebra grad courses be enough to decide on the thesis for my fourth semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T05:25:33.857" Title="Is a combined BS/MS in math a good idea for pursuit of PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10354" CreationDate="2013-05-31T21:55:29.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most private companies have their specific color schemes and logos that must be shown on every slide. That's just the way it goes in industry. So it's just a matter of hitting the right conference :). I am pretty sure that at communication science conventions, you won't see any single white background presentation (or black background, for that matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the color scheme should be a nice touch to your presentation, not a decisive point. The content should play the more important role, and the font size is arguably more important than the color it shows in: if nobody can read your font 6, what's the point of the slide? On some ways to make your presentations more effective without using multiple nested hierarchies of bullet points, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/images/us/how_to_win_in_anbar_v4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this multiple award winning one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T21:55:29.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2013-05-31T23:21:59.340" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jennifer Finney Boylan, Professor of English and Department Chair, Colby College, Maine.  Jenny wrote &quot;She's Not There&quot; and other great books.  My heroine (happily married to a woman)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Lynn Conway.  Lynn invented both VLSI and superscalar architectures.  Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan.  My heroine (happily married to a man)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Deirdre McCluskey, University of Chicago, Professor of Economics.  Very famous economist from Milton Friedman's old school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want more??  You are in the SAFEST profession to DO the transition!!  Read Jenny books and Lynn's website and you'll learn how to do it, step by step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7301" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T23:21:59.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10357" CreationDate="2013-06-01T02:49:32.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about other languages. I'll answer the question in Chinese case since I am a native Chinese speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The literature you have is not in Chinese. The best way is to contact the authors. They will give you the correct answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no such reliable resources at the moment. There is no unique and consistent way of translation between English name and Chinese name. As you already know, Pīnyīn and  Wade–Giles are two of them. I don't think there is one-to-one correspondence relation. There are other issues, such as traditional Chinese character and simplified character. You won't know the correct answer unless the author tells you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no way to contact them, try their collegues or others who might know. Don't use the Chniese name unless you are sure. Use whatever the name appears in the literature if you are not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T02:49:32.870" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1680" CreationDate="2013-06-01T03:33:12.063" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice for any interview dress code is, one standard of dress higher than what you would be wearing if you got the job.  eg  if jeans and a t-shirt is what most people wear around the office, then business trousers and a shirt is fine for the interview.  If its  business trousers and a shirt, then for the interview a suit and tie.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7302" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T03:59:59.883" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T03:59:59.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10357" CreationDate="2013-06-01T04:04:20.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Transliteration between major East Asian languages and Latin alphabet orthography is not a bijection, which means that the exact same spelling of an Asian name in Latin alphabet can correspond to many different spellings in their native language and vice versa. It's somewhat similar to how you can't tell if it's &quot;principal&quot; or &quot;principle&quot; by just hearing the sound /prɪnsəpəl/. In this example, pronunciations and spellings are not a bijection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem is particularly severe for certain names such as typical Chinese names, so some journals allow Asian authors to write their names in their native languages to mitigate the difficulty in identifying a researcher. For instance, see this editorial by American Physical Society: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pra.aps.org/PhysRevLett.99.230001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Which Wei Wang?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was born, raised, and educated all the way up to my Ph.D. in Japan. But I can't tell how my namesakes in Latin alphabet would spell their names in Japanese because they may not be namesakes in our native language. The exact spelling in Latin alphabet may not always mean the same pronunciation in Japanese either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is no easy resource to resolve names in Latin alphabet back to their original spellings. Sometimes you might be able to make a fairly reliable educated guess if you're as proficient in the Asian languages as native speakers. But you'd run into the Asian version of Steven vs. Stephan and Erica vs. Erika. So, I'd recommend you ask the person(s) directly unless you have definite evidence such as a copy of a recent paper written by them in their native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T04:04:20.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10369" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T05:17:50.240" Score="5" ViewCount="5133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have to have a PhD in order to become a PI on a grant for your own funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you only have a Bachelor's or a Master's degree, and are not even working towards a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6026" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T05:55:44.733" Title="Do you have to have a PhD to be a PI on a grant for your own funding?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10363" CreationDate="2013-06-01T05:25:33.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my undergraduate degree at 20, and I know a number of others who have finished undergraduate considerably younger than I did. So, no, 20/21 is &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; not too young to apply for and begin a graduate degree program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you list yourself as a US college student, here are a few questions to ask yourself before embarking on a dual-degree program:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who is going to pay for the MS part of the program? You may not want to have to pay out of pocket the extra costs of the master's, when it would normally be covered if you picked it up &quot;on the way&quot; in the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you happy with your choices for a research advisor for your master's thesis? (No point in being miserable by working for the wrong advisor—even if it is a semester or two, a miserable time is not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where do graduates of your school's master's program end up for PhD programs? Are these schools you'd want to go to? (You can ask the same question of the bachelor's program, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who will write your letters of recommendation? Do you have people who know your work beyond the classroom well enough to recommend you for external graduate programs? If not, this may vote in favor of staying for the master's program. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have to make a decision about which program to do before you apply for external programs? No point in making a tough choice if you can keep it as a &quot;fallback&quot; option.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for topics and coursework, I will leave those answers to the mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T05:25:33.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10355" CreationDate="2013-06-01T14:11:12.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible, I would recommend first seeking out a math professor at your university, preferably someone you know and who holds you in high regard. If you are home for the summer, e-mail would suffice, but an in person meeting would work much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, explain your plans, and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the professor's advice about your self-study plan (maybe the prof has different suggestions)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask if he or she would be willing to evaluate your progress at the end of the summer (e.g., you show up to his/her office and take an informal oral exam), and to write you a rec letter if you've done a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T14:11:12.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10369" CreationDate="2013-06-01T14:25:05.717" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Nate Eldredge points out, who qualifies as an eligible PI varies widely between different programs. However, in general, one important distinction can usually be cited: you must be a &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; researcher (as opposed to a student or trainee) to be eligible to submit a direct grant. Students would normally need to have their advisors submit the grant proposals on their behalf. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to consult the specific rules of the grant you're interested in applying for. Moreover, if you are at an institution that often applies for grants, you should check with the local grants administration office for more guidance. They may have internal policies regarding for whom they will submit grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to note that different countries and different agencies have varying standards. Here in Germany, for instance, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have the equivalent of a doctoral degree to be eligible to be the coordinating Principal Investigator of a proposal. You can participate as a team member without a doctoral degree, but not be a principal investigator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T14:25:05.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10357" CreationDate="2013-06-01T16:25:58.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am aware of this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already aware of the transliteration problem but still asking the question, then I assume you have other information about the authors to help identify them, e.g., affiliations. If that's the case, I'm curious why you don't use the most useful searchable database, namely &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/&lt;/a&gt; Depending on how much information you have (and possibly how proficient in the target languages), you'll eventually be able to identify them in their native languages unless you're talking about very obscure or older-than-the-internet authors. Since the authors you want to identify wrote something in foreign languages, I think chances are they have personal or official websites that have their names both in Latin alphabet and in their native languages. If they don't, you may find some pages that help you identify them in their native languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't get why you think a database on literature is particularly useful for that purpose either. You can use any available resource. For instance, if the authors you want to identify are active Japanese researchers, you can search them in one of the researcher databases found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://read.jst.go.jp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://read.jst.go.jp/&lt;/a&gt; (in Japanese) &lt;a href=&quot;http://read.jst.go.jp/index_e.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://read.jst.go.jp/index_e.html&lt;/a&gt; (in English). (The English version is the first hit on google for &quot;japanese researcher database&quot; by the way. You'd run into these sites very frequently if you google Japanese researchers, too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, as an example, assume you want to know, say, the Japanese spelling of my former Ph.D. supervisor Masakazu Jimbo at Nagoya University. And you want to avoid navigating the internet in Japanese as much as possible while searching. Then, you go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchmap.jp/?lang=english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the English version of Read &amp;amp; Researchmap&lt;/a&gt;, click &quot;Researcher Search&quot; to get to &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchmap.jp/search/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the researcher search page&lt;/a&gt;, and do the usual search with the information you have (i.e., the name is spelled Masakazu Jimbo and he's at Nagoya University). You'll be directed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchmap.jp/read0164386&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his information in English&lt;/a&gt;. Then you switch to &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchmap.jp/read0164386/?lang=japanese&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the original Japanese page&lt;/a&gt; by clicking 日本語 to check how to spell his name in Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you don't need to use the Read &amp;amp; Researchmap to know his name in Japanese. You can simply google him. If you know publication titles and his name in Latin alphabet, you can surely locate his personal website, where you can see how to spell his name in Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what kind of situation are you in? You talk about literature, so I assumed you wanted to cite/quote works by Chinese and/or Japanese authors. And you say those works are not in their native languages, which, I assume, means that you know more about the authors than just their transliterated names (unless you're trying to cite/quote them without reading them). Was the additional information you have not enough to identify them through google? Are libraries' databases and such on books etc. really the only kind you can identify them with what you already know about them? Maybe, they're from 19th centuries or something or way too obscure for the internet to be of use? Or is this question &quot;What resources can I use to find out the correct characters for their names?&quot; asked as a very very broad inquiry for Internet Search 101? If that's the case, it's too broad to answer because you don't tell us what you already know about the authors and why you can't identify them through usual means like google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T16:25:58.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10379" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T20:32:08.493" Score="4" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished my masters degree and co-authored a lengthy paper (It was my idea and I took the lead on the research and writing). The paper is not for publication but provides valuable information and research for the the department faculty and dean.The paper is a program development proposal that our academic department would like to implement. Our group discussed sending the paper to the Dean in conversation with her, and one of the co-authors brought it up with her again at the end of the semester and offered to send it to her individually without consulting our group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm okay with her sending it, however, I felt that she acted independently and did not consider the time-lines of the other co-authors for doing final edits, or offer to CC us when she sent it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name comes last on the paper (alphabetically) even though I wrote and researched more than the other two authors combined. I have the sense that my co-author is taking more credit than she is due on this project since her name comes first and because she acted independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I requested that I be provided an opportunity to review the paper and to be CC'd on any future sharing of our work with others.I think my co-author was offended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in asking my two co-authors if it is okay to have my name as the first author on this paper (then she can send it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise if I am being petty or if this is a reasonable concern on my part. I would like for the Dean and faculty to remember my contributions. The co-author who offered to send it has already made her mark on the program in other ways and I am not sure I have stood out as much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7307" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T21:01:17.987" Title="Graduate Student Co-authorship Etiquette (Dissemination of Student Papers Not For Publication)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T22:30:39.127" Score="180" ViewCount="17396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry, I'm not a mathematician--I'm the wife of a very frustrated and depressed mathematician. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My husband got a math PhD in 2009, and could not get a research post-doc in his chosen field.  We had young children at that point, and he spent two years as a lecturer, applied for hundreds of jobs, and finally took a tenure-track job at a teaching university. Now, he honestly believes that a research position is impossible for him.  He loves to teach, but hates the endless grind of &quot;administrivia&quot;, the low pay, and the mental laziness of the students he's required to teach. (I wish I could give more details, but his research area was a fairly small community, and I don't want to give any aspect of his identity away.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate watching this brilliant man say things like, &quot;Well, since I didn't get a post-doc, I'm stuck on this path, and there's nothing I can do to get out of it.&quot;  I hate watching him spiral into depression.  I am insisting on him getting counseling, but he refuses to take anyone's encouragement that other jobs are possible, saying things like, &quot;You just don't know the academic world.  If I go to the NSA, no one will hire me in an academic position.  If I become an actuary (because we do need more money) then all of my time will be sucked into studying for exams, and I still won't be able to do research.&quot; In his mind, no one in our circle of loved ones has the authority or experience to give him accurate encouragement.  So I'm looking to anonymous strangers at this point. :(  Is a research position possible after spending time at a teaching university?  Would he be able to get back into academia if he had to leave to do actuarial work/industry/something that helps pay the bills? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to give a brief update. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To begin with, THANK YOU to everyone who replied.  My husband's eyes lit up after seeing that 1) This was a fairly common problem, and not somehow indicative of his skill level;  2) There were solutions, other than being miserable; and 3) The solutions did not a) condemn him to a life of administrivia, or b) require him to leave academia all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After getting the &lt;em&gt;hope&lt;/em&gt; he needed from you guys, he spoke with a mentor of his from undergrad, and was given incredibly specific guidance on where to go from here.  His teaching load is so heavy, (4/4 or 4/3) and the mentor gave him a few places to apply to in his field where the teaching load is more conducive to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; research, but is not at a research-specific university.   (3/3 or even 3/2!!!) He plans on speaking to his advisor, getting some &lt;em&gt;glowing&lt;/em&gt; letters of recommendation, and starting a job search soon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks so much.  It was nice to see his face light up again. &amp;lt;3 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7308" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T02:07:24.923" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T02:07:24.923" Title="Is it possible to recover after a career setback such as this?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="41" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-01T23:44:26.613" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a very similar situation as your husband, as a high school teacher very much wishing to be in research.  So, I can empathise with your husband's and your dilemma (as it definitely affects family and friends as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone's situation is different, but I can tell you how I cope in general.  Knowing that postdocs are few and far between, I cope by continuing my own research as much as I can in the spare time I have - getting papers published and continuing to build my research profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research positions are indeed possible after teaching, but as an insurance I would advise still publishing work and developing his research profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps (and I hope good luck finds you and your husband).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T23:44:26.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T23:57:11.577" Score="16" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my lab, a few of us submitted our papers independently to a conference last week. We all had referenced each other's work in our papers. I have a concern if this is a bad practice in academia. It also looks like a bad habit that has festered in our lab: the last two PhDs who passed out from our lab have a total of 15 citations for their papers, of which 13 are from within our community itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this practice of repeatedly citing from one's own micro-community acceptable? It seems unavoidable, as we are all working together, familiarizing with each other's work and trying to build on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7309" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T23:32:02.373" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T12:03:35.983" Title="Is the practice of lab members extensively citing each other's work looked down upon in academia?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-02T00:02:01.733" Score="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is unfortunately common. It is an unfortunate reality that the number of people well qualified for research jobs is greater than the number of jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hiring committees will be looking for good publications, and for recommendation letters coming from leaders in the field attesting to your husband's impact and further potential. If he continues to do good research, publish it in well-known venues, and speak about it at conferences, then he has a good chance. If not, then unfortunately he is competing with people who are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the complaints you mention are common at research jobs as well. I teach at a large state university, where we have our share of poorly prepared students, and/or students who are just going through the motions. Indeed a Harvard professor once quipped to me that &quot;we have remedial classes here, too&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do know people who have successfully moved from one teaching position to a different teaching position, and been much happier afterwards. Some departments have more motivated students, pay better, and/or do a better job of keeping the paperwork down, and your husband could look for one of these.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know people who have taken a variety of non-academic mathematical jobs, and for the most part they are quite happy with them!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that your husband can probably get a research job &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; he can sustain a very strong research program during the interim. Otherwise, there are likely to be appealing alternatives as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T00:02:01.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-02T01:25:19.650" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is possible. Because I know this guy who had been in exactly the same situation except that he got his math Ph.D. a few years earlier than your husband, and got a job at a reputable research university. If he's somehow believing that a prestigious postdoc position is necessary, I know a person who ended up in a gratuitous position for a short while and then landed on a very prestigious postdoc job in math. In both cases, they had strong publication records and also convinced other researchers in the same fields that they are something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there must be way more math Ph.D.'s who wanted jobs at research universities but got stuck somewhere else than those who succeeded. So, it's true that, statistically speaking, chances are very slim, especially if he himself doesn't think he can make it. But there are things he's in control of, and he can make the probability fatter. Do good research, publish it, and show others what you're made of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, I almost forgot. If he's looking for a job this year in combinatorics, information theory, coding theory or quantum information science, well, sorry, but he should wait another year. There is a talking duckling in California looking for that sort of job this year, and that duckling should get it. I know your kids are super cute, and they want their dad to be happy, too. But this duckling is even cuter. If your husband's field is different, then no problem. Kick his butt and tell him to apply to as many jobs as possible with his awesome publication list he's going to develop and strong recommendation letters he's going to get (unless his depression needs a professional help. In that case, that should be fixed first, I think). Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T01:25:19.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2013-06-02T01:40:29.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; insinuating in any way that your lab does this in a malicious and self serving way, this reminds me of the notion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/&quot;&gt;citation cartels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its quite possible that this is an artifact of the research itself and its quite alright to self-cite (or group-cite) a few papers especially when one work builds upon the other. However, there must be more papers in the research community outside your own lab that must be citable? Surely, not 86.6% citations must be from within?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking from my &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;limited&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; experience, if I were a reviewer and I saw papers with this kind of a pattern, I would certainly suggest the authors to include specific, relevant papers (which I have knowledge about) from outside their own lab in the literature review. I might of course be completely wrong and someone else with more experience in academia might have a different opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T03:34:48.103" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T03:34:48.103" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2013-06-02T05:44:16.677" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is only bad practice if the work is not particularly relevant, or if you cite your own group's papers instead of other relevant work.  The point of citations is to lead the reader to other related work necessary for some aspect of the paper (result, context, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is worth examining why those papers aren't getting cited.  Maybe nobody else is working in a sufficiently related area but it's critical background for the rest of what the lab is doing--then I wouldn't worry about it.  But if other people &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; working in the area (e.g. to the point that you might worry that if you take too long that someone else will publish the same results you're trying to get), it can be a sign that the results either aren't contributing to the field much, that the style of presentation isn't good enough for others to really understand what you're saying, or that the lab members aren't going to enough conferences to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T05:44:16.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2013-06-02T05:55:15.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I saw a pattern of only or mostly citing work from your own team, it would make me suspect that the authors have poor awareness of related work.  How likely is it that there is no other relevant work being done by anyone else in the literature?  Nothing else that has any relevance whatsoever (techniques, methods, related results, inspiration)?  That's awfully hard to believe.  It would make me suspect that the authors are either ignorant about the field, or are doing a poor job of citing related work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me what you meant by the 13 of 15 statistic.  If you mean that they wrote a paper or dissertation where 13 of the 15 papers cited in the related work section is to people within their same group, yes, I would tend to look down on that.  It isn't &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; wrong, but it would certainly make me ask some pointed questions and make me suspect that there is something wrong.  It is important to be a good scholar and to understand other work in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you've heard the saying: &quot;a week in the lab can save a day in the library&quot;.  (This is not a recommendation!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T19:19:29.500" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T19:19:29.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10369" CreationDate="2013-06-02T05:55:44.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the grant in question. For example, while most grants in the United States need a PhD (and often university rules dictate more than a PhD, like not giving grant-writing privileges to adjuncts), there are often smaller grant programs that expressly allow non-PhD PIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my university has a translational research program that has pilot project grants, to help researchers generate the preliminary data that is so important for major grant submissions. Whole the $5,000 and $50,000 tiers are restricted to non-adjunct faculty, there is also a $2,000 tier that merely requires a faculty mentor on the project, and is specifically targeted toward graduate student PIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T05:55:44.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:04:27.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not read other opinions however here is mine, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your husband wants to do research in Math, he is lucky, because he does not require high end instruments to do his stuff. So he basically can do research wherever and whenever he wants, meaning, he need not be in a specific place to do his research. In the mean time he can get employed in a place where he can earn money using his skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while his research is done at home, he can work elsewhere till he feels that his research has matured enough to require a lot of attention. Once his work is publicized I'm sure there will be a lot of people to come forward and assist. Some of us developers use and believe in open technology as the future, hence we publish whatever we do for the benefit of the world. He can create a blog to update the world about his research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He can use social media to find and meet people with similar interests or even conduct teaching sessions to people whom &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; wants to teach for a fee or for free. Example Google hangouts. Using the internet will give him better exposure than the closed walls of any university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I help my father with his automobile business and then follow my passion at home, I don't know if any of my work is worthy of being called research but bits  of it I publicize is certainly helping people who wants to learn :) . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7312" LastEditorUserId="7312" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T06:17:31.257" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:17:31.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:09:14.580" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree a little bit with the other answers.  This is a frustrating situation.  Unfortunately, as Anonymous stated, the number of qualified mathematicians exceeds the number of academic research positions.  This makes a difficult position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fear your husband might have accurately assessed the situation.  While I appreciate the suggestion others made of continuing to do research on his own time, this is very difficult.  If you have a full-time non-research position and a family, that doesn't leave a lot of time for research -- so it's very hard to sustain a level of research output that will be competitive with the competition.  Also, others who do have a research faculty position may have students and collaborators, which further boosts their research output; your husband won't have that advantage.  So, while in principle your husband could continue research on his own time to try to build a research portfolio in hopes that this leads to a tenure-track academic research position, in practice your husband is at a disadvantage.  He would be climbing up a steep hill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be for him to get advice from someone more senior who he respects.  Is it worth his time for him to continue his research on his own time, and continue applying to hundreds of research positions each year for the next few years?  Maybe, or maybe it's a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, perhaps he might consider other career alternatives.  Rather than being entirely set on an academic research position, maybe he should consider other career paths.  Even if he has his mind set on an academic research position right now, I suspect there are a number of other directions where he could be happy.  Maybe he should consider the actuarial path, or consider a NSA job?  Or consider Wall Street (a job in the financial sector)?  Maybe he could teach himself computer programming on his own time and pursue a job in the computing industry?  Perhaps there are other opportunities.  This kind of change is scary and requires some courage, which is undoubtedly especially difficult when you are depressed: your support will undoubtedly be helpful to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option is to find things to love in his current teaching position.  I certainly sympathize with the trials; they are real, and a drag, to be sure.  On the other hand, there's a lot to love about teaching, too.  You get to help young students discover the beauty of mathematics: even if it's just one out of a class of 30 students who finds a real passion, that can be very satisfying and rewarding.  Unfortunately, the administrivia and the laziness of students is a constant in academia and would probably be present even if he found a research position; the trick with dealing with them is to find other things in his life that are rewarding and satisfying, and focus on them.  For instance, perhaps he might enjoy doing math research in his own time, not with the goal or any illusions that it will lead to any research position, but entirely for its own sake: for the love and pleasure and beauty of it.  Or maybe he might offer to set up a special enrichment seminar or program for students who do love math to learn more: maybe run a program to prepare for the Putnam exam or Math Olympiad.  If he offers to do this on his own time, as an overload, I imagine his department chair would jump at the opportunity, and it might provide a chance to do something rewarding and fulfilling for him and be a great inspiration to a few students.  Or maybe he might find something else in his job that is rewarding and worth doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:09:14.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:15:55.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand why you are a little peeved that she offered to send it to the Dean without checking with you first, but I think you need to swallow your frustration on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you need to figure out what your goals are.  Right now you are reacting: you are letting your emotions control your reactions.  Instead, you should figure out what end goal you want to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to make sure that the paper is in good enough shape, before it is sent to the Dean?  Then negotiate a timeline with your co-authors.  This might mean you both have to give a little: you might have to work extra hard to get your revisions in; and they might have to be willing to delay sending the paper a little bit until you've all had a chance to revise to your satisfaction.  That's a perfectly reasonable request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to be listed as first author?  If so, why?  You said the paper is not going to be published.  So why do you care?  If you think your contribution means it is appropriate for you to be first author, and you care about it, then raise the point with your co-author.  But approach it with humility and gentleness.  Remember that we're human; we have a tendency to overestimate our own contribution and underestimate others, so you need to correct for that.  Also, definitely do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ask to be first author as a way of getting revenge; that is petty and beneath you.  Take the high road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, take this as a lesson.  Generally, it is best to discuss authorship early in the project, not wait until the very end.  In my collaborations, there is often an understanding from the start about who is the lead on the project; the expectation is that the lead has the overall responsibility and will most likely put in the most work, and in return will likely end up as first author.  These discussions about authorship are often easier to happen earlier than later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, bottom line: Figure out what you want to achieve (what you want the end state to look like).  Then, figure out how to ask for that.  Set aside your emotions and your negative reactions to your co-author's initiative in moving things forward without checking with you first, and focus on what end state you want to achieve.  I suspect you might find that you share pretty much the same goals as your co-author, and there's no need to get upset or strain your relations with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:15:55.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:22:08.413" Score="74" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a research position possible after spending time at a teaching university? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's possible.  There's a mild stigma to applying from a teaching university, since it advertises lack of success getting a research job in the past.  Because of the high ratio of candidates to positions, academic hiring is often risk averse and the perception that nobody else wants a candidate will worry search committees.  However, this can be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that the past difficulties could simply have been bad luck.  Even very strong candidates typically do not get many job offers, and bad luck can easily change &quot;a few&quot; into &quot;zero&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible to strengthen one's application by writing additional papers, but this generally requires &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; papers or more papers &lt;em&gt;per year&lt;/em&gt;, since search committees will normalize for time: if you've spent longer they will expect more.  However, the focus is more on the future than the past.  If you have a productive few years and show signs of maintaining that productivity in the future, it can make up for fallow periods in the past.  If you quit publishing, then the chances of a research job will rapidly drop to zero until you resume publishing.  (There are a lot of people who would like to do research but aren't prepared to actually do it, since they aren't up on the current research literature.  You can't get a research job unless you demonstrate that you aren't one of these people.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, search committees would also normalize for the applicants' circumstances.  For example, research productivity at a teaching university would be viewed as evidence that the candidate would be even more productive at a research university.  Unfortunately, in practice these effects are often underestimated or not taken into account at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is that there's something wrong with your husband's application.  For example, maybe his research statement is not compelling, or one of his letter writers is insufficiently supportive, or maybe one of them does not know how to write an effective letter of recommendation.  (You'd think that should never happen, but some well-established mathematicians simply do not know how to write effective recommendation letters.  If his thesis advisor is one of them, and the other letter writers are less energetic since they assume the advisor will make a strong case, then it could be really bad for his job search.)  I'd guess that 5-10% of job applicants have something seriously wrong with their application that they seem totally unaware of.  This is a low fraction, so your husband probably isn't one of them, but if possible he should discuss all aspects of his application with a trusted mentor who has guided numerous students to the sort of job your husband would like.  Sadly, he may not have such a mentor, but it's good to keep an eye out for one.  For example, if he strikes up a conversation at a conference with a senior mathematician who seems approachable, it's worth asking for job search advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He thought a hiring committee would scoff at the lower output of papers done by someone in a teaching job vs. someone churning out problems in a research post-doc. He even wondered if not having &quot;XYZ Awesome Post-Doc&quot; on his CV would trump any research he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lower productivity because of other duties is a serious factor here.  The CV prestige issue is real but considerably less important: prestige might serve as a tie breaker but won't get anyone a job if their actual accomplishments aren't commensurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters of recommendation will be by far the most important factor.  What your husband needs is really strong letters that address his circumstances, talk about how impressive his research is and why, and explicitly make the case that he belongs at a research university.  Letter writers generally recycle letters from year to year with some updates to incorporate recent papers.  If his letters are not updated to address the teaching/research university issue, then they will not help him.  In particular, if they don't say in strong terms that he ought to be at a research university, then they'll be viewed as damning him with faint praise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something he can discuss with each letter writer, along these lines: &quot;As you know, I've been working at University X for the last couple of years.  It's great to be in a tenure-track job, but I'd really like to work at a research university.  To move to one, I'll need letters of recommendation that address this issue and make a strong case that I should be at a research university.  Would you be comfortable writing such a letter for me?  Of course I'll understand if you can't write one, since I know I'm asking a lot, but I'd rather ask someone else than waste everyone's time with an application that doesn't have the support it needs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an awkward conversation, but it's much better to ask than to leave it to chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would he be able to get back into academia if he had to leave to do actuarial work/industry/something that helps pay the bills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible he could get another teaching-oriented job, although it's by no means a sure thing.  It would help a lot if he could spin the other work as informing his teaching.  For example, he could teach actuarial mathematics or incorporate realistic industrial applications.  In that case the non-academic experience could be an advantage; otherwise applying from outside academia would put him at a moderate disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the chances of getting a research-oriented academic job from industry are low (assuming the industrial job is not at a prestigious research lab like Bell Labs).  There are people who have done it, but it's not likely or easy.  Few people can maintain a high-quality research program on the side with no support while holding a full-time job, and this is necessary for returning to a research university.  In particular, there's virtually no chance of returning based solely on having done research in the past, without having actively continued in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it typically plays out is that you reluctantly go to industry intending to maintain your research and keep applying for academic jobs.  For the first year or two, you complete and write up work you began in academia, and it feels like everything is going well, but your job applications don't do any better than they had before: you've got a more substantial research track record, but your industrial position emphasizes your inability to get a job in the past.  Still, you figure that accumulating more papers will eventually tip the balance in your favor.  Unfortunately, the next few years don't go as well.  It's hard to find the time for research, you have few people to talk to or derive inspiration from, and progress is slow.  However, you're gradually getting somewhere, so you figure it will just take a little longer.  A few years after that, you start to lose your resolve to do research at all.  Even if your applications were successful, would you really want to take a 50% pay cut, give up your job security, and move to another city to restart your career?  And it's hard to keep your focus on an incredibly time-consuming hobby that seems like it may never lead anywhere professionally.  You quit applying to anything but dream jobs you're pretty sure you won't get, and eventually you give up on them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that this path doesn't generally end in depression, but rather the discovery that there are plenty of fulfilling life paths outside of research universities.  It's by no means a bad outcome.  However, leaving academia for industry can be really stressful if you want to return to a research university, since you have to either give up or work like hell to maintain your research program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:22:08.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10352" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:25:20.610" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to know your field.  Part of knowing your field is reading lots of papers.  This should give you an idea of what kinds of papers each of the major journals publishes, and what journal may be best suited to you.  If you're a good researchers, you ought to already know what are the main journals that publish research in your area.  If you don't already know that, then maybe you need to spend more time reading published work first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the best way to figure out if a particular journal is a good fit for your paper is to read a bunch of papers published at that journal.  That will give you a pretty good sense.  You can use the &quot;call for papers&quot; as a further sanity check, but nothing substitutes for reading what else they have published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no shortcut.  If you are a knowledgeable about your field, a random webpage is not going to know your field better than you do.  If you are not knowledgeable about your field, then the first thing you need to do is to fix that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:25:20.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-02T07:22:11.123" Score="8" ViewCount="1926" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am applying for PhD positions at United States and Canadian Universities. I will be 35 when I start my PhD in Computer Science/Machine Learning, and probably I will finish it around the age of 40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will I be banished from academic positions considering a possible PostDoc time and what about industry positions ? Should I plan my study towards industry or academia from the research perspective ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7313" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T18:41:49.620" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T18:41:49.620" Title="Am I too old for academia after a PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-06-02T23:38:53.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10396" CreationDate="2013-06-02T07:29:32.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt you'll get banished, then again, I am in the same boat - though I'll be finishing my PhD by the time I am 37.  Though, I think it will be a bit harder for us, but not terribly so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way, I presume you have alot more practical workplace experience, that will be to your benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T07:29:32.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-02T08:07:55.590" Score="1" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in Neuroscience research but haven't quite made up my mind about what sub-field I want to specialize in. I think taking courses from various sub-fields will help me take a decision. Should I go for a Masters first or a PhD directly? If I go for a PhD, will I have enough time at the beginning of my PhD to explore different areas and then choose a supervisor, say after around 2 years into the program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T09:34:15.250" Title="How is a Masters different from the first two years of a PhD in the same field?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-06-02T23:21:11.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10396" CreationDate="2013-06-02T09:20:25.277" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age discrimination is illegal in the US and (I assume) Canada.  If you're worried, just don't put your date of birth on your CV.  Most people don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiring committees just don't care how old you are.  All that matters is the quality and impact of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T09:20:25.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10398" CreationDate="2013-06-02T09:34:15.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two different types of Masters - taught masters and research masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In England, a research masters allows you to work, on rotation, around 3 labs in the year, and you can pick and choose from different sub-fields. This is hugely beneficial because it exposes you to different sub-fields, but more importantly because it exposes you to different work dynamics and environments, allow you to cope better in your PhD; furthermore, you'll make more contacts (which is all that matters in research - reputation and recommendations) and learn from different people. It'll give you the confidence to know, during your PhD, whether you are right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is that it takes you one more year and there is no guarantee you'll get a PhD after, and there is also the extra cost - most funding bodies do not fund a one year masters. However, if you apply for a 4-year Masters with PhD, funding options are more generous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for England, unsure about other countries, but the same principles apply. (my own opinion is that MRes is good if you can afford it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6942" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T09:34:15.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10402" CreationDate="2013-06-02T09:39:48.660" Score="3" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cochrane reviews are great to cite in academic publications due to their systematic nature but I have no idea how to cite them in APA style because there's no obvious volume or issue to use in the citation. Here's a reference I've already tried, albeit awaiting on the volume and issuing numbers I'm meant to give. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Linde K., Berner M. M., Kriston L. (2008). St John's wort for major depression.&#xA;The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3. &#xA;PMID 18843608.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4438" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T09:45:36.743" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T11:29:55.917" Title="How do you cite articles from a &quot;database?&quot;" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10401" CreationDate="2013-06-02T11:29:55.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first two sources of information about such questions are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The publisher of the database may have specified how they want to be cited.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In fact, The Cochrane Collaboration has such guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/policy-manual/2211-how-cite-our-products&quot;&gt;Cochrane Policy Manual: How to cite our products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews/citing-our-products&quot;&gt;Cochrane Reviews: How to cite Cochrane Collaboration products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The APA style guide may have said something already about this data base.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is also the case:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/01/how-to-cite-cochrane-reviews-in-apa-style.html&quot;&gt;How to Cite Cochrane Reviews in APA Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They explain how a journal article style should be used with year as volume and monthly issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Singh, J., Kour, K., &amp;amp; Jayaram Mahesh, B. (2012). Acetylcholinesterase &#xA;  inhibitors for schizophrenia. Cochrane Database of Systematic &#xA;  Reviews, 2012(1), 1–101. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007967.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If these would not have lead to the required information, a more general idea is:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Following the DOI of your example, I end up at a page of the Cochrane library that also has a tab &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3/citedby&quot;&gt;&quot;Cited by&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. You could have a look there how other people actually cite the report.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all this had failed, I'd propably have gone for a technical report style citation.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T11:29:55.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10354" CreationDate="2013-06-02T12:04:30.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether light foreground on dark background or vice versa is easier to see depends on the light conditions of the presentation room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projectors are still not very powerful: the white of a projector will usually not stand out even against a comparably dim room illumination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is really dark, bright foreground on dark background allows to show more shades of colour and brightness. Because the projectors are not too powerful, the risk of uncomfortably bright foreground is not very high.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the room is not really dark, bright foreground on dark background may be very hard to see, as the eyes adapt to the overall light conditions and few projectors are powerful enough to make white text on a black (= grey because of surrounding illumination) stand out enough to be easily readable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how the projectors becoming more powerful allowed a transition from white-on-black in really dark rooms (which were needed because the white was not that bright) to black-on-white in rooms with a dimmed overall illumination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T12:04:30.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10284" CreationDate="2013-06-02T13:14:30.733" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A a chemist, I'm very well aware of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/meetingpreprints/preprints.html&quot;&gt;ACS Journal Editors' Policy on Preprints&lt;/a&gt;' point of view about the disadvantages of preprint servers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The disadvantages of preprint servers include: the potential for flooding the literature with trivial and repetitious publications, thus making extraction of reliable and valuable information more difficult; absence of peer review; possible premature disclosure with inadequate experimental details or supporting data; premature claims of priority; potential lack of proper references and credit to prior work; abuse of multiple revisions or updates; possible lack of duration and long term archiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find the two concerns about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;premature claims of priority&quot; and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;abuse of multiple revisions or updates&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the most relevant points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;flooding literature with trivial publications&quot; is IMHO an issue with and without preprint servers, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;repetitious publications&quot; for me fall into the same category, as do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;inadequate experimental details or supporting data&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;absence of peer review&quot; is clearly visible with papers from preprint servers - which is IMHO an advantage over journals where the peer review is uncritical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;long term archiving&quot; depends IMHO more on the responsible organization behind the server (I'm not any more concerned that arXiv could shut down than e.g. Langmuir, Analyst or Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been &quot;experiments&quot; with preprint servers for chemistry some 10 years ago &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2002/2404/preprint.html&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; but AFAIK they did not develop the momentum e.g. arXiv has, and they seem to have died meanwhile.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asist.org/Publications/JASIS/Best_Jasist/2004Brown.pdf&quot;&gt;Cecelia Brown: The Role of Electronic Preprints in Chemical&#xA;Communication: Analysis of Citation, Usage, and Acceptance in the Journal Literature, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54.5 (2003): 362-371.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(the discussed server seems to be down - or at least I can't get a response).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Personal point of view on the problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possibility to be able to publish a manuscript on a preprint server &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; submitting it to a journal is not as imortant for me personally as the possibility to make the final contents of the paper publicly accessible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus I can live quite well with not being allowed to submit manuscripts that are already available on preprint servers as long as I'm allowed to also publish the manuscript (preferrably the final version after peer-review) after I submitted it to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;either at a preprint server &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0264&quot;&gt;(arXiv)&lt;/a&gt;, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on institutional, &lt;a href=&quot;http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org/2011/2011-07-01-ABC-Glioma-paper.html&quot;&gt;personal or project web pages&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(preferrably &lt;a href=&quot;http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org/2013/2013-01-03-ChemomIntellLabSystTheorypaper.html&quot;&gt;both&lt;/a&gt;, of course)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T15:41:20.840" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T15:41:20.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10340" CreationDate="2013-06-02T13:45:15.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As your user page indicates that you are in Germany, you may be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html&quot;&gt;§53 UrhG&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Zulässig ist, einzelne Vervielfältigungsstücke eines Werkes herzustellen oder herstellen zu lassen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;zum eigenen wissenschaftlichen Gebrauch, wenn und soweit die Vervielfältigung zu diesem Zweck geboten ist und sie keinen gewerblichen Zwecken dient,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Rough translation:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(2) it is permitted to make or let be made single copies of a work&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1. for personal scientific use, if and as far as copying is needed for this reason and is  not for commercial reasons,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is a kind of continental european fair use policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working in science I think that putting papers I read in a personal private archive is needed - if only to be able to answer specific claims or questions about papers I cite in my papers, presentations, .... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T13:45:15.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10406" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10408" CreationDate="2013-06-02T13:50:11.700" Score="14" ViewCount="3345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my CV right now. I have been teaching EFL at a university for 2 years. It has been my first university position. I am planning on applying at universities back in the States soon. I am educationally-qualified (meaning, I have the degrees required), however I do not have much experience (6 years teaching, only 2 university). I wanted to list as much information as possible, so I have been writing about each course I have taught (about 6 different courses). I have included course name, objective, textbook, and course highlights (meaning unique projects that would set my courses apart). I am wondering if this is necessary or useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7317" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T15:49:46.543" Title="Should I add descriptions of courses taught on my CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10284" CreationDate="2013-06-02T14:45:15.983" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key issue to keep in mind when comparing different fields is the scale of money involved.  For example, according to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acs.org/portal/PublicWebSite/about/aboutacs/financial/CNBP_032302&quot;&gt;financial statement&lt;/a&gt;, in 2012 the American Chemical Society received $421 million in revenue for electronic services, including both journals and the Chemical Abstracts Service.  That's a staggering amount of money for a scholarly society.  (For comparison, the American Mathematical Society's &lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acs.org/portal/PublicWebSite/about/aboutacs/financial/CNBP_032302&quot;&gt;2011 revenue&lt;/a&gt; from Math Reviews and journals was $15.5 million.)  The ACS is the gatekeeper for publications and data that are worth a fortune to industry, so they have a powerful incentive to maintain that control.  It's no coincidence that they are much less friendly towards open access, the arXiv, etc. than corresponding groups in mathematics or physics are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T14:45:15.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10406" CreationDate="2013-06-02T15:49:46.543" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A brief description of the courses you've taught is never remiss, as it helps reviewers place your teaching work into context. This is especially important for teaching-primary positions. However, for many positions, you also have the ability (or requirement) to submit a &quot;teaching statement.&quot; This would be a place, for instance, where you could discuss your unique projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would certainly want people to know about in the courses I taught:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full course name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether they were required or elective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The intended audience (e.g., &quot;freshmen&quot; or &quot;upper-year undergraduates and graduates in the major&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long (how many times) you taught the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you have sole responsibility, or was it co-taught&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Format of the class (lecture, seminar, laboratory, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief description of the course, if its nature cannot be inferred from the title (for example, &quot;Introduction to US History to 1865&quot; doesn't need an explanation; &quot;The Critical Period&quot; would.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other information could be listed on a &quot;courses taught&quot; appendix, but I might not necessarily include it directly in the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T15:49:46.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10410" CreationDate="2013-06-02T20:23:50.860" Score="5" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it would be a good Idea for me to wait until after my MS program is completed and my thesis is published before applying to a PhD program. There is no chance of me publishing my thesis before the December/January deadline of the fall 2013-14 admissions cycle as I am only 2 semesters into my program and the project I am doing doesn't necessarily move as fast as other projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its important to note that I have NO publications at this point, but I do have two presentations at international conferences. Also, my ugrad Gpa was slightly higher than a 3.0... and my Masters GPA is a 3.7. I'm also in the Geosciences, if that matters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with all that in mind, would it be a good Idea to wait until that publication comes in before applying to PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7326" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T21:19:48.103" Title="Waiting until MS thesis is Published before applying to PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10409" CreationDate="2013-06-02T21:19:48.103" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why rob yourself of potential opportunities?  Your chances of admission might be less than if you had a publication, but they're certainly bigger than if you don't apply at all.  If you aren't admitted anywhere, you can always apply again next year, after your thesis is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T21:19:48.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10413" CreationDate="2013-06-02T19:32:00.080" Score="21" ViewCount="11794" Body="&lt;p&gt;When learning a new subject, I would frequently use lecture notes found somewhere in the Internet. When writing a paper (or a master thesis, as in my case, but the rules should be similar, I believe) one should give some reference for used results which are not common knowledge, if I understand correctly. This make me wonder: what do I do if I want to reference a result I found in some notes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The natural thing to do would be to just add these notes to bibliography. What format would be preferable for this? Note that there will generally not be much publishing information, perhaps not even a definite year and place. (A BibTeX template would be .)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, is it OK to cite such materials as a reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7328" OwnerDisplayName="Feanor" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T10:22:58.857" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T19:52:22.363" Title="How to cite lecture notes? (and should I even do this?)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10411" CreationDate="2013-06-03T01:01:47.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my taste, citations are fulfilling several purposes, some of which may not be fulfillable simultaneously. So, one should be honest about where one found a result, even if the source is not widely available. Thus, cite (in the best, most usable form possible) the lecture notes. Still, yes, &lt;em&gt;accessible&lt;/em&gt; sources meet another criterion, namely, helping readers reproduce/understand your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: in light of various comments and other answers... another purpose served by spending &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; (not unlimited) time finding original sources (even while being honest about the source one actually &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; or _learned_from_) is to give at least a lower bound for the age (and locale of origin) of the idea. Nevertheless, at the same time, it certainly &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; happen that a much later exposition does a much better job of explaining... after all, benefiting from hindsight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another reason to exert some effort to credit original sources is to dampen a bit a tendency that otherwise can dominate, namely, some form of &quot;Great Man/Woman&quot; syndrome, in which a very few people are portrayed as being responsible for nearly all good, big ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T19:52:22.363" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T19:52:22.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10411" CreationDate="2013-06-03T01:24:13.370" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should make a good-faith effort to find and cite original source of the results (to give proper credit).  You should only cite the lecture notes if (1) they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the original source, or (2) the original source is inaccessible, either literally (out of print or unpublished) or figuratively (written in a foreign language, with excessive generality or formality, or just badly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the original source may require significantly more scholarly diligence on your part than the author of the lecture notes, since most lecture-note authors (including myself) are fairly sloppy with references.  Such is life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T01:24:13.370" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T06:53:21.497" Score="7" ViewCount="3159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a hobbyist mathematician in China. I study maths by myself and make some course videos to teach commutative algebra, functional analysis and other topics on the internet, like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.khanacademy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Khan Academy&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT open courses&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need a .edu email to get into some sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any organisation that will help me like this: I show them some material, such as videos and papers, and if they think I am no weaker than some college teachers at least, they would give me a .edu email? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7305" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T09:17:22.610" LastActivityDate="2019-11-10T08:03:29.743" Title="How to get a .edu email address as an independent mathematician?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10415" CreationDate="2013-06-03T07:17:30.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, becoming a student or staff member is one way to get a university email.&#xA;Some institutions provide alumni email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universities have various unpaid affiliates. Such affiliates are sometimes eligible for a  university email. However, such affiliates are often expected to contribute to the school, faculty, or university. For example, you might publish with the university as your affiliation or you might give occasional lectures or you might supervise a research student. These sorts of affiliations are typically obtained by building up a relationship with some academics in a given department and making enquiries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T07:17:30.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10415" CreationDate="2013-06-03T07:39:29.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a researcher whose is that of a very small university in Europe, whose domain name and institutional email addresses do not end in &lt;code&gt;.edu&lt;/code&gt; (nor in &lt;code&gt;.ac.uk&lt;/code&gt; or any other recognizable pattern): &lt;strong&gt;any website that uses email domains as filters has a fallback mechanism&lt;/strong&gt; (or exception handler) that you can reach if your own email address doesn't fit into the patterns they recognize. It may take some explaining, though…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T07:39:29.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2013-06-03T08:42:30.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm from Serbia and study at the Faculty of Philosophy. Almost all exams are oral, except for some that require you write a paper on a topic of your choice. We  also have a few courses that require tests, that you have to pass so you can take an oral exam. This system is used for all humanities studies and other social studies as far as I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7338" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T08:42:30.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10424" CreationDate="2013-06-03T10:05:44.513" Score="18" ViewCount="84567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities have independent &lt;code&gt;departments&lt;/code&gt;, but some put departments under supervision of a faculty. For instance, a university has fifty independent departments, but another has 5 faculties containing departments. In the former, the Dean of Faculty is intermediate between the department chairs and the university administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that most of these structures come from the university history, but how these structures affect the department performance, and why universities prefer different structures, instead of a standard one (which should be most efficient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, what is the different of &lt;code&gt;Department of Computer Science&lt;/code&gt; in one university, and &lt;code&gt;Department of Computer Science&lt;/code&gt; in another university which is part of &lt;code&gt;Faculty of Engineering&lt;/code&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T10:18:09.797" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T12:13:52.253" Title="What is the difference between department and faculty?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10421" CreationDate="2013-06-03T10:27:07.743" Score="8" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question if I may, about appropriate methods of dealing with academic bullies (or as one of my students call them &quot;wannabe nemesis&quot;).  What would be the best, most dignified way to 'overcome' them, while protecting your own research interests andreputation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify what I mean by an academic bully - first and foremost, I am not referring to those that offer critiques in any constructive forms (even in an aggressive manner), I am referring to the academics that who, for whatever reason (usually due to disgreeing with research findings or feeling threatened by 'newcomers' to the research field), decide to go on the offensive with insults, threats, and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I am referring to, if the communication is direct (by email. letter or in person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T12:31:03.340" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T12:31:03.340" Title="Academic bullies" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10420" CreationDate="2013-06-03T10:57:57.317" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you point out there is usually some personal (psychological) reason for such behaviour, particularly if it is repeated/continuous. I believe the first thing to do is to avoid to go by insinct and &quot;fight back&quot;. Obviously the correct response will rely on the type of communication/accusation but keeping a calm and cool tone is the best. Keep all replies very short and avoid emotional touches at all costs. &quot;Thank your for your opinion.&quot; (or something along those lines) is enough to have provided a response while practically ending the correspondence since there is nothing more to reply to. To try to &quot;kill&quot; the conversation by not providing fuel is the way to go. In verbal communications a simple &quot;OK&quot; can be enough. Then try to walk away at the first opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad behaviour is otherwise best fought with good science and academic professionality and one must try to find moral support in situations like this so that ones self-confidence is not shattered. There are many destructive behaviours that affect us, some temporary some part of (or deficiency in) a personality. There is however, no reason to go into mud-slinging with such persons unless they express clearly unethical opinions but then the question is at a different level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T10:57:57.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10419" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:11:46.483" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The faculty is a collection of departments. In my system we have the Faculty of Sciences, Law, Humanities, and Social Sciences. In addirions there can be Faculty of Theology, Arts, Languages, Educational Science, Medicine, Pharmacy and probably many others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term Faculty is known from the University in Paris already in medieval times. It was a way in which major fields distinguished themeselves from a genral body of learning. The faculties of Philosophy, Law, Theology and Medicine can be found back to the 13th century. As the universities grew and knowledge became more specialized departments started to form within these faculties and we now have the system of faculties as an administrative level in many university systems. Departments are, however, relatively modern creations from the late 19th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:11:46.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:11:50.307" Score="0" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of registering for nondegree classes at a local university to give an impression to future admission comitee that my GPA does not really reflect me. But I have some concerns. How should I choose which courses to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some &lt;em&gt;internationally &lt;strong&gt;known&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; professor gives an introductory course e.g. Introduction to Algorithms and if another &lt;em&gt;internationally &lt;strong&gt;unknown&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; one offers advanced graduate course, which one should I choose first ? Consider the future recommendation letters to United States schools I would expect from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7340" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:41:53.287" Title="Planning nondegree classes" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10419" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:37:56.017" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The distinction between &quot;faculty,&quot; &quot;department,&quot; and &quot;school&quot; depends a lot on where you are. As Peter suggests in his answer, a faculty can be a collection of &quot;departments.&quot; However, a faculty in Germany (for instance) consists of a number of &quot;chairs,&quot; each of which is closer to a professorship in a department than an actual &quot;department.&quot; Thus, the faculty is effectively halfway between the American &quot;department&quot; and &quot;faculty&quot; in its function, as it combines some of the hierarchy and responsibilities of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for having multiple subdivisions is that there are often many university functions—including personnel and budget decisions, facilities management, teaching, and so on—that can vary widely across the entire university, but significantly less among certain departments that have a similar focus. For these departments, it makes sense to combine these duties in a central administration, rather than duplicate the effort across multiple departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:37:56.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10423" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:41:53.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reputation of the faculty member helps somewhat, but is nowhere near as useful as the &lt;em&gt;quality of the recommendation letter.&lt;/em&gt; A letter from a famous person who doesn't really know you outside of the classroom (or doesn't know you at all) isn't nearly as helpful as an in-depth evaluation from someone you know well, and who knows you well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I find the notion that you would taking an introductory course versus an advanced elective somewhat concerning. In general, if you are looking to buttress a graduate-school application, evidence that you can handle graduate-level work in the field matters far more than having a Big Name write you a weak letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:41:53.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10411" CreationDate="2013-06-03T13:36:03.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a general point of view, lecture notes are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gray literature&lt;/a&gt;, meaning they might &lt;strong&gt;lack standard bibliographic metadata&lt;/strong&gt; (you mentioned the year and place), may be harder to track down for readers, or not long-term available. Thus, one should generally &lt;strong&gt;prefer to cite conventional literature&lt;/strong&gt; (such as books or articles in journals) over gray literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a masters thesis, it should be fine to cite gray literature, but do check with your advisor. When you do so, you might as well discuss the format he'd recommend for citation. If you found the lecture notes online, one idea would be to &lt;strong&gt;cite it as online source&lt;/strong&gt;, where key metadata would be the URL and the date of access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to a masters thesis, many publishers &lt;strong&gt;discourage or forbid the citation of gray literature&lt;/strong&gt; for journal papers. So if you want to make a paper from the thesis and the citation is essential, you would have to find the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T13:36:03.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10432" CreationDate="2013-06-03T15:05:03.060" Score="9" ViewCount="1557" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will start my PhD in computer science at a UK university soon. Even though the university has given me a partial funding, I still need to cover part of my tuition fee and living expenses. My university offers teaching assistant position but its payment is very limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking and seen that most, if not all, of funding sources are only available for UK and EU students. So, I want to ask if there are any sources for international to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T13:40:00.253" Title="PhD funding source for international student in the UK" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10430" CreationDate="2013-06-03T15:08:04.153" Score="10" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I wrote a seminar paper in grad school (MSc) with examples on how companies use method x to improve their security. It includes zero &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; research, no new methods and it would never ever be published in a journal, because the substance is really not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives a theoretical background of the problems itself and then different current examples from 2 companies that I researched over the internet and a conclusion. Thus, not only academic sources but also other sources (companies) are used and it basically shows the &lt;strong&gt;application of academic concepts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other researchers could use this paper to potentially find ways on how to dig deeper and how to address some problems specifically, but I did not point something like that out myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this count as research and does it make sense to hand those kind of papers to PhD admission departments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T08:43:03.170" Title="How much value do papers without new scientific information have, i.e. seminar papers such as overviews of or examples for current methods in CS?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-06-03T15:22:51.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes, it is good to show this if you are planning to apply for grad school as a way to show your capability for conducting research, your interest, knowledge of the topic and dedication. It might, or not, give a potential adviser a hint of your capability. Then, if the paper is or not mature or appropriate for a peer-reviewed journal would not, in principle, be an issue for the purpose you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7116" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T15:22:51.727" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-06-03T15:22:51.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-06-03T15:43:43.120" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is akin to a &lt;em&gt;review article&lt;/em&gt;, in the sense that you're interpreting and reporting on existing work, rather than creating something new. There's nothing wrong with a review article, and many scientists do write them during their careers (but usually not before they've started a doctoral program!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, while I believe that it is not nearly as good as a &quot;standard&quot; research paper in establishing one's capabilities to do &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; research, it may have some merit. If the schools to which you are applying allow you to submit additional documentation, then you could consider sending it in, if you believe it is of sufficient quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T15:43:43.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10419" CreationDate="2013-06-03T17:15:11.687" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes using one word or another is seen as more prestigious or as more independent than another. In one place I was at, they made a big deal of changing their name from &quot;Department of Computer Science&quot; to &quot;School of Computer Science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, some people perceive one Faculty as more prestigious for the purposes of undergraduate recruiting. In many Universities in North America, computer science moved from &quot;science&quot; to &quot;engineering&quot; and my father perceived that computer science departments in &quot;engineering&quot; were more promising than those in &quot;science&quot; (as at the time engineers made more money and had more job opportunities than scientists). Of course, the real reason that this happens is often a question of autonomy, funding, and mutual interests behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the question of &quot;For example, what is the difference of Department of Computer Science in one university, and Department of Computer Science in another university which is part of Faculty of Engineering?&quot; is very, very difficult to answer and I would argue that the differences are much more dependent on the actual &quot;department&quot; than on what faculty/college/administrative area it's under. In North America, most departments (especially computer science departments) are relatively autonomous and do not rely heavily on their college for assistance - it's simply a bureaucratic layer through which funds go through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T17:15:11.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10427" CreationDate="2013-06-03T17:17:54.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is probably to check if there are fellowships available for study abroad from your home country. However, depending on where you're from, there may be special programs available. For instance, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk/apply/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Commonwealth Scholarships&lt;/a&gt; available for people living in members of the British Commonwealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some databases of UK awards for general students: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.educationuk.org/nc?pagename=GLOBAL%2FSearchLayoutTemplate&amp;amp;c=Page&amp;amp;SearchResultType=scholarship&amp;amp;cid=1262432674923&amp;amp;activeFinderCombo=2&amp;amp;checkVal=1&amp;amp;finderSearchType=finder&amp;amp;finderIndex=2&amp;amp;SearchTerm=&amp;amp;Subject=Please+Select&amp;amp;Country+of+residence=International+%28outside+European+Union%29&amp;amp;Level+of+study=Postgraduate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, for instance, is a list of postgraduate scholarships available to citizens of any country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T17:17:54.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-06-03T23:50:42.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also say yes, primarily as your research and analytical methods could be considered as original research - this aspect could possibly be refined and submitted as a paper.  Definitely do submit your work as part of your PhD application, perhaps with a focus on the methodology that you used and an evaluation of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T23:50:42.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-06-04T02:07:00.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read your post and from what I can see you don't sound like you enjoy your PhD or academic life in general. I personally did not find the reason why your situation became so hard. Perhaps you don't feel ok with the fact that your girlfriend is at home and you have to be somewhere else. Perhaps you you don't find the project entertaining. I'd say it might be the research itself that does not motivate you. One thing I am certain about is that you have to feel passion for doing research. You need to be determined and driven. Otherwise, it's easy to lose motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to ask yourself if you really need to stay where you are! PhD is for those who plan to be professional researchers. It's only counts if you plan to stay at any university. Not only will this have to be your everyday job, you will also have to be the person who proposes many new projects and be a leader for others. If don't see yourself in this roll, then it's probably better if you consider quitting. It's nothing wrong with quitting PhD. Besides, you can still begin a PhD somewhere else. You don't need to stick to the one you don't enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that I met many people in my office. Everyone of them had their sort of crisis and this seems quite natural stage in the whole process. The research is also not a usual job and can be frustrating. Things always go wrong. Only determination, enjoyment, and passion make people stay and continue their PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some of the others already said, It's nothing wrong when you quit PhD. Taking a longer break, coming home for couple of months, calming down may help you realise and understand a lot of things which are difficult to spot when you under pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T02:07:00.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10436" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-04T05:45:42.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A blog (a web log) is a discussion or informational site published on the Web and consisting of posts, that are typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). A typical blog allows to post comments as well as pictures and music as well as other multimedia files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For academia it is especially well suited to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write down ideas that one could otherwise easily forget about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show pre-versions of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/papers&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'papers'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;announce date/location of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/conferences&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'conferences'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;conferences&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/meetings&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'meetings'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;meetings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discuss ideas with peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get input from readers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;illustrate effects of methods in greater detail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T07:19:30.510" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T07:19:30.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10437" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-04T05:45:42.860" Score="0" Body="A blog (a web log) is a discussion or informational site published on the Web, that can be used to share, discuss and illustrate academic ideas and methods." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T07:19:24.213" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T07:19:24.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-06-04T08:43:03.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Definition section of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research&lt;/a&gt; Wiki page,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A broad definition of research is given by Martyn Shuttleworth - &quot;In the broadest sense of the word, the definition of research includes any gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of knowledge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your paper counts as research. I would hand those kind of papers to PhD admission departments if I were you. At the very least, the paper shows that you have the research potential even if it contains no original idea or new methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you need to make sure the paper is of good quality. If the quality is poor, it could have negative effects. You probably want some experts (like your advisor) review it before you send it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T08:43:03.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10441" CreationDate="2013-06-04T10:12:57.033" Score="15" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need an specific advice on a specific area (not the main one) in my PhD research (e.g. is it a good idea to include the factor x in the review and analysis of the topic y?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, my supervisor is not an 'expert' in this specific area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that someone else, who has recently done a PhD in my department and has &lt;em&gt;good connections&lt;/em&gt; with my supervisor, is an expert in that area and can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic etiquette: should I make my supervisor aware that I am asking an advice from that person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:36:20.637" Title="Should I tell my supervisor that I will consult someone else?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2013-06-04T10:21:34.153" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would approach your supervisor with request for advice and depending on what the problem is, (s)he may recommend you speak to some other scholarly expert in the field. If (s)he doesn't, you could suggest yourself that it might be an idea to speak to some expert. Your supervisor and you could work out a viable solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has happened to me numerous times during my PhD - the nature of the project meant that other scholars had to be consulted.  My supervisor had no problems with this, but I made sure that I always let him know, and in many cases, he had recommended I speak to other scholars and was also able to recommend various experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always polite to keep your supervisor in the loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T12:36:20.637" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:36:20.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2013-06-04T12:44:37.747" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  In the same tone that you use to describe finding a helpful book in the library.  Consulting experts, whether in the flesh or through their published work, is a normal and expected part of doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tone of your question suggests that you are worried that your advisor might be insulted by not being consulted first.  If this is a real concern, you need a new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T12:44:37.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T14:08:23.207" Score="5" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/900/when-how-should-i-ask-about-a-manuscripts-status-in-review/10443#10443&quot;&gt;this question on when to ask about a manuscript's status in review&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I wonder (since it is happening to me): What does it mean when a paper is &quot;with editor&quot; for two months after a first review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7345" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T09:23:41.163" Title="Waiting after a review" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10444" CreationDate="2013-06-04T14:32:58.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no way to know for sure except to ask the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean that the editor received the first review from a referee two months ago, it may be that the editor has not yet decided what to do with the paper, based on the review.  Another possibility is that the editor wants a second review, and has not yet found a referee for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T14:32:58.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10444" CreationDate="2013-06-04T15:07:15.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, after the first round of review, you were asked to revise your manuscript extensively. And you made changes accordingly and resubmitted a revised version. Two months has passed since then, but it doesn't seem like the revised manuscript has been sent out for external review because the status of your submission you can see online hasn't been changed and is still &quot;with editor.&quot; (Edit: I know some journals use &quot;being handled by editor&quot; or something similar at any stage of the review process except when the manuscript is with the author. You're sure it wasn't &quot;with editor&quot; during the first round review, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, most likely it means the editor is having hard time finding referees for the second round or maybe simply taking their sweet time examining your resubmission. Or possibly they forgot about your submission so you need to remind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what the norm is in your field. But if I were you, I'd send a short and polite email to the journal to ask what is up with your paper, probably after waiting a bit more. If it doesn't work, I'd send another polite email to someone else working for the journal. In any case, you should understand that the editor is a volunteer (unless you're submitting to a journal with fulltime editors like Nature, Science, PRL etc.), and sometimes it takes a while to handle your submission for various legitimate reasons. So be polite when asking what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: And the best way to know if two months is too long is to ask experienced researchers in your field like your advisor if you're a student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="7075" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T15:26:12.643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T15:26:12.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2013-06-04T16:15:49.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be oral exams in others country but as far as I know there is nothing like &quot;colles&quot;, colles aren't &quot;exams&quot;, they are trainings for the oral part of a national competition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is simple: the classe prépa / Grande Ecole system is unique to france. The main reason to go to &quot;classe prépa&quot; is not to learn but to go to the best &quot;grande ecole&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6588" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T16:15:49.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10462" CreationDate="2013-06-04T16:58:33.387" Score="17" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it can happen that a graduate student who is struggling on a project finally sees everything &quot;click,&quot; and becomes far more productive. It might be due to a change in attitude, an improved work ethic, serendipitous success, or some combination of all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing recommendations, how do you comment on the student's rapid turnaround, without making the previous state of the work (in which the student &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; working, and clearly understood what needed to be done, but didn't have the results to show for it) seem like it was a weakness or liability &lt;em&gt;on the part of the student&lt;/em&gt;. Given how real signs of weakness can cause problems for people reviewing the letters, how do you call attention to the fact that the student underwent such a startling transformation, while acknowledging the previous struggles and not harming the student's chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T09:00:18.120" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T09:00:18.120" Title="How do you comment on rapid improvement in a student's performance?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2013-06-04T17:11:08.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your lab is the leader in a certain field, you would be aware of it.&#xA;If your colleagues are pure geniuses, you also would be aware of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases you won't be here to ask about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In others cases, extreme repetition is not a good sign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Keep in mind that little repetition is good as it shows interest in a field, but 13 in 15 is a red flag, a big bad red flag with a big bad skull on it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6588" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T17:11:08.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10453" CreationDate="2013-06-04T17:37:06.720" Score="33" ViewCount="4047" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently uploading my MRes thesis to my university website, but I have some doubts regarding the permanence of the link as it may change after I graduate. I do not have many illusions over who may want to read my thesis in the future, but I would like to have a link to give to people or to put on papers in the future without fear of the link breaking in the near/mid/far future. Additionally, I know that having it available in a place spiders are more likely to look makes it (marginally) more visible to web searches and thus more discoverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all%3a+AND+PhD+thesis/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot;&gt;quick search&lt;/a&gt; turns up a good bunch of PhD theses, but it doesn't say how many there aren't very many &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all%3a+AND+MSc+thesis/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot;&gt;MSc&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all%3a+AND+BSc+thesis/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot;&gt;BSc&lt;/a&gt; theses in there. My reading on this is that it is OK but by no means a standard practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I upload it though, I would like to know if there are reasons &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to put it in such a public place. I am after all a bit of an arXiv fanatic and there may be factors I'm not considering. Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T19:18:16.880" Title="Is it advisable to upload theses to the arXiv?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10456" CreationDate="2013-06-04T18:29:48.077" Score="6" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an electrical engineering (communications) undergraduate student. But my main interest is physics ( and/or CS, esp. it's common fields with physics - &lt;em&gt;but it doesn't affect my question here&lt;/em&gt; ), and I want to pursue my graduate studies in physics or computer science. However for application, as an engineering student  I'm at a disadvantage as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think my major is not considered &lt;em&gt;rigorous enough&lt;/em&gt; by people in those fields &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't have much (official) coursework in those fields, although I have studied (and am studying) even more than is expected from physics majors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because of the time I've put in studying ( and more importantly, exploring different areas of) physics and computer science,  my GPA so far is not good in electrical engineering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with these circumstances, I think the best or maybe the only way is to continue my studies in physics (and/or related areas) more seriously to do more rather good quality research projects and this way, show my ability and qualification for graduate studies in physics (and/or CS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, doing so I'll need more time for these additional studies and projects, and  I think I have to stay one year more at undergraduate school (5 years). Is this considered a negative point in application for graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="6618" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T22:59:31.270" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T22:59:31.270" Title="Prolonging undergraduate school to do research" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10451" CreationDate="2013-06-04T19:18:16.880" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be any real restriction on publishing theses of any kind to arXiv. Therefore, whether you choose to do so is a decision that should be made between you and your advisor, taking into account any regulations your school may have. If your work has been funded by an external agency or company, you should also take their requirements under advisement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, so long as your topic falls under arXiv's category guidelines, and there are no restrictions preventing you, there isn't much to lose by submitting the &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; version of your thesis to a public repository. It would ensure far greater visibility for your thesis than if it's left on your university's website alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T19:18:16.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10452" CreationDate="2013-06-04T19:24:03.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a lot of students who spend an extra year as an undergraduate, and I know of a number of very good students who have done so, and will almost certainly get into very good graduate programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that said, I think the value of the extra year as an undergraduate depends largely on what you spend that year doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you be taking classes that will help your application to a physics program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much research will you be doing, and how will it help your application? (Is it physics-related, or EE-related?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How strong is your GPA in your physics classes? (This won't make up for a weak GPA in EE classes, but it can at least partially mitigate it.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much will it cost you to spend an extra year before starting graduate school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for rigor, I don't think there's as much stigma as you might think. There's far more overlap between fields now than there used to be, and engineers do things that used to be primarily in the province of physics, chemistry, and even mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T19:24:03.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10452" CreationDate="2013-06-04T21:37:05.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nobody cares how long you took to graduate.&lt;/strong&gt;  There is no advantage to graduating early, and there is no disadvantage to graduating late.  It is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; common for students to take more than four years to get an undergraduate degree, especially if they change majors, as you are effectively doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T21:37:05.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2013-06-04T22:14:47.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. I am a graduate student and I have done this quite a number of times. Usually its no problem. In fact my advisers have always encouraged reaching out to various people in their specializations to ask for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is bring up the topic and then say something like &quot;What do you feel about me reaching out to Dr. XX or Prof. YY about feedback regarding this analysis? Or this writing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, they are very happy to agree or suggest alternatives. I recommend that you try this approach and see what comes of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T22:14:47.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-05T02:35:07.437" Score="17" ViewCount="7188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some questions regarding my personal statement for graduate school in math. I hope this is not the wrong place to ask. My question(s) are comprehensive and long, as the title suggests, thus I have numbered and sub-numbered the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these questions are targeted at schools that do not allow me to upload a CV otherwise I think half of these questions would go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Courses&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1a) Is it silly or a waste of space to talk about your math background? Or should I assume the graduate committee already has this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1b) Some schools I have checked out actually asked me to list out all my junior/senior courses along with their books, I guess for those schools I don’t need to? What about those who do not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1c) Should I write or mention courses I have self-studied? Or is this completely irrelevant to them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1d) Should I also bother explaining one W and one ‘bad’ mark that happened in the summer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1e) Should I mention my math department is understaffed and I tried to take as many “hard” classes as possible? How understaffed? We have only at most four math classes at the senior level every year. We are so small that most junior/senior classes stop only at the introductory level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we only have: introductory PDE, introductory Number Theory, introductory Algebra, and Topology does not even exist at my university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very rarely do we get continuations to those courses. In comparison with all the other areas, we have quite a lot of Analysis courses, but all of them are focused in Optimization (excluding Real Analysis, we usually have one to two Analysis classes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have no Calculus of Variation, no Measure Theory, almost nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, I had to go out my way to bug a professor to request an extra Analysis course this year to the unit head and even then I am short on Math classes next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TA experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2a) Should I talk about this? How will they even verify me? Because I have done some things that most TA don’t do at my university – writing exam solutions. The prof I TA’d for left everything for me to do, except the teaching and actually writing the midterms/finals. I never had a class with him, so I am not so sure about asking him to write a letter for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2b) I also TA’d for another prof at another campus during one summer term(same university, but different Math department), should I mention this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;I can provide a link of my exam solutions through the prof's site. I think he will give me permission, should I include this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Research Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;em&gt;very very&lt;/em&gt; little experience, so much that I could probably only write one or two short sentences about it. I also have no publication, but I think the prof I worked for can&lt;br&gt;&#xA;confirm that I did do research under him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the “research experience” I had was a problem the prof had written by hand on a math paper and he asked me to answer the question he posed. It was not an analytic problem, it was coding, graphing, and writing a report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Area of Interest.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4a) I already know my area of interest, I am wondering if it is a good idea to write why I got interested in the first place or is this completely irrelevant to the graduate committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reasons are rather absurd, I am going into my desired area because of a textbook writer and the textbook I read by him isn’t even the area I was interested in, although the writer did write a book in the subject and I was simply in love with his style of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I later found out the writer’s background and plus some neat stuff I read on the Internet sealed the deal for me. If people think this reason isn’t silly or “cliché” (e.g. “I liked puzzles when I was young”), then please tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4b) Also one major problem is that I can’t talk too deeply about my area of interest. i can mention specific subfields, but that's about it. For instance, if I liked Number Theory, I could mention &quot;Analytic Number Theory&quot; and the &quot;Riemann Zeta&quot; or if I liked Differential Geometry/PDE, I could mention &quot;Geometric Analysis&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would it be better to omit the details if I can't comment too much on the details of the subject and simply write &quot;Number Theory&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;strong&gt;Thesis Advisor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find people and mention their names easily on my personal statement. I am just curious if I should narrow it down to only ONE person? Does it look bad that I am just listing out the people whom I want to work with instead of writing down just one name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) &lt;strong&gt;Scholarships/Award&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never liked the word 'Award', so i am going to use 'Scholarship'. Do I need to mention about a scholarship I got from a professor? Again, how can I be verified for this? I think I could ask the prof who gave it to me (whom I did reasearch for) to mention/confirm this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7) &lt;strong&gt;Skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much will it add to my application if I tell them I can use LaTeX (honor's thesis not required for honors degree at my university. I asked one of my profs why and even he doesn't know.), high proficiency with Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc...? I was going to add Photoshop, but then I realize how pointless and irrelevant that is. I can also use Python, but since I am postponed my 1st year computer science requirements till my last year I do not think they will buy this. Also my school teaches Java.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much for reading and taking this time to read this ridiculously long question(s)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT CLARIFICATION:&lt;/strong&gt; I am applying to US/Canadian universities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7349" OwnerDisplayName="sizz" LastEditorUserId="7349" LastEditDate="2013-06-08T04:04:10.497" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T04:04:10.497" Title="A comprehensive question about personal statement" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-05T03:26:52.550" Score="8" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, I download all the content of Academia@SE, later analysis it in a data mining paper, and submit the paper in the end. Is it OK to do so? Do I have to ask the permission from the administrator of the website? And does he or she have rights to forbid my academic use? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2789" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T08:53:14.520" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T15:31:24.540" Title="Is it legal/ethical to use data grabbed from a Stack Exchange site in a paper?" Tags="&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-06-18T10:36:15.957" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-06-05T04:03:48.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you can do it with StackOverflow data, as long as you cite/attribute it properly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/stack-overflow-creative-commons-data-dump/&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article affirms it. However, I do not know whether this can be extended to the rest of StackExchange. A question to the mods or to the support team might help you clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T04:03:48.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-06-05T04:10:00.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.  If you are seriously concerned about this issue, you should consult one; your institution probably has intellectual property lawyers on staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a general principle that &quot;you can't copyright facts&quot;.  Wherever you get your data set, you probably can  legally publish any analysis of that data, without requiring anyone's permission.   However, you may not be able to legally reproduce the data itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, by standard academic ethics, you must properly cite and attribute the source of the data.    And if you can't guarantee that the data will remain accessible, it could affect the reproducibility of your results and hence the quality of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T04:38:03.563" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T04:38:03.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10448" CreationDate="2013-06-05T05:08:13.230" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with JeffE's comment -- this is an opportunity to show fantastic improvement, which looks great in a letter.  If the improvement really was because of &quot;serendipitous success,&quot; it seems that it would be difficult to sustain, unless it happens that the groundbreaking work was so monumental that it is prize-worthy (and even then, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur&quot;&gt;chance favors only the prepared mind&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing a positive letter (which is almost always the case--I'll try to convince a student that I'm not the correct person if I feel I won't be able to justify a strong letter), my goal is to convince the letter-reader that I'd hire/accept the person &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, and why.  Something like the following might fit this case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been particularly impressed by X's recent work on her project, &lt;em&gt;Nuclear Powered Time Travel via a Modified Consumer Vehicle&lt;/em&gt;.  Despite a frustrating set of circumstances that returned limited results in the early stages of the project, her hard work and persistence led to a breakthrough that she is currently preparing for submission to &lt;em&gt;The Twin Paradox Journal&lt;/em&gt;, and will undoubtedly lead to further successful results.  Specifically, she was finally able to properly shield the flux-capacitor plutonium containment compartment in her design, reducing temporal errors by 99% and leading to far greater box office returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student's previous attitude, or struggles don't put her in a particularly good light, don't include them explicitly.  Again, it goes back to &lt;em&gt;would I hire or accept the student now?&lt;/em&gt;  If you believe that by not including the specifics you're not being honest, then maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable with such a positive letter anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T05:08:13.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10458" CreationDate="2013-06-05T09:00:37.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ideas on your statements/questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1a)-(1b)-(1c): It seems to be your undergraduate university is not a very well known one and/or even not considered strong in mathematics. Graduate schools may be wanting to be sure you covered what they consider necessary as undergraduate mathematics. Upon being asked I'd consider sending along a short syllabus of the courses you took. I'm almost sure your university must have these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1d)-(1e) Don't even mess with this unless specifically asked, which I think it's unlikely to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of any topology/measure theory (and perhaps more) courses in your university (or college...?) is a rather serious one, imo, and it may point, again, at some lack of elementary basis most mathematics depts. are supposed to have.&#xA;in fact, I think it is likely some universities could require from you to complete several courses before they considere you as an actual candidate for graduate school in mathematics...are you sure that what you studied in that school of yours was &quot;mathematics&quot;? Perhaps it was something like &quot;applied mathematics&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think serious graduate schools require TA from undergraduates. In fact, mentioning you TA'd some course before being a graduate could be considered as (another) sign of a low mathematics level in your school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To require research? From an undergraduate? I don't think there's such a university. What could be required, imo, is good skills to &quot;hunt&quot; for books, papers, etc. in a mathematics library and, in our days, perhaps also in the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No need to dwell a lot with your area of interest. Perhaps mentioning some of the wide areas (analysis, topology, algebra) could be enough, though imo most decent graduate schools require from graduate students to take two or more rather hefty, year-long course in some of these areas, and only &lt;em&gt;later&lt;/em&gt; you begin to drift towards your love...&#xA;The same applies, imo, for thesis advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do mention any scholarship-award you got that's connected to your studies. This may be rather important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About skills: I don't think anybody will really care about it. Most probably schools will be more interested in finding out about your seriousness, love for the subject, responsibility, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7354" LastEditorUserId="7354" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T00:19:21.847" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T00:19:21.847" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10458" CreationDate="2013-06-05T12:53:27.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Responding to questions approximately in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a waste of space to talk about your mathematics background. Mere course titles tell almost nothing, so it's good to explain more. Telling the &lt;em&gt;authors&lt;/em&gt; of the texts used explain a lot to experienced mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if your school has a relatively weak program, and even if not, telling what self-study you've done is very important. It is all the more important as an indicator that you take initiative, are driven by curiosity about mathematics, independent of grades and structured programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explaining briefly that you've had TA experience is a small plus, because almost all grad students in math are supported by TA work, so knowing in advance that you can communicate will ease the minds of admissions committee members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the contemporary pretense that undergrads &quot;do research&quot; between their junior and senior years, it is very rare that any sort of genuine research occurs. Sometimes, but rarely. After all, if research only takes 8-10 weeks in the summer, with almost no prior background, why does a PhD takes years? :)  (There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a good purpose served by the summer programs, though, of giving undergrads the idea that mathematics is not confined to a classroom and textbooks, as well as creating social connections with other undergrads seriously interested in math. But these situations don't really produce cutting-edge research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About &quot;specific interests&quot;: of course it is vastly better to have tentative, ill-formed, and inevitably ill-informed, &quot;interests&quot;, rather than &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;. :)  I'd encourage you to tell how these interests arose, giving the admissions committee some insight into your approach to mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good to mention scholarships. People will not be so skeptical that you need to document it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computing skills are a positive, and deserve a brief mention. Again, there is little need to offer &quot;proof&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it is a mistake to think that one's transcript explains what the admissions committee wants to hear or needs to know to make a reasonable decision. An informative personal statement makes a huge difference, especially in communicating your motivations and learning outside classrooms. Also, letters of recommendation from mathematicians well-acquainted with you, from contexts of relatively advanced mathematics (rather than elementary) are very important to give an idea of how well you'd fare with more advanced/sophisticated work. (After all, many people do well-enough in undergrad material, but find that graduate-level mathematics has a slightly different nature... of less interest...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:53:27.547" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-06-05T15:31:24.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your University may have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that reviews how you conduct experiments. This board may be known by various names (Ethics Committee, Experiment Review Board, Human Subjects Research, etc.) but they are generally the ones that you would go to to consult about whether what you are doing is within the scope of ethical behavior and good treatment of human subjects data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As StackOverflow and associated StackExchange repository data is available under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (as @piotr_migdal linked above) and is publicly available, your IRB will probably tell you, &quot;It's fine&quot; and not require review. However, it depends on the IRB and the institution and the nature of the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are entire research disciplines built on scraping web sites, software repositories, and social media, so don't feel bad for doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T15:31:24.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10469" CreationDate="2013-06-05T16:30:33.850" Score="13" ViewCount="19314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a review paper. After publication, how will it add on my academic research profile? When I will apply for MS or PHD admission, will it count as publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6912" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T15:29:57.767" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T10:59:54.380" Title="What is the difference between a review paper and a research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10467" CreationDate="2013-06-05T16:55:06.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;limited experience&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; regarding since I am still a graduate student but from what I understand, a review paper is also a research paper. However, unlike a piece of research, where you study the existing literature, develop research questions and hypotheses, collect data, run experiments/analysis and make inferences which accept or reject your hypotheses, a review article is a summarization and collation of existing articles in a given, specific research topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some semi-formal writings on this already namely, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/genrepair/2011/02/01/do-you-really-count-a-review-article-as-a-publication/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/489177a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. The consensus, so far, seems to be that review articles make fine additions to your publication record but &lt;em&gt;not as fine as&lt;/em&gt; articles where you actually did your own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T16:55:06.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10467" CreationDate="2013-06-05T18:19:52.590" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A review paper is likely also known as a &quot;survey paper&quot;, where you read (i.e. survey) related works in the field and then comment on them. Usually, a review paper should be able to contribute a small amount of knowledge in its own right to the field by providing a taxonomy of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of paper that reviews extensively related work but isn't actually a review paper is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584910000467&quot;&gt;&quot;systematic review paper&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in which you usually ask a meta-question about the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it appears in a refereed, peer-reviewed journal, then yes, it is a publication. In fact, if done well, these works can often have pretty high impact and can be cited very frequently. However, as already noted, since they don't usually involve substantial original research they need to be augmented with traditional research papers. If a graduate student has only survey papers or systematic review papers, I'd wonder as a search committee reviewer if this student did nothing but read related work rather than working on research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to MS or PhD applications, I'd think that the fact that you have a publication at all is already a bonus point for you. Most students who apply to these programs don't have publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T18:19:52.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10475" CreationDate="2013-06-05T21:19:21.180" Score="26" ViewCount="1868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just written my first mathematical research paper. It proves some new results, which while not ground-breaking are (according to an expert in the field) at least somewhat interesting and surprising. At the moment however, I spend more of the paper developing the background material (giving standard definitions and constructions, proving standard lemmas) than proving the main theorems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a problem? The way I see it, there are several arguments for and against:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The background material is &quot;standard&quot; in the sense that anyone who works on this class of problems would know the definitions or results in some form. However, this is at most a few hundred people, while if I include the background material my paper should be comprehensible to an advanced undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the background results are part of the folklore of the field, and I've never been able to find a proof of them in literature. While they are believable and not hard to prove, I feel someone should bother doing it. More selfishly, this is one more reason for people to cite my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any one reference which states &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the background material I need, so if I don't include it my readers have to chase down multiple sources and I have to use conflicting notations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Against:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It may be annoying to an expert in the field, although they could skip much of it and mainly refer to the background section for notation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It makes the paper longer, although even with the background the paper is not long (13 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From what I've heard, it is generally considered bad practice to restate definitions and constructions states elsewhere and to reprove theorems available in literature. In part this is because it gives the impression that I haven't read the literature. This is exacerbated by the fact that I only cite ~5 previous works, mostly for further reading or alternative presentations of some of the background.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like advice on this from someone with experience writing such papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T19:47:17.800" Title="How much background material should a mathematical research paper include?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-06-05T21:29:36.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not entirely clear whether the background material is just background, or is needed as scaffolding for the results you prove. Also, if certain lemmas are &quot;standard&quot; why are you proving them ? surely there's some text or other paper that proves these lemmas, and which you can cite ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, in a paper you provide the scaffolding needed to prove your results. It's not necessary to provide other atmospherics unless its part of a larger discussion of related work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T21:29:36.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-06-05T21:51:06.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you rightly perceive, there are conflicting desiderata for &quot;formal papers&quot;. The main tradition for refereed-journal publications is to assume one is writing for the experts, not for anyone who'd need much background or context. Yes, this makes reading such papers needlessly difficult for non-experts. Yes, the necessary background is likely scattered among several prior papers, and some occurs &quot;nowhere&quot;, in the sense of being apocryphal... lost in the mists of time? :)&#xA;Nevertheless, the highest-status refereed journals would probably want more-discursive broader explanations edited out... and the referees and editors might interpret your inclusion of such things as &quot;amateurish&quot; (&quot;It's just not done...&quot;), to your detriment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the expectations or standards of refereed-journals is certainly not the only criterion, and is manifestly antithetical to the obviously desirable outcome of wider dissemination of ideas, collection and organization of otherwise-chaotic literature, and so on. Some people will tell you that somehow it's not ok to &quot;mix&quot; &quot;research&quot; and &quot;exposition&quot;... but this is silly, even if traditional. But, then, given the traditional predilection of refereed-journals, if you want a more discursive version of your write-up, you may have to reconcile yourself to having two versions, one for referees, one for exposition/wider-dissemination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The for-referees version should probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cite the discursive version, but, instead, do the quasi-unhelpful bit of citing the disparate standard sources. The discursive version could cite the for-referees version, as well as the standard sources, and still include your own updated presentation, bringing apocrypha to the light of day, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I fear no single refereed-journal-publishable version could meet the nicer-exposition requirements you (completely reasonably) would like to impose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T21:51:06.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-06-05T23:38:21.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are proofs in the literature for some of your background materials, it is better you do not prove them in your paper unless your proofs are much simpler or they use a method which will be used again in your other proofs (I have seen both instances in papers written by well known mathematicians). However if you cannot find a proof for some of the easy (or well known) results in the literature, it is a great help for your readers to add your proofs. About introducing your notation and/or definitions, you can be even more generous to your readers. Although there is a downside for including lots of backgrounds, not including some of them can delay the referee process of your paper. Do not hesitate to cite more references if they help to find some of the background materials. And finally, I suggest you devote some paragraphs to explain the motivation of your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your paper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T23:38:21.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10484" CreationDate="2013-06-06T04:05:21.007" Score="44" ViewCount="63784" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently tried submitting a paper to a journal. It was mandatory to suggest three reviewers. Is this a norm in journal submissions? If yes, how should one choose reviewers if I do not personally know any experts in the field? I have been submitting papers to conferences and never found such conditions there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-09-01T14:01:20.897" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T14:01:20.897" Title="How to suggest reviewers for a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-06-06T04:24:59.033" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend putting in as much explanation, context, and background as you reasonably can.  In principle you could certainly put in too much, but in practice I don't think I've ever seen a mathematics paper I thought actually did have too much.  If you structure your writing so experts can easily skim things they already know, then I don't see why extra explanation should trouble anyone.  Tradition requires being concise, but that tradition was based on the economics of publishing.  Space in printed journals used to be a scarce resource, and if you spent it on unnecessary exposition you were keeping someone else from publishing at all.  Publishing still isn't free (and readers have only so much patience, as well), so you shouldn't include enormous amounts of unnecessary background, but traditional writing styles should be adjusted to account for the greater availability of space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that a referee or editor will object that they don't like your style.  You may be able to resist making any changes (it depends on how exciting your paper is and how high your own status is within the community), and if you do make changes you can still keep a lot of explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If necessary, it's worth having two versions as Paul Garrett suggests.  If you do, then you should make it very clear which is which and what the differences are, to avoid serious confusion if someone refers to the paper without realizing they need to specify which version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The background material is &quot;standard&quot; in the sense that anyone who works on this class of problems would know the definitions or results in some form. However, this is at most a few hundred people, while if I include the background material my paper should be comprehensible to an advanced undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason to be generous with explanation is that it's easy to overestimate how much people know.  Aiming at advanced undergrads is a good way to make sure grad students really can read the paper.  If you aim at experts, you may write a paper only your own collaborators can comfortably read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the background results are part of the folklore of the field, and I've never been able to find a proof of them in literature. While they are believable and not hard to prove, I feel someone should bother doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great reason to include a proof, although it's important to consult with experts to confirm that there really isn't an accessible proof in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It makes the paper longer, although even with the background the paper is not long (13 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should make sure it doesn't look like padding, say with just a few pages of original content among the 13 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From what I've heard, it is generally considered bad practice to restate definitions and constructions states elsewhere and to reprove theorems available in literature. In part this is because it gives the impression that I haven't read the literature.  This is exacerbated by the fact that I only cite ~5 previous works, mostly for further reading or alternative presentations of some of the background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does seem like a worry, and five references is not very many, even for a 13-page paper.  You might not strictly need any more, but I'd recommend tracking down additional references for background.  As a general rule it's best to cite generously, giving plenty of credit to other authors and offering many resources to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding giving the impression that you haven't read the literature, it's important to be clear about what's background from the literature (with a citation), what's folklore, and what's your own contribution.  If you reprove something you say is known but don't give a citation for, it can look like you were too lazy to track it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T04:24:59.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2013-06-06T06:11:18.803" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to do that several times by an editor after being told (s)he couldn't find referees for my submission (to the point that I now spontaneously tell the editor upon submission that I can suggest referees if need be), but I don't know of any journal (or conference) for which this is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you don't need to know experts personally: you are &lt;em&gt;suggesting&lt;/em&gt; referees, not &lt;em&gt;forcing&lt;/em&gt; them on the editor (or your work on them), and whether or not you actually know them should be irrelevant (it's even better if you don't). Read your bibliography, see which authors come up most often, or whose work form the most important basis for your submission, or who would be the most interested in reading it based on their own work, and I'm sure you'll have plenty of names to suggest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T06:11:18.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2013-06-06T06:56:42.497" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals explicitly ask about suggestions for reviewers with a submission, some will consider any suggestions that you make in the cover letter, and others (probably) will just ignore any such suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are in fact scientific studies about the comparison between reviewers suggested by the authors, and those selected by the editor, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/4/13/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in BMC Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. The overall conclusion seems to be that reviewers suggested by authors provide reviews of equal quality than those selected by the editor. While they are more likely to suggest acceptance in the initial review, at later stages these suggestions seem to equalize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, you should have a high interest in getting over that initial review, and if you do it well, suggesting reviewers is a very good opportunity for that. I'd always suggest to make use of such an opportunity, since you probably can judge best which potential reviewers &lt;strong&gt;will look favorably&lt;/strong&gt; at your paper. And that's of course what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know an expert personally, that's usually a good option. It has to be handled with care though. When you're too close to a suggested reviewer, the editor will give significantly less weight to the recommendation of that reviewer if he knows about personal ties. But if you go to conferences and talk to people about your research, you could suggest them as reviewers afterwards if they have similar interests. Or look at your reference list, as suggested in the answer by Anthony Labarre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="541" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T10:00:44.770" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T10:00:44.770" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-06T07:04:42.263" Score="3" ViewCount="1684" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the ethical and professional implications of self plagiarism, it is very useful to check new manuscript against old ones (which are under review and not yet published) to decrease self plagiarism. In a white paper by ithenticate (download from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/self-plagiarism-free-white-paper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ithenticate.com/self-plagiarism-free-white-paper&lt;/a&gt;), one way to avoid self plagiarism is to significantly paraphrase those text which are need to be used in new article. However, I have difficulties in identifying the similarity percentage of my current work against yet-unpublished works. Online tools (that I know) check the manuscript against published works. I have 3 journal papers, 1 is published, 1 is under review, and 1 is under preparation. Now, I need to check the third one to see the similarity score. Any suggestion?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:14:34.577" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T03:39:03.020" Title="How to determine similarity score of new manuscript against own yet-to-publish manuscripts?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-11-12T22:51:24.740" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10479" CreationDate="2013-06-06T08:04:26.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sourceforge offers a few free tools aimed at detecting plagiarism (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/directory/os:linux/freshness:recently-updated/?q=plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sourceforge.net/directory/os:linux/freshness:recently-updated/?q=plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;) for various platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T08:04:26.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10499" CreationDate="2013-06-06T09:11:05.863" Score="18" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university is on a drive to unify its corporate identity (it makes me sick just typing that). This drive includes branding our lecture slides, research talks, and research posters. The branding templates are not released under an open license and utilize a copyrighted logo and proprietary fonts. I think this prevents me from releasing my talks and posters under a free and open license (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CC BY&lt;/a&gt;) which is one of the tenets of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rrplanet.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reproducible Research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from creating two versions of everything, is there any way to reconcile this apparent incompatibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my understanding of licenses like &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CC BY&lt;/a&gt; wrong? Can I release something (e.g., a research talk or poster) with a copyrighted logo that I don't hold the copyright on under a free and open license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="87823" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T11:28:53.947" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T11:28:53.947" Title="Reproducible research and corporate identity" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10479" CreationDate="2013-06-06T09:27:46.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the paper make an original disciplinary contribution to scholarly knowledge?&#xA;Has any reused material been rewritten from scratch?&#xA;Has the reused material been cited in relation to the paper under review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, it should be fine.  The first one is the big one, I assume that people with a doctorate in their discipline should know whether this has been achieved.  One nostrum I use is meeting at least one of the three: new evidence set, new theoretical tools, new analysis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of this nostrum: Case A organisation demonstrating with Marxist class analysis concept Q.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case B with Marxism demonstrating Q is novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case A with Patriarchy analysis demonstrating Q is novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case A with Marxism demonstrating R is novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T10:01:59.627" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T10:01:59.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2013-06-06T11:21:51.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a practice that should be strongly discouraged.  While on average reviewers selected by the author give fair, high quality reviews, that doesn't mean that the unscrupulous can't exploit this opportunity to select reviewers that share opinions that are far from the scientific mainstream in order to get dubious arguments into the peer-reviewed literature.  This is especially the case where the paper is on a contentious topic that is only tangentially relevant to the journal, so the action editor may not be able to easily find adequate reviewers from within their own field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, there are numerous papers published on climate related issues in energy, astronomy or general physics journals, which can easily be shown to be fundamentally flawed.  Where the journal asks for the author to recommend reviewers, it does raise the question of how much this contributed to the evident failure of the review process.  It seems to me to be better to avoid the problem ever arising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately if the action editors cannot identify satisfactory reviewers by themselves, the work probably doesn't belong in the journal in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to specify people who &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be used as reviewers is, of course, another matter entirely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question directly, suggests the names of reviewers that you consider to have the required expertise in your field and who can give you a rigorous, but constructive review.  Don't choose people you know personally if there is someone equally well qualified that you don't know.  I recall reading that when you receive reviews you are getting advice for free from experts who's time you couldn't afford to buy, so why not attempt to get the most value from it as you possibly can?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2017-08-26T10:52:49.743" LastActivityDate="2017-08-26T10:52:49.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2013-06-06T12:14:02.327" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being editor of a journal where authors can provide preferred and non-preferred reviewers, I can provide some &quot;inside&quot; thoughts on the subject based on what has happened in &quot;my&quot; journal. Note that it is possible to suggest names for review but also provide names which are not preferred. The latter can be because of a scientific disagreement, personal issues or whatever. Such suggestions appear but not often and we usually follow the suggestions (not that we have to!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the preferred or suggested reviewers, I have been tempted to use such reviewers on occasion when it has been hard to identify reviewers directly. Sometimes because the topic is local and where it would make sense to have local input. In these cases, I cannot remember a single reasonable review that has come out of such reviewers. This can be for several reasons but most often the review is a close colleague who might have an incentive to help the author. In some cases the preferred names have been very senior scientists who, I am afraid, has lost touch with the subject and provide poor and in some cases almost non-existent reviews. Out of all immediate &quot;Accept&quot; review recommendations I get, the vast majority have come from these reviewers. So, I not longer trust these names and avoid them at all costs unless I personally know or know of the reviewer and his or her good reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to what I just describe, I also must state that it is often the weakest manuscripts that have listed several suggestions. This can be identified by the disparate review results, sometimes one accept (by the suggested reviewer) and one reject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in principle, there is nothing wrong with suggesting reviewers, I have done so myself when being requested. I have then as a principle gone for established and well renowned names in the community. The problem lies in suggesting names for a purpose other than to get a fair and objective review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that the system can and is abused and since I became Editor-in-Chief, I have come to rely less and less on these suggestions and now mostly look upon them with suspicion and make selections from my own understanding of the field and investigations into the subject literature. The best suggestion, I can provide is to not avoid mentioning names but pick names that in your opinion can provide good constructive critique on your work (and not just favorable).  A note on why you have selected names as preferred or non-preferred would greatly help as well since it puts your choice in a perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T22:31:47.067" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T22:31:47.067" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10479" CreationDate="2013-06-06T13:09:52.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First suggestion&lt;/em&gt;: Never copy-paste material from earlier works, always write everything from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prevents you from moving critical passages from one paper to the other. It is of course still possible to end up with a similar or even identical sentence by accident, particularly if you describe a method or something similar. If you end up using the same method for several papers it is also possible to simply reference your original description in subsequent papers. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/Portals/92785/media/ith-selfplagiarism-whitepaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ithenticate white paper&lt;/a&gt; mentioned by you provides good advice. Yuo can slso visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics)&lt;/a&gt; web site and search for self-plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second suggestion&lt;/em&gt;: Use the softwares such as &lt;em&gt;iThenticate&lt;/em&gt;,  &lt;em&gt;turnitin&lt;/em&gt; or the like depending what you are looking for. But, I would not blindly just look at percentages of overlap but focus on where the overlaps occur. If it is in the methods section describing a series of steps ina  process it is clearly not as critical as if it is in the discussion or conclusions. If you find overlap and you can identify what it is, then go to my first suggestion and critically review if you need to say it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T13:09:52.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-06T14:04:00.783" Score="7" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing a systematic review, either quantitative or qualitative, requires developing a well-defined protocol as a method of conducting it. This includes defining the search methods used in the identification of eligible articles, which include two methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;database search&lt;/em&gt; using &lt;em&gt;search queries&lt;/em&gt; (a main method)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;searching in the references and cited-by sections of the selected articles (which are already retrieved by the first method)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that an author (of a large review) does their best to formulate the &lt;em&gt;search queries&lt;/em&gt; to better represent the review question, but later they realized that &lt;strong&gt;considerable amount (e.g. 50% or more)&lt;/strong&gt; of the relevant articles are found &lt;em&gt;only by using the second method&lt;/em&gt; (searching in articles);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the second method less 'systematic' than the first one? Does it compromise how much 'systematic' the resulting review is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, does the above scenario affect the validity of the &lt;em&gt;search queries&lt;/em&gt; used (i.e. should they be reformulated to increase the recall of search and retrieve more of relevant articles)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; More extremely: If 90 out of selected 100 articles are found only by using the second method, how much does this affect the quality of the systematic review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="133549" LastEditDate="2021-05-20T14:30:19.037" LastActivityDate="2021-05-20T14:30:19.037" Title="Is searching in article references considered a systematic way of literature search?" Tags="&lt;review-articles&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10486" CreationDate="2013-06-06T14:22:39.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Databases are not complete and published articles do not necessarily reference all pertinent literature so it seems unlikely that one would necessarily capture everything relevant by using just one method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Databases are probably relatively complete when regarding more recent publications. I would not like to define &quot;recent&quot; however but I see it as mostly post-1990's. But my guess is that databases are centered around more widespread journals and more local journals may not be well-represented. This means that depending on the search area they may be more or less complete. Going back in time more and more will likely not be found in databases so if the topic has a vital history then database searches will cover the &quot;recent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference lists may pick up more older material but that is of course dependent on the authors willingness to research literature. It is possible one might pick up more esoteric references this way but I fear the selection will be fairly random and not comprehensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to use both methods seem like the safest way forward to me. Depending on the subject matter, having deeper understanding for where and when things might have been published in the past may be vital in order to capture most relevant literature on the subject. To venture so far as to say everything will be found is difficult. Particularly during the cold war much was published in for example Russian journals that never reached the west. Many discoveries published in the west were therefore missing out on the eastern counterparts and may not even have been first. Much has thus been lost by lacking translation and that goes for many if not most languages. One must also remember that the publication scene as we see it today was not utilized earlier, when internal reports and local journals may have taken up much research. To rely on just one of the two parts for methodology may therefore be inadequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T15:51:48.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T15:51:48.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10467" CreationDate="2013-06-06T14:27:08.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One important distinction should be made between papers in the humanities and the sciences. In the sciences, it would be much more important to have &quot;original research&quot; papers where new ground is broken. In the humanities, by contrast, the act of studying the existing literature and critically evaluating it may, in and of itself, be considered an act of research. (Similarly, in medicine, &quot;meta-studies&quot; in which the reports of various experiments are synthesized to produce overall results and recommendations may also be considered very important, although they augment direct clinical research, rather than substitute for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T14:27:08.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9221" CreationDate="2013-06-06T15:17:06.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might be interested in Erik Demaine's set up for video classes, which seems to require less work: &lt;a href=&quot;http://erikdemaine.org/classes/recording/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://erikdemaine.org/classes/recording/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T15:17:06.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10486" CreationDate="2013-06-06T20:29:31.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add to the other answer(s) that you could validate the first approach using the second approach. If your search criteria systematically miss relevant articles &lt;em&gt;in the journals covered by the database&lt;/em&gt;, then that's a clear sign you need to reformulate your search criteria because they're clearly not sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing to add is that any search should also try to find unpublished articles. These are definitely not going to be in databases, but may be cited in papers (thus the importance, at least in my view, of the second approach). It might be worth adding a third approach that involves search conference abstracts, where unpublished (especially recent) work is likely to be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T20:29:31.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10514" CreationDate="2013-06-07T00:41:40.960" Score="10" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing that there are some members of hiring committees here, I am hoping for some insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Rise-of-Altmetrics-Revives/139557/?cid=wc&amp;amp;utm_source=wc&amp;amp;utm_medium=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rise of Altmetrics&lt;/a&gt;, I started to wonder what would be the best way to measure the impact on my publications. I do care for many reasons but one of the reasons is to impress others enough to be able to get a job/promotion/tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is, do hiring committees take alternative metrics (Facebook likes, mentions in blog posts, etc.) seriously when trying to measure the impact of someone's work or are other issues like impact factor more important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-is-a-fair-metric-for-assessing-the-citation-impact-of-journals-across-disci&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is related but is more about measuring the impact of a journal but my concern is measuring the impact of my own work (which might be in several journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4965/are-academic-indicators-h-index-impact-factor-etc-really-adopted-by-institut/4966#4966&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is also related by asking how impact measurements affect job prospects and has some excellent answers but my question is specifically about 'unofficial' metrics like tweets, downloads on SlideShare, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1206/how-many-people-read-an-individual-journal-article&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is also related asking how to measure readership of journal articles but my question is whether alternative measures are taking into serious consideration but those making hiring/tenure decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is the h-index (with its own flaws) but that seems to measure my publications as one unit (all publications taken together, therefore measuring me overall). I'm more interested in measuring the impact publication by publication in order to show an improving trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, it seems that there is a general feeling that a publication in a high impact factor journal equals a high impact publication. This feels a little off to me since one might convince the editor their work is important while at the same time fail to convince their academic community of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T10:37:32.573" Title="Are alternative metrics taken seriously by hiring committies?" Tags="&lt;impact-factor&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-07T05:45:42.693" Score="37" ViewCount="3404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on an idea for last 2 years almost independently along with other research works. My advisor did not believe in my work much initilally, so I did not get an RA for two years even after requesting. Recently, I am getting encouraging results with some specific examples and scenarios with good hope for success to solve a complex problem using that idea. I have not published the work yet. Initially, my advisor was not interested in the idea partly because the work is not his area of expertise and insisted that I spend my time in other research projects with a senior colleague. I pursued it with my interest in spite of RA support, but with new results and potential benefits of the approach my advisor became extremely interested and even described the work as the next big idea in our lab meetings. I am happy about it or maybe he says it to make me happy.&#xA;However, recently I encountered a situation which was difficult for me to comprehend. I found my advisor present a perspective paper along with many other renowned experts in the field, proposing and highlighting the approach I have been working on as the future direction and visionary in the field along with other important developments in a conference. Even though I was not a co-author in that paper and my work was not cited or even acknowledged, I consoled myself as my advisor was alluding me that he was promoting the idea; it was an advertisement of the work (of course with out any acknowledgement). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he was not the first author of the perspective paper and there is a possibility that first/other authors can make claim of it, he asked me to file an updated technical report in the department before the  paper is published. It looked to me like he wanted to promote himself among his colleagues with that idea with out acknowledging it to me before the audience and greater scientific public where it matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happened to attend the conference as a PhD student, and found that the presenter of the perspective paper (whom I don't know) presented more than half of his talk on my idea with my slides that I shared with my advisor, and there was no acknowledgement or mention of my report or work. It was even worse to see that some of the terminology that I planed to use, was disclosed and few misinterpreted while explaining.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even then, people really seemed to liked the idea and the approach and many are convinced that the idea is going to impact the field. While I saw a very drastic change in the way my advisor treated me recently, but what really made me sad was when my advisor asked me to refer to this perspective paper (to which I was not a co-author) in my impending submission (on the idea).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like it was unfair but I don't know if research is done this way in academia or if it is perfectly legit to do something like that. I decided not to cite the perspective paper with possible consequences. I just wanted to know how other students handle such situations effectively and if such a thing is a common practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I do have all email traces and even a previous publication explaining part of the idea and a recent technical report submitted to the department with the complete idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATES &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;June 2014: &#xA;I have continued with the situation I described above honestly because as a student I hardly have any options and as suggested by many that it would be an academic suicide. But, it had impacted me severely, mostly because I believe that any good idea I will bring to the table will be stolen or misrepresented and there will be cleaver manipulations to take ownership of them. I will take two steps forward and three steps backward. I could hardly perform in my potential. I will let you know my ordeal soon and many thanks for your kind help and support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4340" LastEditorUserId="4340" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T04:15:36.393" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T04:15:36.393" Title="Does it amount to plagiarism by supervisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2013-06-07T07:25:49.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check the policies of your university when it comes to intellectual property, specifically for the faculty you are studying under. Make sure you fully understand the guidelines, and I mean absolutely certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; you find that there is a discrepancy, meaning that this is frowned upon, then you have your original presentation (although, to be honest, I am not sure how credible this would be as evidence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, you cold speak to your supervisor about completing a co-authored paper on the topic to be peer-reviewed published in a journal (This is what my supervisor and I do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T07:25:49.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-07T09:13:26.817" Score="13" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Mendeley to keep track of my papers. It allows me to group the papers in folders, and I can easily export BiBTeX for a folder which I can include in a paper I am writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, almost always I need to fill in all the details when I add a new paper to my library. &quot;Search by Title&quot; feature does not do a great job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think everyone around the world is creating their BiBTeX (or any other format) entries by hand. Is there a community driven (wikipedia like) website/service that unifies this process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have in my mind is something like this: People add article meta information (title, authors, year etc.) to this public DB, if they see a mistake they correct it, if they see duplicates they prevent it by deleting one. And one can export entries as BiBTeX, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing I saw is &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;. But because it tries to automate nearly the whole process there are still lots of mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="59" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T06:14:32.050" Title="Is there a community driven unified article database?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2013-06-07T09:16:48.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to follow your school's guidance as much as you have to, but figure out a way to remove (by script, macro, by hand, or otherwise) the branding for distribution.  Have both versions available on your website.  If you have a presentation that you may want to distribute, put a note at the bottom of the title slide, or at the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A freely distributable version of this presentation is available here: [web address].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your branding mechanism is a master/template slide, it is trivial to remove this for a non-branded version.  I have a hard time believing that printing issues (for posters or handouts) should be a big concern for redistribution -- if it isn't digital, very few people are going to scan/copy for redistribution anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T09:16:48.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2013-06-07T10:31:35.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university has had enforced its &quot;corporate identity&quot; since the 1990s. It is described in details on a web site and available in a series of templates. Although I get a sense of tiredness when I read the material surrounding the &quot;identity&quot; I can also see benefits, to recognize the university &quot;products&quot; (sorry) among other materials at a congress etc. But, the question was about reproducing material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it I would want to have the logo on material such as posters or presentations so that people can identify my affiliation. I am free to post presentations and posters or other materials on my university site with the logos on them. If I want to put some material out that is mine I simply would not use a unversity logo. An example: I have written several hopefully useful booklets on scientific writing to be used by students. This material is my initiative and is not the result of the university asking for it. These booklets are distributed for free using our web-page and I would gladly distribute them more widely if there was demand. So from this perspective I can see two different &quot;products&quot; where one benefits from the logo and one where I do not want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the rules of my university says the logo is copyrighted which means others cannot use it. this still means I can post material with the logo in public places. The problem arises if someone takes my, say, presentation and uses it as their own. Then they break the copyright and make themselves guilty of a kind of fraud by associating themselves with an organisation to which they do not belong. I still have done nothing wrong, posting material is fine and even encouraged. The copyright also prevents people from the taking the university logo and adding it to their own &quot;product&quot; fo rexample showing it on their web-page or using it for commercial uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now, the content. You seem to indicate that you will be prevented from displaying your work without the branding. I do not think this is correct. The laws on copyright and particulary intellectual ownership in my country is very clear. If you have created something it is yours. In a commercial company you may end up sign off this right by becoming employed so that the things your develop within that company belongs to them, not you. That is how research in pharmaceutical companies work, for example. My university system has made attempts to gain rights to lectures etc. but this has so far failed miserably due to the strong laws. You need to check these laws that apply to you since I do not know how they may vary internationally; I would expect them to look fairly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention &quot;proprietary fonts&quot;. This means the university has selected fonts and bought them from a font foundry so that you can use and copy them for free within the university system. This does not mean other cannot use them, they must simply buy them first so providing copies to persons outside of your university would be illegal. Since fonts are not included in Office templates or in pedfs resulting from your templates there is nothing illegal about distributing such documents. If you were to take the fonts and produce a product that you were to sell for your won personal gain, you will, however, break the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line, then, is that you can put your  material in the creative commons as long as you avoid the logo (ater all who would want to use a figure with somebody elses logo in it?). I cannot see the university preventing you from doing this unless they explicitly ask you to waive your rights. Material with logo has its place when you want to make sure your afficilaition is clear. If you do not want that, then I believe you are free to post things in another style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally awareness of the laws and regulations concerning intellectual rights are important and I strongly believe it is good to carefully look at whatever applies in each of our cases so that we can react if someone tries to infringe on such rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T19:35:23.190" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T19:35:23.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10497" CreationDate="2013-06-07T11:16:46.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;JSTOR and many publishers include BiBTeX format for articles on their webpages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example from Cambridge University Press (click &quot;How to Cite This Article&quot;): &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=92189&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=92189&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example from JSTOR (click &quot;Export Citation&quot;): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2585925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2585925&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T11:16:46.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10501" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-07T11:27:12.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-commons&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'creative-commons'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-commons&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns questions about posting and using materials released with Creative Commons licences. Creative licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.&#xA;These licences provide an alternative to the automatic &quot;all rights reserved&quot; copyright: they are used within the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/open-access&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'open-access'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;open-access&lt;/a&gt; movement to release materials and publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="26682" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T15:53:56.110" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T15:53:56.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10502" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-07T11:27:12.623" Score="0" Body="Questions about posting or using materials released under Creative Commons licences. " OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2021-05-30T03:09:01.503" LastActivityDate="2021-05-30T03:09:01.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2013-06-07T13:55:44.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way you're really going to be able to establish some sort of claim to recognition is if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisors did not independently come up with the idea, and choose to change their stance and give you credit for the idea; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can establish conclusively that this was &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; idea, and not your advisors'. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to do this is if you have a &lt;em&gt;verifiable&lt;/em&gt; documentation trail supporting your claim. This means that you have conclusive records showing that the work exists. This would include things like emails, &lt;em&gt;verified&lt;/em&gt; laboratory notebooks, and other documents that can be dated and that demonstrate that you came up with the idea. The challenge, of course, will be showing that you came up with it &lt;em&gt;independently&lt;/em&gt; of your advisors (which would require that you have documented proof showing that they discouraged you from working on it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T13:55:44.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10509" CreationDate="2013-06-07T15:09:54.960" Score="2" ViewCount="1735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using the Harvard citation style for a paper for the first time in my life, and I can't figure out how to cite specific comments on a web forum. Can I simply treat in like any other web resource, and do something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the forum &quot;Name of forum&quot;, user &quot;John&quot; says that &quot;Quoting something John wrote on Name of forum&quot;. (Name of forum 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wonder: When using direct quotes, is it okay to translate these from one language to another or must a direct quote always appear in the language it was written in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7372" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:53:20.900" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T19:41:02.067" Title="Referencing forum comments and translating citations using the Harvard citation style" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;translations&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2013-06-07T16:55:57.130" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the other answers are good, I have an alternative approach for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you actually gone and spoken to your advisers about this? A &lt;em&gt;perspective&lt;/em&gt; paper is just that. It talks about concepts and the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;next big thing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - which very well may be your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you have a nice, sit down, frank discussion with your advisers about this and make clear what future directions and expectations are regarding publications, collaborations and co-authorships. That would clear the air quite a bit, which frankly now, is rather hazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T16:55:57.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2013-06-07T18:52:44.587" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand the situation, it seems to me that your advisors' behavior is borderline, even if likely on the wrong side of the border. Since it does not look like a very clear and frank misbehavior, even if you are perfectly right it would be tremendously difficult to prove it beyond doubt. In case of doubt, you could end up being seen more as the trouble maker than as the one who came up with that great idea; the surrounding people to whom you could complain (department head, etc.) would hesitate &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; to go against tenured faculty when the misbehavior is not crystal clear, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind, I would strongly advise you not to confront to wildly with your advisors. You can (and should, as advised by Shion) discuss with them the fact that you are uncomfortable with the way they presented things, with the use without permission of your slides, and so on; but &lt;strong&gt;always let them a way to discuss it calmly&lt;/strong&gt;. If they feel cornered, there will be little chance of the situation not degenerating into a conflict, and it would be very difficult for you to survive professionally a conflict with your advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could cite their perspective paper in a way that friendly makes explicit that the idea is yours. Your aim should be to get decent credit for your idea, even at the cost of letting your advisors benefit from it: think about what you have to gain or loose first, rather than about what they have to unduly gain or what you can cost them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything goes smoothly, you can get into a good position to build on your idea, and be on track for your career. &#xA;Once you're a respected tenured faculty, you should remember this episode and be supportive of young researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T18:52:44.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10505" CreationDate="2013-06-07T21:01:28.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.bcu.ac.uk/docs/downloads/health/research/Harvard_Style_Referencing_Guidelines%5B1%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This University of Birmingham document&lt;/a&gt; has a comprehensive guide as to cite references from different sources, specifically pages 5-6 have how to cite a forum post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to your second question, I would translate the quote to the language you are writing in and in the intext reference state &quot;(translated from author, year)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T21:01:28.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10510" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T07:18:14.923" Score="36" ViewCount="171332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just read a paper that cited the same reference in two successive sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the first sentence (xxxx 2013). This is the second sentence&#xA;  (xxxx 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up until now, I would have cited the reference just once, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the first sentence. This is the second sentence (xxxx 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which method is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T20:05:43.487" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T22:36:24.727" Title="How can I cite the same reference in successive sentences?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10510" CreationDate="2013-06-08T07:48:15.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither is correct, it is a matter of style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer to the style guide of the journal, publishing house or conference that you're writing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T07:48:15.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T09:26:32.213" Score="2" ViewCount="4966" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've degrees in International Economics and Business Administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider myself an entrepreneur, certainly my past degree did give me perspective but I feel it lacked solid practical knowledge, so in my entrepreneurial career it didn't help me much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking to go for computer science degree. But having bachelors degree in Economics/BA it will be hard for me to go directly for masters? (even though I've fairly good knowledge of the subject). Restarting bachelors degree in a completely different field could be a total waste of time for 26 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'm aware that allot of students do it the other way around, first they get science degree and than they do masters in business administration. Do you think my way will be harder and more intense? as master in computer science can be much challenging than masters in business administration or computer science bachelors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7376" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:34:49.140" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T15:34:49.140" Title="What could be a possible next step after a bachelors in Economics and Business Administration?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;economics&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10510" CreationDate="2013-06-08T09:45:03.493" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general terms, the reference should be made where the cited information occurs. If you cite in the second it is not clear from where the information in the first originates. A similar problem occurs if you cite an entire paragraph by adding a reference at the end of a paragraph ass &quot;(Xxxx, 2013)&quot; (I am fully aware that this is the norm in some fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing the same reference in two sentences is clearly wrong. The solution as I see it is to write the sentences so that it is clear they belong together. There are several ways to do this. One way is to avoid the passive, parenthetical, reference and use the active reference where only the year is in parenthesis. As an example, you can start the first sentence by stating &quot;Xxx (2013) states ...&quot; and then in the second say &quot;They furthermore  ...&quot;. In this example we provide a bridge between the two sentences so that it is very clear it is the same reference that applies. Instead of &quot;They&quot; you can also use &quot;Xxxx&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are clearly numerous ways to bridge sentences so the form depends on what you need to say. As a result I would recommend putting the reference in the first sentence, not the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T09:45:03.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10493" CreationDate="2013-06-08T09:55:15.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I served on a hiring committee in mathematics at a research university in the United States, and I don't believe that any of us paid attention to the sort of metrics you describe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal inclination is that I would not recommend listing any of this information unless it is unusually notable, e.g., if someone particularly well known blogged extensively about your work. However, different countries, universities, and departments might operate differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T09:55:15.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10512" CreationDate="2013-06-08T11:00:25.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a couple of options off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply for a Masters in CS anyway and see how you go, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; get credit for your experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perhaps do a postgraduate certificate/diploma in CS (if available) and use that as a stepping stone to the Masters degree that you desire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps consider a MBA that has a strong focus on CS (as a major).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also depend if you are intending to pursue your proposed Masters by coursework, research or as a mix of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T11:00:25.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10512" CreationDate="2013-06-08T12:55:27.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option is going for a &lt;strong&gt;masters degree in business informatics&lt;/strong&gt;, a lot of european universities would admit you in it. I do not know if this kind of discipline is big where you live, but it is one of the biggest disciplines in a lot of universities in germany and austria. A study from the university of vienna has shown that graduands from business informatics earn the most in the industry and have the least problems to get jobs out of all graduands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would have to take roughly one semester worth of courses in algorithms, software development etc. extra, but that should neither be an intellectual problem, since you already know a lot about it, nor a practical problem, because you will get a more academic and thus systematic idea of what matters in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you got into a computer science master right away, well how would that help you? You seem to have many practical skills from CS, but you would likely end up doing it just for the degree, because the students who have a bachelors in CS will most likely be much better prepared for doing the necessary methods for a masters program in that field. If you want the pure CS, you are likely much better off just starting with a bachelor, maybe aside working if you are already really good at CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you care about how &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; a master will be, well that can't be answered right away. But you have to keep in mind, that economics is a social science and thus not as exact as a technical science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T12:55:27.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10532" CreationDate="2013-06-08T14:12:29.593" Score="11" ViewCount="8902" Body="&lt;p&gt;This past year I was accepted into two mid range phd programs in mathematics without funding. Here's what my profile looked like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domestic White Male&#xA;Unknown state school in the midwest&#xA;Majors: Mathematics and Philosophy&#xA;GPA: 3.93&#xA;GRE:&#xA;Q: 168 (97)&#xA;V: 167 (97)&#xA;W: 5.0 (92)&#xA;M: not taken&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interests: Analysis, Medical Imaging/Modeling, Mathematical Physics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Major Coursework:&#xA;Complex Analysis, Discrete Structures, Applied Math (survey course mostly in Fourier methods and PDEs), Mathematical Statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendations:&#xA;One from a top applied mathematician who was very late in sending them out, one from a professor from the previous year who is well regarded but has not had much contact with me and one from a young professor who was fresh out of post doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other:&#xA;I'm 30 years old. Some former work experience as a co-op student in engineering at a national lab, dean's list, normal stuff like that. I had only completed two semesters at my current school, though. About 6 years ago I was an engineering student at a different institution with poor grades and I did not finish my degree. Also mid to high level (lots of national, some international competition) as an athletic coach working with kids, teens and adults. Some international experience as an athlete as well. I also speak basic German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how my profile has changed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current GPA: 3.94 (.01 difference! However, this does mean 6 more As and 1 more A- to counterbalance my poor record from the early-mid 2000s.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRE Subject Score: 660 (52)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Coursework: Formal Logic, Real Analysis, Advanced Linear Algebra, Intro to Abstract Algebra. This summer I am doing a course in number theory and an independent study in Galois theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendations: I am going to give the late professor a much longer lead time this time around. He has said that he wants to help me but is always extremely busy. I will also be asking (and almost certainly receiving) a rec from the professor I am doing my independent study with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interests in pure math have shifted away from analysis, more into algebra. In applied, medical applications (organ/system modeling and imaging more than bioinformatics) have taken the lead over mathematical physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other changes: Medalist in school's math competition, math tutor in our honors college and privately. Taking a Spanish immersion course so I can list basic spanish on there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be taking the GRE subject again in October and am using saylor.org and MIT's opencourseware to review older subjects. I graduate in August and will be working for a year. I'm thinking about applying to teach at a high school or community college for that time. I also plan on taking one or two graduate courses per semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan on applying all over the place (&gt;15 apps) compared to the 8 from last time. I would prefer to go to the west coast. Can anyone let me know if the mid level UCs (Irvine, Santa Barbara, Davis) are reasonable with what I've got now, especially since when I worked at that national lab I was technically a UC employee? Any other recommendations on schools or anything I can do over the next year to boost this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing: I have no REUs, but is a good independent study with a strong recommendation from it a decent substitute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for taking the time to read my post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7379" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T19:47:35.853" Title="Improving my PhD application for math programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T14:33:45.033" Score="13" ViewCount="1754" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might sound like a silly question, but I am not a native speaker of English, so I find it sometimes difficult to write my first draft in that language. What I usually do is write my first draft in Italian, my mother tongue, and then translate it into English. Once I went to a short course on writing in English, where the lecturer advised us that it is better to write the first draft in English, even though it can be very difficult for some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be your advice in this case? Should I still stick with writing my first draft in my mother tongue and then translate it into English? I feel more productive in that way, but any advice would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T09:57:11.593" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T15:58:24.113" Title="in which language should I write my first draft a paper?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-06-09T12:27:57.617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2013-06-08T14:38:12.520" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal opinion from a non-native english speaker:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should write it as much as possible in &lt;em&gt;english&lt;/em&gt;. Start working with bullet points of your ideas and then transfer them to full sentences after you are done. Since most academic papers are in english, it has already been mentioned on this platform a ton of times, that you should get used to the language, i.e. the vocabularies and the way people reason, in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T14:38:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1482" CreationDate="2013-06-08T15:35:47.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like no one thought of who sounds obvious to me: the PhD examination jury. It bears the responsibility to award the thesis, is made of international experts of the field, and should therefore be able to detect ideas that have been borrowed; also the advisor, who supervised the work, has a prominent responsibility among them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not buy the argument according to which an advisor might have trouble detecting plagiarism of a obscure paper: she often propose the questions to the student, and should therefore know the surrounding literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More precisely, there may be cases where the plagiarism is difficult to catch; nevertheless, right after the author these people, to who the university asks whether the work deserves a PhD, have the main responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T15:35:47.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10534" CreationDate="2013-06-08T15:49:31.310" Score="23" ViewCount="3487" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm a pure math graduate student who doesn't like research mathematics. Should I continue and get the PhD because I suspect I might like teaching at a 4-year liberal arts college?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in a pure math PhD program at a fairly good university. I just finished my second year there, and after passing qualifying exams have been awarded a Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since I arrived in grad school, I have been fairly dissatisfied. I went to grad school because math in undergrad felt relevant, and I loved the feeling of leaping from logical lily-pad to logical lily-pad en route to proving something. In grad school, though, these feelings have become fewer and far between. I feel like things have become more mechanical and more like banging my head against a wall. For the most part, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do my work; I never look forward to getting started in the morning. I have finished required courses and qualifying exams, but the difficulty continues as I do a reading course in preparation for work with an advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I have realized that research math is not for me. I have quite enjoyed my teaching experiences, which so far consist of leading recitation sessions, tutoring, and the first week of teaching a summer course. Because of the heavy emphasis on &quot;teaching to the test&quot; in secondary education, among other things, I suspect I would enjoy teaching at, say, a liberal arts college more than teaching at a secondary school. However, I feel pretty inexperienced in teaching, and so I don't feel certain by any means about these feelings. This is now the only reason I would want to stay in graduate school. Is this enough reason to continue for the next 3-4 years to the PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my advisor, I would be in graduate school another 3-3.5 years for the PhD. I would love to work at a liberal arts institution in the US, but ideally one where the research load is minimal/nonexistent. The impression I got from skimming MathJobs recently was that such positions were relatively rare compared to research-intensive positions. Do you feel like I would be very likely to find such a job if I stayed for the PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is much appreciated! Thank you, everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7380" LastEditorUserId="7380" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T18:16:30.450" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:02:50.223" Title="Should I stay in PhD program I dislike to have a shot at liberal arts teaching?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:31:14.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of people who have completed PhDs at prestigious institutions (in computer science) just so that they could teach at a liberal arts college. It certainly seems to be one way into that profession, and an admirable profession it is indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD requires a lot of motivation and hard work, even if you are not aiming for a high profile research career. The question you need to ask yourself is &quot;Are the benefits of finishing the PhD worth the effort? Will you be motivated enough to complete if you are not interested in research?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider also doing some pedagogic studies, so that you know the theory of how to teach and, more importantly, how to help students learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T15:46:27.233" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T15:46:27.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:38:19.687" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For better or worse, the lingua-franca of science nowadays is English. If you plan on staying in science, you can use all the English training you can get. So, I would advice writing everything in English. Do try and get feedback from someone who is good at English, preferably a native speaker, to point any language errors you might not see yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T16:38:19.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:44:24.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notably given the especially difficult employment market in academia (in France but I guess it is the same everywhere), I always advise: do a PhD for the years doing research themselves, not for what you expect to gain from the title. As Dave Clarke stresses, doing a PhD requires a lot of motivation and hard work; but if you do not like the good times enough, it can be really wasted years. If you think you won't enjoy the years of your PhD, you should consider seriously all other opportunities you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I think the same applies to postdoc positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-06-08T17:33:42.977" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T17:33:42.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2013-06-08T17:02:16.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I understand how you're more comfortable drafting in Italian first then translating it to English, however I believe this is a mistake. Many terms and ideas don't translate properly from your mother tongue and it often shows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go ahead and draft it in your best English and if you have trouble expressing some ideas then make the note in Italian and you can go back and work those into your most colorful English with your final draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that English has a vast variety of words at your fingertips when writing and this allows you to be very unique while maintaining creativity and genuineness, that's why most books now are written in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-06-08T22:54:47.283" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T22:54:47.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2013-06-08T17:37:05.277" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation before (in biology) about 5 years ago (and this was an ivy league school on the East coast of US) – I had paper A published and paper B (following from A) in the works, when the advisor tries to work on paper C (following from A, borderline with B). The deal is that neither B nor C would've been possible without A, and one of B or C was necessary to show the full impact and worth of A (think detailed theory paper A vs lab experiments B and C). For other reasons, it couldn't be written as a larger A+B or A+C paper, but that's besides the point. The problem here was that the advisor, being faster at churning out a paper, finished C before I finished B despite starting later and then he insisted that we focus on polishing and submitting C before returning to B (I was 2nd author). Indeed that's what happened and we cited C in B when B was also eventually published (thus changing the &quot;science order&quot; from how it was). Note: I was not actually worried about publishing C, just its appearance before B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issues were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A was my idea, my work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea for C was also mine (leading from A), but was shelved (by me) until I had the time to run the experiments for those (the assays and lab experiments weren't a small deal).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm the student needing advising, not poaching of ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publishing order of C before B looks like it was the advisor's bright idea, when it was not (no, really... this didn't start with the &quot;here, work on my old unfinished idea&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advisor's view was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A is already published, so it's &quot;out there&quot; for everyone including him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B and C are not exactly the same, so what's the big deal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the long run, precedence differences of O(weeks) won't matter, period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm also an author and I now have 3 papers instead of 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I came to terms with it and in hind sight (after 5 yrs), should not have made such a fuss because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I got 3 papers instead of 2 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was a fresh change of roles (he did do the work, and I was in an advisory role)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the long run, precedence differences of O(weeks) didn't matter (might be different in other fields), and since I continued publishing in the same field, it now looks like I'm the man behind the plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resentment never did anyone any good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dude is a hell of a supportive advisor in all other ways, so this wasn't worth burning bridges. Maybe he genuinely didn't see things from my PoV and didn't intend to poach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is – what you're describing, while borderline, might not be uncommon. Especially, using graduate students' results in a presentation to a funding agency, but passing it off as their &quot;project&quot; is very common, because despite what you might want to think, a lot of times, it's the reputation of the PI that brings in the money than the merit of the idea itself (i.e., a mediocre idea from a rock star PI has more chances of getting funded than a rock star idea from an unknown researcher). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it was absolutely wrong of them to have not included your name or acknowledged your contribution (which has never happened with me). You might want to bring that up, but you should think if you really want to burn bridges for a &quot;small&quot; reason. I say &quot;small&quot; in quotes because while yes, from a strict ethical PoV, they might be in the wrong, you're justified in your anger and is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a small issue for you, in the long run, the objective function of life is a multivariable function. Don't just fixate on one and make a decision (that you might come to regret) based on a local minimum that you're stuck in now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7224" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T17:37:05.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2013-06-08T17:42:33.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only I suggest you write everything (research related) in English, but I also suggest you use English in your personal research notes, or even in your thinking process. In this way you skip the unnecessary step of translation and therefore you can read, learn, speak and write faster and easier. In fact when I started reading English books in my undergraduate, I realized it is better I skip translation and try to understand everything in English and try to solve problems in English. Since then, all my practices and my personal notes have been in English. When I am thinking about a problem or a statement I automatically switch to English and avoid my mother tongue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T17:42:33.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10563" CreationDate="2013-06-08T18:16:46.673" Score="0" ViewCount="7972" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 2 months where I should write the literature review for my PhD thesis. However, I don't know how to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general terms, what would be a good way to start the literature review? For instance, how can I organize the reading and divide it in topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any helpful ideas, books, or articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="31419" LastEditDate="2017-04-08T18:46:23.663" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T18:46:23.663" Title="How to start writing a literature review?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10529" CreationDate="2013-06-08T18:26:24.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your topic, I recommend that you start taking the basics from books. After that you can get more specialized information from articles or journals. Do not forget to keep a list of the references that you are obtaining, maybe with a little summary of each of one.&#xA;Another advice is that you start writing about the information that you get, then cluster your information by similar sub topics, so you avoid the formation of information islands.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T18:26:24.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2013-06-09T09:45:44.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, writing in English is better because the phrases and sentence structures you will end up using will sound more natural to the reader. On the other hand, if you are writing the first draft before having a crystal clear idea how your argumentation will flow (i.e. if, for you, writing is also a tool for &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt;), then writing in English might take take away from this process because it's difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would certainly agree with everyone else that using English for the first draft is a good idea. But when I write, I also write an outline of the draft in a separate document. This outline summarizes each paragraph I plan to write, usually in a single sentence, so that it gives me a good overview of the structure the manuscript is going to have. I use it to combine the points I want to make with other findings I think are important to mention (usually I find that these don't match up very well on the first try!), and then I shuffle things around, add and remove items, until I have a story that will flow naturally from the questions I ask to the conclusions I make. And only then do I start writing the draft. And this outline, I would recommend writing in your native tongue. It should be easier to switch to English afterwards, when you begin writing the draft, because you'll already have a clear idea of what you want to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T15:58:24.113" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T15:58:24.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10518" CreationDate="2013-06-09T10:16:26.057" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reading through your comments, I couldn't help but get the feeling that you are &quot;all over the map&quot; when it comes to what you're looking to do in graduate school. If this is similar to the way that your personal statement read to the committee, it could help to explain some of the challenges you faced in applying to graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, after reading what you have written, I can't tell if you're looking to do algebra or bioinformatics—or if you're in an &quot;I'm happy with either&quot; situation. If it's the latter, this can make it harder for a committee to accept you: algebra readers might think they'll admit you, only to have you wander off into applied math, and vice versa. You may find it better to concentrate on one area—or, better yet, show how the different topics you're interested in are actually related to one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another potential issue is the quality of your letters of recommendation. Is there anyone who can help you to evaluate your letters for you? Some colleges have career offices or academic counselors who can comment on the suitability of your letters for different kinds of programs (academic, industrial, etc.), although they probably won't &quot;rank&quot; them for you. If you had a very late letter, it's a good question as to how helpful it would have been, even if  it was from a big name (or perhaps that should be &quot;in spite of&quot; it being from a big name).  By this, I mean that the letter would only have value if it actually discusses your talents and skills in a meaningful way. A &lt;em&gt;pro forma&lt;/em&gt; letter isn't all that helpful, particularly if you are from an &quot;unknown&quot; program. (This latter can also make your job tougher, since your school might not have  a track record at many graduate schools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it also sounds like you have a rather untraditional academic history. This needs to be explained &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; somewhere on your application, in a way that shows thattaking you into a graduate program now would not be a risk. (Not doing this could again feed into the notion that you're flittering around from one thing to the next—which is not a good impression for an admissions committee to have of you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T10:16:26.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10512" CreationDate="2013-06-09T14:34:41.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a serious question: &lt;strong&gt;what do you hope to gain from the additional degree&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't really indicated &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want to get a master's degree in computer science, other than &quot;it's the next step.&quot; You also haven't indicated why you think you'd be able to get into a master's degree program (do you have enough CS courses to convince a committee?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, most importantly, the question to ask yourself is whether or not there is anything really to gain from the two years or so spent earning a master's degree that you can't obtain via another route. If you can do that, then it's probably worth trying. If, on the other hand, it's just to improve programming skills, there are &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of better ways to do that than to spend two years in CS (which doesn't really do much in that regard). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T14:34:41.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2013-06-09T15:20:55.733" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should know that these days, most 4-year liberal arts colleges in the US expect their tenure-track mathematics faculty to do research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colleges want to be able to offer their students the opportunity to be taught by experts who are contributing to their field.  There is also increasing interest in getting undergraduates involved in research, which means the faculty have to have research programs to get them involved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is a wide spectrum of expectations.  At the most selective liberal arts colleges, research expectations can approach those of a mid-level research university, demanding a regular output of papers published in good journals.  Elsewhere there can be more flexibility, replacing a specific requirement for &quot;research&quot; with the broader term &quot;scholarship&quot;; they might require only occasional publications, and they could be projects with students, or articles about teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, if you want an academic job in mathematics that doesn't require you to do any research at all, you're going to restrict yourself to the least selective tiers of liberal arts colleges, or to non-tenure-track positions (and often liberal arts colleges tend to have relatively few such positions, compared to large universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathjobs.org&quot;&gt;MathJobs&lt;/a&gt; to get a sense of what jobs are out there, and what they expect.  Note that there are not so many listings in summer, since this hiring cycle is mostly finished; many more will appear in the fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T15:20:55.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-06-09T17:39:28.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One factor to add is that in many mathematics papers, there are many different definitions and notations for a subject. Some of these approaches may make your results seem more or less natural. Even someone who is familiar with the subject may become confused by the way in which you present things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good reason for a background section is so that you can &quot;set the scene&quot; using the presentation that you think is best. Sometimes just setting things up in a coherent way is more valuable than the new results themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7558" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T17:39:28.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10543" CreationDate="2013-06-09T18:17:37.280" Score="8" ViewCount="7506" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a literature review, we look at recent publications and put what other researchers have said in this context. However, how can I develop my own argument? Should I write it with my own words or should the argument be based in what others have said?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T18:50:37.753" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T09:06:35.100" Title="How to develop your own argument in a literature review?" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-09T20:49:15.573" Score="18" ViewCount="3651" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, we are informed of our yearly raise with a letter mid-summer. There is no scheduled meetings with the chair or anyone else to discuss performance or the raise -- as far as I can tell, we just wait and see what it is. It tends to be a small cost-of-living raise in the range of 3%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a pre-tenure assistant professor actively seek to meet with the chair and ask/negotiate for a larger raise, or is this not done in academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T02:52:52.290" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T02:52:52.290" Title="Should an assistant professor negotiate for a larger yearly raise before receiving tenure?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2013-06-09T21:43:52.150" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer applies to Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Base pay rates are set by a Federal &quot;Award&quot; which fundamentally covers all academics working in Australia.  An employer and employee can privately negotiate an above award wage or condition, but this is never done (employer resistance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most academics are covered by a site specific Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiated by the union (NTEU) and the employer.  This sets graded minimums based on the career phase of the academic, and covers all kinds of academic labour from casual tutor through to professor (a terminal, demonstrated high research output position with field leadership responsibilities).  The persons not covered under this are management.  The employer is generally unwilling to negotiate variations except for professors and management.  Each pay rank has an internal series of steps (Lecturer step 1, step 2, step 3, etc.) representing increases in income based on years of service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While academics of all disciplines are paid the same at the same grade, the Enterprise Bargaining Agreements vary from site to site, so academics at one University in Melbourne will be paid less than another in Canberra but more than another in Sydney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T21:43:52.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10536" CreationDate="2013-06-09T22:34:05.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The literature review is just that, a review of the published literature - synthesised and analysed.  Developing your own arguments should occur after this review as you then have something to refer back to when developing your stance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study technique I use, is as I am reviewing the literature for this chapter, I keep a notepad near by and jot down parts of my argument as I proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T22:34:05.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2013-06-09T22:47:23.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academic Careers Observatory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; may be a helpful resource, especially for the European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, their information on the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Finland.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Finnish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; salary system is fairly accurate: there is a non-negotiable fixed base salary level that depends on your job title, but on top of that there is up to 46% extra that is determined based on your personal performance (i.e., there is a lot of room for negotiation, at least if you can show that you are actually doing your job exceptionally well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T22:47:23.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2013-06-10T00:15:29.380" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here is an answer for Germany.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany there are three different types of professor salaries: &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besoldungsordnung_W&quot;&gt;W1, W2 and W3&lt;/a&gt; (unfortunately there is no English Wikipedia site...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For W2 and W3 the salary is negotiable. In fact, the base salaries have been lowered when the W-system has been introduced (some 10 year ago or so) but there is now the opportunity to have variable bonuses. These bonuses can be obtained by various means and the precise procedure varies from state to state and even from university to university. Basically, one needs to show that one is a high performer, for example in research (having big grants, a lot of publications,...) or in teaching. Moreover, there is a raise for extensive service (e.g. for being the dean). You can expect a raise for sure if you get an external offer for a position which is at least equally good. I think that there are statistics about the average bonus a W2 or W3 professor gets but I can't find one right now. I am not aware of an upper bound for the total bonus and I think the bonus can get higher than 50% of the base salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For W1 professors (junior professors) the situation is different. Basically there are no bonuses but there can be exceptions. One needs to show different things and especially that the position could not be filled otherwise. Moreover, the maximum bonus is at 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T00:15:29.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10537" CreationDate="2013-06-10T00:31:39.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that it should not hurt to ask, as long as you ask in the right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negotiations are always tricky but having an open conversation with 'the boss' should always be a choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to meet the chair with another issue and bring up the salary question as an additional point, as opposed to the main reason for the meeting. Also, approaching it as a question: You're looking to better understand school norms and who better than the chair to explain them to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T00:31:39.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10536" CreationDate="2013-06-10T00:42:48.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damien Igoe's answer is very accurate, however, I would add that I think it is possible to interpret what someone wrote in a different way than others have previously interpreted. However, your arguments should not be confused with the other authors' arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originality in analysis is often welcomed. However, originality in structure should be done very carefully. Common structures exist for a reason. In my field, it is common to switch between the reviewed author's points and your own:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jones (1991) claimed that the primary motivator for workers was public&#xA;  recognition while Smith (2004) believed that workers were more&#xA;  concerned with monetary compensation. I will show that both were&#xA;  correct by showing that workers really care most about their&#xA;  compensation being publicly higher than the average for their&#xA;  position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T00:42:48.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10537" CreationDate="2013-06-10T03:11:16.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a pre-tenure assistant professor actively seek to meet with the chair &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;em&gt;insist&lt;/em&gt; on meeting with your department chair at least once a year, if not once a semester, to discuss strengths and weaknesses in your evolving tenure case.  Make no mistake—your tenure case started evolving the moment you signed your offer letter.  If you are doing the right things to get tenure, you need to hear that.  If you are missing something important, you need to hear that as well.  Symmetrically, if you think things are going well, your chair needs to hear that, and if you think things are going badly, especially if something in the department is proving to be a burden, your chair needs to hear that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and ask/negotiate for a larger raise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, I suppose, if you have good pitch.  You're not going to get a bigger raise just because you ask for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T21:58:18.510" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T21:58:18.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10536" CreationDate="2013-06-10T09:06:35.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would offer a slightly different answer from either of the others, both of which are excellent. Each of these answers and my own are probably (at least somewhat) discipline-specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rarely, in my view, should a literature review be just that - a simple review. Instead, the best structure for papers in my field is an introduction, followed by a single section that provides theory and specific hypotheses derived from that theory, followed by empirics, etc. There is no &quot;literature review&quot; per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, literature that is relevant for establishing a problem is cited in the introduction and literature relevant for building new theory, elaborating existing theory, and/or challenging existing evidence/arguments is cited in the course of making one's theoretical argument. From that argument come testable hypotheses, all of this being stated in one section (possibly with subsections, depending on the scope of the paper) between introduction and research design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, relevant literature is reviewed in the course of constructing arguments, with quotes and references both bringing credibility to your arguments and being used to demonstrate weaknesses in extant work. Thus, your review should be your own argument largely in your own words, with others' work cited and sparingly quoted where it helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T09:06:35.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10537" CreationDate="2013-06-10T10:16:24.190" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in most fields, you only have so many negotiating &quot;chips&quot;. You can spend these chips on whatever you want, but some things cost more chips than others. For example, a raise probably requires your chair to get approval from the dean and is therefore &quot;expensive&quot;. Asking for some extra research/travel money is &quot;cheap&quot;, especially if it is at the end of the fiscal year and there is extra money in the budget, since the chair likely controls that pot of money. Teaching load is often controlled by the chair, but does require someone else to pick up the slack so do cost some &quot;chips&quot;. Basically you have to decide what you want and if you are willing to spend the chips to get it. What makes it difficult is knowing exactly how many chips something will cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T10:16:24.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-10T12:35:10.977" Score="9" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while back I asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5312/how-is-pgche-by-distance-learning-viewed-relative-to-in-class&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; which was about teaching certifications. As I dig into the subject more, it seems teaching certifications are quite rare for university teachers in many countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The UK has the PGCHE (post graduate certificate in higher education) - optional &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canada has the UTC (university teaching certificate) - optional &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm unaware of the US having anything required or anything optional for university teachers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Switzerland I don't see any information on university teaching certificates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about European countries, especially Switzerland, and what teaching qualifications are accepted or required for university teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone familiar with this topic in that geographic region?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T19:58:06.760" Title="University Teaching Certifications for Different Countries" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-10T13:18:10.670" Score="11" ViewCount="10796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it illegal to share students' grades with somebody else (e.g their parents) without their consent in the US? What are the most common penalties for such a violation of privacy? Is jail time possible as a punishment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7396" LastEditorUserId="269" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T21:32:09.543" LastActivityDate="2020-01-09T19:17:48.187" Title="Penalties for disclosing student grades without consent" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10549" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-10T14:19:30.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T14:19:30.567" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T14:19:30.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10550" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-10T14:19:30.567" Score="0" Body="Questions related to privacy of personal or otherwise confidential information" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T21:45:57.450" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T21:45:57.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10548" CreationDate="2013-06-10T14:19:44.533" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of students. This &quot;act&quot; is not a law (on further reading it is a law), but rather a stipulation by the Department of Education that universities must obey in order to receive funding. As such, I do not believe that violations are classed as a criminal offense and hence cannot lead to jail time. Universities which violate the FERPA can lose their funding and likely have grounds to dismiss employees who violate the act. The university might even be able to seek damages against those individuals, but again, not jail time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you not violate FERPA. If you intend to, or have done so (accidentally or otherwise), I suggest that you seek legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T14:24:56.710" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T14:24:56.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9516" CreationDate="2013-06-10T15:35:21.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, each program committee member would receive ALL the submissions (100-200 back in the 1970s and 80s), when STOC and FOCS did not have parallel&#xA;sessions and were only accepting 30-36 papers.&#xA;Authors with accepted papers would receive a mailing tube&#xA;containing large size sheets into which their papers were to&#xA;be typed (or pasted), with blue guidelines indicating the margins for the&#xA;2-column format.  These were then sent to the publisher, who would photograph&#xA;the pages - the proceedings pages were reduced-size versions of the&#xA;&quot;camera-ready&quot; versions.  Figures were often hand-drawn, as you can see if&#xA;you look at some of those old proceedings, scans of which are available in&#xA;the relevant digital libraries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7398" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T15:35:21.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10537" CreationDate="2013-06-10T22:20:41.233" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It only makes real sense when you have a competing offer, which means you have been on the market this year, which means you are considering leaving, which means that the chair either knows this or will get to know this when you come to talk to them. It is unlikely that the chair will be excited to give a raise to the person who is going to leave, anyway. On top of that, as Daniel Shub put it, negotiating a salary increase means going at least one level up to ask for the extra money for the chair, and there should be a very good reason for this. Even if you just got the NSF Career award, the chair will just say, &quot;Great, you now have the research money to support yourself -- congratulations! No salary increase, though&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, if you are going to complain about your pay being too low, you will hear a story about salary inversion, i.e., the tenured faculty in your department making less than you do, which is only justified a small fraction of the time for the deadwood faculty. So the priority will be to raise the non-deadwood inverted salaries -- these guys are here to stay -- and then address your concerns -- you are not here to stay yet, sorry -- subject to any remaining money. Having heard you complaining is not likely to make the chair want you to stay, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a very rare event, you can come up with a scheme in which you bring the department more money, and then your request to see an extra cut of the pie may be legit. This could mean creating a new program/degree/track that is going to be the nations first program in interdisciplinary bubble sort or bean scouting or some other BS, but then it means that you are committing to a teaching track rather than a research track. If your research is stellar, and you want to diversify into teaching, that's probably OK; but most of the time proposals like that from a junior faculty will look weird and awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As JeffE said, you MUST talk to your chair once in a while, and the annual review time is one of the best opportunities to do so. Your case was reviewed by the faculty not so long ago, so the memories of your file are reasonably fresh in the chair's head; it would be easier for them to connect the dots than it would be say in September when the new semester starts, with new students and new courses and all other hectic stuff happening in the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T03:23:10.213" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T03:23:10.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1682" CreationDate="2013-06-10T22:48:44.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I'd also recommend the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY). A good guide explaining &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is best, written by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) exists &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This would fulfil all the criteria you ask for in a)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; matter &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you convey this licence. For example if you included just a CC BY 'badge' as an image in the PDF, it would be difficult for a web crawler or machine to detect that the manuscript is Open Access. Thus it's good to signpost the licence in a clear machine readable way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This work is licensed under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution 3.0&#xA;  Unported License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(specifically including a URL link to full terms of the licence, and make sure you choose the unported license, rather than any of the country-specific variants)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to c) the trick is (if it's not too late now) to upload your CC BY version as a preprint &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you submit to the journal &amp;amp; their draconian terms &amp;amp; conditions. Journals can't stop you uploading your work &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you've signed any agreements with them.  Some journals don't 'like' this and will reject submissions that they know are openly available on the web prior to submission, but these journals represent a small-minded, old-fashioned minority in my experience. Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/preprints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier allow preprints&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T22:48:44.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10497" CreationDate="2013-06-10T23:04:27.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, not yet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many publishers view their bibliographic metadata as commercial property and hold-on to it fairly tightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mendeley will release little bits of the article data they have accumulated from all their users, but they will not let anyone download &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of it - it's valuable property that they want to keep 'in-house'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few truly community-driven projects trying to change this e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://opencitations.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Citations&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19047x2Awo_H5Gkx79i68eQ6FunUeBVGV5_9pBK-A8eU/edit#slide=id.gd13c835f_0142&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Citagora&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These projects aim to build truly public &amp;amp; open databases for &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; to build upon &amp;amp; annotate. The other tools mentioned in the question aren't really public or fully open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T23:04:27.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2013-06-11T00:51:48.603" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it is generally a good rule to think that one oughtn't commit to things one doesn't want to do... and the other answers reflect this in several good ways... sometimes there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an &quot;entry fee&quot; that is unpleasant to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is true that there is an ever-greater pretense that all faculty in colleges and universities &quot;do research&quot;, but, as one might imagine, not quite all of this is cutting-edge... In fact, the requirements of completing a PhD at most &quot;good&quot; places are a bit more strenuous than the &quot;research&quot; required at little colleges. In particular, as I gather from substantial anecdotal evidence, it is possible to be much saner/human in &quot;small&quot; situations, about pretension-to-research. True, it may not be wise to be &quot;too honest&quot;, as in many professional/human situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, you might try to view &quot;the PhD&quot; as simply a college teaching license. Certainly if you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have it you'll be at an extreme disadvantage forever... One might view it as a prolonged licensure ordeal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, at the same time, it is quite excellent that you have realized so clearly that you don't want to &quot;be a researcher&quot;. This is much better than the self-conflicted delusional versions of the story. But what remains is to gain the credentials. &quot;Cred&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not necessarily a recommendation to stay in your PhD program, especially since your recoil has been fairly strong (though one doesn't know how to interpret printed words' intensity...) But, sure, no one likes to take &quot;drivers' training&quot;, and many other things. But it can be done, routinely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last adverb is a significant point: unless you're at an elite place, and unless you are truly severely allergic to &quot;higher math&quot;, ... &quot;it's not that hard&quot; to finish the PhD. The fact that you've already done the qualifiers and such shows that it is easily within your power... if you so choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, srsly, the question is about what you want your appearance to be for the rest of your life. Not that being PhD'd makes anyone a better person! But, it adds something to the ol' resume, undeniably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, again-at-the-end, being &quot;too honest&quot; about one's disinclinations is not necessarily a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, ... in figuring out complicated things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T00:51:48.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T14:19:53.950" Score="4" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was appointed to make some programming outside of a research group to see if I can be accepted for doctoral studies. The task is to mimic the results of one paper and from that point to carry more research about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of some personal problems, that project got delayed. The thing is that when I got the results of my program, and I compared with the ones that I was supposed to get, there were some differences (it was a medical related project). When I started comparing those differences I saw that some of my results were backed up by some medical papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the initial project has ended, because there has been published one software tool that do almost the same thing. And that research group is focusing on other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there any way I can publish the results I obtained with the program I made? I have spent more than six months doing that, without payment. How can I name it? Is it a model? Should it be published like a technical report? Any help will be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T06:12:33.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T06:12:33.590" Title="Should I continue with this research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10497" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:00:08.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This applies only to mathematics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I get most of my bibtex entries from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mathscinet&lt;/a&gt; where one can search for a particular article and then ask for bibtex. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/20551/sources-for-bibtex-entries&quot;&gt;a related question on MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt;; some of the answers there seem transferable to other fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I agree that these are not community-driven resources, but address the related question of where to obtain bibtex entries.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T15:00:08.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10497" CreationDate="2013-06-11T17:43:22.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that Jabref's import from pubmed (pubmed search -&gt; display list of pubmed ids -&gt; copy to Jabref)  does a very good job for the bio/medical fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T17:43:22.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10497" CreationDate="2013-06-11T18:17:46.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citeulike&lt;/a&gt;. Their smart bookmark lets me create an entry automatically from most articles on the web. Once it is in your library, you can easily export it as BibTex (1 click). I almost never have to type in BibTeX entries anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, a number of journals which do not have DOI support, and conference proceedings, unfortunately it comes down to editing the BibTeX entry myself. (Sometimes someone else who uses citeulike would have already done that and you can search for the entry and copy it to your library.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T18:17:46.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10548" CreationDate="2013-06-11T21:40:22.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of people have mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FERPA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt;. Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1232g&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the text of FERPA&lt;/a&gt; and at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.registrar.clemson.edu/FERPA/violation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this University web page&lt;/a&gt; suggests what some others have said: violations of FERPA can result, ultimately, in withholding funding from the university but the law does not list criminal sanctions for either individuals or institutions for violation. That is also my understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there other privacy laws or other kinds of laws that might be violated by disclosure of educational records. There are a variety of other state, local, and federal laws — plus plenty of common law tort law, that could take effect. And besides, people sue for all kinds of things including things that aren't even in violation of a law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear: I am not a lawyer nor a legal expert and this is not legal advice. But, as a non-lawyer that likes to believe that world has certain common-sense limits, it seems &lt;em&gt;insane&lt;/em&gt; to suggest that telling a parent a grade could result in jail time. If you're worried and need a &quot;real&quot; answer, you should find a lawyer and ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-06-11T22:26:53.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T22:26:53.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10529" CreationDate="2013-06-11T22:20:02.930" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you don't say what field you are in, this may not work for you - but I'll describe how I do a literature review in the biomedical sciences. I've tried to be general, so it could apply to other fields, but if you're not in science at all it might not work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step to writing a literature review is defining your topic. What is the key question/ concept you are trying to explain or summarize? This can be difficult if you are really starting from zero on a topic, and will probably need to be refined as you work on your review. But it's important to define this at least in draft form before you start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step is coming up with search terms. Begin by searching your question/ concept on Google Scholar or another large database - if it's a biomedical topic, Cochrane Reviews is a good place to start. I'm not sure if there are similar review databases for other fields. Look for a few key papers in the area, read those, and look at their reference lists. Also, record their 'key terms' (usually below the abstract) - these will help you define search terms. Pull relevant papers from their reference lists and repeat. Once you've gone through ~ 10 papers you will probably have a good sense of the type of key words that are important for your topic. Use these terms to build an improved literature search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you need to actually do the literature search. Your field probably has a database of journals - use this and your search terms to identify all relevant papers over whatever time frame you are interested. You'll probably need to refine as you go, so you don't get swamped with papers. I prefer to go use a systematic search strategy, even if I'm not doing a systematic review, since this removes some subjectivity. This means going through all results, and reading any papers which have titles or abstracts that suggest they may be relevant to your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, you need to read and take notes. Make sure your notes are indexed by paper, so that you always have the citation of the original paper with whatever facts you note down. I find OneNote is a great way to do this, but there are other tools I'm sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, once I've read 20 or so papers, I usually have a pretty good idea of what the answer to my question/topic is, and what the nuances are. Then it's just a matter of organizing the notes that I've already taken into a rough outline of what I want to say (remembering to keep label all the facts/opinions with their citations). After that, you're ready to start writing, and it's not too difficult since you've already got a good sense of what to write as well as a rough draft in the form of notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important caveat is that you should always re-write all your notes in your own words as you go through the outline converting it into a paper. This way, if you occasionally just copied the original author's text when taking notes, you won't end up with their words in your paper (which would be plagiarizing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7407" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T22:20:02.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10548" CreationDate="2013-06-11T23:33:53.973" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not legal advice... If only people giving mathematical or dietary advice without credentials could be sued for failing to make a similar disclaimer! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to this issue. First, is it ok to tell people students' grades? In the U.S., almost entirely &quot;no&quot;, if the student is 18 or older. FERPA. It doesn't matter whether or not the student's parents are paying the tuition, the student's grades are privileged personal information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; acceptable use to disclose student grades for (e.g.) intra-math-departmental function, such as advising, admission committee work, and other &quot;privileged&quot; use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A traditional practice that is no longer ok is posting grades on instructors' doors, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;old&quot; people, the idea that one is not in fact legally entitled to know the grades of the student whose tuition you're paying will seem strange. Indeed, decades ago, the grades were sent to the parents directly, in paper mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, now, 18-or-over people are essentially legal adults in the U.S., and their school records (and medical records) are not automatically open to their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, despite intuition to the contrary, simply do not give grades to parents, ... without seeking legal advice about extenuating circumstances, such as emergencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: but, then, &quot;jail time&quot;? Who knows? But maybe monetary damages if someone sues you for violation of their privacy rights. Apart from the risk of this, if we think it through, maybe kids' grades (if they're &quot;adults&quot;) should not be divulged to anyone... So don't do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T00:53:36.210" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T00:53:36.210" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1788" CreationDate="2013-06-12T03:43:15.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: &lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;, salaries are negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics of how much you can negotiate for will depend on a lot of things including flexibility on the institutions end and the amount of leverage you have in the negotiation (e.g., Do you have other offers? what else are you asking for? etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask around for details on other offers.  I've seen folks on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://academicjobs.wikia.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academic Jobs Wiki&lt;/a&gt; sharing details about offers and startup packages to give folks an idea of what is possible to negotiate for. Professional organizations will often publish these statistics as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One useful data point: Many public schools, at least in the US, are subject to public record laws. I know of people who downloaded the full database of salaries from public universities they had offers from, created the subset all the people with the title of the job they were offered, and used those data as a way of getting a sense of the range they could negotiate for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One piece of advice I got early on was useful: If you are never told &quot;no,&quot; you didn't ask for enough. So don't be afraid to ask. Of course, always be &lt;em&gt;deeply&lt;/em&gt; respectful in the process and keep in mind their own limits and abilities. Your negotiating partners are your future colleagues and a good working environment is worth more than whatever you hope to gain in a rough back and forth over a few thousand bucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T03:43:15.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10568" CreationDate="2013-06-12T07:02:51.137" Score="5" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the choice to either apply for a sholarship or get a regular salary. Economically, the position is slightly favorable (mainly due to pension prospects), but I also want to consider secondary effects such as prestige in the CV w.r.t. lateron applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's hard to put a value on such a thing, so I'm interested in your opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7102" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T08:11:37.820" Title="Scholarship effects on later applications" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10567" CreationDate="2013-06-12T08:11:37.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation describes a situation that is relatively common here in Germany, with the choice between &quot;fellowships&quot; at &lt;em&gt;Gradiuerterkollegen&lt;/em&gt; and traditional degree programs within faculties and departments. If this is in fact your case, I don't think I would make too much of a difference between the statuses—they are both graduate degree programs, and would effectively carry the same weight. It's largely viewed (correctly) as just different means of internally financing graduate studies. Thus, it would not really make a big difference on your later career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make a difference, however, are the &lt;em&gt;duties&lt;/em&gt; assigned to the different programs. Scholarship students may have a substantially reduced set of responsibilities, particularly with respect to teaching and other non-research activities. This may mean that you finish your degree program more quickly and efficiently than someone who has to do substantial teaching as part of the standard graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T08:11:37.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10575" CreationDate="2013-06-12T10:30:46.250" Score="18" ViewCount="10340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the second year of a research degree, and with one more year I could finish my PhD. However, I got a very good job offer at a leading company in the field, which would mean I'd have to finish my degree now (which would then be an MPhil) and start working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hard pressed to make a decision, but I find it very hard to judge: what are the benefits of finishing a PhD over taking a job at a good company? Often people do a PhD to get into such a company, but what if that is not the case? Also, I feel that at this point, a job would be more challenging than a third year of a PhD, which would just be a continuation of the same thing I've been doing for two years now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, people tell me it would be silly to quit now that I am so close, because &quot;a PhD is worth so much more.&quot; I would very much like some extra input on this: is a PhD 'worth more' in the end? And what are other things that I'd have to take into account to make an informed decision? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm only 23 years old, so I could even do a PhD later, but I'd have to start from the beginning again. Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage to have worked for a couple of years, when applying for a PhD again later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7410" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T19:14:14.883" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:33:34.880" Title="Finishing a PhD or quitting and taking a job in industry" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-12T10:34:46.720" Score="4" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose one has written a master's thesis that summarizes several articles, and works out their details, on a complicated topic. It would be of general interest to have this thesis (in polished form) available for the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under what circumstances would it be acceptable to publish that thesis on arxiv.org? All sources are cited appropiately, down to each lemma, but I wonder whether rephrasing could actually lead to getting sued for copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T13:46:39.257" Title="Publish a thesis that summarizes papers on arxiv - copyright issues?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10569" CreationDate="2013-06-12T11:02:28.013" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, firstly, congratulations on the job offer - you must have seriously impressed them to be offered a position before the completion of the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we come to the crux of the issue, the main thing is (and you have no doubt heard this before), but the decision is up to you, and by that, I mean totally up to you.  But, to be a bit more helpful let's look at the information you provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are young and in later years, should you choose to pursue the PhD, it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be likely that you will be able to have some credits towards a future PhD (this would depend on the college).  If I understand you correctly, you'll be able to get a MPhil?  that will help with the first point (credits towards a PhD) and certainly is recognition of the study you have done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a couple of key questions you have to ask yourself are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which of the job or the PhD will lead you to your goals quicker and in a more enriching way?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much would working at this company mean to you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and related to the question above, will that opportunity resurface upon completion of your PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option, once again depending on the policies of your university is to defer the final year of your PhD or complete it part time, while you work (which is what I am doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;- &#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T11:02:28.013" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2013-06-12T13:46:39.257" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All sources are cited appropiately, down to each lemma, but I wonder whether rephrasing could actually lead to getting sued for copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;rephrasing.&quot;  If you are genuinely writing in your own words and citing everything appropriately, then there is no problem at all.  Copyright does not protect ideas, just how they are expressed, so writing your own version is not copyright infringement.  Academic norms require citation, but it is certainly OK to write expository papers on other people's research.  Your thesis sounds like a valuable contribution that should be made available to the community, and arxiv.org would be a fine place to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if by &quot;rephrasing&quot; you mean starting with their text and editing it (rearranging a little, changing some wording, making additions, but keeping the underlying framework), then your paper would be considered a derivative work under copyright law.  I've never heard of anyone actually being sued for this in an academic context, but you might be asked to take down your paper, depending on how closely you followed the original papers.  You might also offend the authors if you copy too much from them, even if there's no legal trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic question I'd ask is whether you had the other papers (or near-verbatim notes on them) open in front of you while you were writing yours.  If not, then you should be fine, because everything you wrote came from you.  If you wrote your paper while actively studying theirs, then there's more risk: the fact that you needed to constantly look at their writing suggests you hadn't fully internalized their work.  In that case, you should look through your paper and make sure you didn't accidentally paraphrase too closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T13:46:39.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T22:10:50.053" Score="3" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have to present at different conferences. Usually I print the poster at the print office at home and cary the poster with me to the conference. With the more and strict luggage rules, it is not always allowed to carry the usual chunky poster cylinders on board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I like to travel light, this sometimes is a problem. One solution would be to look for a print shop at the destination (eg. &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/10801/where-to-print-science-posters-in-paris&quot;&gt;Paris&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/18037/can-i-print-a-science-poster-in-berlin-within-one-day&quot;&gt;Berlin&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then again, you also want to bring back the poster with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question, how can I bring a a1/a2 poster with me as carry-on luggage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Andra" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:14.947" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T18:52:15.050" Title="How to carry a scientific poster as hand luggage?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-06-12T14:25:18.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10569" CreationDate="2013-06-12T14:38:09.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it depends a LOT on the field you work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you my personal experience in my field: programming (although it was with the Masters degree, not with a PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started working during college, and by the time I finished it, I already had a bit of experience, and was able to get good jobs, although this kept me from finishing the Masters. So far, I had no issues at any interviews with this, I got some certifications and made some specialization courses in my free time, I learned what I wanted, and this helped me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have a few years of experience ahead of my former colleagues that didn't do what I did and finished their studies, but I don't regret my decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some of my colleagues managed to get great internships after finishing their studies at very big, picky companies, where I could potentially go in a year or so, but not as an intern (and a good job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things you need to ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you doing the PhD to get a job similar to what you have been offered, or to get a much better job in a few more years, and how big is that difference between what you have been offered now, and what you can find after the PhD ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is the experience in your field of work ? In more theoretical fields, your PhD can greatly outweigh the experience you can get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think that money will ever be an issue (since doing the PhD probably doesn't pay), and unfortunately you have to think of this as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't do the PhD now - how likely are you to resume it in let's say 5 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well is the university rated in your country ? (check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arwu.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.arwu.org/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can go ask your professor at the university and see what he has to say, he probably saw both scenarios (people who quit to get jobs, and people who didn't) - and he/she will probably have some advice for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is as much as anyone can say, after all, it's your life, and your decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm 25, so not much older than you :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7413" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T14:38:09.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10569" CreationDate="2013-06-12T16:14:05.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your goal to go into industry after finishing your PhD? If the answer is &quot;yes&quot; and the current job is perfect, my advice will usually be to go. If you goal is to go into academia and to become a professor, the job is a distraction and you should pass on it and finish the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, things vary by field but my general advice, which I believe is true in most (but not all) fields, is that you need a PhD if you want to be a professor but that it is not critical for doing most other jobs. And because PhDs take up time that you could be sending getting work experience and promotions, it may even be harmful for these other pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential students make the wrong comparison when they judge whether or not a PhD is helpful to their career goals. It is common for people to compare themselves without a PhD &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; to themselves with a PhD &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously, the PhD will provide a leg up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not the accurate comparison because there are opportunity costs to doing a doctorate. The true comparison is between (a) yourself with 4-6 years of experience in industry and no PhD and (b) you with 4-6 years work in a PhD program, no industry experience, and a PhD. In &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; fields, (a) is better, or at least not usually worse, than (b).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD includes a lot of effort that goes into navigating and succeeding in an academic environment. If you are going to be a professor, this is important training. If you are not, you are likely better off doing the things you want to end up doing somewhere more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T16:14:05.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10547" CreationDate="2013-06-12T19:58:06.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the formal teaching requirement at universities in continental Europe is the so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Habilitation&lt;/a&gt;. It's a formal exam which requires submitting a thesis and defending it in a colloquium much like the PhD, but (supposedly) on a higher level. Usually it also includes a teaching-related element. The habilitation used to be a requirement for being appointed as a professor, but in recent times also other criteria, which represent a comparable achievement to a habilitation, are being used. In Germany, having passed the habilitation allows you to use the title &quot;Privatdozent&quot; (even before being appointed as professor), with the same teaching entitlements as an ordinary professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, also other personnel may teach at the university. Even fresh graduates from one study program may find themselves in front of a class of students who could be just a year or two behind them. However, that will always be under the supervision of a professor, or on the formal commission of the department dean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there are recent efforts to offer a more formal teaching education for university staff, including certificates for those who take part in the programs. I'm mostly familiar with the situation in Germany, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bzhl.tu-berlin.de/en/news/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hdz-bawue.de/das-hdz.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (in German), but I imagine similar efforts exist in neighboring countries. At the moment, these certificates are however &lt;strong&gt;not a requirement&lt;/strong&gt; for university teaching, and I even doubt that they will become so in the near future. Yet, in some announcements for professor positions it seems to be included as a desirable applicant qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T19:58:06.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10616" CreationDate="2013-06-12T21:07:18.937" Score="23" ViewCount="3827" Body="&lt;p&gt;In each research paper, there are a lot of things that I want to highlight for later use such as definitions, explanations and concepts... While most of them focus on the topic of the paper, there are some relating to a different or broader topics, e.g. a paper about investigating performance of a specific system may introduce different benchmarks and metrics for performance evaluation and explain why those approaches are applicable for this specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I just highlight all of them, put some notes directly into the paper or using &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com/&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;. However, when I want to look for all highlights and notes about one specific topic, I find it difficult as they scatter in different papers and documents. So, are there any tools or techniques to affectively highlighting important points and group them by topic while reading research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastEditorUserId="5613" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T17:35:58.890" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T08:58:30.300" Title="How to read and take notes on research papers" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10580" CreationDate="2013-06-12T21:26:16.003" Score="9" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I don't know how to confirm to myself that the words which I'm writing are my own words. Now, maybe those words are based on what I have read recently because if not there won't be anything to say. Should I for example just comment in what other researchers say which I'm paraphrasing what they wrote or can I also write as if I was talking (words which are based on what I have read)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T15:39:45.313" Title="How can I make sure that the words I write are my own?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10579" CreationDate="2013-06-12T21:38:10.363" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what the purpose of your writing is, so the answer really depends on that. It sounds like you're writing some kind of review of prior work (either as a survey or as part of a paper) ? In that case, the goal here is not to regurgitate (in your words or via paraphrase) what others say. Rather, you should be reading what they say and thinking about it (and seeing if you're convinced by it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only after that should you even attempt to describe the work. And when you do so, put all reference material away. If you can't describe someone else's work without referring to it, then you don't really understand it yet. In this way you'll ensure that you use your own ideas/thoughts to express what's gone before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T21:38:10.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10579" CreationDate="2013-06-13T00:06:26.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second @Suresh's remarks, but/and the situation is truly more complicated, as your explanation of your question correctly indicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, complicated, sophisticated things are often so easy to mis-represent that it seems as though there's almost a unique path, a unique narrative, that is correct. And it may be non-trivial to learn what this path is. Thus, in effect, the phrasing of a high authority is not only &quot;burned into one's retinas&quot;, but, also, seems the only correct thing to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, first, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; try to &quot;say something else&quot;, just for the sake of avoiding &quot;quoting&quot;, because that seeming paraphrase may be wrong, or deficient, or ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, at the same time, extended passages should not be quoted, unless put in quotation marks. It's best to internalize ideas well enough to give &quot;the standard definition&quot; and such things, even if that ends up sounding very similar to other sources. Similarity is inevitable in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in many scenarios, honesty is a clarifying criterion. That is, is what you write coming out of your own head, even if it resembles other sources, or are you quite literally copying? The latter is not so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T00:06:26.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T01:39:39.833" Score="1" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Background: I am a full-time EFL instructor at a university in S. Korea. I want to do independent research, as most faculty would not be interested to collaborate with someone who only has an MA.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Korea is known as the plagiarism capital of the world. Since I work with student writers there, I am very interested in the subject. I am trying to devise a research project which can measure the efficacy of plagiarism intervention strategies, namely teaching paraphrasing, summarization, and citation skills. I have done a small literature review and have ideas for getting student perspectives on plagiarism using already validated surveys. However, since I want to focus on effect, I was wondering if anyone had suggestion on how to actually measure this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking some kind of pre-test/post-test, but would really love some more ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: to expand on the pre-test/post-test idea, I had thought about giving them a number of short paragraphs which they would need to paraphrase and cite correctly (assuming paraphrasing is a vital referencing skill) pre-intervention and then post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7317" LastEditorUserId="7317" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T09:58:08.227" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T20:12:59.827" Title="Research Design Help: Measuring the effects of plagiarism intervention" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10569" CreationDate="2013-06-13T04:09:34.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is basically, Academia or industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think doing both is a good idea at this moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are 23 years old, you probably never have a real industry job before. You will have to devote yourself to the new job if you accept the offer. You probably have to work 50+ hours a week in the first year. It's very hard to do both at the same time if not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to ask yourself a question. What was your reason to study for PhD in the first place? Were you interested in research? Or you wanted to have a PhD in order to have a better industry job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your ultimate goal was to have a good industry job, then you just got one. Grab it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to do research, being a retiree from industry, I can tell you that you are not going to have much freedom to do the research you want to do. You'll have to do whatever your employer wants you to do. You'll become a money maker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we are back to the basic question. What was your career plan? If you did not know the answer when you started the PhD program, now is the time to make that decision. If you still don't know the answer after pondering over for a while, then you need to think about Lev Reyzin's suggestion, that is, take leave of absence from Academia. This is not a true good idea, just a temporary solution. It delays your decision. Your attitude will be like going there to test water. Chances are, you'll not devote yourself to your new job. I am not too sure you'll succeed the industry job that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion for you, figure out where you want to be 10 years from now. If the answer is Academia, continue your PhD. If it's industry, take the offer. You don’t need to have PhD to be a successful business person after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T04:09:34.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10583" CreationDate="2013-06-13T06:29:12.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just improvising on the fly here but does Korea have software like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TurnItIn&lt;/a&gt; which measures (in a few different ways) the level of plagiarism in a particular paper or a set of papers usually from online sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do, then you could think about devising an experiment where, in a class, you inform the students that you will be trying to reduce their &quot;plagiarism tendencies&quot; and take a pre-test perceptions survey. Next, you set a particular class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn (or equivalent). Then, you make your intervention (in whatever form you choose) and finally set another class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn this time. Finally, you set a post-test debriefing and follow up survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this would make for a very nice repeated measures model (from the TurnItIn or equivalent data) and some nice latent variable analysis from your surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you in some meaningful way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T06:29:12.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T10:45:37.173" Score="15" ViewCount="3773" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to apply for assistant professor positions (in theoretical computer science) soon, and I'm trying to get a feeling for how to write a good research statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should it contain a detailed overview of my (recent?) publications?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer to 1 is yes, should I highlight my specific contributions in multi-author papers - as opposed to &quot;we proved this and that...&quot; ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer to 1 is yes, I must list the references here that I'm mentioning, which are also stated (in the full list of publications) in my CV, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming there's no page limit, what's an appropriate length for a research statement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is to group my work into topics and then, for each topic, provide a short overview of the respective papers (&quot;What I've done so far&quot;) and some outlook on some future work (&quot;What I would like to do&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7092" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2017-12-03T22:11:36.447" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T22:11:36.447" Title="General structure of Research Statement (applying for faculty position)" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10586" CreationDate="2013-06-13T11:35:46.520" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should it contain a detailed overview of my (recent?) publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt;  It should contain a detailed overview of your &lt;strong&gt;research program&lt;/strong&gt;, including both your past accomplishments and your future plans/vision.  Of course you have to describe your published results in technical detail, but as part of a larger narrative, not as stand-alone pieces.  Focus on the big picture, not on the tiny technical details.  Remember that your audience is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just other theoretical computer scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the answer to 1 is yes, should I highlight my specific contributions in multi-author papers - as opposed to &quot;we proved this and that...&quot; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt;  &quot;My coauthors and I proved...&quot; is fine.  The public dogma in theoretical computer science is that in every paper, each of the authors contributed 100% of the work, which is why they are listed alphabetically.  You &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; any paper that has your name on it.  Your narrative will naturally focus on the parts of the paper that you are the most proud of, which are usually the parts that you worked on the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you're writing papers with your advisor or other more senior coauthors, there is a natural tendency for people to wonder if your aren't really just riding their coattails.  This is why you need a larger narrative in your statement—to convince the reader that you understand your results at a deeper level than someone who merely &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; the papers.  This is also why you have papers with different sets of coauthors—so that the common thread through your work stands out as &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; contribution.  In particular, you have at least one paper without your advisor.  Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the answer to 1 is yes, I must list the references here that I'm mentioning, which are also stated (in the full list of publications) in my CV, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach I always recommend is to treat your CV as your bibliography, and to include a footnote like &quot;Numbered references indicate papers listed in my CV.&quot;  Of course, this means that your research statement never cites anyone else's work, except in broad narrative strokes, but for a brief document intended to sell &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; research program, I think that's appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming there's no page limit, what's an appropriate length for a research statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aim for three pages.  Less than two is too short.  More than four is too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may not seem like a lot of space, but that actually works in your favor.  You want to give the impression that you've done just &lt;em&gt;gobs&lt;/em&gt; of really amazingly cool stuff, but dammit there just isn't room to write about everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T11:35:46.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T12:03:39.490" Score="63" ViewCount="6780" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sexism is obvious, blatant, and/or deliberate. Fortunately, my understanding is that this kind of sexism is &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; a thing of the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, female colleagues have told me that more &quot;benign&quot;, but still harmful, sexism is still very prevalent in academia. In particular, I've heard that implicit assumptions that women are less capable, or more inclined to be teachers than researchers, are distressingly common. As a mathematician, the results are distressingly obvious: most math departments are overwhelmingly male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways in which sexism is unknowingly perpetrated by well-meaning people, in academia in particular? And how can those of us who are well-meaning make sure to avoid doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:29:23.390" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T10:48:05.367" Title="How is sexism unknowingly perpetrated in academia?" Tags="&lt;harassment&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10592" CreationDate="2013-06-13T12:10:09.413" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im not sure if I am right on academia so please forward this topic to another page if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is writing her application for a job in research, e.g. studies about medications, diseases etc. Though she has lots of experience and a very good degree (diploma + master thesis) in public health it is not easy for her to find a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To increase her chance for an interview she thought about to mention her high engagement for mentally disordered people. She founded a self-help group at the university which is well established and has several dozen members. She does it almost by herself in her leisure time after university and sideline. She herself is not handicapped but has therapies running, but nothing which speaks against working regularly. On the one hand she could point out that she has a high level of soft skills and does a lot work voluntarily. But the problem then is how would an employer react about these facts? Wouldn't he think she has problems herself and therefore isn't a suitable candidate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it isn't good either to mention only vague information about this. What should she do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7421" LastEditorUserId="7421" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T12:57:30.780" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T14:59:36.517" Title="Mention engagement for mentally disordered people in application?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10591" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:15:33.747" Score="9" ViewCount="3082" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as the title says: do you spell out Thm., Prop., Eq., Ch. and comparable abbreviations in a mathematical paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose that, if in doubt, it is always best to stay consistent (in whatever way) throughout ones writing for the least. Do journals have (different) policies on this, or is there a prefered style when in doubt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T07:22:32.977" LastActivityDate="2020-10-05T00:31:55.867" Title="Do you spell out Thm., Prop., Eq., Ch. in mathematical papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:29:23.853" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a matter of style. I would say &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, expand them. In my opinion, authors tend to over-abbreviate making documents harder to read. For instance, I can't work out what you mean by Ch. (&lt;b&gt;C&lt;/b&gt;onjec&lt;b&gt;h&lt;/b&gt;ure?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T14:29:23.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10589" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:59:36.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many medical research jobs require interfacing with patients, stakeholders, family members, potential study subjects, etc. Therefore, people-skills can be a great asset. Furthermore, it sounds like your friend started a support group on her own initiative and successfully ran this group for some period of time with a fairly large number of person. This speaks to being a 'self-starter', and to good organizational and time-management skills, since she was doing this will completing her degree. The volunteering aspect is not as important as the other aspects, in my opinion since volunteering usually provides evidence of being motivated/'self-starter' which creating the group already emphasizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling would be that this is a good thing to mention as it highlights several desirable qualities. In my opinion, whether or not your friend has mental health issues is her own personal business and not that of potential employers, unless it requires special considerations, so I would advise her to describe this work without reference to her personal health situation, framing it in terms of interest rather than personal experience - i.e. her interest in mental health issues led her to create this group which she managed for a certain period of time with however many clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7407" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T14:59:36.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2013-06-13T15:11:13.327" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, authors almost always spell out words like &quot;Theorem&quot;, &quot;Proposition&quot;, and so on. I expect that journal styles will generally require this.  I can't remember the last time I saw a published paper that abbreviated them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're writing a paper, you must have read a lot of other people's published papers.  Surely by now you've formed your own opinion of the consensus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T15:11:13.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2013-06-13T15:14:38.267" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on Dave's answer slightly, abbreviations should follow the guidelines of the specific venue to which you are sending a paper. If they expect no abbreviations, don't use them. If they have standard ones specified, use those as appropriate. Typically, I would only use something like &quot;Prop.&quot; for &quot;proposition&quot; when it's referring to something with a specific number, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that's what the style guide calls for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other abbreviations should be used to improve readability: for instance writing out &quot;fast Fourier transform&quot; one hundred times during a paper can start to get more tedious than using &quot;FFT&quot; as an abbreviation. But shortening individual words should only be done if it makes reading the paper easier, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; simply to shorten it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T15:14:38.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10620" CreationDate="2013-06-13T17:30:53.823" Score="6" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals and conferences charge money before/after paper acceptance, similarly there are some which don't (like Open Access Journals). Does money matter in judging such journals/conferences before sending paper ? Unfortunately my organization is on a cost cutting and isn't funding for any such activities. Is there a list of journals which do not charge fees or charge modest fees, so that I can publish there on my own ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T04:31:24.170" Title="Is there any difference between journals and conferences which charge money vs those which don't?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-06-13T17:34:02.007" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncwit.org&quot;&gt;NCWIT (National Center for Women &amp;amp; Information Technology)&lt;/a&gt; has an article specifically about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncwit.org/resources/how-do-stereotype-threats-affect-retention-better-approaches-well-intentioned-harmful&quot;&gt;stereotype threat in computing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that resource is student-oriented, it illustrates some examples of how even well-intentioned comments are indications of stereotyping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T17:34:02.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-06-13T23:01:42.423" Score="96" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And how can those of us who are well-meaning make sure to avoid doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you see something, say something.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're correct that blatant sexism is mostly gone.  I'm a female computer engineer, and I have never been told that I can't do the job because I'm female.  What remains is &quot;death by a thousand paper cuts&quot; sexism.  For example, I was recently at a conference, and the small group I was in was discussing one of the presentations.  An older professor in the group remarked that the presentation was particularly good because the presenter was beautiful and wearing tight clothes.  Nobody called him on it: after all, he was trying to give her a compliment, mentioning it would be rude, he's older and things were different then, and so on.  And it's hard to blame them, because if that were the only sexist comment I heard that day, it wouldn't be such a big deal.  But shortly after that, someone jokingly said I should marry my PhD supervisor.  Then someone said a new tool is so user friendly that &quot;even your mother could use it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these incidents on its own is fairly mild: most people probably don't even realize they're saying something exclusionary.  Unfortunately, if you're a woman, each one reminds you that you &lt;em&gt;don't belong&lt;/em&gt;, so the cumulative effect is very discouraging.  However, if you correct every person who says something mildly sexist, you get a reputation as a bra-burning feminazi.  As a result, most women keep quiet, or only point out the particularly insensitive comments.  It would make an enormous difference if &lt;em&gt;other men&lt;/em&gt; would call out the ones who make inappropriate comments.  You don't have to be dramatic or rude about it, but a quiet &quot;I don't think that's appropriate&quot; would take a lot of the burden off women.  And naturally, you can try to be more aware of the things &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; say to make sure you aren't accidentally discouraging women.  A lot of sexist ideas are so deeply ingrained that otherwise fair and open minded people will say them without a second thought (like the &quot;even your mother&quot; comment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to downplay the other valuable things you can do, such as volunteering at math/science camps for girls, but if enough men followed this rule -- even part time -- 80% of the sexism I encounter would disappear. To modify Edmund Burke's quote a bit,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All that is necessary for sexism to triumph is for good men to do nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;June 27, 2014: After a year of comment trolls, I think it's time to add a point about men's rights activists.  The key mistake that MRAs make is treating rights as a zero-sum game.  The fact is, gender stereotypes hurt everyone.  They hurt women who want to be engineers; they hurt men who want to be nurses.  They hurt women who don't want to have children; they hurt men who want to be stay-at-home dads.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, these stereotypes result in a disadvantage for men.  For example, Doug Spoonwood points out that American men have to register with the selective service system to get student loans, while American women do not.  MRAs point to these cases and try to claim that feminism oppresses men.  This is, at best, willfully ignorant: all these inequalities come from the same outdated beliefs and stereotypes, which feminism opposes by definition.  The fact that these cases exist just indicates that gender equality is not a solved problem.  (Women in the American military were not &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to be in units tasked with direct combat until 2013.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer discusses a woman's point of view because that's what I know and that's what the question asked about.  I would be thrilled if a man in a predominantly female field added an answer discussing his experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastEditorDisplayName="user6782" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T21:47:15.170" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:47:15.170" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-06-13T23:56:42.640" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are some ways in which sexism is unknowingly perpetrated by&#xA;  well-meaning people, in academia in particular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not qualified to answer this question myself, but I'll point you to some excellent blogs that detail this, and a tumblr that explores the more general idea of 'mansplaining' (not limited to academia alone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Female Science Professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ilaba.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;The Accidental Mathematician&lt;/a&gt; (in particular, her post about &lt;a href=&quot;http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/why-im-not-on-mathoverflow/&quot;&gt;why she doesn't participate in Mathoverflow&lt;/a&gt; is quite interesting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mansplained.tumblr.com/&quot;&gt;Academic Men Explain Things to Me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T23:56:42.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10606" CreationDate="2013-06-14T00:55:46.350" Score="5" ViewCount="10286" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going into college I had a great record, 3.65 GPA and a 30 on the ACT and about 18 AP and concurrent credits in statistics, calculus, literature, and Spanish. However, trying to balance religious callings and duties during my first year of college left me very unbalanced academically, and as such I failed two major classes, one of which being college, a class that I had already passed in high school and was simply taking to help acclimate myself to the college environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following semester was about the same. I ended up deferring for two years to serve full time under a religious calling, I was able to do this because the university is owned and operated by my church. Going back I am resolved to do better this time, but I am wondering if there is any possible way to wipe away my record of my first year and start fresh again, maybe by applying to a new college instead of transferring, is that possible? Or could I petition on part of my ADHD and Aspergers syndrome for the first year to be overlooked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7425" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T09:05:48.993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T09:20:49.380" Title="Can I recover after a really bad first year?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10600" CreationDate="2013-06-14T03:22:43.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you from experience that one can recover from a bad first year, though it would be up to the university what options there are regarding your GPA.  Having said that, it is very unlikely that the university would wipe the results without making you repeat the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need documentary evidence for ADHD and Asperger's Syndrome to be considered as reasons for wiping the first year's grades.  Even then, I am doubtful that a university would allow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major option is to learn what you can from the first year, apply those lessons as part of your resolve to do better in coming academic years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T03:22:43.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-06-14T05:16:43.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sexism can get perpetuated unknowingly in all sorts of was via the law.  I suggest studying the book Legalizing Misandry by Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson to see how this can happen.  The law also has all sorts of effects on what happens on college campuses and how sexism either gets continued or abated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that at present there exist programs for woman to get ahead in academia, because of their gender, but extremely few, if any, in comparison for men. Have you ever heard of a scholarship program that specifically targets boys in the humanities where they are a minority now and have historically come as a minority also?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_colleges_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There exist&lt;/a&gt; only three non-religious male colleges in the U. S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_colleges_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There exist&lt;/a&gt; many more women's colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exist women's studies programs, but male studies programs have trouble getting a foothold in academia. Ryerson &lt;a href=&quot;http://theeyeopener.com/2013/03/rsu-rejects-mens-group-on-campus/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes&lt;/a&gt; for an interesting example. Sexism, in the form of misandry, has popped up before when a men's &lt;a href=&quot;http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/20/robyn-urback-on-shocking-anti-male-hatred-on-the-sfu-campus/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;group&lt;/a&gt; formed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/gender-gap-in-education.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;make up&lt;/a&gt; the majority of graduates in the U. S. in terms of high school degrees, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees. Trends also &lt;a href=&quot;http://i0.wp.com/www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Four-Graduation-Rates-Degrees-Associates-Bachelors-Masters-Doctorate-by-Sex-and-Percentage-United-States.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;come&lt;/a&gt; as revealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some campuses have a standard of &quot;preponderance of the evidence&quot; for rape cases, which in effect eliminates due process mostly for men, but not for women, and such a standard thus effectively consists of a sexist policy against men. Some other policies can unintentionally end up sexist against men as a study of Daphne Patai's Heterophobia makes clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Male sports teams getting cut also comes as another way in which a policy has ended up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/sports/02gender.html?_r=1&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sexist&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvuLuLarr0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unknowingly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid sexism in academia and elsewhere you need to care about men in general just as much as you care about women in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexism can perpetrated by people by having policies that require different standards for people of different sexes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for a male to get student loans in the United States he has to register with the selective service system (which is still a real entity). No female has such a requirement placed upon them in order to obtain such a loan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexism can get unknowingly perpetrated by believing that an educational equity for one sex can qualify as sufficient for both sexes. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/programs/equity/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Women's Educational Equity Act&lt;/a&gt; is one example of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lifestyle, knowledge of one's educational opportunities, and health in general can all effect academic achievement as well as one's ability to achieve academically. I can't speak to the extent of things here, but one person had the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/02/discrimination-against-boys-in-education-and-elsewhere/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;following&lt;/a&gt; to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As I have said here before, I have worked in higher education for thirty-one years and have never seen a poster or service announcement on any campus aimed at promoting positive lifestyles, health, educational opportunities, etc., for boys and young men. I have seen numerous ones for girls and young women.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexism can also get perpetrated in academia via &quot;equity hiring&quot; as Janice Fiamengo &lt;a href=&quot;http://pjmedia.com/blog/academic-hiring-and-the-diversity-mandate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes&lt;/a&gt; clear...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Next came the creation of a shortlist of three or four candidates for interview; some members of the department were keen to stack the list with members of the diversity groups. To this end, there was much sophistry about why a (white) male candidate’s book with a prestigious university press was really no better than — was actually perhaps a bit inferior to — a female candidate’s single article with an academic journal of no repute; or about why a (white) male candidate’s expertise in highly competitive Shakespeare studies was no better than — was actually far less original than — a female candidate’s untested, largely speculative work on an obscure seventeenth-century woman playwright. Thus were well-qualified white men kept out of the competition. Moments of levity occasionally occurred when we were forced into elaborate interpretative dances to determine if a male candidate might be black or Asian or gay, though usually the savvy candidate made that clear in his cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the hiring stage, there was the same special pleading. Poor presentations by women candidates were praised as “provocatively unorthodox” or “strategically unconventional” while polished ones by men were criticized as “safe” or “unoriginal.” Women’s mistakes could be overlooked or seen as strengths (“I like that she was courageous enough to present on material that she is still working through”) while men’s mistakes were definitive (“I’m shocked that he could be finishing a PhD and still not know that [minor detail”]). One male candidate who had given the best demonstration class I’d ever seen was criticized by our leading feminist professor — presumably because she could find no other faults — for having never visited England to do archival work, a criticism the poverty-conscious lady would almost certainly never have made of a struggling single-mother candidate. That a man might have life circumstances preventing him from travel seemed not to have occurred to her.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That hiring practices may more often than not, favor the hiring of female candidates over male candidates gets further suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; experimental research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of answers which only address sexism against women here, without also addressing sexism against men makes it very clear that you can NOT eliminate or reduce sexism by focusing exclusively on the needs or interests of just one sex.  In fact, that comes as a way to perpetuate sexism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1381&amp;amp;context=crsj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;document&lt;/a&gt; starting at about 532 suggests things goes even deeper than this answer has merely outlined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of York recently withdrew it's intention to mark &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/17/row-after-university-of-york-cancels-international-mens-day-event&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Men's Day&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to avoiding sexism lies in fully understanding the plight of all sexes and acting accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no discussion of sexism in academia is complete without at least some indication of the issues of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/when-women-become-men-at-wellesley-college.html?hp&amp;amp;action=click&amp;amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;amp;version=HpSum&amp;amp;module=second-column-region&amp;amp;region=top-news&amp;amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trans-people&lt;/a&gt; in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7158" LastEditorUserId="7158" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T07:42:51.777" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T07:42:51.777" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10600" CreationDate="2013-06-14T06:24:21.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another big question here is in what classes those bad grades are, relative to your major. IF those are intro classes in your intended major, this is a very, very bad thing, as it will have to be explained to anyone who looks at your transcript (admissions committees or prospective employers). On the other hand, if these are classes outside of your major, while still not ideal, they can at least be viewed as temporary aberrations or difficulties in the transition from high school to university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T06:24:21.077" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10600" CreationDate="2013-06-14T09:20:49.380" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do really well from now onwards, then a couple of poor years can be overlooked, for instance if you are going to apply for PhD studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it seems that the problem is not necessarily ADHD or Aspergers; it seems to be taking on too many different activities. So prioritising your time and commitments during your degree studies seems to be the solution to the problem and then working very hard, not getting the record wiped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T09:20:49.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1628" CreationDate="2013-06-14T13:28:42.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another open-access friendly publisher is Athabasca University Press.  They're currently in the process of publishing my textbook that @JeffE mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120226&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120226&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've been pleasant to work with and, in particular, were fine accepting a non-exclusive license to publish the work.  This still allows, for example, a student society to print, bind, and sell their own copies if they can do it for less than what the publisher is charging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1298" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:28:42.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2013-06-14T13:33:02.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One heuristic is to write things as you would read them out loud.  In other words, don't try to save space in print unless you would use the same abbreviation in speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm happy to say &quot;i.e.&quot; or &quot;e.g.&quot; orally in certain situations, so those abbreviations can be fine (indeed, it would sound really weird if you wrote &quot;id est&quot; or &quot;exempli gratia&quot;), but I would never refer to &quot;Sec. 5&quot; or &quot;Eq. 3&quot; when speaking.  Trying to pronounce &quot;Ch. 2&quot; as written would be even worse.  By this standard, abbreviations like NASA or FFT are OK, although they can of course be overused and they may be more cryptic than the writer intends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This principle extends beyond abbreviations: try not to write anything that would be awkward to read aloud.  (For example, mathematicians sometimes violate this by juxtaposing formulas with no words in between them.)  Of course this is not an absolute rule, but following it will generally make your papers easier and more pleasant to read.  The effects are admittedly small, but if you are explaining complicated or subtle ideas, you shouldn't add to the difficulties with clumsy writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T13:54:22.593" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:54:22.593" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2013-06-14T14:45:27.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, whether a journal charges money for publication or not should &lt;strong&gt;not be a criterium&lt;/strong&gt; for judging the quality of one journal compared to another one. Use other means for that, for example checking where good papers are published, the academic reputation of the editorial board, opinions of colleagues, and, yes, even numeric factors such as the impact factor of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very high-quality open access journals, for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS&lt;/a&gt; series of life science journals, but also no-quality open access journals, for example the ones produced by most of the publishers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt;. Some very high-quality non-open access journals ask for page fees (or even submission fees, as I learnt recently), others don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether there is a specific list of journals which don't require paying fees, or an overview listing publication fees for a range of journals. There is the quite well-known &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SHERPA/Romeo&lt;/a&gt; list, which distinguishes between different levels of self-archiving. I guess most of the green journals (highest self-archiving rating) listed there will be open-access journals and ask for publishing fees, so you could go and check the other journals in more detail, by looking at their instructions for authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T19:15:51.463" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T19:15:51.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-14T14:51:33.403" Score="3" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in analysing the selection and distribution of course readings given to students of middle eastern studies in universities internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By course readings I am referring to subject bibliographies given to students as background reading to accompany lectures, etc. I suspect this would be difficult to investigate, since most course readers are not available online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of lists, bibliographies, methods or other resources which may help to conduct such a survey of course readings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="420" LastEditorUserId="420" LastEditDate="2013-06-15T01:12:12.817" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T11:43:37.060" Title="How to survey recommended course readings?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10612" CreationDate="2013-06-14T19:20:14.193" Score="8" ViewCount="1371" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the conferences and journals doesn't ask for code to be submitted along with the paper. How common is it to detect fake or incomplete results in such conference/journal review ? In my field of study in Computer Science, sometimes overwhelming claims are made in some papers, but since the field is still growing, how do reviewers/editors determine the authenticity of the results ? Is it common to ask for code or working demo in such cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T19:29:17.507" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T19:46:49.683" Title="How do journals and conferences verify if the results in paper are genuine" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10611" CreationDate="2013-06-14T19:46:49.683" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're referring to computer science, I'll talk about conferences. Peer review, as Dave Clarke mentions, is primarily how papers are scrutinized. But conference reviews are often on a severe time constraint. So for an experimental paper, the reviewer looks at the main ideas, sees if the experiments are convincing and handle the cases that the reviewer thinks are important, and evaluates the overall work for &quot;general excitement&quot;. But the reviewer has no ability to check if the work is correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a theoretical paper, a reviewer might skim proofs, and see if the main claims pass a &quot;smell test&quot;. If the result is important, or surprising, the reviewer might try to verify key claims in detail, and expect the authors to argue why their techniques should work. But even there, no formal proof checking happens (that happens in the journal review). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there are two (imperfect) safeguards against incorrect claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;author reputation - you don't want to get a rap for writing faulty papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reproducibility - I might reproduce your work, or ask for your code, when writing my papers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T19:46:49.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10617" CreationDate="2013-06-14T19:46:59.577" Score="4" ViewCount="1811" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently graduated with Computer Science and Engineering and joined an R&amp;amp;D firm. During the job, I enrolled for a part time MS(Research) from the topmost institute in my country (with reputable world rank). Though the only difference from full time course is that we get 1 extra year to complete part time course.Everything else, like the courses, class timings, labs, exams and rigor remains the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to join academia in future. How valuable is a part time degree with respect to joining academia and industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T03:54:41.813" LastActivityDate="2018-09-04T19:20:04.060" Title="How is a part-time degree (from a reputed institute) perceived in the academic job market?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10613" CreationDate="2013-06-14T20:32:56.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would not make a great deal of difference at all.  As you stated, everything but the time to complete it is the same.  I am in the same boat and I have found that when I apply somewhere, that they are not in the slightest bit concerned about me studying part time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way, once you complete your research degree, you will also have a considerable amount of practical experience, that will speak volumes in your favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T20:32:56.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10578" CreationDate="2013-06-14T20:56:46.777" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably isn't an ideal solution; but I still find it to be the most effective in the long run:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I simply keep a log of what I read, and I specifically do this using tex. That way, you will have a searchable document for any words that you may be looking for in your notes. You can also use the &lt;code&gt;makeidx&lt;/code&gt; package to add an index to your text document, which lets you &quot;tag&quot; sections of your documents with various keywords. I also make sure to cite what I read, even if it is for my own purposes. This is especially useful when you are writing a paper, since most of your references will be ready in &lt;code&gt;bibtex&lt;/code&gt; format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took me a while to get used to, but I find it very nice to have a well organized research log.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since requested in the comments, given below is what the log looks like. I don't want it to become a full latex document, but it should be sufficient enough to give you an idea. Note the index markers, which are basically &quot;tags&quot; that don't show up in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\section{Paper #1 Name, Authors, Date, \cite{...}}&#xA;My summary of the motivation and findings of the paper, or whatever I find interesting/useful.&#xA;May be as short as a few sentences or as long as a page, depending on how relevant it is. &#xA;\index{an important word}&#xA;&#xA;\section{Paper #2 Name, Authors, Date, \cite{...}}&#xA;Same thing here.. \index{another important word or two}&#xA;&#xA;\section{Paper #3 Name, Authors, Date, \cite{...}}&#xA;and so on..&#xA;&#xA;\printindex&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can look up your page numbers in the index, which is included at the end of the document. For more information about the package, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDYQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http://www.ctan.org/pkg/makeidx&amp;amp;ei=rkS_UfmyE9LB4AOUqoDQBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFSKosvPcHUnkeA1dsO9RiBlBZ5QQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.47883778,d.dmg&quot;&gt;CTAN&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Indexing&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastEditorUserId="5613" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T17:19:38.707" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T17:19:38.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10613" CreationDate="2013-06-14T22:49:29.007" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The fact that you have done your degree either part or full time will not change your degree's value.&lt;/em&gt; I have never heard of part-time degrees being treated differently from full-time degrees. In fact, it would be unusual to list a part-time or full time status on your CV so it's not clear how people would know. And I doubt many people would react differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your decision to do a degree part-time or full-time has other important implications on your long term goals but they are indirect. If you want to go into industry, choosing a part-time degree might mean you have more time to build up industry experience which might be nice. If you want to go into academia — and you can afford to go to school full time — do the full time degree because work in industry will only slow you down from the pursuit of your long term goal. Being a part-time student might also mean less attention from faculty who might think you are less serious about an academic track while you are doing the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T22:49:29.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2013-06-15T04:31:24.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must disagree with the CS folks in the comments&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;. Whether a journal charges or not is immaterial to the quality of the journal. You can only gauge its quality by being an active researcher in that field, not by silly metrics (this is an order of magnitude worse than impact factor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different journals from the same publishing house might also charge different rates for publications. For instance, AIP publishes both the Phys. Rev. series (+ PRL) and the J. Acoustical Society of America. While there are no charges for the former set, JASA has &quot;voluntary&quot; charges for publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such &quot;voluntary&quot; charges are very common (some flagship and top-of-the-line IEEE journals come to mind) and serves primarily as an opt-out for researchers from low income countries in Asia/Africa/S. America. Researchers in N. America, Europe and Australia/NZ are &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to pay the publishing charges, since with the way grants are structured in these countries, there is almost always a specific budget earmarked for publishing costs. Of course, if a researcher has no budget or is publishing in his spare time or as a secondary interest, then they're also welcome to not pay the charges, but I've never seen anyone that's on a grant decline to pay charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;† Opinions on this site seem to be overrun by CS folks, who generally state them as facts of life. From my years of experience in a variety of fields, I've found their customs to be more of an outlier than the norm (perhaps only mathematics has something in common).&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T04:31:24.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10625" CreationDate="2013-06-15T04:51:10.793" Score="4" ViewCount="5433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the third year of my undergraduate degree now, and in the process of applying for Graduate schools and Med schools. I have a burning questions about a creepy &quot;C&quot; in my transcript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize my story: I was recovering from a biopsy operation back then. Though I was advised to take one semester off to rest physically and mentally (I was extremely paranoid waiting for the pathology report, and luckily it came back benign), I still decided to take all the courses and the heavy research that I had started before. I performed so badly that semester that I received a C. That is like the most embarrassing element in my transcript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some told me that such a bad grade is a disadvantage for admissions. Do I still have a chance to make it to top grad and med schools?  With extra effort (I have managed to pull up my GPA to 3.8 now, I have been on the Dean's list for some semesters, have 3 publications, and 2 poster presentations at symposium, my GRE and MCAT are good too), can I cover that ugly spot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T18:30:20.667" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T18:30:20.667" Title="Will one 'C' grade due to health issues ruin my chances of admission into a top grad school?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10626" CreationDate="2013-06-15T06:57:37.900" Score="12" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US PhD prospects apply to several universities and those select an amount of applicants from that pool according to how many open spots the universities have for that term. Criteria for admission are GPA, GRE/SAT and research experience documented by 2-3 &lt;em&gt;letters of recommendation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe the application process is often times quite different in the way, that not a selected number of applicants get admitted each year, but each available research/teaching assistants position is treated individually. Because the requirements differ vastly, a lot of the times the only &lt;strong&gt;formal&lt;/strong&gt; requirement for application is a 'good' or 'very good' masters degree and/or experience in field x or with technology y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, are letters of recommendation expected, if so how many, and how important are they actually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T23:13:13.690" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T23:13:13.690" Title="Role/importance of letters of recommendation for PhD-applications in Europe?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10621" CreationDate="2013-06-15T08:25:06.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your final GPA already shows that you have done well in your study and a bad grade in one of the semester or subject wouldn't matter much. Even if you are concerned about your grade affecting the admission chances, you can include in your &lt;em&gt;Statement of Purpose&lt;/em&gt; why you performed badly, what did you learn from that and how did you managed to improvise upon it. Failure is also a learning experience, and if you are applying to a sane school, the admission committee are usually intelligent enough to understand it. Moreover, by describing how you improvised after a bad grade, would reflect your commitment and seriousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T08:25:06.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10627" CreationDate="2013-06-15T08:38:52.600" Score="2" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently an undergraduate at a university. I am looking at graduate programs in Mathematics, and if I am applying for math graduate programs for the year 2014-2015, are fall courses (2013) taken into consideration for graduate applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, could you elaborate according to your knowledge and experiences. I'm sure this question is applicable to other graduate programs other than Mathematics, so any comments pertaining to this question would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7430" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T23:14:05.757" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T23:14:05.757" Title="Do Fall Courses Count in PhD Admission?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10621" CreationDate="2013-06-15T09:55:13.013" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have shown that you have overcome great adversity and still achieved great results - this says a lot of positives about your character - of resilience and perseverance - two attributes that are critical for any graduate studies.  You had a cancer scare and still passed the subject despite the medical tests and the very justified anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, it is not an &quot;ugly spot&quot;, but that C, and subsequent successes are a reminder of how much strength and tenacity you have shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T09:55:13.013" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10622" CreationDate="2013-06-15T10:23:47.237" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can distinguish two different kinds of doctoral graduate studies in Europe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programs through &quot;graduate colleges&quot; and &quot;graduate schools&quot; with centralized admissions policies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual PhD positions in the research group (or institute, chair, etc.) of an individual professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, everything is essentially along the lines of an application to a US-based graduate program, and letters of recommendation still carry the same weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an individual position, letters of reference may be important, but as you suggested, it depends on the individual professor doing the hiring. For some research groups, the posting of an application is a formality, as they're only interested in hiring &quot;internal&quot; candidates (that is, people who have already worked in the group as bachelor's or master's students, and who thus can be &quot;directly&quot; evaluated). For people doing real searches, however, letters of recommendation are also important, because they can provide information about a candidate's research abilities in a way that is not possible just looking at a transcript or set of certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-15T19:01:36.167" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T19:01:36.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10624" CreationDate="2013-06-15T10:26:36.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to tell if fall grades will be taken into account is to &lt;em&gt;look at the application instructions&lt;/em&gt;. If you see instructions asking you to provide your mid-year grades, then that's a pretty clear indication that they will be taken into account during the admissions process. If you are not asked to submit it, then follow that guideline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt; for whatever reason, I would assume that you should plan as if it were a mandatory submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T10:26:36.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10610" CreationDate="2013-06-15T11:43:37.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is indeed a tricky task, as you are quite correct, many universities won't necessarily publish online and there are scant compilations for course readings specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said that, I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.middleeastpdx.org/resources/other-resources/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Middle Eastern Teaching tools link list&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Portland and &lt;a href=&quot;http://islam.uga.edu/MESCenters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this compilation by a Dr. Alan Godlas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the bottom of the 2nd link is information regarding listserv's which may be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T11:43:37.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10635" CreationDate="2013-06-15T13:47:18.083" Score="7" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is related to Physics research papers, particularly one that will be coming up for my ongoing PhD research (4th paper in all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core part of the research is developing, testing and validating relevant self-written code.  So, my question is how much of the code should be included in the upcoming paper?  Should it be the whole thing, or a written summary of the main components/subroutines used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T15:17:01.033" Title="How much code to include in a Physics paper?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9978" CreationDate="2013-06-15T14:02:55.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When marking exams, I mark question by question, focusing on the requirements of the question.  By doing this, while marking,  don't take heed of whose exam I am marking - just the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T14:02:55.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2013-06-15T14:20:42.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put the current version [of the code] on gist. Providing inputs and gnuplot (matplotlib/whatever) scripts for graph reproduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T14:20:42.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2013-06-15T15:57:20.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would second @NPcompleteUser's answer about having the code and some sort of walkthrough for reproducing your results online. However your question about how much to include in the &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt; is very journal specific. There are a number of publications specifically for computational science with formats where large chunks of code are expected, but if it's a journal whose focus is more on the science than the techniques, I would just describe in words the tricky parts of your algorithm and give a footnote reference to the website where the code lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6820" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T15:57:20.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2013-06-15T19:21:55.660" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the goal of your paper is to show that your code solves a particular problem or performs a specific task, then it is your responsibility to prove to the reviewers that your code does what it claims to do. The easiest way to do this is to include the code as part of the supporting information for your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;reproducibility&lt;/em&gt;—which is what you're asking about, to a certain extent—is a not-so-simple question when it comes to showing codes do what they're supposed to. For instance, a code that runs one way under one configuration may return a slightly (or perhaps _very) different result when run under another configuration. This doesn't mean that one result or the other is wrong—it just means that this behavior needs to be taken into account when evaluating the correctness of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to help this is to provide as much information as possible on your testing environment, so that any differences between the system on wich you were working and the conditions the reviewers and future potential users of your code will have can quickly be identified. This would be included, perhaps, as a text file that accompanies the code in the supporting information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T19:21:55.660" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10637" CreationDate="2013-06-16T08:07:45.387" Score="11" ViewCount="1401" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems quite common for other teachers at my university (in Asia) to have students help with what are the normal duties of a teacher. Examples range from asking a student to help carry one of many stacks of books (because the teacher cannot carry all of them) to asking students to carry very small things (which the teacher could easily carry but the teacher would prefer not to carry anything at all and let the student do it) to having students complete marking sheets for graded assignments (where the teacher has already decided what the marks should be but prefers to have a student do the typing and printing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very strange for me because I've never seen it in my own culture (which doesn't mean it doesn't happen), but I'm not Asian so perhaps I'm just not yet adjusted to the local culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most universities allow a teacher to put some of the teacher's regular duties on the shoulders of some students? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This has nothing to do with teaching assistants, I'm just talking about regular students who appear willing to help (either to learn/understand more, to get in good graces with the teacher, or perhaps for other reasons I cannot see at this time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[EDIT]&lt;/strong&gt; I've modified the questions slightly away from ethics towards being common due to concerns from other users feeling it was too much of a discussion / opinion question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T09:56:55.547" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T21:30:19.150" Title="Is it common to ask students to help the teacher in the teacher's normal duties?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10636" CreationDate="2013-06-16T10:14:27.600" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius&quot;&gt;Confucius&lt;/a&gt; once said (in a rough translation) &quot;It's student's job to serve the teacher when the teacher needs help.&quot; (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.cn/big5/chtwh/ssjz/33-lunyu-weizheng.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; in Chinese)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in most places, where Confucius's principle is still being followed, helping the teacher in his normal duties is considered normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, help marking the sheets is not normal as far as I understand. At least, Confucius never graded his students. He did have comments about his students, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T11:48:57.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T11:48:57.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10636" CreationDate="2013-06-16T10:39:21.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only provide &lt;strong&gt;anecdotal&lt;/strong&gt; value from the 3 european universities I attended up to this date and from what I heard from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not common at all to do this here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would however not be a problem to ask for help &lt;em&gt;occasionally&lt;/em&gt; either. If a professor did this regularly, especially if it would affect the grading process, problems would arise very soon as students would not be fine with this and intervene by talking to other professors or the director etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this can only work in cases where the students massively respect or depend on the professor, right? Because if a professor was known to ask students to help them outside of the classroom, most students would probably have better things to do and find an excuse when asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T10:39:21.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10641" CreationDate="2013-06-16T11:33:08.973" Score="12" ViewCount="7165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my BA thesis in computer science at a larger company and need to reference a confidential statistics report that has been made available to me in my reference list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how does one normally cite a confidential source? I assume you would somehow include the contact details of someone at the company with access to the material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using the Vancouver reference style by the way. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should clarify that the confidential &quot;report&quot; that was made available to me really isn't a report, but rather just raw data. It doesn't have an author or even a title, only site visitor statistics, thereby my confusion on how to reference it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastEditorUserId="7438" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T18:12:20.350" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T18:12:20.350" Title="How to reference confidential data in reference list" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10636" CreationDate="2013-06-16T12:46:22.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is highly unusual for &lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt; to be asked to take part in teaching duties such as the ones you have ascribed. It would be unusual to ask someone to help with &quot;mundane&quot; or &quot;brute force&quot; tasks—although you could see asking anyone to help out in such circumstances, so I wouldn't think much of being asked to move books or other materials, if the individuals just happened to be standing there at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for grading and more &quot;official&quot; tasks, I think it would be &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; inappropriate to ask a student to prepare the list of grades, or to assist in grading, if the student is actively enrolled in the course. That is because you are then placing those students in a position of authority over their fellow students, and potentially creating a conflict of interest. Note that this does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; preclude the use of &quot;graders,&quot; as they are not also enrolled in the class at the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T12:46:22.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10639" CreationDate="2013-06-16T12:49:45.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you do &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; with the confidential data, you should have cleared its use with the company in question. Giving away the data in any form without their express permission could get you into a lot of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if the report containing the data is a internal company technical report, it should be cited as such in a bibliography. This provides enough information for a person to track it down, although you may want to state that it is not available to the general public.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T12:49:45.580" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10639" CreationDate="2013-06-16T16:42:09.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be best to just cite the source as if it were any other reference, then include in your acknowledgements and/or a footnote more details on how you acquired the data and who to contact if it is indeed available to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T16:42:09.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-16T22:47:04.463" Score="9" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have made some research about a computer science topic. The initial idea seemed good, but when I implement the idea; this works in some cases and in some others it does not bring conclusive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write a paper about this subject in particular? I mean, I do not want to hide the bad results. I want to include them, but I feel scared that my paper could not get accepted because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking also to submit it in a not so prestigious conference, but also I do not see any advantage on doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T01:43:41.880" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T01:43:41.880" Title="Half good and some not good results in a research paper?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2013-06-17T02:17:10.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be good to dig a bit deeper and analyze why the idea works in some cases and not in some others.  More than the fact that your idea seems not to work in some cases, a conference PC may be less than impressed by the fact that you have not worked out all its ramifications and clearly identified the structure of the problem for which it is good.  In all CS research conferences and journals of some reasonable quality, it is the responsibility of the author(s) to present ideas as well as to work out their consequences in some depth -- it is in general not acceptable to present a bare idea (or an idea not thought through properly) with the expectation that the audience/readers will take it forward on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presenting more analyses would also make your submission stronger by adding some other theoretical results to the paper.  You could also identify future research directions for addressing the cases not covered by your current work, which could add gravitas to your current paper as well as suggest your own future direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T02:17:10.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10558" CreationDate="2013-06-17T07:13:28.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE said in his comment, you will need to seek permission from the director of the research group - if permission is given, I would suggest to get their input as to how to develop the research into a paper, and even suggest having the director as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T07:13:28.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10647" CreationDate="2013-06-17T09:38:48.713" Score="17" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;My field is atmospheric physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The irony is that I have been a school teacher for over a decade, but soon, I'll be giving a presentation of some of my findings at a conference.  I think that the nerves stem from speaking about my own research in front of my peers - something that I have not done to a large audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions that will no doubt be ask fill me with anticipation in both positive and negative ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asides from being prepared, making sure the presentation is seamless and that I have a good night's sleep beforehand and 'knowing my stuff' inside and out.  What are some strategies to anticipate the type of questions that would likely arise from a conference presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T05:05:09.047" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T05:05:09.047" Title="Overcoming nerves from anticipating conference questions" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2013-06-17T09:54:20.113" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few obvious questions to ask yourself in planning for questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the inherent weaknesses in the current work? (Almost no research is completely &quot;airtight,&quot; so figuring out where the weak spots are will make a difference.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the ramifications of whatever assumptions I have made? Are they logical? What happens if I strengthen, relax, or eliminate some of those assumptions? Will everything still work in the more general (or more restricted) case?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would I apply this work to other problems? How will it help others in the field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, with respect to the presentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have I left anything out in the interests of time that would potentially interest the user? Is the research methodology clear? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's anything in the last point, you may want to plan on having additional &quot;backup&quot; slides which highlight that info, but that aren't part of the &quot;main&quot; talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T09:54:20.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2013-06-17T10:33:05.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One strategy to adopt when answering questions is to first repeat back the essence of the question to the questioner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, you are asking ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will have two effects. Firstly, it ensures that you are actually answering the correct question. Secondly, it will buy you a little bit of time to gather your thoughts and think a bit about an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your time when answering questions, rather than rushing to the first answer that pops into your head. In the end, it is okay to say, &quot;I don't know&quot; or to ask to discuss the question off-line, but the latter can seem like a bit of a cop-out. Try to answer the question, but only if the message is not getting through can you suggest to take it off-line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real key is to practice your presentation extensively. If you deliver a good presentation and you know it, you will feel great and thus comfortable to answer questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T10:33:05.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10650" CreationDate="2013-06-17T12:24:37.223" Score="6" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK a portion, and in some cases all, work is &quot;second marked&quot; where an independent marker also marks the work. In cases where the 1st and 2nd marker disagree, a 3rd marker may be used. Finally, the entire work of each student over the course of his/her studies is evaluated by an exam board with (sometimes) 2 additional independent markers. These exam board markers tend to only consider cases that are on the border of different degree classifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding of statistics, having all of these different markers will regress marks towards the mean. As I am currently faced with the daunting task of 2nd marking a large stack of off topic papers, I am curious what are the advantages of second marking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="6495" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T20:28:07.970" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T20:28:07.970" Title="Advantages of second marking" Tags="&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10649" CreationDate="2013-06-17T13:52:26.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Double marking has many roles, but mostly it is to ensure accuracy and fairness. The main way of achieving this, and avoiding the statistical anomalies alluded to in the comments is to produce an effective marking scheme, so that academics with sufficient background can grade the exam and produce virtually the same grades. &lt;em&gt;Easier said than done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details can be found on the Internet, for example, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swan.ac.uk/registry/academicguide/assessmentandprogress/doublemarkingpolicy/&quot;&gt;Swansea University's website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T13:52:26.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10649" CreationDate="2013-06-17T13:52:36.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will provide some little experience I have had. I am sure details will differ depending on how the system of two graders are set up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the system I experienced it is a custom to have the course responsible plus someone external (in my case even from a different country) do the grading. The grading was completed by having a discussion between the two graders about possible deviations. In the system grades are given as a number between one and six in steps of 0.1, so very detailed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience was actually quite remarkable; it concerned a masters/PhD level course. We were most often within 0.2 of each other except in one case (answer) where one had given a 1 and the other a 6. In that case it turned out the question was ambiguous and could be interpreted in different ways. The grades were basically calculated as the average of both but only after we had discussed the problems/deviations. This is, for example, how we discovered the ambiguous question formulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, albeit miniscule, experience, I felt that the benefit of having two persons grading is that ambiguities in terms of questions and answers can be sorted out. It is also possible to discuss the apropriateness of the interpretations of answers given by students. The method also provides what I can call &quot;legal certainty&quot; since the grades will be based on two persons view rather than one. Of course the degree to which it is certian depends on the transparency of the process and to what extent the two gradings become official. The point in &quot;my&quot; case is that both graders have to agree so it is not signed by just one person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a grader I also appreciated the possibility to discuss the grading and the corrections jointly made were fair and made the process worth while. I would personally like ot see the system used more, but fear it will be difficult from a financial point of view in many universities (-y systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T13:52:36.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10653" CreationDate="2013-06-17T15:00:01.310" Score="26" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working on a cross-disciplinary project, in an increasingly cross-disciplinary field, I often find myself wondering whether or not I am developing skills in multiple different areas of my work. I intend this question to be as general as possible, but for the sake of clarity I will give my case as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a MSc in applied mathematics, and have been working with biomedical research for three years now. Being branded as a &lt;em&gt;bioinformatician&lt;/em&gt; I feel very appreciated on one hand, and absolutely disregarded on the other. In many cases I am expected to learn more of the biology and develop an understanding of &quot;the real science&quot; while all the tools and analysis should just work. I mean many of the seniors have absolutely no idea of the time and effort it takes to develop at software tool, maintain and further develop it. It appears as all that is given once and for all in the engineering school, after all programming is just programming... (please note the sarcasm here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as it may, I have been trying to improve my knowledge and experience in the technical aspects of the work on my own; learning new algorithms, new languages, new tools... It is surprisingly hard to get accustomed to these when you are not in the university anymore. Consequently, I have given up on learning Maven for my Java projects, or Perl for speeding up my day-to-day scripting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is; what are good methods for learning or developing techniques that are not immediately in the scope of your project but is still very relevant in your development as a scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow up question: am I mistaken in thinking that I should develop a broad set of skills in order to become as efficient and competent as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="27515" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T13:51:01.363" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:51:01.363" Title="Ways of developing non-core skills during PhD studies?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10652" CreationDate="2013-06-17T15:30:16.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goodness, but this is a tough one.  We all learn and maintain our skills in our own unique way.  Especially in industry or when operating independently, so it's difficult to say what would work for you.  I'm in a similar situation except that I'm a developer first and I've been tasked with 'just making security happen'.   Much like with you and bio-med, there is an awful lot that is changing in the landscape of info-sec and staying sharp in both domains is a real challenge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said; your mileage will vary but here are some techniques that work for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find overlapping areas:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When I started to move toward developing a new aspect of my skill set I looked for areas where the old and the new overlap.  Luckily for me; this was a pretty easy thing to do with infosec and software development.  The benefit here is that it allows you to leverage your existing skills in a new area.  If can can find areas where you can turn two jobs into one you can ease your way into it, rather than just sitting down one weekend and deciding &quot;I'm going to learn X.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sit down one weekend and decide &quot;I'm going to learn X.&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Sometimes there is no easy overlap to ease your way into a new tech or topic. In those cases I've found that a couple of days in power study mode can be a real benefit.  Strap on the headphones, coffee up it that's your thing, and just read the literature &amp;amp; work problems.  If it's tech then do tutorials.  If it's topic then vacuum up as much as you can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find mentors:&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe you can't find the all encompassing guru of everything you want to do, but that's OK.  Someday that guru will be you.  In the meantime find people with expertise in your subject areas to help you fill in the gaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it fun:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If at all possible and whenever possible. If you hate what you're doing then you're not going to do it well. At least that has been my experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't give in to the temptation to 'dumb it down':&lt;/strong&gt;  You're a smart person.  You've taken the time to learn a new skill. You've actually read the materials.  You work hard to develop and maintain a system that crosses a number of subject matter domains.  Don't let people off easy when they ask hard questions; give them hard answers.  My approach is to ask them 'do you want an answer or a response?'  If all they want is a response that's OK. I give them a short and succinct response.  If they want an answer then I do my best to provide the most exhaustive and thorough explanation of what I do, that I can.  When I work hard to learn a new skill I don't need to show it off but I won't let it be taken for granted either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's what I've got. All the best to you in your endeavors. If you ever need Java help feel free to grab me on chat and I'll get you an email address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T15:30:16.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2013-06-17T17:58:04.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to strategies for anticipating questions, I thought it would be helpful to suggest how to cope with the nerves. I find that it sometimes helps to remind yourself a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that you have been working and thinking about your specific question probably more than most people hearing the talk - they are just hearing about your work for the first time. Even if there are important and smart people in the audience, &lt;strong&gt;you are the expert on your work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personally, I find that I am similarly anxious before giving talks regarding my work. However, it somehow always plays out fine - the atmosphere is usually relaxed and the questions tend to be either simple clarifications or interesting discussions. I suspect I am not the only person who experiences this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T17:58:04.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10652" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:25:40.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some methods I have found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking courses in the field you want to learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning from books in the field you want to learn. Best done in a learning group of people with a similar background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with experts in the field you want to learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking on research projects in the field you want to learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that your PhD is the best time to gain this knowledge - later you will be much more busy with other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, bioinformatics and computational biology is a bit of an odd field because you need to know math, biology, chemistry, physics and computer science (I won't detail all the subfields, but there are dozens). My point is that this is a HUGE field - don't expect to be an expert in every possible aspect. Instead, it is better to find a niche which you enjoy and become an expert there - but always keep your mind open to learning new things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T18:25:40.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10652" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:03:20.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding from &quot;I am not in the uni anymore&quot; phrase is that you work in some of sort of industry or semi-academic environment. If that is indeed the case, you are probably filling in time sheets for you work; if that is the case, you should be telling your superiors, &quot;&lt;em&gt;This feature that you requested requires 10 hours of immediate development, and another 20 hours to test it properly. How high do you want me to put it on the priority list?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; It is unfortunately a little late for you to start talking like that, as you have been used as an ultimate programmer-who-can-code-anything-without-any-problem for three years now. But you can also bring it up in the sense that &quot;&lt;em&gt;I am getting a variety of requests that I must process one by one&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and then put the feature value-vs-development time trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are asking, actually, is even more advanced: you need to reneg for some 5-10% of your time to be spent on professional development so that you can continue improving as the applied mathematician on the job. Again, you can say that this process will eventually pay off as you will do things on the projects faster. That's a tough sell given that your time is needed for actual research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to ask something like that on the &quot;main&quot; StackOverflow website: how people continue training themselves on the job. In an academic setting, you as a student could just commit yourself to write your next thing (be that a research publication or a term paper) using the new tool. In a production environment, you don't have that luxury of being able to make some errors and give yourself some time to recover from them. So once again, that's tough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T20:03:20.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2013-06-18T01:53:25.590" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to remember that a paper is supposed to make some kind of contribution. It's not merely a report on &quot;things you did&quot;. So if you have some good results and some inconclusive results, what's the contribution ? As sr3u says, you need to work out what's going on and come up with some answers. It's entirely possible that you fail in this endeavour and end up with NO paper. That's not fun, but it's something that you must accept as a possibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T01:53:25.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10716" CreationDate="2013-06-18T02:55:15.363" Score="11" ViewCount="1572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to be a senior undergraduate and am looking to really find the area of research that I would like to be engaged in during graduate-school/senior year. I have submitted one conference paper as a collaborating author (currently waiting for the reviewers) in the area of Social Network Analysis (mathematical modeling) and am currently working on a conference paper in Graph Algorithms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might guess, I am double majoring in Math and Computer Science and would like to pursue a graduate degree in applied math. So far (I haven't taken all the undergrad courses yet!) I have enjoyed Algorithms, Real Analysis, Graph Theory and Differential Equations. In the future I am curious to learn more about Stochastic Modeling, Mathematical Logic, Artificial Intelligence, Complex Analysis, Fractals and Abstract Algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where can I find current research journals about both the topics I have enjoyed and the topics I am curious to learn more about?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do any journals have mobile apps (IOS, Android, or Windows) in which they can be viewed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where can I find unbiased information about the quality and related-data about journals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Do any journals &quot;stream&quot; (RSS feed) to GNU Emacs? or is there any type of package manager that will automatically download the latest publications? For example, I just found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MitAiMemos&quot;&gt;&quot;package/program&quot;&lt;/a&gt; available in GNU Emacs. It is a list of AI publications from MIT up until 2005 (why would they stop then?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all the help! I am at least looking for a copy of a physical journal so I can take my eyes off the computer for a little bit! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T08:20:52.733" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T11:29:09.413" Title="How can a senior undergraduate find academic journals in math and computer science?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10668" CreationDate="2013-06-18T07:26:36.867" Score="19" ViewCount="6472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encounter this term &quot;principled approach&quot; in some &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=principled+approach&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;amp;as_sdtp=on&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt; of computer science. Since I' m not a native speaker, I don' t quite understand what this means. And I didn' t find any results online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I' m not sure if this site is appropriate for such questions. Please let me know if I posted at the wrong place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7237" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T14:04:46.213" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T16:37:57.383" Title="What does &quot;principled approach&quot; mean in papers?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10649" CreationDate="2013-06-18T10:43:05.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the other answers, I don't think it is an issue of regression to the mean (in the sense that the mean is the mean of all the students in the module). It is an issue of finding the true quality of the student's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current university we do sampling in that one marker will check maybe 1/3 of another marker's work. The point here is clearly not to catch every mistake a marker might make but rather to check for signs of abuse of power. Because everyone marking knows that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of their marks will be checked by another is supposed to keep the original marker from giving inappropriately high or low grades to any students, since the marker does not know which of the marks will be checked (admins actually do the selection of the sample).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked at other universities where all work is double marked and in this case my experience is similar to Peter Jansson's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, as I see it, the purpose of double marking (whether full or sampling) is to simply make sure that the student is getting marked fairly. Unfair marks can happen with intent (bad marker) or on accident (marker interpreting an ambiguous question differently from the student).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T10:43:05.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10652" CreationDate="2013-06-18T10:59:54.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am in a very much similar situation as you, doing a PhD in physics - however, there is strong connections to biology, photography and signal processing - but very specific topics therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of methods that I use on top of what has been mentioned are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Join stack exchanges, forums and discussion groups of similar topics&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set myself challenges to determine something new, partly relevant to my studies, but also to build my skills in that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attending conferences, workshops and seminars (as many as time and funds allow).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But one main method that seems to work particularly well is setting up 'Google alerts' of specific topics - I always have a great reading list.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T10:59:54.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10660" CreationDate="2013-06-18T18:18:10.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I am in mathematics, but similar language is used roughly similarly, I believe.) As a place-holder answer: a &quot;principled&quot; approach in science is at least &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; to a quick-and-dirty, or &lt;em&gt;ad&lt;/em&gt; _hoc_, or &quot;kludge-y&quot; approach, the latter three synonymous expressions meaning that the priority is getting &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; result out, perhaps even finding some rationalization for the conclusion one &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously a non-principled approach more lends itself to corrupted (but also quick, desired, easy) results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;principled&quot; approach &quot;takes the high road&quot;, does not bias conclusions, does not rationalize-away weaknesses or flaws in methodology or information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, one could hope that a &quot;principled&quot; approach involves &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; conflict of interest for the parties involved, and could be trusted. At its worst, &quot;unprincipled&quot; approaches (which no one would ever admit to, except perhaps as a mildly perverse claim to fresh unorthodoxy) produce completely untrustworthy outcomes, because those outcomes are chosen in advance, and whatever results are obtained are &quot;interpreted&quot; to support the original premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hilarious example I witnessed was a computer science M.S. (details elided to protect privacy), on which I was an &quot;outside examiner&quot;, in which &quot;the goal&quot; was to prove that two bunches of events were correlated, thus proving that the people who were promoting the one as &quot;cause&quot; of the other were right, and people should invest in their product. (Nevermind that correlation is not causality.) The guy failed to find any correlation in any of the first twenty or so statistical tests he applied... but he kept at it, until he found a statistical test that &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; seem to assert a slight correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what he had &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; proven was that there was apparently no correlation... but, taking an &quot;unprincipled&quot; approach, claimed the opposite of what his own evidence showed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T18:18:10.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10660" CreationDate="2013-06-18T18:23:44.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 'principled approach', at least the way that I've been exposed to this term, implies due care and diligence with regards to the rigor and discipline used in the materials context. A paper that describes a principled approach would be one that is presenting a procedure for the execution or evaluation of a given subject matter. For example, if I picked up a paper titled 'A principled approach to algorithm selection and implementation' then I would expect the contents of that paper to clearly enumerate a system of algorithm analysis, with exhaustive supporting documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, a paper which uses a principled approach would be one that follows such a detailed and rigorous methodology that the data collected from its research may be considered to be functionally with out bias and with a low probability of corruption or inaccuracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="5760" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T16:37:57.383" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T16:37:57.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-06-19T00:16:20.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listing &quot;prestigious&quot; societies like Phi Beta Kappa or Tau Beta Pi is perfectly acceptable. While it probably won't do a whole lot of good, it also won't do any harm. Do avoid listing any societies where you have to pay dues or pay to be inducted: they are a double-whammy since they give the perception that 1) you are padding your CV with inconsequential honors, and 2) are exhibiting poor judgment by paying to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T00:16:20.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-19T00:30:13.360" Score="51" ViewCount="13681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read at least one career advice essay that calls out asking your PhD students to call you by your first name as unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My coworkers and I always called our PhD advisor by his first name, and a graduate student calling &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; professor by their last name, much less their own advisor, strikes my sensibilities as quaint and old-fashioned (undergraduates are a different story, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the standard practice for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T18:37:39.577" LastActivityDate="2020-08-25T09:05:16.957" Title="Should your PhD students call you by your first name?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2013-06-19T01:10:38.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the questions you'll receive will either 1) ask for clarification about your methodology/results, or 2) suggest avenues of future work. Questions of the first kind are usually very easy (presumably you did the research and know the answer ;) ) and the second kind can be very helpful for identifying new research directions and collaborators! If you've already thought about the proposed direction, obviously chip in any insights you might have, but if not, &quot;that's an interesting suggestion, and something I'd be interested in looking at in future work&quot; is all you really need to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only a few realistic ways the Q&amp;amp;A session can go off of the rails. You might get questions like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How does your work compare to [Foo et al 2003]&quot; (you have no idea who Foo is or what his method does)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Does your work account for (some factor you don't understand)?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How might your work apply to (some area you know nothing about)?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fall into the trap of feeling that you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; know the answer, and that admitting ignorance is embarrassing... but the worst thing you can do is to bluff or make stuff up. If people &quot;smell blood in the water&quot; and get the impression that you are being misleading, they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; come back with even more hostile questions. Instead, remember that you are in control of the conversation, and hold the ultimate trump:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Unfortunately I'm not familiar offhand with the method of Foo et al, but I'd be happy to chat with you offline about it after the session.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I don't know offhand, but I'd be happy to chat more offline.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with (area X), but I'd love to talk to you later about possible applications of my work there.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T01:10:38.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2013-06-19T04:38:57.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like the fundamental question here is that of whether or not your current feelings are part of a typical grad student &quot;phase&quot; or indicative of misaligned life goals, priorities, etc. on a much deeper level. Ultimately, a question you'll have to answer on your own and most likely by trusting your gut and intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many reasons why you might be feeling the way you do now. From your description it's clear that you started the PhD process knowing you were accepting less than ideal conditions in some areas of your life with the understanding that these would be offset by other benefits. You might be more or less ambivalent about some of those benefits now that you're in the process, and the tradeoffs and benefits would certainly change if you were to switch sides and leave the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest assuming, for the time being, that one-year-ago you made a well educated calculation of the costs-benefits of the PhD program, in particular with a time horizon greater than 5 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying in the program then means trusting in the vision of one-year-ago you in that the long-term benefits to your life outweigh the immediate suffering (including the less than ideal use of your skills and the momentary loss of passion). On the other hand, your valuation of the tradeoffs and benefits of the PhD may have changed more than you expected, in particular with respect to your relationship or your connection to the research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to know this, in short, is to trust yourself. If your current path is just &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; for you -- if you feel you're compromising some fundamental part of yourself -- then trust that feeling. Otherwise, trust your prior vision: accept that your feelings are part of the PhD journey and trust that you'll find your passion again soon (when you stop putting pressure on yourself to find it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thought that might really be the crux of the issue is that getting a PhD is a highly individualistic and very lonely experience. &lt;a href=&quot;http://public.randomnotes.org/richard/PhDtalk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Richard Butterworth has a talk&lt;/a&gt; that really drove this home in which he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A PhD, by its very nature, is a very individualistic venture. ... The next big surprise for people who are starting PhDs after an undergraduate degree is just how excrutiatingly lonely a PhD is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7444" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T04:38:57.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10671" CreationDate="2013-06-19T05:58:26.360" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always have my students call me by my first (given) name. Currently, I'm teaching in Asia and the students have the local custom of calling everyone as Mr. Givenname or Miss Givenname (yes, even if she is married - strange, I know). This is completely different from my native culture but I bring my culture with me...for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no desire to introduce the formality of calling me in any sort of official way. I feel it distracts from the importance of focusing on the matter of education. As long as my students do not refer to me in a rude way, I'm quite flexible. I do, however, encourage (without insisting) them to use simply my first name, without any title, rank, or any other identifier. This is true not only for my graduate students but for my undergraduate students as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others in my departments, most notably Asian teachers, do prefer to have the greater level of formality. To each their own. It really does come back to culture. For me, I allow my students to follow which ever culture they prefer, but I do let them I know I don't want formalities to interfere with the educational process in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T05:58:26.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10671" CreationDate="2013-06-19T09:22:31.920" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely a local practice. Here in Germany, it is not standard that &lt;em&gt;colleagues&lt;/em&gt; call each other by their first names without specific invitation to do so. However, in other institutes, it is now standard policy that everybody refers to each other by their first name. So what is considered acceptable varies very much from location to location and group to group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within my own group, my undergraduate students tend to call me &quot;Professor,&quot; while the graduate students and postdocs call me by my first name. This seems to me to be a reasonable balance—but I wouldn't really have a problem if an undergraduate who's worked for me for a while calls me by my first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A graduate student who isn't in my group, however, should not automatically expect to call me by my first name in an initial email. That would be rather presumptuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T09:22:31.920" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10671" CreationDate="2013-06-19T10:15:00.390" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a PhD is essentially an apprenticeship in academic research, so they should be treated as a colleague in potential (it seems normal practice for an RA to refer to their supervisor by their first name).  Also I think it is a bad idea for researchers to be overly formal and deferential towards their supervisors; if you ware working at the cutting edge of your subject, not all of your ideas will be good ones, and the PhD student should feel comfortable pointing out where they feel this is the case.  This sort of self-skepticism (being comfortable with the idea of being wrong occasionally) is a key component of being a good scientist, and it seems to me to be difficult to communicate this by example if the student is constantly reminded of their place in the hierarchy by making them call me &quot;Dr Marsupial&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T10:15:00.390" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2013-06-19T10:26:44.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing the answer to a difficult question; if we know the answers to all the questions, then by definition it isn't research.  Being comfortable with not knowing the answer should help with nerves.  The questions are generally asked out of genuine interest, rather than as a test, so the person asking the question is not necessarily expecting you to have a good answer anyway. User168715's suggestion (+1) of saying &quot;I don't know offhand, but I'd be happy to chat more off-line&quot; is a good one&quot;, and is a good way of exchanging ideas with others interested in the same sorts of work as yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T10:26:44.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10671" CreationDate="2013-06-19T10:54:48.053" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall a teacher of mine saying : &quot;Dealing with different cultures is dealing with different expectations&quot;, and calling someone by his title or his first name is definitely related to customs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a French (from Chinese parents) student myself, I have never called my teachers/professors by their first names, but things tend to change just as customs evolve. Maybe it is because of my chinese backgrounds, which implies a strong use of titles (even for family members) that is explained by the importance of respect for the elders in the society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I got to study in Oslo for a few months, and people explicitly asked me to call them by their first names, which I did later. However, it still feels akward for me to call someone by his first name when he is &quot;much&quot; more older than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what I do is that I say &quot;Monsieur&quot; or &quot;Madame&quot;, and use the first name if I am invited to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastEditorUserId="7357" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T15:34:46.047" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T15:34:46.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10690" CreationDate="2013-06-19T13:16:18.283" Score="7" ViewCount="2252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that 20 hours/week when school is in session and 40 hours when school is out is the legal maximum working hour for international full-time students in United States. I was wondering whether this also holds for students other than international students. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/ftsplink.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; of U.S. Department of Labor mentions the same, but it is not clear whether it holds for all. Here is the extract from the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Full-Time Student Program&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This program is for full-time students employed in retail or service stores, agriculture, or colleges and universities. The employer that hires students can obtain a certificate from the Department of Labor which allows the student to be paid not less than 85% of the minimum wage. The certificate also limits the hours that the student may work to 8 hours in a day and no more than 20 hours a week when school is in session and 40 hours when school is out, and requires the employer to follow all child labor laws. Once students graduate or leave school for good, they must be paid at least the federal minimum wage.&#xA;There are some limitations on the use of the full-time student program...&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7469" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T16:59:19.150" Title="Restriction on working hours for full-time students" Tags="&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10689" CreationDate="2013-06-19T15:03:21.363" Score="6" ViewCount="3012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergrad student who is interested in pursuing a Masters degree in complexity science/complex systems in the U.S. I know some schools put this program under physics, math or computer science departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know which schools that provide such a program. Unlike physics, maths or cs programs, it is not straight-forward to find out such a list. Any recommendations on how to get a complete list of schools that provide a masters degree in complexity science/complex systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T15:14:27.130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T04:33:13.950" Title="How to search for graduate schools that have Masters in Complexity Science/Complex Systems?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10688" CreationDate="2013-06-19T16:38:04.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try looking at speakers from conferences dealing with complex systems, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eccs13.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European Conference on Complex Systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://netsci2013.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NetSci&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also search for other conferences (e.g. at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conference-service.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.conference-service.com&lt;/a&gt;) and then check the speakers. Furthermore, looking at affiliations from recent (say - last few years) papers you like my lead to some good trails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to webpages being hubs from complex systems, try looking at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.complexssociety.eu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.complexssociety.eu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.network-science.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.network-science.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some positions (including doctoral programs) and other resources are at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barabasilab.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.barabasilab.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some group websites are in my collections of links (Delicious: &lt;a href=&quot;https://delicious.com/stared/complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;complexity&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://delicious.com/stared/networks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;networks&lt;/a&gt; or search at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pinboard.in/search/u%3apmigdal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my Pinboard&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T11:13:36.270" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T11:13:36.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10686" CreationDate="2013-06-19T16:59:19.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The extract you have linked is specifically for a program that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/q-a.htm&quot;&gt;exempts employers from paying the full minimum wage&lt;/a&gt;. There is, in principle, no &lt;em&gt;law&lt;/em&gt; stating that students can only work 20 hours per week when school is in session. In fact, it's quite the opposite—students can work as many hours as they would like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible for universities to place conditions on financial aid recipients that they not work more than some number of hours per week, and in general it's not really that smart of an idea to be studying full-time and working full-time on top of that. And the university may also have limits on what students can do with on-campus student aide positions, whether or not they are on financial aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as the US government is concerned? I don't think they really care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T16:59:19.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10658" CreationDate="2013-06-19T19:17:11.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree that you should mostly be ignoring journals and focusing on conferences, as they publish the majority of new computer science research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/?SearchDomain=2&amp;amp;entitytype=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to go to get an &lt;em&gt;approximate&lt;/em&gt; listing of the top conferences for each sub-field of computer science. Other fields other than Computer Science are listed there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your school's network to access the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM Digital Library&lt;/a&gt; (this should be free through your school's library), and download the proceedings for the conferences in the past year or two. Find the papers that look interesting to you and then search for them on Google Scholar. You can print them out if you prefer hard copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7474" LastEditorUserId="7474" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T16:47:37.450" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T16:47:37.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10698" CreationDate="2013-06-20T03:03:58.457" Score="25" ViewCount="13629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to have a section titled 'Awards/Honors' in my CV and I am confused about how much detail to include for the items in this section. Here are some formats and levels of detail I am considering: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry Potter scholarship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter scholarship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter scholarship: awarded to one student every year for demonstrated excellence in horcrux-gathering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For certain things, I feel like the first does not include enough context, beyond some very well-known things (such as a Fulbright or Goldwater, neither of which I have received). For some particular names I have in mind the second looks pretty clunky and does not always fit on a single line. The third option is even clunkier, and might be perceived as an attempt to add fluff to inflate the CV. I am personally leaning towards the second option, but I don't know that it adds much value beyond the first option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an accepted way to list awards/scholarships? Should I even be listing them at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some context.&lt;/strong&gt; I am a PhD student in Mathematics and I will be on the academic job market this coming year. I am currently based in the US and intend to apply to jobs here as well as internationally if I find any that are interesting. I am wondering both about the CV I keep that lives on my professional website and the one I hope to send as part of my job applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add&lt;/strong&gt;: The first couple of answers suggest that one might choose the format/level of detail based on the type/prestige of award. If I were reading a CV and came across inconsistent formatting within a section, I would find it quite jarring. Is this something that only worries someone mildly-OCD such as myself (I notice things like en-dashes and em-dashes) and therefore perhaps to not be worried about, or should I be careful about such things (e.g. consistency of formatting) when creating a CV? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="948" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T14:23:07.293" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T19:42:10.890" Title="How much detail to include for an award listed on a CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10692" CreationDate="2013-06-20T04:56:48.360" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;amount of detail&lt;/strong&gt; you give should be &lt;strong&gt;proportional to the award's prestige&lt;/strong&gt;.  So for example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were recognized as an &quot;excellent&quot; teacher, among a list of 100s at your university, that's worth mentioning, but it gets formatted as option 1.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you won a best student paper award, that probably gets option 2.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you won &quot;best PhD thesis in your department&quot; from a department with more than say 10 graduates each year, that might merit option 3, although it's likely to fit easily in format 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you won a prize from a professional society (awarded to very few each year), that might merit option 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T04:56:48.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11051" CreationDate="2013-06-20T08:37:16.667" Score="14" ViewCount="884" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are accepted ways of splitting publication fees among coauthors, when authors are from different research groups and potentially even different institutions? Especially with open access publication, the fees tend to come out at a substantial amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the corresponding author seems to be responsible to the journal for the payment of the fee. I wonder what would be commonly acceptable agreements with coauthors to split such fees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is already a general question on splitting collaboration costs &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5177/how-to-organize-a-joint-collaboration-plan-and-fees&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but the current answer does not apply to publication fees, and I am really interested in this specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:46:46.360" Title="Splitting publication fees among coauthors" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10692" CreationDate="2013-06-20T12:52:49.710" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will disagree with Dan C's answer above and state that you should only be choosing between options 2 and 3. At the very minimum, you want to indicate &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; gave you the award. Otherwise, it's not all that valuable to the reviewer of your CV, as they may not know whether an award is a big deal or not. If it's a major award, I'd default to option 3 if it's &quot;non-obvious&quot; how it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in general, I'd opt for option number 2, unless there's some specific information that needs to be shared, in which case I'd go for number 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T12:52:49.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10692" CreationDate="2013-06-20T15:01:20.517" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go so far as to give the opposite of Dan C's advice: the more prestigious the award, the less detail you need to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you won the NSF fellowship or the Hertz, or got best paper at your national conference, everyone will understand what the award is and its significance, and belaboring the point has the risk of looking desperate or inexperienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other had, if you won your department's annual [famous former faculty] Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching, the award is still worth listing and you should include at least that much information on the CV. Assume nobody is going to take the time to Google your awards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, as my rule of thumb, that each award should fit on one line. If explaining an award's significance requires more than one line, that is a red flag that perhaps the award is not pulling its weight. Understating your accomplishments and aggressive mediocrity will both kill your chances in the job market, but in my opinion the latter is the most dangerous of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T15:01:20.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-20T16:37:07.543" Score="17" ViewCount="21830" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that I publish many papers in many journals and someday I changed the family name (my last name). How can I edit that where my papers have been published? and is it easy process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:02:53.190" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T10:28:24.527" Title="How to edit name on existing publications after a name change?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10700" CreationDate="2013-06-20T19:06:45.933" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that you can't easily change the name on a published article. Publishing is (at least theoretically) still done on print, so there is simply no way to change the physical journal once it has been sent to university libraries all over the world. Even for more important issues such as plagiarism or factually incorrect data, only an errata is issued, or the paper is marked as &quot;retracted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do instead is advertising the double name on your webpage and CV, and ensuring that the academic databases (such as Web of Science and Scopus) correctly recognize and handle your name change, marking all of your papers as written by a single author. You will probably need to notify them using the &quot;contact us&quot; functions on their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several authors in the same situation choose to keep the old name also on new papers; this makes it simpler for other researchers to recognize you, at the price of using a name that you might have disowned and now consider a relic from the past. In practice, there is no requirement that your academical &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; coincides with the one that is written on your ID and that you use on legal papers, so you are free to sign your papers using a different version of it. Once you choose this route, however, it will be more practical if you consistently use the old name also when attending conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are simply getting married, then signing your papers with both surnames is probably the easiest option. (I realize that probably you have already considered and discarded this option, but I thought it more appropriate to include it in my answer anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T07:20:53.673" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T07:20:53.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10692" CreationDate="2013-06-20T19:42:10.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You got good answers. I just want to add that it is usually a good idea to list the relevant year(s). I typically use this format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mickey Mouse Prize. Institute of Advanced Cartoons. 2010. Extra comments if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T19:42:10.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10707" CreationDate="2013-06-20T23:23:08.207" Score="12" ViewCount="1291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate math major at a small state university in the US. Our math department has about 20 tenured/tenure-track faculty, including applied mathematicians and statisticians. We have only 3 current NSF grants, two in statistics and one in biomathematics. According to MathSciNet, only 4 of our faculty have published something this year. Additionally, our current department head mainly does applied interdisciplinary research, but I suppose it is not rare for math department heads to be in some kind of applied math field. To be fair, my university was founded less than 50 years ago, but I still want my department to become better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I could do as an undergrad to help improve my department? It's hard to say exactly what would make my department &quot;better&quot;, but to be somewhat vague, I would consider research productivity and funding to be important factors to improve on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5985" LastEditorUserId="5985" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T02:13:05.043" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T03:01:14.170" Title="How might I improve my math department as an undergrad?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2013-06-21T03:01:14.170" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything I could do as an undergrad to help improve my department? It's hard to say exactly what would make my department &quot;better&quot;, but to be somewhat vague, I would consider research productivity and funding to be important factors to improve on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's not much you can do as an undergraduate to help improve research productivity or funding.  It's not clear whether the department wants to improve in these ways, or should want to: there's nothing wrong with focusing on teaching.  Even if the faculty do want to become more research active, or the administration wants them to, it's not easy and there's little you can do to make it easier.  I'd be careful with how you frame things, since you could easily cause hurt feelings by giving your professors the impression that you consider them substandard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of focusing on what might improve the department in some abstract sense, I'd focus on what would create a stimulating, exciting environment for the current students.  You don't want to be too demanding, and some things just might not be feasible, but it can't hurt to ask what could be possible and what it would take to make it happen.  You could look into various sorts of activities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advanced courses or independent study.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate research supervised by faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Informal mathematical activities: math club, Mathematical Association of America student chapter, Putnam team, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of these things are regularly available, then your department is doing pretty well.  Otherwise, you could try to initiate or reinvigorate some of them.  You aren't likely to get clubs or courses for just one student, so you'll probably have to gather some other enthusiastic students.  This may be the biggest way you could contribute, as a catalyst to bring together a group of students the department hadn't realized wanted or needed these activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T03:01:14.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10688" CreationDate="2013-06-21T04:33:13.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.santafe.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Santa Fe Institute&lt;/a&gt; doesn't have a Master program, it has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/events/workshops/index.php/Complex_Systems_Summer_School_2013_%28CSSS%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Complex System Course&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1353" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T04:33:13.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-06-21T16:09:41.497" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a shaky ground, as a bizzare negative rating of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10602/739&quot;&gt;Doug Spoonwood's answer&lt;/a&gt; shows. A entirely positive (in the sense of only trying to come up with a meaningful psychological theory; an economics term here) &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080130023006/http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;speech by Larry Summers&lt;/a&gt;, then President of Harvard, at NBER conference that promoted gender equality, costed him his presidency... not because he was biased, but simply because the bloody journalists highlighting the event had no clue about math. His argument was very simple: if we look at IQ curves, we see that females have an average IQ about the same or higher than males, and about 20% lower standard deviation. Mother Nature plays conservatively with females while experimenting on males throwing their abilities around. Whichever of these experimental traits the females find attractive in males are worth retaining through natural selection. So if we look at IQ&gt;80 or IQ&gt;100, we see more females; but at top 5% of the IQ distribution (115 or 120-ish on IQ scale), the ratio is roughly 2 males : 1 female. University professors are likely to be even higher on the IQ scales, probably circa 140+, at which point the ratio may be 5:1 (although of course the quality of the normal approximation in the tails becomes VERY questionable). Other examples Summers gave were underrepresentation of Jews in farming and agriculture, and of whites in the National Basketball Association (which may have to do with biological differences in genetic makeup for height, as well as how the proteins are being processed and muscles are built, between races).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all likelihood, conditional on having received a Ph.D. (probability theory term here), there is little difference between males and females in ability to produce meaningful research. Success in academia is dictated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19070437&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other personal traits&lt;/a&gt;. They are &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=gender+and+personality+traits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;correlated with gender&lt;/a&gt;, although again conditioning on high IQ/having finished a Ph.D. may change that correlation structure a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Economists argue for distinguishing between the equality of outcomes and equality of opportunities. Do Nordic countries show greater equality of income because they redistribute more, or because they provide better equality of opportunities? &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2008.00289.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Read here&lt;/a&gt;. Is stunning income inequality in Brazil the result of discrimination, differential &quot;circumstances&quot;, or what? &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=497242&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Read here&lt;/a&gt;. Academia, as any other walk of life, should strive to create equality of opportunities; equality of outcomes may or may not follow, depending on whether the individual traits are correlated with whatever we are trying to equate (gender, hair color, height, language spoken at home, etc.). Forcing equality of outcomes will aggravate those who have benign better abilities and make people of lesser abilities lose incentives to strive to do better. (Been there in the Soviet Union, done that, trust me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one claims that &quot;women are better teachers than researchers&quot;, just ask: &quot;Hm. That's an interesting observation. We are both scientists; can you give me some references to any peer-reviewed literature on this?&quot; (note that I gave mine above :) ). If they can't, that's a biased accusation you can go with to your superiors (chair, dean, university president). Just like drivers found guilty driving under influence, and undergoing humiliating driving clinics, whoever makes such claims should be made to go the literature on the cross of psychology, sociology, gender studies and labor markets to dig into the issue -- who cares if they are good in math, if they have big mouth, they should learn to control it. Join your local committee on women in faculty, or whatever the name of that could be in your university to make sure you know the ways that the university can protect you against sexism, and make good use of what you learn there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T19:09:43.703" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10711" CreationDate="2013-06-22T00:55:31.083" Score="40" ViewCount="11890" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this is too long a post, but I could really do with a few&#xA;pointers about my current situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am 25 years old and I will complete &lt;strong&gt;4 years&lt;/strong&gt; of my PhD in a computational applied mathematics  program in the US in August 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My bachelors was in pure mathematics.  I had gotten interested in numerical analysis in that time and so I had applied to my current PhD program. I have been under my adviser for 3 years now (the first year at my university is spent in coursework).  A PhD at my university is usually 5 years long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I have &lt;strong&gt;almost nothing&lt;/strong&gt; to report in the way of research, and consequently no publications , no conference submissions. I am getting increasingly nervous and frustrated about whether or not I will make it, &lt;strong&gt;even&lt;/strong&gt; if I give myself an extra year by funding myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser has consistently been making me work on uninteresting stuff, where most of the work involved is purely technical like writing brain-dead code, with almost zero chance for innovation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;BREAKDOWN OF MY PHD&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After monkeying around reading research papers, in the &lt;strong&gt;first year&lt;/strong&gt; under my adviser,  he got very confident about getting an industrial project and got me working on that, in anticipation that the contract would go through. At the end of the year we found out that we did not get the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;second year&lt;/strong&gt;, he said he wanted to get into GPU parallel computing &#xA;and to implement a few fluid dynamics algorithms. I slogged over many manuals, spent months and months writing and debugging code, all the time thinking that &#xA;this would be used to do some simulations he was interested in and get them published. But at the end of the second year my professor completely lost interest in these numerical techniques he was making my implement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing his capricious attitude, I almost wanted to quit then and there itself. But I decided to just stick it out, thinking it might be 'just a phase'.  Due to funding issues, he once more got me working in the &lt;strong&gt;third year&lt;/strong&gt; on another project which essentially involved writing a lot of stupid code, and running endless benchmark tests.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have basically ended up trying to do a PhD in mathematics without any mathematics in this PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a couple of weeks back, I told him that I had had enough, and to give me some actual &#xA;problems/material to work with. After about an hour of discussion, and informing him that I was ready to fund my self if required, he finally gave me a couple of possible starting points for what I hope would actually turn out to be worthwhile research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;MY QUESTIONS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do realize it was &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; foolish waiting for so long before putting my foot down, and not having the courage to speak up before. My adviser is well-regarded by colleagues in his field, and maybe I was subconsciously scared of &#xA;contradicting his handling of my PhD for pissing him off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even though he has now suggested problems which do seem interesting, after having had so many negative experiences  I am very skeptical about the future. How should I proceed, and what are the factors I should consider ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I am feeling very burned out.  In the way of future plans, I have been toying with the idea of dropping out,  getting a break for a few months and then sitting for some entrance exams for a Masters in Economics in some good universities back in my home country. I always found economics very interesting through my undergrad and more so these past few-months while studying it has a hobby.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Continuing would require me to stay on for an extra year till August 2015, &#xA;which leaves me &lt;strong&gt;about 17 months tops&lt;/strong&gt; from now, before I start hunting in academic job market. This includes about 2-3 months I will have to spend doing literature review on the proposed topics and learning the requisite mathematical tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I decide to stay on, how should I re-structure my study/research time and the relationship with my adviser in these 17 months so that I can make some head-way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe 17 months is too short a time? Any suggestions would be really helpful !!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7489" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T03:03:25.630" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T07:43:31.633" Title="To stay or leave PhD after having completed 4 years" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2013-06-22T01:35:04.060" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, no apology needed, your question is thorough and easy to read and understand.  It sounds like you are in quite an unpleasant situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take any advice I may give as gospel, but in answer to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are most certainly &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; foolish to wait until now to stand up to your advisor, you have had several leads and have given many chances for the project to kick into gear. You have every right and reason to feel skeptical about the current promises and project direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, how you proceed is up to you (you're probably understandably sick of hearing that), but look at the following considerations (no doubt many other members will add to this):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The new direction could well be a winner, leading to papers, conferences and most of all, fulfillment.  It could also be a good one as now, you have made your feelings clear to your supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could this be just another academic 'false positive'?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps outline a couple of potential papers and present them to your advisor (this is something I do).  This could be an ongoing thing, alongside your research - outline potential papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the timeframe, 17 months - I would not be too worried about that - I have been able to get three papers published in less than ten months, with a 4th on the way and the 5th planned (I finish my Ph.D. at the end of the year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps, and I hope it all gets sorted out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T07:43:31.633" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T07:43:31.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10721" CreationDate="2013-06-22T02:09:11.277" Score="2" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know, if given both options, which of the options, would officials at the american universities follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By internal evaluation, my GPA at some of the universities is translated/scored as 2.87/4.00. Disbarring me from all of their programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By WES evaluation, my GPA is translated/scored as 3.25/4.00. This option allows me to run/apply for all the programs at the said universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these evaluations would the university use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does WES's evaluation hold any weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't this be a problem for those who are not aware of such services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T05:20:28.277" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T05:20:28.277" Title="Do US universities use GPA according to transcript evaluation services or internal evaluation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-22T02:42:23.340" Score="7" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year grad student who is trying to find advisors in two people (quite brilliant scientists!) who are going to join my grad school as faculty. They are going to be in campus only rarely now but will be full-time here from the next year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this situation sound very bad or scary or depressing or something wrong? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I late into the game? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have done studies and have written up research drafts in areas related to these scientists and have been trying to get into discussions with them over emails. Both sounded quite interested in me - one of them met me for a few hours of discussion while in campus about a month ago - and the other one said &quot;we should keep in touch and meet when I am there the next time&quot;  etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But I get very scared and nervous when I don't get replies from them after even a week from the last email (stating my progress in their respective subjects)- I am always thinking if they struck me off from their mind - did they just forget me - did they decide I am not worth it etc. etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...I am getting sick of just the unbearable tension of the fear of having been dropped...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway is the implicit expectation that I am going to read up all current papers in their fields and be able to come up with a paper on my own? (...thats what I am trying to do but clearly thats not easy!...) I don't know how &quot;advising&quot; is supposed to work with so little contact (...may be there is a culture conflict because in my previous institute one met one's professors daily and even multiple times a day at times...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[just a side information - may be irrelevant but still for completeness of information - I think I am way ahead of my peers in terms of depth and breadth of knowledge and speed of learning new papers and my grad school grades are all at the top..] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T15:08:45.320" Title="About email contact with prospective advisors who are yet to join the institute" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-22T06:57:09.227" Score="4" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals like to abbreviate journal names in the papers they publish, and the AMS maintains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/serials.pdf%20bgb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list of abbreviated journal names&lt;/a&gt; for those who need them. Is there a similar resource for conferences (in computer science)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: to clarify, I'm not looking for acronyms (SODA, STOC, ICALP), but rather for something like &quot;Proc. 6th Ann. ACM-SIAM Symp. Discrete Algorithms&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-22T07:58:16.133" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T13:31:45.587" Title="Official abbreviations for CS conferences" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10714" CreationDate="2013-06-22T08:19:20.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any &lt;em&gt;comprehensive&lt;/em&gt; list of abbreviations for CS conferences. One way to see many abbreviations is through CS conference listings and ranking. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au/cms/images/downloads/conference/08sort%20acronymERA2010_conference_list.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conferences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The most obvious way is googling the name of the conference then checking the conference website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T08:19:20.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10658" CreationDate="2013-06-22T09:19:22.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;@willwest has answered regarding CS.  I will answer regarding math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with the journals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;of the AMS (pure math)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://siam.org/journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;of SIAM (applied math)&lt;/a&gt;.  These are the pre-eminent professional societies in their fields and virtually all of their journals are top tier.  In particular, you might start by browsing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/journalsframework/jams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Journal of the AMS&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://siam.org/journals/sirev.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SIAM Review&lt;/a&gt;, the most selective journals from each society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal that a paper gets published in is becoming less and less important, since most researchers find articles through search engines or social media rather than by browsing journals.  The best way to keep up with new research in a particular subfield of math or CS is to subscribe to the appropriate arXiv RSS feed; for instance, for numerical analysis this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/rss/math.NA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/rss/math.NA&lt;/a&gt;.  This is how I usually learn about relevant new research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that few mathematical conferences have proceedings, and none that I know of are considered prestigious (in CS, the situation is roughly the opposite).  If you want to know which journals are the most highly regarded, talk to faculty in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal articles are PDFs, so you can view them with any mobile app that understands PDFs.  If you want to read a hard copy, either print the paper or go to your campus library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T11:29:09.413" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T11:29:09.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10713" CreationDate="2013-06-22T10:47:36.587" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally would be a little &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; concerned about a graduate student who keeps trying to &quot;hard sell&quot; themselves &lt;em&gt;before I arrived.&lt;/em&gt; Partially this is because, if I were just starting a new position, I'd be worried about a million things, including winding down my previous employment situation, preparing for a move, figuring out all the different things that have to be done in the new position, and so on. Others may very well be different, though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I don't think it's wrong to be active when you sense a good opportunity, such as working with a scientist you hold in high regard as an advisor. However, being too aggressive may be just as damaging as being too passive. Steer clear of both extremes. For instance, have the advisors in question &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt; you to send them weekly updates? Have you asked them to  schedule a phone or Skype chat? Do you know if they are even &quot;at home&quot; or if they're on travel when they're not responding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advisors have their own personal styles, and your style should mesh with theirs. If it doesn't, it will likely be an unproductive and unhappy situation for both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T10:47:36.587" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10712" CreationDate="2013-06-22T10:51:52.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, American universities do not rely on &quot;transcript evaluation services&quot;; they ask you to convert your GPA to whatever system they happen to use, since there are so many of them out there (5-point versus 4-point systems, A+/A/A- versus A/B/C, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could of course provide the results of such an evaluation service, but I would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; expect it to carry any weight with admissions committees, who can accept or ignore it as they please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T10:51:52.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10714" CreationDate="2013-06-22T13:31:45.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, there is no such resource, and even if it existed, it would not be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, people do not know the full names of the conference, only their acronyms. The full names tend to change slightly every now and then, while the acronyms are much more stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can safely write pretty much anything that resembles the correct name, as long as you include the acronym. You can often save some space by removing useless words such as &quot;Annual&quot;, &quot;International&quot;, &quot;ACM&quot;, &quot;IEEE&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Proc. 6th Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA)&quot;&lt;/em&gt; would be perfectly fine and unambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T13:31:45.587" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10713" CreationDate="2013-06-22T15:08:45.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Understand that faculty, even junior faculty, can get over a hundred emails a day, and even dealing with only the most urgent of these, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bureaucracy from the department chair / funding agency program director / etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requests from existing students and collaborators&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reminders about late paper reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference and travel logistics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letter of reference requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complaints about grades from undergrads&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;takes up a huge chunk of their time. Recruiting good students is also usually a high priority... but if you've already agreed to work together next year, and have established an outline of what you can be doing until then to prepare yourself, I wouldn't read too much into a slow response to your follow-up emails, especially if they are in the form of long reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach is probably the direct one: ask them what you can do between now and the fall to get a head start on the research project, and what kind of updates, if any, they would like from you between now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T15:08:45.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10712" CreationDate="2013-06-22T15:26:19.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every school does admissions in a different way, so it's hard to say, but I've never heard of &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; using any external services to evaluate transcripts. I'd say send in your application, and let the chips fall where they may.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although quantities like GPA, GRE scores, etc. might be used as a filter to narrow the applicant pool, what will really get you accepted are 1) strong letters, 2) successful undergrad research projects, and 3) direct contact with a potential advisor at the university. If a professor knows about you and your work and wants you as a student, that will go an incredible way towards getting you admitted no matter what your GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T15:26:19.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10712" CreationDate="2013-06-22T20:32:00.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience differs from the others. Although I am American, my wife is Polish and she applied to a slew (by which I mean 9) of grad schools for computational linguistics. Of them, three wanted the external transcript evaluation, and they even recommended which service to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they also asked for a copy of the original transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what impact it had, but she ended up going to a school that didn't require such an evaluation. But there is funny story here: no where on her transcript did it say that she actually finished her degree program. So when her chosen graduate school requested her &quot;final transcript&quot; (even though my wife graduated a year and a half ago, so they already had her final transcript), she ended up sending them an extra copy of the evaluation along with her explanation that she had, in fact, graduated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, the whole external evaluation process seemed overly expensive and annoying. I would advise that you just ask whatever graduate program that you're interested in whether they want applicants to have them (they don't bite, really), and hope that they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T20:32:00.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10732" CreationDate="2013-06-23T03:01:25.017" Score="9" ViewCount="1975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in the statistics of early college graduation, or more generally, the statistics of extreme ages in academic settings (highschool, college, grad school, etc.). For instance, how many students who earn a college degree graduate one, two, three, or more years earlier than the typical age of 22 or so? I am willing for any statistics to qualified in any way (percentages in country W, at university X, in state Y, or from year Z). A quick Google search does not easily reveal this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I estimate that less than 5% of the population graduates college two years earlier than normal based on my acquaintances, but this is likely biased as I am a graduate student and it may be smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It occurs to me that my question does not ask for any opinions on whether early graduation is good, neutral, or bad. Perhaps it would be interesting to expand the question and have those who experienced graduating early give their stories or opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7493" LastEditorUserId="7493" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T16:30:05.240" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T21:41:28.237" Title="How common is college graduation at an early age?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T13:40:54.423" Score="7" ViewCount="3595" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the following takes place in a UK university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Computer Science. My thesis was on applying various machine learning/statistical techniques to biological datasets. I wanted to do something similar for my PhD, however my supervisor left the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now in the first year of my PhD in Computer Science, specifically Computational Biology. My work focuses on comparing different techniques (physical/statistical/machine learning) in single cell simulations. I am finding it hard to incorporate machine learning techniques into my work as there aren't many datasets for the kind of thing my supervisor wants me to do and so the machine learning approach is proving tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I desperately want a job/postdoc in a machine learning/stats environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lots of post docs I know switched field after their PhD e.g. Astro-physics to machine learning, dependable systems to machine learning, Biophysics to compiler design. In my case would anyone in the ML community take me seriously? (I thought my Msc would help me out...) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have taught myself a fair bit of ML and stats, is there anything else I should do to increase the likelihood of getting an ML/stats postdoc?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would anyone in a stats department take me seriously as I have no maths degree?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people that change career areas have successful careers or is this normally a red flag? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7494" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-04T08:48:11.740" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T08:48:11.740" Title="Trying to switch fields from PhD in computational biology to postdoc in machine learning/stats, how to increase likelihood of success?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;biology&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10728" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T13:40:57.190" Score="11" ViewCount="20048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to follow PhD studies in my field of Computer Science. The problem is that I have to work in my native country. I have read that this university, UNISA, is known because of their online Master and Doctoral studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that I have is because I see different comments from people from United States or Europe that wanted to enter into this online degrees. Does anybody have experiences or know if that university is worldwide recognized? Or would it be only a waste of money and time? In case of the latter, which institution of quality offers online PhD degrees in CS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that this question is not focused locally, because as I mentioned in the aforementioned paragraph; there are people from all over the world that want to take those UNISA degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T22:19:54.137" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T22:19:54.137" Title="What is the status/reputation of the University of South Africa (UNISA)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;africa&gt;&lt;south-africa&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-05-28T07:54:13.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10727" CreationDate="2013-06-23T14:45:11.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts on your questions (please don't take any of this as gospel, I am in the final stages of my PhD and are looking for a Postdoc also).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your ML MSc would more than likely benefit you in any postdoc application (to what extent would depend on the institution).  Something to consider, is it possible to build/include ML principles in your current research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One major way to get noticed in the fields that you are interested in is to get published in peer-reviewed journals and present at relevant conferences.  Speak to academics involved in your field of interest, speak to your supervisor/advisor - perhaps inquire if there would be a chance of collaborative papers/conference presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for changing career paths, this is increasingly the norm - my own example is a switch from economic geology, through teaching to atmospheric physics.  One major thing about this aspect is to focus on the skills that you have developed, particularly in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T14:45:11.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10725" CreationDate="2013-06-23T21:04:42.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the USA, the number is probably &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; smaller than 5 percent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that there are generally fixed lengths for education, and minimum enrollment ages at which the process can start (at least for publicly educated students, who are still the majority).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finishing two or more years ahead of schedule means that you probably have had at least two events that belong to the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Started education a year earlier than &quot;normal&quot; (perhaps because of birthday-limited enrollments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skipped a grade during primary or secondary (high-school) education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Accelerated&quot; college studies by reducing the expected enrollment time by either a semester or a full year (through early accumulation of credits via work in high school, or taking college placement exams, credit overloading, and other methods)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is the most common, but still only applies to about one-third of the population. The others are much less frequent, with the second probably pertaining to only about 1 percent of students (if that many). The third also probably is not that common, but I don't have hard numbers (but again, probably less than 5 percent of college students finish in three years or less!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now remember that you have to have at least &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; such events, and you can start to see why the odds are stacked against a 5 percent rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T09:10:09.753" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T09:10:09.753" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-24T00:44:57.460" Score="66" ViewCount="17700" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a not so hypothetical situation. International student x is very talented but comes from a background where technical writing is not taught or understood very well. She writes a great thesis with a good literature review and nice results. However, the results are based on two key papers from previous students in the group. She decides to give credit to the papers in a special chapter, which she starts by saying &quot;I need to give credit to this and that paper&quot; and proceeds with copying paragraphs wholesale to describe what those other students did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a few years back; X is now faculty at a good school and she contacts me (past advisor) in teary-terrified voice to let me know that she plagiarized in her thesis. I am now in a panic as well. How could I miss those? And how could she do that?? We both risk losing our jobs, and she is at risk of losing her degree as well (which, by the way, was a very strong thesis with a good number of top journal publications). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there's no process for revising a thesis after it's been submitted and I don't know what else to do short of turning ourselves in - which I feel morally obligated to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;Thanks all for weighing in on this. I spent the night going through the thesis and there appear to be three more sources that are suspect of being plagiarized, all in the same wretched chapter; one is a thesis of a colleague, the other is a textbook and the third is a book I wrote a while back. So this is more serious than I thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has unfortunately not used quotes for the material, i.e., instead of saying &quot;[paper i] says ,&quot; she just went on with &quot;[paper i] says this and that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; been accused of plagiarism by anybody. I am guessing that she has finally come to grips with good writing standards and upon looking through her thesis she realized that her &quot;summary&quot; was actually plagiarism. I have every reason to believe that she did what she did in good faith (she has proven her honesty on many occasions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7502" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T05:35:45.617" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T05:35:45.617" Title="What to do (years later) with otherwise good student who has accidentally plagiarised part of PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10727" CreationDate="2013-06-24T00:45:38.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is based more on experience from computational biology, but I think it is relevant for other fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changing fields is very common in academia, especially at the PhD/postdoc transition. In many cases it is actually considered an advantage, since you can import your skills, expertise and a certain thought-process into a field in which many people do not have those skills. For example, many physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians have migrated to biology and have made significant contributions. In fact, there are even postdoctoral fellowships that specifically fund this type of field-change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your &quot;will they take me seriously&quot; questions: Since you are aiming mostly at applied ML/stats, I don't think you should be too concerned if the ML/stats theoretical community take you seriously. Many theorists tend to look down on applied science - don't worry about it, you can still have a significant impact without advancing any theory. It sounds like in the future you will either belong to the department in which you want to apply the techniques (e.g. a biology department) or will work very closely with people in those departments. In this case, you will usually be considered the ML/stats expert.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, of course it is your job to become an expert. Teaching yourself the theory is important, but if you are going for applied science, especially applied ML/stats, it would be a big advantage to get actual experience in using them. There is a huge difference between learning about these methods and actually implementing and using them. You will see that during your PhD you can often expand your research in directions you are more interested in. It shouldn't be too difficult to use some ML/stats creatively in some sub-projects (which could later be expanded).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T00:45:38.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10733" CreationDate="2013-06-24T01:05:48.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take what I say below as a perspective, I am by no means an expert in how to deal with plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say (as someone who has been plagiarised before), detecting and preventing plagiarism is the responsibility of all involved. But, having said that, we are human and we make mistakes - is it just that special chapter that has the plagiarism?  How much did she copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think being open and upfront is the best (and most probably, the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;) course of action, as it would be far worse for both of you if it was detected by another academic, or worse still - the authors of the papers plagiarised.  It may be best to be &lt;em&gt;honest&lt;/em&gt; about both of your &lt;em&gt;mistake&lt;/em&gt;, rather than being &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; in trying to cover it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, find out what options are available in terms of resubmitting the thesis, or even the chapter in question.  The original research in your former student's papers may also be in both of your favour in that it would show no malicious intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T01:12:47.053" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T01:12:47.053" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10733" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:37:04.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, here is the responsability of two persons: the advisor and the student, but the amount of responsability is somehow lesser for the advisor. I am pretty sure that your past student has signed a non-plagiarism form or put an statement that she was not plagiarizing anything in her thesis work, so she was doing that on purpose. It seems harsh my opinion, but it seems that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only solution is to tell the truth to the Dean and for what I know, the penalty will come sooner or later. According to what you reply, that person plagiarized about 10 pages and also parts of the appendix, so in that case the only way out is to inform about the accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that she will lose her degree, remember the scandal that happened in Germany a few months ago?. The worse thing that could happen is that she get somehow &quot;banned&quot; from the journals that she has been cited, but only for a certain amount of time. About your case, I think that is not so probable that you will get into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wish you the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T02:37:04.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10733" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:57:25.520" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did any of the plagiarized material make it into journal papers, or was it all literature review that was never published outside of the thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some of it made it into papers, then it's important to contact the journals and publish corrections.  This is more straightforward and predictable than dealing with the thesis itself.  If the plagiarism is confined to background material, then I don't think retracting the papers would be necessary.  Instead, I expect it would be possible to publish a correction that indicates the plagiarized portions and provides citations.  This would be embarrassing and would hurt her reputation a little, but it would solve the problem as far as the papers were concerned.  It would also strengthen the student's case for dealing with the thesis if she can say she voluntarily corrected the publications and did not need to retract any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of the plagiarized material was published elsewhere, then it's trickier.  Once all the original results are published in research papers, I doubt anyone will read the thesis and discover the plagiarism.  Even if they do, they might take pity on the student and ignore the plagiarism.  (I once ignored some mild plagiarism of my writing in the background sections of a thesis at another university.  The student had already graduated, and I found no evidence of plagiarism in any of his research papers.  If I knew for sure he could just file a correction to the thesis, then that would make sense, but I wouldn't want to potentially destroy his career over this mistake.)  So she might well get away with it if she doesn't say anything.  Still, I'd advise her to officially confess to the university.  Turning herself in is likely to lead to a &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; better outcome than being caught by someone else.  Plus it's the right thing to do, and it will save her from years of worrying about getting caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We both risk losing our jobs, and she is at risk of losing her degree as well (which, by the way, was a very strong thesis with a good number of top journal publications). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your university is extraordinarily strict, I don't think your job is in jeopardy.  On the other hand, the student's degree or job might be, depending on how the university handles the situation.  Based on your description, I think it would be unfair for her career to be ruined, but I can't predict what will actually happen.  I hope your administration's sense of fairness is the same as mine, in which case a correction will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest situation will be if she decides to remain silent.  In that case you probably have an obligation to turn her in, and it would look terrible if anyone found out that you knew but didn't say anything.  On the other hand, turning her in would be a tough decision.  Much better for her to turn herself in voluntarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T02:57:25.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10733" CreationDate="2013-06-24T03:46:12.853" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Um, I'm not sure it is worth bothering about.  She gave credit for the results,&#xA;it was in the context of describing other people's work, it seems to only involve&#xA;the language.  This is not a literary topic, so I would tell her to not worry about&#xA;it but learn how to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7503" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T03:46:12.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10733" CreationDate="2013-06-24T07:34:21.410" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, just to make it clear, this is plagiarism. Providing a reference and then long string of text implies that the text is YOUR description of ideas of someone ELSE. To give full credit to someone else requires some sort of formatting distinction (typically block indentation or quotation makes). Potentially the plagiarism was accidental, but it is still plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supervisor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A doctoral dissertation is generally a single author piece of independent work. Plagiarism in a dissertation should have little direct impact on the career of the supervisor. It might have some indirect consequences like people questioning how you can be so unfamiliar with your students work that you do not catch plagiarism, but I think most people would be pretty understanding about this. If the thesis was not single author or if the work was published with your name on it, that is a different story since co-authorship implies you have BOTH plagiarized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure to report academic misconducted (whether it is your student or not) can impact your career. At my university we do not classify failure of a student to report academic misconducted of another student as academic misconducted. I don't know the disciplinary process when faculty are involved. Personally, I would say that we all have a responsibility to the scientific process to report ALL cases of academic misconduct that we are aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my University, the penalty for plagiarism by a current student is zero on the piece of work. This would mean the student would have failed her dissertation. As a department we would deem this penalty too severe and push that she would be able to re-submit a new dissertation that reuses the non-plagiarized material. The University would push back and ask for a completely independent dissertation. I have never experienced this with a PhD student, but this occurs regularly with our final year undergraduates and about 70% of the time the student is allowed to reuse the non-plagiarized material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what would happen if the plagiarism was found after the degree was given. My guess is the University would have to retract the dissertation from the library and any electronic database. They may revoke the degree, but they could also look at other work and count those towards the dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current university may try and fire or penalize her, but this seems harsh compared to the typical penalty of plagiarism in a dissertation of not getting/delaying a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="7508" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T09:20:23.220" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T09:20:23.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10756" CreationDate="2013-06-24T17:21:27.110" Score="5" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seaarching the literature at the moment to write a literature review but I don't know when should I stop searching and start writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T09:06:55.197" Title="when should I stop searching the literature?" Tags="&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2013-06-24T17:58:41.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should develop an outline, in consultation with your advisor, of what is to be included in the literature review - this should be based on the research foci and priorities of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do when writing a literature review, is to actually write the review at the same time as doing the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should you stop?  when you have covered each of the foci and priorities to the point when you (and your advisor) are satisfied that you have synthesised the scope of each of the foci and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T17:58:41.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10749" CreationDate="2013-06-24T20:48:07.450" Score="21" ViewCount="1480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am simply looking for a rough estimate on how many PhD applicants typically apply having published a peer-reviewed paper (or papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, I am interested in Computer Science (or STEM fields in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it would be interesting to know the same percentage for the admitted students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions can likely only be answered by those on (or previously on) admissions committees, but all responses are welcomed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T06:11:47.893" Title="What percentage of STEM PhD applicants have peer-reviewed publications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:04:58.187" Score="4" ViewCount="1186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often seen in review papers in which the author mentions that there are more than # number of publications in the subject, to highlight the importance of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are such numbers determined? While searching for certain keywords in websites such as Scopus or ScienceDirect may be useful, it does not necessarily give an accurate number, as some publications may mention the keywords but not actually deal with the subject, while others may use synonyms of the keywords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7529" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T19:25:52.920" Title="Finding number of publications in a subject" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10747" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:23:52.897" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a CS department at a mid-ranked school in the US, and have reviewed applications for Ph.D programs in CS for the last 6 years. I didn't compile detailed numbers, but my sense is that the number of candidates with &quot;actual&quot; publications (as opposed to fluff pubs) is of the order of 5%. I suspect this number is higher for the top-ranked school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T22:23:52.897" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10748" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:26:36.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I would argue that a precise number would be virtually impossible to obtain. This is because there is a large grey-zone between work published in established journals and work &quot;published&quot; in more &quot;questionable&quot; sources. Obviously the way to obtain a number would be to use search services such as Web of Science, Scopus etc. or reference data bases. But, for example, Web of Science only covers works published in ISI listed journals or papers referenced by ISI listed papers and on top of that only back in time for as long as journals have submitted reference information. This means such searches will be incomplete. Hence to arrive at a number may require quite a bit of work unless one would state the limitations imposed on a search sich as limting it to Web of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice of key word(s) will also be important and it is not certain keywords are systematically applied between sources or over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A claim to have found &quot;all&quot; literature is very questionable and I would argue that when one makes such a claim one must provide a picture of the limitations of the search because there will certainly always be such limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T22:26:36.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10748" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:45:46.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In medical/life sciences, the situation is slightly better than in other fields since indexing in PubMed is the standard for a manuscript to be considered a &quot;real&quot; publication. I suspect that in life sciences, stating that there are more than &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; publications on a subject means counting the number of hits found when searching for that term on PubMed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T02:42:30.143" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T02:42:30.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10747" CreationDate="2013-06-24T23:31:52.997" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, at a 10-20 ranked place in mathematics, essentially &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; grad-program applicants have an &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 1/3 may have some (as Suresh put it) &quot;fluff-pubs&quot; as spin-offs from summer REU programs. These are not &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; things, by any measure, but are more indicative of the socio-economic class of the applicant than their talent or potential. For that matter, it is sometimes quite awkward to explain to novices that their &quot;publication&quot; is a fluff-pub, not real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in fact, there is an actual negative to fluff-pubs on an application, since it suggests a possible unfortunate rigidity or over-confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Once again, in mathematics, if it were possible to do wonderful research in a few weeks over the summer, why does it take 5 years to earn a PhD? There is a misunderstanding... though, yes, it is good to cultivate enthusiasm among talented beginners! Let's just not lie to them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T18:58:49.347" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T18:58:49.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10748" CreationDate="2013-06-25T00:53:25.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Peter answer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Moreover, I really doubt this relation of &lt;strong&gt;more publications = more importance.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Actually, I see it very weird information in my field (Computer Science) regardless of its source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show the importance of a subject, refer to some main papers/findings in that subject, show how and why its important to the general audience of your field. For example, in Computer Science, this can be done through listing some applications/real world scenarios of the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T01:06:14.700" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T01:06:14.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2013-06-25T02:47:27.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be very productive in terms of knowing your area. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;knowing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; what is happening is different from &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;understanding&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; it. This includes utilising every available tool which makes it easier to keep updated with what is published. An easy way , in Computer Science, is setting alerts (both on Arxiv and Google Scholar) and following pioneers in your area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal experience, I spent plenty of time gathering, reading and understanding related papers/books. I came across many interesting ideas. But finally, I found some of my ideas are published in others papers. Some were exactly the same! This is the curse of PhD. Try to publish before others as long as you have the required knowledge and a clear contribution.  The literature is then translated to the cumulative process of publishing different papers related to your thesis problem.  You stop when you do the defence (assuming you will change the area thereafter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T02:47:27.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10747" CreationDate="2013-06-25T02:50:47.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In countries where it is common to do a MSc, many PhD applicants have either published papers or prepared/submitted manuscripts, since a MSc would include a research thesis. The level of the publication can vary, and this can also vary by field (experimental projects typically take longer so probability of publication is smaller).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T04:36:43.760" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T04:36:43.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2013-06-25T08:01:28.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The facile answer is &lt;strong&gt;you don't stop searching the literature&lt;/strong&gt;. Even as the review evolves, you should be including new references &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they are noteworthy in addressing questions within the field. This process should continue as long as you are working in the field of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, from a practical standpoint, you do need to select a cutoff. There should be a reasonable point in time in which you've set the outline of the review, and decided on the main topics and questions to be discussed. At that point, it would be fair to set aside adding more references, and stick to what's been published. However, you should continue to monitor the field, and if further revisions or updates of the text are necessary, then you should include the papers published in the interim as part of your updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T08:01:28.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2013-06-25T09:06:55.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start writing the review &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; (or at the same time) as you start searching the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest to determine the scope of the review before you start searching the literature, and &lt;strong&gt;already write it down&lt;/strong&gt;. This would answer questions like &lt;em&gt;Which problem am I looking at?&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Why is this problem relevant now?&lt;/em&gt; Answers to these questions will also guide your literature search.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop searching the literature when you stop writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is not a linear process - it is going from a rough outline to a focussed text. As you go into focus, you will need to research more and more specific references. While you define your questions, search for literature dealing with these questions, and when you develop an argument, search for literature that would support (or contradict!) that argument.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My key suggestion would be to not view the literature search as shopping around randomly, but more like a visit to the grocery store with the shopping list in your hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these suggestions apply to writing a literature review. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7615/how-to-stay-on-top-of-recent-literature&quot;&gt;Staying on top of recent literature&lt;/a&gt; or reading to get into a new field would be a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T09:06:55.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-25T11:06:28.130" Score="8" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of recent comment regarding the UK release of the &quot;Rate Your Lecturer&quot; website. This website allows users to comment on and rate their lecturers. Comments are submitted anonymously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; want to enter the debate on whether this sort of anonymous online reviewing of lecturers is good, bad or indifferent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether your institution has a policy regarding how to deal with demonstrably untrue, insulting or unfairly negative comments about lecturers posted online, and what that policy is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T13:10:15.347" Title="Does your institution have a policy regarding policing online student feedback?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-25T11:17:54.950" Score="3" ViewCount="2717" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays most journals use electronic forms for the referees to submit their recommendations to the editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that's not the case, how should the letter to the editor be structured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the referee report I have already mentioned some points I consider should be revised. But, do I have to explicitly state these points in the letter? or should I just say that the points mentioned in the referee report should be considered before publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5894" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T11:37:46.100" Title="Letter to the editor from the referee" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10759" CreationDate="2013-06-25T11:37:27.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cover letter should probably state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The title and authors of the article you have reviewed (short list of authors &quot;X et al.&quot; is fine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your recommendation for the disposition of the article (accept as is, reject, recommend major changes, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other important information that you wish to note. This could be anything exceptional, whether that be good (perhaps the article should be considered for &quot;cover&quot; status) or bad (for example, if you suspect something dishonest).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other points can be addressed by referring the editor to the referee report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T11:37:27.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10759" CreationDate="2013-06-25T11:37:46.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The letter to the editor should summarize what you outline in your review comments. You should outline why you think the manuscripts should be judged the way you recommend based on your comments. I, as an editor, find that it is useful to get a personal view point and often these are more explicit than what the reviews show. That said, remember, however, that your review is one of two or more and that they are an expert's &lt;em&gt;view&lt;/em&gt;. Anything you express has to be supported by facts. Emotional outpourings are not very constructive and will likely devalue the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I do not see a particular structure very important it is more the content. It is important to get a summary and conclusion of the review outlining the major short-comings. It is good to provide a sensible justification for the suggested &quot;verdict&quot; based on the major points. If the work contains serious problems, particularly of an ethical nature, it is necessary to provide a very good case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T11:37:46.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10758" CreationDate="2013-06-25T11:51:12.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No policy that I am aware of at any of the four universities and two high schools I've been associated with.  When the sites first appeared in the U.S. about ten years ago, questions came up about whether anything could be done about it, and the institution I was associated with then decided that there wasn't anything legal that could be done.  I believe that libelous material can be appealed directly through some of the websites, but I've never heard of anyone having success with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I love anonymous feedback, and I've had my share of good and bad reviews.  I've tried to use the bad reviews as a means for informing where I can improve, and I've tried to limit my head from getting too big at the good reviews.  Teaching takes a certain amount of thick skin, and sites like these can be a good way to test if you've grown enough of that calloused layer to ward off any long-term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T13:10:15.347" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T13:10:15.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2013-06-25T20:55:24.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, but what I have seen so far (w.r.t. Computer Science PhD perspective) is a bit different than other opinions in this post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doing PhD (Computer Science) in the US (at a mediocre school) and most of my cohorts (not most, actually all of them) have a very decent GPA (like 3.9+ out of 4.0), even couple of them have perfect 4.0/4.0 and a very &lt;em&gt;few&lt;/em&gt; of them are publishing pretty much good level of research works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, most of my faculty members in my school have similar credentials (good grade, good research background, and most of them are from top notch schools like UMD, UPenn, UMich, VTech) -- although my school ranks 60+ in the nation (according to US News, in CS specialization). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even PhD students in my department who did summer research intern in big companies like google, IBM, Microsoft are also equipped with a good GPA. Even some of them have no publication at all !!, even after being a PhD student for more than 2 years. You will be surprised to know that one of them is currently working as a research intern position at google with no research paper at all, he has been a PhD student for last 2.5 years !! Moreover, if you are from a good school, things will be lot easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I see, situation is totally opposite in US. Here Pedigree &gt; GPA &gt; publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be the &quot;odd one out&quot;, I had a decent publication record (published 4 conference papers during my masters (from a top school outside US) and 2 more in my 1st year of PhD here), but I settled with a low grade (3.2+), compared to others it is actually a &quot;bad&quot;. Moreover, the venues that I have published my research works are considered to be quite decent in my field (two of the venues are in the top 20 lists in Microsoft academic search &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=5&amp;amp;last=0&amp;amp;start=1&amp;amp;end=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ranking&lt;/a&gt;, even I got one best student paper award there. In the US, keeping up both research works and regular course load is quite challenging, at least for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such situation compelled me to focus more on the grades and to start practicing problems from sites like &quot;careercup&quot; to land a job in industry -- that's what others are doing here, and this is a totally disappointing and frustrating experience for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to cut my time on research as much as possible, now just doing a minimal possible work to maintain my supervisor's &quot;happiness threshold level&quot;. Here, landing an academic job is harder than in industries -- unless you are a &quot;rock star&quot; researcher -- and this is the reality. Being a mediocre researcher (like me) from a mediocre school does not count much, neither in industry nor academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not the least, I am an international student deceived by the so called delusion of &quot;the land of opportunity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7537" LastEditorUserId="7537" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T21:17:22.733" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T21:17:22.733" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10725" CreationDate="2013-06-26T07:28:35.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK this number is likely to be extremely small. Within our department we circulate a list of all students under the age of 18 at the beginning of the year. This includes both our students as well as students sitting in on our classes. For this sample size of about 500 per year the number under 18 is typically about 1%. Of these, the vast majority turn 18 there first year. Further there is either a bug in our software, possible, or the remainder turn 18 during the summer since I have never been told about a 2nd year student being under 18. The sample size for 2nd year students is about half as big since we do not get drop ins to our second year classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this could be biased by our department or university not attracting these students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T07:28:35.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:55:51.443" Score="14" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;A version of the lecturer review website Rate Your Lecturer recently became active in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any studies which consider to what extent students use this or any other review websites to guide their choice of university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T02:15:32.913" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T02:15:32.913" Title="Are there any studies on how lecturer review sites such as Rate Your Lecturer affect student choices?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T11:17:32.113" Score="1" ViewCount="1812" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my reading about undergraduate student assignments at my university, I have run across the word report quite a bit but the writer is not clearly talking about a research report (but the author might be, without me understanding that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to thinking of student assignments as being either a research report (where the student must collect primary and secondary data) or an essay (where the student writes based on understanding without any actual data (though in an essay the student would often cite theories and the opinions of others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there another meaning of the word report in the context of a university student assignment? Can students write reports only based on secondary data (is this a task commonly assigned)? Can someone write a report without data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if a journalist's investigative report would count as a report using only secondary data (or perhaps not using data at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any clarification would be of great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T23:11:07.693" Title="Is there a difference between a Research Report and a Report?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:05:47.833" Score="3" ViewCount="1128" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having personally contacted a professor about the possibility of a Ph.D., he asked me to send him a cv and a copy of my M.Sc. in order to evaluate.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Instead, in the online application form of &quot;other&quot; Ph.D. programmes, I have found that I need to include a cv, among the other things, but there is no possibility to attach a copy of the thesis. So, preparing the cv, I thought to imbed an hyperlink to the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would ask you: if it is acceptable, or is counter-productive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7551" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:38:35.967" Title="How to properly point out the M.Sc. thesis in a Ph.D. application" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:18:16.780" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise to add the links, because I don't see what you could possibly lose by doing so instead of not doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add links in &lt;code&gt;LaTeX&lt;/code&gt; using&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; \href{link.to.thesis}{My MSc thesis title}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a nice way to link to everything relevant that can not be properly adressed nor otherwise included in your CV. You can for example provide references such as the homepage of your advisor, your department, your other software projects etc. - all just by putting links behind their names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:18:16.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:20:21.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send an admissions office the information they ask for. If they give you the option to provide additional information as a text field, then you could list a link to a version of your thesis on Dropbox or on a university web site (or similar) as part of your &quot;additional statement.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, given the number of applications that a centralized admissions committee might receive, they are probably reluctant to get copies of master's theses and publications—it would be too much extra work to read them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:20:21.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:37:14.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may need good grades during the first two years of your PhD (the time you would be doing your MS, if you applied to a separate MS program) for the reasons listed above: fellowships, in case you decide to drop out and get a industry job, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After two years in a PhD program, worrying about your GPA is a complete waste of time. I've yet to see any research university even &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; for a transcript of your graduate classwork. Some research positions in industry might require a transcript and take into account your GPA, but I don't think this (misguided) practice is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's true for certain is that if you're spending late nights and long hours polishing that final project in a class totally unrelated to your research area, so that you will get an A+ instead of an A -- please stop. You are hurting your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:37:14.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:38:35.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fill out the application form as far as possible. You could choose to include in your application a link to an online copy your MSc thesis, as you and others have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;as your potential professor has explicitly asked you for it&lt;/strong&gt;, I would send him a copy of your MSc thesis directly, as an email attachment if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:38:35.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10781" CreationDate="2013-06-26T18:42:49.693" Score="-1" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my BSc in physics  and now doing my MS in my country(Bangladesh), but I want to do PHD/PHD+MS in USA with decent funding (RA or TA).&#xA;I know In a PHD level, funding may be available, but what about MS?&#xA;I'm saying this because I want to apply in this fall-2014 and during application I may not get my MS results .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7555" LastEditorDisplayName="user7555" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T19:07:22.200" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:40:03.143" Title="Funding with PHD +MS admission" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10748" CreationDate="2013-06-26T19:25:52.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (mathematics) this can become even more questionable because there are papers that consider related problems, papers that consider problems that are essentially equivalent with a different terminology, and so on. The issue of different terminology is especially troublesome because you cannot search for consistent keywords. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless this is an important metric. In mathematics you typically cannot point to real-world applications (any way, that is not the kind of importance you necessarily want for your paper). But it can provide context that the problem you are studying has been analyzed before, it gives you some other results that you can compare your paper to, and so on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7558" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T19:25:52.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T19:58:16.483" Score="3" ViewCount="2735" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I have been pondering for a while. I am currently in my second year at University and my program comes with mandatory Co-op throughout the 4 years of study. I have completed 3 Co-op terms already and those have covered my expenses and tuition for each term at the university. I understand that not every Co-op will provide enough compensation every time but my parents are ready to support me where and when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OSAP is a government program which funds students doing their post-secondary education in Ontario, more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Student_Assistance_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The loans are interests free until the student has completed his education. Then the interest rate is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the provincial part of your OSAP loan, the rate is the prime rate&#xA;  of interest plus 1%. On the federal portion interest rate can be the&#xA;  prime rate of interest plus 2.5%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, should I apply for OSAP and receive their funding and save what I earn from Co-op? Or is it better to not receive any OSAP funding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7557" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T21:52:13.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:52:13.497" Title="Should I take OSAP (student loans) even if I can pay for my tuition?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10777" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:08:42.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is entirely up to you, but, having said that - a few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long would you have the OSAP debt for?  Meaning, how long will it take you to pay it off?  If you do get it, are their any penalties for early repayment?  (just in case you get enough in your Co-op to repay).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at how much savings you have and how much, if any, debts you may already have, alongside all your other expenses - how much would you have to sacrifice to make the repayments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mention that your parents are ready to help if needed (very kind of them). Perhaps look at seeing how much you earn in your co-op - and seeing your parents to cover the balance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in Australia, and, if eligible, we had HECS (now called &lt;a href=&quot;http://studyassist.gov.au/sites/studyassist/helppayingmyfees/fee-help/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FEE-HELP&lt;/a&gt;), where our tuition is paid by the government and we repay the balance as a portion of tax.  It is a good system, but I am still paying mine off over a decade later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:08:42.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10774" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:17:00.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether a US university would accept you into a PhD program would depend on the University itself - you'll need to contact them and ask them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, do you have semester results in your MS, in your application you could state these and say that the final results are pending.  Ask the universities you apply to if it is alright to submit your final transcript a little bit later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, gather all your academic credentials that may help in your application - published papers, conference presentations (if any), references etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:17:00.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10774" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:34:26.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, you can apply to PhD programs without having a master's degree; this is actually the case in many fields. However, you will have to successfully complete the requirements for candidacy to a PhD program before being admitted to the doctoral phase of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding for PhD-level programs at reputable departments (at least in science and engineering) should normally be guaranteed for some fixed term, provided you are making adequate progress and satisfy all program requirements. (What you have to do for such funding—whether it be research or TA—may vary, but that the funding will come from somewhere should be stated in advance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:34:26.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10774" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:34:38.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, you do not have to be a MS &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; in order to apply for a PhD. I was a MS &lt;em&gt;candidate&lt;/em&gt; when I applied for PhD about 4 years ago. I could only show 2 semesters worth of results from my MS program. It works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; programs around the HCI/information science space (and if I might venture to propose, also in computer science), there is very &lt;em&gt;limited&lt;/em&gt; funding for MS only programs. Things might be different in physics. I will leave it to the folks who know physics better to comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T21:40:03.143" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:40:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10777" CreationDate="2013-06-26T22:29:38.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also considered doing this, though I didn't (more from sloth than anything else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, from other students in Ontario, you can pay back the entire OSAP loan in a lump sum at any time. Since the loan is interest free, a rational investor would take out the maximum amount allowed, put it in a risk free asset, and pay it back as late as possible, pocketing the interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, interest rates are low right now, and OSAP needs a lot of paper work. Being in debt can also be stressful for some people. If you are sure that you won't need any OSAP money, then perhaps the $100 or so you'd make per year in interest is not worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that borrowing money now, and then paying it back early will often cause the provincial government to lower your future OSAP payments - since you clearly didn't need the whole amount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T22:29:38.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10766" CreationDate="2013-06-26T22:48:56.807" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is necessarily incomplete, but I do recall a few studies on the correlation between ratemyprofessor.com rankings and student evaluations. Two such studies are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/08/rateprof&quot;&gt;Hotness and Quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/05/rmp&quot;&gt;Student evaluations and RMP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are disappointingly old though (2006/2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a more recent study from 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Researchers-Rate/129820/&quot;&gt;Researchers and RMP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other studies, your google is as good as mine :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T22:48:56.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2013-06-26T23:11:07.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE said, there are differences everywhere about which report is which - potentially confusing the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, this resource from Purdue University &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/726/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purposes and Types of Reports&lt;/a&gt; which has further links to examples and guidelines.  But, they do state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•There is no universally agreed-upon format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•You should follow the format for your course or your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T23:11:07.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10766" CreationDate="2013-06-27T04:38:02.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not confirmed by genuine research, but a very strong hunch based on some decades experience: I'd anticipate that having a few crank-negative reviews among mostly-positive is tremendously beneficial, for more than one reason. First, your &quot;supervisors&quot; (dept head, dean, etc) are often not so naive as to think that there'd be no complaints, so it's harmless. Even better, and more significantly for your day-to-day life, the rants of a few cranks may significantly inhibit other cranks from signing up for your courses. &quot;For the wrong reasons&quot;, but to your benefit, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would apply currently to top-50-research-schools in the U.S., I think, and I'd imagine to most other places in the U.S., since most have not committed to any quasi-automated officially validated anonymous rating system, or any other rating system for faculty teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T04:38:02.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10814" CreationDate="2013-06-27T09:55:36.730" Score="3" ViewCount="2492" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of curiosity, I was wondering what set of courses undergraduate math students take if they're on the track to apply for a PhD in Pure Mathematics vs. Applied Mathematics? Let me try to elaborate as best as I can. I mean at my current university, I've known several people who have gone through the track of going for a PhD in Pure Math and they have taken lots of Grad level Math courses and gotten into top US universities for a PhD in Pure Math where research experience in relevant fields is a plus (I think). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my question is for undergraduate students trying to prepare for a PhD in Applied Math. What sort of coursework do they go through? I mean research experience (I believe) becomes important and taking graduate courses in Pure Mathematics is not so. I do not know much people who went for a PhD in applied math at my school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate it if anyone who can comment on the relevance of pure math grad courses for such students who aspire or strive in applying for a PhD in applied math. Any other comments pertaining to this is welcomed ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7430" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T04:39:01.773" Title="Applied/Pure Math PhD Coursework" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:32:55.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be somewhat controversial for some here, but I don't think there is any one course that you should take in order to get in a particular graduate program. The reason behind my statement is that I believe the logic presented in the OP is rather backwards; one usually pursues graduate studies in a particular field that s/he is knowledgeable and interested in. In other words, you get your undergrad and Masters, and based on what you know and like, you apply to PhD programs in fields where you are competent. The other way around (deciding on a PhD program without have the undergrad and masters done, and choosing courses based on the desired PhD program) does not make much sense, in my humble opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider that &quot;a PhD in pure/applied maths&quot; is really ill-defined. I can think of a hundred different projects that would have different requirements, with regards to previous courses. I would recommend deciding on a specific subject that you find interesting e.g. &quot;elliptic curve cryptography&quot; or &quot;convex optimization&quot; etc (not just pure/applied math).. then look for announced PhD programs based on projects focused on these subjects of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said; I would think  advanced level courses in matrix theory (decompositions etc), functional and complex analysis, as well as  optimization theory would be useful in many different graduate programs at most maths departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:32:55.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10805" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:40:28.180" Score="4" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;When comparing different universities, various factors are common to be reported such as number of students (undergraduate, graduate), student-to-staff ratio, number of staff, physical spaces, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when it comes to financial data, the amount of endowment is reported (e.g. in Wikipedia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference for comparing financial data of universities (mainly in the United States)? Total budget, tuition fee, funds spent on education, research, campus life, etc!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean a comparative database, not attempting to find such diverse data from each university website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T18:52:15.500" Title="Fiscal data of university budgets" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2013-06-27T13:00:45.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have a direct experience with UNISA, but this kind of universities (having massive number of students) does not have international reputation usually. They normally address the local needs for graduating professionals, but what pushes a university among top ones is interactive connection of the staff and students, which is almost impossible to be conducted in a university with 5,000 staff and 300,000 students (even in the digital world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if you do care about your education and reputation of your PhD degree, it is more reasonable to choose a university with international standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T13:00:45.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10793" CreationDate="2013-06-27T13:12:35.860" Score="11" ViewCount="33573" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people do not list references/referees at the end of their CV, and simply quote &lt;code&gt;references are available on request&lt;/code&gt;. This is more convenient to me for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Normally, no reference is contacted without permission, so, it is not necessary to be included in the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the purpose (application, proposal), you may want to introduce other references (more relevant to that application). This is the reason that some job applications need separate list of references.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, including famous persons as references shows your connections and background. In addition, the audience might be suspicious why hiding possible references!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is preferred and more reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:44:15.027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:44:15.027" Title="Do you include references in your CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2013-06-27T13:27:22.743" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion references are transient. I would expect anybody asking for my reference to do so for each time the reference is requested. the reason is that I would want to know for what I am providing reference and also because I am keen to make the decision to be a reference under my own control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, i see no reason to provide references in a CV in some permanent way. For each occassion the CV will be used it will of course be possible to add names to the CV but then only for one-time use. It is after all not complicated to edit the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add a line &quot;references are available on request&quot; would be a big no-no for me (this applies to all aspects of, for example, an application, not just the CV). If you have an application, it should be complete and provide all material and information you want in support unless the application makes it clear some information should be added upon request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T13:27:22.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2013-06-27T15:19:35.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with both points you made and with the points made by Peter Jansson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would not allow my name to be used as a reference without permission - primarily to avoid getting a surprise call/email that I am not prepared for, and when I am not prepared I sound like a blubbering buffoon (which would potentially jeopardise the candidate's chances).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is how my CV is organised, I only include referees that are relevant to what I am applying for (with their expressed permission).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for famous people, for me, it would be only if they are relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T15:19:35.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:08:47.680" Score="45" ViewCount="23943" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any hidden rule for using the words &quot;clearly&quot;, &quot;obviously&quot; or similar ones in a technical paper? It can be offensive to the readers in many cases (especially in mathematical proofs), since the reader may not find it &quot;clear&quot; or &quot;obvious&quot;. But does that mean that we should completely avoid the use of these words? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="7564" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T23:17:34.827" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T18:30:12.010" Title="The use of words such as &quot;clearly&quot;, &quot;obviously&quot; etc. in a technical paper" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10809" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:22:27.923" Score="19" ViewCount="1497" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back when my older brother started his PhD degree I asked him what it meant to be a doctor in something other than medicine. I don't recall the exact wording he used, but the idea he portrayed was that you take a field, a narrow and specific field, and you specialise in it to a level at which when you are done, you have become &lt;em&gt;one of the ultimate experts in that very specific field&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance if you are working with combustion physics, you might be one of the leading experts in efficient 2 cylinder, ultra-light engines made out of refined aluminium... Alternatively if you are into neuroscience you might be an expert on a particular neurotransmitter re-absorption in a particular zone of the brain following heavy exercise (or whatever, hopefully you get the point). It might be an opinionated view of a PhD but I feel it's a common way to look at a PhD degree; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a certification of expertise&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-forward 15 years... I am about half-way in my PhD studies in the highly interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, where statistics, mathematical modeling, physics, molecular chemistry and programming boil together with cell biology, to top it all you typically have a theme spice, which in my case is cancer biology. I have a growing feeling that I am getting stretched thinner and thinner by the day, instead of becoming increasingly competent in a specific field, I become semi-competent in increasingly many fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being the case I am not sure I (or others like myself) will fit the &quot;definition&quot; above. I would appreciate some perspective as to how one should be seeing highly interdisciplinary PhD studies and the development (as a scientist and a professional) that graduate studies entitles. Subsequently, how should one go about to profile him/her-self to future employers, seeing as there is no one natural field to pursue, but rather many different ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T09:12:53.687" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T09:12:53.687" Title="Interpretation of a PhD degree in a very broad, interdisciplinary field" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:26:43.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We touched this particular subject in a &quot;Technical Writing&quot; course; the simple answer is that it's a power-stance. In other words, if you are a big-name professor in your field, you can use it without offending someone. Alternatively if you are a petty PhD candidate, then you are better off avoiding not only these two words but also other forms of bold statements when you are drawing conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said this is rather the short answer, I am sure those who are more into linguistics etc might have more insight into the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T16:26:43.323" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:35:36.177" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding posdef's appraisal, but being a little more blunt: if one is in a position to get away with bullying or intimidating people by implying that it's &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problem if one has not explained well enough ... well, I'd say it's still a jerk-y thing to do. If one is in a lower-status position, such words will often be red flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, coming to functionality versus rhetoric versus &quot;formal proof&quot;: at best these words are functionless filler. That is, &lt;em&gt;saying&lt;/em&gt; something is clear is not what makes it clear: if it is clear after these words, it was clear before. &lt;em&gt;Conceivably&lt;/em&gt; a thing is clear _once_noted_, and thus deserves &quot;Observe that...&quot;. But this, too, can be abused if used outside situations where one is noting that something is &quot;a-fortiori&quot; true, that is, is weaker than what the argument has already demonstrated... but presumably suffices for the issues at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T16:35:36.177" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:42:31.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be a complete answer, but I can empathise with you, as I am in a similar boat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is an academic puree of atmospheric physics, photobiology, optics, photography, oncology, opthamology, programming and a dash of education, public information and community safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The steps that I take are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the main focus/foci - this/these are the overarching main goals of your project (eg for mine, it is Atmospheric Physics and Photobiology).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which fields are where the applications/potential applications of your research come from? (eg for mine, they are programming, optics and community safety/education)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at where you can contribute to (the remainder of the list are mine).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last point is something my supervisor suggested I remember in times that I felt I was being academically-spaghettified - look at the disciplines not so much as fields of study, but as areas that you can and are making a contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T16:42:31.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:46:51.983" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a clear consensus on how to use these words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in some other answers, some people find them annoying or obnoxious.  Others think they are a perfectly acceptable way to mention a fact for which you believe a detailed explanation is not necessary.  Certainly they are quite common in published writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a choice that you make as part of developing your own personal writing style, and your feelings may change over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice is: when you write that something is &quot;obvious&quot;, make absolutely sure it is &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt;!  I've been embarrassed this way before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T16:46:51.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-27T16:56:08.390" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a very clear rule for using such words. One possible reason for my claim is that some authors don't even use words &quot;clearly&quot; or &quot;obviously&quot;, but they simply say &quot;it follows ...&quot;.  In mathematics the level of details of a mathematical proof mostly depends on the writer's kindness to her/his readers. I have encountered with many not-so-obvious claims in papers written by experts, where needed several pages of explanations and perhaps some proofs, and several years later, I have found the proofs of those claims in newer papers written by other authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is an adage which says &quot;brevity is a sign of genius&quot; and it seems some people strongly believe in this adage and try to impress others by leaving not-so-obvious gaps in their works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I apply the following rules for using these words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the claim follows from previously mentioned materials by applying well known techniques in 5 minutes or so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it can be obtained by a few lines of computations again by applying well known techniques. Then I use the word &quot;straightforward&quot;.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it easily follows from a well known type of mathematical proofs, like induction, Zorn's lemma. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The proof is similar to a previous proof in the paper or in the literature. In this case I mention the resource. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I expect a PhD student in the field can prove it easily. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T16:56:08.390" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10807" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:39:50.790" Score="4" ViewCount="3736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be out of the ordinary to get a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and then go for a Masters in something like Civil or Structural Engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know a lot about how transitioning to a Masters program works.. Do people usually continue on in the same field, or is branching out common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7562" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T08:53:29.300" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T04:20:09.287" Title="How unusual is getting a Masters degree in a slightly different field than Bachelors?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10789" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:52:15.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System&lt;/a&gt;, the from the National Center for Education Statistics. One of the many variables you can ran institutions on is in fact percent of budget spent on research expenses. That was just the first one I looked for. I don't know how deeply this will go into anything about campus life beyond how much money is spent on housing and student services. But this seems to be the place to go for raw data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T18:52:15.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2013-06-27T19:21:10.547" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely understand your feeling. I can tell you that many other people in this field feel the same. This has nothing to do with how smart or how good they are. This issue also bugged me a lot, but I can offer some insights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bioinformatics/computational biology is really huge and you cannot be an expert in all aspects. Even if you look at senior scientists in this field, I do not think there is someone who is an expert in all subfields. You simply can't master all the physics, math, CS, chemistry and biology at an expert level - even in a much longer time than a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can still have a huge impact without being a super-expert in every subfield. Just look at some of the research published in top journals. The reason is that you will have knowledge and a way of thinking that people restricted to a single field may not have. From personal experience, I can say that this is a significant advantage for asking certain types of questions and coming up with certain ideas that single-field specialists won't come up with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a while you will realize that you actually are an expert. Maybe not in the sense that you know everything about everything, but you will see that you can give good advice to other people, foresee potential problems, and so on. In addition to knowing a lot about computational biology, you will become an expert in things such as quantitative modelling, applied machine learning and &quot;big data&quot; analysis (I hate that term), skills which are very useful in a wide range of fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that you cannot become an expert in everything doesn't mean you should neglect learning. On the contrary, you should constantly try to expand your knowledge in all related fields. And yes, it can be more difficult than learning only one subject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, in the end you will be working on a specific problem in a given biological problem with a given set of tools. That problem is what you really need to be an expert on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T19:21:10.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10804" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:06:21.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on where you are. In the US, this would generally not be too difficult, particularly if one uses elective courses at the bachelor's level to take some of the courses in the &quot;new&quot; field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany, it would actually be almost &lt;strong&gt;impossible&lt;/strong&gt; to switch as you've suggested. The reason for this is that the &quot;prerequisite&quot; for enrolling as master's student in a particular field is usually taken to be the &lt;em&gt;bachelor's degree in the same field as taught at the university!&lt;/em&gt;  This is known as a &quot;consecutive&quot; degree requirement, and makes life very difficult for people coming from outside Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T20:06:21.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2013-06-27T21:04:32.413" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, a PhD is much more than a deep expertise in a particular field.  A PhD is a certificate of &lt;em&gt;the ability to do science&lt;/em&gt;.  That's why your PhD is more broadly applicable than in your particular expertise and that's why some people can change topics dramatically after their PhD: from particle physics to atmospheric science, from space science to ornithology¹.  In a German &lt;em&gt;Habilitation&lt;/em&gt;, which is I think a step on becoming a professor, one has to write a review of a field that is not ones own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other day, I came accross a job advertisement from the British Met Office that had the following requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·         Proven ability to conduct scientific research, displaying initiative, independence and analytical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·         Evidence of the motivation and drive to overcome obstacles in order to solve scientific problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·         Evidence of the ability to write software to address scientific questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD in any natural science proves exactly that; in any case the first two points, and in many cases the third point, too.  Of course, domain-specific knowledge is a plus, but it may not be a necessity.  Therefore, I think you should profile yourself as &lt;em&gt;a scientist&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹&lt;sup&gt;Scientists performing stratospheric radar measurements discovered an odd diurnal pattern in their measurements near the Antarctic coast.  It turns out a flock of birds was flying through the radar beam.  One persons noise is another persons signal; said scientist is now cooperating in ornithological research.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T21:04:32.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2013-06-27T21:15:39.860" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I commented on another board just this morning, the goal of all higher education is ultimately &lt;strong&gt;to learn how to learn.&lt;/strong&gt; As a PhD-level scientist, you need to be able to understand, master, and solve problems in fields which you may have never seen before you started to work in them. This means that you need to have a well-developed process for assimilating information, synthesizing it, and analyzing it. You need to be able to evaluate what is useful or not, what is correct or not, and what might work and what might not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an interdisciplinary field, your challenge is even harder, as you are trying to assimilate potentially disparate fields of knowledge and combine them into something more than the sum of the parts. This requires learning different jargons, different attitudes, and different approaches to problem-solving and understanding the world. This will actually be even more useful, because this means that you can be pretty good at a lot of different things—which gives you an edge over someone who's outstanding at one thing, but only one thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T21:15:39.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T04:16:19.063" Score="5" ViewCount="3972" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the time I apply for a PhD, I will have almost a year of experience as a Research Assistant, but I doubt I will have a paper published till then. The project is still in the data analysis stage, and it will most probably be in the review stage when I apply. Other than this job, I have no other research experience/papers/projects that are much relevant. Though I have 1.5 years of corporate experience in IT. &#xA;I think the above might be a common cause for concern, especially for people looking to switch fields, and thus hope the question is qualified enough for a general audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my particular case, I am looking for PhD programs at the intersection of Neuroscience and Computer Science (e.g. Cog Sci, Computational Neuroscience, Neural Engineering etc). I have a bachelors in Computer Science, but my grades are bad. My GRE score is quite good however, and I'm from a well-known college in my country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T17:40:59.020" Title="Will not having a publication affect my PhD chances even though I have research experience?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2013-06-28T04:27:14.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to answer and I know little about the intersection of CS and neuroscience. I do know a &lt;em&gt;little bit&lt;/em&gt; about the intersection of CS and social sciences (i.e. HCI/information sciences) so I will write about that. In addition, I am the student representative on the admissions committee of our department so I have &lt;em&gt;some limited&lt;/em&gt; experience with that process as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; a publication to apply for PhD in the US. For other countries, it might be different and I do not have that information. &lt;em&gt;Potentially,&lt;/em&gt; you will be more competitive if you have a publication. But remember, that all publications are not created equal. If you have a first author paper (or otherwise depending upon the publication standards in your field) in a top ranked journal/conference in your field, then you are competitive (&lt;strong&gt;assuming that other parts of your application pass muster&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that publication is in a lesser known journal/conference, you still have displayed some knowledge about how to conduct and publish research - which in the end is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my experience, I have seen that &lt;strong&gt;detailed&lt;/strong&gt; letters of recommendation from authors known to members of the admissions committee are usually given way more weight than any published research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take my words with a pinch of salt. Everything varies from field to field and from year to year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T04:27:14.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2013-06-28T04:39:01.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with many things in posdef's answer, except that you might just get your bachelor's and apply straight to a PhD in the US (instead of getting an undergrad and master's, and then applying to a PhD). I should also say that any required course-work will vary from university to university. Many universities have some sort of 'qual' process, where you need to know certain things and pass certain tests at the start/end of your first/second (varying by university) year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a Brown PhD math student, and we have to pass our quals by the end of the first year, essentially; whereas I have a few friends at places like UChicago or Berkeley, where quals can be more immediate. From what I can tell, the subjects are almost always a subset of real analysis (and probability for applied math), complex analysis, algebra, topology, manifolds, and differential equations. I mention this because the subjects and level of testing can be very high and advanced, and if you did not do a sufficient amount of coursework in these areas, then you would probably have a very hard time passing the quals. (Really, the admissions process would probably take that into consideration, and would be less warm in the admissions process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to say that there is a certain &quot;core material&quot; that many PhD programs seem to care about (although the exact material might vary from school to school). I would say that you absolutely must take coursework in analysis, topology, and complex analysis. But I suspect these are required courses in your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other than that, you should take classes that interest you, and apply to schools that have good programs in what you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T04:39:01.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2013-06-28T06:12:58.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only answer from my experience as well, as I am in Australia and studying a physics PhD - my supervisor advised me that it is always good to have some publications under your belt before graduation - makes it a bit easier to defend the thesis/pass examination (we don't do thesis defence in Australia, or at least, at my university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why it is beneficial is because as you have had part(s) of your research published, it has already been reviewed and accepted in the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said that, I was not published at all in my MSc and I had very little difficulty.  You do have experience in research with your job and significant IT experience, as well as a very strong letter of recommendation (what got me over the line).  You may want to contact the admissions officers of where you are intending to apply to discuss these concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T06:39:49.810" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T06:39:49.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2013-06-28T07:42:35.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Humanities and Social Sciences there are no formal restrictions against submissions by members of the general public.  Some journals are far more friendly to non-academic researchers, either due to editorial staff or a culture of supporting popular contributions to knowledge.  (History from below and socialist research programmes in general have an openness to knowledge from outside the traditional academy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The largest barriers to entry are of course the methods, language, evidence and &quot;currency of research&quot; required to conduct and produce research to scholarly standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T10:22:12.100" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T10:22:12.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-28T12:08:25.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;More broadly then in regards to mathematical proofs, a mark of good writing is to avoid the &lt;em&gt;superfluous&lt;/em&gt;. Whether something is clear or obvious comes from the content, not the writer labelling it as such. Trimming unneeded adjectives and adverbs like those you describe should be a regular step in a proof-reading stage. See Strunk and White's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for a more detailed treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T12:08:25.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:52:22.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By reading the comments and answers here, &lt;em&gt;the conclusion is&lt;/em&gt;, that it is usually not a good idea to use these terms. Keep in mind that it might not always be the case that something is obvious to your reader. That being said, the reason you want to use such words is probably because you want to point out/conclude/summarize your findings to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is not to tell your readers what (you find) is obvious, but to tell them what the obvious thing is (conclude/summarize). This way they will either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Confirm their own observation&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;or &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;B. Let them know they haven't fully understood yet (they might re-read your article now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6661" LastEditorUserId="6661" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T14:01:35.973" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T14:01:35.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T15:33:41.340" Score="6" ViewCount="47310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a B.Tech (Bachelors of Technology) from IIT Madras (class of 2000) and looking to change tracks from my current job in the software industry. In university, I specialized in computer science and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if I can get paid as a faculty for teaching at university level either in private or public universities. I’m also interested to learn what possible salary ranges I should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7570" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-04-05T07:53:00.480" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T07:53:00.480" Title="Can I get a university teaching job with only a bachelors degree?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10826" CreationDate="2013-06-28T15:48:11.130" Score="11" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common sense dictates that any and all work/research/drafts/etc that we do in our journal-research and PhD ought to be backed up and backed up again.  Most of the time, this is constrained to laptop/desktop, USB memory and perhaps a copy in your own email - one disaster could wipe all that out (almost happened to my MSc research - got caught up in a severe natural disaster).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there a more secure and 'safe' means to save/backup our PhD and/or journal-research work? Do universities offer such services, or is it up to individual researchers to find their own solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that I have no illusions of any system being completely 100% safe and secure, but are looking at ways that are more secure than the 'traditional' methods listed before in the first paragraph (2nd sentence) of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T21:38:00.570" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T03:32:45.073" Title="Secure backups of PhD and journal-research" Tags="&lt;backup-archiving&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10835" CreationDate="2013-06-28T16:15:53.407" Score="7" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are asked to list what continual professional development (CPD) you have completed in the previous 12 months, where do you draw the line on what gets included?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would think attending a seminar on teaching skills should be included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new degree, diploma, certificate, etc. would certainly be included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would think that participating on this or any other website (Academia.se) would not be included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would think that discussions, no matter how long or involved, would not be included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about reading books?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about watching a video series specific to the position?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about audio books?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about reading articles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about research for writing articles on the subject of teaching (if you are a teacher)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also think as a general rule that things done to improve a teacher's teaching or subject knowledge would count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T04:15:27.823" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T04:15:27.823" Title="What gets included for Continuing Professional Development?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;cpd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10823" CreationDate="2013-06-28T16:26:04.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the authority that you have to report your CPD to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, here in Queensland, most of what they decree as being CPD is on your list.  Speaking to a rep, reading articles can and often do count towards CPD - and most certainly writing articles and courses, as &lt;em&gt;long as they relate to your subject areas.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are quite correct in that things done to improve the teacher's skills in all aspects of teaching and knowledge that would relate to the teaching area are, for here in any case, considered as CPD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T16:26:04.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2013-06-28T16:46:07.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not really a research-related question at all, but I can tell you what I do. I put everything (excluding large data sets) under distributed version control (Mercurial) and push to remote repositories frequently. &#xA;NB: You can easily automate the pushing if you desire; this has positive and negative aspects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the two leading DVCS are Git and Mercurial, so either of these would work. Free hosting for Git is available at Github and Bitbucket, free hosting for Mercurial is available on Bitbucket. There are many other places you can put your repositories, of course, including remote servers your organization owns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: large data sets require special handling, so I'm not sure about that, but they are often not original work, and can be retrieved from other places if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend doing this in conjunction with some sane method for saving &quot;scratch&quot; work (i.e. work in progress that is not yet suitable for a fully formed commit), so you don't have significant unsaved work lying on your hard disk. The important point here is to have a workflow by which you can sanely push commits at frequent intervals - I try to make commits every 1/2 hr or less. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/08/a-git-users-guide-to-mercurial-queues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercurial queues&lt;/a&gt;. There is also a brand new thing called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/EvolveExtension&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evolve Extension&lt;/a&gt;, but I have not tried &#xA;that yet. Git has similar software available. See for example, the Stack Overflow question &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/952651/350713&quot;&gt;git equivalent to hg mq?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/5016862/350713&quot;&gt;What's the Git approach to publish a patch queue?&lt;/a&gt;. NB: If you do use a patch queue, you need of course to version it, otherwise you can't push it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These methods can appear complex if you are not used to version control. However, I can attest this approach works well. My workstation died three times in the last 3 1/2 years, and each time I was able to switch to a different machine and carry on working without interruption, without access to the machine I had just been using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5277/285&quot;&gt;Why use version control systems for writing a paper&lt;/a&gt;, particularly &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5519/285&quot;&gt;user244795's answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T18:10:37.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2013-06-28T17:23:15.397" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Backups, short-term and long-term storage of research material is actually something we have to address whenever we apply for a IRB for a research study or an IRB exemption. We have to spell everything out in great detail including when we are going to destroy or get rid of the acquired research materials (since they usually contain personal identifiers like name, address, email etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is our approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have our own encrypted lab server on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID&quot;&gt;RAID configuration&lt;/a&gt;. Access to the server is restricted to myself and my adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We store generalized, public versions of our scripts on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.github.com/&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;. The previous answer has very good specifics on github so I will not go into the details here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Periodically, we backup our lab server to another externally hosted server (not physically located in the US). This backup script is encrypted and password protected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physical interview questionnaires, survey instruments, interview transcripts are stored in a locked file cabinet with access to my adviser and myself in our lab. Entry to our lab is through keycard only.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interview recordings, videos and audios are also stored and backed-up according to the procedures in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; and [3].&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach seems to have worked so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T17:23:15.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10821" CreationDate="2013-06-28T18:16:34.267" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;(U.S. answer follows)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is virtually impossible to get a teaching job at the college or university level without an advanced degree at the Master's or PhD (or terminal professional degree) level.  Most faculty have a terminal degree.  The opportunities for teaching with a Master's are limited, especially because competition is high and even collegiate level positions that are open to Master's holders still attract PhDs.  Master's degree holders are normally limited to non-tenure track teaching positions and adjunct teaching positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do want to be a teacher without an advanced degree, there are opportunities at secondary schools, although most public schools will expect you to start working toward your Master's degree in either Education or your specific field within a few years after you begin.  Private secondary schools are less strict in this regard, but these days you'll find that most teachers will work towards their Master's even in private schools.  With a computer science / engineering degree, you should be competitive for teaching positions in mathematics, physics, computer science/technology, and possibly other sciences.  When I started teaching high school physics, my undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering (but I also finished a Master's in education).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are obviously exceptions to the above -- Bill Gates could get a job teaching at virtually any school in the country, and he doesn't even have a bachelor's degree.  But, unless you are in a unique category like that, you should be prepared to get an advanced degree of some sort if you want to teach at the college or university level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T18:16:34.267" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-28T21:52:01.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might go against most of the answers here and say &lt;strong&gt;why not?&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am going to this right now. I am writing a paper proposing a solution for problem X by adopting well known mathematical model Y. Now Y has clear axioms and definitions (for instance, the set of considered elements has to form a commutative semigroup under combination). I defined X then defined the combination operator. Should I go further and proof it is commutative semigroup?  I believe it is clear that X form a commutative semigroup &lt;em&gt;within my framework&lt;/em&gt;. Yes It is obvious.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now whether the author of these words is a student or professor, I believe it doesn't make difference. At the end, there is minimum knowledge required to understand any given paper, if its clear then it's clear and you better utilize the paper limited space in something not clear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T21:52:01.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2013-06-29T03:18:27.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student of neuroinformatics in UK and my background is computer science. I think I know a bit about the intersection of neuroscience and CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretical/computational neuroscience is a growing field and as far as I am aware people with physics/CS background are very much needed. Experimentalists have a whole wealth of data but they usually don't have skills or time to analyse the data, create models, run simulations and obtain predictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need publications to be accepted to a PhD programme. There are actually some PhD students who didn't publish a paper during their programme at all... Having good grades and recommendation letters helps but I would risk to say that primarily you need to show a genuine interest in the field, show that you want to find answers to certain questions etc. You already have an experience as a Research Assistant and definitely it is your strength. Focus on what skills you already have and not what you are lacking. If, for example, you are a brilliant programmer in a couple of languages and handle huge databases well, try to sell that. There must be some labs where your skills are on high demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is what university/lab you would like to aim at. If you want to work for top researchers in the field, it might get very competitive and not having good grades and publications works against you. But of course there is a number of less known labs that work on interesting projects and have various collaborators around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as already mentioned in comments - get in touch with the professors, find out about their research, read their papers, raise some questions. And remember that some labs might be interested in working with you but cannot offer you any funding. In that case it still might work OK as there is various ways to obtain individual grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7219" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T03:18:27.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2013-06-29T03:25:36.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most cases, using git or hg is too much for research that don' t include much code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a concise answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put everything in a web service like dropbox that provides function of version control. Dropbox is easy and straightforward to use and don' t bother you with complex version control commands, while it provides file version system for last 30 days. The free space is usually enough for current work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For code, you can put at bitbucket.org, since it offers nice unlimited plan for academic use, which offers you private repos and unlimited team member. Of course you can open source your code at github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7237" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T03:25:36.160" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-29T07:13:55.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; using these words unless your goal is to trick the reader into thoroughly checking your claim, or in an exam's trick question where you set a false premise (though these words are give-aways if not overused). If something &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; obvious there wouldn't be a need to even state it. And if you need to state something, it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you think some non-trivial&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; steps should be omitted so your 5 page paper doesn't bloat up to a 30 pager, then please have the decency to either briefly state the trickiest tool involved (be that induction or some specific part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles%27s_proof_of_Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wile's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem&lt;/a&gt;) or - even better - put the detail which you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have done anyway into the appendix / online supplement and refer to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;Trivial is also one of these words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T07:13:55.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10834" CreationDate="2013-06-29T10:51:31.167" Score="5" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently 2 units into my MSc degree (6 units over 2 semesters left).I know this is rather early, But I would like to start work on my dissertation as soon as I can, to give myself enough time and preparation to do &quot;distinction level&quot; work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I come up with a topic I'll stick with? I've had tons of advise from different sources telling me to choose from an area of interest. Considering I still have the bulk of my degree work ahead, this wasn't too useful for me. Do I read all areas ahead of the units to &quot;&lt;em&gt;fast forward&lt;/em&gt;&quot; the process?. Any advice is welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7576" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T20:01:18.117" Title="How do I come up with a dissertation topic early on in my degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10833" CreationDate="2013-06-29T11:31:25.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic example where talking to your advisor is of the utmost importance.  Some advisors want their students to choose a topic as early as possible, and others don't mind if their students take their time. As for the topic, hopefully, your advisor should be able to point you in a direction if you don't already have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand the rush to get started on something concrete, you really don't want to do a lot of work on a topic that ends up being (1) uninteresting, and (2) unfruitful.  Talk to as many other faculty and students as you'd like, and there isn't anything wrong with reading ahead, with the exception that you might not understand something well enough to make a good decision about whether you should do research in the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My bottom-line suggestion is to take your time picking a topic, because you really do want it to be a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T11:31:25.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10823" CreationDate="2013-06-29T14:54:10.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding Damien's answer - it depends on who you are reporting to, and it depends on what they want. &lt;strong&gt;Ask for guidelines.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I report to a committee of peers in my department who forward my report with recommendations to the dean. I am judged in several categories. Explicit guidelines on what counts (and what does not) in each category are provided. I would earn credit somewhere for everything on your list. Each category is weighted differently, so I do not received equal credit for all activities. I have taken your list of activities and placed them into the categories for which I would receive credit, and added some of my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instructional Design and Development - Activities to improve the courses that I teach and the methods by which I teach them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attending a seminar on teaching skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video or webinar series on the position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experimentation in teaching methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing new materials that better suit the needs of the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teaching Performance and Feedback to Students - Activities that improve my interacting with students in and out of the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nothing from your list fits here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reflecting on student evaluations and using them to improve your instruction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faithfully keeping office hours and responding to students in a timely fashion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advising students and writing letters of recommendation for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scholarly Activity / Professional Development - Activities to improve my knowledge of my discipline and which improve the discipline as a whole&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new degree, diploma, or certificate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading books, articles, letters, reviews, etc. in your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conducting research in your field, even if specific to education in your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attending, and especially presenting at, conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting grant requests, and especially receiving grants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Service - Activities which forward the mission and goals of the department, the institution, the profession, or the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participating in Stack Exchange&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serving on committees at the department and institution level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serving as department chair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being active (and especially holding an officer position) in professional organizations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educational outreach to the community &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collegiality - Activities that improve my relationship with my colleagues and improves my colleagues' abilities to perform their jobs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussions with colleagues focusing on best practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharing of teaching materials with colleagues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mentoring younger colleagues &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the specific answer to your question is held by the authority to whom you are responsible - your supervisor, department, department chair, dean, provost, vice president, etc. &lt;strong&gt;Ask for guidelines.&lt;/strong&gt; If your supervisor wants you to be productive in the desirable way, you should receive guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T14:54:10.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10797" CreationDate="2013-06-29T15:21:54.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always taught that if you had something to say that was &quot;clear&quot; or &quot;obvious&quot; to your intended readership, then it wasn't really worth saying at all. Made a lot of sense to me, and I've never used those words in any of my technical or academic writing since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5737" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T15:21:54.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-29T18:35:39.027" Score="3" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that many universities in the US and an increasing number in the EU are against taking on their own graduates. Does the same apply to exchange students? I'm wondering if I didn't make a strategic mistake by going there. On the other hand, I did everything to go on exchange to that school because I think they do great research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T19:32:42.517" Title="Applying to grad school where I've been on exchange" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10837" CreationDate="2013-06-29T19:32:42.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know that many universities in the US and an increasing number in&#xA;  the EU are against taking on their own graduates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean for grad-school ? This is the first I've heard of it. We encourage our undergrads to search widely, but I'd love to take my own undergrads for grad school if I could persuade them to stay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentiment you're referring to is more prevalent at the faculty hiring level: namely, universities are less likely to hire their own Ph.D students as faculty (at least not without some time spent elsewhere first)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T19:32:42.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2013-06-29T19:55:11.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it should not matter who you are, it is the quality and importance of the work you do that should determine the publishability. With that said, it is true that it is a nontrivial task to write with the appropriate tone, have the needed citations, and conduct a solid research effort without formal training. My advice to you, should you be considering publishing in a technical area (if you are the carpenter in question), would be to find someone who works/publishes in the area with the aim of writing something together. Chances are they may have some good ideas on how to structure and present the work, how to formulate the basic hypotheses and ideas so that they will be palatable to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T19:29:46.893" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T19:29:46.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10833" CreationDate="2013-06-29T20:01:18.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you have a formal advisor or not, you can approach faculty for advice and for suggestions. It is almost impossible for a novice to pick a really good Ph.D. topic (while working alone in a vacuum). Go by various professor's office hours and talk with them about their work. Tell them you are seeking good problems to work on. Ask good questions, and engage them intellectually. Something good is bound to happen. Talk with other grad students who are further along in their program. Try collaborating with other students: this is a great way to get hands on experience with problems, and if things work out, you may get a publication out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T20:01:18.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10821" CreationDate="2013-06-29T22:08:52.557" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be able to get classes as an adjunct instructor at a community college.  I currently have a bachelor's degree in computer science, with no graduate degrees.  I have taught courses as an adjunct instructor in computer science and in developmental mathematics at community colleges in different states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7582" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T22:08:52.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-29T22:54:10.863" Score="3" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw that one of my research articles was the most-read paper in one of the top journals in my field in February of this year.  What is the appropriate way, if any, to list this on a vita?  It's not an &quot;Award&quot;, strictly speaking, so would it be best to just list it as a comment next to the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7583" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T00:17:02.427" Title="How to list this accomplishment on my vita?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10846" CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:52:09.127" Score="21" ViewCount="5808" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use software for managing my references?  What is the benefit of it?   I can write down the references by myself, so I'm not sure what the benefit is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T02:34:03.760" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T21:24:09.313" Title="Should I use reference manager software?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10842" CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:54:57.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, congratulations!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, whether or not to include this in your CV depends what you are applying for - if you are applying for positions that involve research, then yes, add it as a comment next to the paper.  Then again, it probably would not hurt just to have a comment about it in there anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T23:54:57.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10843" CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:59:33.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a few advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If anything, your references listed in the manager can at the very least be a back up for your written copy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a good time management technique to list the references as you go, handwritten is fine, but with the reference manager, it is ready to be copied onto your completed manuscript - in order, with all the formatting set.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, it will save you quite a bit of time later on in your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T23:59:33.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10843" CreationDate="2013-06-30T00:12:52.253" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to use reference managers. However, if you use some reference managers like Mendeley then, some of the benefits are obvious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pdf of your article is linked to the reference itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can organize references into logical groups (areas, subjects, disciplines, sub-disciplines) by utilizing folders and tags.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can one-click save articles and organize them from your browser. This is invaluable in saving time on organizing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can sync across multiple devices like desktops, laptops and tablets. For instance, Mendeley has an iOS app which does this for you. I use Android so I workaround using Droideley or Scholarley.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can read your articles inside the reference manager and then do useful things like highlighting and annotations which can then be saved as notes for future reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can export to specific citation styles. This is very useful for someone doing interdisciplinary work. For instance, I have to constantly use the same or similar bibliography using APA style, ACM style, IEEE style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are very useful for multiple collaborative platforms. For instance, when collaborating with some computer science colleagues, I generally use LaTeX and Mendeley does a brilliant one-click job of exporting to BibTeX. When I work with social scientists, I generally use MS Word and there is a MS Word plugin for Mendeley which dynamically adds references in-line as well as the full bibliography at the end of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this has been partially useful to you. This is a little Mendeley focused and I am in no certain terms claiming that it is the best or the most useful. However, for me, it certainly has its advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T00:12:52.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10842" CreationDate="2013-06-30T00:17:02.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great work ! The way I do it is under the Publications section of my CV. The following citation is formatted in the ACM style. You can modify it for your own citation styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;J1&lt;/strong&gt;. Smith, J. 2013. &quot;The best paper ever&quot;. &lt;em&gt;ACM Transactions of Awesomeness&lt;/em&gt;, 1 (4). ACM Press, NY, USA. (&lt;strong&gt;most read article in March 2013&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T00:17:02.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2013-06-30T00:33:00.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because no-one's mentioned it yet, I use and love CrashPlan (&lt;a href=&quot;http://crashplan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://crashplan.com&lt;/a&gt;). It's cheap, everything is backed up and encrypted to &quot;the cloud&quot; and it's always running. A nice complement to full disk cloning and git/mercurial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7584" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T00:33:00.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-30T01:00:14.317" Score="4" ViewCount="3036" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am completing my masters in chemical engineering. I have completed my first two semesters but was unable to find a research thesis topic to work upon. Will it be bad to complete my masters degree without a thesis, if I don't get a better option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7585" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-06-30T02:06:44.117" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T00:21:16.237" Title="Non-Thesis Masters" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-30T01:57:11.063" Score="15" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I know, every Phd student needs to choose a supervisor in the first year. For someone who is entering a  Phd with a broad interest in a field, this might be difficult since they don't immediately know what they want to work on. How do they go about choosing a supervisor in that case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6803" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T19:50:35.373" Title="How should one choose a supervisor if they haven't yet narrowed down their research focus?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10849" CreationDate="2013-06-30T02:10:22.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether it will be 'bad' or not depends on whether you intend to pursue further studies (PhD), also, it depends on what the university policy is regarding the completion of your Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you discuss your concerns with your supervisors/advisors (if you have not done so already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to write and submit papers for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T02:10:22.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10850" CreationDate="2013-06-30T02:14:25.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When searching for a supervisor, look at their research profile (usually on a university website), paying particular attention to their fields of expertise/interests - look at and read any papers that they have had published and the nature of the PhD projects that they have already/are currently supervising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuss what options there are with members of the Faculty that whose general fields you are interested in.  Ask what projects are upcoming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T02:14:25.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10850" CreationDate="2013-06-30T04:36:54.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most research groups have seminars or weekly meetings. If you're not sure about a particular supervisor, but have a set of interests, try attending research group meetings for faculty in those areas. Faculty are quite used to this and will usually welcome the attendance (but do check with them first)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T04:36:54.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10856" CreationDate="2013-06-30T05:39:45.853" Score="3" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been admitted to a 4-year B.S. in Mathematics program in an Asian country. The mathematics courses are excellent and at par with the finest universities in the United States and there will a generous number of courses from the humanities. All the same, there is a provision for taking 7 more single-semester courses, to get a minor (alternately, I could dabble in many other subjects other than math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if taking a total of 7 courses in English and Economics instead of courses like physics, chemistry and biology could seriously affect my application when I apply to grad school in the US for PhD in mathematics. I would almost certainly apply to  good grad schools like UChicago and Berkeley depending on my interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect&#xA;  my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7586" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-06-30T10:04:35.960" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T10:04:35.960" Title="Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10747" CreationDate="2013-06-30T06:11:47.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science at a top-ranked US university, I'd estimate that about half of admitted Ph.D. students have a publication while they were an undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having a (good) publication is really helpful, but not an absolute necessity.  What matters most is research potential, i.e., the potential to be a successful researcher.  Showing that you have done good research that led to a publication is one powerful way to show that you have good research potential, but there are other ways (e.g., by doing research, getting strong letters of recommendation from folks you have worked with, excelling in academic work, doing independent work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T06:11:47.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10854" CreationDate="2013-06-30T06:21:38.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're applying to a &lt;em&gt;pure&lt;/em&gt; math program, then it's unlikely that graduate admissions boards will be expecting courses in a particular outside discipline. If you're doing &lt;em&gt;applied&lt;/em&gt; math, however, it would be much more logical to expect to see &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; coursework in an outside discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, economics may be suitable as an &quot;outside&quot; discipline if you're taking advanced coursework with a mathematical bent to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall, demonstrating that you are a strong candidate will make a much bigger impact than the specific training you have. Research experience, a strong statement of purpose, and great letters of recommendation will increase your chances of admission much more than if your &quot;off-subject&quot; courses are in economics or physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T06:21:38.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-30T13:29:46.517" Score="11" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;When someone is just starting out, they can be overwhelmed  with the number of journal articles published each month. Reading everything published seems impossible due to time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After someone has enough experience, they naturally watch for articles which are impressive, see where these are published and where the articles it cites are published but when someone is just starting out, it's not clear where to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one go about identifying the best journals to keep up on when they have no experience reading any particular journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T14:17:27.673" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:45:30.450" Title="How to find the best journals or articles to read" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2013-06-30T16:17:52.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on your field. In mathematics, physics, and a few related areas there is arXiv.org. From which you get rss feeds or e-mail announcements for individual research areas. This is particularly helpful because there are a huge amount a journals in mathematics and physics and you could never keep up with all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The added benefit is that most of what you run across on arXiv hasn't made it to a journal yet so it is relatively new and free. Then after you find useful and interesting articles you can keep track of them and find out where they were eventually published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another set of tools that can be useful is a good indexing service that lets you trace backwards and forwards the references from a paper that you know is important. This lets you see not only what the important paper references but also who has referenced it and where they did so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the fact that my research field does not yet have a single journal dedicated to my field these are the tools that I use most to find new literature and see what is going on. Of course if you are still looking around for a research field to get into there are the big general topic journals in each area which are a good place to start if you want a big picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T16:17:52.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2013-06-30T18:24:42.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your peers and mentors&lt;/strong&gt;. There are plenty of low quality journals, and you would not benefit from reading from those journals especially when you are just entering the field. I currently subscribe to the table of contents of 4~6 top journals in my field via RSS or email. It took me years to identify and settle in this list. I got to appreciate those journals for their high impact in the community. Before I entered grad school, I often read random articles with cool titles that I would find via search engines, but they were not too helpful in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, reading one article carefully is often more valuable than skimming through five articles. You may feel that you are falling behind since there is a constant stream of &quot;exciting&quot; articles, but in the grand scheme of things, only a few will survive the sand of time. Alternatively to reading journals, another good way of keeping up with exciting research frontend is to go to academic conferences and talks (in person or virtually via e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://videolectures.net&quot;&gt;videolectures.net&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T18:24:42.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2013-06-30T18:48:51.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add a slightly less &quot;public&quot; view (my institute is a non-university research institute which would be counted either as academic or industrial depending on whom you ask). We mainly work with original data we measure ourselves. The major concern of our administration seems to be that original data does not inadvertently end up becoming public, destroyed/lost data seems to be less of a concern (but there are backed up servers, see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Default policy is that data and code (and paper drafts) stay inside the institute (though we may take them home, as working from home office is a valid and frequently used option) and within the collaborating groups, respectively.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Basically this has not only the obvious consequence of no google docs, no public github or the like (unless specified for the particular project) but also e.g. no private github plan. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of private github plan (or the like) we have our own git server. The main purpose of the server is not backup (it is located in the main server room, so e.g. a fire killing the file server would most likely kill the git server as well), but collaboration. However, having collaboration with a DCVS automatically means backups that are distributed as far away as the collaborators are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, our computer services provides a file server which is automatically backed up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once a publication is out, original data, source code and the paper are backed up in a publication data base as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Due to home office, I have an external hard disk that I carry hence and forth (particularly for data that is too big to be conveniently exchanged via internet with the git server). Which means that unless the big disaster happens when the external hard disk, my laptop, my desktop, and the file server with the backups are all destroyed (what is the probability that I'm well and up to work after such an event?), there will be some copies surviving. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At a university where  I worked before, the central computer administration did backup services for specified computers of the institutes. We once needed that after a fire in our institute's server room. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I may add that from my perspective of a scientist who is also doing measurements on physical (in fact, biological) samples, I've experienced much more trouble due to physically destroyed or spoiled samples than with computer failures.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sure, we have our share of instrument computers dying (big issue, as it can be difficult to find parts that are compatible particularly with older instrument hardware - but no data loss issue: measurements are usually immediately transferred to file server, office computers, external hard disk). Office computers seldom die without warning symptoms beforehand. There also was that fire in the server room (university computation center back-up did work).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the same time, we've had 3 failures of deep-freezers where our tissue samples are stored. Plus other accidents (tissues thawed by inexperienced student, lots of tissues never frozen correctly by collaborating surgeons, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even without a &quot;proper&quot; data backup plan like automatic backup of all computers, physical loss of delicate samples seems to be the more pressing problem than loss of data. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T18:48:51.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10867" CreationDate="2013-06-30T19:17:31.473" Score="3" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a mathematical paper, is it wise to refer to formulas in a non-English (here: German) text book, under the conditions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the text book is standard in its language region&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all English text books lack the desired presentation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I am concerend about some formulas from vector analysis, which not too difficult, but American text books do not seem to feature these formulas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T20:53:27.190" Title="Reference formulas in non-English text books" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10866" CreationDate="2013-06-30T20:53:27.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should cite the most appropriate references for your work, regardless of the language of the source. (I suspect that even mathematics, many of the most important references were initially published in other languages, such as French, German, or Russian.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not required to cite only English-language sources in publications, especially if the only source you can find is in another language. However, you may have to find a way to share the reference with editors or referees, particularly if the reference is rather obscure. If it's published by a mainstream company, however, then it should not be a problem to verify it. (I should point out that the importance of this depends critically on how central the reference is; a minor result that can be independently verified is not a problem; a core result requires much greater scrutiny.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T20:53:27.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T02:07:52.770" Score="12" ViewCount="13155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Master's student in math who is doing pretty well so far. &#xA;I aced my first two classes (real analysis) &#xA;and my summer session in probability theory is going well, too. &#xA;Even before my Master's study, I already thought of a PhD. &#xA;Nonetheless, there are concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My good grades were the result of grit, not brain, &#xA;meaning that I had to spend time to understand what the book is telling me. &#xA;Furthermore, a lot of times during exam and homework, &#xA;I had to try and fail a few times before arriving at the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did not study math during undergrad.  Before my Master's study,&#xA;I gulped down three semesters of calculus, plus LA and DE in one year. &#xA;So compared to other students, I am already behind. &#xA;In the next two months, I will learn complex numbers on my own&#xA;and review my linear algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am a professional in a field that has nothing to do with math or research. &#xA;After the holiday, I will speak to my advisor about taking a thesis class. &#xA;It's not an insurmountable obstacle, &#xA;but, in an unrelated field, I do have less time to concentrate on math.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, how big is the jump from Master's to Phd? &#xA;Especially after what I said in (1), I do worry that it is beyond my ability. &#xA;I do not hold anyone responsible for my decision. &#xA;So, please kindly offer your best assessment of my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Andy Tam" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T08:50:19.177" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T15:07:48.793" Title="How difficult Is a PhD Program?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11372" CreationDate="2013-07-01T03:43:45.527" Score="4" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be undertaking my first teaching position as a graduate student in the fall - I will be leading two of the discussion sections for an undergraduate biology course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sorts of things should I expect to teach in a discussion section for a science course and how should I teach them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was an undergraduate and took the same course (same material, different university), the graduate students had to re-teach the lectures in our equivalent of discussion sections, as if it was brand new material because the professor was not a very good lecturer.  I know the professors for whom I will be teaching these sections are rather good lecturers, so I do not expect to have to re-teach everything to the same extent.  I have several concerns, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These sections are about twice the size of those at my undergraduate university, and I would like to encourage regular class participation of some sort, to make sure students stay engaged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The material is undoubtedly challenging so I am wary of bringing in too much new material, such as discussion of scientific papers, which is the first kind of discussion that springs to mind.  (Also, someone will inevitably ask &quot;is that going to be on the exam?&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the material is challenging, I could probably do with some review. But how to I keep a large number of students engaged (and participating) through repetition of lecture material? Ostensibly, the reason for having discussion sections is so that there is actual discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7123" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T16:59:56.160" Title="Regarding &quot;discussion sections&quot; for undergraduate science courses" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10873" CreationDate="2013-07-01T04:04:04.860" Score="9" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to distribute some of the materials related to my paper (such as source code) available online. I have the option of uploading them to my personal website or to a server in my institution, (or any better ways you suggest?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that if I upload it on the institution personal space, after graduating I won't have access to the server anymore or my page might be closed.&#xA;and I don't want to disappoint my readers by providing a link which may expire in a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal website seems a good option so I fully have control over the materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is any better option or online services recognized especially for hosting academic materials (here my code) which I can link them in my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7595" LastEditorUserId="7595" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T08:06:37.377" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T20:51:57.347" Title="How to make your paper's materials available online? (personal webpages, Institutional server, etc?)" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2013-07-01T05:30:31.243" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.github.com&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt; which will provide not only a public place for storing your code, but also will give you version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other similar sites exist such as GoogleDocs, FlipDrive, DropBox, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T08:16:16.977" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T08:16:16.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10850" CreationDate="2013-07-01T05:58:34.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick someone at random.  (Use your research interests and experience, and the available faculty's research interests and experience, to bias your probability distribution.)  Work with them for a semester.  If you both like the work that you're doing together, and they're willing to take you on as a student, you're done.  Otherwise, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I'm not joking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T05:58:34.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2013-07-01T06:19:01.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Austin Mohr, pointed out, it is unlikely a stranger on the net fully answer this for you, but what you are experiencing is similar to what I experienced, so I can tell you how it was from my perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given what JeffE commented, studying through true 'grit', does involve 'brains' as you are developing and applying problem solving skills and stategies - which has clearly been effective, as you mention, you have good grades.  So, it seems you have developed effective study techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 2 is pretty much not an issue, based on the skills and strategies you developed in point 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do an unrelated thesis, as you mentioned in point 3 - look at this way, you'll be developing the research and synthesis skills needed for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found about the transition between the Masters and PhD, was that it wasn't so much of a leap, but a case of using the skills developed a lot more thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T06:19:01.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10850" CreationDate="2013-07-01T06:36:54.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it happens, your case was similar to mine—I didn't have a clue about exactly what I wanted to do, other than being interested in simulations rather than experiment. And, unlike JeffE's advice, in my field (chemical engineering), we don't get the option of working with multiple advisors for extended periods of time, because of the way project funding works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes things easier for us? All of the faculty give presentations to the first-year graduate students, and all of the first-year students were required to meet with a number of potential advisors before ranking our preferences. This makes it easier, because we had to be active in seeking out advisors. Talking with graduate students in the group was also very helpful, because it allowed me to learn more about the advisors' styles, as well as the people that are in the groups. (Some of the groups were very cordial, others were not nearly so civil in their interactions—made a &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; difference in making my decision.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T06:45:09.237" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T06:45:09.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10850" CreationDate="2013-07-01T08:00:59.813" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice will be similar to aeisimail's, and though I have not actually done exactly what I am suggesting, the main points are still based on personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also note that I come from the European setting (PhD in France currently) so the levels of education when you actually start looking for an adviser might differ, but I'll try to do my best to be general.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there's &lt;strong&gt;three almost equally important parts&lt;/strong&gt; to choosing what to do for PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;subject&lt;/strong&gt; (narrow field of focus, project you're taking on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you are not sure what exactly you want to do, if you don't see yourself getting at least a little bit excited about the subject, you will not be able to do it &lt;em&gt;and enjoy it&lt;/em&gt; for the whole PhD duration. It also helps if you see the adviser being fascinated by what he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;adviser&lt;/strong&gt; -- on &lt;em&gt;both personal and professional level&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should read something about his previous works. Read some of his publications, something about ongoing projects. Ask around for information from other students. But also, if you have a chance, try and talk to the potential adviser, &lt;em&gt;in person&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe some people can get a feel for an adviser from e-mail or other indirect communication, but for me, &lt;em&gt;if I can hold an easy conversation with someone for 5-10 minutes, I'll probably be okay working with them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;environment&lt;/strong&gt; -- both for working and for living&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, try and get a feel for the research group and the lab you would potentially belong to. Depending on the type of person you are, you will prefer different environments. But, a friendly atmosphere is beneficial to everybody. Also, take a look at where you'll have to live (if you're moving for you PhD): a very extrovert person might suffer after moving to a small, quiet town. A big bustling town might overwhelm a shy and introvert person. Make sure &lt;em&gt;you can be comfortable outside your PhD/job&lt;/em&gt;, because as much as you can't do a PhD if you don't love what you do, you won't be able to do it well if you don't like what your life is outside of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem right now that you can survive with a good topic and adviser, in a bad environment, or some other way around, but think about it: those three things will be with you through the whole PhD. You can't do a PhD properly if you don't love what you do, who you do it with and where you are. &lt;em&gt;All three of them are very important&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some more specific advice that I collected over the years, which is probably not applicable in all the situations but is worth taking under consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;young advisers at the start of their career are more likely to pay more attention to their students. If you want to work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; your adviser, it will probably be harder with somebody who's already made a name for themselves: you're more likely to end up just working &lt;em&gt;under&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the longer the people are in academia, the more they do &lt;em&gt;administration&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;. Know how to &lt;em&gt;take advantage of what you have&lt;/em&gt;. If you end up with an adviser over his head in administration, keep research questions rare and to the point, when you need them. But know that these kind of people will be able to resolve some administrative problems for you that others might not be able to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no matter what type of adviser you get, in the end it is your own PhD topic. The adviser does not hold the absolute truth, and does not have all the answers. He's good for directing you and helping you focus, sometimes discussing problems, but towards the end of your PhD, you are the one that will become the foremost expert on the topic. Prepare for that, so you don't end up disappointed the first time you see your adviser guessing and struggling around your problem just like you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find what fascinated you about your own (potential) topic. Don't get all starry-eyed about what the output should be when looking for at a subject. If the output is all neat and useful and pretty, think about weather it has, for example, too much maths for you to be enjoying working on it. It's not just about what you are &lt;em&gt;capable&lt;/em&gt; of doing, it's about what you &lt;em&gt;enjoy&lt;/em&gt; doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the short novel, I hope you find something that helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T08:00:59.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2013-07-01T08:27:01.383" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few different things going on in this question, I'll try and address them separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, heed JeffE's words about the impostor syndrome. The idea that some people are effortly geniuses (which is inevitably followed by &quot;but not me&quot;) is untrue and distinctly unhelpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover trying and failing a few (or many!) times before coming to a solution is the very &lt;em&gt;definition&lt;/em&gt; of doing research!  The important question you should ask yourself is if you enjoy the challenge of struggling against a problem; if so, then research would be a great fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your background, you seem to have a plan to address the gaps in your background, and if you're doing well in your master's programme, I wouldn't worry too much about being behind the other students. Another challenge may be if you have a full-time job; doing a Ph.D. with a fulltime job is by no means impossible, but requires a some great time management skills. Anyway there's plenty of resources on this forum to help with this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as for the question in the title, I would say it depends the most on what you plan to do with your Ph.D. after you graduate. I'm a recent graduate (in math) from a well-known North American school, and the quality of the Ph.D's varied greatly. I think it really depends on what you want to do with the degree. If getting a Ph.D. is the farthest one wants to go in academia, the standards for graduating are pretty low, and I think can be achieved not too strenuously. If one wants to be competitive in the academic research job market, the bar is quite a bit higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7597" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T08:27:01.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T10:59:43.500" Score="6" ViewCount="6642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my master thesis at the moment in the area of cyber/computer security.&#xA;However, I'm having real trouble in keeping a good structure in the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean with structure is that my supervisor has commented on several occasions that the order of subjects should be changed and that some parts should be switched or explained in less/more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although my supervisor has been incredibly helpful and has provided good pointers, I was wondering if the community here could give some ideas on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to keep the structure of a thesis in line and what mistakes to look out for?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6332" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T00:07:05.757" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T17:31:37.813" Title="How to manage the structure of a masters thesis and what mistakes to look out for?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-04-05T19:16:39.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2013-07-01T11:12:18.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that if you are able to keep them up-to-date, a personal website containing a guide/summary of your works with GitHub (or similar) repositories to host code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this is that it allows you the best of both worlds. I would suggest that your personal site would be the &quot;professional&quot; portal to your academic papers etc, with blurbs / 'about me' etc while the source code and documentation being managed on GitHub (or similar). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6791" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T11:12:18.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10881" CreationDate="2013-07-01T12:12:59.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at good masters theses and good PhD theses in your area to get an indication of the structure. Borrow a book from the library on structuring a thesis. In any case, the structure will look something like the following (with variation possible):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;title page &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;abstract &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledgements &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contents page(s) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;literature review &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;materials/sources and methods (or this can be part&#xA;of every chapter if these are different per chapter) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;themed topic chapters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;results &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discussion or findings &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conclusions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;references&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appendices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1256/Structuring-your-thesis.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T12:12:59.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10881" CreationDate="2013-07-01T12:22:30.910" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Folk might have their own opinions on their favourite wording of the following sections, but here is a basic outline of the structure of a significant technical work, such as a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction / Literature review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aims and Objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Results and Data analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Further work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appendicies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;References&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to express what the content of each section should be, because that will extend this answer too far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guidance for you is as follows: &lt;strong&gt;try to tell the story of your research&lt;/strong&gt;. Lead the reader through your thought process. You could try posing your research as the &lt;strong&gt;solution&lt;/strong&gt; to a &lt;strong&gt;problem&lt;/strong&gt;, for example. Let's see how this works in practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do some background reading - your literature review. You discover that there is an existing problem that no-one has answered, or their answer is lacking in some way. You express this in your introduction or literature review. You refine what you intend to do as a set of aims and objectives. You set out how you are going to achieve your aims and objectives in your methodology. You execute your method and report the results. You discuss your results and consider how you could improve your work. Then you draw your conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T12:22:30.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10895" CreationDate="2013-07-01T12:36:44.143" Score="2" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10652/ways-of-developing-non-core-skills-during-phd-studies&quot;&gt;this question and its answers got me thinking&lt;/a&gt;, once non-core PhD skills are learned and perhaps mastered, how can we make these achievements clear on a CV when applying for academic positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my PhD majors in atmospheric physics and photobiology, but a significant part of it is in Android programming (the basis of the 3 published papers so far) and a few other skills not directly related to the major disciplines, but important nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related, would having peer reviewed published papers be considered as proficiency in the non core subjects without taking away the focus from the major disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T20:07:32.717" Title="What is a correct way for &quot;marketing&quot; non core PhD achievements on a CV?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10885" CreationDate="2013-07-01T14:14:36.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you put on your CV should be tailored explicitly towards the type of job you're applying for.  If you're applying for a faculty position at a research university, putting Android programming would be a waste of time, but putting a significant grant you won would be appropriate.  Likewise if you're applying to a position where teaching is going to be a large part of your workload, put as much about your teaching experience as you can. If you are applying for a quant position on Wall Street, you need to beef up the programming skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really, the answer is, &lt;em&gt;tailor your CV to the job you are applying for,&lt;/em&gt; and given that you are applying for academic positions, you should probably leave off the non-core skills altogether.  That's not to say they aren't important, but they aren't important enough to list on your CV.  If the situation presents itself during an interview, that's probably the place to mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Related, would having peer reviewed published papers be considered as proficiency in the non core subjects without taking away the focus from the major disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure what you're really asking here, but peer-reviewed research should be listed on your CV unless it is in a completely unrelated field than the one you're applying for.  Don't list the paper you happened to get published in the English Literature Journal if you're applying for positions in photobiology&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;*Unless you happen to have written a piece on the writing of 18th Century biologists and how it affects current photobiology trends.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T14:14:36.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10896" CreationDate="2013-07-01T14:45:17.587" Score="0" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some references I would like to tie to all the dot points I've written after my colon and hence I thought it would be a good idea to put the relevant references after the colon, in endnote form. Here is an extract from the text I am putting together that illustrates what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;These acute attacks are typically triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by at least one of the following:2-4&#xA;•   Stress&#xA;•   Medications (especially sulfa-containing antibiotics, barbiturates, synthetic oestrogens, certain antiepileptic drugs and a few others. See http://www.drugs-porphyria.org/ for details regarding safe and unsafe drugs)&#xA;•   Dietary changes (high protein diets, low-carbohydrate diets and fasts are especially notable for causing acute attacks)&#xA;•   Endocrine factors (fluctuations in the levels of the different hormones present in the body; usually the sex hormones such as oestrogens and androgens [e.g. testosterone, dihydrotestosterone]. Acute attacks are often triggered by the hormonal changes that occur in the different stages of development, e.g. puberty, menopause, etc.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4438" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T21:11:53.163" Title="Do you place endnotes (in vancouver reference style) after colons or before?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10897" CreationDate="2013-07-01T15:01:49.857" Score="4" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I intend to study mathematics and do research as a career. I am studying analysis and abstract algebra now and I shall begin my undergraduate studies shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told my friend that physics may lend one intuition into a few mathematical structures though I am not sure. I can only think of differential equations as an example. In particular, please tell me if physics can serve as a source of motivation and if it is crucial enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7586" LastEditorUserId="7586" LastEditDate="2013-07-08T13:16:35.587" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T13:16:35.587" Title="Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10889" CreationDate="2013-07-01T16:31:45.080" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a range of applications for mathematics around many disciplines. In the XX century, physics was definitely the biggest consumer of mathematics, from the photoelectric effect and the black body spectrum in the early century through nuclear bombs and space exploration of the second half. The XXI century looks to shape around biology and life sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physics leans heavily on PDE, real and complex analysis. Some areas may require abstract algebra, but they could turn out to be somewhat exotic (quantum Hall effect and other solid state physics stuff), and you would need to study physics for about 5 years to get to understand what it is if you are starting from ground zero. (School physics IS ground zero, in my books.) Until you know what Green's function is, there may be little point approaching physics for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Economics leans heavily on real analysis and optimization. There's some use of abstract algebra, although again to get to the areas where it is really needed (welfare economics, may be some very abstract macro), you need to get very deep into grad school in economics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's quantitative biology, in which separate fields may require way separate math tools: ecology uses some PDEs, while protein structure is computation that could be using abstract algebra, too, to describe the spatial structures (where it overlaps somewhat with material science).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Computer science is another big obvious consumer of mathematics, and abstract algebra is very immediately used in various codes. If you want to have an immediate gratification from having learned simple groups, you can go ahead and figure out how the PGP algorithm works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T16:31:45.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T17:50:41.807" Score="5" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many PDF files for some academic papers. I want to sort them into journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I know which one is an article and which one is a conference proceedings and which one is ... (any other type of papers)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T17:25:37.160" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T17:25:37.160" Title="How to differentiate between articles, conference proceedings, etc.?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10891" CreationDate="2013-07-01T18:07:02.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reference managing software such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; usually provide an import feature for PDF files. You simply supply a list of PDF files and the software automatically extracts the metadata such as title, author names, journal, and so on. The accuracy is usually pretty good, and then you can easily sort and organize the files in whichever way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T18:07:02.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10955" CreationDate="2013-07-01T18:21:29.133" Score="3" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;For this I shall be using the foo library&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I wish to insert a link to said library, but I am confused as how to properly write the link. Do I insert it as a citation, a footnote, or just leave it there in the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7598" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T09:48:54.980" Title="How do you insert links to a printed report?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10893" CreationDate="2013-07-01T18:44:21.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer footnote or in text. Others would also consider using a citation. Check your local style guide. Here is one possibility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/webapa.htm&quot;&gt;http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/webapa.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T18:44:21.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10885" CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:07:32.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no reason at all to leave any reasonable skill or ability off of your CV. Play a musical instrument? Won some medals in a sporting event? Program an android app? Have a black belt in a martial art? Add a section called &quot;Other skills&quot; or &quot;Personal Information&quot; and &lt;em&gt;briefly&lt;/em&gt; list these skills. There are two reasons for this. First, it can help a potential employer think of you as a real person, perhaps someone they would like to know. Second, many skills can take years of dedicated practice to master; if you can master one such skill, then there is a good chance you can master whatever new skills may be required in the new job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from my life. Many years ago I programmed a video game (one of the old &quot;text adventure&quot; style games. I placed this on my CV, not thinking much about it. It turned out that one of the elder faculty conducting the interview had played that game and remembered it fondly. This alone certainly did not &quot;get me the job,&quot; but anything that can smooth the way can be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T20:07:32.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10888" CreationDate="2013-07-01T21:11:53.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a relatively minor point, but in standard American English usage, footnote and endnote numbers would go &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; a punctuation mark, not before one. Usage in British English might be different, and individual publishers may have their own guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one might also ask why you aren't citing each item in the list separately; it might be more informative to the user rather than doing an all-purpose citation at the top of the list!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T21:11:53.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10889" CreationDate="2013-07-01T21:34:54.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While essentially seconding StasK's points, I'd be inclined to make a stronger claim about the utility of looking at not-so-elementary physics. That is, in addition to all the &quot;mechanics&quot; applications of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Maxwell's late-19th century electromagnetism (which provided a huge impetus to ideas about vectors!), many aspects of quantum theory focused attention on differential equations which have proven to be important examples of mathematical phenomena, in addition to applications to physics. This important-example-intensely-studied phenomenon continued with Bargmann's and Wigner's studies on representation-theory of specific Lie groups, which provided the backdrop for Harish-Chandra's vast program. This specificity was in marked contrast to the &quot;generalism&quot; that mathematicians of the time were embracing, e.g., Weil, Godement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it continues to be the case that physical considerations suggest very-specific examples meriting intense study... which provide test cases for &quot;purely&quot; mathematical ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Witten's (and others') relatively recent &quot;physics&quot; programmes have had a large impact on algebraic geometry (moduli problems, mirror symmetry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I'm also fond of the crypto application/motivations of algorithmic number theory, the breadth and depth seems not as great as the math-phys connection, although of course the elapsed time is much less than for math-phys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The optimization and math econ, and comp sci and category theory applications/connections are less familiar to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I must confess that I dropped an undergrad physics minor while studying mathematics, because it seemed dreary to me at the time. Partly this was due to my inability to see the &lt;em&gt;physics&lt;/em&gt; ideas underlying the tricks to evaluate integrals, but perhaps partly due to the accidentally-dumbed-down viewpoint promulgated in the physics courses ... presumably aiming at &quot;accessibility&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, there is a similar common risk/disappointment in mathematics courses that give up ideas for the sake of &quot;tractability&quot;. The risk is that it gives the wrong impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yet, yes, sometimes I've been told that what seems to me insanely fussy detail-mongering is the very essence of mathematics, and that perhaps I insufficiently appreciate &quot;proof&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T21:34:54.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10900" CreationDate="2013-07-01T21:39:19.163" Score="11" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on @JeffE's suggestion &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10658/how-can-a-senior-undergraduate-find-academic-journals-in-math-and-computer-scien#comment19585_10658&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, I see many CS researchers care mostly about conferences deadlines. Even when they want to read papers, usually they check the recent proceedings of different conferences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a paper in IJCAI or AAAI for example, worth more than publishing in many ISI indexed journals with good reputation. I have no hard evidence for this but being in touch with CS research, I see little discussion about journal publications. why is that? is it &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; for the spirit of research in the CS field? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T08:02:50.097" Title="Why conferences are the main venue for CS research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2013-07-01T22:14:21.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you keep a generic CV on your personal website or a job search website profile, then it can make sense to add the notice about references, though if you don't have it and you get contacted by a prospective employer, they'll still ask you anyway. I doubt they are not going to hire you because they were to shy to ask for references themselves ;-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason not to add specific references to a generic CV is that you can't tailor them. If you go for a teaching position, you might want to give the name of the dean at that private college where you lectured for a summer as a reference, whereas if you go for a research position, you want your Ph.D. supervisor as a reference as well as that important guy in some other university that you briefly collaborated with, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you name references for a specific application, it gives you a chance to let your references know to who to potentially expect a call from. It will help your references (and thereby you) to talk about aspects of you that are relevant to the job you're applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4125" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T22:14:21.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10898" CreationDate="2013-07-02T05:14:18.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a reason CS folks cite when we obsess about conferences. The claim is that the field moves so quickly that conferences are more effective than journal for fast turn-around, and so better reflect the speed of developments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this statement is partly true (conferences do have faster turnaround than CS journals) but misses the point entirely (there's no reason journals CAN'T have faster turn around time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real reason is the usual one. We got used to having conferences be the primary source of dissemination, and have no pressing reason to change. Having said that, the arxiv is more and more becoming the first choice of reading material and &quot;hot off the presses&quot; material, so I suspect that your question will become more and more moot as time goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T05:14:18.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10893" CreationDate="2013-07-02T05:50:59.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my area (management), links belong in the references section (whether on a separate references page or footnote depends on the citation format) but generally you should not put links in your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are referencing system which use in-text links, I have yet to see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T05:50:59.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10904" CreationDate="2013-07-02T06:46:46.473" Score="32" ViewCount="28893" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking into applying to present at a conference for undergraduates in mathematics this summer. When I apply, I have to either apply to give a talk (~20 minutes) or present a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've read on this site, it seems posters are often looked down on relative to talks, especially in mathematics. However, one advantage of a poster session is that I can have a back-and-forth discussion which is impossible in a talk. I think this is especially important for my research, since the computations in the subject are notoriously tricky and will trip up even experts if they aren't paying close attention to the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the relative advantages/disadvantages of each format? Which is a better way to advertise my research and network with other researchers in my field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T23:31:28.987" LastActivityDate="2020-02-05T11:45:15.933" Title="Talks vs. poster presentations: Which is better for advertising your research and building research networks?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10898" CreationDate="2013-07-02T08:02:50.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add some points to @Suresh's answer which already lists the most important reasons (at least in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that brand new results are usually published in conferences due to their speed compared to journals (there's no reasons that journals couldn't be faster, but, as things currently stand, they simply &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt;), there are still valuable papers to be found in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first type of papers I usually read from journals are &lt;strong&gt;extended versions of conference papers&lt;/strong&gt;: once the author gets his idea published &lt;em&gt;fast&lt;/em&gt; in a conference, if it is a Really Important Thing, there is nothing stopping him/her to take some time and publish a detailed version in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other type is &lt;strong&gt;overview papers&lt;/strong&gt; whose value is not in a vast number of new contributions, but usually are the first ones systematically putting a chunk of knowledge in the same place, and possibly giving a new view of already existing techniques/structures/whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T08:02:50.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10902" CreationDate="2013-07-02T08:51:07.250" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you want to do. If you feel like at this point in your research it would be more beneficial to &lt;em&gt;converse&lt;/em&gt; than to &lt;em&gt;present&lt;/em&gt;, then I'd say that a poster session is the right venue for you. It's true that talks are considered a bit more prestigious than poster sessions, but you really should go with what you think will be more valuable for you, and for the conference attendees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that you could always do a poster presentation this year, get the feedback that you covet, and then return next year to do a talk, and let everyone know how your research went over the subsequent year. That kind of progression is not a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are in the early stages of your research, it might not be ready for a talk. When I attend a conference talk, I'm expecting there to be some significant findings. Sure, talks might be more &quot;prestigious,&quot; but, if there are some holes in your research, you could end up discrediting yourself. People aren't expecting the same level of maturity in the research during a poster session. So, as I said before, forget the prestige aspect, and choose what is more fitting based on your goals, and on what you have to share at this point in your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T04:54:42.420" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T04:54:42.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10902" CreationDate="2013-07-02T09:43:51.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Space (time) for talks is often much more limited than space for posters.  At the conferences where I've been (geophysics/atmospheric science), almost all on-topic posters were accepted (note that abstracts were not peer-reviewed) as is.  For people applying for an oral presentation, either they were accepted as an oral presentation, or they were assigned to do a poster instead.  It may be similar in your field; so try for an oral presentation, and if you don't get it, you may still be able to do a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T09:43:51.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10902" CreationDate="2013-07-02T12:42:44.790" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience impact of posters is way, way lower than of a talk. If you can get a single person listening to you for 20 min with a poster, it is much. Plus, usually, people are distracted (noise, people moving around). And before they can ask questions, they need time to learn what you are presenting anyway. So if you have a &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt; between talk and poster, the first is always a better option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T12:42:44.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2013-07-02T14:45:49.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend a combination, with e.g. the personal page pointing to other resources where source code, slides, presentations, pdfs are stored. Beside github (or other options where you can have both private and public repositories) I would also recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;figshare&lt;/a&gt;, where you can upload many forms of research output (data files, figures, manuscripts, source code etc). Each item will also get a doi, which makes them easy to cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T19:50:39.320" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T19:50:39.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2013-07-02T16:22:41.730" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that seems to be missing from this discussion is the maturation process of a research effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A poster session is ideal for the early stages of the research, when you may not have much more than an idea, and you stand to benefit a lot from discussing your idea with other researchers from the same field. You may get some valuable pointers, and perhaps other conferencegoers will find your idea interesting. I've had some productive conversations with presenters at poster sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A conference talk is better after you have some findings, formed some conclusions, and your are ready to present your results to other experts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a chance to collect even more data to bolster the validity of your research, you could eventually get it published as a journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you've been working on something for six or seven years, then, indeed, a poster session wouldn't be anything to write home about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with rule's overall sentiment: Poster Acceptance Means Nothing. In other words, a dozen poster acceptances won't put you on the fast track for tenure. However, that doesn't mean the activity has no value. Poster sessions can be especially beneficial for budding researchers, getting them used to talking about their research with experts from outside their university – maybe for the first time. Plus, some conference attendees will be interested in what they might see talked about at next year's conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are poster sessions a crowning acheivement? Hardly. But they still can be a productive stepping-stone, which is why I think it's sad when they are looked down upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T14:55:35.653" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T14:55:35.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-02T18:09:24.427" Score="2" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year under-graduate student studying mathematics, but also taking courses in economics. I am not sure at this stage if I will continue with maths in my graduate school. My option B is economics. Roughly, I would give 60-40 in favour of math as far as my graduate study is concerned. My question is this:&#xA;Which major should I focus for doing internship and research while I am doing my under-graduate  before applying to grad school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T01:22:24.240" Title="Changing major in the graduate school" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10911" CreationDate="2013-07-02T18:45:38.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today your interests lie in economics, but what if by the time you finish, you're interested in computational biology? Good luck selling Economics → Computational Biology to a graduate school admissions committee. On the other hand, with Mathematics as your base degree, you can cross over to most disciplines including Economics (with your chances boosted by further by internships in that discipline). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is: &lt;strong&gt;the narrower your major discipline, the fewer your opportunities.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7611" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T18:45:38.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2013-07-02T20:51:57.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For hosting - anything which looks decent and has no adverts will be fine. For me there is little difference if it is hosted on institute's server or not (I know many serious academic sites with personal domains, or on some page farms). But there is a big difference if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is clean and complete (good interface, you can easily reach to publications, affiliation, e-mail etc),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is up-to-date,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it stays there (and don't end as a deadlink in a few years; if you move make it explicit; I hate guessing &quot;which e-mail for which page seems to be the current one&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware that even if you host your server, it may became dead (as some setting change, or you forget to pay for the domain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For code use things which are suitable for code storage, reuse and discovery. &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; and similar ones (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt;) are the best places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for hosting you can use &lt;code&gt;gh-pages&lt;/code&gt; (free, stable and relatively easy to use... when you already can use git). Then for example you can have your page in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jekyllrb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jekyll&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ivanzuzak.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10987992/using-mathjax-with-jekyll&quot;&gt;on using LaTeX there&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T20:51:57.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10925" CreationDate="2013-07-03T05:50:43.320" Score="6" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an argument in my institute that ISI journal publication incentive (in ISI journals only) should be omitted. However, the opposition, including me, believe that such monetary incentive would motivate young researchers who are low paid researchers to publish their work in ISI journals. I checked some of the international universities and found similar discussions tend to agree that incentive is necessary for young publishers and researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the status in your institutes and to what extent do you think payment for ISI journal publication encourages researchers to work more seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTEs:&#xA;1- Please consider that the focus is on legitimate peer reviewed ISI journal publication ONLY, not any other publications such as conference or predatory open access journals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- FYI, in Computer Science, publishing in a legitimate peer reviewed ISI journal takes from 6 months to 2 years. If a novice researcher can publish in 6 months, he/she is considered very lucky and brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="6393" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T04:30:36.423" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T04:30:36.423" Title="To what extent do monetary incentives encourages researchers to publish in ISI Journals?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10919" CreationDate="2013-07-03T06:22:47.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one incentive: &lt;strong&gt;publish or perish&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without publishing, young researchers will have a limited chance of a good career in academia. Without good publications, obtaining grant money will be difficult. Without grant money, you will be given more teaching duties and less chance to research. Without publications, you will not be granted tenure. You may end up with a teaching position, which is fine if that's what you want, but the chances of doing research will diminish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling a long term story is perhaps a good way of motivating students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We certainly don't pay them to publish, though they do get the opportunity to go to conferences to present their work, but only if they have work to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T06:22:47.043" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10919" CreationDate="2013-07-03T11:47:53.457" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the status in your institutes and to what extent do you think payment for publication encourage researchers to work more seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never worked in an environment with payment for publication, so my impressions are based on observing it from the outside.  I'm sure it encourages publishing more papers, but publishing more papers is different from working more seriously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publication payments encourage mediocre submissions, since success is defined by having a paper in a certain type of journal, regardless of how good or bad the paper is.  In many cases the optimal strategy is not to work hard on writing a few excellent papers, but rather to write as many mediocre papers as possible and then submit them repeatedly in a search for lenient editors and reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the quality issue, payments per paper create an incentive to break work up into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit&quot;&gt;least publishable units&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publication payments complicate coauthorship decisions, based on how the money is awarded.  If every coauthor receives a fixed amount, then it creates a financial incentive to add honorary authors.  On the other hand, if a fixed amount of money is divided among all the authors, then it creates an incentive to remove less important but legitimate authors.  (And if it's just the &quot;first author,&quot; then that magnifies the importance of who that author is.)  Either way, authorship is being decided based partly on financial pressure, rather than intellectual contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all these issues are already serious problems in academia, with or without publication payments, but adding direct financial incentives just makes them worse.  In addition, using a fixed formula heightens the tension by removing ambiguity.  With hiring, one might worry that hiring committees will count papers instead of judging their quality, but at least some of them will prefer two great papers to five mediocre ones.  By contrast, the incentives with publication payments are unambiguous, which strengthens their effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T11:47:53.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10927" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:18:36.490" Score="49" ViewCount="6790" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I've been using Mendeley to manage and extract metadata from my PDFs, I've come to notice that authors are sometimes denoted with all their initials and sometimes with just one. I assume this has to do with different journal's rules on denoting author's names. However, this makes a mess in my author list in Mendeley, as the same person may be known under two or even more names (e.g.: &quot;Last, F.&quot;; &quot;Last, First&quot;; &quot;Last, First M,&quot;; &quot;Last, First Middle&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for completeness' and tidyness' sake, I edit the author fields to always have the most complete name of the author available to me regardless the journal the author published in, I inevitably will change the way I cite them. For example, an article from a certain journal only uses the first initial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last, F. &lt;em&gt;Article Title&lt;/em&gt;, Journal name, &lt;strong&gt;x&lt;/strong&gt;:y (YYYY), pp. xxx-xxx &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I have &quot;updated&quot; my authors, it is possible my citation includes also the second initial, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last, F.M., &lt;em&gt;Article Title&lt;/em&gt;, Journal name, &lt;strong&gt;x&lt;/strong&gt;:y (YYYY), pp. xxx-xxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: am I incorrectly citing the article when I include more complete information about the author's name than is given by the journal article itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7623" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T05:42:55.973" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T03:08:08.727" Title="Should I cite author names as they appear in the journal or as I know them to be complete?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10926" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:42:49.557" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see your problem but I am afraid you will have to live with the mess. The reason is that a publication must be referenced exactly the way it is published. The exception is that it is permissible to abbreviate first names to initials to adhere to the standard of the publication in which you intend to publish. It is, however, not allowed to remove middle names (initials) if they are part of the original publication, nor to add initials if they were not part of the original. I know many authors who have published under one and two initials randomly, but there is not much one can do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you do it in your reference program, there is nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure your changes do not migrate into published work that you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/manuscript_1prepare.html&quot;&gt;Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals:&#xA;Manuscript Preparation and Submission: Preparing a Manuscript for Submission to a Biomedical Journal&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some but not all journals check the accuracy of all reference&#xA;  citations; thus, citation errors sometimes appear in the published&#xA;  version of articles. To minimize such errors, references should be&#xA;  verified using either an electronic bibliographic source, such as&#xA;  PubMed or print copies from original sources. [The text then goes on to discuss retracted articles.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T17:16:38.860" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T17:16:38.860" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-03T15:40:26.670" Score="6" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to start my PhD. I feel I should try to plan my academic career; or set some general goals at least. The time line could be something like 5-15 years. The first years are easy to plan: study this, study that, publish a few papers etc. It gets more difficult to make plans beyond receiving the PhD. I think that if I don't know where I want to go with my degree, it becomes difficult to make decisions during the coming years: when to say &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, and when to say &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;. I know I don't want to just end up &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt; doing what other people think I should be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you plan your career? How frequently do you update your plan and/or check have you progressed as you planned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7625" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T17:25:12.780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T09:35:57.793" Title="How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10928" CreationDate="2013-07-03T17:13:49.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I tell my students starting out is to make sure that they have &lt;em&gt;realizable&lt;/em&gt; goals. Saying &quot;I want to be a postdoc in field X in five years&quot; is realizable. Saying &quot;I want to work for Professor X at University Y on project Z in five years&quot; is probably not realizable. Making sure you have a plausible goal in mind, and the ability to work toward it is incredibly important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's important to realize that goals and opportunities change over time. What you think you want to do now may not be what you want to do a year from now. So that's why it's important not to have goals that are too narrowly defined—otherwise, it makes it harder to change your mind later and still be satisfied with the way things turn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often do you reassess goals? As often as you feel you need to. But you should also distinguish between the different ranges of priorities—short-range, mid-range, and long-range.  Short- and mid-range should be reviewed on a very regular basis (weekly to monthly); the longer-range stuff at least a few times a year. But these are guidelines that work for me; you need to find a system that works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T17:13:49.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10933" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:38:47.340" Score="1" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This topic may seem very close to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7679/unable-to-defend-and-graduate-because-of-advisers-fickle-mentality&quot;&gt;Unable to defend and graduate&#xA;  because of advisers fickle mentality&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a Masters thesis student, and been doing my research for nearly 3 years now. Which I assume is quite long for Masters. So why such a long time. Well my adviser ( caring and supportive ) doesn't stick to or follow/have a structure for the thesis. Its like wandering about and finally OK yeah lets do this. Sometimes I face problems midway because we dint plan the thesis properly before hand and foresee what issues we could or would have to tackle way down the thesis, in which case it can be called more structured. Adding to this he is never present when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-spite of all these, I have somehow reached the very final stages of my thesis and trying to get some good results. I would like to open up and talk to him frankly and still maintain a good rapport so that I can ask to help me publish a paper/journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please give me a template of how I should approach him politely and convey my situation and get the best of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7627" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T19:51:47.770" Title="Approach adviser to help publish a paper/Journal" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10941" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:48:34.943" Score="4" ViewCount="2289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year under-graduate student in mathematics. My school (3 years under-grad) has a great history of sending its under-graduates to top graduate level math programs of the US universities. However, I do not know to what extent top universities expect an under-graduate to have done graduate level courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math courses I will have done in my under-grad are: Calculus I-II-III, Analysis I, Analysis II, Linear Algebra I, Linear Algebra II, Complex Analysis, Real Analysis, Intro to Algebra, Discrete Math, Introductory PDE, Stochastic Processes. I do not know if I will have done Topology and Number Theory as they are not offered in a regular basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question to those who are studying or working in graduate level math departments is: Are there any specific (number or name of) graduate level courses that a student should have done to be accepted in top math schools for PhD? I know that many things other than the transcript would be considered by admission committee. But just looking at the transcript of an undergraduate, which graduate level math courses would the committee like to see in applicant's transcript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastEditorUserId="7580" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T20:30:15.103" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T04:03:54.643" Title="Planning for grad school" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10934" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:49:04.383" Score="7" ViewCount="4405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, since (almost) all of the submitted works are usually available in an electronic format (e.g. PDF or Word) besides the printed version, is it recommended to add an index to a PhD thesis in order to facilitate search within the printed version? Was it required in the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T22:02:36.797" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T21:14:14.020" Title="Is index required for a PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10930" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:51:47.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could say, &quot;I think it would be a good idea to convert my thesis work into a journal paper. What do you think?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write up a version of the to-be-journal submission, present it to your supervisor, and ask &quot;Do you think we could submit this, after some revision, to a journal?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it sounds like you need to start being the master of your own destiny, and rely less on your supervisor. It is your masters' thesis after all, and your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T19:51:47.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10932" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:59:49.957" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may if you want to, but it is not generally required. Of course, check your local regulations. It is recommended to plan on having an index or not when you start, rather than adding it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indexes were not required in the past, though check historical local regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T19:59:49.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10936" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:00:23.463" Score="6" ViewCount="1729" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the best method to understand the real concept that a paper is trying to explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should one go through the paper as it is presented, from first page to last page? Is there a specific walk-through to understand it faster, such as first reading the result section, followed by the concept section, and then discussion/conclusion section? Is there a best practice to be followed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7627" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T18:13:28.657" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T18:13:28.657" Title="How do I understand the main concepts in a paper by just skimming through it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10935" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:06:50.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the paper is well written, then the abstract should tell you most of the story at a high level. Then the introduction should give more technical coverage again of the whole story – you should then know the problem and the results obtained, though not all the details. The remainder of the paper then will contain just the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, most papers do not do that, so you may also need to read the conclusion, the discussion section, and perhaps any other introductory sections. In the end, you may need to read the whole paper before you get what it is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to really understand the paper, you will need to go through it very slowly, with pen and paper at hand, and try to replicate the reasoning/ideas given in the paper, filling in the gaps – possibly with the help of additional literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all papers need to be read so deeply. Reading just the abstract and maybe the introduction and conclusion should help you decide how deep to read the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T20:06:50.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10938" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:13:29.860" Score="11" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three papers on a new technique came out at almost the same time. They are all similar and introduce a new method that I use in my research by providing a range of examples of that technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are the dates the journals record it as received, accepted, first available online, and then the year of the official citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Paper#  Received     Accepted     Available    Citation Yr.&#xA; P1      2011-11-29   2012-06-21   2012-08-11   2012&#xA; P2      2011-12-12   2012-11-01   2012-11-08   2013&#xA; P3      2012-01-09   2012-08-30   2012-09-05   2012&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By order received: P1, P2, P3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By order accepted: P1, P3, P2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By citation year:  (P1 P3), P2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Should I cite all of them? I assume so. In which case, which order? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to cite all three, since all are in reputable journals and their submission dates were so close that I assume all three did independent work and are deserving of a proper citation. I am not sure what order to cite them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T04:37:23.953" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T04:37:23.953" Title="Three papers came out on new technique at almost the same time. What order do I cite?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10937" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:22:14.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different journals have different ways of listing multiple references. I am used to see chronological order in which case P1/P3-P2 would be the order. I write P1/P3 because usually one does not keep track of chronology within a year (although it can (now) be done). It is otherwise common to put authors alphabetically within the same year. If a journal uses aplhabetical order as a basis then the order is of course different. P1-P3-P2 is of course the most straight forward way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely put all three in, acknowledging their work. Citing only one of them may come across as not knowing the other publications and thereby the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T20:22:14.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10937" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:43:19.227" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be a very delicate diplomatic issue. There might be three groups arguing over the paternity of the original idea. I strongly suggest citing all three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the order, first of all check the journal guidelines. In my field, typically citations are numbered in alphabetical order in the bibliography; if it's the same in yours, then I suggest you to cite them ordered by their citation number (thus alphabetically), i.e., put them in the same bracketed list [a,b,c], with a&amp;lt;b&amp;lt;c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ordering the references like this is a good habit to adopt exactly because of these attribution issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T20:43:19.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10926" CreationDate="2013-07-03T21:05:14.023" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the statement of &quot;a publication must be referenced exactly the way it is published.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.org/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf&quot;&gt;Knuth's Mathematical Writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his bibliography Knuth has tried to keep his citations true to the original sources. The bibliography contains mathematical formulas, full name spellings (even alternative spellings when common), and completely spelled-out source journal names. (This last may be unusual enough that some members of a field may be surprised to see the full journal name written out, but it’s a big help to novices who want to find it in the library.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you can change reference, give full name of authors, give full name of journals. It may be unusual but it can be done and it is DONE. It is done by one of the most respected authors in the academy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is: am I incorrectly citing the article when I include more complete information about the author's name than is given by the journal article itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you include more complete information, you are not doing anything wrong. Actually according to Knuth, you are doing very good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore if your target journal does not have any rule about same reference rule, you should be perfectly alright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="8509" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T23:03:03.857" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T23:03:03.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10931" CreationDate="2013-07-03T21:06:56.213" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;: This is all vicarious based on professional mathematicians' advice (from MathOverflow and the like). Take these words with a grain of salt. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate schools (especially the &quot;top-tier&quot; ones) judge more based on your ability to do research rather than your ability to get an &quot;A&quot; in a class or the quantitative aspect of your CV (referring to how many graduate-level classes you took). In other words, what matters most is your potential ability to become a producer of mathematics, rather than a consumer. After all, your PhD thesis won't come out from that (necessarily). So here's what I think you should be focusing on at the moment, for your final year (not in order of importance):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Getting glowing letters of recommendation (at most 3) from professors who know you well. They'll probably be able to accurately asses your research potential assuming you've done some type of research project with them. If you have not, get to it. The key is to develop a close relationship with someone (or a couple of people) in your department who'll be able to get a good word for your potential as a research mathematician.&lt;/strong&gt; Try to look for someone whose area of research coincides with your potential speciality in grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Start on a research project (independently or otherwise) if you have not already ASAP. Something like a senior thesis. Research that result in publications look awesome but are definitely not necessary (I don't think anybody expects much out of undergrads). As long as admission officers can say &quot;Hey, this guy/gal is motivated enough to do research on their own, and hey look at that work they're doing, there might be hope for them yet.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;If you're planning to apply to places like Princeton, high GRE scores are preferred (shoot for the 90th percentile and above).&lt;/strong&gt; I hate to think of the admission process as a bureaucracy but just put up with it. Just remember, these exams are definitely important, but they are only one part of your application to be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Challenge yourself&lt;/strong&gt;, and keep your &lt;strong&gt;GPA optimized&lt;/strong&gt; (I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean taking &quot;easy&quot; courses that just fluff up your GPA. Try to take the relevant math, which probably means at the upper or graduate-level). Though coursework at this point should not be your main concern (research should be), if you think you can handle it, and you think you'll have time for it, take a few graduate-level courses. Also, fill in the topology gap. Graduate admissions will look for a solid undergraduate background in mathematics (real analysis, abstract algebra, and topology are probably the &quot;Big 3&quot; for an undergrad to take, in addition to other classes). &lt;strong&gt;note&lt;/strong&gt;: the fourth point seems repetitive now that I'm re-reading but I'll keep it like this for now for informative purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other qualities that'll help (more tongue-in-cheek than actual advice) is the ability to persevere and have genuine curiosity for whatever field you're going in when writing your personal statement. Do not puff up your application with courses just to &quot;look good&quot;. General knowledge helps, but this is something you can do on your own time. Focus on optimizing your GPA and standarized test scores (GRE); most importantly, focus on establishing a professional relationship with a professor (letters of recommendation) and research. Other than that, good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to browse these threads. I've pretty much reiterated most of the points, but you should still see their different points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/15848/what-to-look-for-in-applicants-to-graduate-programs-in-mathematics&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/15848/what-to-look-for-in-applicants-to-graduate-programs-in-mathematics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/27299/on-starting-graduate-school-and-common-pitfalls&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/27299/on-starting-graduate-school-and-common-pitfalls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7628" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7628" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T07:58:51.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10937" CreationDate="2013-07-03T21:50:45.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; cite all three papers, if they are all equally relevant to the work at hand. There's no logical reason to exclude one or more of them—even if there were (for instance) a flaw in the methodology, you could still say &quot;introduced by paper X, and an improved version by paper Y&quot; or something similar to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the actual order of citations, I don't think, in the context of a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; citation, which order you pick. You could even pick alphabetical order, if that's what you thought was most appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if all three were in development more or less simultaneously—which appears to be the case here—establishing &quot;true&quot; priority is somewhat more complicated. I would choose whichever order  best fits the &quot;flow&quot; of the arguments you wish to make with these papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing, as I mentioned at the top, though, is that you cite the papers; everything after that is &quot;author judgment,&quot; and is unlikely to be argued (unless one of the authors ends up reviewing your paper!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T21:50:45.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T04:33:36.450" Score="5" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what it sounds like, you need to be in the inner circle of key labs in order to be able to be even considered to be able to apply and get a National Institutes of Health R01 grant. How does a lab position itself to get into that inner circle and then how do you merit a score that will merit review and approval? Should we be focusing on getting several publications out or collecting all of it as preliminary data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="319" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T01:02:14.437" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:08:22.447" Title="How do I best position myself to get an NIH R01 grant?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T04:38:30.373" Score="4" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're organizing a conference and I currently don't have administrative support to process our income and receipts. I don't have a personal admin and I curious about the best and polite way to find support without pressuring someone into the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T14:41:46.830" Title="What is the appropriate mechanism for finding administrative support for a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T05:25:32.137" Score="15" ViewCount="22555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave a presentation on my PhD research at university last week, and it was criticised for lacking practical significance. A different comment suggested the presentation was not placed in context. Could somebody provide some advice on how to place research in context and convey its practical significance? How can I effectively assess who/what/where/when will see the benefits of my research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T22:48:46.750" Title="How to effectively explain why my research is important?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10946" CreationDate="2013-07-04T05:45:49.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing your actual field of research, here are some general pointers (by no means, is this an exhaustive list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research and find other papers based on or is similar to your work, this will give a bit of a basis for the practical context.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From reading of papers, try and define a gap where your research may help with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your supervisor/advisor for advice in this, employ their help in defining the context.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T05:45:49.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10946" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:20:39.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself a number of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why am I doing the research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problem am I solving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why should anyone else by interested in this research? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can my results help solve someone else's problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two questions will help you understand what you are doing from your own personal perspective, as well as establishing the context of the work. The latter two will help you establish why someone else would be interested in your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, ask &lt;strong&gt;What?&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;So what?&lt;/strong&gt; about your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T07:20:39.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10946" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:42:00.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, your advisor is the person who should help you most with this question, so make sure you talk to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this disclaimer, I would like to distinguish two things: the good and the bad way to justify the significance of your research. To be clear, good and bad are personal (but motivated) judgments and are not related with what will please people asking you that question, but with what is sane argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the bad way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this is the most important thing and most others are specialization of it: giving false but vaguely plausible reasons to study what you studied, hopping to reach other's expectations,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;claiming applications that are often claimed in the area, or vaguely related but at best very long term applications (e.g. &quot;my study of cell migration is crucial for understanding metastases, so it will help cure Cancer&quot;; this works with any fondamental research in cell biology),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;name-dropping (e.g. &quot;Nobel Prize Trucmuche has studied this 20 years ago, so surely that must be interesting&quot;),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;generalization for the sake of generalization -applies maybe mostly to maths, but applies a lot there- (e.g. &quot;Finsler geometry is a generalization of Riemannian geometry, so surely it is interesting&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;lacking any clue (e.g. &quot;My advisor told me to do it, so I did&quot;). If you don't know why you are doing what you do, at some point you should find out or change subject.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that 1. is very, very often seen in grant application, and it might be impossible in some cases to apply successfully without resorting to this kind of argument. This does not make it a good argument; we should be as thorough in assessing the relevance of our research than we are in assessing our research result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the good way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this is the most important thing and all others are specialization of it: explaining the reasons why you where interested in the project, why you find it fascinating or interesting,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;giving perspective applications &lt;em&gt;that sincerely did motivate your work&lt;/em&gt;, either from start or that you realized during the research process. This may not exist, which is not (rather, should not be) an issue, at least in fondamental research,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;placing your research in context: how it relates to what has been done before, to which previously raised question it answers, which previously held beliefs it contradicts,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;explaining how it generalizes previous work &lt;em&gt;to meaningful, existing examples&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. &quot;My theorem on Finsler geometry explains such and such features of Hilbert geometry&quot;),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;explain the perspectives opened by your work (e.g. &quot;if we believe this principle applies even more generally, then we can hope to use my methods to understand such and such important phenomenons&quot;),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;explain why it is fun (e.g. &quot;look at this dancing corn starch: weird, huh?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T07:42:00.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10932" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:54:01.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I recommend having an index with hyperlinks (both from keywords on the text to the index, and the other way round). The difference with in-text search is that you select the most relevant occurrences of the selected words; this is especially useful with terms that you use at all pages, e.g. to point out where they are defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think it ahead, it is not that much work to do (at least with LaTeX and the right packages). Otherwise... I remember a few hours spend with two other people on this question for a PhD thesis in biology, where the index contained both abbreviations and complete names of a lot of molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T07:54:01.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10928" CreationDate="2013-07-04T08:02:24.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an advice I give a lot lately: given the state of affairs, make sure each you take a position (start a PhD, start a postdoc, etc.) that you want &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;, and not that you want what you expect to get &lt;em&gt;after it&lt;/em&gt;. For example, if you take a postdoc that you don't really want because you hope to get a tenure track afterward, you have a great chance of regretting that choice a few years later. If you follow my advice, the worst that should happen is that you have fun with research for some years and end up frustrated not to be able to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice is probably not that good for PhD in countries where it is a valuable diploma in the employment market; in France, outside academia you do little more with a PhD than without, and the advice stands (I know a few people that ended up high school teachers after a PhD they did not enjoy, that seems quite a waste).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it means you should reevaluate your plans at least at each opportunity (starting PhD, end of PhD, next postdoc, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T08:02:24.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2013-07-04T08:48:47.140" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer your title question and sub-questions in three words (then add to that): &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Difficulty is relative.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noam Elkies finished his PhD in math at the age of 20. The average graduate student would probably take anywhere from 4 - 5 years. That doesn't mean Noam was a god among graduate students when he was a graduate student, and that's the reason he was able to finish his thesis faster than Joe Schmoe (though he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; quite exceptional) and Joe Schmoe should just give up. Far from it. The fact that you're doing well in your master's courses is a good indicator you're well qualified for the coursework part. Working on a PhD thesis means producing original research. Producing original research means dealing with not so cut-and-neat problems like ones you'd encounter in your homework or textbooks. It means working with problems that you're not sure are close-ended, open-ended, or neither. In other words, different skill sets are needed for research in addition to the problem-solving heuristics which you've already acquired from your coursework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you've never wet your foot it seems to me you have &lt;em&gt;no indication&lt;/em&gt; of your ability to do research . So what do you do? Just go for it! You only live once as far as we know, and it seems to me that your real problem is your self-imposed doubt. Get that out of your head. Research is about staring and thinking about a problem long enough then coming up with an answer which turns out to be completely wrong and in that, the process repeats until you get your &quot;Eureka!&quot; moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also stop worrying about others being ahead of you. There'll always be someone faster and better than you (unless your name is John Von Neumann :-) especially in academia. A good algebraic geometer from UGA by the name of Roy Smith didn't get his start in advanced mathematics until his late 20's, after working in industry as a meat lugger. He received his PhD at 35. Over 30 years later, he's still going strong. What you should learn from him is if passion calls for it, then there should be no stopping you. If you fail at a career, then that's that. It's not the end of the world. But if you never bother to even try, then you'll never know and you'll always have a &quot;What if?&quot; moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So just to sum all of this up&lt;/strong&gt;: Apply to a PhD program and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7120/too-old-for-advanced-mathematics/45644#45644&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7120/too-old-for-advanced-mathematics/45644#45644&lt;/a&gt; (if you're interested in Roy's post)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7628" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T08:48:47.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10849" CreationDate="2013-07-04T08:49:54.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're mainly interested in getting a job in the industry after you graduate, it &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; doesn't matter too much.  Sure, a really good thesis &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be a bonus, but you'll probably have have to get pretty far in the recruiting process before anyone's even going to look at your thesis, and if and when someone does, they probably won't look much beyond the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one exception might be if you already have a fairly specific idea of what you want to do in your job, and can arrange a thesis topic that lets you demonstrate the same skills you expect to be using.  But it doesn't really sound like you have that specific a vision for your future yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to pursue a PhD degree, though, things are completely different.  What people looking for prospective PhD students are most interested in is the ability to &lt;em&gt;carry out academic research and describe its results&lt;/em&gt;, which is &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what a thesis demonstrates.  Without a thesis, you're going to have to find some other way to demonstrate your research and writing skills.  It's not completely impossible &amp;mdash; for example, you could try writing an independent research paper and getting it published in an academic journal, as suggested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8290&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to a related question &amp;mdash; but it does have the potential to put you at a significant disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Background disclosure&lt;/em&gt;: I'm a PhD student in mathematics with several years of past experience working in the IT industry.  I've also had &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; experience in helping to evaluate candidates for both academic and non-academic positions, although I cannot really claim extensive first-hand knowledge of that side of the process.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T08:49:54.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10928" CreationDate="2013-07-04T09:24:48.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities can help you plan your career, by describing what career paths are available to you, and what steps you should take to follow the path you want. I know this is particularly true in the UK, for instance Birmingham university has the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/hr/documents/public/career-pathways.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;career pathways&lt;/a&gt; (there is something similar at my university, but it does not seem to be publicly available). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, some of the main paths are (in parentheses are only &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; examples are points that can be particularly useful to show): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can get some funding can be quite important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can teach and supervise can be quite important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technician-focused (where, for instance, showing that you are very skilled in using your lab equipment can be quite important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;admin-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can work with academics and manage them can be quite important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;industry-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can address &quot;real-life&quot; problems can be quite important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;others (where anything can be quite important!). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current university,  you can have an official, annual meeting with your boss to talk about your objectives with respect to your desired path, and you can get support from a staff development unit. There is also a mentoring program, where you can discuss about your career with a senior staff member, usually not in your department, to avoid any &quot;conflict of interest&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T09:35:57.793" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T09:35:57.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10893" CreationDate="2013-07-04T09:48:54.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the library is important enough to be mentioned in the body of the article, I would definitely cite it.  (If it's only mentioned in a technical appendix, I &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; consider a footnote sufficient.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, many software libraries or packages aimed at scientific use may carry a request that you do so, typically accompanied by an example citation, like this one from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Citing-R&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;R programming language FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;To cite R in publications, use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@Manual{,&#xA;  title        = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},&#xA;  author       = {{R Core Team}},&#xA;  organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},&#xA;  address      = {Vienna, Austria},&#xA;  year         = 2013,&#xA;  url          = {http://www.R-project.org}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation strings (or BibTeX entries) for R and R packages can also be obtained by &lt;code&gt;citation()&lt;/code&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no example citation format has been provided for your software library, I'd suggest citing the library web page in the same general fashion, e.g. as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Foo Project. (2013). &lt;em&gt;The Foo Scientific Library&lt;/em&gt;. v. 3.14.15. &lt;a href=&quot;http://foo.org/fsl/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://foo.org/fsl/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith, J. (2011). &amp;quot;A fast frobnication routine for Intel CPUs&amp;quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.edu/%7Ejsmith/frob/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://example.edu/~jsmith/frob/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the library has been formally described in a published article or technical report, it may also be appropriate to cite the article or report instead.  In such cases, though, I would &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; expect the library documentation to say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps. Here are a few earlier questions on the same or similar topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/how-do-i-reference-the-python-programming-language-in-a-thesis-or-a-paper&quot;&gt;How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9617/how-to-cite-software-documentation&quot;&gt;How to cite software documentation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/how-to-cite-a-website-url&quot;&gt;How to cite a website URL?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8948/how-to-cite-a-product&quot;&gt;How to cite a “product”?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10001/how-can-i-ensure-that-my-software-is-correctly-cited&quot;&gt;How can I ensure that my software is correctly cited?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T09:48:54.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-07-04T14:21:30.273" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the first thing to do is to realize how we are biased, even when we don't know it. See in particular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109&quot;&gt;this reference&lt;/a&gt;; the abstract alone is informative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender&#xA;  disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has&#xA;  demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to&#xA;  experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias&#xA;  against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity&#xA;  in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127),&#xA;  science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the&#xA;  application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a&#xA;  male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty&#xA;  participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent&#xA;  and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants&#xA;  also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career&#xA;  mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty&#xA;  participants did not affect responses, such that female and male&#xA;  faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female&#xA;  student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less&#xA;  likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also&#xA;  assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women&#xA;  using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias&#xA;  against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against&#xA;  women was associated with less support for the female student, but was&#xA;  unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that&#xA;  interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of&#xA;  increasing the participation of women in science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moss-Racusin et al., 2012 Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students PNAS 2012 109 (41) 16474-16479; published ahead of print September 17, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="258" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T09:42:39.627" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T09:42:39.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2013-07-04T14:41:46.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to think about whether you need a full-time administrative assistant for that, or maybe students could take over some of these tasks. It probably depends on the size of the conference also. But I generally found that students are very well willing to take over such tasks, because it allows them a little bit to peek behind the curtains of conference organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important question when engaging students is whether you have funds available to support the conference organization. If yes, then I think it should be easy to find students willing to help for a small salary. Otherwise you would have to rely on volunteering, which may be more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T14:41:46.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10961" CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:44:39.013" Score="10" ViewCount="2652" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I started my PhD in Machine Learning in April this year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My PhD is fully funded for 3 years, I earn around 2000€/month after tax, working only on research and not doing any teaching.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm paid by the grant that my advisor got for his project. This grant his paid by the state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My current advisor is a world expert in Machine Learning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I already submitted 2 papers with him and most likely submit a third one in a couple of months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem: My advisor just got an offer from one of the biggest company you can think of, to do a machine learning project with lots of different world experts newly hired by the said company. It means that he is going to leave his current position at my university in 4 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't blame him to take this position because I would have done the same. It's an offer that nobody can refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in 4 months, I'll have to make a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leave my position and look for a position elsewhere but I doubt I'll find something as interesting and well paid. (My advisor can write recommendation letter for me.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to stay at the university and choose a new advisor -&gt; the problem is that my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor (and I) have knowledge about it (he was a new junior professor and the university wanted to expand the CS department). The rest of my group is working on a totally different subject and I know nobody will be able to help me for the rest of my PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor told me that the university will find me a new advisor if I choose to stay but warned me that my topic will most likely shift to adapt to the domain knowledge of this new advisor. It means that I'll have to give up my current topic and to tell you the truth, I prefer to quit my PhD than to continue on something that I don't like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For info, I read this post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1169/how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway&quot;&gt;how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway&lt;/a&gt; but I think my problem is slightly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tldr: Is it possible to do a PhD with an advisor that can't help you? Or is it better to just go somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T08:18:01.167" Title="Is it a good idea to continue a PhD with an advisor who doesn't really know your field?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10960" CreationDate="2013-07-05T01:37:18.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;judging &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;nobody&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; knows the area except you and your advisor seems&#xA;a strong statement to me specially if you just started doing research&#xA;(this April ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite sure there are other folks working on the same topic or&#xA;something really close to it. Those are your potential advisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that you just started and he's a world class&#xA;expert, I believe the best thing is to approach your advisor asking&#xA;for help. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ask him to suggest some names to you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  He certainly&#xA;knows other academics and can even approach them asking for a PhD&#xA;position for you (have you looked to his co-authors list in DBLP for&#xA;example? ). I have heard several cases where advisors help their&#xA;students secure PhD positions in other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take a breadth view over other's research&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Attend their seminars. You&#xA;might see their work interesting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DO NOT LOSE YOUR ADVISOR. keep in touch with him and try to be his student even outside academia!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T01:47:33.917" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T01:47:33.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10935" CreationDate="2013-07-05T01:41:07.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;NEVER READ A SCIENTIFIC PAPER COMPLETELY FROM START LINE TO FINISH LINE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Idea is to get an understanding of what concept is presented in the paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open powerpoint/paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read abstract - Tells us briefly WHAT experiment WAS DONE and WHAT WAS FOUND. What specific results are mentioned - are they relevant to your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discussion - Summary of important results and gives reasons based on conclusions and assumptions - Do you agree with the logic of the conclusions and are those useful to you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introduction - Motivation and importance of the research and tries to sell the paper to the maximum. Provides some background information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Results - Provides some raw data which can be related to your own research. Figures and Tables provide data in a compact format for easy understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In figures - does the graphs make sense ? , what are the axis's used and does it mean anything ? Check the units used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;FINISH - I have a brief understanding of the paper and I have tried my best to cover all the relevant attributes of a scientific journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check the references and see if they are related to the main concept of the paper in hand. Follow through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manage a reference library like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mendeley&lt;/a&gt; to keep an updated list of the literature you reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7589" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T18:12:12.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T06:10:45.073" Score="3" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing a paper for publication with Taylor &amp;amp; Francis Group. The journal follows the &lt;strong&gt;TF no. 1&lt;/strong&gt; style but there is no mention on how to cite a source such an online video. Rather, at the end of the style guide they say to refer to &lt;strong&gt;New Hart's Rules&lt;/strong&gt; for usage that is not specified in the guide or uncertain. However, New Hart's Rules seems to refer to &lt;strong&gt;Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6&lt;/strong&gt;. So, I'm rather confused on how to cite such a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The citation in APA Style would be as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sesame Workshop. (Producer) (2010). Sesame Street. Journey to Ernie: Beach [Web]. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnRnxkX2U2U&amp;amp;feature=plcp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnRnxkX2U2U&amp;amp;feature=plcp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how should be adjusted to meet &lt;em&gt;Taylor &amp;amp; Francis no. 1 / New Hart's Rules / Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6&lt;/em&gt; style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7639" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T15:58:05.623" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T15:58:05.623" Title="Citing a Youtube video in New Hart's Rules style?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10967" CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:20:12.947" Score="5" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some prominent summer schools in CS (ML in particular) like MLS (Machine Learning Summer School).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the impact of attending such program on academic careers? (or applying for graduate programs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&#xA;LxMLS (Lisbon Machine Learning School) this year has ~ 150 selected participants from all over the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summer school offers the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lectures (from basics to advanced topics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lab sessions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poster Session (based on which the students were selected)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be a worthwhile investment of 1000-1200$ (Assuming I have the means to fund myself) or are such opportunities common and easily funded in US and I should be looking at not attending and saving money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else would this summer school bring forth for a recently graduated undergrad student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the summer schools have courses which can be treated as university credit equivalents. Is this true for all summer schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Background: A student interested in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing and has taken online courses in these subjects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="3983" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T09:52:46.787" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T08:13:10.407" Title="Summer Schools and academic career" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10966" CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:40:46.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student in my final months, I'm in a different field (geophysics), but I've been to some summer-schools that I found &lt;em&gt;very valuable&lt;/em&gt;.  One lecturer even stated that &lt;em&gt;summer schools are the best forum for scientific exchange&lt;/em&gt;.  The summer schools I've been to didn't have as many participants as yours, but still, besides from the obvious point of acquiring knowledge and skills, summer school permit you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet and talk to senior people in your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet other students, who may be going to be the &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; senior people in your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is: &lt;strong&gt;A summer school is as good as its lecturers are&lt;/strong&gt;.  Look at the list of lecturers, and ask a senior scientist you know to look at the list.  Are there many famous names?  &lt;em&gt;Go for it&lt;/em&gt;.  Are those mainly lecturers who spend most of their time teaching at not so well known institutes?  Then you can probably spend your time and money better elsewhere.  Depending on what's included (lodging/meals/...) and on how long it takes, 1000$ is not bad, although of course it's better if you can find someone else to pay it for you ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T09:40:46.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10966" CreationDate="2013-07-05T10:16:19.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;$1500 with everything included? Sounds very good value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asides from the great value and the great opportunity for networking with like minded people, it is a great opportunity, through the networking and sessions, to be able to find your focused research interest(s).  You never know where the contacts you make, and what you learn will lead you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did something similar when I was just completing my MSc - I went to a workshop/conference in Boston - what I learnt helped me refine my PhD research topic; the people I met, I am still n contact with and have helped me when I did not quite understand some topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately though, it is up to what you can afford in terms of time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T10:16:19.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10970" CreationDate="2013-07-05T11:38:19.173" Score="62" ViewCount="7542" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background - I am doing my PhD in atmospheric physics/photobiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experiments are complete - the results are far better than expected &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Successfully got the computer program to work properly and have developed another&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers are published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Much of the thesis is drafted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The light at the end of the tunnel is most definitely no longer an oncoming train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, at this stage, you just don't feel like working on the thesis, you do other things like cleaning, reading, watching movies - procrastination gets worse, and worse despite the submission deadline coming closer.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procrastination resulting in more apathy towards the project, despite being fully aware of how much work has been put into the project, how much has been achieved and how little, comparatively, needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies are there to overcome this academic-apathy, particularly in this late stage of the thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T17:45:12.770" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T23:08:39.000" Title="Strategies to overcome &quot;academic-apathy&quot; in the final stages of the PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;procrastination&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10969" CreationDate="2013-07-05T11:52:06.073" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to set minor distinct goals for each day but not overdo them, make them manageable. Mix boring chores with more fun ones so that the fun ones become a reward. This may seem a bit vague or even wooly. The problem I think you are experiencing is that while working on a PhD you get accustomed to stress and like many (myself included) a certain stress is needed to get something, and really the best, out of oneself. This phenomena, in my case, has only gotten worse, and I simply have a hard time getting anything done unless there is some pressure that gets stress levels up. But, with certain tasks it is possible to get stuff done by breaking it down into smaller pieces because if there is no overview or goals are too nebulous then it is not easy to focus on what to do in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T11:52:06.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10969" CreationDate="2013-07-05T13:17:01.980" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what kept me motivated and got me through the last year of my PhD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A comment from a professor that &lt;em&gt;the best dissertation is the one that is written.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My advisor kept pushing me to get her chapters.  I'm not sure where you stand with your advisor, but if he/she (and your committee as a whole) wants you to finish up, that can be motivating.  If you want to push this angle, send out an email to your advisor and committee with your plan to finish -- that will help keep you working!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had set a deadline for myself (as mentioned in point 2), and backed all my planning up to make sure I met the deadline.  It sounds like you've gotten to the point where it is just the writing you have left, and I suggest setting up a schedule of when you will complete each chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My deadline revolved around the job market -- I knew I needed to be ready to start at a job in August, so I knew I needed to be completely done by then.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I took breaks when I needed to.  I treated myself to a day off when I got a chapter completed and sent to my advisor, and I had one weekly TV program that I watched religiously.  Finishing a PhD is a lot of work, but it doesn't need to be soul-crushing (and soul-crushing work is bad for you, anyway!).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I really wanted to see the finished product -- I thought it was cool to have this giant, polished document, and that kept me tinkering on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T13:17:01.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T13:35:42.753" Score="81" ViewCount="336600" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see researchers working on their PhD calling themselves PhD Candidates, other call themselves PhD students. What's the difference between a PhD Candidate and a PhD Student? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to two posters on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1790323&quot;&gt;WordReferences forums&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This terms vary from university to university, usually a PhD student is granted the candidate status after completion of a “comprehensive examination”, which occurs sometime after the first year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here in the U.S., a “Ph.D. Candidate” is a student who has completed all of the academic requirements for their degree, except their dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this works in the USA and Canada I presume, because they have structured PhD programs where you attend courses as part of your PhD. Unlike most of the universities in Europe where a PhD student starts off directly with his/her PhD thesis. (Europe does have structured programs as well, but they are not as widely spread yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:21:11.223" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T14:56:06.387" Title="PhD candidate vs PhD student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10969" CreationDate="2013-07-05T13:57:57.157" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like a clear burnout sign. Instead of watching movies and cleaning. Get on a train and do something totally different. I think you are in this loophole and won't be getting out of it by doing the same stuff over and over (remember Einstein's quote). Normally you'll need just 3 days to reset your motivation. Things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visit new places&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see new faces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk about anything else but your PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rearrange your furniture (believe me, it helps. Your brain needs to forget old patterns)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't read, watch movies or focus on anything more than 15 minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;go shopping. Ladies do this all the time to get that confidence kick&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7641" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2017-06-30T23:08:39.000" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T23:08:39.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2013-07-05T14:16:51.783" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia, (at least at my university), you start off as a 'Provisional Candidate'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you complete a Dissertation Proposal - where you present a 20 or so page preliminary report and present it as a seminar to a group of peers - once passed, you receive a 'Confirmation of Candidature' then you proceed to complete the thesis as a 'Confirmed Candidate'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually done within the first 1-2 years of the PhD course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T14:16:51.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10976" CreationDate="2013-07-05T14:29:02.523" Score="7" ViewCount="1737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done some research during the past year on one of the topics I am studying. Now I have got some nice results which I think I should publish. I think I can write a conference paper based on my results; a journal one might be too difficult at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have conducted the research alone, and have not received any help from any faculty members. Now, when I'm writing the paper, I came to consider for the first time am I &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to publish under the institution I am studying in? I mean, I can list my university as my affiliation, even though I'm just an undergrad student, right? .. I could not find anything on this from the university rules, so I guess its &quot;quiet information&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7642" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T20:22:02.087" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T20:22:02.087" Title="Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-12T07:23:59.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10975" CreationDate="2013-07-05T14:53:10.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask one of your professors or the administration about what the best course of action is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, you should publish as affiliated to the university as the work was conducted while you were at university. In any case, you have nothing to lose by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T14:53:10.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T15:51:27.267" Score="23" ViewCount="15168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new graduate student and I am about to start writing my first paper. Some of my adviser's other students have been working on similar topic to what I have been working on and he has been pushing us to combine our results into one paper. However, I feel my results could be a paper on their own. I want to start beefing up my CV so that I can get extra funding and, hopefully down the road, a research position but I am afraid that if I am only a coauthor on a paper it won't look as good as if I am the sole author (especially since I worked completely on my own for my section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: would it be better to try and publish a paper in which I am the sole author or would it be better to try and publish a slightly better paper in which I have 2 or 3 additional coauthors? Do funding selection committees and the like give precedence to people with papers that they are sole authors over ones who have coauthors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: My field is math, in case this matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T20:20:53.630" LastActivityDate="2019-09-13T14:19:58.560" Title="Is it better to have a single-author paper or a joint-authored paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2013-07-05T16:01:35.297" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way authorships count varies substantially between fields. You therefore need to figure out how things are in yours. Multi-author papers are commonplace in most fields today and in some (mine included) there is almost a negative to be sole author (it seems as if you do not collaborate). This view strongly depends on what kind of paper/study it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, benefits with co-authorships is that your name becomes associated with others. If it is only with your fellow graduate students, the value may be somewhat limited but if you are co-authoring with someone who is well known and respected, the value is much larger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the way you have described it, it seems silly to put your research into another paper if it can stand alone. If the joint paper is likely to become a benchmark paper and get lots of attention, then being part of it may not be a bad idea. So you see that it really is a problem of assessing how you can optinise your gain from it as well as how much the science will gain from a colaborative paper where all parts are present. One way to resolve such issues is sometimes to write several papers where the group is present on all but where the first author varies so that your own work is accredited you but the joint effort is also acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of decisions are always tricky and, in my opinion, depend on how the work can be divided up without losing strength and impact. You should definitely bring this to the table and discuss the options with your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T16:01:35.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2013-07-05T16:37:52.650" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should really listen to what your advisor says. &quot;...he has been pushing us to combine our results into one paper.&quot; That about says it. Your advisor knows what works and what doesn't work as a paper in your field. He also knows (presumably) about the scope of your work and how it fits into what you and the other students have been doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little downside to this. The importance of the paper to your career has far more to do with how well received the paper is than with how many authors there are. Having more authors means the paper is stronger, means you have a network of people to help rewrite and deal with any negative reviews you may get, and (as suggested in Peter's answers) it shows you can collaborate with others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would not hurt to bring this up with your advisor, make your point (ask your question), and see how the advisor reacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T17:13:31.307" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T17:13:31.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2013-07-05T17:25:38.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relevant questions should be: What have those other people done regarding your own research? Are their contributions worth adding them as coauthors? These are the questions that you should be thinking about. From what I read from your post, it seems to me that the other people did not contribute much to your research, and you feel that you should publish the paper on your own. What confuses you is &quot;the dark side of the force:&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do funding selection committees and the like give precedence to people with papers that they are sole authors over ones who have coauthors?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thoughts that surround this question are very serious issues (c.f. the current ethical standards of academia), and you should think about it. I think the answer of the paraphrased question above should never be a determining factor on whether you should publish that paper on your own or with coauthors. You have to first form your own ethics depending on what you think is true/right/just, and pursue that direction regardless of the monetary/fundetary/titletary disadvantages that it brings within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7648" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T17:25:38.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T17:48:52.600" Score="24" ViewCount="1419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper later that was reviewed by four reviewers. I submitted my revisions to all reviewers. Three accepted the review, while the last is still asking for modifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the reviewer is asking to measure the performance of our work using performance metrics that were never taken into consideration before in the literature (and our problem is well studied - at 30 references !) .. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These performance metrics would require a complete Master Thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it fair to judge a paper based on performance metrics that were not taken into consideration by the authors at the first hand ? (noting that none of the previous work considered these metrics) ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to say it, but the reviewer seems to be reading a paper about my problem for the first time ever, and some of the reviewer comments are contradicting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am sorry if this have been asked before. I could not find any thing related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T20:15:36.923" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T20:15:36.923" Title="What to do when a referee asks for changes I am not willing to make?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10983" CreationDate="2013-07-05T18:07:08.640" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you elaborate more how the discussion has proceeded? If I am under the correct impression, you don't have to agree with every reviewer nor do everything they suggest. Instead, you need to tell them that their comments have been &lt;em&gt;seriously considered&lt;/em&gt;. You should be OK by writing the same statement that you wrote here: you disagree, your point of view is supported by previous research, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T18:07:08.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10983" CreationDate="2013-07-05T18:46:47.957" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question, there is no mention of an editor for the journal to which you have submitted your work. If you disagree with one or more of the reviewers, there is nothing remarkable about that; it is common, a review is an educated opinion about your work, supposedly based on facts. Normally you would provide an account for how you have met the comments (as you seem to have done) and in the cases where you disagree, you provide an account based on facts and reasoning why you think your way is better than that of the reviewer. It should then be up to the editor, not the reviewer, to decide whether your revisions make the manuscript acceptable or not. In some cases the editor will request a second round of reviews, this is normal, particularly if the revisions have been so substantial that the manuscript is quite different from the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I see as a relatively typical way for a review process to take place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T08:24:14.680" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T08:24:14.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2013-07-05T19:15:30.530" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on what JeffE said – &quot;Every department is different.&quot;, here's an example from my university (a top UC school):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math department is pretty rigorous and the &quot;candidacy exam&quot; is mostly a blackboard and chalk routine. They throw a bunch of stuff at you, poke holes in your proposal, make you sweat epsilons and deltas from all your pores before declaring you a &quot;candidate&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The life/physical sciences departments require you to have a 20-30 page written proposal + a presentation on it + preliminary results (usually at least 1 journal paper) and your committee members grill you on the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ECE/CS (applied, not theoretical), the labs/PIs are generally quite rigorous themselves and by the time a student is ready to take the candidacy exam, they've had at least 2 first author publications and 3-4 conference publications. At this point, their course is pretty set and the committee members don't generally feel like they need to say/do much (unless if there are serious flaws hitherto unnoticed). As such, the candidacy exam is more of a formality — no 30 page proposals (who reads them anyway?); just a presentation on the papers already published + future work remaining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line from all this is — there are no standard rules/definitions/process involved in becoming a &quot;PhD candidate&quot;. All it usually means is that &quot;This person has shown an understanding of the fundamental concepts (on the day of testing), their proposal/work done is original and has potential and they've completed all course work/other requirements except for their thesis&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7652" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T19:15:30.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10251" CreationDate="2013-07-05T19:44:21.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a year the Notices of AMS publish the backlog of mathematics research journals containing &lt;em&gt;inter alia&lt;/em&gt; the data you are interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2012 one is here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the 2013 is here :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and both do list some journals in informatics including the non-Elsevier ones (e.g. the Springer's Acta Informatica). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7653" LastEditorUserId="7653" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T14:44:16.773" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T14:44:16.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10983" CreationDate="2013-07-05T21:03:33.787" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other comments that it is ok to not satisfy the demands of all reviewers and that in the end the editor makes the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is still possible that the reviewer has a good point that the other reviewers missed. It is entirely possible that common metrics in the field are problematic and that since the other reviewers are &quot;from the field&quot; (and so are you, for that matter), they just don't give it a second thought. I have encountered these kinds of situations before. Remember that &lt;strong&gt;ultimately, you are the one responsible for what you write in your paper - not the reviewers or the editor&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, I suggest that you keep an open mind and think deeply if the reviewer has a point and how you want to address it and act accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just mentioning this since it is sometimes easy to become overly defensive and dismiss reviewer comments as bad judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T11:36:15.833" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T11:36:15.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10983" CreationDate="2013-07-05T21:24:37.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I may relay a piece of wisdom that was passed down to me many years ago, even if you are convinced that the reviewer is a complete idiot, it only means that your paper was obviously not completely idiot-proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody managed to find fault on what you considered a trivial point, then the point may not be as trivial or clear as you think. Applied to your specific case, &#xA;you could show, in your manuscript, that the results shown are sufficient to make whatever point you want to make, and that other specific tests, i.e. the ones suggested by the reviewer, would not contribute to the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, though, my first step would be to talk to the editor in charge of your manuscript. She/He will be making the final decision, so it makes more sense to discuss with her/him directly, and not engage in a lengthy -- and essentially pointless -- battle with an individual referee. In such cases the editor can usually tell you how she/he would like to see the referee's points addressed, and that will give you something to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also echo &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10991/495&quot;&gt;Bitwise&lt;/a&gt;'s sentiment that, in the end, it's up to you. If the journal, via the referees and editor, makes demands that you cannot live with, then you can live without that particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T21:24:37.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10966" CreationDate="2013-07-05T22:28:57.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the impact of attending such program on academic careers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct - very little (unless it is very selective and prestigious  &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the committee is aware of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the biggest things are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much you will actually learn and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much you will network.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later is more important (always you can learn by yourself, and most of learning is self-learning anyway) but you cannot network by yourself. So if there are people from groups you want to apply - it will help a lot (and also: mean that the level seems to be right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T08:13:10.407" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T08:13:10.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10969" CreationDate="2013-07-06T01:42:21.683" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am completing my PhD in 2 months, and had my own revelation on this subject last week, which is helping me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own procrastination is the result of a fear of failure and a fear of being mediocre. If I procrastinate, and don't do as well as I hope, I've then got the excuse that &quot;I didn't really try&quot;. It was a revelation for me, because this is the very thing I've been telling myself most of my life after I don't do as well as I think I could do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thus been able to accept myself, and my shortcomings, more readily now... which has removed a lot of the internal pressure to perform well. As a result I have found that I am able to work steadily. I will try my best to do as well as I can without too much pressure, and whatever the result, that will be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The revelation in itself did not help so much... it was really the acceptance of myself as I am now that has allowed me to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side benefit to this will be better performance, but that is no longer the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can relate to this, then I suggest reading up on &quot;Fear of Failure&quot; on wikipedia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7659" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T01:42:21.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10518" CreationDate="2013-07-06T11:54:15.510" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Since this was too long to leave as a comment, I'll post it here in addition to an answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Regarding the GRE Subject test for math: admissions wise, the scores are &lt;em&gt;mandatory&lt;/em&gt; for pretty much every top 10 program in the nation (Princeton, Harvard, MIT, UChicago, Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc). Since most potential candidates admitted to these programs have a track record for some type of research-related activity, less emphasis is placed on the scores and more on their potential as research mathematicians (after all, that's what grad school is about: research). However, in less prestigious departments like Irvine, Santa, and Barbara, more emphasis is placed on the subject test relatively speaking to the top 10 programs because one of the likely reasons some students end up in &quot;lower&quot; departments is due of the lack of research experience. Thus, much emphasis (though not all, credible research-related letters of recommendation are probably more essential) is placed on the subject test. Of course I'm not implying that lower grad schools look more at test scores than publications. I'm saying that it's probably more &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; that the students will depend on their scores than their publications precisely for the aforementioned reasons. Right from the words of the UC Berkeley website &quot;&lt;em&gt;Experience has shown that the score on the Mathematics Subject GRE is a partial indicator of preparation for Berkeley's PhD program.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a &quot;good&quot; GRE score, take a look at what top programs expect of their applicants, and shoot for that range (the higher the better, of course). Once again, in the words of the Berkeley site &quot;&lt;em&gt;A score below the 80th percentile suggests inadequate preparation and must be balanced by other evidence if a favorable admission decision is to be reached.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; So if I was you, I would shoot for the 80th percentile at minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now onto your question&lt;/strong&gt;: First of all, +1 to aeismail's answer. I agree with that assessment: It seems to me that you're all over the place! The lack of coordination, I think, might turn off the admissions committee because A) it shows you're not very concentrated in one or two areas which might imply that you don't know what you're going to do and B) you're not very committed to a specific program. Unless your research is going to coincide with different areas, and the scattering departments are a reflection of departmental strengths in those areas, I think that'll be a red flag that you really just want in based on rankings. And if that was the case, you might rejected on the basis of &lt;em&gt;lack of coordination&lt;/em&gt;. It won't be on their consciousness of course: there'll be at least 14 other schools that may admit you, so why would they care? &lt;strong&gt;Here's my advice to you:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apply to less schools&lt;/strong&gt;: 8 - 10 seems like a very reasonable range for me. Even if you don't explicitly state it, imply that you're not just going to grad school based on prestige or naming. Over 15 schools is too much. Show that you're looking at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; programs, with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; goals in mind (i.e Applying to schools X, Y, Z because of their strong research areas in 1, 2, 3 and your interest in 2 and 3). 2 safeties, 2 matches, 2 reaches, and 2 &quot;dreams&quot; (you never know :-). They're paying you to do research, not the other way around. Why should schools invest their time in you if you end up switching fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not these are reasonable choices, that's pretty much subjective. It would depend on the field you're going into (I have no idea how strong these departments are in analysis/mathematical physics) and that's something you can google. You'd also do well to check the websites of each of these schools and look at the expectations for their applicants. Whatever bar they set, shoot for just higher than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REUs are just one way of getting research experience so don't worry too much about it. Senior thesis projects that culminate in publications are another. Working closely with a professor is one other way. I think ultimately (aside from research publications) the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;most important&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; factor that goes into graduate admissions are your letters of recommendation. If it doesn't show on paper, a credible professor may assess your research potential since they know best what research is all about. Of course the tricky part here is getting letters of rec from the right person: If you're getting them, you're better off getting it from someone who coincides with your research interest. Since you're interested in analysis, it wouldn't make sense to get letters of rec. from a basket weaving instructor. Get it from your analysis professor (preferably, someone who knows you well and from upper undergrad/graduate-level course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final thoughts: If you want to improve your PhD application, try starting an independent project or ask to work with a professor. Research that results in journal publications is very rare even for exceptional undergraduates, so do not worry about that. It's helpful to be able to focus on one project for a whole year rather than jump from one to another every single month (the reason for that is obvious: it indicates perseverance and patience, which is very important for any potential PhD candidate). And refine your statement of purpose to show what you have learned from undertaking said project(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7628" LastEditorDisplayName="user7628" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T19:47:35.853" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T19:47:35.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10334" CreationDate="2013-07-06T16:55:47.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some advice first:&lt;/strong&gt; Ultimately you may change your mind about what you want to do in your academic life (and you probably will, which is to be expected) so what I would do is make sure I have a back-up plan. By &quot;back-up plan&quot; I mean whatever field you may choose, make sure it coincides with another existing field (in some obvious, explicit way). That way, if you do end up hating say analytic number theory and you want to specialize in algebraic geometry instead, the path would be continuous, and you wouldn't face too many rough patches. Since you're passionate about math, I'm assuming you have a very, very rough idea of what you may want to specialize in grad school (applied math seems out the window). If not, that's okay. You've got years to think about that. If the answer is yes, then in addition to the core classes (abstract algebra, points-set topology, real analysis are the norm), you should self-study additional books that pertain to your field of interest. If you like number theory, start with Alan Baker's book. If you like geometry, start with Pedoe's book. And so on and so forth. In the meanwhile I'll give you an outline of what I think is the &quot;Ideal&quot; student's path towards a top grad school (for these purposes, I'm going to say all of the schools in the top 10 programs). This will be completely subjective of course, so disclaimer: don't get on my case. I'm also going to completely ignore the general education requirements and just focus on the math part. Since I'm not a believer in REUs I won't mention anything about that. I don't think they're a good reflection of research ability because not too many of them are exceptional. (i.e no first authorship. No grad school is going to believe you made progress on the Hodge conjecture if you say that on your personal statement. You'd only be BS'ing yourself). Moving on :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Freshman year&lt;/strong&gt;: Get your core classes over with. You'll probably be able to finish half of them in this time assuming you declare your major this early and you petition your academic adviser to take more than what the norm is (and if you can prove your competency in the subjects you've listed). They may be able to waive the prerequisites and make an exception for you. In the meanwhile, don't be a stool in class and just get A's. Ask and answer questions regarding your coursework. Go beyond that and take advantage of your professors' office hours. Don't worry if you think you're intruding: it's part of the job description, and they'll probably like the enthusiasm. Talk to them about doing research (it's definitely &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; too early) in an area of interest. Provide your relevant mathematical background so that they may guide you. Ask them what other professors you should talk to if you want to do undergrad research in X, Y, or Z. Collect as much information and ask as many questions as possible. In the meanwhile, maintain a consistent average (3.8+ would probably be favorable). If all goes well, you should be able to get started (or at least have a topic and someone to work with) by the beginning of your sophomore year. If you wanna have fun, you should take the Putnam exam (I don't know how relevant scores are to grad admissions) and see how well you do. If you somehow become a Putnam Fellow, that's going to significantly increase your chances (for bureaucracy reasons probably since the Putnam exam and research mathematics require different tool sets). Still, you can only take this exam a maximum of 4 times in your undergrad years (once for every year). So I'd take advantage of that. If your university has an honors program that results in a senior thesis, I'd take advantage of that as well. Sometimes very exceptional theses get published in journals and that'd be a good credential to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sophomore year&lt;/strong&gt;: By the end of this year you should be well done by your core requirements (assuming you're persistent and keep petitioning to take more and more credit hours). More importantly, at the end of this year you should have a very rough idea of what you may want to study in grad school. But it should be more concise than whatever you're thinking about now. At this point you should also think about starting at least 2 more research projects (the reason is, you need at most 3 letters of recommendation for places like Princeton). If you can get 3 letters of rec. from professors who know you well (i.e the ones you worked with in your 3 research projects) that'll look very favorably on your application. Once again, take the Putnam. Maintain your GPA as close to a 4.0 as possible. You know, the usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Junior year&lt;/strong&gt;: Now would be a good time to start taking grad-level classes. Try to coincide these classes with your area of interest. If you like algebraic geometry, take a class on that and see how you like it. You should know the drill by now. If you're still working on these projects (and you probably will be) don't lose focus. If a publication seems like a pipe dream, that's okay. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Publications are not expected of undergrads&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. But it would look great of course. If you have not already, you should think about which grad schools you may want to apply to. Again, maintain that high GPA and take the Putnam to ease your sure to be troubled mind. By the end of Junior year, you should start studying for the GRE and the GRE Subject test. If you happen to have done extremely well on the Putnam (i.e became a Putnam Fellow or scored in the top 100) you'll probably find the studying part trivial as you've had much practice with problem solving and adeptness. Of course don't get cocky: you should still review anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Senior year&lt;/strong&gt;: Take the GRE and the GRE Subject test. Kick ass at them. Try to finish up your 3 research projects if you have not already and prepare to submit them to a peer-reviewed journal. The process may take time so don't be discouraged if you're still not finished by the time you apply. Be sure to do well on your senior thesis as well assuming your university offers them. Get those amazing letters of rec. from the 3 - 4 year relationship you've established with your professors. Go overload on those grad classes (or self-study) and work at optimum. Get acquainted with your potential field. After all is said and done, write up your CV, do your applications, and send them in. After that, take a sigh of relief, put up your feet, and relax. Take the Putnam for the final time. Enjoy your remaining months in college before you're off doing your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all goes well, you'll get published, you'll get praised, and you'll get into your schools of choice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7628" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T16:55:47.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-07T01:49:56.837" Score="12" ViewCount="26562" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 5 months ago I submitted a paper to a journal. The editors assigned a reviewer. In the meantime I sent a couple of revised versions, which did not help matters, but the editor ultimately wrote back and asked me to complete my revisions and re-submit the document. I did that within a couple of weeks. The editors did not acknowledge receipt of this submission, but I did not want to ask for one since I felt I had already been pestering them too much. A couple of weeks later, I notified the editors that I wanted to post a couple of graphs from the submitted paper on a blog, although I hoped to make it clear that only a very small component of the whole paper was being posted on the blog. The editors did not respond to this notification. More than two months went by after the re-submission, and I sent a message to the editor asking for a status update, just to be sure that the paper was still being considered and under review. It seemed to me that a very simple &quot;yes, it is still being reviewed&quot;, or &quot;no, we have considered your paper withdrawn and it is not being reviewed&quot; or something like that, would suffice. About 10 more days passed with no response, and I thought I would telephone the editor with my question, on the off-chance that my emails were not getting through.  I left a message for him, and another week has gone by with no response. At what point do I take the non-response from the editor as a message that my paper is no longer under review and that I should re-submit it elsewhere? The journal is otherwise a reputable journal, and I would like my paper published there, but there are many others that interest me too.  I feel like I made a mess of the whole process, and am to be blamed for over-communication and confusion, but am I not owed the courtesy of a response from the editor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7664" LastEditorUserId="7664" LastEditDate="2013-07-07T02:09:07.403" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T16:03:26.600" Title="How long is reasonable to wait for reply from an editor?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10999" CreationDate="2013-07-07T03:32:01.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the journal, as there is no set time, in general, for journal editors to publish research.  No doubt you have read up on the relevant sections that pertain to timeframes on the publisher's website - those are usually a guide.  I have had a paper submitted and published online within 2 months and another took 8 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been, somewhat ironically, a research paper written about this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lutz-bornmann.de/icons/TimePeerReview5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How Long is the Peer Review Process for&#xA;Journal Manuscripts?&#xA;A Case Study on Angewandte Chemie&#xA;International&#xA;Edition&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Bornmann and Hans-Dieter, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very pertinent point is that as the editors are reviewing a lot of papers, they are under considerable pressure to reach quick publication decisions and that the majority of the time is waiting for reviewers to get back to them.  This may go some of the way to explain why there is a lack of communication and the length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T03:32:01.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10999" CreationDate="2013-07-07T04:39:00.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are good reasons to expect communication with an editor to be slower than many other e-mail exchanges. Editors are busy, especially since editing may be a minor but time consuming part of their job. And responding to questions from authors often involves contacting referees, who may in turn be unresponsive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it's reasonable to wait a couple of weeks for a response to a timely request for a status update (two months after a revision strikes me as a bit early---I'd expect it to take longer---but not unreasonably early to ask for a status update). If it gets lost (for instance, the editor is waiting for a response from the referee, and hasn't remembered to tell you that's what's happening), a polite reminder and a few days to another week or so of waiting might be appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, though, you can rightly begin to worry that you aren't hearing back. If there are other editors, especially a chief editor, you can contact, I'd start there. I'd be very reluctant to unilaterally withdraw the paper, since that might cause complications if the editor returns and feels you resubmitted while it was still under consideration.  Before resorting to that, I'd try to talk to one or two senior people in the field for advice about the specific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just to emphasize, I'm talking about communication with an editor about the status of a paper. Of course the refereeing process as a whole can take a year or more.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T04:39:00.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10999" CreationDate="2013-07-07T08:38:24.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right in both that you have made a mess and that you should get a prompt reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to see what usually happens: A paper is submitted, the editor takes a look (reads) the paper to decide if it is appropriate for the journal and if it is ok then either sends it out to reviewers directly or assigns the papers to co-editors who will send it out. This process can vary greatly in length but will be on the order of weeks to a month depending on workload. Remember that editors usually work for free or with little pay and working out of their spare time. Assigning reviewers means contacting reviewers, waiting for their reply and in some cases getting negative replies. Each request might use up 2 weeks and so if you are unlucky it might take month just to get enough reviewers to accept the chore. Reviewers usually have something like three weeks to do the review (it will vary though) but often reviewers are not on time so a month can easily go by. Upon getting the reviews back, the editor has to scrutinize the reviews and make decisions on the recommendation to send back to you. Several weeks to a month are typical times for this depending on a situation. The editor will then contact you with a &quot;verdict&quot; varying from accept to reject through revisions. During all this time you will not hear much unless the journal uses an electronic submissions system in which you can usually monitor the progress yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you contact the editor with questions during the process, I would say it is fair to get a reply within at least a couple of weeks unless it is a holiday season. The fact that you for some reason submitted a manuscript which probbaly was sent into above process and then followed up by sending revised manuscripts which would have caused quite a lot of extra work for everyone concerned at the journal, was a mistake and would make me as editor really irritated. Don't send a manuscript unless it is completed. If you need to add or change anything wait until the manuscript is reviewed or withdraw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the problems you may have caused, you are of course still entitled to get a response on direct questions. The fact that many months transpired without contact about your manuscript is not out of the ordinary but if you ask for a status update after 4-5 months, I would think it would only be fair to get a quick reply such as you mention. As a side point, a rejection is usually communicated quite quickly so a lack of contact is usually a good sign. Now, I do of course not know why the correspondence is slow, if it is the norm with the journal or if it is just an accident. As a final point I would say that even if you messed up, it doesn't entitle the editors to treat you any worse than anybody else. It is always difficult to know if sending additional mails will help, most likely not, but at some point, give it another month, then a response should have come forth. If not then another mail is in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T16:03:26.600" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T16:03:26.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11004" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-07T10:02:30.040" Score="8" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently two friends of mine have come back to Australia after having done 2 semesters of 3rd and 4th year subjects (about half mathematics) at different branches of the University of California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They said that the tests would only ask questions directly from or similar to material covered in lectures and example sheets. If questions deviated from the lectures or example sheets very much students would complain to the lecturer. Thus, if one studied the example sheets enough they got an A relatively easily. They returned with A or A+ in all of their maths subjects, but they average about 75-80 for their maths subjects here.&#xA;In Australia, about 70% of the exam is usually like that. The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications? How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Chris's answer below seems to answer the first question by &amp;quot;not quite&amp;quot;, which is what I expected I suppose. The other questions still stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T14:50:39.863" Title="How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11004" CreationDate="2013-07-07T11:58:49.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math and science classes I have taken at top tier universities in the U.S. have had these types of problems as a significant part of exams.  As a caveat, those were also classes designed for math and science students.  I have tutored students in non-math fields who have taken math and science classes that were less rigorous in that regard (e.g., &quot;Calculus for Business majors&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suffice it to say that as undergraduates progress deeper into their respective field, they will generally experience more challenging material on the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T11:58:49.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11007" CreationDate="2013-07-07T12:03:38.113" Score="6" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title stands on its own, but I am not sure how detailed to make follow-up reviewer comments for a paper.  My sense is that I don't need to re-review the paper, but just comment on whether or not I am satisfied with the changes the authors made.  This leaves a rather skimpy review the second time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T12:52:12.103" Title="When conducting a follow-up review for a paper you already made comments on, how detailed should the review be?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11006" CreationDate="2013-07-07T12:29:19.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The extent of a re-review depends on what has been done with the manuscript (MS). If the first review round yielded questions and comments that can be fixed but may require checking to make sure the implementation of the comments are correct, then, as you say, you will not have to do a full-blown re-review. If, on the other hand, the revisions are such that the MS has been substantially modified, perhaps with new parts added, new data included, etc. the situation is different. Then the paper is so modified it is in some way more of a new MS than just revised and, hence in need of a new throrough review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my opinion, the need of re-review depends on the severity of the required changes. How you decide depends on your opinion of the new paper. If an editor feels a MS is in need of so substantial revisions it becomes a new MS, then it is often rejected with a note about re-submission after work has been done. So in the end it is your view of the severity or magnitude of necessary changes that largely determines how much should be done. In some cases authors may disagree with a comment you feel strongly about and in such cases it may be necessary to enforce the view through more careful and convincing scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I should perhaps add that a second or more reviewers may have given other comments that influence your review. This means parts of the MS can be changed in ways you have not suggested so although a new detalied re-review may not be necessary a careful read through and comparison with the old may be in order. Sometimes authors (we) can use conflicting reviews to argue against one or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-07T12:52:12.103" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T12:52:12.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11004" CreationDate="2013-07-07T15:03:41.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Repeating a bit other remarks: in the U.S., exams in upper-division courses are usually designed by the individual instructor, and vary widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a tradition in top-tier places in the U.S. to &quot;challenge&quot; students on exams, and students seem to expect this, while, yes, in some local cultures students expect/demand exams that contain no surprises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, it is not clear to me that &quot;testing cleverness&quot; is necessarily an important goal for timed exams. I am well aware that there is a huge tradition in which quickness and cleverness are construed as fundamental skills/talents. Certainly these are important for math contests, and occasionally useful in the practice of mathematics, but I don't think our classes &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt; these things, in any case. Thus, testing for quickness and cleverness is testing for something outside the course content. Thus, in many regards it is an irrelevant challenge to the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, substantial mathematics often has &lt;em&gt;genuine&lt;/em&gt; complications and difficulties that exist despite examples and forthrightness, and it is sometimes (often?) counterproductive to create &quot;challenging (surprise) problems&quot; from material that should be straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, yes, people on admissions committees are well aware of such traditions and their variations, don't worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the letters of recommendation from math faculty are far more important than grades on the transcript, in any case. Similarly, the statement of purpose of the applicant tells much more than the transcript. And, one more time, the skill set relevant to surprise questions on timed exams becomes ever less relevant throughout grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T15:03:41.053" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11004" CreationDate="2013-07-07T15:48:08.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are, some aren't.  Grading standards are heavily influenced by national and departmental culture, but ultimately they're entirely up to the instructor, &lt;strong&gt;just as they are in Australia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I expect that most upper-division exams in &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; departments require enough mastery of the material (as opposed to memorization of examples) to answer a completely novel question that requires the same techniques.  The key word here is &lt;em&gt;mastery&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;cleverness&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I go further than Paul Garrett.  Cleverness is not only inappropriate to test on exams; it's actually a &lt;em&gt;dangerous&lt;/em&gt; habit to cultivate.  My most frequent advice to students in my classes is &quot;You're trying to be clever.  Stop it.  Just solve the problem, one step at a time.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, admissions committees are well aware of significant differences between universities, both within the US and internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, by comparing them with other international applicants, preferably from the same country, if not the same university.  In other words, exactly the same way we judge American applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my department, if we get an otherwise strong application from a university we've never heard of, we try to judge by the recommendation letters.  But sometimes we just have to gamble, so we admit one or two of the very best students from an unknown university just to &lt;em&gt;find out&lt;/em&gt; how good it is.  If they do well, we admit more from that university later; if they do badly, we don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that depends on the individual applicant, doesn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T15:48:08.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-07T19:12:27.493" Score="24" ViewCount="9352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question particularly for the math professors here. I just finished my second year as a PhD student at a top30 University, passed all my qualifying exams, and I've begun working with an adviser in an area I'm excited about. Since the end of the Spring semester I've done a LOT of thinking, and I'm not sure academia is for me. The main issue is my perception of the time that will be required (in terms of hours per week) to get tenure. I have a wife and kids, and I just can't sacrifice the time spent with them, even if it means giving up something I love. I figure I could put in 40-45 hours a week, but then I need to be home. My first year of grad school, I put in 60-70 hours a week, and I certainly never want to go back to that. This last year, I've kept it between 40-50, and that seems about right for work/life balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is this... am I correct in ruling Academia out for this reason? I had considering smaller colleges, but I'm looking to earn at least $60k and from what research I've done, I won't make that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My next question involves research outside Academia. Is there any place for research in combinatorics, asymptotics, probability, and analysis of algorithms outside of Academia, where the work-culture is a typical 40 hour workweek? I see a lot of research in other areas of mathematics that I'm not interested in (PDE's, Scientific/Engineering, Number Theory) -- but not really what I'm interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with all that, it seems to me that I'm not even sure why I would get a PhD anymore, other than it might open doors, but it's hard to stay motivated when there is no clear goal, or thing to work towards. My current thinking is just take some CS courses and learn some programming languages, get an internship next summer and perhaps leave with a masters after a year or so unless I can think of a very good reason to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is appreciated!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7672" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T22:10:45.183" Title="Math Professors -- On average, how many hours per week do you think is required to gain tenure?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2013-07-09T13:02:52.373" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11011" CreationDate="2013-07-07T19:31:26.130" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've said this in another thread: if you are outstanding and &lt;em&gt;efficient&lt;/em&gt;, you can do the work required in a 40-hour workweek.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An electrical engineering professor I know got through graduate school at MIT working 9-5 days with a wife and three kids (all born during school), and he was a shoo-in for tenure (and received it).  &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;, when he was at work, he was &lt;em&gt;at work&lt;/em&gt;--I never once saw him out of work-mode during the regular day, and he put us graduate students to shame with his work ethic.  His efficiency and focus puts him over the top.  I know I couldn't be that efficient every day, but he makes it a priority to do the best he can at his job (which he loves) and also for his family, and he's figured out how to do it within the confines of a typical working week.  Granted, he is also extremely smart, but I believe his efficiency is as much responsible for his success as his brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-07-07T20:07:45.277" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T20:07:45.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11011" CreationDate="2013-07-07T22:10:45.183" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think it might be a slightly dangerous misconception about extra-academic research or work supposedly being neatly contained in 9-to-5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, yes, &lt;em&gt;efficiency&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;focus&lt;/em&gt; matter a great deal, in any case. Perhaps harder to be efficient and focused if one's motivation or interest is compromised, e.g., by time conflicts, thus making the problem worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it necessary or possible to &quot;separate&quot; research thinking from everything else? At least for many mathematicians of my acquaintance, it is not only possible to keep a part of one's mind working, if quietly, on an issue, but it is necessary, if not quite inescapable. Indeed, I would tend to claim that entirely putting an issue out of one's mind for 16 hours then necessitates considerable &quot;recover and restart&quot; time when one tries to re-engage. Thus, deliberately putting work out of one's mind entirely can have a further, partly un-necessary, effect, of reducing the effective workday by another hour or two, and having that unpleasant restarting to &quot;look forward to&quot; each day. Obviously this reduces one's effective competence as well as happiness if it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might recommend thinking more how to &lt;em&gt;integrate&lt;/em&gt; a work-life and family-life, rather than about how to control or contain one or the other. Conceivably it will become clearer to you that very many of the &quot;long&quot; weeks people spend in grad school are spent fairly ineffectively and needlessly unpleasantly, not just taking up time, but dragging one down psychologically, and producing a state incompatible with family-life, for example. But if/when one becomes more effective at the enterprise, it may be less unpleasant and less an obstruction to the rest of life, apart from literal hour-counting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T22:10:45.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11026" CreationDate="2013-07-08T02:46:20.043" Score="24" ViewCount="11704" Body="&lt;p&gt;When preparing my PowerPoint slides for a lecture, I often find myself wondering what to put as the final slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For presentations in industry, when not in a university setting, I often have a final slide which simply says &quot;Thank you.&quot; The intent is to thank the audience for attending the presentation. However, this feels a little out of place in a university setting, especially where students may not have a choice of attending (well, the choice is attend or definitely fail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I started using a final slide that says &quot;Questions?&quot; However, I recently read something indicating that a teacher should not ask if students have questions (the teacher should either ask a probing question to check for understanding or the teacher should simply expect the students to speak up without prompting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the final slide should somehow indicate that the slides are done and doing that with a content slide does not seem right either. I recently started using a final slide indicating what homework was expected of the students before the next class session (sometimes the slide simply says 'no homework'). This works several sessions into the semester once students see that every time the homework slide appears it is the final slide; however, it does not really work well at the start of the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to my question, what should I put as the last slide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T14:28:54.947" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T19:12:35.497" Title="What should be put in the final slide when preparing teaching presentations?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2013-07-08T04:05:19.793" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a cue from TV. Pretty much every serial show I watch ends with &quot;next time on...&quot; It is simple, not prone to misunderstandings like trying to be funny, and actually serves a purpose of indicating what the students might look at before they come in for the next lecture. This is how I wrap up my lectures even though I do not use slides in the classroom. (I like to juggle multiple columns of coexisting text on a blackboard instead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T04:05:19.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2013-07-08T07:27:52.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on what BSteinhurst suggested, I often have the last slide as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The next event is (next topic/chapter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your training is (homework)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turn the last slide into an almost sporting type event.  But it depends on your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T07:27:52.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11018" CreationDate="2013-07-08T08:32:05.563" Score="5" ViewCount="1551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in pure math at a top math school. My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How important would the recommendation letters from my current supervisors be while I apply to grad school? (Note: My supervisors are very active in their field of research, but are not quite famous.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T17:17:54.000" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:17:54.000" Title="Value of recommendation letters from professors in a different field" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11017" CreationDate="2013-07-08T09:07:17.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take what I suggest with a bucket of salt and a sprinkling of bbq sauce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The recommendation letters would indeed be very important, it certainly can't hurt to have the letters on hand, particularly as your supervisors are active researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is hard to answer, as it depends on the university.  But, having said that, I would say that the admissions people would look on any research favourably, as well as the internship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write or co-author a paper in analysis?  Perhaps you could speak with your supervisors about how to combine the two, or to see if they can recommend another academic in that field that you may co-author with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T09:07:17.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11020" CreationDate="2013-07-08T09:40:27.200" Score="15" ViewCount="1618" Body="&lt;p&gt;A significant number of colleagues had their thesis defense in the past year and talking to them got me thinking about my own dissertation to come in about 2 years (I am approximately half-way through my graduate studies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, the norm appears to be so that the focus of a PhD student shifts from initial getting-used-to-things, to getting-papers-out, do your coursework/teaching (if applicable), getting-papers-out (repeat)... until you are a couple of months away from the dissertation date, and you panic your way into writing your thesis. The panic then leads to stress and errors, which I witness with many colleagues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing as my projects are particularly detached from one-another, it would perhaps be good to start thinking about some structure, and perhaps even start jotting down some text; not long paragraphs but at least some bullet points on the points I want to mention, statements I want to make in my thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing that I am &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; half-way in, is this a reasonable approach? ... or am I stressing way too early? Does one &lt;em&gt;need to&lt;/em&gt; leave the thesis writing to the end when the stress is maxed-out, or are there smarter ways to handle the writing? I imagine one drawback of starting now, is that I do not yet have the &quot;bigger picture&quot; but yet again, since the projects are not built up on one another, I don't know if it's a real issue in my case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any perspective on the matter is welcome, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:36:56.003" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:36:56.003" Title="When is a good time (during graduate studies) to start thinking about writing the thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11019" CreationDate="2013-07-08T10:06:50.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a good idea to start writing down parts of your thesis early on. You need to consider possible structures for the thesis as well so that you know what you might need to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting early will, however, not remove the need for significant efforts at the end because the thesis evolves and it is only when you have your last papers/experiments/equivalent done when you really know how the text will have to look. This means you should write down text early on with the clear understanding that this text will likely undergo lots of revisions. While this may seem like a waste of time, I have found it useful to have the thoughts down on paper, it also provides a sense of fulfillment, &quot;that you are on your way&quot;. In some cases I have had to scrap the texts altogether and start over but I see this as part of the iterative process of scientific work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By going through the iterations your text will improve and the last efforts will be ever closer to a final product than were you to start from scratch at the end. I went through this myself and I have seen countless students do the same. Being prepared and realising that much awaits ahead is just a realisation that must be clear. Going blindly into the final stages without having a grasp of what is needed is what causes extra and unnecessary stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T10:06:50.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2013-07-08T11:39:41.260" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider making your last slide a &lt;strong&gt;reminder&lt;/strong&gt; of what are the expected learning outcomes of the lecture, possibly with a link to other past, or future learning outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this seminar we looked at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differentiation, from &lt;strong&gt;first principles&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;graphical representation&lt;/strong&gt; of differentiation, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;general formula&lt;/strong&gt; for differentiating a function f(x).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differentiation of trigonometric functions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T11:39:41.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11019" CreationDate="2013-07-08T12:10:13.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What many folk find difficult is recalling what they did at the start of their thesis work - the literature review. They come to start writing their literature review with all the experience of the in-depth, detailed analysis conducted during their research phase and have perhaps forgotten all those papers that they read, reviewed and used to fill in the background and inform their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that, right from the start of your literature review reading, make short notes about each paper, perhaps at the top of the first page. e.g. &quot;Great introduction to the field, a bit basic though&quot;; &quot;Good for a thorough review of method X&quot;; &quot;Not relevant&quot; etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes the job of sorting through your massive (!) pile of literature easier when it comes to setting out the path you took through it to come to your research idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T12:10:13.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11030" CreationDate="2013-07-08T12:14:58.150" Score="9" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've passed the disputation and am now preparing the document for the printing press and final submission. We're required to have a CV in the back matter of the dissertation, and I was wondering if it is a good idea to link to my LinkedIn profile in addition (perhaps with a QR code) because it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this is a good idea? Are there any things I should consider when doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="3885" LastEditDate="2013-07-08T12:31:23.287" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T17:39:09.430" Title="Is it a good idea to link your LinkedIn profile in the CV section of your dissertation?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11023" CreationDate="2013-07-08T12:46:19.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good idea, so long as it is not instead of a proper CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember that links go out of date and QR codes will become outdated technology. So when LinkedIn goes out of business, the link and QR codes will be just be remnants of a time gone by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T12:46:19.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2013-07-08T14:12:18.507" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, a '&lt;strong&gt;this is what you should have just learned&lt;/strong&gt;' bullet point slide not only sums up what your audience has learned, but also reminds them about topics/questions that have come up during your presentation. This is a great way &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt; to remember &lt;em&gt;and for you&lt;/em&gt; to guide questions/following Q&amp;amp;A session along the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach that I personally like is a &lt;strong&gt;collection of further resources&lt;/strong&gt; (or sources) that the audience can look up after your talk if they are interested into more details (or simply didn't have the courage to ask questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7678" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T14:12:18.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11004" CreationDate="2013-07-08T14:50:39.863" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two very different questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the international applicants are being treated, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how are math courses being evaluated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site would have been better off if you split them, as they are conceptually unrelated to one another. Ah well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JeffE gave &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11010/739&quot;&gt;a good answer&lt;/a&gt; regarding the former question. His answer seems generalizable, as I've heard of other departments doing similar things. The admissions committees usually try to identify the countrymate among the faculty of their university and ask them whether the school the applicant is coming from is a worthy one. It is more difficult to do with applicants from Kenya or Morocco than those from Australia -- most academics will know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.go8.edu.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the top AU schools&lt;/a&gt; (and if they don't, I just gave them the link :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your latter question, there is no good answer as there are 4000 colleges * 5-50 math instructors in each. Oversimplified hand-holding you described is typical of the intro classes where the students will bitch about the letter $\theta$ and the sign $\forall$ as they have never seen it before. This creates huge impediments to instructors in trying to challenge the more inspiring and better prepared students who have to be held back at the level of the rest of the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a British prof in my Stat program, and he said that the British exams are usually written so that 70% completion gives you an A. I.e., the instructor reasonably expects that the top students will get 70 out of 100 on this exam. His exams were like that. As the system down under is built after the British system, you probably have the same approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silly American &quot;grading curve&quot; system is 90-100% for &quot;A&quot;, the top grade; 80-90% for &quot;B&quot;, the second best grade; 70-80% for &quot;C&quot;, which few students want to get; 60-70% for &quot;D&quot;, which is a very low pass, and often requires retaking the course. Students &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rochester.edu/College/phl/gradechange.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;want higher grades&lt;/a&gt;, and do not hesitate to give lower evaluations to instructors who grade less generously, so the professors, especially whose main responsibility is teaching (vs. research on the tenure track), have the incentives to make the exams simple so that the students are happy. The system produces a lot of students with nominal &quot;A&quot;s who know little to nothing. Only the top 20 or so universities (arguably stronger than the Australian G8 schools) have stronger incentives to maintain the university reputation, and tell their profs to make the exams real. I would expect that the stronger campuses of the Univ of California system (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD) would know better than just hand everybody an &quot;A&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an artifact of the grading curve, the instructors have to populate their exams with 70% of very simple problems to let the bottom students accumulate enough credit for their &quot;C&quot;s, and can basically afford only one or two problems on a typical 90-120 minutes test to distinguish between the top &quot;A&quot; students and solid but not the top &quot;B&quot; students. This all is a matter of habit and tradition. Some instructors try to override it by making the total sum of scores in the course to be 431 or some prime number like that, so that there will be an extra step for the students to convert their 301 score to the familiar 100% range -- and most will fail without a calculator, and won't be able to tell whether getting three extra points they can squeeze for a homework would change their grade to pass from 69.93% to 70.05% into the next letter category. Professors coming from other countries may sometimes bring their own evaluation ideas (as my British prof did), and those interested in teaching and learning devise their own systems -- I described mine &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9064/739&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best luck with your applications, rest assured that you won't have any issues with the US schools just because you say it &quot;todie&quot; instead of &quot;today&quot; :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T14:50:39.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11023" CreationDate="2013-07-08T17:39:09.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question indicates that you want to use a link to your LinkedIn profile in your CV because &quot;&lt;em&gt;it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; Are you suggesting that (a) you are going to include a CV that is not up to date, or that (b) your LinkedIn profile will be updated over time and that you won't be able to go back and edit your dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean (a), then &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, you need to keep your CV up to date and a link to an online profile will not work. Your academic CV should always be kept as up to date as possible and it should &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt; be updated before you submit it in an application or include it in a dissertation. If you are doing your CV correctly, it will include different information than a LinkedIn profile and there is a strong expectation that every academic will have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean (b) and are just worried that an archival copy of your CV will be out of date, sure, add a link to LinkedIn or similar. My CV links prominently to my academic homepage on at a permanent (i.e., non-university) URL, which is kept up to date, and which includes a link to the latest version of my CV at all point. I include a date in the footer of my CV although folks will have a date in your dissertation. Personally, I think this is better than relying on a for-profit company and its URLs for posterity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the QR code, I'd skip it. These days, almost everybody who reads the dissertation will read a soft copy. A hyperlink will be much more useful. I suspect that a QR code will just end up make the document look dated at some point in the rather near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T17:39:09.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11032" CreationDate="2013-07-08T18:15:58.613" Score="17" ViewCount="1297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. Most probably, I will come up with a research paper at the end of the internship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in &lt;strong&gt;pure math&lt;/strong&gt; from a top math school.My question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if anyone can suggest me some ideas on how can I bridge the gap between my paper in applied math and my interest in analysis, I would be extremely grateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11017/importance-of-recommendation-letters-concerning-other-areas-of-study&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a related but different question also of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T07:50:16.130" Title="Value of having done applied math research when applying to PhD programs in pure math" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11031" CreationDate="2013-07-08T19:29:14.230" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly.  In my experience, nobody cares at all whether an applicant's research experience is directly related to their proposed specialty in graduate school.  There are several points to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are only a limited number of research opportunities available for undergraduates, so finding one on your very favorite topic may not be possible.  Nobody would hold this against you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some topics just aren't accessible to undergraduates in the first place (e.g., motivic cohomology).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most applicants don't really know what they will write their dissertations on, even if they think they do.  Many will change their minds a year or two into grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate research in mathematics is generally not as deep as grad student research, and the specific things you learn are not crucial.  Instead, the point is to see whether you have an aptitude for research and whether you enjoy it.  For those purposes, the precise topic doesn't really matter.  (Unless, of course, there's only one thing in the world that you would like to study, but I would consider that sort of narrowness to be a problem itself.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T19:29:14.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11033" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-08T19:47:11.300" Score="7" ViewCount="1380" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a future French PhD student (in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) that legally HAS TO write his thesis in French, I am a bit concerned about the fact that less people would be able to read it and it got me thinking: why do you keep reading articles in your native language, when some ideas you find might also be published in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To those who are not English native speakers, do you read articles in your native language?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, what is it that you find in these articles compared to English-written ones? Are you just looking for useful information for your own research or are you motivated by something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would you cite these articles in your own English-written paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that using one's own native language can be justified for some fields such as social sciences, but here I am asking about &quot;exact&quot; and computer sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastEditorUserId="7357" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T07:42:26.380" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T21:17:52.510" Title="What makes you keep on reading articles in your non-English native language, while the same information might be published in English?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2013-07-08T20:07:01.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your three-part question is quickly answered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes I read articles in my native language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost never because very few exist except older ones (ca. 1960s and older) and possibly bachelor or masters theses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would definitely cite them if they contained anything useful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern is valid, regardless of preferences, using a common language ensures better spreading of the science. This does not mean non-English science is in any way uninteresting but will obviosuly be harder to find and read. It will be up to scientists in that language to bring the research to general attention. A possibility with thesis work is always to publish it or parts of it in journals and then translated. In such cases nothing is lost (except time for the complete re-writing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This answer was written for the original question which subsequently has been changed, also in terms of focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T09:43:51.390" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T09:43:51.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2013-07-08T21:23:20.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a native English speaker who's working abroad, I am finally at the point where I can directly read the scientific literature in the local languages. However, in the past, I haven't hesitated to cite references in French (my &quot;original&quot; second language) when it was appropriate to do so. There are no challenges to do so, really, except making sure that you have the correct abbreviation for the journal title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would agree with the other posters that indicate that, today, scientific work needs to be in English if it is to reach the widest possible audience. Between the fact that a thesis gets nowhere near the number of &quot;hits&quot; as the papers that are derived from it, plus the fact that it's in a foreign language, and I would expect you to get very little in the way of citations for your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T21:23:20.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-09T02:58:22.883" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two Bachelor degrees and an MMath, not looking for any more degrees at this time, but I might be interested in taking some Japanese and Chinese language courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a research programmer for a university in the US (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~uhrs/benefits/tuition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IU&lt;/a&gt;), and they offer the option of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a subsidy toward the tuition costs, under Section 117 of the Internal Revenue Code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would such subsidy be included in my income, and would I have to cover for the taxes as if I have received all such subsidies as real money in income?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What happens to the in-state / out-of-state tuition differential?  I've moved from a different state for this job mid-summer, and might start taking courses right away in autumn.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6026" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T22:32:20.313" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:32:20.313" Title="Are tuition subsidies taxables for research staff?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2013-07-09T03:24:09.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this may not answer your question, I just wanted to say that I did my PhD in France and did not write my thesis in french. I just wrote a summary (about 3 pages) in french, the rest was a compilation of articles. Since a serious publication can only be written in english nowadays, translating it in french would be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should discuss with your advisor and see any way to get your thesis published in english. I do not think any legal argument holds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7683" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T03:24:09.877" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11040" CreationDate="2013-07-09T04:45:35.727" Score="4" ViewCount="1879" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume I want to look for a research internship at a university in the next year, what are decent strategies to find a suitable professor/department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask home university/department/professor for contacts and use that connection? What if I have no prior research experience and professors only know me from classes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google and send CV + Statement to (many) professors via email and hope for the best&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google for positions that are explicitly offered for 8-10 week summer internships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T06:32:11.833" Title="How to find a suitable summer internship university/department abroad?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11039" CreationDate="2013-07-09T05:15:29.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you are an undergraduate; correct me if I'm wrong and I'll amend my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that summer internships at a university that you don't attend are very rare.  My advisor explicitly ignored all cold emails from students asking if they could work with her during the summer (even if they were not asking to be paid).  Logistically, without being enrolled in the school, things like getting access to school servers, badgeing/keys for offices, etc. is just that much more difficult, and professors just don't have the time to vet students from external schools, nor much of an incentive to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that caveat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ask home university/department/professor for contacts and use that connection? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, but it is going to take more than getting contacts to get a summer internship. Unless your professor reaches out to those contacts himself/herself, you're probably not going to get much traction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if I have no prior research experience and professors only know me from classes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you are less likely to entice them to help you.  You're better off trying to work with those professors at your own university instead of trying to use them to work somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Google and send CV + Statement to (many) professors via email and hope for the best&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't bother them -- they get too much spam to begin with.  You'll not only waste your time, but theirs as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Google for positions that are explicitly offered for 8-10 week summer internships&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the best option, but I suggest not limiting yourself to universities and to branch out to look for internship experience in industry (if this is such a thing in your field).  For one, there are probably more opportunities, and secondly, they are generally more structured and you might get more out of the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, many professors use the summer months for work-related travel and to take vacation.  This makes it even more unlikely that you will find a position, as the number of professors around during the summer is minimal.  On the other hand, if you happen to find a professor that will assign you to one of his/her graduate students, you could potentially still work in the lab under the grad student tutelage instead of directly for the professor (and, indeed, this is probably what will happen in any lab -- as an undergraduate you will probably work more for the graduate students than for the professor, although this obviously varies by school and professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T06:32:11.833" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T06:32:11.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11049" CreationDate="2013-07-09T09:55:55.920" Score="16" ViewCount="1092" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a non-native speaker of english, I often struggle with always finding new, well-sounding, non-repetitive descriptions for the same thing and I also, to be honest, find it a waste of time of always having to do something different. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 1 describes the X while section 2 is about the Y.&#xA;The Z is explained in section 3 and section 4 refers to A. The next section is about B...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to just copy the formulation of someone else (of course my X,Y,Z,... are completely different) and always use the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7324" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T10:06:01.343" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T13:00:59.600" Title="Is it plagiarism to copy formulations from others?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11041" CreationDate="2013-07-09T10:05:21.903" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fine line between copying and plagiarism. In general the answer would be no, copying would be plagiarism. However, with certain fomulations there may be limited ways to vary. If the text you copy has some intellectual value, the result of someones inventiveness more than just lining up words to form a sentence, then the formulation has intellectual value and should be referenced, not for th eEnglish but for its content. A trivial sentence is just language and it is not unlikely that one would formulate a sentence identically to someone else. We also learn language from looking at how others (who we believe are better than ourselves) may express themselves. This is not plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for me the critical issue is if there is content other than linguistics that is being copied, if so then plagiarism is round the corner. So as a final statement, I would say: better safe than sorry; don't copy stuff, try to use the linguistic formulation but write the sentence with your word. Learn grammar and speling by checking what others do and emulate, not copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T10:05:21.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2013-07-09T10:35:41.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually read articles in my mother tongue. But I do regularly read articles in a language that is neither English nor my mother tongue (French, to be precise). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With regards to my mother tongue, the few exceptions are resources (articles, books) I received from some of my collaborators. I refer back to them purely for convenience. For French: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are (at least until very recently) still active research in my area performed by researchers who publishes heavily in French; to gain access to those results sometimes it is necessary to read the original articles.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a large corpus of useful literature from even the mid twentieth century that still hasn't been completely distilled into English language textbooks. (For mathematics, this refers most to &lt;em&gt;particular arguments&lt;/em&gt; used in proofs. Quite often the same &lt;em&gt;result&lt;/em&gt; would be available in English, but using a different method of attack. But there are also cases such as [from outside my field] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89l%C3%A9ments_de_g%C3%A9om%C3%A9trie_alg%C3%A9brique&quot;&gt;The EGA&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;translations may contain &quot;errors&quot;. Sometimes it is good to go back to the original source. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I just cite them as I would any other source. Most style guides have sections on special rules for non-English and/or non-Latin-alphabet sources. Just follow them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T10:35:41.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11037" CreationDate="2013-07-09T10:48:51.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am not a Lawyer or Accountant&lt;/strong&gt;, and if you really worry, you should ask one of those or at the very least talk to human resources at your university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, based on my reading of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/117&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relevant law&lt;/a&gt;, part (d) [usually referred to, I guess, as Section 117-4] specifically states that if you are an employee of a university, then tuition reduction for you to take classes &lt;em&gt;at said university&lt;/em&gt; should not count toward your gross income when calculating taxes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US code does not distinguish between in-state / out-of-state tuition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Caveat&lt;/em&gt;: your local state laws may have different interpretation of &quot;gross income&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T10:48:51.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11041" CreationDate="2013-07-09T11:16:26.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, just repeat yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that stands out about reading papers written by poor English speakers is the ugly contortions they go to in order to avoid repeating themselves. &quot;X is about Y. Z is about W. A is about B&quot; may be repetitive but it's perfectly understandable. I would suggest that you do this rather than attempting to copy the form of another writer, I'd also note that your assumption that you can simply lift the same form each time and have it look right may well be wrong anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise this doesn't answer the question you actually posed but I think it deals with the question you need answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T11:16:26.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10944" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:08:22.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the NIH NIDCD (and likely other institutes, but I don't have the data), a great way to position yourself for an a new-investigator R01 is to first get an F32 post-doctoral fellowship since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/research/training/Pages/Moving-NIDCD-Research-Training-Forward-2012.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;70%&lt;/a&gt; of those with an F32 post-doctoral fellowship who applied for a subsequent RPG (predominately R01 and R03 awards) were successful. There might be better predictors, but 70% is pretty good when it comes to funding pay lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be aware that the R01 club is not as closed as your question makes it sound. Historically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/charts/Default.aspx?chartId=273&amp;amp;catId=22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;25% of R01-equivalent awards&lt;/a&gt; are made to new investigators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:08:22.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:20:01.347" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the difference between a PhD Candidate and a PhD Student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To someone outside your department, there is very little difference since people (i.e., prospective employers) just don't care about the terms. they want to know what you have accomplished so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To someone in a finite duration PhD (e.g., a &quot;typical&quot; 3-year UK PhD program), there is very little difference. It is simpler to just list your year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To someone in a indeterminate length PhD (e.g., a &quot;typical&quot; US PhD program), it provides a nice milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other have said, the requirements to achieve candidacy vary widely between countries, universities, and even departments. That said, I think it is nearly universal (and that is going out on a huge limb in academia) that candidacy implies that the next &quot;evaluation&quot; will be on your thesis and apart from time limits or extraordinary circumstances that as long as you are willing to pay your tuition and fees the department will let you be a PhD Candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:20:01.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11041" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:23:52.800" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sentence patterns are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; intellectual property; otherwise, every author who wrote &quot;To X or not to X&quot; would be plagiarizing Shakespeare. (They are &quot;riffing&quot; off of him, but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; plagiarizing!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example you are citing is perfectly innocuous, particularly since you are not doing anything more than summarizing the paper contents. The only thing that would make it wrong would be to copy those sentences directly from someone else's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:23:52.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11037" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:28:14.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, &lt;em&gt;not a lawyer&lt;/em&gt;, but from seminars I've taken and heard about from different people at different universities, the general rule is that things are taxable when you get a notification of a direct benefit from the university. In other words, if they send you a  declaration that &quot;we have paid X dollars as a tuition benefit,&quot; that may very well be taxable income. On the other hand, if it's handled internally as a bookkeeping issue—you get charged less, and some internal &quot;fund&quot; covers the &quot;difference&quot;—then there's no actual taxable benefit to be received. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not normally the case that tuition benefits are taxable. This is particularly important for graduate fellowships, because otherwise the fellows receiving the fellowship would be &quot;receiving&quot; tens of thousands of dollars in &quot;gross income&quot; and be responsible for taxes on that, even though they never actually get the money in the first place! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:28:14.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10695" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:46:46.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your question is a little backwards: All ways of splitting the publication fees are acceptable. You might run into some problems with your grant officer about transferring money around, but in the end they will get over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important question in my opinion is: What behaviour is acceptable from you and your co-authors. I believe the answer is to be nice since these are your co-authors after all. I wouldn't be too put off if a co-author refused to contribute to open access fees or if I was asked to contribute 1/N of the fees for an N author paper where I was a tertiary author and currently under-funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:46:46.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11041" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:00:59.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, your example is definitely not plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, you can refer to the book &quot;Writing for Computer Science&quot; by Justin Zobel (Second edition, p.65, Section Quotations) to decide when to quote and when to merely copy: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;note that it is not essential to quote such a dull statement as&#xA;  (...); paraphrase, or even simply omitting the quote symbols, would be&#xA;  more appropriate. Omisission of quotation marks in this case is&#xA;  acceptable--that is, not plagiarism--because (this) statement is a&#xA;  natural way to express the concept.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T13:00:59.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:34:36.963" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries (e.g. The Netherlands where I obtained my PhD degree) you are not considered a student but a paid employee (staff) with the university. To discern between these, people sometimes translate their status to English using term &quot;PhD candidate&quot;. Btw, this has nothing to do with the length of the program or your progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1605" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T13:34:36.963" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2013-07-09T18:47:52.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a golden opportunity at the end of every presentation that begins with the words - &quot;if there was just one thing you should remember, it is ...&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By being consistent, you will (hopefully) have students waiting to hear what you think that is.  Since it is a consistent closer, you'll be able to build on this time to hook your students in for getting ready for the next lecture, or provide a topic for discussion outside the class, or ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6417" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T18:47:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2013-07-09T21:17:52.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do read scientific literature in my mother tongue (German).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For papers, that are mostly classics and not so recent. However, it is quite common in my field to write theses in German. And there are still serious and good scientific books as well as text books written in German, which I enjoy reading and citing as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm also writing my thesis in German. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Main reason: My old university required that (would need to ask special permission for any other language). I changed university, but I'm not going to change the language as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The findings are/will be published also in English. So not having the thesis in English doesn't matter that much in terms of availability in English. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second main reason: the thesis is the place where things are formulated in a less condensed manner than the papers. Such theses are good for teaching students who are usually not yet that fluent in English (applies to some kinds of foreign students as well!) nor in the subject.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The same (more detailed, elaborate, less &quot;it follows trivially&quot; jumps of thought) is often true also for technical reports, which I read for exactly this reason (any kind of language I understand). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I  cite literature I read in any language I understood (which not that much more than German and English, as I'm not as fluent in other languages).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the books, there is sometimes an English as well as a German version. But of course I cite the version that I acutally read.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(If I'd be concerned that the English-only reader would not get from &quot;Leary &amp;amp; Skoog: Instrumentelle Analytik&quot; to &quot;Leary &amp;amp; Skoog: Instrumental Analysis&quot;, I may put a note that points to the English version)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, how would you read and cite e.g. DIN 38402 A 51 if not in German? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T21:17:52.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-09T21:18:32.827" Score="9" ViewCount="4503" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the USA, if someone writes that they are &quot;professor&quot; with no other specification, does this mean full professor, or can it also mean associate professor?  In other words, is associated professor a subset of professor, or is it a fully distinct category?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T03:36:36.747" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T17:29:27.880" Title="In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11058" CreationDate="2013-07-09T21:39:51.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, Assistant and Associate Professors are also titled Prof. X when being referred to formally. This is unlike in Europe and parts of Asia, where &quot;Professor&quot; is a title that can be used only if they're a full professor. Others are simply referred to as Dr. X (or Mr. or Ms. X, if they don't hold a doctorate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7691" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T17:29:27.880" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T17:29:27.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11072" CreationDate="2013-07-10T01:49:19.163" Score="13" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university is starting a policy where graduate students need to pay for printing (10 cents per page) while It was free before. As a student coming from another university, I see it very weird policy. Actually, I am not aware of any university charges its PhD students for printing. I heard faculty members will be charged as well but at lower rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is freely printing a fundamental right for PhD students? If Yes, how to raise it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is this common in other universities across the world (charging PhD students for printing)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T05:50:52.670" Title="Charging graduate students for printing" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T02:14:28.670" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in Asia my university does not support any kind of 'free printing.' If (any) student wants to print a dissertation, an assignment, etc. they usually either print at home or they go to a printing store where their work gets printed and bound properly (for a fee). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I'm a little surprised that some schools support students printing for free. First, it's not very eco-friendly. Second, it's wasteful. Everything should be left in its digital form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, my school does tend to print a lot and they require students to submit printed copies of their assignments. Still, we should be moving towards less printing, not more. One way to do this is to add a disincentive to printing (having people pay for it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T02:14:28.670" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T03:15:44.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my Ph.D. at a large state university. We could print 250 pages a month, and after that it was five cents a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still remember being informed one month that I owed four dollars, and having to trek upstairs to find the right person to pay it to. It struck me as undignified and distasteful, and reflected a feeling among many of the grad students that the support staff were there to enforce rules, and were &quot;not on our side&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue becomes especially salient if students are expected to print out worksheets, solutions, and other materials for TA assignments. If I had to pay for this out of pocket, given poverty-level graduate student wages, I would be quite resentful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that policies like this are relatively common, perhaps usually with some free monthly quota -- but I nevertheless urge you to oppose this policy at your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T03:15:44.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11058" CreationDate="2013-07-10T03:45:00.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I thought about making this a comment as it only refers to Australia, and your question is about the United States, but it got a bit long&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Australian Context&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor is typically the top of the academic ranking hierarchy in the order: associate lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, professor. Thus, professor means that someone is of the academic rank &quot;Professor&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common general titles that cover all ranks include &quot;lecturer&quot;,  &quot;academic&quot;, &quot;researcher&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In terms of titles, the basic rules are as follows (e.g., for Smith):&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If of professor rank, &quot;Prof Smith&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If of associate professor rank, &quot;A/Prof Smith&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank and the person has a doctoral qualification, &quot;Dr Smith&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank, and the peson does not have a doctoral qualification, &quot;Mr Smith&quot; or &quot;Ms Smith&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T03:45:00.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11058" CreationDate="2013-07-10T05:05:20.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be pointed out that, at least in the US, &quot;associate professors&quot; are a partially overlapping set with the class of &quot;tenured professor,&quot; as many associate professors have tenure, but have not yet been promoted to a full professorship. So, there really is &quot;associate without tenure&quot; and &quot;associate with tenure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the US, as user7691 points out, the correct form of address for any professor, regardless of type, is &quot;Professor X.&quot; I would even include adjunct and emeritus professors in this group. If you're looking at a faculty listing and see just &quot;Professor&quot; &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; a name (or in a separate field), however, it's likely that the individual in question holds a full professorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T21:55:56.373" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T21:55:56.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T05:44:31.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been to graduate school (MS) in India (one of the better known schools) as well as graduate school in the US (PhD, also, one of the better known schools)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of printing charges. We have always had &lt;strong&gt;unlimited&lt;/strong&gt; printing. And I have really tested these bounds. :) Sure, there are reminders not to print more than needed in order to save trees but there is and to my knowledge never has been any printing charges in any of the schools that I have been to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T18:15:52.227" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T18:15:52.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T06:59:43.947" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had unlimited printing through our department (Computer Science).  When I taught high school, we also had unlimited printing and copying but we also had a copy card that counted down the copies -- when the card reached zero, we had to get it refreshed.  I assume this was to keep us apprised of just how many copies we were making, but I don't think it ever slowed anyone down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, I don't print much, but one of the best purchases I made was an inexpensive laser printer that cranked out lots and lots of pages with nary a whimper.  The convenience outweighed the cost significantly.  It's amazing what you can get these days, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00450DVDY&quot;&gt;e.g., duplex and wireless for $80&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get the policy changed, and are going to print more than a couple of hundred dollars worth of pages (2000 at $0.10/page in your case), I'd recommend a cheap laser printer (to print 2000 pages, it can cost as little as $80 for the printer, $15 for paper, and $45 for a high-yield toner refill).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T06:59:43.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-10T07:43:56.577" Score="8" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a third world country where I have no chance of getting into good graduate schools in my country for MS CS which are tickets to US Ph.D  programs. I am not a perfectionist but other schools have no connections with current research community or professors there have no idea how to write a recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working full time, no chance to relocate to other city or job. I always get a biased approach from professors here when I approach for collaboration as an outsider. Impossible to get into their MS programs for me so I have no chance for getting some research experience or any recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do ? I am continuously doing self study on some topics but biased approach and discrimination in my country gives me no chance. I have started to think of completely burning all my books and other stuff because all my efforts are useless going nowhere purely based on where I live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any suggestions? Is there a way to find a professor outside this system lacking funding or student, with whom I can work remotely? I can work for free if it comes down to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7696" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T08:12:49.493" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T10:10:03.520" Title="Suffering from a third world country academic culture" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11068" CreationDate="2013-07-10T08:26:15.587" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an outside possibility, but, have you considered enrolling as an external student at an overseas university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, I am not sure of US universities, but ones here in Australia often have a large proportion of external students - with delivery given online and/or by post (usually the former).  An example is the university I am enrolled in (in Queensland) - I completed my MSc while I lived in Tokyo, Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to add - don't burn the books and especially don't give up (but understand the feeling, albeit from a different viewpoint).  I commend you on your self-discipline and determination - these traits will hold you in good stead when you find your path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T10:10:03.520" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T10:10:03.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11019" CreationDate="2013-07-10T09:20:08.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear from your post whether your dissertation will just mostly be a collection of your papers, perhaps with some filler material added, or whether it will require a substantial amount of writing from scratch. I've heard that publishing papers as a grad student and assembling them into a thesis is done depending on one's academic discipline, and perhaps depending on the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just putting papers together there will be less work involved. Regardless, 2 months sounds like a very short amount of time to be writing a thesis in. Are you sure you got that right? I suggest you talk to other students who left it till late, and ask them if they regret doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would certainly recommend getting started on a draft immediately, if you haven't already. Things to keep in mind, depending on your area, is that heavily mathematical writing is very time-consuming. Computer calculations, writing software and so on, are also very time-consuming. I would also include graphs and figures in writing software. Figures, in my opinion, are best handled by writing code, making it easy to alter after the event, and giving the best results. Actually, graphs are a good thing to try to get set up early, because they can be a pain. Even if you don't have actual data to work with, you can use dummy data, as long as you know roughly what your final structures will look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work has significant components of either, you need to allow extra time.&#xA;You definitely don't want to be in the position of frantically debugging your code a month before your defense to get some important result out, for example. You should also not rely on your adviser(s) to tell you what schedule to keep. It is not their thesis on the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two months before submission is the time for reviewing the thesis for errors, hopefully with the assistance of your advisor, and getting ready to hand it over ot the thesis committee. My impression is that the norm is to allow the committee some time to read it, like a month. They may not read it, but that is considered polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T09:20:08.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T09:27:02.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at a university in Australia, at my particular University, I am entitled to approximately 200 printouts/copies before I need to pay, but the cost is not huge (less than 10c for a black and white sheet).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like what has been suggested here, this is a good way to eliminate waste.  However, one could take this a bit further and suggest some limits may encourage students to be wiser in their research - only printing what is vital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T09:27:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T11:28:37.547" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is freely printing a fundamental right for PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fundamental &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;? No. But charging for printing borders on the ridiculous. – Printing is a &lt;em&gt;necessity&lt;/em&gt;, not a right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it in economic terms. A PhD is a job (there are a few peculiarities, and it’s also part of a student’s education, but nevertheless you ultimately are doing a job, which consists of doing research). If preventing you from printing makes your job harder, the institute has a financial interest in removing that obstacle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What company charges employees for office supplies? The concept is ludicrous. Why not charge them rent for their cubicles as well? Printing publications, drafts and reports for reading is simply a fundamental part of doing research – unless your institute sponsors ebook readers; and even then your PhD will probably involve filling out forms for HR etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your institute suspects that printing is predominantly used for non job related purposes then that may be a problem that needs addressing (and the same goes if the institute suspects that printing could be reduced without impacting performance – lots of companies have tried paper-free offices but so far I haven’t heard of any resounding success, at least not in science). But charging students for printing is still unacceptable since it obstructs them from doing their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="348" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T07:08:42.313" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T07:08:42.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-10T12:41:23.920" Score="6" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words, how much improvement of the submitted thesis (and presented in front of the evaluation board) is allowed, if you want to later publish the thesis at a normal publisher of dissertations (with ISBN and sell on Amazon)? Is there a conflict here? Should it be exactly the same thesis, or if mistakes are found, or recommendations given, they can be implemented, no matter how much different from the submitted and approved thesis? I'm interested in at least a general view on this, at european level. I imagine there are country differences...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7698" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T19:30:01.113" Title="How big is the difference between the sustained PhD thesis and a version publishable as a book?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-10T15:09:24.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Printing costs can add up to a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of money in a hurry (recall that they include primer cartridge, maintenance on the machines, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; people time to replace the cartridges and perform the maintenance). Various features such as color, duplex and transparencies cost more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the discipline and the work culture of your department this can take a real bite out of the budget. When that happens the cost have to be contained &lt;em&gt;somehow&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other people have noted this generally involves tracking the number of print jobs and charging for some or all of them. Often students get a free allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My most recent department had IT under a separate budget, and they charged print jobs to the work unit (high-energy physics group; attosecond physics group; Physics education group; the department for TAs; etc) who then did what they saw fit to get their people to conserve on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work unit had a &quot;don't print if you don't need it&quot; culture and provided generous displays to help you get along without paper. We also tended to send &lt;em&gt;only the pages with figures&lt;/em&gt; to the color print if we were printing journal articles (color cost ten times as much a B&amp;amp;W).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T15:09:24.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-10T15:30:46.753" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal library (.bib-files) contains references which I gathered from various sources, including academic search engines. This includes problems like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some information are missing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal names might be abbreviated or not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalization might differ&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good checklist to ensure that the references are in a acceptable state?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:50:47.153" Title="Checklist for cited references, including nasty details" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11058" CreationDate="2013-07-10T16:41:52.727" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: if somebody from the US writes about themselves as a Professor, then it means a tenured full professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer answer&lt;/strong&gt;: If you see the title &quot;Professor&quot; in the official university publication (e.g., department website), or in somebody's bio, self-description, or email signature, then it means a tenured full professor (the third, and the top, step in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_rank_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US academic hierarchy&lt;/a&gt;... Instructors and lecturers can hardly be considered academics as they are treated as staff for hire and dismissal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see &quot;Professor&quot; in somebody else's email, especially students' emails, or in the university newsletter, or in some other source that was originated from a person that is not so familiar with the academic ranks, and the hoops one needs to jump through to get there, then it may mean a broader use of the term to indicate an instructor in a university. Essentially, all the adjectives (e.g., an Adjunct Assistant Professor... essentially nobody) are getting thrown out, with only the affiliation with academia remaining in this use of &quot;professor&quot; word. Such a liberty may qualify as an insult to a British/ANZ Professor where the meaning is way more specific. American academics are used to the confusions, though, and let the vague understanding of the title slip when used by un-initiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was getting emails addressed &quot;Professor&quot; when I was in grad school... I would roll my eyes -- can't the source figure out a difference between a Ph.D. student and a regular faculty? They come on very different pages on the department website... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T16:41:52.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11075" CreationDate="2013-07-10T19:50:47.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best strategy for dealing with a reference database (be that a citation manager or just a .bib file), is to clean everything when you initially add it. Otherwise going through these things later, when you need put together a reference list, is a major pain and prone to error. Establishing a standard set of formatting rules/procedures up front is always your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:50:47.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11082" CreationDate="2013-07-11T01:59:46.057" Score="5" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a paper has been accepted, other than the reviewers' suggestions, how much content can be changed before the camera-ready version is resubmitted?  Is there a general guideline? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7704" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T18:02:25.193" Title="How much material can be changed between an accepted manuscript and &quot;camera ready?&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11081" CreationDate="2013-07-11T02:56:43.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my (very limited) experience in CS, a lot (if its a conference), &lt;em&gt;but only if you are somehow improving the paper&lt;/em&gt; - you can't obviously publish after removing key results that caused the acceptance in the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anecdote:&lt;/em&gt; My first publication happened after I was able to solve one of the 3 open problems posed at the end of an accepted paper by my advisor - this caused the entire paper to be re-written in terms of the more generalized result, and it did not go through any further reviews (only an informal mail from my advisor to the editors outlining what we did!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T02:56:43.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11148" CreationDate="2013-07-11T06:24:38.770" Score="7" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, my university gives me outside work to design courses for other teachers or graduate students. This includes course books and other complete materials so that teachers using them have little to prepare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T11:36:31.083" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T07:23:16.007" Title="What is the typical payment arrangement for course design?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2013-07-11T06:34:43.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main dividing line in cases as you describe would be between if you had your own company producing courses and &quot;licensing&quot; them to the university and being contracted as a consultant for doing what you are doing. In the latter case you are being paid to produce something for the university and in doing so waive rights to the product. I do not want to get into the copyright regulations because you will need to find out what the university and your contract says (and that may not be very clear). If you licensed a course, things would be different since then your license would state under what conditions the product can be used and you could ask for a fee every time the course is given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main unclear part of all of this is where the intellectual rights (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;immaterial property&lt;/a&gt;) lie. I think you could produce a course under your current contract but retain copyright on materials in the course. Again you probably need the help of a lawyer to find out what is possible. Again you need t look at how the contract or university regulations stipulate such rights. If they do not then national or international laws apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T20:50:46.617" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T20:50:46.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2013-07-11T06:45:24.410" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you agree to design the courses before talking about payment?  I don't know if you have any recourse at this point as there was never a contract in place.  I would guess that had you inquired ahead of time, your superiors would probably have asked someone else to do it for free, as that is probably what they were expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a system in place for paying you for the course design, I would assume it would be a one-time payment with no residual payments, and you should work that out before beginning design.  If you can work something out where you do get royalties down the road, that also needs to be in a contract, and I would be very surprised if you were able to pull it off (but good luck!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T06:45:24.410" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2013-07-11T16:18:44.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Jaap's reply is pretty much spot on, i.e. paid staff (as in the Netherlands, Germany...) vs. student status (as in the UK, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer &quot;PhD candidate&quot; because people here are massively prejudiced against &quot;students&quot; (young, irresponsible, constantly partying...) despite the fact that I'm officially registered as a student rather than staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to make it clear that people are not obliged to use one thing or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6388" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T16:18:44.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11089" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:22:18.107" Score="6" ViewCount="3969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I planned to graduate this summer, and I went through all the process of applying for graduation and my advisor signs all of these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I have just 2 weeks to meet the deadline to officially graduate this summer. I have emailed by advisor to help me prepare my final results, proofread my thesis document. This is 2 weeks back, and I don't have any reply so far.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get an email from my advisor saying that I can't delay and have to postpone my graduation next semester.  &quot;&lt;em&gt;It is best for you to make an official decision to cancel your graduation, since it is getting too close to the oral defense deadline as well as reviewing thesis.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am OK to graduate next semester, but what I can't bear to understand is the carelessness of my advisor. I have to pay again for a whole new semester because of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice what I should be doing at this moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7627" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T20:32:25.887" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T20:32:25.887" Title="My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11017" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:22:45.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters may also represent soft skills. Hence, they are important. Your personality is independent from your field of study, so there is little point in withholding recommendation letters - indicating what kind of person you are - to future supervisors (or committees) if you are going to spend the next 3-4 years working in a team or with a supervisor on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: PhD Student&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7711" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T17:22:45.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11087" CreationDate="2013-07-11T18:34:30.917" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any problems with graduating next semester then just do that.  It will give you more time to refine your submissions and to prep for the defense.  A little annoying, granted, but it could be a blessing in disguise too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for working with your adviser, what's done is done.  Perhaps they were delayed in their responses but you may have to accept some of the responsibility here as well, I think.  It takes some time to make all of the arrangements for finalizing graduation.  It's not like undergrad where they can just look at the transcript and say &quot;120cu, good to go&quot;. Heck, just getting a defense scheduled can be a major undertaking.  Especially if you're trying to squeeze in under the wire.  Stack the university processing and thesis review times on top of that and you're really cutting it close. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can certainly understand your frustration (my M.S. was delayed by a semester due to a similarly inane set of circumstances which led to all kinds of fun) but my suggestion to you and anyone in a similar situation is to take a deep breath, relax, and use the time that you have to prep as best you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: This type of advice question is not a very good fit to the normal SO format.  I wanted to provide a response since I suspect that many people have gotten into similar situations but have fair warning that it may get flagged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T18:34:30.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10725" CreationDate="2013-07-11T21:41:28.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically addressing the edit to to the question regarding experiences as a younger student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from what I've already posted in my comment, I guess the only social aspect that I felt I missed out on was getting into university-sponsored senior class events where alcohol was served (I was under 21 at a US school). Most of the time, my age was not an issue socially. I was also an RA (residential advisor), so my age was not assumed to correlate with lack of leadership ability. Academically, it might have even helped me get certain positions, because I was seen as a &quot;driven&quot; individual with prior academic success, and all of those positions helped me get into graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I'm in graduate school, the only thing I really miss is not having interesting stories to tell about cool things I did during my gap year(s). That problem is common to a lot of people in my class, though, regardless of them being a few years older than me. I don't have people that are my age in my year, but I don't think it's affected my academic success here: I've had four years of high school, four years of undergrad, and three summers of undergraduate research, like (or better than) many of my peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7123" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T21:41:28.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-11T23:52:57.533" Score="5" ViewCount="1701" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the title question is not real clear so let me try to elaborate. I am currently 30 and a senior in college. I will be graduating this spring with a BS in Computer Engineering. The way my school is set up the Comp-Sci and Computer Engineering departments are together and the Electrical Engineering department is separate. I expect to graduate with over a 3.5 gpa (not wonderful) but have no research or intern/on the job experiences. I am looking at continuing on at this same institution with their phd program. My gre scores verbal 165, Quantitative 158. Their cut off is 146 verbal and 156 quantitative. I still need to talk with them and see how they utilize the gre scores and see if I need to retake the gre and up my quantitative score. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from that mediocre beginnings I come to the grand finale. When talking with professors and otherwise looking/learning in my field. How do you find those areas that are new and pushing into the frontier. When I write a letter of intent and they want me to tell them what I want to be doing. Where do I go read up on the new stuff for my major. What are some all around objectives and methods that people use and then specific to computer engineering what are people reading or procuring their resources from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other things could I do in this last year that may help my chances of being picked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional question, Letters of recommendation would be coming from professors from within the department that will be doing the selection. Some of these Professors would be the ones heading my thesis committee(i think that's right). Does anyone have any experience they can relate where they went to grad school at the same institution that they go their BS degree from.  I will have one outside reference as a peer mentor for our freshman engineering program but otherwise most of the professors have seen me go over the top in my work for their classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7705" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T21:37:22.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:58:39.647" Title="When applying to grad school with a mediocre past how can you make yourself stand out" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2013-07-12T00:17:09.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of other things that could be included in an application, assuming of course you have done these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any and all publications, conference proceedings and seminars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any tutoring you may have performed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other activities that demonstrate your work ethic and capacity to learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive list, but may be a start.  Having said all this, my undergraduate grades were ordinary and I had no problem getting into postgraduate courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that you need to do is speak with the admissions, professors etc of the institution you are intending to study postgraduate studies with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T00:17:09.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2013-07-12T01:48:43.920" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why do you think you should be admitted?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admissions committee will ask themselves: if this applicant has mediocre qualifications, why should we admit them?  Why should we believe they will be successful?  So, you should be asking yourself that question, and thinking about what your answer would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a good answer to that question, that might tell you how to make yourself stand out: emphasize the parts that make you think you are well-qualified to succeed.  Your application is a chance to tell your story and answer that question for the admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T21:58:39.647" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:58:39.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-12T02:52:18.797" Score="12" ViewCount="13976" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in a new fast moving field in which none of the professors at my university have an interest. I have even started to work on some areas that show promise in the current scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I am working independently, and this will be my first paper, do I have a reasonable chance of getting it published (assuming it turns out well)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What mistakes should I absolutely avoid while working on this paper? (to maximize chances of publishing later on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastEditorUserId="4227" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T07:10:01.253" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T13:47:46.340" Title="Is it possible to publish a research paper as an independent undergraduate author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11094" CreationDate="2013-07-12T06:32:06.487" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question contains three questions. Is it possible? yes. Do you have a reasonable chance? Probably less than any other researcher because you lack the training but not zero. What mistakes to avoid? Well, that is what research education partly is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a paper involves many aspects, providing the proper background, explaining the research, putting the research in perspective and reaching proper conclusions. There are many mistakes that can be made: you do not show you know the field, you do not describe the methods/theory/experiments well enough, your discussion does not hold and your conclusions are not well founded. All of this can come from poor understanding or from not writing well. So as long as you can tick the boxes from the subject specific to the methodological including writing skills then you would stand as reasonable a chance as any. In the end there is likely only one way to find out, try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You state that you work independently and that is all fine. But, in science we all benefit from having others read and comment on our work to improve it so your chances of success can increase dramatically if your writing can be read and commented on by peers (with at least a PhD would be recommended) to weed out problems and any lack of clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T06:32:06.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11094" CreationDate="2013-07-12T10:38:45.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small addition to Peter Jansson's great answer; your chances of publishing your work independently will most likely depend on your field and how you want to publish your results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in biomedical research and the only &quot;independent&quot; articles I have seen so far are written by senior academics that either portray their &quot;expert opinion&quot; on something, or a literature review of a particular subject. Yet again, they are not independent there either (at least in some meaning of the word), but rather utilize the resources of their affiliations and many years experience in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are into some sort of CS research, I suspect there will be more options in terms of publishing your results, and there you might have a better chance in getting published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T10:38:45.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11097" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11171" CreationDate="2013-07-12T12:54:37.757" Score="15" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the ethics of publishing (on the web, etc.) peer reviews received for a paper? Does your answer change if the paper was accepted or rejected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am specifically interested in the  &quot;one-shot&quot; case typical of computing science conferences, without rebuttals, where there is no or limited dialogue between an author and the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite distinct from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/647/can-i-publish-the-reviews-i-write&quot;&gt;Can I publish the reviews I write?&lt;/a&gt; as here I am talking about reviews I have received, not those I have written - the reviews' authors retain their anonymity, and presumably the paper would be included alongside those reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vijay's response below includes a summary of much of the other responses and my comments on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7717" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T09:55:58.243" Title="Ethics of publishing received peer reviews" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-23T08:58:21.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-12T13:06:14.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the journals where I have been invloved as editor, author or reviewer (except in ones where the review process is open on the web), the implicit understanding has been that the communication is closed between the author-editor-reviewer. I have not seen any explicit rules stated by these journals to control against any such public dissemination but I have not looked for it either. I think that, particularly in cases where it is not explicitly stated that reviews are public, posting reviews without consent from the reviewer would be similar to publisihing someone private letters wihout consent. It is not illegal but ethically very distasteful. I do not think it matters whether or not the review was anonymous. Whether the paper was accepted or not would not matter either. I would consider posting without consent just as bad under all circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T13:06:14.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2013-07-12T13:19:01.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;About your last question about moving from the undergraduate to the graduate programs at the same university. I have known well three people who did this. The first two, in a math program, had had mediocre grades/test scores but had very strong relationships with faculty members and were admitted to the graduate programs because the admissions committee knew the students beyond their grades/test scores. The third was in an engineering program and he was accepted at multiple graduate programs and chose for personal and some academic reasons to stay put. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, if the committee knows you personally and not just as an application folder that can make a huge difference in your chances. So take advantage of the fact that you know the faculty who are making this decision and talk to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T13:19:01.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11121" CreationDate="2013-07-12T14:23:57.320" Score="5" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a senior college student and start to read papers for my final year project. I find phrases like &quot; Chinn et all (1982)&quot;, &quot;Garley et al(1978)&quot; and  &quot;Chun and Seymour (1989)&quot;. When I type those phrase in Google Scholar, its results are not relate to graph theory at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know how to find papers from this phrases accordingly: )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T03:11:15.390" Title="How to find out paper from phrases like &quot;Chun and Seymour (1989)&quot;?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11110" CreationDate="2013-07-12T16:11:43.200" Score="12" ViewCount="1371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got an e-mail this morning inviting me to submit papers to a journal. I looked at the website and found that the journal has no back issues. It would appear to be a brand new journal. Naturally, a brand new journal isn't all prestigious, so I have to wonder about publishing in it. But on the other hand, the journal has to start somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should someone even consider publishing in such a place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5922" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:25:34.617" Title="Should I Consider Publishing in a Brand New Journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-12T18:32:59.333" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be related to your question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peerageofscience.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.peerageofscience.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept is that 1) you peer-review your paper &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; submitting it to a journal, 2) peer-reviews are peer-reviewed, 3) participating journals send you publication offers if they like your paper, 4) you may submit your peer-reviewed paper to any journal you like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure are the reviews public themselves, I did not use the site yet, but at least there are peer-review scores appearing on the main page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7719" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T18:32:59.333" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11106" CreationDate="2013-07-12T18:54:29.443" Score="8" ViewCount="8215" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have understood correctly, most people doing their PhDs do their best to avoid any teaching duties while in their programs. However, I think I might &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do some teaching too. Of course, I have a hidden agenda. I would hope that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually, (good) skill to teach is required later on your career, when applying for tenured positions. I would receive good experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Giving lectures related to my research topic might get someone interested about it. I could delegate some minor (boring :-) part of my research topic for someone to do as his/her master thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I hoping too much here? Any experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7719" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T19:01:28.530" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T18:38:22.663" Title="Teaching while doing a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-12T18:58:23.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As argued in the answer by Peter Jansson, it is ethically not acceptable to publish peer reviews that you receive for your paper, and I agree with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is also a legal aspect to it. The review is an intellectual work and as such will typically be subject to copyright. And that holds even if you don't know the author. So publishing a review will be a copyright violation, unless you get permission from the person who wrote the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to highlight bad review practices, instead of just &lt;em&gt;publishing&lt;/em&gt; the review consider &lt;em&gt;citing&lt;/em&gt; from it. The actual difference may be marginal, but from both a legal and an ethical perspective, you should fare much better with this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And my answer doesn't change depending on whether the paper is accepted or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T18:58:23.903" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11103" CreationDate="2013-07-12T19:11:22.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching (being a teaching assistant) happens to be a requirement of my PhD program, and there's an option to teach more than two semesters, with your PI's permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in teaching while doing your PhD, I'd recommend applying to programs where teaching is required (I did, for this reason).  If this isn't common in your field, you could try applying at universities known for undergraduate teaching: they are more likely to allow you to teach as part of your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7123" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T19:11:22.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11103" CreationDate="2013-07-12T19:12:07.703" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most doctorate programs have some amount of teaching/ta/facilitator/etc as a requirement of the program. Some people try to do more, some try to do less, but unless you're working in a research lab (with its own endowment :-) expect to do some teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re 'good skill': if your goal is to find a tenure track position then yes this would be good experience.  Assuming that you enjoy teaching, and who here doesn't &lt;em&gt;grin&lt;/em&gt;, this would be a good opportunity to enhance and refine your teaching skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re 'lectures on research': be careful here.  Odds are that any teaching roles you would be offered at this point in your academic career would be pretty low level undergraduate type stuff.  Depending on your area of research you might also run into some problems 'presenting' un-vetted data.  There are always exceptions to the rule but I wouldn't expect for you to be teaching anything so specific that your research would come into play.  YMMV but that has been my experience (since you asked).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suggestion: Be careful with overloading your schedule. Teaching is one of those jobs that finds a way to embed itself in many aspects of your life that you didn't expect. For example: I expected to spend my middle years sitting on the porch reading books with my wife, not reading term papers.  Oh well.  While it is good to gain experience you don't want to spread yourself too thin and suffer an impact to your research (remember, the reason you're here in the first place :) or your personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T19:12:07.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11073" CreationDate="2013-07-12T19:30:01.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends mostly on whether publishing your thesis as a book is a requirement in the PhD process or not. As JeffE notes in his comments, publishing the thesis as a book may be a university requirement before you get your PhD. Though, in the cases that I know, publication is after the defense, and you are allowed to make smaller modifications to the originally defended version, as long as the thesis reviewers agree to these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things would be different if publication is not part of the PhD requirements (maybe you have your certificates already in your hands). It's your work, and unless there are specific regulations to the contrary, I'd assume you can do whatever you like with it. In particular also publish a derived work as a book. In this case, I'd still recommend to state that it is &lt;strong&gt;based on your thesis&lt;/strong&gt; (not &lt;strong&gt;your thesis&lt;/strong&gt;), and discuss it with your PhD advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T19:30:01.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11103" CreationDate="2013-07-12T19:47:24.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning your first point, teaching is a major component of most academic jobs, and in fact is the main part unless you're a superstar, so you should at least try it to see if you like it. I thought I'd hate it until I tried it my senior year, and it was incredible and changed my life. I love to research and have published several papers, but teaching is the reason I want to be a professor. So try it out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another note, your PhD institution will probably be much more gentle and helpful if you have any difficulties, while a postdoc or other 'real job' will expect you to already know what you're doing. So you should try teaching now while you have a safety net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4455" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T19:47:24.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11123" CreationDate="2013-07-12T21:05:20.850" Score="10" ViewCount="1380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student at a reputable institute in my country. I joined the group of a supervisor who is good at experimental and not so good in analytical front. I also have a co-supervisor who's good at analytics and numerical stuff. Neither know my research problem well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially I had lot of difficulties in understanding the problem. I was a little slow in understanding the analytics. They told me to do lots of stuff here and there. All of them failed. Now I'm in my third year, supervisors are asking me &quot;Are you really interested in your problem, or do you want to leave the course?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving course mid-way does not make sense for me. But without getting much help from supervisors and working on my own is manageable. Sometimes I get mentally disturbed by their attitude. How do I cope with these supervisors who talk so crazily and seriously at this point of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7720" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-13T10:47:24.043" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T10:47:24.043" Title="Problems in coping with my PhD Supervisors" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11101" CreationDate="2013-07-12T22:15:54.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get the same emails as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to consider when looking at a brand new journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Anonymous, Charles and JeffE commented, make sure it is not a scam and that the editorial board are well respected (well-published) academics in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make absolutely certain that the journal caters to your exact research field - try and find, or ask, what their focus is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out about costs if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; the journal is legitimate and relevant, then consider publishing a smaller paper first, publish your main papers in well established highly ranked and highly distributed journals (especially if you are starting out in academia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T23:25:34.617" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:25:34.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2013-07-13T00:34:44.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way that I perform searches like this in Google Scholar, is to not only type in the citation (such as your examples), but also the main topic in inverted commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I take one of your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Chun and Seymour, 1989&quot; &quot;Graph theory&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9 times out of 10, I find the article I am after (and more often than not, I find several more relevant papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T00:34:44.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11113" CreationDate="2013-07-13T08:41:08.320" Score="1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to apply at a German university for Computer Science. The instruction tells me to annex documents about additional qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I decided for the ten most important and most related qualifications and awards I got and wrote an overview page for them. They are grouped by field and date, and there is a short description of about two lines for every qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need to annex the actual copies of the certificates. I feel uncomfortable with handing in ten copies, plus some other documents. I think providing the certificate for every qualification might result in too much pages which won't get read but make a negative impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I just provide a few of the copies and tell the University staff to ask for more if wanted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7722" LastEditorUserId="7722" LastEditDate="2015-10-17T13:32:30.220" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T13:32:30.220" Title="Can I annex fewer certificates for a shorter application?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11112" CreationDate="2013-07-13T09:17:48.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that to not include a certified copy of each qualification at least can potentially result in unnecessary delays in processing your application.  Essentially, I have found that many universities frown upon incomplete applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T09:17:48.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2013-07-13T09:20:17.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that yes, some competitions do enhance a PhD application.  An example is a seminar series competition run by my university that I participated in, we had to speak about our current research (mine was the MSc at the time). I came second and it went in my favour for the subsequent PhD application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T09:20:17.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11109" CreationDate="2013-07-13T12:37:24.983" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to write a preliminary research findings report to both of your supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the report, explain what you have done in the past two years. State the facts. Don’t point the fingers.  You describe what you have tried and why they failed. Don’t make it too long. Refer the details to the notes and the data stored somewhere else. The final section of the report is your plan to tackle the problem further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the report is to let them be aware of the efforts you have spent. It documents the lessons learned. With the report, your supervisors and you would have more understandings about the problem you have been working on for two years. Bear this in your mind, it is likely you would know more about the problem when you write the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report will answer their questions, &lt;em&gt;Are you really interested in your problem?&lt;/em&gt; Yes. &lt;em&gt;you wanna leave the course?&lt;/em&gt; No. But you need their help to finish it. If they tell you they can’t help you after they read the report, then it’s time to either change the research problem or find yourself another supervisor(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T12:37:24.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-13T15:41:21.073" Score="16" ViewCount="1469" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is the following: I have a very productive but not respected advisor. By productive I mean that he has published a lot, and with not respected that his work is not cited by anyone except himself (his top paper has 20 citations, 15 from himself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will get my master's degree in 6 months, so I need to decide where to do my PhD. To be honest I don't know is my advisor doing real science. Am I judging his career too hard? At least I would not hope to be in the same situation as he is after the next ten years. Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think I should not continue with him, can you tell me what kind of publication record I should demand from my advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7724" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T20:15:21.353" Title="Productive but not respected advisor - Should I continue with him?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11116" CreationDate="2013-07-13T15:55:23.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the issues you need to consider is how far along the advisor is in his career. If he is a relatively junior faculty member, then a lack of citations is not necessarily so serious, if they're being published in high-quality journals respected in your field. However, if he's getting a lot of publications in low-tier journals, that could be a sign of a bigger problem. If the faculty member is more experienced (and has been working a long time), this is very much a red flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might recommend that you not continue with the same advisor, but this is only partially motivated by the quality issue. Another thing to take into account is that you should be preparing yourself to have a variety of educational experiences throughout your career, and that means working with multiple people, and on more than one project. If you have only one advisor, you will have only the experiences you've gained working with that one advisor, as well as only have learned the philosophical viewpoints associated with working with the one advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T15:55:23.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11116" CreationDate="2013-07-13T15:56:52.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question you should answer is: what do YOU want? Then: Where are your interests within your field? Are there opportunities ot develop elsewhere? Are there any reasons not to move?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are of course personal question than can only be answered by you yourself. As fo rthe advisor, well 20 citations does not sound like much at all, depending of course on how senior the advisor is. I do not think that the publication record is necessarily the best criteria for selecting a graduate school, the quality (reputation) of the department and university is probably more important. It may be wise to visit and talk to other students about the conditions as well, if that is at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T15:56:52.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11116" CreationDate="2013-07-13T16:22:33.423" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are reasons for setting aside the issue of your potential PhD supervisor's publication record for the purposes of deciding whether to carry on  working with him - these reasons are set out in other answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You also need to think about whether your - or any - potential PhD supervisor's working habits is a good fit with yours.&lt;/strong&gt; When considering whether to continue with specifically this supervisor, you comment as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - is this a good thing for you, or a bad thing? Was that working relationship a positive or not? You mention that you've been thinking about this a lot, and I urge you to be clear about the answer in your own mind before you commit to a PhD program. Perhaps working like this was okay for a MSc project; I suspect that it could well be a problem during a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What were the experiences of other PhD students in this regard? Did they all have similar feelings regarding how he manages the research of his team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T16:22:33.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2013-07-13T16:55:26.157" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Biology:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt the answers for medicine, microbiology, and epidemiology may not give the complete picture. Of course this is my own opinion, as there are no real formal rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The unofficial rules:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In biology, the first author is the person whose contribution is larger than that of any other author. It is cannot be the author that contributed more than the combined contribution of all other authors - this definition doesn't even work mathematically (a 25%/35%/40% contribution paper would have no first author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the situation is more complicated. Usually, the subsequent order of authors is according to decreasing contribution. Also, at the end of the authors list the scenario is mirrored: The last author is the senior author (i.e. the PI) that contributed the most, with the order of senior authors again reflecting their contribution (mirrored).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, it gets even more complicated. In some cases, you can have co-first authors. This is usually marked by the journal, indicating that these authors had equal contribution. Then, there is the &quot;corresponding author&quot; mark. Some (but this is less widely accepted) use this is to signify equal contribution of the senior authors, so for example you would mark both last 2 authors as &quot;corresponding authors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practical issues:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may seem to be silly to people not used to this method, the order of authors is actually quite important. For graduate students and postdocs, fellowships and prizes will often only consider your first-author papers as your &quot;real&quot; papers - this is usually written in the rules (you may asked to list only first-author papers). Furthermore, if you are co-first (equal contribution), you will often be required to detail your exact contribution (sometimes your supervisor needs to detail it as well in these cases). For PIs, the situation is similar - funding agencies will often only consider your last author papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another less important issue is association with the paper. A paper will be generally referred to by the first author's name, e.g. &quot;Smith et al.&quot;. If you are the first author you will be immediately associated with the paper. If your paper is high-impact, there can be benefits to this in terms of establishing your name in the field. This is one reason why even &quot;equal contribution&quot; may not be considered really equal by some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Biology vs. other disciplines:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to explain why this practice might be useful in biology and how it is different than math or CS, for example. First, any graduate student or postdoc is always under supervision. It is customary that regardless of the actual amount of involvement of the supervisor in a project, the supervisor is always listed as the senior author. You have to remember that it is quite rare for PIs in experimental labs to actually do any actual work themselves (this is different from theorists). This is not to say they cannot be highly involved. Then, many projects are collaborations between multiple research groups. It is very common to see 15-20 authors on a paper, and recently there have been many papers published by research consortiums, having hundreds of authors (although in that case the order of the author list is slightly different). One author could really be doing much more work that some other author, which is on the paper just because he/she contributed some biological sample or ran some program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it good?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this system is optimal. It can lead to personal conflicts and affect people's careers. Some journals try to bypass this system by adding a section detailing the individual contribution of each author, but this isn't widely recognized. Some funding agencies ask you to quantitatively mark the contribution in percentage of each author - but how do you do that? It is extremely difficult to quantify. One author spent a lot of time doing experiments, and another spent a lot of time analyzing the results - who should be first? It is very subjective and in the end is often settled by politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T16:55:26.157" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-13T16:55:26.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2013-07-13T17:54:28.043" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Format &lt;code&gt;Chun and Seymour (1989)&lt;/code&gt; means that there should be a full reference in the bibliography (at the and of the article, chapter or book; or sometimes in the footnote).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case if it is missing, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;author:Chun author:Seymour&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then in the options set date range to &lt;code&gt;1988 -- 1990&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T17:54:28.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11116" CreationDate="2013-07-13T20:15:21.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.&quot; I too had an issue with authoritarian education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group can own a great deal so long as the individual members of that group, here and there through the group, do not have as their sole and only goal (pronoun, capital) &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; alone must have, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want the power of the group, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want this, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want that. You have to feel that way, you see, if you haven't go confidence in the rest of the group. If you can't have confidence in the competence of your fellow students, then you have the necessity of taking the job on your own back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A teacher can provide data or facts, but one worth their weight in gold, is one that has the student learn but is respected for thinking for themselves by guiding them to apply the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7726" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T20:15:21.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11109" CreationDate="2013-07-13T20:37:24.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to know what is the subject or area of your research project. After 3 years, there has had to have been a passion to carry out the goals. Follow your dreams. You could be on to something that will help humankind so really take a bit of a breather and handle any doubts of your own. Visualize the future for a moment by seeing a DONE goal that you would enjoy with the same passion moving forward and having a team with you to help out. Sometimes debugging a project can be like watching grass grow. Find things similar to your dream and make a list of successful actions and put those back in and knock off trying to cope. A new strategy and approach to the supervisors will help rekindle their enthusiasm for you as it was in the beginning. Take the project back to where you were doing well. What happened just after... that is all that needs an adjustment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7726" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T20:37:24.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-13T21:04:15.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ethics are the same as publishing any other communication that is assumed to be in confidence: if the content contains critical information about an illegal activity, you may (depending on the nature/severity) be morally obligated to turn it over as evidence to an appropriate party; if it is otherwise urgent or critical for others to be aware, you may be morally encouraged to find a venue to publicize it (as &quot;whistleblower&quot;), and in pretty much all other cases, you should keep in private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can complain to editors and others responsible for the conference or journal; you can commiserate with colleagues and try to find out whether this is systematic or not.  But trying to shame reviewers in public is very unlikely to accomplish any valuable goal.  (It may provide a satisfying revenge at the cost of other of your goals; I encourage you to think very carefully before deciding that this is worth it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all sorts of reasons you might have a bad review (covered in other answers); assuming one that makes you the most angry and/or feel most self-justified is a very natural reaction, but probably isn't the best way to a productive conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, when you find things like this, you are probably much better off applying to other conferences, publishing in other journals, and maybe quoting (anonymously) the worst parts of the review in a blog or somesuch explaining why you're no longer going to whichever conference or considering publishing in whatever journal.  There are options in some fields for publishing with open reviews (the Frontiers life science journals, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing the full review and naming names is a good way to make people angry, make other reviewers not want to review your work, and to not get anything to change.  Adding your voice (and papers!) to existing movements that seek to improve the peer-review process is much more productive, even if it's not as viscerally satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be completely clear about the ethical implications: you are breaching the trust of the editor(s)/organizer(s)/reviewer(s) that reviews are confidential information.  Breaching trust makes people less likely to trust you in the future, and is (in most ethical frameworks, including intuitive ones) unethical unless perhaps there is a very compelling case why this must be done.  In your situation you have not articulated such a compelling case, especially given that are a variety of other avenues to take if you're actually concerned with the quality of the reviews.  If you are working in academia, presumably you know how to quote tiny sections of a full work to make your point--that's much more acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="669" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T17:41:10.643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T17:41:10.643" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-13T23:39:06.447" Score="22" ViewCount="1893" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I'm in a nasty situation. I'm about to receive my master's degree in two months. Also, I am a third author on my advisor's paper, and the paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. Contradicting results not reported etc., it has it all. The thing is, my advisor &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors. Very probably, he would let his anger to be seen in the evaluation of my master's thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, I have no idea what to do. Should I be quiet, hope the paper gets rejected, and then RUN FAST, or just write a long email about every error there is? Which one is less harmful? I really don't want my name on that paper, nor a biased evaluation of my master's thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For background, my previous advisor left the university about 6 months ago, and then I got this new one. So, I could probably get a letter of recommendation from the previous advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7728" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T04:35:21.357" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:09:15.580" Title="Should I tell my advisor that our paper is full of mistakes?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11125" CreationDate="2013-07-14T00:45:33.043" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not say that this situation is totally hopeless, here are some suggestions as to how to approach this situation (remember, these are just suggestions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are not comfortable having your name on the paper, ask for it to be removed - is it a requirement for the completion of your Masters?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps ask your previous advisor to co-author a paper with him?  Certainly ask for a letter of recommendation as he would have had the most contact with you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you see errors, then it is important for them to be corrected.  I understand your concern with regards when it comes time to defend the thesis - if this concern is major, then perhaps speak confidentially, to the Dean about your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T00:45:33.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-14T01:27:15.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the question is &quot;Should the author publish the reviews he got for his paper(s)?&quot;, then I'd say no (&lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt; with some exceptions, but this would have require a per-case discussion). I believe the other answers have more or less covered that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if the question is &quot;Should the journals publish the reviews?&quot;, then I believe it would be both ethical and useful to publish the final positive reviews, and I have several reasons for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, giving a positive review is like giving a positive grade on an exam. The person doing so should stay behind his &quot;verdict&quot; with his professional reputation. The review is one of the results of the work that the researchers do, so publishing positive reviews doesn't seem to me much different from publishing the results of the research in papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, and quite related to the first, I've read some really crappy papers, with nonsense, obvious errors, misquotes, etc. Reviewer cannot &quot;catch&quot; everything, but some of the papers get bad enough that it is obvious that the reviewer didn't do his job. If the reviewers knew their names would forever be publicly associated with such paper, I believe some of these might actually try to do their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the negative reviews, I see no point in &quot;shaming&quot; the author if his paper was too bad (in whatever way) to be published. If this was not the case, but the reviewer is to be &quot;blamed&quot; (i.e., for misunderstanding the paper), the issue can be resolved with the editor, or the paper can be submitted elsewhere, again giving no reason to make the negative review public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might argue that the negative review is also like &lt;em&gt;publishing the results of the research in papers&lt;/em&gt;, but I see it more like a failed research, which is not something that one usually publishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7161" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T01:27:15.530" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11130" CreationDate="2013-07-14T01:49:06.263" Score="4" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea for a website, which I'm afraid may land me in trouble. I want to create a website where students from the university I attend can submit exams that they took (with scores of 90% or above), and they will be publicly posted on the site for other university students to utilize and study from. However, would this cause any violation of academic dishonesty rules? Would the professors try to hunt me down and get me suspended from the institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7730" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T01:58:53.277" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T02:10:04.270" Title="University Test Bank Website- Potential Liability Issues?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11128" CreationDate="2013-07-14T02:09:29.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends greatly on your university policies. It could result in some serious formal problems for you which could haunt you for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the policies, I think it is simply inappropriate to do this without the teachers' permission. While I do take extra care to never re-use questions on my exams, others do not and they could easily consider the exam their intellectual property. Whether or not there is any validity to their claim is not really the issue. The fact is that some will feel this way and because of those feelings they will be very unhappy with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a better solution would be to offer a prep site where previous questions are analyzed and then new questions are proposed which are similar but not identical - that is they would depend on the same knowledge base and thinking skills. There should be no reason a teacher would complain about this (in fact, I would think the teachers would be quite happy about this as it would help students to better prepare for the exams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T02:09:29.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11128" CreationDate="2013-07-14T02:10:04.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, we don't know what your university's academic dishonesty rules say.  But in most cases they are pretty broad, and there is probably a clause that could be interpreted to include your website, if your university's authorities decide to do so.  I think the odds are good that there will be at least one professor who is upset enough to push them to do something about it.  They might just try to get you to take the site down, they might try something harsher.  There's no way to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think most professors are aware that students may be informally sharing their exams with one another.  For that reason, they usually change exams from term to term, and if they reuse questions, do so only after several years.  However, some may be startled to see it done as systematically as you propose, and try to stop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, nor do I know your local laws, but posting an exam on your website would probably violate the copyright of the professor who wrote it (unless you have his or her permission).  This would be another avenue someone could pursue if they wanted your website gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, professors could try to prevent their students from posting their exams on your website.  For example, they might stop letting students keep their graded exams.  Or, they could add a line to their syllabus that &quot;you may not share your graded exams with anyone&quot;, on penalty of failing the course or academic dishonesty sanctions.  This could not only deprive your website of material, but also make it so that students can't even share their exams informally anymore, which I assume is contrary to your goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T02:10:04.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11125" CreationDate="2013-07-14T02:51:48.393" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your name is on the paper; you should be able to take a look at the draft, and suggest improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. The thing is, my advisor will take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, there are two ways to address this. You can pubically say, &quot;This paper is awful and full of mistakes,&quot; paint your advisor in a bad light, and face his ire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you can take each of the mistakes, and tactfully offer an improvement. That is, you could privately say, &quot;I think the paper might have a better chance of acceptance if we made these changes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, don't edit as a critic; rather, put some work into the paper as a co-author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a fine art to editing work in a way that isn't off-putting for the primary author. People tend to get defensive when their writing is critiqued – it's a very natural reaction. However, if each of your suggested changes is offered constructively, as an improvement to an initial draft, rather than an indictment of it, you stand a better chance of incurring thanks instead of wrath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the paper is so bad that it's not salvagable, then I'd suggest requesting that your name simply be removed from the author list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T02:51:48.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-14T04:54:53.763" Score="27" ViewCount="22806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know one can get a Bachelors degree online. Can one do the same with a PhD (I refer to fields which don't need specialized equipment like Math or CS, for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance, it should be easier since your doing almost independent work (you don't really need tests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there such programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7731" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T16:57:02.387" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T08:47:06.973" Title="Can I get a PhD online?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11132" CreationDate="2013-07-14T06:23:43.540" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most PhD programs that I am aware of have &quot;residency requirements&quot;—that is, you must be registered at the university and in general physically present in the department for some period of time. However, most PhD advisors that I am aware of in disciplines in which people can &quot;work remotely&quot; do allow their students to &quot;telecommute&quot; if necessary. For instance, if a spouse gets a job far away from campus, and daily commutes are no longer a realistic option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the idea of a purely online PhD strikes me as highly unlikely to work out—because the nature of a PhD is fundamentally different from a bachelor's, in that it is a research degree, not a coursework degree. You are learning to become an independent researcher, and I don't think the online format translates well to that goal. There's too little direct interaction with other researchers. You'd definitely be independent, but there's no guarantee that you'd learn how to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T06:23:43.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11132" CreationDate="2013-07-14T07:46:20.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way I can see anything remotely like this is if you are external - similar to the way I did my Masters - I was in Tokyo, and my university near Brisbane.  However, I still had to present a seminar each year on campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As aeismail states, there is often a residence requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T07:46:20.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-14T13:34:17.210" Score="16" ViewCount="6676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that many unpublished theses are available in libraries etc and reading relevant theses is a normal part of research and does not involve asking the author's permission. But suppose a humanities PhD student has seen a thesis title (2008, so presumably in electronic format), that is relevant to their PhD subject and they want to read the thesis but unlike most theses it is not available in the student's libraries or online etc, probably due to the author's geographical location. The author is now a lecturer with a page on the university website. Should the student just email the author and say &quot;Hello I am a PhD student in your field, can I please see your thesis?&quot; Is this a big deal? Are there any do's or don'ts in making this request? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7735" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T22:02:18.247" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T09:28:54.447" Title="Requesting a copy of the PhD thesis from an author?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-14T14:33:41.947" Score="4" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I have been working like a Computer Science lecturer, part time, in a couple of universities in my country. Main problem is that those universities are only worried in finances, but not in academic productivity. So that is why almost all the lecturers, my case included, are assigned only lecturing hours, but with no time to make research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem that I got is that love to make research. Sometimes I come with an idea, and it happened 3 times already, that because of the time I cannot write a paper; so that somebody else has published (in other country, of course) my main idea. I think the phrase &quot;publish or perish&quot; is well suited for me at this moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started to feel frustrated about this. I still have other ideas for research papers in the field and even for making a couple of books in collaboration with other colleages abroad, but I don´t know where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seen a lot of Professors that publish like maniacs, and I would like to know if there is a way to increase my productivity in the academic field. How should I distribute my time?. It may sound silly, but I feel that 100% of my time is dedicated only to lecture pretty boring undergraduate stuff. Any advice? Mostly of people that are researchers and are in this field, so they have experience about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T13:51:46.867" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T13:51:46.867" Title="How to make time to pursue research while employed as a part-time lecturer at two universities?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11139" CreationDate="2013-07-14T14:48:35.947" Score="10" ViewCount="28855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working as a statistician in the marketing world for two years, and I have an M.S. in applied math.  I want to change industries a bit (maybe epidemiology or engineering) and I also want to live overseas (ideally, a job where I'd live in one country for a few years and then move on to another).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: to accomplish these life goals, does it make sense to get a PhD?  Or, is there some other route that would be more beneficial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7736" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T14:43:48.983" Title="What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11135" CreationDate="2013-07-14T15:32:04.707" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD thesis is usually a published work, and is normally archived in a university's library. Almost all dissertations are available via reprints. So you could ask your own library how to order a copy of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, as you suggest, you can contact the author directly. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests in his comment, you can ask for a copy of the thesis, but you should definitely explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're interested in the thesis. However, it may be possible—and even more so for a humanities thesis—that the author is currently preparing it for publication, and may therefore be reluctant to share it via electronic means. However, it is just as likely that they're willing to share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T15:32:04.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11137" CreationDate="2013-07-14T17:16:05.267" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A doctoral degree is a credential signifying largely that you are capable of doing independent research at the highest possible level. It is not, in an of itself, a ticket to working in a particular industry or in a particular location any more than a bachelor's or a master's degree. In fact, PhD holders may have substantially more challenges in those aspects, because the additional qualifications make them unattractive for many positions in conventional businesses and industries. (You are unlikely to find a PhD working in a sales division of a multinational conglomerate, for instance.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason to get a PhD is because you are interested in problem solving and doing original work. If this doesn't describe your motivation, I would recommend against pursuing a graduate degree, because it will be a very long few years of your life which are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; guaranteed to achieve the objectives you've laid out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T17:16:05.267" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11135" CreationDate="2013-07-14T17:26:33.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about contacting the author directly, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/pqdt.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProQuest Database&lt;/a&gt; might be a place to start if the person whose dissertation you are looking for has already graduated and submitted to the final copy the their university, which appears to be the case in the scenario you mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most countries once the dissertation is submitted to the university it comes into the public sphere (still copyrighted but its existence and content can no longer be thought of as private) so there should be no problem with contacting either the author or the Library of his or her PhD institution and requesting a copy politely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T17:26:33.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2013-07-14T20:48:16.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would you be willing to &lt;strong&gt;move to another university?&lt;/strong&gt;  It would be challenging, but possible.  My hunch is that if your school does not value research, and if that's really what excites you more than teaching, then long term  &lt;strong&gt;it will probably be hard for you to be satisfied where you are now.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to move, then I suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;focus on establishing a reputation in some small area&lt;/strong&gt;, and also that you try to &lt;strong&gt;make contacts&lt;/strong&gt; with researchers at other universities who are working in the same area that you are.  I must say that my &lt;strong&gt;collaborations have hugely impacted how much I've enjoyed doing research&lt;/strong&gt;.  I am at a school that values research, but even there I have not found many people to work with, so most of my collaboration is with people elsewhere.  We work a lot by email.  The email allows us to get some momentum, so that when I do have a chance to visit one of my collaborators, often we can be fairly productive in a limited time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things that I love about collaboration: (1) my coauthors often have great ideas, and our papers end up much better than if I had written them myself and (2) it's a lot more fun working with someone, and it's easier to stay encouraged.  So that's what I recommend that you aim for.  If you want to know how to squeeze more research time or productivity (just working by yourself) out of your current schedule, then I recommend that you follow the advice of aeismail and consult a Personal Productivity site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T20:48:16.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11132" CreationDate="2013-07-14T22:24:37.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my PhD as a part-time external student from a reputable university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if this is any different from an online mode because I did not have to be physically present on the campus. Additionally, I mostly communicated with my supervisor via email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This arrangement worked well for me because I did not want to resign from my job and also the university was at least three hours drive from my place of work. (I did go there occasionally to get a 'feel' of being a PhD student!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were however some requirements like two seminars that I had to present and a few face-to-face meetings with my supervisor. They could all be negotiated, depending on my circumstances as a full-time employee (e.g. video conferencing etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawbacks were that it took double the time to complete the PhD (which is expected for a part-time external student) and there was no network of fellow students etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to do a PhD online, chose a university which has a solid reputation as a distance education provider. The university I chose was the leader in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T22:24:37.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-15T02:50:49.753" Score="4" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to cite a webpage which I am accessing with credentials through my academic institution. In this case (and I've seen this often) my institution is indicated in the url. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com.libdata.lib.ua.edu/...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this url seems dynamic and will not be effective for others attempting to access the page, what is the best way to cite this page? In this particular case, the page gives no option for &lt;em&gt;permanent link&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;link to this page&lt;/em&gt; or anything like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7741" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T07:04:25.273" Title="How should I cite a website which includes institutional information" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11146" CreationDate="2013-07-15T07:04:25.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your intention of not citing an URL like that is correct, since it won't be useful to anybody outside your institution (and maybe not even within, if the URL is session specific). It doesn't make sense to give information in the bibliography which is not useful to the general reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, check whether there are other means to cite the content. If it is a journal publication, you may not need an URL: generally, the standard bibliographic information including the journal name, volume, and page numbers is sufficient. Also check whether the content has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI&lt;/a&gt;. Then you should always be able to link to it via &lt;code&gt;http://dx.doi.org/&amp;lt;DOI&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no way to refer to this content such that the general public can access it, then it is just not citable. You can only cite publicly available material, and not everything on the internet is publicly available (think about a Google Mailbox in the extreme case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T07:04:25.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2013-07-15T07:23:16.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you changed the question to be more specific, I'll add a separate answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the universities I have been associated with, a course is designed by the professor that teaches it, or as a collaboration between multiple faculty that are teaching separate sections.  Many times you will find that intro courses that are taught by multiple faculty are still independently created -- a Calculus I course can be drastically different when taught by two different professors even if they are teaching it during the same semester.  I would not recommend this, but it is frequently done this way.  Savvy students will try to take the section with the professor who has the best reviews.  Depending on the school, this is one forcing function for better teaching, although not a particularly good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question (Peter Shor's comment notwithstanding), course design is generally part of the duties associated with being a professor, and no extra payment or duty relief is garnered.  I have never seen a case where payment is given for course design at the collegiate level.  That is not to say that it isn't done, but I haven't seen it.  I have, however, seen many cases where one professor will give all class notes, homework assignments, and tests to another professor in order to build his or her course from those materials, but this is done out of good will and not for payment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of a royalty agreement for course design, and I would be very surprised if you could get such a deal.  Universities do work out deals with textbook publishers for reduced rates on course materials if the book will be required for a class, but that is different from asking a particular professor/instructor to design a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  The bottom line is that courses are (read: should be) mutable entities that change with the times, and with the person teaching them.  This is not to say that there shouldn't be a standard for a course, but I find it hard to believe that a college or university department would hand an instructor a set of materials and dictate that the course must be taught exactly in accordance with the set of lesson plans, with the same materials.  I am all for providing helpful materials for instructors (as well as standards), but dictating them removes the creativity from the act of teaching, and limits the ability to prepare new material for the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get off my soapbox: if you can design a course that your department will buy lock, stock, and barrel, and then you can convince them to pay you each time the course is used, go for it.  You'll have to convince them that the course will indeed be viable next year and the year after, etc., but they may be willing to buy your argument.  My suggestion is to work out the best deal you can for a one time payment, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T07:23:16.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11167" CreationDate="2013-07-15T10:33:16.373" Score="86" ViewCount="41998" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question follow's JeffE's comment &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11137/what-are-the-benefits-of-getting-a-phd-in-statistics#comment20522_11139&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most industries, a PhD has negative value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious about what potential negatives there may be with having a PhD, particularly in industries.  For example, my PhD has applications for image sensors, and the potential of working in that field is appealing—would having a PhD be a potential barrier? Would it be a case of how explicit the practicalities of the PhD can be made?  Would this make any difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2021-01-04T23:34:58.490" Title="What are the potential pitfalls of having a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-15T11:41:22.027" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important issue associated with having a PhD is that many &quot;traditional&quot; routes into industry are effectively closed off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a chemical engineer with a bachelor's or master's degree could take a position in just about any corporate division of a major company—they could work in production, sales, research, or just about any other field, with corporate training providing the requisite skills needed to do the job. By contrast, someone who holds a PhD will simply not be considered for these positions, as they are too specialized, and too far above the requirements for such a position. Any hire into such a position would probably not offer a sufficient &quot;return on investment&quot; to be worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be difficult to cross-train for &quot;standard&quot; management positions, as while a PhD does offer some supervisory experience, it's more useful for research-based organizations than industrial positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T11:41:22.027" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11153" CreationDate="2013-07-15T11:43:35.870" Score="38" ViewCount="13691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am moving from one job to another (postdoc to tenure track) this summer and I have papers in several stages of being written, these go from handwritten notes with all the necessary arguments to under revision at a journal. All the papers will have my new contact information put on them but where is the line for changing affiliation? It seems obvious to me that the one that is still in the handwritten notes stage will get the new affiliation and that the ones under revision won't. So somewhere in between is a line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some similar questions so far (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/academic-affiliation-which-to-choose&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1078/is-it-acceptable-to-publish-a-paper-using-an-affiliation-with-a-former-employer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but they do not seem to be quite the same situation since I am not changing fields and the appointments are not concurrent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T13:10:51.877" Title="Changing affiliation on publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11151" CreationDate="2013-07-15T11:52:27.833" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessarily clear cut. As a principle I would say that the affiliation should be where you have done most of your work. It is, however, also possible to use two affiliations and set your new location as &quot;present address:&quot; (or affilaition). After all, the affiliation serves two purposes. For a university (department) it means something becomes associated to them. For you, though, it means people can find you if they have, for example, questions. So, using the double affiliation, if it is possible, might be a good idea in the grey zone. Otherwise, I would stick with &quot;where you did most of the work&quot;, however you wish to define it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T12:01:46.563" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T12:01:46.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11151" CreationDate="2013-07-15T12:08:11.663" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that it's a question of resources—if you have used resources (equipment, personnel, computers, financial) of both institutions in executing the paper &lt;em&gt;before its initial submission&lt;/em&gt;, then you should list both institutes as supporting the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the core of the work—both research and writing—were done at the old institution, then the new institution should only be listed as a &quot;present affiliation,&quot; rather than as a &quot;co-sponsor&quot; of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T12:08:11.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-15T13:41:55.007" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been a positive for my CV. It gets me interviews that I wouldn't normally have got in a variety of organisations and positions. I have a PhD in computer science - my CV/PhD has got me interviews at banks/biotechs/multinational retailers (I screwed up some of the interviews but that's another problem :-))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never had a problem being overqualified - most employers would rather this than the opposite I imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PhD has applications for image sensors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it will be viewed as a major positive by any private company working in this or related fields.&#xA;A PhD shows you know a particular field very well and also have a number of transferable skills - self motivated, working independently and in a team, management, teaching/tutoring, communication (public speaking and journal articles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="245" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T00:50:18.723" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T00:50:18.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11135" CreationDate="2013-07-15T14:03:56.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is a big deal, unless as discussed in other answers they have reasons not to respond, however &quot;Hello I am a PhD student in your field, can I please see your thesis?&quot; is maximising your chances of not getting a response. Remember you are asking for a favour from a busy stranger you need to give him a reason to treat you as worth responding to. Write a polite, well-subjected, but not too long e-mail, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subject: Request for a copy of your PhD thesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Dr. X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am writing to you today to request an electronic copy of your thesis&#xA;  - &quot;Boring yet strangely intriguing title&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is Bill Bloggs, I am a PhD student at the university of stuff&#xA;  and things. I have seen your thesis referenced by XX and I was&#xA;  wondering whether you would be willing to send an electronic copy of&#xA;  your thesis to me so that I can read it as it seems relevant to my own&#xA;  work in blah and bimble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yours sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill Bloggs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T20:08:32.953" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T20:08:32.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11132" CreationDate="2013-07-15T14:40:34.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can get a PhD online from a reputable university. I think that most universities would waive nearly all &quot;residency&quot; type requirements when presented with a body of completed research that well surpasses the minimum requirements for a PhD and a sum of money. I would guess that proving the Riemann hypothesis and donating a building would get you a PhD from your choice of university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More realistically, the question then becomes how does one complete a body of research that well surpasses the minimum requirements for a PhD in the absence of ever attending the university. This actually happens quite frequently with industry based PhDs. Similarly, it is also possible, but difficult, to complete PhD level research without any supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding someone at a university who is willing to mentor you online while you do your research will be much harder. While a purely online student can provide all the tangible benefits mentors receive (publications and grant applications), the best mentors enjoy mentoring and they will receive very little of the intangible benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider mentoring an online PhD student. I would even consider funding such a student. That student would have to demonstrate to me that they can provide me access to research that I would otherwise be unable to do. For example, access to unique and proprietary industry data or a rare subject population. They would also have to convince me that they can do the work purely online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T14:40:34.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-15T14:51:05.320" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience of questions asked in interviews for non-academic jobs, presumably the assumption is that someone with a PhD did this as a cushy option rather than going out in the &quot;real world&quot; of competition, responsibility, long hours, tight deadlines, office politics etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are also seen as removed from financial considerations, with their head in the clouds, ignorant of real world issues, pondering on the philosophical rather than the practical (rightly or wrongly - this can be the perception).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An actual I was once asked was, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Can you handle the pressure of a commercial job?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another obvious answer is that your PhD does not represent commercial experience. While you have some additional research experience, if your job is not to do research, then this is not seen as much of an asset. Rather you are viewed as behind in your age group by 3-4 years in experience but will probably want the same salary (if not higher). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7744" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T14:41:17.323" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:41:17.323" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-15T14:58:45.207" Score="1" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do US universities offer Graduate Paid Internship programs in CS/CSE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, studying MS in CSE while working as a paid intern in a company, which is arranged by the university itself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, do they have any age limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T20:08:56.470" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T20:08:56.470" Title="Do US universities offer Graduate Paid Internship programs in CS/CSE?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11159" CreationDate="2013-07-15T18:03:55.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know but I don't think so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember though that such &quot;internships&quot; are also known as &quot;research assistantships&quot; or &quot;summer research assistantships&quot; and will generally not be advertised outside the university or department because there are usually more than enough ready and available folks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done something similar in the past but only because I know the professor personally and he offered me the position after a few conversations with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T18:03:55.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11172" CreationDate="2013-07-15T18:50:12.953" Score="16" ViewCount="2692" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What qualifies as a research publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two criteria spring to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peer-reviewed:&lt;/strong&gt; The article has gone through some form of formal peer-review process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dead-tree proceedings:&lt;/strong&gt; The article has been published in a bound collection of thin sheets of dead tree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of exceptions to 1., many book chapters do not rely on a formal peer-review process but are generally considered as research publications and listed in author bibliographies. Similarly, some may consider arXiv, etc., as publications and counting towards h-index counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of exceptions to 2., various workshops (esp. in CS) publish on-line through systems like CEUR or informal web-site proceedings, are peer-reviewed and contain in-depth technical material. As online publishing becomes more commonplace, criterion 2 will grow weaker and weaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something else I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T19:22:30.247" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T20:10:41.127" Title="What qualifies as a research publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-15T19:06:18.070" Score="8" ViewCount="1354" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is pursuing a Masters course containing a research dissertation as part of the curriculum. He has done a lot of work on his topic (both studying of existing literature as well as tried out some new methods) but none of them have given interesting results. So, what should his thesis describe? Or does he need to succeed in order to pass?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7004" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T22:12:14.587" Title="What if research does not fetch good results" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11162" CreationDate="2013-07-15T19:18:06.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A criticism I have heard of European entrepreneurship (vs. US) &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-1354_en.htm&quot;&gt;is that bankruptcy for start-ups is too heavily stigmatised&lt;/a&gt;. People are less willing to take risks and start-ups are rather more conservative in their outlook than their American counterparts. Thus American start-ups tend to fail more often but, subjectively speaking, foster better innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a compelling argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, in research, publishing or otherwise achieving degrees through negative results is important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It fosters an innovative environment where people are willing to try new things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing non-trivial negative results ...&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... informs people from making the same mistake;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... could be extended or fixed by third-parties towards a better solution;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;stops people from the hype that it so common-place now where even if their results are negative, they feel the need to add an artificial positive spin to get published.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, I would say that even if the results are negative, if they are non-obvious or if there's some experience to be gained from them, that should be still be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but none of them have given interesting results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what do you mean by &quot;interesting&quot; results? Do you mean positive results? Negative results are often interesting too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T19:26:11.943" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T19:26:11.943" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11162" CreationDate="2013-07-15T19:33:47.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the program, the committee, the advisor, and the student. To give some anecdotes in both directions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who was a graduate student for a young professor who was just setting up his lab. My friend never performed any novel research, published few peer-reviewed articles, and for the most part did much more work setting up the lab environment than should have happened. Towards the end of his 5th year, he took his publications, white papers, and other documents, stapeled them together, and called it a thesis. He graduated no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different friend of mine was diligentily working on a single research problem for a few years and didn't find any results. Push came to shove, his committee wanted to see progress on one particular area, and six months later, when he didn't produce, he left with a masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two separate stories, two separate universities, two very different programs. Long story short, if you think you're heading towards a situation like this, talk to your advisor and committee members and see what you can do. Do note that in these situations you can often take a minor finding which does not directly address your central theme and present it as your major contribution to the field, as this can serve to demonstrate your proficiency in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T19:33:47.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11166" CreationDate="2013-07-15T20:46:51.753" Score="45" ViewCount="6385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently come across a paper that copy-pasted entire paragraphs of one of my papers which is already published in an international journal.  This paper appeared in a journal which is not very popular, and I did not get a courtesy citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed with this?  I was thinking of reporting the issue to the editor of the journal where the paper appeared but then I thought that it may not even worth the effort. On the other hand, I still have this in my mind since this is clearly unethical behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7748" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T22:04:04.850" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T13:53:26.390" Title="How to respond to someone plagiarizing my work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11165" CreationDate="2013-07-15T20:56:59.737" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely contact the chief editor of the journal and place the evidence before him/her/them. Plagiarism should not be taken lightly. There is a tendency to be lenient when it comes to self-plagiarism of non-critical parts of the text, for example, parts of methods sections (in experimental work). Regardless where one draws the line, copying sections of text verbatim from others is a clear breach to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it will be the editor's job to pursue the matter after you made the point. If the journal belongs to a publishing house they may receive legal help to deal with the author. If the editor does not react and there is a clear publisher behind the journal it may be relevant to bring it up a level. If you have someone in your university working on copyright issues, perhaps at the library, then you could also talk to them. They may be able to provide further assistance and help evaluate the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="683" LastEditDate="2013-07-16T12:54:41.030" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T12:54:41.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-15T21:03:35.297" Score="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though a Ph.D is not necessarily a disadvantage, depending on the field and the nature of the Ph.D, it may also not be as competitive as the equivalent number of years in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think from a perspective of a hiring dev team leader who needs a good systems engineer &lt;em&gt;yesterday&lt;/em&gt; to help integrate some obscure API from a vendor into their product. You're choosing between a pile of resumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one, you have a candidate who has 3 years as a junior engineer in a company that worked on image sensors, 2 years of work as a systems developer II, and one year as a lead developer on a computer vision project. He's delivered seven projects in total and has worked in a highly cross-functional team of hardware and software engineers, salespeople, and on-site support staff. The products he worked on brought the company revenue of $86.3 million dollars over seven years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another, you have a candidate who has done 6 years in a Ph.D and 1 year worth of internships in total. He's worked on a computer vision project and has contributed a novel algorithm to solving &amp;quot;Line tracing under low UV light conditions&amp;quot; (I made that up, I have no idea if that's a real problem in computer vision), and has written six publications. He also has taught a course on 3rd year systems programming and has TAed robotics three times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they are both good candidates, chances are that unless you need someone who does &amp;quot;line tracing under UV light&amp;quot;, the first candidate might be more attractive. Less training, less having to work with that person to integrate them into a product-based flow, proven record of delivering product and making sales, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that the &amp;quot;disadvantage&amp;quot; of a Ph.D is more about opportunity cost than an actual disadvantage. In many cases, the culture of academia vs. industry are different enough that it's like switching fields even if the technologies are similar. Basically, someone with 7 years actual work experience has enough to basically go from a new grad hire to a project team lead, whereas someone with 7 years of Ph.D is proven to deliver in an academic setting but not in a for-profit product-based one. However, at the same time, there are many industries that want to have Ph.Ds on their staff as well because they are long-term, deep thinkers who are rigorous and detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2021-01-04T23:34:58.490" LastActivityDate="2021-01-04T23:34:58.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11165" CreationDate="2013-07-15T21:05:29.083" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you should let it slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where the offending paper appeared, and explain the situation (with the citation of your paper).  If they do not respond, or do not adequately address the matter, &quot;name and shame&quot;: spread the word that this is not a journal to be taken seriously.  You could also contact the publisher, as Peter Jansson suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; paper appeared.  They have an interest in protecting the work of their author, and may have more leverage in dealing with the offending journal.  If, as is common, you transferred your copyright to them upon publication, they may have a legal interest as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider contacting the author of the offending paper, and/or their department chair or dean.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T21:05:29.083" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11162" CreationDate="2013-07-15T22:12:14.587" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the middle of planning a master's project that is &quot;high-risk,&quot; in the sense of the idea that we're going to try out is a relatively novel idea, and we have no idea if it will actually work or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &quot;hedge&quot; against this, however, we need to do some methodological work that will support this idea. This work, even if the main idea doesn't pan out, still has relevance within the field, and therefore in and of itself would represent a sizable enough &quot;core&quot; of work that the thesis would be considered successful, even if the &quot;hypothesis&quot; doesn't hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I believe a master's thesis doesn't need to reach the same standards of &quot;advancing the state of knowledge&quot; as a PhD thesis. It should show the results of a project, but it need not be nearly as comprehensive or represent as great an advance as a PhD thesis—in part because of the relative amount of time involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would perhaps be especially helpful here is if the student is able to analyze &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the various efforts tried haven't panned out. That could make for a significant finding in and of itself, at least as far as the thesis is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T22:12:14.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11125" CreationDate="2013-07-15T23:57:36.950" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You wouldn’t be asking this question if, instead of errors on a document, your dilemma involved a source of personal injury, such as a hole outside the front entrance folks could fall in and never crawl out of!   (Facetious I know, please accept my apology.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aren’t you asking “At what point should I point out errors?&quot;  Below that arbitrary point I find errors acceptable, above that point, prohibited.    Unfortunately, our conscience doesn’t come with a warning lamp.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7751" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T23:57:36.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-16T00:08:05.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add some data points to this discussion. Some items below are about discussing reviews and editors in a public forum and not about publishing reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.inf.ethz.ch/jteubner/index.html&quot;&gt;Jens Teubner&lt;/a&gt; makes available the reviews to his papers &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.inf.ethz.ch/jteubner/publications.html&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt;. I do not know him but I have heard from someone who does that he said he has not received negative feedback about doing this. Maybe you can ask him for more information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/&quot;&gt;Doron Zeilberger&lt;/a&gt; has published reviews in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion87.html&quot;&gt;Opinion 87&lt;/a&gt; and for his paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/RefTipesh.html&quot;&gt;Automatic CounTiling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doron Zeilberger's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion61.html&quot;&gt;Opinion 61&lt;/a&gt; is about rejections and accountability (it has a response from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/fb61.html&quot;&gt;Luca Trevisan&lt;/a&gt;) and his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion81.html&quot;&gt;Opinion 81&lt;/a&gt; is about rejection and snobbery. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/fb77.html&quot;&gt;Peter Clark's mail to Doron Zeilberger&lt;/a&gt; about some material Zeilberger published online. This is only tangential to your question, but I think it's good to keep in mind that when you go down the road of open publication, you should be ready for others publishing material about you or your reviews. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html&quot;&gt;The Writings of Leslie Lamport&lt;/a&gt; chronicles in very direct terms the stories behind his papers including some notes about editors and reviewers (for example papers &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#clocks&quot;&gt;62&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos&quot;&gt;122&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-types&quot;&gt;129&lt;/a&gt;, ). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In The Writings of Leslie Lamport &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-fairness&quot;&gt;Paper 132&lt;/a&gt; he talks about having written an '&lt;em&gt;unkind review&lt;/em&gt;'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been meaning to publish my reviews for multiple reasons and I am glad to see that other people have been thinking the same and some have done it. I do not think the result or answer should depend on whether the paper is accepted or rejected. If reviews are published, I believe that one should also publish the version of the article that was used to make the reviews. Otherwise, the reviews are like quotations taken out of context. If there are coauthors, one should obtain their permission first, or at least include a disclaimer that you are publishing your reviews on your behalf only. As an example of a disclaimer, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html&quot;&gt;Lamport's page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the stories read like complaints of unfair treatment by editors or referees.  Such cases are bound to arise in any activity based on human judgment.  On the whole, I have had little trouble getting my papers published.  In fact, I have profited from the natural tendency of editors and referees to be less critical of the work of established scientists.  But I think it's worth mentioning the cases where the system didn't work as it should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notification of acceptance is usually signed by the editor of the venue, even in the case of anonymous review, so one should ideally obtain their permission if you will reveal who the editor is. The same applies for reviewer permission in signed reviews. I cannot tell whether people in the links I give above obtained editor permission first so there may be precedent for not doing so. Publishing reviews intended for private circulation still takes them out of context.  I would add a disclaimer that the reviews and notification letter were written as private communication and if published without permission of named entities, I would note that too. The latter is in case your intention is to protest the status quo by subverting standard conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't answered your question because I don't have a clear answer. Publishing reviews is not conventional academic behaviour. Doing so can be construed as unprofessional depending on how you publish them and what additional commentary you add. Calling it &quot;unethical&quot; seems  a rather heavy handed judgement to make. There are things an anonymous reviewer can do that are clearly unethical (steal research, suppress publication, circulate the manuscript) or questionable depending on context (force citations, comparisons, reject without reading, write ad hominem reviews etc.). There is very little an author can do to wrong a reviewer that is remotely comparable and publishing a review does not seem remotely on that scale to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple reasons to publish reviews including accountability for all parties involved (including authors) and as a form of protest. I believe this intent is important to consider because forms of protest do subvert what may be considered acceptable behaviour. A useful thought exercise might be to put yourself in the reviewer seat and ask if you would be fine with similar treatment. I would not have an issue if the reviews I have written  were made public (even if I knew that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/2012%20On%20the%20Feasibility%20of%20Internet-Scale%20Author%20Identification.pdf&quot;&gt;stylometric techniques&lt;/a&gt; could be used to identify me). I do not think all reviewers feel that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let me point again to &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.inf.ethz.ch/jteubner/publications.html&quot;&gt;Jens Teubner's page&lt;/a&gt;, which comes across to me as a model of how to publish reviews while retaining professionalism and dignity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6807" LastEditorUserId="6807" LastEditDate="2013-07-16T09:39:34.657" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T09:39:34.657" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11161" CreationDate="2013-07-16T01:23:41.697" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your criteria are close, but (at least for computer science) not quite right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research:&lt;/strong&gt; the paper must describe a novel contribution to some field of inquiry.  Whether a paper makes a novel (and correct and interesting) contribution is often determined through formal peer review, but not always.  Peer review is almost always a formal requirement for a paper to &quot;count&quot; for purposes of formal evaluation for promotion and tenure, but not necessarily for building one's reputation as a researcher. (It's quite common for breakthrough results in theoretical compute science to be announced and discussed in blogs &lt;em&gt;months&lt;/em&gt; before they undergo formal peer review.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publication&lt;/strong&gt;: The paper must be, at least in principle, accessible to the public.  Two reasonable prerequisites are that the paper has a DOI, and that it is published either in a serial with an ISSN or in a book with an ISBN, but one could make a reasonable case that PDfs on researchers' personal web pages, blog and newsgroup posts,  and even StackExchange answers are &quot;publications&quot;.  (Certainly there are fields, like chemistry, in which journals will not publish anything that has previously appeared on the web, on the grounds that it is &quot;already published&quot;.)  There is absolutely no requirement that the paper be printed on dead trees to be considered &quot;real&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I would classify most ArXiv preprints as &quot;research publications&quot;, despite the lack of peer review and the absence of dead trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T01:23:41.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11165" CreationDate="2013-07-16T07:23:33.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experienced this first hand as well (twice) - not a very nice feeling at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asides from contacting the editors, as has been mentioned.  I would also inform those in your research network as to what has happened, for 2 reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;so they are aware of what has happened, just in case they wonder why your research has gone elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;so they are aware of the unethical behaviour of not only the offending author, but of the journal that allowed the plagiarised article to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members of my own research network let me know of both instances when I had been plagiarised (the second time was just within 48 hours of this answer).  As with many academics, we have a zero tolerance for plagiarism, so we inform all in our research group for the reasons above - essentially, looking out for eachother in an academic sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point may seem harsh, but (for what very little my opinion is worth), I find that plagiarism is a deliberate and wilful act of intellectual theft - laziness and even ignorance are not valid excuses.  Both the offending author and the journal that let it pass are just as guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-07-16T23:26:10.510" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T23:26:10.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2013-07-16T12:24:35.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think these two posts by a Canadian scholar could give you a few answers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/08/24/to-improve-your-intellectual-productivity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to improve your intellectual productivity&lt;/a&gt; and the older one &lt;a href=&quot;http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2008/08/19/the-secret-to-intellectual-productivity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the secret to intellectual productivity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the tips he gives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have luck,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meet people who have truly compatible goals and interests,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use a divide-and-conquer strategy (i.e. break down your task into small and easy chunks of work),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on producing value,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enumerate all possible solutions to a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7760" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T12:24:35.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11180" CreationDate="2013-07-16T15:48:36.973" Score="4" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been appointed to take part in reviewing papers for a conference. At the beginning I received an email in which the program chair told me to mark my fields of expertise, so I did that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few days, it appeared in the reviewing page a list of all the papers submitted. But when they assigned me the papers, they do not assign me those in which I have expertise in the field and that I put in a previous email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I have reviewed my assigned papers. I have seen that I can see all the papers submitted and there is also the possibility to put my review in those that there have not been assigned to me. Should I do that with the papers that are my field of expertise? or should I only review those that I have been assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T17:44:27.100" Title="reviewing other articles for a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11165" CreationDate="2013-07-16T15:54:05.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you should send an email to the following persons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) To the person in charge or program committee of the journal in which your work has been plagiarized. Be prepared that you can stump upon some frisky person who would like to deny any responsibility about this actions, but at least you state your point that what is that person doing is completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) To the author who make the plagiarism action&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that the journal in which they plagiarized your work is not well known. Well that is one strong reason why you should communicate with them. For the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes those small conferences and journals want to start to build a reputation, so consider that you will be helping them in that task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also they can get a grasp about the quality of reviewers that they actually have in their staff. In some occasions the reviewers only pass thru the article very quickly, but actually do not check if there has been some plagiarize on it. Do not get me wrong, but a lot of reviewers do that, and most of the discovered cases of plagiarism in journals or conferences has been discovered by external persons to that environment; like in this case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in both cases, you will end up teaching some research ethics to both: the cheaty researcher and the careless journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T20:15:39.753" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T20:15:39.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11159" CreationDate="2013-07-16T16:16:28.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, US Universities do offer Graduate paid internship programs in CS/CSE.&#xA;It is called Curricular Practical Training/Optional Practical Training.&#xA;But each university is different in accepting your CPT/OPT.&#xA;You need to have a job offer in hand, check with the DSO of the university for the dates within which you need to apply for your CPT/OPT.&#xA;You need to be atleast 18 years i guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information you can look this up : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ice.gov/sevis/practical-training/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ice.gov/sevis/practical-training/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7764" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T16:16:28.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11177" CreationDate="2013-07-16T17:44:27.100" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to conference reviewing.  Your situation is unfortunately &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; common.  If the number of submissions in area X is less than the number of reviewers with interest and expertise in area X, then inevitably some of those reviewers will be assigned papers in area Y.  Symmetrically, if the number of submissions in X is &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than the number of experts in X, then some of those papers must be assigned to reviewers who'd prefer Z.  Ideally, most papers are reviewed by experts and each reviewer is assigned mostly papers in their areas of expertise, but sometimes the matching system breaks down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, &lt;strong&gt;you must review the papers that you were assigned.&lt;/strong&gt;  But there are a couple of ways to address mismatches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your assignment looks like a &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt; mismatch, you should &lt;strong&gt;quickly&lt;/strong&gt; contact the PC chair and express your concerns, and in particular to verify that they received your preference email.  If you're early enough in the process, the chair may be able and willing to swap assignments with other reviewers with complementary mismatches.  There might also be a mechanism to swap assignments directly with other committee members, but you should always get the PC chair's permission before &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; swapping.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most computer science conference review forms ask for your &lt;em&gt;confidence&lt;/em&gt; in your review; fill in this field honestly.  If you really don't have the expertise to understand the paper or make a recommendation, your review should read &quot;I apparently do not have the expertise to understand this paper or make a recommendation.&quot;  That's a damning review of both the paper and the assignment process, but that's okay; your job as a reviewer is to &lt;strong&gt;be respectful but brutally honest&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, as a matter of simple self-preservation, &lt;strong&gt;you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; review papers that you were not assigned&lt;/strong&gt;.  Reviewing well is extremely hard and time-consuming, and you have many other demands on your time.  (And reviewing badly should just not be done at all.)  Generally speaking, doing extra unsolicited reviewing will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; earn you additional credit or brownie points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few exceptions.  If you see a paper that you plan to read in detail anyway, despite getting no credit for doing so, you might as well write a review.  And if the initial reviews of a paper disagree, the PC chair may seek out additional input or even full reviews; if you're asked about a paper &lt;em&gt;in your area of expertise&lt;/em&gt; late in the review cycle, you should help.  (If you're asked about a paper outside your area of expertise in later rounds, you should just say no.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T17:44:27.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11132" CreationDate="2013-07-16T20:53:38.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;YES! If you google &quot;phd by published work&quot; or &quot;PhD by publications&quot;, you will find many universities offering such a way of graduating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you do your research with no time pressure, with or without colleagues, with or without a mentor (it is better to have a mentor though and colleagues are fun!). You publish your work in scientific journals or books. When you are ready, i.e. an amount of published work equivalent to a regular PhD student, you submit an application to your university. A committee will decide wether or not the body of researches is sufficient or not. And that's it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more complete answer can be find here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/416988.article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/416988.article&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/phd.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/phd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7767" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T20:53:38.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11185" CreationDate="2013-07-17T07:57:38.143" Score="8" ViewCount="1334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've published a paper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://vixra.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;viXra&lt;/a&gt; and I would like to know if someone else cited it anywhere, but I don't know how. Is there a kind of global index for citations? Does it include “alternative archives” such as viXra?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="819" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T11:59:47.603" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T10:58:54.510" Title="How can I find if my viXra paper is cited?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11183" CreationDate="2013-07-17T08:12:09.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;. There may be field-specific indexes too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6807" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T08:12:09.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11183" CreationDate="2013-07-17T08:52:12.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most established academic journals are indexed in what are logically called “journal indexes”. These indexes commonly record all publication metadata, and usually also include a record of all citations. Such indexes are thus called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;citation indexes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the problem with viXra is inherent to its “alternative” nature: it is most definitely not indexed by conventional players (Web of Science, CrossRef, PubMed, CAS, etc.). You thus have two ways of looking for citations to your paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; includes content from viXra in its results (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.fr/scholar?q=The+Lady+in+Baghdad&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot;&gt;this search&lt;/a&gt;’s first hit, for example). It probably also records citations of such articles, but the quality of citation matching is limited by Google's heuristic algorithms. They're good, but not as good as DOI-based mechanism that commercial databases nowadays employ.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A regular web search with you name, or the title of your paper. This is not as automated, but it may give good results as to who is citing your work, especially if this is one of your first papers and you don't yet have a large web presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Obvious caveat: if your name is John Smith or Li Wang, web search will not help much.)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T08:52:12.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11194" CreationDate="2013-07-17T14:31:00.003" Score="2" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will finish my 4 year bachelors program next year, in a total of 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had failed many many courses in 2nd year and my cgpa was around 2.4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I had that enlightenment and decided to become an academic. Since then, I have increased my cgpa to over 3.5 and turned all F's to A's. For last 3 semesters I get averagely 3.9 gpa each semester&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have some C's in few courses from 2nd year and instead of graduating this year, I will graduate next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have managed to boost my cgpa amazingly after such things but I want to know if this extra year will cause me any trouble during Ph.D. applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:51:52.753" Title="Applying to Ph.D. with 5 years in Bachelors" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T14:51:57.840" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do Chinese (PRC) universities offer CS/CSE Masters programs taught in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, do these programs require mandatory HSK scores to enroll?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T11:40:29.460" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T11:40:29.460" Title="Do Chinese universities offer CS/CSE Masters programs taught in English?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T15:15:26.033" Score="8" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much value do I acquire if I complete an online master's degree in CS and I plan to apply for doctoral study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/top-10-engineering-college-teams-up-with-udacity-att-to-offer-6k-online-masters-degree-in-computer-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Georgia Tech seems to offer an online master's program&lt;/a&gt;. Does this type program puts up anything to apply for a Doctoral program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if somebody wants to get a PhD degree in Computer Science, do Online Master's degrees aid in their ambition? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T12:33:07.837" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T12:33:07.837" Title="Do &quot;Online&quot; CS/CSE masters programs add any value when applying for doctoral/PhD study?" Tags="&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11189" CreationDate="2013-07-17T15:19:33.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you just search for the universities, you will see that each of them has specific guidelines regarding your proficiency in Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Tsinghua university, here is what I find : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/then/5975/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/then/5975/index.html&lt;/a&gt; , but I can't find anything about HSK requirements. My guess is that if the courses are taught in English, you are more likely to be asked to provided your TOEFL scores instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you might want to look at other universities, you should get all the information you need on their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, Chinese universites do have CS Masters programs in English, and it appears that they don't required HSK (but you should contact the International Office of each university to be sure of that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T15:19:33.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T16:13:09.643" Score="21" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many academic journals have copyright policies which forbid authors (possibly for a finite embargo time) to make their papers (either preprints, accepted manuscripts, or camera-ready versions) freely available (either on their personal websites or on repositories such as the arXiv). &lt;strong&gt;How tightly enforced are these policies? Are there known cases of publishers pursuing legal action against an author for posting copyrighted academic papers?&lt;/strong&gt; Or would such cases normally be dealt with private requests to cease-and-desist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9968/820&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate such cases are rare, but there could be privately-dealt with cases that are not visible. Or is there a large body of public-repository-published papers that possibly / probably / demonstrably have been publicly posted in breach of a copyright policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:13:44.103" Title="How tightly enforced are open-access embargoes?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11187" CreationDate="2013-07-17T16:50:15.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sort of thing should be explained in the cover letter. This trend is pretty common; freshmen enter college ready to party, realize halfway through that their grades are actually important, and then buckle down and do good work for the rest. You simply need to state that, despite your initial behavior, you are fully committed to your education. Given a 3.5 GPA at the end, I don't imagine you would have too much trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that this will vary as a function of the universities to which you apply; some may take a harsher view than others. Still, you have a good explanation for the one bad year, so it shouldn't post too much of a problem for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T16:50:15.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11195" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T17:04:18.113" Score="12" ViewCount="7808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.optimization-online.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.optimization-online.org&lt;/a&gt; and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2018-08-25T13:14:37.770" LastActivityDate="2018-08-25T13:14:37.770" Title="Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2013-07-17T17:05:30.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the good non-financial reasons mentioned, there is also a more financial reason - promoting your own book. I am sure this is not the main reason to give online courses, and having the book is not an explicit requirement, but it does provide a way to benefit financially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Prof. Daphne Koller from Stanford and Prof. Yaser Abu Mostafa from CalTech both offer free online Machine Learning courses, and both have relatively recent books that are top best-sellers on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T17:05:30.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11193" CreationDate="2013-07-17T17:10:57.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fully agreeing with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11193/how-tightly-enforced-are-open-access-embargoes#comment20639_11193&quot;&gt;eykanal's comment&lt;/a&gt;, I can provide the following thought on reasons: as with all copyrighted materials originating from commercial sources, it becomes a business decision on when and how to hunt down those who break the rules. If some authors put their manuscripts out on their own web sites it is probably not worth the expenses to prevent it. If everyone did it systematically, I am sure things would look different. If publishers see a decline in subscription rates from libraries due to the fact that authors make stuff available, then I think we will see something akin to what happened with downloadable music. For a publisher, an author is also what makes the business go around, so hunting authors may not be a good business practice. But, with more and more published work being made available in formally  illegal ways, I am sure it is only a matter of time before clamps are tightened. So it is a bit like teasing a sleeping bear, fine until it wakes up (and I do not mean &quot;fine&quot; as in agreeing with posting material illegally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to putting the published paper online, it might be worth noting that in many if not most cases, it is perfectly legal to post the original manuscript (before review and typesetting) on the web since this is not the copyrighted material that is in the publications. Unless you have signed off on immaterial rights you still have the rights to that original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is it is illegal and many probably do not really understand what they have signed when they published their papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:13:44.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11195" CreationDate="2013-07-17T17:42:28.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This only pertains to mathematics since that's the only field I can speak for, but there it's normal for people to list preprints on the arXiv in their publication list or CV &lt;strong&gt;making it clear&lt;/strong&gt; that it is listed as a preprint.  I think people understand perfectly well that there are long lead times one getting things published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would say that you should think carefully and get advice from more experienced people in your field before submitting to a preprint archive.  At least in the case of the arXiv, once something is posted, it can never be taken down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T17:42:28.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11195" CreationDate="2013-07-17T18:11:18.630" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting non-peer reviewed publications on your CV is perfectly fine, but you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications.  I have seen CVs that separately list peer-reviewed works and non-peer reviewed works, and sometimes the non-peer reviewed works are simply listed as &quot;technical reports.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that the papers you write are worthy of being mentioned on your CV, then list them.  But don't think that by putting a bunch of low-quality non-peer reviewed works will do you any favors when looking for work or when applying for academic positions (whether graduate school or employment).  Obviously, you should avoid putting them on your CV if you are doing so simply to demonstrate that you can write a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T18:11:18.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11203" CreationDate="2013-07-17T18:26:35.437" Score="1" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have searched the literature and I'm now have all the papers I need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading the papers at the moment in order to write a lit review. I would like to know some strategies to read them, should I read them from first page to last page? or should I read specific sections only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:39:56.700" Title="How to read an article?" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-18T03:36:44.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T18:30:05.683" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm weighing all my options before the fall application and I wanted to know if it is possible to take out loans in the US as an international master's degree student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips where to look?&#xA;Best I've seen are private loans with an American cosignatory. Is it really the extent of loan options for an international? Do universities extend loans to their students or help in getting private loans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T00:12:44.840" Title="International student loans in the US" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11201" CreationDate="2013-07-17T18:37:40.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes check with your universities Student Services Department. Most of the universities also give you scholarships provided you have some good scores in GRE/TOEFL or whatever they require. Banks also give Student loans to International students provided you have a credit-worthy US-Citizen as a Co-signer.&#xA;But most of the international students are eligible for scholarships.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edupass.org/finaid/loans.phtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.edupass.org/finaid/loans.phtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7764" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T18:37:40.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11200" CreationDate="2013-07-17T19:09:37.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really recommend that you start reading the Abstract, by that way you can get rid of some papers that would not be so valuable for your work. After that try to get a quick glimpse at the theoretical background, just to catch if there is some background that you are actually missing and you will need for understanding the article fully. Take your time to read the experimentation part and feel free to jump to the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that you do not need to read some articles from the first page to the last page, except in some ocassions. There will be some sections that you can clearly jump e.g. the theoretical part, if you have the enough background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T19:09:37.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11201" CreationDate="2013-07-18T00:12:44.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to check (email) with the offices for international students and scholar that in some universities also handle financial issues for foreign students. They will give you the best options. If you're willing to do research or teaching work, I'd suggest you to personally contact Faculties or graduate program secretaries that may have such options for you. In some universities, most national and international grad students are under teaching or research assistantships, have tuition waived and monthly stipend, and this also build up their cv. This may not apply to specific degrees such as MBA, but if you're in science, technology, education or engineer, it is likely that you can find assistantship to support you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It may be too late to find an assistantship for the fall semester, you can consider to start next spring as well.&#xA;good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7776" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T00:12:44.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11193" CreationDate="2013-07-18T01:44:38.783" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One data point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematician, and I have never heard of this happening to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many mathematicians post preprints on their website and to the arXiv, and it is somewhat common for mathematicians to also post scanned copies of the published journal versions of their older papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethical judgements may vary, but I am unaware of any authors who have suffered negative practical consequences for this, or even who have been asked to remove their papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T01:44:38.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11200" CreationDate="2013-07-18T02:40:01.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The objective of reading/review academic papers is to critically analyze research studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical reading is basically a process where you ask yourself questions as you're reading, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What was the objective of the research study?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Did the researchers accomplish this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why or why not?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why is the study important?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are the implications of the findings?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;How does this paper contribute knowledge to society?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do I want to borrow an idea from this paper?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do I believe something can be improved?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering those questions will help you figure out what you've read and why it was relevant to you and the research study you'll end up designing. It can also help you as you target each section, it's not always clear cut the order in which you'll read the paper critically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you know what to look for, how you organize those notes is up to your individual preference. There are many options available: hand written notes, digital notes, laptop, ipad, etc. I personally like to use a matrix format with different fields, such as objective, method, findings, theoretical model, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1238" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T14:39:56.700" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:39:56.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-18T03:06:09.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in pure mathematics, and the only employers that were interested in me were Epic Healthcare (desperate for anyone they can get a hold of with the affordable care act changes) and universities offering postdocs. Other positions, such as a Boy Scouts position I applied to, told me I was overqualified or misqualified. I programmed video games as a teenager; a lot of companies were willing to interview me based on that alone, but I would be forced to start from the bottom and work my way up, which isn't bad, but you're asking whether a PhD is worth it, and in such a situation, it would certainly not be worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, my time studying for my PhD seriously improved my writing skills and analytical thinking skills, and I think that that would help me as a programmer to learn quickly and get promoted. But there's no point in a math PhD for any job besides teaching or a focused job at a national lab/NSA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4455" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T03:06:09.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11191" CreationDate="2013-07-18T03:34:34.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online MS degrees are necessarily course-based &quot;professional&quot; master's degrees, otherwise known as &lt;em&gt;terminal&lt;/em&gt; master's degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to apply to a PhD program, you need to provide strong evidence of &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; potential.  If you are applying with an MS, you will be competing with applicants in &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; MS programs, who almost certainly have more research experience than anyone with a professional MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nearly impossible to get that research experience without direct face-to-face contact with more experienced researchers.  Even if you somehow learn to do research on your own, you still need recommendation letters that describe your research potential in specific and personal detail, and such letters are impossible to get without direct face-to-face contact with their authors.  If you want to become a researcher, you have to do it in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T03:34:34.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-18T05:11:40.037" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are the potential pitfalls of having a PhD?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. I believe &lt;strong&gt;the closer your PhD research is to applied research, the better your industry job opportunities would be&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those PhDs who have been doing basic (pure) research tend to have problem with industry job hunting because their skills/knowledge are not &lt;strong&gt;immediately usable&lt;/strong&gt; in industry. It is simply not cost effective for industry companies to hire them. They need to be re-trained to get them to do real practical jobs. Don’t forget one thing, private companies are for profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, those who have been doing applied research &lt;strong&gt;could have readily available&lt;/strong&gt; skills/knowledge for the employers to use. They naturally have industry jobs lined up for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see two examples right here. User16371 has a PhD in pure math. He has trouble in finding private industry jobs. NimChimpsky probably has done applied research, he has many job interviews. Whether he will get a real industry job soon is another matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in your case, I think you’ll have a good shot if your research is more toward real application. I am absolutely no expert in image sensors. But, I can imagine that if CT scan manufacturers can use your skills/knowledge, you should be able to find a good job in matter of months. Here, a good job means high salary – a barometer to measure how good an industry job is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T05:11:40.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2013-07-18T05:50:52.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our department (in the USA) you have 50 free pages per semester, 5 cents per page after.  I used to think this is ridiculous so I asked about it.  Our department used to have problems with students (undergrad or grad) abusing free printing in order to print out entire books, etc.  Indeed, I am aware of students who do this at other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a grad student joins a research group in our department, however, the research group usually has its own dedicated printer for its grad students to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you're a teaching assistant, you should certainly get free printing privileges for printing that is related to the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will also point out that there are often ways to get around the printing regulator, and indeed this is done often in our department -- so in the end mostly the honest lose out with such a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7779" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T05:50:52.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T09:14:57.877" Score="11" ViewCount="1405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had submitted this paper of mine to a reputed springer journal some time back. There are reasons for me to believe it is a good journal although it has an impact factor of only 0.941 since most of the original work on the problem ( I will describe that in detail below) I'm working on was published in that journal. A few days back I received a decision from them which said that they wouldn't be considering it for publication and this was the reviewer's comment - &quot;&lt;em&gt;I am afraid i do not see a contribution by this paper valuable enough for publication in the Journal. Neither regarding the problem setting nor regarding the solution method any new insights are provided&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I do admit that my work isn't something path breaking or completely novel (I shall give a detailed description in the end). What I have essentially done is that I have used existing algorithms and techniques and have applied the same on the specific problem I was working on and have got significant results (please see the complete detail of the problem in the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So post rejection I have actually been in a complete dilemma on whether I should actually try publishing my work again with some other journals and I have also begun to wonder if journals actually accept such work. The problem is that I have no prior experience of publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student. So it would be really nice if someone could help me with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More on the Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I have been working on is the Traveling Tournament Problem. So what I have done here is that I have taken existing techniques and algorithms for this problem and I have applied it to a very popular sports league in order to schedule it. And doing so has actually given me some &quot;significant&quot;(?) results like reduction in the travel distance in this league. &#xA;I am also pretty sure no one has actually worked on this particular league before, so this would be the first instance of the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastEditorUserId="7775" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T02:40:05.103" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T02:40:05.103" Title="Should I still try to publish this paper I wrote after it getting rejected?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11213" CreationDate="2013-07-18T09:32:32.397" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In publishing there is a phenomena called &quot;me too&quot; publications (see for example Day &amp;amp; Gastel: How to write and Publish A Scientific Paper) where one takes existing methods and apply them to a new area, data set, whatever context is applicable. Although not wrong, these types of studies usually do not contribute much new knowledge except resulting in the understandng that the method(s) work in (yet) another circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can then be done? As I alluded to initially, there is nothing really wrong with such studies. What is necessary is to convince the editors and reviewers that by applying the method(s) to the new area, you have actually achieved something new (in the sense of scientific discovery). For example, applying a formula to a new set of numbers is not a discovery unless the new numbers themselves contain something that can be set apart from what has been done before. So it boils down to what might sloppily be called &quot;packaging&quot;; you need to package your study so that it is evident what new discovery is achieved. It is not sufficient to just say that it is a new data set but you need to convince that applying the method(s) to the new data set shows results that expand our horizon beyond the obvious and also be explicit why one, for example, would not expect the result you obtained (or equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have deliberately kept this answer as general as I can because the issue you bring up applies to many if not all fields. I would give the manuscript a hard work over and really think about what truly scientifically (intelectually) new aspects you bring forth. It may be that your writing has not been clear enough to bring the message through. It may be that you are too involved to see the bigger picture that needs to be explained to others. Or, in the worst case, it may be that your study is too trivial. Avoid falling into the &quot;me too&quot; trap, it easily happens and the remedy is usually to make sure the perspectives of the study are re-written carefully to highlight the core research problem to be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer, yes you should try again unless you find you are stuck in &quot;me too&quot; land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T10:35:28.820" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T10:35:28.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11213" CreationDate="2013-07-18T10:38:37.113" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peter Janssons answer is good.  I would like to add something specifically on the venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop or apply a new method, submit to a journal that focus on methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply an existing method to a field where it hasn't before, submit to a journal that focuses on the application.  This can be very enriching, perhaps nobody in this field thought of using this method before, maybe they didn't know it existed.  Such a paper can be rather short and won't be prize-winning, but can certainly be publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, perhaps all you need to do is sit with your advisor and reconsider the venue where you're publishing, in addition to some &lt;em&gt;packaging&lt;/em&gt; as Peter Jansson describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T10:38:37.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11218" CreationDate="2013-07-18T12:49:10.590" Score="2" ViewCount="7303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had recently submitted my paper to this journal on the advise of my guide and quite fortunately, I received an email a few days back saying that the paper had been accepted for publication. So before I pay the requisite fee of $165 (what is your opinion? is this too much?) I just wanted to know how good the journal was (the website says it has an impact factor of 2.13) and how much value such a publication will have. Would be really nice if someone could guide me on this. (This would be my first publication and I'm an undergraduate student)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the journal's website link: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ijpam.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ijpam.eu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7786" LastEditorUserId="49927" LastEditDate="2021-05-24T13:00:17.420" LastActivityDate="2021-05-24T13:00:17.420" Title="How good is the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics? (http://www.ijpam.eu/)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-18T13:15:47.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11217" CreationDate="2013-07-18T13:13:11.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To try to make this answer generalizable, here's how one can investigate in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to ask more experienced researchers for their opinions, which is exactly what you've done here.  But you may run into the problem that you can't find people who know the journal.  For example, I don't recall having heard of IJPAM before, but it's not clear what that means.  IJPAM is certainly not a famous or prestigious journal, but there are a lot of journals out there and nobody has heard of all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; is a list of &quot;potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers.&quot;  The publisher of IJPAM (Academic Publications, Ltd.) appears on this list, which is a bad sign.  You have to decide how to interpret it - maybe Beall has made a mistake, or maybe your criteria are different from his - but it's an important sign that you should investigate further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then take a look at the actual papers and see what you think of them (or ask faculty members at your university).  In the case of IJPAM, I found it quite worrisome.  I looked at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijpam.eu/contents/2013-82-5/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;most recent issue&lt;/a&gt; and found several papers that don't look like research papers at all: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijpam.eu/contents/2013-82-5/4/4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sudoko: the new smash hit puzzle game&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijpam.eu/contents/2013-82-5/5/5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Odd and even number cultures&lt;/a&gt;.  This suggests IJPAM will publish nearly anything.  If you've written a research paper, having it appear next to papers with no research content would look bad, so I recommend against publishing in IJPAM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T00:03:23.827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T00:03:23.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11220" CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:05:12.297" Score="11" ViewCount="1538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Me an other colleagues organized an Special Issue of some Journal (indexed by ISI) and after having accepted some of the submitted papers (10 in total), we wrote an editorial, which will also appear in the Journal. Do you think such effortless papers can be considered or cited in a CV as a regular paper or should be put into another section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T17:08:13.080" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T17:08:13.080" Title="Should an Editorial be considered as a regular paper in CV, or should it be put in another section?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11219" CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:22:47.047" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am editing an ISI listed journal and have also noticed that the editorials I or others write end up as if they were regular publications and obtain citations. I do not think they should be considered as such but believe it simply is a flaw in the system. The persons entering data or who made the system that scans published papers simply cannot distinguish between editorials and papers, despite the word &quot;Editorial:&quot; occurring in the title of such contributions in &quot;my&quot; journal. Since these editorials are not reviewed by others than the editors-in chief (in my case) they are not fully peer reviewed and would definitely not pass a regular review since they were never intended as journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do one want to put an editorial &quot;paper&quot; in the CV? I do not think it belongs under the heading of papers published in refereed journals. But, having written an editorial means you have been instrumental to produce a thematic journal issue and so you can list it in conjunction with &quot;meriting academic missions&quot; (or whatever you might call it). It will represent the journal issue and the work done there which, in my opinion, is probably worth more than a paper. The fact that it might also be cited can be taken as indicating interest in the jorunal issue that you have summarized in the editorial, but should be kept separate from regular papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add as a final note that the key for me is whether or not the contribution has been properly peer reviewed. I doubt many editorial receive proper peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T21:27:02.543" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T21:27:02.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:34:44.523" Score="4" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably field specific. I'm mainly interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields and psychology/neuroscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, like the title says, how novel should conference papers be? I'm early in my career and find it difficult to judge if my work is yet publishable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose my advisor says nothing about the work I have done, and I have to decide myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7790" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T17:40:02.417" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T17:40:02.417" Title="How novel should conference papers be?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11224" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:46:35.823" Score="10" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ? Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T12:32:55.973" Title="Submitting course work report as research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:50:37.167" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (bioinformatics, systems/computational biology) if you don't have a PhD you practically don't exist on the map, but yet it's a very research oriented field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine a couple of issues where a PhD might have a negative effect on the attractiveness of a candidate, while none of the below are prove-able facts, they are directly based on my experience (myself, people I know, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overspecialization:&lt;/strong&gt; In many industries being overspecialized might hurt more than it helps. You might get stuck on obscure case scenarios, or obsess about rigor before anything else. Likewise doing research might have an effect on having a more abstract, rather than practical, way of thinking. Most of us don't really &quot;deliver&quot; a product. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jadedness:&lt;/strong&gt; Those 4-6 years spent doing research is likely to have caused some self-doubt, questioning yourself. In my experience most people that go corporate after uni live in a state of blissful ignorance, compared to their classmates who've gone on to pursue PhD studies. (yes, I might have exaggerated it a bit but the point is still valid I believe)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attitude:&lt;/strong&gt; While this might not be the general truth, in my experience people in the academic world is much more laid-back than corporate world. While most of my old classmates are expected to be at their desk at 7 or 8 sharp, and expected to leave latest by 5 to avoid working overtime, I can practically show up and leave whenever I feel like. What my boss cares about is whether or not the project progresses as we have decided. A potential employer might be wary of such &quot;bad habits&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, not a factual answer but I hope it provides some insight, anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T03:52:37.140" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T03:52:37.140" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11222" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:52:13.117" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as the results are novel and you meet the other necessary prerequisites for publication (acknowledge main contributors as authors, acknowledge secondary contributors in acknowledgements, reference and discuss related work, meet level of technicality/significance required, etc.), I don't see any problem of submitting course-work for publication, and if as you say the work has had some impact in the field, I think it should be encouraged!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask your professor or other senior staff member for advice, but I don't believe any special mentions would be required other than what's mentioned above. You could mention it as a footnote or as an acknowledgement if so desired. Also, if your work was (even indirectly) funded through a specific research grant, they may require acknowledgement as a condition of the grant. Again, talk to a staff member involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T12:32:55.973" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T12:32:55.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2013-07-18T17:02:23.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, like the title says, how novel ideas should conference papers present? I'm early in my career, and find it difficult to judge is my work yet publishable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is extremely field specific and even specific to different conference venues. But conference venues, by offering (supposedly) quick turnaround of papers, do emphasise novelty of results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a reviewer, in judging novelty, I look at four main things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is novelty made clear:&lt;/strong&gt; Have the authors clarified what methods have been presented in the literature and clearly argued how their work differs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the novelty make sense:&lt;/strong&gt; Oftentimes, authors strap things onto previous works or make unusual design choices (seemingly) just to be novel, and then they adapt their evaluation accordingly. If you say, for example, you have designed a new &quot;hexagonal&quot; wheel that's different from the round wheels in the literature and you show that it's less inclined to run away down hills, that's obviously problematic. (Though the analogy is a hyperbole, this case is quite common in my experience.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did I learn anything:&lt;/strong&gt; If the results are new but are already quite obvious, or are trivially derived as a synthesis of existing results, novelty is poor. As a reviewer, I need to learn (or at least &lt;em&gt;confirm&lt;/em&gt; with solid data) something non-trivial!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could this lead to further research:&lt;/strong&gt; It is certainly a boon for the paper's novelty if it could lead to a new line of research; i.e., if it's novelty warrants further investigation, and could lead to further publications, particularly by other authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T17:29:03.860" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T17:29:03.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11193" CreationDate="2013-07-18T17:48:50.617" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update: Here's the new text of the German &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__38.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UrhG §38 Abs (4)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Der Urheber eines wissenschaftlichen Beitrags, der im Rahmen einer mindestens zur Hälfte mit öffentlichen Mitteln geförderten Forschungstätigkeit entstanden und in einer periodisch mindestens zweimal jährlich erscheinenden Sammlung erschienen ist, hat auch dann, wenn er dem Verleger oder Herausgeber ein ausschließliches Nutzungsrecht eingeräumt hat, das Recht, den Beitrag nach Ablauf von zwölf Monaten seit der Erstveröffentlichung in der akzeptierten Manuskriptversion öffentlich zugänglich zu machen, soweit dies keinem gewerblichen Zweck dient. Die Quelle der Erstveröffentlichung ist anzugeben. Eine zum Nachteil des Urhebers abweichende Vereinbarung ist unwirksam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rough translation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of a scientific work &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which was produced during scientific reseach that funded at least half by public money and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which was published in a periodical that is issued at least twice per year &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;retains the right to make the &lt;em&gt;accpted manuscript&lt;/em&gt; publicly available &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;after an embargo period of 12 months from the date of the first publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as long as this is not for commercial purposes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the first publication must be given.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This right is retained also in case of a complete copyright transfer to the publisher of editor.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Agreements on this topic to the disadvantage of the author are void.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the non-commercial clause will raise some questions and difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;old answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany, the parliament (Bundestag) actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://dipbt.bundestag.de/extrakt/ba/WP17/524/52444.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;voted to change §38 UrhG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;to (among other changes): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Einführung eines unabdingbaren Zweitverwertungsrechtes für Autoren von mit überwiegend aus öffentlichen Mitteln geförderten Beiträgen in Periodika 12 Monate nach Erstveröffentlichung;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rough translation: &lt;em&gt;introduction of an unalienable right of secondary use* for authors of contributions to journals which are mainly supported mainly by public grants  12 months after the primary publication&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* I'm not quite sure how to translate &quot;Zweitverwertungsrecht&quot; - it is the right for secondary use/exploitation(?) of a work. Meaning that agreements that the publisher get the exclusive rights to the work will be valid in Germany only for 12 months, thereafter the authors have the right to make these papers publicly available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new text does not yet show up (the voting took place only 2 weeks ago) in the law texts in internet, it will become &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__38.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;§38 (4) UrhG&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this still means that only papers with public funding are covered, and the embargo period may be annoying, I see this as an important step into the right direction. And it definitively means that there won't be any possibility for publishers to enforce anything after a year if a German author made the work publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, our version of the &quot;fair use&quot; rights mean that  I'm always allowed to send single copies of scientific papers which are needed for collaboration to my colleagues. So within the first year after publication, you'll still have to email me for the paper, but thereafter, you can blame me for not making the manuscript available e.g. via arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T10:55:37.803" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T10:55:37.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11195" CreationDate="2013-07-18T17:51:51.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on your field. If in it arXiv is not popular, make a separate list named &quot;Preprints&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is popular (i.e. people are expected to post on arXiv along with sending to the journal), then it is common to have a single list (where, naturally, papers from last months or a year are only on arXiv, other - both have the journal reference and arXiv ID). If older papers are peer-reviewed then it is somehow implied that the new ones are likely to get into journals/conferences as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have only arXiv preprints (e.g. as you are only starting your career) it is not implied that they will get accepted. Anyway, listing them is way better than listing nothing - just make a list of &quot;Preprints&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case putting preprints may give you an edge - especially if your preprints are related to research they are interested in (for me, quite a few times, they were a starting point of a specialistic discussion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T12:46:44.487" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T12:46:44.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T21:18:46.547" Score="26" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that coming up for tenure/getting tenure is often an opportunity to move to another institution (even if tenure is granted). How does this work in practice? Is it common for assistant professors to formally go on the job market the year that they are up for tenure? Do they do it only informally, by asking around? Do schools just make offers to up-for-tenure APs without prompting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious how this works, because it seems that often times these moves are worked out shortly after tenure decisions are made, so it seems like they must have been in the works before hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm most interested in highly ranked US based research universities.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7792" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T09:56:50.787" Title="Job search when coming up for tenure" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T21:35:01.807" Score="4" ViewCount="1821" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the very beginning of my scientific career, so I don't yet know the standards for (systematic) reviews very well. I feel I don't have so much experience that I could publish my own research in good journals (I have now just two conference papers), so I'm considering to pay close attention for 6-12 months in other peoples' works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a clear research question, but given the massive amount of related papers it's difficult to choose which ones to pick. Of course, I will select papers related to my research question as the first criteria. However, could I narrow the range of included papers more by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publication date (e.g. only take papers published during the past five years),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;impact factor or citation count,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type of publication (conference, journal),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sample size (e.g. number of subjects)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if not these, what criteria are commonly used? I guess the answer is different for reviews and systematic reviews, so please cover both if possible. thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm considering this so that it would be possible to try publish my results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7793" LastEditorUserId="7793" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T21:40:30.880" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T06:09:26.023" Title="What are acceptable criteria to select publications for a (systematic) review?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11229" CreationDate="2013-07-18T21:51:00.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not find any of these points very relevant. The publication date couldbe useful if your topic is such that older references are indeeed obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write a review you want to collect papers that describe your topic as well as possible. A review is usually a good point for others to see the depth and breadth of a subject so being complete is usually a sign of quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you have a topic, you need to consider how you should organize your information. Is there any new that can come out of the way you organize your review? A review is not just a collection of older results, you need to provide a synthesis. Often the outcome is to made limitations in older work visible or to identify gaps in knowledge or point at directions for new development. Depending on what the purpose will be you may end up chosing papers differently. However, often you do not know the structure until you have read enough and come to realize how the knowledge in th earea is distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for me there is no real difference between review and systematic review. A review is simply a way to orgnaize and sort older information in a new way so that new patterns emerge and hint at directions for further research or other forms of new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T21:51:00.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11228" CreationDate="2013-07-18T23:21:03.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a manifestation of game-playing, and is completely understandable once one starts thinking in such terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a person is in an excellent situation to get tenure at their current institution, they are probably in an equally good position to get other jobs, perhaps with tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another feature: if a person has done good-enough work that they've got outside offers, this can set in motion the getting-tenure process at their current institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Shallowly enough, the &quot;best&quot; certification of one's academic virtue is outside offers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I think most up-for-tenure assistant profs in the U.S. are not really looking for outside offers as they come up for tenure, so even if they could generate them, they'd not try. For that matter, despite the &quot;rewards&quot;, many people find this game-playing obnoxious so don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer another part of your question: yes, most formal job offers only arise after informal inquiries and back-and-forth, because... as with high-school dating... getting turned down is embarrassing. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who are interested in gaming the system continue to do so after tenure, typically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T23:21:03.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11237" CreationDate="2013-07-19T03:04:39.617" Score="6" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm designing a leadership development program for a graduate college at a research university. As part of the project, I've designed a summary sheet which each participant will receive. The summary is designed to give them an impression of their overall leadership development. It includes an &quot;overall leadership score,&quot; which is currently shown as a number on a 1-10 scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intent is for all students to begin the program at a baseline level of 5. Students who demonstrate multiple positive leadership traits will raise their score above a 5. Students who show a lack of these traits will lower that score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd like to replace the 1-10 scale since it will be difficult to keep the baseline or average score of 5 from being equated with a 50, an F, etc. For the same reason, I've avoided the use of a letter scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have suggestions on an alternative grading system that is well suited to this type of grading task? I'm also trying to find something that won't be too discouraging for students whose leadership scores are below average (seeing a 0 or an F would not get the right message across).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:52:32.827" Title="Suggestions for an alternative grading system" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;grading&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11229" CreationDate="2013-07-19T04:08:27.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of a review of a field or subfield (IMHO) is to &lt;strong&gt;tell the story&lt;/strong&gt; of the development of the field, leading up to explaining &lt;strong&gt;what are the major open questions?&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;why are they important?&lt;/strong&gt;  Often (though not always), you should focus on &lt;strong&gt;big ideas&lt;/strong&gt; and which developments they have lead to.&#xA;If there was a sequence of 10 papers that repeatedly applied roughly the same ideas to larger data sets, because they got bigger and faster computers, that is probably not very interesting, and something you will likely gloss over (or completely omit) from your review.  So you need a way to determine which are the &lt;em&gt;most important papers&lt;/em&gt; and start with those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's hard to write a review before you know the field.&lt;/strong&gt;  Here are a few possible ways to get that knowledge quickly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read an old review in the same area.  See which papers it claims are foundational, then check to see which more recent papers cite the foundational ones.  Iterate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to lots of seminar talks and see which results always get mentioned in the introduction.  Start by reading those papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask a more senior student or faculty member where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T04:08:27.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1836" CreationDate="2013-07-19T05:27:47.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it really depends on what the person actually wants to do with the two different degrees. For example if someone has both a PhD in chemisty and biology to become a biochemist, their understanding of the subject would be much more versatile. It is absolutely not nessesary by any means, but it would just depend on the person and how many angles they want to approach a subject; some people prefer more than one way of looking at something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7797" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T05:27:47.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11229" CreationDate="2013-07-19T06:09:26.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In health related fields there is a huge difference between a review and a systematic review. The point of a standard review is to summarise an area of research possibly identifying areas of future research, but not necessarily. A standard review is often conducted in conjunction with a meta analysis or leads to a meta analysis to determine if a particular Patient population is helped by an Intervention more than a Comparison intervention on a set of Outcomes. This leads to the PICO search strategy. There are a number of different frameworks by which systematic reviews can be conducted. A Cochrane review is one such system. There is a whole field of literature associated with conducting systematic reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a systematic review, and a review in general, is to find all the relevant papers. If you want less papers you need to narrow your question. PICO can help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T06:09:26.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11232" CreationDate="2013-07-19T07:52:01.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a rubric that includes the desired qualities of each category.  If you're really worried about the scale, don't include the numbers or letters at all, or change to something like Roman Numerals.  I would not include more than four or five categories, unless you can really break down differences. E.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. Not making progress. The student needs to improve his/her leadership skills, to include participating in mentor/mentee relationships with junior students, or actively seeking out lead roles in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. Pre-leadership.  The student is new to the lab, and has not yet developed leadership roles.  The student should start looking for opportunities for leadership, and should begin considering the type of leader he or she wants to be.  The student should thoughtfully observe other leaders and their leadership styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;III. Making progress.  The student is actively engaged in a leadership role in the lab and/or has made mentor/mentee relationships with junior students.  The student should continue to develop his/her leadership skills in these roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IV. Excellent leadership development.  The student has actively developed his/her leadership opportunities, and is capable of independent leadership in the lab.  Other students view him/her as a quality leader and are comfortable going to the student for guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;V. Phenomenal leader.  The student is qualified to independently lead large groups of other students, and is able to mentor others in leadership roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, I would start everyone off at (II).  Everyone will know they should look for leadership opportunities, and it should be relatively easy to get into the (III) category.   Obviously, this is only an example, and can be tailored to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also trying to find something that won't be too discouraging for students whose leadership scores are below average (seeing a 0 or an F would not get the right message across).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think having some sort of forcing function is necessary; otherwise, what is the reason to improve?  In my example, you could tone down &amp;quot;Not making progress&amp;quot; (or take it out), but if you do want to show students who aren't improving that they need to, you should have at least one negative category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T08:28:30.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11232" CreationDate="2013-07-19T09:46:57.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear what you are trying to accomplish with your grading system. If the point is to evaluate/rank the students then 1-10 is probably as good as anything else. If it is to be used as a formative tool then using an absolute scale is probably less helpful and what the students need to know are their relative strength and weaknesses and areas that they can improve on. What this means is that a student who gets a 9 out of 10 still can improve his/her leadership, similarly a student with a 2 out of 10 likely has leadership areas/traits that can be improved more than others. It is not clear to me that the competition aspect of ranking the students will be beneficial in this case. If you go with a relative scale you could just make the total of the numbers sum to 10 (or 1 or 100). Better would probably be a stacked bar or pie chart so it is clearer that comparisons across individuals are meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best &quot;grading&quot; system for leadership is probably one that doesn't assign presence/absence of leadership traits, but rather one that characterizes in positive terms the type of leadership each individual is most suited for (e.g. the managerial grid model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T15:52:32.827" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:52:32.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11228" CreationDate="2013-07-19T09:56:50.787" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot think of any assistant profs in the US who did not actively go on the job market when they were coming up for tenure. This seems to me to be reasonable behaviour even if you have no desire to move because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting tenure at your current institution is a bit of a crap shoot.&#xA;It is obviously influenced by how good your past work is, but there&#xA;are a lot of other factors at play. The success rate is not&#xA;particularly high.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also believe, although have no data to back it up, that having a&#xA;tenured offer from one university increases your chances of a tenured&#xA;offer from another university. This of course could be correlation&#xA;and not causation, but I am not convinced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being up for tenure is not a black mark on your CV, being turned down&#xA;for tenure and then going on the job market opens up a big question&#xA;mark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T09:56:50.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11249" CreationDate="2013-07-19T10:44:15.017" Score="2" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a junior looking for insights on intro to academia. My GPA is considered low (~3.2), but I believe I have a reasonable understanding and experience in the field I'd like to study and would like to try to submit a paper to a conference to aim for top-10 CS grad schools and see if I really have research interest and potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what I should expect and how to plan for the next 1~2 years. Grad school applications are usually due before the spring semester, so I have roughly ~1.5 years to prepare, right? I noticed that the first deadlines for a lot of conferences in the field are between April~June. Will I have enough time to write one? How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning on asking professors if I can join a project when the semester starts (or ask for a review when I write one? I'm not sure what the options are). I wasn't planning on going to grad school until recently, so I'm not very familiar with this process, and I'd like to hear what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7799" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T19:54:10.213" Title="What should an undergrad CS student know to publish to a conference?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11137" CreationDate="2013-07-19T10:44:23.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD in statistics is more flexible and useful that PhDs in some other areas.&#xA;The usual issue with PhDs one hears about is that one becomes over-qualified for non-academic work once one has a PhD. Additionally, there is a lot of time spent getting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, statistics is intrinsically an applied science, and one that is in big demand across lots of areas, because it can be applied to lots of areas, unlike most academic disciplines. Specific anecdote: I was once told by a Statistics Professor that the head of a clinical trial is required to have a PhD in statistics (by the NHS, possibly). I don't know if this is true, but it sounds like something that is probably true. As he put it, this creates jobs for PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With computers being used more and more, and lots of data being created that needs to be analysed, new methods need to be invented to handle all this data. This is the kind of quasi-research work which is quite well suited for someone with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Areas like data visualization and graphics are quite hot right now. Having a PhD in an area like that will probably not hurt you. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://had.co.nz/thesis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hadley Wickham's thesis&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is possible to get a PhD from a Statistics Department without learning any statistics, for example if you write a Probability (Mathematics) thesis. You probably don't want to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience (I have a Statistics PhD) is that to get an interesting work, even in industry, a PhD is helpful. Much of the work so-called statisticians do is to mindlessly apply standard algorithms from some software package to data using things like SAS, and then package up the (machine produced) results. If you have a functioning brain, you don't want to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, it seems &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;such questions are not on topic at stats.sx&lt;/a&gt;, but you could ask people on chat there - perhaps point to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T10:44:23.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11240" CreationDate="2013-07-19T11:39:02.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first -- generally, you do research with the intent to learn something and/or to solve an open problem, not with the intent to publish a paper so you can get into graduate school.  This relates directly to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will I have enough time to write [a paper]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing what you're planning on researching, or how it will turn out, this is unanswerable.  Writing a research paper for publication isn't as simple as saying you're going to do it -- you have to have a legitimate problem to work on, the tools and ability to produce a novel contribution regarding that problem, and the drive to make it happen.  Then, of course, you have to actually write and edit the paper, put together any graphs or other figures that demonstrate your contribution, find a suitable conference (or journal or workshop, etc.) to publish the paper in, and then actually submit it by the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, your idea to ask professors about joining their research groups is a good one.  With this plan, you have the potential to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out if you enjoy and have the temperament for research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get mentorship from a professor, grad students, or other more experienced undergraduates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out what problems are interesting and worth pursuing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice the steps of going from idea to published results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you find a professor to work with (and again, I suggest phrasing your request in terms of why you are interested in computer science research, and not on the means to getting into graduate school), you will start getting answers to the other questions, like what specific conferences you might want to shoot for.  Obviously, it behooves you to plan ahead in order to meet conference deadlines, but until you start the research, you won't be able to determine whether you will eventually have enough good results to put together a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general guideline, it would not surprise me if you can find a good problem to work on and submit it to a workshop or conference within a year and a half.  You might also be able to work on an ongoing project and end up as an author on a paper or two that come from this work.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T11:39:02.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11232" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:12:39.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a challenging question. I believe your goal is to measure progress and not overall leadership-levels. That is, Student A could enter with strong leadership skills and would start at a 5. Student B could enter with weak leadership skills and would also start at a 5. If Student B shows more progress in improving their leadership skills, then Student B should end up with a 7 (for example) while Student A who was a bit lax and did not improve might end up with a 4 or even 3. The goal, as I understand, is to measure &lt;strong&gt;improvement&lt;/strong&gt; only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my understanding is correct you have a challenge in that if students know this, they will try to corrupt (by under-performing) the baseline. Then they will naturally appear to have improved more than they really have giving them a better grade not by improving but by gaming your grading system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could structure it by &lt;em&gt;learning outcomes&lt;/em&gt; whereby points of improvement are each an outcome. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outcome 1: Improve ability to communicate to those in subordinate positions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outcome 2: Improve......&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this, you do not fix the levels but show what areas in which each student should actually improve. This also makes it extremely clear what the goals are. You could assign a certain number of points per outcome (10 for outcome 1, 5 for outcome 2, etc.) to sum up to a total score as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not a discussion board but I'd love to hear what you ended up doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:12:39.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-19T16:30:00.277" Score="-1" ViewCount="1385" Body="&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization (WHO) has a number of apps, I felt I should keep the question rather general in order to prevent people from attempting to close this question for being too narrow, but I really am interested in how I would cite the diagnostic criteria in &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICD-10&lt;/a&gt; in Vancouver style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4438" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T01:47:00.860" Title="How does one cite WHO apps?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11248" CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:40:10.690" Score="8" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a really stupid mistake. Me and some other graduate students were playing Dungeons and Dragons in my lab after hours (9 pm) this summer and we each opened up a beer and the cleaners called the cops on us. I think I'm going to get an academic censure because of it, which means I think that it will go on my transcripts. This is the only case of my misconduct, and I feel really stupid that I did it. My question is will this greatly affect my ability to go into a PhD program? I joined this masters program as a stepping stone, and have done very well academically and with my thesis in this program. I'm worried that all the progress I have made will go away because of one lapse of judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="6898" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T22:27:35.830" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T22:27:35.830" Title="Having Public Consumption on my record to greatly affect my PhD applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:12:03.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do everything I can to prevent this going on my transcript. The first thing I would do is write a letter of apology to the cleaning crew for my misbehaviour. Do not approach the cleaners directly, but rather through their boss. Then I would contact the head of the MS program to explain what happened. While waiting for that meeting I would schedule a meeting with an alcohol counsellor so I could demonstrate I do not have a problem drinking. You may also want to enrol in a workplace sensitivity training course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot recall seeing an application with anything like this before. I don't think people would really hold it against you and you could explain it in your cover letter. That said graduate school admission is competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T18:12:03.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11240" CreationDate="2013-07-19T19:54:10.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That question depends on a lot of factors. Here are a few of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the significance of your research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much of your research is unique, novel, and relevant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will other computer scientists be interested in your findings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well can you write? How well can you organize your paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do you intend to publish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some conferences and publications are more competitive than others. (Put another way, some have a lower acceptance rate than others.) Much of that depends on who sponsors the conference or publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you have to do the research (this is not trivial). Significant findings need to come from that research (this doesn't always happen). You have to write that in a way that will appeal to the community (the community can be rather fickle sometimes). Lastly, you have to find some venue where the work can be presented (it's not always easy to find a good match).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a paper gets rejected, it could be because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research doesn't report anything new or significant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research doesn't report anything of interest to the community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper is poorly written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper doesn't cite other related research, leading to a credibility problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There simply wasn't room for your paper in the publication, or it wasn't a good match for that venue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting back to your original question, you might be able to publish in a year, if everything goes very smoothly. However, that's a huge &quot;IF.&quot; Even established researchers can spend years getting ready for a publication, only to see it be rejected by a committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publication can be a long and arduous process, with plenty of opportunities for obstacles, setbacks, and dead ends. It can be very hard to estimate a timetable, particularly for a first-timer going from start to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet might be to see what's going on at your university, and see if you can get involved with an established, ohgoing research effort. Before you do that, it might be worth doing a self-evaluation first, so that you're prepared to tell a faculty member what you can offer the research team. For example, perhaps you're a crack programmer, and a research project at your institution needs some software written, in order to complete an experiment or simulation. That might be a more realistic way to get started as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T19:54:10.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11261" CreationDate="2013-07-19T21:02:09.550" Score="7" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it to a journal, since they might want partial credit? and would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7802" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T03:55:14.173" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T03:55:14.173" Title="When submitting a research paper as an independent researcher, is it advisable to have a professor look at it first?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11250" CreationDate="2013-07-19T21:17:42.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is a bit vague since you have not provided your own level of education or within what framework you do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is generally possible for anyone to publish a paper, you will not need to go through an academic. It may, however, be a very good step to take since essentially no-one can write a fault-free paper and if you do not have the experience or research eucation, you will find it almost necessary to stand a chance with a journal. Such a &quot;review&quot; will most certanly weed out any major problems with your paper. A problem here may of course be that your inexperience may make the task to improve the paper very time consuming (again, not knowing your own background makes it difficult to assess what help you may need) and hence make persons less likely to take on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal will as I can see ot spend more or less time your manuscript than they would any other of similar quality. If the journal accepts it for review (general quality check) it will be sent out to reviewers for more careful scrutiny (scientific quality check) after which the paper is recommended for either revisions or is rejected. none of this would be different in your case unless one taes into consideration that you may not be as fluent in scientific writing (which means rejection is more liekly than otherwse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a good plan is to try to contact persons at an academic institution, present your work and see if they would consider helping you. It is not certain you will be helped because your manscript will be extra work done in addition to everything else. If you cannot get help then you can hopefully try to submit the manuscript anyway, but I strongly recommend you to spend time looking at how papers in the field are written and also pick up a good reference book on scientific writing to make sure you avoid basic mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T21:17:42.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-20T01:44:44.790" Score="20" ViewCount="1516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attending a university with a mediocre mathematics department. The courses at my school cover fewer topics and are less challenging than the same courses at top universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I avoid becoming behind in coursework compared to students at top universities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I ensure that I am competitive when applying to mathematics graduate school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7805" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T04:06:54.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:41:13.600" Title="How to Remain Competitive at a Mediocre University?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11254" CreationDate="2013-07-20T02:12:30.253" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read as many mathematics books, lecture-notes, and published articles as possible. Not just &quot;textbooks&quot;. Not just &quot;undergraduate textbooks&quot; as these contain very little substantive mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your faculty people are not stellar mathematicians, they surely know some advanced mathematics and can give you guidance about what to read. Uninformed self-study can be a huge time-waster so you will want some direction to be productive and your mathematics faculty will be the best &amp;amp; most available people to provide you with productive guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely talk to faculty to get guidance! This can be done officially through a &quot;reading course&quot; or &quot;directed study.&quot; It can also be done informally through frequent check-ins with interesting questions. Either way this will enable those faculty members to write excellent letters of recommendation about your &lt;em&gt;interest&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;motivation&lt;/em&gt; based on your capacity to appreciate the things you will have read and your perceptive questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not so much whether &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; (as a novice) can handle random questions, which novices rarely can, but whether your sensibilities are heading in the right direction, which would be manifest in your &lt;em&gt;reaction to&lt;/em&gt; substantial mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T17:09:19.230" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T17:09:19.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11254" CreationDate="2013-07-20T03:06:47.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I ensure that I am competitive when applying to mathematics graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be a student member of a professional mathematics organization, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/&quot;&gt;Mathematical Association of America&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/&quot;&gt;American Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://siam.org/&quot;&gt;Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics&lt;/a&gt; (even if you are not based in the USA).  This will help you be up to date with recent developments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try submitting some answers to problems posed in publications like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/college-mathematics-journal/the-college-mathematics-journal&quot;&gt;The College Mathematics Journal&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cms.math.ca/crux/&quot;&gt;Crux Mathematicorum&lt;/a&gt;.  Publication of your name in the solutions section might help you in your application to graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, attend at least one conference in mathematics.  This will let you interact with students and researchers in other schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T03:06:47.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11254" CreationDate="2013-07-20T05:07:17.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you heard about Yitang Zhang's story? If not, I would suggest you to Google for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had you asked about other disciplines, my answer would be different. However, your major is math, I think top university or not does not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you have to do is to study hard. That's it. We are Internet age now. You have all kinds of resources available online. Our sister sites, Mathematics Stack Exchange and MathOverflow, can be very helpful to you. I myself am a retiree. I learn quite a lot from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, study. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T05:07:17.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11254" CreationDate="2013-07-20T05:32:18.893" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student who just graduated from a school whose math department is outside the top 50 and going to graduate school in applied math, I offer the following advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely get to know your professors well so they can write recommendation letters for you. One way to do that, as paul garrett mentions, is to take reading courses with professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important which classes you take: For pure math want to have at least taken classes in algebra, real/complex analysis, and topology. Note that if you plan to go to graduate school in applied math, you would want to take classes in programming, real/complex analysis, numerical linear algebra, ODEs/PDEs, and numerical analysis. Also ask your professors for advice on which classes you should take. The classes I have listed are just the bare &lt;strong&gt;minimum&lt;/strong&gt;. By junior/senior year, you should be taking graduate level math courses if you plan to apply to the very best graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research: Although I cannot speak for pure mathematics, if you are planning to go to graduate school in applied math, try to do research with a professor at your school or a summer REU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRE: Most Ph.D programs in pure/applied math will require that you take the Math Subject GRE (which is not the same as the general math GRE). Although recommendations will have the most weight on your application, the subject test should not be taken lightly. In order to prepare for it, re-do problems from your calculus and linear algebra textbooks. For the other 25% of the topics on the subject GRE, look for problems in textbooks. Also try the practice tests online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something I really wish I had done as an undergraduate would have been to study material ahead. For example, if you were going to take real analysis in the fall semester, I would find a real analysis book in the summer and try to work my way through it by doing as many problems as I can. Doing this will make classes easier and you learn the material much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you didn't know already, &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://math.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; is an &lt;strong&gt;amazing&lt;/strong&gt; resource for students learning math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2662" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T05:32:18.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-07-20T07:22:31.047" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody needs privacy;  to really discuss this issue some ambiguities must be removed.&#xA;Imagine a chemistry lecturer sharing an office with a political science lecturer? This will only lead to total confusion. Though it might help both lecturers to diversify their ideas, but will not help academically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest one senior lecturer with an assistant lecturer from the same field sharing an office. This will help the junior lecturer, and one hopes that the senior academic may learn from his/her younger colleague as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7808" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T18:41:48.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T18:41:48.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11266" CreationDate="2013-07-20T07:55:04.307" Score="11" ViewCount="3149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a rising senior at a Chinese university. I'm really interested in pursuing a master degree (as a stepping-stone to a PhD) in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know what &quot;Minimum Requirements&quot; for admission really mean. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsc.umd.edu/join_us/&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants should have at least a B average (3.0 on a 4.0 scale) in an undergraduate curriculum which includes a strong emphasis on mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My undergraduate school applies a mixture of the British and Chinese grading systems. While 4.0 represents a perfect average, less than 5% of students have an average above 3.5, and only about 25% of students achieve a 3.0 (I do not know exact number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do minimum requirements like the one above mean &quot;if you get grade lower than 3.0 in any grade system, do not waste your money on applying,&quot; or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T17:26:44.023" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T00:05:11.307" Title="How strict are listed minimum requirements for admission to a graduate degree program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11250" CreationDate="2013-07-20T08:03:23.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer you two specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?”&lt;/em&gt; — &lt;strong&gt;Yes, if you have no previous experience of publishing papers&lt;/strong&gt; (as a principal author). Academic publication is a game with a set of written rules and some non-written expectations. You can find the rules indicated on the publisher's webpage (guidelines to authors, editorial policy, etc.). If you have read a good number of papers, including many papers from the specific journal (or conference, or …) you are submitting to, then you may have inferred some of the non-written expectations. But otherwise, having someone to help you with the more formal part of academic writing will enhance your paper's chances.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?”&lt;/em&gt; — &lt;strong&gt;Yes again, if you do not have a very good understanding of the field, its advances and its directions.&lt;/strong&gt; To be somewhat brutally honest (and in line with paul’s comment): from experience, newcomers to research, or to a specific field, have a natural tendency to reïnvent the wheel or overestimate the impact and novelty of their work. It's okay, judging these correctly involves a very good grasp of the overall field, both in-breadth and in-depth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation?”&lt;/em&gt; — &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. For two articles of the same quality, with an unknown author, I don't think the presence of an affiliation would impact review time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit to answer question in comment: “Would a professor who reviews the paper want credit?”&lt;/em&gt; — &lt;strong&gt;It depends&lt;/strong&gt; on the amount of work required and the ethics of the person you ask. If reviewing the paper requires significant amount of time, especially because there are many faults with the paper that need to be fixed, you could see that there must be incentive for the professor to invest in it. In all cases, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/authorship&quot;&gt;discuss this issue upfront!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T15:56:32.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11260" CreationDate="2013-07-20T09:15:44.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially, this means that they would prefer applicants to have a B-grade (3.0 out of 4.0) minimum as an average of their final results.  However, having said that, if you get less (by not too much), I would still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also advise to include details of other relevant activities (research activities and initiatives you may have done), any and all publications and any professional memberships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T09:15:44.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11272" CreationDate="2013-07-20T10:02:57.823" Score="9" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to check how competitive it is to get into a school's PhD (or MS/PhD track) program, what should I look at? For undergraduate, I usually search for the incoming SAT/ACT scores and the acceptance rate, and I found that pretty reliable. Is there something like that for grad schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7799" LastEditorUserId="7799" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T19:33:34.627" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T21:14:40.927" Title="Is there a reliable way to measure how difficult it is to be admitted to a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11260" CreationDate="2013-07-20T10:10:02.770" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, yes. If your grade is well under 3.0, you may be wasting your money for the application fee. Your application may be filtered out by some secretary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would strongly recommend you to use other criteria to determine which schools you want to apply. You want to consider the programs and the faculty the schools have. If they have the program you are interested in  and the professors you would like to go with, then go ahead to apply no matter what. You never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is the school you'll graduate from. Many admission commitees are aware of the different standards that different schools use. They understand that 2.9 from school X may be actually better than 3.5 from school Y. If you can afford to the application fee and you really like that school, go ahead try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors such as TOEFL and GRE scores, recommendation letters and research potentials are sometimes even more important than your GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T10:10:02.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11260" CreationDate="2013-07-20T10:11:35.793" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No direct conversion of grades is possible between various systems. So, you will have to argue your way into their program, by presenting your results in the best light possible and making a convincing case that you would fulfill their requirements if you were in their system. &lt;em&gt;Because in the end, your application will be judged by people, not computer&lt;/em&gt;. At least if you make it clear that your system is quite different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the ways to do it is, as you started to do, by comparing percentiles: figure out what their grade requirement equals to in terms of quantile, and start from there. “I am in the top 25% of my school, which is equivalent to a grade of XX (based on these official statistics)”. That sort of reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T10:11:35.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11268" CreationDate="2013-07-20T16:51:59.200" Score="2" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always read phrases such as &quot;empirical data&quot; and &quot;empirical study.&quot; What does it mean when a study is empirical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T17:25:58.877" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T21:13:39.137" Title="What is an empirical study?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11267" CreationDate="2013-07-20T17:04:17.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good definition from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empirical evidence (the record of one's direct observations or experiences) can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good resource is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-4/empirical-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EricDigests.com&lt;/a&gt; is a further resource that goes through in detail the steps to empirical research, the 7 that are defined from that link are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Randomisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reliability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation of Treatment Variable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis Issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The full details are on the 2nd link - too much to fit here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T17:04:17.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2013-07-20T18:19:15.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need to worry unless there's something more to the context.  Drinking a single beer in a computer lab seems pretty harmless; the university might legitimately object to the risk of spilling your beer, but this should not be a career-ending mistake.  On the other hand, drinking in a chemistry lab could be a very serious safety violation, especially if you were tending to an experiment during the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the only problem is a technical violation of the &quot;public consumption&quot; rule and that you retain the full support of your letter of recommendation writers, I doubt it will do you any harm even if it does end up on your transcript.  You should look at your transcript before applying to see exactly what it says.  You can then include a few sentences somewhere in your Ph.D. application addressing this issue and explaining that the &quot;academic censure&quot; was only because you had a single beer in a campus location not specifically permitted.  This is very important, because to me the term &quot;academic censure&quot; sounds more like cheating or plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you aren't applying to Brigham Young University or KAUST, I can't see why anyone would care about this sort of technicality.  It would lower my opinion of the university, rather than the applicant.  (On the other hand, if there's more to the story, such as safety violations, then you'll have to work harder to sort it out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T18:19:15.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11264" CreationDate="2013-07-20T20:03:21.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although not entirely accurate, due to the high variability of individual applicants and admissions committees, UT El Paso created an &quot;Acceptance Estimator&quot; for Computer Science applicants. The Estimator provides an ordered list of schools the applicant is likely to be accepted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utep.edu/admissions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UTEP CS Acceptance Estimator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gripe is that it largely ignores the most important component of one's application: Research Experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Estimator is designed to help you find schools that match up to your skills, and by no means is 100% correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T20:03:21.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11264" CreationDate="2013-07-20T20:46:05.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any absolute measure for this. However, you can have a general idea by: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some schools provide last year(s) statistics about their programs&#xA;(usually in the prospective student section). For example, program A&#xA;has attracted X number of applications and Y applications were&#xA;accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, some programs have a fix limit (i.e. due to number of equipments available)  for number of applications to be accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes online admission results like the one in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grad Cafe&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;give you a sense on how strict the school is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T21:14:40.927" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T21:14:40.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-21T03:07:49.687" Score="27" ViewCount="5030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a westerner doing my PhD in an Asian country. While writing this I've just finished my first year, but I'm getting so fed up with my academical environment that I decided to move my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons why I went to Asia is that I'm in a technological field. Now a days with all these Asian countries up-and-coming, developing innovative products, it felt like a good moment to ride along on their train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last year I'm experiencing major difficulties with my advisor and I'm not sure whether it's because of cultural differences or just me. Let me highlight some of the major issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I did my masters, my advisors were actually people who gave me advice. My current professor is somebody who gives orders instead of advice. The big problem with that is that there's usually no room for persuading him with counter arguments. As stubborn as I'm, it usually ends up in me ignoring what he says.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There seems to be a big difference in how I approach weekly meetings. I make a selection of what I investigated during the week and decide myself which direction I go into and thus what I eventually present to him. It seems that he wants every direction thoroughly investigated and presented to him so that he can make a decision about the direction eventually. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These and other reasons, I don't think it makes people better. It won't let people think for themselves when they are just following. I got the comment last week that he thinks that my output is too low, but in fact I'm making the most progress, I'm just not presenting as much as everybody else because I make my own decisions upfront. I noticed that I intentionally not share everything with him anymore, because he always manage to turn everything upside down in one hour per week and ends with &quot;just do it.&quot; Like he always creates the strangest and most complicated experimental designs (e.g., 3x3x3) with factors that I don't think are related. I just want to perform a simple 2x2 design and deepening it more and more based on the results. It just feels very odd that somebody who only gets involved into a project an hour per week gives orders about the direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well the thing is that I seems to be the only one who thinks this is not normal. Since I always hear those stories that doing a PhD is always tough and sometimes makes you hate your advisor, I'd like to know where the problem is. I don't mind toughness, but it needs to serve a goal. Before I'm accepted to a different PhD in another country, I'd like to know if I'm getting in the same situation. If so, I don't think a PhD is the right thing for me then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7817" LastEditorUserId="7817" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T05:39:11.790" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T04:37:13.607" Title="What is exactly the role of a phd advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11273" CreationDate="2013-07-21T04:09:11.057" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The quality of your relationship with your PhD adviser is one of the biggest factors in determining your quality of life during grad school.&lt;/strong&gt;  I strongly encourage anyone in your position to consider switching advisers (which it sounds like you're doing).&#xA;I don't know what field you're in, so I can't authoritatively speak to &quot;the way it goes&quot; in that field.  However, speaking as a mathematician, there are a wide range of management styles.  Often, even the same PhD adviser will manage different students differently, depending on their abilities and desires.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schedule a weekly hour meeting without fail; others say &quot;come see me when you have something&quot;.  Some coauthor most of their students' papers, some rarely do. Some students, like you, feel micro-managed.  Others wish their adviser gave them more attention and cared more about their research.&#xA; My adviser essentially let me pick all of my own research problems, which was what I wanted.  It took me longer to start publishing than some other students, but I also felt well-prepared for life on my own after grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, stubborn micro-management is not &quot;just the way it goes&quot;; rather it's just the way it goes when you're working for a power hungry egomaniac.  Run, don't walk, to find another adviser!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="1069" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T21:38:53.640" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T21:38:53.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11273" CreationDate="2013-07-21T06:26:09.967" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are a westerner in Asia, I'll add my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all types of advisers in Asia but there are a greater percentage who expect you to shut up and do as you are told, and just say 'yes Teacher' and get the job done as instructed. In the west, this is not as common. This issue is part of the Asian culture. Of course, you can find exceptions everywhere and if you dig, I suspect you will be able to find an adviser in Asia whose style matches yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to be careful before choosing an adviser and try to find someone who you can 'sync' with well. As Dan C said, that relationship is a very important one for you. If you cannot find an adviser with a suitable style in Asia, then you should consider returning to the west where you will not have the underlying cultural conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T06:26:09.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11276" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-21T07:09:19.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;impact factor&lt;/strong&gt; (IF) is commonly used to compare different journals within a certain &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt;, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. It is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencegateway.org/impact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScienceGateway&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T07:35:46.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T07:35:46.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11277" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-21T07:09:19.407" Score="0" Body="The impact factor (IF) is commonly used to compare different journals within a certain field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T07:36:00.190" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T07:36:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11097" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:15:04.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said before, publishing reviews breaks convention but this, in itself, does not make it unethical.  Publishing anonymous reviews does not really affect reviewers—reviewers could do much worse to authors than what authors could do to reviewers.  (See Vijay's answer for examples.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the confidentiality of reviews is to protect the author: the fact that a paper got submitted remains confidential prior to publication.  Thus, authors may considerably rework their paper after receiving peer reviews, resubmit to another conference or even completely abandon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers are protected by their anonymity -- such that a young researcher can openly state his opinion about the paper of a renowned academic without fearing bad consequences.  I'd assume even stylometric analysis cannot reveal a reviewer's identity without doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all that, publishing reviews might still be regarded as unprofessional, depending on circumstances and context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7818" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T09:15:04.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:15:08.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Daniel’s and Anonymous’ answers are great, and I want to emphasize that they are not mutually exclusive. I’ll also add some tidbits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fight as much as you can to avoid it getting on your academic record. It may not matter much for admissions later on, or it may, you can never know for sure. It sure is easier if there is nothing to explain. You can tell the admission committee that “it was just a single beer”, but that's still just your word: all the official information they have is less informative and, probably, scarier than that. Also, being known from the start as “the guy with the beer-drinking record”, even if you get the position, may not be so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: fight nice! Don't create stronger hostility than you already have…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it does get on your record, be upfront and address it straight on in your cover letters. Doing so, people may not care so much. If you aren't upfront with it, they will definitely not take the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T09:15:08.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11280" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:15:37.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, Oceania, or the rest of Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The German educational system offers a wide variety of bachelor's and master's programs at universities, technical universities, universities of applied sciences (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fachhochschulen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) and universities of art (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_school&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kunsthochschulen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World famous institutions are for example RWTH Aachen and TU Munich, which are both part of the German &lt;em&gt;Exzellenzinitiative&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Universities_Excellence_Initiative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Excellence Initiative&quot;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Degrees&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to the Bologna Process, the predominant degree awarded by German universities were the &lt;em&gt;Magister&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;Master of Arts&quot;) for humanities and &lt;em&gt;Diplom&lt;/em&gt; (e.g., &lt;em&gt;Diplom-Ingenieur&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;certified engineer&quot;) for natural sciences and engineering, both after about five years of higher education including a final thesis. After Bologna, most universities have switched to a tiered Bachelor/Master system (usually 3+2 years), although some universities retain the old name &lt;em&gt;Diplom&lt;/em&gt; for the Master degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terminal degree is the &lt;em&gt;Doktor&lt;/em&gt; (qualified by the field, e.g., &lt;em&gt;Doktor rerum naturalium&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;doctor of natural matters&quot;, abbreviated &lt;em&gt;Dr. rer.nat.&lt;/em&gt;, in physics). One main difference to the North American system is that this is usually a pure research degree (including only a thesis and no mandatory coursework), but the increasing number of graduate schools has lead to some postgraduate courses being expected if not required. Candidates are frequently (at least in natural and engineering sciences) employed by the university, either as teaching assistant (&lt;em&gt;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt;) or research assistants (&lt;em&gt;Projektmitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt;, usually covered by a specific grant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Grading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for law schools (and doctoral programs) a 1 to 5 scale is used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1,0-1,3 &lt;em&gt;sehr gut&lt;/em&gt; (very good: an outstanding achievement)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1,7-2,3 &lt;em&gt;gut&lt;/em&gt; (good: an achievement which lies substantially above average requirements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2,7-3,3 &lt;em&gt;befriedigend&lt;/em&gt; (satisfactory: an achievement which corresponds to average requirements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;3,7-4,0 &lt;em&gt;ausreichend&lt;/em&gt; (sufficient: an achievement which barely meets the requirements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;4,3-5,0 &lt;em&gt;nicht ausreichend&lt;/em&gt; / &lt;em&gt;nicht bestanden&lt;/em&gt; (not sufficient / failed: an achievement which does not meet the requirements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For doctoral programs, the grades are usually&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;summa cum laude&lt;/em&gt; (with highest distinction)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;magna cum laude&lt;/em&gt; (with great distinction)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;cum laude&lt;/em&gt; (with distinction)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rite&lt;/em&gt; (sufficient)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How these distinctions relate to a numerical grade (if there is one) varies wildly between universities and departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1930/eu-ph-d-in-germany-calling-yourself-dr-or-ph-d&quot;&gt;EU Ph.D. in Germany: Calling yourself “Dr.” or “Ph.D.”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5960/is-a-german-hochschule-able-to-offer-a-ph-d&quot;&gt;Is a German &lt;em&gt;Hochschule&lt;/em&gt; able to offer a Ph.D.?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/399/ph-d-in-uk-ireland-as-dipl-ing-from-germany&quot;&gt;Ph.D. in UK/Ireland as “Dipl.-Ing.” from Germany&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Resources&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Germany#Universities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Academic Grading in Germany&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universities_in_Germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Universities in Germany&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T23:33:05.437" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T23:33:05.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11281" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:15:37.840" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to Germany's higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or elsewhere in Europe." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:10:09.513" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:10:09.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11283" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:28:13.707" Score="2" ViewCount="772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm submitting an mathematics article concerning research that was done entirely while I was an undergraduate at University A.  This August I will be a graduate student at University B.  The only funding I received came from NSF through a ten week program at University C at the very beginning of the project, after which I finished the research on my own while attending University A.  On the other hand, while University B has nothing to do with the publication, it is the most up to date institution as far as contact information goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I put University A or University B as my affiliation (or both)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4545" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T09:40:09.540" Title="Publishing while changing institutions" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-21T13:36:11.090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11282" CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:40:09.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard solution for your question is to indicate your current address in a footnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alexander Gruber &lt;sup&gt;a,†&lt;/sup&gt;, Another O. Tor &lt;sup&gt;a&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;a&lt;/sup&gt; University A, Department of Criminology, 221B Baker Street, London (UK)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt; Currently at University B, Logic Department, Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Sq, London (UK)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't use any of the resources of University B, that is the way to go. Otherwise, University B should be listed as an affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation regarding your University C is less clear to me: if you were affiliated with them, you need to list them. If they only “handled” the money given out by NSF, then simply mention them in the funding or acknowledgments section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acknowledgments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A. G. is grateful to NSF program #132-1237 for funding, administered by University C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T09:40:09.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2013-07-21T10:38:25.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are doing a PhD, I can recommend you to read the book &quot;The clockwork muse&quot;. This book has good pieces of advice to progress in your writing and avoid procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true most of the things that other have written to you. It is not good thinking that you have to spend all your waking time studying because if you do not have time for yourself, you will find that your body will take it by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, work 6-8 hours per day (roughly 40 per week), it is good time. So, you can relax your body without feeling guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read all the comments and it is helping to me too. Thank you for writing about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claudia &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7820" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T10:38:25.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11273" CreationDate="2013-07-21T15:38:44.007" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other good points made, and seconding the idea that one's relationship with one's advisor is very important, and agreeing that one must learn to think independently ... :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to have an advisor in whom one has confidence, and who is not merely a sounding-board or yes-man for your own ideas. Of course, some people are jerks, but hopefully when a senior person disagrees with a beginner, the beginner can see good reason to take this as profoundly good advice in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, for example, good advice from a more experienced person can help a beginner avoid pitfalls, avoid re-inventing the wheel, ... even better, avoid well-known failures-to-invent-the-wheel. Good advice can save a lot of time and energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, in some regards it's best to experience various failures, to relive them, first-hand, as a process to better understand what &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; succeed. But there is a cost, which can be high, including professional embarrassment. Ideally, a good advisor helps avoid this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own direct experience, I have had a few PhD students who were convinced (or hoped?) that I was seeing or making things more complicated than necessary in their projects, ignored my cautionary advice, and publicly-professionally embarrassed themselves considerably. I would say this was unfortunate and completely un-necessary, and certainly represents a big waste of time and opportunity. (To have the opportunity to give a presentation and inadvertently use it to embarrass oneself is a sad irony.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ideally, one's advisor is not merely &quot;older&quot;, but also &quot;wiser&quot; about not only specific technical details, but perhaps methodology, and about folklore, especially dangers and traps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sometimes, if one fails to convince someone else, one should consider the possibility that one's argument is in fact unpersuasive, rather than that the audience is stupid. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think &quot;obedience&quot; or &quot;compliance&quot; are high virtues, and I do not recommend obedience for its own sake. Rather, a subtler relationship with &quot;advisor&quot;, that may superficially resemble &quot;obedience&quot;, but in reality is more reason-based, is seeing/believing that the advisor's experience gives them wisdom which will help &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. If you can't see that in an advisor, then they won't be able to help you, either in &quot;objective reality&quot;, or else in your perception, and it hardly matters which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T15:47:14.250" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T15:47:14.250" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11290" CreationDate="2013-07-21T18:28:53.727" Score="14" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm beginner in research and I'm doing my PhD. I would like to know why when I read a paper I worry as if I have exam tomorrow and I have to prepare for it. How can I ignore that feeling and increase my productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T18:41:19.003" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T22:17:58.040" Title="Why am I worrying when I read a paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11345" CreationDate="2013-07-21T19:10:29.167" Score="15" ViewCount="2743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just thought that I would put this question out here because I am currently working on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis&quot;&gt;meta analysis&lt;/a&gt; of a particular research question in my field (HCI/information science). Moreover, this question is new and has not been answered in very detail so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done most of the usual ways described in other resources as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have done a comprehensive review of the relevant literature pertaining to this particular research question. This is a new area and the number of &lt;strong&gt;directly relevant&lt;/strong&gt; papers are ~&amp;lt;50. I have also compiled an exhaustive bibliography of the &lt;strong&gt;indirectly relevant&lt;/strong&gt; papers in this area. That number is ~&amp;lt;150.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Out of this set of &lt;strong&gt;directly relevant&lt;/strong&gt; literature, I have identified 23 quantitative empirical studies, 14 qualitative empirical studies and the rest are theoretical pieces/position pieces/framework papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge I am currently facing is how to meta-analyze the data. In HCI, it is not common to freely distribute empirical datasets (although signs of change are imminent in the atmosphere. :)) and I have sent out polite emails to the relevant researchers inquiring if I could have some manner of access to these datasets. The rate of response is ~50% so far in responding to my email but only about ~5% want to actively share their datasets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the only other option (that I can see right now) is to compile, summarize and make sense of data and results already reported in the qualitative and quantitative papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if any of you experienced (&lt;em&gt;and also not-so-experienced&lt;/em&gt; :)) academicians/researchers had any insights into how to actually go about doing a meta analysis from the bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main online resources which I have been using so far to tackle this problem is given&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statistical-solutions-software.com/what-is-meta-analysis/&quot;&gt;www.statistical-solutions-software.com/what-is-meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wilderdom.com/research/meta-analysis.html&quot;&gt;www.wilderdom.com/research/meta-analysis.html&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Meta-analysis&quot;&gt;www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://echo.edres.org:8080/meta/&quot;&gt;echo.edres.org:8080/meta/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do note that I am not expecting any detailed step-by-step &quot;&lt;em&gt;spoonfeeding&lt;/em&gt;&quot; response. Pointing me to some helpful resources is fine. In addition, personal anecdotes or valuable experiences will be really appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for taking the time to read this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T22:05:33.890" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T23:27:03.543" Title="How does a PhD student go about doing a meta analysis of a research question?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11287" CreationDate="2013-07-21T21:09:30.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We cannot tell you &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you are worrying: the best person to understand the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; is you. But we can tell you that there is no need to worry. Reading a paper is one of the everyday tasks of research, and while it is an important part of the job, you will have plenty of time to learn the ropes. If you're a beginner, just read through the paper, takes notes of the main points you understand, and the points you don't understand that seem important. You can then research those, or ask to your advisor or colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, reading papers is a statistics game: there are very few papers that are so crucial to your own research that you positively have to understand every single last idea and word in them (I would say, less than 10 during a PhD). Most of the time, some ideas are usefuls, some are not, plus there is a lot of redundancy between papers… I used to be quite scared that I would have missed some important paper in the bibliographic search, but quite frankly it's rare for an important idea to exist in a single place and never have been reüsed or quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T21:09:30.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11287" CreationDate="2013-07-21T22:17:58.040" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one little &quot;therapy&quot; often relevant is to try to remind yourself that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the authority in reading papers critically, and the goals are about &lt;em&gt;progress&lt;/em&gt;, not evaluation of &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; by some third party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is understandable that &quot;school&quot; has left one with an excessively paranoid concern about being attacked, being &quot;checked-on&quot;, being examined, being doubted, and so on. Indeed, &quot;school&quot; often includes exaggerated measures that express very clearly an antagonistic, adversarial attitude of &quot;teachers&quot; toward &quot;students&quot;. Naturally, many negligent students are able to ignore this pressure, while students who were already doing the right thing are the ones who feel that somehow they're not doing enough. A similar dynamic exists in many human enterprises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, the thing to repeat to yourself over and over is that now &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are to function as an authority, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are to assess these papers. The point is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; so much any more someone &lt;em&gt;else's&lt;/em&gt; assessment of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; &quot;performance&quot; (often on meaningless, contrived, artificial tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the common &quot;teaching-examining&quot; devices of &quot;trick questions&quot; should be forgotten. When encountering a new idea, don't immediately be worrying how someone could use the idea to trip you up, but, instead, what &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt; use &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; could make of it. In particular, if it does not (at least for the moment) seem useful to you, then don't spend a lot of time on it just for the sake of self-defense against trick questions! Nevertheless, one should often keep a &quot;pointer&quot; to seemingly useless ideas, because their utility may be discovered only later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't study things whose utility seems null. Move on, just keeping a &quot;bookmark&quot;, so if/when something percolates into your head later, you can go back and look a second time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T22:17:58.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T01:54:10.710" Score="15" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got rejected from quite a few grad schools.  Will this make it harder for the faculty at these schools to take me seriously if I interact with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm interested in having a particular professor at the school I will be attending as my advisor.  However, until a few month ago, he was a professor at a school I got rejected from.  I'm afraid that he will refuse to work with me, knowing that I wasn't qualified for the graduate program he was recently at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7828" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T05:56:55.057" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T03:59:24.137" Title="Will getting rejected from a graduate school affect my relationships with the faculty members at that school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11291" CreationDate="2013-07-22T02:14:19.603" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got hired as a postdoc at a university which had rejected my graduate application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And not just that. When I started, I realized that they had made the right decision. The background level of the first-years was uniformly and substantially higher than what mine had been when I started. I would have gotten creamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have the opportunity to prove yourself in your first year. Do a good job, and any weaknesses in your application will be quickly forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T02:14:19.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11291" CreationDate="2013-07-22T02:16:10.990" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it hard for this answer to not be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It depends on the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, do not listen to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposter_syndrome&quot;&gt;imposter syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Focus on your accomplishments, not on perceived failures. So you did not get into program A. The reasons you did not get into program A could be anyone of a long list of unknown and unknowable factors that have nothing to do with you. The number of applicants to program A may be so large that you were not excluded because you were not up to snuff but because you were one of a large number of very qualified applicants. Maybe the chair or members of the admissions committee are lazy, negligent, or perhaps just overwhelmed - and thus your application was not even examined. Perhaps your application was lost by the bureaucrats before it ever got from the dean's office to program A. Think no more about program A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did get in to program B. Focus on success at program B. The professor you wanted to work with moved from program A to program B, so there must be something better about program B. Consider the fact that you were accepted at program B and that the professor you want to work moved from program A to program B to be indicators of a good chance of success at program B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way that working with this professor will not happen is if you don't pursue it. If you worry yourself out of trying, you guarantee your failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless that professor was on the admissions committee, there is a fair chance that professor may not have even be aware of your application to the other program. Even if that professor was on the committee, he or she may not even remember you. Depending on the school and/or discipline, there may be hundreds of applicants. Even if that professor knew about your previous application, he or she should be professional enough to ignore it. If not, then maybe you don't want to work for that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T02:16:10.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T03:48:18.037" Score="5" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please forgive the rambling intro...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are all the rage when people write about teaching. So many articles have been written about MOOCs killing universities while others complain about the attention. Some have even discussed some community colleges using MOOCs with the classroom teacher filling more of a tutorial role using MOOCs for the bulk of their material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I reflect on my own classroom experience (as a lecturer) I find that a lot of my time is spent covering the basics while it would be much more interesting to focus on higher-level concepts. However, in the end, I have only a certain number of hours in the class with my students. If I have 60 hours and it takes 50 hours to cover the basics, there is little time remaining to cover much in the way of higher-level ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I've been considering assigning MOOC videos as homework and using class time as discussion time, much the way one would using the case method. While &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8855/undergraduate-not-doing-homework-case-method&quot;&gt;my experience with the case method&lt;/a&gt; has not been fantastic, I'm not ready to give up on it yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; What is the best way to integrate MOOC videos or other videos as part of the curriculum? Are there any major pitfalls that I should consider before completing my plan for the coming semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T05:31:45.880" Title="MOOC / video integration into classroom schedule" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;homework&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T04:01:22.530" Score="21" ViewCount="5760" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11294/mooc-video-integration-into-classroom-schedule&quot;&gt;This other question&lt;/a&gt; is about assigning videos as homework and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8855/undergraduate-not-doing-homework-case-method&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; is about what to do when students do not do their homework. However, there is another question to ask which is similar, but I think different, from these two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a class of 70 students and you assign some homework on which you will base the following class, and 40% of the students do not do the homework, that subsequent class becomes quite unmanageable. If you proceed as scheduled, the 40% will be lost, they cannot contribute, and eventually become distracting for the rest of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not run the class as scheduled, the students who did the homework the first time will see there is little benefit of doing the home and little cost of not doing it. For this reason, in the past, I have been quite strict. Students who did not do the homework get kicked out and marked absent (too many absences and they automatically fail the module). The problem with this approach is that kicking 40% out leaves me with a very high failure rate and in the end I just end up taking time which would otherwise be free for me to do as I wish and I must dedicate that time to these students who failed (for whatever reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I find myself in a difficult situation. Kicking students out hurts them but hurts me too. The problem is that I value my time much more than they value theirs so it ends up hurting me more than them. If I don't kick them out, my schedule gets destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one find balance in the classroom when a large percentage of students do not do the homework? Is there a way other than simply removing large chunks and failing them? Is thee a more enlightened way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note:&lt;/strong&gt; In my modules grades are pass/fail - I do not have the option to simply lower their grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T06:41:08.893" Title="Balancing between students who do homework and those who do not" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11295" CreationDate="2013-07-22T08:11:57.690" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you've stumbled upon a key and age-old pedagogical issue, and one that doesn't have an easy answer.  I would urge you to find an &quot;80%&quot; solution (meaning, don't try to solve the problem completely), and then work to within the parameters of that solution.  Kicking out 40% of the class isn't tenable for your long-term job security, I assure you.  Assuming your question is in regard to a collegiate class, then you do have the option to fall back onto &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this is your education that you're paying for, so it's up to you to take it seriously, which means doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first-order solution, you can make sure that not doing the homework will affect their grades significantly so that they do fail, and then let them know this on the syllabus, on the first day of class, and regularly.  Students who do not do the work will feel the pain when they receive their final grade.  You also have proof (no completed work) when parents and administrators come with questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this solution doesn't solve is the group that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eventually become distracting for the rest of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is possibly the hardest part of the puzzle.  I have four suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re-organize your class so that those students cannot be distracting.  If large-class participation is the issue, then start forming smaller groups, and give the participating members the ability to police the disruptions (e.g., have each group grade individual members' participation).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If possible, find a way to weed out those students &lt;em&gt;before they arrive in your class&lt;/em&gt;--you may be able to do this via a more strict prerequisite requirement (e.g., certain classes, or certain grades within previous classes).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the homework more manageable.  On the one hand, this seems to be giving in to the problem, but if they're not doing the work and have a reason other than &quot;I don't want to,&quot; then there may be a way to give different assignments that they will attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out what classes they've had previous to yours, and ask the instructors of those classes whether they had the same issues.  You can get a lot of good information about certain groups of students by talking these sorts of issues over with other faculty.  If you do find a faculty member who successfully dealt with those students, ask for suggestions, or, even better, ask if you can observe a couple of classes to get a feel for the types of strategies that teacher uses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T08:21:38.830" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T08:21:38.830" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11297" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:01:20.403" Score="19" ViewCount="2042" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are at the moment designing a document which we can hand out to Bachelor and Master students to give them a general idea on how to efficiently write a thesis. We also do this to make correcting easier for us. We are working in the field of cell biology. A thesis in our field is usually structured like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materals and Methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledgements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we've come up so far is the following list of best practices. This is based on our experiences with previous students and our own theses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can already start writing your materials and methods (M&amp;amp;M) section during your regular lab schedule. This will save you time later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will have discussions with your supervisors on your results, in which you will decide on what to include in your thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start by making the figures for your results and a corresponding caption.&#xA;Lay out bullet points of your results. Afterwards, start writing the text around these bullet points. After finishing, send this part to your supervisor for proofreading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proceed with the discussion. Again, lay out bullet points, but this time, before writing, clarify each point with your supervisor. This will prevent you from having to rewrite large parts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue with the introduction and, if you haven’t written it yet, M&amp;amp;M.&#xA;The introduction should contain everything the reader has to know in order to understand why you did what you did and what the results mean. Be brief and clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalize by writing an abstract (“Zusammenfassung”). This has to be written and edited very carefully because it will be the part most people read. Your thesis also needs to include an english abstract which is an exact translation of the german one. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t forget the acknowledgements (“Danksagung”). This is the second part everyone will read, and it’s extremely unpolite if you don’t have one. It doesn’t have to be formal and can be personal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is there something important missing and would you recommend things differently? Maybe you could elaborate how you handle this in your lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="3885" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T13:49:43.583" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T13:49:43.583" Title="Optimizing a thesis writing workflow for Bachelor and Master theses" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11297" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:36:46.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is impressive, very impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I can suggest adding is a point for students to continuously update their bibliography as they proceed with their research.  Alongside this, they ought to continuously include the subsequent in-text references on each part they paraphrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, and this is a bit of an 'out there' suggestion, but maybe suggest that the students upload drafts to a plagiarism checking program such as Turnitin.com on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T09:36:46.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11297" CreationDate="2013-07-22T10:02:05.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your list looks great, but I would suggest adding a couple of &quot;soft&quot; recommendations; e.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are struggling with a certain topic, idea, or way forward, ask for assistance as early as possible after you have exhausted your ideas.  Do try to solve problems on your own, but don't let that take too much time that you fall behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about the cell biology field, but do your papers normally have &quot;Related Work&quot; sections?  I assume they must also have a References (or Bibliography) section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:02:05.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11294" CreationDate="2013-07-22T10:09:53.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to integrate off-line video content into a face-to-face course is to make the videos worth watching in the first place. If the videos are not well-made, or if they are too long, or if they are only tangentially related to the topic at hand, there's a good chance students won't bother to spend time watching the videos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if students can learn basic information effectively in a relatively short amount of time, and you structure the class so that this information is needed to complete their homework assignments, there's a good chance they'll start learning from the videos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The videos need not be MOOC videos. A video can be something from the Kahn academy, something you found on YouTube, or something you create on your campus.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your institution have a Center or Office that helps professors with DL classes? If so, they may have equipment and expertise to help you create your own videos, if you have trouble finding existing content to fit your needs, and have determined that that's your best course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a collection of suitable videos ready to integrate into the course, I'd avoid telling the students that the videos are mandatory viewing. Instead, I'd simply make this a commonly-heard refrain in your class:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then you complete the problem by doing X, but &lt;strong&gt;X is something we're not going to cover in class. If you're not sure how to do X, I've posted a link to a video.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make the video something that they need to watch before class, there's a high chance the students won't bother. But, if watching it will help them complete a homework assignment, I think the chances are much better. There's a tangible reward for watching the video; it becomes a worthwhile time investment. It helps if the videos are short – say, 10 minutes at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd try to structure the course such that the videos are assigned, and they are tied to a written homework assignment that will be turned in. You can then start covering the more advanced material in class after the students have turned in the assignment, with a bit more assurance that a majority of the students have really watched the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also explain up front (in the course syllabus) why you are leveraging videos in the first place. Tell them directly that your aim is to exploit technology. Explain that spending class time covering basic concepts is not an effective use of class time, now that we are in the age of YouTube and the Internet, and there are other ways they can learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the Discussion Board feature of your institution's LMS so that students can ask questions if they've watched the video, but are still confused about something. That way, you won't create the impression that you're just trying to take the easy way out with a detached teaching style, but that you are instead striving to leverage technology in multiple ways to create a more effective learning climate overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, try to post the video links in your LMS in a way that you'll be able to see which students have opened the videos, and which students haven't bothered. Such reports aren't foolproof (just because a student clicked on a link doesn't mean they've actually watched the video attentively, e.g.). However, it might be worth knowing that, in a class of 23, only 8 students have even bothered to open the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:09:53.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11297" CreationDate="2013-07-22T10:36:03.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the difficulty was that the research part was too interesting, so I ended up writing papers, trying new techniques etc., but neglected the thesis writing. If you have students like me, &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; them to write some parts of their theses before they are &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to do more research in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7831" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:36:03.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8002" CreationDate="2013-07-22T12:54:39.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you lab notebook could be used to document a &lt;strong&gt;patent-able device or process&lt;/strong&gt; then you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; use a stitched notebook with numbered pages, &lt;em&gt;and do not remove the pages&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Even under the first-to-file rules&lt;/em&gt;, some cases can draw on the history of notes and creative documentation.  (e.g. same claims on the same day)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As annoying as this is for modern methods (hyperlinked docs, etc), there is no alternative yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source, a 20yr patent attorney's career)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3962" LastEditorUserId="3962" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T14:50:24.743" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T14:50:24.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11297" CreationDate="2013-07-22T13:32:22.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a very good set of advice. There are two very practical areas that seem unaddressed and that are, in my experience, somewhat… &lt;em&gt;problematic&lt;/em&gt; with some students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proof-reading&lt;/strong&gt;. Find someone, other than yourself, who will do a final proofreading of the thesis for language and clarity. Not necessarily someone from your field, but checking typos, missing figures, acronyms that are never defined, that sort of stuff… That person should not be you, because when you've spent so much time writing the thesis, you won't even see these details any more when you read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check with your supervisor what are his expectations regarding proofreading/corrections. It depends on your university and the supervisor himself, but in many cases they will want to read it themselves, and possibly offer some remarks and corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scheduling&lt;/strong&gt;. You are aware of the submission deadline, but mind that the final stuff takes time. In particular, if your supervisor has to read it, make sure to give him enough time to do so. So, start with a clear set of intermediate deadlines, and if you start to miss them, take action! Nothing's as bad as procrastinating ’til the last day thinking &lt;em&gt;“I can still write that in 24 hours if I get to it”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T13:32:22.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10963" CreationDate="2013-07-22T14:47:11.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take your best shot at getting the citation style correct and then let the copy editor deal with it. I cannot imagine a manuscript being rejected because someone used the wrong citation style for an &quot;esoteric&quot; entry type. Part of taking your best shot would be to scan the reference lists of the past few issues or a through electronic search for someone else who has cited a youtube video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T14:47:11.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11333" CreationDate="2013-07-22T18:47:22.257" Score="2" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Master's program (Software Engineering) I'm enrolled in offers both a thesis track and capstone track. Currently I'm enrolled in the thesis track and I've completed all of the required coursework for the thesis track, but I've been stuck in the thesis proposal process for over a year now&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and I'd like to just graduate and be done. I suspect that I'm being &quot;encouraged&quot; to switch over to the capstone track without the Research Advisor outright saying it. What should I take as the signs that it's time to make the switch? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By stuck I don't mean that I don't have a proposal, I mean that I've been submitting revisions about once a month for the past year with conflicting feedback being received and no real progress towards having a Thesis Director.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7269" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T19:08:45.647" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:23:14.190" Title="What are the signs that it is time to switch from thesis to capstone track?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11311" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:13:31.797" Score="13" ViewCount="17497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper to a journal 2 and a half months ago. Its status remains &quot;With editor&quot;. From your experience, is this normal? If not, how should I deal with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T03:53:40.950" Title="Paper with editor for longer than two and a half months" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11312" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:15:08.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An affiliation is a contractual connection between an academic institution an a student or an employee. It is relevant with regards to publishing research papers or attending conferences, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10237/academic-affiliation-for-a-congress&quot;&gt;Academic affiliation for a congress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11151/changing-affiliation-on-publication&quot;&gt;Changing affiliation on publication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1078/is-it-acceptable-to-publish-a-paper-using-an-affiliation-with-a-former-employer&quot;&gt;Is it acceptable to publish a paper using an affiliation with a former employer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T19:22:42.330" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T19:22:42.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11313" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:15:08.043" Score="0" Body="An affiliation is a contractual connection between an academic institution an a student or an employee." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T19:24:46.667" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T19:24:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:23:30.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The turnaround time for a paper submitted to a journal is dependent on the journal and the time it takes to have for the editor to receive the feedback from the reviewers and for them to review the reviews.  I have had to wait 5 months for feedback, some have to wait far longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you read what the turnaround time should be?  This information is usually available on the journal's author information website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T19:23:30.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:24:25.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The time frame you mention sounds long to me. But having said that, there can be several reasons why this is the case. I assume that the journal you have submitted to uses an electronic submission system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons can be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal is crowded with papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor(s) has/ve difficulties finding reviewers for the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time frame is &quot;normal&quot; for the journal, &quot;with editor&quot; includes review time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you try to figure out how long the time from submission to accept/reject (turnaround time) is for the particular journal you submitted to. If it is possible to see more details that would be good but knowing the average turnaround time allows you to assess if 2.5 months is long even for this journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I edit a journal I can mention our time frames as an example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choice of editor 10 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choice of associate editor 10 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chose reviewers 3 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviews 3 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editor decision 3 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revision 3-6 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editor evaluation 3 weeks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This puts the theoretical turnaround at 18-21 weeks (around 5 moths). What usually makes significant delays are reviewers not returning reviews on time and authors not providing revisions on time. But the bottom line is that for me 2.5 months is long and if you suspect your paper is held up too long you should contact the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:56:23.983" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:56:23.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:00:48.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expectation of review time and time taken for the editorial decision vary widely depending on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own field, chemistry, 2.5 months is about the time when people would start to send an email to the editor and ask about the status of the manuscript. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lutz-bornmann.de/icons/TimePeerReview5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;review of the reviewing process for Angewandte Chemie&lt;/a&gt;, one of the field’s flagship journals, shows a median “submission to editorial decision” time of 5 weeks, with an average of 6.8 weeks. I recommend this paper, because it's full of statistics, and contains many links to data and reviews for other journals in various fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How Long is the Peer Review Process for Journal Manuscripts?&#xA;  A Case Study on &lt;em&gt;Angewandte Chemie International Edition&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Lutz Bornmann and Hans-Dieter Daniel&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Chimia &lt;strong&gt;2010&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;64&lt;/em&gt;, 72–77&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find plenty of similar statistics for journals in various fields, by a simple web search: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sharmanedit.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/submission-to-first-decision-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biomedicine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14602513&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biometrics.tibs.org/carroll.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrewcullison.com/2009/09/journal-review-time-comparisons/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;philosophy&lt;/a&gt;… This confirms my initial point that &lt;strong&gt;review times&lt;/strong&gt; (and thus author expectations) &lt;strong&gt;vary widely on your field and the specific journal&lt;/strong&gt;: the average review time in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Philosophy&lt;/em&gt; is 12.6… &lt;strong&gt;months&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; oh, and I have to disagree with your comment below Peter’s answer… &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“with editor”&lt;/em&gt; most often includes the time spent in review&lt;/strong&gt;. I would say &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;, because it has never been any different in my experience. Many web submission interfaces actually don't allow you to know the internal changes of status between the editor and the reviewers (apart from the American Physical Society system, where you can track every correspondence the editor and reviewers have exchange)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T20:07:25.630" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T20:07:25.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11321" CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:15:29.483" Score="4" ViewCount="1559" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11310/2700&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Master's program (Software Engineering) I'm enrolled in offers both a thesis track and capstone track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat familiar with the overall US academic system, but I've never heard of a “capstone track” before. I web-searched it, and found quite a few institutions that offer it, it seems a sort of more practice-oriented or business-oriented way of completing a given degree. It does not appear to be universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;strong&gt;what is a “capstone track” in general, and how is it different from a Master of Engineering degree?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T01:22:17.253" Title="What is a “capstone track” in a Master’s program?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2013-07-22T21:24:35.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my papers took well over two &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; to get published, thanks mostly to two review periods lasting around 10 months (IIRC).  So 2 1/2 months is not that outlandish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it does not hurt to ask politely about the status of your paper!  It may be well down on someone's list of things to do, and a polite reminder that you are interested in its fate may be all that's needed to bump it up near the top.  Presumably, if you ask, the editor will give some indication as to approximately when reviews might be ready, and then you'll know when to send another polite reminder if nothing has happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T21:24:35.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11295" CreationDate="2013-07-22T22:16:09.537" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If 40% of the students aren't doing their homework, and you rely upon students doing homework for your pedagogy style to work, then something is seriously wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Make homework dramatically more appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put much more effort into the homework--make it fun!  E.g. calculate strain on an iPhone screen instead of a aluminum sheet; don't have someone read a novel but rather ask key questions about it such as to list all the times some character/historical figure expressed defiance against the state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institute quizzes that are drawn directly from the homework.  Do them practically every day.  Staring at a blank sheet of paper and not knowing what to do is a lot more uncomfortable than hearing you babble about something incomprehensible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the grading scheme so homework is most of the grade (if you're allowed).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Make homework dramatically less necessary.  (Note: usually not an option for mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the key problems on the board in class instead of assigning them as homework.  (Assign a similar problem as homework, possibly after you've done it in class.)  Not possible for literature review, of course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rely upon in-class participation instead (if you have the personality to make it work, and the homework is of the right type).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't make the learning environment one which requires the students to do the homework in order to understand most of the next lecture.  Lecture on the important points, review at the end of one lecture and the beginning of the next, and go on.  They might not develop their skills at doing problems, but at least they'll have some hope of following for a while.  Probably won't work with literature, but almost everything else can be quite successful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="669" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T14:02:51.767" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:02:51.767" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T23:59:12.917" Score="21" ViewCount="36822" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate mathematics major, entering my fourth year. I plan on applying to graduate school, but I have not yet taken the GRE exams, and there a few key courses (Topology and Algebra in particular) that I have not taken yet, so I am hesitant to take the Advanced Math GRE too soon. (If you're wondering why I haven't taken Topology and Algebra yet, it's because I was trying to secure a CS degree, which sidetracked my mathematical studies last year. It was a healthy branching out experience, and one that helped me realize my true academic passion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main question: &lt;em&gt;what is the perception of students who take a gap year between their graduation and starting graduate school?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I will take the GRE tests this fall, a) for practice and b) if I score high, then I might as well apply sooner rather than later. However, I ask this question to gauge how much energy I should put into preparing for the tests this fall. If I hear, &quot;You should really do your best to avoid any gap in your education,&quot; then I will work my butt off in preparation for the tests. But if I hear, &quot;It's totally okay take a gap year before going into graduate school,&quot; then I would give myself more freedom in terms of my non-standardized-exam studies, extracurriculars, and in general social activities. I figure the answer to this question won't be as cut-and-dry as I hope, but any advice would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, my gap year would not consist of me sitting at my desk taking practice GRE exams all day... That would be a pitiful use of my time. I definitely plan working either as an intern or a research assistant at a successful organization. It seems like the general consensus is that taking time off is okay, and potentially beneficial, assuming you actually do something in that gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7840" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T07:57:47.703" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T07:57:47.703" Title="What is the perception of students who take a gap year between their graduation and starting graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11317" CreationDate="2013-07-23T01:22:17.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many software engineering programs offer the option of a &quot;capstone&quot; software project instead of a thesis to complete the degree.  This is typically a project that stretches over a full semester, or year, or even longer.  In my department, these projects are designed in cooperation with local industry, so there are real &quot;customers&quot;. The  intention is that the project will force the student to synthesize all the skills and knowledge acquired in other classes in the program, and will give them something closer to real-world experience that a typical class project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;how is this different from a Master of Engineering&quot;, I have no idea.  Everybody gives their degrees different names; there is no standard. (My department offers a capstone project only for undergrads; the degree is a Bachelor of Science whether you do the project or not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T01:22:17.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2013-07-23T03:42:04.573" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was looking into this for a former student of mine I spoke with the head of the graduate program at the US Top 20 program I was working in at the time. He actually viewed a gap year as a good thing. His rationale was that students who had held jobs and managed to live for the gap year were more likely to have the work habits useful in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes time to write your applications you just have to remember to explain how that year has made you a better candidate for their program. It might not be more math that you've learned by it may be maturity and a renewed sense of purpose. If you chose to take a year off do something worthwhile and don't just study for exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T03:42:04.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11329" CreationDate="2013-07-23T06:26:47.483" Score="6" ViewCount="1701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read and heard conflicting opinions on this topic, and would like to see what some of you have to say, particularly related to CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does earning two bachelor's degrees as an undergrad, considering all other things equal, provide any advantage over another applicant? That is, saying that this person earning two degrees is still able to participate in quality research throughout their undergraduate degree and is not slave to the curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would, say, a MechE/CS student maintain a leg up applying to a CS program related to robotics? A Math/CS applying to theory-based CS? Does it vary between fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:00:41.263" Title="How do PhD admissions committees view double majors?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11295" CreationDate="2013-07-23T09:59:32.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one idea you could try: Have the students go to the front of the entire class, and either solve a problem on the board, or else explain something from the homework assignment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal would be to create an activity where anyone who completed the homework should have no problem completing the task, but those who did not do the homework stand a good chance of struggling mightily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it an in-class game of sorts by pulling names out of a hat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If students come unprepared, at least they will be more nervous and less casual about it. Perhaps that might increase your participation rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also do something like this: any student who doesn't turn in an assignment gets their name written down on five more index cards, which are subsequently added to the hat, thereby sharply increasing the likelihood that they will get picked in future classes. Make sure the students are well aware of that practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T09:59:32.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11323" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:06:19.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A double degree/major (or even a minor) makes it easier to see what areas a candidate is interested in. Understanding this, along with the relevant classes taken, can be useful in assessing the research potential of a student (which is really what PhD admissions committees are trying to do). Apart from making my job a little easier, the way I look at it is if I have two identical candidates, which you never do, apart from a single class and this class leads means candidate A is a double major and candidate B is a single major, but I think the class candidate B took is more valuable then I will go with B. That said, there is no formula for admissions so things like this come down to the individuals on the committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T10:06:19.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11295" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:27:22.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your approach of kicking out the students who didn't do the home work is rather draconian, and while seductive as a zero-tolerance policy, is likely to cause more harm to you than good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a (strong) positive correlation between student completion of homework and final grade for the overall module/unit/paper? If so, I suggest that you appeal to the students' self-interest by showing a plot of this correlation to your students at the beginning of your course, and throughout the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding what to do during class, I would make frequent reference to the homework along the lines of, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;If you attempted the homework exercise&lt;/strong&gt;, you would know why this line of the derivation follows from the previous line so I'm not going to go into it here. This sort of thing often comes up in exams.&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The homework exercise was&lt;/strong&gt; the first part of a past exam question relating to this topic. We're going to explore the topic in more detail now&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The homework exercise asked you&lt;/strong&gt; to think about why this next piece of argument might be flawed.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am advocating is a policy where you strongly advise students to complete the homework, so that they are in a better position to understand the material and which appeals to the student's desire to pass the exam/test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completing the homework is not a necessary prerequisite to understanding the material of the present lecture, but would be very very useful to the students indeed when it comes time to revise for the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T10:27:22.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="900" CreationDate="2013-07-23T13:26:35.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say after six months is reasonable to ask for a status check. I am from engineering and I often politely ask after six months. If I don't hear from them with a final decision within the next two months I decide to withdraw the paper as it seems that the whole process will take too long and either the journal or the reviewer(s) is not very professional. Eight to nine months is very long response time for a first inquiry. Sometimes you just cant wait that long, you need to know whether is rejected or not because you need to present something on your PhD career, change a job, or as part of a funded project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7845" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:55:08.620" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:55:08.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11273" CreationDate="2013-07-23T13:56:26.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is better if an advisor can give you useful advice and guide you towards both interesting and promising research topics. Ideally, your advisor would understand how to make you release all your work potential, but you cannot expect that from him/her. There are a lot of different situations, nonetheless there are a few universals that do not vary a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, you can be sure that your advisor will be somewhere between 'simply not there' and overactive. There are students who cope well with an advisor who is completely absent, because it gives them absolute freedom. They are probably a minority. Indeed, others feel good when their advisor greets them each morning with a few kind words. &lt;strong&gt;In order to find a good match, you need to determine how much time you want your advisor to spend on your case. So you need to find out how busy he/she actually is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, &lt;strong&gt;one can generally expect from an advisor to be firm and polite at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;. You might change your mind about your work, about your discipline, and even about him/her, so that steadiness is required as he/she is your reference point. For that reason, you may (temporarily) hate your advisor and/or overreact to comments and criticism made to your thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would say that &lt;strong&gt;another factor is about your feelings and your instinct, as your advisor will more or less be your mental punching bag&lt;/strong&gt; because the major part of what you think about the work you do together and will/should be left unsaid. Most students forget that their advisor is just a person who is exterior to nearly everything they do, because one cannot generally help building an interior (mental) representation of this person as time goes by. So &lt;strong&gt;you have to ask yourself if you can imagine live with this person in your head during 3+ years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7760" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T13:56:26.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11323" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:00:41.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would, say, a MechE/CS student maintain a leg up applying to a CS program related to robotics? A Math/CS applying to theory-based CS? Does it vary between fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All else being equal, &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.  Speaking specifically for theoretical computer science, I am much more likely to recommend a PhD applicant for admission if they have a strong mathematics background.  A second major is not the more important thing, though; majors are just administrative hurdles.  I look for &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; advanced math classes the applicant has taken, how the recommendation letters describe their mathematical ability/maturity, and how fluently they use mathematics in their research statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the effect varies significantly between fields.  For example, my robotics colleagues are much more likely to recommend applicants with strong &lt;strong&gt;mathematics&lt;/strong&gt; backgrounds, and my software engineering colleagues are much more likely to recommend applicants with software industry experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as Daniel points out, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus&quot;&gt;ceteris&lt;/a&gt; is never &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus&quot;&gt;paribus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:00:41.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:10:19.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave an answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11328/7760&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that could interest you. In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to determine how much time you want your advisor to spend on your case. Maybe someone who has a lot of time to discuss various issues with you is preferable even if he/she is too 'nice'...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And nice or not, your advisor has to be firm and polite, as he/she will more or less be your mental punching bag, so with whom can you imagine to live in your head during 3+ years ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7760" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:10:19.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:37:00.960" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is entirely fine to take a year off before starting grad school. Many graduate students do this (I include myself among those who did it and were accepted in top university in the UK (no arrogance intended)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors or Admission committees do not focus too much on the gap between the time when you finished your undergraduate studies and when you applied to a graduate program. However, some care must be taken as I explain in the following list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the combination of gap-years and what-you-did on those years. For example, it is fine if you take a year off to explore the Amazon rainforest and learn T'ai chi ch'uan. However, if you rest for many years and you did nothing to improve your CV during this time, that may look suspicious to an Admission committee. This is because many people apply to a graduate program in order to get funding while they find &quot;something else&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you take more than 2 &quot;sabbatical&quot; years but you did something to improve your CV, that may even be appealing. For example: working for the private sector, teaching, attending some special courses, doing (provable) research on the area of interest ...&#xA;I have come across 60+ y.o. graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;TOEFL and GRE tests are typically valid for 2--3 years, then you can take them as soon as you feel capable of getting the required score. This would also put some pressure on you in order to avoid the common procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it is fine if you take a year in order to clarify your ideas, gather all the requirements, and improve your CV. An advice from my personal experience: be careful with these &quot;gap-years&quot;, they are a double-edged sword. They could either increase or decrease your chances of getting accepted in a graduate program, depending on what you do during these years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7847" LastEditorUserId="7847" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T14:59:04.497" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:59:04.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2013-07-23T16:44:01.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other good answers: It's not entirely clear but that two issues are being blurred here. After all, a person can give useful critical feedback while still being positive, and, oppositely, can be a jerk without imparting useful advice. However, it seems to happen quite often that at least in our mental constructs (as in @adbar's answer) over-simplify or caricaturize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;School&quot; often has the strange effect of encouraging an odd passivity, that people take no initiative, but only respond to &quot;threats&quot; (of bad grades, of embarrassment). Obviously this is undesirable, but seems to be what we have. Years of conditioning in such a system creates an unfortunate frame of mind. Equally obviously, unless one plans to take a job in which &quot;motivation&quot; is a boss standing over you and threatening you, being a self-starter is a critical virtue to &lt;em&gt;cultivate&lt;/em&gt;. Academe, vaguely-structured or unstructured as it is, may be an extreme case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly one cannot instantly become a self-starter, and, equally, some degree of procrastination seems universal. Requires some degree of vigilance to fight back.&#xA;Grad school might be the time to change the source of &quot;motivation&quot;, depending less on &quot;teachers' threats&quot; and more on personal goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If/when that part of the question is recognized as separate from &quot;personality&quot;, there does remain a very serious issue of getting useful information from an advisor. I believe that it is possible to remain completely civil and &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; respectful, even sympathetic, while giving accurate technical/scientific opinions. If it is the case that the nice-and-polite person is also not imparting information, that's bad, and it would also be bad if an intimidating, mean person didn't actually impart useful information (but was just scary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd try to be sure to separate the issues of motivation and information-acquisition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T16:44:01.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11310" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:23:14.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer might not be applicable to everyone; however, today I met with the Associate Director of Professional Programs at [tier-one university]. I was informed that barring extenuating circumstances, if a student doesn't have an accepted proposal and a Thesis Director assigned after a year then they should switch over to the capstone track to ensure they are able to successfully finish their degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7269" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:23:14.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11334" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:38:13.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;strong&gt;abstract&lt;/strong&gt; is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's contribution to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1413/what-are-the-essential-points-that-should-be-covered-in-a-dissertation-abstract&quot;&gt;What are the essential points that should be covered in a dissertation abstract?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4971/are-citations-in-abstracts-considered-bad-style&quot;&gt;Are citations in abstracts considered bad style?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7428/how-to-write-abstract-for-conference-when-you-have-no-results-yet&quot;&gt;How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9026/making-it-look-good-is-it-always-important&quot;&gt;“making it look good”- is it always important?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T17:42:45.147" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:42:45.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11335" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:38:13.833" Score="0" Body="An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's contribution to the field." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T17:42:36.363" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:42:36.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:41:39.847" Score="29" ViewCount="44762" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the typical amount of vacation time, per year, during a PhD program in the United States.  I am particularly interested in 1. PhD programs in the physical sciences, and 2. PhD programs at competitive, research-focused universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7854" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T23:43:22.153" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T13:42:52.090" Title="How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in the United States?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11337" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:52:04.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers&lt;/strong&gt; publications make up around 30% of the world literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, the IEEE also publishes more than 750 conference proceedings every year and maintains over 1,300 standards in engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;IEEE&lt;/strong&gt; publishes the leading journals, transactions, letters, and magazines in electrical engineering, computing, biotechnology, telecommunications, power and energy, and dozens of other technologies. IEEE is one of the leading standards-making organizations in the world. IEEE performs its standards making and maintaining functions through the IEEE Standards Association (&lt;strong&gt;IEEE-SA&lt;/strong&gt;)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/periodicals/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Journals &amp;amp; Magazines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IEEE_publications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: List of IEEE Publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://standards.ieee.org/findstds/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE-SA Find Standards&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="8402" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T20:23:07.217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T20:23:07.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11338" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:52:04.107" Score="0" Body="The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers publishes around 30% of the world literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T18:05:09.960" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T18:05:09.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:56:27.913" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of explicit policies regarding vacation time during a Ph.D in the US. This is likely because in the US, the Ph.D is viewed as educational, and not as a job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student, and now as a professor, vacation time was always an informal discussion between advisor and student. This is of course ripe for abuse. A job in the US usually grants 15 days of vacation (not counting weekends) per year, but in my experience that's MUCH less than what you might effectively get as a Ph.D student (in computer science) but might be comparable to what you get as a Ph.D student in the physical sciences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't have personal experience with physical science programs, but via my wife and other friends I've seen that physical science programs are fairly rough on vacation. This is partly because you need to be around to tend to long-running experiments (&quot;the flies died!&quot;) and partly because of the nature of lab work and the much more intense style of lab-based science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be, once you have some options, to ask students in the programs you're applying to, working with advisors you're interested in targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:56:27.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:58:39.223" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is dependent on a lot of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor.  He/she controls a good part of your life (and probably pays you out of a grant), so vacation time goes through him/her.  I've seen advisors who begrudgingly let students take a couple of weeks off in the summer, to those who don't keep track and their students seem to be on vacation all the time. I've also seen advisors who mandate some vacation time to avoid burnout. (and all of the rest of the answers should be caveated with &quot;and if your advisor allows&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your workload and motivation.  Get your work done (e.g., paper submitted, TA duties done, dissertation chapter written), and you can safely take a week or two off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;School schedule.  While graduate students don't really stick by a strict semester/trimester/quarter/summer/etc. schedule, it more or less dictates when you can take vacation.  I never took more than a day or two off during Spring Break, and my summers were strictly time to get more work done (or to teach a summer class).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;School / department policy.  Departments sometimes regulate time off, but I'd say that is rare, as vacation is, again, left up to the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the low pay, you are an employee, and you need to abide by the rules set by your employer (either the school, your advisor, or, possibly, your fellowship rules).  Sometimes students don't get paid during the summer, and it is easier to take vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that if you are taking too much vacation, you are delaying getting your research done, and that can have ramifications on when you graduate, how your research progresses (and if you get scooped!), and what your advisor thinks of your work ethic.  Should you take time off?  Yes. Should you be greedy and think it will be like undergraduate school where you get three or four months off a year?  &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T18:22:54.377" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T18:22:54.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:13:13.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add some personal experience from two different systems to the other answers (Chris Gregg and Suresh; which I fully agree with). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this is handled clearly depends on where you are (I realize you are asking about US). In Sweden PhD students have a certain number of days (weeks). This is regulated by laws. However, a problem with trying to regulate vacation is that not all students or projects are alike and in the end you, as a PhD student, is responsible to complete your work in time (advisors obviously also have a role to facilitatet this). So in &quot;my&quot; system the stipulated vacation may be a blessing in disguise if taken very literally. The important point is that one must plan ones own time and that includes taking time off to reload batteries and rest. A difficulty is to balance these issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own experience when I was a forreign graduate student in the US was that I really got a lot of work done during holidays and spring breaks when most people were away. I do not remember having any major vacation time but I always had days off for doing anything that could take my mind off graduate school (not that I was bored, I just felt rejuvenated by it). So managing time is more imprtant than having a long vacation. As I saw it grad school was my chance to get somewhere so it was worth working for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T18:13:13.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:20:23.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are two ways to answer/interpret the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first is: how much time are you &quot;legally&quot; entitled/required to take&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question will vary across country, university, and even how you are &quot;employed&quot; within a university. Even if this could be answered in general or for you specific situation, I am not sure it is helpful given the second interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second is: how much time do PhD students actually take&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me a more relevant question and is similar, if not identical, to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8542/how-hard-do-early-career-academics-in-the-united-states-work-really&quot;&gt;How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really?&lt;/a&gt;. I believe that N-of-1 type answers are meaningless since I know people who takes zero vacation days and I know people who take in excess of 60 vacation days. The Sigma Xi society surveyed post docs and found that they take 12 vacation days a year on average. I provided details about this study in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8543/929&quot;&gt;answer of mine&lt;/a&gt;. I am not sure to the extent to which the vacation habits of post docs and PhD students are similar, but this is the only population study I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T12:12:10.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10427" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:32:22.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may also use website that are specifically targeted at helping at finding PhDs. The following website allows you to filter using funding and nationality as parameters:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findaphd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.findaphd.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7857" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T18:32:22.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T19:16:12.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working at a very competitive research university in physical sciences this summer as an undergraduate research intern. I asked a few of the PhD students i'm working with, and they told me that they get a maximum of two weeks off per year, not including one week that everyone gets off for Christmas. Thus a lot of them take their two weeks in addition to Christmas (a lot of internationals here don't care about Christmas much) to get an effective 3 week vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others have said, it will depend entirely on your advisor. The PhD students I've talked to have told horror stories about one advisor in particular who wouldn't grant a PhD student an extra two days off to get married, because it would have put him over two weeks for the year. Others generally don't care as much as long as you get your work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5724" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T19:16:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11288" CreationDate="2013-07-23T19:50:00.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you. I'm trying to do something similar and found that few HCI papers publish enough summary statistics to conduct a proper meta-analysis. Indeed, a lot of the time, their stats seem quite sloppy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've styled my analysis similar to two review papers I found. One from the HCI area as well (Dehn &amp;amp; Van Mulken, 2000) and one from a bit more outfield (Jones &amp;amp; Gosling, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither is a true meta-analysis, but they get as close to formal as I think it's reasonable to get when an actual meta-analysis is simply not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dehn &amp;amp; Van Mulken (2000) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581999903257&quot;&gt;The impact of animated interface agents: a review of empirical research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jones &amp;amp; Gosling (2005) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159105000997&quot;&gt;Temperament and personality in dogs (&lt;em&gt;Canis familiaris&lt;/em&gt;): A review and evaluation of past research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4125" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T19:50:00.263" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T20:23:59.957" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having done a PhD in the United States and then come to Denmark to do a post-doc, I can say that this is going to depend on a huge number of factors. In the US, during my PhD, many of my colleagues seemed to be on vacation all of the time (many of them did not finish). But, my advisor never took vacation and I, accordingly, worked on his schedule. I never took vacation and was always &quot;on email,&quot; etc. when I was away for whatever reason. We had no guarantee of vacation other, I guess, than national and university holidays, but most people work from home (or in the lab) during those times any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Denmark, however, this is completely different. Everyone in Denmark is guaranteed five weeks of paid vacation every year and even in academia, people use it seriously. Because it is July, all faculty and graduate students in my department are gone. Literally all of them and they are not on email and claim to not work, most for a three week holiday abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, this is going to depend on a lot on country, department norms, and your advisor's style/expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T20:23:59.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T20:28:09.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;em&gt;n=1&lt;/em&gt;* at a research university&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can give you a reasonable estimate of the vacation hours as I am a current PhD student in the US, not in the physical sciences but in the computing sciences. At my institution (&lt;em&gt;Cornell University&lt;/em&gt;), I can &lt;strong&gt;officially&lt;/strong&gt; take &lt;strong&gt;14&lt;/strong&gt; days off in the year when I am fully funded. This is what is &lt;strong&gt;typed&lt;/strong&gt; on my funding letter which I receive at the beginning of every semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, this depends upon your adviser. I have been fortunate enough to work with wonderful people who do not care how many days I take off as long as the work has been done according to their expectations. For instance, I took 2 months off in Dec-Jan last year but then I had finished my personal involvement in all the current projects and had submitted relevant papers for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T20:28:09.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:41:54.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a gap of 1.5 years between finishing my (second) Master's and applying for a Ph.D. in statistics... a total gap of two years between my latest graduation and starting the Ph.D. In these two years I was working as an economist (my second degree) in a government think-tank, so it wasn't a totally irrelevant experience. If you sustain an income through say tutoring math (which appears to have an infinite demand, although may be poorly paid), and take advanced classes in the mean time, this only showcases you as a person dedicated to the selected field who wants to do it despite the real life challenges. +1 brownie point!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not have a chance to evaluate an application with such gaps when I was a prof, but I can tell from my teaching experience that the older the student is, the more responsible they are. So if anything, I would view &quot;out of the box&quot; students jumping straight from BSc to PhD as less qualified than somebody who's been out there for a little longer, and knows what they want from their lives. But that's just my personal take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was applying around (1999-2000), there was no point in pushing it at all unless you'd get the perfect GRE math score, which was not that difficult to get (probably 50% or so of applicants did). I heard though that the test was made more demanding and better discriminating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T21:41:54.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:46:26.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Ph.D. you really have to rely on the 'mood' of your PI, or other circumstances: For example, I know a person who had to go back to China for a month to get his visa renewal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think at least 1 week off for traveling during the summer is something that you could expect if you don't have an extremely strict PI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, there is the Xmas week where the university is officially closed and you don't have to show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7859" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T21:46:26.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:56:14.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the one hand it might be beneficial for your application if you take your time to study for a this test in terms of a better score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I would be the person reviewing the application, I would rank your score subjectively lower if you have this gap, since I would assume that you stayed at home and studied for the test. And Grad School applications are not that much high-throughput like undergrad application, so there might be a chance that the person, who will end up reviewing your appl., will think so too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find these GRE tests stupid anyway. They really depend on how much time you spend on preparation. In my opinion, the tests are easy enough to just pass them if you passed your undergrad, but on the other hand you are competing against other applicants for the higher score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, but I am not the person who decides, a good internship or other other topic-related projects (e.g., founding a website like reddit if you are a computer science applicant) would count 1000x more than this stupid test score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7859" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T21:56:14.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-24T00:53:11.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other informative answers, I can't help but comment that (truly) one might ask oneself how/why this becomes a question at all. Of course it is a reasonable question, but it potentially hints at some aversion to one's &quot;work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know others might disagree strenuously, but my own quite sincere and considered opinion is that academe is not a good career choice if the &quot;job&quot; is substantially oppressive or in any way &quot;something to get away from&quot;. The reason is that quite a few people, your competitors, really love spending time at &quot;the thing&quot;, and although of course &quot;more hours&quot; does not mean &quot;more production&quot;, that kind of sustained engagement... and &lt;em&gt;affection&lt;/em&gt;... does seem to enhance productivity and efficiency hugely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, an academic job should be the kind of thing that one _does_not_need_ a vacation from, any more than one needs a vacation from eating or sleeping. Of course this is just one &quot;ideal&quot;, but it is certainly the ground for my own life as a mathematician. That is (at the other end of one's career) when people ask me when I'll retire, regardless of exactly what I say, my thoughts are that it would be silly to stop accepting good pay for what I'd be doing anyway. :) :) (And, I add, for probably 12+ hours a day 6/7 days a week, and at least several hours every day of the year. I feel ill if I can't find a way to think about mathematics at least a few hours every day. If necessary, it seems that insomnia provides an opportunity...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may view this as a silly ideal, and my own experience as a bit of a caricature, but I think it is worthwhile for a potential academic to juxtapose such ranting with their own inclinations. E.g., if one can't feel an irrational affection for one's projects... it's time to consider other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: vacation? I don't &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; the conventional notion of &quot;vacation&quot; (where you stop doing what you do ordinarily), any more than I'd like a vacation from eating or sleeping. Seriously. Yes, this creates some degree of conflict with family. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worse conflict would be if one really does want to get away from one's (academic?) work. If so, then all the people who aren't necessarily as able as you, but who love it, will be zooming past you while you are on vacation. This is probably not just a &quot;scare story&quot;, considering my personal observations over 40+ years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, conceivably, if you really think in terms of &quot;vacation&quot; from tasks that are not ... enchanting... then the real conclusion is that you should think about other possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I thought that this ... arguably idealistic/extreme... viewpoint needed some representation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T00:53:11.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-24T05:38:59.890" Score="27" ViewCount="6154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to teaching. Recently I was given the opportunity to teach at my own university (I am currently doing an MPhil from my university).&#xA;If a teacher fails to control his students once, he wouldn't be able to control them until the end of semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first time in teaching and I am afraid that my students would get out of my control. They wouldn't listen to me, would misbehave and wouldn't let me give my lecture without interruption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise me the best way to keep my cool and prevent my students from getting out of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I have not started teaching yet. I'll be starting my classes from next week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT2:&lt;/strong&gt; The students are Bachelors students. I don't actually want to control them. I just want to maintain discipline in my class. I want to prevent misbehavior in my class. I have seen students not listening to new teachers and just pass the whole lecture passing comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T06:55:25.940" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T21:04:35.910" Title="What is the best way to keep your students from getting out of control?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T06:11:11.417" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as a high school teacher, I have a few tips that may be of help (and I will clarify that having taught undergraduates before, I found from experience that a lot of these still apply on a regular basis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set the groundrules from the first lesson, calmly lay out your expectations for effort, behaviour, homework etc, be sure these are consistent with the rules of the institution and most of all - stick to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't shout, it will turn into a shouting-contest that the teacher can not win and places too much 'power' (via attention) in the hands of any unruly students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be consistent in all that you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember - you are the professional, I have found that displaying knowledge that extends the curriculum gets the students engaged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be helpful, firm and fair - be friendly, but not a 'friend'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid or ashamed of asking colleagues for help, or for them to sit in and critique a lesson.  I am 14 years into teaching and I still do this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware that external issues may affect in class behaviour, this would be a reason not an excuse for any misbehaviour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enjoy the class, be enthusiastic in the subject, the class and the profession.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the ones that come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T06:11:11.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T06:51:41.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They will certainly not remain disciplined if you will give the impression of fear and confusion. Your revealed weakness (of mind) may give them negative impression that might make them courageous for misbehave etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, first and above all, don't be fearful and increase your confidence level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also check what possible disciplinary actions your university may allow to take against miscreant students. But definitely, it should be the last tool you may use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7868" LastEditorUserId="7868" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T06:57:44.100" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T06:57:44.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T07:03:33.557" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, realize that the main reason they might misbehave is the same as every one else, whether they are 4, 14, 24 or 94 years old: &lt;strong&gt;they will be distracted if they are not interested&lt;/strong&gt;, bored. Conjectural factors surely also play a role (if it's nap time, for example), but if you get them interested you increase dramatically your chances of having a well-behaved audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with regards to exercising your authority on a crow, the principles are again pretty much the same for 4 years old and 20 years old:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immediately assume a position of authority.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to be convinced that you naturally assume this authority before you go to the class. It derives from two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    a. By naming you a lecturer, your university gave you authority over the lecture room. Be ready, but not overly eager, to exercise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    b. This authority also derives from your skills and knowledge: you are an authority on the topic you are lecturing. To maintain this, you have to be prepared to teach your topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be consistent.&lt;/strong&gt; Lay out a set of rules, explain them, and enforce them. They have to appear justified and reasonable to the students, so that you can enforce them if need be. &lt;strong&gt;Always put things back in perspective&lt;/strong&gt;: why are we here, and how this justifies what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example: I always start by explaining that “I will not shout, because my voice doesn't allow me to go through the whole lecture shouting. Thus, if the noise level meets the point where I would need to shout, I will simply stop lecturing.” Standing there, silent, is a very effective way to lead the group to self-discipline (“hey, guys, shush!”). If necessary, I will remind them that even if I cover less material, the exam still covers the whole planned curriculum…&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be pragmatic.&lt;/strong&gt; If things are going bad for some external circumstances, be prepared to make a justified exception to the rules, for the benefit of everyone. For example, if it's Friday afternoon and all students are exhausted from a week of exams, giving them 10 minutes off in the middle of a two-hour lecture might lead to overall improved productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most importantly, realize that &lt;strong&gt;while first impression is important, it is not &lt;em&gt;“do or die”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Even as an experienced teacher, sometime you will underperform a given day (because you're tired, because you're not committed enough to this specific topic, because …), but there is nothing you cannot correct later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T07:24:10.757" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T07:24:10.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11336" CreationDate="2013-07-24T09:40:10.793" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: around 4 weeks (20 days)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, given the number of anecdotal answers given, let's try to do something different and find some hard data… It is rather easy, because most institutions have explicit vacation policies posted online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Princeton graduate school (which I think fits your stated criteria) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/gradschool/academics/policies/student_vacation_time/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guidelines on Student Vacation Time&lt;/a&gt;, which say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;graduate student degree candidates may take up to (but no more than) &lt;strong&gt;four weeks of vacation&lt;/strong&gt;, including any days taken during regular University holidays and scheduled recesses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Caltech Graduate Studies Office &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gradoffice.caltech.edu/current/vacation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Institute policy is that graduate students are &amp;quot;entitled to two weeks' annual vacation (in addition to Institute holidays).&amp;quot; […] There are 11 Institute holidays this calendar year […] In total, graduate students are entitled to &lt;strong&gt;21 vacation days per calendar year&lt;/strong&gt;. These days do not accrue from year to year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MIT's policy for &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/policies/8/8.3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Graduate Students&lt;/a&gt; is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…] observe normal Institute holidays and are entitled to &lt;strong&gt;two weeks of vacation with pay&lt;/strong&gt; if their appointments are for the full calendar year. Their vacation schedule must be approved by their supervisors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;GeorgiaTech's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mse.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/Graduate_Handbook%20_MSEpre-2011v2.2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;policy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two weeks vacation&lt;/strong&gt; and all official Georgia Tech holidays are allowed during each calendar year. Advisors must be notified of all vacation time and absences. Mid-term and intermission breaks are not vacation days unless scheduled as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, vacation/holiday time ranges from 4 to 5 weeks at the institutions listed. It should be noted that the above are the actual vacation policies, so real-life situation might be different: less strict, if your advisor is understanding and it doesn't impede your work; more strict, if there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5005/2700&quot;&gt;negative culture in your workplace&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T13:42:52.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T11:47:23.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For university students, you could point out the obvious - that they are no longer at school, and things are done a little differently here. Classroom discipline is essentially an implicit pre-requisite, which should have been learned at school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primarily, they will be expected to behave as adults. This means showing &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; their lecturers &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; their fellow students the respect they deserve and pay silent attention to the lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conjunction with expressing this view, I have seen the application of the policy that, if there is prolonged disruptive behaviour from any student or group of students, following N warnings, the lecturer will simply walk out of the class, return to his/her office and wait for a/the class representative to apologise on behalf of the class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the approval of your line manager of this policy is recommended before you follow it. Telling the students up front that this is how you will deal professionally with class disruption will give you the confidence to actually execute the policy, if needed. You will know that you have a plan in place, the students know that plan, you know you can follow through with your plan as required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer pressure is your ally, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T11:47:23.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11366" CreationDate="2013-07-24T12:35:39.503" Score="56" ViewCount="12742" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently received a response for a paper submission. The paper expanded on a conference presentation, and it was submitted to the journal special issue related to that conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three reviewers recommended acceptance (one &quot;definite accept&quot;, two with &quot;minor changes&quot;) but the editors chose to reject the paper &quot;in light of the reviews&quot; without any additional reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why might the editors have chosen to do this? Is it OK to ask them for an explanation of their reasoning, or even to ask them to reconsider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7880" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T08:13:09.290" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T10:50:36.973" Title="Why does editor reject when reviewers recommend acceptance?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-24T12:36:36.007" Score="6" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who can apply for research grants in Europe? Are there some degree requirements? Can students (undergraduate/graduate) apply for research grants? I know that the answer surely depends on the institution giving the grant, but I assume there are some general requirements, formal or informal. If you know (or even better, are) a student who has received a research grant, please tell how difficult it was. To clarify, I'm not asking about funding to do some degree, but funding to establish new research projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7881" LastActivityDate="2019-09-07T10:15:08.977" Title="In general, who can apply for research grants (in Europe)?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T12:42:35.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first began to teach, nothing I &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; would make the students behave.  It was only when I &lt;em&gt;acted&lt;/em&gt; did students start to behave.  For your first semester of teaching, I recommend that you &lt;em&gt;strictly follow all the rules&lt;/em&gt; your university has on disciplining students.  This includes sending them to the office of student affairs, filing disciplinary cases, giving failing grades for an activity or for the whole course, and so on.  It is important that your response be quick and consistent.  Again, &lt;em&gt;you do not have to say anything,&lt;/em&gt; you don't even have to warn them or remind them of the rules.  Just implement the disciplinary measures quickly and consistently.  Act as if it's no big deal to you, as if you've been doing it your entire life so many times that it has become second nature to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this, trust me, you will have &lt;em&gt;absolutely no problems&lt;/em&gt; with discipline during the next semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T12:42:35.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11362" CreationDate="2013-07-24T12:47:54.900" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a note: &lt;strong&gt;the editor&lt;/strong&gt; (or editors, or editorial committee) &lt;strong&gt;is solely responsible for the decision to publish or reject&lt;/strong&gt; a submitted manuscript. Reviewers are often (not always) called in and their reports provide help to the editor in evaluating the manuscript. But, at the end of the day, it is the editor who makes the call, so the situation you describe is possible and not necessarily unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, however, &lt;strong&gt;very unusual&lt;/strong&gt;, both for the editor not to follow the unanimous recommendation of the reviewers, and even more so not to explain their rejection any further. You can definitely (and, in my opinion, &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;contact the editor&lt;/strong&gt; to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;express your surprise at the rejection, given the contents of the reviews;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask whether it may have been an administrative error (with the nice streamlined web-based editor interface, a simple misplaced click might have lead to the current situation);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the decision is deliberate, ask the editor if he may expand on the reason behind the rejection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, be professional and polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after contacting the editor you are not satisfied with the answer, the only way forward is to appeal the decision to the editor-in-chief or the full editorial board. Details on how to do so should be found on the journal's website. This should not be done lightly, but if you do not get a decent reply from the editor, it seems warranted by the facts of your case. You may, however, want to consider sending the manuscript to another journal, as it will take much less effort than the appeal…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T16:17:13.277" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T16:17:13.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11362" CreationDate="2013-07-24T13:07:23.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fully agree &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11366&quot;&gt;with F'x&lt;/a&gt; but would like to add the following. As stated editors are free to make the judgement they see fit with the journal reputation in mind etc. However, an editor should also wed out manuscripts that do not fit the journal's scope etc. already before the review stage. It therefore seems even more strange that a manuscript reeives such a drastic result from a seemingly good response from reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that reviewers provide comments directly to the editor. It is thus possible that the review seems good but the reviewer may voice some concern that he/she feels the editor must act upon and which they therefore cannot voice in the open review. The editor can react to this. I would still expect the editor to then provide more open concerns so as to provide you with feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all F'x's suggestion to contact the editor is the way to go. Describe that you do not understand the resulting &quot;verdict&quot; and that you would like to get more feedback so as to possibly improve a seemingly already good manuscript or possibly be given the opportunity to revise for a new final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T15:20:07.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2013-07-24T13:08:51.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rules will very strongly depend on the funding institution you're applying to, and even on the details of the grant program. Eligibility criteria are listed in each funding program, so go check up those programs that are of interest to you. Even restricting to “in Europe” doesn't help much, because Europe is a large continent with very heterogeneous research (and funding) institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding students (undergraduate or graduate), the only types of grants I can think of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grants to fund your degree; for example, getting a fellowship that would fund you during your PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grants that encourage international collaboration and exchange; e.g., the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.france-science.org/chateaubriand.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chateaubriand fellowship&lt;/a&gt; to spend some months in a French lab, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JSPS fellowship&lt;/a&gt; for short stays in Japan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student is expected to devote his efforts to the project for which he is employed, not to bid for new research projects on their own. Thus, I don't think you can get funding for a new research project of your own, until you are an independent researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T13:08:51.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11362" CreationDate="2013-07-24T13:32:31.863" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should also point out that one issue could be related to being submitted to &quot; journal special issue related to that conference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that is the perfect place for the paper, keep in mind that in a regular issue, an accepted paper appears in the first issue which has space. For the special issue, all papers must appear in that issue. If the editors ended up with 5000 pages of accepted articles, they had to trim them down and reject some despite the good reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your paper had good reviews, it should probably be easy to publish it in some journal, maybe the regular issues of the same one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7624" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T13:32:31.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11362" CreationDate="2013-07-24T14:40:23.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that the editor can have more information than the reviewers and is concerned not only with the scientific quality of the paper. For example, impact and interest is a major factor for some journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is possible that a similar paper on this subject was submitted at the the same time, and the editor decided to send both the papers to review. Upon receiving the reviews, the editor decided to go with the other paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another scenario would be that the editor learned about a different paper (even in a different journal) which will be published in the near future and lowers the impact of your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things can happen in high profile journals, and it does not necessarily mean the editor is doing something unethical or is acting on personal likes/dislikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T14:40:23.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-24T15:53:44.773" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to point out one thing the other answerers (especially &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11357&quot;&gt;F'x&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11354&quot;&gt;Damien&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11361&quot;&gt;Nicholas&lt;/a&gt;) haven't mentioned, do &lt;strong&gt;encourage and reward any &lt;em&gt;contructive&lt;/em&gt; interruptions&lt;/strong&gt;, like asking questions about the subject you're covering or, even better, answering questions asked by other students, pointing out any mistakes you may have made or letting you know if the material you're presenting has already been covered in another class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best things that could possibly happen, as far as engaging your students to learn is concerned, is having a spontaneous on-topic discussion between students emerge in your class.  If there's any chance of that happening, you definitely should encourage it, even if it's cutting into time you'd planned to spend talking about something else.  You can always make up for the lost time later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the size of the class matters here.  In a class of 10 people, you can just let the discussion unfold naturally; in a class of 200, you're going to have to hand out turns for speaking and make sure you don't let a discussion between a small group of students drag out so long that others get bored.  Just try to do it without sounding dismissive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is all this relevant to maintaining discipline in class?  Well, the thing is that &lt;strong&gt;the #1 cause of classroom misbehavior is boredom.&lt;/strong&gt;  (The #2 cause is probably the mistaken belief that you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to misbehave in class to be &quot;cool&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, the more your students get to engage in the teaching process and to guide it towards things &lt;em&gt;they're&lt;/em&gt; interested in, the less bored they will be.  On the other, if your students &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; getting bored, &lt;strong&gt;you'll want to know about it and find out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it's happening&lt;/strong&gt;: Are you going too slow or too fast?  Do they find the material you're presenting irrelevant?  Or are they just too tired and unable to concentrate?  The best (if not the only) way to know that is to encourage your students to provide you with honest feedback whenever they have trouble following your lecture or find it uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick that may help is to tell your students up front that &lt;strong&gt;attending classes is voluntary&lt;/strong&gt;, as long as they understand that anything they miss will still be on the exam.  If they don't want to stay in the classroom, it's better that they leave than get bored and distract others.  That way, you'll get rid of the students who are bored because they already know the subject, as well as, hopefully, some of those who just feel like they &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; misbehave.  (The latter group may flunk the exam, but that will at least hopefully teach them a lesson for the next time.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you do this, it's a good idea to post a detailed lesson plan in advance, and maybe make your lecture notes / slides available, so that students who choose not to attend can check if they'll miss, or have missed, anything they didn't know already.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also encourage your students to &lt;strong&gt;come ask you after class if they feel like they're not keeping up&lt;/strong&gt; or if there's something they just don't get.  Not only does that give you a chance to help them over their stumbling block and to keep up with the class, but it also provides you with useful feedback on your teaching.  If you find a lot of students getting stuck on a specific critical issue, you may even want to announce a change in your lesson plan and use the next lecture to focus on that point until you're pretty sure everybody gets it.  Just make sure to keep asking for feedback as you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T15:53:44.773" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10870" CreationDate="2013-07-24T16:40:57.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can say with 100% confidence that it will depend on the professor(s).  That being said, you should expect to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reteach all content.  You won't actually have to, but you should of course be able to.  Students often use discussion sections to ask questions they don't want to ask the prof for fear of &quot;looking dumb.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give meaningful practice problems and explanations the students should familiarize themselves with for an exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For some classes, actually lead a discussion of topics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just use it for office hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T16:40:57.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10870" CreationDate="2013-07-24T16:59:56.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I taught discussion sections (for calculus, at a large U.S. state university), the students always appreciated it when I worked homework problems at the board for them. (The homework sets were large enough so that we didn't get through nearly all the homework.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that with discussion sections there is a little bit of a good-cop/bad-cop game going on; the professor is the bad cop and you are the good cop -- embrace and enjoy the role. Help them with their homework. If appropriate, look up the professor's old exams, find out what they are like, and work out similar problems in discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, help your students get through the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T16:59:56.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11376" CreationDate="2013-07-24T19:36:53.597" Score="8" ViewCount="976" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is prompted mostly due to a &lt;code&gt;Numerical Methods and Computer Programming In MATLAB&lt;/code&gt; course I took this summer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470565152&quot;&gt;textbook&lt;/a&gt;). To summarize the course it's basically methods for solving linear, nonlinear, and differential equations and systems of those equations, and learning how to program the respective algorithms in MATLAB. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a fast learner for most topics. I already have programming experience, so that half of the class was no challenge. The mathematical concepts I grasped quickly, and as a result most of the lectures were too slow for me.  This isn't anything new for me, I often have this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of the homework problems given were standard book problems and had no real significance or relation to the application of these methods. There were one or two problems that were applied and those were great, but to be honest I have a problem doing homework and have had it for around 20 years now (since grade school). I understand the importance of it, it's rarely (if ever) difficult for me, but it bores me and I have no motivation to do it. It doesn't help that now I work full time with a wife and 1.5 children, so there is a small window in which I even have to fit this homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of weeks into the course I thought perhaps if the homework was more interesting somehow (puzzle-like, application problems (aka story problems), etc) then that would be better for me, but I didn't know how to approach the professor about this. Long story short the bulk of the grading is homework and I'm not doing as well as I could be. It's likely too late for this class, but how would I approach this in the future? It'd be torture to have to continue down this road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5836" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T07:24:53.487" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T16:32:11.320" Title="How do I ask instructors for more challenging and/or interesting homework?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11374" CreationDate="2013-07-24T20:12:30.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try to make the homework interesting on your own. This is a roundabout way around the problem, but it's worked for me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a Space Propulsion class that resulted in a lot of rather tedious homework, even when I wrote the solutions in MATLAB. By the end of the class I was writing programs that allowed you to 1. vary the parameters of the problem, and 2. Show a graphical visualization. If you're writing Diff EQs, try adding the ability to vary the constant parameters, add a vector field graph, and put it all in a nice GUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the teacher/TA spends any amount of time grading the homework (some classes I've taken, they simply make sure you attempted the problem), then they will probably appreciate the time and effort. I got extra credit for a number of my homework submissions that I did in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7891" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T20:12:30.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11374" CreationDate="2013-07-24T20:40:11.960" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just ask?  Maybe this seems naive but if you approach the professor and say, honestly, you don't feel you are doing as well as you could or even should be, they would be willing to discuss that; a student taking an interest in their learning is a valuable thing.  You can state your desire for creative questions, and ask if the professor has any recommendations for outside material, or has some of their own.  I can't imagine any professor being anything but delighted at the prospect of a student being self-aware of their performance hurdles and seeking more advanced knowledge in the professor's field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastEditorUserId="23901" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T16:32:11.320" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T16:32:11.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11378" CreationDate="2013-07-24T22:40:42.547" Score="42" ViewCount="5420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a postdoc and a guy who used to be a part of our group dropped by today and said repeatedly that he wanted to collaborate with me and that he's too busy with other commitments to do any work. I suggested a project where he could write up some of his recent experiences in the area (I know of a publication that did something similar to this that we could use as a framework and am working with another man in our group on this), and he had no interest in that saying instead he was more interested in the data analysis I'm doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message I got was &quot;I don't have time to do anything, but I want to be a co-author&quot;.&#xA;He was &quot;generous&quot; enough to say he &quot;doesn't need to be the first or second author&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my PhD I had one of my supervisor's former students do this to me. He got 3 publications out of me, which he didn't understand well enough to present at a conference (he insisted that I create slides for him and write a word-for-word script for him to deliver - the conference was in his area of the world).  I eventually put my foot down and refused to have him as a co-author again (my supervisor was pushing to put his name on a 4th publication, I think she wanted to help him get tenure and / or was repaying some debt to him with my work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to spend time trying to defend my work from people who didn't contribute putting their names on it, but I'm not sure the best way to get rid of him. My PI thinks quite highly of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going out with my PI casually for dinner tomorrow and am planning to bring this up and ask him to be explicit about his authorship policy (my PI reserves the right to determine authorship of work from our lab).  I don't want to seem whiny, but also don't want to spend time / energy worrying about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I overly anxious about this?  Maybe it doesn't really matter as long as I'm the first author?  If that's the case, I'm tempted to just put everyone I know on it (I don't want to reward this guy for being obnoxious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7894" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T04:49:55.580" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T18:54:21.563" Title="How to fend off someone putting their Name on my work?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11377" CreationDate="2013-07-24T22:53:31.290" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation sounds messy. I think most will agree that the basic prerequisite for co-authorship is intellectual contribution to the manuscript . To add authors for thanks is common but really not a practice to endorse. If someone comes to me and asks to be a co-author, the obvious response would be: &quot;What will be your contribution?&quot; If there is no clear contribution other than, say, &quot;Read the manuscript and provide input&quot; then the answer should be &quot;No, thanks&quot;. In your case, it sounds as if there is no major point in even having a discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, your case reminds me of a colleague of mine who ends up in all sorts of strange situations. His problem is that he is too nice and does not know the word &quot;no&quot;. I realize it may be hard to set up strict rules for these things if your immediate surroundings do not subscribe to them, but I think you should know that you have solid grounds for being more strict about adding unnecessary co-authors or letting people into a project without a clear picture of why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are first author on a paper, it seems to me you will also be the person deciding how the work should materialize. I think you need to make your own mind up where you want to draw the line. you will benefit of making a decision on how you want things run. If you want to deviate from this later on, then it is still your decision and no-one else's. I think this is what you (and most of us) really want - to be in the driver's seat. So follow your instincts, they seem sound to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T15:03:21.013" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T15:03:21.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11377" CreationDate="2013-07-24T22:55:00.060" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a postdoc but a current PhD student. Strangely, I have had a couple of similar instances in the recent past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just say a firm &lt;strong&gt;NO !&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is a former member of your group and has nothing to intellectually contribute to the current project, then he does not deserve authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely bring it up casually with your PI and make it clear to him that you do not support a person being a co-author if he does not or has not contributed to the project significantly over its life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying a clear &quot;&lt;strong&gt;No!&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; usually works. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T22:55:00.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11353" CreationDate="2013-07-25T09:19:01.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many great answers here already but I do feel there is one important point which is not covered which needs to be. Before I get to my point, I will just say that being a good teacher requires you to get it all right, not just get most of it right. If you let one thing slip (like classroom management) your teaching can end up being extremely ineffective which will be reflected in the final grades of your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I want to add to all of the others already mentioned by others is to engage the students. I don't mean just making it interesting (that is also extremely important) but you should actually make the students do as much of the work as you can (read up on Active Learning). The more you can get the students actively working on the subject of the class, the less chance there will be, even for those who are quite advanced, to become bored (thus turning to their friends or their phone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group work is extremely helpful (perhaps the most helpful) but there are plenty of plenty of other ways to consider. The key point is to keep them actively focused on the class at hand so they will not focus on something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T09:19:01.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11384" CreationDate="2013-07-25T09:55:20.550" Score="20" ViewCount="23045" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been advised that I should include the peer reviews in my CV, particularly when I am applying for academic/research positions.  I am not too sure how to go about this, thus my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to include the full details?  I would imagine that as reviews are anonymous, this would be a no-no.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I just say something along the lines &quot;Reviewer: Journal name&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what section of the CV should this information be included under?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T20:54:11.007" Title="What is the correct protocol for including peer reviews that I have done in a CV?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11382" CreationDate="2013-07-25T10:07:01.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it the reviews are, unless explicitly stated otherwise, a communication between you and the editor and authors. If you make the reviews public you probably need to ask the other parties for permission, if nothing else so for politeness. I therefore suggest anonymous listing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally have an entry in my CV which tells how many reviews I have made since (in my case) 1995 and then lists the journals for which I have made such reviews. As a side-point, I do the same for reviews of proposals I make for large granting organisations such as NERC (UK) and NSF (US). I do not see any point in, say, providing details on suggestions for reject/revisoions/accept. In the end the number of reviews (also per year) is what shows your experience and provides credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also look at the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/647/4394&quot;&gt;Can I publish the reviews I write?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11097/4394&quot;&gt;Ethics of publishing received peer reviews [duplicate]&lt;/a&gt; for different views on making public reviews in different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T10:07:01.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11382" CreationDate="2013-07-25T10:25:15.013" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you may get some tips from the answers to a question of mine on this very site: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3540/2700&quot;&gt;“Do you list journals you have reviewed for on your CV?”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for myself, I list the peer-reviews I have done in a &lt;strong&gt;“Administrative and collective duties”&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;“Community involvement”&lt;/strong&gt;. Or, in a short CV which doesn't have such divisions, I put it with the broader &lt;strong&gt;“Other skills and activities”&lt;/strong&gt; section (i.e. not teaching, not research projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I include is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list of &lt;strong&gt;journals&lt;/strong&gt; for which I act as reviewer (&lt;em&gt;“Regular reviewer for many chemistry journals, including …”&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;funding bodies&lt;/strong&gt; (NSF, private trusts, etc.) for which I act as expert (including, e.g., NSF division, but not the exact programs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;evaluation committees&lt;/strong&gt; on which I sit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels obvious, but it's always worth repeating: &lt;strong&gt;do not include any confidential information&lt;/strong&gt;, such as titles or author lists for reviewer papers or projects. I think it's safe to list the number of reviews performed for each outlet if you want (but I don't do it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T10:25:15.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11377" CreationDate="2013-07-25T11:53:29.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a firm &quot;NO&quot; is not the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it would work to say NO but your PI wants to &quot;drive the car&quot; and you don't want this to generate a conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If her wanting to &quot;drive the car&quot; was not legitimate, I think a firm NO would be the best solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I think the best choice is to bend. BUT, there is a big BUT: THEY are in demand and you should turn this into your own advantage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a compensation, a leverage that could be useful to you... And try yourself at a polite negociation exercice...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe... Mention something like &quot;expedient co-author&quot; in your publication...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7900" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T11:53:29.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11391" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:34:52.260" Score="1" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon get my first paper submitted. Because my name is very common I think it will be hard to look for my papers in databases in the long term. If I want to decide on a pseudonym (author name different than my real name) it must be now before my first paper. I wonder about choosing a pseudonym that is a small variation from my own name so that it is unique in databases. Like changing my first name spelling (John -&gt; Jon) or adding middle name or changing my last name (Smith -&gt; Smyth). Is it a good idea or am I overthinking it? Will it be a problem later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:16:53.540" Title="Taking a pseudonym for publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-25T14:18:40.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11390" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:43:42.530" Score="4" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;On this &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/T_abrvjt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journal title abbreviation list&lt;/a&gt;, some abbreviations are followed by a plus sign (+).  For example, &quot;Thermophysics and Aeromechanics&quot; is abbreviated &quot;THERMOPHYS AEROMECH+&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the significance of the plus sign, and is it to be included when creating a reference list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6334" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:47:54.517" Title="What does a plus sign mean in journal abbreviations?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10427" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:44:03.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility would be to look for full PhD scholarships rather than your current limited partial funding. This is typically handled directly by departments of each university. You can get a good idea of those by a web search for &lt;code&gt;site:ac.uk International PhD Scholarship&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:44:03.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11388" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:47:54.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Web of science doesn't explain it on the page you quote, but you can find it in another page with detailed explanation: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The plus sign on this last abbreviation indicates that cites to the original language journal are unified with cites to the translation title&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/essays/cited-title-unification/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wokinfo.com/essays/cited-title-unification/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:47:54.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11387" CreationDate="2013-07-25T14:16:53.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be a very real problem later on, when you will be looking for a job and potential academic employer, or just colleagues, will want to check on your academic record. Changing your name to make it unique might also bring you a lot of trouble later, as your employing institution will not easily access your publications (knowing you by a different name than the one appearing on you publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it could very well be that, given the practice of your field of research, you could avoid changing the spelling your name. Usually, journals will take your second (and possibly third) name into consideration, and use it for all indexing purpose. At that point, your abbreviated name could simply be unique, no matter how common your first and last names!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, John Andrew James Smith would be abbreviated and indexed as JAJ Smith, for which even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Smith+JAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; does not even returns a hit! (PubMed covers most of life and material sciences)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7904" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:16:53.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11377" CreationDate="2013-07-25T14:33:42.813" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others, I would say that you should say &quot;no&quot;. However, I have something to add: this is not merely about the request of being freely a co-author being annoying. It is about ethics. Not letting someone that contributed significantly to a paper be an author is universally seen as unethical; &#xA;it might be less clear that letting someone not having contributed significantly to a paper be an author is equally unethical, but it is.&#xA;Notably, it gives her or him an advantage in evaluation, promotion, tenure and more importantly recruitment that his or her competitors will not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion; not saying &quot;no&quot; is unethical... to many people you probably do not even know, but unethical nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to add another point there : this is a delicate situation as you are not completely in charge, and as a postdoc you have to handle things gently to have good recommendation from your PI. Being to rigorous about something that people may think costs you nothing can lead you to an impossible situation, so be careful, think ahead the point up to which you are ready to be flexible, do not act offensively, do not corner your PI but let her ways out. For example, you should definitely explain how wrong this would seem to you, but you should not blame her right from the start for asking you this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:33:42.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11377" CreationDate="2013-07-25T18:54:21.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent answers that you already got, I'd like to point out two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are criteria lists for authorship, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot;&gt;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may want to look up a specific guideline for your field. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While I agree with the &quot;say a firm no&quot; side, this may not be possible in - due to the local &quot;power structure&quot;, or also because real life things are usually not as clear as one sentence in a stackexchange question suggests (in that case even possibly not advisable).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I've found a &quot;Contributions&quot; section in the text where for each author is listed what exactly they contributed very helpful in situations where people were unclear about coauthorship and position in the author list.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If there's really just &quot;A. Uthor did not contribute anything&quot; that should a) be embarrassing enough for A. Uthor, or b) the supervisor or, as a last resort c) reviewers/editors to insist on having neither the name in the author list nor the sentence in the contributions. For the less clear cases it allows  readers will to judge for themselves, and in any case I found that explicitly writing down the contributions can do much for the clarification and thus also make decisions about authorship much easier. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, what about approaching the problem from the opposide side at the dinner: telling your PI that you're afraid the guy's not going to do his share in the work. That you had similar experiences previously, so your alarm at that is quite shrill. What your PI recommends what should be that coauthor's exact part of the work and what the PI recommends to ensure that the guy is actually doing his share?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T18:54:21.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11406" CreationDate="2013-07-25T20:28:35.843" Score="8" ViewCount="2985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having problems after ending my master´s in Computer Science. The main problem is that I had to return to my country because I had to take care of my parents. In any case, I managed to get a number of publications in the field, only 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to get a funded PhD position in some European and United States universities, but with no luck at all. By the way, my master´s degree was completed in Europe (in Sweden to be specific).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the feeling that I will not get any paid position, and I cannot afford to pay the whole 4 years of career by myself; also I think that because I am not near any of those research groups from those universities my situation gets further complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Should I sent my CV to the persons in charge of some more research groups, even though they do not have open positions? should I ask that they give me a task so I can prove that I am worthy for their research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T08:13:46.460" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T09:11:59.990" Title="What strategy to follow for getting a funded PhD position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-25T20:51:49.513" Score="11" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently my university does not offer any MOOCs. I am interested in creating one. How should I go about it? Does my university need to sign an agreement with one of the providers such as Coursera or can I approach them independently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7908" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T04:15:49.927" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T16:33:10.333" Title="How does one go about starting a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11267" CreationDate="2013-07-25T21:13:39.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science, this terminology is often used to indicate that an algorithm has been run on real (or simulated) data sets, and observations are made as to how it behaves (how fast does it run, does it solve the problem correctly, and so forth). The experimental procedures are usually not so much of an issue here, because the testing environment can be so well-controlled (i.e. you can generate infinite amounts of random test data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to be contrasted with analyses which are based on mathematical proof, i.e. proving that your algorithm has certain behaviors (e.g. proving it is always correct). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some times you will see papers in between these two poles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7558" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T21:13:39.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11398" CreationDate="2013-07-25T21:22:14.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, you don't need to have a signed deal with e.g, Coursera. You can do it independently. For example, the University of Helsinki has started offering some MOOCs, but they are not listed in the aforementioned provider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good approach would be to follow the line of Khan Academy, maybe it seems rather simplistic, but it can bring good results. One piece of general advice that I can give is to focus on quality instead of quantity. Just a couple of well-made online courses, with lecturers that have experience in the topics, is enough. Also pay attention to the evaluation tools that your site will have, that is crucial for its success and interaction with the prospective students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="46184" LastEditDate="2017-09-18T16:33:10.333" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T16:33:10.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11403" CreationDate="2013-07-26T01:01:58.137" Score="2" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an uprising sophomore, majoring in science.  I just transferred out of a public university, to another public university.  I'm just wondering, what's the impact of transferring between schools to graduate school admissions?  Taking into account that I don't have a great GPA from the previous school (like a low 3), even though I get a 4.0 GPA from my current school, how hard would the low GPA from my previous school affect my graduate school admissions?  Do graduate schools look into freshman year GPA that heavily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have an amount of AP credits, I can graduate in 3 years.  Is it really a good idea to do so, if I wanted to go to graduate school?  Since I don't have a really high GPA from my previous school, should I just do 4 years instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a &lt;strong&gt;add-on question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;I'm not sure what field or career I should go into, how do you know that you want to go into academia? Or is it a little too early for me to decide?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the advices and opinions in advanced!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7912" LastEditorDisplayName="user7912" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T02:24:47.703" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T01:04:18.067" Title="Impact on transferring and graduating early for graduate school admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11402" CreationDate="2013-07-26T02:07:26.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a PhD student with some outside knowledge (as an applicant) and some inside knowledge (admissions committee student member) on an average doctoral admissions process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of factors which affect a candidates acceptance (or conversely, rejection) into a PhD program. They are standardized test scores, GPA, research experience, publications, letters of recommendation and the personal statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, from what I have seen your numbers (GRE and GPA) don't do a good job of getting you in but can keep you out. What this means is that you have to clear whatever internal cut-offs there are. This can be subjective or objective depending upon the department, the field and the university. For instance, this could be 3.5 in one department in one field or could be 3.8 in another department in another field in another university. Standards can also be relaxed for candidates with exceptional research records and letters of recommendation written by trusted researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important factors which matter are previous, relevant research experience, letters of recommendation, personal statement and publications. Some optimum combination of this must convince the admissions committee that you are worth admitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I would venture to say that there &lt;em&gt;isn't much&lt;/em&gt; of an impact in graduating early or transferring to and from different programs. Focus on selecting whether a research career is right for you and what field you actually want to get into for graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of your question is a little broad as I have noted in a comment. If you search this platform, you will find numerous relevant advice from folks much more knowledgeable than me. There are different approaches here. Some people just &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what field they want to get into from the very outset. Others (like me) bounce around in different fields until one &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; very right to them. Yet others get into a masters degree program to &lt;em&gt;try out&lt;/em&gt; a discipline in terms of exploring research before committing to a full time PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T02:07:26.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11374" CreationDate="2013-07-26T04:35:19.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not challenging enough homework problems is not a good excuse to not do them. The homework is necessary when taking programming/math courses. You need to do them so that you know how to crawl before you learn how to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must finish the homework to prove to yourself and your professor that you already know the basics and you're ready to learn the advanced materials. You take the finished homework to your professor and tell him that they are too easy for you and you want more so that he can give you more interesting problems to work on. Professors would really like the students like you because they know they have good and eager to learn students in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect you're in the wrong class. It probably is offered to the students who do not have strong math background as you do. (This is not unusual. I had personal experience that students in my programming class did not know what logarithm is.) In the future, check with the department to make sure the course contents fit into your level of knowledge before you take them so you won't waste your time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best wishes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T04:35:19.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T08:59:40.087" Score="11" ViewCount="2506" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11398/starting-a-mooc&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; prompted me to wonder what compensation comes with teaching a MOOC. Most of these seem to be sponsored by universities, but my university doesn't offer them and neither did my PhD institution so I have no first-hand experience on the instructor-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, most participants do not pay for them (some do, I guess, but I have no idea how many and they're obviously paying much less than university tuition). So, it seems unlikely that teaching such courses pays for the instructors time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I ask: does teaching these come with compensation of any kind? Salary/bonus? Teaching load reduction? Release from service? Teaching assistants for the courses? I'm interested in compensation either from one's university or from the MOOC provider (Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T07:06:46.753" Title="How are instructors compensated for teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11397" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:11:59.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some general guidelines when applying for U.S. positions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The key thing that PhD programs look for is &lt;em&gt;evidence of research potential.&lt;/em&gt;  In your particular case, if you have four peer-reviewed papers, this is a very good start.  The benefits due to the publications decreases (a) if the papers are not peer-reviewed, (b) if they are in conferences or journals no one has ever heard of, (c) if they are not in English [if only because it is harder to read them and see what they are about], (d) if they are not particularly well-written in general (e.g., grammatical mistakes, poor structure, weak results).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your recommendation letters are extremely important, and should speak directly to your research potential and experience.  If possible, these should be from tenured professors at your university, and even better if they are known in their field.  Plan on giving your letter-writers &quot;talking points&quot; that they might want to include in their letters.  Don't write the letters for them, but provide them with enough information so they can write specifically about what you want to study, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your letter-writers know someone at the schools where you are applying, consider asking them to reach out to say directly that you are great and that they should keep you in mind.  Even if the contacts aren't on the admissions committee, they will certainly know someone on the committee and can pass along your name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your grades matter, but less than you might think, especially if you're applying after you already have your Master's degree (again, research potential is the key item).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not apply strictly to &quot;Top-X&quot; schools (5, 10, 20, etc.).  Competition is extremely stiff at the top schools, and &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; can expect to be let into a particular program.  Find other schools that have decent programs but don't limit yourself too much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write an amazing personal statement, and &lt;em&gt;have multiple people proof-read it and give you suggestions&lt;/em&gt;.  Strive to make it clear what you want to research, why it is an important topic, and why you'll be good at solving the outstanding problems in that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, make sure you submit all the correct forms.  You don't want a rejection simply because of an administrative issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that your personal situation (going back to take care of your parents) has bearing on why your record looks poor, say so in a cover letter, or &lt;em&gt;briefly&lt;/em&gt; mention it in your personal statement.  Don't linger on it, but comment on the pertinent points and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the funding part -- if you get accepted into a C.S. position, you will most likely be offered funding, either through a teaching assistant position, and/or through a research associate position.  This should be included in the letter of acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T09:11:59.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11410" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:16:37.220" Score="4" ViewCount="1005" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am registering to submit an article and I am asked to give my current degree, the problem is that I don't have a bachelor degree yet. So, what is the usual term and acronym to use for the current degree if you are still a degree student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7160" LastEditorUserId="84834" LastEditDate="2021-01-19T05:20:19.847" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T05:20:19.847" Title="What is my degree if I am still a bachelor student?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11409" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:53:21.807" Score="-1" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a master's student in computer science. I have almost completed my coursework and they are to different fields. I am planning to do a PhD in the future: is a master's thesis an important prerequisite for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I exactly don't know which field to select for the thesis, I like databases, but my previous job experience was in quality assurance. I really don't want to go for hardcore programming kind of field of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly help me with selection of my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7916" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T10:18:36.400" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T10:28:57.433" Title="Planning for PhD, How much Master's thesis topic and coursework matter for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11408" CreationDate="2013-07-26T10:28:57.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In regards to your first query, any and all &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt; prior research and work experience will strengthen any PhD application.  It is often expected that you can show that you have some proven knowledge (and skills) in the field that you are intending to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to research PhD topics, finding an academic that specialising in that field and ask them about your prior study, also ask the admissions people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can really answer the final part of your query, as this will be up to your interests and experience.  But, one thing to consider for this - perhaps try and find a field that is a mixture of your interests and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T10:28:57.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11407" CreationDate="2013-07-26T11:45:28.047" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US system, I would advise to leave it blank. But in some European education systems (and in particular with the impetus of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_process&quot;&gt;Bologna process&lt;/a&gt;), the high-school diploma is considered a formal degree. In France, it is called &lt;em&gt;baccalauréat&lt;/em&gt;, in the UK it's the A levels, in Spain (you seem to be Spanish) it's the &lt;em&gt;bachillerato&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are in a European system, I would advise you to write &lt;em&gt;bachillerato&lt;/em&gt;/*baccalauréat*/A-levels, otherwise leave blank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T11:45:28.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T08:52:24.017" Score="4" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; about the politics of scientometrics, nor is it on the role of scientometrics in governmental research programs, nor is it about the use of scientometric indices: these questions have been already addressed and debated somewhere else on academia.SE., for instance&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2506/7919&quot;&gt;Which bibliometrics index to trust more?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13/7919&quot;&gt;Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3131/7919&quot;&gt;Which is the most accepted measure for an individual&amp;#39;s academic productivity?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following question is about scientific method(s).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After these few words to avoid any debate, I would like to naively ask about the scientific rigor of scientometrics. &lt;strong&gt;Is there any kind of rigor/general method/scientific concept behind this field of research?&lt;/strong&gt; Or maybe a more aggressive question: is scientometry a science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7919" OwnerDisplayName="Oaoa" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T09:05:31.013" Title="Is Scientometrics a scientific discipline?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T13:37:23.620" Score="1" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to choose the best university in the UK for a computer science master's course, leaning in a more theoretical direction. But sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prospects.ac.uk/search_courses.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prospects.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt; are too broad, I don't want to filter 350 results which consist of basically the same buzzwordy text about carreer opportunities manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current approach is checking out universities I've heard of in the field, trying to find the actual course listing and guessing from that the actual direction teaching might take (currently Glasgow is my first choice because it's the only one to list a &quot;functional programming&quot; course, which is at least a first step into the direction I want); but even the course descriptions in the listing are quite fuzzy…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem of looking at publications from areas I would like to work in and choosing a university from that (hoping that a master's there might set me on a PhD route) is that, at least in undergrad studies, there's little connection between the researcher's work and teaching. But I haven't nailed down an exact direction to go in either, so directly finding research groups I'm interested in and working backwards from there would be hard, too, since there would probably be more than 350 of those as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a specialised computer science master's course ranking website with a column for “philosophical direction” or some kind of “business vs academic career” weighting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6739" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T17:13:47.607" Title="Detailed navigator for UK Computer Science Master's?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11411" CreationDate="2013-07-26T14:56:05.783" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics&quot;&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a science to the extent that it applies the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method&quot;&gt;scientific method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to a field of inquiry. Researchers in this area formulate questions and conceptualize existing problems (e.g., &lt;em&gt;“in these times of scarcity, the public wants research to be&lt;/em&gt; efficient: &lt;em&gt;how can we measure this?&lt;/em&gt;”), they make hypotheses, make predictions, gather data to test them, analyze the data and prove or disprove their hypotheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;em&gt;“what do we scientifically learn from scientometrics?”&lt;/em&gt;, well, there are plenty of established results (you can find some on wikipedia), but I'll use one recent paper from &lt;em&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/em&gt; which highlights what this field can bring us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eloquentscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Fanelli12-NegativeResults.pdf&quot;&gt;Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  D. Fanelli, &lt;em&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;90&lt;/em&gt;, 891–904&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one was really an eye-opener for me, on a phenomenon which I always supposed existed, but it was nice to see it backed by hard data. Other examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0018-8&quot;&gt;Physical and economic bias in climate change research: a scientometric study of IPCC Third Assessment Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A. Bjurström and M. Polk, &lt;em&gt;Climatic Change&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2011&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;108&lt;/em&gt;, 1–22&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cwts.nl/TvR/documents/AvR-Language-Scientometrics.pdf&quot;&gt;Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequences for international comparisons of national research performance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  T. N. van Leeuwen, H. F. Moed, R. J. W. Tijssen, M. S. Visser, A. F. J. van Raan, &lt;em&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2001&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;51&lt;/em&gt;, 335–346&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll finish with a personal opinion: while I am annoyed, as most people, with the emphasis currently given on &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliometrics&quot;&gt;bibliometrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in the evaluation of research and research projects, I think scientometrics in general has an important role to play, just like related fields such as studies on ethics of research: better understanding the positive and negative implications of the way we currently do science is healthy (the meta-level of research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T14:56:05.783" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:43:58.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An additional advantage of LaTex that I haven't seen listed among the many answers here is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTex source files can be (fairly) easily generated by a script or other program.  In some research areas, you might be generating lots of data that needs to be put into tables or figures in your text.  In my case, I had a computer simulation that generated the data.  I programmed the simulation output to add a little bit of LaTex instructions here and there in the data and the output file then became part of my LaTex source document.  No cut-n-paste.  No danger of re-typing a value incorrectly.  If I found a bug in my simulation (hypothetically speaking, of course), then I can easily regenerate the data and associated markup very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T16:43:58.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:45:18.790" Score="1" ViewCount="2204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing my master's thesis for a year now. I was quite productive during the past months, so I already managed to publish one paper on the topic. &#xA;Now, the productivity seems to have drawbacks too - I have already fulfilled every requirement there is for a thesis, and even more, but I haven't described even half of the work I did during the past year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am now left wondering should I return the thesis tomorrow for evaluation, or use two or three more months writing (I'm a terribly slow writer). I would probably like to apply for a PhD position, so I guess I should make the decision from that point of view. If I have a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; comprehensive master's thesis, does it add any value for application? Having the one paper would already opens all doors in my home country, but I don't know about the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7920" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T20:05:50.697" Title="How much more work should I put to my master's thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11417" CreationDate="2013-07-26T17:04:18.377" Score="7" ViewCount="5727" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation, I'm about to graduate with a Ph.D. within the next few months.  My dissertation is done, so I can dedicate quite a bit of time to the issue I'm describing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I have never taught a college level course.  For the entire length of my program I've been on the research side.  I'm very frustrated by this, as &quot;teaching&quot; was always my personal number 2 choice after graduation (number 1 is not in academia, a long shot and not relevant to this conversation).  (And just to remove those suggesting that I should have asked to teach, I have -- for years -- but that's water under the bridge as they say)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to this lack of teaching, I've done everything I could think of: I've taught mini classes to staff and my cohort on specific topics (e.g. LaTeX), and when available, I've taught at university programs for high schoolers.  And, I've recently, applied to every community college in a two hour radius (our university is in the sticks, so that isn't actually very many), to try to get an adjunct job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my fear is that the community colleges won't care about my research or other experience -- they will just note that I don't have teaching experience, so I won't get those positions either -- which means I'll graduate without ever &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; teaching.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is my question:  Is there something I &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be doing that I'm not already?  What have others done in similar situations?  I'm starting to get very concerned about the long term implications of this hole in my CV -- especially given I could really see myself at a lib arts university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7848" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T17:35:51.803" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T22:36:54.913" Title="Creative Ways of Getting Teaching Experience" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11416" CreationDate="2013-07-26T17:42:31.220" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, put down all of that experience on your CV, and when you apply for jobs, make sure you write a great teaching statement on some of these experiences.  Make sure to talk about any courses you designed (the LaTeX one, perhaps?), and don't disregard the high school teaching at all.  I was a high school teacher for seven years before I went to get my PhD, and when applying for college teaching positions, I played up the fact that teaching high school is (in some ways) more challenging and that it made me a better teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that with your current experience, you have a good chance at one of those community college adjunct positions (depending on your field), so don't sell yourself short yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other option that might not sound so great but could at least get you into the classroom is to apply to adjunct positions with for-profit colleges (U. of Phoenix, etc.).  If you can disregard any problems you might have with that &quot;type&quot; of education and dedicate yourself to doing the best you can for the students, it would give you experience.  The problem may be that you're in the sticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of living in the sticks, are you able to move for a semester?  If you're flexible enough, you will be able to find that adjunct position (Alaska?  Kansas?  Puerto Rico?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you can't find a teaching position.  What's stopping you from developing a full-up course, even if you won't teach it now (or ever)?  Be creative, and design the course you've always wanted to teach!  You can then put down, &quot;designed xx undergraduate course, which included a unique assessment plan and a flipped classroom approach, blah, blah, blah.&quot;  A bit hokey, maybe, but it's something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your field, you could branch out and apply for positions or volunteer to teach classes that aren't directly in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is (and you seem to already know this): you have to be as flexible as you can if your goal is simply to get college teaching experience.  But try to think if there are other ways you can be even more flexible, and something is likely to come your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T17:42:31.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11415" CreationDate="2013-07-26T19:29:50.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a paper published on your own work, while doing a Master's degree (i.e. in a relatively short time) sure is a good point of your application to any graduate program. Having a paper submitted for publication is always a plus, but having one already published is a strong plus for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your thesis: the quality of the thesis itself will probably not matter much in admission to a PhD program, unless it is &lt;em&gt;visibly&lt;/em&gt; bad, in which case it will sure hurt. Otherwise, chances are noöne will read it through when you apply. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;if you are strongly confident that your thesis can be accepted/graded/defended&lt;/strong&gt; (I don't know what the detailed requirements are for your program) &lt;strong&gt;in its current state, don't overdo it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong: you don't want to be seen as the guy who did the absolute bare minimum to get away with it. That looks bad, and may leave a stain when people ask for references. Otherwise, if you think your thesis is of good quality, just submit it. The extra work it requires to get it to “perfect” or “awesome” is probably not worth it. The only exceptions I can see are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if your Master's program has a ranking system, and getting a good rank (or even 1st) can boost your future applications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the writing will also be useful for new papers, in which case you might as well include it in the thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T19:29:50.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T20:53:37.293" Score="27" ViewCount="6216" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I just found out that we're having our first child.  While this is a wonderful thing, it also concerns us a bit.  Particularly because we're on limited funds (TA &amp;amp; RA combined salary) and we're still 1.5-2 years away from graduating together.  Also, since our academic careers are so demanding, we're also concerned about balancing time taking care of our newborn.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the responses in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9769/can-one-excel-in-graduate-post-graduate-school-with-a-demanding-family-life&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, but I'd like to ask for more specific advice for new parents in graduate school.  What strategies have you used to enable you to handle having a newborn while both parents are finishing their PhD?  Both in terms of time management and making ends meet, financially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any personal anecdotes, experience, advice, and tips are welcome! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T05:29:39.347" Title="Advice for having children during graduate school" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11416" CreationDate="2013-07-26T22:36:54.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chris Gregg's answer is truly excellent. I would just add one more thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider teaching for free. There are countless opportunities to educate if you do not require compensation. At my university, they are always eager to help the students...especially if they can do so without spending any money. I am sure they would offer me the facilities (room, etc.) if I were willing to 'donate' my time to teach an extra course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this requires you to design a course which is desired by students as well as acceptable by the school which is not already offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of other opportunities - if you have facilities or can afford to rent them. Put an ad in the paper and start teaching. Disadvantaged youths, high school, university students hoping to understand how to get better grades...there should be lots of choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T22:36:54.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11421" CreationDate="2013-07-27T00:54:08.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations! First of all, you are in for a wonderful and life-changing experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your life is going to change quite drastically - so try to be prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things that come to mind in no specific order (some of these are not specific to academia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the personal side, you must first realize that you will have much less time to work. Get used to the idea. The way to deal with this is to organize your time and stick to your schedules. No more random web browsing during work hours - use your time with your child as time for brain rest. As a scientist you may know that it is not always easy to be creative/focused on cue, but you will learn to get used to it with practice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As JeffE commented, if your advisors don't know yet, notify them. A supportive advisor can make a huge difference in terms of flexible-work time, working from home, and even moral support. I would also try to gently ask if they increase your salary or offer some other kind of financial benefits. Also, your graduation will most likely get delayed, hopefully not too much - try to see that your supervisors are ok with that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, have your family help as much as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first year with a child is a huge change and can be quite difficult, especially in your situation. Help each other and be understanding towards each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your school's HR can give you information about benefits you could get for children (healthcare, day care).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can find tons of used baby/child stuff (toys, clothes) for free or very cheap, because they are often useful only for a short time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T00:54:08.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T04:30:45.197" Score="0" ViewCount="1939" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how do we find h-index here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7928" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T09:47:52.920" Title="How to find h-index in microsoft academic?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-07-07T04:12:32.373" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T04:40:30.253" Score="2" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am from Singapore and I am about the graduated from PhD.&#xA;My field is in software engineering, computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan to further my study as postdoc in US, looking at my friends, it seems that although some of them have 1-2 top ranked publications in &#xA;conference, but they are hard to secure a desired postdoc position in US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to get a postdoc position in US, hopefully in some top research labs, is there anyone has some general recommendations on how to improve one's chance in getting those labs in US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7928" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T04:40:30.253" Title="Finding postdoc in US" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-09-17T07:30:54.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11429" CreationDate="2013-07-27T04:58:07.217" Score="19" ViewCount="12273" Body="&lt;p&gt;If no author of an accepted paper registers for the conference, the paper is simply dumped from the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the authors duly register but fail to present it at the conference, what is the fate of the paper? I have an accepted paper at a European conference (IEEE), but due to lack of travel funds, our team has decided that we will not be travelling to present the work (I am not based at Europe). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote to the General Chair of the conference, and he writes to me that if the paper is not presented, it will not be indexed in the IEEE Xplore library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wish to know is, will the paper still be published in the 'Conference Proceedings' booklet or CD? My guess is Yes, since these must be printed before authors arrive for the conference. The General Chair has not responded with an answer on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question two, which happens to be my real inquiry- does such a thing count as a valid 'publication' for me? Will my work get indexed somewhere (wherever it might be) or not, would it be searchable via the Internet or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="5851" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T12:21:52.167" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T22:02:12.107" Title="The fate of an accepted paper not being presented" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11428" CreationDate="2013-07-27T05:09:54.043" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has actually happened to me a couple of times in the past. This really depends on the policy of the organizing professional group (ACM/IEEE) and even within sub-groups of that body (SIGWEB/SIGCHI within ACM)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I have found that if your paper is accepted in a conference and you or any of your co-authors &lt;strong&gt;register&lt;/strong&gt; for that conference, then the paper will still be published in the conference proceedings and indexed in the relevant digital library. e.g. IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you or a co-author do not register for the conference, then your paper, in general, will not be indexed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an accepted paper is not published in the conference proceedings (and by extension not indexed in the appropriate digital library), then it generally does not &quot;count&quot; as a valid publication. You are better off, in that case, by withdrawing your paper and submitting it at a more acceptable conference venue (or a journal where there is not travelling involved)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; You can always link to such a paper on your personal website or put it on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt; for comments. Google Scholar will obviously index it but such indexing has limited practical value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T05:09:54.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11428" CreationDate="2013-07-27T05:19:47.187" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I know in CS field, most conferences care only about &lt;strong&gt;Registration&lt;/strong&gt;. That means if one author registered before the deadline then the paper will be included in the conference proceedings. This mostly due to the fact that many conferences send their papers to the publisher &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the conference take place. It happens all the time where during the conference sessions some papers have no presenter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now some conferences make it explicit that you need to to come and present your paper in order to include it in the final proceedings. Such conditions are usually available in the conference website or after-acceptance emails.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second question, it is really a good and rationale question since your paper passed the peer review process but at the same time you do not have hard evidence for that. Personally I can't comment on that since I am new to conference organisation and academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T05:19:47.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11421" CreationDate="2013-07-27T05:22:50.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first 3 (or even 6) months, it's your fun time. There is not much to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is something I want to recommend is to find a spot for your infant at your university day care ASAP. Most of them give students/faculty members priority. Unfortunately they are always full and have +years of waiting list (specially for infants &amp;lt;2 years old). Register your infant ASAP. Of course, after making sure its a good place to put your child in. Then, you will enjoy visiting the baby during the day hours (12-1pm is a nice time to get your lunch nearby your kid). I went through a nightmare when my kid was at day care far away from my university. This becomes worse in Winter because of the weather conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2018-01-13T05:29:39.347" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T05:29:39.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11432" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-27T07:33:03.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Procrastination&lt;/strong&gt; means replacing more urgent actions with tasks less urgent, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/procrastination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PsychologyToday&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;20 percent&lt;/em&gt; of people chronically avoid difficult tasks and deliberately look for distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T07:44:56.870" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T07:44:56.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11433" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-27T07:33:03.417" Score="0" Body="Procrastination means replacing more urgent actions with tasks less urgent, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T07:45:02.477" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T07:45:02.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11434" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-27T07:46:25.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia going &lt;strong&gt;abroad&lt;/strong&gt; means attending a position to study, teach and/or do research in another country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is often to gain international experience or simply take a chance that is not present in the home country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3323/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-period-in-another-university-during-phd&quot;&gt;How to get the most out of a period in another university during PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11039/how-to-find-a-suitable-summer-internship-university-department-abroad&quot;&gt;How to find a suitable summer internship university/department abroad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5148/msc-for-experienced-professional&quot;&gt;MSc for experienced professional?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T07:55:23.767" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T07:55:23.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11435" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-27T07:46:25.077" Score="0" Body="In academia going abroad means attending a position to study, teach and/or do research in another country" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T07:54:53.780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T07:54:53.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11426" CreationDate="2013-07-27T07:59:15.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The h-index was removed from Microsoft Academic Search in January 2013, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/About/Help.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;features update list&lt;/a&gt; (which, not surprisingly, is the first Google result for “h-index Microsoft Academic Search”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T07:59:15.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11428" CreationDate="2013-07-27T09:29:58.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the conference regulations. As an example I know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://eucap2013.org&quot;&gt;Eucap&lt;/a&gt; indexes the paper in IEEExplore if one of the authors registers and the final paper passes the checks in IEEE PDF Express. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some conference management systems like &lt;a href=&quot;http://edas.info&quot;&gt;Edas.info&lt;/a&gt; have a special page called &quot;Explain no-show&quot;. It's a common issue for authors who are unable to obtain their Visas to enter the country where the conference is held. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's a good idea to consider submitting to arXiv&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T09:29:58.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:26:52.280" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answers: Get cited.  Present.  Show yourself to be a peer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer:&#xA;I have the opposite view about networking: you should not waste any day on it unless it directly helps your research (e.g., potential collaborations, working on grants).  While admittedly you need to network and get yourself known, that won't help at all unless you're known for great work.  You're not going to be known for great work without having great publications.  They don't need to be in the best journals (though it helps), but you need to be pushing out work that answers questions that other scholars have.  In my opinion, there is no better way to get your name out there than to be cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The single most important thing that I learned from transitioning out of my PhD program is this: Publishing is networking.  Publishing is talking with your peers.  (Particularly if you publish in conferences, you are literally talking to your peers.)  No level of pavement-beating will get you more attention than to win a best paper award or to present on a topic that big people have been looking for a good citation on for years.  I know a few relatively young scholars in my field who have just about universal name recognition.  Their MO?  1. They answered questions that researchers were interested in knowing the answers to. or 2. They answered questions that people didn't even realize needed asking, but were so important everyone needs to talk about them now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, being known doesn't help you much if you're known as &quot;another one of those people who works on topic X.&quot;  You want to be known as &quot;An expert in topic Y&quot; or &quot;The first person I would go to with a question about Y.&quot;  If you don't have this, any major researcher will say: &quot;Why would I bother collaborating or recommending this guy?&quot;  Obviously, this takes years, but so does a doctorate.  Nothing is more important to being well-known than asking the right question at the right time (and then answering it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, one secondary route of networking not noted by others from what I have seen: acting as a point of contact who interacts with sponsoring organizations.  You know what another great way to get face-time with experts is?  Being one member of a small workshop or meeting for people all sponsored by the same funding agency.  Usually this responsibility would be taken by your lab head or similar PI.  To get this responsibility, you need to basically be the best grad student working with the PI and the PI needs to be unavailable or need a second pair of hands.  However, by being there, it says two things: 1. You are the best student in the PI's lab/project and 2. Your PI trusts you enough to act as their proxy.  I think this only works with an established (full prof) PI, as non-tenured PI's may need the networking as much or more than you.  Networking with program officers is also a good habit to be in.  Ultimately, these are the people who control what kinds of work can get funded.  This is one of the ways a good advisor can plug you into their network (along with making sure to introduce you to their big-shot friends/rivals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T16:26:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:27:08.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly adding (or just making up) a middle initial to your name will help to differentiate you a lot if someone if looking for your papers specifically. But you have to be consistent and use it everywhere professionally. I work with someone who inserted a made up initial in his publications just for this purpose and says it works quite well. I don't believe that he visited a court or anything to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For hiring purposes, your CV (as mentioned by others) and a &quot;publications&quot; page on your professional website will be the best. If you don't have a website, something like ResearchGate.com or Academia.edu will work in a pinch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7763" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T16:27:08.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11445" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:27:18.587" Score="37" ViewCount="3441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received the galley proofs for an article which has been accepted to a well-regarded math journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The copyediting is, quite frankly, terrible. The copyeditor has introduced dozens of mathematical, typographical, and bibliographic mistakes. The proofs were accompanied by a list of changes and questions, and some of the newly introduced mistakes were described in this list, but not all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few representative examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor has, in many places, replaced the mathematical notation &amp;lt;&amp;lt; with &quot;is much less than&quot;. It is universal within my subfield of mathematics that &amp;lt;&amp;lt; means something very different from &quot;is much less than&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor has typeset fractions in different ways, so that what was formerly in the denominator is now in the numerator.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor has monkeyed unacceptably with the bibliography. I used a software package, for which I looked up on their FAQ how to cite it. The editor replaced my correct bibliography entry with something different.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tables now appear in wrong places. A cursory reading of the edited text reveals that it now makes no sense, and this would be obvious even to someone without specialized knowledge of my field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on, but I don't want to just rant. Instead I have two closely related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, is this typical? I find it difficult to imagine that a publisher who did this kind of shoddy work on a regular basis could stay in business. I wonder if I just had the bad luck to get the new employee this time around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, is a strong response warranted? I am inclined to write to the journal staff, tell them that their work is unacceptably sloppy, explain in detail why, and ask them to start over from scratch, and to furnish a list of all changes made, no matter how minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not just because I want to pick an argument. I have gone through my paper line-by-line several times in the past, making very sure that everything I said was correct. With this level of copyediting work, I am back to square one and I suspect I might accidentally miss several errors introduced by the copyeditors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would such an e-mail be likely to produce the kind of results I'm looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks to everyone who replied. I wrote a strong, but I hope polite, e-mail to my contact at the journal, listing several of the mistakes, and asking them to start over and to send me a complete list of changes. His first reply was a little bit ambiguous, appearing to perhaps misunderstand what I was asking for -- but he has since apologized and agreed to my requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point of departure from Anonymous Mathematician's advice: I haven't said anything to the editorial board and the publisher, or discussed this issue (other than here, anonymously) with anyone but my coauthor and my contact at the journal -- happily, it looks like there won't be any reason to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2:&lt;/strong&gt; As I requested, my contact at the journal started again from scratch, did a much more conservative job of copyediting, and provided me a copy of my file which was marked up in red and blue with every change they made. Needless to say this made my job quite easy and I thanked them for their good work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastEditorUserId="6110" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T21:51:03.397" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T23:04:26.540" Title="How should I respond to a terrible copyediting job?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11441" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:41:46.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a copy-editor (CE) changes the meaning of your manuscript you obviously need to recorrect it. The CE should have received a set of &quot;house rules&quot; for how thing should be formatted but it is not likely the CE is an expert in evey field. In your case it sounds as if the CE has been &quot;trigger happy&quot;. In any case, you should makethe necessary corrections and return the proof to the editor detailing what you find wrong with the CE edits. You should clearly state why the edits are unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your point about location of tables, I am not sure what exactly you mean by &quot;wrong place&quot; but the journal will obviosuly place tables and figures where they make type-setting sense but should of course be located after where they are first referenced in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in some cases journals (CE) may change things to adhere to &quot;house rules&quot;. These changes must be accepted but of course not when they change the meaning of the paper or introduce errors. I have experienced similar (but not as severe) edits to my own papers, I have also been in the position to enforce house rules in the journal I edit, but never to the point of changing the meaning. If in doubt I would have contacted the author or passed along a query about the particular issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T23:04:26.540" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T23:04:26.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:49:25.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;big ego&quot; is definitely not necessary.  Of all the scholars I have interacted with, the biggest-shots were often less egotistical than the average person.  Especially at the highest levels of academia, the strongest work often comes from those who are willing and able to listen to and improve on the ideas of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you do need to make yourself heard.  You do need to be bold.  I do not know a single successful tenure-track person who sits on ideas until they are sure that they're right.  You don't find out an idea is right by mulling it over.  You find out by formulating the problem rigorously, by testing a hypothesis, and by subjecting it to the most scathing peer-review you can find (not necessarily in that order, as you might do some of these steps multiple times).  There's no harm in being self-critical or unsure that you're right.  There is harm when that hinders you from taking the necessary steps to find out if you're right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T16:49:25.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11441" CreationDate="2013-07-27T16:57:05.290" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;That does sound terrible.  I haven't run into anything so bad myself, but I know people who have.  It seems to vary a lot by publisher.  My impression is that it happens occasionally when they try to save money on copyediting by outsourcing to a new, cheap copyediting company.  If the results are terrible, then the publisher will switch to the next-cheapest company, and this will continue until the publisher finds an acceptable level of quality.  Unfortunately, it leads to bad results for authors who get caught in the middle of this process.  Hopefully the publisher will learn from this incident and the problem won't continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More importantly, is a strong response warranted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, certainly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ask them to start over from scratch, and to furnish a list of all changes made, no matter how minor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that getting them to start over from scratch will be difficult, but you should certainly insist on seeing a second set of proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking for a list of all changes made could be useful, but it's not clear whether you can trust that they will compile a complete list (they may be sloppy about that too).  Many copyeditors mark up a paper copy before changing the file, so you may have some luck in getting a photocopy/scan of the marked up copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend letting the editorial board know, and perhaps the publisher too.  If you just resolve the issue directly with the copyeditors, it's possible that nobody else will find out what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T16:57:05.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3142" CreationDate="2013-07-27T18:24:45.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Official Answer: It depends on the tenets of your institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real Answer: No.  Never with an active student at your institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relationships may sometimes be allowed between former students and faculty by the letter, but I cannot think of when it would be advisable for a faculty member to have a relationship with a student.  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is ever a chance of you having power over their academic progress, it is at best a conflict of interest and at worst a setup for sexual harassment case.  If you're looking for a great reason to have your tenure file silently quashed by a dean, this is a great way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have no direct power over a student, there is the possibility that other students could complain if there is indirect influence (e.g., if you have connections to other faculty who do have power over that student or over rival students).  Even an indirect connection to the student has the potential for allegations of bias or preference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You do not know the future and may run into a conflict later (e.g., student takes a course in your department, invited to work on a funded grant with member of their department). At that point, you're hosed.  Even if ended the relationship as soon as the conflict became evident, the prior history of the relationship still exists.  Alternatively, you could hurt your own (or the student's) academic trajectory by declining these opportunities.  At the point where you are hurting a students' academic trajectory, it's unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It looks bad on the institution.  How many administrators would want it known that any of their professors are dating any of their students?  If you were a parent looking at a school for your kid, all else being equal, would you want the one where faculty are dating students?  Imagine if the relationship goes sour and you end up in shouting matches with a student in your office/lab (or theirs!).  In that light, dating a student is an anti-service to the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student is really going to be the love of your life, you can wait until they're graduated to start a relationship.  If not, then it's certainly not worth the risk (even if your name is Professor Carlos Danger).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of thing used to be allowed decades ago, where it wasn't uncommon for the (almost entirely male) faculty to end up marrying female grad students.  As we've become more aware of the power structures and negative externalities involved, it's become much less permissible.  Rightly so, in my opinion.  No school is bigger than 100,000 students and most students you meet will be done in 3-4 years maximum.  Given the risks (bias, bad press, potential lawsuits by the student or their peers), I don't think it's an undue restriction to not date a few thousand people rotating over a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T18:24:45.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11450" CreationDate="2013-07-27T19:29:01.187" Score="19" ViewCount="1577" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one question that probably has an archaic answer.  I recently reviewed a paper for a journal that stuck all the figures at the end (with placeholders in-text).  Where I publish, we typically provide camera-ready manuscripts or at least give reviewers a version with the figures embedded so that they can see what the heck is going on.  Occasionally, you embed the figures plus they are attached separately at the end (due to how the system generates the PDF).  However, I recognize that dumping the figures at the end of a journal submission for review is quite common in some fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My simple question: Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that at some point, there was a purpose to putting figures at the end rather than where they belong.  I am also aware that it is quite common for journals to shuffle around your figure positions.  But why would journals possibly want their copy to have all the figures dumped at the end?  Obviously it is not for the reviewers' benefit, as it makes certain papers nigh-unreadable (&quot;As you can see in Figure 1&quot; - &lt;em&gt;opens up second copy of the PDF so I can see Fig 1 at the same time as the text&lt;/em&gt;).  Anyone know the reasoning behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2020-09-03T13:34:04.953" Title="Why do some journals want figures at the end?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2013-07-27T19:44:41.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think it's a bad idea to just keep throwing papers at the door of a good journal just because it is a good journal.  You seem to have a publication plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I mean by this is that in the plan for publications my group has, the first article &#xA;  discusses just the structure, dynamics, etc. of some new interesting carbon/silicon/etc. &#xA;  system. The second article will elaborate on this for an even more novel, more developed &#xA;  structure than the first. Then the last article will (hopefully) provide a deep new insight &#xA;  into how this structure can be used for energy storage/transport/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your new work is too similar to your earlier work previously rejected, many venues (especially top journals) may ding you because it is not different enough for them to consider it a completely different paper.  No journal wants to re-review one they've outright rejected (even if half of it is new).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then, look at the journals that you are targeting and check out the last 2 years or articles they have published.  Be honest with yourself in thinking: &quot;Which of my articles would look entirely in-place among these other examples?&quot;  This is not just about the importance or quality of your research, but also the scope.  If they want certain data or tests, make sure you have that data.  If they want formulas, better include them.  If everyone cites Dr. X, better make sure he's in your lit review.  Etc.  Ignore the junk the journal says about its' &quot;official&quot; scope.  Look at what they actually accept as a regular (not special issue) paper.  Find the one of yours that is the best match for a particular good journal.  Submit that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T19:44:41.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11448" CreationDate="2013-07-27T20:03:21.887" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a long tradition of submitting text and figures separated. this stems back to when manuscripts were typewritten and figures were drawn by ink. Many journals have kept this format and now the reason to keep figures separate is to facilitate the typesetting/layout. In addition, many electronic submission systems assemble manuscripts by merging text files with graphics files. The reason for having separate graphics files is that the typesetting processing inserts figures during the process. Not all journals take camera-ready manuscripts (in fact none in my field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer, and if you review from a printout, it may also be advantageous to have figures separately since it is easier to look at them in parallel with reading the text. If you review on screen, it will of course not be an advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is actually no need to format a manuscript this way as long as figures and text are delivered separately in the end if that is what the journal requires for their typesetting. Always follow any instructions provided by the journal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="84148" LastEditDate="2020-09-03T13:34:04.953" LastActivityDate="2020-09-03T13:34:04.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11448" CreationDate="2013-07-27T20:03:43.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct that this has to do with pre-online publishing practices. In &quot;the old days,&quot; most images had to be made &quot;camera-ready,&quot; and were to be shrunk down to the required size. Consequently, the figures should be on a separate page at the end of the paper, so that different images didn't &quot;stray&quot; into the area that was to be photographed for another figure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of this, there has been no real need for the journals to change this practice, and thus it persists to the present day in a number of journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T20:03:43.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11441" CreationDate="2013-07-27T20:20:12.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is perfectly normal. Copyediting is often of poor quality, even with reputable publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the following approach seems to work fairly well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be polite. Thank for the proofs. Do not accuse anyone, do not vent. Imagine how you would respond if you had found just one tiny typo, and follow the same pattern even if there are dozens of mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List every copyediting error, and explain carefully what is wrong in each instance. Try to be as thorough as possible. Most likely this is your last chance; do not assume that you will get another opportunity to review the proofs before the paper is printed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Email your response ASAP, preferably before the deadline. Remember that copyeditors have their own deadlines to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can maximise the chances that the copyeditors will do their best to fix all mistakes in your paper — they will know what to fix and how, and they will also have time and motivation to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; Do not try to fix the whole world, just try to &lt;em&gt;cooperate&lt;/em&gt; with the copyeditors to fix &lt;em&gt;your paper&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T20:20:12.720" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11455" CreationDate="2013-07-27T21:36:30.373" Score="18" ViewCount="1428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recognize my advisor is busier than I am. But, nonetheless, I feel the need to tell her sometimes that I am overloaded with too many tasks and I need to push a deadline back or pass on some request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do other people handle this tactfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T16:26:24.133" Title="How do I tactfully tell my advisor (who's much busier than I am) that I'm too busy to do such-and-such?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2013-07-27T22:01:10.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't look up my advisor or other faculty members. I always behave like they were my peers. This way, there's never any kind of social problems, since the relationships are completely professional right from the start (and, if someone is not okay with this, one gets to know who to avoid). Usually, about after a month, people in higher positions than me stop introducing me as a student for other people, and start talking about their new collaborator/workmate instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, I just don't get this kind of questions, most people doing their PhDs are 20-30 years old, and find it difficult to say what they think, want to do, not want to do, or tell if they are angry, happy, sad, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in no need to explain yourself. Just be professional. Either it works out, or doesn't. Get rid of unhealthy social relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7935" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T22:01:10.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2013-07-27T22:08:36.763" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had this discussion with my supervisors/advisors many times, all with positive outcomes.  This is what I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be direct and to the point, it sounds like neither of you have time to dance around the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer alternative ideas/timelines/strategies, I found that coming up with a solution is appreciated as in the long term, it is going to save time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be honest and truthful, state that you are overloaded - show how this is so, and either defer or decline the request.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, your time and well being is just as valuable, and any good advisor already recognises that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T22:08:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:11:28.427" Score="5" ViewCount="1550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my masters thesis. If my full time job involves working on the same research project, will it be worthwhile to do a part time PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any things I am going to lose on? Is there any way i can make up for that? If I want to have a career in academia 3-4 years down the line, will it hurt me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T07:33:53.017" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T07:33:53.017" Title="What do you think about a part time PhD vs full time PhD, when the part time PhD involves working on my master's thesis research full time?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11456" CreationDate="2013-07-28T02:07:40.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can relate to your situation somewhat. I have been full time while studying my Masters and now my PhD, but in my case, there were no direct links (the job pays the bills).  The final academic transcript says the degree, not whether you did it part or full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While working full time, I finished my part time Masters (physics) in 3 years and are on track to do the same with my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on how much time you can realistically spend on your research so that it does not impact on your paid job, your lifestyle, family and friends and such.  Whether it is worthwhile really depends on you and what you are aiming for - it sounds like it may well be worthwhile for you, given your job is in the same field and that you are aspiring to have a career in Academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T02:07:40.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2013-07-28T02:30:26.180" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not sure I have time to do X in addition to Y and Z. If I take X on, it might push me back three or four weeks in finishing Y. Is it that important?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, the off-chance that X is more important than you realize and your advisor might say yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T02:30:26.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11463" CreationDate="2013-07-28T02:33:50.910" Score="24" ViewCount="9362" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question about my advisor (supervisor, professor) in a lab, where I am a graduate research assistant, and had done research together with a PhD student, as a part of his dissertation. The student happened to be one of my close friends. The professor wanted to write a journal paper based on the results of his dissertation with that candidate. This was kind of near the end of his PhD program (three weeks before final defense). At that time he said that he was already stressed out about defense and will write the paper after the event as it won't take him more than a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After he graduated, he had asked the professor about the journal paper but the professor kind of brushed it under the carpet saying he is looking for CFPs (call for papers) where they can write and never got back to him, despite his constant inquiries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For his research on human-computer interaction, I had developed applications which formed the core of his project. So my advisor asked me if I was interested in writing the paper and she convinced me that since I developed the applications (that formed basis of the research) it was fair enough that I write it. But after a week, she ignored me and wrote the paper herself and submitted it to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came to know last week that my advisor wrote the paper herself and got it published. This professor is an assistant professor trying to get tenure. I am trying to understand the motivation behind this behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal paper was published by my professor as sole author. Won't the paper count towards her tenure if she wrote it with a graduate student or will it count towards higher credit if she is the sole author? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it ethical to publish the paper based on my friend's dissertation? (I mean it is legal, because she will be referencing his PhD dissertation, but is it ethical or common in academia to sidestep the original author?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I be listed as co-author for all papers coming out of this research because I developed the applications that formed basis for this research? I mean the concept for them was not mine, but I did program them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2019-08-12T10:01:06.740" LastActivityDate="2019-08-12T10:01:06.740" Title="Advisor publishing students' work as sole author - ethics and motivation" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2013-07-28T03:19:45.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Improve your work efficiency first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, prioritize your assignments. What should be done first? what next? What can wait? If you're not sure about the priorities, ask your advisor. She is the one who advises you. Use her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, work hard. Do your best. Manage your time wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still cannot handle them, then tell her that you need to push a deadline back or pass on some request, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T03:19:45.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11460" CreationDate="2013-07-28T04:59:51.730" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not really qualified to assess how other departments would treat single- versus co-authored papers. As for the other points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] It is &lt;em&gt;completely unethical&lt;/em&gt; for the advisor to submit a journal article based on work done by a student as solely her own, even if she were entirely responsible for writing the paper. Being a single author implies that the author is responsible for the entire content of the work described, referring to both research and preparation of the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Your rights to being credited for this work depend on the nature and scope of the work that you individually did. If you simply built the apps once, and then did no subsequent work on the project, then you are entitled to a paper credit for a work describing the tools and how they were used (in part or in whole). However, unless you have been doing &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; development on these tools, you would not be entitled to receive authorship credit whenever the work is used. (You would, however, be entitled to a citation on the use of your work in future publications!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T04:59:51.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11460" CreationDate="2013-07-28T05:13:24.263" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before anything else: &lt;strong&gt;Don't walk.  Run.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are almost certainly details of this story that you have omitted, or that you have unintentionally embellished, or that you are unaware of, and &lt;strong&gt;clarifying those details here would be inappropriate&lt;/strong&gt;.  What is clear is that your relationship with your advisor is completely broken.  Get help, and get out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q1) Wont the paper count towards her tenure if she wrote it with a graduated student or will it count towards higher credit if she is the sole author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All publications count toward tenure, whether solo, with colleagues, with current students, with former students, or with strangers from Zanzibar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q2) Is it ethical to publish the paper based on my friend's dissertation?  (i mean it is legal, because she will be referencing his phd dissertation but is it ethical to sideshaft the original author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few different possibilities here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor's submission does not report your friend's thesis work as her own, but rather builds on your friend's work in a novel direction.  In this case, your advisor's submission is &lt;em&gt;ethical&lt;/em&gt;, but perhaps a bit unfriendly.  After all, the success of her students is a significant component of her upcoming tenure case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The results in your friend's dissertation are the main topic of your advisor's submission, but your friend did not make a significant and novel contribution, and therefore does not deserve coauthorship.  But in this case, your friend &lt;strong&gt;also&lt;/strong&gt; does not deserve a PhD, and your advisor's signing his thesis was unethical.  This possibility seems highly unlikely; passing a thesis defense generally requires the unanimous approval of the entire thesis committee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your friend made a significant and novel contribution, which is the main topic of your advisor's paper.  &lt;strong&gt;In this case, your advisor is being grossly unethical.&lt;/strong&gt;  Fortunately, since your friend's dissertation is easily accessible online (&lt;strong&gt;Isn't it?&lt;/strong&gt;), any competent referee or editor should quickly spot the intellectual theft.  That would just be &lt;em&gt;stupid&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I came to know last week that my advisor wrote the paper herself and got it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that your advisor has stolen credit for another person's work—your friend, her former student, or a stranger from Zanzibar—it would be appropriate for you (or better yet, your friend) to speak &lt;em&gt;discreetly&lt;/em&gt; to your department head or another trusted senior faculty member, with both the original dissertation and your advisor's publication in hand, asking them to clarify the ethical boundaries.  Do not &lt;em&gt;accuse&lt;/em&gt;; such accusations are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; serious, and your advisor's colleagues may react defensively on her behalf.  Instead, explain the delicacy of the situation and ask for guidance.  And then listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may react badly anyway, but then you have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they agree that your advisor has acted unethically, &lt;strong&gt;get out of the way&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is not your fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it common in academia to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  I won't claim they &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; happen, obviously, but serious breaches of ethical behavior, at the level you are accusing, are extremely rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q3 One more question i have is should i be listed as co-author for all papers coming out of this research because i developed the apps that formed basis for this research. I mean the concept for them was not mine but i did program them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a more subtle question.  As a general rule, I would say &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.  Of course you deserve credit for your contributions, but only once for each contribution.  If your contribution is a key piece of software, then the &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; paper that uses that software should describe that software in detail and include you as a coauthor.  If you walk away after that first paper, later work that relies on your software—by your advisor or anyone else—need not list you as a coauthor; you already got credit.  With good reason, Stephen Wolfram is not a coauthor on every paper that uses Mathematica.  You should of course be &lt;em&gt;cited&lt;/em&gt; in any paper that uses, builds on, or improves your work, but that's a separate issue from coauthorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But reality is rarely so cut and dried.  Is moving the software to a new platform a sufficient contribution?  Optimizing the underlying algorithms?  Adding a new, easy-to-implement feature suggested by your advisor?  Adding a new, &lt;strong&gt;hard&lt;/strong&gt;-to-implement feature suggested by your advisor?  Adding support for a new input device?  I have no idea.  &lt;strong&gt;You and your advisor should have agreed &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt; on the contribution required for you to be a coauthor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, if you had not had this conversation already, I would recommend having it &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt;, but it sounds like it may be too late for that.  You may be better off simply walking away and finding a new advisor that you can trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T17:40:58.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T17:40:58.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-28T07:16:44.733" Score="14" ViewCount="30669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some universities encouraging students to contact with the faculty before making applications. For example,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cse.psu.edu/prospective/graduate/gradgrad&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. On the other hand I've heard some people saying that they are waste of times because professors receive several such e-mails every year and they don't even have time to look at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it good idea to make contanct professors before making the application? Can it increase my chances of acceptance? Can it ever backfire me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:02:40.937" Title="Is it a good idea to contact professors before applying to grad schools?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2013-07-28T07:31:33.817" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really only works as a strategy if you have something truly meaningful to say. If you have to force yourself to do it and struggle to come up with something to say in your email, you're not helping yourself. Faculty get tons of email all the time and every year - as you say - get emails from prospective students, many of whom will not be admitted and in whom they invest no effort. So, if you genuinely think you're a good fit for a program/lab and have solid questions in mind to ask the faculty/PI of that lab that will communicate your quality and fit, this may be viable. But, I would definitely not recommend it as a general strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T07:31:33.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2013-07-28T07:47:58.540" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the link you provided,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To increase your chances of admission to our program, you are strongly encouraged to discuss your research interests with one or more faculty from our department prior to your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds an invitation for you to contact the faculty members. In cases like this, I would recommend you to contact them. Find the faculty memebers whose research interests are close to yours and write e-mails to tell them that you are interested in what they are doing. I believe those e-mails won't hurt your chance to get admitted because they ask you to do so in the first place. How much it will help you remains to be seen. As the web page says, it increases your chances of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do not see such invitation on their web pages then I agree with Thomas that don't contact them unless you do have &lt;em&gt;truly meaningful things&lt;/em&gt; to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T08:05:08.573" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T08:05:08.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2013-07-28T08:58:30.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australian context:&lt;/strong&gt; If by graduate school, you are referring to doing a PhD, then in Australia the standard first step is to find an academic willing to supervise you. The university will typically have additional requirements, such as regarding grades and prior academic experience. In particular, if you want a scholarship for your PhD, grades will be very important. Even if your grades a little lower, there is sometimes the option to commence  a masters by research and convert to a PhD thesis at a later stage. Furthermore, if an academic is keen to supervise your project, then they are likely to do what they can to facilitate your application. So in summary, contacting academics to enquire about PhD supervision is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T08:58:30.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2013-07-28T09:02:48.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One small suggestion:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up your &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/citations&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Citations page&lt;/a&gt;. This will make your publications and name more visible in Google scholar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T09:02:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-28T11:26:34.760" Score="9" ViewCount="1212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about one year from receiving my master's degree. I have published a few papers, so I'm confident that I want to do research. I have been offered two different PhD positions at my current university, but I might not want to stay here. The reason for not taking the first position is that I don't like the advisor too much, and for the second position that they lack funding/other resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recognize the early(?) offers are due to my hard work. If I would like to apply to somewhere else, when should I start contacting potential supervisors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I need some strategy to get out nicely... it will be difficult to stay under the radar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7945" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T12:56:26.277" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T20:21:53.217" Title="When to start seeking PhD positions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11471" CreationDate="2013-07-28T12:01:15.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is never too early to look around for PhD positions. Start out by looking at what is advertised to see what is available and where. If you already know of places to go then get in touch with the department/research group to present yourself. Having a few papers under your belt will be a plus so provide a CV and the papers in your first contact and add a statement of what you want to do and why you are interested in that place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being focussed and showing you have a strong urge to continue is likely to impress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand it is difficult to say no to two offers and move away but remember that you are free to move. Saying no to a position without funding should not weigh you down. The other position is a little more sensitive of course. But, people move for many reasons, personal and professional. I do not think you need to explain your motives. A change in location is enough. Moving is a positive so there is nothing remarkable about doing so. There is, furthermore, no reason to bring up any negatives about your present location. If your move stirs bad feelings then it is a sign things are not right anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T13:38:01.027" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T13:38:01.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-28T16:05:45.277" Score="6" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask what are some general requirements, level of know-how, etc. that students must fulfil/have to get accepted in the top universities? I'm particularly interested in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;STEM&lt;/a&gt; fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand this varies per position, I would assume that this can be answered with either statistical information or experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assume that a student has good grades, a publication or two, 1-2 letters of recommendation. Any chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7947" LastEditorUserId="5658" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T16:09:13.560" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:09:13.560" Title="Who gets accepted to top universities to do a PhD (STEM fields)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11473" CreationDate="2013-07-28T18:32:44.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably varies by field.  I went into an Engr/CS department.  I will say that grad school apps are a bit of a crap-shoot at top schools.  There are certainly &quot;talent picks&quot; (e.g., people so amazing many schools would grab them without knowing where they'd fit), but in my experience top programs often have labs that have particular needs and &quot;draft&quot; PhD candidates who might fill them.  If you expect to be funded with a stipend through grad school (and in my opinion, in STEM, you should be), somebody in the faculty needs to step up and allocate their limited grant funding on a candidate within the first year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your tuition is going to be paid by one of the profs on the faculty, there's obviously going to be some level of preference toward students whose interests and skills match their needs.  Hence, part of your likelihood of being accepted (and most of your probability of being funded) depends on who will have slots for PhD students and how those slots match up with your interests/skills.  Or, in other words, you need to convince somebody that you are worth at least $70k over 4-6 years (in reality, more than that, as professors invest their time in training you to be useful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that light, you're really not applying for a &quot;top grad school.&quot;  You are &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; applying to one or two labs in a grad school... with no idea if they can even take you on board.  In my opinion, your statement in your application should directly reflect a lab (or two) that you would want to do work with.  The whole remainder of your materials help  support the claim that you would be an asset to those labs.  This also means that you generally need to apply to quite a few grad schools if you want to get into a top one.  Unless you know a program closely already, there is no way to know who has funding coming in, who is on sabbatical, or a hundred other things that could sink an otherwise solid application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, good grades, good GRE scores in relevant areas, and prior research experience are all your first foot in the door.  But none of them are enough, on their own.  You need to write well (e.g., have a good statement), have great independent work ethic (e.g., leading teams, not just working on them), and your letters of reference need to be excellent.  You'll also need three letters of reference at almost any top school.  I don't think I applied to a single place that took less than that (though that was some years ago, so it could even be up to 4 in some programs!).  If you can't find three profs who will speak highly of you, you're in trouble.  If having a personal reference vouch for you even crosses your mind, don't even bother applying to a top program.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you're applying to MIT or a few other places, you had better keep track of all the texts that you have ever used.  They ask you to list them.  Which is a huge pain to try to rustle up 3 years later, for the record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T18:32:44.560" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-28T18:38:49.210" Score="2" ViewCount="2144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will receive my master's degree soon. Even though it was a nice program, I found out I'm more interested in something else. Now, I'm thinking should I do another MSc (one-year) in the other field before starting a PhD? The MSc program I'm interested in is given in the UK. I think (hope) I'm so good a student, that they would happily take me in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, then there comes the question how to fund the 2nd master's degree.. In general, are master's degrees (fully) funded in the UK? I'm european if that matters. I would also appreciate if you can point me to grant-providing institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7948" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T03:03:25.037" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:03:25.037" Title="How to fund a 2nd master's degree (UK), or should I directly go for a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11471" CreationDate="2013-07-28T20:21:53.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;looking for a university and a research group,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having time for the formal admission process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will start for the later, as it is simpler.  It depends on place, but some typical estimates of effective time you need are (at least, for applicants from aboard):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in US ~1.5 year,&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applications for Oct in Dec-Jan plus SATs that need to be taken before,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in UK ~1 year,&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applications for Oct in Dec-Jan,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in continental Europe ~3 months,&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some applications May-Jun, some - on rolling basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it depends to some degree on particular university or institute (so always check that; and also check prerequisites, e.g. language tests, documents to be collected - some of them need time).&#xA;Moreover, it depends also or your national/visa status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to searching for a group, it varies. You may find an advisor of your dreams on the first conference you attend (or via a talk at your university, or recommendation of a local professor), or you may spend a year and be far from that. (See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5300/methods-for-finding-graduate-programs-for-specific-areas-of-research&quot;&gt;Methods for finding graduate programs for specific areas of research&lt;/a&gt;.) The time you need depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;popularity of your target field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well are you networked in the target field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how popular is your current universities for that field (are professors well networked? are there many talks of invited guests?),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many conferences/schools/workshops you attend and how good are you at networking. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T20:21:53.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2013-07-28T20:59:31.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is stated in each copyright transfer agreement (CTA) signed for publishing each paper. If the form says it is okay, then it is. Usually you can get your hand on the typical CTA used by a publisher on its website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise never to sign a CTA that does not allow reuse of the article content for a book, a dissertation and collected works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T20:59:31.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11481" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11482" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" Score="0" Body="[copy-editing] concerns the process of copy editing and the work of copy editors in academic writing" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T21:12:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-07-29T00:18:50.417" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;JeffE's answer is excellent, and probably the most &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot;. Nevertheless, as food for thought I offer the following anecdote from Bayles and Orland's &lt;em&gt;Art and Fear&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the &amp;quot;quantity&amp;quot; group: fifty pound of pots rated an &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;, forty pounds a &amp;quot;B&amp;quot;, and so on. Those being graded on &amp;quot;quality&amp;quot;, however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the &amp;quot;quantity&amp;quot; group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the &amp;quot;quality&amp;quot; group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T00:18:50.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11530" CreationDate="2013-07-29T03:33:57.267" Score="4" ViewCount="2505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my bachelor project and my supervisor suggested to work with me on publishing a paper about my work which is an encryption algorithm, Now my supervisor helped me with some remarks along my bachelor project and helped me with the paper (like grammar mistakes and such) but I am the one who made encryption algorithm and I am the one who wrote the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now should I include my supervisor as a 2nd author &lt;strong&gt;as he wants&lt;/strong&gt;? (I can refuse, and then publish the paper on my own) He is a senior IEEE member and has published papers (where he was also 2nd author taking credit for others' work). Should I mention him just for the sake to get my paper accepted or protect it from getting stolen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, what he deserves is to be mentioned in acknowledgments but not as a second author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And will the ownership of the paper will be 50% to me, while 50% to him ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7953" OwnerDisplayName="The Trice" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T09:05:26.590" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T19:17:27.493" Title="Authorship determination for a paper in IEEE journal" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-29T05:09:42.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since he's your advisor and you consulted him through out the project, then you definitely need to put his name as a co-author (unless he refused to be a co-author).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that this is your first paper and he's a senior IEEE member (I don't know what this really mean but IEEE love its members), I believe it is a plus for your paper to be co-authored by him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T05:09:42.653" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T08:14:30.770" Score="4" ViewCount="4094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just gave my GRE and TOEFL examination this month. I am willing to apply for MS in Computer Science in the USA for the fall of 2014 course. The problem is that I don't seem to understand how to go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I know which universities should I apply for? There are so many good universities in US that it confuses me. What are the parameters that I should be considering while deciding where to apply? I don't want to just randomly apply and get rejected. Is there a way to know it before hand - what things a particular university would be looking for in an applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the people have suggested me to select 2 ambitious, 3 moderate and 2 safe universities. I am referring to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; for all my analysis. But its difficult to know the standards that I  should use to decide what an ambitiuos university is. I mean should I consider the top 10 or the top 30 universities as ambitious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6542" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:41:48.737" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:41:48.737" Title="What can I do after giving GRE and TOEFL exams?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6154" CreationDate="2013-07-29T09:45:29.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advice I've been given for cognitive neuroscience is to (1) make sure I have at least one publication every year, (2) invest the rest of my time in high quality work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is that a full year's publication gap in your CV looks bad, but on the other hand, what people mostly look at when you apply for jobs is where you published the handful of your best papers. One or two high-impact publications are more likely to impress people than ten low-impact ones, but a publication gap looks bad regardless of where your best work got published. How many papers you should have under review at any given moment to fulfill this goal will depend you your research area and the duration of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T09:57:23.437" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T09:57:23.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2013-07-29T11:21:42.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is accepted, common and, yes, recommended. Being asked to review means your knowledge in a field is acknowledged and sought by others. The details you provide is up to you. I list the journals I have reviewed for in impact factor order, but it can be any order. I do not provide the number of reviews for each but the total for all. There is no reason to provide more than number of reviews and names of journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a point in that this information is unverifiable in many circumstances. In my field it is, however, common to be known as a reviewer (you have a choice). How the information is used is up to those who read the CV but I think most people will assume you have not falsified your CV (and that assumption goes for the remainder of your CV as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the art of writing your CV is to add anything that can reflect positively on your (in this case) scientific merits and reviewing is such a task. I also include reviews I have done for large funding organisations (e.g. NERC, UK, and NSF, US) as well as evaluations for promotions etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T12:21:04.563" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:21:04.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:14:19.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In engineering, it is common (accepted) for students to put their advisor's names as authors. This does not detract from the student's efforts; in some respects it can enhance the reception of the paper because the wider community will probably know the supervisor more than the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that if you try to publish it without your advisor's name, then the reviewers or editors may contact them and ask what is wrong (and also decline to publish the paper).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor told me that the work I was doing was worthless, and not worth publication.  I moved universities (and advisors), completed the work and submitted it without my original advisor's name as author.  The IEEE editor rejected the paper until my original advisor was added as author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:14:19.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:27:58.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules for what co-authorship mean vary by field: in math it would be unusual for an advisor to be listed as a co-author under the circumstances, while in engineering, as others have notes, an advisor is normally included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons is that fields like engineering list authors in an order conveying information about the contributions: you'd be listed as first author, and your advisor as last author. Readers understand that this means you had the main intellectual contribution and your advisor acted as a supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:27:58.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:35:13.810" Score="3" ViewCount="2175" Body="&lt;p&gt;For university-level researchers and professors, is the salary higher in the medical fields than in other fields? I suppose attracting physicians to teach may be harder, because they can usually get high payments working as physicians. Where can I find data about this in Europe, Australia, Canada and US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7957" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T16:51:20.093" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T05:06:27.063" Title="How is the salary of professors and researchers in medicine?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:42:42.673" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have many questions as about authorship, and I am afraid some of your questions/comments indicate a certain level of confusion about authorship. You could &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/authorship&quot;&gt;browse the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/authorship&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; on this site, and it may Enlighten you to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I include my supervisor as a 2nd author as he wants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should check the policy on authorship directly from the publisher. &lt;a href=&quot;http://winet.ece.ufl.edu/tvt/authors/Policy%20Statements.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Publication Policies&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship and co-authorship should be based on a substantial intellectual contribution. It is assumed that all authors have had a significant role in the creation of a manuscript that bears their names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, the list of authors on an article serves multiple purposes; it indicates who is responsible for the work and to whom questions regarding the work should be addressed. Moreover, the credit implied by authorship is often used as a measure of the contributors’ productivity when they are evaluated for employment, promotions, grants, and prizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The IEEE affirms that authorship credit must be reserved for individuals who have met each of the following conditions:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  a. Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  b. Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content; and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  c. Approved the final version of the article as accepted for publication, including references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you performed research entirely without any input from your advisor, it seems unlikely that he did not make a “significant intellectual contribution”. Possible types of contribution include proposal of research subject/project, any guidance in the choice of method to pursue the project or on intermediate results, guidance on how best to interpret results and present them, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the ownership of the paper will be 50% to me, while 50% to him?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, co-authorship does not necessarily mean equal contribution (and is not understood as such by the readers). To go even further, some journals offer the option of writing an explicit statement quantifying (to some extent) the respective contributions of the coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Won't people think he contributed in making the cipher?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, as above. They will think he contributed &lt;em&gt;to some extent&lt;/em&gt; to the research project, but will understand that he may not have been the one who came up with the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll end by adding that you should be really wary not to dismiss your advisor's role too much. Even if you had the breakthrough idea and implemented it yourself, surely the guidance offered by your teachers and supervisors are to be credited, maybe more than you realize right now. Also, that he gave you the opportunity to pursue a worthwhile research project, and then helped you transform that into a publishable (quality) paper, are important contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:42:42.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11493" CreationDate="2013-07-29T13:58:07.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the US, I would have thought the data would be in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaup.org/report/heres-news-annual-report-economic-status-profession-2012-13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AAUP report&lt;/a&gt;, but I cannot find any data that breaks salaries down by field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cupahr.org/surveys/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CUPA-HR&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cupahr.org/surveys/fhe4-tenure-surveydata-2013.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free data set&lt;/a&gt; has a break down by field with &quot;HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS&quot; as a field. I would assume that this includes medical doctors, but also nurses. There is also some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cupahr.org/surveys/fhe4-nontenure-surveydata-2013.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free data&lt;/a&gt; about non-tenure track salaries including &quot;Medicine, Medical Clinical Sciences, Graduate Medical Studies&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I think defining the &quot;medicine area&quot; and equating job duties and responsibilities is tough. There appears to be a large variation in salaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T13:58:07.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11475" CreationDate="2013-07-29T15:11:38.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general there is no funding available for MSc courses in the UK. In some cases there are 1+3 courses (i.e., a 1 year MSc and a 3 year PhD) where the MSc course is funded, but in general this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One benefit of this is that the admissions criteria for MSc courses are pretty low. Essentially anyone with a 2i or higher degree classification can find a program willing to accept them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T18:29:11.507" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T18:29:11.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11498" CreationDate="2013-07-29T16:53:43.870" Score="1" ViewCount="2142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a literature review at the moment. I have many many papers to read and I don't have that much time (just one month). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is reading the abstract and then the conclusion and from the conclusion I see what were the key findings and then look them up in the paper and see some details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that good way or should I read them cover to cover? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7382" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T23:39:01.357" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T23:39:01.357" Title="Is starting with the abstract and conclusion an efficient reading approach for writing a literature review?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-07-31T01:36:36.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11497" CreationDate="2013-07-29T17:01:50.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your strategy sounds sound to me. You cannot read the papers from end to end. You need to weed out they papers you will possibly need in your review with as little effort as possible. Title and abstract should be enough. Once you have done this you should be left with a bunch of papers that are likely to be of use to you. While you have looked through them you must also consider how the material can be organized. There are many ways of doing this, chronological order (boring), thematic order (are there subfields?), contradictions (are there compeeting ideas) etc. The point is to try to get the information organized. You need some form of organization fo the papers so that you know how you will treat them in your review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have found all papers you think you need you can start assembling the information into your text. It is at this point you can start reading them in more detail. It is still not necessary to read every detail. you need to focus on the background to the different conclusions drawn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the review should be to provide a new perspective on the field you have chosen so your own familiarity with the field (papers) is key. Try to collect as many as you can; not all will be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T17:41:24.790" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T17:41:24.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16705" CreationDate="2013-07-29T17:46:21.113" Score="8" ViewCount="54354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently finishing a B.Sc. Honours in Canada, and I'm applying to Edinburgh (among other places) to do a Masters. They have two &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/postgraduate/research-degrees&quot;&gt;research-based degrees&lt;/a&gt;, and I was wondering if people with experience in academics and CS could help me distinguish between the two. I'm not overly familiar with the British Education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The M.Sc. is a one-year degree of independent research, with very little to no classes. The MPhil is a two-year degree, where classes are taken in addition to independent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which is considered &quot;more academic&quot; or &quot;more prestigious?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which would be better for getting into a PhD program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since there aren't classes in the MSc, are you expected to have a higher level of knowledge coming in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6069" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T09:27:28.887" LastActivityDate="2017-10-24T15:16:12.213" Title="MPhil vs. MSc. in the UK?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11503" CreationDate="2013-07-29T17:54:15.047" Score="16" ViewCount="1625" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one engage uninterested students in a fast-paced, densely fact-packed science course such as chemistry or microbiology? I find that the only students who truly understand and engage with the material are those who already have a strong background in the material being covered, while the rest of the class is usually ranging from bored to panicking, depending on how much they care about grades. (For most of the students in these classes, the science courses are required for their major, so they are taking them because they have to, not because they are intrinsically interested in the sciences.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how could I engage the interest of these students without dumbing down the course material or slowing down the pace of the class? Neither seems a viable option given department wide standards at this institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T17:26:01.733" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T06:39:52.927" Title="Teaching uninterested/under-engaged students in science courses" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-29T18:46:31.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he wants to be an author, add him, and use that as leverage to improve your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being first author is &lt;em&gt;plenty&lt;/em&gt; of credit for you; in fact, in your situation being sole author could be an indication that you are unable to work with others, which is a &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; in most cases.  People are highly accustomed to crediting the student with all of the value of the work (because they did the work), and the professor with all of the value of the work (because they enabled the work in various ways), and the credit can count twice because the student and professor almost never are competing for the same things.  I'm assuming that the professor actually &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; do something enabling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, before you publish the paper you should get someone to read it carefully, and if they say things like &quot;this passage is unclear&quot; or &quot;this needs more background&quot; then your professor ought to be able to give advice and/or help fix it.  There's nothing like having a highly experienced co-author to make short work of a request to place this work in the context of the field!  If your professor cannot help improve the paper in this kind of situation (and help write a good cover letter, etc.), &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; they didn't actually enable any of the work, then even if it would help you, it is probably not ethical to include him as an author.  Otherwise, there are only positives for all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T18:46:31.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11488" CreationDate="2013-07-29T18:53:04.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I know which universities should I apply for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As JeffE mentioned in his comment, you should start by asking your professors, and others at your school what they suggest.  It sounds like you've already been given good guidance to shoot for a range of schools, but you should avoid simply picking from a list and do some serious research into the type of place where you believe you will want to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are so many good universities in US that it confuses me. What are the parameters that I should be considering while deciding where to apply? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by looking at the web pages of schools you are considering, and seeing what kinds of research the professors are working on. You may find that this is overwhelming, but I think you'll start to find some places that interest you.  I actually began my search by explicitly thinking about where in the country I &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; want to live for five years, and then went from there (not necessarily the best method, but it gave me some limits to the search).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to just randomly apply and get rejected. Is there a way to know it before hand - what things a particular university would be looking for in an applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is dependent on the departments you apply to, but in general (and this has been answered many times on this site): schools are looking for an indication that you have the potential to do quality research.  The best way to demonstrate this is by having research experience and by having one or more publications under your belt. Letters of recommendation are extremely important, and grades are important, but I would say grades serve as more of a barrier rather than an indicator (i.e., lots of people have the grades, but not all have the other factors that make good candidates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the people have suggested me to select 2 ambitious, 3 moderate and 2 safe universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good start.  Some might suggest adding more schools (you never know), but this does get expensive and if you are relatively confident you will get into the &quot;safe&quot; schools and believe you will be happy working there, then you're probably on the right track.  Bear in mind that all PhD programs worth the degree do turn away qualified candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am referring to this list for all my analysis. But its difficult to know the standards that I should use to decide what an ambitiuos university is. I mean should I consider the top 10 or the top 30 universities as ambitious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does depend on your situation, and it's almost impossible to give an answer strictly for your situation.  If you have peer reviewed publications and get outstanding letters of recommendation, you have a good shot at some top universities.  But no one is guaranteed to get into any top-10 program, so don't be surprised if you don't get accepted even as an outstanding candidate.  Again, it comes down to doing some research and talking to people about individual programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T18:53:04.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11500" CreationDate="2013-07-29T19:24:59.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a pedagogical standpoint, you always want to teach with a couple of things in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to have a standard for the class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The standard you set should be influenced by the level your students start at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two criteria frequently are at odds with each other, which is a shame: you want to teach the most engrossing, intellectual class so that each student can obtain a mastery of the important details of the subject, yet sometimes your students don't have the background and are not prepared to learn at that level, or are unmotivated for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third issue, and the one that you brought up, is the question of what to do when you have a heterogeneous set of students where some are unprepared (or unmotivated) and others are well prepared. If you are at an institution where the standard is very high, one option (and probably the right one) is to teach the material with the expectation that everyone will try their best and that it will be challenging for everyone, and let the cards fall as they may. Do your best to point the struggling students who want to learn the material to avenues for help -- office hours, tutoring, key reading material, etc.  Don't worry particularly much about the ones who don't care -- if you're teaching an engaging class and they are bored because they don't really want to be there, that isn't your problem.  If you find that you do have too many panicked students, you probably need to re-evaluate your teaching style or assessment plan, and slow things down.  This is just the reality of the situation: too many of your students aren't prepared for the class as you envision it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a community college so many of the students are working parents who juggle multiple demands on their time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe in this case you may end up in the situation I just mentioned more than you'd like. I would venture a guess that many of your students have academic priorities that are less about getting every bit of learning out of your course, and more about doing well enough to graduate and be prepared for whatever the next step in their career is.  I urge you to try to put yourself in their shoes (this is always a good idea) and try to see from their perspective what the course means to them.  I have taught a college physical science course to non-science majors at the community college level where I was happy to give them the &lt;em&gt;exposure&lt;/em&gt; to the material -- most of them had never taken a physics or chemistry class in their life (high school or otherwise), and I knew that it would not have been a good idea to try to force a lot of math-heavy science down their throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I haven't really answered your specific question about how to &quot;engage the interest of these students without dumbing down the course material or slowing the pace of the class.&quot; My suggestions are (1) to re-evaluate why you think you're already engaging (and tweak it to meet your students' level), and (2) to make sure you are providing concrete assessments for them to study for (or work on in lab).  If your students know what they have to do to get a &quot;B&quot; versus an &quot;A&quot;, this might lower the level of panic if they see that shooting for that &quot;B&quot; will be obtainable while still giving them time to keep the other priorities in their life straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T10:46:18.030" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T10:46:18.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11497" CreationDate="2013-07-29T19:32:39.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fill the following template for each article I read. Some of them I fill only partially at first, to potentially come back later if I interested  in spending more time. I found that noting the plan was taking little time and helping enough to be worth doing during the first read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;**** Reference for Humans&#xA;**** Abstract&#xA;**** Bibtex&#xA;     #+BEGIN_SRC bibtex&#xA;&#xA;     #+END_SRC&#xA;**** Index Terms&#xA;**** Plan&#xA;**** Definitions&#xA;**** Results&#xA;**** Algorithms&#xA;**** Questions&#xA;**** Summaries&#xA;***** By Authors&#xA;***** By me&#xA;**** My Notes&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T19:32:39.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T23:24:28.727" Score="6" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, I came into this university on a scholarship, doing their most prestigious undergraduate degree. For a variety of reasons including but not limited to depression and anxiety, I basically failed half my courses in my first year. Last semester, I took a 6 month break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I have been kicked from that degree and have lost my scholarship, but I am really enjoying my schoolwork again. A lot of the problems that were plaguing me the past 1.5 years have been largely resolved. I have missed struggling with a difficult problem and/or the feeling I get when I finally understand something. Originally my passion was space and wanted to do something in that area (such as astrophysics). It was (maybe still is) a dream of mine to go into this field at a higher level after undergrad. When I came to university, I was ambitious and wanted to get into some Ivy League school for graduate school, or some top school for whichever field I chose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had lost that dream, but now I have found it again. I was wondering if it was worth pursuing and putting all my effort into it, or is it too late for me already with my terrible background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7962" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T13:39:50.847" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T16:06:24.540" Title="Is it worth it for me to try at this point?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2013-07-29T23:36:48.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @EpiGrad, @JeffE, and @Swiss Coder said, you should learn about subjects that are outside the direct focus of your research. This provides you with knowledge and tools you might otherwise never obtain. I would add though, that it is rarely wise to take a course in something you have no interest in simply for the sake of &quot;knowledge&quot;. However, if you are truly interested in something, don't scrap the possibility of taking the course just because it is not directly part of your research topic. Higher education is intended to help us become well-rounded humans,not force us into the narrow trench of knowing only about a specific field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider, of course, whether you really need to take a course on this, or if there are other ways to learn what you want to know. Auditing a course is a good option, especially if you don't need to receive credit for it. There are also numerous online options for learning,on your own time and without tuition costs. For myself, though, online learning without the support of a professor and peers rarely works well. I need the motivation of knowing that someone is tracking my progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So definitely explore subjects outside &quot;your&quot; area of expertise, and keep in mind that a formal course may not be the only or best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T23:36:48.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-30T00:18:09.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to me that you are looking for validation for not including your supervisor. A supervisor is not supposed a person whose brain emanates marvelous and groundbreaking ideas which are later developed by a horde of pawns.  Research does not work like that. It is about collaboration at different levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot admit he has contributed to some extent, that's fine. My point of view regarding this sort of ego-fights is: is it worth creating a whole circus and fighting for being first/solo author of a paper that is not going to change the world? Time will pass and you will understand ... Hopefully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7963" LastEditorUserId="7963" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T00:36:47.973" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T00:36:47.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11505" CreationDate="2013-07-30T01:18:57.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a simple answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop thinking and start doing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a graduate degree at an Ivy League school and a successful academic career (perhaps even in the field of astrophysics), then pull your socks up, set definite, measurable and realistic goals and start achieving them. The path will not be easy but always remember that you are not the first and neither will you be the last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt; that a graduate degree at an Ivy League school and a successful academic career are not necessarily mutually inclusive. To do one does not mean that you will do the other and neither does it mean that there is a causal relationship between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal anecdote:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; a rather forgettable start to my academic career as well. I recovered enough to get myself admitted to an &quot;Ivy League&quot; graduate program. I am still on my journey and I dare say the destination is years away. Not everyone is a rising star. Some folks are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer&quot;&gt;late bloomers&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reiterate again. To achieve your dreams, just keep trying sincerely and honestly. It will happen in due time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T01:18:57.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11515" CreationDate="2013-07-30T10:12:35.117" Score="42" ViewCount="4053" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little while back I had sent one of my works to an ACM conference -just a National level conference. I knew my work was not one of the best they were going to receive, but given the quality of the papers published in the conference in the previous years, I was almost sure of an &quot;Accept&quot;, and sure enough, an &quot;Accept&quot; did arrive around a week ago. But reviewer practically tore my work to pieces, saying that the claim is not novel, the data sets are biased, etc. And I do agree with him on most of the points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the reviewer had given a detailed review, I had been working all week long to improve the quality of the paper and address all the points mentioned by him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to my great surprise, today I receive a mail from the PC chairs stating -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we had inadvertently sent an ACCEPT for your paper. After discussion with reviewers we have decided to not accept this paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, to say the least, &lt;strike&gt;unethical&lt;/strike&gt; unprofessional. And my entire week of hard work in improving the paper just went down the drain I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions here-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I put any endeavor in contacting the PC Chairs and ask them to explain this strange stand? Should I explain my stand that the work has been drastically changed and improved from what it was when submitted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does such a behavior make them accountable for any legal action from my side? And, is it worth for me to take such an action?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thank you all for your comments and answers. Posting this here just to make the story complete. My guide insisted that we should write to the PC chair, requesting an opportunity to resubmit since some of the previous review comments were not really justified and too harsh on us, and anyways our paper stands improved from what it was before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we did re-submit. And our improved paper was accepted as well! Rather having an unsatisfactory publication, I have a better paper at hand now!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So happy ending after all :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T05:53:34.867" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T05:53:34.867" Title="What should I do now when this conference first sends me an &quot;accept&quot;, then a &quot;reject&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11514" CreationDate="2013-07-30T10:27:24.030" Score="42" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I put any endeavor in contacting the PC Chairs and ask them to explain this strange stand? Should I explain my stand that the work has been drastically changed and improved from what it was when submitted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think an email to the PC would be appropriate.  Don't expect the answer to change, however, and it may very well have been an administrative oversight.  Even as a mistake, it is a relatively minor one that you don't have much control over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does such a behavior make them accountable for any legal action from my side? And, is it worth for me to take such an action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Their decisions aren't bound by any laws (that I know of) that could force them to honor their original email.  If you make a big deal of it, you're likely to make a bad name for yourself, regardless of the mistake being on their end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you've now got a better paper that probably shouldn't have been published anyway.  Your changes are now in place, and you admit to having improved it.  Submit it to another conference, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T10:27:24.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11514" CreationDate="2013-07-30T10:28:41.093" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always try to send an email to the PC explaining that you used the comment of the reviewer to greatly improve the paper, and that you hope that the paper could be reconsidered in this improved form. I don't think your chances of acceptance are big, but you can always try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to the legal action, I doubt that you have anything based on which you can sue them. In addition, what do you hope to gain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T10:28:41.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11500" CreationDate="2013-07-30T10:54:54.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I may contribute something more from Chris Gregg's excellent answer, from my experience as a high school science teacher for over a decade, in a range of environments.  All having students with a mix of abilities and motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the scientific concepts relevant, link the concepts to current discoveries - show them where the science is headed. Show them how the science affects their lives and how it would continue to affect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not always easy time-wise and logistically as it is not always easy to find how it links to their lives. But I found that the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Have you seen/heard about [everyday life concept related to the science taught]?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T10:54:54.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11514" CreationDate="2013-07-30T11:07:41.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing what happened at the other end it is early to place judgement such as &quot;unethical&quot; on this circumstance. It is of course very unfortunate and also clearly something that all editors do not want should happen. Clearly the accept was prematurely sent away; that was the mistake. I would interpret the &quot;discussion with reviewers&quot; as the editor(s) trying to see if the paper could pass despite the reviews but such an action could seemingly not be supported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the course of events have happened. You can certainly contact the editors to get more feedback, I am sure they would help you with more (scientific) information if they can. Under most circumstances (do not know how this applies to your manuscript), I would recommend you to take the comments you were given and work up your manuscript (which you have also done). The manuscript should now be better than before and it might be suitable to publish somewhere else. This is also something you can ask in your letter to the editors unless you and your immediate surroundings do not already have a clear picture of where it might fit for possible publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the legal bits, journals have no obligation to publish anything and can even reject a paper without telling why. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to do this since it would reflect very badly on the journal and the publisher but the decision lies with the editor(s) and it is final. As an editor, one must think of the reputation of ones journal (because a well run journal attracts good papers) which usually means trying to be as fair and open as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T11:07:41.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11521" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:16:09.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An academic &lt;strong&gt;title&lt;/strong&gt; is often earned through a college or university degree, and is sometimes associated with an academic position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common titles awarded today are those for bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4866/how-should-a-job-title-be-translated&quot;&gt;How should a job title be translated?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8330/what-does-prof-dr-ir-mean&quot;&gt;What does “Prof. Dr. ir.” mean?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7326/whats-the-correct-order-of-writing-for-a-msc-and-a-dipl-ing-degree-e-g-on&quot;&gt;What's the correct order of writing for a MSc. and a Dipl.-Ing. degree? (e.g. on a business card)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10972/phd-candidate-vs-phd-student&quot;&gt;PhD student vs PhD candidate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:26:26.390" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T22:26:26.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11522" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:16:09.770" Score="0" Body="Regarding the appropriate titles or post-nominal letters to use, given an individual's academic status." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:25:05.213" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T22:25:05.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11523" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:24:22.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;cover letter&lt;/strong&gt; in academia is a &lt;em&gt;statement of motivation&lt;/em&gt; usually attached to the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/curriculum-vitae&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;curriculum-vitae&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;curriculum-vitae&lt;/a&gt; in an &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/application&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;application&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;application&lt;/a&gt; to a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/phd&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;phd&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;phd&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/postdoc&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;postdoc&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;postdoc&lt;/a&gt;-position, or a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/faculty-application&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;faculty-application&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;faculty-application&lt;/a&gt;. It contains past experiences and qualifications for the position as well as an outlook on the future within the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;wikihow.com: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Cover-Letter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to write a cover letter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10325/differences-between-cover-letter-and-application-letter&quot;&gt;differences between cover letter and application letter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T03:04:49.117" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T03:04:49.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11524" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:24:22.377" Score="0" Body="For questions about cover letter attached to applications or curricula vitae for an academic position. This is not for cover letters for submissions to journals." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T03:04:49.117" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T03:04:49.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10297" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:28:51.377" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many good suggestions have been given in the answers by Benoît Kloeckner and Dikran Marsupial. I would like to add to these answers by including the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most journals are fairly specialized. The impact factor (IF) tells us how much a given paper published in a specific is referenced on average. So although it may be important to publish in high IF journals it is also (I would say more) important to make sure the paper is seen and read. A high IF journal ensures that this happens to some extent. But, sometimes ones subdiscipline is poorly represented in such a journal and it may turn out that a lower ranked journal may be the major outlet for papers in the discipline. Knowing where people publish their papers is therefore a good guide to the palette or possiblities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, take a careful look at where papers you refer to are published and try to assess where your &quot;audience&quot; is likely to look. Such journals are also likely to provide very good insightful reviews. So when you look at journals try to look at your possibilities from all directions and assess the best journal based on all of the suggestions made in the answers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T15:28:51.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11526" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:29:33.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;/strong&gt; is in academia necessary to accomplish goals and not fall into a state of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/procrastination&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'procrastination'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;procrastination&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11295/balancing-between-students-who-do-homework-and-those-who-do-not&quot;&gt;Balancing between students who do homework and those who do not&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9745/gamification-in-asian-classrooms&quot;&gt;Gamification in Asian Classrooms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10343/motivating-students-to-push-their-limits&quot;&gt;Motivating students to push their limits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10969/strategies-to-overcome-academic-apathy-in-the-final-stages-of-the-phd&quot;&gt;Strategies to overcome “academic-apathy” in the final stages of the PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7668/what-can-i-do-to-recover-from-a-short-term-burnout&quot;&gt;What can I do to recover from a short term burnout?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T15:31:49.817" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T15:31:49.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11527" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:29:33.897" Score="0" Body="For questions about increasing the motivation of oneself and others to avoid procrastination, disinterest and failure." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="30737" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T04:36:35.067" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T04:36:35.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11528" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:42:18.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;Europe&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or Oceania.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The structure of the European higher education system was mainly set by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/higher-education/bologna-process_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bologna Process&lt;/a&gt;, which had a goal of establishing comparable, compatible and coherent systems of higher education throughout Europe, to make it easier for students and job seekers to move within Europe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Europe, higher education typically consists of a 3-year bachelor and a 2 year master degree. The PhD typically takes 3-5 years instead of 5-7 years in the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/united-states&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;united-states&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;united-states&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD admissions in Europe is typically handled by the potential supervisor, not the department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some countries within Europe have other differences. For example, in many areas such as Germany, Austria or Scandinavia the &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of the doctorate is also not called PhD but Dr. (name of the field) such as Dr. rer. nat. for a doctorate in the sciences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19489/can-a-ph-d-candidate-at-a-us-style-ph-d-only-graduate-school-be-admitted-to-a&quot;&gt;Can a Ph.D. candidate at a US-style Ph.D.-only graduate school be admitted to a European doctoral course?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9504/european-style-phd-in-the-us&quot;&gt;European style PhD in the US&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5231/what-are-the-long-term-advantages-of-a-us-phd-compared-to-europe-oceania&quot;&gt;What are the long-term advantages of a US PhD compared to Europe/Oceania?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5229/moving-to-europe-and-seeking-research-assistant-work-after-undergrad-masters&quot;&gt;Moving to Europe and seeking research assistant work after undergrad / masters - best approaches?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8668/teaching-position-or-teaching-oriented-position-in-mathematics-in-europe&quot;&gt;'Teaching position or teaching oriented position' in Mathematics in Europe?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:18:23.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:18:23.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11529" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-30T15:42:18.177" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the European higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or Oceania. Keep in mind that many different countries, customs and regulations coexist in Europe, so many questions will not have a unique answer that applies to the whole continent." OwnerUserId="6690" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2019-01-17T17:20:57.350" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T17:20:57.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2013-07-30T16:14:38.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I read through your question and some of your comments, I get the impression that this faculty member has already done some work on your paper, presumably believing that he would be a co-author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, I think it would be wrong to submit a solo paper with his improvements incorporated into the work. If you want to be sole author, then you should do ALL the work, including the proofreading, etc. – or at least have let the professor know up front that he would only be listed under the acknowledgements, so he could make an informed decision about whether or not it would be worth his time and effort to make those improvements. Proofreading and correcting is not a trivial feat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, though, your question reminds me of a similar situation I experienced during graduate school. During a computer graphics course, my lab partner and I did a lot of work on an algorithm, and we ended up getting a paper published. Our instructor was also listed as a third author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My partner and I developed and tested the algorithm, and our instructor did little but give us the problem. Did I feel slighted? No, and in hindsight, I now better understand his vital role in our work. These problems don't just pop up like dandelions, or infiltrate our email like spam – they are usually the result of extensive study, along with collaborative research with industry. In other words, without us students, he wouldn't have had an answer, but, without our instructor, we would not have had a problem of any meaningful significance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I see an IEEE paper with two authors, instead of presuming that the work was split evenly between those two, I'd probably assume that one author's principle role was to &lt;em&gt;identify the problem&lt;/em&gt;, while the other &lt;em&gt;worked the solution&lt;/em&gt;. That's so common that it's almost a given – such symbiotic relationships are ubiquitous in academia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I think you misunderstand the nature of coauthorship in research. Your instructor thought the work you did was good enough for the two of you to get something published together. You ought to be appreciative of his guidance, happily put his name alongside yours, and get off to a good start in the realm of academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T16:14:38.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2013-07-30T16:26:24.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the first thing to do is to organize ourselves and to see what we can do on our own. Then, the next thing is to inform our supervisors of any “deadline issues” or “work overload issues” and to fix them. Our work is important. Our health is even more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is really important to keep our supervisors informed of our obstacles; especially the research (and deadlines) related ones. He/she can help us to anticipate research pitfalls such as hard problems (to avoid or to dig in by priority), or exception cases (to exploit as shortcuts). It’s also better to inform our supervisor that there is an obstacle on the way than to miss a deadline. Still, we need to be prepared to work harder and to propose solutions of our own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, there is no single best answer to “how to tell our supervisor that we’re overloaded tactfully”: It depends upon our relationship with our supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prepare myself from the start. This may mean to refuse some tasks or to propose alternative deadlines instead of simply “missing the boat”, but it also means to know my priorities. Regarding work overload, I usually prioritize things by deadlines. When I’m overwhelmed, I do a list to see if something can be postponed, then I focus on my academic or research-related work. Strong deadlines, like call for papers, are sometimes hard to meet, but they’re worth the time! As soon as I see a problem coming I identify it. I try to find a solution. Before it overwhelms me I inform my supervisor. The answer is often as simple as “Have you tried this instead of that?”, or simply “Leave it for later.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once, I attended a talk titled “how to manage your supervisor” (with humor) [1]. I think that these slides are valuable material. They may provide some answers to the question of “how to tell our supervisor that we’re overloaded tactfully”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~tw/manage.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~tw/manage.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T16:26:24.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11535" CreationDate="2013-07-30T16:48:22.483" Score="7" ViewCount="31971" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a table of studies and formula per study in the appendix, so sth like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;study A     E = mc²&#xA;study B     v = ma&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. For each study I need to cite a source. Now normally the citation list for the main part of document appears before the appendix. How do I handle this? Do I create a new citation list after the table?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7975" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T16:04:40.980" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T16:08:27.547" Title="How to cite in an appendix (and where to put the Citation list) of a PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2013-07-30T17:04:16.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on where your appendix falls in your document (or whether it will appear in the document at all). If appendix precedes references, just include citations in the regular reference list. If it follows, have a separate set of appendix-specific references. If it is separate, do the same as the latter case (a separate reference list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will depend on your style manual and publication outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T17:04:16.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2013-07-30T17:07:46.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a PhD thesis (as indicated in the tags of your question), check your university's reference style guide. I suspect, however, that it doesn't go into that much detail. So: &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;do what you like best&lt;/strong&gt;, as long as it's &lt;strong&gt;clear&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;coherent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have many citations in the appendix, and you suspect that people will want to read the appendix and main document separately, just maintain two separate lists of citations. It makes each of them shorter, and thus easier to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have very few citations in the appendix, you can also consider citing them in a different style, such as footnotes. It keeps them separated from the main references, for clarity, but doesn't necessitate to have a full “appendix list of references” if it's very short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T17:07:46.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-30T17:47:45.287" Score="14" ViewCount="6137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to find journals that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are ranked with JCR (no matter how low) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have open access (anyone can access the papers for free) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are free to publish (authors are not required to pay)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am asking for a unicorn, but I think this should be feasible. &#xA;If I'm not mistaken, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt; only fails in the first point. If someone could provide (a link to) a list of such a kind of journals that would be awesome. If such a list does not exist, how would I go about creating a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:03:50.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T02:03:50.450" Title="How to find OA free to publish journals with a JCR ranking?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11536" CreationDate="2013-07-30T18:59:15.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please feel free to edit anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Computer Science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artificial Intelligence&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Machine Learning&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Machine Learning Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jucs.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Universal Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combinatorics&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Statistical Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T16:01:07.517" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:01:07.517" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-30T18:59:15.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11536" CreationDate="2013-07-30T19:56:15.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many journals that satisfy your criteria… here's how to find them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR?RQ=HOME&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal Citation Reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Search journals by publisher:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/88DK3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose an open access publisher, such as “Public Library of Science”&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z8pWR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy!&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UeVZL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; as JeffE wisely noted, this does not address the criterion of “no publishing charge”. You'll have to check the various journals, but some have no publishing charges, including some published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/apc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hindawi Publishing Corporation&lt;/a&gt; for example. To find out which, &lt;strong&gt;cross-reference the JCR data with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt; maintained by Berkeley&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T20:19:35.700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T20:19:35.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11548" CreationDate="2013-07-30T21:43:34.597" Score="12" ViewCount="6628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing 2 conference papers. One is highly quantitative in nature and the other is absolutely qualitative in nature. I am submitting both papers to conferences having deadlines in the next couple of months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The papers present results on 3 &lt;strong&gt;different&lt;/strong&gt; research questions on the same topic and are highly related with each other. You could argue that paper A + paper B together present a holistic view of the answer to these research questions. Individually, paper A and paper B show a different side to the problem since you generally get alternate points of view from quantitative and qualitative works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the papers and their results are highly interrelated, there exists a compelling reason for me to ensure that they cite each other. I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8443/cite-paper-in-the-same-upcoming-conference&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4837/can-i-present-the-results-of-a-paper-that-is-currently-under-review&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question which are also highly related to my question. However, my question is different enough, in my opinion to warrant a separate question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should I cite these papers? (one paper is going to be in APA style and the other will be in ACM style)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it make good sense to contact the Associate Chairs of these conferences for further clarification?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; important question for me is, is this ethical? Does it not break the double blind review system? I am ready to not cite these papers if that is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having conversations with my adviser about this but just want some broader perspective from different disciplines if I am somehow missing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T14:43:03.333" Title="Citing a paper under review in 2 different conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2013-07-30T23:00:15.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this boils down to the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I cite a paper that has not (yet) been accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, citing an unaccepted paper is risky, since for a reason or another it might be rejected, and submitted somewhere else later on. Then, your paper would be citing the wrong proceedings or journal. Once a paper is accepted (achieves the &lt;em&gt;in press&lt;/em&gt; status), I think citing is OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And hey, you can just write in the conclusions that your future work will be concentrating on the same problem from another point of view. Interested readers will go google your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T23:00:15.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2013-07-30T23:25:47.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, you can update citations until the proofreading stage.  I've done that at more than one occasion.  When submitting the article, I cite Myself et al. (submitted 20xx).  Then the manuscript goes through peer review, revisions, subsequently typesetting, etc.  By the time the final proofs come out, I probably know whether Myself et al. is rejected or not, and can probably provide an updated citation.  In the worst case, I can replace it by a short text that this will be considered in a future publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T23:25:47.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11288" CreationDate="2013-07-31T01:04:20.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One take on this, regardless of field, is to create a framework to place the existing research in.  Perhaps you have two dimensions, colour (red, green, yellow) and smell (sweet, sour) - and you review all the prior literatures and place it into your framework 'buckets'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this is really doing, and why you want this in your dissertation, is setting up your contribution.  By classifying all the prior research, you will have (hopefully!) identified a hole, which your work is going to fill.  So... choose your buckets carefully!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps, I realize this is not a statistical answer - but I hope this is of use, or perhaps sheds some light that will help you see a useful way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T01:04:20.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11493" CreationDate="2013-07-31T02:09:34.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the problem with this question is going to be one of comparing like with like. I have seen some grants that implicitly assume an MDs salary is higher than a PhD's salary when in the same R01-type grant application, but this usually also involves a comparison of senior vs. junior faculty, which is always tricky. Even comparing &quot;tenured faculty&quot; is hard, because tenure at many medical schools is a much, much more rare thing to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say the following generalizations are probably defensible, assuming we are talking about academic medicine vs. &quot;nearby&quot; fields, or PhDs in academic medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard money positions in research hospitals for &lt;em&gt;doing research&lt;/em&gt; are vanishingly rare.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MDs do have the option of making up for some &quot;gaps&quot; in funding with taking on more clinical duties whereas a PhD might have to take a salary hit, or cut back in other areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunities for clinical consulting, to pharma, device manufacturers, etc. are probably more available to clinicians.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T02:09:34.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11493" CreationDate="2013-07-31T05:06:27.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could mine some of the Collegiate Times public university salaries data, e.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries/university-of-virginia-2010?dept=medicine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UVA Medicine salaries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries/university-of-virginia-2010?dept=english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UVA English salaries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries/university-of-virginia-2010?dept=chemistry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UVA Chemistry salaries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you have to make apples-to-apples comparisons (full professor -vs- full professor, asst. professor -vs- assistant professor, etc.), and also realize that the State provides as little information as they have to by law, and there may be other hidden data that sway the results one way or another (for instance, you'll see full professors making $45000, but these might be half-year appointments, sabbatical years, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T05:06:27.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11546" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12860" CreationDate="2013-07-31T05:12:40.733" Score="7" ViewCount="2095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to finish my Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering and Computational Biology, and planning to apply for a MD-PhD with focus on oncology. After talking to my academic advisers, I had very bad impressions about MD-PhD Program (&quot;such a waste of time&quot;, &quot;please just focus on one thing at the time&quot;). However, it seems that such critiques are targeting the general approach of MD-PhD programs, and I still think that for the case of cancer research, it would benefit me a lot to gain the experiences in both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that extent, I have one question with two sides: Does earning an MD help improve my research as a PhD (for example, identify more significant and meaningful problems), and does earning a PhD side help me become a more skilled practicing oncologist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T21:25:58.203" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:25:58.203" Title="A MD-PhD in Oncology" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2013-07-31T08:46:13.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, unpublished materials are just that, unpublished, and should be treated as such. It is, however, always possible to reference your other work as &quot;in prep.&quot; until it becomes published. You need to look carefully at any instruction for authors on how such references should be made and if they are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add such a reference to a paper it is always possible to remove the reference if one of the works becomes rejected or if it is unlear if it will be published. What should be avoided is to have references to work as &quot;in prep.&quot; remaining if the work is unlikely to ever getting published. After all, the purpose of referencing is to provide published sources that others can access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including an &quot;in prep.&quot; reference will also provide problems for reviewers and adding or removing such a reference during the review process means that something that can not be checked is added or removed in the manuscript. So my suggestion is to avoid having to rely on such a reference for any key points in the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are, in other words, in a grey zone when it comes to referencing. The best solution would be one where you do not rely on unpublished references but if you think you must then use your discretion and make sure your inclusion is made in a way that it is not key to your conclusions or that it might not affect the reviews in a signficant way. You, furthermore, should be as confident as you can that they both will be accepted in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T08:46:13.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11550" CreationDate="2013-07-31T13:37:46.807" Score="8" ViewCount="2478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a senior in college and working for my final year project. I am required to read more than 8 papers. However, 2 of them cannot be found online or in the library (Summon system). The library delivery service is inaccessible now, and I believe my advisor have that papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I ask professor to send me a copy of the papers? Is it impolite to ask such favor or illegal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T13:52:33.063" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T03:40:15.057" Title="Can I ask professor to send me a copy of papers?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11549" CreationDate="2013-07-31T13:51:47.373" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can, and you should. It is not impolite (unless you actually have access), and it is not unethical. I don't think it is illegal, if you do not distribute it further, and it is certainly not uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, make sure you really don't have access (otherwise, you risk looking a bit like a fool), then ask him. Don't make a big deal of it, just explain that you lack access and you believe he may have them, if so could he please send them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T13:51:47.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11552" CreationDate="2013-07-31T13:53:41.890" Score="16" ViewCount="956" Body="&lt;p&gt;My field is cardiovascular epidemiology, and my current research question relates to some risk factor which is supposed to strongly elevate cardiovascular risk in a defined subgroup. However, my data do not indicate any such association, and power analysis shows that I have about 0.85 power to detect an effect of the size previously published. I see my findings as evidence for the null hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the available work on this risk factor in this subgroup comes from papers that all share one author. He is the leader regarding this question. He also holds a patent for assessment of this risk factor and possesses shares of a company that develops and plans to sell diagnostic tests to assess this risk factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to make a statement in my paper that politely mentions these facts. This other author has published virtually everything there is that reports this positive association, and would profit enormously if it were true. However, I'm only a PhD student and they are top tier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how would I best go about this in my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-17T19:07:50.773" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T19:07:50.773" Title="How to politely say in a paper that most of the published research on a topic is by the same person?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11551" CreationDate="2013-07-31T14:07:13.540" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off the fact that one group is dominating will be implicitly understood if you provide a paragraph or two summarizing their work and cite their publications. In such a paragraph you could add words like &quot;ground-breaking&quot; or phrases that describe the dominance of the group on the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could for example start the paragraph by saying: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The work concerning risk assessment of [...] has largely been carried out by [the research group] (example citations).&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I hope you see the main idea of my attempt) Then you follow up on what they have done and cite their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is just important to keep the tone as neutral as possible and let the citeable work speak for itself. Spending one or more paragraphs describing the work should be enough to make everyone understand the message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T17:22:20.477" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T17:22:20.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2013-07-31T14:38:25.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could create Technical Reports for each paper and cite the Tech Reports in your conference submissions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to do this (and especially if you put the TRs on your web page), you may want to be careful about self-plagiarism.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T14:38:25.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11551" CreationDate="2013-07-31T15:55:32.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most of the available work on this risk factor in this subgroup comes from papers that all share one author. He is the leader regarding this question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This you can freely express in your paper: it is a statement of fact, and if you provide evidence to back it up (papers, reviews, book chapters, etc.), there is no reason for it to be interpreted as a hostile statement. It is actually quite interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He also holds a patent for assessment of this risk factor. […] This guy has published virtually everything there is that reports this positive association&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it's a statement of fact, not a problem. You can cite a patent if you want, and stating that in a neutral light is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;and possesses shares of a company that develops and plans to sell diagnostic tests to assess this risk factor. […] and he would profit enormously if it were true.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, on the other hand, I would be &lt;strong&gt;very wary&lt;/strong&gt; of writing that in a review. First, because it is not a scientific statement, so its place in a scientific paper is not clearly defined. Secondly, because it could (and probably will) be interpreted as having a strongly negative implication, possibly to the extent of suggesting very serious ethical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T15:55:32.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11557" CreationDate="2013-07-31T16:05:59.310" Score="10" ViewCount="365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a &quot;transition period&quot; shortly after having finished my MSc, and shortly before beginning my PhD. In the summer period the academic life doesn't cease, though, and sometimes an affiliation is asked for at scientific events. I am going to a conference soon, and indeed the organisers need an affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some rule saying what affiliation I should mention in a situation like that: the past one, the future one, both, or neither?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7328" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T16:34:26.530" Title="Affiliation in the transition period between studies at different universities" Tags="&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11555" CreationDate="2013-07-31T16:27:19.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm a little too practical, but I would go with whichever email address will you be using most consistently in the future.  Presumably that's the PhD one, assuming you have access to that email address.  If anyone wants to contact you in six months that will be the more correct affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T16:27:19.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11555" CreationDate="2013-07-31T16:34:26.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be pragmatic. If you need to provide affiliation for, for example, presenting work you have already done, then use the old affiliation. It would be odd to provide your coming affiliation in such cases. Even later when you are at your new place you may want to use the older affiliation along with your new one to show where you did the work and where you are now. If you need to provide contact information not related to work you have done then the new affiliation migt be good. That said, however, it would be wrong to use the new affiliation until you become officially affiliated by a contract (equivalent). From this perspective your old affiliation can be used until the new one is official (find out by asking your new location when can be applied). There is of course not wrong to clearly state that you &lt;em&gt;will be&lt;/em&gt; at your new affiliation starting such-and-such time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T16:34:26.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2013-07-31T20:08:48.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math graduate programs in the U.S., it is typical (although not universal) to be quite lenient about grading. The philosophy, for better or worse, is that it should be the student's privilege to decide how important the class is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen such a strict distribution of grades in any class with math graduate students in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T20:08:48.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11562" CreationDate="2013-07-31T22:36:09.163" Score="12" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a beginner researcher in a relatively new area. I published two papers in a conference directly related to the general field of my research (the general field is Artificial Intelligence or AI). Still there is no major conference for the new area; only one workshop and several special editions in top journals. As I am progressing in my PhD thesis, I see I am becoming a self-citation researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the new area is attracting more people within AI and other disciplines, I am worried about my research. My advisor is happy and enthusiastic about my work. The big names in my research are well recognized in the AI field in general. My question is how to get their attention to read and therefore cite my work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T22:46:42.447" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T08:20:41.013" Title="How to grab the attention of a new area's big names to read my work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T23:01:37.640" Score="7" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;How acceptable are self-citations? I noticed that my advisor cites his own work quite much, even when the cited articles are not directly related, e.g. type of analysed data is different. Actually, I did not notice this myself - it was pointed out by a reviewer (I authored my first paper with him just now). Looking at his citation records, I found out that he has papers with about 15 citations, of which about ~10 are typically from himself. Our field existed before my grandmother was born, so I'm a little alerted.. This puts the offer to do a PhD with himself to a new light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7988" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T23:15:42.880" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T23:15:42.880" Title="How acceptable are self-citations?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-08-01T10:12:23.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2013-07-31T23:14:42.263" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with all referencing, the referenced works must be pertinent to what is being described in the paper referencing them. If one writes about a specific topic where much of the work has been done by the same researcher or research group then self-citing will be quite common. There is of course a fine line between that and &quot;self-promoting&quot; self-citing. It is impossible to try to draw the line based on number or references or percentages of the total number of references. However, it is not common that most science in a field has been made by the same person so referencing own publications where they are only vaguely related is obviously not a good way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having many self-citations is clearly not a sign of widely spread science, either because it is not that interesting or because the field is very isolated (or very new). Citing ones own work will definitely become obvious when looking at the citations as you have done. The normal citation index or h-index obviously does not capture this although it is possible to calculate such indecees without self-citations. But as stated above a certain quantity of self-citation is inevitable since it is likely that one publication follows on many others from the same person or group. So self-citation is acceptable to a point. It becomes less and less acceptable when the reason for the citation is pogressievly less obvious and where other papers would be equally good (or better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T23:14:42.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11559" CreationDate="2013-08-01T00:21:15.240" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's generally acceptable to e-mail senior scientists a copy of your paper. Say who you are and who your advisor is, describe your paper very briefly, and tell them that if they have any comments you'd be grateful to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most will ignore you, don't take it personally -- it's not something that will &quot;count against you&quot;, unless you do it too often, or to people who's research has nothing to do with your paper. Usually this just means they're too busy or have nothing in particular to say. But you might get a couple of interesting and/or supportive replies. I did, when I was a grad student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T00:21:15.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11549" CreationDate="2013-08-01T03:40:15.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One trick is to google the complete name of the paper in quotes.  This will very often pull up a pdf copy stashed somewhere; perhaps on the profs own web page. Sometimes you can get essentially the same paper from arxiv.  But I totally agree with the previous answer that you should make sure you don't otherwise have access to the paper before emailing.  If you can't get an email response, your library can almost certainly get you a free electronic copy by inter-library loan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7992" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T03:40:15.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2013-08-01T06:22:51.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergradute I took a computer architecture class in the spring of my junior year though it is recommended to be taken during spring of senior year. It is listed as an &quot;upper-level&quot; course. The class had 22 students, of which, 8 were grad students. The grad students got B's and C's and the majority of the undergrads got A's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the teacher told me after the class when I was talking with him (I had made some off handed comment about the undergrads beating the grad students) was that most of the grad students were doing research or working in industry. As long as they kept a C and understood the foundation of what he was lecturing on they would be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was more important for the grad students to work on their research. They did not need to Ace the classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case the class specifically required instructor consent for you to enter. They were allowing you the privilege of being able to take a class that is normally denied to you. If you feel the instructor erred and you were not proficient enough to be able to undertake the class then it is the instructors fault. If you did not study hard enough or go into it knowing that this class was on another level then it yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7705" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T18:14:45.407" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:14:45.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2013-08-01T07:47:08.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can consider BMC Evolutionary Biology and PLoS ONE for game theoretical studies. Unfortunately both are open access, which means there is a hefty fee involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7995" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T07:47:08.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11559" CreationDate="2013-08-01T08:20:41.013" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get face-to-face time with them.&lt;/strong&gt; Email is a “least effort” solution if you have no other possible way, but the way to sell your research is by informal discussions. There are many ways to get one-on-one time with big names, some of which you can pursue alone, some of which your advisor can help with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce yourself during a conference, preferably in a rather informal setting. If the conference has a poster session, engage the discussion if they pass in front of your poster. Otherwise, it is perfectly acceptable to spot them in the crowd, introduce yourself, and say &lt;em&gt;“I have a poster over there and I would like to discuss one of my conclusions with you”&lt;/em&gt;. Just be polite, and courteous if you see they want to opt out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a smaller conference or workshop, just ask the guy a question after his talk, in a way that relates their work to yours. Possibly follow up with some discussion during a coffee break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get your advisor to invite Prof. Big Name to give a talk in your department, and among the activities scheduled during their visit, arrange for a discussion with him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite (or get your advisor to invite) Prof. Big Name to be on your thesis committee!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T08:20:41.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11573" CreationDate="2013-08-01T09:53:24.480" Score="7" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am lucky (or potentially unlucky) enough that a grant applications that I am working on does not have any formatting specifications and instead just has a limit of 5000 words. There are some suggested sections, that will be be variable in terms of length (some will have 200 words and others over 1000), and it is likely that everyone will need to add additional sections. I am used to grant applications using poorly created MS Word forms with predefined sections that allow no formatting and are a single column with narrow margins/long line widths and single spacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a style guide (or recommendations) about how to format the grant and the pros/cons of different formatting styles. I am both interested in the physical layout on the page, use of figures and tables, as well as advice on sectioning and the order of sections. I use LaTeX if that matters, but am happy for MS word advice also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, do I go single column or double column and wide or narrow margins? The suggested sections do not include an obvious place for aim. Is it worth starting with an an overview that defines the problem and the outlines the proposed research or is 5000 words short enough that you do not need it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T15:47:32.063" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:17:03.443" Title="Formatting of grants" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2013-08-01T10:19:20.357" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think self-citation is not a bad practice in general, specially if you consider how most scientific branches work (&quot;standing on the shoulders of giants&quot;, although you can also stand on the shoulders of normal-sized people, including yourself). However, there are two scenarios where self-citation or the lack of it can be seen as a bad practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Superfluous self-citation&lt;/strong&gt;. (already discussed in previous answers). It refers to citing minutiae contained in your previous papers. For instance: &quot;we consider the change of variable $y=x^2$ as in myself (1974,1975,1977,...,2012)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not using self-citation in order to inflate your results&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes not citing your previous papers can produce a beneficial result. I have seen some researchers publishing a good/decent result, followed by a sequence of clones and mutant papers that do not cite the big one. This, of course, has a good effect on the child papers since it makes them look more original.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T10:19:20.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2013-08-01T10:46:48.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, you'll have an advantage in your grades if you are taking course with graduate students(assuming that you are someone who puts a moderate effort on your courses). Most graduate students measure their success by their published papers rather than by grades. To this end, they don't give much attention to course work and they study it for a day or two before the exam. This was the case with many of the grad students in my school and the undergraduates put every effort to be part of the courses as they spent most of their time in course work and chasing the &quot;A&quot; letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception is that when the course is related to the research area of the graduate students. In that case, the grad students might  know better than you. But graduate class professors  mostly have labs and are busy advisors. Which means that they repeat the same exam questions year after year and you only need to solve these problems to get A+ (at least at my university). The drawback of this is, you won't learn much out of the course as the grades come easily. That is one of the reasons I don't understand why courses are given in the first place at graduate level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6333" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T10:46:48.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11570" CreationDate="2013-08-01T12:31:53.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I envy you the fact that it is only a word count that counts. I am in a system where everything has to fit a certain number of pages with 12pt Times-Roman and 2.5 cm margins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the word limit as your main limitation you have the possibility to illustrate your application more freely. If suitable, I strongly suggest you try to come up with conceptual graphics to strengthen the text and make difficult concepts  easier to grasp. This can be a huge advantage. Since your are not limited to pages you can afford complex and larger illustrations than otherwise possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for typesetting, you use LaTeX (as do I) which produces excellent text. Trust the LaTeX settings for text width, line-spacing etc. to get a readable text. Too long or too short lines makes the text difficult to read. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/geometry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;geometry&lt;/a&gt; package for details if you are not already using it. EDIT: I do not think two-column format is good for proposals. It is a way to put as much text into a small area and also involves using smalller type sizes, typically around 9 in order to get enough characters into a line to make it readable. Since the number of pages is not a limit, I would aim for something which is as easily read as possible, typically 11-12 pt single columns. the margin widths can be determined so as to get reasonable line lengths. I do not think wide or narrow margins make a difference but wider margins make the page more attractive than narrow (basically a typographical design issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: With one-column format you can add figures at full width and with the no-page-limit do not have to worry about the size of the graphics (in the sense of having to make it as small as possible so to not use up space. I think a straight-forward simple formatting is best. There is no need to be overly creative. What conveys the message without resistance is the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the more useful concepts in grant writing I have come across is given in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300119398&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Successful Science Proposals&lt;/a&gt; by Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt which outlines a two-paragraph summary, akin to an abstract whith which you introduce your proposal. The point of this is to quickly and concisely convey the key points of the proposal to the reader. This involves starting from the big picture metion key gaps in knowledge, how to tackle them (methods), preliminary results (if existent) and expected results. I obviously cannot copy the book content here but the point is to make the reader of the proposal completely clear over what to expect in the proposal and so all details given is just putting substance to the known structure. I believe this is what you aim for in what you call an overview section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After having started your text with a brief introduction, you simply follow up by the usual type of structure: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;background&lt;/em&gt; (to focus on the gap of knowledge to be targeted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;objectives&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;project outline&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;time table (milestones; can be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/contrib/pgfgantt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gantt plot&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if applicable: &lt;em&gt;research group/resources&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;references&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;For references I would go for footnote type references since the harvard-style citations uses up many characters. It is also possible to abbreviate the reference list by omitting the paper title, similar to what is done in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T16:17:03.443" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:17:03.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2013-08-01T12:52:49.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US there tend to be to models by which undergraduates take graduate level classes. The first are jointly listed classes where the undergraduate class might be 401 and the graduate class would then be 501. In these cases the graduate level class usually includes extra assignments or different examinations and the students are graded separately. For the undergraduate student the undergraduate class is listed on the transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second way is a single class (e.g., 502) with the same work and same grading for everyone. In this system the graduate level class is listed on the transcript. Sure, the undergraduate might be at a disadvantage, but it comes with the advantage of having a graduate level class on your transcript. It would be very misleading to see a graduate level class on a transcript for a class that was tailored and graded to undergraduate standards. If you don't want to compete with the &quot;big boys&quot; stick with the little kid classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T12:52:49.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11570" CreationDate="2013-08-01T14:30:24.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;By submitting a grant proposal you're asking the funding agency to give you some resources (funding) to investigate some problem.  Very early in the proposal you should make the case, clearly and succinctly, why you --- and not someone else --- should be given those resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The problem&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the issue you propose to investigate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why is it worth investigating?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The current state of knowledge&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the shortcomings or gaps in the current state of the art? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why are those gaps or shortcomings important and worth addressing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The proposed research&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do you propose to approach these gaps or shortcomings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what specific research questions will you address in the course of your investigations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what will be the impact if your investigation is successful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Likelihood of success&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what makes you qualified to do this research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what preliminary evidence do you have that suggests that your proposed approach is likely to succeed? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest addressing these points in an &quot;Executive Summary&quot; or &quot;Background&quot; section, of at most one or 1 1/2 pages, at the very beginning of the proposal.  This will give the reviewer a high-level view of what you're planning to do and help set the context for the more detailed discussion in the rest of the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T14:30:24.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11499" CreationDate="2013-08-01T16:52:59.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the courses there appears to be a one-year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/postgraduate/msc/msc-informatics&quot;&gt;taught MSc&lt;/a&gt; and a one-year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/postgraduate/research-degrees/mres&quot;&gt;MSc by research&lt;/a&gt;. The two-year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/postgraduate/research-degrees/mphil&quot;&gt;MPhil&lt;/a&gt; while described as a research degree, has a one-year taught component. It seems to me that the MPhil is just the two MSc courses combined. The programme description says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first year of MPhil studies is probationary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;suggesting to me that if you do not do well enough on the taught component that you cannot progress to the research part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that taking classes is less &quot;academic&quot; than doing research and therefore the MPhil is less &quot;academic&quot;. I would also think that the MSc by research has the highest admission standards and therefore is more prestigious&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For getting into a PhD program you need to prove you can do research. Graduate level course work often helps in doing research. If you already have the fundamental skills that you would be learning in the taught components, there is no big benefit to taking more courses. Similar with research experience. If you are lacking both the MPhil might be the way to, but if you are lacking only one chose the appropriate MSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for entry requirements, it is probably best to contact the department and ask them. As I said above, my guess would be that the MSc by research has the highest entry requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:52:59.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11591" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:07:54.243" Score="3" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found out that my undergraduate institution made a tiny error on my transcript of records. I moved to another country and am currently in my masters and I'm wondering if I should make the effort to get that little mistake corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how often will I need that transcript of records from my bachelors in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that after I have the masters degree I am probably expected to just send in the bachelors and masters certificate (+letters of recommendation etc.) for applications in academia or industry, because adding both transcripts of record would bloat my application significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6690" LastActivityDate="2020-12-03T18:38:53.350" Title="Up until which application level should one keep supplying a bachelors transcript of records together with the actual certificate?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11577" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:17:23.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this largely depends on &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; you apply. Industry usually interested in what recent projects/ education you have. However, academia usually want to see the complete history of the candidate. Regardless where you apply, doing good on the most recent degree is a good sign of productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T17:17:23.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11582" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:29:44.633" Score="13" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like my other research-related activities, I keep a complete record of the reviews I perform: both the original papers and the reviews I have written, as well as the revised manuscript I receive one, and the final published manuscript if it is published (but sometimes in a different journal!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I ever read anything in reviewer guidelines that forbid this, but I recently met someöne who argued that confidential material should be deleted after review. It's true that keeping it on my hard drive exposes it slightly to a risk of breach of confidentiality, but no more than the rest of confidential material that I handle every day…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are policies on this matter and what are the existing practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:35:46.417" Title="Should one keep record of papers one reviews? (and of the reviews themselves)" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11579" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:43:18.403" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no legal reason to hold on to old reviews, it would be the responsibility of the journal in that case. I have kept a record of my reviews just as you describe you have done, mostly because I like to save my work. I sometimes curse this because I can see reviews I would like to share with students but cannot since I perceive them as confidential unless agreed otherwise with the author(s), and the reasons I would like to share them usually does not reflect well on the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the reviews are made under a contract of some sort, I would argue that they fall under immaterial rights; it is your intellectual work which is provided to (1) the author and (2) the journal. I do not think anyone else can claim rights to a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review work is generally made under the assumption that it is a communication between reviewer and author, albeit filtered through an editor. I have not seen any instance where someone has argued ownership of a review in my field, either in general or in the case of the journal where I am an editor. As a reviewer one must always consider the fact that all help that is provided is practically given away and should of course be seen in the greater perspecite of both giving and receiving in some form of balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instances where reviews may be contracted are common when reviewing reports for government agencies or commercial enterprises. I have not seen, but cannot discount the possibility, that a journal or publisher could have such agreements. But I cannot imagine such an agreement would be hidden, it would be communicated very clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for keeping your reviews safe from being spread, I would say that the journals electronic manuscript systems are far more likely to be hacked into than that of an individual researcher. To some extent I would compare having a review on a hard drive to having it in a ring-binder. It IS possible to get hold of it but I doubt more security than that is required (i.e. ordinary computer &quot;security&quot; measures, e.g. provided by a university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T19:35:46.417" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:35:46.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11579" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:29:58.033" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do the same (i.e., save all versions of a manuscript I receive and all of my and the other reviewers' comments that I receive through the review process). I save them in a single directory according to their manuscript number, which tends to keep things fairly organized and easy to find later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why might I want to find them later? First, when I receive a revision, I find it is a lot easier to go back and look at the files I have stored locally to see what I recommended change (in case it has been months since I first saw the manuscript), whether the author(s) did, in fact, change anything, and whether the changes were actually in-line with my and the other reviewers' suggestions. This came up recently when I received a revision that claimed to make changes but I found they had actually not made changes in the manuscript (the original and revision were strikingly similar) and I suggested a rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second instance where this can come up is receiving the same manuscript from a different journal (e.g., because it was rejected by the journal you reviewed for first). Having your previous comments and the previous version allows you to see how the manuscript has developed and either provide original feedback or reiterate points that still need improvement that you highlighted in your previous review. Or, decline to review because youf ind it difficult to present an unbiased opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third, and final, reason that I find it useful to save these things is pedagogical. In graduate school, several professors sent us versions of their reviews for manuscripts so that we could see how to write a peer review. Having manuscripts and your reviews available makes passing down that future pedagogical activity much easier. (Note that sharing manuscripts may be more controversial than sharing one's review, but if the paper was previously available as a working paper or conference paper and was subsequently published, I see little ethical concern with sharing the manuscript with future students.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:29:58.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:50:36.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all journals I have encountered the reviews are kept by the journal through either an electronic submission/review system (digitally) or in paper copy (if they do not have such a system). In the electronic systems it is usually possible to view ones older reviews but not view other's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question whether these are confidential or not is far from clear in general. I would, however, venture to state that a review is treated as confidential unless explicitly stated otherwise, i.e. clearly stated to authors, editors and reviewers (remember that the review comments received may include overruling comments by the editor). Such is obviosuly the case with some journals with open discussion formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To some extent the confidentiality issue is new to me because in my field everyone pretty much assume reviews are. I have not heard of anyone trying to push for publicising a review (again, in my field). It would probably not go down well if it happened without consent from the parties concerned. It seems this is a sector that is largely unregulated other than in general terms and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:50:36.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3407" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:17:27.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually done this 2 times.  First going from pure theory to 50/50 theory/experiment, and then switching departments.  I'm a physicist but I think the following observations may hold generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) don't quit your &quot;day job&quot;.  I.e., work gradually into the new field.  I wouldn't take on any grad students in the new field until you were really sure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) start going to meetings in the new field.  talk to the experts, get to know them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) if you have a sabbatical coming up, try to do it at a place that is a real focus of your new field.  In my case I did a sabbatical at a place that allowed me to do theory and experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) some people switch fields to go after funding.  I don't recommend this.  If you have a real passion for something, find some way to fund it.  who knows what the fashion will be in 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, an observation.  I found that colleagues tend to put you in a box and 20 years from now they'll think your doing the same old thing.  I know very few academics who have worked in the same area their whole careers.  No one expects this and it would be pretty boring if you ask me.  Switching departments is harder, but switching fields I think is pretty easy if you're motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7992" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:17:27.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:45:54.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would scan them and save them to evernote. An alternative is that you find a freelancer (for example on odesk) that types your notes (software is not very good at recognizing handwriting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:45:54.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10843" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:49:01.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This provides a good overview of the articles you've read. Furthermore it is easy to change the format of your references (for example from APA to Harvard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write different articles, it is easy to use the references that you used before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a sidenote: Google Docs has a pretty neat feature called 'research' where you can just search for the title and the reference shows up. In that way you do not have to use a reference manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastEditorUserId="8005" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T17:31:32.213" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:31:32.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8747" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:58:04.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely possible, with a bit of planning and scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in the field of atmospheric physics - my research involved a considerable amount of experimental work and field studies, my timetable and deadlines have been and still is (as I am just completing the research) largely based on a &lt;em&gt;full time equivalent&lt;/em&gt;.  My full time job is, for the most part, unrelated (high school teaching).  I know it has worked, because I am finishing my PhD and have been published multiple times before schedule (2.5 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found is that I had to have an 'adaptable' schedule, as things changed week by week.  My tasks were broken into &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;long term, or semester goals, these were decided at the beginning of each semester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;weekly goals, the smaller steps that make up the long term goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making &lt;em&gt;contingency plans&lt;/em&gt; for the weekly goals is beneficial, for if something goes wrong, there is always a backup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make absolutely certain your supervisors/advisors &lt;strong&gt;fully understand&lt;/strong&gt; what your duties are in your paid job and what time requirements are needed.  Also, what I found worked was making my workplace aware of the study commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may sound counterintuitive is to give yourself regular study-breaks - once again, be adaptable in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:58:04.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11577" CreationDate="2013-08-01T20:45:34.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should get the error corrected.  Do it now, before you need it.  Although not all employers will want to see it, there's a chance that some may, and if they do, they will probably need it quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally you should not include a transcript or other official documents with your application unless they are specifically requested.  Your resume or CV will have the basic information about your degree.  As you say, it adds several pages; if an employer wants it (and some will!) they should say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may vary by country, but when applying to faculty jobs in the US, perhaps 10% of employers required a copy of my undergraduate transcript; enough that I couldn't afford to ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by a &quot;certificate&quot;; the US may not have a direct equivalent.  Here you do get a diploma, but this is just a fancy piece of paper that you frame and hang on your wall; it lists only the degree and the date, with no further details.  Nobody has ever asked to see my diploma.  For us, the transcript is the only real official document; it is sent directly from the institution so that it can't be tampered with.  (However, many employers will be satisfied with a simple photocopy for a preliminary application, and only request an official copy in the final stages.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there have been some high-profile cases lately of people claiming degrees that they didn't have, I'd expect that in the future, more employers will want to see transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T20:45:34.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11592" CreationDate="2013-08-01T20:56:02.927" Score="22" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;A high citation rate is desirable in academia.  Citing other work doesn't cost much, so citations are cheap to give but desirable to get.  That brings me to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a previous article addresses a topic similar to the one I'm writing, is that a sufficient reason to cite it?  Or should the prior article meet a minimum quality to &quot;deserve&quot; a citation?  To put it bluntly: if I'm aware of a prior crappy article, should I ignore it, or cite it and write why it's crap (of course in a more diplomatic way)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, some articles questioning anthropogenic climate change get quite a lot of citations from colleagues pointing out flaws in their reasoning or statistics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm exclusively talking about peer-reviewed publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T17:19:38.890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T17:19:38.890" Title="Should bad prior work be ignored, or cited and criticised?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11577" CreationDate="2013-08-01T21:23:26.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to field making a difference, there are strong differences between countries. For instance, for my jobs in the US, I never needed to show any of my diplomas; however, I had to supply my transcripts for undergraduate and graduate programs. By contrast, in Germany, job applicants are normally expected to show their &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; pedigrees—which means at a minimum the diploma certificates at both the university &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; high school levels! (I was also expected to produce the transcripts, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the best advice I can give is to follow the expectations of the industry in the region where you are applying. If you have any doubts about what is required, ask the contacts for the position or program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T21:23:26.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11590" CreationDate="2013-08-01T21:35:01.563" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a certain amount of judgment that needs to be exercised here. One of my more frequently cited publications is an attempt to correct methodological errors in a previous work (which was also highly cited). While it got the point across, it has also led to my work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; being cited by the other authors, even though they've adopted the methodological points laid out in my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, part of the reason why we discussed the work in detail was because there were major problems that led us to being unable to reproduce their results when we used their techniques with the &quot;advantages&quot; of modern technology. Since it in fact &quot;inspired&quot; our work, we felt the extended discussion was appropriate. However, if the same paper were to present results that were simply wrong, and didn't have the same &quot;primacy&quot; within the research literature, we would have probably ignored it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature citations in standard journal papers (as opposed to review articles) are not meant to be ecumenical or exhaustive. Your job, as an author, is to exercise judgment as to which articles provide an accurate overview of the state of work in the field, and provide the best support for the arguments you wish to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T21:35:01.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11590" CreationDate="2013-08-01T21:37:04.997" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negative citations&lt;/strong&gt; is what you describe. It is something of a fallacy of the system that a paper may get many citations and therefore seems important when it is clearly sub-par and is referenced in a negative connotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seen objectively, one should give credit where it is due. If someone was first to realize something then that is the origin of the idea (in official terms), how good or bad the paper is, is irrelevant. In some cases first discoveries may just be gut feelings and not well-founded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes have to bite my lip when I reference some papers because I really do not think they deserve it (because I know the background) but realize there are no two ways about it. You can of course chose not to reference it, as you have the freedom to chose what we cite, but you may end up getting reviews asking you to add it (if it is something key).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases it is possible to provide objective criticism of a paper. The problem is that the shortcomings will have to be clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T05:45:23.110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T05:45:23.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11590" CreationDate="2013-08-01T22:29:00.930" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what is your goal. If you are doing a thorough review of literature, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have to cite prior work, even if your opinion of it is low (and you can briefly state why). If you are doing a comment, follow-up or other work where criticism of the prior work is key to your argumentation, then of course you have to cite it. But, if the field is otherwise plentiful and there are other more successful prior works which you can cite, you don't need to be exhaustive, and you can thus omit those works which you consider subpar (or of low originality, or derivate works).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T22:29:00.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11603" CreationDate="2013-08-02T09:39:05.583" Score="14" ViewCount="22776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a large company, I am also a student at a big school. My employer is supportive in terms of funding required for my studies. Although the research paper has more to do with my academic studies. What is a reasonable way to put both affiliations in the research paper? My primary affiliation is my employer and second affiliation is my school. Is it ok to put in the Author section both affiliations? And give a footnote with the details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7054" LastEditorUserId="6526" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T18:58:53.897" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T22:24:58.737" Title="How to put multiple affiliations on a paper as the author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11602" CreationDate="2013-08-02T09:46:01.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to put both affiliations on. I assume you are permanently employed, in which case that is more permanent than the academic address. However, if your published work is done as part of your schooling you should put that affiliation first, perhaps listing your job affiliation/address as &quot;permanent&quot; or something describing your employment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for putting your academic affiliation first is that it is within that you have done the work and probably received intellectual coaching and support (if you receive similar input also from work then that affiliation might be equally valid as first). Listing two affiliations is common and the reason is typically when people move between institutes and it is important to keep readers aware of one whereabouts in such circumstances. In your case you will likely be found at your company in the future (my assumption) and it therefore makes sense to list also that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="37441" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T22:24:58.737" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T22:24:58.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11602" CreationDate="2013-08-02T11:11:45.543" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If both institutions contributed to the work you are reporting in your article, you should &lt;strong&gt;list them both as affiliations&lt;/strong&gt;. It is not unusual at all, and in most (all?) journals there is no concept of “primary” or “secondary” affiliation: &lt;strong&gt;whichever order you list them in is fine&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see the penultimate author in the list below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;     &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DJFZ5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3446/2700&quot;&gt;this other example&lt;/a&gt; (which I consider over-the-top):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;     &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g445e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T11:11:45.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2013-08-02T13:32:26.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some opportunities that you are likely to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attend seminars, especially those given by outside visitors. Ask &quot;stupid&quot; questions after the talks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to dinner with the speakers after the talk. In math we always take visitors out to dinner, and usually the attendance is quite poor, even when the speaker is famous. Needless to say, this is an opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to Ph.D. students. Find out what they are doing. Does it sound cool?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to postdocs and junior faculty, who are likely to have recently come from elsewhere. How was their experience? How did their previous departments differ from your current department?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do an excellent job in your coursework, or whatever other requirements you have now. This will prepare you well for your future, and it will also prod professors to help you out and open doors for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T13:32:26.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11609" CreationDate="2013-08-02T22:03:41.250" Score="33" ViewCount="6573" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has not happened to me, but to a friend in the final stages of her PhD, she and the rest of the research group are understandably devastated, as the advisor was not only (in my friend's words), brilliant, but very kind and approachable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend and all the research students are also worried about their research projects, as the advisor was one of the top researchers in that field and apparently, the only researcher in that university.  The associate advisors have indeed stepped up, but as good as they are, they do not have the insight that the late advisor had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a bit of advice that people may have for this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suggestion is that the research group (students, co-authors etc) band together to help each other out, with the guidance of the associate advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked over &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3172/what-are-some-options-for-a-graduate-student-abandoned-by-ph-d-advisor&quot;&gt;this question and the posted answers&lt;/a&gt;, but I feel that this situation is considerably different as there is the ever-present aspect of the feelings of loss, that are present and should not be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T19:14:54.420" Title="Advisor dies suddenly, advice needed for research students" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;death&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11611" CreationDate="2013-08-03T00:50:03.430" Score="15" ViewCount="15975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be starting a Masters of Science program soon and wanted to make plans for my professional/educational future.  I've been looking at different doctorate level degree programs and I'm having a bit of trouble in understanding the difference between a Doctor of Computer Science program and a Ph.D. in Computer Science program.  I've seen it listed both ways which leads me to believe that they're two separate programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone explain what the differences between the two are and identify which is more appropriate for someone with a development and software engineering background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two programs that show the difference in titles. These are not necessarily the programs I have in mind but they're the first ones I could find that show the title difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coloradotech.edu/Degree-Programs/Doctor-Of-Computer-Science&quot;&gt;Colorado Technical University - Doctor of Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scis.nova.edu/doctoral/cisd.html&quot;&gt;Nova Southeastern University - Ph.D. in Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6641" LastEditorUserId="6641" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T02:57:32.380" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T22:12:49.160" Title="What's the difference between a Doctor of Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11607" CreationDate="2013-08-03T02:49:53.897" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a similar situation at my university when a professor running a large group with millions of research dollars passed away. There are a few issues that have to be dealt with, and usually the department chair and/or the dean play a major role in this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;research funding: often this can be transferred (in consultation with program managers) to faculty in related areas who (depending on the degree of involvement in the research) either merely manage the money for the students involved, or might play a more active role in spending it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;students: students need committees and replacement advisors. Again, the department chair, in consultation with the students and related faculty, might be able to assign faculty as caretakers for the students. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;teaching/committees: while there are likely significant teaching/committee disruptions, these don't affect the former students of the researcher, so I'll ignore this component.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view is that students that are close to graduating need someone who can sign off on their thesis work (hopefully without too much modification). They hopefully already have a few other people who can write letters for them for jobs, and can mention the advisor's demise in their letters to explain the absence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students earlier in the Ph.D program (say just post-qualifying) are in the biggest bind: they've spent enough time in their research area to have committed to a topic, but now they have no one to guide them. They are the ones who probably need the most help from senior students, other faculty and the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students early in the program have the option of switching advisors, or even schools if there's no one else in the department who can advise them/fund them/works in their areas of interest. Again, the department is usually sympathetic and might be able to provide such students with short term funding via TAships if that's an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this of course addresses the feelings of grief and loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T02:49:53.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11607" CreationDate="2013-08-03T02:54:03.593" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is without doubt a tragic situation. However, it is not an insurmountable problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you suggested, the important thing is to allow both the grieving process and the research to continue at their appropriate paces. Without the room to understand and deal with what's happened, the research can't really go as it's supposed to, and the work is needed to provide a focus so that grief doesn't completely bring the group to a standstill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an emotional perspective, I'd certainly recommend that the department make a counselor available to the group members, and to encourage them to talk about things, rather than to shove them aside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the research, there really isn't a completely satisfactory solution. It really does need to be a group-wide effort, as you've suggested, with collaborators and co-advisors stepping up to take a senior role. Another idea might be to reach out to former group members who are still active in academia to help with mentoring the group members. Note that this is not the same thing as being a full-fledged advisor; this is more of having an extra person to talk to when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is also why good short-, mid- and long-range planning is essential for everybody, and why thesis committees and planning meetings with the advisor are so important for graduate students. If appropriate plans-to-finish and related strategies are in place, then it should be largely a matter of executing those plans, rather than trying to devise something new without the advisor's help.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T02:54:03.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11608" CreationDate="2013-08-03T03:45:41.660" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the first I've heard of a &quot;Doctor of Computer Science&quot; degree. Not having a dissertation requirement is a clear sign that this is different from a &quot;standard&quot; Ph.D program. A Ph.D (in any discipline) requires you to produce an original piece of research that you defend to a committee of experts. In addition, most Ph.D programs will have course requirements, residency requirements and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: Some googling led me to the Wikipedia entry on '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_doctorate#Professional&quot;&gt;professional doctorates&lt;/a&gt;', which most closely match the nature of the degree the OP describes. As Austin Henley points out, this is close in spirit to an MD (USA) and JD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T20:30:14.790" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T20:30:14.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11608" CreationDate="2013-08-03T04:16:12.020" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in a career in research, I would strongly recommend avoiding &quot;executive-format&quot; programs such as the one you've linked to. A program like that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a standard PhD program, in that you are not required to produce a piece of original research, and therefore cannot claim to have met the standard of being an independent researcher (and problem-solver) at the end of your program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your long-term interests, however, run more toward being in management and other non-technical careers, then perhaps this would be an option—but I would only recommend it if you were already working in industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T04:16:12.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11630" CreationDate="2013-08-03T04:29:29.713" Score="20" ViewCount="6668" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spotted that some universities do not have a comprehensive exam for their PhD students while it is standard at most universities (specifically for computer science). For what reasons do some universities drop the requirement of comprehensive exam? What is the impression towards someone who has graduated from no-comprehensive department? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T22:03:33.197" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:31:45.917" Title="Why do some universities not have a comprehensive exam?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11613" CreationDate="2013-08-03T05:12:22.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My department does not have a comprehensive exam. The most frequent reason I have heard is that we don't &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; it. On the other hand, some other departments in our university have comprehensive exams and I have heard that they are primarily used to &lt;strong&gt;weed out&lt;/strong&gt; students after the first year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will venture to say that there is absolutely no impression towards graduating from a no-comprehensive program. Research job committees look at publications, letters of recommendation and research experience. Graduates from my program have found jobs wherever graduates from similar programs find jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T05:12:22.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11616" CreationDate="2013-08-03T07:08:34.820" Score="10" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to a reputed journal on behalf of my organization (research publications are not very common here). The double blind reviews were received 8 months later when I had moved on to an entirely different project. Both the reviewers indicated accepting the paper but required huge modifications along with generation of more results. The re-submission date was 10 days after I received the reviews, though the modifications would have easily taken at least two months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, I didn't have access to the resources (server, bandwidth etc.) and none of my co-authors were interested in reworking along with a dismal response from the management for request to reallocate the resources, I tried to do it in my spare time but the paper was automatically withdrawn since 10 days had passed. After a few days, the senior management suddenly enquired the status of the paper and forced me to resubmit to the same journal as is.&#xA;Obviously, the paper got rejected within 2 months. Editor didn't gave any comments except that the &lt;strong&gt;reviewers are suggesting to reject the paper.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following confusions: (Didn't think they make separate questions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I ask the reviewer what were the reasons for rejection (which I doubt is re-submission without modification if it went to the same reviewer) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I explain him that I was not journal shopping and the situation was such that I had to resubmit the paper? (Since I am pretty young and do not want the future papers to be rejected in conferences where same editor comes up).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have now incorporated the suggested changes and wish to resubmit. Should I now resubmit it to the same journal or to a different journal?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T09:18:07.813" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T09:18:07.813" Title="Writing to a reviewer to inform that one is not journal shopping?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11615" CreationDate="2013-08-03T08:29:58.160" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with some remarks on the past events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“the re-submission date was 10 days after I received the reviews”&lt;/em&gt; — If the reviewers had asked for large modifications, I am convinced you could have asked the editor to allow you more time to resubmit the manuscript (unless it was for a special issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“senior management […] forced me to resubmit to the same journal as is”&lt;/em&gt; — This is &lt;strong&gt;very wrong&lt;/strong&gt;, and you should have said &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; (backed up with strong arguments, of course). Resubmitting the same manuscript, unmodified, to the same journal, is ethically borderline. Depending on the exact requirements for submission of the journal, and the information you gave to the editor, it may even be unethical (many journals ask “has this manuscript previously been submitted to this journal?” — if you say yes, the unmodified paper will be flat out rejected, if you say no, you are lying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Should I ask […] the reasons for rejection?”&lt;/em&gt; — You can. I am guessing that the editor somehow didn't realize that it was a resubmission, if it took 2 months for it to get rejected. Thus, you probably got some new referee comments. However, if the editor didn't tell you… maybe the reviewers just flat out recommended rejection, with no comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Should I explain him that I was not journal shopping and the situation was such that I had to resubmit the paper?”&lt;/em&gt; — I don't think so, and certainly not in these terms. There is not “situation such that I had to resubmit”: you resubmitted, and the blame of that bad decision lies with you. Pressure explains it, but it doesn't justify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to contact the editor, I would do it very differently. Simply &lt;strong&gt;apologize to him for the bad decision&lt;/strong&gt;, explain that it was done under pressure from your organization and you realized only afterwards that it was wrong. Say that you hope it won't be held against you in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I have now incorporated the suggested changes […] Should I now resubmit it to the same journal?”&lt;/em&gt; — I don't see why not… just make sure you carefully explain all the changes made in response to the reviewers, as a regular resubmission, and explain your earlier resubmission (apologize!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I don't think it will leave a bad stain to your name in the future: everybody makes mistakes, especially young researchers who don't yet understand fully the rules. Being honest and upfront in your future interactions with the editor should lead him to form a good opinion of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T08:29:58.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T08:36:21.977" Score="10" ViewCount="46139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are students with masters degree allowed to enter a masters program in the same area at a good university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is second masters a good option for a better research experience and improving your CV before applying to a PhD in top programs? I am specifically interested in US universities and computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:05:20.577" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T13:32:04.173" Title="Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at another university?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11623" CreationDate="2013-08-03T10:53:52.747" Score="63" ViewCount="49809" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to my first conference in about a month, where I will be presenting a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do people usually dress for conferences? Do I need to dress more smartly than usual? Is formal dress (e.g. a suit) normal? Or does no-one really care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student, if that makes any difference, and both my university and the conference are in the UK. It's a biology conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T04:20:22.643" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T05:56:18.143" Title="What do people usually wear to conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2013-08-03T11:17:42.870" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience the dress code at academic conferences is really casual. I would just wear what you would normally wear to work, possibly avoiding shorts when giving a presentation (although I have seen plenty of people presenting in shorts). You could also wear a suit, although I think you would be one of the few that does. If you do want to make your clothes a bit more formal for your presentation, I would wear only the jacket of the suit combined with nice shoes, with for example jeans and no tie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T17:44:32.513" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T17:44:32.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2013-08-03T12:50:58.063" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, the dress code is much more relaxed than in business settings, but there are exceptions in certain fields. But overall, people care less about what you wear, and more about what you have to say. (And I must, I quite like it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dress code in most academic events (conferences included) is often called &lt;strong&gt;“academic casual”&lt;/strong&gt;, and is not very strict. If you want to be sure to avoid any gaffe, just stay away from the short pants and T-shirts (overly casual), as well as full suits and ties (overdressed). So, long pants (may want to avoid blue jeans), a shirt (or other top with collar), possibly a decent sweater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;             &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcnair.wsu.edu/Documents/pdf/dress%20code%20guide%20for%20web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qs2TS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding women's attire, in addition to the choices above, pantsuits are fine, dresses and skirts (not short enough as to be provocative!) are also okay, but again do not overdress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding various fields: I have noticed that researchers at physics conferences are usually more casual than chemists and chemical engineers. Others will surely comment about their own field(s)…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception I am aware of: law conferences usually follow a more business dress code, rather than casual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T13:26:33.147" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T13:26:33.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11631" CreationDate="2013-08-03T14:21:52.580" Score="11" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for different national repositories (US, Canada, Australia, UK, etc.) of funded research projects, similar to what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cordis.europa.eu/projects/home_en.html&quot;&gt;Cordis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; does in EU. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am after any repository that list funded research and some of the projects details, whether it is public, private or partnership...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T11:42:10.827" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T03:48:19.443" Title="Repositories of funded research projects in different countries?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;repository&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2013-08-03T15:18:45.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to wear something you are comfortable with. If a suit/tie/dress really makes you uncomfortable or self conscious, don't wear it regardless of what other people are wearing. If you are comfortable wearing anything, I would error on the side of too formal. It tends to be easier to make an outfit less formal than more formal and while I have never heard comments about how someone dresses at a conference, I have heard negative comments about how a candidate dresses at a job interview (always that the dress was too informal). I find that a good starting point is to look at what people wear when they are teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T15:18:45.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2013-08-03T15:29:22.740" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a lot on the event (some gatherings are more formal than others) and on your status (win a Nobel prize, and you can wear anything you damn well want), but in general, you're not really expected to wear anything fancier to an academic conference than you would for a normal day at work or in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, most people &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; tend to dress up a little bit, just to look their best, but still, even if you just wear your normal clean everyday clothes, you're not going to embarrass yourself (any more than you usually do, at least). As the other answers note, &quot;smart casual&quot; is the usual style here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing says you can't wear a suit if you want to; I see people do that all the time in conferences. Then again, some of those people also wear a suit to work every day, so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if you're in doubt, why not &lt;strong&gt;ask your advisor&lt;/strong&gt; (or someone else in your group who's been to similar events before)? That's part of their job: to teach you the basics of academic work, which certainly includes presenting your work at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T15:29:22.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2013-08-03T17:00:32.987" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who you are, who your audience is, and what you're presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your talk is very, very academic, then your best going with &lt;em&gt;business casual&lt;/em&gt;.  I have never seen a speaker wear a suit and tie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysXzbPP8rSM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christian Renaud&lt;/a&gt;'s dress at this Siggraph 2009 seems exemplary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/onWRe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A light colored shirt with a collar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likely dark colored pants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a woman, women's business casual is usually very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7tASf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPdn_dG6XiI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mimi Harris&lt;/a&gt; at Siggraph 2009, talking about Web3D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you will see people wearing T-Shirts at academic conferences.  This seems to be ok for &lt;strong&gt;developers&lt;/strong&gt; who spend all their time developing software, and are showcasing what they have recently developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uZXyC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1A_SQX-Mk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Johannes Behr&lt;/a&gt; talking at Siggraph 2008.  I kind of believe developers dress this way to kind of implicitly give the impression that &quot;Hey, I was just developing and I popped in to give you this talk. After, I'm going straight back to my desk.&quot;  A T-Shirt says &quot;this is a casual talk. Relax. I'm showing you some cool stuff.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T17:00:32.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T18:53:01.950" Score="16" ViewCount="7187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working for a university as a &lt;strong&gt;research programmer&lt;/strong&gt; (prof staff, exempt) on an external grant (&quot;soft money&quot;), and there is a clear understanding between me and my immediate supervisor/PI, and at least one other PI, that I can use a certain non-trivial amount of my time each week to work on my own projects (the so-called &lt;strong&gt;&quot;20% time&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried investigating what the university would officially think of any such endeavour, and I found the IP policy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://policies.iu.edu/policies/categories/administration-operations/intellectual-property/intellectual-property.shtml&quot;&gt;IU&lt;/a&gt;) that seems to suggest that patentable inventions unconditionally belong to the university, whereas general copyrightable work does belong to its authors (unless they perform such work specifically for university use, e.g. course materials).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, the policy even says that it covers even non-paid individuals, part-time individuals and students (which are not even just &quot;non-paid&quot; for their activities, but are actually required to support the university by paying tuition and various other fees).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, it basically applies to everyone who uses &lt;strong&gt;University resources&lt;/strong&gt;, however, the term &lt;em&gt;University resources&lt;/em&gt; itself is not defined amongst all the other terms that are, in fact, defined very specifically for this exact IP policy directly within the policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does a public university in the US really have such powers to implement a policy like that, and to claim patent rights to inventions which are not performed in the official line of duty and even oftentimes outside of the work clock?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have such policies ever been reaffirmed through courts?  Especially when applied to non-compensated employees, or the various slave labour?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do I do to avoid being covered by such policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must I never perform any parts of my own research on any equipment purchased through university, even on grant money?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot use the monitors owned by the university together with my personally-owned laptop?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot use university's internet connection to connect to my externally hosted personal servers, where the use of university's internet connection is merely coincidental to my own research on my own computing resources, and could easily be replaced by an off-the-shelf 30$/mo service from elsewhere without any significant side effects? (I'm just using ssh, basically.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot use my non-trivial work time that was allowed for my own research by my supervisors to do my own research?  Do I have to request to be re-classified from being a full-time employee (1.00) to being a part-time employee (e.g. 0.80) to have my 20% time unencumbered?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot sit in my office space doing my own search?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot sit in a university building whilst doing any such research of my own?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannot be anywhere on campus doing any of my own research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6026" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T13:48:48.210" Title="Can a university claim patent rights for inventions performed on my own time?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11632" CreationDate="2013-08-03T19:13:59.443" Score="8" ViewCount="7373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am filling in an application form for a PhD program and I am supposed to answer the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;How do you intend to fund your studies for the entire duration of your stay in ...?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I cannot afford any part of the living costs and university fees but I don't know how to mention it in a academic, polite and well-structured fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T14:05:21.157" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T14:05:21.157" Title="Responsing to &quot;How do you intend to fund your studies for the entire duration of your stay in ...?&quot;" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11625" CreationDate="2013-08-03T20:38:31.980" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that a detailed response to your question, as well as any answer tailored to your specific case, will need to be given to you by a lawyer. And, if you think of doing anything that could even remotely be considered borderline or controversial… &lt;strong&gt;just ask a lawyer&lt;/strong&gt;. And even if you don't do anything borderline, &lt;strong&gt;better safe than sorry!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to explain some of the background of that answer: I have acquired some experience of my own, though not in the US, on dealing with being employed as a full-time researcher and professor, yet maintaining a certain level of activity outside of my employer. I actually produce intellectual property on my leisure time (both copyrightable materials and patent rights), and have consulted with law professionals on how to effectively keep control of my own IP (as opposed to that which I create for my employer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main conclusion is: &lt;strong&gt;you actually have to be very careful to be able to fend off any potential claim of your employer on the IP created&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, it's a risk of the “if it comes to that” variety. If your university is not interested in pursuing any claim to such IP, you may never have a problem, even if you did not clearly separate your own IP from that created for your employer. But… you never know what may happen in the future (e.g., your current understanding with the dean may not hold in a few years), so you should take maximal precautions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you should assume the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everything you do on company time is owned by the company&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm pretty sure that this includes your “20% time”: if it's 20% of the time the company pays you, it may mean that they leave you free to do research in a direction you choose for yourself, but it is still research you performed as their employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly can't expect to be paid 40 hours a week, work 32 hours for your employer and then spend the remaining 8 hours for someone else, can you?! (in this case, the “someone else” is yourself as a freelancer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use resources from your university&lt;/strong&gt;. This is also very typical of contracts and, at least the few European countries I know, the legal &lt;em&gt;status quo&lt;/em&gt;: use of company resources means the company has rights on your production. This includes &lt;em&gt;every resource&lt;/em&gt; you list, even smaller things you may not think of, like email account, FTP/web/ssh hosting, internet connection, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everything you create while inside the company&lt;/strong&gt; is not yours. Walls, internet connection, desktop, electricity… are company resources. While courts in some jurisdictions have recognized that certain limited activities done inside the company, such as reading email during lunch break, may fall within the personal sphere (and not the professional sphere), it is not likely to be the case for any larger activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you think of doing on your spare time anything that is thematically closed to your day job, take care: it becomes hard to claim that your own activities are not linked to your university position and resources, and do not in any way interfere with it, if you are a computer science researcher by day and patent new sorting algorithms by night :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, did I mention? Get help from a professional, aka lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T20:38:31.980" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11626" CreationDate="2013-08-03T20:44:29.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two possible ways to interpret your question, so I'll give two answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you currently don't know how you will fund your studies, but you honestly think you will figure it out: just write down your best educated guess (“I will sell shoes by night”)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think the cost of life is too high and you probably will not manage it: please reconsider your arrangements. The happiness in life that might results from a successful PhD experience requires to have the mind free enough for science, which cannot be achieved if you worry day after day about how to eat. It is a very bad idea to make that gamble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T20:44:29.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11617" CreationDate="2013-08-03T21:39:28.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are certainly allowed to apply, but your chances of getting accepted for a second master's in the same field is approximately zero--with one exception. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have the master's degree you're seeking, most graduate schools will assume that you are really applying for a doctoral program, if the degrees are awarded separately. If you make if clear you are applying for a second master's degree, they'll probably just throw out your application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception to this are programs where you can only be admitted as a doctoral candidate, but can earn a master's along the way. Then the normal procedures will likely still apply. Otherwise, you're out of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T21:39:28.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11613" CreationDate="2013-08-03T21:46:52.253" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary reasons for having a comprehensive or qualifying examination are as a measure of quality control, and as a means of &quot;population control.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first ensures that students meet minimal criteria for promotion to PhD candidacy. This allows, in part, PhD programs to take a few candidates who they feel could be successful, but are not 100% confident thereof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is used if departments admit more incoming students than they have funding to support as PhD candidates. Then the exam is used to &quot;cull the herd,&quot; and keep the candidates the faculty wants to continue to fund. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field used to be the kind of program where everybody had to do a qualifying examination. But, in recent years, this trend has started to swing away from comprehensive exams to research prospectuses. There is no stigma associated with either approach, though; both are considered acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, departments choose not to have a comprehensive exam for a variety of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may feel that they need neither quality nor population control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may not want to spend the time required to prepare, administer, and grade such exams (particularly if there are large numbers of students as well as time-intensive components, such as oral sessions).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may feel other means of assessing performance are superior (for instance, a research dossier and oral proposal).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T16:31:45.917" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:31:45.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11621" CreationDate="2013-08-03T22:16:49.343" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the US,&lt;/strong&gt; the government funded agencies usually publish lists of funded projects. For example, you can search the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov&quot;&gt;National Science Foundation&lt;/a&gt; database for all of the funded projects relating to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/simpleSearchResult?queryText=beer&amp;amp;ActiveAwards=true&quot;&gt;&quot;beer&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Each of these entries lists the name of the project, the NSF program that funded it, the PI's names and contact information, the amount awarded, the date awarded, and an abstract, among other information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the databases from other US government funding agencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/index.html&quot;&gt;National Endowment for the Arts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx&quot;&gt;National Endowment for the Humanities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yosemite.epa.gov/oarm/igms_egf.nsf/HomePage?ReadForm&quot;&gt;Environmental Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.energy.gov/funding-opportunities/award-search/&quot;&gt;Department of Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://report.nih.gov/&quot;&gt;National Institutes of Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other agencies probably, but all you need to do is go to their main site and search for &quot;funded projects&quot; or &quot;Search awards&quot; or &quot;recent awards&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One agency that may be hard to search would be DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is the scientific research arm of US military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T22:16:49.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11626" CreationDate="2013-08-03T23:53:30.790" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm missing something. But if this is a US Ph.D program, this question is really &quot;Do you want us to fund you&quot; and the answer is always yes. As JeffE says, you should not consider entering a Ph.D program unless you're being funded. Apart from the financial constraints this puts on you, the funding creates a commitment (by the department or advisor) to look after you. If the funding is from a research project, then you're even more sure that your work will be linked to something fruitful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are many caveats to what I just said (and they're ringing in my head right now), they're not relevant at the time of applying to grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please always answer &quot;I expect you to fund me&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T23:53:30.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:12:11.530" Score="8" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my understanding that patents can be invalidated if there is prior art to the technique at hand; DJB has a piece that would suggest that this way authors can inadvertently invalidate their own patents, if not being careful with information disclosure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/patents/us/4200770.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cr.yp.to/patents/us/4200770.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diffie disclosed the idea of public-key cryptography at a conference&#xA;  in June 1976. Diffie and Hellman also distributed preprints of their&#xA;  ``New Directions in Cryptography'' paper, which disclosed the&#xA;  Diffie-Hellman system, at that conference and by mail. For example,&#xA;  Mike Matyas received a copy in August 1976. The patent was filed in&#xA;  September 1977.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under United States case law, a document has been published if it&#xA;  ``has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that&#xA;  persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or&#xA;  art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.'' A patent is&#xA;  automatically invalid if the patented invention was published more&#xA;  than a year before the patent's filing date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It appears, therefore, that the Diffie-Hellman-Merkle patent was&#xA;  invalid. In the subsequent court case MIT v. Fortia, another patent&#xA;  was invalidated for the same reason: the inventor handed out six&#xA;  copies of a preprint at a conference fourteen months before applying&#xA;  for the patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this work in the general case?  Is it important that in both examples a whole year has passed between the publishing and the patent application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary for a significant amount of time to pass between the publishing of a paper, and the patent application, for the patent to be subsequently declared invalid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, if one's university explicitly claims that it has no interest in one's copyrighted work (whether books, articles or software), and no interest in any part of any revenue from such copyrights, but that patent revenue sharing and disclosure to the university of the patentable ideas is mandatory (&lt;a href=&quot;http://policies.iu.edu/policies/categories/administration-operations/intellectual-property/intellectual-property.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IU&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;strong&gt;can one get around of any future claims for patents by simply releasing everything open-source and publishing all pre-prints before the university's patent office can get their hand on any of the research?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6026" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T04:11:58.927" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:11:58.927" Title="If a paper or software is released to the public, can the university still file a patent?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11621" CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:23:41.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia, one of the main funding sources is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/dp/dp_outcomes.htm&quot;&gt;Discovery Projects&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/default.htm&quot;&gt;Australian Research Council&lt;/a&gt;.  Another are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crc.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;Cooperative Research Centres&lt;/a&gt; - the website has several links attached to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, 'block grants' are allocated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovation.gov.au/research/researchblockgrants/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education&lt;/a&gt; (yes, that is the department's real name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T00:23:41.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11636" CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:27:50.477" Score="13" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know whether is it normal to publish an article in the journal in which one is associate editor. For example, one of the co-author article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927539813000261&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-empirical-finance/editorial-board/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; journal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8024" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T13:41:33.800" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:41:33.800" Title="Publish an article in the journal in which one is an associate editor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:54:47.257" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not normal, but it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; happen. Usually under such circumstances the article is handled by a different editor, and the submitting editor is treated as would any other person submitting to the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that a paper can be submitted to a journal like &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters,&lt;/em&gt; and them get transferred to another journal where the conflict could be created. (This happened to a colleague.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T00:54:47.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-04T04:10:12.470" Score="5" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding how schools decide on who to give scholarship to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate for me to ask my graduate school department on their guidelines in giving out scholarships?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I have been cheated from scholarship because I have found out people who have worse undergrad GPA/GRE got scholarship and I didn't. I am an architecture major and will study in USC this coming Fall. I submitted my application 2 weeks before the deadline, but they emailed me that I was missing my community college transcript so they couldn't forward to the architecture department they finally forwarded my application early March. I responded to their email the next day with the transcript, but they just took their time to file it. Could that be a factor? If scholarships are given out based on performance then I really think I deserve it after, again, knowing that people who performed worse than me in undergrad received it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8026" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T23:16:22.210" Title="Scholarship Information" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2013-08-04T04:12:16.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (Epidemiology) it is &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; common to publish in a journal where you are an associate editor. It's a fairly regular thing to see articles with authors who are also on the editorial board appear in an issue of the journal, and no particular fuss is made about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, the Associate Editors for the &lt;em&gt;American Journal of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; is both quite large (well over 70 people), and in some cases make up a large chunk of the senior faculty of a given department. With how prevalent collaboration and large co-authorship papers are in the field, not submitting would lock huge swaths of the field out of a particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AJE also has one of the most robust paper anonymization systems I've encountered for review, which I think makes the threat of any particular conflict of interest fairly small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T04:12:16.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11637" CreationDate="2013-08-04T05:46:58.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet would be to make contact with the scholarship people and ask (nicely) for feedback as to why you did not get a scholarship. This way, you'll know for certain as to why they did not award you a scholarship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, scholarships are not just based on GPA/GRE scores or any other academic performance, there are often a myriad of other criteria they use to assess an applicant's scholarship suitability.  Did you have to fill out a form with some details or supply a personal statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know that they &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;just took their time to file it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they did (which I doubt), then yes, it could be a factor, but I doubt a malicious one considering the amount of information that they would have to file, collate from the many applicants.  More likely, they filed your additional transcripts as soon as they received it (or very soon after).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T05:46:58.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2013-08-04T07:46:05.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think the situation you describe necessarily creates a conflict of interest, and thus I believe there is nothing inherently unethical about publishing from time to time in a journal where you are an associate editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, as Anonymous Mathematician nicely phrased it, is more &quot;what measures does the journal take in this case?&quot; At a minimum, it must be a different editor who handles the paper, maybe the editor in chief. And the system must be designed so that the anonymity of the reviews cannot be breached by the author/editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is enforced, then I don't see any major ethical issue. The one risk I see is that the author/editor might get a slightly more &quot;deferential&quot; treatment, but this is also a risk for some other authors, e.g. big names in the field. One case which might become worrying is if an editor were to submit the large majority of his papers to the journal he works for... Even if everything is ethically above board, it may look like collusion, and should probably be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to highlight some reasons why it is desirable that editors are allowed to publish in the journal they work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they are editor for a major flagship journal in their field, it is not fair to ask them, their students and coworkers to avoid it entirely. It could make a large negative impact on, e.g., graduate students' careers. (Imagine a chemist who could not publish their major work to JACS, or a physicist to PRL.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they want their journal to succeed, they want to attract the best papers. If they rightfully believe that their own work is good, publishing it in the journal will sustain its quality. I am not an editor, but I do that myself sometimes: publishing in a journal because you think it's a nice venue for the community, and you want to help it grow. I imagine an editor, who wants the journal to succeed, might feel the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T07:46:05.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11633" CreationDate="2013-08-04T08:15:25.873" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in most cases, dissemination of a patentable invention by academic publication (papers, talks, code) constitutes prior art and will result in a later patent application being rejected. That is why people and institutions who intend to patent their discoveries are very careful about what they publish, and when. (Basically, publish after the patent application is field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your patent evasion scheme, it would probably work in practice, but could lead to severe retaliation from your institution. You said yourself that the policy is to report all patentable inventions. By not doing so, and publishing without first enquiring whether your employer wants to patent the invention, you violate the policy... And, given your question, you would be doing so willingly and in bad faith. This sort of thing could get you fired. And, the could get the papers retracted (look at some of the examples of this on Retraction Watch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, on piece of advice: if you're so afraid that your employer owns the IP you create, enough to look for strategies to remove from them some of the IP they pay you to create, &lt;strong&gt;you should consider quitting&lt;/strong&gt;. It doesn't look like you have a healthy relationship with your employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T08:15:25.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2013-08-04T13:18:23.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is entirely normal, with some uncommon exceptions. For instance, check out how many publications &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=v1MTZmIAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prof. Tony Cai&lt;/a&gt; (former Editor in Chief) has in The Annals of Statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the papers have to go through the usual peer review process, handled by another editor/AE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8030" LastEditorUserId="8030" LastEditDate="2013-08-04T16:30:37.660" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T16:30:37.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11637" CreationDate="2013-08-04T19:03:43.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't really understand how grad school funding works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, GPA and GRE are not even close to the only things that are considered for scholarships. A lot of people can explain away reasons for bad grades, perhaps there was some reason they had lower grades like illness. They might have amazing letters of recommendation. They may have done research, which in my opinion comes way above GRE/GPA in the grad schools eyes. They may have some kind of interesting background, minority or first generation student or something. They may come from a much better school than you, which means the GPA holds a lot more meaning than yours. Their statement of purpose may have been right on target with what the school was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, seeing as your application was not complete at the time, probably did not hurt you that much, but it definitely did not help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to contact them, do it in a really professional way. DON'T mention that someone with a lower GRE/GPA got a scholarship when you didn't. They'll just tell you they factor a lot of things into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8032" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T19:03:43.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2013-08-04T19:26:01.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with an editor publishing in the journal with which they are asociated. Put it differently, why should ones right to try to publish somewhere be limited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All editors, at least should, be aware that publishing this way has some possible repercussuins. If an editor starts pouring out works in &quot;their&quot; journal, it will soon reflect negatively on both the editor and the editor. Hence, such behaviour is &quot;self-regulating&quot; in the longer term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is of course possible that a research field is very narrow and so the journal may be the only major outlet for papers in the field. In such a case there may be no escape but I would then also argue that the science community concerned may know each other quite well, peer presure should then be a major factor keeping things on course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am personally Editor-in-Chief (EiC; one of two, with 12 associate editors) for a journal. My fellow EiC has published one paper, I have not (there are enough journalsin my field so that it does not affect me too much). We make sure, in fact our electronic submission system ensures, any editor submitting a paper cannot see or affect it in the system. We also take care of papers from each others departments to avoid any suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the &quot;problem&quot; is quite common and unavoidable to some extent. It is only a problem if it is abused but that will likely soon back-fire on both the journal and the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T19:26:01.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-04T21:29:13.530" Score="22" ViewCount="9999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc in Physics areas and trying to get myself ready for applying for tenure track positions. However, the US academic salary system seems still mysterious to me.&#xA;In several salary surveys, a reasonably close figure for starting salaries of starting assistant professor positions emerge as $75-80K per year. The point is that, as far as I understand it, the salary is based on the calender year basis. However, the contracts for the assistant professors are usually academic year basis (except that probably in the first couple of years they may get this full salary in their start up package). &#xA;This means that practically they get $55-60K for 8-9 months. The rest of the salary, called the summer salary, needs to be obtained via applying to the respective funding agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, funding is obviously not guaranteed every year. So it is obviously out of question that people should be based on the full year salary amounts shown above. Truthfully, their salaries are $55-60k per calender year and if they are able to get some funding, they can get some bonus over the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the first question is: isn't it way too low of a starting salary for a PhD in STEM areas?! Especially, people are normally already in their mid 30s when they get a tenure track position so they usually have a family to support. Sure, there are many people survive with much lower salaries and also the stereotypical argument that you don't enter academia if you want to earn money is also around. But I am talking about skills, experience and qualification. Anyway, it just seems too low salary to me and I would really want to know if there is something crucial I am missing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, what do faculty members do if they don't get the summer salaries, what other options are there for them to compensate the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T10:58:28.457" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T01:39:23.733" Title="What if a faculty member is not successful in obtaining the summer salary from a funding agency?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-08-05T00:12:24.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps. But only if you are uncomfortable about meeting in a bar/pub and ordering juice while others are ordering alcoholic drinks. Few people will notice (or care enough to ask why) you aren't drinking alcohol. A simple &quot;No thanks, I prefer juice&quot;, or something similar, is usually well accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you were also uncomfortable with being in a bar, that might limit your net-working with academic contacts, if only slightly. It depends on the individuals and the culture in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T00:12:24.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11645" CreationDate="2013-08-05T01:23:50.813" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, salaries for tenure-track positions are usually for the academic year; one might get the summer salary thrown in as part of the startup package for the first year or two.  So your academic-year (9-month) salary of $70K would translate to a full-year salary of $70*12/9 = around $93K.  The expectation would be that you would use those first two years to establish a research program, write grant proposals, etc., so as to be able to fend for yourself after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's true that grants are getting harder to get, remember that single-investigator grants are not your only option: you can also participate in larger multi-PI and collaborative proposals.  For example, you may be able to put together a collaborative proposal with your dissertation advisor while at the same time striking out on your own -- his greater seniority and track record may make it easier to land such a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would counsel against spending a lot of time teaching during the summer --- IMHO you'd be better off spending the time moving your research forward (remember why your initial summer salary was included in your startup package).  One reason (not the only one) is that having a solid record of peer-reviewed external funding greatly strengthens your case when you go up for tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T01:23:50.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11652" CreationDate="2013-08-05T04:34:08.180" Score="15" ViewCount="5439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student, and have just finished the last part of my course requirement. My last assignment is to review several other student's term projects from a seminar course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the projects I have been asked to review is rife with plagiarism. More than 75% of the paper is plagiarized, from over two dozen different sources, including academic papers, stackoverflow.com, and wikipedia. I have reported all of this to my professor, along with a detailed summary of which parts are taken from where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some of the paper appears to be plagiarized from the student's &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; earlier assignments, in a different course. It's fairly obvious that this is the case because they first plagiarized the assignment description to summarize the problem they wanted to study, and then provide an answer to said problem, including answering discussion questions that are on the assignment, but somewhat unrelated to their main topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the professor who taught the earlier course well. Should I contact him directly? Should I suggest to my current instructor that the earlier professor be notified as well? Which course of action is more appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="6546" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T16:09:21.150" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T07:56:39.037" Title="What are my duties regarding reporting plagiarism when reviewing a fellow graduate student's paper?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11645" CreationDate="2013-08-05T05:46:33.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of points on both the question, and comments by the OP above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As others have indicated, &quot;too low&quot; is sadly not a relevant comment where salaries are concerned. Faculty salaries, like any other salaries, are driven by the marketplace. In a field like CS, where there are many good industrial options, starting salaries might be a tad higher, and in the humanities (as others have indicated), even 55-60k would be considered higher than average. This has nothing to do with the time it takes you to get a tenure-track job, the amount of effort you put in, and so on. It's just about supply and demand. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In most universities, your 9 month salary can be spread out over 12. This doesn't change the amount you get, but it helps monthly income management: you get the same amount each month of the year and can calculate your expenses accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the issue of being unemployed for 1 month a year: this is true with the NSF, but not necessarily with other funding agencies. The NSF will not fund you for 3 summer months, but you might (for example) get 2 months of support from multiple grants with the NSF, and potentially (given your area) some money from NASA, or ONR, or...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Yury mentioned, consulting is another possibility. Again, I wouldn't worry about this right now if you're starting, but theoretical physicists are often hired full-time by financial firms, and so I imagine consulting agreements might be possible with them as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;on the issue of an &quot;honest conversation&quot;, I think you're having one right now. Also, why not ask your advisor/postdoc mentor ? I've explained this to my students a few times already, and not just the &quot;average salaries&quot;, but in particular how my salary works (my actual salary is a matter of public record in any case). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in my area (CS), it is common for new faculty to get summer support baked into their startup package (say 2 months for 2 years). this gives you time to get a research program rolling and get some grant money. Find out what's common in your area, and what junior faculty typically do to get summer support. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T05:46:33.143" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2013-08-05T06:13:33.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that hasn't been mentioned in the answers to this question pertain to &lt;strong&gt;recommendation letters,&lt;/strong&gt; which are a key and important part of the application process. If you decide to leave academia for an extended period (more than a year or two), it would be wise to keep in touch with your advisor and some other professors so you don't surprise them with a &quot;could write me a letter of recommendation for a PhD program&quot; many years down the road. They need to be able to comment explicitly on your potential to do research, and (for U.S. universities) you'll need three solid letters to be competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might suggest asking for letters of recommendation now, and plan on contacting your letter-writers later to ask them to look back over the letters, and update if necessary. This way they aren't scratching their heads trying to (1) remember you, and (2) write a quality letter a few years after they knew you and your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I started a Master's/PhD program about 15 years after I got my Bachelor's (and another Master's in a different field), and finding appropriate and relevant letter-writers did prove a bit challenging. I ended up getting a letter from my then-boss (science department chair at the high school where I taught physics), a professor of education from my previous Master's degree, and a physics professor with whom I had been taking some &quot;physics pedagogy&quot; classes (and all for degree programs in computer engineering!).  In the end, I successfully got accepted into many of the schools I applied to, but I'm sure my case would have been helped if I had letters that commented more specifically on my ability to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T06:13:33.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11649" CreationDate="2013-08-05T06:25:39.260" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've spotted plagiarism, you have a duty to report it to a responsible authority. Just because the student is a fellow graduate student in your department does not absolve you of the duty. However, the politics of the situation can make things much more complicated, because it may lead to intra-departmental conflict, which is most certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would believe the correct initial approach is to notify the professor of the current course of the current and past plagiarism. If you feel that no appropriate action has been taken, then you can consider notifying the instructor of the past course; however, the actions that can probably be taken are somewhat more limited than for a class where the final grades have not yet been assigned or have only recently posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far you want to pursue this matter, on the other hand, depends on how serious you believe the transgression is. If the plagiarism is serious enough that it calls into doubt the student's ability to be an independent researcher, then further escalation—perhaps (in order of approach) to the graduate &quot;officer&quot; for the department, the chair of the department, or the dean for graduate students—may be necessary, if your initial efforts don't lead anywhere. This is, admittedly, a rather severe course of action, and one which may cause problems for you later down the road. So I would also recommend talking to your advisor as well, and solicit feedback as to what are the consequences of pursuing this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T06:25:39.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11649" CreationDate="2013-08-05T07:58:57.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very serious, just noting the extent of plagiarism in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the projects I have been asked to review is rife with plagiarism. More than 75% of the paper is plagiarized, from over two dozen different sources, including academic papers, stackoverflow.com, and wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the student's own work.  To my way of thinking, this is wilful and blatant plagiarism, possibly due to laziness, and maybe desperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add to what aeismail suggested, I would seek the faculty/university's rules and procedures for dealing with plagiarism and follow them to the letter - there must be a documented protocol to follow in situations such as this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may get awkward within the department, but putting the seriousness of plagiarism aside, they have put you in an uncomfortable position, something I am sure you don't need at this stage of your studies.  Also, remember that they chose to plagiarise (at 75%, it is very likely a choice), so they have, in a way, chosen to bear the brunt of the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T07:58:57.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11657" CreationDate="2013-08-05T08:12:45.090" Score="34" ViewCount="6129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it is slightly controversial, but I am supervising a student who started with the right attitude, but is now less and less engaged with the research. We are at a point where there's no end in sight, and the student still wants to finish within unmanageable time limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; is peculiar (but I would like to keep it detached from the generality of the question): he's a part-time student, he's paying his own fees (as opposed to a PhD funded by a project), and he's after the PhD &quot;title&quot; more than the research that he has to put in for the title itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these factors make it more difficult to dissuade him from his PhD choice: the endless excuses of putting more work when there will be time (he's a part time student); and the fact that I am proactively chasing him to arrange meetings are all things that are taking their toll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My (general) question is therefore: how do I dissuade a PhD student from wasting his time and money, when it's clear that she is not PhD-material? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1520" LastEditorUserId="1520" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T14:25:07.817" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T05:26:09.833" Title="As a PhD-Advisor: How do I discourage a student from continuing?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T08:42:02.980" Score="20" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a manuscript for a scientific article, I often wonder what software I should cite or acknowledge, and how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem is to make a choice &lt;strong&gt;which&lt;/strong&gt; software to cite. On the one hand, there is no way to cite all software, as this would mean to cite my whole software stack (Linux, GNU tools, emacs, git, ...). On the other hand, not citing any software is not fair, either. Furthermore, some software explicitly asks to be cited, some software doesn't. Also, some software is really crucial to the results, some isn't. Another important aspect is that citing software is not only about giving credit to the authors of the software, but also to give other scientists hints on what software they might want to use. So, the choice which software to cite is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; to cite the software. Some (scientific) software does provide a classical scientific article that can be cited. However, in this case, no URL to the software is given. Others do not have an associated article. How do I cite these? I have seen people that cite the manual of a software, others just give the URL. What is the way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt; to cite the software. Some software can be cited in the course of the articles text, but when it comes to more fundamental software, other places may be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good ideas out there on any of these aspects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8038" LastEditorUserId="7428" LastEditDate="2020-01-08T09:43:57.593" LastActivityDate="2020-01-08T09:43:57.593" Title="What software to cite in a manuscript, and how?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11655" CreationDate="2013-08-05T08:42:02.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some thought on the matter, my own approach in my next manuscript will probably go like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which&lt;/strong&gt;: To choose which software to cite, I would try to answer the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific article that can be cited and are the authors of the software asking to be cited? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this specific software relevant to the results of the manuscript? If there are plenty of alternatives to the software and you use it merely because you knew it, this is probably not a reason to cite it. But if I used and profited from the specific features of a software, then it is probably worth citing it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I explicitly want to give credits to the software? Maybe I found the software very good to use and I want to tell other scientists to use it, then I would cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt;: If there is a scientific article, I cite it in the classical way. However, I would also cite a URL of the software, as this makes it significantly easier for a reader to find the software. Otherwise, cite the URL. Citing the manual doesn't make sense to me, the only reason to do so would be to give explicit credits to an author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where&lt;/strong&gt;: If I can cite a software in the course of the text, I do so, otherwise, I would make an appropriate paragraph in the Introduction or Acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8038" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T08:42:02.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11654" CreationDate="2013-08-05T09:20:55.980" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to dissuade the student from continuing because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You think the student is not capable because of a lack of ability,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You think the student might be capable, but just isn't engaging in the work,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't see the student is worth investing your time in,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You think the student is wasting his/her money?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (1), then a frank discussion might be the best way. I have seen other PhD supervisors directly let their PhD students know that they think a research career is not for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (2), you ought to move from dissuasion to a frank discussion in which you try and figure out the reason for the downturn in engagement. Is all well at home? Is it just the usual mid (?) thesis malaise? Has the student lost the big picture and therefore the drive to do the research? Why did the student start the research in the first place? Has the situation changed - e.g. has the life goals been redefined/changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (3) and/or (4), if the student is  paying for themselves, then it's their money they are potentially wasting so I wouldn't concern yourself on how other people spend their money. However, the money is presumably paying your salary in part so your obligations to the student remain in that regard. In return however, you can set reasonable expectations on your student. If you make it clear that you expect your student to achieve reasonable goal A by reasonable deadline Z, and the student doesn't, then that opens up another opportunity for a frank discussion along the lines of the need for effective prioritisation of research work and for-money work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To bring this answer into line with the edited question, I would set out an agreed plan of work - and behaviour (esp. showing up to meetings) -  with deadlines for the next 2/6/12 months. &lt;strong&gt;You might want to work with your Head of Department/School on this to ensure that your requirements are reasonable.&lt;/strong&gt; It appears that you have already said to the student that in your opinion the student isn't PhD material. In setting out your agreed workplan, you are giving - formally - the opportunity for the student to show that he or she is capable of working to an agreed standard. If, as you say, the student isn't capable, then the student will fail and you can reasonably excuse yourself as his PhD supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am suggesting this cautious approach, as I am sure your Faculty will want to know why things went this way, and that you offered the best opportunity for your student (or fee-paying client) to succeed, before you ceased to be his supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="1424" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T15:30:09.353" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T15:30:09.353" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T09:26:40.027" Score="6" ViewCount="1788" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have contacted a professor about the availability of a PhD position.&#xA;And I got the following responses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would be interested to explore the opportunities for you to come and complete a PhD in the Precision Livestock Management group that I lead. I have attached a formal application form for you to complete. One of the issues that we will need to address is funding. I do not have any current direct funding, however, it is possible that depending on the project area I could seek some indirect support from the University to waive the overseas fees. We would still need to find funds to cover your living expenses. Do you have any opportunities for funding to support your PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would also be interested to hear what areas of research you would more specifically like to focus on that might relate to precision livestock management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for your message and consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually, as you may know finding the financial support is not simple, usually. Honestly, I am not so optimistic to find one. However, I will keep eyes to find any financial support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herewith are the topics that I would prefer to do the research on them:&#xA;      .&#xA;      .&#xA;      .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides, in the case you have any suggestion about a topic please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To complete the application form I have to attach the research proposal. Thus, I would be grateful if I could have your confirmation for the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I sent him a required information and got the following answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will give some thought to possible project areas. In your initial application you will need to say that you are applying for a full fee-paying place. We can then explore options for securing funds for a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, it is my first serious contact with a professor.&#xA;Does his response include any sign that I may get the position?&#xA;How serious is the position?&#xA;Should I count on this position?&#xA;He asked me to fill in the application form. Am I supposed to send the application form to him or the admission office?&#xA;He told me, he will give some thought to possible project areas. One of the required documents for application form is the research proposal. Should I wait for his thoughts and write a research proposal based on that? Should I follow up his thoughts?&#xA;Within which timeframe should this procedure usually be completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8041" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T09:22:56.157" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T09:22:56.157" Title="Questions about contacting a professor for getting PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11694" CreationDate="2013-08-05T09:36:54.033" Score="34" ViewCount="16150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;unwritten&lt;/em&gt; rules for avoiding the use of first-person while writing research papers? I was advised at the beginning of my grad school to avoid use of first person - but I still don't know why I should do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen that, at many places, authors refer to themselves are &quot;the authors&quot; and not &quot;we&quot;. At the same time, I have also seen use of first-person to a good extent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these things differ in different Journals and Conferences (and in different disciplines as well - mine happens to be CS)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="20418" LastEditDate="2017-12-01T11:01:08.440" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T23:20:22.860" Title="Using first person or third person in papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T09:53:22.940" Score="6" ViewCount="3096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many students arrive at University and struggle with the transition from school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone run/attended a lecture in which some or all of the following topics - or similar - were covered? Note - I am envisaging a mandatory single lecture for first-years which is independent of course/faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to behave in class&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. little/no talking while the lecturer is talking; what to do if arriving late (go in through a rear door, and/or apologise), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to ask help of a lecturer/tutor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. make an appointment and arrive on time if you want to ensure you get attention; don't arrive unprepared - show that you've done some reading and/or attempted to solve the problem yourself; have a series of well-defined questions ready, rather than just &quot;can't do it&quot;; don't show up 24 hours prior to a deadline set a month ago asking for help that should have been sought weeks ago and expect miracles;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to engage with lecturers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. forms of address - initial formality (e.g. &quot;Hello Dr/Prof. X&quot;) is very likely to be appreciated and then met with an invitation to be more informal (call me &quot;Phil&quot;). Remind that lecturers are often engaged in other teaching and/or research and may often be too busy to chat if you just drop by their office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to engage with students&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remind the students that they are adults, this is not school, there are now serious consequences for breaches of behavioural codes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, this subject material is not course or subject specific, nor am I envisaging the lecture as part of a lecture course, where only a subset of the year group attends. I envisage a mandatory class that all first-year students must attend at the start of the year. Furthermore, it sets out only the basic requirements of behaviour - specific lecturers might have their own additional policies on behaviour that they follow in their class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T17:23:14.620" Title="Seminar on How to Behave At University" Tags="&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T10:08:28.227" Score="5" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I earned my Bs.C. in Computer Science five years ago. Two years ago I started taking courses of advanced level from Computer Science department. Now I am thinking about applying to M.Sc. studies abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual requirement is to submit three references. The problem is I don't have someone to write a reference. I wasn't very successful in these advanced courses, therefore I don't think I could ask a lecturer to write a reference, nor his assistant who was checking homework assignments. As option, I could find a professor and start working with him for a while; I am not sure that the result of this work will be a paper, but at least he will be able to somehow evaluate my ability to do a research, the problem is I need three of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I am not sure I could ask someone from my B.Sc. studies to write a reference, just because I lost touch with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your opinion, what is the best way to get three references?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8042" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:44:36.990" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:44:36.990" Title="Whom to ask to write a reference?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T10:39:49.793" Score="8" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I motivate my undergrad students to do research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these students are at an undergrad level, I don't expect any extraordinary results.  However, I would like if they get something published (even in low impact publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undergrads almost never do research in our country. It's not even a requirement of the course.  But, I want to motivate them for research. If they get something published, it would encourage them in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our country, research at the undergraduate level is almost non-existent. I want to introduce this concept at the undergrad level, but I don't want to force anything upon them.  I just want to show them the benefits of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2016-05-22T16:45:55.877" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T16:45:55.877" Title="How to motivate an undergrad class to do research when its not a course requirement?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11663" CreationDate="2013-08-05T10:50:44.363" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, as a teacher, you can allot a project as a mandatory part of course. This project should count towards the final evaluation of the course. You need to do a bit of design and planning about the project and research idea that you want to implement. Then you may divide the work among students based on their strengths and weaknesses. You may assign one group to the whole project and assign individual modules to the students or you may create many groups and each group an individual module. Once this phase of project is over, you will be able to assess the students by their research caliber and motivate the good students for further work, which may be another project with more intensity. In addition to this, you can motivate them to go to better universities and industries for project work. This will really broaden their outlook. They will start looking beyond getting some CGPA and grabbing a job. I hope I could give you some idea :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8047" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T10:50:44.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11663" CreationDate="2013-08-05T11:11:16.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps teach it to them as doing research leads to potential publications, which in turn leads to them increasing their 'research profiles' - which will provide a great advantage for if they wish to pursue postgraduate studies, as there is often a lot of research necessary in Masters and PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't necessarily get all of the students motivated (as some may not be interested in further study), but may be a stepping stone in making this a normal practice in the undergraduate course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T11:11:16.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11676" CreationDate="2013-08-05T11:47:48.133" Score="8" ViewCount="1486" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that a systematic review on a topic X was published some (3-8) years ago by someone else, and it is currently still a useful source for what has been made before it was published. However, more recent works were also published later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, how can I decide whether it is a good idea to work on a newer systematic review for publication, taking into account that the newer review could be (somewhat) similar in methodology and would be based on extended and more recent literature (including that already reviewed in the published one)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T18:11:00.630" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T18:11:00.630" Title="A systematic review already exists in the literature. When is a newer one required?" Tags="&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11654" CreationDate="2013-08-05T11:58:21.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of context missing from this question, so I'll provide some leading questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, is the student working independently, or are you/ your group counting on their results for some other project? If it's the latter, then you should have a conversation setting out clear and realistic time frames for the work that needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student is basically operating independently, then how you respond depends on what their goals are. Maybe the student just wants a Ph. D for their own personal satisfaction, and isn't worried about how long it takes. Maybe they want an academic job afterwards, in which case your concerns are valid. You should first aim to understand the student's goals, and then you can suggest whether the way things are going are reasonable to achieve those goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student didn't have their own funding, there is the additional question of whether it is worth spending &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; resources to support them, but this doesn't apply here - your student is an adult and can decide if the costs in time and money are worth it for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: ask your student what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; want, and then advise accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8048" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T11:58:21.030" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11655" CreationDate="2013-08-05T12:59:32.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few additional thoughts to your answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Otherwise, cite the URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cite also the version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citing the manual doesn't make sense to me, the only reason to do so would be to give explicit credits to an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sometimes the manual is a normal book, so this allows you to cite it in analogy to the &quot;there is a paper&quot; strategy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manuals usually have the version of the software in their name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe a practical historical reason: BibTeX has an entry type @MANUAL (since at least 25 years), so for BibTeX users manuals are an easy way to cite the software. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;otherwise, I would make an appropriate paragraph in the Introduction or Acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a paragraph &quot;software&quot; in the materials &amp;amp; methods section&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T12:59:32.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2013-08-05T13:41:36.310" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most answers above. It IS important to create a working environment. I, for instance, simply can't work at my home computer without being distracted. Here are the simple techniques that worked for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;set up a 'home office.'&lt;/strong&gt; For me it was the simple fact of getting-out-of-my-comfort-zone that kept me going.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;try working from a coffeeshop&lt;/strong&gt;. Apparently, it was discovered that the ambient noise of 75 dc (approx. the pleasant buzz in a coffeeshop) is the best for productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;schedule the breaks&lt;/strong&gt;. Breaks are as important for your productivity as the intensive work, so I found it most helpful to actually set an alarm clock for a 10 min break every 1.5 hrs.        &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keep a &quot;success diary.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Basically, it's a to-do list where you can tick the items you've completed. So, first, break down your workload into smaller tasks (for me it was smth like &quot;write min 3000 word today,&quot; &quot;finish that damn introduction already,&quot; and so on) and then tick them one by one. I guess, you can do it in an actual paper diary, but I used a task management app. It kept me on my toes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8049" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T13:41:36.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11660" CreationDate="2013-08-05T13:50:01.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are four very different topics, with distinct answers for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to behave in class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typically deliniated by each professor on a class-dependent basis, as expected behavior will vary from course to course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to ask help of a lecturer/tutor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty low-level etiquette, and these sorts of things are typically tacitly conveyed through interactions with the community rather than being formally discussed in a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to engage with lecturers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, varies from lecturer to lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to engage with students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this discussed in a wide variety of settings, including seminars, course lectures, lab meetings, and individual advisor discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T13:50:01.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11672" CreationDate="2013-08-05T14:03:47.720" Score="4" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Google scholar, a researcher can generate a public webpage where all his papers and citations are presented.&#xA;Because Google is far from perfect, it is possible to group some papers. For instance if the same paper is (wrongly) seen as two papers by Google scholar, it is possible to make a fusion : the two papers are now a unique one, and the citation are recomputed accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question : when there is a conference version, an extended journal version and possibly a invited conference version of the same work, is it best to merge all the versions or all the papers are to be considered different ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="36320" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T01:10:09.230" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T01:10:09.230" Title="Policy regarding grouping of papers in Google Scholar" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11671" CreationDate="2013-08-05T14:13:25.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One rule of thumb would be that any set of related papers that would be considered separate for a paper CV should be considered separate in what amounts to an electronic CV. Especially if one version clearly contains more material/data/argument than another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:13:25.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1190" CreationDate="2013-08-05T14:25:07.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on what you are looking for in a project management tool. In my opinion, Basecamp is good in term of basic task management. And I really liked its Calendar feature. It was easy to set a milestone and adjust schedules in a click. But in the new version of BC it’s no longer an option, as calendars are now events, so I need to edit each part of the schedule manually. I personally preferred the good old version of BC, it was simple and clear. My team agreed with me and, we decided to switch to another tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We’ve evaluated &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;, but it had no calendar feature at all. &lt;a href=&quot;https://asana.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana&lt;/a&gt; didn’t quite fit our scheduling needs either. We realized that we lacked the ability to view all the projects on a monthly progress chart. Whether it’s per project or per team member, Asana couldn’t give that to us. In the end, we settled for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;. I like its Gantt chart even better than the Calendar we used. Thanks to it I can visualize my whole project, set dependencies between tasks, and adjust them with just drag-and-drop. And the Dashboard view is all clean and uncluttered, just like BC’s used to be. So, we are sticking with it for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8049" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:25:07.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11666" CreationDate="2013-08-05T14:44:25.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would include only the work done after the other publication, with the occasional exception of including papers which would be too important to leave out. Of course, if you think the previous review was not a good one, you can do it all over again. Before starting, check what are the main implications of the other review: were there some open important question, which have now been solved; bad practises in the reviewed field, which have been corrected; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8053" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:44:25.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:00:01.430" Score="13" ViewCount="3233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading in different forums now and searching for the advice that can give me an answer to my dilemma of quitting or continuing my PhD. In this search I did not find any entry to why I should stay in the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Profile&lt;/strong&gt;: Female, 29 years old. Undergraduate in agricutural engineering and MSc in environmental studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONTEXT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I started my PhD&lt;/strong&gt; on political economy 14 months ago. At the beginning I did not like the topic at all. However &lt;strong&gt;doing a PhD has always been my dream,&lt;/strong&gt; as I am very curious and I love learning something new everyday. So despite my lack of theoretical foundations on this discipline, I was so passionate about politics that I considered it was the gap I needed to cover on my interdisciplinary education in order to understand the state of the agriculture nowadays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start, I was not convinced of the reputation of my host university so I decided to search for a second supervisor who was internationally well-known and recognised in the field. Then, I engaged in different theoretical courses in order to acquire the background I was lacking and started working with both my supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After my preliminary fieldwork,&lt;/strong&gt; I came back depressed, demotivated and wanting to quit. I realised that I did not have any other alternatives, so I started job hunting while I was giving my last change to the PhD. Steadily I brought the topic to a terrain I like more and I became a bit more enthusiastic about it. However it is not (and has never been) the topic I am passionate about. On top of that it implies the need for more fieldwork (1 year) and living in harsh situations that are not appealling anymore. Furthermore I realised that jumping into a new and so abstract discipline &lt;strong&gt;is representing to me a more major challenge than I initially expected and I feel that I am much slower than my other colleagues.&lt;/strong&gt; I realised &lt;strong&gt;I am no longer the bright student that I used to be before&lt;/strong&gt; and maybe I am not made to deal with the construction of knowledge that academia represents. I also started questioning the power relations in the academia and how hard and competitive it may become. I start feeling a lot of stress and &lt;strong&gt;lose more and more self-confidence&lt;/strong&gt; on what and if I can do it. And finally I questioned if I really want to do a PhD? For what? What are the reasons that hamper me to quit? Why I am staying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DILEMMA: TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reasons why I am staying&lt;/strong&gt; is firstly because I love research (but I hate academia). I love learning something new everyday and engaging in discussions with very interesting people. However I hate the competitiviness that academia embodies and the constant show-off it implies. It makes me feel terribly insecure and to not enjoy the learning process.&#xA;I love the people I met along the way and I adore and admire my supervisors. However the topic is not the one that makes me feel super motivated in the tough moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reasons that hamper me from quitting&lt;/strong&gt; are the compromise I felt I have acquired with my both supervisors. The amount of money and time they have invested in me makes me feel I owe them to finish... Additionally both of them are very recognised people in the field, so in case I would decide to quit this PhD and change into another one where my passion is... I wonder what my credibility as an scholar would be if I keep changing without completing things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I asked constantly since a long time ago: &lt;strong&gt;whether or not I want to do a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt; I get to the conclusion I can work in research in many other places (i.e. think tanks, international organisations) that even if, and most likely, might be also competitive and with power relations involved, I don't have to deal with the theoretical issues that are killing me now. I realised that I am more an action, hands-on person that search for solutions to problems and don't like so much revolving around a problem for so looooooong (which is one of the things why I can not find the passion in my topic). I realised that I don't need a PhD for doing so and that the labour market can not absorb so many Doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So having reflected on what I would like to do in my life (which I can not now see how it will be in academia), &lt;strong&gt;my fears about quitting the PhD are&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't have alternatives now. I searched for them but I see it is incompatible to be job hunting while trying to make sense of my PhD (in terms of emotions and time).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am scared of regretting quitting the academia and not being able to work in research in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I can stand the disappointment of my supervisors for quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to lose contact with the wonderful people I met along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;strong&gt;why do I want to quit&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fed up of theory. I am not good at engaging with it and I don't understand it. This is stressing me incredibly and is becoming a very painful process.&#xA;I don't want to defend myself in everything I elaborate putting all my intellectual effort, because someone else may find many things in my work to criticise.&#xA;I am not passionate about the topic.&#xA;I don't want to go back either to the fieldwork or to my host university.&#xA;I feel I have many other skills that are hidden in academia. However when I develop those skills I feel much happier (like social skills).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what shall I do? I would appreciate any advice (apologies if I did spelling mistakes but I am not a native english speaker)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8055" LastEditorUserId="27515" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T13:45:28.317" LastActivityDate="2021-05-18T22:08:26.013" Title="Should I stay in my PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2021-05-20T20:07:47.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11666" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:06:47.187" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever there is a set of papers that has significantly extended or changed the topic of interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have to do it as part of your thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are contributing with a new approach/method in a publication (the literature review would typically be part of the Introduction).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: do not spend too much time on writing and trying to publish a literature review if the problem has not evolved significantly during this time. Most of this kind of works get lost in an ocean of surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8056" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T15:06:47.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:13:53.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sort of dilemmas are very common among PhD students. The reasons for this and possible solutions widely vary for different people. The best thing to do is to attend therapy. Many universities offer this service for free, and the psychologists involved with this are very familiar with this sort of problems. If this service is not offered by your university, then you may want to spend some money on this. It is an important decision and you should not take it lightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8056" LastEditorUserId="8056" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T15:19:37.543" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T15:19:37.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11685" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:46:22.003" Score="7" ViewCount="826" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no way to evade having a lot of acronyms in a scientific paper, often already in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/latex&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'latex'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;latex&lt;/a&gt; package &lt;code&gt;glossaries&lt;/code&gt; to automatically expand the first use of every acronym (except usage in the title), but for a scientific paper, I do not include a table of acronyms (for my thesis I do).  In a long paper, if someone does not remember all acronyms or does not read sequentially, it could be difficult to look up the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use a not very well known acronym in, say, line 100, and again in line 500, should I expand it again, or is it a better style to stick with expanding only and exactly once?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T17:24:36.883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T06:25:21.873" Title="Shall acronyms in scientific papers be expanded exactly once?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T17:26:48.607" Score="5" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently graduated and am temporarily employed as a lecturer at the school I graduated from (9 hours a week of teaching, not counting prep time).  There's a weekly seminar on my field of interest, and I've been asked to take over hosting it.  This would involve handling various logistics like planning the meetings, planning lunches, booking the room, etc. etc.  It would be a lot of work...  On the other hand it might be a neat opportunity to network/make connections/etc., but not that much better than the opportunity one would get just by attending the seminar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I do it or should I save that time for working on my own research/jobhunting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8058" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T20:51:23.533" Title="As a recent PhD entering jobhunt, should I agree to host a weekly seminar?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2013-08-05T17:27:57.777" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given how little I know about the specifics of your situation, it would be inappropriate of me to advise you on a life decision of the magnitude of whether or not to stay in your PhD program -- if at all possible, please talk to people who know you well: friends, family, colleagues, advisors, mentors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned four reasons for not wanting to quit.  It seems to me that, of those four, you should disregard (at least) the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I am scared of regretting quitting the academia and not being able to work in research in the future&quot;&lt;/em&gt; -- if you want to return to academia in the future, usually you can.  There may be a cost, but note that there is also a cost to maintaining the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't know if I can stand the disappointment of my supervisors for quitting.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  You are not responsible for your supervisor's happiness, only your own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't want to lose contact with the wonderful people I met along the way.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Staying in touch with people you like is independent of earning any academic degree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T17:27:57.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11678" CreationDate="2013-08-05T17:48:55.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(I've been using a table with abbreviations also in a paper, that was no problem at all)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For longer texts (thesis) I give long version and abbreviation again if the abbreviation has not been used for &quot;a while&quot; of the text. E.g. introduced in the introduction, but next used in chapter 7 (400 lines ≈ 10-11 pages, that I'd consider probably close enough for not giving the long form again).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be a good idea to have the long forms in parts of the text that are expected to be read without the rest (obviously in the introduction, but also in summary and outlook)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also consider how widely-used and how ambiguous the abbreviation is: Does PCA mean principal component analysis or polymerase chain reaction? Is LDA linear discriminant analysis or latent dirichlet allocation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T17:48:55.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11678" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:21:14.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask the journal or conference where you're going to publish the paper.  Some specify that it is, indeed, exactly once at the first use.  (Shorter-format journals especially prefer this.)  Others prefer &quot;upon first use and where necessary for clarity&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, in a long work with many acronyms that may be referenced out of order, there is no substitute for a table.  Likewise if you define specialized symbols, a table of symbols greatly simplifies out-of-order reading.  It's often worth devoting a table to such things even if your allowed number of figures and tables is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T18:21:14.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11679" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:33:34.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's in your interest to focus on research, then job search, then teaching, then service. This is service, so lowest priority. See if you can get a student assistant (grad or undergrad) to do a lot of the grunt work, while you handle the higher level logistical stuff. If you can't get some help, doesn't sound like it's worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T18:33:34.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11678" CreationDate="2013-08-05T20:26:43.260" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, try to avoid acronyms unless you repeat it frequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case you mention, occurring twice, an acronym is not warranted. New acronyms may be useful if it is likely that it will be used over and over again, both in your paper and in subsequent ones. It is difficult to say how many repetitions is needed before an acronym may become a viable option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acronyms generally make a paper less readable. We all know some like DNA or UN and particularly in the first case the acronym is easier to remember than the actual words. So use acronyms sparingly, be careful about what you abbreviate, and avoid publishing acronyms that only your research group uses unless it starts to become a standard (identified by other people also using it in presentations etc.). I think many acronyms start by it becoming jargon first. Trying to be restrictive is the best measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="10512" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T06:25:21.873" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T06:25:21.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T21:15:19.083" Score="5" ViewCount="2347" Body="&lt;p&gt;A conference I'm submitting to &lt;em&gt;will be able to offer limited financial support to a small number of participants needing assistance to attend the conference.&lt;/em&gt;.  The date of the conference is several months after my PhD finishes and I don't know where I will be at that time, if anywhere, so I am asking for financial support.  What should I focus on to maximise my chances? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I am mentioning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The previous edition of the conference (for which I had other funding) was very useful for me.  I presented paper A there (title, reference, I'm 1st author), and got major input that significantly improved paper B (title, reference, highle reuptable journal, I'm second author).  Without my participation in the previous conference, paper B would not have been as good as it became.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work I want to present now, which is paper C (almost ready for submission; probably published by the time of the conference; title, abstract; I'm 1st author) should be very relevant for the conference (&lt;em&gt;should I send a copy of the full submitted manuscript?&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the previous conference, I talked to a co-chair (name) and he encouraged me to ask for financial support should I be &quot;between jobs&quot; during the next edition (&lt;em&gt;NB: he also encouraged me to explicitly mention his name, and I will&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My PhD is planned at &amp;lt;date&amp;gt;, and I currently don't know where I will be by then.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this roughly correspond to what they likely want to hear/know?  Am I missing something?  Am I saying too much?  Should I focus on one aspect more than another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;NB: the conference is held every 2 years and is in the field of remote sensing, and it is customary, but not mandatory, to write a non-peer reviewed paper for the conference proceedings&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T09:58:06.460" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T22:44:40.400" Title="What should I focus on when asking for conference travel support?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T21:23:05.843" Score="6" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of listing and comparing all the graduate schools I am interested in. What should I be comparing, gathering, etc. And what is the best way to keep all the information together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8060" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:47:55.767" Title="Trying to collect information on grad schools" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11660" CreationDate="2013-08-05T21:50:13.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended such a course during my first semester at a community college. It was mandatory for all incoming students, in all fields/majors.&#xA;This course covered most of the topics you mentioned, plus effective study habits, time management, basic computer and research skills, and brief experience with PowerPoint and givng a presentation. A major focus of the course was introducing students to resources they could use if they ran into difficulties with studies or life experiences. For me, the course was not very useful, since I already had a strong foundation in those essential life skills. However, to other students, the course proved very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T18:51:18.553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T18:51:18.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11663" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:33:13.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite undergraduate classes had a original research requirement, as well as a publishing requirement. Neither was very stringent; the original research requirement was that we collect some data on our own, while the publishing requirement was to provide proof of submission of a manuscript. It gave us a taste of research and publishing, which in some caes led to in-depth, sophisticate research while the students were still undergrads. &#xA;Don't be afraid to make some research a requirement for your students. They will learn that they are capable of more than they thought, and it is likely that a few students will run with the opportunity and produce results that may surprise even you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T22:33:13.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11687" CreationDate="2013-08-06T00:03:07.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways in which different schools differ from each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Size. Both small schools (personal attention) and big schools (lots of seminars, people to talk to) have their advantages. Which is more important to you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research focuses. Even large schools will be dominated by a couple of research groups. Do you find their work interesting?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Program structure. Some programs are very structured, with lots of requirements; some are more free-form. Which is best is a matter of individual preference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competitiveness. Some departments are friendly and competitive, some departments are friendly and less competitive. (And a couple of departments are unfriendly and you should avoid them.) Do you thrive under pressure? If so, choose a competitive place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quality. (This one is obvious.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Geography. Some places (Harvard, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, among many others) are located in towns where it's a lot of fun to be a grad student. Some are not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Support. Some places offer more money, and/or less teaching requirements in exchange for funding. (Typically private schools fare better than public in this regard, but not necessarily.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All things to keep in mind when you compare schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T00:03:07.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T00:55:05.877" Score="13" ViewCount="1254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently finishing my undergraduate math studies, and I am really interested in computer science (especially theoretical). However, I realize that most CS departments expect their applicants to have a CS major or at least a significant amount of coursework in CS. I have taken a couple of programming courses and a course in data structures, languages and machines, and design of algorithms, but all very basic (so I would probably be rejected because of insufficient background). Therefore, I have been looking for math departments that do theoretical CS research, but I have found very few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is possible for a mathematician to successfully enter a program of theoretical computer science with few previous experience in CS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8062" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:49:18.480" Title="Theoretical CS research having a math undergrad" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11663" CreationDate="2013-08-06T02:31:22.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered making it some sort of contest?  Students will go to astonishing lengths to win a competition. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give you an example.  One of the undergraduate classes I teach is a C programming class, and towards the end of the term we spend a couple of weeks on performance optimization.  For the corresponding assignments the students are asked to speed up a slow program given to them.  Their score on those assignments depends on the speedup they are able to get, and -- here's the kicker -- if they can beat the performance of my solution they get a 20% bonus.  I've seen students explore exotic data structures and algorithms, figure out how to embed hand-tuned assembly code, and teach themselves how to write multi-threaded code, just so they can say they beat the instructor.  It's really terrific watching them push themselves to excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your situation is almost certainly different from mine, but I think it's still fair to say that students will self-engage, and push themselves to think creatively and explore different solutions, if the motivation to excel is coming from the inside -- which is really what research is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T02:53:26.130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T02:53:26.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11659" CreationDate="2013-08-06T02:41:06.963" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2945/choice-of-personal-pronoun-in-single-author-papers&quot;&gt;link provided&lt;/a&gt; in the first comment above has a VERY useful answer but I will add a little bit as to the &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; part of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing research papers, the reader's focus should be on the idea, not the author. Yes, you did the research but the point is not &quot;Everyone! Look what I did. I am so great!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research paper should be more along the lines of &quot;Everyone! Look what is new and interesting. This information is really great!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the purpose of the research report is not &quot;I did this&quot; but rather &quot;This was done.&quot; For this reason, it is quite common to use the passive voice (this was done) rather than the active voice (I did this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I disagree that removing the use of the word &quot;I&quot; prevents writing readable English. I do agree that is makes the writing more difficult but lots of things are more difficult when they are done the proper way. That doesn't mean we give up and do it the wrong way because it is easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T10:16:20.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11679" CreationDate="2013-08-06T04:00:22.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you decline. If there are enough researchers in your group to host a decent seminar, then there are enough people with job security to handle the grunt work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offer to help out, say, by seeking out and inviting people, chatting them up, and going to dinner with them, but I would avoid any and all grunt work. You have a good excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T04:00:22.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12491" CreationDate="2013-08-06T04:27:16.513" Score="22" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we enter a new school year, I'm wondering if the is any evidence to support or contradict the idea that putting a poor-performing students on academic probation improves their performance. Does anyone know of any such evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that schools are naturally concerned about eliminating students whose tuition keeps the doors open and my school does not have any formal rules on academic probation. I'm thinking of proposing some, but only if there is evidence that it will actually improve performance. If it demotivates students (for example creating a stigma which is a very serious issue here in Asia) and bounces students who might otherwise just pass then it does not seem so appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T02:17:32.800" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T15:23:50.703" Title="Does putting poor performing students on academic probation improve student performance?" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11692" CreationDate="2013-08-06T06:00:46.373" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought this question was asked and answered before, but I couldn't find it. In any case, people with a strong math background can do very well in TCS. The only stumbling block might be the breadth of CS material (including things like architecture, compilers and operating systems) that might be required of a CS grad student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are certain programs (CMU/Georgia Tech/Waterloo) in which TCS is a separate discipline: if you applied to one of these programs, you might be able to to circumvent core CS requirements that you don't have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T06:00:46.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11702" CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:35:44.647" Score="6" ViewCount="12297" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate, I have heard this term a lot. I have not graduated but will graduate soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying to graduate programs, research experience is what everyone tells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research Experience is used rather recklessly. Many students, even if they had to just type in data for professors/researchers, check some test tubes in laboratory or whatever depending on discipline mention they had research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year, I had an internship at a renowned research organisation. The only thing they do is research and development. As an intern, I did not specifically join saying, I wanted a &quot;Research Experience&quot;. I were involved in their project which was a research project. My task consisted of API development, working with Matlab and various stuff important for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, I did not come up with something new. Well, they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this is far better than what many students mention as research experience. But, is it worth calling this a research experience in my CV or applications? Shall I call this reaserch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the question specific, what does a &quot;Standard Research Experience&quot; consist of? When graduate schools say undergraduate research experience, what kind of activities are they expected to have been involved in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8065" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T07:39:23.880" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T09:14:51.987" Title="Showing research experience in graduate applications" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11692" CreationDate="2013-08-06T08:55:05.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to Suresh's excellent answer, a couple of practical steps you could consider doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the admissions people at your favoured universities; at the same time, caontact potential supervisors and ask about your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read more about the topics related to the research interests of potential advisors, this is to gauge your level of knowledge and confidence in the topics (this is what I did before my MSc, now I have followed through into my PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T08:55:05.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11621" CreationDate="2013-08-06T09:04:59.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of databases about funded research projects in the &lt;strong&gt;Benelux&lt;/strong&gt; countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcis.nl/?Language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NARCIS - National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;NL&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fnr.lu/en/Searchable-Project-Database/Research-Domain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fonds National de la Recherche&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;LU&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belspo.be/belspo/research/data_en.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Databases INVENT and FEDRA by the Belgian Science Policy&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;BE&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchportal.be/en/projects/search.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flanders Research Information Space&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;BE&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.fnrs.be/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;BE&lt;/strong&gt;, only in French)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;German speaking countries&lt;/strong&gt;, there are informative databases about funded reseach projects as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.base.elfi.info/elfi-2.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ELFI database for the German-speaking area&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://p3.snf.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swiss National Science Foundation&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;CH&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/projects/projekt_suche.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FWF Austrian Science Fund&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;AT&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/OCTOPUS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DFG German Research Foundation&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;DE&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T12:40:41.177" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T12:40:41.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11698" CreationDate="2013-08-06T09:14:51.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're expected to describe research experience. It sounds like you've had some. You should describe it in your application. Talk about what role you had, what sort of things you actually did (&quot;various stuff important for the project&quot; and &quot;working with Matlab&quot; aren't very good descriptions). What was your role? Did you make decisions or did you just assist? What sort of products did you produce and what skills did those products require? How did you solve problems you encountered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind these application questions is to try to differentiate people with no experience from some minimal experience (cleaning instruments in a lab and feeding rats) to moderate experience (sounds like what you have) and people who engaged in truly independent research (which is pretty rare, depending on where you did your bachelor degree and in what field). Be honest and detailed, that's all that's expected. Of course people will play up what they did, but if you made substantive contributions that demonstrate your abilities and experience, that will show through in your write-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T09:14:51.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11663" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:42:53.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've discovered that an effective way to engage undergrads is to give them a tour of your lab and let them shadow a grad student or other undergrads for a few days. Speak with them as often as you can to gauge what they are interested in and let them get a feel for your research group. Handing students off to a grad student or a postdoc and not speaking to them for a month is not going to work. It would be nice if you can give them a short term goal, say a poster presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2678" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:42:53.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11687" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:47:55.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to keep all the information together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got a number of options here, but I would suggest two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A spreadsheet (as Thomas mentions in his comment) for the logistical issues.  I had a spreadsheet with the following columns:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Name | Website | Location | Due date for application | App. complete? (Y/N) | Letters sent? (Y/N) | Accepted? (Y/N/Waitlist) | Visit date | Primary contact name | Primary contact email | Thoughts (this was a one-liner column where I would put &quot;great location!&quot;, &quot;no funding...&quot;, or &quot;perfect research fit&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2. A folder on your computer for each school, underneath an overarching &quot;Grad School Applications&quot; folder. This is where you can drop all information pertaining to the school, including: a document with jotted down thoughts, your personal statement personalized for the school, a cover letter, the application form (if offline), correspondence you've received from the school (printed emails work pretty well), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put everything in a Dropbox so you can access it on the road (and for backup).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:47:55.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11692" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:49:18.480" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people in Theoretical Computer Science have undergraduate (and sometimes graduate) degrees in Mathematics, and some do not know how to program at all: do not be afraid and go on. Having a solid background of both mathematics and computers is an asset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only warning: be ready to learn by yourself, especially as you might be asked to TA or teach courses you never took (e.g.  I had to learn a lot for teaching Operating Systems, or Networking, as this was never taught in my undergraduate degree in Mathematics). But if you go to Academia, you should be ready to learn by yourself anyway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:49:18.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T18:08:37.127" Score="5" ViewCount="2320" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a paper has 3 weak accepts (in all evaluations, a weak accept in each evaluation),  will it be published in the conference? If this is the case, what is the difference if it has 2 weak accepts and a strong accept or 3 strong accepts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4442" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T20:17:58.983" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T20:17:58.983" Title="Acceptance in a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11711" CreationDate="2013-08-06T18:32:57.693" Score="5" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of applying for PhDs. My question is whether it is frowned upon to have done a degree in a subject completely unrelated to my main studies. I just completed two masters at top universities concurrently, one in biology and the other in English literature. I did the literature degree to please my parents, my real passion is in biology. I steered my English degree somewhat towards the biology by writing my dissertation on the representation of tropical diseases in literature. I am wondering whether I should list this degree on my CV or just leave it off? I thought that it might prove how hard-working I am to do two masters concurrently. I also scored the highest mark out of my class in my biology master, so the other master did not affect my primary  master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T21:08:30.683" Title="List Unrelated Degree on Application" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11710" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:33:05.000" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say to list it, for a couple of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It does show that you are hardworking, 2 concurrent Masters degrees completed and completed to a great standard.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Practically, it further demonstrates the abilities necessary to research, synthesise information, draw valid conclusions from a wide range of sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you put in the effort, why not 'show off' your good work. By steering your Literature Masters in a biological direction with your topic of tropical diseases, you have also shown how this long-standing and serious issue (tropical diseases) have been portrayed to the non-scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T19:33:05.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11709" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:45:19.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This largely depends on the conference. The way that conferences usually work (at least in my field for computer science - subdiscipline software engineering or human-computer interaction) is that once the reviews come in, the program committee meets and then discusses which papers will be accepted and which ones are rejected. This often comes down to how many papers there are, how many they can accept (subject to things including a mandatory acceptance rate, how big the conference can be, etc) and what other papers are like (if your conference has very few &quot;strong accepts&quot; that year then weak accept is pretty good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, a paper with few &quot;strong accepts&quot; could end up around the &quot;middle&quot; of the pack are more likely to be held up for discussion where they have a chance for rejection. Most PCs won't extensively discuss a paper where all of the reviewers say &quot;strong accept&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we don't know if it'll be published in the conference. However, in general, the more strong accepts a paper gets, the more likely the paper will be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T19:45:19.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11709" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:45:42.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; My answer is computer science and specifically HCI relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the conference, the discipline and the conference committee. There are variables which determine the acceptance of a paper in a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper with three weak accepts may be rejected if there are stronger papers out there or if the committee feels that another paper which describes something really new must be given an opportunity to be presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper with three strong accepts is most likely to be accepted because this means that there is an almost unanimous consent among the reviewers and the paper is most likely very strong and very relevant to the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper with any such combinations in between the previously described examples may or may not be accepted depending on various factors. Ultimately, the decision is upto the organizing committee. For instance, I have seen papers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2014.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CHI&lt;/a&gt; be rejected finally with three 3.0 scores (borderline accepts) but seen papers with one 4.0, one 3.0 and one 2.0 get accepted finally after the revisions were made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, ultimately, my first sentence remains valid. It depends on a bunch of factors most of which are out of your direct control. The only thing which you can control is the revision of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T19:45:42.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11710" CreationDate="2013-08-06T21:08:30.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Damien have stated you should list both and for the reasons provided in that answer. In addition, I think it is worth thinking about how well you can second guess how anyone on the receiving end will percieve your CV. Basically, you cannot know. It is therefore important to list everything and in cases such as that about which you ask, provide a brief account to honestly describe why you did it. If you managed to do a masters with flying colours ina topic you do not like, that is a very strong show. I am impressed and so will others. So look through your CV, list everything that indicates stamina, effort, ambition, perseverance etc. and where you think things can be misinterpreted, add some sentence explaining why you claim it is a plus. You can easily do this in a short narrative that summarizes your CV and strong points. You can then put everything in the light in which you want them to be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T21:08:30.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11716" CreationDate="2013-08-07T04:19:01.290" Score="19" ViewCount="1897" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need to hire a computer scientist with a very particular specialty as a consultant for a long term industrial research project.  We've read the relevant papers and so know who does good work in it.  But we don't know the first thing about hiring a professor as a consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I just email them and say &quot;Hi, Dr. So and so, I've read your paper about X and want to discuss hiring you as a consultant&quot;? Or do I need some type of introduction?  Specifically, if I'm coming from a small business (with the funds to hire them, mind you, but a small business nonetheless), will they take it seriously?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I evaluate their abilities to be a good &lt;em&gt;consultant&lt;/em&gt;? I know they have the brains and the know-how, but I need more than that: I need someone who will work on the problems we have, giving us a reasonable assessment of their likelihood to solve them, keeping us up to date, and clearing communicating their results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once hired, how do we effectively manage them towards our goals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Currently, we have funding to hire them only for the initial stages. With good results, we have investors to approach, and we'd like to say &quot;We're working on this problem; we have Prof. X on it, who's done this so far; with another $1M, we could get here.&quot; Will academics be supportive of such an arrangement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do we protect our intellectual property? Our plan is to leverage existing research towards new technological applications.  What's to stop our consultants from taking our ideas on their own? This is especially a concern in the initial evaluation stages, where we don't have a business relationship, but need to discuss our applications in some detail nonetheless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: Are there any resources on how to do this? Books, articles, services? We'd really like to benefit from someone's experience on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8075" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:08:35.593" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:08:35.593" Title="Hiring a faculty consultant" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11715" CreationDate="2013-08-07T05:40:55.297" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an academic with a history of consulting, the proper way to approach the person in question is to contact him directly. Email might work but for initial contacts phone might be better. If he/she is geographically close, a face-to-face would be even better. The initial conversation is really about whether he/she is interested in consulting in his/her area of expertise. If yes, then you can start to dig a little deeper into the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be clear and up front with what you have and what you hope to achieve. Make it clear what the limitations of the project are and that the project might or might not move past the initial phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that the size of your business would be an issue but that really depends on his/her personality. You'll know when you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About evaluating if he/she can be a good consultant, explain very clearly what your concerns are. There is no reason for the Prof to be concerned since you do not know each other there is not an issue of personalities and you are not doubting him/her, you are simply saying what you are concerned about. If you have read this person's work you should have an idea of his/her ability to communicate clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as managing this person toward the goal, handle him/her as you would any other employee. Normally consultants expect a little bit more freedom but, to repeat myself, be clear with what you want and that might include an update every 2-3 days (more or less depending on the nature of the project - you might want daily updates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for protecting your intellectual property, have the Prof sign an NDA/non-compete. This &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be an issue if it will in any way limit the Prof from exploring his/her own work. For this, you will need to negotiate what kind of legal protections you feel you need. If you write the non-compete in a narrow enough way, the Prof might feel comfortable enough (he/she is getting something out of the deal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T05:40:55.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11621" CreationDate="2013-08-07T12:02:41.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In India it is  &lt;a href=&quot;http://shodhgangotri.inflibnet.ac.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shodh Gangotri&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the website...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word “Shodh” originates from Sanskrit and stands for “research and discovery”. “Gangotri” is one of the largest glacier in the Himalayas and source of origination of Ganges, the holiest, longest and largest of rivers in India. The Ganges is the symbol of age-long culture, civilization, ever-aging, ever-flowing, ever-loving and loved by its people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... research scholars / research supervisors in universities are requested to deposit electronic version of approved synopsis... The repository... would reveal the trends and directions of research being conducted in Indian universities [and] would avoid duplication of research. ...once the full-text thesis is submitted for a synopsis, a link to the full-text theses would be provided from ShodhGangotri to &amp;quot;ShodhGanga&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8081" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T03:48:19.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11734" CreationDate="2013-08-07T12:07:11.183" Score="15" ViewCount="7339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a visiting faculty, professor in B-schools. How does one go about in designing or compiling an open book exam, ensuring that it's not tough and neither too easy. At the same time someone who has not read the book will not be able to answer the question. What at the pointers or measures that should be taken care? Isn't designing an open book exam difficult compared to traditional exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8081" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T00:01:19.040" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T09:11:09.333" Title="How to design an open book exam?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T12:48:13.283" Score="2" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know your opinion about the following situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read all recommendations on how to apply to graduate school abroad, how to choose the professor to work with, I found a really interesting suggestion of someone. The person was describing the similar process applying to graduate school and in parallel he was looking for someone to work with in the same university, a bit early but if know what do you want to do, why not to do it. Having found a good candidate to work with, the person offered to work together for from few weeks to few months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person was lucky, he made a really good choice, they decided to proceed working together towards a masters degree and application to the university was a useless formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One minor point though, it was a quite expensive, to buy a fly ticket, rent a room etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion about this form of finding a professor, do you have more examples like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8042" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T18:58:50.603" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T19:13:56.177" Title="Finding a professor beforehand" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11721" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:27:27.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you want to find a good professor to work with, you could search for the available professors in a certain university (online, in their website). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After having all the names, you could &quot;stalk&quot; them online, find some of their papers, etc. Most of them (if not all) will have a webpage in which they post lots of information about themselves, such as, their papers, students they worked with, even their hobbies. You'll probably delete quite a few names that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll still have some professors names not crossed out. You can then try to e-mail the students they worked with and ask them what's their evaluation of said professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is what you're looking for, sorry if it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8066" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T13:27:27.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11720" CreationDate="2013-08-07T15:56:43.077" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open book exams&lt;/strong&gt; are actually very easy to design (at least I think so, and I favor them in my own teaching): just design it the same way you would design regular exercises. The goal is to &lt;strong&gt;evaluate the students’ understanding and skills&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. how they analyze and solve problems, rather than the facts they have memorized. To do so, I usually design exams as &lt;strong&gt;problems&lt;/strong&gt; rather than series of trivia questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T15:56:43.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11725" CreationDate="2013-08-07T16:16:51.543" Score="11" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to cite a paper in an upcoming paper and conference talk. The paper appeared in a journal several years ago, and normally I would just cite the version that appeared in the journal. However, several important calculations in the section which is relevant to my work were incorrect, and a corrected version has since been posted to the arXiv. How should I cite it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach would be to just cite the arXiv version, but I feel like this gives the impression that the article has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, while it in fact appeared in a top field journal. On the other hand I certainly don't want to cite the version with the incorrect calculations, as they make closely following the relevant section impossible. Is there a standard protocol for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T17:00:45.910" Title="Citing a paper for which a corrected version exists online" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11724" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:00:45.910" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would list the published version in the bibliography, with something like &quot;corrected version available as [insert its article ID] from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arXiv.org&quot;&gt;http://www.arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt;&quot; appended to the end of its entry in the bibliography.  When you discuss the article in the text of your paper, you should mention the corrections there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should certainly not cite the arXiv version without explaining that the published version contains a mistake (readers may assume the published version is a cleaned up copy of the arXiv version, rather than vice versa), and it seems weird to say this without actually explaining where the article was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T17:00:45.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11728" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:30:55.763" Score="11" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the following question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6130/co-authorship-for-not-very-involved-supervisor&quot;&gt;Co-authorship for not very involved supervisor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have got to ask a slightly different question:  I have a past supervisor while I did my masters and she wasn't really involved or as active as I would have liked. Also, I received no funding from this professor. I did however receive a scholarship from the university to fund my masters; not sure if these facts change anything.  Naturally, this person would also like to believe she was involved, so had I finished the research while I did my masters there I would have listed this individual as a second author and even the author of correspondence.  But now I am pursuing a PhD and in fact in a  slightly different field at a different university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While preparing for my qualifiers I came across some fresh new ideas and had a light bulb moment.  Consequently, I have made significant progress in my old project as of late.  I believe by the end of the summer I will have results ready for publication.  On the one hand, I feel I should notify my old professor of these results once they come in... I think it would be wrong or even unethical to let them find out through the grape-vine or just through reading to keep up with the field.  On the other hand, I fear this person will want authorship or even write the editor and demand it; this person is a Reader at a prestigious university while I'm just a little PhD student.  I feel it will be a case of he-said she-said with the Editor which will ultimately result in me losing (even though I completely believe I'm justified and the recent progress was 100% mine).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm over-reacting but I'm not sure what to do.  And I certainly don't want this person to &quot;read over&quot; my paper or attempt to &quot;edit&quot; it, because I think then they would have more grounds to put their name on the paper.  Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8084" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T19:09:59.640" Title="Authorship with Past and Nearly Absent Supervisor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T18:22:27.123" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering an attempt to gain admittance to an MSE program in Software Engineering but I realize that most of my education may not be fully relevant. My BS is in CIS where the focus was real world application and lots of management type stuff, so there wasn't much math and I know that is going to be be a problem. I was looking at ASU's MSE program which implied that the only pre-requisite was Calc I. However, when I was looking through the pre-reqs for each individual class, there were things like Intro to Embedded systems and such; subjects that were obviously not included in CIS. I currently work as a Software Engineer, but our focus is pretty level in that it's typical information systems type stuff (just moving data in and out of databases). I have a true passion for it, I'm not terrible at math, and I really do want to get deeper into the matrix so to speak, so motivation won't necessarily be a huge issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering if anyone had any experience with this or could give me some info on what to expect or what I'm going to need to do in order to make this happen. For instance, am I going to end up getting a second BS (in CS) before I can make the transition or should I still be able to make the switch outright? I haven't contacted ASU yet because in my experience, they push you to apply without actually providing guidance first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8085" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-11T08:30:46.477" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T08:30:46.477" Title="Transitioning from a BS in CIS to an MSE in Software Engineering" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11726" CreationDate="2013-08-07T18:27:06.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; you include her as a co-author? &lt;strong&gt;Customs in this are journal- and field-dependent&lt;/strong&gt;, so you should check with others in your field (you didn't tell us what it was) and also with the &lt;strong&gt;authorship policy of the journal&lt;/strong&gt; you intend to submit. You may also want to check with the &lt;strong&gt;department where you did your Masters&lt;/strong&gt; what their policy is on authorship and affiliation for students' papers. At the very least, if you're going to have someone be cross at you, know in advance where you stand!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll sum up &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11494/2700&quot;&gt;my answer to another question on the site&lt;/a&gt; by stating that &lt;strong&gt;graduate students oftentimes dismiss too easily an advisor's role&lt;/strong&gt; in the research. Selecting a problem/project for you to work on, even guiding you in the selection of a problem can be considered a big intellectual contribution to your research. &lt;strong&gt;Conception/design of research is an integral part of the research&lt;/strong&gt;, and usually explicitly calls for authorship in resulting papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay to be proud of your work, and to think your contribution in it was crucial, but be sure not to be biased against your supervisor when evaluating her contribution. One person who may help you do that is your current advisor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that being said, let's suppose you have made the decision not to have her as coauthor. How do you manage that? The guiding principle should be: be upfront and clearly state where you stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Including her name in the acknowledgements of the paper, specifically stating her contribution. (&lt;em&gt;“SG thanks Dr. Jane Doe for initially pointing him to this challenging problem.”&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the paper is published, be sure to send her a preprint, along with a nice email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about her reviewing the paper, list her in the list of potential reviewers to exclude (if the journal submission has space for that). But… having her in the acknowledgments may already be enough for the editor not to pick her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T18:27:06.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11726" CreationDate="2013-08-07T19:09:59.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a somewhat difficult situation, but I believe the most salient issue is the one that you originally mentioned in your comment: the master's advisor did not fund your research in any way. As a result of this, the demands placed on the advisor for authorship become even more stringent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criteria that becomes significant here is whether or not the advisor contributed materially to the development of the ideas you've carried out. If you decided upon the topic yourself, without assistance from your advisor, then it's appropriate not to give co-authorship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also the issue of politics to consider. If, as you suggested, you are worried about the influence of your former advisor on spiking the paper, it may be worthwhile to consider the possibility of adding your advisor on at least the first paper; any future papers could be done without citing your advisor on the future papers (except as an acknowledgment, as F'x suggests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T19:09:59.640" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11679" CreationDate="2013-08-07T20:51:23.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think carefully. If you are not successful with your job search (and that has already happened to you once, apparently, as you did not find the job around the time you defended), and you decline to run the seminar, you will spoil your relations with the department chair/head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To other previous responders: come on, guys, don't you know who's who in the academic food chain positions? The leader of the group considers him/herself busier than other members of the group. Other professors are busy with the research, their own grad students, and other committee assignments, and don't like to be bothered by additional service (which they also view as the lowest priority job, as clearly, and to the point, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11683/739&quot;&gt;communicated by Thomas&lt;/a&gt;. So the group leader went to the person with the least negotiating power and the greatest amount of time, at least as perceived by other professors -- the new Ph.D., arguably with no other service assignments, no students to teach, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the overall advice is to weigh your options. If you are certain that you'll find a job elsewhere, feel free to decline. Keep in mind that this is an intertwined issue in that your group leader is to write your recommendation letters, and if you are perceived as non-cooperative colleague, that will make a way to the letters and (fewer) interview invitations. I was given the department seminar series to run in my first year out of Ph.D. tenure track job, considered it fun, but got kicked out of my tenure-track job two years later as I was perceived as doing too much service, and too little research. If you will have the opportunity for a greater deal of interaction with the invited speakers than just sending email on your leader's behalf, this could be valuable. If all you will find yourself doing is reservations and such, then this may not be as good. However, if you have a regular date and time for your meetings, you should be able to reserve the room once for the whole semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T20:51:23.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T21:43:39.660" Score="5" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you can apply for fellowships for individual students, but I'm not talking about funding only for one's self. Let's say I noticed a grant that was solicited on grants.gov and I wanted to apply for it. Can I do that?&#xA;The nature of these grants is to supply the awardee with funding for experimental set-ups, student funding (undergrad/grad), and other various research supplies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp; As a follow up question, is it possible to apply, if your PI is applying for this funding as well. Basically, could I send in a proposal and my PI could as well? Are there some restrictions here? I've read through the solicitation's eligibility and couldn't find anything about multiple names being on different proposals, or if we were to apply separately, then having the funding go to the same group under different names. &#xA;Just curious if anyone knew.&#xA;I'll write back, if I find more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8086" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T23:39:01.627" Title="Can students apply for Research Grants (US)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11731" CreationDate="2013-08-07T23:24:33.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, in the US, most grants are not normally submitted directly by the principal investigator, but are instead sent in via a &quot;grants office&quot; that acts as the interface between the principal investigator and the funding agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, in addition to the grant-specific funding rules you have from a specific funding agency, you also have to deal with whatever restrictions your university grant-office has. For instance, it's not likely that your grants office will accept a proposal submitted by a graduate student instead of by a faculty member or similar personnel (lecturer, research professor, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, you need to read the requirements of the individual granting agency, as well as ask your local grants office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T23:24:33.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11731" CreationDate="2013-08-07T23:39:01.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your first question: you'd have to read the funding agency's rules for an authoritative answer.  I think the most likely case is that there are no restrictions on who may apply for the grant, and proposals from students would be considered, at least in principle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your chances of getting such a proposal &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; would be somewhere between extremely slim and none.  The review panel is going to have serious doubts that a student will have the necessary experience and expertise to successfully manage and carry out the project.  Your proposal would have to convince them that you do, and unless your circumstances are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unusual, this will probably be impossible.  Given the substantial time and effort needed to prepare a grant proposal, it's almost certainly not worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question: the PI normally lists on the grant application all everyone participating in the project who will be supported by the grant, including students.  Those people are normally not eligible to apply for their own funding.  And if you are not on the grant, then you're nominally working independently of the PI, and why would an agency want to award grants to two different people to do the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T23:39:01.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11720" CreationDate="2013-08-08T00:13:42.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When designing an assessment, it is helpful to look at something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bloom's Taxonomy&lt;/a&gt;. Since you mention B-school, I assume you are assessing a management or finance module. I always thought finance modules in particular should be open-book because of the extensive use of formulas and, as pointed out by F'x and others, simply testing if the student can remember some information is not really the most interesting (for teachers or students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sticking with Bloom's Taxonomy, remembering is the lowest form of assessment. If the students do not have to worry about getting the formulas right, then you can start something more complex. For example, have them make recommendations or create a plan for whatever the subject is. For example, if you are assessing leadership, give them a scenario with enough background knowledge and ask them to recommend (with justification of course) a particular leadership style for the situation. Remembering the standard leadership styles is not what is most important. What is important is that they can see a situation, assess the more important elements of that situation with respect to leadership, evaluate the pros and cons of each option, and decide which would be the best of all the choices to be used, which may include creating their own leadership style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, for open book tests, move further up towards evaluation and creating and away from rote memorization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T00:13:42.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T01:36:43.863" Score="9" ViewCount="1606" Body="&lt;p&gt;As described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11715/hiring-a-faculty-consultant&quot;&gt;Hiring a faculty consultant&lt;/a&gt;, we need to hire a faculty consultant. The initial stages are perhaps only 100 hours, but subsequent stages may blossom to ten times that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will good professors be able to deliver that much consulting time? Would I be better off with a grad student or postdoc - could they deliver that much time?  Or with a less accomplished professor with more time on their hands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One alternative we've considered is to hire a fresh Ph.D. looking to enter industry. The problem is that we are not ready to commit to a full time employee - it's only if we get good results in the initial stages (and our investors agree!). Is there a solution for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last alternative is to work out a research arrangement, where the professor would direct some of their research towards our needs. They'd get to publish the papers (with the application details removed, but the algorithms there) and we'd get ownership of the IP and control over the research agenda. Is that an option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8075" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:53:54.637" Title="Hiring academics for very large industrial consulting projects - how to find an arrangement without full-time employees?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11747" CreationDate="2013-08-08T01:54:36.560" Score="3" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short, my transcript is quite the spectacle: I started off getting really good grades, but due to a lot of personal issues ended up graduating with a respectable, but lackluster GPA.  Unfortunately, I have a downward trend.  While my final GPA is slightly below 3.5, I have failed quite a few courses.  I'm getting a MSE in computer science, coming from an applied math background.  My undergraduate computer science GPA is really high, but my GPA in everything else is pretty low.  I'm confident that I will do exceptionally well in the CS MSE, but I have a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are undergraduate courses unrelated to one's discipline factored into the PhD admissions decision making process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Despite doing poorly in some math classes in my undergrad, will taking graduate level math courses and doing well in them essentially negate the fact that I did poorly in some classes as an undergraduate (did well in most of them)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm currently conducting research and should have good to outstanding recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that for PhD programs, a common order of applicant evaluation is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transcript&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that I have valid reasons for my poor performance, nonetheless, I'm scared that they're going to look at my undergraduate transcript and just get scared off.  Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="541" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T02:07:57.800" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T12:16:54.837" Title="Pursuing a Masters, trying to figure out the potential effects of my undergraduate transcript on PhD admissions" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11738" CreationDate="2013-08-08T03:41:16.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had an almost identical situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not spectacular overall score in undergraduate (nor in my Honours for that matter)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did well in my MSc (in a different field). Got great references and did very well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now are about to complete my PhD, with several publications under my belt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I can offer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be honest, if they ask for the transcripts, show them what they need - the improvement in your grades would be evident.  More than likely they'll probably be more interested in your highest level of attainment (Masters).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If unsure, ask the admissions people and even approach professors that have the same field as what you are interested in pursuing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T03:41:16.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T03:54:24.873" Score="39" ViewCount="12694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first-year PhD student in Biology and I am currently working in a lab for a very hard-to-please PI (a new PI who started a couple years ago and only just recruited her first few graduate students). I am very interested and excited about this line of research and I really want to do what I am doing. But my PI's way of managing people makes everyone miserable and I am not sure what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: Last fall, I rotated in a lab which I really enjoyed working in and generated some great data, but had to leave, along with the other rotation student, because PI had no funding. In the spring, I rotated with a brand new PI, whose lab I helped set up and started on a project, but did not stay in his lab because his management was very poor - was never around, didn't know or care what was going on with projects, etc, and I was also advised to join a different lab by the academic coordinator who said they thought this PI was not &quot;ready&quot; to handle a graduate student. So then, I started a THIRD rotation in another &quot;new&quot; PI's lab and have been here for three months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person's research is really great, but their management seems to focus heavily on threatening language and negative reinforcement. They often send very angry emails to the lab. When this person is feeling &quot;iffy&quot; about you because you didn't get fantastic results or you responded to an email too slowly, they will tell you to your face that you are not worth their time to mentor if you don't &quot;try harder.&quot; I recently gave PI a sequence alignment, but accidentally gave them the wrong version of the sequence, and as a result, they said they would not be willing to fund me as an RA. PI actually made the same mistake when they did the sequence comparison (which is OKAY! It is an easy mistake to make!), but they were just so harsh on me for the mistake. All their communication with me makes me feel that, despite my good merits, progress or improvements, they disapprove of me or are angry with me. They deal with my labmates in the same way and my labmates have often expressed their worries and stresses to me over this. I should note that some of my labmates are well-accomplished, highly dedicated post-doctoral researchers who devote ALL of their time and efforts to their work. The dynamic in the lab overall is not very good, in part because people feel increased anxiety from the PI's anger or lack of professionalism in expressing themself. It is really a huge distraction from my work whenever PI is talking about kicking me out of the lab. I go from focused on an experiment to panicking about what to do or who I should talk to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still respect this person as a scientist, but I feel at times that this harsh style of management/dealing with people is too much for me. I am not perfect, but I am trying very hard and have made so much progress on my work, I just wish PI would recognize this. Almost in my second year of graduate school, and with the school potentially not able to support me with a TA in the future, and with me working in my third lab, I am extremely stressed out by this situation. I feel that, if I do not make it work in this miserable lab, I will be kicked out of the school and then lose my chance to earn a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good way to deal with this type of advisor and how to keep clam and focused in the lab with this kind of stress? Any advice is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8088" LastEditorUserId="8088" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T04:57:48.040" LastActivityDate="2019-12-31T01:17:02.243" Title="How to handle a PI who constantly threatens to kick me out of their lab?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T04:43:57.737" Score="4" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PG graduate working in an engineering college as an assistant professor. Currently I have got one and half year of experience in teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to become a reviewer for an engineering journal? Do I need to pay money for that? Or by publishing paper in that journal can I become a reviewer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8089" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T15:36:42.977" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T15:36:42.977" Title="How to become a reviewer for an engineering journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11741" CreationDate="2013-08-08T06:47:54.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer for formatting a cv is that you should do it &lt;strong&gt;like others applying for similar jobs&lt;/strong&gt; (or already in those jobs), but make it easier to scan if possible.  So find home pages of people who have jobs like the one you want, and read their cv's to see how they format them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for your second question:&#xA;Most editors are often (constantly?) looking for new reviewers.  To get a chance to review a paper, you should &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;let the editor know you'd like to review and &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;give him or her some reason to trust that you'll do a good job.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accomplishing (1) is easy: simply &lt;strong&gt;send an email or tell the editor in person&lt;/strong&gt; (for example if you meet him at a conference or visit his university).  Now (2) takes a little more work, but isn't hard.  Trusting you to review a paper is typically a low-risk gamble for an editor.  If you don't violate confidentiality (talk about the paper with others in more detail than you should), then about the worst outcome for the editor is that you fail to write a report, or write a lousy report.  That's less than ideal, but if it happens, they'll just ask someone else to review the paper.  All that is to say, you don't have to work too hard to convince an editor to let you review a paper.  So how do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you suggested, one good way is to &lt;strong&gt;publish in that journal&lt;/strong&gt;.  Others are &lt;strong&gt;publish in another related journal&lt;/strong&gt;;  &lt;strong&gt;give clear intelligent talks&lt;/strong&gt; on research in an area related to the journal; get a &lt;strong&gt;recommendation to the editor to use you to review, from a friend&lt;/strong&gt; of yours who is more established in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do get an opportunity to review a paper, make sure you do a good job.  Mainly this involves: submitting your report &lt;strong&gt;on time&lt;/strong&gt;, making a &lt;strong&gt;clear recommendation&lt;/strong&gt; to accept or reject, and &lt;strong&gt;supporting your assessment&lt;/strong&gt; with the strengths and weaknesses of the paper.  If you'd like more detail, that's another question by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T06:47:54.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11740" CreationDate="2013-08-08T07:47:14.943" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I'm really sorry about your situation. It's certainly not a nice boat to be on, metaphorically speaking... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have omitted any information about where you live and work, I don't really know what rules and regulation apply, likewise what the &quot;norm&quot; of a PI - grad student relationship is over there. So I will try to keep it as general as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start by looking at your options, you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep wishing that the PI will eventually realize your efforts and give you a break&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accept the constant stress and harassment (yes threatening someone is a form of harassment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leave the lab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communicate your concerns to the PI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) and (2) are pretty self-explanatory. Let's consider (3) for a second, why would you want to work in a lab like that? I know that cultures vary and level of respect and fear professors command is scary at certain countries/cultures but I honestly don't get why you would be willing to put up with that. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that working in a lab like that will make you work harder and get better results (and I sincerely doubt this will be the case in the long run), who cares that you got a publication in a fancy journal if you hate your life every day. I am possibly dramatizing it a bit to make my point clear. Honestly if you have been doing research with 3 different PIs and none are sound to work with, I'd consider some other uni/lab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly (4); communicate your concerns. You have mentioned that other people have similar problems with this PI. Gather some good arguments; enriched with facts, numbers that cannot be easily denied... Then try to get a 1-to-1 meeting with the PI, and simply tell the person that s/he is terrorizing the lab, and it's hurting peoples mood and ultimately effectivity. If you make good, logical points without diving into emotions and thoughts and beliefs, you could actually make your concerns heard right there and then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PI in question completely ignores your concerns, and ultimately tells you &quot;my way or highway&quot; then one option would be go pursue your legal rights. I don't know what the situation is where you work, but in Sweden PhD students are actually employed by the university, and thus by the state (exceptions exist, but that's beside the point). So you have certain rights assured by your employment. Even without a formal employment, i.e. &lt;em&gt;only a student&lt;/em&gt;, you should have some rights and some representation towards the faculty. The student unions here in Scandinavia are pretty strong and well connected. They actually work together with the faculty and university administration to catch up, and deal with issues like this. I would recommend you to try and see if there is a similar concept in your university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I got, hope the situation resolves itself soon.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T07:57:59.297" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T07:57:59.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11750" CreationDate="2013-08-08T09:32:47.977" Score="17" ViewCount="7522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergrad in Australia, and at this stage I want to go on to do further study in maths (or maybe physics/CS, still have a few years till then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I do so, I imagine that I will want to complete a PhD overseas. Possibly at a university in the US or maybe Oxbridge in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, PhDs typically take 3 or 4 years, and I would be eligible to go straight into a PhD upon completion of my undergraduate degree (it is research focused and includes an honours year, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://studyat.anu.edu.au/programs/4660HPHB;overview.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, much of what I have found for overseas institutions has been in the range of 5-7 years, or maybe a 3-4 year PhD with a few years doing a master's degree beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this indicate that the level of rigour and amount of work produced is significantly different for various PhD programs, or is it the case that some programs are more relaxed and simply spread the same amount of work over a longer period of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8039" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T18:31:14.367" Title="Why is there such variation in PhD length internationally?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11740" CreationDate="2013-08-08T10:42:58.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would not come here, if you thought the situation acceptable. Unfortunately the isolation of the PI will have given rise to a wrong self-perception. If you are ready to search for yet another PI, and again some criticism on &lt;em&gt;another person&lt;/em&gt; arises, wait (not too long) till you can talk to the PU alone, and say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are the best PI till now, you have gotten,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have no experience, but isn't the tone quite harsh? - especially as there are still professional unsurities on the side of the coworkers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am a bit longing already for a bit collegual tone at work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English is not my native language, so formulate the above as short and open as feasible, maybe in question form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that you are missing a bit of lightness, humour, in the day-to-day operation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether the current team is a bit disappointing; in what respects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also be sure to give the PI his say, listen: if the PI does not react on a pause: what do you think?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop if the PI cannot reach over (in that moment). Leave the case open &quot;just wanted to air my mind; thanks for the patience&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On a negative reaction: &quot;you are the best PI I had till now.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt, that such a deviation of normal lab behaviour, will come easy, and the appropiate formulation will be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this advice is a risk, but all other measures are less direct, being less open-minded towards the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8092" LastEditorUserId="8092" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T12:54:34.497" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T12:54:34.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T11:14:52.263" Score="8" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am willing very much to make a transition to a scientific position, but I am not sure what's the best way to do it. I would like to ask for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me describe my situation (it is quite specific, but it can be generalized):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have completed PhD in Russia (at some provincial university, on knowledge representation and high-performance computing) which I am unfortunately not quite happy with (it could be better and I did it during my work at a company).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have some publications, but none in top journals/conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have very diverse interests that span machine learning, knowledge representation, AI, algorithms, parallel programming, performance analysis, etc. I am trying to stick myself to just one direction: scalability problems of machine learning of big data sets, but well, there are so many interesting topics! :-) I visit summer schools on these diverse topics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I live in Russia (province, so to say) and I still do some teaching and research advise in local university, but I am not a faculty staff and I refused to be one. The reason is that it only involves teaching, but I want to do research. Also, faculty members at Russia have extremely low salary that will not allow me to survive. But there is one group doing research in machine learning there (not a famous one by all means).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the moment I am a software development engineer (in one of the top companies) doing research-like work in high-performance computing, but which is very applied. It is not always possible to publish a paper for the outcomes of this work, that's why it is not completely scientific/research. Also there are some software development tasks (previously I did it a lot, ~10 years).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a family (wife + son of 8 years + plan to have another baby in some future).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the moment I am trying to do research work during my free time as much as I can, but it is not always very effective of course, because it is not my job. But I am trying to use every minute for this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal: do scientific research. I believe that it is not very effective to do it as a hobby, so I am searching for a way to have a scientific position. I am ready to give a lot for it; I will be happy to have a medium salary, enough to support my family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible ways to meet this goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Europe/US and do a PhD there. Not possible, because I already have a PhD and I won't be able to support my family.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Europe/US and do postdoc work. Somewhat possible, but:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need to produce at least 2 good publications first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will I be able to support my family?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Postdocs are temporary positions. This could mean switching countries and it could be difficult for my son at school (due to language).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Join research group at local university. I am going to do this, but it is temporary, I wanted to work with top people in this field. But it's good for the start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Join some research lab or faculty in university in Europe/US. Well, that's a dream, but I need to be more prepared for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is to do 3), do research and write papers on my own or with this group and then... I'll see. Though, doing research and writing papers on one's own is quite difficult, because you don't know what is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be your proposal in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concerns are supporting my family and school studies of my son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8093" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T05:54:01.907" Title="How to make a transition to a scientific position (from engineering position)?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11738" CreationDate="2013-08-08T12:16:54.837" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right to be concerned. Some places &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be scared off—or more accurately, won't even see your application—because of your undergraduate record. &lt;strong&gt;But some won't.&lt;/strong&gt; Some will see your strong record in computer science, in graduate classes, and in research, at the expense of other classes as a sign of passion/focus/geekery (which is a strong advantage in research) combined with immaturity (which most people grow out of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD admission is a random process, a numbers game.  You have a high-variance record, so to be reasonably confident of admission, you should apply to a wider spectrum of places than someone with a more consistent record with the same average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;strongly&lt;/strong&gt; recommend discussing your concerns directly with your letter writers.  They have to make the case that the admissions committee should ignore the black marks in your record and focus on your considerable strengths—good performance in graduate classes, excellence in your chosen field, strong research ability, and so on.  (You can't really make that case yourself.) Your references may also be willing to contact colleagues directly, to convince them to pull strings on your behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: &lt;strong&gt;PUBLISH!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T12:16:54.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2013-08-08T12:31:12.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The length of the PhD program depends on how the bachelor's and Master's programs are structured, and what additional demands are placed on students in terms of teaching and other assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the US, you can gain admission to a PhD directly after a bachelor's degree, but you will also be expected to take courses for one to two years. In mathematics especially, you will likely have significant teaching duties as well. in Europe, PhD programs in math will still likely require significant teaching, but no coursework, since it is presumed you took the requisite courses as a Master's student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T12:31:12.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11786" CreationDate="2013-08-08T13:15:09.897" Score="6" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am fortunate to have a very nice, easy-going advisor (the last because I have seen some horrible PhD advisors). He respects me and my work (I did my master degree under his guidance). Then, I went to another university and returned to him again last year. I am a first year PhD student now. However, I have some issues regarding &lt;strong&gt;my research&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First,&lt;/strong&gt; my advisor does not know much about my area even though he's encouraging me to pursue on it. To make it clear, I can't consult him in my specific area (I do consult him on other things though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second,&lt;/strong&gt; he's not aiming high (top conferences) on publications. He mainly publishes on mid/ lower mid conferences and happy with that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have met a professor who is a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;big name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;expert in my area&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;affiliated with a top university&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;my work is highly influenced by his research&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. He also seems to have a very nice personality (I have chatted with his students). I met him several time on different occasions. and he showed an interest to work together for a joint paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most importantly,&lt;/strong&gt; I believe changing university will result in a  better research experience &lt;strong&gt;for me&lt;/strong&gt;. In particular, I will join a lab with different enthusiastic grad students with critical guidance unlike my current situation where it is only me and my advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About funding, I have external funding and will continue regardless where I am.&#xA;I am really wondering which path to take. I am addicted to what I am doing but need the guidance and research experience which I am greatly lacking with my current supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question is: How to approach this professor for acceptance ?&lt;/strong&gt; specially without saying anything bad about my current advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T06:33:39.333" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T02:40:06.133" Title="Easy going advisor versus expert advisor and research experience" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2013-08-08T13:41:00.190" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @aeismail's points, in the U.S. the undergrad degree (B.S. or B.A.) in math is typically rather thin, due to &quot;breadth&quot; requirements, so a year or two of a PhD program is spent catching up, in comparison to most other educational systems in which specialization occurs earlier (and perhaps high school math education is more intense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some decades ago, it was the style in elite places in the U.S. to have people finish a PhD degree as quickly as possible, often in three years, as proof of ... something. This was plausible under the hypothesis that students at such places had an unusually good background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, given the way professional mathematics has evolved, spending more time learning things and maturing before hitting the job market may be wise. In any case, no one is creating artificial obstacles to any student's quick graduation! In my current institution, there really are no &quot;required courses&quot;, in the sense that there are some modest proficiency exams in standard material that need to be passed, and courses help prepare for those, or can substitute for proficiency exams to some extent. Thus, a well-prepared student can &quot;test out&quot; of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One underlying problem seems to be that people take as much time as is allowed, so if it is understood that one may take six years &quot;if necessary&quot;, then most people plan to use up that time. Not that they're &quot;forced to&quot; or &quot;kept from graduating earlier&quot;. And then there's the reasonable fear of facing the job market that leads to &quot;avoidance&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would claim that &quot;having to teach&quot; is not a serious impediment to quick graduation. However, its relatively immediate gratification can seduce people away from the far-less-immediate gratification of research and study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T13:41:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11715" CreationDate="2013-08-08T13:43:30.113" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key question to keep in mind is why someone would want to work as a consultant, since that determines how you interact with them.  You're hiring someone who already has a full-time job, and who has chosen to work in academia despite having skills that are valued by industry, so you need to convince them that this is worth their time.  It's possible you can find someone short of money who is specifically looking for a part-time job on the side, but that will greatly limit your choices.  (The best consultants are often already the best paid faculty to start with, and they generally have many consulting opportunities to choose from.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I see three main reasons why someone might value a consulting job, in roughly decreasing order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You offer something they just can't get in academia.  For example, unique data or experiences, extensive resources, dramatic real-world impact, etc.  A computer scientist might work with Facebook to get access to their social network data, or Google to be able to study search and indexing on a vast scale.  This lets them advance their understanding of the field in ways they could not have done otherwise (and hopefully they can publish the results).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you can't offer anything unique or unavailable in academia, you may still be working on cutting-edge problems that help inspire and shape their academic research program.  The difficulty here is that the world is full of cutting-edge research problems waiting to be solved.  To convince someone to work on your problems rather than their own ideas, you need some argument.  Maybe your problems are especially exciting or important, maybe they are a perfect match for this researcher's background and interests, or maybe you are offering enough money to outweigh other considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If what you want is really routine (with little or no academic research significance), then you may need to offer a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only deals with the first part of your question, on approaching faculty, but I see that as critical: once you establish mutual interest, you can work out the other details.  Getting to that point is the hard part, and how you frame things can make a real difference.  When you first approach someone, it's much better to say &quot;Here's an opportunity in which we'll pay you to do exciting things that will advance the field and your own research&quot; than &quot;Here's what we need and how much we would like to pay.  Would you be willing to do it for us?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T13:43:30.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10569" CreationDate="2013-08-08T14:53:42.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in my last year of a PhD program but decided to take up job now. To be clear and frank about my view towards a doctoral degree, I never enrolled in the PhD program to have Dr. in front of my name. I enrolled as I liked the project would I will be working on and the skills I would be learning from it. Also this would be my main opportunity gain new skills and test my research interest and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always wanted to work in industry, I worked before my MSc one year in industry. Now I got the opportunity to start working with the current market rate pay with my current work experience. I don't have any regrets if I can't complete my PhD while working at the new job. I can say as most of PhD students in this situation are thinking what others going to say, guilt of living in middle. But I can say that something new to start, something should end. If you think the opportunity is great then go for it. You're the one who will live with your decision, don't worry what others are going to say. If you become successfully in future with your current decision then same people who ridiculed you, will come to you and will ask your help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am lucky as my supervisor is realistic and his opinion is that it will be up to me whether I get PhD or not, as working your normal job and completing remaining PhD stuff is tough task to do. So he gave me full freedom to choose as its my life and my career and I will decide which direction it will go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering taking up job before finishing PhD not just because of job offer. I have a family situation where I need to have job soon and I think this is right choice for me and my family. At the end of journey if I get PhD its all well and good but only if the knowledge skill learned will stay with me always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding PhD will help you in industry to get job, its too tricky. It depends upon your PhD research area. as not all industry want to have PhD students. and with my interview experiences I realized very few companies prefer PhD students more then someone with a BSc or MSc. Companies are worried about PhD students as how the student after 3 years of research work will fit in industrial world? If not, then company will loose all investment on PhD students when he resigns job as he unable to adjust to the industrial world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is Focus on what your rational brain decides and also listen to what your heart wants. When both are same, then go for it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8094" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:33:34.880" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:33:34.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11740" CreationDate="2013-08-08T15:01:24.310" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't walk, run&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of behaviour should be viewed as entirely unprofessional and unacceptable in any working environment; it astonishes me what gets politely overlooked in the academic world. What you describe is &lt;em&gt;bullying&lt;/em&gt;. While the work may be exciting, it is doubtful that you will ever be able to flourish as an independent researcher facing daily abuse from your supervisor and suffering the toxic secondhand effect of your supervisor abusing your colleagues. I cannot imagine that after several years of that you will still be able to maintain the same level of enthusiasm for your work, and perhaps for academia altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T15:01:24.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T15:19:10.750" Score="12" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my master and am about to start a funded PhD in October. Thing is that the reason I am doing this PhD is because I missed the deadlines for the PhDs that I am truly interested in. I was thinking that it would be better to do something academic this year and get paid than to do nothing until the next application cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this extremely dishonest to start a PhD without the intention to finish it? Will this put me on some blacklist at that university?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should I portray my position in my other PhD applications? I was thinking of saying that I was doing a funded student placement program or something?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8096" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T07:33:10.253" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T17:16:38.153" Title="Is it dishonest to start a PhD with intent to leave it and transfer to another program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;transfer-student&gt;&lt;quitting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11740" CreationDate="2013-08-08T15:32:53.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really does sound like you are better off leaving. For one thing, since he really does kick people out, what will you do if this person does kick you out later on in your PhD? I'm assuming here what you seem to be implying in your question, but have not stated explicitly - that this lab will be your home for the remainder of your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also suffered abusive conditions, though as a post-doc. (Although the PI in question did not generally kick people out.) I think it is unlikely to get better. These kind of people don't change unless they are forced to, and academia tends to be very undemocratic, and my experience is that department officials are loath to interfere unless they benefit in some way. E.g. if they want to get this person for some reason, they may use his behavior towards his juniors as an excuse, but they won't really care. (Something like this actually happened in a department I was in.) Your setup certainly sounds very undemocratic. Even if the PI is pressured into behaving better (unlikely by the sound of it) it will still probably not be a positive working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If if it already late in your PhD, I suggest you discuss funding problems with your department, and sooner than later. Maybe something can be figured out, but the longer you wait, the more difficult your position will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in a comment above, if you do move again, check the PI in question out, as far as practicable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as Jack said, there is a significant possibility that this treatment will end up ruining your appetite for research altogether. You should take that possibility seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T15:32:53.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11755" CreationDate="2013-08-08T15:53:02.880" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this extremely dishonest to start a phd without the intention to finish it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends if you talk about your situation with your current advisor. If you clearly stated &lt;em&gt;&quot;I'm more interested in another position, but I couldn't get it, and it's likely I'll try next year&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, then, no, it's not dishonest. If you said you were interested in doing a full PhD there, while you actually were not, then, yes, it's dishonest. You're taking a funding opportunity for someone who would be interested, and in some cases, for instance when the funding is associated with a project, you will leave your current advisor with a partial funding, that cannot be used to hire a new PhD student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will this put me on some blacklist at that university? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it depends how you explained the situation, but I would not hope much for any recommendation letter from your current advisor (which is a shame, because recommendation letters can be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; useful later on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I portray my position in my other phd applications? I was thinking of saying that I was doing a funded student placement program or something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5447/102&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, lying is always a bad idea. Academia is a very small world. If you want to change position, then you have to explain why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T15:53:02.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2013-08-08T16:15:40.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another aspect that's worth mentioning is that there's PhD and there's PhD. Even though the name of the title is essentially the same when translated to common English, the &quot;content&quot; of the dissertation and diploma could differ significantly. If you have more time to do your research you're more likely to produce more publications (although this is not a given). I would even argue that the potential increase in your publications is not linear to the number of years in grad school, considering the rather steep learning curve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the expectations during post-grad applications could also vary based on the degree. You might, and probably will, be expected to do more years of post-doc research before getting a faculty position, in comparison to if you had a longer PhD period (for instance 5 years instead of 3). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another aspect is the funding; most PhD programs are limited in years, because the funding is usually limited in years. In other words, if you have means of sustaining yourself without grant money, or if your supervisor/group leader has the possibility to fix some other source of funding, I am pretty sure actual dissertation time would not be a huge issue (again it depends on the supervisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, none of this is written in stone, and there will always be exceptions to the rule. I would advocate that there is really no shortcuts to success, and instead of worrying about number of years to a particular title, one should focus on getting &quot;really good/competent&quot; at the field of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T16:15:40.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2013-08-08T18:31:14.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having moved from the US to Europe (Denmark specifically), I was surprised that doctoral degrees here are standardized. Whereas in the US degree times vary considerably for all the reasons stated in the other answers, in Europe the length of PhD degrees is increasingly zeroing in on three years. Indeed, in Denmark no one is permitted to take longer than three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is due to an international European standard known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/bologna_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bologna process&lt;/a&gt;, which aims to standardize academic qualifications across Europe. In order to enter a PhD in Bologna process countries, students must have a sufficient number of ECTS points (equal to a master-level degree), thus reducing the variance in times (common in the United States) due to differences in additional courses (minimal), teaching obligations (minimal), etc. between students, departments, and universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T18:31:14.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T20:46:24.560" Score="28" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://jchyip.blogspot.be/2013/08/the-most-interesting-things-ive-learnt.html?view=classic&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; recent blog post the author lists several interesting concepts he has discovered pertaining to learning. One thing he mentions is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mastery is more important than passing grades. You will reach limits&#xA;  in learning when you have a &quot;Swiss cheese&quot; foundation full of&#xA;  misconception holes. Master each concept before building on top.&#xA;  ~Salman Khan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is actually from Salman's TED talk which you can view &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.) My questions is as follows: I graduated about a year ago with a Master's in Applied Physics from a reputable university. I've been a B student throughout my academic career and I feel like I started building on un-mastered concepts somewhere towards the end of &lt;em&gt;high school&lt;/em&gt;. Despite obtaining a relatively &lt;em&gt;tough&lt;/em&gt; engineering degree, I cut corners whenever possible. If I could pass an exam by being able to do all the exercises, I would get to that level and stop there. I would rarely - if ever - go for complete mastery. As a result I feel like I have Swiss cheese holes in my understanding that date back to high school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Albert Einstein's quote is anything to go by: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I can't &lt;em&gt;simply&lt;/em&gt; explain a whole lot. For instance I would not be able to explain simply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the proof of Euler's identity? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why can you express a wave as an imaginary exponential? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does a photon have momentum, but not mass?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the intuitive understanding of eigenfunctions, eigenvalues and their physical manifestations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the wealth of knowledge available today on the internet, I could look up any one of my knowledge gaps, and with some effort I feel confident I would be able to fill them. My question is, would that be worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8098" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T19:00:39.253" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T18:10:26.933" Title="Swiss cheese holes in my education. Do I go back and fill them?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11760" CreationDate="2013-08-08T21:38:19.233" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, for context, I'd disagree strongly with a too strict notion that &quot;mastery&quot; is required before &quot;moving forward&quot;, for several reasons. It is easier to understand the purpose of something &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; one sees how it is used. It is all too easy to acquire a fake mastery that is not &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt;, but only refers to some artificial tasks created for a textbook, and, all the worse, may be wastes of time. And, finally, the kind of &quot;mastery&quot; we are often led to think we should attain is basically unattainable... That is, unless one keeps ones list of things-to-master really short, very elementary, and uncomplicated, this &quot;mastery&quot; is just unreachable on the terms a novice or even journeyman conceives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... don't over-interpret &quot;mastery&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, _of_course_ it is good to go back and fill in. And one will find oneself doing this many times, as one discovers, upon &quot;stressing&quot; one's knowledge, that what one thought one knew &quot;well enough&quot; was not quite good enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, even with an excellent memory, things slip out of a person's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My bottom line recommendation is to maintain (at least) two &quot;threads&quot;, one to review and backfill, the other to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is surprisingly useful at helping review make more sense! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T21:38:19.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2013-08-09T00:10:09.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could try approaching the problem from another direction,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What is it that you would like to achieve? what is the purpose of your research?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are millions of problems in life at the moment, and finding things to research is not the problem at all, even though it may seem that way.&#xA; Inspiration is not purely found in a textbook, but are a function of the mind and soul and body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience is what probably allows your professor to come up with constant questions. He probably practices free thinking, whereby he doesn't feel constrained in any way by other people and current belief systems.&#xA; Maybe a lot of the problems that actually need to be understood, such as mental health and problems that people and our planet, experience everyday, just aren't being taken into your current world-view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science in itself is not an end. Science is a state of being, including understanding; and is a way that you as an intelligent, caring and investigative person (I presume) approach problems.&#xA; A classic example of a problem is, that we don't understand. However, simply not understanding something is not a problem. A problem is something that has effects in the real world, such as, how can we help infertile couples reproduce and have children? Although it appears that now that we have resolved this in some detail, that it was the problem of not understanding DNA and the details of reproduction that probably is what resulted, with in vitro fertilisation, and even in vivo transplants etc. If one were to take the time to step out of this 'curiosity breeds progress' mindset, it would appear that these problems weren't purely driven by a quest for knowledge, but from real world problems, that have fortunately been solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be  interested in further discussion, as I have only this evening come up with an idea myself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's always a thirst for improvement, and this won't cease until people realize that happiness doesn't come from materials. Happiness is within all of us, all we have to do is tap into it. Being only 24 I have seen some truly eye-opening things and I am very humble to each of our personal strengths, but I do feel its a shame that research has become so fascinated with one-upmanship, and away from the real potential and benefit of being so intelligent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8099" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T22:02:51.170" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T22:02:51.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2013-08-09T02:05:15.043" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your work is in game theory and population biology, do not forget Springer's &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Theoretical Ecology&lt;/em&gt;. It's a newer journal (started in 2008) but already has an impact factor close to JTB, and has an open access option. Alan Hastings is the Editor in Chief of this journal (you'd have a hard time finding a more prominent figure in Theoretical Biology than him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately most journals in the subject don't have open access options (e.g. Mathematical Biosciences, Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, Ecological Modeling, Journal of Theoretical Population Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also don't forget Bio Journals, you can stick the more advanced math and proofs in an appendix, and often your work will get more exposure in these journals. I know &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the Royal Society Part B&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;the American Naturalist&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Applied Ecology&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;PLoS BIO&lt;/em&gt; all have open access options and take modeling papers as long as the results are interesting from a biological perspective and aren't just a cool model that was fun to explore (a good intro and discussion is key for these journals as they all have very high impact factors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prove things in your work also consider applied math journals like &lt;em&gt;Nonlinear Dynamics&lt;/em&gt; (Springer) which has an open access option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T02:05:15.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11774" CreationDate="2013-08-09T03:21:38.517" Score="262" ViewCount="36456" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imposter syndrome&lt;/a&gt; is a psychological phenomenon wherein an individual is convinced that they do not deserve the success that they have achieved despite (perhaps extensive) empirical evidence to the contrary.  Some people with imposter syndrome doubt their own ability level. For me, this usually manifests in the thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I've somehow convinced everyone into believing that I'm actually good at this.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;followed by the horrifying notion that eventually I'll be found out and my world will collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the imposter syndrome is not uncommon in academia. I'm interested to know how other people here have experienced and dealt with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm looking for &lt;strong&gt;actual tactics&lt;/strong&gt; that someone might&#xA;use to combat imposter syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why I asked this question:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the obvious reason that this is something I have struggled with for many years and only recently gotten a handle on myself, there's also some evidence that merely realizing that other people experience imposter syndrome helps fellow imposters. As a grad student, I've managed to meet a fair number of people who are in their own struggles with imposter syndrome; however, the tactics and self-trickery that have helped me don't always speak to them and perhaps someone else's methods might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="13240" LastEditDate="2021-02-19T03:25:56.750" LastActivityDate="2021-02-19T03:25:56.750" Title="How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: &quot;I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this&quot;" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="146" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T03:21:38.517" Score="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to even think of a time when I didn't feel like an imposter. I would tell myself constantly that I was succeeding only due to luck, or having spent more time working as opposed to having any actual ability, or the fact that as an international student I had a very different background from my peers and therefore had an unfair advantage, and so on. At some point in graduate school when I came across the phrase 'imposter syndrome' I finally realized that I am not alone and started to get over it, to some extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some things that have helped:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowing that this is a real thing (I'm not alone!)&lt;/strong&gt; The mere fact that there is a name for what I was feeling was a big deal. Imposter syndrome is a documented phenomenon that many people have to deal with. I sometimes go back to the wikipedia page just to remind myself of this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowing that several bigger, brighter academics have felt (or feel) similarly inadequate on occasion&lt;/strong&gt;. It's easy to convince oneself that while imposter syndrome is common among grad students, maybe only the 'non-imposters' actually go on to succeed - knowing that even the academic superstars I look up to sometimes doubt themselves helps to remind me that this is false.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forcing myself to look at the empirical data.&lt;/strong&gt; I imagine some other grad student, with exactly the same achievements as mine and ask myself what I think about them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, honestly, this is very much work-in-progress for me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T03:21:38.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-09T05:25:48.827" Score="3" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of doing a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, which is not a bad place to graduate from as far as I've heard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is I'll be a little on the older side by the time I graduate, and in India, there seems to be a starting faculty preference of 35 years. I would like to know if I'd be able to practice physics somewhere else in the world after getting a PhD in the area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard the US is pretty open in terms of hiring foreign candidates, but Europe is not. What about other English speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc? Does a Phd open up career opportunities world-wide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8104" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T14:49:51.330" Title="Does a PhD give you global mobility in the job market?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T07:42:24.073" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Aru Ray said, knowing that this is actually a quite common feeling is helpful in overcoming it. Ways you can achieve that include &lt;strong&gt;discussing it with others&lt;/strong&gt;, including accomplished researchers, and reading about it. Here are a few texts and resources on the topic, which I recommend heartily to both students and faculty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A recent article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/An-Academic-With-Impostor/138231/&quot;&gt;Chronicles of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;, which sums it up nicely. And also, some reactions on the web: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hookandeye.ca/2013/04/academic-imposter-syndrome.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ianmilligan.ca/2013/04/16/an-aside-an-academic-with-imposter-syndrome/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A personal experience &lt;a href=&quot;http://thebluereview.org/impostor-syndrome-in-academia/&quot;&gt;is related here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://mentalfaculties.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/on-impostor-syndrome/&quot;&gt;references over there&lt;/a&gt; make for pretty good reading too…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T08:02:58.310" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T08:02:58.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T08:55:39.883" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you have phrased your statement &quot;I've cleverly fooled everyone into believing that I'm actually good at this.&quot; makes me think of two different situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is when you have low self-esteem and simply do not think you are worth much as a person. With low &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-esteem&lt;/a&gt; comes also low &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-confidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-confidence&lt;/a&gt;, which is a very common situation in academia -- I recognize it from myself. Self-esteem can be a sign of depression and can in such cases be medicated. Self-confidence is something one can build through positive feedback from others so that the value of ones work is seen. It is possible to have reasonably good self-confidence but still have poor self-esteem. In such cases you have to keep up a facade to seem confident although you do not feel as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case I think of is more of a psychological (permanent) condition, akin to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;narcissism&lt;/a&gt; where you deliberately thrive from deceiving people that you are more than you really are. In such cases you thrive to fool other into thinking something and the goal is the manipulation and nothing about the truth. I think we can see some of this as well (of course since it is a human aspect) in persons who try to cheat more or less successfully. I would not be surprised if some of the more famous scientific cheats suffer from this affliction although peer pressure could certainly play a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, regardless of type, you will find these feelings/afflictions because they are all part of the human psyche and becomes a burden if not in balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7368" LastEditDate="2018-08-26T16:14:51.120" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T16:14:51.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2013-08-09T13:36:32.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another good option is &quot;Theoretical Biology and Medical Modeling&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tbiomed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T13:36:32.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11760" CreationDate="2013-08-09T14:08:17.180" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ancient Hebrew wisdom of Solomon applies here: &quot;Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh.&quot; (Ecclesiastes 12:12b) There is no end of making books, so we can never completely master anything. Mastery is an ideal that no one ever really reaches; it is more like a compass to steer by. So if those holes are bothering you, why not fill them in as you run into them? You'll never reach a place where there are no holes left, as paul garret implied in his answer. This fact should not stop us from trying, though. Enjoy the journey....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T14:08:17.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11767" CreationDate="2013-08-09T14:49:51.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects to this question: the hiring process within an employer's institution, and the immigration policies which allow a foreign worker to move to another country and begin employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think with respect to the first question—the hiring process and preferences of an individual employer—I think that in general, employers are looking for the best-qualified candidates, regardless of their origin. There are certain obvious exceptions to this (for instance, a foreign national will have a hard time getting a position at a National Nuclear Security Administration facility in the US), but otherwise, people will want the person best-suited for the job. I think this is true both in the US and Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other step is the national immigration policies. This is where things become more complex. For instance, if you are a non-European Union citizen, then your employer will need to certify that your experiences uniquely qualify you for this position, which can delay the hiring process somewhat. Similarly, employers in the US have to wait for you to obtain an appropriate visa, which can delay your start date significantly. This makes it sometimes less advantageous to hire foreign employees. (But this is a &quot;speed bump,&quot; rather than an insurmountable obstacle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T14:49:51.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T14:50:16.060" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question struck a nerve...I didn't know that this feeling is an actual diagnosable syndrome! As an undergrad who is attempting an ambitious course load, including research projects far beyond what most undergrads in my school tackle, I often struggle with feeling that the praise, recognition, and high grades I receive must be mere kindness on the part of the professors, who surely are just impressed by the amount of effort I put in! I &lt;strong&gt;know&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a genius, so those who say I am must be mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remembering what the famous inventor Thomas Edison said is always helpful when I begin to feel like an imposter. &quot;Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.&quot; Knowing that I have put in a large amount of 'perspiration', I realize that even if others are being generous in their applause, I have earned &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; of it through sheer hard work, and I can accept the rest of it being providence or luck or whatever it is to which you want to attribute unearned success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, realizing that most success is due to hard work, and accepting that a small part of success will always be unpredictable and unearned has helped me deal with Imposter Syndrome. I realize that depending on the situation and the severity of your symptoms, this may be of no help at all...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T14:50:16.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T15:14:54.047" Score="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found two practices helped me a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reinforce what you know&lt;/strong&gt;. The biggest problem with being an academic surrounded by other academics is that you're constantly being confronted by things you don't know. Even worse, it often seems like everyone else knows something that you don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need me to tell you how demoralizing that is. The fight is to go back and review what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know, and reinforce your expertise in your subject area. Most academics are polyglots; choose some random thing you've studied, learned, or even just considered previously, and review it every now and then. It'll help you view the progress you're making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Engage non-academics&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't realize how much you know until you talk to the other 99.99% of people who don't know what you know. (Confusing sentence...) Write blogs, offer to give visiting lectures at a school or workplace, work as an intern or consultant in industry, champion a political cause related to your research. There are so many ways you can make use of your knowledge, and doing so will definitely help massage your ego which has been bruised by many semesters of feeling inadequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T15:14:54.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11775" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-09T15:47:47.707" Score="13" ViewCount="25645" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc and will be up in the tenure-track job market in the near future. Just want to know what the average duration one has to work on tenure-track. Is this duration negotiable or there is a strict rule for this duration?&#xA;Thanks!&#xA;--Dave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8108" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T14:19:39.837" Title="What is the average tenure-track duration in the USA?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T16:57:05.543" Score="69" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The Harsh Reality: They Do Exist&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I met my roommate, I thought that I was one of the most intelligent people that I've ever met, pretentious, I know, but just being honest.  When the material was upper-level undergrad or graduate level, I studied, but even at a top tier university, I got amazing grades with much less effort than most of my peers, which was convenient but in an odd way depressing and isolating; however, my grades dramatically changed after a lot of personal losses (this is relevant, see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure a lot of us are in awe of well renowned professors--if you're an academic, they're like rock stars, at least to me they are.  I've always looked up to these people, they make me feel like there's a place for me in this world.  Anyway, as a result of being extraordinarily depressed, I lost almost all of my confidence.  Unfortunately for me, this was when I met my (now) roommate, which made me feel so much worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who say that they don't study when they really do.  There are people who appear to be really smart when they're really not.  There's a major difference between knowing a lot of facts and actually being intelligent.  My roommate is quite literally the most brilliant person I've ever met, including several Nobel laureates.  After living with him, I discovered that he actually doesn't study, at least not like most people do.  He can read something once, at a ridiculously fast speed--quite literally he can read a full textbook page in under 20 seconds and comprehend everything.  This is not limited to any particular domain.  There are countless times that I have gone to him with high level mathematics problems from disciplines that he's not too familiar with, and he's able to not only understand everything almost immediately, but he can synthesize beautiful solutions and explain the concepts to me better than my professors who've been in the field for years.  I know it sounds unbelievable, but I assure you that it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My roommate was a major stumbling block for me.  After meeting him, I began to doubt my intelligence even more.  If people like him exist, what the hell am I going to do?  How could I possibly compete with him?  I went to speak with a few of my professors to essentially ask them if they were like my roommate.  If they all were, then I knew that I had no place in the academia.  Fortunately, out of all of the professors that I talked to, every single one of them said that they struggled a lot.  While some of them knew one or two people like my roommate, they reassured me that not only did they put a ton of work in and struggle, but they also doubted themselves all the time, and most still do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am saying is that sometimes it can make sense to feel like an imposter.  Some people are just &lt;em&gt;geniuses&lt;/em&gt;, and I do not use that term lightly.  In the end, 99% of the best of the best of the best still struggle a lot.  It's okay to struggle, it's good.  It means that you're learning.  For what it's worth, if you're accepted into a PhD program or lab or what have you, the admissions committee/PI made a conscious decision to say that they believe that you are good enough.  I don't care if you think that you got in because you knew someone, and that person recommended you.  (A) that happens all the time, and (B), they actually went out of their way to recommend you.  They put their reputation on the line for you.  They wouldn't do that unless they believed in you--these are really intelligent people, you didn't trick them.  Finally, for the people who only think that they got to where they are because of hard work and not natural intelligence, I say to you (A) that's probably not true (smart people tend to think that because they struggle with stuff and finally understand it, that everyone can and that's patently false) and (B) you're more likely to be successful than someone smarter who doesn't put in as much work.  Sorry for the really long answer, but I hope it helps someone.  It made me feel better just writing it.  Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One last thing, the more one travels down the rabbit hole, the more one realizes just how little they know.  This can lead people to question their intelligence.  It's pretty ironic, you're becoming more informed and because of it you feel less informed.  In this case, you just need to take a step back and realize that true mastery is impossible.  It should be a good feeling to learn that which one did not know before.  It's doesn't mean that you're stupid, it means you're getting smarter.  If you think that you know everything or even can know everything, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; perhaps you are not that intelligent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T03:38:04.483" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11737" CreationDate="2013-08-09T17:54:05.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors at &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; levels of seniority and accomplishment are very busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have courses to teach, institutional committee service, and their own research programs.  Neglecting any of these for any length of time can have a permanent impact on their career.  Professors who are less accomplished or have fewer duties in one of these areas will typically have more in the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a professor who is very motivated to work on your project may only have a few hours per week to devote to it.  One day per week would probably be a maximum.  Teaching schedules are often inflexible, so it may be particularly hard for them to visit your site, especially if it is far away from their home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior people (tenured full professors) may be more likely to be able to make time for your project, but they also have lots of other interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thought: you might consider approaching an expert who has recently retired.  They should have the time available, and may be interested in your project as a way to continue their work in the field and earn some extra income.  But they also may not be interested in working a lot of hours per week, and they may demand a fairly high hourly rate (as they're probably not in desperate need of money).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, also, that research by its nature is very hard to predict.  It may be difficult or impossible for your consultant to accurately estimate how much time they will need to solve your problem, unless it is so straightforward that they can solve it almost at once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as fresh PhDs, note that a new PhD has just spent several years working long hours for low wages.  It may be hard to entice them with an offer of unstable, part-time work, unless you can offer some other perks like stock options or an unusually enjoyable work environment; startups are a dime a dozen.  Of course, a lot will depend on the overall strength of the job market in your industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third option (&quot;research arrangement&quot;) doesn't strike me as particularly feasible.  A major reason for being in academia is the ability to choose the direction of one's own work.  I don't think you'll find many professors amenable to being told how to direct their personal research program.  They not only have to publish papers, they have to publish &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; papers which are novel, interesting to the research community, and spur further work in the area.  If your project doesn't lend itself to that, in the professor's view, then the right to write papers about it is useless to their career and won't be seen as a benefit.  Moreover, if they're going to work on your project as part of their own research, which is on their institution's time, then you can expect the institution to get involved in any IP issues, and they often have lots of lawyers.  Not to mention outside funding agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T17:54:05.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11765" CreationDate="2013-08-09T17:59:22.357" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personal take on this, or why I don't feel quite as much like an imposter these days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've spent years toiling away in the salt mines of my choice convinced that I was just scraping by at every stage that didn't involve a formal &quot;exam&quot; (I'm good at those). Certain that I was surrounded by my betters. Because I'm in big science I got to do this in settings that involved a lot of close work and socializing with my peers; I've worked closely enough with scores of people at various points on their career arcs to get to know our relative strengths and weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I've slowly come to a realization which has taken (some of) the pressure off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, I suck and I'm really only good at a couple of the bits of this job and other people make me look like piker in almost everything involved in this work &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... but ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;with only a couple of exceptions&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;they suck too&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I really am better than average (even among my peers) at a couple of things. They are not big flashy things, they don't draw the admiration of crowds, but they are things that need doing and I'm pretty good at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I've become content (at least some) to be a worker bee: I've got a part to play in this enterprise, I know how to do it and people will ask me to do it because in these little corners they are even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The only thing I can say about these folks is that they are few and far between and there aren't enough of them to keep me from getting work. And I try not to think about them. And I think I'll have another drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is inevitable for most of us. If you are N sigma above the norm, then there is one person who is N+2 sigma for every ten people like you. Unless you one of the ten smartest in the world there are going to be people who make you look like you can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. That is just the way it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T03:54:31.320" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T03:54:31.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11661" CreationDate="2013-08-09T18:37:58.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would reach out to the instructors of the classes you enjoyed the most and put a good effort into, regardless of grade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an instructor myself, I have written recommendations for students who have and who haven't received straight A's - my main requirement for writing a recommendation is can I see this person succeeding in the position I am recommending them for? If not, I let the student know that I am not the right person to write the recommendation for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say reach out to your instructors - the worst they are going to tell you is no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8112" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T18:37:58.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11775" CreationDate="2013-08-09T18:38:42.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK it's usually six years, but people can get extensions due to major personal events like the birth of a child.  There's usually a limit on the total number of such extensions someone can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T18:38:42.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11775" CreationDate="2013-08-09T20:24:33.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's quite a spread: where I am it's seven years (sometimes extended to eight when someone has a kid), but I've heard of other places where it's as short as four. Six is probably the median. It's not unheard of for people to go up for tenure early if they think they're likely to get it and their department chair (or other relevant people) agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T20:24:33.473" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11686" CreationDate="2013-08-09T22:44:40.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its better to be honest and upfront. If not for ethical reasons, then for logical reasons that networks collide and you don't want to be found guilty of a few hundreds/thousands of dollars - which in the long run would be not much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation. I sent something similar to what you wrote and the folks replied back and gave me the funding from my new location. The other way to do this would be showing your affiliation as that of the &quot;/&quot;. This is a technical fix - since that should get you the benefits of both locations. I prefer this because I am honest about where the work was done, and where I am today. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8115" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T22:44:40.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T02:25:48.767" Score="19" ViewCount="13027" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the Australian academia following the same system as the US one? i.e., tenure track for a few years, and then tenured? Or it is more like the British one where there is 'probation' period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T08:08:49.760" LastActivityDate="2017-07-21T02:45:35.827" Title="Do Australian academic jobs have similar tenure track policies as USA?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11749" CreationDate="2013-08-10T02:38:33.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you approach the professor for acceptance would be very similar to how you speak to your current advisor (should you choose to*) about your decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be objective, there is no need to mention anything about either academic in a personal way, this decision is purely one for an academic reason - you want to be 'closer' to where current &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; research is happening and amongst those &lt;em&gt;actively&lt;/em&gt; involved in research in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related, be polite and direct to the point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the professor has expressed interest in writing a paper with you is a strong indication - perhaps accept this offer and at that stage mention that you wish to pursue your research under his guidance and to work within his labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once it is definite that you'd get in and although you are not obligated to explain to your current advisor, it is advisable to explain clearly and positively about the opportunity to work directly with one of the top researchers in the field - I am sure your advisor would understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T02:38:33.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T13:42:31.583" Score="1" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m writing my first review paper and I don’t know much about the CSE system. I couldn’t find the indirect citation rule for CSE (but for others). So how do I cite indirectly in this style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8122" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-13T16:45:01.237" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T16:45:01.237" Title="How to cite indirect sources in CSE/CBE (name–year) system?" Tags="&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11788" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T14:07:57.673" Score="4" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm on the job market, preferably a liberal arts university (I'm an economist). As part of that, I had three discussions with members of my committee about my job market packet.  There is quite a bit of disagreement of the importance of one item of my CV, my business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started a software company where I developed an SaaS CRM and project management tool (not to mention all of the marketing, documentation, videos, etc.).  This company has existed for over 10 years, it put me through my undergraduate degree, and meant that I wasn't living on &quot;my stipend&quot; during my PhD.  And probably more to the point, I consider my own identity intimately tied to the company: after all &lt;em&gt;I decided&lt;/em&gt; everything it did and did all of the work and I'm passionate about the products I made and how they are different than the competition (why they &quot;deserve to exist&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it came time to put my CV together, I said to myself, screw the normal order.  Everyone has a PhD applying for a given job, why should that be first?  So my order was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything Else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went and talked to a committee member who is more of a friend than anything else, he thought it was strange, but probably good.  My chair thought it was fantastic idea.  Then I spoke to another committee member, she thought it was just wrong -- and she has been on many search committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only just wrong, but deserving of no more than a bullet point under &quot;industry experience&quot;, she compared it to working for a company (like working for a company and &lt;em&gt;running a company&lt;/em&gt; are the same thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have a huge amount of respect for all three of these people (I'm unusual in that I actually like my committee).  However, what I think happened is that the first two people understand what my company does.  They get that product development is really hard and is very similar to research (and in fact harder than research in some cases).  And a huge reason that I've been a productive researcher is because of the skills that I gained from the business (not to mention the &quot;real world&quot; perspective).  However, when I explained that to the third person, she didn't buy any of that.  And I think it is quite possible her reaction is more representative of someone who doesn't know me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get that the most important thing is research (and I have more research than most of my cohort, so I'm not suggesting this is a substitute).  But people list absurd things on their CV.  They list their community service (which I have as well, I just don't list it).  Or not real awards (like travel grants).  In fact, in this same conversation she suggested I list some extremely minor volunteer work for a grant she applied for.  Certainly, the thousands of hours of work involved in my business has to be worth a lot more than that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is my current thoughts.  I list the &quot;standard&quot; order, but I still have a good half page on my business, albeit on page 5 of the CV.  Thoughts?  Does this really not matter at all?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7848" LastEditorUserId="7848" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T14:16:00.397" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T17:02:05.623" Title="Thoughts on Business Ownership Experience in the Academic CV" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11791" CreationDate="2013-08-10T14:22:07.347" Score="8" ViewCount="1686" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following some tips about graduate study, I have contacted the professors before the admission cycle, and managed to secure some appointments with them. I have read through their publications that match my research interests, and prepared some brief write up about my research experiences (though I had sent them my CV beforehand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just confused about what I should expect from such meetings. To be frank, do you think to impress them to the point that they agree to accept me is a feasible thing? Or I should aim for something simpler, like maintaining relationships with them through this semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="7401" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T14:46:46.410" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T16:33:31.500" Title="talk with professors about prospective graduate study" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11789" CreationDate="2013-08-10T14:31:57.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rule, I think such meetings are a bad idea.  At a minimum you should go in with no admissions agenda.  If you are interested in research and only research I think the meeting will go well.  But if your real agenda is to help the admissions process, they will read through the facade and probably be annoyed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7848" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T14:31:57.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11789" CreationDate="2013-08-10T16:33:31.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I endorse such meetings, but keep them brief. Prepare a couple of questions, not too many, listen to them talk about their research (and maybe their graduate program), &lt;em&gt;thank them&lt;/em&gt;, and get out of their hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what &quot;maintaining relationships with them through this semester&quot; means, but unless it involves &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; having something to offer &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, or having particular questions which are uniquely important to your case, and whose answers can't be determined by looking at the department's website, then I recommend against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T16:33:31.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11788" CreationDate="2013-08-10T17:02:05.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like your compromise proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important, when writing a CV, to demonstrate knowledge and respect for the process by which you're evaluated. In my mind, that strongly suggest putting the &quot;standard&quot; stuff first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also heartily endorse your decision to highlight your work experience. It sounds quite impressive, actually. Just do it after you have assured your prospective employers that you have the credentials and skills they're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T17:02:05.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T17:38:29.903" Score="24" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am advising an outstanding graduate student who is currently doing a summer internship with a government agency. He is also applying for a permanent job with the same agency, for which I was quite proud to recommend him strongly. That said, his prospective employer has been the subject of recent news reports which have led me to oppose its work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will certainly not renege on my duties as an advisor. But I don't have a good poker face, and I'm afraid that my changed attitude will be all too clear. What would be the kindest course of action? To share my thoughts once and once only, or to keep my mouth shut?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T17:43:00.483" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:43:44.807" Title="How to support a student whose aspirations I don't support?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T18:49:25.123" Score="-3" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to this journal -International Journal of Information and Education Technology and it seems they need 700$ to get my work included ,once it is approved.But is it a scammy journal .Has anybody heard of this practice before FYI ,here is the link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijiet.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ijiet.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7960" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T14:42:21.823" Title="How good are journal papers which ask you to pay x00$ to get published" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-08-10T21:04:31.037" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11795" CreationDate="2013-08-10T19:19:28.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking for publishing charges &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; is not necessarily a bad sign. It is almost unheard of in some fields, but perfectly normal in others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good indicator of bad quality and scammy journals is being on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's list of predatory journals&lt;/a&gt;. I'd suggest you to try and stay away from any publisher on that list, on general principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, the usual criteria for judging a journal apply: do the other people in your field publish there, or cite their articles? Do you find good papers or reputable authors in the previous issues? Is anyone in the editorial board known to you? Is it indexed in databases and/or has a decent impact factor (with the possible caveat that databases and impact factor can be gamed, and have been in the past).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has been marked a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, so I suggest you check out the criteria there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: fixed the part in which I thought this was on Beall's list, and turned this into a &quot;general advice&quot; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T14:42:21.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11794" CreationDate="2013-08-10T20:42:18.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your student is very talented perhaps you could help him to find a better position than the one with the government. If you know what your student cares about then find a better use for his skills and propose it to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work you could always have a heart-to-heart talk with him to help him to see your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is our job to educate our students on more than simply module content (should teach critical thinking, proper citation formats, etc.). I would not recommend cramming your value structure down his throat but I think giving him your ethical perspective to think about is quite reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T00:43:44.807" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:43:44.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11794" CreationDate="2013-08-10T21:05:45.673" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t really understand what part of your “support” your question is about. In short: is the problem how to support him personally (in your discussions with him, in your work relations in general), or how to support his PhD work, or how to support his job application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For his PhD work, I hope you are able to prevent outside circumstances from impacting negatively your work. As an advisor, this probably happens at some point with any student… and  any coworker, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For his job application, you don't need to state to support his future job, just to say he would be excellent at it. Just to give an example, stating that “Dr. Martin has all the skills necessary to excel in numerical simulations of deep offshore oil drilling” doesn't require you have to state “I strongly support offshore drilling”, nor does it imply it. Moreover, most recommendations are done in written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, regarding overall personal support throughout his graduate studies: that's a bit harder, but you truly have to put it past you, and it may not be easy. The best approach is clearly to be upfront with him: discuss it, preferably in an informal manner (i.e. don't make it a big deal). Points that seem important to mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have strong feelings about your future employer, and I think it is best that I am frank with you about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shouldn't change our work relationship, and I don't expect it to. I continue to support you wholeheartedly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think you notice a negative impact in the future, please come and discuss it with me, we'll work it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But honestly, it's not a nice situation to be in. I'm a bit surprised as to how what could gather so much distrust from you that you cannot simply separate it from your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T21:05:45.673" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11794" CreationDate="2013-08-10T21:45:26.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it is a tough situation, and no answer cannot be complete without knowing more details about the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before deciding there are few things for you to consider. As earthling said, we should typically educate our students on more than just academical things, but you should also keep in mind that when it comes to many government agencies, opinions vary a lot. Is not necessarily that our opinion about one agency is the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters most is your student's goals. If he really likes the position, and it fits his goals for the future, that should matter more than your personal views [there are few exceptions to this rule, if the agency contradicts the basic morale codes of everyone and everything, again it really depends on particulars of the situation].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, I should point to you that your student worked there for few months, his inside knowledge about the agency is most probably much more accurate than what you found out in the news. Since he applies for a permanent job there, I would guess that he enjoyed the experience, and he didn't find anything wrong with its work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are the only one to know the specific details of the situation, you should try to find the answers alone, we can try to guide you towards it but don't value too much the very general answers we can give, they might not apply to this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion there are few things you should ask yourself, answering those will tell you what to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the student really wants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a good opportunity for the student or not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think the student can get a better position? Note that better should be &quot;better&quot; in his opinion, not yours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this agency really bad, or just your opinion? How much can you trust the news you heard about this agency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does your student thinks about these news?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7624" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T21:45:26.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11804" CreationDate="2013-08-11T05:00:38.103" Score="13" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to my previous question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10969/strategies-to-overcome-academic-apathy-in-the-final-stages-of-the-phd&quot;&gt;&quot;Strategies to overcome “academic-apathy” in the final stages of the PhD?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, one thing I am noticing as I am drafting papers and the thesis, I seem to becoming overcome by 'drafting fatigue' - where things that usually don't bother me, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation and grammar fixups&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;especially when my supervisor (advisor) suggests a change, I make the change, then he suggests changing it back on the next draft.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;wanting to add additional figures&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and all things like this.  After the 2nd draft, I find I am getting 'over it' (for want of a better term).  So, this leads to my question - what practical effective strategies are there to overcome this 'drafting fatigue'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T00:04:47.187" Title="What are effective strategies to work through 'drafting fatigue'?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11802" CreationDate="2013-08-11T13:37:41.157" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having similar experiences, the only approach I have found effective is to &lt;strong&gt;leave it alone&lt;/strong&gt; for an extended period (week to a month typically - with fresher eyes the longer I wait). You can dig into another project for that amount of time, so it isn't wasted doing nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bullet points jive with my experience as well, e.g. reading the same draft over and over again makes one less likely to see grammer mistakes, minor supervisor input is annoying, and you always want to do &lt;em&gt;alittle more&lt;/em&gt; (like add in another figure). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For copy-editing sometimes I will ask my wife or a friend for a look over, which is nice because it gives you alittle respite from the draft as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T13:37:41.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-11T20:26:03.350" Score="1" ViewCount="2006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a MSc Computer Networking student and I recently became acquainted with the internet of things. I've fallen completely in love with this new area and I would love to base my dissertation on this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, I'm unsure if &quot;The internet of things&quot; falls academically within the scope of computer networking at the MSc level. My school is currently &quot;closed&quot; for the summer break, so getting to a lecturer before September is rather difficult. I'll like to know if this is an &quot;okay&quot; topic for me to base my dissertation on for my course, so as to use my summer to do some deeper reading on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7576" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T10:50:23.133" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T18:28:43.290" Title="Does the 'Internet of Things' fall under Computer Networking?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11813" CreationDate="2013-08-11T21:13:35.297" Score="5" ViewCount="1808" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously being a teaching assistant as an undergrad or a masters student looks good, but &lt;em&gt;how good does it look&lt;/em&gt;?  Is it merely a nice little bonus, or does extensive TA experience have a large impact on one's acceptance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T22:23:14.960" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T23:48:05.327" Title="How much does TA experience impact acceptance into PhD programs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11809" CreationDate="2013-08-11T22:12:17.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may depend on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For instance, teaching is compulsory in most American universities while in the UK you are only &quot;encouraged&quot; to teach, with some exceptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PhD on what?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may not be that important if you are going to do a PhD in theoretical mathematics  or a more &quot;industrial topic&quot;, while the opposite may happen if the PhD is in Education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;how good does it look?&lt;/em&gt; It looks good, but it doesn't represent a huge advantage. In my opinion, as long as you get all the requirements, the most important part of the application are the reference/recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T22:23:01.357" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T22:23:01.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-11T23:46:54.400" Score="97" ViewCount="30958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my undergraduate degree in the US and am heading to graduate school here in less than a month, so I myself have taken the Graduate Record Examinations (the general as well as two subjects tests) and I guess it always just seemed as a sort of un-avoidable formality that nothing could be done about, and so I just took it and got it over with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the intervening year between undergrad and the start of my Ph.D. work, however, I traveled overseas to Cambridge where I found that I was quite mistaken:  the GRE is very, very avoidable.  The solution is simple:  don't apply to universities in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time I had arrived there, I had already gotten it over with myself, but for most of my peers there, this was not the case, and quite a few of them had simply decided to not even bother applying to the US because of the inconvenience that comes along with that in the form of the GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made me wonder:  are admissions committees at US universities aware of the number of highly qualified candidates they miss out on because of the GRE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could understand being willing to miss out on the potential recruitment of these students if the GRE were a significant part of one's application, but I have yet to find any US professor tell me that the GRE scores are weighted highly when it comes to making admissions decisions (perhaps I just haven't asked around enough?).  In fact, I've often been told it's the &lt;em&gt;least important&lt;/em&gt; factor when deciding whether someone should be admitted.  (Indeed, my impression is that the general GRE is more or less a joke and only serves as a convenient way of tossing out applicants who would have been found un-qualified for other reasons.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting aside for a moment the issue of those who decide not to apply to US universities, let's consider the inconvenience faced by those who do.  Once again, if you're from the US, I can imagine simply not being aware of this (I know I wasn't), but I now know of several people who have &lt;em&gt;had to fly&lt;/em&gt; (sometimes the flights have even been inter-continental!) in order to sit to take a GRE test.  And even for those who don't (like probably most of us in the US), there is the ridiculous price:  almost $200 for the general and an extra $150 per subject test. I was under the impression that admissions committees encourage people from all backgrounds to apply, rich or poor, but how can they honestly expect this to happen if even those who don't have to fly have to shell out anywhere from $300-$500 in addition to the application fee? (I personally find it a bit nuts that these tests cost several times more than the application itself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, could somebody please explain to me why we still require students to take these things? Do they really add information about the applicant and their abilities that could not be found out any other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5622" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T09:31:21.040" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T10:03:35.773" Title="The GRE: Why does this still exist?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11809" CreationDate="2013-08-11T23:48:05.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective admitting students to CS PhD programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TAing for CS classes will be a small positive signal that you did well in those classes and were well thought of by the instructor (who presumably asked you to be his TA, or at least accepted your application). It might also let you get to know the professor teaching the class better, which will be helpful for your application if he/she can write you a letter of recommendation. But beyond that, it won't be a huge bonus in and of itself -- its mostly a signal correlated with other good things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T23:48:05.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T00:33:33.507" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question. I have not been a fan of the GRE for 20+ years, although (through whatever luck I had a good-enough number on it myself that it didn't harm me...) many are. Having been on admissions committees and very much involved with graduate programs for 30+ years, I've had ample opportunity to see the (non-) correlation of success in graduate mathematics with GRE subject-test scores. (The other parts are often useful as tests of English fluency, mainly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the world would be a simpler place if GRE subject-test scores really &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; show talent for higher mathematics. We note that the Educational Testing Service (in NJ, that makes the GRE and other stuff) is a for-profit that has a vested interest in maintaining its products' apparent importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost is unfortunate, and certainly discriminates against people whose currency doesn't compete well with USD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vaguely useful bit of information provided by GRE is that, well, yes, it is the only thing that most applicants will have done, thus, if one insists on &quot;simple comparisons&quot;, it is the only thing that allows that. It is clear that comparison of GPAs is even more pointless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have known admissions committees that simply ranked applicants by GRE subject test score. There! Done! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I do not care very much about GRE numbers, but in a way I am glad that some admissions committees do, in a fashion to the way that under-valued stocks are good investment values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think that the elite graduate programs use GRE subject test as a convenient filter, because it selects somewhat for &quot;quickness/cleverness&quot;, and they can afford to &quot;lose&quot; some prospects, because they have so many who are &quot;quick/clever&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., having a GRE subject test score is also a sign of awareness that people expect you to take it. Thus, it doesn't matter so much what one's score is, but that one _is_aware_ ... even if it is only of &quot;expectations&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in summary, no, I see no point in it. But there are economic incentives for ETS to keep making money. And a great number of admissions committees in math have personal predilections that lead them to be fond of (over-) simple numerical quantification, so... there-we-are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: As @msw observes in a comment, indeed, if GRE measured significant academic achievement cumulative over several years... it would be odd that one could usefully do the &quot;prep&quot; courses ETS provides. :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, performance on GRE probably &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a good indicator of how well a kid can do on a multi-hour, timed, multiple-choice test, etc. Yes, if we make subsequent coursework resemble this (!?) then we &lt;em&gt;give&lt;/em&gt; the GRE predictive power. No, I do not recommend making everything multiple-choice! But, amazingly, some people do believe that this could be done, and purportedly save us all a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, these things measure &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, and produce numbers that can be manipulated. There are people who are inexorably drawn to the possibility of making final decisions in those terms, even when the significance of the numbers is unclear. Meanwhile, reading letters of recommendation and personal statements is obviously not easily quantifiable. Of course!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were really the case that &quot;standardized testing&quot; could tell what its promoters like to insinuate, it would be convenient, indeed. But, again, some decades of experience indicate that these tests do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; indicate whether or not people can sustain interest over 4+ years, work hard for 4+ years, continue to develop scientific sensibility, and so on. &lt;em&gt;And&lt;/em&gt; the latter issues prove to be vastly more important for completion of a PhD. In direct observation of about 700+ grad students, I'd estimate that fewer than 20 dropped out or failed due to lack of intellectual capacity or lack of prior knowledge. Rather, loss of interest in the subject, or personal issues (mental/physical health) dominate. This &quot;sample&quot; of mine includes a very wide range of GRE scores and even GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More anecdotally, several specific examples stick in my mind, of very low percentile on GRE subject test (bottom 10 percent or smaller...) but exceptional achievement in coursework, prelims, and thesis work. These peoples' potential was easily visible in letters of recommendation and personal statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T13:31:21.507" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T13:31:21.507" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T01:15:38.523" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department, GRE scores are used mostly as calibration for students who have good grades but are from universities/programs that we are not familiar with and whose quality we are therefore not sure about.  For students with good credentials from strong programs the GRE is pretty much irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T01:15:38.523" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T02:55:30.193" Score="57" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Empirical evidence on the relationship between GRE scores and post-graduate performance&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a massive meta-analysis by Kuncel et al (2001) that empirically evaluates the correlations between various aspects of the GRE with multiple post-graduate performance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on hundreds of studies and thousands of participants, GRE shows  reasonable correlations with post-graduate GPA (i.e., around observed r = .21 to r=.43). Similar correlations emerged between GRE and faculty ratings of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correlations of GRE with research productivity and publication citation counts were smaller, but still positive. This is not surprising given that these are more distal outcomes and there are many non-academic reasons why people may or may not pursue an academic career or have publishable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors thus concluded that GRE was a valid predictor of a wide range of graduate outcomes. They also noted that &quot;subject tests tended to be better predictors than the verbal, quantitative, and analytical tests.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, selection decisions are assisted by standardisation, and a big part of academic achievement involves measuring baseline ability. Thus, the GRE combines both standardisation and competence measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Response to comments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a few points made in other answers and in comments, which I'll comment on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict of interest:&lt;/strong&gt;  @msw wrote that they &quot;consider the cited paper to be junk because ETS provided all available data&quot;. In general, I don't find the results in the meta-analysis surprising. Most tests like the GRE tend to have fairly strong correlations with general cognitive ability. It is well established through thousands of independent studies that IQ scores correlate fairly well with both school grades and job performance (i.e., in the r=.50 range; see Neisser et al 1996 for a field consensus review). The results show correlations less than .50, but that's not surprising given some of the issues around standardisation, practice, range restriction, domain specificity and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Belief there is no correlation based on personal observation&lt;/strong&gt;: Note that if the correlation is around .20, that means that 4% of variance has been explained. That leaves a huge amount of variance in performance to still be explained. It would not be surprising to meet many people that did well on GRE and poor in graduate school or vice versa. Thus, it is problematic to rely on personal experience when it comes to evaluating the validity of tests where such correlations are likely to be only modest. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small correlations are useful&lt;/strong&gt;: While a .20 correlation is small, it can still help make selection decisions. In particular, when evaluating the suitability of selection tools, you need to contrast the validity of a given tool with other available tools (e.g., interviews, GPA, references, and so on). I'm not as familiar with results in the graduate selection domain, but certainly in the employee selection domain, which is quite analogous, cognitive ability tests tend to correlate more highly than interviews, references and so on (for a comprehensive meta analysis of employee selection, see Schmidt and Hunter, 1998). That said, the best selection decisions are typically obtained by integrating multiple selection tools. Furthermore, the small correlation also should highlight to individuals who score poorly on the GRE that it is not that predictive, and therefore it shouldn't discourage an individual from pursing post-graduate study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does training invalidate the GRE?&lt;/strong&gt;: @user8134 wrote &quot;many people significantly improve their GRE scores by taking courses with prepping companies like Kaplan. So it seems GRE test does not measure any intrinsic ability/talent necessary for grad. school.&quot; I agree that individual differences in training and preparation for the GRE may influence test scores. That said, if you characterise test scores to be determined by true ability, training, and error variance, then I would expect that true ability would remain the much larger source of explanation in test scores. This is based on general observations about testing for ability based assessment. In general, the degree to which training is an issue would depend on how much the test materials teach to the specific test. Overall, I would assume that this would reduce the potential validity of GRE, but that the GRE would still be useful. Furthermore, training and nuisance factors can be used to do better on many selection instruments. For example, people can be coached on how to frame their CV or how to answer questions in interviews. Such training is potentially a source of error variance, but it doesn't invalidate CVs and interviews completely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why would anyone care about post-graduate GPA? (@JeffE)&lt;/strong&gt; @JeffE further notes &quot; in PhD programs, the only thing that really matters is the student's research output.&quot;.  Some post-graduate courses include meaningful graded coursework and others don't. For the courses that do include meaningful coursework, then such coursework provides a more standardised way of measuring post-graduate performance. So the validity of GRE  in predicting  such outcomes is not surprising. And thus, presumably we could generalise this to being indicative of how people perform in less standardised aspects of post-graduate performance. Of course, there's an inferential leap here, but in general, performance in related domains tend to correlate (e.g., coursework in mathematics with research performance in mathematics); it's not perfect, but it's still a positive correlation. Furthermore, if the validation study includes some post-graduate coursework where everyone gets top marks and such data is mixed with studies where grades are valid measures of performance, this would only serve to attenuate the observed correlation. Thus, this would suggest that the correlation between GRE and post-graduate GPA is higher than reported by the meta-analysis. Also, the meta-analysis does report correlations with research output and they are weaker but still positive. It also reports correlations with supervisor ratings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better alternatives to GRE&lt;/strong&gt;: None of my comments above are necessarily advocating the use of the GRE. Developing an effective selection and recruitment system whether it be for employment or post-graduate admission is a complex task. That said, most post-graduate selection systems would want to get a reliable and valid measure of academic aptitude. GRE, IQ tests, other ability tests, undergraduate GPA, all have reasonably validity evidence. And in general standardisation and efficiency are important. So, for example, administering your own selection tools takes more time, whereas taking pre-existing measures like GPA and GRE is more efficient. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethics of requiring applicants pay money to complete GRE:&lt;/strong&gt; Several people are critical of the GRE on the basis that it costs several hundred dollars to complete. I think that this is a perfectly legitimate question, but that the question of predictive validity can be answered separately. Such a fee could potentially discriminate against low income applicants. That said, presumably the fee in comparison to forgone wages associated with completing a post-graduate degree is fairly small.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kuncel, N. R., Hezlett, S. A., &amp;amp; Ones, D. S. (2001). A comprehensive meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the graduate record examinations: implications for graduate student selection and performance. Psychological bulletin, 127(1), 162. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.uvic.ca/~slindsay/teaching/499/readings/kuncel.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr, T. J., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., ... &amp;amp; Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American psychologist, 51(2), 77. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/correlation/intelligence.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schmidt, F. L., &amp;amp; Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological bulletin, 124(2), 262. &lt;a href=&quot;http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T23:39:18.930" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T23:39:18.930" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11808" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:12:28.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I expect you'd have to argue that (some aspect of) current approaches to networking either won't scale to an Internet of Things (IoT), or else will need to be done differently because of device characteristics -- in other words, the networking aspects of IoT will have to be done differently somehow.  If you can do that, that could form the basis for a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T03:12:28.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:52:09.233" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re Mr. Anglim's comment, a suspect issue re. any correlation between GRE scores and success in grad. school is that many people significantly improve their GRE scores by taking courses with prepping companies like Kaplan. So it seems GRE test does not measure any intrinsic ability/talent necessary for grad. school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that the GRE is a form of forced labor: ETS uses one of the sections in the exam (just which section is unknown to the test-taker) as data for future exams, i.e., the section is not counted for the score of the test. So one is expected , basically, to work for ETS for free, producing high-quality data they would have to pay a lot for, or may not be able to produce themselves. GRE also puts out books to prepare for the exams, which cost above $20 each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, ETS could find a way around this by asking, say, &quot;There may be a section in this test which we use as data for future exams: if there is one, would you be willing to take it, or do you prefer to skip it?&quot;. This - asking you to work for them for free - is unethical, IMO, if not illegal. And ETS' BS response to this (I called them) is to tell you: &quot;Well, if you disagree, don't take the test.&quot; The problem is some programs require you to take it in order to apply for their grad. programs; ETS is the Frank Burns of testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8134" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T12:31:55.373" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T12:31:55.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11808" CreationDate="2013-08-12T04:28:39.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question can be better answered in cs.stackexchange.com. I suggest that the moderators move it there if they dont find it suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Internet of Things is very huge for a Master or PhD thesis. It's like saying I want to solve the problem of the &lt;em&gt;Internet&lt;/em&gt;. You should be more specific about what you want to solve. The problems of IoT are separated into &lt;em&gt;layers&lt;/em&gt;. What will interest you the most is the &lt;em&gt;networking layer&lt;/em&gt;. This layer is very similar to the OSI model of the Internet. There are tons of unsolved problems in this layer, and tons of others already solved (because they are old problems already found in the Internet). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested problem domains: the services in the Internet of Things, naming resolution in IoT, objects integration in the IoT, objects networks in IoT, security and privacy in IoT, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or simply look for conferences about IoT, collect a set of similar papers, read them carefully and find an idea of a good thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T04:28:39.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11839" CreationDate="2013-08-12T05:19:41.537" Score="9" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an EE student specializing in &lt;strong&gt;Communications and Networks&lt;/strong&gt; (actually a bit more on sensor networks/signal processing) who plans to apply for a direct PhD program in the top US universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen some undergraduates who have been directly offered PhD programs by the top electrical engineering (EE) US universities, e.g. MIT, Stanford, and UCB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, they all have a super high GPA and some have very good GRE scores. (I say &lt;code&gt;some&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;all&lt;/code&gt; here, because MIT does not require GRE at all!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides these two characteristics, they have also published several papers whilst undergraduates. Maybe just by coincidence, they are all from &lt;strong&gt;Microelectronics&lt;/strong&gt;. As a layman in Microelectronics, I heard that it would be relatively easy for an undergraduate to publish a paper in this field, because a lot of publications are experiment-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems quite difficult for me and other peers who also specialize in Communications and Networks to publish some work during as undergraduates. It seems that publishing something in this field requires more knowledge that is out of the scope of a undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do most of the EE undergraduate successful applicants have publications? What about in the &lt;strong&gt;Communications and Networks&lt;/strong&gt; field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If an applicant has no final results (papers), but a 9-month research experience, will the experience help? By how much?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can a undergraduate applicant outperform a master applicant who holds some publications during his/her master study?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remarks:&#xA;Any generic answers are warmly welcome!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T12:49:31.507" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T12:49:31.507" Title="How much does &quot;having publications&quot; mean to a undergraduate direct-PhD applicant?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11962" CreationDate="2013-08-12T05:34:54.403" Score="16" ViewCount="2951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a undergraduate student who is trying to publish something so as to facilitate my PhD applications in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few seniors who help out in the lab and have been included as non-1st authors in some publications. Basically, what they do is helping the PhD's do some implementations. Thus, actually there is not much real research involved. But at least in the end, they are the authors, although not 1st authors, of some publications. It is quite nice for undergraduates to have such publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for me, I am currently working on an &lt;strong&gt;individual&lt;/strong&gt; project under a supervisor, who is extremely busy every day. Instead of being a helper, I am actually initiating the research all the way. I am also working towards publishing a paper to present the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice as it may sound, I am facing a lot of difficulties. As a undergraduate, my knowledge is so limited, and meanwhile I have to attend lectures. My time is also very limited. &lt;strong&gt;So I am really afraid I can publish nothing at the end of the research.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have already started the research, no matter the decision to initiate one project my self is wise or not, I have to fight to the very end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could anybody help give some suggestions to make my work get published more likely?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T06:52:18.133" Title="Should a undergraduate rely on PhD students to publish papers or do it individually?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11822" CreationDate="2013-08-12T06:42:17.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think working on your own project is a very good thing to get started with research, and it is a good basis for publishing something. But when you have little experience with the research and publishing process, it is important to have someone with more experience who is able to invest some time in advising you. As your supervisor seems to be very busy, he probably cannot take that role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to get someone senior, like a PhD student or, even better, post-doc with related research interests on board. It's probably best to get someone from your supervisor's group. You should also discuss this with your supervisor first, maybe he/she can even recommend someone. This would of course mean that you add someone else as coauthor, but it should allow you to learn much more about the research and publishing process than when you do it on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T06:42:17.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-12T06:49:59.730" Score="14" ViewCount="11024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from people saying that while applying for PhD, you need to have past experience in researching something and should have international publications. I was like more concentrated towards practical experience and have't had any publications. If I am aspiring to do PhD and want to apply, it would be impossible if such a criteria exists!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8138" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T12:40:19.700" Title="Is it mandatory to have published papers while applying for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11825" CreationDate="2013-08-12T07:42:36.270" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it mandatory to have published papers while applying for PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have any research experience (working in a lab, research you've done for classes, undergraduate thesis, capstone project, etc.), you should highlight that on your application, both in your personal statement and on your resume / CV.  More importantly, your letters of recommendation should discuss your &lt;strong&gt;potential&lt;/strong&gt; for research. Your recommendation writers should know this, but it would be worthwhile to highlight this in any material you provide to them when you ask them for recommendations, and when you discuss it with them. Trust me, the more information you can give your letter writers, the better their letters will be. I explicitly ask students what their goals are when I'm writing letters of recommendation so I can tailor them appropriately, and you should make sure your letter writers understand that you're applying for a PhD and what your research goals are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was like more concentrated towards practical experience and have't had any publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;practical experience&quot; you mean that you worked on an unsolved problem, then that counts as research. If you simply re-applied knowledge in order to learn how to become proficient in that field (e.g., you programmed a microcontroller to turn lights on and off via voice commands), then the research angle is harder to spin.  But, do the best you can to highlight on your applications why you believe you have the preparation to do quality research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T07:42:36.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11787" CreationDate="2013-08-12T07:48:15.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mean by &quot;indirect citation&quot; citing a source cited in another document (which you, most likely, cannot access for some reason) then your citation would be for example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Rawls 1971, cited in Brown 2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcgill.ca/library/sites/mcgill.ca.library/files/cse-name-year-citation-style-guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the CSE style guide&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Anyway, I would strongly encourage you to find the original source and to avoid indirect, secondary citations as you do not know whether the citation is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-13T16:43:32.827" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T16:43:32.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11825" CreationDate="2013-08-12T08:48:30.493" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Chris Gregg here, and I would like to detail my personal situation, as it might be relevant here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to get my Master's degree in CS and will start my first year of PhD in October with only a four-month experience in R&amp;amp;D (and not really research &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;) during an exchange program and with no publication. In my opinion, there are three points that played in my favour while applying :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Four-month experience is still experience, and you should highlight it in your resume and cover letters. In my case, this experience was at the roots of my choice to get a PhD; reading articles, getting to learn of tons of great ideas on a single subject, then trying to develop your own idea and finally publishing it are the reasons why I have decided to get a PhD. But more importantly, thanks to this experience, I got to know what it was like to work in the industry (through internships) and to work in research, and it allowed me to justify my choice more easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to narrow down the subjects that interest you, as a PhD is a long-term engagement. During my applications, I have specifically targeted the Human-Computer Interactions domain (HCI) and have been lucky enough to find a subject on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) that is related to HCI and to learning sciences (which is great because I want to be a teacher, eventually).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose wisely your recommendation writers. They have to testify your ability to work in research and academia. I have been accepted for a subject only because the contact knew a PI who wrote a letter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is no, but prior experience in research and clear future career goals have to be emphasized in your applications in order to get not only what you want, but also what suits you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T08:48:30.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11621" CreationDate="2013-08-12T11:16:47.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France we have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/&quot;&gt;Agence Nationale de la Recherche&lt;/a&gt; (ANR, National Agency for Research). The &quot;régions&quot;, local administrative divisions, have also a capacity to finance research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8142" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T11:16:47.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11838" CreationDate="2013-08-12T12:54:39.103" Score="5" ViewCount="1716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did quite well on my GREs -- perfect scores on all three sections of the general test, and a result in the 98th percentile on the relevant subject GRE test. I'm applying for Ph.D. programs in a STEM field and will naturally submit these scores as part of my application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'll also be applying for fellowships like the NSF graduate fellowship and the Hertz. It's my understanding that these fellowships do not require the GRE, but I would assume these strong scores might work in my favor if the relevant committees were to know about them. Can/should I include these scores on the CV I submit with my application, or is doing so always considered gauche?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="27900" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T16:52:20.080" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T16:52:20.080" Title="Should a CV for a fellowship application ever include test scores even if these scores are not requested?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11840" CreationDate="2013-08-12T12:59:24.993" Score="15" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/726/how-to-become-well-known-in-the-research-community-while-being-a-phd-student&quot;&gt;a lot&lt;/a&gt; has been said in this site about the importance of visibility in academia, I specifically want to know about the effectiveness of blogs: are blogs an effective means to communicate your presence in the field? I envisage the blog to contain posts which informally talk about selective publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What points should one consider when writing blogs about published papers? It is a significant challenge not to exceed the usual blog lengths when writing on a technical paper. Are there effective tips an academic blogger should keep in mind? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T17:16:41.320" Title="How to effectively use blogging as a tool to gain visibility in academia" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;blog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11775" CreationDate="2013-08-12T13:40:31.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of a (very top) school/department that is fine with promoting everybody to Associate Professors, but the real tenure decision comes about three years after that, and you really have to be an international star to be granted tenure. So in effect, the tenure track is about 9 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I was thrown out of the tenure track after three years after my 3rd year review. When you negotiate your contract, make sure that it states the full term, rather than &quot;annually renewable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T13:40:31.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T13:54:20.503" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Jonathan, if you were to ever come to the other side, you will see a great number of glowing applications from top students of the top university in Bolivia or Madagascar. How do they fare compared to the top student of the top university of Idaho? Or a top student from a mediocre university in Massachusetts? If you admit grad students planning to use them as TAs, how do you know that this student from Nepal will be understood by your students in Tennessee, who heartily laugh at both New York and Californian accents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GRE fills the role of such a filter, and as such is the cheapest, easiest to use tool available to graduate schools in the US. If you can get any UNESCO money to design and implement a version of it that would be free to international applicants, maybe you can get a &lt;em&gt;Nobels fredspris&lt;/em&gt; for your efforts. (This is not such an unrealistic idea as it sounds: an alternative, freely available operating system known as Linux has been developed by enthusiasts, and in many dimensions has replaced UNIX.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T16:23:08.707" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T16:23:08.707" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:50:21.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Explains the quality of our PhDs, doesn't it. I have personally found the American education system far more wrapped up in silly and actually dangerous formalities than schools in Europe, generally speaking. I was surprised to find this out first hand because the common consensus is that Europe suffers from a great deal of pointless formality that the US does not. The problem is that it's a category mistake: elaborate bureaucratic formalities: yes; greater social formality:  sometimes, depends; educational formality, not necessarily. Also, there is a difference between formality and rigidity. While titles are more important in Europe when addressing one another, they actually can enforce a very healthy relationship between the student and the professor which enables a healthy flexibility and informality to emerge. The casual &quot;buddy&quot; culture of the US is actually too chummy which encourages disrespect and I think the reaction to it is a certain kind of seething rigidity that manifests in the student-professor relationship which is unhealthy and domineering many times. But I digress. When I experienced American education first hand, it seemed infantile in its execution and the GREs belong to this set of things which contribute to the culture of pettiness (other things include the &quot;publish or perish&quot; doctrine which has resulted in the explosion of BS and CV padding nonsense and the &quot;career academic&quot; (hopefully that translates into English properly). While there are entrance exams in Europe, graduate school acceptance is according to other criteria. It's not always optimal, but certainly less irritating than this test taking nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, I find the correlations mentioned above to be exactly the problem. They make the same mistake of drawing rigid and often erroneous inferences from a very poor selection of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that university education everywhere have been ruined by the pressure to put everyone through it. What you have are glorified trade schools in most cases with millions of applicants pushing through as if through a military entrance exam where narrow indicators sacrifice complexity for measures of simple routine. It's highly corporate and prone to the rat race. Graduate school should be the last place where this kind of pettiness manifests, and yet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: GREs are a result of the culture, of modern (American) university culture like the silly innovations of the German university which sought to label and shelve every person for particular slots in the machine of the the Reich. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:50:21.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-12T15:02:07.567" Score="8" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am encountering some problems for making my research in English, due that this is not my native language. Even though my ideas are crystal clear in my language I find it extremely hard to express them in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For checking issues related to grammar and syntax I have been using Proofread Bot, it is an online grammar and syntax reviewer, but their results are not so accurate. I have been checking some persons that make this task, but their fees are pretty high (almost 200 USD for a 3 pages articles); and I would not like to be paying this amount every time that I want to submit something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody knows another software reliable english editor tools online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T18:11:00.520" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T18:11:00.520" Title="reliable english editor online?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11836" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:01:26.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sympathetic to your problem since I had (and have) it, too, as a non-native English speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spellcheckers are easy to use and reliable, so use them everywhere you can. Even as I am typing this answer I get a squiggly line below every incorrect word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammar is completely different though. As far as I know there is no easy way to check it in an automated way. Some software tools are listed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6333/grammar-checking-tool-for-use-with-latex&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; on tex.se, but even an intermediate English speaker would find most of them disappointing; they do catch some missing 's', but with so many false positives and negatives that it's hardly worth the effort to go through the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestions would be: either (1) find some English exchange student willing to proofread at much cheaper rates, or (2) ignore the issue; it's not so important. I am not a native speaker myself, so I am not in the best position to judge, but your English looks clear enough to me. As long as the paper is understandable to the referees, it shouldn't be a problem if there are occasional grammar errors. After acceptance, the journal's copy editors should make a full grammar check and proofread for you for free as part of the publication process. By going through their correction you can identify the typical mistakes in your English prose and try to improve when writing the next paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in mathematics; if you are in the liberal arts the situation could be very different though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T16:01:26.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11831" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:14:06.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to cite your scores, then you should check to see if there is a reporting mechanism from ETS that will allow you to send official copies of the scores to the recipients. For instance, NSF had a &quot;college code&quot; so that you could send a report directly to them. Other fellowships may be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat that should be mentioned: if a university or fellowship &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; instructs you &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to send something, &lt;strong&gt;don't send it.&lt;/strong&gt; I know that some schools do not want and will not accept additional letters of reference, award citations, publications, and so on. If this is the case for the specific application you're completing, then you'll want to find some other way to provide the information. This might be in the form of a mention in one of your essays (if appropriate!), or in a &quot;supporting information&quot; box in the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T16:14:06.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11821" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:25:31.933" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I can't comment about microelectronics or EE specifically, I should point out that many US graduate schools admit external candidates &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; to a Ph.D. program; there is no option available for admission to a master's program &lt;em&gt;en route&lt;/em&gt; to a doctoral program. Consequently, the students met the requirements for admission to the school, period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research experience is always helpful, particularly because it gives you a potential letter of reference from someone who can directly comment on your skills &lt;em&gt;as a researcher&lt;/em&gt;, which is the biggest thing that graduate departments are looking for. They want candidates who are capable of doing high-quality research, and having confirmation of that—whether or not there are papers already written—is a vital component of that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest it's probably not worth it to try to compete with faceless peers whose credentials you can't guess. That's a hopeless endeavor that will just make you frustrated and dispirited. Just do the best job that you can with the resources available to you, rather than worrying about &quot;keeping up with the Joneses.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T16:25:31.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11832" CreationDate="2013-08-12T17:16:41.320" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is well accepted that an online presence for early career researchers is a good thing, even though a minority actually have one. As an example, blogs on my website have been reposted a few times on various news sites, and they also appear high up the search engine list for keywords relating to my field of research. I also managed to get invited to speak on the back of my website, so in my experience a website really does improve your visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first challenge with blogs is deciding who they are aimed at. Remembering back to my early PhD, understanding papers was hard, and so I decided that I would focus on researchers in my field (magnetism) but try and avoid all unnecessary jargon, which should also make it accessible to undergraduates in the discipline. If you are blogging about your publications, then it means you can simplify the result for a broader audience, without compromising on the detail (those who are interested can look up the paper on your site - don't make them hunt for it or have it stuck behind a pay wall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main tips for an academic blog are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk about all your publications - what is the main result in laymans terms and specify why it is important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about length limits. Academics are used to reading long documents and a blog a couple of pages long doesn't take long to skim. However, research is generally technical and so it is difficult to write a superficial post such as 'I had omelette for tea' or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A blog is as much about you as the subject, so write in the first person and include your wider activities. For example, I always write up conference visits and talks I have attended/done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pictures and figures are a lot more effective than words, so use these extensively if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T17:16:41.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11844" CreationDate="2013-08-12T19:11:36.087" Score="25" ViewCount="143799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my B.Sc in CS about 6 month ago and now I am writing a paper for a conference. before when I was a student I put my university and department name below my name as an author. but now I am not a student. I saw somebody put their IEEE membership on the paper something like &lt;em&gt;&quot;member of IEEE Computer society&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or something similar, but I am not a member in any society yet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I used before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sajjad Gerami&#xA;Department of Math and Computer Science,&#xA;Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran&#xA;Email: my.email@gmail.com&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I may use now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sajjad Gerami&#xA;Email: my.email@gmail.com&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do that? Can I publish a paper just by my name and email (which is a Gmail one) without any institutional affiliation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; For information about email address check these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8984/what-should-a-proper-email-signature-look-like-for-graduate-students/&quot;&gt;What should a proper email signature look like for graduate students?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2872/e-mail-address-to-use-in-publications&quot;&gt;E-mail address to use in publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T03:29:58.783" Title="What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;&lt;alumni&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11845" CreationDate="2013-08-12T21:12:49.370" Score="6" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been sending emails to potential advisors for PhD programs, and the responses have varied from, You have an impressive CV, and I strongly encourage you to apply, to lets discuss future projects over skype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;lets discuss projects over skype&quot; is a no brainer. But the &quot;impressive CV&quot; response seems a bit generic, and am wondering if he wants me to apply just to have more applications? So finally, I have these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a potential PhD advisor, what kind of responses do you give students that you MOST want to apply to the program? Do you ever say, please don't apply here? Does this vary depending on the ranking of the institution? I tend to get the generic ones from higher ranked programs and the more personal ones from lower ranked programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, For people who have applied to Phd programs, What kinds of responses did you get and what was the outcome of your application there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary motivation for this question is because there are many departments I wish to apply to, but realize applying to 20 programs would take up too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, thanks for taking a look at my questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T21:31:53.760" Title="Should I not apply to a PhD program when a Potential Advisor gives me a generic response?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11841" CreationDate="2013-08-12T21:20:56.030" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard practice is to list the affiliations under which the work was performed. If you performed the work as an undergraduate at your undergraduate institution, then you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; continue to list it in work related to that effort. However, you can &quot;update&quot; your address by listing a &quot;current address&quot; along with the old affiliations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T21:20:56.030" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11843" CreationDate="2013-08-12T21:31:53.760" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In managing responses, you should keep in mind the policies and procedures of respective departments. For instance, in my field, projects aren't discussed until after a student's been admitted, and the decision regarding advisors isn't made until after students enroll. So there's little productive reason for an advisor to discuss projects with prospective students, given the enormous time between the conversation, and when the student would start working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, keep in mind that professors are busy professionals, and have lots of demands on their time. For instance, the professor you've written to might be on travel, or have some ongoing commitments that preclude a longer answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the other hand, if you're submitting to an individual PhD position, and the professor will hire you &quot;directly,&quot; then a generic response isn't so good, unless there's an indication that the professor would like to discuss things further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, how generic a person's response will be will also depend on how generic or specific your initial inquiry is. If someone &quot;cold calls&quot; me, and &quot;greets&quot; me with &quot;Dear Sir&quot; or &quot;Hello,&quot; and doesn't show any signs of explaining why I should consider hiring that individual, I am unlikely to respond at all, because why should I write a personal response to a form letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T21:31:53.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11441" CreationDate="2013-08-12T22:25:21.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell them to revert everything to the original version, period. If they introduced 100 mistakes, it is not your job to find them all (besides, I doubt you'll find more than 70 anyway). Be polite but firm. Don't accuse anybody of anything but stand the ground even if you'll have to withdraw the paper. Your primary duty, as a writer, is to readers, not to publishers. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T22:25:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11851" CreationDate="2013-08-13T03:21:55.817" Score="25" ViewCount="4278" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I read a scholarly paper and find it interesting and beneficial, should I write a short thank you letter to the author? Should I send the thank you letter from a &lt;code&gt;.edu&lt;/code&gt; email address?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8152" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:17:18.283" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:17:18.283" Title="When should I write a thank you letter to the author of a scholarly paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11849" CreationDate="2013-08-13T03:33:15.007" Score="4" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be starting graduate school next week with a major in Mathematics. I've started working on some research in mathematical biology this summer. It's applied mathematics linked with computational biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the tangible advantage of getting a research publication along with my masters degree vs. just getting a masters degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits for a math major, for future job prospects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I want to apply for another masters degree later, how much will getting a publication help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8154" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T12:57:15.720" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T12:57:15.720" Title="Importance of degree and publication vs. degree alone" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11848" CreationDate="2013-08-13T06:13:06.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;tangible advantage&lt;/strong&gt; can only be measured for an agreed upon measure (or &quot;utility function&quot; if you prefer).  This is a classic misstep in attempts at persuasion.  I can't convince you to do &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; (or appreciate anything) if I don't know your core values and phrase my arguments in terms of those values.  Unfortunately, the phrase &quot;future job prospects&quot; is rather vague, so I will guess a bit at what you're hoping to pursue and accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First suppose that you're &lt;strong&gt;considering getting a PhD&lt;/strong&gt; in the future.  This one is easy.  If you do go for a PhD, a large chunk of your time will be spent on &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;publishing&lt;/em&gt;.  What exactly this looks like varies significantly even within math, depending on how applied your subfield is.  However, if you stick with the same subfield (or even one nearby), then publishing a paper during your masters will often give you a reasonable sense of what you'll be doing during your PhD.  This will &lt;strong&gt;help you to know whether you want to get a PhD or not&lt;/strong&gt;.  Having published a paper during your masters will also help convince the admissions committee that you are likely to succeed in a PhD program, and &lt;strong&gt;improve your chance of being admitted to a PhD program&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose instead that you plan to &lt;strong&gt;pursue a job that requires technical writing skills&lt;/strong&gt;.  This one is pretty obvious too.  Writing (as with most things) is a skill that you acquire only by doing.  Many (most?) journals require a higher quality of writing than is typically needed in your masters thesis.  They also require you to &lt;strong&gt;write in a certain style, to a certain audience, etc&lt;/strong&gt;.  Being forced to do &lt;strong&gt;this will make your writing better&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, suppose that you want to &lt;strong&gt;convince someone that you take initiative&lt;/strong&gt; or that you &lt;strong&gt;conceive a project and see it through&lt;/strong&gt;.  In either case, having published a paper can serve as good evidence.  Like most things, after you've published multiple papers, the process will get faster (though not likely &lt;em&gt;fast&lt;/em&gt;).&#xA;But the first time you do it, you'll invest a lot of time, and often not know quite what is needed.  This can be frustrating, but also rewarding when you succeed.  The &lt;strong&gt;ability to teach yourself new skills is far more marketable than anything you will learn in grad school&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T06:13:06.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11852" CreationDate="2013-08-13T06:42:13.720" Score="3" ViewCount="1479" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm nearing the completion of my undergraduate degree in mathematics. The handful of experiences I've had tutoring students are among the most satisfying ways I've applied math to real problems. My academic record is good but not honors material. I'm convinced that teaching mathematics at the secondary school level is an excellent way to apply my math degree where it's needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying to a 13-month Master of Education program at an American university. Through coursework and internships teaching at a local school, students are fully prepared to certify to teach Secondary Education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a highly selective program.  Applications, essays, PRAXIS scores, and interviews are all part of the application process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does inexperience teaching totally defeat one's chances of admission to an education program? This may also apply to teaching at a university.  Is there any way to convince them to see past the inexperience? How does one overcome this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6089" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T00:04:40.723" Title="How to overcome lacking teaching experience for admission to Master of Education" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11847" CreationDate="2013-08-13T06:42:21.167" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly wouldn't hurt, and as a published author myself, I would say it would be very nice feedback, particularly if you include details about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;specifically any particular points/methods you found useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A brief outline of how you are extending the work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps any question you have about the article.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be a good way to make yourself known in Academia, especially if the author is an influential scholar in your field.  However, a caveat, don't overdo it - in terms of being 'over the top' complementary or too many 'rapid fire' letters/emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it would more than likely be appreciated as it would be a validation of the author's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T06:42:21.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11850" CreationDate="2013-08-13T08:09:01.907" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does inexperience teaching totally defeat one's chances of admission to an education program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have direct experience in your situation: I entered a MEd teaching program at a top-5 U.S. university with zero teaching experience.  I did have five years of military experience, and I emphasized the leadership skills I gained from that, as well as the personnel management skills I learned. My college grades were mediocre (3.2 GPA in Electrical Engineering), GRE scores were decent but not phenomenal, and I entered the program to be certified in high school physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any way to convince them to see past the inexperience? How does one overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in the enviable position of wanting to teach math, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;STEM&lt;/a&gt; teachers are highly sought-after and needed right now. That isn't to say that you won't be competing against highly-competitive peers, but for what it's worth you will probably be competing against &lt;em&gt;fewer&lt;/em&gt; peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To overcome the lack of teaching on your resume, you should highlight any experiences you have had working with students or children (e.g., did you TA a class? Were you a camp counselor? Think outside the box to find something relevant, but don't stretch it too thin -- e.g., lifeguarding probably wouldn't quite fit the bill, but mentoring junior acolytes at your church might). You should certainly discuss why you enjoyed the tutoring, and how that informed your decision to pursue a teaching career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you need to demonstrate your passion for teaching -- talk about the middle school algebra teacher who opened your eyes to the beauty of mathematics, or the calculus teacher who gave you the first real taste of a formal proof. Talk about why you love mathematics, and how important you think it is for upcoming generations to get quality mathematics teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admissions committee needs to see something special in your application that will make you a great teacher, and personal experience means a lot -- do you have 26 cousins that flock around you during family reunions to hear stories (you're a great story teller! This is a fantastic skill for a teacher!). Did you wake up every morning in tenth grade salivating at the thought of fifth period trigonometry class? (you've got legitimate passion! [and may be the only person in the world who loved trig at that age...]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MEd programs are one of the few programs where I believe a well-written personal statement can truly make a difference in your application, so make it good. Have one or more people read your statement and give good criticism. Write it one week and re-read it a week or two later, and edit it if you don't see the passion coming out. Ask your reviewers to look for passion (or, rather, ask them after they've read it what they thought, and if &quot;passion&quot; doesn't show up in any reviews, re-write it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your letters of recommendation are extremely important, as well. You should make sure your letter writers know that you are applying to teaching programs (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; research programs), and that's what you would like them to focus on. You &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; want a letter that says, &quot;X is a brilliant mathematician who can focus intently on minute details of complicated mathematical proofs for hours at a time. He has the potential to produce award-winning mathematics.&quot;  What you want is something along the lines of, &quot;X was one of my most passionate students, who has a knack for coming up with succinct, meaningful explanations for complicated mathematical topics. I routinely saw him during office hours where we had enlightening discussions about the course. I learned as much from him as he did from my own teaching.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your interview is obviously important, too. I suggest preparing something to teach for five minutes (high school level--if I were preparing something, I might choose compound interest -- you can teach it in about five minutes to a willing audience, and you end up with the beautiful definition of &lt;code&gt;e&lt;/code&gt; in the end), and practicing it on someone. If I were interviewing candidates, I'd ask them to teach me something (maybe something particular), and if you have something in your back pocket that you've practiced, you'll be ready for the question if it appears. Be prepared to discuss why you didn't have the opportunity to teach (what did you do during your summers?  Were there TA opportunities that you could have taken?). Obviously, do a lot of smiling and be as personable as you can without going outside your normal personality. Have a very succinct answer to why you believe you will be a great teacher -- 30 seconds that will wow an interviewer. (one further tip: if you have an interview with multiple people, &lt;strong&gt;remember their names&lt;/strong&gt; and address them with their names during the interview--this can make a very good impression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T10:41:46.767" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T10:41:46.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11825" CreationDate="2013-08-13T12:40:19.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a general answer to your question is &quot;no, it's not essential (but it won't hurt!)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to bear in mind that this will be more true for some disciplines than others. In a lab science, for instance, it is fairly common for undergraduates to show up on the publications of group leaders on whose projects they have worked during some kind of internship. This is in stark contrast to a discipline such as economics, in which most students do not have any publications even at the time of completion of their PhD! Try to find out what the norms are in your discipline of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6879" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T12:40:19.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11874" CreationDate="2013-08-13T13:09:26.097" Score="5" ViewCount="6137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have on my CV a list of conferences I organized, or co-organized, a list of invited talks, a full list of talks, etc. Recently I have been asked to chair a session in a prestigious conference. I am very honored, and thus wondered: is this something I can feature on my CV? If so, would somewhere along with the conferences organized be &quot;standard&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-08-12T07:05:25.550" LastActivityDate="2017-08-12T11:02:10.950" Title="Should I list conference session chairmanship in CV?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;chairing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11854" CreationDate="2013-08-13T13:16:13.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes. Anything that can be considered meriting can (or should) be added to a CV in my opinion. I have a heading &quot;Other meriting academic miissions&quot; in my CV where I list things that I consider meriting but do not fit under other headings where the list is longer. this includes, invited talks, tenure evaluations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My strategy with my CV is to add everything into a &quot;master CV&quot; and then remove parts depending on the purpose of the CV. Therefore, add the meriting tasks you are asked to do. It is easy to remove them if they are irrelevant for the specific purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T13:16:13.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11847" CreationDate="2013-08-13T14:45:56.287" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to try to give some background to convey the perspective of the researcher on this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a scientist, the publishing of a paper is usually the culmination of &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of hard work. The scientist has gone through coming up with the project, implementing it, solving all the problems, summarizing it all into a paper, and then through a long process of peer review. Each of these steps involves major effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the paper gets published. I personally found this to be very anti-climatic. The paper summarizes so much effort, but you rarely get any personal feedback about the paper, except maybe at meetings and conferences. Since we are all publishing our work openly for the benefit of mankind, I think every scientist would be happy to get feedback from people on his/her paper and hear that it was helpful in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T16:19:21.110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T16:19:21.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5466" CreationDate="2013-08-13T15:01:25.050" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a year ago, I was asked to become editor-in-chief for one of their journals.  I asked myself the same question. After doing some background research, I came to the conclusion that MDPI was, albeit rather &quot;young&quot;, a reputable publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with them for a little while now and have just started as editor-in-chief on another journal under MDPI with a specific focus on my area of research. My interaction with the editorial manager is very efficient. Surely, we will not compete with Nature and Science for high profile manuscripts, but I am absolutely convinced that both journals will do well with high quality papers and manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8162" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T15:17:46.043" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T15:17:46.043" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11847" CreationDate="2013-08-13T15:44:59.190" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that most of the correspondence I get when putting out a new paper goes something like &quot;I have just read your very interesting new paper. I want to inform you of my related works [....],&quot; and thus is very transparently a request to be cited, the rare message that just says something like &quot;I liked your new paper!&quot; is always a welcome change of pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T15:44:59.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11866" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:25:29.970" Score="14" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out. Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field. Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time? How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T14:34:36.977" Title="What kind of papers is it acceptable to read during working hours?" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11847" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:36:48.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please do.  The author will likely be pleased to hear about any specifics you found particularly interesting or helpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scientist one of the main goals is to disseminate your findings and spur interest in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is especially good to send a letter if the paper becomes a significant inspiration for your own research.  But, in this case you will also complement the authors by citing their work in your papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T17:36:48.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11861" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:39:49.100" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;A perspective from (theoretical) computer science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that distinguishes academia from some other lines of work is that there is no well delineated line between &quot;working hours&quot; and non-working hours. Since you can probably be better paid elsewhere, academics tend to enjoy research. You seem to as well, since you read papers during your free time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is the great thing about academia. Reading papers that you enjoy is work, since as you observe, reading in a field different from your own can nevertheless give you tools useful for your own work. So, I would say that you can read any paper you like during &quot;working hours&quot; and not feel bad about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, one can always switch areas. If you feel that you are &quot;forced&quot; to read the papers that come out in your area, but there are other areas that you read for pleasure, perhaps you should work in those areas!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: needless to say, to have a &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; academic career, you can't spend all your time reading -- you have to spend some of your time writing! But there is no need to arbitrarily partition the reading into a work and pleasure pile.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T17:39:49.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11867" CreationDate="2013-08-13T19:40:57.243" Score="16" ViewCount="1014" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the 2nd year of a PhD program. I was planning to present a poster at the national conference but (probably) need to cancel. Now I'm deciding whether to attend the conference anyway. On the one hand: I'll meet people and probably enjoy myself. On the other hand: I could use the time for other work, would prefer not to spend $$ on the hotel, and I'm years away from being on the job market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$$$. My plane ticket is non-refundable. My hotel is refundable. So I could save some money by skipping the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T14:52:43.557" Title="Worth attending discipline's national conference as early grad student if not presenting?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11861" CreationDate="2013-08-13T19:50:40.523" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may of course be differences between different academic cultures and systems but in essence you should be free to read whatever you want. Yes, you will of course &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to read some literature to keep yorself up to date with your field to the extent that you can teach whatever courses you need to teach. I assume teaching is something you are &lt;em&gt;ordered&lt;/em&gt; to do. Your own research adds the need to read other papers but since you decide your field you also decide what you need to read. If you find other areas of interest (still within your or related fields) then I cannot see that as a problem. There are many aspects of science such as methodology that can be extracted from, for example, neighbouring fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own case, I find I have a different problem: simply not time enough to keep myself updated to the level I would like. So, reading literature irrelevant to my major field is simply not imagineable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end the answer will depend on what your job situation looks like and what the expectations are, what you are ordered to do and what is your own initiative as well as what might result if you do not fulfil the goals of your employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T19:50:40.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11865" CreationDate="2013-08-13T20:10:07.903" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attending conferences is very useful for several reasons. Usually, the work presented at conferences involve the latest developments in the field. This may provide you with new ideas or tools for your own research. It will give you a good overview of what is happening. You will also become familiar with who is doing what. In addition to this you also have the possibility to get in touch with colleagues and strike up new contacts with persons working on questions for interest to you. This can become useful in the sense that you can possibly start up collaborations or simply become known to others in the field. The latter can be important, for example, when you publish since reviewers might easily be someone you meet during the conference. Obviously, presenting something makes this even easier but being there is far better than not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I can see from not going is if you do not think the conference is of major interest or if you do not think you will meet people interested in similar questions to yours, in other words if you cannot see any academic benefits from going. Saving money is of course also a valid question if you think you can use that money more wisely on, for example, another conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, go to good conferences regardless of whether you have something to present or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T10:56:53.610" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T10:56:53.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11861" CreationDate="2013-08-13T23:03:51.663" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not in academia. You are not &lt;em&gt;forced&lt;/em&gt; to read anything at all after you get your PhD. As a graduate student, you may have regular reading assignments given by your adviser, but those are just like any other class assignments, so I don't think you are talking of them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One funny thing in academia (if we are talking about academia and not about an industrial job that pretends to be one) is that you &lt;em&gt;never know&lt;/em&gt; what exactly your work is. Any time a colleague may stop by and ask a question, a paper may come for refereeing, etc., which may give you an opportunity (not &quot;force&quot;, because you can reject anything you don't want either bluntly or in some fancy way like &quot;Interesting problem but, unfortunately, it is outside my area of expertise&quot;) to think of something you've never heard of before. Another funny thing is that there is no work time (except teaching and meeting hours) and free time. You can wake up at 2AM and work like crazy if you have a good idea, or you can lock your office and go for a long stroll in the town if you don't feel like sitting and bumping your head against the brick wall will result in anything any time soon. I read whatever I want and wherever and whenever I want, and suggest that you do the same, provided that you meet your obligations and do not go on reckless reading (or non-reading) sprees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zillions of them! No chance to read them all, of course, but, by all means, look out and around whenever you have a chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever you prefer. I like reading when lying on a sofa and I don't have one in my office, so I read everything at home. Some people prefer to clearly separate the work and the social life, so they do all their reading at the office. There are no rules and no obligations in this respect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently there is no such border in academia. We enjoy the total absence of the &quot;reading police&quot; and the internet made everything (well, almost: the copyright still spreads its shadowy tentacles far and wide but they are cut out one by one every day) available at a click of a button. The real danger is not in the &quot;legal issues&quot; but in the effective management of your time, which is the reverse sign of the freedom coin. But that is a totally different story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T23:03:51.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11865" CreationDate="2013-08-14T02:08:50.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to rely upon the grapevine, the internet, and the personal communication more than on formal meetings but if you like socializing, by all means go. Just make sure that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You know which talks you want to attend and to which people you'd like to talk and are prepared to both sitting through the talks and the conversations. Nothing is as meaningless and time-wasting as sitting through a talk in which you understand only the speaker's name and affiliation, and nothing is as pathetic as a graduate student who tries to communicate with some expert and either has no idea of what he (student) is talking about or has nothing more interesting to say than &quot;My name is ..., my adviser is ... , it was nice to meet you&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you've made a poster already, take it with you anyway. Even if it is not displayed in the main hall, you may still have an opportunity to show it to some people (of course, it shouldn't be 8 by 10 feet in this case, so you may want to downsize it a bit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) In spite of what I said in 1) and 2), do not take the whole affair with beastly seriousness and have some ideas about what to do in the town or nearby for fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to work, in most conference places you may find a quiet room or two (in the worst case scenario, just return to your hotel) where to spend some time alone between the events that really interest you. Unless you fly trans{atlantic/pacific}, you can reduce the wasted time to just a few hours, not days. As to the job market, if you are any good, the earlier you appear on the radar screens, the better. As to dollars, it should be your own decision: I suspect you'll not end up in the bankruptcy court or become a millionaire either way :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastEditorUserId="6118" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T14:52:43.557" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T14:52:43.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2013-08-14T08:45:49.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;hye PPl! &#xA;Excellent blog , Actually conference proceedings have no IMPACT factor .&#xA;If you are still aint buying it then read the link below&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conferenceseries.iop.org/content/quick_links/Policy%20on%20Impact%20Factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://conferenceseries.iop.org/content/quick_links/Policy%20on%20Impact%20Factor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Policy on Impact Factor&#xA;Under current policy, Thompson Reuters (the owners of ISI Web of Science) do not calculate Impact Factors for ANY proceedings titles. Therefore, proceedings journals are not issued with Impact Factors.&#xA; hope it clears the ambiguity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8177" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T08:45:49.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11854" CreationDate="2013-08-14T11:26:41.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chairing a session during a prestigious conference is certainly a good indication that you are recognised within your community (at least to the conference committee) and they value your contributions to the field. It should be definitely part of your CV (and online CV if you do have one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T11:26:41.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11865" CreationDate="2013-08-14T13:10:30.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also depends a lot on your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (mathematics), I largely agree with everything &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11869/94&quot;&gt;fedja had said&lt;/a&gt;. Having been to (and organized a special session for) a big national conference, I found that the best part about it is the social aspect, and some of the cool stuff you get to see at the vendors.  In terms of talks I listened to they generally fall in one of two categories: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone I know (or know of) speaking on a subject I am (quasi-)familiar with at a level that is slightly lower (more general) than what they would say in a seminar or smaller, more specialist oriented conferences and workshops. Which is rather comforting to hear but often I don't learn much (though there are a few wonderful exceptions) more than what I already know. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone whom I don't know speaking on a subject I am unfamiliar with at a level that is slightly lower (more general) than what they would say in a seminar or smaller, more specialist oriented conferences and workshops, yet still flies &lt;em&gt;entirely over my head&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields conferences are a lot more plentiful, and missing one conference, even a &quot;national&quot; one, will not be that big a deal. And if you are short on money, you may well want to be picky about how and where you travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in some other fields (take Geology for example), &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.agu.org/meetings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Conference&lt;/a&gt; (fully deserving of the capital letters) is the place to be and everyone in the field, from graduate students to emeritus faculty, who doesn't have a very good reason &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to be there tends to be there. (The AGU fall meeting attracts more than 3 times the participants than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jointmathematicsmeetings.org/jmm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;largest mathematics meeting in the world&lt;/a&gt;.) If your field is anything like that, I'd say you probably should make an effort to participate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, when it comes to money (though this may be a bit late), many of the national conferences have special funding set aside for graduate students, and in addition many graduate programs have some limited travel funding provided. You may also want to talk to your advisor about travel funding. Both my wife and I are in academia, and neither of us have ever paid out of pocket for conference attendance as graduate students. (Of course, in your field the situation may yet be different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T13:10:30.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11854" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:04:52.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see absolutely no reason why not. It fits perfectly well into &quot;other academic achievements, honors, and activities&quot; (or whatever else your title of this part is). Just don't declare it the biggest achievement in your lifetime and provide the relevant details (conference name, level, session, etc.) in a reasonably full and concise format so that people can appreciate what you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T15:04:52.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11847" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:09:56.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would certainly be very pleased to receive 1 or 2 of such letters but I would hate to make it a standard academic practice (The image of Jean Bourgain reading &quot;fan mail&quot; sends shivers down my spine. Brrrrrr....). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T15:09:56.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11877" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:27:53.957" Score="2" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper at a conference and it is currently under review. Can I use this paper as a 'scientific report' (asked to assess candidate's writing skills) for a Ph.D application ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T02:10:35.903" Title="Using Paper under review as a Scientific Report in PhD application" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:36:40.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So long as this is for an internal evaluation process that doesn't involve any form of &quot;publication,&quot; it's hard to see how this could be a problem. You retain rights as the author of a paper, especially if it hasn't been published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have concerns over whether it is allowed, you can always ask the conference organizers if it's acceptable. On the other hand, if you are concerned whether the department you are submitting to will accept it, &lt;strong&gt;ask the department&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T15:36:40.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11836" CreationDate="2013-08-14T16:08:20.113" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever spelling or grammar checkers you use, you may rely only on their ability to detect a problem, not on their suggested solutions. Alas, if your paper is not completely trivial, this applies to most human professional editors as well no matter how much they charge or how many years of experience they claim. So, in the end, it'll all come back to you no matter what. I have been writing and speaking in broken English for 20 years and the only people who complained were the undergraduate students who, as far as I can judge, would hate me even if I had spoken with perfect Cambridge pronunciation and Oxford grammar. Just write in short simple sentences and you'll be fine. It will not be an exaggeration to say that, no matter what field you are in and what subject you are writing upon, the probability that an attempt of expressing your thought in an overly flamboyant manner, including all nuances and sideline remarks into a single sentence, and alluding to the arguments described in several previous passages at once (especially when the the latter are structured similarly to the phrase under consideration and the references to them can hardly be called unambiguous), will not throw the reader off for good somewhere in the middle of an elaborate construction you have built with utmost patience and verified against all spelling and grammar tools at your disposal is nearing that of the event that a layman be able to recite a sophisticated ten page legal contract with all details including each and every involved party and covenant therein in a single outpour flowing as effortlessly and graciously as a wide river in a deep valley after a quick look at it, i.e., zero. Just make sure that your thought is clear. Then yor massage wll cam thru evn if wrds r misspld and wrng grmmar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T16:08:20.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-14T16:48:19.717" Score="6" ViewCount="9945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to submit a latex document to a SAGE journal using ScholarOne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (poor) documentation says that it accepts tex files, but the pdf it produces says that it cannot turn my tex into a pdf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: The following files were submitted by the author for peer&#xA;  review, but cannot be converted to PDF. You must view these files (e.g. movies) online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;response.tex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just what it does with tex files? Should it compile them? I don't know. If it is not compiling, how do I get the error message?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2020-07-07T19:51:15.500" Title="Submitting TeX to ScholarOne" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11881" CreationDate="2013-08-14T17:09:47.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know the Scholar One Manuscripts (S1M) system can convert Word files into pdf, it does not contain a LaTeX engine but will accept PDF files. In the journal I work (which uses S1M), we accept LaTeX manuscripts but explcitly ask authors to produce a pdf of the document for reviewing purposes. It is a mistake or omission by the journal to not explain that the file for review must be either Word or PDF. The LaTeX files can be uploaded but must be marked as &quot;Not for review&quot; which means they are not included in the file sent to the reviewer. You need to check with the journal how they prefer to handle it. In my case, I do not need the LaTeX files until the final revised manuscript so uploading them is of minor use; this, however, might vary between journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know of any commnercial manuscript system in use that produces PDF from submitted LaTeX files but then I do not know all journals. In any case, the proper way with S1M should be to submit your files in LateXed PDF format (e.g. PDFLaTeX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T17:09:47.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11881" CreationDate="2013-08-14T17:11:50.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This might be more ontopic at tex.stackexchange.com.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you received sounds like an error, but is vague. First, of course talk to technical support if you can get hold of any. These systems are often set up to only accept a minimal set of LaTeX packages. If you are using any non-standard packages, see if you can remove them or include the functionality in the document itself. And of course talk to technical support if you can get hold of any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12554/submitting-a-journal-article-as-a-single-tex-file&quot;&gt;Submitting a journal article as a single tex file&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Peter says the system is not trying to convert at all, and he should know. However, I'll leave this answer here for now. If anyone thinks it should be removed, let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T17:17:26.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11881" CreationDate="2013-08-14T18:10:45.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the Royal Society of Chemistry journals and the American Chemical Society journals use ScholarOne Manuscripts™ as their web submission platform. In both cases, &lt;strong&gt;the system is able to compile LaTeX documents into a PDF file&lt;/strong&gt;. There are, however, strict requirements about the type of LaTeX document you can use. These are spelt out in a specific help section entitled &lt;em&gt;“Preparing and Submitting Manuscripts Using TeX/LaTeX”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ACS Authors have two distinct options for submitting work authored in TeX:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FAST Submission: Submit your own PDF file—and provide the native TeX and figures in a .zip file—and your own PDF file will be used for the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;STANDARD Submission: Submit a complete and properly styled TeX file, figures, and references using the achemso style package. The TeX files will be converted to PDF by ACS Paragon Plus and used for the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The help further states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you upload your TeX/LaTeX Manuscript File, the system will analyze the file, and identify additional resource files referenced within the file (such as image files and bibliographic files) that are necessary to complete the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manuscript files prepared in TeX/LaTeX (Version 2.02 and earlier) will be used in journal production provided you adhere to the following guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use only LaTeX2e. Use of plain TeX and RevTeX is discouraged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use generic style files whenever possible. Minimal formatting is all that is required in the document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Include all sections of the article in a single file. Include the list of references within the LaTeX file. Captions must be created in the TeX/LaTeX document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;References should be cited in text using &lt;code&gt;\cite{}&lt;/code&gt;, and the list of references should be itemized using &lt;code&gt;\bibitem{}&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use &lt;code&gt;\frac&lt;/code&gt; to build fractions. Do not use &lt;code&gt;\over&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;\stackrel&lt;/code&gt; to build fractions in displayed equations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use &lt;code&gt;\sum_{}^{}&lt;/code&gt; for summations and &lt;code&gt;\prod_{}^{}&lt;/code&gt; for products.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use the array environment only to build true matrices, not for aligning multiline equations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use characters/symbols in the generic LaTeX character set only. Symbols from other sets may not translate correctly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid extensive use of &lt;code&gt;\newcommand&lt;/code&gt; and `\def .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some style files (text and bibliographic) that are available in the public domain may be used for most ACS journals, e.g., jacs.sty and jacs.bst; jpc.sty and jpc.bst; achemso. The use of the achemso style package is strongly encouraged. Please note that the ACS does not provide support for using these files.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further requirement, which is not actually listed, is that all figures should be in the same directory (you cannot upload a directory structure). And, as noted, if you use bibtex, you have to run it manually and include the content of the &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt; file into your &lt;code&gt;.tex&lt;/code&gt; file before upload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion: &lt;strong&gt;ScholarOne Manuscripts™ has the capability to support LaTeX compilation&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether this is enable or not for your specific journal/publisher, I cannot know. In any case, check the documentation! (or ask the editorial office)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:10:45.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-14T19:59:38.100" Score="7" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to submit a manuscript describing a data product.  In the manuscript, I will advertise that the data are available for public use under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/summary/&quot;&gt;ODC Attribution license&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;em&gt;After&lt;/em&gt; submission, I will start the process to transfer the data to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wdc.dlr.de/about/general.php&quot;&gt;World Data Center for Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere&lt;/a&gt;, who would like to see a manuscript &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; I can transfer my data.  But in the manuscript, I hope to have a persistent link, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datacite.org/whycitedata&quot;&gt;citing the actual data&lt;/a&gt;.  So, I have a chicken-and-egg problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could solve this by writing in the submitted manuscript a note &lt;em&gt;This will be adapted in the final version&lt;/em&gt;.  How usual or unusual is it to write such meta-information in a manuscript?  Or should I rather not make mention of it in the initial submission, and rather communicate this meta-information to the reviewers via the editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T11:49:40.263" Title="In a submitted manuscript, how (un)usual is a note &quot;will be inserted in the final manuscript&quot;, or other meta-information to editor&amp;reviewers?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11841" CreationDate="2013-08-14T20:07:28.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published together with authors that only used their personal home address + email address as contact information, so your second option should not be a problem. You can publish in scientific journals without a formal affiliation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the work was performed at a previous location (e.g. as a student) where you are not currently working, you should include both the previous affiliation along with the current address (as others have also suggested).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T09:43:41.370" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T09:43:41.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11885" CreationDate="2013-08-14T20:16:03.177" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had a similar problem and submitted a paper including the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data for the analysis has been submitted to Dryad (&lt;a href=&quot;http://datadryad.org&quot;&gt;http://datadryad.org&lt;/a&gt;) with DOI: xxxxxxxx (Note: data will be uploaded at publication, during the review found in Appendix A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal did not have any problem with this, and I have now recieved the reviews. However, I contacted the journal beforehand and asked about this, since Dryad only accepts data from papers that are published or in press. In this case I included the data as an extra, review-only, appendix, and the need for this will naturally depend on specific journal policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only communicating this information to the editor (your last option) should also be fine. However, for the reviewers it can be useful to have the information in the actual manuscript when they are reading, instead of buried in an email from the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T11:49:40.263" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T11:49:40.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2013-08-15T02:10:35.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Submit it as a preprint in ArXiv and cite the corresponding document (I am assuming it has the minimum quality to be submited here). Producing preprints is a good practice (specially for countries with limited access to co$tly journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion: do not cite &quot;submitted to TOP JOURNAL&quot; papers. Only &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tyche&lt;/a&gt; knows what is going to happen with that submission (e.g. maybe the referee is your arch enemy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8189" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T02:10:35.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11943" CreationDate="2013-08-15T12:48:52.147" Score="2" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am majoring in computer engineering and having a minor in computational biology. I'm planning to apply for a PhD in computational biology too, though I didn't take an impressive amount of biology/chemistry/biochemistry modules. Therefore, I am taking the GRE subject test to compensate for the imbalances between my EECS and bio-related portions in my transcript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which GRE subject test will benefit me the most in this case? Biology or Cell and Biochemistry? The main purpose for me is to prove that I have good background in the fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T20:19:23.180" Title="GRE subject test- Biology or Cell/Biochemistry?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11861" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:34:36.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take (for profit company) is anything that clearly improves your domain knowledge in a way that can be tied back to your business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One funny thing in academia (if we are talking about academia and not about an industrial job that pretends to be one) is that you never know what exactly your work is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true in the business world as well. My boss has no idea that we need to consolidate user directories, set up a configuration management system or implement a system that lets us visualize netflow information. He comes to me with problems, I need to read to be able to reply with answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So work related stuff is almost always good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and xkcd. Anyone should be allowed to read xkcd at work. Except bus drivers, but that should be obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8190" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T14:34:36.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:38:27.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DevonThink&lt;/a&gt; for managing developing research projects. It's a Mac-based software which offers a data and knowledge management system. The relevant steps in my workflow for refining research ideas to concepts and then projects are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect literature on a relevant topic and put it into a dedicated DevonThink group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I see important points for the project in a particular paper, I create an annotation text document in the same group to write down these points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I import email related to the project (for example discussions with colleagues) into the database, so that I can link to them when making use of ideas obtained from there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When starting to synthesize ideas, I do it in a text document where I can insert links to or even image snapshots from the source documents in the DevonThink database.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When working on a project, I create journal files in the DevonThink database, writing down what I did, what results I got, and maybe pasting screenshots or relevant result diagrams into the journal file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T14:38:27.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:43:14.733" Score="1" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to conduct a training seminar inside a computer laboratory without a projector?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an existing software program that could achieve the same results as conducting a training seminar with the aid of a projector?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8191" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T15:19:00.823" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T13:20:21.840" Title="Conducting a training seminar without projector" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11902" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:55:25.863" Score="8" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend submitted a paper to a well-known computer science conference. One of the reviews was very short - only 2.5 lines of text, extremely general and vague, and rejected the paper. The review is so meaningless, that the author cannot even respond to it, or use it to improve the paper. Additionally, the review includes little justification to the rejection recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two reviews were balanced - there was one positive and one negative review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author feels that the short review should get a smaller weight in the final decision. How can he communicate this to the conference organizers? Is it a good idea to contact them directly by email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference is organized by an automatic web-based submission system that allows the author to write a single response to the reviewers, but it is not clear if this response gets to the organizers or only to the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T18:29:15.690" Title="Review too short and vague to be useful" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="48624" CreationDate="2013-08-15T15:03:05.317" Score="13" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a 2nd-year grad student in a US PhD program in one of the social sciences. Coursework has forced me throw out the initial ideas I had about research, which I proposed in my application nearly two years ago. Now I'm actively hunting for the &quot;right&quot; topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People ask me all the time, &quot;what's your research on?&quot; and I'm not sure how to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about &quot;how to pick a research topic&quot; as much as &lt;strong&gt;how to professionally present one's very tentative research idea(s) before one has a topic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I:&#xA;1) Preface any response to the question with &quot;I'm still early in my program and haven't written my dissertation prospectus yet, but I'll probably focus on ...&quot;&#xA;2) Should I be honest about having multiple ideas or just pick one in order to better focus the conversation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice probably differs across contexts -- i.e. talking with peer, talking with senior scholar. All tips are appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this question is subjective, but I think about the situation every day, and I feel like I need some advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T23:55:51.077" Title="Advice for early grad student: how to professionally present tentative research idea(s) before one has chosen a topic" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11895" CreationDate="2013-08-15T15:09:33.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, when submitting to a conference, you don't have control over the process to the detail you are talking about. It will probably be the case that the useless review does indeed get less weight during discussions (unless the reviewer happens to be one of those reviewers who holds a lot of sway and can get a paper rejected with a vague and general review!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would urge against sending an email to the conference chair / organizers -- unless you are extremely tactful, any attempt to sway them with this method will come off as whiny and will only hurt your case (or, rather, your friend's case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best option is to write a rebuttal as you normally would: fix all the critical comments from the other reviewers, address each comment specifically in your rebuttal response, and thank the reviewers for their consideration. The good news is that you got one positive review.  While this is not normally sufficient for a paper acceptance at a very competitive CS conference, you have the chance to improve the paper as much as you can, and send in your rebuttal, and you should make the most of that opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T15:09:33.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11894" CreationDate="2013-08-15T15:17:35.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;CLI or GUI? If GUI, you can have everyone watch your screen w/ a remote desktop client. Other solutions for CLI too (screen program) but I guess you're using a GUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T15:17:35.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11896" CreationDate="2013-08-15T16:21:08.260" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be honest for sure. If you don't know something, do not pretend you do because you may face a person who really knows what you try to talk about and then, if you have only a superficial grasp of the subject, you are toast. Just say straight that you've heard that X is an interesting subject, that you have already read , that you want to learn more about it and, perhaps, try a research project in that particular area, and that you have this and that idea and wonder what can be made of them. That will get you the warmest response you can expect from the person you are talking to (&quot;the warmest&quot; doesn't mean &quot;warm&quot;, by the way) and you may get some good advice or help this way from a &quot;complete stranger&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit that many people fail to understand that knowing and openly delineating the limits of one's knowledge and powers is &quot;a professional behavior&quot;. Nevertheless, those whose respect you should really earn during your academic career (whether they are your professors or your fellow students at the current moment) will judge you from this standpoint. The opinions of the rest may make a lot of difference on the short run but none on the long one.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T16:21:08.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11894" CreationDate="2013-08-15T17:54:37.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put your seminar material online, and just have people view it at the same time as you talk. It can be any easily readable format, like PDF file or simply series of web pages. If you are not sure that people will follow, just put large bold numbers on each page, and announce what page you're at when you change page. (A bit like kids' audio book!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either that, or hard copies of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T17:54:37.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T18:19:00.180" Score="38" ViewCount="5814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a little bit surprised to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Week-One-on-the-New-Job/141009/&quot;&gt;this comment thread&lt;/a&gt; on the Chronicle of Higher Education, which suggests (among other things) that faculty shouldn't fraternize with grad students. I think this site has a different slant than CHE, so I thought I would bring up the question here. Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that professors should definitely avoid getting romantically involved with grad students, or getting drunk with them. Moreover, I agree that a heightened sense of boundaries is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there any reason for a professor, who would otherwise be interested, to decline offers to attend parties thrown by grad students, or to go hiking with them, or to play soccer with them, or to go to bar trivia with them? I've observed this to be common in math departments, and appreciated by faculty and students alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2019-08-25T21:38:06.753" Title="Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11895" CreationDate="2013-08-15T18:29:15.690" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It reminds me of a review we got recently, in which, among other (reasonable and meaningful) things there was the phrase&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;5) The argument at the top of page 7 is not as clear as it should be.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My immediate response was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The referee's remark in section 5 is too vague to take any action upon it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I believe, my co-authors finally put it in a slightly nicer form, but the meaning stayed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with Chris that your friend should just ignore the &quot;content empty&quot; review and act properly upon the other two, but, before everything, ask yourself honestly whether the paper in question is good enough and written well enough? I don't want to know the answer but you should know it yourself before you proceed in any way or give him any advice. Only one positive review out of three is a clear signal of trouble unless your friend had quarreled with each and every influential colleague of his by the moment of submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing: whatever your friend &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; the organizers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do, most likely, trying to convince them of that directly won't accomplish anything. I believe that the indirect comments like the one I quoted above yield better results (especially if your friend's tact and sense of humor are not as terrible as mine :)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T18:29:15.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T18:29:53.010" Score="23" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to officially become the Ph.D. advisor to a math grad student at a second-tier state school. (He is about to pass his comprehensive exams.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is strong, motivated, and talented, but not to such an extent that I wonder why he's in our program and not some top-20 program. He doesn't know precisely what he wants to work on, and will be looking to me for guidance. He hopes to get some kind of academic job afterwards, but hasn't thought about precisely what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I best help him? For example, should I urge him to work on something difficult, technical, and of interest to experts -- or something less exciting to experts, but easier to explain and motivate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, although not always, our successful graduates don't get offered research postdocs, but do often go on to faculty positions at second-tier liberal arts schools or branch-campus state universities. Assuming he would be happy with such a position (which of course I will ask!), what can I do to maximize the chances for his success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T19:12:31.730" Title="As a dissertation advisor, how can I best help a &quot;typical&quot; graduate student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11903" CreationDate="2013-08-15T19:12:31.730" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let him teach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that he decides to make plans for working at a LAC or a branch campus of a state university he will need to be ready to teach the day he starts. So encourage him to take that part of his professional training seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your soon-to-be student is really going to end up in a small department a very helpful thing is that he can continue his research more or less independently. There is the internet but it is not the same as having half a dozen people working on the same topic just outside your door. This, I feel, is more important to his future than whether or not the topic he decides on has a large or small buy in cost. That being said he will want to have some facet of his research program that can be explained to a general mathematical audience, but this does not have to be all of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, find a friend of yours or a not-so-recent graduate who teaches at a school like this and ask them what they want to see in a candidate. That should give you a good guide for what outcomes you should work for in your student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T19:12:31.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11901" CreationDate="2013-08-15T19:21:21.727" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to your main question:  NO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the rules of the faculty, there is nothing particularly wrong with academics interacting with grad students, particularly if the boundaries you suggested are adhered to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fortunate enough to see this from the perspective of being a high school teacher and as a grad (PhD) student - in the grad-professor interactions, both parties are adults, professionals in their fields and are largely working together on the project.  The supervisors/advisors are not teachers in the traditional sense, but as their role states - advisors (supervisors in Australia) - often as co-authors of mutual papers, effectively a colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T19:21:21.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11901" CreationDate="2013-08-15T20:06:20.433" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose it depends on whether one views grad students as &lt;em&gt;hoi polloi&lt;/em&gt; who need to be kept on the other side of a &quot;class boundary&quot; (as the CHE comment put it), or whether one views them as colleagues who just happen to not be as far along on their academic journeys.  I prefer to see them as colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, when I was a grad student my advisor often had us (his research group) over to his house for dinners and drinks, and I'd often play racquetball with one of my dissertation committee members.  This made us feel appreciated and made it much more palatable to put in crazy hours when needed to meet a proposal or paper submission deadline.  And now, as a tenured faculty member, I take my students out to lunches and dinners and beers and hiking trips (alas, I'm too old for racquetball now).  I enjoy getting to know my students as whole individuals, and find that the socialization engenders a sense of community that makes things more pleasant for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socializing with students is very different from being &quot;buddies&quot; with them: the relationship between a professor and an advisee is very different than that between friends.  But IMHO this is no different than any other professional relationship with any other colleague: there are some things that are fine to share and others that are best left unexplored.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T21:17:45.327" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T21:17:45.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11901" CreationDate="2013-08-15T23:12:36.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rather emphatic &quot;&lt;strong&gt;No!&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I socialize and have socialized with my advisers and other related professors many times. In fact, its rather encouraged in our department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have an informal departmental event &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; every week called &lt;strong&gt;HBI&lt;/strong&gt; (Human Beer Interaction - yes, rather cheesy given the HCI focus of our department) where graduate students and faculty in the past have been known to hang out and talk about different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different professors socialize differently. Some professors have movie nights with their lab. Others organize dinners/lunches/pizza making sessions at their houses. Its a great opportunity to meet their better halves and families. Its also really great to go to the major conferences (CHI/CSCW) in our areas and hobnob with the professors there. I found the linked article to be rather out of sync - at least as far as our department of information science is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I know that in other departments in our university, there have been co-ed professor-student intramural soccer/softball teams, ice cream sessions, beers, dinners etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T23:12:36.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11922" CreationDate="2013-08-16T01:49:35.960" Score="10" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently won a scholarship related to my career focus. I was chosen as a winner in part because of a recommendation from a former professor. She is now asking me to draft a press release about winning the scholarship. I am hesitant because I do not want to appear press-hungry, but I would like to allow a write-up to be used as a means of increasing the visibility of the college and this professor. &lt;strong&gt;I do not want the focus to be on myself and my accomplishments.&lt;/strong&gt; How should I handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T23:12:30.753" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T23:12:30.753" Title="How to write a scholarship press release?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;self-promotion&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11901" CreationDate="2013-08-16T01:52:02.313" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There might be a problem here. Now this is somewhat related to what happens in corporate . If the student is a brown -noser then that is ok. He might be doing this(socializing ,which often leads to doing personal favors for adviser) to further his career. But if he is a backstabber ,he might get away with that crap , because he is close to that adviser and adviser completely trusts him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally seen cases where the grad student would go to an adviser's home ,babysit her kids , do her some personal chores and then speak crap about other students .And since the adviser thought this student was sincere, she would believe in whatever he said sans verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always better to have a friendly relationship with peers but with an Adviser you should be  a friendly acquaintance ,but not a friend . A manager (in this case an adviser or mostly lab supervisor) should always keep his distance from his student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T01:52:02.313" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11916" CreationDate="2013-08-16T02:38:35.127" Score="5" ViewCount="511" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the difference between termination and suspension?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there &quot;neutral&quot; ways for a graduate student leaving his graduate&#xA;school without completing a degree? Is a student voluntarily leaving his graduate school called termination?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When applying to another graduate school, will the student be asked&#xA;if he has ever received a probation and termination? How will that affect the student's chance to be admitted to the new school? For example, he&#xA;received a probation because he didn't manage to find a research&#xA;direction and research advisor in 2.5 years, followed by a termination a few months later because he didn't&#xA;pass his PhD qualification exam without &quot;protection&quot; from an advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T17:13:23.193" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T02:38:54.040" Title="Questions about termination" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11901" CreationDate="2013-08-16T03:43:54.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just know the boundary between &quot;socializing&quot; and &quot;fraternizing&quot; and you should be fine. I've seen a few examples where crossing this boundary was rather detrimental to the PhD advising process (though nobody got fired or expelled; it just got very difficult to force the student to meet her obligations and to carry out the required assignments because the student got an idea that she had a right to argue with and to question everything she was told to do). However, I don't think that maintaining some &quot;class hierarchy&quot; makes much sense at the PhD student level or even during extracurricular undergraduate activities like Putnam training, etc. though I'm all for it in the low level undergraduate classes ever since the time I was being kept on teaching nothing higher than engineering calculus for four years in a row, and the idea of introducing some kind of &quot;faculty uniform&quot; like in the military is not altogether alien to my mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to remember however is that no matter how friendly you are with your students outside the classroom, when you are lecturing, you are the boss and they are subordinates. The joint soccer game or beer jug yesterday should not become an excuse for not turning in the homework today. If this principle is understood and followed by both parties, I guess that's all &quot;hierarchy at the graduate level&quot; we need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the journal article in question, it was written by an administrator, albeit a clever one. Most advices he gave are excellent but at some places you certainly get the feeling I had some twenty years ago when I was pulled over for speeding by a policeman, asked him what would be the maximal speed they would allow in that state (North Dakota), and got the reply &quot;Sorry son, but all I can tell is that if you go under the posted limit, we won't bother you&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T03:43:54.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11918" CreationDate="2013-08-16T04:00:44.983" Score="12" ViewCount="3048" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research supervisor is a quite strict person who constantly criticizes me for my faults (such as slow progress, or always asking others for help on programming issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't blame him being a bit too strict with me, because anyway supervisor is here to supervise and give constructive suggestion. I really learn from his lessons for me. In fact, I am very grateful for him being willing to teach me some lessons. His comments are always very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the last meeting, he seemed not very satisfied and happy with my progress. I have previously told him about my plan of submitting a paper in November. It seems that he thought this kind of slow progress would fail the aim in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of meeting, after criticizing me for asking others for help too much instead of solving the problems myself, he decided to schedule the originally weekly meeting to two weeks later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I am quite worried as the submission deadline is just in November. Given my poor performance, I have no right to suggest getting the meeting every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that my research indeed gets stuck here. I kinda need the supervisors' advice to move on. What may I do to save this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T04:18:32.990" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T17:29:27.753" Title="Supervisor not satisfied and only willing to see me every two weeks, what should I do?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11910" CreationDate="2013-08-16T05:29:15.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not want the focus to be on myself and my accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many of us (hopefully) have a modicum of modesty, &lt;strong&gt;there will be many times in your career where it is in your best interest to triumph your accomplishments, and this is one of them&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, it is a no-brainer: your former professor asked you explicitly to write the press release, and you should do it. Your university home page or newspaper probably has a news section that demonstrates the type of press release you're talking about (e.g., a short story with a picture and a description of the research and/or accomplishments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release will be primarily about you (if you are the only winner at your school), but you should also include a paragraph about the scholarship itself and about the college and how it relates to the scholarship (e.g., &quot;The X Scholarship has been awarded at Y College for the past 10 years, and was funded through the generous donation of so-and-so, who graduated from the college in 1954...).  If it fits in, you can mention your professor's relationship to the scholarship and your involvement (how did she know to recommend you? Was it her impetus or yours?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned about how to write the press-release, I would reach out to someone with journalism experience, whether it is someone who works for the school paper, or the news-section of the school website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T05:29:15.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11912" CreationDate="2013-08-16T06:03:46.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically two ways to leave an academic program permanently: &lt;em&gt;withdrawal&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;termination&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Withdrawal&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;voluntary&lt;/em&gt; process, which can occur for any of a number of reasons: academic dissatisfaction, financial, psychological, medical, or family are usually the most common of these. The key factor here is that withdrawal is normally initiated &lt;em&gt;by the student&lt;/em&gt;. It is &quot;neutral&quot; in the sense that normally the student hasn't done anything wrong, and could have continued in the program had she so chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Termination&lt;/strong&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;involuntary&lt;/em&gt; process initiated by the supervisor or department. Usually, under such cases, the reason is inadequate performance or violating departmental policies. For instance, one might fail a qualifying examination, fail to pass required courses, committed &quot;academic dishonesty,&quot; or violated some other regulation. This is the sort of &quot;black mark&quot; that you are referring to. Depending on the situation, this can have catastrophic effects on the student's ability to apply and be accepted elsewhere. It all depends on the nature of the situation, and what the student's role in the situation was.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;em&gt;suspension&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;probation&lt;/em&gt; are serious issues that require disciplinary action but are not so serious as to require termination. Probation may or may not need to be reported, but an action which leads to a suspension—or temporary removal from the graduate program—probably would need to be reported, if asked about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not necessarily a given if you will be asked about this in a graduate application—it depends very much on the particular program or school to which one applies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T06:03:46.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11914" CreationDate="2013-08-16T06:09:18.420" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be several factors at work here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, the advisor may simply have other commitments that prevent meeting on a weekly basis.  I know that as my group has gotten larger, I tend to meet only with new members of the group weekly; older members are on an every-two-weeks or as-needed basis (per mutual agreement).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, the advisor may be cutting back on the frequency of meetings so that you learn to become more independent. I know that the big breakthrough in my own graduate research came at a time when my co-advisors were both completely out of the picture for a while (one was on sabbatical and the other was on a temporary leave of absence). This might not work for everybody, but it can make a big difference if you &quot;take off the training wheels&quot; and start working things out for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T06:09:18.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11914" CreationDate="2013-08-16T12:19:14.370" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Once every two weeks&quot; is actually &quot;quite frequently&quot; for an individual research project. Your supervisor, probably, just noticed that more often than not you could not tell him much after just one week of work (very few students can, actually) and decided to listen to your &quot;progress report&quot; once in two weeks. If you are really doing your work and aren't just dragged by him through it, this shouldn't slow you down in any way and I bet 10 against 1 that if you get something interesting to tell him tomorrow, he will listen to you the day after tomorrow no matter how far the scheduled meeting date is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of operating from a &quot;submission deadline&quot; in an unfinished research project looks totally ridiculous to me. The whole difference between a research project and house cleaning is that you never know how much time you'll need for the former and whether you'll be able to pull it through at all. In my own work, the failure to success ratio is 9 to 1 and that is generally considered quite good. You have to learn that things take time and that you may fail completely when doing research. It is &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; and there is no reason to freak out about that. Even in the case when you see the general way to do things and are certain that it must work, the &quot;little details&quot; may take forever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can request direct help now and then but the request should be not in the form &quot;I just don't know what to do next...&quot; but in the form &quot;I've done this. Now, for the next step I would need something like this. Unfortunately there is this particular obstacle in the approach I am currently pursuing. Do you have an idea of how I can overcome it or I should try a different route altogether?&quot;. You supervisor may share the &quot;bird's view&quot; of the road with you (and it is sort of his duty) but to go around trees, to jump over brooks and to climb hills is your job unless you really face an impenetrable thicket, a fast deep river, or a steep mountain on your way). Telling you how to do every little thing every time is no fun for him and takes the most important part of the research experience away from you. Passing the &lt;em&gt;routine&lt;/em&gt; work (like programming of a known algorithm) to others is a no-no at your current level. You may &quot;outsource&quot; your own work only when you can do it faster and better yourself, but there is yet another task at hand that nobody else can do at all. You may (and should) seek general information, but not ready solutions to your particular problems even if the latter are as trite as &quot;Why does this stupid while loop stop one step earlier than it should?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my general advice is to relax, to forget about all deadlines, and to proceed on your own and at your own pace however slow it may seem to you. Just don't stop altogether and give up unless you are ready to declare an official failure and quit completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T12:19:14.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11894" CreationDate="2013-08-16T13:20:21.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I get the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;no projector&quot; (and no whiteboard) mean &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not want to use a projector (nor a whiteboard)?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;=&gt; IMHO you should then know what you want (and tell us why), without that we'll not know what to answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or: just there is no projector available&lt;br&gt;&#xA;=&gt; borrow projector somewhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or is it no possibity to project to a suitable space&lt;br&gt;&#xA;=&gt; borrow projector and screen, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no possibility for placing a screen, neithr&lt;br&gt;&#xA;=&gt; or go for a different room?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T13:20:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-16T14:56:58.000" Score="7" ViewCount="14851" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper with my teacher and his teacher. I don't know the standard of writing authors name, affiliation and email in the paper. I am using &lt;strong&gt;IEEEtran&lt;/strong&gt; template for an IEEE conference. If the authors are in different department or university there is no problem we can use column author name like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;     Author one                  Author two                 Author three&#xA;   Department one              Department two             Department three&#xA;   University one              University two             University three&#xA;author.one@uni-one.edu     author.two@uni-two.edu     author.three@uni-three.edu&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but what if two of them be in a same department and just two of them has a .edu email address? In this situations we can use another style like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;        Author one*!, Author two*! and Author three^#&#xA;              *Department One, University One&#xA;              ^Department two, University two&#xA;          !{Author.one, Author.two}@univ-one.edu&#xA;                #Author.three@univ-one.edu&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or it should be like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;        Author one*, Author two* and Author three^&#xA;             *Department One, University One&#xA;          {Author.one, Author.two}@univ-one.edu&#xA;             ^Department two, University two&#xA;                Author.three@univ-one.edu&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: What is the right format in this case when different authors with different affiliation, department and email should be on a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my specific, we all are from the same Univ. and Department but they both have .edu email and I don't have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T22:50:20.840" Title="How to format multiple authors name, affiliation and email in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11920" CreationDate="2013-08-16T16:43:38.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just look up previous conference proceedings and do the same!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T16:43:38.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11910" CreationDate="2013-08-16T17:10:25.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, look at previous press releases from your institution and department. This may give you ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But use the press release as an opportunity to speak to the public about things you deserve to be publicized. You're right, it doesn't have to be about you, but getting the fellowship is the award that gives you an opportunity to speak up about things you care. Press releases often contain quotes. In this case these could be quotes of other people talking about your involvement in a program you helped launch, or a quote of yourself praising whatever it is you want to praise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;use that opportunity to promote something you believe in&lt;/strong&gt;, in addition to pro outing yourself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T21:02:06.677" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T21:02:06.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11924" CreationDate="2013-08-16T17:52:58.170" Score="13" ViewCount="2238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had submitted a paper to a reputed Computer Science Journal. The reviewer has a lot of constructive changes, in addition to that he also suggested citing a few more papers, all by the same author. Since this is a double blind process, we don't know each other's identity. So, is it common for reviewers to suggest references in this field or any other field ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T22:37:43.973" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T22:37:43.973" Title="Can a reviewer suggest references?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11923" CreationDate="2013-08-16T18:23:39.330" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it is a common practice, and I have both been given reference suggestions in blind reviews and given reference suggestions in my own reviews. If you are concerned about a reviewer trying to promote his/her own papers by the suggestions, I'll just say that if the recommendations are apt (i.e., if you read the suggested papers and they do appear to be legitimate references), then it makes sense to cite the papers regardless of whether there is a seemingly disingenuous motive by the reviewer. Even if you don't specifically use the prior work, it makes sense to mention them in your &quot;Related Work&quot; section. If you don't cite the suggested papers, provide a legitimate reason in your rebuttal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, if a reviewer is chosen well, he or she should be an expert in the topic of the paper, and most likely does have apt references under his or her name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T18:23:39.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11923" CreationDate="2013-08-16T20:48:01.697" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is very common&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, some journals explicitly ask the reviewer to answer the question &lt;em&gt;“Are the literature references appropriate and up to date?”&lt;/em&gt; (in addition to other reviewing criteria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proper citation is an important part of academic publishing, and it should not be treated lightly. It is also the reviewers' job to make sure that you did not, in good or bad faith, forget to cite relevant work in the field. As such, &lt;strong&gt;it is common (and desirable) for reviewers to recommend citation of some papers&lt;/strong&gt; that the authors may have forgotten, or not know of. It has also happened to me in the past, as a reviewer, to &lt;strong&gt;recommend deleting some references which I believed were irrelevant or too numerous&lt;/strong&gt;. (In particular, some overly enthusiastic self-citation or friend-citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it may happen that many references you were required to add are from the same author. Maybe it's the reviewer, maybe it's not, but it shouldn't matter to you. Read the papers, and if they're relevant, cite them. &lt;strong&gt;If they're not relevant&lt;/strong&gt;, and you really believe citing them would not be correct, then simply &lt;strong&gt;don't cite them and explain your position in the reply to the editor&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't make accusations (&lt;em&gt;“the reviewer is trying to improve his h-index”&lt;/em&gt;), simply state that you do not believe the references to be relevant for reasons X and Y. Remember, the editor is the one making the final decision, not the reviewer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T20:48:01.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12047" CreationDate="2013-08-16T21:01:47.957" Score="25" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's been a case of alleged data manipulation in a recent &lt;em&gt;Nano Letters&lt;/em&gt; paper (initial report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2013/08/13/alleged-data-manipulation-in-nano-letters-and-acs-nano-from-the-pease-group/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;; now-retracted &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl400959z&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QSLsu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You can surely make your own opinion on whether the images have been digitally modified, given the above snapshots (look for gray rectangles around the rods); I was careful to write “alleged” because the paper’s PI threatened legal action against the blogger who reported the issue.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this case lead to a large number of comments &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2013/08/13/alleged-data-manipulation-in-nano-letters-and-acs-nano-from-the-pease-group/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/2013/08/14/some-very-suspicious-tem-images-in-nano-letters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; about whose responsibility it was to catch this issue (reviewers or editor). I tend to agree that the reviewer should probably have caught it, but this lead me to wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As editor of a scholarly journal, what measures can I implement to prevent image/photo manipulation? And what about data manipulation?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Organic Letters&lt;/em&gt; has made the news two months ago when they &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/2013/06/07/organic-letters-on-the-lookout-for-data-manipulation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hired a in-house data analyst&lt;/a&gt;. Is that the way to go? Are there other measures one could take to reduce the threat of image and data manipulation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T13:40:48.217" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:40:48.217" Title="As an editor, what measures can I implement to prevent image/photo manipulation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11928" CreationDate="2013-08-16T21:35:11.513" Score="9" ViewCount="2965" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to have a letter of recommendation from a senior lecturer rather than from a full professor? The lecturer knows me well (I took two of his classes and I'm TA'ing for him) and he really likes me. Unfortunately he is not involved in research, but I should have two other letters from research profs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8208" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T21:45:18.180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T23:35:25.247" Title="Letter of recommendation from a senior lecturer" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11927" CreationDate="2013-08-16T22:06:14.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A clarification for what you need a letter would help. But, any letter that highlight academic skills should be useful. It will show your capacity to plan and carry out work so regardless of whether it is research or teaching you should get a leter. And, in each case the person most qualified to provide the letter should write it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing letters that describe traits that are not sought after in an application will of course not be optimal (probably not detreimental, however). You therefore need to chose your authors of letters to match the skills requested for your application purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T22:06:14.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11927" CreationDate="2013-08-16T23:35:25.247" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a reader's perspective, there are three components to a letter of recommendation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what specific skills/accomplishments/qualities does it discuss?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how relevant are those skills etc. to the position or program one is being considered for? and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much credibility does the letter writer have?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone who is not involved with research writes a letter praising your research abilities, that probably won't have a lot of credibility.  If someone who is deeply involved in teaching praises your teaching, that will have a lot more credibility.  If teaching is important in the PhD program you're applying to (it usually is -- and definitely if you're going to be a TA), then that should count in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're getting letters from two research faculty who can speak to your ability to do research, it's probably OK to get a letter from an instructor -- as long as this person speaks about things within his/her sphere of expertise, it probably won't hurt and may possibly help your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T23:35:25.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11812" CreationDate="2013-08-17T01:29:29.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, standardization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once asked this question to a colleague, and I appreciated the response I received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the faculty member told me, &quot;What I like about the GRE is that it's the only way I can compare apples to apples.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went on to explain, &quot;How can I compare a 3.2 GPA at University X with a 3.7 GPA at University Y? I can't. But, at least with GRE scores, I can compare the two students on an even playing field.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My retort was that a high GRE score isn't necessarily a good indicator of potential in graduate school, although it might be a good indicator to determine the amount of time a prospective student spent preparing for the test. (I got a lot of milage out of my &lt;em&gt;How to Ace the GRE&lt;/em&gt; practice book.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He readily agreed, and assured me that it's just one piece of the puzzle. An admissions office only has so much to go on: a transcript, a GRE score, and perhaps a &quot;Why I want to go to graduate school&quot; cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could throw out the GRE, but then there would be that much less information to base admissions decisions on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut tells me that the negatives include the expense and hassle for the applicant, and a limited ability to predict how the student will actually perform. But I must admit my colleague had a point with his &quot;apples to apples&quot; perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T01:29:29.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11246" CreationDate="2013-08-17T01:47:00.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Daniel commented, &quot;there is nothing special about The WHO.&quot; As with any source, cite in accordance with the citation style  you are using. For Vancouver style, two online guides are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southampton.ac.uk/library/resources/documents/vancouverreferencing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/?amp=&amp;amp;depth=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Find the section relevant to the source you are using, (electronic book, print book or website), and use the recommended format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T01:47:00.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11912" CreationDate="2013-08-17T02:38:54.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When applying to another graduate school, will the student be asked if he has ever received a probation and termination? How will that affect the student's chance to be admitted to the new school? For example, he received a probation because he didn't manage to find a research direction and research advisor in 2.5 years, followed by a termination a few months later because he didn't pass his PhD qualification exam without &quot;protection&quot; from an advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the student is simply not prepared for graduate school, or at least that graduate program.  (Moreover, the department was irresponsible for letting them stay so long without an advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the student has a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; compelling story about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they could not find an advisor, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they did not pass quals, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; neither of those circumstances will repeat in a different department — with all three explanations backed up in the student's recommendation letters — this will almost certainly kill their chances of admission anywhere.  Admissions committees are looking for students with strong evidence of research potential, and failing to find a research direction, secure an advisor, and pass quals is a rather strong signal of the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of this answer, the student may be tempted to lie in their application, by claiming not to have been kicked out, or not to have attended the other graduate program at all.  &lt;strong&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;VERY&lt;/em&gt; bad idea.&lt;/strong&gt;  Unexplained gaps in an applicant's academic record are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; suspicious.  And even if the student somehow got admitted, if the dishonesty is discovered later, they'd immediately get kicked out (again), and possibly asked to pay back any financial support they received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T02:38:54.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11939" CreationDate="2013-08-17T06:13:04.117" Score="2" ViewCount="1433" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to figure out whether a university-program is offering Professional Masters degree  or &quot;Research&quot; Masters degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are all taught Masters degree programs professional programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorDisplayName="user4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-17T13:16:05.173" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T17:14:16.507" Title="How to figure out whether a Masters degree is a &quot;Professional&quot; or &quot;Research&quot; degree?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1078" CreationDate="2013-08-17T12:03:55.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would list the current affiliation in the address field (that field just tells where people can find you, not much more than that) and start the paper with an elaborate paragraph starting with &quot;This work was made possible through the generous support by.... &quot;. This way you kill both birds at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T12:03:55.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-17T12:36:51.960" Score="15" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live and teach at a university in S. Korea. I may have an opportunity to complete my PhD in TESOL or English linguistics at this university. However, I am reluctant because I have heard that PhDs from non-Western universities (in particular, Korea) are not valued or equatable to US PhDs. Anecdotal evidence from my department supports a similar notion: all the PhDs in my department were received in the US. So, my question is, how are PhDs from non-Western universities perceived? Would a university rather hire someone with a US PhD rather than a US citizen with a Korean PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7317" LastActivityDate="2018-09-02T08:07:26.150" Title="How are PhDs from foreign universities percieved in the US?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-17T16:00:29.167" Score="40" ViewCount="8298" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current situation is that I am stuck teaching in a couple of universities that do not support the research at all in my country of origin. I am 38 years old and I have finished a MSc degree in Europe (one year ago), but I find it pretty hard to get a funded PhD position until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I really feel discouraged and depressed because I really like to do research, but is pretty hard to do it without economical support; and more difficult to share ideas if my current place of work has that null approach to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how I can get feedback from other professors around the world and expose my ideas? Maybe with the hope that they will like to guide me in their field of specialty or maybe doing a paper together. I know that a lot of good professors in their own field are pretty busy, so I think it would be not polite to approach to them, by email, tell them about my ideas and ask for academical support (not monetary, but about guiding and feedback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field that I like to do research is Computer Science. I have only 5 publications in different areas, but I would really like to do more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T19:44:31.433" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T12:12:21.057" Title="The nightmare of being an independent researcher" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11937" CreationDate="2013-08-17T16:30:22.463" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, 5 papers on completion of your Masters is pretty good (for comparison, I had 1 rejected paper at that stage).  Even though they are in different areas, they demonstrate your researching skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, in regards to the PhD and in particular, funding - I have a few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research not only what the academics' specialities are, but also the scholarship/funding opportunities that the universities have on offer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the academics, asking about &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; research, this way you'll express your interest without giving away all of your ideas.  Once you build a rapport with the academics, then enquire about co-authoring a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps look into working at a university (library, research assistant etc), so, look at the job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most of all, don't give up!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, by no means an exhaustive list and I am sure, other members here will provide more in depth answers, but it something to think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T16:30:22.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11933" CreationDate="2013-08-17T17:14:16.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main difference is that &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; MS degrees require a thesis, which describes the student's &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt;, while professional/taught MS degrees do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several secondary differences as well.  Professional/taught MS programs are cash cows; their enrollments are generally higher, their admissions criteria are generally lower, they almost never offer financial support, and students are generally treated like cattle.  Research MS programs generally have smaller enrollment, because the students require more individual attention, and therefore higher admission standards; some research MS programs offer financial support in the form of assistantships or even fellowships.  In many departments, there is an easy transition from a research MS program into the PhD program; transitioning from a professional/taught MS program into a PhD program is almost impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these answers are very crude approximations.  The actual difference will vary significantly between departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T17:14:16.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11914" CreationDate="2013-08-17T17:29:27.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor is treating you like a grad student. This is very likely a good sign, but it can also be quite hard. Many of the problems you listed are very similar to my own early grad school experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My research supervisor is a quite strict person who constantly criticizes me for my faults (such as slow progress, or always asking others for help on programming issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tend to receive mostly negative feedback from my very amiable supervisor. In the early days he would start out by saying something positive first. As time went by, the positives got mentioned less and less, until they essentially stopped. Now that I am almost done, the negatives have slowed down to a trickle as well, AND I MISS THEM. I learned to appreciate the importance of someone taking a close look at my work and giving feedback which helps improve the end result. Because it's not about me - it's about doing high quality work. Dealing with mostly negative feedback is a typical experience for a researcher, and it takes some time to get through the soul-crushing part of it and start valuing the informational part. The way around it is to have a passion for the truth which overrides the need to feel valued for being right. It takes a while to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have previously told him about my plan of submitting a paper in November. It seems that he thought this kind of slow progress would fail the aim in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you set yourself an unreasonable deadline, and that your supervisor could see that you're not yet quite at the level where you can write a paper. But that's OK. It just takes time. Imagine that you're to work on your next paper all alone. Which are the things that would be terribly difficult to do without others? Those may just be the things you need to work on right now. Programming is often a crucial skill for researchers, but it can be really difficult to get through that first period where you get stuck for hours over trivial things such as proper syntax. But that's simply what the learning process looks like. It truly gets easier with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, I am not saying that you're &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; to feel bad in this situation. It could be that your supervisor isn't particularly good at giving feedback and that he has a bad intuition on how difficult it is for a newbie to get into programming. But you're not alone, and you're getting a potentially valuable glimpse of the grad school experience right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T17:29:27.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11937" CreationDate="2013-08-17T17:52:03.320" Score="22" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up a webpage where you put your CV, papers, projects, &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; about yourself as a professional. The people should be able to access this information at a click of a button, not through long search or e-mail exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to conferences and other events where you can meet people and get acquainted with them. Try to give a talk there or, at least, to present a poster. Hang on the CS Stack exchange and other professional sites. About 10% of my knowledge of who is who comes from MO interactions and I suspect that many people there would never hear of me otherwise either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the grapevine. Tell your friends about the situation, they'll let their friends know, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Direct E-mail is also possible but you'll have to put something on the table at the opening move. Ideally, it should start with &quot;Dear Prof. ... You asked on/in .... whether .... is true. The answer is .... (see my attached paper).&quot; Then you may confidently end with &quot;By the way, I am currently looking for ... &quot; (just do not request too much) and nobody will be able to resist. You can put a few lower cards on the table as well but  starting with &quot;I have this wonderful idea, I just don't know where to apply it&quot; will, most likely, earn your mail a guaranteed permanent position in the trash box with possible honorable mention in the spam filter blacklist.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get into the habit of spending some time every day looking at what's going on in the field you are interested in and reading.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the job advertisements regularly. With math. all you need is to go to mathjobs.org I don't know if there is a CS analog of it but you can find that out. You never know what and when may come your way, so be always ready to move quickly when an opportunity presents itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, get noticed and get your past achievements exposed plus look for every opportunity to engage into a communication and joint ventures with everyone whose work looks decent to you. Remember, however, that, at least in your position, you will need to think of what other people like and are doing, not try to seduce them to think of your own ideas and projects! (By the way, I find this modus operandi very beneficial regardless of one's status). People will go out of their way for you only if you demonstrate that you can go out of your way for them first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against applying for grants, etc. until you get known at least a little bit. Rejections won't help you in any way and the free money is so scarce nowadays that even people with established reputation don't always get their awards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T20:20:20.113" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T20:20:20.113" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11891" CreationDate="2013-08-17T20:19:23.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question best answered by the admissions officers at the programs to which you want to apply. They will generally have recommendations as to which test they would prefer you to take. If there's a consensus that one of the tests is preferable to the other, that's the one that you should take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My particular sense on this is that Cell/Biochemistry is probably closer to what is expected for people in Computational Biology than the more general Biology exam. However, I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a bio person, so I'm not speaking from a position of authority here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T20:19:23.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11946" CreationDate="2013-08-17T23:58:59.890" Score="4" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I encounter papers in which the authors expend significant effort to either: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove an hypothesis that I know to be false;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promote a new theory that I know to be fundamentally flawed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, the authors use methods such as forging experimental results, misinterpreting results or misinterpreting cited references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I know that the views presented in the paper are false, I can deduce from the paper that the author must have favored promoting their views over correctness. However someone less educated in the topic might not be aware of this and base their work on this paper as they consider the presented views to be scientifically proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a commonly accepted method to flag such a paper, so that future readers will be aware that the presented views are forged and false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8215" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-08-18T00:11:49.530" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T00:19:18.337" Title="How do I respond to papers that present the authors' views and opinions as scientific fact?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11945" CreationDate="2013-08-18T00:19:18.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you believe there are significant problems with an existing manuscript, then you should present these issues to the journal in which the &quot;offending&quot; articles appear. The format this response should take depends upon the nature of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the issue is in fact &quot;forging experimental results,&quot; then the paper deserves to be retracted. However, this is a difficult allegation to prove, and you would need to have strong justification (not evidence, &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;) backing up your allegations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, if the issue is misinterpretations of results or previous literature, this does not quite rise to the level of &quot;academic dishonesty&quot; as forging results. It is not necessarily correct to have the paper retracted. Instead, you should consider writing a &quot;comment&quot; or &quot;letter to the editor&quot; or even a longer paper in response to the problems in the earlier work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that if the paper has appeared in a reputable journal, it has gone through some sort of peer review process. As a consequence of this, it will be necessary to present a more &quot;airtight&quot; argument than if the paper merely appears in a repository such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;. In the latter case, however, then there's probably not much you can do beyond the aforementioned &quot;response article,&quot; as the paper has not been published, and thus retraction depends on the author &quot;self-retracting&quot; the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T00:19:18.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11948" CreationDate="2013-08-18T02:06:58.513" Score="6" ViewCount="968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few questions about letters of recommendation for graduate school. I'll include my current situation, as I'm not sure what is relevant and what is not. I'm entering my fourth year of my bachelors in math, but I may stay an extra couple semesters to finish my minor (I also had a small setback, so doing the degree in 4 years wasn't entirely possible). I'll be applying for grad school in math. Here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you ask a Prof to give a letter of reference to more than one university? For example, lets say that each school I apply to requires 3 letters of reference. Then, if I were to apply to 3 grad schools, would I need 9 distinct professors to ask for letters?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I get to see the letters which are sent?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is one Prof who I've taken a course under, and I did well in his class. During that term, I showed an interest in the material, but I also think he does not like me (well, I'm not sure). This may or may not be the case, but let's say it is. Would it be unwise to ask this person for a letter? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8216" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T02:24:58.473" Title="Letter of Recommendation/Reference Protocols" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11947" CreationDate="2013-08-18T02:24:58.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It's quite typical to ask each prof to write a letter for each school you apply to. Indeed, you almost certainly want to do this. Be sure to take care of all the paperwork beforehand, pre-address envelopes if any applications use snail mail, etc. so he/she doesn't have to. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hard to say. I'd find someone else in your department (who knows the prof in question) to ask. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T02:24:58.473" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1184" CreationDate="2013-08-18T09:17:26.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really see why you are concerned at all! When you apply for PhD admissions, you have can always suggest who you want to work with, based on their and your research interests (you have to like them and they have to like you). I guess my question is how did you get paired up with him in first place and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make it sound like you are stuck with him, but you aren't. Now if he hired you to be on his project (remember this is his project/funding), you are to work for him and do it the way that makes him look good, (he has expectations to meet too and he wants to do a good job and look good to his superiors/sponsors). If you aren't interested in his project (and it clearly looks like you are not), don't west your time or his staying on his team. Approach your program and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and provide your reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you understand that, in most cases in research based universities, you don't get a PhD admission offer unless at least one of the professors in the department you apply to is interested in your research topic. Now it would be unfair of you for a professor to hire you (recommend you for admission) so you can be in his team and then expect him to let you work for someone else. While he doesn't own you, he also feels that you would be an asset to his team upon your admission into the program, otherwise he could've recommended a different candidate whose interest matches his research/project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is however, you should get out there. Approach your department Dean's office and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and explain your reasons. Keep in mind however that in most cases at PhD level, a professor will only agree to work with you/serve as your advisor if he feels that he is familiar with your research interest and that you will be of a great asset to his team. hope that helps. Remember that your tuition weaver and other monetary benefits (monthly stipend, medical insurance, etc) you receive while you are pursuing your PhD studies is covered by the money that is allocated to his project. So it is important that have interest in the work/project he has for you and you are confident you would succeed doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8217" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T09:17:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-18T13:48:18.860" Score="28" ViewCount="1429" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, without giving out the details about the school. I joined a graduate program at school X, because I was really interested in work of professor Y. I met him during the graduate school visit and I accepted the offer to join school X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though Prof. Y did not officially accept me as his graduate student, he said come and meet me when school starts and we can figure out your research direction. Now, when I came to start at this school; I found out the professor Y has left and joined a different school Z. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what do now. My decision of joining school X was based on my intentions to work with Prof Y. Also, on top of that the school X now just has one faculty working in my interested area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be precise I am starting the PhD program now (Fall , 1st sem). I am not sure what my next step should be? I would appreciate any suggestions on the given situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T14:54:15.073" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T14:54:15.073" Title="What should I do if the professor I intended to work with has moved to a different school?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11951" CreationDate="2013-08-18T18:36:35.643" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this happens. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend applying to school Z during your first year at school X. This would be very natural under the circumstances, and nobody (in particular, not those at school X) will think less of you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, I'd recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;E-mail and ask Prof. Y if he'd be willing to vouch for you with the graduate admissions committee at school Z. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simultaneously apply to a couple of other programs that might be more suitable for you than school X. This goes especially if Z is substantially more selective than X, so you are far from sure that you'll get in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kick ass in your first year at X. This will keep you sharp, enable you to get a letter of support from someone at X, and better prepare you for the program at Z if you go.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you might not get into Z, or you might find a research area you like at X and decide you prefer to stay. (Another reason to kick ass in your first year at X.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T18:36:35.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11951" CreationDate="2013-08-18T19:08:59.367" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you may very well want to transfer to school Z in order to work with Professor Y, I'd consider the following point. If you expressed strong interest in working with him, and he made comments in writing that you should talk to him when you arrive at the school, then he was remiss in notifying you that he was no longer, in fact, at school X. Do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to work with an advisor who's packed up and moved without letting you know in advance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would also recommend, as Anonymous does, that you see if there's anyone in your current department who you would be interested in working for. If so, I'd pursue that option alongside the possibility of transferring to other departments. However, I'd also recommend that, &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you accept an offer in another department, that you ensure that you have &lt;strong&gt;multiple&lt;/strong&gt; potential advisors available to you, if you're working in a field where a commitment is not required before you enroll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:08:59.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11957" CreationDate="2013-08-18T19:28:57.573" Score="8" ViewCount="9608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently passed the M.Sc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was reviewing a paper I found it interesting and potentially useful. I am planning to adopt the analyses that are utilized at that paper in my area of interest. The applications are quite different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it feasible, usual and professional to propose that paper's first author (he is a post-doc student) to participate in my future work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about the contribution, to be more exact, the order of names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can politely ask him for his contribution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8041" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T11:05:35.827" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T19:14:30.043" Title="Inviting someone to co-author a paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11956" CreationDate="2013-08-18T19:33:43.077" Score="12" ViewCount="691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently midway through my first Postdoc gig, I got a 1 year contract and haven't heard a word from my PI concerning any possible extensions. I only have 6 more months left in my program, and I was wondering whether I should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him directly whether he is considering to extend my contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start looking for other jobs without consulting with him first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I'm under a grant that runs out shortly after December (my contract is due on February), and we might or might not have an extension for that. The answer should come around September's end, but I'm afraid it'll be too late to look for another postdoc then, I'm under a J1 visa in the USA, and I'm worried that the immigration process to extend it and the whole hiring process might take considerable longer than 5 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AS professors and more experienced professionals, what would you recommend to do, I'm also wondering whether asking him if I should look for another job might strain our relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:44:32.013" Title="How can I address my career future with my current PI?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11955" CreationDate="2013-08-18T19:44:32.013" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your advisor has the &lt;strong&gt;duty&lt;/strong&gt; to inform you if you are meeting expectations, and to notify you in a timely manner if your contract will be renewed or not. Politely bringing this up at the end of the meeting should not cause conflict with your advisor—unless your advisor is a control freak (in which case it's not exactly a bad thing that you'll need to move on!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would have this conversation as soon as possible, as the end of your contract will be here quite soon. You should inform him, if you'd like to continue working with him, that such is the case. You should also politely mention that if the finances aren't secure for a commitment, that you will need to consider additional job opportunities to ensure that you are not &quot;stuck&quot; looking for a job without a current source of income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:44:32.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11954" CreationDate="2013-08-18T20:14:56.090" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How I can politely ask him for his contribution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just sent him/her an email with a brief summary of the ideas you are interested in and ask him/her if he/she is interested on the project, it has worked for me. Otherwise, try to attend one of his/her talks and approach him/her and the end of the talk, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How about the contribution, to be more exact, the order of names?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is too early to discuss about this (&quot;Before one brings home the bacon one must kill the pig&quot;). Who knows whether he/she is going to generalise or improve the ideas you propose or he/she would barely be involved in the project (you will come across all sorts of characters while doing research). A safe option is to use the alphabetical order. It helps to avoid many ego-fights. Start with a document without the name of the authors. If you end-up with something worthy of publication, put the cards on the table and ask directly &quot;what order would you be more comfortable with?&quot; or &quot;would you be happy with the order '&lt;strong&gt;ME&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;em&gt;John Doe&lt;/em&gt;'? &quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8223" LastEditorUserId="8223" LastEditDate="2013-08-18T20:20:25.100" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T20:20:25.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11822" CreationDate="2013-08-18T21:49:40.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be a magic solution but I would suggest focusing on a project than involves more applications and simulations than theoretical results. You would also need to find a suitable, likely small, journal that replies fast. Note that top journals may take years to get back to you with a first review or even an automatic rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I got some &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; results after googling your profile picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8223" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T21:49:40.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11951" CreationDate="2013-08-18T21:57:14.300" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD student was in exactly the same situation when I was moving from Michigan to Wisconsin but I told him that that move would be likely to occur even before I became his adviser. He just transferred with me (asking me only to confirm to the chair of the new department that I'm, indeed, interested in having him there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morals are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Arranging a transfer is not a big headache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You should be sure that not only you want to interact with prof Y, but also that he wants to interact with you before making any drastic move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that Y didn't inform you about his move in any way, I would start with getting a clearer idea of where you stand as far as the second point is concerned. It doesn't imply that you should stay at X, but it may turn out that your best option is really to move to V to work with W...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T21:57:14.300" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11964" CreationDate="2013-08-18T23:14:36.783" Score="25" ViewCount="3278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/docs/Kepler-2wheels-call-1.pdf&quot;&gt;call for papers by NASA&lt;/a&gt;, asking for submissions of possible further missions using the Kepler spacecraft, given the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/A-Glassy-Blue-Jupiter-219974671.html&quot;&gt;mission-crippling loss of two reaction wheels&lt;/a&gt;. The call describes itself as a &quot;Call for White Papers&quot;, and I am slightly confused by the term. What is a white paper, exactly? What other 'sorts of paper' can you call for, and how are they different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T12:32:37.097" Title="What is a &quot;white paper&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11822" CreationDate="2013-08-18T23:45:49.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One alternate strategy that could help is to see about trying to present a poster of your work at a conference. Even if that doesn't have quite the same prestige as a paper in a journal or an accepted paper at a conference (if you're in CS), it still is a sign of doing significant amounts of research. An especially good sign would be if you could win a &quot;best student poster&quot; or &quot;best student talk&quot;-type award. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the important thing for you will be to be able to discuss what you have done with authority in your statement of purpose to graduate schools, and to get a good letter of recommendation from your advisor that clearly outlines your contributions to your project. Having a publication is nice, but it's not an essential component for graduate school admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T23:45:49.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T02:26:01.157" Score="2" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to apply for an MS CS degree. However I want to study computational biology along with other subjects like AI, etc.&#xA;But many colleges have a separate department for computational biology(eg CMU) while others provide some courses to grad students of the cs department(eg Stanford).&#xA;Is it possible for me study computational biology at colleges which offer it as a separate program altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8225" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T05:41:53.200" Title="Is it possible for a cs undergrad like me to apply for a cs grad program and study computational biology?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2013-08-19T03:52:56.273" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some funding agencies (e.g., DARPA, AFOSR) use the term &quot;white paper&quot; to mean a brief synopsis of a project idea; this is similar to NSF's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf08_1/gpg_1.jsp&quot;&gt;&quot;Letter of Intent&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  White papers help funding agencies evaluate project ideas quickly, and provide feedback to the proposer about whether or not they're interested, without having the proposer go through the (considerable) hassle of preparing a complete proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia shows other meanings of the term (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;), but given the context my guess is that NASA is looking for a synopsis of your idea.  You might look at this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=33158a51c8a598de45ae478f95cbb3b7&quot;&gt;DARPA solicitation&lt;/a&gt; for an idea of what sort of information an agency might want to see in a white paper (see Section 4, and note the length limit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T04:08:47.127" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T04:08:47.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11963" CreationDate="2013-08-19T05:41:53.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you make contact with the admissions of the target faculty, as well as make contact with academics whose research interests match the field you are interested in.  Have a look at the academic's profile pages as well as looking at papers that they may have published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As JeffE said in his comment - why not?  You have computational background and a clear interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T05:41:53.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T08:53:10.520" Score="13" ViewCount="4784" Body="&lt;p&gt;At undergrad level I was short-listed for the most prestigious award at my university (best graduate of that year). I however did not receive it. I did not get any paper or other evidence stating that I was short-listed. I only know this because my personal tutor told me. She also mentions it in her reference letter for me. Should I include this in my CV? Such as: Shortlisted for award X? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T12:57:37.543" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T04:31:12.857" Title="Include Shortlisted Awards?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11966" CreationDate="2013-08-19T09:02:38.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A CV is a living document that changes over time. early in one's career, there is not much one can put into it but hopefully this changes over time. I argue that one can put anything into a CV which strengthens ones profile at the stage at which one is at the moment. In other words, it sounds perfectly in line to add your short-listing now. At some point later such an item will probably not be worth keeping but that is a judgement call to be made depending on where you are in your career and what else is in the CV. Another factor to keep in mind is that CV content will vary depending on for what you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you think something will positively reflect on your capacity in the light of for what you need the CV, add it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T13:54:31.343" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T13:54:31.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11966" CreationDate="2013-08-19T09:57:46.607" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will contradict Peter's answer: the CV is a living document, but it's one that needs to be supported by documentation. Something that cannot be proven should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be listed on a CV. If you only received a verbal confirmation that you were on the &quot;short list&quot; for an award, then you really don't have any documentation that you can provide, if called on to do so by a future employer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, as much as it would be helpful to list such an award, I don't think it's a good idea to do so here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T09:57:46.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11966" CreationDate="2013-08-19T12:14:33.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While aeismail and Peter's answers are both quite good, it strikes me as a very complicated issue. It does seem that you have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; documentation that you got it and I agree with Peter that earlier in your career your CV can look quite empty so having anything to put on it can help show yourself in a better light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, someone nominated for an academy award would certainly be referred to as 'Oscar Nominated.' On the other hand, to say you were short-listed for an award such as this (since from the title it is not clear how students are compared to each other) may come across as &lt;em&gt;trying too hard&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think it would be acceptable and that you have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; (albeit weak) evidence. However, were I in your shoes, I would not include it out of concern of looking too desperate to find good things to say about myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T12:14:33.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11971" CreationDate="2013-08-19T12:22:10.417" Score="5" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my M.Sc. recently and we have agreed to publish it in a journal with my supervisors.&#xA;I have got once comments from the first supervisor but it is almost two months I couldn't got the final comments. I have followed up it and the supervisor mentioned he would give comments shortly. I am worry he may want to refuse from contributing, and he couldn't mention it, directly. He may have any convincing reason for him self for refusing from authorship but I am pretty sure the quality is good enough and it can be published in a journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I politely ask his decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should those papers that are derived from thesis include supervisors name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8041" LastEditorUserId="8041" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T12:34:09.177" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T14:10:55.840" Title="Contribution of the supervisors in publishing paper from thesis" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11970" CreationDate="2013-08-19T12:35:50.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Authorship&lt;/em&gt;: Strictly speaking authorships should be determined by the academic intellectiual contribution. It is rare that a thesis topic is solely invented by a student on their own so it is most likely that an advisor regardless of input during, say, writing stages will be an obvious co-author (if that is how authorships are determined in the specific field). There may of course be more co-authors and the order is not necessarily clear due to differences in traditions and cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Response&lt;/em&gt;: Not getting response is unfortunately quite common and very unfortunate. I think you have to keep asking for a response but also add that you are interested in submitting the paper soon. If you are through with your education, you might be moving and it seems reasonable to get a paper in before leaving for other work/equivalent. So the answer is to simply politely ask and maybe massage your advisors ego by saying how much you would appreciate/need his/her comments to complete the joint paper. Just keep your cool and avoid nagging. At some point you will simnply have to provide a firm deadline due to whatever circumstances may exist. If you have some other faculty to whom you can confide then asking for advice may be a good point as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T14:10:55.840" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T14:10:55.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11973" CreationDate="2013-08-19T16:31:20.497" Score="42" ViewCount="2932" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading a series of blog posts on a sub-field in TCS (theoretical CS), I came across a paper recently published by a group of students/faculty that has literally copy-pasted large sections of &lt;a href=&quot;http://geomblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/voronoi-trick.html&quot;&gt;a blog post&lt;/a&gt;, and made it into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijcst.com/vol31/5/a587.pdf&quot;&gt;journal paper thats available online&lt;/a&gt;. My question(s) are about what I should do about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I point it out to the author of the blog, and leave it to him&#xA;about how to handle the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the journal in question - but since its not my work, I'm hesitant that whether I have a case &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leave it alone, finish reading the blog posts, and add the journal to my private list of journals to completely ignore?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third option is most hassle-free for me, but I wondered if it'd be ethical to know about plagiarism and not point it out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T19:31:37.767" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T05:38:52.777" Title="Is it my responsibility to point out that a paper has been plagiarized from another researcher's blog?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11972" CreationDate="2013-08-19T16:41:15.390" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the journal in question is probably an overreaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the best route to take is the first one—the author of the copyrighted material is the one that has the most responsibility to assert her rights. Your duty is to notify the person whose work has been infringed upon that the violation has taken place. Once you've done that, you've achieved what's ethically required of you. You are not obligated to take the matter up directly with the journal. (However, you may do so if you so choose.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T16:41:15.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11972" CreationDate="2013-08-19T16:44:28.723" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hjwHf.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Dilbert&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, personally, I would contact the journal in question and inform them of the suspected plagarism. They may not be aware of the issue, as it's hard to be on top of all possible literature on a topic. The post may have been guest-posted from the original authors on the blog in question. There may be actual plagarism, and it would have to be dealt with. However, any solution relies on the journal being made aware of the problem. To paraphrase a famous quote, &quot;Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by lack of effort.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are for some reason worried about your being identified as the &quot;whistleblower&quot;, so to speak, use an anonymous email address when you contact the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T16:44:28.723" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T17:17:13.830" Score="4" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning on organizing a workshop as a part of a scientific conference (neuroscience). I have observed that some workshops are organized by a single person, and others are organized by multiple people. When it is organized by multiple people, they were associated with different institutes, and were not from a common academic family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: is it preferable to have people from different institutes as organizers? Does it look &quot;bad&quot; if people from the same institute/lab organize a workshop together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to invite around 10 people as speakers, and the organizers will have at most 1 talk altogether (except introductory/organizing short speeches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T21:19:41.963" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T21:19:41.963" Title="Co-organizing a workshop, does diversity matter?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11975" CreationDate="2013-08-19T17:24:56.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;em&gt;To add after an edit focussed the question&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The convener line-up will be important to attract people to the workshop so getting good names is not a bad idea as a starting point. Having conveners from several institutes may be beneficial since it shows prospective participants that the workshop has wider support. It may also mean that the advertisement can be improved, particularly if conveners come from different continents. Such signals should not be udnerestimated but will highly depend on the field and where research is carried out (geographically). There is of course nothing wrong with having conveners from only one institute. In the end it will be other factors such as convenience and interest that will determine the line-up of conveners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Answer to the original question as it was interpreted&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question you should ask yourself is what is the goal or purpose of the workshop. I am used to workshops focussing on specific questions, perhaps leading up to common paper or document detailing  a problem formulation or providing recommendations for the future. In any case, the persons to invite would be the most suited to provide input to the goal. I have run very small workshops where I could only accept one person from any department/research group due to limited physical space. In other words, getting representation was more important than getting certain names in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So depending on the goals you have you will probably see how you distribute invitations. If you have the space and time then it may be open but that may not be the most efficient way and invitation only may be the way out. That requires careful thinking so that you can achieve the set goal(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T21:18:04.330" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T21:18:04.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T18:14:17.490" Score="1" ViewCount="4184" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title already has the question. If I have a master's degree, can I use it to apply for another (in UK)? I have completed my master's degree (GPA 4.0/4.0) at my home country (situated in northern Europe), and I would now like to do another one-year MSc course at a top university to swap fields. The thing is, my BSc degree is clearly below average (lack of motivation during the first years... is costly), so I really hope this would be possible. I also have 4 peer-reviewed publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8236" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T12:59:40.217" Title="If I already have a master's degree, can I use it to apply for another master's degree (UK)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12053" CreationDate="2013-08-19T18:41:17.697" Score="5" ViewCount="1560" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the desire to obtain a master's degree in Management Information Systems, IT Management, or Computer Science, how do you proceed writing a personal statement when your bachelors degree is unrelated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With minimal previous technical experience (basic knowledge on programming, some collegiate participation in software club), is it possible to be considered seriously? What can be added to the statement to strengthen your impression? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because a lot of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/Prospective%20Students/Pages/Graduate-Ambassadors.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;graduate ambassadors&lt;/a&gt; at DePaul have bachelors in different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3153/how-does-one-change-fields-between-undergrad-and-grad-school&quot;&gt;How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1252" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T06:48:04.127" Title="How to write a graduate study personal statement for a technical field without related bachelors degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11972" CreationDate="2013-08-19T21:17:56.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with option 4 (loosely based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018:15-17&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matt. 18:15-17&lt;/a&gt;, a principle of giving maximal opportunity for people to correct their own goofs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Privately contact the apparent plagiarist(s) and point the problem out to them. Most likely, knowing that the plagiarism has been discovered, they will want to fix it ASAP before it becomes public knowledge. It's always conceivable that there has been an honest mistake, at least honest on the part of some of the group of faculty and students. And in that case it would be best to let those in the group address the problem. That's how I would want to be treated if I were in that group (whether I was guilty or not).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they don't listen (e.g. if they make excuses) - contact their department or employer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they don't correct the situation, contact the journal, since they've published the material, and have a responsibility toward the copyright holder even if the plagiarists won't do the right thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would contact the copyright holder only as a last resort, if the plagiarists and the journal both ignore the problem. Or, you could contact the copyright holder after the problem has been addressed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4373" LastEditorUserId="4373" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T05:38:52.777" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T05:38:52.777" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11972" CreationDate="2013-08-19T21:42:57.120" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very common among obscure journals. I have come across papers copy-pasting entire paragraphs from my papers and not even getting a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11165/8239&quot;&gt;to do something&lt;/a&gt; about it, but it is usually worthless since many of these journals even accept &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;randomly generated papers&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I would go for &lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt;, the second option might be too risky. Recall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The road to hell is paved with good intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third one might not give you peace of mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8239" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T21:58:32.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11978" CreationDate="2013-08-19T23:52:07.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course you can, since you are changing fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mind never finished his bachelor degree and had years of work experience and wanted to get into a master program (in the US). The program he wanted said they would take him if he had a bachelor degree but since he did not have one, he could not enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went to the UK, got accepted into one master program based on his partial completion of his bachelor degree COMBINED with his real-world experience. Once he completed that master program, the program in the US (in a different field) did accept him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it is absolutely possible to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what your real question is whether an admission committee will overlook your poor performance during your undergraduate since you have a master degree. It would help to know what your performance was during your master, and how 'top' of a school you want to get into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publications should help, especially if they are from reputable journals. The best course is to actually submit an application. However, you should consider what you really want to achieve. If you want to do research, perhaps going into a PhD program would be better for you. If you just want to change fields, but don't want to do a lot of research, then a new master degree might be just what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T23:52:07.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T03:21:58.100" Score="7" ViewCount="6779" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just graduated from one of the older IITs (Indian Institute of Technology), majoring in EE and have a GPA of about 7.8 / 10. I want to pursue a masters degree in computer science from a top 20 university in the US. I have a paper published in an international conference on machine learning and have good test scores(GRE / TOEFL) but I'm worried that my grades could affect my chances. I have some experience in competitive programming, my team finished among the top 10 among 300+ teams in the ACM ICPC regionals and I have a decent Topcoder rating. Not sure if this matters though. I have also made contributions to open source projects and have open sourced some of my projects, some of which have been downloaded thousands of times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen people from  unknown colleges with higher GPAs getting in to places like Stanford, UIUC, Cornell, CMU etc. Realistically, do I have any chance of getting admitted in a top 10 or 20 program. If not, what can I do to improve my chances within a year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Well, I guess grades do matter, I didn't get into any of the good schools I applied to. I'll have to give up my hopes of grad school now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8242" LastEditorUserId="8242" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T08:53:06.603" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T10:13:38.327" Title="How can I increase my chances of being accepted to a top 20 MS CS program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11987" CreationDate="2013-08-20T05:14:22.850" Score="18" ViewCount="11910" Body="&lt;p&gt;This fall I will be an senior mathematics major at a small public liberal arts university. I'm trying to finalize the list of schools to which I will apply (to PhD programs in pure math), but I am finding it somewhat difficult. I know that I am not a candidate for admission at top-tier universities. My school is relatively unknown outside of its state, and the professors who will write my recommendation letters aren't very well-known either (although they do publish somewhat frequently in their respective fields). I have taken two semesters of abstract algebra, one semester of real analysis, and two semesters of topology, and received an A in all. By the time I graduate I'll have taken another semester in real analysis and a course in complex analysis, plus several other applied and discrete math classes. I haven't taken any graduate courses since my school doesn't offer them, but I have completed a research project with one of my professors in the area of math which I hope to study in grad school. My GPA is around 3.85.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) that I should focus on applying to &quot;mid-tier&quot; programs, but I find it very difficult to determine which programs are at this level. I know that one student from my school was accepted at a program ranked in the 40's by the U.S. News math grad school rankings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, my question is this: Do the U.S. News rankings accurately reflect the selectivity of programs, and if so, is there some point in the rankings at which schools become &quot;mid-tier&quot; or at which I would be competitive for admission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8245" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T10:57:42.440" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T06:46:10.467" Title="How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11988" CreationDate="2013-08-20T05:56:27.047" Score="9" ViewCount="1381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a research project (not PhD and after Master's degree). I have completed a work which my adviser thinks is publishable. But he has such a heavy schedule that he hardly has time to respond. Can I take the whole charge of writing the manuscript and communicating the paper with his permission. (I have not yet asked him.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6969" LastEditorUserId="6969" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T07:57:46.297" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T07:57:46.297" Title="Can student be the corresponding author?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11985" CreationDate="2013-08-20T06:27:26.717" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, the rankings (roughly) reflect the selectivity of the program, as far as I know.  Your choice to focus on mid-tier programs makes sense.  (I think defining mid-tier as starting in the 40s is plausible, though I suspect you'll get conflicting answers from different people.) &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't confuse the quality of the program &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; with the quality of their specialty that you hope to study.&lt;/strong&gt;  Their specialty program could be much better or worse than the program overall.  In math departments (as opposed to, say, some computer science departments), students are typically admitted &lt;em&gt;to the department&lt;/em&gt;, rather than to a professor's research group or a specialty area.  Taking advantage of this could get you into a specialty program that's rated higher than you &quot;deserve&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't exclude a school just because it's too highly rated.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's good to &lt;strong&gt;apply to a wide range&lt;/strong&gt; of schools, some &quot;reach&quot; schools that you think it unlikely you'll be admitted to, and some &quot;safety&quot; schools that you would be quite surprised &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to be admitted to.  All sorts of factors influence how likely it is you'll be admitted to a given school in a given year, many of them completely unknowable to you.  For example, maybe a new faculty member will be coming and looking for students (or maybe one will be leaving).  Maybe the program has all their TA positions tied up with current students who haven't finished yet, or maybe not.  Maybe a dean wants to grow the program, etc.  Many of these things you just can't know.  Most likely, you won't get into MIT, Harvard, Princeton, or Stanford.  But once you get into the 20s, 30s and below, the outlook is less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on &lt;em&gt;fit&lt;/em&gt;, rather than solely on &lt;em&gt;ranking&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  Think about where the school is located.  If you plan to live there for 5 or 6 years, you don't want to hate the place.  This can include proximity to your family or friends, climate, scenery, nightlife, etc.  If you know what specialty you want to study, the school should have at least 1, but hopefully 2 or 3 folks that you would potentially like as an adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on aspects of your application that you can still change&lt;/strong&gt;.  With a transcript no stronger than yours, I got into a top-25 school.  The cool part is that for the specialty I chose, they were top-10.  At this point, most of your transcript (and much of your application in total) is fixed.  But you didn't mention your GRE scores.  (The surprising thing about the GRE is that you can do pretty well if you're just really good at Calculus (through multivariable), Dif. Eq., and Linear Algebra.)  I think my subject test was something like 65th percentile.  That's not terribly good, but I think it was enough to convince the admissions committee that even though I was coming from a small LAC that no one had heard of, I did know something.  The other thing I did, which I highly recommend you try, is get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member at &lt;em&gt;that school&lt;/em&gt; (where I was admitted).  I wrote code for him for 3 or 4 weeks (about 30 hours/week, I think) during Christmas break of my senior year.  In exchange, he wrote a recommendation for me.  I'm sure it didn't say that I was a math wunderkind, but whatever it said added just enough to my application to get me in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T06:27:26.717" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11986" CreationDate="2013-08-20T07:21:50.100" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no problem at all with a student being the principal author (in the sense of “being in charge of the writing”) of an academic paper. In fact, I think it's very good that you consider doing so. Here are, however, some thoughts on the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss this with your advisor before writing anything. Once both of you have established that there is sufficient matter for publication, and that you want to publish it, you should make plans for doing so. It includes determining (right now!) the authors list, the order of authors on the list, and plan who will do what.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;corresponding author&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;corresponding author&lt;b&gt;s&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), often indicated by an asterisk in the authors list and their contact details in a footnote, do not necessarily need to be the person(s) who actually did most of the writing. The contact author is the one who is the most central to the project, and who will be able to deal with correspondence about it in the near and not-so-near future. For that reason, some groups (including mine) do not consider students a good choice for corresponding author: in two years, they may be gone to a new job and not interested any more with the paper's research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few more comments for first time authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you've never written a paper before, don't underestimate the task. Writing a paper from A to Z is a complex project, even for experienced authors. It requires using many different skills, and is truly an exercise in both scientific reasoning and communication, with very specific constraints (style, formatting, length limits, …). Assign a lot of time to writing, and don't hesitate to get help if you're stuck!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt while writing, &lt;strong&gt;put yourself in the reader's shoes&lt;/strong&gt;. And specifically, a non-specialist reader's shoes. That should be the guiding principle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T07:21:50.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11990" CreationDate="2013-08-20T07:29:13.853" Score="73" ViewCount="5226" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11988/2700&quot;&gt;an answer to that question&lt;/a&gt;, I realized I don't really have a good list of resources that could be useful to first-time authors, like MSc or PhD students who write their first paper. I often direct my own students to these two papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;G. M. Whitesides, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.200400767/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Whiteside's group: writing a paper”&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Adv. Mater.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2004&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;16&lt;/em&gt;, 1375–1377 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ee.ucr.edu/~rlake/Whitesides_writing_res_paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P. E. Bourne, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0010057&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Ten simple rules for getting published”&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;PLOS Computational Biology&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2005&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt;, 0341.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also make sure that they read the journal's editorial policy and authors guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are other sources of good information for students and first-time academic authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T12:53:43.777" Title="How to write an academic paper for the first time?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="71" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T08:30:20.837" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book or paper on writing is a good introduction but can usually not solve everything. Reading a book does not mean you can reproduce what it teaches, particularly with writing since it is something that needs lots of practise. One problem is that writing is a question of both knowing how to structure the science but also a question of building and formulating the text, the latter being a language issue. So it is usually relatively easy to teach students how the technical side works and provide explanations for why. Teaching students how to be concise and precise is another question and without lots of practise it is quite difficult to get anywhere. During a thesis much of the language issues are ironed out by constant revisions sugested by the advisor. I also point out to all my students that writing is a life-long learning process and thatit is never to late to develop and change your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have some sources I fall back to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Katz, M.J. From research to manuscript. A guide to scientific writing. Springer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day, R.A. and Gastel, B., How to write and publish a scientific paper. Cambridge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Laboratory&lt;/a&gt; OWL is also very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For language (English) I have (aside of Strunk &amp;amp; White) found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glasman-Deal, H. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course lots of books around but all are definitely not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final gem is a short paper on abstracts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Landes, K., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aapg.org/bulletin/abstract_scrutiny.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A scrutiny of the abstract&lt;/a&gt;. Bulletin Of The American Association Of Petroleum Geologists. 50 (9), 1992-1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which provides an excellent description of the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T09:17:50.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T08:41:42.220" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically for mathematics, good resources are N. Higham's very comprehensive &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/books/ot63/&quot;&gt;Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and (for non-native speakers) a nice booklet by J. Trzeciak, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://utvle.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/1995-ems-trzeciak-writing_mathematical_papers_in_english__a_practical_guide.pdf&quot;&gt;Writing mathematical papers in English&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T09:06:28.180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T09:06:28.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12078" CreationDate="2013-08-20T09:49:13.713" Score="1" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;How understanding are American Top-10 universities of different expectations abroad? In the UK, nearly  nobody publishes anything before they start their PhD. The master courses are much shorter and usually include mostly courses instead of research. We are not expected to do any teaching. I am therefore wondering whether all of this will count against a UK student applying to the US. Personally, I have a very good profile for a UK student (Top of my class in undergrad and masters), but I only have 2 research internships outside of my courses. Is it expected of UK students to achieve the same things as US students applying to the same universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T10:58:46.587" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T16:39:51.910" Title="What does a US university expect of a student applying from the UK?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11996" CreationDate="2013-08-20T09:51:50.613" Score="15" ViewCount="11518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginning doctoral student in the field of Machine Learning and I've been given several contradicting opinions on whether a PhD is worth it or not. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in front of a desk doing research, but I would like to deepen my understanding on my field. I am interested for a career on industry. Some people say I'm wasting my time for doing the PhD and some people say it is worth it. My plan at the moment is to finish PhD as fast as possible and then continue my career in industry when I'm still young. Any opinions or recommendations on what I should do? :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to add to this that I have already 2,5 years of work experience on industry (IT) already. For example I designed and implemented an online language skill tester for my university and have worked as a software engineer. So I wouldn't be entirely newbie in programming after I finish my PhD...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My subject is about applying the techniques of Machine Learning on Big Data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any suggestions and guidelines :)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8249" LastEditorUserId="8249" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T10:45:16.617" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T23:04:40.203" Title="Is PhD worth it when considering your career in industry" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11992" CreationDate="2013-08-20T10:07:53.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are literally talking Top-10, you will be on equal footing with American applicants, especially with your research internships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below that threshold you may well surpass American applicants, as you haven't spent any of your time minoring in side subjects since school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not relate to how well your applications fare, but the larger universities will be well versed in taking on Eurasian applications, and you should expect fair judgement on UKish criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8250" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T10:07:53.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11993" CreationDate="2013-08-20T10:18:49.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an 'official' answer, but one of a revelation of sorts I have had recently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that occurred to me as I complete my PhD (submit in the next fortnight), is that my PhD is a very practical and successful application of existing technology into very specific scientific functions that the technology was not designed to do.  This, and the community benefit aspects have formed the basis of the papers that I have been able to get published.  If you can make a focus on practical applications &lt;em&gt;alongside&lt;/em&gt; the theoretical constructs - then the PhD &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be of benefit of both you and a future employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this varies from discipline to discipline (as the answers in my other thread linked in the comments suggest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have got to look at what benefits are there for you in pursuing a PhD, both in the short and long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T10:18:49.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11993" CreationDate="2013-08-20T10:31:09.710" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't really defined what you mean by &quot;...when considering your career&quot; in the subject of this post.  On the one hand, you say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to deepen my understanding on my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to deepen your understanding, one way to do that is to get a PhD. You can also do this on your own, without getting a PhD, but you'll find a more structured path and (possibly) more resources if you go down the PhD route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am interested for a career on industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you interested in industry because of the money?  If that is the case, you're most likely better off earning a full income and &quot;moving up the ladder&quot; during the time you would spend in graduate school, which means you should forego getting a PhD to concentrate on the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in a career in industry because of reasons outside of financial considerations, then you have to think about what kinds of jobs you're looking to take in industry. If you're satisfied that your current skills and educational level will make you competitive for the jobs you want, you should probably reconsider the PhD, and to &quot;deepen your understanding&quot; in a different way. Then again, a certain percentage of people want to get a PhD for the challenge and for strictly personal reasons, removed from the job details themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the jobs you want to get are generally given to PhDs, then you have your answer already -- get the PhD to make yourself competitive for those positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest writing down all of your long-term goals, and then weighing them against the time and cost (and opportunity costs) of getting your PhD. If after all that you still don't have a good answer, you might consider continuing with your program for another year and just postponing the decision until then.  Eventually, either you will get your PhD, or you will be convinced that it is better off that you stop the program (but the decision may get harder the closer you are to finishing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T10:31:09.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T11:36:45.577" Score="4" ViewCount="657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to improve my competitiveness for grad school admissions. My intended area of study is AI/Machine Learning and possibly other math and statistics heavy fields of Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My undergrad math grades were terrible, mostly C's and a few B's. Although my mathematical maturity improved tremendously after years passed, as you will guess I have no proof for this. So I decided to take a math class to show my skills to adcoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have to choose exactly one from the two options available:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an undergrad MATH level mathematical analysis class following through walter rudin's PMA book or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a graduate EE level Random Processes class about stochastic processes following through Ross.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from an admissions comittee member perspective, which class do you value more for judging a students mathematical maturity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8252" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T14:49:47.867" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T15:09:51.813" Title="Importance of Mathematical Maturity for CS Grad School Admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T12:50:47.017" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nice article for writing your first mathematics paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/200711/tx071101507p.pdf&quot;&gt;How to Write Your First Paper&lt;/a&gt; by Steven G. Krantz in the December 2007 &lt;em&gt;Notices of the AMS&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T12:50:47.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11985" CreationDate="2013-08-20T13:49:27.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dan C's answer is great, and I just want to echo some points and add a few things to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I'm not sure why you've decided you're not a candidate for a &quot;top-teir&quot; school. It sounds like you've been successful in your coursework, and you can likely get strong letters of recommendation. If you don't bomb the GRE, you can certainly get into a &quot;highly-ranked&quot; school! I went to a college just like the one you describe, and my friends and I all did fine when it came to grad school admissions -- one of my friends got into a &quot;top ten&quot; department, and we all got accepted by schools in the top twenty or thirty. So don't count yourself out simply because your school is small and relatively unknown. And, most importantly, if you do get into a prestigious program, be sure to base your decision to enroll on more than the US News rankings!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've used the quotation marks above because the rankings are all a bit questionable, and one should really consider the strength of a department in your field of interest, like Dan C said.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the professors who will be writing your letters of recommendation: They may not be heavyweights in their fields, but chances are they know some people of influence. Take a look at some departments, get a feel for what you'd like to study, and possibly with whom, and then talk to your letter writers. It may happen, when you mention your interest in working with Professor X, that your letter writer was roommates with Professor X in grad school. These little personal connections won't get you admitted, but they will help ensure that your application gets a fair evaluation despite your school's relative obscurity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! Aim high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T13:49:27.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11984" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:16:24.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While your question is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1034/maximizing-opportunities-to-be-admitted-in-top-schools&quot;&gt;Maximizing opportunities to be admitted in top schools&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions/325#325&quot;&gt;How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?&lt;/a&gt;, since in general MS admissions is different from PhD admissions, they may be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in another &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1900/929&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;, your approach is wrong and will be a hindrance in maximizing your chances for acceptance. No school wants to accept someone who only wants to go to their school because of its ranking. You need to tailor your application to demonstrate why you want to go to the particular school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the MS programs you are interested in have a research component, you need to identified some potential supervisors, ideally one of your recommendation writers can introduce you. You then need to build on that relationship. Talk to them about how your work fits in with their past and current work. As your relationship with the potential supervisors builds, figure out how they fit into the department. They will likely have the inside knowledge needed for writing a really good application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purely taught programs you need to identify what it is about the courses they offer that make the program unique and a good fit for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:16:24.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11984" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:50:31.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Realistically, do I have any chance of getting admitted in a top 10 or 20 program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a publication in an international conference?  Definitely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm assuming that you mean a &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; publication in an &lt;strong&gt;internationally recognized&lt;/strong&gt; conference (not just a conference with papers from more than one country), ideally indexed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt; and available over the web.  I'm also assuming that you will have strong recommendation letters describing your contributions to the paper, in specific, personal, and credible detail, as evidence of your research potential.  Ideally, your letters will make direct comparisons with other IIT graduates who have succeeded in strong graduate programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also assuming that you have a compelling &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1555/65&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; describing your research experience and interests, written in flawless English, and that those interests are a good fit for the faculty at your target departments.  Be sure to describe your ongoing open-source projects.  (The contest stuff?  Meh.)  As Daniel suggests, focus on the &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; you want to do, not the ranking of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, I do mean you have a &lt;strong&gt;chance&lt;/strong&gt;, not that you have a sure thing.  Graduate admissions is a random process; you have some influence on the distribution, but someone else rolls the dice.  Machine learning is a particularly competitive area, so if you want to continue in that direction, you should apply broadly.  In particular, you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; limit yourself only to programs that appear at the top of some list in some stupid magazine.  Rather, aim yourself at departments whose faculty and students have similar research interests to your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I regularly serve on the CS grad admissions committee at UIUC.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:50:31.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11997" CreationDate="2013-08-20T15:09:51.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with the graduate-level class.  But just taking one class is not likely to make much difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need is for your &lt;strong&gt;recommendation letters&lt;/strong&gt; to specifically address this point.  Nobody will believe &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; claim that your grades do not accurately reflect your true level of mathematical maturity (although you can certainly &lt;em&gt;demonstrate&lt;/em&gt; your mathematical maturity in your research statement).  But people will generally believe your references if &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; make the same claim, especially if they back up their claim with specific and credible evidence of your mathematical maturity, and more generally of your potential for research excellence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will only happen if you develop a closer collaborate relationship with your professors.  Don't just sit in the back of the random-processes class and get an A.  Talk with the instructor; ask cogent questions; ask about research opportunities, or at least directions for further study.  Impress them.  Give them proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T15:09:51.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T15:23:13.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A resource for writing a paper in natural sciences can be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scripps.edu/milligan/em-journal/pdf/Scientific_Writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Writing: My Approach and Irreverent Opinions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Yeager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has several good resources listed in the bibliography, which I haven't gone through but looks promising!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T15:23:13.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T15:26:36.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For CS, there's a pretty well-written book that addresses the art of writing for a CS conference/journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justinzobel.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing For Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Justin Zobel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading through it now, and its really an eye-opener for me - as it quotes examples from actual published papers to illustrate its points, which are quite succinct and easy to incorporate once you've read the book! I would enthusiastically recommend it to any CS grad student!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T15:49:00.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T16:13:48.273" Score="20" ViewCount="3558" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a year ago I noticed that my PhD supervisor has listed on his faculty page that he co-authored a conference presentation together with me.  The problem is, he didn't-- the research itself was entirely mine, and I wrote and gave the presentation alone.  (This is in the social sciences, not the hard sciences).  He never talked to me before claiming co-authorship on his faculty profile, and in fact, has never mentioned it to me-- nor have I mentioned it to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that he may have felt he needed the &quot;extra credit&quot; to beef up his publications last year while he was trying to get tenure.  Now that he's got his tenure, though, and now that I've finished my PhD and am applying for jobs, I am worried that, should my potential employers google the items on my résumé and come across his co-authorship claim, it will contradict my résumé's claim that I was the sole author... making &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; look like the liar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really reluctant to &quot;give in&quot; and credit him as co-author for the presentation on my résumé too, because (a) it doesn't feel fair and (b) I don't have many publications/presentations to begin with... so including him as co-author could dilute what little power my résumé has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am also embarrassed to ask him to take this &quot;publication&quot; down from his faculty page, because I am worried that he may get defensive, which could ruin our relationship-- which would be a problem, because I still depend on him for references as I look for a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas/perspective on how to handle this??  Thanks!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8256" LastEditorUserId="8256" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T19:58:39.467" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T19:58:39.467" Title="Is it okay for a PhD supervisor to claim co-authorship... even if it's my work, and he didn't ask?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12005" CreationDate="2013-08-20T16:52:50.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be fair, if your advisor had no intellectual involvement in the presentation, then he does not have the right to list it on his CV. However, getting him to agree to take it off is a different matter altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the way to begin this conversation is to ask your advisor why the paper is listed on his web page. Don't make it a demand, but instead probe the reasons for doing it, and perhaps drop a few suggestions. For instance, as you mentioned above, you could ask: &quot;Won't having a single-author credit on my CV be helpful?&quot; as part of the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think if you make it more of a &quot;mutually arrived at decision&quot; rather than a demand that he take the publication off the CV, you'll get a more favorable response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T16:52:50.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12005" CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:01:10.913" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a number of fields it's standard for the supervisor to be listed as the last author on papers or presentations that their students produce. This is because the supervisor helps in a number of ways, some of them indirectly: they get grant money, they train you to use the lab, they train you to do statistics... or they might make suggestions for the research design, the main theoretical focus of the presentation/manuscript, etc. If I wouldn't list my supervisor on a conference presentation, the only possible reason would be that it slipped my mind to add his name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore ask other PhD students in your department what the standard is in this case, because your supervisor might not think that he's doing something wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T17:01:10.913" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12005" CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:06:15.713" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is an archival record of the conference presentations then the authors are whoever the authors are. If the conference doesn't have any type of archival record of the presentations, then you are in a grey area. Who is going to be authors when the work is eventually published? It sounds like the adviser expects to be an author. Presumably you have not talked about authorship with your adviser. I cannot stress this enough, &lt;strong&gt;prior to starting any project discuss authorship and funding with your collaborators and advisers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that a project has already begun without prior discussions of authorship, you need to work it out ASAP. I would hope that your adviser was not simply claiming credit to &quot;beef up&quot; his CV (if he was you have some serious problems). My guess is that he thinks he made an intellectual contribution to the work. You need to have a civil conversation with him to understand what his expectations are about the minimum contributions needed to warrant authorship. If you strongly disagree with this view, you need to consult other colleagues to determine who is being reasonable/unreasonable. Once the authorship parameters are laid out, you need to understand what he believes are his contributions. These then need to be compared to the criteria for authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not suggest that your adviser has taken credit he doesn't deserve unless he is substantially below the authorship bar. It is an unfortunate situation but a co-authored paper and a reference is generally much more valuable than a single author paper and no reference. If he is clearly below the authorship bar then you have a &lt;strong&gt;MAJOR issue&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T17:06:15.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:35:09.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish I read this book before writing my first paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0960191038&quot;&gt;The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, &amp;amp; Problem Solving&lt;/a&gt;. It explains how to better organize and articulate ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it is always worth re-reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060891548&quot;&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="413" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T17:35:09.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12217" CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:43:03.677" Score="4" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;What steps are taken to evaluate an applicant's coursework? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are graduate-level courses weighted higher?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this a significant part of the decision process (outside the major&#xA;components of research experience, personal statement, and LORs)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in what adcoms look for as good signs, red flags, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any information, particularly for CS PhD programs, is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastEditorUserId="5658" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T17:49:40.953" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T12:16:28.653" Title="How do admissions committees evaluate coursework?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12017" CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:51:27.323" Score="2" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be eligible to apply for the master's in Computer Science within a semester (2 max). I'm working as an undergrad for a research group (I'm implementation -- programming).  I'd like to know what I could reasonably expect (in terms of job prospects and recruitment if any) if I work as an RA.  How are RA's typically viewed by prospective employers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, I thought this would be good and that RA's are sought after since they're pretty well educated and have been working in cutting edge areas.  But then, I wasn't sure if it's just too far removed from industry and that employers might think you just didn't bother to pursue any work in the private sector while getting a degree in a field that is highly employable by the private sector (i.e. they might not be sympathetic to your desire to do interesting research work as opposed to straight coding production work as is often in industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8238" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T23:11:06.150" Title="What are the career prospects after being an RA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-20T19:27:12.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A blog entry, written by Terence Tao, specific for mathematics but with some points that can be used in other scientific branches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writing-papers/&quot;&gt;On writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference, by Paul Halmos,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~azoff/courses/halmos.pdf&quot;&gt;How to write mathematics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8258" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T19:27:12.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12021" CreationDate="2013-08-20T20:28:26.670" Score="7" ViewCount="3105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am invited to an online interview for a PhD position.&#xA;Actually, it is my first time.&#xA;What are the contents of the interview?&#xA;What issues are usually discussed in these interviews?&#xA;Am I supposed to represent a proposal in the context of research, at that time?&#xA;Which parameters can increase the acceptance chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8041" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T19:16:11.553" Title="PhD online interview" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12013" CreationDate="2013-08-20T21:43:01.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case (machine learning), background knowledge of the field and previous publications are the most important parts. My supervisor enumerated the names of the sub-fields and asked whether I know about them. I need to give different level of introductions or explanations according to my familiarity. As for the publications, I have little publications so I had to explain my thesis at great detail. Actually my supervisor was not satisfied and I had to write several pages of &quot;abstract&quot; later. At last, my supervisor asked me to the read the xxx page of his paper and derive the differential of a complex function right away. I made some minor errors but finally got myself through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: In my case I don't think my supervisor was &quot;quizzing&quot; me, but try to obtain a rough impression of my background. For me, the point was to articulate what I have known and not to boast on what I don't know. And I was also asked about the ability of English communication and teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2789" LastEditorUserId="2789" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T19:16:11.553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T19:16:11.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T22:05:50.877" Score="34" ViewCount="1951" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is motivated by the fact that my last research internship was unsatisfactory in my relation with my supervisor. Partly because of me, I may have tried to be too much autonomous, rarely coming to him or sharing what I was doing or reading and never asking feedback. We didn't produce much and by the end he shared with me his disappointment, which strangely was a bit surprising to me, I was blind to the situation and our lack of exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm about to start my PhD with a totally new supervisor, and I'd like to learn from this mistake. I'm deeply convinced that the experience will be much more fulfilling for both sides if we maintain stimulating exchanges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about having from the beginning a long discussion about his expectation from me on short, mid and long term, his availability and the way he would like to supervise and push me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this irrelevant or too much? Have you already had similar discussions? Have you tried something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8148" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T01:42:01.420" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T04:47:56.483" Title="What are some good things to make explicit between a student and his supervisor when beginning a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12015" CreationDate="2013-08-20T22:20:42.500" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a discussion about the PhD project specifically and expectations in general is always a good idea. If there is a clear project lined up it will be useful to discuss the details, possible directions, publications etc. In some cases (systems/programs/traditions) it is useful (in fact mandatory) to write a research plan or to write a review of the field as part of reading up on it. It is necessary that both you and the advisor has the same view of what should be achieved to the extent the specific program allows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the science it is useful to discuss expectations so that you can agree on how work should proceed. Should you meet regularly? if so how often? How much feedback should you expect? Well the questions are many but having such a discussion is useful, particularly if you can also note what you agree upon on a piece of paper. In my country, one actually signs an individual study plan that is followed up annually showing progress in terms of course work and research. having such a plan is actually constructive in that it makes it possible to see if you are on track and also identify if and when your plan needs revisions and goals may deviate from the originally proposed. But, of course, all this is something which to some extent is dictated by the traditions in the specific program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do take the opportunity to have a good talk about the future collaboration. you will robably sense if the discussion is received well by the advisor and adapt accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T22:20:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12011" CreationDate="2013-08-20T22:58:54.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an RA (Research Assistant) means you get to work closely with one or more post-docs and faculty members in a context that generally requires technical,  problem-solving, and communication skills -- skills that are definitely valued highly by employers.  So, assuming that you do a good job, your supervisors should be able to write strong recommendation letters for you, recommend you to recruiters from industry, or possibly put you in touch with people they know in industry.  Also, you may be able to use your RA work and experience as a discussion item in interviews.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the industry jobs that undergrads tend to work in look (to me) like grunt-work: website development and maintenance, routine programming, stuff like that.  It seems to me that an RA would be much more preferable than those simply because it can allow you to be more creative and possibly also sharpen your communication skills.  Of course, it's possible that you have some unusual set of skills --- say, Unix guru or security honcho --- that would make you suitable for a very different kind of industry job that would be even more attractive to employers down the road --- but in my experience this tends to be rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T23:11:06.150" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T23:11:06.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12020" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:19:34.367" Score="4" ViewCount="2633" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a PhD student, is it common that failing a qualified exam and thus leaving the PhD program results in a termination record, which any future academic program (the student will apply to) will be interested in accessing after getting the student's permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some can leave their PhD program with a clean record, according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://flickamawa.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/on-failing-the-quals-again/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The graduate committee chair who gave me the news reminded me that I could still apply to other programs and that it wouldn’t go on my record or anything so it will just look like I just left with my MS degree. If I ever want to, I can return to grad school in the future, and I will be better able to choose a department that fits me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the student has received his masters way before his qualify exam, is there other way to write the record that looks better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T05:21:22.297" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T05:21:22.297" Title="Does failing the qualifying exam leave a record?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12015" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:47:59.523" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to Peter's answer, another that needs to be made clear are practicalities, including any other commitments that you have (e.g. work, volunteer work, family etc).  I found having this discussion in the early part of my PhD program has meant that we have been able to adapt deadlines and meetings around my (full time) work schedule.  This is also important if you are required to travel or conduct experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other logistical practicalities include medical conditions, financial constraints - these kind of thing do not need to be divulged in detail, but as they may affect the research (in a practical sense) - just to make the supervisor aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T01:47:59.523" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12018" CreationDate="2013-08-21T02:51:39.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if the student has received his master way before his qualifying exam, is there other way to write the record that looks better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the student doesn't get to write the record. The university writes the milestones that the student passes, specifically, which classes they took and with what grades, and which degrees they earned. (In some countries, the thesis itself also receives a grade, like a class.)  At least in the US, intermediate milestones like finding an advisor, passing or failing quals, proposing or failing to propose a thesis, probation, suspension, termination, and even academic integrity violations are rarely recorded on university transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, if a student were asked to leave a PhD program after 2.5 years, for whatever reason, the transcript would show five semesters worth of classes, ending without the student earning a degree, because they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many PhD students in this situation opt to switch to an MS degree program in their final semester, so that they can plausibly claim that they were just a masters student.  (After all, in their last semester, they &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; just a masters student.) They don't have to explain why they left without a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student already has a MS in their home department, earning a second MS in the same field is usually impossible.  But another option is to switch to an MS program in a nearby field, for example, applied math or computer engineering or operations research instead of computer science.  At least at my university, switching from a PhD program in department X to an MS program in nearby department Y is usually fairly painless, especially if you have a supportive advisor in department Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If even that is not an option, I'm afraid there's little one can do.  Your transcript will end without a degree, and most people reading it will assume that (or at least wonder if) you left because you were forced out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T02:51:39.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12013" CreationDate="2013-08-21T04:42:45.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a program for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scicomp.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;computational science&lt;/a&gt;, and we do online interviews with all of the qualified candidates for both our dual-degree (master's-PhD) and doctoral programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we are a rather broad program, we tend not to favor &quot;quizzes&quot; that test knowledge. Instead, we are looking for things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to communicate in English &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enthusiasm for computational science (many people think we're a computer science program, instead of a computational science program!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Match for the research interests of one or more of our institute members (particularly for dual-degree candidates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous experience in computational science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evidence of teamwork and ability to fit our program&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no real way to &quot;game&quot; the system, at least in my interview, unless you want to invent an entirely new personality for yourself. That's because most of my questions are free-form after the first few, and will try to explore the answers you've given in greater depth. For instance, if a candidate expresses an interest in fluid mechanics, I'll ask what they've done, what makes it interesting, what they'd like to do in the future. If someone happens to express interest in my area (computational materials), things will go in yet another direction altogether. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice is be yourself. If you try to come off as someone you're not, that will likely show up during the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T04:42:45.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12015" CreationDate="2013-08-21T04:47:56.483" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To echo some of the other comments here, I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; recommend touching on topics beyond just science - your supervisor is going to be a very important figure in your life for several years if all goes according to plan, so in addition to things like the details of the project you're working on, I'd make sure to touch on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any &quot;lab policies&quot; they have, written or unwritten. For example, some folks really prefer if their people work with a particular programming language, operating system, etc. Some people could care less if you work remotely as long as they see you now and again, and some people want geographic proximity, and seeing your face in the office.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working preferences. Are they a night owl, or a 9-to-5 type? Will they read drafts the weekend before a conference deadline, or do you need to get them weeks in advance? Do they want progress reports, or will they be happy/prefer with a finished product simply manifesting itself after weeks of silence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authorship policies - how much do they want you writing your own papers, taking ownership of your projects, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How stable is your funding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching expectations, if there are any. Are there courses they think you should take?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slightly later on, once you've clarified your own goals, I'd also suggest a talk with your supervisor about where you'd like to end up when you're done. Teaching? Research? Industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T04:47:56.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11822" CreationDate="2013-08-21T06:52:18.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As some people have suggested, it may be worth your time to see if you can get the research into a conference - while in some fields they're less prestigious than a paper no one is going to scoff at undergraduate research that ends up there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I did author several papers as an undergrad, and it was immensely beneficial both to my job prospects and my outlook on research. It's tough, but if you want to do it you can - and no, you shouldn't rely on PhD students to get you a few papers with your name buried in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T06:52:18.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12027" CreationDate="2013-08-21T07:22:35.257" Score="5" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting my PhD for assessment in the next fortnight, by the end of the year, it will be complete.  Currently, while studying (and to pay the bills), I am a high school teacher.  Getting into a postdoc or lecturing tenure is quite difficult in Australia (particularly in my field - Physics).  So, what is likely to happen is that I'll be high school teaching next year as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while teaching, I intend writing more papers (3 already published, 4th submitted) - my current supervisor (=advisor) has indicated that he is more than happy to collaborate on these ongoing projects, post-PhD (but is not in a position to offer a postdoc position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, generally speaking, beyond writing more papers and building up the research profile, what other benefits are there to stalling entering academia by a year? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, it would be almost like an academic-gap-year except, I will need to be still full time employed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T07:54:05.023" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T09:05:34.213" Title="Are there benefits to taking a year off before entering academia after completion of the PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12028" CreationDate="2013-08-21T08:27:12.387" Score="8" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that in many areas the peer-review process is quite lengthy (even a couple of years), it often happens that, by the time the journal version of a paper appears, the preprint version (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; arxiv) has accumulated a couple of citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: do citations of the preprint count as citations of the journal version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8265" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:43:37.463" Title="Preprint citations + Paper citations =?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11993" CreationDate="2013-08-21T08:50:52.560" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is impossible to answer your question unless you tell in which country you intend to work in the industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, for example, a PhD is not very highly considered by industry, where the one important criteria is which engineering school you did. This is slowly evolving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that in Germany, a PhD is highly valued in industry, even if its content has nothing to do with the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have little knowledge for other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T08:50:52.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12024" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:05:34.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that this is one time when taking a year off is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; recommended. You are at your peak right now in a number of ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have very recent publications and just received your degree. Both have a discernible half-life when it comes to being hired in academia (particularly for the first time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know the most people in your field, including your advisor and other professors who can write you up-to-date recommendation letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the most current knowledge of your field, and although it sounds like you're going to continue to publish, you won't be as able to actively learn (then again, I know from your previous posts that you were full-time employed during your PhD, so that may not be an issue).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that the timing is different in Australia, but in the U.S. there are generally key times of the year that academic hiring happens -- you put together applications in Nov-Jan and hope to land interviews and talks in the Feb-April time frame. If there is a similar time-frame in Australia, I would make sure you have the time available to put together applications and go on interviews, whether it is this year or after another year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you'll still be allowed to publish under your previous school's affiliation post-PhD defense, but if that isn't the case, I would urge you to figure out a way to work that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally (and I'm not really in a position to comment directly on this) is the question about how your job applications will be received with a year gap from academia. My feeling is that an extra paper will help you but that the time away won't help you (even though it isn't technically away it will be noticeable that you got your PhD a year prior), and it may be a wash. You'll have to consider this when you write your cover letters and research statement. I would think about how (if at all) you justify the extra year of high school teaching post-PhD in a cover letter. You've already got plenty of teaching experience under your belt to prove your teaching credentials, so an extra year in the classroom won't be beneficial from that standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T09:05:34.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12025" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:12:01.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on what you mean by &quot;count&quot;. If we consider whether they should be counted as citations: yes definitely. Afer all, the citations reflect how your science is read and then cited by others. It is then clear that these &quot;count&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem occurs when using the citation counts provided by different services such as Researcher ID through Web of Science. Then it is not certain that the &quot;in press&quot; version is counted. I, for example have papers where in press citations exist. In Web of Science, I can actually see them but the connection is not automatically done so I would have to add them to the appropriate paper count manually. I know it is possible to write to Web Of Science and have references corrected or coupled. I, for example have another paper that occurs in four posts because people have written the wrong volume number, the wrong year of publication etc. Since I am senior and these extra citations are not critical to me I have not tried to get them corrected but they can of course be more important in an early career case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other services such as Google Scholar may work differently. I have opted for providing measures from services to which I can link and thereby have others verify my numbers. So in the end this becomes a technical problem, the citations certainly count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T17:43:37.463" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:43:37.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12031" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:44:37.513" Score="4" ViewCount="1498" Body="&lt;p&gt;When would someone marking papers (lecturer, etc.) bump a student from just below pass up to the pass line? Do teachers consider things like attendance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the consideration (attendance, participation, etc.) for giving a student a better grade than they deserve, what is the justification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T02:22:29.573" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T14:10:37.020" Title="Under what circumstances would a lecturer 'bump up' a student to pass?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12035" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:50:34.483" Score="44" ViewCount="6198" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12007/929&quot;&gt;answer &lt;/a&gt; it is claimed that authorship is given away for &quot;free&quot; in some fields (e.g., obtaining the funding). The comments to the answer suggest that this is field dependent. I am looking for documentation from a field that suggests that authorship can be given away for &quot;free&quot;. For example, the ICMJE has authorship &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt; that put a pretty high bar on authorship. Is there any documentation that suggests that supervising a student or getting funding is enough to warrant authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T19:26:14.013" Title="What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12029" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:54:16.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a myriad of reasons why a student could have barely passing grades and good attendance.  Not everyone is able to grasp the concepts as quickly and as well as others.  They may have a learning difficulty, or they are taking on something to extend their knowledge and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example, my short term memory is no good under pressure, such as in an exam - I barely passed, and had conceded passes twice - does that make me less deserving?  I'll let the fact that I am now just finishing my PhD &lt;em&gt;in the same topic area&lt;/em&gt; answer that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good attendance is an indicator, albeit, not conclusive of effort, but more conclusive if they had not attended at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T04:13:13.313" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T04:13:13.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2013-08-21T09:59:06.547" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the Vancouver Protocol is something most people understand but traditions, peer pressure etc. is what makes co-authorship a sometimes fuzzy decision. So as for documentation, I doubt any exists that is accepted by all. That said, I know that in large consortias such as in physics, for example, accelerator work, one signs a contract that automatically adds your name to all papers produced within a given time frame depedning on your time period involved in the project. Such consortia-authorships usually use the consortia name as author with a separate listing of individuals. The consortia-authorship is something I do not think the writers of the Vancouver Protocol had in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from from &lt;a href=&quot;https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/ATLASAuthorshipPolicy&quot;&gt;CERN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of large research groups this type of &quot;contract&quot; (specific in each case) could be a way to officially outline the policy accepted by participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T11:56:06.280" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T11:56:06.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12036" CreationDate="2013-08-21T11:18:25.643" Score="8" ViewCount="1982" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; I think my supervisor has a severe lack of knowledge, does too many things instead of focusing heavily on just a few things and hence I can't really focus on my research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Story&lt;/strong&gt; I started my PhD a few months back and was hired specifically to work on a certain project. We have a few very outstanding research groups as collaborating teams but all in different research areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few weeks into my PhD, I was hit by all the different side projects my supervisor tries to kick off. They are extremely time consuming and not research related at all. Besides, I noticed that my supervisor has a severe lack of knowledge in one of our core research areas. As a consequence, I can't discuss any of my ideas with him. As the other PhD students feel the same way, we have mentioned the lack of time quite a few times in our group meetings. And although he agreed that we need more time on proper research, things didn't really change yet. As a consequence, my motivation for the project starts to decline, although I continue to be extremely passionate about the project's overall goals!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how I should cope with this situation? I thought about leaving his group, but I'm kind of stuck in a dilemma: I'd love to work on the project, and I don't want to let my collaborating teams down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8269" LastEditorUserId="8269" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T14:07:09.553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T16:29:06.983" Title="Doubts about PhD advisor and unsure how to continue" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2013-08-21T12:31:13.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to depend on the field. For most fields, the norm is that an author has made &quot;intellectual contributions&quot; to the work. ICMJE updates this requirement to &quot;substantive&quot; intellectual contributions, but most conferences and journals have a written or implied cut-off for how substantive an intellectual contribution is. Many journals and conferences now ask for detailed list of contributions by the authors to combat vanity authorships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields, for example my own field of Chemistry, the norm is that the individual who has secured the funding has written one or more grant proposals specific to this project. These proposals may have been written with or without the assistance of the students working on the project. They may have even been written before the student joined the project. In chemistry, the proposal needs to be pretty specific about what types of problems will be examined and what methods will be used. Writing the proposal to get the funding is a substantive intellectual contribution counting as &quot;substantial contributions to conception and design&quot; as far as the ICMJE is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding does not necessarily happen this way in every field. As Peter Jansson suggests, a National Lab, consortium, or other funded research center or institute may have a budget process that is separate from the conception and design of experiments. In such a case, the director of the center, whose duties likely include making sure the center is funded, is probably not an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal behavior for whether the supervisor is an author has been established in every field. Ask your colleagues. Consult your journals/conferences. For example, the American Chemical Society has the following description in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1218054468605/ethics.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Publication Ethics (Page 3)&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The co-authors of a paper should be all those persons who have made &lt;strong&gt;significant scientific contributions to the work reported and who share responsibility and accountability for the results&lt;/strong&gt;. Authors should appropriately recognize the contributions of technical staff and data professionals. Other contributions should be indicated in a footnote or an “Acknowledgments” section. An administrative relationship to the investigation does not of itself qualify a person for co - authorship (but occasionally it may be appropriate to acknowledge major administrative assistance). Deceased persons who meet the criterion for inclusion as co-authors should be so included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name should be listed as an author or coauthor. The author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts the responsibility of having included as co-authors all persons appropriate and none inappropriate. The submitting author should have sent each living co-author a draft copy of the manuscript and have obtained the co-author’s assent to co-authorship of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the ACS, the individual who takes responsibility for the validity of the data and the work (usually the student's supervisor in chemistry) is an author, even if that person did not design the experiments, collect the data, interpret the results, or write the manuscript. The supervisor has a more permanent position than the student and is likely to be easier to reach with questions five years from now than the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T12:52:52.070" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T12:52:52.070" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2013-08-21T12:37:02.323" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: free authorship, also known as &lt;strong&gt;gift authorship&lt;/strong&gt;, is a clear violation of research and publication ethics. The limit between “small contribution” and “no contribution” is not, however, easily defined; different fields put it at different levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the answer actually states that. It lists a series of contributions that are, in some field, considered important enough to warrant (in some combinations) authorship on resulting papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;they get grant money, they train you to use the lab, they train you to do statistics... or they might make suggestions for the research design, the main theoretical focus of the presentation / manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All journals (or publishers) have &lt;strong&gt;policies or guidelines on how authorship should be determined. In all cases, it involves significant scientific or technical contributions&lt;/strong&gt; to the work published. Authorship determination has to be weighted &lt;strong&gt;in each individual case&lt;/strong&gt;, as no two situations are identical (and not simple rule of thumb can encompass all possible situations, as Peter Jansson highlights).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are so many ways in which people can contribute to an intellectual work&lt;/strong&gt;, such as a research project and academic papers. It happens that &lt;strong&gt;different fields&lt;/strong&gt; of research have different habits in authorship determination, &lt;strong&gt;giving more or less weight to different types of contributions&lt;/strong&gt;. My own background is in physics and chemistry, where authorship tend to be more generous that, say, computer science or mathematics. I'll thus argue two examples of what you (and some fields) may consider dubious basis for authorship, but which in my field would be considered fairly standard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting funding&lt;/strong&gt;. In this age, getting funding most often requires writing a grant proposal for a specific research program, with good and novel ideas, and convincing a tough crowd of other scientists (in a competitive environment) that your program is a good use of taxpayers' money. Thus, in most cases, &lt;strong&gt;the person who provides the funding also provides a clear scientific contribution&lt;/strong&gt;: they identified an important problem to be solved, and provided a general framework for solving it. That's an important part of research! Identifying the right question to ask yourself is half of the job, &lt;em&gt;it is known. (Yeah, I'm trying my hand at Dothraki style in academic context. By the way, thank you for reading so far down my answer.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supervising&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether or not the supervisor actually provided the student with the research project in the first place, &lt;strong&gt;supervision implies guidance&lt;/strong&gt; of the student, which is definitely a scientific contribution. The supervisor will, in many cases, provide a broader view of the field and ideas for related problems relevant to the research, scientific background, and advice on how to use one's research time most efficiently. All of that is highly valuable, and contributes to the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I've read somewhere “but the supervisor is paid for this, it's his job, so he shouldn't be awarded authorship” — that's plain stupid, pretty much everyone gets paid to do research, thus by that argument most papers would be authorless.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, funding and supervising imply scientific contributions, which are the reason for authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T19:26:14.013" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T19:26:14.013" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12033" CreationDate="2013-08-21T12:40:08.447" Score="13" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's your project, not your advisor's.  Your lack of progress/motivation and supposed lack of time have nothing to do with him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; sit down with your advisor and have a serious talk about both of your expectations. Be honest about your lack of motivation, be honest about your disappointment, be honest about your intellectual loneliness.  Ask for suggestions. Listen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have other senior collaborators that you can work with, so if you need senior collaborators, work with them. Ask your advisor to fly them out to visit you, or to fly you out to visit them.  Schedule regular Skype/Gchat meetings. Similarly, get to know other faculty in your department, who might serve as more experienced mentors/advisors, if not collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're surrounded by colleagues who are excited enough about their research to want to draw you in, and you turn them away because you feel stupid?  &lt;strong&gt;What a wasted opportunity!&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; you feel stupid.  &lt;em&gt;Everybody&lt;/em&gt; feels stupid listening to other people talk about their ongoing research, because &lt;em&gt;by definition&lt;/em&gt;, they're talking about stuff that nobody understands (yet).  You're simultaneously complaining about intellectual loneliness and turning away potential collaborators.  So what if they're not working on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Of course&lt;/em&gt; you're constantly forgetting important things you once knew well.  It is totally unrealistic to think that you can keep everything you've ever learned/read fresh in your mind. Don't even try. Write things down. Maintain a library of papers, or at least a close personal friendship with Google Scholar. Let yourself forget details, confident in the knowledge that they'll come back amazingly quickly when you read them again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since your feeling is shared by other students in your group, it sounds like your advisor is a bit overexcited and has bitten off more than he can chew. All the more reason to sit down and talk with him directly, and to develop mentoring relationships with other faculty in your department and elsewhere. Also, start looking into other potential advisors, even if it means moving to another university.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T16:29:06.983" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T16:29:06.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:31:21.250" Score="28" ViewCount="1788" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assign my undergraduate students assignments from a workbook as homework. The homework amounts to about 30-minutes per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is impractical for me to collect these workbooks at each lesson, or even weekly, as any days when I am checking the work are days when the students don't have their workbooks in hand. Furthermore, I cannot constantly collect, carry, and redistribute hundreds of workbooks each week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I've limited my collections of these to twice per term. The results, however, have not been good. A great many students save many weeks of work until the last minute, only to discover then that the task is far more difficult than they anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I motivate my students to complete work daily when it is impractical for me to frequently assess it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T18:18:10.127" Title="How to motivate students to complete work that I cannot frequently check?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12033" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:32:46.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see only two possibly justified complaints here: &quot;supervisor incompetence&quot; and &quot;overloading with routine work&quot;. Unfortunately, without knowing both the supervisor and the subject in question, I cannot really tell you anything about the first (beyond the general statement that it may or may not be true and that if it is, nothing short of changing the adviser will cure it). The second can and should be discussed directly with your adviser, or, if it doesn't help, with the department chairman. Remember however that if the load you are talking about is a common rule for all PhD students in the department, you cannot request an exception for yourself without a really good reason laid out in a very convincing way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe JeffE said everything else there is to be said here already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T13:32:46.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:43:32.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[reward] Give some exam bonus to volunteers who will correct the homework on the board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[threat] Randomly pick a student to correct the homework on the board and give him/her malus if he/she has not done it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[threat ++] Make an exam (each week first, then each two weeks or randomly) in class on the given exercises, collect and evaluate the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8270" LastEditorUserId="8317" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T18:18:10.127" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T18:18:10.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T14:01:16.310" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intrinsic motivation&lt;/strong&gt; is always a better motor than threats and coercion. They are, after all, adults. So, try to make them understand that doing this is important for their progress, and thus completion of the course. Also, be open to suggestions from them on how to make it less cumbersome (for example, by skipping a week if they are really hard-worked at that particular time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, however, combine this with &lt;strong&gt;extrinsic motivation&lt;/strong&gt; forces, in order to help them see very concretely how the benefits of doing the homework regularly. For example, collect 5 of them at random every week. Another idea would be to tell them in advance that 50% of the final exam will be on problems taken from the workbook: they will understand very easily that, if they have done the homework correctly, it will really help them secure a good grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T14:01:16.310" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T14:38:04.360" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are excellent. Without knowing your field or the nature of the workbook assignments, I'll give the following answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have become a big fan of automated online homework systems (although I know some students hate them). If you happen to be in a field where these systems exist (e.g., Physics, Math, Chemistry--WebAssign, MyMathLab, etc.), consider this for a future semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I bring up these systems is that (1) they provide a forcing function for the students to do the work, (2) the grading is automatic and immediate, (3) the better systems provide guidance on problem solving, and (4) the math-related problems can be randomized so students can't copy of another student's work (as easily...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas for your current system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do a cursory check of the books every week. By cursory, I mean &quot;check that there is writing on the required pages,&quot; and give a check or not. This doesn't preclude them from not putting in much work, but at least they will see that you've got eyes on them each week.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give them a daily 1-question quiz that is straight from the homework (if it is the kind of work that has &quot;correct answers&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reassess why it matters that they do the work, and lay it out to them plainly. Do the students who procrastinate on the homework really do more poorly with the material? If the answer isn't an emphatic &quot;yes,&quot; then why do you care? If the answer is &quot;yes,&quot; then lay this out to them on the first day of class: &quot;I assign the workbook material because it helps you get a better grade in the class. It's up to you to do the work, and your grade will almost certainly reflect the amount of work you put into the workbooks. I don't collect it because I expect you to do it on your own, and it's your grade that matters.&quot; In the end, your job is to give them the tools to learn the material, and their job is to use those tools. At the collegiate level, you can expect them to take their education seriously. I.e., &quot;You can lead a horse to water...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T14:38:04.360" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T15:12:57.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually give short quizzes based on the homework assignments. You do not need to include the exact homework questions there (though you can do it too) but they should satisfy the condition that whoever can do the current homework problems should be expected to pass them and whoever who can not should be expected to fail. I find this system more encouraging and revealing than grading a random subset. For completely routine things (like basic arithmetic, trigonometry, etc.) various automatic online systems are really good. You need to be very careful with how you set up the questions there and it can take a full day for one course but you can do it just once and never think about it again until the time to print out the student scores comes. Just don't forget to make those scores a noticeable portion of the grade. The other advantage here is that you may (but aren't obliged to) allow the students  several attempts before they fail an online test, so they can really learn in the process, not just be evaluated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T15:12:57.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11926" CreationDate="2013-08-21T18:58:37.837" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kill the chicken, and make the monkey watch&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Institute an editorial policy by which all convicted offenders are banned for life from the publication in question. Convince other publications to share such info, and act in the same way after definitive proof is presented. No second chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publicize these events far and wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will probably take care of 60-70% of the problem, at least the blatant cases such as the one above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately few publishers have the conviction to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &#xA;To answer your question: &quot;Who do you ban among N coauthors?&quot; To first approximation, all of them as co-authorship implies shared responsibility. However, that can be more accurately determined on a per-case basis as the result of detailed investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detecting instances fraud is trivial if crowdsourced. Blatant image manipulation as the one shown above would eventually have been noticed by a reader of that paper. Same applies to other similar kinds of fraud. Relying on a single overburdened editor and a couple of bored referees for that task makes it much more difficult. Hiring staff to essentially redo part of the research reported in manuscripts submitted to the journal is just laughable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to demand ethical standards as a publisher, and raise the stakes so high that the penalty of getting caught, guaranteed loss of professional reputation and possibly employment, offsets any gain from publishing a single or a series of papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relying on automatic detection schemes is inherently unreliable. Smart people will always find creative ways to cheat more effectively. To illustrate my point, consider the unending arms race between virus writers and antivirus software companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, and since you seem to be quite green, I suggest you give this a thorough reading: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schon_scandal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schon_scandal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't take many Schönen to drive the point home...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8274" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T21:47:12.853" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T21:47:12.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T19:59:50.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a prof who marked us on completion. He taught 3rd year quantum physics for chemistry and would give out a page of reasonably easy questions that he marked, then several pages of really hard questions he wouldn't, but if you brought him each sheet completed he added 1 to your total grade. So whereas before you were out of 100, now you are out of 101. (Roughly,  his marking system was out of more then 100 I think). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also complete previous years worksheets for the same thing, or textbook questions, anything like that. One page of questions (not answers) was one mark, or one of his old worksheets was one mark (Since the solutions were online). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a lot, but someone worked it out that the first one you did added 0.4% to your final grade or something like that, but each one you did after that added less and less. The class perfectionist misunderstood the system and did 40 pages of textbook questions, and managed to raise her final mark by something like 4%. I just did all the old worksheet questions and got a percent or two, which really isn't much, but damn, did having done all those worksheets really help on the final. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="242" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T19:59:50.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11926" CreationDate="2013-08-21T20:07:52.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me the only possibility is to subject all or particularly important images to an analysis detecting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.albany.edu/~lsw/homepage/PUBLICATIONS_files/ICCP.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;variation in noise levels&lt;/a&gt; (see examples &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.errorlevelanalysis.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;; service unfortunately closed). I personally do not know if such an analysis could be automated in an electronic submission system or be used as a tool by the editors. How much effort should be spent looking for fraud will obviously depend on assessments of, for example,  how critical images are for the publication(s), the likelihood for fraud (random tests?) and the cost in terms of time and money for doing the testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me there would be much use to have a tool to do such an analysis for all submissions. The problem is of course that the noise level detection also identifies all kinds of manipulation and so it would seem reasonable to ask authors to provide a very detailed account of what has been done to each image so that the analysis can be set in a perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T20:25:53.390" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T20:25:53.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-21T20:15:52.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask the students to photocopy or photograph their completed work from the workbook each week and email them to you as PDFs/JPEGs.  (You may want a dedicated email to receive such files.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't grade the electronic copies, you can make submission a portion of the homework grade, e.g. 10-20%, depending on what your rules are about later changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T20:15:52.100" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11926" CreationDate="2013-08-21T21:00:35.470" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a search term for this type of manipulation detection is &lt;strong&gt;image forensics&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://dud.inf.tu-dresden.de/~kirchner/Documents/image_forensics_and_counter_forensics.pdf&quot;&gt;Matthias Kirchner: Notes on Digital Image Forensics and&#xA;Counter-Forensics&lt;/a&gt; may be a starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What can you do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a first step is to communicate clearly what image manipulations* are acceptable and which are not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it acceptable to adjust brightness and contrast?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;correct unequal illumination?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whitelight correction based not on a whitelight measurement but on parts of the image?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;digital sharpening or other enhancement filters?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where's the border between an inset picture and a fraudulent manipulation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who should detect this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that the reviewer should have commented and asked about the pictures above, however my experience as reviewer is that I often get pictures in ridiculously low resolution (I comment on that). I'm not sure, but I think that the publishers may ask for high resolution pictures when they spot such problems in the production process. However, that would mean that the reviewers may not have seen the actual picture that is used for printing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* &lt;em&gt;manipulation&lt;/em&gt; in the data analysis sense: calculations that change the information content (e.g. enhance contrast), and cannot be easily undone (as opposed to a transformation where the back transformation is easily possible, e.g. rotation), &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in the sense of fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T21:00:35.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T21:55:51.047" Score="2" ViewCount="1431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a MS thesis in an engineering lab and I am fully funded by my advisor (tuition waiver plus stipend). We are a small lab and my professor is aiming for tenure. I am ahead of schedule and almost done with my thesis.I am good at programming and completed the project in 3 weeks (my professor thought it would take at least 3 months). Now, my professor is asking me to work on other things which involve developing apps for her other projects. I have protested by saying I am an GRA and I should only be concerned with my thesis project and my work in all other large projects in the lab should be at my discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor replied that I am pretty lucky to work for her since other professors have graduate students who work on 5 projects simultaneously (which of course is load of crap, I have other friends working in other labs who only work on their thesis). The other time I protested, my advisor said that since I am supposed to work 40 hours a week in lab, the project should be completed within 2 weeks easily. (These projects which my advisor wants me to do require some 80 hours of programming sometimes since I first need to learn the language and then write code for it). It's not that I don't want to develop apps, but I am more interested in writing journal papers for IEEE with deadlines in November, and I need all the time I can for that endeavor. I raised this issue but my advisor said that getting accepted in IEEE is remote, so I should concentrate on writing apps since there is a very good chance for her to get funded if I develop them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that even if I refuse development, my advisor might throw a fit but my GRA will be intact because no advisor fires a student who is about to complete thesis. Also, I had asked my advisor if she would be interested in helping me with getting a PhD after thesis and she flatly said no. The advisor said I should probably go back to industry and work for 3-4 years and then decide on PhD. It seemed more like an excuse to make me get out of the lab. So it's pretty obvious there is no chance of a long-term relationship with my advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand what are the other job responsibilities of&#xA;     an MS student doing thesis?  There is no chance of working with my&#xA;     advisor after MS, so why should i work on her projects? I can very&#xA;     well try to get some journals papers published as it might help in&#xA;     getting a PhD admit elsewhere, or should I just develop her apps&#xA;     because I work in her lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: There are 3 people in my lab now (2 MS students and one PhD student), but I am the only programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T08:06:33.810" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T08:06:33.810" Title="Where do the responsibilities of an MS GRA doing a thesis actually end?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12048" CreationDate="2013-08-21T22:41:33.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; Your adviser is not wrong. There are plenty of additional responsibilities and duties of maintaining a matured lab affiliation even as a MS student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you went about it a wrong way. A little hill out of a molehill has been created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a GRA in a lab does not mean that the buck stops with your thesis research. I am a member in a medium sized lab based in a ECE department.  Typically, we have 4-6 graduate students, 1-2 post docs and a gaggle of undergraduate and masters students at most given times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Responsibilities:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesis research. This is primary and takes up most of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collaborative research with another graduate student. This is my secondary project and takes up a little bit of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Giving talks in the lab about our works in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Guest lecturing for my adviser in his courses when he is away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mentoring REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students when they come in summer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mentoring undergraduate and masters students from my own university in their own and lab projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Helping other lab members out with analysis - typically quantitative and some qualitative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing articles written by other lab members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Social engaging with lab members and lab visitors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Designing presentations for lab funding reports and reviewing said reports.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure I have forgotten a few more &quot;responsibilities&quot; but I can assure you that my work &lt;strong&gt;does not&lt;/strong&gt; begin and end with just my own thesis research. It sounds like a lot but I can assure you that it really isn't and the situation is quite typical for my university and department. I have an excellent work-life balance. Now, I am a PhD student but once upon a time, I was a MS student and I had similar responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; atypical. I have seen folks in labs (which develop apps as a stepping stone to doing research) spend a lot of time actually developing the app. You are right. It takes time.  Being a member of the lab means contributing to projects which are not just your own. It is a team effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your adviser has actually given you a sanity check in terms of getting a PhD admit and in terms of what other graduate students usually do. Getting a paper accepted in a prestigious IEEE transaction is quite a considerable effort and takes a long time. It seems to me that your adviser does not feel that your research will be accepted into such a venue. I also think you hit a nerve somewhere when you argued about quantum of hours and projects to be worked upon according to your GRA deal. It doesn't work like that. You are not a unionized worker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research takes as long as it takes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T22:41:33.977" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T23:43:33.570" Score="2" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am required to complete 300 practicum hours to fulfill my requirements in a Masters program.  I decided to fulfill these hours by creating a practicum experience with my GRA (graduate research assistant) supervisor.  This experience was designed for me to develop skills in tasks that I would not normally do in my GRA.  We decided to work on a few different projects- I was to submit an letter of intent after taking a course on grant writing, help develop a couple of publications in the works, and work on a presentation for our group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took the grant writing course, developed some general ideas with my supervisor on paths that we might pursue, and we submitted the grant.  I was told that I would take the lead on this grant as part of my experience.  And I have for the most part.  We did a lot of editing together, we met with the grant coordinator of our school, and I did most of the research for the grant.  It was a continuation of an earlier project, but the application was novel and it was something that I created and took ownership over.  I was excited as this was my first grant and I worked very hard on it.  I wanted this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Months go by and we are working on the other parts of the practicum, mostly working on some publication work.  But it felt like I was being excluded from the main discussion and I was not receiving much support.  It is an area that is not in my background, but I wanted to get experience in this area.  It felt like I was wasting hours sitting there with no support, so I did not count my hours towards the practicum.  I would try to get her to help, but it always seemed like I was bothering her or she didn't have time or was frustrated.  When I told her that I have not counted my hours recently, that I was just doing GRA hours, she seemed frustrated and told me that I need to get this over with.  I didn't think I was getting enough out of the experience.  At this point I started regretting doing my practicum experience here because I would have had a chance to develop real skills elsewhere.  Then, I thought that I probably should have been given more tasks in my GRA hours.  I was horribly underworked to begin with, and my practicum was an attempt to gain more meaningful experiences out of this group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, we get the word back that the letter of intent was accepted and there was a very good chance that we would get the grant.  I reply back to the grant coordinator like I had done before, since I was taking the lead on this grant, and instead, my supervisor gets in and starts coordinating things.  I keep trying to set up meetings and figure out the next step, but she took over the project.  No discussion, no email at all.  Now there is a lot of work going on with this grant and I feel excluded.  She has not assigned me a task to work on for this and I have not heard anything.  I feel like I am left in the dark.  I know she has a lot more experience and skill with these things, but this feels like it would be a big opportunity for me.  To be honest, I would like some recognition from department.  I feel like I helped the department score funds with a practicum and grant idea that was mine.  I feel pushed away on both the grants and the publications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you think of a way to approach this?  I really do like her and I don't want to cause any issues.  I just think she is a poor leader and supervisor.  I viewed it as a team effort to begin with and I was hoping to continue this way, but it does not feel like it is going this direction.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T11:26:03.833" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T11:26:03.833" Title="Supervisor and GRA roles in submitting a grant" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8574" CreationDate="2013-08-22T00:01:00.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read the editorial practices and author guidelines of your chosen journal carefully. The details will depend on the field, but I suspect most journals do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; require authors to implement all changes suggested by referees. However, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; required to address all the points raised by the referees. (For example, Physical Review Letters does this; see their &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/info/polprocl.html#edproc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;editorial practices&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/authors/tips-authors-physical-review-physical-review-letters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;author guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referees are human and are not immune from making errors. If you believe a criticism of your paper is incorrect or a proposed change is superfluous or erroneous, you should state this (politely!) in your response. You alone are responsible for the quality and integrity of your publications, and you should not implement changes you disagree with. If you present a solid argument for why the changes should be rejected, a reasonable editor can and should let your version stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Regarding multiple proposed corrections on material a referee has already seen, I feel that a polite request to the editor, after the first occurrence, that they expedite the review process by preventing such multiple corrections, is well within your rights.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, &lt;strong&gt;know the rules of the game&lt;/strong&gt;. Read your chosen journal's editorial practices and all the author guidance at least once during the preparation and submission process of your paper, ideally &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you submit, and certainly before you reply to a referee report. If a journal states that you must incorporate all referee proposed changes, and you are uncomfortable with this, choose another journal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="820" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T19:01:07.123" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T19:01:07.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12093" CreationDate="2013-08-22T00:06:21.047" Score="18" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4820/8563&quot;&gt;recent meta.physics.se discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the use of permanent links form physics.stackexchange, I proposed as policy that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when linking to the arXiv, link to the abstract page (arxiv.org/abs/...) and not directly to the pdf, as a courtesy to users on lower bandwidths. If the paper has been published (which will be noted on the arXiv abstract), &lt;em&gt;include a link to the journal version, even if it's paywalled, if only as a courtesy to the referees' hard work.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One comment on the italicized part was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doesn't pretty much everybody post the final version on arxiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I would like to know (if that is even possible) to what extent this is true. My gut feeling is that this is field-dependent, but I do not know what evidence may be available to explore this, other than anecdotal evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a clear trend for authors to upload post-referee-process versions after publication?&lt;/strong&gt; Does this depend on the specific field? What evidence is available for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:02.853" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T22:37:55.827" Title="How many arXiv papers are uploaded in their final (refereed) versions?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11979" CreationDate="2013-08-22T00:23:56.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently accepted to a MS program that is different from my undergrad and graduate training.  In my personal statement I tried to relate my experience to the field I was pursuing.  I had field research experience in public health, but I was applying for a MS in biology.  I still used my research experience, but I focused on the general research skills that I developed, things that would be useful in the lab.  I mentioned things that are universal to all research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you convey passion and direction for the new field, you'll be alright.  It can be an advantage too.  Think of ways you can incorporate your previous field if possible.  If not, show them your maturity and passion.  It seems like admissions committees can tell who is going through the motions and who is genuine.  Make your voice heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T00:23:56.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12048" CreationDate="2013-08-22T01:57:36.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way that I view my GRA position is that the university is paying your tuition and stipend.  There is expectation is that you will provide labor that will contribute to their projects.  It's a pretty good deal- you get an education with a mentor in exchange for work that hopefully you are interested in.  I would expect them to think of you as an employee.  At this stage, you work for someone and they tell you what they need and you do it.  It takes time and effort to mentor you, make sure you contribute everything that you can while you are there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T01:57:36.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-22T03:09:33.243" Score="71" ViewCount="8622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as an instructor at a university. I am not a graduate student there and my responsibilities end at teaching. Recently, a supervisor from another department asked me to prepare an article for their department to use, for some extra pay. The subject aligned well with my background and recent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I finished the article, which involved additional research and several weeks of work, I put my name as author, as I would any other paper. After I finished, the supervisor requested that I completely remove my name, as he wished to submit it to the leader of his department, assembled together with some students' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that at all unusual that someone would request that I remove my name from a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T16:03:20.703" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T05:59:38.920" Title="Is it common practice to remove an author's name from a paper?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-22T04:19:35.170" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a blatant attempt to take credit for your work - as far as I know, this is both not common, nor acceptable. To quote @JeffE &lt;em&gt;&quot;hell, no&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, or a polite variant, is the only response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, politely but firmly, state that as you have done the research and the write-up, then you are the first author, perhaps offer to have them as a co-author, only if they have contributed something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also consider having a quiet word with the head of the department about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="8850" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T05:59:38.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T05:59:38.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12037" CreationDate="2013-08-22T04:37:46.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are other answers here which get to this point, I would look at making required things required. If you need the students to do it every week, then make them do it by tying their grade to submitting it every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you don't have time to assess their work every week. I think everyone here can appreciate that. However, you need to at least partially solve that issue. One key for that is the proper use of technology. Either a Virtual Learning Environment, email, or other online homework systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot assess all of the students, then a random assessment might get what you need. After all, as a teacher, you should be providing feedback to your students. So, have them submit their work electronically (yes, this requires a change from a paper workbook approach) and each week randomly select a few for assessment. If you see some are stars, skip their assessments for several weeks. If you see some are struggling then assess them more often. The students don't know who will be assessed but their grade might not be based on the assessment of the homework, just that they attempted it for that, you can simply scan a list of submissions. Again, you could do this with email if you have no other solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the students would be intrinsically motivated and you would not have to do any prodding but in my experience some students do need a little prodding to get them to overcome the inertia  of laziness. For that, submission might be enough. However, in the end, you will need to assess some. You should assess as much as you can but you have to balance this with your other needs. There's a lot more to teaching that assessment but assessment is a pretty important aspect of what we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T04:37:46.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-22T05:22:46.653" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &quot;slam-dunk&quot; case, &lt;em&gt;provided you have a paper trail.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have both done research for the paper as well as wrote the first draft, then your colleague is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to give you co-authorship on the paper. (In fact, there's a strong case that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; should be the first author, not your colleague.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would agree with Damien that you should &quot;politely but firmly&quot; make your case to your colleague. If he refuses, then speak to the &quot;leader of the department&quot; and present your evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also make sure not to work with this colleague again in the future! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T05:22:46.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12029" CreationDate="2013-08-22T06:27:00.887" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things I like about teaching is that while we draw fine lines at numbers such as 65.0 and 89.5, teachers also get the final word on putting grades into the system, and the ability to look at a student's performance holistically to include non-tangible paper marks such as attendance (in class and office hours), intrinsic motivation, and future goals justifies &quot;bumping&quot; grades for particular students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't do it often, but if a student is on the line and showed me high motivation but didn't quite get to the higher grade, I will consider bumping up the grade (but I won't do it because of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9014/what-to-do-about-grade-grubbers&quot;&gt;grade-grubbing&lt;/a&gt;). Sometimes, it comes down to when I'm entering the final grade into the system, and I think, &quot;You know, that 89.3% for Alice really should be an A-.&quot; I don't lose sleep over it, and it really is relatively rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T06:27:00.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12065" CreationDate="2013-08-22T08:43:05.353" Score="8" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a masters degree in electronics engineering. When I was pursuing my B.Tech (Electronics and Communication) I had a nervous breakdown (to be specific BPAD) which was treated. After successful treatment I was able to succeed satisfactorily in my career. I have had to follow strict medications from then and sleep of 8 hours was must and the doctor warned me not to be in tense situations. I qualified the entrance exam for M.Tech  with a 97 percentile and I have a severe love towards research now. I have started to fall in love with subjects like signal processing, linear algebra, statistics and probability, machine learning etc, but one professor from a premier institute of engineering and science warned me not to do a PhD, because competition is so heavy nowadays and people like me may have a second nervous breakdown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as an lecturer at a private engineering college. The management people are bothering me which is creating great tensions. I will give you an example: The vice principal was asking for an explanation letter and apology along with lot of scolding for a malpractice done by a student in an exam where I invigilated. They are also compelling us to do a lot of office works and not allowing us to focus teaching itself. What my argument is that since I can tolerate these humiliations and tensions, couldn't I join for a Phd programme and advance my career? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried comparing myself with my teachers in engineering college and to my colleagues (who are certainly healthier than me). One instant I can explain: I had a teacher who when I asked a doubt on optical communication answered me that a teacher hadn't taught that....meaning they were not willing to take a look to the reference text. I am far better than my colleagues here. I regularly clear most doubts in the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a human being who has the right to exist in this world and to support my poor family, and to do justice to myself, let me ask that couldn't I do a PhD in this present world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I submitted my Ph.D. thesis in January 2020. Of course, there were tough times. But I survived. I got a postdoc position too. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastEditorUserId="8284" LastEditDate="2020-03-05T05:39:05.813" LastActivityDate="2020-03-05T05:39:05.813" Title="Is it wise for a BPAD (bi-polar affective disorder) recovered student to enrol for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-22T09:09:32.710" Score="2" ViewCount="3446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have around 8 years of work experience. At this stage, the possible step is to go along management track. But, I am neither interested nor does it appeal to me. Thinking more on this, I have decided to go back to school, preferably for a PhD or, in the worst case, a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GRE and GPA are not so strong: 1100 GRE with 770 in math and 3.0 GPA (out of 4.0).&#xA;My experience includes companies like Amazon and Zynga, but I have no research experience whatsoever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I a good candidate for PhD or master's with research? My primary interests are in computer graphics or applied mathematics in simulation/visualization. What do you  suggest I do? I am aiming for top 20 schools, but not sure if it will be right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8273" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T07:22:34.460" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T07:22:34.460" Title="Does work experience help in (US) graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12061" CreationDate="2013-08-22T09:52:22.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd love to tell you to pursue your dream, but it's not as easy. As Daniel said, a PhD (almost?) always leads to some tense situations. However, I wouldn't be as pessimistic (or at least as definite) as he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, Jack's comment is right on spot: we cannot give medical advices. IMO, you should discuss this with your doctor. How much stress can you take? For how long would it be O.K. for you to lose sleep? As your PhD draws nearer to the end, the stress will rise, whether you want it or not, and you will get at least few sleepless nights. Is there some medication that can help you with that? A doctor should now that, as well as the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you should look for a potential advisor and talk to him/her. Explain your situation, see if there is something to be done (i.e., give you much looser deadlines), maybe even arrange to meet with both your doctor and your potential advisor together to discuss this. An advisor can point out the potential problems, and a doctor can address them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, what would you do after getting a PhD? In many countries, a PhD is the first real step towards the research career. Such career, while relaxing in some aspects (flexible working hours, for example), is quite stressful in others (paper/conference deadlines, looking for grants, fighting for university positions, your own PhD students, problems in getting results and/or being unable to solve some problem,...). At that phase, you will not be able to have the world adapt to your needs. A journal will not postpone its next issue to wait for your paper, a conference will not be postponed for you, grants will not be just handed to you,... Is this the life you can handle? This is also to be discussed with your doctor (if possible, have someone with such experience along). If not, what does PhD give you and is it worth going for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to end in such grim tones, there might be alternatives. You can go for a &quot;normal&quot; (i.e., non-research) career, but talk to some researcher(s) and see if you can cooperate (see it as a hobby at first), so that you do some research, but without all the pressure. And, if that works out well, you can always discuss doing those additional steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, do remember: communication is everything. Without consulting your doctor and at least one academic, I don't think you should go for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7161" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T09:52:22.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12061" CreationDate="2013-08-22T09:56:40.977" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the basics: doing a PhD usually implies a lot of stress, and the process is both very competitive and tense. However, it depends a lot on the environment around the student. Therefore, without knowing your specific medical situation (and not being a medical expert, even if I knew all about you), you may not get a more useful answer than: &lt;strong&gt;yes, it is possible&lt;/strong&gt;, but you have to be very careful about &lt;strong&gt;ensuring that this is done in an environment compatible with your condition&lt;/strong&gt;, and be prepared to &lt;strong&gt;quit if you have to choose between your health and your job&lt;/strong&gt; (recognize early on that failure is always an option). It will be hard, but I don't think it's impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are to enroll in a PhD (or graduate program, I don't know the details of India’s graduate-level education system), it has to meet certain conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that the people taking you on as advisor and department head know of your condition, and wholeheartedly embrace the idea of you having special needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss it with the doctor that follows you regularly. Also bring into the discussion your future institution's resident doctor, because he is (in most countries, by law) the person who will mediate between you and your institution if problems arise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realize that if you love research, it's not only a PhD, but already think of your career ahead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last note of hope: in many countries, &lt;strong&gt;people with disabilities are allowed by law to obtain work adjustments from their employers&lt;/strong&gt;. This is more commonly done for people with physical disabilities, but I know at least one person who successfully obtained very specific (and very large) adjustments to his PhD program because of his mental health (this is in France, if it makes any difference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T09:56:40.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12067" CreationDate="2013-08-22T10:32:47.137" Score="10" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this concept sounds familiar to you but in Sweden PhD students are expected to have a study plan, which is revised every year, in connection with a meeting between the student, the primary and secondary supervisor(s). It's the closest thing I have to a contract actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically the concept is great, there's a formal demand to plan and revise the projects, so that things don't get out of hand. The study plan typically defines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the nature and title of graduate studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an expected time of dissertation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the responsibilities the student has towards the department (teaching, lab/IT responsibilities etc) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the extent of research/course ratio per semester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;courses taken/planned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project that planned to/will be a part of the thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then comes a series of so-called &lt;em&gt;&quot;lärandemål&quot;&lt;/em&gt; which I could possibly translate as &quot;learning goals&quot; mandated/advised by the board of higher education services (&lt;em&gt;Högskoleverket&lt;/em&gt;) and what is planned/completed to achieve these goals. This piece constitutes a majority of the study plan essentially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far so good... I think conceptually it's a great idea. In practice, the part regarding learning goals becomes a whole bunch of formal gibberish that does not reflect reality but looks fancy on paper. My supervisor does not really care much about the plan, at least not in the format it's forced on both of us. I am not sure if this is the impostor syndrome speaking, but I feel like it's essentially an annoying piece of paperwork, on which I am forced to write what I am doing/have done in rather exaggerated fluffy words. I have also considered the possibility that I &lt;em&gt;perceive&lt;/em&gt; it thus because even though I am very fluent, Swedish is not my first language. I could not say for sure... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to force myself to see the benefit in having and updating such a study plan. I could just do the minimal amount of work and get it over with, but seeing that this is actually my chance and legal right to influence the development of my graduate studies, I feel it'd be a waste of opportunity if I did not take the chance to make the best out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas as to how I can make better use of these study plans and study plan meetings that go along with it? Likewise any plans as to how I can avoid seeing it as an annoying piece of work that has to be done and have no practical meaning? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-17T21:30:01.863" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T21:30:01.863" Title="How to make good use of compulsory study plans in connection with PhD studies?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;paperwork&gt;&lt;sweden&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12066" CreationDate="2013-08-22T10:56:17.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can sympathise with your sentiment about the study plan. The idea is generally good but it will only be as good as one makes it. In my department we started with study plans long before it became a mandatory requirement. The reason was mainly to establish a contract (although strictly speaking it has no legal meaning) where student and advisor agree to the terms of the work. We had instances where both students and advisers were not doing their part and lacking a paper trail made discussions difficult, usually both parties blaming each others for the catastrophe that emerged when it was too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I still look at the study plan as a tool when things go wrong, actually to identify when things start to diverge and nip it in the bud. There are students who do no appreciate the plan but as subject responsible (and in our case the discussion involves also me) I try to make it a good and reflective discussion. I do believe it is good to take the opportunity to reflect upon what has been done so far and try to lay out the plans for the next year because in a PhD project the nose is often close to the work and perspective may be difficult to get. Providing an opportunity to express the plans can therefore be enlightening for all parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must, however, add that the bad cases which the study plan is supposed to reduce, still are very difficult and the study plan is not enough to resolve such cases. So my recommendation is to try to find a format for the discussions so that they become useful and positive for you. I would not expect everyone to experience these discussions the same way so in the worst case, try to make it as pleasant as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT in response to comment.&#xA;As with most things that are forced into action from &quot;above&quot;, the way to handle study plans and how to relate to them has become unclear. I can personally see that different departments view the document differently and although the Science faculty of my University has issued guidelines, my suspicion is that they have no clue what they are trying to say. So it is all confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, recently I heard a lecture by &lt;a href=&quot;https://internwebben.ki.se/en/bob-harris-central-director-doctoral-education-karolinska-institutet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bob Harris&lt;/a&gt; at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm which concerned the so-called Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs; another fancy term). You can listen to a talk similar to the one I attended &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.brainshark.com/Examining-ILOs-Webinar-446773935&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on BrainShark&lt;/a&gt;, however, a warning is issued for the poor sound quality. The talk was for director's of graduate studies and the Faculty. The point made here is that we need to decide what it is that we do during a PhD and it is only then [my interpretation] that we can make use of the study plan to see if we meet the expectation from the side of the Higher Education Act as well as from our personal viewpoints. All of this becomes very involved and I am myself in the process of changing the way we look at the study plan to also include the goals of the research education as formulated in the Swedish Higher Education Act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem with study plans as they stand now is that everyone must be involved in the process and as with everything else, they are not necessarily so and opinions will vary. Some will find it very useful and some will not. If a study plan is merely a meeting where one says 'done that; will do this' then its use is very limited. At best it is a time to actually reflect upon the progress or lack thereof. In the end, I think we have all lost track of the purpose of a PhD, &lt;em&gt;we do not see the forest for all the trees&lt;/em&gt;. Publish has become the (only?) goal but all the other skills are not highlighted well or even considered. Integrating the wider goals with the study plan to record and view progress, could in my opinion be a useful tool but it requires more or less reorganisation and additional adaptation by many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T13:51:51.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T13:51:51.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11696" CreationDate="2013-08-22T11:21:58.937" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if the is any evidence to support or contradict the idea&#xA;  that putting a poor-performing students on academic probation improves&#xA;  their performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whose idea is this? I quick look at what US universities think academic probation means does not suggest that its purpose is to improve performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://studentsuccess.utk.edu/crisis/probation.shtml&quot;&gt;University of Tennessee Knoxville&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probation serves as a serious warning that your academic performance&#xA;  needs improvement, alerting you that you are in jeopardy of Academic&#xA;  Dismissal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.fas.harvard.edu/registrar/ugrad_handbook/current/chapter5/ad_board.html&quot;&gt;Harvard&lt;/a&gt; Academic Probation is defined as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a serious warning to a student whose academic performance for the term&#xA;  is unsatisfactory. Academic probation is a formal action of the&#xA;  Administrative Board and becomes part of the student’s official&#xA;  record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that in general &quot;academic probation&quot; is an administrative state between &quot;good standing&quot; and &quot;academic dismissal&quot;. The purpose is to warn the student if they do not improve that they will be dismissed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potentially relevant question might be are things like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://studentsuccess.utk.edu/crisis/docs/SuccessPlan-Probation.pdf&quot;&gt;Success Plan&lt;/a&gt; of University of Tennessee Knoxville successful. This, however, is a really broad question. Each University is going to have a different &quot;success plan&quot; and implement it differently. You might also wish to consider how to build and implement a successful success plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T11:21:58.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1913" CreationDate="2013-08-22T11:37:41.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will just add to good Alexander Serebrenik's answer. The main point of references is to provide traceable sources to information. This means the translation of the title and journal are key. The title provides insights into the content of the paper and the journal makes it traceable. All journals have different &quot;standards&quot; for how to do this in detail. It is also common that articles in French, German, and/or Spanish are not translated (again local &quot;rules&quot;). It is not common to see, for example, cyrillic in references, instead translitteration seems to be the most common. Again, there should be &quot;rules&quot; about this in each journal and so the best appraoch is to contact the journal editor and ask if no explicit information is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of how journals may wish to see the references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author(s), year. Title in original language (if possible) [Title translated into English]. Publication name in original language (if possible) [Publication name translated into English]. Volume/issue/page information (according to type of publication). [In ‘language’]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Krenke, A.N. and Khodakov, V.G., 1966. O svyasi povercknostnogo tayaniya lednikov s temperaturoy vozdukha [On the relationship between melt of glaciers and air temperature]. Materialy Glyatsiologicheskikh Issledovaniy [Data of Glaciological Studies], 12. 153–163. [In Russian]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T15:48:46.837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:48:46.837" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12076" CreationDate="2013-08-22T11:58:19.810" Score="2" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new immigrant and my question is about norms in American universities. I have MSc degree from abroad and in order to improve my chances for admission to a decent PhD program I would like to get published. I would appreciate your answers about the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable for &lt;em&gt;someone outside a department/university&lt;/em&gt; to contact a professor and ask him/her for a research project (as a non-student)? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not have journal publications. What else can make them convinced?   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, what would be an ideal etiquette/strategy for contacting professors with a plan for making such a request, if it is sensible at all. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="8289" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T14:15:14.927" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:47:25.320" Title="Right way of requesting research project from a professor as a non-affiliate" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-22T12:11:48.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer assumes the worst case, namely that said supervisor indeed attempts to claim authorship for your work. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12056/is-it-common-practice-to-remove-an-authors-name-from-a-paper#comment22313_12056&quot;&gt;LarsH justly pointed out&lt;/a&gt;, you might first want to clarify this is not a severe misunderstanding by having a talk with said supervisor, i.e. why would he want you to do such a thing (and please don't go down the path of asking &quot;ok, assuming I did, what's in it for me?&quot;). There may be a sensible argument, but personally I doubt it, thus let's assume he basically wants to publish your work as his:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only is this unusual and unethical, it is against all scientific conduct and might even be a felony to press charges against. This would warrant said supervisor to face severe consequences like being fired or having their PhD/tenure disavowed. Do however not attempt something stupid like blackmailing them - instead, assuming you have sufficient prove of this, expose them immediately since this is intolerable misconduct. (If you don't have prove, treat carefully though, since this might backfire into you ending up being &quot;that jerk jealous of the &quot;real&quot;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; scientists&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; No offence meant, but unfortunately in the event of doubt rank all too often outranks common sense&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T11:33:43.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-22T12:19:07.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone wants to steal your research for whatever purpose, he is a thief. It is not acceptable in academic world to do such thing, but as far as I know, such things can happen quite often in comparison how unethical it is. You have to resist and you have to change or expel your supervisor as soon as possible. If he use your work without your name, you can / and you have to use it against him, (with help of 3rd party, who will &quot;accidentally&quot; find this) so such thing will not repeat in the future and you will have no strikes back. Academic world should be (and unfortunately it is not) free of parasites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6534" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T12:19:07.667" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12061" CreationDate="2013-08-22T12:58:09.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The bad news&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your doctor has warned you not to be in tense situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listen to your doctor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like somewhere around 10-25% of the population, you have challenges to your mental health. Those are challenges you have to live with and work with. For that, you will benefit from medical support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So listen to your doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doing a PhD is a lot of stress. A &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of stress.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you've written, according to your doctor, you are not in a position to take on that stress. So don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The good news&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of ways forward from here. There's lots of good evidence-based psychology going on, in India (for example at the CARE Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Chennai) and elsewhere, that may be able to help you develop your own early intervention toolkit to help prevent any recurrence of your former ill health. Such a toolkit might conceivably give you the tools you need to take on a PhD in the future, and to deal with the other challenges that life offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Final caveat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And life will throw enough stress-inducing events at you anyway: there's no need to go seeking out additional ones, until you've got the tools you need to handle them, so don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just listen to your doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T12:58:09.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12070" CreationDate="2013-08-22T14:01:35.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is acceptable, but not the best strategy. Getting the attention of a top professor is like fishing a very picky fish: you need a good bait. In my experience, it is easier to approach them by offering something rather than by asking for something. Also, the approach should be genuine. This is, you approach them because you want to work on something that might fit his/her research interests not just because you want to see his/her name tied to yours in a paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IDEAS&lt;/strong&gt;: Professors salivate when they see an interesting idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just follow all the etiquette rules. Be polite and respectful as you would be with any other person. Also, try to be precise, they are busy people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly: Publications are not strictly necessary to be admitted to a decent PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some project in mind, write it and send it to the Professor in question. Tell him/her that you are interested in working on such project and that given his/her research interests, you think that the project would be greatly benefited with his/her ideas and that you would appreciate collaborating with him/her on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8295" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T14:01:35.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11992" CreationDate="2013-08-22T15:08:57.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may vary by field; my experience is in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most US students start a PhD program immediately after finishing their bachelor's degree, so they apply during the last year of their undergraduate program.  It is less common to complete a separate master's first, especially in the sciences where PhD students are funded and masters students are typically not.  The first couple of years of a PhD program are usually coursework similar to a masters program (you would probably be able to skip some or most of these courses, if they are comparable to what you have taken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the US students with whom you are competing are mainly undergraduates in the last year of their bachelors program.  At this level a few of them may have published papers, but most will not.  They may have research experience from summer projects, summer internships, independent study or lab work, but it is not usually comparable to graduate research.  Very few of them will have any formal teaching experience; at most they may have worked as teaching assistants, which usually means grading homework.  Some of them may have taken a few graduate-level courses at their undergraduate university, but not to the full extent of a masters degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't think you need to be concerned about your level of preparation or experience in comparison with US applicants. If anything, you should be ahead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in comments, at a major US research department there should be people who have either come from UK universities or have experience with them.  If they are not already on the graduate admissions committee, the committee members will consult with them if they have questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T15:08:57.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-22T16:28:21.060" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;An episode I personally witnessed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A married grad student at a top university in a semi-experimental field told one of her two PhD advisers that she was pregnant 3 months before the dissertation defence (the baby was due 5 months after the defence). He replied &lt;em&gt;&quot;congratulations, I suppose&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and sent &lt;strong&gt;her&lt;/strong&gt; an e-mail (the same day) telling her that he was removing her from the author list in one of their joint papers. To say that she was shocked is an understatement. After much agonizing she replied to him &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;all the other paper authors&lt;/em&gt;, listing her contribution to the paper and expressing a surprize that this does not merit her being one of the authors. The advisor apologized and her authorship was reinstated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;em&gt;never surrender&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5829" LastEditorUserId="5829" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T18:16:07.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T18:16:07.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-22T18:04:44.183" Score="5" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that you just read your supervisor's dissertation because it is important for your research. As you have already conducted a fairly broad literature review about the subject some time ago, you start to notice that your supervisor's work appears familiar to you. While skimming through the relevant papers, you are able to identify some large parts of your supervisor's dissertation that were invented before. Those parts are not properly marked, and/or your supervisor's (suggested) improvements seem to be fairly trivial and insignificant - at least in your opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you suggest to approach the supervisor with your findings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8318" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T10:07:57.777" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T14:39:36.317" Title="How should a student handle possible misconduct in his supervisor's work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12082" CreationDate="2013-08-22T18:23:36.250" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Misconduct is of course a very serious thing. The problem you face is that you do not know the circumstances when your advisors work (or lack thereof) was made. It will also be hard to start digging into it to find out so I am afraid there is probably not much you can do. I do not think it would be wise to start spending time on this as a student either since it could seriously affect your thesis by distracting you and waste your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can be done? I would try to bring the question up with others. Discussing the different works and see if others pick up on the problem. Making people aware of what might be a problem can help you further assess the issue. I would tread carefully, however, unless you feel secure in opening up a can of worms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fully realize that this is far from a satisfactory answer from a moral point of view but it is pragmatic and I do not think it is your burden as a student to carry such weight. So the best you can do is to carefully expose the issue and perhaps later do something about it, if you still feel it is a serious breach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T14:39:36.317" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T14:39:36.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12086" CreationDate="2013-08-22T18:43:11.147" Score="11" ViewCount="2083" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one is extending work previously published in conference proceedings, what must be changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, does one need to change the Introduction, Background Work, or similar sections that are not actually the new material being presented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that some journals use a plagiarism detection system that would throw serious red flags if sections were untouched; so, how do editors view this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems reasonable to not have to modify every sentence, especially where the material has not changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Typically, 25-30% new material should be presented, but does this have to come at the cost of rewriting some portions of the work that remain the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastEditorUserId="5658" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T18:55:50.690" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T20:06:32.413" Title="What to change between Conference and Journal Paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12085" CreationDate="2013-08-22T19:12:52.747" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no good reason to simply copy large portions of an existing publication to make a new. By rewriting everything, you have the opportunity to rephrase your thoughts and most likely produce a better paper, at least from a writing point of view. Some journals definietly look at plagiarism and in this case self-plagiarism and the only way to avoid it is to rewrite. I think the benefits of rewriting clearly outweighs the possible time-saving by just copy-pasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to provide an example. I have written tens of papers about the same natural physical object that I have studied. In each paper, I have to provide a descritpion of the locality and characteristics and not once have this been copied. It is in fact interesting to see how many dofferent ways the same (dull) information can be conveyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a percentage of new material, I really would advice against relying on a numbr. It is possible this is a silent understanding in some fields but in general, only new insights and conclusion should warrant a new publication. Another year of data or something similar to that is in itself not enough. The paper might be published but such publication strategies are not looked upon favourably in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I strongly recomend rewriting each paper and not rely on copy-pasting. I am convinced you will develop as an author and also generate better papers by doing so. consider each paper a separate new entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T19:12:52.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12085" CreationDate="2013-08-22T19:42:38.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Peter Jansson, and I believe there is significant reason to rewrite the paper. That said, some of it is simply tedious!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just going to add an answer here that I received after reaching out to an editor about this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary of their response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good question! I will give you my point-of-view as an editor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The delta will be evaluated &lt;strong&gt;semantically&lt;/strong&gt; not textually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There is no definitive need to rewrite sections; however, since you are not subject to the same limitations as a conference paper,&#xA;  detailed explanations are highly welcomed, specifically in unclear or&#xA;  shortened sections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Also, since an extended paper contains something new, it is unlikely that Intro and Conclusions will be the same, and changes&#xA;  should be made accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5658" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T19:42:38.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12085" CreationDate="2013-08-22T20:06:32.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite likely, when you were writing the conference version of the paper, you found yourself having to compress and cut here and there, ultimately telling a different story than the one you would have liked to tell. These cut will have occurred throughout the entire paper. When writing the journal version of the paper, you will have the chance to expand on those previously compressed sections. Indeed, you probably have better ways of explaining things or new insights. Now is the time to give those explanations and insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T20:06:32.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12062" CreationDate="2013-08-22T20:19:33.213" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend sitting in on, or somehow actually enrolling in, some upper level class at a local university. Treat it as if you were actually enrolled, and ask (beg) the professor to grade your homework and exams. And be sure to sign up for something brutally hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will let you test your chops, and if you excel, then you can ask the professor to write a letter of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that top 20 programs are extremely competitive, and reject very many good people. Your competitors will have letters of recommendation from professors specifically familiar with the requirements of Top 20 programs, confidently saying that they are prepared to handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative would be to try to get into a master's program at a lower-tier university. If you prove yourself to be head and shoulders above everyone else, you can ask your professors to support transfer applications to better programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your work experience is likely to count for very little, or perhaps even against you, since you have been out of school for so long. Sorry -- that's just how it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a hard road, I have at least sort of walked it myself. Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T20:19:33.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11926" CreationDate="2013-08-22T21:14:43.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exist softwares dedicated to this. Journal of Cell Biology seems to have been a precursor in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24frau.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in 2002&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first simple check suggested in this paper is to open images in a image manipulation software and change &quot;controls&quot; (I guess: contrast, luminance, etc.) The problematic regions can then appear clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that, like plagiarism, this is the publisher to check or provide software to the editorial board, as this is technical and not scientific assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T11:50:18.163" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T11:50:18.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11649" CreationDate="2013-08-22T22:00:52.820" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers make it sound like it is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; bounden duty to hound the plagiarist, yea, even unto the ends of the earth.  My feeling is different in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand your question, the project was assigned for a course, and you are assisting the instructor of that course (call him or her Prof. Smith) by reading and evaluating the papers, in a role similar to that of a teaching assistant.  You should certainly report your findings to Prof. Smith, and be willing to answer any further questions they  may have, but &lt;strong&gt;your responsibility ends there&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is up to Smith to decide how to handle the matter and whether to pursue further sanctions, consistent with the institution's policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the student's self-plagiarism of past assignments (say, from Prof. Jones's course), again, report your findings to Smith.  If appropriate, Smith can discuss it with Jones directly.  It's not clear that the student has committed misconduct with respect to Jones's course, only Smith's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T22:00:52.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12061" CreationDate="2013-08-22T22:32:59.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to do a PhD at part time status?  It usually seems like PhD's in the US work on campus and these usually require being enrolled in a certain amount of hours.  I'm not sure what India is like.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really wish you luck with your condition.  Hopefully, over the years, you've learned different ways to stay balanced and handle stress.  Exercise and meditation are essential to keep me in balance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T22:32:59.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12052" CreationDate="2013-08-22T22:37:55.827" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a lot of work to find out which paper in arXiv has actually the same content as a published paper. However, taking arXiv's journal-ref field as a surrogate indicating which paper has a journal version out, I arrive at these fraction of papers: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CB8Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;fraction of arXiv papers with set &amp;quot;journal-ref&amp;quot; field&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks as if the gut feeling that this is field-dependent is true: high energy and nuclear physics have consistently high fractions of papers with journal-ref field set. On the other hand, this seems far less common for maths papers.  Note that a certain drop at the end is to be expected as the preprints may be uploaded to arXiv considerably before the paper is accepted, printed and the journal-ref is updated in arXiv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the marginal plot over all fields:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AxFth.png&quot; alt=&quot;fraction of arXiv papers with journal-ref set&quot;&gt; &#xA;So overall, about 45% of the papers have a journal-ref. However, it is set for almost 60% of the 2001 - 2007 papers. Whether this is a real decline or just the lag between preprint and paper publishing remains to be seen (in a few years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, neither the overall nor the subject-dependent trends seem to have a convincing increasing trend, even if the decline due to &quot;not yet published and updated&quot; is assumed to be the sole cause of the decreases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the complete picture, here's the development of total number of papers:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BZsuL.png&quot; alt=&quot;number of papers in arXiv&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and number of papers with journal-ref set:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7EpoL.png&quot; alt=&quot;number of arXiv papers with journal-ref set&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T22:37:55.827" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-23T01:51:53.900" Score="3" ViewCount="2361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of questions about grad school prospects with poor grades and/or gre but what about the prospects of getting into a funded PhD program with no research experience or professor connections but good grades and gre quant (3.9 and 165 respectively)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduate in December (BS CompEng from 2nd tier US college) and don't really have time to get interested in undergrad research (though i'd love to but I can't afford to quit my job).  If I just blanket applied to the top 20 CS PhD programs do I have a good chance at picking up decent funding (say $18k+)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also is there an online resource to profile what kind of applicants get accepted to which schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I received some good advice but no one has responded to my original question: can I get into a decent funded cs PhD program with good grades and gre while lacking research experience.  I can certainly ask my professors to write letters of recommendation and 'top 20' is a somewhat arbitrary number.  I would really be happy in any school that is actively outputting interesting machine learning or combinatorial optimization research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8336" LastEditorUserId="8336" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T00:28:23.790" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T01:58:26.747" Title="Chances at funded cs PhD with high GPA and GRE scores but no research experience or professor connections?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12097" CreationDate="2013-08-23T03:12:29.380" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your big challenge—and this would be true regardless of the field—is that you have no &quot;professor connections.&quot; This is a major challenge for you, because one of the most important parts of a graduate application is the letters of recommendation. If you don't have people who know you and can vouch for your capability to be a successful graduate student, you're going to have a tough time getting admitted to a graduate school, and especially top-20 programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that in most science and engineering graduate programs, if you do get into a reputable program, you should be able to get a guarantee of funding (either as an RA or TA) for the length of your graduate career (assuming you make &quot;normal progress&quot; and are a good departmental citizen, etc.). I would be leery of accepting an offer from a school that doesn't make such a commitment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T03:12:29.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12103" CreationDate="2013-08-23T04:29:52.003" Score="6" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesai.org/Publications/IJACSA&quot;&gt;International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA)&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesai.org/Publications/Guidelines&quot;&gt;copyright section&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Authors retain the right to publish their material elsewhere, providing the original publication is acknowledged.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the same paper be sent to somewhere else as well. Given that I have seen that mostly conferences/journals require unpublished material, what does this clause exactly mean ? Is it normal clause in Open Access Journals ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T11:11:37.813" Title="Publishing again acknowledging the original publication of oneself" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12108" CreationDate="2013-08-23T04:40:54.290" Score="5" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently come across this journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesai.org/Publications/CallForPaper?code=IJACSA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal provides acceptance notification within 15 days. This raised red flags, but then I performed a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=thesai.org&amp;amp;btnG=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholar Search for thesai.org&lt;/a&gt; and seems that most of their papers have decent citations. So, how reliable is scholar search when evaluating the quality of a journal or how to interpret the results from scholar search ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As pointed out by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010/nate-eldredge&quot;&gt;Nate Eldredge&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12099/publishing-again-acknowledging-the-original-publication-of-oneself/12103?noredirect=1#12103&quot;&gt;Publishing again acknowledging the original publication of oneself&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;this journal is on  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers&lt;/a&gt;. But this again raises the question how reliable is scholar search then or what are ways to search reliably for a research papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T15:53:10.657" Title="Can I reliably determine the quality of a journal by checking citation numbers in Google Scholar?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12107" CreationDate="2013-08-23T04:41:55.820" Score="33" ViewCount="93346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to submit part of my current work to conference A. I then wish to submit my whole work to a more prestigious conference B. As for the part submitted to A, there is no point of repeating it again. So I will just cite my submission to A in my submission to B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem is that the submission deadlines for A and B are roughly the same. So actually the moment I submit the work to B, my partial work submitted to A has not been published yet. I have not even been notified of its acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I still cite it?&lt;/strong&gt; My concern is that even if I can cite it, one will find nothing online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-19T21:41:33.420" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T21:41:33.420" Title="How to cite my own submitted but not yet published work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12099" CreationDate="2013-08-23T04:46:11.910" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;That means that IJACSA will not try to stop you from publishing your work elsewhere.  (They'd have little reason to do so, as they are not profiting from it.)  It is common for open-access journals to let the author retain the publication rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, no reputable journal will publish an article that has already appeared somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could &quot;publish&quot; it on your web page, or on arXiv, or as part of a book (though again, a reputable book publisher will probably balk if the content is just recopied).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: IJACSA is published by The Science and Information Organization, which is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers&lt;/a&gt;.  Its website makes the journal look very dubious, especially the ridiculously broad scope and the promise to complete peer review within 15 days.  I wouldn't publish there (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/&quot;&gt;or would I?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T04:46:11.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12101" CreationDate="2013-08-23T06:57:39.567" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are allowed to cite works in submission as part of your ongoing research; this is something I've had to do on a number of instances for publications I wrote both in graduate school and as a post-doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; cite the work only as &quot;Submitted to Conference A&quot; rather than a standard reference to a work published in the proceedings. You would then, if possible, provide the conference paper A as an appendix or supporting information for the referees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T06:57:39.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12099" CreationDate="2013-08-23T07:00:44.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the more specific meaning of this statement should be that you have the right to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publish your work in alternate formats (on-line repositories, your website, internal technical reports, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-use &lt;em&gt;excerpts&lt;/em&gt; from your work in alternate venues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter would be, for instance, to reprint a figure that you used in one publication in a second publication you've written, but simply citing that it came from the original figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T07:00:44.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12101" CreationDate="2013-08-23T08:03:45.770" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle you can cite other, submitted work in a research paper. Just give the authors, paper title, and either &quot;Submitted.&quot; or &quot;Submitted to [venue].&quot; in the reference list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, both as a reviewer and reader, I usually find this disappointing. I already came across several cases where I wasn't able to find the cited paper even years after publication of the paper with the citation. It is well possible that the cited paper is rejected, and maybe someone just doesn't follow up to really get it published. As a better alternative, check whether you can put a preprint version of the paper you want to cite online (e.g. on arxiv), and just cite that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T08:34:56.440" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T08:34:56.440" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12100" CreationDate="2013-08-23T08:10:05.493" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in case you generally accept numerical measures such as citation counts or the h-index as a measure of quality, Google Scholar seems to be rather unreliable in them. In the case of evaluating individual authors, let me cite the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on Google Scholar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vulnerability to spam — Google Scholar is vulnerable to spam.[26] Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg demonstrated that citation counts on Google Scholar can be manipulated and complete non-sense articles created with SCIgen were indexed from Google Scholar.[27] They concluded that citation counts from Google Scholar should only be used with care especially when used to calculate performance metrics such as the h-index or impact factor. Google Scholar started computing an h-index in 2012 with the advent of individual Scholar pages. Several downstream packages like Harzing's Publish or Perish also use its data.[28] The practicality of manipulating h-index calculators by spoofing Google Scholar was demonstrated in 2010 by Cyril Labbe from Joseph Fourier University, who managed to rank &quot;Ike Antkare&quot; ahead of Albert Einstein by means of a large set of SCIgen-produced documents citing each other (effectively an academic link farm).[29]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of a case where this has been exploited by a predatory journal, but if a publisher wants to do that, it doesn't seem to be too difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T08:10:05.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12111" CreationDate="2013-08-23T10:09:26.137" Score="10" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;My faculty is starting a mentorship initiative where they match undergrad students with alumni from the same program. I was contacted by one of my old professors, and asked whether or not I could be a mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have been in mentorship programs before; and I currently have a mentor myself, but I have always been the &lt;em&gt;mentee&lt;/em&gt;, never the mentor. I have to say I never considered what the mentors have to gain in these programs. Is it mostly charity, in the sense that you selflessly help/guide the mentee, or are the intellectual/practical benefits to mentoring, particularly within academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-08T10:45:36.047" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T10:45:36.047" Title="What benefits are there to university alumni mentoring undergraduate students?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;&lt;alumni&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12109" CreationDate="2013-08-23T10:29:11.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I view this as &quot;paying it forward&quot;: someone who has received good mentoring advice should pass this onwards to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it's a way of encouraging promising young talent, and making sure they make their way through a challenging transition (from high school to college graduate is a big change!), and prepare them for their careers in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to gain new insights and experiences by working with students of varying backgrounds. Helping them has actually helped me to develop closer connections both within the administration of my university, as well as with colleagues at other universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T10:29:11.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12109" CreationDate="2013-08-23T10:53:16.820" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can a mentor gain from the mentor/mentee relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Altruistic answers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Passing on learned knowledge and lessons is a hallmark of a society. What you learned as a student, employee, employer, &lt;em&gt;citizen&lt;/em&gt;, etc. is important so that once your brain and the brains of others in your generation are pushing up daisies, the knowledge isn't lost, and repeating mistakes can be avoided. Many people consider this a satisfying endeavor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a role model, you can demonstrate moral, ethical, compassionate, etc. strategies for using the education you got from the school. Knowing that you've led someone down an ethical path is a good feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can act as a sounding board for your mentee's questions about your field, and for the types of questions that don't routinely come up in class. There is a certain satisfaction in being able to answer questions based on your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There might be new ideas that your mentee knows about your field that you can learn from. While you pass on your wisdom, you also have the opportunity to learn some of the new ideas that are being taught today.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less altruistic answers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your field, having been a mentor looks good on a resume or in an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you'll gain points with your former professor, who might be more inclined to write you a good letter of recommendation some day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decidedly bad answers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steer the kid in the wrong direction, and that's one less competitor!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might get your lab cleaned because &quot;it builds character.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In academia, if your mentee has good ideas, you can steal them and publish the results yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T10:53:16.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12109" CreationDate="2013-08-23T12:47:22.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the mentor point of view, I think one important practical benefits of mentoring/tutoring is that it gives you access to a pool of students (your &lt;em&gt;mentees&lt;/em&gt;, as you put it), from which you may find future interns/grad students/post-docs. This access can be used to try and recruit them, either for yourself, or within your network (or your field in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it gives you privileged (yet indirect) access to the students currently enrolled in the program: if you wish to circulate, e.g., a job or internship offer, it will look more attractive coming from a classmate than sent to them from a stranger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T12:47:22.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12099" CreationDate="2013-08-23T12:53:00.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very important to understand the difference between &lt;strong&gt;copyright law&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;academic ethics&lt;/strong&gt;. They give you permission, waiving the normal copyright assignment process, to retain the copyright of the work you produced. You can thus republish it, in full or in part. While doing so in another journal, even with appropriate citation, would be unethical (journals require &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; content), there actually are some ethical ways in which this could happen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;republishing as a chapter in a book, with a clear notice;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;republishing parts of it in course material;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;republishing “as is” in a more prestigious journal 20 years from now, if it so happens that your paper spawned an entire new field of research and is now revered as such&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reformatting it and putting it on your blog (which &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a publication).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T12:53:00.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12056" CreationDate="2013-08-23T13:47:11.970" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to round up the discussion, there are situations where you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to have your name removed -- when you are not satisfied with the quality of the work in the paper. I am a statistician, and I have heard of cases when a group of substantive researchers would ask a statistician for initial guidance, do the (wrong) analysis on their own, and stick the statistician's name into the list of authors to make their paper more credible. I have also heard of really weird situations when statisticians from pharma industry did not want their names on solid papers so as not to signal to their competitors that their firm is working on this new type of a drug. In either case, the initiative of having the name removed comes from the co-author themselves, not from the lead author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I have +1ed most answers here. As most others, from your description the situation appears to be that of plagiarism and a blatant violation of your authorship rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T13:47:11.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12101" CreationDate="2013-08-23T14:28:46.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing something that is not published will prevent reviewers from doing their job, so it's a big no-no if you want to improve your chances of being accepted. The best way to go is to be patient and submit to B next year, having had the chance to improve using the reviews from A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not at all possible, you may be able publish A right now as a technical report from your lab/department an cite it as such. You'll have to check the guidelines of both conferences, namely if A accepts material previously published as a TR (in CS at least this is very common) and if B accepts citing TRs (usually also true in CS as long as it is easily available online).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, when citing from a non-refereed source like a TR, you have to be very prudent in the way you characterize the work. Remember that it was only accepted in your department as an interesting document, not properly validated using the scientific contribution standards of your community. If I read a claim that something was &quot;proven&quot;, or &quot;shown&quot;, or &quot;demonstrated&quot; by a tech report, I'll probably reject the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, do not just cite A unless it is tangential (and in that case, why cite it all?). If it's actually important, give it an overview in your B submission, sufficient for a reviewer to keep on reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T14:28:46.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12121" CreationDate="2013-08-23T15:36:11.500" Score="13" ViewCount="2661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11031/importance-of-research-in-other-areas-of-study-within-mathematics&quot;&gt;this question of mine&lt;/a&gt; first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Does the admissions committee in grad school consider publications in places like &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt; as a significant achievement given the student has only completed bachelors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question because I have seen many math papers in arxiv.org that have not made new contribution to the field. In other words, those papers have not made new discoveries or solutions of the unsolved problems. This makes me wonder whether publishing at arxiv is considered a big achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T17:41:10.700" Title="Are publications on arxiv.org valued by graduate admissions committees?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-23T15:40:19.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is not really. This is because the people in Grad schools see if your publication has been submitted to a known conference or journal, or at least that they are peer reviewed. In arxiv.org anybody can publish their own work, being more like a big database of not or pre peer reviewed papers. I mention you this because I usually put my articles, the drafts that has been accepted in conferences, in arxiv.org, but there are some people that put only its ideas and even some articles that do not contribute too much to the developing of an specific field of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T15:40:19.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:11:03.500" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Publishing&quot; on the arXiv is not a big achievement; actually, it's not an achievement at all.  In terms of how prestigious it is, it's not really any different from putting an article on your own personal website.  The arXiv isn't a publishing venue, it's a preprint server---it's purpose is to serve as a public repository for potential articles.  It has various benefits (it's probably more reliable than your own website, it gives credible evidence about when an article was posted and modified, which is sometimes desirable), but it achieves those in part by &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; refereeing the articles on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; an article as an undergrad is certainly a meaningful achievement, and given that it can take a while for a paper to make its way to being in print, an appropriate unpublished article is still a positive for an applicant.  Of course, the admissions committee wants to distinguish a good article from a bad one, and since posting on the arXiv isn't a good proxy for quality, the committee will look for others (recommendation letters, for instance, or possibly just reading the article themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:11:03.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12100" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:23:53.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;decent citations&quot; I assume you are referring to quantity.  Attempting to determine the significance of a journal by the number of citations is a very bad idea; see for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.0278v4.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper showing that such things can be very misleading&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just ask any experienced researcher in your field; if they're not familiar with the journal, you should probably stay away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:23:53.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12070" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:47:25.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Iron's advice is good, but you will probably get turned down.  I get many such requests and none has worked out yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way for you to get to work with a professor is to first be admitted as a PhD student in his/her program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:47:25.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12101" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:10:07.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that there a few issues that need to be addressed in this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You believe that part A is based on fundamentally sound methodology and the findings will be accepted within the community of your discipline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you cite works in submission?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Works in submission are not available to the public.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether of not Part A is widely accepted you can site it as a work in submission, the answer to the second concern is: you can also cite it as an unpublished work. For proper format check with the manual of style for your discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of an unpublished work not submitted for publication using APA Manual of Style:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Lincoln, A. (1863). &lt;em&gt;The principles of human equality&lt;/em&gt;.. Unpublished manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a work in progress or submitted but not yet accepted using APA Manual of Style:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Lincoln, A. (1863). &lt;em&gt;Gettysburg Address: The principles of human equality&lt;/em&gt;.. Manuscript                 submitted for publication (copy on file with author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the third concern goes, I have reviewed numerous submissions to everything from small local up to international conferences and the equivalent array of professional publications and journals, personally I prefer that a brief description of the &quot;Part A&quot; methods and finding be given in a manuscript. However, when it comes to an abstract and space limitations a simple &quot;previously we (I) found...; therefore, we furthered the body of knowledge with...&quot; was always sufficient for my standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6931" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T19:10:07.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-23T20:57:10.440" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the paper.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you post a &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; paper to arXiv, it will definitely be valued by admissions committees, especially if you (and your references) make a compelling case to read it in your statement (and their letters).  On the other hand, if you post a &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt; paper to arXiv — poorly written, making no new contribution, or both — it will also be valued by the committee, but as an easy excuse to reject your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's exactly like any other publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T20:57:10.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11985" CreationDate="2013-08-24T00:18:27.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll just note that my credentials weren't so different from yours when I graduated from college (obscure liberal arts college with little track record, etc.) and I got in to Berkeley, Michigan and Northwestern.  Of course, I can't actually compare our cases (and this was a decade ago), but I don't think you should hesitate to apply to, say, Wisconsin, or UT Austin or Rutgers (depending on your regional preferences).  If you doubt it, you can always contact the graduate coordinator and ask if they think you're a plausible candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dan says, a good range is the best approach; apply at least one place you can't quite believe you'll get in, and at least one place where you feel absolutely confident, and a few in between.  This stuff is indeed incredibly unpredictable, but there are a lot of slots in reasonable graduate programs, and fewer good candidates than you might think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T00:18:27.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-24T01:03:57.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting papers on arXiv is publication, but it is not a referred publication. People use it for various reason but most importantly to timestamp their work and communicate their works with others earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, publishing on arXiv itself is useless, since no one has read on your paper yet. I bet that the admission committee won't read your paper at all. There are hundreds of applications, why do they want to waste time to go to arXiv and read a newbie's paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, situation could be different if you can show your work already &quot;reviewed&quot; in other way. For example, it is discussed by journals like Science/Nature, or very well known website like arxivblog before the referred publication. Or, the arXiv version is already cited by independent research groups. Remember to mention that if you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should put it in your CV if your papers are good. If possible, you can a try to attach a short excerpt from your paper such as abstract or the first page. It might be useful to show your work in progress and support your research interest in your application. In particular, if you already have at least one referred publication, the extra arXiv papers should sound much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4277" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T01:03:57.763" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12139" CreationDate="2013-08-24T03:07:56.283" Score="5" ViewCount="2000" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I noticed that some of the papers actually had their author names listed in the alphabetical order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say Mr. Smith contributed more than Mr. Black. Then without noticing the tiny footnote, one will simply take Mr. Black as the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether there exists some certain such scenarios where the authors have to be listed as such. Will it be unfair for the first-author-should-be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am talking about EECS field. I see most of the papers list the authors according to the contributions. But only occasionally, I see alphabetically-listed authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T05:52:26.333" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T13:12:54.600" Title="When will the authors be listed alphabetically?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-24T03:11:11.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with JeffE's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things the admission commitee look for is your &lt;strong&gt;research potential&lt;/strong&gt; when they review the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to show that you do have the potential to do research. How do you show that? A well-written paper on arXiv is the evidence. Whoever writes your recommendation letter can use that to say it. You can mention that paper in your application. If the commitee has any doubt in your research potential, they can look at the paper and draw the conclusion themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the quality of the paper is good, I believe it's achivement. Whether or not the achievement is big depends on the quality of your paper. Of course, you may kill your chance to be admitted if the quality of the paper is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to improve the quality of the paper, I would suggest you to let somebody (your prof/advisor) review the paper before you put it on arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T06:44:17.067" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T06:44:17.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12130" CreationDate="2013-08-24T03:17:38.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (Atmospheric Physics) it does not happen - the principal researcher is first author, then the list is in order of contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship#Order_of_authors_in_a_list&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this section of a Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, it really depends on the field of research, and these seem to be relatively well established within those fields, so I would imagine that there would be very little feelings of unfairness (though I would imagine that such conflict would still occur). It would get trickier in interdisciplinary studies, where this would have to be negotiated, once again depending on the policies of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T04:15:50.503" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T04:15:50.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12130" CreationDate="2013-08-24T03:23:14.427" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics authors are almost always listed in alphabetical order. This works, among other reasons, because work groups are organized less by a lab structure so you get more rhetoric of equality between all authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T08:52:14.353" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T08:52:14.353" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12119" CreationDate="2013-08-24T03:41:51.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to highlight one exception to the different answers given above. There are a few subdomains of research, mainly in physics, in which repositories such as arXiv are the primary means of communication. (This applies to topics such as string theory, and I believe some high-energy areas as well.) If you happen to work in one of these areas, then an arXiv publication will carry much more weight. Otherwise, the warnings given above do apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T03:41:51.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12140" CreationDate="2013-08-24T07:00:42.450" Score="10" ViewCount="4755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine a case where I wish to apply for MIT. I happened to work with a young assistant professor who finished her PhD in MIT. How much will her good words weigh in recommending me to MIT PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this because I am facing a choice in asking for recommendations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A recommendation letter from a more experienced full professor OR&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One from a young assistant professor who just came back from MIT?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that what matters most is whether the professor knows me well or not. But for them two, I think they understand me roughly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-08T10:46:04.467" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T10:46:04.467" Title="How much more does a recommendation letter from alumni help in PhD admissions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;alumni&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12137" CreationDate="2013-08-24T07:30:38.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As both the academics know you the same, I would obtain a reference from the more experienced full professor for your application and a reference from the new assistant professor for your records/supplementary notes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that you can never have to many references/recommendation letters, but strategically use them for what you are applying for wisely. However, use the recommendation letter only if their specialisations are the same or are similar to what you are applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T07:30:38.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12130" CreationDate="2013-08-24T09:00:09.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It happens when the authors chose to do so!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals do not impose the order of authors in the authors list. They usually give guidelines (or policies) on authorship standards, i.e. who should be co-author and who should not, but they leave the ordering up to the authors themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, different fields have different customs. In physics and chemistry, alphabetical ordering is very rare (used for example in consortium publications), while in mathematics alphabetical ordering is more commonly, but not exclusively, used. &lt;strong&gt;Unless there is a footnote clarifying the authors’ respective contributions, you cannot definitely tell which system they used.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T09:00:09.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12137" CreationDate="2013-08-24T12:01:55.880" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Damien's answer for the specific case of your question. A graduate of the department, who knows you very well and can write a good letter of recommendation, is worth just as much as the &quot;big name,&quot; because she is familiar with the department as it is currently operating, and would be able to place your work in context of people also known in the department. So, for the specific case of applying to a school that is someone else's alma mater, I would say go for it, with a caveat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That caveat is that if a person is not able of writing a good letter of recommendation, then you shouldn't use it. A bad letter will not help you at all. If you have a career services office or academic counselor who can help you sort through which letters are most suitable for graduate school applications, that will help you make the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T12:01:55.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12130" CreationDate="2013-08-24T13:12:54.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In CS, it varies by subfield. Theoretical Computer Science follows the math tradition and (almost) always uses alphabetical ordering. Many other subareas use some form of order-by-contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T13:12:54.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12145" CreationDate="2013-08-24T14:59:40.600" Score="30" ViewCount="6246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted to a journal a couple of months ago. The editorial flow is somehow quick and very transparent. I receive notifications for all events happening to the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the managing editor contacted me three weeks ago. They informed me that the assigned editor could not commit to the job and left. Another editor was immediately assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was contacted today by the new assigned editor. I was informed that all the contacted reviewers so far either refused to review the manuscript or did not respond to the invitation. They are now looking for other reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the bad luck surrounding the manuscript, all of this happened in a reasonable time and I am satisfied with how quickly they react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, these events made me reflect. Even if an editorial board possesses a fair network of reviewers, there is still a little risk that all the contacted reviewers either refuse or do not reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if no reviewers could be found for a submitted manuscript? Is the journal going to reject the manuscript because of a lack of reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorDisplayName="user7112" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T17:49:18.763" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T12:01:37.113" Title="What happens if the editor cannot find reviewers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12144" CreationDate="2013-08-24T15:17:09.250" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: the editor will continue to try and find other suitable reviewers, sending them invitations and waiting for replies. At some point, they may come back to you and ask you to suggest names (additional names, if you had already given some when you originally submitted the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can happen that an editor has a hard time finding suitable reviewers that accept to review a manuscript. There are a few factors in play, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the journal is not well-know;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editor is new, or not well-know in the field, or does not have a very good network;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the research reported is atypical, in a very narrow subfield, or joins different areas (so that no one reviewer feels confident in accepting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the elements sent by the editor (title and abstract) are rather boring or tend to confuse the potential reviewers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that most of these factors do not reflect badly on the manuscript, so there is no need to feel bad about it. The editor is likely to continue his search of reviewers. I see two other options that the editor could choose from, but I judge them as rather unlikely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate the manuscript himself, and make a decision based on his own review. After all, it's his job, and the reviewers' role is only to help the editor reach a decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refer the manuscript to another editor, or to the editorial board, so they can make a decision on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that it may take quite some time to find suitable (and willing) reviewers. In the case of one paper of mine, it took the editor 3 months to find adequate reviewers, and that was actually for a prestigious journal. However, the paper was atypical enough (and the research was quite novel) that many potential reviewers did not feel able to review it adequately. &lt;em&gt;(And in case you wonder, it was accepted on the first try, once the editor found reviewers.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (regarding your comment): my advice is &lt;strong&gt;don't retract your submission&lt;/strong&gt;, unless you think it's the journal's fault (unwilling editor or unknown journal). I know it's tempting! But especially if your work is multidisciplinary, it will take time to find reviewers, even if you submit it to another journal. Thus, better let the current submission process go to its end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T15:24:35.220" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T15:24:35.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12144" CreationDate="2013-08-24T17:55:45.930" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;F'x's answer looks right to me, but since this actually happened to me once, I'll add some extra commentary which doesn't sound like it applies to your situation, but might apply to similar ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals (at least in math) have a de facto policy that every paper which even plausibly might get published has to go to a referee before a decision can be made.  Therefore an article which has problems which make it very unlikely to get accepted---being difficult to read, or highly specialized, or involving multiple areas with few potential referees---but which doesn't have obvious flaws which make it an easy rejection might have trouble getting through the process.  The editor keeps asking people to review it, and it looks like a hard job, and the paper isn't so interesting to be worth it, so they keep turning it down.  An editor can eventually break this loop by asking a reviewer in a way which implies that the reviewer has permission to give a more cursory rejection for the reasons the editor has identified (perhaps based on comments made by other people when turning down the review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once an editor has decided to start nudging potential reviewers in this direction, it becomes faster for everyone if the editor politely suggests that the paper should just be withdrawn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This (I think---I can't say for sure what the editor was thinking) is what happened to me.  I submitted a paper involving two different areas to a journal specializing in one of them.  After several months I got back a letter from the editor stating that several people had turned down the paper with negative impressions; the editor offered to look for more referees, but before doing so, wanted to know if I would like to withdraw the paper rather than continue to wait when it wasn't clear the paper would be accepted.  I (and people I consulted with) interpreted this as a polite indication that at this point the editor would primarily be looking for an excuse to reject the paper, and therefore that it would speed things up for me if I withdrew it.  (And, indeed, the next journal accepted it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a notification that the editor can't find reviewers &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be a hint that the editor wants you to withdraw it, but isn't necessarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="8" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T19:32:27.777" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T19:32:27.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12148" CreationDate="2013-08-24T18:02:29.620" Score="5" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, my field is Information Technology and I would like to know if it is okay to submit to management and environmental science publication. Of course, it's not purely I.T. but this is a paper on how I.T. can help preserve the environment, specifically on reducing consumption of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8357" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T19:17:20.167" Title="Is it okay to submit a paper to a conference or publication from another field?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12147" CreationDate="2013-08-24T18:43:01.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't anything wrong with submitting to a conference that might not be a perfect fit. I would urge you to ensure that the fit is decent enough that you won't be wasting anyone's time, but cross-polination can be great for both fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a graduate student and was helping my advisor review papers for a prominent conference, I read an outstanding paper that I didn't believe was on-topic for the conference, and I suggested to my advisor that it should be rejected it even though it had a novel (and cool) contribution. When I discussed it with her, she said that for really excellent papers, program committees will sometimes be flexible. If I was convinced it was that good, she said, I should give it a positive review and let the committee sort it out. In the end they accepted the paper. It was very well-received at the conference, and the authors were excited to get the paper into the competitive conference, where it would undoubtedly be seen by a lot of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T18:43:01.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12147" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:17:20.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if your work is either &lt;em&gt;interdisciplinary&lt;/em&gt; (i.e. has impact in two different fields), or at the border of two fields (e.g., physical chemistry or molecular biology), you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; publish in journals and conferences in a way to address both communities. We usually have a lot to learn by outsiders coming into a given field of research, as they bring a new view, new ideas, concepts and methods. Your case sounds exactly like that, so I'd say go ahead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T19:17:20.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12152" CreationDate="2013-08-24T20:25:14.713" Score="29" ViewCount="7658" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my student and I are writing a paper, my question is:  Among &lt;code&gt;firstname.lastname@student.institution.domain&lt;/code&gt; vs &lt;code&gt;firstname.lastname1@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which sounds more professional? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally submitted a paper back when I was a bachelor student using my gmail address, although I had a similar student account like the one above. But my supervisor back then advised me &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to use an &lt;code&gt;@student&lt;/code&gt; account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/164/changing-mailing-and-e-mail-addresses-as-corresponding-author-which-to-include&quot;&gt;this related question&lt;/a&gt;, a reviewer mentioned that he tends to have a negative a-priori when he sees an author of a paper with a gmail address (he admits that it should mainly be about the quality of the work, but he can't help it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2018-12-29T22:28:51.763" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T22:28:51.763" Title="Which email address should a student use in a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-24T20:31:33.230" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I have used my gmail account in the papers I have had published, without any hassles (in journals of impact factor 2+).  I use the gmail account as it is one I still will be using when I complete my PhD, thus no longer have my university account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like with many things, it is dependent on the journal's policies - best to read up on what they expect, if in doubt, write and ask them.  They may allow it, but it may be due to email addresses like gmail going to their spam folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T20:31:33.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-24T20:57:25.613" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on many things, which I tried to order by descending priority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possible journal policy: in most cases, they don't have one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possible employer policy: my own institution forbids the use of &lt;code&gt;gmail.com&lt;/code&gt; addresses in lieu of our professional ones, because of a national policy forbidding use of commercial email providers for state-paid positions (prohibitions which my institution extends to students)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which email address you'll keep longer: students email is temporary, but &lt;code&gt;gmail.com&lt;/code&gt; may also be (it may not be hard to imagine that, in some near future, you become infuriated by Google's (or any company's) behavior and close your account). On that note: if you graduated from some institution, you may get a permanent alumni email redirection, which may last longer than all those individual accounts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which email looks more professional: &lt;code&gt;smurf19@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt; sure doesn't do any good for your reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T20:57:25.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12144" CreationDate="2013-08-24T22:07:19.187" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happened to me once that the editor sent my submitted paper to 5 reviewers (all of them were in my references) and all of them rejected the invitation to review the paper. The editor took this as a sign that my paper was not suitable for publication in that journal and rejected the paper. So, yes, a rejection can actually happen but it is not the rule. As usual, publshing is a combination of good content, a bit of politics, and luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8358" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T22:07:19.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-25T01:38:36.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, an institutional account looks more professional than a personal account. However, because of the transient nature of most student accounts, you may want to consider having your student open an account using &lt;code&gt;firstname.lastname@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt; format, especially if their current gmail user-name happens to be something like &lt;code&gt;smurf19@gmail.com&lt;/code&gt;! This account should then be used for all academic/professional correspondence with individuals and institutions outside your university. (Obviously your student still needs to use the &lt;code&gt;@student.university&lt;/code&gt; account within your university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, also check the policy of the journal to which you are submitting. If they require an institutional email account, then this is a moot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T01:38:36.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-25T04:29:22.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me suggest a different direction (even though it doesn't directly answer your specific question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't put your email address on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(obviously, put whatever you want for the correspondence when submitting the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a grad student, my advisor forbid me to put an email address for us on any papers unless it was &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by the formatting guidelines. We just left out email addresses altogether, for the following reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If someone wants to find you, a &lt;em&gt;simple&lt;/em&gt; Google search will turn up an email address that will be at least as current, if not more current, than the address on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But what if my old website is still active with my old address?&quot; you might complain. That's your own fault for not policing old websites. If you have switched institutions, your new website should quickly rise (or will eventually rise, anyway) above your previous sites, cached pages notwithstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will there be false hits because someone didn't find your up-to-date email? Sure. I'll argue that just as many times the email you put on the paper will be different than the one you currently use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that email addresses change, and what you put on your paper may not matter in a year, or two, or twenty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T04:41:10.800" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T04:41:10.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12182" CreationDate="2013-08-25T10:22:00.673" Score="9" ViewCount="8028" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: What to write in a hypothesis that can't claim statistical results of any kind -- only those of engineering nature.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explanation:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;In thesis writing, hypothesis is claimed to be one of the most important aspects. I'm not arguing with that but in some cases, it seems a little over-priced. I am currently writing a thesis that deals with enhancing an existing security model. I can't give out the exact idea obviously but please let me explain with the help of an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, I have a security problem that the existing &quot;role-based access control&quot; of MS-Windows does not solve some problems -- so, I come up with time-based constraints for the model used and incorporate them in a new &quot;enhanced&quot; model. In the thesis explaining this contribution, what do I write in the thesis? I can't claim an &quot;N%&quot; increase in security or any other statistic that I can think of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's the hypothesis in this case?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastActivityDate="2020-01-11T23:40:15.913" Title="Hypothesis for an Engineering Oriented Research Thesis" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12156" CreationDate="2013-08-25T12:42:24.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Effectively, what you are doing is &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; of existing research, rather than designing something &lt;em&gt;de novo&lt;/em&gt;. The notion of a research hypothesis is therefore somewhat inappropriate to such work, and you wouldn't write a paper describing this work specifying a definitive &quot;hypothesis.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you'd write the paper emphasizing that your model does something &quot;better,&quot; &quot;faster,&quot; &quot;more securely,&quot; or specifying whatever other accomplishments advance your work from the previous state of affairs. Your thesis should then show how that is accomplished, and give some evidence thereof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T12:42:24.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12159" CreationDate="2013-08-25T13:07:35.623" Score="4" ViewCount="1809" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my dissertation, I have felt the need to illustrate some ideas with the help of figures and illustrations which I have found available in existing literature. I have borrowed a number of them and I give proper citations and everything. My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be considered a negative point to have multiple borrowed figures from existing publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in two cases, I found it hard to rephrase the captions for the images and I just quoted the captions(the proper way). &#xA;Does that look like I am being lazy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8360" LastEditorUserId="8360" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T14:36:17.483" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T14:36:17.483" Title="Borrowing figures from the literature" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12158" CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:27:32.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here is not &quot;laziness&quot;; the real issue with reusing figures from the literature is that, without appropriate permissions, you &lt;strong&gt;do not have the right to do so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reuse a figure in the literature without the appropriate permission from the rights-holders, you are effectively stealing their work, which is not allowed. Therefore, you need to make sure that you have gotten the right to use the figures, and have the proof to back it up if challenged. Normally, for scholarly works such as theses, such rights are routinely granted and cost-free. However, you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to check with the publisher (or author of the paper, if she holds publication rights) &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; using the figure. Then, next to the figure you are reproducing, you'll need to have a statement such as &quot;Figure reprinted by permission of &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; where &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is the person or institution authorized to grant reproduction rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T14:27:32.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-25T16:52:11.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A university email address that I had long used become unavailable in 2011, so I faced the decision of what to use for publications, and indeed what email addresses to use in other places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main criteria was that I wanted a permanent email address, and I wanted maximum control over the email address, including reducing the possibility that others are reading/storing my email, and the option to change my hosting if I was unhappy with it while not having to change my email. Changing email is a real drag, and I think it is a good idea to use a permanent address for publications if possible. If someone is contacting you regarding a paper, and it bounces, it is possible whoever it is will just give up. Your prospective correspondent may try to search for a more current address, but why make it difficult? If you have a common name, searching may be more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue asked in the question is what is more professional. Personally, I think this is a minor issue. Maybe some journals care, but I don't see why they should. They should be more concerned, in my opinion, whether you will be contactable by this email long term. Unfortunately, in many cases it is not possible to update publication email addresses afterwards, even online, so that makes it doubly important. Email to my old address (which I stopped using in 2011) now bounces, which is unfortunate, but I can't do anything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many choices available out there. They include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Free corporate email addresses. Google's gmail is a popular example in this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS: They are free. It is permanent as long as the provider does not close up shop or close your account for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS: They are not university addresses. &#xA;      Someone is probably going to read and possibly sell the contents of your email. Otherwise, why would they give away something free? Also, if the email hosting is hosted in the US, the NSA may store your email. As we know from recent news revelations, for gmail, we can assume that both Google and the NSA are going to be going through your email, or at least keeping it.&#xA;      You have little or no control over the quality of the hosting. Even access may be problematic at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) University address (possibly using alumni accounts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS: University address, which is generally a good thing for academic publications. The NSA might still sniff through the email, but it is unlikely the university will, though who knows these days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS: Little control over the quality of the hosting or other parameters like the amount of storage allowed. If you want to change to another host, you will have to change the email. Possibly not permanent (for non-alumni addresses). If you don't work at the university any more, they will probably eventually shut down that email address (again, for non-alumni addresses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Create a custom email, including buying ones own domain, and paying for custom email hosting for email addresses of the form yourname@custom.domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS: Complete control over the email hosting. If you don't like the hosting, you can change it. One hopes a paid hosting company will not sniff through the email, though again who knows? For US hosts, the NSA is still a concern. It is a permanent address as long as you own the domain. You can make the email address easy to remember and to tell someone over the phone. Mine is extremely easy. Also, you can use anything_you_want@custom.domain; i.e. you can choose whatever username you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS: Not a university address. You have to pay. However, the charge is not excessive; I pay $10.00 a month, and this is on the expensive side. There are cheaper options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can guess, I went with option 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2017-05-02T09:47:17.143" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T09:47:17.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12166" CreationDate="2013-08-25T19:46:43.460" Score="8" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked two professors by email if I could do an independent study with them. Both of them responded, saying that they can sponsor me for the study. As soon as I received the first professor's response, I replied, saying that I wanted to work with him and scheduling a face-to-face meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that both professors have responded, though, I think I would enjoy working with the second professor more. Would it be appropriate for me to tell the first professor that I changed my mind, or would it be wrong to take back the commitment I already gave him? If it would be appropriate to change my mind, how can I handle the situation tactfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I would prefer to work with the second professor, I know that I would enjoy working with either of them, so I'll be fine if it's too late to change my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Here is some more information about my specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning on doing the same project with either professor. I am currently writing the music for a video game, and I would be working with the professors to produce the music and create a graded portfolio. I haven't worked out any specific details with either professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both professors are music professors who have specific knowledge about music technology. The reason I would prefer working with the second professor is because I know he has expert knowledge of the software I'm using to produce the music. In addition, he is skilled with the genres of music I'm producing as well as writing film scores. I'm not sure how much the first professor knows about these specific topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6030" LastEditorUserId="6030" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T06:34:31.410" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T06:34:31.410" Title="Can I tactfully change my mind after agreeing to do an independent study with a professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12164" CreationDate="2013-08-25T19:56:09.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good situation to have to be interested in two projects, and be equally happy to work on either of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have given a commitment to one of the professors, then you really should honor that commitment. Reneging on your commitment will look bad to the first professor, and if the second professor finds out, that could leave a bad impression on his mind, as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could tactfully tell the second professor, &quot;I would really love to work for you, but Professor X gave me an offer first, and I accepted before I received your offer. I am sorry to have to decline, but perhaps we can work together in the future.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a tactful way to say the same thing to a professor after you've made a commitment; you'll come across as very opportunistic instead (note: that's not a good thing!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T04:24:12.460" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T04:24:12.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12164" CreationDate="2013-08-25T20:03:44.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a project already lined up ? it sounds like your meeting with the first professor would be to discuss topics for the study. In any case, if no financial agreement has been reached, I see no harm in talking with both professors and then making a decision based on what happens in those meetings. I disagree with @aeismail that you've given a formal commitment at this stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't say though why you'd prefer to work with the second professor prior to having a meeting ? is it the subject matter ? general rapport ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T20:03:44.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11920" CreationDate="2013-08-25T22:50:20.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a similar complicated case in our &lt;a href=&quot;http://eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers2013/hees.pdf&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;. I'd suggest this as a good way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your own case, add a comma after the braces, followed by your email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how it would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;{Author.one, Author.two}@univ-one.edu, Author.three@univ-ten.edu&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming your username tells the reader that it is yours (has your lastname, initials or so). Additionally, do your best to sort the emails such that they follow the same order of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T22:50:20.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T01:41:18.293" Score="5" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor recently received a pretty major award in our field for a set of four papers that he wrote, and I was a co-author on one of these.  He and I both agree that I should receive some sort of credit for this award because my contribution was significant (the nomination for this award was done by someone else, so there is no wrongdoing on his part).  What would be the right way, if any, for me to include this on a CV?  What should I tell people?  I was thinking of saying, &quot;Paper so-and-so that we wrote together received the such-and-such prize&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8368" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T04:36:25.907" Title="How to share credit for an award given to my advisor?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T01:46:03.853" Score="32" ViewCount="55822" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing my Ph.D. thesis and struggling with the introduction chapter, what to cover, what not. This is a technical thesis. The broad area is molecular simulation in statistical mechanics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of tips available on Internet, but those are very general often. I have found few theses also searching on Google. All those tips and theses vary in style and content and it is difficult to decide which one to follow. Please provide tips on how can I write a good introduction chapter of high academic standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After reading your valuable inputs, I am adding here few more points. (Thanks everybody). Your comments on these points are highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen theses where people include background theories. On this matter, I have read that the theory should not be something which others know. Now this is difficult to predict what to include as background theory, what not. I have seen people including theories which are widely available in textbooks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The chapter 2 is dedicated to literature review. It is also important to briefly mention background and relevant research works. Here I have found people are giving a little elaborate technical details. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T19:52:26.567" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T14:16:07.843" Title="How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12097" CreationDate="2013-08-26T01:58:26.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I get into a decent funded CS PhD program with good grades and GRE while lacking research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will&lt;/em&gt; I get into a decent funded CS PhD program with good grades and GRE while lacking research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate school applications at the highest level are strongly biased random processes. For the good programs, there are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; many more qualified applicants than available positions. Many times it boils down to which professors are looking for candidates who are strong in certain subfields, and that changes on a yearly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go to graduate school in your field, put together the best application package you can (great letters of recommendation, well-written research statement, etc.), and apply to a range of schools that meet your criteria for &quot;school[s] that [are] actively outputting interesting machine learning or combinatorial optimization research.&quot; Don't be silly and apply to only the top schools (&lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; is guaranteed acceptance), but don't feel shy about applying with excellent grades, scores, and letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned that you'll be throwing money away by applying, there are times in life where you do have to take risks in order to proceed, and spending application money may be one of those times. However, this: &quot;If I just blanket applied to the top 20 CS PhD programs&quot; is a bad idea and almost certainly a waste of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your concern is more &quot;should I spend another semester/year getting some research experience to be more competitive,&quot; well, that's a bit more nuanced. It can't hurt, especially if you do well in that research (either publish something, and/or demonstrate to a professor that you have good research potential). Are you the perfect candidate now? No. Will you be competing against other students who don't have research experience? Yes. Do students with quality research experience have a better chance of being accepted? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T01:58:26.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2013-08-26T02:50:45.163" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a slightly different field to you (atmospheric physics), but have had my PhD thesis approved for submission.  Your university should have a style guide available to you - take that advice first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My introduction comprised the following sections (this was also used successfully for my MSc):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rationale - this comprises an overview of the background knowledge in the field (and was expanded on in the Literature Review that was written after the Introduction).  Make sure all variables are explained in detail here (dependent, independent and controlled).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hypothesis - what exactly is the predicted result of the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Objectives - The main outcomes of the research (these related to the main papers that have been written and published along the way).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesis structure - how the thesis is organised.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T02:50:45.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12169" CreationDate="2013-08-26T03:13:30.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you were only the coauthor of one of those papers, it would be nice to know how much was your contribution to the paper you co-authored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I see your advisor is a very humble person (thing that you should learn, and not asking that you deserve extra credit for the work you have done); and he just feels that you deserve credit for the award. Only problem is that maybe he is saying that because he wants to be polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper that you co-authored if it deserves good credit and reputation, that will come with the number of citations you will receive. I think, personally, that is of very bad taste that you want to pull the strings so hard to get a recognition for a work that was not even 50% of your contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the good work and you will see that next time maybe you will get an award for your hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember stay a little bit humble and you will be respected and learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T03:22:16.720" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T03:22:16.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12169" CreationDate="2013-08-26T04:33:39.597" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will take a slightly different view from Layla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that you &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; cannot list your advisor's award under &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; list of awards. However, you would list an award that a paper won as part of the listing of a paper, or a &quot;best talk&quot; or &quot;best poster&quot; award, or indicate that a lecture was invited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if the award is expressly given to the winner for a set of papers, and this paper has been cited as one of the papers in the collection that is being recognized, then there would be nothing wrong or misleading about designating the paper in question as &quot;(a Prize X-winning paper),&quot; or a similar formulation which expresses the same intent. (That is, that the paper is one of a set of papers so awarded, and that you specifically are not the one being recognized). Also, this designation should appear alongside the paper, not in your &quot;awards and honors&quot; section of the CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T04:33:39.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12169" CreationDate="2013-08-26T04:36:25.907" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just write it down exactly as it is: &quot;I co-authored one paper in the series of four papers for which my adviser got PRIZE_NAME prize&quot;. Then I would read it aloud and wouldn't find it impressive enough, so I would abstain from putting it in the CV at all, though you are welcome to make your own judgement here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Nothing that doesn't sound good in plain, crude English will fly with people who have brains (and most hiring committee members are no fools). The very first thing I do when I evaluate a CV is to translate every sentence into plain language and cross out all buzz words. The second thing is to verify all easily verifiable statements. So, either say it plainly, clearly, and precisely, or don't say it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T04:36:25.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2013-08-26T04:55:16.773" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thesis, which does happen to be in the area you are writing about, took a somewhat different approach for the introductory chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivations—why is this particular problem important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related efforts—in what context was the work done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short summary of the main development of the thesis (without a formal hypothesis statement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An outline of the remainder of the thesis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following chapter, which was also an &quot;introductory&quot; chapter, but more of a &quot;preliminaries&quot; chapter, defines all the major concepts, tools, and ideas used in the remainder of the thesis (which were derived from my published papers, and therefore somewhat briefer than what is needed for a thesis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T04:55:16.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12181" CreationDate="2013-08-26T06:18:47.223" Score="11" ViewCount="2443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking at a job application that asks for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C.V. (required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement of Interests (required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cover letter (optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement of Research (optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement of Teaching (optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this confusing because I don't understand what a &quot;Statement of Interests&quot; is supposed to be, relative to the others.  Does anyone know what's expected in a document of this kind?  I'm a bit shy to ask the institution in question just yet, for fear that it's something well-known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8369" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T12:10:20.757" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T14:38:38.637" Title="What do statements of interest, teaching, and research mean when applying for an academic job?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2013-08-26T06:19:43.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem of university addresses getting stale because the linked accounts are not available/active can also happen with other accounts.  Gmail may be a bit more sensible than most, but I have suffered for using hotmail.com (Microsoft always knows best, including when to delete all your old saved mail wholesale without telling you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your student is a serious scholar, I recommend using an alias from a professional society (acm.org, ams.org, ieee.org, etc.) instead, which can be redirected to whatever actual account one currently uses.  My old grad school address of firstname-lastname@university.edu also has stayed for years, first as a pointer to my school e-mail account (now of course gone), and now as an alias for my work e-mail address that I use professionally.  Your school may have some such option also, check with some local IT guru there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T06:19:43.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11985" CreationDate="2013-08-26T06:46:10.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll only address the question of deciding what &quot;mid-tier&quot; means. There's one coarse classification that could be helpful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 48 math departments considered as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/group_i&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Group I&lt;/a&gt; under the AMS classification (the older one, deprecated as of last year but the most useful one in my opinion). There's obviously a lot of variation within this group, but I think it's safe to assume that the programs at these 48 schools are stronger than the 56 math departments in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/group_ii&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Group II&lt;/a&gt;. (The bottom of Group I is probably not separated from the top of Group II by &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much, however, so don't stress too much about the cutoff.) However I have a lot less confidence in the division between the bottom of Group II and the top of Group III; in this region the AMS's case for switching to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/groups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new groupings&lt;/a&gt; seems quite strong to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T06:46:10.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12177" CreationDate="2013-08-26T08:24:04.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a rather confusing request, actually. However, what I think the job offer is looking for in a &quot;statement of interests&quot; is a description of the research areas you are interested in, while the &quot;statement of research&quot; would be a listing of projects you'd plan to start if you were hired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in many job postings, those two items would potentially be conflated into a single statement. So I'd recommend that you contact the department. I'd recommend doing this by phone, if possible—that way, you don't have to give as much identifying information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T08:24:04.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12156" CreationDate="2013-08-26T09:05:32.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis-model is good for research where you want to understand how something works, but I think it is ill-suited for capturing the full scope of engineering research. After all, in engineering, you're primary goal is not to learn something about how the world works, but rather to &lt;strong&gt;change how the world works&lt;/strong&gt;! So, instead of a hypothesis on how something works, I'd put up existing gaps in the ability to do something as a working basis. That will then put a focus on your research result as an extension of technical capabilities. In order to evaluate your research results, you would then have to show that your results actually close the existing gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, also engineering research needs to understand something about how existing things work in order to be able to create something new. Hypotheses &lt;strong&gt;are suitable&lt;/strong&gt; in engineering to clarify these preliminary things. In your case, you state that &lt;em&gt;&quot;the existing 'role-based access control' of MS-Windows does not solve some problems&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - that sounds like a perfect hypothesis to test for. But verifying this hypothesis is certainly not the key step in your research, and maybe it has already been done previously. That's why I'd recommend not to focus on a hypothesis as the basis for engineering research (though one might use them to clarify preliminaries), but focus on &lt;strong&gt;identified gaps in current technical abilities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T09:05:32.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12177" CreationDate="2013-08-26T09:19:51.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I assume it is an academic job you apply for the letters will cover aspects of that type of work. The job profile could possibly also reveal how to interpret the requested information. My general advice concerning the confusion is to contact the employer to get additional information (they may also keep such information on a web-page). It seems the instructions are sub-par in this case, which is annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;View the CV as the back-bone and the statements as an opportunity to provide some meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;aeismail has already covered two of the letters/statements well. How the research statement should be interpreted is less clear, but posdef's comment is good because it may concern what you have already done. If it is then it is common to go through previosu research and highlight what you consider are your major contributions out of your production and how you consider your work original and contributing to development in the field(s) of concern. I would strongly advice asking about the focus for this letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement of teaching is usually detailing your views on teaching. The purpose is to  get a sense of your ideas and understanding of pedagogical aspects of the work. This may nclude techniques/methods you have already used or ideas on such that you wish to develop. It could also include ideas on courses you would like to develop (if you have a sense of your possible coming mandate at the place at which yo apply. If your position is not concerning teaching, such a statement may not be necessary (I assume you received a form letter?). But, if you are pplying for a position which includes teaching then such a statement may be quite important and provide the job committee with a firm picture of your teaching philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T09:48:54.103" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T09:48:54.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2013-08-26T09:30:28.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The introduction of a thesis is a good place to give a &lt;strong&gt;bird’s eye view of the problem you face&lt;/strong&gt;, its importance, relevance to major challenges in the field, possible applications (including in related fields). You can very briefly explain what other have done to approach it, but I would &lt;strong&gt;definitely not include there a full review of the literature&lt;/strong&gt;. You want the introduction to give the readers (and demonstrate to your committee) that you have a high-level understanding of the context and problem at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you can include a section giving a full review of the state of the art in the field (i.e., what others have done so far) later in the manuscript, either as its own chapter, or as part of a “methods” chapter that is structured as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      1. Foundations of molecular simulation&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      2. State of the art for your specific problem&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      3. Methods you have developed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T09:30:28.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2013-08-26T10:00:18.217" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, all the other answers omit a very important purpose of the Introduction: You should introduce not only the thesis, but &lt;strong&gt;the results of other people&lt;/strong&gt; in the Introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good introduction cites quite a handful of works of other people. Basically, a reader, after reading the Introduction, should have a good idea as what the thesis is going to be about, and in what wider concept of science it fits, and this cannot be done without citing other people. This shows that you are not doing some rubbish nobody is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T10:00:18.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2013-08-26T10:22:08.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An introduction is a funnel into your work, bei it a paper or a thesis. The basic idea is to start by providing the wider scope within which your work resides.You then focus in on your part of the field or research question through a few steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wider perspective of the beginning should also be the perspective in which you will later put your own results, to show how they feed back into some more general perspective. This part should allow the reader to focus in on relevant research and obtain a firm backgroudn of the current knowledge in the field. Once you have established the background you should identify for the reader the gap of knowledge which you have tackled. you then finish of by stating you plan for solving the problem so that your choices of methods etc. can be seen from the perspective of knowns and remaining problems to be solved. We can summarize the text as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach for a solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a thesis and a paper can mean this approach can be accomplished in several ways. In a research paper all of this usually goes into a single heading &amp;quot;Introduction&amp;quot;. When you write a thesis the introduction may be many pages log and it is not uncommon to either have the list above as subheadings under introduction or to outline this part slightly differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a lengthy introduction, you may start out by having a chapter called introduction which does what was outlined above but cuts out the backgroudn details and only summarizes what is known and identifies gaps, almost like a sumamry of the whole introduction. You then follow up with a detailed background in a separate chapter and likewise for identifying gaps and providing the outline of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that there are many ways to format or partition an introduction but the general idea is still there regardless of what form of publication you are writing: research paper or thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T10:22:08.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12188" CreationDate="2013-08-26T11:23:17.110" Score="10" ViewCount="3069" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has recently happened to an acquaintance of mine.  A bit of background, in Australia, we do not 'defend' the thesis, we submit it to be examined by, usually, 3 academics (in the country or overseas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is, the thesis was approved by the advisor, after several drafts and some feedback.  However, when it has come back from the examiners, it has come back as 'failed'.  Some of the errors detected are ones that the advisor should have picked up on (as they are within their field of research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asides from the appeals procedure (dependent on the policies of the University), what are some practical options?  Should they start again? Take her research elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit for clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This has &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; happened to me, it has happened to an acquaintance (as said above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My acquaintance submitted her thesis well within time and underwent several drafts (as said above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The advisor is young/new to the academic scene.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T11:17:58.237" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T16:26:03.890" Title="PhD approved by advisor, rejected by examiners" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12187" CreationDate="2013-08-26T11:36:56.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to answer the question without also judging the supervision and other aspects of the student-advisor &quot;relationship&quot;. I have been involved in a case which also resulted in a fail. I, being non-Australian) got the impression the thesis was done either by meeting a time deadline or by the student &quot;deciding&quot; so. I cannot imagine any advisor would recommend the thesis as completed in the shape it was. I could not, as examiner, figure out what rules made the thesis judged as competed, it would simply not go in my own system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case we bring in an examination committee from other universities and mostly from abroad. The thesis must stand an international scrutiny. This also means the advisors and students are aware of this requirement. In your case, as well as the one I experienced, I ask myself what sort of system is in palce to safekeep the general scientific standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see there are many open questions which makes a simple answer difficult to provide. In some cases it might be possible to use the feedback to improve a thesis. In the US system it is common that a thesis is given revisions to complete. In my system (Sweden) all this quality work has to be made before time, there is no recouperation after a fail. Hence, the options depend on what is possible within the Australian system. If it is possible to revise and re-defend? then that is one way. Tpo take the work elsewhere might be possible but if the work does not stand international scrutiny then that option does not look bright. If there are deeper misunderstandings that lead to the verdict then it might be possible to claim a &quot;mistrial&quot; but failinga PhD thesis is not a good thing under any circumstances. I am just left wondering why it happened, not so much to put blaim but it seems something(s) must have failed in the process and finding out the reasons may provide a better view of possibilities to go forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;finally, start again? another 3-5 years ona different project will require both a strong interest and financing (I would presume). It is possible but usually, I do not think anyone would subject themselves to another PhD period lightheartedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sydsvenskan.se/lund/disputation-avlyst-i-sista-stund/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; that just occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T16:26:03.890" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T16:26:03.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12193" CreationDate="2013-08-26T11:41:15.373" Score="6" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important are final year ( more especially final semester ) results in PhD admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am on MEng course in the UK where final year results are usually released mid to late July, and I intend on applying to US universities, now when reading on the application procedures at many universities I noticed that the application deadline for a lot of US engineering PhD programs seems to be from late November to late January, with admission decisions usually being made around April.So I am curious to know how important final year/semester results are in a PhD application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8371" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T10:18:52.067" Title="The Importance Of Final Year Results In US PhD admissions" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12192" CreationDate="2013-08-26T12:01:21.280" Score="14" ViewCount="5126" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a discussion on why subsubsections are evil, egreg &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/118478/why-are-beamer-subsubsections-evil#comment263534_118478&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have subsubsections, you must have at least two of them in a subsection; you must have at least two subsections and, of course, at least two sections. Draw the tree and you'll understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm writing long texts, such as for my thesis, I might have sections that contain only one subsection.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;5.3 Topic X&#xA;&#xA;... bla intro bla ...&#xA;&#xA;5.3.1 Special Case in Topic X&#xA;&#xA;... bla detail bla ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it considered bad style to have &lt;code&gt;5.3.1&lt;/code&gt;, but no &lt;code&gt;5.3.2&lt;/code&gt;?  Should I rather put the &lt;code&gt;bla intro bla&lt;/code&gt; in a &lt;code&gt;5.3.1 Introduction&lt;/code&gt; and have the special case in &lt;code&gt;5.3.2&lt;/code&gt;?  What are the general approaches here, what is considered good or bad style, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T12:31:32.107" Title="Is it bad style if a section has exactly one subsection?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12190" CreationDate="2013-08-26T12:12:14.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, it is a bad style in most contexts, and I will try to explain why, on your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.3 Topic X&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  blabla&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.3.1 Special Case in Topic X&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  bleble&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a long work (like a thesis or a chapter of a book), you have to use sub-sectioning, still you should keep a good structure. In your case, I would use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.3 Topic X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.3.1 General Approach [or a similar title]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  blabla&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.3.2 Special Case [and not &quot;Special Case in Topic X&quot;, that's redundant]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  bleble&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasonable measures whether you have a good structure of your work is the Table of Contents. Just look at it: If it looks good and truly helps in using the text, then the structure is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write an article and this would likely be the only subsection in it, just make it a section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5 Topic X&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  blabla&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6 Special Case in Topic X&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  bleble&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's too short to deserve a section, it's quite likely too short to deserve a subsection, in the case you don't use subsections to keep some general structure of the works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Needed to say, I speak as a mathematician and as a typesetter of a tech journal. I've seen solitaire subsections a lot. Unfortunately it is out of my privileges to remove these in the articles I typeset.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T12:31:32.107" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T12:31:32.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12190" CreationDate="2013-08-26T12:28:47.417" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a section with a single subsection is usually considered bad style: &lt;strong&gt;most style guides, academic or not, advise against it&lt;/strong&gt;. In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Subheads.html?old=Subheads01.html&quot;&gt;the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; advises against it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the reasons why this is considered bad practice, I'll quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help%3aWikipedia%3a_The_Missing_Manual/Formatting_and_Illustrating_Articles/Article_Sections_and_Tables_of_Contents#Single_Subsections&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Single Subsections&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Just as your English teacher told you, if section 2 has a subsection 2.1, there'd better be a section 2.2 as well. If you see a section with a single subsection, you have three choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there's a lot of text in the section, followed by the subsection, you ought to be able to carve out a good subsection from the initial material, or even two, to create multiple subsections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If most of the section's material is in the subsection, you may not need a subsection. Just combine the two.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the content of at the top of the section is short and substantially different from what's in the subsection, you might be able to promote the subsection (for example, change the heading from level 3 to level 2). On other hand, if the subsection covers something relatively unimportant, then don't promote it to a level 2 (top-level) heading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources, both style guides and writing advice, say the same thing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/writingtips.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing.engr.psu.edu/other/chap2.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T12:28:47.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12189" CreationDate="2013-08-26T13:54:17.680" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions to US graduate programs are generally &lt;em&gt;conditional&lt;/em&gt; on final-semester grades. That is, you are required to pass your classes, and in general maintain a reasonable GPA in them. Developing a case of &quot;senioritis&quot; and getting D's on everything could have an effect on your admissions offers. (Whether or not it will depends on the department and the school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the grades earned in the final semester do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; influence the decision whether or not to accept you in the first place; that is determined by your grades up through the end of the first semester of your final year (or the last semester of your penultimate year, if the grades aren't available by mid-year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T13:54:17.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12197" CreationDate="2013-08-26T14:45:43.787" Score="47" ViewCount="10346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a mistake in a published paper, and am unsure what to do now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was looking at all cited articles from a paper over 10 years old, and found one that is citing the paper in error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A variant of a certain protein and a fusion protein made of 2  proteins have been confused, that is the citation points to a paper on a protein which shares an abbreviation but is entirely different - this is a pretty big mistake and suggests they haven't actually read the paper they referenced!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Elsevier journal published this in 2013 and I don't know how to report it, or what the etiquette is here. I can't see contacting the authors to be of much use as it is already printed, and they could very easily delete my email and forget about the error, whereas an editor or some such person would surely be able to take reasonable steps to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record I'm an undergrad and have no professional link/competition/other conflict of interest with this researcher or department!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8374" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:35:10.017" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T02:35:10.017" Title="What should I do if I found a citation error in a published paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2013-08-26T14:58:07.037" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be wise to bring the matter up with a researcher who may have the insights you have and beyond. You (two) can then discuss if something should be done and if so what. The error you describe sounds like it is significant but it could also be a typo or have less impact than what appears because of other factors. So getting someone to backing up your observations could be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be done? Depending on the severity of the problem, it may be necessary for the journal to retract a paper (if the problem negates the results). More commonly you and the researcher you pair up with could write a &quot;Letter to the Editor&quot; pointing out the problem and perhaps detailing the ramafications of the mistake. This letter could lead to a correction being made or lead to a discussion where the author will have to explain how the problem is not one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are several possible outcomes. As an undegraduate you need the support of a more senior scientist since it is unlikely journal will accept letters from persons who are not considered experts in a field (which is what a PhD can signifiy). That does not reduce the merits of your observation but will ensure the observation gets the attention it may deserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T14:27:17.430" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T14:27:17.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2013-08-26T15:04:52.023" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small errors that do not affect the results or conclusions of the paper are normally handled through publication of a correction (or erratum)&lt;/strong&gt;. This is handled by the journal editor, who will be in contact with the authors for confirmation that they agree as to it being an error, and provide for the exact correction to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal that published paper should have a policy on corrections, check it out! &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt;’s editorial policies and practices state, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Errata.— The Errata section contains notices regarding errors or omissions in papers previously published. Besides the standard Erratum, several special categories of documents may appear in this section. In the online journal, each of these documents involve bidirectional links between the original article and the document in the Errata section. The category of the corrective document is indicated in its title and in the link from the original article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard Erratum is a statement by the authors of the original paper that briefly describes the correction(s) and, where appropriate, any effects on the conclusions of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, what you should do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make double sure it is actually an error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then ask someone else to double check it again. Preferably someone more senior, i.e. with some experience of academic publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write to the corresponding author, pointing out the error. Be nice, and make real sure not to assume to worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say &lt;em&gt;“this is a pretty big mistake and suggests they haven't actually read the paper they referenced”&lt;/em&gt;: depending on context, it could actually be something minor like a copy-paste mistake (pasting the wrong reference, when they meant another paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you do not obtain a response, or they respond but don't intend to correct the error, then consider contacting the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand why, as an undergrad, you would consider contacting the editor directly without writing to the authors first. However, as long as you remain professional in your correspondence with them, I think it's best to contact the authors first. It's more polite, and they may actually be able to provide you with some explanation you haven't thought of. Contacting the editor before the authors is somewhat overdoing it…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T15:08:43.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2013-08-26T16:14:35.587" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometime last year, a colleague of mine and I were writing a paper on scientometrics and reading associated articles. We were closely following a certain paper on preferential attachment in networks and realized that the numbers in the published tables do not add up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We double checked with each other and then asked our faculty adviser to double check. Upon confirmation, we emailed the corresponding author about this error. The author immediately wrote back with a note of thanks. The major conclusions of the paper were not affected by this error - it was merely a calculation error which should have been caught during the reviewing process but sometimes isn't due to so many numbers floating around in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, I have always assumed that contacting the corresponding author with a note of caution is always the best way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T16:14:35.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12010" CreationDate="2013-08-26T20:31:55.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more of a general answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate-level coursework should carry additional weight in a graduate school application, because it normally suggests that you are capable of doing work at a higher level than the standard undergraduate curriculum. However, it should be pointed out that more weight will be given to a full graduate-level course than a &quot;shared&quot; course that regularly offers both undergraduate and graduate enrollment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary red flag would be poor performance in one or more &quot;core&quot; courses in your discipline, while encouraging signs are taking more or harder classes and doing well in those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the relative importance of this in an application, I'd put coursework in general somewhat behind the letters of recommendation and research experience. However, this is something that may vary from school to school, and even department to department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T20:31:55.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T22:38:11.727" Score="8" ViewCount="2961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to do a Ph.D. in CS and I will start doing research as an undergraduate student soon, and I will be applying next year (December 2014) at good (say top 15) US universities. My problem is that I have interest in many areas and I don't know which one to choose. At first, I thought that would like to do research in Machine Learning, but then I realized that there are many undergraduate students doing research in that area so it will be more difficult for me to get in a good school by having research experience at that area, as I am not coming from a highly ranked program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition I am an international student, currently studying Computer Engineering and not Computer Science and this may affect my application as well. So I am thinking about doing research in another area that may be a little less competitive and choose my field of interest (it may be the same) after I got into graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;my question&lt;/strong&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it be better to choose something that is less competitive (&lt;em&gt;that still interests me&lt;/em&gt;) as a research area for my undergraduate thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8381" LastEditorUserId="8381" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T23:21:34.283" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T10:35:25.793" Title="How undergraduate research area affects Ph.D. admission chances?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12203" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-27T01:09:28.030" Score="9" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just start writing a paper. This is also my first time doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a problem describing the pros and cons of the related literature. &lt;strong&gt;I am not sure where I should place them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the papers address the pros and cons of related work in &lt;code&gt;INTRODUCTION&lt;/code&gt; section so that they can claim why their research is superior. e.g. after pointing out the cons of the related work, one may claim that they work has fixed this and thus superior. So it is like the research motivation and work desctiption come directly after the pros and cons. They are all in &lt;code&gt;INTRODUCTION&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second style I have seen is writing them in &lt;code&gt;RELATED WORK&lt;/code&gt; section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both ways seem fine to me. And I am even confused with these two sections! &lt;strong&gt;I notice that there is usually some related work described in both &lt;code&gt;INTRODUCTION&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;RELATED WORK&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where should I put them? &lt;code&gt;INTRODUCTION&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;RELATED WORK&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, I am in EECS field. But any generic advice is welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T01:15:37.433" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:45:55.523" Title="Where to describe the pros and cons of the related work in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12203" CreationDate="2013-08-27T01:46:07.450" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One criterion is how important these comparisons are for understanding your work.  At one extreme, you may be writing a paper whose sole purpose is to address a gap in the literature by doing something in a better way than other papers or using different hypotheses.  In that case, nobody can really understand your paper and its purpose without an explanation of how it relates to these other papers, so you would need to discuss this in the introduction.  At the other extreme, you may be mentioning related work only for completeness or because it might interest the reader, with no necessity at all for understanding your paper.  In that case, you might as well not clutter up the introduction with it.  Most papers are somewhere in between these extremes, in which case you'll have to make a judgment call (and may end up with a compromise, such as discussing some related work in the introduction and other papers in a section of their own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T01:46:07.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12203" CreationDate="2013-08-27T02:16:30.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (business management) this is always done in the literature review which normally follows the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt; This paper will show that the key to motivation within a team is.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature review&lt;/strong&gt; Jones (2012) believes that money had no influence on individual performance but this paper will show evidence&#xA;  which directly contradicts his claims. The fundamentals of his theory&#xA;  are quite strong and informed this current research; however, there&#xA;  were a few points that he did not seem to fully consider...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fuller (2010) had a very thorough study of motivation and which&#xA;  covered interpersonal interaction quite well, however, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methodology&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also see some papers where people put the literature review at the end of the paper but it seems less common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T02:16:30.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-27T02:47:54.300" Score="3" ViewCount="1986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to apply to PhD programs in English Literature this December. I have pretty good stats from a good liberal arts college + summa thesis, but I majored in Russian Lit. I took a couple of English classes in college but I probably won't do very well on the GRE subject test in British/American lit. Is it possible to get into a PhD program with a good all-around application but bad subject test scores? Should I address my lack of canon-knowledge in the personal statement or leave it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8384" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-01T08:03:52.707" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T08:03:52.707" Title="Bad GRE subject test scores in Brit/Am Lit---any chance at PhD admissions to an English Lit program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12203" CreationDate="2013-08-27T03:34:14.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a variety of styles used in Computer Science.  One that I personally like a lot is where the Introduction has a succinct summary of the pros and cons of related work, with a more leisurely and detailed &quot;Related Work&quot; section towards the end of the paper.  The idea is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want to set the stage for a quick summary of the specific contributions of your own work.  To do this, you need to briefly summarize the related work in the Introduction -- in particular, pointing out the problems that your work addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reader's time and attention is precious, and you want to start discussing your own contributions soon instead of meandering about talking about other people's work. The initial summary is therefore necessarily brief (I'd suggest aiming to get to your research by page 2 of the paper).  If necessary, include a forward pointer to the Related Work section later in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T03:45:55.523" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:45:55.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12263" CreationDate="2013-08-27T03:43:29.247" Score="5" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often seen conferences which invite papers on &quot;work in progress&quot; or &quot;work with not too mature results&quot; along with the original and exhaustive research. So, when is it apt to present your work in such conferences as work in progress in terms of the expected level of maturity, implementation progress and results ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field of research is Computer Science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T16:22:40.530" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T16:22:40.530" Title="When to publish and what to include in a work in progress?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12202" CreationDate="2013-08-27T04:51:14.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put simply: &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your undergraduate thesis work need not have any connection with your graduate research. Certainly, staying in the same area lets you have more of a &quot;running start,&quot; but there's always the chance that you find a new research project as a graduate student that grabs your attention and doesn't let go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't worry too much about doing research work in a less competitive area unless you want to do that research anyway. It's better to do work that excites and motivates you, because the end product will almost certainly be better than taking a project that doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T04:51:14.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11785" CreationDate="2013-08-27T08:14:22.610" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Australia.aspx&quot;&gt;Australia does not have a US-like tenure system&lt;/a&gt;. Academics at all levels are occasionally &#xA;scrutinized, and advancement is not automatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T08:14:22.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12187" CreationDate="2013-08-27T08:25:43.897" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This type of thing is one reason that many graduate colleges or departments will not allow an assistant professor (or other non-tenured new academic regardless of formal title) to be the sole/primary advisor for a Ph.D. student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the obvious ill effects on the poor doctoral candidate, this also reflects extremely badly on, and could hurt, the advisor also (e.g., during tenure review), and even shows the department in poor light.  I hope your friend is able to salvage things, but in my opinion this is at least as much the advisor's and department's problem as the candidate's, and they should be actively working to find a proper solution.  If they're not, then I regard that as a bigger problem than the thesis rejection itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T08:25:43.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12304" CreationDate="2013-08-27T12:34:46.193" Score="6" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched on the internet about this but found no convincing answer. I have to submit a paper to a conference where they are also asking for an Industrial Case Study. I contacted the conference chair about this, they replied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there is a pragmatic solution to a problem or there is an innovative application developed then an Industrial Case Study is required. For more details you may search for case study submissions for similar conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The domain is KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases). I did search but did not find any good stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone help me out with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T12:44:47.937" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T22:27:37.940" Title="What are Industrial Case Studies and why are they required?" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12010" CreationDate="2013-08-27T13:07:37.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Are graduate-level courses weighted higher?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relative to your core undergraduate courses, I'd imagine so. Taking advanced graduate courses (preferably, more advanced versions of your core classes, since this will look like an upward trend if you didn't so hot in your core ones), and doing well in them, implies one can do potentially good research in grad school. Courses at this level will tend to expose you to current research that you may work on in the future. Aside from LOR and conference/journal publications, this would be the next best indicator of your potential success in grad school. Which leads to the next question. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Is this a significant part of the decision process?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that it's significant (consider that some liberal art colleges may not have available graduate courses to undergraduates, as compared to a research university) but it's still important, if the resources are there. Graduate admissions are aware of that, but they key is to stretch your intellectual vitality as far as possible. Remember that there aren't too many indicators of whether or not an undergraduate can do well in grad school (after all, the &quot;research frontier&quot;, depending on the discipline, may simply be inaccessible, even to an exceptional undergraduate). This applies to other fields like mathematics, but three factors will always be taken into account by any respectable institution (LOR, statement of purpose, research experience), and you've already mentioned them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that (and GPA, which is really more of a &quot;cut-off&quot; tool), if all else is taken into account, it will probably come down to best fit; whether or not your research interests coincide with the faculty of your chosen area. If you wanted to do research in artificial intelligence, it wouldn't make sense to apply to a program that (hypothetically) only specializes in mathematical optimization, so you would probably be passed over to someone who does want to do research in AI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;aeismail had a nice answer so I will not add much more regarding &quot;red flags&quot; (I would say that even if you did terrible, say, your freshman year, the best thing to do would be to show an upward trend in your grades). However, remember that the &lt;strong&gt;main question&lt;/strong&gt; admission committees want to answer is &quot;Can this person succeed in our program?&quot; (i.e can this person do research?), so you have to persuade them to say yes. Your application will be scrutinized by professors who want to see if you're worthy. Coursework is important, but demonstrating your research potential in ways that are not just related to coursework is &lt;strong&gt;essential&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do would be to create a check-list of what they expect to see in your application, and meet all of the requirements, then go above the call of duty (whether it's in the form of a publishable senior thesis, which I would argue is always better than chugging coursework, or presenting your work at a conference, or getting an awesome research-based LOR from a professor who knows you well and can vouch for your potential, or all of the above). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7628" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:07:37.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12221" CreationDate="2013-08-27T14:13:27.353" Score="36" ViewCount="23974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I start my graduate program next week, which includes spending some of my time as a Teaching Assistant. It is my least favorite part of job, and I do not want to teach in my career after that. I don't want to become professor but get a job in a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody told me how to teach and I don't even know what classes I have. I have little time to prepare, and probably don't know the professor (professors?) well. So what can I do to prepare, until I know what courses I have and can go over the material? I'm quite scared right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T19:16:07.587" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T21:27:57.603" Title="How to prepare for being a TA (Teaching Assistant)?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T14:33:03.057" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are off to the right start - ask questions. Next step is read... a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some books I've recommended &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer/5261#5261&quot;&gt;here before&lt;/a&gt;. They will give you a good beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, university teachers are rarely prized for their teaching abilities. Often they are just thrown in as long as they understand the subject(s). Tertiary teaching is, more often than not, learned on the job. So, read all the posts here about teaching. If you have a chance, practice. Usually a university teacher's first semester is the worst. It gets much better (and easier) as you go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other course I would recommend is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=2044&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Art of Teaching&lt;/a&gt;. It is really well done and covers so very many things you should be thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T14:33:03.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T14:45:39.723" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One part of your question I can offer very concrete advice for. You say you don't know what classes you have then go into the main office of your department and ask where to get trained on the course registration software. You say you don't know the professors that you are assisting well or at all, make appointments to go meet them and ask them what they want you to do. What they tell you will be the best starting point for your preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you go into industry you will occasionally be asked to complete tasks that may not be to your taste. For you it sounds like teaching while in grad school is the same situation and this is ok. Treat these two situations similarly, put in enough time and effort to do it well and it should work out fine for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T14:45:39.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T14:47:14.807" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be honest and be yourself. Students will latch on to your discomfort and will use it as an excuse for their performance. I have found that if you are honest with them with a statement along the lines of &quot;I am new to teaching, so please be patient while I work out my teaching style and get more comfortable. If you have any concerns about how class is going, please speak to me as soon as possible.&quot; they are much more forgiving of your mistakes which you are bound to make. There is nothing worse than students who feel they cannot pass the class due to your teaching, so allowing them to voice their opinions early can both help in your teaching (i.e., &quot;You stand in front of the board too often.&quot; or &quot;It would be more helpful if you spent a little more time going over X.&quot;) and in your students attitudes towards you. But be careful on this front, make no instantaneous decisions. I always will say something like &quot;I will think about it and get back to you next class if the policy X needs to change.&quot; Always get back to them about it, even if it is a no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, talk to other grad students and faculty if you are finding you are having problems with teaching. I would be surprised if your department or university had people did not staffed just for training of instructors for teaching duties. Talk to them and voice your nervousness, they are there to help. Even think about all your classes and what the professor did that you hated or liked and try to emulate the best attributes as best you can. But don't try to be these people, just be yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is talk to everyone, do your best, and be yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're just starting out, I don't believe that they would throw you in cold into a classroom and say &quot;teach&quot; without any forewarning or even knowledge of which class, but they might depending on where you are (and talk to other people about what to do quickly if possible). You will probably start out grading and/or doing recitations/review sections a few times a week until you are more capable/comfortable with maintain your own class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in teaching and studies! I always think being able to explain what you know to other people is a true sign that you know it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum: The books that earthling suggested will always help. If you are in mathematics, I also suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=HTM-2&quot;&gt;How to Teach Mathematics&lt;/a&gt; by Steven G. Krantz. Even though it is written for those teaching math, it is also a good read for almost any new instructor, particularly in the sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7745" LastEditorUserId="7745" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T15:25:45.693" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T15:25:45.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T14:55:22.143" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accept that the first day, and probably a few days following that, are likely to feel a bit 'emotional'. It happens to everyone. It will get better from there quite quickly, though will probably take at least a term before you really get into the swing of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done so yet, try going to the admin department and seeing if they know what courses you'll be doing. They're useful people to know in general, and I've found them often to be much more on top of things like this than the faculty. The same applies to lab technicians and other staff (who will absolutely know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than you do, so stay on their good side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not already, get familiar with the way things are generally 'done' at your uni. With undergrad courses and practicals there's quite possibly a standard way all work is assigned and graded. Look in the undergraduate prospectus and/or any webpages set up for them to get an idea what they're being told, and hence their expectations. Also look up any rules your department has on plagiarism, dealing with late work, dealing with sick days and religious holidays, what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviour towards them on your part, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will almost certainly need a calendar to keep track of when you're meant to be doing what. I've used a pocket book in the past, but these days would probably use my phone so I can sync it all online. Being organised, and &lt;em&gt;knowing&lt;/em&gt; that you're organised, removes a lot of the stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you find out what course you're doing be sure to go through all of it. If there's a practical demonstration, do it yourself as soon as possible - and once you can do it, play with the equipment and find all the ways it can fail to work (your students will discover them all). If there's questions students will be expected to do, do them all yourself, no matter how easy they look - you need to know this material better than they do, so you can deal with the thousand and one bizarre errors they will make. This will be a bit of a time sink, but you've got to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared to not be surprised if you start to find you're enjoying it. Even if teaching isn't your long term goal, seeing someone 'get' a problem thanks to your advice can be very rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T14:55:22.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T15:25:13.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before every lecture I've taught, I hand out forms to the students.  The questions on the form are very simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What went well?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What could be improved?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do you have any other suggestions?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I collect the forms at the end of the lecture.  The feedback I get may be tremendously helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T15:25:13.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2013-08-27T15:31:44.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good number of universities (or departments) have a &lt;strong&gt;TA Handbook&lt;/strong&gt;, or another sort of documentation which contains both high-level stuff (e.g., policies), but also very practical advice on being a teaching assistant. Ask around if your institution has one (ask the more senior students, or ask the administrative staff). Also, have a look at those institutions that put theirs on the web:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unl.edu/gtahandbook/preparing-teach&quot;&gt;University of Nebraska Lincoln&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cidde.pitt.edu/teaching-support/ta-services/ta-handbook-teaching-assistant-experience&quot;&gt;University of Pittsburgh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://graddiv.ucsc.edu/current-students/pdfs/ta-handbook.pdf&quot;&gt;UC Santa Cruz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many others you can find with Google…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T15:31:44.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-27T17:36:59.443" Score="17" ViewCount="19932" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I use Mendeley. I have heard some stuff about ReadCube, but they don't have a Mendeley quick import tool, so… before I go through the hassle of resetting up my library with them, I wondered how it compared to Mendeley. What are its extra features? What is missing? How smooth is it to use, how widely adopted is it, that sort of things…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8395" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T07:13:13.490" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T08:40:03.957" Title="How does ReadCube compare to Mendeley?" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12225" CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:49:26.037" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a short comparison of the features listed on the website here is list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/compare-mendeley/&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; features that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.readcube.com/#features&quot;&gt;ReadCube&lt;/a&gt; doesnt have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In-text citation insertion and formation: Mendeley has Word and other plugins, ReadCube only exports to Endnote and &quot;your favorite citation software&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharing and collaboration features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ReadCube is only a desktop app (no web app), and it doesn't work on Linux&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mendeley has an open API to query its huge database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ReadCube is used as the online reader for a few publishers: Nature, Frontiers and Wiley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ReadCube suggests personalized article recommendations (dont know if they're good, though)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T18:49:26.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12234" CreationDate="2013-08-27T20:44:37.923" Score="1" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the market for a (hopefully free!) grade book software and  would like to see some suggestions. This would be used for a math class and I am planning for many grades (15+) per semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, if a gradebook has any features that make it stand out from other gradebooks or spreadsheet solutions, I would appreciate knowing that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8400" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T08:00:57.993" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T02:39:53.360" Title="What are good database/grade book software?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-28T05:04:03.313" Score="10" ViewCount="565" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a paper whose co-authors are found in the conference committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although they are not in the executive committee, they are in organizing committee and all the committee people know each other well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am wondering how this can happen? I mean, is there any regulation, either ethical or by law, that prohibits this type of thing? Or it's allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T18:37:08.787" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T18:37:08.787" Title="Submit a paper to a conference where co-authors are in the committee?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2013-08-28T05:37:29.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some of the communities I am in, the following processes ensure that bias is removed.&#xA;In one case, such papers would receive additional reviews and would be rejected if any of the reviews suggests rejection. In another case, there is an additional committee whose task in part is to review such papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T05:37:29.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2013-08-28T05:39:26.453" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any reputable conference, authors with a conflict of interest will recuse themselves from discussions about their paper. They won't have a vote on the paper, and if things are very well administered, other committee members won't even know that the paper is from that particular author, only that the author has a conflict of interest. Indeed, there are many reasons for a conflict of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current or prior colleague at the same university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current or prior collaboration or co-author on a paper or papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current advisor / student relationship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These guidelines are generally spelled out in the paper submission guidelines, too (if you are an author and have a conflict, you should list them). Also, in many program committee meetings, committee members go in and out of paper discussions based on whether they have a conflict for a particular paper or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there any regulation, either ethical or by law, that prohibits this type of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethical: sure (see above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal: no. I'm not sure why people think there are a lot of legal rules that dictate how independent, non-government conferences and journals are administered. I've seen this in a number of questions recently, and the bottom line is that a conference has its own rules to abide by, and that's about it. Conference organizers have a vested interest in making things fair to the extent that they don't want the conference to have a bad name, but they aren't in the position to be bound by any laws pertaining to the way the conference is administered (outside of normal law-abiding behavior).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T05:44:48.013" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T05:44:48.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2013-08-28T05:39:40.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be a strange situation if you were forbidden to publish something when you organize a meeting. What usually happens is that your paper is taken on (for editing or other scrutiny) by someone else in such a committee. I agree that it can become a little sensitive if you are the sole organizer handling the reviews and submitting a paper. In such a case ethics would hopefully make you think about a co-convener or to openly state that someone with more neutral standings will handle your paper specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this situation is common, very common, and in most if not all cases there are ways to avoid conflicts of interest. There may of course be cases where the intent is to circumvent objective handling but such cases are likely noticed in the community. In the end, I think it is bad judgement to avoid objective handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T05:39:40.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12227" CreationDate="2013-08-28T05:55:04.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing this question will get closed, but there are many options (as &lt;strong&gt;earthling&lt;/strong&gt; highlighted in the comment). When I taught high school, I invested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easygradepro.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Easy Grade Pro&lt;/a&gt; and was happy with it. It is not free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, I've been using a home-made Excel spreadsheet, which has been pretty easy to do, although I have a fair amount of experience with Excel. As &lt;strong&gt;F'x&lt;/strong&gt; said, OpenOffice has a spreadsheet and it is free, and Google Docs also provide a free spreadsheet solution. You can also find pre-made Excel spreadsheets for grading, which you can tweak for your own use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to see if your school has a gradebook built-in to it's student-database system. This is a nice solution because you don't have to transfer grades from one system to another, and the students have easy access to grades along the way so they can explicitly track their own progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T05:55:04.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12246" CreationDate="2013-08-28T07:29:44.550" Score="9" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;My name is John Smith and I'm writing a paper. In the discussion of the existing literature, I cite quite a few papers from another team, including many whose first author was a David Smith. I usually write this using heavily the “et al” style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Einstein et al. first established in 1976 a possible plan for eradicating world hunger by massive beet culture in Antartica,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; but it took 20 years before Wiles et al. clearly delineated the challenges of such a prospect.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; The earlier analyses, by Smith et al.,&lt;sup&gt;3–7&lt;/sup&gt; held the narrow view that climate&lt;sup&gt;3–5&lt;/sup&gt; and transportation issues&lt;sup&gt;6–7&lt;/sup&gt; would be the limiting factors, forgetting to address the marketing aspects and negative implications on consumer image of the brand. In this paper, we present …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the journal style calls for superscript numbers for citations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it seems somewhat likely that the reader may think the Smith from “Smith et al.” may actually be me. How should I help avoid this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not worrying about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use first name or initial, “David Smith et al.” or “D. Smith et al.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choosing another author, like the last author, as in “Professor et al.”?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some other formulation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T10:40:15.370" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T10:40:15.370" Title="Using &quot;Smith et al&quot; when another Smith is also referenced" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12216" CreationDate="2013-08-28T07:46:22.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could not find a specific definition; however, I found a few Industrial Case Study examples from your and similar fields that may be useful analogs for you to model your case study off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alarcos.esi.uclm.es/doc/metotecinfinf/articulos/4-damian-casestudy-ese-2004.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;An Industrial Case Study of Immediate Benefits of&#xA;Requirements Engineering Process Improvement at&#xA;the Australian Center for Unisys Software&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Damian et al. 2004).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA446147&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA446147&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Cook and Wolf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/2268/4182/1/Extended_T3-245.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Process Monitoring using a Combination of Data driven Techniques&#xA;and Model based Data Validation&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Duchesne et al. 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/amc/amc22/amc2213.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Signed Directed Graph Based Modeling and its Validation from Process Knowledge and Process Data&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Yang et al. 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="8324" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T13:20:13.080" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:20:13.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12238" CreationDate="2013-08-28T07:56:20.467" Score="8" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days I'm going to take the subject of my master. I'm wondering how to search about the subject and how to decide which master thesis I can take and work. The one option is to go to a professor and take anything that he gives me and work with if I like it. Is any other way to search about hot topics on my research area? So far, I have search on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;google scholar&lt;/a&gt; for related work on my area... Any other suggestion that I can do before decide for the subject is more than appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8009" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T13:29:46.580" Title="Find master thesis" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12237" CreationDate="2013-08-28T08:01:02.447" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to go visit not one professor, but a few. &lt;strong&gt;Don't ask them specifically for a thesis topic&lt;/strong&gt;, but tell them you are looking around and &lt;strong&gt;ask them to talk to you about their research&lt;/strong&gt;. Ask about &lt;strong&gt;weekly seminars&lt;/strong&gt; at your department, and go listen to a few of those. Get a broad view of the different topics that groups around you are working on, then decide on something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T08:01:02.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-28T08:23:47.893" Score="10" ViewCount="924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Briefly, the question is: what are sensible career choices for a trained mathematician (with a doctoral degree) outside of academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation I've found myself in is the following. I have been employed as a teaching assistant at one of the top Polish universities for a year now. The salary of TAs in Poland is borderline acceptable (as in, if it were a little bit less, one wouldn't be able to make ends meet), but when I was signing a contract, I was promised I will be promoted to assistant professor after a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I was informed a few days ago that I am not getting said promotion, but they'll be happy to keep me as a TA. It was stated very clearly that this is happening not because I am not doing my job properly (in fact, I have a pretty solid track record); apparently the university is in financial troubles. As a corollary, I may be stuck as a TA for quite some time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a family to provide for, so this is unacceptable for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make matters even worse, the timing of the information left me without any option to pursue a postdoc position. This got me thinking that -- even though I enjoy doing research and teaching very much -- perhaps it's time to take that step and decide on changing career path. The problem is, I don't really have any experience in work outside of academia. I feel that I am professional and disciplined enough to handle any kind of work, but sending resumes at random doesn't seem like a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize the question may be too vague, but I'm thinking maybe someone has already been down that road and has some advices to share. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8405" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T08:40:41.547" Title="Career for a mathematician outside academia" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12239" CreationDate="2013-08-28T08:40:41.547" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The past few years, many friends, either mathematicians or people from physics/chemistry who knew how to write code, have gone other to various financial companies to do algorithmic trading, data analysis, that sort of things… and some others have joined web startups. In short: their coding, algorithmic and reasoning skills were more valuable than their specific academic knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would advise you to do is to &lt;strong&gt;look where alumni from your department have moved&lt;/strong&gt;. Ask the department for statistics or listings, if they publish them; otherwise, look up people's names on the web or professional networks (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; comes to mind). See where they are now: this will give you an idea of who is hiring people with your skills (and network).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T08:40:41.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12248" CreationDate="2013-08-28T09:07:58.233" Score="2" ViewCount="2571" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to attach additional reference letters to an application under the supporting documents category of an application? Say I have 3 references from my masters institution, and another 2 from my undergraduate institution. I would think that if they are all positive, that the more is better. Would this be acceptable or is it a no-no? I am particularly thinking about top-10 universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T12:17:35.220" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T12:17:35.220" Title="Can I submit more than 3 reference letters with my grad school applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9446" CreationDate="2013-08-28T09:19:20.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the paper is not publicly accessible, and you were not given explicit permission to share it, I would consider it confidential&lt;/strong&gt;. It was sent to you (and few others), so assume that it is not yours to share. If you want to, ask the editors (not the authors, in case your identity was not yet given to them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T09:19:20.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10444" CreationDate="2013-08-28T09:23:41.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It most likely means that your manuscript is undergoing a second round of review, after you made revisions to it. In most fields, two months is not overly long time to wait for reviews, especially if you made large modifications to the manuscript, or if the editor is not sure what to do and asked for an additional referee’s opinion (or adjudicating referee, in some cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, however, write a nice email to the editor enquiring about the status of your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T09:23:41.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12250" CreationDate="2013-08-28T09:44:44.050" Score="5" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note: this is a hypothetical situation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, for whatever reason, research is started by another academic (not necessarily known to you) and abandoned part way through (more often than not, the reason is tragic).  This will potentially leave research incomplete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a general sense, what are the practical and ethical considerations and procedures to restart and complete the research that has been abandoned by another academic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T10:42:31.627" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:16:05.940" Title="What are the general ethical procedures to restart abandoned research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12235" CreationDate="2013-08-28T10:30:06.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your references clearly can be traced to a unique paper then the name is not (or should not be) confusing. Yes, someone may mistake you for someone else or &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt; but then their checking of sources is out of sub-par. You can safely continue referencing the (standard) way you do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two publications exist as Smith yyyy (Smith et al. yyyy) then it is common to use letters so that the references become Smith yyyya and Smith yyyyb (Smith et al. yyyya; Smith et al. yyyyb). So not even in this case is it necessary to add initials. You may find that initials are used in older puiblications but by introducing the letters to distinguish several similar references initials have become obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to add indicators in the text that allows the reader to understand where your work is referenced by using &quot;we&quot; or &quot;I&quot; (as the case may be) when discussing a particular reference/result, that is use an active voice instead of passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T10:30:06.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12235" CreationDate="2013-08-28T10:32:35.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working through your list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using just the standard &quot;Smith et al.&quot; is the usual standard that I've seen in my fields (physics, materials science, chemical engineering).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you feel the need to indicate explicitly that this is not your work, then you can choose to use a variant that includes the full initials of the author: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;D. A. Smith &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; found. . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using a formulation &quot;Professor &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is incorrect usage of &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, which is normally used to designate in &quot;actual&quot; order the authors listed. The better formulation would be &quot;Jones and colleagues&quot; or &quot;Jones and co-workers&quot;; however, if the same first author is responsible for all of the papers, then using one of the other authors as the &quot;focal point&quot; is very misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other formulations, I believe, would be much less common than any of the other variants you've listed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you could always try to just avoid mentioning Smith's name by referring to the contents of the work directly without saying &quot;Smith et al. did X,&quot; by writing &quot;X has been observed under conditions Y&quot; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T10:32:35.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12241" CreationDate="2013-08-28T11:50:43.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US institutions expect that you have never seen your recommendation letters; your references are supposed to upload/submit them directly to your target departments.  But presumably you are uploading/submitting your own supporting documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the application web site somehow restricts you to naming only three references, then you only get three letters; choose wisely.  If it's a paper application, just ask all your references to mail in their letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I assume you are applying to a graduate program.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T11:50:43.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12010" CreationDate="2013-08-28T12:16:28.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of an admissions committee in the field of applied math.  Since there are very few undergraduate programs in applied math, our applicants have a wide variety of backgrounds -- mathematics, engineering, physics, and others.  My main interest when looking at the transcript is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, do you have good grades in the most relevant courses?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, how well-prepared are you in terms of course coverage?  It's typical for students from outside math to have one or two gaps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, we interview promising applicants, so I look at the transcript to see what the student &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; know, and quiz them on typical course material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T12:16:28.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2013-08-28T12:23:41.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the ethics here really relate to the foundation upon which you will build. Conducting additional research and writing additional papers is not problematic in itself, but if you must use materials, data, and ideas from informal conversations then you have ethical and/or practical considerations. If you have never met the other researchers and have just read some papers, found it interesting, and then they stopped publishing, I don't see how you would have any obligation to those researchers. This is academic life- we build on the work of others. In fact, you might say we have an ethical obligation to advance the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from this perspective, what is acceptable with respect to the foundational elements would be governed by the normal rules. So here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data: If you need actual (generally unpublished) data from the other researcher(s) then you will have to ask for the data and have their permission to publish that data. You should acknowledge the source of that data in any related publications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materials: If you need code or study materials, you will have to ask for it as well and you will be bound by any relevant licensing restrictions. Again, this should be acknowledged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideas: If you are building on informal conversations with previous researchers, then you should seek their permission and acknowledge that as well. This is about not losing friends, unless you are under NDA, in which case it may be a legal matter as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be cases in which your reputation and friendships may be at stake, for example if you publish research that competes with that of your old advisor. This should not generally be a big concern with projects that are abandoned. If in doubt, you should probably communicate your intentions and seek their blessings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, particularly if others have given advice, it may be a good idea to ask if they want to be involved as a coauthor. A researcher who has had to stop doing their research, perhaps due to lost funding or changes in their employment, may be excited at the opportunity to help advance the field while improving their own CV, by just providing some past data and helping with some writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to be sure to always give credit where it is due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastEditorUserId="5631" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T13:16:05.940" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:16:05.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12202" CreationDate="2013-08-28T12:45:03.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to have a look at this doc written by a professor of the admission committee of Carnegie Mellon University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8408" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T12:45:03.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12237" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:21:01.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should have a research methods teacher who will guide you through the process of identifying a good area of research for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis will take a significant amount of work and you need to consider many things. For example, what are you interested in? If you select a topic which you are not interested in then you will likely lose hope and go nowhere or do a poor job, receiving a poor mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration is access. This is a significant issue in research related to business management. For example, if you want to study how telecommunication companies do something specific with regards to recruitment, you need to make sure you actually have access to telecommunication company HR departments. Without that access even if you are interested, you will find yourself very frustrated, again turning in poor quality work receiving a poor mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you should have a teacher who will walk you through this. If you don't, you should have an adviser who can walk you through this. If you don't have that, then I would definitely take advice from @F'x and ask &lt;strong&gt;several&lt;/strong&gt; professors to get some ideas and narrow it down from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T13:29:46.580" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T13:29:46.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12257" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:35:10.493" Score="8" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals publish reviews of newly published books in their field. It's not clear how authors for these reviews are typically chosen. Can you apply for writing a review? Or should you do just like for a regular paper: buy the book, read it, write your review and submit it? How is this typically handled? Is it reserved to the editors to initiate such reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:15:00.893" Title="Who gets to write book reviews for academic journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12260" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:43:31.347" Score="7" ViewCount="3120" Body="&lt;p&gt;During college, I decided to use my free electives to pursue a second major I had an interest in (Sociology) besides my main focus on computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am contemplating applying to some phD programs that intersect both of these fields. However, I know these are new programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have e-mailed a few departments but I get the vibe that they are more focused in getting people to apply to these new programs rather than necessarily being honest about prospects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is essentially, are there tenure track professorships that are interested in applicants with these kinds of backgrounds? And if so is it only a very small group of institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of one of the programs I am referring to: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.css.gmu.edu/?q=node/43&quot;&gt;Ph.D Program in Computational Social Sciences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8410" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T13:47:11.370" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:06:27.733" Title="Prospects with a Computational Social Science degree" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12259" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:54:04.083" Score="10" ViewCount="4741" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working in corporate IT for the last two years and would like to apply to graduate school for a MA in East Asian Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told I should keep my work resume to &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; page, so I have done that. It wasn't that hard to do because jobs aren't as concerned with your volunteer experience as a masters program would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MA program is asking that I attach my resume. I'd like to add back in my volunteer + other experiences a graduate school would be interested in... but that would put it &lt;strong&gt;over one page&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that okay? Is there any difference (apart from content) in the structure/general guidelines of submitting a resume in the work world vs the grad school world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8411" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T14:07:59.753" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T08:48:57.673" Title="Work Resume vs Graduate School Resume" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12254" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:07:10.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure this varies but is most likely one of the following (in some kind of falling order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you are a well-known and respected researcher/educator in the field&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you have recently written material that are key to the book (perhaps referenced in it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you are known not to know the word &amp;quot;No&amp;quot; (makes the editors work easier)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you are friends with the editor (makes his/her life easy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt many editors will necessarily take you up on an offer (depending which category you may fall into) but I am sure some might be fine with it. It never hurts to contact an editor and express interest. You should then provide a background for why you should be considered for such a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:15:00.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12256" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:23:56.993" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a fan of the &quot;1 page resume.&quot; If you have had a number of relevant educational experiences and work experiences (and relevant volunteer experiences), and it goes over two pages and is in an aesthetically pleasing form (e.g., 10-12-pt font, 1-in margins, etc.), don't worry about it.  I've seen some absolutely horrible resumes where the applicant has tried to cram everything onto a single page, and it is a detriment to that person's application. I haven't had a 1-page resume since just after undergraduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate schools are normally looking for a proper Curriculum Vitae (CV), which would include education, work experience (primarily academic), publications, awards, and possibly references. Now, this isn't to say that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; reformat your resume into a CV, especially if you don't have research/publications/awards/etc., but you do want this document to highlight your experiences to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, your resume/CV is not as important as some of the other documents you will provide with your package: letters of recommendation, transcripts, and your research/personal statement. Your resume/CV should list the pertinent information from your past, but it will be amplified in your other documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:23:56.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12255" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:31:41.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, if this is a relatively new cross-disciplinary area, this will start as a very small group of institutions. If it's a fruitful area, that number will grow quickly, and among  the early adopters might well be some of the best universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, to set up these programmes in the first place, does indeed require buy-in from professors and top-level university administrators, so there are tenure-track professorships interested in applicants with those sort of cross-disciplinary backgrounds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is it like to study in a new cross-disciplinary area?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things that make it different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find yourself building the foundations. A lot of the work might be much more exploratory. It can be the wild west, with few established paths and no signposts; and you may end up making up the rules as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, established fields tend to have well-defined protocols for things like data collection; and a proven set of tools to work with. Whereas in a new cross-disciplinary area, you're more likely to be building the basic toolkit from scratch: writing your own protocols starting from bare bones.  There will be things you can take from each of the disciplines that you span, but combining them will be untested ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the papers you write may end up being foundational for the new cross-disciplinary area, and highly-cited for years to come. Even though the work they contain, might seem fairly basic to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be lonelier. Scarier. More exciting. Harder to get funding. Or easier to get funding. Your reading will be broader, as it will span journals across more than one discipline, and you won't find enough journals or conferences that are closely-enough targeted at your field. You might end up starting your own conference, just to help build the platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;disclaimer: I do work in a new cross-disciplinary institute, but I do not work in computational social sciences (though one or two of my colleagues are indeed computational social scientists)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:31:41.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12262" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:55:33.590" Score="12" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an etiquette when asking Potential Advisors about their future projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask this is because a Potential Advisor informed me of a future grant that she is applying for, which would have research a topic I am fairly interested in. The advisor gave me a general outline, but she left out some important details that are important to me; my fear is that the advisor will think I am trying to steal the grant idea. Perhaps I am making too much of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T15:00:47.880" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:04:35.740" Title="Is it ok to ask a potential PhD advisor for more information about their future grants?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12261" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:04:35.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can certainly ask (nicely) for some more details about her ideas and the research she proposed as part of the grant. Especially so if this is going to be something you end up working on, or close to your own projects. You are, after all, possibly going to work for her! I don't think she will think anything else than you having interest in her research, which is quite positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, don't ask for the grant proposal (i.e. the written text) itself, as it could be seen as assuming. Ask the questions you have, and let her decide if she wants to reply or simply give you the document to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:04:35.740" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12208" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:08:03.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presenting work in progress on conferences is a good way to elicit a first discussion of your (preliminary) research results, to establish yourself in a new topic, or to claim first ground in a &quot;hot&quot; research area. The important thing to me seems to be that you are able to present at least &lt;strong&gt;some results&lt;/strong&gt;. Research concepts and plans often do not yield good conference papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a number of ways in which results can be regarded as premature, such that you would want to present them as &quot;work in progress&quot;. I'll give some of them without claim of completeness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;empirical research&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small amount of data compared to the standard in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contradictory results which prevent firm conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low amount of replicates or additional supportive data for your conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experimental setups which may not capture or control for relevant factors in the system you're looking at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;theoretical research&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restrictive assumptions which make a theory applicable to only a fraction of the relevant problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluation of a method with a smaller or more restricted test case than what would be done usually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mathematical results from numerical experiments without a clear proof.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missing steps in an implementation such that only partial results could be obtained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, it is a difficult decision, whether you should publish preliminary results (in case they are publishable in principle) or rather wait until you get more complete results. It depends on how fast you want to publish something on the topic, whether you can quickly get more complete results or not, and probably a range of other factors which I didn't think of now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:08:03.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12265" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:11:19.057" Score="30" ViewCount="2607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10059/mentor-trying-to-be-first-author&quot;&gt;this good question&lt;/a&gt;, I think posting this question will surely benefit the next generations of students, albeit this does not happen to myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research students will publish several papers along the research road under someone's supervision. When it comes to the issue of &lt;strong&gt;the author order&lt;/strong&gt;, the student and the advisor may &lt;strong&gt;not always reach an agreement&lt;/strong&gt;. i.e. Sometimes the student thinks he or she deserves the 1st author, but the advisor doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, the students are usually very worried and upset. Having been working on that topic for such a long time, the student feels very disappointed to be listed as the non-first author. Being the &lt;strong&gt;weak&lt;/strong&gt; party, the &lt;strong&gt;student may not even dare&lt;/strong&gt; to argue with his advisor. After all, the advisor is kind of &quot;in control of&quot; his remaining PhD life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should a student defend his or her 1st authorship in front of the advisor politely and effectively?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T16:20:00.000" Title="How should a student defend his 1st authorship in front of his advisor politely and effectively?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:27:23.080" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authorship questions inevitably end up having two threads: what should be and what happens. The &quot;what should be&quot; is that the amount of intellectual work (as described in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.mq.edu.au/about/research_@_macquarie/policies,_procedures_and_conduct/documents/Vancouver.pdf&quot;&gt;Vancouver Protocol&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.  Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data&#xA;    AND&#xA;2.  Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content&#xA;    AND&#xA;3.  Final approval of the version to be published.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that each author has put into the work. As with most agreements, it is best to discuss this in advance and agree on how to evaluate the work done. Usually the first author is in charge of writing and the other author(s) provide feedback and contribute to the writing. If everyone follows these rules then the argument is fairly &quot;straightforward&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, we have to also deal with different types of personalities and other situations that affect judgement. It is not uncommon for persons to want first authorship if they are up for promotion or if they see that something they did not fully think was great actually is. The list could be made long. Straightening these cases out is sometimes (if not often) really tough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being pragmatic, I often think about if the situation will hurt me and evaluate if the fight is worth it. In the case of a PhD student, having ones advisor as first author is not necessarily a bad thing since, hopefully, the advisor is well-known and respected. Hence some of that rubs off on the co-author. As a PhD student I think a valid argument is that you need first authorship on some of the work in your thesis. This is a particularly good argument if the &quot;switch&quot; occurs repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguing against irratianal excuses for first authorships will be hard or near impossible to win so I am a little pessimistic when it comes to such cases. You need to evaluate the situation yourself, gather objective arguments for your claim and possibly asking other faculty for advice and support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T16:20:00.000" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T16:20:00.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12216" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:45:35.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I contacted one the authors on the papers UV-D mentioned and according to the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Industrial Case Study&quot;  means the results presented have been validated in actual plant operation, they are not only based on theoretical considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even asked this question on Google+'s Machine Learning Community. You can have a look at the converstaion &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/117281960538042233493/posts/JxxxvbNsXom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="8324" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T16:07:38.817" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T16:07:38.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2013-08-28T16:18:32.910" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Peter's answer, one should also keep in mind the accepted practices in one's field of study. For instance, in some fields, such as economics and parts of mathematics, alphabetical order is the default; in other areas, such as organic chemistry, the principal investigator of the lab—not the primary author of the paper—has traditionally been given the first spot in the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a field where the order is somewhat preordained, it's going to be very difficult to change that tradition, for many reasons. In such cases, you should optimize your placement within the &quot;available&quot; options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T16:18:32.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12272" CreationDate="2013-08-28T19:18:25.810" Score="3" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can one be titled &quot;Vising Student/Scholar&quot; at a university if one is already graduated from another institute (with BSc/MSc) and is currently not affiliated with any university? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does one have to pay registration fees, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this case, can one be paid for as a TA/RA by the university? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it different in US and EU?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T20:00:43.067" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T20:28:08.990" Title="Visiting Student/Scholar" Tags="&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12268" CreationDate="2013-08-28T20:37:53.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there are a lot of different variations, between continents, countries, and even individual universities. It is definitely true that pretty much every school in the US will have its own policy (since there are no national policies regarding registration in the US—although there are some rules that apply to financial aid obtained from federal sources). In Europe, things can also vary greatly between countries and schools (although they're trying to standardize things, this is still very much a work in progress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to contact officials at the international office of whatever institutions you're interested in attending, and asking them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T20:37:53.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12268" CreationDate="2013-08-28T21:31:10.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on my experience in the US.  It won't necessarily apply to every institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, these titles are used for people visiting University X for an extended period (one or more academic terms) to work on a research project with a faculty member (call her Prof. A) who is already there.  If this is not your situation, then please clarify your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would not be employed by University X, but would typically be entitled to courtesies such as library privileges, computer access, and perhaps office space.  The exact qualifications needed for each title may vary, but if Prof. A wants you to visit, she can probably arrange for you to get whichever one is appropriate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that if you are not attending classes, you wouldn't pay tuition or fees.  There might be a nominal fee for a library card or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching assistantships would generally be reserved for University X's own enrolled (degree-seeking) students.  It is conceivable that you might be able to get one if they are really short staffed, but probably unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get paid for teaching, depending on University X's policies and needs, you might be able to get an appointment as an adjunct professor or instructor.  This would be something for Prof. A to bring up with her department chair.  At some places an MSc would be sufficient for such an appointment, but other universities might require a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely way to get a research assistantship would be from Prof. A's grant funding.  It would depend on the specifics of her grant, the rules of the funding agency, and the rules of University X.  In any case, her own official graduate students would probably have priority.  Again, this might depend on how strongly she wants you to visit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T05:13:12.387" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T05:13:12.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-28T22:32:59.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Daryl Bem has a short, accessible piece on writing articles (in psychology). He gives concrete examples of good and bad choices in writing, often using the paper itself to illustrate his points.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dbem.ws/WritingArticle.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing the Empirical Journal Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daryl Bem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5893" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T22:32:59.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T00:29:56.013" Score="66" ViewCount="6182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking what to expect after violence in my classroom, will I be fired, expelled?  What is the procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is the correct stack exchange for this, if not feel free to tell me where to move it where it would be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am a teaching assistant and masters student in the math dept. at a large state university.  I was holding a discussion section this morning for the class I'm teaching and near the beginning some young man walks in with his shirt off acting verbally belligerent, he then comes up to the front of the room and just kind of stands there, not saying anything just kind of smiling in this creepy way and showing absolutely no signs of embarrassment or anything.  After asking the class if anyone knew him (no one did), I told him he could either leave right now or I would get someone to remove him.  I'm a small guy and he wasn't huge but he was certainly bigger than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He didn't leave upon request so I stepped out of the room to go get someone, although in retrospect I had no idea at the time who I would have gotten, but then as soon as I stepped out I realized that that probably wasn't a good idea since he could take my stuff or who knows what.  So I walked back in and sure enough he's got my water bottle in his hand, so I grab it from him and say something to the effect of,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;!@#$ it, does anyone big want to help me get this guy out of class?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And two guys stand up, and one of them is clearly super pissed at this guy disrupting class and goes straight over to the guy and BAM hits him in the face super hard and he goes down and then hits him again and then kicks him in the face all in the span of like 5 or 6 seconds, like a proper #$!%ing beat down, and there are girls screaming and I'm a bit in shock as I was expecting him to just kind of strong arm him out of the class, and one girl comes up and is like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;stop hitting him stop hitting him!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I don't exactly remember what happens right after but the guy who was disrupting must have left, and then somehow the assistant dean is like right there and I step outside and talk to her and explain quickly what happened but I don't say that the student hit the guy I just say he got him out of class, and she says later I will need to file a report, and then basically I hold the class which goes fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then at the end of class I ask the student who hit the guy to wait for me so I can explain what the assistant dean said to me, and after dealing with other students who need something, I'm about to talk to him when the assistant dean comes back in.  And basically I ask the assistant dean if she could step outside for a little bit while I talk to this student in private, since I'm not trying to incriminate him since I feel partially responsible since I asked for help and he did get the guy out.  Well she gets super offended at this and tells me that &quot;I shoo you, you don't shoo me, get this straight I'm your superior&quot;, and so I apologize but I think maybe the look on my face isn't sufficiently contrite and I look rather taken aback at her strong response.  So she writes down my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no one not my professor/student-teacher liaison, not my ombudsman, seems to know what I should expect from all this.  I talked to the police and they did apprehend someone fitting the guys description, so I probably don't need to worry about that guy coming back.  I am however morally conflicted about having to write a report to the dean's office or whoever I have to write it to, since I don't want to get the student in trouble, since he helped me when I requested it, although I certainly didn't expect him to start beating the guy up, I thought he would just strong arm him out or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I scheduled a meeting with the dean for a week from today (earliest availability), and now I'm super worried that I'm going to be fired or kicked out of my masters program.  If I'm fired then whatever that's the way things go, but if I'm kicked out of the masters program that will completely screw up my life.  Like I said no one (not my fellow TAs, not my professor/student-liaison, not my ombudsman) seems to know what to expect from all this, and if I should be worried about getting fired or kicked out of the program. Thus I'm turning to people here who maybe know what I should expect from all this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;~~Update~~&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found out that the guy who was disrupting class got arrested later that day and he was not a student.  I also talked to several students who said that this is not the first time he has done this, and that several weeks ago in another class he walked in and lit a cigarette, and the professor took the cigarette out of his mouth, stomped on it, and then physically threw him out of class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2016-07-15T16:57:26.257" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T16:57:26.257" Title="Consequences I should expect of violence in my classroom" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2013-08-29T01:12:26.040" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not as serious as an infraction as what you are going through, I was just recently in a bit of trouble with my school (public consumption). I  was able to get past it by doing the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spoke Nothing but the truth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Had people from my department advocate that beyond this infraction, I was an asset to the department and the school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you also need to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain that you were clearly in an unsafe environment, and that beyond the stranger's threat, you put your students in danger by asking for help. While you aren't much older than the students, I assume, You are responsible for them as a Teaching Assistant. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain to them that, if you are fortunate enough to keep your job and stay in the program what you would do in similar situation, which is, call the police. Get on your phone and call Public Safety or the Police, that is their job. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This may have legal ramifications, depending on the particulars. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find as many people as possible with stature to advocate for you. Does your advisor love you as a student? Time to find out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thats all I can really think of. I really wish you good luck, as you know this is super messy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T01:12:26.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2013-08-29T03:03:52.570" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should have called the campus security/police when the incident was happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had you done that, you'd worry about nothing right now. How did you know that guy did not have a gun? Why did you ask the student to help you to get the guy out? It was the security/police officer's job. You put all the students' and your life in danger !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what happened already happened, too late to change that. To answer your question, you should talk to your professor, the department chair and the assistant dean. File the report. Just tell them the truth. You can use this question as the draft of the report. Take out some improper words. Admit that you did not know the appropriate action to take when it happened and you learned a painful lesson. Ask them to provide security trainings so that you'll know what to do if this kind of thing ever happens again. They'll understand. I don't think you'll be kicked out. A reprehend action is probably unavoidable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question directly: It really depends on your department and school. If they had established security procedure and provided training to all faculty, staff and students as how to deal with this kind of thing, then they should also have the procedure as how to deal with anyone who did not follow the procedure. If they never had the security procedure, It's time to have one now. You can put that in your report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="13856" LastEditDate="2015-02-23T17:24:16.003" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T17:24:16.003" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2013-08-29T03:06:25.523" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You clearly found yourself in a very uncomfortable and unpredictable situation (I'm assuming the school never prepared you for this kind of situation). The fact that you are young and relatively inexperienced should help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should definitely see the head of your department and ask for his/her help. The bottom line is that you were unsure of what to do, you felt threatened, you did something which seemed reasonable at the time (asked for help). Yes, the other student seems to have gone a bit too far but for his situation there are mitigating circumstances (his teacher felt he was in trouble and asked him to help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are mitigating circumstances all around. Even you shooing (really?) someone whom you should not have happened only because everyone was off balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is not good but for everyone involved, any reasonable third party can clearly see that there are mitigating circumstances all around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go to the department chair and ask him/her what to do. Don't hide anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T03:06:25.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2013-08-29T08:05:18.177" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short: &lt;strong&gt;Contact a local union representative, and ask them for information and advice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice given by others (&lt;em&gt;speak the truth&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;contact your department head and ask for his help&lt;/em&gt;, etc.) is good, and if cool heads prevail, you shouldn't be in too much trouble, though the experience must have left you in bad shape. Also, on that note, &lt;strong&gt;do not hesitate to contact the school's counsellor/shrink&lt;/strong&gt; if you need someone to talk to in confidence. Sometimes, some of the things we cannot say in official channels (&lt;em&gt;“I somehow feel responsible for the guy getting beaten, after all, I set students onto him”&lt;/em&gt;, that sort of stuff) need to be spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;even if things are probably going to be fine, you also need to prepare yourself in case things go wrong&lt;/strong&gt;. So, just in case serious or threatening administrative procedures are started, &lt;strong&gt;get informed on what your rights are&lt;/strong&gt;, and get advice on what to say exactly. (Yes, you will speak the truth, but there are many ways to phrase it.) That's your union's job, and they can even help you further if things turn for the worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a union, you could also get good advice from a lawyer… you may have access to a legal clinic or public-funded law consultations near you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T15:25:29.083" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T15:25:29.083" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11658" CreationDate="2013-08-29T09:05:40.287" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't look very good. The guy is happy to take you on, but requires that you pay full tuition fees for your studies and is only willing to “explore options for securing funds” after you do so. This would be expected at undergrad level, but for a PhD it means either he is not very interested in you, or he doesn't have funding but is not willing to decline a potential student. In any case, it doesn't look good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T09:05:40.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:49:45.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone else is giving good answers about your specific question.  I want to add one thing: you need to think about how to handle such situations going forward.  Set up time with campus security to learn what their policies are.  You might try taking a good self defense class - not sport martial arts, and not military-go-kill-someone martial arts, but something designed for citizens who truly want to protect themselves.  If you do so, you'd be well advised to learn about the different types of violence, so you can recognize whether someone is likely to hurt you vs someone who just wants your money.  Rory Miller is a great starting place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T11:49:45.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:09:57.147" Score="4" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you please let me know your opinion about the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subject: US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by authors&#xA;  employed by the Government of Iran  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OFAC Sanctions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by authors&#xA;  employed by the Government of Iran&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Dr Bruno Granier,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of &#xA;  the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. As&#xA;  a result of OFAC sanctions we have been made aware that US editors, US&#xA;  Elsevier staff and US reviewers are now unable to handle scientific &#xA;  manuscripts where any of the authors are employed by the Government of&#xA;  Iran. This includes the research departments of the various oil and&#xA;  gas  companies which are deemed to be entities of the Government of&#xA;  Iran.  We realize that this OFAC regulation will cause some&#xA;  inconvenience in your role as an editor but Elsevier is legally&#xA;  obliged to ensure that  all reasonable efforts are made to avoid&#xA;  submissions from Iranian  government agencies and companies being&#xA;  handled by US editors, US  Elsevier staff and US reviewers.  Please be&#xA;  aware that editors, Elsevier staff and reviewers from outside the US&#xA;  may still handle these  manuscripts and that this OFAC regulation does&#xA;  not pertain to  manuscripts where the authors are based at Iranian&#xA;  academic and research institutes.  Manuscripts originating from a&#xA;  clinical setting that are  not government run, for example, a hospital&#xA;  or clinical practice are  also exempt from this regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To view the official OFAC regulation, please click here.  In practice&#xA;  the result of these sanctions will mean that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submissions where any author is based in Iran, and is not at an  academic and research institution, cannot be handled by US-based &#xA;  editors, US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based &#xA;  outside of the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If an Iranian author has dual affiliations (eg.  university and  government), their submission cannot be handled by US-based editors,&#xA;  US  Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based outside of&#xA;  the  US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Affiliations of Iranian authors should therefore be checked, and any manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation delegated to a&#xA;  non-US editor, before handling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When assigning reviewers, affiliations of Iranian authors should  also be checked, and any papers which fall under this OFAC regulation &#xA;  should only be sent to non-US reviewers. (As an editor you should do &#xA;  what is reasonable to determine the nationality of a reviewer e.g.&#xA;  check their email address. This check does not extend to emailing&#xA;  reviewers  directly to confirm their nationality or location). Unless&#xA;  there is  specific knowledge that a non-US-based reviewer is a US&#xA;  citizen, editors can send such submissions to reviewers based outside&#xA;  the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your journal workflow involves all submissions being handled by  US-based Elsevier staff, they will reject these manuscripts outright &#xA;  before they reach you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should there be no suitably qualified editor or reviewer, please reject the manuscript outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When rejecting manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation &#xA;  please use the new EES Decision Term &quot;Reject - OFAC Sanctions&quot; and the&#xA;  following text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a result of OFAC sanctions all editorial staff who are &#xA;  US-based/US nationals are unable to handle scientific manuscripts&#xA;  which  are authored by Iranian scientists, employed by the Government&#xA;  of Iran.  Based on this OFAC regulation we are unfortunately unable to&#xA;  handle your manuscript. We wish you success with your submission to&#xA;  another  Journal.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. If you do have any&#xA;  questions please contact your Publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sent on behalf of Dan Lovegrove&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cretaceous Research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="An Iranian Author" LastEditorUserId="3957" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T12:31:35.793" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T14:55:20.687" Title="US editors and reviewers vs. Iranian authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-09-07T14:55:29.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12227" CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:25:49.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the solution has to be webbased, I think Google Docs (&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://drive.google.com/&lt;/a&gt;) makes a lot of sense. At the very least, the learning curve is very easy and being a complete spreadsheet solution it has complete flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can even imagine that if you create quizzes based on online forms (created from google docs) you could have grades going automatically into your form in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T12:25:49.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-08-29T16:34:48.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to write an academic paper for the first time?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading different papers in your field. Pick one good paper which you know very well, Look how the authors organised their ideas into set of pages. How the contribution flows from one section to another in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are about to write your first paper, try to list the key messages (i.e. contribution) you want to deliver. Start by writing the key messages as sections in your paper. Fill-in these sections. Read it over and over and  ask yourself: is this easily understandable to the reader? should I add additional sections/subsections? can I better organize the paper?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give yourself one or two days break and then ask yourself the same questions. Hand it to your supervisor. Let him/her comment on it and start again the cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T16:34:48.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12298" CreationDate="2013-08-29T19:39:47.763" Score="16" ViewCount="2226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that while many have some appreciation of the level of research in a PhD (usually by saying &quot;that's way over my head&quot; or something similar) and I have not really had a problem with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/257/how-do-i-not-get-impatient-when-other-people-ask-me-to-describe-my-research&quot;&gt;getting impatient describing my research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to add: this is reflective of my own experience, mostly studying/researching part time and working full time in an unrelated field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The query here is how to convince people of the time required for completion of the PhD, and the continued dedication needed in order to get the intrinsic tasks complete.  In some cases, it is not 'a 1000 word book report'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my PhD (now just submitted) was highly experimental, each set of observations were 3 hours each, and I had to do about 100-120 of them (usually on weekends as I work full time). After which, I would have to do 6-12 hours of coding/data analysis.  So many did not seem to understand that time was required to do the work properly - and were perplexed when I tried to explain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to explain why I felt the need to explain, this reason I would imagine is true for many - friends and family, people that you respect, may wonder why am I seem to be ignoring them, why am I 'obsessing' over this project, why did I decline the invitation to wherever.  They may worry that we are 'hiding' behind the study.  They question why we spend so much time on our research, often not due to any jealousy, but not understanding the time commitment needed for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; after opinions, but are asking what are some strategies that can help educate people of the time required to perform PhD research, particularly for part time PhD students working in an unrelated field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T22:42:14.600" Title="How to convince people of the time required to perform PhD research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12297" CreationDate="2013-08-29T19:56:01.997" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often draw parallels to elite athletes since most people easily realize that athletes need to train and spend much time getting to where they are (and they usually also have some talent for their sport). The point is that to become good one has to spend lots of time and energy training. How easy it will be is unique to each person. Hence, it is also difficult to say how much time and effort each person needs to complete a PhD. Not that one has to be the best, but one has to be good enough to be at the top. Another aspect that I find useful in the parallel is that athletes usually love what they do, and it is an internal force that drives them. I sincerely believe that some such drive is necessary to complete a PhD without having to torment yourself too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When trying to explain the time perspective to prospective students the parallel might not be enough and it is usually difficult to make people realize the interest driven part. This is, in my case, due to the fact that people decide on trying to go for a Phd for many different reasons other than just a genuine interest in the subject. I will add that I do not mean such a drive is the only way through but it certainly helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T02:15:50.303" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T02:15:50.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T20:17:43.463" Score="2" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to write a lit review from papers which I already have, should I read all those papers deeply and summarize them, or can I just skim and scan and just pick the information that I need to connect it with other information available in another paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main point that I want to understand&lt;/strong&gt;, do I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good to include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T03:01:05.240" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T12:07:46.610" Title="Deep reading or just skimming and scanning?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12299" CreationDate="2013-08-29T20:20:48.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the paper you are reading is familiar material, it might be easy to assimilate the data from scanning. If it is news to you, you may have to go slower. The answer is, read as fast or slow as you have to in order to actually understand the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T20:20:48.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12299" CreationDate="2013-08-29T20:24:48.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your level of understanding in the specific topic you are researching.  Having said that, it does not hurt (and more likely benefit) you to read each article carefully - taking notes of the important points, terminology, equations and any other relevant aspect of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One effective means that I have found (has worked well for me), is to paraphrase these key points as you go, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/writing/information-technology/sources/2.5.3.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this resource about paraphrasing and summarising may be of help.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T20:24:48.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T21:49:07.097" Score="2" ViewCount="2186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am noticing that many graduate applications require a &quot;primary spoken language&quot; and &quot;other spoken language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &quot;other spoken language&quot;, do they mean you must be proficient in writing, speaking, and reading? What if you can only do one (and you may not even be great at it...)? Does that count? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; What if I do not know any of the jargons used in my study in that language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7349" LastEditorUserId="7349" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T05:45:03.390" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T05:45:03.390" Title="&quot;other spoken languages&quot; in graduate applications" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12216" CreationDate="2013-08-29T22:27:37.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An industrial case study is when you take your solutions or your processes, apply it to some situation in industry, and then report on the results. You might use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1452242569&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Case Study Method research method&lt;/a&gt; if what you propose can be appropriately investigated using a qualitative case study. This is appropriate if you're in management sciences, human-computer interaction, and software engineering (which is what the Damian paper referenced above is about). Note that industrial case studies of this type are VERY difficult to do and take an extremely long time to write up and report on, so I actually doubt the conference is looking for this kind of case study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, in the field of Knowledge Discovery of Databases, an industrial case study may simply be applying your algorithm to a database that is used in industry to discover something novel or meaningful. This is more common for analytical fields in general and simply requires you to acquire a database or some other data source that was generated through industrial activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for &quot;industrial case studies&quot; is because a lot of people create methods and techniques and test it only with &quot;fake laboratory data&quot; that they happen to create or acquire. This fake laboratory data doesn't reflect very accurately the real world and people want to see that techniques in fact work on, affect and influence the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T22:27:37.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2013-08-30T02:15:14.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they ask about &lt;em&gt;&quot;spoken&quot;&lt;/em&gt; languages then it is about speaking, not about writing and reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should not be a surprise depending on the area of research you are studying. It could impact those you will be working with or it could involve your research subjects. For example, if you want to study cross-cultural team dynamics specifically between fracophones and anglophones and you only speak English and you cannot communicate at all in French, then you are going to have some difficulty with your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do not ask you to qualify your speaking ability, then do not worry about it. If they do, then answer appropriately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, yes, if you can speak one &lt;em&gt;other language&lt;/em&gt; even if not well, it does count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I know plenty of people who speak zero &lt;em&gt;other languages.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T02:15:14.473" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12299" CreationDate="2013-08-30T02:41:53.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt; Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to write an effective literature review, you should definitely understand the material. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;[D]o I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good in include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that you may not need to understand the entire paper completely, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; you should be sure that you understand the primary points well enough to be absolutely sure that you are &lt;strong&gt;not taking the quote/paraphrase out of context.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, as other replies point out, whether you can determine this from skimming will depend on your current level of understanding of the subject. I assume you have already read these papers, and have a fair knowledge of the content; however, I would still advise you to read carefully anything you will be quoting--this will improve the quality of the lit review you are writing (and anyway it is never fun to be called out for having misrepresented someone's paper!). Bottom line, unless you know the subject--and the relevant papers--very well, you will probably be better off with reading thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T02:41:53.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2013-08-30T06:12:58.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The application to my program explicitly asks candidates to list the language the foreign languages they know, as well as identify their skills in speaking, writing, and reading those languages on a poor/fair/good/very good/excellent basis. We also ask them to identify how long they've been learning the language. (The disconnect between how people evaluate themselves—particularly in writing—and the quality of their written statements of purpose is at times quite jarring, as you can imagine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd say that the purposes of such questions are the same: to see how well you are able to communicate in languages other than your &quot;native tongue,&quot; or to see how proficient you are in the working language of the program, if you're attending an international program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they only ask about speaking, then they only want to know about speaking and oral comprehension; writing and reading don't enter into the equation. The same is true if they ask about &quot;reading knowledge&quot; of a language: if you can read it, they're not necessarily concerned about your ability to speak it. Requiring reading knowledge used to be the case, and often still is, in fields such as mathematics and chemistry, where much of the &quot;classic&quot; literature in the fields were in languages such as French, German, and Russian. Therefore, the ability to be able to read and understand papers in at least one of those languages was considered a necessary skill for doctoral students to acquire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T06:12:58.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12297" CreationDate="2013-08-30T07:50:40.123" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I think I get it now. &quot;Science&quot; as it is actually practiced is not well understood by non-scientists. I.e., experiments and analysis takes a lot of time, and a lot of hard work that sometimes must happen in long, solitary periods.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP5Cc3lm5Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Popular media&lt;/a&gt; gets it wrong all the time, which doesn't help things. Science does not (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9769/can-one-excel-in-graduate-post-graduate-school-with-a-demanding-family-life/9776#9776&quot;&gt;generally&lt;/a&gt;) follow a 9-5 work schedule, and if you're trying to shoe-horn your research activities into an already full schedule (be it another job, or family/friend considerations), you're even more prone to non-regular work hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of ways you could have a conversation with friends and family about the amount of work necessary for your studies and research. You could start by sending a draft of your 100+ page dissertation and saying, &quot;Look what I've been working on!&quot; After about three pages, their eyes will glaze over and they'll realize how intricate it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could certainly invite someone into the lab (if one exists), but you might just end up boring them without the contextual background necessary to see what has to happen to get your research done. However, you can be honest by pointing out the number of hours you stared at and tweaked an experiment, or the number of hours it took you to analyze the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use other famous examples from science and engineering, starting with the scientists who spent many years working on ideas (Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc.) before publishing them, and peppering the discussion with the standard epigrams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a friend of mine was writing her PhD in history at Harvard, she had stacks and stacks and &lt;em&gt;stacks&lt;/em&gt; of library books in her foyer (it was probably a fire hazard), and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that her long hours working were of necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you might also consider (esp. for friends and family) is to come at the issue from a different angle: be honest about your work, but also be honest that you want to spend time with everyone, and you'll do your best to work into their schedule. Set aside time that will be explicitly for them (and without work), and do your best to meet those obligations. The time you spend on your research won't get as much vitriol if you're willing to make some effort (even if it is minor) to spend time with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T07:50:40.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12311" CreationDate="2013-08-30T16:43:03.593" Score="14" ViewCount="1223" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a junior student is doing research independently (for example theoretical), does s/he need official permission to publish a research article? In the article, s/he needs to introduce his/her affiliation. Normally, this affiliation is connected with the research funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does studentship qualify him/her to use the university name as his own official affiliation, even if this affiliation has no connection with this independent research project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T00:29:09.923" Title="Does a student need official permission to publish an independent research article with university affiliation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12310" CreationDate="2013-08-30T16:50:08.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, check if your university has rules/policies/guidelines in place. If so, follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, use your university name as affiliation. No need to ask them. (Trust me, they are much more worried about people &lt;em&gt;forgetting&lt;/em&gt; to use the affiliation, than the other way around!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T16:50:08.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12310" CreationDate="2013-08-30T16:51:26.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically affiliation is valid for employes to an organisation. Graduate students will belong to that category as well since their degree depends on producing publishable materials. Undergraduate students are not automatically entitled to use an affiliation. I do not think this introduces any majpor hurdles. You need to talk to the department chair or have some faculty member do so to get the permission to use the affiliation. I am assuming such affiliaiton will not need decisions higher up in the university bureaucracy; you need to find out, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation will make publication easier than using a private address so getting to use an affiliation provides a stamp of approval with it which may work to your advantage. So, if I understand your final question right, there does not have to be any connection between the research you do and the affiliation. The affiliation simply means that the department/university supports your publication and thereby your efforts in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://policy.umn.edu/Policies/Operations/OPMisc/BRANDING.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this  example&lt;/a&gt; it is evident that there is a responsibility associated with using the university name (for example as affiliation). It is clear that the affiliation cannot be used &quot;as you wish&quot; without possible repercusions, hence asking for permission is a natural first step. Particularly when the work is not done at the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities have been very relaxed about &quot;brandinG&quot; but trust me, they are becoming increasingly watchful. This is evident by studying the visual identity and similar branding policies of many respectable universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T00:29:09.923" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T00:29:09.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12315" CreationDate="2013-08-30T17:07:42.327" Score="2" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing research with a professor of mine pertaining to the topic of a well-received paper he wrote several years ago. The original paper discussed a computer program that the professor wrote. The research I am doing consists of adding new features to the computer program and broadening the scope of what the program does. The work does not change the basic premise of the paper, but rather expounds upon it and adds new applied programming concepts that have broader implications for the field. The professor wishes to publish the results of our research as an &quot;update&quot; to his previous paper, using the same format and information as the original paper, but with new information discussing the features being added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice in academia? How are &quot;updates&quot; to scientific papers handled when submitting to journals? Will the paper be considered the same paper but only  republished with a new title and date or will it be considered a &quot;brand new&quot; paper of which I will have co-authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T17:13:04.677" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T18:51:21.403" Title="Is there a difference between an &quot;update&quot; to a scientific paper vs. a &quot;new&quot; paper in a scientific journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-30T18:43:58.787" Score="4" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose we design a prototype for a new product that is indeed novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would writing a paper on such a thing be useful as mostly the papers talk about new algorithms or their upgrades or some new theory ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am talking about just a new product that does something better than the existing ones but uses old algorithms and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T22:29:34.983" Title="Can a paper directly be written on a new application developed rather then an algorithm from existing research results or algorithms?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12313" CreationDate="2013-08-30T18:51:21.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have had a very similar situation occur.  The original paper discussed and explained the theoretical and practical aspects of a scientific technique that we adapted; the second discussed and explained the programming automation of the technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor and co-author advised me at the time that each paper has got to be unique, taking the lead from the previous one and adding new information, techniques etc.  The journal that I published in are quite happy to take on a follow up article, just as long as it is sufficiently unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in answer to your questions - it would most likely be a new paper for publication, make reference to the previous one, but place the emphasis on the new developments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T18:51:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12314" CreationDate="2013-08-30T18:57:30.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that I have been doing.  If I understand your question correctly, you are looking at a new product using existing algorithms and techniques. If this is the case, the answer is yes: many journals will welcome this, as I have found.  I have also taken an existing technology, aspects of existing algorithms, based on existing research and developed a brand new technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of caveats though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will need to make the specific context to which it will be used crystal clear, this must be the focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must give full credit for the prior information and techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must fully justify why such an altered technique is useful, what are the implications and benefits of such a product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T20:59:56.430" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T20:59:56.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3123" CreationDate="2013-08-30T20:29:29.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Stat-R said, it is possible to change fields for your M.S. or your Ph.D., but it is harder to get in and you need all those things that @Stat-R said. In addition you may find some M.S. programs in C.S., offered for non-CS major students. I know that U. Penn has such a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.upenn.edu/grad/mcit/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;program&lt;/a&gt;. If you are in Mechanical Engineering, you might have worked with robotics. Robotics Institute of CMU &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=273&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;offers&lt;/a&gt; both M.S. and a Ph.D. and they accept Mechanical Engineering major students too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is harder to get into a Ph.D. program, especially if you haven't done any research on related topics, but I think you can easily get into an M.S. program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T17:26:23.580" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T17:26:23.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12328" CreationDate="2013-08-30T20:33:14.353" Score="2" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first time faculty member straight out of grad school and I have been installed as a director for a &quot;learning center&quot;. We hire undergraduate and graduate student &quot;coaches&quot; in the learning center to help students who have trouble understanding concepts in physics or math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have interviewed students for the &quot;coach&quot; position and I have to have 10 of them sign a contract. How do I do this? I am assuming that I cannot have all of them sit in a circle and sign the contract? Should I ask them to come to my table one at a time and read and sign the contract with them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if this is really a &quot;question&quot; here and please feel free to re-assign it if it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T15:25:52.003" Title="Contract signing session etiquette for student coaches" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;contract&gt;&lt;student-employee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12314" CreationDate="2013-08-30T22:29:34.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So basically you are finding a new (and maybe promising) &lt;em&gt;application&lt;/em&gt; to an existing technique &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;. If that's the case then yes. You are showing a new perspective of &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; applicability to real domains.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is specially important when the applicability of &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; is questionable (i.e. &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; literature lacks real applications for it), then definitely this seems strong findings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T22:29:34.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12319" CreationDate="2013-08-31T02:50:33.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any contract, especially with people who have likely never signed an employment contract before, the best thing is to to give them a copy (hard or soft) so they can review it with someone they trust. Then tell them to bring it back in on/by a certain date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better if they sign in front of you. Then you sign and give them a copy immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T02:50:33.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12299" CreationDate="2013-08-31T12:07:46.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add to the above answers that it also depends on what exactly you want to cite. Is it the description of methods, results, conclusions or general discussion or something else? I can think of a couple of scenarios that I came across:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was writing about some algorithm on networks and cited a physics paper that used similar approach. I only skimmed the paper as just wanted to highlight that the method is widely used in various fields in various contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I cited two papers that conducted similar studies but obtained opposing results. Here I read the papers thoroughly, especially methods section, to pick out the differences and try to understand what was the cause of such discrepancies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I cited some general discussion and future hypotheses to test from one review paper. I liked the reasoning of the guy and I knew that he is one of the leading scientists in the field. I did not hesitate to cite his opinion because I had read a couple of his previous papers and knew his contribution to the field. I would probably be careful with citing opinions/conclusions from some obscure sources. If you don't know what brought the author to conclude something, you are risking that you cherry-pick nice sentences out of context (as already mentioned in previous answers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7219" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T12:07:46.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-31T14:21:29.643" Score="2" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my case, before I studied my master´s degree I managed to write a research paper jointly with a Professor (not from my university) on databases. After that I pursue my master´s degree in CS, but on neural networks rather than databases. The thing is that I would like to do my PhD in databases with the professor I wrote the research paper with. Do you think that I can have problems with the admission committee? I would not like to go to study a PhD without any financial support at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T16:43:38.843" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:43:38.843" Title="is it possible to have different research topics for the MSc and PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12325" CreationDate="2013-08-31T14:29:21.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see why there should be any problem with this whatsoever. It is quite common for students to move around topics, particularly if you are switching between programs or universities. If everybody agrees that you are a good candidate for the position in question, then it shouldn't really matter too much that the topic is not an exact match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T14:29:21.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12319" CreationDate="2013-08-31T15:25:52.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with earthling's answer and want to add to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have ten of them signing the same contract, there is nothing wrong with first explaining the contract to them as a group. Then, they can ask questions and benefit from the questions each of them asks. Tell them that they have until X date and Y time to sign the contract, that they have to sign it in front of you, and that they should feel free to ask you additional questions in private in case they did not want to ask a sensitive question at the group setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these ten people will be presumably working together at the same job, there is nothing unethical about them all knowing that they have exactly the same contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T15:25:52.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12333" CreationDate="2013-08-31T16:55:54.760" Score="1" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that it's possible to pass the TOEFL iBT several times. However, it has been one hour since I looked for the answer on the web, but I don't manage to know if all the scores are sent to the university I apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if I pass the test two times, can I send only my best score?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8443" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:39:09.733" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:39:09.733" Title="I have sit the TOEFL iBT for several times, Which one can I post: my most recent score or my best score?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2013-08-31T17:24:24.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a tool to block certain applications (like Facebook and Twitter). Furthermore I set goals for myself and hold myself accountable (created a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bohrresearch.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;weekend project&lt;/a&gt; for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monthly meetings with my supervisor help as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastEditorUserId="8005" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T17:35:26.710" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:35:26.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12331" CreationDate="2013-08-31T17:27:34.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the only way for schools not to receive the complete record of test scores is for you to cancel the test score. Since nowadays the test scores are usually finalized once you agree to get the score, I think the answer is probably no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:27:34.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-31T17:39:48.570" Score="16" ViewCount="2988" Body="&lt;p&gt;For all that is said about the &lt;em&gt;wealth&lt;/em&gt; of information that is freely available on the internet, the fact is that most of it is incomplete, dumbed down, lacking in context or downright wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individuals spend the best part of 20 years completely oblivious to the existence of journals and the process of peer review and even then we'd be lucky if 10% of those with access to journals (usually through an institution) actually bother to invest in them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted that some journals will be totally inaccessible to those without a solid background in some particular field but by and large exposure is a good thing and there are many areas of research where individuals will benefit directly from having read these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where does this come from?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided I wanted to read &lt;em&gt;Popular Politics in the Late Medieval City: York and Bruge&lt;/em&gt; in The English Historical Review today, mainly because it looks interesting and I'm hoping to invest more time into learning about British and European History. Incidentally I also wouldn't mind tucking into &lt;em&gt;Super Stable Clocks&lt;/em&gt;, Nature 500, 505 (29 August 2013) and a number of data analysis and big data journals in order to advance my career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, not being affiliated with an institution that subscribes to these journals means that I would typically have to pay between £5 ($10) and £15 ($25) per article that I read... I could probably spend £100 just to pass an hour by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's being done to address the lockdown on 'higher' education material? I've noticed that the Directory of Open Access Journals publishes open articles and other firms are doing similar, mainly with journals in new fields?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I, as an individual outside of an institution, gain journal access without it costing so much money?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8442" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T06:36:44.537" LastActivityDate="2020-01-09T10:48:26.107" Title="Access to journals for individuals outside of an institution?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12338" CreationDate="2013-08-31T18:30:26.287" Score="11" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not native speaker and I'm doing a lit review at the moment. My Question is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about  one paper? So I read the paper deeply and then write about it. The process takes more than 6 hours.  Is that normal or should I try to double that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T01:08:04.127" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T01:08:04.127" Title="Is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about a single paper for a literature review?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12336" CreationDate="2013-08-31T18:40:38.167" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading efficiently takes practise. I think it is reasonable to spend such time on a paper in the beginning. I am sure the speed will improve over time. that said, however, you probably need to check on how you read. It is normally not necessary to read every word in a paper. There are parts that you could skim to get an idea of what is going on and then focus on the stuff your really need to know. You should start making notes about the parts you skim so that you easily see if you have read it in detail later on, and if need be return to it at a later stage. In the end you will get more skilled in reading efficiently and the key lies in evaluating what is key and what is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T18:40:38.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12336" CreationDate="2013-08-31T19:05:10.060" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to expand on Peter's answer, there is a saying on the University of Canberra's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/learning/reading&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic Skills Centre: Reading and Remembering&lt;/a&gt; regarding academic papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic material is not meant to be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is meant to be ransacked and pillaged for essential content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, some of their advice for reading academic texts may be of help in helping you with the time taken to read and summarise the texts that you have, specifically before you start reading, have a question already that you want answered and very importantly, to optimise your time in reading academic papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a summary, a conclusion, a set of sub-headings, or an abstract, read that first, because it will give you a map of what the text contains. You can then deal with the text structurally, looking for particular points, not just reading ‘blind’ and so easily getting lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always have a subject-based dictionary on hand as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T19:05:10.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12334" CreationDate="2013-08-31T19:27:12.743" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a preamble: maintaining a publishing system has a cost. You may shift it to the authors, or to the reader, or have it financed directly by governments or supranational organizations, but there will always be a cost. It's true that in the current system, with a mixture of private publishers and non-profit ones (academies, learned societies, some well-administered professional societies), some players may be making a bit more money than we wish. Academic publishing has not yet fully adapted to the digital age, and it will get leaner by doing so. However, we have to recognize that this will always have a cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, answering your first question: there is a growing trend to go towards &lt;strong&gt;open access journals&lt;/strong&gt; (and open access options in many other journals), which shift the cost onto the authors. Moreover, some funding agencies (for example NIH) have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicaccess.nih.gov&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;public access policy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, meaning that they ensure that publications stemming from research they fund are publicly accessible in some form (in the case of NIH, the final version of the preprint must be made available on PubMed). Now, different fields of research are moving toward this new paradigm at various speed (biology is faster, chemistry is not moving at all). In the current state of things, it must be noted that apart from a few renowned exceptions (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org&quot;&gt;PLOS One&lt;/a&gt;, for example), most open access journals are far from prestigious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields, the publication system has hoped earlier on the digital bandwagon, and it is routine for authors to publish only preprints of their work (and publishers have copyright transfer terms allowing it). For example, in mathematics and physics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt; is a very popular source of preprints. In some other fields, most journals don't allow preprints to be posted at all…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your second question, there are a few options for you to gain access to some paywalled journals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public library: if you live in a big city, the local public library likely subscribes to a few major scientific journals: &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, things like that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a guest reader status at the closest university: some institutions allow access to outsiders in their library, either by not actually checking who gets in (as long as you behave), or in some cases by actually having an official “guest reader” status (which may require some paperwork or approval).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Membership in a professional society: individual membership in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acs.org&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt; gives you access to their journals at a rather decent price.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing to the authors: if you see a paper you don't have access to, just write to the authors asking for a PDF.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar&quot;&gt;Reddit Scholar&lt;/a&gt; :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T14:45:37.177" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T14:45:37.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12325" CreationDate="2013-08-31T19:58:47.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible. As long as your professor agrees. You have to work 4 years+ on the topic so it should be something that you are passionate about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T19:58:47.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2013-08-31T22:28:07.400" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be great if you learn skills that you can apply in your PhD. Some Universities even encourage it. As long as you communicate this clearly to your professor and still devote enough attention to your PhD it is OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T22:28:07.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12343" CreationDate="2013-09-01T03:20:07.620" Score="69" ViewCount="55422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a final year PhD in UK in a scientific discipline and I am writing my thesis. I have already published 2 journal papers and I have submitted 2 more papers for publications. My department does not allow a &quot;publications-based&quot; thesis so I need to write a thesis in the context of a book etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I write my thesis in a couple of places, especially in the literature review, I tend to reuse sentences from my publications. I try to restate them a bit, maybe change some words for their synonyms etc. but it is practically me writing about what I wrote before. It goes without saying that I cite/quote me at the end of a passage if I say something non-obvious (I found that slightly funny. :) ). The problem is that occasionally I am just explaining for instance how a certain estimation technique works; in that case I cite the original authors and not myself. The syntax in those occasions though is practically the same as the original passage I used in my publication; as I have explained it once and was consider good, I find no reason to reinvent myself (I do a mild rewording as I mentioned but that is quite insignificant). Same things goes for listings. I do cite my paper in the beginning of a big list as the list's source but the list itself is almost identical as the one in &quot;my&quot; paper; in those cases I don't use quotations, just attribution &quot;[]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an obvious guideline? The basic definition of plagiarism &quot;&lt;em&gt;reproducing the work of another person's as your own&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is not (directly) applicable to me because I am the other person (almost *); if I am using other people's work I do cite them but I don't cite myself, citing them, in quotation marks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a bit &quot;fuzzy&quot; about how not to plagiarize myself in my thesis (I have had no problem regarding my journal publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(* In all publications mentioned I am the first -but not sole- author.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8448" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T20:28:50.150" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T22:21:34.920" Title="Self-Plagiarism in PhD thesis" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12342" CreationDate="2013-09-01T04:38:25.100" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if your department does not allow a &quot;stapler&quot; thesis, it is entirely reasonable to expect that you should be able to freely use this material in a thesis. In general, I would expect that you would have to include a copyright statement similar in form to hose that would be used were you to copy the entire paper outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cover against charges of plagiarism, I would simply acknowledge something like &quot;Some passages have been quoted verbatim from the following sources,&quot; and list them. Also, when you reuse figures, I'd include the &quot;reprinted with permission&quot; tag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, ask your advisor or other members of your department for guidance! Since you're not the only person subject to this restriction, they've gone through this situation before, and can provide you with information on how former students have handled this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T04:38:25.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12351" CreationDate="2013-09-01T07:22:57.800" Score="5" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student in Engineering. This semester we're going to form a graduate student club. We're thinking about creating some networking events with former students, companies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you  have any related ideas that are not hard to implement and not too expensive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8450" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T18:33:35.930" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T18:33:35.930" Title="What simple events can a graduate student club organise to network with former students, companies, etc.?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12342" CreationDate="2013-09-01T07:25:01.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The papers you have published and that my be under review in a journal require permission to rproduce. It is therefore necessary to write to the journals and ask for permission to reproduce the contents in a thesis. I have heard of journals that refuse but they are very few. What you should remember, however, is that the copyright usually covers the final product or versions of the manuscript that have been altered as a result of work done within the journal, in other words gone through or in some stage of review. It would therefore be safe to reproduce your original submitted manuscript. You will need to acknowledge the permissions in your thesis (e.g. if you include a list of published paers and manuscripts in prep.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this may seem complicated but I have not experienced any publisher that has refused reproduction (either of a reprint or the text itself) in a thesis. After all, publishers live off of scientists writing papers and a PhD candidate (and scientists involved with her/him) is another &amp;quot;customer&amp;quot; to put it bluntly. It would therefore potentially be pretty self-destructive to refuse use of materials for a thesis with very limited distrubution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under any circumstances, please contact publishersand tell them what you intend to do andaskfor permission. Also check on the copyrights (which you usually sign at some point during the publication process. It is &amp;quot;better safe that sorry&amp;quot; that applies. And, I repeat, I would be surprised if you are given a no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A good way to find out what &amp;quot;your&amp;quot; journal adheres to is ot use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php?la=en&amp;amp;fIDnum=%7C&amp;amp;mode=simple&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SHERPA/RoMEO site&lt;/a&gt; classification for self-archiving. They use a four part classification as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;green - can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher's version/PDF&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;blue - can archive post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) or publisher's version/PDF&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yellow - can archive pre-print (i.e. pre-refereeing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;white - archiving not formally supported&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level or archiving indcates what also falls under the copyright agreement of each journal and hence also what you may be free to reproduce in a thesis, and what you are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T16:31:21.167" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12352" CreationDate="2013-09-01T11:04:24.100" Score="39" ViewCount="237225" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing letter to an academic professor (not necessarily from student to professor), what is the appropriate way to address his/her title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen in letters using&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Prof. X&lt;/code&gt; even when the addressee is not a full professor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Dr. X&lt;/code&gt; though, knowing that the addressee is a full professor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Mr/Mrs X&lt;/code&gt; though, knowing that s/he has an academic title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2020-05-01T16:27:45.780" Title="How to address a professor in letter?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12349" CreationDate="2013-09-01T11:23:09.240" Score="6" ViewCount="3113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was browsing some UK universities, and I was surprised by the number of 'Honorary Lecturers'. I understand a 'honorary professor' position, normally given to an outstanding scientist outside the academia, but I wonder how a junior academic position (like lecturer) can be given with honorary title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I thought it can be a political figure or something like than rather that someone with scientific achievements, but suprisingly, I found it is VERY popular to fall in this category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, 10% of faculty members in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slms/people/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences&lt;/a&gt; holds the positions of 'honorary lecturer', 'honorary senior lecturer', 'honorary reader', or 'honorary research associate'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="31487" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T10:09:58.167" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T10:09:58.167" Title="What is &quot;Honorary Lecturer&quot; in the UK universities?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12346" CreationDate="2013-09-01T12:34:49.447" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on a number of factors, not limited to the country the professor is in, the actual title, the type of correspondence (formal/informal), and the professor's personal preference. In the U.S. in computer science, for instance, virtually everyone goes by first names, almost regardless of university affiliation or rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid Mr./Ms. if you know there is an academic title (and these days, unless you have demonstrable evidence that the person prefers it, &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; Mrs.). I happen to prefer people use my first name, but I have to admit that it does tweak me a little bit if someone who should know better calls me &quot;Mr.&quot; instead of &quot;Dr.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Evil&quot;&gt;&quot;I didn't spend six years in evil medical school to be called 'Mister', thank you very much!&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) I shake my head whenever I get an email from my PhD alma matter when they refer to me as &quot;Mr.&quot; -- of all the places or people in the world that should get this right, they don't!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a country where it seems to matter (Germany comes to mind), call the person's office and ask explicitly (or figure it out by going to the professor's web site or the school site). Otherwise, I suggest that for a formal never-been-introduced letter you should use either &quot;Dr.&quot; (if applicable) or &quot;Professor&quot; (for all ranks of professor), or if you're in a field where first names are standard, go with that. For unofficial correspondence, you will be safe with the formal titles, but shouldn't have a problem with a first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T12:34:49.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12347" CreationDate="2013-09-01T12:44:35.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/hr/procedures/recruitment/honorarytitles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; they explain the subject in detail&#xA;In general regarding honorary academic titles for non-employees it is written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To recognise the association, the College may confer an honorary academic title on a non-employee during the period of their association.... The title to be conferred will depend on the level of distinction and qualification of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And specifically with regard to &quot;honorary lecturer&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honorary Lecturer&lt;/strong&gt;: Must continue in teaching, research or joint industry/academic activity to an appropriately high level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T05:40:35.957" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T05:40:35.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2013-09-01T13:05:43.987" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Awesome question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is - &lt;strong&gt;for sure!&lt;/strong&gt; (if it is related to your research as a grad student)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me expand. I think grad school is time for couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Widen your knowledge in the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deepen your knowledge in the subfield of the subfield of the subfield ... of your field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bla bla bla&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to be known by your peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make new connections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor could usually tell you that points 4 and 5 are easily achieved by publishing couple of papers and going to couple of conferences (realistically, how many conferences grad student can go in 5 years? maybe 8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, also, advisor doesn't want you to spend time on the stuff that will not has his/her (advisor's) name on it. That is understandable, advisor needs a list of stuff to put in the grant/whatever proposal to get funding. However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advisor pays you a minimum wage (in most of the cases)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Makes you work on his/her &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spherical cow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are hardly any jobs on the market [1,2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For at least these reasons my answer is - &lt;strong&gt;for sure&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, usually startup'ers invest time and money into something, and hope to get more money back. In my case, I have decided to invest in myself. So my startup goal is to contribute to a list of the opensource/closed source project in my field and arrive into authors/contributors list. This will accomplish the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to be known by your peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make new connections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get myself aware of the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing I'm happy about, only my name will be on the list. In academia people get authorship on the papers for all kind of things, only not for doing research, well, in the software - there is no such issue - as commit history is the judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks for the attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/03/Unemployment-Data-Worst-40-Years.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/03/Unemployment-Data-Worst-40-Years.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.a1300184&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.a1300184&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6346" LastEditorUserId="6346" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T13:12:09.323" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T13:12:09.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12344" CreationDate="2013-09-01T13:07:57.177" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seminar where a professor gives a talk on his/her current research. Provide beer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite an alum from one of the companies you're talking about to give a talk on something new from the company. Provide beer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple cook-out, which includes beer (even better if this is a recurring event, monthly, once a semester, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More involved ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mini-poster conference, where a quorum of students have posters about their current research. Alum can act as judges, if you want to award prizes. Provide beer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite a famous alumus to give a talk. This always involves more work than you're expecting, but can have big pay-offs. Might necessitate actual cocktails (and possibly pay for the speaker, but if you play it right you should find an alumnus willing to do it for free).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Field-trip to a local engineering firm that may have something interesting to look at (or a tour). Drinks at a local bar afterward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T13:07:57.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12346" CreationDate="2013-09-01T13:16:01.343" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;The appropriate way to address someone is with their proper title. In your question, it seems you know what the title should/should not be. If you know, use it. If you don't know, it's generally safer to err on the side of formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I personally prefer (and request) everyone to refer to me by my given name, I do feel it a little strange when someone I do not know / have never met addresses me in writing by my given name. Perhaps I am old fashioned but I expect introductions to be formal (and better to be too formal than too familiar) and then quickly get to preferred ways of addressing (i.e., to use my given name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When corresponding (in writing or electronically) I would look to the signature. If they wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Professor Schmoe:&#xA;&#xA;Blah blah blah&#xA;&#xA;Sincerely, &#xA;John&#xA;&#xA;----- &#xA;Dr. John Doe &#xA;Agri-science Department &#xA;University of Whatchamacallit&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would write back&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear John:&#xA;&#xA;Thank you for your letter. Blah blah blah.&#xA;&#xA;Sincerely,&#xA;Joe&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T13:16:01.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12342" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:06:12.403" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use sentences like &quot;The results described in this chapter have been published as [xx].&quot; or &quot;This chapter gives the argumentation published in [yy]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my primary reason for this is less concern about self-plagiarism (papes and thesis are in different languages) than  pointing out that these findings/developments have passed peer-review during a publication process. But if you give the appropriate citations also to your paper, I think it is important to make it easy for the reader to see whether the citation is your contribution or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;slightly off-topic: I even go one step further and at the very beginning (in a section about abbreviations, symbols and conventions) explain that papers [1 - x] were written in direct connection with the thesis, and are put to the front of the literature list to allow the reader to easily detect my contributions to the field. You could also solve this by giving reference lists &quot;my contributions&quot; and &quot;other people's contributions&quot; (similar to how some fields give primary literature lists and secondary literature lists).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T14:06:12.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12342" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:20:41.930" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The letter of the copyright law is extremely weird in such cases (formally you may need to request a permission from the journal editor to reproduce something, especially a picture, you made and submitted there yourself a few years ago, if you have assigned copyrights-some journals require copyright transfer, some do not). However, the spirit of the law is that you are free to use your own work several times &lt;em&gt;even if you assigned your copyright away&lt;/em&gt; as long as you clearly state that it is not the first time you present (this is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; required if you both retain all the rights and no originality expected) it and that the previous publications are such and such. To be on the safe side, write to the editors and request a permission to reprint (it is automatic unless the editor is an evil villain having personal grudge against you). However anyone trying to accuse you of using your own work without his permission will make such a fool of himself in the scientific world that his reputation there will plummet to negative infinity, so I don't think the chances of trouble are above those that some crank will accuse you of plagiarizing his work or that the outcome of the accusation, if it occurs, will be essentially different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastEditorUserId="67026" LastEditDate="2017-03-13T16:29:42.047" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T16:29:42.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12334" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:22:51.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add a few point to @F'x's excellent answer.&#xA;I'm going to give country-specific points for &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt;. However, you may find similar structures/possibilities in your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's being done to address the lockdown on 'higher' education material? I've noticed that the Directory of Open Access Journals publishes open articles and other firms are doing similar, mainly with journals in new fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One thing that changes right now is that authors will retain a right for secondary publication after an embargo period of 1 year for work that was paid for mainly by public funding.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This will give additional freedom on the site of the authors to make their manuscripts available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dfg.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DFG&lt;/a&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationallizenzen.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;program where they provide Germany-wide access to a number of journals&lt;/a&gt;. This is available also for private persons (you need to be in Germany though). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I, as an individual outside of an institution, gain journal access without it costing so much money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sign up for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationallizenzen.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DFG Nationallizenzen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As universities here are usually owned by the state, their libraries are usually public. Terms for getting a library card vary (from everyone to you need to be either associated with the university or have your main residence in the respective Land). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found that libraries of research institutes often allow you to go there as guest reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Side note, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dispatch.opac.d-nb.de/DB=1.1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electronic journal database&lt;/a&gt; allows you to check which libraries have the journal (year) in question. The data base covers also major research institutions like the Max-Planck/Fraunhofer/Leibniz institutes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the publicly accessibe information about a paywalled paper includes contact information to the corresponding author. You can email them and nicely ask for the manuscript. In many legislations getting a copy for private use is covered by fair use (e.g. in Germany &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;§53 UrhG&lt;/a&gt; says that you are allowed to copy or obtain a copy of journal articles for private use). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your local library may be able to obtain a copy for you through inter-library loan and/or document delivery services like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.subito-doc.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;subito&lt;/a&gt;. You'll have to pay for this, but the fees are often substantially lower than the direct subscription fees you cite. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T13:34:49.993" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T13:34:49.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12336" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:37:30.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree that academic papers are not meant to be read (although many are unfortunately written that way...). But usually not every part of every paper is equally relevant for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how long reading and digesting a paper does/should/can sensibly take depends on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how familiar you are with the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much/which parts of the paper are relevant for your research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the kind of relevant information: is it a bunch of facts that you need (prevalence of disease X was fount to be Y in population P - here a day would be very long) or do you need to understand a method including what the idea is behind, what assumptions are made, what caveats exist, how it behaves, and so on (a day would be very fast)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(how familiar you are with the language).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the actual reading skills, I like to mark important parts, and that will later on also tell me what parts I read thoroughly and what parts I just skimmed. And, while I also go over abstract and conclusions first, I'm a bit wary of accepting statements from there &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;: often, the detailed discussion or the description of the experiments give (explicitly or implicitly) important limitations. So that may need double-checking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T14:37:30.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11737" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:22:36.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foreword: I smell a contradiction… you talk about &lt;em&gt;“very large industrial projects”&lt;/em&gt;, but &lt;em&gt;“we are not ready to commit to a full time employee”&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to hire a consultant… but &lt;strong&gt;why a &lt;em&gt;faculty&lt;/em&gt; consultant?&lt;/strong&gt; In pretty much any field of science, you can find decent consultants outside academia, working in, well… &lt;strong&gt;consulting firms&lt;/strong&gt;. From what you describe, it seems than you need a rather large amount of work done, rather rapidly, and the benefits for the academic would not be immediately clear. That doesn't align well with the constraints and career goals of most academics, as Nate Eldredge explains very nicely. However, &lt;strong&gt;consultants from outside academia do not have such constraints&lt;/strong&gt;, and it seems like a better fit for your specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T19:22:36.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12360" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:28:13.853" Score="7" ViewCount="1140" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student who starts his last year, I will soon start to look for post-docs. In this process, I will update my Curriculum Vitae. But as a title of this CV should I put &quot;PhD in XXXXXX&quot; or &quot;PhD Student in XXXXXX&quot; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8457" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T19:48:54.253" Title="CV for post-docs: PhD vs PhD student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12359" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:35:21.107" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until you have your PhD officially, your CV should list &quot;PhD Candidate&quot; or &quot;PhD Student,&quot; depending on your proper status. In your education section, you should list the month you expect to graduate (and you should say &quot;(expected)&quot; or similar next to the date).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T19:35:21.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12359" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:48:54.253" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;(+1) to Chris Gregg's answer. In addition to that two points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you claimed to have a PhD (at the time of application) and you don't officially have the degree one can claim you are making a &quot;false statement&quot; and disbar you from the selection process. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Assuming you want to finish your PhD first and then take up a job] You want your possible employer to consider you for a position after you finish your PhD. Saying you are a &quot;PhD&quot; already means you are ready for immediately employment. Furthermore you might want to have you employer know you might need a couple of days off for your viva, etc. Given that this might take place in the first couple of months of your employment and probably you are not allowed &quot;vacation-time&quot; yet, it is good to let them now early on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T19:48:54.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12363" CreationDate="2013-09-01T20:49:22.627" Score="21" ViewCount="1520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a TA for a freshman calculus class, and I've just finished grading the first homework set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fairly clear that there has been some collaboration going on, which is disallowed in my institution. For instance, a pair of students both put exactly the same (very) incorrect solution to a trig problem, and a group of four whose work is next to each other in the pile (i.e. they sat near each other in recitation) have all made the same (more common) errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The course started last week and this was the students' first ever assignment: it was set on the second day of class and due on the fourth day of class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of what I &lt;em&gt;&quot;should&quot;&lt;/em&gt; do, i.e. report it to the instructor and let him follow the necessary disciplinary procedures. But is this necessarily the right course of action? It would probably be just as beneficial to these kids' academic integrity in the long run to tell them I'm onto them and never to do it again, as it would be to have them officially disciplined. It's likely that many of these people (should but) don't know the policy on collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8459" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T01:05:31.160" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T22:38:45.910" Title="How should disallowed collaboration on a freshman homework set be handled by a TA?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2013-09-01T21:04:44.260" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally follow the rule &quot;once is nothing, twice is a habit&quot;. I think a warning would be a good way to start. I do, however, think that it is still a good idea to run this by the instructor. I assume he/she is responsible for the course and the decision is up to him/her. You can explain your point of view and perhaps get some feedback on the matter. In addition, by taking up the discussion the problem is in th eopen and it makes it easier to catch repeat offenders. If you keep it secret, the culprits, in the worst case, can get by repeated cheating for each new teacher they encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheating is an abomination but I think people are allowed to make mistakes. I also think most people learn from mistakes and will not easily do it again. But, it is necessary to make sure they understand their attempt has put them under scrutiny, that is probably &quot;punishment&quot; enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T21:04:44.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2013-09-01T21:39:33.530" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The course instructor is the person ultimately responsible for all aspects of the class, including proper implementation of departmental and university policies.  As a TA, it is not your role to decide which policies should be followed and which can be ignored. Therefore, regardless of your personal feelings, you should report any issues that arise to the instructor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T21:39:33.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2013-09-02T01:15:37.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it's important that the instructor know about this. It is ultimately her responsibility to handle the situation, and your  job is to make sure she has the information she needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, though, that just because you report it to the instructor doesn't necessarily mean that a formal disciplinary case will result. The instructor may decide to handle it informally, by having a talk with the students about appropriate and inappropriate collaboration, etc. Under the circumstances, I think that is what most people would do. Note that such a talk will probably have more of an impact on the students coming from the instructor instead of from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you report the matter to the instructor, you can certainly point out that it is the students' first college assignment ever, and that you believe leniency is appropriate. But of course it is the instructor's decision in the end, and you will need to respect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T01:15:37.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12346" CreationDate="2013-09-02T01:39:55.017" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a sticky question.  Preferences for academic titles varies between countries, institutions and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, any individual employed in an instructional capacity by an institution of higher education can be properly addressed as &quot;Professor Smith&quot;, even if his or her official title is &quot;Assistant Professor&quot;, &quot;Lecturer&quot;, &quot;Adjunct Instructor&quot;, etc.  Moreover, any individual holding a doctoral degree can be addressed as &quot;Dr. Smith&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these two cases often overlap, and you are left to decide whether to use &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Dr.&quot;.  The pattern I've observed is that at institutions where only some of the faculty have doctorates, those who do are more likely to prefer &quot;Dr.&quot;; whereas at places where almost everyone has a doctorate, they will all prefer &quot;Professor&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the safest default, and the one I most commonly see, is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor Smith,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not abbreviate &quot;Professor&quot; as &quot;Prof.&quot;.  It sounds too much like an annoying student saying &quot;Hiya, prof!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T01:39:55.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T05:13:16.613" Score="3" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could someone do me a favor for any guidance (link) for writing an article that is supposed to be submitted to an international journal in micro-biology/micro-organism field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please lead me to another source instead of &lt;a href=&quot;http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWgeneral.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8463" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T07:58:16.837" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T09:04:47.220" Title="Reference for scientific writing for an international journal in the micro-biology/micro-organism field" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-11-05T12:51:28.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11979" CreationDate="2013-09-02T06:25:24.330" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I applied for an MS in electrical engineering. I wrote my sop on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly you have to mention how you got interested in this field. Then you mention all about your academics and activities from your schooling to present day. Then you mention about your area of interest and your academic projects and internship(s). At last why you want to do graduation in the area you prefer to and conclude.&#xA;Regarding your projects you have to give brief explanation about the project and the things that you used in the project .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8412" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T11:33:13.227" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T11:33:13.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12370" CreationDate="2013-09-02T06:50:44.563" Score="34" ViewCount="3456" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elsevier has started circulating &lt;a href=&quot;http://mail.elsevier-alerts.com/go.asp?/bESJ001/mTR68G9F/uQX51PJB/xD82RH9F&amp;amp;SIS_ID=&amp;amp;bid=V9HZG9F%3aQX51PJB&amp;amp;utm_campaign=&amp;amp;utm_content=&amp;amp;utm_medium=email&amp;amp;utm_source=ESJ001&amp;amp;utm_term=20130430%20Iran%20OFAC%20Sanctions%20NON%20INC&quot;&gt;this letter&lt;/a&gt; as a consequence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.pdf&quot;&gt;sanctions taken by the US against Iran&lt;/a&gt; to the editors of their journals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subject: US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by&#xA;  authors employed by the Government of Iran&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Dr Bruno Granier,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of&#xA;  the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. As&#xA;  a result of OFAC sanctions we have been made aware that US editors, US&#xA;  Elsevier staff and US reviewers are now unable to handle scientific&#xA;  manuscripts where any of the authors are employed by the Government of&#xA;  Iran. This includes the research departments of the various oil and&#xA;  gas companies which are deemed to be entities of the Government of&#xA;  Iran. We realize that this OFAC regulation will cause some&#xA;  inconvenience in your role as an editor but Elsevier is legally&#xA;  obliged to ensure that all reasonable efforts are made to avoid&#xA;  submissions from Iranian government agencies and companies being&#xA;  handled by US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers. Please be&#xA;  aware that editors, Elsevier staff and reviewers from outside the US&#xA;  may still handle these manuscripts and that this OFAC regulation does&#xA;  not pertain to manuscripts where the authors are based at Iranian&#xA;  academic and research institutes. Manuscripts originating from a&#xA;  clinical setting that are not government run, for example, a hospital&#xA;  or clinical practice are also exempt from this regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To view the official OFAC regulation, please click here. In practice&#xA;  the result of these sanctions will mean that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Submissions where any author is based in Iran, and is not at an&#xA;  academic and research institution, cannot be handled by US-based&#xA;  editors, US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based&#xA;  outside of the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• If an Iranian author has dual affiliations (eg. university and&#xA;  government), their submission cannot be handled by US-based editors,&#xA;  US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based outside of&#xA;  the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Affiliations of Iranian authors should therefore be checked, and any&#xA;  manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation delegated to a&#xA;  non-US editor, before handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• When assigning reviewers, affiliations of Iranian authors should&#xA;  also be checked, and any papers which fall under this OFAC regulation&#xA;  should only be sent to non-US reviewers. (As an editor you should do&#xA;  what is reasonable to determine the nationality of a reviewer e.g.&#xA;  check their email address. This check does not extend to emailing&#xA;  reviewers directly to confirm their nationality or location). Unless&#xA;  there is specific knowledge that a non-US-based reviewer is a US&#xA;  citizen, editors can send such submissions to reviewers based outside&#xA;  the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• If your journal workflow involves all submissions being handled by&#xA;  US-based Elsevier staff, they will reject these manuscripts outright&#xA;  before they reach you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Should there be no suitably qualified editor or reviewer, please&#xA;  reject the manuscript outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When rejecting manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation&#xA;  please use the new EES Decision Term &quot;Reject - OFAC Sanctions&quot; and the&#xA;  following text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a result of OFAC sanctions all editorial staff who are US-based/US&#xA;  nationals are unable to handle scientific manuscripts which are&#xA;  authored by Iranian scientists, employed by the Government of Iran.&#xA;  Based on this OFAC regulation we are unfortunately unable to handle&#xA;  your manuscript. We wish you success with your submission to another&#xA;  Journal.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. If you do have any&#xA;  questions please contact your Publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sent on behalf of Dan Lovegrove&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cretaceous Research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any public response, by US editors or reviewers, stating whether they will obey (or not) the instruction? Also, does this letter conflict with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf&quot;&gt;Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot;&gt;COPE&lt;/a&gt; (all Elsevier journals are members of COPE as of January 2008)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8421" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-02-17T11:14:52.787" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T11:14:52.787" Title="Elsevier actions following US sanctions on Iran" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;&lt;iran&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2013-09-02T07:57:49.023" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control&quot;&gt;Office of Foreign Assets Control&lt;/a&gt; (OFAC) is an agency of the US Treasury that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control#Authority_and_activities&quot;&gt;empowered by US federal law&lt;/a&gt; to edict and enforce embargoes and economic sanctions. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;US journal editors are bound by its regulations&lt;/strong&gt;, whether they like it or not. Violating them would expose them, and their employers, to liability. If they violated them willingly, the employer might also turn against them. &lt;strong&gt;I don't see how deference to the law is in violation of COPE guidelines&lt;/strong&gt; (or academic ethics in the broader sense): though important in publishing, they do not have force of law (and specifically defer to the law in many areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsevier is not the only publisher affected by these sanctions, and as others, they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://elsevierconnect.com/trade-sanctions-against-iran-affect-publishers/&quot;&gt;not happy with it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We stand by our belief that generally speaking, restrictions on publishing are inappropriate, and any exceptions should be narrowly crafted. We will work with our other publishing house and industry colleagues, along with research communities and institutions, to analyze recent changes and continue to pursue appropriate balance in the laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other publishers, however, either have a different understanding of the law or are willing to (potentially) go to court over it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A spokesperson for the American Geophysical Union, which has a dozen members in Iran, says AGU does not consider publishing to be a trade issue and &quot;accepts paper submissions from anywhere in the world.&quot; The American Society of Mechanical Engineers echoes that view, as does AAAS, Science's publisher. &lt;strong&gt;&quot;We do not put any restrictions on submission or publication of papers based on economic or other sanctions,&quot; says Monica Bradford, executive editor of Science.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;                                                                                        [source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iranian_scientists&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and references therein]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T07:57:49.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11989" CreationDate="2013-09-02T09:04:47.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best start is probably either &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226823377&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Manual for Writers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regularly look into those books. Either to refresh my knowledge or just for the pleasure of reading &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8264" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T12:53:43.777" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T12:53:43.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12376" CreationDate="2013-09-02T09:29:33.650" Score="11" ViewCount="808" Body="&lt;p&gt;When recruiting a student or post-doc to join my group, I trim down the list of applicants to a few names (3–5) by looking at CV's, research/teaching statements, existing publications, etc. Then, I will write to the mentors/professors/teachers/PhD advisors they listed in their list of references. I will also write to people who would be obvious choice as a reference, but aren't listed (fresh PhD who doesn't list his advisor, e.g.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;what do I ask these people?&lt;/strong&gt; My “standard” email would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A former PhD student in your research group, Dr XXX, is applying for a position in my group. I wonder if you can give me a frank and confidential appraisal of his abilities and working style. How efficient is he, how quickly does he get things done? Is he able to communicate clearly, both in writing and orally, at a level you would expect from an good researcher? Does he interact well with other scientists, and work in a team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one senior professor whom I sent such an email replied with a rather negative tone, saying &lt;em&gt;“Dr. XXX is a good scientist. I don't want to comment on your other questions.”&lt;/em&gt; So, I am wondering: am I asking something I shouldn't? Or not in the right manner? &lt;strong&gt;What should you ask of applicants' references?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T10:31:28.780" Title="What should you ask an applicant's reference?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2013-09-02T09:39:40.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not see anything wrong with your questions at all.  The professor who responded was probably pressed for time and felt that the quick summary would suffice (or they were having a bad day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of suggestions that I found were helpful when I was recruiting (albeit for a very different field) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the questions so that they are a yes/no response.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up a form where the response could just be selected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of the above could have a box for optional additional comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help when they are pressed for time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T09:39:40.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T10:11:35.407" Score="5" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working at an internship this past summer, and have applied a relatively standard technique (formal analysis of a security protocol) to a new (company internal) protocol. The company are pushing me to try and get the analysis published in an academic journal. The results do not highlight anything of particular note (a few caveats and gotchas but nothing with substantial security implications), but simply provide a rigorous mathematical underpinning for their security assertions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something publishable? I feel it isn't because the only new bit is the protocol which was simply given to me (and is being published in its own right). If not how do I make the results of the analysis available? Obviously the analysis needs to be made public and peer review is vital (because otherwise nobody would trust the security claims). Do I just put it on the company website and hope people in the know stumble across it? Can I email appropriate people and hope they look at it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1202" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T15:24:58.993" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T17:44:48.050" Title="Application of standard techniques to new data: is it publishable?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12374" CreationDate="2013-09-02T10:27:55.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend just putting it on the company's website or emailing it to anyone - if you sent it for publication, you would get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;peer review and feedback of your algorithms, assumptions and conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;potentially, validation for your application of the underlying rigorous mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potentially, you could publish as an internal company white-paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless this is proprietary information, I would suggest that if you have had the work verified internally, perhaps ask them to be a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being published would bring it to the attention of those in the same field, potentially allowing more valuable feedback and allowing further development and research to be performed on the work you have completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, why not get published recognition for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T19:19:52.763" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:19:52.763" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2013-09-02T10:31:28.780" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may well depend on the country. In the US, being the litigious society that it is, there have been some people going after (legally and non-legally) people who give negative references. The candidate can have a stronger case if you are contacting someone they didn't approve. Now, there is freedom of speech and many, many other issues but simply put, some people in the US are scared to give candid assessments unless the assessment is positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would tend to take the response you received as an &lt;em&gt;implied&lt;/em&gt; negative but I would also have to keep an open mind that the referee simply did not want to answer and it might not reflect at all on the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the questions you ask, they seem quite standard and I don't believe anyone would be taken by surprise by them. However, they might not answer out of fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, when it comes to reference checking, you need to be sure you are getting are response from the proper person. Emails get hacked, fake accounts get created. I personally prefer doing my reference checking over the phone. This may also come across as a casual conversation without written evidence, making the referee more comfortable in being candid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T10:31:28.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12374" CreationDate="2013-09-02T12:53:31.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider sitting down with the people arguing for publication to try and understand why they consider it to be (potentially) publishable.  It's possible, for example, that this new protocol addresses some issues not addressed by existing protocols; or addresses them more efficiently, or robustly, or is otherwise better in some way.  In other words, it's possible that the protocol by itself (without your security analysis) is not publishable, and your security analysis by itself (without the novelties of the new protocol) is not publishable, but the two taken together may possibly be publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T12:53:31.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12394" CreationDate="2013-09-02T13:36:12.420" Score="5" ViewCount="4383" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm in the start of the process of applying to graduate school in Canada for a Masters in experimental physics, and am kind of overwhelmed and wondering about some things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not from Canada and didn't study there, but have Canadian&#xA;citizenship. How much help, if any, will this be? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have somewhat bad overall grades in my undergrad degree (GPA just over 3/4 in a B.Sc(Hons) of 3 years normal undergrad + 1 year higher level courses &amp;amp; research, a high B+ in my uni's system, or 2nd class (1st division)), but am reasonably confident I can get a decent physics GRE score, having done okay on a practice test with no prep. How much would a good GRE score make up for poorish grades, and should I be limiting the schools I'm looking at to less respected ones based on this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Between 3rd and 4th years of my undergrad, I did a 10 week summer research project, as well as the whole year project in 4th year. Would this amount of research experience be typical for students from north American universities, or not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was looking primarily at the University of Toronto, U of Ottawa, and Simon Fraser University, and then just sort of started feeling like maybe I'm wasting my time &amp;amp; money even applying for them. Any help or suggestions are appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8464" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:47:44.997" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:47:44.997" Title="Am I aiming too high if I am applying to physics graduate schools in Canada?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-11-10T03:16:59.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:13:20.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me address each of your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How helpful is Canadian citizenship?&lt;/em&gt;  I'm guessing the answer is &lt;em&gt;maybe a little, but not a lot.&lt;/em&gt;  This is reasoning by analogy from the United States.  I think typically applicants to grad schools in the U.S. are grouped by &quot;where they went to undergrad&quot; more than &quot;where they have citizenship&quot;.  I believe that often the standards for applicants from the U.S. may be at least &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; from those for internationals, but it's still a very competitive pool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What about my GPA?&lt;/em&gt; You're right that just over 3/4 is not great.  In this case I would encourage you to take the GRE.  Good GRE scores could help convince admissions committees that you know more than your grades show.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does my research experience make me stand out?&lt;/em&gt; Over the last 15 years or so, it's become much more common for grad school applicants in north america to have research experience.  Over this time, we've seen a dramatic rise in the number of REUs (research experience for undergraduate).  While it's by no means universal, I think you will &lt;em&gt;not stand out&lt;/em&gt; for simply having a summer of research experience (or having completed a senior project).  However, you could stand out based on what came out of that experience.  Did you publish a paper?  Give a presentation?  Convince your mentor that you are the greatest thing since sliced bread?  If so, then your application should highlight this aspect of your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked about U of Toronto, SFU, and U of Ottawa.  These schools are all pretty highly rated, especially the first two.  I would guess that getting admitted to grad school there would be a stretch for you, but I don't say that to discourage you, just to encourage you to apply elsewhere, too.  (Once you're putting together an application for one school, it's typically not too much work to apply to another school.  You're right that it costs money, but it's a relatively small cost, when you consider the potential impact it could have on the rest of your life.)  You may want to read an answer I wrote recently to the question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11985/how-should-i-choose-which-graduate-programs-to-apply-to-for-the-phd/11987#11987&quot;&gt;How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let me comment on something you didn't ask about.  &lt;strong&gt;Your recommendation letter writers&lt;/strong&gt; can dramatically impact your chance of being admitted to a given school (and getting a desirable job later on).  You should choose these people carefully, and do all you can to help them do their job well and on time.  Remind them how they know you (whether it's through a class, or some extracurricular activity).  Remind them of some of your accomplishments, and make sure to give them information about why you're applying.  Speaking as someone who's written a number of recommendation letters, I am more comfortable writing a stronger letter when I feel like I know more about the students.  Obviously, you have to have impressed me (or in your case, your letter writers) with your performance already.  But that is only part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1069" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T15:27:08.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12382" CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:34:31.473" Score="28" ViewCount="1156" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the following common? An editor for a journal sends a paper out to, say, three or four referees. After getting the first two referee reports, the editor makes a decision and tells the third and fourth referees not to bother (so that they have potentially been wasting their time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see this happening in some circumstances, e.g. if one referee finds a substantial error. However, I was asked to referee for one journal, and I get the impression (&lt;em&gt;which I have not yet confirmed&lt;/em&gt;) that they typically send the paper out to lots of referees and take only the first couple of referee reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This practice, &lt;em&gt;if it is indeed what they are doing&lt;/em&gt;, seems likely to produce quick turnaround times, but also seems disrespectful to referees who might be half-finished when they are told their reports are no longer needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this common? (In particular, in mathematics?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T07:09:09.827" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T11:25:09.543" Title="Do editors ever &quot;overbook&quot; referees?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12380" CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:41:17.000" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;An editor that cancels the review for a referee within the &quot;normal&quot; referee period will end up angering the referee and likely losing her as a reviewer for future papers. So this is a very unlikely practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals will request multiple reviews (three is not uncommon for many of the journals I submit to), and will wait until the end of the standard review period to return any comments. If two of the three (or four) reviewers have returned reviews, and the others haven't, then the process can reasonably truncated at that point. (If you're behind schedule, you don't really have a right to complain in this case!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T15:41:17.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12380" CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:45:33.417" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this one will be very hard to answer with hard data. So, I'll just throw in some anecdotal evidence, along with a few things learnt from some editors that I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a reviewer point of view, it has happened to me &lt;strong&gt;exactly twice in a decade&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. &lt;strong&gt;very rarely&lt;/strong&gt;) to receive an editor's review saying “I've reached a decision based on input from other reviewers, and you do not need to review the manuscript”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first time, the email came as my review was already overdue (a week or ten days), so I suppose the editor asked another reviewer when I didn't reply on time, and the new reviewer was fast to reply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second time, it was sort of the other way around: I was asked to review a paper, then 5 days later the editor wrote, saying the reviewer who was uncommunicative had finally replied, and my review was no longer needed. He apologized profusely, and offered to actually wait for my review if I had started doing it and wanted to finish. (I was happy to let it go.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think for an editor, growing a list of trustworthy and willing reviewers is crucial. So, they simply cannot make them work for nothing! &lt;em&gt;(pun intended)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T15:45:33.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:54:27.593" Score="10" ViewCount="2593" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question that has plagued me for a couple of years now. Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student?  Or, is posting it on my course website good enough?  My syllabus contains a good deal of information.  I have the homework schedule, online video schedule, office hour info, etc.  But, the class is close to 30 students.  And printing that many three page syllabuses seems extreme.  To make the question more specific, has anyone noticed that printing the syllabus has had a greater effect than not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In response to the comment below, all the students have access to free printing of the syllabus in any number of computer labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1462" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T21:38:27.717" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T21:38:27.717" Title="Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student or it is better to have it on my course's website?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12383" CreationDate="2013-09-02T16:36:33.707" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should check that your school doesn't have a policy that says instructors must hand out a paper copy of the syllabus to their classes (those policies exist...). Second, you have to think about whether there is anything they need that you can guarantee they've &lt;strike&gt;read&lt;/strike&gt; been handed (e.g., some laboratory students have students sign that they've read the syllabus, for safety reasons). If you don't have to hand out the paper, you should feel confident these days that they can get the syllabus on your class web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current strategy is to forego printing the syllabus for large classes, but to explicitly email the class with a link to the online version (along with a very short introduction). If you want to ensure they get the syllabus, attach it to the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For small classes (&amp;lt;20), I have printed out a 1-page &quot;highlights&quot; of the syllabus (my contact info, &lt;em&gt;address for the online version&lt;/em&gt;, due dates for assignments, etc.). I may not even do that any more, as I just figure the students are perfectly able to get the information online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing: on the first day of class, I do go over the important parts of the syllabus, and I also put a copy on the projector as I go over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T06:54:01.720" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T06:54:01.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T18:31:07.040" Score="21" ViewCount="11313" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my CV, I have a few talks listed where I was not the presenting author (though I am a co-author on the work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have left them on my CV because as a graduate student, my CV is pretty slim. However the work in question was recently published in a journal, which now appears on my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I delete all the talks where I was not presenting author? I'm not sure adding length to my CV is really appropriate since the information is fairly redundant (all the same line of research and similar talk titles, just different conferences).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8465" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T04:56:16.407" Title="Should I list talks on my CV given by co-authors?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12386" CreationDate="2013-09-02T18:38:17.173" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is no. You should not list items that you have not performed. In this case it would be listed under &quot;talks&quot; (equivalent) and that would be wrong. On th eother hand it represents work that you have done and as such it can be listed but probably under a different heading. The important thing is that it represents what has actually happened. I can see a heading called, for example, &quot;Other work presented at conferences&quot; and then list the talk and state that you was part of the work but that it was presented by someone else. Again, the importance lies in formatting it so that the actual conditions are very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the CV is short, I think such additions may make sense, later in a career these posts will lose their importance relative to other headings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T19:01:29.460" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:01:29.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12386" CreationDate="2013-09-02T18:54:18.423" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Peter: &lt;strong&gt;unless you're at a very early stage in your career, don't list talks given by others&lt;/strong&gt;. It clutters your CV, and it looks like you're desperate to lengthen the list (at best), or you're claim credit for others' work (at worst).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in this age of scientometrics, &lt;strong&gt;you need to keep a list of these things, separate from your CV&lt;/strong&gt;, as they may be required of you in the future (as I learnt to my misfortune): by your employer, by a funding agency, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T18:54:18.423" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12386" CreationDate="2013-09-02T19:44:50.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, but the main issue is that the information in your CV is transparent and accurate. Therefore, you must clearly separate talks where you were the presenting author from those where you were not, so that there is no ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add talks where you were not the presenting author would be largely redundant, especially if the work is included in published articles. However, on a short CV it can make sense, and (to me) it can also be reasonable if you e.g. contributed a lot to producing the actual presentation (writing, constructing graphs, poster layout etc). But as the previous answers state, adding these talks could also be seen as you trying to pad your CV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:44:50.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12392" CreationDate="2013-09-02T20:21:07.643" Score="11" ViewCount="31112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm review the literature at the moment. Now I'm reading a paper that mention other studies. How can I reference them without reading the original papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T01:17:42.097" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T10:32:45.903" Title="How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2013-09-02T20:25:37.467" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us assume, for example, you read Doe (2011) and find Smith (1966) referenced therein. Technically, you can say something like &quot;Smith (1966, cited in Doe, 2011)&quot;, or alternatively &quot;(Smith 1966, cited in Doe, 2011).&quot; The exact format depends on the format of the journal (it is also possible to phrase it &quot;cited by&quot; instead of &quot;cited in&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, however, it is &lt;em&gt;very dangerous&lt;/em&gt; to provide such quotes since you do not know if the person(s) citing the paper has understood it correctly. It is not unheard of that people cite for very odd reasons and not double-checking works cited may just propagate such errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is possible but not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T20:49:42.050" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T20:49:42.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2013-09-02T20:53:04.407" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them? If they are not relevant, why would you cite them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only case I can think where it might make sense is if you are reading a review paper, and want to actually cite them as a collection rather than individually. Because there are a large number or for other reasons. Then you would write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in &lt;strong&gt;(Doe, 2012 and references therein)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in &lt;strong&gt;(Doe, 2012 and references 15–73 therein)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T20:53:04.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2013-09-02T22:49:11.950" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start with the cheat code of Canadian admissions: in Canada, the professors in the department you apply to look at your application package and decide if they, personally, want to take you on as a student.  This means that the decision is up to the professor: if they want you, you're in; if they don't, no GPA or GRE score can save you.  So the secret is to decide who you want to work with at each school you're applying to, contact them, and convince them you would be an awesome student.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, for each university, look at its website to find out who works in the area you're interested in.  Look for a list of research groups, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/research&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; for Toronto.  There will usually be a small number of professors per group; for each professor, get a list of their papers from their website.  (If they don't have such a list, which sometimes happens, try Google Scholar, but make sure you're finding the right John Smith.)  Pick the professor (or two) whose work seems most interesting to you and look at their papers in a little more depth.  Don't worry if you don't fully understand them -- if you did, you wouldn't need to go to grad school -- but try to get the general idea of what the authors did and why.  Then email the professor, briefly and politely covering the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask if they are accepting new students this year. (They may be low on grant money, going on sabbatical, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe your research interests.  If you wrote a paper or gave any talks about your research, mention it.  Good communication skills are essential in research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe how your research interests fit with the professor's own interests (which you're familiar with from their papers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaffirm your interest in their work and show off your preparation by asking a question about one of their recent papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is obviously time consuming, but it will greatly increase your chances of getting in.  Most professors will be impressed by your interest and level of preparation.  (I say &quot;most&quot; because there is one professor in my department who complains bitterly about getting emails from prospective students.  You may encounter one of these, if you're unlucky, but the good news is that you wouldn't want to work with them anyway.)  Use your institutional email address to minimize the chance of getting caught in spam filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other point: in Canada, at least, many STEM fields have two kinds of master's degrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A terminal or coursework master's, which you get by taking a certain number of courses (8 in my department).  You cannot enter a PhD program with this degree (hence &lt;em&gt;terminal&lt;/em&gt;) and you usually don't get any funding.  They can be often be completed in a year or sixteen months.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A non-terminal or thesis master's.  These are intended to prepare you for a PhD, so you get the degree by taking a smaller number of courses (4 in my department) and writing a thesis.  These are usually fully funded and take two years to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let me (finally) get to your actual questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How helpful is Canadian citizenship?&lt;/em&gt;  Somewhat helpful if you're applying for a non-terminal degree.  I mentioned that these are usually funded, which means you get a stipend to cover your tuition and living expenses.  However, the tuition you pay depends on your citizenship.  Canadian universities are subsidized by the government, so citizens (taxpayers) are charged less than non-citizens.  This in turn means that international students need a bigger stipend to cover their higher tuition.  &lt;em&gt;All else being equal&lt;/em&gt;, a professor will choose a cheaper citizen over an expensive international student.  Being a citizen will also make it slightly easier to win scholarships, since many require citizenship or permanent residence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How important are grades?&lt;/em&gt; Most programs require a minimum undergraduate average of 78%/B+, so you're definitely borderline.  Stay above the minimum if at all possible, and if there is an explanation for your grades (e.g. illness), include it in your application.  If you did better in later years or courses that are core to your degree, mention that.  Nobody cares if you failed underwater basket weaving, but if you failed calculus, you're in trouble.  Finally, make contact with the professors you want to work with; if they want to accept you, grades will be much less of an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How important are GRE scores?&lt;/em&gt; Practically irrelevant.  Students with a non-Canadian bachelor's are sometimes (not always) asked to submit scores for the general test, but as far as I know no program asks for scores on the subject tests.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How helpful is research experience?&lt;/em&gt; All honours undergraduate programs in Canada require a thesis or a capstone project in the final year, so this isn't special.  Fewer students do summer research, so that will help your application.  The main issue is that &quot;research experience&quot; is a fairly meaningless term, so when you write your application letter, be as specific as possible about what you did and learned.  &quot;I have research experience&quot; is not nearly as powerful as &quot;I learned the standard technique for measuring XXX and applied it to a project exploring effect YYY.  I then presented the results at conference ZZZ.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final disclaimer: I'm in computer science at Waterloo.  As far as I know, everything I said is true for physics departments and other universities, but I can't guarantee it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T22:49:11.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2013-09-03T01:16:47.780" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/how-to-write-literature-review-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing literature reviews in psychology&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Here's my advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cited In&lt;/strong&gt;: Good literature reviews do not use &quot;Cited in&quot;. Literature&#xA;  reviews which summarise Author B’s citation of Author A’s work write:&#xA;  &quot;as Author A (1999) says as cited in Author B (2002) …&quot; . However,&#xA;  good literature reviews, when they see that Author B cites Author A,&#xA;  go and get Author A’s article, read it , and draw conclusions about it&#xA;  directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is only in rare occasions that you need to indicate that an article was cited by another author. Just because you learnt about a study because it was cited somewhere is generally not relevant. Read the original so that you know enough about it to incorporate it into your literature review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are many less common exceptions where you may wish to indicate the relationship between two papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to discuss how Paper 1 uses Paper 2. For example, you might want to draw attention to how various papers have mis-used a citation in order to justify some misguided methodological practice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are performing a meta-analysis and you want to indicate that you used a previous study to find references. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a potential plagiarism issue around over-reliance on a single paper to generate your literature review. If for example, you took 95% of your references from the one paper, this would be questionable in general, but at least by using &quot;cited in&quot; you are being honest. Of course, I think this strategy of reviewing the literature should be avoided in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, finding literature by following the citation trail backwards (by looking at references) and forwards (using tools like Google Scholar) forms part of a general set of strategies for finding literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T02:26:17.660" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T02:26:17.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12383" CreationDate="2013-09-03T02:49:09.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know some here will consider this too extreme but I never print my syllabus. If I were in an area where students really had no reliable access to the internet then I might consider it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better to get students used to keeping things electronically (and save the environment one page at a time). Of course, some students will want it printed and they can do that for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do NOT find that giving a student a printed copy guarantees they have read everything on it. I have read recommendations that teachers should not talk too much about their syllabus in class in order to encourage students to go get a copy and read it. I don't find that to be a good idea either. If there is something you want to make sure they know, by all means put it in your syllabus but &lt;strong&gt;actually discuss it in class&lt;/strong&gt;. However, try to minimize the printing. It really creates a lot of waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T02:49:09.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2013-09-03T10:43:02.310" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE above said, &quot;Don't&quot;. When you make assertions in your published work, they should be based on either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that you have demonstrated yourself in the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that another person has demonstrated (so you cite them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that is sufficiently well known to the intended audience that no citation should be necessary (you don't need to cite Newton for his law of gravitation for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To consider the bigger picture for a moment, something that is published does not suddenly become a part of scientific dogma, even if it's published in a top tier journal. The motto of the Royal Society is &quot;Nullius in verba&quot;, that is, &quot;take nobody's word for it&quot;. If you are relying on established results for your work, then reading these results is the very minimum you should do. In an ideal world where you would then proceed to replicate the results that you are depending on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is usually not practical because of constraints on your time but at the early stages of your studies you should at least consider replicating some results since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will give you a far greater familiarity with the domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a very high chance that you will expose some misconception that you had held about the work you are citing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a reasonable chance that you will expose a deficiency in the original work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In closing, you should consider that every time you publish something, you have added to mankinds knowledge. Every time you cite a paper without reading it, you dilute that knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8475" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T10:43:02.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T10:45:32.470" Score="7" ViewCount="2060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been composing the International journal for microbiology research.  I learn that research journal should consist of active voice not passive, but I find that the previous researchers for related subject mainly used passive voice. &#xA;How should I consider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This genus is characterized by two types of conidia called α–conidia (fusiform) and β–conidia (filiform).  [I think it is valid.  Please correct me if I could change it to active voice]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diaporthe sp was reported causing dieback of rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) (Van Rensburg et al. 2006)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[Van R et al 2006 reported Diaporthe caused dieback of rooibos (Aspalathus l.)?]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A novel Phomopsis sp  was reported as a weed (Carthamus lanatus) pathogen and may be used as a biocontrol agent (Ash et al. 2010). &#xA;[Ash et al. 2010 clarified that a novel Phomopsis sp as a weed (Carthamus lanatus) pathogen may be used as a biocontrol agent?]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*** Note - 9/4/2013:&#xA;Thank you so much, I appreciate the clarity from everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://widstudio.wordpress.com/wid-writing-handbook-project/a-guide-to-writing-research-papers-for-introductory-microbiology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I also did online research&lt;/a&gt; and learn this (may it help those who have the similar problem):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many writers are torn between whether &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;they should write the paper&#xA;  in the active or passive voice&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. In the former, the subject performs&#xA;  the action; in the latter, the subject receives the action. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Too&#xA;  much use of the active voice has the tendency to make the text&#xA;  monotonous because of too many first-person references. On the other&#xA;  hand, overuse of the passive voice can cause the tone of the paper to&#xA;  be dry, boring and even pompous&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; To ensure that &lt;em&gt;the text is more&#xA;  lively and readable,&lt;/em&gt; it is best to try and strike a balance. Consider&#xA;  the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We used eosin-methylene blue agar plates for the preliminary isolation&#xA;  of P. aeruginosa. The bacteria were Gram-negative bacilli, and motile.&#xA;  The results for oxidase and catalase activities were negative.&#xA;  Additional experiments showed that the bacteria did not ferment&#xA;  glucose, galactose, maltose or lactose (Table 2). Based on these&#xA;  results, we concluded that the organism had an oxidative metabolism.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Try translating this in to an entirely passive or active tone.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;You’ll notice that the creative mix of both voices makes this narrative not only lively and engaging but also states the results in&#xA;  a clear, confident and unambiguous manner&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8463" LastEditorUserId="8463" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T02:34:11.607" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T02:34:11.607" Title="Active or Passive Voice in International research journal, within the field of microorganism?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T07:17:21.540" Score="6" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question that has been bothering me for so long about research work is, &lt;em&gt;what level of work can be called research and is worthy of publishing in a research paper&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I am working with JPEG compression, if I make some may be &lt;em&gt;a little&lt;/em&gt; enhancement in the algorithm for the compression, can it be given the title of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I make a little enhancement or added a little new stuff to an already existing work, can it be called a research and can I write a research paper for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8481" OwnerDisplayName="Umer Farooq" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T14:18:26.740" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:32:27.487" Title="Research paper about an enhancement to algorithm" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12401" CreationDate="2013-09-03T09:04:04.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely say yes, if you researched your field thoroughly and found a solution to a problem, why not? But just to make sure: I would discuss my ideas with a supervisor, or colleague first.&#xA;A lot of people made improvements on existing algorithms and wrote about it. I have read a few papers about compiling mpeg on the GPU using OpenCL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Erich Marths Paper: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://li5.ziti.uni-heidelberg.de/x264gpu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parallelization of the x264 encoder using OpenCL&lt;/a&gt;&quot; at ACM&lt;/strong&gt; he did improve some aspects, but interesting is rather what was researched. We tried his code and approach years in 2012 to find: CPUs had outgrown the improvement already and the approach could not be followed any more without significant work put into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure your research effort becomes clear. If in doubt, hand the draft to a &quot;mentor&quot; or colleague to judge the degree of research effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8487" OwnerDisplayName="AnyOneElse" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T14:32:27.487" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:32:27.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12401" CreationDate="2013-09-03T10:53:05.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What matters most is the time and memory complexity of the algorithm. The crucial step is having the improvements repeatable (reproducible) by another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. if instead of &lt;strong&gt;O(n&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt; your algorithm offers &lt;strong&gt;O(n log(n))&lt;/strong&gt; execution time, it is worth publishing and you may well expect your name to be remembered for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your &lt;strong&gt;implementation&lt;/strong&gt; of the algorithm has lower startup time, or spends 5% less time on each iteration, it is not altogether clear that this is an advance in the field. With another compiler or with error-checking on, these results may not be valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are important &lt;strong&gt;exceptions&lt;/strong&gt;: self-tunable, configurable, hardware error-resistant, hard realtime algorithms, to name a few. Adding valuable properties to algorithms is a very nice result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Deer Hunter" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T10:53:05.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12400" CreationDate="2013-09-03T12:08:46.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is primarily a question about taste and tradition. The passive voice has largely been the norm but it has its obvious drawbacks, it is boring to read. Using the active voice is therefore recommended. Your need to get a sense of what is the &quot;norm&quot; in your field because you may encounter unnecessary resistance if your deviate. Unfortunately This problem May be larger for a younger less well known scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T12:08:46.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12400" CreationDate="2013-09-03T12:47:43.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The choice between active and passive voice is mainly a matter of taste&lt;/strong&gt;. As a writer, you are entitled to a certain degree of liberty in your stylistic choices. Even within the generally tight constraints of scientific and academic writing, there is no established dogma on passive vs. active voice, and you will find people advocating (some very strongly) both for and against the use of the passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duke’s Graduate School &lt;a href=&quot;https://cgi.duke.edu/web/sciwriting/index.php?action=passive_voice&quot;&gt;Scientific Writing Resource&lt;/a&gt; has a good summary of the pros and cons of passive and active voices. In particular, it lists the position advocated in some high-level style guides, editorials, and other essays of note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the current trend is toward a diminution of use of the passive voice. The reasons are summed up nicely by Randy Moore (&lt;em&gt;The American biology teacher&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most scientists use passive voice either out of habit or to make themselves seem scholarly, objective or sophisticated. Scientists have not always written in passive voice. First-person pronouns such as &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; began to disappear from scientific writing in the United States in the 1920s when active voice was replaced by today's inflexible, impersonal and often boring style of scientific writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main argument used in favour of passive voice is that it promotes objective statements&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than focusing on the actor. However, removing the mention of the actor in the text does not actually prevent subjectivity in the experiments: even if I write &lt;em&gt;“the sample was smeared until it reached a thickness of 1 µm”&lt;/em&gt;, somewhat actually &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; smear the sample (and could have screwed it by going too slow or too fast). So the counter-argument is that passive voice does not &lt;em&gt;promote&lt;/em&gt; objectivity, but only the appearance of objectivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main argument in favour of active voice is that it makes for shorter, clearer, less boring text.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love that anecdote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&amp;amp;Papers/education/ssr_activepassive.htm&quot;&gt;Rupert Sheldrake&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;School Science Review&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“The test tube was carefully smelled.”&lt;/em&gt; I was astonished to read this sentence in my 11-year-old son's science notebook. At primary school his science reports had been lively and vivid. But when he moved to secondary school they became stilted and artificial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T12:47:43.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12406" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12432" CreationDate="2013-09-03T13:24:34.507" Score="14" ViewCount="11349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that in Germany, basically all the professors are addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX, say Prof. Dr. Mueller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in other parts of the world, only Prof. would be sufficient, &lt;del&gt; since a non-doctor can never be a University professor. &lt;/del&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why are the German professors addressed this way? Isn't it kind of redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T01:18:31.083" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:30:12.790" Title="Why are the German professors addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12400" CreationDate="2013-09-03T13:42:17.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, follow the journal's style guide. It doesn't matter how well your paper is written: if it doesn't comply with the rules, you'll make the editor's job harder. Getting published is, in fair part, about making the editor's job &lt;strong&gt;easier&lt;/strong&gt;. And you are writing in order to get published, right? The more like recent papers your writing style is, the easier you may find it to get published. So look at how the active and passive voices are used in similar papers to yours, in recent issues of your target journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as far as compatible with that, follow your institution's style guide, as far as you must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as far as is compatible with those, write in professional, lucid, interesting prose. The choice between active and passive will depend on context and rhythm. I highly recommend the books from Tim Harford's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ft.com/undercover/2010/03/three-books-you-should-read-if-you-want-to-write/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Three books you should read if you want to write&lt;/a&gt;, which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Style: Towards Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Art and Craft of Feature Writing by William Blundell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T13:42:17.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12401" CreationDate="2013-09-03T13:56:39.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question I would ask is: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Are there people working in this area who would learn something interesting and useful from what you've done?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  If the answer is yes then your paper makes a contribution and so is potentially publishable. At that point you could consider some secondary questions, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Length of the paper:&lt;/strong&gt; this should be commensurate with the extent of the contribution (i.e., how much someone would learn) -- a small contribution merits a short paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Venue of publication:&lt;/strong&gt; some place (conference, journal, forum) typically accessed by the people who would learn the most from your paper.  For example, a theory journal would not be the right place for systems-oriented paper about the guts of a compiler.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T13:56:39.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12406" CreationDate="2013-09-03T14:06:28.757" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany, in rare cases also non-doctors can become a professor. Then it's just &quot;Prof. Müller&quot;. Regarding Doctors, we don't have a &quot;PhD&quot; title. &quot;Dr.&quot; is the official title for a doctor which is traditionally a prefix to the full name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)#Germany&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)#Germany&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:06:28.757" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12401" CreationDate="2013-09-03T14:15:13.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, you are not necessarily required to show any improvement in performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What journals typically require of a publication is for the results to be novel, sound and withing the scope of the journal's area. More prestigious journals also judge how interesting your results are to their readership. However, some journals will accept any work as long as it is novel and technically sound (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS ONE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if you find an algorithm that has performance that is similar to current state-of-the-art algorithms but gives some new insight about the structure of the problem it could be interesting enough for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:15:13.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12445" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:11:12.900" Score="3" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and two other student, did a course project and it has been accepted for publication in an international conference. I am confused now that whether I should add his name as a co-author or acknowledge him in acknowledgements ?&#xA;I would like to share that though, the entire implementation and writing the paper was done by us, we were student of his class and the work was produced as a part of course project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: As F'x suggests, that I should ask the instructor. What would be an appropriate way to do so given that his name was not added as co-author before acceptance.(We were confident about the work but were not sure about the acceptance. The conference management software was EDAS and it spams email of all co-authors which we wanted to avoid in his case)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T17:53:53.907" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:25:04.483" Title="Adding a faculty as a co-author" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:13:29.987" Score="2" ViewCount="1907" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the literature review when I have many definitions from the literature can I paraphrase them or do I have to put them in quotes as they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8479" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T15:43:04.463" Title="Should I paraphrase or quotes definitions?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12411" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:25:39.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he/she supervised your work, and/or read your paper, and/or somehow gave his/her contribution to your paper, &lt;strong&gt;I think that yes&lt;/strong&gt;, you should add his/her name as author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T15:25:39.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12504" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:38:51.337" Score="25" ViewCount="4113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say this year the university A advertises one postdoc and one tenure-track position. If I prefer the tenure track position, but am not sure that I can get it, what should I choose between the following two options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option A: Apply for both postdoc and tenure-track positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option B: Apply for tenure-track position only, hoping that even if I don't get it, the university will consider offering me the postdoc position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that Option A is safer, but some of my friends say the opposite. They think that if you apply for both positions, then even if you are good for the tenure-track position, the university will tend to offer you only the postdoc position, the lowest rank that you asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any insight on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information: the job market I am referring to is the US'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if we have other situations: postdoc/lecturer, lecturer/tenure-track, or postdoc/lecturer/tenure-track? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8480" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T06:51:43.050" LastActivityDate="2020-02-26T16:48:09.670" Title="Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12412" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:43:04.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use another source's definitions verbatim, then they must be placed in quotes; otherwise that's plagiarism. However, it should be pointed out that general facts and definitions—one that would be reasonably obvious to anyone who has, for instance, an undergraduate background in your field—need not be cited, so long as you are not literally quoting someone else. For instance, saying &quot;Newton's second law states &lt;strong&gt;F&lt;/strong&gt; = m × &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; does not require a citation; saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second law states that the net force on an object is equal to the rate of change (that is, the derivative) of its linear momentum p in an inertial reference frame &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_second_law#Newton.27s_second_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[Wikipedia]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;requires a citation to Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T15:43:04.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12374" CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:44:48.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, without the details, I cannot say for sure, but I'd guess that &lt;em&gt;Yes, it is publishable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If more senior people think it is publishable (and it seems they have some experience with the scientific process even though this is an industry setting), then I tend to trust their judgement over yours. Often, when starting out, people tend to think that only major breakthroughs can be published; when it is very much not the case. This is a fairly common occurrence with young researchers: that they are too publication shy. (Others are too quick to think something is ready to be published).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is obviously novel that this particular protocol has these properties even if the protocol itself has been published already (or is published separately) or the techniques to get to the result are also not novel. The question is whether it is interesting and non-obvious enough. If it is really a trivial thing, then it may not be worth publishing even if it novel. Alternatively, if the protocol itself is not very interesting or used, then it may be deemed &lt;em&gt;not interesting&lt;/em&gt;, which is a different criterion from non-novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given the above, the quality of the actual paper (as opposed to the raw analysis) will also need to be taken into account. It is more publishable if you can tie these particular results to a wider framework so as to locate it into a larger body of work. Again, it is hard to say for sure what this might be without knowing more details.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T17:44:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2013-09-03T18:19:23.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest choosing the job you want and think you have a good shot at, and then apply for that position. Here is my rationale (and supposition, to a certain extent):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply to both positions, you've told both hiring committees a couple of things: you've said to the tenure-track committee that you would be happy with the post-doc position, otherwise you wouldn't be applying for it. You've said to the post-doc position, &quot;I'm doing this as a backup in case I don't get the tenure-track position.&quot; In both cases, you're not telling them anything particularly good. Sure, there is the possibility that they'll see your dual application as really wanting to work in that particular department, but I wouldn't bet on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can make a good case why you are very competitive for the tenure-track position, then go for it. Apply to post-docs elsewhere if you want a bit more of a backup (although in the job market it isn't really worthwhile to talk about &quot;backups&quot; in the same way you talk about it for school applications). Also, there is something to be said about applying for the position you really want: it demonstrates your own belief that you are well qualified (but, of course, you may end up without a job...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't make the case that you're a strong candidate for the tenure-track position, apply for the post-doc position. You'll get the experience you need to be competitive for future tenure-track positions, and there is always an off-chance that there may be another position opening up at this school, and you'll be more competitive for it (and know people on the committee). I don't believe there is the same stigma about hiring post-docs into positions at the same school as there is for hiring PhD students into positions at the same school (which is rare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T18:46:43.113" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T18:46:43.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2013-09-03T19:23:32.970" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recruiter, I don't see much of Chris's point. And, as a candidate (some years ago), I followed pretty much your option B (apply to both). Here's the reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Times are though, and the academic job market is very competitive. &lt;strong&gt;Anyone who expects you to apply only to a single position&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;“applying to more that different positions shows that you don't know what you want”&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;“you don't believe in your chances”&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;is delusional to some extent&lt;/strong&gt;. You will apply to backup post-doc positions, and I don't think you benefit by excluding the place where you also apply for faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you can actually turn that into a pretty positive argument: “&lt;strong&gt;I love your institution/department, this is really my dream place to work at, and if I don't get on faculty this year I'm willing to take a post-doc, know you all better and try again next year&lt;/strong&gt; (if circumstances permit).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that &lt;strong&gt;this is actually commonly done in France, UK and some other European countries&lt;/strong&gt;: once you've traveled a bit, find the place where you want to settle, apply there, and if you don't get the job on the first try, get a post-doc there and try again later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T19:23:32.970" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12873" CreationDate="2013-09-03T21:21:57.820" Score="21" ViewCount="55062" Body="&lt;p&gt;Papers published from an academic project (MSc or PhD) usually have two authors; the first author is the student who mainly conducted the research, and the second author is the professor who supervised the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding author is the one who take the responsibility of a paper, and thus, some believe that students are not yet prepared to take this responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, who should be corresponding author for papers published by MSc or PhD projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it mainly depends on personal agreements and preferences, but I want to know which case is more reasonable from academic logic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T11:17:35.550" LastActivityDate="2020-04-09T05:53:57.163" Title="Should student or supervisor be corresponding author for publications based on student research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-03T21:30:40.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that ought to be agreed on in discussion between the student and supervising professor.  Ideally, this decision should be made from the start of the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own situation, when I was completing my PhD, the 4 papers published had me as both the first author and corresponding author.  My advisor told me that part of the research process would be to field any and all questions, concerns and queries that come from the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited (in response to question edit): From an academic point of view, it can be argued that the student is the primary researcher, hence expert in that specific topic, hence would be the only one who can completely answer any questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T22:04:04.440" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T22:04:04.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-03T22:03:56.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always the corresponding author; my advisor(s) thought it was good for me, and they had other things to do than to fiddle around with LaTeX...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, I think it is good for phd students to be the corresponding author; besides, if there is any trouble, you have always your advisor/coauthor to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastEditorUserId="2794" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T08:08:12.750" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T08:08:12.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-03T22:28:05.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies widely, not only on your field's customs, but also on individual research groups. In the research groups I have worked in, and worked with, in &lt;em&gt;chemical engineering&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;the corresponding author is usually the most “perennial” researcher, i.e. usually the PI/professor&lt;/strong&gt;. The idea is to ensure that the corresponding author is a faculty member, meaning he is the person most likely to still be around in 5 to 10 years' time to answer questions about the work. (In that time, PhD students and post-docs may change field completely, exit academia, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the PI is usually the one who gets to keep the archives (raw data, lab notebooks, etc.) in the long term, so it makes sense that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T22:28:05.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T23:24:07.317" Score="1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I posted something similar a while back and it was closed, but I believe this post will be more suited for discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm heading to Europe from the U.S. to complete my BS in physics. I intend on returning to the U.S. to complete a PhD (ie. no masters degree in-between). I'm aware that the European system has a three year BS program, as compared to the four years that are done in the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The central question is&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Does having a three year BS affect admission into a competitive American graduate program?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From where I sit, I can't help but feel PhD programs will raise an eyebrow at applying with only two years of experience. All of the graduate application deadlines available online (Princeton, Cornell, Columbia) have a deadline of the 15th of December, which correlates to a little over two years of undergraduate education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been lucky enough to have a huge head-start on the material (few formal credits, however), which means I could start research within my first year of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6777" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T05:16:07.820" Title="European BS - American PhD (Graduate Admission)" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-16T09:14:13.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-03T23:32:19.137" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The corresponding author is the one who take the responsibility of a paper&quot;. I've never heard this before. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_04_16/caredit.a1000039&quot;&gt;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_04_16/caredit.a1000039&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;The corresponding author is the point of contact for editors, readers, and outside researchers who have questions about the contents of the paper. Often, the corresponding author is also the last author, but she or he may be listed first or even in the middle of the author list.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All authors take responsibility for the paper (or should). The point of the corresponding author is who to contact if you want to correspond about the paper. If this were someone who was likely to move institution (because they are finishing, or have finished their study), they are going to be hard to contact, so make it someone who's likely to hang around for a while. I've never seen anyone take any notice of who the corresponding author is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T23:32:19.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12443" CreationDate="2013-09-04T00:25:51.130" Score="2" ViewCount="1378" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a doing a dissertation funded by a company and my dissertation is basically a report of my progress on the problem they have given me. I have an &lt;strong&gt;academic supervisor&lt;/strong&gt;, an &lt;strong&gt;industry contact&lt;/strong&gt; who has given me occasional guidance and basically the company itself who sponsored it, to acknowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I acknowledge the industrial sponsorship the same way one would acknowledge a government grant?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, Since this is a mathematics dissertation, It is written in First person plural: &quot;We do this we do that&quot;. For the acknowledgements section, should I use 3rd person to keep it formal: &quot;The author would like to...&quot; or first person singular: &quot;I would like to thank&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think the order should be sponsorship, academic adviser, and lastly the industry contact. Is that the right order? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8360" LastEditorUserId="8360" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T01:33:02.620" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:48:51.607" Title="Acknowledgements in an industry-sponsored dissertation" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12430" CreationDate="2013-09-04T00:49:28.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say generally there are no perfect settings for acknowledgements. It all depends to your university dissertation rules. If the thesis/dissertation booklet does not cover the way acknowledgement should be stated then its up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T00:49:28.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12406" CreationDate="2013-09-04T05:12:02.443" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany, professorships and doctorates are considered to be &quot;legal&quot; titles, and have special status not accorded to other degrees and professions. In particular, university professors in Germany are &lt;em&gt;Beamte&lt;/em&gt; (appointed civil servants, sg: &quot;Beamter&quot;/&quot;Beamtin&quot;), which places them in a relatively small class of government employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is to be noted that a professor in a German university can be called &quot;Herr Professor&quot; or &quot;Frau Professorin&quot; only so long as he or she is actively working as a professor. Following retirement or leaving the university profession, it is technically not permitted to use the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in this sense, the appellation &quot;Professor&quot;/&quot;Professorin&quot; is legally part of someone's name, and should therefore be used in formal greetings and salutations. (This can sometimes be annoying—for example, in a physician's waiting room, you can hear them call for &quot;Frau Professorin Schmidt!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="68222" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T11:30:12.790" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:30:12.790" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12428" CreationDate="2013-09-04T05:16:07.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there will be a huge problem in taking a European bachelor's degree to a US institution, so long as you do a little explanatory work in getting ready to apply. The reason for this is that in those first two years, you will often have more major-specific work than most US students will have completed in three years!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would recommend contacting the graduate admissions of programs you're interested in applying to, and explaining your situation to them. Take a look at the undergraduate programs they offer—and in particular, the list of required courses, and show that you have a similar amount of preparation (or more!). Then ask if there's anything else that you need to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T05:16:07.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T07:49:03.253" Score="7" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a team working on the second phase of a project. The project hasn't been published in any journals or conferences yet, mainly because not a lot of work has been done completely. Practical work of a certain significant part has been done by a previous team. My team started two months ago and we have enough exposure to write a conference paper proposing the design and the theoretical work completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My project guide asked us to start writing a publish-ready paper encompassing everything, including the previous years practical work. He says, cite their term project and use their data. He was the guide of their term project too. I'm unsure as to whether it's right to just cite their unpublished thesis work. I think maybe they should be co-authors too since their work does comprise a significant part in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right and should I bring it up to the professor? If so, how should I do it without offending him? If the question is vague, I could give more specifics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The field is control and robotics. The practical work is calibration of the equipment in question. The overall paper does include control strategy, dynamics and other sections that the previous researchers have not touched upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6644" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T11:53:41.503" Title="Citation or inclusion of name in conference paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12437" CreationDate="2013-09-04T07:57:19.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said &quot;their work does comprise a significant part in the paper&quot;. The question is to judge the nature of their contribution: if their work is a scientific contribution (by opposition to a technical contribution), then they indeed deserve to be co-authors of the paper. If their work is considered a technical contribution, then they should be left of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a judgment call and what you say about their work (&quot;the practical work is calibration of the equipment in question&quot;) makes it borderline. Sure, calibration is crucial, but is it an intellectual contribution, or is it something any technician with access to the apparatus user's manual could have done? In short: did they design the calibration procedure, or did they just follow an established (standard) procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, you may want to bring that issue to the other authors' attention, in a diplomatic manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T07:57:19.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12440" CreationDate="2013-09-04T08:03:08.047" Score="27" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to start a PhD project soon and I have almost decided on the group in which I will apply. But I know that I am a very sensitive person when it comes to any work atmosphere. I have to feel comfortable where I don't work alone in the corner of a room for 4 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are telltale signs of the academic work atmosphere? When I visit the group with the professor, will he let me ask questions to students already there? What should I ask and to whom? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:59:34.997" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:59:34.997" Title="Joining a group for PhD, how do I judge the atmosphere before I sign?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;group-dynamics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:05:32.277" Score="29" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First off, if the professor is reluctant to have you talk to members of the group, this is a huge red flag. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you visit, ask if you can sit in on lab meetings or seminars (some group setting) and observe the dynamic. Does everyone seem engaged and happy to be there? Is the mood collaborative and friendly, or authoritarian? Basically, put yourself there and ask yourself if you'd be comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the professor about their advising style and philosophy. Some like to be very involved, some want their students to be independent. Make sure their answer works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most important one, in my opinion: contact a few of the other students independently, tell them you are coming to visit, and offer to take them out for a coffee or beer. This is an opportunity to ask them, in a relaxed non-work setting, about what they like and don't like about working in the lab. Do not tell the professor what the students are thinking, in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T18:46:32.020" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T18:46:32.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12411" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:06:19.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Co-authorship depends on the person and (sometimes) internal rules. For instance, during my PhD it was common for the professors to consider reading a paper + giving feedback as contribution worth authorship. Some of them even thought that they deserve authorship just because they talked to you about your idea:) &#xA;During my Masters (at another university) my supervisor did not only read the paper, but also corrected some errors in the formulas and checked the experimental results. When I put him as a co-author, he asked to remove his name motivating this as &quot;I just did the work a normal supervisor will do&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as others suggest - do ask the professor ASAP.&#xA;P.S. Many professors will not fund your trip to a conference if their name is not on the paper unless explicitly agreed beforehand:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:06:19.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12485" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:09:06.633" Score="4" ViewCount="2311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a writing course that has many students who plan to study economics or finance in graduate school. I am not so familiar with these disciplines, but want to make sure these students finish the semester with the skills they need to succeed in graduate school. What kind of writing assignments can they expect to see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T16:47:44.870" Title="What kind of papers do economics and finance students write?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12430" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:10:24.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak from a similar experience.  Many moons ago, when I was completing my Honours research (yes, this was and still is considered postgraduate), I was sponsored by a company (mining and economic geology). With the acknowledgements, I was told to give my thanks in the order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academic and industrial supervisors by name and affiliation.  These are your first points of contact and did the most of work with you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The company for the sponsorship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then friends, family and/or pets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an opinion, but experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, having said that, I would &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; recommend that you ask both advisors what is expected as @seteropere suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T09:48:51.607" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:48:51.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:21:34.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ma sure someone can write a more thorough answer, but the following are some resources that may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duke University's &lt;a href=&quot;http://lupus.econ.duke.edu/ecoteach/undergrad/manual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A Guide to Writing in Economics&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charles Sturt's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/51934/Business-Report-Writing-Skills.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Business and Report Writing Skills&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:21:34.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12411" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:25:04.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;em&gt;“given that his name was not added as co-author before acceptance”&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;ask him ASAP&lt;/strong&gt;. Be honest, be apologetic, explain clearly the situation and the reasons you did not want to add his name beforehand, but also be very clear that you realize now it was a mistake not to discuss it at the time, and that you made the mistake due to your lack of experience in academic publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:25:04.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12447" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:29:28.263" Score="6" ViewCount="3799" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you address a &lt;strong&gt;Dr. des.&lt;/strong&gt; (Doctor designatus), for example in e-mails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dr. John Doe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dr. des. John Doe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Doe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;…?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5967" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:36:20.200" Title="How to address a Dr. des.?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12446" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:36:20.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the formal title is &lt;strong&gt;Dr. des.&lt;/strong&gt;, there are good reasons to simply use the form of address you would use to a “final” doctor: the title is only temporary, and the person will eventually have the title or &lt;em&gt;Dr.&lt;/em&gt;; moreover, PhD candidates having freshly attained their goal will probably enjoy you using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who wonder what &lt;em&gt;Dr. des.&lt;/em&gt; is, it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unilu.ch/eng/promotionspruefung_824753.html&quot;&gt;temporary title&lt;/a&gt;, like US presidents are “president elect”:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following a successful defence, the title of &lt;em&gt;Doctor designatus&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Dr. des.&lt;/em&gt;) may be used until the doctoral degree is gained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:36:20.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2013-09-04T11:52:53.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you decide on which project you will be working on? Did you propose it (freedom, at the cost of being on your own), did you get assigned to it (as a worker), or did you plan it with the professor (teamwork)? Chances are that whatever happened during this phase will carry on during the PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How central to the supervisor's own work is the question you are going to work on? This will massively influence how much support you get from him, especially when competing with other team members for resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very important to find out how the team handles results that go against their main hypotheses/theories/assumptions. Do they pour in resources to discover whether they should abandon their preconceptions, do they assign you to another less threatening line of research, or do they put pressure on you until you give them the &quot;right&quot; result?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do people help each other to conduct their work, or do every person concentrate on their own work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the order of authors on their papers. Do the people who actually worked get first authorship, or do the most senior post-doc get first authorship, the head of the lab gets last, and everybody else gets authorship in order of seniority (BAD!)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On conferences and social occasions, does the team hang together (whether alone or mixing with other teams), or does the lab head leave the students aside and goes looking for &quot;important people&quot; to talk to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the team enjoy their own time together? Do past team members still nurture personal friendships with the lab head/team members? Do you know of closet skeletons, team mates turned enemies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most important: Do people, including the professor, look &lt;strong&gt;happy&lt;/strong&gt;? If they don't, run for your life!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8490" LastEditorUserId="8490" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T12:19:49.293" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T12:19:49.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12437" CreationDate="2013-09-04T11:53:41.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a delicate question. My own rule is to offer a co-authorship to anybody with whom I discussed the problem unless I use only the results they have already published and took the official credit for. However I don't insist and if they decline, I just give them extended thanks in the paper. So, I would definitely contact the (leader of) the previous team and offer to include all the names in the author line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to ow to approach your professor, it is not entirely unlikely that he is reading this very thread at the same time as you already, so once you decided to go public with it, just show him the replies you get here and ask what he thinks and what his arguments are. If he is a good man, he'll be straight with you and hold no grudges. If not, well, then you are in trouble already... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T11:53:41.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T12:56:43.320" Score="1" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to cite someting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/it-services/learning/documentation/webaccess-1/webaccess-1t.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this workbook&lt;/a&gt;. How can I cite it? The year is 2009 but what should I put between brackets if there is no specific author? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8479" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T15:03:21.477" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T15:03:21.477" Title="How can I cite a workbook?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2013-09-04T13:14:33.320" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the people who left the group, either by graduating with a PhD, finishing their post-docs, or through getting tired of it, and find out about their experiences. You can find their names on the group/professor website either explicitly under &quot;students&quot; / &quot;post-docs&quot;, or by looking through the list of co-authors/publications. In all likelihood, they will be more independent in their judgments than the current members of the group who are financially dependent on the leader -- at least those doing their PhDs and post-docs. There is no point whatsoever in asking grad students about how they feel in the group in the presence of their adviser -- you will get them in an awkward position, and the leader will definitely raise a brow about you. Besides, the grad students usually don't have any other experience, anyway, so they have no reference point to say whether their atmosphere is better or worse than the average across the field. The &quot;graduates&quot; of the group will have at least one more work group to relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T13:14:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2013-09-04T13:59:56.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our group, potential new starters are more than encouraged to talk to current postgrads - for example we normally take them out to lunch when they come to interview/present, without the academics in the group present.  This works both ways - a group that works as a team will want members that fit into the team.  If you are asked to present to the group at interview, that's inherently a good see (IMO), but the tone of a question session after that is a good gauge - not the supervisor's questions, but how the rest of the group ask questions in front of him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a feel for the dynamic of the group without asking directly - find out about whether they do stuff together out of work, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checking the order of authors as suggested by dmvianna is a good idea, but you need to do that in the context of the field - e.g. in my area of applied physics, postgrads generally do experiment+analysis+writing and are first author.  My perception of particle physics is rather different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your worry about being isolated is certainly valid, I feel very lucky in the group and department I'm in, when talking to people elsewhere in the university they are often quite lonely in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T13:59:56.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:07:46.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You also need to realize that your behavior during the tour of the group is also a way for your potential advisor to see how you interact with other scientists. It will also be (if you take the position) your first contact with your future team mates! So be sure to show interest, take your time, ask questions… don't rush it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T14:07:46.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:17:28.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm (as the postgrad and lead author) the corresponding author on a paper, rather than my supervisor, which is common here.  I've had a few queries on the experiment and equipment, which realistically, as I did the work, and I'm not so busy as my supervisor I'm better placed to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T14:17:28.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10843" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:26:08.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would say not unless it suits you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm happier with a flat .bib (i.e. bibTex, for use with LaTeX) file, just managed in notepad++.  You can use the url field of a .bib to point to a local file, but I don't.  Instead, what I've recently started doing is to save a pdf of the reference with a filename based on (but generally longer than) the key I use in my .bib file.  I wish I'd done this sooner though!  That way I can copy a file and a folder to another machine, on another OS, with no internet connection (e.g. when travelling) and everything just plain works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T14:26:08.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:40:34.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would treat it as an online resource since it is not published and might be replaced by a newer version at some point. To cite this, you don't need an author but make sure you state the date when you retrieved the resource. In BibTeX it is done using &lt;code&gt;@misc&lt;/code&gt; entry for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, but less formal, possibility is that instead of a reference, you use a footnote where you will place an URL and the date you retrieved the resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7219" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T14:40:34.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:58:17.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As this is published by IT services and not an academic part of a university, I would treat it the same as a sales brochure from a company.  The author is the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you follow the guidelines for getting a copy + associated documents as in the document, you get to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/it-services/learning/resources/searchresults.html?topic=&amp;amp;8=&amp;amp;14=&amp;amp;11=&amp;amp;29=&amp;amp;4=&amp;amp;9=&amp;amp;5=&amp;amp;3=&amp;amp;7=&amp;amp;13=&amp;amp;level=&amp;amp;audience=&amp;amp;res-type=&amp;amp;keyword=webaccess-1&amp;amp;find-res-btn=search%20%3E%3E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, which states &quot;The publicly accessible documents on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England &amp;amp; Wales License. &lt;strong&gt;Their &quot;original author&quot; is the University of Bristol which should be acknowledged as such in any derivative work&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; (my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T14:58:17.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12469" CreationDate="2013-09-04T15:10:38.457" Score="6" ViewCount="3982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a master student of some engineering (other than EE/CS) in a decent US institution who will apply for a PhD in mathematics in Fall 2014 (possibly in PDE / applied analysis, but not sure). I finished with three A's and five A+'s in eight upper-undergrad / grad math courses, along with four more to come this fall. Since my intention for a math PhD came pretty late, I am only able to look for supervisor this semester. The sad thing, as expected, is that all three potential supervisors declined my request softly. My previous engineering research experiences are mostly experimental, with little to do with math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have roughly one full semester left, and my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to gain any sort of research experience in this semester without a supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If not, then how can I show my research potential by other ways?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will the three LORs solely from course lecturers be convincing, even if the lecturers are well-known, and I did pretty well in their courses?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition, is abstract algebra a must or at least very important in math PhD application? Since I have to make a choice between Algebra II and Dynamical systems, and I don't have Algebra I.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your responses and criticisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7367" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T11:45:08.487" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:24:17.623" Title="What if I may not have research experience for math PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12471" CreationDate="2013-09-04T15:52:28.400" Score="8" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am organizing a one day workshop as a part of a major conference in my field.&#xA;I would like to have a website to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introductory text (static html)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;announce things (some content management)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep everybody up to date (mailing list)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintain a pre-workshop and post-workshop online discussion forum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a web service that would implement these things easily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't want the visitors to register accounts. Perhaps a mailing list accessible via web would be sufficient, since I do not expect anybody to regularly visit just to check the forum (except for myself). Is there a mailing list/forum service suitable for such purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free would be best. I am capable of building such website myself, but I do not want to host it nor spend too much time setting it up. In the past, I used wordpress.com, google sites, google groups and such...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:03:54.727" Title="Building a workshop website" Tags="&lt;website&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T16:20:57.917" Score="6" ViewCount="1772" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a website or software for one to search for all the past co-authors/collaborators of a given researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can of course go through the researcher's publication and get the names one by one, but just wonder if there is a shortcut way of doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8496" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T18:35:47.950" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T00:27:41.840" Title="Is there a quick way to search for a given researcher's past collaborators/co-authors?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2013-09-04T16:32:09.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can do this with many scientific indexing service.  Personally, I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;.  It is subscription-based, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?origin=resultslist&amp;amp;authorId=31267510200&amp;amp;zone=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;author page&lt;/a&gt;.  I find this easiest by searching for the title of any publications by the said author, because most names are far from unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qwKQy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot for my author page&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you can click on co-authors.  This will give you a list.  For example, I currently have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/search/submit/coAuthorSearch.url?authorId=31267510200&amp;amp;origin=AuthorProfile&amp;amp;sot=al&amp;amp;sdt=coaut&amp;amp;st1=Holl&amp;amp;st2=Gerrit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;31 co-authors&lt;/a&gt;, here sorted by number of publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fhrjz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't state how many documents in particular I have in common with this co-author.  To get that, click instead on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/search/submit/author.url?author=Holl%2c+Gerrit&amp;amp;origin=AuthorProfile&amp;amp;authorId=31267510200&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Documents&lt;/a&gt;, then, under &lt;em&gt;Author Name&lt;/em&gt;, on &lt;em&gt;More&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wjzWB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get similar information through the Author Evaluator → co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, 100% of my publications have myself as an author ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T19:09:36.323" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T19:09:36.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2013-09-04T16:43:17.640" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For researchers in computer science, another approach is to use DBLP, which is free. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/pers/hd/v/Venkatasubramanian%3aSuresh.html#coauthors&quot;&gt;this is the coauthor list for me&lt;/a&gt; on my DBLP page. It is reached by going to the researcher page at DBLP, and then clicking the little 'people' icon on the right hand side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T16:43:17.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12460" CreationDate="2013-09-04T18:40:59.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some large institutions maintain platforms for such tasks: some of them are restricted to their members, others have a more liberal policy. For example, the French CNRS (largest national research institute) has developed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencesconf.org/?lang=en&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;SciencesConf.org&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It fulfills your requirements, except for the forum (which, as far as I can tell, is rather unusual for conferences to have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T18:40:59.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12753" CreationDate="2013-09-04T19:56:30.120" Score="11" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking for a post-doctoral fellowship, I have, in a nutshell, two alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply to open positions, where money is already secured (at least for the beginning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply together with a potential supervisor for funding agencies, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://nasa.orau.org/&quot;&gt;NASA NPP&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vsp.ucar.edu/&quot;&gt;UCAR VSP&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/rap/&quot;&gt;NRC&lt;/a&gt;, or one of the more generic funding agencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With option (2), I'd need to first convince a potential supervisor, then write a funding proposal to convince a funding agency.  From a candidate's point of view, (1) is easier.  On the other hand, there are a lot more options in (2) to try, than in (1).  My question relates to option (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two relevant calls for me close on 1 November and 10 January.  Results are announced in February and March.  I could apply to both, with different projects and different supervisors.  While waiting for results, other opportunities, where funding is already secured (such as point (1)) may come along, and I'd apply to those too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it unethical, unprofessional, or otherwise unwise, to apply to different programmes, with different supervisors, and still apply to immediately available positions while awaiting the result?  Suppose that I find a postdoc elsewhere before even knowing the result of either funding application; can I then simply back out of the still-open funding applications without consequences, or should I expect this to cause severe annoyment with the host scientist I'd be applying with?&lt;/strong&gt;  After all, he or she would have invested a non-neligible amount of time in the proposal.  I find it different then simply applying for different jobs, because time invested is much less.  On the other hand, I don't want to have to wait until March, before hearing a negative result and having to start all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to hear from senior scientists how they would look upon a fresh PhD who they'd spend time writing a post-doc proposal with, but who'd then back out for another position before the result is even announced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T16:52:14.760" Title="When applying for postdoc funding, what are the consequences of backing out if I can get another position where funding is already secured?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12473" CreationDate="2013-09-04T20:18:23.687" Score="12" ViewCount="4773" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/category.html?code=archive_news_views&quot;&gt;“News and Views”&lt;/a&gt; articles summarize high-impact research published recently in other journals. The News &amp;amp; Views articles are typically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; written by the authors of the research paper, but by other researchers in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the topic of News &amp;amp; Views articles are not covered at all in Nature’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/submissions/presubs/&quot;&gt;information for authors&lt;/a&gt;. So, how are people writing the News &amp;amp; Views chosen? Is it only by invitation of the editor? And who chooses the articles written about in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T20:55:00.687" Title="Who writes Nature’s “News &amp; Views”?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2013-09-04T20:31:16.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1577660633&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Economical Writing&lt;/a&gt; is one standard reference for economists. An economics paper usually has a lit review, an economic model, analysis of what this model predicts, and how the data supports this model. A great outline is provided by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msu.edu/~choijay/etiquette.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toilet Seat Equilibrium&lt;/a&gt; paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your students might want to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://repec.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Papers in Economics&lt;/a&gt; archive, pick some papers there, and critique them from the intensive writing perspective. This collection has both published and unpublished versions, so with some luck they might be able to trace as the paper is getting into a more publishable state as it moves between versions and revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T16:47:44.870" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T16:47:44.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12458" CreationDate="2013-09-04T21:27:41.487" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I should mention that I am a 3rd year math PhD student at Brown. So I have a hint of knowledge, but not as much as a professor who has been to more institutions, and certainly not as much as someone who has been  on an admissions committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, many starting PhD mathematicians have no real research experience. The reason is simply that research mathematics is so far from most undergraduate mathematics. This is also why doing research is so hard without a supervisor (for that matter, it's hard with a supervisor). Many candidates have done &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/programs/students/undergrad/emp-reu&quot;&gt;REUs&lt;/a&gt;, which look generically good but often don't usually result in a publication or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I recommend to you is that you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify what you're interested in and pursue it. You say you maybe like applied analysis or PDE. Maybe see what some people are doing, read some of their stuff, backtrack if you need to. In this sense, you &lt;em&gt;can just do research&lt;/em&gt; without waiting for someone else's permission. I'd like to mention that there is a polymath project you might be interested in, &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=The_hot_spots_conjecture&quot;&gt;Polymath 7&lt;/a&gt; on the Hot Spots Conjecture (here is a link to the most recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://polymathprojects.org/2013/08/09/polymath7-research-thread-5-the-hot-spots-conjecture/&quot;&gt;progress page&lt;/a&gt;). It's slowed down, but they've done some interesting things and the polymaths are generally good about leaving a clean trail of breadcrumbs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask about showing research potential and getting letters of reference. Instead of worrying about what's the absolute best thing, I think you should worry about doing the best that you can do. You've tried to set up some research with professors and that fell through. You haven't done math research before, and you're probably not going to get far in the next 4 months. In particular, it's unlikely that you're going to come up with a result great enough to inspire someone you haven't worked with to write you a letter of reference. This is all to say that you should get your letters of reference from those best able to recommend you. If these are lecturers, then so be it. But I hope that you've been attentive, proactive, and inspired in those classes. For that matter, if you're inspired, you might be able to ask your dynamical systems professor for an interesting project - approachable projects exist. It might not be new research, but at least it would be something you, and others, could talk about. As a final note, you should talk to your math professors and ask them for advice - I suspect that at least one of them will be able to say something, and they're more familiar with your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you done any research in your 'some engineering?' Conceivably, a great letter of reference could come from your advisor/a great teacher/I don't know these details. You should talk to them about this, and get their advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Determine what schools you're interested in applying to (apply to many), and their requirements. Brown's Applied Math department does not require algebra. But they do (essentially if not officially) require the math GRE, which does require algebra (though for less than 1/4 of the test). On the other hand, Brown's Pure Math department (the one I'm in) has a severe algebra requirement. Interestingly, PDE is done in both, though in different directions. Many schools require algebra, or require it in the sense that they will have qualifying exams and one of those is in algebra. My undergrad, which I'd say has an applied bent, had quals in algebra and both real and complex analysis. So you could consider taking algebra if you needed to or wanted to, based on looking into what universities you want to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, algebra II without algebra I sounds incredibly perilous, especially as the fall semester is upon us already, or is about to be. Perhaps possible with a lot of pre-work. If you are going to attempt to hop into algebra II, I recommend getting a copy of Dummit and Foote's algebra book (clear exposition at a low level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, plan on taking the math subject GRE. It's only offered 3 times each year, and you've missed the summer one. You should take it both times this fall, and those signups might already be occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T21:27:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12479" CreationDate="2013-09-05T00:44:07.667" Score="7" ViewCount="3087" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my industry-sponsored dissertation, I want to thank my industry contact and some non-academic persons in the acknowledgement section of my dissertation. How should I refer to them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J.   Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mr. John Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the slightly informal nature of the acknowledgement section, yet keeping in mind that these are industry folks who wouldn't mind a bit of respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8360" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T10:52:30.050" Title="Acknowledgement: non-academic persons" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12460" CreationDate="2013-09-05T01:31:49.397" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a generic tool for making websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;WordPress.com&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/&quot;&gt;WordPress.org&lt;/a&gt; if you are more tech-savvy and want to host it on your univ. server) is a popular option (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://netsci2013.net/wordpress/&quot;&gt;NetSci2013&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both you can add comments for discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other CMSes would work - for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikidot.com/&quot;&gt;Wikidot&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://offtopicarium.wikidot.com/&quot;&gt;Offtopicarium&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to mailing, &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Groups&lt;/a&gt; are one easy solution (unless you want something more sophisticated.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only general advice is to use as many made tools as possible, so you don't waste time on reinventing the wheel (or dealing with too many services at once).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T01:31:49.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12470" CreationDate="2013-09-05T02:22:28.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should refer to him in the precise manner in which he wishes to be referred to, which you can only determine by &lt;strong&gt;asking him directly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: The same way you would refer to an academic person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T02:22:28.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12467" CreationDate="2013-09-05T04:08:39.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/others.html&quot;&gt;Nature guide on Other Submitted Material:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;News &amp;amp; Views&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  These articles inform nonspecialist readers about new scientific advances, as reported in recently published papers (in Nature and elsewhere). This is a commission-only section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the articles are selected and commissioned by Nature editorial staff, and written by invited authors. A quick look through recent News &amp;amp; Views articles finds contributions from scientists and science writers (including former Nature writing / editorial staff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T04:08:39.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2013-09-05T04:23:40.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to the graduate college with proof and talk to dean. It's unethical and the PI should at a minimum be reprimanded publicly. I don't think it matters what others think as long as you are honest and can prove your points. The exception is that you are happy in your position.. Of course talk to the PI first if you haven't already and find out why. There is nothing dangerous about this and its cut and dry. Stop fearing these A-Holes and cut them of at the knees - they aren't as immune to the system as they want you to believe and I am sick of the fear factor. The person that should be worried is the PI if they are behaving bad, just saying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8498" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T04:23:40.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12476" CreationDate="2013-09-05T04:25:37.293" Score="16" ViewCount="3313" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a group of students (say, 3 students), produces a work which has been accepted to a reputable conference. All of them contributed equally to the project,from implementation to writing and proof reading of the paper. &#xA;How should one decide who should be the first author. Even if the names are listed in alphabetical order, so by not being the first author, does it affect the prospects for the other two in any means ? &#xA;My field of research is computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This question has been partly inspired by the  flurry of questions on ASE, regarding the importance of being the first author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T00:03:33.377" Title="Not being a first author diminishes the contribution of co-authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12475" CreationDate="2013-09-05T05:49:26.500" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the subfield of computer science. For example, if the paper is in theoretical computer science, then author order is alphabetical, and the equal work put in by the authors is not negated by the author ordering. If in a discipline where author order is meaningful, then it's standard practice to (say) order the authors alphabetically and add a footnote saying that all authors contributed equally to the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T05:49:26.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12475" CreationDate="2013-09-05T05:56:19.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, since the order of authors is often used to convey meaning, it can. As an example, in Neuroscience (my background), the conventional order of authorship is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;first author&lt;/strong&gt; is the one who did most of the work, and who is responsible for writing the paper;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second authors&lt;/strong&gt; are listed in order of contribution to the work. Usually the people who contributed work come first, and the ones who contributed with ideas come last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last comes the &lt;strong&gt;mentor&lt;/strong&gt;. This could be the head of the lab, the supervisor, or a senior researcher who might have assigned the first author to this study. This person is usually a reference in this field, and the one who would provide general guidance to the project or line of research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, often it is difficult or impossible to order authorship with fairness. Some journals (not all) accept footnotes telling the reader all authors (or which) contributed equally to the work. But the footnote will not be visible in bibliographies, and the second authors will be forced to indicate their equal contribution in their resumes and applications. So coming second, even in these circumstances, is a handicap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8490" LastEditorUserId="8490" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T12:39:19.990" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T12:39:19.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2013-09-05T06:23:29.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely assumed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/web-of-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; is the most comprehensive citation index. It is also true that it is not the most intuitive web interface available, but it is very powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you can create criteria such as counting the number of citations for an author excluding past co-authors. This one is great to measure impact outside one's own circle of acquaintances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I would have included a link to the search page, but unfortunately I don't have institutional subscription for that service anymore.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8490" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T06:23:29.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12470" CreationDate="2013-09-05T09:58:35.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgments usually skip formal titles, i.e. no &lt;em&gt;Prof.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Dr.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Mr.&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Ms.&lt;/em&gt; Some journals even insist on it in their authors guidelines (here for &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/jceda8/jceda8_authguide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;J. Chem. Ed.&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acknowledgment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Include acknowledgment of grant and other financial support, technical assistance, colleagues’ advice, and so on. Do not use professional titles or honorifics in this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your journal has guidelines on the topic, follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, just refer to the person as you would if you were giving his name to a colleague, i.e. omit the titles and honorifics unless you barely know them. But if you think they will like it, use their titles, it doesn't hurt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a few examples from Nobel-prize winning papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w1enx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;                       &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6u0NY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMqgn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;                &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ni8I.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Vmp9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6DPH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T09:58:35.847" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12484" CreationDate="2013-09-05T10:20:38.453" Score="8" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different corpora&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt; for the English language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books ngram database&lt;/a&gt; is freely accessible and covers publications indexed in Google Books from the 16th century; words are tagged by part-of-speech (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more info here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Corpus of Contemporary American English&lt;/a&gt; is a large and balanced corpus of American English, including not only books but also magazines, newspapers and spoken English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British National Corpus&lt;/a&gt; is a similar enterprise for British English, both spoken and written.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one may want to do an analysis of the evolution of English as used in written academic works (theses, journal articles, etc.). This came apparent to me while I was trying to research usage of passive vs. active voice for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12400/2700&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any available corpora of academic works in English language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;corpus: &lt;em&gt;collections of written or spoken material in machine-readable form, assembled for the purpose of studying linguistic structures, frequencies, etc.&lt;/em&gt; [New Oxford American Dictionary]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:19:35.907" Title="Are there available corpora of academic works?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;databases&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12481" CreationDate="2013-09-05T10:43:41.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone will no doubt provide a better answer for you, but here are a couple of resources that may be of interest/help/use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jowr.org/articles/vol2_2/JoWR_2010_vol2_nr2_Roemer_Wulff.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Applying corpus methods to written&#xA;academic texts: Explorations of MICUSP&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Romer and Wulff, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num3/pdf/thompson.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for Academic Purposes&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Thompson, 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T10:43:41.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12470" CreationDate="2013-09-05T10:52:30.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you're talking acknowledgements rather than co-authorships, you need to take into account journal style and be sensible and polite.  If someone in industry has helped you, in company time or with company resources, you should acknowledge that.  So &quot;... would like to thank J Smith, XYZ corporation for ...&quot;, but if that doesn't fit with journal style guides, you could try &quot;...would like to thank XYZ corporation for support, especially J Smith for valuable discussions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company may not get anything for helping you, except that a mention in the literature is good for their profile. Of course if you paid them for work, they could end up anywhere from not mentioned to co-authors depending on the contribution)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T10:52:30.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12481" CreationDate="2013-09-05T10:58:43.967" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jstor.org/&quot;&gt;JSTOR&lt;/a&gt; provides a corpus for linguistic (and other) analyses of academic literature, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://dfr.jstor.org/&quot;&gt;JSTOR Data for Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6545&quot;&gt;this Language Log discussion&lt;/a&gt; of one such analysis done on that corpus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T10:58:43.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2013-09-05T11:55:22.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teacher of graduate-level finance classes, the main writing they are expected to perform are business reports and essays. I find that writing essays is easier for them but it is quite common for students to have challenges writing business reports (using bullet points properly, using graphics properly, using section headings and very concise writing properly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as key skills you should be thinking about, the biggest ones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to construct a proper argument using academic evidence (reasonable sources as opposed to some random person's blog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to properly cite the work of others (related to the point above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Including counter-arguments in their work (another extension of the first point)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all my graduate students had these skills, my life would be much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T11:55:22.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12458" CreationDate="2013-09-05T14:24:17.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To supplement what @mixedmath aptly observed: your experiences in engineering departments will have been misleading about the expectations of mathematics grad admissions, almost universally. That is, it's not so much &quot;research record&quot; as getting up-to-speed on the very basics of the vast established literature in mathematics. Usually this is done by coursework, but not necessarily, though having a paper trail is useful. Taking the GRE subject test is a sign of awareness of how the game is played, if nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am frequently surprised at the apparent possibility in engineering and CompSci to do meaningful research at an undergraduate level. Perhaps &quot;research&quot; refers to a different thing than it does in mathematics... I think we have a severe shortage of labels, insofar as there seem to be only two valid/understood descriptors: &quot;coursework&quot; and &quot;research&quot;, with some belief that the former is just gatekeeping and unrelated to the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, unless one tries awfully hard, the very most-basic topics in mathematics are used and useful throughout mathematics, despite much gossip and mythology to the contrary. E.g., the central notions of abstract algebra arise everywhere... although, sure, one can struggle to &quot;get by&quot; by reinventing crappy versions of &quot;wheels&quot; without ever knowing that the technology had been perfected 100 or 200 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is toooo often true that courses and exams are conducted in a nearly-punitive fashion, and perversely emphasize separation from other subject matter, but one should try to ignore this exaggeration and caricature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:24:17.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2013-09-05T14:49:51.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google scholar tries to do this, but it looks as though the author needs to have a profile, and so do the co-authors, and either both authors need to have added the publication to their record, or one author needs to have added the others (in addition to them being named on the paper's author list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ResearcherID can apparently do the same, again, if the author has a profile, but the search doesn't appear to work (I can't even find myself without the ResearcherID), and it can only cross-populate the author list from papers which the author has added using web of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your target person has a google scholar profile that they maintain nicely, and that's common in the field, you might do quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, can you automate scraping their publications page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:49:51.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12490" CreationDate="2013-09-05T16:04:34.777" Score="10" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some students, particularly in the US, face the dilemma of graduating at the end of a fall semester or quarter, but then have the prospect of not having a PhD position start until the following fall. For students for whom working would be an important means of trying to support themselves, what options are available? Companies are typically reluctant to hire someone for a few months (not enough return on investment in such a short period of time), and there aren't a lot of academic programs available. What's a prospective PhD candidate to do in such a case—particularly with reference to students entering science and engineering fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T17:23:06.227" Title="Research &quot;employment&quot; options for students graduating midyear?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12475" CreationDate="2013-09-05T17:03:07.453" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be advantageous to be the first author even in disciplines where author names are ordered alphabetically. In a study by Einav and Yariv (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;proxies for success&lt;/strong&gt; in the U.S. economics labor  market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) &lt;strong&gt;are correlated with surname initials&lt;/strong&gt;, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that &lt;strong&gt;these effects are related to the existing norm&lt;/strong&gt; in economics &lt;strong&gt;prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits&lt;/strong&gt;. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors with higher surname initials are significantly less likely to participate in projects with more than three authors and significantly more likely to write papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv (2006), &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/089533006776526085&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on  Academic Success&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~lyariv/papers/Einav_Yariv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;free pdf here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T00:03:33.377" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T00:03:33.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12488" CreationDate="2013-09-05T17:23:06.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is limited to anecdotes. What I have generally seen is that students usually attempt to get either a paid industrial internship or an paid/unpaid research internship with a particular research group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I have been mentoring an undergraduate who is graduating in the middle of the semester and is preparing to spend the next 6 months working as a research assistant (paid ~$15/hour) for a research group in our university before joining a prestigious PhD program in another university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T17:23:06.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11696" CreationDate="2013-09-05T19:09:24.707" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is only a part answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ls-probation.berkeley.edu/definition.html&quot;&gt;University of California Berkeley&lt;/a&gt; applies a probation when the cumulative GPA goes below 2.0 and are within grounds for dismissal.  But, they give a semester and advise the student to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The College of Letters and Science encourages students who have been placed on term probation to seek advising at the Office of Undergraduate Advising for help with schedule planning and to discuss any issues that may have caused poor results in the first place. Although this web site may be helpful to you, it is primarily designed to assist probationary students whose cumulative grade point average has fallen below a 2.0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example from Australia, Brisbane's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/82774/Academic_standing_flyer.pdf&quot;&gt;Griffith University&lt;/a&gt;, it seems that a similar constraint may be applied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The minimum standard for academic performance is a Grade Point&#xA;  Average (GPA) of at least 3.0 for undergraduate students and at least&#xA;  3.5 for postgraduate students. Students who meet this GPA standard&#xA;  are said to be in ‘good academic standing’. If a student’s GPA is below&#xA;  this level their performance is ‘unsatisfactory’.&#xA;  The first time a student’s performance is below the required&#xA;  standard, the student is placed on probation for the next semester.&#xA;  The second time a student’s performance is below the required&#xA;  standard, the student will normally be excluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Princeton article &lt;a href=&quot;http://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/FletcherTokmouline_2010.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Effects of Academic Probation on College Success: Lending Students a Hand or Kicking Them While They Are Down?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Fletcher and Tokmouline, 2010), found that often there is an improvement, but then their &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;findings also suggest that this short term boost in performance fades out over time and students who are on academic probation following their first semesters of college do not have higher rates of persistence or graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also found that an overall model (indeed a definitive answer) is hard to come by due to inconsistency of heterogeneous effects, particularly &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;pre-determined student characteristics as well as high school of origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T19:09:24.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12467" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:55:00.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to EnergyNumbers' answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the News &amp;amp; Views are about Nature papers published in the same issue. Sometimes the editors will ask one of the reviewers to write about the paper they reviewed. This makes some sense since they should be experts in the field and have already read the paper (which hasn't been published yet) thoroughly. There is a chance though that this will reveal their identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T20:55:00.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-09-06T11:03:20.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A search on Google Scholar reveals that both the forms &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in chapter/section 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in Chapter/Section 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;exist in published scientific articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;chapter&quot; the capitalised version seems to be a little more common. For &quot;section&quot; the capitalised version is much more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8514" LastEditorUserId="42498" LastEditDate="2018-11-07T14:18:40.290" LastActivityDate="2018-11-07T14:18:40.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12499" CreationDate="2013-09-06T11:48:28.863" Score="24" ViewCount="130894" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have submitted a paper to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ad-hoc-networks/&quot;&gt;Elsevier Journal&lt;/a&gt; and now I want to know how much time each stage in article lifecycle take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/160/p/7923/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzc4NDYxOTEyL3NpZC9iUzVURkR6bA==&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in Elsevier site which describes different status of a paper from submission to publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Submitted to Journal&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editor Invited&lt;/em&gt; (Conditional - this step may not occurs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;With Editor&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Under Review&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Required Reviews Complete&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Decision in Process&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Completed – Accept&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also noted that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Most journals aim to communicate decisions to authors within &lt;strong&gt;four months&lt;/strong&gt; of the start of the review process. There are a number of factors that may influence the actual time taken, most notably the availability and responsiveness of the article's referees. In consequence, peer review times do vary per journal. During the peer review process your article will show a status of ‘Under Review’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But our paper status is &lt;em&gt;Technical Check In Progress&lt;/em&gt;. this status is not mentioned in Elsevier site! I'm confused about this statuses. and now after 40 days the status is still in that stage. I want an estimation about time of this steps to see if I should be concern or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastEditorUserId="8149" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T12:48:19.833" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T11:15:18.613" Title="How much time does each stage of paper in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) take?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="14" ClosedDate="2015-09-17T02:25:20.643" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2013-09-06T11:59:45.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most of the time will be spent &lt;em&gt;“under review”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. That's the limiting step: sending the paper to reviewers, and waiting for them to review it. In some cases, the paper might also take some time before that (“with editor”), if the editor has a hard time finding willing reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T11:59:45.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2013-09-06T12:48:41.640" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each electronic manuscript handling system typically has a set time frame for each part of the review-revisions process. The systems have default values which, I would assume, are what most journals use. It is, however, possible to custom make the different time periods for each part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.Submitted to Journal:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This usually does not involve a lot of time and a reasonable time frame might be &lt;code&gt;5-10 days&lt;/code&gt; depending on factors such as workload, time of year etc. The step might involve inspection of the quality of the submitted material, but not necessarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.Editor Invited&lt;/strong&gt; (Conditional - this step may not occur):&#xA;This may again be another &lt;code&gt;5-10 days&lt;/code&gt; and may be affected by workload etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.With Editor:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The main problem that occurs here is difficulty to assign reviewers. The editor may also be overloaded with work. The time frame is likely something like &lt;code&gt;3 weeks&lt;/code&gt; but will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.Under Review:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Each journal has a time frame and  &lt;code&gt;3 weeks&lt;/code&gt; is what I am accustomed to in my field. Reviewers that accept reviews and never return them is a problem here. How quickly the editor tries to assign other reviewers to speed up the process will vary from person to person and journal to journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5.Required Reviews Complete:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am not sure if you actually mean revisions here because typically the author gets about &lt;code&gt;3-6 weeks&lt;/code&gt; to revise the manuscript. This is another point where delays can occur but they are self-inflicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6.Decision in Process:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The decision process may require some time since the editor needs to read the revised manuscript and the revisions/rebuttal from the author to make a decision. In many cases there is cause for another round of reviews which would loop back to 4 and 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7.Completed – Accept:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;7 could be 6 if the manuscript gets accepted after one round (rare in many circumstances).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once accepted, the manuscript goes to copy editing and type-setting. This may be a quick process depending on the resources provided by the publisher. Journals using LaTeX have the advantage of having print ready proofs basically at the turn of a switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up. Each of these steps can take various amounts of time depending on the working conditions at the journal as well as the expedience of reviewers and authors. I think the time frames I have outlined are reasonable but that does not mean all journals will be that quick (or slow, depending on your view).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T15:33:00.097" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T15:33:00.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2013-09-06T14:19:25.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technical Check In Progress&lt;/em&gt; refers to the &lt;em&gt;Technical screening&lt;/em&gt; which is explained at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/editors/technical-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.elsevier.com/editors/technical-screening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To solve the problem of peer reviewers and Editors being overloaded with manuscripts which contain many ‘technical’ problems such as poor English, Elsevier introduced a Technical Screening process for all journal submissions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process shouldn't take too long. 40 days sounds too much to me and you may want to email the editor asking for an update on the status of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I just realised from your profile that you are Iranian. The delay might also be caused by the sanctions implemented by Elsevier against your compatriots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elsevierconnect.com/trade-sanctions-against-iran-affect-publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://elsevierconnect.com/trade-sanctions-against-iran-affect-publishers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/05/scientific-journals-adapt-new-u.s.-trade-sanctions-iran&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/05/scientific-journals-adapt-new-u.s.-trade-sanctions-iran&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shame, I would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastEditorUserId="8516" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T14:39:23.217" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T14:39:23.217" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12601" CreationDate="2013-09-06T16:42:05.073" Score="7" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for post-docs, and there is a professor I would very much like to work with. I would like to e-mail him and see if he has any open positions in his lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never met the professor before, though I am friends with several of his former and current graduate students. I feel like this is an important thing to bring up. What is the best way bring this up in a brief e-mail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8465" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T20:09:58.393" Title="Applying for post-doc, how to mention mutual acquaintances?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12575" CreationDate="2013-09-06T17:46:29.130" Score="41" ViewCount="8859" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternate title could be &quot;Do we award a PhD for what the student became or for what he produced?&quot;. More precisely, if a research thesis report does not advance human knowledge, yet still shows that the student acquired the right skills of investigation, should the title of Philosophy Doctor be awarded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I kind of always assumed that a thesis (PhD thesis in particular) should have some positive results (where positive means &quot;advancing the state of human knowledge&quot;), and that part of the art of finding a good topic of research was the art of asking the right kind of question, which would yield some positive result independently of the answer. Similar views are expressed in this other &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7421/what-to-do-with-negative-research-outcomes-results-of-phd-research-experiment&quot;&gt;stackexchange&lt;/a&gt; question and the corresponding answers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an expectation that the PhD would make an original contribution and/or advance knowledge in a given field. I understand this is a universal assumption for this level of study across all universities. (...) usually a PhD is measured on its contribution to expand knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, Justin Zobel defends convincingly the opposite view in &quot;Writing for Computer Science&quot;, p.154 of the Second Edition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;even if good results are not achieved, the thesis should pass if you have shown the ability to undertake high-quality research. (...)&#xA;  A thesis with negative results can, if appropriately written, demonstrate the ability of the candidate just as well a a thesis with positive results. (...) &#xA;  it is you, not the research, that is the primary object of scrutiny&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an agreement across disciplines about this question? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not directly concerned (I reported positive results in my PhD thesis long ago, have many positive results to report in my &quot;Habilitation&quot; thesis, and I certainly aim for my students to report positive results in theirs), but I am curious about the real objective of the thesis: &#xA;- as an advisor, I could suggest a more risky topic if it had the potential to teach more to the student without risking the whole graduating thing; and&#xA;- as a referee or member of an evaluation committee, I have to judge students and/or their thesis...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Extreme Fictional Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student and advisor do the entire research work following the most rigorous scientific process for several years, only to find their efforts ruined near the end of the process either by a budget cut, the disappearance of the species they were studying, or the discovery that the problem is the consequence of an obscure results from year ago in another research community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student has followed and learned the scientific process, but did not contribute to human knowledge (apart from maybe improving the index of its bibliography).  If the student has showed the qualities required from a good researcher, should(n't) he/she be awarded the title of &quot;Doctor in Philosophy&quot;, independently of the contribution made to human knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is truly a rhetorical question, and I doubt this kind of situation happens often. Yet the idea is new to me and I kind of like it, albeit I doubt the whole community would agree...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Opposite Extreme Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that a student, stroke by luck, makes an amazing scientific discovery which deeply impact human knowledge, and can be understood by all even though the student  poorly redacts it. It seems clear to me that the society would not benefit from awarding a PhD to such a student, who has not learned how to do research even though contributing to human knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, setting two conditions for the awarding of a PhD, having learned how to do proper research AND having advanced human knowledge by using it, introduces trade-offs and compromises (which again do not serve society).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1318" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T11:20:10.380" Title="Is a research thesis (report) with zero contribution to human knowledge acceptable?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;negative-results&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-06T18:14:27.630" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that by negative results, you mean non-significant results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is an expectation that the PhD would make an original contribution and/or advance knowledge in a given field.&quot; Yes, this is true. And &quot;X doesn't work&quot; is a contribution to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To use an example from my area). Health practitioners are constantly dreaming up things that might work to treat various ailments (illnessess), and using them. The job of health researchers is to find out which ones work - and most of them don't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used to joke that our role as health care researchers was to say no. &quot;Nope. That doesn't work. Don't do it. No, that one's not effective either. No, don't use that. No. No. No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pressure for positive results just means you tweak models and data until you find them - using 'researcher degrees of freedom' (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/11/1359&quot;&gt;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/11/1359&lt;/a&gt;). Your results are therefore significant, but worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD thesis was trying to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between stress and psoriasis symptoms (many people say &quot;stress worsens psoriasis&quot; - it's taken as a given truth, but it's never been empirically demonstrated). I was trying to answer things like what kind of stress, how long does it take, does it differ between people? I never found any evidence that stress did worsen psoriasis. Nor that psoriasis worsened stress (or any other psychological symptom).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is an educational process. One should demonstrate that one has learned. The most important thing about a PhD is showing what you know, what you have learned, and what you understand. If anyone gets to the end of a PhD and says &quot;Well, those results were all positive, just as I expected&quot;, they've learned little. At the end of your PhD (or any research project) you should want to start again, and this time do it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastEditorUserId="6275" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T00:10:46.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T00:10:46.603" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2013-09-06T18:30:25.463" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is in mathematics in the US. My personal experience is that people will not read anything especially deep into applying for both jobs.  Everybody understands that the market is tough, and basically expects everybody to apply to every opening.  I've seen instances where a person was considered both for a postdoc and TT position at the same university, and this was not seen as an issue at all (there was much more strategizing around the question of whether they would come for a postdoc).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the vast majority of cases (without, say, a severe geographical constraint), I think if you consider TT and postdoc at the same place as both reasonable options for you and plausible possibilities, you're probably kidding yourself on one score or another. Generally if you'd even be seriously looked at for a TT job at University X, then when the postdoc committee looks at your file, they'll say &quot;We could hire this person for a TT job.  There's no way that a postdoc at University X is the best job they'll get.&quot; and they probably won't offer you the position.    But unless you feel confident about which way it is, I don't see any problem with applying to both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; One thing I'll add, which is mathematics specific: if you're applying MathJobs, the visual difference between applications for the different jobs is negligible.  There is a column where you can see what positions the applicant applied for, but it's not very noticeable.  So, it's quite possible the committee for one job won't even notice you applied for the other (I have seen this happen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T16:52:04.930" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T16:52:04.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12519" CreationDate="2013-09-06T19:38:17.660" Score="9" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some avenues of research require time-intensive research and experimentation (e.g.m sciences). For example, in my case, each experiment took 3-12 hours and I had to perform over 30 of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, this type of research is performed as part of a group, where group cohesion and harmony are an important factor.  If you caught a member taking &quot;short cuts&quot; in their research: for example, doing one trial of an experiment instead of several or, as an extreme case, slightly altering the results to better fit their model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always good to speak to the person in question discreetly, but what if the behavior continues? Also speaking to them can cause disunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this behavior be remedied, while maintaining group harmony?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Please note, I am not after opinions, but practical solutions, particularly if people have confronted this issue before, and I have heard of this happening before, but was not privy to the details.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T17:47:49.543" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T19:37:24.293" Title="How to stop a researcher cutting corners in research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10932" CreationDate="2013-09-06T22:16:09.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether its required is probably field/institution dependent. However, just for the sake of those who (we hope!) will be reading your thesis, &lt;strong&gt;include an index&lt;/strong&gt;. Even in electronic versions, an index is a useful tool for the reader; it allows them to see what the author(s) thought important enough to index, if nothing else! And if your PhD thesis turns out to be good enough to be printed and bought by university libraries, you will definitely increase the ease of use for those who access the print version (and yes, some people, myself included, do still wander the physical stacks when researching!See &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0618958428&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; for reasons why this is a good idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T22:26:12.633" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T22:26:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2013-09-06T22:58:15.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to be aware of that I don't think others have mentioned is timing. In my field (theoretical particle physics in the US), postdoc hiring decisions are all made in December and January, while interviews for faculty jobs usually take place in February, March, and possibly April. Postdocs who are on the last year of their current job &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to apply for and accept a postdoc position, even if they are hoping to get a tenure-track offer, simply because of the timeline. If they haven't accepted a postdoc job in January, and they don't manage to get a tenure-track offer that spring, they have no job at all. Because of this, everyone expects that people will apply for both postdocs and faculty positions simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing of these things will potentially vary depending on your field, so this consideration might or might not be relevant. But it's something to think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T22:58:15.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12518" CreationDate="2013-09-07T03:12:42.967" Score="8" ViewCount="2815" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I apply to a job, and it asks for 4 recommendation letters, is it good if I submit 5 or more letters? Why and why not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8480" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-09-08T00:22:43.440" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T00:22:43.440" Title="How many recommendation letters are enough?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2013-09-07T05:11:17.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The search committee, or whoever it is who is reviewing applications, asks for 4 letters because that's the number of letters they want. For a postdoc, four is logical because that is typically the size of a doctoral committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a very good reason (which, off the top of my head, I can't think of), don't send more letters than they ask for. (1) They don't want to read them. (2) They will think you don't know how to follow directions and will toss your application (which is what I would do, if it wasn't clear why I was getting &gt;4 letters). In my field of biology, there might be over 100 applicants for a position (particularly a faculty position; I've heard of 200-300 in some cases). I've been on numerous search committees, and I really can't fathom some of the materials that get sent in with applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastEditorUserId="75" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T19:41:17.877" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T19:41:17.877" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-07T10:51:06.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a research project to be successful, you need more than just&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good student&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good concept and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good advisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course these points are not independent: up to a certain point a good student will be able to make sure the concept is good. At least the good advisor will do that. But what if the advisor isn't that good, and in consequence the project concept is flawed and the student gets bad advise and that is the reason for only negative results? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, &lt;strong&gt;having only negative results likely hamper the project success in an indirect way&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not underestimate the psychological effect on the student: not succeeding in something that the advisor told you to do can have serious effects on the student's self-esteem and that can in turn lead to giving up or anyways loose the &quot;psychological bonus&quot; that you can only get if you are convinced of your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on what kind of negative results, and how the project was specified, &quot;it doesn't work&quot; could be either due to the student's inability/laziness or due to the fact that things just don't work that way. Therefore &quot;it doesn't work&quot; always has a danger of falling back onto the student, even if it was not the student's fault. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is hard for the student to prove that it wasn't his fault in that case, which may mean wasting lots of effort just to make sure that noone can come and blame the student for the bad results. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All together, I'd be extremely cautious with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I could suggest a more risky topic if it had the potential to teach more to the student without risking the whole graduating thing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether I'd at all  consider this would also depend on other circumstances. Maybe it is because I've seen bad advisors putting students into risky projects and leaving them in the resulting difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the very least I think that entering a project that the advisor already before it ever began perceives as more risky, should be entered &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;by a clear understanding between advisor and student that this is risky (but much may come out of it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only if the advisor knows the student well enough to be able to judge whether the student could stand this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only with a clear risk-management strategy: the risk the student takes must be made up by something else.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How about treating such risky projects as normal job and paying a full wage if you cannot guarantee that even a good student will be able to get a thesis out of the results? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example (heard of it by rumour only) of how such things go wrong: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;project involves growing some plants over 2 years. If all goes well, student can finish thesis in 3 years.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Student is hired for the project on a fixed 3 year contract, and is told that the project really shouldn't take longer. (Apparently, there is no money for more than 3 years). In the 2nd year a minor flooding kills the experiment. &#xA;Floods are in no way an unheard of occurrence in the region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO in this project the student was left not only with a project that had the inherent risk that the work of 2 years may be lost just before it was &quot;ripe&quot;. The really bad thing is that it was combined with no plan B (e.g. extending the project), and occured in a country where a failed thesis is a serious thing: it wouldn't work to say in the beginning: &quot;let's try this, and if it fails after 3 years, why, then you can just go on and try another project&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T10:51:06.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2013-09-07T13:54:53.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you get your meaning across efficiently, it won't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We 'Brits' (as the previous contributor so brashly refers to us) are a cosmopolitan lot and we are well used to reading materials in US spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do people use the word 'Brit' anyway? It's derogatory and offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8526" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T13:54:53.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T14:40:48.130" Score="17" ViewCount="2917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am well aware of the ethic guidelines in the academic publishing world regarding submission for publication of the same article to multiple journals: I know this is broadly considered unethical and creates a bad reputation for the author in question among the academic community (this eventually giving way to negative repercussions –presumably and informal, tacit type of ‘black listing’).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a slightly different problem here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what happens if I submit a series of articles, one different article to one different publisher, but all of them more or less at the same time: each of these articles would consist of a theoretical premise (a formula of principles according to which a text’s analysis will be conducted in the article), &lt;strong&gt;which is common to all the articles&lt;/strong&gt; in object, and then the main body, different in every article: that would be the analysis itself (on the basis of the formula) of the works of an author –a different author in every article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field of research is humanities (literature). I am attempting to determine, on the basis of existing definitions of a literary trend (the aforementioned formula, which itself is a sum up of existing definitions of the literary trend, by other researchers), which authors and which works of theirs may be plausibly associable to the trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum it up, &lt;strong&gt;the formula of analysis (the definition of the trend) is the introductory part of each article&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Conceptually speaking it is the same for all of them&lt;/strong&gt;. I could change the exposition from one article to the other for the sake of not using the same exact text in all articles. The concept(the theoretic formula), however would remain the same: it would mostly not be my own original contribution, give or take a few corrections or specifications I am adding. &lt;strong&gt;The main body of the text –the original contribution to knowledge- is the analysis of the author’s text&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;this is the greatest part of the text and it is different for each article&lt;/strong&gt; (one author for every article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of this research has already been done in a draft form. Hopefully at some point in the future, and if these texts are published as articles, I’d be able to organize them (along with a few necessary additions) into a broader text to be submitted for publishing as a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: would this strategy be viewed by any reviewer/publisher/editor as a breach of ethic guidelines in the academic publishing sector? Would it cause me problems of reputation in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8527" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T05:06:09.060" LastActivityDate="2019-05-04T05:19:59.003" Title="Is it unethical to submit for review multiple articles which overlap in some respect?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2013-09-07T14:51:46.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing unethical about simultaneously submitting different articles to different publishers. The slight problem is that you probably need to quote the other articles in each one (where needed of course). This is more of a technical problem, though. As long as the articles you submit are significantly different so that none is duplicating the other, you should be fine. It is not uncommon to submit at least two articles more or less simultaneously, to the same or different journals. Having three or more is just more unusual but certainly not wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not heard that submitting papers the way you suggest would lead to any negative effects. That said, there is a tendency to split research that could be a longer paper  into several shorter contributions, mostly to get more publications. Although this is not wrong, sometimes the papers may become too fragmented (&quot;cooking soup on a nail&quot; as the proverb goes in my part of the world). It is therefore a careful balance when dividing up (packaging) papers from a research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T08:37:33.747" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T08:37:33.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2013-09-07T15:00:56.330" Score="16" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should avoid &lt;strong&gt;self-plagiarism&lt;/strong&gt;. Having an identical section in both papers would be ethically questionable. They could have the same overall meaning, but I would try to rephrase them differently as you might already have done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also have your papers &lt;strong&gt;cite each other&lt;/strong&gt; as being submitted, and possibly update the final manuscript with full citations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It may be a good idea to let the journal editor know that this is happening. They may be able to provide you with specific guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T13:58:39.797" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T13:58:39.797" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:57:11.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem&quot;&gt;this negative result&lt;/a&gt; got a fair amount of press, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems&quot;&gt;this negative result&lt;/a&gt; is generally considered a big deal, and my guess is that a negative result about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem&quot;&gt;this problem&lt;/a&gt; would probably be considered an acceptable thesis. :-)  So the trivial answer to the original question is: &quot;Yes.&quot;  On the other hand, it's easy to think of negative results that wouldn't pass muster for a thesis.  So perhaps the underlying question is: &quot;How can we tell whether a negative result qualifies for a thesis?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesis is expected to make an intellectual contribution.  If I prove a bunch of trivial negative results that surprise no one, then I don't make any intellectual contribution.  On the other hand, if a lot of good researchers believe X, and I show that X doesn't hold, then that changes the state of knowledge in the field and therefore is a contribution.  (In many cases, the real contribution from such negative results is the analysis explaining &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; X doesn't hold --- i.e., why the scientific intuitions of a bunch of good researchers are incorrect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the questions I would ask would be: are the negative results unexpected?  Do they give us new insights into, or a better understanding of, the phenomena being studied?  If these questions can be answered positively then I think the negative results qualify for a thesis; if not, then IMHO they do not.  The bottom line is, simply: &quot;Do the results (positive or negative) teach us anything?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T18:13:45.750" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T18:13:45.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2013-09-07T18:49:44.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US in math my understanding is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the NSF fellowship follows the rules to a T.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For other postdocs there's probably no harm in submitting an extra letter, but there's also rarely a compelling reason to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For tenure track positions it is common, and not frowned upon, to submit 4 or 5 research letters instead of the requested 3 research letters.  If you have a compelling reason to submit more (for example, you work between two adjacent fields) then go ahead, but if you don't have a compelling reason you're also not going to be penalized for sticking with 3 research letters.  It's better to have all the letters be great than to have more letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of discussion about this in the comments on &lt;a href=&quot;http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/some-advice-on-job-hunting/&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T19:01:54.937" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T19:01:54.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12505" CreationDate="2013-09-07T19:37:24.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this question very interesting but difficult to tackle. It will be difficult to provide specific answers to a general hypothetical situation since one is left with too many unknowns. First, one could wonder what the policies at the university are like? Do they have a panel for scientific fraud, misconduct etc.? Are there guidelines in place?  Then, we deal with persons and each situation is unique. People cheat for a variety of reasons from fear and feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, through stress and peer pressure to the narcissistic or psychopathic. Thirdly, the severeity of the problem is on a continuous scale and the response depends where you are on that scale. This also holds for the reverse problem, what works in one place may not work in another for these reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question you state you wish to keep harmony but in essence the fact that &quot;you&quot; are uneasy with someones less than adequate research methods is already disharmony. So regardless if you do or do not do anything, there will be disharmony, either you will feel bad or someone else will. So there is no painless way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the case. I can see that you describe a sliding scale for what I would call poor science (overinterpreting results) to actual falsification of results. In the latter case, it is clear, one &quot;must&quot; pursue the problem. How this is done will vary but I am sure there are guidelines in place either at the university level or at a national level (on my home turf the national science foundation provides such services). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of someone producing poor science by either, for example, being too lazy to do the work or by jumping to conclusions, there can be only one way forward: to try to confront the person and have open discussions around the science (or lack thereof) to bring out the problem in the open. It may be possible to start a discussion group where you read and discuss each others manuscripts. Such discussions are useful under any circumstances to help improve the manuscript and spot problems before submitting to a journal. Under such circumstances the problems can be discussed (if they become solved is a different matter). My sense is that a person who is aware of their shortcomings is not generally fond of talking about them so you may end up having these discussions with everyone but the one you want to target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T19:37:24.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2013-09-07T20:10:10.977" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This practice is usually termed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing&quot;&gt;Salami Slicing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit&quot;&gt;Least publishable unit&lt;/a&gt;. This is conducted by many researchers for whom having a series of N small and terribly overlapped papers is more convenient than having just one substantial paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In academia, salami slicing refers to the practice of creating several short publications out of material that could have, perhaps more validly, been published as a single article in a journal or review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This often happens when someone finds a result that applies to a certain family of logical concepts and prefer to &quot;study&quot; one member of such family at a time. For instance, you find that a certain result applies to any colour and, instead of publishing this result, you publish a paper saying that result X applies to red colour, another one for the green colour, another one for the black colour ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not considered unethical in general (although Elsevier says it is unethical &lt;code&gt;http://www.ethics.elsevier.com/pdf/ETHICS_SS01a.pdf&lt;/code&gt; in some cases such as slicing data sets), just ask yourself if you want to be classified as a Salami Slicer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8534" LastEditorUserId="8534" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T21:37:19.403" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T21:37:19.403" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12521" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T22:48:14.437" Score="4" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new faculty in US based university. Surprisingly, when I arrived to my new office, there was no computer in it. I wonder, if I will buy a computer with my startup, would I be able to keep it for myself when I will leave the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T23:32:27.033" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T23:32:27.033" Title="Can I keep items purchased out of my startup funds?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12521" CreationDate="2013-09-07T23:28:25.847" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, equipment purchased with university-provided funds belong to the university, rather than the individual faculty member who ordered the items. On the other hand, items procured through individual grants (where the university did not directly provide funding), can often be transferred from one institution to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also true that such property is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; normally something that you can normally keep for yourself! The primary exception to this might be if the property has been in service long enough to be declared &quot;obsolete,&quot; and no longer needs to be inventoried. Then, the university will typically have some sort of policy on the disposition of such equipment, and that is what you should follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T23:28:25.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12535" CreationDate="2013-09-08T09:40:54.907" Score="6" ViewCount="4874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been approached to submit an extended version of a research paper in a journal.&#xA;The original paper is already published in a conference proceedings by publisher A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &quot;degree of extension&quot; do I have to provide so that publisher B will (legally?) be able to publish my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does &quot;extended version&quot; in this case mean additional results, or purely textual extension?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-02-02T14:20:39.640" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T14:20:39.640" Title="How extended must my extended paper be?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;publishability&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12524" CreationDate="2013-09-08T12:14:11.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a single &quot;default&quot; answer here. However, I would suggest that if you are planning to publish in B's journal, that you do &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; kinds of extension: provide both additional explanations that were in the original material, plus present different results (if possible) than what was in conference proceeding A. You should also avoid direct repetition of material, where possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, before agreeing to this, I would also consider asking the journal editor to provide you some examples of what he or she considers &quot;extended versions&quot; of other proceedings, and review them to see what you think of the extensions. If you're not comfortable with the changes (in that they're not expansive enough to be a &quot;new&quot; paper), then you're free to tell the journal you're not interested.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T12:14:11.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-08T15:18:09.297" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question. Just to abstain from the discussion of different standards in different fields, I'll talk of mathematics only. Also, I'll assume that it is a question about a PhD thesis, not about anything of lower level like Masters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is that the gap between &quot;advancing human knowledge&quot; and &quot;mastering the subject&quot; is huge and there is a lot of grades in-between. IMHO, the works that advance human knowledge are rare, be it PhD theses or papers in refereed journals. Most of us live off &quot;doing what hasn't been done before&quot;, which is much less demanding. What I mean is that each work introducing a new idea is followed by 1000 ones applying this idea combined with already known stuff to all setups where it works. Each of those 1000 papers does what hasn't been done before but does not advance human knowledge because, once the new idea appears, every sufficiently high level professional can figure out how it may be applied elsewhere, though getting all details right may require patience and even some effort. I certainly would accept &quot;doing what hasn't been done before&quot; (a successful application of a well-known idea in a fairly straightforward way to a new setup) as a tolerable (but not brilliant) PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much below that would I consider acceptable? Four out of every five projects I try end up in a miserable failure, when I cannot even claim that I have proved some partial result in the desired direction. I have never tried to write a detailed account of &quot;mein kampf&quot; for any of those (dead end moves with counterexamples at the end, chains of implications that never meet the goal, associations and studies of seemingly relevant things that failed to relate to the question at hand for some fundamental but hard to discern reason, etc.) but I would let a report like that pass as a PhD thesis if it really shows 3 years worth of high quality effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find not acceptable is a &quot;literature survey&quot; (understanding what is written elsewhere and relating things in a superficial way without deriving any new result or introducing any new twist into the story). In other words, my idea is that you should get your PhD after you show that you can &quot;fight a mathematical battle on your own&quot;, not only study the battles fought by other people. The victory in a decent battle is sufficient, but not necessary. Sometimes you can be made a &quot;general&quot; even if you lose but show good fighting skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is my humble opinion only. As to the official point of view, in Russia we had the central committee that had to confirm every degree award before it became valid and there were written guidelines. In the USA it is way more relaxed, so 4-5 professors conspiring together can pass anyone (to the credit of them I should say that I cannot give an example of such conspiracy). Canada requires an external review to be positive (which, by the way, makes perfect sense as a simple safeguard against &quot;local standard relaxation&quot; to me), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &quot;risky topics&quot;, the best ambitious projects are such where &quot;something&quot; can be done right away (not something that is worth talking about as &quot;defendable&quot; or &quot;publishable&quot;, but something that shows that the student has the general grasp of the subject and decent problem-solving skills). If that something (or something equivalent) is not done within the first half a year, it is a sign of trouble and the ambitious project is better abandoned and replaced with an &quot;apply a known idea in a straightforward way to a new setup&quot; one. If it is, you have a chance and may consider taking the risk. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can guide you then except your gut feelings and your knowledge of the student. You and your student are in an uncharted territory all on your own, and no general advice can be given except &quot;play by ear&quot; and &quot;act by circumstances&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T15:18:09.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T01:16:44.270" Score="3" ViewCount="1306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took the GRE and my analytical writing score wasn't what I hoped for. During the exam, I thought my answer was good. Having read about argumentation and practiced writing, I wonder if there is a reputable service that will score essays and give feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T03:35:15.763" Title="Scoring GRE analytical writing practice essays" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12531" CreationDate="2013-09-09T06:38:03.223" Score="23" ViewCount="5928" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two closely related questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If a student submits their assignment and is unhappy with their mark, are there any dangers (which I might not be seeing) in allowing the students to do so? If I would offer for one, I would offer for all, but &lt;strong&gt;should I be offering it in the first place?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If resubmits are unavailable, some students ask me to 'pre-read' or 'pre-mark' their assignment. The end result is that when they submit officially, that may actually be the second submission. Clearly doing any 'pre-marking' or the like takes time and energy and, so far, very few students have taken advantage of this until right before the submission deadline (at which point I stop because I don't have THAT much time to offer them). &lt;strong&gt;Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: These assignments constitute either 50% or 100% of their total mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my concerns is that the student would have lower motivation to maximize the quality of their original work and just correct what was marked as a problem area - like a production worker depending on a Quality Control Inspector and not paying as much attention to the quality of their work the first time around. Are there other issues as well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I should add that these are business management subjects so student answers are not easily right or wrong but more about how they justify their analysis. Therefore, there is not an issue of &quot;giving the right answer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T06:54:26.567" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T09:21:08.973" Title="Dangers of allowing students to resubmit assignments" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T06:50:47.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first scenario: if you give out solutions, there's obviously a problem. But if you hold off on giving out solutions, then the remaining students have to wait longer than might be reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T06:50:47.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T07:09:08.880" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I be offering it in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dangers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You spend even more time on assignments, limiting your time for other endeavors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students might get into a &quot;grade grubbing&quot; mode where they simply re-submit marginally better answers in order to improve their grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students do a poor job initially because they know they will have a chance to re-submit, and they might as well take their chances that you'll give them decent marks for inferior work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall, students spend more time on the assignments, leading to better knowledge and ability to do the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can provide helpful information to guide them to better answers (because you're seeing first-attempts). This level of grading also takes more time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are happier because the stress of a hard deadline isn't so bad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the benefits outweigh the dangers if you're willing to put in the extra time to re-grade. As I've said in other threads, I've used auto-grading homework for a some classes (probably not relevant in your case), but I've used the strategy that I'd have deadlines for all the assignments but that the week before the final I'd re-open all the assignments and tell the students they can re-do any questions they missed. I don't tell them I'm going to do this until I do it, in order to keep students from simply waiting until the end to do all the assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's great that you're being creative with the assignments (e.g., pre-marking, resubmittals, etc.). Again, it comes down to your time -- if you have motivated students who want pre-marking and you have the time, I can't see a problem with it. It wouldn't surprise me if the best students are the ones who want pre-marked work, but then again I've had some less-capable students jump at chances like that to do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T13:59:18.347" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T13:59:18.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T08:14:31.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem lies in what expectations the students have. With a clear set of grading criteria (c.f. rubrics) you could probably avoid some or many problems. In the second case, you could say that pre-grading provides a preliminary grade which. at best, will be raised by one notch upon successful resubmission. Then, the student will get feedback and know where they are and make a decision of putting the effort it worth it. Clearly, this simple example is not thought through so I believe this case may need a serious think and discussion with peers on possible side effects. But, the point is that if you make the grading clear then there will be less complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first case is perhaps trickier. The same idea applies, you need to apply some clear rule of what happens with a resubmission. It is possible that if your design of the criteria for case 2 is good, then as a side-effect case 1 disappears. You should also consider reducing grades for late arrivals etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this reply is not very precise, I think setting up criteria that makes the grading process clear will help. By putting in an optional pre-assessment, you make the students decide what they should do. Note that the criteria for the assignment also have to be clear so that the grades you set can be explained in terms of learning objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T08:14:31.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T08:36:22.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A suggestion that I have used quite successfully in regards to your point no. 2: premarking.  This would depend on the dynamics of your class, but if at all possible to have the students perform a peer-review pre assessment of each other's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With peer-reviews, the students become more aware of is needed to fulfil the criteria and requirements.  Alongside that, each student can also do a self review with a criteria based self-review pre-assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always a risk of copying, but I have found that this to be no more than what would occur with the normal procedure (and tools such as turnitin can help with this).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T08:36:22.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12528" CreationDate="2013-09-09T08:47:08.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've got a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if your school has a GRE preparation course (you may have to pay for this) or other writing tutorials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Tirath said, look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org&quot;&gt;ets.org&lt;/a&gt; for strategies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're still in undergraduate school and have at least another semester, enroll in a writing class. The practice you get from the class should improve your overall ability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look online for test preparation courses. These can be expensive, but sometimes they have &quot;guaranteed results,&quot; and you can probably figure out the best ones by looking at reviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advertise on Craigslist (or similar) for a tutor. If you are in a college town, you may find someone willing to tutor you relatively cheaply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look online for GRE writing samples, and read as many as you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice writing every day. The more you practice, the better you'll get (and read as much as you can, too).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that while you always should strive for high scores, your field of study will partially dictate how important the writing score is. If you're going for a history PhD, you'll need a high score, but for a science degree this tends to be less important (for admissions--being able to write is important for any PhD!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T08:47:08.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12524" CreationDate="2013-09-09T09:18:55.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most subareas of Computer Science having the paper with &quot;at least 30% of new material&quot; would be acceptable. This is particularly true of conference-&gt;journal paper transition, for instance when a conference version of the paper is extended with new results, more thorough description of the research contribution (and/or methods, materials, related work) and then submitted to a journal. Sometimes this also happens when a conference organizes a special issue of the best papers in a journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody will measure how many words/letters you added, but you should be able to convince the reviewers/editors that the paper is extended. Pointing out the differences between the previous publication and the extended paper in the introduction would normally help to reviewers to assess if the extension is enough. Basically, what you want to avoid is Salami Slicing or Least Publishable Unit (see comment by BlackPudding at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12514/different-articles-to-different-journals-all-at-same-time-is-it-unethical&quot;&gt;Is it unethical to submit for review multiple articles which overlap in some respect?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T09:18:55.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12524" CreationDate="2013-09-09T09:20:13.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/aeismail&quot;&gt;aeismail&lt;/a&gt;, every journal have different policy. Usually, the journals/conferences accepting extended papers mention such things in there Call for Paper as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this is a quote from CFP of &lt;em&gt;Special Issue on Emerging Systems and Applications for Wireless Health Computing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All authors who presented papers at Wireless Health 2013 are invited&#xA;  to submit extended versions of their papers to IEEE TETC for inclusion&#xA;  in this special issue. Given that the Wireless Health 2013 proceedings&#xA;  will be published, it is required that submissions to the special&#xA;  issue have &lt;strong&gt;at least 30% new content&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, it is not very clear what exactly 30% new content means here, but it does indicate that your extended paper should have at least some new significant observation from may be at least  the same results of your original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T09:20:13.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12538" CreationDate="2013-09-09T09:25:38.393" Score="1" ViewCount="2020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to bore anyone so long story, very, very short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is for the Computer Science / Software Engineering industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am combating laziness and extreme procrastination due to depression.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not doing very well in my studies as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the two above I wonder if a degree with some tainting in the first year of my units would still be enough to get me a good job (in the industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is experience worth more than my grades alone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this because I often find that I do better by doing than just by reading the course material for Discrete Structures or Databases etc....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I not worry about my (past) bad grades and make the best of the situation and just develop a good portfolio?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to fix what I have gotten myself into, and I hope someone in the industry or with some kind of related experience can give me some insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8546" LastEditorUserId="8546" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T10:59:23.983" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:03:25.800" Title="Exactly How Important Is The Quality Of My Degree (Grades, GPA)?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12537" CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:16:25.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's no problem to tell people &quot;Hey, I was lazy in school but I'll work super-hard for you.&quot; Unfortunately, people won't buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my time in the software industry, hiring quite a few people, I would actually not normally even look at their grades, unless they were borderline in the interview. Even then, if there was another candidate who was better in the interview, that borderline candidate would not even get a callback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will care about grades but for computer science 'guys' I find that what most people in industry really care about is what you can do for them. Can you help them more than someone else can help them? If so, then you'll likely land a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you shape up, pull out of your 'funk' and get down to actually learning, you will likely be OK. If you let depression pull you under water, you'll drown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've started your degree, you should finish it. However, don't let the past dictate your future. This is the first day of the rest of your life. It's always darkest before the dawn. I'm sure there are more sayings along this line but in the end, depending your area of IT, you can do fine even if you had a bad start to school. If you have a strong finish, it's easy to explain that you should be judged on your 'exit velocity' rather than the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T11:16:25.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12540" CreationDate="2013-09-09T12:00:32.810" Score="5" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine the following situation: Mr. Expert writes that it is important to have A,B &amp;amp; C. Dr. Smart writes it is important to have A, Y, Z. As both are using the arguments to lead to different topics, their list is not exhaustive and {A,B,C,Y,Z} do not contradict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think all points are important, but I would also like to add that A may be red or blue. Hence I think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Red and blue A, B, C, Y and Z are important.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do I cite them correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Red and blue A, B, C, Y and Z are important [Mr. Expert; Dr. Smart].&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the only form that doesn't make the sentence contain more citations than actual words. Is this a bad citation style, e.g. might Mr. Expert complain that he never said A should be red or blue or that he thinks Z is completely irrelevant? Or am I just noting that some ideas might be copied from one (or maybe multiple) listed sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="8549" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T10:04:08.120" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T10:04:08.120" Title="Citing ideas but extending information" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12539" CreationDate="2013-09-09T12:08:58.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me you should simply expand the text to provide the background that &quot;Expert (cite year) has shown that A,B &amp;amp; C are important and Smart (cite year) has shown that A, Y, and Z are important. Based on circumstances I postulate that also Red and Blue A are important along with B, C, X, Y, and Z&quot;. I hope you get the point? In other words describe the findings of Expert and Smart and then add your own &quot;hypothesis&quot; or ideaand make it clear that (a) it is your idea and (b) on what you base the idea. It is not clear fom th equestion whether it is a hypothesis to be tested or a result of your own research. Depending on which the way you present things will be slightly different, of course.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T12:08:58.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T12:29:13.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly tricky!  There are a number of pitfalls, I've found, that usually end up making it not worth the effort:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot more work for you.  Grading twice may be no biggie in a class of 10, but a class size of 200 or 300 would be prohibitive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The students will, in all likelihood, not try as hard the first time around, since they know they automatically get an extension.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade inflation.  This may not be a big deal to some (it's a minor crusade of mine) but it can be a major issue.  If the entire class is getting &gt;90%, your superiors may be suspicious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, the more successful kids are liable to get annoyed.  What's the point of busting your hump to be an A-student if the B- and C-students can resubmit and do just as well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are some good work-arounds; nothing you can do about class size, but here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't tell them beforehand!  This is a bit devious, and you can only do it once and not on the final, but most people will, after a hard midterm or something, appreciate that hugely.  This will ensure most everyone works their butt off instead of slacking first time around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them half credit for resubmitted answers.  That is, if a student gets an 80%, but the resubmit is 100%, give him/her a 90%.  This can be a good (enough) balance: The poorly-performing students get a sufficient boost, but not enough to threaten or annoy the high-performers.  This also reduces the overall grade-inflation risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the vein of pre-marking, since there's no &quot;right answer,&quot; you can accept &quot;drafts&quot; and then spend some time going over some of the more and less successful avenues students chose.  Everyone may end up doing something similar, but students will end up thinking more about their answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T12:29:13.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T13:59:30.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, students will ask me to pregrade or review an assignment prior to submission.  I am always happy to do so, but I don't give them a grade, just feedback on what is good, what is lacking, and what needs improvement.  I find this is a good compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6196" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T13:59:30.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-09T14:35:36.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the field you're in is different from mine (mathematics), what I am about to describe may not work for you, but perhaps some variant of it could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite fond of allowing students to make corrections to assignments (especially quizzes and exams), with the following rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Students may only resubmit an assignment once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The corrected solutions must be flawless. There is no partial credit on resubmissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The students can earn back half of the points that they lost on their first submission. So if they scored a 4/10 on a problem the first time around, and if they submit a flawless corrected version, they will improve this to a 7/10. They cannot do any better, and there is nothing in between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that this is a great way to get students to correct and learn from their mistakes, and I cannot find a downside to it. After all, my goal is to get the students to learn the material! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your assignments do not have clear-cut answers (as you describe in your edit), this might need some tweaking. You may need to replace &quot;flawless&quot; with &quot;would have earned very high marks&quot; or something to that effect. But the point remains: I think that allowing students to resubmit assignments is a valuable tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T14:35:36.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12546" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12552" CreationDate="2013-09-09T16:39:12.343" Score="14" ViewCount="4609" Body="&lt;p&gt;When having fund for hiring postdoctoral fellow, it is tricky to find highly qualified applicants, since they can get aware of the opening position by chance. For almost any postdoctoral position (it should apply for any position, but more severe for post-doc), there are better candidates who were also interested, but did not hear about the opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible approaches are not very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spreading by word of mouth through colleagues is very limited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A few applicants may browse research group websites for checking&#xA;opening positions. Moreover, search engines do not index and rank&#xA;them quickly to reach the deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Posting on academic job websites is good, but most of them are paid&#xA;websites. For faculty positions, universities have enough fund to pay&#xA;for advertisement, but it is difficult to cover the advertisement cost&#xA;by the limited fund of a postdoctoral position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free job websites are not very common for academic positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to find more effective ways to inform and encourage more potentials candidates to apply for a postdoctoral positions to have a better chance to select a highly qualified applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T02:43:44.430" Title="How to inform/attract more candidates for a postdoctoral position?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12546" CreationDate="2013-09-09T17:29:39.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are sometimes subject-specific mailing lists available on which one can post job advertisements. Examples that I am currently subscribed to are  All-Acad.com (mailing@all-acad.com) and allstat (allstat@JISCMAIL.AC.UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't say whether this is a more effective way to advertise, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDENDUM: Actually, I think it would be useful to expand the question in the following way, that would be useful for both prospective employers and job-seekers. This could be a community-wiki style question. So, the question could be: what resources are available for job advertising? And each answer could be for one subject, and divided into free and non-free sections, and within each could be web sites, mailing lists etc. I don't know whether such a question would fall within the scope of this site. I do know the SE sites vary in their policy wrt such &quot;list&quot; questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T18:06:21.873" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:06:21.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12546" CreationDate="2013-09-09T18:02:20.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some departments it is common practice to publish available postdoc positions in other institutions via the departmental mailing list. You can try mailing administrators/faculty in relevant departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:02:20.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12537" CreationDate="2013-09-09T18:03:25.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer might change from a country to another, but you have to remember that when applying for a job in the industry, you will meet the HR first. Most of the time, that particular person would not know anything about the technical aspects of the job you are applying for and would probably not ask you for your grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is still your first contact with the company and you should not neglect it. Indeed, what he/she will do is to ask about your previous work experience (or at some point when you just freshly graduated, about your school projects) and your ability to work in a team. If you are not aiming too high, your human skills are sometimes more important than your technical ones because it is easier to learn new technical knowledge than to learn how to behave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last point, in any kind of job application process, always remember to ask as many questions as possible regarding the company, the team you might join. You always want to know where you will be working everyday for quite some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:03:25.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2013-09-09T18:07:27.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some fields, if you are referring in a manuscript to other unpublished material you must submit it together with the manuscript. I suggest that if you plan to submit each of these manuscripts to a different journal, also submit the other papers as supporting material and notify the editor that they are submitted for review elsewhere. That way you are not hiding anything and the editor has all the information to reach a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:07:27.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12546" CreationDate="2013-09-09T18:15:33.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second both Faheem and Bitwise's options of &lt;strong&gt;mailing list&lt;/strong&gt;, in two different manners:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each field (and subfield) has its own “go to” places for vacancies advertisements. In my field, people typically subscribe to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccp5.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CCP5&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ccl.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CCL&lt;/a&gt; mailing-lists (the first one offers a choice of UK-only, Europe-only or worldwide postings). Some of these mailing-lists include a fee, but it may be reasonable (shelling out $50 is not much compared to 12 months of salary).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can send it to group-, department or institution-level mailing lists in places where you know people who will act as a local relay. I personally find that this is the best way to advertise a position, and I got great candidates this way in the past.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other options available, both of which can have good efficiency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some countries have national website, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobs.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt; (UK) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intelliagence.fr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABG&lt;/a&gt; (France). Sometimes, advertising through them is even mandated by your funding agency or institution!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post it to job sections of high-level journals, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature Jobs&lt;/a&gt; or some highly-read journal in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T18:15:33.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12546" CreationDate="2013-09-09T19:00:08.153" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible outlets I can think of include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Field-specific e-mail lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department email-list forwarded through collegues at other departments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adverts inserted in talks/presentations held by people at your department (e.g. at invited talks, conferences etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Job ad websites (national and global)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advert at research-focused web communities/forums, such as Researchgate and Academia.edu, as well as LinkedIn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T22:16:42.917" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T22:16:42.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:05:19.453" Score="3" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed my PhD and I'm now looking for a job in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. Either in production or in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From somebody on the inside (senior position in research in a &lt;strong&gt;major&lt;/strong&gt; pharma company), I was told that actually nobody gets hired without PostDoc experience. However, PostDoc is no guarantee, I was also told, for a position. My feeling is that I rather spend the time on the job, learning what is important for the company. Simply put, I don't want to do PostDoc because I don't feel like that (but that's another story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the question is: Has anybody gotten into chemical/pharma industry without PostDoc and without using inter-personal connections (that means only by directly applying for positions stated on the website of the company)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T14:21:06.823" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T22:47:24.607" Title="Is it possible to get hired without post-doctorate experience in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T01:55:52.600" Score="11" ViewCount="6974" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student, soon to complete a PhD, is not ready to enter academia &lt;strong&gt;is a year of travel a good option&lt;/strong&gt;?  Assuming that academic route is still interesting after the year will post-doc positions (leading to tenure-track) still be a viable option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T02:42:39.383" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T02:42:39.383" Title="Possible pitfalls of taking a year off to travel following a PhD instead of immediately starting with a post-doc position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12556" CreationDate="2013-09-10T03:10:18.220" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I envy a PhD graduate who has the funds left after obtaining a doctorate to pursue a year of travel, I don't think this is a good idea (unless your degree is in anthropology, in which case it's probably a great idea!) Some thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are at a tenuous position in your career -- you've reached a peak (not necessarily the top-most peak), and you are very prepared for academia (although possibly not mentally, as you allude). Your degree has a half-life of sorts -- others will continue to do research in your field while you jet-set the world, and your own work will start to get stale. Now is the best chance you're going to have to convince people who may want to hire you that you're a candidate at the tip of the spear, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a year is not too long, your letter-writers aren't going to have as fresh a picture of you from which to paint their glowing recommendations. You can mitigate this by asking for letters now, but you'll want them to review the letters a year from now (and change the date!) when they do submit them for applications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academia can be a fierce environment, as you've probably learned during your candidate years, and possibly why you don't feel you're ready. But, removing yourself from the process for a year doesn't help your case in academia, except to possibly calm your spirits in order to be reinvigorated in a year. Although not universal, the people working the hardest get the best jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said: do what you feel is best for you. If you're not ready for academia, by all means remove yourself from the process for as much time as you need. Better to have a harder time getting a post-doc in a year than to spend a year burning out on something you're not prepared to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T05:59:36.720" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T05:59:36.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12559" CreationDate="2013-09-10T06:45:48.843" Score="4" ViewCount="3266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing my master's under the supervision of an assistant professor. He's brilliant, professional and an amazing mentor. He is supportive but at the same time knows when and how to be tough on me enough to challenge me intellectually and push me to get out of my comfort zone. For all these reasons, he would be the perfect supervisor for my Ph.D. The only problem is that he doesn't work on the same topic as me (and doesn't really have much experience with it either) and seeing that it's a new and tricky topic, I need someone experienced in this particular area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke to him several times about my plans for my Ph.D. and mentioned that I planned on applying to several major universities and that I was looking for supervisors working on my field of interest. He would keep bringing up the Ph.D. programme at his departement and would tell me that I could work with him and also someone else from another university (co-supervision). I said it could be a good idea, but of course, I was still considering the Ph.D. programmes at other universities (which, I think is normal, I'm only keeping my options open). Of course, he knew that I could enroll in better programmes elsewhere, but he still asked me to stay, more than once (which is flattering since I respect and admire him). The Phd programme he's suggesting is the best option for me ONLY in terms of funding, because it has a special offer for foreign students paying extra fees (which he also knows...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I recently had a meeting with him and I mentioned that I wanted to do an internship in one of the universities I'm interested in. He said &quot;It's a good idea and if you like the experience, you can decide to stay there for a Ph.D.&quot;. That was one hell of a slap in my face... He basically told me &quot;Hey, I changed my mind, you're not a worthwhile student, finish your master's, then you're out&quot;. So at the end of our meeting, I decided to be honest and asked &quot;okay, so if I understand correctly, you no longer want me to stay here for my Ph.D.?&quot;, to which he answered &quot;No, I do. But I want you to explore your options. I don't want you to stay just because you think it's your only option but because you believe it's the RIGHT option for you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm confused. Does he want me to stay or does he want to get rid of me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8565" LastEditorUserId="8565" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T00:45:10.153" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T03:59:04.157" Title="Does my supervisor want me to do my Ph.D. with him or elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12558" CreationDate="2013-09-10T07:01:50.690" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Peter said in his comment, ask him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said that, and based on what you have said, it is very clear that he is not 'kicking you out' at all - on the contrary, he is demonstrating a very positive and constructive approach - by telling you that you have to pursue what is best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you need to consider a key question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is/are your goal(s) after you complete your research?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor is, as you say not an expert in the field you are interested in, and what he is suggesting is that, as this is the case then the internship may lead to opportunities that are more in line for your plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is also seemingly suggesting is to pursue the internship and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; decide where and what you want to study for your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the decision is yours to make - he is helping you to help yourself in this regards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, a piece of advice, do not assume to know the intentions of anyone - take his advice on face value and in the spirit that it has been given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:01:50.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12558" CreationDate="2013-09-10T07:56:48.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor just wants to make sure you make the right decision. Therefore, it might seem wiser to stay where you are now with him (plus another co-supervisor) if you know you get on well than go to another (even more prestigious) university where you might not find people you really want to work with (although they are in the field you are interested in). On the other hand, internship gives you the opportunity to meet faculty of different university and see how you can get on which is just as important as academic qualities of your new supervisor. Your current supervisor sees that as a great option for you to see where you want to do your Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is not such an uncommon thing in academia. Although it would help your current supervisor if you stayed (you can teach some classes, more research gets done in his group etc.), he can also see you as a possible future collaborator. From this point of view, it is important for him that you get the best from your Ph.D. even if it means leaving your current university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself was in a similar situation a while back. Although my supervisor would like me to stay for Ph.D. he knew that there are universities and research groups where I can learn more and he did all he could to help me choose the one that would suit me best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:56:48.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12562" CreationDate="2013-09-10T08:41:05.630" Score="4" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10510/cite-same-reference-in-two-successive-sentences&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, however I'm searching for an elaborated answer on how two (or more) sencentes are oubviously from one source, and hence can be cited with one citation at the end of all sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example to reduce a really long sentences: &lt;code&gt;The thing varies in dimension A, because of &amp;lt;long explanation with many commas&amp;gt;. Consequently, it is categorised as 1,2 or 3 [Mr. Twit, 2013].&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are linking words like &lt;em&gt;consequently&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;therefore&lt;/em&gt; and so on enough to signal that is originates from one source? Can I swap the dot (.) and the citation [Mr. Twit, 2013] to indicate that the citation does not only belong to the last sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus question: If I write a whole paragraph and add one citation at the end, does this imply that the whole paragraph is quoted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In gerneal I'm trying to reduce he-said-she-said structures, as they are akward and hinder the information flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:23:38.157" Title="Citing in two connected sentences" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2013-09-10T08:58:10.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read what you have written, and check. Altering the order of punctuation and citation might seem a logical way to do it, but many style guides actually impose the respective order of those elements, and not logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I'm afraid you have to choice of either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accepting ambiguity of your example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using the author's name to make things clear: &lt;em&gt;“Twit et al. demonstrated that […]. As a consequence, it is categorised as X, Y or Z [Mr. Twit, 2013]”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T08:58:10.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12529" CreationDate="2013-09-10T09:21:08.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One advantage of allowing resubmits that hasn't been pointed out is that it allows you assign more challenging material without scaring the students too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T09:21:08.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T09:58:08.260" Score="33" ViewCount="11908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is a general consensus as to the suitability of epigraphs in a thesis, either a single one at the start of the document, or an appropriate quote to begin every chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, at the start of a technical chapter describing some code, I could write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. - Donald E. Knuth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am lucky to have complete freedom over how I choose to typeset my thesis (Master's thesis in astronomy) and I like the idea of a thematic quote to begin a chapter. However, I am wary of seeming unprofessional or tacky so I am curious to get some more thoughts on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2021-04-07T15:27:05.170" Title="What are your thoughts on epigraphs in theses?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:11:24.147" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well-chosen, non-frivolous epigraphs can enhance a thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T10:11:24.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:23:38.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every &quot;idea&quot; you introduce that is not your own needs a reference. It doesn't matter how many sentences it takes to express this idea, you only need to add the reference at the beginning/end (depending on your citation style) of the idea. If it takes more than a couple of sentences to express the idea, you may want to use a quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example it seems like you have two ideas so you need to reference each idea. Often, it is better to provide context of each idea you introduce so the ideas are generally not back-to-back. Sometimes you have to have a list of ideas, in which case you put a reference after each idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:23:38.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12571" CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:29:58.300" Score="14" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in an international collaboration (Germany and Netherlands). It happens quite often that I'm asking technical questions to fellow postdocs by email, just sending the email to this single person. When I receive the reply, I almost always see that the head of the group has been put in CC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering why this is done. Is this some kind of etiquette I'm not aware of? I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T15:22:14.290" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:22:14.290" Title="What is the etiquette for CCing faculty in eMails?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12569" CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:52:41.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a fairly normal practice to cc: your boss on correspondence that is outside the organization, especially if he or she has a vested interest in the response. As you note, though, it does require some judiciousness to keep from overpopulating your boss's inbox. I'd say it is more rare in the case of technical back-and-forth, but I have seen it before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen the &quot;cc the boss&quot; mentality from people who want the boss to know they're keeping busy -- I wouldn't suggest this kind of toady behavior, but it does exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you shouldn't be concerned to see others do this on their correspondence, and you could certainly ask the head of your group if he or she wants to be cc'd on correspondence from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:52:41.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12569" CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:53:15.623" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that sort of etiquette (CC'ing the PI of each involved partner in a collaboration, even for exchanges at lower level) exist in some groups. It is particularly true of recent collaborations, either because they have been established recently or because the research is still in its infancy. In both case, I suppose it is nice to help PI's stay on top of how things are progressing, both on the science and on the interpersonal relationships (like, is everyone acting professionally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not universal, but it is common. It depends a lot on the nature of the relations between the PI's and their groups. I tend to ask students/post-docs to keep me in CC of the first few emails to our collaborator after they arrive/we start the project, then after sometime I tell them to drop me when it's evident things are going well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, the safest course of action is to keep people on the CC list. You didn't CC them, but someone did, so don't drop them unless they ask for it. Also, ask &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; own boss how he likes to do things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?”&lt;/em&gt; — Whatever you do, you will be flooded with emails. You don't read them all, but you may skim those for tone/content, keeping an eye on things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:53:15.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:56:41.013" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It cannot hurt to have epigraphs, and they do not specifically have to be about your research topic or about research. Epigraphs are indicative of the state of mind of the author at a particular point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:56:41.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2013-09-10T13:02:44.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of any institution imposing a restriction such that your doctoral research is in a different field to your Master's research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your PhD research is a significant body of original research that greatly extends your Master's experience and appropriately cites any previous findings, there should not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in some countries it is possible to &lt;em&gt;convert&lt;/em&gt; your Master's research into a PhD. For instance, if you are 6 months into a project and decide you want to greatly extend the scope of your research, you may be allowed a conversion. Bear in mind that where I live, a Master's degree is not a requirement to begin a PhD (you only need an honours degree, which is 1 year of postgraduate lectures and a small research project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T13:02:44.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-10T15:46:54.957" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question as currently asked is: &lt;strong&gt;Is a research thesis (report) with zero contribution to human knowledge acceptable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the answer to that question is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesis or portfolio submitted for a PhD or higher doctorate must make a &lt;strong&gt;novel contribution to human knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;. It &lt;strong&gt;must also&lt;/strong&gt; demonstrate that the applicant has acquired the appropriate level of research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some negative results do advance human knowledge. So a thesis with negative results and no positive results may make a novel contribution to human knowledge. e.g. demonstration of &lt;strong&gt;absence&lt;/strong&gt; of an effect is a negative result, but can be a distinct and significant contribution to new knowledge (particularly if the effect was previously believed to exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just spending the time, putting in the effort, and churning out the right quantity of work, is not in and of itself sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Basis for this&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on a combination of my employer's guidelines, my experiences as a PhD supervisor, and advice from my colleagues. I hear that there are other (less well-respected) institutions that award doctorates just for putting in the effort and churning out the right quantity of work, regardless of novelty of contribution, or of demonstration of research skill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A quote from some official guidelines.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from the relevant part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/acd_regs/2012_13/RD_Section_2_2012_2013.pdf&quot;&gt;academic regulations for PhD examinations from UCL, University College London (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A thesis for the awards of EngD or PhD degree shall be examined in accordance with&#xA;  the criteria prescribed by UCL and the thesis shall demonstrate that it: ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shows a student's capacity to pursue original research in the field of study&#xA;  based on a good understanding of the research techniques and concepts&#xA;  appropriate to the discipline; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;represents a distinct and significant contribution to the subject, whether through&#xA;  the discovery of new knowledge, the connection of previously unrelated facts,&#xA;  the development of new theory, or the revision of older views;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T14:25:26.943" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T14:25:26.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12558" CreationDate="2013-09-10T15:56:47.843" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest temptations for many advisors is to hold on to a productive student or postdoc a little bit longer than is necessary just to reap the benefits of a productive worker. Against the personal gains of the advisor need to be set the goals of doing what is in the best interests of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that a good advisor will try to make sure that the student can explore all of her options. I'm sure that he would be more than willing to keep you around, if he's mentioned co-supervision. But if you really want to go elsewhere, then he really doesn't want to be seen as trying to strong-arm you into staying. That could build feelings of resentfulness that could poison your future working relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the other hand, if you complete this internship, and then decide that the project with this advisor is &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; the route you want, then you have done your due diligence—which is what a good advisor would want you to do in any case!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:56:47.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2013-09-10T17:23:05.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fast moving fields one can get scooped fairly easily. For example a biology PhD thesis may be based around determining the structure of a protein. If someone else publishes the structure before the thesis is reviewed then there is not a contribution to human knowledge since the structure is already known. I think in these fast moving fields the student would be expected to do more. In my &quot;slow&quot; moving field I am aware of two theses (one PhD and one MSc) where the results where the key findings were published by someone else in the weeks before the thesis was finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T17:23:05.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T18:36:41.363" Score="39" ViewCount="18736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered lots of chalkboards through my career, and they vary widely in quality.  Some write smoothly and erase cleanly; for others, the chalk squeaks and the eraser just smears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume there are differences in the materials they use, the construction techniques, how the surface is prepared or treated, and so on.  But I'm clueless as to what these differences might be, and how they affect the quality.  If I'm looking for a &quot;good&quot; one, what questions should I ask?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Academics are one of the few groups these days that use chalkboards on a regular basis, so I hope this question is suitable for this site.  Please note that I'm not asking for specific product recommendations, just general information.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T17:49:04.493" Title="What makes a good chalkboard?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15566" CreationDate="2013-09-10T20:11:47.993" Score="8" ViewCount="34063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have discovered that I enjoy computer science immensely and I would like to pursue a masters degree in computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My undergrad was Neuroscience (biology) with a minor in Bioinformatics. I have a 3.2 gpa, and an 77 percentile GRE, which I understand is not amazing but ok. &#xA;But, I've gotten all A's in any computer science class I have taken, (data structures, algorithms etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to get into the best possible program, for example MIT, I understand this may be unrealistic with my grades and would like to ask what are my options and what should I do to get ready?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retake the GRE get better score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a Comp Science GRE subject test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get real life experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put code online, open source&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get work experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screw the masters get a job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to hear what you think is the best choice for setting up a successful career in computer science. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8573" LastEditorUserId="10661" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T05:18:18.577" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T06:21:41.507" Title="How do I get into a Computer Science Masters without an undergrad in CS?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12578" CreationDate="2013-09-10T20:38:14.147" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a partial answer, since I am not discussing materials and building techniques but only giving a couple of tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chalk squeaking should depend on its length; break it into two parts to avoid it. Not sure if this has been studied rigorously, but it seems to work in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for erasing, I am personally a fan of using a damp towel rather than dry-erasing. It takes some more work and preparation, but the results are much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T20:38:14.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12580" CreationDate="2013-09-10T20:41:54.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many departments do not require you have a Bachelor's in CS to pursue graduate studies. They might have a stipulation of a minor in CS, though. You'd have to check with the individual departments. Bioinformatics is similar to CS in some schools, so they may waive that minimum requirement. The main reason for their requiring a minor is to ensure you've had a sufficient foundation to build upon. Taking more courses in a local school first would fill any gaps you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it comes down to what the department says. Contact some of the ones you like and see what they say. They may want you to take more math, for instance, over anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Removed statement about GRE subject test in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T16:24:15.180" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T16:24:15.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T21:31:51.313" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the reputation of a journal in specific field of science. I am looking at this journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/rankings.php?bsearch=ACM%20Transactions%20on%20Computer-Human%20Interaction&amp;amp;searchby=journal&amp;amp;orderby=eigenfactor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CHI Paper&lt;/a&gt;. How do I read the information from the graphs and figure out how this journal compares to other journals? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:59:59.783" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:59:59.783" Title="How to read Eigen factor and AI for a journal in specific field?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12578" CreationDate="2013-09-10T23:26:13.187" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good chalkboards appear to be made of porcelain enamel fused to a steel core. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Chalkboard.html&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; for more details on the manufacturing process. As JeffE mentioned in a comment on another answer, cheaper chalkboards are made by painting wood or chipboard with a special chalkboard paint. Although these are good for crafts, they are NOT the kind you want to have in a classroom. They &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ellaclaireinspired.com/2013/01/chalkboard-maintenance-101.html&quot;&gt;have to be primed with chalk&lt;/a&gt; before the first use and after being cleaned with a damp cloth. Also they will often have to be given another coat of paint after being used for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-squeak writing, break long pieces of chalk in half--this will &lt;strong&gt;usually&lt;/strong&gt; take care of the problem! I have noticed that regular, i.e. daily, sponging with an all-purpose cleaning solution also helps to prevent smearing while writing/erasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T23:26:13.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12583" CreationDate="2013-09-10T23:32:55.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/rankings.php?search=129&amp;amp;year=2011&amp;amp;searchby=efcat&amp;amp;orderby=ArticleInfluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entire list of journals in the field &lt;strong&gt;Information theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, where this journals belongs. There you see that &lt;em&gt;ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction&lt;/em&gt; is at place 53 out of 248, ranked by AI. By combining this number with knowledge of the field you can probably draw some conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, both &lt;em&gt;eigenfactors&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Article influence score&lt;/em&gt; (AI) are reported by Thomson ISI as well, so they are well known. Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; at eigenfactor.org and read the wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenfactor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt; for more info. In general, AI is more comparable to the impact factor, while the eigenfactor scales with the number of papers published in the journal. Also have a look at SNIP and SJR if you are interested in journal metrics, info can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalmetrics.com/values.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journalmetrics.com&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-09-20T22:39:25.900" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T22:39:25.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-11T01:05:18.613" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One can perhaps distinguish two major categories of epigraphs:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Serious-tone&quot; epigraphs, which usually the author uses in an attempt to positively influence the reader on his upcoming arguments through a usually wise (or wise-looking) or ingenious (or so the author thinks) quote from a well-known and respected (or so the author thinks) person.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Light-tone&quot; epigraphs which serve the same purpose but they supposedly do it using the additional weapon called humor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author may also honestly believe that the epigraph sums up some of his upcoming arguments (or opens the gates for them) in a way that surpasses his capabilities, and uses the epigraph with true respect and admiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &quot;influencing strategy&quot; seems to be the thought that comes up to people's minds... which means that usually, only &quot;respected persons&quot; can get away with using epigraphs of other &quot;respected persons&quot;, without the risk of looking like they are trying to manipulate their readers...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip-side, who can resist a great epigraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8575" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T19:14:58.740" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T19:14:58.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12591" CreationDate="2013-09-11T05:27:20.573" Score="19" ViewCount="4886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I study mathematics at a large state university. My professors sometimes teach two courses in a given semester, usually two undergraduate or one undergraduate, one graduate course. Typically they hold separate office hours for each course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come up with questions about what I'm learning at various times throughout the week, and often it's more convenient to ask this question in the office hours for the other course the professor is teaching, i.e. the course I'm not in. Perhaps it's the fastest way to get my answer, perhaps the office hours for my course have passed for the week, whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you consider using office hours for a different course (but same professor) bad etiquette? (I do try to give priority to students of the other course, and try to avoid taking up too much time if there are students waiting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: most of my professors have a open-door type policy, so I don't think they really mind. This question is more on a general level, i.e. including professors that don't have such policies in place.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7156" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T22:46:59.233" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T22:04:30.750" Title="Is it bad etiquette to come to office hours that aren't for your particular class?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;office-hours&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-11T06:40:06.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on their frequency - personally, while I do enjoy one nice epigraph at the very beginning of a thesis, I consider one on each section (or every ten pages) overkill and rather disturbing the reading flow. But on a divide, e.g. between the introducing theory and your own contribution, a second epigraph is surely ok as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it really is a matter of your own taste; an epigraph may make the reader smile, but they can easily skip it if they just need raw facts at that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T06:40:06.873" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12587" CreationDate="2013-09-11T07:09:00.383" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the professor minds too much, but you should of course be prepared for him to decline if he chooses to. Though I myself could hardly care less, I have colleagues who would definitely think unsuitable (because it's not &lt;em&gt;how it's planned&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think the other students might mind, as you noted, if they began to see it as you “stealing” time from their limited allocation. As always, sharing is no problem unless the resource is scarce :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, I don't think it's a big problem, &lt;em&gt;given that you are mindful of others&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T07:09:00.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12556" CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:20:56.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer your question because I was at the similar situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the type of your field, and how well you did during your PhD. For example, you did your PhD in electronics, and your supervisor is a well known researcher in this field. In this case I would say do not take one year off and look for a job/postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, if you did your PhD in a okish manner, your supervisor is kind of well known, and you didn't publish high rank papers and journals, DO NOT do a postdoc right away. This is because most definitely you will not get a good postdoc position from a high rank supervisor and you will waste your time running around trying to please your postdoc boss (saw many cases like this). In this case you MUST take a year off, and think about your life in general. Doing a postdoc is not the solution for a person with a weak background in his/her field. It is much better to do a 9 to 5 job in industry than to do a postdoc with uncertain future. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honest with yourself and choose between these two! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8579" LastEditorUserId="8579" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T14:37:35.573" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:37:35.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-11T15:42:46.897" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase an old joke, and risk the disapproval of Dave Clarke and Daniel E. Shub: What do you call someone whose PhD thesis contains a frivolous epigraph that they spent a while finding?  Answer: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Doctor&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that to first order, &lt;strong&gt;nobody will ever read your thesis&lt;/strong&gt;.  Ok, you will, and your advisor will probably read most of it, and perhaps some of her future students will look through it for ideas.  And your family might flip through the first few pages to be polite.  Otherwise, what people will read are the papers you publish based on it.  Therefore, it doesn't really matter very much whether you include an epigraph or not, as few will read the thesis, and fewer will notice the epigraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I enjoyed choosing a &quot;frivolous&quot; epigraph for my thesis; it did take an hour or two that I could have spent writing, but nobody can spend all their time writing, and it was a good stress reliever.  I don't think it enhances the thesis, particularly; I don't really think it affects its merit at all.  But it was one more little thing that helped me get through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, your epigraph should be in good taste, and not offensive to anyone.  Don't use it as a way to make the thesis sound more impressive; that's a waste of time, because nobody will be impressed.  And if your advisor notices it and objects for any reason, apologize and meekly remove it.  But otherwise, if you have fun with it, I can see no reason to object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T15:42:46.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12596" CreationDate="2013-09-11T16:59:18.607" Score="4" ViewCount="2880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just got my first paper accepted to a reputed IEEE (say X for generality) conference. Now, one of the authors have registered for the conference as a student member of X. I have applied for student membership, but probably won't receive the member card before registration deadline. In that case, I have been informed that only the author attending the conference would be getting the certificate. &#xA;So I have the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Do I need the certificate to proof that I have this publication in future ? (My dept has procedure of submitting copies of all certificates that you earn during the semester, and my co-author would definitely be submitting his there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is it worth to register without availing student discount so that I may get the certificate ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T14:45:43.013" Title="How to show proof of publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12595" CreationDate="2013-09-11T17:14:53.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't get a &quot;certificate&quot; for publishing something. The fact that it is available online at the journal's website (which can take a while, depending on their publishing speeds) and has a doi (which you should receive soon after acceptance), is sufficient proof. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most societies don't have a membership card either. They might send you a welcome letter, which you could use as proof of membership.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most places accept different forms of proof of claim when a formal one doesn't exist. In your cases, the following should be just as valid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An email from the editor, accepting your paper for publication (you should have this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An email from the society, thanking you for your interest and membership&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A screenshot of your member page, showing validity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A screenshot of the web copy of your paper (some journals throw a rough version on the web which serves till the final version is typeset).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8581" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T17:14:53.070" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="183" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:39:01.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is significantly after the fact, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w19406&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; just came out.  It purports to show that students learn the most/best from instructors who are NOT tenure-track professors, potentially due to the added burden performing research has on an instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T18:39:01.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12556" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:46:48.813" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is a difference between fields (my experience is math in the US) but this sounds like a totally insane thing to do.  Having a year with no job or affiliation your resume looks terrible, and it doesn't matter if you tell people that traveling unemployed was your choice, no one will believe you.  Actually, it's probably better if they don't because if they do believe you, it will just make you look like more of a flake.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like an especially bad plan, since there's an obviously superior option, which is wait another year to get your degree; I'm not sure I recommend this either (it depends a lot on whether it will annoy your advisor), but in general taking a year off before graduating is much better than taking a year off afterwards.  When you complete your degree is your timestamp; it will stick with you for the rest of your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T18:46:48.813" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12501" CreationDate="2013-09-11T20:09:58.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer with a view from the other side (I.e. as a recruiting professor). Getting mention of a mutual acquaintance in an application email (or cover letter) is not so common. Most often, I find out about those from reading the CV (former student of mine was PhD advisor, for example) or by getting a separate recommendation (or follow-up) by email directly from our mutual friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I did recently receive such an application mentioning a common acquaintance, and I must admit it was a nice touch. I definitely will bring up the subject with said acquaintance in the net future, checking for his views on the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording was &quot;light&quot;: &quot;I heard a lot of good things about your research group by XXX, who is an officemate in my current group&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T20:09:58.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12606" CreationDate="2013-09-12T01:40:01.247" Score="12" ViewCount="3009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper that was accepted and is already in press (you can download a PDF online), and I have already filled out the copyright transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher allows uploading preprint versions (including revisions after reviewer comments) to repositories such as arXiv, but is it ok to do so at this stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8584" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T17:44:15.803" Title="Is it ok to submit a paper to arXiv after copyright transfer?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12603" CreationDate="2013-09-12T02:29:55.260" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a situation where you have to read what the copyright transfer agreement the journal had you sign (physically or digitally). That document is part of your publication contract so it is what you officially agreed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last time I read one was, I think, an AIP journal and it had a paragraph on pre-print servers in general and arXiv in particular stating exactly which version of the paper was permissible to post. The language was &quot;the author retains the rights to post [such and such version]...&quot; so I could have posted that paper to arXiv after publication legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T02:29:55.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10931" CreationDate="2013-09-12T04:03:54.643" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professor in a top ten math dept. in the US.  I have sat on admissions committees for many years, and talked to colleagues at other top tier institutions about admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: admissions is not done by a &quot;bureacracy&quot;, or &quot;officers&quot;.  It is done by some subset of the math dept. faculty, who read the applications, including the letters, the GRE scores, the transcripts, and the essay, and then rank order them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: To get to a top institution, high GRE scores are essential.  These don't guarantee admission by any means, but if someone can't get high scores on this exam, it calls into question their understanding of all the basic undergrad math they've learnt.   It's true that different schools (and different faculty members, even at a given school) place different weights on this exam, but doing well on it is something you have some control over in the admissions process (by preparing well), so it makes sense to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your GPA in your math courses is also very important.  Presumably you are doing your best in your courses, and getting as high a GPA as possible.  So there is no real magic to this; you just have to work hard at learning math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: Assuming that your GPA and GRE scores put you in the ball-park of being a credible candidate for admission, people will read your letters carefully.  So you want to get letter writers who can write about your achievements and abilities in as much detail as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth: No-one expects undergrads to have done real research; REU experience certainly helps, but one main reason for this is that it provides a way to meet professors who may get to know you quite well, and so can (hopefully) write a strong letter for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth: Graduate courses certainly help, if your grade in them is good and meaningful.  It is often the case that undergrads in grad courses will be given somewhat inflated grades out of sympathy on the part of the instructor.  This makes sense from the point of view of not destroying someone's GPA because they took a challenging class, but an admissions committee will look for evidence that the undergrad really did master the material in the grad classes they have taken.  One way to show this is to have the instructor of the graduate class write a (hopefully positive) letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, different schools have different expectations about what incoming students will know.  At the absolute top places (Harvard, Princeton) essentially all the incoming students will know essentially all the material in basic graduate courses (measure theory and functional analysis, basic algebraic topology, basic commutative algebra, and so on).  At other places this is not the case, but most incoming students at most top schools will be familiar with a reasonable percentage of what would be regarded as basic graduate math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sixth:&#xA;In terms of preparation for grad school, writing a senior thesis is great.  It teaches you about a topic in much more depth than you would normally investigate it, normally leads to learning some grad level math, and also again builds a closer connection with a professor (your advisor) who can then hopefully write a good letter for you.   And at a more fundamental level, since mathematicians spend most of their time writing about mathematics, this is pretty good preparation for that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as applications to grad school go (rather than as preparation for succeeding in graduate school, where as I've said it's great), my sense is that the real pay-off for writing a senior thesis is the letter from the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a bit harder to quantify than entries on a transcript, often students are advised to take grad classes rather than write a senior thesis (if this option exists).  I can see why this advice is given, but I do think writing a senior thesis (if you put your heart into it) is an invaluable mathematical experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related option is to do independent study on a topic with a faculty member. Again, from the pragmatic point of view this doesn't do much for your transcript, but the benefits for your mathematical education are similar to those of writing a senior thesis, if you have a good advisor and take the independent study seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: Remember that there are lots graduate schools in mathematics.  What I've written above more-or-less reflects admissions experience at top ten institutions, but obviously there are many more very good math programs out there, and they are not all as competitive as the top ten.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall, the most sensible thing to do is to work on learning as much math as you can as well as you can, and interacting with your professors enough that they know what you're learning and can write about it.  I think the only things that are really worth thinking about in terms of &quot;gaming&quot; the admissions process are attending an REU or doing independent study or writing a senior thesis, something that gives you a chance to interact with a professor, and a specific topic, in more depth; and making sure you study well for the GRE before you take it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8585" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T04:03:54.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12603" CreationDate="2013-09-12T07:39:30.103" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The publisher allows uploading preprint versions (including revisions after reviewer comments)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're allowed to do it, you are allowed to do it. &lt;strong&gt;To be 100% sure, check the text of the copyright transfer agreement&lt;/strong&gt;, where these policies are spelt out. Or, if you don't like reading legal text so much, &lt;strong&gt;it is summarized for many publishers in a nice color code at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php&quot;&gt;SHERPA/Romeo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T07:39:30.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12608" CreationDate="2013-09-12T08:26:26.490" Score="25" ViewCount="79005" Body="&lt;p&gt;US universities have a tendency to name chairs after people. Just to give a few examples from Harvard: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/05/the-oldest-endowed-professorship/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hollis Professor of Divinity&lt;/a&gt; (love that title), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2013/08/29_steven-and-maureen-klinsky-endow-professorship.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steven and Maureen Klinsky Professorship of Practice for Leadership and Progress&lt;/a&gt; (too long to fit on business card), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2009/11/johnson-perkins-named-to-endowed-chairs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the people whom the chairs are named after are rich and donated money to the school in the past. What I do not understand is in what aspects it changes the nature of the position. Are these chairs more highly regarded that just being &quot;Professor of Divinity&quot; for example? Are they better paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="51867" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T18:18:10.127" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T09:09:32.537" Title="What is an endowed chair exactly? How does it compare to a “normal” position?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12607" CreationDate="2013-09-12T09:37:17.987" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chaired positions are generally &lt;em&gt;endowed&lt;/em&gt;, in that the money provided for the salary, and some other benefits (e.g., a dedicated assistant) or increased research funds comes from the interest on principal donated by the person or people the chair is named after, which is part of the school's overall endowment (&lt;a href=&quot;https://foundation.ucsd.edu/accounting/how-endowment-works.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UC San Diego has a more broad definition&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor#Tenured_and_tenure-track_positions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as does Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). Being named to a chair is a prestigious award, and in many cases it is a lifetime (or at least, until retirement) position. Some chaired positions are given on a rotating basis (e.g., for five years), but nonetheless it is prestigious to be named to an endowed chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is not strictly true that professors in chaired positions are paid more (because in most cases pay is negotiable), because universities use a combination of pay and incentives such as an endowed chair to lure highly sought-after candidates, the pay is probably on average higher than the average non-chaired full professor would have at the same institution and department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some schools use chairs at the university level (versus the departmental or school level) that they dole out throughout the university. The positions can therefore be used as an enabler for some departments with less money to attract particularly important faculty members that they might not have had an opportunity to attract otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a specific example of the policy for endowed chairs at one university (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpi.edu/dept/provost/Policy%20-%20Chaired%20Professor%20Positions.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="99421" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T09:09:32.537" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T09:09:32.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12613" CreationDate="2013-09-12T16:57:56.867" Score="9" ViewCount="8393" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common that people add their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; profile in their resumes. On the other hand, they add profiles (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/a&gt;) counting publications, citations, and showing factors such as &lt;code&gt;h-index&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; is something in-between, but I have not seen if anyone add his/her &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; profile link in resume. Is it because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; is young and not popular, or it is not technically convenient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T08:55:14.653" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T02:30:43.717" Title="Adding ResearchGate profile to Resume?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12578" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:00:26.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best chalkboard, if you can afford it, is slate. It is the combination of grain consistency and durability that allows the consistent accretion of chalk on the surface of the board. The only reason it is not used is that it is prohibitively expensive and either heavy or fragile, depending on the depth of the slate. I suppose this could be improved with a non-flexible backing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8595" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T19:00:26.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:02:54.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The different services such as Researcher ID, ResearchGate, LinkedIn have not generally caught on in application processes (I am sure there are several exceptions). I am, however, sure these will become more common. To use the &lt;em&gt;h&lt;/em&gt;-index provided in ResearcherID is one way to get a relative standard measure, compared to one calculated by each individual. Hence, I am sure these linkable sources will become more common in application procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use researcherID in my CV and am now on ResearchGate and will use their measures as well. Since they are official checkable soures I think they serve well in CVs. In my case, however, I have noticed that maybe 5-10% of the citations I can find in Web of Science cannot be found through Researcher ID, this is because some references occure as several entries due to errors in peoples reference lists etc. I believe it is possible to send in error reports to Web of Science to get corrections made. This means that the total number of citations through, for example, ResearcherID may be smaller than what you think you should have. But since this problem likely affects everyone in a similar way the values are still comparable, at least that is howI think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think it is fair and very useful to list these measures that can be independently checked. You could (should) check your field to see what services are often used and perhaps focus on those first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T09:22:29.113" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T09:22:29.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12622" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:15:45.930" Score="1" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is in a similar vein as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11149/what-are-the-potential-pitfalls-of-having-a-phd&quot;&gt;What are the potential pitfalls of having a PhD&lt;/a&gt;, but where that was specifically targeted as entering industry, this is targeted at becoming a lecturer of STEM education (effectively a 'teacher-trainer').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an actual example*, I have completed a PhD in atmospheric physics (with a bit of programming thrown in) and 14 year high school teaching experience, I have applied to be a STEM Education lecturer - will that PhD be considered too specialised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**note: this is just a real life example, not a self help question.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T05:25:54.250" Title="Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education, even with relevant practical experience?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;stem&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2013-09-12T20:40:24.720" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the reason ResearcherID is sometimes used on CV's is because &lt;strong&gt;it's a quick way to link to (and host centrally) your publication list as well as bibliometric information&lt;/strong&gt; (h-index, number of citations, etc.). I also see people use Google Scholar as an alternative service for that, although the quality of citation data is not as good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/strong&gt;, it may be field-dependent. I see a large number of people around me (chemical engineering, both academic and industrial) semi-actively using it, i.e. maintaining a network of peers and getting the occasional introduction/reference through it. I do not often see it used in CV's, however. It is clearly used for &lt;strong&gt;networking&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/strong&gt;, as you stated, is neither here nor there. It's not very widely used yet, and rather aims to be a &quot;Facebook for researchers&quot;: it is centered around papers, comments and discussion. While it can be used to host a publication list, &lt;strong&gt;the metrics it offers access to are not commonly used and, one must say, rather opaque&lt;/strong&gt;. I think that's why it has little value to add to a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T20:40:24.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2013-09-12T23:23:06.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are certainly good, too, and/but my reaction is that choices of epigraphs are like poetry or philosophy written when one is young... just seem silly later. Now, yes, the same seemingly-proscriptive criterion can be applied to almost all human activities... but/and the question really becomes whether one plans to be indulgent, later, of the young self, or whether one will be annoyed or regretful or embarrassed. Meanwhile, other people, at their own analogous stages, will perceive youthful choices of epigrams as just that... probably not as necessarily either greatly entertaining or profound, any more than philosophizing or humor of every age-demographic seems insightful or funny to other demographics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T23:23:06.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12624" CreationDate="2013-09-13T00:46:41.253" Score="36" ViewCount="153187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that the salary of a postdoctoral fellow depends on the field, project, contract, and so forth, but I am curious how much is the normal range for a fellow. Someone told me that he prefer to continue postdoctoral fellowship, as he gets the same salary of assistant professorship with less official duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the range of salary for a postdoctoral fellow is much less than an assistant professor, something between $25,000 - $50,000. In Europe, it is in the lower side, but it is usually higher in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious to know what is the actual rate, and is there a norm for estimating the salary of a postdoctoral fellow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, when looking at postdoctoral openings, how much is an excellent/good/normal deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T16:38:30.590" LastActivityDate="2018-11-03T15:40:42.257" Title="How much is the normal salary of a postdoctoral fellow in North America and Western Europe?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11749" CreationDate="2013-09-13T02:40:06.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can ask your current advisor (the easy-going guy), to be your co-supervisor. This is done by many Ph.D. students and sometimes the co-supervisor is even from a university in a different country. It could be a good solution to work under the supervision of this expert in your area and at the same time maintain the collaboration with your current supervisor with whom you get on so well. That's what my supervisor suggested for my future Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8565" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T02:40:06.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12630" CreationDate="2013-09-13T04:18:37.853" Score="5" ViewCount="1081" Body="&lt;p&gt;Endowed professorship is very common, but the financial endowment normally comes from external sources. Is it also common that a professor/research endow his/her position to establish a research group in the target university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be an excellent approach for mid-level professors/researchers who can establish a research group in a top university (where it is normally hard to get that position) and get research fund from external sources such as industry and funding agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of mutual benefit for both the university and professor, but I have not heard about such positions. Is it uncommon or just through private contracts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Apparently, I confused endowed and named chair with research professor. I asked the question about research professor &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12640/how-to-get-a-research-professor-position&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. However, I still do not see a contradiction between research professor and self-endowed professor. Does a endowed chair must be necessary result of a huge donation to university? or a foundation can merely fund a professor position. If it is the latter case, one should be able to fund his own endowed position too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:26:18.403" Title="Self-endowed chair in the US and Europe" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-09-13T04:19:52.387" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;@All,&#xA;I can only give you some examples. In most areas in physics, in the USA, the postdoc salary ranges from 36000-45000US$ for most universities. Some high-ranked universities pay as much as 60000$ too to their physics postdocs, with an exception of Simons Center which pays 70000$. On the other hand, national labs pay around 70000$ for their physics postdocs - I don't know why the difference between the university payscale and the national lab payscales in the same country for the same field!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK it is fairly uniform for any field, at least in science and engineering. It is usually between £29000 to £33000 per year. Where you lie in this range depends on how many years you have passed after your Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, they usually pay 60000-70000 AUD + 9% (if the contract is for short term - I don't know if the short term means 1 year or less than 3 years though) or 17% (if the contract is for 3 years or more) superannuation, i.e., retirement fund. Again, there are precise rules on where you lie in this range depending on years after the PhD date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In South Africa, it is somewhere between 180000-240000 Rand per year tax-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In New Zealand, you may expect the salary around 50000-60000 NZ$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany the salary levels seemed complicated to me when I was applying as there are many kinds of taxes and you may avoid some if you are married and have child etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Brazil, you may expect around US$14000 for the national postdoc fellowship (52000BRL). With month life cost of US$1073 (3966BRL )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me, the postdoc life is miserable if you are in most universities in the USA and have even a small family to support. In my experience, Australia or the UK where the salaries are uniform and above the national averages for the fresh engineers (or other professionals), your life can be much more pleasant -  well unless you are in the expensive area in Sydney or London!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brazil seems excellent too but I can't speak Portuguese !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Forgot about Ireland. The salaries are around €35000 per year. I used to get paid around €43000 per year (each every expenses like insurance, taxes, 'levy' which was another kind of tax, etc. were on me though) in 2009-2010, however I would think the salary levels have gone lower after the credit crunch in which Ireland has been affected the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also mention that most postdocs in Math departments in the USA are paid 48000-55000 US$ per year but they have to teach 2 courses a year or so whereas the physics postdocs don't teach at all (if they teach then they get more money than their salary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in Japan and South Korea the salaries are around US$40000 (converting. their local currencies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8123" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-11-03T15:40:42.257" LastActivityDate="2018-11-03T15:40:42.257" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12614" CreationDate="2013-09-13T05:25:54.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education? [with teaching and research duties]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not call it a &quot;pitfall,&quot; per se, but rather you'll have to do some convincing that you're qualified to research in the field of education. I applied for a couple of similar positions (with somewhat similar experience and education as you, though with about half the number of years teaching high school), and the guidance I received was that I needed to demonstrate that I had a &quot;research arc&quot; (or research strategy) that was consistent with the research goals of the position. Having a good deal of teaching experience may have given me an edge as far as the teaching duties were concerned, but I only had one publication in the education pedagogy realm, and that (among other things, presumably) was not enough to make me competitive for the positions (i.e., I didn't get the jobs). In fact, it probably was the case that most applicants for such a position spent time teaching at the secondary level, and my experience there was a wash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: if you are asked to write a research statement, make sure it is highly targeted towards the position, and try to have a long-term approach to the research question or questions you discuss. Relating it back to your hard-science degree may be difficult, so leverage as much of the teaching experience you can to inform the statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T05:25:54.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-09-13T08:02:50.303" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's find some official numbers and statistics. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23512-postdoc-payday-salaries-for-fellows-are-on-the-up.html#.UjLASBbvaE0&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a baseline, in 2012, &lt;strong&gt;the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award (NRSA) postdoctoral stipend for new postdocs was $39,264&lt;/strong&gt;, increasing to $54,180 for those with seven or more years of experience. Funding levels at universities are broadly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-doc salary guidelines depend on individual institutions, and benefits vary widely from place to place. In addition to salary, checking the benefits is important in the US, but less important in more civilized/socialistic (strike out the inapplicable term) countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salarylist.com/jobs/PostDoctoral-Fellow-Salary.htm&quot;&gt;A job site&lt;/a&gt; that gathers salary information from US job advertisements has the following for post-doctoral fellowships:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Post-Doctoral Fellow average salary is $39,302, &lt;strong&gt;median salary is $38,000&lt;/strong&gt; with a salary range from $20,779 to $961,896.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's safe to say that $961,896 is an outlier, but apart from that, the median matches  the NRSA number. It also shows that there is a broad range of salaries, even by browsing the job listings on that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Europe, as I've said the situation is heterogeneous. I know how to find numbers for &lt;strong&gt;UK&lt;/strong&gt;, at least. If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobs.ac.uk&quot;&gt;jobs postings from jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt; for post-doctoral positions, the range appears to be &lt;strong&gt;£28,000 – £37,000&lt;/strong&gt; (apart from a few outliers). This would be roughly $44,000 – $58,000, but you have to adjust for taxes, health insurance, and then cost of living (which can be quite high in UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;France&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnrs.fr&quot;&gt;CNRS&lt;/a&gt; is the largest scientific employer, and its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cnrs.fr/sites/band/fichier/w_2007_gb_web.pdf&quot;&gt;post-doc salary&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The gross monthly salary of a CNRS postdoc is &lt;strong&gt;2,500 €&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As an anecdote, when I started as assistant professor, my salary was significantly lower than my post-doc salary. And even some of my post-docs in my group had higher pay than me (as well as some industry-employed PhD students). But money's not everything…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T08:02:50.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:19:36.473" Score="7" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my thesis there are 7 chapters. Each chapter contains many nomenclatures and symbols. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nomenclature:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Monte Carlo (MC)&lt;/code&gt; simulation is wonderful. &lt;code&gt;MC&lt;/code&gt; is a stochastic process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 2/3/../7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to re-expand the nomenclatures at the beginning of each chapter or expanding at the chapter 1 (or first occurrence) is enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symbol:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Same question applies for Symbols also. For example, &lt;code&gt;Temperature (T)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: Apart from the above, the list of abbreviations and symbols is a must in the thesis as per institute guideline.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:37:26.507" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:37:26.507" Title="Nomenclatures and symbols expansion in text" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12620" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:19:38.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe sounds like a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Research_professor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in the US system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A professor who does not take on all of the classic duties of a professor, but instead focuses on research. At most universities, research professors are not eligible for tenure and &lt;strong&gt;must fund their salary entirely through research grants&lt;/strong&gt;, with no regular salary commitment from internal university sources. In parallel with tenure-track faculty ranks, there are assistant and associate research professor positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious drawback is that it puts enormous pressure on grant finding, with no tenure and thus no job security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:19:38.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12627" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:31:47.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike papers, theses are longer and typically not read in full (someone is going to say “typically not read at all”, but if you are writing yours, please don't listen to these people!). So &lt;strong&gt;expanding acronyms for the first time in each chapter makes sense&lt;/strong&gt;. On the other hand, people who will read chapter 4 of your thesis are probably experts, and so &lt;strong&gt;they already know the common acronyms in your field&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Monte Carlo (MC) is trivially used by anyone who knows molecular simulations and wouldn't need to be expanded more than once. On the other hand, acronyms of less common methods might warrant expansion once per chapter: Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC), Self-Learning Adaptive Umbrella Sampling (SLAUS), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution is to include &lt;strong&gt;a list of abbreviations and symbols at the end&lt;/strong&gt; of your thesis!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:31:47.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12620" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:35:09.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Endowed professorship typically are the result of a large donation of money to the university that allows them to fully fund a position in perpetuity based on the earnings on the initial donation. This is generally much larger than what an individual can bring in from external sources. If you manage to bring in that type of income, you will likely have little problem obtaining a permanent position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of one independently wealthy individual who made a large enough donation to establish his own professorship. Basically he spent a small fraction of his wealth (which would be a large fraction of the wealth of most academics) to become a full professor with minimal teaching and service duties. His research was funded from his charitable foundation and I believe the foundation paid the standard overhead rates. He was reasonably productive throughout his entire career and probably could have obtained a professorship without using his personal wealth, but given the competitive nature of the job market and limited availability of positions, probably not at the institution of his choosing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:35:09.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12627" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:58:47.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition towhat has already been said, you should consider whether all abbreviations are necessary. Some are part of jargon but sometimes you see something abbreviated only to be used, say, twice. In such a case it is unnecessary. My advice is to be relatively restrictive with new abbreviations and ones that are not used very frequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think there is a tendency to over-use abbreviations and making wise decisions of when to use them and when not to use them should be part of all scientific writing. In the days when papers were printed on paper there may have been an incentive to make the text shorter but with digital publications, this is no longer really the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you should re-introduce some abbreviations in each chapter, I think it is a matter of style and taste. The purpose of reiterating the explanation would be if you think the use is rare so that the reader would forget about them between occurrences. Then it may be useful to drop them altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variables are slightly different. You should only need to provide an explanation once. That in addition with a list of variables should be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a comment, in your example you abbreviate Monte Carlo simulation as MC and in the second sentence you essentially say &quot;Monte Carlo is a stochastic process&quot; (it is a place). You should use MCS to make the abbreviation full and not subject to misinterpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:58:47.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12553" CreationDate="2013-09-13T13:16:42.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it is definitely possible, as I have students who did it. But it really depends on the type of position sought: position advertisements usually list a &lt;strong&gt;“level of experience required”, so be sure to check it&lt;/strong&gt; before applying, and possible taylor your application/interview in response to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Regarding &lt;em&gt;“without using inter-personal connections”&lt;/em&gt;, I'm not sure how to interpret that. Surely during your PhD, and your job search, you have met (will meet) people at various places. Why would you refuse to use these people to help your application, or your inside knowledge of position openings in a given company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T13:16:42.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12691" CreationDate="2013-09-13T13:22:57.637" Score="5" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a piece of work, mainly studying some theory developed in a particular article. I did my best to be clear whether it was one of my own comment concerning the subject or material, eventually rephrased, coming from the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now, I &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to copy a large section from the article. There is no point in modifying the section, it is actually a list of hypothesis written in a mathematical fashion, and rephrasing it would be unclear. So well, maybe I changed a bit the formulation of a few things, or changed the order of the list to fit the way I present the things, but really cosmetic changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I cite that ? I guess (as it is not exactly copy/paste) no &quot;&quot;, but then what ? I already mentioned that the whole work was closely related to the article, but I feel uncomfortable copying the section without knowing how to reference it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4448" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T22:15:36.733" Title="How to properly reference a source when almost exact copy?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12633" CreationDate="2013-09-13T13:29:12.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copying is of course not good. But, it is always possible to use a quote. This can be done by either use quotes or in your case to state that you are providing a copy of the list provided by the author.. In your case I think you can easily say something like &quot;Following &quot;cited author&quot; (yyyy) we can define the problem as ...&quot; and then follow up by rewriting the list you mention. It should then be very clear that what you write follows what the cited author has written. The exact phrasing might be slightly different but along the lines I outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T13:35:12.840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T13:35:12.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12637" CreationDate="2013-09-13T14:22:11.533" Score="15" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my PhD thesis in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens frequently that I use results that I don't have a reference for except&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;textbooks stating &quot;it is easily seen that ...&quot; or &quot;it is well-known that...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is stated on Wikipedia (without proof)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have derived it with colleagues or people from Q&amp;amp;A sites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I try to find a source for some time, before I write down a proof by myself. However, most probably, there has been an earlier mention of this result that I could  reference instead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8601" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T15:44:45.767" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T15:44:45.767" Title="How do I cite a result that I've only seen stated without a proof, and I prove myself?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12635" CreationDate="2013-09-13T14:45:17.877" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a textbook-level result, you could just &lt;strong&gt;cite a textbook&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, if you derived it yourself or with colleagues, no citation is required unless you published that proof earlier (not likely if it's a minor one). But you should definitely &lt;strong&gt;thank the people who helped&lt;/strong&gt; in acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that &lt;strong&gt;there is a threshold for citation&lt;/strong&gt;: if a result is trivial, and as such is likely to have been independently demonstrated by many people over time, with no clear historical/seminal work, then you do not need to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T14:45:17.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:06:47.503" Score="-3" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among institutions that will be hiring professors of mathematics, how can one identify those which attract students that want to learn? When looking for a job, how can you identify institutions whose values / mindset / pedagogy suit you best? &lt;strong&gt;How to find an institution where it would be normal for students to show up for the material in the course, rather than treating it as a price they pay to get a grade?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7229" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T21:10:42.333" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T03:55:36.200" Title="Finding institutions that attract students who want to learn" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-09-14T16:29:56.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12481" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:19:35.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll self answer, because I realized just now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COCA&lt;/a&gt; (The Corpus of Contemporary American English) actually includes academic texts (a subpart of the corpus they refer to as COCA-Academic). It even allows one to search by section, for example restricting the search to academic works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ElW0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and it was right under my nose the whole time!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:19:35.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12640" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12644" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:22:48.920" Score="9" ViewCount="8287" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since universities do not normally pay the salary of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Research_professor&quot;&gt;research professor&lt;/a&gt;, and salary along with research funding comes from external resources, this not a paid position. On the other hand, a few people are interested in a job without a secured salary (or a few researchers are confident enough to get enough funding to secure their salary too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, universities do not advertise for hiring &lt;code&gt;research professors&lt;/code&gt; (at least, I do not see in job websites). Therefore, it should be based on private negotiation. Logically, universities should not have limitation for the number of research professors, as they do not pay their salaries. If they can obtain fund, it is good for them, if not, the university loses nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the aforementioned circumstances, I guess, potential researchers should start this negotiation. If yes, how this negotiation is normally started? A potential research professor contacts the university President, Vice President for Research, Dean, Department Chair with a proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the procedure for hiring a research professor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T16:40:09.810" Title="How to get a research professor position?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12640" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:38:07.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different institutions will have different procedures. Some of them handle it case-by-case, but in other places there are actual formal recruiting procedures and call for applications. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dof.tamu.edu/content/research-professor-hiring-guidelines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Texas A&amp;amp;M’s guidelines&lt;/a&gt; on hiring research professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:38:07.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12638" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:50:43.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to go to the root of the question: when looking for a job, how can you identify institutions whose values / mindset / pedagogy suit you best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's actually a tough question, and one faced by elementary and high school teachers more often than by academics. Probably because higher education deals with adults willing to learn (overall), and so giving individual teachers a lot more freedom is usually fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a tough question to solve, because an institution is a complex organism, and it does not have a single mindset. So you should identify keep people in the organization who are responsible for setting the tone: department chair, head of the program(s) you will teach in, head of the recruiting committee. Those people effectively determine, large and by, what the attitude of the students will be (and the response to students whose attitude is deemed unacceptable). So, you want to have a chat with these people, and make sure you feel like working with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:50:43.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:54:36.460" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math in the US postdocs generally pay between 40K and 70K with the bulk between 45K and 60K.  The AMS has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2009Survey-StartSal.pdf&quot;&gt;survey data and graphs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T15:54:36.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12640" CreationDate="2013-09-13T16:40:09.810" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to realize is that within the same department a tenure track/tenured position is usually more desirable than a soft money position (what you are calling a research professor). Soft money positions tend to have less responsibilities (e.g., teaching and service) but at many research oriented universities TT staff can use grant money to buy out of teaching and service. In fact those on soft money positions often pick up the residual work thereby making their grant money go further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also realize that most departments do not want lots of soft money staff. There are often physical space constraints. Soft money staff can potentially push a department in a direction it is not interested in which can lead to social and political issues. There is also the issue of graduate students. Most people on soft money positions want to have access to graduate students but this can syphon off students and funds from TT staff and provide less security for the students (e.g., when the soft money runs out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, realize that most departments actually care about their staff. When soft money positions have a gap in funding, the members of a department often try and cover the shortfall. The ability to attract the best soft money candidates depends on the past history of how soft money staff have been treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer you question, at the highest I would contact the Department Chair. No Department Chair wants to hear from the Dean that they should consider someone. No Dean has the time to read CVs of candidates that are not good enough for a TT position. Even better is to contact a TT staff member in the department that you would like to work with. the best soft money positions are ones in which the individual is not isolated from the rest of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T16:40:09.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12647" CreationDate="2013-09-13T19:42:21.010" Score="7" ViewCount="1357" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good academic job normally needs excellent recommendation. Due to the rapid growth of higher education, there are too many vacancies (in new or expanding universities) and too many applicants (growing number of graduates). As a result, each vacancy receives many applications, and each applicant need to apply for many positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how the matchmaking system works: keeps submitting applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, online systems are replacing hardcopy applications, still many universities prefer application by mail, and more often, they ask for recommendation letters to be submitted by mail. I have seen this very common in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, each job-seeking scholar must ask his/her colleagues, professors, etc to submit tens of recommendation letters by mail. Owing to the fact that every famous scholar has/had many students/colleagues. Therefore, a part of this schedule must be devoted to writing recommendation letters for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that people need recommendation for other purposes such as grant proposal, admission application, fellowship, etc; this matter must be more serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in online systems, a busy scholar may receive emails for completing recommendations on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My questions are:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From the applicant part: isn't it bad/rude/harsh to ask a colleague/professor to write tens of recommendations for you to find an academic position. And keep asking for recommendations for prospective proposals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From the reference part: isn't it annoying to deal with repeatedly recommendation requests? Ignoring a recommendation request may have bad consequences for the applicant, but it is not easy to see recommendation request every day checking the emails, as an old student/colleague is strongly seeking a new position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T23:56:00.633" Title="How do people manage recommendation letters?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12645" CreationDate="2013-09-13T19:49:54.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No it is not rude but there is a matter of fatigue in the end. the professor might just say &quot;enough&quot; at some point. Usually the letters will also be fairly similar so that each is largely composed of the same text but with smaller alterations tailored to the specific job application. Another trick is to ask the applicant to write a basic text covering what the applicant wishes the letter to cover. It is then easier to use that text and make modifications as one pleases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the applicant has more than one person to ask for references. Writing such letters is, at least in my sphere, something you are supposed to do, unless it inflicts severe effects on other activities. Yes, it is annoying at times,particularly if the request is such that one needs to complete the letter &quot;yesterday&quot;. Hence providing some time will alleviate the discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T23:56:00.633" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T23:56:00.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-09-13T20:16:41.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give a lower-end answer, the worst position in France is &quot;demi-ATER&quot;: it is a half position in the sense that you have half as much teaching duty than professors (about 4 hours a week on average, for about 24 weeks), but you are usually expected to work full time, research included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is paid less than 1200 Euros per month, net before taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full ATER position is as much teaching as professors, with a month salary of approximately 1600 Euros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T20:16:41.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-13T21:23:35.957" Score="2" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the journals similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/jceda8/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Chemical Education&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which are helpful from middle school through graduate school? I mean the journals which publish articles which are good resources for learning the basics (complementary to books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note: The journals need not be necessarily in the field of Chemistry]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T07:39:57.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T07:39:57.730" Title="Journals similar to Journal of Chemical Education in style" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-01-27T23:23:10.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12655" CreationDate="2013-09-13T21:30:04.717" Score="3" ViewCount="58253" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past (historically), &lt;code&gt;A+&lt;/code&gt; was a bonus in transcript and had an effect on the cumulative GPA too, but it is no common these days (at least I do not see around). If some universities/colleges use &lt;code&gt;A+&lt;/code&gt; in the transcript, but it is equally considered as an &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; in calculating the GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;code&gt;A+&lt;/code&gt; obsolete in the US universities/colleges? or because they use it for rare occasions, we do not normally see it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, are there still universities using &lt;code&gt;A+&lt;/code&gt;, and equaling it to &lt;code&gt;4.3&lt;/code&gt; in calculating the GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T22:55:38.607" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T00:18:49.350" Title="A+ in transcript and GPA" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2018-06-25T13:23:56.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2013-09-13T21:43:24.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think A+ is used, but not very often. For GPA purposes, A and A+ are usually equal, but A+ is a rarer grade. Sometimes, A+ is used for 96 and higher. Personally, 97 and higher would merit an A+ if I was doing the grading, but that's just my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7329" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T21:43:24.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2013-09-13T22:14:33.777" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;How an A+ is treated varies from school to school. In the traditional American grading system, an &quot;A&quot; contributes a 4.0 to one's GPA, an &quot;A-&quot; contributes a 3.7, a &quot;B+&quot; contributes a 3.3, a &quot;B&quot; contributes 3.0, etc. In many universities, 4.0 represents the maximum possible GPA, and so an A+, although it may appear on the transcript next to a course, also only contributes 4.0 to one's GPA. At other universities (such as e.g. Columbia), an A+ contributes 4.3 to one's GPA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this matters very much of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T22:14:33.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12650" CreationDate="2013-09-13T22:53:02.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am a regular reader of &lt;em&gt;J. Chem. Ed.&lt;/em&gt;, I wouldn't really say it's a good journal to read for learning the basics. It is more a journal of &lt;em&gt;educators in the field of chemistry&lt;/em&gt;, and while I think some articles may be useful to chemistry students (including lab experiments and activities), overall its goal is to be a forum to discuss how we teach chemistry, rather than a place to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other journals about chemical education, you can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry_education#Academic_journals_on_chemistry_education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a very short list on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. Also, as stated there, most such journals (especially for junior or high school chemical education) are localized, i.e. limited to a specific country (because of differences in curricula). Among the international ones, I would recommend &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/education/eic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Education in Chemistry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which is more readable than its sister journal &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/journalissues/rp#!recentarticles&amp;amp;all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemistry Education Research and Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T07:38:07.443" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T07:38:07.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12638" CreationDate="2013-09-14T01:26:28.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might just as well ask how to find a planet where... There is only one answer: create it around you. Your problem is that you want some &quot;universal behavior&quot;, which exists neither in a community college, nor in an Ivy League institution. F'x told you what to look at to avoid &quot;totally hopeless&quot; places (and answered the second of your 3 questions as well) but, in all honesty, you can find decent students to work with almost anywhere if you look for them and if you are an interesting enough teacher to make them look for you. I admit that the general attitude in the calculus classrooms is not something that makes me rejoice either, but I have no other students for you today and I doubt anybody does if you request them en masse. Find your consolation in the fact that it takes 5 professors working pretty hard to educate one good student and it takes one cashier in the registrar office to collect money from 1000 bad ones, so concentrate on the first part of the job trying not to miss too many, and just leave the second part to the office clerks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know that it is pretty frustrating that if you try to be &quot;nice&quot;, you cannot call the things by their names and if you call them by their names, it is hard not to &quot;rant&quot;, so I tried to address directly the point you were trying to make ignoring the style of the question completely. Some more experienced people may be able to give you a better advice, but my 2 cents are here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T01:26:28.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12638" CreationDate="2013-09-14T03:55:36.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you found &lt;em&gt;an institution where it would be normal for students to show up for the material in the course, rather than treating it as a price they pay to get a grade&lt;/em&gt;. And then you go to that institution to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One year later, the department chair steps down. The dean of the college goes to another institution. Everythings changes. All of a sudden, the new rule/guide says students presence must be included in grading. What are you going to do? Follow it? Don't care? Dis-follow it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is meaningless to me. I would concentrate on my own job, i.e. teach and research if I were you. I don't have total control to the external environment although I can have influence to some extent. If I can use my influence, I'll do. If I can't, I either quit or stay. No matter what, teaching my students math is the most important thing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T03:55:36.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12666" CreationDate="2013-09-14T04:11:25.827" Score="4" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a conference, where I am an author, I noticed that there is a substantial fees for registering as a listener for the conference.(10-30% less than the fees for professionals, students etc  but it is still on higher side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this justified given that as an author I would like my work to be presented in front of as many people as possible and receive comments for the same. Is this common practice in conferences across Computer Science or any other field ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T18:56:31.283" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T18:56:31.283" Title="Is listener's fees in a conference justified?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2013-09-14T05:02:29.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student at State University of New York. For my first semester (I transferred from a community college) I got 4.03 GPA. I got three A's, one A-, and one A+.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So to answer your question: A+ is equaled to more than 4.0 GPA (I do not know if it is 4.3), it is rare and probably depends on your professor, but it is definitely not obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8607" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T05:02:29.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12663" CreationDate="2013-09-14T06:18:01.637" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason for fees is that there is a cost for renting the auditoriums and perhaps other services (refreshments, facilities etc.). Under such circumstances all participants need to pay to support the conference. Exactly how the pricing is done differs widely but in most cases it is based on costs divided by a certain number of projected participants in different categories. There are conferences which I have attended that seem horrendously expensive and are held in luxurious places with organizing services and then there are those run by a smaller society where making a cheap efficient meeting for the members by the members is a priority. In all cases you pay just to get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So pricing will vary depending on venue and organiser. Depending on how the conference is organized you may be able to gain some insights into how the costs come about and then make constructive comments to the organisers on how it should change; particularly if the organisers are a membership organisation where you are a member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T06:51:09.803" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T06:51:09.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12663" CreationDate="2013-09-14T07:47:05.350" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it justified?  Well, if people pay it, then yes. If they don't, then no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's any more complicated than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conference organisers want to earn a living by doing their job. Just as you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some will seek to make as much profit as possible. The market will decide whether or not they are succesful in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just the economics of the private sector within a mixed economy. So looking for a moral dimension is like dancing about architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T07:47:05.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12669" CreationDate="2013-09-14T07:55:05.430" Score="9" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a university appoints a faculty applicant, the rank is based on his/her current position or the university will judge about the academic rank independently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that each university has its own regulations for academic rank/promotion, but how much they consider the current position of an applicant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be a serious issue when an applicant comes from another country with a different academic system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it (even rarely) possible to appoint a currently full professor as assistant professor or vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:41:47.927" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:41:47.927" Title="Are faculty applicants hired at a level based on their current position?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12668" CreationDate="2013-09-14T08:06:41.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Details may vary but in essence the following applies (assuming it is a research/teaching university):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scientific publications&lt;/em&gt;. The list is judged on quality, usually determined by h-index, number of citations and publications per year in some combination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Funding&lt;/em&gt;. The ability of the applicant to attract funds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Academic experience&lt;/em&gt;. This could be anything from teaching through administrative tasks, within  a university or in international circles. the latter may be important since the person brings in a network of contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, it is possible that a department may look for a younger promising scientists to build a new environment and many positions may be strategic to expand a department or to strengthen it uncertain ways. Hence the current position may have very little influence on the appointment. It all boils down to what the department is looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is possible to employ a full professor as assistant or &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt;, is difficult to answer. generally, yes, but the meaning of full, associate, assistant professor varies and does not exist everywhere. So the picture is more complex here and I believe the search criteria is what is looked at. I can imagine, that being full professor may be a disadvantage if the position is looking for someone to be assistant but then it is up to the applicant to accept (or not) the conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-28T09:14:10.480" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T09:14:10.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T09:35:14.637" Score="2" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently an undergraduate student studying BEng (Hons) Software Engineering at University of Greenwich. I want to do masters but I am not sure what to do. I am a very talented software architect and programmer. I have two years worth of industrial experience (1 year at IBM and 1 year at NHS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in technical side of things in industry which is why I have been considering to do MEng Software Engineering. However, in future I want to move into management side of things while staying technical at the same time. My ambition is to become a CTO. What would you advise? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you advise me to do MEng Software Engineering and then MBA? Or shall I do MBA straight away after my software engineering undergraduate degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a bunch in advance. &#xA;Manthan Dave &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8609" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T09:55:11.773" Title="Management after Software Engineering undergraduate degree or separate management masters degree?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12670" CreationDate="2013-09-14T09:55:11.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, MEng Software Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to stay on technical side. Do MBA after you have more years of industrial experience if you think you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO depends on CTO for technical decision. CTO needs to have a lot technical knowledge. For example, you need to be able to tell one software architecture is better than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T09:55:11.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12678" CreationDate="2013-09-14T14:49:29.033" Score="2" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in Sweden and I'm currently in the second last year of &quot;Gymnasiet&quot; (Senior High School), years 16-18. In Sweden, the next step is &quot;Högskolan.&quot; Is that the same as undergraduate education in the US? Do I first need undergraduate education to attend a graduate school? Is there any difference between graduate and post-graduate education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8611" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:52:18.243" Title="US School System" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;sweden&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:27:16.427" Score="5" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research in an industrial organization. Now, I have written a paper describing my work and outcomes. The idea was completely envisaged by me and the paper was written solely be me.  It was an outcome of a funded research project, but the research done was no where in the scope of the work, and I managed to squeeze time to do this work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am confused on whom to include in my co-authors lists. &#xA;I have only one teammate, with whom I worked in the project but didn't take any help for doing this area of work and writing the paper. But I think he deserves to be a co-author since we discussed various related things. &#xA;I also gave the paper for review to my reporting officer who gave a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the problem is, I have two more level of hierarchy above my reporting officer one of them being the director of the organization. Would it be ethical to include their names as co-authors when no discussion was made with them regarding this or should they be acknowledged ?&#xA;Note: The usual practice in my organization is to keep your superiors name before yourself(some red tapism probably), and I have already violated that by keeping myself as first author(thanks to ASE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8612" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T16:00:37.363" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T16:00:37.363" Title="How many co-authors are enough?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12685" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:30:36.970" Score="7" ViewCount="1028" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume you are reading two academic papers every day. What strategies can I use to decrease the possibility of confusion between the two? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T13:18:05.520" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T19:35:29.300" Title="How to read 2 academic papers a day without confusion?" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;&lt;paperwork&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:44:40.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your teammate, it seems that you had exchange of ideas with him, and it is up to you to consider whether that consists of a scientific contribution to the final paper. Regarding your reporting officer, the description your currently have (&lt;em&gt;“a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing”&lt;/em&gt;) do not sound like &lt;strong&gt;significant scientific contributions&lt;/strong&gt; (which &#xA;is the commonly-used threshold for authorship determination; check with the journal or publisher's guidelines for your specific case). Your hierarchy, well, this doesn't sound like they contributed at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there is real life to consider, your organization's policies and customs, and your own contract. In a way, it might actually be easier for you not to have your teammate as co-author, in which case it is clear that the paper is &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt; (while the outcome of the work itself was the company's).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:44:40.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:45:08.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;People who have made no intellectual or scientific contribution to a paper should not be listed as authors. So, unless your upper-level supervisors have had an active role in designing the project, carrying it out, or writing the papers, they should be excluded. This is the practice normally carried out in corporate environments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:45:08.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12673" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:52:18.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stages of Gymnasiet and Högskolan correspond to the German Gymnasium and Hochschule, respectively. These do work out to the US high school and university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graduate education normally requires an undergraduate degree as a prerequisite. However, unlike in much of Europe, there is not the requirement that the bachelor's is required for a Master's in the same discipline. (That is, in the US, someone with a BS in chemistry can do a master's in chemical engineering; this is not normally possible in much of Europe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graduate and postgraduate both mean more or less the same thing in the US: education past the bachelor's level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:52:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:59:48.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guide lines suggested by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.mq.edu.au/about/research_@_macquarie/policies,_procedures_and_conduct/documents/Vancouver.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vancuver Protocol&lt;/a&gt; lists what should be the norm. It is evident that not everyoone abides by this protol and in some cases deviations may be fine. Take some time to study the protocol (the one linked or some other version) and make your mind up how you should abide. It is not always easy to know who to include and excluding peoplemay be evenharder because of a variety of reasons from personal to financial. The protocol at least provides a platform against which any such decision can be judged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:59:48.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12683" CreationDate="2013-09-14T17:23:43.147" Score="8" ViewCount="7995" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a co-author in a paper. How can attending a conference be beneficial to career and resume since I am not sure whether to attend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6589" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T18:54:30.527" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T08:37:40.803" Title="Advantages of attending a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T17:28:40.573" Score="3" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm required to submit my internship report in my university. Since the work involved is a work in progress and is yet to be published, is there a way I can mention somewhere that it is not for reproduction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6644" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T20:04:29.980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T20:04:29.980" Title="Internship report - any way to request discretion from reviewers for a to-be-published paper?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12680" CreationDate="2013-09-14T17:31:51.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since conferences are the places where new science results are typically first presented, going to conerences can be very rewarding. You will most likely get an overview of the area within which the conference lies. You will meet and hear many researchers you may only have heard about or read. You also have the opportunity to network and find others that are working on similar or related topics. So there are several reasons for going and if you intend to stay in academia you should make it a habit to attend at least one per year (depending on costs and travel etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T17:31:51.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12680" CreationDate="2013-09-14T17:42:40.267" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are &lt;em&gt;presenting&lt;/em&gt; a paper at a conference, there isn't much advantage for your résumé. From a professional and educational perspective, however, conferences can be very informative, for the reasons Peter outlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go a little bit further than Peter, however, and recommend that, if possible, you try to attend &lt;em&gt;multiple&lt;/em&gt; conferences per year, particularly if you are relatively early on in your career. At least one should be a relatively large meeting, where you can make many contacts in your &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; field; and one, if possible, should be a smaller meeting or workshop, where you can interact with your peers in your &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; field. That way, you get the benefits of learning about the overall field—which is important for networking and job-finding, as well as the close-up exposure to work related to your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T17:42:40.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12681" CreationDate="2013-09-14T17:48:24.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be fair to say something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This report concerns work in progress and should not be freely distributed pending publication of the results &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think it would be wise to talk to somebody in a position with insights into how the reports are handled. You may not be the first to have this issue. I am sure such reports are not circulated anyway unless specifically stated they will be from the beginning. But it is better to be safe than sorry so do not hesitate to ask around to get the necessary information you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T17:48:24.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12675" CreationDate="2013-09-14T18:38:03.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do of course not know what your current work strategy looks like so I can only provide what I think are generally helpful tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note-taking should be a priority, not only to avoid confusion but also to help you get an overview. set a target to summarize the paper in a about a page and try to capture the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the major question covered by the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why is it important?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What was done (experiments observations data)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the major conclusions of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you find any new information of particular interest to you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may come up with similar or different key questions depending on th epurpose of your reading. The point is to make such short summaries of the papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the summaries you could consider organizing them in some fashion. There is no exclusive model to use and in fact the organization may depend on the purpose of your reading. You may find that after reading a number of papers a possible way to organize them can become clear. The main  purpose of this step is to bundle papers that have specific points in common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also sort your papers (printouts or files) with your notes. There are many ways of doing this rom the analogue to data bases. Try to use a free reference data base system to get everything organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="32534" LastEditDate="2017-02-17T19:35:29.300" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T19:35:29.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-13T18:34:22.933" Score="2" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am searching for Journals in the area of GIS and Remote Sensing in agriculture and water management, with a high impact factor. It is important that these journals pay authors for their articles ... thanks in advance if you can share even one journal's link. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Argishti" LastEditorUserId="8686" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T02:11:33.023" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T02:11:33.023" Title="High impact journals GIS and Remote Sensing" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2020-03-14T17:49:35.317" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12686" CreationDate="2013-09-14T19:04:51.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comments above—the idea of journals &lt;em&gt;paying&lt;/em&gt; authors for articles guarantees that you will not have a high-impact journal. A trade publication might pay an author, but a reputable journal should not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are very likely good journals which do not require authors to pay &quot;page charges&quot; to get the article published. But you'll look in vain if you want high-quality and profit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T19:04:51.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T19:58:59.030" Score="12" ViewCount="3626" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a phd student in IIT Bombay. I have found sometimes that professors or faculty behaving rudely especially with phd students. The situation being the student demanding better guidance on his research or while reporting complaints on unavailability of research facilites(infrastructure). Partly it seems the reason for the professors behaving so is because of their own frustration with their job which they pass it on to the students when they raise questions for which they don't have answers. And partly some professors think behaving rudely is the right way to scare students away so that they don't come back and trouble them. Also often the faculty feel they are being embarassed by being compared to their peers elsewhere and are being looked down upon, so have a bellicose attitude and start fighting at the slightest provocation. This is extremely frustrating for graduate students and they ask themselves why they made this grave mistake of joining for graduate studies here. But since few years already pass off by the time they realize this, they just try to finish a half hearted unhappy phd and try to run away from this place quickly with a wounded heart. Many of my seniors have experienced this who are now doing postdocs in US. How does one not let one's heart wounded in such a situation and how does one deal with such unpleasant rudeness on part of faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T17:03:09.880" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T17:03:09.880" Title="How should a Phd student deal with rude professors or faculty?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2013-09-14T20:39:24.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;D.W.'s answer is great advice. I just want to add something for the (your) future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What counts in the end if you intend to continue in academia are hard publications. Since this seems to be a soft &quot;publication&quot;, I think you should ask yourself; can the material be re-written and actually published? If the answer is yes, then you have to ask yourself, should you take on the job as first author (you have already done a lot). Most often the one who takes the initiative will be spearheading the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T21:01:17.987" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T21:01:17.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12688" CreationDate="2013-09-14T20:59:25.160" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be more happening with the professors to make them as rude as you say.  However, having said that, there is no excuse for incivility and rudeness - it is not professional and certainly not conducive to a productive academic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to your main question, on how to do deal with the day-to-day rudeness, I was in such an environment when I was completing my honours in geology.  This situation is similar to an unpleasant workplace.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I got through the honours year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus on your goal, not on the personalities - by this, I mean always 're-focus' your thoughts to be task orientated (not easy to do).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Form a friendship group amongst your fellow students, not to complain what is happening, but to mutually re-focus your attentions to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't take anything said to you personally (also sometimes not easy to do).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it at all possible to transfer to another research group/university?  it does sound that the academics' frustrations are being taken out on the graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T20:59:25.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12633" CreationDate="2013-09-14T22:15:36.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You likely will need to check the copyright requirements of the journal, and contact the publisher and/or author. Very often, quoting or copying more than a few sentences or one or two figures will require direct permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Permission may not be necessary, but you don't want to open a big bag of trouble by publishing something that violates copyright - better safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T22:15:36.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T22:27:55.967" Score="12" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;US universities seem to have assistant professors go through a reappointment process before tenure. It seems like a similar review, complete with letters. Except unlike tenure, almost 100% of people get reappointed. In fact I do not know of a case in which a professor failed to have their contract renewed at reappointment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it seems pro-forma, why do it at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8614" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T23:48:46.023" Title="Why do universities have a reappointment process before tenure?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12692" CreationDate="2013-09-14T23:05:15.667" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not totally pro-forma; I do know of examples where the contract was not renewed, though it certainly does happen less often than a tenure denial.  I think the standard is basically &quot;is it reasonable to hope this person gets tenure?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the purpose is to try to get people ready for their tenure review by having a look at their case early, and trying point out where they are doing OK and where they could do better.  If nothing else, it focuses the minds of people in the department who might have let things slide otherwise.  It seems pretty logical to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T23:05:15.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12692" CreationDate="2013-09-14T23:48:46.023" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Ben Webster points out, it is not entirely pro forma (I know a couple of people who did not get their contracts renewed).  I agree with his points, but here's another aspect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In departments where tenure denials are common, it's extremely valuable to get a preview of how strong the letters will be.  If they aren't compelling enough, the department will probably still renew your contract, but they'll warn you that tenure isn't likely.  This gives you several years to find another job, which is valuable because job hunting is more difficult after a tenure denial: universities that might have been interested when they thought they were competing with University X may not be as excited about taking what they perceive as University X's rejects.  So the information from the reappointment process may be very useful in ways that are intentionally invisible from the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T23:48:46.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13097" CreationDate="2013-09-14T23:51:38.640" Score="9" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master's student doing research in the field of the cognitive psychology of language and I would like to do an unpaid 4-month research internship in a different university. I am preparing cover letters to send to different professors within whose projects I would like to work. I want to include in my cover letter a description of what I plan to do during my short internship, so I want to know what research interns usually do. How can they contribute to an existing research project?  Also, can I say that I want to learn how to use a specific research technique (like for example a neuroimaging technique) even if I have no experience with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any general advice on how to best ask a professor to accept me as an intern within their research project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8565" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T20:41:03.743" Title="How to apply for a research internship at the master's level?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T00:05:52.850" Score="20" ViewCount="49250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year PhD student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in my first stage (doing a literature review) but I face problem in organizing the papers I read and the notes I take for all papers. Should I put all that in one MS Word file for example, or different MS word files, or maybe use a different software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to come after month from now and get confused about the way I organize my papers and notes in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, any helpful ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T13:41:20.053" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T20:49:48.823" Title="How to organize my papers and notes from the beginning of my PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="13" ClosedDate="2013-09-28T17:28:55.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12715" CreationDate="2013-09-15T04:35:12.017" Score="14" ViewCount="2569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two related questions, which are similar to my other question &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12414/should-i-apply-for-all-jobs-that-a-university-offer&quot;&gt;Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is say a school is opening a tenure position in the Associate Professor rank. I like to know how the job committee will view the application from a candidate who is currently a postdoc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is that say the school opens both a tenured-track Assistant Professor and a  tenure Associate Professor. Should a candidate who is a postdoc apply to both or only to the tenured-track position? If he/she applies to both, whether that affects his/her application negatively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8480" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T17:32:44.047" Title="Should a postdoc apply for a tenured position?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12697" CreationDate="2013-09-15T06:00:10.317" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  Unless you have proved the Riemann hypothesis or cured cancer, you won't be hired into a tenured position straight from a postdoc (in the USA).  You should apply for tenure-track assistant professor positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T06:00:10.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2013-09-15T08:53:26.657" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, a graduate &lt;em&gt;school&lt;/em&gt; is a learning process so finding what is perfect from you from the start is a valiant endeavour but not necessarily sure fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should start to use a data base system, some (mentioned in comments) that come to mind are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; (free), &lt;a href=&quot;http://endnote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EndNote&lt;/a&gt; (commercial), &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/refbase/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RefBase&lt;/a&gt; (free) to mention a few. If you consider going into LateX (which many of us swear by) then I can recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JabRef&lt;/a&gt; (free; BibTeX format). There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia comparison page&lt;/a&gt; that can be of assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sort your references concerns managing some form of structure where you  group or &quot;mind map your articles. In the old days you simply kept them in piles. With a data base software you can start providing key words in the data base and also keep some short notes for each paper which makes everything searchable and ready for sorting. I think the process or sorting articles is one that changes with different tasks and also persons so you are best of taking some advice from others and looking into it. Hopefully you also have peers around who can provide their insights. In the end you will develop your own set of tools that suit your needs and to keep trying different ones at an early stage, and discarding many of them, is far better than trying to do it later when the mass of information is much larger. Another option is to simply start using something and sticking with it regardless of weaknesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that with experience you will rely less and less on note-taking and be more efficient at seeing structure in what you read and so keeping a reference database is the main tool you will use. Even if this may not sound very constructive, I also say that the time you spend now on testing different solutions will pay back later, putting it off is only pushing problems forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final personal note. If you want a free, platform independent, and completely versatile way to author documents you should look into LaTeX-writing (for example through &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;TeX.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;). I recommend it to everyone unless you are in a complete Word-environment, being alone with a different system can be hard. You should nevertheless look into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T20:49:48.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T09:30:30.107" Score="33" ViewCount="9606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was actually thinking about submitting one of my papers in a conference which is to be held in Spain (LATA 2014) but alas I might not be able to do so since the registration fees for this conference is 400 Euros (discounted since I'm a student) which is virtually impossible to afford (since in addition to the registration fees I will have to travel to Spain as well). In fact just to get a sense of how much money this is, this 400 Euros is almost equivalent to half the salary (in terms of basic pay) a senior professor earns in my country (India) and I see that this conference is not the only one when it comes to such high fees. What are the real reasons behind such high fees? Isn't this in some away discouraging genuine contributions in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T19:00:31.533" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T10:32:03.343" Title="Why are the registration fees for academic conferences so high?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12701" CreationDate="2013-09-15T09:41:01.633" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically the fees are to cover the facilities of the meeting including services attached to the venue. In addition there may be administrative costs for the conveners to be added to that. My experience says that everytime you let a professional conference center and staff organize a meeting it becomes very expensive. this may seem like a bad ideabut what is often not seen is the work volounteers would have to put in if you tried to organize a large conference without such help. Free help is usually not easy to muster these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I agree that conference fees may seem ridiculously high at times the reason is that it would be hard to organize them otherwise. It may be easier for recurring conferences since they can build a knowledge base and tools to help but for a one-off the ask can be too large without professional help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping a discussion open about these costs we can perhaps put the spotlight on the problems and realize that we cannot both have the cake and eat it. In order to reduce costs meetings may have to be organized in simpler venues and by more volounteers from the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T09:41:01.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T09:49:22.643" Score="9" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a book called &lt;em&gt;Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing&lt;/em&gt;, in which there is a section called further reading. It states the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chomsky (1965: 47ff, 1980: 234ff, 1986)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not able to find any paper of Chomsky written in 1965! Any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8618" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T11:35:09.280" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T11:35:09.280" Title="What does YEAR: NNff means in research papers? eg 1965: 47ff" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12701" CreationDate="2013-09-15T09:53:13.537" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is expensive to run a conference. You have to rent the venue, provide food, possibly pay for a keynote speaker, and pay for other incidental costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, as you note there is a disparity in salaries between developed and developing countries, and this can price out participants from developing nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is an institutional discrimination against academic contributions from developing nations, but your inference that it is harder to make these contributions because of a wage/price discrepancy and the need to attend a conference to be published in it is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option that might be helpful is to try to publish in journals, which do not incur travel fees. Not the best answer, I admit, but something to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this is a discussion that you should have with your university -- it is in their interest to help faculty and students get published, and there may be money for travel and conference fees that the university can help out with. Furthermore, research grants (often also harder to obtain in developing nations, unfortunately) should be set up to pay for conference fees and travel, and faculty members should do everything they can to compete for grant money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T10:09:21.843" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T10:09:21.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12703" CreationDate="2013-09-15T09:55:27.173" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;ff&quot; stands for &quot;and following&quot; so in your case it is page 45 and following pages that are indicated. It should be used when no stop page can be given. The abbreviation comes from the latin for page &lt;em&gt;foilum&lt;/em&gt; plur. &lt;em&gt;folia&lt;/em&gt;. Originally one would write page 45f to indicate just the following page, i.e. &quot;45-46&quot;. The two f's indicate more than one page so &quot;45 and on&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T11:34:48.557" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T11:34:48.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T11:47:01.413" Score="13" ViewCount="6050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a beginner in research papers and doesn't know much about registration and presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can two authors register for the same conference and present the paper (together)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6589" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T13:21:10.767" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:50:31.803" Title="Can a paper be presented by two presenters in a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12706" CreationDate="2013-09-15T12:00:03.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Registration and presentation of a paper are two somewhat separate issues. Normally, presenters at a conference must register, but there is no rule that says only one author of a paper can register for a given conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, papers normally have only one presenter, as the logistics of a conference normally work against having multiple speakers for a single presentation. (The presentation time is not that long, transferring a microphone between speakers, ensuring proper &quot;flow&quot; of the talk across the change in presenters, and so on, all tend to work against the idea of multiple presenters for a given paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T12:00:03.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1317" CreationDate="2013-09-15T13:11:28.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are ways to get accredited for completing online courses on Courses as of 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coursera now offers &lt;em&gt;Signature Tracks&lt;/em&gt; for some courses, on completing which you get a &lt;em&gt;Verified Certificate&lt;/em&gt;. In a Signature Track, on submitting each assignment, you are asked to submit some written text as well, which is verified against a handwriting sample given by you at the beginning of the course. There are other techniques used too, such as facial recognition via webcam, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some courses have started to provide an option to give the final exam at a certified Testing Center to earn a similar Verified Certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these, of course, cost money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T13:11:28.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12706" CreationDate="2013-09-15T13:32:05.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @aeismail said, registration and presentation are two separate things. I don't have a &lt;em&gt;vast&lt;/em&gt; conference experience, but from what I've observed/done until now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Registration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registration is more about attending the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most conferences require at least &lt;em&gt;one author&lt;/em&gt; of a paper to &lt;em&gt;register for a &quot;full&quot; fee/participation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain, I've seen reduced fees for students or options to win a free/reduced stay sponsored by the conference (this usually requires a motivation letter or things like that). So, the conference usually requires one registration at full price, and then other authors can register and attend at a reduced fee if they're eligible. Reduced fees (about 10-20%) for members of various organizations (e.g. IEEE members) still count as full fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presentations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very uncommon to see two people presenting. And it's substantially harder for them -- for the reasons @aeismail said; it's hard to get the dynamic right and you will potentially loose a lot of time on the switches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;it can be done&lt;/em&gt;: I did it. Just as in @ChrisGregg comment, I had a truly collaborative paper with a colleague: we joined our substantially different work in a single application, and knew only the basics about the other ones contribution, so we decided to present our own contributions each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It required more work and preparation than any other oral presentation (conference or otherwise) I ever did. We had to really know what we were doing, we both needed to know each others slides and their contents well. We had to practice being &lt;em&gt;really good at presenting our own parts&lt;/em&gt;, and then &lt;em&gt;practice presenting together&lt;/em&gt;, especially the switches. The switches had to be fast and natural. We actually switched two times I think (person A - person B - person A) (or even three times, not sure?). But &lt;em&gt;every presenter's part had to be a whole &quot;chapter&quot; all in it self.&lt;/em&gt; There's much less room for improvisation (even the tiny ones within one slide can confuse the other person). The flow of the presentation is also more constricted -- what is the most natural way to present a work might require way to many switches. So, you have to ensure a minimal number of switches while still keeping the presentation flow natural and concise. And, I did feel kind of out-of-place just hovering around waiting for the switch while my colleague was presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T13:32:05.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12697" CreationDate="2013-09-15T13:48:43.130" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually do know of examples of postdocs being hired with tenure.  They were people with very strong records, though certainly not solving the Riemann hypothesis (or even necessarily future Fields Medal) caliber.  However, I don't think applying for the tenured in addition to TT job will increase the probability of this happening.  This something that a university will do if they really badly want you and are worried you will get a TT position somewhere &quot;better,&quot; not because you asked politely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T13:48:43.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T14:52:28.883" Score="11" ViewCount="2434" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on the question, I recently (as in yesterday) posted a question on Math.SE and also wrote my answer in the post, claiming that my answer was wrong. One answerer pointed out that I was correct, but simply needed to do a quick deduction step, after which I edited that question with that deduction step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I use this answer now in my assignment, will it be considered an academic offense? None of my university's resources are helpful at all in this regard. I'm a student in the sciences, and all the 'resources' of the university are towards arts students. I'd like a clear cut answer because informing my instructor that I posted my own interpretation of a question on an assignment is really out of the question, since I don't know if consequences exist for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm already looking for an alternative answer, but I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8620" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:06:48.337" Title="Is using an answer I posted online on Math.SE considered plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12711" CreationDate="2013-09-15T15:04:15.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The offense lies in taking material without consent or proper acknowledgement. In your case, you can simply acknowledge the comment so that it is clear that you received feedback to improve or correct your work. I think this help can be equated to peer review. Hence I do not think consent is necessary as long as the person providing the help is explicitly acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:06:48.337" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:06:48.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12711" CreationDate="2013-09-15T15:36:02.017" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to determine this without more information about your university and course policies.  If you're honest about what happened, then I doubt you could get in a lot of trouble for this, but of course I don't know the policies and potential consequences in your case.  At my university different courses can have different policies on collaboration (regarding what's allowed and what sort of acknowledgment must be given), but they should be explained at the beginning of the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were teaching the course, it wouldn't bother me that you got advice on this problem, since it looks like you did most of the work yourself and learned something from the feedback you received.  However, I would be unhappy that you posted the homework problem and a complete solution online, thereby making it easy for other students in the class to copy your solution if they know about math.SE.  If the grader detects several solutions with nearly the same wording as the one you submit, then you may all be accused of cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't find a clear statement of the relevant policies on your course or department website, then I strongly recommend asking your instructor how to handle this.  In theory that could end badly, but I don't expect it to.  Bringing it up yourself is almost certainly better than letting the instructor discover it, and it would mean you could stop worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T15:36:02.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12706" CreationDate="2013-09-15T15:56:54.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and Misha Sodin did exactly that on the last IMC meeting (though it wasn't a single paper but a survey of a series of related papers) and nobody had any problem with that. We just felt that 50 minutes is a bit too little to tell everything we wanted in an understandable way and split the presentation into two parts. Of course, nobody wants to listen to the same talk twice, but if your paper can be split into two more or less independent parts (making some cross-references is OK as long as you avoid vicious circles and state clearly what you refer to), then I see no problem whatsoever with you presenting one part and your co-author another one. Just make sure that people who go to only one of these talks still have a chance to understand something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T15:56:54.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12697" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:17:03.530" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under most circumstances (not an exceptionally brilliant candidate or a field that is very difficult to recruit in), if a postdoc applies to what is advertised as a tenured associate professor position, then I would interpret the application as asking whether the university might consider hiring at the assistant professor level instead.  That's not unreasonable, since job openings do not always get filled the way the department had in mind.  The chances are lower if the department is hoping for something else, but it's not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend being explicit about this.  If you are actually trying for tenure straight out of a postdoc, you should say so, but it will be a waste of time unless there are unusual circumstances (and it may make you look arrogant or out of touch).  If you would like to be considered for a tenure-track position should the department decide to hire at that level instead, then you should make that clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T16:17:03.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12711" CreationDate="2013-09-15T17:34:57.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only your instructor can answer this question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were a student in one of my courses, consulting Math.SE and using the comments/replies you received would be fine, provided you cited them properly and you rewrote them in your own words.  But I believe I am in the minority.  Most faculty in my department would consider consulting a StackExchange site in the first place to be cheating.  You just have to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T17:34:57.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T20:54:40.517" Score="5" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a literature review, assume you have the paper X and the paper Y. The two are similar in the study and the results. How can I write a review in this case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T05:01:42.120" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T05:01:42.120" Title="How to review similar academic papers for a literature review?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12738" CreationDate="2013-09-15T21:26:08.297" Score="8" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question may be too specialist to be on topic here. If it is off topic, please feel free to transfer it to another SE site, or close it, as&#xA;appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to publish an applied statistics paper. This paper&#xA;develops an algorithm and then applies this algorithm to some data. I&#xA;obtained most of this data from the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imgt.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.imgt.org&lt;/a&gt;. The data I am&#xA;using are immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequences, in&#xA;the form of FASTA files. I'm using around 200 of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imgt.org/IMGTlect/?query=201%20M38103&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;random example&lt;/a&gt; of the data I am using (click on [6 Sequence (FASTA format)] to get the FASTA file).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have a problem. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imgt.org/Warranty.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Warranty Disclaimer and Copyright Notice&lt;/a&gt;, is written&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IMGT® software and data are provided as a service to the&#xA;scientific community to be used only for research and educational&#xA;purposes. Individuals may print or save portions of IMGT® for their&#xA;own personal use. Any other use of IMGT® material need prior written&#xA;permission of the IMGT director and of the legal institutions (CNRS&#xA;and Université Montpellier 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just heard from Prof. Marie-Paule Lefranc and she replied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no objection that the data you retrieved for your work from&#xA;IMGT/LIGM-DB be made available to the reviewers, but unfortunately we&#xA;cannot authorize a script or a distribution of the IMGT/LIGM-DB files&#xA;with your code to the users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can provide the users with the list of the IMGT/LIGM-DB accession&#xA;numbers you used, with the source of the data clearly identified:&#xA;(IMGT/LIGM-DB version number) and reference to NAR 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this just made my life more difficult. To start with, I'm&#xA;puzzled by this. Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it&#xA;really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide&#xA;sequence data as proprietary information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wrote back and asked Prof. Lefranc what license the data was&#xA;published under, which I had not done earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, how does one make data available to reviewers and not to&#xA;users? That is awkward, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the data is inconvenient to download. As you can see&#xA;from the example above, the FASTA file is displayed in a web page, and&#xA;is not downloaded by that button. One needs to clean the web page to&#xA;get the FASTA file, which is a pain. As you can see Prof. Lefranc also&#xA;disallowed the use of a script for doing this. What this most likely&#xA;means in practice is that no user will ever actually test the code,&#xA;because obtaining the data is too difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering&#xA;what is essentially a legal opinion, and if so, can anyone suggest a&#xA;more authoritative source to ask about the legalities of this? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:49:15.550" Title="Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2013-09-15T22:39:03.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing all the details it is not possible to provide equal amounts of detail in an answer. Since we (you) do not know the background of these papers it is also problematic to try to say anything to separate them. It is, for example, possible that they were mde independently bt one wtook much longer through review. we simply do not know. We cannot therefore cast judgement. I think it is ffair to simply list them both in a citation without saying anything about who was first, the publication date will definitely put one before the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T22:39:03.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2013-09-15T23:52:21.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks that it is an example of two independent studies that obtained similar results so you might comment that this reinforces the claim that the reported results are correct. However, most probably the studies weren't exact replications so it might be good to mention the differences between the studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a good idea to investigate the journals they were published in - maybe the earlier paper was published in some obscure journal and the second one appeared in a high impact factor one? Have you looked at 'cited by' numbers (in Google Scholar)? Which paper got more citations? Maybe there are some publications that mention both papers? This might give you a clue how the community finds both papers and which one made more impact. It is also plausible that one paper got bigger publicity simply because of more known authors/research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7219" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T23:52:21.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T23:53:04.757" Score="10" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; student at the University of Waterloo. I'm writing a paper potentially for IEEE Security and Privacy, which is a semi-academic magazine. Basically, papers follow the abstract, body, lots of references format, and read like research papers, but apparently generally exposit some random software gadget produced by the author's research etc, so not a super-academic journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how should I put my name on the paper? Should I just write &quot;Yuhao Dong&quot; or &quot;Yuhao Dong, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo&quot; or something else? I don't want to be misunderstood to be a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7903" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T14:04:11.110" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T14:04:11.110" Title="Should an undergraduate writing an article for a semi-academic magazine list a university affiliation?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12721" CreationDate="2013-09-16T02:37:11.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should put your name, your university, and (if appropriate) your department. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out which department to put. When I was in undergrad, I listed the departments that were paying me, or in which my concentration (i.e. major) I was. If when you were working on the project, you were employed by some professor or received an award (say NSERC) through your department, then that is the easiest affiliation. In your case, this means that you would go further than &quot;Faculty of Mathematics&quot; and say something like &quot;Department of Combinatorics &amp;amp; Optimization, University of Waterloo&quot; (I am just randomly guessing a department in the faculty, replace appropriately). Sometimes, it might make sense to instead of placing a department to place the name of the lab on which you worked, but for that ask your professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if you plan to stay in academia (or go to grad school) then you should decide at this point (I am assuming this is your first publication) what your academic name will be. Search Google Scholar for your name, and see if somebody in your field is already using it. If it is a common name then it might be worthwhile to add an initial to disambiguate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T02:37:11.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2013-09-16T02:37:51.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just say &quot;We have the following result in the following setting&quot;, tell the scientific part of the story, and finish with &quot;see [] and [] for details&quot;. No matter what you do, my advice is not to try to claim that someone &quot;did it&quot; and the other one &quot;repeated it&quot; or &quot;did it later&quot; or that the results were &quot;obtained independently&quot;. With a three year difference in publication time (some papers take longer to prepare and to review and it certainly takes more for an average paper to get &quot;widely known&quot;), you never know what exactly happened and it is neither your duty, nor your right to make any &quot;educated guesses&quot; on that account unless you have some tangible evidence at your disposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically the same as Peter said (only in stronger language). You may launch a small &quot;private investigation&quot; along the lines Rabbit indicated to satisfy your own curiosity, of course, but it is definitely way beyond your reviewer duties and nobody really expects that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T02:37:51.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12727" CreationDate="2013-09-16T03:46:29.650" Score="31" ViewCount="26844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a post graduate engineering student(Computer Science). I have only one conference (not very good) publication in my name as a first author. &#xA;One of my seniors labmate, worked on a very good research project a few months ago and wrote a paper. I have been approached by him to generate a few more results for his paper and proof reading and extending his paper with literature survey and elaborative explaination of results. I have been offered co-authorship(2nd author) for this paper.&#xA;Now, though I can dedicate some time to do that work, but is accepting 2nd authorship worth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask in general as well, that is it worth to put effort in papers and get 2nd authorship given that the paper is not related to my primary area of research or rather work and dedicate time on one's own research and get papers as a first author ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I have seen that in academia (where I want to go), usually advertisements call for applications from people having at least X no of papers as first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8612" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-28T09:12:46.177" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T20:48:03.213" Title="Is it better to have no publication than having you as second author?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-16T04:27:38.870" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I would evaluate the quality of that paper (so far) first. If the quality is good, I would join him and become the second author. If the quality is poor, then walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have only one publication thus far. Have another one, even the second authorship, is definitely better than nothing. Not to mention your first authorship paper is not very good by your own evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T04:27:38.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-16T04:30:23.697" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the paper is well-written, contributes non-trivial knowledge to a particular field, is peer-reviewed, and you contributed significantly enough to the paper to be listed as an author, you should put your name on it. In the case of fields where pre-prints are common (i.e., it won't be peer-reviewed, at least initially), it is also worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you don't want is to be an author on a poorly written paper. In other words, you should be proud to list a publication on your CV even if it isn't exactly in your primary research area. Especially at this stage in the game, having a few good papers will help your case, even as a second author (and keep in mind that some fields, such as theoretical computer science, should have the authors listed alphabetically and all authors are considered primary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T04:30:23.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12728" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-16T06:12:11.957" Score="8" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking for a solution to manage our literature (citations and corresponding PDFs) in our workgroup (~15 persons). Everybody should have read-write access, so a solution having a shared library would be the best for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which workflows do other groups use for a common literature management?&lt;/strong&gt; We've checked out EndNote, Reference Manager and Mendeley so far, but are not happy with the &quot;workgroup&quot; options these softwares provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T16:29:47.430" Title="Literature management for workgroups" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-16T06:14:22.560" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end, each paper counts. I would not hesitate to get second authorship unless I felt I deserved to be first author on the paper. What you need to consider is if the time you spend is worth it. If the paper is going to a good journal then is more acceptable than if it goes to a low rank journal. When your cv is evaluated, number of papers, journal impact, and citations on the papers are most frequently looked at. First authorship is an important factor as always but having second authorship (I am assuming among several co-authors) shows that you have been instrumental in the paper (I am again assuming authorship order reflects contribution). As long as you have first authorship on a sizable fraction of papers no-one will think twice about coauthoships, particularly not early in ones career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6153" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T21:07:27.710" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T21:07:27.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5032" CreationDate="2013-09-16T07:45:57.050" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry man, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/faq&quot;&gt;no more GRE CS test will be given&lt;/a&gt; :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8625" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T07:56:17.080" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T07:56:17.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12728" CreationDate="2013-09-16T07:54:37.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll go with &lt;strong&gt;group-level Wiki&lt;/strong&gt; on that one. Give every member of the group read-write access (or IP-based write access), and have maintain lists of references (and attached PDF files) by topic and sub-topic. If you want to include some notes on a paper, create a new page for that paper, and put your notes there. People can add their own notes to the same paper later, by editing the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search capabilities will be important, so choose you Wiki software so it has decent search support. Or export all the PDF files of papers as a read-only network drive, thus allowing for full-text search of the whole database through client's OS (which is what I do myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For examples of wikis run by research groups, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://tbayes.eecs.umich.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;professor Hero&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sklogwiki.org/SklogWiki/index.php/SklogWiki%3aAbout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SklogWiki&lt;/a&gt; (on which papers are ordered by topic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T07:54:37.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12718" CreationDate="2013-09-16T08:15:24.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;strong&gt;it is making your life a little harder, but it doesn't mean publication of your work is impossible, nor does it make IMGT's action unethical&lt;/strong&gt;. I cannot comment on the legality of IMGT's copyright claim on the data, but contesting their claim doesn't sound like a great idea in the first place. In any case, talk it through with &lt;strong&gt;a lawyer from your university's legal department&lt;/strong&gt;, before you do anything that deviates from what IMGT asks for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how can you move forward? Well, separate your existing code (which does the scraping and the analysis) into two separate parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The IMGT website scrapper/parser, which will download data and write it to files named after each query (&lt;code&gt;M38103.txt&lt;/code&gt; for query “M38103”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not publish that part (but keep it around, it would be a shame to throw away code that you have already written, and that works: you never know, IMGT's policy may change in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of your analysis code, which takes these query results as text input files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now publish #2, and give the referees access to the files (journal submission websites have an option for &lt;em&gt;“supporting information for reviewers only”&lt;/em&gt;, although it may be called differently). In the paper, you indicate clearly (but not aggressively) that “because licensing restrictions do not allow us to redistribute IMGT data, we provide a script that requires query results as text input files”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not the first person to publish valid research results that come from analysis of a proprietary data source. There is no ethical issue here, because &lt;strong&gt;the reviewers have enough information to accurately review the validity of your work&lt;/strong&gt;. Moreover, even the readers will be able to reproduce your work, though it will require a separate download step (and definitely depends on IMGT keeping its database online and freely accessible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, &lt;strong&gt;it makes your code is little harder to use for others, but it doesn't diminish the values of the results you have obtained with it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T11:08:42.083" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12758" CreationDate="2013-09-16T09:26:15.610" Score="1" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must admit that although I deeply believe museums, no matter how small, play a very important role in almost any sort of research, proving their scientific character can be sometimes quite awkward. Is there any set of fixed criteria that would allow a museum to be considered as an academic institution if met?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8628" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T18:21:59.600" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T23:46:35.257" Title="When can a museum be considered an academic institution?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12718" CreationDate="2013-09-16T11:38:42.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As F'x already said, from a scientific perspective there is no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data is available, just not automatically and from you, but from the original source (via the ID numbers). So editor, reviewers and readers can get the data, given they are not too lazy to download it from the original web site. That is much more than is common in many fields of physical/experimental science.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Considering that you are talking about biological data, not having an automated download is so much more convenient than trying to reproduce experimental data  (although I have to say that it is a sensible and under-used mid-way checkpoint) ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, here are a few more thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequence data as proprietary information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Facts&lt;/em&gt; cannot be copyrighted. But the measured &lt;em&gt;data&lt;/em&gt; is subject to copyright. If I go through the effort of doing these measurements, I'm the owner of that data. Just as you are the author of the program code you wrote and the paper you wrote.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But, as you cannot forbid that someone else to write another program doing the same, or another paper on the same subject, just because I have the rights to &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; measurements, I cannot forbid you to make your own measurements.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course I could donate my data base to the public domain, just as you can put your program under a FOSS license. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copyright varies considerably depending on jusdiction. So IMHO this question cannot really be answered without taking into account where the database comes from (EU) and where you are located.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Now, in the EU we have a database copyright given you put enough effort in making the data base (it is not enough to grab an old encyclopedia and scan pages from that. But carefully curating a nucleotide sequence database is clearly enough). Again, this copyright is for the database, not for the facts stored in the database.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For your nucleotide sequences that means: if you choose to use &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; nucleotide database, you have to stick to their rules. But again, you are free to measure the nucleotide sequence yourself and use that data set instead. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how does one make data available to reviewers and not to users&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the letter to the editor to tell the editor that you'd be happy to supply the reviewers with the curated data set you acutally used for the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the data is inconvenient to download. [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering what is essentially a legal opinion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is certainly a good idea to learn about copyright, I cannot recommend going for legal loopholes against the database owner's expressed wishes. They do allow enough for you and other scientists to do science. Why would you want to upset them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be better to talk to them. What about this instead of asking them to allow scripts, you could offer to produce for &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; a second version of the data base that is suitable as machine-readable input, and kindly ask them whether they would be willing to make that version available via their server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to learning about copyright, maybe you could ask them for their reasons for their download policy. There may be a whole lot for you to learn in that answers as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from one of the physical sciences where good measurements take lots of effort. Here are some reasons why a data base ownder may say that people should download the data base from the original source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The name of &quot;owner&quot;/author of the database is associated with it. As author  you may not want to run the risk of getting associated with derivatives that do not follow your strict high-quality policy.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One very simple way to ensure that people actually get &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; data base when they think they do is to tell them always to download the original&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(there are alternatives, such as signing a version for distribution etc.). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, the owner may want/need to have at least a rough overview of how many people use the data base. Such information is at the very least extremely helpful when you need to show that you are not doing useless stuff for your wages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T11:44:23.187" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T11:44:23.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12718" CreationDate="2013-09-16T11:53:56.540" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright is probably on the full database release flatfile and the formatted entries ... you will find similar conditions for UniProt/SwissProt so it is not so unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The restrictions on scripts are common to prevent server performance hits from a large number of requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can simply invite reviewers to download the data from some other server, for example from the EBI SRS server. The URL for entry A00673 would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use a list of accessions, for example A00673 or A01650&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673|a01650]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If downloading many entries you should pause between requests, but putting lists into the URLs may reduce it to few enough not to cause a problem. I doubts EBI would be upset by 200 requests - they would be concerned about thousands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various fasta formats available for IMGT data, you need to find a server that produces fasta files compatible with your input requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively of course your reviewers could download the whole database from IMGT or any of the other servers (including &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/imgt/&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/imgt/&lt;/a&gt;) and generate their own fasta subset from the list of accessions/ids&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8632" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T11:53:56.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-09-16T11:56:03.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered multiple people who refer to &quot;Habilitation&quot; as a &quot;second PhD&quot;. It is very typical that you go for a &quot;Habilitation&quot; after your PhD in many countries in Europe and Central Asia. It is not a PhD though, earning a Habilitation degree will change your title to Dr. habil. XXXX YYYY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike a PhD thesis, a Habilitation thesis covers a topic in breadth rather than in depth. Typically it is in the same field but covers a different topic than the one covered in your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T11:56:03.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12721" CreationDate="2013-09-16T12:05:46.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grad students often write &quot;PhD candidate&quot; on their websites, etc., so you might consider &quot;Yuhao Dong, BSc candidate, School of Computer Science (or whatever your department is), University of Waterloo&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: I was curious, so I checked the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/peerreviewmagazines/acsecurity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;author guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.  They don't indicate how to specify your affiliation, so I would either ask the editor or look at some articles from the most recent issue and copy their style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastEditorDisplayName="user6782" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T21:43:15.663" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T21:43:15.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12701" CreationDate="2013-09-16T12:19:23.727" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, some practical side notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a field with high conference fees as well. However, my professor once complained with conference organizers when student fees were 250 € saying that no student (and no institute paying for the student) could afford that. I got in at a much reduced price.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, I once attended a conference in Africa where many &quot;speakers&quot; didn't show up after they had tried to make the organizers completely waive the fees &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; pay their travel a week or so before the conference. The organizers felt blackmailed and refused (I believe they had a developing countries discount from the beginning, but I'm not entirely sure. Europeans paid about what you'd pay for a conference in Europe)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may be able to negotiate a discount for not attending the conference dinner, tourist program, etc. (though I recommend attending if possible: this is where you can talk and get to know people)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some conferences and/or professional societies have travel grants for students. Some universities have travel grants as well. They would usually help towards both conference fee, flight ticket and housing at the conference location. Ask around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my field (analytical chemistry/spectroscopy) in terms of conference fees for students I found that conferences in the US had &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; lower student fees compared to Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more points on the costs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you mention that the 400€ is half a months salary for a prof in your country. But the costs of living and the wages are not the same all over the world. You don't get as far in Spain with 400€ as you'd get in India. Unfortunately I guess from India most good conferences will be in crazy expensive countries. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I've seen conference announcements in southeast Asia and northern Africa, and the fees were not that much lower compared to european and north american locations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T12:19:23.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12721" CreationDate="2013-09-16T12:59:46.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this and all such similar questions is in two stages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;first, check the journal's guidelines for authors. The answer's probably there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer isn't there, ask your editorial contact at the journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T12:59:46.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12745" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:33:07.353" Score="6" ViewCount="1371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write my first introduction sentence, which should be catchy. I came up with a sentence along the lines of &quot;imagine the world without this super thing, all these things wouldn't be possible&quot;. Obviously, this case will not occur in the next million years and I guess I won't be able to find any paper supporting my claims. However, the described consequences still seem realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the rest of the introduction is very technical and dry, I think a fresh start is quite nice, but I'm worried someone might say that this first sentence is not scientific as nobody can back up my statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is having a bit more colloquial or lurid kick-off sentence considered to be a &quot;good&quot; or &quot;bad&quot; scientific writing style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T13:40:19.367" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T14:50:59.333" Title="Style for first introduction sentence - citation required for lurid statement?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:57:05.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is having a bit more colloquial or lurid kick-off sentence considered to be a &quot;good&quot; or &quot;bad&quot; scientific writing style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends.&lt;/strong&gt; If your attention catching statement is relevant, true, and tasteful, then it is probably &quot;good&quot; scientific writing style. However, if the connection to the rest of your paper and its findings is not immediately apparent, the veracity of the statement is in doubt, or it might be considered &lt;em&gt;not tasteful&lt;/em&gt;, then it would be &quot;bad&quot; scientific writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also Eykanal's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/493/7921&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/492/7921&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; about the appropriateness of humor in academic writing. These points apply here too. Don't compromise the integrity of the results--is it relevant? Use this type of statement sparingly. And last but by no means least, this may best be reserved for someone who is fairly well-known in their field--don't jeopardize your career! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add one more point to Eykanal's excellent advice above. &lt;strong&gt;Don't be afraid to be &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt; Just be sure that your interesting statements are in good taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T13:58:56.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:58:41.777" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is a &lt;strong&gt;non negligible chance that this will make a bad first impression on the readers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong: I love it when people depart from the dry and oft boring “academic style” of writing and try to invigorate their papers: more concise writing, less use of conditional, more direct statements, use of active voice, stating one's opinion when need be, etc. But this should be done with the goal of making your paper easier to read, and not hyping it. &lt;strong&gt;If you start with a broad claim that has little to do with your actual conclusions, you may alienate some readers&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;“hey, I read the paper because the first line said that a world without gluons would be beneficial in the long term, but then it's only a boring particle physics paper!”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a specific example, when I read papers dealing with physical and chemical properties of water, oftentimes the authors think it wise to start their introduction with a broad statements like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water is the most abundant molecule of the human body, and the second most common molecule in the Universe. Its presence or absence has dramatic consequences for human life and civilization: droughts cause famines and floods cause death and disease. Though it has a special relationship with our everyday lives, there is still much we need to learn about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then end with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, we reported the most accurate measurement yet of the bending vibration frequency of heavy water, with an uncertainty of 10&lt;sup&gt;–9&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It annoys me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T13:58:41.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12748" CreationDate="2013-09-16T14:45:57.987" Score="8" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some fields like Economics and Maths have their work in progress published as &quot;working papers&quot; with notes like &quot;work in progress, do not cite or quote without the author's permission.&quot;Sometimes they upload these to their own websites or to their universities websites. I don't see much of this going on in my own field (sociology). I have heard from people that are afraid of having their work scooped or that fear that work published in this way will not be considered as &quot;unpublished&quot; by journals and conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages of making work in progress available in this way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7428" LastEditorUserId="7428" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T15:24:05.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:24:05.730" Title="What are the advantages of publishing work in progress as a working paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12747" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:09:59.627" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantages are that you get to stake a claim to some sense of ownership of the work; it's a way of inviting feedback and collaboration from others by showcasing your work in progress; and it's a quicker way to publish your work than submitting to a journal or conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when do you publish your work as a working paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the following conditions are met:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You've done some work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And&lt;/strong&gt; some combination of:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want feedback on it from a wider group than your immediate colleagues;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to showcase your work to get new collaborators, new funding, or improved career prospects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to publicly stake a claim to the work you've done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And&lt;/strong&gt; some combination of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the follow-up work is something that you've already got sufficiently far advanced that it is very unlikely that you will get scooped by your competitors;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you're not bothered about being first to publish the follow-up work yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And&lt;/strong&gt; publishing your work in a working paper won't prevent it from appearing (possibly in modified form) in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:09:59.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12747" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:12:21.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first paragraph's implied question and your formal question are different.&#xA;The first concerns an already finished work, which is just unpublished, and the second a work in progress. I'll comment on the second one as the more interesting one to discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you make your work in progress public, you just let people see your ideas and use them or comment on them. I perceive a publication of unfinished work as an invitation to take a look and try to answer questions like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What else can be done this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Can you do it better (find some shortcuts, generalize, whatever)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Do you see how to finish the project or why it is a dead end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Are there any mistakes in what is done so far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage is, of course, getting a few more brains engaged, which has the potential of enhancing the quality of the final product drastically. The &quot;disadvantage&quot;&#xA;is that you agree by default to share the credit with anyone who contributes something of value. Which one is more important for you is up to you to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outright scooping is not something I would be particularly afraid of; not in my field at least (my usual mode of operation is to send what I know to a few &quot;experts&quot; and ask what they think rather than to put unfinished works on arXiv but that is primarily because I do not want to clutter my arXiv list of papers with half-cooked stuff some of which will never be finished and some of which makes little sense). Most people who get interested in your project share their thoughts with you on exactly the same basis you share yours with them: if you go open and supply your ideas for free, they pay back with the same coin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:12:21.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:42:19.990" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the OP has done &quot;experiments&quot; and &quot;drafting&quot;. This case differs from what I wrote above. Then he is eligible for authorship, unless &quot;few results&quot; mean really few results and literature review was somehow ready from the paper his/her colleague had already drafted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastEditorUserId="6928" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T17:43:43.227" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T17:43:43.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11936" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:36:56.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would a university rather hire someone with a US PhD rather than a US&#xA;  citizen with a Korean PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably you mean a US university and not a Korean university. The school from which you obtain your PhD has some impact on the hiring process at US universities, but not much. Having a PhD from a top rated department with a &quot;famous&quot; advisor can be beneficial, but a PhD with an advisor from a university (whether it is a US university or a Korean university) that the search committee isn't familiar with is pretty common. For research intensive universities the most important factor is your future ability to publish and secure external funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T16:36:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12466" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:52:14.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to be open and honest. To answer the question lets define some terms. Let Prof X be a potential post doc supervisor who already has funding and Prof Y be a a potential post doc supervisor without any funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to working on a funding application to Prof Y you need to discuss whether he expects you to put all your eggs in one basket or if he is okay with you applying for different jobs. There may be applications that Prof Y will not make with you or it might change the application strategy. For example, Prof Y may not list you as a named post doc so as not to cause problems with the funder if you do not take the position. The key is to be honest and up front.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a application in with Prof Y and Prof X offers you a job, then you have problems. If it is close to the decision deadline for the funding with Prof Y, you may want to wait before starting with Prof X. Again you need to talk with Prof X. Maybe Prof X X needs you to start right away but instead of a 12 month commitment he only needs a 6 month commitment and maybe you can delay the start of the funding with Prof Y, if you get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, most people understands that a guaranteed job is important and will try and be flexible. That said if you have funding, you need to deliver the work you promised, and you don't want to apply for funding you cannot use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T16:52:14.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11412" CreationDate="2013-09-16T17:13:47.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, is there a specialised computer science master's course ranking&#xA;  website with a column for “philosophical direction” or some kind of&#xA;  “business vs academic career” weighting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. While it would be nice if there was a system that you could enter your definition of &quot;best&quot; and it would spit out the school for you, it just doesn't exist. While it probably is not a fair system, if you want the &quot;best&quot; according to your grandmother's definition, you probably want to limit yourself to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/our-universities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Russell group&lt;/a&gt;. You could also look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rae.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2008 RAE&lt;/a&gt; for what HEFCE thinks is the &quot;best&quot;. You can also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;league tables&lt;/a&gt;. The best approach would be to actually define what you mean by &quot;best&quot;. Factors you may want to include are location, course size, research component, course work, faculty, and reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T17:13:47.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12050" CreationDate="2013-09-16T17:39:52.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be having two issues. The first is you are not happy with your GRA experience and the second is you are confused about the grant. It is important to separate these issues when talking to the supervisor and only bring one issue up at a time. Sicne you questions focuses on the grant, so does my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is too late now, before starting to work on a grant or any research project it is important to define the roles of each team member. You then need to review these roles frequently as the project progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two possibilities for the grant. The first case is that the grant includes funding for you (or someone like you). In this case you need to have a friendly chat to discuss what your role will be if the grant gets funded. This should be fairly painless since you (or someone like you) is listed on the grant. The second case is that the grant doesn't include funding for you (or someone like you). If this is the case, then it is pretty clear that you are not really included on the grant. If the grant could have included funding for you, but you were not included, you should have raised the issue as soon as you realized. This is potentially problematic and it is worth discussing with the supervisor why you were not included. If the grant could not have included funding for you, then it is not clear what the issue is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever happens, you should have a nice civil conversation with the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T17:39:52.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11727" CreationDate="2013-09-16T17:45:39.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most MSE programs in the US do not require you to have a BSE in the relevant field. The listed prerequisites for the courses are often requirements that undergraduates need to fulfil before being allowed to enrol in the graduate class. That said, you may need to take some undergraduate classes to get up to speed and you may need to work harder to make up for starting slightly behind. If accepted, it is likely that the admissions committee thinks that your previous background is enough to be able to succeed in the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, admissions committees do not accept students that they think will be unable to complete the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T17:45:39.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12206" CreationDate="2013-09-16T17:50:45.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like in the sciences, the GRE is not particularly important for admissions to humanities PhD programs. That said, the GRE can be used as a tool to decide who gets the limited funding and the most desirable TA positions. As for the personal statement, you need to address why you want to switch from Russian Lit to English Lit. In fact this should probably be the core focus of the personal statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T17:50:45.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12733" CreationDate="2013-09-16T18:01:55.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/880?redirectedFrom=academic#eid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OED definition of academic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of, relating to, or characteristic of an educational institution or&#xA;  environment; concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and&#xA;  scholarship; scholarly, educational, intellectual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;has a focus on education. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_institution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia definition of academic instituion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Academic institution is an educational institution dedicated to&#xA;  education and research, which grants academic degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also has a focus on education and a requirement to grant academic degrees. To me degree granting is critical to being an academic institution. I do not think of any non-degree granting institute as being academic. Places like the German MPIs and US National Laboratories are cutting edge research institutes, but not academic-institutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-academic research institutions often have a grants office, just like their academic counterparts. Further employees at non-academic institutions that wish to conduct research can often get a research appointment at a local university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T19:02:05.307" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T19:02:05.307" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2013-09-16T20:53:42.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once wrote a journal paper[*] whose abstract was in the form of a limerick:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The analysis of control flow&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Involves finding where &lt;b&gt;return&lt;/b&gt;s may go.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        How this can be done&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        With items LR(0) and (1)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Is what in this paper we show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewers seemed OK with it (which is to say, none of them took issue with it in their reviews), but the editor nixed it on the grounds that ACM's indexing software wouldn't deal with it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral of the story, I suppose, is that humans may not be the only &quot;readers&quot; of your paper, and non-standard writing styles may confuse such non-human readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] The paper showed that algorithms for computing LR(0) and LR(1) items, used in parsing context-free grammars, could be used for control-flow analysis of tail-recursive programs.  I still think it's the best abstract I've ever written. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T07:14:17.593" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T07:14:17.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:14:31.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With regard to citations: Generally, statements that are &quot;common knowledge&quot; don't require citations.  Nor do statements that are purely conjectural, or are not intended to be taken literally.  The opening sentences you have in mind seem to satisfy at least one of these criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't venture an opinion on whether or not a creative opening sentence is a good idea or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T00:14:31.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:15:00.733" Score="4" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for software for macs geared towards organizing and referencing the text in notes. I'm currently studying pathology and would like to be able to &quot;tag&quot; a topic/heading within my notes (not the entire note itself) with a keyword that is searchable. For example, if I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, I'd like to be able to highlight it, and tag it with  multiple keywords or hashtags such as &quot;hypersensitivity reaction type IV&quot; or &quot;#hypersensitivityrxntypeIV&quot; and be able to search those keywords and have any of those topics I've tagged show up in the results. Anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8639" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T07:16:10.830" Title="Note taking software: referencing text to searchable keywords" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:24:53.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have to do a cost/benefit analysis. It's always good to have another paper, even if you are second author. A hiring or review committee may ask you to describe your own contribution to the paper. As long as you can do that honestly and point to some substantive contribution to the paper, it will be to your benefit. If it will take you a significant amount of time then it is probably a substantive contribution. The fact that it is not completely aligned with your own research may be an asset...it shows that you can collaborate and are willing to get outside your comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what would you be doing instead if you did not contribute to your colleague's paper? If you have another paper that is at a critical stage then it may be reasonable to turn down your friend. Otherwise, I'd say go for it. It's hard to say what will catch the eye of a hiring committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2738" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T00:24:53.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12765" CreationDate="2013-09-17T03:54:10.067" Score="20" ViewCount="9003" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I experienced, research is the most important factor for promotion, as it represents different features of an academician/scholar, which are needed by higher education institutions: teaching at graduate level, supervising academic projects of graduate students, attracting research fund, fame for the university, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publications is normally the main measure for research of a professor. Thus, one expects to see a proportional relationship between publications (both quality and quantity) and academic rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People can be promoted with less publications, probably because of other activities. But, I wonder why there are some academicians whose rank is far behind their publications. For example, I have seen people with 50 papers but are still assistant professor, or over 100 papers but still associate professor. I am referring to the US universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What keeps an assistant/associate professor with a strong publication record from appropriate promotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T04:01:07.457" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T04:01:07.457" Title="What stops an assistant/associate professor with a strong publication record from being promoted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12764" CreationDate="2013-09-17T04:32:10.903" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember, a promotion/tenure review package is just that: a package. While you are correct that a record of strong publications is the driving factor, there are still a number of items in the package that could lead to a tenure/promotion denial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weak letters of recommendation. You need to get your name out in more ways than just cranking out a lot of papers. This includes presenting talks at other institutions, sitting on program committees, and making sure that prominent people outside your institution write you good letters for your package.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lots of publications ≠ good publications. You need to be published in reputable, peer-reviewed publications. Some of those professors may list a ton of publications that aren't particularly notable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor record of graduate student supervision. A professor who never has any students, or who hasn't graduated a student in years isn't going to be competitive for promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor fundraising. If you're not applying for and getting grants (in many fields), you aren't going to be able to sustain a good research lab. It's tough to keep publishing relevant work without money coming in, although over time you can still build up a fair number of publications (many of which may be mediocre). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor teaching record. At some institutions, good teaching is more than just something the admissions office declares in all of its trifolds. If you've had consistently poor teaching evaluations, or if students have complained multiple times to the Dean or department chair, this could hurt your chance at promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personality. Your department has to make a recommendation to the tenure/promotion committee, and if you're genuinely not liked around your department, they aren't likely to make that recommendation, regardless of how strong your publications are (within reason).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: publications are a part of the larger promotion picture in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T04:32:10.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12764" CreationDate="2013-09-17T04:34:24.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple reasons why someone might not get promoted or receive tenure, even with a strong publication record:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor fundraising efforts (even if you publish a lot of papers, if you don't bring in enough grants to satisfy the department, you're unlikely to get tenure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor relationship with departmental colleagues (if you've burnt a lot of bridges with your more senior colleagues, again, much less likely to get tenure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative/budget actions: a hiring or promotion freeze can kill otherwise promising tenure cases, just because the university won't allow the cases to be heard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two tend to be applicant-specific issues; unfortunately, the last is usually school- or university-wide. In such cases, there's not much you can do, but it is at least announced &quot;publicly&quot; within the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T04:34:24.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-17T05:02:08.757" Score="15" ViewCount="1522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very recently came across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09/an-aspiring-scientists-frustration-with-modern-day-academia-a-resignation/&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt; which was about a PhD candidate quitting a few weeks/months shy of completing the degree due to frustration with the way academia works in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you may agree or disagree with the notions put forth, but both the anonymous letter and the long row of comments it has attracted certainly provides an interesting and lively discussion, relevant to many academics if not all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One particular subject it got me thinking about is the choice of projects, safe-and-uninteresting vs daring-and-interesting. For those who do not feel like reading the discussion in the blog, essentially it's about how many researchers go for projects that have little to no impact practically, in fields where a lot of the &quot;interesting&quot; work is put forth. Such projects are essentially after small incremental additions to the literature, more often than not special case scenarios, or replication of previously demonstrated results with other methods than previously reported. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently at a large conference, and I started reflecting on this subject. I noticed how the &quot;better&quot; speakers claim of excellence, or ground-breaking research, the-whole-picture type projects (e.g. &quot;mapping out the entire human kinome&quot;, or &quot;developing antibodies for each and every human protein&quot;). Currently I am sitting with my iPad observing people passing by my poster from some distance. Just like I suspected most people just pass by and barely even stop to read more than a sentence. That's how poster-sessions work you might say, but I am confident that a major contributor to this is the fact that the project I am presenting is inherently not that interesting; it's about a rare disease, effecting mostly elder patients, and does not involve the newest and hottest instrument or technique. I can only imagine that editors and reviewers will be equally unimpressed with the manuscript when we submit this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being the case I got into thinking whether or not it's actually worth getting into such a study. I feel like I have put a lot of time and energy into something that's not really my field of study and not liekly to have a rich &quot;return-of-investment&quot;. Before I go to my supervisor and have a serious chat about this I would like to get some feedback on whether or not this is a common phenomennon, within the biomedical sciences/academia in general. As scientists-to-be is our primary responsibility to ourselves, to our bosses/departments, or to science itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T18:36:21.427" Title="Project design and scope: &quot;interesting&quot; vs &quot;incremental&quot; science" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;project-design&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12761" CreationDate="2013-09-17T07:53:43.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be interested in using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maxqda.com/maxqda-for-mac&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MaxQDA&lt;/a&gt;, they are just now preparing to release a mac version. Although it is a software geared towards textual analysis and qualitative researchers, it can tag pieces of text pretty much like you say you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7428" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T07:53:43.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12770" CreationDate="2013-09-17T07:56:06.723" Score="4" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Understandably, there would be some adjustment needed, particularly if the academic had been in the predominantly teaching role for a long time (or it is the only academic role they've had). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What practical considerations are there that would help an academic currently fulfilling a primarily teaching position to seamlessly and effectively transition to being in an all-research position (any job that is all research, no teaching)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T19:55:00.073" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T19:55:00.073" Title="Considerations for transitioning from a teaching to a pure research position" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12769" CreationDate="2013-09-17T08:05:29.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some issues that will need to be considered are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting up to date with the current developments in your field – this will involve intense and selective reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding new topics to work on &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;justifying in grant applications the gap in publication record and demonstrating potential to produce results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attracting students to work with you – this may be easier if you've been teaching a lot, as you've put yourself in a position where students can see you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T08:05:29.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12764" CreationDate="2013-09-17T09:54:50.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;over 50 but assistant&quot; and &quot;over 100 but associate&quot; are meaningless for another reason. It's all relative. In a field where any assistant professor can rack up 50 papers, having 50 is not a sign that you should be promoted, &lt;em&gt;leaving aside all the other reasons why paper counts are not useful&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But another point is that in some universities, promotion to full professor is triggered by an application from the candidate (rather than after a fixed period of time like for tenure). So if the professor can't be bothered to apply, they might not. This is not common, but it's not inconceivable, especially if&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the pay differential at the institution isn't that significant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;full professors are required to do a lot more service work than associate professors. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T09:54:50.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12767" CreationDate="2013-09-17T10:05:43.967" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have different but overlapping responsibilities to all three; you can't say that one &quot;overrides&quot; the others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the responsibility to do &quot;good science.&quot; By &quot;good,&quot; I do not mean &quot;high-impact&quot; or &quot;prize-winning&quot; or anything like that; I mean &quot;ethical&quot;: you carry out your experiments or calculations without trying to achieve a desired outcome to support a preconceived model or explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You owe your advisor and yourself the same level of professional conduct: do the science properly, and let the results be what they are. You also have the responsibility to respect and properly use the resources your advisor provides: money, facilities, and time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you have a responsibility to yourself: do work that you feel satisfies you, and that keeps you motivated. Don't do research in an area just because that's what's &quot;hot&quot; right now; fads come and go, but good research survives that. Second-rate research likely won't survive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T10:05:43.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12778" CreationDate="2013-09-17T13:55:29.020" Score="10" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just read a recent paper in a well-respected journal. The work is technically sound and the results interesting. However, the authors comment their main results as unexpected and “extraordinary” (in the abstract and in the text), while it is an instance of a very generic and well-known phenomenon, which has been experimentally confirmed (and theoretically explained) in a large range of systems in the last decade. The author do not seem aware of the literature on this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am somewhat conflicted between two courses of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raising the matter with them privately, making them aware of the literature they have missed so that they do not repeat the mistake, and telling them (nicely) that their claims of extraordinary behavior are not valid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing the same thing, but through a formal “Comment” published in the same journal. This does not only bring the matter to their attention, but also to other readers of the journal. &lt;em&gt;Right now, I favor this option, because I think it improves the scientific record.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal in question does publish comments, its policy on the matter is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions […] For publication of a Comment or a Reply, they must be judged by the referees to present new insights and be of interest to our readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, a Comment in the journal will necessarily include a “Reply to the Comment” by the original authors, as per journal policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;how do I choose between contacting the authors in private, or submitting a formal “Comment” to the journal?&lt;/strong&gt; What factors should guide my choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T14:29:58.833" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T14:49:40.407" Title="Publishing a comment or contacting the authors privately?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12767" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:07:28.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As scientists-to-be is our primary responsibility to ourselves, to our bosses/departments, or to science itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not even sure what this phrase means. IMHO, the only principles are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Do what you find interesting and try to get good of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Never publish junk (BTW, no medical research that works is junk: even if the disease &#xA;is rare and affects only few &quot;old people&quot; and you found a cure, you improved this world quite a bit; the junk is something that either doesn't work or is perfectly clear from what everybody knows already and I should say that many papers involving &quot;hot techniques&quot; fall into that category).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Watch out a bit so that your can live and support yourself and your family on your salary (but don't try to fight for promotion, etc. beyond that level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Never tell other people that what they are doing is not worth doing unless you can easily do it yourself and never listen to anybody telling you something like that unless he can demonstrate that he can do it himself better and faster than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Don't envy anybody. There is always a bigger fish in the pond (a lot of them, really).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &quot;losing belief in academia as something useful to the world&quot;, since the linked letter uses quite a strong language, I'll use equally strong one to answer. It is not greedy and irresponsible academicians that make the beautiful world worse but the rather disgusting world that makes academicians greedy and irresponsible. We work for God but have to deal with people and I can quite understand the attitude of Wernher von Braun, which, if I understand anything about him, was &quot;I'm here to get us all to the Moon and my time is short, so if you make it impossible without sending people to gas chambers, it is your moral problem and not mine&quot;. Whether you want to share this attitude or to protest against it most fervently is your choice. The point is that this is not a choice a scientist invented and forced upon the world but the choice the world invented and forced upon a scientist. So, I don't buy the rhetoric about scientist's responsibility to the humankind unless I see some reciprocity. Making the most brilliant rocket engineer of all times a Nazi is quite an unforgivable crime and it is not the only one the academia can charge the humankind with. So, if somebody insists that we are not up to expectations, I'll retort that the world should be grateful that the scientists still work for it at all, not judge them from the viewpoint of idealistic moral standards or their utility for its purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastEditorUserId="6118" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T07:56:50.897" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T07:56:50.897" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12776" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:12:53.543" Score="2" ViewCount="1112" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geekosystem.com/shady-scientific-research-is-rampant-infographic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;big info-graphic&lt;/a&gt; (at the end of the question) explains that biomedicine and psychology have greater rate of data fabrication/falsification/mishandling than other fields. A similar effect was reported a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PLOS ONE paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once these factors were controlled for, surveys conducted among clinical, medical and pharmacological researchers appeared to yield higher rates of misconduct than surveys in other fields or in mixed samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it suggests that misconduct in clinical, pharmacological and medical research is more widespread than in other fields. This would support growing fears that the large financial interests that often drive medical research are severely biasing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paper does not offer any further discussion of the field dependence of data manipulation. So, have there been explanations proposed about why these fields are &quot;special&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;   &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Ulw7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T02:25:22.353" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T14:15:02.920" Title="Why is data falsification reported to be more usual in some fields than others?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12774" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:21:57.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing stopping you from contacting the authors directly. In fact that might be polite. It may, however, be unfruitful. Submitting a comment is not considered less polite than contacting the authors directly first. Remember, the authors have, in your view, published poorly referenced/researched work (reviewers and editors are partly also to be blamed). By writing a letter/comment, you perform a scientific debate where you wish to correct a problem with said paper and that is clearly within the realm of what we can and should do as scientists without feeling impolite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you do anything you should perhaps solicit colleagues to discuss the matter over. Since the results have been published, some form of publication discussing the problem must also appear in a publication. It is for this reason you should carefully discuss the matter, start writing a &quot;letter to the editor&quot; of the journal where it was published. The letter should contain the information that puts the &quot;novelty&quot; in perspective. Under such circumstances the authors will have the possibility of a rebuttal which typically is published at the same time as your letter, it is their opportunity to &quot;defend&quot; themselves. This is what typically is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now several things might happen, for example, the authors get angry, the editor refuses to publish your letter. This is why you are better off not being alone behind anything you write. If the letter is refused, then publish it elsewhere. But, remember, the point of writing a letter is to set the faulty perspective of the paper in a more correct one so that the paper is not taking credit where not credit should be had. Do not stray from this endeavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T14:24:50.890" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T14:24:50.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12774" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:22:06.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that these two choices are not mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors should be given the benefit of the doubt. Contact them privately first, to see if they are aware of your concern, and if so, whether they have a reasonable response. You should say, in that first contact, that you think it's enough of a concern that you're preparing a formal comment to submit to the journal. Perhaps it's a bit too nice, but I would rather be allowed the opportunity to publish my own comment or even a retraction, rather than being publicly &quot;called out&quot; without warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I believe that if your faithful attempt to privately contact the authors fails—if they do not respond within a reasonable amount of time, or they blow you off without a satisfying explanation, or they say that they'll do something but don't—then you should move onto publishing a formal comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that something needs to be put into the public record, and the sooner the better, but it doesn't need to be so quick that you don't even attempt to contact the original authors. Everyone should get the benefit of the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8619" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T14:22:06.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12595" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:45:43.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the previous answer speaks about journal, I just wanted to clarify for conference. &#xA;The proceedings are prepared by the Programme Committee and submitted to IEEEXplore library. They can appear there before the conference or after the conference, depending on the arrangementes chairs made with IEEE. Once the proceedings are there, you'll be able to locate your paper and print a screenshot and/or the paper in case you need to proof the publication.&#xA;The e-mail from the PC you received should also serve as a proof of publication, as long as it mentions the authors of the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T14:45:43.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12776" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:19:06.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read the paper you mention, but I can definitely see why falsification could be more common in these fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the factor that affects data falsification the most is not ethical differences between fields, but rather simply how difficult it is to identify the falsification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fields where experiments are simple to replicate, false results will be discovered easily. In clinical/pharmacological research, for example when testing an effect of a medical treatment, studies on human subjects are extremely costly to perform, so they are difficult to replicate. Even if they are replicated, there is such intrinsic large variance in the results that it would be difficult to conclude that results from a previous study were purposefully falsified even if they are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T15:19:06.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12776" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:19:50.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your quotes from the Plos One meta analysis highlight problems in clinical, medical and pharmacological, but your question is about biomedicine and psychology. The meta analysis paper found no evidence for increased rates of reporting misconduct in either biomedicine or the social sciences suggesting that those fields are not &quot;special&quot;. The authors then present a reasonable conjecture about why the reports of misconduct in medicine might be higher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, as all survey-based data, this finding is open to the&#xA;  alternative interpretation that respondents in the medical profession&#xA;  are simply more aware of the problem and more willing to report it.&#xA;  This could indeed be the case, because medical research is a preferred&#xA;  target of research and training programs in scientific integrity, and&#xA;  because the severe social and legal consequences of misconduct in&#xA;  medical research might motivate respondents to report it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think base on the meta analysis I would argue that data falsification is NOT more usual in some fields than others, but simply that reports and sensitivity to it is more usual when a field specifically trains individuals to recognize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T20:04:13.990" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T20:04:13.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12817" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:23:26.610" Score="10" ViewCount="10881" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, I went to a workshop/conference on the specific topic in my field. It was a small event, with not proceedings published. I would like to discuss it in an upcoming paper, in order to state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it was discussion with X and Y, spurred by the workshop on Z, which initiated this new direction of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due. Now, I could leave it in the text, or cite it as “private communication from X at Z”, or cite it directly in my references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Workshop on Z, Big City, Country (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal style doesn't say anything of this, but generally calls for references with superscript numbers. So, what is the best option to cite a whole workshop/conference? (and not a specific presentation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T11:20:37.490" Title="Can you cite a workshop or conference in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:29:49.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It always depends on how much effort you need to put relative to the quality of the paper. HOWEVER -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be an urban myth, but I keep hearing from faculty that not having any second author papers is seen as a slight negative (this is in biology). Both in academia and in industry, the ability to collaborate and work in groups is seen as important. The only method they have of guessing what your teamwork skills are is - second author papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8645" LastEditorUserId="56594" LastEditDate="2020-06-24T20:48:03.213" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T20:48:03.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12782" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:46:13.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, only &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; sources should be referenced. Exceptions may be &lt;em&gt;personal communication&lt;/em&gt; and reports. Quoting, for example, a discussion during a meeting is therefore quite difficult unless you can quote the persons (and that meeting) as personal communication. The problem is that the discussion or statement(s) are not officially recorded somewhere. There is of course nothing wrong with simply printing out the occurence of the discussion at the meeting in full text. I am not sure if I have seen it but something along the lines your first example with names (and titles) clearly indicated. Just remember to clear the statement with the persons you quote and do not forget to state the date of the conversation/conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T15:46:13.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12782" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:50:24.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here is that conversations are not normally &quot;on the record.&quot; The point of a citation is verification: you are giving credit by citing the &quot;original source&quot; that you are using. Since you would not really be pointing them to material actually associated with the workshop, you should cite &quot;Private Communication&quot; with the involved individuals—although you could cite the event as the &quot;location and date&quot; fields for the communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T15:50:24.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:00:03.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, a good (not catchy) title catches readers, not a first sentence in an introduction. The problem of trying to be catchy is that people's opinion about catchy may not be the same as yours, in which case it backfires. yes, science can be dry and the temptation is large to be catchy or funny, but it rarely works. Rarely, partly because each paper is read by only a few, and partly because the diversity in opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introductory sentence should try to provide the interesting perspective within which your results fit. It is difficult to get right but since it is not the first you write, you can use the results and your hopefully thought through title to ponder what is the perspective you wish your work to fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T17:00:03.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:27:36.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I electronically highlight and comment my papers in the program Xournal. I used to then organize them somewhat in a program called Zotero (in some ways similar to the Mendeley mentioned above I believe). However, I recently stopped using Zotero because it was an additional hassle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So currently I just mark up papers in Xournal and then organize them into different directories within my Dropbox account. I'm happy with this, and have been doing it for about 4 years now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T17:27:36.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12790" CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:54:21.817" Score="8" ViewCount="1554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking an advance course in Computer Science so the class size is pretty limited (8 to be exact). The faculty is very senior and well respected in the field. For past few lectures, I have been asking questions that make the faculty a little uncomfortable which I can guess from the way the answers are given (I am also on a psychology class :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, to understand a concept, I say &quot;why X has been used ?&quot;. He tries his best to answer &quot;because of A,B,C reasons&quot;. During this explanation, occasionally I can sense high level of uncomfort in him and the answers are ambiguous. So, now I have doubt that &quot;if X, then why A ? &quot; and so on. Should one continue with these kind of questions when you know that the faculty won't be able to answer the questions perfectly or isn't comfortable enough to satisfy your inquisitiveness. I do not doubt his competence at all and respect him very much. But how does a faculty feel in this kind of continuous poking (if it is so) or should one resort to personal interaction so that he may feel more comfortable ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that hold negatively for the student that student is trying to humiliate the faculty ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Questions are not non-sense but are somewhat basic and supported by logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T18:29:12.140" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T00:51:10.697" Title="Should a student keep asking questions to a faculty even if the faculty is unsure of the answer?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:53:20.433" Score="4" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading a paper and in the Background section the author said something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent studies suggest that... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then gave a citation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to that references section, took the name of the other paper and downloaded it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what was a surprise for me is that this paper also in the literature review section refer to the same studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that the first paper refer to this second paper. So, is this allowed on literature review without considering secondary citation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T08:59:20.433" Title="reviewing a review: Referencing" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:58:24.917" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, there is nothing wrong with asking questions. But, asking the same one may be perceived as badgering the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a course of action would be to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Faheem suggests, talk privately to the professor, not only about how they feel about the questioning, but the question itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Offer to perform some research on finding an answer - this could be an opportunity for you to potentially perform new research that could answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T19:58:24.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:14:00.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's anything too unseemly going on here, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; the cited paper that also lists the other papers does not actually produce the results that follow &quot;Recent studies show.&quot; In that case, there's a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, however, you do have to give some deference to the fact that there are only so many papers out there on a given topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T20:14:00.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12801" CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:22:16.647" Score="26" ViewCount="13224" Body="&lt;p&gt;People are interested in tenured positions to have a secured job, as they do not need to worry about their contracts. Tenured position gives a professor security that s/he cannot get fired easily (e.g., simply not renewing his/her contract). But, what is the actual obligation for the professors? In return, what is the motivation for a university to offer tenured position, which is accompanied by less flexibility from HR point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, tenure is just for the sake of &lt;code&gt;academic freedom&lt;/code&gt;, and has no real benefit for the institution, except a one-way service to professors (probably satisfying more applicants). Am I right? Then, a university must prefer not to offer tenured positions at all, as HR has more freedom with non-tenured positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T22:12:18.077" LastActivityDate="2019-11-13T00:02:03.260" Title="What is the real benefit of tenured positions for universities?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:32:19.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that this is wrong per se, but I think it's bad form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I try to do is to cite either the first paper to show a particular result, or at least a seminal paper in that area, then then point to the review explicitly. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Then people were like, hey, maybe timing matters?&#xA;STDP was born (Bi &amp;amp; Poo, 1998; see Sjöström &amp;amp; Gerstner, 2010 for a review).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper's already been published, well, not much you can do. If you're reviewing a paper, I might suggest they change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8619" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T21:32:19.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:23:27.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand the question you're asking, there is no obligation for a tenured professor to remain at the institution that gave him or her tenure. Professors changing institutions happens quite frequently. In many cases, such moves occur because of career advancement—for instance, one might be offered a position in the university administration (chair, dean, or provost, for example).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in such cases, the professor typically has the obligation of &quot;winding down&quot; her group at the old institution &quot;gracefully.&quot; Usually, that means that the advisor is still responsible for supervising any students that chose not to move with the professor. In some cases, depending on location, there may be teaching duties leftover—for instance, a tenured professor left my university here in Germany not too long ago to take a position in another country. He still had to return once a week for an entire year to fulfill the teaching obligations he had under German law. (Professors' minimum teaching loads are regulated in Germany.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T22:23:27.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:35:04.270" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might be misunderstanding the purpose of tenure. While your view from the teacher's side might be correct (wanting to avoid worrying about contract renewal) the purpose for a school to offer tenure is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to be putting an educator in a position where he/she can teach whatever they feel is best without worrying about being fired if the school doesn't think it politically appropriate. For example, if someone was teaching about communism during the 1960's in the US, the school might want to fire that teacher. Tenure shows that the school believes in scholarship over politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, recent studies show that this is not at all what happens. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/09/study-finds-students-learn-more-non-tenure-track-instructors&quot;&gt;Students learn more from non-tenured teachers than tenured ones.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question, the responsibilities are the same as any other professional position - do your job. You certainly can leave if you find better opportunities - it's not a prison, it's a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="8658" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T13:44:20.517" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T13:44:20.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12807" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:55:15.317" Score="6" ViewCount="835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, the credit of a scientific paper is equally distributed among authors. In the real world, it is almost impossible to write a paper with equal contributions of all authors. Usually, one author is the main one who is the idea maker or discoverer by subtle analysis of data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, contributions of some authors are trivial, e.g., consultation on a specialized area, analysis of a part of data, etc. With this system, there are many famous professors who are co-authors for tens of hundreds of papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why when judging the research records of a researchers, only the quantity and quality of papers are considered, and no one cares about how much s/he has contributed to those papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T15:53:12.860" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T15:53:12.860" Title="Why are all authors credited equally with authorship regardless of level of contribution?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2013-09-17T23:47:20.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the relative two fisted brutality of the unitary Australian system in industrial relations terms on the average (as opposed to &quot;appointed&quot;) academic staff; and the early death of &quot;tenure&quot; in Australian contexts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The only limitation on institutions offering positions is industrial&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can see this in field specific peaks of casually taught classes reaching 80%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And society wide casualisation of about 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academics have incredibly low rates of militancy in the face of massive erosion of work conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Research,&quot; the unique product of on-going appointments in Australia, has consistently been treated by institutions as a &quot;Luxury&quot; product (AUR reports on cross subsidisation of research by teaching).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employer preference is the only basis on which any on-going positions exist, and this seems to be directly related to either Degree program related academic administration (&quot;Who's in charge of the BA's pedagogy?&quot;) or to inter-Employer status game (&quot;We have 100 more HERDC points than you, and are therefore a better university&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T23:47:20.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2013-09-18T00:58:34.563" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are some odd accidental assumptions in the question. For the U.S. system, although there is substantial drift in the last 10 years, the idea was not only that people should &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt; what their best judgement indicated, without worry of censure or loss-of-job, but that also their &lt;em&gt;research/scholarship&lt;/em&gt; should reflect best-understanding rather than politics... especially given the transience and partisanship of politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the idea that in otherwise-profitable enterprises people might not want to put any effort into teaching at all, thus not want to participate in a &quot;university&quot; (with students), without an otherwise-extraordinary promise of more-or-less-endless job security. Some smart, able people, not terribly interested in money, beyond a certain point, can be ensnared by the &quot;care-free&quot; aspect of a tenured faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Even&quot; in the U.S., in recent years there has been a push to &quot;contract&quot; faculty positions, indeed. In happy times, these seem to be no worse than tenured positions. However, obviously, in the next economic downturn the administration will have the easy option of terminating as many contract employees as seems convenient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is part of the increased corporatization of U.S. (and other) colleges and universities. Of course, we should understand that we are at the end of a sort of &quot;golden age&quot; between the pre-WWI times that only the upper-classes' children &quot;went to college&quot;, apart from seminary students, and after the post-WWII time where the &quot;GI Bill&quot; financed returning veterans' college educations to avoid flooding the job market... which was already in disarray after all the women who'd been &quot;allowed&quot; to work in factory jobs and such in wartime were expected (or forced) to quit and &quot;go home&quot;... so there was an artificial surge both in the numbers of college enrollments and in the socio-economic goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more complications currently...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T00:58:34.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11785" CreationDate="2013-09-18T01:08:07.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Australian Academics do not have tenure.  They are either appointed on an on-going basis (&quot;Permanent&quot; staff) or on contract (year-to-year, three-year to three-year) or casual (hour to hour) bases.  All three categories of staff can effectively be dismissed at whim by management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appointment to permanent positions in Australia is on the basis of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merit selection to externally advertised positions (with a probationary period)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corrupt selection to unadvertised strategic appointments (with a probationary period and the possibility of &quot;non-conversion&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Absence of selection or merit selection to contract or casual positions followed by a lengthy union fought conversion process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the conditions of appointment to ongoing positions vary from field to field, you should expect that the conditions of appointment for a Level B &quot;Lecturer&quot; are broadly similar to the requirements for either entry to a tenure-track position or achievement of tenure in a tenure track position.  (Varies by field and labour supply).  Appointment to Level C &quot;Senior Lecturer&quot; often occurs 3 to 6 years after first appointment on the basis of another unit of research output equivalent to the unit of research output required for initial appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics may be dismissed at will by forced or &quot;voluntary&quot; redundancy processes covered by weak industrial provisions in Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (site specific industrial instruments).  These dismissals need a fig leaf of reduced student numbers or institutional renewal; but are effectively managerial dismissals.  Individual academics are constructively dismissed through bullying processes, change fatigue, and general managerialism.  Management has the power to entirely defund teaching streams and then claim that positions are no longer required due to the lack of teaching.  Australian University management is adept at manufacturing both immediate and long-term funding crises to achieve fundamentally political ends in terms of attacking specific work-cultures or disciplinary research programmes.  In addition, freedom of research has been significantly eroded by quantity and quality audits of research output which often involve politicised sub-disciplines indicating their preferences (Consider the Business Dean's journal quality list, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only defence Australian academics have against management is unity in the National Tertiary Education Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Industry experience, NTEU membership, 40 years of union journal back-issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T01:08:07.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2013-09-18T01:59:26.510" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Institutions offer tenure, not (just) because of high-minded abstractions like &quot;academic freedom&quot;, but because it makes good business sense.  The benefit of tenure to the institution follows from the benefit to the individual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From the faculty member's perspective, tenure makes it possible to pursue high-risk/high-impact research ideas without having to worry about having to keep short-term bean-counters happy.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This makes institutions that offer tenure more attractive to strong researchers because those researchers want an environment that best supports their ability to pursue their research ideas.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Such researchers, in turn, are very often also the ones who bring in the big grants.  Their high visibility also enhances the reputation of the institution, which attracts more students and alumni donations, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons, given two otherwise-identical institutions where one offered tenure and the other didn't, the one without tenure would find itself at a significant competitive disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T01:59:26.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12803" CreationDate="2013-09-18T03:57:36.010" Score="9" ViewCount="4390" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes online application systems ask for uploading recommendation letters as supplementary documents (scanned copies). In this case, it is possible to get general recommendation letters (addressed as &lt;code&gt;To Whom It May Concern&lt;/code&gt;) and submit them for different applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it bad to submit a recommendation letter, which has not been addressed for a specific application? Assume that the content will be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it is OK, is it bad to attach some recommendation letters for an application when it is not requested?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T17:21:05.647" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T17:21:05.647" Title="Are generalized recommendation letters bad?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12802" CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:19:27.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually surprised that whatever system you're using has you upload the letters yourself. Typically (maybe this is field specific?) an applicant should not even get to look at the letters, since any negative (or neutral) comments the writer includes might strain their relationship, and so excluding the applicant means the writer can, in theory, be more direct and honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) This is bad. A generic letter is obviously better than no letter at all (if one or more is required), but not always by much. It indicates that you are interested in a position &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt; rather than interested in a position &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt;. If your other qualifications are superb this might not matter, but you can give any application a really significant boost by showing the people who will be reading it that you are interested in them and will be a good fit. This doesn't mean totally different letters for each application, but you will have to help your letter writers to tailor small changes, for each letter, that &quot;personalize&quot; your applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) This is probably bad too; if they didn't request letters, then they don't want them. At best they'll ignore them, at worst they'll be annoyed that you don't follow directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6820" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:19:27.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:28:06.230" Score="2" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new Master's seeking student in Mathematics, and I'm trying to get a jump on my research focus/concentration for eventually writing my Master's Thesis. My interest is primarily prime, perfect, and Mersenne numbers. When I try to formulate a plan though, my ideas are always too broad and vague, or are way too specific. Does anybody have advice on how to decide on a topic? How long is the average such thesis? Perhaps what I thought was too vague and expansive would be a perfect length and I was just second-guessing myself too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8654" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T05:16:53.793" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T07:22:41.527" Title="How do I choose an appropriate scope for a master's thesis in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12802" CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:52:27.900" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, as wsc says, you should not be uploading the letters yourself.  Usually there's someone in your dept. who can accept letters and send them out if there's no way for the letters to be uploaded directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, senior letter writers already spend a lot of their own valuable time writing letters for dozens of people.  Asking them to write separate letters for dozens and dozens of applications for each person is completely unreasonable.  In Math for research jobs in the US, letters for job applicants are not school specific.  (Though they do usually say &quot;postdoc&quot; or &quot;tenure track position&quot; since obviously a strong postdoc candidate would often be a weak TT candidate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For teaching letters for liberal arts schools my impression is that the situation is somewhat different and some specialization may be expected.  But I don't have first-hand knowledge.  Of course, for those letters, it's less likely that one person is writing 50 letters a year.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:52:27.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:59:26.053" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're studying psychology. That doesn't make you telepathic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a wide variety of possible reasons for what's going on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are mistaken, your lecturer is not uncomfortable. Crazy, I know, but you just might be wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your lecturer has indigestion, or piles, or tight shoes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your questions indicate you're missing basic knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the questions take the group away from the core material that the lecturer has to get through, and answering them will slow the teaching down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your lecturer doesn't know the answer, and can't bring themselves to say as much, and doesn't have the nous to turn it around and ask you or the rest of the class to find the answer. That's quite a failing in an academic, to be unable to say &quot;I don't know&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that repeatedly asking &quot;why A?&quot; &quot;So why B?&quot; &quot;So why C? ...&quot; is something that toddlers do, it's often just time-wasting and attention-seeking and is likely to annoy a lot of people; even if those aren't your motives, be aware that it could come across as that. So instead of just asking questions, look for some answers yourself. You are doing a higher degree, after all, so you should be looking for answers yourself, as well as seeking help from staff and other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:59:26.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12796" CreationDate="2013-09-18T05:25:22.667" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that using simple publication or citation counts is prone to a range of problems. One important class of such biases relates to differential levels of involvement of an author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of some basic corrections for this, there are ways that individual papers are evaluated to assess relative contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some fields being first author (and to a lesser extent, subsequent positions) suggests a greater level of involvement in a given  paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a few cases, proportion of contribution is explicitly stated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some contexts, some form of proportional analysis is performed such that if you are one author among two, then the paper is weighted more than one author among ten (I've seen this in some university workload models).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, generally, when evaluating the publication achievements of a researchers, a more holistic approach can be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An overall program of research will be evaluated in order to assess a sustained contribution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To some extent, over time researchers would be expected to play a range of roles from lead to secondary contributor. Therefore, often an overall sum of papers may balance out such varying levels of contributions. In particular, if you have a reasonable balance of first author papers and the number of authors per paper is similar to other researchers in your field, this may reinforce such a perspective. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T22:54:50.393" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T22:54:50.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12804" CreationDate="2013-09-18T07:22:41.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on scaaahu's very valid comment, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what specific topic(s) interest you the most.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;which of these do you have some level of confidence in pursuing at a Master's level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who has the expertise to be able to advise you, are the willing to do so (they may be overloaded).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are their enough resources available to start research in the chosen field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, what is the 'end-game', where do you hope to go with this qualification?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T07:22:41.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12796" CreationDate="2013-09-18T08:38:50.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree that all authors are credited equally. Since there are several ways in which authorships are counted, the position of your name will provide different signals. In my realm, first authors are simply assumed to have done the most, such papers count higher. Other authors are considered to have done less in falling order, unless stated otherwise. In some fields the last author is the &quot;important&quot; one. In some fields authorships come through contract, e.g. CERN consortia authorships (see link in the reply on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12032/4394&quot;&gt;coauthorships&lt;/a&gt;, the answer there may also be of help). Hence authorships are treated differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally everyone should follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.mq.edu.au/about/research_@_macquarie/policies,_procedures_and_conduct/documents/Vancouver.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vancouver Protocol&lt;/a&gt;) in which it is clear that some contributions simply should not warrant authorship but rather a mention in the acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end when judging the authorships of papers, each field applies their own &quot;standard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T08:38:50.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12796" CreationDate="2013-09-18T08:53:52.997" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that, contrary to what you say about &quot;one main contributor&quot;, in most cases, it is absolutely impossible to judge &quot;the level of contribution&quot; from any objective standpoint. Let's consider a (not hypothetical, just missing real names!) example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A and B spent about a year thinking of a problem and devising a scheme for solution they could not make work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A discussed the question with C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C, who wasn't much interested in trying it yourself, passed it to his collaborator on a different project D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D found an approach that gives fairly good result but not quite what was wanted and told it to C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C passed it to A and B and during the two week visit of D arranged that A,C,D have a few discussions about it that resulted in some extra ideas but not a full solution yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile B tried to combine what he knew himself and what he was told by C and obtained an even slightly better result than D (though still short of the exact statement wanted) but under more restrictive assumptions. He sent it to D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D, upon reading B's draft, realized that the initial scheme of A and B could be made to work after all (what he was missing was in that note from B and what B was missing was a part of D's &quot;general knowledge&quot;), finished it off, and sent the solution to A,B,C, who have read and verified it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I suggest you try to tell the &quot;level of contribution&quot; of each person keeping in mind that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If not for C, D would most likely not hear of the problem at all and it is doubtful that he would come into direct contact with A,B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It is possible that A and B would make their approach work eventually without D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) What was a &quot;general knowledge&quot; for D and allowed him to finish the problem off, would hardly come into the mind of A,B,C at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Without B's draft, D would, most likely, stop at the &quot;partial result&quot; he obtained first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Both A and C participated in the discussion during D's visit and, while everybody remembers all the ideas that surfaced, nobody remembers (or cares much about) who said what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) A,B,C,D all argue that the rest 3 could surely do the problem without him, just in longer time, so the current idea of &quot;author credit&quot; C and D have is to publish the whole thing under the name AB CoD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T08:53:52.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2013-09-18T08:59:20.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with aeismail in that there is not anything out of the ordinary going. On. To have two chronologically separated papers citing the same material and the later also citing the older is perfectly fine, in fact I would say necessary. What is not ok, is if the author of the later paper read the older paper and simply took the references from that without actually reading the original papers. This is far from unheard of and the main problem is that the later author relies entirely on the formers judgement and interpretation. The risk is that errors in interpretations propagate without proper critical scrutiny of original studies. So one question you should ask is whether the later author have cited everything with or without such critical review. If the papers are separated by years and you know more papers have been published but are not referenced by the later author, then there is a chance (but not a certainty) the later author may have been just lazy. But if more papers are added then it is less clear. To make the case even worse, that two authors cite the same sources for the same conclusion(s) can also be seen as sound, that both have found and read the pertinent literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what you should do is to make sure you have critically read all the papers so that you can judge if the formers interpretations are sound. If they are sound then none of them have contributed anything negative to science. If they are not sound then you have the opportunity to rectify a problem by doing better or in this case suggest improvements in the review. The problem is tricky and requires quite a lot of work from a reviewer to possibly rectify if a problem really exists. this is likely why some errors propagate through scientific literature for sometimes quite a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T08:59:20.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12813" CreationDate="2013-09-18T09:06:47.490" Score="19" ViewCount="2260" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happened quite recently to a friend and colleague of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another colleague made an off-hand 'joke' about a friend (an academic) potentially behaving inappropriately with his students.  This was said in front of my friend's students (over 20) and within hearing range of his students, as my friend heard them laughing soon after the 'joke' was said (his own students apparently had shocked looks on their faces).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation was that he was setting up an experiment demonstration that required the lights turned off and curtains drawn (physics - lasers).  Understandably, my friend was very angry, hurt and terribly embarrassed and could not bare to even look at his colleague who 'triumphantly went back to his own class' soon after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a point I want to make here, the reason I am saying 'joke' in inverted commas, is because this kind of infantile rubbish can and does cause unwarranted mud to stick - and is potentially a lot more damaging for male teachers/lecturers.  Also, it is a lame, disgusting, low-brow attempt at humour. (I have been a butt of a joke like that myself a few years ago and it inadvertently caused quite a bit of trouble, despite being 100% innocent and proven so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no question of his innocence of any wrong doing, and being the true professional, he redirected his students back to the demonstration and completed the lesson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is the kind of person that does not like to make waves and does not like to make a fuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lecturer X about to start his class requiring the lights to be off and curtains drawn for an experiment. Lecturer Y comes in unannounced and made the 'joke' about X potentially doing something inappropriate with the students in the darkness.  This was in front of both X's and Y's students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lecturer Y went back to his class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lecturer X was justifiably insulted, but continued his lesson.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What course of action should he (Lecturer X) do?  Particularly to protect himself from any potential future trouble regarding allegations etc from this 'joke'?  (Which as I said, can occur).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="1348" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T20:09:35.720" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T20:09:35.720" Title="Appropriate response to sexual misconduct 'joke' made against an academic" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12812" CreationDate="2013-09-18T09:30:26.853" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very unfortunate event for your affected colleague. Usually the proverb &quot;where there's smoke, there's fire&quot; has some truth, but when artificial smoke is generated without the fire, it is very detrimental. As you state the comment may stick and through the grapevine it may attain any proportion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What then to do? Well, first, I think the teacher should tell his (in this case) students that he feels the 'joke' was totally inappropriate and the he was hurt by it and also explain that this sort of action is not to be tolerated by anyone. This will set the record straight with his own class. It could spark a short discussion about political correctness and even if it takes time out of the subject teaching it will be worth it. It is a good lesson that should be taught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to actually step up to the person who made the 'joke' and explain that it was uncalled for and inappropriate, particularly in public and at his expense. I understand that this may be difficult to do but unfortunately the choice is to do it or let it be and face the fact that the issue is unresolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third step is to bring it up at a departmental level and try to turn it into a general discussion to eventually also involve students. The university/department probably has rules about (mis-)conduct and correctness. It can be fruitful to provide an opportunity to have a discussion on how people (faculty and students) should conduct professionally,it does not even have to bring up this 'joke' in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, being affected by a situation like this is about the worst that can happen, particularly if the 'joke' propagates without any control. It may be that there are officers within the university that can provide advice on what can be done and help defuse the situation in case it will propagate into rumours, etc. The students will therefore also be involved and can be good support if brought in to discuss the matter from a correctness point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T14:32:31.523" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T14:32:31.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12816" CreationDate="2013-09-18T10:47:38.367" Score="4" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently considering to use a in line (in text) listing style, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Some things are quite good. &lt;strong&gt;(i)&lt;/strong&gt; Thing A can do this and that, which is awesome because of this and that. &lt;strong&gt;(ii)&lt;/strong&gt; Thing B can do, ... . &lt;strong&gt;(iv)&lt;/strong&gt; Some people also say that this and that, therefore thing Z is great.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got more important points already highlighted through bullets, therefore I don't want to use bullets again for this minor information, plus I want to logically link the single points through sentences, but still provide an easy way to pick out the key words quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First question:&lt;/strong&gt; I've seen this style in quite a few papers. Is it considered to be a &quot;good&quot; style, or are there any downsides to this approach? Should I not use this style? Does the reader get confused by this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second question:&lt;/strong&gt; Shall the brackets and latin number be bold, only the number, or nothing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third question:&lt;/strong&gt; Should I place the enumeration element right infront of the keyword, or at the beginning of the sentence containing the keyword?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="8549" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T10:52:58.383" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:30:00.567" Title="In text listing style - how to use? Any downsides?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:26:28.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes it is a good/acceptable style. At least in the fields where I have looked the format is standard. in fact bullets or numbered lists should be used more sparingly and I think the following is a good guideline: use bullets/itemization when there is a lot of text going into each. 'Lot' in this case is a complete sentence or more. Use the format you mention when you need a word or partial sentence for each item.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are several ways to do this you can use 'i)' or '(i)' or (1)' or '(a)' etc. The choice may differ depending on what else you have in your paper. If you have figures that contains several panes, for example, a, b, c, d, you may decide to use Roman or regular numerals for your lists. if you have several lists you should avoid repeating the same item descriptor and, for example, use Roman numerals for one and Arabic for another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the context. you should place them where it is appropriate to read them. this means before each part of the construction. In your example you have divided everything into separate sentences but I think you should make a construct with semicolons instead: &quot;There are three things of importance: (1) thing A; (2) thing B; and (3) Thing C.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T11:26:28.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:26:45.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the numbers are never used, or if the technique is overused, then this can be considered bad style. I would not use it in the example above, for instance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use whatever style you want. There is no reason that they are bold. Sometimes the leading parenthesis is dropped, sometimes both. It's best to consult the style guidelines for the relevant publishers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the enumeration element in front of the sentence or phrase under consideration. Try it out, if you put it near the keyword, then you'll have spurious sentence elements in illogical positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T11:26:45.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12782" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:34:36.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could mention the people with whom you discussed in the acknowledgements &quot;thanks X and Y for helpful/... discussions&quot; and cite the conference in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cite it in the correct style, I would recomment that you contact the editorial office and ask. I once asked about the style of referencing a thesis and recieved an answer very fast, so this is the safest way in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T11:34:36.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12767" CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:05:13.193" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first comment that comes to mind is &quot;If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be science&quot;. Much of the science will out of necessity be at a basic (and therefore perhaps perceived as uninteresting) level. Ground breaking work originates primarily from two things: luck or huge funding (thinking of human genome as an example). As a PhD student you are not likely to tap into huge funding although your advisor may do so and your PhD might then get a ride on that gravy train. It is not the norm. Luck is not something one can hope for either. It is of course possible to argue that finding a good research question can be a third alternative but again getting the results to break through or the money to fund it usually ends up being the limiting factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the lines of aeismail's answer, a PhD is about so much more than just a flashy product, it is about learning the basics of science, the attention to detail, the ethics of research and the research process. this does not preclude high profile results but more often than not it is about basic science and about providing or contributing to a firm basis upon which higher profile science is built. Put differently, with out that ground work the rest would not exist. So there is a drive in all of us do do as best as we can and that this some day will reach the headlines. but, I would argue that doing high-quality science is something almost different to high profile science. There is not necessarily an equal sign between the two. And with research you do not necessarily know when or where the breakthroughs will appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I worked with a group of colleagues trying to prove an hypothesis through experimental work. We found something completely different and hitherto unknown and it was not by design. this gave us a publication in Nature (whether this is the pinnacle of good science I will not say) from a project that otherwise would have been looked upon as fairly middle of the road.u&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T13:05:13.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12774" CreationDate="2013-09-18T15:06:04.637" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advice you to be careful. Not citing other sources is &lt;strong&gt;quite&lt;/strong&gt; common in the academia as a mean of making your result look more innovative, more important, and more appealing. Then, if you tell these researchers &quot;Oooooh,  I know your dirty tricks!&quot; (even if you do it in a polite way), they might feel offended and could probably take revenge when they come across one of your manuscripts as referees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand your frustration since I often come across papers like the one you mention, written by reknown researchers and published in important journals, while they are basically reinventing the wheel. I have also come across papers where the authors do not cite their previous &lt;em&gt;extremely related&lt;/em&gt; papers. &lt;em&gt;C'est la vie&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8660" LastEditorUserId="8660" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T15:12:41.800" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T15:12:41.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11193" CreationDate="2013-09-18T17:34:00.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one event that can qualify as such. In 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://r6.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russell O'Connor&lt;/a&gt; submitted a paper to the ACM Workshop for Generic Programming 2011 after having submitted it to the arXiv under a Public Domain licence. At press time, the printer asked O'Connor for a letter of permission from the ACM &lt;em&gt;in lieu&lt;/em&gt; of an exclusive copyright transfer which he could not grant. Although he had informed the conference chairs of the arXiv upload when he submitted, and they were OK with it, ACM legal refused to publish the paper as it was &quot;already published.&quot; The paper is only mentioned briefly in the proceedings in  a note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We note that one of the papers presented in the workshop is not included in the proceedings. This paper, ‘Functor is to Lens as Applicative is to Biplate: Introducing Multiplate’ by Russell O’Connor, is accessible as &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.2841v2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv:1103.2841v2&lt;/a&gt; [cs.PL].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is explained in more detail in O'Connor's blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://r6.ca/blog/20110930T012533Z.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The ACM and Me&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T17:34:00.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:11:46.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to use a journal to keep track of my readings as I could take the journal to the library with me. If I were doing a similar thing today, I'd use a wiki to keep track of my notes and research as that would let me re-organize things as needed, host PDFs of the journal articles when available and allow for searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T21:11:46.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12835" CreationDate="2013-09-18T22:27:02.920" Score="6" ViewCount="1633" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some graduate students (MSc and PhD) have a second advisor from outside the university (and even outside the country). In most cases I've seen, the second advisor is a collaborator of the primary supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any institutional attitude towards having a second advisor from outside the university (and probably internationally)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the terms of working with an external advisor? Does it need an HR contract, or institutional agreement? Who approves the qualifications of the external advisor to meet the university standards/regulations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T20:41:18.583" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T20:41:18.583" Title="External advisor for graduate students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12812" CreationDate="2013-09-18T22:41:25.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the local laws and policies, that joke itself might constitute harassment of you and of your students, thus, the &quot;jokester&quot; might already be culpable. Certainly they are visibly culpable, but/and possibly so depending on the incisiveness and (in a good sense) subtlety of your local laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual counter-argument that &quot;oh, it was just a joke, don't be so uptight&quot;, is just a disregard and attempted dismissal of the issue... which might have been orthodox and acceptable &quot;back in the day&quot; when the opportunity for various bonus intimidations of subordinates was an understood &quot;perk&quot; of senior positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the students, one could comment that that exemplified the reasons such behavior is against policy: not that anyone was immediately injured, perhaps, but ... here's the point ... it was a &lt;em&gt;distraction&lt;/em&gt; from the real goals of the situation, namely, learning/education/teaching. Even if everyone in the room knew that there was no chance of the &quot;joke&quot; being relevant, certainly most would know that there is a potentially very serious issue there, and, thus, raising a fake-serious issue burns far too many mental CPU-cycles. A big waste!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T22:41:25.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T04:27:39.633" Score="13" ViewCount="1593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior PhD student who greatly appreciates learning about allied fields. I had been a huge fan of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and I believe some of them steered the course of my life towards grad school. However, I am more and more getting impatient in lectures. I am a Mathematician but I like to study Economics and Computer Science for fun. My university pays for any courses I would ever want to take as a PhD student so I try to enroll but I am losing my patience. I feel the instructor is taking up too much time explaining things that I could grab off the textbook in much lesser time and in the process, form the connections better. Is this normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who has had 20 years of schooling since kindergarten, is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself. I know I am implicitly making the assumption that one is motivated enough to stick by routines but that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8668" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-20T01:39:14.903" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T00:29:04.400" Title="Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12831" CreationDate="2013-09-19T04:53:35.037" Score="18" ViewCount="10432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got a request for an article I'm a coauthor on, which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Dr. NAME REMOVED: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is Victoria Hornos and I am contacting you on behalf of the&#xA;  Central Library of Medicine Foundation.  Dr. SANTIAGO ATEHORTUA has&#xA;  contacted us asking for a reprint that you wrote. He is a Terapia&#xA;  Intensiva and Dr. is in need of your article as Dr. is making a&#xA;  research on this subjet . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JOURNAL NAME 2013;XX(YY):ZZZZ-ZZ On the Reasons Why This Is Clearly A&#xA;  Paper That Needs To Be Read, Cited, And Manifest Itself In Fame And&#xA;  Fortune For the Authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my request is possible, please send it to the following e-mail&#xA;  address or by fax so I can send him or another doctor on the same&#xA;  situation the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks very much in advance for your response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;E-mail: victoria.hornos@fbcm.md Fax: (+34 91) 133 30 81 Post Address:&#xA;  B1638 CAA Central Library of Medicine Foundation. Zufriategui 627 8º&#xA;  (D4D7) - Vicente Lopez Buenos Aires Argentina&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely yours,  Victoria Hornos&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really clear on the legality of this request. I know many people are fine with sending PDFs to particular people, but this sounds like sending it to a clearing house, and that makes me a little nervous. Beyond that, I'm not the corresponding author, 'fbcm.md' doesn't resolve to a webpage, and well...this feels like many, many scam journal requests, but this time as a paper request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone encountered this? Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T17:30:11.240" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T20:52:41.587" Title="Has anyone heard of the &quot;Central Library of Medicine Foundation&quot;?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12830" CreationDate="2013-09-19T05:20:58.737" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;After googling for the Central Library of Medicine Foundation, I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni-muenster.de/ZBMed/aktuelles/2527&quot;&gt;following post&lt;/a&gt; on the University of Muenster site (note I used Google Translate to translate the piece from German to English):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently, faculty members have received many article requests from a&#xA;  &quot;Central Library of Medicine Foundation&quot;, which was apparently&#xA;  acting on behalf of South American doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While researchers are usually happy to accommodate private, direct inquiries&#xA;  from colleagues, there is naturally some skepticism, since we do not&#xA;  know if this service costs the requesting physician or how much&#xA;  the &quot;Central Library of Medicine Foundation&quot; receives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After some inquiries with South American and Spanish-speaking&#xA;  colleagues the following picture emerges: the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rima.org&quot;&gt;www.rima.org&lt;/a&gt; (The&#xA;  &quot;Central Library of Medicine Foundation&quot; aka &quot;Fundación Biblioteca&#xA;  Central de Medicina&quot; aka &quot;Red Informática de Medicina Avanzada&quot; (RIMA))&#xA;  is a non-library organization based in Buenos Aires that offers physicians&#xA;  and researchers to get an article for a given fee (the exact amount is unknown). RIMA neither &#xA;  buys the article from the publisher nor copies it from a local library (which&#xA;  presumably cannot afford journals), but services the requests by directly&#xA;  forwarding them to the authors, in many cases, Münster faculty members.&#xA;  This probably the name &quot;Central Library of Medicine Foundation&quot; is&#xA;  used to simulate the unselfish non-profit library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyone must of course know how to handle it themselves. To send a&#xA;  reprint by email costs only a push of a button and it helps indeed&#xA;  ultimately a colleague who is certainly not as well supplied with&#xA;  magazines as oneself. On the other hand, you will be benefiting a commercial (?)&#xA;  intermediary organization, which may not help you,&#xA;  either. But maybe it is just a clever business idea of 10 unemployed&#xA;  Argentine doctors, to help them earn a living. . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that this Central Library of Medicine Foundation is a business that charges a fee to its clients for obtaining a paper, via you. Although this is probably not really legal or moral, this fee is probably lower than what, say, Elsevier is asking for the same paper. I think this situation makes a good argument for open-access journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T17:35:57.070" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T17:35:57.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T05:26:14.107" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to take into account that many of the courses you attend are not made for you. They are probably made for people that have a lot less experience. Even though you might not have a lot of knowledge yet regarding the topic you are attending a course in, you have much more general knowledge and acquired learning skills throughout your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn these new things through courses, I think you just have to suck it up as the focus of these courses is probably on less experienced people. Alternatively, you could pick up some text books and start learning like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T05:26:14.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T05:26:21.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your level is far beyond the level of the other students in class, then this is hardly surprising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps, the teaching methods of the professor need to be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T05:26:21.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T06:25:55.633" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Autodidacticism&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a cornerstone of being a successful academic, and hardly surprising for PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are number of goals of classroom teaching, e.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directed learning from an expert in the field (professor, lecturer, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The opportunity for students to ask questions about the material, and to have discussions about the material that goes &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; what is in a textbook or online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would presumably benefit from point (2), but unfortunately, you have to be patient with point (1), especially if the other students are expecting a lot of guided learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of enrolling in courses, I suggest seeing what &lt;em&gt;seminars&lt;/em&gt; are available in the fields you are interested in. You may have to prepare to get the most out of the seminars by reading up on current research, or learning a lot of the background material independently, but I think you'll get more out of the experience than sitting through formal classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T06:25:55.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12825" CreationDate="2013-09-19T06:38:06.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this is an institution-dependent issue. Different departments and schools may have very different approaches as to what is formally allowed. In this day and age, however, collaborations, particularly between different departments or institutions, is generally looked on favorably. Whether it rises to an &quot;official&quot; arrangement or not, however, is clearly a different matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that this is normally done via an employment contract; I think this is handled according to the regulations of the department—so the chair or graduate officer (or whoever normally approves student-advisor matches) would have to sign off on the arrangement. The responsibility for making sure all appropriate procedures are followed, however, lies with the advising team. (In general, this only matters with respect to the thesis committee and matters related to the thesis defense itself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other situation which might complicate matters is if both advisors are jointly funding the student; then the situation is certainly thornier. However, for such purposes, usually one advisor is the &quot;hosting&quot; advisor who has the primary responsibility for the student, which normally obviates the need for a complicated contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T06:38:06.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T07:10:41.173" Score="8" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in this, because I want to know if there is something like an average number that we might find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for statistics on the number of papers published while working on a PhD, preferably by general field of study (e.g. Physics, History, etc., not &quot;Quantum Electrodynamics&quot;) and the country where the PhD was completed. If possible, the duration of PhD and amount of course work should also be parameters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T10:18:00.727" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T10:57:39.213" Title="Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13973" CreationDate="2013-09-19T10:55:05.987" Score="2" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to join a masters program for next year. Unfortunately, I've found that comparing masters programs is difficult since the information is not displayed the same way in every university page. My question is: what is the best method to search masters, gather their information and analyze so as to make the best choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other questions about searching masters is the following one, which is directly relates to the previous one: does exist any webpage, document or reference sorting masters and giving unified information about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7160" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T19:57:59.387" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:58:28.707" Title="How to look for a master's program?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12837" CreationDate="2013-09-19T10:57:39.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/4/283&quot;&gt;Byrnes (2007)&lt;/a&gt; found that for tenured faculty in top departments of psychology in the US there was a correlation between the publication rate during the first 7 years following a PhD and the number of publications during the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;individuals in the bottom quartile published an average of 1.03 predoctoral articles, those in the middle 50% and top 25% published 2.00 and 3.03 predoctoral articles, respectively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the quartiles refer tot he number of articles published during the 7 years following the awarding of the PhD and not the number of predoctoral articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study obviously includes only a small subset of all Psychologists (those who have gotten tenure at top Psychology departments), but may provide a hook into relevant literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T10:57:39.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:04:07.380" Score="2" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought of applying for master's in US universities in 2011 for fall 2012. So, I had taken official transcripts from my college. But, I didn't apply then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of applying this year for fall 2014. Can I use the old ones? They were signed with 2011 date on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8664" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:16:27.367" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:19:32.373" Title="Old transcripts for Grad application" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12838" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:14:56.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I've gathered quite a bit of information on the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://phds.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phds.org&lt;/a&gt;. It is specifically suited for researching Ph.D.-granting institutions, but there is also an option for ranking Masters-granting institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T15:14:56.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T16:11:02.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience as a professor I have with some regularity encountered students that are impatient with my classroom lectures and exercises.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In virtually all of these cases it was because the student was missing the point of what we were trying to do in the class.  In most classes, content delivery is only one of the learning goals (and not even the most important one, since as you point out the information is available in texts and other sources). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other learning goals typically are associated with trying to help students think critically about the content consistent with the best practices of the field.  Students with a experience in another field can find this frustrating because it requires that they relax their comfortable assumptions about how information is acquired and evaluated.  (True learning is always disruptive because it requires that we reconcile our current understanding in the face of new information, not just stockpile facts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suggestions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I would look at the syllabus of the courses that you are taking.  The learning objectives of the professor are probably listed.  If they are not, just ask him or her about what they want you to get from the course.  My guess is that it goes beyond simply understand the material in Chapters 1 - n.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, relax.  Don't be in such a rush to simply acquire content.  It sounds like you are good at picking up new material but you may be too quick to assume you &quot;get it&quot;.  I am a biology professor and I regularly encounter this with the teaching of photosynthesis and other &quot;elementary&quot; processes.  Students get the details quickly because they have heard it since elementary school but they rarely delve into the deeper implications.  You may be missing some of the more subtle aspects of the subjects because you are in a rush to move on to new material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastEditorUserId="248" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T00:29:04.400" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T00:29:04.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T16:13:12.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You sound like a fast learner who grasps concepts easily. It also seems like you have a fair amount of self-discipline and initiative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming those are true, it makes sense that lectures wouldn't be an ideal way for you to learn something new, and that you might thrive in an online environment, where you have a bit more autonomy and can dictate your own pace through much of the learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lecture halls have a lecturer – who tends to teach at a certain pace – along with a group of students. Some students may find the instructor's pace a little too slow for their liking, and a few who might find that pace excruciating slow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good lecturer should sense when the general mood of the classroom dictates a change in pace, slowing down when students are getting lost, or speeding up when students are getting bored. Unfortunately, there are plenty of lecturers who don't process the cues very well, or are simply not interested in doing so. Still, the students are individuals who make up an aggregate; it's not unusual for a classroom to have some who would prefer the professor speed up sitting alongside others who would rather the professor slow down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always enjoyed lecturers who taught at a relatively fast pace. Those who didn't got me multitasking; I often doodled in my college notebooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I think your restlessness is indeed &quot;normal,&quot; particularly for students with your abilities, and your learning style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T16:13:12.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2013-09-19T16:35:36.817" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are impatient in lectures because they are fundamentally not a good way to teach.  If universities were about teaching then lectures would already be nearly obsolete - MOOCs are orders of magnitude more efficient.  But, for students, universities are about &lt;em&gt;certification&lt;/em&gt; and MOOCs aren't trusted enough in that capacity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with your being a PhD student - the vast majority of lectures add nothing beyond what can be found in the textbook.  Well, perhaps a little, as a PhD student I would assume you actually read the textbook, and therefore have no need for the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a popular point of view among those who must give lectures, but it is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more widespread among those who must attend them.  And, really, who are you going to believe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8674" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T16:35:36.817" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T18:49:27.167" Score="10" ViewCount="1162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Canada have similar tenure-track system as the USA? Does it have around 6 years in a tenure-track position before getting tenure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:42:10.383" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:42:10.383" Title="Does Canada have similar tenure-track system as the USA?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11161" CreationDate="2013-09-19T20:10:41.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Committee on Publication Ethics (&lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COPE&lt;/a&gt;) has summarized a standard for responsible publishing for authors (&lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;). Although this document does not define scientific publication explicitly, the requirements are implicitly understood by reading about the demands set on an author of such a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors (CSE)&lt;/a&gt; (quoted by Day &amp;amp; Gastel, 2012, p 19) provides the following definition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An acceptable primary scientific publication must be the first disclosure containing sufficient information to enable peers (1) to assess observations, (2) to repeat experiments, and (3) to evaluate intellectual processes; moreover it must be susceptible to sensory perception, essentially permanent, available to the scientific community without restriction, and available for regular screening by one or more of the major recognized secondary service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, for example, abstracts, corporate reports do not count as scientific publications. It should be added that review papers of course count although the wording of the definition may not make that clear at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day, R.A. &amp;amp; Gastel, B., 2012 How to write and publish a scientific paper. Seventh Edition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T20:10:41.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:18:15.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year myself, so I can't say &quot;this works&quot; so much as &quot;this is what I'm trying&quot;... But what I'm trying is using Zotero &amp;amp; Zotfile to hold notes on individual papers, and after reading each one I to try to fit it into a structure in a mind map (I use X-Mind). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T21:18:15.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12847" CreationDate="2013-09-20T01:36:15.873" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malaspina.ca/integratedplanning/documents/OverviewofTPPoliciesinCanada.pdf&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; reviewed tenure-track positions across Canada. The time range from first probationary appointment to tenure is 3 to 7 years, with an average of 5 to 6 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simon Fraser University's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/academic/a11-01_new.html&quot;&gt;tenure track policy&lt;/a&gt; states that professors and associate professors shall be considered for tenure no later than the 4th year of the appointment, with options for early consideration or extensions. Assistant professors are considered for tenure no later than the 6th year of the appointment, with automatic promotion to Associate Professor if tenure is granted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T01:36:15.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12853" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:01:21.190" Score="4" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main criteria for academic promotion to associate/full professor includes, research projects, publications, grants, administrative services, and such things. These are achievements that one can obtain regardless of timeframe. Logically, one with required achievements must be able to be promoted. However, most of universities need a certain period of time before promotion application (usually 5 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why one must wait for promotion, when he is already qualified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One who is associate professor for two years but qualified for full professorship must wait another 3 years to send application for promotion. Strangely, if that person apply for a full professor position in other university, he will be appointed as a full professor (if qualified) without waiting for another 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: the only criterion which seems to need time is teaching, but I think a strong/outstanding teaching records for different courses over 2 years is comparable with teaching the exact same courses over 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T19:29:37.477" Title="Why a certain period of time is needed for promotion of qualified applicants?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:31:15.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience and what I have observed, the time frame is time for the academic to &quot;&lt;em&gt;earn&lt;/em&gt; their stripes&quot;, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more factors that I have noticed that are considered, that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; take some time to notice, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person's character - how well do they work with colleagues and/or students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How the person performs under pressure and during 'down' times.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much initiative the academic shows can only be observed over a period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;note: the above is not usually formally documented, but are important in any profession for someone going for promotion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as the university will be making a considerable investment in the academic, it would seem that they would like to see that the academic is willing to make a considerable investment (time, expertise etc) in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T19:29:37.477" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T19:29:37.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2013-09-20T08:55:10.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exceptions are generally possibly, and there are many examples of people who have been promoted faster than the usual timeframes at their universities.  Often the easiest way to achieve this is via a counteroffer to an offer from another university, but that's not always necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, standardizing the process with an expected timeframe makes some sense.  Implicit in your question is the assumption that the required achievements for promotion can be judged objectively, but that's not always the case.  For example, it's not easy to quantify the difference in scholarly perspective and experience between an associate professor and a full professor, and there's no way to measure this objectively without distorting it.  One approximation is to say &quot;for most people, the difference amounts to seven years of experience.&quot;  This is far from perfect, but it's not clearly worse than the alternatives.  Ultimately, any workable policy is going to be a patchwork of several approximations, and a sensible department will allow exceptions in cases where the approximations are clearly inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T08:55:10.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2013-09-20T11:34:09.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, in all places I worked so far you could apply for &quot;early promotion&quot; if you felt like you were strong enough to qualify for higher rank before the official consideration time and some people were even encouraged to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it takes two things to be a good scientist: brilliance and persistence. If someone is in my field, I can usually estimate the former pretty accurately after looking at just one paper of his. However, to estimate the latter, I would need at least a 5 year record, which is pretty close to the standard &quot;probation period&quot; before promotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the university administration, like any other management, wants to keep us on our toes for a while before loosening the reins. Whether that is beneficial or detrimental varies from case to case but one can hardly deny that it is more or less universally accepted management policy used almost everywhere from WalMart to NASA, so you'll need to put together quite a convincing argument to explain &quot;why not in academia&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, even if one is a good scientist (according to the above definition), one still has to prove that he is a &quot;good department citizen&quot;. In 5 years, you will actually face all &quot;reasonable&quot; situations and take most &quot;normal&quot; roles in the department except some extreme cases when one cannot predict anything about anybody anyway and establish stable (whether good, or bad) relationships with most other department members, so you'll become a &quot;known evil&quot; rather than &quot;a cat in the sack&quot; at the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only remaining question is &quot;Why a cleverer person who is just hired has much lower salary than a less clever person who's been there 20 years?&quot;. In the European system, it is, indeed, almost always so but I should say that the US contract negotiating system is quite flexible here and I've been in the situation when the chairman recommended to several full professors on the hiring committee not to tell the (unusually high) salary that would be offered to a coming assistant professor not only to other department members but even to their colleagues on the committee itself with lower salaries to avoid unnecessary frictions, so the life is not so bad here as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the arguments &quot;in favor&quot; of the waiting period. I realize that there are ones against it too and can bring up a few myself but since the question was &quot;Why is it there?&quot; rather then &quot;List all pros and contras&quot;, I'll hold the other half of my 2 cents in the pocket for now :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T11:34:09.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12859" CreationDate="2013-09-20T16:13:00.107" Score="4" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the time-consuming nature of administrative jobs, university administrators normally reduce their teaching duties. This reduction is normally proportional to the level of administrative job: Chair/Dean/Vice President/Provost/President.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious if it is only matter of personal preference or there is institutional regulations for minimum and maximum teaching tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, how university administrators are involved in classroom teaching, supervising graduate students, and academic research projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T17:26:11.840" Title="How much is the teaching duty of university administrators?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12858" CreationDate="2013-09-20T17:26:11.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right that professors in various administrative positions typically have a reduced teaching load. However, this is hard to quantify and depends mostly on the institution's policy and maybe even the specific agreement (or contract) negotiated. The full range is possible: from no reduction in teaching load (position with little time requirement) to full “exemption” from teaching (e.g., dean or university president).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T17:26:11.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11546" CreationDate="2013-09-20T18:57:24.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you indicated that you are focusing on oncology, it seems likely that a PhD will enhance your oncology practice. &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=810248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This thread&lt;/a&gt; on The Student Doctor Network explores the pros and cons of an MD-PhD in Radiation Oncology. The general consensus is that it is worthwhile if you plan to be active in research as an MD, otherwise it may be a waste of time, money, and energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Shion mentioned in a comment, most MD-PhD's become medical research professors, while it sounds as though you will be in active medical practice. There is a possibility that having a PhD may exclude you from consideration by the hiring boards at non-research-focused institutions. At research-intensive insitutions, the PhD will probably help your case, and certainly can't hurt. It appears that many practicing physicians at top US cancer centers are MD-PhD's. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/staff_directory/staff_display.aspx?doctorid=8882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.texasoncology.com/doctors/Gary_Weiss/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/doctor/david-ilson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T18:57:24.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-20T23:47:27.443" Score="8" ViewCount="54609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came to a web page where it says beneath:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Updated 3 September 2011 (first published August 2002)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I cite this should the year be 2002 or 2011?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T14:12:38.140" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T14:25:54.740" Title="Reference a web page by author and year: which date to use in citation; publication date or revision date?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12862" CreationDate="2013-09-20T23:52:14.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the sensible future where updating and correcting on-line documents is not surprising, much as editions and re-printings of books has been understood for a long time, surely one should give &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; this information, much as what you quote. I think that the fact that many &quot;standard&quot; citation formats do not incorporate this is insufficient reason to ignore the reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conceivably one could hope that the original version as well as all revisions are archived, but this currently seems not quite the case, although Google and other engines do a certain sort of archiving. If the archiving were &quot;perfect&quot;, perhaps all versions of a document would have their own &quot;doi&quot; or other universal identifier, but at the moment this is simply not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, for an essential reference, one should probably create a local mirror, with due acknowledgements and disclaimers. I seriously think this is the new/future reality of &quot;reference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: in response to the question &quot;so which year, 2002 or 2011?&quot;, my point is &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt;, with explanation. If there is a format constraint, try &quot;2002/2011&quot; or &quot;2002/11&quot;. If the format constraints insist on four decimal digits, then you are in a minor circle of heck, and have other difficulties as well, ... :) ... On one hand, I'd suggest &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; allowing oneself to be constrained by such dysfunctional stylistic requirements, but I understand that one may have already chosen some software system that is shortsighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst-case scenario, give the year of the version you used/saw. Pity if that cannot reflect the real story, simply for random formatting reasons. Reminiscent of the &quot;y2k crisis&quot;, entirely that the Cobol programmers c. 1970 did not imagine that they'd be writing code that would still be in use by 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T00:23:14.657" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T00:23:14.657" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-21T00:05:29.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it mostly depends upon the mutual understanding between the supervisor(PI) and the student. I had a similar case with my PhD colleague. She wanted to be a corresponding author but the adviser of the study group (a large scale multidisciplinary study) denied which could be due to the factors mentioned above such as: the PI will be staying there at least for few years however the student might leave the institute or even academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is very helpful for a PhD student be the corresponding author because being a corresponding author will improve some skills: experience in answering critiques from the reviewers, writing, giving reasonable explanations and so on. More importantly, it is the student who did most of the work for the publication and will be able to give answers to most of the queries from the reviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8685" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T00:05:29.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12894" CreationDate="2013-09-21T01:19:54.370" Score="18" ViewCount="2056" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just beginning a research project with a fellow student. She is always 10-20 minutes late to scheduled meetings and has a very hard time making any sort of deadline. She freely admits that she is a procrastinator, and acknowledges that chronically being late is a problem which she has never effectively dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are going to be working together for several months, perhaps longer, and I know that her chronic lateness will eventually become irritating. (I am always at least 10 minutes early, and consistently complete tasks before the deadline.) I enjoy working with her in a more casual setting, but I am concerned that her procrastination may become an issue in an academic collaboration. How should I approach her about this? Are there any ways to work around it? The collaboration was her initiative, so I am hesitant to confront if there are more diplomatic options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I deal with her procrastination and lateness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T20:20:20.417" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:20:20.417" Title="How to deal with a procrastinating (student) collaborator?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;procrastination&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12869" CreationDate="2013-09-21T02:53:08.577" Score="6" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a western (white) teacher at an Asian university I constantly have to worry about being the subject of gossip and rumors between students (and others). So, I do need to be more careful about my actions with students and how my intentions are viewed by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I see a student has a strange blink pattern? Should I consider that (potential need for glasses) integral to the learning process and pull that student aside to tell them or is it generally considered that teachers in my situation should only consider issues directly related to the subject matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T07:40:48.990" Title="Borderline on appropriateness from teacher" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12866" CreationDate="2013-09-21T03:25:58.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strange blink patterns are not necessarily a sign of a need for glasses, one of my students has similar symptoms as part of Tourette's Syndrome - there are a myriad of other reasons what this could be a symptom of.  Having said that, asking the students how they are individually as they enter class may give some insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I would ask your supervisor or someone in administration first if something has already been documented about the potential condition the student may have.  If not, then it is your superior, the nurse or someone in administration that should be informed of your concerns, this will do 2 things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;save any potential embarrassment for you and the student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;provide evidence of you chasing-up the concern through official channels&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T03:25:58.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12865" CreationDate="2013-09-21T03:38:40.157" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of options that you could consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may have to put your foot down (in a nice way), and gently remind her that it was her idea to collaborate and that such collaboration is difficult unless you both adhere to the deadlines set.  If it still persists, &lt;strong&gt;tell her&lt;/strong&gt; that the procrastination, particularly with the tasks are making the collaboration untenable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If this is not a critical aspect of your work, take a more relaxed attitude yourself to it - in terms of punctuality and task-completion.  The rationale for this is that if she does not place the collaboration as a high priority, then why should you?  This second one you would need to be careful about, the approach would be to put your other work before it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T03:38:40.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12866" CreationDate="2013-09-21T04:25:53.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I am answering this question from my own point of view. My opinion may not represent the majority of Asians (although I am an Asian myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one of the reasons your school invited you to teach there is for internationalization and diversification besides your excellent academic credentials. They would like to have not only your expert knowledge but also the views you can bring to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@UV-D gave an excellent answer. The strange blinking pattern could be a medical issue, so you need to take it to somebody else’s attention. I think he is right.  However, as you noticed, you need to take care of the issue carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairness and consistency would be the keys.  Suppose you are a male professor and the student happens to be a female, there is a possibility this could become a gossip, something like “Our teacher likes that girl”. The gossip would spread until the next time you do the same or similar thing to a male student. Everybody would then say “Ah, he is just a very nice teacher, take care of everybody”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think people (not only Asians) would like to be treated fairly. Consistent actions between multiple events will make people think you are being fair. So, my point is, you’ll be fine as long as you keep your actions fair and consistent and do whatever you think is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important note. Be extremely careful when dealing with the students outside the classroom. I noticed in your question, &lt;em&gt;pull that student aside&lt;/em&gt;. This could potentially become a harassment case.  Talk to an authority may be a better way to handle it. A western white lecturer in an Asian university is always the focus of the students and the faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T07:40:48.990" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T07:40:48.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12871" CreationDate="2013-09-21T07:58:02.503" Score="4" ViewCount="1134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Me and one of my friends have recently written a paper and we have almost the same contribution. Is there any conventional way to express this and show this ? &#xA;How do we sort the name of the authors in such a case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8689" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T14:21:08.440" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T14:21:08.440" Title="How should we sort the names of the authors of a paper (with two authors) when they have the same contribution?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12870" CreationDate="2013-09-21T08:30:19.003" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common is to list in alphabetical order (in fact you can decide whatever you want) and then write a statement in the acknowledgement to the effect that &quot;both authors have contributed equally to the paper&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one (odd) example I know of names were listed in reverse alphabetical order. The &quot;first author&quot; was the senior and the second his (in this case) graduate student. They then stated in the acknowledgement that contributions were equal. So in this case the senior scientist wanted the publication listed under his name although it would have been more logical with the students name first. So it is obvious there may be several &quot;reasons&quot; to list other than alphabetical but I think alphabetical should be the way to go. At least in my subject order typically signifies contribution and an inverse order would be a very strong signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen authors who have taken turns to be first when they frequently publish together. That could be a reasonable (fair) alternative when it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T08:30:19.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-21T13:58:21.520" Score="5" ViewCount="6491" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take grad schools for instance. Their acceptance rate is 8%, or seems to be so. Basically, suppose you have 100 randomly selected across the USA grad school applicants. 50 don't know what to do with their lives, so really the acceptance rate goes up to 16%. Then the other 25 will be out for unusual circumstances, so roughly, there is a 33% chance, or 1 in 3 chance of getting in. (yes, even my numbers are a bit skewed, but reasonably better)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of your game)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T17:58:20.823" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T13:38:44.843" Title="Are grad school acceptance rates skewed?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2013-09-21T14:13:36.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the ordering of authors differs between fields the meaning and usefulness of a corresponding author also varies. In fields I am familiar with, the corresponding author is usually the same as the &quot;first author&quot; (quotes because it may not be literally the first). Many journals therefore do not explicitly identify a first author unless different from the &quot;first&quot;. There are then several cases where the corresponding author may need to be identified. One example is when a person lacking a permanent academic address is first author. Then the supervisor may take on the responsibility for the paper and be corresponding author. This can be important since it can be near impossible to track down someone who has left academia and so the supervisor stands for continuity in terms of contact. There are many variants on this and in some cases, a person heading a project or who by legal obligations carries responsibility for a project may be identified as corresponding author. This could be the case with some governmental organisations where communications are funnelled through hierarchies for bureaucratic reasons. I am sure there are lots of examples good and bad but the main purpose of identifying corresponding author, unless first, is so that anyone requiring more information can go directly to the main source for such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So based on this background and the field you are in you may find a good way to determine corresponding author. In most cases, I would say it is the person who has done the most work, or the one who &quot;owns&quot; the project. It is not clear in some cases whether it is the student or the advisor who should be corresponding author. One also has to weigh in the intellectual work behind the project as a whole and from that perspective the person who has done the work, perhaps a detail in a much bigger perspective, may not be the appropriate person for details although that person has done most of the work for the paper in question. So in some cases the question is definitely harder to answer. Not being corresponding author, does not necessarily detract much from being first author since such details are not visible in literature searches and CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T14:22:21.043" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T14:22:21.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12875" CreationDate="2013-09-21T14:53:00.250" Score="26" ViewCount="5101" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any kind of academic application (from graduate admission to professor position), recommendation letters have a major impact on the outcome. The basic idea is understandable: &lt;em&gt;discovering what others think about the applicant&lt;/em&gt;. It can help the review committee to decide about the applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recommendations letters cannot be statistically reliable. For instance, when all recommendation letters of an application are highly positive, this cannot guarantee that all colleagues think highly of the applicant. Instead, it can be the result of only a few friendships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters. For example, one could have conflict with his entire university, but having close social connection with three persons who can recommend him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why are recommendation letters relied upon so highly, given these limitations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I do not mean friendly recommendation letters. I mean influence of friendship on a professional recommendation letter. As an another example, Applicant A who has good relationship with 20 professors of his department is an ideal academic with professional relationships at workplace. BUT applicant B who has serious conflicts with most of his colleagues (professors of his department), but having only three friends among his department professors will get better recommendation letters. Those three professors will write recommendation letters based on the applicant strengths by ignoring his weakness in the light of their friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T06:34:57.173" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T11:29:59.193" Title="Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12874" CreationDate="2013-09-21T15:49:30.727" Score="39" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that's not what &quot;strong recommendation letter&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, strong recommendation letters do not simply state the author's high personal regard for the student, but provide &lt;strong&gt;specific, personal, and credible detail&lt;/strong&gt; supporting the applicant's potential for excellence.  I don't just want to know that someone thinks you'll succeed—I assume they wouldn't write you a letter if they thought otherwise.  I want to know &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt;.  I want &lt;strong&gt;compelling evidence&lt;/strong&gt;, not mere opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, &lt;strong&gt;recommendation letters have more weight if they come from credible sources.&lt;/strong&gt;  At a minimum, the author should work at a credible academic institution.  The best letter writers are themselves experienced, visible, active researchers, with documented experience mentoring and/or selecting candidates for admission/hiring/promotion at departments similar to the candidate's target.  For faculty promotion in my department, letters are essentially &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to be from full professors, preferably in named/endowed positions, in top-10 computer science departments, and there is a strong preference for ACM/IEEE Fellows, NAE or NAS members, and major award winners (Turing, Gödel, Dijkstra, Gordon Bell, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intersection of these two aspects of strong letters is &lt;strong&gt;direct comparisons with the applicant's peers.&lt;/strong&gt;  An ideal PhD recommendation letter for my department includes sentences like &quot;Among the 13 undergraduates I have mentored who went on to top-10 PhD programs in computer science, I would rank [applicant] roughly 3rd, well below [famous person who proved P=NP], but on par with [successful person] at MIT, [successful person] at Stanford, and [successful person] at CMU.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T15:49:30.727" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12872" CreationDate="2013-09-21T16:09:38.280" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are missing a fundamental aspect of probability theory. The acceptance rate tells me what the chances are that if I randomly select an application, from all the applications to my program, that it will belong to a student that gets accepted. What you are interested in is more like the probability that an applicant applying to a randomly selected school gets accepted. The two probabilities are NOT the same. Going back to your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of&#xA;  your game)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about getting into a top graduate program with funding, then the answer is still &quot;yes&quot;. Top grad schools only accept students at the top of their games and they always have more applications than spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T16:09:38.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12872" CreationDate="2013-09-21T16:18:56.837" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acceptance rates are nearly meaningless as isolated numbers, for exactly the reason you describe.  They are averaged over the entire applicant pool, and therefore they imply very little about any particular applicant's chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to estimate your own chances of admission, then you need more information.  If you attend a school that regularly sends students to a given university, then you can form a decent estimate based on feedback from faculty and comparisons with your peers.  Otherwise it's harder to predict.  At top grad schools, it really depends a lot on what your recommenders say, how seriously the admissions committee takes their letters, etc.  You may have a faculty mentor who can help you arrive at a good estimate, but you'll get at most a crude approximation from grades, GRE scores, counting REU publications, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of your game)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who are genuinely on top of their game and have made sensible decisions about where to apply (based on their accomplishments), getting into grad school is not that hard.  They might not be admitted to their dream schools, but they'll be admitted somewhere reasonable.  On the other hand, thinking you're on top of your game doesn't imply that you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it difficult to give universally applicable advice.  Some applicants should stop stressing out and have faith that it will work out OK in the end, while others need to start worrying and rethinking their plans.  We end up back in the same situation as with admission rate statistics: it all depends on your personal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T16:18:56.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-21T16:27:52.290" Score="4" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to an MS program in CS. I have not published any technical papers, mainly because I had little opportunity to do research and I did not want to write a paper just for the sake of it. Will I be rejected for this reason? Also, do I stand a less chance of admission than my friend who has written an average technical paper (dumb topic IMHO)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8225" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T09:26:54.290" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T09:26:54.290" Title="Can not having any research papers be a reason for rejection for an MS program?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-21T16:36:05.907" Score="0" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to an MS in CS program. I know most people apply for AI and Machine Learning. Does a university have a fixed number of slots for AI students? Or is this true for the Ph D program and not the MS program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8225" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T20:09:19.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T20:09:19.767" Title="Is there an upper limit on the number of students interested in a particular specialisation that a university will admit?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12874" CreationDate="2013-09-21T17:28:42.527" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that applicants choose their letter writers definitely means the letters are a biased sample of opinions.  In certain cases departments take big steps to address this issue.  For example, promotion and tenure committees ask for some letters from people not suggested by the candidate, precisely to avoid this source of bias.  Nobody worries quite as much about graduate admissions, but there are still several safeguards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone writes recommendations that seem unreliable, biased, or misleading, they will lose credibility and their letters will carry less weight for everyone.  This is a strong incentive to keep bias in check, since professional reputation is a critical aspect of academia, and nobody wants to be thought of as a fool or scoundrel.  Of course there are still some bad recommendations, but admissions committees really keep track of credibility: when we evaluate an application, one thing we discuss is what we thought of students recommended by these letters writers in the past and what we think of their judgment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having multiple letter writers also helps.  Finding one recommender who is strikingly biased is easier than finding three.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees sometimes solicit opinions from other faculty members at the applicant's university.  If the applicant's letters seem questionable or difficult to interpret, or we're concerned about credibility, then it's easy to call or e-mail to get a second opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I believe the system does a good job of minimizing conscious bias or manipulation.  It's not perfect, but I think you are underestimating the strength of the incentives.  If an applicant can find three people with a lot of credibility who are willing to hurt their reputations by writing unreliable letters to help the applicant get admitted, then they can take advantage of the system, but this is not so easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, I'm more worried about the safeguards being too strong.  One severe drawback of the letter of recommendation system is how it handles unknown letter writers.  If the committee knows nothing about a recommender, has never seen a letter from them before, and doesn't expect to in the future, then the recommender has very little credibility.  If an application includes only letters from unknown recommenders, then the chances of admission may be low even if the letters all say wonderful things.  This isn't fair, since some applicants just don't have access to any other recommenders, but it's unavoidable under the current system.  (It's not just a matter of bias or honesty, but also of whether the recommenders are even capable of judging who would be a good candidate for admission.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T18:51:23.507" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T18:51:23.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12879" CreationDate="2013-09-21T21:22:12.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends largely on the admissions policy of the program to which you are applying. If the program directly admits candidates to the PhD program, and has them go through the master's program first, then there is quite likely a cap on the total number of students who can be admitted. On the other hand, if the master's program is functionally separated from the doctoral program—that is, if students can apply to the master's program without any connection or expectations for applying to the doctoral program until later—then it is much less likely that admissions will be limited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T21:22:12.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12879" CreationDate="2013-09-21T22:10:31.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions are &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; limited, because students consume finite resources: classroom space, lab and computing equipment, advising and grading time, funding,  and more generally faculty attention.  Even in online professional masters programs, admissions are restricted to students with a certain expectation of success, because failing students make the program look bad.  For research oriented MS and PhD programs, money and advising time are probably the most limited resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different departments approach the limits differently.  Some define strict quotas in advance, depending on number of faculty and available funding levels.  Others (like my department) have softer quotas, which are influenced by prior belief that specific students will accept admission offers.  Others accept every student with a high enough GPA and GRE scores, and let the students fight each other for advisor attention.  But there are always limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T22:10:31.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12878" CreationDate="2013-09-21T22:24:32.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way to predict whether you will be accepted or rejected from any graduate program.  Graduate admission is a random process.  You have some influence on the expected outcome, but the variance is set differently by each department, and you only get one trial per department per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as far as I know, there are no CS MS programs that restrict admission to applicants with prior publications.  There &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; PhD programs where most students in some research areas had published (or at least publishable) results as undergraduates—algorithms at Princeton, for example. But even in those programs, and in those research areas, publication is not an actual requirement for admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T22:24:32.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T02:23:56.877" Score="6" ViewCount="1970" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just finished my undergraduate education in Physics in Europe and as I want to stay in academics I want to pursue a PhD, which means either a master and then PhD in e.g. UK, Switzerland or Germany or a PhD in the United States. I have now heard that for postdoc positions especially in the US it is generally better to have a US PhD. Is that true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the higher education systems are quite different and I have already attended courses like advanced quantum field theory or general relativity and the core courses like qm, classical mechanics, statistical mechanics or e&amp;amp;m on graduate level for my bachelors degree, is it generally the case, that I would have to take those courses again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8693" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T22:34:29.227" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T22:34:29.227" Title="PhD Physics Europe vs. United States" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T04:46:26.033" Score="7" ViewCount="1626" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in knowing what percentage(a rough estimate) of &lt;strong&gt;admitted&lt;/strong&gt; phd applicants in top-60 university have peer-reviewed papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm particular interested in theoretical computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T08:25:08.250" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T13:57:50.067" Title="What percentage of admitted phd students have peer-reviewed publications?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12887" CreationDate="2013-09-22T05:11:16.390" Score="12" ViewCount="1742" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is enrolled as a master's student in Computer Science and considering to convert to a PhD at the same university. My guide acknowledges that he has excellent interpretation, understanding and deduction skills. He is also very good in implementing ideas as code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has been able to score just around average grades in all the subjects primarily owing to class projects. The problem he attributes to is that he is not at all good at reproducing things during the examination. In fact, while studying, he tends to ignore all the information like names of techniques, methods etc and just focus on what and how things work. In fact, he doesn't like to write the exam at all and usually just focus on the most tempting or the most thought provoking questions in the paper. (and just writes something to other questions for the sake of writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, he is just falling short(by 0.2) of the CGPA criteria set at our university to convert to a PhD. So, not being able to properly write examinations and not being able to score good grades, makes him a weak potential candidate for a PhD or does it affects his chances of successfully completing a PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="8696" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T06:39:55.163" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:33:14.507" Title="Is a student with weak written examination skills also a weak candidate for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12886" CreationDate="2013-09-22T05:55:55.443" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's map what you've written about your friend, onto the sort of things we might look for in a promising PhD candidate, to see why, although exams and PhD research are very different beasts, we &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; learn about one thing from another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meticulous? No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrates good grasp of the substance and relevance of theory? No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can perform under pressure? No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can follow protocols? No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, although you say the grade point average is only just below what is needed to convert to a PhD, there are a few warning signs that this student might not be appropriate PhD material; &lt;strong&gt;both the student and the decision-making body should pay heed&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that this may not be easy for you to hear, as they are your friend. But really, PhDs aren't for everybody: there are lots of domain experts who are not PhD candidates; and there wil be lots of successful Computer Science PhDs who will never be such good programmers as your friend. A PhD is a measure of academic research skills, not of industrial skills or life skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer science and software engineering are two different disciplines, though they are related. Different institutions will teach them with varying degrees of overlap. But they are distinct. Maybe your friend is a talented software engineer who needs to specialise there, rather than in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T07:38:41.267" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T07:38:41.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12886" CreationDate="2013-09-22T07:52:36.727" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with EnergyNumbers's top-level conclusion—bad performance on written examinations &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; have a detrimental effect on a graduate student's career—but I will disagree with most of his lower-level arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examinations at the graduate level do show some correlation to the ability to do well in a doctoral research program, but it's only a weak correlation at best. Having a perfect GPA indicates that you are good at taking tests, and that you might have the &lt;em&gt;aptitude&lt;/em&gt; to be a good PhD student. But that is by no means a perfect correlation: I've seen students who can ace exams who would make horrible graduate students, and I've known quite a number who are not so good at taking tests, but are outstanding researchers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the poor performance is a problem is that it means additional &quot;intervention&quot; is required to save the student's candidacy. That is, someone within the faculty will probably have to speak out actively to defend the candidate's record. &quot;X is not a good test-taker, but she's been doing an outstanding job on her mini-project in my group, and I'd like to act as her PhD advisor. Keep her!&quot; Without that internal support, the record is all they have to go with; when that's weak, the odds of doing well are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T07:52:36.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12884" CreationDate="2013-09-22T07:57:35.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;International experience is always a good thing these days; but in general I don't think that a US PhD is inherently superior to a European PhD. (This may be highly variable within different disciplines, however, so physicists might want to weigh in on this particular point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the repetition of coursework, that is &lt;em&gt;entirely&lt;/em&gt; department-dependent. Different programs will have entirely different means of handling this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All students may be required to complete the entire set of coursework requirements, regardless of past experience;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may be granted placement out of courses they have already completed, but not given a reduction in the number of courses required;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may be granted both placement and credit for prior equivalent coursework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case above, the student would replace the core courses with more advanced electives in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the only way to find out which policy a department uses is to &lt;strong&gt;contact the department directly.&lt;/strong&gt; (Sometimes this is publicly stated on the webpage; other times, it's not. And sometimes special cases arise, which is why it's best to contact the graduate office of the departments you're interested in and ask them directly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T07:57:35.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T08:56:31.247" Score="2" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering to apply for a PhD. My situation is roughly this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA in my BSc is about 2/4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA in my MSc will be about 3.6/4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two peer-reviewed conference papers with proceedings and two peer-reviewed journal publications. I'm a first author in two of them. I could probably have two good recommendation letters. Third would be related to teaching, not research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I have any chance to get admitted to top universities? I feel that the BSc GPA is a problem. And I'm now in a small university no one has never heard of. On the other hand, my MSc grades are good, and as different from my BSc grades as &quot;night and day.&quot; Will schools likely give more weight to my MSc or BSc grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8698" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T18:25:09.087" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T18:15:03.867" Title="Some bad grades but many (good) publications; applying for a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-08-03T18:15:19.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12878" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:52:03.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a little bit of a simplification (and an avoidance of your actual question), but in general the only reason applicants get rejected from a graduate program is lack of space and funding. Being rejected generally doesn't say anything about you or your application. All you can take away from a rejection is that the department ran out of space and funding before they got to your excellent application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T12:52:03.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12885" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:59:58.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there might be reasons for wanting this data, I am not sure what it will tell you. There may be some data out there (I don't know where) that may show a correlation between the number of publications and the chances of getting admitted to a PhD program. While publications may correlate with admissions, I doubt that it is causative. The Phd admissions process is all about trying to assess the ability of an applicant to conduct research. A publication goes a long way towards demonstrating that ability, but there are many other ways (e.g., strong reference letters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T12:59:58.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12865" CreationDate="2013-09-22T13:22:03.383" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are both students and she approached you, then the answer is simple: Walk away nicely. Explain to her that your working styles do not mesh and therefore the collaboration is becoming too burdensome. Then you need to work with her to setup an exit strategy where you clearly agree on what it is you will do. You also will probably want to (re-)discuss authorship of any possible publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a fellow student it is not your place to try and change her behaviour or working style. As you were not asked to collaborate with her by your supervisor, you are only letting her down and realistically it is her who let you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T13:22:03.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12862" CreationDate="2013-09-22T14:52:47.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many citation styles will tell you what to do. For APA 5 the format was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of&#xA;  document. Retrieved month day, year, from &lt;code&gt;http://Web address&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In APA 6 the format changed slightly to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of&#xA;  document. Retrieved from &lt;code&gt;http://Web address&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with a clause that you should include the retrieval date if the source material may change over time. The page you are describe clearly falls into the may change over time category so you would essentially use the APA 5 style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your particular example the date of publication is 3 September 2011 and the date of retrieval is whatever date you visited the website. The August 2002 date is irrelevant. Think of it like citing a book with a 1st edition published in 2002 and a 2nd edition published in 2011. If you use the 2nd edition, you cite the 2nd edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T14:52:47.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-09-22T15:22:20.250" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go about it slightly differently. I would write the manuscript as you wish it to appear and then redact any identifying information. The redaction process should given a sense of what has been redacted without revealing the identity of the authors. See for example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/41995/efficient-ways-to-anonymize-a-document&quot;&gt;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/41995/efficient-ways-to-anonymize-a-document&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I would not leave the acknowledgement section out, but would rather do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author XXX was funded by XXX and Author XXX was funded by XXX. We thank XXX for help with the fancy piece of hardware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T15:22:20.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12865" CreationDate="2013-09-22T16:04:04.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First an optimistic scenario, maybe it turns out to be a non-issue in the end. You can find something else to do while waiting for her to turn up. Who knows, maybe not everybody has to be organized. It is up to you to decide. But it seems that pessimistic scenario is much more likely to happen. There is nothing more disturbing in your work than a collaborator you cannot rely upon. In short. The quicker you seriously talk about your worries the better. And certainly being late yourself when the other person is late is not a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8628" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:04:04.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2013-09-22T16:30:00.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably want to check your sytle guide about seriation rules. The APA style manual defines rules for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sentence seriation without a hierarchy and elements not having internal commas, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sentence seriation with a hierarchy and elements not having internal commas,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sentence seriation without a hierarchy and elements having internal commas, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sentence seriation with a hierarchy and elements having internal commas, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paragraph seriation without a hierarchy, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paragraph seriation with a hierarchy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previous sentence is a properly formatted example of sentence seriation without a hierarchy and the elements not having internal commas. If there were internal commas, then the comma at the end of each element would be replaced by a semicolon. Sentence seriation with a hierarchy follows the same rules except there is no line break between elements and the bullets are replaces with a letter within parentheses. Paragrpah seriation without a hierarchy follows the same rules as sentence seriation without a hierarchy except the element ending comma is replaced with a period and the list is &quot;introduced&quot; with a colon. Paragrpah seriation with a hierarchy follows the same rules as paragraph seriation without a hierarchy except the bullets are replaces with an Arabic numeral followed by a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since each element of your example is a sentence, you would need to apply paragraph seriation and hence your formatting is not compliant with APA (and I believe MLA and Chicago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:30:00.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12886" CreationDate="2013-09-22T16:33:14.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people have a specific weakness with exams, for example because they don't work well under time pressure.  It sounds like the issue here isn't exams themselves, though, but rather your friend's approach (not learning what things are called, being unwilling to work on any exam questions except the most thought-provoking ones, etc.).  As an advisor, this would worry me and I would want some evidence that it won't be a problem in other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that a successful scientific research career requires more than just scientific ability.  You have to be willing to do things that are necessary even if they aren't fun.  (If you are sufficiently brilliant, you might be excused from doing things that are required of other people, but this is not something one can or should count on.)  Some people have plenty of scientific ability but are not temperamentally suited for a research career and are not likely to be as successful as their ability suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you have to read other people's papers and cite them appropriately.  You have to work out details carefully, rather than just giving an impressionistic account of the main ideas.  You have to write down and publish your work, not just keep it in your head.  You have to publish the papers you can write, rather than holding out for years waiting for the perfect paper you might someday be capable of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people are fine with all these things, but some people just hit a psychological wall and can't bring themselves to do something.  This is a major career impediment.  It's not worth preparing someone for a career they are going to derail, so it's important to try to predict who can do what they need to and who can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To return to performance on exams, getting high scores is partly a demonstration of knowledge, but also partly a form of jumping through hoops.  Hoop jumping is of no value in its own right, but it's a demonstration that you are willing to do what you have to do.  When a student refuses to jump through hoops, I sort of admire the stubbornness, but at the same time I wonder what else the student will be unwilling to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supportive letters are critical for grad school admission.  You mention that your guide has a high opinion of your friend's work, which is a good sign.  If your friend can find letter writers who make a compelling case for why he will be successful, then I expect many admissions committees will admit him despite the exam grades.  Otherwise, getting admitted will prove difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:33:14.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12903" CreationDate="2013-09-22T17:44:20.277" Score="8" ViewCount="3233" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is related to, but not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12508/how-many-recommendation-letters-are-enough&quot;&gt;How many recommendation letters are enough?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that question the job requires 4 letters and the applicant has 5 good letters. I am applying for a TT faculty job that requires 3 letters of reference and allows up to 5 letters of reference. I have 5 people who have and would be willing to write letters for me. While I have never seen the letters written by my references, I believe that 3 of them write much better letters than the other two. My question is how many letters do I submit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potentially useful is that my three &quot;primary&quot; references know my research and teaching inside and out. They are also excellent writers with effusive personalities and well respected within the field (and department) that I am applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My secondary references also know my research, but not my teaching. Their writing and personalities are less effusive. I have never collaborated with them or worked directly with or under them. I feel like they have less &quot;invested&quot; in me and that this probably reduces the quality of the letter. They are also in a &quot;competing&quot; field and would potentially sell me as the &quot;wrong&quot; thing. I wouldn't expect their letters to be bad or saying anything negative. I am just worried that they will not be positive enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T06:37:06.023" Title="How many reference letters to submit?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12902" CreationDate="2013-09-22T18:25:36.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, having more recommendation letters can prove the popularity of applicant among his/her colleagues in workplace, but &lt;strong&gt;just a  negative (or even less positive) recommendation letter can destroy a possible recruitment&lt;/strong&gt;, as it can strongly affect the impression and judgment of search committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A negative (or not-positive) recommendation letter can attract the attention of review committee to weak points (even if they are imaginary induced by the recommendation letter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not bad that a recommendation letter emphasizes on teaching or research only. This is somehow the reason that several recommendation letters are needed (by people who knows the applicant from different perspectives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Just keep in mind that a search committee always try to foresee any drawback in prospective recruitment&lt;/em&gt;. If a recommendation letter states negative points, then, &lt;strong&gt;the search committee must consider this risk&lt;/strong&gt; (for bad recruitment), as there is an evidence for that in the application under review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE that recommendation letters normally should assist search committee to discover what they have NOT already found in resume. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;A tiny negative point has more effect on search committee rather than many recommendation letters stating an evident point&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, they already knew from resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T06:37:06.023" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T06:37:06.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T23:35:57.057" Score="20" ViewCount="2798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not native speaker so I always have some problems with academic writing and speaking. Any good book for English in the academic context generally or for Computer Science in particular (writing or speaking)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T09:44:09.877" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T16:30:51.697" Title="Good book on English for academic writing and speaking for non-native speakers" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12904" CreationDate="2013-09-23T00:15:28.053" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be useful if you wrote your research area. For a mathematician, Nicholas Higham's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~higham/hwms/&quot;&gt;Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7161" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T00:15:28.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12904" CreationDate="2013-09-23T01:54:31.817" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is not my first language either, but have taught myself through &quot;academic-immersion&quot;.  Here are a couple of recommendations that may be of help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dblab.cs.toronto.edu/~miller/Research/writing.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Computer Science Writing&quot;&lt;/a&gt; - this is a website with an outline of good practice and links to various other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=J3hCp9G7mSIC&amp;amp;dq=english%20writing%20skills%20for%20computer%20science&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=w54_UtT8GYb8iQLCpoGIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CEcQ6AEwAA&quot;&gt;&quot;Writing for Computer Science&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Zobel, 2004) - this book has a couple of high reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T01:54:31.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T05:36:14.527" Score="2" ViewCount="2037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously I am asking this because I am worried!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical physics grad student at one of the top places in the US. The following is a brief history of my last 2 years and I would like to know of opinions and suggestions regarding the path ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did the most advanced courses (relevant to my interests) during my first year and worked on some project ideas through very high-profile external collaborations (but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts) During my second year I tried working with some other profs but the projects were never really interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[..though I have a (single author) paper on arxiv from my 2nd year work and may be I will get one more...] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Towards the end of second year I started meeting with a very brilliant scientist who will be joining my institute as a faculty in January 2014. With him the projects are very exciting - but interactions are difficult since he is still mostly not in campus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this unstable path happened since I had to join a grad school which didn't have people in my subject of interest. But over the last 2-3 months things have been looking up as this new person came in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="6683" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T07:29:57.150" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:17:20.437" Title="What should a good theoretical physics PhD progress look like at the beginning of 3rd year?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-09-18T12:13:17.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12904" CreationDate="2013-09-23T08:57:10.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For English for non-native speakers I strongly recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day, R.A. &amp;amp; Sakaduski, N.., 2011. Scientific English. A guide for scientists and other professionals. Third edition. Greenwood, Santa Barbara CA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glasman-Deal, H., 2012. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English. Imperial College Press, London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both cover general writing in English. In addition, it is difficult to avoid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strunk, W. Jr &amp;amp; White E.B., The elements of style. Fourth Edition. Longman, New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is a classic usually referred to as just Strunk &amp;amp; White.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T08:57:10.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12874" CreationDate="2013-09-23T09:07:09.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters for associate and full professor positions (both in hiring and promotion) do not come exclusively from writers that the candidate selects.  Instead, the department will solicit letters from independent sources in the candidate's field.  Furthermore, the references named by the candidate cannot have close personal or professional ties to the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T09:07:09.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12911" CreationDate="2013-09-23T12:25:46.867" Score="30" ViewCount="4040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see an enormous amount of videos on Youtube about helping to learn high-level knowledge that is usually taught at universities. Even though I'm only at the beginning of the time I'm going to take at the university before graduating, I have a desire to teach what I've learnt to others - for free, through the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that knowledge is global and free; however, I think sharing my knowledge wouldn't be fair for my teachers, or any other university teachers and professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is sharing this knowledge fair  - or ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T14:00:16.853" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T09:46:54.377" Title="Is it ethical to share the knowledge for free that I've learned at the university?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T12:36:33.017" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see that sharing your knowledge would in any way be a problem &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. What could become a problem is if you also share copyright-protected materials. It is virtually impossible to list what might or might not be such materials but to take other persons presentations, images, data and then sharing it would be clearly illegal (and unethical) unless they are provided with a &quot;license&quot; stating they are free. If you take the knowledge you gather and then put it together somehow (including making your own presentations on your own material), it should not be such a problem. In any circumstance where you want to use other peoples materials, it is always best to ask for permission. Not only does it save you possible future problems, you may find friends in the process. Watch out for materials published by commercial interests and use open source material (but do give credit to those who made it - attribution is required by licenses like &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/&quot;&gt;CC-BY-SA&lt;/a&gt; and it is also a nice gesture to acknowledge the work and time by the original authors). Much material is given out for public (but not commercial) use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final advise, attach an open source license to your materials. I am not fully aware what licenses may apply but am sure many has good suggestions for you (check Academia.sx or ask another question on that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum up. I think it is a nice idea and perfectly fine, but be aware that you must be 100% sure you do not publish materials so that you break copyrights or abuse licenses (protect the open source practises).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T09:46:54.377" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T09:46:54.377" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12904" CreationDate="2013-09-23T13:15:59.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can recommend&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English for Writing Research Papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English for Presentations at International Conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English for Academic Correspondence and Socializing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;all written by Adrian Wallwork and published by Springer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author shows examples from his work as a reviewer and a language teacher/professor and corrects them, so he writes an original version and the revised version. In some cases he mentiones specific problems of people from several countries with the English language.&#xA;The author wrote also a grammar book, but I don't know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T13:15:59.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12885" CreationDate="2013-09-23T13:28:53.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have statistics on that particular number, but my &lt;strong&gt;anecdotal evidence is that most PhD students in my field (chemical engineering) have zero publication when they start&lt;/strong&gt;, while a small (but nonnegligible) fraction has one paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;you can gather such statistics yourself!&lt;/strong&gt; Publications are, by definition, public... And you can sample admitted PhD students by looking at current PhD students. So, take a random sample of CV from PhD students in your field (from the web) and look for publications prior to PhD start in their publication list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T13:57:50.067" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T13:57:50.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12885" CreationDate="2013-09-23T13:49:09.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having publications when you apply for graduate school is typically unusual. The reason is that it takes time to get something published (review process). What I have experienced is that students may have a publication in preparation based on their bachelor or masters work. It is rare that these are more than manuscripts by the time they apply for a PhD program (they get published during the first year, perhaps). It is only those who may have worked between their earlier degree and the time of their PhD application that may have something. It is, however, easy to see if that is the case (a year of work rather than going straight from one to the other) so it is easy to understand why someone has come a little further than someone else. I therefore doubt it has a major impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To widen the perspective: In the application process, the fact that someone's earlier degree might result in a  paper can be covered in a personal reference/recommendation letter. Keep in mind that all studies done at a lower level may not be publishable (because of time constraints for the work). It is hence important to have someone evaluate your efforts since the quality of the research at lower levels may not necessarily be best judged by a publication alone and a good word is always taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So published papers are rare and when they occur there is usually a clear reason for why this has been possible to achieve when moving from one stage to the next in the education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T13:49:09.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12907" CreationDate="2013-09-23T14:08:55.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; — this sounds weird to me. It is not rare at all for a project/idea not to work ou the way you would like, but for it to fail so utterly that you cannot get any work published out of it, i.e. that there is nothing for the community to learn from it, is rather rare. That it happened multiple times &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be an indicator that you threw the towel too early, or that you could be looking harder into how to extract something useful from your failed attempt. Helping you out with that would typically be the job of your advisor, because it is not the easiest part of the job...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, your account does not look particularly worrying: as others have noted, you have already built a good network of collaborations, have one publication, and advanced your course requirements... Sounds good to me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:08:55.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12907" CreationDate="2013-09-23T14:17:20.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you have much to worry about. I recently obtained my PhD in physics from one of the top universities in the country and then went on to my current position of postdoc at another of the country's top universities, and I didn't get my first publication until my 3rd year. Hell, I didn't even start research until early on in my 3rd year, so you really seem ahead of where I was at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the comments on having to abandon the fist projects you worked on, that doesn't seem particularly worrisome either, especially as you get started in research. Your ability and speed with which you can do research will increase dramatically over the next couple years, and your ability to choose good problems will do so perhaps even more. Perhaps the reason your projects previously didn't pan out has to do with problem selection (I'm assuming the external collaborators were largely involved in the project selection here); PIs can sometimes be pretty poor judges of project quality, since some don't know the literature as well as they used to, but this varies from PI to PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:17:20.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T15:21:04.743" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that knowledge is global and free&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is essentially academia in a nutshell. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe – &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; – that anything that runs counter this freedom also fundamentally runs counter academia, and humanity’s best interest (or, economically, the country’s best interest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a more legal perspective, (University) teachers are paid for &lt;em&gt;teaching&lt;/em&gt;, not for the knowledge they posses. So you are fine, as long as you don’t disseminate copyrighted material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This used to be different, when much knowledge was coveted, closely guarded and only handed down from teachers to their apprentices, under an agreement of privacy (see for instance the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath&quot;&gt;Hippocratic Oath&lt;/a&gt;, which regulates this, among other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, knowledge cannot generally be privatised. Instead, we have the concepts of copyright and patents, but neither prevents the dissemination of knowledge. Exceptions only exist in certain circumstances, e.g. for a method that is currently being developed, where you may be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement; for classified governmental documents, dissemination of which may make you liable to prosecution, and the publication of know-how that falls under weapons regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="348" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T12:25:24.733" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T12:25:24.733" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T15:28:40.210" Score="10" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is a concern to me that I may look unattractive to potential employers because I went so far beyond the original budgeted time for my PhD (50% over time)&lt;/strong&gt;. I am currently searching for a job in industry, where there may be no understanding of the difficulties of my research and I expect to recieve no sympathy from prospective employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that on my CV I must somehow find a way to hide that it took me so much time to finish my PhD. However I will not blatantly lie on my CV. &lt;strong&gt;Does anyone have any advice? Or any suggestions as to how I could explain this extra time on a CV? I hope I am not the only one to have ever been in this mess?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time I studied for my PhD went to 6.5 years, which is far beyond the typical 4 years for PhD studies in Europe (I study in London). In growing desperation (for applications to jobs based in Europe) I consider replacing the first two years of my PhD with a job, possibly titled &quot;research assistant&quot; or something similiar, and placing it under employment history. On the CV it would then appear my PhD took 4.5 years, a more typical length. Any thoughts on doing this? Is it correct that in the United States and Canada that 6.5 years is close to the typical length (or time required) for a PhD and therefore I would not be discriminated against?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice and suggestions are appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS it genuinely took 6.5 years to finish this PhD, it was impossible to finish in 4 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8710" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T15:45:28.637" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T17:03:00.233" Title="My PhD went over time - advice for explaining this on a CV" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2013-09-23T15:43:43.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do do not fabricate or conceal the truth. I am not sure someone would worry about finishing &quot;on time&quot; as much as looking at the quality of the work you have achieved. In my system there is also a 4-year research time limit (in terms of calendar time it can be extended by including teaching, maternity/paternity leave or whatever is applicable). Regardless of whether you apply for a job in academia or industry the criteria for the employment will be much more than finishing on time. So issues like quality, number of papers published, social skills, other relevant skills will be measured. If you have a reasonable explanation for the extended period of your PhD, just spell it out. Do not make a big story about it, just cleanly provide an explanation that makes the period understandable and reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:43:43.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2013-09-23T17:03:00.233" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I understand (and this might be a US centric thing). What does it even mean for a Ph.D to go &quot;over time&quot; ? It takes as long as it takes, and that's pretty much it. While taking inordinately long (8+ years) might raise some eyebrows, 7 is still within the &quot;normal&quot; range, albeit on the higher side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I've often suggested to students that the benefit of staying an extra year to strengthen their CV (if there's a path to doing so) far outweighs the potential cost of taking &quot;longer&quot; to finish, in terms of future job prospects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect Europe (or parts of Europe) is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T17:03:00.233" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T17:31:55.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have learned in the Academia is your knowledge, and you can do whatever is pleases you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The material that you had access in the academia is copyright of the producer, except for those that were blessed with some form of &lt;em&gt;copyleft&lt;/em&gt;. So, unless you have some authorization, you cannot use it, in some countries. (For example, in some countries you can reproduce part of some material, for learning purposes, given that all credits are given to the proper authors, and so on. Example: reproduce some piece of some article to analyze it and study it with some students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries it's possible to have a patent on a &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt;, and so some ideas might be patented, and that patent might or might not be valid in your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally, it's possible that you signed some non-disclosure agreement, and then what you learned that's covered by that contract might not be transmissible to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="815" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T17:31:55.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12874" CreationDate="2013-09-23T17:31:58.083" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it may be redundant to write an answer after 3 people already have, I think the other answers have not actually tried to answer the question, but to disprove the OPs hypotheses.  I agree that the OP overstates the degree of bias and favoritism in the system of using recommendation letters, but those are serious issues.  As the other answers point out, a letter written largely on the basis of warm personal feelings will not be very convincing, but I think the personal attitude of the letter writer will influence the reader (does anyone doubt that it's easy to write a letter that spikes almost any candidate's chances that it is still professional and accurate?).  If you read a book like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/how-dispel-your-illusions/?pagination=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Thinking Fast and Slow&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and then look at how people actually make decisions about academic hiring, you will slightly horrified at how much we ignore the plain facts of social psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People rely on recommendation letters because they are monkeys (OK, actually apes, but for rhetorical purposes give me this one) whose brains evolved in one sort of social situation that encouraged certain kinds of mental heuristics.  One essentially universal fact about humans is that we prefer to make individualized judgements based on intuition rather than rely on any kind of impersonal rule. We are overly confident that we know when to make an exception, and we feel better seeing a mistake made based on human misjudgment, rather than some sort of numerical calculation.  This is evidenced in lots of places:  for example, people actually try to actively invest in the stock market when any look at the facts shows it is essentially impossible to beat passive investing in the long run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think for academic positions, it's also probably true that there is important information in recommendation letters which is hard to get anywhere else.  In a lot of cases, I'm not sure what we would look at instead.  I doubt they are going anywhere, and people will strongly resist switching to any &quot;harder&quot; metrics, as doing so just &quot;feels wrong.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T11:29:59.193" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T11:29:59.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T18:06:46.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are paying the university for instruction and access to materials and facilities not available to the general public, not knowledge. As long as you are not violating any confidentiality agreements, copyrights, etc., you are not doing anything wrong from a legal standpoint. From an ethical standpoint, I think you would better support an educational institution's mission to make the world better by sharing your knowledge than by keeping it to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8713" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T18:06:46.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T20:34:47.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with some of the answers, only when asserting that you are primarily paying for instruction and materials. Typically, you are paying for a document that states you understand a specific subject, often with the intent of proving to a future employer that you understand said subject. Your school is responsible for helping you to pass the required exams to demonstrate this understanding, which in part involves access to instructors and materials to help you learn. A school that consistently fails to produce document holding students will not be a strong school for long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watching YouTube videos will not give you a document, so while you may have gained the instruction and materials for free, you still lack the main reason people attend higher education -- paperwork. Producing a list of your recently watched videos will also do little to entice future employers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're directly releasing information that was obtained as part of a research project through the facility itself or (as stated previously) copyright materials, without permission, it's doubtful you are conflicting with the interests of the school. In fact you may encourage people who get interested in a subject to sign up at your institution, and be good for business. (MIT did quite a bit online for free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, get permission. This IS your future at stake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not to discount self learning, you could learn the equivalent of a doctor as far as I'm concerned, if you were driven enough, and bright enough, by simply reading publicly available information. However I won't know if you were driven or bright enough, so I'll stick to people that proved it on an exam -- for now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8721" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T20:34:47.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-23T23:12:14.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I understand the point: you spent $50,000 (or whatever) on college, and you worry that if you teach others for free, you are depriving someone else of income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, it doesn't matter. People don't go to college to learn things. &lt;em&gt;They go to college to get a piece of paper that says they learned things&lt;/em&gt; so that they can get a job in their chosen career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can learn libraries, the Internet, and their own research. When I went to college to get my Computer Science degree, a good 90% of what I was taught was stuff I already knew. So why did I go to college? To get the paper that says I know how to do what I already knew how to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's true that people actually do learn things in college. However, people pay for college because a degree makes them more employable. That's not something you can deliver through YouTube, and so your free education efforts will not replace the college system and will not put college professors out of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8728" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T23:12:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12695" CreationDate="2013-09-24T05:48:44.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have an insatiable hunger for learning and adding knowledge or contributing to the society. If you have bad grades, you need to present yourself well and prove to your professors that you've got more that good grades to offer. Be inspired and work your way to the top without getting gunned down by pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8734" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T05:48:44.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12932" CreationDate="2013-09-24T07:32:06.857" Score="2" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know about journals on water resources/contamination. Is there any? I cannot afford to pay for publication, although I have some work which I believe can be published. Also, what if I'm not associated with any university, can I still publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4437" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T11:07:57.590" Title="Open access journal for water resources" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12931" CreationDate="2013-09-24T10:06:20.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Access (OA)&lt;/a&gt; is not necessarily free for authors (but free for readers). OA concerns free access to the publication. Many OA journals charge for submitting a manuscript, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/volumes_and_issues.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HESS&lt;/a&gt; which could be an OA journal for your paper. It is possible to publish without an affiliation with a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with OA has appeared a darker side, often referred to as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;predatory OA journals&lt;/a&gt;. So choosing a journal should under any circumstances be made with care. If you are uncertain, I suggest you contact a professional at your (former) university to get some advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T11:07:57.590" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T11:07:57.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12935" CreationDate="2013-09-24T11:06:28.843" Score="27" ViewCount="2200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the title says, are there any downsides to receiving BSc, MSc, and PhD all from the same university? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university is not very well known outside my home country. I did not enter the PhD program yet. If I would stay here, I would already have many good contacts (~10 professors/academics). Also, because I perform quite well, I assume I could get to do exactly what I want. On the other hand... I think I could get into Europe's top-ten universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8739" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T21:25:22.100" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T21:25:22.100" Title="Are there any downsides to receiving BSc, MSc, and PhD all from the same university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12934" CreationDate="2013-09-24T11:30:30.713" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an obvious downside of staying at the same university—you will only work with one set of advisors and contacts throughout your career. That will mean that you may not benefit from the experience and diversity of viewpoints and philosophies that comes from working with different groups of people across the length of your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there is a &lt;em&gt;compelling&lt;/em&gt; reason to remain at your school, that's a different situation. This could be financial, personal, or educational. For instance, a family member may have a job that makes it difficult to relocate, or a new project may be starting up that provides a unique educational opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, though, I would lean towards going somewhere else for your PhD program!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T11:30:30.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12939" CreationDate="2013-09-24T12:41:06.043" Score="11" ViewCount="1086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fresh mathematics Ph.D who has begun a three year postdoc at University X. I applied for an NSF postdoctoral grant last year with University Y (with Y not equal to X) and did not get it. This year I want to re-apply. I like where I am and so I am planning to apply for the NSF with a mentor at University X. I have two questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there examples of a postdoc at an institution being awarded an NSF grant to stay at that institution (before their postdoc runs out)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any particular pitfalls I could find in applying at an institution that is already planning on paying me for three years? That is, if the NSF funds me then the job market &quot;lost&quot; a job in the sense that my postdoc position won't be replaced by my institution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8397" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:10:22.093" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:10:22.093" Title="NSF grant proposals after earning PhD" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12934" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:00:06.140" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A top university has many advantages. Better universities provide better Professors, better academic environment, better scientific connection, better equipments, better laboratories, they can get better grants, they can give better scholarship, etc. You can find better friends and get better reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@aeismail has very good points on the reason you may or may not stay in the same university for all your academic carrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities has large department and so many professors. there is a chance you don't even know them yet after 6 years being there. They work on different fields and you can work on different field if you want. but that's not true for all universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all of this, consider that you will carry your university names forever in your CV! This will affect your feature job opportunity a lot, in industry and mainly in academic world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as one my professor says: &quot;&lt;em&gt;sky is the same color everywhere&lt;/em&gt;&quot; ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All said I suggest you going to a better university. At least try to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T13:00:06.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:43:59.590" Score="8" ViewCount="13631" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to have more than one corresponding author for a conference or journal paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Useful question about corresponding authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12423/who-should-be-the-corresponding-author&quot;&gt;who should be the corresponding author&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10062/does-corresponding-author-carry-an-implied-meaning&quot;&gt;corresponding author implied meaning&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T06:25:19.427" Title="More than one corresponding author for a paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12936" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:44:17.360" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there examples of a postdoc at an institution being awarded an NSF grant to stay at that institution (before their postdoc runs out)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any particular pitfalls I could find in applying at an institution that is already planning on paying me for three years? That is, if the NSF funds me then the job market &quot;lost&quot; a job in the sense that my postdoc position won't be replaced by my institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are talking about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301&quot;&gt;MSPRF program&lt;/a&gt;, it can be combined with your postdoc at University X.  One common pattern is to use the NSF postdoc half-time for the remaining two years of your current postdoc (to reduce teaching) and then full-time for one more year after that.  This is called the Research Instructorship option in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/mps/dms/MSPRF/MSPRF_fastlane_instructions.pdf&quot;&gt;MSPRF instructions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining NSF postdocs with university postdocs is very common in mathematics, so you shouldn't worry that it will be viewed as strange or problematic.  The only case I'm aware of in which the job market clearly &quot;loses a job&quot; is that if you are offered an NSF postdoc and do not accept it, then the position disappears for that year (there is no waiting list of backup candidates).  So if you decide it's not what you want before the awards are made, you should withdraw your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T13:44:17.360" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12938" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:50:56.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being corresponding author does not primarily concern the journal publishing process. The role of the corresponding author is to handle communications with other researchers once the paper has been published, to respond to questions concerning the research as a whole, methods, results. It is typically the most involved person who takes on this task and in many cases it is implicitly understood it is the first author. So for you to take on the corresponding author task means much more than the communication during the publishing process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see reasons for there to be more than one corresponding author, although I have never encountered it. This would be if the paper contains material where two (or more) authors are experts on separate parts and it is necessary to contact each for specifics on their specialty. As I said, I have never seen it and am not sure it has ever been done. Perhaps we might find out through comments to the answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:34:51.347" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:34:51.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12910" CreationDate="2013-09-24T15:21:27.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a university professor who puts lots and lots of time into developing course materials and trying to figure out better ways to explain ideas to my students.  Other answers seem to cover the point that you should be careful about redistributing the materials from a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to recommend that you contact the professor who taught you the course and tell him/her of your plans.  I would be very glad to hear that my course motivated one of my students to want to teach the material to others.  &lt;strong&gt;In fact, if the student does a very good job, I might want to see about using the videos/explanations/examples in my own course or at least pointing future students towards the videos.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T15:21:27.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12938" CreationDate="2013-09-24T16:15:02.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is possible&lt;/strong&gt;, and at least in my field (chemical engineering) it is quite common. One example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v12/n10/full/nmat3763.html&quot;&gt;in this paper&lt;/a&gt; there are two authors, and both are corresponding authors! There are even papers with more than two corresponding authors (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja4051873&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; and probably more)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most typical case is when you have &lt;strong&gt;two (or more) teams collaborating&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have an experimental and a theoretical team, you can imagine that questions/discussion concerning each aspect of their joint paper might be better directed at the respective team’s expert. Same thing if you have a paper including very different techniques/methods, or multidisciplinary paper with teams from different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T16:21:59.287" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T16:21:59.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12950" CreationDate="2013-09-24T16:43:37.110" Score="12" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patents are not normally considered as publications in scholarly journals, as they are not subject to peer-review. They are actually new ideas, but patenting does not guarantee the impact and importance (whether good or bad idea). However, academics tend to patent inventions and discoveries for the sake of possible commercial benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if they have any considerable impact on academic career? e.g., promotion, getting academic jobs, and in a different context, impact on proposals for getting grants and research funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-28T09:11:00.167" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T16:33:00.413" Title="How much do patents impact an academic career?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;patents&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12949" CreationDate="2013-09-24T18:04:50.547" Score="8" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the research I have done so far is in Computational Chemistry, where the major emphasis is on publishing in journals. But I also research aspects of Computer Science,and I have read here that in Computer Science the standard for publishing is different. I have recently created a data structure, and will be presenting my findings at a regional Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference later this year. Is this considered a publication in Computer Science? While I do not mind presenting my findings--I've done similarly with posters in my Chemistry research--I would prefer to have my research published in a printed journal.  Does the conference lead to a journal publication? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T17:14:44.290" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T17:14:44.290" Title="In Computer Science, does a presentation of findings at a conference constitute a &quot;publication&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12948" CreationDate="2013-09-24T18:18:15.473" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of publications in Computer Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications in peer-reviewed conferences &lt;strong&gt;with published proceedings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications in journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you present your results at a conference or workshop but don't publish them in the conference proceedings — it's not a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, publications in top tier conferences are much more important than journal publications for computer science researchers. Usually you can first publish your paper in conference proceedings and then submit it to a journal but not the other way around (though, of course, that depends on conference and journal policies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T18:18:15.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12947" CreationDate="2013-09-24T18:35:22.767" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will clearly vary by institution, and in particular by field (Your average English prof wouldn't be expected to hold any patents but a materials scientist might) but yes, it certainly can.  Patents and publications are measures of productivity and it would be silly not to note them.  It should be pointed out, however, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.cspo.org/rvm/publications/pubs_docs/Dietz_Research_Policy.pdf&quot;&gt;patents correlate to jobs closer to industry&lt;/a&gt;, so a particularly high rate might be indicative of someone &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T18:35:22.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12675" CreationDate="2013-09-24T19:16:27.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE has suggested, some confusion with reading papers is both expected and desirable - &#xA;I can always tell which paper's I've read closely, versus skimmed for a little bit of information, because they've got scribbles in the margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And therein lies my recommendation: Thoroughly, carefully interact with each paper. You're not just &quot;reading&quot; them in the same way one reads a good novel. Annotate. Take notes. Find places where the author seems to have taken a leap and make sure you agree with them. If they don't show the steps for something, see if you can puzzle them out for yourself. If you don't understand a bit of math, etc. work it out until you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also help to read from two related but distinct fields, so that your papers don't feel &quot;the same&quot;. For example, one empirical and one theoretical paper. Or a wide scale review and a single study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T19:16:27.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2013-09-25T04:26:42.340" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue I've often heard cited involves having a family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students on a traditional timeline in academia, the years from age 22 to 36 or so are critical: you go to grad school, get a PhD, perhaps do a postdoc or two, search for and land a permanent job, and finally get tenure.  You have to be constantly advancing and publishing your research, traveling to conferences and seminars, and generally impressing the community in your field.  Odds are you'll have to make at least one long-distance or international move, perhaps several.  Any delay or gap during this time could permanently derail your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally, the years from age 22 to 36 are also the best time (biologically) for a woman to have children (assuming she wants to do so, and most do).  And bearing and raising a child can certainly put a major crimp in your ability to keep doing the things listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty clear that this system was designed for men: men with wives who didn't work and could take care of children full-time.  It's very hard on anyone who wants to be an involved parent, and doubly so for the woman: pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and so on can't very well be delegated or shared!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities do tend to have standard-to-generous maternity and family leave policies, which certainly help with this in the immediate term.  What's less clear is whether (possibly male or male-dominated) advisors, hiring committees, chairs, deans, and tenure committees are as understanding in the long run.  If a candidate has a six-month or one-year gap in her research output, and then a slow period afterward as she gets back up to speed and learns to balance her work and family, it's hard to imagine that won't hurt her career, no matter what explanation is attached in her file.  And God forbid she should want to have &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; children!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a kind of sexism that's not based on any one person's behavior, but on the structure and norms of the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I am a childless man and have no personal experience with this issue, but I thought someone should mention it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T04:26:42.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T05:51:41.150" Score="19" ViewCount="3067" Body="&lt;p&gt;When teaching 250 students in the same subject, knowing each student can be quite difficult. In smaller classes, it may be possible to learn enough through classroom interaction that when assessing the assignments it may be easy to tell if it is their work or not. For example, if a student can never form a coherent argument when asked in class, but that same student submits extremely high quality work, the teacher might want to dig a little deeper to see if the student is just better at writing or if they are hiring a ghost writer to produce their reports for them. However, in large classes, there is too little interaction with each student to form a strong opinion of everyone. Those who can 'hide' in class are the least likely to be 'caught.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see one option as incorporating an oral exam into the overall mark and using that mark as a basis from which to judge the student's future work. It's not perfect but it's something. One problem is that with 250 students, oral exams end up consuming so much class time that little time remains for lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running through something like TurnInIt will only catch if they are taking from an existing work but it will clearly not catch ghost writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most effective ways of verifying authenticity of student assignments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T16:29:37.870" Title="How to verify authenticity of submitted assignments" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12956" CreationDate="2013-09-25T07:11:11.260" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to give you an answer you may not want to hear: &lt;strong&gt;it isn't worth it&lt;/strong&gt; for a class that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pedagogue in me doesn't like my own answer, but as they say, you have to choose your battles, and I believe there are more important issues when teaching a class that large than to worry about catching the homework cheaters. Mitigation can include reducing the impact that homework has on the overall grade (but this leads to other issues, such as students wondering why homework is necessary if it isn't worth much in the final grade).&#xA;Another (probably less successful) method is to instill the fear of [insert deity of choice] into your students when it comes to cheating. If you do catch a cheater, make an example of that person that the other students won't forget -- I threaten to fail any cheater instantly if I can prove they cheated in any way, and I say it as matter-of-factly as I can on the first day of class: &quot;Look, if I catch you cheating, I'll fail you, end of story.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a balanced set of assignments that includes in-class exams, then poor performance on exams should produce final grades that indicate that the student hasn't learned the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can work out the oral exam, that might help balance out any poor knowledge, but beware that some students are absolutely terrified of oral exams, and they might know the knowledge as well as anyone else on paper but not be able to perform out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest not losing sleep over a few cheaters in a class that big, and to ensure that you're giving good assignments that are challenging and provide a good means for learning the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T07:11:11.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T09:09:42.557" Score="16" ViewCount="8474" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for a faculty position (from assistant to full professor), the search committee asks for 3 - 5 recommendation letters by people who know the applicant professionally (and probably in person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first factor for choosing a reference is his/her relationship with the applicant, but another important factor is the (academic) position of the writer. Possible references can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past PhD student/post-doctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor&lt;/strong&gt;: probably he is the best person to describe the&#xA;applicant's attitude towards students and education (something that&#xA;is critical for the search committee).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A faculty colleague&lt;/strong&gt;: closely witnessed the applicant works, but not directly involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Department chair&lt;/strong&gt;: supervised the applicant, but probably his view is just the standpoint of a boss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dean&lt;/strong&gt;: had less connection with the applicant, but can provide a top view about the applicant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provost/Vice Presidents&lt;/strong&gt;: very little direct connection, but can show the applicant's relationship with senior people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The point is that how to balance the level of relationship and the reference's position?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Normally, recommendation letters by people with higher positions are more reliable, and can be trusted search committee, as a colleague may bias the letter for a colleague, but a provost will not do this for an employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the position of a reference more important than his/her direct connection with the applicant (considering the fact that a senior person has no reason to write a recommendation letter for someone he does not know personally)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Some commented that references should be not-related peers, not people who know the applicant. It seems I'm a little bit confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you list references who do not know you at the end of CV/resume? References named in the applicant CV can be contacted for a job application.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some job ads ask the applicant to arrange submission of three letters of recommendation to the search committee (for example, see a job ad at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/recruitment/faculty-openings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UC Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;). Do you ask people who do not know you to submit a recommendation letter about you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, most job applications are via online systems. When the online system requests a recommendation letter just send an email to the named reference to submit his/her recommendation for Mr./Mrs. X (but will not attach his/her resume or works). How one who does not know the applicant can then submit a recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="27515" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T13:52:50.290" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:52:50.290" Title="Who should write a recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12956" CreationDate="2013-09-25T12:03:01.117" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Chris Gregg's answer and want to add some additional thoughts and strategies to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make cheating irrelevant&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Homework becomes a collaborative venture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students can work individually or in groups on all out-of-class assignments. Every student needs to turn in their own copy of the assignment. Every student has to list whom they worked with on the assignment. Homework is a tool for me to give the students to help the students learn the material. Why should I care if they do it in groups or individually? If you encourage students to go to each other for help, then only the most diehard cheaters (whom you cannot stop) will keep going to the faceless masses on the internet. All involved learn more through the interaction. Most &quot;real-world&quot; work is done collaboratively anyway. When I give these kinds of assignments I work very hard to come up with questions and prompts that are not internet searchable - because they must use specific resources, the questions are opinion-based, or the questions focus on specific narrow local events, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the two figures on the accompanying handout best explains the observation that carbon-carbon single bonds in strain cyclic molecules are weaker than those in unstrained cyclic molecules? Provide a brief rationale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the data in Table 8.1 on page 115 to determine which of the the following is growing faster: China's population, China's per capita GDP, or China's per capita energy consumption. Do a similar analysis for the US 100 years ago (use the data on the handout). Comment on any similarities. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the three key points of the speech given last week by the Dean of the College? With the information I've given you about the budget of the College, which of the Dean's action priorities for this year are financially feasible? Which action priority are you most interested in seeing completed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third one on my list would be very challenging for someone to get outside the institution help on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the out-of-class projects are significant, then you can encourage the students to keep each other honest. On big collaborative projects, I have the students rate (not grade) each other on the following questions. Trends appear when someone has not pulled his/her own weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This person contributions to the project were (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This person deserves a grade on the project that is (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This person's greatest contribution to the project was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hardest thing about working with this person was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) As Chris Gregg said - make exams worth much more than homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homework 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Midterm Exam 1 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Midterm Exam 2 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Midterm Exam 3 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final Exam 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, exams count for 80% of the grade (and so cheating on homework will not have a huge impact), but homework still counts for something. If you phrase your grading descriptions as &quot;homework counts as much as an exam&quot;, then you get students to take it seriously. One instructor I know even goes the extra step to rename his homework assignments as &quot;Take-home Exam Part 1, 2, 3, etc.&quot; (and then treat them like the collaborative homework I described above. If a student has been cheating on the assignments, then he/she will not do well on the tests, and course grades will follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these strategies focus on the purpose of the homework (to guide student learning and studying) which is different from the the purpose of tests (to assess student knowledge, skills, etc.). If homework is a guiding assignment and exams are an assessment assignment, then worry about cheating on exams (easier to spot and control) and ignore cheating on homework. Some students will not be guided the way you want them to be. Just as you cannot make an individual student learn, you also cannot make an individual student learn in the fashion you choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:03:01.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T12:09:52.710" Score="2" ViewCount="510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Master's Degree in Pharmainformatics (which is quite IT oriented and different than regular Pharma Masters) from India. Since two years I am working on Microbial Genomics, which is Bioinformatics and now I have got a task of Database Management for next year. Is this shifting of fields increasing my exposure to different fields or am I just wasting time learning different things?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6969" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T13:16:33.200" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T01:19:09.617" Title="Is shifting from one field to another helpful for a good career?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12959" CreationDate="2013-09-25T13:07:29.537" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the commenters above: none of these would be a good reference.  If I was on a committee that received a reference letter by a dean, president or former student, I think it would probably be immediately dropped from the pile as someone who plainly has no idea what they are doing (I say think, because in hundreds of applications, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this).  I can imagine having a letter from the department chair, but that would still be pretty weird, unless it was specifically to address the candidates teaching.  A letter from a colleague of comparable or greater seniority is reasonable in some circumstances, but unless you're a postdoc and they're your supervisor still probably not the best choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you seem to have a lot of weird ideas about how search committees work.  I think you should try to find a senior colleague in your field who can advise you about applications; asking deans for letters is not going to help you get jobs or make you a popular person with deans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: To address the new questions you've added: first, I think it is even more clear from this that you need have a personal discussion with an older colleague/person in your field who knows your situation well and can give you advice, as you are clearly incredibly confused about how academic job applications work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters should come (typically) from people in your field senior enough to have tenure; your former supervisors, either in a graduate or postdoctoral capacity, are good people ask, as are any more senior collaborators or more senior scholars who have shown an interest in your work.  Typically, you do want to ask people you personally know, but there are exceptions; that could be because you worked in the same department, but that's not a factor I would weight highly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to list references on your CV, but this is not a substitute for getting letters.  The committee does not have time to contact that many people.  They will just ignore your application if your letters aren't there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want to get people who are familiar with your work.  So, it's unlikely you'll know someone is familiar with your work if you never met or corresponded with them, but it is conceivable.  I would only go ask people with whom you've had no contact if you have no good options amongst people you've personally discussed your work with. (Note, the important thing here is not your personal acquaintance with them, but how that allows you to judge how they feel about your work).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Basic politeness dictates that you contact your letter writers long before you are ready to submit your application to ask if they are willing to write a letter and to share your materials like your CV with them.  It is not a good strategy to sent a request from an online system to them cold, whether you know them or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T18:40:30.867" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T18:40:30.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12959" CreationDate="2013-09-25T15:44:25.530" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your letters should come from experts in your field who are familiar with your work.  They should be written by professors who are substantially more senior than you are, and who will be known to the people reading your applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical situation for someone applying for a first job out of graduate school would be one letter from your advisor, one letter from someone else in your dept. who is also an expert in your field, and one letter from an expert at a different school who saw you speak in a seminar or at a conference and who has read your papers.  It is not necessary, at the new-graduate level, to have had more substantial interactions with outside letter writers than their having seen you talk and read your papers.  If you can get two good outside letter writers, then do that instead, but in my experience it's common to have only one outside letter writer at this stage.  At least two of these people should be at the associate or full professor level, and all should have excellent tenure-track jobs.  For someone a few years out of Ph.D. one would expect, in addition to the Ph.D. advisor and postdoc advisor, letters from well-known experts in the field who have interacted more substantially with the applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T15:49:48.747" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T15:49:48.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12956" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:29:37.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen it done before, but in theory, it could work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The day you collect the assignment in class, hand out a surprise quiz that is identical to the assignment the students completed at home (or maybe just a couple questions from the assignment to make it faster/easier to compare).  Have the students complete the quiz during the class period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student completed the assignment legitimately, they will likely have very similar answers on the quiz.  If the student did not complete the original assignment legitimately, they will likely struggle with the quiz and their answers will not even remotely match the answers they &quot;provided&quot; on the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to look for quizzes whose answers are significantly worse than those provided on the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two problems with this method&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is kind of insulting to students that didn't cheat. FIX: Don't tell the students until afterwards, but don't count the quiz for normal credit.  Instead, just give students who didn't cheat a few extra credit points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does nothing to catch cheaters that don't show up to class.  FIX: Make a big deal out of requiring students to hand the assignment in in-person on the day of the quiz to make sure whoever hands in an assignment takes the quiz.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit, this is a pretty wacky idea, but it seems feasible, although a bit elaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7169" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T16:29:37.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:42:42.960" Score="17" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find papers that aim to solve the same problem that I am working on, but these papers are of &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt; quality. Some of these papers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce wrong solutions, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-introduce a solution that is already published, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are just very hard to understand because of the low quality of writing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I cite these papers in my &quot;related work&quot; section when writing a paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be offensive to tackle these papers and prove that they are wrong (especially as the most of these papers are published in not very good conferences)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it perhaps a waste of time to pay any attention to these papers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T21:09:52.810" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T21:44:42.693" Title="Citing low quality papers (solutions) in surveys?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12965" CreationDate="2013-09-25T17:57:05.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not cite them in your related works section as you clearly do not build on top of that work because of the bad quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If these papers do not have a lot of citations or attention, I would not waste my energy on writing responses to these as they will remain obscure. I would recommend putting your energy into writing papers yourself and reading quality material.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T17:57:05.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12965" CreationDate="2013-09-25T18:25:34.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I cite a paper in two cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I use something introduced there (from the problem statement to some theorem) in my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I think it would be a good idea if the reader takes a look at that paper when reading mine for some reason (historical, mathematical, whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I am either able or obliged to put even &lt;em&gt;everything good&lt;/em&gt; related to my current work into the literature list: I don't know the whole history myself and nobody will be able to navigate through the whole history anyway. Beyond certain length, the &#xA;&quot;additional literature&quot; part of the list becomes equivalent to the empty one: if I am suggested to read 3 papers, I'll look at all 3; if 10, I'll look at 1-2, and if 50, I'll look at none, and I suspect that most other people have similar attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only case in which I would put any reference to a terrible (in your sense) paper into my work is if I choose to write the sentence &quot;There is a lot of junk written on this subject as well, see, e.g., [][][]&quot; in the main body, but I usually prefer to make enemies in more sophisticated ways :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T18:25:34.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12965" CreationDate="2013-09-25T21:44:42.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from the perspective of a no-longer-quite-so-young mathematician, this is a serious question. I think one &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; acknowledge &quot;prior art&quot;, even if one disagrees with many aspects of it. That is, to pretend that something doesn't exist when one is aware of it is dishonest. (I do not think that one's bibliography must only include things one has &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt;... that can be subverted to argue, as I have heard a distinguished mathematician say, that one need not cite anyone else's work _if_one_is_careful_not_to_look_at_it_.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is the awkward issue of giving an opinion on &quot;prior art&quot; that one finds deficient. As @Shion comments to the question, one probably should hesitate before being too sure. The universal non-commital (therefore slightly dismissive, which is the right amount) comment is something like (at the end of introduction) &quot;Compare [A], [B], [C].&quot; Not saying that they're crap, or failures, or anything else. Just admitting one is aware of them, and pointedly not &lt;em&gt;endorsing&lt;/em&gt; them... if that's one's intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; think that published papers should not just be update-reports, but have sufficient scholarly context-setting to orient a genuinely interested reader not already completely expert, for example. I realize that the literal function of many &quot;published papers&quot; is merely &quot;making a living&quot;, but it is not profoundly difficult to do somewhat better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T21:44:42.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="776" CreationDate="2013-09-25T21:52:11.117" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;aeismail's answer is definitely good advice, but I'll add two more bits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check the journal policy&lt;/strong&gt; and author guidelines. There may be something in there that can guide your choice, like the &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Chemical Society&lt;/em&gt; has:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deceased persons who meet the criteria for inclusion as coauthors should be so included, with an Author Information note indicating the date of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check with the editor&lt;/strong&gt;, if in doubt. He has the final say in the matter, and these things are probably best run by him if no official policy is established.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of papers with deceased authors, I think the record holder is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic001137t&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;               &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UYkkCm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you spot it? One author died in 1919, and one had her PhD in 1911: while no date of death is provided for her, I don't think she's still around. (Also, it was probably quite an achievement for a woman to get a PhD at the time.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we say: old chemist don't die, they just reach equilibrium!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T22:56:00.217" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:56:00.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12971" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/harassment&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'harassment'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;harassment&lt;/a&gt; tag encompasses a wide range of behaviours of offensive nature. The tag should be used along specifying tags such as, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/sexism&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'sexism'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;sexism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/violence&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'violence'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;violence&lt;/a&gt;. Other tag names to possibly be added include [racism], [discrimination], [prejudice].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12972" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" Score="0" Body="[harassment] concerns a wide range offensive behaviours. The tag should be used with a tag specifying what kind of harassment is concerned" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:13:08.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:22:52.623" Score="12" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for doctoral programs in biostatistics and have read multiple places to attempt to set up contact with a potential advisor before applying.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the department website specifically says to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; contact potential advisors? There is a research lab I am very interested in joining (my top pick), but I still should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; contact this professor, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the exact wording of the website: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Should I contact faculty about RA opportunities?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  No. All applications are reviewed by our admission committee and students do not need to (nor can they) try to find their own mentors prior to admissions. Having an interested faculty member in no way influences the admission process, which is based on an evaluation of your application only.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8763" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T02:36:00.453" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T13:56:37.010" Title="Should graduate applicants follow instructions by department NOT to contact potential advisors?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:25:10.933" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If thats what the department says, then don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very interested in a couple of research groups in my university but I never contacted them before admission. After I was admitted, I had an opportunity to speak to all these faculty and then made the best choice for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:25:10.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:43:02.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions are tough, and if you break the rules you make the committee's life easier (one less applicant to judge). So: don't break the rules, especially when you not in a position of power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:43:02.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:49:57.907" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple practical reasons for not asking you not to contact advisors prior to admission:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisors may not know how many RA positions they will have available until later in the year, and departments do not want that to discourage people from applying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They may have an established procedure for allocating students to research groups; &quot;jumping the gun&quot; would therefore be discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They don't want undue influence from various faculty members lobbying the admissions committee in support of &quot;their&quot; candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is also because at many schools—particularly in Europe—individual faculty members are responsible for advertising their open positions. This is not the normal procedure in the US, thereby leading many schools to explicitly state that students should not directly petition individual faculty members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T22:49:57.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12959" CreationDate="2013-09-25T23:07:27.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For assistant level positions your PhD supervisor and any postdoc supervisors should be included as reference writers. Even if they are not willing to write you a stellar letter, I believe it is better than the questions that are raised by not having them. If you cannot include them (e.g., they are deceased), I would address this in the cover letter and ask one of the other letter writers to explain why in his/her letter. For more senior positions (e.g., associate and full professor) you may replace some of your former supervisors with people more familiar with your recent accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional letters can be sought from thesis committee members (especially for first jobs), more senior research collaborators, a teaching mentor (either someone you TA'd for for someone who has observed your teaching), or colleagues at your current and past jobs. A letter from a past department chair can be useful in saying that the department was really sad to lose you and that you are a great colleague. A letter from your current department chair is a little trickier in that the letter may be read as a means of pawning a bad apple off one someone else. Then again it can explain why you are trying to leave your current position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T23:07:27.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T00:49:34.093" Score="3" ViewCount="12261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will graduate in 1 semester and I have realized towards the end of my B.S. in mathematical sciences that I would like to develop software. I know there's no degree requirement to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken 20 math classes, bu have only taken 4 official computer science classes (2 in Java, 1 in C++, 1 in discrete math) and will have the opportunity to take up to 2 more before I graduate such as &quot;data structures and algorithms&quot; (a java class). I have also taken graph theory through the math department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have brainstormed. I could apply to masters degree programs in computer science (or PhD programs, then leave with a masters) or I could try to self teach myself the programming languages and gaps in my knowledge. Or I could take the additional couple of years to finish a double undergraduate major in computer science at my school. I could also try for an internship for Summer 2014, regardless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self study and try for an entry level position. No explicit or implicit cost if I succeed. But if I fail to get a job, there's the time wasted that I could have been in school. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finish a double major in CS (would take an additional 2 years). This would have an opportunity cost as well as an explicit cost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply to graduate school in CS. This would have an opportunity cost and most likely an explicit cost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8606" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T15:14:29.407" Title="How does one with a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences become a software developer?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11405" CreationDate="2013-09-26T00:56:44.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @JeffE said, every department is different. There is remarkably little information available on the compensation offered to the instructors teaching the courses. A quick search revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://science-and-food.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-super-professors-and-mooc-pushback.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which states that &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/103171251377160188790/posts&quot;&gt;this professor&lt;/a&gt; at Duke University doesn't receive any compensation for teaching MOOCs, including no reduction in teaching load, or any teaching assistants. See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/103171251377160188790/posts&quot;&gt;this scathing article&lt;/a&gt; which states that professors teaching MOOCs are grossly underpaid--no hard numbers anywhere though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T00:56:44.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11405" CreationDate="2013-09-26T01:01:26.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of contract (or agreement) between the teacher and her employer. Options include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no compensation, no appreciation for the job you do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;encouragement in the form of teaching load reduction, or financial compensation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also happen that the online course provider would directly pay the teacher for her time, but that odds not happen (as far as I know) in the current model of MOOC, where the course provider deals directly with institutions rather than individual teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T01:01:26.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12985" CreationDate="2013-09-26T01:15:13.137" Score="22" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journal submission guidelines in my field typically require the submitting author to provide the editor with a list of potential referees. The journal guidelines ask to suggest people with whom we have no collaboration, no joint publications and no conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given how competitive academic research is, I sometimes wonder how conservative one should be in choosing potential referees. After a long career, if I am to exclude all people whom I have collaborated with over time, there will be few experts left qualified to judge the work! On the other hand, someone with whom I am just starting a project with, and has nothing published with me so far, would not be seen as a violation by the editor, yet would not be rally fair (if we work together, he has a vested interest in my success).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am asking here what guidelines or principles can be proposed in this gray area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T14:37:19.337" Title="When suggesting referee names, where do you draw the line for conflict of interest?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T03:23:18.700" Score="10" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I am interested to know how much data, code, results, etc needs to be shared in a successful collaboration. For example: when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms, should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset? Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T12:23:15.743" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:41:32.033" Title="How much data should be shared in the collaboration?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12981" CreationDate="2013-09-26T03:37:44.787" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The National Science Foundation in the US has clearly articulated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=form1230p&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for what constitutes a conflict of interest for reviewers of grant proposals.  These are probably safe — and certainly defensible — guidelines for you to follow.  Specifically (and for the reason you mention), research collaborations are considered to be a conflict only if they occurred within the last 4 years (there are other rules as well, please see the document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T14:37:19.337" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T14:37:19.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12994" CreationDate="2013-09-26T05:54:34.570" Score="5" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently preparing my very first paper. Since the conference to which I am going to submit my paper to requires the authors to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the IEEE conference paper template&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The template says that if the authors have &lt;strong&gt;no more than 3&lt;/strong&gt; affiliations, we should adopt &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gQZ60.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the affiliations are &lt;strong&gt;more than 3&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; format should be adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f376t.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2nd format is quite clear about the order of the authors, but as for the 1st, the 3rd and 4th authors are grouped together. So is there any distinction between the authors who are grouped together? Do these two formats convey the same contribution information about the authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T08:57:00.187" Title="IEEE Conference Paper: Different Author Blocks, Different Information?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13002" CreationDate="2013-09-26T07:13:00.710" Score="42" ViewCount="104217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume a search committee is reading my CV and in the publication section they notice some of my papers are only submitted or claimed to appear in a journal (or accepted for publication in a journal). Sometimes the journal which has accepted the paper for publication lists the title of accepted articles before actually publishing them, but in the rest of cases there is no evidence to prove that the referee process of the paper is over and the journal has accepted the paper for publication. Also assume preprints of my papers are available in ArXiv. So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How a search committee interprets and evaluates those papers which are just submitted or are claimed to appear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does a search committee consider these types of publications less valuable than the published ones (assuming the same quality)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does a search committee refer to my preprints in ArXiv to evaluate my submitted or accepted papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T10:46:09.197" Title="How &quot;submitted&quot;, &quot;to appear&quot;, &quot;accepted&quot; papers are evaluated in a CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T02:06:26.220" Score="12" ViewCount="2535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been recently accepted into graduate school for my PhD in Mathematics. I feel very prepared and excited. However, my route is somewhat untraditional as I am &quot;going back.&quot; That is, I am walking away from a well paying job. (I should mention that I am unmarried with no children.) I still have a lot of debt from undergrad. And, I am about to accumulate more (although an assistantship will help defray some costs). Obtaining my PhD and teaching at a college is my dream. As such, I am taking the plunge-no matter the cost.   Working with the assumption that I will be about $100,000 in debt when I graduate, is it feasible to &quot;live&quot; even if I secure a tenure-track position? For instance, can one &quot;request&quot; to teach intersession and summer sessions for extra income (as a professor)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="gabe36" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T06:36:45.283" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T21:48:30.323" Title="Can I payoff student-loan debts working as a professor after getting a Ph.D. in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12988" CreationDate="2013-09-26T07:29:48.593" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to distinguish between publications that have passed the review process (accepted, in press) with those who have not (in prep, in review etc.). The first group are just as published as those that are printed and should/could be listed among the published. The others have not received the accept decision and despite their quality are not yet officially approved by peers and journals. Hence they are equated with manuscripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can divide your manuscripts and papers in as many categories you like in the CV but the bottom line is that those that are not through the peers review will not be counted as highly since no-one yet knows of their deemed quality. But, that said, manuscripts (of all forms) indicates activity so they are not a complete loss in the CV. Unfortunately people have very wide views on what can be included. One person stated that a manuscript existed if it had a title, an abstract, some text and some references. With experiences like that it is perhaps not difficult to imagine that a list of manuscripts in different stages may not count for much other than an indication of activity (no matter the reality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for manuscripts in public archives, there will be a middle ground. They obviously exist but have not been peer reviewed. An evaluator should be able to check its quality fairly easily, even if they are not necessarily an expert on the topic. It is also doubtful reviewers search for papers on their own, commonly what they receive to review is what they look at. So the value of such papers is less clear but I would definitely set up a separate category for these sorts of papers in the CV between published peer reviewed and unpublished manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T07:29:48.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12989" CreationDate="2013-09-26T07:37:58.503" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most math PhD programs in the US, your tuition costs are covered by either the department or your advisor, and you receive a &lt;em&gt;stipend&lt;/em&gt; on top of that to cover your living expenses. While it may not be enough to cover the lifestyle you are accustomed to as a working professional, it is certainly enough that you should not need to accumulate substantial debt as a doctoral student! Moreover, you should be able to put any subsidized loans you have in deferral during this time, so that they do not accumulate interest during this period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to income as an assistant professor, what exactly is permitted depends on the regulations of the particular institution at which you are working. At most schools, however, you are entitled to have &quot;consulting contracts&quot; which would supplement your salary as a faculty member; however, such contracts and the workloads associated with them normally have to be declared to the university. In addition, at many schools, you are paid only a nine-month salary; you can &quot;earn&quot; the remaining three months through external grants and other means (perhaps teaching summer courses, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T08:40:48.310" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T08:40:48.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12983" CreationDate="2013-09-26T08:32:10.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of it.  If I don't trust you with my data, why would I collaborate with you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm in favor of sharing all the code and data with the whole world, not just my collaborators.  Once you make intellectual property public, it cannot be stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T08:32:10.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12948" CreationDate="2013-09-26T08:38:44.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to concise and to the point answer by Yury:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are also books, and if you publish a chapter in an edited book, it normally does not influence your publication record much (a paper in the proceedings or an article in a journal would value much more).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;however, if you publish a book all alone or with couple of co-authors (monograph, handbook or textbook) then it is valued even more than a journal article or a proceedings paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you publish an edited book (a collection of chapters collected by a group of people - editors, and possibly peer reviewed) it is also valued, but normally less than a monograph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T08:38:44.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12987" CreationDate="2013-09-26T08:57:00.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the IEEEtran_HOWTO (available in the template you link), they seem to actually mix a bit between the number of affiliations and authors. They actually write (Section IV.2): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there are more than three authors and/or the text is too wide to fit across the page, use an alternate format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which corresponds to the second format you put. So, basically, there are three possibilities: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have 3 authors or less, in which case you use the first format. If the first and third authors are from the same affiliation, then you can just repeat it, to keep the author ordering. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have more than 3 authors, but you can split the list of authors in 3 affiliation blocks. In this case, you use the first format. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you can use the second format, even if you have only two affiliations, but the author ordering is somehow interleaved. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of doubt, you can use the format that makes sense to you, you will be contacted by the editor if there is any problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T08:57:00.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12998" CreationDate="2013-09-26T09:46:27.947" Score="29" ViewCount="1073" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit of background, I am doing research in atmospheric physics and detection systems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I received a paper submission back with revisions suggested by a couple of reviewers.  For the most part, the revisions were definitely constructive, justified and most importantly, helpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, except on one particular crucial aspect of the paper where both reviewers made suggestions, that they labelled as critical for the paper's success.  However, the suggestions were directly opposite.  i.e. Both suggestions are mutually exclusive, but equally feasible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an effective means to address this conflict?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have spoken to my academic supervisor and he is not sure how to proceed either and we have double checked and both suggested paths are feasible.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T11:30:47.033" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T23:00:06.347" Title="How to effectively address conflicting suggestions from reviewers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12996" CreationDate="2013-09-26T10:50:17.607" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, but not always, reviewers try and be helpful. For example, a reviews that simply says that &quot;crucial aspect of the paper is broken/wrong/needs to be reworked&quot;, tends not to be as helpful as &quot;crucial aspect of the paper is broken and would be improved by doing X&quot;. Of course when you get a second review saying to do Y and X and Y are incompatible, then you have an issue. I would think about X and Y (and possibly Z) and decide which you want to do. Then respond to the reviewers and acknowledge that you improved crucial aspect with method X (or Y or Z) for the reasons you decided to use it. Hopefully, the reviewer will be happy that you improved crucial aspect and not upset that you didn't use method Y. If after the second round of reviews you still have conflicts, explain the problem to the editor and ask for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T10:50:17.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12996" CreationDate="2013-09-26T11:24:26.990" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my capacity as editor for a journal, I see this quite frequently. I think it is a pity that you are left on your own to try to resolve the problem. An editor should provide some indication of possible solutions in tricky situations like this. So my first advice is to contact the editor and briefly explain the dilemma and ask for some advise on how to proceed. If you can, you should also provide your opinion on what you think is reasonable. After all, you have made your study and knows its strengths and weaknesses better than most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, I have experienced how authors have used conflicting reviews to swing their paper in one or the other direction. This is certainly also possible since the reviews, and this is important, constitute peer's views and opinions, not an absolute and definitive truth to be followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lacking the necessary insight into the details of your work and the issue at hand, I would also add the following. If you think you can bring up the conflicting views in the discussion, you may perhaps add both to your paper and simply arrive at a conclusion that the jury might still be out concerning the burning issue. I realize this may not be applicable in your case, but could be one way to acknowledge the existence of several, seemingly valid views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="87026" LastEditDate="2019-03-09T23:00:06.347" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T23:00:06.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12989" CreationDate="2013-09-26T12:03:08.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just my 2 cents here, but in my opinion, going into a math PhD which is not financially covered 100% more or less; meaning tuition and basic living expenses are paid for, sounds like a bad move to me. Even full teaching assistantships are paid very badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can spend a lot of time in a PhD program. You said that after you graduate, you want to be a math teacher. Well, math teachers don't get paid that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't fully covered under your current arrangements, I suggest you try and find an institution that will fully cover you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you don't give a lot of details about what your financial arrangements during grad school will be, or details about your current debt. If you gave more details, people might be able to offer more concrete responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that asking about such things in a personal finance forum such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://money.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Personal Finance &amp;amp; Money&lt;/a&gt; would also be a reasonable thing to do, as this is partly a finance question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:25:36.440" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T12:03:08.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12996" CreationDate="2013-09-26T12:08:35.303" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reviewers' suggestions are just that: suggestions.&lt;/strong&gt; So, read both of them, make your own idea on how useful each of the suggestions would be, then depending on available resources, &lt;strong&gt;you may choose to follow one, the other, both, or none&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can do both, then of course do it, compare the results, and that will vastly improve your paper!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot do both, then decide in advance on which seems more likely to you, and follow this course (X). Then, add mention of the other method (Y) in the revised paper, saying something along the lines of &lt;em&gt;“it would also be interesting to see how doing Y improves the results of Z, though we do not expect it to be as efficient as X because of …”&lt;/em&gt;. And explain in your letter to the editor that you have followed the avenue which seemed best to you, out of the two suggested by the referees. If your case is convincing (yet concise), you should not have a problem with the editor: you're the expert, after all!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think both have value, but (i) you don't have the resources to do it, and (ii) though the suggestions are valid, your current results already bring something new and significant to the field, you may decide not to follow the suggestions. Include them, with some background for each, in the revised manuscript and explain that it may be useful for future work to consider those. In the response to the editor, make your case that though it is interesting, it would be out of the scope of the current study, and your work meets publication standards as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T12:08:35.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2013-09-26T12:10:09.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://akiraoconnor.org/2011/01/21/the-life-of-an-ees-manuscript/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; that describes &lt;em&gt;The Life of an Elsevier Editorial System Manuscript&lt;/em&gt;. I think it may be useful to others. It is a real-life report of the editorial process from the beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Answer edited to increase its length in an attempt to avoid future vandalism attempts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T10:32:46.243" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:32:46.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12988" CreationDate="2013-09-26T12:21:29.297" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a tiered system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peer-reviewed published articles&lt;/strong&gt;. Published means published in any form, so it includes papers in all states published online on the journal's website, including “in print”, “ASAP papers”, “just accepted papers”, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's top notch: it demonstrates your ability to perform research, write it up and publish it. Those are key requirements for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1b. &lt;strong&gt;Peer-reviewed accepted papers&lt;/strong&gt;. All search committees I know will assume good faith, and accepted papers not yet published (thus without proof) are considered as good as published papers. If you want to (and the application format allows for it), you can actually join a copy of the manuscript (not as proof, but for committee members who may want to read your paper to judge its quality).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Submitted papers, non peer-reviewed papers&lt;/strong&gt;. This has some value, as an indication of your recent activity. It is especially useful to the committee if you have few papers (junior researcher) or have not published much recently (so that it is clear you are still active). Again, you may want to join manuscript(s) to your application, or give a link to arXiv if you deposited it there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In preparation&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;in writing&lt;/strong&gt;, … There is no clear standard on threshold for what is a paper “in preparation”, so these are usually worthless on a CV. The only exception is if you have very very few (or no) published papers: applying for a PhD position, or early application for post-doc position, with 1 or 2 published papers. Otherwise, my advice is simply not to mention manuscripts you have not finished writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T12:21:29.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2013-09-26T13:56:37.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This position may be a little stern, but once you are on the other side of the admissions table, you get bombarded with &quot;Dear Professor, I am highly interested in working with you, do you have any positions available?&quot; emails every week. A lot of these emails suffer from poor grammar, and most in fact miss the point of what I do, researchwise. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12975/739&quot;&gt;F'x said&lt;/a&gt;, if you decide to take the liberty of sending such an email, it (a) may be lost among dozens such emails, (b) may get you blacklisted by the department. (This is a very good school, and they will have no shortage of highly qualified applicants, and you hardly will be in a position of power in negotiating with them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you would've established a contact with a faculty much earlier with something like &quot;I believe there is a typo in the Appendix of your recent Biometrika paper&quot; or &quot;What R package did you use? I can't get lmer to work on a similar problem&quot; or &quot;I thought that M=5 imputations is always enough&quot; or some other question relevant to both your studies/interest and their expertise. I've established a couple of the most long-lasting and satisfying professional relations by asking these curiosity-driven questions, even though I never worked with these specific researchers, in the end. Don't try to make this up, though, and make sure to produce something that will really pique enough of the professor's interest to reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a faculty, I have been receiving meaningful emails, too, saying &quot;You've published on this and that; I am working on the intersection of this-that right now as an analyst in Iranian government, but I realized that I don't know enough, and want to learn more...&quot; -- to which I would have to say that the contacts between Iran and US are kept low profile. The fraction of such emails is low double digits, most are obvious academic spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the department may have similar language in the faculty bylaws discouraging faculty member from discussing financial matters and/or open positions with potential applicants. Basically, this would be done to avoid a mutually unpleasant situation in which a professor may promise an applicant the RA support, but neither the applicant would make it based say on their GRE scores, nor the professor would get that grant that they were expecting. The department cannot commit acceptance based on such side negotiations, so they want to minimize the risk of that happening. Likewise, a professor may not be able to promise to take you as an advisee if they expect to have five more students, currently in their second year, joining their lab to support the work on a new multi-million R01 grant. You will be taking the fundamental required courses for a year or two, and talking right now about what is going to happen three years down the road is basically waving a big question mark in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my bottomline is, if you want to talk about research, there is little to stop you; if you are told not to discuss the admissions process and the existing positions with anybody outside the admissions committee, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T13:56:37.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12989" CreationDate="2013-09-26T14:26:37.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a lot of undergraduate student loan debt and expressing the amount in dollars makes it sound like you are in the U.S.  On the other hand, I haven't heard of a U.S. math grad school admitting anyone in September, so I'm puzzled by where you are.  I'll answer assuming it's the U.S., but this answer may not apply in other locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As aeismail pointed out, U.S. Ph.D. programs in mathematics fund their students at a level that should let you make it through grad school without new loans.  If such a program admits you but won't provide funding, then that shows a serious lack of confidence in you.  It amounts to saying that you're welcome to try if you can afford to pay for everything, but they don't think it's a good use of their money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems from your question and comments that you've been admitted now but will not learn about funding until spring.  I would strongly recommend applying more broadly this fall, so you can see what your other options are.  If the current school does not come through with funding in the spring, then you should view it as just barely being admitted (and you should factor that into your estimate of the likelihood of getting a good job - they might be totally wrong in their judgment of you, but this would indicate that they don't expect you to be one of their more successful students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend taking your favorite among funded offers of admission and treating unfunded offers as tantamount to rejection, but of course it depends on how risk averse you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working with the assumption that I will be about $100,000 in debt when I graduate, is it feasible to &quot;live&quot; even if I secure a tenure-track position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.direct.ed.gov/calc.html&quot;&gt;student loan calculator&lt;/a&gt;.  The details will depend on your interest rate, repayment schedule, etc., but for an order of magnitude estimate, you'd need to pay roughly $1,000/month to be debt-free in ten years.  Whether this is feasible depends on how frugal you are and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/facsal&quot;&gt;how much you might make&lt;/a&gt;.  I've linked to American Mathematical Society salary surveys.  You should be careful not to get too optimistic: fancy jobs can pay starting salaries in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, but few people get such jobs and in any case typically after a postdoc.  A typical starting salary for a tenure-track job at a teaching-oriented college is $55,000, and getting a tenure-track job at all is certainly not guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, can one &quot;request&quot; to teach intersession and summer sessions for extra income (as a professor)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes.  If you find a job at a research university with a low teaching load, then deliberately increasing the teaching load would be a bad way to get tenure.  If you end up working somewhere with a high teaching load, then you might not want to increase it, but I'd expect that you could take on summer teaching if you need the money.  It may not pay very well, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T14:26:37.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T14:47:23.713" Score="4" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is understandable if considering the educational record (where s/he has studied and how is his/her transcript) of an applicant applied for junior academic positions such as postdoctoral fellow or assistant professor. BUT, for senior academics, the factors for judging a potential full professor is his/her research, teaching, publications, and other academic achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;em&gt;in a few job ads for full professors in Europe (mainly Scandinavia), one of the application materials is unofficial transcripts.&lt;/em&gt; It seems that the initial review is substantially based on the applicant education achievements two decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how much the education of an applicant affects his/her chance to be appointed as a full professor? Does a bad education (having low GPA at PhD level) always affects someone's academic career, even at highest levels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T15:38:43.120" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T16:39:51.813" Title="How long the curse of bad education remains in academic career?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12983" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:18:29.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more you limit the information exchange between the two teams, the more you also limit the best possible outcome of the project: without the information about the other group's work, you won't be able to achieve more than rather blindly applying some optimization algorithm to some kind of problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But successful collaborations are not something that pops up at full strength: the different groups have to learn the others' language, get to know each other etc., and the trust that enables sharing the data is something that will grow over time (carefull: destroying the built up trust takes no time at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the intellectual property: that should be clear already before you start the collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I think the normal human behaviour is that the collaboration partners adjust the level of cooperation to each other. I'm usually very open to sharing data and code. But if I find that other people want me to send them my data without even allowing me to read their code, neither will I give them my data. Neither will I help people understanding my code* who would not give me their code or data (but sometimes I tell them that I run a freelancing side-job, so they can &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; consulting time - and then we can specify non-disclosure conditions and it's completely their problem if my advise is not optimal &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; I didn't have the details. However, this doesn't work for scientific publications, as I have to take care that &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; name is not pubicly on a bad paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* I have published code that is e.g. GPLed, so there is no question about not sharing the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes: they will be the ones who can check the optimization process with &amp;quot;common engineering sense&amp;quot;, which the AI team usually won't have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes: and the AI should explain the heuristics of the optimization to the engineers. Not only the AI researchers, but also the engineers need to judge whether these heuristics are appropriate for the application. I guess the AI people are better at checking the &amp;quot;formal&amp;quot; part (e.g. numeric properties), whereas the engineers can say whether a certain strategy makes sense from an engineering point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO the AI team should also have early access/particupate in the setting up of the DoE of the engineering team, as optimization approach must be appropriate for the DoE (and vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:18:29.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12983" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:41:32.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by withholding data one part of the collaboration has made the other part draw false conclusions, then you have broken the trust in the process, and if you're going to publish based on this collaboration, spoilt that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you don't want to bog them down in stuff which is irrelevant - so some material should be made available (perhaps on request) rather than pushed to them.  You wouldn't want to see all their preliminary work, and your code may be meaningless to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you have properly defined your optimisation and other datasets, so there's no need to hold anything back for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some industrial collaborations are affected by issues of commercially sensitive material being kept back, usually this can be sorted out, and if the collaboration is purely academic, this issue doesn't arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:41:32.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T16:45:45.663" Score="31" ViewCount="2539" Body="&lt;p&gt;An application for a faculty position normally needs a strong research statement, but what is included in a good research statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Highlighting the past successful research projects evidenced by&#xA;publications?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Giving novel ideas for future research, although there is no evidence&#xA;that the applicant can be successful in this field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Including technical descriptions and graphs or writing for a broad range of readers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasizing potential collaborations for prospective research&#xA;projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, what are the eye-catching points of a research statement? What does the search committee look for in a research statement, and what can extraordinarily impress them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2018-10-18T17:11:11.423" LastActivityDate="2019-07-28T01:06:23.823" Title="What to include for a strong research statement for a faculty position?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;research-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13010" CreationDate="2013-09-26T18:57:37.947" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a hiring committee for new faculty is looking for is evidence that the applicant will be able to continue a strong research trajectory over the course of (at least the) next 6 years, and become an established leader in his or her chosen field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a convincing case for this, you need to include evidence both that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) you have succeeded so far in doing this: that is, you have a track record that if it were extrapolated linearly over the next 6 years would result in tenure. So you should spend a good deal of your statement explaining what you have done, and why it is important/influential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) You can plausibly continue your trajectory. To do this, you should express a cohesive &#xA;research agenda that ties in with your past work, and plausibly leads to a large number of meaty, interesting, unsolved questions. The more closely related this is to things you have already worked on, the more plausible it will be that you can carry it out. But it should also be different enough that it is new and exciting, and not merely a rehashing of your thesis work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in all statements, what you write about should form a cohesive story. If you work in several disparate areas, or would like to branch out to new areas, try and find something that ties them together, or some reason why your experience in both areas gives you an edge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T18:57:37.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-26T23:29:58.463" Score="36" ViewCount="4731" Body="&lt;p&gt;During seminars and talks, some presenters hear a question and compliment it by saying &quot;Good question.&quot; Could this possibly offend the asker? Could this be viewed as a tactic to pretend being unfazed by a difficult question? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it really a good psychological ploy to mollify the interrogator so that he/she is more accepting to the answer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8775" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T09:44:24.870" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T09:44:24.870" Title="Saying &quot;good question&quot; during a seminar talk" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T00:09:37.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An amusing issue! This sort of response can be done in a good way, or in a not-so-good way. It is rhetorically constructive to not be combative, and also to deflect potential combativeness, but/and not good to be sycophantic (which will offend some people). It is also not so bad to give oneself time to think while being polite and positive to one's audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T00:09:37.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T00:28:36.950" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an economist I can rant for hours about people's ulterior motives... as a speaker I can tell you that this reaction springs in me spontaneously, when the question has good &lt;em&gt;timing&lt;/em&gt; with what I am presenting, meaning that it is a good opening for the next issue (or next aspect of the current issue) I was about to start speaking on. It makes a presentation rolling &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the audience, and you cannot ask much more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T00:28:36.950" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13007" CreationDate="2013-09-27T01:41:23.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Combining the various comments that this question has elicited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries and at some institutions, the transcript is the official record certifying completion of the degree. When an institution asks for an unofficial transcript, they are really asking for verification that you earned the degree you said you did. Unfortunately, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/scott-thompson-quits-as-yahoo-ceo-following-fake-degree-controversy-1080165&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;certain events&lt;/a&gt; make some institutions feel justified in asking for  proof. You cannot very well mail your diploma!  Unofficial copies of your transcript are easy to come by in the digital age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T01:41:23.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12989" CreationDate="2013-09-27T03:19:50.577" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since nobody else has offered a direct answer to the title question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I take on debt in order to get a Ph.D. in mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Absolutely not.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a PhD program isn't willing to waive your tuition and offer you a stipend (in the form of an assistantship or fellowship), they don't really want you.  Go somewhere else.  If they decide not to give you more funding after a semester or two, you're done.  Go somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T03:19:50.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T04:31:53.013" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several reason why a presenter (of any kind) will comment &quot;Good question.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question is good and the speaker wants to provide positive reinforcement for other participants to ask questions (feeding each person's need for praise)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To give themselves time to think of an answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't know why, they just do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of (3), it is usually taught for the reason (1). That is, speakers are taught to play to the ego or rather give positive reinforcement to the audience which will in turn lead the audience to think more highly of the speaker (&quot;Wow! That speaker really sees how amazingly clever I am.&quot;). There is a very real psychological issue going on here and one which is properly used all the time (in and out of the classroom). It is not to patronize, it is to give credit where credit is due. Those who do not know why they do it, can end up patronizing but that is just from a lack of understanding and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is psychological but only partially to make the person asking more receptive to the answer. It is also to encourage others to ask more questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point (2) does happen and it perfectly acceptable. It is not the comment that is the concern. The concern is whether the speaker &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; know the answer and does not. When I am asked questions for which I need to think for a moment, I will openly say so: &quot;Hmmm, I've never heard that question before, let me think for a moment.&quot; If the needed thinking time is too long I will refer the asker to follow up 'offline' so it does not interrupt the overall flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if a presenter is dancing around an issue to avoid showing ignorance shows a lack of confidence which is usually also shown other ways leading to a weaker overall presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T04:31:53.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T05:45:04.137" Score="2" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;My lab published a database (db) two years back in Nuclear Acids Research. Now looking at the increasing data and new features we are planning to update the db. but the db admin is leaving now and I have taken full charge over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it mandatory for us to send the update to same journal (&lt;em&gt;so as to increase chance of acceptance&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What authorship may I expect? (&lt;em&gt;1st or 2nd&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6969" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T13:07:06.690" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T13:11:41.527" Title="Should a Database Update be sent for publication in same journal where previous edition was published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;databases&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13021" CreationDate="2013-09-27T06:35:09.833" Score="10" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an author on a poster, but I am unsure of what to put for my affiliation. I am a graduate  student, but the poster and corresponding project is in no way connected with my university. I work for another university and the project relates to materials from that university, however they are not sponsoring the project. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8778" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T11:54:34.410" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:54:34.410" Title="What author affiliation to put when you work for one university and study at another?" Tags="&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13020" CreationDate="2013-09-27T07:11:59.427" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, affiliation address must be where the research has been conducted therein (this is the statement given by some scholarly journals in Guide for Authors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors normally use their official affiliation for any publication/presentation even if their university has not supported that research. Probably, because their secured salaries let them to work on an external project. This is different for graduate students, but still can be applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, nothing stops you for using both affiliations in your poster. Normally, a graduate student is gaining credit from his/her affiliation. Then, two affiliations can be indicative of your research potential, as you have not stuck to your academic project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T07:11:59.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T07:23:20.357" Score="14" ViewCount="6912" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific conferences, there are usually many headhunters who come to offer newly graduated scholars jobs in the industry sector. As a matter of fact, the recruitment in industry mostly works with the headhunting system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, academic recruitment is mainly application-based, and they are stuck with &lt;em&gt;Equal Employment Opportunity&lt;/em&gt;, in which even when planning to appoint a Vice President to a vacant President position, they need to follow public call for application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why doesn't a department chair offer faculty position to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an application-based system, only those who are looking for new jobs will apply, but in a headhunting system, headhunters tempts satisfied employees with attractive offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when someone is averagely satisfied by his/her job will not check current job ads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T12:06:33.830" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T14:50:40.087" Title="Why is headhunting uncommon for academic positions?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13022" CreationDate="2013-09-27T07:54:58.817" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why doesn't a department chair offer faculty positions to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, but they do. For high profile academics, there are many behind-the-scenes discussions between department chairs, deans, and other faculty members. If a department really wants a particular academic for a particular chair, they'll have discussions about it with the candidate. I imagine that certain faculty get calls rather frequently asking if they want to move universities. Some professors can pretty much move at will; see, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West&quot;&gt;Cornell West's move between Harvard and Princeton&lt;/a&gt; -- West got in a tiff with Harvard President Lawrence Summers, and then he up and moved to Princeton, where they were happy to have him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The networking system within academia is broad enough and the number of open positions small enough that hiring headhunters is not really necessary, although for really high profile positions -- presidents of universities and the like -- a headhunting firm may be hired to make sure certain protocols are met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For run-of-the-mill assistant professor and associate professor positions, and for other candidate-search positions such as department chairs, the application process works well. But don't think that there still isn't any wrangling between various faculty members and possible candidates -- if you're an excellent researcher that has been making a name for yourself as a graduate student or as a junior faculty member, you may be asked directly to apply for positions that are open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T07:54:58.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12838" CreationDate="2013-09-27T08:05:05.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When searching for programs I found that I overlooked a lot of good programs when looking at &quot;database&quot; type sites. They are useful for getting basic data and narrowing the programs you look at, but also consider getting advice from people in (or near) your field and (if applicable) looking at publications in your interest area to see where the research is coming from. I also found organizing the information that was the most relevant to me in a spreadsheet useful, even if it is time intensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8778" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T08:05:05.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12733" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:47:54.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is &quot;localized&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In France there is a distinction between museum of arts (arts in a broad sense, antiquities being arts for instance) and museum of natural sciences (biology, paleontology, etc.). The latter is considered an academic institution: part of the people working there have the title of associate or full professor, and they can have PhD students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some european countries (France, UK, belgium at least), some museums are part of a university, so I think we can say that they are academic places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question may be then &quot;are you an academic if you work in an academic institution&quot;, and I guess the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:47:54.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:48:06.817" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually tend to do this more with a younger, less experienced audience. I remember being terrified to ask questions during talks, and how much it helped to have a speaker with this attitude. So, in part, when I say it, it means: 'It's good that you asked a question'. Of course I only do it if the question is reasonable. I was recently at a summer school for PhD students and postdocs where the speaker started his response with: 'That's a very basic question, of course'. I think it was a language issue and that he actually meant it's fundamental, but nobody wanted to ask any questions afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, in an audience of peers, I usually take 'good question' to mean that it's something that the speaker has found intriguing at some point, because that's usually when I would say it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T10:55:35.303" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:55:35.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T11:48:46.467" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would usually respond 'Good question' to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A question asking something that I have thought about before, but which is not obvious. This could be something I forgot to include in my talk, something I am about to get to, or something which I decided to skip over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A question asking something that I haven't thought about before, but immediately see that maybe I should have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:48:46.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13022" CreationDate="2013-09-27T12:17:21.083" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, academic recruitment is mainly application-based, and they are stuck to Equal Employment Opportunity, in which even when planning to appoint a Vice President to a vacant President position, they need to follow public call for application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why a department chair does not offer faculty position to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least for public universities in the US, you've answered your own question.  Public universities cannot directly offer jobs to anyone; they must follow Equal Employment Opportunity laws, which require open applications.  Even with an open search, department chairs often don't have unilateral power to offer a job to anyone.  At my university, all faculty appointments must be approved by the dean of the department's college, who among other things, is supposed to verify that all EEO procedures have been followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Chris writes, less direct headhunting does still happen.  For senior positions, especially endowed chairs and department heads, most applications submitted in response to the public ad are hopeless; the only strong applications come from candidates that faculty identify, contact directly, and convince to apply.  (That's the explicit reason my department has a faculty &lt;em&gt;recruiting&lt;/em&gt; committee, and not just a faculty &lt;em&gt;search&lt;/em&gt; committee.)  But even for assistant professor positions, faculty do contact  promising PhD students—by email, by phone, or in person at conferences—and strongly encourage them to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For even higher-level positions like deans and university presidents, universities often work with professional search firms to identify and contact promising candidates, but my impression (having worked with such a firm in one search) is that those firms are mostly good at identifying people who aren't interested.  Strong candidates for those positions—the ones that are actually invited for public interviews—are almost always people that the university faculty and administration has been courting for months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Departments do sometimes identify people they'd like to hire even before they've advertised a position.  In that case, the university may &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; a position specifically for that person, with a very narrowly tailored job description.  But then sometimes the department gets an even stronger application in response to their narrowly tailored ad, so they don't end up hiring their original target after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T12:17:21.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T12:42:55.070" Score="3" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a related question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959/who-should-write-a-recommendation-letter&quot;&gt;Who should write a recommendation letter?&lt;/a&gt;, I came to the conclusion that letters of recommendation should be written by academics in the same field who knows the applicant's work, though, they may not know the applicant in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder who should be named as references when applying for a senior administrative job such as &lt;strong&gt;dean, vice president, provost, president&lt;/strong&gt;? In this case, the search committee should be interested in the applicant's skills for administrative tasks, rather than achievements in his or her academic discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a dean is applying for a provost position. Shouldn't the references be persons who have been directly involved in the applicant's role as dean in his current position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T11:31:41.403" Title="Who should recommend applicants for administrative positions?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13018" CreationDate="2013-09-27T13:11:41.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing ties you, neither ethically nor legally, to publish your new work (your database update) in the same journal as earlier work on the topic. However, if the journal was a good venue for this particular publication some years ago, the same reasons probably still hold, which means it's still a good place to publish your update. If, however, you feel like changing, just go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding authorship, this should be discussed right now. If you have full charge of the database, did important work on it yourself, and write the paper, then &lt;strong&gt;you have strong arguments to be first author&lt;/strong&gt;. On the other hand, if you're the new admin but contributed little to the recent improvements, your position is weaker. In the end, it will be the result of a negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T13:11:41.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T14:34:13.320" Score="6" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;When addressing the past positions in a resume, although titles somewhat describes the role, they cannot clarify the importance of positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, listing a past position of &lt;code&gt;department chair&lt;/code&gt; indicates administrative duties at department level, but it depends on the department. Definitely, chairing a small department with a few faculty members and annual enrollment of 30 undergraduate students is different from a well-funded department with tens of senior faculty members and several PhD programs. However, if a reader does not know that specific department, the term &lt;code&gt;department chair&lt;/code&gt; is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is even more serious when it comes to differences in terminology. In a university, a faculty can be equal to a department, and somewhere else a faculty can be in the size of a university hosting several large departments. Even terms of mid-level administrative positions in academia do not always have the same meaning: e.g., dean, director, chair, head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you fairly clarify the importance of the job you had?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to add a description, but as it is not very common, it may cause an impression of overestimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="406" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T14:53:06.537" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T15:42:29.650" Title="How to highlight the importance of past positions in CV?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13022" CreationDate="2013-09-27T14:50:40.087" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer this question it is important to understand what a head hunting firm does. For a substantial fee (potentially in excess of 25% of the annual salary) head hunters use their networks to identify (and convince) people to apply for a job. They talk to the contacts they have, plus individuals identified by the hiring department, and try and get names of not only potential applicants, but also people who might know potential applicants. They may also use web resources, but in general I believe they like to use named introductions instead of cold calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In industry where HR firms often do not have networks in the area of expertise of the job, outside consultation is necessary. Industry jobs tend to also be less worried about costs. Additionally, it is harder for potential applicants to find out about job openings at smaller companies and figure out if they are interested in working for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For academic position networks in the required area of expertise already exist. Search committees and most faculty in the department will email their colleagues when a search opens and try and attract candidates to apply. Additionally, even small colleges would qualify as a large company and are much better advertised and described. This means departments don't really need head hunters to reach potential applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue with head hunters is that the candidates they identify didn't respond to the open call and are therefore either less interested or feel the are less qualified. In general academic searches do not have a problem with attracting qualified candidates to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us to the final issue. It is often difficult to make an attractive enough offer to candidates to get them to accept. Adding 25% of the annual salary onto the search costs means less money for recruiting and start up package. This makes it less likely to get the candidate of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Head hunters do have a role in academic job searches. Sometimes a department is trying to expand in an area they do not have expertise/networks or are looking to make an unusual interdisciplinary appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T14:50:40.087" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13031" CreationDate="2013-09-27T15:02:59.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can put a short (maybe four or five word) explanation in the CV item itself (or more if you think it's really important).  You can also give more details in your cover letter about exactly what responsibilities you had.  Another option is to ask one of your letter writers to explain; this is a common approach for things like personal reasons for wanting to leave a job, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T15:02:59.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T15:11:14.727" Score="5" ViewCount="3694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently having a hard time understanding if authors are using the word &lt;code&gt;methodology&lt;/code&gt; correctly, or if their papers should be classified as BS. Hence, I set out to get a better feeling for the correct use of the word, but now I'm even more confused than before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I had a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study, or the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is followed by a second sentence with reference to a paper from S.I. Irny, which as far as I could see, states something very contracting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with&#xA;  specific components such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and&#xA;  tools [two sources are given]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I think the wikipedia description is identical with my understanding of the term, the reference is confusion. I then asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merriam &amp;amp; Webster&lt;/a&gt; for help. Here it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1:  a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline : a particular procedure or set of procedures&#xA;      2:  the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxford says a discipline is branch of knowledge, which I would interpret as things like math, sociology, computer science and psychology, but not things like UML modeling, crossword solving, methods for solving a problem, or even sticking together methods to solve a problem. This does not match the &lt;code&gt;discipline : a particular procedure or a set of procedures&lt;/code&gt; part of the definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then again they give a weird example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;«for solving crossword puzzles my usual methodology is to begin by&#xA;      filling in all of the answers I'm reasonably sure of»&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the &lt;code&gt;«&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;»&lt;/code&gt; brackets indicate that they chose a poor example, or they consider crosswords a discipline (case 1). It obviously doesn't qualify for case 2, as the example does not analyse methods used in the crossword domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, Oxford defines the term as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity: a&#xA;  methodology for investigating the concept of focal points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which again is used as a method/solution for a problem and not the theorecial study of methods in that field. Only the &quot;Methodology as a buzzword&quot; section on wikipedia seems to back up my understanding of the term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many recent uses of the word methodology mistakenly treat it a synonym&#xA;  for method or body of methods. Doing this shifts it away from its true&#xA;  epistemological meaning and reduces it to being the procedure itself,&#xA;  the set of tools or the instruments that should have been its outcome.&#xA;  A methodology is the design process for carrying out research or the&#xA;  development of a procedure and is not in itself an instrument for&#xA;  doing those things. Using it as a synonym for method or set of&#xA;  methods, leads to misinterpretation and undermines the proper analysis&#xA;  that should go into designing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Is my understanding that a methodology is, as the name suggests it, a logic behind methods, and consequently must not deal with the topic per se, but address some meta level of the used methods, wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; For my particular academic problem in CS: Is the combination of general priciples and rules as part of a standard for creating a particular type of operating system a methodology (e.g. as used in AUTOSAR)? Such principles and rules govern and describe communication mechanisms, memory access methods, scheduling and the like. I would call this a body of methods, hence this must be a buzzword?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional fact&lt;/strong&gt;: My Sixth edition Oxford from 1976 says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Science of method; body of methods used in a particular branch of&#xA;  activity;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the current version they dumped the actual meaning and only used that weird body of method definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm happy about any source bringing some clarity into this mess. Don't worry if you can't answer the CS specific question, a general purpose answer may well be just as good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T09:11:36.383" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T06:22:25.727" Title="Methodology as a Body of Methods?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13031" CreationDate="2013-09-27T15:42:29.650" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a title or position is unclear, or an institution is possibly not well known, just explain it in a few words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Director of Supersonic Operations department (15 researchers) at Small U.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Time-management officer, Funny Inc. (in charge of scheduling company-wide meetings)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Information officer, U. of North Virginia (CTO-like position, managing computing resources for 10,000+ students and staff)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as concise as possible, but give the reader some idea of the scope of your activities. And if the position is clear or well-known, just don't add any details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T15:42:29.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T16:03:52.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt it's a tactic or a ploy, except maybe to reassure the ones who asked the question that they have not asked a stupid question. How many questions never get asked because members of the audience are afraid they will look like fools if they raise their hands and ask a &quot;silly&quot; question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question almost makes it sound like the speaker is trying to cover up a weakness. Ironically, I think it conveys a strength, because, by saying &quot;good question,&quot; the lecturer may be inviting &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have listed several spontenous reasons why a question might be considered good –  its timeliness, its relevance, its insight. I'll add one more: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the question reminds me to cover something I had been intending to cover, but almost forgot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd call that a &quot;good question&quot; – perhaps aloud, even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T16:03:52.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12978" CreationDate="2013-09-27T18:27:19.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do understand by 'software developer'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write the source code for casual games on smart phones, you don't need any knowledge from university at all. I am pretty sure that many software developers do not care at all about your university degree if you can provide practical prove of ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more complex and &quot;professional&quot; the project gets, the more a university degree (in sciences or engineering) is expected or even required. But then your desired level operation is more &quot;bird view&quot; than anything you could learn in university classes. Whether you are an excellent computer scientist, mathematician or physicist does not matter, as long as you are excellent. In particular, mathematical skills are all but mandatory and essential for large-scale and high-performance computation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, what kind of mathematician are you?&lt;/em&gt; It makes a difference whether you are an algebraic topologist, or into combinatorial or numerical algorithms. Furthermore, there are universities where CS programs are extremely mathematical, or, conversely, math programs contain a lot of theoretical computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least if you are a computational mathematician, it does not matter at all whether your master is CS, math or physics. These theory stuff on software engineering (development models) is more humanities rather than science. Spend some bucks for SE books if you feel like missing these topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:&#xA;&quot;2 in Java, 1 in C++&quot; - nobody gives a ... cares what languages you encountered in these classes. University won't help you to become a Java or C++ pro, you will have to do that by yourself, as will you have to do with a lot of other languages in professional software development. What have these classes really been about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastEditorUserId="6222" LastEditDate="2013-09-28T09:41:56.273" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T09:41:56.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13034" CreationDate="2013-09-27T19:59:11.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words don't have a fixed meaning, and dictionaries only follow usage here. That is what is happening here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;“classical” meaning of &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is (my own words): &lt;strong&gt;a branch of epistemology that studies scientific methods, i.e. the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied in science.&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology&quot;&gt;Epistemology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, in turn, is a branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This classical meaning is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot;&gt;eponym Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; discusses (WP being an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, it doesn't have to list all meanings of a given word). It's also what one of the Merriam-Webster definitions says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, language evolves, and in addition to this “classical” meaning of &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; (which is, in that sense, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun&quot;&gt;mass noun&lt;/a&gt;), a second meaning is developing. This new meaning is &lt;strong&gt;“a collection of methods used in conjunction”&lt;/strong&gt;, as you noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as with every language evolution, &lt;a href=&quot;http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/04/07/method-versus-methodology/&quot;&gt;some people complain about it&lt;/a&gt; (and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Methodology&lt;/a&gt; is clearly written from this point of view; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology#Methodology_as_a_buzzword&quot;&gt;“Methodology as a buzzword”&lt;/a&gt; section). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/methodology&quot;&gt;Wiktionary article&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Etymologically, &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; refers to the study of methods. Thus the use of &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; as a synonym for &lt;em&gt;methods&lt;/em&gt; (or other simple terms such as &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;technique&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;procedure&lt;/em&gt;) is &lt;strong&gt;proscribed as both inaccurate and pretentious&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, sod them to Hades! It is clear that &lt;strong&gt;this newer meaning is abundantly used in the academic literature these days&lt;/strong&gt;, and can thus be considered acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(If you've never seen it, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY&quot;&gt;wonderful tirade by Stephen Fry&lt;/a&gt; should cure you of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription&quot;&gt;prescriptivism&lt;/a&gt;. It is delightful to hear… “They're no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.”)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T19:59:11.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13034" CreationDate="2013-09-27T20:10:04.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since there exists also the word &quot;method&quot;, then one could argue that we should use &quot;methodology&quot; in its full epistemological meaning (definition 2 in Merriam &amp;amp; Webster), which is the discourse &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; science and its methods. In practice, a lot of people use the two words almost interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reason for that: &quot;method&quot; has a rather narrow &lt;em&gt;applied&lt;/em&gt; and descriptive flavor, while &quot;methodology&quot; invokes the knowledge of the fundamental principles of logic, science or whatever else is pertinent to the case, from which specific methods descend. So when we write &quot;the methodology that was followed in this paper is...&quot;, we do mean to refer to the fact  that we are aware of the philosophical, epistemological foundations (and weaknesses) of our methods. Even if we are not aware of that,  in a sense, it makes us &lt;em&gt;accountable&lt;/em&gt;: we cannot afterwards claim that &quot;we just employed a widely used method&quot; -by using the word &quot;methodology&quot; we accept responsibility of having a clear opinion of what we are doing and why we are doing it this way (even if we really don't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T20:10:04.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-27T20:46:55.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with saying good question is that when you have said it once, you have to say it every time - otherwise it implies that you're saying that the next question is not a good question.  So I don't say it unless the person looked nervous or appeared to need encouragement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T20:46:55.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13045" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:50:48.243" Score="10" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper where you are citing from another paper which uses a different citation style, how should one cite portions of text that contain in-text citations? For example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“Malnutrition has often been referred to as “the skeleton in the hospital closet”, as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated [69,70].Despite this, the negative consequences of malnutrition have been widely reported...&quot; (Barker, Grout &amp;amp; Crowe, 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative format would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Malnutrition has often been referred to as &quot;the skeleton in the hospital closet&quot; , as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated (McKee, 2011; Busby, 2008; in Barker, Grout, &amp;amp; Crowe, 2011). Despite this....&quot;( Barker, Grout, &amp;amp; Crowe, 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems an awkward and redundant solution. Would this be considered correct for APA style? What about other citation styles; MLA,etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T14:31:09.677" Title="How to cite from a paper using a different citation style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13042" CreationDate="2013-09-27T23:09:14.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not rephrase it, and quote each source properly? Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McKee (2011), Busby (2008) and in Barker, Grout, &amp;amp; Crowe (2011) wrote that “Malnutrition has often been referred to as 'the skeleton in the hospital closet', as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated&quot;. To this, in Barker, Grout &amp;amp; Crowe added that &quot;Despite this, the negative consequences of malnutrition have been widely reported...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, you are quoting McKee at al., so it is only proper to cite them properly, and thus have them in your references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7161" LastEditorUserId="8966" LastEditDate="2017-06-15T14:31:09.677" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T14:31:09.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12733" CreationDate="2013-09-27T23:46:35.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a better definition of an academic institution is whether they contribute to peer-reviewed research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If museum staff often have &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt; input to peer-reviewed research, then perhaps they could be called an academic institution (in a pragmatic, not legal, sense). However if the museum staff merely serve as a repository of knowledge rather than a source of original ideas, then I would hesitate to call the museum an academic institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T23:46:35.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13042" CreationDate="2013-09-28T00:17:00.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echoing the other good comments and answer, I'd encourage you to think in terms of &quot;forthrightness&quot;, rather than compliance to semi-random formal criteria. Think of the &lt;em&gt;function&lt;/em&gt; of your citations, and thinking of the idealized version of scholarship and such. The goal is not conformity to style guides, but useful contributions to human knowledge, blah-blah-blah, ;) But, yes, that should be the way to think about such questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my taste, citations in-line should be sufficient so that the reader does not have to &quot;flip to the end&quot; to see what &quot;[46]&quot; is. The space spent on fuller references is a good investment!!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, yet again, if one thinks that the &lt;em&gt;function&lt;/em&gt; of one's writing is to &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; the reader, all in-line references would be optimally helpful, as opposed to &quot;proper-and-possibly-unhelpful&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T00:17:00.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13034" CreationDate="2013-09-28T07:40:21.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One meaning of &quot;methodology&quot; is a synonym for method. That is how it is used, both in technical literature and in common use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another of its meanings is the study of methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet another is the body of methods in a particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find writers who are celebrated for being experts in that craft who use the word with any and all of those meanings; so this is not a question of technical usage versus casual usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Etymology is not destiny.&lt;/strong&gt; As F'x writes, language is defined by usage, and evolves constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, as writers we not only have the expectations of our readers in mind, but also (and primarily) the expectations of our commissioning editor - the gatekeeper to publication.  If they are a descriptivist, you may have to work with that in order to get published. If they have a style guide to work to, then you must work to it too.  Your goal is to get your paper published: fighting to change the publisher's style guide is a different and separate battle, so don't mix them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to find out whether you should be using &quot;methodology&quot;, &quot;method&quot; or &quot;paradigm&quot;, read some comparable papers in your target journal, and see what's most commonly used, in contexts that are most analagous to yours. If that doesn't clear it up, ask your contact editor at the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T07:40:21.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13058" CreationDate="2013-09-28T08:06:32.003" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have strong professional IT skills but average educational background, will a university consider me for admission or financial aid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked through Stanford's site, including &lt;a href=&quot;https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/international/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;application procedures&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://gap.stanford.edu/2-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;admissions requirements&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://gradadmissions.stanford.edu/about/frequently-asked-questions/gre-and-toefl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GRE/TOEFL testing&lt;/a&gt;, but I cannot find a mention of anything other than TOEFL/GRE scores required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7866" LastEditorUserId="135770" LastEditDate="2021-04-10T00:05:22.940" LastActivityDate="2021-04-10T00:05:22.940" Title="Will excellence in professional career be considered for admission or financial aid" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13007" CreationDate="2013-09-28T09:03:44.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a European perspective: the only time I was ever asked for transcripts was for PhD admission. After that, nobody every asked me for transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative people asked me for a proof of my degree (a copy of the degree itself, without grades, is what I gave). They only wanted to check I was eligible for the position's formal requirements (having a PhD to become post-doc or assistant professor).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientists asked me for my publications, my thesis, the list of topics I had taught, etc. They did not care the least about my grades in undergrad or graduate education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the ads you saw asking for transcripts, especially for senior positions, are by far a minority. &lt;strong&gt;Once you have a PhD, most people won't care about your earlier educational record&lt;/strong&gt;, since it is not a good predictor of how awesome you will be as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T09:03:44.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13048" CreationDate="2013-09-28T14:54:29.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professional IT skills have very little to do with graduate-level work in computer science. While such skills may lead to a positive letter of recommendation, it is unlikely that you will receive either admission or financial aid (in the form of a teaching or research assistantship) solely on the basis of your record as an IT professional. There may be exceptions to this (for instance, if your professional work is in a specialized area that maps closely to an existing research area at the school to which you are applying), but in general, but that would be more the exception than the rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other fields, such as bioinformatics and chemistry, where &quot;professional work&quot; may be more similar in nature to ongoing academic research, this is more of a possibility—I know several people whose work careers did have an influence on their admissions to graduate programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T14:54:29.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12947" CreationDate="2013-09-28T16:33:00.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW my university's promotion and tenure guidelines were revised recently (April 2013) to explicitly include consideration of patents and commercialization activities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Promotion and tenure require excellent performance and the promise of continued excellence in 1) teaching, 2) service, and 3) research, creative work, and scholarship.  The University values an inclusive view of scholarship in the recognition that knowledge is acquired and advanced through discovery, integration, application, and teaching.  Given this perspective, promotion and tenure reviews, as detailed in the criteria of individual departments and colleges, will recognize original research contributions in peer-reviewed publications as well as integrative and applied forms of scholarship that involve &lt;strong&gt;cross-cutting collaborations with business and community partners, including translational research, commercialization activities, and patents&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we may see more of this sort of thing as the funding landscape changes and the share of state funding for universities decreases further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T16:33:00.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T17:43:32.803" Score="12" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many questions on this website ask how university rankings affect the future career in research and graduate admissions. But it is not clear for me what is actually meant by ranking. There are various rankings of universities and many of them are contradictory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in the context of graduate admissions what ranking does the admission committee have in their mind? How does the committee decide which is a high-ranked school and which is a low-ranked school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T23:08:42.593" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T23:26:55.073" Title="What does &quot;university ranking&quot; mean for a graduate admissions committee?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T17:54:17.603" Score="8" ViewCount="2358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an assistant professor in my fifth year and have decided to go on the job market this year.  Obviously I prefer tenured positions to pre-tenure positions, but I'm interested in either one.  Would it be weird to leave this ambiguous in a cover letter, that is, to simply say &quot;I am applying for a position in your department&quot; without specifying the rank?  It  seems to me that if I say I'm applying for an associate position, then some departments might say &quot;oh, she's not ready for an associate position, too bad, we would have hired her at the assistant level&quot;, whereas, if I apply at the assistant level, I might be passing up opportunities for a tenured position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8791" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T02:29:25.793" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:55:04.160" Title="Including desired rank in a cover letter for an open-rank faculty position?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T18:12:45.397" Score="2" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied in program A, and received a master degree in A, and at the same time received a master degree in another program B by taking a certain number of courses and doing a thesis. Then I continued to study for a PhD degree in program B, but without finishing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my resume for either graduate school application or job hunting, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How shall I report my education? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First master study in the two programs, and then PhD study in program B, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;master study in program A, and graduate study in program B receiving my master in B but not finishing PhD study in B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how to report my GPAs for my studies in program A and B? &#xA;In particular, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for my master studies, can I calculate my GPA for program A using all courses I took, and my GPA for program B using only the courses that I used to meet the master degree in B?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for my PhD study in program B, shall I calculate my GPA by including those courses that I took to meet the master degree in B or not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much flexibility do I have to calculate my GPAs? My university doesn't calculate GPAs for graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="10257" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T18:16:01.820" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T18:16:01.820" Title="How shall I report my education and calculate my GPA?" Tags="&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12996" CreationDate="2013-09-29T02:26:51.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would probably do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the appropriate section, acknowledge that two routes had been suggested, and then explain why you chose to take the route you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: sorry, didn't fully read through the answer above mine before posting (which says much the same thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8797" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T02:26:51.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13062" CreationDate="2013-09-29T03:13:21.260" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is one of these questions where there is no truly &quot;correct answer&quot; as you can't predict what's going on in any given search committee, but I think you're unlikely to do any damage by leaving it open.  At least my understanding of these things is that a department would rather hire you w/o tenure (note that this is not quite the same as the associate/assistant distinction) as it is less of a headache with the administration; you'll get tenure if they really want you, and don't think they'll get you otherwise.  I don't think it will matter much what you wrote in your cover letter.  Concentrate on making them want you, and then worry about what they have to do to get you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T03:13:21.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13068" CreationDate="2013-09-29T05:25:34.863" Score="11" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider a paper that uses many different techniques to solve a &lt;strong&gt;practical&lt;/strong&gt; problem. &lt;em&gt;The techniques that the paper uses have all already been published by others&lt;/em&gt;. This paper only &lt;strong&gt;modifies or customizes these techniques a bit to fit the particular question&lt;/strong&gt; that the paper is solving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The techniques used are from different disciplines. So the paper is more or less similar to &lt;strong&gt;an integration of these techniques&lt;/strong&gt;. These different techniques were proposed or published for a general purpose with no specified applications before. Now this paper integrates them together and solves a rather specific and practical problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this kind of very-specific-problem-solver application paper will get cited less often than those algorithm papers that may be applicable to many applications. However, let us leave the impact factor issue aside first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this integration and application valued by the peers? Is this paper valuable enough to get published? (not considering its impact first)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T03:34:13.117" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T03:34:13.117" Title="Is a paper that takes existing techniques to solve a practical and more specific problem valuable enough to get published?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13067" CreationDate="2013-09-29T05:45:56.453" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You paper will prove that those techniques are useful and usable by using them to solve a practical problem. I consider it a contribution to human kind, thus valuable to get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it will be accepted by journal/conference is another issue. You should try. Please send it to be peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T12:26:47.717" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T12:26:47.717" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13070" CreationDate="2013-09-29T07:28:04.050" Score="36" ViewCount="6238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a few professors who announced to the class the mean and median scores for each exam, but I haven't seen anyone go further than this (e.g., announce this information for homework too, give a histogram of all the scores, etc.). Also, this information has always been kept semi-private, in the sense that it is announced verbally in class, without an explicit instruction &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to share it, but still making it unlikely that the information would spread beyond the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what to take into consideration when deciding what sort of information to provide, and how. Would it be acceptable to put the mean and median scores for each exam on my (publicly available) website, for example? Or is that violating the privacy of my students in some way? Might they be ashamed, as a group, if they've all done extraordinarily badly? But as their teacher, I would have to also be ashamed if that were the case - so perhaps deciding to publicize how my students are doing ought to be considered as a sign of confidence that my teaching will make them do well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other issues I'm not thinking of regarding this. Your experiences (either as a student or as a teacher) with classes that gave this sort of information, and any other thoughts, would be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I'd be teaching an undergraduate math class. But regardless of my personal situation, I'd like to hear whether you think the field of study, or the level of the course, affect the answer to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="222" LastEditorUserId="222" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T07:38:03.120" LastActivityDate="2021-04-18T20:20:09.307" Title="What data about grades should I tell the class? Make public?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13069" CreationDate="2013-09-29T08:50:50.280" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Revealing information about grades is normally directed by some combination of university policy and government regulations (if one is teaching at a public institution of higher learning). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I teach, for instance, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; grades for written exams are officially published, but semi-anonymized by replacing the students' names with their student ID numbers. In addition, the aggregate statistics are also published, along with the rubric for converting &quot;raw&quot; scores into final grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general belief, however, is that grades are an &quot;internal&quot; matter, that should not generally be publicized beyond the extent required by regulations. There is no need for everyone in the world to see the grade distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T08:50:50.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13067" CreationDate="2013-09-29T08:59:03.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the way you described your work, it certainly worth writing it up and submitting it as an article to a journal. However, there are several factors that can add more value to your work as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the problem you have solved is an important problem and has been addressed by well known experts in the literature and if you write a very nice introduction to your paper and explaining the importance of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the way you use these techniques explores more applications and benefits of them. In this way, it is like you have invented a brand new technique. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the way you use these techniques from different disciplines shows interconnections of these disciplines and suggest more interrelationship for further investigations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that if you explain carefully all the above points in your paper and highlight the advantages of your approach to the problem, it won't be difficult to publish your result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T08:59:03.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13069" CreationDate="2013-09-29T09:13:16.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at regulations that apply to you, whether local or national. There has been a recent shift to more privacy on this issue, so in most institutions today grades of a specific students are not public (no one knows except the student himself, and probably the NSA). In my institution (in France), full listings of grades are regularly posted, but they are anonymous (associated with student numerical ID, not with name). Back when I was a student, though, full listings of names and grades were not uncommon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T09:13:16.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13067" CreationDate="2013-09-29T10:53:16.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't have any doubts about this. It is the essence of &lt;em&gt;applied science&lt;/em&gt;, where theoretical techniques get to be tested through their application on practical problems. And as you write, it is usually found that some modification and customization is required, or even, that some techniques actually don't work with some sub-class of problems, or that some techniques are better suited to some sub-class compared to others. Further, a paper that &lt;em&gt;compares&lt;/em&gt; the application of different techniques on the same problem, is even more valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8575" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T12:55:11.280" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T12:55:11.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13067" CreationDate="2013-09-29T11:24:10.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such publication will not only be helpful to the community whose focus is on the particular problem under investigation in your paper, but, will also be instrumental in spreading the knowledge of the techniques you employed from other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to improve the technical quality of your manuscript, I would even suggest that you elaborate on the techniques used. Often analysis techniques originate from complex mathematical treatises. Applied research employing such techniques help in making the techniques popular and useful for practical applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8798" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T11:24:10.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13069" CreationDate="2013-09-29T14:38:00.310" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on my experience teaching undergraduate math in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students are used to having at least the mean or median, so as to give them some context for their score.  If you don't announce it, you can expect to be asked about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never bothered to post exam statistics on a web site.  I wouldn't see it as a privacy issue, though it does feel a tiny bit like over-sharing.  Mostly it's that students want this info at the moment they receive their graded exams; they won't want to read it later, or remember it from earlier.  So even if you post it, you'll probably have to announce it also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, I understand that FERPA generally forbids releasing &lt;em&gt;identifiable&lt;/em&gt; student information.  There should be no legal objection to statistics, or even an anonymized list of scores.  (Note, though, that university ID numbers may not be considered sufficiently anonymous.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T14:38:00.310" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12774" CreationDate="2013-09-29T14:49:40.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add here, for the record, what I ended up doing. After reading the advice here, and discussing with a few close colleagues, I decided to write and submit a comment, without first discussing it with the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons behind the choice are the following: I assume good faith on their part, and that they simply didn't know that the phenomenon they observe, and which might seem counter-intuitive, is actually a specific manifestation of a quite common behavior. They didn't know the literature well enough, or didn't realize it; at least two reviewers also didn't realize that. Thus, it is really good to “educate” the community on this, and publishing a comment in the same journal appeared to be the best aim to achieve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I didn't contact them privately first is two-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will get the well-polished comment for them to reply, through the editor. A journal editor who is a friend of mine suggested that &lt;strong&gt;she (as editor) would prefer to see all communication go through her,&lt;/strong&gt; rather than come at a later point and have to “referee” a dispute he hasn't seen half of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I wrote to them first, and they then wanted to write a correction to the paper themselves, I couldn't be sure exactly what they would say, and &lt;strong&gt;my message &lt;em&gt;as relayed by them&lt;/em&gt; could be less clear than what I intended to say&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T14:49:40.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13080" CreationDate="2013-09-29T18:37:22.640" Score="30" ViewCount="13043" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I receive galley proofs of a paper, I look at possible errors introduced by the copy-editing team. But while I proofread the article, there are sometimes small mistakes I'd like to fix, which were not introduced by them (i.e. they were already present in the accepted version of the manuscript).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the proofs are accompanied by instructions saying that &lt;strong&gt;extensive changes should not be introduced at that time, and any such changes would have to be approved by the editor&lt;/strong&gt; (hence, I suppose, delaying publication). However, the limit is not very clear to me. &lt;strong&gt;What is considered extensive changes?&lt;/strong&gt; In particular, what do you think of the following items (from my experience):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slight changes in wording, to improve clarity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updating a citation, because an “in press” or “ASAP” article now has page numbers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding an important (but not crucial) citation one had missed, in the introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a citation to a paper that has been published since the manuscript was submitted; possibly adding a short sentence to the text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have done so far is change everything that I think should be changed to improve the paper (including all the above items), and let the typesetter decide whether he wanted to send it back to the editor. I never received any complaint or comment on my changes, which could indicate that it was the correct course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T19:29:29.097" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T20:02:56.300" Title="What corrections can you make on galley proofs?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13079" CreationDate="2013-09-29T19:02:08.290" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;A galley proof should primarily be proofed for typos or mistakes made in the type-setting process. It is not the time to change phrasing, exchange figures, add or remove blocks of text or anything else substantial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding references might seem like a useful addition but the problem is that it would then be possible to add references without the knowledge of the editors and of course the reviewers and hence possibly make changes that could have affected reviews etc. The case of adding anew paper is a similar problem since it may change the paper in ways that the editor and reviewers have not seen and therefore ok'd. If such changes are wanted (they are probably seldom needed), it would be best to at least check with the editor if that would be appropriate. In short, no changes should be made that alters the content of the paper. All such details should have been checked and if necessary corrected before submitting the final revised manuscript for copy-editing and proof production. Any corrections called for by the copy-editor and editors after submitting the final version is of course to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updating of references are usually also acceptable, to, for example, add the publication year (from e.g. &quot;in press&quot;) or adding doi, page numbers etc. if these were not known at the time the final version was submitted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proofing stage is not a stage where many changes should be made. The manuscript that is submitted for proofing should be considered the last chance to make any substantial changes. What many do not realize is that all changes done after a type-set proof has been produced may cost the journal money, apart from the extra time and trouble it causes. So, as an editor, I often have the feeling authors just send in their final manuscript without checking figures and text properly and then waiting for the proof to make final changes but is, in fact, an abuse of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your last paragraph, the type-setter is usually not a scientist and has no idea of what changes might mean so to think that the type-setter would act as some form of intermediate editor is not right. In cases where type-setting is done in-house it might be a professional doing the type-setting but I would still say this is not the way to handle the type-setting/proofing stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, anyone, make sure the final submitted manuscript is checked, complete and correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T19:02:08.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13079" CreationDate="2013-09-29T20:02:56.300" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the cases you mention (minor wording changes, updating/adding references) seem entirely fine to me.  It's best to do this only when it's important, but in my experience it's standard and acceptable.  Peter Jansson's answer suggests what's acceptable might vary between fields or journals, however.  (His point about making changes after reviewing is valid, but I'm not so worried if the changes are relatively minor.)  All I can talk about is my experience in mathematics as an author and editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5YKiwrpJntoC&quot;&gt;Mathematics Into Type&lt;/a&gt; (first published by the American Mathematical Society in 1971, and last updated in 1999) says the following on pages 53-54:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an author makes changes in first proof amounting to more than 10% of the original cost of composition, these changes are usually considered excessive.  Many publishers ask authors to bear the costs in excess of 10%.  These excessive correction charges may be the result of large sections of text being deleted or of changes in wording or notation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This agrees with my memory of the traditional standard for excessive changes.  It's not clear what, if anything, this 10% figure means nowadays, or how widely it's used (although web searches lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofsurgicalresearch.com/authorinfo&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-environmental-economics-and-management/0095-0696/guide-for-authors&quot;&gt;mentions&lt;/a&gt; of it in guides for authors).  I wouldn't take it too seriously, but it does give an indication of what was considered acceptable in the past.  Note that it didn't mean you could rewrite 5% of the article, since those changes would require resetting a lot of the surrounding text as well, but it meant you had some flexibility for making a few small changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back further, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1943-49-03/S0002-9904-1943-07884-6/S0002-9904-1943-07884-6.pdf&quot;&gt;in 1943&lt;/a&gt; the AMS said this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important that galley proofs be carefully read and corrected by the author, since it is only the author who can detect errors which are due to an imperfect manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least back then the official AMS position was that authors should correct their own mistakes when reading proofs, and not just new mistakes introduced by the typesetter.  (I don't know of more recent references that discuss this explicitly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I agree with Peter Jansson that articles should be carefully checked at the time the final version is submitted, with changes to the proofs being considered a last resort rather than an opportunity to delay the checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T20:02:56.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13069" CreationDate="2013-09-30T00:11:38.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can share some experience as simultaneously student, TA and developer of software evaluating user data gathered by learning management systems (including test results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not share any personal information without consent ever. This goes as far as that you should not show any statistics based on gender, age or any other identifier as this often  leads to single students being identifiable (everyone seems to be craving for gender statistics nowadays but this is almost impossible doing anonymously in technical fields where there are few woman). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can of course ask all students if it is ok to create some more extensive statistics. Beware that any consent may be caused by peer pressure though. Go for an opt-in rather than opt-out approach if you want to be fair (or the other way around if you want their consent). I think this really depends on trust and the relationship between you and your students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many people feel uncomfortable if too much of their personal data is stored online. They will feel spied upon. For most students the advantages (seeing own success, areas for improvements) are outweighed by the disadvantages (people can see where they failed, make prediction about their chance to graduate, ...). They won't trust any system their data is stored on (and rightfully so, many universities store large amount of personal data for years, freely accessible by any system administrators). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself, are you ok with other teachers seeing your students average results? How about your supervisors? It could affect your career if they knew you let too many students fail or give good grades too easily (management most likely knows this already anyways though).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there were public average results of tests of each teacher available, as a student, of course I would use this as a measurable factor in my decision for choosing a teacher for my upcoming course. Sure, the word probably gets around anyway if you grade students better/worse compared to other teachers but extensive statistics on this subject are gold for the lazy student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to share individual test result online, don't rely on student IDs for anonymous results. Fellow students know each others IDs. Sometimes IDs contain information that can be used to identify students as well. The only reliable approach I've seen, is to let each student write a secret keyword on their test, which you later list online next to their grade. The whole page shouldn't be public for everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, don't let this discourage you to share information with your students. If you gather any statistic that could help a particular student to improve, it would be best to discuss this in case they come see you during office hours. Even if it's just to praise a student or offer help when his grades are declining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5677" LastEditorUserId="5677" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T00:25:39.903" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T00:25:39.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T05:59:43.290" Score="4" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I applied to a Master's Degree Program when I was at my last year in undergraduate. I got accepted but I couldn't enroll at this school because I failed to finish the undergraduate on time, and I need to spend one more semester in undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to apply again when I'm finished so what I want ask is how my previous application will affect my next one? Will it affect positively since I got accepted last time, will it affect negatively because I rejected the previous one or will it have no affect at all and they will consider my next application independent than previous one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8805" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T09:53:55.043" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T09:59:31.677" Title="About multiple applications for graduate programs to the same school" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2013-09-30T06:52:03.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is about my experience in applied atmospheric physics&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it is often reading for depth that is more effective.  Making sure that you understand the key concepts and connections made between the main concept and the subsidiary topics within a paper.  Usually, I read the Abstract and Conclusion to garner the main points of what the paper sought to discover, what method they used (established, modified or new) and what were the overall results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many of the papers that I have read (and written), the method is often in stages corresponding to specific results in the results and discussion section (they are often merged in my field) - I tend to read the method, derivations therein and the results of each stage - which means flipping between each section.  All the time taking notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times (not very often), the method stage makes reference to another paper, so that paper is retrieved and worked through in the same way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found this process to be quite quick, as each stage comprises a short paragraph and equations in the method; a corresponding sentence in the results, often with a table or graph and a sentence or two of explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T06:52:03.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13061" CreationDate="2013-09-30T07:46:36.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of graduate admissions, the “ranking” of universities by members of the committee is a purely subjective one, and depends heavily from place to place, from department to department, and from committee member to committee member. That's why you're not getting a simple silver-bullet answer to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, most admission committee members will rather rely on their own past experience with students coming from various schools, and would probably go further and would not “rank” the same the different undergrad programs from a given university. They would typically consider things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how ready were past students from program X for our graduate courses? e.g., did they know and master well enough all the prerequisites for our courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well did these students do during courses? e.g. what sort of grades do they get (knowing that a top student from school X usually doesn't make it to the first half of your program, for example, is interesting to know for future candidates from this school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well did they perform in terms of research? e.g. school Y has students with excellent grades and educational record, but are they prepared for a wide-ranging professional experience that is a PhD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T07:46:36.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2013-09-30T07:55:29.373" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll chime in with a quite different opinion (or maybe a related opinion phrased in a different way), which grew out of advising/supervising PhD students and post-docs: &lt;strong&gt;reading for depth is a job requirement, but reading for breadth is what will make you stand out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student, you are required to read in depth the papers that directly pertain to your particular subfield. A PhD is the process of becoming an expert in your discipline, and you cannot do that without mastering the minute details of it, which you will only learn by reading in depth the papers published (and attending conferences, asking questions, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, though becoming an expert is what gets you your PhD, if you want to continue further in research (whether academic or R&amp;amp;D), you will need to be able &lt;strong&gt;to show a quick understanding of new problems, to make connections between concepts in various areas of research, and propose creative solutions&lt;/strong&gt; to the problems you have identified. This requires a casual knowledge of a large variety of fields, which will be only acquired by reading a large breadth of topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T07:55:29.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13084" CreationDate="2013-09-30T09:59:31.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very good, but very difficult question. The problem is that there's no definitive answer here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we do know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You turned down a previous offer.&lt;/strong&gt; This is never helpful for future admissions at a given school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You were not able to accept because you weren't qualified to start.&lt;/strong&gt; So long as you clarified this with the school in question, this may be a mitigating factor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we don't know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How the school evaluates candidates.&lt;/strong&gt; Is it a &quot;rolling&quot; admissions process, in which candidates are considered year round, or is it done on an annual basis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is probably the most important. If it's a rolling admissions, and you were a high-quality candidate in the previous cycle, you'd probably have a good chance of getting admitted, provided you explain what happened and why you couldn't get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the admissions process is done once a year, then you will have to compete against all of the other candidates in &lt;em&gt;this year's&lt;/em&gt; pool. Then, it's not necessarily a given that you would get in having gotten in previously. If you were a &quot;bubble&quot; applicant last time, You may be below the &quot;cutoff&quot; given a different pool of candidates—or you could be a clear admit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T09:59:31.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13090" CreationDate="2013-09-30T11:48:03.363" Score="29" ViewCount="37632" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the terminology for a peer-reviewed publication to be submitted to a reputable scientific journal, what are the differences and characteristic properties of the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;draft&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;preprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;article&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own take on it would be that my text is a draft until I submit it to a journal, at which point it becomes a manuscript.  When the manuscript is accepted it becomes a preprint, and when it gets published it becomes a paper, which is synonymous to article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that be an accurate summary?  Would anyone have corrections or additions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T17:44:43.303" Title="What are the boundaries between draft, manuscript, preprint, paper, and article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13089" CreationDate="2013-09-30T12:13:42.950" Score="32" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;paper = article&lt;/strong&gt;: In the academic meaning of the words, papers and articles refer to the same thing: a published piece of writing. The term is used for &lt;em&gt;journal papers&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;journal articles&lt;/em&gt;, which means they have been published by a journal, but also for less traditional publications, including self-publication (&lt;em&gt;“Dr. Who just published a great paper on the intricacies of time travel on his webpage”&lt;/em&gt;) and e-print repositories such as arXiv (&lt;em&gt;“check out the latest paper by Galileo on arXiv, that guy has mad ideas!”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals have different categories of “articles”, and differentiate between letters, communications, reports, reviews, and full papers (sometimes abbreviated as just “papers”). In usage I have seen, &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;article&lt;/em&gt;) used as a generic term covers all of those: you would say, for example, that &lt;em&gt;“letters and full papers are two types of articles”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;preprint&lt;/strong&gt; (more commonly used without the hyphen) refers to the &lt;strong&gt;distribution, in advance of formal publication, of something that will be published in print&lt;/strong&gt;. The preprint may differ from the final publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Preprint&lt;/em&gt; status does not always indicate that the work has been formally accepted for publication. It just means the authors intend to publish it in a more formal venue (journal, book, etc.) but wanted to distribute by other means beforehand (preprints used to be distributed to colleagues as photocopies, but are now mostly circulated by email or repositories).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;manuscript&lt;/strong&gt; is, in the &lt;em&gt;New Oxford American Dictionary&lt;/em&gt;'s words, “an author's text that has &lt;strong&gt;not yet been published&lt;/strong&gt;”. Any piece of writing that you have not published in any way (but intend to) is a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;draft&lt;/strong&gt; is the same as a manuscript, except that it insists on the &lt;strong&gt;unfinished state&lt;/strong&gt; of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing, I could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;draft&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I've been working on, please amend it with your corrections. Once we have done this final round of revision, I will upload the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to the editor's website, and we can start circulating it as a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;preprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to colleagues whom you think may be interested. Once it is accepted and published, we'll just send them the published version of the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for their records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T12:21:59.083" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T12:21:59.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13089" CreationDate="2013-09-30T12:14:15.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a piece of writing during the pre-submission stage is a draft and during the post-acceptance, but pre-publication, stage is a preprint. I think that this agrees with your terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals publish original research findings under a number of categories including articles, letters, and reports and in some fields books are the predominant mode of publishing research. Therefore, I would say that a preprint does not necessarily become a paper/article when published and instead becomes whatever it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining a manuscript is the hardest for me. I have often seen acknowledgements which thank someone for reading a previous version of the manuscript. This happens frequently enough in my field that I believe that a piece of writing becomes a manuscript prior to submission to a publisher. I am not sure when a piece of writing becomes a manuscript. I think a piece of writing becomes a manuscript when the first complete draft is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T12:14:15.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13012" CreationDate="2013-09-30T12:41:10.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the first question, a speaker once explained that there are three types of question: great questions, good questions, and interesting questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great questions are answered on the very next slide! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good questions are answered in an upcoming slide &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interesting questions need some research before they can be answered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Made sense to me, and no-one need be offended by the category assigned to their question :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8807" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T12:41:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T12:58:26.197" Score="1" ViewCount="3525" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a recent bachelor of technology graduate from India and want to become a research assistant just after b.tech at any abroad university (USA,CANADA,UK, etc). If it is possible then what kind of qualifications, GPA, academics are required? Also for becoming an RA at these universities is the GRE exam necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6589" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T14:56:13.250" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T19:47:44.110" Title="Is it possible to become a research assistant just after b.tech?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13093" CreationDate="2013-09-30T16:58:19.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First be admitted to graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then convince a professor to hire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T16:58:19.397" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12695" CreationDate="2013-09-30T20:41:03.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Networking is key&lt;/strong&gt;--check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5066/7921&quot;&gt;F'x's answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5065/7921&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. Find people in your university who are willing to recommend you to the other researchers in the field, whom you would like to work with. Take advantage of the connections your faculty members have developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then &lt;strong&gt;write a killer cover letter&lt;/strong&gt;. aeismail notes that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5071/7921&quot;&gt;a compelling 'cover letter' email&lt;/a&gt; was the only reason he even considered an individual for a research internship. Research the PI and tailor your letter to his/her interests and current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T20:41:03.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T00:18:45.290" Score="6" ViewCount="2365" Body="&lt;p&gt;The deadline for uploading conference papers (extended abstracts) for presentations at the AICHE conference (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aiche.org/conferences/aiche-annual-meeting/2013&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aiche.org/conferences/aiche-annual-meeting/2013&lt;/a&gt;) is tonight.  I have already been accepted to present on the basis of my abstracts submitted a while ago.  (I wasn't invited to this conference; it requires registration and submission of material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emailed the event organizer and received the reply: &quot;We strongly encourage a paper (synonymous with extended abstract) submission. However, it is not a requirement to present.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; submit something today, but I would prefer not to.  For one thing, some of the material needs a little more polish.  And for another, I'd rather not reveal research results before the presentation date in November.  I meant to ask my advisor his opinion earlier when I met with him today, but it slipped my mind.  I've just started year two of grad school and this will be my first conference presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good reason to go ahead and submit anyway?  Having no conference experience, I am not even sure what/who these papers/extended abstracts are for.  Am I skipping something that I really should be doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Checking the online presentations, it appears that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; people have not uploaded an extended abstract.  Not sure if that makes a difference...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T08:01:34.467" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T10:22:47.010" Title="Should I submit a conference paper (extended abstract) to this chemical engineering conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T05:00:14.267" Score="11" ViewCount="2072" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often brainstorm research ideas on my whiteboard. I then run out of space and want to store and print the contents of the whiteboard. In general I &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeromyanglim.tumblr.com/post/48596358182/whiteboard-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;have a system of taking a photo of the whiteboard&lt;/a&gt; with my phone, which is synchronised to dropbox, which then creates a copy on my computer. Now I can print the image, on my computer, but it is not optimised for printing. &#xA;It is possible to open it up in photoshop and manually make it black and white, and try to optimise the contrast and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd ideally like it to be a one click process for printing a whiteboard image. The whole point is that the process shouldn't disrupt the brainstorming process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I efficiently print digital photos of a whiteboard that are optimised for printing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, the procedure might vary under different computing or phone operating systems. An ideal solution would be (a) extremely efficient, (b) minimise printing toner usage, (c) maximise readability. Useful automated steps would include: (a) optional conversion to black and white; (b) arrangement of image into a size and layout designed for printed paper, (c) optimising contrast so that the whiteboard is white and only markings print. Some form of auto-cropping might also be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; A few options I've discovered since posting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rii.ricoh.com/apps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ricoh has a couple of Apps for iphone and Android&lt;/a&gt; that will email you a modified whiteboard photo. I wasn't entirely happy with the quality of the results, but with good initial lighting and black and white image, it seem to work okay. They also have &lt;a href=&quot;http://whiteboard.rii.ricoh.com/whiteboard_cleanup/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a web app that is quite easy to use&lt;/a&gt; for uploading single files and then printing cleaned versions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://matthew.mceachen.us/blog/how-to-clean-up-photos-of-whiteboards-with-gimp-403.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gimp tutorial&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://registry.gimp.org/node/19822&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gimp script&lt;/a&gt; for processing whiteboard images. The manual process if fairly straightforward, but not a single click.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/18717/&quot;&gt;Various suggestions on Photo StackExchange for getting more professional results&lt;/a&gt; particularly one involving shooting both the original image and and an empty white board and digitally subtracting images. It all sounds a bit complex for simple brainstorming needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These suggestions on &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/107313/software-to-clean-up-photos-of-whiteboards-and-documents&quot;&gt;SuperUser&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, there's an email service where you email the original whiteboard photo file and get a cleaned version back &lt;a href=&quot;http://snapclean.me/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://snapclean.me/&lt;/a&gt; . It took a few minutes when I tried it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Given that using whiteboards is fundamental to teaching and research, I hope people don't mind that I have used this site for asking the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:06.827" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T13:45:14.897" Title="How to efficiently print the image of a whiteboard?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13110" CreationDate="2013-10-01T05:38:48.707" Score="8" ViewCount="2824" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for jobs after my PhD, should my CV include an incomplete degree I read towards years ago? It's a field completely unrelated to what I'm doing now. However, before my final year when I started getting sups and failures by the dozen (my reason for quitting) things actually went swimmingly. I worked with a renowned professor as an undergrad research assistant for a spell and even published a paper (on my own) during that phase of my academic journey. I didn't get a certificate out of it, but I nevertheless feel I honed some valuabe skills then (and of course I have a transcript listing the passes and failures).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since moved onto a completely unrelated humanities field. Should I mention the incomplete degree on my CV? If I ignore it, prospective employers might wonder what I did for three years of my life, surely? Should I list my science publication on my CV when it is irrelevant to what I'm doing now? Does quitting and switching tracks make me look flighty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8507" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T11:04:17.900" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T11:10:32.850" Title="Should one list incomplete degrees on a CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13099" CreationDate="2013-10-01T05:48:58.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Optimizing a photo of a whiteboard is similar to optimizing a scan of a page.  On Linux, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scantailor&lt;/a&gt; -- it usually does a great job for what I want.  It's not automatic, but it's way faster than trying to tweak curves in Photoshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T13:45:14.897" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T13:45:14.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13099" CreationDate="2013-10-01T06:32:53.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much money are you willing to spend? If the answer is around &lt;strike&gt;$400&lt;/strike&gt; $900&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, you can get a whiteboard capture system like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AQ4Zk6Pqr0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MimioCapture System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would have to change your workflow to make sure your computer was up and capturing, but you use regular whiteboard markers (albeit inside the electronic case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;sub&gt;*educational pricing, I think, although you may have to buy additional software; I couldn't tell from the product's website&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;*It looks like the pricing is much more steep for a standalone system. I am not 100% positive, but it looks like the $400 system does need other expensive components. Darn. This one seems to be completely standalond:&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/2011/09/30/capture-what-you-draw-in-real-time-with-ebeam-edge-whiteboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eBeam Edge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T06:44:12.453" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T06:44:12.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13099" CreationDate="2013-10-01T07:59:01.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For this I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/sa/app/turboscan-quickly-scan-multipage/id342548956?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TurboScan&lt;/a&gt; on my iPhone.  It's designed for scanning and there are many similar apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes 3 photos and combines them to get one with good contrast and resolution.  It optimizes for readability.  It automatically detects the edge of the whiteboard and crops there; you can easily adjust the crop to be smaller if desired.  You can easily adjust contrast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a photo of what's on my whiteboard right now.  This was taken in extremely poor lighting conditions (dim, with lots of glare).  Also, TurboScan outputs a PDF, so you can zoom nicely without it becoming pixelated, but SE would only allow me to upload a JPEG, so what's below is lower quality.  Right-click and open in a new window to see it better.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vtYWi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T07:59:01.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13098" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:06:02.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing you get by submitting something is a publication on your CV.  The value of a conference publication varies heavily by field; except in computer science, they are usually of much less value than a journal publication.  But since you are a student, presumably even this is a substantial addition to your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, conference papers are usually published in a book that is later impossible to get a copy of.  Usually a conference publication is a limited, preliminary version of work that will later be published in a journal.  It can also be a good place to publish work that is interesting but that you can't/won't pursue far enough to make it worth a journal publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a professor, &lt;strong&gt;you should not submit anything to a conference without first having your advisor review it&lt;/strong&gt;.  So I think at this point you're better off not submitting anything, but I recommend planning in advance to submit something to the next conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:06:02.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13098" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:14:48.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a chemical engineer,&lt;/strong&gt; I would recommend &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; submitting an extended abstract. The primary reason for this is that, unlike proceedings of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrs.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Materials Research Society&lt;/a&gt;, the extended abstracts of the AIChE annual meeting are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; peer-reviewed. Therefore, any such publication will automatically be of lower weight than something that has been published in a venue that provides peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, because the work has effectively been &quot;published,&quot; you will find it harder to secure publication for fuller versions of this work later on, as many journals could view the extended abstract as a &quot;prior publication&quot; and reject a paper on those grounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, as David Ketcheson suggests in his answer, the dissemination of your research will be greatly hampered by the relatively low circulation of the extended abstracts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for this conference in particular, and more generally for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; conference whose proceedings are not peer-reviewed, I would avoid submitting extended abstracts and conference proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:14:48.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13100" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:20:05.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing fields in and of itself does not make you look flighty—many faculty members have changed research fields and even academic departments during the course of their careers, and it doesn't make them look flighty!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a problem is not having a valid reason for making the career switch. Struggling with a major in a science field is not a big deal; however, the fact that you managed to publish a scientific paper in that area actually represents a significant degree of accomplishment (&lt;em&gt;particularly&lt;/em&gt; if you were an undergraduate at the time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, ignoring the degree on your CV could come back to haunt you if it is discovered later on, as &quot;fudging&quot; the CV is often grounds for termination for a position, even years afterwards. So I would not try to &quot;hide&quot; this. Instead, I would make sure that I have a logical and convincing explanation for that period of your life: why did you choose to start in that field at that time, what led you to leave it, and what lessons did you take from the experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:20:05.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13099" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:52:58.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would not be too difficult to set up for an &quot;almost&quot; one-click operation. With a little bit of Unix shell scripting you could set up a process on the print server which could do the job. E.g. you could email a photo from your phone to a special email address on the print server (to make things simple on the phone side). On the server the process could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;saving attached photo upon receiving email -&gt; processing it with e.g. ImageMagick to optimize for printing -&gt; send to printer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the scantailor can also be used for batch processing, haven't tried it myself, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8628" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:52:58.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13098" CreationDate="2013-10-01T10:22:47.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me chime in advising against submitting an extended abstract submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (analytical chemistry/biospectroscopy) we joke that such proceedings (including the mandatory ones e.g. with SPIE conferences) are quite good if you need a publication, but at the same time want to make sure that noone will ever read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of our conferences do not have their &quot;own&quot; proceedings any more, but instead papers can be submitted to a themed issue of a proper journal, undergoing the usual peer-reviewing process for a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can ask the organizer whether any such issue is planned, and for what journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T10:22:47.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13100" CreationDate="2013-10-01T11:10:32.850" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't omit it&lt;/strong&gt;. Changing your mind at some point during your education or your career is nothing to be ashamed of. Just make sure to put it in a way that does not imply that you actually got the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not listing it would be an error in three ways at least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience even in unrelated fields is always valuable;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you omit that stint, there will be a hole on your CV, and you will have to explain it (so you'd better mention it upfront);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you got a publication from it, so it was actually a successful experience, even if you didn't complete your degree&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, my advice would be to always list what you've done on your CV, even if it is not an academic activity. &lt;strong&gt;Even if you spent two years traveling and selling onion rings on Australian beach grill house, put it in your CV.&lt;/strong&gt; The pros outweigh the cons (and if that experience leads a potential recruiter to turn you away, ask yourself: would you have wanted to work with someöne who has such as narrow view of life?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T11:10:32.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13116" CreationDate="2013-10-01T11:52:40.387" Score="4" ViewCount="1076" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking at a paper by some colleagues, that has been in ASAP status for 4 months now. In that particular journal, “ASAP” indicates accepted papers after the authors have corrected the proofs: i.e., they are just like the final paper, except they have not been attributed an issue and page number yet (and have thus not yet appeared in print).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most papers in that particular journal only stay 2 or 3 weeks in ASAP status, before being assigned an to an issue. This paper stands out, being the only one so old on the website. Yet, no indication additional information is given on the publisher's website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can cause a paper to be stuck so long in ASAP queue? Would it be impolite to ask the corresponding author what's going on? (I admit it would only be to satisfy my own curiosity…)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T12:57:42.010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T13:41:16.953" Title="Paper stuck in “ASAP” status: what does it indicate?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13093" CreationDate="2013-10-01T12:18:55.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field is it quite common to hire recent graduates for a year or two as a research assistant. Typical duties of an RA include scheduling participants, collecting data, and doing preliminary data analysis. Depending on previous expertise and experience gained on the job RAs can also design and implement/program experiments. There is also a fair amount of house keeping work (e.g., sending equipment off to be calibrated and making sure the supply cupboard is stocked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people hiring for these types of positions look at GPA and classes taken as well as practical skills. I have never heard of anyone requiring or looking at the GRE. As far as qualifications are concerned you will need to have whatever paperwork is required to allow you to work in that country. I don't know anyone who would go out of the way to get a work permit type visa for an RA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T12:18:55.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13114" CreationDate="2013-10-01T12:38:57.867" Score="10" ViewCount="2524" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published a conference abstract with a undergraduate student of mine as a co-author. The work was presented as a poster and the conference doesn't publish proceedings/papers. I am now planning on publishing an extended version and want to drop her as a co-author. Can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to the student starting the project we discussed authorship and agreed that it was unlikely that she would contribute enough to warrant authorship on anything that came out of the study since the experiment was conceived and implemented by me and I designed the statistical analysis. At the time of the conference, the student had collected approximately 1/4 of the data on the poster and did a fair amount of the statistical analysis, but her contribution was essentially just turning the crank. Given the effort she put in, I did not think it was out of place to have her as a co-author on the poster, but nor did I think it was required. I wrote the abstract and poster and asked her if she wanted to be an author and if so for any input on the abstract and poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, I have collected a second independent data set and come up with a completely new analysis. I now feel her contribution (1/8 of the total data set and helping with a partial preliminary analysis) does not warrant authorship and I think it would be better to acknowledge her work in the acknowledgements then to add her as an author. I would discuss this with her, but she is out of the field and I cannot contact her easily. Can I drop her for the list of authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T22:41:35.863" Title="Removing an author from a future publication" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13113" CreationDate="2013-10-01T12:56:55.913" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most authorship questions are a gray area: she did contribute to the paper, but was it a &lt;em&gt;significant intellectual contribution&lt;/em&gt; (which is one usual criterion), with emphasis of both &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;intellectual&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;scientific&lt;/em&gt;)? That's for you and her to decide, taking into account the customs of your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From her point of view, I can see two reasons why she might be consider a rightful co-author of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the data collection was itself part of the scientific research, i.e. if it could not have been done by an unskilled worker following instructions. If so, then her data collection was significant (and it doesn't really ).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the conclusions drawn from the preliminary analysis were useful in tuning your final analysis, i.e. if her work helped design a better analysis method.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though by your description it seems like she may not pass the threshold, it is true that having her as a co-author on an earlier publication (conference abstract) gives her a stronger case than otherwise. If her contribution was deemed important enough for authorship at first, and you now publish work that includes this contribution, why shouldn't she be an author? I don't think that authorship “dilutes” because other larger contributions were added…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: you maybe have good reasons not to make her a co-author, but if she feels like fighting it, she does have valid enough arguments that it could get messy. I'd advise discussing it openly with her, but being ready to have her as co-author if she feels strongly about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T12:56:55.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8911" CreationDate="2013-10-01T13:27:00.037" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;WARNING: Stay at your home institution, even if it means that you&#xA;might not get your ideal pick of subject area. Once you leave&#xA;your home undergrad institution, you won't be able to get back&#xA;your accomodations so easily. I was accepted and into a Math PhD&#xA;program this year with full funding. I moved across the country&#xA;to work with a certain professor at this new school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math department is awesome, but the disability services is&#xA;horrible. I was told that I am the only graduate student that has&#xA;ever asked for accomodations...ever! The director of the center&#xA;somehow thinks that I am being insincere despite the multiple&#xA;levels of documentation that I have sent. The higher your level&#xA;of education is, the more likely it is that you are supposed to&#xA;be a failure if you are an LD student. Since you'll be going into&#xA;math, they simply won't believe that you have any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not disclose that you require accomodations to anyone until&#xA;after you have been accepted with funding. Get these issues&#xA;settled before you start classes. It might even be a good idea to&#xA;defer your studies until you get these issues resolved with the&#xA;disability services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have poor grades due to a learning disability and want to&#xA;get into a grad school, then you must compensate with published&#xA;research with your professors. When it comes to graduate&#xA;acceptance, they are only looking for research potential. They&#xA;will overlook your GRE scores or grades if they are above the&#xA;50th percentile and you have a strong research background. The&#xA;GRE isn't predictive of anything for math students because it is&#xA;a timed exam full of highschool math problems that you can do in&#xA;your sleep. With a learning disability, you will get a low score&#xA;because you will only finish fewer than half of the problems, but&#xA;since you are a math major, you will get all of them&#xA;right. Again, they are highschool math problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only grades that really count are are your proof-heavy math&#xA;courses. You should try to get As in most of these. Especially&#xA;Abstract Algebra and Analysis. The grad school will ignore any&#xA;past failures in the pre-calc through calculus sequence of&#xA;courses if you have done well in the proof heavy&#xA;courses (abstract algebra, analysis, topology, number theory,&#xA;combinatorics, graph theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to all of the mathematics conferences and colloquiums. Hang&#xA;out with the professors. Get to know a few of them very&#xA;well. Learn about their research. They will give you toy problems&#xA;to take home for fun. If you do enough of these, then they will&#xA;eventually give you some real problems to work on. Then all of a&#xA;sudden, you will be presenting at conferences and publishing&#xA;papers with them. They will write you awesome letters for grad&#xA;school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once in grad school, you will have to deal with another hurdle --&#xA;the qualifier exam (quals). These are typically timed exams. You&#xA;will have to make a really good impression on all of the&#xA;department's professors for several years if you want them to&#xA;argue for giving you more time on the quals. Giving someone&#xA;without a learning disability more time on the quals will not&#xA;change the outcome of the exam, so they will allow more time in&#xA;the case of an LD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In grad school, you will work with your professors very&#xA;closely. Work on their problems for a while. Eventually you will&#xA;run into something that they haven't thought of. This will be&#xA;your PhD thesis. Every question that you can answer in math&#xA;generates new questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mathematics ability is judged by creativity, not on&#xA;speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8817" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T13:27:00.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13111" CreationDate="2013-10-01T13:41:16.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As was mentioned in the comments, one possibility is that the editors are waiting for a better time to publish the paper, perhaps as part of a special issue or to highlight the paper on its cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is that the authors have not fulfilled some requirements for publication like signing a copyright transfer form or paying the page charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps there are some problematic issues about the paper.  Maybe the topic is controversial and some members of the board don't want it published, or perhaps the editors suspect some unethical publication practice.  (If it is this last reason, then perhaps it would be impolite to ask the authors about it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T13:41:16.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13131" CreationDate="2013-10-01T14:15:54.467" Score="21" ViewCount="4622" Body="&lt;p&gt;How &lt;em&gt;illegal&lt;/em&gt; is it to cite books that were illegally downloaded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they aren't available in the university library, if you can't really afford the books (maybe you will make one reference in one article and the book costs $250+), if there isn't anything else you can use (published articles, reports, etc)... it's one more citation for the author. So in fact you might be helping the authors academic career (here I am considering only academic authors). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do try my best to find other articles that I might be able to use in my work, but sometimes there is nothing else written, or not enough time to do the extra search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps1: I do buy books that are important to my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps2: I do download books that can be important to my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T09:28:57.740" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T18:18:25.060" Title="Is it illegal to cite books that were illegally downloaded or accessed from a library?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13117" CreationDate="2013-10-01T14:31:29.827" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can cite a reference even if you have not read it, although that of course is a poor practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For books in English, you can often get a reasonably good idea about what a book covers by looking at Google books or previews on Amazon. That may not get you as far as you would have liked, but it is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought research was an altruistic attempt to expand the humankind's knowledge; have I been wrong all these years???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T14:31:29.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13123" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:11:14.317" Score="15" ViewCount="3594" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been out of college for 7 years and want to pursue graduate studies in a field unrelated to my undergraduate degree but am not sure how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The detailed version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My college career began as a Physics major.  I made what I now consider the mistake of changing to a technically driven humanities major (Electronic Media, Arts and Communications) although I completed a great deal of my pure sciences coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years later I have a very solid job in a field that I hate and want desperately to get back to school to work towards higher degrees in mathematics.  I've spent the last five years as a systems engineer with a focus on network distributed video and have a very solid resume in my field, but my academic credentials are poor.  A 2.8 GPA (albeit from a strong school) and an unrelated B.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made it a point to keep up studies in math, participing in a great many MOOCs to try to backfill my mathematical education and keep my skills sharp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know is how to re-approach academics.  Would I need to earn some additional undergraduate credits before applying for a graduate program?  I expect GREs will be required, but that's not a major issue as I've been scoring quite well on practice exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that I lack educational recommendations and undergraduate research, and I have absolutely no idea how to supplement this lack...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8818" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T06:24:57.013" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T16:13:55.273" Title="How to pursue graduate admissions in mathematics seven years after a humanities undergrad degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:27:55.987" Score="43" ViewCount="32549" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Erdős number&lt;/a&gt; is the academic &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_graph#Collaboration_distance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;collaboration distance&lt;/a&gt; someone has to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Erdős&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MathSciNet has a tool&lt;/a&gt; to calculate the collaboration distance between two mathematicians (where one may or may not be Erdős).  Alas, I am not a mathematician, and if I have an Erdős number at all, it's probably quite large.  But the concept of collaboration distance is, of course, not limited to mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/92Srl.png&quot; alt=&quot;Erdős number&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erdosnumber.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia Commons, user h2g2bob, cc-by-sa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any online tools to calculate the collaboration distance between two arbitrary scientists, whether in mathematics or not?  In principle this should be possible using any large database of scientific publications.  It would be fun to know if I have an Erdős number, or what my distance (and the route!) is to famous scientists in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:17:59.277" LastActivityDate="2019-06-22T15:56:11.480" Title="Are there any online tools to calculate academic collaboration distance (i.e. a generalisation of the Erdős number)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13120" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:46:09.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's always pretty difficult to offer a definitive &lt;strong&gt;“no”&lt;/strong&gt; as answer to such a question, I'll go on an limb and say it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, the mathematical community is the only large scale community to feature comprehensive collaboration database, and ways to query the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_graph&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;collaboration graph&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;None of the widely used general publication or citation databases offer such a feature&lt;/strong&gt; (I checked Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar). Field-specific databases in other fields (such as PubMed, SciFinder, etc.) do not offer them either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T15:46:09.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13240" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:50:53.613" Score="12" ViewCount="24505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having some trouble trying to find a place to publish. Therefore this question is about how to find these places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this I provide the following example, my particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm searching for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A journal, not a conference, workshop, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where publishing is free (no cost for processing the paper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That is open access (no cost for readers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where the reviews are transparent/public. I.e. anyone can follow the review process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where my drafts are also public (for people to follow the review process) The point is that I would like not to need arxiv.org or similar services to dissuade reviewers from shifty actions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the field of computer science theory (like lambda calculus and such)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX should be accepted, this is very important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't need trees dying, online publishing is fine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't care about impact factors, as long as the journal is trustworthy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my particular case, but I'd like to make clear that I'm not asking for this specific fish for me, but for a good method about how to fish that can be useful for everybody in academia, specially those that are new and do not have this kind of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: maybe a workaround would be using two services where one should be. Now I am thinking about uploading the paper to arxiv.org (or similar) and asking for reviews and comments on cstheory (or similar). I think that would meet all requirements and &lt;em&gt;implicit&lt;/em&gt; requirements (implicit for journals) as allowing citations on my paper, proving authorship, etc. I'm not sure about being overlooking something or which considerations should be done to find the right place(s) to publish in this new context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T14:54:02.703" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T18:06:53.263" Title="How to search for an open access journal with no publication fee?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13119" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:53:43.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the comments, visit the Universities, meet with the professors of the fields that interest you the most (of course, make an appointment to see them).  I would suggest emailing professors (not to the point of pestering) - asking them about research papers they've had published - show an interest in and knowledge about their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going further, you have Physics and you have been taking a lot of courses to keep your skill set up to date, so these would work in your favour. On top of that, your work experience provides a solid work-ethic and some more applied skills and knowledge (which, depending on what you are going for, may of a huge benefit to you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the admissions people of the faculties in the universities that you are interested in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of all, in all interactions, be truthful about everything including your grades, academic history, work experience and motivations.  But speak of the skills that you have gained from each thing you have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T15:53:43.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13120" CreationDate="2013-10-01T16:01:03.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vosviewer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VOSviewer&lt;/a&gt; is a free (however not online) tool developed at Leiden University that can be used to create maps based on network data. Although it does not have any function for the Erdös number, it provides capabilities to view collaboration networks. The example below (taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vosviewer.com/maps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VOS-viewer web page&lt;/a&gt;) shows an overview of the scientific world through relations among 5000 major scientific journals. Visit the web-page for more details on the software and additional examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qXnKI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image from VOSviewer example at VOSviewer web page&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T17:21:24.480" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T17:21:24.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13120" CreationDate="2013-10-01T16:06:43.150" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; provides a way to compare the connections between two authors. From the profile page of an author, you can click on the &quot;co-author graph&quot;, and then on the tab co-author path, which allows you to search for all connections between the author and another one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/VisualExplorer#1112639&amp;amp;2037349&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is the co-author path between Paul Erdös and Jeffrey Ullman&lt;/a&gt;. I don't know how extensive is the graph for other fields than Computer Science though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bZHoJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T16:06:43.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T16:41:03.693" Score="6" ViewCount="3762" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the importance of scores in Analytical Writing section of GRE for graduated admission in STEM fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a score below 3 means that the applicant will be rejected by all good schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T20:00:58.943" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T20:00:58.943" Title="How important are GRE analytical writing scores for graduate admission in STEM fields?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13126" CreationDate="2013-10-01T17:46:26.227" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poor GRE scores are a warning sign, not a stop sign, in most graduate admissions. Essentially, the GRE is only a weak predictor of ability to do graduate-level research, and therefore doesn't get all that much weight, at least in the STEM fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, you don't want to have a 1 out of 6, either. But there are often mitigating factors with respect to the writing section. Given that you have questions &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/pool&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that government funding of the arts is necessary to ensure that the arts can flourish and be available to all people. Others believe that government funding of the arts threatens the integrity of the arts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the writing section is a test that reveals more about the capabilities of students in the humanities than it does students in STEM fields. So do the best that you can, and don't worry too much about this writing sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; more important to worry about the research statement you send to graduate schools!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T17:46:26.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13122" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:38:29.073" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The set of journals you are describing is almost &lt;em&gt;guaranteed&lt;/em&gt; to be equivalent to the null set. You are specifying way too many criteria on the journal. You are basically asking for a complete wish list that no single journal can reasonably satisfy and still survive. For instance: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does it pay its ISP hosting bill? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who handles the processing and editing of articles? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who does the typesetting and copyediting? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who maintains the web site?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these things require labor, and is not something that anyone is likely willing to donate &lt;em&gt;pro bono&lt;/em&gt;. That means income has to come from somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these criteria are not problems (for example, a CS journal is unlikely to refuse a LaTeX submission). However, in total, I think you really need to decide which criteria are required, and which ones would be nice to have. Then prioritize accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:38:29.073" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13130" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:50:07.240" Score="6" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reviewing a paper for peer review, I consistently find that I spend &lt;strong&gt;way&lt;/strong&gt; more time on a paper than if I were just reading it for understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one increase the speed at which they review papers, without compromising on the quality of the review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3860" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T09:10:11.363" Title="Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13129" CreationDate="2013-10-01T19:03:50.383" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think speed primarily comes with experience. Reviewing will nevertheless take lots of time for good reasons. Unlike when you read a manuscript (MS) for referencing in a MS of your own, you need to read everything. You also need to think about what has been referenced in detail and evaluate if omissions have been made in the referencing. You need to look at figures and tables for errors or problems, or just to suggest improvements. If you can, you also can or should comment on the language and structure of the paper. To cap off, you probably need to read the paper more than once, perhaps not in the same detail but one read is not enough. In all, this takes time. With each review this may become easier and you will be able to expedite the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally probably spend around a working day on a normal MS. Early in my career it may have taken twice the time. Some MS may take even longer. I don't think there exist any dependable short-cuts apart from being well read-up on the subject in general, and being experienced in reading and commenting on MS and reports. I am, however, convinced that the larger reductions in time occur early on since the benefits of experience comes quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T08:50:34.707" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T08:50:34.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13117" CreationDate="2013-10-01T19:19:40.060" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The illegal act of course is the download, never the citation. @Federico Poloni answered that correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If they aren't available in the university library, if you can't really afford the books&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;besides the possibilities @StasK mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many countries there exist inter-library catalogues (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gso.gbv.de/DB=2.1/&quot;&gt;GVK&lt;/a&gt;) that tell you which libraries have the book you're looking for. Once you know that (or your local librarian found out for you), you can ask your local librarian to either get the whole book via &lt;strong&gt;inter-library loan&lt;/strong&gt;, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to order a &lt;strong&gt;partial copy&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. the chapter or the exact pages you need).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are also &lt;strong&gt;commercial document delivery services&lt;/strong&gt; (see for an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.subito-doc.de/index.php?&quot;&gt;Subito&lt;/a&gt;). Which offer tracking down documents and again either loan of the book or partial copies.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even the linked commercial service charges only 9 € per book inside Germany for non-commercial customers and 25 € worldwide for commercial customers but excluding UK and USA (I don't know why). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're talking about a &lt;em&gt;thesis&lt;/em&gt;: university libraries usually have a copy at least of all PhD theses done at that university, for Bachelor or Master theses you'd often have to ask the institute (or supervisor) where the work was done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Germany, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnb.de/EN/Wir/wir_node.html&quot;&gt;national library&lt;/a&gt; has a copy of each book published in Germany or in German (or about Germany) from 1913 on. There are also field-specific large libraries, as for example the  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tib-hannover.de/en/the-tib/&quot;&gt;TIB Hannover&lt;/a&gt; for technical literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;em&gt;are you sure &quot;can't really afford&quot; is a valid argument?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Whether you nevertheless download pirate copies, or ask your neighbour to let you have a look into her book, or buy it despite the fact that the neigbour at the other desk owns it as well, stays entirely your own choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have to get a book by inter-library loan, I try to make a copy of the vital chapter. This is legal here in Germany (single copies for personal use, reseach or teaching of not too large part of a book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T19:32:47.410" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T19:32:47.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-02T02:19:49.973" Score="9" ViewCount="2405" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, to start with my question... PhDs/research are undoubtedly hard/stressful, but how much is too much? Should I leave my PhD in my 6th year or just take a bit of a leave to try and regroup? (I'm 31 if that makes any difference.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with most, my path through grad school has not been straightforward and I apologize in advance for the lengthy background/question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received my MS and was planning to continue for a PhD at University A (contingent upon me getting funding + suitable project). Got both of those figured out, but my advisor was told my project would not help her tenure case and had an awkward advisor switch. Got fed up with politics at A then transferred to University B (in year 4) where I have a fantastic and super supportive advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just started my 6th year, but have not yet taken my qualifying exam. Many reasons for this, but mostly the program at Univ A was more interdisciplinary (better matched to my research) while the program at Univ B is much more traditional/focused on fundamentals. I  need to relearn a lot of material which is not really relevant to my research and have been at a complete loss of motivation for months now. Being daunted by oral exams certainly plays a role, but also feel that a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this, switching schools, etc. etc. has taken its toll on my emotionally/mentally to the point where my research progress is practically non-existent. This has all triggered pretty severe anxiety/depression (yes, I am getting help elsewhere too), but even so, I am seriously questioning whether it is really worth putting myself through this any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love my research topic (on good days), but at what point is the stress of a PhD not worth it anymore?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8821" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T14:05:37.487" Title="Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an &quot;appropriate&quot; level of angst to go through with a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13133" CreationDate="2013-10-02T02:32:48.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed my PhD, so the angst you speak of is still fresh in my memory.  I will say that it is good that you are thinking about your options instead of making a rash decision.  We can not answer whether or not you should leave your PhD, that decision is yours and yours alone to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, a few things to consider (some of which you have alluded to already):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your enjoyment of the research topic - is it stronger than the frustration hat you feel?  You mention that the move between schools and the internal politics has had a negative effect on your research productivity, reflect on what is causing that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your career goals have shifted, so is the PhD relevant to what you are planning to do?  More so, is the PhD in any way holding you back from achieving the career goals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An important question with regards to your PhD, is what is it leading to?  What is the 'end game' of it all, so to speak?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will taking a year off having a negative effect on your funding etc? Conversely, will the year off allow you to, as you say, regroup - and also perhaps explore that career path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am 36, and just finished my PhD - so your age is not that important, you're still young.  Never feel that you are 'obliged' to complete the PhD in a certain time frame, if at all - you have to look out for what is best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T02:32:48.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13113" CreationDate="2013-10-02T02:36:32.523" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.ufl.edu/misc/hlrules.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hardy-Littlewood rules of collaboration&lt;/a&gt;, while formulated for a mathematical collaboration between peers, are a useful guide to a harmonious collaboration here. Specifically, the fourth axiom: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it was quite indifferent if one of them had not contributed the&#xA;  least bit to the contents of a paper under their common name . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T02:36:32.523" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2013-10-02T04:01:32.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;depending on your major and skills, I believe you can find some teaching positions. like ESL, math, computer science etc. whatever you can teach, look for companies offering that kind of service. I was working as an instructor at a &quot;computing for children&quot; kinda company. using available software, it was fun to work with kids. I was also teaching A+,N+ classes, since I am a CS graduate and like to teach the stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8822" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T04:01:32.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13589" CreationDate="2013-10-02T07:50:21.120" Score="6" ViewCount="3448" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Though related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/890/2700&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on undegrad student affiliation, I am in a somewhat different situation…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an undergrad student at the Miskatonic University. For completion of their BSc, students at MU are required to perform a 6-week research project in a research lab, which I did with a professor at another institution: Unseen University. I loved it, extending my stay there for 3 more weeks into my summer break. Now, &lt;strong&gt;we will submit a paper with the results of that internship project, but I don't know what affiliation(s)&lt;/strong&gt; to put.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not paid by MU, and did not set foot there during my research project (not using the library, nothing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was not paid by the research institution (UU), either&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Though I am keeping an eye on the research project, I did not do any significant work since my internship ended (vacations, then too busy with courses)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I should put UU as my affiliation, because I used their resources. But maybe UU being the affiliation of the main authors (grad student and professor on the project) is enough? And should I put MU as affiliation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T15:52:50.717" Title="Affiliation for a student's internship project" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13129" CreationDate="2013-10-02T09:10:11.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will get better at this as you gain experience… but it will/should never be a blazingly fast process. The two reasons you will become faster at it are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You gain more experience in the process itself, as Peter says.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As time goes by, you will probably give up faster on very bad papers. I remember one of my first reviews, where I wrote 2 pages of minute review of a paper, concluding that it should be rejected without a doubt for lack of originality (giving a reference to earlier work which the authors had re-discovered). Now, I would not bother with the in-depth review when it has become clear that the manuscript should be rejected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T09:10:11.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13137" CreationDate="2013-10-02T10:41:58.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~yinw/publication/mobisys13-final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A paper that I have recently read&lt;/a&gt; may be a good reference (or example). As can be seen, one of the co-authors, Xuemei Liu is under &lt;code&gt;Baidu, Inc. Shanghai&lt;/code&gt;. The research work was done when she (gender inferred from the name) was done during her internship at &lt;code&gt;HP Lab&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She wrote the affiliation as &lt;code&gt;Baidu&lt;/code&gt;, and used a star mark as the footnote indicating the work was carried out during her &lt;code&gt;HP Lab&lt;/code&gt; internship period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update: Another more relevant example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ust.hk/~qyang/Docs/2005/Sigir05Xue.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper here&lt;/a&gt; is exactly the case. The first author is a student under &lt;code&gt;Shanghai Jiaotong University&lt;/code&gt; (student and thus, unpaid). The work of the paper was performed when he was an internship under &lt;code&gt;Microsoft Research Asia&lt;/code&gt;. They adopted the same way: affiliation is still the university and a star footnote indicates the internship connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T11:24:40.380" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T11:24:40.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13140" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-02T10:48:47.703" Score="5" ViewCount="4292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen few people who learn better(or mostly) by reading textbooks themselves in private as that gives them more time to think back and forth about the material. While there are other students who are quick at grasping things transmitted orally like in a lecture and despise reading it through books. Few of the former even have this habit of not being able to learn at all sitting in a class as lesser time is devoted to discussion on a particular topic and the lecturer tries best to move to the next topic as quickly as possible(not always though). So should those who like to learn on their own through books be guilty for not attending classes(mandatory like in bachelors or masters programs) since they are anyway not going to assimilate much and it will be waste of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6418" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T11:28:17.117" Title="Are learning by reading from a textbook compared to listening to lectures different roads to same goal" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13140" CreationDate="2013-10-02T11:20:27.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are operating on the false assumption that class time equates to &quot;lecture&quot;. There are other things to do with class time, which may be valuable to the book-learner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the lecture-based undergrad classes I teach, I do not take attendance (which becomes impractical anyway as class sizes increase). Students are paying for my time, and they can do with it what they want. They have assignments that need to be completed by certain due dates - some online and some that need to be submitted in class. If they are earning good grades, I let them do whatever. If they are doing poorly, I intervene, but one-on-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the course in question is discussion- or activity-based, then the students should not be excused. These types of courses are not content-based (think General Chemistry), but issue-based (Racial Inequality in American Politics) or skill-based (Introduction to Public Speaking). Again, I would not take attendance, but a majority of the students' grades will be for in-class activities - discussions about case studies or issues, group presentations, individual presentations, peer-lead team learning, active and hands-on learning, demonstrations by students, etc. In these cases the student is heavily penalized by not attending class. In the class on public speaking, perhaps each student is graded as follows: 1) three short in-class oral presentations (20% of the overall grade each); 2) a written critical reflection on their presentations as a final paper (20% of the final grade total); and 3) critical analysis of presentations made by 2 classmates (10% of the final grade each). This student needs to be in class, or he/she will be unable to do 100% of the graded work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases I firmly believe in placing the responsibility on the student. Just as the student needs to be responsible for the assignments, for studying, and ultimately for earning the final grade, the student needs to be responsible for the decision to come to class. If the student wants to skip class, the student can skip as long as the student knows that there will be real (missed assignments) and implied penalties (missed opportunities to comprehend the material better). The instructor's responsibility is not to ensure that students learn. It is to create an environment where learning can happen and to provide guidance and feedback about how successful that learning is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T11:20:27.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13140" CreationDate="2013-10-02T11:28:17.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Readers&quot; and &quot;Listeners&quot; is a well-known categorization regarding the main method through which a person learns. But it is one thing to acknowledge this fact, and it is a different thing to argue that any person that is learning mainly through one method, should altogether abandon the other. To take your example, if I am a &quot;Reader&quot;, then participating in oral presentations will shed light on aspects of my reading that will never illuminate themselves. I will listen to questions that otherwise I wouldn't realize that I also had, and maybe when I would, I could not be able to answer them myself and through my books.  I will listen to interpretations that I hadn't thought of. Etc, etc, etc: live interaction with other human brains does not substitute for deep reading - but it can not be replaced by the latter either. They are, simply, fully complementary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T11:28:17.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13145" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:40:28.737" Score="44" ViewCount="1767" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this question does not offend our American fellows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read in news that the US government is partially closed  and many agencies and services run by US federal government is no longer available, for example national parks, many websites, etc. I was wondering if this temporary government shutdown has any negative effects on academic life in US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T20:07:35.160" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T10:37:28.820" Title="How does the US government shutdown affect academics?" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-01-04T18:43:17.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13113" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:41:07.977" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with the answer by F'x, but there is an additional point: You wrote in your question that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she is out of the field and I cannot contact her easily&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that you &lt;strong&gt;shouldn't put her on the list of authors without her approval&lt;/strong&gt;, for which you obviously need to contact her. Many journals that I know have the explicit policy that all authors need to approve the final manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any affordable means to reach her, one way out could be to cite the conference abstract / poster where she is a coauthor, even if it is not a formal research publication. Thus, you make clear that her contribution was only to the results presented earlier. In addition, you could explain the particular contribution in the acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T12:41:07.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:45:00.933" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;It definitely has. And by that, it has an impact even on academic life outside of the US. One of the most important data and literature resource in medical and life science is the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&quot;&gt;National Center for Biotechnology Information&lt;/a&gt;, running for example the literature database PubMed. Now it has a statement on its website saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the National Institute of Health, the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml&lt;/a&gt; states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical  trials at the National Institutes of Health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to interpret this, but it could mean that the research personnel is on unpaid leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T12:56:23.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T12:56:23.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13147" CreationDate="2013-10-02T13:02:39.043" Score="12" ViewCount="3332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two publications submitted but rejected in top conferences. Is it advisable to mention and list them in my CV/resume to show that the work was submitted for publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T06:56:43.413" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T06:56:43.413" Title="Is it advisable to mention rejected publications in resume?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13146" CreationDate="2013-10-02T13:06:38.690" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly list them as manuscripts. I'm not sure what you are asking exactly: it would be a poor idea to list them as &quot;Rejected from Prestigious conference A&quot;, or even &quot;Submitted to Prestigious conference A&quot; if Prestigious conference A has already made its decisions, and it is clear from the non-appearance of your paper that it was rejected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T13:06:38.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13146" CreationDate="2013-10-02T13:08:32.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until you have them accepted, you can list them as &quot;Technical Reports&quot; on your C.V. Once they are accepted, you can switch out the reference to the conference or journal where they will be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T13:08:32.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13133" CreationDate="2013-10-02T13:33:46.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation where I had to transfer from Univ A to Univ B which is in a different country! Making that decision took a toll on me for months since my adviser was pressurizing me too. Finally I decided to move with him, but after a year and half at my univ I realized he was a total jerk and ignorant who did nothing for me but help destroy my career for 5 years. I understand you like your adviser and subject which is a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion to you is that to take matters in to your hands! Work on subjects you like, avoid the negative comments and people (very important), forget about the number of years you spend, send papers out  and you will be fine. I have done much much better in the last 6 months of PhD than the rest. From the point where I thought had no research at all, now I feel somewhat confident that I will pass the defense next month! Try to read inspirational books to get yourself going. This website helped me a lot &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marcandangel.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.marcandangel.com/&lt;/a&gt; or find some other self-help books and get your inspiration back because it is very vital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8827" LastEditorUserId="8827" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T14:05:37.487" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T14:05:37.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13146" CreationDate="2013-10-02T15:07:54.930" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not say that they have been rejected from Conference X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common practice in my field (mathematics) is to post a preprint (on arXiv or your website) at the same time as you submit a paper.  In that case, it would be appropriate to list it on your CV as &quot;Preprint&quot; (and include a link).  Of course, people may be able to read between the lines and guess that you are trying to get it published, but haven't succeeded yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you will soon be revising your papers and submitting them somewhere else, at which point you can list them as &quot;Submitted to Conference Y&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T15:07:54.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-02T16:23:39.280" Score="10" ViewCount="1745" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor told me once that the chapter sizes (measured in number of pages) in a PhD dissertation should be coherent. That is, the number of pages in each chapter should be somehow close to each other (to the average). Note: This does not include the Introduction and Conclusion chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really an important factor when writing a dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T01:59:43.357" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T01:59:43.357" Title="Should each substantive chapter of a PhD dissertation be of similar length?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13151" CreationDate="2013-10-02T17:30:04.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's just a general guideline, don't worry about it too much. Aside from the fact that there are many ways to lay out a thesis, there are many reasons this would be violated.  I would venture that a better way to state this rule would be, &quot;A chapter should be of medium length.&quot; If a given chapter is too short, it's likely an indicator that it can be combined with some other section. If a single chapter is too long, split it up into parts (experiment 1, exp 2, discussion, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, you should first check into how your advisor wants the thesis laid out. Consider asking your advisor to see some dissertations of other previous students to get a feel for how he likes to have things laid out; that'll be a good way to get a feel for how to lay out your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T17:30:04.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-02T18:03:50.433" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US most academic institutions are not run directly by the Federal Government and so are not shut down. That is even public universities are run by the states, not the Federal Government, and so are not shut down. So the teaching side of academic life in the US is not really impacted unless the shutdown lasts long enough to interrupt student loan and grant payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is another issue and it depends on how exactly you are funded. If all of your federal grant money has been transferred to your university then it is there and you can use it. But you won't know when the next installment will come. If you work directly for a federal research unit then you have been shut down and sent home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T18:03:50.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-03T04:19:14.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I tried to download &lt;a href=&quot;http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/publications/1370/download/&quot;&gt;this paper from NASA&lt;/a&gt;, but failed. It was only then when I realized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov&quot;&gt;the US Government has been shut down&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T04:19:14.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13159" CreationDate="2013-10-03T09:19:34.930" Score="52" ViewCount="241423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use active voice for cover letter and while doing that I end up with too many &quot;I&quot; and most of the sentences in my letter also begin with &quot;I&quot;. This makes my letter quite boring. I would appreciate if you share your suggestion/tips to avoid this while writing a cover letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since cover letter is the first thing that the potential employer notices, I want to write a concise and attractive cover letter. It will be also helpful if you share a link of a well-written cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8836" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T03:40:30.813" Title="How to avoid the repetition of &quot;I&quot; while writing a cover letter for an academic job?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13157" CreationDate="2013-10-03T09:45:36.743" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because it's a cover letter, I think it's quite natural that you say a lot about &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; in it. That's actually not to be avoided, because you want to give the addressee a good idea of your background, your motivations, your interests, etc. In short, you want to show them who you are, so they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to work with you. This is a totally different exercise than usual academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding the redundancy of &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, it is a matter of writing style. It probably wouldn't bother me much, but if you want to diminish it for some reasons, here are worthy alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &lt;em&gt;starting&lt;/em&gt; your sentence with &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, just push it somewhere down in some sentences. That way, you avoid the pattern of &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; as the first word of every sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking at your group's wide range of research, I must confess a certain attraction for your recent groundbreaking work on the correlation between &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2008.16551.x&quot;&gt;beer-drinking and publication rate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nowhere.com&quot;&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use constructions that, while retaining the first person, shift from the subject pronoun to other cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been my intention for a few years now to shift my research interests from pure psychology to experimental psychohistory, and I have thus taken in 2009 a post-doc position at the University of Trentor (group of prof. Seldon)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead of &lt;em&gt;“I decided a few years ago to move to the field of psychohistory…”&lt;/em&gt;. Similarly, you could say&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nowhere.com&quot;&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The standard techniques of academic writing… introduce the pronoun once, then shift the discuss to avoid being the actor, e.g. using passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During my thesis, I introduced a new data reduction technique called XXZ. This algorithm, when applied to large datasets, was used to univocally establish whether data was being manipulated. In particular, results obtained on the 2000 election showed systematic bias against a specific candidate, highlighting its power as a diagnostic tool for real-life applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nowhere.com&quot;&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that there are downsides, though: most of these alternatives are longer than a direct sentence starting with &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, which means overusing them could make you sound windy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T14:36:35.573" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T14:36:35.573" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13163" CreationDate="2013-10-03T11:45:22.863" Score="6" ViewCount="2097" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, many journals publish articles online ahead of print, in a state that is given various names by the various publishers: in press, ASAP, just accepted, ahead of print, etc. The final printed paper will be identical with the online one, except maybe for page numbers and color figures… They can be cited through their DOI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if somebody, author or reader, were to find a fatal flaw with one such article, what should happen? Would the article be withdrawn (or retracted) before printing, or would it be printed nonetheless, then retracted later? And in any case, would the resulting paper be considered part of the scientific record, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T15:36:11.147" Title="Can an article &quot;in press&quot; (available online) be withdrawn/retracted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13160" CreationDate="2013-10-03T12:55:57.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that unless you're talking about a quarterly or annual journal, the investigative process for a retraction would probably stretch past the point where the journal would have to be sent to press. The only exception I can see is a clear-cut plagiarism case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd expect most plagiarism cases to proceed as if it were a standard case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For online-only journals, you might be able to stall publication while you figured such issues out. The article, once accepted, should go through the same treatment as a published article, so a formal retraction should be done. Otherwise, it could look like nothing was ever submitted in the first place, which is wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T12:55:57.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13157" CreationDate="2013-10-03T13:21:03.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to use &quot;my&quot; now and then: instead of &quot;I am experienced in ...&quot;, write &quot;My fields of experience include ...&quot;. Another possibility is to use references to previous sentences: instead of writing &quot;I developed the method of ... . I applied it to the problem of ... .&quot; write &quot;I developed ... . Its application to ... resulted in ... .&quot;. Also, instead of writing &quot;I'm interested in the position because ...&quot;, write &quot;This position will allow me to ... and benefit my ...&quot;. The idea is always the same: look at all other words in the sentence and think of whether one of them can be made the subject without changing the meaning or diluting the &quot;importance&quot; of the sentence. If it can, do it. If not, resort to passive voice and other techniques suggested in this thread. If it is still not satisfactory for some reason, just use &quot;I&quot; and go to the next sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T13:21:03.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13160" CreationDate="2013-10-03T15:36:11.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question you say &quot;fatal flaw&quot; and the answer will strongly depend on the meaning or intent with using these words. A fatal flaw might mean a figure is wrong; you may have submitted an earlier version of a figure you later revised. A fatal flaw may also mean you discover something that negates your results; you used the wrong equation or based your conclusions on the wrong data, both in ways that would pose serious risk. A third way to interpret the term is by personally simply disagreeing with what has been published, but my guess is that this is not what you are primarily thinking about and it is of course not grounds for any actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, retraction could be the only way forward. You should of course make the journal aware of this as soon as possible and ask for their suggested solution. If you have your paper published online but not yet printed, the journal (publisher) might retract it and it will never be printed. If it is printed they might retract it and probably print a note in a following issue to that fact. See examples for why in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/medical-articles/retraction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, the journal will likely publish an erratum, publish the correct figure to follow up on the example. Anything that is of a technical nature and can be rectified by providing the correct version will be done so through errata,. In print this will be included also in a subsequent issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsevier, for example, summarizes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/about/publishing-guidelines/policies/article-withdrawal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their rules&lt;/a&gt; and provides the following grounds for retraction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Article withdrawal&lt;/em&gt;: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Article retraction&lt;/em&gt;: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Article Removal&lt;/em&gt;: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Article Replacement&lt;/em&gt;: Identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, if something is officially published with a doi, there is no way to get corrections made in the pdf or in print. The online version must correspond to the printed and so the solution becomes providing a correction later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything that has published will be possible to see. A paper that has been retracted will just be associated with a clear sign that a retraction has been made. The paper might live on through older copies on peoples computers or in their desk drawers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044118&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in PLOS one&lt;/a&gt; that provides a perspective on retractions in general and which may be of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T15:36:11.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13177" CreationDate="2013-10-03T15:40:26.397" Score="18" ViewCount="1800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a PhD student in a program that I do not find challenging. A part of that may be due to the fact that my advisor has an EXTREMELY hands off approach. He will not return my emails for weeks on end and rarely gives me things to do, despite the fact that I am being paid as an RA.I worked with him for two years as an RA during my masters and I am currently in my first year of a PhD agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't know if the program I am in is good for my career. I am generally unhappy with the required coursework I am taking and just weary of my future career options. Given the previous internships I have done at renowned institutions, I think I can do better. &#xA;I have been toying with the possibility of switching schools for quite some time now. Here is my problem: How do I apply to a new school without burning bridges with my current advisor? The problem is my advisor is NICE and so amiable. The hands off approach just doesn't work with me. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am not important or the least of my advisor's priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that any program I apply to would want a recommendation from my advisor. I just don't know how to proceed! I want to apply to top tier programs in my field -- but want to retain a good relationship with my current advisor just in case I don't get accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)What is the best way to proceed without burning bridges? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is it possible to apply to a new program without my previous advisor's recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="8840" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T15:49:33.690" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T07:00:34.770" Title="How do I change schools/advisors without making my advisor angry?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13164" CreationDate="2013-10-03T15:55:28.687" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the answer to everything, but &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt;.  If he is, as you say, very nice but hands off, you should talk to him.  Express your concerns, that you really feel you need a more hands-on approach and that right now you feel like you are floundering.  If you're honest and direct without blaming him, asking for help, he may change his behavior or work with you to find a better fit.  Either is good for you, but you need to talk to him.  He knows he's being hands-off, he just may not know that it is not working for you.  You need to communicate that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T15:55:28.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11660" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:23:14.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I set up an introductory lecture for students. Some of it was along the lines you outlined but there were some additional points which I will mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had the possibility to run a short written anonymous survey asking for (up to three) keywords about their (1) expectations, (2) reason for studying in general, (3) reason for choosing the topic, (4) what they are elt uncertain about with their coming studies,  (5) what they considered most important about studies, (6) listing differences and similarities between higher ed. and lower ed., (7) their roll as student, (8) the lecturers roll, and (9) what they look forward to the most. This was collected and could be summarized in an an hour before my lecture so I could use the outcome to discuss their answers directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I had students discuss in groups of four in the lecture hall to briefly answer the questions: why get an univ. ed.? How does a univ. ed. work? and what distinguishes university from lower level ed.? This formed the basis for going into, and this could possibly differ slightly between systems, the very clear differences between school and university. In school teachers are there to teach you and it is their job to make sure you understand. At the university, lecturers are there to present, help explain and structure material. The learning is the job of the student, not the lecturer. The lecturer facilitates learning. So, bluntly speaking, the difference is that if you do not learn in school it could be blamed on the school but if you do not learn at a university, you need to primarily blame yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also pointed out the importance of skill such as the written and spoken word, study habits and computer skills (many other specific to the particular education could be mentioned). These skills are usually not mentioned anywhere but are outcomes of almost every course in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I outlined the many rolls of someone working at a university: teach, develop teaching, teach and advice graduate students, research (including writing proposals), administration, maintain national and international contacts, and research information to society (please add if you can think of more tasks. It is important to understand the conditions under which the lecturers live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: &lt;em&gt;Professional attitude&lt;/em&gt;. Pointing out that studies are serious but also that they should be fun through good social interactions and that students and lecturers in a way are colleagues in a common project, to complete a successful and useful education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also re-ran the survey once they were done with the course (which ran a full term) and could then repeat and highlight the differences in their answers. The main point of this is to get everyone to at least have heard the same &quot;truth&quot; about what they were about to embark upon. For some it was no news but many expressed that they received a better picture of what it is all about. There certainly was a lot more understanding for the lecturers reality than earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T17:23:14.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13174" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:28:19.620" Score="6" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a mixed undergrad/grad course that has lecture (300 people) and seminar (15 people) components. Thankfully for me, only the grad students get seminars. I have 2 TAs that assist with the seminars allowing us to break into 3 five-student 1-instructor discussion groups. The problem is that thanks to the miracle of central time tabling this year I have been given a tiered lecture hall that seats 25 people for the seminars. How do you run discussion groups in a cramped lecture hall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T06:59:43.617" Title="Strategy for teaching in a room that is laid out &quot;wrong&quot;" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13167" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:32:41.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a tiered lecture hall that has the long continuous tables with chairs, rather than auditorium seats, was the gather students around one end of the long tables and basically have students on one side sitting backwards. The room I did this in has chairs that swivel 360 so this was not actually uncomfortable for them. And then you sit on the end of the table with 2 or 3 students on each side from your point of view. This generally works for small enough groups like you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T17:32:41.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:33:45.333" Score="3" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student studying mathematics. I am thinking of switching to engineering for masters or phd programs. The problem is I do not have a single engineering course. I do have knowledge of programming in C. I  do not know if it makes difference, I have a few physics courses as well. I however have more than one year before I graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which engineering fields are possible to go from the background I have? How can I strengthen the possibility to go into good programs despite such programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8843" LastEditorUserId="8843" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T17:39:57.237" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T21:32:25.290" Title="Switching majors" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13171" CreationDate="2013-10-03T20:17:01.747" Score="6" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for a post-doc where they ask for two &quot;academic reference letters&quot;.  Does the adjective &quot;academic&quot; strictly mean they must be from people working in academia?  In my field, a good deal of research is performed at meteorological agencies, and I've co-authered several papers with a researcher employed at such an agency.  Would a letter from a researcher who publishes lots of papers (5 1st-author articles in 2 years), but is not associated with any university, be considered an &quot;academic reference letter&quot;?  Said researcher has a PhD, but further academic titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T18:22:07.020" Title="Must an &quot;academic reference letter&quot; be from a university-employed researcher, or will other researchers do too?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13170" CreationDate="2013-10-03T20:28:13.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better safe than sorry: check with the institution you're applying to, they may have formal requirements about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't think it's likely to be very narrow. The important points are that the recommendation letters come from &lt;strong&gt;people with a good track record&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. people who clearly perform high-quality research, and that &lt;strong&gt;they have worked closely with you&lt;/strong&gt; in the past. Whether they're affiliated with a university, a meteorological agency, the NASA, a museum, or even (may God have mercy on your soul) The Industry… it doesn't matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T20:28:13.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T21:07:06.743" Score="7" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to begin my hunt for post-doc positions. As such, I will be discussing my dissertation work in some detail with potential post-doc advisers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the data collection phase, and none of this research has been published. I am somewhat worried because, as a requirement for my PhD, I have to contribute novel research to the field. I hope to submit a part of my dissertation to a conference; however most relevant conferences are not until next summer, and submissions are typically due early next year. In other words, this research will not be published for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to ask for some discretion when discussing my dissertation with professors who do similar research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8465" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:17:56.120" Title="Discussing work in progress" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13169" CreationDate="2013-10-03T21:32:25.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things that you would need to do (and a few rhetorical questions to ask yourself):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the admissions people relevant to the graduate studies you are wishing to do. A key question here is: Do you have the prerequisites they require?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to the profiles of any professor in that faulty, particularly looking at their research interests and read some of the research papers they have completed.  Also, pay particular attention to the titles of the research degrees they have supervised (sometimes, this is available).  A key question here would be: Which engineering field of research matches your interests, expertise and background?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last, but not least, what is your 'end-game'? What is the overall career/research plan?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T21:32:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13167" CreationDate="2013-10-03T21:48:26.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more of an opportunity to change the scenery, as F'x mentioned in a comment — going outside or in the student union building and such could be a great alternative.  If you do not have to stay in the assigned seminar room, then why stay there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on this further, I need to share an example — I used to teach a Physics class, literally in a storage room, it was cramped and did not really help in their learning, my teaching or any of our sanity, so here are a couple of examples of what we did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split the class and did the lesson via a basketball match, we were doing projectile motion — the point here is that we moved location and did an activity within the context of what is being taught at that time.  The activity need not be directly related, but doing a drill (such as basketball shots) of sorts could help students' focus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We 'walked and talked', this worked only with small groups — we had a topic, and went for a walk discussing the topic.  This proved to be very effective (for me anyway), as all my students were checking  for information of the topic on their phones etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T06:59:43.617" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T06:59:43.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-04T04:30:17.330" Score="10" ViewCount="5434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from Dept A with a master degree, and then pursued a PhD in Dept B (which is applied math). But I left the PhD program in B this fall. I am now applying to some CS master programs (including some professional master programs and non-professional ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research in Dept A used some computer programming and machine learning methods, although A isn't CS. In Dept B, however, most of my experiences were taking courses and doing TA, and very little research in stochastic processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my previous research advisor in Dept A for a letter of recommendation. He politely say no, because we didn't have academic interaction in the last three years after I joined Dept B. Also I guess that the fact that I didn't finish PhD in Dept B may  be another reason. Note that he recommended me when I applied to PhD program in Dept B, and he knew little about computer programming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I find some professors in Dept B, whom I took probability and stochastic processes courses from  or was a TA for. I was wondering if their recommendation letter will help my application to a CS master program  (including some professional master programs and non-professional ones), given that these are two different areas and my experience with CS was mostly from my master study in Dept A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does recommendation from my previous research advisor in Dept A really not help much, because our collaboration was too old, compared to recommendation from the professors in Dept B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I am applying to PhD Programs in Statistics, instead of CS master programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-08T15:56:18.910" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:40:06.700" Title="Recommendation letter for application to CS graduate program from professors in math?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2013-10-04T06:03:39.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that a mix of both worlds (physical and digital) works best for me. People have different ways of retaining and processing information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity apps are quickly becoming a popular and efficient choice in managing note, documents and other information. You may want to try applications like Evernote, Dropbox or Google Drive or a mixture of the three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also recognizing this growing problem of information overload and how to address it, there are many new and improved data capture applications that cater to the myriad of problems stemming from the need to organize information efficiently while making it accessible no matter the age of the info. You may want to try new apps around like &lt;a href=&quot;https://doo.net/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doo&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://phoenary.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phoenary&lt;/a&gt; to enhance your note-organizing and information capture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8851" LastEditorUserId="83941" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T00:25:35.590" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T00:25:35.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13164" CreationDate="2013-10-04T07:00:34.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you received your Master's degree from the same institution, it is understandable that you would want to pursue other options even if you were not having difficulties with your advisor. This might be a good way to approach your advisor without causing unnecessary tension. Ask for a meeting, express your concerns tactfully, and ask for opinions on what your options are (both including going elsewhere, but also discuss what measures you can take to get more out of your program). Hopefully is your advisor is as amiable as he/she seems, this won't be a problem.&#xA;I do not know how not having your advisor's recommendation would be received for applications, but it could lead to questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8778" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T07:00:34.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13344" CreationDate="2013-10-04T07:43:51.507" Score="28" ViewCount="1874" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you meet new people entering the world of academic research, it is often tempting to try and guess what “sort” of researcher they'll be, based on their personality, character, known qualities, and defects, etc. You'll sometimes hear people say things like &lt;em&gt;“he's not cut out to be a researcher”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I wonder: &lt;strong&gt;are there any studies that have probed the link between personality/character and success in academic life (and academic research in particular)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sort of studies I imagine would be possible are things like assessing researchers' personalities (e.g. by the well-known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator&quot;&gt;Myers-Briggs classification&lt;/a&gt;) and comparing the distribution against that of the general public… But I could not find anything serious through Google, though I imagine researchers in behavioral sciences, psychology, or other related fields must have tried to address this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-09T03:49:47.940" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T13:11:04.000" Title="Correlation between personality type (MBTI or other) and success in academia?" Tags="&lt;psychology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13670" CreationDate="2013-10-04T09:27:56.927" Score="6" ViewCount="2128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student in China. I am currently a junior, majoring at Mathematical Economics and Mathematical Finance. My goal is to apply to a graduate school in the U.S. to learn Finance or Financial Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do now to better prepare myself for the forthcoming application? How can I leave a good impression on the Admissions Committee? Except for higher GPA, GRE, Toefl, what else also make sense? To win a competition? To publishing papers? Or abundant internship experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the website of each school lists some requirements about the applicants, but those words are too general. Obviously there will be so many applicants who meet those requirements. What else need I show make myself outstanding, making them believe I am a good candidate? I am really puzzled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to obtain a master degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to know that among GPA, GRE, TOEFL, competitions, publishing papers(if possible), good credible recommendation letters, etc, which ones deserve prior attention. It is unlikely for me to be that &quot;superman&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8854" LastEditorUserId="8854" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T16:32:25.587" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T16:32:25.587" Title="How to better prepare myself for the application to masters degree programs in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13182" CreationDate="2013-10-04T10:59:59.327" Score="6" ViewCount="1750" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I have come across a few articles on Google that are really distressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typed in &quot;professor real world&quot; and it just mentions how professors have lost touch with the real world, how they need to step down from their ivory towers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is all that bad? It doesn't make me reconsider my dreams a little, but it does hurt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ultimately subjective from the pessimists' point of view? I have come to terms with the fact nothing ultimately matters, we are just grains of (smart) sand in the universe. Whether I did industry or not wouldn't matter, since I love academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I help others see that academia is a 'real job' too?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T16:55:45.980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T02:50:01.647" Title="Good responses to &quot;Ivory Tower&quot; accusations?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13180" CreationDate="2013-10-04T11:15:56.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; matter, we all matter in our own way and we have no idea just how far our influence will extend.  Never let yourself otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, as JeffE said in the comment, some people are just jerks - for whatever reason, the authors of those articles are venting, and as they can not possibly know every professor - they probably have had an awful experience and are venting, generalising across the board.  (or they can just be jerks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;They obviously do not know my professors - the most dedicated educators I have ever had the privilege of working with.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignore those remarks, follow your ambitions, be the best you can be in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, you do not have to prove yourself to anyone, but yourself.  So, be yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T11:15:56.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13180" CreationDate="2013-10-04T14:22:33.567" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no point talking to people about the job they cannot do themselves or about the parts of reality they cannot even see, not to say enter. Most of them are, probably, just envious (that's why the words &quot;easy life&quot;, &quot;good salary&quot;, and &quot;tenure&quot; appear in such articles more often than not). The rest are frustrated that our work doesn't provide any immediate personal benefit for them. As to &quot;stepping down from ivory towers&quot;, in Soviet Union the students and professors were sent for a month to collective farms to help with harvesting every year. It turned out that we could do the farm work. Sending help in the other direction wasn't considered practical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T14:22:33.567" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13180" CreationDate="2013-10-04T14:38:18.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I typed in the same Google query, read the article I think the OP was referring to (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/29/professors-need-to-come-down-from-their-ivory-towers/&quot;&gt;this one?&lt;/a&gt;), and was filled with a similar hot burst of indignation. (How &lt;em&gt;dare&lt;/em&gt; they!) But while the author of that article paints with a broad brush, I think it might not be inappropriate for us, as scholars, to examine ourselves with the same brutal honesty that we take to our intellectual disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the complaints I've heard about ivory-tower academics simply reflects a misunderstanding of what higher education is about -- for example, as a computer science professor I've heard students complain about not being taught how to use Excel spreadsheets and the like.  But I've also seen colleagues who have grown complacent and uncaring, whose courses really do shortchange the students.  So yes, the author of that article paints with a very broad brush, but I think that we'd do ourselves a disservice if we just blithely ignored him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important for us to be able to articulate &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; we do what we do. I routinely explain to my reviewers why my research matters -- I should similarly be able to explain to my students why they should study what I'm teaching;[*] and I should similarly be able to explain to my neighbors why their tax dollars should pay my salary.  (I may not &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to do these things, but I should be &lt;em&gt;able&lt;/em&gt; to.)  Whatever explanation I come up with -- and it'll be different for different people -- that's the &quot;good comeback&quot; the OP asked for; and if I can't come up with any explanation at all, then maybe some deeper introspection would be in order. :-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] In my grant proposals I say what difference I think the research will make if it's successful.  In my classes I tell the students what I want them to remember of the class five years later.  I've found this sort of exercise very helpful for distilling out what I think really matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7974" LastEditorUserId="7974" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T14:50:41.023" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T14:50:41.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13202" CreationDate="2013-10-04T14:55:54.213" Score="9" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year math major, and I intend to do my PhD from a top math school. Until now, I haven't taken any university level physics course. Somewhere in this site, I saw someone writing that courses related to theoretical physics (heavily loaded with mathematics) are also very important besides the regular math courses. So, my question is: How important are the physics courses? Or any other courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7580" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T06:43:49.587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:24:52.770" Title="How important are physics and other non-math courses for admission into a math PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-04T15:44:14.213" Score="19" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know if there will still be NSF postdocs offered (the current deadline is the 16th), given that the NSF website is currently down due to the government shutdown in the US?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in case it is still open, if anyone has the PDFs that could previously be found at&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regarding the information, application process, and forms to be submitted, perhaps they could mirror a copy on a website, and post the link here?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8856" OwnerDisplayName="David Carchedi" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:04:14.750" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:04:14.750" Title="How will the 2013 US government shutdown affect NSF postdoc applications?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13187" CreationDate="2013-10-04T16:11:48.937" Score="11" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently replaced in my role of analyzing data in a project by another person on the project. It's not clear that the person has the authority to do this. He is a resident in neurosurgery with no formal training in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This removal came nearly immediately after I communicated to him unequivocal null results that a colleague of mine confirmed. When I asked, he offered no explanation for this removal. He will replace me with a statistician who works for the device whose efficacy we were testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I learn that he publishes observation on the current data set that completely contradict my findings, do I have an ethical duty to make this known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a side project for me. My removal from it has no adverse professional impact for me. Nor do I think that speaking up will have an adverse impact for me, it may even not for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T16:20:28.257" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T17:36:47.243" Title="How to handle being removed from a paper for (perhaps) unethical reasons?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13186" CreationDate="2013-10-04T17:36:47.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story you tell certainly leaves off a certain fragrance. The key question seems to be whether or not you have been replaced in order to get more &quot;friendly&quot; results. It is clear that it is possible to have an opinion about how data should be analysed and that opinions may deviate. It is also possible to interpret results differently. But, all within reason. If your analysis is sound and provides a certain outcome while a new analysis provides the basis for a different there can be either a matter of academic disagreement or that one or the other is flawed. I cannot judge this of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on which case you are facing the necessary, or possible, action would be to write a letter to the editor providing your analysis and view of the results to be published in the same journal, or to write the editor pointing at the error on the publication. In the latter, worse case, you of course need to be able to show without question that your view is correct and that the other is flawed (beyond just opinion). If the results are seriously flawed and may cause serious harm, the paper may even be retracted (see e.g. policy from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/about/publishing-guidelines/policies/article-withdrawal&quot;&gt;Elsevier&lt;/a&gt; and examples from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/medical-articles/retraction&quot;&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, the way forward depends on the seriousness of the flaw. An alternative option is of course to simply walk away and find better collaborators and more interesting vistas. But, if there are serious ethical problems you need to take action. Where you draw the line is not clear but usually a person with questionable behaviour has a history so you may be able to assess the over-all seriousness of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T17:36:47.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13185" CreationDate="2013-10-04T18:12:25.640" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documents are posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.berkeley.edu/~mbtucker/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  Extra text so I can actually post this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that some of the documents are specific to the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, but some of them are general-purpose (I came to this question from MathOverflow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8859" LastEditorUserId="8859" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T22:06:01.680" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T22:06:01.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13170" CreationDate="2013-10-04T18:22:07.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never known of an academic program that didn't accept letters from employees at research laboratories.  Depending on the field, demonstrating such contacts can be a significant plus.  Of course, some academics are only impressed by other academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T18:22:07.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13193" CreationDate="2013-10-04T18:43:15.263" Score="12" ViewCount="4406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a resource or study that compiles statistics about paper acceptance rates in various journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more interested in biomedical journals, but this would be a good place to list such resources in any scientific field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T13:13:24.747" Title="Resource for journal acceptance rates" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13192" CreationDate="2013-10-04T19:10:24.457" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few journals/publishers publish statistics about their acceptance rate, but this data is usually rather sparse, and not communicated on the journal webpage itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, publishers often allow researchers in the fields of scientometrics, ethics or psychology access to their (anonymized) database of paper review/acceptance/publication timelines. You can find papers such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.1552&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; (and references therein), which then analyze the raw data and publish some statistics about it. We learn, for example, that the acceptance ratio for &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt; in 2012 was at 32%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other nuggets of information one can gleam include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in the &lt;em&gt;Europhysics Letters&lt;/em&gt; study Michael Schreiber expressed concern about comparatively high acceptance rates for July-submitted papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is always good to know if you happen to work in that field :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T19:10:24.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13192" CreationDate="2013-10-04T19:19:05.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few studies on rejection rates in specific areas such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009BAMS2908.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atmospheric Sciences&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecobias.org/resources_files/Aarssenetal2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ecology&lt;/a&gt;. In a seminar talk given by Elsevier at my University Library, the indication was that 40-90% rejection rates were not unusual. Typically, high profile journals (usually identified by a high Impact factors) will be at the upper end of the range. I edit a ISI listed journal and we consistently have about a 50% rejection rates. I believe the norm for many fields is in this neighbourhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a journal with an exactly known constant rejection rate for a paper you should go for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universalrejection.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JUR&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T19:19:05.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12904" CreationDate="2013-10-04T19:57:52.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may consider the following books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On Writing Well : William Zinsser;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Elements of Style : Strunk and White;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sin and Syntax : Constance Hale;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: SciWrite: Writing in the Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also take the online course i.e. &lt;em&gt;Writing in the Sciences&lt;/em&gt; at the following website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Medicine/SciWrite/Fall2013/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Medicine/SciWrite/Fall2013/about&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8836" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T19:57:52.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-04T21:33:05.083" Score="6" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on applying for an NSF postdoctoral fellowship and I was wondering if anyone had insight into the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it practical to have a proposed research project that is not directly in line with the applicant's previous research (I'm thinking of a research project that in some way falls within the same subspeciality but none of the work I've done before naturally segues into this work)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it disadvantageous to apply to work under someone who already has numerous postdocs (say around 4)? The worry would be that a panel would think that this would reduce the sponsor's ability to be an involved mentor&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Broader impacts, in particular things like educational outreach, is it all right if this occurs in another country if I am applying to be supported by the NSF while at a foreign institution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="graduating2014" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:10:07.933" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:10:07.933" Title="What are evaluation criteria for NSF postdoctoral fellowships?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13206" CreationDate="2013-10-04T23:19:20.263" Score="4" ViewCount="2672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working for a professor who started out recently. Most new professors get start-up funding from the department which helps them pay for their first students. Right now I am working in the lab with another PhD candidate; both of us have been funded by departmental funds until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD is working on a project which has no funding. I am working on a corporate-funded project for my thesis.  Now I am the PI for this project internally. So I did the whole project as my thesis and I was listed as the PI on consent form (approved by my university IRB) when I carried out the final testing of my product with the corporate sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where things turn shady. When I carried out my testing, we paid the participants through my research funds (the account number for the project is listed on some departmental documents that I had to sign to get cheques for test participants). In my GRA contract, it was specified that my funding was coming from the departmental account and when the PhD candidate showed me their contract, it was getting funded from my project account (the stipend account number was my project account number and I have confirmed this with a student departmental assistant). Their stipend was coming from my project funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke with few other people in the department, and came to know that when the department gives seed funding to new professors, there is a limit in stipend they can give.  So to give the PhD student more funding, my advisor is using my research funds (for which I am PI) to pay this stipend and thus is getting double my stipend.   I am still getting funded by the department, so I get a lot less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screwed-up thing is this project is highly successful as I did a lot of hard work and I am not getting any financial incentive. In fact, it's all going to the other researcher who is nowhere involved in this project. The sponsor is giving my advisor funding for a second phase next month and also offered me a full-time job at their corporation. I should probably mention that I don't have a good relationship with my advisor and we fought multiple times in past due to some other issues but the PhD candidate gets along very well. They are like  family friends and have  very good social interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am graduating this December, so it probably won't matter anyway, but is this ethical? Can I speak with my department chair about this? I had asked my advisor multiple times to increase my stipend but they said they cannot. The questions is not about money — it's more about betrayal by your own advisor who you trust to be fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have the copy of the departmental documents used to order cheques for testing showing my account project number and a copy of the PhD candidate's contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-19T10:07:03.153" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T10:07:03.153" Title="Question about ethics and possible misappropriation of research funds" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13196" CreationDate="2013-10-05T00:16:17.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think this depends to a large degree on how intelligently you can write about this subject.  If you have a carefully thought out research plan, and can point to how your previous experience prepared you for it, I don't think it should be a huge problem.  That said, there's no reason to really go out on a limb in the description.  It's not like you're required to do the research you propose, so I would be more inclined to suggest doing a mix of problems from the new and old areas.  Also, talk to your recommenders about it.  If they're enthusiastic, it will really help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't over think this stuff.  It's just impossible to know what people will think.  I would concentrate more on what you think is best for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should discuss anything cool you've done with educational outreach.  If it was in another country, I don't think it's a problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T00:16:17.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13185" CreationDate="2013-10-05T00:20:12.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer that we don't know.  It depends on when and how the shutdown is resolved.  As long as the NSF gets back up to its previous funding levels, presumably it should be OK.  I think it's quite likely that the deadline will be pushed back given how close it is, but it's hard to know until something happens in Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T00:20:12.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13197" CreationDate="2013-10-05T00:43:09.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not knowing where you are in the world makes this a bit complicated so I will answer from the only perspective I have, which is working in the USA. What you are describing may...possibly...be illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, save every scrap of paper that has any bearing on the matter. Save every email and text message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, do not go public...yet. Don't call a newspaper, write about it on Facebook, or text your best friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, figure out what the proper channels would be in this case and go through them first. If you are at a public university there may be an internal auditor who looks at these things. You should be able to talk to that person confidentially, and they should be able to quietly determine if any university policies or public funds were misused. Be very honest about what you know to be a fact with evidence to back it up, as opposed to what you suspect but cannot prove. Don't make allegations that you can't support with documentation. If you have suspicions you can present them but make it clear that you are not sure whether the situation is improper or not. Separate your personal feelings about your advisor from the objective truth of their behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, if the funds in question come from an external public agency (such as NSF, NIH, or NASA in the USA) then those organizations will have offices that investigate possible cases of financial misconduct. In the USA they are called the &quot;Inspector General&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth,...I don't know what comes fifth. If you get to this point and you still think that misconduct has occured, but none of the normal channels are working or you feel that you have no support, then you face a difficult personal decision. If you are absolutely certain that you have proof of financial misconduct (by the terms of the applicable laws or policies) then you can put your career at risk and go public for the sake of your personal ethics and morals. You will probably pay a high price for being honest. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2738" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T00:43:09.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13184" CreationDate="2013-10-05T01:30:59.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure to have a decent overall GPA. Personally, even though physics uses a lot of mathematics, I would recommend that you take a more basic conceptual physics course, to understand the physics itself and learn it for its own sake. That way you will be better to appreciate the physics. If you are really passionate about math, then take math-related electives. That would show your commitment to the major. Maybe even do math-related research if that is your bent. Treat the physics courses as important, but do not worry if you are not doing as well in them as in your math courses. Because you are a math major, they will pay more attention to your major courses, but don't let yourself be discouraged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7329" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T01:30:59.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13184" CreationDate="2013-10-05T02:33:18.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Math grad programs do not look at physics courses on the transcript, or think in those terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that higher-level (not formulaic) physics courses can be &lt;em&gt;beneficial&lt;/em&gt; to math people by providing other inputs for intuition. A common obstacle is that the higher-level physics courses do speak in terms of the lower-level ones, which are often quite alien to/from any sensible mathematical world-view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if one skips over those &quot;immediate&quot; things, one can find that there are &quot;physcial imperatives&quot; mandating mathematical &quot;facts&quot;... which might not be obvious on &quot;purely mathematical&quot; grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grandest example is &quot;Green's functions&quot; ... about which volumes can be written... An immediate point is that the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; is wonderful, is necessary, even if one cannot justify it. Green got the idea pre-1850, and it was completely understood in &quot;rigorous&quot; terms by L. Schwartz in 1950. Not easy, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, understanding other (very serious) inputs to mathematics is obviously helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T02:33:18.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13184" CreationDate="2013-10-05T06:02:27.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A possible benefit of non-math course(s) in the resume of a PhD applicant in math, is the fact that it shows that he has a wide research perspective and is eager to study different areas. That is definitely a huge plus for a grad student as one of the major sources of creativity, is bringing in ideas from areas that are sometimes totally irrelevant to the area under study. There are a lot of instances of innovations in for example Agile software engineering that came from manufacturing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, as others mentioned, most universities should not care much. But if you target top universities, then you must know that they do receive a lot of good applicants. And this might be something that make your application stand out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;just my 2 cents..  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T06:02:27.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13179" CreationDate="2013-10-05T06:15:39.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you already know the minimum requirements, I would recommend looking at the references being taught in the top Finance schools in the US. I have a friend who studied Finance in Europe and after coming to the US, he had to start studying another Master's in order to merge his knowledge to what is taught in the top Finance schools in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can write in your CV about the courses you have taken mentioning the references. Online courses, (e.g. from Coursera) are also very helpful for this purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T06:15:39.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13197" CreationDate="2013-10-05T07:30:17.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will disagree with Joe Hass, in that it's quite possible that your advisor is very likely doing something unethical by paying you and your colleague different amounts for the same position in the absence of merit-based arguments to do so, it is quite possible that nothing &lt;em&gt;illegal&lt;/em&gt; is happening that requires reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important issue here is that you do not know the terms of the contract between the external sponsor and your advisor. In particular, you would need to know what restrictions have been placed on the funds provided: in some cases, it may simply be an unrestricted &quot;block grant&quot; that the advisor can spend in any manner of her choosing. If this is the case, then the only regulations that might have been broken are departmental regulations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the other hand, if there are restrictions on the use of the funds, it is much more likely that something inappropriate has occurred, but without knowing the agreement, you could be setting yourself up for needless trouble, so proceed with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T07:30:17.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13213" CreationDate="2013-10-05T15:30:34.413" Score="27" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that many researchers spend a lot of their time (maybe even a half) writing the grants. I understand the researchers that need to purchase some equipment or fund their PhD students, although does not the department fund PhD students anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about pure mathematicians and researchers who need a pencil and paper, a personal computer. Do these apply for grants, what for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T01:58:06.130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T01:58:06.130" Title="Why do researchers in areas requiring minimal resources apply for grants?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13208" CreationDate="2013-10-05T15:44:31.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the competitiveness for research money is a way to &quot;ensure&quot; that there is scrutiny of projects so that well founded studies get funded and less so may not. Like all systems there are flaws but the general principle is to extract the best proposals as seen by peers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funding for researchers through their departments varies substantially between systems and even between universities within any system. Some departments may fund PhD students, some may rely on external funding. Researchers need to go to conferences and publish papers (which may involve costs) so even if you only need paper and a pencil for the research itself, there are other activities that must be covered and the examples I gave are probably not covered by department finances. For most experimental research, costs for equipment, labs or field visits can be substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my system, partly due to credit crunch and a general interest in cutting costs everywhere, more and more must be covered, even office costs for performing the research and office costs for PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T13:02:45.267" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T13:02:45.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13208" CreationDate="2013-10-05T16:16:21.590" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a pure mathematician, there are still plenty of reasons to apply for grants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grants contain supplementary salary, the appeal of which should be obvious.  It also includes travel funding, so one can travel to conferences one otherwise couldn't get funded. (Also, the funding for conferences comes from grants).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;generally the funding for graduate students is tied to teaching and comes from a fixed pot.  So having grant funding allows one's students to concentrate on research more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's an aspect of &quot;keeping score.&quot;  It's generally hard for say a university administrator to judge the quality of a research program, so a grant is an outside stamp of quality.  If one might be interested in getting a different job, it's especially important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pure mathematicians actually don't spend a huge amount of time applying for grants; they maybe average one every two years or so.  NSF grants last 3 years, with a few extra applications for conference or big group grants thrown in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T19:09:16.143" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T19:09:16.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13180" CreationDate="2013-10-05T17:44:31.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak to my personal experience, but it stems from the fact that professors are supposed to be training in a new generation of productive people in the work force. If they have not spent a significant amount of time being productive themselves, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to passing on useful education to future productive people. This is not to say that such education is impossible, or even uncommon, simply that the education is typically based on applied theory as opposed to experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I once was in a lecture about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory&quot;&gt;computational complexity&lt;/a&gt;. My professor had said that if I could take an algorithm from &lt;code&gt;4n^2&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;4n&lt;/code&gt; that my boss would be happy, but if I could take it from &lt;code&gt;4n^2&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;2n^2&lt;/code&gt; that he would not be happy. I told her the entire business model of the firm I interned at relied on running our computations as fast as possible, and that if I could cut the time in half, my boss would be thrilled out of his pants. She immediately dismissed this as naive, as such a performance gain would be insignificant: only a reduction in the &lt;em&gt;order&lt;/em&gt; of complexity would be noticed - simply reducing the coefficient would not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I called my boss after the lecture, and he said if I could cut our simulation time in half, he would fly me back to work and double my pay (since it would still be cheaper than the expansion of our beowulf cluster we were planning). We looked up the professors credentials, and despite having a PhD and over 20 years experience in academia, her only real world experience was a 6 month internship that, according to the description, consisted mostly of paperwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, is this representative of most people in academia? I don't think it is. But it does happen, and it's more common than it would seem from the inside looking out. And because it does happen, it feeds the &lt;em&gt;stereotype&lt;/em&gt; of academics who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. There are stereotypes all over all industries. Software developers have a stereotype of being nerds who couldn't possibly get a date, and yet in North America 70% of developers are married, with only a 3% divorce rate (compared to 40% of the population). While I certainly know some nerds in my line of work, and yes they do feed the stereotype, they really aren't represented by the majority of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions I would make is that the concerns raised by those yelling about &quot;Ivory Towers&quot; I think are valid concerns. They do not apply to all academics, and of course, research should be judged on the actual research, not the researchers. But you should keep in mind that the there are certain individuals who speak with authority based on experience, while others speak with authority based on the assumption that they have the experience. When it comes to published, peer reviewed research, it's easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the classroom settings, where such authority is not to be questioned, it can be very dangerous for young, impressionable students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you respond to an ivory tower accusation? Well, clearly if you have industry experience, put it forth. If you lack industry experience, make it clear that you have no intention of trying to pass off your education as being backed by industry experience. When it comes to your research, encourage skeptics to review your research on its own merits. If they're true scientists, they will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="877" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T17:44:31.657" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13208" CreationDate="2013-10-05T17:56:00.357" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical computer scientists in a top-10 US computer science department.  To first order approximation, the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; reason I apply for grants is to fund PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My research does not require PhD students, but it's part of my job as a university professor to advise them, I enjoy working with them, and I am considerably more productive when I work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students in my department that are not funded by research grants or fellowships are funded instead by teaching assistantships.  Being a TA requires a significant time investment, decreasing the time that these students can devote to research.  Being a TA can be incredibly valuable experience, especially for prospective academics, but the first-order criterion for judging the success of PhDs in computer science is the quality of their research output.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My department competes with peer departments — and I compete with researchers in those departments — to attract strong PhD students.  If we/I want to attract strong students, we have to make credible promises of future funding to do research, because that's what our peer departments do.  Prospective PhD students understand the previous point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I work in a public university in a state with rather significant budget problems.  TAs are paid from state money, which is limited.  Thus, my department can only support a limited number of TAs.  So if I want the department to admit more than a small number of students into my research area, I have to demonstrate that we can fund a majority of those students through grants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students need funding to travel to conferences to present their research results, because they need to build a reputation in the research community.  I could pay for my own travel out of pocket if I really had to, but most PhD students don't have that luxury.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few second-order concerns as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The day-to-day functioning of my department requires a steady stream of incoming research grants.  Grant overhead pays for a lot of basic infrastructure in my department, including the salaries of all the staff our business office, half of the salaries of most other administrative staff, support for non-instructional non-research computing resources like our graduate admissions database.  Grant overhead is also the source of startup packages for new faculty (for which we are again competing with our peers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only equipment I need is &quot;pencil and paper&quot;—or more accurately, a laptop with a stable LaTeX distribution and a drawing program, and basic internet access.  NSF no longer allows research funds to be used for general-purpose computing equipment, so I can't include that in my grant budgets anyway.  But my university returns a small fraction of overhead directly to PIs, and I can use that to buy new laptops, to pay for additional travel (by me, my students, or visitors), or even to help fund RAships.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tenure and promotion decisions, and to a smaller extent raises, do depend in part on professors' proven ability to attract funding, especially in a department (and college) like mine where most faculty are extremely successful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh right, I almost forgot.  I can pay myself an extra month or two of salary over the summer from my grants.  The university pays me for only 9 months of each year (although that pay is spread over 12 months), so each month of summer salary is actually more than 10% of my annual pay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T18:02:26.983" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T18:02:26.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-05T21:41:27.157" Score="6" ViewCount="5245" Body="&lt;p&gt;In applying to the NSF postdoctoral fellowship for mathematics, the instructions include the following paragraph for the biographical sketch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A list of: (i) up to five products most closely related to the proposed project; and (ii) up to five other significant&#xA;  products, whether or not related to the proposed project. Acceptable products must be citable and accessible&#xA;  including but not limited to publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights. Unacceptable products are&#xA;  unpublished documents not yet submitted for publication, invited lectures, and additional lists of products. Only&#xA;  the list of 10 will be used in the review of the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what exactly does &quot;unpublished&quot; mean? Is a paper uploaded to the arXiv but not yet submitted for publication in a journal considered &quot;unpublished&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8877" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T23:12:21.587" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T02:14:41.783" Title="What exactly is an &quot;unpublished paper&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13214" CreationDate="2013-10-05T23:24:39.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would interpret &quot;published&quot; here to mean &quot;published in a peer-reviewed journal&quot;; it would not include posting on arXiv.  If your paper hasn't at least been submitted to a journal, I don't think you can include it in your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T23:24:39.830" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13218" CreationDate="2013-10-06T01:56:32.600" Score="5" ViewCount="785" Body="&lt;p&gt;After finishing a paper, I'd like to show it to a few people for review. I'd like to establish publication priority somehow. The site arXiv won't do because my paper hasn't been reviewed to that level of quality. On the other hand, viXra won't do because I don't want to look like a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/i-want-to-submit-a-paper-to-arxiv-org-but-im-not-affiliated-to-an-institute-w/1508#1508&quot;&gt;crackpot&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some desirable functions. The site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets me upload a file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets me share the URL so that anyone can see it who has the URL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows the time I uploaded the file in a trustworthy way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prevents others from modifying it-- it's view only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus:&#xA;5. Shows versions of the file, together with their upload times &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many of these can be satisfied? Would a file sharing site suffice? Thanks for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8878" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T05:34:16.273" Title="Discreet way to establish priority" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13214" CreationDate="2013-10-06T02:14:41.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would interpret &quot;published&quot; to mean exactly what the text says — citable and accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ArXiv papers are both citable and accessible, and therefore &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; count as acceptable research products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T02:14:41.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13216" CreationDate="2013-10-06T05:34:16.273" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot establish priority without circulating your paper widely.  Or, more precisely, you can prove that you had the idea first, but that won't help you much.  Academic credit is awarded for contributing to the research community.  If you have an idea and don't publicize it (so few people find out or learn from it), and someone else rediscovers the idea and tells everyone, then they will get most or all of the credit, because the community will have learned far more from them than from you.  Even if you can prove you made the discovery first, you may end up as a footnote or side comment in the background sections of future papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not always fair, but it's a pretty good system.  In particular, it avoids the nightmare scenario of researchers trying to establish priority while deliberately telling as few people as possible (to preserve their head start for follow-up work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the arXiv has time stamps and keeps old versions available is potentially useful for resolving disputes, but the important aspect is that papers on the arXiv get noticed.  That's why the arXiv is a good way to establish priority: the community doesn't consider &quot;Oh, I had no idea that paper was on the arXiv&quot; to be a good excuse.  By contrast, if you post the paper somewhere much more obscure, then not noticing it would not be surprising or frowned upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this depends on the threat you are worried about.  If you are concerned that someone you ask to look over the paper might steal your ideas, then you could cc a trusted mentor who could vouch for you if there were a dispute.  On the other hand, I wouldn't worry about this too much: outright theft of ideas is rare, and why would you even want advice from someone you think might plausibly be a thief?  If you are concerned about staking out credit in case someone else is independently working on similar ideas, then there's nothing you can do except get your paper in good shape and then distribute it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my paper is wrong and I put it on arXiv, I'll look like a crackpot. I want something a lot more obscure than arXiv while my paper is in its formative stages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's hard to say without more information, but these comments suggest to me that worrying about credit may be premature.  I'd recommend revising/polishing the paper until it is no longer potentially embarrassing or in a state of flux, and then posting it to the arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T05:34:16.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-06T13:01:25.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This affects people outside the US too: some databases maintained by US institutions, like NIST, have been effectively shut down. In the case relevant to my work, I don't have access to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIST Chemistry Webbook&lt;/a&gt; and related databases, which is a royal pain in the buttocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T13:01:25.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13234" CreationDate="2013-10-06T13:34:34.923" Score="2" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im writing my project thesis in Computer Science and I want to make sure I am using correct and non colloquial terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there better word for &lt;code&gt;code&lt;/code&gt; when talking about your &lt;code&gt;program code&lt;/code&gt; in programming. Is it acceptable to use &lt;code&gt;code&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;program code&lt;/code&gt;? I remember my programming lecturer had a go at a few students for using the word &lt;code&gt;code&lt;/code&gt; when to describe there program, but I just can not think of a better word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8882" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T13:55:13.583" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T08:46:06.863" Title="What is a better word for 'code' when taking about programming code?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13233" CreationDate="2013-10-06T14:05:46.403" Score="12" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large research groups have guides for newcomers, which contain both important information, both high-level and practical, on their new position and the group. I don't have such a large group, but I can see the value in keeping all important information in one central place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I get to writing such a document, what information should one put in a group guide for new group members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T03:59:31.777" Title="Group/lab guide for new students and post-docs: what should it contain?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13197" CreationDate="2013-10-06T14:37:32.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot really tell what you question is about, but let me try and clarify a few things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, being the PI on an institutional review board application does not make you the PI for the funded project. It is not clear what you mean by &quot;your&quot; project funds, but from your description it does not sound like it is your funding, but rather funding that your supervisor was awarded and is providing you access to for you to accomplish your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, applications for funding generally have around 3 aims. The linkage between these aims can be pretty loose. It is not uncommon for students working on different aims of the same grant to think their projects are completely independent. Often a grant might not provide funding for all the staff required to complete the aims. In fact a selling point to potential funders is the ability to leverage their funding with &quot;outside&quot; funds like a departmental studentship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue I think in your question is if it is ethical for your supervisor to use her funding to pay PhD students different amount. The answer to this is that it is most likely ethical. It is possible your supervisor has circumvented the policies of both the funder and the department, but this seems unlikely. It is quite likely that your department has a fixed, relatively low, stipend for internally funded PhD students, but allows for PhD students funded from outside grants to be paid more. In my mind there is nothing unethical about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then the question is why is your lab mate being funded by the grant while you are being funded by the school. No one but your supervisor can answer this. Maybe she flipped a coin. Maybe she thought your the project of your lab mate was closer aligned to the aims of the grant. Maybe, as you say, she likes your lab mate better and cannot be trusted. Before going down that road, you need to remember that it is quite possible that the decision of who to fund from where may have been made prior to either of you applying to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T17:20:56.393" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T17:20:56.393" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13179" CreationDate="2013-10-06T15:13:17.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One worthwhile strategy (I found when applying to graduate school) is to examine the public profiles of graduate students at the institutions you want to attend.  Graduate students (especially senior ones) often post their CVs online, and it's a good way to get information about what their profile was like when they applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that it is extremely rare for people to list things like their GRE scores on a CV.  However, many programs list useful aggregate data about their classes (perhaps what you mean by &quot;lists some requirements about the applicants&quot;), but at least in the case of Berkeley/Haas' &lt;a href=&quot;http://mfe.berkeley.edu/community/students/classprofile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MFE Program&lt;/a&gt;, the information is very specific averages for standardized tests and even work experience/industry prior to entry.  Keep in mind that those are the averages for their class, not the minimums for acceptance, so they're a reasonable target to try and hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8883" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T15:13:17.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-06T17:00:39.663" Score="3" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently almost one semester into a graduate program at a school in Michigan.  However, I just heard back from my dream school in Florida. &lt;strong&gt;Am I able to stop my program at one school and start at another?&lt;/strong&gt;  I don't even mind starting fresh seeing as I'm only 2 classes deep into my MA.  Any help/suggestions/opinions will be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8886" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T03:45:01.827" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T03:45:01.827" Title="Can I switch grad schools early in MA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13224" CreationDate="2013-10-06T20:27:30.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever you want.  If another school accepts you into their program and you'd rather be there, I don't see a problem.  Of course, there exist circumstances in which switching might have downsides, but you haven't told us enough about your situation for any of us to judge them.  Sounds like you just want someone to tell you it's OK to switch, which I'm fine with doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T20:27:30.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-06T22:11:04.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wonder.cdc.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wonder database&lt;/a&gt; containing the surveillance data that the CDC collects has been shut down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiologists worldwide use these data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone is searching for the data that was in the morbidity tables from the National Disease Surveillance Survey (NDSS), that data up to May 2013 is &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/abought/cdc_mmwr_liberation/blob/master/tabdatafiles/cdc-mmwr-tables_1996_jan-2013_may_25.tar.gz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;available on github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8891" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T10:37:28.820" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T10:37:28.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13242" CreationDate="2013-10-06T23:47:25.407" Score="21" ViewCount="2610" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a thirsty graduate student, I've amassed a burgeoning collection of research articles in both paper and digital formats. Right now I manage pdfs and references with Zotero, but I'm still searching for an organization logic for paper documents that allows rapid access and prevents redundant printing and storage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bettergradstudent.com/blog/organize-papers/&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; have suggested organizing by topic, while another approach is to sort by author name. Topical organization has not worked well for me in the past because my research is highly interdisciplinary, confounding my categorization efforts. For a coupled digital-physical organization system I'm considering the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Digital documents and references stored and tagged in Zotero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicator in Zotero whether or not I've printed in the file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physical documents stored in manila file folders labelled alphabetically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most effective way that you've found to maintain both paper and digital document repositories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T18:41:57.453" Title="best practices for organizing digital and physical articles" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;paperwork&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13143" CreationDate="2013-10-06T23:47:38.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/us-antarctic-research-season-is-in-jeopardy-1.13889&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;appears&lt;/a&gt; that the shutdown may result in the cancellation of a whole year of research in Antarctica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/08/230445614/shutdown-forces-antarctic-research-into-caretaker-status&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Update&lt;/a&gt;: The NSF just shut down all Antarctic research, though they have left open the possibility of restarting some of it if the shutdown ends very soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 2: Antarctic season is &quot;open&quot; but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/politics-the-long-shadow-of-the-shutdown-1.13978&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some projects will still be cancelled&lt;/a&gt; this year due to the delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T10:36:49.130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T10:36:49.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13180" CreationDate="2013-10-07T02:50:01.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jossie, you are a scientist, right? Define the 'real job' for us first, please. &quot;The real job is a job in which...&quot; what happens? You get a real paycheck, that's for sure, and if that's the main indication of the 'real job', then you definitely got one. If, on the other hand, you define a 'real job' as the one from which you can be fired, then a tenured professor is not a real job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, there are several layers of complications that your question uncovers. Apparently, you are a smart person with a dedication, given that you were able to finish your Ph.D. It is, however, also apparent to me that you cannot really explain what you do to a layperson. You are not alone in this: the portrayal of academia as the ivory tower stems from this same lack of communication between professors and the general public that just cannot understand the value added that academia provides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked as an assistant professor on a tenure track for three years, was booted from it, and found home in industry. I can tell very specifically what the value of academic research is for me in my position: it can produce new efficient ways for me to make the product that my company delivers better... where better may include concepts like &quot;more accurate&quot; (I am a social statistician, so that's a relevant dimension of my work), &quot;faster&quot;, &quot;more robust wrt various uncheckable assumptions&quot;, etc. Unfortunately for me, academic research produces hell of a lot of noise that's irrelevant for me: from ~100 papers in the top general interest journals, I would find 1 to be of relevance to my work. The ratio is of course higher in specialized journals, where it can be 3:1 or so. (&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt; are out of my league; they may publish statistics papers on a cute little topic from time to time, but generally the ratio will be what, 1:10000?) So I am the natural selection process: out of all the random mutations that academic researchers publish, I am selecting the relevant traits that need to be preserved because there is a survival value in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the question that I keep asking myself is, &quot;How much of that random noise does need to come out so that in the month of October 2013, I will read up something that will change the way I work?&quot;, and apparently the answer is, well, several hundred papers (out of which I will get may be 10 or so to read). That's a costly enterprise: if an average professor is paid $120K, and they publish three papers a year, then that's $40K per paper (we can ignore teaching: first, nobody really cares about it, and second, you can buy a teacher for $5K/course, way below the cost of a research paper that I just derived). So the total for one usable academic result is [drum roll] $4M for the hundred papers that need to be published. That's A LOT of money... although I would humbly hope that for each disgrunteld StasK, there are hundred other statisticians who would find the other 99 random papers useful for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the ratios are better in other disciplines, that's great. For what I heard in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;education  research&lt;/a&gt;, the ratios are about the same: at some point, that depository had reviewed ~300 papers, and found only 6 of them to be usable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T02:50:01.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13221" CreationDate="2013-10-07T03:59:31.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find a lot of good examples on the web, written by professors with a lot more experience, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidketcheson.info/guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is mine&lt;/a&gt;.  It includes guidelines and advice on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to approach group meetings and individual meetings with advisor (me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding a thesis topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning and recording research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading the literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommended software tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General conduct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T03:59:31.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13220" CreationDate="2013-10-07T08:46:06.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what you want to refer to. For instance, if you were to implement an array sort in Java, you could refer to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the sorting algorithm, as Paul mentioned, which could be described in pseudocode, and is independent from the language you used (note that it could be more readable to include within your thesis only the pseudocode of your algorithms, and then attach the actual code at the end, or provide it in a different file). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the program, which is the binary executable that takes an array as input and returns the sorted array. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the implementation, which refers to the way you defined the sorting algorithm in Java. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the data structures you manipulate, such as the array. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the source code, as Anonymous Mathematician mentions, which is the textual representation of your implementation (note that if you include the file at the end, then you can also refer to it with &quot;the Java file&quot;, or &quot;the file sort.java&quot;; in this case, you can even include line numbers, which can be helpful to point to a specific part of your source code). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T08:46:06.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13236" CreationDate="2013-10-07T08:47:27.010" Score="12" ViewCount="2581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to request a letter of recommendation for higher studies (PhD) from one of my faculty (I took two classes and did 3 very good course projects). I have never been good (just above average) in any of his written examinations and has admitted this to him in several discussions. Though in the projects, my score was the highest and I also got praise from him for writing excellent research quality articles for those projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure that he would certainly mention my weakness in the letter. I don't think (not really sure) that he has doubt over my research potential. So does that give any negative impression on the reader of such recommendation letter ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I generalize my question, how does specifying weakness of a candidate affects his chances of admission (if they do) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T08:49:48.270" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T09:08:02.653" Title="What could be the effect of mentioning a student's weakness in the recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13235" CreationDate="2013-10-07T09:08:02.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honesty is the best way. When you admit a student, one of  the things you dread is if you find out someone is not what you thought. The issue is not easy to deal with of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think someone has a weakness, it should be mentioned. The first thing I think one can do is to point out that it is ones own opinion and possibly also describe the circumstances for why the weakness has become evident. The main point is provide the recipient of the information with as much information as possible to make a well-founded decision. After all, a persons positive traits are easy to describe and it is only the negative that cause problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One aspect that weighs heavily is if you would take on the person yourself, and if so, would you then deal with the weakness in some way? &lt;em&gt;Provide possible solutions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a candidate has a weakness that you think may affect the persons ability to be considered, you should probably bring it up with the person. This can of course be very difficult and may result in bitter feelings but the question is, are the weaknesses something that can be compensated? If the person does not know about them, then the situation will seem inexplicable when he/she gets a rejection. A constructive discussion may make it possible to elaborate more in a letter to defuse the negative aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, writing negative aspects about a person is very difficult but it is also vital that a letter of recommendation has value. You may not be the only person writing a letter so the picture you provide may be one of many that has to be weighed in at the other end. If the person ends up not being appointed, you cannot take it personally as long as you have tried to provide an as objective appraisal as possible and that includes both positives and negatives. I have included what I sometimes have thought were damaging (but true) comments in letters and found the person was appointed despite them. I have then carefully explained why I think the way I do and tried to see how the negatives could possible be worked around. I have never written a letter where I had to just say, don't employ this person. I have then avoided the task altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, be honest, be objective, be constructive, and the opinion will be much valued by whoever reads your letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T09:08:02.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13249" CreationDate="2013-10-07T09:14:58.937" Score="10" ViewCount="1830" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best protocol for handling a student whose name has changed from the time when a letter writer knew the student. For instance, suppose Pat Jones has become Pat Smith. Do we write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pat Smith (&lt;em&gt;né(e) Jones&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or is this unnecessary? I would think that the name should match what's in the rest of the application, but I would imagine it would also be helpful to make sure that the name change is noted, just in case there's some inconsistencies in the overall record (for instance, I doubt that all universities would change transcripts of alumni).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:04:35.653" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:04:35.653" Title="Mentioning student name changes in a letter of recommendation" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14609" CreationDate="2013-10-07T09:21:17.340" Score="14" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several of the students who have come to my group as summer students are planning to submit NSF graduate fellowship applications in the coming weeks. However, one question that I am not sure about is how specific the statement of purpose needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I applied for the NSF fellowship (going on fifteen years ago), I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do as a student, other than it was computational rather than experimental. Therefore, my application was all over the place, talking about three different types of projects I might want to work on as a graduate student (and I ended up choosing none of them in the long run!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I get the impression that today such an essay wouldn't be suitable for the application, and that a more narrowly tailored essay is required. At the same time, there's also the challenge of ensuring that the research problem can be done at the school one has chosen, and not narrowing things so specifically that the student is too &quot;boxed in&quot; or too opaque for a review panel to see the merits of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how should students thread the gap between vagueness and specificity in writing these and other fellowship applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:05:46.803" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:05:46.803" Title="NSF graduate fellowship: how specific should the statement of purpose be?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13237" CreationDate="2013-10-07T09:44:38.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the student is clever enough, he has both names written on his CV. In some systems, it may even be built into the application software (in France, universities online applications typically ask for both &lt;em&gt;family name&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;birth name&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I wouldn't bother with it, unless the student asks you to do it. And yes, I would use the student's current name, even though he may have been named differently when you first met him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T09:44:38.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13122" CreationDate="2013-10-07T11:48:28.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this link &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/doaj?func=csv&quot;&gt;http://doaj.org/doaj?func=csv&lt;/a&gt;  to download the complete list of journals from DOAJ, with metadata as scientific field, license (if CC) and whether you have to pay to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8898" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T11:48:28.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13237" CreationDate="2013-10-07T12:04:46.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your suggestion of using the &lt;code&gt;né(e)&lt;/code&gt; construction is the traditional solution in English, i.e. the solution suggested in etiquette manuals. I would do it once at the beginning of the letter to avoid confusion then revert to the current name. Just because the student should mention it elsewhere does not mean your letter should not contain all the information you can reasonably provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note I would doubt that any American University would retroactively change transcripts. However, being a person who has never changed his name I have no relevant experience to back that up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="7561" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T12:38:18.613" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T12:38:18.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13230" CreationDate="2013-10-07T13:13:02.280" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have them organized similarly to the blog post you linked. I'm not sure it is the optimal way, but it works quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The central search key for me is (First)AuthorYEAR. By now I know my way around in my field so that the author names are meaningful. And easier to remember exactly than title abbreviations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I try to have almost all papers also digitally, and organize them with &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;jabref&lt;/a&gt;. I started using jabref before Mendeley, Zotero &amp;amp; Co came up and didn't change.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;jabref allows to assign the papers to topics/groups, which can be hierarchically organized, but a paper can also belong to several of them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is important for me, because one paper may be about an application (e.g. tumor diagnostics -&gt; group with tumour or cell type), use specific measurement technique (group that), and maybe use or invent an interesting data analysis technique (group there). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jabref stores its information in a .bib file (with a few non-standard fields and some more info in comments at the end). But essentially I can work with this file as with any other .bib file.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;.bib and digital versions are in a git repo which basically solved the mess of having lots of copies that go out of sync while I'm still able to work completely offline. As .bib is a text format, version control works fine with that. Papers usually do not change, so it doesn't really matter for the version control that they are binary data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a paper, I usually search for it in jabref, and then look whether I do have a printed copy (I'm too lazy to keep track of printed status).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;physical copies I keep in two drawers with a suspension filing system. One has collections of important papers on topics I'm interested in. The other keeps other physical copies alphabetically by author name (one folder for each letter so far, some will be split soon). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I tried before with normal lever arch files, but was too lazy to put papers away into their proper place. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For a while I had the luxury of working with dual monitors. During that time I printed considerably less papers. Now I have to work with only a single (and not too big) monitor again, and again print most papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T13:13:02.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-07T13:59:08.280" Score="8" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finding it difficult to select a topic for my masters thesis (my advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter). I intend to do thesis in the field of internal combustion engines. To get some good ideas about finding a good topic I want to study some recent PhD theses in internal combustion engines but I don't know where to find them. Also I would like to know about modern research trends in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8899" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T15:26:11.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:11:25.603" Title="How to find one or two good recent PhD theses (that are internationally recognized as best) in your chosen area" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13246" CreationDate="2013-10-07T14:08:49.437" Score="11" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my PhD thesis I have proven a minor result but with the help of a theory that is far apart from my actual subjects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have my work self-contained up to a certain level and to make my proof understandable, I should introduce like one page of notions, which I will never use again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is quite different from others. But even if it was just a modification of a known result, I don't think the line &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... can be obtained by a modification of the proof of XYZ to our&#xA;  needs...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is appropriate in a PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8601" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:19:20.210" Title="How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13243" CreationDate="2013-10-07T14:50:53.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, doctoral theses do not receive much recognition outside of a university, let alone on an international scale. The reason for this is that nowadays the thesis is nowhere near as widely circulated as the papers that can be extracted from the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if you want to find out about good thesis topics, look up what's going on in the scientific literature of the area you're interested in—in this case, internal combustion engines. Find the most highly-respected journals, and see if they've published recent review articles in different areas related to your topic. That might give you a sense of where recent work has been, and provide you with a good body of reading material to work from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T14:50:53.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13244" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:19:20.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;An appendix, if allowed by your university style/guidelines (and it usually is), is the best option. It strikes a balance between two legitimate concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want your thesis to be self-contained, and you want to showcase the work you've done (as well as convince others of your work's quality)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the main text, it may make your message less clear and burden the reader's mind with new notations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:19:20.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:27:18.503" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like some useful advice regarding pursuing a PhD in mathematical sciences in the UK. I've just started my PhD in mathematical modelling and would like to know as much as possible about how to make the most of the entire journey. I have some ideas here and there but I want to know what things to do and things to avoid, planning ahead, useful websites etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topic/Question have been edited to broaden scope of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8901" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T14:16:02.837" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T14:16:02.837" Title="How can I best use my time as a Mathematical sciences PhD student in the UK" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10999" CreationDate="2013-10-07T17:11:47.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From reading this it almost seems like the paper is not actually submitted. By submitting revisions (via email? were you uploading them? withdrawing the original? submitting via the submission systems as if they were new submissions?) AFTER the manuscript had been sent out to reviewers, you threw a wrench into the system. The editor was polite and told you to resubmit a final version of the manuscript. They probably WITHDREW your original manuscript and pulled it from review. The clock now resets for this submission. How did you do it? Via email to the editor? If you did that, it is not submitted. If you have no acknowledgement email, manuscript number, control number, it is not submitted and probably not under consideration. I would not recommend contacting the editor further and log into the manuscript submission system and check the status of the manuscript. You will probably have at least one submission withdrawn by the editor, but it is unclear to me how you submitted the unsolicited revisions and whether they will appear in the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8902" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T17:11:47.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13237" CreationDate="2013-10-07T17:35:34.243" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not ask the student what they would prefer?  I can imagine situations (for example, if the student changed what gender they identify with) where they might not want the name change mentioned too much, or they might appreciate you explaining the circumstances.  You're writing the letter for student's benefit, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T17:35:34.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13258" CreationDate="2013-10-07T18:21:02.423" Score="3" ViewCount="1250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a computer science student at the 3rd/8 level, and there is a competition in scientific researches, including computer researches, at my university for financial aids and I'm thinking of getting involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of theoretical stuff or things can't be applied, instead, I think of writing about Unix and Linux debuggers development and debugging techniques basically something practical that helps to provides the bases and guidelines for someone who want to build Unix debugger starting with the basics of debuggers and then build a proof of concepts small debugger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never done such thing before and have a few ideas about writing researches from high-school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be a research? what type (I need the term so I can look it up) of research is it and it's general structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8909" LastEditorUserId="8909" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T19:54:21.857" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T03:19:34.157" Title="How to write a practical computer science research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13250" CreationDate="2013-10-07T19:55:58.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://xrds.acm.org/current-issue.cfm&quot;&gt;ACM Crossroads&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a student journal. You can start submitting an small article to be published as a column like &lt;a href=&quot;http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2520000/2517258/p65-zitnik.pdf?ip=129.97.125.155&amp;amp;id=2517258&amp;amp;acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&amp;amp;key=C2716FEBFA981EF1A02146E4E58B30BB50A6E02CF45A69A7&amp;amp;CFID=243949817&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=88605034&amp;amp;__acm__=1381175675_f3d78fd1e2206b79a792076847b9e822&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. I have not seen other research journals letting these sorts of tutorials get published. They are usually towards publishing papers that solve an issue, done an experiment, provides recommendations, etc. If you want to write a research paper in those sort of categories, then you will have a lot more choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T19:55:58.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13237" CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:07:27.933" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the specific case of an undergraduate who has gotten married after graduation, I think it would be unethical to mention the name change unless the student specifically asks you to.  It's emphasizing information (marital status) which the people receiving the letter should not be considering when making their decision, and in fact are legally barred from considering in the US.  In places where it's not illegal (and where marital status is mentioned elsewhere on the application) letters should still be concentrating on data relevant to the job and not things like race, appearance, or marital status.  Furthermore, given many people's prejudices (both conscious and unconscious) it is likely to actively harm female students.  Even if the student you have in mind is male, mentioning marital name changes in general will be harmful to women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of someone who has a publishing record under a different name, the issue is more complex, and I think it would be reasonable to ask the candidate if they'd like you say anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T22:07:27.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T02:15:32.270" Score="-2" ViewCount="2135" Body="&lt;p&gt;let me explain a bit about myself before getting to the question.  I graduated recently in May with a Computer Engineering degree and a minor in CS.  Originally I wanted to go into embedded development, but after a few courses in it I decided that it wasn't for me.  At that point it was a little late for me to switch so I went with getting the CS minor instead, and took all the CS related engineering courses that I could.  Naturally there is a lot of overlap between the two disciplines, and if all of my classes mapped over I was only two classes away from double majoring, but due to departmental reasons the CS department wouldn't accept any of my courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working for the past four months at my job and performing very well.  My work has a tuition reimbursement program that covers 8k per year of schooling/books.  I've noticed that I have some gaps in knowledge compared to new computer science graduates such as with compilers, databases, and machine learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So here's my question:&lt;/strong&gt; Do you think it would be beneficial for me to enroll in a part-time masters program?  Should I just learn these things on my own?  Now that I have cash coming in I don't want to go full-time.  I'm asking this now because Georgia Tech just opened up registration for their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online Masters program&lt;/a&gt; and it seems like I'm the perfect candidate for it.  Am I really going to earn that much extra or get a better position than I would with normal work experience that would justify the extra 20 hours of work per week this would give me (2 classes a semester for 3 years)?  With my work reimbursement this program would be free and simply a time investment.  My manager at work recommended doing it now before I have a wife and kids to deal with later.  I would love to continue learning and I guess I could stretch it out longer than 3 years if I needed to, or stop at any time and have no financial loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T22:33:55.857" Title="Is it worth it for me to get a masters in CS?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-11-03T02:28:13.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13250" CreationDate="2013-10-08T03:19:34.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are thinking more of a tutorial than a research object. You may be interested on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research#Research_methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is about obtaining some new knowledge. This knowledge can be simply a compilation of some things that are already done and existing but were never put together to compare them (a survey) for instance. IMHO survey papers get a good number of citations because they are in fact quite useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of things to do research in that field, for instance you could  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put something new in that small debugger (beyond the state of the art) or  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try a set of different things in that small debugger to compare them and obtain that comparative knowledge (being new) or  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do a survey of the debuggers that exist, or evaluate them wrt something new (e.g. usability)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find open questions in the field of debuggers, define a problem that was not being considered before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it boils down to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding and defining a problem (which is open in the state of the art (SOA))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding or creating solutions (and adding them to the SOA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evaluating and comparing solutions (in the SOA to know better how is it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say all of them are quite pragmatical, focusing on solutions. The point is to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solve something new (it's quite pointless solving something that is already solved, right?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evaluate properly (so that we can understand why is it a solution and what properties does it have, when is it useful and when may not be so useful).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding problems (because the first step to solve a problem is identifying it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the approach taken then the research and the paper will look in different ways but basically you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an explanation of the background that may be required to understand everything else (this is optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a description of the state of the art, what is out there that is relevant for the proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the proposal (for definition, solution or evaluation of the problem at hand)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the results obtained with that proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the conclusions obtained from the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledgements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: If that fails you can simply forget about the state of the art and do research on this as if it was new, without checking properly the literature on the topic before. If you apply the methods correctly and do a good work that could be ok in some contexts (I'm not sure about the context of this question, though). This would not be very practical, because most probably someone did that already decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T03:19:34.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13230" CreationDate="2013-10-08T03:52:58.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always store the references in zotero before printing them. I don't print all of the references, therefore I always use zotero to find the references before searching for the printed paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context what I did is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I print the paper I write in one corner the date and time when it was added to zotero (always the same corner).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I search for a paper I check that identifier (date-time) and perform binary search on the big pile of printed papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only print papers that are very complex on formulas, though. This could not scale well for hundreds of papers, but it's a handy identifier. One advantage is that papers are usually added to one side of the pile, so old papers can be stored somewhere and I don't use to need to insert a new paper between old papers, if you use folders (or similar) some of them could overflow by doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T03:52:58.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13243" CreationDate="2013-10-08T07:09:25.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many disciplines have prizes and awards for the best thesis in a given year (or longer period). For instance, in our field there is a well-recognized one called &lt;em&gt;Householder award&lt;/em&gt;. There are many more if you restrict to the national level, often funded by privates or industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look for past winners, you can be fairly sure that they are outstanding theses. (After that, getting your hands on the actual document might be more difficult, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with Engineering to suggest you a good one in your topic; you may try to add &quot;thesis award&quot; to your google searches, but sometimes they are tricky to find without knowing the exact names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T07:09:25.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13285" CreationDate="2013-10-08T09:29:09.050" Score="10" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading some reflections on research and academia lately, and it has gotten me to think more critically towards what we do, and what the life we are pursuing has in store for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of you might remember &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12767/project-design-and-scope-interesting-vs-incremental-science&quot;&gt;another recent question of mine&lt;/a&gt;, where I was inquiring about the right way to set up projects based on an open-letter I read  about how academia is not what it claims to be. Now I have stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog entry&lt;/a&gt; which focuses on the shortcomings of the single-blind peer review process overwhelmingly used in biomedical research publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it all brings me back to a disturbing idea that I had some time ago; that the quality of the research and the truth to all we do is essentially hanging on a rather fragile virtue, what one could call &quot;academic honesty&quot;. We count on the reviewers and editors objectivity, we count on publishers &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; researchers naive and good intentions with their work, we count on people not putting their personal benefits before that of the society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As anyone out on the streets will tell you, we do not live in an ideal world and [&lt;em&gt;call me a pessimist if you will&lt;/em&gt;] thus I don't believe in the inherent good of the people (at least I do not rely or count on it). I don't see how academics should be exempt from a degeneration in the society that affects everyone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That brings me to my question; what measures exist to ensure this &quot;academic honesty&quot; we seem to rely so heavily on? How do we know/ensure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that the reviewers do not lose their objectivity, for instance when looking at a manuscript of a competitor&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that there's no collusion between high-profile PIs and editors of &quot;high-impact&quot; journals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that academics (at varying stages of their career) do not consider/prioritize &quot;pushing up&quot; the numbers (e.g. &quot;h-index&quot; or &quot;impact factor&quot; etc) when they set out with their research projects? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that grants/prizes/titles are actually given to the better projects/people from the perspective of the greater good, and not based on how well-connected the applicants are? (after all such committees &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to have or be composed of other researchers, who else is going to be able to judge the impact and importance of cutting edge research than other researchers?) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that it's a broad question, but I have tried to give a thorough background story to give you an idea about how I got to this idea. Likewise I tried to narrow my concern to one over-arching question (rather than to seek discussion), with a couple of example follow-up questions to make my point clear. I can ask them separately if-need-be, but I think they sit better together, as is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T21:42:49.717" Title="Are there any measures to ensure &quot;academic honesty&quot;?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13265" CreationDate="2013-10-08T10:35:18.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will start by stating, that we probably cannot ensure that any of these problems cannot occur. Doing so will probably mean enforcing structures that are far from democratic and open, it is the downside of the sort of openness we are used to and so we need to learn to live with the system. That, however, does not mean we are without means to work against bad, unethical, behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reviewers&lt;/em&gt;: The vast majority of reviewers do a good job. Some may be socially challenged to provide criticism in polite ways but have the knowledge to provide critical views. Journal editors will play a vital role in not only selecting reviewers but also screen and evaluate the reviews and provide authors with a balanced view based on the two or more reviews that typically are gathered for each manuscript. The same also applies to foundations evaluating proposals. The review process has two levels where things must go wrong to severely affect a manuscript and the role of editors should not be underestimated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Collusion&quot;&lt;/em&gt;: This problem may be more difficult to spot if the issue originates at &quot;top level&quot;. I am not sure I see a patented solution in this case but am convinced that publishers will not  support such behaviour and the scientific community will most likely pick up on the problem quickly. There is in other words a social control that will sooner or later make an impact on such problems. This does not prevent them from occurring and since the research community consists of humans we have all the human fallacies found elsewhere in society as well. Removing the illusion that we are of equal moral views and chivalry is a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;inflation&quot;&lt;/em&gt;: There are good services that calculate, for example, the &lt;em&gt;h&lt;/em&gt;-index for you and in a way that others can double check them. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com/Home.action&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researcher ID&lt;/a&gt; but such calculations can be done directly in Web of Science and elsewhere. The main point is that by using such a service, the calculation is open and reproducible and it is possible to trace what has been entered. Hence the indicator indices used should preferably be of this kind so that one can double check the value without any effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;grants&lt;/em&gt;: This is similar to the *&quot;Collution&quot; point above. I cannot see any simple solution that would not involve significant costs for the funding agencies (and hence less money given to research. Social control is probably the strongest point here but it also involves openness so that the public has insights into who gets money and why (I am assuming we are talking governmental funding in one way or another; industry and private sources are different)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I understand and can share some of your pessimism but the alternatives to our current system are in my opinion worse and likely heavier from, for example, bureaucracy. Openness and good guidelines for and continued discussions on ethical behaviour among all are necessary. It is what occurs behind closed doors that starts rumours and may also initiate the problems you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T10:35:18.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13268" CreationDate="2013-10-08T10:51:34.730" Score="11" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2013 Physics Nobel prize went to François Englebert and Peter Higgs, for their discovery of the Higgs boson. I was wondering why the CERN, as an institution, or the ATLAS collaboration, are not co-awarded the price with Englebert and Higgs. Apparently, “collaborations” cannot be awarded the Nobel prize. Is it a tradition, or something written in the rules of the Nobel foundation? Has there ever been an exception?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T08:35:29.493" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T08:42:24.823" Title="Why does the Nobel committee not award prize to collaborations?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13267" CreationDate="2013-10-08T11:15:10.150" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/statutes.html#par4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paragraph 4 of the statutes&lt;/a&gt;, it restricts the price to be only awarded to two works and to a maximum of 3 individuals.&#xA;But it also says, that it can be awarded to an institution or organization. Which has been done with the Nobel Peace Prizes to the EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A prize amount may be equally divided between two works, each of which is considered to merit a prize. If a work that is being rewarded has been produced by two or three persons, the prize shall be awarded to them jointly. In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each prize-awarding body shall be competent to decide whether the prize it is entitled to award may be conferred upon an institution or association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T08:37:22.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13247" CreationDate="2013-10-08T11:16:31.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recently-started science PhD student myself, I can recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Research Student’s Guide To Success&#xA;Pat Cryer&#xA;Pub Open University Press, 2006&#xA;ISBN: 0 335 22117 3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T11:16:31.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T13:26:45.540" Score="9" ViewCount="3655" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per title, &lt;strong&gt;which&lt;/strong&gt; one is a &lt;strong&gt;better&lt;/strong&gt; way to go: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to write the &lt;code&gt;Related Work&lt;/code&gt; part right after &lt;code&gt;Introduction&lt;/code&gt; and before &lt;code&gt;System Architecture&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to write the &lt;code&gt;System Architecture&lt;/code&gt; right after &lt;code&gt;Introduction&lt;/code&gt; and dump &lt;code&gt;Related Work&lt;/code&gt; in the end just before the &lt;code&gt;Conclusion&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, I have read both ways. I personally find &lt;code&gt;Related Work&lt;/code&gt; a bit unnecessary and I usually skip them while reading a paper. It is reasonable in the sense that a researcher would have already read nearly all the related work within his or her field. So he or she may not bother to read those sections of the similar papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, I prefer to adopt the latter that dumps this part at the end. However, I see most of the papers that I have read adopted the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the pros and cons of these two approaches? How do I choose wisely?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am in &lt;strong&gt;EECS&lt;/strong&gt; field, but any generic advice is also very much welcomed&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T17:07:31.043" Title="Is it better to write &quot;Related Work&quot; at the start or in the end?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13270" CreationDate="2013-10-08T14:14:52.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main advantage of putting related work near the beginning is that it allows you to very clearly define what is new in your approach.  I like to do that when I'm attacking a very well-defined problem and my contribution is closely related to what has gone before; e.g., if I've modified algorithm X so that it runs twice as fast, then I must review prior work on algorithm X.  I try to work the review into the flow of an expository structure -- i.e., introduce prior work as you move naturally through the introductory and motivational concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage of putting related work near the beginning is that the reader must wade through it before getting to the important part of the paper -- your contribution.  It also may interrupt the flow of exposition.  So I put the related work nearer the end when possible; for instance, if I'm solving a problem nobody has considered before, or exploring some newly discovered phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T14:14:52.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T15:46:12.530" Score="8" ViewCount="1531" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here is the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a Math student in a very well ranked French university, and I am going to finish my degree (i.e. 2-year MSc, after a 3-year BSc) in August. Therefore, it is time to think of the future: graduate school. In particular, I have been thinking to apply in the US, where many very good groups in the field I'm interested in are located. I have the highest possible GPA, followed advanced courses, research and teaching experience, potentially very good recommendation letters from well-know professors, received awards, and I'll be writing my MSc thesis at a well-known university on the East Coast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I haven't been able to register for the GRE subject test soon enough due to personal reasons, and when I look at the US math graduate school, &lt;strong&gt;they almost all require the GRE subject test&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of them even say that the applications without the GRE and Subject GRE will not even be reviewed, or will be very disadvantaged. The next session is in April, and the results must be submitted in December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the reality of the graduation admissions system in the US? Should I try to apply anyway without the GRE Subject (i.e. &lt;strong&gt;are applications without GRE automatically rejected&lt;/strong&gt;)? Should I wait one year to apply, until I can pass the GRE? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8916" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-09T03:48:03.243" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T17:36:10.867" Title="US Graduate School without subject GRE" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13272" CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:04:25.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid there's not really a lot you can do. Your best bet is, as always, to contact the departments you are interested in attending, and explain your situation to them. You'll need to have a very convincing reason why you weren't able to take the GRE subject test, and would need a waiver. They may be willing to make an exception; they may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I'm not sure what else you can do; the policies and deadlines are all well-known and published, and the departments are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required to give you special treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:04:25.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13243" CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:11:25.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer complements the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing my dissertation proposal, I felt the need to look at some other published dissertations in my area (~HCI/privacy). I realized that one of my committee members, who dissertated very recently (2007) has an incredibly relevant dissertation in my area and also won the best dissertation award from her alma mater. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that is one strategy. In general, look at the best works in your field and find out if any happens to be the primary work of a PhD student. Chances are, that work will be incorporated into his/her dissertation and if you look at their CV's, often, you will find that they won a &quot;Best Dissertation&quot; award or something similar to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:11:25.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13277" CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:34:37.517" Score="11" ViewCount="24443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two friends successfully defended their dissertations yesterday, and many people have congratulated them, calling them Doctor so-and-so. I explained to my wife that they actually don't have that title until the graduation ceremony, that it's similar to a President-elect, who isn't called the President until they are sworn in. So, what title does a doctoral candidate take after they've defended but before they graduate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2020-12-03T16:18:54.983" Title="What title do you hold after you've defended but before you graduate?" Tags="&lt;defense&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13275" CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:42:11.383" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a formal, universally accepted title here. The general standard has been to call them &quot;Doctor&quot; since everything else is in principle a formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other note that I'd make is that it's not commencement that makes the student in question a doctor, but rather &lt;em&gt;conferral&lt;/em&gt; of the degree by the university. Some universities may confer degrees multiple times per year, but only have one commencement ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would not include &quot;Ph.D.&quot; next to my name, but in the education of my CV, I'd write &quot;Ph.D. (to be conferred &lt;em&gt;Month Year&lt;/em&gt;),&quot; as that is entirely accurate representation of the state of affairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:42:11.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13272" CreationDate="2013-10-08T17:03:06.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you come from a well-ranked university, and have top grades and excellent recommendations from professors there, it shouldn't matter that you are missing a subject GRE; this may disadvantage you slightly, but excellent grades, research and recommendations should easily make up for it. If you came from a less well-ranked university, the lack of a subject GRE would be a much more severe disadvantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some universities where bureaucratic requirements will keep you from being considered, but I suspect this is not true at most private universities. The admissions office should be able to give you this information; email them, explain your situation, and ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5912" LastEditorUserId="5912" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T16:25:28.067" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T16:25:28.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13275" CreationDate="2013-10-08T17:17:29.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most countries &quot;Dr&quot; is an honorific (in Germany I believe it is a legal title and part of your name) that is typically used when referring to individuals that hold certain types of degrees (most doctorates but not all, for example holders of the JD degree are not typically called doctor, and some non doctorate degrees, for example a BMedSci in the UK). As it is an honorific I think it is perfectly reasonable to bestow that honor to someone during a party to celebrate a doctoral defence. Similarly when seeing someone the first time after the defence using doctor is a nice why of honoring them. In some countries one can pass the defence and still need to make substantial revisions. I would use the honorific as long as the person passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In non-formal situations I would avoid it, but then again I avoid using the honorific even for people with doctorates. In formal situations where honorifics are being used I would definitely avoid it. I think it would set a bad tone to go to a job talk an allow yourself to be introduced as doctor. In that situation I would deflect the honorific and say &quot;not yet&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T17:17:29.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13256" CreationDate="2013-10-08T18:38:56.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are merely trying to fill in gaps in your education, then a Master's is probably overkill, and almost certainly not worth it for CS. You can fill in your stated gaps &quot;compilers, databases, and machine learning&quot; with equal effort in personal projects and reading. CS is a well documented field on the internet, especially for your three stated gaps. Compiler construction, while daunting, is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;achievable task,&lt;/a&gt; and databases are very well represented online, being the foundation of most online software. Machine learning is also very popular lately, with lots of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/mlbook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not so new&lt;/a&gt; resources available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you are like me, and suck at the whole 'autodidact' thing, then a Masters degree might help provide the focus and structure you need to succeed at learning these fields. Your financial incentives certainly make this an appealing option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, completely ignorant of the standards and expectations of American CS masters, an MS.c in CS should be deeply focused on an area, taking you &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;close to the edge of human knowledge&lt;/a&gt;. Who knows, you could produce something novel, but in your area, at the end of a Masters you should know where the boundaries lie. For me, this means that course based Master's programs that are broadly scoped aren't as valuable as a deeply focused Masters, be it course or thesis based. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T19:05:04.957" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T19:05:04.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13265" CreationDate="2013-10-08T21:42:49.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me throw in a few points in addition to @Peter Janssons great answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &quot;tools&quot; that help with some of your concerns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that the reviewers do not lose their objectivity, for instance when looking at a manuscript of a competitor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, most journals I know not only ask for suggested reviewers, but you can also ask that particular persons are not asked to review your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The journals I know have at least 2, usually 3 reviews. So a firm &quot;reject&quot; means that several reviewers did agree that the paper is bad. While one may have a biased opinion, with 3 rejects it is maybe time to stop and think whether the paper really is good or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bias in peer-review is one thing, but variance is another. And, from my experience, variance is high. IIRC there are studies about marks on texts by different school teachers which were found to vary between good and barely passed for one and the same text. My guess is that peer review is similar. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd prefer if peer-reviews were done openly (both sides named, some journals do, though none in my field) as opposed to one side more-or-less blind.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that grants/prizes/titles are actually given to the better projects/people from the perspective of the greater good, and not based on how well-connected the applicants are? (after all such committees need to have or be composed of other researchers, who else is going to be able to judge the impact and importance of cutting edge research than other researchers?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is fundamentally impossible, because that would imply that it is possible to know which project will be a good project beforehand*. This may be possible for very applied projects, but those would typically be industry projects, not basic research.&#xA;The &quot;interesting&quot; projects always imply a risk that the thing doesn't work out, no solution is found. Otherwise no research would be needed on the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the huge importance of projects is clear only years (or even decades) after they are finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* On the other hand, I think it is possible to find out in advance that a project is poorly designed, so it should not be funded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that there's no collusion between high-profile PIs and editors of &quot;high-impact&quot; journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that can happen. Corruption exists, and I don't think science is fundamentally different from other fields of human professions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(see below for my thoughts on how to deal with that)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that academics (at varying stages of their career) do not consider/prioritize &quot;pushing up&quot; the numbers (e.g. &quot;h-index&quot; or &quot;impact factor&quot; etc) when they set out with their research projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a way we cannot, and IMHO it &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to be expected that scientists are intellectually quite able to understand how to optimize a given measure. Thus, the assumption that e.g. bibliometric measures do not influence the measured system will not hold. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether they actually do it, is another question. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is one very important point: the papers are not kept secretly, you can read them. As a scientist, you can, should and do judge the quality of the papers. IMHO peer review does not allow you to switch off your brain when reading paper - I think peer review is meant to be a sieve that gets the &quot;failed&quot; papers out of the system - while what I want to read are not &quot;barely passed&quot; but &quot;excellent&quot; papers. However, there is a tradeoff, and if you push up the rigour of peer review you'll inevitably throw out also good papers, or papers whose importance will become apparent only later on. That is, too strict peer-review may pose a restriction on the publishing system that disfavors really new ideas, and allows to pass only predictable results.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, you won't be able to help realizing who publishes by salami-slicing and who publishes lots of studies with e.g. very low numbers of patients, poorly designed experiments, and OTOH, which groups take the effort to get meaningful numbers of patients, publish on relevant controls, do their homework validating their findings and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also the authors are of a paper are named clearly. And taking together your judgemen of the quality of papers and maybe some citation network tool, you can get an idea  who optimizes e.g. citations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attending conferences and workshops and talking to people you'll get to know people personally so you can judge their character. In addition, you'll hear a fair amount not only of &quot;rumours&quot; and &quot;stories&quot; which also tell about people.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I think this works as &quot;real life&quot; does: how do you know a company is honest you consider dealing with? You put some advance trust in them, and you use your judgment, including what you hear by your peers about them: e.g. were they recommended by someone you consider reliable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T21:42:49.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13299" CreationDate="2013-10-08T21:46:41.750" Score="26" ViewCount="27884" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the cover letter of an application to an academic job, should we write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Search Committee Members, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor A, Chair of the Search Committee Members,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor A, Chair of the department&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case we don't know who the chair of the Search Committee is, should we write the department to ask?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8480" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T12:19:04.787" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T08:13:09.787" Title="Who to address on the cover letter?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13286" CreationDate="2013-10-08T21:58:22.460" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advertisement usually specifies to whom the application should be sent. In such cases, use the name that's listed in the advertisement. If no name is given, then I would vote for the first option, as it is the most inclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T21:58:22.460" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-09T00:52:02.937" Score="11" ViewCount="2925" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking to apply to PhD programs in math. I want to study mathematical logic. So I need programs that have mathematicians who do research in this area. I've searched the internet, the results were not satisfactory. The only list I've found find is &lt;a href=&quot;http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/logic-rankings&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this list contains only 9 schools (which are very difficult to get into!). I was wondering if anybody can guide me to some longer lists of schools and PhD programs that have expert(s) in mathematical logic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8606" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T19:25:41.843" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T19:25:41.843" Title="How to find out which math departments have a research group in mathematical logic?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13289" CreationDate="2013-10-09T04:26:27.993" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess some logician is me. I don't know of any list of schools that have programs in logic, and it would be hard to keep such a list anywhere close to comprehensive---very few schools have more than one or two people in mathematical logic, so the list would change frequently based on whose hired/moved/retired recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steffen Lempp keeps a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.wisc.edu/~lempp/main.html#other&quot;&gt;list of logicians&lt;/a&gt; which, while not comprehensive, is pretty large, so the institutions those people are at is a good place to start.  Another idea is looking at whose spoke at recent logic conferences (for instance, the program for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aslonline.org/files/AnnualMeeting2013Program.pdf&quot;&gt;this year's&lt;/a&gt; ASL annual meeting, or the European equivalent, the Logic Colloquium).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always, of course, if you know any faculty who are familiar with your interests (not necessarily logicians themselves), they may be able to point you towards some schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that there's no school with anything like a &quot;generic&quot; logic program---anywhere you go, your specialization within the field will be limited by whose present there. You likely have some narrower idea than generic logic that you're most interested in, so looking for people working in that area (or who've done work you think is interesting) is a good way to find schools. (You shouldn't obsess about this, though; you don't have to work in exactly the same area as your advisor anyway, and your interests are likely to shift at least a little over time.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T04:26:27.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-09T05:26:43.647" Score="8" ViewCount="2426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international student. I have been in a PhD program in the US for 1 year and this is my second. My advisor informed me earlier this year that he is moving to another lower-ranked school. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1169/how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway&quot;&gt;How to cope when PhD advisor quits midway&lt;/a&gt; deals with this issue. This is not what this question is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been doing a lot of research and have been overwhelmed with coursework. By the time I finish my coursework, I'll be in my third year already. I also find that my advisor's work (after having spent some time with his group) does not interest me and is very different from what I thought I would be doing. I do research in a very specialized area. My advisor does work in a different area but is interested in how what I'm doing can be applied to what he's doing. However, we disagree on methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also not interested in research/teaching as a career and originally decided to do a PhD to gain more knowledge/training in this very specialized area that is not available in industry. My original plan was to finish my PhD and get a job. However, my advisor's move is making me reconsider this plan. Even though my advisor is moving, he will still advise me remotely until I satisfy my coursework requirements (and then I could move as a visiting student at this point). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By the end of the second year, I can quit my PhD and get a MSc but I see the following issues&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I handle this on my resume? Do I say that I'm doing a PhD or that I'm doing a MSc?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I say I'm doing a PhD, how do I explain not getting it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I say I'm doing a MSc, does that violate an F1 student visa?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I handle my relationship with my advisor? At what point should I announce my plan to quit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will quitting reduce my chances of getting a job? If I say I'm doing a MSc, then chances are my employer will not seek a recommendation from my advisor but if I say I'm doing a PhD and decided to quit, then chances are my employer will do that and will seek an explanation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a good idea to get an internship this summer before quitting for a full-time position?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oct 9&lt;/strong&gt; If you have an answer to only one or a few of these issues and not the others, please consider posting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T15:31:33.473" Title="Advisor is moving. Issues with quitting PhD and settling for a MSc" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13295" CreationDate="2013-10-09T07:11:07.490" Score="8" ViewCount="3624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in my last year of an undergraduate degree in pure maths, doing my thesis on probabilistic combinatorics. In Australia (at least at my university), Hungarian-style combinatorics is classified as &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently thinking about PhDs and where to apply. One thing that I've noticed is that combinatorics is often classified under &amp;quot;applied maths&amp;quot; (for example, this is the case at MIT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important reason I'd consider pursuing a PhD at an American university is for the coursework component -- I'd like to broadly improve my foundational understanding of mathematics, and I like the possibility of changing my area of focus after deeper exposure to different areas of mathematics. However, I have comparatively little interest in applied mathematics coursework (other than combinatorics, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a submitted paper in combinatorics, my undergraduate thesis will be in combinatorics, and by far my strongest reference will be from a combinatorialist. Other than my supervisor, my strongest potential references would come from areas that everyone seems to agree are &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot;. The higher-level classes in my transcript will also be almost entirely &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For American universities which have both a pure and an applied math program, which one does one typically choose to study combinatorics? Is it flexible? With a cursory search, I wasn't able to find a university quite so explicit about it as MIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For universities that classify combinatorics as &amp;quot;applied&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given my situation, would my application be stronger to pure or applied maths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can one do a PhD in pure mathematics with the (tentative) intention for the research component to actually be &amp;quot;applied&amp;quot; (combinatorics)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can one do a PhD in applied mathematics but actually take mostly pure coursework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6282" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T14:44:55.743" Title="Pure vs Applied maths, and combinatorics, in American universities" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13293" CreationDate="2013-10-09T08:52:48.617" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you come here for &quot;general advice&quot;, I am afraid you'll be disappointed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should choose based on the people there. For each school you apply to, look through both the applied and pure departments and see where the mathematicians who work in combinatorics fit in. Most large research universities will list their faculty by research interest, or have dedicated research group webpages. For example, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/faculty-research&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; you probably do not want to apply to Princeton's pure math program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that many schools do not, at least on the graduate admission level, differentiate so strictly about going into applied versus pure mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For choosing the school, since you already have research experience, you should look up articles which you find interesting and find out where those authors currently reside.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the school. If a school has no combinatorialist in its pure maths department, and you apply there with an intention of studying combinatorics, your chance of admission is practically 0. Similarly in reverse if all the combinatorics is done in the pure maths department for the school you are applying to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;one size fits all&quot; solution. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This again depends on the school. Some schools allow it, some schools don't. In many departments it is expected that you find an advisor from within the department and do your dissertation research on a subject that your advisor is interested in and/or an expert on. In other departments more leeway are given to students interested in more interdisciplinary subjects to be jointly advised by two advisors (possibly from different departments with different expertise). But remember, if you are going for a PhD you will need to find an advisor in any case. Shoehorning yourself into a situation where it maybe difficult to find a professor in your own department who is willing to advise you is, in my view, generally not recommended. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This again depends on the individual policies for the schools. Some departments have very strict requirements on what the students must learn for their comprehensive exams; some, not so much. Most schools with graduate programs have very clearly written information on their websites about what is expected in their degree plans. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seas.harvard.edu/audiences/prospective-graduates/what&quot;&gt;here's Harvard's version for the Applied Maths degree&lt;/a&gt;, though it seems they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seas.harvard.edu/student-affairs/academic-policies/phd-model-programs#applied-math&quot;&gt;a little bit short on the exact details&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only &quot;general advice&quot; I can give is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't apply to graduate schools blindly, especially since you have a confirmed research interest. Do your homework and find the experts with whom you would like to study, and apply to study with them. Write to them in advance to confirm that they are interested in taking on students, and possibly solicit advice about other possible individuals if they are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good research school may not be strong in the field of research you want to do. Always, always check before applying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T08:52:48.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13298" CreationDate="2013-10-09T14:03:53.633" Score="4" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student at State University of New York. My math professor gives scantron exams which consist of true/false questions for calculus and graph theory courses. Each question presents a problem and a solution, and all I have to do is just mark it right or wrong (by doing calculations on a separate sheet that won't be collected). I'm a transfer student, so I've seen how real math exams are written. The first time I saw it I was quite surprised.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this kind of testing typical for math courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: after taking 2 exams this week, one in graph theory and one in calculus 3, I can say with certainty that scantron exams are useless. Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In calculus 3 I got 11 correct answers out of 12, and I was guessing 5 questions. Together with the curving that my professor did, I got 95. I didn't know the answers for almost half of the exam, and yet I got an A!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In graph theory I got 19 correct answers out of 25, and I was guessing about third of the questions. After curving, I got 86.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8607" LastEditorDisplayName="user8607" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T00:01:48.733" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T15:48:24.990" Title="Scantron Tests For Math Courses" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13297" CreationDate="2013-10-09T14:27:44.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multiple choice exams certainly do get used in math, by many people and at many places. (At the university I'm at, we use them for the calculus sequence, and then move to short answer exams after.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T14:27:44.830" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13286" CreationDate="2013-10-09T14:32:00.367" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I address all cover letters, letters of rec, etc. &quot;Dear Committee Members:&quot; Don't waste your time addressing it to an individual.  The only thing you can achieve by doing that is embarrassing yourself and giving the search committee the chance to have a good laugh at your expense.  If you do it correctly, it doesn't actually achieve anything; why give yourself one more thing to stress about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T14:32:00.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13293" CreationDate="2013-10-09T14:44:55.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are overgeneralizing from an example here; the placement of combinatorics in applied math at MIT is due to ancient historical department politics, and regarded as an amusing quirk by those of us educated at other schools.  While I completely agree with Willie's answer that you should carefully research schools you want to attend, at most schools combinatorics is regarded as a perfectly fine branch of pure mathematics.  If you want to do the pure math coursework, and you see yourself as wanting to do pure mathematics, then probably you should just apply for the pure math programs at places with some strong combinatorialists (Berkeley, Penn, Davis, San Diego, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T14:44:55.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13291" CreationDate="2013-10-10T03:44:43.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honesty is the best policy. It means you should not lie. It does not mean you must say everything about yourself on your resume. For example, you do not need to say where you attended high school on the resume. If you do not have PhD, do not say you have it. If you have MSc, say you have it. You do not need to say you were doing PhD &lt;strong&gt;unless&lt;/strong&gt; they ask you that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If and when they ask you whether you were doing PhD, you should tell the truth with brief explanation why you did not get it. This will hurt your chance getting an academic job. Most industry people would not care that much. They are more concerned with your ability to make money. However, you probably will not get an industry job if PhD is part of job requirement.(Some companies do want PhD only)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to ask the international student office at your school or immigration office to see the requirement for F-1 visa. They are the authority to answer that question. We are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internship is always helpful. You gain experience which you can put on the resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T04:56:18.123" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T04:56:18.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T05:14:20.427" Score="8" ViewCount="1884" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a web developer reasonably proficient in PHP and front-end development. I had completed my Masters (by coursework) more than 6 years ago and have been working as a web developer. My Masters' grades weren't very good (pass in average with few distinctions and credits). When I did my Masters, rather than focusing in one area, I was pretty much experimenting with different subjects such as natural language processing, multimedia, visual info processing, distributed programming, etc 'cause I wasn't too sure what direction to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I contacted few research supervisors after completing my Masters but didn't hear anything positive from them. Then I pretty much gave up and started pursuing career and moved into web development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how to go into research now and whether it is even possible for me. How do I prepare myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8934" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:09:29.913" Title="Research advice needed: How to make a move from web development to PhD research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13308" CreationDate="2013-10-10T05:18:05.320" Score="17" ViewCount="2461" Body="&lt;p&gt;Naturally I would say &quot;of course&quot;, but my current situation makes me doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my paper I'm &lt;em&gt;briefly&lt;/em&gt; covering various alternative cryptographic constructions. I am (of course) familiar with all of them, but I have not (nor have the time to) read the full papers I'm actually referencing. The reason for this is that they contain lengthy specifications complemented with cryptanalysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in doubt whether it's acceptable to reference said papers without having actually read them. Is it acceptable to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5965" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T16:35:50.010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T16:35:50.010" Title="When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13305" CreationDate="2013-10-10T05:31:13.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my take. This is not high school and nobody is going to check whether you've read the papers. The idea is to provide references for the readers for further research not to show that you've read all the literature. Naturally, of course, you don't want to cite a paper that has nothing to do with the subject at hand so you need to have a grasp on its content but nobody expects you to be an expert on every detail in the 100 publications that you reference. Sometimes I only read an abstract to decide if I want to reference the paper or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8936" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T05:31:13.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13305" CreationDate="2013-10-10T06:02:37.033" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer your question by means of an example. In my on-going research I am using a notion called &quot;Schlichting completion&quot; which is originated from a paper written in German by a mathematician called Schlichting. I can't read German, but using a dictionary, I've found some clues about this notion in his paper. So I cited this paper, even though I have only read about one page of it. The reason is sometimes we have to cite a paper, because some fundamental notion has originated from that paper and we have to give credit to the person who invented that notion. Other reasons for citing papers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have a nice review of the subject and/or contain relatively a comprehensive list of references related to the work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have done some parallel or complementary works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have some results which are used in my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They contain reasons which motivate my work. For example, they ask or suggest a problem which is addressed in my work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They give more examples, applications and/or ideas related to my work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you do not have to read all contents of a paper before citing it. But make sure it is relevant, useful, some how necessary, interesting and/or important paper with respect to the work you are presenting in your paper. As a final remark, it is always nice to point out where in the paper you are citing is related to the discussion, for example specify the theorem number, the page number, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T06:02:37.033" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13304" CreationDate="2013-10-10T08:37:52.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few suggestions (not necessarily in this order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read up on the latest research in your area(s) of expertise and interest. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Narrow the research interests down to a few and make contact with the academics involved - make contact with them, asking good questions about their research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact the admissions offices of your selected universities, explain the situation truthfully - put an emphasis on the experience you have gained through your employment, which is now an area of expertise, despite your masters going in many directions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In your readings, you should be able to find an area that is in need of more research, where something new can be contributed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, your situation is different than it was when you completed your Masters, you have several years of specialised work experience behind you now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T08:37:52.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13314" CreationDate="2013-10-10T09:32:53.530" Score="2" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;What scores are generally expected &lt;em&gt;per section&lt;/em&gt; (AW/quantitative/verbal) to get my applications evaluated in top/good grad schools?&#xA;Also, would achieving even better scores be a &quot;plus&quot; or it won't matter at all/that much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8940" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T10:58:25.193" Title="GRE scores per section and their importance for PhD admissions in CS/E.Engineering" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13313" CreationDate="2013-10-10T10:58:25.193" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My top-10 CS department does not require GRE scores at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For applicants that send them in anyway, the only scores that provide useful information are low scores.  Anything below about the 50th percentile is a red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are aiming at the wrong target.  Top grad schools are looking for strong evidence of promise as an independent researcher.  Test scores do not provide that evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T10:58:25.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13304" CreationDate="2013-10-10T12:35:00.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you don't mention, and I'm quite confused about, is what your PhD would actually be in. Web development and php, while important and valuable skills, do not prepare you for any sort of research I can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of this, 6+ years is a long time to have been out of a field. Natural language processing, visual info processing and distributed programming have moved on &lt;strong&gt;tremendously&lt;/strong&gt; in that time. Unless you've been doing something day to day which keeps you up to date with the cutting edge, you're going to be very behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research isn't about getting grades - it's about being able to publish work that is useful to others. When you applied before, all people had to judge your potential to achieve this was your (average) grades. Now though, you've been out in the wild for a few years doing stuff. If you can present things you've done which will convince a potential supervisor that you can come up with novel solutions of a quality high enough to get into a journal, then you've got a shot at it. My (wild) guess would be you should aim for a lab that does applied stuff rather than theoretical stuff, where your prior day to day coding experience might shine through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~~~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, have you considered applying to get chartered status in your field rather than a doctorate? It's challenging to get so generally highly thought of (this varies country to country and profession to profession though) and more closely based on industrial experience. If you have six years of that under your belt, along with a relevant masters degree, then you may be well on the way already. The yearly fees once you have it can be expensive, but worth checking out if you haven't already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T12:35:00.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13317" CreationDate="2013-10-10T13:01:34.317" Score="9" ViewCount="9016" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend has made some nice slides that I could reuse (similar topics). He sent me the slides and commented that if I use them and could cite him that would be nice, I asked him how should I cite the slides but he said that whatever suits better to me he said &quot;Just add my surname in some place where it's not very intrusive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if he doesn't care or he doesn't want to be too picky, but I'd like to cite him, to each one his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, they are related to a paper (but not in the paper) and to his thesis, where they could be as a diagram but definitively not animated. The slides (as such) may be available at some URL, he said they will be but they are not available yet (so I don't have the URL yet). If citing by the URL I guess I could use this: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/how-to-cite-a-website-url&quot;&gt;How to cite a website URL?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I cite slides? If yes, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T10:34:15.573" Title="How should I cite presentation slides?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13316" CreationDate="2013-10-10T13:12:58.000" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two practical purposes to scholarly citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledging scientific contribution of others, the borrowing of ideas (mainly) and content (sometimes, in the form of quotes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helping people find relevant content if they want to read it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bookkeeping, for scientometric/bibliometric purposes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, you cannot fulfill #2 and #3, because your friend's slides are not available for others to read, and even if they were, random documents on the internet are not really used for bibliometric purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you want a solution that will achieve #1, i.e. make sure his contributions are recognized by people who will read your slides. To do so, you don't need to give your citation any specific format. I suggest you simply write, at the bottom of slides you borrowed from him:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Slide courtesy of John Doe&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Slide modified from John Doe, with permission&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you can thank him in your acknowledgements at the end of your talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:12:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13305" CreationDate="2013-10-10T15:51:38.873" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you reference a paper within whatever your context may be, you are possibly doing several things. First, you may make claims and use other authors names and reputation in support. Second, you may take &quot;facts&quot; from a paper and propagate these facts through yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing wrong with that? Not generally. But, what happens if a paper makes a claim that is not at all well supported by the study? You run the risk of propagating errors so that when somebody uses your paper as a reference the original paper is still further away and after a few such iterations the source may be completely forgotten. There are many instances where either errors have been propagated or where &quot;truths&quot; have slowly been misquoted so that they turn into errors. This is clearly not what we want in our papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore say that one needs to (critically) read a paper enough to make oneself sure that the facts can be trusted and that no misinterpretation has occurred in the paper to be referenced or earlier. Hence relying on, for example, other authors references is a very weak link in the chain. One has to try to back-trace vital information as much as possible. Misunderstandings may not necessarily be born out of malice but just by oversight, but the end result is still the same. To therefore, for example, simply gloss over the abstract and use whatever seems to support some idea or vice versa is far from satisfactory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T15:51:38.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T16:36:25.983" Score="25" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on an application where we have tried two alternative methods. Both methods are used for the same purpose, but the first one had several problems. Despite getting results we had to look for another method that solved those problems to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I mention the rejected method along with the accepted method in a research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T23:30:55.830" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T09:48:21.707" Title="Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13319" CreationDate="2013-10-10T16:42:30.077" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see any reason not to mention what could be labelled &quot;negative results&quot;. If you have tried a method and it failed there can be two reasons, either the choice of method was bad (which is likely a trivial unpublishable result) or the method is in some way not appropriate due to reasons not before understood. In the latter case, there are clear advantages to convey this result to others. This may spawn new research or simply help others avoid using the method. Hopefully you will be able to provide deeper insights into why things did not work out as you first thought. In essence, anything that progresses our understanding is worth bringing forth in a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T16:42:30.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13319" CreationDate="2013-10-10T18:37:20.227" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, especially if most people &lt;strong&gt;would expect the method to work&lt;/strong&gt;, but you can clearly describe why it does not work. It has to be done carefully though, because the focus should be on actual results, not on failed methods (this is not a negative result, it's really a failed attempt to get any result).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the &lt;strong&gt;best place to put this&lt;/strong&gt; is the introduction. After you state your problem, say which method one would try in a first step, then argue why it doesn't work, and then present you approach to the problem. This approach works especially well if someone suggested the method as a feasible approach to your problem, and you cite that in your introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;keep it short&lt;/strong&gt;: I would think that two to three sentences should be sufficient to describe it. If the failed method is so little known in your field that it requires careful explanation, it's probably not worth being mentioned at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T18:37:20.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13275" CreationDate="2013-10-10T18:45:52.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formally, they &lt;strong&gt;don't take a title&lt;/strong&gt; before the university awards it, and the awarding is usually done by handing out a certificate stating the title (independent of whether that involves a ceremony or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In informal situations, it's nice to address them with the title because they are usually happy and proud of their accomplishment, and what remains to be done before they actually get the title is more or less a mere formality. But you shouldn't put any doctoral title on name tags, staff directories, or anything formal like that before they actually get the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T18:45:52.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2013-10-10T18:47:58.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the time and ability to - start a business in your disipline! I know this is a hard task but I managed to set at home accountancy and consulting business while a undergraduate (Accounting major and also a Computer Science). You can recruit people to work on commission for you, thus creating money for themselves and you! I have always been a fan of consulting and recruitment (headhunting) business start ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8946" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T18:47:58.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13325" CreationDate="2013-10-10T19:21:21.003" Score="4" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a new data structure, and I intend to submit a paper about it to an ACM conference later this year. However, in writing the paper, I realize there is no specific &quot;question&quot; the research answers. I was simply curious if such a structure could be created. Can I simply write the paper, describe the structure and how it works, and then give a pseudocode example and perhaps comparisons to other data structures? The structure has some rather interesting properties, and I can see specific applications for it in statistical analysis. But beyond that, as far as I can tell, it's just a neat structure with some weird properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T23:59:14.077" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T23:59:14.077" Title="Can I publish a paper that doesn't have a specific question to answer?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;publishability&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13324" CreationDate="2013-10-10T19:42:09.903" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you investigate those interesting properties further and then have a paper along the lines of &quot;this structure has this useful property, more-so (or less-so) than these other structures.&quot; That is justify why someone would actually use this structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it from the editors' point of view. Why should this paper be published? If you can't provide an answer with a straight face then maybe you should wait until there is a purpose for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T19:42:09.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T21:25:26.457" Score="13" ViewCount="3509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master student, my master's background is about IT, signal processing, and Telecommunications. It's a &quot;research master&quot;, which means that we're trained more to do research than be an IT engineers/specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made my choice because I want to do research, but It is also important for me to work after my masters graduation, some of my professors always say that it's very difficult, even impossible to do those two things together. So I'd like some more advice. Here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it practically possible to do research and work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a good idea to work for a year or two after my masters, and start a PhD after that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of internships can I do, and how long should they be, so I can apply to IT companies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I've some background ans skills in Java technologies, software design, web development, and basic knowledge in networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8813" LastEditorUserId="13789" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T08:30:12.673" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T19:52:12.590" Title="Can I work as a software engineer and be a PhD student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13331" CreationDate="2013-10-10T21:30:01.837" Score="2" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for post-docs and for one of them, I should provide the &quot;category&quot; or degree/educational establishment where I have the choice between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;University degree&#xA;Postgraduate&#xA;PhD&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: what is the right category of a Master 2 Research (in Europe) ? &#xA;Is it a University degree or a Postgraduate degree ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8457" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T23:34:04.913" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T23:57:24.317" Title="Is a Master 2 Research (Europe) a University or Postgraduate Degree?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T23:47:06.367" Score="29" ViewCount="6619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there already exists a software/service that allows to build a tree of references/citing articles starting from a selected paper &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt;. For example paper &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt; has a list of references, call it &lt;code&gt;bibliography[X]&lt;/code&gt;. This list of references is usually presented in the journal's webpage and, in fortunate cases, the list is also accessible by cross-reference. The idea is then to go to all the papers &lt;code&gt;Y&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;code&gt;bibliography[X]&lt;/code&gt; and repeat the process for the papers in each &lt;code&gt;bibliography[Y]&lt;/code&gt; up to some depth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, we could also look at the citing articles of &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt;, which is also displayed in the journal's webpage as well as in other resources, e.g. Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way the tree of references/citing articles of &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt; up to some depth can be obtained and plotted in a nice graphical framework and perhaps display relevant information of the vertices of the tree like title, doi, etc. In my opinion this would be a very nice and efficient way of discovering new papers related to some paper, e.g. a seminal paper (citing articles tree) or to look into the history of a subject (references tree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for something like that for some time but so far nothing. I think Microsoft Academic Search would have the potential to do this by using the same framework they use for the Co-author path. Also there is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/jabrefprrvp/&quot;&gt;project&lt;/a&gt; for JabRef but it is not what I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/ase/#video&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; would be perfect but unfortunately it is not available to the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5894" LastEditorUserId="5894" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T18:08:34.537" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T16:03:53.200" Title="Map (tree) of citations/references" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13347" CreationDate="2013-10-10T23:55:40.240" Score="5" ViewCount="3738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask about the possibility of getting a paid PhD position in Germany.&#xA; I am going to defend my thesis in Physics after a few days and I am thinking of applying for a PhD.&#xA;My specialization is in nano-science and surface physics.&#xA;The average of my Master's degree will be at most 2.7, which is between good and satisfactory.&#xA;Does the average play a pivotal rule ? Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8950" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T16:11:10.247" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T16:11:10.247" Title="How difficult is it to get a paid PhD studentship in physics in Germany?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13328" CreationDate="2013-10-10T23:57:24.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I would recommend you to confirm, normally a 'university degree' is an undergraduate degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A postgraduate could be a postgraduate certificate, postgraduate diploma, or a postgraduate degree (which is a master degree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you know what a PhD is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, as master is a postgraduate (the middle of your three choices).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems a little strange because normally post-docs are &lt;strong&gt;post&lt;/strong&gt; (after) &lt;strong&gt;doctorate&lt;/strong&gt; (PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T23:57:24.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13324" CreationDate="2013-10-11T00:00:51.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can see some useful applications then I think you have your question: What is the best data structure in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;____&lt;/strong&gt; (situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not the best data structure in any situation then perhaps it is better to improve it so that it does something important better than anything else that is out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T00:00:51.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13316" CreationDate="2013-10-11T02:37:11.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In practice, what I've often seen is to just stick in a footnote saying &quot;slide from [name]&quot; or something similar. To do otherwise could be considered plagiarism. Admittedly, people are not picky about this with slides the way they are with papers; it seems to be tacitly accepted sometimes to borrow figures or entire slides without always acknowledging the source, but still, unless you want to be the kind of person who doesn't care about academic integrity, I think you should strive to credit the sources of your content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something more formal, you could have your friend upload his slides to &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot;&gt;figshare&lt;/a&gt;, which will archive them and allow him to claim a DOI. You can then use that DOI for a more standard citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T02:37:11.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13330" CreationDate="2013-10-11T06:44:14.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, most PhD positions are paid. In physics, you would typically get a half to three quarters full-time equivalent position as a university employee. I don't think it's particularly difficult to get such a position, if you have the right qualification for it. This will also depend on the place where you got your Master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the average play a pivotal rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of professors that I know do care for good grades. And many university regulations ask for at least a good degree for admission as a PhD student (in my place, that translates to 2.5 or better, though there's a tolerance for students from abroad to take care of differences in the grading systems). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to look for position being announced through for example in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academics.de&quot;&gt;http://www.academics.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drarbeit.de&quot;&gt;http://www.drarbeit.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and apply or get in contact with the person there to see how far you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also try to use your personal network: Ask your supervisors whether they know good labs to apply to, or whether they could even throw in a word for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T06:44:14.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13324" CreationDate="2013-10-11T06:57:00.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;theoretical&quot; papers are welcome! Just make sure to clearly present your contributions to the field, even if they are incremental. Ex: place a table with other related structures and show that your data structure improves on some operation, (retrieval, insertion, or whatever operations you have) operation on which other structures have a higher O(). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State your advantages clear in the discussions section but mention them in abstract, introduction and conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please make sure that your mathematical argument on why you get the specific O() is sound! &#xA;It also could be helpful to collect some experimental data with your proposed structures and current &quot;state of the art&quot;. The experiments doesn't need to work on some real problem. It is enough if you can generate some data having a distribution similar to what you might encounter in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submit it and remember, reviewers are always right :(&#xA;Don't give up if you get rejected, try a conference, or another journal instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8955" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T06:57:00.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13330" CreationDate="2013-10-11T07:51:15.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience (just started a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in Hannover), it is not difficult. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13335/8164&quot;&gt;@silvado&lt;/a&gt; mentions, most Ph.D. positions are paid with about 75 % equivalent of a university employee (corresponding to about 1500-1600 EUR after tax per month). You can look at the Internet for open positions or try and contact group leaders that you would like to work with (possibly after a consultation with your current supervisor). The latter, however, might require some time as the professor will need to find funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding grades, some professors might care. In my case, that was not the case and only my research results (i.e., my master thesis) were important. Nevertheless, that is just a single experience and it might be different elsewhere. Anyway, I guess you can always ask about this and, if you can reasonably explain why your grades are not better, this might not be a serious issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T07:51:15.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13319" CreationDate="2013-10-11T09:09:22.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly I will qualify this by declaring that I am not strictly an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have, however, overseen research for a number of years.  This has been government-private partnership industrial research that has been done under full scale production processes of construction - perhaps the largest contiguous experimental research work ever undertaken in hot and tropical climates.  This was a 20+ year project involving a number of programmes - some 120,000 data elements and a team of analysts to PhD level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, it is important that this information be published, presented and disseminated - otherwise it is of no value.  What is paramount in this process is the benefit that this information and message can give to the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all each and every statement must be supported by logic and the data.  Try to let the data speak for itself.  Try not to wander into speculative territory - some things cannot be explained.  And the reader must have enough information to make their own informed decision.  We take the view that the researcher has a lot of power - the power to persuade and change an audience and industry to new and better ways.  This is research in action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings us to the question posed. For the audience to make an informed decision, it is essential to report on aspects that did not turn out as expected.  Often we learn more from things that did not work than from those that did.  For example, we established a procedure to carry out full scale temperature monitoring in one experiment, but found, to our surprise, that we still encountered significant ambient (environmental) effects, which prompted us to redesign the experiment until this phenomenon was effectively eliminated.  This type of information, to your audience, is quite valuable.  It also will build more confidence in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it should not be something that one dwells on.  Address it, and move on to more important things.  Our work tends to go to practitioners, whereas yours may go to other academics.  In this situation speculation, although I personally stay away it, may be warranted because it may lead you to new research avenues.  These are matters your supervisor or associates will better understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, research is about objectively seeking the truth - truth, like perfection, being something we may approach but never reach - with successes and failures along the way. Research is amongst the highest of human endeavours, in my view.  Try to let your work and your writing convey these principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8943" LastEditorUserId="8943" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T09:48:21.707" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T09:48:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13267" CreationDate="2013-10-11T09:40:40.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, there might have been an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/50690/20131009/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;internal dispute behind Nobel physics delay&lt;/a&gt;, on the possibility of including the CERN as a recipient. However, according to this article, some members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science hint that it was not possible with the current rules: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It was discussed a lot. But we must follow the (Nobel’s) will as I see it. There is nothing in it about institutions so in that way the decision was dead simple,” said Hans Ryde, professor of physics at Lund University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The chairman of the prize committee, Lars Brink, defended the decision, saying it was a “theoretical prize”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Research is changing. If you go back a hundred years it was about a single person doing experiments and making discoveries. And today it’s 6,000 or so people – a sort of collegial research situation,” said Academy member Per Carlson, professor of elementary particle physics at the Royal Institute of Technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I don’t know if the Academy will open up the possibility to give the prize to organizations in the future – it’s a possibility,” he suggested. “In my view it should be possible.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even though a Nobel Prize can be awarded to an organization, it seems that the Royal Swedish Academy of Science does not consider this possibility yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T08:42:24.823" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T08:42:24.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-11T13:03:56.937" Score="9" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This question is one of three correlated questions: How should I do it? &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13367/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-and-h&quot;&gt;(second part)&lt;/a&gt;, What are the downsides? &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13368/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-what&quot;&gt;(third part)&lt;/a&gt;.This is the &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; part)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed &lt;strong&gt;interesting enough&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was &lt;strong&gt;not for the projects&lt;/strong&gt; that were proposed to me, but in a &lt;strong&gt;different area&lt;/strong&gt;. I would like to do research in &lt;em&gt;this area&lt;/em&gt; but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I try to do a project in that area, even though my professors&#xA;aren’t doing research in that particular topic (some do research in a close field) or choose one of the projects that were proposed to me?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will any professor be able to help/guide me through the project,&#xA;even if he is not doing research in this topic exactly? (I will ask&#xA;them if they are capable of helping me, but I want to know, how much&#xA;can someone help me if he is in the same field but I am doing&#xA;something different than his projects)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, &lt;em&gt;I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T11:31:59.247" Title="Is it a good practice to choose my undergraduate research topic on my own? Can I get enough help?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-11T13:27:56.213" Score="3" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;In german computer science it is quite common to use citations like &lt;code&gt;[HoBo12]&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;[HoBo12, pp.1-4]&lt;/code&gt; for say, &lt;code&gt;Hoy, Jane; Boy, John 2010: The great story.&lt;/code&gt; The rules for composing this label depend on the amount of authors and their order. Seemingly, this is defined in DIN5015-2 and ISO690, but the wikipedia page only talks about the bibliography and not about the in text references. Weirdly, there is a Zotero style named DIN1505-2 which kind of does that, but still seems to have a few bugs or the official definition (which I can't find talking about this topic) thinks that weird things are nice e.g. &lt;code&gt;[HoBo12, pp.1-2, WVDE13, p.2]&lt;/code&gt; (notice that a ; would be nicer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this style is quite nice and would like to use it for an English text. Therefore I would like to choose an accepted style from an english speaking nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Are there any other styles in that form (maybe even defined in a Zotero CSL-format)? I still think it looks a bit big with the additional page information. Something like this would be perfect &lt;code&gt;[HoBo12:1-2; WVDE13:2]&lt;/code&gt;. Is this an offical style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="8549" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T14:49:08.153" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:15:42.857" Title="Label based in text citation" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13178" CreationDate="2013-10-11T14:38:11.417" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)&lt;/strong&gt; Psychologists on Psychologists:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Helmreich, Robert L.; Spence, Janet T.; Beane, William E.; Lucker, G. William; Matthews, Karen A. (1980), &quot;Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, Vol 39(5), Nov 1980, 896-908.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ABSTRACT&lt;/strong&gt;: Examined personality, demographic characteristics, publication rate, and citations to published work in a sample of 141 male and 55 female academic psychologists. Reputational rankings of their graduate schools and current institutions were significantly related to citations, as were components of achievement motivation. Mastery and work needs were positively related to citations, whereas competitiveness was negatively associated with the criterion. Large sex differences were found in citations, with men receiving significantly more recognition and producing at a higher rate. A model of attainment in psychology is proposed, and possible explanations for the differential attainment of the sexes are explored. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2)&lt;/strong&gt; A more general review paper that includes a discussion and literature on psychological factors:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Fox, M. F. (1983). &quot;Publication productivity among scientists: A critical review&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Social Studies of Science&lt;/em&gt;, 13(2), 285-305.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;available at&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/68920/10.1177_030631283013002005.pdf&quot;&gt;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/68920/10.1177_030631283013002005.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8966" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T12:49:03.837" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T12:49:03.837" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13390" CreationDate="2013-10-11T14:42:51.577" Score="2" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have developed an Internet application that I need people to run across the Internet to collect statistics to see how well the program works.  So far, I have used LinkedIn to reach out to my friends from my university and I started an open group.  I also have a Git page where the program can be downloaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&amp;amp;gid=6518497&amp;amp;trk=groups_guest_most_popular-h-logo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&amp;amp;gid=6518497&amp;amp;trk=groups_guest_most_popular-h-logo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the participation is going to be what I would like, so I need a way to find more users willing to run the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how to reach others in academia or elsewhere on a broader level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8960" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T03:45:02.557" Title="Any ideas how I could get people to participate in my live Internet application experiment for my thesis?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13345" CreationDate="2013-10-11T14:57:17.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: If you intend to do research, you have to pay attention to how you pick the participants. If you just take everyone willing to participate, there could be age/gender/etc bias in your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer to actual question: Standard way to do this is to pay your participants (though not necessarily in cash). Try movie tickets etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8961" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T14:57:17.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13330" CreationDate="2013-10-11T16:10:55.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good grades can help, but they aren't the be all and end all. If you put together a great CV and have positive references then you've got a good chance of gaining an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More important than grades I think is simply showing that you are, and will be, a good researcher. Not every great academic was a hotshot from Harvard in their undergrad years. And not everyone with a perfect GPA from Harvard would make a good academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you from personal experience that you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; amazing grades to get a PhD scholarship. Just put your best foot forward in proving that you're an excellent researcher and go for gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T16:10:55.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13350" CreationDate="2013-10-11T17:26:23.500" Score="19" ViewCount="7347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had two PhD interviews. One of the position (position A) I like more than the other (position B).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have gotton a reply from position B saying that they will offer me the PhD. However, before replying yes/no, I would like to know what the response is from position A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be good practice to let position B know that I will answer them once I know what the status is of my other application? Or is this sharing too much information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T01:06:13.437" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T01:06:13.437" Title="What to say to one PhD offer when still waiting to hear the result of a different and preferred PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13349" CreationDate="2013-10-11T17:51:34.847" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual thing to do in this situation is to ask B when they need your response.  If that isn't enough time to hear back from A, then it's fine to ask B if you can have more time to decide (you don't need to say why).  Of course, they might say that they cannot give you more time, in which case you'll have to make a decision on B without knowing about A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with wanting to consider all your options, and the people from B will undoubtedly read between the lines and understand that this is the situation, but you don't need to rub their nose in the fact that you'd rather be somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To echo Pavel's answer, whatever decision you do give to B, you should stick with.  If B gives you a short deadline, and you decide to accept their offer before hearing from A, you're committed, and you need to immediately contact A and withdraw your application.   It's not appropriate to accept B while planning to back out if A later says yes.  Doing that would burn your bridges with people at B (and anyone who they talk to), and it could even be cause for A to rescind your acceptance, leaving you with nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T21:27:36.377" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T21:27:36.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13349" CreationDate="2013-10-11T17:56:18.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a similar situation in the past. I told the people concerned very honestly about my choices and that I was waiting to hear back from other programs. They were, in general, very understanding about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did make sure to note down the formal dates by which I would have to notify each such department and stuck to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T17:56:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13349" CreationDate="2013-10-11T18:03:39.427" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our research group has an experience of dealing with students who accepted the offer and then declined it because of the better offer received. This is often considered as an impolite behaviour and I will explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervisors and heads of a research group usually have ideas of projects to propose to new students before they arrive. When you accept the offer, supervisors are making plans already how to integrate you in the work of the group. When it suddenly appears that you are not coming to the group, because you received another offer or whatever reason, this requires substantial resources for a group to recover and to change their plans accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The group needs to start recruiting process again, what is time-consuming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If too much time passes, it often happens that the position can be lost, what literally means that the group wastes money and reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, don't underestimate people. Everyone understands that you can look for positions in many places simultaneously. Be honest, and accept the offer conditionally. If possible, provide the final decision date when you should know application results from all other places. The research group will plan their projects accordingly. Also this will help you to save the reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Industry is more tolerant to people who change their mind. Usually they have a team of recruiters and their daily business is to solve this kind of problems. Research groups usually don't have so much resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8964" LastEditorUserId="8964" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T18:43:00.053" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T18:43:00.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-11T20:25:08.943" Score="19" ViewCount="8823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got my PhD in quantum gravity 2 years ago, not from a top university, publishing only 1 paper, no conferences. Couldn't get a post doc, and it has been 2 years struggling in the job market, teaching part time here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking seriously about getting an MS degree in something that can open job chances for me because all jobs outside academia I looked at required certain skills I do not have, or knowledge never needed during my PhD, all my work was very formal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would graduate schools/ master committees accept me being with a PhD? (I expect to pay my own tuition for that MS of course.) Do I have any chance?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course I am not planning to do MS in physics. How about geophysics MS programs? engineering MS programs? Scientific writing MS programs? MBA programs?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still evaluating my options for what career path I should pursue, but I just want to know if it is acceptable to do an MS after PhD or I will be rejected right away. (I would hate and regret my PhD if I will be rejected because of it.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8965" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T19:28:27.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:48:46.667" Title="MS degree after a PhD in physics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13356" CreationDate="2013-10-11T21:10:54.293" Score="4" ViewCount="1222" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a potential future researcher I would like to know how much I could focus on my research and how much distraction grants cause. My research interest lie in theoretical cs and logic, however the answers should include other areas so that they may be useful to other readers too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, how many hours of your working day on average is dedicated to grant related issues - searching a grant, writing a grant proposal, writing the final report for the funded projects, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard in an informal talk that this can be as much as half of the time of the researcher, say 5 hours, Monday to Friday. In such circumstance, I do not think I would be able to focus on the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T00:35:15.500" Title="How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-11T21:17:18.967" Score="31" ViewCount="8043" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of lessons I learnt as an undergraduate which I wish somebody had told me much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although each of you learnt different lessons with different notions of which way is the right, please share your findings and wisdom so that an eager reader would contemplate over your advice and would not regret avoiding later in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T04:44:07.563" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:44:07.563" Title="What do you wish you knew as a student before you became a researcher?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="20" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-13T03:57:21.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13354" CreationDate="2013-10-11T21:54:30.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case (pure mathematics) it is about two or three weeks of hectic activity before the October 1 NSF deadline once every 2-3 years. I cannot say that I do nothing else during that time but it definitely distracts me quite a bit. What helps is that we (I and a few my colleagues and friends) often apply for collaborative research grants (so we have  well-established separation of labor when writing, which increases the speed noticeably).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reports are easy if you have something real to show. I would say it takes me at most a couple of hours to write mine. Recommendation letters and reviews usually take much more time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T21:54:30.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13369" CreationDate="2013-10-12T00:01:55.617" Score="10" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing research requires exploring a tree of different ideas and then, upon failures, tracking back to some extent, up to giving up on the whole project and changing topics (or even quitting your PhD). You might err on both sides: change approach too much, give up too early, or too late. (See for instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8726/8966&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10643/8966&quot;&gt;Half good and some not good results in a research paper?&lt;/a&gt;). Most importantly, though, often you won't know that you'll actually succeed until you did, and things might look bleak until then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does some degree of stubbornness help being a researcher (I couldn't extract an answer so easily from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13178/8966&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)? Lacking that, do you know any metaheuristics to approach this decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I read this idea off the mention of &quot;stubbornness and self-delusion&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this rant&lt;/a&gt; - and I've observed this trait in at least some researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: an answer suggested that I talk about persistence instead. And probably that's the right compromise and what you actually should have. But I prefer the more provocative phrasing, also because I've anecdotical experiences of stubbornness as a &quot;professional risk&quot; of the profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T23:07:36.840" Title="Does some degree of stubbornness help for a researcher?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2013-10-12T00:14:39.753" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research can be great, but I learned it can be so hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, Google &quot;should I do a phd&quot; and then &quot;should I do a PhD in &quot;. There are tons of people who succeeded and failed in academia and writing about it, about what's it going to be in Academia, and so on. Two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/specials/phdfuture/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature's special on the point of a PhD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You and your research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, here's a few things I've learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being a researcher is a career job, not so unlike being a lawyer, a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After all, a paper has to change the scientific knowledge on the&#xA;topic. You're going to teach respected scientists something they&#xA;didn't know and something they thought was wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I hear that in life sciences, the career aspect can extend to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;people sabotaging&#xA;fellow researchers&lt;/a&gt; (that is, competitors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being more intelligent does not (necessarily) mean being a better researcher. If you're admitted to a decent program, you're more than smart enough for research. Managing your work (in all senses) can be more important, even though supervisors can help you with (part of) this in the beginning. But it's also about discipline and character:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choosing a good question to work on (supervisors can help) - the question should matter (or you should make it matter, if you can).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping an overview of what you're doing is important: otherwise, you might find an excellent solution to a problem which in the end is the wrong one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working enough on it (keeping focus among distractions of grad school can be hard).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you choose which way to approach a problem? Some approaches might not ever work, but others will only work if you keep at them long enough. So you need to be tenacious, and be able to change mind, depending on the moment. You need to delude yourself that you'll succeed until you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good supervisor is extremely important. Nowadays it's extremely hard to start doing research &quot;by yourself&quot;. On the one hand, there's too much written knowledge to navigate (literature). On the other hand, there are often unspoken assumptions which you won't learn from reviewers. It helps if he's available enough for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A supervisor must also fit you, character-wise. You mustn't be friends, but you need to function together, and neither you nor your supervisor study how to occupy your position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication is extremely important. You're supposed to learn something and then tell your peers (and the world). And nowadays, if your peers don't get it, it's your problem (because your paper gets rejected). Hence, learning technical writing was very important for me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is what &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; learned, which is influenced by my weak points, my experience and my field — I'm saying this because I'm sure somebody will disagree.&#xA;I'm a programming language researcher, so I invent and design stuff (programming language). And evaluating design is hard. So much that many ideas are not right or wrong per se - you can make it right or wrong by determined work (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13357/8966&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;). But other disciplines probably experience similar phenomena in different form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T00:14:39.753" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-13T03:57:21.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6059" CreationDate="2013-10-12T00:56:49.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to expand on Pieter Naaijkens's answer, because your question and his answer bear on a more general problem: when is a problem worth solving? Or viceversa, should one care about a paper solving this problem? I'll present the answer I've grown up with (as a PhD student), though I've seen wildly different opinions on this, so I don't think there's a fully objective view (though characterizing the spectrum of opinions is what matters here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've learned that it's up to the author to motivate the reader to care about the paper (&quot;sell one's research&quot;), though others might disagree; nowadays this is necessary because of the research-literature overload we live in. In applied fields, a common motivation is a set of (possibly indirect) applications. Different kind of motivations exist, but I'll conjecture that even good theoretical work should matter to other theoretical work to be good, and then leave other motivation out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you accept a paper (1) solving this latency problem for websites interacting with users? By your reasoning, I wouldn't (at least, not at a top venue). But let's assume that again Pieter Naaijkens submits a paper (2) on the topic. It first convinces readers that better latency matters by describing some application (say high-frequency trading, assuming this actually applies). Then, paper (2) solves the problem exactly like paper (1) above. The second paper could get past the same reviewers. I might even argue that with that motivation (assuming it's good), he might create a research question. And in some cases, simply motivating well a research question might be enough for a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To demonstrate that wildly different opinions exist, I'll offer two opposite examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've seen a reviewer explain that a paper was good research but he wasn't sure whether it addressed any relevant problem; the reviewer concluded with a strong accept judgement. (Of course I won't share details).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems book explains that some research had the only point of &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1410217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;keeping otherwise unemployed graph theorists off the streets&lt;/a&gt;, because (it is hinted) the problem lacked actual applications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples of researchers questioning the motivation of other research abound, but I won't add further anecdotical evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T00:56:49.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8529" CreationDate="2013-10-12T02:30:02.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you referring to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8326/8966&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on how to gain research experience after a masters? That changes things.&#xA;That answer suggests to do menial work for some research group. That's one of the few things where people might care less about you being remote, as long as you do the job — after all, they'd likely try to get students to do it. Especially if you can get (with some luck) to coauthor a publication, but that's often hard to discuss upfront.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is that relevant? I'd disagree with the poster there. But you should ask a professor in your field — possibly one you'd want to apply for; a bit like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8114/8966&quot;&gt;this other answer&lt;/a&gt; suggested. If they think this experience might count, then go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have research experience, it's hard for you to know how to approach research. That's what you're supposed to learn in a PhD (or to a little extent in a research master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not followed often enough by a supervisor, I believe you're unlikely to learn enough research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably recommend some book like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226065669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Craft of Research&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to get started; the problem is, there's tons of stuff you can only learn from a good supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T13:00:46.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13353" CreationDate="2013-10-12T03:05:15.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally seen people start and complete an MBA after receiving a PhD in astrophysics. It is certainly possible to study a master degree after a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be more rounded, for example, relating physics to the business world, this could certainly help your job prospects, especially in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T03:05:15.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-12T03:49:45.120" Score="42" ViewCount="7074" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've become quite upset with how lectures for my courses are conducted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyday, I attend lectures where the teacher simply writes definitions and theorems on the board straight from one of our textbooks (or another professor's published lecture notes). They then prove a handful of the theorems, or part of them, and leave more than half as an exercise. They do little to motivate the material or provide insight based on their professional experiences, and are often scribbling material onto the board as fast as possible to cover some predetermined amount. And sometimes the professor writes proofs straight from their notes and, when questioned, has a hard time explaining the gaps between steps (as they are simply regurgitating and not really even attentive to what they are explaining).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I feel like these lectures are a waste of my time. To be blunt, I can read a book and I can do exercises. I don't need someone to paraphrase a book for me and then tell me to fill in the rest myself. Moreover, since I cannot afford to live on/near campus, I have to commute an hour each way to sit through such lectures, which hardly seems validated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to attend lectures where the professor engages the students. Often, my professors are so rushed to scribble things on the board that they take few questions and relegate them to exercises (yes, I had a professor answer a simple question about his proof by assigning it as an exercise). If an instructor wants to cover some predetermined amount of material, I would prefer they assign this as reading beforehand and then take questions on that material in class. It'd also be nice if they presented us with hard problems in class and then we all worked through them together (with students presenting them, everyone critiquing, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I approach my professors about my feelings? How should I go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I am becoming quite bored (and frustrated) and starting to skip lectures in favor of office hours (which are far more engaging), reading the book on my own, and working extra problems. I do not like that I am not enjoying my educational experience (since I love to learn math!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I quit going to lectures and move on to doing what I am tending towards now, anyways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6497" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T03:58:44.763" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T12:42:38.297" Title="Professor only teaches what is already in textbook. Should I quit going to the lectures?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2013-10-12T06:17:51.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://selectedpapers.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selected Papers Network&lt;/a&gt; is a new effort in this direction that intends to federate content from all over the web.  To post something to it, just write a Google+ post with #spnetwork and the paper's arxiv ID or DOI in the body.  You can also post things directly at the site.  The developers are working on interfacing with other social tools like Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the thinking behind it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3264905/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3264905/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The site was shut down several years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2020-02-22T07:24:33.733" LastActivityDate="2020-02-22T07:24:33.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13357" CreationDate="2013-10-12T08:12:40.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you've got to be stubborn in order to get results, because everyone encounters failures and roadblocks. Giving up too early can withhold good results, but aimlessly slogging towards a dead end can be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only give up on something when I can justify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I should give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the cause of the difficulty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out what you need to do to solve the roadblock.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess whether it is feasible to solve the problem with the available time and resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most failures are still useful to you, because you can usually find out why those ideas did not work. Learn from your mistakes, and (if appropriate) publish why a method did not work as expected (as a prelude to a subsequent method that did) so that others can learn as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T08:12:40.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13363" CreationDate="2013-10-12T08:35:00.653" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common frustration faced by college students, especially in lecture-oriented STEM majors. Unfortunately, the truth is that the lectures may be a waste of time and there is little you can do to change that. If you can cover the material more efficiently on your own time (especially since you're commuting), you shouldn't necessarily feel guilty in doing so. You can see similar sentiments expressed on ratemyprofessor where students often question the value of lectures and simply go to the library as opposed to lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes you're paying for the lecture, but if it doesn't help/contribute to your understanding, there is no point in going. I knew students who went every time out of habit, but it was an absolute waste of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had physics professors who wrote starting problems on the board and then the solution only to say that if we were at his level, we should 'see' the dozen steps in between. Needless to say, lectures were fairly empty after that. He was very well versed in the material and many students would come to office hours, it's just that he couldn't lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the age/tenure of the professor, they may be receptive to making the lectures more engaging, or they may &quot;brush&quot; you off. Simply express your interest in the subject to the professor and ask them to make the lecture more engaging/be better prepared. Depending on the college/class, the professor may be unable to accommodate you because your peers may not be at your level. Be aware that some professors cannot lecture effectively, or have had unwanted courses foisted upon them. No matter your school ranking or major, you will encounter lousy enthusiasm-killing professors whom you'll have to endure. For many professors, your best shot for a more engaging experience would be to visit them during office hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a certain sense, to quote Mark Twain, &quot;Don't let schooling interfere with your education.&quot; You won't have this professor forever, though you may unfortunately have them or those like them again. Don't let them dampen your passion for the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8978" LastEditorUserId="6497" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T18:48:58.747" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T18:48:58.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-12T10:44:29.490" Score="7" ViewCount="2472" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This question is one of three correlated questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13342/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-can-i&quot;&gt;Can I get enough help? (first part)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13367/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-and-h&quot;&gt;How should I do it? (second part)&lt;/a&gt;.This is the &lt;strong&gt;third&lt;/strong&gt; part.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Science and Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed &lt;strong&gt;interesting enough&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was &lt;strong&gt;not for the projects&lt;/strong&gt; that were proposed to me, but in a &lt;strong&gt;different area&lt;/strong&gt;. I would like to do research in &lt;em&gt;this area&lt;/em&gt; but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the &lt;strong&gt;downsides&lt;/strong&gt; of choosing my own project instead of&#xA;doing a project that a professor is working right now (with his&#xA;Ph.D. students)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How &lt;strong&gt;harder&lt;/strong&gt; will it be to get something good out of it (in&#xA;comparison with doing a proposed project)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, &lt;em&gt;I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:30:26.170" Title="What are the pros and cons of choosing my own research topic?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13357" CreationDate="2013-10-12T13:06:47.870" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I understand what you are getting at, I would like to say that stubbornness is perhaps not a good trait for a scientist. My dictionary provides the following: &lt;em&gt;Stubborn: Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly a scientist needs doggedness and stamina to endure long and hard experiments, field work, often monotonous work on data and theory, as well as other issues met in the workplace. To be able to change footing in light of new evidence is, however, an important trait. So being stubborn, in the sense of the definition, would be very counter productive in our effort to have science progress. &lt;strong&gt;Persistence and perseverance&lt;/strong&gt; are perhaps synonyms that better reflect the traits you aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes it is important to be able to endure. Being a scientist is usually based on a deep appreciation for the subject and the research, which is why it is possible to endure the pressures that exist. It is a bit like being a top athlete, very few will excel without a deep love for what they do. As soon as you lose the drive it is difficult to continue because of the demands. Maintaining the drive is therefore a very important aspect of academia and the workplace in which you act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T19:49:53.603" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T19:49:53.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11896" CreationDate="2013-10-12T13:40:53.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should you be honest? Sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you talk about all ideas you have? Most likely not, but it depends on how much time you have. Many people have multiple projects (some simply ideas, some less so) at most times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try picking the most promising one. If you have no clue, just pick one, and observe the feedback you get. I believe you need a focused discussion to get useful feedback. If you have enough time with the same person for multiple focused discussions, great! But that's not the assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you need to take both positive and negative feedback with a grain of salt. Listen to negative feedback! But if they tell you &quot;this is a bad project, because X&quot;, listen to the X but think on your own whether it can be fixed by improving the idea or you should actually change completely (or something in between). The same logic applies even when papers are rejected (see for instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13357/8966&quot;&gt;Does some degree of stubbornness help for a researcher?&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1799/which-soft-skills-for-research-career#comment2877_1801&quot;&gt;discussions&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;learning from criticism&quot; skills).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T13:40:53.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-12T14:25:16.843" Score="0" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a physic student from Jordan, few days ago i got an admission to do my master in physics at university of Rostock, Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I able to get a PhD position from other university when I finish my master study, i.e., will other German universities recognize my Master degree from Rostock university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8950" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T11:37:10.390" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T11:37:10.390" Title="International master programm in Physic at university of Rostock" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13363" CreationDate="2013-10-12T16:05:38.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to know the reason why the lectures are not working for you without more information about you, the professor, and the course, but there are a few possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor is not doing a good job of engaging the students because of a lack of interest or competence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor does not have the the flexibility to alter the way the course is taught due to institutional limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor should not alter the way the course is taught because overall it is working for the majority of the students in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor is unaware that the lectures are not working and would change the approach if he/she knew.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these only #4 will result in a change if you provide feedback but you should go talk to the professor because you are struggling with the class.  Struggles do not have to be only low grades, if you are disengaging from the class that is a problem.  Your approach should be one of requesting help understanding how the lectures are supposed to fit into the overall learning goals of the class, not one of offering lecture style critique.  For the reasons listed above, I can't promise it will change anything but it may offer insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you should still go to the lectures.  Lectures are only one part of a course and unless the professor stipulates otherwise, you should consider them non-optional.  Your full participation in all aspects of the class is your responsibility as a student.  There are lots of things that we have to do professionally that are inefficient (e.g., all my faculty meetings) but participation is a requirement of being part of a professional community and is a prerequisite of gaining the other benefits of that community.  For example, I would be very reluctant to invest a lot of time in a student (however promising) who regularly came to my office hours but skipped all my lectures.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T16:05:38.687" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13376" CreationDate="2013-10-12T18:49:00.413" Score="11" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am employed as a student in a theoretical computer science research group and part of my job was to assist my supervisor with a scientific paper he has been working on.&#xA;Concretely, my job was to implement the software that was used to conduct the experimental part of the research paper and also to gather and put together a dataset in order to empirically test the theoretical framework developed by my supervisor using real-world data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the first submission attempt, I was mentioned in the list of the co-authors. However, the paper was not accepted on the grounds that the empirical results only weakly reflected the theoretical claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor thought that the rejection was due to a bug in the code I've developed and afterwards he removed me both from the list of co-authors and from the project. I am very sure that the code didn't contain any bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, my supervisor contacted a fellow student who was already working on a different topic, and asked for his permission to use the data from this different topic in order to test the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second submission attempt of the research paper was successful and the paper was accepted. My fellow student appeared in the list of co-authors but I didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version of the paper that finally got accepted differed from the first one that got rejected, in that it contained only an extra experiment, using the data from my fellow student. However, the initial empirical experiments that I put together were still there. They have not been removed, nor modified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding this situation I have a series of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal to feel that I have been treated unfairly? I feel that the only reason why I have been removed from the list of co-authors is because the dataset I have compiled simply didn't confirm the expected theoretical results and me getting fired was simply a way for my supervisor to vent his frustration about being rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it legal to publish a paper that uses data and software that some other person developed and not mention this person as a co-author (or at least as a reference)? Are there any laws or rules of conduct regarding such situations?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that a variation of this question may have already been answered before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2730/what-to-do-when-principal-investigator-publishes-your-work-without-putting-you-d&quot;&gt;What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975/my-research-work-stolen-and-published-as-his-own-by-the-co-author-without-my-con&quot;&gt;My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5188/my-work-was-published-and-my-name-was-nowhere-to-be-found-how-should-i-handle-t&quot;&gt;My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers suggested that I should try to approach and discuss this problem in private with my supervisor or with some other member of the research group. I have tried doing exactly this and both my supervisor and 2 other senior members simply refused to discuss this issue with me. The only response I've got was: &quot;what's done is done, let us focus on the future now&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do, or what would be ethical to do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8982" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T08:36:42.147" Title="Status regarding co-authorship for a computer science research paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13373" CreationDate="2013-10-12T20:03:13.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assuming that you are giving a totally impartial and accurate account of the facts&lt;/em&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your first question: Your Supervisor has a &quot;right-to-manage&quot; in this project since it was his project and you functioned as his assistant. &quot;Right-to-manage&quot; is an euphemism for &quot;authority to fire&quot;. Namely, he has the (moral, even) right to &quot;fire&quot; you from the paper, if he believes (rightly or wrongly) that it was your fault that the paper was rejected the first time. Naturally, he wouldn't want faulty work to continue to be present in his paper, now would he? So he went on and scrapped your contribution on which you have labored so hard... but wait: he didn't scrap your work from the paper, but he &lt;em&gt;kept it in&lt;/em&gt;, without your name. This leads us to your second question: what he did can be legally characterized as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_theft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grand theft&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, I believe, at least in the US legal system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do? The &quot;cosmic-joke&quot; scenario (but I am not joking here) would be to &lt;em&gt;actually find&lt;/em&gt; a bug in your code and send a letter to the paper that published the paper, challenging the empirical results (and you will be in an excellent position to challenge them since you know all the details).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sensible thing to do, given that you have already futilely tried to discuss the issue with the defendant (which was the civilized thing to do), is to indeed &quot;focus on the future&quot; -&lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; future this time. With &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; that such a vague phrase may silently imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T20:03:13.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13389" CreationDate="2013-10-12T21:14:39.380" Score="9" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a PhD student in mathematics with a very strong interest in foreign languages (native language English), and I would be interested in translating math articles in foreign languages into English on the side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that academic journals are generally willing to pay for? How would one go about finding work in this area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8983" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:01:47.830" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T16:01:47.830" Title="Do non-English academic journals pay for a translated paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13373" CreationDate="2013-10-12T21:43:47.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you say, it does sound like you were treated unfairly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving you out from the paper given the circumstances is at least unethical. I don't know about legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your collaborators don't sound like nice people. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in academia, where abuse of junior people is certainly not uncommon, though for obvious reasons statistics are hard to come by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An obvious option is to write to the journal's editor explaining the situation. If you have contributed significantly to the paper, you certainly have a claim to be considered a co-author. Obviously, make sure you have documentation backing up your claim. If you don't, it is just your word against theirs, and you will quite likely get nowhere. If you have good documentation, it will be more difficult for the journal to ignore your claims, though it is obviously hard to predict what people will do. Given that you were on the first submission attempt, I think that first submission should count as part of the documentation, and should really help your case if you appeal to the journal. It would be easy enough to compare the two versions of the paper. In the first submission, is your contribution described? Also, were the two submissions to different journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not completely clear from your posting whether the paper has been officially published. If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that your collaborators will quite possibly try to find a way to get back at you, for any number of reasons. People who behave in the way you described can get extremely petty and unpleasant when they perceive you as &quot;going against them&quot;. They also have a remarkable capacity for not taking responsibility for their own actions, and in their own minds will find a way to blame you for the situation. This is not meant to discourage you from standing up for your rights, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think people &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; stand up for their rights, but at the end of the day it is your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T08:36:42.147" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T08:36:42.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13363" CreationDate="2013-10-12T21:48:18.123" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to attend lectures where the professor engages the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, isn't that what we all want? Some professors are very good at this, and, unfortunately, others are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend attending the lectures, even if you're finding little benefit. Why? I think skipping lectures altogether is a bad idea. You never know when a professor will offer some tidbit of information that will help you on an exam, or help clarify an assignment. It's one thing to miss a lesson every now and then, but habitually missing class doesn't seem like a good way obtain an education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After class, I would talk to fellow classmates, and see if your feelings are isolated or universal. If your opinions are shared by a majority of your classmates, perhaps you could get a groundswell of support for being very blunt in your end-of-course surveys. That feedback should be candid but constructive. In other words, don't just say, &quot;His lectures sucked,&quot; say, &quot;His lectures would have been a lot better if...&quot; If enough students voice a consistant message about the low-quality lectures, perhaps the professor will try to take some of your suggestions to heart, or perhaps the department head will pressure him to do so. That may not help you this term, but it might help other students in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the long commute, I feel your pain, but the way I'd handle that is to plan to do other things while you're on campus. Maybe you could start working out at the campus gym, or start writing for your campus newspaper. Driving an hour each way to just sit through a crappy lecture &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; seem like a waste of time – and gas. Driving an hour each way to become engaged on your campus – even if that time happens to include a lecture from a professor who may not be so gifted in teaching in lecture halls – may not seem so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's rare for a professor to drastically change tactics midway through a course, so this is a matter of you making the best of a bad situation. Sometimes, that's part of getting an education, too, even though you won't get credit for it on your transcript. Just remember, many employees like to hire students with degrees, not just because of what was learned in the classroom, but for things that were inevitiably learned in the process of obtaining the education: time management, teamwork, dedication, extra curriculars – and making the most of bad situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T21:48:18.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13357" CreationDate="2013-10-12T23:07:36.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Peter Jansson makes clear in his answer, stubbornness may not be a good quality to have, but tenacity and perseverance certainly are. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matt Might &lt;/a&gt; for an insightful look at why PhD students need persistence and tenacity in order to survive and thrive in what can be an exercise in long-term frustration and failure before reaching success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T23:07:36.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13178" CreationDate="2013-10-12T23:40:55.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some small studies that examine the role of personality in academic success. You should search academic databases, if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2273.1970.tb00328.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personality, study methods and academic performance&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/a0014996&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2002.tb00667.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Effects of Personality Type on Engineering Student Performance and Attitudes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8978" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T23:40:55.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13178" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:01:19.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19070437&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, which postulates that modern science selects for sociability and perseverance at the expense of creativity and intelligence. The successful academic will be agreeable and persevering, but will not necessarily be very intelligent or creative. (These traits are derived from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eysenck_Personality_Questionnaire&quot;&gt;Eysenk's Personality Questionnaire&lt;/a&gt;.)&#xA;In short, dull people are preferred! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I agree with the authors' analysis, since I've met many interesting, creative, and highly intelligent academics, including many in positions which are indicative of &lt;em&gt;success&lt;/em&gt;--however, as StasK pointed out in a comment, perhaps these individuals are just more memorable. My subjective experience in no way indicates that the majority are not of the dull and agreeable sort. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T13:11:04.000" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T13:11:04.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13354" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:35:15.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T00:35:15.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:38:41.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't fly solo. Having initiative, coming up with your own ideas and avenues of research is great, but find someone to take responsibility for you and your success - especially when it concerns funding and advocating for you in the department. Being a ronin grad student involves semi-recurring desperate searches for funding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't get too distracted by side projects - they're sometimes quite useful, but it's easy to get bogged down in new shiny things, and a collection of unrelated musings does not a dissertation make. Similarly, don't be afraid of presenting the same thing twice - continually submitting unrelated, novel projects just leaves a bunch of half-done things gathering dust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T17:43:42.540" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T17:43:42.540" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-13T03:57:21.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13342" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:52:45.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So somewhere I've made a moderators life harder, because I thought your three correlated questions were just one question. I think they probably could be, just incidentally. I'm going to answer accordingly, because when it comes down to it, How To Do It, Will I Have Help and What Are the Downsides aren't just correlated - they're interwoven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My bias: I did my own projects. As both an undergraduate and a graduate student. This worked out quite well for me, but is not without it's pitfalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, yes, your professor should be able to support you in your research interests - the odds of what your interested in being so far afield from their expertise, when you're an undergrad, is fairly unlikely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That being said, there are two elements of support they won't have: infrastructure and funding. It's helpful, if you're working on a project, for there to be grad students and postdocs working on similar things. Code you can use. Helpful little suggestions like &quot;Have you read Smith's most recent paper in Journal of Important Things?&quot; That kind of ambient helpfulness isn't going to be there. Similarly, even if you're working for free, its way easier to justify conference travel, a piece of software, or an open access publishing fee if it helps an existing research project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, this worked out quite well for me - I got good publications out of it, and I got to work on my own stuff. But its a harder road, for graduate school may take longer, and you lack the security of working on an established project. Beyond that, if it &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; work out well, you don't have an entire lab's worth of effort, papers that might be salvagable, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T00:52:45.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13387" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:53:59.027" Score="17" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what is graduate school supposed to be like? I started grad school for mathematics 2 months ago and I find myself studying all the time with no time for anything else (except activities of daily living). Is this typical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notable advantages that I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I commute from school to home.&#xA;I am a U.S. citizen and obviously did not have to venture outside of home for any of my schooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8905" LastEditorDisplayName="user8905" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T21:04:29.137" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T04:33:11.657" Title="Is grad school typically time-intensive?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-13T01:48:34.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grad school is an extremely time intensive activity. Depending on where you went and what you did for undergrad, you may feel overwhelmed. Rest assured that grad school is designed to eat up all your time and you are expected to dedicate your life to it. That said, it should eventually be somewhat enjoyable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8978" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T01:48:34.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-13T01:48:53.713" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate school is an experience and like any other experience, it differs for different people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may or may not let your work overwhelm you. That is entirely your choice unless you have to catch up with your cohort. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gradview.com/articles/graduatestudies/graduate-school-time-management.html&quot;&gt;Time management&lt;/a&gt; is one of the most important skills to learn in graduate school and as I understand, it carries over to real life significantly later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, specifically in response to your question, your current experience is typical for &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; graduate students but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; all graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T01:48:53.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13368" CreationDate="2013-10-13T02:43:33.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience the topic is normally self-chosen. Your adviser might have some ideas but generally the research (and subsequent writing) requires a significant amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the amount of work involved, if you are not excited by the topic it might be difficult to follow through with the amount of work required. This might be less true for undergraduate theses but at the graduate level, you will need to really spent a lot of time and, therefore, maintaining motivation can be a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if your adviser has some ideas that person might be more willing and able to provide support for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T02:43:33.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13375" CreationDate="2013-10-13T02:57:43.663" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'd have a better chance of getting more reliable information if you go to popular online forums for translators like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProZ&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TranslatorsCafé&lt;/a&gt;, where you can talk to professional translators and browse job ads. A very quick search already gave me one recent (but already closed) ad that seems to be looking for a translator for an academic journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/job146043.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/job146043.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am currently in search of French to English Translator with a mathematics &amp;amp; engineering background to translate an academic journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, AMS seems to have a list of translated journals here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/trnjor.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/trnjor.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there seems to be a demand for that kind of job, so you might be able to find a job if you know where to look. So, maybe the question is more about how to become a professional translator (and find jobs) than about academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="7075" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T08:01:55.903" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T08:01:55.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13345" CreationDate="2013-10-13T03:45:02.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are ready to invest a small sum, Amazon Mechanical Turk &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mturk.com/mturk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mturk.com/mturk/&lt;/a&gt; might be a good place to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="257" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T03:45:02.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-13T06:04:34.820" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most graduate schools take a &quot;firehose&quot; approach in the first semester or two, so a heavy workload is to be expected, although it's certainly not desirable. That said, however, it should not be all-consuming—but it's also true that it can eat up all of your time, if you allow it to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I tell all of my students is that time for relaxation and non-study based activities is just as important as finding time for classes and preparing for examinations. In fact, not having the &quot;outlet valve&quot; can make you less productive overall; mentally and physically such behavior is not sustainable over a long period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I tell my students—as well as undergraduates that I mentor who intend to go to graduate school—that they need to &lt;em&gt;schedule&lt;/em&gt; relaxation time into their week. What they do and when and how they do it is up to them; but there needs to be something to balance the stress of being a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:04:34.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13343" CreationDate="2013-10-13T06:15:42.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't recall ever seeing such a format being used, particularly in the context of books (as opposed to papers). Part of this is, I think, a desire to be clear. For instance, what does [WVDE13:2] mean? Does it refer to the second chapter, or to page 2? Or does it refer to a specific work? Without the clarification of &quot;p.&quot;, it's relatively ambiguous from a first glance. As a reader of a book, that can get very annoying over extended periods of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; free to use any style that your publisher allows; if it's something relatively unorthodox, then you should explain that somewhere (perhaps a comment prefacing the bibliography would suffice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:15:42.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12840" CreationDate="2013-10-13T06:19:32.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, a signed, sealed transcript of a completed degree program should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be valid, as there presumably there has not been any changes made to the contents of the transcript since that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Interim&quot; transcripts, of course, would no longer be valid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing to note—many schools nowadays want the transcript submitted &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; by the university; in such cases, it is unlikely that they would accept a transcript mailed by the student along with the application (if they even accept mailed applications!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:19:32.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2013-10-13T06:33:06.593" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two key pieces of advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn to discern.&lt;/strong&gt; You will encounter a lot of new information as a graduate student. Some of it will be absolutely illuminating; much of it will be of at most tangential benefit. Other papers and ideas won't be worth the paper they're printed on (or the bits of hard drive space they take up). One of your biggest challenges will be to figure out what's worth knowing, and what isn't. This will take skill, practice, and guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn how to learn.&lt;/strong&gt; As a researcher, the odds that you will be doing the same thing throughout your career are asymptotically small. Your PhD should not be just about picking up skills for solving a particular problem. Ultimately, it should be about learning &lt;em&gt;how to become an expert in a field you haven't seen before.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:33:06.593" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-13T06:33:06.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-13T06:37:07.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a slightly different experience that what is mentioned here - I have worked full time while completing my PhD.  That means a lot of time management, as well as stress management is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break up each task into smaller manageable subtasks and allow yourself rewards and most of all, as has been mentioned, time to enjoy some hobbies and recreation.  This is critical - you'll potentially burn-out other wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a job (volunteer or paid, full or part time) is also a good way to force you prioritise tasks and deadlines, the job also provides a break from study and vice versa - this is a mindset that develops over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be busy, but be sure that you are doing something that you enjoy, it won't be a chore, it will be something to look forward to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:37:07.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13399" CreationDate="2013-10-13T12:36:30.963" Score="10" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick background; I study Computer Science and have been asked to take the role as a paid student teacher for college students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am extremely nervous about it, although it's a fairly familiar role as I'll be teaching what I learned only three years previous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm far from the extrovert type and as such, find it really difficult to hold a room.  &lt;strong&gt;How do I keep the attention and respect of students that are almost my age?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8988" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T11:58:54.640" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T13:46:37.390" Title="My first day as a teacher, how should I proceed?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;student-employee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13397" CreationDate="2013-10-13T13:20:59.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practice.&lt;/strong&gt; Get some friends, go to an empty room, and practice. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice in the street, in the subway, in line at starbucks, and at the bar(well you're &amp;lt;21 so that might not work). You want people to look at you. To stare at you. To ask, &quot;who the hell is that and what the heck is he talking about?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare.&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously, come prepared.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get over yourself&lt;/strong&gt;. Chances are that your first lecture will be awkward. Possibly very awkward. But then it'll get better and you'll eventually know what you're doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify with the students&lt;/strong&gt;. They're roughly your age so it'll be easier to identify with them. As a student, you know how you wanted to be taught and what you wanted to hear. Follow that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responsive.&lt;/strong&gt; Be responsive to the class. Don't shy away. There's no benefit for anyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8978" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T13:20:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13397" CreationDate="2013-10-13T13:23:26.450" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calm down! easier said than done. Remember you know more than they do but do not put on a suit that does not fit. If you get questions you cannot answer, do not get nervous, simply say: it is a good question and you will check up the answer. Don't start putting out excuses that you are inexperienced, haven't done this before, or whatever. Let what you do speak for itself, I am sure it is more than fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the emergency is over, what can you do? Be prepared. Check out the material ahead of time and if you are in a lab or have to help out in exercises, run through them yourself to figure out where problems may arise. This takes a little time but will help you run things smoothly. In the case of a lecture situation, you also need to be prepared, read up on the material, make a good series of slides. Show what you plan to do to someone more experienced to perhaps get feedback and pointers on improvements. A typical rookie mistake is to overwork things, put too much stuff into a lecture and set the level too high. Assessing the right level is something you learn but if you have a chance to look at others' lectures or perhaps go back to what you experienced, you may be able to find your level quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yo want a quick check on what you have done you can do a quick feedback at the end. Give each person a small piece of paper (e.g. index card) and have them write one or a couple of things they found good on one side and something they think could be improved on the other. Do not use the word &quot;bad&quot; on that side, you want to know what you did well and what might improve. Collect the feedback and check it immediately. It may help you get a sense of how you came across. You can do this on a regular basis if time permits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it is tough to get started, we have all been there with different amounts of self-confidence, experience etc. Expect some things to go less well, it is bound to happen, we all have off days. If something is less well, use it to improve. Use your colleagues as support if you find it rough, everyone has some experience of that sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you luck. It can be really fun to teach. Look for pointers on teaching on the web and check out journals for higher ed. teaching to get ideas. There is no reason to approach teaching less seriously than what one would do, say research. The butterflies you will inevitably feel when you start will disappear and your confidence will grow with experience. Just keep calm and on top of matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T13:23:26.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2013-10-13T15:26:02.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Networking is crucial (it's not only a game of skill and hard work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most opportunities (positions, workshops, fellowships) spread organically,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for everything you need to provide 2-3 recommendation letters; if you don't know professors who are well-known and respected in the place where you apply to, it may strongly affect your chances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T17:21:42.860" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T17:21:42.860" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-13T15:26:02.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12556" CreationDate="2013-10-13T19:54:01.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing math, and I took a gap year last year. From a purely scientific viewpoint (I do not know about career/hiring committees/politics) I think sabbatical holidays are possible, and even advisable in some cases, if you have a solid and &quot;marketable&quot; research project,  and if you can work alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In math, most of your value is derived from the theorems that you proved, not from the places you spent your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that Perelman would have solved the Poincare conjecture if he took a postdoc (or some other position in academia)? Postdocs would have been harmful for him: teaching loads, seminars, academic responsabilities, annoying colleagues...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I obtained my best papers during my gap year (almost solved an open problem). My productivity is skyrocketing, and this is why I will take a second gap year this year (I turned off &quot;good&quot; postdoc offers, with good money, but in quite boring countries, which I would have had to leave after 1-2 years anyway, no opportunity to settle, waste of time). No teaching, no seminars, no interferences. Supervisors can sometimes give bad advice, try to disturb you, and I have a good research project, I prefer to work on my own (but I come back every 3-6 months to my advisors at home to show him my new theorems, and I am going to spend 1 month at a university in the US, to get recommendation letters, and meet people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot get a post-doc at Princeton, NJ (which is probably a boring place anyway), I think the second best working conditions are probably in Pattaya, Thailand (or some other place of your dreams), you will find inspiration and a stimulating environment (notice that math conferences are always organized in touristic places, for this reason). You will be happy, and therefore, inspired and scientifically ambitious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are universities almost anywhere in the world, with smart and educated people, so if you can give some lectures at the local university, they will be happy to meet a foreigner, a fellow scientist, and even sometimes, give you unexpected job opportunities (not competitive for the 'global academic market', but still decent for local life, and probably still better than being a high school teacher in your home country). Local scientists are probably as useful as colleagues of your postdoc: it is like doing a &quot;non-paid&quot; postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So besides traveling to countries I like, discover cultures and people that I like, develop myself as a person, in countries where life is amazingly cheap, meet some people happy (and others not so happy) with less than $200/month, I think I can also develop my research projects, and even broaden my job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentally speaking, 1 year of holidays, doing nothing, is too much anyway (I cannot take more than 2-3 months of holidays in a row), so you will need some kind of intellectual activity, do something of your day (if no distraction is around), and you will naturally get back to your scientific pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postdocs are short-term contracts anyway (it is not as crazy as dumping a permanent position), they are used as disposable commodities by senior mentors for their own scientific interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postdoc traps are denounced by everyone, so I prefer to fall in my own 'holiday' trap. There will certainly be gaps in my CV (filled with great papers anyway), some hiring committees will not appreciate (probably out of jealousy), but it puts even more pressure to do good work (to justify my &quot;holidays&quot;, to my consicence at least). Hiring committees are very random anyway, so they are not worth sacrificing my happiness: it is now or never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8991" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T19:54:01.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-12T11:26:53.380" Score="28" ViewCount="13496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the early stages of my PhD and I am trying to put together a literature review of my topic. My intention is that this review will eventually be included in my thesis, something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;the chapter that describes the state of the art in the domain&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My subject is soft matter physics and a large number of theses have already been written this topic. When looking at the literature reviews included in these other works I've noticed that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sequence of ideas is often the same (this makes sense, so why not?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cited papers are always the same, even though 20 years elapsed between the first and last thesis. Moreover, papers from the 30's are cited but no one in my lab seems to have a copy available? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hypothesis is that these theses are derived from some sort of a &lt;em&gt;Mother of All Thesis&lt;/em&gt;, and that paraphrasing the work of the previous student is OK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, what makes a good literature review?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you notice that a literature review is sloppy?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I posted this question because I assume many of you have experience with this process either in your own PhD work, or as a supervisor where you have had to deal with paraphrasing of your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS2: I am not asking about making proper citations, LaTeX+BibTeX handles that like a charm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8993" OwnerDisplayName="Pascail" LastEditorUserId="22520" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T08:34:22.930" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T06:17:19.793" Title="How to write a good PhD literature review?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13405" CreationDate="2013-10-12T17:20:07.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are couple of points i like to make from my perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bibliography is something which evolves during your PhD. I would recommend not to write it at the first place. As you read more and more, relevant to your area in Soft matter, you can keep adding it to your bibliography&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Soft matter is a really huge area. One who works on Molecular dynamics may not even touch crystal defects while writing his bibliography. In that way it is really topic specific and not the entire area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You said, you saw some say 30 papers in every thesis. This is not because of magic, this is only because they are path breaking. If you are in MD area (which is mine), and you are using a thermostat, it is 99.9999 % sure that you cite Nose-Hoover paper. It is no magic. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no point in saying none from my lab is cited. It depends on how many groups are working in that &quot;specific&quot; area and what impact had the papers published from your lab made in their research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all points out to the fact that one does not simply write a bibliography of an entire area :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8331" OwnerDisplayName="Vaidyanathan" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:01:26.900" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:01:26.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-13T22:44:38.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other good answers, &quot;Yes.&quot; It is a situation in which there's no such thing as &quot;being too good&quot;, of course. People who've been easily top-in-their-class are now &quot;average&quot; in the population. Very disorienting. Also, as noted, there is a pretense that people &quot;catch up&quot; at super-high-speed by doing 30 hours of homework each week, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, the pretense, the hype, the mythology, and the disorientation seem to tell people to spend every waking moment &quot;studying&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the bad/silly side effects or versions of this is the one wherein one merely &lt;em&gt;frets&lt;/em&gt; all day, rather than doing anything constructive. Or &quot;obsessing&quot; about small things, individual homework problems that are of dubious significance, etc. Pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also as noted, it is important to get sleep, exercise, and reasonable food, to say the least. Chronic sleep deprivation (and dubious diet) is all too typical in the relevant age-group in the first place, and having added seeming-motivations to sacrifice sleep, exercise, and diet just makes everything worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many people have said on many occasions, getting a PhD in mathematics is not a &quot;career choice&quot;, because it's waaaay too much work in comparison to the (extra-mathematical) rewards. It only makes sense if one is fairly obsessed with math in the first place, and can continue to have that degree of irrational interest despite workload and temporary loss of self-determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, by normal standards, it is not reasonable to aim for &quot;a normal life&quot;, whether in grad school or thereafter, because it's maybe not possible, any more than performing musicians have &quot;normal lives&quot;, whether classical or jazz or pop or...  The idea is that it's a hobby that, quasi-miraculously, pays a living. (This is different than engineering, apparently!) If one can keep that feeling, then it's fine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T22:44:38.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11746" CreationDate="2013-10-14T01:47:26.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you already have a phd, you don't need to prove your skills, if you are REALLY PASSIONATE about research, then you can do some soul searching to select a field, target a research lab, apply to a university in that country for a Master's Degree on a particular topic. Write to the professor famous in that research. Do your research home, spend 1 year on Masters , write a brilliant thesis on your field of interest. Publish it and try to apply for the lab that interested you. Usually MS students are not preferred, but since you have a Phd and you have a Master's thesis to prove that you are capable of research as well as proof to your passion for research, you can get a research job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth a try, since you wont be spending another 5-6 years on Phd. Also this thesis publication could be your entry to a post-doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regd your family and Son - you should save for your family and work part-time to cover for them. Depends on if your family is ok with you taking a risk for 1 year and leaving them in their own place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you indeed get post-doc, thats easily should be your choice. Since your son is only 8 years old, he should be able to pick up the language or teach him the language before you make a move to any country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that you can always live a normal life after a failure trying to get to top or to chase your passion. So it doesn't make a difference unless your family objects to it. Its just that most people so afraid of failures before even trying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All depends on how much you love doing research :)&#xA;Good luck with your efforts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6033" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T01:47:26.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13371" CreationDate="2013-10-14T04:48:00.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A master's degree from a German &lt;em&gt;Universität&lt;/em&gt; (University) or &lt;em&gt;Technische Hochschule&lt;/em&gt; (Institute of Technology) is directly recognized by other universities in Germany (and usually by most other universities around the world). The same cannot be said for a &lt;em&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/em&gt; (FH). Rostock is officially a university, so that shouldn't be a major concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T08:33:24.853" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T08:33:24.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13405" CreationDate="2013-10-14T08:47:58.720" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose and expectations of a PhD literature review is likely to vary from field to field. My PhD was in Physics, but my views might be taken to apply generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is likely to be some repetition or paraphrasing between students in the same research group, when it comes to the literature review. However, perhaps the comments below might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literature review should be an enjoyable to read (!) introduction, survey and guide to the state of the art. You want to introduce your reader to the field (assuming a clever, but non-expert reader), setting out what has gone before, and perhaps to some extent showing where the gaps are in the research - raising the opportunity for you to present your research as that which fills a gap (Next chapter: &quot;Aims and Objectives&quot;, or similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My primary hallmarks of a poor, or sloppy literature review is that papers are listed &lt;strong&gt;without any helpful context&lt;/strong&gt;.  A dreary literature review, to me, is a listing of papers that we all already know about, without any guide to the reader why the trail leads me to hold the present thesis. No-one much likes reading a dry chronology of papers. I personally, want to be told the story of the research and the literature review plays an important part of that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opportunity exists here to &lt;em&gt;review&lt;/em&gt; the field - what are the general trends in the literature? For example,  Paper A was the first to introduce the theory that drove the authors of Paper B to perform experiment Z which is now the standard technique. However, Paper C suggests that an alternative method may be more effective, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that your review shouldn't attempt to be a complete review of the field - whole standalone papers are written on this, usually by invitation. Your PhD literature review should be more focused, but still a recounting of the Story So Far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your literature review is to be a nice, focused review of the path to your contribution, it is likely that you will read far more papers than you will need to cite in your literature review. Those papers that do not contribute to the Story So Far can be excluded from your literature review. Going off on a tangent, like in any story, can lose and confuse your readers. If you feel a need to refer to these papers, perhaps you can refer to a decent review article which discusses them in detail, for the interested reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T08:47:58.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2013-10-14T09:05:46.197" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of people have a bad time until they realized this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your supervisor/adviser is somebody you should work with, who can guide and direct your research, but after not so much time, &lt;strong&gt;you, not the supervisor, become the expert in your topic&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervisor is the &lt;em&gt;more experienced researcher&lt;/em&gt;, and his expertise should definitely be taken into account. But, after months of research into the topic, you start knowing more about your specific problem than anybody else, and should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; expect the supervisor to be a &lt;em&gt;fail-safe book of infallible answers&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another very important one that I'm happy was told to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you &lt;strong&gt;can't do research as a &lt;em&gt;side&lt;/em&gt;-activity&lt;/strong&gt;. In order to do it well, and to be happy... um... in your life, you have to love research in order to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be jobs that are not your dream jobs, but are worth having because of other personal benefits (e.g. proximity to where you live, good salary, etc.) which you can do full time and have a happy and full life beside them, even if you're not working your dreams. Research is just too demanding and too exhausting to do if it is not &lt;em&gt;the thing&lt;/em&gt; you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T12:10:48.943" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-14T09:05:46.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13417" CreationDate="2013-10-14T14:42:07.010" Score="31" ViewCount="17265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fifth year pure mathematics graduate student; I'm currently on the academic job market. I'm traveling to a few conferences this semester and I believe that I should take this opportunity to meet and talk to people from different universities. I don't find it particularly easy to strike up conversations with relative strangers (while I have some skill at this in 'real-life', the added pressure of 'Oh my God this is a person who wrote a seminal paper in my field' is somewhat nerve-wracking)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to introduce oneself as a graduate student to senior members of one's academic community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hello, my name is X, I'm student of Y at University Z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hello, my name is X, I work on ABC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hello, my name is X, it's great to meet you, I really enjoyed/am currently reading your paper on DEF [[assuming of course that this is true]]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T16:34:01.467" Title="How should I introduce myself (a graduate student) at a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13416" CreationDate="2013-10-14T15:18:33.110" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;By starting a discussion on a point of interest to both them and you. This can typically be a question, or introducing yourself and suggesting that you would like to discuss some of your results with them. But before you can get this conversation started, you'll have to give your name, and state your position, so: &lt;strong&gt;all of the above&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best time/place to introduce yourself is at a poster session, if your conferences have some. And the purpose of these sessions is for people to discover new research and new names in their field, so that's where it is most easy to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello, my name is X, I'm a PhD student at Y in the group of Z.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(now, you've given him enough context… time to start a discussion)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I've read your recent papers on W, and I had a question about it which I could not really solve myself. I was wondering whether, in the diagonalisation step of your algorithm, you could use a direct-space method based on partial sampling of the matrix, rather than transform it to reciprocal space. Do you know if someone ever tried that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I have a poster discussing the economics of greenhouse gases' role in global warming, and how it will enable us to save on the costs of construction of actual greenhouses. I think it may be of interest to you… I'm over there in row 307, and I'd really love to get a chance to discuss this with you…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists are curious, and the best way to approach them is to pique their curiosity…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T19:30:47.040" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T19:30:47.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13441" CreationDate="2013-10-14T23:51:09.550" Score="7" ViewCount="2864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need your advice, dear visitors. Currently I am finishing my BS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and trying to apply for a PhD program in Computer Science to universities in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have a real problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topics on which I worked with my adviser are purely mathematical (differential geometry). I began to study this branch of math 2 years ago. But 1 year ago, due to a suggestion of my friend, I started reading articles on Theoretical Computer Science (namely algorithms on planar graphs and in Linear Algebra but nothing related to numerical methods) and became carried away by that. For some reasons, I couldn't have abandoned the work on my topics. One of them is that the results in differential geometry we eventually obtained are excellent (together with my advisor we have two articles in good mathematical journals). Since this is the last year of my education at my University, I haven't changed the field for my diploma (it would have had no sense and it would have been impossible in some way, but let me not tell about it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Differential Geometry is very interesting and I know much about it but I feel that algorithms is the field to which my future research will be dedicated. I am not interested in any other field of CS. By the way, my scientific advisor knows about my future plans (reported to him half a year ago). He also heartily agreed to write a strong letter of recommendation for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what have I got? Good mathematical skills: a wide spectrum of knowledge on many fields including algebra (linear and abstract), advanced analysis, differential geometry (as mentioned before), functional analysis, combinatorics, algorithms, graph theory... I also have medals and prizes earned on mathematical olympiads (IMO, IMC). So math and TCS background is not a problem for me. After all, Theoretical Computer Science is the same math (we also state and prove theorems like in math)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why a PHD? Because I absolutely know that one-two years spent on getting a MS finished will be just a waste of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I feel difficulty when composing a Statement of Purpose. I just don't know in which way I should put the description of my personal experience forward in such a way so it would be clear and laconic. I don't want the reader to be confused about my goals. I don't want my statement of purpose to be a fruit-salad. I want the reader to understand that a PHD in CS is what I need since I am completely determined about my intentions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of sincere thanks to whoever will answer my question. Maybe, one can give me a link to a sample of SOP similar to my case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9011" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-13T16:35:34.380" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T16:35:34.380" Title="Making future goals clear in statement of purpose when changing fields" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T01:46:41.477" Score="2" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished BS degrees in math and physics, and doing MS in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be applying for PhD programs (mostly physics), interest in mathematical physics, and have taken only the Physics GRE. I found that Stony Brook mathematics dept does not require math GRE, so I am asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can one expect to reasonably predict if it look bad to apply without a math GRE score, given that my background in math is (all pure courses starting from multi-var calc/linear alg/diffeq two semesters of analysis one semester of abstract algebra, undergrad diff geom., two semesters grad. diff. geom., currently in grad. analysis (and of course self-taught measure theory and point-set topology, complex analysis)) all A's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No publications so far, but independent study in physics in understanding solitons of various classical field  theories, and string theory interpretations (used a little diff. geo (ADHM)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And could one be able to predict if recommendation letters from at least one string theorist in a physics department will have as much impact as a rec. from a mathematics faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9012" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T04:12:10.687" Title="Applying to a Math PhD program which doesn't require GRE as a physics/math major" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T04:06:31.450" Score="15" ViewCount="804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to a tiny undergrad school and majored in math.  I had absolutely no idea what to do with my major, so I went to grad school (I've been here for two months now).  Now that I'm here, I'm leaps and bounds behind everyone else, and I don't understand anything in any of my classes.  In my undergrad classes I was always one of the top few students, but now I can't figure out anything by myself.  Is this kind of thing normal?  Should I even be here?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not, what am I going to do with my life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9014" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T09:37:49.313" Title="Not sure if grad school was the right choice" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13420" CreationDate="2013-10-15T04:12:10.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it will prevent you getting accepted.  I followed a similar path (Physics + Math BS, Physics GRE only -&gt; Applied math PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I recommend that you decide who you would like to work with in the places you'll apply to, and write them a very polite, short e-mail explaining your qualifications and interest.  If a faculty member is interested in you, GREs won't matter at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T04:12:10.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13385" CreationDate="2013-10-15T04:33:11.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is yes.  Grad school can be very time intensive, especially if you are coming from a small undergrad program into a large grad program, as your background knowledge may not be up to snuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9014" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T04:33:11.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13427" CreationDate="2013-10-15T04:55:57.133" Score="12" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working towards a PhD. My supervisor and I decided upon a topic which interested both of us. I did an exhaustive literature survey, and found that there have been heavy work in this area in the past 2-3 years. The problem statement we started with seems to have been primarily solved, and now extensions to those are appearing in top journals and conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, he feels that the work remaining in the area is not worth a PhD so we should look for something else, but he still asked me to explore the area. Now, I am clueless what exactly I am supposed to do and where to look for new problems (given that I have already invested my first year into this along with the course work). &#xA;Is it normal during the PhD that the problem that you expected to have not been mostly worked upon, already has so much work done ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in this case, how should one proceed to look for new problems or extensions of the problem that are worth a PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My area is Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T04:21:26.410" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T04:21:26.410" Title="Is it normal to suddenly become clueless about your PhD topic and how to rediscover one?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13425" CreationDate="2013-10-15T08:37:52.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the vast output of science it is not surprising that more may be done than what might appear at first. Science is about advancing science and so if your original question has been answered the question becomes what is not answered? A key aspect of all research is that new question spring out of answering (or trying to) question. This leads to the point that one must read up on the literature in the field of interest so that you can identify the new questions that emerge. This is one way of interpreting your advisors suggestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be very difficult to isolate oneself with a question since others will likely arrive at similar ideas sooner or later. Defining a PhD study can therefore be tricky since it means working on some line of questions for several years. &quot;Knowing your opposition&quot; is therefore a good thing. You need to read up on material not only to identify unsolved questions but also to get a sense of what others are working on. Going to key conferences in your subject is one good way to see what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, I want to add that I do not think it is your sole responsibility to do all this, after all, your advisor should now more about the field and who is doing what among peers. Getting a PhD is about learning to become an independent researcher and to ask too much of you early on is thus not realistic. What you can do is as stated earlier to read up on literature and build your own picture of the (sub-)field. You will need this knowledge under any circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T08:37:52.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13425" CreationDate="2013-10-15T08:41:37.983" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't consider your time reviewing the field necessarily wasted. You say that you've discovered that the research topic that you wished to pursue has already been thoroughly investigated. If this is true, then you are in the happy position of finding this out &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; before having invested more of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; it indeed true that the topic has been exhausted? Perhaps this is the basis of your supervisor's request that you continue reading around the topic. Is there a line of investigation still remaining that you can work on? Are you sure all the extensions to the primary findings have been looked at? Is there a way of extending into new and unexpected territory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this last point, &lt;strong&gt;talking to many other people in the field&lt;/strong&gt; - or closely related fields - might spark off ideas in your head. Discuss with them whether they think all aspects of the topic have been considered. Find people who are not experts in the specific topic, but are conversant with it who might offer a difference perspective. These people might draw you toward research across two fields. Can the results of the research topic you were looking to work on be extended into other, surprising areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T08:41:37.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13421" CreationDate="2013-10-15T09:37:49.313" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're experiencing what a lot of graduate students go through—moving from being a big fish in a small pond to being a big fish among other big fish in what seems to be a vast, uncharted ocean. Feelings of frustration, confusion, and even bewilderment are normal. It's part of the adjustment process. The truth is that many of your classmates are likely going through the same difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question to ask is not &quot;Should you be in grad school?&quot; The question to ask is &quot;Do I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to be here?&quot; If you do, then don't let &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect&quot;&gt;imposter syndrome&lt;/a&gt; drag you down! Also, remember that research bears often little resemblance to classwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the other hand, if you've realized that you're not interested in doing a PhD anymore, then you'll be much better off figuring out what you'd like to do instead. There are a lot of career options for mathematicians, and wasting a bunch of years getting a PhD you're no longer interested in won't be of much use for you in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T09:37:49.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T12:06:54.163" Score="5" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to  continue working on the research I used to work on when I was in school.&#xA;The thing is that I am not a student anymore, and I also do not work for the company that works on the research project I used to work on. It used to work on the research project by myself while I was in school (a little help from professors), meaning I can probably work/project on it by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that since I am not in school anymore, do I need to concern the license issue as commercial? All I want to do is do my personal/individual research project and submit a work to academic purpose, such as journal or conference. I see some software or programming library I am using say &quot;Acedemy&quot; or &quot;Commercial&quot;, and since this is for the academic purpose, I am not so sure which one I need to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9018" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T12:13:01.540" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T14:00:18.140" Title="Independent research and license usage" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13431" CreationDate="2013-10-15T12:14:21.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to read the exact terms of the licenses, and see what they call “academic” or “commercial”. There is no general definition, these types of licenses depend entirely on the software publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T12:14:21.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13368" CreationDate="2013-10-15T12:56:02.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along the lines of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13388/73&quot;&gt;earthling's answer&lt;/a&gt;, you do have a strong say in your topic, and you'll definitely want to be interested in the topic as you'll be putting a lot of work into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do realize that, as an undergraduate, you have far less experience in doing research than your advisor. You will save yourself a tremendous amount of work and effort by working closely with him on your project. One way to ensure that your advisor will be willing to invest that time in you is to work on a project that (1) interests him and (2) is related to his research. Even better, both. You are definitely free to choose whatever project you want, but it would be a good idea to choose something on which he can offer his expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T12:56:02.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13431" CreationDate="2013-10-15T14:00:18.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In adddition to @F'x's point:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As your situation is different from both the usual academic and the usual commercial situations, maybe you could email the developer/author/maintainer of the library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the license says, software licenses are almost always non-exclusive*. That means whoever holds the copyright to the software can grant you another license that covers your use of the library. This can be as easy as an email saying &quot;go ahead and use it under the terms of the academic license&quot; and would give both sides legal certainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Or at least, software with exclusive license usually doesn't make its way legally into the public. Although one could think of an exclusive license granted to the public...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T14:00:18.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13443" CreationDate="2013-10-15T14:17:36.863" Score="2" ViewCount="1378" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;Even though title itself seems quite similar to other questions asked here, my question is a bit different from other similar questions. I know it's a bit long, but I do appreciate anyone who has a read through it. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a Ph.D. student in UK and it has been 5 months since I started. My topic was something completely new (to me) so as one might guess, I've spent these 5 months reviewing the literature and covering what I didn't know. Problems started right here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working at a Research Institute that has expertise on something totally different than my Ph.D. (let's name it field A, and name my Ph.D. field B). Simply, A and B have nothing in common (except both are engineering topics, but sub-fields are different). As a result, this laboratory doesn't have the required equipment or facilities that I need for my Ph.D. &lt;strong&gt;most importantly&lt;/strong&gt;, there is not a single person around me in the lab who has a single bit of knowledge about my topic, thus no practical help or chances of hands on experience. Speaking of the good parts; I am getting a proper work experience (since this research institute has industrial focus), my scholarship is a substantial amount and my supervisor (even though he is sort of clueless about my topic, he is a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; figure in field A) is quite impressed with my progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as always, I have an alternative. There is another lab in my university which has expertise on field B (my Ph.D.). In this lab, there are people who have expertise in field B and of course, director of the lab is a powerful figure in field B. I know it sounds good so far, but here are the cons of this alternative: Lab director  can't give any sort of guarantees regarding a scholarship (which means I have to pay tuition fees as well, good old UK) and  wants me to work in a new project(a new field, field C). This field C, again completely different from A and B, is a newer topic compared to B and there are lots of research going on in this field. Field B is sort of an established field, I am just trying to squeeze whatever's left out it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on one side, I have a good working experience, Ph.D. in field B, an impressed supervisor, yet no practical help about field B or collaboration whatsoever. On the other side, I have a group of people who have expertise in field B and C, yet no money. I personally don't have any problems about changing my Ph.D. from B to C, the only disadvantage will be losing 6 months of work and naturally, getting 6 months of extension in the end. On the plus side, I already have a paper waiting to be published (in field A though, not in my Ph.D. topic field B). Therefore, these 6 months won't be &quot;that&quot; lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, both sides are waiting to hear from me as soon as possible. I have to make a decision by this Friday. Last thing that should be mentioned is my current lab is located in city 1, whereas the other one is located in city 2. I hate city 1 (current city), whereas I am in love with city 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Financially, I am promised by the other professor that depending on my performance, I can get funding. I do know I can't trust this, though I believe I can cover my expenses throughout my Ph.D. including tuition fees. So, money is not a big problem right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I go to the other lab, field C will be my Ph.D. as well as my work, hence shielding me from dividing into two as I do right now for field A and B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simple, what would you do if you were me? I have exhausted my friends and my family about this issue and I need a fresh pair of eyes and neurons to help me out.  I do appreciate any questions and comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9019" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T09:51:06.860" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T09:51:06.860" Title="Ph.D. Topic Problem- Changing Topics/Labs" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13435" CreationDate="2013-10-15T17:21:19.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whichever makes you a happier person. Life is short and not worth spending 5 years in a condition you don't like. If you have the money, go for it. If not, here is my longer answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work experience you are getting in field A should not be a priority because you are there to do research, to contribute to science. Work experience in that field should be just a tool so that you can earn money and live properly. The excellency of people in field A are also irrelevant, as your research is in field B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, life does not always present us the best options. If you cannot get a scholarship when you switch to field B, then I would definitely stay at where you are now. You say you can cover expenses, but if you don't get a scholarship, how much will you lose in 5 years? That's a big number and imo not worth it (unless you have a million in some account)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stay there and from time to time, consult professors that work in field B. After some time, as you dig deeper, you will know more than those guys anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your budget I guess. I am not rich so I don't like the idea of Ph.D. level scientists' paying for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:21:19.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13368" CreationDate="2013-10-15T17:30:26.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to answer you as a senior undergraduate computer science student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to do research (I had no prior research experience, so I asked an instructor for support for research. He gave me a topic, I found it OK, and I began to learn about the field and work on an existing paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet in 2 months I realized that I lacked motivation to go on because that field was completely out of my interests and what I have always wanted was something else. ( I couldn't choose that as my research topic because there was nobody with that field's knowledge)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research requires deep knowledge and unless you are completely interested in that area, you might find it hard to continue after some point. You should really love and embrace it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, everyone is different. Yet I strongly advice that if you are gonna work on something, make sure you are really interested in it and not doing it just for the sake of doing research. It can harm your motivation and discourage you from being a determined scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will definitely be harder to get something out of it as your instructors don't know the topic. If the aim is to get fruitful results, you should choose one of the proposed topics. If your main aim is to develop yourself in an area that will contribute to your personal desires, it is better to choose your own topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:30:26.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12556" CreationDate="2013-10-15T19:30:28.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it need to be a whole year? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a certain creativity and a good grasp of when there is a chance to take a longer break helps: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After graduation (Diplom/master) I went abroad to work for half a year, and then took off 2 more months for traveling before returning to my old institute. My professor made me sign the contract for afterwards before I left for those 8 months.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Maybe you could apply for a postdoc, but put the possible start of the affiliation some months later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Later, I managed to get one free month when changing positions. Took quite hard negotiations (the new institute actually wanted me to start 4 months earlier, i.e. 3 months before the end of the old contract). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One other time, I negotiated for a similar break, but it didn't work out that way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A postdoc colleague of mine managed to get 3 free months between two projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this depends very much on how strong your position in the negotiations actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about putting a bunch of visits to other groups into the travel schedule? Enough, so that you also get a bunch of research stays and a whole lot of networking out of that year. In my field, few people object to visitors who come on their own money and sincerely try to start collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T19:30:28.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T22:11:06.987" Score="2" ViewCount="2015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a BSW (social work) and have decided to go back to school for MSW; but social work was never my passion. I honestly picked it in undergrad because they took all my credits when I didn't pass the Praxis for Early Childhood Education (missed each by 1 point) and now I'm in the MSW program at Delaware State University but hate it. I feel like I'm just wasting my time; its not something that I am interested in at all. I went back because &quot;its the thing to do&quot; if I want to get money in my field. I'm just lost when I'm in class because it doesn't have 100% of my attention. I am 26 years old and feel like its too late for me to be saying &quot;I don't know what I want to do with my life.&quot; What are some other options of programs I could  look into that is somewhat within social work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9023" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T00:00:28.693" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T06:52:20.507" Title="Don't like my choice of grad program and don't know what to do" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13419" CreationDate="2013-10-15T23:26:26.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice any of us could give you is to do an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/#q=statement+of+purpose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;internet search&lt;/a&gt; for what others have written, and use such examples to help structure your own personal statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you want the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What previous experience (particularly research) do you have in this field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are your future research goals? How do these goals tie in with past experiences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you want to do this research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why should &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; be chosen above other applicants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one here is going to help you write it or proof-read your statements. If you have further &lt;strong&gt;general&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. not field-specific) questions that are well structured, they are much more likely to elicit a good response than the floundering &quot;where do I start?&quot; that I see here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T23:26:26.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13419" CreationDate="2013-10-16T06:35:35.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you've essentially written an outline of your SoP in the question. Namely, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm interested in theoretical computer science and mathematics. I've worked in differential geometry, and here are my results, but I'm now fascinated by algorithms research, and I have extensive math background&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now just expand on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T06:35:35.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13439" CreationDate="2013-10-16T06:52:20.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you do not have the passion for the study you are in - and this will invariably affect your effectiveness to be able to succeed in the Masters you are doing.  At 26 years old, rather than being 'too late' to try anything new, take this as an opportunity to explore new fields, to find where your passions are and most of all, find a path that you will both enjoy and feel fulfilled by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ultimate decision is yours; however, a few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just because the course is perceived as being &quot;the thing to do&quot;, does not mean it is the best thing for you to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider if that field is a career that you want to devote your time to in a career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there chances for innovative new research in a related field?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T06:52:20.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13435" CreationDate="2013-10-16T07:38:56.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would move to another lab if I were you. The reason is, I want to do my PhD and the research in the field I like. Otherwise, why would I do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading your question a few times, my impression is that you like field B the most, field C the next, field A the last. Please correct me if I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stay in your current lab, everything will be the same as the past 5 months. You have the money alright. What else do you have? You don't have experts in B around you. You don't have equipments/facilities to do research in B. It looks like there is no way to finish PhD in B in that lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you'll have experts in B to talk to you and equipments available if you move to the other lab. There is a good chance for you to finish the PhD in B if you have a choice to do B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field B is probably a dead end, you are trying to squeeze something out of it. What if you find nothing after 2 years of squeezing with or without help from other experts in B? What are you going to do? Do you want to do A? I would not if I were you because I don't like A. But, you can choose to do C if you move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the lab director says he can't give any sort of guarantees regarding a scholarship because he wants you to do C. The scholarship is the incentive. If you don't have problem changing from B to C, I think you will get some sort of financial help after you move there (no guarantee, of course). If my interpretation of your question is correct, C is acceptable to you, at least it's better than A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I would do if I were you, I would ask the other lab if there is some chance  to get some financial help if I move there. If the answer is not 100% negative, I would move. (I must be able to get some food to eat while I am doing research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is an absolute no, I would stay and look for other opportunities to move later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T07:38:56.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13445" CreationDate="2013-10-16T11:44:02.013" Score="21" ViewCount="1713" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few question aiming at or hinting towards avoiding academic burn-out, but I couldn't come across one that targets interaction with a colleague that has suffered from a serious burn-out, which can be very tricky as I am learning nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: A colleague of mine (office-mate actually) has suffered a pretty major crisis over the past year and had to take an extended leave of absence due to stress. The person in question was/is close to disputation but due to the fact that they could not handle being at work anymore, everything was postponed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After several months away, my colleague is trying to get back in the game by starting off 20%. I heard that it didn't work out all too good the first attempt, a couple of weeks later they are attempting to start again. As we were chatting the other day, I realized that I can't really say much without tripping my colleague off, in the sense  that the subject often raises old issues somehow and causes some frustration/stress for my colleague. That partially originates from the fact that most of what we have in common and talk about is work oriented somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My natural reflex when I realize that the subject causes discomfort is to not feed the conversation and attempt to change the subject. But that doesn't really work too good, as it's not very discrete. I also suspect that specially avoiding small-talk with my office mate isn't very nice either, I don't want the person to feel isolated and alone. I mean the fact that a person had a stress-related problem, it's not something that one should be ashamed or embarrassed about, it shouldn't be awkward socially, but somehow it does feel like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone here have any experience about how to tackle a situation like this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-15T20:12:15.353" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T20:12:15.353" Title="Strategies for dealing/interacting with a colleague who have suffered from academic burnout" Tags="&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13444" CreationDate="2013-10-16T11:58:21.370" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a tricky situation, and there is no 'guidebook' way of helping your colleague or how to deal with their recovery - I can only offer an account of when I burnt out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I burnt out, my colleagues - both work and academic, rallied around and helped me get back on my feet.  The way they did it was to be there and to simply &lt;strong&gt;listen&lt;/strong&gt; - this was the key thing that helped me rise up.  They also kept things as normal as possible and understood the times when I needed to vent - which over &lt;strong&gt;time&lt;/strong&gt;, became less and less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also gave me my &lt;strong&gt;space&lt;/strong&gt; - like an open invitation for me to join in the conversations or activities when I felt I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having also been in the situation from the other side, listening and giving time and space did help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, you have to take care of your own well being as well - you are doing the right thing, by being there, it is not an easy road - but believe me, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; making a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T11:58:21.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13449" CreationDate="2013-10-16T12:42:45.310" Score="37" ViewCount="3113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, when speaking English in research, you can find a great variety of (mostly, non-native) accents. Since I started moving in academic circles and a more international environment, I slowly learned to understand some of the accents much better. I can currently understand well most mild accents and some specific accents even if they are strong, but there are still both &lt;em&gt;researchers with very strong accents&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;types of accents I have a very hard time understanding&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As networking, communicating, and generally talking to other researchers is very important, it got me wondering about what I can to to &lt;strong&gt;overcome this &quot;accent barrier&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've encountered this &quot;accent barrier&quot; in at least three different settings, and there's always problems arising for that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;speakers and presenters on conferences (or other big events)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually try and decide from the slides (and what I can understand) how relevant I think the presented material is for me, and then I would read the paper later on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it means that I could &lt;em&gt;miss some interesting papers&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;miss some of the authors insight on the problem only mentioned in the presentation&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;loose a certain amount of time, because listening to a talk is much faster than reading&lt;/em&gt; (especially if one just wants to understand the basic idea).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;poster sessions and social events on conferences / other manifestations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is a bit more tricky since it's more personal interaction. I would usually try and ask the person to clarify or reformulate the question, and then if I still don't understand try talking about something related to &quot;keywords&quot; that I succeeded to identify. If it's a social occasion, I would try to look attentive, smile, and excuse myself the first acceptable opportunity I get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again, I might be missing on some great ideas this way. Missing making some potentially useful contacts with the people from the community, and even possibly looking rude if I didn't understand something crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;interactions with people from you team/close environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this one, I'm totally at a loss. I know how much team dynamics is important. If something like that happened, I would probably try and avoid one-on-one communication with that person as much as possible. Still, it would probably make me feel constantly uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;are some suggestions on how to act in such situations?&lt;/strong&gt; They generally make me feel uncomfortable, and often afraid that I'll offend somebody. Again, I do believe that a little practice and effort can go a long way to understanding different accents, especially when they are not &lt;em&gt;too strong&lt;/em&gt;. But (and I guess this also depends on ones mother tongue) I think a lot of people have problems with (probably different) strong accents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T21:08:34.233" Title="Dealing with listening/talking to researchers with difficult accents" Tags="&lt;language&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2013-10-16T13:03:16.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it makes your point well, then a comment that is humorous can add to the paper.  The cutoff for this is rather more permissive in a conference presentation, though sprinkling a few semi-relevant jokes into a presentation is best left to the keynotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more eminent the author, the more they can get away with in terms of grabbing the reader's attention:  How about the abstract to &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1751-8121/44/49/492001/article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T13:03:16.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13446" CreationDate="2013-10-16T13:20:37.397" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accents are tricky... It's a problem that one often hears/talks about at conferences. English being the &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; language of communicating science (well, anything really) internationally, I feel native speakers of English are at a major disadvantage when it comes to accents (perhaps it's only fair since they likely have an easier time reading/writing in English). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be counter-intuitive but, a native speaker has a very clear idea just &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; a particular word or expression is supposed to sound like. As a non-native speaker to two languages I speak most in my daily life (including English), I have to point out that learning a language is hard work, especially later in life. I was lucky enough to learn these languages when I was young enough, and my teachers have always been native speakers. Not many are so lucky... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, what can one do when talking to a person with a very heavy accent? Allow me to put forth my two-cents; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;lecture/talk:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't really have much else to say other than try to take notes of the subjects, figures and references the speaker mentions. Then try to keep your communication on a written basis. While it's not very nice, you can always excuse yourself for misunderstanding or not-catching up with the talk and ask for details that way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;poster sessions:&lt;/strong&gt; I think this is a two-sided coin; if you are the person visiting a poster, and can't seem to communicate with the presenter, it's essentially same as above, get the headlines and move along, then keep communication on a written basis. On the other hand, if you are the presenter it's more tricky. I have had occasions where a very interested researcher (young or senior) comes forward and tries to either fire shots at the project or inquire more about details of what I'm presenting, for instance how it's relevant for their work etc. I hate it when they have so much to say and just can't get themselves understood. I suppose it's a matter of being polite and trying to get them to rephrase, help out with choices of words (important to be very subtle) etc. If all else fails, resort to the ugly backup plan, ask them to mail you with their questions instead.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;colleague:&lt;/strong&gt; I think it's essentially the most relaxed case, just help the colleague to formulate his/her questions or ideas. If you have a good enough relationship, advice them to improve their english and make it clear (in a friendly manner) that the impact of heavy accent is a hinder for their own success in communicating with others, and ultimately their chances of succeeding in academia. Give tips about how they can improve. It's of course problematic if the colleague in question is significantly more senior than you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's not much but I hope it helps anyways. Finally, if there's a particular type of accent that you find really hard to decipher, expose yourself more to it! Maybe that helps with the choice of the next vacation spot? ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T13:20:37.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13446" CreationDate="2013-10-16T13:41:08.003" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker but I do understand your frustration. Here are some of my experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Embrace the elephant in the room&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time to time I found people around me are too &quot;polite&quot; to not tell me that they don't understand what I say. I have had a course evaluation saying that &quot;the instructor is great but time to time I had hard time understand some words he said. For example, it took me a few weeks to realize he meant 'result' when he said 'ray-sult'.&quot; I was actually amazed by how much money this student spent to be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, at the beginning of the course, I surrender myself and introduce the elephant. &quot;I have accent, and if any of my pronunciations is off, you're more than welcome to correct me. Your input will help me to become a better speaker.&quot; Then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the situation is the same in the native speaker's shoes. If you have trouble understanding a colleague. Tactfully ask for a few repetitions in an informal conversation, and then confess that you sometimes may not catch the full gist of the speech, and proceed to ask for a blanket excuse in the future should you need another repetition again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Fully understand&quot; is likely an illusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your point about missing important materials in conference is well taken. Here are two reflections I have: i) realize that even you get the whole sentence, it's still a foreign language to the speaker and there will always be some loss in translation. ii) In a conference, it's probably hard to pick up all the little bits of information. On this point, you can Zen that over like watching a firework; let that go. Or if the curiosity is killing you, approach the speaker after the talk and clarify. If the conversation goes well you can consider exchanging business cards, and ask for a copy of their presentation over the e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hold on to an ad hoc interpreter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach in foreign countries, there would be English speakers whose speeches are beyond my cognitive reach. This is how I deal with it: i) Keep smiling, and rephrase the question as best as I can, and I know I'd fail, then repeat step i) for a few more times and keep calm and smiling, ii) eventually some participants who are more proficient would volunteer to translate. If no one does, embrace the elephant in the room and say &quot;I guess I'm a bit stuck here, would anyone tell me what I missed in the question?&quot; iii) once the question is clarified, answer it, facing the original questioner. For myself, I prefer to slowly pace up to the board, and write down my talking points. I think this would enhance the questioner's understanding if he/she has trouble listening to my speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often enough, no one would help. And the questioner may just wave his/her hand and give up. Don't be frustrated. Invite the person to stay and talk, and perhaps then you can employ things like paper and pen to better understand each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When communicating with colleagues who have heavy accents, I'd also rely a bit more on writing. Using e-mails, or using a white board in a meeting may help. On that note, I also bring a stack of index cards with me to meetings and classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use international &quot;language&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smile, drawing, ... etc. are always good substitute or supplement to verbal communication. Avoid using very specific body gestures because one friendly gesture here may deem insulting in another culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn some foreign languages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually quite interesting that comparing to my colleagues who are native speakers, I actually have an easier time filtering other countries' accents. I attributed to the fact that when sitting through English classes, our teachers put extra emphasis on highlightin how our mother tongue may cause some English words to be mispronounced. Then in university I picked up a couple foreign languages, and then now I have virtually no problem listening to people from those countries speaking English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may actually be impractical to learn all the languages. Here are a couple tricks I have used: First, just learn their basic pronunciation system first and if you have time, figure out how to say some basic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.towerofbabelfish.com/the-method/vocabulary/base-vocabulary-list/#.Ul6VVxB2GrY&quot;&gt;general words&lt;/a&gt;. In the process, evaluate how the system may work if it's used to pronounce English. For example, Japanese system does not differentiate r and l, so you may expect hearing &quot;running&quot; and &quot;learning&quot; or &quot;lighting&quot; and &quot;writing&quot; pronounced identically. Mandarin does not have the -th and Th-, so Mandarin speakers may compensate with -ve and F- (e.g. A &quot;fief&quot; instead of a &quot;thief&quot;.) On the contrary, Mandarin has an elaborated series of s or s-like sounds: si, zi, and ci, with different tongue-teeth positions and amounts of air blowing through the lips. So, you may expect emphasis on some syllables that would have been only lightly pronounced if spoken by a native speaker. Italian speakers, on the other hand, tend to clearly pronounce syllable-by-syllable and attach an -e or -a after some words. Once we put the same nouns spelled in English and Italian side by side, the reason would become apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, read some books on how to get rid of accents or how to speak in British and American accent. Most of these books would have a chapter or so dedicated to explain major mistakes made by speakers from different systems. For example, Japanese speakers may have an extra &quot;-gu&quot; after all words ending with -ing; Chinese speakers may not distinguish clearly between -s and -th. These tips are not for native speakers, but by learning some major traits, native speakers can quickly filter the noise and get to the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make an effort&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes time to understand accents. But as you speak to a certain foreign person more and more, you should be more at ease. This is particularly important when dealing with your colleagues. Keep talking and keep categorizing their speech traits, and you'll get better at talking to them. Most of these advices may make you feel vulnerable or even stupid, but as an ESL and also a foreign language learner, when it comes to language, I think we cannot be overly reserved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T21:08:34.233" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T21:08:34.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2013-10-16T15:16:11.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of an  interdisciplinary NSF IGERT program on Water Diplomacy which supports 15 or so PhD students across 4+ departments. The program has done a commendable job of making opportunities for team building, collaboration, and the emergence of happy accidents within the group. Here are a few things to add to the running list of answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly colloquiums where one student presents their work for an hour, followed by half an hour of collective brainstorming, critique, and discussion. Light breakfast provided. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annual weekend retreats to revisit program priorities, assets, and areas for improvement. We cook meals, have fires, and chat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly evening workshops/round-table discussions on a theme - this year's series is on civic engagement. Dinner provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share office space. While not uncommon for PhD research groups, it's unique to have students across multiple departments sharing space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4226" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T15:16:11.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13444" CreationDate="2013-10-16T15:54:28.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can give suggestions, but the only person who knows how your colleague wants to be treated is your colleague.  I would suggest discussing it with them directly.  Maybe something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I didn't realize until now how much I talk about work.  I don't want to make you uncomfortable by bringing it up, so if I do, feel free to stop me or change the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T15:54:28.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13446" CreationDate="2013-10-16T16:14:06.870" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers here are fantastic. Just to add my experience, &lt;strong&gt;know that these conversations will take more of your time.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm in the US, and I've been working with a team in India for some of our coding for the past few months. I quickly realized that simply slowing everything down by about 50% improved communication significantly. Speak slower, wait longer for responses, provide and ask for clarification about twice as much... you'll have much better success if you simply accept that what would be a 15 minute conversation with a local colleague may be a 30 or 45 minute conversation with someone less familiar with the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, not all conversations have to be in person. I've had a lot of success with one of our contractors &lt;strong&gt;limiting our interaction to email and IM&lt;/strong&gt;. This person is very uncomfortable speaking English, and using text-based communication has made our communication more painless and more frequent. There are still many instances when each of us has to ask for clarification, and when using IM I definitely slow down my own typing so as not to dominate the conversation, but it has helped immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T16:14:06.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13455" CreationDate="2013-10-16T17:15:28.080" Score="19" ViewCount="22837" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 4th year computer engineering undergraduate student who will apply for Ph.D. programs this winter/spring, for the next fall semester. I have decided to become an academic 2 years ago, and head of department said &quot;keep your gpa high and you will be fine&quot;. Well, I have increased my gpa, from 2.5 to 3.5 but now I see that I need research experience to be admitted to good programs. ( I can't afford masters program)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I didn't need a research experience, yet while I was thinking that, I see that undergraduate students all over the world were doing research. I admit I was naive to think so but I was guided that way. So few months ago I am trying to learn about admission process and I see many people over the internet with tons of research experience and even papers waiting to be published, or already published. And the most important part of SOP is research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And guess what? There is no lab at my university. And not a single instructor that does research in the field I want. It is a very small department (5 full time assistant professors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously, I cannot get into a top or very good program with these conditions, and they have every right to decline me. But I believe it is my right to get into a good valid program that matches my interests. I shouldn't take the whole responsiblity of non existent opportunities that other students had in other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know, from experienced people, about what I should do to get into a Ph.D. program without direct proof of research capabilities. No lab work, no research, nada. Just reading many papers in the field I am interested in for last few months, and high motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it a point where I should say &quot;That's life and never fair&quot; and have plan B and plan C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastEditorUserId="7773" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T17:36:42.117" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T09:07:55.933" Title="How to overcome &quot;No Research Experience&quot; in CS Ph.D applications" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13477" CreationDate="2013-10-16T23:33:34.353" Score="2" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;h1&gt;General background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the cognitive sciences, it is often necessary to program/script experimental paradigms to conduct your studies. Basically, these programs present stimuli and collect responses, such as in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eriksen_flanker_task&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eriksen Flanker task&lt;/a&gt;. However, programming capacities are typically limited in my field because it is rarely taught during graduate education (at least in my country). Also, it seems there is a somewhat reluctant culture of sharing this software unless there is some sort of scientific cooperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, when designing a study the decision for one of several paradigms used to measure a given construct can, among other things, be motivated by availability of the software or the effort necessary to implement it. With respect to sound science (choosing the most appropriate rather than available paradigm, software bugs, etc.), reproducibility (incomplete descriptions of methods, lack of programming skills, etc.), speed of scientific development, and, more generally, open science this is less than optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The situation at hand&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a current study, I have started to implement three paradigms from scratch for different reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One paradigm is publicly available from the authors but implemented in a commercial development environment for which I don't have a license (I, therefore, can't run it). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another paradigm, to my knowledge, is not available from the authors at all. I contacted the authors for a copy of the software but got no reply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third paradigm is commercially available but is also closed source and only grants access to a limited set of the response data. For my analyses, I'd like to have access to richer data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given my prior general considerations, I think about releasing my implementations of the paradigms under an open source license, once they are finished. Now my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are issues to consider when I release my software to collect data in an experimental paradigm, which was conceived by another scientist, under an open source license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the things I'm wondering about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there &lt;strong&gt;legal issues&lt;/strong&gt;, such as copyright infringement, to be considered for commercially or non-commercially available software? Note, I created all of the code and  all images based on low resolution prints in publications. I'm merely copying the concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would such a release conflict with common &lt;strong&gt;etiquette&lt;/strong&gt; in the case where the software is simply not available from the original authors (remember, I asked but got no reply)? Is it necessary to ask each author before releasing my code?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I be &lt;strong&gt;held responsible morally&lt;/strong&gt; if the software is used and turns out to be faulty? I'm less concerned about legal responsibility because the license I intend to use does not provide warranty. More importantly, I certainly intend for the software to work since I'll use it my self but you never know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If my study ends up being published and points to the availability of the software, can this benefit the &lt;strong&gt;citation count&lt;/strong&gt; of the publication?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are more things to consider that I haven't thought of. But that's why I'm asking the question. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T12:48:54.290" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T16:37:17.163" Title="What are issues to consider when making your code for an experimental paradigm, which was conceived by someone else, publicly available?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13453" CreationDate="2013-10-17T00:40:09.527" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need research experience for a program, &lt;em&gt;then you need research experience&lt;/em&gt; and there's not much you can do about it besides gaining that experience. Even if you did gain entry into such a program, you will lack the research skills of your peers. You'll be starting off on the back foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is a long-term commitment to poorly paid slave labour. What if you find out you don't even like research, 1 year in? I would strongly advise the &quot;try before you buy&quot; approach. Get a Master's degree or a postgraduate diploma, that has a reasonable research component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good PhD program will want you to prove that you have the commitment and research skills to pull it off. Once you can do that, you have a good chance for admission. If research experience is a &lt;em&gt;requirement&lt;/em&gt;, then you can't just shrug it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T00:40:09.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T03:21:31.580" Score="9" ViewCount="4495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no formal work experience. I have a BA in sociology and went into graduate school for education. Instead of following my instincts or really thinking about whether I could teach childhood as a job, I told myself it would feel more natural. It has not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will fail this program if I have to teach full-time, which is required to graduate (as is an exam that's so new there are no prep books, and it is required to stay in this program). I am in my mid twenties and have zero formal work experience. Foolishly, I'm one of those people that could barely juggle a full courseload and work. I've always chosen school and realized too late that graduate school was a horrible choice for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of anything resembling work, I've assisted as a volunteer in classrooms, written papers and portfolios, and have put two years into this program but am incredibly unhappy and cannot finish, nor do I want to be in this profession anymore. I thought it was the one way to put my useless liberal arts degree into a professional path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that, I went through a year and a half after graduation looking for entry level office job, bookstores, retail...no callbacks. Maybe three interviews in the whole time. Temp agencies stopped responding and when I called one to ask why they weren't calling me in to offer advisement, they said they'd have to call me. I graduated with a 3.0 but my resume was too weak, I guess. I had friends look at it to see that it was passable, but as I said I have no experience and I'm now in my mid-20s. (And for what it's worth, am incredibly ashamed of myself.) No experience, no work. My family says I am &quot;unemployable&quot; and I fear they're right--I was in this program two years and should have pulled out sooner. It looks suspicious. If nothing else, it is damaging because I went to school full-time instead of working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time, money, and effort I spent on this makes me feel bad, but the lack of a degree/ANY work experience in all that time makes me feel worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there it is, I have no work experience AND no degree to explain the time gap. Can I salvage this? I feel embarrassed even to put the school on my resume b/c of the lack of a degree, but it's the only thing I have to show for the last few years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is in teaching/early childhood. I don't know how to spin graduate school into first experience in even a basic clerical job.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9038" LastEditorUserId="9038" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T10:16:46.380" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T17:50:08.837" Title="I have nothing to show for the last five years but graduate school and I can't finish/want to leave this field" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13457" CreationDate="2013-10-17T05:14:53.633" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The skills acquired as a graduate student are often very employable outside academia. I was doing a PhD in Linguistics with a focus on corpus linguistics. As part of my education, I learned statistics, Python scripting, Mandarin Chinese and technical writing. Those skills ended up getting me a job offer from a major computer software company, which I accepted and left grad school to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably have more employable skills than you think. Spend some time thinking about what skills you possess and what professions need those skills. a PhD to your name is not the first thing employers look for - they look for whether you have the skills that they need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop thinking about your degree and start thinking about your skillset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9042" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T05:14:53.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-10-17T08:53:35.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/72974/25283&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; I describe how it is possible to recover data from &lt;strong&gt;vector&lt;/strong&gt; graph in a PDF file with maximum exactness and even estimate introduced recovery error. I show how it can be done in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mathematica&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; but the method shown is very basic and simple enough to be easily implemented in other systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6255" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T09:20:44.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13461" CreationDate="2013-10-17T09:24:05.297" Score="8" ViewCount="1064" Body="&lt;p&gt;What information is important to provide when citing from a PhD thesis that has appeared as book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The publisher (even if it is a 'dubious' one that might vanish in the near future)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or the institution and that it is a phd thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for bibtex, I wonder whether I should use the @book or the @phdthesis entry type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8601" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T09:49:49.950" Title="How to cite a phd thesis that was published as a book?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13460" CreationDate="2013-10-17T09:38:06.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provide the citation form that you think will be &lt;strong&gt;most useful to readers in the middle or long term&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;provide both&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's self-published, then cite it as you would cite a thesis. On the other hand, if it was published in book form by a respectable publisher (i.e. it will be easy to find 10 years from now), then cite the book. This is commonly done in some fields of humanities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing both is also an option, and it does not have a downside, except it's a bit longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T09:38:06.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13491" CreationDate="2013-10-17T09:43:47.480" Score="8" ViewCount="1586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a doubt regarding the Statement of Purpose for grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toward the end of the essay, should I specify the list of professors who I am interested to work with? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;...Since research in this field is very active in Dr. A's, Dr. B’s, Dr. C’s groups at XXX University, I would like to apply to your program...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is: though doing so may indicate that I have read about the professors and their works (which is a plus I suppose), it is risky at the same time. What if Dr.[A-C] are not able to accept more people to their labs? Will the admission committee automatically disqualify my application in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I would love to hear more advices from you of how to play it safe: whether such specifications are needed, and how to phrase them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="7401" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T11:01:57.333" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:31:00.247" Title="Statement of Purpose-How specific it should be?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13460" CreationDate="2013-10-17T09:49:49.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a thesis is published as a book with an ISBN number (or ISSN-number as is the case with theses in my university system) then the thesis is traceable and identifiable. There may even be a doi associated with it. An unpublished thesis can of course be traced back to the department where it was produced, or at least the university. But, often such theses are found on fragile perhaps unmaintained web-pages with uncertain life-span. So given the information you provide both can be quite fragile, but with the published version the traceability might be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One has to realize that theses are treated and stored in varying ways in different university systems. In some cases there are central repositories for unpublished thesis, in others there are not. They may even only exist as working copies for the examination committee. In my system they are printed and provided as part of a publication series (with and ISSN and ISBN number). So while there is nothing wrong with citing a PhD thesis using as you suggest bibTeX' @phdthesis, I would argue that using a published @book is better because of the official traceability (provided it has ISSN/ISBN/doi).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T09:49:49.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13465" CreationDate="2013-10-17T10:42:27.310" Score="13" ViewCount="3673" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one bit of academic etiquette I'm not sure about. When I write to another researcher, a peer (we're both professors). I've never exchanged with before and never met him but I know of him (and he probably knows of me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erring on the side of formality, I write to him &lt;em&gt;“Dear professor Mortimer”&lt;/em&gt;. I sign with my first name, because that's how I've always signed my emails (there's a formal signature block below, with full name and contact details) and I think it indicates a willingness to be called by my first name (which I prefer, but I don't want to force people one way or the other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that going to be well received? Will people take the hint? Or should I just start using first names from the start? (it does sound weird to write &lt;em&gt;“dear Philipp”&lt;/em&gt; to someone you don't know)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T15:58:14.527" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T15:58:14.527" Title="How do you address unknown peers in email?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13464" CreationDate="2013-10-17T11:00:12.190" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is of course never wrong to use the title of the person to whom you write. In general I think it is fine to use Dr. since that is the degree most have. This may not work so well in cultures where titles are more of an obsession or where hierarchy is still well established. If the person writing is a professor, then you are of course writing from the top position and so you will either direct letters to someone at the same level or lower. This simplifies things compared to if you, yourself were not at the professor level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an editor of a journal I often use the term Colleague instead of Dr. this or Professor that. This is because the tile may not be completely obvious from the manuscript and I do not permit myself time to Google every author to find out. Since I am also a professor, it feels relatively safe to call everyone a colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sign off I often use my first name except if the mail has some formal aspect where, if it was a letter, I would have used my full name. In all my e-mail correspondence, I have found almost without exception, that once I sign with my first name, the mail reply will inevitably greet me by first name and be signed by a first name. I try to be a little sensitive about it but not overly so; I have &quot;my&quot; culture, the person I correspond with his or hers and none is above the other in my view. So In any correspondence I will open the first mail with Dear Colleague or Dear Dr. So-and-so. If the response is signed by first name then: titles away. Otherwise I will countersign correspondence with first name to break the ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems e-mail is often more forgiving than regular letters or traditional contacts. I think internet has an informal context which implicitly signals to everyone that it is less formal. I have not seen research on this but I can see, for example how students can ask quite blunt questions over e-mail while almost trembling and excusing themselves when standing at my office door (not that I am in any way trying to be intimidating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T11:00:12.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13467" CreationDate="2013-10-17T12:13:01.420" Score="15" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title mostly says it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing an article on a rarely researched topic in my field - 4-5 articles exist, as far as I know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently published a related article, still making this topic a rarely researched one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be a bad practice to include my own published article in the literature review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T09:00:57.740" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T16:53:21.100" Title="Is including an own paper in the literature review a bad practice?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13466" CreationDate="2013-10-17T12:22:37.107" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not at all. You should cover all publications which fall within the scope of the review, and if one of them happens to be a paper of yourself, then of course you still have to cover that in your review. Just make sure that you try to be &lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt; in the way you discuss it. Best practice would be to review your paper as you would review a paper by any other author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you have a coauthor in the review who was not coauthor on the research paper? Ask him/her to do the review section about that research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note the positive aspect of this situation: having published a research paper in the area you are reviewing gives you more credibility as an author of a review in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T12:22:37.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13470" CreationDate="2013-10-17T13:29:15.797" Score="13" ViewCount="4626" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you think it is against the academic code of conduct to present a paper at a conference or a departmental seminar that has already been submitted to a journal for publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9050" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T13:42:04.557" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:08:54.833" Title="Presenting a paper at a conference/seminar that is currently under review by a journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13468" CreationDate="2013-10-17T13:49:39.593" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Duplicating” a publication by having both a conference paper and a journal paper about it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5820/2700&quot;&gt;discussed here before&lt;/a&gt;, and a short summary is that this usually not a problem: apart from Computer Science, where conference papers have a rather different status that in other fields, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5823/2700&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;“publishing a paper does not normally prevent you from presenting your work at a conference”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presenting as-yet-unpublished results in a conference/seminar&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong about that at all, and I think more people will actually enjoy you discussing recent results rather than old stuff. Customs, here again, depend on your field: I've seen more people discuss unpublished results in physics, and fewer in chemistry… but even in fields where it is less common, it is not forbidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note: if the paper is not yet published, it is probably polite to inform your co-authors (or ask for their permission, depending on your relationship) that you are going to present it at a conference. At least, that's what I do (and expect my co-authors to do).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T13:49:39.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13464" CreationDate="2013-10-17T13:53:56.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using titles may sometimes be not that easy. E.g. in Germany you would write &quot;Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. Dr. Smith&quot; while in other countries one never uses the &quot;Dr.&quot; if a &quot;Prof.&quot; is present. Moreover, I've heard that some people would even prefer to see their kind of Dr. (e.g. Dr.Ing.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases I am not sure about the title I usually go for the full name, i.e. start with &quot;Dear James Smith,&quot;. If you know the full name this is not wrong and I think only very few people will mind if no titles are given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T13:53:56.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13473" CreationDate="2013-10-17T15:01:16.237" Score="8" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blog Retraction Watch posted an interesting question the other day &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/ask-retraction-watch-whats-a-reviewer-to-do/&quot;&gt;about reviewing the same paper twice, rejecting it both times, and then later finding out it was published in a different journal&lt;/a&gt;. The reason for rejection was that the author(s) failed to mention previous work using the same dataset; seemingly a case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/one-case/&quot;&gt;very similar publications&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asc41.com/Criminologist/2012/2012_September-October_Criminologist.pdf&quot;&gt;piecemeal publication&lt;/a&gt;, or borderline plagiarism, however you want to describe it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is an appropriate course of action for the reviewer in this circumstance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T15:34:36.823" Title="Obligation to tell journal of flaws in paper previously reviewed?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13472" CreationDate="2013-10-17T15:20:33.597" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that the paper has been published, your role is not that of a reviewer anymore, but is the same as any reader. Anyone might read the paper and draw the same conclusions as you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, you can act just as any reader would act, without having to disclose your earlier role as a reviewer. It seems to me that you then have a choice of three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write to the authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a comment to their paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write to the editor, mentioning your doubts about the adequacy of references to the existing literature (including previous studies by the authors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, the only additional information that you (as a former reviewer) have is that the authors have been journal-shopping for their paper, and do not want to make the necessary modifications to it. This means that solution #1 is probably not going to be productive, because the authors acted in bad faith. So, you're left with #2 and #3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to write a public comment, you definitely cannot say that you were a reviewer for a previous version of the journal. On the other hand, if you write to the editor, I think you could reasonably give him that information (&lt;em&gt;“I was a reviewer of this particular paper for another journal”&lt;/em&gt;), because (i) it may change his point of view of the author's honesty, (ii) he will treat it as confidential information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T15:20:33.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13472" CreationDate="2013-10-17T15:34:36.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest contacting the editors of the journal where it was published and pointing out the problem. However, the problem of salami slicing (to chose one expression) publications are not necessarily grounds for retraction so not much may happen. What will at least be achieved by such a contact is to make editors aware of the behaviour, which may be a very small victory in the battle against such publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like this it also pays to look at cases brought up by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot;&gt;Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)&lt;/a&gt;. I found one case on &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/case/attempt-publish-data-already-published-elsewhere&quot;&gt;An attempt to publish data already published elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; which may be interesting to read. Each individual case must be weighed against these COPE cases and evaluated separately. In the linked case, retraction of both papers was in fact the resolution. It may be useful to point the editors towards the COPE site and any COPE case that might be applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I handled a case where someone published a paper in what they thought was in-house &quot;publication&quot; (&quot;&quot; indicating the didn't see it as published). The submitted paper was more or less a copy of the other with another years worth of data added. The problem was that the in-house publication had an ISSN number and had to be counted as a real publication. We rejected the paper much to the dismay of the first author. The point is that some people try to publish and from pressure or ignorance end up in these bad situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T15:34:36.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13466" CreationDate="2013-10-17T15:43:07.490" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think its particularly bad practice at all, assuming that the paper is indeed relevant to the topic, rather than being a stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader is reading a review paper to get a picture of the field as a whole - by not including your own papers, especially in a small field, you are in effect denying them an understanding of a significant percentage of the topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many fields have review papers invited (or proposed as &quot;Would you like to invite...&quot;) by people who could be considered experts in that field. I think there's a pretty clear expectation that the people best qualified to write a review work in the field, and may end up mentioning their own papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In meta-analysis, failing to include your own papers (or including your own unpublished work) has the potential to bias your findings. While your paper might not be a meta-analysis, the principle still holds - the paper should be an in-depth review of the available literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, treat your own work with an even hand and, as has been suggested, possibly have someone else read it over to make sure no &quot;Clearly the right answer is (Me, 2013) whose staggering genius is beyond the scope of this paper&quot; has slipped in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T15:43:07.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13468" CreationDate="2013-10-17T16:15:27.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to F'x's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it may be good to tell the audience that the corresponding paper was submitted/accepted and give the corresponding reference, so they can look up the paper once it is out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T16:15:27.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13454" CreationDate="2013-10-17T16:37:17.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there legal issues, such as copyright infringement, to be considered for commercially or non-commercially available software? Note, I created all of the code and all images based on low resolution prints in publications. I'm merely copying the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless their method is patented, no. Software is covered by copyright which protects a given implementation, not the general idea. Just as you are allowed to write an own novel on a topic that is covered by existing novels already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would such a release conflict with common etiquette in the case where the software is simply not available from the original authors (remember, I asked but got no reply)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to ask each author before releasing my code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to get permission from all copyright holders. Depending on the actual settings, that means: for each author who contributed to &quot;your&quot; code the acutal holder of the copyright (could be the author or the author's employer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the &quot;original&quot; software are not involved at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I be held responsible morally if the software is used and turns out to be faulty? I'm less concerned about legal responsibility because the license I intend to use does not provide warranty. More importantly, I certainly intend for the software to work since I'll use it my self but you never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;moral responsibility: just like you will be held responsible for any other scientific publication. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;legal responsibility: while no liability clauses are common for FOSS licenses, completely excluding liability is not possible in all legislations (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifross.org/en/normal-exclusion-liability-and-warranties-open-source-licenses-effective-germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in Germany a general no liability at all clause is/can be invalid&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my study ends up being published and points to the availability of the software, can this benefit the citation count of the publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitively, yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T16:37:17.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13468" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:19:38.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know of any journals that do double-blind review. Having said that, here's a related scenario where there might be a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have submitted a paper to a &lt;strong&gt;conference&lt;/strong&gt; that requires&#xA;  anonymized submissions, and you give a presentation at a public&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;seminar&lt;/strong&gt; on the material while the paper is under review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, while there isn't an issue of misconduct, there's a sense of actively breaching the double blind guidelines. Again, there are caveats here: some venues are more relaxed about this than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T17:19:38.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:23:48.703" Score="20" ViewCount="4582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love my full-time job and do not wish to leave it (statistician in a small-ish research institute within a large university) because I believe the research we do will someday benefit humanity and because I get the freedom to pursue my own research and several open-source statistical software projects I'm developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not making enough to provide for my family, and we are starting to feel it. I'm looking for something low-risk that I can do from home and on my own schedule, so finding an adjunct position someplace is not on the table. I'm looking into ways to commercialize my software and teaching myself about investing, but neither of those will be reliable income streams anytime soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to solicit people's stories/advice on how they got into freelance statistical consulting or any other &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot; jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are there specific types of businesses that are known to hire free-lancers to do survival analysis, repeated measures regression, and all-around R programming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not trying to be the next James Goodnight, just to find a way to make some extra cash doing stuff I find easy and other people find difficult. I'll do web development if I have to, but I figure there should be a more profitable niche where I put my less common skills to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8083" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T17:28:39.817" LastActivityDate="2018-09-29T09:43:55.447" Title="What can a biostatistician do to earn money on the side?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5195" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:34:23.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too long for a comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@EnergyNumbers wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be giving away your most promising source of future funding: the exploiting and extending of those tools and protocols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that opening the source is accompanied by a corresponding license, making the code publicly available under a FOSS license may actually do the exact opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It might ensure that you can exploit and extend those tools even after you leave your current institution, thus securing a promising advantage for future funding/employment negotiations.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a PhD student &lt;em&gt;employed&lt;/em&gt; for doing the corresponding research by some university or research institute, you usually do not own the code you wrote. Instead, your employer has the copyright (depending on your legislation, you still may have the authorship rights, but the economic rights are your employer's).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other people may have been involved in the development, so they have intellectual rights to the code as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, a FOSS license can give legal certainty that you can go on using and developing the code after you leave your current university (which is not unlikely to happen after a PhD is finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the license must be granted by the holders of the copyright (university, co-authors' universities, etc.). This will not happen unless you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) bring the matter to the attention of your university (supervisor, IP office, etc.)&#xA;b) you convince them that the FOSS license is good for them as well*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However going for such a FOSS license is IMHO advantageous for both you &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your university:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for you, because you can throw this piece of software into negotiations for your next job and go on using it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for your current university, as they have a much better chance that the code is maintained so they can go on using it. It is a huge difference between e.g. people in your current group using your code and your group finding someone else to take over the maintenance of the code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote might: because you'd have this advantage without FOSS license if you are the actual copyright holder of the code.&#xA;That would be the case, if you were not paid for doing the research (but e.g. only for being teaching assistant), or you were paid by a scholarship and didn't sign a contract that transfers the copyright of the work you do during you PhD to your university, you actually own your code. So you already have all rights to deal with your code in future as you like, and granting a FOSS license to the public doesn't change this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* In my experience, IP offices tend to see $$ as soon as you start telling them that you developed a software, but have no idea about the costs of selling the software (infrastucture and ensuring maintenance) that you can in practice avoid with FOSS licenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T11:11:30.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13479" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:42:16.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few friends with similar stories, though in different fields of science. Overall, they realized that their specialty is not their only skill, and that as successful researchers, other generic skills are more in demand. In particular, you can be a &lt;strong&gt;scientific or technical editor, scientific writer, copy-editor, technical translator&lt;/strong&gt; (especially if you live in a country where English is not the primary language). These tasks are in very high demand, and allow you to work on a “as needed” basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T17:42:16.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T18:35:20.030" Score="2" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do British universities expect the research PhD applicant to know research methods before they write application proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied research methods in the masters but it has been sometime now. Do I have to revisit research methods or can I present the proposal as if I have not studied research methods before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9033" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T19:15:28.573" Title="Do British universities expect the research PhD applicant to know research methods before they write application proposal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13468" CreationDate="2013-10-17T19:23:50.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to F'x's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I not only don't see this as a problem, but I think it is a great thing to do! By presenting a submitted (or not yet submitted) paper at a conference, you get instant feedback by a self-selected sample of people who were interested enough in your research to attend you talk - basically, the mother of all peer review. Of course, it won't be as in-depth as the reviews you get from the journal submission, but it can still be extremely helpful. And you can (and should) use the feedback from the conference to improve your submitted paper in the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T19:23:50.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13479" CreationDate="2013-10-17T19:54:33.630" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more of a brainstorming session/life hack than an answer specific for academic, hopefully this can spark some more inputs. As a disclaimer, I identify with you as I am also working in the field of biostatistics and epidemiology, though I have not actively sought after extra income. However, I have always been a financial life junkie and I used to love to daydream how to be rich or at least to enjoy retirement with dignity. Here are some of my thoughts and, well, refined thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saving = Income - Expenses&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should first recognize that you can save money by either getting more or spending less. Before going to get more, I'd recommend sitting down with your spouse and go over the financial situation. Here are a few exercises that I found easy to pick up, and once you have started, you may see if this route is good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Create a happy matrix for your spending:&lt;/em&gt; Print out your credit card statement(s), item by item, grade how each of them makes you happy (Likert's scale, etc. you know the drill.) Identify things that are not contributing any satisfaction and avoid making the same purchase again. For those that truly make you happy, evaluate if you can cut back (usually, from all my reading, the culprit is often the $7.90 something Starbucks grande latte and a scone for the breakfast), or substitute with cheaper options such as shifting to other vendors or make them at home. I especially recommend everyone to check their credit card bill, bank bill, and cell phone bill: When I first started this routine, I found out that I have $280 sitting in my credit card as cash back! I just never claimed it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Have an energy audit of your house:&lt;/em&gt; Most local government should be able to point you to some free energy audit service. They will evaluate your house's insulation, electricity usage, conditions of the heating system etc. and provide you a list of improvements and expected return on investment. For example, you can spend about $1,200 to inject foam in between inner and outer wall, and drop your heating bill by more than $200 per year. Other gadgets like motion sensing switch, smart thermostat, and CFL light bulbs may also help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Take public transport or bike:&lt;/em&gt; I actually use this method. I don't drive and I live about 9 miles away from work. I commute on bike in spring, summer, and fall; and use subway in winter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Commit to be green:&lt;/em&gt; This sounds like quite off. But I have come to realize that once you want to cut down on trash, you can't help but cut down on consumption. For example, I bring my travel mug and a collapsible box everywhere in case if I need to buy a drink or food. Since packaged food is automatically out of the equation (which are usually more expensive per weight), I save some money there. I also go to wet market or farmer's market for food, and I don't consume processed food. If I need an item I check out local flea market and freecycle websites (I give away stuff through freecycle as well.) For level 2 difficulty: Commit to be a vegetarian or vegan. Meatless lifestyle simplifies life tremendously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Use your educator's identity:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giftcardgranny.com/blog/the-complete-list-of-66-teacher-discounts/&quot;&gt;Many vendors&lt;/a&gt; provide discount to educators. Since you work in a university, you can flash your staff card and get some good saving here and there. I'd also encourage you to check with your university's benefit page. I got a 24% discount on my phone bill just because I filled in an extra form.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then up a notch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have mortgages and complicated insurances, etc. Consider talking to a financial planner. Most of them can point you to some restructuring to make the system more streamlined. Simple things like grouping the insurance to one company can save monthly payment. I have even read about an extreme case that a couple actually ends up saving more by having one of them stopped working because the commute, childcare, and other expenses were eating into the take-home income so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, zoom out&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do understand that you value your biostatistics skills. But when it comes to making money, you don't have to only work on biostatistics. For me, after 9 hours of coding and reading outputs, I'd rather see something else. Once you have broken out from the box, you'll feel more liberated. Reassess your passions and hobbies, and see if you can pursue an instructor position somewhere. For example, personal trainer, yoga teacher, musical instrument teacher, handcraft, carpentry, gardening, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my own spare time, I write video game walkthroughs, and post them on various websites and my own wiki sites. In the walkthrough I put affiliated links to vendors and in the wiki I earn Google Ads money. Given I am not very prolific, I don't earn a lot, but I can usually pocket about $300-400 a year if I happen to have written a walkthrough for a popular game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, zoom back in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, back to your question. There are many ways a biostatistcian can expand their job repertoire. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Consult your local classified websites such as Craigslist:&lt;/em&gt; Check for consultant type of jobs. You may even post an ad if you are so enticed. I used to do some consultation on and off as a student and got to charge $50 to $100 an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Propose a course to local adult learning center:&lt;/em&gt; Most cities should have some adult learning centers the provide classes on hobbies or professional skills. Meet with the director and propose a course (on R, for example). You can build clientele and enlarge your social network as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Statistical editor and reader:&lt;/em&gt; You can also contact local editors and discuss on possibility to be an ad hoc statistical editor. I am actually working towards this direction. In my institution there are a lot of orphan data: grants ended, staff left, no body works on it and publishes the work. I found my niche of being a data undertaker, and I grew to be very interested in writing as well. Other than editors, you can also sell your skills to students who are writing their thesis. Most of their works can benefit by having a round of quantitative examination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Look for an adjunct position:&lt;/em&gt; I know you don't want to, but I'd urge you to be a bit more adventurous on this option. Since online education is actually picking up traction, your skill in biostatistics and website building may actually be a good combination for some institutions looking for a way to move their program online. For remote course you usually just need to meet the student in the first 1-2 weeks or every other week, which can still preserve your flexible time table. Use online chat or billboard for office hour, give students feedback using track-changes, etc. You can do most of these at home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remarks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I didn't sound patronizing. But I wholeheartedly hope you may find some of these useful. I used to have mindset like you do, thinking of how to expand my income sources (I have my own expense and family in my home country to support), but after a few rounds of thinking, and sorting out what are the most important, I didn't feel like that any more. Now I make sure I have good pre-tax saving taken out first, save at least 10%, allocate money for family, allocate minimal expenses, keep about 5% or so for entertainment, buy used, give away or sell my own used goods, bike to work, stop all cable TV, lend to people on Kiva.org, simplify my closet, practice the motto of &quot;buy the experience, don't buy the stuff&quot;... etc. I realize that I still have enough, and I am not really sure what I was fussing about in the past. I'm happier, calmer, and definitely feeling clearer about what I want. And I certainly hope you'll be able to find your solution as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T21:06:42.060" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T21:06:42.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13462" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:23:11.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have &lt;em&gt;specific and substantial&lt;/em&gt; reasons for wanting to work with a particular professor, definitely mention them by name and say why.  But do not lie, do not bluff, and do not just drop names and paper titles.  Admissions committees already know you can use Google; anyone can read the department web page.  But actually incorporating appropriate technical details from someone's papers into your own research plans will generally draw their attention and impress them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if Dr.[A-C] are not able to accept more people to their labs? Will the admission committee automatically disqualify my application in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should.  If you want to be a student in department X specifically to work with Prof. A, but Prof. A is not taking students, then joining department X anyway would be stupid.  In that case, you should &lt;em&gt;hope&lt;/em&gt; that Department X rejects your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:23:11.663" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13479" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:26:36.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer complements the other, nicely crafted answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; My core competency is that of a statistician as well and I am still a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to earn extra money. However, in the recent past, I have been hired on as an analyst or statistician for various projects by other professors or researchers in my university or in other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did this happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal networking I presume. I don't really make an effort to network at conferences or their ilk (I mostly attend talks which I want to ; the poster sessions and hang out with whomever is most fun. :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, through formal and informal interactions with professors in my department and elsewhere, I have come to understand that I almost always position myself (&lt;em&gt;to them&lt;/em&gt;) as a researcher coming from a math/stat background who is trying hard to understand and put on curious foot after the other in the interdisciplinary world of HCI/privacy etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This unintentional (&lt;em&gt;and honest&lt;/em&gt;) positioning infrequently results in conversations like &quot; &lt;strong&gt;Hey ! We have a cool dataset and need to publish a paper which answers some of these research questions. Do you want to lend us your skillz in return for money/19th authorship?&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, in such cases, I almost always take the authorship offer but I have also done it for payment in the past as well. Sometimes, if its a really cool collaboration, it yields both !!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I advise you to reach out through your contacts, other researchers in your institute/university/college/department informally (lunch/dinner/happy hour) or formally (seminar/colloquium/email) and see what opportunities might be there in your own backyard. You never know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:26:36.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:26:53.810" Score="38" ViewCount="7455" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I caught a paper which had plagiarized my paper. Several sentences had been copied from my article without citing my article. Some of the copied sentences had been shuffled, so the words were the same but the order of the words had been changed. Some other sentences were exactly copied from my article. Besides, all the copied sentences in the new article appeared in approximately same places to the original sentences used by me in my article. I am not inexperienced in academia and without any severe bias, it was quite obvious that they have picked my sentences. Even the citations at the end of my sentences had been used in the same order in the new article... Moreover, the style of my sentences were unique to my article and not inspired from another article. So it was not possible that those authors were copying from another source other than my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said all the above points to the editor of the journal. I also highlighted all the copied sentences and put very detailed comments beside each highlighted sentence in the new article and attached the new article and my article to the journal editor so he could see for himself. He didn't respond. So I searched for and found the email addresses of all the editorial members of the journal and emailed them the same letter, frequently. All the emails were correct and running. Only one of the addresses bounced my letter. So I am pretty sure they have received my emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However they again didn't do anything about it, nor they did respond to me... So I wonder what else can I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to report them to as many authorities as possible. I know a couple of them, but don't think they will do much about it. I need to know what can I do about it? What those authorities are legally able to do? And that should I sue them in court or not? The plagiarizing journal is in Turkey (not my country) and I don't know can I sue them in a court of my country? Are there other routes for filing copyright theft complaints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion is appreciated for when the journal tries to hide the plagiarism or doesn't care about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T19:37:08.930" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T19:37:08.930" Title="What to do when a journal publishes a paper plagiarizing one's work but doesn't care about it?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13462" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:31:00.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am still a graduate student and my experience is limited to my own application process and as a student member of my department's graduate admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen that specific reasons are almost always better than general reasons. When I was going through the application process, my SOP always mentioned current specific projects that my POI's were doing and how I could be an optimal choice for those projects in the near future with my background and current research. This approach seems to have worked well enough for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During multiple interviews in the application process, my SOP was often alluded to, especially in context with these specific projects and my fit with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:31:00.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13489" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:48:59.130" Score="41" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't get a reply from the editors of the journal, write to the publisher. Or if it's the journal of a learned society, contact them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You probably can't act alone, but you may get more powerful allies (deeper pockets) on your side. There are others around you who have a vested interest in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the journal where you published your work… given that you transferred them the copyright, I suppose they might act in their own name against the plagiarist. Even if it does not escalate all the way to a legal action, the publisher of the plagiarized work might respond (or respond faster) to a well-known publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your employer may also have an interest in helping you enforcing your copyright. They may also have a legal department who can advise you on this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:48:59.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13489" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:49:42.553" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the journal editor(s) did not act (a question is of course how much time they should have before &quot;doing&quot; something), it should be possible to contact the publisher. If the editor(s) are not interested in digging into a problem, a serious publisher will probably think differently. So, the step beyond editors will be the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot;&gt;the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)&lt;/a&gt;. COPE has a library of cases where assorted possibly unethical behaviours have been assessed. COPE is not intended for individuals but for editors to handle poor behaviour. But, by looking at their case studies you may find additional support for your case to influence both editors and publishers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot answer the questions on legal actions but considering theft of, for example, copyrighted music, fashion and technology around the world, plagiarism will be low on the scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:49:42.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13524" CreationDate="2013-10-17T22:29:17.227" Score="2" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;When selecting an American business school, we look for certain accreditations specific to business schools, like ACBSP, AACSB, CHEA, , etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For European universities, we look for Equis, AMBA, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about British universities? (For pursuing a PhD in a UK business school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9033" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-01T04:26:02.403" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T04:26:02.403" Title="What is a reliable accreditation to look for in British business schools?" Tags="&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;business-school&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16236" CreationDate="2013-10-18T00:06:01.327" Score="4" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhat similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/4784/7921&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but looking for resources (books/articles, etc) for undergrad students who are not very familiar with designing effective surveys, (for example, one student is creating a survey in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.surveymonkey.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SurveyMonkey&lt;/a&gt; to evaluate nurses' attitudes toward their work). &lt;strong&gt;I'm looking for a resource to help my students develop survey questions that will return meaningful, non-biases responses.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this is in the social sciences, but would welcome resources that will be helpful to undergrads in any field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:42:27.900" Title="Resources for students designing surveys?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13498" CreationDate="2013-10-18T03:36:40.750" Score="9" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my PhD research in a new multidisciplinary field within Computer Science. It is new in the sense that there are still no tools/implementations publicly available and several workshops co-located with different conferences. Many papers targeting this new area, have been published in different conferences and journals.  As a PhD student and besides the scientific contributions, I would wonder what other &lt;em&gt;soft&lt;/em&gt; things I can do for the field?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have developed a tool for one of the main models in the field. I am documenting it to make it public. I thought about maintaining a bibliography. but not sure how beneficial it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T19:28:15.007" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T19:31:52.083" Title="&quot;Soft&quot; ways to contribute to the research community in a new and growing field" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13497" CreationDate="2013-10-18T04:56:47.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should remember that as a Ph.D student, the instruments at your disposal are limited. Having said that, maintaining a bibliography is a useful way to collect all relevant information in one place, especially given the multidisciplinary nature of the area. If you do this though, be careful to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure things are always kept up-to-date. There's nothing more annoying than a half-baked reference page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be very liberal in what you include in the bibliography. It shouldn't be perceived that you're being a gatekeeper for the area. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, provide some structure to the bibliography: sections, maybe some annotation, etc. Depending on how web-savvy you are, you might be able to create a form for people to enter information in themselves. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary benefit for you will be access to the entire body of work in the area, and some credit for maintaining the page. There will undoubtedly be name recognition benefits if you are perceived not only as the librarian, but as an expert on the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T04:56:47.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13497" CreationDate="2013-10-18T05:52:05.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am also currently a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research lies at the intersection(s) of HCI, privacy, location based social networks, mobility theory and spatial statistics. This means that the work in this area gets published from computer science-y journals like ACM CACM, IEEE Privacy &amp;amp; Security to communication-y journals like New Media and Society to conferences like CHI, SOUPS and MobileHCI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I adopt 3 strategies to organize my own work. If I do not do this then the existing literature and new critical thinking about my area will spiral out of control for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I maintain an annotated bibliography for any relevant work in this area. As Suresh pointed out, its generally up-to-date and quite liberal in nature. This is not public but I always email it to folks who ask for it. I find that maintaining a bibliography in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;, exporting as a BibTeX file and writing a couple of sentences about each article works for me. I make sure that each article is filed under some loose sub-heading. For instance, one such general sub-heading in my area could be &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Location Privacy and Surveillance.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write scripts in order to extract, manipulate and analyze data and I always publish them on &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;. This is public. Usually, I write scripts in php, python or R. Its great to see other folks forking my projects or following them and making them better than I could. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; blog posts about my impressions on certain topics and also post some simplistic visualizations and analyses of my work there. I take special care in making sure that these are short but to the point. Nobody likes to read long, rambling blog posts. :P&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T05:52:05.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-18T06:57:19.123" Score="6" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;By independent research I mean, the research was not done with some organization or under a professor. I and my roommate tried out some new things that we thought to get published. My ultimate aim would be getting into research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, I also have a paper published where the I did my work under the supervision of a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I was wondering if sharing the experience of independent research in a Statement of Purpose really matters while applying for masters ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T07:41:27.843" Title="Importance of &quot;independent&quot; under-graduate research in graduate admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13500" CreationDate="2013-10-18T07:36:15.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an application, list all material that shows you in a positive light. Being able to perform successful research, both on your own and under supervision, is good. The fact that you engaged, on your own (or with friends) on research and were able to publish it (I assume in a peer-reviewed journal) is a plus for your application… unless the quality of the paper is really (visibly) bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T07:41:27.843" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T07:41:27.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13495" CreationDate="2013-10-18T07:39:47.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Same as EU: UK has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_accreditation#UK_.2816_schools.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;16 schools&lt;/a&gt; with triple AACSB-AMBA-EQUIS accreditation, which is a good sign that it follows the same agencies as the rest of the world (or at least, as the rest of EU).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T07:39:47.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13457" CreationDate="2013-10-18T08:55:38.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I have much of value to add, but here is my two cents for what it is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First it sounds like you have (in your opinion) gone down the wrong path, and are panicking a little bit. This is understandable. The first thing I should say, is, join the club. We've all been there. Everyone makes mistakes. The thing to do it to learn from them, and try not to repeat them. Though this is easier said to done. Also, try not to panic. It really doesn't help. If you are panicking, try to calm down. You could also try things like yoga. It can have a calming effect, apart from the health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you are in your mid-twenties. This is not really old at all (by any definition). Many people at this time in their lives are still trying to figure things out. So, again, don't panic. Spend a little time making a calm assessment of where you want to go, and what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@user9042 made some useful suggestions. You said in response that all you wanted is a &quot;basic entry level office job&quot;. Well, I don't think you do, really. If you have a functioning brain, you would hate it. I think if you are feeling that you want a job, any job, it is because you are feeling demoralized, and like a drowning person, you want a lifebelt to cling to. I think you can aim a little higher than that. Are you actually interested in (for example) statistics and computers/software/programming (per @user9042 posting)? If you are not sure, then I suggest learning a little about them, and seeing what you think. You could start by taking some basic college classes. If you aren't interested in these fields I &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; recommend going into them. The world is already too full of programmers who aren't interested in programming and just want to make a fast buck. If you are, then you could consider a graduate degree in these areas and see where it takes you. More generally, you should consider seeing what area of specialization you think you would like. If you are an intelligent person, you probably won't be happy just dropping out of school. Most good jobs these days require some degree of specialization. You say you are &quot;fed up with school&quot;, but this may just be a reflection of your experience in your particular program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific suggestions - if you want to learn basic computer programming, try learning Python. It is about as accesible as any language out there, and very popular. It is also not a toy language; many people use it for real work, including in research contexts. Are you familiar with the world of free software? If not, try installing Debian and see what you think of it. Debian is a fairly obscure operating system, but also has some claim to be the worlds best. Other similar Linux based operating systems would probably also work. Check out unix.stackexchange.com for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning on your own about a more academic discipline like statistics is more difficult, but you could take a look at R.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can at least respond intelligently to questions people have put here, which is more than many people seem to be able to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, none of this really has much to do with academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, again, I suggest revising your question to include the information that you have given in the comments, so people don't have to look all over the place for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T09:10:54.983" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T09:10:54.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13520" CreationDate="2013-10-18T09:21:52.477" Score="2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for master of engineering, but unless I can receive some financial aid through funding, I can not attend. So is there any way to receive funding except TA?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9060" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T10:13:05.467" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T21:51:54.087" Title="getting funding as a master of engineering student" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13518" CreationDate="2013-10-18T10:19:59.953" Score="37" ViewCount="5494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently dating a PhD student in the same department as me (I am also a PhD student). Not the same research group, but closely related topics anyway. We're both happy with it, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I am worried about possible negative consequences on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what rules (written and unwritten) should be followed when dating someone like that? that is we do not work together everyday but we are still working closely, both geographically and scientifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="7902" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T14:19:04.700" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T22:32:32.907" Title="How to behave when dating a fellow PhD student in same department?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13506" CreationDate="2013-10-18T11:00:19.527" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning written rules you need to find out if any exist in your department, university etc. you will certainly not be the first or the only couple in this &quot;situation&quot;. Unwritten rules are perhaps what you need to care more about and then I am actually not so much thinking about rules as such. First off, people know more about your relationship than you think. Or perhaps more precisely, they think they know more, in other words rumours and gossip might spread. so the advice is to be open about it and think about it as two adult persons in a relationship. It is your life, it is not a secret and most importantly, it is natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your work, you need to act professionally (like any other should). You need to help each other prioritize your respective careers and make sure your relationship can function despite the pressures graduate school inevitably involves. So in my opinion, you should worry more about balancing work and relationship so that you both can spend the time necessary to succeed. this means making sure the relationship does not directly or indirectly affect others on a professional level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T11:00:19.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30152" CreationDate="2013-10-18T15:02:01.623" Score="4" ViewCount="1748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just had a look at my citations and they are in an aweful state. Most conference papers that I imported into my citation manager have different styles, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IEEEE Conference on Emerging Txxx Bxxx Qxxxxxxx, 2009 (ETBQ 2009)&#xA;IEEEE Conference on Old Wxxx Yxxx Sxxxxxxx (OWYS), 2009&#xA;IEEEE Conference on Txxx Txxx Xxxxxxxx, 2009, (TTX 2009)&#xA;IEEEE Conference on Gold. 2009 (Chicago)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to bring all conferences into the same format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What format would you recommend? Should I drop abbreviation, year, or place of the conference as it is repeated? I think the year might have to stay because e.g. a coference might be held in Dec. 2009 and the papers are only published in Feb. 2010, hence the 2009 date would be lost. I also like the abbreviation as it helps my to identify the coferences in one glimps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second question:&lt;/strong&gt; Should I add &quot;Proceeding of the&quot; in front of every conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T01:38:35.797" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T11:45:06.707" Title="Conference Title - shall abbreviation and year be listed uniformly?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13508" CreationDate="2013-10-18T15:36:23.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clear that the papers from the same publication should follow the same format. The proceedings or journal should provide a suggested reference format for the papers. This should point you to what is a correct way to reference them and format the entry in your database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you enter papers into a data base you should try to follow the suggested reference in terms of what information is suggested to be included. I use bibTeX and enter the full name of the publication. I can also provide the formal abbreviation of the journal since the format for references in journals vary, some use full names some use abbreviations. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;data base for journal abbreviations&lt;/a&gt; established by ISI that should give you the correct abbreviated format for all. I assume many if not all reference managers have ways of handling full and abbreviated names, probably using full names as a standard. With proceedings that are not included in the list you ave to follow the suggestions from the proceedings and also use the correct abbreviations for specific words as suggested in the ISI data base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors do not know about the correct abbreviations, or do not bother to follow them, which causes confusion in databases. I have papers that occur under up to 4 different posts because of inappropriate journal names, wrong volume or page numbers etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T15:36:23.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13510" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-18T15:59:09.220" Score="2" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am writing the references for my paper, I usually &lt;strong&gt;copy and paste the bibliographic&lt;/strong&gt; information and use it &lt;strong&gt;directly&lt;/strong&gt;. AFAIK, most of them are in the full version, meaning that all the author names are spelled out, e.g. &lt;em&gt;James Rhianna Smith&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;(They can be really long!)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also given the fact that some conferences do have a &lt;strong&gt;page limit&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. 6 pages maximum), directly using those tedious full names is sometimes a luxury I cannot afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under this type of circumstances, should I shorten the author names?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T07:44:27.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T07:44:27.650" Title="Should I abbreviate the author names due to the page limitation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5195" CreationDate="2013-10-18T16:30:29.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issues I have personally encountered working on this - my source code is a mixture of open source and closed source projects, depending on many factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You have to maintain your code&lt;/strong&gt;. This might not be something some people care about, but for me, I dislike the idea of putting out code that doesn't run at least relatively smoothly. Which means while the custom workflow where data bounces between a Python script, a C++ program and then an R script for analysis might work for me, produce good and reproducible results and generally carry science forward, it sure as hell isn't going to see the light of day. Things need to be put into functions in case people end up using your code like a library, general messiness cleaned up, etc. That's...well...it's work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;. As with the above, I really dislike the idea of releasing something without documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of feedback mechanism/opportunity cost&lt;/strong&gt;. This one is a big one for me because they are what make 1 &amp;amp; 2 so difficult - it's really hard to tell if someone is using my code. It feels a bit like shouting into an empty room, it has little to no impact on my career, and certainly people aren't using it to the extent that it would appear as a line-item on my CV. So I put in a lot of work that could have gone to another paper etc. purely for ideological reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sanitizing code&lt;/strong&gt;. Releasing code into the open and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; putting in things that might get you scooped means going over your code to not put in a glowing neon sign that says &quot;Future Directions Here&quot;. You can't really have a code base that is the combination of three projects, one being written, one being tinkered with and one really only in the musing stage and open source that code without taking a risk.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Beyond that, for me, is the potential presence of private health data. So my &quot;released&quot; code needs to be scrubbed of any reference to anything that might be confidential, and along those same lines, now needs dummy data that will work and is validated to go along with the code because the data the code was actually written for &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; just get dumped on GitHub or whatever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is because you asked for cons. Despite this, I try to put up as much of my stuff as is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T16:30:29.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13510" CreationDate="2013-10-18T16:30:55.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not?  There's nothing wrong with using first initials consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T16:30:55.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2592" CreationDate="2013-10-18T17:19:03.203" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my place, people who are doing well have public Google Scholar profiles, while those who shouldn't and probably wouldn't get tenured hide their profiles, probably because their publication — and thus citation — records stink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9064" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T07:45:30.577" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T07:45:30.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13510" CreationDate="2013-10-18T18:13:49.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is almost always dictated by the style guide of the journal/conference/whatever to which you're submitting. Check with them, or better yet, use a bibtex style definition file provided by them (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/bibtex/IEEEtran_bst_HOWTO.pdf&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T18:13:49.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2013-10-18T19:01:51.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What they need is proper training in survey design and analysis. Let's say, around 80 hours of teaching and then a lot of practical work, assuming they've already got a basic stats grounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a serious technical skill, and you won't do them any favours if you don't treat it as seriously as any other tool they might use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One option might be to work with a colleague who does teach survey design and analysis.&lt;/strong&gt; They may well have students who are looking for some material on which to practice their new skills. Perhaps your colleague can set for them, as homework, the task of working with one of your students on the survey design. That way, your students get to introduce their students to their subject (learning by teaching), and they get to see survey science done reasonably well (assuming your colleague has taught them well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because survey design looks easy and online tools enable any fool to do it, doesn't mean that any fool &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A complaint about &quot;giving them a well when they only need a drink&quot;, doesn't hold water. How could any teacher encourage their students to do bad science, or cultivate a contempt for other experts' fields?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(are they &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/793/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;physicists&lt;/a&gt;?)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9nrH2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T11:11:52.703" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T11:11:52.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13483" CreationDate="2013-10-18T19:15:28.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;British universities have recently begun to adopt the MRes (Master's of/by Research) as the preferred pathway for new PhD candidates who may not have a full set of research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This typically involves some taught causes, as well as hand-holding through some preliminary research which may then form the basis of your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It offers you a couple of advantages: it adds a qualification that you'll have earnt after one year, so  you'll get early rewards. And you can decide after a year whether academic research is for you; and whether or not you can work with that department. If so, you've made progress in your research already. If not, then you can leave amicably with a Master's degree and a new network of academic contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It offers the university an advantage too: it gives an additional point at which the candidate's abilities can be assessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T19:15:28.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13497" CreationDate="2013-10-18T19:31:52.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One very valuable thing you can do is to try to form or contribute to an online community of researchers in your subfield.  In my area, these communities tend to form lately on Google+ and/or Twitter.  You can start by following/adding to your circles people you know who use these social networks.  Then when you read (or write) an interesting paper, post your commentary for others to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On G+, if you add the #spnetwork tag to your posts, they will also appear on &lt;a href=&quot;https://selectedpapers.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://selectedpapers.net/&lt;/a&gt;, giving them wider exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T19:31:52.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13506" CreationDate="2013-10-18T20:05:47.860" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible thing to watch out for: in some departments, graduate students may work as teaching assistants for graduate courses.  You should ask not to be assigned to TA courses which your significant other is taking (and he or she should do likewise), as this would represent a possible conflict of interest.  Even if you can grade your SO's work objectively, there might be a perception of unfairness among other students.  Likewise, if any other situation should arise where one of you might be in a position of authority over the other, you'd need to disclose the conflict of interest and be prepared to resolve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, as Peter Jansson said, relationships between graduate students are very common and aren't likely to cause academic concern.  Just stay professional about it (e.g. don't make out in the hallways).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T20:05:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13506" CreationDate="2013-10-18T21:22:31.947" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you and your partner aren't put into any &quot;boss-subordinate&quot; professional relationship, it is nobody else's business what you are doing. So, it is perfectly fine to be in the same research group, the same class, etc., as long as it is not a direct &quot;teacher-student&quot; relationship. In the latter case just check what the university rules are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only (but major) negative consequence for the job is that if your relationship gets serious, you'll get a two-body problem to solve. I've been trying to solve mine since 1995 with no really satisfactory results (at best I could rank the arrangements I had as &quot;tolerable&quot;). So, watch out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastEditorUserId="12660" LastEditDate="2017-09-12T22:32:32.907" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T22:32:32.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13505" CreationDate="2013-10-18T21:51:54.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look for scholarships from your university, as well as outside scholarships devoted to your specific branch of engineering. Another option would be to do a co-op or have a part time job, as that would not only pay your costs, but also give you real-world work experience. If all else fails, ask your adviser and financial aid people. They will be able to show you whatever is needed. You could also apply for entry-level work positions and try to work and study at the same time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7329" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T21:51:54.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12961" CreationDate="2013-10-19T01:19:09.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shifting among several fields is definitely exposing you to different fields, and as the comments indicated,  being an expert in more than one field is helpful for a successful career in academia. Answers to other questions on this site make it clear that shifting (or even completely changing fields) in the duration of an academic career is normal and advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see Bitwise's advice &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10734/7921&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, where he says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changing fields is very common in academia, especially at the PhD/postdoc transition. In many cases it is actually considered an advantage, since you can import your skills, expertise and a certain thought-process into a field in which many people do not have those skills. For example, many physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians have migrated to biology and have made significant contributions. In fact, there are even postdoctoral fellowships that specifically fund this type of field-change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was specific to changing fields at the PhD/postdoc transition stage, but his advice holds at any stage of an academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T01:19:09.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13457" CreationDate="2013-10-19T03:32:28.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are frustrated because you feel that you are stuck. You want to leave academia and don't know how to find a job outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer a practical issue first. When you write your resume, you can say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BA in sociology, University A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate study in early childhood teaching, University B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare to explain why you did not have graduate degree from University B. Your explanation can be that you are not interested in early childhood teaching anymore. This is not uncommon. Many people change their career in their twenties, thirties or even much later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your employable skills, I believe you already have some. You may not know you have them. For example, writing is a very important skill. You may be surprised to find out many workers don't know how to write when you enter the job market. If you don't have the skills current in use, then acquire them. Go to job training. There are plenty available. Find what you like to do and acquire the skills needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, back to academia. I don't know what you don't like about your current graduate school. Early childhood? Teaching? Or graduate school in general? I cannot tell from your question. It seems to me that you are worried about the upcoming full time teaching program. I guess you need to be with kindergarten kids for a while. If this is the problem, I think you entered a wrong area. If one wants to study early childhood teaching, of course he/she needs to go through such a real program. Otherwise, everything you have studied is just on the paper, no real value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like graduate school, then I would advise you to leave as early as possible. If it's the program you don't like, I would say you should consider changing your field of study. Only you know the answer. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T10:55:25.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13530" CreationDate="2013-10-19T08:06:49.710" Score="23" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jit449&quot;&gt;recent paper&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Infectious Diseases&lt;/em&gt;, which reports the discovery of a new botulinum toxin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24398-new-botox-supertoxin-has-its-details-censored.html#.UmI4BpEm_ZL&quot;&gt;has been censored&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because no antitoxins as yet have been developed to counteract the novel C. Botulinum toxin, the authors had detailed consultations with representatives from numerous appropriate US government agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team sequenced the bacterial DNA corresponding to the toxin, but did not publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand the reasoning, and see how it might make sense, but I wondered: in such a case, what are guidelines that should be followed? The editors indicate consultations with governmental agencies, but I think the government might in some case be overly eager to censor data that should, from an ethical and moral point of view, be disseminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, without turning this into a political question: &lt;strong&gt;what are guidelines (written rules as well as unwritten moral standards) that an author, reviewer or editor should follow concerning potential public safety issues?&lt;/strong&gt; I looked for information on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org&quot;&gt;COPE website&lt;/a&gt;, but could not really find anything relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T13:25:38.043" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T08:12:52.537" Title="When should academic papers be censored due to public health/safety concerns?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13495" CreationDate="2013-10-19T12:03:48.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how valuable accreditations are. I would suggest going by reputation rather than a binary is/isn't accredited. I think it would be rare for a school to have a &quot;good&quot; reputation, but lack critical accreditations. There likely is variability in the accreditations that schools with questionable reputations have. I would still base my decision on reputation and then only when deciding between a few schools with very similar reputations give any weight to accreditation. As for finding out about reputation word of mouth, league tables (e.g., the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/education/table/2013/jun/04/university-guide-business-management-studies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guradian&lt;/a&gt; tables), and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=36&amp;amp;type=uoa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RAE&lt;/a&gt; are reasonable starting points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T12:03:48.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13525" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-19T12:42:10.873" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which month to cite, the month of acceptance or the month on which the paper was published online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using bibtex and a custom bibliographic style where specifying month is not required. However, to update my bibliographic database and to know specifically what is the norm, this question has been asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T08:09:08.050" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T08:09:08.050" Title="Which month to cite?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2013-10-19T12:43:10.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some advice, but not a resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As something that you want to happen quickly, EnergyNumbers' advice to&#xA;find a colleague who does this or teaches a class on it is&#xA;appropriate. Ask this individual if they would be willing to come to&#xA;your class for one or two sessions to give the students an overview&#xA;of the process, including examples of good and bad survey questions.&#xA;A whole lot of success can be achieved by mimicking the successful&#xA;behavior of others, even if you do not have time to get into the&#xA;underlying theory (cf. memorizing basic arithmetic facts instead of teaching children to construct them &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an exercise, have each student write two or three survey questions independently and test them on the rest of the class.&#xA;Depending on the number of students in the class, extreme biases&#xA;should emerge under review by the class. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strive for a neutral tone in the questions. If you are asking an opinion question, do not ask how strongly they agree/disagree with &lt;strong&gt;one opinion&lt;/strong&gt; on the issue. Give them a range of opinions and let them pick the one they agree with most. Let the respondents provide the bias (otherwise, what are you looking for). Let's go with the nurse example proposed in the question. Let's look at two questions about shift length:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To what degree do you agree or disagree to the following statement: &quot;My shifts are usually longer than I would prefer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strongly agree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somewhat agree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neither agree nor disagree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somewhat disagree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strongly disagree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please select the response that most closely matches your opinion regarding the lengths of your shifts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of my shifts are too short. I could work longer shifts if it was needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I sometimes have shifts that atr shorter than I would like, but most of my shifts are of an acceptable length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I like the lengths of my shifts. They are neither too long nor too short.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I sometimes have shifts that are longer than I would like, but most of my shifts are of an acceptable length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of my shifts are too long. I would prefer to work shorter shifts if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other (provide a spot for written comments).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both questions are after the same info - how nurses feel about the length of their shifts. The first question is biased - it is asking nurses whether they agree with just one (negative) opinion about shift length. You have given them just one opinion to agree with about an issue instead of a range of opinions to agree with. The second one is not &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; biased. It goes after the same information, but in a different way - by providing a list of five opinions about shift length running the gamut from &lt;em&gt;too short&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;too long&lt;/em&gt; and asking each respondent to pick which one they like most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide an &lt;strong&gt;other&lt;/strong&gt; option. Notice that my second question has this option. That way you can capture the few of the more unusual opinions without railroading the respondents into just the choices you provided.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use simple language. Do not use flowery language or more complex wording than necessary. Notice that my second question did not read:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Please meditate on the durations of your shifts and select the&#xA;   response that most closely matches the harmonious resonances of your&#xA;   soul.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid technical jargon unless that technical jargon is understood by all of your respondents (and then think twice about it) or if the survey is about technical aspects of the respondents' work. Jargon related to the nursing field would be appropriate, but be careful. Jargon used by a geriatric nurse might not be understandable to a nurse anesthetist. Since you student probably does not know much nursing jargon, such jargon should be avoided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T12:43:10.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-19T12:43:41.190" Score="4" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is too early to ask this, but I will go ahead anyway, to satisfy my curiosity. I am currently studying Arts in a University, aiming to get a BA Honours in English and German. If I went ahead to get a Masters, would I have to choose one of them, or could I continue with both? And similarly for a Doctoral, if I get that far, does it have to be one subject at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9066" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T15:26:05.860" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T17:21:27.703" Title="Advanced degrees in two subjects?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13527" CreationDate="2013-10-19T13:05:30.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do research based Masters and/or PhD, you could probably find a specific research that combines elements of both - quite often (not always), these types of projects turn out to be the better ones, as they force the researcher to establish, rationalise and justify the links between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though my research has not been in linguistics, rather in the applied physical sciences field, my research combined a few subjects together - in my case: atmospheric physics, programming and signal processing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is very possible to do, in your case, relevant elements of both English and German in a single research postgraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T13:05:30.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13525" CreationDate="2013-10-19T13:34:26.947" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain citation styles, you indeed need to add the month (respectively day and month) when you cite monthly (respectively weekly) periodicals. In which case, definitely use the month of publication: online publication if it's an online-only periodical, print publication otherwise (either print-only or print-and-online).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But such styles are a rather rare occurrence. It may be that using the month is not correct at all for what you intend. Could you give more details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T13:34:26.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13523" CreationDate="2013-10-19T15:02:28.877" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a rising &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics&quot;&gt;bioethics&lt;/a&gt; topic in the area of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity&quot;&gt;biosecurity&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology&quot;&gt;dual-use developments&lt;/a&gt;. Last year there was controversy with &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/205/11/1621&quot;&gt;H5N1 and censorship&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no set policy, though they are being devolped. Most recently there is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/02/22/2013-04127/united-states-government-policy-for-institutional-oversight-of-life-sciences-dual-use-research-of&quot;&gt;United States Government Policy for Institutional Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interacademies.net/File.aspx?id=5401&quot;&gt;IAP Statement On Biosecurity&lt;/a&gt; principles state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awareness. Scientists have an obligation to do no harm. They should&#xA;  always take into consideration the reasonably foreseeable consequences&#xA;  of their own activities. They should therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;always bear in mind the potential consequences – possibly harmful – of their research and recognize that individual good conscience does&#xA;  not justify ignoring the possible misuse of their scientific&#xA;  endeavour;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;refuse to undertake research that has only harmful consequences for humankind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US NIH &lt;a href=&quot;http://oba.od.nih.gov/biosecurity/biosecurity_documents.html&quot;&gt;Office of Biotechnology Activities&lt;/a&gt; is often consulted for such research concerns and has a report &lt;a href=&quot;http://oba.od.nih.gov/oba/biosecurity/documents/COMBINED_Codes_PDFs.pdf&quot;&gt;Enhancing Responsible Science Considerations for the Development and Dissemination of Codes of Conduct for Dual Use Research&lt;/a&gt; and has a series of &lt;a href=&quot;http://oba.od.nih.gov/oba/biosecurity/PDF/03302012_NSABB_Recommendations.pdf&quot;&gt;recommendations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/biosafety/WHO_CDS_CSR_LYO_2004_11/en/&quot;&gt;WHO Laboratory Biosafety Manual&lt;/a&gt; does not address publication restrictions/censorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8978" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T15:02:28.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13527" CreationDate="2013-10-19T15:22:27.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I do a 'double master's' in English and German the same way I can 'double major' in English and German?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;not easily&lt;/strong&gt;. The reason for this is that admissions to master's programs are normally decided by the department, not by the university as a whole. Therefore, admission to one program (say, a master's in English) does not give you the right to get a master's degree in the other program (here, German). You would have to apply to the programs separately. It is also difficult to study for multiple master's degrees simultaneously, since the coursework tends to be disjoint sets, and therefore you would probably need to complete the degrees sequentially (at best).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctoral thesis topic would allow you to combine the two disciplines. However, it may be administratively difficult to have two different departments listed on your degree; this is an administrative issue rather than an academic one. There is usually an approved list of fields that can be listed on the diploma; if you want something else, you will have to petition for it, which could be a difficult process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T17:21:27.703" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T17:21:27.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-19T18:29:19.310" Score="17" ViewCount="1585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to ask the authors of a paper if they have thoughts on an application of their work. I'm not sure who to email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first author is a grad student, who is supervised by the last author - however, the authors are in alphabetical order so I'm not sure if there is any meaning to the ordering. The paper is in economics, which traditionally goes alphabetically, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I email all the authors in one bulk message? Just the professors? Choose one of the authors at random and email them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9068" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T21:12:42.493" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T23:52:13.517" Title="Who do I email about a question on a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13532" CreationDate="2013-10-19T19:51:29.833" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Papers usually have one (or more) designated &lt;strong&gt;corresponding author&lt;/strong&gt;, or “contact author”, or “author to whom correspondance should be addressed”. That's whom you should contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's indicated by a footnote, an asterisk, or at the end of the paper. Sometimes, it's indicated by the fact that only corresponding authors have their email address listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If there is no corresponding author, then email either the first author or senior author&lt;/strong&gt;, depending on the nature of your question and how confident you feel in communicating with them. &lt;strong&gt;I would refrain from copying the email to all authors&lt;/strong&gt; (except maybe if there are only two): if he wants to, the author you will write to can forward your query to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T19:51:29.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13556" CreationDate="2013-10-20T01:09:44.423" Score="0" ViewCount="5310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this line about the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, 6:16 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-6-16&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the volume is &lt;strong&gt;6&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Then what is &lt;strong&gt;16&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should you correctly cite the Bibliography in Tex?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My BibTeX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;%&#xA;% Published abstract&#xA;%&#xA;@ARTICLE{vladimir,&#xA;    author = {Kudriavtsev V, Polyshchuk V and Roy D L},&#xA;    title = {Heart energy signature spectrogram for cardiovascular diagnosis},&#xA;    journal = {BioMedical Engineering OnLine},&#xA;    year = {2007},&#xA;    volume = {6:16}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am suspicious about the author and the volume field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9009" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T01:52:13.973" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T11:28:17.860" Title="What is the volume of this article in a journal?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13532" CreationDate="2013-10-20T01:51:35.110" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this involves a little more work, it might be possible to do some digging to see who's the prime mover on the paper. For example, if one of the authors has a series of papers on the topic, or if it's part of an author's thesis, and so on. If you're able to find such a person, then it might help to email them directly. If not, then @F'x's solution is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T01:51:35.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13534" CreationDate="2013-10-20T02:20:20.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That notation is standard for volume and issue no. For instance, the following is a ACM citation for one of my journal articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeremy Birnholtz, Shion Guha, Geri Gay, Y. Connie Yuan, and Caren&#xA;  Heller. 2013. Cross-campus collaboration: A scientometric and network&#xA;  case study of publication activity across two campuses of a single&#xA;  institution. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 64, 1 (January 2013),&#xA;  162-172. DOI=10.1002/asi.22807 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22807&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you will notice, after the name of the journal (JASIST), there is the notation 64,1. It refers to volume 64, issue 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular example, which I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/6/1/16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, on the top right hand corner, volume 6 is clearly mentioned. The structure of the citation leads me to believe that it is issue no. 16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In BibTeX, issue no's are default. There is nothing particular that you have to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After perusing your author field, they also seem to be well aligned with the actual article. What are your suspicions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T02:20:20.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13329" CreationDate="2013-10-20T04:11:31.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're serious about such a project, I think what you need to do is recognize that this task naturally separates into two parts. It will be &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; easy to find a good, general purpose and freely available program that suits your taste for visualizing/analyzing/discovering networks in general. I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cytoscape.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cytoscape&lt;/a&gt; is pretty good, although I've only played around with it a little and many others exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the second (well, first) part is to fetch and prepare the input data for the citation relationships of interest to you. You need to be very specific about exactly where you want to get this from and for what subset of articles, since it may not be possible (due to license restrictions) or technically feasible (as noted, the size of the network grows exponentially).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9069" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T04:11:31.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T05:19:52.873" Score="9" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;A normal process of learning in a graduate school looks like taking courses that include a broad perspective on some subject. This also includes the instruments of control: exercises, tests, problem sets, and exams. Let's suppose this control exists only to show where a student has gaps in his knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student takes such courses to learn things she will apply later in her work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in practice each course include much material that the student will never apply in her work, even in academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many notable scholars mention that they pick up necessary tools, while disliking the idea of a university that offers too much in general, so students have to disperse their efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does academia use this push process of fixed course program and control for all students in the course, instead of a pull process, when students have their own research interests and just pick necessary tools when the need arises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shouldn't students in general use a selective, not linear, approach to getting necessary knowledge? It's obvious that students need some overview, but what prevents them from getting this overview as they work through the problems of their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T16:02:57.437" Title="Why should a graduate student complete a whole course?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11746" CreationDate="2013-10-20T05:54:01.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you already have a PhD, and have a strong work experience with one of the top companies with the research-like work, not to mention your published work that you have mentioned, you should be able to get a grant from one of the prominent universities in Russia. If not, then try a country where you can happily continue your research while still supporting your family. As Dexters above has suggested that, with your passion you have nothing to lose, it stands true if you keep trying and not give up just yet. In the meantime you could try to publish your work with the top journals.&#xA;Good luck with your endeavours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9072" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T05:54:01.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13538" CreationDate="2013-10-20T06:05:21.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're presenting a false dichotomy: most graduate programs are not &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; specified. There are a certain number of required classes—to ensure that all students have the same &quot;core&quot; knowledge that they will be expected to have, both as graduate student researchers as well as professionals in the field—and usually a number of elective courses, that can be chosen as the student chooses to meet the needs of their research, or to satisfy their interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're really asking &quot;why is there a core curriculum,&quot; it's because, as I mentioned, there are expectations of what an advanced degree holder in such fields will know. However, there are large discrepancies and variations in curricula between departments at the undergraduate level. Therefore, to &quot;level the playing field,&quot; and make sure that all students have the expected knowledge and skills, they offer the courses that will guarantee proficiency at the required level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T06:05:21.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13538" CreationDate="2013-10-20T08:18:30.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My immediate answer is they shouldn't. The problem is that there are differences between graduate systems. Aeismail has provided a good answer for one such system. Where I work each graduate student has an individual study plan and the idea is to tailor make the studies for each. this tailoring involves taking parts of a course and not for credit in the sense to go through examination. In our system all courses at graduate level is pass/fail. To understand the differences one has to look at the position of a graduate student as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some systems a graduate student is more or less a bit more than an undergraduate (a &quot;super student&quot;). In my system a graduate student is pat of the employed body of the department and in that sense also a colleague. The point is that this involves both rights and responsibilities and further involvement in department affairs. This position has old traditions where a PhD was not awarded until much later in life, the term graduate student simply did not exist, there were, for example, intermediate teaching positions for those who had not yet completed the PhD yet. The thinking about courses is thus to ensure that the student does not waste much time on unnecessary material, just as you stated in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this position, there is no right or wrong in terms of courses, the PhD programs differ so much between systems. The reason for the differences comes from deeper differences in the university systems and views on what the PhD student profile after completion. We had  discussions about mandatory (tailor-made) course for students to provide a common base in the subject, but we have scrapped this approach because the field is simply to wide and then it will be up to each to read upon their sub-field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T08:18:30.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13544" CreationDate="2013-10-20T09:13:20.047" Score="10" ViewCount="1469" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my literature survey for a project, I came across papers that have very interesting results and have decent number of citations. Unfortunately, the sub-area I am exploring doesn’t have any standard datasets on which I can test my implementation of the algorithm presented in their paper. The authors have generated the dataset by applying certain actions on a subset of publicly available information, which are Flickr images in my case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have contacted the authors, asking whether they can provide me with their code or the dataset that they used for their implementation so that I may use it to perform my experiments and possibly try to extend their approach. But almost a week has passed by, and I haven’t received any response from them. Does that mean that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My method of asking was not correct? (In that case, what would be appropriate?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don’t have the code or dataset available? (The papers were published in 2004.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not interested?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be polite to remind them again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T00:47:50.213" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T00:47:50.213" Title="How should I proceed if the author of a paper doesn't reply to my query?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13543" CreationDate="2013-10-20T09:55:37.393" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for no response may be anything from what Anthony Labarre mentions to what you list. I would wait at least a month before writing off an answer; I have received answers even later than that. It is possible they are working on improvements themselves as well. In short, if you do not get a reply, you can only try again and perhaps express your request differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have contacted all the authors. Sometimes the project leader may be too busy to pick up on questions and the younger team members may be more inclined to answer. They may, however, want to talk it over among themselves, and it is probably not a high priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So try again in a couple of weeks. If you do not get any response, then there is probably not much you can do. You probably need to think about what can do to improve the chances for a reply. The word &quot;collaboration&quot; is sometimes a good way to &quot;sweeten the deal&quot;. Sometimes, just to give a perspective, I get requests for data that are of the sort, give me this or that, give me everything, and I often end up asking myself, why should I? having laboured to generate the data. I am not saying you must follow such an approach to be successful but considering why the other researchers would want to help you may also help towards solving the communication problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T22:54:23.957" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T22:54:23.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13547" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-20T10:24:20.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/bibtex&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'bibtex'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;bibtex&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns the bibliography/reference handling system associated with the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bibTeX&lt;/a&gt; comprises reference database handling, referencing within documents and generation for reference lists. bibTeX, as TeX/LaTeX is freeware. The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/bibtex&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'bibtex'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;bibtex&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns use of the data base for academic writing. For technical questions on bibTeX and its use, the user should turn to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;TeX&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T11:30:52.783" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T11:30:52.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13548" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-20T10:24:20.367" Score="0" Body="The bibliography/reference handling system of TeX/LaTeX, including other versions such as bibLaTeX" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T11:30:52.783" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T11:30:52.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13543" CreationDate="2013-10-20T12:44:19.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they don't respond to e-mail, I'd try to give them a call. Many people get a lot of e-mail (running projects, requests to be hired as postdoc, etc, etc), so it is hard for you to get attention in this large amount of mails. Calling them makes it personal, you have their undivided attention at that moment. I would first ask them if they have time right then to answer your question, and propose to reschedule your call to a time that they are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T12:44:19.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13532" CreationDate="2013-10-20T14:13:15.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fields like pure mathematics, where authors are given equal credit, I'd recommend e-mailing all the authors unless there are an awfully large number of them or special circumstances apply (you know an author personally, you happen to know that your question is most relevant to a specific author, etc.).  The reason is that if you single out a specific author, then the other authors may try to guess why.  Is it because the author you chose is the most famous?  Because you mistakenly think they deserve most of the credit?  Because you are ignoring a woman in favor of her male coauthor?  Of course nobody will know why you made your choice, so they won't get too upset about their speculations, but this is not a great start for your interactions with the other coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you e-mail several people about a paper at the same time, it's best to send a single e-mail.  Every so often someone will send the same message separately to me and to a coauthor, which just increases the chances that we will waste time by both replying without ccing the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T14:13:15.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13538" CreationDate="2013-10-20T15:23:12.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Affirming the remarks in the two earlier answers, and continuing some of the themes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in mathematics, although it is vitally important to have direct, sincere enthusiasm about projects and questions, inevitably these are not well-informed from a beginner. That is, projects grounded in ignorance of established ideas, while temporarily often very beneficial, simply aren't &quot;professional-quality&quot; projects. That's fine, temporarily, but certainly not in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in addition to &quot;common culture&quot; awareness, as mentioned earlier, there is the genuine and awkward problem that beginners may not have an inkling of what they'd like to know if only they were aware of it. Can't easily learn a thing if one isn't aware of it ... perhaps all the more crazily so if there really is a wonderful new concept that is unfortunately more than one remove from the familiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I do agree with the questioner that all-too-often the &quot;required&quot; courses take a too-adversarial approach, too much homework, too tricky exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly varying depending on the subject and on the program, many graduate courses are given in a not-so-adversarial fashion, with &quot;grades&quot; playing no serious role. Rigidity and an adversarial attitude are not universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, again, yes, encountering an adversarial and coercive attitude is polarizing and unfortunate. Creates a bad attitude, and this can be a long-term ill, also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally dangerous, though, is concluding too soon and too strongly that one is &quot;ready to go&quot;, when, in fact, one is not merely missing some important things, but perhaps unaware. Sure, one should have enthusiasms, and follow them, but be absolutely sure to maintain at least one other thread in which one looks around fairly broadly, cultivating serendipitous encounters with helpful things one may have failed to imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Required courses are a clumsy approach to the latter, yes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T15:23:12.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13532" CreationDate="2013-10-20T15:31:32.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This applies to the case where there is no corresponding author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about my field (applied CS), where many experiments depends on experiments which are not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; easily repeated, and code are usually not available*: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is more effective to go directly to the supervisor (or supervisors) - [last and second to last authors - since this is the order usually followed in applied CS]. These authors usually takes higher care of their reputation in the field. Because of that, they will force their students (i.e. first author and/or second) to give explanation. (&lt;strong&gt;example&lt;/strong&gt;: This happened when my supervisor received a question about a paper of his with another post-doc. I am sure that my supervisor did not work much on the details of the paper, but his name must be included - that s an engineering tradition I believe. The supervisor made sure to call the post-doc and asked for explanation. The supervisor forced the  the post-doc to send an email back to the question sender). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you send a question directly to a PhD/Msc student, he would ignore you most likely - from my experience. Because many PhD students hide their mistakes intentionally - just to have their thesis accepted later. (&lt;strong&gt;example&lt;/strong&gt;: I heard a PhD student that he made some mistakes in his MSc thesis and he hid them intentionally. He said &quot;this is to make whoever work on my work find trouble matching the paper results and the new experiments results&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But honestly, at the end, &lt;em&gt;we cannot generalize&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*)This one of the biggest mistakes in applied CS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="4472" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T23:52:13.517" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T23:52:13.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13538" CreationDate="2013-10-20T16:02:57.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question. I think the idea is to make sure, as aeismail says, that all grad students have the same core knowledge after having gone through the program. However, in practice this approach has major problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many disciplines are so big that it is often not clear what the core&#xA;&lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, some areas are changing so fast that even the core&#xA;becomes outdated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, my experience with going through such courses is that it doing homework&lt;br&gt;&#xA;problems does not really make one understand the material as, say, working on &#xA;a research problem does. Also, a homework problem might be a page of &#xA;argument which is by definition well understood. This is poor preparation for &#xA;research work (assuming that this is the goal) because a research paper is &#xA;more than one page long, and does not consist of well-understood material. In &#xA;practice one spends a lot of time when writing a research paper worrying&lt;br&gt;&#xA;about such things as graphs/figures, suitable notation, and organizing the &#xA;material. These are issues that simply never come up in course work. Even an&lt;br&gt;&#xA;end of semester project in practice is not big enough to provide a suitable &#xA;ground for exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often different parts of the core (depending on the subject) are rather&lt;br&gt;&#xA;different from each other, and as you say, a graduate student, of necessity, &#xA;is forced to specialize quite quickly in one area, and will likely never &#xA;need to know about those other areas. So, in practice, much of this is time &#xA;wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think part of the idea is that someone who is excessively specialized is not in a good position to cross-pollinate ideas across different disciplines. The very idea of interdisciplinary work is that ideas in one area are useful in others. But I'm not sure that forcing a set curriculum has the effect of creating a more &lt;em&gt;rounded&lt;/em&gt; researcher. I think such adventures are best driven by curiosity and need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, my experience is that beyond basic/core courses in a department, the more specialized courses may just reflect the (possibly non-mainstream) research interests of the faculty, and can be a real waste of time if such courses are made a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T16:02:57.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13534" CreationDate="2013-10-20T17:17:09.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the title, it seems that the journal is an online only journal. Many such journals don't use page or issue numbers, since there is no need for these in an online journal. Instead, such journals number articles subsequently as they appear throughout the year. In conclusion, it seems that in your case, 6 is the volume number, and 16 is the article number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For BibTeX entries, I usually use the &lt;code&gt;pages&lt;/code&gt; field to enter such article numbers. The reasoning behind it is that, in classical journals, page numbers are used to refer to an individual article, while in online journals, it's the article number which takes this role. Also, there are several BibTeX styles which use a citation format with &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;volume&amp;gt;:&amp;lt;pages&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. For these, using the &lt;code&gt;pages&lt;/code&gt; field for the article number will be compatible and will turn out as you show in your citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, &lt;strong&gt;6:16&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T17:17:09.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13534" CreationDate="2013-10-20T18:34:55.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have already said, it's an article number. &#xA;You can verify on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/6/1/16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;publisher's website&lt;/a&gt; that papers in the same volume have indeed consecutive numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell there is no bibtex field for an article number, so you'll have to work around it. Personally I'd go for &lt;code&gt;volume=6, number=16&lt;/code&gt;, and no page field (it's not mandatory for an &lt;code&gt;@article&lt;/code&gt;). The publisher's own bibtex file (go on &quot;download reference&quot; from the article page linked above) reads &lt;code&gt;VOLUME = {6},NUMBER = {1},PAGES = {16}&lt;/code&gt; instead; that said, publishers' bibtex files are often quite bad, don't take this for an authoritative answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, the formatting of the &lt;code&gt;author&lt;/code&gt; field is wrong. It should be &lt;code&gt;Kudriavtsev, V. and Polyshchuk, V. and Roy, D. L.&lt;/code&gt;, or even better (if you know their names) &lt;code&gt;Kudriavtsev, Vladimir and Polyshchuk, Vladimir and Roy, Douglas L.&lt;/code&gt;. Note that the correct format is &lt;code&gt;surname, name&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;surname, n.&lt;/code&gt;, with &quot;and&quot; as the author separator. What you wrote would be parsed as two authors, one with given name Polyshchuk V and surname Kudriavtsev V, and one with surname only Roy D L. Abbreviations and sorting could go wrong with such a field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on formatting &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; files, ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://tex.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T11:28:17.860" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T11:28:17.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13560" CreationDate="2013-10-20T21:02:36.667" Score="51" ViewCount="25241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently teach at University X and am applying for a job at University Y.  Should I write my cover letter on University X's letterhead, or use a blank page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9077" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T15:20:05.143" Title="Should I use my university's letterhead for a cover letter for a job application?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13559" CreationDate="2013-10-20T21:17:17.263" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. It is you as a person who is applying, not you as a representative for your university. Univ. Y would probably look very negatively on an application on such lerterhead, as would Univ. X. Letterheads are intended for your official business of your position at X as teacher, researcher etc. Applying for a job or for example writing somewhere for your private business is just that, private. You can, however, create your own private letterhead to use for such instances but this should reflect your private standing and show only private address, phone and e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So keep the official business separate from your private. As alluded to this also applies to e-mail, something most people forget about. It is good to have your own private e-mail for instances such as this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T21:17:17.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13559" CreationDate="2013-10-20T21:33:21.133" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally side with Peter Jansson on this one (do not use an institutional letterhead if you're not conducting business on behalf of your institution), but you will have to note that &lt;strong&gt;this position is not universally shared&lt;/strong&gt;. I cite only one example, of &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2013/05/17/why-your-job-cover-letter-sucks/&quot;&gt;somewhat high-profile blogger/consultant&lt;/a&gt;, who says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your letter must be on letterhead if you have a current academic affiliation of any kind. This is not negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it may be a field-specific and/or generation issue: some people, and some fields (humanities/law/medicine) have more attachement to older traditions and think a letterhead is a crucial part of correspondence etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T21:33:21.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13559" CreationDate="2013-10-21T01:24:35.690" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask a senior person in your field.  In my experience in mathematics in the US, no one gives a flying flip how you format your cover letter; in all likelihood, no one will read it.  Using department stationary is common, though far from universal and I don't think affects anyone's thinking one way or the other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this advice is universally applicable;  I know in many other disciplines, cover letters are read carefully, and thus their professionalism will have some salutary effect.  My personal feeling is that using your current institution's letterhead, your office address, etc. looks more professional, but obviously this isn't a universal feeling, so all the more reason to check about your field specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T01:24:35.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-21T03:42:19.037" Score="0" ViewCount="12299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to graduate math programs and my subject test score was abysmal, but I'm very confident that I will have excellent letters of recommendation from my professors. Will these LOR offset the bad test scores? I know every situation is different, but in general what is your opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9079" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T07:20:00.893" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T07:10:22.257" Title="Can good letter of recommendations offset bad GRE scores?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-10-26T21:27:04.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13563" CreationDate="2013-10-21T03:52:47.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You state yourself that every situation is different, and that really is all we can tell you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a school that receives a high volume of applicants, your GRE score is likely to matter a lot more than at a school where lower numbers of applications are received. An overworked applications committee is much more likely to toss an application with a low GRE score (without even reading the letters) than a committee that has enough time to properly assess each candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRE scores (can) matter a lot, and then once you pass the gatekeeper they don't matter very much any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T03:52:47.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13563" CreationDate="2013-10-21T04:03:41.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a current graduate student and my experience is limited to being the student representation on the graduate admissions committee of my program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my advisers always reminded me of the following principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GRE scores will not get you in but can keep you out&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does this mean?&lt;/strong&gt; GRE scores by themselves will never get you admitted into any program worth its salt. However, they do act as a nice way of filtering candidates, especially in schools which received hundreds of applications for its programs every year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you make the initial GRE/TOEFL filter, you are good. Your application will then be vetted on the basis of academic achievements, research, statement of purpose and letters of recommendation. Ergo, if you are removed at the initial stage by virtue of your GRE scores being rather low, then chances are, that nobody will even look at the rest of your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your GRE scores are bad (but not &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; bad) then your good LORs might serve you better in the later rounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, for quantitative oriented programs (like math), you might be expected to get a perfect (or &lt;em&gt;near&lt;/em&gt; perfect) GRE Math scores and respectable Verbal scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this makes the process a little clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T14:16:20.990" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T14:16:20.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-21T06:57:20.407" Score="17" ViewCount="4373" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's embarassing, I failed my quals (in PhD ECE). The school is going to give me a terminal masters (w.o. thesis). My gpa is also not that stellar (3.4+), from a mediocre school. But I have a strong will to do a PhD (I enjoy doing research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor (along with other co-authors) are supportive in the sense that they are willing to write good letters (i.e. I have a quite decent publication record). So, I am planning to apply this year, my specific queries are -- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it really worth a shot? as I have a &quot;bad record&quot; now (although my transcript will not convey such information, but I am not willing to hide it either) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If no.1 is &quot;yes&quot;, then how should I justify this to the adcom ? For example, explaining my financial and family problems that I faced during my last years (probably in the SOP)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to go to a better school/lab compared to my current one ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some particulars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am an international grad student in the US.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a 3.8+ undergrad score from south-east asia (used to be a class topper, if that helps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My GRE was also decent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9083" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:15:01.467" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:15:01.467" Title="Reapplying for a PhD position at another institute after failing the qualifying exam" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3592" CreationDate="2013-10-21T08:05:47.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many US schools generally offer a partial/full &quot;course waiver&quot; depending on the course load and syllabus of the previous MS degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some problems with MSc (by research) programs from the UK (i.e. anglo-saxon system), as such program does not require any course work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know one person in our lab who did MSc (by research) from the UK and had to complete a full course load during his PhD, it took almost 3 years to finish the course work (only, and getting a second MS), even being one of the most competent/experienced members in our lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7537" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T08:05:47.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13573" CreationDate="2013-10-21T10:37:31.027" Score="68" ViewCount="60521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reviewing a paper that has an uncommonly large number of references compared to the average number for that particular venue (more than 60 versus around 30). This is a regular paper, not a survey one, and although there does not seem to be wrong references, it feels like some are not really necessary, and the fact that one particular author is cited more than 15 times makes me worry that this paper is used to inflate the number of citations of that author (the submission is anonymous). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I mention this in my review, and try to examine which submissions are &quot;abusive&quot;, or just let it go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2020-10-07T21:34:34.033" Title="Is there such thing as too many references for one paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2013-10-21T11:06:44.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think that there are inherent problems with citing &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; &quot;extra&quot; papers, if they are appropriately relevant. The purpose of citations is to help us form a network of research. If a paper is not cited, then it will not join that network. However, one does not need to cite every paper that an author has written in the past 5 years in order to maintain that network!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than spend time examining each citation, perhaps you could ask the author why there are so many citations. If the author(s) has been inflating citations without due cause, then any academic worth their salt should promptly correct that indiscretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T11:06:44.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2013-10-21T11:10:26.630" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only see one way to resolve this and that is to critically assess if all references are necessary. Self-citation can be a problem but it may be perfectly fine in situations where the author is a leader in, for example, a small field. Excessive citations can also be a sign of the author not being able to weed out the critical papers from the &quot;mass&quot;. In some cases, it may be tempting to provide all the literature found on a particular topic wher perhaps a review paper or relatively new paper summarizing past work could be referenced using the form &quot;(e.g. author, yyyy)&quot;, indicating it is one of several possible references on the topic. I think it is perfectly fair to ask for such changes if the excessive referencing is clearly just excessive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T11:10:26.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2013-10-21T11:14:10.963" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really a judgment call… some people consider that more references is good, because it gives the reader a wider perspective into the issue, and some people consider it a bad practice (in old times because it wasted paper, but nowadays mainly because it obscures the more valuable information inside a long wall of text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have, as a reviewer, sometimes asked authors to cut down on the number of references, so it is certainly an acceptable practice. Here are some factors you may consider when making the decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does each individual reference bring something to the paper, i.e. is used to back up a fact, idea, or to give credit for a specific (and relevant) new idea that it introduced?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are references cited in block? I tend to consider it is very bad practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A series of recent experiments have shown systematically that current human-powered aircrafts are not suitable for mass transportation [refs. 9–21]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each paper (or group of two or three papers, at the very most) should be used with regards to a specific point in the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat disguised form of the earlier: are long lists of claims and references justified? Sometimes many citations are used as “examples”, where a few would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Could some of the citations be replaced by one or two reviews on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the work cited really the seminal work on each topic/idea/experiment, or are there also less “worthy” works cited?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is true that there are some unethical practices that can lead to inflated number of citations. &lt;strong&gt;Excessive self-citation&lt;/strong&gt; is certainly one, but there are others. For example, &lt;strong&gt;some authors cite very widely papers from all groups in their field&lt;/strong&gt;, even when it is not really warranted, in an effort to help their chances at peer review: the idea is that the reviewer is less likely to be harsh to a manuscript that cites 5 of her own papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in conclusion, if you believe that self-citation was the motivation, there is nothing wrong with reporting your doubts to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T17:12:04.580" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T17:12:04.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13586" CreationDate="2013-10-21T12:00:56.893" Score="11" ViewCount="17257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a Motivation letter to be used in applying for masters from German or Finland Universities. I have following points explained in my motivation letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How I see this technical world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why I chose Computer Science in my under-gradute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I learned in under-gradute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are my interests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why I want to pursue Masters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why I chose their University&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be the format of a good motivation letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other points could be included to make it more explaining about myself? And how to arrange those points? How to connect a motivation letter to your CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9086" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T12:25:19.553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T14:46:17.783" Title="A good motivation letter" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2013-10-21T13:31:32.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the authors considered the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13305/442&quot;&gt;When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine multiple likely reasons for the high amount of citations by one particular author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The over-referenced author is a member of the same group as your paper's authors (or even themselves) and they try to promote their own work. This may be adequate if the cited papers honestly led to the new one, but if they are just loosely related (if at all), the amount of citations should be severely reduced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that author is one of the big-shots in the field, and the submitters either want to acknowledge that fact or they know that person is likely to also review the submission and would insist on these citations anyway - maybe this is actually already the reaction to such requests. And don't say this doesn't happen...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately no matter the reason, to judge fairly you basically have to read at least the abstracts of said citations and check their relatedness. However, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13573/442&quot;&gt;F'x' answer&lt;/a&gt; suggests, if there are &quot;obvious&quot; signs of over-citation, e.g. block citations of more than, say, three publications, you shouldn't bother with that and rather directly state your concerns in your review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the amount of references surpasses a sensible amount, the authors should maybe more directly justify the citation themselves instead of forcing each reviewer to figure that out on their own...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T08:50:54.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2013-10-21T16:37:57.490" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;One&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; thing&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; that&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; hasn't&lt;sup&gt;1,4&lt;/sup&gt; been&lt;sup&gt;5-7&lt;/sup&gt; mentioned&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; yet&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;sup&gt;3-5&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; effect&lt;sup&gt;10,11&lt;/sup&gt; on&lt;sup&gt;2,7,10&lt;/sup&gt; readability.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;  References&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; are&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; a&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; necessity&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; but&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; loading&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; up&lt;sup&gt;19-21&lt;/sup&gt; a&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; manuscript&lt;sup&gt;23,24&lt;/sup&gt; with&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; too&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; many&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; will&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; often&lt;sup&gt;3-5&lt;/sup&gt; make&lt;sup&gt;5-7&lt;/sup&gt; it&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; more&lt;sup&gt;9,29-31&lt;/sup&gt; difficult&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; for&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; me&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt; to&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; follow&lt;sup&gt;35,36&lt;/sup&gt; and&lt;sup&gt;37-39&lt;/sup&gt; can&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;3-5&lt;/sup&gt; a&lt;sup&gt;13-15,19,21-23,25-27,29-33,35-37,39,40&lt;/sup&gt; deterrent.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;  If&lt;sup&gt;2,3,5,8,13,21,34&lt;/sup&gt; a&lt;sup&gt;3,4,15,19,26&lt;/sup&gt; paper&lt;sup&gt;2,7,18,28&lt;/sup&gt; turns&lt;sup&gt;1,6,18&lt;/sup&gt; off&lt;sup&gt;1,4,14,21,35&lt;/sup&gt; its&lt;sup&gt;1,7,32&lt;/sup&gt; readers,&lt;sup&gt;2,23&lt;/sup&gt; it's&lt;sup&gt;4,8,15,16,23,42&lt;/sup&gt; not&lt;sup&gt;6,28&lt;/sup&gt; doing&lt;sup&gt;1,2,4,8,16,32&lt;/sup&gt; its&lt;sup&gt;2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41&lt;/sup&gt; job.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7886" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2020-10-07T21:34:34.033" LastActivityDate="2020-10-07T21:34:34.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13559" CreationDate="2013-10-21T18:17:22.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point that I'm missing so far, but which IMHO makes quite some difference is the position which you are in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My &quot;default&quot; opionon on this question is not to use your employer's letterhead, nor your email at your employer's.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The reason is that unless your relationship with your current employer is really bad (in which case &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; don't want to use their letterhead),  (ab)using your employer's letterhead demonstrates illoyality: not only are you not acting in as an official of your employer, but as @scottishwildcat already pointed out, you are presumably acting against your employer's interests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But in academia, there are certain situations where your old university is anywhere between quite happy with over positively encouraging you to expecting you to apply for another job.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may be in a stage of your career where a change of university is expected or at least reasonable and you and your employer agree on this (close to finishing your degree, did a postdoc abroad but want to move home again, want to move for family reasons, want to become a professor which in some countries you cannot at your &quot;home&quot; university, ...), or you are on a project position and for external reasons they cannot keep you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In this case, IMHO you may use the university letterhead (although I'd probably still not do it). But if you do so, you should make sure the university where you apply knows unambiguously that your university is happy with your application for their position, e.g. by naming your current supervisor as reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the email, free emails are available also with sober username and sober providers, so that shouldn't be a problem, neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T18:17:22.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-21T19:01:39.513" Score="7" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having experienced academia through masters, and work via part-time and full-time jobs, I plan to pursue PhD and keep working full time. However, my plan is to create a mutual relationship between work and PhD program in which research feeds work and leads new assignments, and work assignments helps research through results and my employer as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not sure about the case in the other fields, but I think this should be valid for CS people. Do you think or know whether this is possible? If so, do you know any examples of such programs or people who work in this particular way? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other questions is how might this relationship help or hurt PhD studies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is already &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8747/is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd&quot;&gt;a question&lt;/a&gt; about possibility of working full-time and pursuing PhD simultaneously. However, this question considers working in a completely unrelated area with respect to PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/708/is-it-possible-to-work-on-extra-activities-start-up-project-during-phd&quot;&gt;another question&lt;/a&gt; that explores the possibility of working on extra activities such as start-up project while pursuing PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="399" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T05:34:59.953" Title="Is it possible to create a mutual relationship between full-time work and a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13579" CreationDate="2013-10-21T19:09:16.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unheard of to have people work outside of an academic setting on their PhD thesis. For instance, in the US national laboratory system, there are a number of graduate students working on their PhD thesis. It's not a large number—maybe a dozen or so per laboratory—but it's not zero, either. In countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, it is also not uncommon to be employed as a PhD student in industry; however, the financing of that is somewhat unclear to me. (They may receive the equivalent of their stipend, or they may receive a &quot;professional&quot; salary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I suspect it will be difficult to find an arrangement which will allow you to work full-time and receive both a graduate stipend and a full-time salary. Such arrangements would be generally frowned upon by both university and the external sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T19:09:16.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13563" CreationDate="2013-10-21T20:02:06.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies wildly from program to program. Most people on admissions committees recognize that actual graduate work does not resemble a multiple-choice timed test given one Saturday... but there is difference of opinion about how much it means, exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are from a good university with letter-writers who are well-known, terrific letters from them can substantially compensate for a terrible GRE subject test, although elite programs would still use the GRE as a &quot;weeder&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, it's hard to tell what will happen... but only a matter of degree, really, since there are so many factors in play. E.g., if your coursework background is solid and letters are terrific, and your personal statement is both very positive and perhaps notes that you feel your performance that day did not indicate your preparation or ability, chances are only slightly worse...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T20:02:06.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13583" CreationDate="2013-10-21T21:41:18.450" Score="14" ViewCount="20253" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should the last section of a scientific paper be called? Conclusion or conclusions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always felt like conclusions were things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion was the end of something (a book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3860" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T17:20:18.143" Title="Paper ending: conclusion vs. conclusions" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13582" CreationDate="2013-10-21T21:56:29.127" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B006YY4JQ2&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Little, Brown Compact Handbook&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, in MLA style the final section is called the &quot;Conclusion&quot;, while in APA style the final section will be labeled &quot;Discussion&quot;. When using either citation style (and I would assume this holds no matter what citation style you are using), this section will contain your summary/interpretation, the conclusions (&lt;strong&gt;plural&lt;/strong&gt;) that you wish the reader to take away from the paper, and perhaps a call to action or an outline of future work. So you are right, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;conclusions [are] things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion [is] the end of something...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;though not necessarily the end of a book; a conclusion can be the end of a paper, article, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T21:56:29.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13582" CreationDate="2013-10-21T22:04:00.783" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no real right or wrong here. &quot;Conclusion&quot; is quite common; &quot;Conclusions&quot; indicates that there is more than one, although I am sure that is not the intent. It is also possible to replace the conclusion with a &quot;Summary&quot; or &quot;Synthesis&quot; (both often occur in review papers). In some cases the discussion and conclusion is combined in &quot;Discussion and Conclusion(s)&quot;. In other cases, the last section might be &quot;Recommendations&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the last section might be called many things but it should summarize the important points of the discussion. That is the main point of &quot;Conclusion&quot; and its &quot;relatives&quot;. So from the point of view of content it is all the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T22:04:00.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13579" CreationDate="2013-10-22T05:34:59.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; This originated as a comment to @aeismail's answer but rapidly got too long and complex to warrant being an answer. It's however intended to complement his answer primarily...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak for Germany or Netherlands but in Sweden you are officially employed as a PhD, thus you do get a &quot;professional salary&quot; and not a stipend, albeit that salary not being on par with what you could earn out in the industry. I cannot say for sure but I have heard that it's a similar system in Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The so-called &quot;industrial PhD&quot;s come in multiple flavours. The type I have seen most commonly are employed by a company which has a certain interest in a particular type of research. Basically by establishing a collaboration with a research group in a nearby university where there might be more resources (time, instruments and most of expertise) they send this student to do a PhD &quot;in-between&quot; the two organisations, figuratively speaking. It's usually a beneficial position for all parties involved, at least on paper, since; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the company gets the research done, with near-minimal costs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the research groups gets a grad student that is practically free&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and the student gets well-paid (often better than her colleagues in the research group) and usually gets better deals through her arrangement with the company in question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way the industrial research might work is, if the company in question decides to have the necessary resources to conduct research in-house. Then you are practically working as a regular employee, you just get to do R&amp;amp;D and publish your results (usually after being filtered to a level which your company is content with). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, about keeping a full-time job and a full-time PhD position at the same time, if you do pursue such a course, make sure you double check your contract(s). Because we are government employed here (in my university for sure, but I think it applies to the rest of Sweden as well) and have pretty decent salaries, we are required to prioritise our research duties. In other words, we are &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to not have any other full-time commitments besides our employment. I can imagine that similar fineprint might exist elsewhere as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T05:34:59.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13574" CreationDate="2013-10-22T08:10:44.953" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, just typing &amp;quot;motivation letter&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;cover letter&amp;quot; into Google seems to spew up links to loads of hints, tips, and how-to-s, so I guess it's not so hard to find materials outside of here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead, I'll focus on the advice that was given to me last year when I had to write one, since it worked for me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important thing to realize is that a &lt;em&gt;cover letter&lt;/em&gt; is supposed to &lt;strong&gt;complement your resume, not duplicate the same information&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, your qualifications and achievements should mostly stay in the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should &lt;strong&gt;focus&lt;/strong&gt; mostly &lt;strong&gt;on the position you are applying for, what makes you want it and what makes you think you would be good for it&lt;/strong&gt;, which means that &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;how I see this technical world&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; probably does not deserve much elaboration (one sentence should be okay in my opinion). You are trying to convince them that &lt;strong&gt;you are the One&lt;/strong&gt; and show them what makes you different from the bulk of people applying. What makes you more suited, more likely to succeed, or a better fit than other applications they're considering. (I would guess it's easier for a Master studies application since they will be admitting more than one/a handful of students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the structure that I used, and will probably use the next time I will have to write something like that, is &lt;strong&gt;dividing the letter in to three parts&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you:&lt;/strong&gt; here's where you'll put information on you. While you're not supposed to list &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your achievements here, you should emphasize or elaborate on specific achievements, skills and motivations that make you especially suited &lt;em&gt;for the position you're applying for&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;them:&lt;/strong&gt; it is important to &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot; that you're not sending out generic application letters. You demonstrate that you're familiar with the work done in the university/lab/research group you are applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying as a PhD student to a lab/professor, you might want to mention a specific paper or project and write an intelligible sentence or two about that. If you're applying for a University, you might want to pick some specific of their programme that especially caught your eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you and them together:&lt;/strong&gt; first section is about how awesome you are. The second, how awesome &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are. Now (to conclude), you have to show why you thing &lt;em&gt;you would be awesome with them&lt;/em&gt;. Why do you think you're a good fit, right there? This section is &lt;em&gt;not only&lt;/em&gt; about what they can do for you, you also have to try and convince then of &lt;em&gt;how they can benefit from you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the letter should &lt;strong&gt;not be longer than one page&lt;/strong&gt;. Somewhere, you can even find this as a hard limit on an application. In my experience, you should also not have more than 3 sections. I managed to put an introductory sentence and an finishing sentence just fine in the &amp;quot;sections&amp;quot; I mentioned. Also, &lt;strong&gt;your writing should be impeccable.&lt;/strong&gt; If you can, get a native English speaker to check your language. Use a spell checker. &lt;strong&gt;Pay attention to details&lt;/strong&gt;. Getting an address wrong, or a letter in a name, shows sloppiness. Maybe it does not consciously affect the decision, but it might on some level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the last advice I got, which I did follow, but you &lt;em&gt;don't have to take it as a hard rule&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;avoid negative statements&lt;/strong&gt;. It's supposed to give a better tone to your letter. So, instead of saying, e.g. &amp;quot;Unfortunately, I couldn't find and internship during my last summer&amp;quot;, you should write something like &amp;quot;Having a free summer before my last year, it allowed me to spend more time reading upon the areas of my choosing&amp;quot;. The positive statements should help you present the facts in a more positive light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T08:10:44.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T08:15:34.043" Score="10" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;My University has recently started recording lectures and posting them online. We have also, in the past few years, noticed a considerable drop in lecture attendance across the whole Physics and Astronomy department (even in courses that are not recorded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that the advent of recorded lectures is a significant contributor to this. However in the tutorial classes as well as lectures, it wasn't uncommon for attendance in the course I was TA for this semester to be below 50%. Myself and the lecturers are at a loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not necessarily against offering pittance marks for attendance, however I think that it is rather poor practice as it does little to encourage students to become genuinely interested in the material. Encouraging students to discuss science among themselves and become emotionally invested in the topic is the best way to get them out of bed and attending classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any &quot;success stories&quot; to share where they have significantly increased the level of student engagement in their course(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T14:53:04.060" Title="What can we do to increase student engagement?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13137" CreationDate="2013-10-22T11:26:58.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO being paid or not doesn't matter at all (e.g. a PhD student payed by a scholarship doesn't list the scholarship as affilitation but the university, funding goes into the acknowledgements). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'd list both adresses&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters is that there is an official relationship. Official relationships the student has with both universities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MU for the studies (not going there outside lecture time doesn't matter - you are allowed to study at home after all, and noone forces you to use their library). MU is also where you are now while writing up the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UU for the internship. Presumably there is some kind of supervision agreement or something. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly an explanation that you were at MU as an internship (summer) student would be good (e.g. acknowledgements: thanking your supervisors - particularly if your MU supervisor is not coauthor of the paper?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the situation in the linked question, here it is clear that MU officially wanted you to do the internship (and for the internships I know you usually also have supervisor at MU), and UU officially had you over there to do the internship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But looking up how we deal with this, I find that all three possibilities are used in practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;giving only MU, as this is the &quot;main&quot; affiliation of the student (I think nowadays I'd give both affiliations - but my UU supervisor entered the affilations, so if he's OK with me being MU only, that's fine with me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;giving only UU (I'm at the UU side, but I know the project is also a consulting project for studies at MU. But AFAIK no supervisor from MU was actively involved in the student's work.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;giving both affiliations. Having multiple affiliations is increasing in my field as we have more and more interdisciplinary centers, and people give institute adresses rather than the university or the department. Working at a non-university research institute, students here usually have an affiliation with both our insitute and the university. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: policies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At my institute, the policy is &quot;discuss with the director&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hovewer, some universities have policies on the net, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/3503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Adelaide: Authorship Policy &lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Policy applies to all staff, &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; and titleholders&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1.5 All individuals and organisations that contributed to the research outcome (e.g. research assistants, technical writers, funding bodies, &lt;strong&gt;the University&lt;/strong&gt;), must be properly acknowledged within the publication.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2.5 As an acknowledgement of the institutional contribution to the delivery of research outcomes, &lt;strong&gt;authors must cite their institutional affiliation or affiliations&lt;/strong&gt; in any publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wustl.edu/policies/authorship.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Washington university in St. Louis: Policy for Authorship on Scientific and Scholarly Publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicability: Faculty, Staff, Postdoctoral Scholars and Associates, Fellows, &lt;strong&gt;Trainees&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;Students&lt;/strong&gt; affiliated with Washington University  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T15:52:50.717" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T15:52:50.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T13:23:58.893" Score="8" ViewCount="1972" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted one of my paper to an ISI journal in September 2011. While I was waiting for it, I inquired about its status (I needed the paper to complete my PhD), and the journal wrote back saying that my paper was under review and the referee was not answering. I was thus waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after more than two years (about 26 months), the journal sent me this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By a QUICK view on your paper, it is not interested for our journal and so we reject your paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think they could have answered earlier. Unfortunately, now my work is still not published and some authors published my results in another journal. &lt;strong&gt;So, I want to complain to the journal, and possibly get them eliminated from Thomson's lists. How can I achieve this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9102" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T14:03:49.153" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T04:23:44.263" Title="Complaining about an ISI journal's unreasonable behavior" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13587" CreationDate="2013-10-22T14:13:06.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school has a mandatory attendance policy (which I know several members here disagree with) but because of that policy I have had to face with engagement in a different way that you. Still, I hope this answer will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without engagement I find myself in large classes (sometimes &gt;100) and classroom management gets to be a real challenge (for me and the other students). So, after trying a few different things I've found that challenging the students almost like a game show seems to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in one module, I will give them scenarios (one at a time) to analyze (with multiple choice answers where each requires them to come up with their own reasons why that is the right answer). The scenario is short enough to fit on one slide and while the students are encouraged to read before class, they can still participate even if they did not do the work. This is particularly helpful to me since the ones who do not do the homework tend to be the hardest to control and, therefore, are the most disruptive to the learning environment. They tend to find it a challenge to see who can 'guess' right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of this, I try to inject a little humor while walking around the room asking for analyses which tends to add a little entertainment aspect to the whole event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For another module, I assess through an extremely difficult test which is quite common to fail unless extensive research is done. In this case, I alternate lecturer sessions (where I do most of the talking) and discussion sessions (where students do most of the talking). Engagement is not quite as strong with this module but I'm still honing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a somewhat related note, you might check into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/346077/Does_Discovery-Based_Instruction_Enhance_Learning_A_Meta-Analysis&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on discovery based learning. I found it quite interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T14:13:06.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13587" CreationDate="2013-10-22T14:39:34.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the definitive answer is not within our grasp. There are interesting studies that indicate that improved quality of lectures is one of few possibilities to improve attendance (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&amp;amp;context=commpapers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Univ. of Wollongong Online Research&lt;/a&gt;). The causes of absenteeism can be related to many factors including demographic factors such as&#xA;age, paid employment (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1571&amp;amp;context=ajte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australian Journal of Teacher Education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963928042000310788#.UmaOXxDfnCc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Accounting Education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2004.tb00137.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South African Journal of Ecomonics&lt;/a&gt;). It appears that the reasons for the attention drop has to be found in changes of student conditions, both in terms of academic experience and conditions relating to life in general. In other words, the world is changing and that demands adaptation from the university system. A study in &lt;a href=&quot;http://exchange.ac.uk/journal/index.php/ee/article/viewFile/144/216.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engineering Education&lt;/a&gt; (also in the aforementioned study in Accounting Education) provides indications that attendance and accessibility to teachers out of class hours correlate. The study also conclude that class performance and attendance are highly correlated. This means that academic performance is a selling point for attendance. The role of incentive schemes in achieving higher attendance may, however, not be a key to success as exemplified by a study in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8454.00163/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australian Economic Papers&lt;/a&gt; so the means to improve attendance requires more attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whereas I do not have any good examples of how improvements can be made, there are studies that point at both causes and effects, positive and negative, which should be considered when trying to improve attendance. Some aspects lie with improving lectures but some concern understanding the changes occurring outside the university and adapting to these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T14:53:04.060" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T14:53:04.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13574" CreationDate="2013-10-22T14:46:17.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can talk to you by my own personal experience following a Master´s in a Finnish university (about the German case I am ignorant about that). Anyway Finns are very laconic people, try to submit your motivation letter as concise and direct as possible. I have taken a look at the questions that you are plan to answer in your motivation letter and they are just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case I submitted my CV separated from the motivation letter, but a big plus would it be to show that you have some sort of research experience; for example if you have made some research article during your undergraduate or you have been a research assistant. In case that you do not have that, you can express your interest directly to make research in the field that you are applying for your master´s degree (I think that you have covered that part also in your questions stated before) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T14:46:17.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13597" CreationDate="2013-10-22T16:17:00.113" Score="45" ViewCount="2816" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I know this is a pretty basic question but I haven't been able to come up with any really satisfactory solutions. (I have searched around on this site, but none of the related questions precisely answer my problem.) I'm a first-year PhD student working mostly in evolution, phylogenomics, and conservation biology. I'm looking for basic tips on how I can become more effective at finding papers when I need to research a subject for any of the usual reasons like developing a methodology or drafting a proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I seem to be pretty bad at this. My search strategy pretty much consists of putting likely keywords into Web of Science and Google Scholar, and then looking at whatever papers appear that seem like they might be relevant to my query. Frequently this fails to yield satisfactory results, even when the subjects that I am researching seem like they ought to have a significant body of existing work behind them. I know I must be able to do better, because I see other people coming up with papers that I don't seem to be able to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some basic best practices for conducting a literature search? I feel like this is a big gap in my existing skillset, and something that will really hold me back if I don't get on top of it soon. Again, I realize that this is a pretty remedial-level question and I appreciate your patience and guidance here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9105" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T08:46:51.547" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T08:46:51.547" Title="How can I improve the effectiveness of my literature searches?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13594" CreationDate="2013-10-22T16:29:22.587" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you limit yourself to only internet searches, your success will depend on your key search words as you mention. Doing such a search is of course an integral part in the approach but what you also need to do is the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to figure out what constitute key journals in your area based on your web searches and start browsing the table of contents of the journals for articles. Start from the latest issues and go backwards (as far as you find useful). You can either find out new search terms for additional web searches and/or find other key publications on the subject. Keep an eye out for upcoming issues and new manuscripts accepted by the journals since they are often posted online once accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you find recent published papers, check their reference lists for other relevant literature (papers/books/proceedings). This way you will start to get an overview of what other find of interest. Just remember you cannot find anything more recent referenced than the paper itself. In other words this is a way to search backwards in time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now put all this together and work on all fronts in parallel and your overview will grow rapidly. Doing literature searches will inevitably take time but you will learn to find your way through the mass of information more and more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T16:29:22.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T17:28:12.370" Score="7" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to fall 2014 PhD programs in computer science. I have heard that the online recommendation system in place at most universities asks the recommender to answer a series of questions about the student in addition to a place where the letter can be typed. What kind of questions are asked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9107" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T17:36:30.260" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T19:48:04.217" Title="Do online recommendation systems ask specific questions about the PhD candidate?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13594" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:19:43.597" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literature search, to me, is like the recipe of potato salad: everyone has at least one, and they always claim that theirs is the best. In fact, we just use what we feel comfortable and, so far, has not caused any major meltdown. So, bear in mind that these are just what work for me, and you should modify them along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schedule a meeting with a librarian, now&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to a librarian at your institute. In our school we have a medical librarian and perhaps you may find one specialized in your field as well. They are trained to locate useful information and are up to date with related technology. Give them a clear field of study and even a gist of your research, and ask for a good list of databases. I may go so far to say that a good database list is half of the game. Apart from the list, learn Boolean and learn them well, pick up a good electronic reference manager software. Your library should have these resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, ask your library if they have any library consortium. Some major institutes have large amount of subscriptions which open the gateway to many full articles. If your institute is tight on budget, a lot of the time you can just find abstracts sans full text. Having a consortium library card may grant you access to other bigger institutes' library, in which you can print or photocopy their articles. On the same note, ask for an introduction on doing inter-library loan and how much you're supposed to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn systematic review&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review&quot;&gt;Systematic review&lt;/a&gt;, simply put, is performing literature review as a scientific research. It's problem-based, protocol-focused, and the process is meticulously documented and hence readily replicable. There are plenty of publications about this skill. I have been using Booth's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0857021354&quot;&gt;Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and so far it serves me well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the chapters about question formulation and ways of collecting data. I think even we are not heading for a formal systematic review, learning how to keep a clear search records, draft a conceptual framework, and maintain a paper trail would still be very beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand the cataloging system&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In biomedical field (where I work) we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh&quot;&gt;MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)&lt;/a&gt; which shows the hierarchy and grouping of keywords. Consult the librarian and see if such thing exists in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read a few systematic reviews or literature reviews in your own field&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get the general picture, I actually first start from Wikipedia and encyclopedia. If you already have some background knowledge, you can probably skip the first phase. After meeting with the librarian, use the new-learned technique to find a few literature reviews or systematic reviews (hereafter &quot;review&quot;) in your field. Review articles provide general scopes and a rich pool of keywords for your later use. You can also perform a reference tracing technique on these articles because they usually have unreasonably nice and comprehensive bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend some time with the online search engine and really read the &quot;read me first&quot; and &quot;how to use this site&quot; links. Learn how to massively download cited articles from a hosted article and export them to your manager software of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good reason to start with these articles is that they are all required to report the information retrieval in details. Which engines were used, how articles were screened, what were the criteria, etc. You can get a good sense of how researchers do it (or appear to want to be seen doing in order to look trustworthy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start casual&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through this snowballing technique, a small body of articles should start to form. Pay attention to their use of words, keywords, etc. It's still somewhat a toying phase but you should start using your tools seriously. The only recommendation from me is at least one electronic storage/manager software should be used. Make sure you can integrate this software into the word processing software in a harmonious manner, and be able to export a formatted document on the fly. For the rest, it's personal choice: index cards, Post-it notes on the wall, writing on a poster size paper, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, many fun tools are available... &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot;&gt;mind map&lt;/a&gt; allows you to cluster the ideas and words, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/citmap/&quot;&gt;citation map&lt;/a&gt; allows you to trace the ancestors (cited) and offspring (citing) articles of any indexed articles, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordle.net/&quot;&gt;word cloud&lt;/a&gt; allows you to identify the most frequently used words, some of these functions are also embedded in manager software such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/&quot;&gt;Qiqqa&lt;/a&gt;, which is largely free and powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then get serious&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a week or so, you should have a good command of the tools, the software, the databases, and the keywords. Now you just need a question. Personally, all literature review should be problem-based. If someone asked you to &quot;go and understand the field,&quot; that is just simply absurd. It's like searching an encyclopedia without anything to search; while there may be people who enjoy randomly reading wikipedia entries (I do, to confess), but that's not the best use of PhD time. Isolate the questions from your study before doing any literature search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what to search? I work in biomedical field so your and my paradigms may differ. For me, I usually go by this sequence as a starter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Definitions:&lt;/em&gt; How does my field define XYZ? What are the controversy of the definitions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Operationalization:&lt;/em&gt; How does my field capture/measure different contexts? How do we approximate &quot;poverty&quot;? How do we call a good &quot;user experience&quot;? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Data source/Research design:&lt;/em&gt; What does my field do when they study the phenomenon of XYZ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Analysis:&lt;/em&gt; What is some specific analysis for a certain type of design?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, use the first literature review to solidify and fortify the understanding of every single phrase in your research questions and specific aims. Then expand to other questions (you WILL have branching questions along the way, trust me. It'd be hard to suppress them). Stop when you feel you have somehow exhausted the answers, and/or you're happy with the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never start a literature review without a question, or you'll find yourself still only reading paper 18 months into the PhD, and that is probably not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PhD is not a between-people competition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that sometime you saw others finding stuff that you did not. I'd suggest just ask them how they did it. Just because you asked them doesn't mean you're worse than they are. If they found something you didn't, get the references, read them and incorporate them into your manager, and instantly you're as well informed, if not better informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to experts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find some prolific faculty members and researchers, and ask them for tips. Collectively you should be able to get something more out of just talking to the librarian. Experienced researchers also tend to know more about the seminal work. And if you can get that list, compounded with the ability to trace the work's offspring, you can pretty much recreate the family tree of a particular key research theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use crowd-sourcing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot;&gt;Research Gate&lt;/a&gt; utilize social bookmark approach and you can refer to other people's collections of articles/citations. If you have a good peer in your team, you may also divvy up the work and then evaluate the findings together, exchanging references, etc. Also some young researchers may be on other social sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt; (but refrain from checking funny videos) or crowd sourcing sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;... you may consider setting up an account and set up a chat thread or a project for others to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exploit all services of journals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least a few services that you should see if your field's prime journals provide: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. Mail alert:&lt;/em&gt; Some journals or search engines will send you e-mail when an article containing any of your preset keywords is available. Get like a weekly notice from them, and you can keep yourself somewhat up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. Twitter:&lt;/em&gt; Same as above, but through Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Digest:&lt;/em&gt; Some journals may boil down their published works into short pieces then feature them in the form of an online billboard. Occasionally a third party may do that as well for a nominal fee. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdlinx.com/&quot;&gt;MDLinx&lt;/a&gt; summarizes key medical journal findings and e-mail them to subscribers as a 5-minute digest every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pay attention to &quot;grey literature&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that in some fields there is a tendency to favor publishing results that are statistically significant. Relying solely on literature database is only unbiased in the domain of the published literature. Sometimes, grey literature such as conference abstracts, documentaries, unpublished papers, white papers, proof-of-concepts, blog posts, grant proposal archives, trial registries, patents, personal communications, and general mass media may needed to be explored as well. Each field has their own literature graveyard and atypical channels of documentation, you'll need to talk to some specialists in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be always on&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, literature search is really more of a lifestyle change rather than an activity. Now I have camera to take snapshots of posters, take verbal and written notes. I bring index cards for writing. Etc. When talking to people I often drive the topic to what cool papers they recently found. That's my best way to deal with potentially tricky water cooler conversation; either I'll learn something or they'll leave me alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T09:39:52.557" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T09:39:52.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13599" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:26:25.113" Score="7" ViewCount="5127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently having an exceptionally good and fair editorial process with a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the two reviewers suggested a rejection (still providing many suggestions for improving the manuscript). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor was able to understand that many issues raised by the reviewer were because of how the paper was written instead of the actual research design and the results of the study. Additionally, the editor was also able to understand that the study is multidisciplinary and that some issues were born on the side of the non-familiar discipline for us (both the editor and the reviewers are expert in this discipline). These issues were not severe but quite a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of rejecting the article, the editor requested major revisions and actually provided substantial suggestions for improving the manuscript. Exactly how the reviewers did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I revised the manuscript and acknowledged the &quot;help of two anonymous reviewers&quot;. However, this time I truly feel that I should thank the editor, as well. I have never seen this in a paper. Is there a reason for that? Can I acknowledge the editor in my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T17:07:19.483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T17:07:19.483" Title="Can I put the editor in the Acknowledgements?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13598" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:34:35.230" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with acknowledging an editor that goes beyond what can be expected. It is of course not customary to provide such acknowledgement in most cases. Editors do not expect it and it may simply appear as inappropriate attempts at flattery. It is difficult to draw the line where acknowledgements are appropriate but, I have probably acknowledged editors in a couple of percent of my own papers. I have also been acknowledged a couple of times in my capacity as editor (out of editing hundreds of papers), all in cases where I have felt my assistance would save a paper that could otherwise be buried undeservedly. In any case, your description seems to fit a case where the acknowledgement is appropriate, although no editor would probably expect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T19:34:35.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13596" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:48:04.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pSoHq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They pretty much ask the same sort of questions (mostly in a Likert scale). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T19:48:04.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13606" CreationDate="2013-10-23T06:04:32.383" Score="10" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper where I've created several images using clipart from various sources. Some sources are Creative Commons, some just require attribution while others require a specific disclaimer (e.g. Microsoft and Android logo usage) with specific wording. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought was to have a 'Credit' section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CREDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the&#xA;  United States and other counties[53]. The Android robot is reproduced&#xA;  or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according&#xA;  to the terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution&#xA;  License[54]. Figure 1 Physical System Architecture incorporates&#xA;  derived works for an aerial vehicle[55], surface vehicle[56],&#xA;  submersible vehicle[57] and a communications server[58]. Figure 9&#xA;  Testing Configuration incorporates derived works for the drone[55] and&#xA;  clock[59]. This diagram also utilises the following third party&#xA;  images: server[60], node.js logo[61], laptop[62], server[60], penguin&#xA;  tux[63], Microsoft Windows™ logo[53] and Android™ logo[54].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my references section I then have the correct references as per IEEE formatting style, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[60] mimooh, “Clipart - Server,” 12-Aug-2011. [Online]. Available:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101/server-by-saisyukusanagi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101/server-by-saisyukusanagi&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  [Accessed: 13-Oct-2013].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is two fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is above approach is valid? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I meet creative commons requirements by the above (see Android reference)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried finding style guide information on composite images and how to deal with creative commons but not had much luck. I have also not been able to find any example papers that deal with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The images are as follows (I'll have to add credits below):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9m5wW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Physical System Architecture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;N. Halftermeyer, Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 flying. 2012.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;U. S. N. photo by J. S. J. Ebalo, Camp Lemonier, Djibouti (Oct. 26, 2004) (RELEASED) Robot used by Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit (EODMU).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;MKFI, Bofors Double Eagle Mk II remotely operated underwater vehicle used for naval mine clearing by Finnish Navy. Photographed in Turku Forum Marinum during the Finnish Navy 2011 anniversary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;C. Berscheidt, Built-to-Spec Raspberry Pi Case. 2012.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bqK15.png&quot; alt=&quot;Testing Configuration&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other counties.&#xA;The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to the terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;rihard, “Clock + Calendar,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://openclipart.org/detail/2998/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;mimooh, “Server,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;“node.js.” &lt;a href=&quot;http://nodejs.org/logos/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;metalmarious, “Laptop,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://openclipart.org/detail/5012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;L. E., Simon Budig, Anja Gerwinski, Penguin Tux, the Linux Mascot. 2012.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9113" LastEditorUserId="9113" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T04:41:30.547" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T04:41:30.547" Title="Attribution when creating images from other sources" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13590" CreationDate="2013-10-23T07:41:34.200" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, to quickly address your explicit question in boldface, here's the official words from Thomson Reuters regarding their journal selection process for Web of Science and annual review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/&quot;&gt;http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they apparently take timeliness and peer review very seriously, my impression is that a single instance of slow external review is not a strong enough reason to remove a journal. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/06/new-record-66-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html&quot;&gt;this recent blog post on Nature&lt;/a&gt; shows, they do ban journals rather aggressively when they feel necessary. But those dropped journals are serious offenders of abuse and are clearly hurting Thomson Reuters' business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every researcher experiences unfair rejection in some way or another once in a while. I understand that it is very unfortunate that this has happened at a very early stage of your career. But this seems to be a lost cause at this point. And if you are sure that it was unjustifiable and if you do want to take some action, the best you could do seems to be let Editor in Chief know exactly what happened by writing a letter from an objective viewpoint in polite language and in sober tone and ask them to consider what they might be able to do to improve contributor experience. If you do not receive a satisfactory reply from them, you might consider reporting everything to the publisher that owns the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before you take any action, you should ask opinions from experienced researchers in your fields, such as your advisor. This is very important because different fields have different cultures in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that you are enrolled in a Ph.D. program in mathematics; I saw your post on MathOverflow. If this is the case, you might want to take a look at the most recent yearly report by American Mathematical Society on how long it typically takes for a paper to get accepted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the median time from submission to final acceptance varies greatly from journal to journal. You might want to notice how it takes a long time to get your paper reviewed by some of the most respected mathematics journals. For instance, Annals of Mathematics, which is arguably the most prestigious journal in mathematics, takes &lt;strong&gt;24 months&lt;/strong&gt; on average for review. The Memoirs of American Mathematical Society averagely takes more than &lt;strong&gt;18 months&lt;/strong&gt; from submission to acceptance. Granted that the practice of these journals is more of an exception than the norm, two years of review is certainly not unheard of in mathematics. So, while I tend to believe that your paper could have been reviewed much more quickly because a typical paper certainly does not require two years, it is impossible for us to tell if it was unjust or not without more context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the priority issue you brought up, if it is in mathematics, I must say that you should not be surprised if you do not receive much sympathy. Reading your post, it appears that you did not make your preprint available to other members of the mathematics community before or soon after submission. Because mathematics has a much longer review process than other fields, it is quite common and, I think, very important to disseminate your results as soon as possible by, for example, uploading your preprint on arXiv or directly sending it through email to people you are sure will be interested. In fact, some journals explicitly encourage authors to upload their preprints on arXiv upon submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, I understand that arXiv and other means of &quot;pre-publication&quot; are not for everyone. In mathematics, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/103703080789076472131/posts/e2cwzcu9B4t&quot;&gt;one Fields Medalist mentions unpopularity of arXiv among East Asian authors he noticed during his little experiment on arXiv usage&lt;/a&gt;. As someone who was born and raised in Japan and received a Ph.D. from a Japanese university, I know how people may have their own valid reasons not to make their preprint public. You may have some strong belief or policy regarding science publication models as well. I din not use arXiv when I was a graduate student in Japan, either. However, you should not complain when someone &quot;beats you to it&quot; when you could prevent it by following the normal practice in the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you managed to read this wall of text this much, that means that you are the good kind of person who can stay calm and be in control of yourself in a tough situation. And, obviously, you have good math skills with which you proved new theorems worth publishing. So, if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that you have been heading in the right direction as a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like the journal caused an unnecessary delay or &quot;gap year&quot; of some sort to your career, I guess you're right. But personally I try not to overthink, and try to think it's just another unavoidable glitch that often gets us out of the blue in our lives. (Notice the word &quot;try.&quot; I fail very often.) You know, there are so many horror stories like yours out there in mathematics... (And never ask why I've been doing a postdoc for so many years!) It sucks for sure. But probably the best you can do now is talk to your advisor, who is there to give you advice anyway, and get back to your math life as soon as possible to prove more theorems. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="7075" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T11:26:56.733" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T11:26:56.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13602" CreationDate="2013-10-23T09:38:07.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's somewhat unusual for academic papers to have a &lt;strong&gt;Credits&lt;/strong&gt; (I would use the plural) or &lt;strong&gt;Picture credits&lt;/strong&gt;, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academics usually strive to produce their own content, rather than reuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most people wouldn't follow the proper attribution/disclaimer rules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, however, think your way of doing things is very adequate. Your Creative Commons attribution seems correct: as you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#How_do_I_properly_attribute_a_work_offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.3F&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Users&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt;, the CC attribution requirements are actually pretty flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing I might do differently is the use of references for each of the attributions. It seems a bit overkill (takes up more space) and somewhat blurs the purpose of the references list. I would simply put the attributions inline in the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This diagram also utilises the following third party images: server (by mimooh, 12-Aug-2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101/server-by-saisyukusanagi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101/server-by-saisyukusanagi&lt;/a&gt;), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that, at least for openclipart.org but also for other online resources, you can actually abbreviate the URL without loss of functionality: &lt;code&gt;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;http://openclipart.org/detail/155101/server-by-saisyukusanagi&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T09:38:07.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-23T09:43:12.900" Score="17" ViewCount="1195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know other PhD students (at a different university) who have minimal duties like preparing exercise sheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to enter a PhD programme which does not involve any teaching components,&#xA;but throughout the years before, I have frequently worked as a tutor, leading exercise classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether the lack of teaching in my PhD will negatively affect my future employment chances in academia (or whether my teaching experience until now will positively affect my chances). What do you know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T16:45:02.757" Title="PhD programme without teaching" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13607" CreationDate="2013-10-23T12:46:46.527" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definitely yes&lt;/strong&gt;: if in the future you're looking for a teaching (or part-time teaching) position, having less experience than other candidates will be a really bad experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes to some extent&lt;/strong&gt;: even for non-teaching research-only positions, teaching experience can be seen as a positive for the applicant. Some of the qualities required for teaching are necessary for other aspects of the job (handling a team, tutoring interns or PhD students, communication with non-scientists, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would advise you to continue having some teaching duties during your PhD, even if you have to take those outside of your own institution or do some of it &lt;em&gt;pro bono&lt;/em&gt; (or for not-so-great pay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T12:46:46.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13612" CreationDate="2013-10-23T17:13:55.307" Score="13" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one applies to a graduate school and gets declined, is it considered okay to ask for the opinions of admission staff or committee, about their thoughts on the person's application package (gpa, experience, personal statement, recommendation letters), for better adjusting his plan of applying to other schools and career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T19:14:21.203" Title="Is it considered okay to ask for the opinions of admission staff or committee after their decision of declination?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13610" CreationDate="2013-10-23T17:59:05.307" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with asking, but don't expect an answer that is particularly helpful (although you may get very helpful answers). You may get a standard response that doesn't tell you much, and I would think it pretty rare for someone to take the time to craft a detailed response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do ask, make sure you do it in a professional manner, with a couple of key questions about particular issues, like those you mentioned. I would avoid a generic email that simply asks, &quot;Why didn't I get the job/an acceptance?&quot; or &quot;What didn't you like about my application?&quot; Obviously, if you do get a response, follow up the response with a brief thank you email (and definitely don't get in an argument about the response if you don't agree with it!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastEditorUserId="4461" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T18:11:32.090" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T18:11:32.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13610" CreationDate="2013-10-23T19:14:21.203" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tricky. The selection committee may refrain from telling you anything very specific about your case, because if they don't walk carefully and say something dumb, there can be a lawsuit. So, mostly you'd get some cookie cutter responses such as &quot;it's not a good fit&quot; or &quot;the selection process was highly competitive&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To soften them, I'd suggest sending the chair of the committee an e-mail thanking for their time to evaluate your case. Express a reasonable amount of sorrow but show a strong will to pursue this degree or career. Propose an informal meeting or a phone conversation to lessen their stress of crafting a written response (stress &quot;informal&quot;). Schedule a time, and meet or call. In the communication, never ask why you were not selected. Twist the question a bit by asking what are the traits they value in this field/industry, and in light of your application, how you can enhance your portfolio so that you can become a stronger candidate in the general pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one school's rejects can be another school's successful candidates. On top of this very institute, you should talk to other institutes or at least attend their open day as well. The comments of the committee of the next school you'll apply probably matter a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T19:14:21.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13623" CreationDate="2013-10-23T21:25:48.180" Score="24" ViewCount="2169" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The topic of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility#Reproducible_research&quot;&gt;reproducible research&lt;/a&gt; is attracting quite some press these days, yet much remains to be done. In this spirit, I am asking what can be a reviewer's role in this — I'll explain fully below.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many people, I would like to see academic research moving toward a more “open data” model, especially because the principle of reproducibility of research is central to the scientific method. However, I know that at least in my field (theoretical chemistry), the usual standards are pretty lax. I'll give two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you develop your own simulation/modeling code, you do not have to make it public in order to publish your results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you use an existing modeling code (available for free or commercial), you do not need to include your full/raw input files with your publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I peer-reviewed papers for publication in the past, I typically did not ask for this, because (a) maybe my standards are not other people's standards, and (b) the role of the reviewer is more to advise on the quality of the science and analysis of the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, over time, I'm not really satisfied with this approach any more. So: as a reviewer, how much information do you think is reasonable to request from the authors? &lt;strong&gt;Should you follow the customs and unwritten standards of your field, or is it okay to push it toward the direction you'd like to see it go? And how much can you push?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T18:42:20.967" Title="As a reviewer, how much raw data or code should you request?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T05:08:28.607" Score="89" ViewCount="16552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do scientific research, and I noticed for a lot of plots, the different curves are represented with different styles, but they are all black.  For instance, one curve may be a solid line, one may be a dashed line, one may be a dotted line with triangular markers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this makes it hard for me to differentiate between the curves.  Color is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more effective for helping people distinguish between data (and I’m taking a data visualization class that has research to prove it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... can I do this in my research article?  I imagine most people are keeping their plots black and white because of printing restrictions on color, but at the same time they include colors in all kinds of other figures in their document.  Also, how many people actually read printed articles anymore?  For scientific work, I look all of it up online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there good reasons for me to stick with this backwards black-and-white scheme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-01T21:09:40.620" LastActivityDate="2020-09-06T18:56:37.310" Title="Are there good reasons to avoid using color in research papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="49" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-24T05:19:57.290" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, the reason is as you suggested: historically, it has been very expensive to print in color, which made it unattractive for most research groups to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, however, it is increasingly common for most distribution of journal articles to be in PDF form, which can just as easily use color as not. Many journals will let you do &quot;color online&quot; for the same cost as black-and-white. However, if you are planning to use colors, then they should be used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tristen.ca/hcl-picker/#/hlc/6/1/816D92/57ECC5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an intelligent manner&lt;/a&gt;. Arbitrarily using colors in a haphazard manner can make understanding even harder than using black and white. (Don't forget that many people are color-blind!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T15:40:00.297" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T15:40:00.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-24T06:40:17.193" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why might be reasons for you to stick to black and white:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some legitimate scientific journals, even in the beginning of this 21st century, still have publishing fees for color figures and do not allow the combination of “color online and B/W in print”. It's sad to realize, but I know some in my own field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having color figures allows you to have a higher density of information on a given figure. Yes, it sounds like a good thing and it usually is, but it is a double-edge sword. First, because you may end up making figures that are just too dense and difficult to interpret (if the caption requires more than 3 sentences, you may have a problem). Second, because if you do not choose your colors well, it may be actually &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; readable than a black and white figure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The rendering and perception of colors in printed materials and in video projected presentations is not at all the same. Thus, if you want to provide top-notch material, you might need to make two versions of your figures, which is extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mortiarty has said that the choice of colors is crucial. This is very true (and under appreciated by many), both for rendering and perception. I would advise you to read a book about color theory or color design (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1592534333&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; is the one I read to strengthen my understanding of these things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To given an example, the software I love for drawing figures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grace&lt;/a&gt;) has an almost unusable default color palette (left below), but with some practice I could change it to a palette that is quite nice to use (right below):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;        &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9X37.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;          &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tdHx3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look in particular at how the basic colors have been desaturated: red, blue, green, and yellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T08:15:51.523" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T08:15:51.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-24T06:44:43.360" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;When making plots, I like to use reasonably subtle colours and &lt;em&gt;combine them with different line or marker styles&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. blue triangles and red circles, or a black solid line and a blue dotted line). If printed in black and white the figure is still easily readable, and the colour version makes things a little more differentiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to dark or pale colours, and they will enhance the appearance and readability of your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kxyP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bidXi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aAtFT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BgSm0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMKIW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AB4E8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T06:51:12.097" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T06:51:12.097" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-24T10:40:12.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals will ask you to pay a per-figure fee for your print figures to appear in color.  If color really enhances the figure, then this is worth it.  But if, say, you're just using a monochrome red colormap instead of grayscale, it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T10:40:12.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13615" CreationDate="2013-10-24T10:54:22.220" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are other reasons to reject the paper, then it's certainly unnecessary to request code/data.  If the paper looks like something that might be accepted, then you should ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I certify the correctness and significance of this work, to the necessary degree, with the information that is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the key is the phrase &lt;em&gt;to the necessary degree&lt;/em&gt;.  To make things more concrete, you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would I feel comfortable if the whole world knew that I refereed and recommended acceptance of this paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;no, I don't have enough confidence in the results without seeing the raw data/code&lt;/em&gt;, then you should ask for it.  You're really doing the authors a favor here -- giving them the chance to convince you by providing additional evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very polite and make the request through the editor.  If the code and data are not forthcoming, you should probably say in your recommendation something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find the results in this paper compelling if they are correct, but I cannot recommend it for publication without verifying the data/code that underlies those results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the degree to which a referee is expected to verify the correctness of results varies greatly between fields.  But you can always choose a personal standard higher than what's usual in your field.  Just realize that good refereeing takes a significant time investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T17:52:46.380" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T17:52:46.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13594" CreationDate="2013-10-24T12:40:26.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've got some great answers here. What I can suggest is trying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myscizzle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scizzle&lt;/a&gt;, where you can set up your feeds based on the things you always search for. It's more of a tool to keep up and stay on top of the literature rather than previous literature search, but it will help you going forward.&#xA;The problem with only using eTOC is that you limit yourself to just those journals and may miss something that is still important to you just because it was published in a journal you don't follow. Not to mention you might flood you inbox with all those alerts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love the analogy of the potato salad, it's so true, you just need to develop your own workflow and practices that fit your own style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9137" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T12:40:26.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-24T13:36:03.543" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hail to Colorbrewer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Cynthia Brewer's website &lt;a href=&quot;http://colorbrewer2.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colorbrewer&lt;/a&gt; to pick color schemes. It's also embedded in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ggplot2.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ggplot2&lt;/a&gt; which is a common choice of graphing package in R. It allows users to specify colorblind-safe and photocopy-able color schemes. It's meant to be for map making, but the idea works for visualization all across the broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRdSB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other color specialists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graphs that are used in more eye-catching media such as reports, posters or infographics, you may consider taking some advice from fashion and interior designers (See the graph below proposed by Japanese Shigenobu Kobayashi). Each combination can conjure a certain type of feeling, color schemes that seem absurd may work in other settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D5TdK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Works on data visualizations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention there is research backing up the use of color, which I do believe there must be. Though for that, I'd just like to share another point of view. Bill Cleveland, whom I consider the guru of visualization in science, advises that color should actually be avoided. In his book, he lays out this hierarchy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G5Gth.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may not go thus far to suggest color is worse than area and volume, but I do agree that positioning along non-aligned scales is much better than color. In other words, if I have two curves to show, I'd opt for paneling them onto to their own coordinate then put the graphs side by side, or plotting them together using line with different styles or grey scales over using colored lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The baseline for me is, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the added colors should have their dimension (aka variable) to represent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. If there is anything that does the same job, remove the colors because now the colors are &amp;quot;non-informative ink,&amp;quot; as described by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tufte&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human eyes are prone to visual tricks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree that colors catch attention, but just because it gets attention does not mean people can distinguish them well and can isolate the information well. Particularly, colors interact; just by pairing with some different colors, the same color can look different. For instance, here is an example borrowed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sibleyguides.com/2010/05/color-illusion-and-thrush-identification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;. The brown and the orange tiles pointed by an white arrow are actually of the same color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGl07.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why care about black and white?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you asked &amp;quot;how many people actually read print articles anymore?&amp;quot; I would think that there are a lot. Schools in developing countries may not have color printer, and not every student has access to computer and the Internet. Their only way to learn about a journal article may just be through photocopies. Even in the US, with the rapid adoption of tablets, I still see a lot of journal clubs and meetings relying on B&amp;amp;W photocopies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when I go to deliver any workshops in other countries, I always photocopy a few sample pages of my handout to make sure they are still legible. And Brewer's work has been a lifesaver for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remark&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I embrace data visualization and the increasing acceptance of colors thrills me. Though in the process I believe we should remind ourselves to be humble and do not create works that very disproportionally benefit people who are riding high at the technology tide. John Tukey laid the groundwork of some graphical &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0201076160&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;exploratory data analysis&lt;/a&gt;, Charles Minard made a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130816224418/http://studio.coe.uga.edu/seminars/visualization/minard.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visual&lt;/a&gt; with rich amount of variables like 150 years ago and yet still considered to be pretty bad-ass by today's standard. How many colors did they use? Just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, I would probably argue that &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;design trumps all&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. It's not about color or non-color, it's about if they are used efficiently to maximize information transfer and minimize noises. At this moment, for me, lines, dots, shades along grey scale, and empty spaces are my staples; colors are my spices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="47408" LastEditDate="2020-09-06T18:56:37.310" LastActivityDate="2020-09-06T18:56:37.310" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T14:43:04.197" Score="2" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to practice writing lit review from reading other papers and looking at the style of writing. Where usually are the review sections found in papers? Is it the &quot;Introduction&quot; Section, for example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8479" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T16:27:41.887" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T16:27:41.887" Title="In which sections of a paper can I find literature reviews?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T15:22:53.933" Score="12" ViewCount="3413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a third-year PhD student. First year, due to my ill health and lack of command over the subject research progress was slow. My second year, I picked up well but still no clarity over the research problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After secnd year, on a monthly basis my supervisor asked if I am interested or not, and said things like &quot;You have improved but within three months if I don't see immense progress I'll give you a master's and get rid of you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested and trying really hard to keep up to them. These questions demotivate me regularly even though I'm still confident. With this state of mind, working has become difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I get masters, it'll be of no use since I'm already a Post-graduate. How do I make this situation better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7720" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T15:57:32.230" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T16:33:05.650" Title="PhD Supervisor warnings" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13628" CreationDate="2013-10-24T16:27:23.397" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have never been at either side of the table in this kind of situations, but I can share some of my thoughts based on conflict resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as I have stated in the comment, you need to let us know where you are at. Have you passed the qualifying exam? Have you submitted your PhD proposal? Was your proposal rejected? etc. All these can help the viewers here to give more concrete suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think in your supervisor's shoes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you'll need to realize that mentor-mentee is a very delicate symbiotic relationship. The mentor guides the mentee by provide intellectual, physical and financial supports, while the mentee helps expand the research base of the mentor's, publish papers and solicit funding. Even you don't mind your progress being slow, you can significantly slow down your supervisor's career advancement, especially if he/she is struggling in a tenure track. So, the urge for you to get done is reasonable and you should understand that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not entirely sure about your institution but in my institute, for a supervisor to keep a PhD student for two years (notice: not three, three is impossible) without producing any progress, a LOT of work has to be done (explaining to the promotion committee, to the dean, to the funding source, etc.) to keep the student safe. I suspect that your supervisor might have done a lot to protect you already, and finally gave in to the pressure and reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask for an evaluation guideline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really wish to stay and are confident that you can do that. First, ask for a set of criteria on what is meant by &quot;&lt;em&gt;immense progress within three months&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; Be it a draft of a proposal, a draft of a paper, a list of research aims, or whatever. Ask your supervisor for a list of deliveries and how they will be evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, go home and break them down into 2-week chunks of work. Turn the results into a monitoring chart. Every two weeks, you'll meet with your adviser and check off the items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything slows you down, don't wait till the meeting, ask for help. If your supervisor is not giving you help, ask someone else or work it out yourself. Never attend the meeting without the promised delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the third month, if both parties are happy, keep going and repeat the system. If for any reason it does not work, then bow out. At least you would get a Master in three years, and in that sense your resume wouldn't look too wrong. Getting a master after post-graduate is not rare, a lot of people get MBA or MPH after their doctoral studies. It's the nature of the Master degree and your work that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get professional help&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also get some outside help (from someone who has no vested interest in your PhD). A career coach or an outside mentor would be a good choice. Frankly share with them your problem and let them give their diagnosis and suggestions. Be open and try them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, get the requests in writing, and stick to it. Dive into the process for three months and see if both parties are happy. Leaving does not mean you lose. It may just mean this supervisor or this research topic is not a good fit. You may be amazed how much more you can actually get just by letting go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T16:33:05.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T16:33:05.650" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13627" CreationDate="2013-10-24T17:44:30.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The portion of a paper where previous literature is summarized and elucidated upon is also known as (but not restricted to)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature Review&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous Work&lt;/strong&gt; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my brief life as a graduate student, I have heard of multiple strategies to write a literature review. I will describe one such path which I personally utilize (in part, because this is what my previous adviser always trained me to do)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Annotated Bibliography Approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is an annotated bibliography?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is perhaps the best advice to start writing one. Note that I am also affiliated to Cornell University but this has nothing to do with my affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that I am writing a paper for &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2014.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CHI 2014&lt;/a&gt;. My area is in privacy and surveillance. I want to look at the relationship between &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foursquare.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manual location sharing&lt;/a&gt; and privacy concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look at all the related papers I have read in the area and realize that their are &lt;strong&gt;four&lt;/strong&gt; major categories that could evolve from this reading and still be relevant to the writing of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a draft, I write down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature Review&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Privacy Frameworks&#xA;&#xA;  Location Based System Research&#xA;&#xA;  Privacy Measurement Scales&#xA;&#xA;  Privacy Aware Design&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, under each category I start writing the references (in the style of your area ; in my area its in the ACM style) of the relevant papers and a couple of lines about each paper which explains the main contributino of the paper. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Location Based Systems Usage&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Janne Lindqvist, Justin Cranshaw, Jason Wiese, Jason Hong, and John&#xA;  Zimmerman. 2011. I'm the mayor of my house: examining why people use&#xA;  foursquare - a social-driven location sharing application. In&#xA;  Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing&#xA;  Systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2409-2418.&#xA;  DOI=10.1145/1978942.1979295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1978942.1979295&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1978942.1979295&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This exploratory paper examines why people use foursquare, a manual location sharing application. It determines three major reasons why people do so - to gain points and compete with friends, to track their location as a form of a diary and to earn discounts and special offers from business venues that they visit. Emerging social norms and online identity management are also briefly alluded to in the discussion section of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, once you have all your relevant papers written up in this format, your annotated bibliography and by extension, your literature review is almost done. You copy the references to their rightful place at the end of the paper (&lt;em&gt;References or Bibliography section&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the final step is to simply integrate the few lines that you have written about each paper in to coherent paragraphs and voila, you have a very passable first draft of your literature review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this made a little sense of how you go about writing one. I can understand that writing a literature review for the first time can feel like a very daunting task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T18:01:08.827" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T18:01:08.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13632" CreationDate="2013-10-24T18:43:03.670" Score="15" ViewCount="1108" Body="&lt;p&gt;In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is some good etiquette for laptop use in classes, so that I don't annoy or distract either my fellow students or the professor? Should I ask the professor if he/she would mind me using a laptop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T01:16:59.587" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T11:29:47.973" Title="How should I use a laptop in class without distracting others?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13631" CreationDate="2013-10-24T19:09:23.670" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors don't share the same rationale so mileage may differ. Usually, the younger ones are more forgiving. Those born before late Generation X (aka 1970 or before) are more likely to feel awkward because in most of their education life, portable computers had not been made popular. So, personal computer and laptop were/are much less integrated into their daily life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it's not the laptop, it's what the laptop being used for and the manners of the owner's. Here are some guidelines, most are in my syllabi as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the syllabus does not require a labtop but you'd like to use one, inform the professor through e-mail for permission. This step, however, can be skipped if the majority of the students have started using one since the beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sit to the side or back so that your screen will not interfere with other students' line of eyesight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mute all sounds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be courteous about where to plug your charger and make sure no one will trip over the wire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type quietly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refrain from doing anything other than tasks related to the materials being covered (no Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, games, porn, jokes, e-mail, IM, shopping etc. even you think you have nailed down the contents).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Occasionally establish eye contacts with the professor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask questions, keep engaged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are very few students and the interaction becomes more of a meeting, angle your laptop to either or your side by about 40 degrees so that it's not becoming a wall between you and the professor, or you and other students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also ask my TAs to sit at the back of the classroom so that I can make sure karma finds its way when I tally up the in-class performance portion of the final grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T19:28:38.353" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T19:28:38.353" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13631" CreationDate="2013-10-24T21:14:21.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Follow the directions given. If nothing was said with respect to laptops, you may use one but be ready to fold it if asked to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T21:14:21.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13631" CreationDate="2013-10-24T22:31:00.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other useful information given earlier: yes, some &quot;older&quot; faculty are very sensitive (I almost wrote &quot;hyper-sensitive&quot;, but that would have been judgmental...) about electronic devices of any sort in the classroom. Thus, no matter what you're doing, even if it's note-taking from their lecture, it will upset them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of that reaction is due to the greater difficulty of telling exactly &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; you're paying attention, or not. The point is that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; other &quot;inattentive&quot; activity is more easily distinguished from &quot;attentive&quot; activity... so that part of what is upsetting is that it's no longer possible to easily distinguish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, when I was in high school, one of the great attractions of my hobby of mathematics was that writing technical-looking stuff in a notebook &lt;em&gt;looked&lt;/em&gt; just like taking notes in class... which was a great trick for me, personally: make occasional eye contact with teacher, then go back to what I was doing. :)  An astute chemistry teacher did make a very cryptic comment which I only later realized was meant to let me know that, although no action was taken, not everyone was fooled. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But/and, in fact, &quot;even many old people&quot; realize that &quot;paper&quot; is being significantly supplanted by electronics. In my &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; courses, students have the PDF notes called-up on their tablets, and mark on them using the touchscreen corresponding to the &quot;added value&quot; I (attempt to) provide in my lecture/discussion of the material. This is entirely reasonable, and certainly preferable to everyone printing out their own copy to physically mark on... ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if/when I give references during lecture/discussion, how could I discourage a person from looking up the reference document (assuming it's available on-line)??? I realize that a well-prepared student may often have &quot;extra cycles&quot; available, so that they can legitimately pay attention well-enough, while looking up the peripheral stuff...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, similarly, in fact, I realize that a well-prepared student can fully follow what I'm doing while intermittently carrying on an email/facebook/text-message discussion with friends. Why not? Is this worse than daydreaming, looking out the window? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the genuine operational issue is not whether-or-not faculty are offended, to which the answer is something like &quot;yes, but that's not the only thing that offends faculty, ...&quot;, but whether it would be genuinely appropriate to try to actively prevent or &quot;police&quot; electronics use in class. This seems like a hopeless battle, beyond the larger request for ordinary civility in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T22:31:00.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T01:35:46.567" Score="12" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for clarity and grammar, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most relevant to her research. Is this commonly against school policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9153" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T13:15:33.627" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T13:15:33.627" Title="Does helping a PhD student with proofreading violate school policy in general?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13637" CreationDate="2013-10-25T06:07:35.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It normally comes under plagiarism to do paraphrasing for all dissertation. But if student does it by himself/herself it should be fine to proofread and suggest how to improve that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just noticed kigen wrote same thing in the comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5995" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T06:07:35.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13631" CreationDate="2013-10-25T06:10:13.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might give an impression that you are doing something else on laptop and this might make someone  angry. The tick tick from keyboard can also be disturbing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5995" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T06:10:13.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13665" CreationDate="2013-10-25T07:29:32.717" Score="7" ViewCount="8912" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for an Indian student with M.Sc degree to do M.S course in USA? I heard BS degree in USA is of 4 years, but in India MSc is done after BSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9156" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:20:18.740" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T04:25:46.330" Title="Is it possible for MSc (India) student to pursue MS in US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13637" CreationDate="2013-10-25T07:36:19.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to be sure of the policies as to what your university considers as plagiarism, if this is not clear, then ask what is the boundary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, to be absolutely certain, I was advise to do as has been mentioned, that student needs to learn to paraphrase, even more so importantly that English is their 4th language - especially if they are pursuing a career in academia, paraphrasing is something the student will need to do themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're heart is in the right place, but, by not doing the paraphrasing for them (rather editing etc), you will do yourself and the student  favour in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T07:36:19.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13637" CreationDate="2013-10-25T07:36:55.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would maybe like to add that since a collaboration is an important part of research, &lt;strong&gt;explaining&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;summarizing&lt;/strong&gt; the articles &lt;strong&gt;you already read&lt;/strong&gt; would be okay in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When somebody new comes to my team and either has read something relevant to my research or is researching something where the articles I have read will be of help, we will often sit together for an hour or so, and the one who has read the relevant articles will explain the basic ideas, point out to relevant examples and/or results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is fine, since there's no point in duplicating the time invested. Of course, I always read the articles in question after such talks, and I hope the other people do to. But, the explanations help reduce the time it takes me to fully understand the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to &lt;em&gt;summarize&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;sharing the knowledge and research findings is okay&lt;/strong&gt; and even encouraged in PhD level, but &lt;strong&gt;not researching and summarizing the relevant materials&lt;/strong&gt; for somebody else; that is something I imagine high school professors would do for their pupils in the classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and as a sidenote, proofreading is completely fine and I would gladly do it for any of my friends and colleagues whose English level is lower than mine (provided I have time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T07:36:55.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13647" CreationDate="2013-10-25T07:56:49.033" Score="30" ViewCount="6462" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A confession first&lt;/strong&gt;: This was our first attempt at a journal paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The story so far:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We had submitted our work for possible publication with a reputed journal in our area. Some time later, while the review was still on, I checked out whether this journal allowed self-archiving of author's version of the paper. Feeling glad that it did (and being quite confident that our paper &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get accepted), we decided to upload our pre-print on arXiv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And now...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The decision arrived from the journal. It was a reject. Amongst the other things written by the reviewers, one of the points happens to be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...I am a bit concerned with what appears to be the same paper&#xA;  published and made available from: arxiv.org/xxx/yyy. I would&#xA;  recommend that the authors clarify this potential duplication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that this was the only reason for rejection, but might have contributed to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I know I did a mistake due my lack of awareness of the proper rules. How to rectify my mistake?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Should I consider that this work of mine cannot be published to any conference/journal since its pre-print happens to &lt;em&gt;arXived&lt;/em&gt; already?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As far as I understand, arXiv does not allow us to remove papers. I can request a withdrawal, but even then the previous version(s) will remain available online (for any future reviewers to bug us).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best course of action for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update based on answer by @F'x:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Adding this from the Journal's website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/computers-security/0167-4048/guide-for-authors&quot;&gt;Guide for authors&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright is retained by the Publisher. Submission of an article implies that the paper has not been published previously; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out; and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="5851" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T05:13:41.060" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T04:27:06.690" Title="Made an arXiv submission too early; How to minimize the damage?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-25T08:06:30.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some might claim that having black and white is better because it's cheaper to print and keeps the focus on the content.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I disagree with using black and white and think that the content is better supplemented with color.  There is research that if your mood is changed positively when learning (with our 5 senses), humans retain more information.  (Example: don't you retain more when you eat dinner with your friends in a new restaurant versus sitting at your desk and talking to someone on the phone?)  This is not true if the brain becomes conditioned to the environment (or restaurant in my example).  So the environment should continually change to increase one's ability to learn.  Thus, you should have a web interface to keep changing the theme to something new each day they visit the research.  If it's on paper, then you're S.O.L.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could keep it in black and white if it's on paper and just spray some good smelling perfume on the paper.  That may allow others to retain more with smell than with color, because smell has more of an impact on the brain than color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sight&#xA;Hearing&#xA;Touch&#xA;Taste&#xA;Smell&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way would be to put it in a card that plays classical music.  When listening to classical music while learning, you will retain more.  Hearing is on the list of 5 senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this the other day that might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then click the &quot;Explore&quot; hyperlink.  And finally click the &quot;Most Popular&quot; hyperlink and the &quot;Most Used&quot; hyperlink.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure which one is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find the work of many Adobe geniuses that might make your research a lot easier, rather than re-inventing the color wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5698" LastEditorUserId="5698" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T08:31:27.570" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T08:31:27.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13644" CreationDate="2013-10-25T08:20:45.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I clarified the answer, as F'x correctly pointed out that the last part was not related. Sorry, I wrote the answer before having my morning coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the journal allows self-archiving of the preprint on arXiv (as you reported), I don't think this was a reason for rejection. Reviewers may not know all the journal's rules (not professional behavior, but it happens). The editor, on the other hand, is supposed to know the policies. You can still clarify this with that journal's editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your &quot;issue&quot; is that you have your article on arXiv and this preprint cannot disappear. There is nothing wrong in having your manuscript there, as posting a preprint on arXiv has the benefit to make your work more visible. You are supposed to gather feedback on your study by posting your preprint there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are two cases, according to how your article was published in arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decided to employ &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html&quot;&gt;arXiv non-exclusive license to distribute&lt;/a&gt;, you are in the best position to submit your article to any another journal. If the journal wants &quot;original articles&quot;, it does not necessarily mean that it does not welcome a preprint on arXiv. Journals usually make a distinction on this, if any. In any case, you &lt;em&gt;could mention the preprint existence in the cover letter&lt;/em&gt;. It is an act of transparency in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you chose a CC license, be very sure to make a pre-inquiry with the journal editor in chief. As much as I love CC licenses, non Open Access journals may not like that people will be allowed to create derivate works out of your preprint (i.e., much of your article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your target journal has a clear policy against arXiv and other non-institutional preprint servers, most likely you have to switch journal for this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorDisplayName="user7112" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T11:37:55.317" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T11:37:55.317" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13644" CreationDate="2013-10-25T08:47:52.787" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question &lt;strong&gt;depends on the exact details of the journal's policy&lt;/strong&gt; (and it would be good for you to quote them exactly, or give us a link). More precisely, it depends not only on the journal's policy regarding self-archiving, but more importantly on the &lt;strong&gt;journal's policy on prior publication&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that might sound weird, but these are actually two separate questions. Self-archiving is a question of copyright, a legal issue: it's a question of what rights you retain (and what rights you transfer) according to the agreement you have with the journal's publisher. This copyright agreement is not something that influences the peer review process, it only governs what you agree with the publisher &lt;em&gt;should they actually accept to publish your paper&lt;/em&gt;. (The agreement is void if the paper will not be published, obviously.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the &lt;strong&gt;journal's policy on prior publication is not a legal issue, it is a question of scientific (or editorial) policy. It is decided by the journal's editorial board, and should be explicitly spelt out in its guidelines for authors&lt;/strong&gt;, journal policies or another similarly titled document. Some journals, like those of the American Chemical Society, have a very &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/page/jacsat/submission/prior.html&quot;&gt;strict policy on prior publication&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Chemical Society&lt;/em&gt; considers for publication only original work that &lt;strong&gt;has not been previously published&lt;/strong&gt; and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. When submitting a manuscript, an author &lt;strong&gt;should inform the editor of any prior dissemination of the content in print or electronic format&lt;/strong&gt;. This includes electronic posting of conference presentations, posters, and &lt;strong&gt;preprints on institutional repositories and any other Web sites&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Any content that has been made publicly available&lt;/strong&gt;, either in print or electronic format, and that contains a significant amount of new information, if made part of a submitted manuscript, &lt;strong&gt;may jeopardize the originality of the submission and may preclude consideration for publication&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, this journal would reject any manuscript that was posted on arXiv (or anywhere else), because it is not considered &lt;em&gt;original material&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, what about you?&lt;/strong&gt; Well, you have to find out what your journal's policy is, and act accordingly. If the journal policy forbids prior publication, then accept that you made a mistake, find a journal that doesn't have such requirements (it depends on fields, but it should not be too difficult), and submit it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the journal policy does not forbid such prior publication, then you only made a smaller mistake: not informing the editor. Thus, if you want to appeal the rejection, you may want to write an apologetic letter to the editor with that information (along with answering the other comments of the reviewers). As you say that this was not the main reason for the rejection, I wouldn't advise appealing though (chances of success are very slim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T08:47:52.787" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13179" CreationDate="2013-10-25T11:41:13.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are applying to graduate schools for the purpose of obtaining a doctorate, the best thing that you can do to improve your chances is to &lt;strong&gt;foster contacts with people who can write letters of recommendation testifying to your potential as a researcher.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Awards and prizes are certainly nice, as are graduate coursework, internships, and other experience. But, ultimately, none of those might provide any insight on your capability to do research. Doing research with members of your faculty (or at other institutions) and getting letters of recommendation from them allows a graduate committee to feel that they're taking less of a risk in admitting you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T11:41:13.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13641" CreationDate="2013-10-25T11:43:37.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;So long as you meet or exceed (but not by too much!) the graduate admission requirements of a department, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to study there. There's no fixed rule that says that you can't do a master's in India then do one in the US as well. (If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; such a rule, it applies only to the departments or universities that impose them; there are no universal rules that govern US graduate admissions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best bet is, of course, to contact the schools you're interest in attending and ask them directly what their policies are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T11:43:37.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13637" CreationDate="2013-10-25T12:47:58.693" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--&lt;strong&gt;cleaning up the language for&#xA;  clarity and grammar&lt;/strong&gt;, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the&#xA;  information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most&#xA;  relevant to her research.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for&#xA;  clarity and grammar, etc. &lt;strong&gt;The student has asked me to paraphrase the&#xA;  information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most&#xA;  relevant to her research.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is abhorrent in two levels. First, the student had the guts to even ask. Second, the task itself involves significant amount of intellectual input that is not of the student's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand you wish the student to do well, and the work would reflect on your mentoring ability. But this is just identical to parents helping children with art project the night before school. It can be a fun and educational experience for kids, but outlandish for a grown up PhD candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, make the student do the major part of the work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight the parts that he/she feels relevant. The selection of articles and contents should never be done by you. Discuss with the student on the rationale of the selections, and use this as an educational opportunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paraphrase 5-10 various statements and hand them to the student as a guideline/examples, ask him/her to replicate on a dozen or so, check and give comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send him/her away with a complimentary copy of a thesaurus, or some URLs like  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesaurus.com&quot;&gt;http://thesaurus.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the ESL center in your institute, and ask the student to work with the ESL staff along the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommend the student to identify an editor. His/her English standard will not become any better. Now you are helping with proposal, a couple years later you'll help with dissertation---vicious cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as how I define it, if English is my mother tongue, then all languages I would learn are my second languages. It'd only be a fourth language of this student if, say, he/she has Russian as mother tongue, then learned Chinese in Russian, then learned Thai in Chinese, then learn English in Thai. I don't think that is a very viable pathway, and you may want to hook the student up with a Russian English teacher/editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, where were you when I was working on my PhD?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T12:54:10.780" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T12:54:10.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13644" CreationDate="2013-10-25T14:32:28.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you may not have done anything wrong, violating a journal's preprint publication policy is a big deal. In fact it is such a big deal that if you did something wrong and this was the reason for rejecting the paper, the editor would have told you off in no uncertain terms. More likely the editor got a recommendation of &quot;reject&quot; from one or more reviewers, quickly looked at the reviews and decided that the decision was warranted and forwarded on the decision. The editor's review of the reviews may have been so cursory that he/she didn't even notice the comment about the arXiv preprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T14:32:28.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T14:39:34.247" Score="8" ViewCount="2175" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past few years there has been a &lt;a href=&quot;http://notable.math.ucdavis.edu/wiki/Mathematics_Jobs_Wiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;math jobs wiki&lt;/a&gt; with lists of posted jobs together with &quot;rumors&quot; about shortlists, interviews and offers. This year the website hasn't been working. Does anyone know if the website will be available this year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9162" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T13:49:09.910" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T13:49:09.910" Title="Is the math jobs wiki around this year (2013)?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13654" CreationDate="2013-10-25T16:16:19.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/952/where-are-mathematics-jobs-advertised-if-not-on-mathjobs-e-g-in-europe-and-els#comment368742_3753&quot;&gt;the reply from Greg Kuperberg&lt;/a&gt; to this exact question asked a month ago on MathOverflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will put it back up soon. –  Greg Kuperberg, Sep 24 at 10:56&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be up soon unless he has changed his mind. Upvoting the comment there might help... hopefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T12:31:42.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2013-10-25T17:04:44.937" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ph.D. is a mismatched degree for industry. A typical industry employer wants to find smart, witty people with (1) sufficiently high level of specialized skills who would be (2) productive in the existing company environment, and (3) would be able to balance the initiative based on what they know vs. following instructions when a project needs to be pushed in a specific direction and completed by a given deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of these, the Ph.D. label only provides the evidence that you are smart, addressing (although still only partially) the requirement (1). Mid- and upper-level technical positions, especially in research departments, would require Ph.D., so there is a qualification issue of door-opening (or rather not opening if you do't have the degree). In many situations, though, the narrow specialization of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11167/739&quot;&gt;&quot;Line tracing under low UV light conditions&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is irrelevant for most practical purposes, and the employer would rather want to see a person who can tackle a wider range of light conditions and frequency spectra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ph.D., however, fails to deliver on all other counts. On the second aspect that I brought up, doctorate programs do not teach people and business skills, and most programs even won't touch say computer skills if you are a biologist or may be even a mathematician. It is up to you as a  grad student to self-teach project management, version control and all other team-work, productivity-increasing stuff. On the third aspect, the overqualified Ph.D.s may have a tendency to roam towards their own interests, and provide beautiful solutions for narrow problems, as that's what they are used to be doing in academia. Sometimes, though, you just have to shut up and format the Excel report. A decent solution that is delivered on time is MUCH better than a perfect solution delivered two months too late. Academicians are not taught to make these judgement calls of timeliness vs. depth (although the pressure to submit this now before the competitors do is often present in many lines of research) or cost vs. what the client expects (and grad students usually have no idea regarding how to budget a study; most professors also take the zero time cost of their grad students for granted, but that's not how the real world operates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T17:04:44.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13615" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:42:20.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if there is code, you should ask for it (if possible). If you get it, then test it. Bear in mind if the authors don't have usable code, they probably aren't going to give it to you, but it doesn't hurt to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the authors have provided code, the authors will probably be delighted if you test it. Most of the time people don't bother. They'd probably be seriously thrilled if you provide useful feedback and suggestions for improvements. This practically never happens. Personally, if an academic reviewer was to provide useful feedback on some code I had written, I'd think I was dreaming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, if you can't reproduce the results using the code, then I suggest documenting your reproduction difficulties in the review. I believe that such a failure is not considered a dealbreaker in academic research, because the ideas are the most important thing. However, it is still nice for everyone when this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T18:42:20.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2013-10-25T23:38:18.097" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect is the teacher's attitude. It sounds as though your students are already benefiting from yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Cinco says above,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;motivation is not a static, unchangeable property of particular students... A good teacher arouses the motivation indirectly, by creating the right environment for learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experiences with some awesome professors, I will say DO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;hold your students to high academic standards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;assume that the students are capable of doing more than they are currently doing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;show them how the subject you are teaching is relevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;be enthusiastic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;recognize their great work, and always expect more and better in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps most importantly, &lt;em&gt;have fun!&lt;/em&gt; Enjoyment is contagious, and a good professor can make it fun to learn about anything. A &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; professor can make it fun to struggle and push against the limits of our abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry, this is rather subjective...it is hard to quantify what makes a great teacher!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T23:38:18.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13563" CreationDate="2013-10-26T07:10:22.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My reaction is pretty different from everyone else's here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: in my experience, yes, outstanding letters from credible, well-known letter-writers will outweigh poor GRE scores any day.  Few applicants get really outstanding letters from a credible, trusted letter-writer, but when we do see a letter like that, it carries a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does make a lot of difference whether folks on the admissions committee know and trust the judgement of the letter-writer.  Does this letter-writer see a lot of students headed for graduate school, and see which ones are and aren't successful?  Does this letter-writer work with graduate students?  Does this letter-writer have a successful research program?  Do people on the admissions committee know this letter-writter and trust him/her?  What sorts of letters has this letter-writer tended to write for previous applicants, and if any of them were admitted, how did they work out?  These factors weigh heavily in the admissions decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also matters a lot what the letter-writer says in their letter.  I don't know how you can possibly know how strong your letter will be.  A letter that says &quot;this student did really very well in my class&quot; is actually a weak letter (contrary to what you might think), because it gives very little information beyond what is already on your transcript.  In contrast, a letter that describes successful research you did with them and your contributions to the research project and how they were critical to the success of the research project carries a lot more weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poor GRE scores might not trigger a kneejerk rejection, but they will certainly cause the admissions committee to ask questions and scrutinize your application closely before admitting you.  &quot;Why did this applicant score so poorly?  Are they lacking basic knowledge?  We'd better go look more carefully at their grades in their undergraduate classes.  Is their poor performance on the GREs a hint of fundamentally insufficient preparation, or is it a one-off anomaly?&quot;  That's the sort of conversation you should expect committee members to be having.  If the admissions committee can answer those questions to their satisfaction and the rest of your application package can survive close scrutiny -- if the rest of your application package is strong -- then I would not expect poor GREs to sink your application.  On the other hand, if your GREs are poor, your grades are mediocre, and you don't have incredible accomplishments to counter-balance those flaws in your application, then you might be in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based upon my personal experience with one particular admissions committee, so I have a very small sample size.  It is possible that other committees might do things differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T07:10:22.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-26T08:21:43.990" Score="3" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing final year project on a subject which I did not have a very good grade(I took three courses in this subject with grade A-, A and B+, only top 5-10% can earn a grade of A and A+). I am quite interested in it and plan to continue in this subject in graduate school. Will this grade have bad effect for my application? Can I indicate my interest clearly in my PS given that my grade is not perfect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9165" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T09:11:57.877" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:56:58.040" Title="Will the bad grade in a proposed studied subject be a red flag in my application?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5686" CreationDate="2013-10-26T12:19:59.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimating the time to &quot;write&quot; a paragraph is hard since the paragraph isn't really done until you submit it. There can be many revisions before a paragraph is submitted, many of which have nothing to do with the paragraph itself (i.e., something else changed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field conference abstracts are small (250 word), one-off, self-contained paragraphs. In my time estimates I assume that during the writing you are not collecting new data or conducting new analyses and that you understand the data and analysis that you have already completed. Obviously collecting data and understanding it can take huge amounts of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grad students, both from observations and personal experience, take about 14 hours to write an abstract with it taking about 8 hours for the first draft, 4 hours to revise based on feedback from co-authors, and 2 hours to finalize after a second round of feedback. Post-docs go faster taking about 6 hours for the first draft and 2 hours to revise and finalize. They tend to only need one round of feedback. PIs go the fastest with about 4 hours to write and 15 minutes to revise based on feedback. Getting the feedback from co-authors takes times, but I don't consider that part of the writing process. There are a few people out there that can write beautiful technical prose at a rate of 500 words an hour, but they are the exception and not the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T12:19:59.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13667" CreationDate="2013-10-26T16:24:27.483" Score="1" ViewCount="6849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Systems (3rd Class Honors) form a UK University. My Transcript states as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Course Name    Marks    Cats&#xA;BUS            40       12&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I convert these to the German Grading System?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;German Grading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssag.de/studying-in-germany/why-germany/grades/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Understanding German Grades&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gone through the above but can't figure out how to calculate the UK (40 Marks and 12 Cats) to the German Grades (scale of 1 to 5) and also how to figure out the ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9169" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T17:03:51.997" Title="Convert UK Bachelor Degree Grades to German Grade Scale" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-10-27T09:31:39.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13641" CreationDate="2013-10-26T16:27:01.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, it really depends on the University. Some universities do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; allow you to do a masters in the same field, twice - for example : &lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stanford.edu/admissions/faq#a2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cs.stanford.edu/admissions/faq#a2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of them will waive GRE/GMAT scores if you hold a master's degree (couldnt' post the link here, apparently I need 10+ reputation to do this). Other universities are more interested in whether your graduate degree had a research/thesis component to it, or if it was just a course based masters, like the one from NorthEastern (CS dept), for example, where a thesis is optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, masters in science, AFAIK, are seldom course based, and more research oriented - so any university worth its soul will not want its students wasting time/resources on a second master's degree in the same subject - they encourage applicants to consider a PhD instead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you hold a master's degree in, say, Physics - and want to pursue graduate studies in computer science, this is usually okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you post details about which subject you've done your masters and bachelors in, whether your graduate degree was had a paper/thesis component, and what you want to pursue in the states? That may help narrow down the answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8876" LastEditorUserId="51507" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T23:41:24.617" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T23:41:24.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13661" CreationDate="2013-10-26T16:36:38.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is a serious stigma associated with an undergraduate getting a B+ in a graduate-level course. It is generally understood that undergraduates taking true graduate-level work (with graduate-level course numbers, etc.) are taking exceptionally advanced subjects, relative to their own preparation. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that you might have an A-, B+, or even a B in a graduate-level subject without it having a strong impact on your chances for graduate-school admissions. Exceptionally weak performance (corresponding to &quot;failing&quot; grades—usually C+ or lower) would be an exception to this, but I see no reason here why you should worry too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T16:36:38.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13664" CreationDate="2013-10-26T17:03:51.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universal system available for converting grades between national systems. For instance, in Germany, each university and even each faculty within a university may have its own system for &quot;translating&quot; grades from one system to another, and grades obtained between courses are not necessarily directly translatable. For instance, 70% of the points on an exam in one subject might constitute a 1,3 in one subject but (for instance) a 2,3 in another subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reliable rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 4,0 (4.0) is the minimum passing grade in any subject in a German university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In classes where written exams are administered, the scale above 4,0 should be as uniform as possible. (In other words, the difference between the minimum points for a 1,0 or a 1,3 should be the same as between a 2,0 and a 2,3.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as you can see, this still allows for a lot of latitude between different subjects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T17:03:51.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13978" CreationDate="2013-10-26T19:45:22.173" Score="9" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a claim recently that GRE scores correlate more strongly with family income levels rather than academic success. Is there any validity to this claim?  Does anyone know of any study correlating GRE scores with this factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T09:23:53.877" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T09:23:53.877" Title="Is there a correlation between GRE scores and family income?" Tags="&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T03:27:59.813" Score="14" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to teaching jobs at small liberal arts colleges. They typically ask for the standard things: cover letter, CV, research statement and teaching statement. I feel as though a compilation of student comments and data taken from students in my classes (rating my enthusiasm and preparedness in particular) makes my application much stronger. After all, these are the types of things people look for when it comes to tenure review, so why not for a job application? My question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it inappropriate to include such additional materials in a teaching application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T14:45:26.720" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T14:46:21.367" Title="Is it appropriate to include additional materials in an academic job application?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13179" CreationDate="2013-10-27T05:04:28.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aeismail’s answer points out that you need to &lt;em&gt;foster contacts with people who can write letters of recommendation testifying to your potential as a researcher.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a definitely a good answer. However, it is hard to get &lt;strong&gt;good credible&lt;/strong&gt; recommendation letters in China. You need to have not only strong academic performance but also strong &lt;strong&gt;social background&lt;/strong&gt; to get them.  The same is true for internship opportunities. When there are more than a hundred applicants competing for 3 internships, the best 3 academic performers with the strongest social background will get them. (The population in China exceeds 1.3 billion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to the question. &lt;em&gt;How can I leave a good impression on the Admissions Committee?&lt;/em&gt; Besides high GPA, GRE and TOEFL scores, (and possibly winning a competition, publishing papers, abundant internship experiences) and good credible recommendation letters, the only thing I can think of is an excellent &lt;strong&gt;Statement of Purpose&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use that statement to &lt;strong&gt;convince&lt;/strong&gt; the admissions committee why you’ll be an excellent student in their school. Why are you interested in finance or financial engineering? What have you learned in undergraduate school? What particular research program in that school you are interested? What do you hope you can learn from that school after you get the master degree from them? What do you plan to do after master degree? Etc.etc. Hopefully, they will be convinced by this statement and then accept you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my 5 cents worth. I sincerely hope experts here who are currently in the admission committees can give us more and effective answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T13:27:00.610" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T13:27:00.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T06:29:08.927" Score="0" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to apply for the masters program in computer science to various US based universities. I am  eager to apply to their professional courses which do not have thesis/projects in their curriculum, commonly known as MEng and MCS programs. These courses are more inline with the industry needs and that is where I eventually want to go after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee? How else can some convince that this is the right program for him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6542" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T16:22:10.140" Title="Pursuing Masters to get a better job" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13669" CreationDate="2013-10-27T08:56:48.190" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the call clearly states that nothing more must be included you should do so. As you correctly identified such information provides insights into you success in teaching. An option could be to simply include a summary in the CV or make it part of the teaching statement, as support that your teaching ideas produce good results. In short, add the material but make sure it is condensed and clearly structured. I have added such material to applications (for promotion in my case) and had someone sign off that the summary reflects the material on which it is based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T08:56:48.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T09:44:58.990" Score="3" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work is based on &lt;code&gt;algorithm A&lt;/code&gt; that is actually a developed version of &lt;code&gt;algorithm B&lt;/code&gt;. When I cite &lt;code&gt;algorithm A&lt;/code&gt;, should I also cite &lt;code&gt;algorithm B&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the conference page limit, I prefer not to cite &lt;code&gt;algorithm B&lt;/code&gt;, as &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; has already cited &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; and I do have cited &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt;. Does my this &quot;citation chain&quot; work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another dilemma to me is when &lt;code&gt;algorithm C&lt;/code&gt; incorporates &lt;em&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; develops)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;algorithm B&lt;/code&gt;, given the fact that I have to cite &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; anyway and actually I have used &lt;code&gt;algorithm B&lt;/code&gt;, can I choose to only cite &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt; without &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt;? &lt;em&gt;(again, to save space)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T12:37:58.153" Title="Cite a developed version of an algorithm (citation chain)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13673" CreationDate="2013-10-27T12:37:58.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Space savings aside, your choice in this must be guided by two factors: &lt;strong&gt;help the readers understand&lt;/strong&gt; what your work is built upon, and &lt;strong&gt;acknowledge scientific contributions&lt;/strong&gt; of your predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those principles in mind, I would say the choice depends on the relationship between A and B, and whether either (or both) are well-known. Let's take two simple cases to illustrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if algorithm B is world-famous, and algorithm A is a not-so-well-known extension (e.g., because it is specially optimized for a specific type of data): you will have to cite both, as you cannot assume that all readers are familiar with algorithm A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Herein we highlight an extension of the Abersmith algorithm,[ref A] which is itself based on the Borodin sort algorithm with specific improvements for the handling of &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;-adic input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if algorithm A is very well known in your field, and algorithm B was an earlier algorithm that was almost completely superseded by A and little used nowadays (except for historical considerations): it is not useful to cite B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T12:37:58.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T16:30:45.290" Score="9" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do job search committees for tenure track jobs think of applicants using a service like interfolio?  Using such a service, you don't have to bug recommenders for each place you apply and, instead, enter a special email address generated by interfolio on application forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9173" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T21:46:28.217" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T21:46:28.217" Title="Is it a good idea to use Interfolio service for tenure track applications?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T17:42:37.880" Score="5" ViewCount="9444" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors. I might get acceptance. I need to know, in that case, will I be allowed to add my co-authors or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9175" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T18:02:55.567" LastActivityDate="2020-09-04T21:40:34.177" Title="Adding co-authors after acceptance" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13676" CreationDate="2013-10-27T17:55:34.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general this depends on the conference regulations, so the advice is to check them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually you must put information about all authors before the submission deadline. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://edas.info/doc/authors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here are the rules&lt;/a&gt; on EDAS submission system regarding this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can add other authors later and you can change the order of&#xA;  authors. Note that some conferences do not allow that you add or&#xA;  delete authors after the submission deadline, to prevent that authors&#xA;  try to defeat the conflict-of-interest detection mechanisms by&#xA;  omitting authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8964" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T17:55:34.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T18:12:06.083" Score="21" ViewCount="54358" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the typical (median or maybe third quartile) scores on the math subject GRE for successful applicants to a math program at the PhD level, in applied math, at a Group 2 or Group 3&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;This is a ranking system the American Mathematical Society uses for graduate programs. Generally, Group 1 schools are considered the best, while Group 2 and 3 schools tend to be smaller and less prestigious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9176" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T20:50:27.253" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T20:50:30.327" Title="What is the median math GRE subject score for admission to a Group 2 or 3 PhD program in applied mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13676" CreationDate="2013-10-27T18:14:20.307" Score="41" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;Hell no!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the editorial policies of the venue you submit, they may or may not allow to add co-authors during the review process. Some may even accept you to add co-authors after acceptance of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that in all cases, &lt;strong&gt;it is unethical not to have a correct/honest list of co-authors&lt;/strong&gt; at time of the first submission. &lt;strong&gt;All persons who have made significant scientific (or “intellectual”) contributions to the work should be co-authors&lt;/strong&gt; in the submitted version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Hiding” co-authors during the first submission, even if you intend to add them at a later point, is a clear ethical violation. It probably also violates the journal's (or conference's) policy, which typically stresses the importance of having an appropriate authors' list (and even sometimes provides criteria for authorship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that editors may allow you to add authors is for special cases. The main reason why it would be used is when, during revision of the work to address reviewers' comments, someone who wasn't a co-author of the initial manuscript has been brought onto the team. For example, if you asked someone to ran some extra analyses and his contribution warrants authorship of the revised manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="5595" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T05:42:19.217" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T05:42:19.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13675" CreationDate="2013-10-27T20:30:19.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as someone running a faculty search committee, I doubt we'd even notice, as long as your application materials and recommendation letters are properly entered into our own application system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, many faculty recruiting processes (including mine) only request recommendation letters after applications have passed the first round of reviewing.  In that case, I would be a little suspicious of an application that suggested using &lt;code&gt;fdje28dn@interfolio.com&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;name@mit.edu&lt;/code&gt; to request a letter from a well-known professor at MIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T20:30:19.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13671" CreationDate="2013-10-27T20:31:44.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  That's what professional master's degrees are &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T20:31:44.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13566" CreationDate="2013-10-27T21:54:08.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider applying to a different school or switching majors in the same university. Yes it is certainly worth a short. And no do not mention financial or family problems in the SOP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider joining the workforce. It is good to have options in hand. A PhD is not very useful unless you want to stick in academia which means low pay, being stuck in small city in the middle of nowhere, dealing with procrastinating students, begging NSF for funding etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ECE Masters are paid well in the industry and most PhDs I know work on &quot;stuff&quot; that a Masters can easily do. There are always exceptions to everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9179" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T21:54:08.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13676" CreationDate="2013-10-27T22:33:12.587" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with F'x's answer, but let me expand on it a little: intentionally submitting a paper without listing your coauthors is a potentially career-ending mistake.  If I caught you doing that at a journal I edit (or as a referee), I would fully inform everyone - your coauthors, department head, university administration, etc. - and I expect it would lead to severe consequences, such as expulsion from grad school or tenure denial.  Ethical violations vary in how serious they are, and deliberately omitting coauthors is among the most serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you confess and ask for your coauthors to be added, people may not believe you always planned to add them.  Instead, some people will suspect that you initially intended to take all the credit but lost your nerve or feared getting caught.  You may know that was never your plan, but your word won't mean much when you're already confessing to something unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be even worse if you get caught during the process.  For example, one of the referees might already be aware of who is involved in this work, or might even be a coauthor.  If they turn you in, you'll be in a particularly bad situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, your coauthors will likely be furious with you.  They presumably don't think the paper is ready to submit (if they do, then you should submit it with their names on it!), and they also don't want it circulated with just your name on it.  Regardless of the journal's policies, you'll have to answer to your coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you manage to salvage your career, this will stay with you forever.  In short, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T22:33:12.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-27T23:00:07.057" Score="3" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a working software developer getting a MS in Computer Science. I've really enjoyed the courses -- but I have never done any academic research. Now I have an idea for a graphics-driven iOS application that I would like to build for my upcoming year-long thesis. (It's a variation on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tss.android&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;particle simulator&lt;/a&gt;). The other students in my program have told me that a thesis is about generating a paper on a new technique or unsolved problem -- not building a polished program or application. They say that the code can simply be a proof of concept or prototype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, how should I approach building this particle simulator and pitching it to my advisor? Should I focus on underlying structures that would allow me to render complex physics-based graphics efficiently? Is there a name for that area of CS research?  Are there papers in a certain area that I would want to start reading? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9172" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T05:29:42.547" Title="At what point does my practical software project become an academic research project?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13676" CreationDate="2013-10-28T00:10:46.670" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @F'x and @AnonymousMathematician said, don't do that by any means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel there is some good reason that @Suresh cannot find then on the basis of that reason you can request a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/peerreviewjournals/author#aui_3_2_0_1225&quot;&gt;double-blind review&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the way you worded the question, my guess is that you don't have good reasons to do that. You should agree with your co-authors whether you want to send a paper or not before sending it for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides of the ethical reasons provided, there could be legal consequences, AFAIK you are not the holder of the copyright of what your co-authors did, and if you disclose, publish or attempt to publish some information without their consent then they could start legal actions. If you had their consent, holding their names for the review would be very dodgy and ruin your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, to answer the question: &quot;will I be allowed to add my co-authors or not?&quot;, the answer is &quot;no&quot;, and it doesn't really matter if you try to add them or omit them, this has many chances of backfiring in a dreadful way. Hopefully you didn't send it already, if you did and no review was started then withdraw it asap. If the reviews started, then start to apologize deeply to everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T00:10:46.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13951" CreationDate="2013-10-28T00:30:12.837" Score="28" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach at a community college, and my experience with textbook reps is that they're very friendly and persistent, but ultimately all they've really done is to give me a copy of their book and try to convince me to adopt it. There are certainly many unethical things about textbook publishing, but as far as I could see, they were decisions made by executives in New York (e.g., bringing out new editions to kill off the used market, or shrinkwrapping the book with useless trinkets so that it couldn't be returned). In online discussions, I've often heard people who seem to be students make claims that professors were &quot;bribed&quot; to use a particular publisher's book. I never believed these claims, and when I asked these people to supply evidence, they never had any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recently I was talking to a colleague in another department, and he told me that his department would never change their book for a particular course, because his colleagues got ethically questionable inducements from the publisher. When I asked him what they were, he said that the publisher would, e.g., repeatedly invite faculty who were using the book to &quot;meet-the-author&quot; events in Florida. He said that these faculty had grown to expect this as a perk that they were regularly offered as an unspoken quid pro quo for continuing to use the book. I didn't ask him for hard evidence of his claim, and I don't know what form of evidence he would have available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really any hard evidence that publishers do this sort of thing, or is this an urban folktale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T23:04:59.563" Title="Do textbook publishers really offer ethically questionable inducements to professors to adopt or retain their book?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13685" CreationDate="2013-10-28T00:34:59.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I approach building this particle simulator and pitching it to my advisor?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on your goals. Your advisor should be able to advise you how to approach building this particle simulator. But in short it depends on the goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; you want to get funding to do the project, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; state how that is going to be useful and profitable for the one paying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; you want to make research with that, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; state how is that research and why it is interesting research that will produce interesting publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have some other goals not included in these two. Your advisor may also have different goals. Whatever the goals are, try to plan to do whatever is useful for your goals and try to explain to your advisor how what you plan to do is useful for his or her goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I focus on underlying structures that would allow me to render complex physics-based graphics efficiently?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO algorithms are going to be more interesting than structures specially when using parallelism, everybody loves parallelism nowadays. In any case try to check this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0021999187901409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; and possibly this &lt;a href=&quot;http://sutlib2.sut.ac.th/sut_contents/57409.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a name for that area of CS research?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently that is computational physics, but simulation may work well too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there papers in a certain area that I would want to start reading?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, to find more papers you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take the first reference I provided (and possibly the second) this is your set &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt; of all sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check the citations in &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;, add interesting ones to &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check who cited the references in &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt; (you can try google scholar and other services for that), add the interesting ones to &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check other papers from the authors of the references in &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;, add interesting ones to &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search (e.g. google scholar) for related terms that appear on the papers in &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt; if you think they should be explored further, add interesting references to &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you have now a lot of references to read, try not to read all of them, check the abstracts and summaries, try to prioritise what to read and how detailed the reading process should be. If you need more, return to 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At what point does my practical software project become an academic research project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do something new and interesting from a scientific point of view, basically when you face challenges and provide solutions that are worth publishing, because reading about those solutions saves time to people working on similar problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. If the solution is very specific (e.g. an implementation in a programming language) then reading about it may be a waste of time for people not using that language. An algorithm in pseudocode will be useful to anyone working on a similar problem if the problem is hard/big enough and searching, finding, reading, understanding and implemented what a paper says pays off in the end. Keep in mind that &lt;a href=&quot;http://randomdump.tumblr.com/post/65135568331/watermelongifs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evaluation&lt;/a&gt; is a fundamental aspect in research, either empirically or formally (proof instead of evaluation then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T05:29:42.547" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T05:29:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13690" CreationDate="2013-10-28T04:31:28.887" Score="16" ViewCount="3466" Body="&lt;p&gt;As title above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This thesis is only available at the author's blog, though it is indeed a formal Master thesis. If I can cite it, how may I fill in all the blanks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is even if I cite it, the readers may be still unable to find it, if it is somewhat removed from his blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T11:36:30.750" Title="Can I cite an unpublished Master Thesis?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13689" CreationDate="2013-10-28T05:22:58.463" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because it's not published doesn't preclude being able to cite it. You can't &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cite the thesis if you're taking information from it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree-granting institution should perpetually retain copies in its library, and most universities these days store PDF copies as well. A copy may be harder to track down, but a determined reader should have no enormous difficulty in getting a copy of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith B. (2013), &lt;em&gt;General Relativity&lt;/em&gt;, MSc thesis, University of&#xA;  Cambridge, UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T05:22:58.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-28T12:27:15.003" Score="6" ViewCount="1827" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I state my query, you should know two things about me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm an EE graduate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm working in field of VLSI for past one year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for Masters in &lt;strong&gt;VLSI&lt;/strong&gt; for fall-2014 and I'm in a dilemma here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've approached my head of department and a lecturer from my department for getting  letter of recommendation. I only need one though. These are the reasons as to why I'm conflicted in deciding between the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My head of department has a PhD in VLSI while my lecturer is just a postgraduate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My lecturer has guided me for my thesis project in my final year of my undergraduate course. My final year thesis project is NOT on VLSI.It is on power systems. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My lecturer has taken classes for me while my Head of department has not taken any class for me . So she doesn't have any benchmark to judge my academic capability. She knows me as a student body member who has organised technical events though.(Which is why she agreed to give me recommendation, that and the fact that I had a discussion with her on my current job responsibilities)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other two recommenders are my technical manager from my workplace and a teacher who took Integrated circuits during undergrad level- (again not a PhD)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whom should I choose? I am confused because My head of department has that PhD tag( none of my other recommenders are PhDs) . So I'm in doubt as to whether I should go for her credentials or take one from my senior lecturer( in which case none of my recommenders will have that PhD tag)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9186" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T21:12:35.340" Title="Which recommender should I go for getting a LOR for graduate school admission?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13691" CreationDate="2013-10-28T13:09:49.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to get letters from both.  Some application web sites will not accept more than the standard number of letters, but others will, so you should check first.  It's considered obnoxious to assemble an unreasonably large number of letters, since it wastes the time of your recommenders.  However, one extra letter could be reasonable in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is for them to write a joint letter.  I've seen this occasionally, with a graduate student and faculty member co-writing a letter of recommendation for an undergraduate (where the grad student knows more about the undergraduate's work, but the faculty member has more perspective and credibility).  You should treat this carefully, so you don't inadvertently offend the lecturer by suggesting that their recommendation is not valuable by itself.  However, it could be one way to handle a strict limitation of three letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to choose one, I'd probably go with the lecturer, since the head of department has neither taught nor supervised you, so her letter is unlikely to be as informative as the lecturer's.  However, you would have to decide based on the specifics of your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you can't replace either of the other two letters, since the course on integrated circuits is obviously relevant and I imagine your technical manager can say a lot about your background, experience, and abilities in VLSI (since that's what you are doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T13:09:49.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13508" CreationDate="2013-10-28T13:58:29.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As conferences are very important for computer science, here is this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conference_acronyms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; on wikipedia.&#xA;And at the end it also lists &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/LNCS_Conference_Acronym_Index.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conference acronyms from LNCS series&lt;/a&gt; published by Springer (LNCS publishes roughly half of CS conferences).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conferences.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; lists correct names for IEEE conferences, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/events.cfm?CFID=257044285&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=61623404&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; lists those for ACM conferences.&#xA;All-together, those would cover 85% of conferences in Computer Science:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would advise to not go for journal-like shortening of conf names, which is IMHO last century, now we don't have a problem of storing longer strings in the database:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T14:07:05.020" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T14:07:05.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-28T14:03:53.127" Score="5" ViewCount="2184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I missed 3-4 weeks of class this semester due to a medical condition. This was around 3 weeks before exams which meant I had to catch up with other subjects  as well as doing assignments and tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to sit an exam tomorrow even though I missed a chunk load of the material and was too ill to be able to study at home during those weeks. I sent the university all of my medical certificates as I missed a couple of tests and had to resit the exams.  I also sent  my medical certificates to the special consideration committee telling them that I want my exam deferred, but this was denied. I sent the lecturer my certificates and told him about the situation but he told me the matter was out of his hand.The thing is I really studied hard during this swotvac period even though they only gave us a week before our first exam,  and I had to study for the other subjects that I missed as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to get a good GPA to transfer universities but I know if I sit that exam tomorrow I will probably fail because it's a hard subject and I'm just lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I fake sickness and get a medical certificate like food poisoning? What do you suggest? Any other suggestions on what I can do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9188" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T09:14:48.280" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T09:14:48.280" Title="What do I do with my exam tomorrow given that I supplied medical certificates" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13669" CreationDate="2013-10-28T14:26:04.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would be appropriate as long as the call does not clearly discourage supplementary information (e.g. by saying that you should only include reseach and teaching statements + CV), and could strengthen your application, especially when applying to a teaching position. However, only include summary scores (such as %-students satisfied or student test results), and maybe one or two student comments. However, I would be hesitant to include comments altogether, since it is obvious that these might have been cherry-picked. A quantitative summary is much more informative. Do not include lengthy appendicies of raw evaluation data (which I've seen in applications), since this will only add clutter and make your application appear less professional.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T14:46:21.367" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T14:46:21.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13694" CreationDate="2013-10-28T17:50:01.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't an answer, just some points you can consider and some 2 cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the short time, if I were in your shoes, I'd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Comb through the student academic handbook about sick leave and how should the makeup examination be scheduled. Look for keywords like &quot;... upon mutual agreement.&quot; or &quot;... student and department will decide.&quot; etc. and quote that in a written document to urge the committee to honor the wording in student academic handbook.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify the chair of the grievance committee. Every department/school should have one, and inform him/her about your situation. Ask for guidance and potential on filing a grievance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Objectively figure out what are the number of quality days available for a non-sick student to prepare for the tests, and then come up with how many quality days you have been given, minus the ones that you have spent. Ask for the exam to be rescheduled to a reasonable time that would provide a fairground to you. Down play the fact that you &quot;want more time,&quot; emphasize on the desire &quot;to be judged fairly.&quot; Should the number of days are actually comparable, chance is you really have no ground to delay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chat with the admission people and discuss the possibilities on the followings: i) retrospectively request a medical leave (this is more viable if you are on a trimester system or this is a half-credit course, missing 4 weeks might as well mean you have not taken it at all) for this semester, and retake the whole thing again. ii) Negotiate for fee reduction or fee waiving so that you don't have to pay again. iii) Also make sure the half-done course will not end up as F or even appear on your transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think you're not being fairly judged, never take the exam. Once a grade is given it's next to impossible to revoke. Inform the school as soon as possible with your reasons (preferably sound and focusing on the lack of fairness), give them a summary of your arguments and what you have talked about with different representatives in the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, in a sad way, that you only decide to decline one day before the rescheduled date is an extremely bad move. If indeed everyone also had one week to prepare, then it is pretty much done for. When the decision was just made, you can still negotiate for 2-4 more days to collect lecture slides, notes, and meet with the lecturers. Now, it's a bit too late to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nut shell, set your worst scenario and figure out what are the things that you cannot afford to mess up. If your first thing is GPA, then strive to make this trimester/semester not counted. The cons: you may need to retake, but given your circumstance, retaking seems a lot more viable than taking an exam. Also, don't position yourself as a victim. It's unfortunate but you're not asking for leniency or special treatment. Show them that you're very conscious about the grade situation and your determination to work through this glitch with the department, and hopefully they will reopen the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you best of luck, and if you have time, come back to update us by revising your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T17:50:01.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13691" CreationDate="2013-10-28T21:12:35.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, if you are applying for a &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; degree, then you are better off getting letters of recommendation from people who can comment on your ability &lt;em&gt;as a researcher.&lt;/em&gt; Even if the person is a well-known expert in the field, that won't do them a whole lot of good if they can't comment on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; abilities in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your department head has neither observed your work in classes nor supervised research for you. How much detail she can provide on your capabilities is therefore greatly in doubt. You have taken classes and performed research with the lecturer. Therefore, your lecturer can evaluate you more thoroughly and provide evidence supporting those claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless you have some additional absolutely compelling reason to obtain the letter from the department head, I would go with the instructor who actually knows your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T21:12:35.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13616" CreationDate="2013-10-28T21:59:44.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals will either charge for the use of color (especially those that still appear in print) and a few I've run across outright ban its use unless it's essential for an understanding of the figure (some photographs, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there's no reason you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; use color if you're willing to pay the fees, publish in online journals, use color in electronic supplements, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One essential thing I find, that I always check as a reviewer, and find appallingly uncommon in color figures: make sure they're still understandable in black and white. It doesn't have to be &lt;em&gt;as good&lt;/em&gt;, but someone printing out your work on their office printer should still be able to understand what you did. Distributed in PDF or not, I can't read things for comprehension on a screen, so I print them out - I know a fair number of colleagues who do likewise. And I have yet to encounter a figure that &lt;em&gt;needed&lt;/em&gt; printer unfriendly colors to be understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T21:59:44.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13705" CreationDate="2013-10-28T22:58:35.493" Score="75" ViewCount="17915" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you might see from my history I don't have a good relationship with my advisor. Recently we wrote a journal paper together based on my thesis. I wrote the introduction, analysis and the description of the app we had developed for our research. In crude terms, I wrote 15 pages of the 23 page journal paper. My advisor told me that our draft was submitted to this journal three weeks ago, yet I never received any notification from the journal that I was listed as author or co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went into the help section of the journal to figure if they do send emails to every author and it seems you do need an email to register as co-author. Confirmation &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/pdfs/SubmitGuide_S1M_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the guidelines, if the co-author is not registered with the journal, their email should be provided. Its quite obvious I should have received an confirmation email and my advisor only has my .edu email so there is no way another email address could have been used. I have written a journal paper to IEEE as co-author before and I had received an confirmatory email saying I was listed as co-author.  I am afraid of confronting my advisor about this as I need co-operation to graduate and in my thesis defense, but I was curious to know if I will get an email if I am listed as co-author? More importantly, should I be listed as author or co-author in this case, when the work is based on my thesis and I wrote most of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I called the 1-800 number and when I told them the submitter's last name (my advisor) and the paper title, they confirmed that my advisor was listed as sole author. They told me that they had to un-submit and resubmit the journal paper to add me as co-author and they gave me contact of a University professor for further inquiries. I have all the email proof of my work (for instance emails where my advisor asks me to write intro and I would reply with the intro text attached and so on). I am seriously upset right now. I have my thesis defense in December and I fear that if I confront my advisor, things will screw up. Can you  please advise on what I should do right now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:  I was told that I am listed in Acknowledgement section in the end, which is completely unfair. The Deciding officer (it seems he is the final authority in these cases and RIO reports to him) at my University is the vice president, who was my advisor's PhD Advisor half a decade ago. They are both from same city of a foreign country and are close family friends. Rumor has it that the Vice President rejected multiple highly qualified candidates to get my advisor for Asst. Prof. Position.  All my friends are asking me to drop it because I don't have many bullets to go after them, but they can completely screw me up or set me up for something if I go against &quot;one of their own&quot;. I am still evaluating what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PPS: Thank you for all your advice. Even though I don't know any of you personally, you were very kind in giving me your time and advice. I cannot thank you all enough. I spoke with a full professor in another deptartment in Engineering. He asked me to stay put till December until the paper is published. He was of opinion that the University is a big cesspool and they only way to clean it is to &quot;get the people&quot; who are doing this publicly and shame them. I do not know if I am being used as pawn right now in University politics or what I should do. I  spoke with other people too and all they said was &quot;Is not getting an authorship on journal worth more than not earning the degree&quot;. It seems sole authorship does carry extra weight age in front of tenure committee. The whole situation has completely shattered my faith in academics, and the fact that I am part of a state university makes this even more depressing. By the way, one of the two editors of this journal was on advisor's PhD committee. So many people have advised me not to contact any of them. In academia everybody seems to know everybody, in fact it seems more like a cult. I am just doing a Masters now, I always had plans to do PhD and explore my curiosities and see what I can achieve with perseverance, hard work and to test my mental capabilities to their limit, but I am done. I quit. I never felt so depressed for a very long time. Academia these days seems to run by industry practitioners who had previous experience at corporate politics and are good at it or by businessman who wear good clothes, have good people skills and just show off while delegating all the work to GRAs and underlings, and that's not what I am and will never be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T06:13:56.287" LastActivityDate="2020-08-29T09:26:15.660" Title="My advisor submitted a paper with my work without including me as an author" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13700" CreationDate="2013-10-28T23:29:01.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, web submission software &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; send authorship confirmation emails to all co-authors, but not all journal publishers actually configure it to do so. I can confirm that at least one journal by Taylor &amp;amp; Francis does not send confirmation emails to people other than the corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T23:29:01.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T00:49:03.090" Score="2" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master in CS from a not too well ranked French university. I have excellent grade in algorithms and did a good master thesis (although I haven't tried publishing the results in it). my overall grades are good as well. What can I do to further maximize my chances of getting a good PhD position in algorithms? I am confident in my skills but do not have much to prove that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing that trying to do some publishable research with my former master adviser is a good thing, but since his area of research is really not my cup of tea, is it reasonable to try to publish something alone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I find problems to work on that are feasible and publishable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other advices are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9191" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T11:33:55.287" Title="How to maximize the chances to get a good PhD position in algorithms" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13700" CreationDate="2013-10-29T00:58:44.617" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be nothing to worry about.  In ScholarOne (the web submission system being used), the submitter is supposed to enter contact information for all the authors, but an impatient submitter might skip that.  As long as you are listed as an author on the paper itself, I'd bet the web submission stuff can be fixed after the fact (it might annoy people, but it's unlikely to derail publication).  Probably the person you called at the publisher just checked the ScholarOne metadata without examining the submitted PDF, in which case you don't know for sure whether it lists you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of provoking an angry confrontation, I'd focus on first figuring out whether you and your advisor are in agreement on authorship.  I'll assume you have not explicitly discussed this question, since if you had, then you should have ended up with agreement one way or the other, or at least known you disagreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first step, you could bring up the question.  For example, you could write &quot;I realized recently that we never explicitly discussed authorship of our paper.  I've envisioned myself as first author and you as the senior author, since I wrote much of the paper and it is based on my thesis work.  However, I should have discussed this with you before submission.  What's your take on the author ordering, and how did you handle it in the submission?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can decide what to do based on her response.  If she explicitly says you're an author, then I'd trust her on this.  You could still discuss author ordering, based on the conventions in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor says she doesn't think you should be an author at all, then you'll have to discuss this issue.  It would be counterproductive to accuse her of dishonesty or of trying to steal your work.  Instead, you should just try to make the case that your contributions justify coauthorship.  You could refer to guidelines for this journal or for your field in general to help you argue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T00:58:44.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13700" CreationDate="2013-10-29T01:03:38.747" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is an &lt;em&gt;unambiguous violation of ethics&lt;/em&gt; for a collaborator to be dropped from the list of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote a significant contribution to the paper, &lt;strong&gt;you are in the right.&lt;/strong&gt; Your supervisor has no ground to stand on. You should &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; your supervisor (don't accuse!) if he/she has included you as a co-author. If a mistake has been made, the sooner it's fixed the better. You could also have a good claim to first authorship, though that is something to decide between authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edit: a little humour - full credit goes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://upmic.wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nik Papageorgiou / The Upturned Microscope&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mrv8v.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T07:35:57.210" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T07:35:57.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13707" CreationDate="2013-10-29T02:28:44.327" Score="11" ViewCount="780" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a discussion with a friend of mine who is applying to graduate school in physics, she was worried that she wouldn't be able to get a good recommendation from one of her advisors because she hadn't done much creditable research under that advisor. I suggested that since she has two other recommendations from other professors who she had done research under, she could ask for a recommendation from a professor who thought highly of her academic (i.e. non-research) performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised by how negatively she responded to the idea: she would much prefer a mediocre letter from a research advisor than a good letter from someone who does not know her as a researcher, but does as a student. I reasoned that her research credentials would probably be spoken for with her other letters, but she didn't seem to accept this reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it generally true that a PhD program in the sciences looks more favorably on less-than-glowing recommendation letters about an applicant's research experience than on positive letters about his/her academic performance? Even when his/her research is attested to by other letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not true in general, does it hold for programs in the experimental sciences? Does it vary between fields? (I am a mathematics student, and to my knowledge this question doesn't apply as well to mathematics programs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7156" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T06:06:52.460" Title="Should you request graduate school recommendation letters only from those that know you as a researcher?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13706" CreationDate="2013-10-29T06:06:52.460" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate schools admitting students are looking for evidence of ability as (or at least strong potential to become) a good researcher. Therefore, letters of recommendation that do not discuss research at all are simply not nearly as helpful to us than letters that do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a mediocre letter of recommendation can be damaging to a student's chances of admission. Someone who isn't enthusiastic and immediately willing to write a letter should not be asked to write one; the &quot;hit&quot; to the student's admission chances simply aren't worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, under the circumstances, someone who is willing to write a very good letter that can testify to academic talent is certainly better than a weak to mediocre research-based letter. But a letter that only talks about a student taking tests well and &quot;acing&quot; a class is not really helpful. A letter that talks about, for instance, an in-depth class assignment, or can include details and observations from outside of class, would make for a much stronger and more useful letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T06:06:52.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13702" CreationDate="2013-10-29T11:33:55.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have few suggestions for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are applying for PhD there are few documents which needs to be submitted along with your application like Your transcripts, Research statement/proposal, Resume, Recommendation letters etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what you can do is: Prepare a very good research proposal, since you believe in your skills make sure that you highlight them with some examples like previous projects, your contributions etc. Remember, your research proposal is read very properly, so if you are bale to justify yourself well that would work for you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in your recommendation, you can ask your supervisor to mention your skills, appreciate your strong point enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there is no harm in mentioning the reason of not having published papers in your cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this answer gives you some insight to get into a good PhD position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T11:33:55.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2013-10-29T11:51:54.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some points to mention on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Read papers relevant to your research:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I mean, you will know slowly which conferences publish results in your interest area and which do you find relevant, so choose papers from top conferences or journals because those set the benchmarks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Datasets in paper convey a lot&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Browse in the result section of the papers and you will notice that the datasets on which the algorithm are tested should suit your requirement. For example: I am working on outdoor dataset and I see a paper showing results from indoor dataset, there are 99% chances of me dropping that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Use abstract as filter&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I think this point is self explanatory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Scheduling your reading - difficult&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There may be a week where you will end up reading a lot of papers and there will be times where reading even one paper will not be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T11:51:54.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14047" CreationDate="2013-10-29T12:34:24.140" Score="4" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to organize my workflow and make it more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As non-native English-speaker studying in a foreign country I often need to look-up domain-specific translations (in 3 languages). As there are no specific dictionaries I am using textfiles containing translations I have collected over the time. &#xA;This is quite uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often these words are related to some kind of mathematical definition which has to be stated as a theorem for proofs. Right now I usually copy these from my old publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to have some kind of central dictionary or knowledge-base where I could organize all this (Translations and Definitions).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone who can recommend a program for this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you organize definitions and domain-specific translations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5621" LastEditorUserId="5621" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T20:00:09.973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T21:22:57.160" Title="Creating an central multi-purpose dictionary / database" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13715" CreationDate="2013-10-29T15:59:10.257" Score="25" ViewCount="2955" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I feel to contact some of the eminent researchers in my field for any of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Appreciating their research publication (recent times). They publish in top conferences, which are usually not hosted in my country or nearby.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Requesting comments on some of my research hypothesis&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes just because I am a die hard fan of them. For example, probably the only reason I continued with research in Computer Science was due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth&quot;&gt;Don Knuth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, to know what they think on some specific research area that has propagated due to there work. (Probably looks like some journalistic work)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For knowing how did they tackle the pressures or certain situation during their PhD or research. (Yes, it's vague but these questions come to mind and probably should be answered by oneself or personal interaction, but adding it for the sake of completion)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, most of them are located outside my country, I can't visit or phone them. So, how are such emails perceived. Is it appropriate to send such emails, given that they are expected to have very busy schedule and it would probably waste their time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I have mentioned my field as Computer Science, the question should be applicable to all the fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T23:47:19.663" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T23:47:19.663" Title="Is it appropriate to email an eminent researcher in your field?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13713" CreationDate="2013-10-29T17:25:09.453" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many of these topics are excellent points to start a 1-1 conversation, I seriously doubt whether you'd get much of a response over email. This is not to say that they wouldn't appreciate your praise, but that there may not be anything to reply to in particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect an email will get a better response if you have specific questions about &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; content: ideally, a question related to something in a recent paper that isn't entirely obvious. For example, in my field it's sometimes the case that someone sketches a proof idea in a conference paper without a full version, and fleshing this out requires some clarification from the authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can always add in a question from your list as extra cargo. Then it's a little more likely that someone will reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, think about it this way: if you never met someone before, and they came up to you and asked you questions that might be construed as personal (especially 5), or that require you to come up with opinions on the fly (2,4), you might hesitate to respond. The same thing, but without the pressure to say something, will happen over email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T17:25:09.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13713" CreationDate="2013-10-29T17:44:30.670" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some of my strayed thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think from return of investments, of yours and your idol's&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ever perceived that your e-mail would be a &quot;waste of their time,&quot; then why send it? I feel that most eminent researchers have a trait of &quot;ignore everyone and head for their goal;&quot; getting acknowledgement and acceptance is probably not their primary concern. A specific e-mail describing how their work has inspired your study/project is probably fine, but I wouldn't go so far to expect they would reply and give specific comments on your hypotheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your point of view, instead of using the energy and bandwidth to send the e-mails, there are a lot more you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are many ways to show your appreciation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, they would probably like to see their work being formally cited and, more importantly, applied to the field or crossed into other fields. Each idea geminated from their work is an appreciation by itself, and in the mean time you can also enhance your publication and research paradigm. The plus is: if you have done enough of it, the big shot may actually contact you and give comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you can help preaching the researcher's ideas and agenda. You can write blogs, answer other people questions, use their works in your journal clubs or lectures, etc. to subtly introduce the researcher's teaching to the public. Better yet, refine the researcher's ideas, and incorporate into yours. Become a spiritual successor with your own unique approach. And let your career be inspired by the researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can learn from someone without establishing communication&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some more senior researchers, look for their auto-biography, biography, interviews, and documentaries that feature them. I will probably never be able to talk to Itzhak Perlman, but I learned a lot about him through books, websites, documentaries, and musics that he plays. (And actually, he has a Youtube channel as well, but I am suffering from too much fanboy shyness to write any comment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For younger researchers, try look for their blogs, Youtube channels, open courses, or even biographies of their mentors. All these may help you become more familiar with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to indirectly know them. Most of these researchers would have a lot of students or proteges, who may be closer to your rank and more likely to communicate with you. You may build a relationship with them, and learn a thing or two about their interaction with their mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try technology&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For their new publications... nowadays most online journals allow leaving comments online. You may try to say a nice thing or two there. If they write a blog, that's even easier. Some researchers maintain a LinkedIn page or a Twitter account, try connect with them and follow them. Hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use other famous people as leverage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to communicate with them, also try using other organizations. For instance, you can write to some online radio station and suggest an interview topic and some guests, which of course will include your idolized researcher. You can also write to some prominent podcast hosts and give them a couple reason to invite so and so for an interview. Make good use of crowdsourcing, invite your peers and friends to support your petition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some heroes/heroines are better left a bit mysterious&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is sad but occasionally painfully true. Some famous people are better left not known at personal level. They could be immensely arrogant, they may not have a nanogram of social skill, they may be a jerk... Unless I have reconstructed a pretty concrete and reliable image about the researcher from different sources, I would probably want to keep them as what they are in my mind, and as an inspiration for my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T17:44:30.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13700" CreationDate="2013-10-29T19:25:46.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am seriously upset right now. I have my thesis defense in December and I fear that if I confront my advisor, she will screw me up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply as a matter of self-interest, your adviser probably doesn't want you to fail your defense. The work is being published in a journal, and at least one of the names on the paper is hers. If it's then being judged as academically inadequate for a PhD, that reflects badly on her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if she's really as bad as she sounds, she'll have a reputation at your school, and many of the people on your committee will realize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more realistic concern is that this is also the time when you're going to be applying for your first job, and she may not give you a good recommendation. E.g., if you're applying for a postdoc at another university, people there probably don't know her personally and don't understand your situation. Once you get past the hurdle of getting that first job, you no longer have to depend on your adviser for a recommendation. One option to consider would be to get that job lined up before starting a big row over authorship of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T19:25:46.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T19:55:33.487" Score="42" ViewCount="3528" Body="&lt;p&gt;My spouse and I are both finishing Ph.D's in math and applying for math postdocs in the US. We work in different areas of math, but there are many departments in which both are prominently represented. A postdoc position in the same place is not an absolute must but a big plus for us, and would likely be a deciding factor if choosing between offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: would adding a statement in the cover letter to the effect of&#xA;&quot;My spouse xxx is also applying for this position&quot; be helpful, or is it more likely to disqualify both of us in the eyes of departments? We have different last names, so someone who does not know us well personally would probably not know we are together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice for tenure track applicants seems to be not to divulge such personal information until the interview, but there are no interviews for math postdocs so I'm not sure whether the advice would be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9206" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T01:49:54.753" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T01:49:54.753" Title="Applying for postdocs: mention two-body problem in cover letter?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;&lt;two-body-problem&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13717" CreationDate="2013-10-29T21:42:26.817" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the advice that applies to tenure-track applicants also pertains to postdoc applicants. Employers aren't allowed to ask about two-body problems in terms of interviewing and hiring candidates. There's no need to force the issue ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get an offer, then you can discuss the two-body problem. Otherwise, I wouldn't make an issue of it before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, the challenge is trickier for postdocs in most fields outside of math, because in those disciplines, postdocs are normally hired by individual faculty members, rather than at the departmental level.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T21:42:26.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13717" CreationDate="2013-10-29T21:43:38.483" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd not risk it: you have more to loose by mentioning it than to gain.&lt;/strong&gt; It seems fairly unlikely that this would be a motivating factor for the department to offer you both a position, but it could be interpreted badly (such as &lt;em&gt;“I won't come if you don't offer us both a job”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is not based on personal experience with US post-doc committees, but post-doc hiring in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T07:45:46.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T07:45:46.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13721" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:01:20.877" Score="1" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering submitting a paper to Annals of Applied Statistics, published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://imstat.org/publications/arxiv.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IMS Journals on arXiv&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that the IMS posts all accepted IMS journal articles on arXiv at publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paper entries on the journal page do not link directly to the arXiv paper. Also, for at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoas/1380804802&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the following publication&lt;/a&gt;, there is no corresponding entry on arXiv. I'm not sure what to conclude from that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I was just wondering if this approach counts as open access. Also, the Wikipedia entry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_statistics_journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comparison of statistics journals&lt;/a&gt; lists Annals of Applied Statistics and other IMS journals as not open access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T22:13:41.933" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T07:41:47.087" Title="Do IMS journals count as open access?" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13720" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:12:58.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definitive place to check is the IMS's &lt;a href=&quot;http://imstat.org/publications/copyrights/copyrightTA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Copyright Transfer Agreement&lt;/a&gt;, which conclusively says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the author(s) reserve the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The rights to use all or part of this work (with appropriate reference to the journal and article) in future works of&#xA;  their own, such as lectures, press releases, reviews, textbooks, or reprint books.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The right to &lt;strong&gt;place the final version of this article&lt;/strong&gt; (exactly as published in the journal) &lt;strong&gt;on their own homepage or in&#xA;  a public digital repository&lt;/strong&gt;, provided there is a link to the official journal site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The right to provide a copy of the final peer‐reviewed manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for publication, for&#xA;  public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the IMS follows the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;green open access model&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (which is confirmed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?issn=1932-6157&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sherpa/ROMEO&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T07:41:47.087" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T07:41:47.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13713" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:15:54.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can be exahustive here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;If&lt;/code&gt; they feel like writing that kind of things to strangers &lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; they most likely have a blog that you can follow, that saves a lot of time for them, by broadcasting. &lt;code&gt;If&lt;/code&gt; they do, you can write comments in the blog, that could be appropriate and extend posts and discussion, which is good for them (a chance to clarify something), for you (getting answers, yay!) and for anyone that reads the post and then the comments (and doesn't need to ask the same again...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;If&lt;/code&gt; they don't feel like writing that kind of things to strangers  &lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; most probably they won't reply. In that case you will be wasting their time (that's bad) and &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; time (that's worse; selfsteem, please :P ). Thus that's probably not very wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;If&lt;/code&gt; you have questions not covered in the aforementioned blogs, you can ask here, to a crowd of anonymous people. There are many people giving great answers (really, I know my profile is the closest one in distance, but you should check somewhere else). &lt;code&gt;I know&lt;/code&gt; we are not so famous and important and wise and everything, &lt;code&gt;but&lt;/code&gt; we try to do our best and even if &lt;code&gt;we can understand&lt;/code&gt; that you may prefer the advise of other people, we &lt;code&gt;still&lt;/code&gt; have a little heart and that hurts. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;:P Personally, I think it is normal to feel admiration for people that basically are, in some aspect or another, what you want to be and struggle to be in the future. It is probably useful and interesting to get some insight from them, and understand their perspective (personal and professional) on many questions, if you are going to idealize someone and have an idol, probably a rock star is a worse option than a researcher, but I'm not sure whether idealizing and idolizing researchers is any good anyway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer may be biased because I tend to underestimate the relevance of mentoring and I consider more important talent and hard work. I'm also to some extent opposite to you, I admire and appreciate some people, but I'm more introverted, so my natural reaction is thinking to myself: &quot;Stay quiet and don't bother them, you despicable maggot!&quot; (This is clearly worse than idolizing them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final advise, keep your extroversion, it's good for you. That means you will have plenty of things to speak about when you go to a conference and chances to do so. You will love conferences, so focus on publishing to go there (you should focus on publishing anyway). If you like visiting places then that's another big plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So work hard and remember, we (a bunch of anonymous people) will always be here whenever you need us, remember us when you get to be famous. Also, write a blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:15:54.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13713" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:19:10.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell: &lt;strong&gt;Sending a polite email on an appropriate topic is pretty much always acceptable.  However, don’t automatically expect an answer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part is important.  The eminent researcher is probably a busy person, and you have no particular moral claim on their time and attention.  Don’t make it sound like you feel entitled to their assistance — “Hey Mr. Tao!  I need to understand the Green–Tao theorem for my masters thesis.  Please can you explain it to me in simple terms?  P.S. my thesis is due next Tuesday.”  And don’t be disappointed if they don’t reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, don’t despair either — don’t feel “oh, it’s not worth writing because they’ll never reply to a nobody like me”!  Some may well be too busy or dismissive, but many are also genuinely kind people, and very generous with their help.  Others (I have a specific rather famous person in mind here) are simply incorrigible curiosity-hounds, and will happily get caught up for hours by an intriguing problem from a random stranger when they’re supposed to be grading final exams.  So they may well reply — just don’t presume it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand: what’s an appropriate topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about their research can be fine, provided you’ve done your homework.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/a/144823/2273&quot;&gt;I had a question on mathoverflow recently&lt;/a&gt; which looked like it might have been answered by a particular researcher, but nobody could find the specific paper, and it was possibly unpublished.  Writing to ask e.g. “Do you recall which of your papers on $\tau$-categories might contain or imply a result something like […]?” is certainly OK.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about practical matters that may be their responsibility are good — at worst they can always hand it off to someone else.  “I’m applying to your department’s PhD programme, and it wasn’t clear to me from the website if students are expected to have a potential advisor in advance.  If so, are you potentially accepting new students at the moment?  I am very interested in your work because…”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plain fan mail is OK, as long as it’s sincere and you’re not trying to get something for it!  Nobody’s going to mind hearing “Please excuse my writing out of the blue; I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your talk at such-and-such conference.  As a non-specialist, I really appreciate the effort you put into making it accessible to a wide audience.”  However, if this is followed up by “Incidentally, I am applying for a job at such-and-such department.  Do you have any insider advice you can share?” then the initial compliments will look a lot less sincere.  Don’t do this!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Possibly&lt;/em&gt; questions about your own research.  The two big questions here are: again, have you done your homework; and is there a good reason why you’re asking them, not someone else?  Asking “I read your paper, and had an idea of how to generalise Theorem 5.3, by such-and-such approach.  Do you know if somebody is already working on this question, or is it open?” should be fine.  Asking “I had such-and-such new idea in your field.  Can you spare the time to give me feedback?” makes you sound a bit like a crank — for this, you should be running it by a colleague first, or a colleague-of-a-colleague, or if you don’t know anyone close to the field yet, try and find someone less famous and with at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; specific connection to you (e.g. geographically closer) that you can write to first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What’s &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking for significant favours (unless you have a personal connection of some sort).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking them to explain their research to you because you don’t want to read their papers.  (That’s what helpful strangers in internet forums are for!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personal questions (unless you’re a serious journalist writing e.g. a book on drug use among academics; but in that case you should know about how to get in touch with sources appropriately already).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1277" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:19:10.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10014" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:38:08.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There used to be a computer science offshoot of the mathematics project, but it's disappeared!  I was on both, but only put my PhD students on the CS one.  It was a pain.  There may have been issues e.g. about multiple supervisor, disputed supervision, policing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="384" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:38:08.503" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13717" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:45:45.820" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who actually has experience chairing a postdoctoral hiring committee in math in the US (maybe F'x has? &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/630/13&quot;&gt;s/he is an international wo/man of mystery&lt;/a&gt;...), I think the answer is &quot;it's unclear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's no question that mentioning your spousal situation in connection with a job will increase the probability of you both getting jobs and decrease probability of either of you getting jobs; it's impossible to be sure how those things will balance.   There's an extremely real danger that if a school knows about your situation, they'll just decide they have no chance of getting you and give up; on the other hand, if a school has a reasonable number of positions (for example, the University of Michigan), and you and your spouse are reasonably hot commodities, there is some chance a school will try to grab you both, but only if they know before whatever crucial meeting they have.  That's not a very likely turn of events, but it has happened (note the importance of at least one, and hopefully both, of you being a hot commodity, &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; of the school in question having a large number of positions; if they have only one position, this won't work very well).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In part, you have to decide for yourself how scared you are of not getting a job vs. how scared you are having to take a job separating yourself from your spouse.  No one on this site can tell you, but maybe your advisor or another trusted mentor can help you work that out.  If you're planning for a research career in mathematics, you should also give some thought to doing the best postdocs possible (maybe requiring separation) to have better leverage on the TT market (I know that sucks, but the two-body problem generally sucks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide you would like the committee to know about your spouse, you then have to figure out when and how to tell them.  I wouldn't depend on anything being noticed in your cover letter; there are a lot to read, and such a subtle thing will go unnoticed.  As other answers point out, there is some chance of coming off as presumptuous. It's probably more reliable for one of your letter writers to mention it (bonus: this requires you to have a discussion with the letter writer about your situation).  You can also broach the subject with someone you know at the school via email (or ask your advisor to do this).  Another useful trick is to include a link to your spouse's homepage on your homepage (though that could be easily missed as well; still I'm more likely to read a homepage than a cover letter). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:50:17.453" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T11:35:19.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T23:24:15.223" Score="22" ViewCount="3965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting a paper to a machine learning/computer vision conference. Is it worthwhile to include some source code of my implementation so that the reviewers can test it themselves or gain a greater understanding of my idea? It will take time to clean up my code and make sure it is anonymised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice? If so do reviewers pay attention to the code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth the time to prepare anonymised and clean code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code will be included as a ZIP archive through the paper submission website. After the paper has been accepted I intend to release it with an open source license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T05:17:42.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T05:17:42.627" Title="Should I supply code along with my paper submission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13726" CreationDate="2013-10-30T02:20:12.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This largely depends upon the reviewers and the field customs. Some reviewers, specially in journals, may ask for source code. However, it is unlikely that in Computer Science conferences reviewers ask for source code specially when the paper is well-written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T02:20:12.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13729" CreationDate="2013-10-30T03:04:56.983" Score="15" ViewCount="2284" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everybody knows, research experience helps in one undergraduate's admission to a PhD program. It would be even better, if the undergraduate has a publication out of his or her research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for a full-time undergraduate, it is quite difficult to devote too much time to research since one still has the school work to deal with. &lt;em&gt;(Maintaining a high GPA is also important, isn't it?)&lt;/em&gt; Given the time limitation by this or other reasons, the &lt;strong&gt;undergraduate&lt;/strong&gt; may face the following dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;quality&lt;/strong&gt; of work is &lt;strong&gt;low&lt;/strong&gt;, but the undergraduate has &lt;strong&gt;no time to improve it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should the undergraduate publish it to a random and low-tier conference to at least have a publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should he or she just make it a technical report instead of publishing it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, during the PhD admission, &lt;strong&gt;how do the admission committees or professors view a low-quality conference paper?&lt;/strong&gt; Do they take it as an advantage in the sense that most of the undergraduates have none. Or do they start suspecting the student's research potentials? &lt;strong&gt;Does a low-quality &quot;1&quot; win a &quot;0&quot; in this case?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, the field of interest is EECS, but any generic comments are also very much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T12:32:39.580" Title="Low-quality paper or no paper - which is better for an undergraduate in PhD admission?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13728" CreationDate="2013-10-30T03:32:05.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the quality of the work is low, the student should neither publish it in a lower tier conference nor publish it as a technical report.  They should either make the time to improve it or toss it in the trash.  A &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt; publication, no matter what venue it's published in, is worse than no publication at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, a &quot;publication&quot; listed in a CV or described in a statement of purpose that isn't retrievable via google (unlike most technical reports, which &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; googlable) is also worse than no publication at all, because we can't tell if the applicant is lying.  (Sadly, some applicants are lying.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T03:37:24.927" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T03:37:24.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13726" CreationDate="2013-10-30T03:43:23.123" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I supply code as supplemental material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but it would be better if you published it in an open access fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so do reviewers pay attention to the code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on the reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it worth the time to prepare anonymised and clean code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends, don't do more than necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285&quot;&gt;Ten Simple Rules for Reproducible Computational Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/rjl/pubs/topten/topten.pdf&quot;&gt;Top Ten Reasons to &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; Share Your Code&#xA;(and why you should anyway)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.52north.org/bin/view/Documentation/BestPracticeOpenSourceForUniversityResearchers&quot;&gt;Open Source Software Publishing for University Researchers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T03:43:23.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13733" CreationDate="2013-10-30T08:57:43.127" Score="39" ViewCount="12654" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you review papers submitted for publication, is there an “optimal” length for reviews?&#xA;In my experience as an author and referee, I have seen a large range of review lengths (for reference, a paper in my field is typically between 3 and 8 printed pages):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zero length: for some of the papers I have authored, the reviewer just clicked the “accept as is” or “reject” checkmark on the review sheet, without adding any comment (at least, not any comment visible to me). It's not so common, but it has happened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short length: a lot of time, I received reviews who consisted of a single paragraph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medium: one full page, maybe two pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I have never received any such long reviews, I have myself written on a few occasions reviews that exceed two pages, including once or twice a four or five-page review.  These were cases where the paper was good, but could be (in my view) much improved and some of the aspects/consequences had escaped the authors' consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering &lt;strong&gt;how useful reviews of various length are to editors&lt;/strong&gt;. I often consider that “unmotivated” reviews are useless, as they do not give any real insight about the paper to the editor. For example, if the editor gets two conflicting non motivated reviews, how is she to decide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, although I write some from time to time, I have never received long reviews, so… &lt;strong&gt;is this something frowned upon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T20:21:00.883" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T07:08:51.380" Title="How long typically are paper reviews? Is there such a thing as “too long”?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T09:11:19.640" Score="14" ViewCount="2067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished a BSc degree in maths at ETH Zurich and I am now planning to continue with an MSc and a PhD in Japan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: is it possible to do an MSc at one university and then do the PhD at a different university? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe this is not only socially acceptable but nothing unusual. But as far as I know, Japan is different; how different I don't know. I would very much like to apply to one university for the MSc and then relocate to somewhere else for my PhD. But I'm rather worried that this may mean that the professor supervising my MSc will lose face. And of course, I can't just ask them directly because they might not tell me the truth out of politeness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9218" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T09:21:09.177" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T20:42:50.907" Title="Master's and PhD at different Japanese universities" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13731" CreationDate="2013-10-30T09:18:25.140" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviews can be of quite varying length but obviously the extremes indicate some problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review consisting of &quot;Accept as is&quot; would be highly suspicious in my mind (as an editor). It usually means the reviewer has not done any work, essentially no manuscript is that close to perfect (although it may of course happen). A review of &quot;Reject&quot; without additional comment is equally pointless (I am then assuming the journal has some form of quality check before accepting for review). An absence of comments is just a big warning sign since there is no perspective on why the MS is either perfect or perfectly worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the length of a review, it is governed by two factors: the quality of the manuscript and the personality of the reviewer. To some extent longer reviews indicate more questions to be resolved. At the same time some reviewers may be more nit-picking than others so that also influences the length. Based on my experience as an editor, I would say, as a rule of thumb, that at least a page of (single spaced) comments would be a basis for a descent review for a normal manuscript (15-20 pages double spaced excluding references, tables, figures) in the field experiment/observation based science where I work. A review of more than three or four pages of (single spaced) comments would be unusual and probably involve comments down to spelling issues. &quot;A decent review&quot; involves providing clear and constructive comments that will allow the editor to value the manuscript and the author to improve the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would not say that a long review would necessarily be frowned upon, it clearly depends on how constructive it is. If someone spends a lot of effort improving language and grammar (which does not necessarily constitute the expectations from a review) that could be very useful. Normally such comments may be made as revisions in a file rather than a written report. So length is not a major issue, constructiveness is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T09:18:25.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T10:51:51.020" Score="5" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13713/is-it-appropriate-to-email-an-eminent-researcher-in-your-field&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but it does not exactly match what I would like to ask. In my case, &lt;strong&gt;it's &lt;em&gt;almost surely appropriate&lt;/em&gt; to send the e-mail (since my adviser suggested it)&lt;/strong&gt;, I'm just wandering as to &lt;strong&gt;what is the best way to formulate such an e-mail&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The situation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is that there is this bigshot researcher in my field, who designed an experimental framework that is very widely used (which I want to use now). In the paper describing the framework (not so recent, ~2005), he compares 5 (then) state-of-the-art methods, and those 5 are still used as comparison references.&#xA;The problem is that, even though implementations for the reference methods are provided, I can not find the parameters used to initialize the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is stated in the paper that the parameters suggested by original authors of the methods are used, but, after weeks of digging through the framework paper, papers introducing the method for the first time, and even trying to guess the parameters so they match the ones used, I still &lt;em&gt;can not get the ones used&lt;/em&gt;. Since I want to test the method with slight modifications and not just use it as reference, I can not re-use the implementation provided but instead need to run my implementation with &lt;em&gt;parameters I can not find&lt;/em&gt;, and introduce modifications to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In short&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to &lt;strong&gt;summarize and generalize:&lt;/strong&gt; After a few weeks of looking for it, I &lt;strong&gt;can not find some parameters&lt;/strong&gt; used in a (seminal framework) work published in 2005. These parameters are &lt;strong&gt;not needed to reproduce&lt;/strong&gt; the work, but &lt;strong&gt;are important in extending it&lt;/strong&gt;. My adviser suggested &lt;strong&gt;e-mailing the author of the paper&lt;/strong&gt; (who is a well known in the community), but since he is so well know and I'm a lowly PhD student &lt;strong&gt;I feel kind of uncomfortable sending this e-mail.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do understand that this is probably the best (and possibly only) approach to getting the information I need, even if it is not very probable that it will work. With that (and my fear of bigshot academics) in mind, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to best write such an email? Besides the basics (be polite and concise) I don't know where to even start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any advice on how to increase the chances of getting a reply? Maybe including my adviser in the CC of the e-mail would be a good idea, indicating my relation to a more established academic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T11:14:00.843" Title="Increase chance of reply when e-mailing an eminent researcher?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13734" CreationDate="2013-10-30T11:14:00.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your chances of a reply will correlate quite strongly with two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How interesting your problem is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long it will take the professor to respond.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make everything as brief as possible, yet still include all necessary information. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask yes, no, or short-answer questions that the professor will know off the top of his/her head. Ask for references to a paper, or for whole pieces of code: not the embedded details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Briefly mention that you're a PhD student at Fake University, supervised by Professor Jones (if the prof you're contacting likes your supervisor's work, that's a good start).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T11:14:00.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13737" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:10:34.290" Score="6" ViewCount="5004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot find the DOI number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234793205_Experimental_analysis_of_pattern_similarity_between_Bessel_kernel_and_born-Jordan_kernel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. It has ISBN, but it does not help me find its DOI number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you find the DOI number of articles where it's not listed, but other identifiers, such as an ISBN, are available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9009" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:14:58.680" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T12:10:44.840" Title="How can you find the DOI of an article that doesn't seem to have one?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13736" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:19:23.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try these sites to search for a CrossRef DOI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://search.crossref.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://search.crossref.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9220" LastEditorUserId="21890" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T12:10:44.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T12:10:44.840" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13728" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:32:39.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a different opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should push it forward for publication in a national conference, not international  (because quality is low)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The weightage for this will definitely be less, But it leaves a different impression if you have some published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T12:32:39.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:36:48.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your use case, I'd go with M PowerPoint. I have spent anywhere from 4 to 16 hours on posters, depending on the level of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My progression through poster design software went as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;M PowerPoint - easy to use, basic layout a breeze, limited in typographical tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;M Publisher - more layout tools, still easy to use coming from a M Suite background&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illustrator - fully featured vector graphics, more control of print/graphics settings, more layout options, harder to learn (but worth it for stunning posters, IMO) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Latex - tried, but didn't fit my use case very well. I needed more interactive control of design elements and the basic templates looked quite drab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Future - perhaps InDesign, which may add some typesetting features that Illustrator lacks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4226" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T12:36:48.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13731" CreationDate="2013-10-30T13:00:41.073" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &quot;accept as is&quot; option is useful after resubmissions; it signifies that no more work needs to be done. However, it is unusual to see that happen in an article on the first round of submissions. (I've had that happen precisely once in my career.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I would say that the more detailed a review can be, and the more precise the suggestions for improving the paper are, the better it will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One to two pages is typically the norm; however, I have submitted a few three- to four-page reviews when I thought an article was already quite good, but could be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if a paper is already of relatively poor quality, I will explain the methodological or other significant flaws, but skip over an analysis of minute points; (it's simply not worth the time to rearrange the furniture when the roof is going to collapse any minute.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T13:00:41.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-10-30T13:24:48.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this &lt;em&gt;very broad&lt;/em&gt; question depends on many factors such as (but not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;field: I can't really say if the same position in one field makes more than another but it's very possible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;country: see other answers; North America or Western Europe are waaay to broad to be clumped into a single bucket. (see below for approx figures from Sweden) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;university/city: bigger and more expensive cities usually call for larger figures, but in practice you don't get richer on that due to higher cost of living (particularly rent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;financing: postdoc but where? ... at a company/university/independent research institute? In certain systems it's also possible to apply for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vr.se/forskningsfinansiering/bidragsbeslut/internationellpostdok.4.41c4c50b1195b50750780002260.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;postdoc grants&lt;/a&gt; (ref in Swedish), I know some people who have gotten grants that include their own salaries. Getting such a grant means your financial burden on the employer is much less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tax: some countries have special, time-bound tax classes for &quot;visiting scientists&quot; or something like that, I have heard that Denmark has a such a policy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I have got a figure of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saco.se/Yrken-A-O/Larareforskare-vid-universitet-och-hogskola/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;approx 32500 SEK/mon&lt;/a&gt; (ref in Swedish) which corresponds to roughly €45000 per annum (The source is a labor union for university employees).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T15:07:45.740" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T15:07:45.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-10-30T13:31:44.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some anecdotal data from (theoretical) computer science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Simons funded postdoc gets ~ $70,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;normal&quot; postdoc funded by a faculty member from an NSF grant seems to get between $50,000 and $60,000 around these parts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A postdoc at an industry lab (say, Microsoft Research which I think is the highest paying lab, but numbers at other labs like IBM are not so different) gets upwards of $130,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, part of the reason that these comparatively high is that the outside industry options all pay more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T13:36:29.440" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T13:36:29.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12618" CreationDate="2013-10-30T14:35:46.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just adding information for some countries omitted above. For useful links find my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2346/after-my-phd-how-much-salary-should-i-expect-as-a-professor-of-computer-science/2453#2453&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. For Germany, you are interested in the E13 scale (grade depending on you experience = the number of years from your PhD. start/defense - depends on the position), which boils down to somewhere around 40-50k EUR brutto. For Netherlands, you are interested in a salary scale 10, or 11 again depending on your experience, generally the grade corresponds to the number of years from your PhD. defense. The end result again lies somewhere between 40-50k EUR brutto. There are however significant tax reductions for &quot;knowledge workers&quot;, which could significantly increase your net salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later edit: adding few sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information about the &quot;30% ruling&quot;: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands#The_30_Percent_Rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands#The_30_Percent_Rule&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/living/official-matters/thirty-percent-ruling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/living/official-matters/thirty-percent-ruling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most universities also provide information about this, for instance TU Delft here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tudelft.nl/en/theme/international-staff-and-students/staff-guests/procedures-prior-to-arrival/immigration-procedures/30-rule/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tudelft.nl/en/theme/international-staff-and-students/staff-guests/procedures-prior-to-arrival/immigration-procedures/30-rule/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T20:46:14.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T16:55:19.240" Score="-1" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one submit a paper (today) on Oct 30th at 20:00:01 GMT (16:00:01 EDT) on arXiv, which announces on Nov 1st 00:00:00 GMT, &lt;strong&gt;is the identifier 1311.xxxx or 1310.xxxx?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the general policy of arXiv to have 1311.xxxx or 1310.xxxx when submitting a paper near the end of Oct? When is the cutline between the twos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9222" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T17:11:15.160" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T15:30:02.477" Title="arXiv identifier near the end of month" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13746" CreationDate="2013-10-30T19:18:00.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The information on arXiv's &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/submit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;help pages&lt;/a&gt; implies that the identifier is based on the submission date, see e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submissions are assigned identifiers and appear in the listings in order based on the submission time (the last time the &quot;Submit&quot; button was selected at the end of the submission process). An edit and subsequent &quot;Submit&quot; will reset this time and thus change position in the listings. Edits are permitted between 16:00 and the 20:00 announcement time. However, doing this will remove the submission from that day's announcements and delay it until the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, a manuscript submitted today should get the identifier &lt;strong&gt;1310.xxxx&lt;/strong&gt;. This also seems to fit with a couple of random papers I looked at, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.7382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; (Submitted 27/09-2013, announced 01/10-2013). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that arXiv seems to use 20:00 GMT as the daily deadline for submission (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/localtime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), so submissions made after that are transferred to the next date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T15:30:02.477" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T15:30:02.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12297" CreationDate="2013-10-30T21:17:26.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have to be a Phd you are studying for. I had  similar problems just doing an undergraduate degree. I'm what you call a mature student and my mother cannot for the life of her, understand why I wanted the education I wasn't able to get when younger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was not amused when it was explained that I had yet another essay to complete and couldn't just drop everything to attend something or other. So it is often not about you at all, its about them and their need of you. Some of the other students faced even more difficulties, especially the women with husbands and children. So, I fear you will just have to carry on and take it on the chin but for heavens sake, don't give it up. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9226" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T21:17:26.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T22:23:38.903" Score="8" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematician and am updating my CV for this hiring season. I am wondering if there is any upside, or downside, to listing the journals of submitted papers on a CV. I have heard advice given in both directions on this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9227" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T01:33:14.030" Title="Should one list the journals of submitted papers on a CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12297" CreationDate="2013-10-30T22:42:14.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted in other answers, the general public simply does not understand the level of effort, over a substantial time period, necessary to produce new knowledge. Yes, the popular media have been very unhelpful, since it is more interesting to report on &quot;geniuses&quot; than on &quot;hard work&quot;, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is also completely unreasonable to imagine &quot;(re-) educating&quot; people about scientific/engineering processes. Rather, if one really wants to &quot;reach&quot; them, as is presumably the case with friends and family, some rhetorical devices seem necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., one can mention the thousands of people working over the last 100-200 years (or whatever timeframe you want to pick), especially the (figure out an impressive number) of documents produced in the last 20 years (or number of your choosing), and the necessity of _catching_up_ and &lt;em&gt;adding&lt;/em&gt; something to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it is somewhat misleading, a recitation of the thousands of pages of pre-existing research reports and the difficulty of reading them gives a not-unreasonable &quot;pop&quot; idea of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in contrast to the &quot;pop&quot; idea that &quot;this one weird trick&quot; [sic] solves problems, one must convey that extensive, time-consuming experimentation (even, truly, in &quot;pure mathematics&quot;, where there is a tradition of pretending that we don't experiment... with ideas...?) is necessary to learn how to exclude plausible-but-failing possibilities. All the &quot;worse&quot; that other people have already looked at the first 1,000 more-accessible possibilities, so that a &quot;newbie&quot; is stuck with looking at far-less-obviously-accessible possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in summary, an only-slightly-hyped-up description of &quot;prior art&quot;, and the need to understand it before pretending to do something new and worthwhile, might &quot;make an impression&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, then, yes, &quot;it's not a 9-to-5 job&quot;. E.g., it seems that a requirement for an academic scientist (and other academics) is a definite urge to work nearly to the exclusion of everything else, out of curiosity. If the academic topic is not one's &quot;job&quot;, it'd seem that 80-hour work-weeks wouldn't be necessary... but the point is that most of the &quot;prior art&quot; was &lt;em&gt;produced&lt;/em&gt; by such people, giving further (rhetorical, anecdotal) evidence to the idea that further progress will not be made &quot;casually&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conflict with &quot;normal&quot; human social activities is partly inescapable. It is truly unacceptable in various regards that one's &quot;work&quot; could conceivably have priority over social obligations. There's really no good way to explain how &quot;it's ok&quot; that one refuses invitations from family and friends, &quot;to work&quot;. If it's your own choice, you've shown that you prefer work to friends and family. Whether or not that's the case (!), it's safer and less offensive to claim that external forces require you to spend the time... this, after the &quot;complaint&quot; that there's sooooo much to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, for perspective, we recall that very many people have unpleasant, pointless-seeming jobs, and no &quot;second job/hobby&quot; of any interest to turn to. Indeed, sometimes people take offense at one's enthusiasm or dedication to one's work (whether it's the paying job or the second one). An enviable luxury, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no way around it, a tricky thing. White lies may be optimal on many occasions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T22:42:14.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T23:41:33.567" Score="6" ViewCount="826" Body="&lt;p&gt;all. I'm an early PhD student and one of my research foci is conservation biology. Of the various focal topics of my research, this is the one that I feel most passionate about. (And within conservation biology, habitat loss/disruption is the issue that holds the highest degree of intrinsic interest for me.) However, like many in conservation bio I am somewhat dismayed by what I see as a lack of actual impact stemming from conservation research -- that is to say, a lot of research gets done but not a lot actually changes because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that environmental policy is a huge issue that extends way beyond the bounds of academic research, and that the challenges of enacting science-based policy are many and are often seen as being best left to policymakers and policy advocates rather than researchers. However, I am finding that I am increasingly interested in charting a career path that puts me in a place where I can work to bridge the divide between research and policy, where I have a chance of making conservation bio a more effective field in terms of real-world results (even if my part in such an effort is a small one) and where I can ideally be involved both with doing impactful, effective research and also with seeing the results of that research be put into action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: what would that career path look like? My goal up to now has been to try for a professorship in academia (as insane as that job market is these days) or else in the statistically likely event that I don't make it there to look for a similar research-oriented job, perhaps with a museum or with the government. I'm still in the first year of my PhD, so this plan is still pretty hazy but that's the general outline of it at the moment. I realize I have a long way to go (at least another four years of PhD work and a postdoc or two) before I'm in a position to take a shot at becoming a PI, but I think it's important to have at least a rough idea of what the ultimate end is. Looking realistically at the PhD program I'm in, I think I have as good a shot as anyone at &quot;making it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm becoming less sure though that that path (what I think of as the &quot;traditional&quot; career path for PhD students in the sciences) is one that will necessarily put me in a position where I can have a hand in conservation policy and in shaping the direction of my field, which are goals that are becoming increasingly important to me. I know that there are ways to do research that is more impactful (I found this article very edifying:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236190887_Achieving_Conservation_Science_that_Bridges_the_Knowledge-Action_Boundary/file/504635178e8cfe5a13.pdf&quot;&gt;Cook et al 2013, Achieving Conservation Science that Bridges the Knowledge-Action Boundary&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]) but I don't feel that impactful research is really incentivized by the systems of reward and prestige that prevail in academic research, such that putting too much of a focus on actionable research can actually be detrimental to one's career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to think outside the box a little bit now, to get a sense of what trajectory I should be putting myself on if I want to do more &quot;meaningful&quot; conservation work while still using the research background that I am developing in my PhD program. I love research. I love doing science, and I even love working in academia as crazy as it sometimes can be. I'm not committed to the idea of a high salary (not that professors normally make a particularly high salary) though I would like to do something that gives me a modicum of financial security at a modest standard of living. I'm not averse to working in academia, or in government, or for an NGO or a private corporation or anywhere else as long as I can be connected to research and have the opportunity to turn conservation research into conservation action. I just want to do research (or at least be involved with research in a way that lets me put my skills to good use) that actually makes a difference out in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of you have any suggestions for career tracks that I should look into? Perhaps you yourself are already in a job that you feel has the characteristics that I am looking for? Maybe you are able to offer me a new perspective on academia that will allay my reservations about a lack of impactfulness in my hypothetical future work there? Or perhaps you see opportunities for researchers of any stripe to make important contributions to the work of conservation management and policymaking from whatever role they may end up in, by being advocates or advisors or activists outside of the lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All kinds of advice would be appreciated. Reading material, personal anecdotes, and any resources or tips or insights you have will all be welcome. Thanks for taking the time to read and think about my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9105" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T06:28:53.690" Title="I want my conservation research to make a difference. I am a first-year PhD student. What should my career path be?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13755" CreationDate="2013-10-31T00:29:05.143" Score="8" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started doing PhD 3 months ago and I still don't have that much progress. What I found is that I spend more time on learning about web development, which I can choose not to do,  and this will make me focus more on my PhD and I'm sure I will do better. However, the problem is that web development is like an addiction for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Web development is not like doing something else (it requires learning stuff so my mind will do a lot of hard work) and when I do that and come to do my research work in PhD I feel bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I decided to stop doing web development and focusing on PhD but how can I guarantee not to come back to that in 2 or 3 days?  I tried that one month ago and I found myself coming back to web development and not focusing that much on PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas or suggestion on getting rid of this habit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9230" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T01:07:26.083" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T09:21:54.947" Title="How can I throw other ideas from my mind while doing PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13749" CreationDate="2013-10-31T01:33:14.030" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opinions differ on this issue.  The advantage of listing where you have submitted the paper is that it gives a clue as to how good you think the paper is.  If you submit to the Annals of Mathematics, then you are suggesting it's a wonderful paper.  If you submit to Advances in Pure Mathematics (not to be confused with the reputable journal Advances in Mathematics), then you might as well have &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102&quot;&gt;generated your paper using random text&lt;/a&gt;.  Listing this information gives you a tactful way to indicate what you consider to be your best work even before it is published, and this may be helpful to someone who wants to take a look at your papers but has only a little time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, submission is not nearly as meaningful as acceptance, because you are a biased judge of your own work.  Furthermore, you could deliberately submit to an unrealistically prestigious journal just for the purpose of writing &quot;submitted to the Annals&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listing the journals can also come across as presumptuous, like you believe the papers will obviously be accepted and you are already bragging about the presumed outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend against it.  I think the benefits are small, and it's not worth the risk of looking arrogant or manipulative.  On the other hand, it's something people sometimes do, and it doesn't seem to do them much (if any) harm, so if you like the idea I don't think it would be a big mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T01:33:14.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13752" CreationDate="2013-10-31T01:48:06.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can probably get paid more doing web development. Normally you have to like research a whole lot for a PhD to be worth it, compared to doing something more lucrative and in-demand like web development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on top of everything, you enjoy that more than research, I would recommend at least spending some time to reevaluate your motivation to go through with a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T01:48:06.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13752" CreationDate="2013-10-31T02:00:05.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you are having a hard time finding motivation for pursuing your PhD. You don't mention the focus of your research, but one idea would be to modify the focus so that it aligns better with your addicting hobby of web-development (I'm not familiar with CS, so I have no idea how this would work in actual practice. Others will better be able to advise you on that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Become interested in your research.&lt;/strong&gt; Assuming that you have compelling reasons for staying in your current area of research, you will need to have a genuine passion for the subject, or completing the PhD will become well-nigh impossible due to lack of motivation. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2013/10/22/how-to-learn-boring-subjects/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by Scott Young on how to learn boring subjects; his advice also holds for renewing interest in something. See the key points below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't pick degree programs you hate. Although there are times when you may have to take courses you don't actually like, avoid a career made up of tasks and information you hate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't confuse boring and difficult. It is easy to avoid something as boring, rather than admitting that it is difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find the 'real-world' connections. Math isn't boring when you begin to see the connections and overall patterns--ditto for many other subjects/areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discover the context. Take the time to explore the background, and understand why these [proofs, theorems, whatever] are important for where we are now. Young recommends reading Wikipedia articles on lunch-breaks for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make stories and pictures. Learning is a creative activity--the product is the intangible connections and stories in our minds. Mnemonics and stories can be interesting even when the subject is not. (Use this for the necessary but boring parts of research.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the knowledge. Using even part of what you learn in a separate project will help cement the learning, and will also be interesting. (And anyway, isn't this part of the purpose of a PhD, to apply knowledge in new ways?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Realize that not everything will be fun--&lt;em&gt;more interest&lt;/em&gt; is better, even if relative differences still exist.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T02:00:05.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13751" CreationDate="2013-10-31T06:37:54.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about your specific area of interest. But to have impact in your field, it might help to seek out examples of people whose career you'd like to model. What trajectory did they follow, and as far as you can tell how did their choices help with the impact they had ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the advantages of a Ph.D (not necessarily an academic career) is that it acts as a signifier to open doors. For example, in my line of work, there are many people with Ph.Ds who have immense impact on technology from jobs at research labs, or companies. Their Ph.D gave them access to jobs in these venues, and the rest was up to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be that in your area, a Ph.D is almost a necessity to even be part of the conversation (whether in doing research, or affecting policy). It might also be that the people impacting policy do so from an academic perch (hence the point about searching for role models). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T06:37:54.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13799" CreationDate="2013-10-31T09:07:37.537" Score="4" ViewCount="45658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wonder if anyone knew if it is possible (and how) to download an entire journal (as if it would be printed) from ieeeXplore ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9236" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T13:30:07.487" Title="Download full journals from IEEE as pdf (ebook)" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13760" CreationDate="2013-10-31T09:43:01.403" Score="11" ViewCount="1537" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the typical size for a conference poster? Is it &quot;ask the organizers&quot;, or can I safely assume that I'll get a default size, and that there will be enough space to hang it at the poster session?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T14:21:02.947" Title="Default poster size" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13759" CreationDate="2013-10-31T09:57:41.697" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll have to look at the conference announcement or contact the organizers. The space allotted to each poster is usually clearly stated in the conference announcement, and there are a number of different poster sizes being used, common ones being e.g. A0, A1. However, sometimes you are free to use the poster boards as you see fit (i.e. only provided a maximium limit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested, here are also some resources/guidelines for constructing posters that I've used earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makesigns.com/tutorials/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Poster Tutorial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sicb.org/newsletters/fa97nl/sicb/poster.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mortal Sins in Poster Presentations or How to Give the Poster No One Remembers &lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bildmakarna.kib.ki.se/posters/tips/index_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tips for creating scientific posters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140913113832/http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Poster Design (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; - has lots of examples of what you &lt;strong&gt;shouldn't&lt;/strong&gt; do when it comes to colour choice and design. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="100953" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T14:21:02.947" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T14:21:02.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13759" CreationDate="2013-10-31T09:58:16.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no real “default” size. It should be communicated by the organizers, as part of the various practical details of the conference. If not, double check, but otherwise you can ask them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for some reason you cannot ask, it is relatively safe to assume that it's either vertical or horizontal A0. So, if you could not get the information from the organizers and want to play it safe, restrict yourself to 84 cm in both directions, that way you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T09:58:16.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13764" CreationDate="2013-10-31T10:23:11.557" Score="17" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been involved in managing a special issue in a scientific journal. The chief-editor was somehow appreciative of my work and now wants me to join the journal's board as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyeditor&lt;/a&gt;. I am puzzled by this request since I have no example of an academic being involved in such a task. Usually, being an editor (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9506/why-become-a-journal-editor&quot;&gt;Why become a journal editor?&lt;/a&gt;) involves more content evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would my academic career take advantage of such a duty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7767" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T17:10:10.377" Title="Is copyediting good for an academic career?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13763" CreationDate="2013-10-31T10:31:19.337" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only benefit you'll get as a copyeditor is clear: &lt;strong&gt;money&lt;/strong&gt; (assuming he offered to pay you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downsides are numerous: it takes a lot of time, it will not be considered a plus to your CV (it's a technical job, not a scientific one)… none of the benefits from being a journal editor apply to a copyeditor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't know exactly what you did when you say &lt;em&gt;“I have recently been involved in managing a special issue”&lt;/em&gt;, but if you were guest editor, &lt;strong&gt;offering you a copyeditor job is clearly not showing appreciation for your job&lt;/strong&gt; as a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T10:31:19.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13767" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:57:56.063" Score="56" ViewCount="6891" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have a paper submitted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. We had two rounds of revisions, and following detailed suggestions from one reviewer, we have improved our proposed algorithm a lot: its complexity is now significantly lower, and the idea he suggested makes the overall method more robust in handling noisy signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this reviewer's contribution extend far beyond his original role, so much that I feel it would be ethically honest to have him as a co-author. To be crystal-clear: if he was not a reviewer, but a colleague with whom I had discussed this before submitting the paper, he would clearly be entitled to authorship, no question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But… he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a reviewer, so I am wondering how (if at all) we should ask him to join as co-author. Right now, I am ready to submit the twice-revised manuscript, and I have no doubt that it will be accepted (second review was “minor revisions”). The options I can see are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my cover letter for the revised manuscript, explain the situation to the editor and ask him if he could (with the reviewer's agreement) lift anonymity and allow the authors' list change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait for the manuscript to be formally approved, and only then write to the editor asking for the same thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do nothing, for example because it is frowned upon. This would pain me greatly, because the reviewer really contributed very significantly to the algorithm, and I believe he should be able to claim authorship for this contribution (if he sees it fit).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are accepted practices? How should I handle this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T05:02:24.633" Title="How to offer a reviewer to be co-author?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13765" CreationDate="2013-10-31T14:28:41.643" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd ask the editor now, assuming the reviewer has clearly stated that the paper should be accepted (at least conditionally on certain changes).  The worst case scenario is that the editor will suggest waiting, and even if that happens I don't think the editor will be upset or offended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the reviewer has made critical comments and hasn't specifically stated in the comments to authors whether the paper should be accepted, then I would wait until the conclusion of the reviewing process, just to avoid looking like you are trying to bias the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't sound like a plausible issue in your case, but I've experienced it once as a reviewer.  I made a lot of critical but apparently useful comments on a paper, and the authors offered coauthorship when they submitted a major revision.  I don't think they meant this to be manipulative, but I wondered whether one effect would be to remove a critic from the reviewing pool for their paper (in which case I might be replaced with someone more favorable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T14:28:41.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13765" CreationDate="2013-10-31T15:21:06.020" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding other comments and answers: surely no one would be &lt;em&gt;offended&lt;/em&gt; if you tried to make such an offer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as already noted, if your offer is made prior to final acceptance, it might be misinterpreted, as your trying to clinch acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that possibility surely has to be systematically excluded, so a foresightful editor and/or journal would surely not want to set such a &lt;em&gt;precedent&lt;/em&gt;. A journal would not want authors to (be able to) solicit reviewers as co-authors, since this would create a conflict-of-interest situation, and cast doubt on the general validity and impartiality of their refereeing process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, while it would be weird and awkward to publicly state such a policy, I would anticipate that the journal/editor would object &lt;em&gt;as a matter of principle&lt;/em&gt;, to putting the reviewer on as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sensible reviewers would also understand this situation, for similar reasons, and &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt; would expect no reward beyond &quot;job well done&quot;. Even the anonymity of the referee should be maintained, as a matter of principle. Thus, we do often find effusive thanks to &quot;the anonymous referee&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T15:22:22.833" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T15:22:22.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13769" CreationDate="2013-10-31T15:41:45.477" Score="10" ViewCount="19447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 100 slides but most are light weight with pictures. I am afraid it is too much because I can't get it under 1 hour in my rehearsal. I have noted that some slides take me more time to explain. Any suggestions other than reduce number of slides? Maybe use some kind of timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9242" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T18:13:14.113" Title="Number of slides for 45 minute defense presentation" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13768" CreationDate="2013-10-31T15:58:06.477" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you fixated on the number of slides? What matters is the story you tell, the important messages that people who listen to you will be able to take home after the presentation. Sure, you'd like to say more, but that's not how it works. &lt;strong&gt;Don't plan to talk faster, to run through your talk at lighting speed&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;If the content doesn't fit the time frame, drop some things&lt;/strong&gt;. You may not want to hear it, but you have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another hint, maybe too late for you, but which I find useful: there are two things which are very interesting to &lt;strong&gt;know about yourself as a speaker&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How fast do I usually go?&lt;/strong&gt; I.e., for a typical presentation, how many slides per minute do I do? This allows you to get a rough idea of timing, for future presentations, even before rehearsing (or allow you to skip rehearsing at all, once you become good at it!).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In real circumstances, &lt;strong&gt;am I faster or slower than during rehearsal?&lt;/strong&gt; This depends somewhat on circumstances (being tired, being excited, etc.) but it is still interesting info. For example, I know that I tend to digress more during real talks than rehearsals, which means when I time myself I know I have to leave some margin. On the other hand, some people talk faster on the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When my students preparer for their first conference talk, I usually ask them to think of the above, and write down their timing. It is useful to prepare later talks, and also their PhD defense!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T15:58:06.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13768" CreationDate="2013-10-31T16:29:14.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to already good answers and comments. A rule of thumb often quoted is &quot;number of minutes in talk&quot;/2 but this number has a huge standard deviation. So both much more and less can still be good. Clearly you need to make sure you get your message across. I have seen someone using up 30-40 slides in a presentation in five minutes but then it was a way to create a &quot;manual animation&quot;. It was nevertheless very efficient and gave the desired result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you need to consider, how much &lt;em&gt;detail&lt;/em&gt; you need to explain your main points. You also need to think about how much time you need to discuss each slide. It is easy to just make loads of bullet points and actually not &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; anything. In this case you need to consider your audience. If the target of the talk is your fellows in the department then they are not as deeply involved as peers within your sub-discipline. If the audience requires more background you probably cannot use a vast number of slides because people will soon lose track. With a specialist audience who can understand the slides more intuitively, you may be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Speed&lt;/em&gt; is also a factor. If you have to much material you need to speed up and you are more likely to not finish on time. You need to pace yourself and consider how your talk will be perceived. A rushed talk is never fun. The result may well be a presentation where you think there are gaps. But that is how it is. You need to make decisions about what must be included and what could be discarded. Sometimes you can add the discarded material (figures) to the end of the talk in case someone asks questions where they can be used for the answer. That usually comes across as being well prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reduction&lt;/em&gt;. Since you ask if how you can reduce the slides, I will suggest looking at each and every one and think: &lt;em&gt;Is this necessary?&lt;/em&gt; I am particularly thinking about figures. &lt;em&gt;Necessary&lt;/em&gt; in this case means if it tells something unique that is used to build towards the conclusion(s). A follow up question before deleting it is perhaps &lt;em&gt;if it can be merged with another slide?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and as a side comment, I do not think that you are new to Beamer is at fault. Using Beamer/LaTeX is great and for me the fact that producing a slide is slower than in, say, PowerPoint is a bonus. It helps me from just generating too many slides since I have time to think about each and everyone as I go through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T16:29:14.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13772" CreationDate="2013-10-31T16:51:31.950" Score="11" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I am quite fresh as a researcher, even more as a reviewer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am reviewing a paper that appears to report a well-conducted empirical study, with proper data analysis. The results of the article are interesting and relevant for the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am very concerned with how the paper was written. I will provide some of my concerns of the report here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides many grammatical errors - which I forgive as English is not my main language as well - the article is badly structured and often confusing. It fails to clearly state the research questions. No all the hypotheses are well supported by the literature review. It omits several key studies in the literature review. It often makes strong claims without a proper reference. It often fails to quantify stuff, falling to the tedious &quot;a lot&quot;, &quot;many&quot;, &quot;few&quot;, &quot;circa&quot;, etc. It is quite mysterious on certain aspects of the research design-e.g., a control group is suddenly mentioned without really clarifying what constituted the control group, and the paper reports that the experiment is not even a controlled experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, &lt;em&gt;for the first sections&lt;/em&gt; I have nearly a comment for each of the manuscript paragraphs. I will do my best as a reviewer. I will provide all possible suggestions for improving the manuscript. Whereas I am confident that the results of the study are interesting, and that the research design is sound, I don't know if failing to clearly write the manuscript is a reason for suggesting rejection or for recommending major revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is the line in this case? The journal does not clarify this in its reviewer guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of suggesting a major revision, what if the authors still fail to provide a clearly written and organized manuscript in a second round? Could I still request for major revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T09:56:49.080" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T17:53:44.663" Title="If research design, data analysis, and results only are good, where is the line between suggesting major revision and rejection?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13771" CreationDate="2013-10-31T17:04:11.437" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend emailing the journal editor to ask for some of these clarifications. There might be certain unwritten policies endemic to that particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, you can ask for multiple rounds of revisions (major or minor) until you are satisfied. Peer review is supposed to be an iterative conversation. However, as I mentioned earlier, there could be certain journal policies regarding the number of revisions which you might get addressed if you talk to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer, if you feel that the article should be rejected, you are free to make that claim. However, personally, I always give at least one chance to a paper (however horrible it is) to redress my comments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T17:04:11.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13771" CreationDate="2013-10-31T17:04:24.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journal instructions vary so exactly what can be done may also vary. But, as a reviewer you re &quot;only&quot; suggesting a verdict based on your review. An editor will make the final decision based on your and one or more reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question you can ask is whether the revisions you suggest can easily be accommodated within some reasonable time frame. As an example, I edit a journal where we allow six weeks for &quot;major revisions&quot; (three for minor). Unfortunately, this time frame may not be obvious to anyone but the editor. But, you probably get a sense if the paper contains enough good science to be worth waiting for or if a new submission at some later time would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, you provide a report that is passed on to the authors in some way but you also provide a confidential note to the editor. I suggest that you detail your qualms about the paper and try to explain your thinking about the potential for this paper and whether it may benefit from either rejection and possibly later resubmission or by taking it down the &quot;major revision&quot; route. You can then provide you sense of how much time might be required for the changes so that the editor obtains a sure footing for the decisions. It is always good to receive a little of &quot;pros and cons&quot; from the reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end the editor will make the choice and it will be based on more views than just yours. Providing the best substantiated view you can will most likely be welcomed by the editor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T17:04:24.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13775" CreationDate="2013-10-31T17:58:29.543" Score="24" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the SE sites, especially Math.SE, MathOverflow and CompSci.SE, extremely useful for solving specific problems I encounter during my research. But I have one concern: if I ask a question in an SE site, and then describe the same question in a paper (whether I got an answer or not), then this might be considered a breach of the anonimity requirement, because, one of the reviewers might be a member in one of these sites, see my question and know that I am an author of that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that my paper will be rejected because some parts of it were published as questions on the web?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T18:51:32.280" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T19:46:12.157" Title="Asking a question in SE might be considered a breach of anonymity?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13774" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:19:06.173" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's two parts to the question, one about anonymity, one about content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of anonymity, it's unlikely that your paper would be rejected, at least in my field (which is not math/CS). While papers are submitted anonymously, in reality, reviewers sometimes have a good idea of who the author is. A reviewer can recognize the submission's subject area and approach from other work you've published/presented, or be tipped off by little things like the citation of an unpublished thesis (which likely only the author would know about). If reviewers think they know the author, and there's a conflict of interest, they contact the editor; if they don't see a conflict of interest that would bias them toward or against who they think is the author, they just review it. That's been my experience at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of content, it's a bit dicier. I know this isn't something you're asking about, but I figured I'd address it for completeness sake. I assume that you're referring to questions that are fairly small, narrow, and specific, and whose answers don't make up the core of your paper. If so, no problem. But an editor or reviewers might take issue with you using answers you get here as your own, especially if they're central to your argument. You probably know that already, and I've never seen it occur in any blind review I've done, but I feel better including this caveat in my answer to your main question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9244" LastEditorUserId="9244" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T19:46:12.157" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T19:46:12.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13774" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:44:14.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should carefully check the Creative Commons Attributions Share Alike (CC-BY SA) license agreement under which this site operates. You will find a link at the lower right corner of this page or simply use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;. The license essentially tells you that you can use and distribute the material, even commercially, provided that you make correct attribution and that any material that builds on it is shared under the same license. The license can be waived through permission (see the CC-BY SA page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this perspective you are not doing anything wrong as long as you follow the license. I also do not think any journal, editor or reviewer would hold use of an SE site against you as long as the material can pass review, the license is followed and that the source for your information is provided. Also check &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1580/4394&quot;&gt;Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T18:44:14.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13774" CreationDate="2013-10-31T19:12:27.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's becoming a common practice to cite answers on SE if they get used in papers. I'd strongly recommend (at least for the second question) that you cite answers you get. There is indeed a risk that this violates anonymity requirements (because you're not supposed to cite material that can reveal your identity), but you can get around that by merely citing &quot;an answer on the stackexchange forums&quot; with &quot;identity withheld to preserve anonymity&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, you make it clear whether the result is yours or not, without breaching rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T19:12:27.397" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13726" CreationDate="2013-11-01T08:11:28.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making code available is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a good idea, as long as the code works. It is probably a good idea even if it doesn't, since even non-working code can help reviewers and users/readers of your work to understand details of your implementation that your paper does not cover. However, if the code does not work, you should clearly indicate this in the source. In the case of working and tested code, bear in mind that sufficient documentation to run the code is highly desirable. You only mention reviewers, but you should also be thinking about general readers of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is probably reasonable to supply a current snapshot of the code to the paper as a zip archive (or similar) for reviewing purposes, but why not just put it online directly as a Git or Mercurial repository on Bitbucket, Github, or similar, and reference this on the paper? I also recommend making repositories available in more than one place, in the interests of redundancy. For example, I have used both Bitbucket and Google Code for my Mercurial repositories. This has various advantages over a zip archive file; for one thing you can push corrections and other changes to your repository, and everyone will immediately have access to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about releasing your code before your paper has been published might mean someone else will &quot;scoop&quot; you, that seems unlikely to me. At least, it is not something I've ever worried about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T05:10:17.693" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T05:10:17.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13771" CreationDate="2013-11-01T11:40:35.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It fails to clearly state the research questions. No all the hypotheses are well supported by the literature review. It omits several key studies in the literature review. It often makes strong claims without a proper reference. It often fails to quantify stuff, falling to the tedious &quot;a lot&quot;, &quot;many&quot;, &quot;few&quot;, &quot;circa&quot;, etc. It is quite mysterious on certain aspects of the research design-e.g., a control group is suddenly mentioned without really clarifying what constituted the control group, and the paper reports that the experiment is not even a controlled experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend including this paragraph &lt;strong&gt;verbatim&lt;/strong&gt; in your referee report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This description is not obviously consistent with your claim that the paper &quot;appears to report a well-conducted empirical study, with proper data analysis&quot;.  Is it actually possible, even in principle, to have a well-conducted study without a crisply stated research question or a clearly-defined control group, or a proper data analysis that uses &quot;a lot&quot; and &quot;circa&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; basic flaws, independent of the authors' first language.  If they were spread throughout the paper, they would be sufficient to recommend rejection.  If these problems appear only in the introduction (and later sections clarify the research questions, experimental design, and so on), then they may not warrant rejection, but they certainly require major revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discrepancy between the initial sections and the body of the paper suggests that a student wrote the former, and the PI wrote the latter.  At least, I hope that's what happened.  It's appropriate to be gentle (but firm) with the student, but a bit less forgiving of the PI for not advising the student better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In case of suggesting a major revision, what if the authors still fail to provide a clearly written and organized manuscript in a second round? Could I still request for major revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the authors' revision does not sufficiently address the concerns in your initial report — regardless of whether your concerns are about presentation or content — your response to the editor should be &quot;The authors' revision does not sufficiently address the concerns in my initial report; therefore, I cannot recommend acceptance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T11:40:35.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13771" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:06:10.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference between a major revision and a rejection can be thin, because after a rejection people can of course still significantly improve the article and resubmit.  Many journals have a deadline to submit a revision.  In this case, I think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the required work can reasonable be performed in the time scheduled for a revision, then recommend a major revision.  If the work is &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; substantial that it would take a lot more time than that, then recommend rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T13:06:10.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:07:18.160" Score="4" ViewCount="1576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a first year undergraduate student in pure math but recently I've become interested in neuroscience and related fields. Is it possible to pursue neuroscience and cognitive sciences without a medical degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, do you know any universities in North America or Europe that accepts people with pure math degrees in programs that are related to neuroscience and bio-mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if my question is too naive, I don't have much information about academic stuff yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9256" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:02:39.010" Title="Is it possible to attend grad school in cognitive sciences without a medical degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:16:47.040" Score="17" ViewCount="2553" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author &lt;em&gt;Anonymous&lt;/em&gt; has 74,305 publications in the Scopus publication database.  Those include 32,476 peer-reviewed articles, most from the 1980s and 1990s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone write a peer-reviewed paper anonymously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2020-09-03T16:39:17.350" Title="Why write papers anonymously?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13782" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:27:50.327" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one case that I know of (Anonymous, 1969; J. Glaciol) the article summarizes a then new report on terminology. The paper is published in a high impact journal in the field but is not a research article and not a review article, just a summary. The purpose was to inform the community and after that people reference this paper rather than the report, which before internet was hard to get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why the authors were anonymous in this case was that they felt no-one in particular should be personally associated with this summary (get credit as if it was a scientific paper when it really was not). The report was made through a large international effort with international peer review.  So from this perspective, the Anonymous author has a function to fulfil. The material becomes possible to reference and it is not tied to a person but a community. It would, of course be possible to call the group working on the report something and then use this communal name instead of &quot;Anonymous&quot; as is also sometimes the case in larger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T13:27:50.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13781" CreationDate="2013-11-01T14:50:53.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, a neuroscience or cognitive science PhD program generally admits people with undergrad or masters degrees, which generally can't be medical degrees since many US schools do not offer medical degrees at those levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your first question is yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the specifically a math background, I expect that most schools would consider such an application. Even in fields that have corresponding undergrad majors, it's not uncommon for people to enter PhD programs from very different undergrad studies. An application would have to address the question of having an adequate background and understanding of what the field is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T14:50:53.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13782" CreationDate="2013-11-01T14:52:59.703" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched for the author Anonymous in PubMed (the life sciences publication database), and found 26 results, which shed some light on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some paper titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I was sexually harassed as a junior by senior doctors: it still goes&#xA;on, and it needs to stop&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My own story: dealing with depression&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A mind surrounded by a moat: a first-person account of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Trying to overcome racism in the NHS&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in many cases the authors are describing a sensitive experience or medical condition they have and they do not want others to know about. Alternatively the author could be a whistle-blower. It may also be used in some cases where the editor wrote the piece but does not take credit, but I am guessing this is usually not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T14:52:59.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13765" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:23:12.000" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also have an experience of being asked to become a co-author by the authors of one paper I refereed. It wasn't a journal of the PNAS caliber, but it's a good specialized journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know exactly when the authors asked the editor, but he asked me if it was ok to disclose my identity to the authors because they told the editor that they wanted to include me as a co-author. It seems that the editor was fine with accepting the manuscript (maybe with another round of external review with another fresh referee). But I suggested submitting a revised version as a joint-work to a different journal, and we did so in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I'm not sure if the reviewer is expecting such a request. As a reviewer, if I can't recommend publication, I always try to improve the manuscript I am reviewing as much as possible within a reasonable timeframe and, if possible, make it potentially acceptable for the journal. This may include proving a stronger theorem than the main result given in the manuscript, repairing critical errors in a proof, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, this practice doesn't seem extremely uncommon in design theory (which is my expertise), and I have also benefitted greatly from excellent referees. So, I don't expect anything from the authors, and I do the same when reviewing manuscripts in different fields (although it's practically impossible in some fields I work in because editors want reviewers to carefully read a paper in a very short period of time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you do want to include your reviewer as a co-author, I tend to think that you might want to ask the editor that after a final editorial decision is made for the reasons stated in other answers. And you shouldn't be surprised if the reviewer declines the offer. Probably he or she isn't expecting it; the referee most likely just got excited while reading your great results and a bit &quot;carried away.&quot; Such an offer would be helpful if the reviewer is a student or postdoc on the job market, or is trying to get tenured though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T15:23:12.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13781" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:54:58.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one word: absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Psychology the top rated public university in the US (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.wisc.edu/index.php/graduate/prospective-graduate-students/admission-and-requirements/graduate-school-admission-requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UW Madison&lt;/a&gt;) states absolutely no specificity for an undergraduate degree for consideration, and in fact no psychology department I could find in my short searching stated any such requirement. Even most engineering schools, for example, don't require an undergraduate degree in engineering for consideration (though they often state a preference) - and this includes what in the US we refer to as &quot;Industrial Engineering&quot;, which includes a variety of fields that do work in the cognitive sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For neurology, the picture is a bit different, but the answer is still &quot;yes&quot;. For neurology there is &quot;clinical neurology&quot;, which are usually programs geared towards medical students (those seeking a medical degree - not necessarily who already have one). However, for pure &quot;neurology&quot; degrees the fact is the same - they don't universally require a similar undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the other side a word of caution - some degree programs state a preference for a related undergraduate degree. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/programs/masters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The University of Pittsburgh Neurology&lt;/a&gt; department states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In general, successful applicants have a BS degree in neuroscience,&#xA;  biology, chemistry, or psychology with a cumulative grade point&#xA;  average of at least 3.4 (on a 4.0 scale), and a cumulative Graduate&#xA;  Record Examination score of at least 160 verbal, 150 quantitative and&#xA;  a 4.5 in analytical writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every department sets its own requirements, and just because one says &quot;in general...&quot; doesn't mean they don't admit people who don't fit their exact stated mold - just that your chances will be higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an international candidate (I assume), you'll probably have to apply to more programs as the chance for admittance is generally small per application to US schools (it's not uncommon for schools to accept 50% of domestic applications, and but only 1-10% of international applicants), but again - this is not all that uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had the opportunity, it wouldn't hurt to try to direct some independent study or work towards even a single mathematical problem that relates to something like decision or control problems or statistics - which you could then provide as an example of proof that you are interested in cognitive sciences, etc - but you don't have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom-line, you will have to figure out what angle of attack you'll want to have on the cognitive sciences. It is a very big field, and you can technically do cognitive science in the field of Business (especially Behavioral Economics), Psychology (where most undergraduates are required to take a course in cognition), Engineering, Multidisciplinary design/art programs (like Human Computer Interaction), Computer Science (especially in Artificial Intelligence), Neuroscience/Neurology, Linguistics, and even Philosophy. None of these require medical degrees, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the downside, if you don't also acquire a medical degree they generally won't let you cut people open and play with their brains or run them through radioactive/high-magnetic machinery by yourself (but you can collaborate with people who can!). If that's OK with you, no medical training is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T17:02:39.010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:02:39.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T18:06:05.850" Score="6" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a developing country. I want to go to USA for higher studies and plan to acquire a PhD there. But since I do not have enough money to go there, I need to have a job first to collect my money. May be the job is not relevant to my academic field of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these types of break-of-studies hindrances to getting PhDs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T23:37:47.253" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:37:47.253" Title="Is a break-of-study a hindrance to getting a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13792" CreationDate="2013-11-01T18:19:31.670" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;break-of-study&quot; is not a hindrance &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. It has side effects (you get older, acquire a family, and so on), and some of these can make it a little trickier to get a Ph.D. In particular, you might find the answers to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9769/can-one-excel-in-graduate-post-graduate-school-with-a-demanding-family-life/9787#9787&quot;&gt;Can one excel in graduate school with a demanding family life?&lt;/a&gt; very relevant in terms of the challenges of doing a Ph.D with a family. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, a break-of-study in and of itself is not a bad thing. Now if the job you are looking for takes you far away from your intended field of research, then you might have to explain your background on your application and somehow establish that you have a continuing interest and basic knowledge in the field (which may have changed since you graduated). You can do this by taking courses online, or by doing research projects on the side, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T18:19:31.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13797" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:27:00.993" Score="3" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a philosophy essay. The essay is required to answer a particular question by analyzing, in turn, four particular philosophy essays; the essay needs to follow the outline below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restate the question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze essayW by Mills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze essayX by Shue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze essayY by Locke&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze essayZ by Hospers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answer the question with information from essay analyses. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do I need to write (Author, Date) in my analyses? Each analysis will be about an essay, and will reference that essay in most of its sentences. Do I need to include the same citation in every sentence that references that essay? That seems like it would aggravate the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T15:54:56.650" Title="How to cite (Chicago author-date) papers your paper is about" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13796" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:51:56.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not knowledgable about the specific best practices in philosophy, but I would say that you should cite in the least obtrusive fashion, while still being unambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your four essays have four different authors, and you do not cite other works by these authors, I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite each essay when you first introduce it, e.g. in the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then avoid using citations, e.g. simply saying &lt;em&gt;“Hospers relies in is essay on concepts X and Y”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the first sentence to each of the separate analyses (your parts 3 to 6), make clear what essay you are looking at and cite it again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this section, we offer a detailed analysis of &lt;em&gt;essayY&lt;/em&gt; (Locke, 1698), looking in particular at …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T19:51:56.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:57:09.513" Score="15" ViewCount="2409" Body="&lt;p&gt;After starting my PhD a few months ago I'm now not sure if research is the thing for me. I'm uncertain on whether I should continue in the PhD program and try to make myself like research more, or if I should just stop and drop out of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I know if research is for me or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9230" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T13:34:46.907" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T09:17:09.800" Title="How do you know if a PhD is for you?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13757" CreationDate="2013-11-01T20:05:12.447" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that violates the terms of use for IEEE Xplore.  I don't know if you are an IEEE member, institutional subscriber, etc., but the terms of use for institutional subscribers states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Institutional subscribers are NOT permitted to do the following: [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Download or attempt to download an entire issue or issues of a publication contained in IEEE Xplore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should first view the terms of use for IEEE Xplore at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp&lt;/a&gt;, and if you have questions contact Xplore support via the contact form &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/techform.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/techform.jsp&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8402" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T20:51:06.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-02T17:02:37.343" Score="2" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering the correct format for citing when including both book edition and the page range of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From owl purdue on citing chapter (APA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of&#xA;  chapter. In A. A. Editor &amp;amp; B. B. Editor (Eds.), &lt;em&gt;Title of book&lt;/em&gt; (pages&#xA;  of chapter). Location: Publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the correct format then look like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of&#xA;  chapter. In A. A. Editor &amp;amp; B. B. Editor (Eds.), &lt;em&gt;Title of book&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;strong&gt;Edition, pages of chapter&lt;/strong&gt;). Location: Publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9268" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T21:47:45.140" LastActivityDate="2017-07-21T16:39:31.773" Title="APA: How to cite chapter and edition in book" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-02T18:05:01.873" Score="4" ViewCount="1572" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my undergrad studies, my first two years went fine but in third did not go well as compared to the first two years. Consequently, there was a drop in the GPA. But there was one good project at that time and I and my roommate did some independent research work during this time which we got published in beginning of our final year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason for the drop in GPA was due to trouble in catching up with the subjects. I just could not handle my studies at that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though it was the third year when I realised which field of computer science I wanted to specialize in, so since then all my projects, independent research work and even some research work under my professor has been related to that domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must also add that my GPA increased every semester since the drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted some suggestions on how to present this in a positive way in an SOP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T04:06:13.297" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T04:06:13.297" Title="How should a drop in GPA be presented positively in a Statement of Purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-02T18:20:42.477" Score="13" ViewCount="809" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a pure math phd student and the supervisor gave me two papers so as I find an idea to research but the subjects are unrelated and I can't concentrate on one of them and can't decide which one is likely  to be a fruitful subject, What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9271" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T12:58:58.593" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T12:58:58.593" Title="Who is to decide the main idea(s) of research in a PhD Proposal, the student or his/her supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13803" CreationDate="2013-11-02T19:51:48.060" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it depends on the country you're in, the type of funding you're applying for, and probably to a smaller extent on your field of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you already have an agreement with a supervisor, then you should probably look to him for advice on choosing a topic, but make the choice yourself. Given that he sent you papers on these two topics, you can probably assume (absent any evidence to the contrary) that both would make a good and fruitful subject. Thus, choose with your heart: what problem is most exciting to you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T19:51:48.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2013-11-02T22:43:43.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; which is really a generic list app, there I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; methodology (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;), so for each project there are four lists: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TODO &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Verify (means that task is done according to person who did it, and someone other should verify it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you can use this methodology: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split process of preparing manuscript into tasks (this is possible after you have decided outline of the article). Tasks could be: &quot;Prepare image depicting architecture of our system&quot;, &quot;Prepare section about data acquisition equipement we use&quot; and so on. At this phase you should have most of needed results, but not necessarily all. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can assign tasks to particular persons, but this is optional. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All tasks start in TODO sections. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When someone starts doing a tasks they drag it to Doing section (you should minimize amount of tasks in this section). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done tasks are moved to Verify section where someone (may be senior member of team --- depending of the aragements) checks them and moves to Done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might need add section: Waiting, where tasks is being done but is waiting for something external to happen (like editor response, or some computation to get time share) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When in review phase you should add changes requested by the reviever/editor to TODO tasks. And then maybe add column: &quot;For the next communication with reviewer&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really Kanbaan's heart is: &quot;Start with your current workflow, and then change it to increase throughtput and minimize amount of work done concurrently&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="117" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T21:18:21.537" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T21:18:21.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13757" CreationDate="2013-11-02T22:52:12.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to put legality aside merging pdfs into single file is rather easy (I assume that you can download individual articles as pdfs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need ghostscript program (avilable on any modern linux, and I guess also for windows) and then issue command: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=combinedpdf.pdf -dBATCH 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which will merge &lt;code&gt;1.pdf&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;2.pdf&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;3.pdf&lt;/code&gt; into &lt;code&gt;combined.pdf&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to mass download articles you can use this firefox plugin: &lt;a href=&quot;https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/downthemall/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/downthemall/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways: please mind that you might be bending or violating terms and conditions using these techinques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T22:52:12.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13801" CreationDate="2013-11-02T23:09:04.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible (I know at least of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.management-revue.org/authors_guidelines.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one journal&lt;/a&gt;, giving such recommendations in addition to the APA style).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But in this form, according to my experience, it's more common for the MLA style while rarely used with the APA. What you also might want to do is to include two references: one for the chapter (only pages in parentheses) and another for the edited book (only edition in parentheses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9189" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T23:09:04.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13802" CreationDate="2013-11-03T00:41:07.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would avoid making excuses for a drop in grades. They are what they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should highlight the independent research you did and published. That's a huge achievement for an undergraduate. If it's obvious to the reader that you put a significant amount of effort into that research and learned a lot, that should outweigh the fact that you didn't learn as much in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the grad school programs you are interested in do still have a coursework component, then grades will matter more than they do for a research-only course. But if they're &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt;, research experience will make up the rest. That, glowing letters of recommendation from supervisors, and a good interview are worth more than perfect grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't waste words making excuses. Show you are emotionally invested in your research. &lt;em&gt;Make promises&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Anecdotally, my GPA tanked from A- in my final undergraduate year to B (overall) in the first year of my Master's program. I had a tendon injury and couldn't write for nearly 3 months, so I only just scraped through that first semester with a C average. Way behind on my research project, I put that ahead of my second semester papers and did very well in the research but with average coursework. Those grades got me my dream PhD job, and I haven't even finished my Master's thesis yet. I never mentioned the injury because no-one ever asked about my grades.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T00:49:17.053" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T00:49:17.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-03T01:00:18.440" Score="7" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a writing course designed to prepare international students for graduate school, mostly social science majors. The students have no experience writing academic papers. I have found that lists of sample TOEFL and GRE writing topics, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL/pdf/989563wt.pdf&quot;&gt;this list of sample writing topics&lt;/a&gt; found at ETS, serve as good essay topics for these students so that they can practice organizing their ideas in writing. These topics are: (1) simple; (2) can be addressed by students from any major or culture; (3) and can be supported by the students' opinions, not research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next term, the course will focus on introducing research methods. Were can I find topics that are: (1) similarly simple; (2) can be handled by students from any major; but that (3) will require students to rely on academic journals for support? I need students to practice gathering information, evaluating the credibility of sources, and assembling their ideas and evidence without getting bogged down in the complexity of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T21:54:15.470" Title="Where to find easy research topics any student could write about?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13796" CreationDate="2013-11-03T03:58:51.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see this issue when reading student lab reports in psychology. So for example, a student is paraphrasing a number of claims made by Smith (2000), so they write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X is related to Y (Smith, 2000). The cause of some stuff is blah blah (Smith, 2000). Then the system does that (Smith, 2000). But several reasons for this include A, B, and C (Smith, 2000). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem with this form of writing is that it does not make explicit the link between statement and citation. There are many possible links between citation and statement (e.g., Smith asserted a claim; Smith conducted research and obtained a finding; Smith is one reference among many where a generally accepted fact in the field is asserted; etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you are writing critical commentary about a particular article, then your writing style will need to be explicit about claims made in the target paper and what is your analysis. One way of restructuring the text is to make the author explicit in the text. E.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smith (2000) proposed&lt;/strong&gt; that X is related to Y. &lt;strong&gt;He found evidence that&lt;/strong&gt; the cause of some stuff is blah blah. &lt;strong&gt;He went on to show that&lt;/strong&gt; the system does that. &lt;strong&gt;He proposed&lt;/strong&gt;  several reasons for this including A, B, and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the full in-text reference is provided in the first sentence. The remaining sentences make it clear that the propositions are related to the citation in the first sentence. Furthermore, the connecting words (e.g., &quot;proposed&quot;, &quot;found evidence&quot;, etc.) provide further information on where the propositions came from (e.g., theory, mere assertion, empirical evidence, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T03:58:51.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13840" CreationDate="2013-11-03T06:30:47.213" Score="35" ViewCount="2064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learn math on my own. And I sometimes end up generalizing theorems. I do not claim that these generalizations are ground-breaking. However, I feel these generalizations are not entirely obvious at first-sight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I publish a paper on such a generalization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making this more relevant to the community at large, how do you know when your &quot;new&quot; ideas are paper-worthy? Should one pursue research directed only by external trends? As in, if I were to publish a paper, should I only look for current areas of research in order to conduct research that would be relevant to academia today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7573" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T16:10:54.117" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T11:09:21.927" Title="How do you know when your independent findings are paper-worthy?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13821" CreationDate="2013-11-03T07:38:41.773" Score="26" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you review a paper which relies on results some other paper and you do not have access to that paper, is it acceptable to contact the editor and ask whether the author can provide a copy of the referenced paper? Are requests like this reasonably common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should the referee simply take the word of authors that their conclusions based on the referenced paper are correct, even without seeing that paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T21:52:44.030" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T21:52:44.030" Title="Can a referee request a paper referenced in the reviewed paper?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13818" CreationDate="2013-11-03T07:54:32.473" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very hard question in general, and is defined by a combination of absolute standards and community opinions. It's very hard to answer your specific question (&quot;can I publish these results&quot;) and I don't think this community is the right forum to even ask that question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your second question is a good one. There are some things to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;make sure your ideas are indeed new. It's easy when working independently to be aware of the published literature, but not be aware of the large cloud of &quot;folklore&quot; knowledge that floats in the air of a community. You'll get a paper rejected because something is &quot;well known&quot;, even though you can't find a specific reference and no one provides one. To figure this out, it would help to approach an expert in the field, or at least someone you trust. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What kind of research you pursue is a complex combination of external trends and your interests. If you go too much towards external trends you might not find much pleasure in it. If you go too much towards personal interests (unless you have impeccable taste) you might find yourself isolated. It's all about balance. Similarly, while looking at current areas of research will tell you what's likely to be publishable, that's not the same thing as what's interesting or useful. Again, having some contact with people in the community might help a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T07:54:32.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13819" CreationDate="2013-11-03T08:06:12.193" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if the paper is crucial to the work, I don't think there is anything wrong with asking the editor to provide it to you. I think the editor would probably check for it himself first (in order to save time), and if not possible would relay your query to the authors. As an extreme measure, if the editor was unwilling to do this, I would simply consider writing back saying you are unable to fully review the paper because access to this crucial reference was not provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short: &lt;strong&gt;do not let your lack of subscriptions get in the way of doing of thorough review&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are some other ways around this. First, maybe you can find that paper in the usual ways: through interlibrary loan or on the “grey market” (ask a friend who's got more comprehensive subscriptions that yours). Second, maybe the editor offers reviewers some service that can be of help already (for example, Elsevier journals offer a 30-day free access to the Scopus database to their reviewers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T08:06:12.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-03T09:29:02.773" Score="5" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am registered as a psychologically disabled student with my University, and (for disability reasons) have asked my professor to allow me to take the exam at a date later than the ordinarily scheduled time.  I have not received a response from my professor yet; my guess is that she is hesitant to agree to this exception for several reasons. One, is the notion that I might have some kind of advantage over the rest of the class. Second, should my professor make modifications to the exam (e.g. change problems, make it harder) for my exam, then she may argue that the other students' exams will have to be graded differently from mine, and that's unfair. Third, the exam is scheduled at the normal class time, 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM, so it can be argued that if a student attends class regularly at those times, then there is no reason why the student should need to take the exam at a different time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor hasn't said any of the above (yet) and I don't read minds; this is just my best guess of what she will think of my request. University policy leaves the decision on such an exception entirely up to the professor. (No department in the University has authority to influence her decision. Not even the office of disability services can influence her decision in this case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your experiences at universities, how do most professors typically respond to such exceptions? For you professors, does the exception I'm requesting appear reasonable to you? Are there any other reasons you can think of for why the professor would/should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; grant me an exception for the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9275" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T10:07:15.560" Title="Exam exceptions for student with disabilities" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13822" CreationDate="2013-11-03T10:07:15.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exceptions can always be made under certain circumstances. Interestingly in your long and detailed question, there is no trace of a reason for requesting a delay other than your general condition, which I cannot see as a reason by itself. The university/department probably has some rules or policies for such cases. There are usually ways for people with different disabilities to take an exam in parallel with the scheduled exam in a a separate room, sometimes with specific tools and help. I can for example see that hospitalization and family funeral can be clear cases for such exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if an exception is made, what would you have to expect? To provide exactly the same exam twice seems extremely unlikely for the reasons you provide. So from the teacher perspective, making a new exam is not something to take lightly, it requires a lot of work (if done seriously). In other words, you would get a different exam designed to be of equal difficulty. From a student perspective a new exam can always appear either easier or more difficult based on what and how well you have studied but in general, the exam would not intentionally be made more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T10:07:15.560" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13818" CreationDate="2013-11-03T10:18:38.190" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to &quot;know&quot; if your material is publishable is to know the literature on the subject. I used &quot;know&quot; because all publications go through per review and that is the final hurdle your paper must pass before the answer is given. So the question really becomes what must be done to pass peer review? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to know your subject by finding and reading all relevant literature. An interesting personal observation is that it is easy to think you know more than you really do if you are not familiar with a specific field. Getting yourself up to date is hard work. Apart from the research literature, there is of course need to master the basics. As editor and reviewer I see many manuscripts presenting measurements that in themselves might be good but where interpretations are shallow and sometimes trivial because they have missed relevant research. Remember that journal rejection rates, although they vary, can be from below 50% to up to 90% for the more prestigious journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T10:18:38.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13819" CreationDate="2013-11-03T11:44:44.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects of the question: Should you try to find the necessary information (papers) to do a good review? And should you contact the author of the paper you review to ask for other sources written by that author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that you should attempt to gather all information you deem necessary to perform your task as reviewer. Since journals typically only accept published materials to be used for sources (with the possible exception of unpublished data or personal communications) you should be able to find such information given some time and work. That said, I doubt that many would keep a review on hold just because they have not been able to find a specific source unless that source is absolute key for a critical (in the negative sense) aspect of the paper. It is, however, possible to inform the editor that you have not been able to check up on this particular aspect since you are unable to obtain a copy of the paper within a reasonable time. Although it is always possible to purchase papers from publishers, I do not think we consider such actions within the expectations placed on a reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the second aspect about contacting the author for more information should be handled with care. As an editor, I would first of all want to be aware of such communications. Peer review is based on an objective evaluation for materials and although a simple request is not likely to change much it simply removes part of the desired distance between author and reviewer. One solution to this, which I would prefer is for the reviewer to contact the editor and ask for the material (from the editor or from the author through the editor). It has not happened to me that i have received such a request but I would not consider it other than a positive. I would also add that if a reviewer is lacking some key piece of information (as stated in the previous paragraph) I would greatly appreciate knowing about this weakness in the review. Given such information, I could, as and editor, add key comments of requests to the author to improve the paper in some respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-point, I would like to add that some papers that totally rely on other previously published on, for example methods and error discussions, should include enough of a summary to make the paper stand on its own in its entirety. It is thus possible to request a major revision with the explicit wish to see additions to the paper to remove the necessity to have to read other papers for key aspects. I fully realize the delicate balance in such requests since no-one is striving for excessively long publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T12:40:24.803" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T12:40:24.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13815" CreationDate="2013-11-03T11:51:48.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I have taught research methods for undergraduate work, I find that it is best to give the students a lot of freedom while still requiring acceptance for the topics. I do not think giving a list of acceptable topics is the way to pique the interest of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better in my experience to guide them and let them know that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; know their field better than anyone outside of that field, so they are capable of finding a suitable topic by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had students who choose &quot;I want to study the effect of someone smiling at you.&quot; It could be an interesting topic but, since my students are all business majors, I give them the restriction is that it must be related to business. When they submit this topic, I hand it back and ask them &quot;How does this relate to business as I said all research in this module must?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I could provide them a list but I really think that will just end up limiting them. Better to coax them out of their shell and get them to really start thinking and choosing and living with the consequences of their decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:50:20.350" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:50:20.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13803" CreationDate="2013-11-03T12:48:17.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your situation because I recently started my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to come up with ideas from those two papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from that try to come up with own ideas of yourself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take all the ideas with you in a meeting with your supervisor and tell him frankly what you want to work on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T12:48:17.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13803" CreationDate="2013-11-03T14:30:34.723" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky question. In principle, of course, it's best if one comes up with one's own question/project. However, it is all too easy to accidentally, from inexperience, choose a too-hard, or boring-to-experts, project, or, more subtly, a project in which neither you nor your advisor has any special insights to give you an edge over anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if you are hoping to make a run at the &quot;research post-doc&quot; game, you'll want to have done Ph.D. work that is of interest to experts in that field. A novice has the obvious difficulties ascertaining whether a given topic might be of interest to experts, but your advisor should be able to clarify this. I have seen examples of people working enthusiastically on a PhD topic, and finish the degree, only to have no one care at all, and no job offers result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't think it's the case that a &quot;smart-enough person&quot; can pick random problems (that are of interest to experts) and expect to make significant progress merely by wanting to. While it's true that &quot;fresh eyes&quot; can be helpful, literal inexperience is rarely useful. I tend to think that one's advisor should give &quot;insider advice&quot; about un-obvious possibilities for progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in reality, I think that the true choices available are something like first choosing an advisor based on their expertise. Then ask them for guidance. Presumably they will not dictate a project, but merely suggest, giving &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; choices... but it is very important to continue the iteration of &quot;getting advice&quot;, rather than just privately making a choice and assuming it is wise. Lacking the information and experience your advisor should have, it is essentially impossible to make good choices on your own. Tentative choices, to be discussed with your advisor, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T14:30:34.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13803" CreationDate="2013-11-03T14:55:38.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in general the role of the PhD should increase trough the course of the project. In the beginning, the supervisor will have a significant role, both in selecting the subject and performing daily duties. This is needed imo to get the unexperienced PhD going. Later, the role of the PhD increases, and the supervisor takes a more passive role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Netherlands, it is customary to write four journal papers as a PhD (4 years). While the first might be an idea that your supervisor came up with, your last should probably be your own idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T14:55:38.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13832" CreationDate="2013-11-03T14:57:37.640" Score="9" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a few years of graduate school, I've noticed that I may not be asking questions and making criticism in the workshops in the best way. By &quot;best,&quot; I have two goals for comments. The first (selfish) goal is to develop a reputation for being a intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments. The second goal is to effectively communicate my concerns to help others improve their research. Luckily these goals are mutually reinforcing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observing others in my department's weekly workshop, the questions that usually get the most attention are those that are phrased quite strongly, even aggressively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tendency has always been to be polite and not try to put someone on the spot about their work. I gently communicate the problems I see with the work. As a result, presenters often do not listen. They brush off the questions as if they are unthreatening and thereof of limited concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want workshops to be a threatening or aggressive environment, but it seems like only questions that get the presenter's adrenaline flowing regularly warrant proper consideration and response. Maybe I'm going too soft and I can find a middle ground without being one of the aggressive (sometimes rude) ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T17:30:38.017" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T18:19:33.383" Title="Etiquette for effective workshop comments" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13831" CreationDate="2013-11-03T15:15:43.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure that your questions at a conference are necessarily a major concern. If you look at how science is propagated, conferences are typically a step before publication. Therefore, it is noble of you to think of it as a point where you can provide constructive comments to authors about their work. However, the most critical point comes when work is published and peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your experience at conferences (which I to some extent share) you can ask yourself the following: Is the author/presenter interested in your comments. If he/she is, then it would be counter productive to ignore your questions. The question-and-answer format, on the other hand, is too brief and fragmented considering the time constraints of a presentation schedule to be the forum for constructive criticism. That is probably also why the more aggressive questions dominate. In the end, there is nothing wrong with approaching a person during a break to initiate a deeper discussion. you will then also get a better feeling if your comments are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final thought. I tend to think as the saying: &lt;em&gt;it is sometimes better to be silent and seem a fool than to speak and prove it&lt;/em&gt;. You can exchange &quot;fool&quot; by whatever trait you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7934" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T17:20:08.067" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T17:20:08.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-03T15:42:00.560" Score="6" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether there're job sites that post jobs in applied/interdisciplinary mathematics, more specially, say postdocs or higher positions in mathematics and medical imaging, mathematics and computer vision. I'm aware of mostly all the popular job sites, mathjobs, euro math jobs, jobs.ac.uk, nordic math jobs etc etc, but most of the jobs there are of 'pure' nature, with very few for applied/interdisciplinary. I find it a little strange, since it seems (I might be mistaken) that they've more funding in the interdisciplinary areas, which should mean they'd have more available jobs too, but I don't see any!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my particular case, I'm trying to find postdoctoral position in mathematical imaging problems, which would use significant amount of conformal/quasiconformal mappings, Riemann surfaces, differential geometry etc. I guess looking into individual group's webpage is an option, but that's just too much work, since you've to google them first, then see what groups actually work in your areas, then look at their sites etc. But if there's an webpage containing all the information, that'll be much better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you know any such website for the above (for Europe and the US), I'd appreciate if you could pass them onto me. Thanks! And sorry for having sounded so shameless about the funding comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T11:40:01.390" Title="Job sites for applied/interdisciplinary jobs in Mathematics?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13837" CreationDate="2013-11-03T18:08:17.240" Score="9" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a blog post citing several paywalled papers. Could I also put graphs, diagrams or photos from these papers in my blog post under fair use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is medical object detection and I would like to show examples from the papers where the authors show in which cases their algorithms fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2698" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:20:00.443" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:20:00.443" Title="Can I use a graph or figures of a paywalled paper under fair use?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13834" CreationDate="2013-11-03T18:26:55.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I have contacted the first or authors directly and asked them for permission and most of them have replied within 2–3 days. Also my librarian had advised me to refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sherapa/Romeo&lt;/a&gt; (a listing of journals and their policies). Some journals are very lenient and wouldn't mind using images if you have explicit permission from author. Important thing to note is once journal is published, the author waives away all his rights and only journal paper has rights on the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:48:38.307" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:48:38.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13818" CreationDate="2013-11-03T18:32:10.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even professional scientists cannot know if their last idea is original and new (and so, if it is worth publishing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today science is too big, too complex and too separated in different specialties to allow one person to have a general overview (this is the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Big Science&lt;/a&gt;&quot; issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are people who are specialist of evaluating scientific contributions. There are &lt;em&gt;referee&lt;/em&gt; of Journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer would be to try to be published. Even if the paper is not accepted, it is the opportunity to have feedbacks, references and to see what your idea deserves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9282" LastEditorUserId="9282" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T11:09:21.927" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T11:09:21.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13834" CreationDate="2013-11-03T19:53:12.793" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether the articles were paywalled or not, you should resolve your problem in three steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content license&lt;/strong&gt;: check if you can find a version of the figure with liberal licensing terms. The paywalled version certainly does not fit the bill… but you may find the same figure (or a similar one) in a pre-print version of the paper, under a different license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obtaining permission for use&lt;/strong&gt;: even if the content is not available under a free license, the publisher can grant you permission to reproduce the image. Nowadays, many publishers use a nice interface called Rightslink. If you look for example at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja4067207&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;random article&lt;/a&gt; from the American Chemical Society (which is far from being the most liberal of publishers), you can see a “Rights and permissions” link. In that particular example, the publisher will grant you reproducing of up to 4 figures of the paper on the internet, even on a for-profit website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fair use&lt;/strong&gt;: the fair use doctrine is a tricky, murky area of US copyright law. It's not as wide as people generally assume. It has to be judged on a case-by-case basis: see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/fair-use-copyright-and-images-faq/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/04/26/is-reprinting-a-figure-fair-us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; a notorious case from back in 2007 which is very close to your particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my own conclusion on fair use: it's nice in principle, but unless you're ready to hire a lawyer to double-check (or get formal training on that), just play it safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T19:53:12.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13815" CreationDate="2013-11-03T20:29:22.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I am concerned research methods are disciplinary in nature. Even restricting your topics to social sciences, and your research skill focus to literature reviews, I'm not sure you're going to be able to craft topics suitable for all social science disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T20:29:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="797" CreationDate="2013-11-03T21:03:41.577" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's quite a while since you posted this question but here's what I've seen been extremely effective (when I was a student for those courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Course 1: A theory course with reading and understanding of advanced material&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor took great effort in actually explaining everything using a chalk and board (better than PowerPoint for theoretical course IHMO). Of course, we were told to read the papers but he explained as if teaching in a chapter/concept in the lecture. Thereafter, he'd assign us some homework problems and we were allowed to do them in groups. Now, these HW problems were really innovative. They weren't part of any book. He would actually &quot;create&quot; them based on the ideas he was teaching. He would cast an existing problem, either from something he was working on or just create one and ask us to solve it. THAT was the master's stroke, IMHO. The entire class would bang their heads against the wall to solve them and learn a lot as a result. We could solve the problems but not always, but the fun part was applying what we learned, consequently requiring  us to understand the material really well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Course 2: Exact same format as you mentioned as well as that suggested by @lynxoid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nothing learnt. Honestly. Only the people assigned the papers actually read them. Maybe a few questions here and there but very little interaction other than some from the professor. Overall, the students weren't really happy with it. I barely even remember half the things from that class. But for the former, remember almost everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another variation you could try with style #1 (I read about this somewhere): Tell them that you are going to tell one &quot;lie&quot; (false information) when explaining the material. They have to spot the lie by the end of class. If they don't, they have learned something that is not true. If they spot it, a small reward like a chocolate else, it's a HW due next week. This drives them nuts. You can make the lies progressively complex and sometimes not lie too (You can say that you lied when you told them that every lecture would have a lie :) I haven't tried this variation but will do so soon. I feel this is an excellent way to get them to master the course content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="407" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T21:03:41.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13818" CreationDate="2013-11-03T21:20:46.517" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complementary to Suresh's and Peter's more comprehensive answers that you should &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; take into account: (+1 to both) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Use ArXiv&lt;/em&gt;; ie. publish it yourself. Go ahead and write your findings down and put them in public. This will be a good exercise as : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you will be covered for plagiarism etc. and you 'll be also able to refer other people's attention to it. It will be immensely easier to attract people attention to something tangible than just referring to &quot;some idea you think it is great&quot;. As Torvalds said : &quot;&lt;em&gt;Talk is cheap. Show me the code.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (or Maths in your case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people you do not know, can actually find you; or even cite you for that matter. I know a lot of people who regularly read ArXiv papers to keep up to speed with the bleeding edge of stuff. You might be lucky and really get some attention from people that actually care for your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you will see for yourself if what you wrote can be formulated in a research paper and it doesn't come across as some ''back of the envelope'' calculations. You might even identify where feedback from a collaborator would be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you are up to something good, put it up there. Worse case scenario: nobody bothers and you never know if you were right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T21:20:46.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13843" CreationDate="2013-11-04T07:57:49.077" Score="9" ViewCount="565" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is feasible to assume that you cannot have more than one grant, since getting a grant means that you are paid for a research project and you cannot work on too many projects at once. So answer should be one. Nevertheless there should be some researchers that have more than one grant. How common is that? Is this field related? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T07:22:49.430" Title="How many grants it is possible to have simultaneously?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13842" CreationDate="2013-11-04T08:07:48.560" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my institution, most researchers have more than one grant.  It is extremely common over a wide range of disciplines, at least in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, one is required to include the &quot;level of effort&quot; in each grant proposal; i.e., the percentage of one's time that will be spent on that project.  That number is never 100%; more often, it may be 10-50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many fields, the &quot;principal investigator&quot; on the grant may do only a small part of the actual research, with the bulk being done by students and post-docs.  This part is very field-dependent.  In some fields, full professors at top universities are expected to have very many grants simultaneously, or at least some very large grants that involve a lot more than the full time of a single person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T07:22:49.430" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T07:22:49.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13842" CreationDate="2013-11-04T08:16:09.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one example: the National Science Foundation in the US funds academic researchers. Usually the researchers draws some amount of summer salary from the grant (the rest - most of the grant money - goes to student support and travel). But you can be supported by different grants for different fractions of your summer. It's not impossible to have four active grants, each paying 0.5 months of your summer salary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T08:16:09.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T10:01:18.203" Score="15" ViewCount="13351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be applying for MS (computer science) in US schools. I am from a rural part of India where lecturers (who will be writing letter of recommendations) in my college still don't have official email id (e.g. &lt;code&gt;name@mycollege.edu&lt;/code&gt;) and they use commercial services (e.g. gmail or yahoo mail). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What shall I do? Will it harm my application? I think so, because I doubt how it can be evaluated as not-fake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other option would be not to consider this LOR at all. I am currently working under a professor in one of the top institutes of India and I can get a recommendation letter from the professor. But I am working under him from past 6 months. How does this weigh against the LOR of my bachelor school lecturer who knows me for 4 years ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add more details, I completed my bachelors 3 years ago, so will this LOR be any of help since the lecturer only knows how I was 3 years ago, but not now ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditorDisplayName="user10269" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T08:04:06.247" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T08:04:06.247" Title="Letter of Recommendation from an unofficial college email ID" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13842" CreationDate="2013-11-04T10:18:15.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would have to check the conditions of the grants to be sure. This answer is based on my experience with some European grants. Especially for &quot;personal&quot; grants that pay your full salary, it is often not allowed to have multiple of such grants simultaneously. In addition it there are often conditions to ensure you are not being paid twice (from different grants) for the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation in Europe is different from the US in the sense that university employees are paid all year round, not only during the teaching semester. So they don't have to source additional income in summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T10:18:15.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13172" CreationDate="2013-11-04T10:37:26.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right to be cautious. better safe than sorry. But as Nate said there is an ethical responsibility on the side of the recruiter to keep things you said during the interview confidential. And since you are considering working for him, you surely do not have reason to doubt his honesty, or else you would have ran away!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: you should speak about your unpublished work and results. Be careful to mention that it is unpublished, though, to be sure they get it and do not mention it inadvertently to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T10:37:26.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2013-11-04T13:13:04.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer by Andy W discusses the role of Rubrics, which I think is key to simplify grading. They provide better understanding for both expectations and evaluation from the student's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to that, one method that I find works in many situations to reduce grading is to gather students after the exam and discuss the answers in session. This way I can express the points I consider important for a good answer. I realize this cannot always be accommodated in the schedule of courses and exams. But, students appreciate the opportunity to ask questions etc. The grading can then be done quicker since I can refer to what was mentioned in session rather than making many detailed comments. The comments necessary will then be more of a summary connecting to the rubrics and how the answer fills (or not) these criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say how much time is needed for the grading is difficult in detail but I believe significant reductions can be made, including post-grading discussions with students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T13:13:04.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13798" CreationDate="2013-11-04T13:50:25.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question is vague, but I think vague questions are the ones that provide the most general answers and thus the most useful. Thus, I'll try to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is it vague?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is not &quot;one thing&quot;, there is nothing like the &quot;one true research&quot;. There are many different aspects of research that can influence this decision and the experience of doing research. Among others I can think off the top of my head about: The area, whether it is applied or theoretical, formal or empirical, the people in the lab, if you work alone or in a team, the supervisor(s), the project(s) or grants that provide the funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you have to consider that all that collides with your personality, assets and skills, or the lack of. Some people have natural skills for writing and communicating, some other people for rigor and analytic thinking, etc. So even if two people are doing the same &quot;amount&quot; of writing and analytic thinking, for the former writing may take 80% of the time and for the latter it may be the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you like &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; research but you don't like &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; research it may simply be that you don't like &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why the answer cannot really be answered. But as I said, those are the best answers, what we should do in these cases is lifting up the level of abstraction and providing some guidelines so that anyone can find their own answers. I'll do my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing to do is find out what do you want. Do you want to do some research or not, even if it is some Utopian idea of research that does not really exist anywhere. Then try to find some place where this research is being done. Then try to see if you can access this place. Then you will have to find a compromise solution between what you want, what is available and what is available and accessible for you. If this compromise solution seems to be satisfying for you, then go for it, if it is not then leave it for some other life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest part is trying to know if a place that seems to fit your interests is really that way or that's only a delusion, the best approach is try to speak with the PhD students there, find out how do they feel about that, if they are similar or different from you, etc. You can also check the statistics like how long does it take for them to finish, number of publications, etc. that will give you expected values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the difference between expectations and reality, wishful thinking is a hazard. There are quite a few pictures with a skeptic/pessimistic meme about expectations and reality to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to some specific details of your question, you should compare this Utopian place with your current place, and possible alternative PhD programs you could start. That way you have an additional option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not doing a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing a PhD in a place that suits you, even if it is a compromise solution (life's hard)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing a PhD where you are, it's again a compromise solution maybe less optimal than #2, but you save a year with this option, this may pay off or not, that's something for you to consider.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end nobody knows, life is about choices with partial information, choose wisely and work hard, no matter the path you choose, this train doesn't move without your effort. If you choose rationally, considering all the information that you have, you may make mistakes, but since they will be caused by information that you don't have, you should not regret them, that's life. Basically, if you do your best, you should not regret the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T14:03:56.507" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T14:03:56.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:03:58.583" Score="54" ViewCount="5840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a group of bright students who will interrupt the material presentation with questions that will be answered in the next slide or sentence.  I appreciate that they are thinking ahead but I have times when I just need to get the information out there and then discuss it when everyone has had time to process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advice can you give me? What are best practices for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9295" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T01:32:11.353" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:59:10.160" Title="How to deal with premature student questions during a lecture which will be covered in a subsequent slide?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:20:47.827" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You stated the question very well: you want to lower the number of 'easy questions' (the ones that are natural at this point), but not discourage them to ask questions altogether. Apart from the usual 'we will get there in a moment' response I see two ways of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think it is seriously needed you could have a conversation with them about it. You say they are bright students so they probably will see the value in restraining themselves a bit. You could possibly formulate some sort of policy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is always OK to ask a question immediately if there is something that you did not understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a question of curiosity (like 'but mam, if that is true what does it imply for X?') then you could wait a bit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do that and pause regularly enough (may be not once per lecture but 10 to 15 minutes) so they can ask their questions, then they will not be frustrated yet allow you to deliver the course without too many interruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T14:25:18.973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T14:25:18.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13845" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:32:28.770" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Will it harm my application?&lt;/em&gt;” — Maybe, maybe not… it depends on the mindset of the persons who will review the application. The likelihood that it impacts negatively your application is probably not very high (there are more people than you think, even in non-rural non-Indian areas, who use commercial email accounts rather than institutional ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you are right there is some slight risk: there have been recent cases of people using faking email accounts for other researchers, e.g. in order to increase their chances in peer review. Because these cases have been publicized recently, people may be more wary of non-institutional addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more to the point: &lt;em&gt;what can you do?&lt;/em&gt; — Not much. &lt;strong&gt;If the format  of the letter is free, ask your letter writers to use official letterhead from their institution…&lt;/strong&gt; Otherwise, try and see if your letter writers are &lt;strong&gt;listed on their institution's public pages, at least, with their email address&lt;/strong&gt;: that way, the person receiving the application will be able (if he wants to) to check their identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T14:32:28.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:35:26.487" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is good to have students feel free to ask questions. I often get similar question in lectures and just answer by either moving to the next slide and continue the lecture with a &quot;good question, I was just getting to that&quot; or &quot;good question, I will get to that in a moment&quot;. The result of that is hopefully that students get more and more comfortable with you covering material and with that security questions may actually decrease over time. yes, it is frustrating some times but it means the students are concentrating on your lecture and that is really what you want so don't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can of course ask oneself what is causing the questions. Is it that the material could be presented in a better way (order). use the comments to reflect on the way you present the material and try to see if you can &quot;defuse&quot; such questions by some re-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One practical matter is to make sure your present the core points first before discussing how you arrive there. Then the route will be more clear and the wait for the culmination avoided. I am of course not certain this is valid in your case but you can consider approaching the train of thought in a different way than &quot;normal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With time (running the lectures a couple of times) you probably get a good picture of what are repeating questions and you can actually use them in your lecture by saying &quot;you may now wonder why [something] and I will get back to that in a moment&quot; (or what may be appropriate. Do not be afraid to experiment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T14:35:26.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T16:27:35.510" Score="6" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to 6 universities for MS and I have short-listed 2 professors from each university whose field of interest is nearly the same to that of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with mentioning my interest in their work, can I also mention about a topic/project that I have been working on or 'am planning to work in future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please suggest!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The topic/project will be similar to the research interests of the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="8324" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T16:53:09.977" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T17:04:48.473" Title="Can we mention our own idea of a project in the letter to a professor during grad applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T16:37:05.587" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I get such questions from my students, I always answer the same way: &quot;I am &lt;strong&gt;so&lt;/strong&gt; glad you asked that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a mistake to view such questions as a negative phenomenon that should be avoided and prevented. For one thing, the question shows that the student is paying attention and drawing the proper conclusions. But consider the benefit to all the other students, those who might not have formulated the question yet: the question serves as proof that what you're teaching is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider two alternatives (using an example from computer programming):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teacher&lt;/strong&gt;: And that's how you let a user input a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student&lt;/strong&gt;: What if you want to take many numbers from the user? Do you have to copy and paste the same code over and over?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer A&lt;/strong&gt;: Please save your questions until after I show you loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer B&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm &lt;strong&gt;so&lt;/strong&gt; glad you asked that! Avoiding copy and pasting code is an important habit for computer programmers. So let's talk about &lt;em&gt;loops&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student's question served as a perfect setup for the next lesson, and in a way that convinces other students that the lesson is practical and necessary. It's like teaching with the Socratic method (&quot;why is this useful? ... because it...&quot;), except that you have an accomplice in the audience instead of having to talk to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1340" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T16:37:05.587" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T16:45:56.850" Score="3" ViewCount="2710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like know to what are some good/effective ways to showcase one's research capabilities, other than paper publications, when the person is out of academia and applying for schools in USA for MS(preferably MS by Thesis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to my case, I graduated 3 years ago and now I am out of academia. I do not have any paper publications. So I am looking for other good ways to show the admissions committee that I am capable of doing research. But how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For eg., a personal website where I can list my technical essays (which are not worthy as to be published as a paper) mentioning methods I tried to improve an idea, or where I failed etc. List of research projects I did independently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I want to know how can I make myself a potential candidate for the MS by thesis programme(other than paper publications) being outside an academia and working independently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:11:24.407" Title="What are some good ways to showcase one's research capabilities while applying for graduate programmes" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T17:00:49.893" Score="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option that I saw once and I thought was, frankly, pretty great:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my Introduction to Logic class my professor taught from Powerpoint slides, and the slide was divided into two sections, the main section on the left, and a small column on the right. The column on the right was titled &quot;Questions You Probably Have&quot; and was exactly that. Underneath each question in bold it either said &quot;Next slide!&quot; or &quot;Ask me!&quot;  And so, inevitably, people would ask the &quot;Ask Me!&quot; questions and he would click the &quot;Ask me!&quot; link and it would jump to a tangential slide and he would go into the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if someone asked him something not on the slide, he would always say, &quot;Great question!&quot;, give the questioner a bonus point on the next exam (even though he did this no one abused it, I'm sure he had a plan if they had, but it was another amazing thing he did), And as he answered it he would scribble a few notes. Before the next class, he would show us the new slide he'd created (or the new text in the next slide) for that question and ask us if it made sense now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, as a shortcut method it covered all three of the core issues this sort of thing entails: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Here's what's coming up next.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Yes, yes, you are very clever for thinking of that.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting a coherent lesson together that encourages feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it was kind of meta and spooky when the slides really would predict questions I'd have, when really it was just the material presented itself the same to hundreds of other people before me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9299" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T17:00:49.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13858" CreationDate="2013-11-04T17:04:48.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, that shows proactiveness, interest, creativity and many good things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest to publish it somewhere before, even if it's just a blog, arxiv.org, safecreative.org or your favorite option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise it will be &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; idea, at least for some professors. Some of those may actually have had that idea (years) before you suggested it, so it may really be &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; idea. By publishing it you are able to prove that at least you got to the same idea/conclusion on your own, even if it was years after them. In case that matters to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to emphasize the research aspects of that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T17:04:48.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T17:36:31.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with all the other answers, but I would make one more very practical suggestion: Consider putting more material on your slides! If you have 50 slides and students are always asking about material on the next slide, then putting it onto 25 slides will remove half the instances of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this can be taken too far, but it is worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T17:36:31.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2013-11-04T18:01:14.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the humanities 4000-5000wd an hour for commented responses on essays.  Two to three times as fast for commentless grading of essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &quot;work norm&quot; ala Taylorism, but it hasn't been subject to speed up as far as I've seen (unlike the head count in tutorials work norm, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Australian system, multiple essay based departments' work cultures amongst permanent members of staff; and multiple rounds of multiple sites of collective contract negotiations with casual employees; as a Trade Unionist and department level administrator with previous pay responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T18:01:14.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13866" CreationDate="2013-11-04T18:50:18.140" Score="17" ViewCount="1555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was supposed to defend my thesis in another week. But, due to the time schedule of one of the committee members I have to give the defense it tomorrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developed a rough defense presentation (probably need revision)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have less than a day to prepare&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone advise me a plan as to defend this successfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULT : FOLLOWED ALL ADVISES POSTED HERE AND DEFENDED SUCCESSFULLY ! THANK YOU ALL !&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qGX6y.png&quot; alt=&quot;Final Stage&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7627" LastEditorUserId="7627" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T18:09:25.530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T18:09:25.530" Title="Time short on thesis defense preperation" Tags="&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13865" CreationDate="2013-11-04T19:12:01.923" Score="24" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call together your graduate school friends, and set aside a two hour block of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them the presentation in its current form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Receive (possibly scathing) feedback and take good notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go fix the presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your friends are up for it, repeat the process, but not more than once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice at least two more times before tomorrow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the defense tomorrow, and pass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8. Buy lots of beer for your buddies who gave you help to pull this thing together.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T19:12:01.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-04T20:35:11.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when I interrupt people, it's often because I know that if I wait until there's a lull, I'll have forgotten my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people without faulty memory, it's still a good habit not to blurt out a question the moment it pops into your head. I find that most of my questions are answered if I just hold on to them for a minute or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a formal classroom setting, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask students to hold their questions until you've finished talking (or, if you can remember, when you prompt for questions). For those, like me, who can't hold on to a thought for more than five seconds, there is pencil and paper...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9302" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T20:35:11.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T23:26:31.053" Score="12" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started working with this professor, I am beginning to really like the work they are doing in his lab. When do you  think I should ask him if I can do a PhD under his tutelage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9306" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T06:10:44.210" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T06:10:44.210" Title="When would be a good time to ask a professor if he will consider being my PhD advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13868" CreationDate="2013-11-05T00:02:42.750" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on how far out you are from starting your PhD (are you a first year undergrad, halfway through a masters or somewhere in between?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should ask as early as possible so that if you are rejected you have time to find someone else. Although the earlier you ask the less likely you are to be accepted, since you may not have shown ability or determination yet. I feel that the best time to ask is probably after the professor has indicated that they like your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T00:02:42.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13886" CreationDate="2013-11-05T05:46:23.257" Score="18" ViewCount="25945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if I should include my high school details in the resume of my graduate school application ? It's unclear about this bit since we are not actually submitting any proof of high school records during grad school application( they only ask for undergraduate details).&#xA;But my high school final examination details are particularly good (better than my undergraduate credentials infact!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9186" LastActivityDate="2017-09-02T11:33:34.500" Title="Should I include high school details in Grad School Resume?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13872" CreationDate="2013-11-05T06:45:07.453" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already explain why: &lt;em&gt;they only ask for undergraduate details&lt;/em&gt;. The graduate school admission committees already have too many applications to look at. Don’t over-load them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your idea is actually counter-productive. If your high school record is better than your undergrad credentials, they would wonder why your academic achievement is regressing instead of progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T06:45:07.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13872" CreationDate="2013-11-05T06:55:36.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually a bad idea to include documents which are not actually required. Some universities even specifically mention not to send documents which are not required.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also as @scaahu explained, it will give an negative impact as you did poorly in undergraduate compared to high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastEditorUserId="6240" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T14:37:28.427" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:37:28.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T07:18:03.277" Score="9" ViewCount="943" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the midst of creating a series of videos to teach statistics online. Do any of you have a list of common do's and don'ts that can make a big difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how does one assess how much to explain a topic, since you do not get instant feedback by looking at facial reactions to a given concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way to minimize this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9311" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T02:06:41.900" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T02:06:41.900" Title="Etiquette or useful guidelines while making video lectures" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13868" CreationDate="2013-11-05T07:31:50.687" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would tell the professor that you're interested right away, but don't necessarily expect him/her to say yes or no immediately.  Rather than saying &quot;would you advise my Ph.D. research?&quot;, just say, &quot;I'm planning to do a Ph.D. and I'm interested in working under your supervision.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably get a &quot;let's see how this first project turns out&quot;, but it will be easier to discuss in the future and the professor will know you are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T07:31:50.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13172" CreationDate="2013-11-05T07:37:23.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the following won't apply to you, but may be useful for people in other fields with the same question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work in a field where putting preprints online is an accepted practice, then write up your work and upload a preprint.  In this way you clearly establish priority without needing to wait for the article to be refereed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in Physics, CS, and Math, most researchers put preprints on arXiv.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T11:34:22.710" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T11:34:22.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13833" CreationDate="2013-11-05T11:40:01.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.siam.org/jobseeker/search/results/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIAM Job board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netlib.org/na-digest-html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NA-Digest list&lt;/a&gt;, ostensibly restricted to numerical analysis but in practice lists jobs in a wide range of math-related subjects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T11:40:01.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13875" CreationDate="2013-11-05T14:00:34.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do's:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do your best to pretend there are students in the classroom. Obviously, don't ask questions to the void, but scan the room, move about as you might in a real classroom (but don't go off camera), and take &quot;normal&quot; pauses if you're writing on a board.  This is an example from a short video I made for some of my pre-algebra students, and there weren't any students in the classroom at the time:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=est2X6-BVkw&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=est2X6-BVkw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write big enough and clearly enough so the video picks it up. In the video I linked to, I realized that the pen I was using was pretty crappy, so I switched to a better pen (although I probably should have redone the entire clip). Even better is the way Khan Academy does it, with a digital board that he writes on during the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have a good microphone, preferably one that is wireless that you put on your shirt/lapel. There is nothing worse than trying to watch/listen to a video that has poor sound.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don'ts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't block the board!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid to make a few mistakes that remain on tape. You can spend too much time re-doing videos for simple mistakes. If you make a mistake and recognize it immediately, fix it as you would in a real classroom. If you find a mistake in post-processing, feel free to overlay the video with a text box that fixes the error -- no one will care. Obviously, you can re-record if you wish, but keep in mind what your time is worth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one assess how much to explain a topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of those times you have to do the best you can and try to elicit feedback from the students after they watch the video. The reason I posted the video I linked above is because I realized that a number of students didn't get it when I first taught the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's one difference between face-to-face instruction and online video instruction. This is what email correspondence with the professor is for. You can also consider posting response videos to frequent questions you've been asked via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:00:34.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13172" CreationDate="2013-11-05T14:17:56.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to ask for some discretion when discussing my dissertation with professors who do similar research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not. The correct answer is &quot;certainly&quot;. If it doesn't come, run away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, to me it sounds extremely early to look for a postdoc job when you do not yet have any publications about dissertation project (and while you are still collecting data).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:17:56.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T14:26:04.117" Score="5" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good (preferably open-source) software for making illustrative videos to explain one's research? I am currently looking for software to make a small video on my research topic that could complement presentation slides. The video may not delve into all technical details, but should summarise all technical content in a compact and entertaining way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One source that I know of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sparkol.com/products/videoscribe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Videoscribe&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.videoscribe.co/scribes#video-wSmPIBJWXGM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample video&lt;/a&gt;), but I have not tried it yet. Are there other/better alternatives, especially open-source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-07-24T15:36:31.153" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T15:36:31.153" Title="Software to make illustrative videos explaining a research topic" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13875" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:01:40.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow, I am on the same boat! Way to go!! Anyway, I'm slowly experimenting as well and am happy to share what I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Synchronous or asynchronous, or both?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foremost, you'll need to decide if your online module is going to be synchronous or asynchronous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Synchronous&lt;/em&gt; module involves real-time interaction. For example, online conference where students can type in comments into a twitter-like platform or directly ask you through microphone. The pros about this format are that you can clarify any problem instantly and the format mimics class-room interaction; the cons are that one technical error can throw the whole class into chaos, and multi-tasking in talking, reading, typing, and clicking through slides require some skill. It'd be better to have a teaching assistant to comb through the incoming messages and give you a synopsis of students' question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of enrollment matters very much as well. If there are a few students only, you can afford to tune up the interactivity (e.g. more discussion, Q&amp;amp;A, etc.) If the enrollment is high (from my experience, more than 20 or so,) then the format may have to be less spontaneously interactive: perhaps a relatively longer lecture, coupled with break-out group discussion, and a big wrap up as a whole group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Asynchronous&lt;/em&gt; module is a bit more like learning anything online. For example, online presentations/workshops through which students can learn the materials at their own pace. Comments and evaluation are usually done through blog post, e-mail, or forums. The pros of this formats are that students have a lot of flexibility, and the lecturer usually has to devote one large fixed chunk of time to set up the workshop, and it can run itself (more or less.) The cons are that the preparation is extremely intensive and assessments have to be carefully chosen and planted here and there to make sure the course is working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hybrid or fully online?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some online course would mix in-class lecture and online together. For example, students may meet at a classroom for the first two weeks to learn about the requirement and format of the class plus some fundamental background lectures. And then they'll go back home and switch to online. Some other hybrid model may involve coming to class every alternate week, etc. The pros are quite apparent as the lecturer can establish a real presence, and it also provides some opportunities for networking between students, which is a crucial component especially in graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another sub-genre of hybrid online teaching is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flipped classroom&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; through which students will watch the lecture in advance, complete the assignments, and come to class for more challenging group exercises, case studies, or journal critique. I am actually planning two classes using this format and hopefully I can get a real sense of what a difference it may make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also conduct your course fully online... that way no one have to travel, leading this format to have probably the lowest carbon footprints, if limiting such is part of your aspirations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microlectures&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For video lectures, length matters. I'd suggest breaking up your lecture into one-idea, one-bite chunks. Formats like &lt;a href=&quot;http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7090.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;microlecture&lt;/a&gt; will be a good place to start. For me, I usually try to explain an idea within 10 slides in 20 minutes, which is usually the attentions span for someone sitting in front of a computer. Never make hourly videos; they are a pain to download and very tedious to sit through. Pausing and coming back later is possible, but it's better to capitalize on the online features and make learning (esp. technical subjects like statistics) more modular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good way is to incorporate some &lt;strong&gt;Interspersed exercises&lt;/strong&gt;. For instance, after the microlecture on normal distribution, build in some exercises asking the students to check the &lt;em&gt;z&lt;/em&gt;-score table, or answer some online quizzes about application. What exercises to put in there depends on your class objectives and competencies to be taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mention that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if&#xA;  someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have&#xA;  just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is not totally true. As long as your script is clear and correct, students can always replay the video to listen again. They can also try the exercises to evaluate themselves. From the exercises you can detect problems and misunderstanding to some extend, and provide feedback accordingly. I would like to emphasize that this is a pretty different generation we are looking at, &lt;em&gt;gen Y and after are actually much better as a communicator online than in person&lt;/em&gt;. In the tool paragraph I'll talk about some ways to let student provide feedback or ask question about the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Combine self evaluation + formal evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, build in plenty of self evaluations within and between students: online quiz, blog post, comments for others' post, exercises, etc. Let the students know in advance that how they will be formally evaluated for grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be present and don't be always present&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &quot;curse&quot; of being an online teacher is that students think you're as convenient as the materials you put online. This can be bad cause you may get an e-mail at 3:30 am and you happened to have forgotten to mute the phone that night. Be very upfront about your availability and honor the promised office hour. You can use online communication such as Skype, Google Chat, etc. to communicate with students. Also, make sure to give them an expected time for your response (I have been using one office day, which seems doable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use the right tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for the right tools has been the biggest deal for me by far. I broke my class into three major components:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lecture: I use a few ways and they all have their own advantages. MS Powerpoint with voice recording is amazingly easy. Users can also correct and re-record on each single slide if you're not happy about it. Adobe Presentation has been wonderful, you may even edit the soundtrack and record over with the corrected script. Both are quite friendly to multimedia such as embedding videos. &lt;strong&gt;Invest in a good microphone&lt;/strong&gt;, for recording lecture on screen, a headphone with built-in microphone (around $30) and a quiet room will work fine. For recording real lecture, have some school IT unit hook you up to a wireless microphone. Video lecture + speech submerged in echo + difficult subject = withdrawal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Software demonstration: I use a software called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snagit&lt;/a&gt; to take screenshot video of all software demonstration. The software allows users to export it as movie files, which can be linked to the lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other materials: I use a wiki platform to host all materials. I also authorized all student as editor so that they can maintain a project page in the wiki and collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teachers start going online by videotaping the lecture and upload that online. I feel slightly negative about this approach because it does not exploit the pluses of going online. However, if someone so wants to do that, I'd suggest investing some time to identify a software that allows picture-in-picture. One camera can focus on the lecture, one zoom onto the board or show the slides. Having said that, I have to admit that in most of the &quot;online&quot; lectures I have watched, the board writing is mostly illegible. I haven't incorporate writing into my work, but if I have to, I'll consider to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a 3-D project to show my writing onto the board. There you can use thicker pen or play with the zooming to make sure all space on the white screen is used. An added benefit is that projecting on screen does not cause glaring on the video, while a white board may show glaring that obstructs the text.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a drawing pad and a very simple drawing software (even MS Paint) as your writing tool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students' feedback, I have been having some luck with online forum and tweeter-like bill such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://todaysmeet.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Todaysmeet&lt;/a&gt;. Todaysmeet allows your to open a chat thread in which student can post questions or comments. You may even archive them if you wish to. Most online meeting software (such as Adobe Connect) also builds in some &quot;raise hand&quot; button; users can click that to initiate a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for video, look for some video markup tools so that student can bookmark a certain section of your video, generate a link and send it to your with related questions. They can, of course, mention the video link and time stamp as well. E.g. &quot;I have a question about a point at 12:45 of the video on [link to the mp4, etc.].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Provide ONE and ONLY ONE official announcement site&lt;/em&gt; where students can get the most up to date announcement. Because online teaching involves a lot of software and different forms of communication, it's easy to fall through the schedule not knowing some is due or a new lecture has been released. Make sure all announcement can reach the students' official e-mail address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I cannot stress enough &lt;strong&gt;i) pilot run, pilot run, pilot run!!&lt;/strong&gt; Try all modules and make sure they work on at least Mac and PC. You may want to check the course shows up correctly on iPad and Android pad as well. For a very similar reason, don't use any Adobe Flash to make animation. &lt;strong&gt;ii) have a plan B, plan C... plan K&lt;/strong&gt;: Isolate your critical control points and prepare a second plan if the control point falls through. For example, if you decide to use Skype for an online talk, but Skype's server goes down, think 1) how to contact the students? 2) Where to re-establish the meeting? etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study guide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you're not there to guide them in person. It's crucial to have a very protocol-based syllabus. I adopted the idea from Smith's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787994421&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conquering the Content&lt;/a&gt;. For every single session, list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning goals and outcomes:&lt;/strong&gt; After the session, what will the student know and learn to do?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning resources:&lt;/strong&gt; List all resources including the required and optional reading, supplementary websites, journal articles etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning activities:&lt;/strong&gt; Describe the flow of learning, provide due date or schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self assessment:&lt;/strong&gt; Lay out how the students can assess their learning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Formal evaluation:&lt;/strong&gt; Lay out how you'd assess their learning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this approach very much. Smith particularly emphasizes not to put time-sensitive information in your video, instead, put them on this learning guide. For instance, in the video you can say &quot;refer to the suggested journal article&quot; instead of saying the exact title. That way, you can just update your learning guide without the need of re-recording your video, saving some time to renew your lecture every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remark&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for this really long post. I still have a lot to say but I guess I have long passed the socially acceptable length of SE responses. Teaching online is a fun challenge, and all I have described here are just a fraction of this domain. There are online interaction, engagement, etc. which are other cans of worm. If I were to do it again, I'd start simple by switching 2-3 classes to online as an experiment, and build from there. It's dangerous to go online in a semester, I'll invest a good 6-month period to be familiar with all the tools. I'd also suggest planning the whole course before putting anything online, because that helped me eliminate a lot of irregulars, and make the format a lot more uniform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these comments would help, and have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T15:14:40.933" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:14:40.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13860" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:11:24.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for graduate school, you need to show that you can do good research. More than the actual &lt;em&gt;field&lt;/em&gt; of research, it's more important to show the &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to do good research. That being said, of course, doing research in the area in which you're applying shows that you are motivated and equipped to solve research problems in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some things you could try : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reach out to a professor in your alma mater (someone you've worked with during your undergraduate studies) - offer to be a voluntary research student. Work with the prof part time, if you have a full time job, otherwise volunteer to be a full time &lt;em&gt;unpaid&lt;/em&gt; researcher. This doesn't mean you get a freebie research position, the prof still wants to know you can do quality work. Remember, the prof is also investing his/her time to coach you, and answer questions you (probably will) have during your voluntary research term. This, by far, is the best way I know of that you can do research outside of university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get an IEEE membership, or use google scholar. Go through research papers in your field, and see if there are any interesting problems you can solve (there are millions of awesome problems yet to be solved :) You may think you're way in over your head, but that's how you learn. Once you have an interesting problem to solve, reach out to peers (senior students, or current graduate students you know) and professors (including potential professors you want to work with during your Masters) with your work. Remember, researchers are looking for talented and passionate people more than anything else - test scores and grades are just an indicator of that, but not the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; indicators. So if a professor is &lt;em&gt;genuinely&lt;/em&gt; interested in your work and convinced that you have potential, they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt;  be interested. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's about passion, intensity and potential - less about content. At the risk of being repetitive, the work you do &lt;em&gt;demonstrates&lt;/em&gt; how much potential and passion you have. Your work is not a &lt;em&gt;means to an end&lt;/em&gt;  - don't &quot;do research&quot; with the aim of getting into graduate school. Graduate school should be a natural continuation of what you are already passionate about doing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your future and applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8876" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:11:24.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13872" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:35:57.870" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree slightly with the stark &quot;No&quot; answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only when those details provide evidence of your potential for &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; information about your high-school experience &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; shed light on your research potential.  Certainly you would want to mention winning the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Science_Talent_Search&quot;&gt;Intel Science Talent Search&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ioinformatics.org/index.shtml&quot;&gt;International Olympiad in Informatics&lt;/a&gt;, or describe the peer-reviewed research papers you published as a high school student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your high school &lt;em&gt;grades&lt;/em&gt;?  No, leave them off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:35:57.870" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2013-11-05T17:36:24.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zimmerman I think I can help you out. I have a resource where students can create and deploy surveys. It also has a tutorial that helps you create a survey from beginning to end including tips on creating neutral non biased questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out SurveySidekick.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site should be especially useful for beginner survey designers. It was created by Teachers College Columbia University and meant for any higher-ed students so I think this is appropriate for your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9321" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T17:36:24.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T21:18:26.720" Score="14" ViewCount="60863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am extremely dissatisfied with the Master's program I just began and plan on dropping out ASAP. I currently have no interest in finding another graduate program and instead wish to pursue a job outside of academia. As I see it my two choices are to either stick it out for the rest of the semester and just try to maintain C's, or to simply walk away from it and accept the F's because the drop deadline has passed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question I have is how much more damaging is the option of just walking away mid-semester? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that certain employers will view the situation differently, but I am just seeking opinions here. I have no idea of what industry I would want to work in or how that might affect your answers. Or if anyone has advised students in similar situations, I would greatly appreciate similar advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my records before this program, I got my BS in applied math and graduated with honors. I am hoping that I can bank on this earlier performance and explain the reasoning behind dropping out to potential employers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9323" LastActivityDate="2020-08-24T20:21:32.193" Title="How much will dropping out of a Master's program hurt job prospects?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2013-11-05T23:54:21.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody can design a good question, right? Just like everybody can build a car engine. Or everybody can cook Boeuf Bourguignonne a la Julia Child. Or everybody can write a speech for a candidate in a state governor election. Instrument design is a professional work that requires understanding how people respond to questions, which in turn requires some psychology on the respondent's end, some statistics on the data user's end, some computer graphics on the GUI end, etc. As a professional survey statistician, my professional duty is to discourage your creating a false sense of &quot;doability&quot; here. Rectifying the user-written instruments is an unpleasant part of the job that a team of survey methodologists in my company has to perform more often than we would have liked to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I would encourage you to lookup something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmgtfy.com/?q=questionnaire+design+class+syllabus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;questionnaire design class syllabus&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irss.unc.edu/content/pdf/Questionnaire%20Design%20Fall%20%2711%20Syllabus%20Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JPSM/UNC class&lt;/a&gt; looks good, and refers to right books. The reading list of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uic.edu/classes/chsc/chsc577/Syllabus.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UIC course&lt;/a&gt; is very comprehensive, if not intimidating. If you don't have the time to read any books, the minimum self-check list is available through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://appliedresearch.cancer.gov/areas/cognitive/qas99.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RTI's Question Appraisal System&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:54:21.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13883" CreationDate="2013-11-05T23:58:40.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not free or open-source, but my institution offers licenses to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Camtasia Studio&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to be the best package out there for slidecasts/screencasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.educreations.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Educreations&lt;/a&gt; is a a comparatively much simpler - and cheaper - tool that allows you to create videos but doesn't play as well with slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:58:40.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T04:28:56.243" Score="5" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking a graduate class which is based on &quot;notes&quot; written by former students of the course years earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This notes are a bad translation of a published book by a renowned author, and the class consists entirely on expositions from the students based on this notes and the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the course, the lecturer suggested that his idea was to collaboratively write some notes of the material covered in class, but so far, he has not given a single lecture, nor any help, insight or even references for the gaps found in the notes, everything has been done by the students. Now he is asking us to write all the expositions of the material we have found to fill the gaps in the notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to contribute to the notes because there is no guarantee that they will be published as a collaborative project instead of as something of the lecturer's authorship, but it might hurt my grades if I refuse to write something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking in writing something to be included in the notes but posting it with me as an author in my blog first. Do you have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9328" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T20:22:19.230" Title="Authorship of class notes" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T12:58:22.320" Score="10" ViewCount="2907" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone's (SO) PhD supervisor is not collaborating on publications from SO's PhD. The problem arose as SO raised his mistrust (for the supervisor) on other academic issues. The supervisor treats student's work as his, and SO does not agree with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO has one paper just rejected from a journal but could be submitted in another journal. This is from SO's PhD, so he would like to publish it and more from the PhD. SO is not sure how to go ahead with this, (with the supervisor or without). The paper is intellectually SO's but the supervisor helped in improving the writing (of the rejected paper). As the supervisor is refusing to collaborate, how can SO publish that? Can SO do that without supervisor name? What could be the consequences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9333" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T13:23:57.683" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T08:05:11.537" Title="What to do when a PhD supervisor is not collaborating on publications after the PhD from it?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2013-11-06T13:25:29.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no expert on the legalities/ethics of academic publishing. However, here are my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you want to publish papers based on your PhD you should do so.&#xA;As far as I know, there is nothing that requires you to get your supervisor's permission to publish your own PhD work. You are also not required to work with him if you don't want to. I think there may be some pressure to put his name on the paper, even if he has not done anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I want to go ahead, I would do so. If/when the paper (or papers) get to the point of submission, it might be a good idea to ask him if he wants his name included on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds from what you say that you already don't have good relations with your supervisor, so you don't have a lot to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T13:25:29.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T16:28:10.897" Score="31" ViewCount="19282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you submit a paper and it is rejected with no suggestion of resubmission, but there is substantial feedback. Do you fix up the paper, based on the feedback and resubmit? Or fix it up and submit to another journal? What heuristic do people use, if any? Or is every case different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a bad experience a few years ago. Briefly: Paper rejected after 1 yr. Fixed it up, resubmitted. Major revision decision after 6 months. Fixed up, resubmitted. Rejected again after another 6 months. This literally went on for years, and was quite, quite horrible. The original draft was in pretty bad shape, in hindsight, which partly explains it, and I'm more experienced now. I guess it was one of those character-building experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm wondering if on balance, if the journal doesn't want it, whether it is better to cut your losses and move on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I'm leaning in the direction of submission to another journal if initially rejected without the suggestion of resubmission. If the journal suggests resubmission, I suppose it is a more ambiguous situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="13560" LastEditDate="2020-07-03T08:48:08.913" LastActivityDate="2020-07-03T08:48:08.913" Title="Should I resubmit a rejected paper to the same journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13898" CreationDate="2013-11-06T17:17:52.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent you answered your own question, every case is different. There is nothing wrong with resubmitting to the same journal, although the paper has been rejected without encouragement to resubmit after revisions. Earlier, such lack of encouragement could be taken as a hint that they do not want to see the paper again, and maybe that will still be the case, but more likely the workload is at such a level that the editors leaves such choices to the author. You are of course free to submit to another journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger to submit to the same journal is that you may end up with the same editor and the same reviewers. That may not necessarily be all bad but with a new journal you will likely have a fresh look at your paper. You will of course at submission tell the editor that the paper has been reviewed in the earlier journal and was rejected, and also detail what you have done to improve the paper. It would not hurt if you also provide some (good) motivation why you chose the new journal for resubmission. As an editor it is always of interest to know why you made the choice so that one can approach the paper from that perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to try to figure out if which journal is the appropriate one and there certainly can be strategies in submitting papers. It is not uncommon to try for a prestigious journal with material that has a chance and then resubmit to a more ordinary journal if the first attempt fails. It is always good to have such thoughts in mind when submitting material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not easily give up on papers, some may of course be lost causes for a variety of reasons but any study done and written up properly that presents new non-trivial results should be possible to publish. Easier said than done, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T22:40:57.597" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T22:40:57.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2013-11-06T17:30:13.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question will benefit from some more clarification. Basically, I feel that just because he has a reputation to claim others' work does not grant you the right to bend the logical decision of assigning authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Improving the writing&quot; can generally be considered as significant input and thus should lead to an authorship. Whether it may be downgraded to being acknowledged depends on the degree and magnitude of improvement. Changing a couple words here and there probably should go to acknowledgement; anything on par or beyond line editing should conservatively go to authorship, unless it's done by a paid editor/copywriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another information we need to know is what is the supervisor's status in the rejected paper. If he was listed as a co-author, then in subsequent revisions he should be retained as a co-author even he can no longer contribute. An exception is that he explicitly refuses to be listed as a co-author in the next round and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, we'd need to know how did this adviser &quot;refuse to collaborate.&quot; Did he refuse to do anything because he believes the first version is good enough? Is he too busy? Or did he say you should drop this article? The stated action is up for too many different interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without too many details, I'd say keep him, resubmit and then move on without this person. And should you so loath the idea that he may claim your work, then cut the connection, forget about this paper, and publish independently from him on something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T17:46:50.930" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T17:46:50.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11362" CreationDate="2013-11-06T18:46:45.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few potential scenarios in mind beyond just &quot;They don't like you&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Peter Jansson said, reviewers usually get a space to address just the editor, rather than the author, and in those comments there might have been a reason to reject your paper. Perhaps the reviewers suggested it's really not a good fit for the journal or something along those lines - the paper itself might not be flawed, but its submission to this journal might be. Yes, that sort of thing should show up in the review itself, but reviewers are imperfect people just like the rest of us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor might have made a &quot;Is this a priority?&quot; judgement call and rejected the paper - &quot;in light of...&quot; phrasing might just be journal boilerplate. Don't underestimate the capacity of boilerplate language to generate confusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal's publishing schedule might just be full for a very long time, and so they may be rejecting anything below &quot;My god, this &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; go in our journal&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T18:46:45.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T19:38:26.360" Score="6" ViewCount="1946" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student and I would like to do an internship at an American university or institute. How should I proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9343" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T21:41:44.220" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T21:41:44.220" Title="Internship for PhD students" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T20:14:28.023" Score="5" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there papers that sum up ideas and results from other papers? What are their characteristics/form? Do they provide insights on the field or try to predict the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read some papers for a class homework and I would like to know whether I should try to summarize and publish it somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8381" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T21:09:18.627" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T08:41:40.610" Title="Can I publish a sum up paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13894" CreationDate="2013-11-06T20:22:19.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess my suggestion is to think carefully about what you want to achieve in this situation.  It doesn't feel especially righteous to suggest that you do a competent job of working on the notes, try to learn something and don't worry too much about precisely how much credit you will get out of the collective endeavor; however that sure seems to me like the right course of action.  For an original refereed publication, it's worth throwing a few elbows to make sure you get your fair share of credit (and even there it pays to be careful), but it doesn't sound like that's what we're discussing here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't like saying that, I just can't think of what course of action is likely to actually improve your situation.  if you refuse to participate, you'll get a bad grade and make a poor impression (and such impressions do spread from one faculty member to another); I doubt he will really believe its due to high-minded concerns about authorship credit, as opposed to laziness.  If you make a fuss about getting credit before you've even written the notes, I don't think that will make an especially good impression either.  It wouldn't be right for the lecturer to publish the notes without appropriately crediting the class, but that wouldn't make suing him (or more realistically, making threats about suing) any less stupid. If it makes you feel better to separately post your contribution on a blog as well, knock yourself out.  Hopefully some people will read it and learn something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the productive thing to do is to try to meet the expectations of the class, and if later it seems that the faculty member is doing something shady with the results, you can go to your graduate director or another professor and express concerns about credit.  But complaining preemptively is not likely to achieve much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T20:22:19.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13903" CreationDate="2013-11-06T20:44:38.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sum up papers you are referring to are called &lt;em&gt;review articles&lt;/em&gt;. In order to write one, you should know the research area in question &lt;strong&gt;very well&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review&quot;&gt;systematic reviews&lt;/a&gt; and reviews of reviews (tertiary reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9344" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T20:44:38.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13898" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:04:32.197" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the reason for rejection.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a paper is rejected because &lt;em&gt;it's off-topic&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;it's not really interesting&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;it's not really new&lt;/em&gt;, etc.: then perhaps you were too ambitious.  A paper may be perfectly written and the science may be very decent, but still rejected from Nature, because its impact is not really large enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if a paper is rejected with a motivation like &lt;em&gt;this topic would fit our journal, but some major aspects are missing in the study, and they are so grave that we choose to reject&lt;/em&gt;, then you can start over and submit a fixed study.  In fact, I have the impression that some journals that have fixed deadlines for revisions, will reject if it is deemed unrealistic to submit the revision in time.  Otherwise, there could be a huge difference between the submission date and the publication date, and that isn't beneficial to anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T14:04:55.613" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T14:04:55.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13903" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:15:15.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second blabla's answer, short and too the point, with adequate amount of emphasis on &lt;strong&gt;very well&lt;/strong&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll expand it a bit by saying that journals are not typically interested in review papers that merely &lt;em&gt;summarize&lt;/em&gt; other papers in the field. It is not simply a report on the papers you read: this has some value for your studies, but it is not a valuable publication in academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of a review paper is to provide &lt;strong&gt;perspective&lt;/strong&gt;, giving the author's deep insight into each of the papers and the way they articulate together, his ideas of the directions in that particular subfield, a critical overview of the recent advances and deadlocks still to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while your &lt;em&gt;summary paper&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;bibliography report&lt;/em&gt;) is probably not publishable in respectable peer-reviewed journals, it doesn't mean you cannot publish it (in the sense of “making it public”). If you are careful about how you title it (not “review paper”), you could upload it to your webpage or to arXiv.org, so that it is useful for other students discovering this field…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T21:15:15.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T09:04:10.807" Score="19" ViewCount="1432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure whether this belongs here, but since I am a PhD student (teaching) in the TCS/Algorithms department, I'd like to know what fellow, maybe more experienced, teachers think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question at hand is whether we should offer sample solutions to all our exercises for, e.g., a Data Structures &amp;amp; Algorithms lecture.&#xA;I am convinced that this would be a highly beneficial service for our students whereas my advisor is against it. Here are the pros and cons that we came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students have access to high-quality answers when they don't understand something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our expectations on verboseness, conciseness, depth of proofs, etc. can be communicated more clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A student can individually study using the solutions and is not forced to attend the tutorials if this is not his preferred style of learning&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We (the professor/tutor) have a clearer idea of what solutions to expect since we have to work the problems ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tutor (me) is more free in the design of the tutorial. Without sample solutions, the tutorial basically boils down to writing the sample solutions on the blackboard. Otherwise I can't be sure that everyone has at least seen the correct way how to solve it. Little interaction is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It costs time and/or money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students may stop being engaged in the exercises since they know they can always look at the sample solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students may stop coming to the tutorials.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can't reuse exercises from past years since students might have access to (and use) past sample solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we do it once, the students might expect we do it for every lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, in both cases the students are expected to solve the exercise sheets on their own, and they will be graded. I'm merely interested in what to offer &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; this has happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's all. Optimally, I would like to find some kind of empirical study that proves that sample solutions increase the &quot;productivity&quot; of students. Data always wins. However, so far I couldn't find anything like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To discuss the points mentioned above, my general opinion on these matters is that if we can offer more services using little work, we should always do it. If someone really misuses it (as stated in the cons), he or she will notice that this is the wrong approach the latest in the exams. My advisor, however, wants to minimize the time spent on lectures and have me rather do the research relevant to my PhD. Since I have to do the solutions anyway, the overhead for providing a sample solution is maybe 2-3 hours/week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9361" OwnerDisplayName="HdM" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T00:00:31.870" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T22:00:20.923" Title="Do sample solutions increase student 'productivity'?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13908" CreationDate="2013-11-06T22:05:08.520" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three types of exercises in my algorithms classes: homework problems, exam problems, and discussion problems.  I'm not entirely sure which you're asking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I release detailed solutions and grading rubrics for all homework and exam problems, in part for the advantages you list, in part to speed up grading, and in part to better calibrate my own expectations for the students.  (If it takes too long for me to write up the solution, the problem is probably too hard for them.)  I take them all down again at the end of each semester.  I don't actually mind if students have access to my old solutions—as long as they write in their own words and cite their sources—because homeworks are only a small part of the course grade.  (Students who are stupid enough to submit my old solutions verbatim, typos and all, are not quite publicly fed to the wolves.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I deliberately do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; release solutions for discussion problems (which we discuss in, you guessed it, discussion sections) because &lt;strong&gt;the solutions are not the point&lt;/strong&gt;.  The point is to practice &lt;strong&gt;finding&lt;/strong&gt; the solution.  I know students are adults, but it takes a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; more discipline to practice hunting when someone just regularly hands you the meat.  Also, some discussion problems reappear later on my exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But this is really an individual choice.&lt;/strong&gt;  I know plenty of algorithms instructors who don't give students solutions, and others who hand out solutions on paper but don't distribute them on the web, and others who distribute them on the web but behind a firewall, and others who beg people like me to please for the love of god stop giving away homework solutions because coming up with good algorithms homework problems is really really &lt;em&gt;HARD&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;  Starting in 2017, I now regularly release solutions for my discussion problems, typically a few days after each discussion meeting.  (Just like homework solutions, I take these down at the end of every semester.)  Perhaps as a result, these discussion problems are now effectively fixed from one semester to the next -- in a typical semester I replace 5%-10% of them -- and discussion problems almost never appear on exams.  (I should also clarify that discussion problems do not contribute to the final grade.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also include an extra &lt;em&gt;solved&lt;/em&gt; problem in each homework, &lt;em&gt;with a complete grading rubric&lt;/em&gt;.  Again, these solved problems rarely change (as opposed to the problems the students need to solve, which change every semester).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the idea is to provide concrete examples of the structure, precision/formality, and level of detail expected from their own work.    Realistically, once the discussion sections are over, &lt;em&gt;unsolved&lt;/em&gt; discussion problems are not as valuable as the solutions; students are busy!  And I have &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of other unsolved exercises in my lecture notes for students who want unsullied practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing all those lab solutions (just over 100 pages of text) was a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of work, but now it's done.  The net effect of releasing all these solutions &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; to be positive—more clearly for teaching evaluations, but also for student performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T22:00:20.923" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T22:00:20.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13908" CreationDate="2013-11-06T23:34:50.837" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other good points made, let me say that (in mathematics, at all levels) I myself make many &quot;model solutions&quot; and put them on-line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the availability of model solutions has positive potential... The issues are the genuine downsides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason for my decision to take this approach was that, especially in upper-division and graduate-level mathematics, enthusiastic students acting in good faith often put either flawed or misguided solutions on-line, and other students look at &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt;, ... thus &quot;learning&quot; low-quality versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is according to an over-simplified reasoning: important examples should not be left to students to mess up, and unimportant examples should not be used to waste students' time. I realize this is over-simplified and has implicit hypotheses, but after 40 years of watching people diligently spend time on exercises _without_thinking_critically_ about any sort of larger picture, I am ever more fond of this pseudo-principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a fundamental objection is that on-line solutions allows laziness/cheating/whatever. And, yes, as JeffE noted, in some venues it's hard come up with good &quot;training exercises&quot;. Thus, I can certainly envision scenarios in which a cyclic putting-them-up, taking-them-down could be justified. However, dedicated lazy/cheating people can maintain copies ... And so on. Thus, in effect, it is impossible to prevent laziness/cheating in the face of even modestly motivated lazies/cheats. Thus, I reason that elaborate strategies aimed at foiling laziness/cheating, at the expense of making people acting in good faith have to jump through hoops, etc., are bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics at least, I'd claim that many traditional contexts for &quot;exercises&quot; are somewhat missing the point, &lt;em&gt;anyway&lt;/em&gt;, so that moving away from the weekly problem sets wouldn't be so bad! That is, to make a large number of &quot;exercises&quot; feasibly do-able by nearly everyone in every class, and in a short period of time, the issues must be &lt;em&gt;contrived&lt;/em&gt;, not natural. Students understand this, even if only subliminally, and many of the &quot;successful&quot; ones have managed to squelch their critical faculties (&quot;why are we doing this?&quot;) to be more economical in their approach to these fairly-random exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, at the opposite end, there are the occasional much-admired slim texts where 2/3 or more of the things one needs to know relegated to exercises! Crazy! In this case, the student's disadvantage is even worse in some ways, because the issues are more real, and there're even fewer &quot;model solutions available&quot;, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; they may come away with deeply flawed or misguided pseudo-understandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in modern mathematics, I think that the inarguable &quot;engage with the material&quot; is too often denatured, to something like &quot;try to prove all the theorems yourself&quot;. Supposedly, the side information of knowing assertions of true theorems is enough of an advantage. But this is a strange presumption... proof mechanisms, concepts created to &lt;em&gt;enable&lt;/em&gt; proof mechanisms that are humanly comprehensible, are as significant as the bald assertions themselves, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to advance collective human understanding, putting &quot;models&quot; on-line is good. Yes, there are downsides, and hazards, but this is just the new reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T23:34:50.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-07T05:53:53.917" Score="2" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say a member of a lab has an entirely theoretical idea like &quot;wouldn't it be nice if we wrote software that does X?&quot;  The member did give a talk showing how such code would work if implemented.  Due to general skepticism about the idea, nothing ever comes of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The member never actually writes any of the software while in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After leaving the lab, the member uses publicly available data and implements the software, as well as developing the mathematical theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the member required to acknowledge his former lab in authorship? Is this a breach of ethics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the former lab member had previously agreed to letting the PI use his idea in a grant proposal, but the PI then forced him out of the lab and thus out of the grant proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Can the former lab member write up his work for publication? 2. Does he have to make the PI a co-author if he does?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra Information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea was documented as a presentation to the lab.  A small simulation with fake data was used to argue this could work.  There was some discussion of how it would work when the grant was written, completely the member just saying to others how this idea worked and so the idea was written up in the grant.  The PI does not have any training in this area.  However, there are plenty of emails where the PI refers to this as the former lab members idea etc.  I feel certain everybody in the lab would acknowledge this was the former lab member's idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former lab member didn't actually write any of the grant as the PI claimed to want to collaborate with someone with greater mathematical expertise. So the collaborator wrote the grant, with occasional emails to ask the former lab member questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="4146" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T13:34:40.890" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T06:39:59.720" Title="Can a PI take someone's idea" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13912" CreationDate="2013-11-07T08:01:14.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see &quot;member&quot; has developed everything from idea to finished product. There is very little sign of anyone else being involved other than possibly as a discussion partner at the lab. To allow someone to use the idea still does not take away the intellectual property held by the member unless there has been important feedback from someone. So I would not hesitate to try to move forward towards publication with the idea. I simply cannot see any ethical issues based on the details you have given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having given the green light, there will always be the issue of personalities. You allude to some level of conflict in terms of the move by the member. It is not inconceivable that the PI may have a different view and this view may not even be anchored in reality. So even if you do everything by the book and have all rights, that does not preclude the PI from doing all the things you express, it really depends on the PI's personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end member should think through if anyone has contributed to the work to the degree that merits co-authorship. Member can, for example, use the the post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12030/4394&quot;&gt;What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship&lt;/a&gt; to set the authorship in perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T08:01:14.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13903" CreationDate="2013-11-07T08:36:17.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those questions that depend on the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases you can do a summary or a review, e.g. a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;survey paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;review paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. These papers are very useful because they provide an overview of the state of the art in some area, (if they are well written) they are good for citing and for anyone who is not yet an expert and is interested in the area (new grad students, interdisciplinary people that can benefit from an overview, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may prefer to do some &lt;strong&gt;evaluation, benchmarking or comparison&lt;/strong&gt;, this is usual in computer science and I guess it's normal in engineering and other sciences (robustness tests, stress tests, statistical significance and that kind of things). So this takes more than listing papers, it takes executing/testing things, maybe on new settings, obtaining new results and publishing these results. The difference with research papers is that you don't develop a new system/theory, you only test them on a new (better) setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some people (but probably not you) can write a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_paper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;position paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, where they make educated guesses about how the future will or should be, the directions of research, etc. This is usually done when you are an expert and your opinion matters. Usually nobody cares about the opinion of grad students. Personally I don't care about opinions in general, but these papers are interesting because they influence decision makers and investment in research, they are self-fulfilled prophecies to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other possibilities that I cannot think of now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T08:41:40.610" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T08:41:40.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13941" CreationDate="2013-11-07T09:46:47.413" Score="24" ViewCount="1470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to supervise my first bachelor student and I'm not quite sure what is acceptable and what is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis will contain math formulas, illustrations, images, graphs and tables - like any other paper / thesis in physics. The question is, shall I force my student to use (and learn how to use) certain SW tools (LaTeX, Matlab,...) instead of commonly used office packages (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,...)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to provide source files of my thesis and/or Matlab functions/scripts to the student? Note that the field of research is not connected to typography nor data analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit considering JeffE's answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to require students to use the software tools that are standard in your field when they begin working in your field, even as undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't defined standard, or mandatory, tools to use. Just only vague rules how the thesis shoud look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools for specialized work, say microhardness measurements and analysis, are set and there can't be any doubts and discussions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9200" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T07:09:23.960" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T02:06:12.200" Title="Is it acceptable to require a student to use the supervisor's preferred software/tools?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-07T11:07:28.520" Score="8" ViewCount="22610" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use bibliographic software (e.g., Endnote, BibTex, etc.) to manage my references. However, sometimes I am working on an existing article that has been written with APA citations and references written manually. For example, I might be working with a collaborator who has written the first draft or I'm adapting a student thesis for journal publication. As a result, citations get added and deleted, and there are reference errors: (1) citations present with no reference;  reference needs to be added (2) references present with not citation;  reference needs to be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a common task when such documents are being finalised is to go through the document and pull out all the citations and check them against the reference list and fix any errors. This is generally a frustrating task, because (1) unless you are careful errors can be made, and (2) if the document is edited further, the document may need to be rechecked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is an efficient strategy for identifying citations without references and references without citations in a  document with author (year) style citations (e.g., APA, Harvard)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any automated tools that perform this checking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T11:25:43.273" LastActivityDate="2021-02-22T02:10:13.763" Title="How to check citations and references match in a manually prepared document with APA author (year) citations?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8184" CreationDate="2013-11-07T11:25:48.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check this site, which is supported by the Andrew Ng (of Coursera and machine learning class fame) : &lt;a href=&quot;http://graddecision.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://graddecision.org/&lt;/a&gt; this will walk you through entire process and has lot of good information and advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically figure out where you want study and why that school, prepare a kickass Statement of Purpose(SOP) and contact your professors for letter of recommendations(LOR). And yes, give GRE soon as deadlines mostly in December. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T11:25:48.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-07T11:28:50.770" Score="4" ViewCount="1038" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to this question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13921/how-to-check-citations-and-references-match-in-a-manually-prepared-document-with&quot;&gt;cross-checking APA citations and references&lt;/a&gt;, I often have an existing list of APA formatted references. This might come from a document from a collaborator or it might just be a published article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often want to take this list of APA references (e.g., one reference per line) and import them into my bibliographic software in such a way that the reference manager is able to discern what aspects of the reference correspond to author, year, title, journal, issue, pages, etc.&#xA;I'm often working with Endnote to do this, but I imagine that once you get the data into any reference manager (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, etc.), it would be relatively easy to export and import into a preferred reference manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also be happy with a system that was pretty good but not perfect. In psychology at least, most references are journal articles, book chapters, and books. So a system that imported these and flagged the rest would still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can an existing list of APA references be automatically imported into a reference manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T17:54:15.537" Title="How to automatically import APA references into reference manager?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13921" CreationDate="2013-11-07T11:38:31.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;old days&quot; this was what had to be done manually. I simply printed the reference list (one-sided print) and went through the text and checked the references I passed in the text and checked the corresponding one in the reference list. This would take maybe 20-30 minutes(?). It is clear that this is easier to do on paper than on screen but it is a very safe way to do the checking. In the end you will (hopefully not) end up with references missing ticks in either the text or the list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So considering, the time it takes, doing the manual check on paper copies, is perhaps boring but not a terrible loss. Sometimes you pick up on other errors as well. Although one should not rely on external help to solve ones own problems, many journals use copy-editors that check for inconsistencies so there may be a back-up for the stray miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for software, I cannot point at one directly. It would have to be able to match first author name and the year between text and the reference list. I does not sound like an impossible task but I would probably just do the job the manual way in the few cases where this is necessary. You can also ask your collaborator to do a separate initial check (as &quot;punishment&quot; for not using bibliographic software). In addition, if you author in LaTeX then writing the bibliography directly with &lt;code&gt;\bibitem&lt;/code&gt; and using &lt;code&gt;\cite&lt;/code&gt; (or &lt;code&gt;natbib&lt;/code&gt; cite commands) commands will at least do half the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T11:38:31.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12528" CreationDate="2013-11-07T11:46:44.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about joining a MooC by UC, Berkely on eDX : &#xA;&quot;College Writing 2.1x is an introduction to academic writing for English Language Learners, focusing on essay development, grammatical correctness, and self-editing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/colwri2-1x/college-writing-2-1x-principles/1194&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/colwri2-1x/college-writing-2-1x-principles/1194&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.berkeley.edu/news/introducing-latest-mooc-college-writing-21x-principles-written-english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://online.berkeley.edu/news/introducing-latest-mooc-college-writing-21x-principles-written-english&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a 5 week course and requires 5-6Hours/week effort. The course will be taught by Maggie Sokolik. And will be starting from November 8, 2013. So enrol now soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more, English Composition by Cousera : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English Composition Part 1 - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/composition#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/course/composition#&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you can move on to part 2 ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T11:46:44.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-07T12:38:53.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to require students to use the software tools that are standard in your field when they begin working in your field, even as undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T12:38:53.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13927" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-11-07T13:24:31.050" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T13:24:31.050" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T13:24:31.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13928" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-11-07T13:24:31.050" Score="0" Body="These questions relate to maintaining other employment while working in Academia or to part-time post-graduate study while working full-time." OwnerUserId="4051" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T15:36:10.733" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T15:36:10.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13931" CreationDate="2013-11-07T14:06:19.727" Score="25" ViewCount="1777" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple months ago I refereed a paper for one journal. Due to a number of factors, I recommended that it not be published in that particular journal, and gave the author a bunch of comments on how they could easily improve the manuscript. The editor of that journal followed my recommendation (and perhaps the recommendation of other referees I am unaware of) and did not accept the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This morning I received another review request, this time from a different journal but for the same manuscript. I've never had this particular situation occur before, and am wondering what the expected thing for me to do is. Should I review the manuscript again as if I hadn't before, should I let the editor know first and see what they say, or what? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T02:03:50.833" Title="If I refereed a paper at one journal (and it was rejected) should I referee it again when it's sent to another journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13872" CreationDate="2013-11-07T14:11:11.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't do that. &#xA;it is a waste of time. for a master's degree and pHD, I would use only my university achievement. &#xA;Completing graduate studies gives an employer a positive signal.&#xA;However, social conditions (different in each country) may oblige you to write your previous education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9355" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T14:11:11.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13929" CreationDate="2013-11-07T14:23:06.487" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no problems associated with you reviewing a paper again, regardless if it resubmitted to the same or a different journal. Since you have seen the paper earlier and know its earlier problems you can better judge how it has improved and to what extent it is now publishable. You should definitely let the editor know that you have been involved in the process of this paper earlier even if he/she has not indicated the paper has been rejected somewhere before. That information provides the editor with a better perspective of the development of the paper and can make the decision to accept or reject easier since the willingness or capability of the author(s) to improve the manuscript is set in perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always contact the editor and state that you are willing to take on the review but felt it was necessary to convey the information. I do not see it as necessary but it is of course a nice gesture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T14:23:06.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-07T16:34:02.457" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly define what are your &lt;strong&gt;goals and constraints&lt;/strong&gt;, and work from there. What are the things that they need to learn in order to progress further in the field (and someday find a job)? What are constraints imposed by the research project you will be working on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals&lt;/strong&gt; — if learning a specific piece of software is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to become a professional in your field, then it is a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; standard and they need to learn it. In this, a specific piece of software is just like a particular experimental or mathematical technique.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints&lt;/strong&gt; — there are cases where you need to restrict the choice of software to interoperate with others. For example, the student might not be able to choose his favorite programming language for a specific project because he has to use a specific advanced library, which only exists in e.g. Python. Or the project actually is to implement a specific functionality in an existing C++ framework. Or one of the goals of the thesis might be to produce technical documentation to be published in a given format.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other than that, leave them free to choose whatever works for them.&lt;/strong&gt; Be clear and upfront about what you advise them to use, and what you are willing to teach them (and what you cannot teach them). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The choice is yours, as long as your are able to efficiently produce and edit a professional-looking 200-page document with many figures, tables, references and subdivisions, and it adheres to the university guidelines. I myself use LaTeX for writing articles and theses, as many colleagues, and I advise you to do the same. I have little experience with word processors. I can help you if you run into problems with the first one, but will not be able to help if you choose a word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had a student who mastered MS Word to a level that I had never seen, and did a superb job in an efficient matter. It wouldn't have been bright of me to require him to use LaTeX when he knew another tool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T16:34:02.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-07T18:15:17.307" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; to expose new students, even undergraduates, to the tools of the field. It's beneficial for them to know what some of this &quot;looks like&quot;, it's easier for you to help them if they don't have to bring you up to speed on what they're using, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say there might not be &quot;standard&quot; tools, but are there some tools that are commonly used? Your two examples, LaTeX and Matlab, are both fairly ubiquitous in &quot;applied math-y&quot; fields, so why they might not &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to use them in the future, there's a good chance they'll encounter it, or something like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one caveat is that I would have a discussion with the student about their goals and objectives, and make sure the tools you're making them use &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; tools they will use in the future. As a somewhat personal example, despite the inclinations of some of my collaborators it would have been useless to make me learn how to lay out papers in LaTeX, as the standard for my field is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; that, and all that would have accomplished was adding an extra step in before I converted everything to Word files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T18:15:17.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-07T18:38:36.110" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A certain amount of &quot;tool agnosticism&quot; is a healthy attitude to have, since many people will want to use tools with which they are already familiar. I would be loathe to interrupt someone's already-functional workflow without a strong reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, among those reasons are interoperability and reproducibility. If a student is doing research in your group, then their tools should be compatible with the ones you're already using. More importantly, you should still be able to use the work that they've produced even after they've left the group. So something that would require you to purchase an external license, or may not be well-supported within your group, is probably a bad idea. An &quot;alternate&quot; tool that is public domain, open-source, or otherwise &quot;standard&quot; in your field is probably not such a big deal. (What this means in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; field is, of course, for you to decide!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T18:38:36.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13912" CreationDate="2013-11-08T03:19:06.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually at least three(3) persons involved: the member, the collaborator and the PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two parts in the work: the software and the mathematical theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the information described in the question, the member definitely owns the software because the original idea was his and he implemented it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is, who is responsible for developing the mathematical theory? Based on the info, &lt;em&gt;So the collaborator wrote the grant, with occasional emails to ask the former lab member questions.&lt;/em&gt;, I think the collaborator plays a role. But, how much is his contribution? Anyone else contributes to the development of the theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another question, did the lab ever receive the grant? Grant proposal and the grant itself are completely two different things. Did the lab ever start to work on the grant (not the proposal)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the ideal solution is for the collaborator to write the paper if he is the one who develops the mathematical theory. The member will be the co-author. Whether or not the PI is another co-author depends on how much his contribution is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the member develops the whole thing including the theory without much help from the collaborator and/or the PI, then the member should be the main author. Who should be the co-authors depends on the invidual contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is my opinion based on the limited information I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T06:39:59.720" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T06:39:59.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:05:49.537" Score="20" ViewCount="3168" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the start of the hiring season, I've seen around 20-30 job openings that looked interesting for assistant professor positions in my area of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's somewhat awkward to ask my recommendation letter writers to send letters to 20 different places. (Is it not?) How many places do people usually target simultaneously? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7092" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T04:59:48.617" Title="How many faculty positions should one apply to?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13939" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:21:32.013" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your chance of getting any particular job you apply for is small. To make your probability of success significant, you need to multiply that by many applications. Your recommenders know this is the situation. Try to make things as easy for them as possible. E.g., they would probably prefer to send out 20 letters at once rather than being contacted by you 20 times in the space of a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T04:21:32.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-08T05:25:52.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to answer this question for the best interest of the &lt;strong&gt;student's&lt;/strong&gt;, not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are supervising bachelor students. They may go to academia or industry after graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student will pursue academic career after he graduates, then you should tell him to use the tools that are widely used in academia because it's for his best interest. I think &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; is a too strong word. To convince him is what you would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if he will go to industry, why waste his time to learn something he probably will never use for the rest of his life? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student doesn't know what he wants to do after he graduates, it's time for him to think about it now. Isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my personal experience while I was in industry. I had to produce some document which contained math equations. I wanted to use LaTex. MS word was the tool I was told to use because of maintainability issue (no one else in my department knew how to use Latex). I had to follow the order. Matlab is another story. It's also used in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T07:42:08.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T07:42:08.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-08T08:28:42.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I force my student to use certain tools such as LaTeX and&#xA;  Matlab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be hard to force a student to do so anyway, so do not force them simply suggest it to them. The examples you gave of LaTeX and MATLAB are not particularly difficult to learn. As a Computer Science undergrad I learnt them in my 4th year and it only took a very short time to be productive with them. In fact I was eager to learn and use them, you may find this to be true with your student, so do not assume that your student will resist the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also explain why you use such tools and hopefully they will realise and come to appreciate them. Explain that not using the same tools will create more work for the both the student and yourself. My final recommendation is to set them some small trivial tasks at first to build familiarity, which is what my supervisor did. It worked on me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T08:28:42.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13944" CreationDate="2013-11-08T08:33:13.697" Score="27" ViewCount="27528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm supposed to give a presentation at an academic conference in the coming days but have fallen ill. What is the best way to send my regrets? Should I also send a doctor's note? It doesn't provide details of my condition but does have other personal information such as date of birth and home address. I just wonder if any of this is the conference organiser's business. At the same time, sending an email without proof that I am truly incapacitated doesn't seem like it's enough either. I'm still not sure what to do about the presentation I'd prepared - whether or not to send it anyway etc. I'm trying to focus on getting better, but I am worried that this medical issue will ruin my good name. Any advice would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8507" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T09:00:36.707" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T06:55:50.393" Title="Etiquette when unable to attend a conference" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13943" CreationDate="2013-11-08T08:40:49.400" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just tell the convener that you will be unable to present due to unforeseen circumstances.  That is enough and will be understood — there can be many reasons and it won't be a first time.  He/she will be glad that you inform him/her at all — it happens all to often that people simply don't turn up without giving any information at all.  The convener shouldn't need a doctor's note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, is any co-author travelling to the conference, or perhaps a colleague familiar with your work?  If yes, you could ask one of them if they are willing to take over your presentation.  I've done this for colleagues and although I wasn't able to answer detailed questions from the audience, it's still beneficial both for me (visibility to experts in the field) and to the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T08:40:49.400" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13943" CreationDate="2013-11-08T09:07:20.520" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just inform the organisers as soon as possible, they might want to rearrange the programme accordingly, and therefore might to contact other authors to see if they agree to change their scheduled slot. You don't have to provide proof, as gerrit says, things like that happens quite often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to gerrit's suggestion to see if a colleague could present your talk, you could also check with the organisers if you can present your work remotely (if your illness allows for it). I attended a conference recently where one author presented his slides through a Skype conversation, and another talk was presented as a video, while the author was available in the end for any question. Although it's not ideal, it's still better than not presenting your work at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T10:33:57.710" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:33:57.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T09:47:59.287" Score="9" ViewCount="2515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Twelve months ago I started working on a project (which began at that time) with my advisor.&#xA;Six months ago another student (refered to as A in the following) joined the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are now publishing a paper on our results. My advisor asked me if I would find it reasonable that A’s name was put &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; mine in the article. Our advisor’s reason is that she believes A has contributed a lot more to the publishable results and making figures for the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with this latter part: student A has definitely been the working horse behind these results and made the graphics for the article. However, my contributions were in the first 6 months of the project, laying the foundations for the setup, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure how to feel about my advisor’s question. Is my contribution worth less because they are further back in time? And does making article-figures count as “ammunition” to be put first in an article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastEditorUserId="22407" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T13:44:53.000" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T13:45:20.487" Title="Paper contributions and first authorship" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13946" CreationDate="2013-11-08T10:06:54.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authorship questions are among the most difficult aspects of academia and where feelings may run high. First, it seems you have a reasonably good working relationship with your advisor, it is good that she asked you. Some would tell you, some would just do it. So from this perspective, your advisor does what she (in this case) should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of ordering of names is tricky and there are no simple rules, or actually there are simple rules, but they may be difficult to apply in the individual case due to a variety of reasons, including anything from personality clashes to just simple difficulties to asses who has done most. There are examples of point systems where authors are given points depending on what they have done and how much. In one case, the study design and writing (discussion) had much higher weight than aspects of experimentation and data analysis. the problem is that one should agree on such matters before starting on the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to assess your and your co-author's contributions, you need to split the project down in at least four parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who came up with the original idea and designed the study (high credit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who did the experimental work (equivalent) that generated the data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who did the analysis (equivalent) of the data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who contributed to interpretation and discussion towards the conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these have some weight with 1 and 4 most often larger than 2 and 3. Then when several persons split a chore you need to figure out roughly how much of each point each person has contributed. This would then give you a profile of who has done the most (important) work etc. I completely agree with anyone who would say this is easier said then done but you probably see the principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to the question(s). If you have work earlier or later on this is of less significance, it is what type of work you have done and of course how much. figures can be extremely important. Good graphics convey the message in condensed form. plotting data is, however, in most cases not much more than a technical issue. Creating conceptualizations of processes, events etc. can be key to the paper so making figures &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a considerable input to be counted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also check the text on this link for a text on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt;. An example of how authorship can be determined is given on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorder.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=18&amp;amp;Itemid=45&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AuthorOrder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T10:13:37.423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:13:37.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13946" CreationDate="2013-11-08T10:23:13.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peter gave a good summary of the types of issues encountered in determining authorship, maybe I can answer some of your more specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Is my contribution worth less, because they are further back in time?”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; — It’s neither less nor more. There is no unique scale to weigh the different &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; requirements of authorship, and except in clear-cut cases, it is somewhere between a judgment call and a negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Does making article-figures count as “ammunition” to be put first in an article?”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; — The typical standard to judge authorship issues is the &lt;strong&gt;intellectual (or scientific) contribution&lt;/strong&gt; of each co-author. Having the ideas, setting the foundations for the work is very important. But obtaining the results, analyzing them, presenting them in a convincing manner (which includes making figures, writing the paper, etc.) are also crucial: without it, there would be no paper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I’m not sure how to feel about my advisor’s question.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; — We can’t answer that for your, as it also depends on your relationship to your advisor. She has more experience than you in makings such decisions: do you trust her to do the right thing? (at least according to her) Or do you suspect her of trying to screw you over?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a solution may be to used footnotes to indicate &lt;strong&gt;equal-coauthorship&lt;/strong&gt;, if that is something the journal accepts. This is typically indicated by a sentence like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“The first two authors contributed equally to this work”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="22407" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T13:45:20.487" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T13:45:20.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13957" CreationDate="2013-11-08T10:36:23.703" Score="16" ViewCount="2861" Body="&lt;p&gt;During peer-review, is it part of the job of the reviewer to check the spelling, typos, grammar, and suggest improvement? It will help the paper and seems part of the job, but seeing some manuscripts it could take ages to write down every tiny correction in the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it the job of the reviewer to judge quality of the writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:58:37.823" Title="Are spelling issues part of the reviewer's job?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13949" CreationDate="2013-11-08T10:43:54.137" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is no. Unless the review instructions ask for such comments, it is not mandatory. When I do a review, I usually do some corrections if there are not too many of them. If the paper is littered with such errors I might make corrections for one or two manuscript pages and then state to both authors and editors that the papers needs substantial checking and correction beyond my capacity. I also sometimes just leave that comment without making example corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the more problematic issues is the difference between native English speakers and this who have English as a second or third language. Clearly authors who are not native speakers, should receive more help than others. There are also services that do language corrections and each publisher typically can suggest such services. If there are native English speakers as co-authors, some responsibility should fall on them to correct the language, after all, they are credited, or perhaps discredited, by the paper as well. So my point is that some leniency has to be considered depending on the severity of the problem but the bottom line is no-one is forced to correct spelling and grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:43:54.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13687" CreationDate="2013-11-08T13:07:49.293" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some hard evidence that textbook publishers do occasionally offer inducements to professors for adopting their texts. The abstract of &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmd.sagepub.com/content/20/3/258.abstract&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; in the Journal of Marketing Education reports that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With respect to publisher incentives, 32 respondents reported that they had been offered and 18 reportedly received an inducement from a publisher related to textbook adoption...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ricki Lewis, author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/12259/title/FREEBIES-AND-OTHER-INDUCEMENTS/&quot;&gt;Freebies and Other Inducements&lt;/a&gt; found that &quot;monetary enticement to adopt a book, although not rampant, does happen, and not just in economics. In science, these extras are encountered in large introductory biology and chemistry courses--but less so in physics and geology classes, which tend to attract fewer students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T13:07:49.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T13:31:16.263" Score="3" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to graduate school (CS MS/PhD) this year and I wanted to put up a copy of my papers online so that admission committees would be able to see them. The problem is one of the papers is currently under submission at a conference and notification for the same is only on Jan 22nd. Another one is still in preparation and I will be submitting it soon to a journal/conference. So I was just wondering if it is okay if I put up these papers in my Academia.edu page? &#xA;Actually one of my friends' told me that since Academia.edu submissions are searchable on Google, the conference I have submitted to and the journal or conference I would be submitting the other paper will have a problem. Is he right? How else can I provide a way for others to view these papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T22:48:52.403" Title="Is it okay to put up a submitted paper and a paper which is about to be submitted on Academia.edu?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13889" CreationDate="2013-11-08T14:17:41.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would stick it out and get the best grades I can.  I would try to monitor my stress level and do things I enjoy as well.  The important thing is to finish things in a clean way and not let yourself get to the point where you drop everything and leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job market is extremely competitive these days.  A master's degree can have a big effect on what pay you receive and how far you can go in certain industries.  You might not feel like a master's degree is worth it now, but you might want to go back to school for a different degree or even to complete the same degree.  It's hard to predict what the situation will be for you in 5 years or 10 years.  Bad grades now can restrict your possibilities for years to come.  Who knows? You might be thinking about getting an MBA in a prestigious program in 10 years and find yourself stuck having to explain some bad grades from years before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first one or two years of work, people might ask about your GPA as well, and leaving the graduate school off might be tricky as it might leave gaps in your employment.  Although, I have seen it work to just not put what year you got your undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T14:17:41.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T14:23:11.720" Score="21" ViewCount="28145" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the difference between special issues and regular ones from scientific journal publication point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9363" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:18:02.003" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T07:02:30.760" Title="Difference between special issues and regular ones" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13952" CreationDate="2013-11-08T14:26:49.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your submitted paper: Check the copyright and &quot;prior publication&quot; policies of the conference you've submitted to.  It's very likely that they allow you to post a &quot;preprint&quot; of your paper on your web page.  This is a very common practice in Computer Science, since it allows researchers to share their work without being delayed by the peer review process.  You might also consider posting on a preprint server such as arXiv.org as this will further increase your audience (this is also usually allowed).  And it would also be a good idea to include a copy of the paper with your applications, or at least a link; don't expect the admissions committee to find it by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your not-yet-submitted paper: Again, there shouldn't be a problem with the journal/conference, but it's probably best to wait to make it public until it is completely finished and ready to submit.  However, you could certainly include a copy with your applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T21:03:34.850" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T21:03:34.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13954" CreationDate="2013-11-08T14:42:19.593" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different journal may put different meaning into &quot;special issue&quot; It could mean that papers have been invited around a certain theme, it could mean papers come from a workshop or symposia, or that the journal have decided to gather papers around a specific topic for some reason. The point is that a special issue differs from a regular issue in that the papers constitute a collection around a theme or coming from a specific group of authors or event. Such issues can either be a decision by the journal or a request from a group of scientists to publish around &quot;their&quot; proposed theme. There may be additional cases but these are the ones I am familiar with within my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T04:10:08.317" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T04:10:08.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13949" CreationDate="2013-11-08T14:51:09.417" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the major goal is to examine the validity, integrity and contribution of the work. Since these can be challenged, causing the work to be rejected or subjected to a major revision, editing at this stage would just be like staining the wood before the carpentry work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, at least for me, my mind runs on two different gears when engaged in editing and reviewing. If I have to edit, I can only edit; if I have to think about the concept, I can't edit... perhaps in my mind editing only happens when the concept is already there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are three areas I always do a full body pat down, once for concept, once for edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Table&lt;/strong&gt;: I suggest always comb through the table title, column and row titles, numeric agreement, footnotes, superscripts, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Illustration&lt;/strong&gt;: Check labels, title, and footnotes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;: Look for typos and point out if a particular sentence appears to be terse or even misleading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for putting the abstract under all lenses is apparent. The reasons for checking the illustration and table are that these are usually the most neglected places in copy editing and revision. And yet, these are the most viewed sections in a paper. Nine out of 10 errors I've spotted in journal articles are in these two hot spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the main text, if there is any sentence that is very grammatically challenged, I cite the page and line in the review, and comment on the need of a rewritten version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are typos, I collectively write one separate comment requesting a through spell-checking, and give 2-5 occasions in the article as examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T15:26:46.530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T15:26:46.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13954" CreationDate="2013-11-08T15:53:00.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (theoretical computer science), the best papers at a particular conference often get invited to a special issue of a journal. The editor of the special issue is typically one of the conference chairs, but the papers still go through the regular peer-review process of the journal, and are held to the same standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T15:53:00.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13961" CreationDate="2013-11-08T16:37:36.663" Score="30" ViewCount="32697" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel a little bit ashamed, but I have never understood the difference between transactions and journals. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9518/the-differences-between-ams-research-journals/&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is quite related. However, I could not find any clear differentiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my little field (software engineering) &lt;em&gt;IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering&lt;/em&gt; is considered the top venue. However, there is not an IEEE journal on Software Engineering (or whatever name). To be honest, I have never seen any publisher on software engineering having both transactions and a journal on software engineering. This is also why I fail do differentiate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what IEEE writes at its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/subscriptions/clientservices/info/faq_clientservices.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the difference between IEEE Journals, Transactions, Letters, and Magazines?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals, Transactions, and Letters are the primary means for&#xA;publishing technical papers concerning original work in IEEE fields of&#xA;interest. [..] The primary purpose of&#xA;Journals, Transactions, and Letters is to disclose and provide a&#xA;permanent archival record of original technical work that advances the&#xA;state of the art or provides novel insights. Papers in Journals,&#xA;Transactions, and Letters should be of lasting value to the&#xA;professional as judged by the authors’ peers through a formal review&#xA;process. [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The omitted part is about letters and magazines, so it is not related. Am I really missing it, or they do not really differentiate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T07:40:32.557" Title="Difference between transactions and journal" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13960" CreationDate="2013-11-08T17:07:17.307" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transactions&lt;/strong&gt; used to have a very specific meaning. From the &lt;em&gt;New Oxford American Dictionary&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;transactions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  published reports of proceedings at the meetings of a learned society&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this historical usage, it is synonymous to &lt;strong&gt;proceedings&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. it is a published report of a conference or a set of meetings. Many learned societies have &lt;em&gt;transactions&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/journalissues/tf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transactions of the Faraday Society&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/journalsframework/tran&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transactions of the AMS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, etc.. Some other institutions use the term “proceedings”, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the National Academy of Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These transactions or proceedings were separate from journals, which do not have to coincide with a conference or meeting. However, with time the customs changed, and &lt;strong&gt;many of these reputable publishing venues became independent from actual meetings or conferences&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;But, because they were reputable (and famous is some cases), the name remained.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:07:17.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13949" CreationDate="2013-11-08T17:58:37.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not the job of a reviewer to proofread an article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is the responsibility of a reviewer to comment on issues that would improve the state of a manuscript. Therefore, one should not completely turn a blind eye to issues of formatting, spelling, and grammar. Moreover, there are some papers where the grammar, spelling, and usage of English is so poor that it actually hinders appropriate evaluation of the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it is appropriate to include some comments on the general level of usage in a review, although one would not want to list tons of typographical errors as part of the review; a comment that corrections are necessary should suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:58:37.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T19:16:35.740" Score="2" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my dissertation, I am solving a problem by using techniques used to solve another problem. As a result, I have to do two literature surveys for both problems. I ended up with a huge chapter!  - most of it is basically a literature survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want my examiners to hate me when they find a long thesis, but I don't want to get comments such as: &quot;Why have you not considered the work of X in your survey?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good practice to move part of this huge chapter's survey to an Appendix chapter, while keeping a section that speaks about the general approaches followed in the literature? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T02:46:50.383" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T02:46:50.383" Title="Moving a detailed literature survey in Appendix to reduce size of chapter?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13939" CreationDate="2013-11-08T19:24:11.767" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't hesitate to apply to a job because of the burden on letter writers.  Applying to 20 or 30 schools is quite normal (and I know people who've done as many as 100).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Firstly, letter writers know it comes with the territory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondly, the thing you should focus on is making each individual letter less of a burden.  It's normal for them to send their letters to an administrator in your department (or sometimes the one where you got your Ph.D.) and to have the administrator send out the letters.  You can also use a service like Interfolio, where they only have to submit once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T19:24:11.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13678" CreationDate="2013-11-08T19:33:07.817" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not exactly answer your question though... Below are &quot;official&quot; statistics for two group-one (?) pure math programs. Note that whether a score is &quot;acceptable&quot; might also depend on whether you are domestic student or not (based on the Ohio State data). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Since my reputation is too low to add more than two links in an answer, I can't provide more information at present. But I'll definitely update this answer once my reputation grows...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ohio State University: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.osu.edu/graduate/apply&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.osu.edu/graduate/apply&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are no a-priori minimum scores for the test set by our program. However, admissions become rare below the 50th percentile. The distribution of percentiles of subject test scores of Ph.D.-applicants we admitted between 2009 and 2012 is depicted below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data over the four admission cycles includes 125 domestic (in red) and 129 international (in pink) applicants. &lt;strong&gt;The median percentile for domestic students is 67, the one for international students is 95.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9bODe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University of Pennsylvania: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.upenn.edu/grad/graddata.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.upenn.edu/grad/graddata.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Scores on the Advanced Math Subject Test of the GRE should be at least 750&lt;/strong&gt;, though applicants with somewhat lower scores may be admitted if the rest of their application is sufficiently strong. &lt;strong&gt;The average GRE scores of the students who entered our Ph.D. program&lt;/strong&gt; in the recent past were: Verbal: 597; Quantitative: 789; &lt;strong&gt;Advanced Math Subject Test: 820.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: More data...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cornell: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.cornell.edu/m/Graduate/app_details.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.cornell.edu/m/Graduate/app_details.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Most successful applicants score 700 or above on their GRE subject test.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Georgia Tech: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.gatech.edu/academics/graduate/faqs-graduate-admissions#MINGRE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.gatech.edu/academics/graduate/faqs-graduate-admissions#MINGRE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The PhD entering class in Fall 2006 had the following averages: ... Subj 795&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UIUC: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.illinois.edu/GraduateProgram/apply-phd.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.illinois.edu/GraduateProgram/apply-phd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mathematics subject GRE scores of entering Ph.D. students in 2013: upper quartile 850, median 790, and lower quartile 690.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penn State: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.psu.edu/grad/phd/faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.math.psu.edu/grad/phd/faq.php&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(&quot;Listed below are the average scores of students accepted to our program for the last several years...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9366" LastEditorUserId="9366" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T02:57:14.747" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T02:57:14.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13963" CreationDate="2013-11-08T20:26:47.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a thesis, you may as well include the full review. You've done the work, and a thesis typically has no particular length limit. Realistically, your examiners will probably just skim it anyway. I see no reason to move it to an appendix, though I also don't think it matters very much. If your advisor or university policies feel strongly, of course, do what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you publish papers based on your thesis, then you'll want to condense the review to focus on  the most important and relevant prior work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T20:26:47.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13963" CreationDate="2013-11-08T20:29:32.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a current graduate student starting to write my own doctoral dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice which I have got from several faculty members with whom I have been working for the last 3-4 years is that there is no &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; length to a literature review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literature survey should encapsulate your research problem, identify the current gap in the literature and then, factor in methods using which you attempt to answer your research question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that makes it long, its long. My literature review is probably around ~30-40 pages. Given that I work in a rather interdisciplinary area, its inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advise you to include all the literature that is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appendix is usually reserved for additional figures, tables, links, code, supplementary analysis etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T20:29:32.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T21:15:27.403" Score="10" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm sitting here, rewriting the abstract of a paper I hope to&#xA;submit shortly. The abstract I had was old and not very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have on good authority that an abstract is an important part of a&#xA;paper, because it is often what makes a reader take a closer look at&#xA;the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how does one write a good abstract that will make people take a&#xA;closer look? What are things to include and things not to include?&#xA;What are common mistakes, if any, to watch out for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of example, here the abstract I am rewriting, in its current&#xA;form. This is for an applied statistics paper. Feel free to critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We describe and implement a method to select a Bayesian model for&#xA;      a collection of DNA sequences. This method assumes the DNA&#xA;      sequences are generated from one of a particular class of&#xA;      distribution models. These models capture long range correlation&#xA;      structure among the sites of the DNA sequences. We choose a model&#xA;      from the class by using a simulated annealing search algorithm&#xA;      with a scoring function based on the prior predictive distribution&#xA;      corresponding to the model. We apply this method to model human&#xA;      and mouse Recombination Signal Sequences (RSS). We use the&#xA;      posterior predictive distribution corresponding to the model to&#xA;      predict which of a larger group of sequences are RSS in the&#xA;      context of a cross-validation setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDENDUM: Please comment on whether there is a standard abstract length limit in your field, unless it is journal specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Here is a second attempt at an abstract. This is based partly on the discussion at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write an Abstract&lt;/a&gt;, which is a nice discussion of the main points to think about. The results teaser at the end is a little unorthodox, but it is intended as an inducement for people to look further at the paper. @F'x, do you have any feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given a specialised set of DNA sequences, it is a biologically&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  interesting problem to predict which members of a larger set of DNA&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  sequences belongs to that set. In this paper we consider the&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  particular example sets of Recombination Signal Sequences (RSS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Problems of this kind are commonly addressed in the biological&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  literature. However, we approach this problem by selecting a&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Bayesian model for this specialised set. This is an approach that is&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  rarely used in this context, but as we show, can give good results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We select our model from particular class of distribution models.&#xA;  These models capture long range correlation structure among the&#xA;  sites of the sequences. We choose a model from the class by using a&#xA;  simulated annealing search algorithm with a scoring function based&#xA;  on the prior predictive distribution of the model. We apply this&#xA;  method to model human and mouse Recombination Signal Sequences&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (RSS). We use the posterior predictive distribution of the model to&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  predict which of a larger group of sequences are RSS in the context&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  of a cross-validation setup. We summarize the results of the&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  prediction in figure and tabular form, showing good results. Example&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  statistic: out of 700,000 candidate sequences, 30 to 50 are actually&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  RSS. The algorithm ranks these, in descending order, by how likely&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  they are to be RSS. It ranks almost all the RSS (90\%+) in the top&#xA;  100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T13:27:22.580" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T13:27:22.580" Title="How do I write a good abstract?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13968" CreationDate="2013-11-08T22:01:56.677" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that is too much overlooked is that an abstract is read by a more diverse crowd of people than the rest of your paper. So, you have three different goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a take-home message to people who aren't interested enough to read the full paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convince the undecided to read it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it easier for experts to find it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, #3 is not so much of a constraint: Google and other search engines allow for full-text searching. So, focus on #1 and #2: &lt;strong&gt;be concise, crystal-clear, attractive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Enough with the generalities. I love to critique, so I'll give it a try: I'm not in your field, which I think makes me a good test reader for your abstract, but also makes it harder for me to actually suggest actual changes to it. Anyway…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's decent: no catastrophe, but far from enthusiastic. My main comment would be that it lacks a clear statement of the broader issue you are trying to address. You could start with it, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The past few years have seen large advances in the statistical modeling of DNA sequences, mostly based on genetic algorithms. In this work, we explore the efficiency of an alternative and simpler route, and show how to efficiently choose within a class of distribution models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have filled in with semi-random keywords/buzzwords, just to give you a sense of how to achieve it. The idea is to put your findings in perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roughly, what subfield are you working in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the main trend in this field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you position your work with respect to this recent research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then trim down the rest of the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We showcase a method to select a Bayesian model for a collection of DNA sequences, generated from a specifically chosen distribution model capture long range correlation structure. We choose the model based its prior predictive distribution. Applying this method to model human and mouse Recombination Signal Sequences (RSS), we predict which of a larger group of sequences are RSS in the context of a cross-validation setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I hope I did not lose or betray some of the meaning, it's hard when you don't get the finer points of the text… but you get the idea anyway!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T22:18:48.480" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T22:18:48.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13952" CreationDate="2013-11-08T22:48:52.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be relevant to OP's situation but it's relevant to the general question:  There is one additional issue not addressed so far: Are you sure that you want everyone in the world seeing your paper now?  Are you sure, even, that you want admissions committees seeing it?  If a paper is accepted for a conference, that means that someone has decided it's at least good enough for that conference.  You have a little bit of confirmation that you're not embarrassing yourself by posting your paper publicly.  But conference papers don't necessarily have to be good in a self-contained way.  It might be enough, from the point of view of the conference organizers and reviewers, if the paper is intriguing and could lead to interesting discussion and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;safest&lt;/em&gt; thing to do is to restrict circulation of your papers to people you know until the paper has been published.  I'm putting aside issues about copyright, prior publication, etc.  My point is that having had a paper reviewed, having gotten feedback, and having revised to the extent that reviewers think the paper is worth publishing provides good reason to think that you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; embarrassing yourself by making the paper publicly available.  (Alternatively, just get lots of feedback from people who are qualified to give it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the safest thing to do.  I'm not saying it's the best thing to do.  There are tradeoffs.  By putting the paper out on the web early, you promote your ideas, advertise what you're about, and promote discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that any of this applies to CS, and I'm not sure that any of it applies to your situation.  It's more relevant to people who are going on the academic job market after graduate school.  I think that what people are probably looking for in graduate applicants is that applicants have a lot of promise.  If there is good raw material, but also rough edges, that's OK: Helping you grow past the rough edges is the job of the graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9370" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T22:48:52.403" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12728" CreationDate="2013-11-09T00:07:41.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you run your own server, then there are some open source, web-based reference management tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refbase.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;refbase&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aigaion.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aigaion&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikindx.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WIKINDX&lt;/a&gt; which seem to me most suitable for your purpose: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can share a reference library plus file attachments (and quotations in the case of WIKINDX) and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all have import/export functions for RIS and BibTeX, so that all users can upload their own references and download the collective library independent of their reference manager of choice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T00:07:41.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12838" CreationDate="2013-11-09T03:46:23.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also find search tools specific to regions, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastersportal.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MastersPortal.eu&lt;/a&gt;. If you just need the same sort of general information that you will find on a program's Web site, all in one place, this will be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know of a specific major that you want to study, many professional associations or organizations will put a long list of programs on their Web sites, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://linguistlist.org/teach/programs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this list of linguistics programs&lt;/a&gt; at the LINGUIST list or &lt;a href=&quot;http://englishlanguageprofessionalsresourceguide.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this database of schools&lt;/a&gt; from the TESOL International Association. Sometimes these lists include detailed overviews of the programs, courses offered, and estimated costs, but usually not enough information to know about the quality of instruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For thorough student reviews and comparisons of schools, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studentsreview.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StudentsReview&lt;/a&gt;. This Web site has various tools for searching for and comparing the various details of schools, based on your personal requirements, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studentsreview.com/compare.php3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University Comparison&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studentsreview.com/ultrasearch.php3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UltraSearch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T08:31:05.273" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T08:31:05.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13939" CreationDate="2013-11-09T04:59:48.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're coming out of a graduate program, your department or an office in your university may be used to handling the process of sending out letters.  Another alternative is to use a service like Interfolio that allows your letter writers to upload a single letter.  You can't see the letter (that's what you want), but you can cause it to be sent to whomever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9370" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T04:59:48.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5466" CreationDate="2013-11-09T09:14:09.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having more than 10% of your journals in ISI is more than an achievement. Most open-access journals don't even care because it is impossible to them. I think it is wrong to take open-access as fake or low quality, traditional journals are also becoming open-access and there are very serious open-access journals like PLOS. MDPI journals fall short compared to PLOS but they are respectable and are building their reputation. Charges are proportional to the journal reputation and most times can be waived if the author makes its case of lack of funding and it is completely independent of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent overview of the impact factors for various journals in MDPI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1335&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact factors&lt;/a&gt;  , show that there is significant credible scientific scholarship being disseminated. (eg. 'Catalysts' 3.4, 'Energies' 2.6, 'Entropy' 2.3). As of 2017, 'IEEE Access' has an impact factor of 3.5, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact factor on front page&lt;/a&gt; and its reputation is accepted and acknowledged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9374" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2018-08-21T18:29:18.827" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T18:29:18.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-09T19:04:10.020" Score="13" ViewCount="3571" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student can't decide which school to apply at one time, and different schools have different' deadlines, how could the student do to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible solution. I heard of interfolio (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interfolio.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.interfolio.com/&lt;/a&gt;). Does anyone know if it might help? My concerns are that each school has its own only application system, and it might not be good for recommendation letter to not have specific school name in it. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T12:09:52.043" Title="How to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13668" CreationDate="2013-11-10T00:04:34.270" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairtest.org/facts/gre.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;em&gt;Fair Test&lt;/em&gt; website,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The GRE is particularly susceptible to the influence of socioeconomic class. ETS' own research has shown a strong relationship between family background and test scores. One study of applicants who scored between 750 and 800 on the exam found that only 4% of these high-scoring test-takers had fathers who had not completed high school; around half had fathers with bachelor's degrees or more, and of these, a whopping 90% had fathers with graduate or professional degrees. &lt;strong&gt;When family income was held constant, most of the test score differences between races disappeared or shrank dramatically.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correlation between GRE scores and future academic success is much lower, according to the same source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ability of the GRE to predict first-year graduate grades is incredibly weak, according to data from the test's manufacturer. In one ETS study of 12,000 test takers, the exam accounted for a mere 9% of the differences (or variation) among students' first-year grades.2 Undergraduate grades proved to be a stronger predictor of academic success, explaining 14% of the variation in graduate school grades. An independent non-ETS study found an even weaker relationship between test scores and academic achievement - &lt;strong&gt;just 6% of the variation in grades could be predicted by GRE scores&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T09:19:08.693" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T09:19:08.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-10T09:53:12.980" Score="7" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a 3rd year PhD student in a Canadian university, I've been given the opportunity to work directly with my supervisor's long-term collaborator, who is a young faculty member in an Australian university. I shall be visiting him for a month to initiate a (STEM-theory) project and am looking for advice on how to make the collaboration fruitful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, it took time for me to understand my own supervisor's priorities, strengths-weaknesses and way of working. With that understanding, I have been able to work effectively with him. How can I quickly learn the best way of working with my new collaborator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6800" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T18:26:07.743" Title="How to effectively manage a new collaborator?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13977" CreationDate="2013-11-10T12:09:52.043" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can reduce the amount of work the professor needs to do by following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1777&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this excellent advice from Prof. David E. Keyes&lt;/a&gt;.  Here are some of the most relevant bits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ensure that such a writer is well primed to execute your reference efficiently, you should create a self-contained packet containing all the information the author will need to dispatch the reference in one sitting: (1) contact information for the recipient of the letter, (2) a description of the position and application closing date, (3) your own application essays and cover letter, (4) a resume, (5) relevant transcripts and scores, and (6) an explanation of the niche of the writer! It is very useful, as a reference writer, to receive a reminder along the following lines: &amp;quot;Professor Keyes, your letter will be the one that comments most authoritatively about my analytical ability, my promptness in completing projects, and my reasons for wanting to pursue X next fall. Remember that you gave me an A– in partial differential equations two years ago and it was your suggestion that led to my summer at Los Alamos with Y.&amp;quot; You should provide this packet in both hard and soft copy. Writers of lots of references maintain files that may be hard or soft, or both, and you should make it easy for those writers to locate your files quickly for subsequent updating and future requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some faculty write many dozens of letters of reference during peak months, and they may even ask candidates for sample text to be incorporated into letters, to ensure that they capture their niches. You should not be flustered at such a request, and should not be modest in complying. You should be aware, though, that your words will not pass directly into the delivered product; they will be used simply to get the author's juices flowing following the formulaic paragraphs of the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help maximize the time a writer has available for each candidate, you should complete the reference process as far as legally possible yourself. For hardcopy applications, this means printing out and filling in as many fields as possible, both about you and about the writer (title, affiliation, contact data). For reference letters collected online (the vast majority for positions filled by junior candidates), you can usually fill in each writer's basic contact information. Such streamlining is always appreciated and leads to fewer errors and faster completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think something like Interfolio would help, because the last thing you should do is force the professor to learn to use a new tool just so he/she can write a letter for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T12:09:52.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7231" CreationDate="2013-11-10T13:35:03.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Found this link after Googling for &quot;Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Lände&quot; (Thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/519/mikael-vejdemo-johansson&quot;&gt;Mike&lt;/a&gt; for explaining first )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarifvertrag_f%C3%BCr_den_%C3%B6ffentlichen_Dienst_der_L%C3%A4nder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (Collective agreement for the public sector in the countries)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this, 13 is the pay group for Ph.D. students and postdoctoral associates. And the gross pay is from 3200 Euros upwards. (Basically it would be about 2000 Euros for 2/3 of that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, in one of the invitations, it says &quot;E13&quot;. I'm not sure what this refers to but, I guess it's same as TV-L 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and if you took this position, please explain further about TV-L 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9381" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-11-10T23:09:02.477" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T23:09:02.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13990" CreationDate="2013-11-10T17:10:13.597" Score="29" ViewCount="2513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to defend my PhD in Computer Science in a couple of months, and I'm struggling with deciding on a future career path. Over the course of the 8 years I spent in an academic environment, I familiarized myself with advances and challenges of formal software development. I also learned a lot about myself. It might sound a bit depressing but right now I don't think that it's my vocation to be a scientist. I feel that there are lots of talented people who will do the research with a lot more passion and way better than me and that a mediocre researcher is of no use for society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I think I would love to work with scientists as a software engineer. I came to this point because I like developing software, I have high respect for science and would happily support the research with tools, and implement the research results in software. Being in a research environment I might become more inspired with science someday and will switch to research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being said my question is: are software engineers with a research background &amp;amp; PhD in demand in the academic world? Do they allocate funding for such people in universities/research labs? What should I expect from a career of a research software engineer? Would it be considered strange if I applied to a PostDoc position saying that I want to concentrate primarily on software? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any comment or advice. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9382" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-10T19:58:03.547" LastActivityDate="2020-10-31T22:53:34.063" Title="Are software engineers with PhD in demand in Academia?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14001" CreationDate="2013-11-10T17:30:00.620" Score="9" ViewCount="1804" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate (not studying computer science) I was fortunate enough to work in the lab of the CS department chair at my university for an extended period of time. This work resulted in me being added as a coauthor to one of her most recent papers. She also knows me well - I took an intro CS course with her, and during my time in the lab we would be in contact practically every day. I definitely plan on asking her for a recommendation letter when I apply for graduate school in computer science next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I know that going to the same university for undergraduate and graduate school is sometimes discouraged, I would quite honestly be very happy to return there, as I very much enjoyed working under her, she is well-known in her field, and some of her research interests are very close to mine. In any event, it would be nice to have a &quot;safety net&quot; of sorts while exploring other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that every university has different policies about admissions decisions, so no one can speak to my particular case. But in general, how much would you say that having the backing of the department chair helps in graduate school admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9383" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T17:24:20.783" Title="How much will connections with the department chair help with grad school acceptance?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13327" CreationDate="2013-11-10T17:37:43.873" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did combine PhD and work for 4 years, so, theoretically - yes, it's possible. But I didn't like the process because I wasn't fully invested in either activity. It also significantly delayed my defense. It depends on how productive you are. At times you will be facing certain deadlines and will be feeling torn between two major activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should go ahead with PhD if you are serious about it. It will take some 3-6 years of your time, so why to postpone it? I think it's totally possible to get internships at summer time and you may have to develop software as a part of your research, so you'll be practicing your skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also consider free-lance work so that you have more control over your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9382" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T17:37:43.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13327" CreationDate="2013-11-10T17:59:04.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, its completely possible, at least in Indian universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it practically possible to do research and work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yes, but it will be difficult. see the related &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8747/is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; by Charles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to work for a year or two after my masters, and&#xA;  start a PhD after that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on you. If you need money, pay loan etc, job may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of internships can I do, and how long should they be, so I&#xA;  can apply to IT companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not sure how do I answer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really interested in PhD, then join after masters. All the best :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T23:23:15.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13980" CreationDate="2013-11-10T18:26:07.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to comment that your choice of words in the question is somewhat inappropriate: you do not &quot;manage&quot; a new collaborator when your collaborator is more senior than you are. As a graduate student, you cannot have any reasonable expectation of asking for and receiving commitments from a professor—if anything, it's the other way around, even if you will be the one doing the majority of the work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this also tells you something about how to handle the process. Remember that the professor is quite likely to have many more time commitments than you will. Therefore, you will need to be cognizant of that when making plans. What takes you a few days of effort may take your collaborator substantially longer, if he has to do it himself. So it may be very useful to find out if there is another point of contact you will be working with in the other professor's laboratory group, and ask if you can coordinate things directly what that individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T18:26:07.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13984" CreationDate="2013-11-10T19:32:07.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: Yes, some universities do value software engineers with a research background.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University College London (UCL), for example, has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/staff/research_services/rsdt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research Software Development Team&lt;/a&gt; (RSDT), which specialises in providing &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/research-software-development/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;software engineering by programmers with a science-research background&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the first of those links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a team of professional software developers with particular expertise in designing, constructing and maintaining software for academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal is to enhance UCL’s capacity to produce high quality scientific software, from the simplest scripts to complex simulations running on state of the art high performance computers. We do this by collaborating with researchers who are creating their own software&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How is it funded?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work can be funded in one of several ways. It can be funded through university core funding. The work can be bid for as part of a research funding proposal or consultancy contract. It can be funded as part of a research grant for generic research software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What do they do?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UCL RSDT team work alongside researchers on scientific projects. They co-author papers with them, transfer best practice &amp;amp; skills into the team, and hand over well-crafted, well-documented software (and its version-control history) for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team do have research backgrounds themselves. They help select / develop the algorithms. When starting a new project, they read some of the background literature to the project - particularly that relating to the algorithms - to get enough grounding to enable them to ask meaningful questions of the researchers who they're working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And (touching on a comment by dgraziotin), the team host &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Carpentry Boot Camps&lt;/a&gt; for research staff and doctoral students. This gives the attendees an introduction to key concepts that they might otherwise not be exposed to, such as unit testing, version control, and working from the command-line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do many universities do this?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, this isn't an initiative at many universities that I'm aware of. However, given the success of UCL RSDT to date (the team is now expanding again), and the growing awareness of the concept of the Research Software Developer &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?q=@jamespjh%20%22a%20new%20type%20of%20hero%22&amp;amp;src=typd&amp;amp;f=realtime&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(&amp;quot;a new type of hero&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, as described by Neil P Chue Hong, Director of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.software.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Sustainability Institute&lt;/a&gt;), this is probably an idea whose time has come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Disclosure&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little involved with the research software development effort linked to above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T16:02:18.310" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14083" CreationDate="2013-11-10T23:06:21.657" Score="8" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, I attended a conference. The organizers later compiled an edited book with the revised presentations of the conference. I was also offered to contribute a chapter. But after the sending the organizers a first draft, I had to turn down the offer as I did not have the time to make the revisions and additions they asked for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am writing an omnibus review about the same topic for a journal and I also would like to discuss the meanwhile published proceedings of the conference. Although I think the edited book has some very good points, I also would have to express severe criticism about some other points especially in the introduction by the organizers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would like to know:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;How do I disclose the best in the review that I have participated at the conference and was offered a chapter? Should I add a footnote or a paragraph? Wouldn't that even raise distrust?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things more complicated: There is already a well-meaning  review of the book by the 2nd supervisor of one of the contributors who has not disclosed his link in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9387" LastActivityDate="2021-05-21T09:11:42.087" Title="How to disclose in a review of an edited book that one was offered a chapter?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13327" CreationDate="2013-11-11T01:18:55.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, being a graduate student in a PhD program is a full-time job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T01:18:55.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T02:03:06.060" Score="26" ViewCount="150580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a PhD programme in Europe. For that I need to write a cover letter. It will be more like a SOP (technical but shorter version, as it's one page) or it can be more general stuff, as in why I want to do a PhD, what I like about this particular field, what background I have. Any suggestions welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9390" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T05:44:12.953" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T02:45:18.720" Title="How to write a Cover Letter for applying to a PhD programme" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2013-11-11T03:20:49.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/researchlei/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Lei&lt;/a&gt; was an interesting attempt at visualizing groups of people working together, clustering documents with similar subjects of work, using a simple python interface. I am not sure if it still works but making such graphs and reviewing your community gives you a global view of work being done in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9371" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T03:20:49.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13405" CreationDate="2013-11-11T03:33:08.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;References and bibliography are to be read and digested in a progressive manner. References that might have been not so intuitive become useful over time as we gain more experience.&#xA;One needs to document them in any suitable way and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add new references and connections with current work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track these references and revisit them when and where you touch base again with them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revise the entry with new information or clearer understanding of the subject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove any parasite or related paper that you think is no more directly related to your work - clear clutter up - this is important to stop accumulating lots of bibliography which can become non specific!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the references you might accumulate may not be useful for the final bibiliography. There is need to sort or classify these references as biblio, self learning references, state of art, related (first order, second order) and so on and so forth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this using a wiki would be advisable - and if there is a team involved group updates would be preferable! Basically one needs a good sense of organization while writing the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9371" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T03:33:08.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14019" CreationDate="2013-11-11T03:40:57.840" Score="6" ViewCount="13170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently looking at the requirements of a (Comp. Sci.) job that seems to only take into account &quot;ISI-indexed publications&quot;. I'm vaguely aware of what ISI is and so forth, but I'm struggling to find a definitive list of ISI-indexed venues, or what &quot;ISI-indexed publications&quot; means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or at least I hope it doesn't mean what I think it does ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/publist_sciex.pdf&quot;&gt;following list&lt;/a&gt; on the Thomson Reuters' page as a journal list for science. However, the list doesn't contain any conferences (even the &quot;big ones&quot; like WWW, (P)VLDB, SIGMOD, etc.) and a few journals I would expect to be on there aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I be correct to say that any Comp. Sci. venue not on that list is not &quot;ISI-indexed&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this &quot;ISI-indexed-only&quot; restriction common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If so, seems quite antiquated really. Not being able to mention good, highly-cited, highly-selective conference papers sucks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T18:56:39.887" Title="What precisely does &quot;ISI-indexed publications&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2013-11-11T04:03:54.400" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of examples on the Web of the basic format a cover letter should take. There's a good template here on &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocs.fas.harvard.edu/files/ocs/files/gsas-cvs-and-cover-letters.pdf?m=1438033280&quot;&gt;page 23&lt;/a&gt; from Harvard. (Make sure to do it in TeX if applying for a math or comp. sci. PhD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, my own personal advice ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What not to do&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common mistake I have found in cover letters is that they are too generic. Either they could have been written by anyone (&quot;&lt;em&gt;I have a keen interest in science. I was always curious as a ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;) or could have been written for any programme (&quot;&lt;em&gt;I want to do a PhD as I believe I would be well-suited to a career in academia ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). Keep such generic sentences to a minimum: the more of these a cover letter has, the more impersonal and unremarkable it is, and the more it leaves the suspicion that the same cover letter has been recycled for multiple applications and/or by multiple students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, avoid hyperbole (&quot;&lt;em&gt;I am the best candidate for this position because ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). You cannot know that you are the best candidate. This is an academic application, not an industrial one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What to do&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your cover letter personal, remarkable (i.e., stands out from other cover letters), specific to you and specific to the position at hand. Be enthusiastic. Be specific. Show that you've put thought into the position and why you are applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relate your specific skill sets and previous experience to the programme you are applying for. Relate the content of specific aspects of your CV to the programme: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;During my masters, I enjoyed working on the topic of A, which relates to your programme&lt;/em&gt; [in this way]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I worked three summers at company B, where I gained experience in topic C ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I visited your university in March last year and was impressed by ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I read paper entitled 'D' published by your group at 'E' and was interested in ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I recently published a paper 'F', which I believe compliments work by 'G' in your department on 'H' ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T14:47:10.907" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:47:10.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13996" CreationDate="2013-11-11T04:18:20.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would I be correct to say that any Comp. Sci. venue not on that list is not &quot;ISI-indexed&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answer is Yes. Click &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jloptions.cgi?PC=master&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to search for your journal. Many CS top journals are not indexed by ISI. This says nothing whatsoever about the quality of the work. Limiting publications to only ISI-indexed is really really a bad decision. This may vary between fields, but in CS, I am certain most of the high quality venues of publishing are not ISI-indexed. Note that some scam journals would claim they have impact factor &lt;em&gt;x.xxx&lt;/em&gt; where actually they are not even listed by ISI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this &quot;ISI-indexed-only&quot; restriction common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some universities (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://ksu.edu.sa/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;King Saud University&lt;/a&gt;; a list from one guy from KSU is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emilio.ferrara.name/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Computer-Science-Journals-ISI.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; ) where researchers are required to publish in ISI-indexed venues to get promoted (i.e. to associate or full). But these are exception cases and not common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T04:18:20.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13985" CreationDate="2013-11-11T06:46:33.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right, it's sometimes discouraged to get a graduate degree from your alma mater, but it's not as highly discouraged as getting a Ph.D. from the same place you got your master's degree. It really depends a lot on the culture of the department. When faculty are going over your letters of recommendation, test scores, and statement of intent, they're trying to mainly assess:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How likely you are to succeed in the program&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How closely your interests align with faculty (&lt;em&gt;i.e&lt;/em&gt; Can they help you? Can you help them?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People can seem amazing on paper and turn out to be a disaster as a graduate student, and vice versa, and faculty will tell you they're taking somewhat of a gamble each year when they admit new students based on application materials alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got someone on faculty who can vouch for your intellectual abilities and your fit factor in the department (and you clearly do), then I would say you're very likely to be in a favorable position over other applicants in that department. My department accepted a master's student who had just graduated with their bachelor's from the same department two years in a row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as other programs go, it's extremely beneficial that you have co-authored a published article and would have a letter of rec from a department head. Not a guarantee, of course, but a massive help in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9392" LastEditorUserId="9392" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T07:10:50.607" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T07:10:50.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13985" CreationDate="2013-11-11T07:02:30.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to getting accepted into your current institution, it matters a lot.  If she recommends you, you're definitely in.  With respect to other institutions, it depends on whom she knows.  Recommendations can get you very far, to the point that &lt;strong&gt;strong&lt;/strong&gt; recommendations from well known faculty pretty much trump all other aspects of one's application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T07:48:02.893" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T07:48:02.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14004" CreationDate="2013-11-11T09:27:00.930" Score="7" ViewCount="8588" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the schools that I've looked at for PhD programs in Computer Science have between a 9-15% acceptance rate.  I've noticed similar acceptance rates for other programs outside of computer science; yet almost everyone that I've ever spoken to has only applied to a handful of schools.  This just doesn't make sense to me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's just say that each school that I apply to has ~15% acceptance rate, then if I only apply to only 6 schools, I have roughly a 63% chance of getting accepted to at least one (1-probability of getting declined everywhere).  That doesn't seem horrible, but if I know I want to do a PhD, I would like to have much higher odds, plus most of the programs are closer to a 10% admissions rate.  I understand that applications are costly both monetarily and temporally speaking, but having a 37% chance of not getting into any programs is pretty bad.  Whereas if I apply to 14 schools, I have about a 10% chance of not getting accepted anywhere.  Can someone please explain the thought process behind this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T09:33:34.400" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T05:38:34.843" Title="Why do so many people apply to so few PhD programs?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14003" CreationDate="2013-11-11T10:15:28.790" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, I like your way of analytical thinking, some ouf your assumptions do not hold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection procedures of PhD programs are &lt;strong&gt;not random&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The selection procedure of one PhD program is &lt;strong&gt;not independent&lt;/strong&gt; from other programs, as it is likely based on similar characteristics and markers in your CVs. (Maybe, there is conditional independence given 3, but that is problematic because the value of 3 is relative to the local distribution of 4.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your application profile does &lt;strong&gt;not change&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do &lt;strong&gt;not know&lt;/strong&gt; who your competitors are which may also vary between programs (and time). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would assume that people use their applications as measures to test the unknown distribution of the accessibility of PhD programs. Unfortunately, this accessibility changes every term/year because of different populations of applicants. Furthermore, information about the specific demands and requirements of PhD programs is limited because it is time-consuming to look them up and sometimes they are simply hidden. That makes it reasonable to concentrate only on few programs and draw &lt;em&gt;convenient samples&lt;/em&gt;. If applicants fail, it is easier to adapt, as your application costs were moderate, and to finally accept that there were better competitors and go on with life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T13:07:13.557" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T13:07:13.557" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14018" CreationDate="2013-11-11T10:57:35.040" Score="3" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to keep up to date with public literature in my research field. All relevant publications are of too big a volume to follow and so the problem invites some automatic mechanism of filtering and notification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any good mechanism (desktop\online application etc.) that could be configured to alert on new publications according to specific criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three criteria that I would think would be very useful in such a mechanism are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;researcher name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - I would like to know of any new publication Prof. X was involved with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configurable  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; filter - I would like to know of any new publication which cites any of Prof. X papers or a specific one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And\Or\Not &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;keywords&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - I would like to know of any new publication that has both keywords A and (B or C).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of such existing app? Any recommendation to such (or similar) applied functionality would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T17:36:21.687" Title="Following literature - What is a good configurable publication notifier?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14003" CreationDate="2013-11-11T12:39:51.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many factors you are ignoring in your analysis... No offense but I have to say that your understanding of recruitment is lacking a lot of depth. Recruitment strategies and practices vary quite a bit but below I tried to give some ideas to the shortcomings (IMHO) of your analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Recruitment is a complex procedure that typically has many factors that are asymmetrically known to different parties. Writing applications, personal letters etc is almost an art in itself. Thus it's important to get a better understanding of the system before jumping into conclusions with misleading statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Outcomes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to take the outcome as a binary variable, while for a single application it might be a valid way to see it, for a single &lt;em&gt;applicant&lt;/em&gt; it might be misleading. Based on the project at hand and the candidates in question, the fact that you didn't make it for that particular application isn't necessarily independent of any future incidents, or rather the other way around; your future applications will most likely not be independent of the previous one(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite the contrary, actually. You might have significantly increased, or decreased, your chances for a future position with the same group, or at another group associated with the one you applied to. That's practically based on the competition (to which you are will be in the dark) for the project you applied to, and to the impression you have left on the admission committee or the individual PI/group leader. It's important to keep in mind that &lt;em&gt;people talk&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, your reputation will most likely proceed you, whether that is positive or negative that's a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fairness&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might like to think otherwise, but life isn't always fair and recruitment is typically one of those scenarios. In most respectable universities, all open positions need to be publicly announced, which means that anyone in the world can practically apply to them. Furthermore, there are usually laws and regulations that are put in place to work against discrimination of any kind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might get forgotten, however, is that the projects aren't really randomly devised. It is not that uncommon for a position to be announced so specifically that it's essentially tailor-made for a candidate; practical examples of this case could be the continuation of a master thesis work, or any similar project work. Such a position could be &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; filled months in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a position at a group with no prior knowledge of the place, you might actually be applying to a position that is already filled. However, many PIs use the public application procedure to &quot;scout talent&quot;. In other words, you might not be an interesting target for the project/position you have applied to, but you might still be very interesting for an upcoming project (see previous section &quot;Outcomes&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Spamming&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at numbers only, you might be mislead on accessing the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; number of &lt;em&gt;feasible&lt;/em&gt; candidates. I might be insensitive, or even offensive to a certain degree, but there are people who do not even read the job description and mass-apply (especially if it's free to apply). I work with bioinformatics, and among the other candidates there were some who apparently: &quot;&lt;em&gt;... always dreamed of the chance to be a radio engineer, and thus would gladly take the opportunity to ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (I have not seen the application myself, as it'd be a conflict of interests. I heard about this much later at a pub gathering with my colleagues and boss)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be muddying the statistics if you count with people that would be sorted out almost immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Hype&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word gets around, quickly... So more and more people want the same thing; &quot;Did you hear {insert_famous_professor} group has announced a new position?!&quot; While that is a normal human behavior, it also points out a fundamental defect in the way we reason; &lt;em&gt;just because something is famous it's not necessarily better than something else that isn't as reknown&lt;/em&gt;. At this point it's also worth noting that a successful senior scientist isn't necessarily &lt;em&gt;a good teacher of doing science&lt;/em&gt;. The distinction might not be very apparent prior to doing a PhD but a couple of years into academia, you start noticing the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while most people swarm over a few number of positions, very few apply to many positions elsewhere. Ask any head-hunter (recruitment professionals) and they'll even give you statistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suitability&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call me a snob if you will, but doing a PhD isn't a god-given right to all humans. It's a job, a career path and thus not suitable for everyone. Please note that I &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt;, in any way, mean that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are not suitable to do a PhD (it would not be my place to make a judgement, even if I knew you in person). I am merely stating that if a person is consistently getting a rejection, the chances are highly likely that the person is being unrealistic, or stronly under/over-valuing his/her skills. The negative effect of over-valuing is obvious, I suppose, but modesty or humility to the extreme could also impair one's chances of getting an acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T12:52:12.517" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T12:52:12.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14005" CreationDate="2013-11-11T14:12:47.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in life sciences, I suggest two methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PubMed updates: PubMed is the database that contains the abstracts of all life sciences publications. If you register (free), you can have query updates sent to your mail regularly. The way this works is that you run a database query once (these queries can be quite advanced), and then all new results to this query are compiled and sent to you. &lt;em&gt;This is a good method if you want to keep up with every publication in a relatively field&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;F1000: The Faculty of 1000 is a group of ~5000 scientists that regularly read papers and rank papers of special interest along with a short explanation. If you register (not free unless your institute has this service), you can also receive weekly updates according to specified sub-fields of interest. &lt;em&gt;This is a good method for keeping up with interesting publications in a wide field&lt;/em&gt; (where the PubMed search would just give too many results).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T14:12:47.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13902" CreationDate="2013-11-11T14:18:17.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in a STEM field, there are lots of options available to you. There are about 20 national laboratories that take students from every level of education as summer students, including international students. Personally, I've interned at Los Alamos National Lab and at Pacific Northwest National Lab. It's generally very applied work, but it's a great atmosphere for students and is also extremely helpful for making connections with potential future employers. I would look up national lab websites and look at their respective research areas, and contact individuals you would be interested in working with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The internet is your friend -- many companies and government agencies have programs listed on their website, and many of them don't require US citizenship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9397" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T14:18:17.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14041" CreationDate="2013-11-11T14:35:54.547" Score="169" ViewCount="164880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a honours thesis and have developed a Fortran library that I would like to cite in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some places they suggest to quote the documentation of the project but this is something I plan to do in the future and isn't done yet. The only documentation I have right now is the README file and the code itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be an acceptable way of directing a reader to my work on Github?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(bonus) &lt;strong&gt;Is there a BibTeX way to do it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9398" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T16:16:27.257" LastActivityDate="2020-05-07T14:49:57.073" Title="How do you cite a Github repository?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;repository&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="61" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14017" CreationDate="2013-11-11T15:11:05.257" Score="3" ViewCount="1406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a paper as an assignment for one of the courses that I take in University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main outcome of this lecture is having a good final paper in the end. As we are Masters students, the paper that I am going to write resembles more a survey paper in a given topic, rather than a research paper presented by the authors of a specific research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my topic assigned already. I have done my literature search and organized all the papers that I want to use. Unfortunately, at this point I am not that deep into the topic. But, everything I read seems to me like relevant for the topic, and somehow useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had difficulties with a similar situation before. As I was trying to include as much as possible relevant material to the survey paper, to make is complete. But in the end I was blamed that the paper loses its coherence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am stuck. In fact I am reluctant, because reading multiple papers, multiple times, writing them and then getting bad remarks does not feel nice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What criteria should I use to filter my papers all over again, and what approach should I use when writing a survey paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T21:45:02.547" Title="Selecting the relevant papers for a survey paper I have to write?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2013-11-11T15:34:46.157" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The underlying question seems to be how to get citable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a traditional method for doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write a methodology paper describing the software, how it was built, what it does. You can provide the source code as supplementary information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you cite &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; paper, in future papers where you apply the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T15:34:46.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14005" CreationDate="2013-11-11T15:42:14.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_alerts?view_op=list_alerts&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar alerts&lt;/a&gt; are certainly one (slightly crude) solution. But there are other databases out there that allow much better controlled searching and which do email alerts. My university gives me access to a university-branded version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EBSCO Discovery&lt;/a&gt;, but others do exist - some generalist and some especially suited to particular fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you are affiliated with a university or similar, I recommend asking your university library what they recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScienceDirect&lt;/a&gt; allow you to set up similar alerts, but they only apply to journals that are published on those sites (so with the example of ScienceDirect, you would only be told about articles in Elsevier journals). Depending on the publications that are relevant to you it might be possible to set up similar alerts on a few different publishers' sites to get good coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T15:42:14.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2013-11-11T16:40:30.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've seen most often is a footnote with the URL you want to provide, in this case the URL of your GitHub repository. This will point people even better because it will be in the same page, and sure it will not count for bibliographic statistics and your h-index, but it wasn't going to count anyway, at least not yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T16:40:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2013-11-11T17:00:44.147" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P.W.D. Charles, Project Title, (2013), GitHub repository, &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/charlespwd/project-title&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/charlespwd/project-title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or a bit different, depending on your citation style. Just is is crucial to include: author, title (if style includes it), year and link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you do have a publication related to this piece of code (even if only by fact it is your first publication basing on this code), don't forget to cite is as well! (In the current academic system it is all that counts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And respective BibTeX entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@misc{Charles2013,&#xA;  author = {Charles, P.W.D.},&#xA;  title = {Project Title},&#xA;  year = {2013},&#xA;  publisher = {GitHub},&#xA;  journal = {GitHub repository},&#xA;  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/charlespwd/project-title}},&#xA;  commit = {4f57d6a0e4c030202a07a60bc1bb1ed1544bf679}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware, this above are improvisations (especially the BibTeX entry), not standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even for more established and citable things there are not set standards, see e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/131245/how-to-cite-a-sequence-from-the-on-line-encyclopedia-of-integer-sequences-oeis&quot;&gt;How to cite a sequence from The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS)? - MathOverflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/90019/how-to-cite-sourcecode-from-an-svn-repository&quot;&gt;How to cite sourcecode from an svn repository - TeX.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/8743/how-to-cite-software-in-latex&quot;&gt;How to cite software in LaTeX - SuperUser.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to assign DOI to a particular commit in your repository&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T14:03:25.553" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14011" CreationDate="2013-11-11T17:32:33.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer may differ from field to field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all ask yourself &quot;What is the central question&quot; or the goal of you paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to give an overview on all aspects of the theory / concept? Or is it more about the central aspect of the theory / concept and extensions / applications are not that interesting? Or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then think about the story you want to tell. If its about the theory itself you might want to talk about the development of the theory, &lt;strong&gt;central&lt;/strong&gt; aspects, proofs, and maybe some applications or extensions at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to give a general overview, try to create groups, are there some main movements, aspects, fields of application? Where are the links between these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then select your paper according to this &quot;central story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing think about the audience of you paper, which concepts are common knowledge? Which are important to explain? Which depth of information is appropriate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, try to get more feedback: Read the feedback of your old paper, then read your paper and try to find the flaws. Ask the person who graded you to give you some advice. Read some paper of your fellow students which got good marks, find out what you like about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Identify the central question of your paper&#xA;2. Create a structure / central story    &#xA;3. Think about the audience&#xA;4. Fill the structure, create links between your sections.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5621" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T17:32:33.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14005" CreationDate="2013-11-11T17:36:21.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your institution (for example its Harman Science Library) and many others have the database product &lt;a href=&quot;http://newisiknowledge.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;. Precisely the alert criteria that you described, and more, are available through that product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selection of journals covered in its flagship collection, Web of Science, is curated with the goal to cover all of, and more than, the core literature of all scholarly fields, naturally without attempting to cover all journals in existence. Alerts in Web of Knowledge can also simultaneously search up to a dozen other collections including Medline, depending on your institution's subscription. You can see the collections in the subscription that is available to you by choosing the &quot;Select a Database&quot; tab. You can browse and search &lt;a href=&quot;http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the journal lists for the various collections&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8343" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T17:36:21.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13996" CreationDate="2013-11-11T17:55:49.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right, the IP &amp;amp; Science business of Thomson Reuters (the business formerly known as ISI) curates the indexes Web of Science and Current Contents Connect. The journal coverage in those two is almost identical. Thomson Reuters then creates some data products from the Web of Science and Current Contents Connect data, such as the Journal Impact Factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other indexes that are important in computer science include IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library. There are also more open indexes such as DBLP and CiteSeerX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomson Reuters &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mentions &quot;Bradford's Law&quot;&lt;/a&gt; as a principle it uses to include or exclude journals. The general idea is to include some 12,000 journals that are well woven into the network of scholarly citations, viewed broadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read more than once that computer science is unusual in the value it places on conference papers. That fact may help to explain limitations in the collection of conferences in the Web of Science collection. I am not certain whether or not the collection strategy for Web of Science specifically takes into account that computer science is unusual in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Web of Knowledge product that provides access to the Web of Science collection happens to have a more subject-specific collection called Inspec available for subscription. That is a bibliographic collection curated by the Institution of Electronics and Technology that historically was the UK's counterpart to IEEE. Not every institution that subscribes to Web of Knowledge elects to include Inspec in its subscription. Conversely, Web of Knowledge is not the only way to access the Inspec collection - although I believe it is the only way that is cross-referenced with Web of Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8343" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T17:55:49.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T17:57:50.303" Score="6" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying from Europe to US or US-styled Ph.D. programs and I'm wondering about who to choose for referees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated 2 years ago and my undergraduate professors don't remember me well, or at least I don't think so. In those two years I have worked as a research assistant in one lab, with three different post-docs. Should I diversify the source of my references and try to get references from my undergraduate institution or should I just opt for the people that I've been working with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the latter group knows me better and has, generally, a better opinion of me and my work. Then again, I'm afraid that the single source of references will be suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mentioned having studied in Europe because the undergraduate research options are typically limited, compared to American institutions where research experience is strongly encouraged. I only did a research thesis during my undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T18:20:48.697" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:50:04.153" Title="Choosing reference letters" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7200" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:24:22.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This situation has happened to me in both directions. As a reviewer, I always inform the editor first, and then only if they insist do I send them the earlier review. But I prefer to avoid it because otherwise  it constitutes double jeopardy for the authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, if I resubmit to a new journal, I expect to get a new set of opinions. There's no point in resubmitting if you're just going to get the identical comments. As to whether one should or should not revise a paper before resubmitting, that depends on many factors. Obviously factual errors or typos should be corrected. But I don't necessarily agree that one should go through a huge revision to address concerns raised by one set of reviewers, because a new set of reviewers may have a completely different set of issues, and maybe even object to some suggestions made by the first set of reviewers. Moreover, the second set, not knowing what issues were raised by the first set, won't know why certain things were included. For instance, if one reviewer asks me to add a paragraph favoring a particular interpretation (theirs of course) and I include this, but the paper is still rejected and I then send it to a new journal with a new reviewer, that person might completely disagree and reject the paper based on that interpretation which I only put in for the now-irrelevant reviewer in the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9402" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T18:24:22.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14029" CreationDate="2013-11-11T19:19:58.470" Score="10" ViewCount="1285" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, i've had to substitute teach a number of times for a variety of classes.  I'm wondering if it is really worth while to add this information into my CV.  Obviously, it won't hold as much weight as teaching a full class.  But if it is worth mentioning on the CV, what category should I add it to?  Teaching?  Volunteer Service?  Something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T20:44:47.957" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T07:49:54.763" Title="Is it worth it to add substitute teacher work in a CV?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2013-11-11T20:21:01.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely. Teaching experience is always worth adding to the cv because it reflects that you have gained experience in presentation techniques beyond the usual scientific presentations. The difference to research presentations lies in that the latter involves explaining matters and making material understandable at a more basic level. On its own, such experiences may not be enough so document your teaching experience such as levels of the courses, number of students and amount of teaching. you should also gather evaluations of your efforts. I could add links on teaching portfolios here but a simple search on &quot;teaching portfolio&quot; will give you quite a lot of examples and your own university might also have links worth loking at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T20:21:01.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13902" CreationDate="2013-11-11T21:19:38.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your advisor has contacts at any of the universities you'd like to work at, I would ask him or her to reach out for you. If you are looking to work with a specific faculty member, that is probably the trickiest route, as faculty members often use the summer to travel themselves, and it is rarely worth the hassle to hire an unknown student for the summer, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a networking contact through your advisor or other faculty members at your school, my next suggestion would be to start networking at a conference, or through a professional organization that you are affiliated with (e.g., IEEE, AMS, etc.). Start getting the word out that you are looking to spend a summer at a U.S. school, and see if anyone has suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a paid internship, you may be at a disadvantage as an international student, and you are probably more likely to find something if you can fund yourself. If that isn't an option, you might also consider looking at internships in industry, as they tend to have more money for summer interns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T21:19:38.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14011" CreationDate="2013-11-11T21:45:02.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Frederick's excellent answer, after you have settled on your central question/goal/thesis AND have created at least a rough draft of your paper, use the 'So what?' method. For every section, idea, and paragraph, ask yourself &quot;So what?&quot;. Why does this need to be here? What purpose does this serve? would the narrative still flow without this piece? Don't automatically throw it out if you cannot answer the questions immediately, but use this as a way to assess what you have written, find the weak spots, and begin to understand how to improve them. This also helps weed out irrelevant material, so that you can avoid a bloated, incoherent paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T21:45:02.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13923" CreationDate="2013-11-11T22:24:34.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a list of tools that attempt to convert formatted bibliographies to bibliography software formats &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/importing_formatted_bibliographies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't used any of them for a while so I can not recommend any of the tools in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7841" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T22:45:06.907" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T22:45:06.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2013-11-12T01:39:01.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to disagree with Peter Jansson here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean you stepped in to cover a couple of classes here and there when the regular instructor was sick or out of town, I would say this by itself doesn't constitute a meaningful amount of teaching experience for professional purposes, and shouldn't be listed on a CV.  It may have been valuable to you, but I think it would look kind of silly on a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were assigned as a teaching assistant for the course, you probably have a line where you describe your responsibilities in that role (grading exams, holding office hours, etc), and you could add &quot;occasional lectures&quot; to that line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you filled in for an instructor for a longer period of time, then you could consider listing it (&quot;taught 3 weeks of Calculus 4&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T01:39:01.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14035" CreationDate="2013-11-12T06:43:09.710" Score="24" ViewCount="9184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a paper for a conference in EECS field. &lt;em&gt;(Generic suggestions are also welcomed!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should one do when he or she wants to emphasize one particular word?&#xA;Should that word to be emphasized be in italic or bold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself rarely see text in bold, which makes me wonder whether bold should only be used in section or subsection headings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T15:21:32.740" Title="Emphasizing in paper: italic or bold?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2013-11-12T07:49:54.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Peter Jasson. It's worth mentioning in your CV unless you already have quite a bit teaching experience. You should put it under &quot;Teaching&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're a graduate student. Anything meaningful should be listed in the CV. Many years later, you'll find the substitute teaching looks funny when you're a professor. For now, list it unless you already have more than 2 pages long CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my personal experience. I put my number of years teaching experience in my resume while in industry. A lot people were interested in that. It's was one of the most frequently asked questions in my industry job interviews I had. One time, I did ask the hiring manager why he was interested to know. He said it shows that I do know how to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T07:49:54.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14033" CreationDate="2013-11-12T08:31:48.863" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a matter of style&lt;/strong&gt;: both bold and italic are typographically acceptable ways to emphasize part of your text, as are small caps, use of a different typeface or point size. (And, if you wonder: &lt;em&gt;no, &lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;underlining is not considered good practice in modern printed text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;you are right that using bold is usually reserved for &lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/bold-or-italic.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;headings or very strong emphasis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (think things like “Danger of electrocution — do not use under water” is an appliance user’s manual). The reason it is not commonly used inside &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/running_text&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;running text&lt;/a&gt; is that it disrupts the overall level of gray of the page, drawing the eye from too far away: you want emphasis to make certain words stand out in the sentence, but you do not want the reader to skip directly to these words as soon as they set their eyes on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, always exceptions… like when you use bold (or color, or any other device that disrupt the grayness of the text), to emphasize a few stand-alone “take home messages” from a longer text, as I've done above!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7121" LastEditDate="2016-08-02T14:34:07.227" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T14:34:07.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T11:15:53.620" Score="18" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I peer-reviewed a manuscript and am about to send my conclusions to the editor. It occurs to me, though, that because there are many details to be checked/changed in various places of the paper (mathematical notations, in particular), it will take quite some time for me to type it into a proper review (probably using TeX, because it is math-heavy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am wondering: since my hand-writing is decent and people don't usually find it too hard to decipher, could I simply scan my annotated copy of the paper, along with one page of notes, to the editor? Or will that be unacceptable to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it raises a few questions, going from practicalities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will it be as useful as a thoroughly written-down review?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it give more work to the editor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should I also include a summary of my comments, in computerized form?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to ethical questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does handwritten notes breach rules of anonymity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose people used to do that in older times, but it have never received a hand-written review so far, so it is (at least in my field) unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: should I do it? if I do it, what precautions should I take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T09:37:19.837" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T09:38:34.567" Title="Is scanning an handwritten peer-review suitable for editor/authors?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14036" CreationDate="2013-11-12T12:00:05.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think that there is anything wrong with a scanned handwritten report. As for anonymity: you may even sign your referee report as it is your decision to stay anonymous or not. As for usefulness: I once received an annotated scanned manuscript as a referee report at is was tremendously helpful (as there were several suggestions for formulations which greatly increased the readability). A computerized summary would also be helpful for the editor to form the decision and also for the authors to find out what you main points are (so that they can distinguish between just typo corrections and serious remarks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T12:00:05.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14043" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:31:01.520" Score="5" ViewCount="3743" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today this question came to my mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am a Master student enrolled in University. All my previous studies I have passed thinking that I am a fan of Telecommunication/Computer Networks and related topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recently due to the overload on these topics I feel like I have lost my interest in them. Honestly, I have not lost my interest, but I have come to a point where I feel disgusted. These topics are too technically oriented. There is not much to do with the human factor (in terms of interaction). I am aware that all the studies related to computer science, electrical engineering etc. are closer to the machines rather than the humans.&#xA;In daily bases the communication with machines is more often than with humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was contemplating the possibility of switching from such an area, and work my thesis on Human Machine Interaction, where the human factor is considered a little bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion on this issue. Does the topic that you work on as a master thesis affect your future job if you apply to a position that is not that much related?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="4051" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T14:30:44.243" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T18:12:08.580" Title="What is the significance of the Master thesis (topic and quality) when you apply for a job in the industry/academia?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14038" CreationDate="2013-11-12T15:02:19.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the topic that you work on as a master thesis affect your future job if you apply to a position that is not that much related? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, No. Companies usually want their employee to have specific knowledge before hiring them.  (so if your thesis is close to what they work, you may be very interesting to them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(still if your thesis is not related to what the company does), then you may be interesting to them company. Why? A master thesis gives the company an indication about your skills, including marketing skills, creativity, and theoretical skills. These skills may be useful for the company.  (this is just my opinion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="4472" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T18:12:08.580" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T18:12:08.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T15:46:26.430" Score="5" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's a quick and useful reference, either in print or online, for writing numbers and reporting measurements in scientific texts? Something I could distribute to all new students, which would cover things they should be taught but do not always know, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to write big/small numbers in scientific form (1.78 10&lt;sup&gt;–12&lt;/sup&gt;), including proper spacing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to write units of measurement, in text and in abbreviated form? includes: when do you capitalize units, when do you pluralize them, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to properly report significant figures, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when do you write variables in italics/roman/bold/underline?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T18:04:39.367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T18:04:39.367" Title="Short reference on writing numbers and units" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2013-11-12T15:52:30.153" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was asked to provide my comment as an answer, so here it is. It is yet another way to cite software. However, it requires some effort from the software authors.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I developed an Open Source Web tool for modeling and gathering data when following a certain theory/methodology in software engineering. Here is how you would cite it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Graziotin, D and Abrahamsson, P 2013. A Web-based modeling tool for the SEMAT Essence theory of software engineering. Journal of Open Research Software 1(1):e4, DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jors.ad&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jors.ad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is possible because I opted to publish a &lt;em&gt;software paper&lt;/em&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Open Research Software&lt;/a&gt;. It is a fully Open Access journal. This journal only accepts software papers on &lt;strong&gt;open source software for research&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A software paper is a special kind of paper, which describes the software-e.g., what is it about, implementation and architecture, its availability, and its reuse potential. The editorial process works as in any other research venue, and articles are peer-reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article processing charges are 25GBP. However, they can be fully waived if you cannot afford them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it is nice with this approach is that researchers have an extra motivation to open their software for research: they get a publication for that, plus citations. Additionally, writing a software paper is far easier than writing a &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;https://ineed.coffee/1929/review-journal-of-open-research-software/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review of the journal on my blog&lt;/a&gt;. TL;DR; Great experience, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="123844" LastEditDate="2020-05-07T14:49:57.073" LastActivityDate="2020-05-07T14:49:57.073" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14040" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:28:32.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess &lt;a href=&quot;http://publish.aps.org/author-information&quot;&gt;these recommendations&lt;/a&gt; by the American Physical Society might be just what you are looking for. In particular, Style and Notation Guide for Physical Review/Physical Review Letters deals with scientific numbers, units, figures/tables, and use of roman/italic fonts. (For some strange reasons, it requires a secured connection to see the file; in case you couldn't see it, there is an excerpt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~f99-mle/Public/Blandat/howToWriteMath.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9189" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T16:28:32.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14038" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:41:28.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the topic that you work on as a master thesis affect your future job if you apply to a position that is not that much related?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By applying to a position you are not that familiar with, you will compete against people who know more about the job than you do, starting with a disadvantage. However, as AJed said, companies are sometimes looking for potential rather than technical skills and showing &lt;em&gt;other skills&lt;/em&gt; during a job interview can prove really useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about the academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer this question, I will assume that you mean &quot;looking for a PhD position&quot;. I think it will be even more difficult to find a PhD position if you change field (please correct me if I am wrong). Indeed the ultimate goal of a PhD program is to make the student an expert in his domain and the commitee might prefer choosing someone with little experience than no experience at all in the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are plenty of applied research fields related to Human-Computer Interactions so before you switch topic I advise you to check some of them in-depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T16:41:28.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13916" CreationDate="2013-11-12T18:37:13.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without going into many details. I think of this as a chance for the student to learn not only Math, but things related to research and Academia. You as a supervisor should be able to prioritize. So start by asking him to work with fully professional tools such as Matlab and LaTeX for example, but if you find out that this holds him back from the main purpose of his thesis, then you should be lenient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T18:37:13.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14046" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:46:25.803" Score="14" ViewCount="26547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can't believe I've got to the end of my PhD before asking this one! I want to cite a work whose copyright date is 1996 but whose first paperback edition (the one I'm referencing) is 1999. Which date is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5688" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T07:57:50.977" LastActivityDate="2021-02-20T18:09:22.913" Title="Copyright date or publication date, which one should I cite?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14045" CreationDate="2013-11-12T20:48:35.380" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have actually asked a librarian about this issue as it came up for me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She told me to cite the exact copy that I am reading. If what you are reading is the first paperback edition (usually the inside left initial pages will have information about this), then do cite that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T20:48:35.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13711" CreationDate="2013-11-12T21:22:57.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try &lt;a href=&quot;http://termbases.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://termbases.eu/&lt;/a&gt; a site that was mentioned under &lt;a href=&quot;http://linguistlist.org/sp/GetWRListings.cfm?WRAbbrev=Software#wr102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software: Lexicons&lt;/a&gt; in Linguist List.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly, what you have described is a lightweight variety of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_writing_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dictionary writing system&lt;/a&gt;, software for developing a lexicon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were translating digital documents, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;translation memory&lt;/a&gt; software. Collecting and managing your multilingual context-specific translations is part of what translation memory software does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility, if you happen to be comfortable setting up a wiki, is to create a wiki in the manner of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8343" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T21:22:57.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14040" CreationDate="2013-11-12T21:25:47.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bk-2006-STYG.ch011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt; offers an online version of its &lt;em&gt;ACS Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;. While this used to be available only in print, it is now apparently being distributed free of charge—or at least is available at any university with a subscription to ACS Journals. However, since it's intended to be a resource for anyone planning to submit to an ACS journal, I suspect it's generally available. The link above will take you to the specific chapter on math and units of measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T21:25:47.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14003" CreationDate="2013-11-12T21:41:15.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several levels on which one could answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One could say that people (even those applying for graduate school in quantitative fields) typically don't approach things logically.  Someone will suggest a number of schools to them, and they will apply without doing such a probabilistic analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The statistics you want to do such an analysis properly are just not accessible.  I haven't been able to find any graduate programs in math (my subject) that publish admission stats. (&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I was totally wrong about this.  It seems that the secret is to look at central rather than department websites.  For example, the stats for my department are &lt;a href=&quot;http://gsas.virginia.edu/sites/gsas.virginia.edu/files/Profile-Mathematics.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) You even if you wanted to carefully analyze things, the data isn't there.  I think anecdotally, people have found that 6 or 7 schools with a good range of rankings is good enough.  If people were doing this intelligently and still getting in nowhere, I think the CW would change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the number of people who only apply to places where they have a 15% chance is small;  smart students will apply to a couple of the best places (thus giving a few places very low acceptance rates) but also a range of places with lower ranking and easier admission.  If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=685&amp;amp;start=50&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;, for example, you'll see very few people rejected from all the places they applied, even though you'll see many rejected from most of them.  In general, grad schools outside the very top tier are pretty hungry for good students; admission to a top 5 program is of course very hard.  Getting into a top 50 one might be easier than you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who only apply to a couple of top places have revealed a preference: they are interested in getting a Ph.D., but only at a top place.  This is a reasonable position; I'm not sure what objection you have with it.  Just because you can get into some program doesn't make it a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This isn't precisely what Ben Crowell says below, but his comment and post reminded me: people tend to operate on short time horizons.  The trouble and expense of more applications is very visible and concrete, and the trade-off of maybe going to a school which is worse on some dimension of prestige/fellowship/fit etc. is very indefinite and far off. Thus, people will tend to focus more on the former and somehow push off the latter to some corner of their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gotten the general sense that undergrads don't have a very visceral feel for how going to a higher vs. lower ranked graduate program affects their chances of success in academia.  Of the faculty in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.virginia.edu/faculty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;my current department&lt;/a&gt;, almost all the PhDs from the US are accounted for by the Ivies, the University of California system, Chicago and MIT.  At Oregon, where I was previously, I once calculated that half of the US PhDs in the department went to Harvard, MIT, Berkeley or Stanford.  One can argue how much of that is selection bias, how much is getting a genuinely different education, and how much is just the power of the name, but I think they all play some part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T05:38:34.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11608" CreationDate="2013-11-12T22:59:09.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Doctor of Computer Science program at Colorado Technical University has a dissertation requirement.  At one point there was an optional four paper option but it is really a dissertation broken out into three papers that are the dissertation chapters broken out separately.  The fourth paper is a publishable journal article.  Thus you are doing much more work if you elect not to do the dissertation. The current program has removed the four paper option and is now dissertation only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an alumni of the program and currently in a tenure track role at a state university while also holding an honorary position at a Tier 1 (top 100) institution.  When I was in the program we had three residencies per year and now they have two.  Remember that not all institutions are allowed to have a PhD but may have another terminal (doctoral) program.  My Research Gate profile is below however you may contact me on LinkedIn to ask any questions.  Additionally, I can point you towards other alumni who are professors West Point Military Academy, George Fox, Alabama A&amp;amp;M University, The Oklahoma State University, and other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research Gate Profile &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maurice_Dawson2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maurice_Dawson2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LinkedIn Profile&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/in/mauricedawson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.linkedin.com/in/mauricedawson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both programs are great but you have to look at publishing peer reviewed research immediately to bring value to your terminal degree.  Again feel free to reach out to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Mo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9417" LastEditorUserId="72313" LastEditDate="2017-04-17T22:12:49.160" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T22:12:49.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T00:06:05.307" Score="15" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;When teaching a course on a topic that might be controversial, what are the responsibilities of instructors to facilitate an open learning environment?  If the instructor has a strongly held opinion, is it appropriate for the instructor to structure the course and the readings around this opinion?  Does the instructor have a responsibility to structure the course in a way that is agnostic about the topic?  When selecting the readings and the lecture schedule, does the instructor have a responsibility to give equal time to opposing viewpoints, if those opposing viewpoints plausibly have equal intellectual merit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm familiar with the notion of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9549/705&quot;&gt;academic freedom&lt;/a&gt; for instructors, where instructors should be protected from external influence (from outside the academy: e.g., from politicians) in their ability to shape their courses and express their findings and opinions.  Is there a corresponding responsibility to protect the academic freedom of &lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt;, by structuring courses so that they do not make students feel uncomfortable expressing views that disagree with the instructor's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any guiding principles or resources for how these issues should be navigated?  What are the social norms within academia?  Are there any lines that, if crossed, might lead to disapproval from a significant fraction of fellow academics?  I'm mostly familiar with engineering/science/mathematics courses where this sort of issue rarely comes up, so this is new to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:32:44.853" Title="Responsibilities of instructors to students when teaching controversial subjects" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;academic-freedom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14003" CreationDate="2013-11-13T00:16:27.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have pointed out that the probabilities are not all independent. Let's say that x is some objective measure of the quality of the program, and let x0 be the quality of a program for which &lt;em&gt;you personally&lt;/em&gt; (not everyone in general) have a 50% probability of getting in. Then it may be reasonable to imagine that there is some function P, where P(x-x0) is your probability of getting into that school. P has a plateau at 1 on the left, another plateau at 0 on the right, and a fairly steep &quot;knee&quot; in the middle. If we don't know your x0, then the probabilities of admission are not all independent. But once we know your x0, it may not be unreasonable to assume that the probabilities P(x-x0) for all the different schools are independent. If the assumptions of this analysis are correct, then it explains why rational people would apply to a large number of schools. They're basically picking a whole bunch of schools for which they think P(x-x0) is small but non-negligible, i.e., programs that they judge themselves as just maybe having a chance of getting into. For example, I applied to 14 PhD programs in physics, almost all of them top-20 programs in the US. I also applied to a couple of backup schools that I was pretty sure I would get into. I ended up getting into the backup schools plus exactly one of the top-20 schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T00:22:33.537" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T00:22:33.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T00:39:28.140" Score="7" ViewCount="4791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming I got a PhD in Computer Science from Oxford or Cambridge University, how would that affect my chances at becoming a professor at a top US university versus getting a PhD from a top US institution? Assuming also that I had US citizenship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9418" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T11:00:44.560" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T19:36:19.300" Title="How are British PhDs looked upon in the United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11500" CreationDate="2013-11-13T06:39:52.927" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, even if I was deeply enthusiastic about the course, I would be completely unengaged in any class session that consisted of powerpoint lectures. There are many alternatives, such as flipping, peer instruction (Mazur, Peer Instruction: A User's Manual), and various other forms of active engagement (Hake, &quot;Interactive Engagement Versus Traditional Methods: a Six-Thousand Student Survey of Mechanics Test Data for Introductory Physics Courses, Am. J. of Phys, 66 (1997) 64).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should one engage uninterested students in a fast-paced, densely fact-packed science course such as chemistry or microbiology? [...] For most of the students in these classes, the science courses are required for their major, so they are taking them because they have to, not because they are intrinsically interested in the sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these actual examples? Do you actually teach both chem and microbiology? (That would be unusual.) I would think that microbiology would be the easiest thing in the world to sell to students. E.g., if they're premed, they ought to easily be able to appreciate the relevance of learning about viruses and bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, your subject has intrinsic worth, interest, and beauty. Presumably that's why you got a graduate degree in it. Approach it from this point of view and without apology, and you have every right to expect that at least some of your students will respond. You can't expect &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; community college student to respond. Look at the parking lot on the first day of the semester. Look at the same parking lot in the last week of instruction. Many, many community college students simply shouldn't be in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re &quot;densely fact-packed&quot; -- you could ask yourself whether your subject could be presented with less emphasis on memorization and more emphasis on concepts. Do you give open-notes tests? If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T06:39:52.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14051" CreationDate="2013-11-13T07:41:44.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I cannot say how the principles of, or basis for, university education are formulated everywhere, one guiding principle in the system I work is that courses/teaching should be founded on science. In the term science lies objectivity, that is to show both pros and cons for a specific idea. this does not preclude one from having personal opinions we all have. One example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my university a scientist, known for controversy, decided to run a course on divining rods under the pretext they were serious and work. Now, one can have an opinion about this but when trying to look for a scientific background, the best one can say is &lt;em&gt;absence of evidence is not evidence of absence&lt;/em&gt;. The university clamped down very hard on this because it broke the founding principles of university education due to a lack of critical discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a person's opinion should not taint the material so as to skew the picture based on unscientific principles. If one runs a course that uses sound scientific principles to criticize a view point, the exercise to evaluate the criticism may be sound in itself. The issue therefore lies in openness about any &quot;one-sidedness&quot; of the course. The role of a university teacher/teacher, is after all to provide objective critical view of materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to look at this is to compare with research. If we try to push a view uncritically, our peers are likely to suggest rejection of that article. To not approach teaching with the same serious rigour is, I would argue, unprofessional. The problem maybe lies in that there is no peer review of course materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T10:43:04.427" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T10:43:04.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T10:09:27.067" Score="4" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently taking a year off to reapply for PhDs. My ultimate aim is to work in academia. I am currently teaching secondary school biology as a way of filling this year. My government presents the opportunity of obtaining a teaching certificate by taking weekend classes in addition to the teaching. I was wondering whether a secondary school teaching certificate would be in any way valuable in obtaining a lecturing position after completing my PhD. I know that there are specific university teaching certificates which might mean that a secondary school teaching certificate is useless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:38:43.453" Title="Obtain a secondary school teaching certificate?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14062" CreationDate="2013-11-13T11:39:36.783" Score="4" ViewCount="1669" Body="&lt;p&gt;My discipline is Telecommunication engineering and I am writing a paper for an IEEE journal. I want to cite an invited paper published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. My question do I need to mention in my citation that the paper is invited? If yes, how? As part of the original article name or the journal name or somehow else? Same with correspondence papers which are not full length articles, but short ones on some emerging area. What does IEEE say about it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7437" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T18:41:28.720" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T18:41:28.720" Title="How should I cite an invited paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14058" CreationDate="2013-11-13T11:59:04.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the big picture, having a secondary school teaching certificate probably won't make a difference in the hiring process for lecturer positions at the university level. Your teaching experience is what will count (to some extent--really, teaching at the collegiate level will be more important), and you will have that to put on your CV. I highlighted my high school teaching experience (and degree, certificate, etc.) on my CV when I applied to teaching positions, and in the interviews I had it was clear that it helped me land the interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if the certificate is something that will give you a fall-back plan if the PhD doesn't work out (i.e., you can transition directly back into the secondary teaching more easily), it might not be a bad idea to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, having the certificate won't hurt you when applying for future collegiate teaching jobs, and if you have the time now it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and knock it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T11:59:04.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14058" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:22:32.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being someone who has a teaching certificate and have just completed my PhD, I can provide some insight to this.  A caveat though, my experience is localised (Australia) and subject based, so not all may be relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD is in Atmospheric Physics, and I am a high school teacher of Maths and Physics, I have been applying to get into lecturing for a little while with no luck, even for STEM and Education lecturing positions.  Having said that, I have only bee searching for a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague was in a similar situation for about 2 years (PhD, high school teaching and applying for academia) and he succeeded, but starting off with short term lecturing contracts (a term here, a term there, then a semester), now he is pretty much part of the furniture in the university faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking with my academic supervisor (=advisor) where I asked whether the teaching degree and experience were useless, he suggests that the qualifications and experience are indeed valued, but an academic should build a published research profile and most of all, be patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to note - every degree is not useless, they all contribute to your skills and knowledge in some way at the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Chris Gregg said, having the teaching qualification can not hurt you, as not only is it a back up - teaching provides bountiful transferrable skills that can be applied in academia, as mentioned in the answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10319/progressing-from-high-school-teaching-into-academia&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:38:43.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14059" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:50:55.410" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, &lt;strong&gt;cite it as you would any other paper.&lt;/strong&gt; You do not mention the paper status (“invited paper”, in your case; “review paper”, “perspective”, “editorial”, etc.) in the citation, unless that is formally part of the title (which it typically is not), or unless the citation style explicitly calls for it (IEEE does not, and I know no citation style that does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IEEE's templates and LaTeX classes, the only place which mentions invited papers is a command to indicate when &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; paper is an invited paper (here for &lt;a href=&quot;http://css.paperplaza.net/conferences/support/files/IEEEtran_HOWTO.pdf&quot;&gt;IEEEtran&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Special paper notices, such as for invited papers, can be declared with:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\specialpapernotice{(Invited Paper)}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:50:55.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T15:30:21.750" Score="8" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student is contacting faculty member and finds that there are two professors that are of his interest. So, he decides to contact both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While contacting should the student mention that he has also contacted another professor in the same department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="8324" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T16:28:22.133" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T17:50:24.757" Title="While contacting professors should we mention if we have contacted some other faculty in same department?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14063" CreationDate="2013-11-13T17:50:24.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming this is regarding admission to graduate school. I don't see any harm in mentioning this as a courtesy. The odds are high that if the two professors work in related areas they will discover this themselves. If you haven't mentioned this to them, it will seem as if you're flooding the department with applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps personalize the letter, which is the number one thing you have to do if you expect to get any kind of response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T17:50:24.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14065" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14067" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:26:15.897" Score="9" ViewCount="5769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Phrase &quot;dissertation submitted in &lt;strong&gt;partial&lt;/strong&gt; fulfillment of the requirements&quot; seems strange. Can one submit dissertation in &lt;strong&gt;full&lt;/strong&gt; fulfillment of the requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9337" LastEditorUserId="9337" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T19:35:58.333" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T19:39:52.327" Title="What's the reasoning behind phrase &quot;dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements&quot;?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14069" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:32:06.950" Score="3" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I find abbreviation of the journal name &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/journal/eng/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Engineering&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6763" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T20:38:49.920" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T13:51:57.657" Title="Abbreviation of a journal name" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14065" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:39:52.327" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most doctoral programs have other requirements for completion of the degree, such as  a certain number of course hours and the passing of qualifying exams. Hence, while the dissertation is the culmination of the doctoral program, on its own it does not satisfy all the requirements for graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T19:39:52.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14066" CreationDate="2013-11-13T20:57:04.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;How to find journal title abbreviations? (in general)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various sources of abbreviated journal titles, and though most of the time they agree, there are definitely cases where they do not. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check the citation style of the journal you're writing for&lt;/strong&gt; (if any). They may specify an authority on abbreviations, or specify that journal names are not to be abbreviated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bk-2006-STYG.ch014&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society style guide&lt;/a&gt; says to &lt;em&gt;“abbreviate the name according to the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI)”&lt;/em&gt;. Chicago style &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/Chicago/journal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;forbids abbreviations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, see if the journal you're looking for is included in the authoritative list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's not covered, then then &lt;strong&gt;the best source for information is the cited journal itself!&lt;/strong&gt; How do they abbreviate their own name, e.g. on article page headers/footers, or in citation to articles from their own journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is to look into one of the very &lt;strong&gt;large citation indexes, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/E_abrvjt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;; they maintain a list of journal abbreviations for the journals they index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What about &lt;em&gt;Engineering&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's not an easy case. First, it's a very low-profile journal: despite its claims that it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/Journal/Indexing.aspx?JournalID=64&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“indexed by several world class databases”&lt;/a&gt;, I don't think it is. Let's take ISI Web of Knowledge, which they cite as their first example. It indeed has a journal named &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/E_abrvjt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Engineering – London&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in its index, but a quick search reveals it is another journal entirely, published between 1969 and 1994. Moreover, the citations given as justification in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/imagesForEmail/abstract/ISI/eng.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;screenshot&lt;/a&gt; by the publisher of the modern-time &lt;em&gt;Engineering&lt;/em&gt; cannot be found on the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the journal is not present in the ISI index, and does not given information about how to abbreviate its name (it does not use journal abbreviations in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/Journal/ForAuthors.aspx?JournalID=64&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;succinct style guide&lt;/a&gt;). In other engineering journals, the word &lt;em&gt;Engineering&lt;/em&gt; is usually abbreviated as &lt;em&gt;Eng.&lt;/em&gt; So, either go with that, or use the full name and let the copyeditor worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T21:11:35.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14053" CreationDate="2013-11-13T20:59:58.533" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an American who earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. A degree from Cambridge or Oxford is well-respected in the US - I was warned to avoid other UK universities as they are not as well known in the States.  The one caveat is that all of your network for post-docs and jobs will be in the UK, not in the US. It was an amazing experience though so I would not want to discourage you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9426" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T20:59:58.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14051" CreationDate="2013-11-13T23:29:57.620" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the students are being assessed by you, some (most?) will start to tell you what you want to hear in order to get the highest grade. This is rarely what we as educators want in our students. We want to build within them critical thinking skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controversial issues are common in some fields. For example, one of the subjects I teach is Business Ethics and I have clear beliefs and values in this area. Is it OK for me to focus on the arguments in favor of my view and discount competing arguments? No, it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I tell my students my opinion? Opinions differ on this but I believe it is OK, as long as it is done very carefully with LOTS of evidence that my opinion is wrong. Again, students must be taught to think for themselves, including how to critically evaluate what they consider right and wrong. If I just make my points then it is not education, it is indoctrination and that is not what higher ed is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as social norms, I would say that if you are trying to get your students to 'believe' anything, then you are doing it wrong. If you are trying to get them to think critically, then you are doing it right. If the students feel they must agree with what you say, you are doing something wrong. If they feel like they are getting balanced information and a class ends up with many different opinions, then you are doing something right. If everyone is thinking the same, then nobody is thinking...and that's not good for anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T22:32:44.853" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:32:44.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T00:41:20.060" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Data Collection is a primary objective in many academic fields and can be approached primarily through three different lenses - qualitative,quantitative and mixed methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With particular attention to computer science and HCI (human-computer interaction), what are some primary approaches to data collection? Specific references to primary, secondary and tertiary sources would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9428" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T16:33:51.887" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T16:33:51.887" Title="Data Collection in Academia: Insights?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T04:33:35.190" Score="4" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;SLO stands for student learning outcome. At the community college where I teach, what seems to have happened is that our accrediting body told us we had to have them, and since they effectively wield the death penalty over us, we complied. Administrators may also have bought into the idea at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the history of SLOs? Is there any published, intellectually rigorous justification for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm inclined to be extremely skeptical of them. They seem to be an incompetently executed type of standardized testing, without any of the scientific rigor that has been built up over a century of development of the field of psychometrics. In particular, standardized tests are supposed to be both &lt;em&gt;valid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reliable&lt;/em&gt;. A typical SLO is probably not valid (because it tests too small a subset of the subject matter) and not reliable (because it is too short an instrument to produce a result with a reasonable variance). We could fix these problems, and then we would have ... a professionally developed standardized test. E.g., in my field, physics, we would have something like the AP physics test, the physics portion of the MCATs, or the physics GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Administrators and accrediting bodies seem to believe that SLOs could be used, for example, to measure whether a particular educational innovation has been successful. The problem here is that one then has to interpret the &lt;em&gt;difference&lt;/em&gt; between one set of test scores and another set of test scores, but the difference between two low-reliability (high-variance) numbers is essentially meaningless. This is also a problem that plagues &quot;value added&quot; measurements (Baker 2010), but it would be far more severe for SLOs because of their far lower reliability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arum 2011 (p. 140) discusses this sort of thing in the context of the seepage of NCLB-style testing from K-12 into higher education. They discuss the Spellings Commission report (Spellings 2006) as an influential document, although I think the fad for SLOs began to get underway before 2006, and the report suggested standardized tests such as the CLA, rather than what people now refer to as SLOs. A disgruntled member of the commission (Zemsky 2011) says that in retrospect the main outcome was to transform accreditation from a pro forma exercise into an audit-like procedure designed to give the federal government coercive power over colleges and universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the whole thing a Dilbertish emperor's-new-clothes exercise, or is there some intellectually rigorous case to be made for SLOs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;References&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, 2011; summarized online in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110606crat_atlarge_menand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110606crat_atlarge_menand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baker et al., &quot;Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers,&quot; Economic Policy Institute briefing paper, Aug 29, 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spellings et al., Commission on the Future of Higher Education, &quot;A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education,&quot; 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zemsky, &quot;The Unwitting Damage Done by the Spellings Commission,&quot; Chronicle of Higher Education, 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/The-Unwitting-Damage-Done-by/129051/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/The-Unwitting-Damage-Done-by/129051/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T23:29:29.433" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:41:46.840" Title="Is there a case for SLOs?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14075" CreationDate="2013-11-14T06:38:36.487" Score="3" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold a BSc and MSc in physics and want to do graduate studies in CS. I did computational and theoretical research and thesis on quantum memories which are useful in quantum communications (not sure if that sounds any interesting to CS admission committees). But I have not officially taken CS foundations courses (well, except some through Coursera and edX). I am willing to pay for a decent Masters program through loans and part-time work though. Here are my questions from you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I improve my odds of getting into a decent department by applying to Masters programs instead of PhD programs? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Besides full score on GRE quantitative, I got a decent score in GRE physics. Can any of these make up for my lack of formal education in CS?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T07:05:29.613" Title="Applying to MSc vs PhD in CS with science background in US" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14074" CreationDate="2013-11-14T07:05:29.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no expert, but with research experience and already having a Masters in physics, I think that you should directly apply to the PhD programs.  During your first two years, you're going to take courses anyway.  So &lt;strong&gt;unless&lt;/strong&gt; you don't think that you'll be able to handle those courses, I think that doing another masters and then your PhD will be a waste of time and money.  It depends on where you want to go, but a lot of schools will make you take courses in your PhD even if you already have a masters in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T07:05:29.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T08:23:12.333" Score="3" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct abbreviation for National Certificate in Financial Planning? NatCertFP or maybe NatCertFinPlan? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9432" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T08:43:26.917" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T08:43:26.917" Title="Abbreviation of qualification" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;new-zealand&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14076" CreationDate="2013-11-14T08:43:03.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two abbreviations you mention yield respectively &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;0&lt;/strong&gt; results in a Google search. Do not abbreviate that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T08:43:03.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14072" CreationDate="2013-11-14T13:10:14.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first introductory text I used is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0534126723&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survey Research Methods&lt;/a&gt; by Babbie. It gave (and still serves as a refreshment of) a pretty comprehensive look to the whole process, and the writing and layout are quite easy to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also consider a Google search on different syllabi using phrase like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=research+methods+syllabus+filetype%3Apdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research methods syllabus filetype:pdf&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and see what most instructors recommend. You can modify the search phrase to make it closer to your field; you can also change the &lt;code&gt;pdf&lt;/code&gt; to other extensions such as &lt;code&gt;doc&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;docx&lt;/code&gt;, or even &lt;code&gt;ppt&lt;/code&gt; if you desire other types of document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry to say that we can't be ready to run a study just by one book. Common methods such as interview, focus group, and questionnaire are their own field of research: For interview and focus group, you'd have to expand into the field of communication and qualitative analysis. For questionnaire design, you may have to further tap into some psychological manifestation of questions, measurement theory, and item response theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To build a better foundation, I'd also recommend flipping through &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226065669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Craft of Research&lt;/a&gt; by Booth et. al. and it will also pay off to befriend some statisticians or people major in statistics because you may need to learn something about probability-based sampling as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T13:26:04.857" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T13:26:04.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T13:34:42.300" Score="24" ViewCount="5853" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some people, in their CV or publication list, add bibliometric information to each entry.&lt;/strong&gt; I've typically seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mention the impact factor of each journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of citations of each paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mention the acceptance rate of each conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure it is very helpful: people from your field will surely know the journals/conferences, while people from outside your field might be more interested in a “macro” view and not go into the minute details of your publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I'm not sure I like the tone it conveys: it feels like bragging (this is typically done by people who are proud of these indicators), and a bit over-the-top to me. Finally, it's well accepted by now that things like the journal impact factor are a poor measure of individual papers' merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;strong&gt;is it accepted practice to do it? does it improve the CV? or does it risk alienating the reader?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T22:05:57.470" Title="Mention impact factor or conference acceptance rate in CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T14:20:27.500" Score="3" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a figure in my paper. If there is much to say about the figure, I will have a brief title and a descriptive caption for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the figure about which I have not much too say? Do I replicate what I have written in the title in the caption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since caption is also used for reference, it must exist. Can I then remove the figure title and use the caption only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:22:56.643" Title="Caption or title: which should I use?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14081" CreationDate="2013-11-14T14:26:39.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your paper for? I think figures (for example in journal articles or thesis) usuaully have a caption below them, in addition to their number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Figure 1.&lt;/b&gt;  Cumulative food intake in rats during intragastric treatment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But typically there is no &quot;title&quot;, unless you have a &quot;list of figures&quot; somewhere in the beginning of the document: then it is ok to use the same phrase as caption and title, because they are not written at the same place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T14:26:39.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13991" CreationDate="2013-11-14T14:44:41.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that &lt;strong&gt;you do not need a disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt; in this particular case: the bottom line is that &lt;strong&gt;you did not contribute to the book&lt;/strong&gt;. If you had participated, it would be a clear-cut case… yours is more complicated, but the fact remains that none of the text of the book was written by you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to see it: a disclaimer would not raise distrust, but it would certainly add confusion (or at least, not add any clarity). You'd have to explain concisely your situation, stating the facts. You could come up with something like &lt;em&gt;“The author of this review was asked to participate in the book, but had to decline due to time constraints”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;strong&gt;if you want to be sure to do the right thing: ask the journal editor!&lt;/strong&gt; You then make it his call, since it's his journal. He's the best person to ask, really…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T14:44:41.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T14:53:47.840" Score="1" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to do my PhD in CS (Robotics to be specific). I will be completing my masters with a thesis and a publication in a field that is very closely related to CS. However, my BS is in Geology. So I am mostly concerned whether I will be considered for a PhD at a school since my undergraduate major is not CS. I feel this way because I contacted professors at some schools and they didn't respond back to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="884" LastEditorUserId="884" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T17:48:12.617" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:48:12.617" Title="Computer Science PhD with Geology BS" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14089" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:14:54.200" Score="75" ViewCount="22813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastEditorUserId="7775" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T05:33:47.237" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T15:08:26.730" Title="Is it acceptable to have a research paper with no references?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14084" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:30:29.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not expect to receive a useful answer if you &quot;cold-call&quot; (or &quot;cold-email&quot;) a professor. They have too many time constraints, and if your email looks like a junk email or wild goose chase, the professor will probably treat it as such, &lt;em&gt;even if it isn't!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I suspect that coming from a field so far away from CS &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have an impact on the admissions process, because it will be hard for faculty members in CS to adjudicate your performance as a bachelor's student in geology. You can overcome this through the usual methods (strong letter of recommendation, cogent explanations in the statement of purpose, and so on). Your primary challenge will be to coherently show that you are willing and able to undertake graduate level coursework and research in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T15:30:29.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14090" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:42:57.953" Score="17" ViewCount="1466" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor's wife is having her first baby and he told us about it at our last lab meeting.  We understand that this will mean he might need extra time/patience as the big day approaches, but are we supposed to be doing anything else?  What is the etiquette for this as one of his students?  Should we be buying him some kind of baby gift?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:03:29.007" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T08:44:30.283" Title="Advisor's wife is having a baby, should we be getting him something?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:48:39.813" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle there is nothing wrong with that. But, I have a hard time seeing that there is nothing published whatsoever on anything that forms the basis of what your research concerns. The problem must have some origin and there is probably literature that forms the basis for your work by for example indicating that your problem is a gap in knowledge. So even if it would theoretically be possible to publish a paper with no references, it seems so unlikely that the problem should be sought elsewhere, such as indicated by the comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of submitting such a paper would probably lead to rejection, even if your work in itself is sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T18:44:49.407" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T18:44:49.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:52:37.727" Score="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I don't think there's any hard rule against having a paper with no reference, it seems pretty weird. Note that references are not only for citing other people's results (theorems, algorithms, etc.) which you have used, but more broadly to recognize other's scientific contribution. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the problem never been discussed before? Who first realized it was a problem, stated it, formalized it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You probably put the problem into the broader context of your field. And if you don't, you probably should. This sure requires citations on recent work on related problems, even if nothing was ever done on the one problem you're addressing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For example, is your problem a specific case of another problem, or does it have generalization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the consequences of your results/findings? They probably have some impact on other related problems, or practical consequences on real-life issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Didn't you or your co-authors ever do any prior work on this issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let's see it another way: you have solved a problem, that no one else has solved, worked on, or more generally discussed. And you did so using only elementary techniques, which have been known for so long that they do not require citation. Stated like that, &lt;strong&gt;it may sound like either you're a genius opening an entire field of mathematics, or you're working on a useless problem that nobody cares about. You probably don't want the reviewer to be thinking that way!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T15:52:37.727" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14087" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:57:29.770" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A personal gift from you, as an individual student, is not expected, at least by European or North-American etiquette. It may be nice to pool with other students and group members to offer a &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; gift (either something for the baby, or something for the father). It'd be more customary to offer it after the baby is born, rather than now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is no strong expectation that you offer a gift. I.e., if you decide not to for any reason, he won't think it weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T15:57:29.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T16:14:47.533" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not acceptable to have a paper with no references. One of the first things a referee looks for is whether the paper shows proper awareness of the current state of the art in the field and references previous, recent work properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is actually somewhat more commonly encountered (although not in any decent journal) than a paper with no references is a paper in which none of the references are appropriate. For example, anti-relativity kooks will self-publish papers in which all the references are to papers from the 1920's, textbooks, their own work, and the work of fellow kooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, one of the quickest ways of detecting that a paper is a kook paper and not worth spending much time reading is if it has these characteristics. The fact that the professors you're working with are unable to place your work in the context of current work in the field suggests very strongly that they are not competent, and this is reinforced by your description of them as being unfamiliar with publishing. You probably want to stop working with them in order to avoid embarrassment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming associated with someone who's a kook or publishes incompetent work could be the kiss of death to any future academic career you might have been hoping for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T20:34:11.850" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T20:34:11.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T16:42:25.693" Score="0" ViewCount="7758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going into the field of computer science after getting my original bachelor's and masters (in city planning) a few years ago and finding out I like the technology much more than the actual field I studied before. I took GIS courses and started tinkering around with code and figured out CS was my calling. I am currently taking classes at my local community college to get an AS in CS that I am hoping to transfer to somewhere that offers a BS. I have no regrets because I am in a job I love and take class half-time while I work.&#xA;I think that I will be done with it in about 1.5 to 2 years as it is about 27 credit hours and I am taking about 7-8 a semester (fall, spring, and summer). It may take me closer to the 2 because I want to retake calculus and physics (as the college requires) since I took them 10 years ago as an 18-year old and barely skated by. Most BS requirements in CS require 2 calc classes and one physics class. It looks like my local universities can accept them being taken from community college as long as the AS was earned. I just would rather be safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the catch though, I probably need to do it online since I also want to work while in school and will likely be moving out of my state when my SO finishes medical residency in 2017.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like being in class, but I am 28 now and will likely have a lot more going on later. It seems like going somewhere locally would be more affordable, but then I risk not being done in time. That's why I am considering doing it online since I may have to perhaps have a marriage and hopefully an advanced career from what I am doing now at my current company. Are there any good schools that are non-profit that go fully online? To further make things complicated, I am hoping to go somewhere that isn't insanely expensive because I am already $35,000 in the hole from my past degrees. I have seen that there is OSU, UMUC, and U of Illinois. I have heard that UI and UMUC are expensive and hard to get into. I read somewhere that FSU and Nova may have something as well as some private catholic college. Trying to sort out fact from fiction on good schools and seeing the most up-to-date information. Those degree mills just are not appealing to me in that they are expensive and I would rather have my time be put into something that is on the up-and-up.  It seems like a few of you here may be able to tell me things from personal experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really am hoping you  can help me get a list of reputable non-profit schools to apply to sometime in 2015 that will accommodate me in that part of life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9435" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T22:31:25.293" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T22:31:25.293" Title="Post-Baccalaureate Online BS Programs?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-07-04T01:19:22.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T17:28:21.443" Score="6" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the main text of scientific papers, one should use and and avoid using &amp;amp;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it still holds true in section titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple and Pear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple &amp;amp; Pear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;more appropriate as a title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:40:24.987" Title="&quot;and&quot; in section title: &quot;Apple and Pear&quot; or &quot;Apple &amp; Pear&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14093" CreationDate="2013-11-14T19:40:48.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals specifically state what they expect, or often it can be ascertained by looking at their previous issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9441" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T19:40:48.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T20:18:47.633" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually been working on a project which is similar in that nobody seems to have done any work that is directly comparable in the area of application. The work uses standard Bayesian techniques (this is an applied statistics paper), but these techniques are not at all used in the area in question in the way I've done it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I still had a bunch of references. If you are using people's data they like you to cite it. I had a couple of cites for the Bayesian techniques which I'm using - they aren't trivial. The broader area has been much worked on, but much more by biologists than statisticians, and their approaches are very different, though their aims are similar. So, I cited a couple of these papers, out of very very many possibilities. They weren't particularly relevant to the paper at hand, but I couldn't think of anything better. (I actually thought of posting here, but wasn't sure what specific suggestions a non-specialist could give, and I'd already tried asking specialists with no useful result.)&#xA;Additionally, I used some quasi-mathematical derivations which I also had a cite for. So, generally these things do pile up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suggest backing up a step, considering the more general problem which you are trying to solve, and perhaps give some references to papers that have worked on that more general problem. Then you could say these papers are examples of the more general/related problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people have, I think, adequately addressed the issue that not being able to find relevant papers to cite means there might be a problem with the project. I.e. it is something nobody has worked on because nobody cares about the problem. This isn't necessarily the case, but I agree that you should look into that as a possible issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing novel work isn't necessarily a bad thing. I was offered a chapter in a book for a paper just published, not because the work was particularly good, but because, as the editor put it, &quot;not much work has been done in that area&quot;. And apparently he thought the area was worth representing in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T08:19:00.593" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T08:19:00.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14080" CreationDate="2013-11-14T20:47:14.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that this is field specific. I work in a very interdisciplinary area and I have seen, for instance, in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), it is &lt;em&gt;quite common&lt;/em&gt; to list acceptance rates for the major conferences (CHI, CSCW, UIST, MobileHCI etc.). HCI is very conference dominated in terms of major publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the field of privacy (which I also consider myself affiliated to), journals matter. Everyone knows the best journals in the area (CACM, IEEE Privacy and Security etc.) so &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; nobody lists impact factors or numbers of citations. Therefore, in response to your specific questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some fields it can be an accepted practice, in others, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It might improve the CV in terms of informing folks looking at your CV who are not in your discipline (perhaps other members in a search committee). But, I don't think it really &lt;em&gt;improves&lt;/em&gt; your CV per se.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think that there is a very &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;low&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; risk of actually alienating the reader. The reader is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; bound to be a scientist or academic and I don't think that the vast majority of them would get annoyed to see such numbers (especially if they are in disciplines where this is an accepted practice)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T20:47:14.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14087" CreationDate="2013-11-14T20:59:21.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the same answer I gave about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5699/929&quot;&gt;weddings&lt;/a&gt; but it holds for births also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must do something. Building social relationships with your work collegagues is really important. If other students are organizing the collection and suggesting an amount, I would give that much. If they are organizing the collection, but not suggesting an amount, I would chip in two beers worth of cash. In some cultures two beers will be on the generous side, while in other cultures it will be on the cheap side. It won't be out of place in any culture. If no one is organizing the collection and you want to take charge, then I would suggest asking people to chip in one beer worth of money (all students should be able to afford this). If no one is organizing a collection and you don't want to take charge, go out and buy a card and get the other students to sign it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T20:59:21.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T21:24:19.687" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always imagined that the reason for citing references in a paper is not to give credit, but to keep all research grounded in other research. Something like, if someone cannot understand the result in your paper, or what motivated it, then either the result is wrong, or that person did not understand the result of one of the references, or what motivated it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on a specific problem, for example, you should reference other papers which also work on the problem. If you are using a specific tool, you want to reference some other papers that have used that tool, and certainly the result for which the tool was developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's about giving your research context, and by extension, giving other peoples research context, which is why results are published in the first place, instead of kept secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9449" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T21:24:19.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T21:25:06.960" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your work needs to be self-contained. That means your idea needs to be built, first and foremost, on a solid foundation. You reference other people's work to establish that foundation. With one sentence (and reference) you can establish all the knowledge that your work AND paper is based on; including the language you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example; pick any recent paper in your field. Now examine its references, and pick the oldest paper there; continue doing that and you'll eventually get to papers written in Latin that establish the very basic ideas of things you might take for granted as being fact.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you reference a recent paper (which in turn references other papers), you are including that full body of knowledge of hundreds of years of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say the answer is No, unless you're willing to dedicate thousands of pages to reinvent and reestablish everything your work is based upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any notion that your work and ideas are unconnected or non-derived from any previous research endeavor is delusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9450" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T21:52:53.307" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T21:52:53.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T21:53:27.960" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm referee for various IEEE and other Journals, generally speaking citations give me the idea of the behavior of the article, it is really not acceptable for me few citations (7-10 at least for conference); despite, my view could be rought, other referees may finalize the same conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to add at least 7 citations (at least on the introduction and conclusion) in order to deceive superficial people like me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refer to book, manual and technical worksheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T21:53:27.960" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14087" CreationDate="2013-11-14T22:03:49.620" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with @F'x's assessment: no gift is necessary really. Having said that, if there's something you can do that's simple and doesn't strain your budget, then as a courtesy (from a colleague to another) that might be welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having been in this situation myself (from the advisor's side) I can say that one thing parents of a new child lack that grad students might have more of is &lt;strong&gt;time&lt;/strong&gt;. If it's possible, lab folk could offer to help running meetings without the advisor, do guest lectures in classes if it's appropriate, and so on. Again I emphasize that it's not necessary at all, but it's a gift that would not cost you money, and would be greatly appreciated by someone who probably isn't sleeping very much :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:03:49.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14081" CreationDate="2013-11-14T22:22:56.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preferred format is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No title in the figure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the caption&#xA;small title. very extended caption describing the figure and a small summary of the results addressed by the figure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:22:56.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T22:43:31.613" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of &lt;strong&gt;exactly one&lt;/strong&gt; published paper in my field with no references whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark H. Overmars and Emo Welzl.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=323233.323274&quot;&gt;The complexity of cutting paper.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;em&gt;Proc. [1st] Symposium on Computational Geometry&lt;/em&gt;, 316–321, 1985.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;References&quot; section reads, in its entirety:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No references on this topic seem to exist and no useful results could be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:43:31.613" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14053" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:00:16.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that it the effect on academic employment would be relatively small compared to other factors, as pedigree is typically neither necessary nor sufficient for obtaining employment. Arguably, department reputation will matter more, but what you do while you are there will matter far more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be helpful to your decision to note that &lt;em&gt;several&lt;/em&gt; UK universities are very well respected in the US and elsewhere: Imperial, UCL, KCL, Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, to name a few. Are Oxford and Cambridge the only UK institutions with respected CS departments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9458" LastEditorUserId="9458" LastEditDate="2016-02-07T19:36:19.300" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T19:36:19.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14093" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:06:04.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the modern usage of the ampersand (&quot;&amp;amp;&quot;) is restricted to collective proper nouns. While it was much more common to see people use the ampersand during the 18th and early 19th centuries, this has fallen out of fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In formal writing, the use of the ampersand has largely disappeared except for collective nouns in a title, and in situations like table and graph legends, where normal rules of written English do not necessarily apply. For instance, &quot;Crate &amp;amp; Barrel&quot; or &quot;McKinsey &amp;amp; Co.&quot; In standard running text, you would not use an ampersand in place of a traditional &quot;and&quot;: for instance, you would write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mozart visited Vienna and Prague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mozart visited Vienna &amp;amp; Prague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the legend of a graph, you could write either &quot;(1 M NaCl &amp;amp; 1 M KOH)&quot; or &quot;(1 M NaCl and 1 M KOH)&quot;; in many instances, the former might actually be preferable, because it's more compact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also supported by many writing style manuals. For instance, the only mention the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/isbn/9780841239999&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;ACS Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; makes of ampersands is with respect to web addresses (where one would in any case not replace &quot;&amp;amp;&quot; with &quot;and&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:06:04.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14073" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:35:26.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is not a perfect answer (not a rigorous study of the costs and benefits of learning outcomes) I hope it will give some insights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning outcomes are not all that rare, although I do not remember seeing them much in the US when I was there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key reasons for learning outcomes is to be able to evaluate how closely Module A in School X matches to Module B in School Y. If you are teaching a subject titled &quot;Contract and Negligence Law in New Zealand&quot; then the learning outcomes kind of write themselves. If you are teaching a subject titled &quot;Modern Business Practices&quot; then it is less clear what it is that students who passed that subject actually learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, leaning outcomes, I believe, are mainly for the benefit of administrators so that can 'map' modules across universities. However, I also believe that they have great value for us as teachers. I believe the more we can formalize, in writing, what students will learn, the more transparent we are being and the fewer (unhappy) surprises people are likely to have. Students will better understand what they are supposed to learn, as will their parents (if they are involved in the process) and other teachers will be able to see how our modules fit together with their own simply by reviewing the learning outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical learning outcomes might include (in my field): Understanding teamwork and team development. In this case, you do not need to look at differences in test scores. The outcome is not an improvement in knowledge (take a module where you have already learned the outcomes and you will likely learn very little) but rather an absolute &quot;The student will understand this.&quot; If the student did not understand before, they should understand at the end, or they should fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe the goal of the learning outcome is that it is one-question on a final exam but rather it is what gets assessed by the assessor. How you do that is up to you. For the example of team work I have several tests to see if students understand the key points that they should have learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T23:41:46.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:41:46.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14093" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:43:59.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other good points made... On one hand, obviously it doesn't matter toooooo much, being understandable either way. A relatively superficial criterion is some mandatory style, which is presumably dictated externally: just do it. If there were any &quot;real&quot; criterion, it would be about scan-ability: is it more scan-able with Amper's &quot;and&quot;, or with &quot;and&quot;? I tend to think that, given that everyone these days has more practice reading &quot;prose&quot; without symbolic abbreviations (somewhat in contrast to earlier times...!?!), a plain text &quot;and&quot; is &quot;easier&quot;, if only due to habit &quot;in these times&quot;. But/and the latter is what I consider, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:43:59.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:49:48.617" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although my context is mathematics rather than computer science, this seems like an absolute no-brainer: &quot;No&quot;. A paper without citations is a crank paper. Basically immediately and irretrievably rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, ultra-practically, referees will not easily believe either that your work occurs in a vacuum, or that there was no &quot;prior art&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if you think there was no prior art, I'd bet against long odds that you are mistaken. The referee may know the specifics ... and then you look awfully bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, unless you can explain why anyone should care about what you've done, that is, give references to give context, why should anyone care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citations are by far not just about what one thinks one's work &quot;depends on&quot;, ... and even that should not be appraised naively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am shocked that &quot;professors&quot; would contemplate letting a paper out the door with no citations at all, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And it would benefit &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to refine your perceptions of their &quot;publication rate&quot; and/or &quot;research activity&quot;. I realize it is hard for a beginner to appraise these things, but your description seemed very strange, as evidenced by some of the comments...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:49:48.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:58:46.670" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no general formal rules for this but some conferences may have such constraints and most reviewers will probably sort out papers with few citations anyway. As it is regarded as good academic writing style to cite from primary sources, it might be a good idea to cite from the original papers of the definitions you use [i.e. (Riemann, 1868)].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9460" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T23:58:46.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T00:00:10.380" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it isn't acceptable, and is probably a sign that you should back up a bit and make sure your result really is completely unrelated to other results. If you think that you have something totally unrelated, which you obtained from elementary-ish mathematics, it probably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is considered trivial or irrelevant by others in the field. For example, I could very well write a paper on the derivation of the drag of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BatmanCurve.html&quot;&gt;Batman Curve&lt;/a&gt;-shaped object. This uses basic principles and doesn't need to call upon advanced prior results. But it's not too useful, and is probably not considered a worthy topic for research. This, of course, was an exaggerated example, but you may be in a less pronounced situation. Make sure that your paper is something that constitutes publishable work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has already been published before, just with different terminology. Usually, the simpler things get snapped up first; if you feel this is the case then you should dig deeper; and possibly show your results to other researchers in the field asking if they know of similar results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third possibility is that you have truly made a breakthrough or opened up a new avenue of research or done something radically new. Such results are very rare, especially when they build from basic concepts only. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, one way to beef up the references is via the introduction. I've noticed that a some physics papers have a lot of references in the introduction, and they skimp on references in the rest of the paper because the mathematics may be straightforward or otherwise not worth referencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your paper is publishable research, there probably is some motivation behind it. And some ideas you may have built upon (If not, you can always find similar ideas to &quot;pretend&quot; to build upon). Write an introduction detailing the motivation, and cite papers there. Look at the introductions of other papers in your field to get a better idea of how to write one and what sort of references are at home there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1035" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T00:00:10.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14113" CreationDate="2013-11-15T00:53:09.587" Score="18" ViewCount="18273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate and I do not know much about the rules of writing an email.&#xA;The email system used by our university is not convenient at all: it responds slowly, often crashes, and its common to miss important emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to email profs in our school and other universities.  Is it necessary for me to use the email account of the school? Can I use my personal gmail account? Is it informal or impolite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T01:18:58.430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T16:13:23.050" Title="Should a student use the email account provided by the university to communicate with professors?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14112" CreationDate="2013-11-15T02:16:18.593" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the cases I'm familiar with (U.S. universities), using your own e-mail account should be completely fine, subject to some obvious caveats.  One is that it's best to have an e-mail address that doesn't look foolish or offensive.  People sometimes choose very strange usernames, and you don't want that to reflect poorly on you; furthermore, you should make sure your e-mails include the name your professor knows you under.  Another issue is that if you are asking for sensitive information such as grades, your professor will likely be unwilling to send this information to an outside account without some verification that it belongs to you.  Finally, you should make things simple for anyone you correspond with.  For example, if you use several accounts, you should check them frequently or forward one to the other, so that there are no delays if someone sends something to an account you didn't expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common solution is to set up your university account to forward to your private account, and to set up that account so you can send e-mail listing your university account as the sender/return address when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T02:16:18.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T02:33:13.237" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that your work is entirely new. How do you know this? Have you read any survey papers? If you have, cite them. If you haven't, go read some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any other work on related problems? Cite it. Explain why their problem is different from yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should I care about your work? Has anyone expressed a need for someone to do what you're doing? Cite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7289" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T02:33:13.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-15T06:03:48.230" Score="10" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days, most of the conferences I attend provide their proceedings on a USB stick, or online only. Yet at the same time they have a strict page limit, which is usually set to something between 4 and 8 pages. I'm curious about the rationale for such a small limit. This is probably something that varies between fields, although I've experienced it in more than one field myself (subfields of artificial intelligence and physics). It doesn't seem particularly limited to big conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that super-long papers would hard on the reviewers, who have to do a lot of work for a large conference. But on the other hand, a very short paper will have to leave out a lot of background and important information, which at best will make it difficult to read, and at worst will make it impossible to judge on its merits. It's also a lot more effort to write a four-page paper than a 10-page one, unless you happen to be presenting a single experimental result using an established methodology (which is rarely if ever the case in artificial intelligence and related fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at conference proceedings from the 1950s through to the early 1980s, it seems that proceedings papers were generally much longer. As an extreme example, I know of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/stand.on.entropy.pdf&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; that's over 100 pages (it's quite a famous paper and the length seems worth it), but up to 20 pages doesn't seem uncommon. In the '90s the standard seems to have been 10 pages, at least in subfields of computer science. Although there's obviously selection bias involved, these old papers don't seem particularly longer than they need to be, and their length allows them to make rather deeper points than could be made in a modern 4-page paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know the reasoning behind short page limits at conferences. Is there a school of thought that says these extreme limits lead to better-quality papers, and/or less work for the reviewers? Or is it just a holdover from the recent past, when big conferences were expected to provide a paper proceedings to every participant, who would then have to carry the whole thing home?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1534" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T06:30:24.153" Title="Why do conferences have such short page limits?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14115" CreationDate="2013-11-15T06:30:24.153" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of inter-related reasons for short (and shorter) conference paper lengths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 10-12 page limit is typically so that reviewers don't have to review an inordinately long document. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final versions are also limited in length because the fact that proceedings are now mostly electronic doesn't mean that the cost of publication is independent of paper length. Editing costs are per-page (one can of course argue that professional editing does little for a conference paper, but nevertheless that's how it's priced).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in order to make sure &quot;what you review is what you get&quot;, one generally enforces the page limit at submission time as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finally, the 4-page limit I suspect is so that a fleshed out version of the work can be published in a journal without questions about the level of original content over and above what was presented at the conference. In this sense, the 4 (or 2 page) conference version is merely a short advertisement. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T06:30:24.153" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14119" CreationDate="2013-11-15T07:31:47.513" Score="4" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just received feedback about my PhD (in my University, we do not do an oral defense, our dissertations are peer reviewed) - and I have received great and useful feedback and criticisms which will be a breeze to respond to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also included in the feedback are some very kind and positive comments about me as a scientific researcher.  This leads me to my question, would it be appropriate to use the positive comments from the examiners when applying to academic positions? This of course, while preserving the anonymity of the examiners themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something along the lines of &quot;Examiners to my PhD dissertation recognized my ability to &lt;em&gt;perform task&lt;/em&gt;, stating &lt;em&gt;positive comment&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T09:58:33.293" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T09:58:33.293" Title="Using comments from examiners in a CV" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14117" CreationDate="2013-11-15T08:45:14.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hum, I do understand the impulse, but I don't think a CV is the right place for that. You don't want it to look like the back cover of a crime novel :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my country (France), PhD thesis undergo both a peer-review and a formal defense. Thus, you usually come out of it with two written reviews of your thesis, and one written review of your defense. &lt;strong&gt;It would be quite uncommon to quote these in a CV&lt;/strong&gt;, but in many applications it is fine (and sometimes &lt;em&gt;mandatory&lt;/em&gt;) to actually &lt;strong&gt;attach them to the application, as supporting material&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless it is common to do so in your system, I wouldn't recommend quoting praise for yourself in a CV (a CV is a list of facts, mainly, not opinions), but you can try to include it in the application if it is allowed. Either raw, or you could &lt;strong&gt;quote it in the application letter, statement of intent, summary of your work, whatever&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research topic of my PhD was to study the influence of UV irradiation on bacterial growth rate in the lab's fridge. I quantified the extent to which it was detrimental to the life of these poor innocent bacteria. I also made the case for a new classification splitting part of the UV range currently known as “UV-C” radiation into a new “UV-D” category, based on its distinct harmful effects on fungal growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This work was well received by the community, with a total of 4 published papers and 3 conference talks during my PhD. The thesis peer-review committee called it &lt;em&gt;“a brave and well-inspired revolution of the old dusty classification of UV radiation”&lt;/em&gt; and characterized the end product of the thesis as &lt;em&gt;“a clean lab fridge: the greatest service you can render mankind or, at least, labkind&lt;/em&gt;”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T08:45:14.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T08:54:26.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add my two cents in there: the main point of the references is to &lt;strong&gt;give context&lt;/strong&gt; to your work (as suggested by multiple answers already). It's also about &lt;strong&gt;justifying the validity of techniques you used&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;justifying the evaluation process&lt;/strong&gt; you used for your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's several &quot;different&quot; references you usually want to include in your paper (and while I do admit that sometimes you don't have many in some of the &quot;reference groups&quot;, I think it's impossible to have none at all):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;general references about your (sub)field&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be used in the introduction, to set a broader context for the paper, especially if you're submitting to a general conference in your field instead of a small subfield-focused conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I work in &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Morphology&lt;/em&gt;, which is often used to perform &lt;em&gt;image segmentation, object detection&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;image filtering&lt;/em&gt;, and belongs to the field of &lt;em&gt;computer vision&lt;/em&gt; and/or &lt;em&gt;image processing&lt;/em&gt;. So, when I submit to an CV or IP conference, I have to put it in the context because &lt;strong&gt;not all the referees/attendees&lt;/strong&gt; will be experts in Mathematical Morphology and some general references will be useful here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;general references about your problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually very similar to the previous, and would be put in the introduction as well. It stems from the same reasoning: not everybody will know that &lt;em&gt;what you are attempting to solve is even a problem&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again a personal example: in my field of Mathematical Morphology, there are hierarchical structures used to hold information about an image &lt;em&gt;in a tree structure&lt;/em&gt;. I recently published a paper about &lt;em&gt;reducing the size of those trees&lt;/em&gt;. Why should anybody care? Unless I &lt;strong&gt;give good motivation&lt;/strong&gt;, nobody will. I had to give references to various &lt;em&gt;applications&lt;/em&gt; of the tree structures I was working on (including a tiny bit of motivation for using them at all in the first place), and then give references and elaborate &lt;em&gt;why the size is an important factor&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;what applications will benefit from my proposed technique&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and the &quot;core&quot; of the paper was using something I used in advanced high-school programming papers: DFS. I still had to give context as to why my specific application was interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;references about the structures/techniques you used&lt;/strong&gt; (even if they're simple or not common for your field)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this would go somewhere between Introduction and Related work. But, it's important to justify the validity of what you're using, and you're not going to prove it from scratch in your paper. Maybe it's also interesting to _ elaborate on the connections and similarities_ between the &lt;em&gt;standard usage of the technique&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;common usage&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give two examples here: There was a recent paper in my field presenting powerful but simple techniques based on Kruskal's minimum spanning tree algorithm. Of course Kruskal was cited (even if most computer scientists learn about that in their high-school mathematics / undergrad algorithms courses). Also, there was an older paper in Computer Vision about image-by-image search applying techniques from text processing. It was explained in quite some detail how parallels can be drawn while processing an image as a text document, e.g. what is the equivalent of &quot;words&quot; in an image.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;specific references about your problem and possible previous solutions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who attempted to solve it before? Maybe somebody attempted to solve a partial problem? A similar problem? The same problem in a different context? Who was the first one to pose it as a problem? This would go to Related work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your contribution is not directly based on any of those, you have to &lt;strong&gt;put your solution in to context&lt;/strong&gt;. If there's a previous partial solution that's justification that your contribution is important. If there's a similar problem solved, comparing similarities and differences might help somebody to one day make a generalized solution. Maybe somebody got results that are as good (as fast, as complex, as precise...) as yours using different techniques? Good, compare pros and cons!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;references about the testing framework/techniques you used&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did you evaluate your approach? How will you justify your evaluation to the reviewers? Why are the statistics you presented actually relevant to evaluate the validity/impact of your contribution? Discussion/Results section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a lot of things you can produce a lot of useless statistics. You have to justify your choice of how to present your results. Is the testing framework widely used? Cite it! Is it new or an upgrade on an existing framework? Cite pros and cons related to the &quot;standard testing approach&quot; and argue why your approach is better suited to represent the pros of your contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;references about the data you used&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly for the testing framework. Why this particular dataset? When did it first appear? What makes it suited for your problem? Where was it used before, and how does that justify your choice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;references supporting your claims about the importance of your contribution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to giving motivation, you should once more emphasize &lt;strong&gt;the impact&lt;/strong&gt; your paper will make, and &lt;strong&gt;the potential applications&lt;/strong&gt; of your contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is definitely different from &quot;what you based your paper on&quot;. It's almost the opposite: you're listing papers/authors that might benefit from your work and base their future, extended work on your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, it's not just about citing the mathematical/algorithmic bases of your work. It's about proving that you did your proper background research, giving motivation for your problem, explaining the benefits, and convincing everybody that your work is &lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;. And, sorry to say, if your supervisors couldn't tell you most of this, you should think about changing them (especially if you have an interest in academia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T17:21:37.570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T17:21:37.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14040" CreationDate="2013-11-15T12:12:28.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The SI unit brochure (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BIPM&lt;/a&gt;) is actually quite clear and well-written, and backs up many of its points with logical/physical justification. I would say the style guides (should) build on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T12:12:28.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14092" CreationDate="2013-11-15T12:13:08.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many online programs from traditional universities that you could choose from. A significant question is your aim for the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you pursue further education?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you planning to switch careers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you intend a career in industry or academia?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand what your goals are. Particularly in the software industry, if your goal is hobbyist, to build skills that will supplement your current job or to pick up as a developer, the education you already have may likely be enough. (Edit: And, if undergrad is your terminal goal, this probably isn't the forum.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to pursue graduate/advanced education or research, then the specific degree is obviously valuable. A problem may exist with finding the nexus between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;easy to get into&quot; (you indicate a concern with admissions rigor at UI and UM-UC). Plus, it's important in those cases to be developing relationships with faculty, a task that is hard to do through emails and online forums. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programs through traditional universities have costs similar to their in-person programs. That's going to be hard to get around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception that comes to mind is Harvard Extension School's programs. They offer a computer science focus, but do require at least 16 credits completed through in-person courses in Cambridge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I unfortunately can't offer a comprehensive list of online bachelors degrees through traditional universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider, though, is instead of pursuing a second bachelors, look for masters programs that function as career-change degrees. These will have a lower bar for entry and include some fundamental learning (though generally expect you to learn quicker). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open University&lt;/a&gt; (Bachelors, Post-bachelors, Masters)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate/computer-science/curriculum.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oregon State&lt;/a&gt; (Bachelors CS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/degrees.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drexel&lt;/a&gt; (Bachelors Info Sys completion, Masters CS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.harvard.edu/degrees-certificates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Extension School&lt;/a&gt; (Bachelors CS, Masters Software Eng)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Georgia Tech&lt;/a&gt; (Masters Computer Science)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Penn State's World Campus&lt;/a&gt; (Masters Software Engineering)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;come immediately to mind as being accredited schools with these sorts of online programs. They're all easily found with a bit of Googling, however, and I'd suggest doing a little focused searching to see what you can turn up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many, many schools have programs today. Masters programs will probably be cheaper than Bachelors programs. Through a traditional school, though, all are going to cost. And ultimately, unless you're looking to get deep into theory, you're likely better off completing your Associates, learning a few modern languages and learning through application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9480" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T12:13:08.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1020" CreationDate="2013-11-15T13:10:31.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CWTS SNIP factor controls for differing disciplinary citation rates and speed. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalindicators.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.journalindicators.com&lt;/a&gt; It is also shown in Scopus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9489" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T13:10:31.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14237" CreationDate="2013-11-15T13:12:33.733" Score="6" ViewCount="2082" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for graduate studies in the US and in my statement of purpose I mention the name of a book and it's author, as the book is very relevant to my previous research work and the author is working in the university I am applying too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this okay, or should I not mention the book's name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is okay should I quote the book's title or should I do any special formatting regarding this reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T17:16:23.520" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T19:04:46.117" Title="Statement of purpose book reference" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14183" CreationDate="2013-11-15T13:26:12.717" Score="5" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;If  you can upload a writing sample or a second statement of purpose in a  university online application, and the department I am applying for doesn't require these two essays, would I get extra credit (higher chances of getting accepted) if I do upload answers to these questions, or they will not even look at them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T17:14:46.920" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T17:14:46.920" Title="Optional essays" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14128" CreationDate="2013-11-15T13:37:28.553" Score="8" ViewCount="1906" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I mention an adjunct professor as my proposed supervisor for graduate studies, or adjunct  professors are not allowed to be supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there anythings that I should be aware of before mentioning his/her name in my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T15:05:18.607" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T15:05:18.607" Title="Adjunct professor capacities" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14153" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:10:59.763" Score="4" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I do have a sponsorship for continuing my masters degree, will that increase my chances of getting accepted, or is money irrelevant in admissions decisions? I am considering computer science or computational engineering graduate studies in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T14:41:44.900" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T21:59:20.480" Title="Financial Support" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14126" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:21:01.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to resolve this question is to e-mail the person and ask whether they anticipate taking new graduate students in the near future.  This is worth asking even for non-adjunct faculty (since they may have all the students they can handle already, they may be retiring soon or moving to another university or an administrative position, etc.), so nobody will be surprised or take offense at the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what sort of answer to expect, it depends on what sort of adjunct professor it is.  Sometimes researchers from other institutions (government or industrial research labs, museums, etc.) hold adjunct positions at universities.  They may or may not be allowed to supervise graduate students, depending on the terms of their appointment, but it's common to allow this; often it's part of the point of the position.  On the other hand, there's another sort of position sometimes called adjunct faculty, namely low-paid temporary workers hired to teach introductory courses, and these jobs are not likely to involve graduate supervision.  You should be able to tell pretty easily which case applies to any particular person by looking on the web, and in any case e-mailing them (as described above) will give a definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T14:21:01.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14172" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:22:12.633" Score="2" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a research question that I want to explore, so am considering completing a Master of Research (MRes) degree in the UK. I will soon finish a terminal master's program by coursework (in the US), with no thesis option, so I do not have a research background. Is research experience a typical prerequisite for an MRes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T00:55:14.900" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T09:23:45.100" Title="Do Master of Research programs require prior research experience?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14152" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:39:02.597" Score="5" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied to a Canadian university to study a Masters degree starting Fall 2013, and they didn't accept or reject me, the online application clearly states that I will get notified by an email of their decision and I am pretty sure I didn't receive any emails from them (yes, I check my spam folder everyday).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have any recourse for recouping my application fee? Whom do I contact for this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T22:22:31.660" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T22:22:31.660" Title="What do I do if a university does not inform me of my masters application status?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14126" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:45:49.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you just want to know “in principle”, look at your university's policies… This is something they decide. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/graduate_studies/admin/adjunct_information.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Manitoba&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) The Adjunct Professor may be thesis/practicum supervisor or co-supervisor of, or serve on the thesis/practicum committee for, graduate students registered in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. In the event that the appointment of an Adjunct Professor expires before the graduate students have completed their programs, the Head of the department/unit shall be responsible for recommending reappointment or naming a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's a good idea is an entirely different question…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T14:45:49.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:39:30.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published a paper regarding a new technique for printing iron microparticles. In my research I found a long list of printing methods, but ultimately the technique I invented was unique in the field (that's according to the reviewers). Yet the references I used, although they were not directly related to what I was exactly doing, helped me devise the final idea. I think that probably you can put some references, just to give some context on something that might be related somehow, rather than risk yourself to appear as an amateur. In today's world, where there are papers and inventions in the millions, there should be something related to your idea. Or maybe you are like Einstein who published with no references, but even he was exploring and ultimately refining Newtonian physics. So strictly speaking he should have cited Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9496" LastEditorUserId="9496" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T13:43:29.987" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T13:43:29.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14181" CreationDate="2013-11-15T16:12:54.107" Score="5" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for two universities for graduate studies at the US, assuming both universities accept me (Hopefully) should I choose the university that fits me better or the university which is more selective (like ivy league universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that smarter students will overrun me in the top university, is this a valid concern or there is no academic competition between students since the admissions office and the designated department would not have accepted me in the first place if I had a non competitive enough profile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T17:07:22.017" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T18:56:36.230" Title="Choosing universities or programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T16:21:14.293" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a problem, you can submit your work with no references if nothing related to your work is done before. You and your team may get a &lt;strong&gt;Nobel Prize&lt;/strong&gt; for the work you guys are trying to do, so keep it up and do great things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References are used when we are going to extend the work which has already been done or we want to do something related to that. In your case if you have no references, then you can go for that Conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9499" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T23:57:57.290" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T23:57:57.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14133" CreationDate="2013-11-15T16:59:15.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: why don't you come back and ask again when you got the acceptance letters from both schools? These worries seem premature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, assuming this is more about applying to schools... I cannot tell you which to apply, but here are the components you should consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on the department you are going to. Not all departments in the selective schools are reputable. Meanwhile, some department in smaller schools can be the field's leader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on your career aspiration. Graduates from reputable schools &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; face fewer barriers in advancing to become a researcher or apply for a faculty position. But this is only one piece of the puzzle; other factors such as research topics, track records, etc. matter greatly as well. If it's a skill-based degree, then check the field and ask around which institutes seem to be better recognized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on what do you mean by &quot;fits me better.&quot; At the very least, the chosen school should not give you more stress/misery beyond necessary (e.g. beyond stresses that is due to class work, high standard, etc.) If you have to endure extra burdens such as tension brought about by different value and culture of the organization's, then you better not go there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Competition happens &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt;. Organizational and personal cultures have a lot to do with it. There are departments/schools that particularly favor competitive students, either due to the professional nature of their degree, pride, or scarcity of resources. Personality of the classmates can also matter. Some people just love to compete, even in the most minor things of their life. Anyhow, to expect less competition because the people are more homogeneous is unrealistic; in fact, competition is the likeliest outcome to see in a homogeneous population.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some schools &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; consider accepting students from developing countries even the students deem slightly less competitive than the rest of the crowd. They do this for many reasons: to expand their influence, to leverage the intellectual bargaining power of the applicants' countries, to establish their department that is specialized in global work, etc. Regardless if this system is in place or not, there is always a spectrum of competency among the student body, whatever the makeup of the body is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, I think you can benefit from some attitude readjustment. Unless you need excellent grades for scholarship or assistantship, graduate school is more of a competition within oneself than between people. As a foreign student, try your best to integrate into the local culture, make friends, build support networks, consult some cultural and study specialists at school, pay attention to your grades, ask questions, participate in discussion, bring what's unique about your experience to the table, and enjoy the stay and study. The whole process is a lot more than worrying about how not to make mistakes or fall behind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T16:59:15.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14139" CreationDate="2013-11-15T17:04:59.523" Score="4" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is absolutely important to quote all thoughts that did not originate from the author. This makes one think that it would be OK to include works of others when referencing them correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider that one had that really great list of problems that also apply to your own paper. Is it legal and/or legitimate to write about that list, include the key points in your work and reference the original author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am facing that situation where I want to include some key aspects but quoting all of them and describing them individually feels like copying too much, even though I explicitly state that the aspects originate from another paper with referencing to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9502" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T22:07:17.813" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:15:15.840" Title="How large may included parts from other people's work be in an academic paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14138" CreationDate="2013-11-15T17:15:57.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can include any material that is published as long as you appropriately cite the material (source). If you think any phrasing made by the author(s) is key, then you can do it as a quote where the text is reproduced in verbatim. If you do not use quotes you need to rephrase the text in your own words since it would otherwise be considered as a form of plagiarism. So, just be careful with referencing and quotes if necessary. It is better to have cited one time too many than the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T17:15:57.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14138" CreationDate="2013-11-15T17:22:32.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Idea-wise it's hard to tell. It'd depend on how different your interpretations of the problems are compared to the original author's. It'd be prudent to consult a couple other researchers/peers for some objective inputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Format-wise, of course you can cite anything up to any amount. One way to do that is through &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;block quotation&lt;/a&gt;. I have seen pages and pages of run-on quotes. Just double check, again, with some people in the same field to make sure your quoting style is not too outlandish, just because it's legal to do does not mean it's culturally appropriate to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's just a list of questions, another way I can see working around this is to tabulate them in your work, attributing the list to the original author in the caption or footnote of the table. Then, in your text, refer to the questions through the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T17:22:32.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T18:02:50.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feynman's &lt;em&gt;Forces in Molecules&lt;/em&gt; has no reference and was published on Phys. Rev.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cce.ufes.br/jair/mq2grad/PhysRev.56.340_Feynman_Forces_in_Molecules.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.cce.ufes.br/jair/mq2grad/PhysRev.56.340_Feynman_Forces_in_Molecules.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9504" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T18:02:50.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-15T18:33:38.707" Score="5" ViewCount="1783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I decided that I want to go to graduate school. I started looking into some local schools, but none of them have any programs that are very appealing. I found a program that is two and a half hours away and classes are held on Saturdays. Is this ridiculous? How long is too long of a commute? As much as I would love to just move there for a few years, I have a husband and a toddler. I can't uproot them as well. My only other option is to take the program online. Do people even take online programs seriously in the job market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9506" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T16:57:14.893" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T16:57:14.893" Title="How far do you commute to graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2018-09-21T14:37:57.803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14143" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:00:25.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, it matters if it is just a course-work based program or if it requires research, lab work, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to check with your program to be sure what's expected of participants, and if you reach out and contact an enrolled student (or if their admissions office has a student they could direct you to for such questions) you can ask them for their experience of &quot;what it really takes&quot;, and what options you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one example, all around the USA there are &quot;weekend {MBA/etc}&quot; and sometimes &quot;executive&quot; programs. These are designed precisely for people like you, people who are working full time during the week, who live far out of town, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is determining what is really needed - is that one day all you really have to be there for, in person? Are there demonstrations, oral reports, projects, group meetings, etc, that must be done on any other day of the week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue with this answer, we must assume the answer is &quot;yes, the program really only requires you to be here Saturday, and everything else can be done at your home, email, web, etc&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of my experience, I have not done this myself, but I've worked with about 4 people who were doing exactly this. They would finish their work on Friday, commenting about how they had a long drive ahead of them. If they had a morning class some would go down on friday night, stay in a hotel (or couch surf, or stay with a friend/family), and then go to their classes. When they were done they'd drive home and be there in time for dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some others drive down early on Saturday, did class, and drove back all in one day. This is doable - they were doing 3 hours each trip, so 6 hours of driving in one day. But I must warn you - according to psychological/cognitive research, people do not habituate to commutes of this length. If you find a way to enjoy the drive as an experience, like your chance to listen to audio books, loud music, be by yourself to meditate and think, etc, then that's fine. Most people just always hate it - it's one of the few things we, as human beings, suck at just getting use to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the experience of my coworkers, none of them liked the drive. But in the case of all of them, they decided that the unpleasantness was worth it because their degree was important to them, and all it cost them was a chunk of their weekend. They didn't like it, they always looked a bit down to have to make the drive the next day, but they did it anyway. Another coworker stayed with family/friends and stayed the whole weekend, driving back Sunday night. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father was actually going to do this for his PhD in English Literature, but found 1.5 hours back and forth while working 50-60 hours entirely too unpleasant, and stopped before even really starting it. Your value and personal situation - and how you handle long stretches of time in the car - will heavily influence your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &quot;Your Mileage May Very&quot;. There is no &quot;too long&quot; or &quot;too short&quot; to commute. Commutes suck. As humans, we universally tend to hate them, especially while driving. As a personal note, I've found that anything over 20 minutes per day (if every day) starts to wear on me, and anything over 45 minutes is very displeasing (unless I'm on public transportation, which I find relaxing and can easily do double the time). Meanwhile, some people drive an hour and a half and just &quot;deal with it&quot; temporarily. I find road trips for 3 hours ok, but the ride back is rough even if I did very little that day, and I spend most of the next day tired. You'll kind of have to find this out yourself - might I suggest some trial runs to scope out the campus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you could also try to find creative solutions, which will depend on your personal situation. Some couples, if they are both off during the weekend, will travel together and one will go to school while the other has a Family Fun Day. Since this is almost always done on trips to a larger city than one lives in, there are often museums, parks, movies, etc. This can be anywhere from relatively cheap (pack a cooler and picnic, choose low/no cost fun things to do) to prohibitively expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to online classes, that really is a separate question you might want to search for, with lots of good answers all over. To give you an executive summary: it depends on who you ask - but some people say they worked for them just fine, and there are some people who give them no value. What percentage of hiring decisions will consider them a negative? No one seems to offer good data, and I'm aware of no quality comprehensive studies for any area of degree. Education is strictly &quot;let the buyer beware&quot; in the USA, with little exceptions. (They are starting to crack down on some aspects that involve federal student aid, but only on the worst offenders.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T20:06:43.260" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T20:06:43.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:14:06.947" Score="15" ViewCount="4869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two years ago I did a piece of research for a journal's especial edition. I got the reviewer's comments, did all the corrections and sent it to my co-authors. One of them took so long to return his comments that the paper wasn't included in the EE. I then tried to submit it to another journal but again the same co-author took long time to provide his comments. Finally my boss suggested me to submit it to another journal (good one) without waiting for my co-author's opinion. I got the reviewer's comments back, I did all the corrections (I have 45 days), sent it to my co-authors and gave them a week to send me their comments. The same co-author is now telling me he's not happy I didn't tell him I submitted to that journal and that he won't be able to make comments in a week. I'm again in a catch-22. What do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9512" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T15:41:01.753" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T15:41:01.753" Title="What do I do when a co-author takes too long to give feedback during the peer review process?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:36:52.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apologise to your coauthor.&lt;/strong&gt; Hope that he is not too upset. Ask him what to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, do not ever submit a paper for publication without discussing it with all coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T14:39:17.453" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T14:39:17.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:41:20.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's inappropriate to submit a paper for publication before all authors agree that it is ready.  Your boss shouldn't have advised you to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should apologize profusely to your coauthor.  Make sure he knows about the deadline, then wait patiently until he is able to give his comments.  If the deadline gets close, you could ask the editor whether you can have more time.  If not, it may be necessary to withdraw your submission and resubmit later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you collaborate with coauthors, you have to accept that the final product needs to be something that everyone can agree on.  Yes, this may be inconvenient if one of them is slower, or has different standards than the others, and it can cause you to miss opportunities.  This is the price of collaboration. If it becomes a problem, you should talk to your coauthors and try to work out a solution that's agreeable to all, but you cannot act unilaterally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T21:48:29.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T21:48:29.840" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:41:51.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you are following your boss' (good) advice. Dealing with co-authors is not always easy as you have experienced. I think I have experienced a similar co-author, not responding but complaining whenever something happens. In my case, the co-author was definitely over-committed and the actions were basically a symptom of frustration about not being able to perform. Now, I think you have done the right thing to a point. The only thing that would have improved things would have been to provide the co-author with the information but with a strict deadline but not more than a week or two. Doing so at all stages, is the only way to deal with such cases. It is not very nice, or comfortable, but it is necessary to make a stand and convey the seriousness. In your case you have clearly had a lot of extra work due to the (lack of) actions from your co-author. I assume he has not apologized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what to do? Well, I would write and state that you are sorry the co-author feels left out (or however the co-author has phrased it). You can then state that the lack of response earlier made you assume the co-author was not prioritizing the work and that based on suggestions from your boss you have now taken the actions you have to get the material published. Be brief and courteous but do not add many excuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T15:23:54.973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T15:23:54.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:58:16.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the general consensus here: find relevant work and cite it. You can cite textbooks or reviews for well-known things. You can also cite vaguely related problems or just the most exciting problem in the field. (This takes some experience, which you lack, but try your best.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However note, that 'conference paper' means different things to different people in different fields. A regular paper (article or letter in scientific journal) never goes without References, never. However, depending on the field, some conferences call for abstracts or summaries. Those are much shorter (between 1 paragraph and 2 pages) and &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; include some references, but not as many as in the full paper due to space constraints. You can probably submit a 1-page abstract without References if the topic is interesting and clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T21:48:33.440" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T21:48:33.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14130" CreationDate="2013-11-15T21:52:49.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple questions that remain unanswered here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you meet all of the deadlines for the admissions process? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the people who wrote your letters of recommendation send in their references on time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the school promise you a reply-by date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, why did you not contact them at that time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you get an email confirming that the application was complete?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of those were missing, then it's entirely possible that you didn't have a complete application—in which case, the school is not necessarily required to do anything, because they don't have a complete record to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, a lawsuit is a horrifically bad idea under the circumstances—it's far more time-consuming and expensive than anything you're going to get back from the school. It's a waste of your time and money (unless they rather unlikely made written promises of admission, in which case they may be in bigger legal troubles than just having to return an admission fee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T21:52:49.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14127" CreationDate="2013-11-15T21:59:20.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Admissions in the US are not necessarily need-blind at either the undergraduate or graduate levels, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.georgetownvoice.com/2013/10/23/gw-lied-about-having-need-blind-admissions-for-years/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;even if the university claims it is&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially at the graduate level, it is more or less accepted that ability to &quot;self-fund&quot; one's education, through fellowships and scholarships, or other arrangements, can be considered as a factor in admissions processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T21:59:20.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1020" CreationDate="2013-11-15T22:03:28.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an informal and difficult to quantify one: does it suffice to have a publication in this journal to get tenured? Or, in a reverse manner, can one get tenured without having published in a journal like this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In economics, you will get tenure in most reasonable places for publications in &lt;em&gt;Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Econometrica&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In statistics, these would be &lt;em&gt;Annals of Statistics, Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B Methodology, the Journal of the American Statistical Association&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Biometrika&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the fields I am closely familiar with. I can imagine that in most natural sciences, a publication in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; would boost your chances quite a bit. Finance has a system of ranking journals, with a handful of highly coveted journals designated as A-journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting reliable statistics along these lines is of course impossible. If Google were a little smarter, it would scan the CVs of those tenured and untenured (those who moved to another university after the typical period of 5-6-7 years), grab their publication records, and see what the journals are that those who got tenured had published in that untenured hadn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T22:03:28.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-15T23:41:21.207" Score="2" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to ask, if any time, any of you have had any issues ordering hazardous chemicals in a laboratory located in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specially if you had any of your students or postdocs do it, since I recently saw that they run a background check on you for certain chemicals, so I was just wondering if this may backfire sometime in the nearby future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because my PI had me order a couple of chemicals, but my Postdoc is in computer science, so not at all related with this, I wanted to know if this may jump in some future in a Green Card application? Perhaps I'm just being paranoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any experience in your laboratories with this kind of issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T10:30:37.683" Title="Ordering Chemicals for a laboratory on a Student or J1 Visa" Tags="&lt;visa&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-16T03:15:05.807" Score="9" ViewCount="12988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently searched my publications in Scopus and I have found that they are all scattered around. The reason behind that maybe is because I have a compound last name. The situation has gone pretty weird also in one of my papers, where they have put one of my last names to another author that I do not even know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that I have is how I can make to put all my papers under a same profile, and also delete that &quot;ghost&quot; author from one of my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:29:51.260" LastActivityDate="2017-11-05T23:40:49.237" Title="How can I get all my papers under the same Scopus profile?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;scopus&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14138" CreationDate="2013-11-16T05:15:15.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be prudent to look up the journal's policy on such matters, as the exact answer depends on the publisher. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/rights_permissions_ras.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford Journals&lt;/a&gt; let you copy a maximum of two figures (post-1998) from a journal article, and five per issue. Above these limits, specific permission is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If in doubt, ask the publisher of the material you're citing if it's OK.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:15:15.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14093" CreationDate="2013-11-16T05:40:24.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on Volodya's answer, you probably don't need to worry about this too much if you're planning to submit to a peer-reviewed journal - they'll just change it to their preference during the proof stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:40:24.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14020" CreationDate="2013-11-16T05:50:04.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having sat (as a graduate student) on my department's admissions committee for two years, I can provide a few thoughts from my own personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, everyone has &quot;good&quot; references - it's very rare that a reference writer will say something negative or even something neutral. What sets apart the really good ones is that the writer can provide a specific, concrete anecdote that demonstrates an applicants skill set, attitude, previous successes, etc. So in that regard, knowing you the best probably trumps almost everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, having three letters from postdocs (none from professors), all of whom are in the same lab, is likely to make your letters somewhat redundant. If you worked with each of them on very different projects, or you know that they have very different things to say about you (in particular if they can speak to different aspects of your work or personality), this might make sense - but to have all three from the same place might be a bit much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing anything else about your situation, it would seem that perhaps two letters from your current lab and one from a professor at your undergrad institution would be a reasonable balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T05:50:04.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-16T06:21:54.477" Score="3" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title itself is a good summary of my question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to make the situation more specific: I am a double major in math and computer science, and would like to apply to PhD program with theoretical CS as primary research interest. I am well aware that research experience helps a lot to show the committee that one has research potential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other academical records of mine are in decent shape so I want to shoot for the top programs. Now I am writing my SoP and here comes the problem: &lt;strong&gt;I have only non-TCS research experiences.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have in hand are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) serious pure math REU (not just expository) with a recently submitted paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) technical work (implementing and benchmarking) new numerical algorithm (scientific computing) with tech report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was planning on doing a senior thesis, but my potential advisor is on a leave so it didn't work out. I went through the old questions and only found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7599/will-a-paper-in-a-help-phd-application-in-b&quot;&gt;one related question&lt;/a&gt;. But I guess in my situation, it is worse because I have only research experience in entirely different subject. Although I am very proud of what I did, it is hard to sell them in SoP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought I don't need to do research in the &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; same area to what I want to do in grad school. Plus trying out interesting areas are fun. But it seems to me now that it was a very bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I wish to study a_0,a_1 and a_2 in A. I have done research in B and have been a trustworthy cheap labor in C. B and C are somewhat related to A, so I think I will do a decent job in A as well.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; just sound miserable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Thanks for reading - I know it is a bit long. Also I do apologize in advance if this question violates the rules - it is my first question ever. :)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T06:48:38.193" Title="Does research experience in a different but related field help in PhD application? (Pure Math-&gt;TCS)" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14160" CreationDate="2013-11-16T06:48:38.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert, but, from what I know, your experience is quite valuable.  Even if you had computer science research experience, there's a good chance that what you would actually end up doing in a PhD program is far from the domain of your undergraduate research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still worried, note that theoretical computer science is all mathematics.  I was an applied mathematics and statistics major and am currently taking a graduate course in approximation algorithms--it's literally a graduate course in theoretical side of applied mathematics.  Other theory courses in automata, computation, machine learning, etc are also all math courses, but in the computer science domain.  I actually think that your math/research background, if anything, is a huge plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What PhD programs are really interested in is whether or not you have done research in any discipline (preferably math/engineering for CS) and if you enjoyed it and showed an aptitude for it.  You're ahead of the game, don't worry.  On that note, if you know that you want to do TCS research, you could start now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T06:48:38.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2013-11-16T09:52:36.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apologize to your co-author for not telling him about the&#xA;submission.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try having a meeting/phone conference with the co-author (if possible including your supervisor) to solve the immediate problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change your requests to the co-authors to an opt-in style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the future, send out &amp;quot;submitted paper to :-)&amp;quot; with the final version to all co-authors as last point on your submission routine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he won't be able to make comments in a week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That just tells you that you &lt;em&gt;won't have&lt;/em&gt; his comments within the week. But you need to know when you &lt;em&gt;will have&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, I'd ask back &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; I can have the comments. Here, however, things look more difficult. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, I'd switch from email to phone (or a visit to his office). That eliminates the dead time between emailing several times and may allow you to extract a definitive answer for the time line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second thing I'd probably do would be trying to have a meeting (or a phone/video conference if the co-author is too far away). If he told you that he cannot do the comments this week, send a list of possible meeting times for next week. I'd (try to) include a number of &amp;quot;weird&amp;quot; times (early morning before the usual office routine sets in, evenings, possibly even at the weekend). This serves  two purposes: it makes absolutely clear how important the meeting is to you and it closes loopholes for him. Talk to your supervisor about this first, you'll probably want to have him at the meeting as well - so you need to find times that are OK with your supervisor as well (that's the &amp;quot;try to&amp;quot; above).&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I'd probably email the list, ending with: if none of these is possible for you, please send me your preferred time for a meeting next week. I'd then do an immediate follow up-call &amp;quot;We need to talk about the paper. ... I just emailed you a number of possible times for a meeting&amp;quot;. Ask him to tell you when the meeting would suit him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;gave them a week to send me their comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the context I assume you wrote something like &amp;quot;please send me your comments within a week&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about changing the question to an opt-in style: &amp;quot;please send me your comments asap. If I don't receive any within any within a week, I'll assume you're fine with the text as it is and move on with the submission.&amp;quot; O course, you need to be extremely timely yourself if you do this and you need to give sensible deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submission without the OK of all co-authors is misconduct. However, if I understood the described situation correctly, a manuscript that was approved by all co-authors was sent to a different journal. Again, an opt-in for changes would have been the proper way, but IMHO it is not as serious as general &amp;quot;submit without co-authors approval&amp;quot;: after all the text was approved by the co-author, and the choice of the journal should not make any &lt;em&gt;scientific&lt;/em&gt; difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I understood correclty, the co-author in question does not complain about the submission, but about the fact that he didn't know about it. That again is a valid complaint, so apologize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T09:52:36.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14155" CreationDate="2013-11-16T10:30:37.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you mean order as in &quot;sorting the bottles&quot;, then you anyways shouldn't do that unless you have the proper training so you know what you are doing. If I should give a paranoid guess: getting the training would have been the point that got you listed as owner of a &quot;hazardous chemicals certificate&quot;. That's much easier from a large scale administrative point of view than knowing who entered which lab to touch a bottle at a nation-wide scale.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you mean order as in &quot;administrative task to buy things&quot;: This type of ordering does not imply physical access to the substances. Lists of people who do that would be full of secretaries and administrative/procurement/bookkeeping staff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to be paranoid: the other thing that is much easier to know than who actually enterd a particular lab is who is working in that group/building. From that point of view, you may already be listed as &quot;possibly had access to X&quot; if anyone from your lab does the order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I'm German and in Germany and not overly worried what types of US visa I can have. However, I'm chemist, so if they list people in relation to harzardous substances, I'd expect to be listed by profession [or by my publication list/affiliations] anyways - even though taking also into account the amounts the most important hazardous substances I usually handle are alcohol/bacillol for cleaning instruments and the lab table.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T10:30:37.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14080" CreationDate="2013-11-16T10:58:46.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor (chemistry) I had once told us in the lunch break about a CV where the applicant (for a position in the medical faculty) had listed impact factors and summed them up. He was not only alienated but outright upset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that was years ago and things may have changed. But I still think it weird and in my field have not seen it (chemistry/spectroscopy/chemometrics). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T10:58:46.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-16T11:46:00.097" Score="18" ViewCount="4431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done some independent research that I wish to mention in my SOP. The full account of what I have done till has been published as an e-print on arxiv.org. Can I give a hyperlink to this e-print in my SOP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T10:40:49.127" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T10:40:49.127" Title="Should I link my research in my SOP?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14166" CreationDate="2013-11-16T12:20:04.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't list it on your Statement of Purpose. You should cite it properly in your CV / Resume, or in a separate list of publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly discuss the research that led to the paper in your statement, but if the statement-readers would like to read the paper itself, they can find the reference in your other material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4461" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T12:20:04.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14156" CreationDate="2013-11-16T13:52:17.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Federico indicates, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.elsevier.com/app/ask_scopus/p/8150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contact form&lt;/a&gt; (“Ask a question”) has a field for suggesting correction to the index:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;     &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TfvZ5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can directly send them the papers in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please attach a copy of the missing or incorrect document, this is essential for us to verify the changes and make the corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't have any direct experience with Scopus in that area, they are generally serious and I think they will act on your request. I have once contact another index provider (Web of Science) with a correction, and they updated the data within a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T13:52:17.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14166" CreationDate="2013-11-16T15:14:34.160" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should absolutely list it in your statement, in the bibliography, with a hyperlink, along with all the other papers you cite in your statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T15:14:34.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-16T15:50:25.960" Score="7" ViewCount="836" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases it is advisable to contact faculty while applying to the graduate school. But not all professors reply to the emails and in most cases none of them reply to emails, so is it advisable to mention in the statement of purpose (SOP) that a faculty member was contacted even though no reply came from their side ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T12:15:39.630" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T12:15:39.630" Title="Should a student mention about contacting a faculty in a SOP even if the faculty has not replied yet?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14170" CreationDate="2013-11-16T17:00:38.920" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend against mentioning e-mail contact with faculty unless you've had a substantive interaction, one that leads you to believe they would remember you and support your application.  In particular, you don't want someone on the admissions committee to mention to a colleague &quot;So, I hear applicant X has been in touch with you; what was your impression?&quot; and receive the reply &quot;I have no idea who that is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there has been no reply to your e-mail, you could still indicate interest in your statement of purpose (&quot;Based on my interests in X and Y, I envision Professors A and B as possible advisors.&quot;).  This would help classify the application and indicate who should look at it, without setting up the expectation that they will already know who you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T17:00:38.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14129" CreationDate="2013-11-17T09:23:45.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you do not need research experience to get on a UK MRes progamme.&lt;/strong&gt; Though it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may vary by institution; this answer is based on the one MRes from my subject area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/energy/programmes/postgraduate/mres-energy-demand-studies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCL MRes in Energy Demand Studies&lt;/a&gt; has the following prerequisites (taken from that linked page):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Good numeracy and literacy and an ability to present ideas clearly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;An appreciation of the importance of behaviour and society in energy demand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;An understanding of or ability to learn basic physics and engineering concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Strong performance in a science, engineering or social sciences discipline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The course, in its first half, contains a lot of taught material. This covers, amongst other things, research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having research skills, or a research track record, will help you with getting onto the more competitive courses, such as this one; and it will improve your chances of getting your study funded too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the selection criteria is (&lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how your academic and professional background meets the demands of this challenging programme&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so if you can show a research track record, that will help fulfill that criterion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T09:23:45.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T13:30:20.593" Score="12" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my master thesis I developed a software tool that improves a common workflow used in a certain industry. Currently, no such tool exists, and this workflow is conducted manually all around the globe. I am currently in the finalization phase of my thesis and my supervisor told me to write a paper on the tool and the worflow improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here is my Problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have the tool and I can show that the workflow is performed better with it (our industry partner puts almost no limits on use cases, interviews, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have no idea how properly package this into a paper (also, what to objectively measure to &quot;proof&quot; the improvement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please point out a few &quot;good&quot; papers, where a software tool was created for a problem domain (where no such tool existed before) and evaluated so that I can learn from it's structure, the approach and the proper &quot;packaging&quot; of the entire paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9535" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T12:30:36.530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T12:30:36.530" Title="Creating paper on software tool" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14173" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:37:42.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I don't have any specific tips on structuring this type of paper, you might be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.software.ac.uk/resources/guides/which-journals-should-i-publish-my-software&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt; of journals that focus on publishing scientific software. You should be able to find lots of examples of &quot;software&quot; papers there. Those papers that I have read in &lt;em&gt;Methods in Ecology and Evolution&lt;/em&gt; have been particularly high quality, and you might try starting there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T15:37:42.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14166" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:51:25.997" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would differ a bit from both of the previous two responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SOP and the CV serve different purposes. The SOP is the high-level summary (some would say sales pitch) for why your work is interesting and why you should be hired. This needs to be tightly written and compelling, and part of being compelling is highlighting particularly unique, interesting, or high-profile publications. Importantly, I've been told by several hiring committee members that more people will read your SOP than your CV - so if something's important, don't bury it only in the CV. The CV is more of a &quot;data dump&quot; in which you list everything that you've done that may be of interest. You don't necessarily want all of this detail clouding up your SOP, although you want the hiring committee to have access to it if necessary. Think of your SOP like a glossy brochure and the CV like a dictionary - the former is intended to be read while the latter is intended to be referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that said, I think it's both a mistake to leave your publication out of your SOP entirely and also to list all of your publications there (if you have many). Reference only the key ones that support the rest of your story and include a hyperlink in a footnote if you think that a reader might actually follow it. I would suspect that this will be a rare event, though, and I would encourage you to put enough detail from this publication in the SOP itself that a reader won't have to follow the link to get the gist of what you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T15:51:25.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14117" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:54:56.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I would include these in your own application materials, but I would certainly try to have this examiner write a letter of recommendation for you (many jobs will allow extra, optional letters if this one is an &quot;extra&quot;). It's going to sound stronger coming directly from a respected third party than if you provide the quote yourself, even if the actual material is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9530" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T15:54:56.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T16:06:22.423" Score="4" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the editor. I received a paper from some author. I need to check whether that same paper is already published in some other journal or not. For example some authors downloaded a paper from some other journal, they just change the paper title, and author name and they send that paper to us. So in this case how can I find whether this paper is already available or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9536" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T16:33:59.873" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T16:33:59.873" Title="how to find whether this paper is already available or not, if authors just changed the Paper title &amp; author name?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14178" CreationDate="2013-11-17T16:33:39.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several software available for checking plagiarism, which would also fit the problem you are investigating. The journal (actually the publisher) for which I am editor use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iThenticate&lt;/a&gt;. I am not in a position to compare the numerous software and services around, some free, some commercial. However, a simple check that can easily be made is to to a Google search on bits of text. I have personally used this to check on similarities between manuscripts and earlier published articles to check on the degree of overlap and it works fine. It will give you a first indication at which stage you can decide on continuing with a more advanced analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also answers in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8464/4394&quot;&gt;What is the easiest way to check for plagiarism in student essay papers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T16:33:39.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14185" CreationDate="2013-11-17T16:48:57.273" Score="33" ViewCount="4041" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying to faculty jobs, how much weight is given to your research/teaching statements?  Talking with a few folks on admissions committees at Very Good Departments in Big Research Universities, I was told in no uncertain terms that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your letters get you the interview,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your talk and individual meetings get you the job,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nothing else &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; matters,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &quot;nothing&quot; includes your research statement, your teaching statement, the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of your publications, or your hairdo.  Of course, I am working with a very small sample here.  How true is this sentiment?  (And if it is true, why keep asking us young folks to write these hackneyed teaching statements that nobody ever reads?)  More importantly,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; For those who have been on faculty hiring committees, what are the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; criteria you use to invite applicants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (in bold and italics) I don't mean &lt;em&gt;&quot;what the job posting specifies&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;what the department charter says you're supposed do,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but rather &lt;em&gt;&quot;how you actually make these decisions in a meeting right before lunch while preoccupied with a grant proposal due at midnight and the fact that the cafeteria is going to fill up with noisy smelly undergrads if you don't get there soon.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="5846" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T17:16:53.083" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T01:04:14.820" Title="Will anybody actually read your research and teaching statements?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14133" CreationDate="2013-11-17T17:07:16.650" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My concern is that smarter students will overrun me in the top university&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the good news is that the smarter students will be concerned about &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; overrunning &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;.  It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;impostor syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, and virtually everyone at a top institution has it.  (And I don't just mean the students...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: being around people who are (much) smarter than you is a &lt;strong&gt;good thing&lt;/strong&gt;, because it means you will &lt;strong&gt;learn more&lt;/strong&gt;.  (That's why you're hanging around a university, right?)  The other good news is that in grad school, you will no longer be competing against your peers.  The bad news is that you will now be competing against the &lt;em&gt;entire academic community&lt;/em&gt; in your chosen area of study.  So, it's probably good to have some other smart students around to talk to.  Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience as a student at a Extremely Well-Ranked School is that other students are very supportive, and empathetic to the experience of getting through a tough program.  In short: don't worry.  It will be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should I choose the university that fits me better or the university which is more selective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this a tautology?  The university that fits you better will fit you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less sarcastic reply is: there is &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; that matters more in grad school (or in life in general...) than your relationships with the people immediately around you, namely, your advisor and the other members of your research group / lab.  Even brilliant students who do not have a good working environment or a supportive advisor will flounder—I have seen it time and time and time again.  In contrast, students who are not exceptionally brilliant but have a good relationship with their advisor / group tend to do well, at least well enough to move on to a satisfying career after grad school.  Prestige, fame, money, and beauty are all higher-order terms.  Pick the place where you will be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T17:07:16.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14192" CreationDate="2013-11-17T17:19:48.707" Score="5" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to do my PhD in the UK at a renowned university in the natural sciences, how likely is it that one gets access to a fully funded PhD program?( living costs + fees).&#xA;The reason why I am asking this is, that I see a lot of scholarships on the websites of the universities but I have never heard of an actual percentage of PhD student(coming from the EU) who got such a scholarship. Does anybody know? It does not have to be an actual number, but maybe you know something about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9368" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T00:30:39.300" Title="Funding for PhD students in the UK for EU student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14125" CreationDate="2013-11-17T17:21:35.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Less is more.  The goal of your application is to present &lt;em&gt;tangible evidence&lt;/em&gt; that you have the potential to succeed as a researcher (completed papers, projects, and to some degree coursework), and do so as quickly and concisely as possible.  Adding more text simply distracts readers from the &quot;important stuff,&quot; which they probably care about less than your letters anyway.  In that vein, I'll stop here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T17:21:35.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14133" CreationDate="2013-11-17T18:56:36.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should I choose the university that fits me better or the university which is more selective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're lucky enough to have that choice....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Neither.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should choose the environment that gives you the greater likelihood of future success, as defined by your own academic and career goals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be correlated with the overall reputation of the university, but any such correlation will be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; loose.  The overall reputation of the &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; is a better proxy, but still loose.  The reputations of your (probable) advisor or advisors, or even better, of their former students, is even closer, but still not the whole story, because not every student wanted to do what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strong universities have weak departments and vice versa.  Strong departments have weak research areas, or toxic work environments, and vice versa.  Strong advisors in strong departments may have no interests that overlap yours, or may have working styles that badly clash with yours, or may have insufficient funding to support you, or may be located in places that you find unlivable for financial or cultural reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does the university evaluation (acceptance) mean that I am capable of performing perfectly in their program !? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course not!&lt;/strong&gt;  There's no such thing as &quot;performing perfectly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But acceptance &lt;em&gt;with funding&lt;/em&gt; usually means that the faculty—or at least the admissions committee—believes you have a strong potential for success in that graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I write &quot;usually&quot; because a few lazy/unethical departments do intentionally accept more students than they reasonably believe can succeed.  Especially if this is a serious concern, &lt;strong&gt;talk to current students in the department before you accept.&lt;/strong&gt;  And acceptance &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; funding only means that they're willing to take your money; run away fast.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: &lt;strong&gt;Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T18:56:36.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-17T19:11:01.547" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a Very Good Department at a Big Research University.  &lt;strong&gt;I read research and teaching statements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know that you have a compelling agenda for your &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; research; your letters won't talk about that at all.  I need to know that you can describe and motivate your research agenda well enough to attract external research funding.  I need to know that you know why (not just &quot;that&quot;) your work is interesting, visible, important, and likely to have high impact.  I need to know that you communicate clearly enough to be a good teacher, and that you care enough about teaching to formulate a coherent teaching philosophy.  I need to know that your research, teaching, and career goals—as &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; describe them—match those of my department.  I need to know that you are taking the recruiting process seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, your publications (&lt;strong&gt;which I also read&lt;/strong&gt;) and your recommendation letters are probably more important.  But saying that your statements have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; importance is a dangerous exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't eat in the cafeteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T19:11:01.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-17T19:23:22.727" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that letters are by far the most important part of an application, but there's a big difference between not reading something and not having it be the deciding factor.  Your research statement is needed to describe your research agenda; if you don't do a good job of this, you are unlikely to be hired.  However, there's only so much one can learn from a research statement.  For example, some people describe ambitious plans they cannot actually carry out successfully, some are very good at making incremental work sound exciting, and some may work in an area nobody on the hiring committee can evaluate confidently (perhaps that's why the department needs to hire in this area).  The top candidates all have impressive research statements, and the differences between them are generally not compelling enough to matter compared with what the letters reveal.  On the other hand, it's certainly possible to write a bad research statement, for example by giving the impression that your greatest ambition is to refine your thesis work forever.  If you do that, you'll discover that someone was reading after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching statements are a messier subject, and nobody can quite agree on what should even be in them.  Search committee members at research universities differ in how they evaluate them: some read them very seriously, while others use them for nothing but filtering out applicants who might provoke a student uprising through incompetent teaching.  I think you'd be surprised at how many people care about teaching, even in departments that are not known for teaching excellence overall, and even people who don't care about teaching know they need to maintain some minimal standards and put on a good show for the administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all this depends on what sort of job you are applying for.  There's enormous variation, not just via the obvious categories (research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, etc.) but also at the departmental level or just based on who's on the search committee.  There are overall patterns, such as the importance of letters, but there is no agreement on things like whether cover letters matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T19:23:22.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14173" CreationDate="2013-11-17T20:21:23.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you just want to write a paper on the software itself, the list provided in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14175/7112&quot;&gt;user4936 answer&lt;/a&gt; is perfectly fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to conduct a research on how the tool actually enhanced certain processes in a firm, you might go for a paper in an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_systems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Information Systems&lt;/a&gt; venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start looking for articles in what you can access of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://start.aisnet.org/?SeniorScholarBasket&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top 8 journals for IS&lt;/a&gt;. Look for &quot;decision support system&quot; and add some of your paper's keywords. You will find plenty of papers with methodologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that IS venues demand very strong theoretical background and motivation for a study. They like theory a lot. So, be prepared to read a lot and to write a lot :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T20:30:36.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-17T21:33:03.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, people like to rant about the current state of the system, and most often over-exaggerate the importance given to this or that item. Some people find it sounds better to say &lt;em&gt;“the system is rigged/stupid/corrupt, all that counts is whom you know”&lt;/em&gt; than &lt;em&gt;“it's a pretty tough job, and we need that much information to make the best decision”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the simplest way to make the point is this one: &lt;strong&gt;with the huge amount of competition and pressure on that particular job market, hiring committees use all the information they can get their hands on to make the best decision&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to the extreme, even things like your hairdo, your clothes and your language style do convey information to your interlocutors: does the guy know how to adhere certain basic social conventions, for one thing? It sure is a minor element compared to your publications, but it may come to play a role, because, well, plenty of other applicants will have stellar publications!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T21:33:03.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T21:35:41.043" Score="4" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a research book on the topic of abstract pure mathematics. Now the book is in review with a scientific publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book there are some conjectures formulated by myself. There are also some conjectures and problems at my site, which are not in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to create a community of mathematicians around my book to solve questions I formulated and related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice to help build the community? Maybe should I ask the publisher to place a prominent URL of my site on the topic of the book on the book cover. (The URL is already present in the text of my book, but it may probably be more prominent if placed on the cover.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that it may be worth to redesign my Web page on the topic of the book to make it &quot;problem oriented&quot; (to place unsolved problems at the top of my page instead of the bottom as it is now). Well, on the other side serious researchers should anyway read my entire page and all links on it. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a note: I am not a math professional, I am an amateur. (This means that I earn money in some other way than from my knowledge of mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="1637" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T21:41:53.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T23:53:42.577" Title="Creating a community around my research book" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;community&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;self-promotion&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T21:48:10.900" Score="39" ViewCount="3763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received a perplexing peer-review to a submitted paper of mine. The editor asks for major revisions, and sent us two reviews. The first one is serious and raises good points: we'll work, amend the manuscript and send a detailed reply to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second reviewer, however, has a 3 (minor) weird questions, and his fourth is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors claimed that “[some sentence taken from the abstract]”. Please give more detailed explanations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the sentence is actually a summary of our two-page “Results and discussion” section, i.e. the core of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm concerned that the second reviewer has actually not really read the full paper&lt;/strong&gt; [1], and wonder what the best option to deal with it. I've come with the following ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the response to the editor, respond to this request by simply saying &lt;em&gt;“This claim is backed up and discussed at length in section IV”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not respond, but write to the editor saying I am concerned about whether the reviewer actually read the paper at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to do some editing and write an evasive response, like &lt;em&gt;“We have edited the manuscript to improve the clarity of the discussion on this point”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to take option #1, because I think the editor will read between the lines. I'd hate to badmouth the reviewer (option #2), or risk deteriorating the manuscript by silly editing (#3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's your take on this? Do you have advice or suggestions on how to act in this situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] I must say here that I started by doubting the clarity of our paper, first. Trying not to be overly defensive of my work! But after asking a friend a second opinion on it, he agrees with me that the review seems shoddy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T02:37:21.780" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T19:15:58.163" Title="How to respond to a perplexing review?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:14:43.913" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do, which I understand you have done, is to check all comments to see whether or not something is unclear or can be misunderstood. Your experience with the second reviewers matches what I see as an editor, that (very) short reviews often are sub-par, and essentially of very little use (applies to both positive and negative reviews). So this is unfortunately not unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think you should do is the following. Follow up the first reviewer's comments as carefully as you see fit. When you turn to the comments of the second author, try to treat them seriously as well. If you are lucky, maybe something you fixed in response to reviewer 1 will cover Reviewer 2's comments. If not, you need to try to respond to the comments even if you think they are pointless. Failing to respond, or trying to brush them off (regardless of how much you would like to do so), should be avoided. The example you gave should be possible to counter by simply saying that the abstract is not the place to expand on any discussion, since a detailed discussion is provided in the paper proper. Although this may seem unnecessary, you do not know how the editor will interpret the comments and your reply, so try to be clear and stay neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T22:35:47.347" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:35:47.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14182" CreationDate="2013-11-18T00:30:39.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know actual numbers unfortunately but I will tell you what I know from my experiences in a Computer Science and a Statistics department (of different universities). Your question is tricky because there are a lot of different cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBSRC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nerc.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NERC&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPSRC&lt;/a&gt; funded places (by far the most common). UK Research councils are the standard funding bodies for PhD programs in UK; they usually do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cover maintenance fees unless you are a UK national. They pay only the registration fees for EU students. (I know, I am one). The success rate for something like this is the &lt;em&gt;highest&lt;/em&gt; compared to the following options; it generally equates that of a PhD program acceptance rate to the university you are applying to. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University/departmental funded places. Generically also called &lt;code&gt;PhD bursaries&lt;/code&gt;. UK universities have self-funded places but they are not very common; usually not more than 2-3 places per department. In most cases those are money on hand but registration fees are occasionally lifted, I think because you are an EU national that might be easier (I know that for an Indian national fees where not waived.) their acceptance rate is obviously harder than those of option 1. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Industry (or goverment agency) funded places. Industry collaborations do occur, I have seen some brochures but I don't know anyone that got them. Pretty much the same situation in terms of fee coverage as option 2 but they tend to be even more rare. I would guess it is not &quot;harder to get&quot; than usual departmental funded places given you actually apply to one. Almost certainly these are tighten with a faculty member and they are not &quot;up for grabs&quot; by all applicants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General university scholarships. These are usually merit scholarships and you compete against the whole university. They are hard to get: In the medium size university I am now this translates into 25 places. They do not differentiate between costs, they give you a lamp of money (about £13k-15k) and you are on your own. It is not completely unusual to get one if you are an EU national and you have already a registration-fee-only scholarship. Obviously these are really hard to get, but selection is non-random: if you are great you might get them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervisor money. Usually they are tighten to specific grants/research programs/etc. It is almost the same as option 3. This is &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; money for you to directly tap into. Essentially they are money a supervisor/department has and it is decided that they'll be used to fund a PhD. They might not even be advertised. I know two cases, in first one fees were waived, in the second one not. Success rate? I have no idea, probably the probability of really impressing with your research potential, a successful and well-connected professor with a shortage of good PhD students (Given you are good, the hard part is actually finding the professor; not many people have a couple tens of thousands of pounds to allocate to a person they think is awesome.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EU programs. &lt;em&gt;Sci-fi&lt;/em&gt;. I know only post-docs that got these kind of funding. I can not give any estimates, I am just mentioning them cause I know  they exist. I have come across them in relation with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus_mundus/index_en.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Erasmus Mundus&lt;/a&gt; program, worth checking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, if you are an EU national registration fees are &lt;em&gt;somewhat easy&lt;/em&gt; to be waived (ie. paid by the university or a funding body). Getting the extra money is the hard part but if your supervisor wants you, strings can be probably pulled. Teaching also pays good in UK in comparison with other countries. In general, &lt;strong&gt;do not let finance hold you back from applying to places&lt;/strong&gt;. Especially for an EU national if they believe in you they will find a way to make you a somewhat good offer as your registration fees will not be horribly high to start with. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T00:30:39.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-18T02:44:44.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a member of a hiring committee in a small department at a primarily undergraduate institution, I read both statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the research statement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know that the research planned by the candidate is feasible at my institution. If he/she needs access to one of only five specialty instruments in the world, then I am suspicious that the candidate may not be happy at my institution and will likely want to move on in a few years. I also want to see projects that look like they are friendly to undergraduates. Finally, since I am in a small department, I want to see research that somehow balances our desire to find someone who complements the types of research we are already doing while filling in voids in our expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the teaching statement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since teaching will be the majority of what the candidate will do, I read this statement for a few key items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the statement cogent and organized? I do not care what the teaching philosophy of the candidate is so much as I care that the candidate has clearly thought about how they would approach teaching and learning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the statement contain more specific examples than fluffy buzzwords? Even if the candidate has limited teaching experience, specific examples from classes the candidate has taken again demonstrate that the candidate has thought about what good teaching might look like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long is the statement? Half a page means the candidate put no effort into the statement. More than three pages means the candidate does not have focused thoughts on the matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimnately, I make certain to read both statements carefully for the same reason I read the letters carefully. I want to make sure the candidate is the best possible match for the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T02:44:44.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2013-11-18T03:19:12.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on what your ultimate goals are. If, as the tag of 'self-promotion' would suggest, you are after increased publicity of your book and self promotion of your website, I think you are likely to have a tough job creating your own community of interested parties from scratch. Certainly, making your website links highly prominent in your book would be a key start. Making links throughout the book relating to problems you have posed in the book would also be useful (but perhaps not so practical now if the book is in review). If you intend your community to be focused around your website, then yes, you should redesign it and separate it from your other web interests (minor links are ok). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to be involved with a mathematical community in order to help solve worthwhile, interesting and stimulating mathematical problems posed by you, you might want to consider presenting your questions at &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Mathematics Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, just as you have already done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T03:19:12.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2013-11-18T04:10:48.207" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1 is fine. You are not required to do what a reviewer asks - if you choose not to do so you just need to explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2 is not a good idea. You &lt;strong&gt;are required&lt;/strong&gt; to respond to every comment made by a reviewer, regardless if you agree or disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 3 is also fine. This may be the safest bet - I am guessing you could probably even add a single sentence and the reviewer will almost certainly say its fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably both 1 and 3 are ok and will get you past this reviewer. You can also go for a combined strategy like: &quot;We feel this claim is backed up and discussed at length in section IV. Nevertheless, we have edited the manuscript to improve the clarity of the discussion on this point.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T19:15:58.163" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T19:15:58.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-18T05:08:51.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I do an interview I see the interviewers pull out a folder and read my research statements right in front of me.  So yes, I am pretty positive people read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9542" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T05:08:51.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T05:54:27.257" Score="14" ViewCount="1405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematics PhD student in the US graduating this year. I recently received a very good 3 year postdoc offer in Europe, which I have to accept or decline in early December. Not being a big risk taker, I am leaning toward accepting the offer.&#xA;I have also applied for an NSF postdoc, which I would prefer to the European offer but am obviously not a shoe in to get--and the results of which won't be known until February. If I accept the European offer, I will have to decline the NSF postdoc if awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do that, would I be allowed to reapply for the NSF next year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9543" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-01T09:08:17.197" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T09:08:17.197" Title="Will I be allowed to reapply for a mathematics NSF postdoc next year after declining one this year?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-18T06:03:56.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sat on a hiring committee last year.  We read all the research statements.  Candidates didn't submit a separate &quot;teaching philosophy&quot; but did discuss teaching experience/perspective in their cover letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would bet that it depends on the job.  If the job is narrowly targeted toward a specific research area, your research statement is more likely to be similar to those of many other applicants, so it may carry somewhat less weight.  For the committee I was on, the job ad was very open-ended, so the research statements carried considerable weight in weeding out people whose research didn't jibe with the department's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in my experience, it is quite untrue that the letters are the only thing that gets you the interview.  In our discussions, letters were among the least discussed aspects of the applications.  Committee members would not if a particular letter seemed especially glowing or damning, but that was about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you don't mention is your CV, which I found to be one of the most important factors.  We spent a lot of time discussing the research output of the candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, my impression is that it is (unfortunately) much easier to shipwreck your prospects than to boost them.  We definitely had people who gave poor interviews, or poor job talks, and thereby took themselves out of the running.  So, even if people don't give the research statement immense weight, it's worth your while to make it decent, because if it is noticeably sucky it could torpedo your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T06:03:56.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14201" CreationDate="2013-11-18T08:46:28.220" Score="11" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as a research assistant with a pay grade that is half of a typical entry level commercial job (computer programming jobs in particular).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it beneficial to mention this in a Statement of purpose for graduate admissions, so as to show that I sacrificed a better financial situation in favor of a research career? Is mentioning money a bad idea regardless of the context, or is it well known that research assistance-ships pay less than regular jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T17:14:26.480" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:07:35.763" Title="Mentioning money in statement of purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14197" CreationDate="2013-11-18T10:26:18.647" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you accept another position before the NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships are awarded, you should officially withdraw your NSF application.  The way the NSF postdocs work is that there is no second round of offers: if you are awarded one and turn it down, then it won't be offered to their next choice of candidate, who might have received it if you had withdrawn your application.  Furthermore, I believe withdrawing will preserve your eligibility for next year, while you will not be eligible if you decline an offer (according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/mps/dms/MSPRF/MSPRF_fastlane_instructions.pdf&quot;&gt;official instructions&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T10:26:18.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14199" CreationDate="2013-11-18T10:42:40.457" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually its well known that research assistance-ships pay less than regular jobs. This is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I think you should not mention money in the research statement in a blunt way. But you can definitely prove your point in a subtle way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like, After my undergraduate I got multiple offers from multi-national corporations but my passion motivated me to choose a research path over any other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just an example, you can rewrite suiting to your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:07:35.763" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:07:35.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T12:32:14.290" Score="4" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a member of a curriculum committee where we want to improve our undergraduate physics program. One way of doing that is to include weekly discussion sessions with our courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After looking at the undergraduate physics programs in some universities, including top ones, I have noticed the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Such sessions come under different names: recitation session, discussion session, tutorial session, problem session. Are they all the same thing? if not then what is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The total number of credit hours for a course that has 3 hrs lecture and 1 weekly discussion session sometimes is listed as 3 Cr. in some universities or 4 Cr. in other university. What are the criteria to include or not to include that session in the course credits?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Replies are welcomed from math, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, geology, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="9547" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T15:03:22.703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T17:28:11.443" Title="Undergraduate recitation/discussion session: when is it (not) counted as a credit hour?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14212" CreationDate="2013-11-18T12:41:14.167" Score="6" ViewCount="1486" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is not my first language, and I am concerned that my statement of purpose might contain some grammatical and punctuation mistakes that neither Microsoft word nor I can see. What is the best way to overcome this problem, and to what degree does this affect the admissions committee decision putting into consideration that English isn't my first language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I don't have any native English-speaking friends and I don't trust companies or online sites to see my statement of purpose to check its correctness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T18:15:21.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:15:21.520" Title="Statement of purpose: how important is correctness of grammar and punctuation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14202" CreationDate="2013-11-18T14:11:53.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JeffE states, there aren't really any hard and fast rules about when recitation sections count for credit and when they don't, because of the multiple overlapping credit systems used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the &quot;Carnegie&quot; units system, such as that used by MIT, the amount of credit associated with a class is strictly dependent on the number of hours expected to be spent on a class per week. For instance, a 12-unit course requires 12 hours of work per week on average, while a 9-unit course would be less than that. The number of hours spent in class is included in the total, but does not strictly govern it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other faculties may have their own rules for deciding how much a class is worth. My undergraduate institution, for instance, had a fairly strict reckoning system: 1 &quot;unit&quot; for most classes, 1.5 for language classes, 0.5 for labs &quot;bundled&quot; with a lecture course, and 1 unit for labs &quot;separated&quot; from a lecture course. Recitation and discussion sections did not carry any extra credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it basically is what the tradition for your school in assigning credit should be, and what regulations your university has with respect to this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T14:11:53.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14202" CreationDate="2013-11-18T14:46:59.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just add a couple more points that may be more applicable to you as a committee member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, most academic degrees granted by universities are accredited by some overseeing organizations. These organizations evaluate the school's syllabus, infrastructure, and other personal and academic factors, and determine if they would continue their acknowledgement of the degree's representativeness. You can scout around and see if your department has some of these accreditation processes, and learn more about the missions and criteria of those overseeing organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, check your school's and department's mission/value statements. When proposing a new course, these statements would come handy as a supporting point. Similarly, if your department has a good academic competency checklist, you can also refer to that list, and evaluate if, overall, your institute's degree is enabling these competencies, and if a discussion-type course can further strengthen so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, understand the process of approving a course. This process varies school by school. However, most often there should be a committee (probably called curriculum and academic committee, etc.) that meets regularly to approve new courses or remove old courses. Ask if you can sit in one of those meetings and learn how the process happens. Meeting with the chairperson or secretary would also be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, if you happen to be a student representative, don't forget to use your connection to solicit students' ideas. Be very present and actively seek inputs (even it means standing out at a large lecture and ask them to fill in your online survey, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these should give a good preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your question is difficult to answer because it does not just depend of school, but also is an evolutionary process of its own within each of the schools. A credit-counting discussion course might be a result of an informal journal club started a couple decades ago... likewise, a current informal discussion could be a remnant of a credit-counting course many years ago which was crowded out by expanded syllabus or was cancelled due to constant under-enrollment. You'd have to check with some more senior faculty members to understand the ins and outs. And here, knowing the school culture and history would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T17:28:11.443" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T17:28:11.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14197" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:16:23.400" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Anonymous Mathematician has left out something pretty important here, which is that often these situations can be finessed.  Have you spoken to the people at the school in Europe about the possibility of you getting the NSF postdoc?  Often you can spend one year at wherever you applied to for your NSF and then move to a different place.  It's also probably worth speaking to the project officer for the NSF; a lot of things about the fellowship are really up to him/her, so it's possible you could get approval to transfer your NSF to this new place.  There's no guarantee, but it's possible with the timing they'll be understanding.  You'll never know until you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely agree that you need to withdraw your application from the NSF and any other jobs if you know you won't accept them this year.  That's just common decency, and it will save people trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T16:16:23.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:38:07.983" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly true that publications, letters and your performance in an interview are far more important than research or teaching statements; I'd much rather be on the job market with latter weak than the former.  That said, I think you're conflating two things here: most applicants' research and teaching statements never get read.  But if you get the job, it's pretty likely they were.  Between TT and postdoc searches, my department currently has 623 applicants in our MathJobs queue; that's way too many to read all the research statements of.  But eventually things will get narrowed to a shortlist, and then documents will get read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T16:38:07.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14215" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:46:47.043" Score="6" ViewCount="989" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the absence of an official academic adviser in the department at which I finished my undergraduate studies be used in my graduate application to justify some deficiencies in my undergraduate grades transcripts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="8969" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T17:58:24.023" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T21:31:36.027" Title="My transcripts are not an accurate indication of my academic ability" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T17:27:51.273" Score="6" ViewCount="7074" Body="&lt;p&gt;My GPA is 2.97 and I am a junior in University. My resume is pretty strong, having around 2 years experience in the industry as a software engineer. I also include work samples with my resume, including small games and web apps. Recently I have been applying to several co-op jobs. In a few of them, I have been contacted by the employer and asked &quot;Do you have a 3.0 GPA?&quot;. I respond honestly and say &quot;no&quot;. Many of them seem to completely decline based on this alone, despite everything else I have on my resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This always seemed odd to me, because in and of itself, this focus on grade-point average influences poor academic behavior. It influences students to avoid taking anything challenging because the risk is too high. Also, many students have the advantage of being full-time students, whereas people like me work full-time while in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do companies base so much on GPA? And why is the 3.0 cut-off so strictly enforced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6745" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T03:39:59.403" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T10:32:14.387" Title="Why is 3.0 GPA used as cut-off for job offers, etc.?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12830" CreationDate="2013-11-18T17:29:55.823" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Received a similar solicitation from the same person. She says she is in Argentina, the country code to her phone number is for Spain, and the webpage is a Moldova domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all seems a bit dodgy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer to help colleagues out as much as possible...I certainly have no problem sending a PDF to an individual upon request. But this seems to be a (possibly for-profit) enterprise and I'm certain it would violate the copyright of the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9551" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T17:29:55.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14203" CreationDate="2013-11-18T18:16:26.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the written question above is a genuine reflection of your English spelling and grammar abilities, then I strongly suggest you seek professional services to assist if you are in any way concerned about your abilities having an adverse impact on your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This application is clearly a very important step in determining your future, and if it is so important and you have concerns, it is not worth leaving it to chance. If you have no suitable friends, use a professional service. Plenty of other &lt;em&gt;native-English&lt;/em&gt; speaking applicants who are competing for spaces with you will have done so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't say for certain how a selection committee will factor your English as a second language. It is likely to depend on the institution and the course you are applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T18:16:26.303" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14209" CreationDate="2013-11-18T21:31:36.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lack of an official advisor is most unlikely to be of any benefit as an excuse for not doing well in classwork. Presumably you have a common core of classes in your major, and you'd better have a good explanation for any significant deficits in those courses. The lack of an advisor might have led to poor course choices in electives, but you could have ended up taking the same courses even if you had had an advisor. Moreover, your advisor didn't take your classes for you; he didn't do your homework or take your tests or complete your projects for you. Ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; are responsible for your performance as a student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T21:31:36.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14217" CreationDate="2013-11-18T22:40:12.860" Score="5" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond the obvious, that the NSF Fellowship Personal Statement is &quot;Why am I good for the NSF,&quot; and the Academic Statement of Purpose on a graduate school application is &quot;Why grad school and why  grad school?&quot;, how different or similar are the two essays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having already written an NSF Fellowship application, I'm now in the process of writing my Academic Statement of Purpose for grad school applications, and I'm trying to figure out how similar these statements are going to end up being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9555" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T23:09:59.257" Title="Academic Statement of Purpose vs NSF Personal Statement" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14216" CreationDate="2013-11-18T23:09:59.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There will be many common features, but the NSF has many highly stylized requirements, including &quot;broader impact&quot; and such, which would seem stilted or hypocritical outside that venue. NSF has a page limit, rigid formatting requirements, many other formal requirements, none of which matter in a statement of purpose. You have room to be more sincere, more genuine, explain more fully in your grad school application's statement of purpose. Also, unlike the NSF, where there is some compulsion to pretend that you already know what you're doing and will start research immediately, grad school applications (e.g., in mathematics) can easily and reasonably acknowledge that it might be premature to be thinking about PhD-level research prior to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't necessarily hold a grudge against NSF over some of this, because they have to &quot;make the sale&quot; to Congress, in terms Congress-people can understand and find compelling, in order to get the money...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T23:09:59.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2013-11-19T00:50:47.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment on the US, but in Canada there are a number of &quot;lecturer&quot; positions, even at research universities. Lecturers only teach; they don't do any research, and it is not necessary to get a PhD to be a lecturer (though I'm sure it doesn't hurt, and some positions do request a PhD). It seems that these positions are becoming more common, especially because the current Canadian government likes to cut costs, so funding is harder to come by. I would suggest searching for these types of positions, and hopefully that will give you an idea of what is out there, how many positions are available, and how many require PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.uwaterloo.ca/positions/lecturer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one example&lt;/a&gt; at my university that does require a PhD (in Psychology, not math, sorry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Having said all that, I don't think it's worth continuing your PhD if you're not enjoying it. If you don't like what you're doing, it's going to be very difficult to put the time and energy into completing your thesis. If the area of research is a problem (you're not interested in your research project, or you simply feel stuck), perhaps you can ask your supervisor for a different project, or switch supervisors, or even switch to another department, program, or university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9558" LastEditorUserId="9558" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T15:02:50.223" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:02:50.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14220" CreationDate="2013-11-19T05:10:35.137" Score="3" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out whether I need to cite these poems or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Out, Out—” has its morbid description of a young boy bleeding out and&#xA;  its underlying theme of death. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has its&#xA;  pessimistic theme that nothing beautiful can stay beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I speak so generally that I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have no idea if it's ethical or not to exclude citation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I would cite were I to. Generally you cite poems by line numbers. If one were to cite a poem based on a description of its theme, doesn't that encompass the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; poem? This has more to do with the in-text citation part.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9563" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T13:11:09.603" Title="Is an MLA citation needed for a broad description of a poem's theme?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14219" CreationDate="2013-11-19T06:13:56.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it's always a good idea to cite your sources. This can especially be the case with older poetry, where there are often differences in spelling, punctuation, and layout between different editions of the same poem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at the first mention of a literary work, whether it's a direct quotation or an indirect reference, it's probably a good idea to cite the specific version of the poem you're writing about. This will make life easier for everybody involved. You would cite the overall poem, usually as a publication in a larger source, and follow the specific guidelines of whatever style manual the publication you are writing for (or the school you are attending) is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poetovsky, R. &quot;Sonnet 100&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Every Sonnet Ever Written by Anybody&lt;/em&gt;, ed. John Smith. Random Publisher, Some City (2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you go on to cite the poem again, you can refer to the specific lines as needed; general statements probably wouldn't need to be cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T06:13:56.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13671" CreationDate="2013-11-19T09:36:24.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't argue with what JeffE answered, but I would like to add that the reason you mentioned &quot;I want to get a job in US&quot; will be frowned upon by the US embassy if they knew about it, which means that they might not grant you a visa even if you were accepted by a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T09:36:24.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14210" CreationDate="2013-11-19T10:32:14.387" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“why do companies base so much on GPA? — And why is the 3.0 cut-off so strictly enforced?”&lt;/em&gt; — Because it is practical! As any &lt;strong&gt;numerical indicator&lt;/strong&gt;, it allows one to make decisions very fast. Thus, it is not used the main decision factor, but simply &lt;strong&gt;to weed out a large fraction of applications, thus reducing the amount of work required by individual examination of the remaining applicants' files&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean that some exceptional applicants, with poor GPA grades, are left out? Yes. Is it understandable from the company's point of view? Yes, also: you have to compare the amount of work it would require to give each and every application a thorough review (huge) to the risk of loosing a potential top-notch-collaborator-who-had-a-poor-GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why 3.0?&lt;/em&gt; — I'm not sure there's any good reason for that, and it would probably depend on the company/program. But 3.0 is a nice round number, easy to remember, and it falls in a convenient place in the statistical distribution: if you set the limit to 2.5, your threshold does not filter out enough applications; if you set it to 3.5, you're at risk of loosing to many good applicants (making you rely too much on this simple numerical indicator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to combat it, if your GPA is lower than 3.0?&lt;/em&gt; — Rounding is one trick you might try (2.97 is 3.0, if two significant digits). More promising, though, are &lt;strong&gt;getting very strong recommandations, if possible from inside the company&lt;/strong&gt;. Whatever the announced requirements are, there usually are ways to get your application file into the right pile, if you can get someone to speak for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T10:32:14.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-19T11:00:47.793" Score="22" ViewCount="3676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematics Ph.D student in the United States, and recently received a 3 year postdoctoral offer in Germany, which I have only a few weeks to accept or decline. The offer is very good (high salary, travel funding, no teaching unless I want to) the PI is basically the top person in my field, and the position also solves my 2 body problem (my SO has a similar offer from the same place), so I am tempted to accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have sometimes heard that an American doing a postdoc in Europe is at a disadvantage applying for permanent jobs since European positions are often restricted to EU citizens and American schools are less likely to hire someone who did a postdoc in Europe.&#xA;Can someone (on either side of the pond) offer perspective on whether my concerns are valid?&#xA;I need to accept or decline the position before offers for US postdocs are sent out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9565" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T14:20:17.267" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T14:20:17.267" Title="Potential disadvantages of a math postdoc in Europe vs US" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14224" CreationDate="2013-11-19T11:47:15.480" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll contribute to answering on the European side… &lt;strong&gt;nationality requirements for European positions are rare&lt;/strong&gt;, although not totally unheard of (especially in some strategic sectors). To give only a few examples, French &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dgdr.cnrs.fr/drhchercheurs/concoursch/informer/default-en.htm&quot;&gt;CNRS positions&lt;/a&gt; and UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/fellows/Pages/whocanapply.aspx&quot;&gt;EPSRC fellowships&lt;/a&gt; have no nationality requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More common, however, are language requirements: &lt;strong&gt;positions that include some teaching&lt;/strong&gt; (lecturer, assistant professor, …) very often &lt;strong&gt;require that you speak the language of the country&lt;/strong&gt;. So, unless you're targeting the UK in particular, if you get a post-doc in the EU, you'd better pick up the language!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T11:47:15.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14228" CreationDate="2013-11-19T12:06:10.627" Score="4" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal which is now in 'Submitted to Journal status'. Now I want to remove it to improve the write up, though the content is good. I don't want it to be rejected after waiting for 7 months which would be a lot of time wasted. I would rather remove it now and improve it  myself or with the help of editing services. Should I email editor to remove it?  I am worried because the reasons for withdrawals mentioned on their website are serious and I don't want to give that impression when my reasons is just to improve the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you feel your paper does not have high chances to get accepted, do you keep on working on it during the review and re-submit to a different journal when it gets rejected eventually? Or remove it immediately, work on it and submit again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9242" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T07:42:36.660" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T07:42:36.660" Title="Remove submission during review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14224" CreationDate="2013-11-19T12:42:15.757" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of a few potential issues applying for academic jobs in the US after a European (or non-North American) postdoc. These won't necessarily come up in any given job, but they're the problems I've heard of people having. (Specifically, I know of different people who've had each of these problems individually.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many American schools are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have adequate teaching experience, and especially at least some experience teaching service courses (courses to non-majors), since that's such a large part of the job in the US. European postdocs often have less or different teaching requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many schools can't afford to fly people in from Europe to interview for position, and will therefore officially or unofficially discount applications from someone in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's still some variation in how people write recommendation letters, so a European writer is more likely to write a letter which comes across as negative to Americans.  (More specifically, in the US, almost any negative comment in a recommendation letter, even a very mild one, is taken as a hint that the problem is much worse than is being said. In Europe, I'm told it's more common to include mild critique of an applicant in an overall positive letter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T12:42:15.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14226" CreationDate="2013-11-19T13:02:30.387" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“When you feel your paper do not have high chances to get accepted”&lt;/em&gt;… then I suggest you &lt;strong&gt;don't submit it for publication in the first place!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has happened that I have submitted a work which I continued to work on improving, but it was definitely in some very specific cases, where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the improvement in question was nice but absolutely not crucial to the paper,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;had no impact an any of the conclusions of the paper,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was not sure the improvement would actually work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, something like submitting the paper while continuing to tinker on Figure 2, thinking without adding or removing any data there might be a better way to present it, but it required getting a new software license and learning how to use it. Or submitting a paper while thinking that “hey, this is totally publishable, but if I continue running the simulation while the paper is submitted, maybe I can get the curve on Figure 3 with a little bit less noise”. But &lt;strong&gt;nothing as extensive as changing the text.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What should you do now?&lt;/em&gt; — Well, if you think reworking on the paper can in a significant way improve its chances of being accepted, I suggest you withdraw it from consideration. If you submitted not too long ago, the editor and referees might not even have wasted much time on it yet. So &lt;strong&gt;write to the editor, &lt;em&gt;apologetically&lt;/em&gt; explaining that you've realized you made a mistake in submitting your paper too early, and would like to withdraw it&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not a very nice thing to do, but I still believe it's in your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T13:02:30.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14219" CreationDate="2013-11-19T13:11:09.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you answered your own question. Although my &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205651712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trusty handbook&lt;/a&gt; doesn't specifically address this issue, when citing a poem based on a description of its theme, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; referring to the entire poem. In text citation would thus be (Poetmann lines 1-100), where 100 is the last line of the poem. Obviously, if you later mention a specific line of the poem to back up your claim about the theme, you would cite this particular line as (Poetmann 6).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T13:11:09.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13671" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:22:10.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should maybe steer clear from saying things like &quot;I want to get a job in the US&quot;. Rather say you're passionate about computerscience and would like the experience of studying abroad to look at things from a different perspective, or to enrich your culture, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of good reasons to study aboard - but already talking about work I'd avoid ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T16:22:10.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14248" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:39:23.080" Score="6" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started a PhD position at a university in the US, but I'd like to travel during my time there.  What's the easiest way to do something like that?  Are there fellowships or grants available for students who want to study abroad for a semester or year, and if so, how can I find them?  Or, is studying abroad typically a process that is dependent on who my advisor knows in foreign countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps to answer this question, my field is statistics and I'm planning on focusing on spatial statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7736" LastEditorUserId="7736" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T17:22:37.367" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T17:22:37.367" Title="Traveling during PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14226" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:46:54.183" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to check: the changes you want to make don't affect the results of the paper, you just want to write it more clearly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper has already been under review for 7 months, they at least think it's good enough not to reject immediately, and the referee(s) have probably spent a fair amount of time looking at it.  If you withdraw it now, you will have to start the whole process over when you resubmit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably do one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait until you get a decision from the journal.  There's a good chance the decision will be &quot;accept with revisions&quot;.  Then you can include your changes along with those suggested by the referee.  Include a list of all the changes you made, so that the referee knows what to look at.  Of course, if it's rejected, then you can make your changes before submitting to a new journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make your changes now, and quickly.  Then contact the editor, saying something like: &quot;Upon rereading the manuscript, I think its clarity would be improved by changing such and such.  Would you be willing to consider this updated submission, and pass it along to the referees?&quot;  Again, include a list of the changes you have made.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, it would help to minimize the amount you change: revise what you have to, but don't gratuitously make changes that aren't really necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T16:46:54.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14231" CreationDate="2013-11-19T17:00:34.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very dependant on the country you live in. There are plenty of countries whos universities have special programs for students studying abroad. In such programs, you are often in contact with other people from your university / country who study or live near you when you're in another country. They then organise several events to explore the culture there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've attended keynotes about this as I'm thinking of studying abroad myself)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T17:00:34.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14203" CreationDate="2013-11-19T17:26:01.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;English not being your first language should not be an excuse. No one is perfect and making a mistake is acceptable, surely if  you're not a native speaker. But it makes you look less interested if there are a lot of mistakes in your text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A native English speaker would be advised - since they might be able to phrase something better than someone who's just &quot;good&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T17:26:01.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-19T18:21:45.080" Score="27" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching, research and (academic) publishing are three different pursuits. Our society and its institutions, particularly most universities, enforce links between these in various ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who have great teaching skills can not get teaching positions (at universities) because they aren't good in doing research, and some potentially great researchers experience setbacks in their academic career because they are horrible at teaching, and both can be penalized by failing to or poorly publishing their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did this happen? Who does is benefit? How does intertwining these three requirements benefit the general knowledge and the academic community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2802" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T10:31:27.497" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T23:47:21.930" Title="How did modern western post-secondary education become tied up with research and publications?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14124" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:02:27.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the comments by Anonymous Mathematician, there won't be a problem with mentioning a book that you read in your statement of purpose. If your statement of purpose has a list of references, you can include it there and just use the standard referencing style to cite it. If you don't need a list of references, then just cite the book in the text, e.g., &quot;Reading the book 'A nice mathematics book' by , I found that...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficult part will be to make citing the book really &lt;strong&gt;worth putting it in your statement of purpose&lt;/strong&gt;. Which books someone read is probably not as important for computer science students as it is for students of literature. Think about the following questions, as examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did reading this book influence your decision to apply for graduate studies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In which way will your planned research build upon what you learnt in this book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the book define research problems that you are planning to tackle?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot write something along these lines when referring to this book, then I am not sure that it would be worth writing that you read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T19:02:27.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14124" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:04:46.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is perfectly acceptable, if not &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt;, for research statements (aka &quot;statements of purpose&quot;) in computer science PhD applications to include references to the research literature.  I recommend citing them exactly as you would in a research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T19:04:46.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14473" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:47:36.083" Score="13" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for advice on presenting the research publications of my group on our webpage. Most groups seem to go with a simple publication list, sorted by year and maybe publication type. But there are also more elaborate implementations up to browseable publication directories (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/papers.html&quot;&gt;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/papers.html&lt;/a&gt; ). What would be your recommendation for creating an online presence for research publications that is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;informative and useful for readers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visually pleasant, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easy to maintain for us?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also be interested in links to websites that you see as role models for this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T20:02:00.247" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T12:13:41.853" Title="Presenting the publications of a research group online" Tags="&lt;website&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14235" CreationDate="2013-11-19T21:33:29.200" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We miss out on people who would make great teachers because they aren't good at doing research, and some potentially great researchers are left out of academic research because they are horrible at teaching&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dubious.  The labour market is so flooded that institutions above the barrier can for &quot;on-going&quot; positions select who they like within the wage's established differentials.  For bulk teaching, most Universities are reliant on casual staff who they sweat with the hope of an on-going position.  So this statement is, outside of markets with limited labour supply, junk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the oversupply of labour, the Employers have a very good reason to offer more candidatures for PhD than the required number of future jobs plus a friction load for losses to industry practice.  They're &quot;deskilling.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're also changing the nature of the commodity on offer (check word limits, class sizes, expectations of self-activity over a 30 year scale for undergraduates); and, of course, attempting mechanisation.  From what I've seen mechanisation isn't increasing worker productivity, but, rather is more important in breaking down work cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How did this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proletarianisation, commodification, and capitalism.  Ford &amp;amp; Taylor, my friends, Ford &amp;amp; Taylor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could suggest that it happened in countries without strong Academic industrial organisation (The United States, for example) due to particularism.  But actually we can see the broad effects of this universally across &quot;varieties of captialism&quot; to greater or lesser extents.  That it happens in undergraduate teaching and in research, with their different world markets, is indicative that it isn't just particular systems.                                                                                          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who does it benefit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It directly benefits the bourgeoisie, as capital flight into newly commodified areas results in a period of primary accumulation, and as secondary accumulation takes off it often has a higher rate of profit.  Basically, there's superprofits in Tertiary Education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also benefits consumers.  Tertiary education is largely a required commodity to consume, see for example Australia's rate of tertiary education uptake.  The more important question is why consumption is over biased (given the knowable workforce demands from employers) towards Higher rather than Further or Vocational tertiary education?  Here I'd suggest that many, if not most, jobs don't require tertiary education to perform, and instead employers are getting labour discipline benefits.  Consumers still gain some measure of benefit from the enjoyment of education, and the possibility of subversively exercising education in their employment anyway.  Also, with the massification of higher education many more consumers get to enjoy this commodity in its dissipated &quot;University&quot; form rather than through Workers Educational Associations, Trade Union newspapers, or Party Education.  (Personally, comparing the level of discourse in 1940s TU newspapers to contemporary bits of the internet where equivalent age bands try to discuss serious matters, I'll go with the &quot;non-traditional&quot; education system here for superiority.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research culture is a side effect of the commodification of undergraduate teaching.  In 1987 when Australia commodified undergraduate education (HECS), it also began the audit of research (The &quot;Publications&quot; return portion of the current HERDC report).  It has taken 25 years, and changes in the control over production in departments, but effectively HERDC points act as a method of realising research activity, in a similar way that the &quot;Effective Full Time Student Unit&quot; realises as a commodity teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the teaching / research nexus: using publicly available data I'm pretty sure that even in research intensive universities, all research outside of grant funded substantive positions is done as &quot;overtime.&quot;  Going back to the labour supply and generation of PhDs: the employer inculcates in apprentices the idea that 60 hour weeks are normal, and that the employer should have exclusive use of the employee for teaching and service for the &quot;normal&quot; working week.  The natural form of resistance and sabotage to this would be to not publish.  The results of not publishing is the guaranteed absence of an on-going position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Vestes/AUR; Trade Unionism; long term wage/price series; managerialism &amp;amp; audit culture; Braverman on deskilling &amp;amp; proletarianisation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T21:33:29.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14235" CreationDate="2013-11-20T00:34:29.157" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ca. the 17th century, typically research, teaching, and religion were the functions of a European university. For example, when Isaac Newton wanted to become a professor at Cambridge, he asked the king for a special dispensation to be excused from taking holy orders. He was expected to teach as well as doing research, but was apparently such a bad teacher that he often lectured to an empty room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this period publication was not as emphasized as it is today. There were no academic journals in the modern sense. People communicated their results directly to their students, by letters to their peers, and sometimes by writing books. In some fields, such as alchemy, secrecy was the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably the reason that research, teaching, and religion were all linked was that the system evolved from medieval institutions, in which the literate class consisted mostly of monks. Part of their job was to preserve knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the more modern, liberal, and secular model is what's known as the German university model. It dates to the 19th century and was influenced by personalities like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt. I think this was also the era when modern academic journals began to appear, and this was an important, positive development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more modern phenomena in the US are research supported by grants from the central government; land-grant colleges; the delegation of a large amount of undergraduate teaching to part-time faculty; and the creation of community colleges, which have only teaching as their mission, not research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T05:23:36.023" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T05:23:36.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14231" CreationDate="2013-11-20T04:56:50.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may depend on who your advisor knows in foreign countries --- or who &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can get to know in foreign countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known people who've done this, but my impression is that in grad school it becomes less about &quot;doing a study abroad&quot; and more about doing a &quot;visiting scholar&quot; program at a particular school.  That is, you wouldn't seek or find something like &quot;I want to study abroad&quot; or &quot;I want to study in Country X&quot;.  What you could do is find a particular school, department, or researcher in Country X and arrange to visit their department for a certain length of time.  I'm in a department in the US, and we regularly have visiting scholars from a range of countries (e.g., Japan, the Netherlands, Finland, Brazil).  We currently have one of our own students on a visiting scholar stay in Germany and another is planning a possible study in Singapore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that, like anything else in a PhD program, &quot;studying abroad&quot; can't just be &quot;studying&quot;, it has to be connected to your particular research.  So you would need to build connections with particular departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there can often be opportunities for shorter-term study abroad in the form of &quot;workshops&quot; or the like.  These would be more in the range of 2-6 weeks.  That's a lot less time abroad, but my impression is it's much more straightforward, because you just apply (instead of having to form specific personal relationships with other researchers).  These workshops sometimes have fellowships available to cover some or all of the cost, and even if they don't, it's likely to be easier to get funding from other sources if you can point to a specific &quot;thing&quot; you're using it for (i.e., &quot;I am going to this workshop on these dates to learn about these topics&quot; rather than &quot;I'm going to Country X for a while to hang out&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T04:56:50.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14251" CreationDate="2013-11-20T09:37:11.250" Score="8" ViewCount="1449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm undergraduate who are applying US research program. I have one interest field in which I have read 1 survey and 3 other papers (I know it is not enough). I only have some vague and primitive idea so that I am not sure I will do research in the field in graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid if I write my research interest too specific and there are no professor who has knowledge about or is interested in such field, the admission committee would think my goals do not coincide with their department research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a disadvantage to write research interests too specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is also possible that what I believe is too specific may be not specific enough for some professor.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T09:42:09.930" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T06:43:18.473" Title="Is it harmful to list too specific research interest in personal statement?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14250" CreationDate="2013-11-20T09:53:29.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if a statement would be harmful, it will be a question of how well you appear to know the field. You are right in that you have not nearly read enough. It would be better to simply state that you are interested in such and such a field without going into depth, after all being interested is hardly a problem. If you try to get into arguing for why a field is interesting without having a good grasp of the field, you run into the likely situation that instead of primarily showing your interest, you simply expose your lack of knowledge. No-one would expect an undergraduate to have deeper knowledge about a specific research topic but if you try to argue for some field based on very sketchy knowledge, you may come across as naive. I therefore think it is better to simply state fields that you are interested in without going into specifics. If you manage to read up on a field (which would take, likely significant, time) so that you have a perspective, then such a statement would be a definite positive. Coming across as having good general skill (knowledge and abilities) is still the most important aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T09:53:29.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14250" CreationDate="2013-11-20T10:36:39.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should choose either where do you want to go (e.g. research group) or what topic you want to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose the group because those guys are really clever and doing very interesting things (whatever they do!), or maybe because they are where you want to live for personal reasons and you don't care about the topic, then find out what kind of interests they have (specially what do they need to cover with new people) and be specific on that. You can ask them, everybody likes getting new people to work with/for them specially when they need more people and have money to pay them. If they don't have money and don't need people, and possibly are saturated of work and cannot supervise/advise more students, then probably you should search for a different place (and repeat the process in this paragraph).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose the topic then you should see which are the best groups to work on that topic, who is doing interesting things, where they are, choose the research group of your interest and then repeat the process in the previous paragraph. Do this until it works for a research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that working for many hours a day, days a year and years in total is more exhausting if you don't really like the topic of your work. I know it's feasible, and it's even possible to get good results and survive (at least physically and academically, your soul may be crushed), but certainly it's more advisable to do this after finding a topic you love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T10:36:39.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T11:31:18.513" Score="5" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an electronics and communication engineering final year student. I have a 6.5/10 GPA. I do not have an exceptional academic record, or any finished research papers in my name to boast about. But I always wanted to be a researcher and problem-solver. I love computers and electronics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I took up engineering. But being taught lots of theory without being provided with practical implications for the same killed my interest. I tried to find out things myself, but after the first year, workload caught up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I am doing my final year project and it has rekindled my interest in applying what I learn. I feel stupid for not having done anything productive for the past 3 years, but I want to change that. I want to learn about embedded systems and HPC, from a practical point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to pursue M.S, but I am afraid I do not have enough understanding of the subject, or grades to get into a good university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way I can work as an intern/research assistant under a good professor/organisation with my average academic grades, so that I can gain experience and learn the subject more thoroughly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9587" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T23:28:24.907" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:54:44.600" Title="What are the opportunities to do research under good professors/organisations?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T14:49:50.270" Score="55" ViewCount="25235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a year and a half into a PhD at a top university in the Uk. Doing some good work but not enjoying academia and I think this is more than second year blues. I have quite a bad advisor which doesn't help, for example I've already had my work stolen by a collaborator and my supervisor is reluctant to rock the boat or say anything.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD is in applied Math and computational physics and I have access to London. My current plan is to leave with an Mphil and find a job in the city - trouble is I don't know what I want to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like a career that uses my mathematical and programming abilities and is more commercial, i.e. not all technical. A career that I can go places with - but has a good work life balance.  I've always wanted to be a professor, but the reality of academia has really put a pin in that, I can't stand it, I hate the politics, I hate the way I'm treated by my supervisors, the university staff and colleges, I hate the academic culture here where I'm expected to let my research take over life and that just by considering other opportunities, I'm not worthy of academia - I came TOP of my class, I worked incredibly hard, I feel I deserve more respect than what I get as a grad student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've been looking around and a few careers have caught my eye - though I want something with a better work-life balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone themselves quit a PhD? Were you happier? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9589" LastEditorUserId="9589" LastEditDate="2017-08-11T11:18:34.100" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T11:18:34.100" Title="Quit PhD and find a job" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;quitting&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14262" CreationDate="2013-11-20T15:44:17.870" Score="5" ViewCount="2427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to create an online course and use someone's book as the basis (follow the structure, topics) and as a textbook (use exercises, examples, etc). Note that I'm not going to distribute any parts of the book to my students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might be the legal issues here?&#xA;How do physical universities deal with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9592" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T16:23:31.437" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T16:23:31.437" Title="Are there any legal issues in having someone's book as the basis and as a textbook for an online course?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14265" CreationDate="2013-11-20T15:48:52.113" Score="23" ViewCount="2853" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if there is a tool that takes a paper (pdf) and is able to produce a directed graph of the citations, and if possible take the papers that are cited and use the citations of those papers and include it in the graph. So it is easy to see what is an important paper, and what I've missed and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I hardcoded: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mStcP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9236" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T09:57:44.400" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T20:05:43.200" Title="Visualization tool for paper citations" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14239" CreationDate="2013-11-20T15:51:54.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dreamed interface puts on the left a list of topics, a list of authors and possibly some other list (venue, maybe). Clicking on them filters the papers that appear on the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The papers on the right are in a table that can be sorted by year or title (or possibly something else, number of cites to that paper maybe). On each row there are two icons, one is a PDF icon that leads to the PDF file, the other one is a TeX icon that leads to a GIT repository with the TeX source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this can be done (for instance) in Javascript with the data coming from a JSON file that would be the only thing you would need to update to maintain this, so it's quite maintainable. This is my dream. Reality is very far from it, but it may serve as inspiration to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:51:54.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-20T15:54:56.530" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my PhD in Computer Science so it's not a 1:1 comparison, but it's probably close enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, know that being a grad student has it's perks, but overall, you haven't really promoted yourself much in the eyes of your supervisor by getting an undergraduate degree. You're still going to be viewed with the title of &quot;student&quot; until you graduate. This is unfortunate, but it's how I've found most of the world works. You should know that once you graduate, the situation does improve quickly. There will always be people who will look down on you (in any industry or education level), but for the most part, it's not so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, remember that getting a PhD doesn't really close that many doors. There will be some companies that don't want to hire a PhD because of your title, but you can usually find a job outside of academia with a PhD. I have friends with PhDs that have gone to Google, Amazon, etc. and do jobs that they could have been able to do with a Masters degree. However, by having the PhD, they can now go back to academia if they choose to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, at least make sure you come out of the experience with something. Those I know that abandoned ship midway through at least made sure they received their Masters degree before leaving. Otherwise, you're definitely limiting your options later. You can get lots of jobs with a Bachelor's degree, but it gets harder and harder to be promoted without more advanced degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if politics is not your thing, you're probably right that working in a university setting won't be what you want. It's going to be a very political job for most of your career compared to some of the other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big question you have to answer is, what are your goals? Do you want to make more money? Don't work in academia. Do you want to have more control over your work? Then research is probably going to be more in line with what you want. Also remember, universities aren't the only places that do research. There are also companies and government labs in most countries where you can do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:54:56.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-20T16:14:24.920" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of finding out what you want to do is trial and error.  If you want to do investment banking, do some investing yourself; it's never been easier to participate in a market.  It might not be investment banking itself, but an individual portfolio you've created, using your mathematical knowledge would go somewhere in an interview with a financial institution, and you have London, so there's no shortage of investment banks.  That career path has zero work life balance, however, if done professionally.  If you want to maintain some liberty you'd need to be investing your own money your own way.  This is much easier because you have much less paperwork and regulatory overhead as an individual investor than a member of an investment bank.  If you don't like it, you can take a few years and make a fortune making others' fortunes and move on to something else.  Having a few million affords great liberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I too wanted to be a professor in the States, but seeing the grim realities of the academy made me realize that I wouldn't be able to deal with the extra nonsense that goes along with it.  If all I had to do was teach and research, I would dedicate my life to it.  But we all know that's maybe 20% on a good day of what academics actually do.  But almost all careers have this kind of extra stuff to deal with in one way or another, so don't look to avoid it just by escaping the academy.  I'm in the humanities, so ymmv, but I know there's a lot of similarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't avoid these petty politics you hate outside the academy, at least not completely.  It's not as if academics alone have petty fights and engage in office politics.  But I do know that there is less of it outside the ivory tower.  One of my mentors told me &quot;tempers run so hot because the stakes are so low,&quot; which I found out later is called Sayre's law, and it indicates a truism about human nature; we are acutely aware of our insignificance, if only subconsciously, and fight it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academy fosters a tunnel-vision.  It becomes impossible to imagine life outside, or that other career paths are just (and more) legitimate, or that there are other ways to make a living other than competing for an ever-diminishing piece of the grant funding.  Academics tend to think in zero-sum thoughts so outside-the-box ideas, such as other careers are difficult for them to process.  The institutional thinking engenders feelings of shame and fear for leaving, or even considering other options, because why would anyone want to do anything else, this is the life of the mind, the highest life!?  But you can look past all that since the early-relationship glow has worn off the ivory tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you've already discerned that the academy isn't for you.  You can be happy doing just about anything you find fulfillment in.  If it's making million dollar trades, or laying brick it doesn't really matter.  You just know its certainly not research proposals and bitter backstabbing academics who don't appreciate your contribution to the institution, yet depend on you for their status.  You can work hard without an advanced degree and climb the ladder just as well.  With at least a 4 year degree you'll never hit any glass ceilings anyway.  I speak as an American. I know you folks across the pond have more stake in social status, so it might be slightly different over there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to specifically answer your other question: No one who quit a PhD ever felt bad for quitting a PhD.  They usually just feel bad for not quitting sooner, or for going in the first place.  They regret the lost years filled with stress and low income, and not the missed opportunity for a very, very, low chance of a tenured position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9590" LastEditorUserId="9590" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T17:06:20.760" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T17:06:20.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14257" CreationDate="2013-11-20T16:22:45.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see any problem with this as long as no copyrighted material is accessible in such a way that it breaks the copyrights  of the book. Although the outline of a book probably can be considered the intellectual property of the author (and possibly the publisher depending on copyright), I doubt anyone would object since the purpose of writing a (course) book is to provide a product to support teaching of a specific topic. The structure of a book can often be the most logical way of presenting the material. The key issues is rather if you reproduce parts of the book such as providing the exercises on-line. As long as participants must obtain the material in the book on their own you should not worry. From this perspective it is no different from a normal university course (where it is also illegal to copy and distribute material freely from a book (or equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for an on-line course, you just need to be very careful with reproducing text or figures from copyrighted materials in ways that breaks the rules. You can also contact the holder of the copyright (author/publisher) to obtain the right to provide parts within the course. The success of this may depend on the system you use for on-line material and what file formats you use for distributing the materials. Such details will likely be made clear by the copyright owner if you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T16:22:45.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13985" CreationDate="2013-11-20T17:24:20.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's probably more helpful from knowing the chair of the department is that she probably knows other professors from other institutions whom she has met at conferences, workshops, etc. Talk to her about your options and use her as an advisor, rather than a boss in this situation. She should know that it's not usually a good thing to stay at the same place for your grad work and she might be able to say, &quot;Yes. I know such and such professor at this university who would align with your interests. Let me talk to him/her and see if they're interested in hiring a grad student.&quot; That sort of recommendation, where you are applying for a specific position and it's no longer a cold call is far more useful than just applying blindly with good recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T17:24:20.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14258" CreationDate="2013-11-20T17:41:39.567" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also on a saga to look for this tool, hopefully the answers in this thread can end all the search. Here is what I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There used to be a software called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082952/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RefViz&lt;/a&gt; that does what you exactly want. It was released by Thomson at a price of about US$295. Unfortunately, the response wasn't too good and it seems the product has been discontinued for more than five years. I used to use this software quite often to generate some themes from the literature pool. Since it was discontinued I have moved away from this type of relational analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instem has another product &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150222114228/http://www.instem.com/solutions/omniviz.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OmniViz&lt;/a&gt;, which remains in the market. OmniViz is like RefViz on steroids, and is much more capable. The price is also higher, reaching about US$1000 for an educational copy. Apart from literature relation, it can also be applied to genomics and that perhaps explains the high price. Instem has also produced a text-specific version of Omniviz, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160207201724/http://www.txtviz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Txtviz&lt;/a&gt; that is designed specifically to support people wading through large volumes of textual documents to find specific themes and areas of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're tight on budget, try Google &amp;quot;citation map software&amp;quot; and you should be able to find other cheaper alternatives, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://sci2s.ugr.es/scimat/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SciMAT&lt;/a&gt;, which is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomson has also hosted an online &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/citmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;citation map&lt;/a&gt;, which does not hook up to your literature library, but if you click on any indexed article on Web of Science, you can get a network consisted of the cited and citing articles. If you'd like to see how much impact a certain article has, it's a good tool as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more rudimentary way is to make the network yourself using mind mapping software. I have been using the brainstorming function in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Qiqqa&lt;/a&gt; and it's not too shabby as a thought generator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, I'd also like to advocate for a large piece of A3 size paper, a good black or sepia felt tip pen, a box of color pencil, and some fun attitude to draw your own. I got the most out of this method, to be honest. When using the online tool or software I feel I am just producing a thing, but when I use my hands to make a network of articles that I feel important, I am also thinking. I guess person-to-person it's different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember whatever software we use, the relevance is based on algorithm. It's just like data mining, there will be false positives and negatives. Be mindful when analyzing the so-called literature gaps that the software found, sometimes it could be a gap, sometimes it could just be a void and does not deserve attention. Strong discretion along the process is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="17254" LastEditDate="2021-01-08T20:05:43.200" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T20:05:43.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T19:27:10.787" Score="3" ViewCount="3657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Master's student currently applying for PhD programs. I've seen conflicting advice about including coursework on my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether it's ever helpful to have relevant coursework listed. In my case, for example, I'm applying to programs that are more computation-based than my current program, and I'd like to show the CS course that I took while here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T03:41:17.613" Title="Is it unwise to list coursework on CV for PhD application" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14266" CreationDate="2013-11-20T19:38:31.617" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most applications ask for your coursework separately so it might be a moot point. However, in case it's not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't list everything. I wouldn't even list all of my CS courses. I would only list things that are particularly interesting or unique, such as courses that had relevant projects that you can describe. Seeing a big list of courses without anything to differentiate it will probably do little to improve your chances, but if you have something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CS 520 - Operating Systems -&#xA;Implemented a complete rewrite of the Linux kernel that does computation in negative time.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you might consider including it. I've found that it's more helpful to include projects (things you've done) rather than courses (things you've sat through).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T19:38:31.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-20T20:19:26.873" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who left a PhD program, I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trying to stick it out for a bit longer and see if your outlook changes  if this is a field you truly have an intellectual passion for and your own intellectual development is reward enough for you. &#xA;It will be extremely hard if not impossible to go back to the PhD route once you leave. Even if you never use the PhD it will still be a significant accomplishment that you can feel proud of.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seeking out a new advisor/mentor. Try to cultivate some supportive relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the idea that academia is much worse an atmosphere than another occupation is misguided, as others have said. &#xA;When all else fails, try spite as motivation. &#xA;You were TOP of your class? &#xA;You don't feel respected?&#xA;Well, to quote Troy McClure, &quot;Get confident, stupid!&quot; &#xA;Go be the mathsiest mathematician you can be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9598" LastEditorUserId="47388" LastEditDate="2016-09-03T20:50:15.247" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T20:50:15.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:14:39.337" Score="4" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the university that I am working, which is more technically than research oriented, they want me to publish one of my past articles in a faculty magazine that they are planning to print. I have chosen one from the IEEE, and I have read that they have that possibility. I would like to know if I should mention that to my other co-authors or is it not necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your help &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T23:12:03.433" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T23:12:03.433" Title="Should I ask permission of my co-authors when republishing an article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:54:13.530" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a courtesy, one should always inform co-authors of such things. One doesn't necessarily expect replies (since no action is required...), but one is taking action on &quot;property&quot; that is partially &quot;owned&quot; by other people, so some notification, or even request for permission (which would presumably be unhesitatingly granted), is entirely reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T22:54:13.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14235" CreationDate="2013-11-20T23:47:21.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are advantages to having the same people do teaching and research. One is that students are being taught by an active researcher in the field, someone who is presumably up to date on the state of the art. They can provide students with meaningful examples that relate to current real-world research problems. Interested students may even get opportunities to do some research, either through a course project or as an extra-curricular activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also advantages to researchers. In my experience, one of the best ways to really get to understand something is to teach it; it quickly becomes apparent what you know really well and what you don't know so well. Students can also push teachers to look at things a different way, and can help fuel the creativity of researchers. Of course, the researcher has to be careful not to steal a student's brilliant idea for themselves, but rather to include the student in the research process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think your comments are valid, and there are some drawbacks to having teaching and research coupled so tightly. As you observed, some people are better at doing research, and some are better at teaching. Universities have found ways to deal with this, such as letting more research-focused professors not have to teach much, and letting good teaching professors teach more. Even so, I had some professors in my undergrad who weren't very good teachers, and I think the reason the university keeps them around is because they are good researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities are moving more toward the model you describe, hiring full-time lecturers to teach some (especially first- and second-year) courses. This is a contentious issue in academics, and you're certainly not the only person who thinks research and teaching should be decoupled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9558" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T23:47:21.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14266" CreationDate="2013-11-21T03:41:17.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees can read your transcript.  That's why they ask for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T03:41:17.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-21T05:00:16.733" Score="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have strong urge to respond to user9590's comment: &lt;em&gt;No one who quit a PhD ever felt bad for quitting a PhD.&lt;/em&gt; Well, &lt;strong&gt;I do.&lt;/strong&gt; I always feel bad after I quit PhD. Although I had good personal reasons to do so, I always regret my decision. I missed everything in academia: the professors, the classroom, the research, the teaching, even the campus. After I retired from industry, I had to choose a place to live. Do you know the street name of my current address? &lt;em&gt;Academia Road !&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons you're thinking about leaving academia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hate the politics&lt;/em&gt; - Do you believe there is no politics in industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hate the way I'm treated by my supervisors, the university staff and colleges&lt;/em&gt; - Do you believe your managers, the human resources and the company in industry will treat you very well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hate the academic culture here where I'm expected to let my research take over life&lt;/em&gt;, - Would you love the industry culture to let making money take over life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I feel I deserve more respect than what I get as a grad student.&lt;/em&gt;. - Do you feel you deserve more respect than what you'll get as an employee of an industry company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answers to the above questions are all positive, industry is your place. In particular, please run to industry if you love to make money. Otherwise, please reconsider quitting PhD. Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T05:00:16.733" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14250" CreationDate="2013-11-21T06:43:18.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for people to do a project entirely different from what they wrote about during the application process, so it's not necessarily a bad thing to write in detail about a project that would interest you. It's good to let the faculty know that you can sketch out one or more coherent, interesting, and potentially fundable/publishable ideas for a project that would be appropriate and manageable during your time in the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to talk specifically about what you're interested in (and I encourage this), great - but get to know the specialties of faculty members before applying. You should be choosing the schools based on faculty, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're spot on about being too specific about a project causing a problem when there are no faculty on staff who specialize in that area. To be honest, it's in your best interest to not apply somewhere if there are few or no professors that specialize in what you're interested in. It becomes difficult not only for the student who may receive little help, but also for the advisor, and the result could be a poor working relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your letter of intent is one of the most important parts of your application package. If you don't talk specifically about a project you'd be interested in, then make sure what you do talk about is worthwhile and not simply filler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9392" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T06:43:18.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T07:33:14.767" Score="16" ViewCount="6021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Department of Defense for nearly 6 years now, and I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from a top-10 university in the United States. I am seriously thinking of doing a 2nd PhD in Computer Science, because I want to eventually own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm and need to become an expert in Machine Learning algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, I am working on a few journal papers to publish and I am not going to have any problems getting strong letters of recommendation from my employer and professors on campus.  I ought to be able to get a letter from the Dean of my college as well.  So, I am thinking of a second PhD in Computer Science because I really want to immerse myself in Machine Learning and figured a PhD was the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question for everyone:  Would it be a challenge for me to acquire entrance into a top 5 school in Computer Science for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ought to mention that my PhD research was in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Turbulent Flow and I had to develop my numerical solver and turbulence models in Object-Oriented C++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9607" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:04:28.633" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T01:58:06.623" Title="After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14281" CreationDate="2013-11-21T08:19:56.123" Score="4" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have interned in two companies while I was conducting my undergraduate studies, one of the internships was unpaid and the other covered transportation expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question should I mention in my CV that these internships were unpaid or voluntary?&#xA;And does this issue make a difference in the eyes of the graduate admissions committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of the internships is related to my undergraduate studies (general computer skills), but not very related to my research topic I want to peruse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T17:42:11.120" Title="Internship paid vs unpaid on CV" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14276" CreationDate="2013-11-21T09:54:52.017" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;A major part of doing a PhD is learning how to do research and handle working on problems which sit on the edge of what is known. You've done that already. Doing it a second time is unnecessary, expensive and time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've been doing aerospace engineering then you almost certainly have the necessary calculus under your belt already. And if you have a PhD you can teach yourself stuff. Buy a few good textbooks - I recommend &quot;Pattern recognition and Machine Learning&quot; by C.M. Bishop; &quot;Information Theory, Inference and learning Algorithms&quot; by D.J.C. Mackay (this one is free to download on the author's website because he's nice like that). Look up material universities and other insitutions put online - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&lt;/a&gt; is a free course, whose description sounds like it covers a lot of the necessary basics.  A lot of machine learning conferences make their proceedings available for free - ICML and NIPS I think both do this, and the work is good quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start getting up to speed on all this stuff. If it still interests you and you want to go the academic route, go looking for postdoc positions and then try to find a couple of talented people you can form a startup company with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T09:54:52.017" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2013-11-21T14:12:49.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you were paid or unpaid is a matter of compensation, which is not something a reviewing committee would care about. All that's important is that your credentials were strong enough to earn you the internship. Whether you were paid or not is irrelevant to the strength of your credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T14:12:49.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2013-11-21T17:42:11.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it's &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; relevant. &quot;&lt;em&gt;It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; What message? you may ask. It's not the same that some guys are willing to pay you as some guys accepting your free work, the difference is huge. Also, it's not the same committing to your work to the extent of working voluntarily for free when compared of working for a salary, which most of the people do much more gladly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;I would not mention that&lt;/strong&gt;, again because &quot;&lt;em&gt;It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; And in this case whatever the message is, you don't want to send it. This is not going to be used in your favor, and it can be perceived negatively (in either of both cases). Therefore it is some information not to tell (unless you are explicitly asked) so that people reading the CV can focus on whatever you want them to focus, which will be your skills as the best possible candidate (on any plausible universe!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can play the card of: &quot;I'm committed&quot; (thus expensive) or &quot;I'm expensive&quot; (thus expensive) or whatever card you may want, either to get the job, a better salary, more responsibilities, a plant in the window or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T17:42:11.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T12:59:00.827" Score="7" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a researcher in computer science. I am used to publish papers on computer science problem resolution (machine learning, optimization, disabilities, pattern recognition...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent work, we needed to create a specialized software incorporating many complex technologies. This software is used to conduct other researches on which we already publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are wondering if we can publish on how the software helps to solve our problem and on how we designed it with multiples technologies. A careful debate on the possibilities, choices and architecture would be incorporated. &#xA;The problem is this is the first time we would publish such article and we don't know where to publish. We are seeking good scientific journals (if possible with an impact factor) accepting such papers. If you know one, can you tell me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9631" OwnerDisplayName="sebtic" LastEditorUserId="160" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T18:16:50.430" LastActivityDate="2020-10-19T16:42:53.400" Title="Where to publish software-related work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14284" CreationDate="2013-11-21T14:31:32.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the software system is targeted for a research problem that is deep, recognized by the community, requires complex architecture and design, and from which a wide community can benefit from, then system conferences could be a good match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give you an example. Symbolic execution is a widely used and researched technique in software verification. People from Stanford developed Klee, a symbolic execution engine that aims to be highly practical and scalable. Making&#xA;such a system required taking care of quite some details. They published paper&#xA;on OSDI, and I believe they received best paper award. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~cristic/papers/klee-osdi-08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Klee paper&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, there might be conferences in your particular area that care&#xA;about building systems for the problems you mentioned, but I guess you already took a look into that. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9617" OwnerDisplayName="bellpeace" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T14:31:32.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14284" CreationDate="2013-11-21T17:05:52.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's enough information in this question to give a yes or no answer of whether this is publishable.  It might depend upon factors like: what problem it solves, whether the problem is novel, whether the problem is important, how novel the solution is, how useful this will be to others, how effectively you can evaluate your solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of giving a yes or no answer, let me instead suggest a process you could use to form an answer on your own.  I would suggest that you talk to your colleagues in your area and ask them the same question.  They will have the domain knowledge and will be in the best position to judge the contribution of your particular work.  Take a few minutes to sit down for coffee with them and get their advice.  Personally, I've always found this to be an incredibly valuable exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; to publish it, as that is highly domain-specific: it'll depend very heavily on your field, the area of research, and the nature of your contribution (which you haven't told us).  In general, if you are thinking of publishing somewhere that you are not familiar with and where you are an outsider, it will be especially important for you to make sure that you learn the related work and the values and culture of that community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" OwnerDisplayName="D.W." LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T18:50:45.493" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T18:50:45.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14284" CreationDate="2013-11-21T21:03:39.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association for Computing Machinery&lt;/a&gt; has at least two journals with the word &quot;software&quot; in the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://toms.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transactions on Mathematical Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tosem.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about the latter, but the former publishes mathematical software packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T21:03:39.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1880" CreationDate="2013-11-21T22:22:36.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just used Microsoft Publisher to turn an 8-slide PowerPoint presentation into an A2 poster for a medical conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I copied each slide into Publisher and then blew them up to 140% and distributed and aligned them. I added a blue frame, then saved it to PDF for the print shop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the best and easiest way to turn an existing PowerPoint presentation into a large poster for professional use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PowerPoint is very easy to use, but I would recommend using proper publishing software for actual publishing work. PowerPoint gets used too often for things it isn't good at. There's loads of great free and open source (and indeed paid-for/proprietary) software out there - don't limit yourself to trying to do everything with the basic Microsoft Office suite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Publisher is also part of Office but it's a proper DTP package.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9616" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T22:22:36.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14276" CreationDate="2013-11-21T22:56:05.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should study Machine learning by yourself instead of going for a second PhD, which is a huge task! You can learn a lot about any subject by yourself specially when you already have a PhD that proves you can do research by yourself. There are free online lectures from MIT almost about anything related to AI, including Bayesian inference and machine learning. I don't know what your needs are specifically but I suggest you try to research by yourself first and then decide if you need more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give you a personal experience that may or may not be relevant to you, so don't laugh. It seems your interests are similar to mine if not exactly the same (according to your last paragraph c++,turbulence,CFD..). I presume you frequent CFD-online too? Anyway I recently got a PhD in CFD related engineering field, but before that I was very interested in artificial intelligence. So I have acquired a lot of knowledge about it by myself as to even write a top-10 computer chess program that can beat almost any human. Computer chess is not really AI but there are other games like GO where many machine learning / data mining techniques are used to write the best programs. I have been doing this as a hobby, but anyone can learn anything programming/AI related, and you don't necessarily need a degree in Computer Science even for AI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9242" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T22:56:05.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14293" CreationDate="2013-11-22T02:54:04.567" Score="34" ViewCount="15168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate in the UC system.  I sometimes encounter situations where professors or TA's make errors, or there are inaccuracies in the material.  These situations tend to be quite awkward for both the student and the TA or professor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is painful for me not to speak up, but there is a fear, possibly exaggerated, that this could lead to resentment by the TA, or professor, or even future unfair treatment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most frequent response by senior students is that the professor is always right, and you should never attempt to argue with the professor. Confronting a professor about a misconception could end up being detrimental to the student in the long run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should a student do (and how?) when a teacher makes an error or gives inaccurate information or material?&lt;/strong&gt;  Is there any reasonable way to anonymously point out mistakes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6348" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T08:34:40.733" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T08:38:53.523" Title="How should students react to inaccuracies in professors' teaching without causing resentment" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14291" CreationDate="2013-11-22T03:18:05.840" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Falsities is a strong word--be very sure that the teaching is actually inaccurate before confronting your professor. And if you feel that you MUST say something, it is best handled in an area less public than a lecture hall. Also, a professor is far more likely to admit to having been mistaken if you approach them with the attitude of trying to understand their viewpoint and/or teaching, rather than trying to point out where they are mistaken. You may discover that you have misunderstood, and the professor is actually   correct. On the other hand, your humble, 'trying-to-learn' question may impel the professor to  take a second look, and discover where s/he has been inaccurate or mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that there are many (if any) professors who will deliberately teach falsehoods to their students, especially in a course where, as you say, the material is of a technical nature and mistakes easily provable. So when you approach your professor, do so with an intent to discover where YOU are mistaken. You may both learn something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T03:18:05.840" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14291" CreationDate="2013-11-22T03:57:40.097" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your fears may be exaggerated.  I can't think of a professor I've ever met who I think would be offended by having a mistake (politely) pointed out, much less retaliate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accusing anyone flat-out of being wrong, or worse yet, lying, will certainly make them defensive; and if it turns out they were right, it will be more embarrassing for you.  So I don't suggest thinking of it as &quot;confronting&quot; the professor.  What I would suggest instead is to approach the question as something that you don't understand.  &quot;Hi Professor Smith, in class today you said X.  But I'm confused, because I thought that Y.&quot;  Listen to her response.  Be open to the possibility that you are mistaken, or have misunderstood what she said, but if your doubts aren't cleared up, figure out what part still seems wrong to you, and ask about that.  &quot;I still don't understand; what about...?&quot;  Stay calm and polite.  If you find you are getting worked up (or she is), take a break.  &quot;Let me think about that, and if I still have questions I'll come back later.&quot;  Hopefully in the end, everyone agrees on where the truth lies, and nobody feels too embarrassed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think she's simply misspoken about something in class, or written something incorrectly on the board, point it out right away: &quot;Is that X supposed to be a Y?&quot;  If there's something deeper, it may be better to discuss it in office hours or by email; I know that when I'm teaching, if I think I may have a serious mistake, I get flustered and it throws off my rhythm.  I'd rather have time to think about it offline, and then correct the error in the next class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the other comments saying &quot;Be sure you are right!!!&quot; are excessive.  It's not a bad idea to try to think carefully about your question; if you can clear it up yourself, you'll learn better.  But don't hesitate to talk to the professor.  Even if it's you that's confused, part of my job as a professor is to clear that up.  And if it turns out I'm wrong, of course I want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your suggestion of having some sort of middleman to anonymously forward queries strikes me as a bit extreme.  Again, I think you may be more intimidated by your professor than is really warranted.  It may help to try to get to know your professors better: early in the course, make it a habit to drop by their office hours.  Ask some trivial questions if you like.  &quot;Are we going to study Z next week?&quot;  Then later, if you have more substantive questions or concerns, you'll feel more comfortable approaching them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anonymity seems unnecessary and perhaps counterproductive.  If you come to me with something you don't understand, and I'm able to clear it up, I won't think less of you; instead, I'll be pleased that you now understand it better.  And if it turns out I was wrong, I won't resent you; I'll be impressed that you understand the issue deeply enough to spot the error, and grateful that you brought it up.  But if you're really timid, you could consider sending an email from an anonymous account. (&quot;I'm sending this anonymously because I'm embarrassed that it may be a silly question.&quot;  Either way she'll probably assure you that it isn't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final comment: If you have mentors suggesting that professors are never wrong, find better mentors!  I agree that it is not pleasant to &lt;em&gt;argue&lt;/em&gt; with anyone, but that doesn't mean you can't discuss your question and try to sort it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T04:09:52.920" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T04:09:52.920" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14291" CreationDate="2013-11-22T04:39:45.710" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose there are some insecure professors who resent having mistakes pointed out, but in my experience they are relatively rare.  I'm impressed when a student catches a mistake, and I'm happy to learn they were paying close attention.  I'm certainly not alone in having this reaction, and I'd say it's a pretty standard response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it depends on how you raise the issue: if you act like you are pained by the falsehood, or you question the professor's competence, then it's easy to cause offense.  Instead, it's safer to take a neutral tone, with an understanding attitude (based on the fact that it's difficult to teach a semester-long course without ever misspeaking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some errors, you should mention them as soon as you detect them.  For example, if your professor drops a sign in a calculation, then the earlier it gets corrected, the better.  No reasonable person could take offense at having this pointed out, so the only danger is being too eager to point out mistakes and inadvertently complaining about correct calculations.  That would be annoying if done frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a statement is an error or an intentional simplification or approximation.  For example, if someone does a calculation using Newtonian gravity, then it's almost certainly unhelpful to interrupt to complain that general relativity would be more accurate.  If you can imagine that the statement might be deliberate, then it's probably better to raise the issue outside of class.  It's helpful to phrase it in the form of a question: &quot;I was wondering why we neglected relativistic effects.  Do they matter at the scale we're working with?  Do you know of any good books where I could read about these corrections?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you just have to understand that the discipline in question is based on an approach you don't like.  For example, you might complain that your biology professor is always talking about evolution, or that your philosophy professor doesn't use an Ayn Rand-approved definition of freedom, or that your economics professor studies models that assume people are rational utility maximizers.  You should definitely not start a conversation by saying &quot;Why are you teaching this nonsense?  Surely you know it's all wrong.&quot;  It's reasonable to ask foundational questions about the field and why the standard approaches have become standard, and you might learn something interesting (for example, that behavioral economics exists).  But you should approach the issue respectfully, with the goal of improving your own understanding rather than condemning the field itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, I'd try to handle things delicately.  The fact that you frequently run into these situations makes me wonder whether you are taking a very literal approach to truth, and perhaps counting many models or simplifying assumptions as outright falsehoods.  There's nothing wrong with that philosophically, but approximations are a fact of life.  If you start complaining whenever anything falls short of the literal and exact truth, then you won't be happy anywhere outside of pure mathematics.  Furthermore, when you talk about how painful you find falsehoods taught in class, I wonder whether you make that pain apparent when asking questions.  I certainly don't want to discourage you from challenging falsehoods or from asking questions, since both activities are crucial parts of academia.  However, it's worth making sure your strong feelings aren't playing an unproductive role in your interactions with professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T04:39:45.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14297" CreationDate="2013-11-22T08:10:20.843" Score="12" ViewCount="3053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently reviewing a paper, which is definitely not suitable for the journal where it was submitted (high impact, topics should be interesting for a broad audience). The content is not new and in this current state not sufficient for publication at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would now recommend rejection with reference to some literature which covers the same results. &#xA;I would suggest some more detailed experiments for the authors, to quantify their results and then submit it to a journal with a more narrow focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here my questions: Is it ok, if I write a precise journal, like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recommend to submit a revised manuscript to Journal XYZ, which is&#xA;  more focused on the authors' topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or should I write;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recommend to submit a revised manuscript to another journal, which&#xA;  is more focused on the authors' topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T08:11:33.683" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T23:28:59.120" Title="Is it a good idea that a reviewer recommend a paper to be submitted to another journal after it is rejected?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14295" CreationDate="2013-11-22T08:24:15.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's okay for you to make recommendation to the author as a reviewer although you don't absolutely have to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recommend to submit a revised manuscript to another journal with more focus on your topic, e.g. Journal XYZ or Journal ABC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so that the author(s) would have more options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T08:24:15.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14295" CreationDate="2013-11-22T09:06:21.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's definitely OK to name one or a few journals you would consider more appropriate for this paper. Some web interfaces for reviewers even have that as a built-in option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I encourage you to do is to use the journal's publication criteria to back up your opinion. These may have been given to you along with the paper, or they can be found on the journal's website. If, for example, the journal &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;'s guidelines say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Articles should be of high scientific quality, originality, significance, and conceptual novelty that are of interest to the wide and diverse contemporary readership of &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then it's good practice, in your recommendation to the editor, to evaluate the manuscript following these criteria. For example, you could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manuscript is technically and methodologically sound, and clearly written. The conclusions are, in large part (minor exceptions noted below), supported by the results. However, it seems to me that this detailed study of knee injuries sustained in wingsuit accidents may not be of interest to many of the reader of &lt;em&gt;The International Journal of Transportation Research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T12:35:59.567" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T12:35:59.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14295" CreationDate="2013-11-22T09:18:23.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with scaaahu and F'x but will add the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not normally the reviewer that makes suggestions like these. If the journal editors have sent the manuscript out for review, it should mean they consider it suitable for publication in &quot;their&quot; journal. It is the editors (in Chief) that makes this decision to maintain a good publication standard. So the fact that you feel this ways about the manuscript might mean the editors have slipped up or they see something in the paper that you do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above in mind, I still think it is ok to make a comment like this since the journal is also there to serve the community and as part of that you can voice your opinion about issues regarding the journal. So if you want to make such a comment, keep in mind that you do not necessarily know why the manuscript was accepted for review (mistake or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T09:18:23.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-22T13:05:45.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also have left my PhD. Well, it was more of a situation like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1652&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with it? I really liked research, the issue was that my objectives/field were not matching the ones of the supervisor: I was (and still am) for a more practical/engineer approach while the supervisor wanted a more theoretical/pure mathematical one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result was me leaving the PhD after 1 year and a half from its beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I happier now? Well, you can be sure of that, I found another PhD with an approach I like and I am having a ton of fun doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion? Try to understand the real reason for which you feel that leaving the PhD would be a good idea. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I would like a career that uses my mathematical and programming&#xA;  abilities and is more commercial, i.e. not all technical. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A career&#xA;  that I can go places with - but has a good work life balance. [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I hate the politics, I&#xA;  hate the way I'm treated by my supervisors, the university staff and&#xA;  colleges, I hate the academic culture here where I'm expected to let&#xA;  my research take over life and that just by considering other&#xA;  opportunities, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I'm not worthy of academia - &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I came TOP of my class, I&#xA;  worked incredibly hard, I feel I deserve more respect than what I get&#xA;  as a grad student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure I understand your contraposition of commercial and technical. IF you program a commercial product, isn't that a technical task?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, I would not expect too much, the perfect job does not exist, you'll always have to accept some kind of trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Expect all of that in any and all workplaces you'll ever go&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;pardon? you feel you're too good or not good enough? Personally, I think you're making a mistake either way&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Life isn't fair, live with it. [&quot;I deserve&quot;? you're from the US, right?]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9621" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T13:05:45.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:32:42.117" Score="14" ViewCount="4685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently my literature surveys do not involve trips to the library and I am wondering if I am missing out on something important. What sort of material/knowledge can the library provide that I would miss on google scholar. &#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9628" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T00:43:09.267" Title="What advantages do libraries offer over the internet for doing a literature survey in Mathematics or CS" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:00:46.060" Score="2" ViewCount="809" Body="&lt;p&gt;Must a co-author of a book have written literally half? Or can her role refer to significant contributions that actually made the book publishable, such as extensive rewriting and editing, knowledge about publishing, navigating manuscript through the publishing process, writing queries, etc., etc. The book, though very steeped in science, is written for the general public. I am the author of many books and the author approached me to navigate her through this process. She is now exploring whether I shouldn't be co-author because of my contributions. I know this is common in scientific journals, but can't find answer re books. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9629" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T20:00:51.780" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T20:00:51.780" Title="Defining book co-author" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:54:49.910" Score="5" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no serious need to know the answer to this question, but I'm mostly just curious (after applying for undergraduate schools 4 years ago and applying for graduate schools now). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sorts of expenses are institutions trying to pay for when requiring application fees for the applications? Why is there a wide range of fees? (I know Stanford graduate school is $125, and Chicago is $55, and I've only applied to 5-6 schools so far.) Are the institutions just breaking even, or do some of them use their prestige to earn a little extra money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T14:34:02.143" Title="What factors determine application fees?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14306" CreationDate="2013-11-22T19:18:26.850" Score="8" ViewCount="8307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 9 and 10 months old recommendation letters. Can I use these when applying to graduate programs (United States)? Is that okay with the admissions committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9619" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T19:29:15.360" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T06:28:31.363" Title="Letter of Recommendation Expiration Date" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14301" CreationDate="2013-11-22T19:26:00.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A co-author &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coauthor&quot;&gt;is&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An author who collaborates with another to write something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in the definition that states that each author must have written literally half of the book. Obviously, if there are more than two co-authors (perhaps more common for articles, your question seems to indicate that you realize this), they cannot all have written exactly half of the book, and it is rather unlikely that each will have written exactly one-third or one-fourth or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, if the original/first author offers you co-authorship, accepting is a judgment call on your part. You have authored many books; is this one worthy of being added to your list? On the other hand, if you are not offered co-authorship, but will be acknowledged otherwise for your contribution, it is probably best to accept this with good grace. Next time--assuming that you might collaborate again--be sure to clarify potential authorship roles before beginning the actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T19:26:00.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2013-11-22T20:18:19.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To elaborate on Nate Eldredge's point, this would be a bad idea on several levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will look bad with the committee.  Presumably the letters are dated and people will notice.  It will probably not be interpreted charitably.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presumably an updated letter will may more good things about you, since it will mention whatever you've been doing for past 10 months.  Hopefully you've done &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; worth noting in that time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's also bad form to use letters so long after they are written without contacting the authors.  I don't think there are any precise cutoffs for when one transitions from OK to not OK, but I feel like 10 months is pretty firmly in not OK territory.  You need to give the letter writers the chance to update their assessment, hopefully for the better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand why people being out of town is a problem for contacting them.  As Nate says, just send them an email. The ball will be in their court, and they can figure out whether it's practical or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T20:18:19.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2013-11-22T20:48:56.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other points already made, in most situations &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; do not send the letters yourself, but have the recommenders send the letters &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes this involves simply uploading the letters to a web site, but this would be done _by_the_recommenders_, not by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, some action will be required by your recommenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T20:48:56.170" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14291" CreationDate="2013-11-22T21:25:36.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between having a discussion and having an argument. Once you know the difference you then need to be able to recognize when the two parties appear to have a different view of which applies.Once you know that you need to know how to change the situation to one of agreement. Once you know that your question will not bother you.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9630" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T21:25:36.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14310" CreationDate="2013-11-22T21:38:06.807" Score="5" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a paper in which the authors find a compound that is antimicrobial. I would like to experiment with it (I haven't yet asked the authors for it), but I'm anticipating the worst, that is that they will refuse. What can be done there? Are they obligated to provide the compound besides requesting being paid for postage and other expenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="668" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T01:36:46.820" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T01:36:46.820" Title="Compound used in publication" Tags="&lt;responsibilities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-22T21:41:35.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The world is a big place and full of millions of opportunities for whatever work life balance &quot;floats your boat&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You (like 99.99% of us) want to be happy (and right now NEED to be happIER).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Life is short.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9630" LastEditorUserId="38417" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T03:39:07.567" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T03:39:07.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14308" CreationDate="2013-11-22T21:59:51.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The academic standards require that the paper explains how the compound was obtained, so that the results can be reproduced by others. So, either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product is commercial, and the paper should say how it was obtained? if it's not stated, you can ask the authors for the provider and reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They extracted the product from a natural source, and then the authors will describe the extraction procedure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They synthesized it, and thus they report the details of the procedure, as well as the reagents used (and providers). You can buy the reagents, and reproduce the synthesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T21:59:51.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14300" CreationDate="2013-11-22T23:07:56.400" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Almost none.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/pubs/optcycles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research survey&lt;/a&gt;, while on sabbatical at an institution without a physical library, but with extensive electronic subscriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; missed having physical library access, even for papers dating back to the 1840s.  (In fact, the historical literature was &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; likely to be freely available than papers from the 1980s.)  Occasionally I had to use my home university's VPN to get access to a different subset of the electronic literature, and there were one or two books that I had to download via bittor—sorry, that I had to borrow from colleagues down the hall.  Yeah, that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T15:39:49.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T15:39:49.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14321" CreationDate="2013-11-23T01:45:51.433" Score="2" ViewCount="875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the impression that many female scientists, especially after they gave birth to a child, start to develop a research interest in the learning, growing, and developmental behaviors of babies. I got this impression because over time I heard about a couple of female university professors and industry scientists doing research about babies. I personally know &lt;strong&gt;0&lt;/strong&gt; male scientist whose research interest is in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether this trend I see around me is real, and thus wondering: &lt;strong&gt;are women more represented in the subfield of child development (or developmental psychology) than in the broader field of psychology?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned, and intuitively don't like this (possibly imagined) &quot;trend&quot;. I think it may encourage some people to think that female scientists just pick up certain research topics and don't want to touch others. I also see this &quot;trend&quot; as a destruction of many years of effort encouraging women in the &quot;hard-core&quot; science and technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="773" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T14:55:23.937" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T14:55:23.937" Title="Are women overrepresented in the field of child development studies?" Tags="&lt;statistics&gt;&lt;psychology&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14300" CreationDate="2013-11-23T03:31:58.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't assume that a library is a building. Libraries provide the funding and infrastructure that lets you access online journals and databases, just as they used to provide you with hardcopies and card catalogs. If you think that Google scholar provides the same degree of access you are sorely mistaken. And no, I am not a librarian, but I am very grateful that I have access to a good library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the question of whether libraries should be forced to pay for access to journals is another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2738" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T03:31:58.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14300" CreationDate="2013-11-23T04:06:03.047" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is different from JeffE's. I had been looking for a couple of old CS books (in automata and switching circuit theory) published in 1960's. I finally found them in an institue library. According to the librarian there, the two books I wanted to borrow had not been checked out for at least two decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just me. My research area is not very active. I wanted to find info about what was done in those books which were not cited in modern literatures. I knew the existence of the books because I saw them when I was a graduate student in 1970's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your research area is modern and active, I guess you don't need to go to the library. Internet would be good enough. By the way, my personal experience is that Google is sometimes better than Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side note. My feeling of reading books in the library is different from staring at the computer screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T04:06:03.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14319" CreationDate="2013-11-23T08:39:16.097" Score="42" ViewCount="106490" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the textbooks  I used during my undergraduate studies (outside north America) are International editions, so what is the difference between a national and an international edition of a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have a book that says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;XYZ published this special edition for the benefit of students outside the United States and Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they don't mention why this international edition is special or what is the benefit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="7902" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T08:46:22.433" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T12:28:13.887" Title="Difference between International edition of a book and a non international one" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14318" CreationDate="2013-11-23T08:51:24.667" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;International editions are cheaper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are sold cheaper, in English speaking countries (or countries with education in English) outside North America: India, China, etc. The content is equal to that of US/North American versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons why they are cheaper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;because they are printed in cheaper version: paperback instead of hardcover, sometimes black and white&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;because the publisher knows he cannot sell them at their US price anyway, so they are willing to sell them at the price people will buy them (better to sell them cheaply than not at all)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetextbookguru.com/2011/04/20/international-textbook-editions-a-cheaper-alternative-2/&quot;&gt;http://www.thetextbookguru.com/2011/04/20/international-textbook-editions-a-cheaper-alternative-2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abebooks.com/books/Textbooks/international-editions.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.abebooks.com/books/Textbooks/international-editions.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825164810AAGRN80&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825164810AAGRN80&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was also a case about import of international edition textbooks in the US supreme court last year (&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/thai-student-protected-by-first-sale-supreme-court-rules/&quot;&gt;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/thai-student-protected-by-first-sale-supreme-court-rules/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T08:51:24.667" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T10:46:51.130" Score="3" ViewCount="1490" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the desired length of a SOP is 1.5-2 pages, is it okay to have an extra page for bibliography? (so that I cite books/papers in the formal way)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification:&lt;/strong&gt; I mean 2 pages of text, plus 1 page of bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8940" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T14:40:45.900" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T00:35:07.903" Title="Statement of Purpose length and bibliography" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2013-11-23T12:20:42.500" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Males have historically outnumbered their female counterparts in the field of psychology, but this has changed in recent years. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun07/changing.aspx&quot;&gt;the American Psychological Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychology, once a man's profession, now attracts mostly women. Data from the 1986 APA report, &quot;The Changing Face of American Psychology,&quot; and the National Science Foundation show that the percentage of psychology PhDs awarded to men has fallen from nearly 70 percent in 1975 to less than 30 percent in 2008. (The data do not include PsyD degrees.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only are females over-represented in psychology as a whole, they appear to be even more over-represented in the sub-fields of developmental and child psychology. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/cover-men.aspx&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from the APA states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In developmental and child psychology...female PhD recipients outnumber men by more than five to one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T12:20:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2013-11-23T12:41:28.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my general experience, a statement of purpose rarely needs to be so detailed as to necessitate inclusion of a bibliography. That said, there is nothing expressly preventing you from including a bibliography. On the other hand, part of me is skeptical of the wisdom of including a full-page bibliography in association with a two-page statement. It may seem very much like overkill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're citing each and every one of the works in the bibliography individually, I don't see a logical reason to include that many works. I'd stick to just the essential citations needed to explain what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T12:41:28.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T14:29:09.860" Score="10" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a group of undergraduate students who are best described as 'unprepared' meaning that they were not well prepared for life in university. They are, as a group, under-performers, although there are certainly stars contained within the group. One more point of complexity is that the students are studying in English, which is not their native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflection is something that has been identified as useful not just for performance while at university but also for encouraging life-long learning for the students. While strong students might take to reflection quite readily, critically analyzing the countless decisions that they have made on any given academic project, unprepared students seem to have a much more difficult time with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, are there particularly effective techniques for teaching reflection to unprepared students (or academically weaker students)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T14:36:59.450" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T17:59:31.630" Title="Techniques for teaching reflection and critical analysis to unprepared students" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5556" CreationDate="2013-11-23T15:26:30.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many possible motivations for writing a textbook. A few textbooks bring in very large amounts of money for their authors. E.g., Jim Stewart, the author of a home-run calculus textbook, used $24 million from the book to build a &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123872378357585295#project=SLIDESHOW08&amp;amp;s=SB123869600484183257&amp;amp;articleTabs=article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;house that is famous&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most common reason for writing textbooks is the reason that I've done it: because I thought the books already on the market were crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T15:26:30.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T17:03:05.733" Score="5" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question is rather self explanatory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the article was submitted within the context of a course within the university, but it is nonetheless my intellectual property. I also generally cannot seem to get a clear answer from the university's staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generally, is it acceptable and legal to submit an article or review submitted within the context of a course to a journal for publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="581" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T17:05:19.310" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T17:16:05.963" Title="Am I allowed to publish reviews submitted for courses in open-access journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14326" CreationDate="2013-11-23T17:16:05.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see anything in general that could prevent you from submitting a report written in a course to a journal. There are of course several issues you need to be aware of. First, did you do the entire work yourself from coming up with the idea through researching the topic and writing? You need to look if someone else's &quot;intellectual property&quot; is involved. Second, you do not state under what circumstances your report was written. Submitting a manuscript to a journal involves meeting certain standards so under what I would consider normal circumstances, course reports would not be in shape for publication. One obvious reason for this is that reviews typically involves reading and summarizing/synthesizing a very large number of papers, work that cannot fit into the short time span of a course. So, in general, I doubt the scenario you describe would work without significant extra work. I have no doubts the core of a useful paper can be achieved within a course format but from there to publication is a different story. So without additional details, it is difficult to assess the likely success but the principle stands, yes it is acceptable and legal as long as the work adheres to general publication ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T17:16:05.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2013-11-23T17:59:37.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to wait for a couple of months to see how will it go AND look for another PhD. You've mentioned you are in top university, I don't see major problems for another top university to accept you for PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you are lucky. A lot of people are dreaming to do PhD and study in top university. I don't even have a chance to do PhD but I would love to do it. Doind Taught Masters now, it's harder than bachelors and MRes, so enjoy your time. Talk to someone you are in good relations with at university, they might figure out something for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9636" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T17:59:37.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14330" CreationDate="2013-11-23T19:13:46.020" Score="9" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an article that has something to do with the multipole expansion with irreducible tensor operators. The topic is old, and I only find books talking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it OK to cite tertiary sources (books) in scientific journals? or must it be a primary source source article? Or does it depend on the journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I'm asking is general about citation rules, and not for this specific case, though this specific case with irreducible tensor operators is what I'm facing right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9644" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T19:41:13.943" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T20:06:02.590" Title="Citing books in scientific articles" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2013-11-23T20:06:02.590" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, citing books is fine (including anything from research monographs to elementary textbooks).  The question you should ask yourself is what the citation is for.  What are you trying to convey to the reader?  For example, if you are trying to assign intellectual credit, then you should cite whoever originally made the discovery.  However, that's far from the only reason to give a citation.  If you are providing references to background or more detailed explanations, then all you need is a source that explains what you need, and sometimes a textbook will be clearer or more useful than a research paper.  If you are supplying a citation to back up a potentially controversial claim, then you need an authoritative source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific topic you mention is mathematical, in which case the distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources is not particularly important except for assigning credit.  As far as explanations go, any derivation will do.  Of course, the form of your citation should indicate your intention.  For example, if you cite a textbook, you can say something like &quot;See [insert reference] for an exposition of the theory of irreducible tensor operators&quot; to make sure it doesn't look like you are claiming this book is where the theory originated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course other fields may attach far more weight to these distinctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T20:06:02.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14300" CreationDate="2013-11-23T20:51:00.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most things can be found online, that's for sure. But the main problem is that we tend to stay in &quot;our neighbourhood&quot; because of that: we can only find what we are looking for while searching online resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in another field researchers use a different wording for the same objects, we will never know because it is very hard to browse a large amount of papers very quickly online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interest of going in a library is that it is possible to crawl very quickly amongst dozens of papers from other fields, just looking for &quot;oh, this curve looks just like mine&quot; or &quot;wow, but I know this equation&quot;. This way, with luck and persistence, it is possible to find new connections and/or new way of thinking about a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T20:51:00.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14334" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:20:42.193" Score="7" ViewCount="2341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some academic job posts and grant applications require submitting both a CV and a publication list. I would have thought that it is a standard to put the publication list in the CV, hence it is not necessary to have the publication list again. What is the purpose of requiring both of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T01:20:31.017" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T15:48:59.690" Title="Why ask both for CV and publication list?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14332" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:34:42.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A CV is generally a short account of your employment history and skills, often squeezed (or stretched) into 4 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publication lists can span many many pages. 100 complete publication entries (including technical reports and invited contributions etc etc) could easily span 10 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, CV contains the summary from a global perspective, whereas the publication list contains all details of one particular aspect of a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T21:34:42.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14332" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:37:29.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;On mathjobs, my workflow when glancing through files from candidates is to look at the publication list instead of the CV.  This is for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CVs typically frontload a bunch of information which I already have from the mathjobs cover sheet (education, postdoc, advisors, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CVs are longer than one page, so finding the publications takes some time.  Publication lists have the info I'm looking for right at the beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T21:37:29.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:56:59.463" Score="2" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;mGRE is only recommended when applying for a Ph.D in statistics. &#xA;But obviously sometimes it's better not to send a score than to report a bad score.&#xA;Stanford, which is the only place that actually requires mGRE, post that their average is the 82% quantile. But this also includes graduate students in probability, with much higher level in mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you cut the threshold between send/not send/indifferent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9645" LastEditorUserId="9645" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T08:30:58.193" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T08:30:58.193" Title="Statistics PhD - Sending the math GRE score" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-24T06:09:18.020" Score="4" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;A university has asked for a research proposal of around 200-250 words in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done some work on it myself and hence I want to propose that same project for research. Should I mention about the work that I did or should I just present an abstract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8324" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T09:54:59.170" Title="Do we mention the work that we did ourselves while giving a research proposal?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14339" CreationDate="2013-11-24T08:31:54.003" Score="15" ViewCount="3508" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing one's Statement of Purpose for applying to a grad program, should one mention that her spouse is also a grad student in the same university? What are the pro's and con's of that approach - while on one hand, it shows that the candidate is very likely to accept an offer made by the dept, it might also imply that the presence of her spouse is the main reason the applicant wants to get admitted, which might not sit well with the Admissions Committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorDisplayName="user38309" LastEditDate="2015-12-12T14:41:25.050" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T20:07:51.823" Title="Should an applicant to an university mention that her spouse is currently a student in the same University, as part of her SOP?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;two-body-problem&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14336" CreationDate="2013-11-24T09:54:59.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Including preliminary results that indicates the strength of the proposed research is never wrong. If your work has just started and your results are just inconclusive then you may consider not including them, simply because they do not contribute much to indicate the potential success of the proposed project. Mentioning that you have started work could still be useful to mention since it indicates you have thought through the process very carefully but then you should probably also consider adding something that makes it clear you cannot complete the research without additional resources. Otherwise, someone might get the idea you do not need any support and that you will complete the work anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T09:54:59.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14337" CreationDate="2013-11-24T10:05:14.647" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really can be a two-edged sword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pros&lt;/em&gt;: You are likely to really come and stay since your spouse is there. You can argue that you know much (positive) about the place through your spouse which has made you select the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cons&lt;/em&gt;: You may be seen as applying because your spouse is there and not because you think the place is exactly where you want to go and be. In other words, you make a choice out of practical and not academic reasons. (largely what you already stated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, first of all, it is no-ones business why you apply to go to a certain place. Of course the people who read your application will evaluate your interest and so anything that strengthens the application is good anything that doesn't can be left out. Although the location of one's spouse should not be grounds for admitting (or not) a person, it is possible people read things into the fact that you did not originally anticipate. If you want to state that you already know the place is good, you may do so by demoting your spouse to a friend. I have to confess I am not at all happy about writing this which seems so negative towards mentioning your relationship but it stems from knowing that you cannot predict how people interpret things and it is therefore better to be neutral and focus on the academic rather than putting up personal reasons for a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T10:05:14.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14337" CreationDate="2013-11-24T10:08:26.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you attending the same courses? If so, it might seem like you are applying to be with him. If not, then you could state he was really positive about it which made you interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Peter said, it can go either way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T10:08:26.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14318" CreationDate="2013-11-24T10:15:15.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, some international versions are only to be used outside of the US. Due to them giving a software license for a certain region. (During my Physics / Maths courses, I had to use the international edition so the license was valid in EU universities.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be for a variety of reasons, I think Jim stated the most important ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T10:15:15.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14346" CreationDate="2013-11-24T13:54:58.250" Score="11" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;During graduate studies online application submission period, is there any preference given for an applicant if he/she submits his application at the beginning of that period compared with someone who submits his/her application couple of hours before the deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or as long as the applications are complete there is absolutely no difference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T09:03:04.303" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T09:03:04.303" Title="Is there any preference given based on how far in advance of the deadline a graduate application is submitted?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14367" CreationDate="2013-11-24T14:37:09.567" Score="8" ViewCount="3661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planing to apply to study in graduate school, major in &lt;em&gt;computer science/engineering&lt;/em&gt;. I just took a GRE test, this is my 1st time, and the result is pretty...not so good :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most schools, the science or engineering related program, reveals the average or preferred GRE scores for &lt;em&gt;quantitative&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;verbal&lt;/em&gt; sections for admitted students. But it seems they don't care about the score of &lt;em&gt;Analytic Writing&lt;/em&gt; section. Really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, my writing score really bumped this time. I want to know if there's a preferred score range for this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8625" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T15:29:59.937" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T11:26:41.397" Title="What is the preferred GRE Writing score for MS/CS student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14342" CreationDate="2013-11-24T15:28:21.930" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at all the application rules and guidelines. &lt;strong&gt;Unless the registration/application is specifically described as first-come first-served&lt;/strong&gt; (which would be unusual), &lt;strong&gt;the date of submission doesn't matter&lt;/strong&gt; as long as the submission is complete before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T15:28:21.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-24T18:38:36.037" Score="4" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am uploading a paper for an Elsevier journal. The system indicates that a Manuscript should be uploaded. I don't have previous experience with this system. My question is: should the Manuscript exclude all the information about the author? Or should the manuscript be the whole paper in its final form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9650" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T20:49:04.070" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T21:27:24.750" Title="Publishing with Elsevier - Does the manuscript have the author info?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14347" CreationDate="2013-11-24T21:27:24.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on the comments: each journal sets his editorial policy, which is clearly stated on the journal's website and instructions to authors. For example, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Accounting and Economics&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This journal employs a single blind review, where the referee remains anonymous throughout the process (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-accounting-and-economics/policies/peer-review-policy-for-the-journal-of-accounting-and/&quot;&gt;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-accounting-and-economics/policies/peer-review-policy-for-the-journal-of-accounting-and/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;em&gt;Computers and Education&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This journal employs double blind reviewing, where both the referee and author remain anonymous throughout the process (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-and-education/policies/peer-review-policy-on-computers-education/&quot;&gt;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-and-education/policies/peer-review-policy-on-computers-education/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to submit to a journal with double-blind review, do not include authors' name (or any other incriminating information, for example in acknowledgments). If single blind, then include the author names in the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7902" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T21:27:24.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14350" CreationDate="2013-11-25T00:13:01.893" Score="8" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a thesis on a financial topic and some important arguments for my research can only be found in reports from investment banks, not scholarly sources. I think it's because the topic is very new but right now I'm not sure how 'respected' a bank report reference is. I'm talking UBS, Citibank,... The topic concerns QE causing distortions in the stock market. &lt;strong&gt;Is it considered acceptable to use a bank report as a source in a thesis?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9651" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T03:32:16.960" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T01:08:27.630" Title="Use Investment Bank Report as Reference?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2013-11-25T04:33:06.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing grey literature, such as investment bank reports, isn't unheard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss it with your supervisors early on: they will know the whens and hows of acceptable grey-literature citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may not be easy to find useful citation metadata such as named authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your reviewers / examiners may not be able to accesss the report, and that would be problematic for them, and thus for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should not build arguments that are grounded only in grey literature. Corroborate with peer-reviewed literature wherever possible, even if it's just corroborating one aspect of the points you're taking from the grey literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business reports often have some wacky form of encryption that hinders text searching, which can make including them in your literature review somewhat hazardous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T04:33:06.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-25T04:47:23.093" Score="8" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a formula appears in the main body of the text, there seems no doubt that punctuation should be given to that formula when necessary. But when a formula appears &lt;em&gt;displayed&lt;/em&gt; (i.e. solely taking up a line), there seems no consensus on whether punctuation is needed for it. I wonder if there will be any potential ambiguities if punctuation is (or not) included in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially a question about &lt;em&gt;functions&lt;/em&gt; of punctuation for displayed formulas. I don't want an answer about &lt;em&gt;rules&lt;/em&gt; from certain style guide...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9366" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T08:47:53.273" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:26:00.753" Title="Is punctuation necessary for displayed formulas in academia writing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14364" CreationDate="2013-11-25T05:01:58.463" Score="11" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;When one cites a theorem from a source in mathematics, the following problem usually arises: some assumptions/conditions of the theorem are written much &lt;em&gt;earlier&lt;/em&gt; in the source, which do not appear in the statement of the theorem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are good strategies to solve this problem so that the writing could be more reader-friendly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, citing the theorem simply as &lt;em&gt;&quot;By theorem 3.1.4 in [Fang 2013] ...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; means the reader may miss some of the conditions of theorem 3.1.4 if they appear earlier in the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, yes, restating all the conditions of the theorem is considerably the &quot;best&quot; way. But if one has to cite a lot of &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; theorems in a proof, restating everything may distract readers from the main issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me construct an example: if a chapter in a commutative ring theory book begins with &quot;All rings in this chapter will be Noetherian&quot;, any theorem containing the word &quot;ring&quot; in this chapter would not include the word &quot;Noetherian&quot;. If I cited one theorem in this chapter merely by its &quot;number&quot;, a reader may be easily misguided if he/she directly read the theorem without reading the first sentence of this chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9366" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T14:42:59.290" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T16:34:38.017" Title="The best ways to cite a theorem whose assumptions/conditions are written earlier in the source?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14351" CreationDate="2013-11-25T09:41:13.537" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics there is a near universal consensus that displayed mathematics should not be treated differently from inline mathematics with regards to punctuation. By this I mean that the vast majority of papers on the arXiv follow this convention, most journals will add punctuation according to this principle if it's not already there, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus whenever you're unsure whether or not to include punctuation at the end of a displayed equation, try to replace &lt;code&gt;\[ ... \]&lt;/code&gt; with &lt;code&gt;$ ... $&lt;/code&gt; - whatever punctuation mark looks natural when it's inlined should be included also at the end of the displayed equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that texts without punctuation after displayed equations are necessarily &lt;em&gt;ambiguous&lt;/em&gt;, but then again, a text without punctuation after inlined equations would probably not be ambiguous either. The main purpose of punctuation is after all not to reduce ambiguity but to increase readability and &quot;flow&quot; of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9305" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T09:41:13.537" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14357" CreationDate="2013-11-25T11:09:44.207" Score="52" ViewCount="7681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a post doc in mathematics, and was just sent a request to review a paper. This is the first time it happened to me. I never heard of this journal before, but it is a Springer journal, and upon checking the editorial board it looks like a respectable journal. Also, the paper looks quite interesting, so it appears that I shouldn't worry about it being dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder however, if this is a good time in my career to do such a job. Given that I am a postdoc, constantly in the run for the next job, and probably this will take some of my valuable research time. Is it normal for postdocs to review research papers? Should I accept it? If so, should I mention the fact I review for this journal in my C.V?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9656" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T11:27:50.817" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T14:30:39.987" Title="Should I agree to review papers as a postdoc?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T11:31:08.513" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have served as a referee for various math and related journals since I was a graduate student. I'm a postdoc now, and during this career phase, I have refereed way more papers than I wrote. I put on my CV the names of journals I have served for as a referee. I don't think I have done anything wrong about this. Let's see if I will land on a tenure track job this year!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a bit more serious note, I think it's normal for a postdoc to referee papers. One of the editors of Nature once said the best referees are postdocs because they're on the cutting edge of research but naive enough to be honest. I don't know if this equally applies to mathematics. But I think the fact that the editorial board you find respectable chose you suggests that you are qualified and needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T11:31:08.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T11:33:08.500" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, reviewing papers is an integral part of your job now, and a very beneficial one at that!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that the first papers you will review will take you quite a bit of time, but it's a sound investment (unless you consider dropping out of academia next month). You'll improve your reading and ability to read between the lines. It will help you gain a wider view of what others are doing in your field, because it will force you to really go through the paper in depth, not just skim over it as we are so often forced to do when a paper is not at the core of our own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it will give you invaluable experience when you write your next papers, because you will be able to put yourself in the reviewer's shoes! You will see better what could be problematic for a referee in the presentation of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether you should list it on your CV: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3540/2700&quot;&gt;yes!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T20:57:20.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14359" CreationDate="2013-11-25T13:22:29.553" Score="21" ViewCount="2131" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (chemistry), review is always done in a single blind process, i.e. the author does not know who the referees were, but the referees do know who the authors are. In ten years, I have never seen a referee breaching this anonymity, e.g. by signing their review, unless they got prior approval by the editor (in order to continue discuss things further with the authors, once the manuscript was accepted for publication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seemed logical to assume that in single blind peer-review, the reviewer should not disclose his identity without the editor's consent. Yet, some people have told me (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14037/2700&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/98308/when-if-ever-disclose-your-identity-as-a-reviewer&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt;; also IRL a friend from human sciences) that they have seen people sign their reviews, or write emails to them after the review but before the paper is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;in single-blind peer-review, can you reveal your identity without the editor's consent?&lt;/strong&gt; Does it depends on the customs of each field, or is there a hard rule? (in which case, the few anecdotes I heard were outliers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2020-10-21T16:33:28.557" Title="In single-blind peer-review, can you reveal your identity without the editor's consent?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14358" CreationDate="2013-11-25T14:15:51.763" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think that it's a bad idea to open the possibility of referees communicating with authors, since this opens the possibility of authors' influencing referees, compromising the process. Of course, this is not to say that there aren't some positive possibilities, but the conflict-of-interest criterion seems to me in this case to be clearly manifest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, it should be understood, implicitly or explicitly, that referees will remain anonymous &quot;in perpetuity&quot;, so that there is no hint or possibility that authors could communicate with them or influence them. E.g., either overt or subtle invitations from authors to a referee to communicate (and get some credit for the paper, maybe co-authorship, etc., as discussed around here some time back...) would be understood in advance to fail absolutely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, editors who discover referees willing to engage in such would probably regretfully stop asking them to referee, since if such activity became known it would seriously damage the reputation of the journal... if only in principle, but &quot;principle&quot; would seem to be the point...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T14:15:51.763" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14351" CreationDate="2013-11-25T15:03:31.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a probably-minority opinion, I try to avoid having English-language punctuation juxtaposed to mathematical notation, especially anything complicated, whenever possible. Also, I try to avoid beginning a sentence with mathematical notation, trying, instead, to begin with an obvious English word that is capitalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that vein, I do not put periods or commas at the right edge of displayed purely-formulaic expressions, but have the next line start with a capitalized English word, signifying new-sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My objection to juxtaposition of English-punctuation with formulas is the visual noise, small though it may be. At least my own perception of my own scanning of English+mathematics is that I think of English in a somewhat different manner than I think of the mathematics (apart from small naming-phrases), and everything's easier if the two functions of &quot;comma&quot; and &quot;period&quot; are clearly distinguished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T15:03:31.203" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14386" CreationDate="2013-11-25T16:10:02.273" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;What can we do with the technical documentation we develop during our career?&#xA;Is it worth to publish? If so, where? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering those lines of code that we took time to write and that we usually only use in the first steps of our own publications, that we never actually added to the publication .. but saves all our colleagues (everyone one asks you to adjust your code to their needs...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good way to guarantee that our colleagues give credit to the work previously developed by us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastEditorUserId="636" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T07:55:10.490" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T09:10:52.923" Title="Technical documents to publish or not" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14351" CreationDate="2013-11-25T16:27:27.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for including the punctuation is that text with math in it is still text. The reason for leaving it out is that it looks ugly because we're juxtaposing elements of two writing systems in which symbols have completely different meanings. Either possibility can be jarring to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to deal with these problems is to leave some white space between the equation and the punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Pythagorean theorem,&#xA;  A^2+B^2=C^2    ,&#xA;has been known since ancient times.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In LaTeX, I use a \qquad for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal style, I also sometimes end a sentence with a displayed equation set off by a colon, without a period after the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Thus from Euclid's five postulates we arrive at our final result,&#xA;known as the Pythagorean theorem:&#xA;  A^2+B^2=C^2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I feel that the colon acts like a signal on the tracks that tells the train conductor we're nearing the end of the sentence. The construction of the sentence also reinforces the reader's subconscious expectation that the sentence will not continue after the equation. Grammatically, the equation does not function as any part of speech; the style is similar to what one would use in introducing a diagram that was in-line in the body of the text and had no caption or figure number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T16:32:27.923" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T16:32:27.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14352" CreationDate="2013-11-25T16:34:38.017" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of ways to handle situations like this, depending on how much prominence you want to give to the result you are citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the cited theorem is quite important to your work, and you think the reader will benefit from seeing it written out, then you can include a complete statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theorem 1.2&lt;/strong&gt; [Smith 1953].  Suppose $X$ is compact, Artinian, and hyperfinite, and $\sqrt{Q(X)-57} &amp;gt; \pi/4$.  Then $U(X) \sim \gamma$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Oh right, we don't have MathJax here. :( ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then elsewhere in your paper you can say &amp;quot;By Theorem 1.2, ...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hypotheses of the theorem are particularly complicated and you don't feel it's helpful to include them in your paper, you could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theorem 1.2&lt;/strong&gt; [Smith 1953].  If $X$ satisfies the assumptions of Section 5 of [Smith 1953], then  $U(X) \sim \gamma$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can write elsewhere &amp;quot;We can easily check that $Y$ satisfies the conditions in [Smith 1953], so by Theorem 1.2., $U(Y) \sim \gamma$&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't care to say much about Smith's result (perhaps it's well known, or you're just using it as a black box), you can just cite it, perhaps with a brief comment about its assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since $X$ is hyperfinite, by Theorem 5.6.7 of [Smith 1967], ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Theorem 5.6.7 of [Smith 1967] (which requires $X$ to be hyperfinite)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T16:34:38.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:44:10.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is another one, which I find very helpful and intuitive: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cmap.ihmc.us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CmapTools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6066" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T17:44:10.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:51:46.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a reason it's not listed--there is no preferred score, it doesn't really matter.  I am not an expert, but I feel like the writing score is something that can only hurt you, not something that can help you, at least with respect to science or engineering graduate programs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More concretely, I can see a very low score preventing you from getting into a program, but I highly doubt the admissions committee saying: &quot;Well, he got a great score on the writing section, that really differentiates him from other applicants; let's admit him.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a foreign student or non-native speaker, doing well in the writing section probably carries a little more weight than it does for native speakers; nonetheless, I believe that the above still holds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T19:24:12.457" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:24:12.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14323" CreationDate="2013-11-25T18:19:39.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly this is going to be a multi-stage, complicated process, with no simple answer. However, here's something relatively simple to start with, maybe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest starting with collaborative peer-evaluation. Create an assignment which has a peer-evaluation stage (with no reflection on the final grade). The peer-evaluation stage consists of sitting them down and working through each person's output as a group. Ideally, you'll act mostly as guard-rails for the discussion, keeping it on-topic and professional, while providing some initial thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the peer-discussion phase is to start getting them to think critically about the output, from both the perspective of a creator and a consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the discussion stage, then allow them to take the feedback and re-edit their work to improve it, grading only the final result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T18:19:39.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:41:48.800" Score="1" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just graduated from a masters degree in information systems, and I'm due to begin a role at a large IT consultancy firm in 6 months time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the interim I have arranged a period of desk research with one of my old professors. I cannot go into specifics but to give you a taster my research will be around small/medium IT firm strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will of course receive direction from my professor on the detail, but some general advice for someone wanting to shift into an appropriate mindset for being effective at desk research would be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies would you use to tackle a desk research role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9666" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T23:24:44.807" Title="How to be effective at desk research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14370" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:49:09.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set clear objectives &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; deadlines as early as possible to force yourself into a practical mindset. Don't do it for your supervisor, do it for yourself. Try to funnel your thoughts and ideas into a confined key focus point .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prevents you from procrastinating (which I consider to be a big threat in desk research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:49:09.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:53:44.790" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers have focused on why reviewing papers makes sense to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there’s a second, equally as important facet to it: It’s your &lt;strong&gt;duty&lt;/strong&gt; as a researcher to review papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, nobody’s contract mentions anything about reviewing papers, and no grant proposal ever allocates resources for it. But, to put it bluntly, that’s a bug in the system (and one, I might add, that badly needs fixing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer review is a fundamental part of how science is done today. And, by design, the people to do it are researchers. It’s simply &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; that researchers perform peer review. Of course we could all just say “eh, let other people worry about this” but I hardly need to explain how conceptually broken and ethically objectionable this concept is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:53:44.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T20:00:11.707" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do unto others as you would have them do to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sums it up quite nicely. Do you want your papers to be reviewed? Do you want the reviewers to do it properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume the answer to both questions is a profound &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;. From the perspective of science, writing and reviewing are both crucial. As a scientist, it is part of your responsibility to review even if you consider it to be less rewarding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean you should accept every review request. Sometimes you may get a request to review a manuscript which you may not be entirely suitable for as a reviewer. If the manuscript is in your field of expertise and there is no conflict of interest you should probably do it, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T20:00:11.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T21:15:40.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was referee for various IEEE journals / conferences / proceedings during my PhD studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opportunities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good opportunity for your CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some benefits from the editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you are member of a community (research is community) you must participate to the community's activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reject the review if the paper doesn't fall in your research field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you do not feel up to it, you can only evaluate the scientific soundness and point this out to the editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T14:30:39.987" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T14:30:39.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-25T21:43:48.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but you should be protective of your time. Here is my algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;We have a duty to review papers, but how many?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How many reviews have you consumed?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb is that I will serve as a reviewer for each time when someone else was asked to serve as a reviewer for my paper. Therefore, if I have 4 first author papers, and each was reviewed by 3 people, then I have a duty to review 12 papers. When doing these calculations, I will discount my obligation if I had co-first-authors on the paper, but not for minor authors or senior authors. Senior authors are typically occupied with other obligations, such as serving as editors for journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Will you benefit from this review?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you interested in the topic? If so, you are getting the first peak at this research, along with an opportunity to get the authors to respond to your questions. Do you respect the editor, and are you happy that she considers you an expert?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pay attention to how much time you spend on a review&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a tendency to spend 5-10 hours on a review (biology), but have been told that 2-6 hours is appropriate. I am trying hard to compress that. The appropriate amount of time may depend on your field. A mathematician colleague of mine said that he spends several days reviewing each paper. This is feasible for him because publications in his field are very rare. Sometimes I spend a lot of time because I am interested in the topic but have not previously bothered to read the background literature, so I read several papers while reviewing the one. This may be a helpful or harmful habit for my career. Refuse to review a paper if it will require background reading that you are not interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't review unless you can get it done immediately&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't make time for it in the next few days, then you probably don't have time for it. It's best for everyone if the review is returned to the authors ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Reject bad papers ASAP&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Refuse to review papers with bad abstracts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have reviewed a couple of papers even though they seemed pointless based on the abstract. It turned out that they were indeed pointless. My new policy is to refuse to review any paper with a bad abstract and write to the editor that I do not consider the paper publishable. I have not had the opportunity to do this yet, so I don't know how editors actually respond. However, I think this is a legitimate basis for rejecting a paper. If the abstract accurately reflects the content of the paper, then the paper is indeed pointless. If the abstract fails to describe what is notable about the study, then the paper is poorly written and is not ready for publication. Some journals say that their papers are not to be evaluated based on &quot;impact&quot;, but if a paper is as pointless/trivial as the stuff I've seen, it is not worth the effort of reviewing it, and therefore it is not publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Try to identify a fatal error quickly; if you find it, stop reviewing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody benefits from detailed nit-picking on a paper that is not going to be published anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T21:43:48.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14370" CreationDate="2013-11-25T23:24:44.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you're doing a literature review on two topics in management strategy.  I assume you've been trained to conduct research from your Masters.  Grab a (post-graduate) textbook on business research methods and go forth and conduct your literature review.  Given you're planning on using publicly available documentation it sounds like a &quot;discourse analysis&quot; of &quot;business strategy.&quot;  You may want a (post-graduate) textbook on social science discourse analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T23:24:44.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2013-11-26T01:08:27.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a bank report is acceptable unless it appears as though there is some bias present. QE and its impacts are a hot topic so you are likely to find it written quite heavily about in bank reports and the like. However, you must be on guard that what is being written is not really sales literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the statements is &quot;You would be reckless with your finances to ignore the impact of QE so come and let us make your money work for you!&quot; then you might want to avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just follow common sense about critical reading and how to evaluate your source reading material. If the source seems credible and the content seems unbiased then there should be no problem citing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As EnergyNumbers wrote, it is always better if others have access to the report but even if others do not, that should not stop you from including relevant information. Use the best source material you have, wherever you can find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T01:08:27.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14407" CreationDate="2013-11-26T04:56:52.480" Score="5" ViewCount="2699" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone do research and eventually obtain a PhD in a gastronomy-related field (not approached from the side of chemistry, history or culture but rather from the culinary side) from an accredited university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6414" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T18:42:32.057" Title="Is there an accredited doctorate in gastronomy?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-11-26T08:46:31.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are already several good answers, but I will add one from a pure mathematician point of view, because this question is very dependent on the field (or at least, fundamental maths are outliers given the time needed to deeply review a paper: from a few hours for a clearly flawed paper to &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; in some cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing is part of your duty as a researcher, it adds a little bit to your CV, it pleases important people when done right, and most importantly it makes you learn stuff. But as said it takes a lot time to be done right, and you are in a position where your own research will earn you the right to have a career as professional mathematician or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefore consider that you should only accept to review papers that are either easy enough (or easily rejected enough) not to take too much time, or that are of primary interest for your own research, in which case a few weeks of part-time work on a review can be very beneficial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T08:46:31.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14362" CreationDate="2013-11-26T09:10:52.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether the software is private or not. If it is public, you can either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add your name to the AUTHORS file (you have one, right?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ship the manual with the code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;slap a technical report number onto it, so that people will find it easier to cite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write up a detailed description of what the software does, and publish it in a journal that publishes algorithms --- there are many of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code is a well-kept secret of your research group, not available even for sale, I am afraid there is very little you can do. People won't be interested in documentation of some code they cannot run themselves. You can still do 1--3, but don't expect people to read and cite it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only hope in that situation is that your co-authors are fair and acknowledge you appropriately whenever they use your code and documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T09:10:52.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14388" CreationDate="2013-11-26T09:33:12.403" Score="1" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a multidisciplinary subject which involves mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and chemistry. I have a decent amount of research completed and now I need to select a journal to publish my work. How do I select a good journal to publish my papers?&#xA;Also for the same topic I need to select conference to present. How do I select that too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9691" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T21:02:15.063" Title="Selecting Journals or Conferences to publish research work" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14387" CreationDate="2013-11-26T09:59:23.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general if you are looking for a journal where to publish a specific type of manuscript do a survey of the material you have referenced. Where are those articles published? You should pay special attention to articles that are multidisciplinary such as yours. The next step if you are uncertain about the appropriateness is to e-mail the journal editors of journals and ask if they consider multidisciplinary articles. I do not think you should send the manuscript to them because they usually do not have time to read anything substantial just to answer a question but do paste in your title, author list and abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of conferences, I cannot see a patented answer. If a conference is a recurring event you can always go back to collections of abstracts to see if other multidisciplinary papers have been presented. Another option is to see if you cannot organize your own session at a larger conference that permits sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T09:59:23.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2013-11-26T11:26:41.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GRE scores are just initial cut-offs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analytical writing usually requires a minimum score of 3 that's it. But this is true for most of the universities there may be some exceptions to the rule obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scores 3 and 2.5&#xA;Displays some competence in analytical writing, although the writing is flawed in at least one of the following ways: limited analysis or development; weak organization; weak control of sentence structure or language usage, with errors that often result in vagueness or lack of clarity.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T11:26:41.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14394" CreationDate="2013-11-26T15:14:45.483" Score="0" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm doing some work for a new online-only university that is being founded, based in the US and offering degrees up to doctorate in courses like history, philosophy and literature. It's heavily research-based and doesn't allow credit transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the great things about this university is that it will offer scholarships to people in developing countries allowing them to complete a degree at a US university for as little as $100. The university is not designed to make money, but only to keep itself going. (This does not mean it is non-profit; in fact most non-profits are designed to make as much money as possible, they just don't have shareholders.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need academics/professors to volunteer to advise and help us get started, especially during the current period where the application for a new university is being considered. We expect them to help by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;associating with the university for the sake of the application, even if only in name;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;marking theses, when students reach that stage (though no teaching will be required).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried emailing professors asking for their help, but it seems no one is interested. I get the impression that online universities don't have much respect from these people and that no one wants to risk their reputation by being involved with something new and different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best approach to convince established professors to contribute to this project?&lt;/strong&gt; Would they expect to be paid in return? (A stipend is possible, as well as a title, but no salary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7245" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T11:21:53.153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T15:02:47.883" Title="Convincing professors to help with the founding of new university" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2013-11-26T15:41:23.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This my vary by school, but at least at my institution, this is close to the line where approval from higher-ups is required for a professor to participate.  While professors have a great deal of latitude with how they use their time, the university does actually claim possession of our teaching (it is, after all, what they're paying us for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are written-in exceptions (for example, giving tutorials on research subjects is a standard thing, and allowed), and it's possible to request permission for other cases.  It's not clear to me from your question whether what you're asking for would require permission, but it's close enough that I probably wouldn't be comfortable without permission.  That's a big enough deal that it might discourage participants who were otherwise inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T15:41:23.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2013-11-26T17:25:45.440" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different requests warrant different communication styles. By simply sending an email and leaving it at that, your request is in the same boat as any other piece of spam they receive; unsolicited mail asking for their resources (time, money, whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly wish to have them partner with you in a new business venture, you should engage in standard courtship behavior expected for this sort of relationship; phone conversations, in-person conversations, take them out for coffee, lots of follow-up. Additionally, they'll need to be convinced that you're not a fly-by-night nobody and that it's worth their while to work with you. This takes time and effort, and is guaranteed not to happen if your main communication channel is email. You are acting in a Sales position here; treat it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that you will likely be received with significant skepticism, and you should have ready answers for all the questions you're sure to receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T17:25:45.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2013-11-26T17:46:22.197" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new university probably isn't accredited (yet?) and is for-profit (at least that's how I interpret &quot;this does not mean it is non-profit&quot;).  In principle a for-profit, unaccredited university could be innovative and wonderful, but it will face a lot of prejudice because most such universities are not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joining a new venture like this involves putting a lot of trust in the people who are running it.  If they turn out to be crazy or dishonest, then everyone involved will look bad.  It's difficult to reach this level of trust, and almost impossible starting with e-mail from a stranger.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advising research students takes time and effort.  It's not just a matter of proposing a topic and waiting for the thesis to come in; instead, there's a lot of advising and mentoring.  This is a major commitment, and I wouldn't want to have my name associated with something like this unless I was doing everything necessary to help the students succeed.  Some of your comments (such as &quot;virtually no need of professors until it comes to marking theses&quot; or &quot;we need academics associated with the university for the sake of the application, even if its only in name&quot;) sound like I would be setting students up for failure or misleading them as to my level of involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time is a major limiting factor.  If I had all the time in the world, then I would cheerfully volunteer to help with all sorts of things.  As it is, though, there are a lot of students at my own institution who seek supervision, and working with them in person is more satisfying and productive than supervising someone over the internet.  If I maintain my current level of engagement with students in person, and add internet activities, then what am I going to cut?  It's not enough to make a case that participating in this new university is valuable.  Instead, you have to make the case that it is more valuable than whatever I might be doing instead, such as research or family time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What you describe comes across as saying professors aren't really necessary except for validating research output and ought to be willing to do that for relatively little money.  This philosophy won't be popular with many professors, who would like to believe they engage in plenty of crucial activities.  If this isn't the impression you would like to convey, then you need to modify your sales pitch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T17:46:22.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14397" CreationDate="2013-11-26T18:14:09.213" Score="16" ViewCount="3399" Body="&lt;p&gt;A journal which accepted a paper of mine has made some alterations to the text of the paper as part of their editing process.  They sent me the edited version for approval, and I discovered that at least some of these changes are erroneous (for instance, one of the changes included a typo, and another was changing the spelling of a technical term incorrectly).  I asked for a list of all the changes made, and was told that this was &quot;too messy&quot; (I assume because the alterations to the text are mixed in with the changes to the formatting of the paper, which is a more standard part of the editing process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this time the journal is waiting for me to approve/make changes to the final proof before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how I should deal with this situation.  I feel like I have an obligation to be responsible for the contents of a paper published in my name.  (Though, if I'm mistaken about this, that would be a helpful answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few solutions, ranging from the tedious (compare the PDF files line by line to identify the changes myself), to the demanding (insist on a list of changes anyway), to the passive-aggressive (either withdraw the paper or add a sulky footnote disavowing responsibility for the unknown changes to the paper).  These all have problems, so I'd appreciate more constructive ways to approach the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T22:27:19.293" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T13:26:10.127" Title="How to check and correct editorial changes to a manuscript post-acceptance?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-26T18:39:48.677" Score="12" ViewCount="1311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy creating presentations a lot and I think I have an eye for nice design, however, I tend to always have the same layout/colour scheme/etc. and I'd like to try something new for my defence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've been googling great presentations for hours, and there are heaps of innovative designs but usually these are from outside academia. I still want to convey information in a serious manner. But when looking at websites that intend to give advice for scientific presentations I find the examples horrible and very much 1990s (bullet points...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, can you think of any scientific presentations with unpretentious but great design, which can be found somewhere online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; Thank you for your comments, which definitely include heaps of helpful advice, however, I was less looking for &quot;basic&quot; presentation guidelines but more for design elements, which do not distract the audience but which make the presentation a bit more interesting. For instance, a colleague of mine recently gave a presentation and before each section she'd have a slide with just the title of the section and a photo (e.g. &quot;Methods&quot; and a picture of her lab equipment). I liked that because it structures the presentation and is a nice break from charts, diagrams and (in the worst case) bullet points. So, yes, I am really more looking for inspiration on fonts, colours, using white space, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9699" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T02:57:56.197" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T02:57:56.197" Title="Inspiration for great presentations" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2013-11-26T18:45:01.950" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into bad editing situations like this. In these cases, I've gone through the paper line by line, with a fine tooth comb. Yes, it is painful, but it is a  good idea even if the journal editors aren't obviously screwing up. (This can get doubly horrible if you have complicated formatting in your paper.)&#xA;You should bear in mind whoever is doing this is unlikely to actually understand what you are writing, and my experience of people doing this sort of thing is that they can be well-meaning and not too bright, so they can take it upon themselves to &quot;correct&quot; your manuscript, while not understanding what they are doing. Additionally, if you give them last minute changes to the paper, make sure to check they have applied them correctly. Are you the sole author? Can you get anyone else to help with this? It would make it less awful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other ideas sound less viable. Asking for a list of changes assumes that there is someone there who actually knows what those changes &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;. My experience is that journal staff are often amazingly technically incompetent, and probably have never thought of using version control for example. though I'd love to hear about the exceptions. But you can certainly try to insist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passive-aggressive ideas just sound bad. You don't want to withdraw your paper over an issue like that. And if there are errors in the paper, they will reflect badly on you, and nobody else will care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times I've thought someone should start a site like ratethisjournal.org where people could discuss their experiences dealing with different journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T18:45:01.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2013-11-26T19:13:19.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background. Many copy-editors (I would say most) are not experts in any field but are experts on the house style of the publisher. I have experienced how copy-editors new to the journal make lots of mistakes, they sometimes edit several journals with different styles. They should not make such mistakes but sometimes the communication between the publisher and the copy-editor does not work well for one reason or another. Note that the journal and its editors may not be involved in this part of the process; I cannot say what applies in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you contact the editors of the journal, or the contact to which you are supposed to return the comments. State that your manuscript has been corrupted by the copy-editing and ask how they suggest you should proceed (considering that the state of the paper is completely unsatisfactory). What you can also do is to try to summarize the systematic errors you have observed so that the journal/publisher can provide these comments to the copy-editor. Unfortunately, the copy-editor will not likely be able to make any better judgements on the corrections without input from others, so I think it is safe to say at least some will most likely fall back to you to correct in the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T19:38:32.273" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T19:38:32.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2013-11-26T20:01:26.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects to your question, in my opinion: design and function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Function&lt;/em&gt;. Many have criticized PowerPoint and bullet points and perhaps none so much as Edward Tufte in his essay booklet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp&quot;&gt;The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within&lt;/a&gt;. The defaults of PowerPoint and reliance on bullet points is interesting and &quot;forces&quot; users into a particular form of presentation where bullets are more reminders for the speaker than the audience. From this background an alternative is to use the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html&quot;&gt;Assertion-Evidence Structure&lt;/a&gt; which takes a very different approach to building slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Assertion-Evidence Structure the heading of the slide is the main point of the slide, a take-home message. The slides use graphics extensively to support and high-light the main point. The structure has been shown to yield significant improvements in both audience understanding than normal bullet-point presentations. Se the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/presentations/speaking.pdf&quot;&gt;linked example of the structure&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Assertion-Evidence slides are not necessarily pretty but they do the job very well so that brings me to the second issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Design&lt;/em&gt;. When you look at designing slides it is probably easier to list the don'ts than the do's. In general, anything &quot;fancy&quot; easily becomes boring when overdone. Therefore simple is better. I would also add that subtle is better. Do not use strong colours and avoid backgrounds that can clash with the text, either structurally or in terms of colour, after all you want your message to shine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So design anything with a principle to do as much as possible with as little as possible and you should be on a good road. I think referring back to Edward Tufte is useful also here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So taken together, it is not clear what is a well designed presentation depending on whether you are looking at aesthetic impact or factual impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T20:01:26.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14387" CreationDate="2013-11-26T20:42:15.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the journal accepts pre-submission inquires try this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively consult &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier Matching&lt;/a&gt; tool, it should help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T21:02:15.063" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T21:02:15.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2013-11-26T20:47:04.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copy-editing is a normal part of the publication process, and a few errors can be introduced that way. &lt;strong&gt;A good proof-reading is in order, of course, but if you miss a typo or two it's not the end of the world.&lt;/strong&gt; Moreover, if you later come to realize that a critical error has been introduced, which was not present in your initial copy and which you did not find in the your proof-reading, you can always ask for a correction at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many publishers give you more information to help review the copy-edited proofs. For example, many publishers will gladly give you (automatically, or upon asking) the list of changes made (“edit track” or something like that). Something a bit like a &lt;code&gt;latexdiff&lt;/code&gt; output, in most cases. It's a crowded document, and hard to read through because there are many formatting and copy-editing changes, but it can be helpful with some details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T20:47:04.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2013-11-26T21:25:02.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally like the books from Nancy Duarte, &quot;slide:ology&quot; is about design and how to express certain concepts (Flow, Structure etc.) while &quot;resonate&quot; is about structuring the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly these books can't be applied to Science directly, there is nothing about setting formulas etc, but they provide good directions and give inspirations on what to think about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this I would not focus that much on the whole presentation, but on special components, like &quot;How to visualize Information/Data&quot;, typography or design in general. There are a lot of websites and books on these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally on real examples: There are tons of presentations on ted.com. In my opinion Hans Rosling is an interesting speaker, his talk &quot;Global population growth, box by box&quot; is a example of a presentation which combines powerpoint and real things. Brian Cox is also worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5621" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T21:25:02.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14421" CreationDate="2013-11-26T22:47:24.813" Score="1" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my CV, I want to mention the budget size of third-party funds I helped to raise, but I do not know the financial details. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the rough cost for one person year in academia, including personal costs, travel costs, overhead costs, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Since the budget seems to depend on the location: It was a German project (&quot;DFG Einzelantrag auf Sachbeihilfe&quot;) and I computed the personal costs per year to be about 60 thousand Euro. But I have no clue how much the travel and overhead costs are per year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="224" LastEditorUserId="224" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T00:10:04.427" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T23:59:03.383" Title="What's the rough budget size for one person year (research asssistant/postdoc) in academia?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2013-11-27T01:07:33.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried following a number of design presentation guidelines (Presentation Zen being one of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I've found that the real focus of presentation design needs to focus first on your story (and therefore your content) and less on the visual aspects of your presentation. One colleague of mine read a lot of presentation books and then tried to do a presentation filled predominantly with large photographs (as recommended by one of them) and minimal text. A faculty member complained that he couldn't follow the talk because there were too few words. I've seen slides that are dull and boring that are accompanied by fascinating speakers. I've seen talks with boring slides and really amateurish graphics that are good talks (the amateurish graphics were actually interesting in that they made the presentation stand out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my main message here is that we could throw examples of good scientific presentations with good visual design at you all you like but they won't necessarily improve your presentation. If you already knew that, then that's excellent - you're probably just looking for something minor then, like a new type of bullet or an interesting color scheme. But if you're hoping that &quot;using more animated builds&quot; to explain complex topics and adding &quot;more punchy pictures&quot; will help, that's not a sufficient condition!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T01:07:33.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9925" CreationDate="2013-11-27T01:59:54.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I defended my final dissertation defense two weeks ago, and my chair congratulated me and called me Dr. Woo! I always thought it was until  when the title is conferred in a doctoral commencement, they can call you Dr.  But on the contrary, you are called Dr. the moment you pass your dissertation defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9706" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T02:57:03.777" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T02:57:03.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14382" CreationDate="2013-11-27T02:55:07.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the programs/universities mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food-culture.org/food-studies-programs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the link&lt;/a&gt; which Zenon gave in a comment, it appears that you may need to tweak a molecular gastronomy program to fit your interests. The Italian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unisg.it/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Gastronomic Sciences&lt;/a&gt; looks to have several programs that might fit your desired focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T02:55:07.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-27T07:35:25.203" Score="10" ViewCount="2253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I rewrote my thesis work with improved analytical explanation of major problem statement and included few subsections which were not the part of thesis. Also I rewrote the algorithms with more clarity for better understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues at current working place has helped me in organization of paper and correction of English. I submitted the paper by mentioning my supervisor as second and my colleague as a 3rd author of paper. I also mentioned in acknowledgment that work is extended version of my thesis work under supervision of Mr. X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After acceptance of paper my supervisor is causing trouble and saying I cannot mention anyone else except him in acknowledgement, and he must be the corresponding author. But as per editor's response, it’s too late to make changes. Now he wants me to withdraw my accepted SCI paper and resubmit according to his wishes (1-He must be corresponding author 2-Acknowledgment must be written according to his wishes 3-Exclude 3rd Author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether his reaction is proper? If I don't listen and proceed for publication whether it can cause some problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9710" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T00:06:25.623" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T08:34:23.270" Title="Authorship for paper based on my thesis" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14412" CreationDate="2013-11-27T10:49:09.817" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the usual time spent doing graduate studies (Masters + PhD; courses + research) in the UK for someone studying life sciences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a Junior Research Fellowship in hopes of doing a postdoc in the UK. However, one of the requirements is that I have fewer years of graduate studies behind me than I in fact have. I have other grounds to ask for an exception (pregnancy leave), but I am wondering whether my 2+4 years (Dutch) graduate program is longer than what the typical UK student does. I'm sure that programs vary, but if we were to pick a random UK life sciences postdoc, how many years would he have spent doing graduate studies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T14:07:31.527" Title="Average length of graduate studies in the UK in the life sciences" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2013-11-27T11:44:37.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are tired of the slide-by-slide format of PowerPoint, you can have a look at dynamic presentations with &lt;a href=&quot;http://prezi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prezi&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://bartaz.github.io/impress.js/#/bored&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Impress.js&lt;/a&gt;. These two tools can introduce you to a whole new way of creating presentations but using them must always be motivated by good reasons. Because PowerPoint follows a linear path in the presentation, it is easy to do the same with Prezi and Impress.js while they can afford for a higher level of interaction between each &lt;em&gt;slide&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, some people have motion sickness and using too many effects might annoy them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T11:44:37.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14408" CreationDate="2013-11-27T12:24:06.733" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem you ran into is one of the prime examples of why one should &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; get &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the coauthors' approvals before submitting an article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have in fact documented approval from your previous advisor for the paper in the form in which you submitted, the facts are on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; side. And there's little your advisor can do about it: it is his own fault for not having caught something he disliked and to have given you the OK to submit. (Though pissing off one's advisor is generally not a good career move.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;have not&lt;/em&gt; obtained the approval, then you almost certainly &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; retract the paper. All journals I have submitted to and refereed for either requires the assent to publication be individually given by all the authors (in which case the journal will often ask for contact information of all authors to be keyed in when submitting), or that the corresponding author certify that he is in a position to speak on behalf of the other authors about the paper. The fact that your advisor is making noises means that either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He will disagree, as a coauthor, for the paper to be published, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have in fact lied when you certified that you can speak for him, in which case the journal will retract your paper for violating their rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(assuming some form of this question was asked during the submission process). In other words, most likely you are already in a situation where you either voluntarily retract the submission (in which case the only people who will know about it are likely yourself, the two coauthors involved, and the handling editor at the journal), or, if you chose to publish anyway, be forced to retract the paper by the journal, since many journals take authorship problems rather seriously. In this latter case anyone with a subscription to the journal would know that your paper was retracted because of some sort of misconduct (yes, misrepresenting author information is scientific misconduct). Your call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above basically answers what you should do in your situation. But what about the case where the paper has &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; already been submitted, but there are disagreements over authorship and wording of the paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only suggestion is that in that scenario, you should get together with your two &quot;co-authors&quot; and hammer out a compromise yourselves. While I find the objections by your advisor a bit strange, there may be ulterior reasons you are not telling us. A possible compromise in this case would be for you to publish one paper, containing only the contributions of your thesis work, with your advisor, and a second one containing the reanalysis and extension, with the other author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt;, in any case, go over the objections of your co-author(s) and submit a paper in a form they do not agree with. That's a recipe for academic misconduct right there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T12:24:06.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14409" CreationDate="2013-11-27T14:07:31.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a master's course is 1 year and PhDs are 3 years. There are exceptions to this though, some mphil's being 2 years and some structured PhDs being 4 years. However, it is possible in the uk to go straight to a phd after undergrad. Therefore the number of years of graduate studies varies between 3 and 6, though the average is around 4 if you ignore the special cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T14:07:31.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2013-11-27T15:39:31.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Copy Editor speaking. I have couple comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is true that &lt;strong&gt;it is impossible to seperate the changes in the text and changes in the formatting&lt;/strong&gt;, even in good systems like LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good Copy Editor never changes any scientific terms as is.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes we have to change a formula (split in two lines, etc.), or we are dubious about a comma, preposition, hyphen or whatever. Even though the Language Editor corrects these, I sometimes don't make the changes if I feel it is against the intention of the author. Honestly, this is a complicated process, even inside the Editors' Office, not speaking about communication with the authors. As well, we put some notices in the Proofreading version if we're unsure about something, so that the author can be aware of it. Unfortunately, it seems to me that not many journals do quite a great job in Copy Editing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read your manuscript really carefully during the proofreading.&lt;/strong&gt; No matter what&#xA;happens, you can get as angry as possible at the Editor's, but if there was a mistake in the proofreading version and you did not point it out, it's your mistake, not the journal's.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare the manuscript as perfectly as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; Use the correct template (esp. in LaTeX), follow the (typo)graphic manual of the journal etc. This way, you minimise the changes the Copy Editor/Typesetter has to make, thus minimising the chance of something going wrong. My experience is that the amount of mistakes that appear is highly dependent of the quality of the manuscript when you send it. (Example: We work in LaTeX, and when I receive an article in Word, I have to re-write/revise all the math formulas. Imagine how many mistakes I make during this very stupid process.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are tools that allow a document to be &quot;linearised&quot;. Then you can linearise the accepted version and the proofreading version and compare them. However, I don't have any how-to for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you find a serious mistake after the publication,&lt;/strong&gt; see what errata policy the journal has. In our case, the online version (we're open access) can be corrected, and additionally, Errata are printed in the next suitable issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2019-11-08T13:26:10.127" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T13:26:10.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14332" CreationDate="2013-11-27T15:48:59.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;CV should be short (never more than 2 pages), while the list of publications can be pretty long. You usually mention some publications in the CV (well, if you have an article in Science, you surely do!), but surely not all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of publications is valuable for different reasons: How many collaborators does he have? How many solo publications? What is the variety of topics? etc. CVs and motivation letters are easy-to-manipulate things. You can manipulate your publications, but that is something completely different (and soft-of more dangerous IMHO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T15:48:59.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2013-11-27T15:56:37.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/presentations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Butterick’s Practical Typography &lt;/a&gt; has some great tips for making more readable presentations that don't look like typical PowerPoint ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use a white background&lt;/strong&gt;. High contrast slides can be very exhausting, especially if your presentation is given in a darkened room. In that case, consider a black background with light grey text. Even in bright rooms, using a light grey background with dark grey text reduces eye strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a consistent font size&lt;/strong&gt;. Most presentation programs will automatically adjust the font size based on the text, which just looks messy. It's better to adjust your text so that it displays nicely at your font size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limit the use of color&lt;/strong&gt;. Use color sparingly to emphasize or set apart certain elements. A lot of color quickly distracts from the content, and when every­thing is em­pha­sized, noth­ing is emphasized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I have seen some really good hand-drawn presentations. They have a feeling of authenticity that you can't get from PowerPoint. I've seen two versions of this: using note-taking software, or simply a sequence of photographs of a stack of hand-written sheets of paper. The note-taking software can make it much easier to do certain animations, as you can draw on the slides during your talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T15:56:37.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14358" CreationDate="2013-11-27T16:51:56.793" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;informing anyone that you was their referee is a serious betrayal of the system.&lt;/strong&gt; The fact that the reviews are (at least) single-blind by default has a good reason, which is that you don't feel unsafe writing a very negative review to a paper if it deserves it. As such, it works only if it's standard that this information stays secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a situation when 15 people vote for something in secret vote, but vast majority of them plan to reveal publically their vote. It stresses the minority to state their opinion as they feel it. And the uttermost reason for reviews is that reviewers state their opinion as they feel it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some exceptions when it is acceptable, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you reject to review the paper for whatever reason, you can of course tell them that you saw the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another exception is when the paper is really excellent and contains some breaking results (so that it is really really far from giving a negative review), but even then I would be quite careful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, in some countries, even a randomly-chosen portion of PhD theses get single-blind reviewed after they are published, to ensure that the thesis oponents take it more seriously in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fact that others do it doesn't mean that it's correct.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T16:51:56.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14351" CreationDate="2013-11-27T17:20:32.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer: Yes, of course. No matter what is the formatting on the page, the text is &lt;em&gt;linear&lt;/em&gt;, with the only exceptions being floating objects (figures and tables), which obviously &lt;em&gt;float&lt;/em&gt;. The fact whether the formula is on display or not should have no implication on the punctuation used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue exactly is not much addressed by Knuth in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.org/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mathematical writing&lt;/a&gt;. Still, him being a profesionnal typographer, a mathematician and an author of many books, his opinion on this (which is clear if you open any of his works) is IMHO quite valuable, being a strong reference for proper punctuation. The linked article is definitely worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:26:00.753" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:26:00.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14420" CreationDate="2013-11-27T19:53:06.273" Score="22" ViewCount="9275" Body="&lt;p&gt;How long does it take for a cited paper to show up online? I can see a couple of papers that were cited very recently and the papers containing those citations are currently online since a week or two. How long should I expect it to take before those citations show up as citations through Google Scholar or other indexing services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user825" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T20:03:10.173" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T06:44:27.947" Title="How long does it take for a citation to show up online?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14419" CreationDate="2013-11-27T19:59:47.203" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com&quot;&gt;Web of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt; and other indexing services have their own ways how the papers get into their database. For Scopus, the journal has to be registered there, and then actively send the data. It's similar for Web of Knowledge I think. Google gets the data from who-knows-where and I doubt you can control it efficiently. &lt;em&gt;In general, it takes couple weeks to several months.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;dgraziotin&lt;/strong&gt; pointed out in comments, Google Scholar indexes citations from &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; quite quickly, in couple days. However, by many people and many institutions, arXiv papers are not considered at all regarding citations, unless they are published properly elsewhere and properly Journal-ref'ed; even then, many people don't trust that the arXiv version is correct, because nobody makes any check of this (I mean, you can put whatever Journal-ref to whatever your arXiv paper, so it's not trusted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T11:11:45.367" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T11:11:45.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14404" CreationDate="2013-11-27T20:58:17.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The total amount of funding is difficult to guess. If you can't get detailed information, it's better to just state the number of positions in the grant and the total duration. Even that could be left out. If you're applying within Germany, everybody will know what a &quot;typical&quot; DFG grant includes. For applications somewhere else, I'm not sure how relevant this information would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The personnel related funding received from the DFG is standardized. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/formulare/60_12_-2012-/60_12_2012_de.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; for rates in 2012. The important question here would be wether it's a full-time or part-time position. That is field-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overhead cost is standardized at 20 % of the total funding (at least for recent grants, it has been less earlier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Travel costs and other is really dependent on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T23:59:03.383" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T23:59:03.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2013-11-28T01:48:32.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say even if Newton was going to write a research article related to &quot;law of universal gravitation&quot; would have found related work. Related work gives a broader view of research topic e.g, if newton was going to write article related to &quot;law of universal gravitation&quot; might have given a reference to Aristotle who believed that there is no effect or motion without a cause. &#xA;Now science and technology is so advanced you must find related work. Or might be you are genius invented new field in science and technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9710" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T01:48:32.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13889" CreationDate="2013-11-28T06:08:27.300" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a little surprised your professors won't work with you to allow you to quit gracefully.  If it's for you and you're just moving on I would think they would accommodate you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shorter your time in grad school the less bad it looks for quitting, assuming the employer cares at all.  If you have, say, all complete coursework and just didn't write your thesis/dissertation, that may be looked upon less favorably than just quitting after a semester.  This might tell an employer you can't finish things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many more people walk away from graduate school than finish it, and figuring it out quickly won't reflect negatively on you if you can frame it as if you were moving on, instead of failing out.  You can better form the &quot;it wasn't for me&quot; narrative if you've been decisive about that.  It's good that you've figured out its not for you so quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you want to work in specialized fields or teach something, a Master's degree isn't required.  Employers will nearly always take relevant experience over credentials when applying for a job, and I find they tend to prefer experience, with the credential being a nice plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9590" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T06:08:27.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14436" CreationDate="2013-11-28T07:16:56.150" Score="6" ViewCount="1743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate intending to apply to an American graduate program. In my SOP, I decided to write one paragraph about my final year thesis. However, the truth is that I failed to propose something new in my final year thesis. The only positive things, I believe, is that I have found related papers quickly without any guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope to talk positively about this experience. Is it positive to mention that &quot;I have found papers quickly?&quot; And how to mention such a &quot;failed&quot; final year thesis in SOP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More background information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field: graph theory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor was busy and he did not spend much time discussing the topic with me or teaching me about it. I have a problem understanding papers that are somewhat concise. At last, I had no choice but to change my topic. He only described the topic, did not give any references to read. I found the references by myself, which were exactly what he wished me to read. The time is limited and hence I do not propose many new things in my final year thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T11:50:50.643" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T12:05:11.560" Title="How to mention &quot;failed&quot; final year thesis in SOP?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T08:23:42.560" Score="5" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some very well-known results and equations, e.g., Shanon Capacity formula, Erlang Distribution and Poisson Distribution, etc. Do we have to provide a reference for these results as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also at times we seek help from a user manual while writing a simulation program or conducting a practical experiment. Do we have to provide reference for user manuals as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9710" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T13:14:03.517" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T13:14:03.517" Title="Citation to well-known results and reference to user manuals" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14408" CreationDate="2013-11-28T08:34:23.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will add some supported information to the answer and comments, perhaps more for future reference. There are guidelines for author ship. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors&lt;/a&gt; has written up guidelines for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;authorship and contributorship&lt;/a&gt; based on the Vancouver Protocol. You can also see the post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13946/4394&quot;&gt;Paper contributions and first authorship&lt;/a&gt; The requirements for becoming an author are quite strict. Based of these guidelines you can see whether co-authorship should be reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also check out COPE's &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/2003pdf12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to handle authorship disputes:a guide for new researchers&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/students/authorship-paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Psychology Association APA Student’s guide&lt;/a&gt; for thoughts on authorships and disputes particularly from the perspective of a young scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cap off, your situation is far from ideal. To evaluate possible co-authorships must be made early on. You will inevitably experience people who will bully their way into a paper (pressured authorship) and in some cases such behaviour is more a tradition than abuse (but nevertheless wrong and unethical). But remember that missing to add an author (ghost authorship) is also unethical. What you can do in this case is to contact the editors of the journal to seek their advice. Suggestions to retraction of articles is not something they take lightly. You do, however, need to assess the authorship issue carefully along the guidelines given in the examples above. Whether someone is missing from the acknowledgement or not is cause for any drastic measures. The acknowledgement is the only part where the authors can add thanks etc. as they see fit. It is not even necessary to have an acknowledgement, although that might appear odd to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T08:34:23.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14427" CreationDate="2013-11-28T08:42:35.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first comment will be that it is better to add one reference too many than one too few. Reviewers or editors might suggest to remove references during the review process if they seem superfluous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, it might be more useful to add references to quite basic concepts. One such instance is when papers are directed at least partially to people outside the field. In such cases it may be sufficient to point at a basic book in the field, as an example to point to a good book on statistics regarding the Poisson distribution (the book has to provide some good information on the topic of course). This can help people who may have a different background to get deeper into the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general there is of course a fine line where references are or are not needed and with time one learns to identify this line better. What you can do is to simply look at other papers that you have read and see where they place the line and try to follow their example. That will likely form a very good basis for finding the right level of referencing. But, be aware that the line is different depending on the audience of the publication where the paper is published and you should briefly check to see what is applicable in each journal where you publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T08:42:35.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14426" CreationDate="2013-11-28T08:43:02.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At undergraduate level usually it is expected that student has basic understandings of intended field. Your SoP must state that what kind of motivation you got from your thesis/studies and how it is influencing your decision to select future field of research. Sometime you may select a topic (due to to lack of guidance and experience) which is not suitable to you. If this the case and you want to change your major research area be honest and explain why you want to change and why you are selecting new area of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9710" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T08:43:02.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14427" CreationDate="2013-11-28T10:17:34.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessary to reference &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; well- and generally-known results. For instance, it would be reasonable for somebody to say &quot;by Pythagoras...&quot; instead of trying to find a reference to his original writings ;-) I imagine that the Poisson Distribution would fall into the same category, but not being in your field can't comment on the others. Ultimately, as others have said, this judgement depends on your field and your intended audience. If in doubt, cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re user manuals for software: If you have simply used the manual to learn how to use the software, a reference is not necessary - instead, reference the software itself. However, it would be appropriate to reference the manual if you are quoting from it, or if you are explaining how the software does a particular calculation and your evidence for this is that the manual says so (and perhaps provides more detail than you are including).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T10:17:34.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14445" CreationDate="2013-11-28T11:19:58.630" Score="7" ViewCount="1094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a multidisciplinary person. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science and now I'm working on my master's thesis on strategic intelligence studies. The experience I have in writing both of my master's and bachelor's theses, and the experience of using both of quantitative and qualitative methods show me that there are so many things to learn within the scope of research methodology, be it the methods, the paradigms, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of being lured into one of the related disciplines that I've been exposed to, I'm far more interested in learning the research methodologies which are applicable to them. I want to  learn them all and I want to be able to devise such methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thence my question, where should I begin my journey in learning and mastering research methodology? Is there any university offering such programme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9724" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T08:45:36.210" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T19:23:53.753" Title="How does one learn research methodology?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14426" CreationDate="2013-11-28T12:05:11.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not so sure that your final year thesis has actually 'failed'. It is not actually expected that many students will propose something truly new in their bachelor's thesis. The purpose is to teach you how to research a topic and write about your research. In this case, the fact that your supervisor did not give you much guidance or direction may actually be seen as positive, since you have succeeded in finding the relevant papers on your own, and have (I presume) written a decent paper about your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are now heading into a phase where you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be expected to go beyond a literature search and propose &quot;something new&quot;. Finding the relevant references is a basic skill required of any researcher. So is being able to work independently (that is, without someone always telling you what to do and where to focus your research). Your current supervisor's supervisory style has forced you to do this--point out this fact in your SOP! Take credit for having initiative and independence, and do not see your final year thesis as failed. It may not be outstanding, but it has served the purpose well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T12:05:11.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T13:11:38.460" Score="5" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking forward to finding a university that I could do my PhD in computer science in financial systems and machine learning. Financial systems means Foreign Exchange market or Stock markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any way to look for such universities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background:&#xA;I studied in three universities in Egypt, USA and Singapore for my bachelor in Comp Eng. Worked in two universities as undergrad research assistant (NTU, Singapore and Uni of Arkansas, US). I won several national and international awards and competitions. Now, I'm working as a junior researcher in north Italy (one year of experience, two by the next fall). And I published 4 papers in last 12 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9727" LastEditorUserId="9727" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T11:31:53.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T11:31:53.183" Title="Finding graduate programs supporting a specific research focus" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T13:31:21.463" Score="-2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is not a coherent, exhaustive, or detailed reference. I would like to find a similar resource that explains academic/scientific terms and methodologies clearly, briefly, and in a detailed manner. Ideally, this resource would be freely available on the Internet and provide descriptions that clarify these sorts of terms e.g: theory, theorem, hypothesis, assumption, conjecture, lemma, corollary, law, rule, principle, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T15:40:57.463" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T15:40:57.463" Title="What resources are available for clarifying academic and scientific terminology?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-24T07:08:20.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14442" CreationDate="2013-11-28T15:45:11.880" Score="8" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll get a B.S. in math this December and (hopefully) go to graduate school next fall. In the coming spring semester, I will stay around my undergraduate institution (in the U.S.), auditing classes, attending seminars, talking with faculty and so on. But since I will not be enrolled during the spring, I will lose my access to a lot of University resources. Specifically (not limited to),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will lose access to the secure University Wifi network on campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will not be able to borrow books for free from the University library unless I pay some money to become a member of the alumni association. But more importantly, even if I become a member of the alumni association, I will not have access to any math database (e.g. MathSciNet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will not have access to computer labs in my college where I can print 600 pages of papers for free every semester when enrolled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand University is also a business and I hope I could get used to my situation soon after graduation. But I wonder if there are some ways to improve such an embarrassing situation. What is the best way for me to get access to math databases for instance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9366" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T16:18:00.663" Title="How to get access to university resources after graduation?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2013-11-28T17:20:06.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you find wikipedia not clear and brief enough, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiktionary.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; instead.  Instead of a full scale encyclopedia type site, wiktionary only provides definition and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9542" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T17:20:06.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14440" CreationDate="2013-11-28T18:27:07.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One potential solution: I may register for a one-credit course at the University. It (hopefully) may not cost much and help me get access to standard University resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;: the University library just told me I could get access to math databases through computers on campus libraries by applying for a guest account for free, though I can't get remote access.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9366" LastEditorUserId="9366" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T16:18:00.663" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T16:18:00.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2013-11-28T20:52:40.213" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the result for entering &amp;quot;theorem&amp;quot; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wolfram alpha&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A theorem is a statement that can be demonstrated to be true by accepted mathematical operations and arguments. In general, a theorem is an embodiment of some general principle that makes it part of a larger theory. The process of showing a theorem to be correct is called a proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although not absolutely standard, the Greeks distinguished between &amp;quot;problems&amp;quot; (roughly, the construction of various figures) and &amp;quot;theorems&amp;quot; (establishing the properties of said figures; Heath 1956, pp. 252, 262, and 264).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, any theorem, no matter how difficult to prove in the first place, is viewed as &amp;quot;trivial&amp;quot; by mathematicians once it has been proven. Therefore, there are exactly two types of mathematical objects: trivial ones, and those which have not yet been proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T20:52:40.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T22:31:21.917" Score="17" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for two kinds of data about the great scientists of today, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Their average daily routine of work. Like how many hours and when? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Their average length of time of being able to think continuously. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I vaguely remember seeing a post by Terence Tao about this - like he mentioned that it takes him some x-minutes to focus on a question when he begins working. Though I don't remember if he mentioned any specific length of time for which he can concentrate at a stretch. [..sadly I can't find that post...] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more looking for examples among mathematicians and theoretical physicists though other theory fields might also look more or less the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T11:38:37.070" Title="What do we know about working times of great living scientists?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14432" CreationDate="2013-11-28T23:06:52.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a strong need for learning research methodologies, and many postgraduate research courses require as prerequisite research methodology evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that many institutions do offer specific courses in research methods; the better news is that many offer distance learning and there even some MOOC/Open learning options available. Below are some examples that I'm aware of (I'm sure there are many others):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oli.cmu.edu/courses/future/empirical-research-methods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Learning Initiative&lt;/a&gt; (Open)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.city.ac.uk/courses/cpd/Research-Methodologies-for-Practice-e-learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;City University London&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/taught/med/pg-modules/research-methods-%28distance-learning%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Birmingham&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erm.ecs.soton.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Southampton&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saylor.org/courses/psych202a/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Saylor Academy&lt;/a&gt; (Open)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acs.edu.au/courses/research-project-iii-377.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/research-methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;squillion books on research methods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastEditorUserId="23242" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T08:23:47.390" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T08:23:47.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14458" CreationDate="2013-11-29T04:08:24.533" Score="15" ViewCount="3030" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paper of mine has been under review for more than a year now. About 6 months ago I heard from the journal that one referee report is in while they are waiting for the 2nd. The editor promised he would get in touch with the Associate Editor to speed up the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, nothing has happened until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of withdrawing the paper citing excessively long review times. Could I ask for the one review that the journal received on my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good way to frame the withdrawal email with the request for the journal office to be kind enough to share at least the single referee's report they received?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9734" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T06:51:40.193" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T06:51:40.193" Title="A year + for first review, one referee report in, want to withdraw paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14451" CreationDate="2013-11-29T05:34:27.987" Score="3" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have any prior experience of publishing any kind of research material, it would be a huge favour if you can give your comments in the following matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a thesis related to Seismic Image Processing, the author has proposed a method for Automatic Fault Detection, I have implemented that method and I have improved the results of the method by introducing some more equations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, given the above situation can I publish my findings ? and how should I quote that thesis in the publication ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion/comment/idea is welcome. &#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9735" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T13:46:05.203" Title="Can I write Research Paper on improving results of a Phd thesis" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14450" CreationDate="2013-11-29T06:58:12.147" Score="1" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I am not asking for name suggestions. I am just not sure how to express very well the content of my paper. The paper theoretically compares four algorithms, and nominates and implements one of them. I found many papers in the literature which started with the name &lt;code&gt;Comparative analysis&lt;/code&gt;. Does this term apply to my paper? (In all the literature I've found they implement all algorithms, not just one.) If this term does not apply, is there a proper term that can pinpoint the content? More specifically, my paper compares four pattern recognition algorithms and implements one of them that theoretically seems to be the best. Does &lt;strong&gt;(Selection and Implementation of an Algorithm for optimizing ... system)&lt;/strong&gt; properly express the content of my paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T15:51:11.563" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T15:51:11.563" Title="Title for a paper that theoretically compares several algorithms and implements one" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14449" CreationDate="2013-11-29T07:25:18.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult to choose a title without more information, but why not choose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Performing ..., theoretical comparison of four algorithms, and implementation of ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9737" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T07:25:18.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14447" CreationDate="2013-11-29T13:14:38.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is standard practice. Someone does work and publishes it. Someone, possibly same people, but not necessarily, improves on the work and publish that. The fact that it is a thesis should make no difference, so long as the work being improved upon reflects the state of the art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T13:46:05.203" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T13:46:05.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14447" CreationDate="2013-11-29T13:25:42.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best practice would be, IMHO, to contact that person, discuss your ideas with them, and make a common paper with them. In general, they will be interested in it (if they stayed in science), and you're sure you don't offend them or anyone. At least for me (in Math/CS), this is the way to go if you really &quot;improve&quot; some other's work. It might be a bit different if you &quot;build on&quot; their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You quote the thesis as any other source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe. &lt;em&gt;My most stupid work on Josh phenomenon.&lt;/em&gt; PhD Thesis, University of Neverland, Nevercity, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(These are the mandatory fields. You can add ISBN, number of pages etc. if you wish.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In BibTeX, it should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@phdthesis { doe_2013,&#xA;  author = {Doe, John},&#xA;  title = {My Most Stupid Work on {J}osh Phenomenon},&#xA;  publisher = {University of Neverland, Nevercity},&#xA;  year = {2013},&#xA;  pages = {666}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T13:32:59.000" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T13:32:59.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14449" CreationDate="2013-11-29T13:36:44.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go for something brave:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Algorithmic Jungle on GPU: QuickSort, HeapSort and ShakeSort Compared.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you implement one of them should be mentioned in the abstract, however, it seems to be too long for the title, and people don't like too long titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the implementation is more important for you, then maybe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QuickSort Implemented on GPU for Sorting Ducks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T13:36:44.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-29T20:31:39.313" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;My faculty has asked for permission to republish one of my articles. This is planned to appear in an upcoming magazine within the school I am currently working in. I have already asked the permission for republishing. It is an IEEE article, but I have some issues about the new printing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person in charge of the magazine has told me that they need the change the format of the article, so that it is according the magazine standard. Anyway they plan to change the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- size of the font&#xA;- convert from two columns to one column&#xA;- referencing of the tables and graphs in APA style (I think IEEE uses another format)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the content would be left unchanged. I have seen that in the Certification of Clearance sent to me by IEEE states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All uses not specifically authorized in this license and specified in&#xA;  the options for reusing IEEE Licensed Material available through the&#xA;  RightsLink service are prohibited, including (i) altering or modifying&#xA;  the Licensed Material in any manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in other part it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the Licensed Material is altered or modified in any manner, it must&#xA;  be within the scope of the license granted and it must not alter the&#xA;  meaning of the Licensed Material or in any way reflect negatively on&#xA;  the IEEE or any writer of the Licensed Material&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So according to this, can they change the format? &#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T20:49:10.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T20:55:13.213" Title="Is it acceptable to modify the format when republishing an article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14454" CreationDate="2013-11-29T20:55:13.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many types of rights related to intellectual property, and it is important to understand them correctly. The one you're dealing with here is copyright, which covers the text, graphics illustrations, and other possible graphic media (video, if your paper include any).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the copyright which you transferred to them does only cover these elements. Once they give you permission to reproduce the text and graphics, you can reproduce them in any way you want, following the license. But the presentation (fonts, page layout, etc.) is not part of the copyrighted material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T20:55:13.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14446" CreationDate="2013-11-30T08:33:08.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually had a similar situation some years ago. I don't think my experience is very useful, but I will briefly recap it in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to a journal in October 2009. In April 2010, after several requests, I was told that one referee had given a report, and the journal was still waiting on the second report. The journal then sent me the report at that time (in April), though I gather that was not standard procedure, and as far as I can see, I did not explicitly ask for it, though I had been repeatedly asking for feedback of any kind. The journal wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, we got a report from the first referee. The referee's opinion&#xA;  is rather negative. As a rule, we do not send a negative report before&#xA;  we get a report from the second referee. Taking into account your&#xA;  will, we send the first referee report to you - please find it below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SInce we have not yet got the second referee report, &#xA;  there is no editorial decision concerning your paper.&#xA;  We hope to receive the second referee report in April.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know exactly what was meant by &quot;taking into account your will&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second report never arrived, and I withdrew my paper in September 2010, slightly less than a year after submitting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you ask your journal for the one report. You might want to wait on withdrawing it till you hear what the report says. You could say that you would like to use the first report to improve the paper while waiting for the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they refuse, I guess you could then say that you are withdrawing the paper, and then ask for the report again. If you are going to withdraw the paper, this marks the end of the process from the journal's point of view, and I don't see why they would refuse feedback that might help you. Of course, they might refuse regardless. I imagine that individual journals would have different policies about such things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T09:24:27.883" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T09:24:27.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14446" CreationDate="2013-11-30T09:23:54.180" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question I must acknowledge the comment that times vary between disciplines (and to some extent journals). You should therefore check what applies to the journal where you submitted your manuscript. Based on what you find you can start thinking about withdrawing the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective what you describe sounds like good grounds for withdrawing and trying a different journal. In my field (Environmental sciences) and in the journal where I am editor-in-chief, the time from submission to acceptance can be anything from a month and a half to slightly less than a year, but then the long times involve revision and a second round of reviews. If what you describe happened in &quot;my&quot; journal i would be very sympathetic to a request to withdraw. One could argue that because you have received a review you should feel obliged to stay because of the work the journal editors have put in, but then one must also consider the work they have not done, which is following up on the lack of response. It would not be too much work to assign a third reviewer when lack of response from the second becomes obvious. So in the end I think the journal seems to suffer from internal problems. A lack of response from a reviewer (which is not uncommon) should not halt the process for a paper. So with the assumption that turnover times in your field are within what I see as normal in mine, I think you have a good case for asking to withdraw your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my view, this is what I would do. I would write a polite letter to the editor explaining that you have decided to withdraw the paper because of the (severe) delays you have experienced. You do not need to point out the obvious short-comings of the journal but explain how the delays affect your personal situation. We all need publications to strengthen funding applications, job applications, promotions, evaluations etc. so significant delays have negative effects. Now it is of course not a responsibility of a journal to help your career but in a case like this, there is little point in blaming a (failed) process within which you have no insight, so focus on the effects it possibly has for you. And keep it brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T09:55:29.160" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T09:55:29.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14460" CreationDate="2013-11-30T14:48:48.307" Score="4" ViewCount="1068" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to submitting a Journal article, I had a conversation with my supervisor about whether it was suitable for a letter (max 4 pages) or a more detailed article (max 12 pages). My position was that the core contribution (a new method) could be concisely and completely be described in less than 4 pages, and should therefore be a letter. The complication was that some progress had been made on the application of the method to a particular problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefore wanted to publish the first letter straight away, and later publish a second letter later dealing with the application. My supervisor didn't like this idea. He said it was &quot;playing the game&quot; to increase one's own H-index, and it was more suited to a single article. I subsequently took his advice to submit a full length article. However, now (with the article submitted over 3 months ago, and still under editorial review) he has changed his mind and says it's &quot;up to me&quot; as to whether I would like to withdraw it and resubmit as 2 letters...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is whether there is any disadvantage to publishing research as a series of short (more concise/readable, and faster reviewed) letters in the same Journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In this journal the letters are also mandated as open access, which is an option rarely used for the full length articles, and may improve findability)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="9680" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T16:16:40.060" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T08:34:23.877" Title="Full length articles or multiple letters to publish in Journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14459" CreationDate="2013-11-30T16:58:53.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to go through with the submission as is. If you were to withdraw the manuscript you would then have to write the two new papers and go through review for each of them. These steps take a lot of time and effort, both of which you could spend on original research (e.g. use this new method to solve various other problems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only case where the resubmittal might be interesting is if your results are so novel and significant that you are almost sure you can publish them in a high-profile journal (more prestigious than the current one). Then again, if they had this kind of potential I guess your advisor would have spotted it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, having two papers (one of them as a letter in a prestigious journal) is of course more gratifying than one long publication and looks better on the CV. There are however two points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The results need to be important enough to warrant publication as a letter. In particular, the (uncertain) benefit of having it published must compensate the investment in time and effort (see above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;long paper&quot; should contain enough new material to stand on its own. &quot;Salami slicing&quot;, also known as the search for the &quot;minimum publishable unit&quot;, is frowned upon. Although this behavior is not apparent from the publication list, it can be detected by careful examination (e.g. by the candidate's referee on a hiring committee).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5208/sending-a-paper-to-a-letters-journal&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T08:34:23.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14462" CreationDate="2013-11-30T17:56:30.040" Score="1" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious about this -  I'm currently undergoing a Masters degree and am almost finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finished the coursework, however I still have the thesis project &lt;em&gt;plus&lt;/em&gt; the thesis. And it's looking unlikely for the Spring semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My prof is a little bit agitated, but i'm just strapped for time. I'm working full-time and school is simply becoming second-fiddle to work. I come home from work, and if I'm lucky I can spend 20 minutes on school material. Weekends are tough also, as I travel to meet family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I feel that taking a semester off only hurts my overall situation. Because even being registered for 1 hour of thesis credit is a sort-of motivation for me. I.E &quot;OK i'm paying money so I better get my money's worth&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I see the other argument which is &quot;well if you knowyou can't graduate this semester then why not just do the work without paying.. then register  the following semester?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am worried that there'll be some hidden snag associated with re-enrolling? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have advice/suggestions? Intuitively i'd rather pay-up and at least stay enrolled, but I caan sympathize with my prof's view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="621" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T18:25:19.373" Title="What are the risks associated with taking a semester off while doing a Master's degree?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14461" CreationDate="2013-11-30T18:25:19.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know several people who have deferred their degree's at all levels for one reason or another.  In all these cases, the student has spoken not just to their professor but to the relevant department admin person and it's been pretty straight forward to enrol and pick up from where they left off.  None of them have suffered from taking time out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to ask yourself a couple of questions so you can figure out which is the best solution for you.  Here's a few that spring to mind....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is taking a semester out really going to solve your time problem?  If you will have the same issue again the next semester you enrol in then taking time out is probably a little pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take time out, do you think you will stay motivated enough to re-enrol again?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stick with it this semester, what can you do to generate more time?  You mentioned you travel to see family at weekends - is this something you can stop doing for the semester or is visiting an absolute necessity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9692" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T18:25:19.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15892" CreationDate="2013-11-30T18:35:18.463" Score="8" ViewCount="1572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a double major in mathematics and electrical engineering. Towards the end of my mathematics major, I began to develop an interest in combinatorics (specifically graph theory), and am seriously considering a Ph.D. in the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having developed the interest late, my senior thesis will be in a different topic (complex ODEs), but I would have completed one course in combinatorics/graph theory (an upper-level undergraduate course using a grad-level text - I expect a strong reference from the professor teaching this course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courses I have completed are basically both the undergraduate and graduate-level algebra sequence,  analysis in R and R^n (without a formal introduction to Lebesgue measure), discrete math (for EECS), applied probability, one course in numerical methods, PDEs, applied complex variables, and a &quot;mathematical methods for sciences&quot; course (focusing on special functions, variational calculus, and integral transforms). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't have the standard math major courses(i.e,  topology, measure theory, and number theory.) I plan to focus more on applications than theory in my combinatorics Ph.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would additional coursework be necessary for a Ph.D. in combinatorics (specifically graph theory)? (I could potentially delay my degree by a year and spend time as a non-degree student at another university, or complete a non-thesis track master's degree before applying for a masters/Ph.d.). Any advice would be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9756" LastEditorUserId="621" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T19:30:19.943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:40:53.980" Title="Undergraduate prerequisites for a Ph.d. in combinatorics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-11-30T18:56:25.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about giving a summarized, quick answer and then saying &quot;I'll have more details soon&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if someone asks me a question and there's a &quot;summary version&quot; I like to give that at least give that summary info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's worth experimenting with. I wish I had an example. Well here's a the basic idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Student: &quot;Is there a difference between how we see stars and planets&#xA;  in the sky?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor: &quot;Yep, one of these celestial objects twinkles. Reflect on&#xA;  that , and I'll give the full monty after I finish this.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totally realize it can be annoying/vexing to be a little derailed, but if we want to accommodate the curious students, we may be best served by giving them a snap-shot/summary/challenging-yet-telling answer without feeling derailed. The fact is that a snap-answer of &quot;I'll get to that soon&quot; is a little useless. Well at least to me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, no doubt instructing is an art!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="621" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:59:10.160" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:59:10.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14437" CreationDate="2013-11-30T21:10:41.097" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three easy suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for advisors, not programs.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's unlikely that any department is going to have a separate program, or even a separate research group, with your particular focus.   Look for authors of papers that you've read about financial systems and machine learning.  (You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; read such papers, haven't you?)  Then look at the authors they cite, and the authors that cite them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't limit yourself to computer science departments.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you do good research, nobody cares what department is listed on your diploma.  (And if you don't plan to do good research, you don't really want a PhD.)  &lt;em&gt;Lots&lt;/em&gt; of faculty and students in non-CS departments do excellent computer science research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your faculty mentors.&lt;/strong&gt;  After working at six universities, you've built a large professional academic network; exploit it!  Your faculty colleagues will be considerably more familiar with programs in their (and your) particular focus than Random Strangers on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T21:10:41.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-30T23:54:00.150" Score="15" ViewCount="1355" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a third year graduate student (theoretical physics) I need to find out methods to understand if I am doing well or not, am I making progress or not, am I putting in enough effort or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I judge/measure my performance? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course a primary skew in my situation is that I found an advisor only towards the end of my second year of PhD. (..before that I was working in other groups on topics which I didn't like at all..) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="6683" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:31:08.057" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T07:44:24.753" Title="How does a graduate student judge if one is slacking off?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14466" CreationDate="2013-12-01T07:43:38.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that one factor should be &quot;ask your advisor&quot;. Depending on the relationship that you have, they might be best placed to give you an honest opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T07:43:38.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14466" CreationDate="2013-12-01T07:44:24.753" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good question, and one that's rather difficult to answer. I'll say a few things though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;being able to judge your own level of progress and evaluate yourself honestly but fairly is a crucial part of your development. After all, you won't have an advisor for very long, but you'll be a researcher for a long time. So it's good that you're asking this question&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research has many phases, and to evaluate your progress it's important to recognize which phase you're in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in an exploratory phase where you're looking at different topics to see what might be worth pursuing, you should be reading a lot. A plausible metric here could be whether you're reading something every day, and if you're getting a sense of familiarity with the literature (you know citations without having to look up the bibliography, you keep encountering papers you've read before, and so on)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when you are working on a particular problem, do you have an idea that you're trying ? If not, what are you doing to search for the next idea ? do you have concrete tests of whether the idea is going to fail or not ? If you're thinking concretely and constructively, then you'll automatically make progress (notice that I'm not talking about how long it takes, but rather whether you see paths to progress)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when you're writing up work, are you methodically identifying things that need to be edited/cleaned/removed, and are you spending enough time each day working on these. When there's a lot of grunt work to do, time spent is a good measure of productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, students (and researchers!) often become unproductive when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they don't know what to do next, and don't know to ask, or how to find something to do next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have things to do next, but are overwhelmed/fearful, and avoid doing them, or fritter away time in busy work (getting the exact right font for the title, for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is not to get caught up in doing things at a certain rate, or worry about the large-scale,  but rather &lt;strong&gt;ensure that you always have something to do next&lt;/strong&gt;. If you don't, that's when you go talk to your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T07:44:24.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T19:54:42.363" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do admission committees start evaluating applications before deadline? I mean is there any point in sending application before deadlines? My main concern is USA universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T19:54:42.363" Title="Is there any point in submitting application earlier?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-12-02T01:33:11.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14239" CreationDate="2013-12-01T20:56:01.543" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibbase.org&quot;&gt;BibBase.org&lt;/a&gt;. It's a free web service that I created with the aim to solve the problem you describe. I was originally motivated by the third point (easy to maintain). As input you can use a bibtex file, Zotero, or Mendeley, and unlike bib2html you don't need to rerun any program after making changes to your input. Visitors can resort by different criteria (author, year, keyword, number of downloads, type), get the bibtex source entry (even when not using bibtex as input), and subscribe to an RSS. Here is an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isi.edu/integration/karma/#publication&quot;&gt;http://www.isi.edu/integration/karma/#publication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Disclaimer: I'm the creator of BibBase.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9763" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T21:36:39.967" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T21:36:39.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T21:29:35.810" Score="8" ViewCount="1951" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for interesting conferences I stumbled upon some remarks that there were &lt;em&gt;presented papers&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;distributed papers&lt;/em&gt; at a conference session. This distinction was new to me, so I did some web searches: It turns out that this is pretty common among the International Sociological Association and the European Sociological Association. According to one of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3awww.isa-sociology.org/pdfs/rc15newsletter_march_2010.pdf&quot;&gt;Conference FAQs&lt;/a&gt; a &quot;distributed paper is a written paper which the author(s) brings along to the session to distribute to those attending&quot; in contrast to an actually &lt;em&gt;presented paper&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/32574-accepted-as-a-distributed-paper-is-it-worth-it/&quot;&gt;individual cost–benefit analysis&lt;/a&gt; whether that kind of a conference contribution is worth the effort (and fees), but it is hard to do the math withouth any experiences what I could expect from such a conference contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have experience with this format? I am especially interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of feedback (quantity and quality) can I expect from a &lt;em&gt;distributed paper&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In comparison to a poster or a normal presentation, what could be advantages of a &lt;em&gt;distributed paper&lt;/em&gt; for the &quot;distributor&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have suggestions how I could optimize a &quot;distributed paper&quot; to get better feedback (or feedback at all)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9762" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T17:27:53.703" Title="What is a &quot;distributed paper&quot; and is it worth the effort?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10008" CreationDate="2013-12-02T06:13:45.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer for you depends on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; purposes and standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're hoping to rule out the possibility that any published prior art is relevant to a patent claim, no database will be anywhere near the degree of completeness that you would prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, every database is complete for some purpose. For example, my understanding is that Web of Knowledge has at least a mere mention (a journal title, volume number, and page number) for every item that has been cited in the core literature since the end of the nineteenth century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That presumes a definition of core literature that is decided by Thomson Reuters editors in the form of the product's &quot;master journal list&quot; on the basis of Bradford's law. Those seeking an introduction to Bradford's law could start with Sturgeon's law, which apologized for the low quality of much science fiction by observing that &quot;90% of everything is crap.&quot; Bradford's law is the more specific, better studied converse in regard to scientific journals, that if we can examine a small but highly valuable fraction of them all, then for many purposes we can ignore the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T06:13:45.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10008" CreationDate="2013-12-02T09:58:11.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Previous research has shown strong evidence that there is a &lt;strong&gt;language bias&lt;/strong&gt; in academic databases in the social sciences and humanities[1]. However, evidence for the sciences is mixed: Some cannot find an US bias using the Science Citation Index (SCI)[2], others actually identify also a strong language bias in the SCI[3].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you have to consider differences in &lt;strong&gt;publication cultures&lt;/strong&gt; between disciplines: The humanities and social sciences still approve &lt;em&gt;monographs&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;edited books&lt;/em&gt; as publications which are seldom listed in theses databases.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[1] Bookstein, A./Yitzhaki,  M. (1999): Own-language preference: A new measure of “relative language self-citation”, in: Scientometrics, 46 (2), 337-348.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hicks, D. (1999): The difficulty of achieving full coverage of international social science literature and the bibliometric consequences, in: Scientometrics (1999), 44 (2), 193-215.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hicks, D./Wang, J. (2011): Coverage and overlap of the new social sciences and humanities journal lists, in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62 (2), 284–294&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Yitzhaki,  M. (1998): The ‘language preference’ in sociology: Measures of ‘language self-citation’, ‘relative own-language preference indicator’, and ‘mutual use of languages’, in: Scientometrics, 41 (1-2), 243-254.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[2] Van Leeuwen, T. N. et al. (2001): Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequencesfor international comparisons of national research performance, in: Scientometrics, 51 (1), 335-346.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[3] Luwel, M. (1999): Is the science citation index US-biased? in: Scientometrics, 46 (3), 549-562.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;King, D. A. (2004): The scientific impact of nations, in: Nature, 430, 311-316.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[4] Nederhof, A. J. (2006): Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review, in: Scientometrics, 66 (1), 81-100.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T09:58:11.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1369" CreationDate="2013-12-02T10:16:11.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to ease the process of making your data/code open. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://centerforopenscience.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Center for Open Science&lt;/a&gt; is an interesting non-profit that started this year. They're developing &lt;a href=&quot;https://openscienceframework.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Open Science Framework&lt;/a&gt;, which is a tool meant to assist with the research workflow--it facilitates collaboration, version control, and it reduces making your data/code open (completely or in parts) to a single click.  I guess the strategy is to lure researchers into using the software by making a useful tool, and hoping that if openness is only a click away, more of them will just click the button. I could see this or something like it making a real impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9765" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T10:16:11.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13479" CreationDate="2013-12-02T10:19:35.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;private tutoring&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to be a great way to earn money on the side as an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This often just involves going through exam papers with your tutee (e.g. studying Maths A-levels, GCSEs etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great pay: ~£15-30/hr (depending on whether you are free-lance or via some agency or academy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexible hours: Often demand for tuition is after school hours ~5-7pm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewarding and satisfying, your students remember you and may one day be great interns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-improvement:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep up to date on pre-university curriculum/vocablurary (good if you need to lecture 1st year undergrads)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping afresh the fundamental concepts &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great way to network with parents who may be in areas of business you may be interested in future&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9764" LastEditorUserId="9764" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T09:06:28.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T09:06:28.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2013-12-02T11:09:55.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, most questions are due to the need to feel clever.. less are due to the need to understand more. In both cases, instructor has to appreciate the question. Whether or not you will immediately answer, is a different issue from having to making the student feel appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychology is an important part of learning. Hence, it is an essential part of teaching is to make students feel good. Your immediate response must be positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I like it when you think ahead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That is the right question; congrats&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, it depends on your judgement if you want to answer immediately, or simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your answer is coming up in a moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stay tuned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;alternatively, some people defer questions to the end of session. That has more negatives than positives. I prefer to keep them engaged and encourage them to challenge my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9033" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T11:09:55.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14342" CreationDate="2013-12-02T15:55:24.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's some empirical evidence from my experience - having done three very late applications in the past which all ended with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my past experience. No problem applying late - even the last hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jobs 2013:&lt;/em&gt; I have made &lt;em&gt;last hour&lt;/em&gt; applications for two job posts recently, one for Computational Biologist at ICL and one for Bioinformatician at ICL. Both led to interviews followed by acceptance. Remarkably, the Computational Biologist post stated that &quot;it is essential that the post holder has a PhD&quot;, which I did not have! I have now started this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;MSc Course 2012:&lt;/em&gt; I was the last applicant of the Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems MSc with CISBIO - most people applied during their BSc e.g. many on the course applied February but I applied in October after finishing my BSc! Not only was I accepted, but I got a scholarship that I did not even apply for! In the interview panel was a chair of BBSRC research grant, who set me up with the scholarship after the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9764" LastEditorUserId="9764" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T08:33:24.627" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:33:24.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2013-12-02T18:12:19.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you suggest somewhat sounds like a series of applications of some concept. If that is the case, and assuming you're not salami slicing but present a well thought out selection of applications of the concept, why not talk to a journal editor about this? A series of papers exploring a particular topic from different application perspectives isn't unheard of.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So if your idea is as good as you think, you should be able to find an editor. And if the selection isn't that concise (i.e. each new paper doesn't provide enough new stuff), your book wouldn't be worth its money anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T18:12:19.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2640" CreationDate="2013-12-02T19:13:13.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (biology), I think that taking a couple of years off before grad school provided me with an advantage during applications. Granted, I was working at a biotech company, so I was still developing &quot;relevant&quot; expertise (though in the end, it wasn't really relevant to what I worked on for my dissertation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the most important consideration is that you continue to learn during your hiatus. Fluency in a foreign language can be very valuable in academia -- I expect that there are a lot of top-notch computer scientists in Japan. Ideally, you would be able to establish relationships with Japanese CS students/researchers; I'd bet that many of the students are itching for help learning/practicing English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few reasons that older applicants may be more attractive in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not continuing in school by default/inertia, and so are more likely to complete the program&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are more mature, so they are less likely to cause drama in the department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can bring outside perspective into their research. The academic career machine places a big emphasis on &quot;shaking things up&quot; and learning from a wide variety of situations/mentors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also see a couple of possible downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some fields have a youth cult, where they think that radical thinking comes from young researchers. Specifically, I'm thinking of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mathematics&lt;/a&gt;, though this may apply to CS. In contrast, the conventional wisdom is that biologists value experience and perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be older when you graduate and start your academic career. This may not be a big deal if your grad programs are short (5 years). A low salary and the need to chase jobs across the country/globe may not seem like a problem when you are 21 and healthy, but things are different when you are 30 and have responsibilities and are not as strong as you once were.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T19:13:13.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5638" CreationDate="2013-12-02T19:49:33.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: my perspective is from doctorate-granting biology departments in the USA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate research experience comes in two flavors -- work-study (paid) or for class credit (often a senior/honors thesis). Both are valuable, and I expect that most departments do not have very specific expectations for professors aside from some basic effort to provide undergraduate research opportunities. Professors at these institutions are judged based on both research and teaching, and undergraduate research is just a small part of the teaching that these professors do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see how universities present undergraduate research opportunities to the students (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://uraf.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.berkeley.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UC Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;), but I doubt that you will find publications describing how these programs influence faculty promotions. Faculty can receive &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.berkeley.edu/distinguished/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;awards&lt;/a&gt; for undergraduate mentoring. Such awards are nice to place on one's CV when applying for promotions, but that this is secondary to research, graduate student mentoring, and teaching classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my personal opinion on undergraduate research. Even if an undergraduate is only washing dishes and making media (sterile technique!), they are still being exposed to the laboratory environment and learning what level of rigor is required to do research. Given their other commitments (such as class), their inexperience, and their limited conceptual preparation, undergraduates should not be expected to accomplish anything of note. Their inclusion in research projects should be structured to support and advance the work of full-time lab members, with the expectation that undergraduates will learn from any exposure to research projects. Finally, they can provide graduate students and post-docs with the opportunity to learn how to be mentors themselves, which is an essential part of their training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T19:49:33.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T01:38:12.353" Score="14" ViewCount="3694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just submitted my applications to all the grad schools I am considering. Is there anything I can do during the wait to help my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8794" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:09:01.633" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T14:56:12.760" Title="I just submitted my PhD applications. What do I do now?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T02:36:15.023" Score="18" ViewCount="53537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently applied for an academic job that did not request letters of recommendation at the time of application, but only a list of potential references. I just now received an email from the search committee chair that I had made it to the &quot;short list&quot; and to please contact my references to arrange for my letters to be sent.  I thought that a &quot;short list&quot; was the list of people who were going to be flown out for an in-person interview, but it seems that the &quot;short list&quot; in this context just means &quot;the list of candidates whose letters of reference we'd like to see&quot;.  Is there an agreed-upon definition of &quot;short list&quot; that I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9774" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T00:12:26.507" Title="What does it mean to be on a short list?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14488" CreationDate="2013-12-03T02:56:30.397" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope, there's no widely agreed upon definition of &quot;short list&quot;.  Sometimes a committee draws up an official short list, while sometimes people informally talk about a short list based on who is being seriously considered even if there's no official list.  Sometimes the short list consists of the people being interviewed, sometimes it's the people for whom letters are being requested, and sometimes it's in between.  Things can get more complicated when there are several forms of interviews (e.g., interviews at an annual meeting vs. fly-ins).  Sometimes a reference to the short list is a meaningless pleasantry meant to soften the blow of rejection when a committee member knows an applicant personally.  Ultimately, the only thing you can say for sure is that it's better to be on the short list than off it.  Beyond that, you have to guess from context or ask for clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T02:56:30.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14486" CreationDate="2013-12-03T03:39:29.457" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything I can do during the wait to help my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer assuming you are applying to programs that work like most U.S. math graduate programs.  In other words, programs where admissions are decided by a departmental committee, rather than by individual professors, and where there are no interviews or other direct involvement of the applicant after the application is submitted.  For other sorts of systems, I'm not competent to offer any advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a first approximation, there's nothing you can do during the wait to help your application.  It's best to find a distraction and try not to worry about it.  That being said, there are several things to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should make sure your letter writers actually submit their letters.  Every year, a few letter writers are many weeks late, and this can cause real damage.  Even once you have submitted everything you are responsible for, the application is not complete until enough letters are received.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting in touch with potential advisors might help, but it should be done exceedingly sparingly.  If the content of your e-mail amounts to &quot;please look at my application&quot; or &quot;see how great I am&quot;, it will only annoy people.  &quot;Please estimate my chances of admission&quot; is even worse.  I'd recommend restricting pre-admission e-mails to cases where you have something genuinely substantive to say.  For example, if you have intellectually serious comments or ideas related to the person's research, then that's always worth an e-mail.  Same thing if you would like to bring their attention to a paper of yours that is closely connected with their work.  A good test is whether you would still send the e-mail even if you weren't applying to their university.  I don't recommend manufacturing a contrived reason to send e-mail, but if you never got in touch with someone whose research you extended, now would be a good time to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's usually possible to add information to your file if something important comes up (e.g., a paper acceptance or a prize).  This is not worth even trying unless it's a real improvement in your file, and you certainly shouldn't make repeated changes in an attempt to draw attention to your file (any additional attention will be negative).  However, if you get good news you should consider sharing it.  The best news is often financial: if you get a fellowship that would pay for one or more years of grad school, then you should definitely add this information to your file.  It's both a serious vote of confidence from another organization and a real savings to the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T03:39:29.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14486" CreationDate="2013-12-03T05:12:52.593" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should follow Anonymous Mathematician's advice. The very unhealthy thing to do is to obsessively update the Results Search at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegradcafe.com&quot;&gt;http://www.thegradcafe.com&lt;/a&gt;. It does pass the time, though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T05:12:52.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31848" CreationDate="2013-12-03T06:43:18.667" Score="2" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper that describes a programming language that I am developing as part of my PhD. I think that writing the paper using an example can greatly improve how the paper is understood. Is there a &quot;standard&quot; example that is used in programming languages paper? A set of examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="828" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T08:46:31.327" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T13:16:53.430" Title="Is there a standard system example for writing papers which introduce a newly developed programming language?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14496" CreationDate="2013-12-03T08:00:38.747" Score="20" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12514/is-it-unethical-to-submit-for-review-multiple-articles-which-overlap-in-some-res&quot;&gt;recent question&lt;/a&gt; on how to deal with submitting several papers on similar subjects at the same time, one of the (good) practices suggested by the answers is make sure that they cite each other, and that each result appears as original only in one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may want to put informative references from one to the other; for example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paper A &quot;An application of this result is in paper B&quot;; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paper B: &quot;We apply this result from paper A&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of providing all the relevant context to the reader, this might be the most informative thing to do. However, the other use of citations is for computing metrics, and in this respect this practice could be seen as a dishonest way to improve one's citation count, since you get two (self-)citations instead of the one you'd normally get if the two paper were not written simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the question in the title: Is this practice recommendable and/or acceptable? Or should I decide an implicit temporal order for my simultaneous papers, and only cite older ones from newer ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:46:59.650" Title="Should my citation graph be acyclic?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14495" CreationDate="2013-12-03T08:20:53.103" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the two papers are already written and submitted at the same time, I don't see why not. You are right about the upsides: &lt;strong&gt;making information easier to find for the reader&lt;/strong&gt;. This is one of the purposes of citations! The only small addition I would make is that &lt;strong&gt;you should submit a copy of B along with A&lt;/strong&gt; (and the other way around), so &lt;strong&gt;the reviewers can evaluate the need for this citation&lt;/strong&gt; (as they do with “regular” citations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to end on a practical note: &lt;strong&gt;this will probably no inflate your citation count anyway&lt;/strong&gt;. You submit your two papers at a time, then let's say A is accepted before B. So A is published with a reference to &lt;em&gt;“B: F. Poloni, submitted for publication”&lt;/em&gt;, which won't be counted in citation databases. Then when B comes out, it will feature a proper citation to A (either in full, or through DOI if A does not yet have full citation information), and this citation will be included in databases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T08:20:53.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14506" CreationDate="2013-12-03T09:29:36.953" Score="14" ViewCount="3241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a master student in mathematics studying in Europe and I am applying to several graduate schools in the USA. They aren't all Top 10 in these dubious rankings, but I am applying to Harvard, Northwestern and Rutgers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, in the first paragraph of my letter of motivation (=letter of intent, statement of purpose, personal statement, ...) I explain how I overcame a big slump (=phase in which I had not much motivation to learn maths) which I went through after completing my bachelor, so roughly 1 year ago. &#xA;I mention it because this was an important experience to me, and as a result I feel like a more mature mathematician, and I am now confident that I want to do maths in my life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I read that one should never put negative things about oneself in the letter of motivation, so right now I'm having doubts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could people on the admission committee consider having gone through a slump a negative point? Do they only want to hear how awesome I was my entire life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9776" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T20:15:45.317" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T21:28:13.307" Title="Should I mention a &quot;math depression&quot; I went through in my letter of motivation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14515" CreationDate="2013-12-03T11:51:34.977" Score="3" ViewCount="2920" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student who wants to do research in computer graphics field. I would like to know how a computer science masters degree and a computer graphics and Game Technology (goes with similar names at different universities) would affect my future Ph.D. applications and career, upon graduating from the masters program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I should also mention that some of the &quot;Computer Graphics and ...&quot; master programs are 1 year long. (No thesis I assume?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T06:05:31.283" Title="Computer Science vs Computer Graphics Masters" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-03-31T13:10:11.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14509" CreationDate="2013-12-03T12:21:13.030" Score="2" ViewCount="7699" Body="&lt;p&gt;When graduating from a university in the UK you are often conferred with an award before the graduation ceremony.  I am therefore seeking clarification as to what date should be written on documents such as job application forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For an bachelor's degree, do I use the ceremony date or the award date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a PhD, do I use the date of the viva voce or the ceremony date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4485" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T15:01:30.690" Title="What date should I use for graduation?" Tags="&lt;awards&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:17:34.610" Score="11" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course in academic writing covering the writing aspects, the very basics of research skills, such as referencing works, plus related college skills. At this point in the term, quite a number of foreign students have begun to express frustration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some wish they can organize their papers in more “creative” ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some want to share their feelings and personal experiences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some see the style guide rules as overly pedantic or finicky.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't like the many “restrictions” dictating how they should gather information and organize and present their ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I compiled a short list explaining why such strict conventions are necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictably-organized writing helps readers to access information quickly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The various research procedures generally raises the quality of the work, so others can benefit from the ideas presented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these students, however, have no intention of ever becoming “academics”, and maybe they don't care so much benefiting readers. They just want to get a degree and get a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I help them to see some personal benefit to learning all of these conventions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T13:45:01.640" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T02:18:41.117" Title="How can my students learn to value the rules of academia?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:28:38.597" Score="4" ViewCount="27415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a paper (only internally marked) and I have a title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;GCR2: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was initially a Winston Churchill quote about Russia (after the colon anyway). However, it seems silly to reference it directly in the title and I have been looking around on the web and cannot find how to reference something that only appears in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any guidance or links to websites will be very helpful (although I couldn't find any!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9778" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:19:40.603" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T21:34:32.627" Title="How do I cite a quote in the title of a paper" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14498" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:41:42.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I kind of disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9488/the-hiary&quot;&gt;@TheHiary&lt;/a&gt;... I don't think you should put negative statements about yourself in your cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they do not want to only here how awesome you would be, they do want to hear &lt;strong&gt;how, and why, you would be totally awesome working for/with them&lt;/strong&gt;. You can look up some tips and guidelines about writing a cover letter &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13574/4249&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that any half-page story has no place in your cover letter. &lt;strong&gt;It should be fairly short, clear and memorable/striking&lt;/strong&gt;. I was suggested, two pages maximum. One page is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;if it was an important experience for you as a potential researcher, there's definitely place for it in your cover letter,&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;just not directly&lt;/em&gt;. What you should include, however, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what helped you get back your motivation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(you can say that e.g. a project made you &amp;quot;rediscover your love of science&amp;quot; without explicitly saying that you lost it for a while)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;how your approach to research has changed in a positive manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. working on the team project made me realize how important and helpful peer input, informal discussions and exchanging ideas was for my productivity)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;how your vision of science/yourself changed after that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. working with Professor X. what made me secure in my opinion that I want a career as a researcher)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;basically, any positive result of your experience is worth mentioning, but I would rather mention just what triggered the positive change of attitude instead of motivation-less period before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:30:07.210" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14504" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:44:30.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The points you list are key, and a good starting point. I am not sure you need to add to that list but rather expand on the points to set them in a wider perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several misconceptions that needs discussing. There is the idea that academic (scientific) writing is complicated and uses difficult language. Well, it does not have to be, and really should not be. With the huge onslaught of information, we must all learn how to express ourselves concisely and clearly. This is an art that requires training, not only in science but also in writing. Regardless of which sort of work we have, assuming communication is part of it, we need to be able to get our points across. Hence it is key to impress on students the importance of learning to write well. So point at the goals: being able to present information in a way that it can be understood by the intended recipients. You then need to be able to take complicated issues and express them clearly and in language that can be understood. Understanding terminology and concepts is the basis for being able to explain them and making necessary simplifications. Badly written reports will not serve the author, the company (equivalent) the author works for, or the recipients who need the information. I therefore think it is important to make these wider perspectives clear to students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Companies usually have very strict rules for how reports should be written and formatted. Getting used to following such instructions may seem like a limitation, but understanding the necessity is a good preparation for the work place. With commercial reports come legal aspects that puts much restriction on how to express oneself. Learning about such rules and restrictions is therefore a key to become a successful contributor in the future, inside and outside of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that most (if not all) employers look for people who are good at presenting information, written as well as in speech should be emphasized (often included in social skills). These skills require much training and a solid foundation to build on. Courses in scientific writing and presentation as well as term papers and other reports (including a final thesis) are all parts of this education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, I am totally convinced that skills such as these will make a difference when applying for jobs. We just need to point out the fact. Getting feedback from employers about the necessity for these skills to share with the students is very valuable. Some students have better basic skills than others but none are good at writing concisely and clearly without the training we can provide. It is also important to make students understand that in the longer term they will have to develop their own skills, not just take whatever is served and think it is enough. It is a life-long learning experience which requires solid a foundation. and that is what we can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T20:44:07.757" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T20:44:07.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14505" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:58:33.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No-one would expect a reference in the title. There are a few alternatives you can consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple one would be to add &quot;(Winston Churchill)&quot; after the quote in the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better option in my opinion, is to start the introduction with the same quote built into an explanatory sentence and then add the reference there. After all, the quote must have a significant meaning for your work, otherwise it would not form the title. I am not sure what the &quot;GCR2&quot; stands for but in general one should avoid abbreviations in the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third possibility is to rewrite the title to something more explicit. you can have the quote as the main title followed by a subtitle that explains the significance. Different field have different ways of handling such titles so I cannot say what would be suitable for you. The title should draw attention to your work and make readers decide whether the work is worth reading. For me it has no meaning and although I am in a different field, I think that is a sign that the construct is not optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T18:15:04.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:15:04.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14503" CreationDate="2013-12-03T15:01:30.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use the &lt;em&gt;date conferred&lt;/em&gt;. Universities will have an official date where all degrees for the term are conferred on everyone. This is usually not the same date as the graduation ceremony as there can be multiple graduation ceremonies across multiple days, but trying to keep track of all of them would be confusing. It's much simpler to just pick one day after all the ceremonies and say all degrees are official as of that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I've never heard of an employer (or anyone) who really cares about the particular date as long as it's clear that you've already met all of the requirements of graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T15:01:30.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14502" CreationDate="2013-12-03T15:07:10.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on what sort of research you want to do. I know people who I work with in scientific visualization that have Computer Science degrees and that's probably the best thing for their kind of work. They use computer graphics, but most of their work is more related to computer science. If you're going to go the route of Computer Science but are interested in graphics, make sure you pick a program that offers enough education in that area (good coursework, professor interested in the research, etc.) and take plenty of Math, possibly even another Master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what kind of PhD work you would do in Computer Graphics outside of scientific visualization (though I'm sure there's some of which I'm unaware), but it sounds like the kinds of programs at which you're looking are more focused on people who are using the Master's program as an end goal to go into the computer games industry. I'd be wary of those programs if you're trying to move into a Ph. D. later as they may not be relevant to the kind of program where you'd be applying in another year or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T15:07:10.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:16:15.377" Score="20" ViewCount="7276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently submitted a paper to arXiv, but the arXiv moderators put my paper in status &quot;on hold&quot;, because they have to make a decision on the right classification for the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To those who have experienced a similar situation, how long did it take before they made a decision and published the paper on the arXiv? I just want to have an idea of how long I will have to wait. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9781" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T01:48:26.010" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T20:20:34.640" Title="Submission on hold on arxiv" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14502" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:25:02.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd look at this a little like a wager on where you want to go in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to do a PhD in the future, then focus on the fundamentals will pay off. I can't think of a single PhD that wouldn't benefit from stronger research and math skills. Especially if you want to go on to a PhD, ensure that you're getting the background in research --- typically this will mean a focus on thesis based programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're unsure of where you want to go afterwards, be aware, that a good master's program in Computer Science, is unlikely to close any doors for you, whereas a focus on Computer Graphics may mean that it's more difficult to make the transition into a different field later should you decide it's not for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T17:25:02.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14517" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:58:52.910" Score="4" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished some experiments on classification and I am now preparing for a &lt;strong&gt;presentation&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment yields data which will then be manually verified to determine if the data is correct or incorrect. The experiment is run a total of 10 times and the output for each run is the amount of hits (&quot;Yes&quot;) or misses (&quot;No&quot;). In the end, I have this complex table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/05W60.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;exp-data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best way to present this kind of complex tables? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If applicable (as in my example), should I present normalized data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If applicable (as in my example), should I present average values?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9782" LastEditorUserId="8067" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T14:21:14.210" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T15:50:17.233" Title="Presenting data of complex tables" Tags="&lt;data&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14504" CreationDate="2013-12-03T22:05:57.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some wish they can organize their papers in more “creative” ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some want to share their feelings and personal experiences. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some see the style guide rules as overly pedantic or finicky.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why there are &quot;rules&quot; about organizing papers, and what's wrong with more &quot;creative&quot; approaches. As for style guides, they are often overly pedantic and finicky, and in any case are mostly appropriate for an actual publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible you're referring instead to the way to organize a paper (in terms of introductions, related work, methods, discussion, and so on). In which case you can explain the particular roles these components serve, while emphasizing that these components achieve a certain purpose and if that purpose can be achieved using other methods, there's nothing wrong with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for sharing feelings and personal experiences, it's common for students with little experience of writing formally to confuse the &quot;what&quot; with the &quot;how&quot;, because they're focused so intently on the &quot;how&quot;. One way to help them is to identify places where they're spending too much space on process words, and ask them to describe the outcomes instead. In other words, their goal should be to describe WHAT was done, rather than WHO did it, in order to ensure that the process can be repeated by someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T22:05:57.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14502" CreationDate="2013-12-03T22:26:45.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think you might pursue a PhD later, it's a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; bad idea to pursue a one-year master's degree without a thesis, no matter what it's called.  PhD admissions committees tend to consider all applicants with master's degrees together as one equivalence class (because it's difficult to remember the exact details of hundreds of different master's degrees).  You will be directly competing with other applicants who took more time doing &lt;em&gt;and publishing&lt;/em&gt; research during the first full year master's program, before applying at in their third semester.  Students in one-year master's programs would apply after only two or three months in their program, which (for most mortals) is not enough time to do any significant research, much less publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T22:26:45.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14504" CreationDate="2013-12-04T00:30:15.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage a peer-exchange assignment that is not marked. Each student writes a technical paper (or maybe a short technical paper), and then each student has to read every other person's paper and then &quot;mark&quot; them on a scale of criteria such as &quot;clarity of presentation&quot; and &quot;I was able to decipher the main ideas of the paper&quot; and &quot;This paper was easy to read&quot; and &quot;I clearly understood the technical contributions of this paper&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After they finish that with others' papers, then they should go back and read their own paper, and then mark their own paper. (I would also recommend in parallel that you or other markers also mark the paper to &quot;check&quot; that the marks given to the particular paper are not outrageously out of line).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By comparing their own work with those of others, they will get exposure to a large number of different writing styles, get constructive feedback, and a large portion of the class marking will be done for you as well. With so many papers to read, many of them will start getting a feeling of what works, what doesn't, what they skip, what they absorb, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I could say that I thought of this all by myself, but many of the ideas were mentioned in a talk by &lt;a href=&quot;http://d.ucsd.edu/srk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scott Klemmer&lt;/a&gt; about innovation and evaluating innovation in a massively open course situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T00:30:15.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14513" CreationDate="2013-12-04T02:35:18.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe visual representation is nearly always a much better way to present data-intensive information. However, it may depend on your audience, and the depth of analysis you go into with your results.&#xA;If you are repeating each experiment &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; times, it would be most useful, in the least, to present the average result (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean&quot;&gt;mean&lt;/a&gt;), along with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation&quot;&gt;standard deviation&lt;/a&gt;. There are many different ways to visually represent your data, but whatever method you use must be able to deliver the main points you need to convey clearly. To help you decide on the best form of presentation of data, here a couple of suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask yourself what the main message is that you need to deliver from this data, and focus on a delivery style (graph, table, list, whatever) that &lt;em&gt;best delivers that main message&lt;/em&gt; (and not all the other stuff) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the number of variables you need to display to reduce distractions from that main message. So you wouldn't need to display results from 10 repeats of an experiment when you can just show the average result for that experiment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that in the majority of cases, a picture tells a thousand words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, regarding your statement &lt;em&gt;&quot;The experiment yields data which will then be manually verified to determine if the data is correct or incorrect.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Always believe your data. Your data is always correct. You just have to come up with the explanations for why the data is as it is.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T02:35:18.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14513" CreationDate="2013-12-04T11:00:30.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to show frequency data as yours with more than 4x4 cells in a presentation, I would generally recommend to use graphs instead of tables. Either you spend much time explaining such a big table or you will leave your audience with the feeling that they just saw something they did not have time to really understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/tablevsgraph/res-tablevsgraph.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LabWrite Guide&lt;/a&gt; by NC State and the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/~jkastell/tables2graphs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Using Graphs Instead of Tables in Political Science&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Jonathan Kastellec and    Eduardo Leoni provide some ideas for graphs substituting tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is a closely related question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/book-recommendations-for-information-visualization&quot;&gt;Book recommendations for information visualization?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T11:00:30.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14524" CreationDate="2013-12-04T13:38:38.700" Score="2" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I publish my technical paper on more than one publishing sites? The paper content is the same while only the formats differ. I am the author of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9793" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T22:00:57.637" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T22:00:57.637" Title="Can I publish a technical paper on more than one publishing sites?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-04T17:10:12.790" Score="-3" ViewCount="4029" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, there is a clear ranking for universities and almost all universities offer PhD programs. Unlikely, not all universities in Europe do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking, what are the best Computer Science PhD programs offered in Europe? I plan to specialize in data mining/machine learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9727" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T16:51:37.617" Title="What are the best CS PhD programs in Europe?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-03T02:29:30.443" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14520" CreationDate="2013-12-04T19:46:08.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer : No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: Only under certain circumstances where you have explicit permission to do so. Be aware that even if you have permission to do so, there are many folks who take an extremely dim view of multiple publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9797" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T19:46:08.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14488" CreationDate="2013-12-04T21:03:55.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The short list&quot; doesn't have an agreed upon meaning besides &quot;The list that's shorter than the long list&quot; in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some places, it does mean the people they're intending to interview, but not necessarily. In your case, since they've been kind enough not to waste the time of (potentially) hundreds of people writing letters for candidates that never stood a chance, it might actually &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; what you thought it meant, just that there's an additional step between &quot;We like him&quot; and &quot;Fly him out&quot;. Namely, get letters of recommendation before they spend airfare, department time and resources etc. for someone who has some hidden flaw that will come out in the letters. So the intent might be there, but with an added bit of due diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be that they have a &quot;short list&quot; and then a &quot;shorter list&quot;, which would be the scenario you're assuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T21:03:55.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14488" CreationDate="2013-12-04T21:33:58.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your interpretation is similar to how things work at my institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We scrutinize the applications and filter them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the filtered set, we ask for letters of recommendation (this is the stage you appear to be at). We do this because it takes work to track down the letter writers, and we don't want to invest the effort unless the candidate has some chance of making it to the next phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We go through the letters very carefully, solicit extral informal feedback if necessary, and then develop a (partial) interview list. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't necessarily tell candidates that they've reached phase 2, and in some universities there's no step 1, so it's not always clear what &quot;asking for letters&quot; really means. In your case, since the department explicitly mentioned a short list, you've likely passed a plausibility filter (which is good!), but you can't draw any further inference from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the department's point of view, this is also a way to make you excited and motivated to push your letter writers into action (so it saves them effort :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T21:33:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14520" CreationDate="2013-12-04T21:36:19.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only formal process that I'm aware of is the reprint mechanism. You publish a piece of work. Sometime later, editors of a compendium or collection wish to take your article and reprint it. In that case, the original publishers have to approve this (as well as you of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More commonly, papers published in a peer-reviewed venue might also appear in a Ph.D dissertation in some form. Here again, there's some form of copyright approval needed for it to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T21:36:19.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2834" CreationDate="2013-12-04T21:41:47.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried to copy-paste the key (&quot;most relevant&quot;) sentences from the paper in a form of list, by using just text editor (to make it searchable).&#xA;Drawbacks: 1. after 30-40 papers this text file started to be really big and difficult to search. 2. when I come back to this paper again the &quot;important&quot; parts are, in many cases, different from what was annotated from previous reading. 3. unable to sort the notes easily to categories. 4. in many cases even several sentences are not enough to express the finding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I decided to excerpt the facts from the article pretty much the same way as they are prepared for Beilstein chemical database. I read an article briefly for the first time to roughly split it into logical pieces. Then I read it thoroughly sentence-by-sentence and make sort of reference card for every fact originally described in it (no information from references is included even though it may be relevant), although facts that go with &quot;data not shown&quot; count. In the reference card I have special fields to specify all available information on how particular fact was discovered including methods, experimental model etc. Every card contains reference to the original article, list of tags that can be key words or any other words that help to find it including their synonyms and abbreviations to facilitate search and grouping similar facts from different articles together. The card may also contain relevant references (if any). Tagging enables to assign the same fact to several different categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9802" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T21:41:47.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14531" CreationDate="2013-12-04T23:53:23.683" Score="37" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a relatively young faculty member. I was asked to provide a reference for a student of mine so he is admitted in a PhD program in Sciences in UK. The student is probably one of the best students I had in a couple of years in terms of academic potential. I firmly believe he will do well as he is bright and hard-working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to fill in an online form rating him. My problem is that the form's scaling is very strong.&#xA;How can I honestly say that someone was &lt;code&gt;outstanding&lt;/code&gt; (3%) and not &lt;code&gt;exceptional&lt;/code&gt; (1%)? Even the third most positive option is &lt;code&gt;unusually good&lt;/code&gt; (rated at 10%) which I feel as a characterization in itself should be &lt;em&gt;strong enough&lt;/em&gt; for someone to be at least considered for a PhD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My classes are never above 40 to 45 students and I believe that simply &quot;lumping&quot; all the students from my past couple of years in one sample is ineffective and unreasonable. I would probably be unable to single out one of my students as the single best student I've ever had so that I can place him in the top 1% interval with certainty and not top 3%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I want to support him and I worry that simply putting him down as &lt;code&gt;outstanding&lt;/code&gt; would harm him as other referees might be tempted to &quot;max out&quot; everything. On the other hand simply rating him as &lt;code&gt;exceptional&lt;/code&gt; in almost all aspects would be just grade-inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone provide me with some advice on the matter and what they would do? The scaling I have come across before topped at 5% which I found reasonable but here this not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9805" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:31:34.907" Title="How high should I rate a good student for PhD admission?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14488" CreationDate="2013-12-05T00:12:26.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being on a short list does not necessarily mean that they are going to interview you.  It costs them quite a bit to fly you out and put you up in a hotel for a few days.  But it is very possible that candidates ahead of you will ultimately turn the job down.  And at some point they may well consider you, and fly you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite likely, also, they haven't decided who they are going to call for an interview, and they want to read the letters to get an idea of who they want to interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, these decisions may be based upon things beyond your control, or your talents.  For example, they might be looking for candidates with a very specific skill set, and you might not be a good fit.  Or there might be some internal politics in the department - perhaps one person really wants to hire you, and another really wants to hire someone else.  It's all out of your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9806" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T00:12:26.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14529" CreationDate="2013-12-05T01:00:07.977" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of gauging inflation in these situations is both serious and important. It affects peoples' lives!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficult task of the letter writer is to visualize what other letter-writers will say, their degree of effusiveness. &quot;Being brutally honest&quot; is obviously stupid and naive to the point of destructiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The operational issue is about achieving the desired effect. And, in particular, if your recommendee is fairly exceptional, it would be a grievous error to praise them &quot;modestly&quot;. Yes, the problem is to discriminate between &quot;fairly exceptional&quot; and &quot;exceptional&quot; and &quot;truly exceptional&quot;. And these are not things that can be rationally discussed about young people by committees...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, consider the noise in the system into which you put your information...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T01:00:07.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14180" CreationDate="2013-12-05T01:04:14.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on search committees.  I have made decisions (usually decisions about who goes on my short list) on the basis of the research statement.  So make an effort to have it readable and accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9806" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T01:04:14.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14053" CreationDate="2013-12-05T01:11:29.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, I would say that British Ph.D.s are very well respected in the U.S.A.  Probably more so than many US universities.  The US citizenship is a plus, because it means that the university can avoid the hassle of H1 visas and Green Cards.  But a major research university will probably not reject you if you don't have US Citizenship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9806" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T01:11:29.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T07:06:43.830" Score="5" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to apply for USA universities. Is there any difference between the number of PhD opportunities in spring and fall semesters? I mean in which semester do I have a better chance to be approved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my country application for spring semester is not so usual. What about USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T12:49:31.240" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T14:21:04.590" Title="Is it better to apply to doctoral program in the fall semester or spring semester?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14547" CreationDate="2013-12-05T08:49:57.777" Score="11" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;This recent question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14529/how-high-should-i-rate-a-good-student-for-phd-admission&quot;&gt;How high should I rate a good student for PhD admission?&lt;/a&gt; is just an example of how puzzling the problem of writing reference letters is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One knows that there is inflation in the field, so they feel they have to adapt, but it is not clear how much inflation is appropriate and when it is too much. Negative comments are often omitted, and this gives the evaluators less data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an analogous problem when refereeing papers, or serving as anonymous referees for research proposals and grants. This seems to be a flaw which is implicit in the evaluation method. Apart from this voluntary inflation bias, there is also an involuntary component: if I ask you to evaluate your research field/colleague/student is, you will unconsciously feel biased towards it/him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this perceived as a big problem?&lt;/strong&gt; If so, &lt;strong&gt;why is there no attempt to obtain more reliable results?&lt;/strong&gt; Some possible strategies, although difficult to apply, spring to my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if there are enough data points for the recommender, normalize everything and &quot;grade on a curve&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't ask &quot;how good X is?&quot;; give them two paper/applicants/projects to evaluate, and ask &quot;which one is better, X or Y?&quot;. This makes it more difficult to find good referees, because they have to be familiar with two of the persons/projects under evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;force the evaluators to provide at least 3 positive and 3 negative points, the most outstanding ones. This won't affect the inflation bias, but at least it provides some more data on the negative aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seriously considered writing a standard addendum to enclose to my letters and reports, stating that I realize how biased and unreliable these things are, I am in a difficult position giving an absolute score on a scale that is totally unknown to me and the other evaluators, and I'd really feel more comfortable with a comparison-based evaluation system. &lt;strong&gt;Would this be appropriate, or raise some eyebrows on the trustworthyness of my evaluations&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T04:57:59.457" Title="Why don't things work with comparisons in reference letters and refereeing?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8915" CreationDate="2013-12-05T09:34:24.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't regard these journals as worth publishing in, then chances are no-one else will either. If you think you have unpublished work that people would be interested in reading, but isn't worth submitting for whatever reason, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; seems a good place to put it. There are lots of conference proceedings on there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9818" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T09:34:24.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14534" CreationDate="2013-12-05T12:53:45.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All institutions I know of in the US have &lt;em&gt;deadlines&lt;/em&gt; for submitting applications to the doctoral program. The earliest ones I remember were in December, and the later ones were in early spring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your chances of being accepted are zero if you submit after the deadline, and if you submitted early it would be at best annoying. So long story short just follow the rules of the institution to which you are applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T12:53:45.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14534" CreationDate="2013-12-05T14:21:04.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities offer Doctoral admissions exclusively in fall semester (once a year). Deadlines for applications are typically in December. For more detailed information, you should check the particular department's webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8940" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T14:21:04.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T14:42:00.393" Score="4" ViewCount="1009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student in Canada doing a double degree concurrently, a B.Sc (Bachelors of Science) and a B.Eng (Bacehlors of Engineering) over 5 years. (8 years down to three at the price of my sanity? Sure haha!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Major in Science is Physics, and my Discipline in Engineering is Electrical/Computer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to picking my masters, I have three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M.Sc (Science, thesis based)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M.A.Sc (Applied Science, thesis based)*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M.Eng ( Engineering, project based)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From knowing nearly nothing about these, I think the M.A.Sc sounds right for me, sort of a &quot;middle ground&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to go on study quantum computers, specifically to apply the principles of quantum field theory to microprocessors and develop quantum computing hardware and software. &#xA;(I work as a computer programmer alongside my studies, and I've been a professional polyglot programmer since I was 16, and a hobbyist since I was 11)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, which masters would help me more on a path to a Ph.D, and eventually to a job in academia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fellow undergrad suggested I do a double-masters to compliment the double-degree, is this possible? Would it be useful to me at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9828" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T02:20:51.553" Title="Which Masters is right for me?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10821" CreationDate="2013-12-05T15:16:37.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Japanese teacher needed to go back to college for a Masters degree, or be forced to leave Santa Barbara community college. Being from Japan gave no leeway in teaching Japanese to beginners. Hence the strictness in the US for a Masters degree to teach at any college level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9832" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T15:16:37.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14540" CreationDate="2013-12-05T16:25:48.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When it comes to picking my masters, I have three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;M.Sc (Science, thesis based)&#xA;  M.A.Sc (Applied Science, thesis based)*&#xA;  M.Eng ( Engineering, project based)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letters in your masters degree do not matter. In other words, you'll never see an M.Sc. or an M.Eng. specifically asked for in an application call ... you'll only ever see &quot;Masters&quot;. As such, your degree could be called an M.Xk.Cd. and nobody would really care. It's the topic and quality of your masters matters most! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to work on quantum computing, then you should look for a good masters programme in either Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a relevant field of Mathematics. These are typically M.Sc. or M.Eng. courses (again, not that the letters matter!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research masters is usually preferable, in that you may even get a publication or two which will help with PhD applications ... or you may continue in the masters programme and graduate into a PhD programme if you are happy with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I would encourage you to be flexible in your interests. You quote &quot;quantum computing&quot; as an interest but it can often be unfeasible to get a PhD you like in a really specific area. I think at this stage it's important for you to decide what discipline you want to pursue (Comp. Sci., Maths, Physics, etc.). Having a sub-field in mind is great, but don't plan your future &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; rigidly around that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fellow undergrad suggested I do a double-masters to compliment the double-degree, is this possible? Would it be useful to me at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it would be useful. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as to whether it would be worth your time, I would say absolutely not. See (1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(1) Masters + 0.5 × PhD ≫ 2 × Masters&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T20:33:01.577" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T20:33:01.577" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14523" CreationDate="2013-12-05T16:45:13.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States, there is a clear ranking for universities and almost all universities offer PhD programs. Unlikely, not all universities in Europe do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for global University rankings, you can find various versions with dubious methodologies out there on the Web. For example, one of the more famous of these is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/subject-rankings&quot;&gt;QS World University Rankings&lt;/a&gt;. Again though, these rankings are dubious at best ... the hint being that they present the &quot;quality&quot; of a university as a single dimension when the &quot;quality&quot; of a university has high dimensionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what are the best Computer Science PhD programs offered in Europe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an almost completely different question. The best PhD programme is a combination of three simple things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;great supervisor that you get on well with and that lends you the time and expertise you need, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;great topic in an emerging area you are interested in and with a healthy global research community,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;great environment in a good office with the resources you need, a stable academic atmosphere and smart colleagues to bounce ideas off. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find such programmes in many reputable universities, even if they're not in the top 5 universities in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to read some of the recent literature in the data mining area (e.g., SIGKDD, ICML, WSDM, ICDE, etc.), find the research group whose work most interests you and get in contact with a professor or postdoc there (or preferably find a mutual acquaintance to introduce you to him/her).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, just to add that when you do a PhD, you have to start building your own reputation and not rely on the reputation of the university from which you received your PhD. You will be judged primarily by the work with your name on it. This is different from Bachelors and taught Masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T16:51:37.617" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T16:51:37.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10821" CreationDate="2013-12-05T18:36:10.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need a masters degree (at least) to teach university courses. With a bachelor degree however, you might be able to score a position at a highschool considering you've already worked in the industry.Though, if you're really dead-set on giving lectures at university, your best shot would be to pursue a master degree. There are possibilities to study a masters whilst working. You might even be able to teach a bit in highschool whilst studying for your master degree, see what that is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though you might be able to become an assistant instructor, like Herkenham said. Which (here) means that you get to correct students work, give practical lectures (practical coding instead of theory based courses). Once again, having worked in the industry might play to your advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly think having worked in the industry increases your odds, but they are still against you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T18:36:10.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2013-12-05T19:42:07.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, the scientific specialists' communities have traditionally identified journals having high editorial standards. That is the key: who are the editors and what are the standards. Are the breakthrough discoveries sent to that journal? From that, reputations are built and filtered down to preference and use by the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9838" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T19:42:07.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14536" CreationDate="2013-12-05T21:29:08.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that an academic committee, sitting in consideration of an applicant to their PhD programme, would very likely view your addendum as being an honest attempt to preserve your set of professional ethics with regard to fairly ranking the applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that the academic committee would doubt your trustworthiness. However, I expect that the committee would view whatever ranking you provided on the Good/Great/Excellent/Outstanding/Genius scale in light of your action of submitting your addendum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the committee are not going to doubt your ability to rank the applicant, but are going to doubt the veracity of your ranking on the artificial scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would hope that any sensible academic committee is going to be aware of the problem that we are discussing here and are therefore going to take a scaled single-valued ranking of any applicant with a massive grain of salt. They must know that a single value rank is going to be useless when judging the suitability of an applicant for a PhD programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus I would hope that, with or without your addendum, a sensible academic committee would take very little notice of the single value ranking and pay much more attention to the substantive letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The addition of your addendum would not, I think, damage the applicant's application before a reasonable academic committee, as it wouldn't be news to the committee that such single-valued rankings are untrustworthy. To a reasonable academic committee, your actions of submitting the addendum might prompt others to do the same, and the practice of demanding a single-value metric abandoned over time. To an academic committee that places great store in such single-value metrics, your addendum sets out your concerns and presumably instructs the committee how you the single-value ranking is to be interpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T21:29:08.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T23:41:54.683" Score="25" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Master's student who is mentoring a recent graduate through a research project in the same field (of astronomy). He is a very good &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt;, but struggles with one of the realities of being an astronomer - coding. Right now, he is just running code others have written, but despite my strong suggestion that he start learning the language, still asks for my help on even the most elementary of problems. His confidence in using computers is lacking, and if he continues in the field it will become a serious hindrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did provide a very high level of assistance early on, but this was mostly due to a couple of bugs in setting my own code up on his computer. In later stages of this research project, he is going to need to write some basic code of his own, so I feel we're getting to the stage where we need to establish a greater level of independence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key points of difference between a student and a researcher is that a researcher solves their own problems. It is the job of a mentor and supervisor to &lt;em&gt;assist&lt;/em&gt; in that, but I feel that my mentee still feels entitled that I should solve his problems for him (I only solved &quot;his&quot; problems before because a bug in code that I wrote is &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; responsibility). It's time to start taking a more hands-off approach: I'm happy to give advice on how he might solve a problem, but it's his responsibility to sit down and implement that idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I approach this problem -  (a) with my mentee, and (b) with our supervising professor (we have the same supervisor)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T00:00:06.807" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:00:46.170" Title="Guiding a mentee towards greater independence" Tags="&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2013-12-06T00:57:05.657" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a current PhD student and speak from personal experience as one who has guided both masters as well as undergraduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning how to code appropriately takes skill, time and confidence (among other things). My strategy for this while mentoring students is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a small project which will have some significant coding component in it but will still add to the overall project. Lay out the coding expectations and deliverables very clearly. Don't start with something too difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider using version control tools (such as git) to manage your mentee's code. Be very clear about what languages/libraries etc. you plan to use and how this code will add to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lay out a timeline with your mentee with very specific coding expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Achieve each small component with your mentee. Guide (but &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; spoonfeed/handhold) your mentee. Make sure that he/she codes everything by him/herself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give him/her a small reward. (coffee/sugary thingy/beer) This always makes my students very happy. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, once a mentee has achieved a small project by him/herself, they are usually quick and eager to move onto the next objective. I use this to ramp up the difficulty level slowly but surely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the second part of your question, I would definitely keep your supervisor/adviser in the loop regarding this. He/She may have much better suggestions than any that I have to offer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T00:57:05.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14504" CreationDate="2013-12-06T02:18:41.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider emphasizing the potential personal benefits that come with good communications skills:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizing information in an easily accessible manner makes others more likely to read your writing and follow your thoughts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presenting ideas concisely helps make your idea more accessible, and therefore make it more likely that the reader will actually understand your point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presenting methodology along with your idea demonstrates transparency, showing that you have nothing to hide, making you appear trustworthy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citing other people's work has two benefits: Firstly, it demonstrates your knowledge scope by showing that you're familiar with the literature, and secondly, it improves your standing with the people you cited, as it shows them you found their work useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these apply to academia, but apply equally to all other areas of life. I used to work in academia, and I know work in operations for a health care company doing analytics. I use all of the above when I write white papers, and I have seen numerous times how following these guidelines helps others understand, appreciate, and build upon your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By emphasizing these points you may be able to better connect with your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T02:18:41.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14540" CreationDate="2013-12-06T02:20:51.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have picked a nice area for having a wide background. &lt;strong&gt;Most theoretical quantum computing positions usually ask for experience in at least two of Physics, Computer Science, or Mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;, so you are in good company. Don't pigeonhole yourself into one discipline if you are planning to be a theorist. More applied and experimental work usually requires a single background in the specific methodology used, and usually comes from Physics, Chemistry, or some type of Engineering. It is common for &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/2323/1037&quot;&gt;strong quantum programs&lt;/a&gt; to have professors of background in various fields, and in that case you will usually decided the letters after your M. based on the department/faculty of your preferred supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, check if your undergraduate school offers a straight-to-Masters program, since that might be a viable option for you. I know that at McGill you can now get a Masters at the end of 5 years, instead of doing just a Bachelors, I am not sure how it is at Dalhousie. Ask your professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Canada, your best bet for a Masters will be at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Institute for Quantum Computing&lt;/a&gt; in Waterloo. They have one of the strongest and largest quantum computing/information programs in the world (and definitely the strongest and largest in Canada). If you browse their website, you will see that &lt;strong&gt;you can get any of M.Sc, M.Math, or M.Eng as your degree&lt;/strong&gt; with departments ranging from: Applied Mathematics (2 profs), Chemistry (2 profs), Combinatorics &amp;amp; Optimization (4 profs), Computer Science (2 profs), Electrical &amp;amp; Computer Engineering (3 profs), Physics &amp;amp; Astronomy (7 profs + 3 assistant profs). I think all of the programs are thesis based, and students are expected to produce original research. I would base you department choice based on potential supervisors (you will have to list who you prefer as supervisor during your application) and what sort of non-quantum courses you like (since you will be expected to take some non-quantum related courses in your department).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, that &lt;strong&gt;in the USA, it is not customary to sit for a separate Masters before your PhD&lt;/strong&gt;, so consider applying straight to PhD with your choice of supervisor determining the department. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqi.caltech.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IQI at CalTech&lt;/a&gt; is a good choice, I know that John Preskill has an interest in the intersection of quantum field theory and quantum computing; note that most other work in quantum computing doesn't use QFT and concentrates on the non-relativistic limit. Make sure to do a little bit of work in quantum computing during your undergrad before you make your Masters/PhD decision, to make sure you have an idea for the lay of the land. A lot of people don't have a good grasp of what research in quantum computing will look like when they first say they are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T02:20:51.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2013-12-06T02:25:59.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the more difficult tasks of the mentor is to assess current skill levels, set milestones accordingly, and ensure that the student has the necessary resources (and capabilities) to improve his skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At your admission, he is a novice coder, if that. Are you setting expectations too high? Does he have the right resources to learn how to code? There are lots of books/websites/youtube videos/whatever that teach coding; is he aware of these tools? Does he know how to use his IDE? Having watched my wife learn to code as a graduate student, I learned that the ability to represent a theoretical solution in software is a skill that takes a lot of time to develop. He may just need time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you've done all that and he's still not making any progress (after sufficient time... say, two to four months), then you may have to recommend that he take time off from working on your research until he becomes a more proficient coder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T02:25:59.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T03:04:51.847" Score="10" ViewCount="1137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the second year of my post-doctoral fellowship. My PI will be moving to a new university in ~9 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the story of the potential move developed, I was honest with my PI during discussions and told him that it was likely that I would go with him if he left, but it was never discussed in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that more specifics are known, it is time to talk details. I would like to negotiate for an upward move to a research associate position. I believe this would be fair considering I'm sure I will &quot;lose&quot; some amount of research time while the new lab is getting set-up. However, I'm worried about negotiations because a) this is not a &quot;new&quot; job, just a continuation of my fellowship at a new location with the same boss, b) I've already indicated that I would like to move to the new location, and c) my resume has not yet reached a point that I am able to strike out on my own for any other upward job move (though, I can probably make a lateral move to another post-doc, that is not ideal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it reasonable to ask for a title promotion in this situation? Or do I have no room for negotiation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What else should I add to the negotiations in order to help my career progress to the best of its ability during a transition to a new university in another state?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9842" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:35:15.740" Title="Can I negotiate a research assistant position if my PI moves to a new univerisity?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14553" CreationDate="2013-12-06T03:57:02.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's reasonable to at least ask for the title bump. What do you have to lose? Administrators are more familiar with this situation than you might expect. It's essentially a case of the worst they can say is &quot;no&quot; when it comes to giving you a revised position/title. It likely comes down to their budget and/or the budget of your PI and whether their faculty see you fitting in there longer term. Remember they may see you as an asset and someone they wish to also &quot;pluck&quot; from your current university, which ultimately makes the plucking university look better overall as far as reputation stuff goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently witnessed a very similar scenario in my department, where a faculty member left and took his lab with him, including two PhD students and a post-doc. The faculty member (not the post-doc) negotiated with the new department to get his post-doc a research professor position. So it does happen. So you may not be the one who should be doing the negotiating directly, this might fall on your PI to negotiate for you. Also, in this situation the negotiation happened after the faculty member had accepted the offer, so the negotiations can still occur after the initial offer is accepted by the PI. Remember this is the honeymoon phase between the administrators in this new department and your PI, so they may do whatever it takes to make him happy (for now) including whatever he asks for on your behalf. Or they could say no, but I don't think anyone is offended and even expects this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration might be whether you wish to stay with this PI long-term or not? Prior to him telling you he was departing, did you see yourself working with him beyond your current post-doc? These university moves are common and can shake you up when you are caught in the middle. It's a very important time to keep your career goals in sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1399" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T03:57:02.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14529" CreationDate="2013-12-06T04:49:17.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am in your position,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a student and I have to rate him. The rating in my mind is top &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;%. I need to make a choice between top 1% and top 3% when I fill in the rating form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would choose top 1% for the following reasons,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is really no significant difference between 1% and 2% or between 2% and 3%. I only know his past performance well. I can only firmly believe his future will be bright  (I am not a superman. I cannot predict the future.). &lt;strong&gt;I want to give him top 1% rating because I want to let him have a better chance to succeed.&lt;/strong&gt; I know top 1% is a little bit grade inflation. But, this is not my fault - there is no place for my real rating, that is, top 2%. I would not feel guity for the inflation.&#xA;  I would not know what others will do. I am just performing my duty as his professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T06:01:42.350" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T06:01:42.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14553" CreationDate="2013-12-06T10:25:30.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is more than reasonable to ask for a &quot;bump&quot;, but you may want to reconsider moving. The way I see it is you are currently in your 2nd year as a post doc and the move isn't for 9 months so at the time of the move you would be approaching 3 years as a post doc in the same lab. This is getting to be a long time and you do not want to lose the time associated with the lab move to move to a new lab for a year. You need to make the move to the new lab desirable enough that you want to stay for 2+ years. The reason you may want to reconsider the move is that you would be effectively doing 2 post docs in the same lab instead of 2 labs. This means less of a chance to learn new things (both technical and interpersonal skills) and meet new colleagues (specifically ones who can write letters of reference for you and help you get the next job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you chose to stay, the argument for a bump is that (1) this would effectively be your second post doc, and (2) you would be taking a hit in your research associated with the move and need additional support to over come that. The reason keeping you is advantageous to your PI is continuity and the ability to get started quicker. Finally there is the issue that the PI probably has a start up package so can actually afford a bump (both salary and resources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T10:25:30.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2013-12-06T12:26:32.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from ecology. I think this is an excellent example of how an initial blog post/idea was developed with the help of comments from readers of the blog, and then turned into a paper. There was a follow-up discussion of the paper on the blog, also with an invited response from authors that disagreed with the conclusions in the paper (they also published a response paper).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Initial blog posts&lt;/strong&gt; (with a very active comments section):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oikosjournal.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/zombie-ideas-in-ecology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://oikosjournal.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/zombie-ideas-in-ecology/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/zombie-ideas-about-disturbance-a-dialogue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/zombie-ideas-about-disturbance-a-dialogue/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paper:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534712002091&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fox. 2013. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis should be abandoned. TREE.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow-ups:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/zombie-ideas-in-ecology-the-tree-paper-is-now-online/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/zombie-ideas-in-ecology-the-tree-paper-is-now-online/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/a-thumbs-up-for-the-intermediate-disturbance-hypothesis-guest-post/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/a-thumbs-up-for-the-intermediate-disturbance-hypothesis-guest-post/&lt;/a&gt; (guest post from researchers taking the opposite view)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T12:46:09.870" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T12:46:09.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T13:06:10.840" Score="6" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that some researchers in my field, that is Computer Science, do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They publish a paper, for example titled &quot;The use of the Fourier transform for problem X&quot;. The paper gets accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then after a while they have another paper titled &quot;The use of the Fourier transform for solving the problem X under these constraints&quot;. I read the paper and I see this is the same as before with only the title changed a little bit and published in another conference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, the same paper in another language &quot;l'uso della trasformata di Fourier...&quot;, which has the same content, but submitted to a local conference&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this alright? For me it just seems that it should only be put like one publication under their CVs and not &quot;resell&quot; the idea over and over. I have this question because they had asked me to translate one of my papers to a local conference, but I do not consider that to be like a new publication. Should I translate and claim a new publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T20:28:39.067" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T20:28:39.067" Title="Can a new paper be published with only slight modifications to a published paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2013-12-06T14:47:09.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science, papers are published in archival conferences, which makes things a little confusing. (In many other fields, papers are published in journals, and conferences are just for giving talks -- you can only publish a paper once, but you can give a talk about it many times). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) It is unethical, in violation of the rules of the venue, and an incredibly stupid idea to publish the same paper more than once in an archival conference. This is self plagiarism, and is a serious academic offense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) On the other hand, in computer science there are also non-archival workshops to which people are invited to give talks. (These are more like the &quot;conferences&quot; in other fields). It is fine to give a talk at such a venue about a paper that has been previously published elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to be whether you personally should commit unethical and stupid act a). I would advise against it. (It is unethical for obvious reasons. It is stupid because anyone who seriously considers your publication record will be sure to spot such a move, and you will not be able to get a reasonable academic job). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T14:47:09.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T14:50:46.203" Score="12" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for several post-doctoral positions. For these applications I have to prepare a research document in which I present my current research and my future projects in a limited amount of pages (typically not more than 4 or 5). But there is two possible organisations of ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1) A first approach would be to present first my past and current&#xA;research topics and then my future projects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2) A second approach consists in a thematic organization in which I present for each topic&#xA;my past and current research and what I plan to do in this topic in&#xA;the future. Some topics can be only past/current and some other only&#xA;long-term project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best organization ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8457" LastEditorUserId="1424" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T20:39:18.070" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T22:11:06.200" Title="Post-doctoral research statement/project: current/future vs thematic" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2013-12-06T15:49:17.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some relevant questions. What is the computational background of your student? Has he ever done any coding before? If so, what languages? What is his general computer literacy? What language are you trying to get him to use? You just write &quot;learning the language&quot;. Programming languages vary greatly in their difficulty for someone without experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first programming language I ever tried to learn was C, in the middle of an already busy semester as a grad student, for a course in numerical analysis, in 1997. I used the famous book by Kernighan and Ritchie. I had zero experience of programming at that time, and in hindsight it was a crazy thing to try to do. The instructor didn't offer any programming help; neither did anyone else. I think the instructor was a fan of Fortran. :-) At that time online forums were probably in their infancy. In any case, it never occurred to me to try and use them. There were easier languages to use even in 1997. For example Python 1 existed at the time, though I don't know how usable it was. Anyway, I think I came last in the programming assignments - I think I didn't hand the last one or two assignments out of sheer exhaustion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the culture in academia with respect to programming and related computer work is very much - toss people in at the deep end and let them sink or swim. This is caused by several factors - often the instructors/senior people are very ignorant. Second, there is a feeling that programming languages are too trivial to teach people and they should just pick it up themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I think, depending on what language you are trying to get your student to learn - consider having him learn something easier and more user friendly. I recommend Python. Have him do some simple exercises and gradually warm up to something more difficult. A language like C/C++/Fortran is probably easier to learn once one has learnt some programming in a language that does not require things like compilation and manual memory management. These days there are many resources online to help the novice programmer - point him to some of them. E.g. Stack Overflow. Also, tell him to give high priority to learning version control. I recommend Mercurial. Git is probably fine, but it gives even experienced people a headache. It might be quite scary for an inexperienced person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T16:13:17.607" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T16:13:17.607" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14570" CreationDate="2013-12-06T16:08:30.927" Score="12" ViewCount="1852" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote an article containing quite a lot of maths using latex. I want to submit this paper to a given journal. However,  submission guideline explicitly states that&#xA;all submissions must be done in word format. I am a bit confused about such a specification and really feel unconfortable to reedit everything in word. Some companies seem to offer convertor or online conversion. Maybe some of you have already experienced some of them and can give me some feedback and advices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9851" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T03:01:22.603" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T03:01:22.603" Title="What to do when manuscript is in latex but journal requires submission in MS Word" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14565" CreationDate="2013-12-06T16:32:16.727" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can sympathize with your situation but unfortunately there is not much you can do if the journal explicitly asks for Word files except to provide them. As was stated in a comment you can (and should) contact the journal to ask about the use of LaTeX. Most large publishers handle LaTeX but the individual journals (editors) may not be aware of this and may not use LaTeX themselves so as to see the benefits. I doubt anyone would change their local policy based on one manuscript but if they are not aware that people wish to submit LaTeX files, nothing will ever change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask editors about LaTeX, remember to also ask them about formats for supplying equations. In some cases, journals accept the built in so-called equation editor in Word and in some cases they may request equations as graphics. They should however, have some standard way of handling such, since I assume your manuscript cannot be the only one they ever published that includes equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T16:32:16.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2013-12-06T17:11:44.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the detail you've provided, it's difficult to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self plagarism is a big no-no, obviously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, when you're building on previously published work (e.g. by adding constraints), there's almost certainly going to be overlap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what I'd look for is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the new work provide a meaningful contribution? (E.g. is solving the problem with constraints tricky to do, or does it give unexpected results?) This will depend on the field, and the standards of the conference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is the previously published paper cited by the new work&lt;/em&gt;? You don't specify whether this is the case or not in your question, and I think it's critical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are large portions of the text lifted verbatim? If the author is continuing with prior work there's bound to be some crossover (there's only so many ways you can clearly describe a problem using standard terminology, after all, and that's before we consider page limits), but it shouldn't be a cut&amp;amp;paste job. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they pass all that then it's probably ok, even if the paper isn't exactly wonderful - but chances are then, if it's making it through the review stage then it's probably been submitted to a less prestigious conference, and people will pick up on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to translating a paper for a local conference, it's not an issue I've ever faced and I'm a lot less sure about what the accepted etiquette is. My gut feeling though is the key test would be whether anyone is being mislead as to what's happened. Off the top of my head this including the local conference organisers, the conference that published the original version of the paper, any funding bodies who might ask how many papers you've published, and the people later reading your CV. If you're deceiving any of them in the way you present the publication, or even leaving an unreasonable opportunity for them to misunderstand, then no, don't. Otherwise, I can't see a reason to object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastEditorUserId="7061" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T18:00:21.813" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T18:00:21.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14600" CreationDate="2013-12-06T17:47:53.257" Score="17" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently interviewed for a position with a project with a major university. It is funded by federal grant (mainly NSF). It is not an academic position per se, but is led by a few principal investigators who are full professors. This is my first encounter with academia since completing my undergrad degree (I have worked entirely in private sector since then) so it's fair to say I'm pretty ignorant of many of academia's inner workings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the interview went fairly well, and I like what I know of the job very much, but I have a concern: I was convicted of selling drugs (a felony) about 4 years ago. The position I interviewed for is software related and has absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While my layman's impression is that universities are fairly tolerant of such background in general (Bill Ayers and Timothy Leary come to mind. I'm sure there are better examples) I know that charges like this have bearing on eligibility for FAFSA student loans. Therefore I am concerned that there may be similar restrictions for projects that are the recipient of federal funding. The team may have liked me for the position, but they certainly don't like me several million dollars worth!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what its worth, it is a private school. This is in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any insights into any potential for conflict with federal rules? Any other potential roadblocks, or comments on the culture/conventions concerning these kind of issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apologies for an anonymous question, but I think you can see why. If this question indicates lack of research I apologize as well, but I am outside of my realm of knowledge here and had little success with googling the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9853" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T17:59:06.900" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T20:14:25.950" Title="Criminal record and work on federally funded project" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14565" CreationDate="2013-12-06T17:59:40.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt; for this problem previously and it worked pretty well. Problems I have encountered are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-line equations (e.g. &lt;code&gt;align&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;matrix&lt;/code&gt; environments) are not converted correctly to word. (I don't think there is an equivalent of &lt;code&gt;align&lt;/code&gt; in word).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Converted all citations to the ones within parentheses (much more minor a fix).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last publication I did this because I got so frustrated with the journal (it would accept and compile my Latex file, but gave no instructions about what packages I could use nor any instructions on how to get the bibliography to compile - and emailing for three weeks with the staff did not help). But it only took me a few hours to convert the paper (that publication had minimal math though). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T17:59:40.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12938" CreationDate="2013-12-06T18:03:30.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having two (or more) corresponding authors is also common, if the paper is submitted by a student (or post-doc) who is expected to leave the research group soon and may not be able to attend to correspondence, reviewer queries etc, particularly in case the review gets delayed. In these cases, it is customary for the adviser to add his/her name as the corresponding author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9854" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T18:03:30.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T18:20:36.093" Score="1" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to ask you this. I am applying for my Masters in CS in US universities. I am very much interested in Artificial Intelligence, but some of my friends said that it would be very difficult for me to learn AI as I have no overview about the course in my undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone tell me if I can easily learn by putting some effort on learning AI. I am very much interested in that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9855" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T17:26:07.013" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T17:26:07.013" Title="Can I adapt to learning Artificial intelligence in MS easily" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14572" CreationDate="2013-12-06T18:27:16.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about the US, but in some schools in Canada you can be admitted to a CS Graduate degree without prior background in an interest area. You'd have to take background courses to get yourself up to speed, possibly in excess of the bare-minimum program requirements, but it should be doable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For AI specifically, ensure that the schools you're applying to have enough background in the topic, and that there are supervisors and supervisory capacity for you. Look for undergraduate courses in topics that interest you, as they may form part of your background studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T18:27:16.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14572" CreationDate="2013-12-06T19:09:36.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, many graduate courses do not require prior knowledge about the specific subject being taught, only background knowledge. Alternatively, they may require only minimal knowledge that you could teach yourself very quickly. But it is worth checking specific courses - naturally some would be more advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For something like machine learning, the relevant background would probably be algorithms, probability, linear algebra and maybe some calculus/optimization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T19:09:36.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14579" CreationDate="2013-12-06T20:34:16.840" Score="7" ViewCount="4490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to compare PhD training programs of different universities, institutes and departments in my field of interest. One of the comparisons I made is where did the previous students go after they finished their PhDs; how many papers did they write during their PhDs; and how much are they cited 1-2 years after completing their PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, comparing the citations counts is difficult. They vary quite a bit. How many times should  a successful young scientist be cited 1-2 years after completing his or her PhD? How about an average one? What is the minimum number to be able to continue in academia? I understand that exact numbers are difficult to provide but I would guess you senior scientists can provide good estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9857" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T22:07:58.910" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T00:30:52.967" Title="Number of citations after PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2013-12-06T21:37:51.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your first two criteria are far more relevant than the third one. Two years after the defence is too early to evaluate scientists based on citations. Moreover, the average number of citations varies a lot from one field (or even subfield) to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9221" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T21:37:51.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2013-12-06T21:49:45.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nickyee.com/index-daedalus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daedalus Project&lt;/a&gt; was a long-running survey of MMO players. It had a blog that summarized recent results, which were then included in scientific papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T21:49:45.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2013-12-06T21:57:29.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that scientometric indicators of scientific productivity and impact are at best, limited if the overall objective is to compare different college, departments, universities, institutes, centers (or any other academic organization) in one discipline. This is coming from someone who has had rigorous training in bibliometrics/informetrics/scientometrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because there are massive variations in citation patterns &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a particular field. This is especially pertinent if the field is rather interdisciplinary. Note though that in any given field, there is a general level of agreement among scholars in that field which departments are &quot;&lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;&quot; than some other ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), critical theorists and ethnographers get, on an average lower numbers of citations per article published than say, ubiquitous computing folks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, purely on an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;exploratory&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; basis, there could be several ways of looking at departments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where are graduate students from a particular department publishing in?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;em&gt;Are they consistently publishing in top tier venues?&lt;/em&gt; e.g. In core HCI, I would look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2014.acm.org/&quot;&gt;CHI&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://cscw.acm.org/&quot;&gt;CSCW&lt;/a&gt; conferences. When considering, the subfield of usable privacy, I would, in addition, look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2013/&quot;&gt;SOUPS&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/securityandprivacy&quot;&gt;IEEE Privacy &amp;amp; Security&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Among these publications, are they receiving best paper awards or best paper nominations?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where are students from these departments being placed on a consistent basis?&lt;/strong&gt; Are they being placed in industry or academia? Where, specifically? Google or a no-name startup? Are they getting tenure track positions or primarily post doctoral fellowships? Which other departments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are some of these students recipients of prestigious fellowships during their doctoral studies?&lt;/strong&gt; e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsfgrfp.org/&quot;&gt;NSF Graduate Research Fellowship&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/academics&quot;&gt;Facebook Fellowship&lt;/a&gt;? How many?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bibliometric Indicators:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average number of peer reviewed articles? (full journal and conference papers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average number of citations per article?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Co-authorship network analysis (which gives a nice idea of collaboration networks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average number of student grants received or otherwise?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go on and on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that, there is always some way to standardize or normalize any given construct. Sometimes, that is an useful approach. But, strict adherence to bibliometric indicators at many times, &lt;strong&gt;make you mistake the noise for the actual signal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the bigger picture and use metrics to buttress your concerns. That might be a more holistic approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T21:57:29.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2013-12-06T22:09:59.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such a paper can be published, but it should not be treated as a new research output.  Using the Australian HERDC specifications for research publications at 9.1 a publication is characterised by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;substantial scholarly activity, as evidenced by discussion of the relevant literature, an &#xA;  awareness of the history and antecedents of work described, and provided in a format &#xA;  which allows a reader to trace sources of the work, including through citations and &#xA;  footnotes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;originality (i.e. not a compilation of existing works. See important notes below regarding &#xA;  the treatment of scholarly editions and scholarly translations) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;increasing the stock of knowledge [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with papers, a new paper on a theme must still &quot;increase the stock of knowledge&quot; by &quot;substantial scholarly activity&quot; and be &quot;original&quot;.  Adding a new case study may fit the bill.  Using a new technique of analysis may fit the bill.  A new theoretical context may fit the bill.  &quot;Substantiveness&quot; would be indicated by the portion of the work that is &quot;original.&quot;  If the original component would fly as a paper by itself, in the sense that the component of the paper that is original scholarly contribution to knowledge is reportable as research by itself; then it is fine.  My dictum when dealing with these is &quot;new evidence?&quot; &quot;new analysis?&quot; &quot;new conclusion?.&quot;  If it meets one of these, originality has been met, and probably substantial scholarly activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors have a separate responsibility in terms of IP and copyright agreements that they may have previously made, and obviously have ethical obligations to cite prior works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T22:09:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2013-12-06T22:53:59.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You should decide on your PhD institution by the quality of the tenured faculty, not their students.&lt;/em&gt; Great students make great co-workers, but it's the quality of your supervisor that can make (or break!) you. If you have good relationships with faculty at your current institution, you should ask them what, in their opinion, are the best departments to apply to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should review the publications of faculty members you would like to be supervised by, to see if their research interests you. The papers that are first-authored by the faculty member (they are still active in research and don't spend all their time supervising and teaching, right?) will be particularly useful in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T23:12:18.343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T23:12:18.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2013-12-07T00:30:52.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this approach to measuring is plausible, I fear it is not what you want. Although of course things vary by field, the &lt;em&gt;papercount&lt;/em&gt; per se, or even &quot;impact factor&quot;, or ... any other easily-measurable thing is not quite what will affect things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in mathematics (my field), a smaller number of very-good papers is much better than a large number of irrelevant papers. One might imagine that this would be measured by &quot;impact factor&quot;, but it is absolutely not reliably so. As an extreme case, consider what happens when an important problem is finally and definitively solved: there may be fewer follow-ups, fewer citations, simply because there's little more to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's time-lag: I have many examples of 10-20 year (and longer) delays before people widely realized the interest of a given paper. Srsly, surely we're not trying so much to be of-the-moment-celebrities, but to make a long-term impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could go on-and-on about the unreliability of appealing-but-fatally-flawed metrics... but the real point is that a less objectifiable judgement is necessary to evaluate the &quot;merits&quot; of a program. Stats on the students is probably not quite what you'd want, even though it might seem to be. E.g., at more elite places, there is vastly greater variance among students... so the &quot;outcomes&quot; are harder to interpret meaningfully... and, for you yourself, what those other kids did or didn't do is operationally irrelevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; level-of-performance, that causes (or doesn't) respected experts to commend you to their peers, is what will get you a job, or not. The &quot;published papers&quot; thing is a &lt;em&gt;side-effect&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T00:30:52.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15811" CreationDate="2013-12-07T01:40:27.210" Score="4" ViewCount="2512" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (business administration) there are two main terminal degrees. One is a DBA (doctorate of business administration) and one is a PhD (business admin, economics, etc.). A DBA is focused on the application of theories (within a business) as opposed to the generation of new theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any published research on the perception between these two terminal degrees? I'm concerned that a DBA is viewed as a &quot;poor-man's PhD.&quot; While I am interested in what hiring committees think I am also concerned about the perceptions across academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T09:12:12.963" Title="DBA vs. PhD Perception within Academia" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-07T06:32:37.007" Score="6" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how I should put my internship experiences in my Statement of Purpose for Master program. The internship experiences (mainly building java web applications) are not quite related to my research interests like distributed systems, real-time computing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9862" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T15:42:56.950" Title="How much work experience should be included in Statement of Purpose for Master program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-07T12:05:59.033" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am mentioning  educational programmes within my essay and wonder if I need to have the name of the programme in italics? (For example, the &lt;em&gt;Wellmother&lt;/em&gt; programme.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I have mentioned a Government document, Midwifery 20/20 in the essay and wonder if this needs to be in italics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9871" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T15:24:59.477" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T07:17:36.603" Title="Do educational programmes need to be in italics within the Harvard system of referencing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12528" CreationDate="2013-12-07T12:35:32.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ets offers a service to rate your essays. They charge approximately $10/essay and they rate the essays as in the actual examination. You could check the service by logging in your GRE account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8940" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T12:35:32.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-07T13:13:37.340" Score="9" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing Algebra in a college in India. The professor asks students to note down solved examples in class, and then poses the very same questions in the tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't go to class for these very reasons. Hence, I end up writing alternate proofs for such problems. The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad, and gives me zero on all those answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying for grad school, I will have bad grades in Algebra and other math subjects (I suspect). How do I convey the this to the Admissions committee when applying for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is relevant to a lot of students studying in the sub-continent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9873" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T08:25:31.100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T08:25:31.100" Title="Unsatisfactory grades for unsatisfactory reasons" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-12-09T09:32:13.957" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14593" CreationDate="2013-12-07T15:21:08.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is a classic no-win situation. If you protest about instructors being incompetent, you may come across as someone too eager to assign blame for mistakes to someone else. If you say nothing, then your record may be dismissed out of hand (given how important algebra is in the undergraduate math curriculum). You also don't want to admit that you're skipping class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best bet may be to take your chances with the poor grade in algebra, but then follow the advice &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;suggested for other people with weak transcripts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T15:21:08.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2013-12-07T15:29:40.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, italics would not necessarily be used just to represent the name of something. You wouldn't write &quot;the &lt;em&gt;Marshall Plan&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, so you wouldn't write &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wellmother&lt;/em&gt; programme&quot;, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the government publication, that's a different matter altogether. If the document is a &quot;stand-alone&quot; publication, as most such works are, then it should be italicized as if it were a book. So, this could also extend to a program if it were announced as a formal document, rather than just a policy position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T15:29:40.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2013-12-07T15:30:01.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are not a professional programmer yourself, it is a poor idea to have you teach programming to your mentee. He should take a real programming course with Python or Ruby or Java, be that online (EdX is offering a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-cs50x-introduction-computer-1022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;computer science&lt;/a&gt; course starting Jan 1, 2014), or with a real instructor at your home school. That way, he won't learn your errors (which you admit you make), and will learn the professional tools like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://hgbook.red-bean.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;revision control&lt;/a&gt; which I think Faheem Mitha mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467775a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poor programming skills&lt;/a&gt; among scientists is an unseen, but a real impediment to reproducibility of research, its soundness, and eventually scientific progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T15:30:01.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14593" CreationDate="2013-12-07T18:28:16.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone else is teaching algebra next semester/year, just drop the class.  Cultivate a competent faculty mentor that you respect and trust.  Listen to them.  Meanwhile, &lt;strong&gt;document everything&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are really no competent, trustworthy faculty in your department, do everything you can to move.  In that case, sadly, your department is a diploma mill, and even with the best grades in the world, you're unlikely to get into a good graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't drop out or move, at least stop skipping class; you're just giving your instructor a legitimate excuse to dock your grade.  Yes, it's childish, but your grades are more important than your pride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Careful.  I also do not understand many proofs written by undergrads.  But in most cases, that lack of understanding is not due to &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; incompetence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T18:28:16.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14601" CreationDate="2013-12-07T20:09:24.407" Score="17" ViewCount="2612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have stumbled upon a paper that is very related to my field of research and after reading and discussing it with my supervisor, I found some issues in the paper that I need more information about, such as the data set they used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I sent them an email (their emails are university email accounts) I received a failure notice telling me that these emails have been discontinued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the protocol that I should follow to pass my inquires to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found one of the author's LinkedIn account, from it I know his current working place, can I contact the company asking them for his contact information? And I have already sent him a connection request containing a brief message of my intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T20:20:15.203" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T15:38:55.893" Title="Author's email address in a published paper is not working" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14569" CreationDate="2013-12-07T20:14:25.950" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was not able to find any documentation directly related to the NSF, however, I would find it unlikely that it would be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing relevant is mentioned in your employment agreement/contract, then you are probably fine from a legal/regulatory perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the ethical question of whether you should volunteer the information to your employer, I can say that if your performance on the NSF grant were contingent on criteria like your criminal history, the professors would have likely asked you directly during your interview.  If they did not feel that it was important enough to interrogate you about it, it probably does not matter either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a problem is if the grant requires you get a security clearance, as felonies usually invalidate candidacy for a clearance.  It is very unlikely that a clearance would be required for NSF grants; it's more likely from funding agencies like DARPA and ONR.  With that said, grants don't last forever, and the professors might eventually get one that requires you to get a clearance.  If the professors thought that might be a possibility or concern, though, they would have likely brought it up during your interview.  Also, the government often makes exceptions for software engineers/computer scientists since there is a shortage of ones who are otherwise eligible for a clearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T20:14:25.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14599" CreationDate="2013-12-07T21:33:10.637" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no particular &quot;protocol&quot;; just try to find some other way to contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google the author's names.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for more recent publications by the same author(s); see if they list updated email addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;LinkedIn was a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have found the author's employer, see if you can find his contact info on their website; or contact someone else at the company and ask.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some professional societies maintain a database with contact information for all members.  For instance, mathematics has the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ams.org/cml/&quot;&gt;Combined Membership List&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact someone at the previous employer and ask if they have current contact info.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T21:33:10.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14611" CreationDate="2013-12-07T23:16:29.687" Score="2" ViewCount="2057" Body="&lt;p&gt;Application forms for graduate school usually contain some vague statements regarding the extents of usage of one's social security number. &#xA;Some people believe that educational records at other institutes are private information and the universities should have access to the educational records that &lt;em&gt;the applicant&lt;/em&gt; would disclose to them ONLY. (Regardless of potential consequences and/or ethical justification for actions of either party.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, having the applicant's social security number, can schools see which schools/programs the applicant has attended, for how long, and the courses that were taken in the past? If so, is this a common practice? That is, do graduate offices commonly check with social security information to make sure that the records from each previously attended institute is included in the application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T07:01:56.850" Title="Are student records accessible by university officials?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14593" CreationDate="2013-12-08T02:08:37.183" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a supplement to aeismail's and JeffE's excellent answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand it may be hard to drop the class or move to another class for some reasons. For your best interests, it's better to follow the instructor for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a suggestion for you. Sign in to our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Math SE&lt;/a&gt;. Present your proofs. See what people think. After you verify your proofs, you'll know your professor is incompetent or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your professor is indeed incompetent, you should seriously consider dropping the class. You don't want to waste your precious time. However, if it turns out that you do have serious flaws in your proof, I would listen to my professor if I were you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T02:08:37.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14607" CreationDate="2013-12-08T04:26:13.893" Score="0" ViewCount="3258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am bachelors of commerce from a not known university. I am going to take economics masters from India's top institute. I will take higher math courses as well. What else should I do to get in top 10 economics program ? (Are there any chances for me?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also can you please suggest some masters economics program which enrolls commerce undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9881" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:43:29.340" Title="Any chances for me in top 10 economics program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2013-12-08T04:39:46.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(If I had more rep then this probably would have been a comment not an answer, sorry).  That is a very hard question to answer without you providing much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally getting into a top 10 economics program is already a semi random process because so many applicants are so well qualified.  It requires a high GPA in hard courses, good recommendation letters, etc...  That being said, there are a lot of students from India who end up placing very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A website where you might get more opinions is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/&lt;/a&gt; .  They have a general format for how to submit your profile, look at a few and check it out.  Might help you know where you stand (They also have old archives of student profiles with results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9882" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T04:39:46.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14536" CreationDate="2013-12-08T04:57:59.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry too much about it.  Good schools will rely primarily on the content of your letter.  Focus on writing a helpful letter.  Include comparisons to other students who you have worked with in the past, where possible.  That will enable people to calibrate your letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't don't worry too much about the numeric scores.  Good schools won't pay too much attention to the numeric scores, if you've done a good job with the body of the letter and written a detailed, helpful letter with plenty of concrete specifics.  Any school that puts more weight on the numeric score than the body of the letter is just screwing themselves by using bad decision-making processes.  You can't do anything about that; you can't fix other peoples' bad judgement.  All you can do is do the right thing when it is under your control, and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T04:57:59.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13238" CreationDate="2013-12-08T05:11:45.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is an issue that a lot of students struggle with; at least I did when I applied last year.  I was rejected, so probably take what I say with a grain of salt.  They say some things on their website that are important to note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep in mind that NSF does not just seek to fund scientists and engineers; NSF seeks to fund future STEM leaders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use appropriate scientific form (hypothesis, figures, references) in the Graduate Research Statement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of elaborate details on theory, focus on the rationale for your studies and the existing literature as it supports your proposed work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students that I know that were given the award properly addressed these issues.  My proposal did focus on one research idea and that was rewarded with comments on the creativity and feasibility of my proposed idea.  One of the critiques I got in my review was &quot;While the applicant does demonstrate an excitement of discovery and should be able to communicate his results to a large audience, ...  Broad societal impacts are not evident with respect to encouraging diversity and enabling the participation of underrepresented groups.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedback that I got was based on two scores: Intellectual Merit Criterion and Broader Impacts Criterion.  I would make sure that your students take both into account.  As far as the research proposal goes, I what JeffE said is true.  It is an opportunity for the students to show that they are familiar with the current research and are able to come up with an appropriate idea to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9882" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T05:11:45.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14602" CreationDate="2013-12-08T05:46:39.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your question is really about the existence of some sort of central database where all student records can be searched, if one has a key like a Social Security Number (SSN).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe any such system exists as I have never heard of it and if it did exist, it would likely run afoul of FERPA mentioned in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the only way one school would know you were at another school is if you (or someone else) tells them. Having your SSN does allow people to find out information from you but that is mostly from credit reporting agencies. If you borrow money from the school and they report it to the agencies, someone might be able to find out some information that way, but I can't imagine they would find out the program you were in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T05:46:39.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14602" CreationDate="2013-12-08T07:01:56.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer provided by earthling is excellent. I would like to tackle this question from another angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe any school will purposedly leak or illegally obtain student information. You are in the US. You are protected under FERPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, accidents always happen. For example, what if one of the professors in the school you previously attended just transferred to the school you are applying. He would know you were in another school and the program you were in. Or your current advisor met with your former advisor in a conference. Academia is a small world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry about the SSN issue if I were you. Just focus on your application and your study. Put aside your past. Pursue the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T07:01:56.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14626" CreationDate="2013-12-08T07:44:39.440" Score="2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to PhD programs in physics in US. Majority of the deadlines are in one week from now. My question is, does that help at all at this time to contact potential advisers and let them know that I am applying and am interested in their research? (At least one place requires me to indicate potential advisers in the online application form). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If contacting can help my application at this point, what should I do if there are more than one potential advisers whose interests match my experience and interests in a given department? (For example in one case I am even asked for naming three potential advisers in the application form)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T05:04:07.097" Title="Contacting potential advisers before deadlines" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-08T11:51:32.583" Score="4" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently thinking about organizing a course for next semester. The most important aspect that I worry about is: How to sustainably organize knowledge? This should be a new &quot;hands-on&quot; course where students research and work on novel solutions to real-world problems (Note: How to get the students to innovate is not the question I am asking). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key aspect of this course is to keep track of knowledge from previous semesters, so students of later semesters can build on top of what was previously achieved, and can find good (over the years better and better) answers to commonly (and less commonly) asked questions. They should also be able to get a good idea of what students worked on previously, and even decide whether to build on top of what was previously done, or just roll their own thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The knowledge that needs to be tracked, in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q&amp;amp;A's regarding the course contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interesting and useful material relevant to the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project approaches and results by students who have previously taken the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently thinking of using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones&quot;&gt;Stackoverflow clone&lt;/a&gt; in combination with a Wiki. Does anyone have good suggestions/experiences? Maybe more professional solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9791" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:31:50.297" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T15:07:53.957" Title="Better organization of knowledge for courses?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-08T14:35:16.293" Score="7" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in an applied science subject at a UK university, part way through my first year. I have two supervisors: 'A' is a senior professor, and 'B' is a PDRA. Most of my work is centred around a large multi-university project. A is the PI on this project, and most of B's time is spent on it. B and I often work together on the same problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B has recently informed us that she is pregnant and will be going on maternity leave next year. By that point I will be a few months into year 2 of my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A has told me that that there is a possibility that, if I am willing, my PhD could be put on hold for the duration of A's maternity leave, and I could be employed as a RA to cover the work that she would have been doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial thought is that if this comes to pass, it would be a win/win: It would provide continuity for the project, and give me more experience and more time around the subject before my funding runs out. While the work that I would be doing would be slightly different to my PhD topic, it would be relevant and closely related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What potential pitfalls are there here? What questions should I ask if this is formally proposed? What pros &amp;amp; cons can you see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T19:34:21.640" Title="What are the potential pitfalls of putting a PhD on hold to be employed by the university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14614" CreationDate="2013-12-08T15:07:53.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR First build a knowledge base, then a knowledge community (more than 1 person), then a Q&amp;amp;A site...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the practical questions (software, structure) I think you miss like many trying to start a community site/wiki that there really needs to be an incentive to participate continuously in such a project and answer and document things when there is a reader count of a few dozen (like it will be for a course). You see what trouble some specialized beta sites here on stackexchange have to get 1-2 questions at all a day to attract audience. &lt;strong&gt;Gamification will not work for a such a small audience&lt;/strong&gt;. I participated in some research group wikis, the will of the members to participate is defined mainly by &quot;how easy to use&quot; and &quot;what's my profit from this compared to my current personal note taking system (redundancy)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikis work much better for such a small community for the purpose of documenting things and sharing knowledge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easier to share and embed PDF's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many skins to get a layout suited for good overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;often plugins to export Wiki syntax to Tex/Docbook/PDF so you can write basically your bachelor/master thesis with the wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easier software to handle, many wikis can be file-based and run without server (more &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/580/what-future-proof-software-for-building-managing-a-personal-big-knowledge-base&quot;&gt;future-proof&lt;/a&gt;), I would only put my knowledge into a wiki if it is simple to copy and install at another place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put such criterions now &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikimatrix.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you get &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/ButorWiki+Daisy+DokuWiki+Giki+GWiki+JSPWiki+MoinMoin+MoniWiki+PhpWiki+PmWiki+PukiWiki+TiddlyWiki+Triki-Wiki+Zim&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some candidates&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dokuwiki, MoinMoin, PHPwiki, PMwiki I can recommend&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MoinMoin runs without server (even on USB stick), has WYSIWYG editor (absolutely necessary or only few will use your wiki) and is pretty future-proof as Debian and other known communities are based on it. There is also a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/ThemeMarket/Solenoid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sidebar theme&lt;/a&gt; to keep overview and allow fast navigation, &lt;strong&gt;don't underestimate overview when people browse a new site!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is my recommendation, but the bigger question is how to motivate students to participate. Already putting some knowledge and stuff up yourself is mandatory, why participate in an empty website, that's why stackexchange invented the Area51 launching system, but even this is not reliable...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.560" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T15:07:53.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14599" CreationDate="2013-12-08T15:38:55.893" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add one point of note to the other answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do check if the first author is still in academia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that the first author wrote the paper as a PhD student, and has since left academia.  Quite probably, if he/she has left academia, he/she will not have time or want to make time to address the issue.  When this is the case, probably their supervisor is also on the paper, and might still be in academia.  In this case, contact the supervisor or another co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T15:38:55.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-08T17:35:57.020" Score="11" ViewCount="830" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the prime motivation/incentive for people to supervise undergraduate projects? Students want the degree obviously, but what do the supervisors get? Is there some incentive? Are undergraduate supervisors paid per project as well?&#xA;I am an undergraduate computer science student. We mostly make applications and computer programs as final year projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9887" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-08T18:54:20.030" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T23:45:18.443" Title="What incentives do supervisors get for supervising undergraduate projects?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14615" CreationDate="2013-12-08T18:24:24.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes this is a slippery slope you are mounting! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be better for you to keep on your PhD on track, taking a year out to do other research may end up being a complete waste of time for your PhD. It wouldn't be so bad if it was a 6 month absence but a year is a long time to be dropping your tools. I did my PhD full-time over 4 years in Computer Eng. and I needed those full 4 years to get the job done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd ask if you can continue on your PhD track and get your supervisor A to take full charge for the year - just coordinate your plan with supervisor B before she leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said if your fairly young and can afford to spend a full year on a different subject matter then good for you! Personally I'd try to finish your PhD research goals ASAP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T18:24:24.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2013-12-08T18:50:30.683" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes undergraduate projects can form an extended talent scouting, looking for good matches of personality and interests for future graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T18:50:30.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:00:58.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In community/junior colleges, faculty members may be offered a small fee for supervising student's honors projects. In my experience, most of those who agree to do this put in far more work than would be covered by the stipend. Although some may agree to supervise projects just because they are expected to, most do so because they enjoy working individually with motivated and talented students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T19:00:58.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14615" CreationDate="2013-12-08T21:14:56.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know your field, so my answer might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that taking this opportunity runs the risk of a small lifetime earnings hit (since there's a good chance that it means you would spend an extra year at PD salary rather than TT or industry salary), but that beyond that it would only help you career-wise.  Especially since this year wouldn't count against your clock.  That is, compared to your peers graduating at the same time as you, you'll have more experience, more publications, and experience with more projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T21:14:56.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2013-12-08T23:45:18.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond a general desire to train students to be good researchers, a few of the benefits of undergraduate supervision for the academic include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workload:&lt;/strong&gt; Some departments have a workload model with various degrees of formality. In such models, supervising undergraduate projects would count towards an overall workload. Thus, if you preferred supervising undergraduate projects to some other tasks such as teaching or various service roles, you could do a little more. In a similar way there might be a default expectation that each member of academic staff take on a certain number of undergraduate students. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Facilitating research:&lt;/strong&gt; Some undergraduate research is publishable. Thus, the research can contribute to the academic's research track record. Obviously undergraduate students don't usually have the research skills of a PhD student and the time frame is shorter. That said, with proper design of projects and some work by the supervisor, it's often possible to get a publishable research project or perhaps a piece of a publishable project. In other cases, merely supervising a project keeps the supervisor thinking about a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identifying potential doctoral students:&lt;/strong&gt; It provides an opportunity to get to know a student and identify those with particular research talents. Such students may consider doing a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T23:45:18.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-09T04:26:32.887" Score="3" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it recommended to refer to research done by specific faculty members in a department in the SOP for graduate school admissions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it not imply that you are interested in &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; research ONLY and thereby reduce your chances in case they don't have funding or had already other applicants/students who wanted to work with them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it can be beneficial, how can one address specific faculty research without limiting the audience of their application to them? (More specifically, consider physics PhD programs in US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="8289" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T04:33:36.337" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T04:33:36.337" Title="Addressing research of faculty members in statement of purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-12-27T13:47:12.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14630" CreationDate="2013-12-09T05:01:36.093" Score="24" ViewCount="15301" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we all know, during our higher-education careers there have been many professors who have assigned academic papers that require a minimum word or page count in some shape or form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel this simply forces students to create “fluff” in their papers. I can understand creating a maximum word count (this makes students sift out what they feel is relevant to answering the prompt of the paper) whereas a minimum word count encourages one to think more broadly about how to go about the prompt. In some situations this is good – perhaps the instructor expects evidence or more critical thinking – but in most situations this will only lead students to find more evidence to reaffirm their claim (which is not very useful if you can prove your claim with less evidence) or create “fluff” in their paper in order to meet the requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://michellerafter.com/2012/10/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-word-counts-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; about word counts for people writing stories/articles but this is in the professional world (not academic) and doesn’t actually have statistics, but it does give some interesting perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I want to know if there are any statistics or studies that prove specifying a minimum word-count is beneficial or hurtful in academic paper writing? Does it vary based on subject?&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps instructors can give their experience and/or thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So far there have been answers of people’s experiences which is extremely beneficial and I encourage more of them. Inevitably though, I am hoping to accept an answer that has a case study or any research relevant to this topic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9893" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T08:40:22.007" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T08:40:22.007" Title="Is specifying a minimum word count beneficial for academic writing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14613" CreationDate="2013-12-09T05:04:07.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely helpful to contact potential advisers for many reasons.  In my experience, one important reason is that a professor for whom you would like to work may not have space or funding for you.  Sometimes those things can be overcome, and sometimes they can't.  If there is only one professor whose research interests you in a given department, and that professor isn't taking students for some reason, that could make your decision for you.  It's not a pleasant situation, but I have seen it happen several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also find that, after talking to a potential adviser, the focus in their research isn't quite what you thought it was.  Of course you can find that out by reading the recent publications, but a conversation can also be enlightening.  They might tell you about one or two specific projects you would likely be working on, and if those projects don't interest you, you might want to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things look like they could work out, it is still an excellent idea to stay in touch.  If someone on the admissions committee gets to know you somehow, that will really set your application apart.  The chair of the graduate admissions committee at my undergraduate institution even told me that, more than once, he has admitted a student simply because he or she was calling or emailing and expressing real interest and desire to become a student in the department.  Don't be annoying, but a couple of emails and/or a phone call or two never hurt anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are several potential advisers in one department, that is great.  It likely means that department focuses on research that interests you.  Don't be afraid of getting in touch with more than one professor.  The more people that recognize your name, the better.  Just be sure to be polite and respectful and leave a good impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9894" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T05:04:07.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2013-12-09T07:47:10.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that providing a minimum word count promotes fluff. I have often used an approximate number of pages (12 pt double spaced) expected together with a minimum number of references. The reason for providing anything, is that students ask how much they need to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question from the students is the key, as I see it. They do not know what constitutes good scientific writing and tend to try to quantify knowledge as &quot;number of pages to be read to the exam&quot; and similar quantities they can relate to. How this should be translated into what we usually are looking for &quot;quality&quot; is not at all clear to them, nor us in most cases! This has made we think more about the training throughout the education and how to get the message of &quot;quality&quot; across. I, unfortunately, do not have a patented solution but believe that organized writing exercises throughout the education is necessary. The problem is that most if not everyone in the education have to synchronize exercises across course boundaries in order to build understanding of academic writing among the students, starting with simpler exercises and leading towards essays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the writing task should also be a clear goal providing a goal for the writing exercise, other than a ten page requirement. what are the goals? to write ten pages? To quickly gather some information on a topic? To handle references correctly? To write concisely? The list can be extended substantially. The goals need to be made clear and then one must have a clear picture of what one expects out of all these goals because a different number of them can be satisfied at different levels of an education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T07:47:10.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2013-12-09T08:59:39.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start by saying I'm an undergraduate, so take me as seriously as you feel I deserve. I've TA'd for a 200-level class with a fair amount of writing, which meant grading lots of papers, and dealing with students who need to have a word/length requirement to be happy. I also have worked in journalism both as a writer and editor (again, college paper), so I've done lots of writing, and spent a lot of time working with writers on their articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In class, length is seen as a good thing, while in journalism, it's seen almost as a bad thing (due to space requirements). Dealing with tight space constraints was very tough for me at first, but after doing it for a few years I've learned to write compact stuff. You write better when every word is a gift. You really think about what you can cover in a given space, and how to give every word as much impact as possible. You think about structure more, knowing you won't have room re-summarize later, and you don't bring up anything that's not essential to what you're writing. It's harder, but it makes you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving long length requirements seemed to have the opposite effect. Topics diverge, and structure can easily be ignored. Writing/syntax is encouraged to be verbose. I see many writers come onto staff used to writing they do in class, and what I've noticed is that their writing often lacks clarity and purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I do as an editor/teacher is ask questions like, &quot;What exactly are you trying to say?&quot; and &quot;Explain this to me like I'm a 5-year-old.&quot; I find that this really helps, and that good writing follows good and clear ideas. This is regardless of the length of assignment, but I think having limited space forces students to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9898" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T08:59:39.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-09T09:33:31.023" Score="3" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working in a big-shot multi-national corporation as a developer for two years now, with a possible future as a software architect in some eight to ten years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to enroll in a PhD program. I am planning to quit my job and join some university for PhD programs. Now most of the universities needs some research papers, of which I have none. They also require recommendations from professors, however I have already quit college two years back and don't have a working relationship with those professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I secure letters of recommendation? Will a letter of recommendation from my manager help? Does academia really care about professionals wanting to enter back into the world of higher education again? Will I be able to apply to competitive universities with my profile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9899" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T19:22:22.070" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:22:22.070" Title="How to secure recommendations and apply for PhD after having worked outside of academia for two years?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2013-12-09T10:01:39.237" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we all know, during our higher education careers it is inevitable to be assigned &#xA;  essays or academic papers that require a minimum word-count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not agree with your premise here. For my undergraduate and graduate students I rarely include a minimum word count. I do include a maximum word count (which students often want extended) for the reason you wrote: Encourage students to write concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimum word counts do promote the things we want to avoid. Writing the same information with fewer words give greater power to the writing so encouraging students to do the opposite does not really do what I want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I do find that I have to be VERY clear with my students that writing too little can cause them to fail. I explain that when it comes to word count, there is a maximum, say 3,000 words, but no minimum. If they can show they understand everything they should understand in 500 words, great! However, unless they are an exceptional writer, they should expect to fail if they submit too little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T10:01:39.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2013-12-09T12:57:25.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you really should give it a try, but of course it depends on the field of CS that you are going to apply to. So try to check a field of specialization that is closely related to the one that you have been working, eg. Software Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also here it depends to which university are you going to aim for. A certain number of them require that you have already a master's degree in CS; some of them can choose you directly to do PhD studies being just a bachelor, but that usually happens to students that got at least one or two publications in a respected peer conference or journal (that is for the admission committee to check it up if you have research skills). The last point is not a must, but it is important. I have talked a few days ago with a Professor in one renowned university in the North America area, and he mentioned me that the admission committee in his faculty is getting more strict each year, and now to have publications is really a must (apart of a MSc degree of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case give it a try, and do not forget to say in your cover letter your research interests and why you really want to pursue a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T14:02:53.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T14:02:53.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2013-12-09T15:00:25.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a computer science guy, so I don't really have experience with the norms of a CS department in a university.  But I can give this general advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a PhD, you should at the very least: 1) know you enjoy research; and, preferably, 2) have specific research problems you really want to work on. &lt;strong&gt;Don't enter a PhD program if you don't like to research.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're not sure, start with a master's in a program that has a history of allowing master's students to graduate into PhD programs and in-so-doing take advantage of their master's coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References: get them from people who make you look good and make sure your letter-writers know what makes a good grad school letter of recommendation.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have a good manager who can attest to your capabilities as a learner, sure, have him or her write a letter.  However, not all managers are going to know what graduate schools are looking for -- so educate the writer. Grad schools want people who can learn and work independently above all.  Emphasize that. And, of course, if you are interested in a certain kind of research, make sure your letter-writer knows that and can comment about it!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The personal statement matters.&lt;/strong&gt; In your post here you mentioned your strengths (professional experience at a good firm) and weaknesses (disconnected from academia, non-academic references).  Be straightforward about those in your personal statement. More importantly, use the personal statement to discuss what you want to research, why, and your prior experience in the area. Furthermore, explain why you are a good fit for the department...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fit&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to fit in at your department. This basically means you should apply to programs where you can have an appropriate mentor who is an expert in what you want to study, or expert enough to guide you along. Do not just apply to any-old program, or a program with a good name. Read through the department web site, figure out the kind of work they are doing, and contact possible mentors/advisors with questions that show your interest and help you decide if the program is a good fit. Having prior rapport with the faculty will help you, and if the department knows you &lt;strong&gt;want to be there&lt;/strong&gt;, this will bump you up a little in the stack of applications. Of course, having good credentials and clear research interests is what makes for a successful application, but departments don't want to waste giving offers and potential funding to candidates who are unlikely to attend the program should they be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9904" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T15:00:25.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14634" CreationDate="2013-12-09T16:44:46.360" Score="20" ViewCount="1128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just noticed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt; is basically running out of monthly IDs, as can be seen in this graph (&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; [13-12-09]):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YeUtE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have gone over 8000 monthly submissions 3 times in last 1.5 years. With the steady increase in the number of submissions, it can be expected that it gets over 10000 in cca 2 years. However, the current ID format is restricted to 4 digits, i.e., 10000 submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found any information regarding this on the webpage. So: How will the submission IDs look like if they don't fit into the scheme? It interests me because in some helper applications, I tend to rely on the &lt;code&gt;yyyy.xxxx&lt;/code&gt; format of the IDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T16:54:40.097" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T08:55:58.957" Title="arXiv is running out of IDs -- is their solution known?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14633" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:13:30.890" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The format presumed in the question is incorrect. The format is &lt;code&gt;YYMM.NNNN&lt;/code&gt;, rather than &lt;code&gt;YYYY.NNNN&lt;/code&gt;. Shortening the year to &lt;code&gt;YY&lt;/code&gt; and including the month as &lt;code&gt;MM&lt;/code&gt; gives a factor of 12 increase in the number of available IDs. Version numbers are appended to the ID, as &lt;code&gt;v1&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;v2&lt;/code&gt;, and so on. That said, it is still a problem, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/arxiv_identifier&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt; have thought about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NNNN is a zero-padded sequence number starting at 0001 and permitting up to 9999 submissions per month. If current growth rates&#xA;  continue, we expect to change the sequence number to 5-digits NNNNN in&#xA;  10 to 15 years. We will do this in a uniform fashion so that, likely&#xA;  starting on some year boundary, all subsequent identifiers are&#xA;  zero-padded to 5-digits. We cannot currently anticipate extension&#xA;  beyond that although extension to 6-digits would be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was posted in 2007 so we are 6 or so years into their 10-15 year window. Submissions of multiple versions might grant some extra headroom, however it does appear that we could run into problems in about two years. It looks like they underestimated their growth a little bit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Status change in 2015.&lt;/strong&gt; arXiv.org switched to 5-digit IDs in January 2015. The format is now &lt;code&gt;YYMM.NNNNN&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;YYMM.NNNNNvV&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T08:55:58.957" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T08:55:58.957" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:48:35.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, I try and provide enough room between the minimum and maximum word counts to accommodate both verbose and terse writers. I use word counts to provide a guide as to the scope and depth I want in the assignment. Generally, the students who stretch out/tighten up their writing to stay within the minimum/maximum range have bigger issues than just being overly verbose or terse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably see better writing if I let students use their natural length, but generally my writing assignments are about learning a topic in breadth (long assignment) or focusing on a key issue (short assignment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T17:48:35.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14615" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:50:46.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been in a similar situation at least once before, I would say the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your priority should be the rapid completion of your PhD;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The family circumstances of colleagues or machinations of your dept's internal labour market are irrelevant to your career;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be flattered into &quot;helping out&quot; by the temporary prestige of a salaried RAship;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Universities are infamous for their exploitation of PhD students and are ruthless in the substitution of permanent salaried posts with FTCs (fixed term contracts).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware that your supervisor may attach a higher priority to delivering a project they are contractually responsible for as PI, than to facilitating the early completion of your PhD and thus your exit to an independent career;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The early completion of your PhD will give you mobility in the job market, rendering the internal labour market irrelevant;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you aspire to a career in UK academia, now is the time to strategize and position yourself for REF2020. Unless some dramatic shift in hiring practices takes place, your next employer will only be interested in your PhD (tick), publication history and REF-ability for 2020.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologise if any of what I say sounds miserably pessimistic; but academia has become ruthlessly competitive and I would advise putting self-preservation ahead of any internal loyalties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9906" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T17:50:46.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14563" CreationDate="2013-12-09T20:49:28.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would favour option 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are trying to tell the story of your research career so far, and how your story could continue at the institution(s) to which you are applying. Looking at it in this way, you are casting your past and present research activities as &quot;Background&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your subsequent sections would be about specific projects - the &quot;Future&quot;. In each section you can refer to your skill set, showing how this project is based on a firm foundation of skills developed during your Background years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader will get a much clearer picture of you as a scientist - past and future - if you structure your application this way. It makes for easier reading, and you want your admissions committee to be happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting up your &quot;story&quot; thematically - showing how parts of your background set you up for the project under consideration - makes it more difficult for a reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T20:49:28.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2013-12-09T20:53:28.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any relevant experience is valid subject matter for an application for a program of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, your internship experiences are well within the same field of endeavour and I would include them, if space allows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A researcher who has a particular interest in developing a java web application to interface with a real-time computing solution, might therefore be very interested in your particular skill set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T20:53:28.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14701" CreationDate="2013-12-10T03:09:11.863" Score="11" ViewCount="4469" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12414/should-i-simultaneously-apply-for-multiple-jobs-in-different-ranks-at-the-same-u&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that it is generally okay to apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university, but I want to know is it acceptable to apply two different postdoc positions in the same institution at the same time. I think I remembered seeing somewhere that you are not advised to do so because these two professors may talk to each other and find that you apply to both of them. Suppose I have sent an application to Prof. A but did not hear back, is it okay to send another application to Prof. B even if they are in the same institution or should I wait for a definite yes/no from Prof. A before moving on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9917" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T18:56:36.283" Title="Is it acceptable to apply for two different postdoc positions in the same institution at the same time" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14648" CreationDate="2013-12-10T03:43:44.530" Score="3" ViewCount="3294" Body="&lt;p&gt;What citation style allows the author to reference sources with superscript numbers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm at the very edge of my page limit. I'm allowed to use any citation style. I need something concise that can point to the relevant works I've listed on the works-cited page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:05:59.140" Title="What citation style allows the author to reference sources with superscript numbers?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14647" CreationDate="2013-12-10T04:01:49.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am presuming this is a coursework assignment. If you're that tight for space, are you sure you haven't written too much? Be careful that your finished piece doesn't &quot;feel&quot; cramped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; journal uses superscript numbers for in-text citations&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and then references them in the bibliography like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hynek, B. M. Implications for hydrologic processes on Mars from extensive bedrock outcrops throughout Terra Meridiani. &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;431&lt;/strong&gt;, 156–159 (2004).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T04:01:49.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14647" CreationDate="2013-12-10T04:55:04.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using LaTeX, you can refer to the following links for superscript citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/8467/superscript-citations-without-brackets-with-the-revtex4-1-document-class&quot;&gt;Superscript citations without brackets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/114833/biblatex-textcite-using-a-superscript-reference-number&quot;&gt;Using a superscript reference number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9917" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:05:59.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2013-12-10T05:35:19.693" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you don't specify in which area you are. I certainly know that in &lt;strong&gt;mathematics&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;theoretical computer science&lt;/strong&gt;, only a very weird professor would enforce a minimal length on a solution of a problem (which is a typical assignment: to solve a problem). You simply assign a problem and you think to yourself: &quot;This should be for 2 or 3 pages of proof.&quot; To your surprise, the student writes a 10-line proof in a way in which you never treated the problem before (and maybe no one else either)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you never put a lower bound on the length of the solution, for the above reason. You can put a upper bound so that the student &quot;can't simply list all possibilities&quot;, but even that is not necessary; however, it still of course makes sense if you have many students and a lack of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;N.B.: One of my favourite scientific paper has 5 pages including abstract and references, and shortens a proof that was previously ~20 pages. Isn't that beautiful?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T05:35:19.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-10T07:48:13.370" Score="6" ViewCount="4627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my paper to a reputed journal two days ago. I got a mail from the editor saying that I need to complete other forms (copyright etc) after he finishes screening. However,I hadn't received my supervisor's approval when I submitted the paper. Now my supervisor has got back to me saying that I should withdraw my paper. Currently the status is &quot;Not Assigned.&quot; Do I need to send a withdrawal letter? Or I can wait for the screening result? If I don't pass screen, do I still need to send a withdrawal letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9920" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T09:58:30.483" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T10:13:55.590" Title="How to withdraw my submitted paper before it has passed screen?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14651" CreationDate="2013-12-10T09:02:57.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you need to withdraw the paper from formal consideration. This is the only way to stop the process once it's begun. This also actually helps you with later submissions. If the paper is submitted and rejected, then you may have to specify this to other journals that ask about the previous history of the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:02:57.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14667" CreationDate="2013-12-10T10:58:11.943" Score="5" ViewCount="1855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to apply for a PhD position in a university. For the completion of application I have to write two essays:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement of motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description of research area (with vacant PhD position)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written my statement of motivation but I am unable to write a &lt;em&gt;description of research area&lt;/em&gt;. In the application there are different research themes which have a vacant PhD position; we have to chose one research area from these themes. I am interested in one research area: its title is &lt;em&gt;catalytic study of X-material&lt;/em&gt; . I have never worked in this research topic or material. So I am in a dilemma on what to write in my description of research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write about the property of X-material, current research or should I make a research proposal for that research area (catalytic study of X-material)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9922" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T09:56:12.347" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T15:02:54.163" Title="How should I write research description essay in my PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2013-12-10T11:22:13.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was the template expressly provided by the advisory committee? In this case, you should of course forward it to your prospective references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if it is just something you thought up, chances are that an experienced reference writer will do a better job by himself (he is probably more aware of what the committee is looking for in an applicant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should not stop you from sending him all the relevant info: detailed CV, statement of purpose, transcripts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9221" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T11:22:13.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14657" CreationDate="2013-12-10T13:31:54.643" Score="3" ViewCount="34175" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a Deliverable for the European Commission I'm commanded to include an Executive Summary at the top of the document. This Executive Summary includes the main outcomes of the research done for the Deliverable, including what I've read from others research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course anything I've learnt is formally referenced, and by style decision I have to employ APA style. Should I put the cites and references in the Executive Summary as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PROS&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If by any reason the executive summary is separated from the real&#xA;document, it is stated clearly that I don't pretend to pass any&#xA;others insights as mine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONS&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Executive Summary occupies nearly one and a half pages more&#xA;(APA!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extensive citing makes the reading slower, and more difficult if you're not used to read academic papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm worried to make the Executive Summary unuseful by adding too much formalism.&#xA;Any experiences on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9924" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T08:05:19.530" LastActivityDate="2016-02-06T03:59:11.320" Title="References in Executive Summary?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14656" CreationDate="2013-12-10T13:41:24.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general answer would be: No. Summaries should summarize the work/report and anyone reading the summary will not need to go to references to check on sources since those are given in the report itself. I can see exceptions from this if one or two references are key to the report by for example, being ground-breaking or by being in conflict. Then it may be important to show from where the key aspects originate and to perhaps list the single r couple of references after the text. But, the persons reading the summary may not be familiar with referencing so make sure you know your intended audience and the style they are familiar with. It may still not be necessary to provide references but to reference the material by stating the author name(s) and the place of publication without reference details. Again, the report summarized in your Exec. Summary will have the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T13:41:24.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15124" CreationDate="2013-12-10T13:56:33.703" Score="10" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a new program in the spring and one of the first things that we will be tasked with is the creation of a 'XYZ Learning Contract'.  After a bit of digging in the search engines I see that there is a pretty broad spectrum of thought on the value and composition of learning contracts.  Having never dealt with them before I find myself wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How common are they?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the contracts can be, and some sources say - should be, modified then how is obligation and adherence managed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following on to the last question, how are they enforced?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that every department is going to be different and that an advisor's milage may vary but I'm also curious if there is some general consensus on learning contracts among those that have had to deal with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T14:57:51.283" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T17:24:15.180" Title="Learning contracts" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2013-12-10T15:14:34.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an alternative approach: &lt;strong&gt;Speak to &quot;an academic&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't be afraid of the weird people we are :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one true story: There are two papers by the same two authors, one of them is a renowned professor and the other one works at a farm. The farmer had a very nice idea, wrote it to this professor, and they published it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://taylortiling.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joan Taylor&lt;/a&gt; lives, according to the address in the papers, in Tasmania, Australia. Professor Joshua Socolar is affiliated to Duke University, North Carolina, USA. Their two common papers are available: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4279&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv:1003.4279&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1419&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv:1009.1419&lt;/a&gt;. I personally witnessed the passion with which Joshua spoke about the details of this story on SubTile conference in January 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any case, make sure that your ideas are clear, because academic people receive various weird stuff and you don't want your mail to just get trashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you might feel &quot;unsafe&quot; that someone &quot;steals&quot; your idea. In that case, a pre-publication of any form (arXiv, blog, free software as mentioned above, etc.) is enough to verify your attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T15:49:02.927" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:49:02.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14670" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:19:33.257" Score="11" ViewCount="9079" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals, especially in the life sciences, offer the possibility to submit results as as a brief communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering when to choose this way of publishing. If I don't have enough results for a large paper because it used to be a &quot;hobby project&quot; that should be put to an end, but the results are interesting and I want to publish them, should I opt for a brief communication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I choose between this form of publication and an article?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes the question of how small a &quot;real&quot; article can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T09:07:16.853" Title="When to submit as a &quot;Brief communication&quot;, when as an article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14662" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:46:31.667" Score="6" ViewCount="29408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am used to European university system and I don't know much about how things are working overseas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already hold a Bachelor degree and a Master degree. I will soon be looking for a PhD. If I am not mistaken, in the USA, someone directly jumps from a Bachelor degree to graduates studies which include a Master degree + a PhD, is it correct? Is it also the way it works in Canada (Vancouver, UBC)? Is it possible to make a PhD in Canada without having to take time for the Master degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that a Canadian PhD last between 4 and 7 years. Does it include the Master degree? If yes, how much time does the PhD only represents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9928" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:49:02.983" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T19:33:43.407" Title="Is it possible to obtain a PhD in Canada without having to attend courses for a master degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14661" CreationDate="2013-12-10T17:23:24.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canada is different from the USA, in that direct entry for a PhD after a bachelors degree is rare. The typical path is a bachelors, followed by two year masters, followed by four to five years for a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, no typical Canadian PhD program also grants a masters, as in Canada, it's sort of implied that you already had one going into the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course, based on my understanding of the sciences: Humanities and Engineering may vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: One note about courses: Course requirements vary dramatically from program to program, university to university. Some will require relatively few courses, others, many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T21:45:22.723" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T21:45:22.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14668" CreationDate="2013-12-10T19:18:23.850" Score="8" ViewCount="3601" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can two people, a professor and a graduate student, sign a recommendation letter? The concern here is that the professor knows little about the student and the graduate student knows all about the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information, where as if I was listed as the primary contact: I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9662" LastEditorUserId="9662" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T22:10:35.877" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T22:10:35.877" Title="Can both a grad. student &amp; faculty member cosign a recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2013-12-10T19:38:54.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have more than one person sign a recommendation letter.  I had one letter signed by two people.  But it is unusual.  My understanding is that the usual approach in your situation would be for the graduate student to help write the letter, but only the professor to sign it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T19:38:54.833" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14651" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:08:06.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to withdraw ASAP. Submitting papers without a co-authors consent is considered scientific misconduct. It can have SERIOUS consequences for your career!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T20:08:06.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:20:13.350" Score="0" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am in an MS program with a research concentration in theoretical/formal computer science (mostly spatial and temporal knowledge representation and reasoning). However, I find myself getting more attracted towards artificial intelligence and robotics. When applying for a PhD do you think my MS research is a good concentration for a PhD research in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics? (I have taken courses that cover both artificial intelligence and robotics during the MS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="884" LastEditorUserId="54237" LastEditDate="2020-09-05T22:43:06.980" LastActivityDate="2020-09-05T22:43:06.980" Title="Choosing Artificial Intelligence after MS in Theory" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;artificial-intelligence&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14654" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:31:15.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, to be registered successfully for PhD project you have to write an abstract (10-20 pages) (and make a presentation). This should cover roughly and shortly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;state of the art &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;state of knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the very specialized niche of your work and what the motivation is(better understanding, prototype, measurement accuracy improvement...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how you are going to achieve this (probably), i.e. a reasonable working and time plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are still applying for a PhD position, it has to be much shorter, so show to the committee that you can identify above points analyzing literature and summarize them in 2-3 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things more easy, google similar current published PhD thesis related to this topic and read the preface (above points will often be summarized there within 2-3 pages). Don't write an essay, if the committee asks you to write 3 pages of decription of research area, write exactly 3 pages ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Oh forgot, why are you are motivated for this topic you don't know again? Maybe after writing the description of research you should polish up the statement of motivation also a bit based on that ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T20:31:15.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2013-12-10T21:05:33.100" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Noah, I had a situation where two advisors co-signed a letter of recommendation. I should mention that the people reviewing the letter found this an unusual situation—and had claimed that they had not seen that in twenty years of reading recommendation letters. So this is definitely not standard practice. I suspect it would be memorable, but I am not sure it would be actually useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the difference was that my two co-signers were equal in rank. Your situation has a professor with a graduate student providing most of the insights. I suspect you will need to have the professor adapt the graduate student's comments, and then sign the letter. In the case where feedback is needed, the professor would then need to get the relevant details from the graduate student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T13:39:40.830" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T13:39:40.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14666" CreationDate="2013-12-10T21:12:53.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, it's going to come down to your application and your history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sounds of it, you'll be a very strong candidate based on your theory background -- You just need to find the right school / supervisor that will see how to help you pursue those interests. Look for schools with good AI programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the research focuses at the CS Department in the University of Alberta, I think you'd have a good shot there with a number of supervisors, both in reinforcement learning and in machine learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really though, it's going to come down to a demonstration that you can do the research, via your reference letters, CV, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T21:12:53.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14660" CreationDate="2013-12-10T22:34:00.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is often that you submit an article, and the journal says &quot;We might accept this if you can make it a brief communication, which means 1 table, and X words&quot;.  (Where X is a relatively small number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the article and see if it naturally fits into their criterion for brief communication. If it does, submit it as such, if not, submit it as an article. The length of a 'real' article depends on the journal, but I've had a lot of papers rejected and this only happened once because the article was too short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6495" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T22:34:00.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14673" CreationDate="2013-12-11T00:00:40.070" Score="3" ViewCount="1754" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a two year gap after finishing my Master's degree and I am applying to graduate schools in the same field. This time has spent on immigration and then unemployment, tutoring physics, and a job not directly related to my field. But I have been following new research on the topics that I was interested in, without being supervised or any serious research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is, what should I mostly emphasize on in order to explain the gap most effectively: My teaching experience (indicating interest in teaching the field), Having a job and paying for my family expenses (indicating maturity), or that I was following the current research on topics of interest (indicating persistence)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T02:41:45.487" Title="Justifying a two year gap after Master's degree in Statement of Purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14671" CreationDate="2013-12-11T02:36:25.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can mention all three.  The trick is to make these parts of your CV look like &quot;features,&quot; not &quot;bugs.&quot; It sounds like you have an idea of what to do there. I don't think it would hurt to mention that this slight detour, while being slightly off the path to graduate school, has only convinced you that graduate school was the right place for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, no one ever got into a good program by saying &quot;I really want to be there!&quot; I was in a similar situation when applying to PhD programs -- I was teaching high school, which was good, but my background was not directly inline with what some PhD programs were looking for. I emailed some faculty about what to do to bolster my application, and one suggestion was to go ahead and do some academic writing on my own and use that as part of my application.  I'm not sure if that's possible for you, but it's something to consider. If that work is high quality, shows that you are up-to-date on the state of your field, and actively thinking about workable research topics, that will surely impress admissions committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9904" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T02:36:25.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14671" CreationDate="2013-12-11T02:41:45.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I presume you are applying to PhD programs. If I were you, I would emphasize&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was following the current research on topics of interest &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;since research will be the primary task for PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience should be also mentioned so that they would know you can be a TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things are not directly related to SoP. You can mention them briefly in your CV  in case they wonder what you have been doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T02:41:45.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14651" CreationDate="2013-12-11T03:32:58.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether your supervisor is one of the authors/co-authors or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor is one of the authors of the paper, submitting the paper without all the authors' consent is unethical. You should send the editor a letter to withdraw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wait until the paper passes the screen process, you are wasting the editor's precious time. If you withdraw it now, he can then proceed to other papers on his desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the only author of the paper, I am not sure why you need your supervisor's approval to submit the paper. It would be up to you to withdraw or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T10:13:55.590" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T10:13:55.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14677" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-11T07:25:21.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Statement about an individual, what influences them, professional interests, and plan for the future as typically described as part of a college applicants admissions application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:26:28.660" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:26:28.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14678" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-11T07:25:21.860" Score="0" Body="Concerning an individual, what influences them, professional interests, and plan for the future, typically described as part of a college applicant's application for admission." OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:26:28.660" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:26:28.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2013-12-11T08:06:05.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I think that any relevant work experience should definitely be included in your resume or cv, I am not sure if its place is in the statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your internship in some way inspired you to get your master's degree or to pursue a certain area of interest, then I would include it; however, mentioning it for the sake of mentioning it doesn't make sense to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T08:06:05.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14682" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:09:57.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Networking refers to a process through which a group of individuals become interconnected, normally in an informal manner. With the purpose of building academic relations among people who share academic interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:01:04.280" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:01:04.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14683" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:09:57.623" Score="0" Body="To try and build academic relations among people who share academic interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. " OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:02:32.787" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:02:32.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14684" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:13:18.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A dissertation is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings. In some contexts, the word &quot;thesis&quot; or a cognate is used for part of a bachelor's or master's course, while &quot;dissertation&quot; is normally applied to a doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:02:14.847" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:02:14.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14685" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:13:18.920" Score="0" Body="A formal essay, specifically written by a candidate for the doctoral degree at a university." OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:02:28.910" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:02:28.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14686" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:20:15.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MBA degree as a Master of Business Administration. The core courses in an MBA program introduce the various areas of business such as accounting, finance, marketing, human resources and operations management; many programs include elective courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:02:02.270" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:02:02.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14687" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:20:15.040" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the Master of Business Administration (MBA or M.B.A.)" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:02:35.663" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:02:35.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2013-12-11T10:33:03.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why there are publishable blog posts that never become research papers?&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Writing a research paper takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Also, publishing is a tedious process. &#xA;So, some people prefer to write research results in a more informal way, i.e., blog post, to focus on the research results rather than focusing on writing [and publishing] the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In CS and related fields it is not rare to start with a blog post that eventually will become a published research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bertrand Meyer, famous for &lt;em&gt;Object-oriented software&lt;/em&gt; and the programming language Eiffel, has an article on the CACM blog titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/160071-the-waves-of-publication/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Waves of Publication&lt;/a&gt;. This article suggests starting publishing research results in a blog, then convert it to a technical report, then present it in a workshop, then in a conference and finally publish it in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EZQBd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Waves of publication&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1353" LastEditorUserId="1353" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T16:29:36.020" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T16:29:36.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14689" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-11T10:40:10.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/gre&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Graduate Record Examinations&lt;/a&gt; (GRE) is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools in the United States, and for English-taught graduate and business programs world-wide. The exam is reated and administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GRE General Test is offered as a computer-based exam administered at Prometric testing centers, aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are not related to any specific field of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:54:12.513" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:54:12.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14690" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-11T10:40:10.053" Score="0" Body="On the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) test, a standardized exam that is required for admissions to many graduate schools in the United States. " OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:54:12.513" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:54:12.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15418" CreationDate="2013-12-11T11:13:59.147" Score="6" ViewCount="1536" Body="&lt;p&gt;While filling a PhD application for a European university, I came across a field  that needed to be filled. The field - to be filled by 'Yes or No' -  asked if my master's or bachelor's universities are 'delocalized campuses'. This is the first time I have come across this term. I am not a native English speaker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does 'delocalized campus' mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:05:38.167" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T07:08:26.003" Title="Meaning of &quot;delocalized campus&quot;" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14694" CreationDate="2013-12-11T12:39:51.707" Score="19" ViewCount="15161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a University Dissertation proposal on Big Data. I have recently received my feedback and while there are good, constructive points one of the main issues in the marking is it is &quot;too descriptive&quot;. I do not understand what this means really, when we are talking about a literature review how can it not be descriptive - you are talking about what has already been found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact feedback is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your literature review is overwhelmingly descriptive in character and its needs more of a critical edge, evaluating the main contributions to the literature. Having a critical edge is essential, if you want to achieve a high mark in the final dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: What is descriptive writing and what is critical writing, preferably with examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9945" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T20:36:13.793" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T04:45:52.337" Title="How to deal with &quot;too descriptive&quot; comment in dissertation proposal feedback?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14693" CreationDate="2013-12-11T13:03:55.117" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference between descriptive writing and critical writing is much like the difference between a newspaper report and an opinion column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Descriptive&lt;/em&gt; writing is the act of reporting on what's in the literature: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith found that when X occurred Y and Z also happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Critical&lt;/em&gt; writing analyzes what has been done, and takes note of trends, as well as possibly offering feedback on the overall quality of the research: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith found X occurred in the presence of Y and Z, as did Jones. However, Doe has demonstrated that Y and Z normally occur in conjunction with one another, so it is not clear if X actually influences Y and Z, or if it is an independent effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can see from the above is that critical writing does require some descriptive writing, but it goes well beyond it in terms of the depth of analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T13:03:55.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T14:56:15.343" Score="8" ViewCount="9392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to start writing my thesis. My topic for research is work life balance in IT sector - a comparative analysis of male &amp;amp; female IT professionals in Pune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need help in writing the first introduction chapter. what all should be included in this chapter &amp;amp; what should not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9947" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T08:52:03.560" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T15:53:55.110" Title="What should I put in the introduction chapter of my thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14695" CreationDate="2013-12-11T15:04:47.007" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to your advisor and look into student services provided by your university.  The department should have pretty clear guidance on document structure and format.  You will also learn a lot by reading some of the dissertations of previous (successful) candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5760" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T15:04:47.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14693" CreationDate="2013-12-11T15:49:07.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To extend aeismail's comment slightly, a good critical analysis will not only summarize and critique findings, but also extrapolate conclusions from multiple studies to support/disprove current theories. Each individual paper provides evidence to some small piece of the overall puzzle; a good review will tie together many related (and some unrelated) papers to build an argument towards a general conclusion, using the individual research findings as support for their argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the individual results are almost expected to contradict each other. You can frequently have a batch of papers supporting theory A, and a second set of papers supporting theory B. This should be noted and identified as well; these are the current trends in your field of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T15:49:07.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T16:04:33.153" Score="5" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;If my university position is entirely funded by grant funds can I write for another grant while being funded by another grant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically the individual is a project coordinator hired by grant funds to manage a grant, not a faculty member or student.  Can this person spend time writing another grant when the project coordinators entire position is grant funded , no appropriated funds used. A PI on  the grant has asked the individual to start working on another grant during the regular hours, not outside the designated 40 hour work week. Thus, the real ethical issue can a faculty PI of a grant request a project coordinator to work on another grant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9949" LastEditorUserId="9949" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T18:30:27.670" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T18:30:27.670" Title="Can I write for another grant while being funded by a grant?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14702" CreationDate="2013-12-11T17:48:02.243" Score="4" ViewCount="1456" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a non-US undergrad majoring in Computer Science. I will have published a couple of research papers in a few months before I graduate, have worked on a couple of research-based academic projects, made some significant contributions to a big FOSS project, have done an internship from a small US startup, and a project in a big company (the size of Microsoft, Yahoo) - kind of a university-company mentorship. I intend to pursue my Ph.D from a US university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I join a US startup after relocating to US, work there (coding work - PHP, Python, iOS development) for a year or two before taking the GRE test and applying to MS/Ph.D programmes, will it increase my chances? I really want to work at a startup and want to found my own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What if the work at the startup is based on data analysis and machine learning (along the lines of which I intend to pursue my Ph.D)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, does having already founded a small startup (supposing I've got an investor or two too) help my chances in gaining admission? Considering I will co-found my own startup anyway someday, for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9953" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:13:24.027" Title="Does experience at a startup for a couple of years increase the chances of getting into a good Ph.D programme in a US university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14693" CreationDate="2013-12-11T18:43:39.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echoing what others have said, while reviewing the literature, you need not only summarize findings. That's what &quot;Descriptive&quot; means in this context - not that your writing shouldn't describe current findings, but that your writing &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; describes current findings, without any analysis, criticism or synthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I once wrote a review on the reasons why a particular disease follows a particular seasonal pattern. A purely descriptive review would have described the various theories as to why this phenomena exists, and stopped there. Instead, I evaluated the extended evidence for each (i.e. for X to be true, Y must also be true. We have no evidence that Y is true, which puts X on shakey ground), identified which were mutually incompatible, and suggested which might actually be describing the same mechanism in two different forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your evaluators are looking for, in all likelihood, is not merely a listing of the current thought in the field, but work that shows you are &lt;em&gt;interacting&lt;/em&gt; with that work. That you think someone might be wrong - or are at least critically evaluating what is currently being written. That you can extend where the field is going in unique directions based on what's been done before, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T18:43:39.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14646" CreationDate="2013-12-11T18:56:36.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is entirely reasonable to apply for multiple postions at any one time, even at the same institution, provided you do it appropriately. There are a number of considerations to digest, but pretty well most of what is discussed in your &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12414/should-i-simultaneously-apply-for-multiple-jobs-in-different-ranks-at-the-same-u&quot;&gt;linked question&lt;/a&gt; is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to consider is that the application you make is tailored for the position you are applying for. You need to be able to highlight what amazing skills and abilities you will be bringing to this partnership, and how it will benefit the project. You need to avoid a cold call approach, otherwise your applications will sound like spam. This means you need to change your cover letter a lot. It is likely, though, that the skills you bring to any project will be very similar. You are, after all, a product of your previous experiences. If you were to apply for two different positions, highlighting two very different sets of skills and abilities, I believe this could be to your detriment if this information was shared between prospective employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to weigh up the relative value of each position. If they are both about equal, then I would apply to both simultaneously. If, however, one was far more cherished than the other - one was your dream position with a triple Nobel Laureate with access to the best research facilities and guaranteed ongoing funding opportunities and endless publications and the other was with an also-ran professor (do they exist?) who publishes once in a blue moon, I'd probably hold back on the application for the latter, just in case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there are two positions being offered in the same institution that you are qualified and suitable for, I believe you'd be crazy to let the opportunity slip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an added consideration in that if your two professors discuss your applications, they may realise the potential to be able to share your expertise. And let's face it - professors do discuss applicants.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No professor/academic/employer is going to be that precious to believe that they are the only person in the world that you are willing to work for. No, I take that back - I've met a couple who are like that, but you wouldn't want to work for them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T18:56:36.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14699" CreationDate="2013-12-11T19:04:58.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to all of these questions and more is going to be: Maybe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience will help, but testimonial in the form of reference letters will be better. If you work at this company and it gets you a dynamite reference letter, testifying to your skill, it may help you. On the flip side, for a PhD, skill may not be sufficient--- for a PhD your research background (what you already &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt;) may be much more important than the work experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T19:04:58.627" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14695" CreationDate="2013-12-11T20:24:35.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned - look at previous candidates' theses, and ask what is expected by your advisor.  The introduction contents will vary between disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I included in my (successful) PhD thesis is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brief outline of the topic and subtopics being covered in the PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A rationale as to why the project is an important addition to the current body of knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main objectives of thesis and a brief overview of how these would be achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A hypothesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: it is important thatyou check to see if this or any format is acceptable and expected from your faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T20:24:35.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14708" CreationDate="2013-12-12T00:22:11.247" Score="20" ViewCount="6276" Body="&lt;p&gt;After I completed my PhD program, during which I published one refereed paper, I applied for several academic positions.&#xA;For a while, my two main thesis advisers agreed to write letters of recommendation, but after a few couple of years, one of them told me he would no longer recommend me because I had not published enough. He even admitted that it was not his job to judge my publication record -- potential employers could do that -- but until I published again, he wouldn't recommend me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do admit that I should have published more during my PhD program, but I was always under the impression that my publishing would begin after I had got a relevant job. During the period between graduation and being refused a recommendation, I'd been a consultant, a college teacher and unemployed. I could have published on my own but, after the delay, I felt hindered by being unemployed and rather &quot;burned out&quot; after the thesis writing process. Catch-22? Even more ironic is the fact that I had asked my thesis advisers if I could submit my thesis in the form of a series of published papers (this was allowed under the rules), instead of as an unpublished monograph, and both said no!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't thesis advisers have a duty to both encourage candidates to publish and to recommend them for academic positions? At the same time, is it right that universities expect job applicants to already have publications before they arrive? What could I have done, other than publish as an independent after the fact? It is hard not to feel very bitter about the whole PhD process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Since it was not yet listed, I add &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/635/how-to-handle-not-having-my-phd-advisor-as-a-reference?rq=1&quot;&gt;How to handle not having my PhD advisor as a reference?&lt;/a&gt; is a related question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9957" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T13:47:00.530" Title="What to do when a thesis adviser refuses to recommend me?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14706" CreationDate="2013-12-12T01:11:01.233" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't thesis advisers have a duty to both encourage candidates to publish...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Universities prefer, or require, that a thesis be in the form of an expository monograph, which is absolutely different to several papers stapled together. If that is the case at your University, don't interpret your supervisor's adherence to this as discouraging you to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...and to recommend them for academic positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesis adviser does not have an obligation to &lt;em&gt;recommend&lt;/em&gt; a student for a position. Arguably they have an obligation to write a reference letter, but that letter should contain the adviser's honest and confidential opinion of your suitability for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to still try to publish, as good references from your thesis supervisors are a huge help if that will win them over. If you publish your thesis results years later, this well help show that you are serious about getting back in the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5127/in-the-absence-of-strong-references-on-which-things-should-i-focus-so-that-i-ca&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to prove&lt;/a&gt; that you are an excellent researcher to get an academic job. If you cannot get &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9341/how-do-i-make-sure-i-get-strong-recommendation-letters-for-faculty-positions&quot;&gt;strong letters&lt;/a&gt; from your supervisory faculty, good publications become even more necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T01:11:01.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14706" CreationDate="2013-12-12T01:32:00.657" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky situation, and it's hard to interpret it without more information.  Thesis advisors certainly have an obligation to help their former students within reason and to recommend them for appropriate positions.  An advisor who gives up too quickly on a student is an unsupportive jerk at best (and it's easy to think of much worse descriptions).  On the other hand, nobody has an obligation to recommend a candidate they cannot honestly support.  Telling someone that is really awkward, especially when it's their own student, but the alternatives are writing a dishonest letter or writing a letter that undermines the candidate's chances, neither of which is any better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've written, there's no way of telling whether your advisor is a jerk or the two of you are just caught in an awkward situation.  I'd recommend asking your advisor some key questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there other positions you could apply for that might be a better fit for your background and accomplishments so far?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on your unpublished work, how could you prepare a good paper as quickly and efficiently as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you'll get encouraging and useful answers.  If you and your advisor can work out a plan that satisfies both of you, then that's great.  If not, you may have to give up on your advisor and apply with letters from other people.  That's far from ideal (the first thing everyone will ask is why your advisor didn't write a letter), but it can work if you get strong enough letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course publishing would help with getting strong letters.  Ultimately, I'd bet that publishing another paper or two is in your best interests, regardless of the situation with your advisor.  I can understand that it's upsetting to feel forced into publishing on your own, with no job in your field and no guarantee of getting one in the future.  However, it's probably a worthwhile investment of your time, and it's a valuable contribution to the academic community in any case (so regardless of what happens, it's something you can be proud of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T01:32:00.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14660" CreationDate="2013-12-12T02:50:29.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Journal of Neuroscience has this web page&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/site/misc/ifa_bc.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brief Communications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does explicitly say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brief Communications are short research articles intended to present &lt;strong&gt;exciting&lt;/strong&gt; findings that will have a &lt;strong&gt;major impact&lt;/strong&gt; in neuroscience. Brief Communications are limited to &lt;strong&gt;4,500 words&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;. . .&lt;/strong&gt; may include &lt;strong&gt;no more than 4&lt;/strong&gt; figures, tables, multimedia, and/or 3D models, &lt;strong&gt;. . .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please ask the editors of that journal for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journal_of_Neuroscience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki page&lt;/a&gt; for that journal says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;some issues of the journal contain articles in the following sections:&#xA;   Brief Communications &lt;strong&gt;. . .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it means not every issue publishes brief communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: My research area is not life science and I am not affiliated with Journal of Neuroscience.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T09:07:16.853" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T09:07:16.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14693" CreationDate="2013-12-12T03:42:32.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to tackle this question from another angle for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have done &lt;em&gt;a literature review&lt;/em&gt; for the &lt;strong&gt;dissertation proposal&lt;/strong&gt;. You report your findings from those literature after you study them, so you have descriptive writings in the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;what do you propose to research&lt;/strong&gt;? Have you discovered anything? Have you challenged the existing literature? What do you want to research? Why do you want to research that topic? What are your arguments? What would be your own approaches? Why would your approach work? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the things they are looking for. They want you to have &lt;em&gt;critical edge&lt;/em&gt; in the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a link from University of Leicester about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/writing/writing-resources/critical-writing&quot;&gt;What is critical writing&lt;/a&gt; very helpful, at least to me. It contains several sections, What is critical writing? What is descriptive writing? The difference between descriptive writing and critical writing, examples and other useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T05:22:09.243" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T05:22:09.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14712" CreationDate="2013-12-12T06:36:56.433" Score="2" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have presented recently in one of IEEE computer science conferences. My paper's main contributions was optimizing an algorithm to achieve 3.5X times speed up. Now, I am planning to submit another paper to one of Springer's journals with IF 0.7. However, the only new contribution here is I optimized the gain to be 4.5X in addition to theoretical comparison between the algorithm and other 3 algorithms to justify why I have chosen this algorithm to be improved. The paper has been re-written completely and I am aware of the plagiarism issue. However, I am still concerned, is that contribution sufficient to make my paper qualified?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T02:05:01.980" Title="Optimizing conference paper solution to be eligible for Journal article" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14711" CreationDate="2013-12-12T08:47:47.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the editors and/or reviewers decide whether the new contribution is sufficient. Mention that you extend previous work. It may be wise to be explicit about the novelties with regards to the previous work in the cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the original paper was published in conference proceedings (e.g. not just a talk), it is very important that you cite it. When you do that, there can be no claim that you are attempting to recycle existing material without anyone noticing (self-plagiarism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T08:47:47.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14698" CreationDate="2013-12-12T10:51:06.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. While most (possibly all) funding agencies will not allow you to work more than 100% of your time on a single grant, most universities will allow you to allocate more than 100% of your time (e.g., up to 125% or so) which is reasonable given a full time job is nominally a 40 hour week and 50 hours is not unheard of. This means that you are not using your time that is funded by the grant to apply for another grant, but rather some of that &quot;extra&quot; time. The key thing is that you need to make sure you still accomplish what you set out to do in the grant that is currently funding the majority of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T10:51:06.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14714" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-12T12:06:24.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements of varying levels of achievement in a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GPA can be used by potential employers or educational institutions to assess and compare applicants. A Cumulative Grade Point Average (C-GPA) is a calculation of the average of all of a student's grades for all courses completed so far. The scale of GPA may be 4.00, 20.00, etc. or it may be descriptive by the letters A+, A, etc., depending on the educational system or level of education in each country .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:46:13.353" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:46:13.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14715" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-12T12:06:24.373" Score="0" Body="On the Grade Point Average (GPA), a numerical measure of a student's performance over a semester or career. This tag may apply to questions on calculating the GPA, or on the impact of GPA on graduate admissions and academic careers." OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:48:29.363" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:48:29.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5569" CreationDate="2013-12-12T13:09:35.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers already contain the conclusions of my answer. However, I'll try to give some reasoning behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glossary, Nomenclature, List of Symbols, Index, References, etc.&lt;/strong&gt; -- all these are &lt;em&gt;indexes&lt;/em&gt;, and should go to the backmatter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Table of Contents, List of Figures, etc.&lt;/strong&gt; -- these specify the &lt;em&gt;contents&lt;/em&gt;, and should go to the frontmatter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that &lt;em&gt;indexes&lt;/em&gt; are have in general logical sorting of some type (alphabetical or other), whereas the &lt;em&gt;contents&lt;/em&gt; strictly reflect the order of the text in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the order of them: &lt;em&gt;the more used&lt;/em&gt; they are, &lt;em&gt;the farer away from the mainmatter&lt;/em&gt; they go (i.e. first in frontmatter and last in backmatter). This depends a lot on your reader. The reason for this is that the closer to the cover they are, the easier it is to reach them. In general, the most used index in a thesis are the references, so they go last. In textbooks, the General index goes last, since it's more interesting for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule above is, on the other hand, less important than the fact that &lt;strong&gt;Title, half-title, dedication, preface and colophon&lt;/strong&gt; have priority, and are obviously the outer-most elements of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, you might get to this order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FRONTMATTER&#xA;  Title&#xA;  Half-title&#xA;  Dedicatory&#xA;  Preface&#xA;&#xA;  Table of Contents&#xA;  other &quot;Contents&quot;&#xA;&#xA;MAINMATTER&#xA;&#xA;BACKMATTER&#xA;  Appendicies&#xA;  Various indexes (Glossary, Nomenclature, ...)&#xA;  References / Bibliography&#xA;  Colophon (if placed in backmatter; it can go before&#xA;     half-title on the verso page as well)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of these rules is very strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T13:09:35.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2013-12-12T14:46:53.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well It really doesn't matter much whether your research subjects are related to what you have done internships in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it more clear. Internships depicts that you are inclined and willing to work along with your regular curriculum. &lt;strong&gt;I would suggest you to relate your  internship with research subjects.&lt;/strong&gt; As we all know that all subjects in Computer Science are inter- related so try to find out any open source concept that you can relate to or willing to work for it. This much is enough. No doubt Research is most important aspect for admissions but you should know to combine it with your life. Give small Instances (backed with Proofs) where you can prove your point. Speaking about Number of years to show for experience is all depends on your profile, show max possible and make sure that you have salary slips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9970" LastEditorUserId="9970" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T15:42:56.950" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T15:42:56.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13093" CreationDate="2013-12-12T15:37:18.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it is possible to become a research assistant just after completing B-Tech.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Qualifications needed for it could be categorized as:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good Academics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research Papers published in International Conference that are indexed IEEE (required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GPA of 3.6/4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also for becoming an RA at these universities is the GRE exam necessary?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA; The answer to this is &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; for some universities and &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; for other universities. This is mainly because &lt;strong&gt;Not all the universities require GRE EXAM.&lt;/strong&gt; It all depends upon university requirements. You need to check out their website for the details. &lt;strong&gt;Even they have Cut-off score for GRE and TOEFL Exam.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages of becoming RA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tuition Fee waiver&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increases chances for off-campus placement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to Subject in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9970" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T15:37:18.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13093" CreationDate="2013-12-12T19:47:44.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there's some ambiguity in language here that I think is causing a wide variety of different answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Research Assistant&quot; means many different things to many different people. Most commonly in the U.S., this invokes the idea of a funding mechanism for a graduate student that doesn't involve teaching. If this is what you mean, then the answers about getting into graduate school apply. And then yes, in that case, it is possible to get admitted to graduate school straight out of undergrad, and work for a professor doing research - the requirements of that will vary depending on the type of school, department, etc. you're looking at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just mean &quot;Someone who works on research projects&quot;, then I'm going to suggest another title - in the &quot;wet lab&quot; sciences I'd say &quot;Lab Tech&quot;, and unfortunately most of the computational researchers I know come from a biological heritage, so use &quot;Lab Tech&quot; even when referring to programmers and the like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what you mean, then you're talking about being a research employee of the university, paid for likely by grant money and working for a particular professor. It's certainly possible to do this - a former group I worked for regularly hired people out of undergrad to work on programming projects that made like easier for other people in the department, and we've got a researcher now who came straight out of undergrad. As for what's required? Likely not a GRE, but your academics should be fairly strong, and you should have some evidence of the quality of your work. That can be publications and independent research, or it could be a portfolio of things you've done for other people - after all, the job is &quot;Can you do things well for other people&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely a particular professor you'll have to contact, and be warned - if you're looking to come in from another country, you have to be worth more than the visa and immigration hassle, and it's going to be an uphill climb when there's likely undergraduates at their own university who probably wouldn't mind a job after graduation either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T19:47:44.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9925" CreationDate="2013-12-12T19:54:05.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting Yogi Berra, &quot;it ain't over till it's over&quot;.  Just because someone feels the degree has been earned, does not mean it will be conferred.  After a successful dissertation defense, the graduand likely has some additional obligations to the institution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you state that you are 'married' just because your wedding is near?  Same thing for degrees.  You do not have it until you have it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9974" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T19:54:05.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T20:50:46.357" Score="3" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now in another lab now, different from my PhD studies, as a post doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a review paper in which we included a figure from my thesis, without analyzed or even concentrate the paper to this figure, since it is very common. This figure was included in one of the 10+ topics discussed in this review. Should the authors include the supervisor of my ex-laboratory, as author or could just declare the laboratory and the name of my ex- supervisor to the acknowledgments, where they could thank him personally, as well as his laboratory? (my ex supervisor has not contributed in writing of the review). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9976" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T22:13:03.040" Title="review paper and authorship of ex supervisor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:02:33.570" Score="8" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone of the members of the committee of a PhD thesis use data of the former doctoral student’ PhD thesis without attribution to the PhD thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ex-supervisor used data at a conference with some co-authors. Unfortunately this data has been already presented in another conference as a poster 6 years ago by myself with different co-authors. This data was derived from my PhD thesis 5 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I asked her, she told me that she had the right to. In my PhD thesis, I wrote that I retain the intellectual property rights. However in my PhD program, the university policy is that results from a PhD thesis can be used by both the student and its supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9976" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:03:43.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:03:43.730" Title="Ex supervisor published last month a photo from my PhD (5 years ago) with other co authors" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14722" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:20:13.743" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say for sure without knowing all the details and both sides, but typically, whenever an academic paper uses material that's been previously published (and a PhD thesis would count), academic ethics require that it be cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:20:13.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14529" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:25:32.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, find out, independently of course, what percentile, 1 2 5, this &quot;science&quot; committee requires for admission into their hallowed PhD programme, and give them what they want. Of &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; your students are in the top k% -- why would be recommending them otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, and this is very important for the future of our planet, you need to convince the world that this &quot;science&quot; committee is made up of complete idiots, hypocrates, clowns, and fools who are doing all they can to help aggravate the UK's STEM crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(OK, I'm being a wee bit cynical, but I provide this as a separate answer because I fear the other folks, while sympathetic to your plight, just have not come down hard enough on the ridiculously high &quot;standards&quot; that are being set.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9957" LastEditorUserId="9957" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T21:31:34.907" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:31:34.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:40:29.807" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that &quot;quality&quot; is a bit overrated, and that you should think most deeply about &quot;fit&quot; (i.e., how well your content matches the interests of a journal's reviewers and readership).  With that said, when I'm looking for the best journal to put an article, I have three methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at my cites for similar work to my manuscript, then look at where they published (similar to Artem's comment).  If your paper isn't citing related work, well... it probably has a pretty terrible lit review.  If you're citing sources out of your league for that paper (i.e., Science, Nature), find the publication list for that lab to find their fallback journals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask greybeards I collaborate with where they would publish such a paper.  Good senior academics have a huge amount of expertise about the social networks and publishing networks in their fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use journal rankings.  I find  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/&quot;&gt;Scimago&lt;/a&gt; to be the most convenient.  That also charts things like cites/paper over time, so you can see if a newer journal is growing or stagnant.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm&quot;&gt;Austrialian Research Counsel&lt;/a&gt; (mentioned by Willy Wong) is probably my #2 resource.  Thompson's ISI stuff is also useful, but I've found it sometimes has glaring omissions and has been less convenient to me (annoying to log in).  Conferences are harder to rank using indices.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot;&gt;Microsoft&lt;/a&gt; have ranking systems that catch those pretty well, at least for comparing citations within a topic.  However, given the choice, I'd still go with option #1 or #2.  I mainly use this approach for interdisciplinary research that doesn't have an obvious, natural target journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:40:29.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14721" CreationDate="2013-12-12T22:13:03.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that only citing him would be enough. My field is cognitive neuroscience, yours might have different rules. I was in the opposite situation, a figure from one of my papers was included in a review where my supervisor was one of the authors. When they described the figure they cited my paper. A citation is quite a nice thing to have, especially in a review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T22:13:03.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2872" CreationDate="2013-12-12T22:22:15.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We should just use the email of our current academic institution, and academic institutions should provide user-controlled forwarding of some type (so people don't need to ask a sys admin if their forwarding address changes).  Simple, effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we (well, the ones of us that have tenure and power) put pressure on system administrator to change this practice?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Unqualifiedly.  In my opinion, any institution that fails to do that does a massive disservice to its students and non-tenured researchers (i.e., anyone who might leave during their career).  Email forwarding is not hard, nor is it costly.  If someone tells me their institution doesn't forward, I would suspect they have a mediocre administrative infrastructure for research.  Research institutions are built on the successes of their professors and professor's successes are built (in part) on the success of their students and research staff.  If you could improve your school's standing in the research community by one peg by adding email forwarding, wouldn't it look pretty stupid not to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disconnecting those researchers' emails entirely is a small but non-trivial obstacle that could impact their research careers, which trickles back to the institution (particularly with PhD recipients).  They might miss out on invitations to collaborate, book chapters, and even a heads-up on job opportunities.  To those who say &quot;Well, I always Google anyway,&quot; you probably aren't emailing a couple dozen people to contribute to a book (or, for an encyclopedia, think 100+ contributors).  If you did and a couple emails bounced, how much time will you spend trying to hunt down the new emails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been affiliated with an institution that did provide email forwarding, by a mechanism that I thought was pretty flexible.  At the end of your time there, they closed down your email account after a couple months (the storage, that is).  You could request that your emails be forwarded to an alumni address.  This alumni address was controlled by you, in terms of where it forwarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then, you would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create an alumni address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up your original email at the institution to forward to the alumni account&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up the alumni address to forward to a stable account (e.g., Gmail)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emails to either your original or alumni emails would forward to the permanent email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as your permanent email doesn't change, you only need to do this process once per institution.  Even if you did change your permanent email, it would take only a small amount of time to re-route your forwarding (one re-route per past institution).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T22:22:15.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14728" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T22:44:05.840" Score="4" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a number of sites and web controls for presenting a list of papers (e.g., in BibTex format) on one's personal website.  Some sites also allow you to manage your citation list, then link to a list of publications.  I was wondering about people's experiences with these different tools and the pros/cons.  While I've historically just manually dumped my refs in HTML format for my site, I'm looking to use something a bit more elegant and maintable these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I would like it to have the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to add/edit papers (e.g., generate from BibTex, Mendeley, online storage, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Splitting papers into groups (e.g., journal papers, conference papers, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decent fallback display for users with JS disabled.  Ideally, no change at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers sortable by year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can specify links or upload pre-print PDF's that users can download&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how well existing solutions stack up on these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T22:44:05.840" Title="Display of Publications for Personal Website" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-12-13T15:05:29.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14750" CreationDate="2013-12-12T22:52:07.177" Score="42" ViewCount="30950" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's been a series of articles recently [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/11/adjunct-faculty_n_4255139.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Project-Shows-Wide/136439/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/real-money-with-alivelshi/Real-Money-Blog/2013/10/15/poor-working-conditionsforadjunctprofessorsleavestudentsshortcha.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206/adjunct-professor-dies-destitute-then-sparks-debate&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/adjunct-professor-death-190047241.html&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;] that basically decry the dismal working conditions of adjunct faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask: Why do these positions pay so little? Is it because there is a vast amount of oversupply of teachers? Is it because the Universities have such a diverse range of topics to cover that they cannot afford to hire full-time instructors to cover these courses? Is it because there is decreasing income and funding for academic institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious about what conditions led to this situation where adjunct professors are paid so little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T11:29:58.367" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T10:58:40.480" Title="Why is it that adjunct faculty positions pay so little?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;&lt;adjunct-faculty&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2013-12-12T23:29:44.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really helps if you take some time off and get a job in your field if you can. That way it serves to rejuvenate your mind and gives you a breather. By doing so you can hit three birds with one stone: 1) you take a break and feel better 2) you have some money to use 3) you become more interested in other subjects you never thought you would have liked, such as technology, fashion, the business world, different languages and culture, etc. I didn't say to quit, I said to take some time off and &quot;find yourself, to rediscover yourself&quot;. Will it help? Maybe or maybe not. Perhaps if you look at yourself in comparison to the rest of the world. You're doing a PhD which is one of the most prestigious and most sought after degree in the world. Not many people are able to do that let alone get a bachelor degree. Be grateful. Some people don't even have enough money to afford a days meal or a roof over their head. Hell be lucky you're not in combat or war. Sometimes it helps to appreciate with what you have. That may give you motivation to keep going. Maybe PhD isn't for you. Maybe it is for you. maybe you're meant to become the next Bill Gates or the next president. Who knows. My point is no matter what happens always keep your head up, stay confident, and don't ever give up. Take a break. But don't give up. No don't worry you are not alone. The fact that you made it this far shows you are a winner (Charlie Sheen haha just kidding). Don't give up doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9978" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T00:25:03.017" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T00:25:03.017" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-12-13T00:00:05.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2013-12-13T00:02:14.790" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer is simply one of supply and demand. As you mentioned in your question, there is an oversupply of those willing to teach. As the old saying goes, those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. While this saying does not represent my feelings I did find it a quite typical American perception toward the teaching profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years ago I taught as an adjunct in the US. The hourly rate (just for teaching hours, forget prep, marking, etc.) was so low that I could make literally four times as much working in 'the real world.' The math was quite easy to see. They needed someone with lower skills than I had and while I could do the job, so could most others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, I didn't stay in that situation long. I stopped teaching at universities and focused on the private sector. Those whom I taught alongside felt like they were lucky to have their opportunities (I clearly felt differently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you scan websites for teachers (e.g., the Chronicle, etc.) you can see countless posts of teachers complaining that some other teacher took their job. Sometimes it is a full time teacher who wants extra money so they pick up adjuncting at another school. This constant oversupply naturally pushes rates down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why would schools pay more than they need to? Out of the goodness of their hearts? In the US, sadly, teachers are not valued. If you look at Europe or Asia, (average) teachers actually make quite a nice living because they are valued for the dual-professionals that they are (subject matter and pedogogy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T06:54:02.077" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T06:54:02.077" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2013-12-13T00:04:36.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, adjunct faculty are employed &lt;em&gt;part-time&lt;/em&gt;, and thus cannot be paid at the same rate as &lt;em&gt;full-time&lt;/em&gt; faculty.  Often a university department has a set allocation for the number of full-time faculty it can employ, based on &lt;em&gt;predicted&lt;/em&gt; enrollment.  So, adjunct faculty pick up the slack, as needed, based on &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; enrollment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T00:04:36.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2013-12-13T00:44:54.390" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other useful comments and answers: in my context, of mathematics... : yes, only a very small fraction of &quot;adjunct&quot; teaching is done because of lack of expertise of &quot;regular faculty&quot;. Examples would often be &quot;financial math&quot; or &quot;actuarial math&quot;. Far more typically, adjuncts teach very low level math. Now, on one hand, while the mathematics itself is very easy, reaching the audience is non-trivial. Full of pre-existing neuroses, etc. Although the typical adjunct teaching such things has very modest mathematical ability, that is more than sufficient, and, typically, such a person's ability to &quot;connect&quot; to &quot;normal&quot; kids who're &quot;having trouble with math&quot; is greater than that of talented mathematicians. (Tho' not always.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, &quot;The Market&quot; observes that there are many more people able to do this than the number of jobs, so the pay is depressed. It doesn't help that there is a mythology in (academic?) mathematics that teaching itself is something anyone can do, perhaps after one has lost the &quot;zip&quot; to &quot;do research&quot;. All the more ridiculous that this mythology exists among people who's teaching is awful, at every level, their whole life. Luckily, their job description emphasizes &quot;research&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the mythology, seemingly confirmed by The Market, marginalizes (non-specialty) adjuncts. At my current institution, none of the (non-specialty) adjuncts has a Ph.D., which further reduces their status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is the current budget squeeze on universities... Everything has to be done more efficiently, etc. Departments' supply budgets are cannibalized to pay for office staff, etc. It is crazy. Night-school classes, once paid for through separate budget lines, have been &quot;in-loaded&quot;, so have to be covered by departments often with the same budget as before (!) So, hardly the time to think about equity for people who're willing to &quot;work cheap&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AAUP has long argued for better treatment of &quot;adjunct faculty&quot;, but harsher economic times are not fertile grounds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, often the real competition for adjuncts is grad students as Teaching Assistants, who are &quot;more expensive&quot; if their tuition is included in the package. Thus, at best, adjuncts have some incentive to keep their pay below that of grad students + tuition. A crazy dynamic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that the volatility of enrollments gives management incentive to find a way to avoid liability... but in the dim past there was simply consistent excess capacity, not so much a population willing to absorb that volatility!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, upper echelons of the university almost make it against-the-rules to cushion people (other than tenured faculty) against volatility... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a happy situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T00:44:54.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14736" CreationDate="2013-12-13T01:04:07.313" Score="42" ViewCount="12097" Body="&lt;p&gt;ACM now offers authors of published papers a choice of two copyright licenses: the &quot;traditional&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/copyreleaseproc-8-16.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/acm-publicenseagreement.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACM Publishing License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I choose between these two licenses?  What are the advantages and disadvantages to the authors of each license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I care a lot about maximizing the ability of others to read the paper (e.g., maximizing my ability to make my paper available on my web page, institutional repository, etc.); are there any relevant differences between the two licenses that affects this consideration?  Are there any other important differences between the licenses that authors might care about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="36857" LastEditDate="2018-12-22T07:08:33.267" LastActivityDate="2018-12-22T07:08:33.267" Title="Which ACM copyright license to use?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-13T02:40:58.463" Score="9" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm organizing a conference and we have the option to set up the seating either around multiple tables ie a wedding arrangement or in the classroom style. There are benefits to either strategy but the way I see it, the tabular format allows people to put their stuff down and relax. On the other hand, the classroom style creates a much better learning environment for people to actually pay attention to a talk and creates a more cozy impression for the speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious, what do people typically expect out of a conference and what is the ideal scenario for a one day conference? Does it make a difference if it's a bunch of students or a bunch of of professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T10:12:32.443" Title="Tables or Stadium seating for a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14734" CreationDate="2013-12-13T03:27:34.947" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, please note that IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the &lt;strong&gt;Copyright Transfer Agreement&lt;/strong&gt; is what ACM used to be doing to everyone: when you publish with the ACM, you transfer your copyright to them, and thus lose ownership of your creative work. The ACM has been receiving criticism for this as the Open Access movement has gained momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Publishing License&lt;/strong&gt; seems to be their response to this criticism: with the Publishing license, you retain copyright yourself, and instead grant ACM a specified list of rights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable and sublicenseable license to publish, reproduce and distribute the work in any way they feel like — including to hand these right on to other parties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A non-exclusive permission to publish, reproduce and distribute any software, artistic images and auxiliary materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These rights “infects” any &lt;strong&gt;minor revisions&lt;/strong&gt; (derivative work with less than 25% new substantive material).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't actually know what the exact implications here will be — the conditions are restrictive, but the copyright remains with the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T03:27:34.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14735" CreationDate="2013-12-13T08:55:22.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it's a one-day conference, I'm assuming it's a little more relaxed than a powerhouse 3-day affair. But even then, I think the classroom format is a little more appropriate. Here's what happens with the table format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;either people will have to move chairs around to see the speaker, in which case you've effectively created a classroom format with much less desk space. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or people start talking to each other and ignoring the speaker. I've seen this happen in particular at business meetings, where arguably it's less important to listen closely, but the level of noise created is still annoying. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it's not serving its purpose. By all means use the table format for the coffee area or break spots. But I don't think it makes sense for the conference itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T08:55:22.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14735" CreationDate="2013-12-13T10:12:32.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different seating arrangements are best suited for different types of conferences. Auditorium style seating is best for listing to talks. For conferences that are built around breakout sessions then tables large enough for the size of the group are best. For conferences that are built around posters, small tables are the way to go. Ideally you decide how you want your conference to work and then find a venue that supports it, practically you find a venue that you can reserve and tailor the conference to fit the venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T10:12:32.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-13T10:55:51.197" Score="8" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across this query on a LinkedIn group. The exact query was:&#xA;&quot;Does anyone know if there are journals in image/signal processing, CV or related ares, which have no page limitation and have ok/reasonable reputation? I have a theoretical paper which has 50 page.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online journals could theoretically have no page limits but they still end up having limits/bounds. Why is it so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any such journals which allow for publishing of large sized papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T01:40:40.667" Title="Publishing large papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-13T14:54:54.200" Score="7" ViewCount="1277" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals have their own bibliography styles (bst) for BibTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a journal does not have its own bibliography style, am I supposed to include the content of the bbl-file into the tex-file I am sending? Or can I send the bib-file instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals offer LaTeX-templates showing the style of the article. (This is almost always true if a journal recommends using its own document class.) In some case I have seen that this template contains BibTeX style (.bst file). But in other cases BibTeX was not used in the template, instead it was shown what the preferred formatting of references looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that if I were the person who has to do the final typesetting from the sources submitted by an author to conform the style of the journal, I would prefer to have the BibTeX-file. (It is easier to simply change the formatting of references by changing the choice of BibTeX style than changing each separate entry manually.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a journal does not explicitly mention the recommended BibTeX style, what would be preferable way to submit the paper? Should I send both, TeX source and BibTeX file, so that editor can change the references using BibTeX style of their choice, or should I simply send the TeX-file, where I include also the bibliography generated by BibTeX. (And, if necessary, I modify it manually to be in the style required by the journal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(So far I have done the latter, but I am not sure whether it was the correct choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T20:59:45.423" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T20:59:45.423" Title="Using BibTeX when submitting an article" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;latex&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14743" CreationDate="2013-12-13T15:12:56.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most journals do not have the resources (read time) to handle lots of auxiliary files in submissions. Unless the journal clearly specifies they want bibliographies provided as a &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt;-file and has a fixed &lt;code&gt;.bst&lt;/code&gt; style file, you should not provide LaTeX based manuscript that way. What you can do is to run your final version yourself and then manually include the resulting &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt; bibliography in your manuscript so that content and bibliography is included in the same file (see e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/52368/19384&quot;&gt;How can I insert by .bib file into my .tex file?&lt;/a&gt; on TeX.sx). The &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt; file contains all references in the common &lt;code&gt;\bibitem[]{}&lt;/code&gt; format. Alternatively you can of course use the &lt;code&gt;\bibitem&lt;/code&gt; form directly when you write the paper. If you do not have a bibliography style file for the specific journal, it would be simple to use one that yields a similar format and then manually correct the details that may differ in the &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt; file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T15:12:56.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14741" CreationDate="2013-12-13T15:25:25.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In biology there are some journals that allow very long papers. These journals are typically online-only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of such a journal is Biology Direct: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biologydirect.com/content/pdf/1745-6150-5-7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is an example with 78 pages. I remember seeing a 200-page paper in Biology Direct, but can't find it right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what the motivation is for someone to publish such long papers in this manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T15:25:25.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14743" CreationDate="2013-12-13T15:30:00.090" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd send the &lt;code&gt;.tex&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; file, which seems by far the most logical thing to do, to both you and me at least. On explicit request I'll grudgingly provide the &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt; file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should make things easier for them, as you correctly suggest. It is easy and fast to convert a &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; to a &lt;code&gt;.bbl&lt;/code&gt;, but the other way round is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal has a workflow that can't handle &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; files, that seems their problem and not mine. They are the professional publishers who charge for the &quot;added value&quot; of the professional typesetting and printing service, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T15:30:00.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14661" CreationDate="2013-12-13T18:05:57.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed a PhD in Canada. I started in a MSc program, but after one year transferred into the PhD without completing the MSc. My total length of graduate studies was 5 years. This is not uncommon in biology at the schools I've been associated with. I'm not sure if you can technically apply directly to the PhD, but many students enter the MSc program with the expectation that they will transfer after one year, so it amounts to the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience Canadian schools with a PhD program also grant MSc degrees in the same program. There are schools that only offer MSc without PhD though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6292" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T18:05:57.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14661" CreationDate="2013-12-13T18:40:18.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a Canadian PhD program after completing a European Master's program. This is the typical progression in Canada; the combined Master's-PhD programs are the exception, not the norm. PhD programs typically take between 3 and 5 years. The exact length depends mostly on how quickly your research progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are significant differences between Canadian and European PhD programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most Canadian PhD programs require you to take some courses. In my case, I had to take 3 graduate classes in various disciplines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are not an employee&lt;/strong&gt; of the university. You do not get a salary from the university for being a PhD student, and instead have to pay quite hefty tuition fees. You should make sure that your funding is enough to cover the tuition and living expenses. This funding can include salary from TA (Teaching Assistant) or RA (Research Assistant) work for the university, scholarships, and money from your supervisor's grant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T18:40:18.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-13T19:31:54.163" Score="1" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to submit my CV/Resume to universities for MS in CS. I have learnt web designing and development along with other programming languages learnt in undergraduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to prepare 2 resumes, one for web development companies and other for software companies and I would submit suitable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now can I do something creative and submit a CV that looks something like this? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/design-cv-resume/sarah_parmenter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/design-cv-resume/sarah_parmenter.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the universities not consider if I do something like this? or do I need to submit normal 2 page resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9855" LastEditorUserId="25174" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T11:49:16.343" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T11:49:16.343" Title="Different CV/Resume for US Universities" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2013-12-13T23:16:10.763" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;The adjunct model seems to be predicated on an assumption that most adjunct faculty are presumed to be employed somewhere else. It's supposed to be a win-win: the institution gets a qualified expert with current, out-of-the-ivory-tower experience; the adjunct gets a chance to scratch a teaching itch, or to work with the university. All this happens for a modest compensation – which turns out to be a bargain for the university, and a little extra pocket money for the adjunct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't read all five of the articles you linked to in your question, but I did look through three of them. They seemed to be focusing on the depressing conditions for those who are trying to make a full-time living through a collection of part-time teaching assignments. I don't think that's the way the system was ever intended to operate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I teach, I'm an adjunct, and I love the perks. I get to use the campus gym, and I get access to campus library resources. I have a passion for teaching, but I don't get to do much teaching at my full-time job. The extra money hasn't made me wealthy, but it's led to a few lifestyle improvements and splurges for my family. $9,000 isn't enough to live off of, but it goes a long way when you want to renovate a kitchen, take a vacation, or help pay for a wedding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, where I teach (a state university in the U.S.), the adjunct rates are not set by the department. The going rate is the going rate, take it or leave it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My brother once asked me how much my adjunct job paid per hour, if I factored in prep time and grading time. I told him that I never bothered to calculate that, but it didn't matter, because I enjoyed my duties too much to give it up. I'm fortunate in that I'm not doing this for the money, so even the relatively low pay is very much appreciated. I enjoy the challenges of teaching, the chance to experiment with new pedagogies, and the chance to make an impact on the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me put it this way: Teaching two nights a week for fifteen weeks? &lt;em&gt;$3,000&lt;/em&gt;. Staying up until midnight grading final exams? &lt;em&gt;Zero extra dollars.&lt;/em&gt; Getting an email from a student from two years ago, telling you about how she's using stuff from your class at her new job? &lt;em&gt;Priceless&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T23:16:10.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14749" CreationDate="2013-12-14T00:34:35.283" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you're specifically applying for a MS in graphic design, your CV should, first and foremost, show off &lt;em&gt;your academic and research accomplishments&lt;/em&gt;, not your graphic design skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple.   Creativity is fine; good typography is great; but &lt;strong&gt;emphasize the content&lt;/strong&gt;.  The &lt;em&gt;fourth&lt;/em&gt; image on that page (with the blue dot) is much more suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good design is invisible.  A bright yellow background is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; invisible.  Therefore....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T00:34:35.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14741" CreationDate="2013-12-14T01:40:40.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long theory paper in image/signal processing, you could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Transactions on Information Theory&lt;/a&gt;. The papers typically run about 20 pages, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=57199&amp;amp;punumber=18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this classic&lt;/a&gt; runs 45 pages. Note that the two-column format can condense a one-column draft by 25% or more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trans IT is a very well-regarded journal in my field, with regular contributions from math-y engineers, statisticians, and engineer-y mathematicians.  To quote the aims and scope (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IEEE Transactions on Information Theory publishes papers concerned with the transmission, processing, and utilization of information. While the boundaries of acceptable subject matter are intentionally not sharply delimited, its scope currently includes Shannon theory, coding theory and techniques, data compression, sequences, &lt;strong&gt;signal processing&lt;/strong&gt;, detection and estimation, pattern recognition, learning and inference, communications and communication networks, complexity and cryptography, and quantum information theory and coding. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory papers &lt;strong&gt;normally contain a strong conceptual and/or analytical contribution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;strong conceptual and/or analytical contribution&quot; means theorems and proofs; don't submit here if your paper doesn't have these. I couldn't find any stated page limit, but if your work is unnecessarily long for its contribution, the reviewers will definitely complain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/journals/siims/policy.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIAM Journal on Imaging Science&lt;/a&gt;.  There is no hard-and-fast page limit there, but the policies do state that &quot;papers exceeding 30 journal pages, excluding the supplementary material, will be reviewed more closely to ensure that the excess is fully justified.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For both of these journals, expect a very rigorous review cycle.  I suspect that, unless the results are earth-shattering, you will still hear complaints about the length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8932" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T01:40:40.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14756" CreationDate="2013-12-14T04:21:58.480" Score="8" ViewCount="1069" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/14741/2692&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, and specifically &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14745/2692&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, I find myself wondering why someone would publish an extremely long paper, for example 200 pages, instead of publishing as a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was always under the impression that publishing a book was more prestigious than publishing articles so &lt;strong&gt;why would someone write something with the quantity to be a book and prefer to publish it as a journal article?&lt;/strong&gt; Are there hidden benefits of publishing as an article over publishing as a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T05:18:08.043" Title="Benefit of publishing large articles/papers instead of books" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15151" CreationDate="2013-12-14T05:22:11.123" Score="6" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to do a Ph.D. in applied Mathematics/Theoretical Computer Science. The organization I'm going into is not a university, but a research institute in Europe. I'd like to assess my prospects after the completion of the Ph.D. So I would like to know how my Ph.D. would appear to potential employers. Will I be sidelined because I'm not from an esteemed university in the US, or will the actual contribution or my thesis be what I'm evaluated on? Will the former overshadow the good work I may have done and detract from it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I thank you for your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9988" LastEditorUserId="9988" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T13:09:17.790" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T13:22:46.273" Title="Yardsticks for the worth of a Ph.D" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14754" CreationDate="2013-12-14T06:13:47.523" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, it depends. First of all,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;publishing a book was more prestigious than publishing articles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;depends on the area. In parts of the humanities, writing a book is an almost-necessary condition for tenure, but in my area of CS, a book is viewed as best as a waste of time pre-tenure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of absolute prestige, books and articles serve different purposes. Even a 200 page article might be a technical exposition of a single result. Witness for example the ongoing series of articles on graph minors in mathematics. A book often tries to distill and put in perspective a body of work, and (sometimes) might have educational components like exercises/problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-written book gives you some cachet as an expert in an area, but a seminal journal article can do the same. It really depends on what purpose you expect the document to serve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final point. A book (even a technical one) may not be peer-reviewed in the same way as an article. Indeed, it's not common in my area to have brand new research appear first in a book (I'm excluding simple observations and recasting of results). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T06:13:47.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14757" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-14T08:25:48.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nsf.gov/about/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T13:43:22.323" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T13:43:22.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14758" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-14T08:25:48.247" Score="0" Body="Inquiries regarding the National Science Foundation [NSF] awards, funding, and support opportunities and procedures in all areas of science and engineering" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T13:43:19.450" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T13:43:19.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T09:18:01.333" Score="11" ViewCount="1694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fresh PhD student and I need to choose an advisor to guide my research. Currently I find it difficult to choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One professor's current project pretty well matches my previous research experience. Although I would not say I am interested in it, at least I don't hate it. But I find most of his students will need 7 years to graduate the PhD program under his advisement. The speed of this professor's life is really slow. The most important thing is that he rarely gives his students constructive suggestions when they confront problems in the research. I know a PhD needs to have the ability to conduct experiments independently, but some kind of guidance is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other professor, his project is really exciting and he published many papers with high impact factors. It is not that related to my previous experience but it may use some of the techniques I used before. I like it but some of my friends told me this professor is really picky and tough. With him as an advisor it may be difficult to get job after graduation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am working with the first professor. I try my best to make myself get interested in the work, but I am still hesitant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What advisor should I choose to achieve a satisfying research experience?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9983" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T17:21:39.077" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:21:39.077" Title="A professor matches my previous research and the other matches my interest. Which one should I choose?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14760" CreationDate="2013-12-14T10:20:32.830" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I would choose to work on what I'm interested in rather than what I have experience in, assuming that you have enough background to follow your interests (but in a 7 year PhD program, you'll have time to learn the techniques you'll need) and that there is a future for you after completing the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Learning how to use capital letters and to punctuate your sentences properly will also help in the future.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T10:20:32.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14754" CreationDate="2013-12-14T11:04:10.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on a number of factors (the field, the scope of the work, and the reputation of the publisher), but a book often summarizes the current state of a field, while an article adds something new to the state of the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one of these (the book) estabishes you as a subject matter expert, while the other (the article) establishes you as a subject matter pioneer. In institutions where research is highly valued, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find more prestige associated with article publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are exceptions, of course: A textbook that becomes recognized as a standard in the discipline might garner more prestige than an article in some lightweight publication. Unless the book happens to be based mostly on your own research, though, it's easy to see why a textbook might not gain you too much reputation in an environment striving to be known for their cutting-edge research. One is more forward-looking while the other is more backward-reaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T11:48:42.490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T11:48:42.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T13:18:08.667" Score="14" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a foreign student and currently applying to several PhD programs in the US. My GPA in the 6th semester was a lot disappointing, and pulled down my overall GPA and ranking significantly. The reason is that I got pregnant, by accident. I want to explain this situation in my statement of purpose or address an email to the admission committee, so I want to know how Americans, especially professors, will normally react to this explanation? Will they regard it as understandable mistake or unforgivable sin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9998" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T04:37:57.690" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T04:37:57.690" Title="Is pregnancy a valid explanation of a weak academic performance?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14764" CreationDate="2013-12-14T14:13:15.237" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to side-step this question by simply saying: in PhD admissions, grades are not nearly as important as one might think.  Far more important are 1. your letters of recommendation and 2. tangible evidence that you are capable of being creative and productive in a research environment (e.g., class projects, publications if you have them, etc.).  One semester of bad grades is not going to kill your application, especially if the rest of your grades are strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some even broader advice is: draw attention to the good rather than the bad.  Compare the two statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(A)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;Despite my poor performance in area X, I believe that I am still a strong candidate for the program in (your field of study).&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(B)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;My strong performance in area Y demonstrates that I am well prepared for a research career in (your field of study).&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both statements communicate the same idea (&quot;I am qualified&quot;), but &lt;strong&gt;(B)&lt;/strong&gt; draws attention to the good, whereas &lt;strong&gt;(A)&lt;/strong&gt; draws attention to the bad.  Don't draw attention to the bad.  If people think something is bad, they'll think it's bad no matter what you say about it.  Get them focused on the good stuff instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T14:13:15.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14760" CreationDate="2013-12-14T14:26:06.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always, always, always pick the advisor who is less of a jerk.  Doing so serves numerous purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project will be more enjoyable, because you're not working with a jerk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the initial project doesn't work out it will be easier to switch to a new topic, because you're not working with a jerk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the whole &lt;em&gt;program&lt;/em&gt; doesn't work out, it will be easier to get support for switching labs/schools/careers, because you're not working with a jerk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It means fewer talented students will pick jerks as advisors, which will (hopefully) help weed out jerk advisors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: talk to the students.  Make sure you're not signing up to work with a jerk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T14:26:06.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14764" CreationDate="2013-12-14T15:04:41.947" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fully agree with Dnuorg Spu's answer (emphasize strengths, not perceived weaknesses), but it could be worth a brief, vague mention of this issue somewhere in your application.  For example, something along the lines of &quot;You'll notice that my grades dipped briefly during my 6th semester before returning to normal.  This was due to a personal issue that has been resolved.&quot;  The idea is to reassure the admissions committee that it's not a sign of flakiness or ongoing difficulties.  I'm not sure whether such a statement makes a real difference, but at least you would be stating on the record that your 6th semester was anomalous for a reason unlikely to be repeated.  Hopefully your 7th semester grades will be available to the committee and will demonstrate that you are back to normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend against going into more detail than this, however.  There's too much of a risk of distracting people, since the whole topic (young mothers raising children, adoption, abortion, etc.) is emotionally charged, especially in the U.S.  You don't want this issue to be the most attention-getting or memorable part of your application.  It would probably not hurt your chances, but what happened is none of the committee's business and the details are not relevant for whether you should be admitted, so it's safest to keep the discussion focused on academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T15:04:41.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14778" CreationDate="2013-12-14T15:07:08.080" Score="35" ViewCount="1786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoth the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, 'Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.'&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, we have a tendency to promote brilliant and productive young researchers (e.g., grad students and postdocs) into positions with a large management component (i.e., assistant professors who must run a research group).  God willing, I will get promoted.  But during my PhD,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I was not trained as a manager!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conventional wisdom is: it doesn't matter!  No professor ever took management training, and, hey, everything &quot;works out&quot; in the end.  The main problem I have with that statement are the quotes around &quot;works out.&quot;  I have seen friends suffer through horrible, painful, sad grad school experiences as a result of having advisors who are brilliant researchers and &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt; managers.  Likewise, the advisor suffers because she/he is investing time/energy/money in a student that doesn't produce anything.  So my question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: How do I avoid becoming a terrible manager?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, what kinds of activities have you seen successful leaders of large-ish research groups engage in?  Did they take training specifically targeted at managing groups?  Read certain books?  Talk about it a lot with senior colleagues?  Make lots of posts on academia.stackexchange?  Or did they really all just fly by the seat of their pants, and let natural selection take its course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T15:25:50.270" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T12:10:15.140" Title="As a new faculty member, how do I avoid the Peter Principle?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14772" CreationDate="2013-12-14T15:36:51.290" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I live, it's quite common for MSc students to seek help from &quot;professionals&quot; in this field. What they do varies from simple peer-review-like service and in the worst case they provide a full thesis with tuition i.e. spoon feeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's amazing how many people teachers and teaching assistants are (unofficially) accused of getting this type of degrees. But this accusation in most of the time actually holds due to obvious lack of fundamental comprehension of the topics they are specialized in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer review is quite common and a prerequisite for papers to get published in a respected journal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's typical for a professor to have one or more teaching assistant to help him doing some part of the work for example some CS professors delegate the proof of concepts implementation to a teaching assistant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the two examples above what else is allowed and considered an acceptable academic activity by a peer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translation for thesis written in another language to English which is the required thesis language in that university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing a proof of concept &lt;em&gt;off the record&lt;/em&gt; i.e. without citing the PoC creator in the thesis officially.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing the (Related Work / Literature Review) given the student claims full knowledge of the papers but having no time for writing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the above changes when it's done as a service i.e. paid, instead free peer assistant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note 1:&lt;/strong&gt; I do have my own view for this but I would like to hear yours. Also I will mention my view later in a answer for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note 2:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm concerned with the STEM fields if that makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10001" LastEditorUserId="10001" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T18:15:02.833" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T20:22:29.093" Title="Permited peer assistance in PhD and MSc thesis" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14770" CreationDate="2013-12-14T17:12:43.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, none of your numbered items (1-4) is acceptable. As for the two bullet points above, they must be carefully circumscribed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can of course get comments on your manuscript from your peers. This should not include solving your problems for you or writing parts of the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some technical work may be performed by someone else: chemical synthesis of a compound you are using, specialized analysis of some samples etc. Each instance should be clearly specified: in the text, in the legend of the figures obtained this way etc. The reader needs to see clearly the distinction between your effort and that of other parties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is codified in the saying: &quot;Credit where credit is due&quot;. However, this principle is applied slightly differently to a thesis and to a journal paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A thesis demonstrates the ability of its author, who is assumed to have done all the work contained in it. That is why any external contribution should be indicated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A paper's main goal is to present a scientific result. It is therefore less crucial to know &quot;who did what&quot;, although some journals (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PNAS&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/home.action&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLOS One&lt;/a&gt;) do require it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9221" LastEditorUserId="9221" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T20:22:29.093" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T20:22:29.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-14T17:22:43.977" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Know when to turn down a promotion offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, seek out mentorship opportunities, and learn what you can. Does your institution have a faculty development office? See what kinds of workshops they offer. Not all of that is about teaching techniques. If the faculty development office doesn't plan to offer any kind of training on managing a research group, request that they do so. Faculty development offices are often underutilized on campus, and if the people running that office are worth their salt, they will go out of their way to give you the assistance you are requesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T17:22:43.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14276" CreationDate="2013-12-14T18:04:34.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You gain nothing from doing a second PhD in a professional capacity. If you want to do some type of algo trading work the best thing to do is get a job in the algo trading world. Given your background they are likely to hire you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T18:04:34.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T18:32:03.897" Score="1" ViewCount="4575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently admitted to few universities for my master's program and I narrowed the university of my choice down to two. The options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: A Mid-ranked public university in US (around #160 among the US National Universities,around #500 in World ranking ), where the potential supervisor is believed to be a good fit for me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: A top ranked university in US, here I am mostly going after the prestige, but supervisor is not as good as the university mentioned in Option 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am planning to get a job directly after my master's (i.e. without doing PhD, although I might go back to school for PhD after gaining some work experiences on my belt), which option would you take? I have very good GPA from my undergrad years (4.0), and my parents want me to take the second option, but the first option is considerably more affordable and plus I like the fact that the first university has a good potential supervisor...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;any thoughts are welcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9861" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:32:50.313" Title="does prestige of university where I will be getting my Master's degree matter?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-14T18:36:26.690" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience with faculty, if you care about managing well, and don't want to be a bad manager, you are already doing better than many people. Again, in my experience, the worst offenders along these lines are those who think they are God's gift to their graduate students and postdocs, and cannot bear to hear any criticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to do a good job managing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep caring about doing a good job and encourage constructive&#xA;criticism/suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In particular, talk to the people you are managing, and find out&#xA;what they think. Lots of junior people are scared to even give&#xA;constructive advice to their seniors, because they don't know if it&#xA;will adversely affect them. It is obvious to say that you can often&#xA;learn a great deal from the people around you, but people sometimes&#xA;forget that this is very much true of the junior people you work&#xA;with as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only tangentially relevant, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2013/11/07/management-a-rant/&quot;&gt;this blog post by Matt Zimmerman&lt;/a&gt; is quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T22:18:37.930" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T22:18:37.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T18:48:26.980" Score="3" ViewCount="917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if anyone in graduate school in mathematics had managed to improve considerably his/her speed of problem solving.&#xA;I had failed to get my PhD pass and obtained only Master Pass on my qualifiers.  I have been trying to increase speed of solving problems but alas, achieved only slight improvement.  I know that most problems on these exams are manageable and may be few are hard. Problems of similar level of difficulty would take me days or even weeks of solving. Any suggestions and especially real life examples of improving problem solving speed would be highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9726" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T19:06:50.937" Title="speed of problem solving in grad school in mathematics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2013-12-14T19:01:35.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think speed of problem solving is a criteria for graduate school in mathematics. You're doing research and inventing new mathematics, and that usually requires slowing down, not speeding up. If you're in a graduate program where not solving problems quickly leads to failure, I'd say you're not in the right program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that slower is better. If you're unable to solve problems relating to your subject area, that might point to deeper problems. But &lt;em&gt;speed&lt;/em&gt; of problem solving should never be a goal (unless you're competing in a math competition like the Putnam)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T19:01:35.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2013-12-14T19:06:50.937" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Success in well-designed qualifying exams in mathematics will depend very little on &quot;problem-solving&quot; speed or talent, but, rather, will depend on whether you've already done problems nearly identical to the problems which appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, as you observe, it would be prohibitively slow to &quot;solve&quot; many of those problems &quot;in real time&quot;. Thus, that is not the expectation. Rather, the &quot;test&quot; is whether examinees have studied sufficiently broadly so as to have seen examples resembling the instances occurring in the given exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, no, it's not about &quot;memorization&quot;, either, which tends to be insufficiently flexible to allow easy adaptation to slightly changed situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, really, it's not about &quot;speeding up in problem-solving&quot;, but to be able to merely &quot;remember&quot; instead of &quot;solving&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T19:06:50.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14777" CreationDate="2013-12-14T20:40:10.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your point,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the question comes since the option 2 is a top ranked university there is a very slight chance the supervisor will be really bad because they have some minimum standards for their faculties etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now since you are planning to directly go for a job I would suggest you to go with option 2 definitely, since companies will definitely give weight-age to the rank of the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastEditorUserId="9136" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T16:32:50.313" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:32:50.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14875" CreationDate="2013-12-14T21:28:10.700" Score="22" ViewCount="2899" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose multiple students have asked me for letters of recommendation to the same graduate department in the US. Am I expected to explicitly compare the students to one another? Am I supposed to do this in both letters (assuming they haven't been submitted yet)? Do I need to explicitly state a preference for one over the other, or can I just get away with listing relative strengths and weaknesses (for instance, &quot;X is stronger academically, but Y has more research experience and is a stronger programmer&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T21:37:47.283" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T05:19:26.597" Title="Writing letters of recommendation for more than one student to the same department" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-14T23:48:35.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is a site about academia, I believe it is worth pointing out that Management as we perceive it today, has no more than a 60-70 years history as a body of knowledge which is (attempted to) be systematically taught (it started out as in-house seminars in General Electric corporation), and even less history as an academic, research discipline. Of course texts about leadership are scattered throughout human history -but they are more of a deontological nature, focusing on how a leader &quot;should be&quot; rather than on how they can help the reader be that leader.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This does not mean that being trained as a manager is worthless -there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; general conclusions about Management that seem to stand the test of time, of activity field, and even the test of culture.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From my 20-years experience as a manager, I have two pieces of advice for someone inexperienced like you say you are:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a) Be available&lt;br&gt;&#xA;b) Criticize the act and not the (professional or personal) character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T23:48:35.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14777" CreationDate="2013-12-15T00:57:50.340" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for option 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to an MSc the role of your supervisor is less important than that in a PhD. Yes, you have to do some research (not always) and working with a &quot;great guy&quot; if far better than working with an &quot;OK guy&quot;, but remember you are doing an MSc and planning to go to industry. People will care more about your grades than your research potential (short-sighted but true in my experience). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, being in a more prestigious institution opens you more avenues; it will be a better selling point 5 years down the line and the top-ranked US university will probably have a better alumni network than a mid-rank public university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, MSc studies are a way to &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; some credentials to use either in the job market or as stepping stone to move to a better institution for your PhD than the one you are already. Get the best possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T00:57:50.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-15T06:21:22.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are worried that you aren't trained to manage the humans under your direction go to Human Resources and ask them what &quot;early management development&quot; support they offer. These are the type of afternoon or day long seminars on things like employment guidelines, university policies about being the supervisor for a bunch of people. You would be surprised how useful it can be to understand how departments like Accounts Payable work (reimbursements come much faster when the paperwork is done the first time). There should also be opportunities for them to help you develop the kind of workplace leadership skills that you may feel need sharpening because they aren't the same as research leadership skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing though, most of the development opportunities will be focused mainly on staff, not faculty. But once you start talking about managing employees much of it carries over. Of course, simply talking with other folks who have run large groups before. But always press them for specifics of what they wish they had not done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T06:21:22.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14783" CreationDate="2013-12-15T06:31:47.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing recommendation letters, you can write about each applicant's strengths. &#xA;You do not need to compare them to each other, but you can say whether you consider them in to 10%, 20% etc (some schools explicitly ask for this information). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than one student can be in the top 10%, for example. If you have a good formula to calculate this, you should just follow that. It will make your letters easy and consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5995" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T07:50:00.317" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T07:50:00.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-15T07:02:49.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a great question and one that is not asked often enough, inside or outside of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, all first time managers suck at it. Likely you will too. Don't be disheartened, just understand that proper management technique has a large artistic component and you just have to learn by doing (and usually by making mistakes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is a good excuse to turn down the job. If you take a management job later you will still likely start off as a poor manager. That said, starting too young will make it more difficult (on you and on those you manage) simply because of less life-experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to be open minded and, as teachers always tell students, read more. In your case, read as much as you can. There are so many great management books out there from very well respected writers (Drucker, Covey, etc.). Read, experience, reflect. As you learn you will be more competent and that is, in the end, how you avoid the Peter Principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another key I had always thought relevant to avoiding the Peter Principle was that you should never accept a job that you cannot already do 50% of. The same is true when recruiting - never offer a position to someone unless they can already do at least 50% of the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T07:02:49.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14803" CreationDate="2013-12-15T08:16:43.587" Score="9" ViewCount="1018" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two loosely related questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is done about academics who do not do any research anymore?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is done about academics who teach badly enough that it shows up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I insist that I am asking what &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; done, in your department or institution (or in your country if it is uniform). I'll ask a separate question about what &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be done. I would also like to distinguish between status (e.g. if you are talking about tenured faculty, please say so), and I am mostly but not only interested in tenured faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added:&lt;/strong&gt; implicit in the question, as was mentioned in an answer, is the way an institution measures the research and teaching activities. Answers are welcome to describe the way these are measured to decide whether to take action, but please stick to what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a little context, from 2009 there are recurring discussions about the teaching duty of academics in France, and whether it should be adapted to their achievements. I would like to have a broader view of the various answers actually given around the world to this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T08:43:57.667" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T08:43:57.667" Title="What is done about academics who do not do research anymore, or who teach badly?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14734" CreationDate="2013-12-15T08:49:41.427" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three options with transferring authors rights to ACM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open Access&lt;/strong&gt; that requires paying &gt;$1k.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publishing license&lt;/strong&gt; means &lt;strong&gt;copyright license&lt;/strong&gt; except that the author continues to hold copyright.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Traditional&quot; &lt;strong&gt;copyright license&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone author wants to have its paper as more distributed and open as possible without any &lt;em&gt;paywall&lt;/em&gt; which directly leads to more citations and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can remove all money barriers with &lt;strong&gt;option #1&lt;/strong&gt; (Open Access). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option #3&lt;/strong&gt; transfers absolutely all rights to ACM: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plus&lt;/strong&gt;: let's imagine that someone publish your paper with its own name. In that case ACM guaranties that it will defend against this situation, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minus&lt;/strong&gt;: ACM can do anything it wants with your work, say, just delete. Or something more interesting as &lt;a href=&quot;http://r6.ca/blog/20110930T012533Z.html&quot;&gt;The ACM and Me article&lt;/a&gt; says: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Imagine what happens if in the future the ACM goes bankrupt. Creditors could become copyright trolls, sweeping the internet for illegal exchanges of ACM owned papers by academics&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option #2&lt;/strong&gt; transfers not all rights, only an exclusive licence to publish, reproduce and distribute the work. But in this case &quot;... which gives ACM the right but not the obligation to defend the work against improper use by third parties&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: Each option allows authors to &quot;&lt;em&gt;Post the Accepted Version of the Work on (1) the Author’s home page, (2) the Owner’s institutional repository, or (3) any repository legally mandated by an agency funding the research on which the Work is based.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10007" LastEditorUserId="10007" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T09:37:47.467" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T09:37:47.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14792" CreationDate="2013-12-15T09:04:55.390" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to both your questions will, from my perspective, be &quot;not much&quot;. So this answer describes the view from my local point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a basis, university positions in my realm are teaching positions, 70% teaching and 30% for admin, personal development and research. The 30% is very quickly consumed by everything but research. On top of that one can &quot;buy&quot; oneself out of teaching so that the research time essentially is based on soft money. If you do not do research well, then no money comes in and your teaching load increases towards the 70%. So as long as you do your job in some way there is no mechanism for &quot;correcting&quot; a lack of research. On the other hand senior academics often get involved in higher and higher level administrative work at university, governmental, etc. level so a lack of research as such may be replaced by benefits gained in other ways. But, basically, a lack of research simply means teaching more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your teaching is very poor there is not much that can be done. Employment laws are very strong. The only way to sack a person would be if they, for example, drink at work, or blatantly refuse to accept orders from the &quot;boss&quot; (head of department etc.). It is also possible to remove someone if it can be shown that there is no need for whatever profile the person was employed under. I really cannot provide a detailed description of employment laws here but they make sacking people a difficult way out. Persons failing with teaching will most likely first be placed to do other duties. I have experience with one such person and it is hard to find tasks where this person can function and contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &quot;not much&quot; is largely explained by employment laws in &quot;my&quot; case. The problem cases, which do not easily contribute in alternative ways, will cause lots of work for the department to find ways in which they can be made productive to the department. This will be successful in most cases but not so in the odd case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T09:04:55.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14804" CreationDate="2013-12-15T10:05:21.090" Score="8" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had worked on a computer vision problem three years ago, drafted a journal paper and submitted it to a top-tier journal. My rebuttal to the reviewers answered most of their concerns except &quot;more results required&quot; comment, so got rejected. By then I had changed jobs, but wanted to get this paper published, so quickly made some changes and submitted to another journal, after two rounds of to-fro with the reviewers, the editor rejected it saying, &quot;come back with more results&quot;. I don't have access to data as I have changed jobs, so &quot;more results&quot; is out of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now toying with the idea of getting this paper published in an open-access journal (where I believe, my chances of getting it published is high) or Arvix.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go for a low-quality open-access journal or arXiv.org? I want my work to be out there. It may not be award-winning work but it's research and I want it out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does publishing in a low-quality open-access journal (or arXiv) affect a candidate's chances when applying for a job? I know some people who hire use a point system i.e. A-grade journal = 5 points, etc. Do they have a &quot;negative point system&quot; for low-quality open-access journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10013" LastEditorUserId="17548" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T16:53:14.067" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T10:54:33.827" Title="Options to publish a paper &quot;as is&quot; without being able to produce &quot;more results&quot;" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14783" CreationDate="2013-12-15T14:17:40.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree the students are competing they can still both get in! Especially if we are only talking two students applying to a cohort. Schools will remember students from particular institutions, and more quality students is a good thing as it suggests they were better prepped for grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flipside, I fail to see how providing potentially disparaging remarks (even if indirectly in saying I would choose A over B) provides help to the student getting the positive hand. That is, if you say &lt;code&gt;A is a better student than B&lt;/code&gt; I don't see how this helps A against any of the other competition applying to the program besides over the B individual. Your creating a false dichotomy in doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO the letters should really be orthogonal to one another (that is A's actions should have no bearing on B's letter) and you should focus on the individual in the recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T14:17:40.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14768" CreationDate="2013-12-15T16:11:12.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add a few scattered points to the answers that are already here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'm not sure your question is about Peter Principle. As I understand it, the Peter Principle is about ending up with a position that you cannot and &lt;em&gt;will never be able to&lt;/em&gt; cope with. I think this is very different from not being a good manager because you're just at the stage to start learning management skills.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From that point of view, there's nothing wrong with trying to learn management. If you are afraid that management isn't your thing, make sure you have a way out at least every once in a while. This also means that you need to stay at the top of your 'primary' profession (I consider full-time management a different profession!).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find yourself a good mentor. Personally, I'm lucky: in one of my former positions I had an exceptionally good leader. We're still on good terms, and I know where I can ask for advise on leading. I do so, too.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course it helps if the mentor is from academia, too. But this is not necessary. Look around not only with colleagues but also with friends, acquaintances etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your partner or a good friend is in a similar situation, and you could discuss and reflect every once in a while what you've encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Side note: There's a saying that on average a human needs to exercise a profession 10 to 15 years to arrive at the top of the personal performance in that profession. I think this also applies to management, though there are counter-examples. All in all, it means that your first students will suffer from your lack of experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I try to be open with students about the fact that I'm learning these skills, and also when I don't know how to teach them something. As others have already said, being aware of the potential problem is probably already more than half of the solution:  It is one of those points where those who are concerned would not need to be concerned, and those who aren't probably should be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are open about learning your part, it is easier for students to give you the feedback you need. It is your step to &lt;em&gt;mutual&lt;/em&gt; openness.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my culture (German) it is up to the senior (position) to offer the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction#German&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Du&lt;/a&gt;. Likewise, I think the supervisor should make the first step in being open about the soft skills. If this is about criticizing your leadership, you'll normally have to repeat this several times until a mutual level of trust is established that allows students to give you feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=&gt; Look around you what is going on. Try to find out what goes well and why, and what went wrong and why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A bad enemy of learning these skills is being assigned too many students, and being assigned students where you did not participate at all in the application/selection process (I'm in a close-to-academia institution, but with us, students have to apply for research topics.) IMHO this can lead to serious trouble between the supervisor and the students, and backfires already in the mid-future (some improved skills pay off very quickly I think).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'd like to encourage you: keep fighting that your needs (time, space, ...) for improving these skills will be met somehow.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course, one also needs to learn how to cope with the more difficult situations...  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, probably you did have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; training on this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likely, you have been looking already after undergrad/practicum students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly, you have (unofficially?) supervised Bachelor's / Master's theses already. Or at least helped with the supervision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likely, you have been attending meetings already.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Possibly, you have already been leading meetings. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly, you have been in charge already. For sure, for your thesis. Maybe also for other projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, you probably have by now some experience in managing the managers. ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not in a management position. Though I try to learn it while working in my primary profession. I actually think switching over to management too early too much is a waste of all the training and learning. Personally, I want to see some fruits of the highly productive phase that I think I've reached now after some 10 years in my profession -- I like that far too much to leave it completely for management. But I see that it is basically impossible to be a good group leader and do substantial amounts of scientific work yourself. So I try to slow down the changing sides to management. On the other hand, I've done quite a bit of leading students behind the scenes. And I've been responsible for several projects on a volunteering basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T12:10:15.140" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T12:10:15.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14792" CreationDate="2013-12-15T16:18:05.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true that it's very difficult to fire someone based on &quot;bad&quot; teaching or &quot;bad scientific results&quot;. However, in some countries and institutions, an evaluation/audit by an external comitee is done on the level of institutes, departments, but for each person seperately as well. If this comittee concludes that a person is not worth the position, the head of the institute can fire him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this applies only to a small number of places, and even then people don't get fired as much as they should, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T16:18:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-15T17:15:30.093" Score="7" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student of Industrial Engineering at a US university. The IE grad department has about 11 graduate level courses listed in their catalog. However, insofar they have offered only 2 of those courses. One in fall, and one for the upcoming spring semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke with students who are graduating this year learned that they have been in the same situation. The department has been offering the same two courses repeatedly for the past couple of years. Courses with which my interests align aren't being offered at all. With no choice, I am having to take up undergrad courses (one level lower) to keep up with credit requirements. I wanted to know whom I could approach in such situations. Who should I contact? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My options are limited since I am an international student. Moreover, my tuition fees are higher, and for that cost, I feel my educational needs aren't being met justly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I approach this problem? What are the possible solutions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1058" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T07:53:09.293" Title="My grad department isn't offering courses listed in the catalog. What do I do?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14801" CreationDate="2013-12-15T18:30:39.623" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most science-technology-mathematics-engineering departments in the U.S., there are many more courses in the catalog than are offered in any year. There are typically pressures (from above, or from faculty) to offer fewer, rather than more, courses, so things may default to reduced graduate course offerings. Nevertheless, if many grad students explicitly request (to the department) a given course, this greatly increases the chances it'll be offered. Certainly if you don't ask, things will probably continue to be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T18:30:39.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14792" CreationDate="2013-12-15T20:16:36.697" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before quibbling with some of the implicit hypotheses of the question: In my observation in the U.S. at top-20 places over the last 30+ years, official steps are rarely taken against post-tenure faculty on grounds that their &quot;research&quot; is in decline, much less that their &quot;teaching/mentoring&quot; may be in decline (if it ever was good). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few cases, teaching loads have been informally increased, or service loads informally increased, but often the dynamic that led to decline in research or teaching causes people to be unable to take up other responsibilities reliably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, in many places in the U.S. now there is &quot;post-tenure review&quot;, pushed onto faculty by administration. But this is viewed by faculty as unsavory and contrary to the spirit of things. In particular, short of gross malfeasance, an excellent research and teaching record for some decades is viewed as earning a spot until one chooses to retire, rather than being forced out either unofficially or officially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does partly return me to questioning some implicit hypotheses of the question, namely, the short-term measurability of &quot;research&quot; and/or &quot;teaching&quot;, and even the desirability of taking short-term samples. For that matter, foolishly idealistic though it may be, isn't the idea of &quot;tenure&quot; that one has indeed earned a spot, and one now has license to exercise one's own judgement, rather than be constantly and indefinitely concerned about external critiques?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, of course, administrations do tend to create ever-greater pressure to do more with fewer resources, thus indirectly pressuring faculty to &quot;do something about&quot; the (relatively few) faculty who are &quot;not helpful&quot;. But I think most of us recognize that this is a potentially dangerously subjective question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., again, even faculty acknowledged to be &quot;unhelpful&quot; are not railroaded out, somewhat on the same grounds that we think of &quot;free speech&quot; as including, as a matter of principle, speech that we disagree with, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T20:16:36.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14796" CreationDate="2013-12-15T21:27:46.587" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: Put your paper on the arxiv. It's a preprint server. Then the work is &quot;out there&quot; and you are still free to submit it to any reasonable journal (as noted in the comments, not every journal takes papers that are already on a preprint server, so check that in advance). So my short answer is: do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T21:48:26.050" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:48:26.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14816" CreationDate="2013-12-15T21:33:52.363" Score="4" ViewCount="1857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of pursuing a degree in Biostatistics (instead of just Statistics).&#xA;I am wondering if such decision will limit my career prospect to the field of Biostatistics. Is it feasible to think that somebody with a Biostatistics degree can work as, say, a quantitative social researcher or a data miner? The reason why I am considering Biostatistics program is because I get to take an epidemiology course, which to me sounds interesting. However at the same time I don't want to limit my career prospect strictly to the field of biostatistics....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9861" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T08:54:57.097" Title="Biostatistics vs Statistics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T02:28:00.427" Score="17" ViewCount="14665" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I was reading today an article from Nature I was wondering: Does anybody know what's the difference between article and letter in the Nature Journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog of Nature points out the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Articles&lt;/strong&gt; are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Letters&lt;/strong&gt; are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2009/12/difference_between_nature_arti.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2009/12/difference_between_nature_arti.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10020" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2020-09-15T21:08:47.767" LastActivityDate="2020-09-16T18:30:24.167" Title="Difference between article and letter in Nature" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T03:10:59.867" Score="5" ViewCount="2275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that if you take TOEFL exam several time your score will never  decrease. Is it correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems rational, if TOEFL is a standard test, its difficulty level should be equal in all exams. For example if in your first try you get 28 in reading and it shows your good skill in reading, it's not rational that ETS assign a lower  score in successive exams.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took exam for second time after ten days of my first attempt. I feel the reading section was harder than my previous exam. If TOEFL is a normalized exam, its evaluation of my skill in reading should not be decreased in such short period.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:42:42.313" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:42:42.313" Title="Is it possible for an individual's TOEFL score to decrease between exams?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14805" CreationDate="2013-12-16T03:38:15.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you have a math background?  If so, I would say go with regular stats and see if you can gear your course of study more towards the medical side of things (by taking a course in epidemiology or other medically related courses, and doing a research project in the biomedical field).  I think you will leave more doors open this way.  I think that Biostats is generally geared more towards biomedical research.  You collaborate with doctors and scientists.  Taking statistics would allow you to go this route if you desire, but also leave doors open to the quantitative social research/data mining that you mentioned in your post.  Then again, take what I say with a grain of salt.  Do more research on each subject to find out what is best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10022" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T03:38:15.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14807" CreationDate="2013-12-16T03:54:42.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an International student, I have taken TOEFL 4 times in one and a half year. Personally, I increased my score in every section at every exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it does not suggest you will always improve your score. The reason is simple. Assume you do not spend time on learning English regularly between two exams. In fact, your score is a random variable with constant mean and variance. You may have got 28 in reading last time and 26 next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spend a lot of time on improving English skills, you may still get a lower score in writing and speaking sections. For those secitons you can apply for rescoring service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="22297" LastEditDate="2014-09-27T13:32:40.223" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T13:32:40.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T04:19:43.680" Score="11" ViewCount="5283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do American universities want official GRE/TOEFL scores before admission? It seems to be a waste of time and money for prospective applicants. They can easily use the scores claimed by students in first stages and ask them official scores after admission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand ETS can send official scores directly to universities electrically via Internet without additional cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastEditorUserId="9586" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T14:55:21.617" LastActivityDate="2016-09-04T03:09:44.717" Title="Why do universities require official confirmation of scores before admission?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14806" CreationDate="2013-12-16T04:48:20.013" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;They have a difference in the allowed length, and the importance of the results. Articles are longer and supposed to have &quot;far-reaching implications&quot;. In other words, no chance to get an article unless you revealed that the moon is actually made of cheese or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters are shorter, yet still very prestigious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T04:48:20.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14818" CreationDate="2013-12-16T05:54:17.623" Score="31" ViewCount="4358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student in theoretical particle physics, where the standard is that all author lists are alphabetized. However, even in other disciplines of physics, it's quite common for author lists to be ordered by the amount of the contribution. At some point I will probably be judged by people who are not entirely familiar with the standards of particle theory, and even if they are they probably have subconscious biases towards earlier authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also happen to have a last name that's around the middle of the alphabet. I can feasibly find an advisor whose name is after mine, but the most natural choices (including my current advisor) all happen to be before mine alphabetically. My current choice makes me a bit worried because most of his other students also have names before mine alphabetically. I'll probably have a number of publications with other people in the group, and it's not unlikely that I'll be the last author on most or all of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that I should be seriously worried about? (My heart tells me no, but my brain isn't sure.) Will I have much more trouble in the future than comparable candidates who are listed earlier? Or is it a fairly small effect which is much less significant than choosing a good advisor in the long term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6055" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T08:58:23.150" Title="Will it hurt me if my advisor's last name is before mine alphabetically?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-16T06:47:42.877" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no idea about its credibility, and I'm certainly not trying to discourage Zhang's or Zyskowski's out there. But you might find this article interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/089533006776526085&quot;&gt;L. Einav, L. Yariv. What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Economic Perspectives&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;20&lt;/strong&gt; (2006), 175-187.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We present evidence that a variety of proxies for success in the U.S. economics labor market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) are correlated with surname initials, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that these effects are related to the existing norm in economics prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors participating in projects with more than three authors have significantly earlier surname initials, and authors writing papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical have significantly higher surname initials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's absurd and ludicrous to take this kind of bias into account when choosing your advisor, though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7075" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T06:47:42.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-16T07:32:05.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You suggest that your grade-reporting method is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They can easily use the scores claimed by students in first stages and&#xA;  ask them official scores after admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that you will save your money by self-report the score. And some univeristy, say Iowa state U, adopt such policy. However, it will cause trouble for the university because some students may report wrong score due to various reasons. If the university find out an admitted students have reported wrong score, they face a dilemma: continue to admit him? or admit others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T07:32:05.950" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14805" CreationDate="2013-12-16T08:54:57.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single right answer. There is value in specialisation, and value in generalisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do statistics well, domain knowledge is crucial. So, if your work is to be in, say, health epidemiology, then the more knowledge you have of how health interventions are measured, and the causal patterns, the better a statistician you can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, tools developed by health epidemiologists are now being used in other fields (for example, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://energy-epidemiology.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;energy epidemiology programme&lt;/a&gt; that I'm involved with), so the analytic skills are portable - but you will need to pick up knowledge in any domain you move into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need to base your decision on whether you want the first job or two after you finish the Masters to be in biostatistics. If you study biostatistics, then you'll have some domain knowledge, your analytic skills will be best directed to the right tools, and if it's designed well, the Masters will give you some opportunity to network with potential future employers: it will have guest lecturers from such institutions, and it will have a research component that you can do in partnership with one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T08:54:57.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14829" CreationDate="2013-12-16T08:59:50.767" Score="6" ViewCount="2397" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students have three weeks to write a little application (UI, some logic, event handling, persist data to a file). They are given one page with some requirements (input). They are supposed to hand in a compilable and running application (output). No software documentation required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you grade a software project? What criteria would you use? Can you give examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few areas that seem important to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are all the given requirements implemented?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is error handling implemented or does the application crash when the user inputs invalid data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the user interface look good, is it usable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the code well structured?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each class in a separate file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small methods which do one single task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public methods are documented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I save the data, quit the application, restart it again, and all the data is reloaded?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those criteria are very vague, I know. For each of the above criteria, I don't know when to give an A and when to give an F. Any suggestions to improve the criteria and any suggestions on how to grade it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10026" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T14:15:59.687" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T17:00:30.303" Title="How to grade a student software project?" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-16T09:05:05.323" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a subtle unconscious bias. Even in a field where author names are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; alphabetical, papers will be cited in talks as &lt;em&gt;Author1 et al&lt;/em&gt;, so if you happen to be Author1 your name will be slightly more disseminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? &lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;. Is it fair? &lt;em&gt;No&lt;/em&gt;, not entirely. Is it a big deal? &lt;em&gt;No&lt;/em&gt;. Should you change your advisor as a workaround? &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to overcome this bias is going to conferences and getting your face and name known to other people in the field. So it won't matter if your name is Aardvark or Zwingli, because people will know you anyway and know that you did some respectable work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do to reduce the impact of this bias on your CV is adding a statement on the lines of the following sentence that I put in mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf&quot;&gt;common practice&lt;/a&gt; in mathematics, the author order is usually alphabetical and does not reflect a difference in contribution. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(by the way, I can relate: I have been alphabetically last author on 86% of my joint papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T09:05:05.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14817" CreationDate="2013-12-16T11:17:08.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grading depends on the level of the students. The younger the student the more beneficial it is to be explicit in your grading policy. In an introductory class the grade is paramount for many people who may be taking that class to fulfill a requirement. In upper level undergraduate or graduate classes, grades seem like more of a curious administrative requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For introductory classes one approach is to enumerate your requirements and give equal weight to all of them. The OP gives five domains. Give each 20 points. I assume that somewhere you specify what the &quot;given requirements&quot; are and what you mean by &quot;error handling&quot;. (Are students expected to write custom error classes?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a domain has further divisions, such as #4, then divide that domain's points equally among the subdivisions. In this case 7,7,6. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes an explicit enough grading criteria that heads off undergraduate complaints about a biased system while giving the more motivated students something to do beyond writing code that checks off boxes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T13:14:10.367" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T13:14:10.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:08:57.220" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my own experience, even if your last name comes before your advisor's, your own research community will regard any joint work with your advisor to be primarily your advisor's work, despite your advisor's protests to the contrary, until you start publishing independently.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect&quot;&gt;Matthew Effect&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more significant than your position in the alphabet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My name comes before my advisor's, and I've advised students with names before mine and others after mine. I work in a field that orders authors alphabetically.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T21:14:28.380" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T21:14:28.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:52:45.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a field [chemistry] where historically (before academic search engines), the advisor's name was always first, since that was probably the person you had the best chance of identifying when you went to your local library and sat down with the print version of chemical abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The modern practice is to list authors by intellectual contribution (which usually puts the adviser last, but not always). To add to the confusion, some advisers still operate by the older method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals now want a statement of author contributions to appear in the text. This type of statement removes any ambiguity over who did what, and resolves both the author ordering problem and the sadly still recurring vanity author problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example: B.N.N. designed the synthesis and prepared key intermediate 1. J.V.V. prepared derivatives A and B. B.N.N. and J.J.V. characterized the compounds. H.G.T. and A.B.C. coded and compiled the computational models. B.N.N. and H.G.T. designed the study and wrote the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T13:16:56.253" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T13:16:56.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14824" CreationDate="2013-12-16T13:36:11.183" Score="3" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working in physics, I recently discovered a mathematical identity useful to solve a partial differential equation. I have generalized the idea and found several other identities but I do not know yet whether they apply or not to other PDEs. These identities have, though, a physical interpretation and feature interesting symmetries. As it is not my research topic, I did not spend too much time on this work but still think it deserves to be published. I have tried to submit it (to J. Phys. A and J. Math. Phys.) and it was rejected by the editors without review. I have no more idea where it could be submitted and I would appreciate any suggestion. A previous version of the paper is accessible at &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.3140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.3140&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10030" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T13:05:19.383" Title="Where to submit an article of applied maths for physics" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14822" CreationDate="2013-12-16T15:00:44.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that &lt;em&gt;J. Phys. A&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;J. Math. Phys.&lt;/em&gt; are quite top journals and they reject lots of reasonable papers not because they would be off-topic but because they are &quot;not good enough for them&quot; (whatever that means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, if you feel that your identities are something completely new to the world of maths, you should find a reasonably good math journal, because they are likely interesting to math people as well. On the other hand, if you feel that the results are interesting only to (theoretical/mathematical) physicists, go for a journal in this branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know any mathematical physics journals personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For math journals about identities/symmetries in PDEs, you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/publications.html?pg1=CC&amp;amp;op1=AND&amp;amp;s1=35B06&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;check the list of publications in MSC class &lt;code&gt;35B06&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. For the mathematical physics journals, I suggest trying to find the proper MSC class in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/freeTools.html?version=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the MSC catalog&lt;/a&gt;, there you can see which journals would be suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T13:05:19.383" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T13:05:19.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-16T16:54:41.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cost of processing applications is very high. The policy of asking applicants to pay something for applying may sound inequitable, but it ensures that nobody will apply &quot;just for fun&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a private university where I worked years ago, the simple fact of asking for the payment of the stamps (roughly 5 euros) used to send the results of the process lowered the number of applications by more than 20%, without lowering the quality of the top applications. This is a huge saving on the cost of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T16:54:41.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-16T16:58:36.563" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that many students will resort to cheating, if necessary, to secure admission to graduate school. Just about any method or loophole that can be exploited will be. For instance, when I was an undergraduate in the 90's, one of the graduate departments stopped admitting students from China for several years because they had multiple instances where applicants had stand-ins for interviews to determine their English skills. Similarly, at my current school, we have recently had a rash of applications come in with faked English competency certificates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, American graduate schools (and programs in other countries which ask for test scores) are increasingly (although not exclusively) relying on officially submitted documents. Scores reported directly from the College Board would presumably be less likely to be subject to manipulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as why not just ask for a paper copy: American departments usually only have one admissions cycle per year. Therefore, admitting someone who is ineligible because of fraudulent documents usually means denying someone else who is qualified the ability to be admitted. Therefore, schools want to know that the students are officially eligible &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they are admitted, and will not hold up the process until later. Schools that do rolling admissions likely do not have this problem, and could perhaps use the method you have suggested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T16:58:36.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14817" CreationDate="2013-12-16T17:00:30.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My policy, my 2 cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part of the grading corresponds to the expectation of the &quot;customer&quot;. if this project is considered as an actual development project in industry, does it deserves that the customer is paying its full price. For instance, I will give 10 points (over 20) for that criteria. If the software fulfil all the requirements then the student is awarded the 10 points, otherwise he/she starts losing some of the points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part of the grading is for the quality of the code (structure, naming of variable, algorithmic aspects, etc.). I give 5 points at max here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rest is for the tasks around the code: modeling, UML stuff, reports, etc. The last 5 points can be found here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T17:00:30.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14832" CreationDate="2013-12-16T17:16:04.327" Score="9" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is quite premature for the current state of my studies, but I already have a few people in mind to which this question applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Academia, would it be considered normal to approach a researcher you respect (who's work has great personal value or interest to you) and suggest that you would be interested in assisting with their future research efforts? In this case, I'm speaking less about full collaboration/co-authorship, and more about being willing to assist with the 'grunt work' of a given research project, purely out of interest in the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be construed as insulting to the researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this sort of offer commonplace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an expectation of credential equality in this situation? For example, would it be inappropriate for an Undergraduate student to make such an offer to a PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9891" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T21:37:50.533" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T21:37:50.533" Title="Approaching researchers about collaboration?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-16T20:42:48.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it will. The problem is not the alphabet, it's the advisor and others, the readers. I am not at my library so I can't link to the psychologic rules behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as you asked 'Is this something that I should be seriously worried about?' the point is, you can't avoid the problem - live with your (his/her) name (hair color, size and, and, and), and think about doing the best ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't avoid psychological problems, so better not to take care, if you can't change it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answer with a tautology: Take an advisor who is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10049" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2017-05-04T08:58:23.150" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T08:58:23.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14830" CreationDate="2013-12-16T21:36:39.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To show interest is never wrong so from that point, I think such an approach would be fair. What complicates the issue is the picture of prerequisites. When you approach someone, does not matter at what level, you need to show how you can be of interest. What that entails is showing you have the background (courses and scientific literature) that allows you to be efficient help. I think this is where the plan is most likely to fail because the recipient of the request will not likely be interested in taking on help that needs much coaching to function. If your request is within the department where you study, matters might be easier but if you contact someone in another university of perhaps even department the difficulties may arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I cannot see anyone being offended by a request such as this. The problem lies in seeing how you can fit in and be a contributor without to much costs (in terms of e.g. time) for the researcher or research group. However, a personal visit is far more likely to lead somewhere than a letter or E-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requests such as these are not uncommon but in my experience have most often been very uninteresting. Again, some have visited which has provided a very good possibility to assess the common interests and in what way a possible &quot;collaboration&quot; would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the last question, I cannot see a problem except that a PhD student may not be in a position to bring in an external person into a project that in essence is run by their advisor. A PhD student, on the other hand, may be a good way into a research group since they may be open to a meeting more readily than a busy project leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, showing interest is good but you need to be able to show clearly what you bring to the table to wet the appetite of the person you target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T21:36:39.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15083" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:11:01.797" Score="27" ViewCount="3309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the first year of a six year bachelor's degree aiming for astrophysics. The course is a home/distance learning setup run by the Open University. While I am enjoying it thoroughly, I am aware of the academic politics that can dog professional science. So my question is thus: Upon soldiering on with the degree, then masters, and then PhD, will I be taken seriously within a professional setting given my inability to reference a leading university for my education? Will the format for my studying be &quot;pitied&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; I suppose a bit more info may help. I'm 27,wife, 2 children, and I currently work as a full time chef, and self employed part time IT technician. I flunked my GCSEs, with no further education. The past 3 years have been a revelation for me, and I have discovered a before unexperienced love for academia; specifically, physics and astronomy. Last year I completed a 1 year OU maths brush up course, which at the time I really struggled with. This year I had a bout of madness and took the plunge for a BSc degree in astronomy. I am now loving the math within the physics so far (yet to hit calculus though!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD, and even masters, is a long way off.  Also, since this original post I've improved my understanding of what a PhD actually entails. So I realise that if I get there, it may well not have anything to do with the OU! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It occurs to me that a lot of my initial queries could have been avoided with a better understanding of the educational and qualification system itself. I now have a greater appreciation as to what a PhD actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;, realising that its a long way off and not necessarily needed for a fulfilling career in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think trying to repair my broken education and fight my way into a worthwhile (and productive!) career is enough of challenge at the moment. There will be plenty of time later for worries concerning doctorates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good to hear that there is at least an open mind towards distance educated professionals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been said, if you've got it, you've got it - you just have to be ready to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10055" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2016-03-06T22:57:23.963" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T22:57:23.963" Title="Distance learning: taken seriously?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14842" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:16:11.917" Score="3" ViewCount="2102" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a computer engineering student, I think this is the right place to ask for help about my career. Well I am in my sophomore year at one of the leading university in Turkey. I want to specialize in information security. However, I want to clarify something. &quot;I have been - and always shall be&quot; an average student. My student life has never been so bright but I have enough passion and resources to be an ethical hacker. Sometimes I think what they teach us in the university is waste of time. People can learn coding, operating systems, network, database etc. from the internet. So here is my question: Should I quit my university and stay behind the doors,do what I love, for a long time or waste two more years with the pressure of everything you do or don't will be graded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10056" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T22:31:37.397" Title="Should I Quit University?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14833" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:23:31.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true that open universities / distance learning institutions are not taken equally seriously, even if sometimes the work is harder due to the vast number of exercises. Still, in research it is mainly what you publish (and where) and what you are really capable of doing. In this sense, the sky is always the only limit a) if you have the ability and b) work extremely hard regardless of initial studies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also too young to worry about PHDs, MSCs, since you do not know if spending your time studying is more fun to you than working and getting some real money from some real job (after graduating). So, do the best you can for now, keep your grades up and your eyes open and towards the end of your study you will know what you want to do. If you are really good, you will find your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T23:23:31.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14834" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:31:50.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always a very personal decision as to whether you're going to stay on with university education. I fear this question may be closed as opinion based, but I'll take a stab at giving some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a number of factors you're going to have to keep in mind when you make these kinds of decisions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It has to be acknowledged that large swathes of the computer science/engineering skillset can be self-taught or learned through MOOCs, and project contributions. However, one needs to keep in mind their own personality when considering self-learning. Historically I was a terrible autodidact, simply because my personality worked depth-first, which is a terrible way to get started in a new topic. University helped me a lot by forcing me to prune my search trees so I could actually learn the topics at hand! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Universities aren't always just what they teach. Faculty can be important resources for guiding one down productive paths and avoiding getting stuck on solved problems. Mentorship and the possibility for great guidance should be carefully evaluated when considering leaving. If you aren't seeing mentorship and guidance, consider how much of this is the environment, and how much is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. An alternative to dropping out entirely might be to transition into an institution that is better suited to your interests. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Credentials may not mean anything. However, sometimes they can open doors for you that might be closed, or subject to hurdles without the credentials. It's going to be highly specific depending on what kind of work you want to do in what field, but needs to be considered. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;you need to know where your desires lie&lt;/strong&gt;, and plan the best way to get them. It could be well that going indie is going to get you to your desired career faster --- or it could nuke the possibility of achieving them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt;: Oh and about pressure: If you think the pressure &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; university is a lot, you're going to be surprised about what it takes to succeed &lt;strong&gt;outside&lt;/strong&gt; university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T23:31:50.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14834" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:32:03.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are wrong. You are so wrong you do not even understand it. Why? Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to write a fast app. You need to know the data structures for the right job (trees, lists, hash maps). You want to write a database app. You should know which fields to index and which not. You want to do some geospatial app. You need to know the correct indexing (R-tree).  It is very hard to know these things on your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What you can find in the internet: how to do a hash map in C++ &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What you cannot find in the internet: why you need a hash map in the first place and so-on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, finish your studies and you will understand later why those studies were useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are so good you think you are at coding (which you probably are not unless you get paid for it and others agree), you still do not want to have a technical manager who knows less than you but has the degree (you do not have). So, you will need the degree anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T23:38:11.510" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T23:38:11.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14844" CreationDate="2013-12-17T00:59:28.320" Score="2" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done a three months independent research at a national lab in US with guidance from a scientist who was working there, but he is very busy and not much time is left to ask him to write a recommendation letter (RL) since the application deadline is coming. &#xA;I want to include this experience in my SOP, and wonder, in general, how is the reaction of graduate admission committees to research experience which is not backed up by a RL?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T04:12:09.157" Title="Research experience not backed up by recommendation letter" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2013-12-17T01:04:53.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need a letter from the senior person under whom you did the work! If you don't have one, this is like getting a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; letter. People know that they have this responsibility to junior people, so, although, yes, it involves some work on their part, it would be irresponsible to shirk it. You need that letter, I think, or people will wonder...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T01:04:53.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2013-12-17T01:58:04.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the duties of a researcher who takes on a mentor role is to write letters of recommendation for his students. Your advisor will understand this responsibility. You may want to read the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1452/points-to-remember-when-having-to-write-recommendation-letter-yourself?rq=1&quot;&gt;this question regarding writing your own recommendation letter&lt;/a&gt;, as this may be relevant to your situation, but you should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be willing to ask for a letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T01:58:04.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14834" CreationDate="2013-12-17T02:33:30.233" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand that a University degree (assuming it is a degree course you are enrolled in) does not attempt to teach you all the skills you need in order to be successful in your chosen career. What it does do is give a good grounding in your chosen area, but more importantly, provide evidence of your ability to apply yourself and achieve a widely recognized level of accreditation. If you are after courses that provide more specific vocational skills, and there are plenty of these in the computer science industry, it may be that you should search for a better suited program. These types of courses are usually shorter and more intensive than a degree course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your university degree will be useful to you will depend very much on what you intend to do with your career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to design and develop your own software systems or products, and then fight to have your products recognized on the global market, and build your reputation from scratch, then a degree may not be much use to you. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs&quot;&gt;success&lt;/a&gt; stories of people who dropped out of, or never went to, university, so nobody can tell you it can't be done. But I think you will need to be extremely good, and lucky, to be able to do that. You may also need to have a back-up plan in the meantime in order to put food on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, if you ever plan to work for somebody, or a company that does not know of your reputation and amazing ability, then you will need to somehow demonstrate that. A degree is the first step towards demonstrating to those who are likely to employ you that you have been able to apply yourself in a recognized mainstream course of learning and been able to reach recognized benchmark standards. Once in your job, you will then be expected to learn the specifics of that position, and what better way to show that you are able to learn and apply knowledge than to have a piece of paper from a university to show that you can. It will be a nationally (and in many cases, and importantly not all cases, internationally) recognized accreditation. Once you have embarked on your career, it will be the references from previous employers that will vouch for your ability, and the degree will matter less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would be asking myself as a prospective employer is whether someone who claims to have passion and ability to access resources, but lacks the application and commitment to successfully complete their degree is the right person to employ in my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T02:33:30.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14834" CreationDate="2013-12-17T03:21:26.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You sound like you're an independent worker, who dislikes and just is not suited for the structured learning style of University courses. Fair enough, there are many others like you. It doesn't mean you won't benefit from a University degree, it just makes it a little tougher to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm like that too, yet now that I am doing research and am free of undergraduate classes I'm enjoying myself a lot more. But you still need that knowledge and those skills gained from those courses, even if you don't like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to teach yourself is a fantastic ability, but a University degree will give you solid ground to stand on with regards to your employability. You will look a lot more desirable to an employer if you have a degree, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; considerable personal achievements to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only people who I would even consider advising to not go to University are those who:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;aren't bright enough,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are passionate about something that doesn't benefit from a degree,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or who genuinely cannot afford it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're neither. Not only will a degree give you a significant boost early in your career, but you'll probably gain more skills and knowledge than you think you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stick with it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T03:21:26.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2013-12-17T03:44:34.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the research experience with a national lab would be very helpful to your graduate school application. You should do your best to ask that senior scientist to write the recommendation letter for you. And he should understand it's part of his job to write recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case he will never have time to write the letter, my suggestion is to ask the human resource department of the lab to write a letter to &lt;strong&gt;certify that you had worked at that lab&lt;/strong&gt;. This is, of course, not the recommendation letter. But, at least the certification letter proves that you did work there. How the admission commitee will react is another story. You have no control over it. You just need to do your best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T04:12:09.157" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T04:12:09.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T03:46:34.200" Score="7" ViewCount="4486" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the compilation of thesis (MSc or PhD) in a case we wanted to include some program codes as chapters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We prefer to put &lt;code&gt;heading&lt;/code&gt; to all program codes everywhere they appear as complete source to clarify the license. Is it nice to do so? Any other solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.1.1  Loop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    ...text...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;code&gt;-------&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;Copyright 2013 Coder, ...                   !this part&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;code&gt;-------&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;code&gt;function loop(...) result (...)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;code&gt;some code&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &lt;code&gt;-------&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    ...text...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10062" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T08:51:39.733" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T08:51:39.733" Title="Inclusion of `computer code` in a thesis" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2013-12-17T05:01:18.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frank Wilczek,&#xA;Edward Witten, &#xA;Athony Zee,&#xA;Bruno Zumino, &#xA;Barton Zwiebach.&lt;/strong&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Their last names initials are W or Z.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(They are in HEP theoretical physics, particle physics, like you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They hardly get anything for the authorship sorting. But they are doing fantastic well outstanding. They are hired by TOP institutes. Keep their names in your mind. Keep it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9222" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T05:01:18.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14845" CreationDate="2013-12-17T06:23:05.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should add source codes scarcely and when it is interesting to add the code. &lt;strong&gt;Loop&lt;/strong&gt; does not sound one of the interesting headings. In those cases you should include source code as figures and discuss them in your text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in other cases, you can give complete source codes in appendix or in a CD/DVD as an attachment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5995" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T06:23:05.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14845" CreationDate="2013-12-17T06:51:19.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own experience and this would depend on your university's guidelines, a summary of the main algorithms of the code ought to be included - specifically with what each algorithm does, what's its significance, how it functions and how it links with the other parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my recently completed and peer reviewed PhD thesis, I also included example 'snippets' or bits of code and included a flowchart of how the program as a whole works, linking all the described algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was advised to write chapter subtitles with the context of each algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T06:51:19.033" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1452" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:56:34.703" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a very old question, but I guess no harm in me adding my two pennies even after a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that it's not good practice writing letters for oneself, but, a lot of bad things happen in academia and this is one of them. It happened to me, and that with a good and dedicated professor: it was just a set of circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I asked this person for a letter a few months in advance and he agreed to write it when I apply somewhere, when I stumbled upon my (then, potential, now, current) supervisors, realized we want to work together, there was about a week left to apply for the grant. When I asked for a recommendation, the professor was on a conference / trip and could not find the time to do it himself. He asked me for &lt;strong&gt;a &quot;draft&quot; to see what points the letter should cover&lt;/strong&gt; which he actually did modify later. And I have a feeling he would have preferred to write it than to just modify my writing, but, hey, &lt;em&gt;circumstances&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the points I was focusing on when I was writing the letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;each letter-writer&lt;/strong&gt; I contacted, &lt;strong&gt;I had a specific purpose in mind&lt;/strong&gt;. Each of those people could &lt;strong&gt;attest to a different set of skills and give a different view of me&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This particular letter was to attest how I have diverse interests (the professor had me on some small extra-curriculum classes), and how I'm good with working with students and explaining stuff (I did some T.A.-like work for him).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically, I wrote about the experiences, facts and results that made me want to ask this person for a letter in the first place. Shortly: &lt;strong&gt;Keep to the point and don't digress too much.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support your statements by facts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I guess) nobody wants a read list of synonyms for &quot;awesome&quot;. A good rule might be: &lt;em&gt;situation&lt;/em&gt; (in which the professor was working with you), &lt;em&gt;result&lt;/em&gt; (of your working in that situation), &lt;em&gt;conclusions&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reasoning&lt;/em&gt; (about your ability, based on the situation).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to put the conclusions in context with what you are applying for.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a letter attesting (among other things) that you have diverse interests. Maybe you're applying something that is slightly different from your current/previous works, and having diverse interests and an aptitude for learning is certainly a strong point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure your language is flawless.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep to a structure.&lt;/strong&gt; (not like my bullet points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good one might be: &lt;em&gt;firstly&lt;/em&gt;, introduce the professor. Shortly list all or some of the situations which make that professor a relevant and good choice for a reference. &lt;em&gt;Secondly&lt;/em&gt;, for the &quot;meat&quot;, expand on the reasoning for the recommendation. &lt;em&gt;Lastly&lt;/em&gt;, summarize the good points and their relevance to the position you are applying for, and &lt;strong&gt;include a sentence explicitly saying that you the professor would recommend you&lt;/strong&gt;. Something, maybe, like &lt;em&gt;Based on my experience with Mister X., I would wholeheartedly recommend X for the position Y.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't write a novel.&lt;/strong&gt; One page should be quite enough. (again, not like my answer :) )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this advice should not only &lt;strong&gt;help you to write a passable / good recommendation letter&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;but also increase the chances of the professor actually reading and reviewing what you wrote&lt;/strong&gt; instead of just signing it. If everything is written concise and to the point, the professor (even the one with very little free time), might be more inclined to change things, because he can identify faster what he disagrees with, what he maybe wants to expand, add, or omit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T08:56:34.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14851" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:18:04.483" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the first author changes the authorship arrangement of a journal paper &lt;strong&gt;without discussing or informing&lt;/strong&gt; the other co-author who is being unfairly affected with this, what we can do about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to stop this sort of stealing other one's work? What would you recommend to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10062" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:46:13.593" Title="To act against rearranging authorship irresponsibly" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14850" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:46:13.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To play with the author order is not fair and perhaps unethical if it unfairly changes the picture of the intellectual contribution to the paper. Unfortunately, the ordering is largely an internal problem within the group since only that group can assess the appropriate ordering. So, discussing the problem within the author group would be the first choice of action. When doing so you need to have a good argument for why the division of authorship should look the way you see it and have good arguments for that. The core problem therefore seems to be a lack of communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea (necessary) to discuss a system for ordering of authorship. There are guidelines for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;authorship and contributorship&lt;/a&gt; based on the Vancouver Protocol. You can also look at the post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13946/4394&quot;&gt;Paper contributions and first authorship&lt;/a&gt;. Requirements for authorship are quite strict and each author group needs to work out how authorship should be divided along a clear set of rules. An example of how such a discussion is given on, for example, the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorder.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=18&amp;amp;Itemid=45&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AuthorOrder&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases when authorship changes can be unethical, but those mostly concern the first authorship so I do not sense this is the main problem in your case. Nevertheless, for some input on disputes, I recommend looking at COPE's &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/2003pdf12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to handle authorship disputes:a guide for new researchers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not think you can discuss the changes with the first order, then you have to learn from the experience and insist on discussing the grounds for authorship and ordering in future collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:46:13.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14856" CreationDate="2013-12-17T11:25:35.427" Score="7" ViewCount="2196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/math/1/au:+Gaitanas_K/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my two-page paper&lt;/a&gt; to arxiv and sent it to the editor of a good journal. The editor responded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your result is not substantial enough&quot; and so it was rejected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot say that I totally disagree with the editor, the paper does not make any significant progress on number theory but I can't say that my paper is totally without value. It is the first time I have tried to publish a paper, and I am confused:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was my paper rejected because it is too short?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I submit it to another journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate if someone gave me some advice on how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8979" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:02:54.173" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T11:28:48.957" Title="Submiting a two page paper to a math journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14861" CreationDate="2013-12-17T11:34:42.383" Score="9" ViewCount="1234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working towards converting to a PhD but was unsure of what research I would do. Suddenly an idea striked my mind and I discussed it with my advisor. He doesn't have much experience in that exact field but has been in the area for around 6 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that he thinks that idea is feasible but doesn't know what would be the approach, and not sure whether the results would be positive in terms of PhD because there several parallel domains. Moreover, literature doesn't have much details on that exact topic. And my literature survey (pretty limited though) has only enhanced my confusion. Probably because my idea deals with application of a recent class of techniques to optimize a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth to convert to a PhD with such an idea ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T19:39:02.840" Title="Is it feasible to take an unsure PhD topic?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14854" CreationDate="2013-12-17T11:50:47.620" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no expert in number theory, so I can't really help you with the last question (if you should submit your paper to another journal). However, it sounds like the editor stated the reason for rejection pretty clear: In his impression the results are not substantial enough. This is a valid (and frequent) reason for rejection. So in this respect you are in good company. If the editor did not state explicitly that he finds the paper &quot;too short&quot; than there is no reason to believe that this was the reason for rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get good feedback on how to proceed with your paper and your research you should &lt;strong&gt;ask your advisor&lt;/strong&gt; (or find one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T11:50:47.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-12-17T13:19:06.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure there's a correct answer here, but I would recommend against it. The goal of your PhD research is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce you to the world of Academia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earn you a PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By choosing your topic to be something completely exploratory, you put (2) at risk; the research may not pan out, or may be much more difficult than you think, or may be infeasible for technical reasons, or whatever, and your PhD would be at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to reiterate, this is a function of the specific topic at hand, your risk appetite, your advisor's skillset and risk appetite, and your willingness to restart your research partway through your program. Take all that into account when making your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T13:19:06.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-12-17T13:50:44.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &lt;strong&gt;eykanal&lt;/strong&gt;'s answer, and I would add this: I know many people who changed the topic after one year of their thesis, and if they put enough effort into it, they still finished in time (being &amp;lt;4 years here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean, if you start working on one problem and you finish solving another one, you still can graduate and get your PhD. However, depending on your subject, this might be more difficult: for us &quot;theoreticians&quot; who work in an office it's simple, for people who do complicated experiments it's of course much more difficult or even impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T13:50:44.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-12-17T14:50:00.433" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is exactly how most of the really great PhD students I've seen have all started.  Working on a problem with unknowns is a process called &quot;research.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, you are going to have to find some collaborators with more experience in the field than your advisor, but that's part of the process as well.  Hopefully, your advisor can assist with networking / introductions / etc.  The support of your advisor will be critical (as it is for all PhD students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to make sure you have a backup plan and a way to convert to it if necessary.  Don't spend three years mucking around if you're not making progress.  But, spending 6 months investigating if there is something there -- that's well worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T14:50:00.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14872" CreationDate="2013-12-17T15:40:02.163" Score="14" ViewCount="18849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international Fulbright scholar, the scholarship covers my university tuition expenses to complete my Masters degree in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard a lot about how the Fulbright scholarship is one of the most prestigious scholarships there are and I was wondering if the prestige is due to only the financial reasons or are there any other benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also is the scholarship only prestigious in the US or is it famous on a world wide scale or only in academic realms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10071" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:16:16.883" Title="How prestigious is a Fulbright scholarship" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-17T16:02:01.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all universities have admission process for Fall/spring every year. Considering the fact that thousands of NON-US students apply to Universities; It is practically impossible for individual university to ask for student's GRE/TOEFL score directly to ETS or take from it.  Let us consider cases to understand it in totality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case (A) Student sends his/her score [No involvement of ETS]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Student can send Whatever Score He/She wishes. Suppose that Score got accepted and is Fake. If the same University receives 100 such applications then it would be tedious task not only for the universities but also for the ETS management. 100 applications is small number for that particular University but What about ETS??? ETS is the only authority that issues official score. There are 100 more such university in US. If ETS starts replying to 100*100 such fake request; we can easily imagine the man power that could be needed. &lt;strong&gt;The most important point here to remember is TIME. Every university has a time limit for considering applications. If ETS Starts evaluating all such Queries;it will be a chaos.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case (B) Student sends his/her score [ involvement of ETS]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ETS is already involved right from the first step then there is no chance of fake score getting reported to university and the whole Process is transparent and efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally Why will ETS not send the Score Electronically to respective University ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suppose you request to send the Score Electronically to University of your choice. If ETS allows this for free then there are 100% chance that you or anyone will send it all universities as the cost is NULL. In order to avoid Denial of Service to the students that really deserve admission this becomes necessary to keep such a system that currently Exists&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9970" LastEditorUserId="9970" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T16:21:27.073" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:21:27.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14833" CreationDate="2013-12-17T16:32:28.457" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own experience of having an open university degree (computer science) is that &quot;it depends on who you talk to&quot;.  Some people value the degree highly, others put it at the bottom of the pile.  I've found that the longer I've held it (ten years now!) the more value it seems to have accrued.  This could be to the fact it becomes less and less relevant where your studied the more experience you build or the fact that it's become a more accepted route of study since I gained it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I work in academia, but am not an academic.  I currently work for a big academic institution and they perfectly happy with my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10076" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T16:32:28.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14845" CreationDate="2013-12-17T17:40:57.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the code itself out there, put it up on GitHub or BitBucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the thesis itself, it depends on the pedagogical value --- some algorithms are worth including as code themselves: where the specifics of the language and environment matter. Others are best included as &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3aLatex-algorithm2e-if-else.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pseudo-code&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T17:40:57.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14870" CreationDate="2013-12-17T18:06:58.297" Score="7" ViewCount="1892" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to do a master's at Canadian universities. My background is Earth &amp;amp; Environmental Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a statement of interest, I am familiar with the various research in the field I want to go into, however, a professor told me I should talk about &quot;gaps in the data and where my research could fill those gaps&quot;. While I believe that's a great suggestion, I don't feel like I know enough about different methodologies and their faults to write a good statement of interest. Should I keep it on the vaguer side and relate it to the professor/research group's common interests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a different note, my marks aren't the best, they're about the admission requirements/slightly above. I have a lot of work experience in the field, and TA'd quite a bit. I also did an undergraduate thesis that I'm quite proud of (and hope to publish soon). So I know that already sets me apart from my peers and may make up for my lower average.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within that framework, should I discuss my marks and explain how I am a better researcher/writer than I am at taking exams, or do I leave out grades completely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10040" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T11:41:34.297" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T11:41:34.297" Title="How should I write a statement of interest about how my research will fill gaps in the field, when I don't know enough about the field yet?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14868" CreationDate="2013-12-17T18:35:55.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This statement of interest is both a persuasive and reflective piece. You need to sell yourself as best as possible. Below is one good way to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;General advice: Sell yourself, but be honest. Be specific and concrete - a few detailed examples are better than lists of stuff you did (which goes in a resume if one is requested). Highlight experiences that suggest you are ready for graduate-level research. Relate your experiences and interests to the research going on in the department/program to which you are applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 1 - State your intention (admission to M.S. program). Here is a good place to very quickly summarized your qualifications and to highlight your general research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 2 - Why the admissions/selection committee should give you a spot. This paragraph is the place to mention your experience, your TA activities, and your thesis. If you have a lot to say, group it by categories (like coursework, research, service/teaching) and make more than one paragraph. Do not worry so much about how your current experience is shaping you to contribute greatly to the field. Instead, focus on that thesis experience and what you learned from it. Do you think you are more prepared for graduate-level research than other undergrads might be because of this experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 3 - This paragraph is an opportunity to be frank about anything that others may see as a limitation and/or weakness. Then you should describe how these limitations are not so serious or are counteracted by some additional experience/strength that makes you stand out. You can also describe how you are addressing these limitations so that they will go away. You should mention your grades in this section. Do not hide from them, but do not fixate on them either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 4 (optional) - If you have some unique story about how you because interested in a field, subfield, or research project. If your reason boils down to &quot;it sounds neato&quot;, then incorporate this content into another paragraph. You can bring up your thesis again and discuss how you chose the topic and how the work has shaped your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last paragraph - Wrap-up. Restate your intent and summarize the key factors why they should accept you. This is a good place to write some specific wordage for the program you are applying to: &quot;My undergraduate thesis was on the effects of X on Y, and I would like to continue study in subfield Z. Projects being undertaken by professors J, K, and L at Institution M are especially interesting to me because...&quot; If you do this, you are showing that you did your homework about the program. You can also put this kind of stuff up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T18:35:55.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-17T19:27:24.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As all of us know this is only a game to gather money from poor applicant. The application fee of American universities are high enough to prevent non-serious applicant from sending application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETS can provide for each student a secret key. The student enters such key in application system. The university can use the key to retrieve the authentic scores of each applicant, if it is necessary. This is just one possible solution among a lot of other practical hassle-free approachs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T19:27:24.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14862" CreationDate="2013-12-17T19:52:19.507" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is very prestigious, yet in many countries most non-academics will not have heard of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the benefits, I assume you did your research before applying so I don't know what we can tell you that you don't already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since this could help other people thinking of applying to one of the Fulbright programs, I am providing an (unofficial and incomplete) list of good things about this program. Please contact your local Fulbright office for more detailed and updated information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once awarded, you'll attend a workshop/training in your home country, that will help prepare you for applying to US institutions and for studying and living in the US. This can be very important for people traveling to the US for the first time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need help improving your English, they'll likely send you 1 to 6 months ahead of your MS studies, to attend an English program in a US University (not the same university in which you'll get your MS).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have academic advisers that will help you apply to Universities, will check your recommendation letters and statement of purpose, so that you can maximize your chances of getting into a top program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll forever be part of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://alumni.state.gov/&quot;&gt;&quot;State Alumni&quot;&lt;/a&gt; network and will be invited to attend networking opportunities with other State Alumni members in your home country (and I guess other countries if you relocate).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During your first year of studies, you'll be invited to a 3-4 day &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2013/2013-02-08-Fulbright-Enrichment-Seminars-2013#.UrCpztdMFgI&quot;&gt;Fulbright Enrichment Seminar&lt;/a&gt; on &quot;topics of global importance&quot; (topic changes yearly). Personal note: for me, this was an amazing experience and probably the best part of the whole program. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIeaeTJpWdo&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;hd=1&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; shows what the grantees do on these seminars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may get some additional financial help (in addition to tuition), like a stipend for books and/or to buy a computer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT (Added the following):&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the intangible benefits of the Fulbright Scholarship&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the Fulbright program is an International Exchange Program. It is hard to try to explain the intangible benefits you get from participating in such a program, but these quotes from Senator Fulbright can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace--eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy--the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. The simple purpose of the exchange program...is to erode the culturally rooted mistrust that sets nations against one another. The exchange program is not a panacea but an avenue of hope....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, international Master's students in the US end up interacting primarily with other international students in their own program, and sometimes even with mostly other students from the same home country. A student participating in the Fulbright program has numerous opportunities to interact with US citizens and other international students from different programs and from different universities. It is an enriching experience that most likely will contribute to give you a more broad view of the world. This will likely have a positive impact in your career, either directly (for people in law, international relations, government, etc.) or indirectly (like helping you become a better teammate, a better project leader or manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want some examples on how the grantees experience their time in the US, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1425936458&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; has good reviews (I cannot comment myself, since I have not read it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7978" LastEditorUserId="7978" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T16:16:16.883" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:16:16.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14810" CreationDate="2013-12-17T21:02:45.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would think that it will save you a lot of money if the school ask for official school only if they have intention to admit you, and it shouldn't be difficult to do for the grad schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, indeed this can be done, and is being done by a lot of programs.  However there are complications and many programs don't do it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &lt;strong&gt;you get four scores to be sent out for free when you take the test&lt;/strong&gt;.  Even if you apply to as many as 10 schools, that may be enough to cover all the schools that do ask for official GRE/TOEFL scores upfront.  This is intended to be a primary channel through which you are reporting your scores.  It will be a significant cost if you apply for 30 schools, but I don't really see the point of doing that.   Of course, that would require you to do your homework early and figure out which school to send your scores to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, that adds one more phase of admission process.  You have to understand that by easing your financial burden (which isn't even the main cost of application anyways.  just think about how much application fees and tests would cost you.), schools have to put in more work, with no apparent gain on their part.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your financial constraints are preventing you sending the scores, you can always write a letter to the program you are applying for.  &lt;strong&gt;As an international graduate student, I can tell you that many institutions did give me waiver for official scores before admission, and some even waived application fees entirely.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, in some universities, there are two separate entities that are processing these applications:  the graduate school and the department.  Sometimes the graduate school have minimum requirement policies for GRE or TOEFL scores and until you can prove your eligibility, your application cannot even be transferred to the department, where the decision is actually made.  If that is the case, it would be impossible to waive unofficial score until admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9542" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T21:02:45.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14783" CreationDate="2013-12-18T00:29:10.713" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since each individual student is asking for a letter of recommendation it would be appropriate to approach each letter as an individual task and not implicitly cross-reference between the letters by making comparisons. Direct comparisons between the specific students should not be made. It is after all the person or committee admitting the students to the program that will make decisions who may fit the best and their criteria may not be the same as yours. It is, however, reasonable to make implicit comparisons such as ranking each in relative terms to, say, all students you have encountered or some other frame of reference. This way each student is compared to a group and not each other. This is what one commonly does anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that you may get a request for more details by the person/committee if there is a difficulty in separating students. You could if you are willing, add a comment to the fact that you are willing to answer any questions that may arise during the process regarding the student in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T00:29:10.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-18T02:13:23.503" Score="13" ViewCount="1495" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most papers do not specify a separate license for the source code, so presumably it would be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the paper. Typically, this means that the copyright lies with the publisher. Then,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a reader, do I need permission from the publisher to use source code contained in journal articles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would using the source code be considered fair use in the US? What about countries that do not have comparable laws?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an author, what should I do if I want the code I publish to be freely usable by others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T13:46:37.417" Title="Code in journal papers" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14880" CreationDate="2013-12-18T02:20:29.250" Score="3" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it beneficial/harmful to get a letter from a research supervisor who was not satisfied with my work? (I wasn't interested in that topic, but I kept working in the lab for the money). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or forget about that and instead focus on people who were satisfied with my research experience only? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:39:10.340" Title="Recommendation letter from a research supervisor who was not satisfied with my work" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-18T02:39:30.497" Score="1" ViewCount="6989" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do some graduate schools require an employment history for their application forms?  Additionally, is it likely that they verify said history via one's social security number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T13:47:39.153" LastActivityDate="2020-11-11T21:24:36.650" Title="Employment history and graduate admission" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14878" CreationDate="2013-12-18T03:45:26.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk with your advisor about this. Depending on your relationship with your advisor, you may still be able to get a decent letter. Use the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Decent letter &gt; No letter &gt; Bad letter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor cannot write you a decent letter you will have to find someone else who is. Do note that not having a letter from your advisor will be a huge red flag; you will have to come to any interview with a ready explanation as to why your advisor did not feel comfortable recommending you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T03:45:26.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14877" CreationDate="2013-12-18T04:28:10.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the codes available in papers are provided as materials for several purposes, including&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help reviewers and journal's board to efficiently evaluate the work and identify its technical merit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enable readers to better grasp the algorithm/method proposed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enable researchers to utilize the code in their future research to avoid duplication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help (novice) researchers to play with the code for educational benefits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide opportunity to peers to further improve the proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may contact the author(s) if the want to use the code for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercializing the algorithm/method &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the code for activities that generates money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Register patent using available contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my institute, I see lots supervisor ask their master students to read recent papers and identify a small research problem to alleviate during their project work. Students either use the given code or contact the authors for code, which authors usually provide the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think you don't need to explicitly state the code copyright in the paper. But, if you are really interested to do that, you can have a footnote in the first page allowing readers to utilize the code in full, if the EiC does not mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T04:28:10.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14883" CreationDate="2013-12-18T06:54:46.457" Score="26" ViewCount="1220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before submitting a manuscript to a journal, it is fairly common at least in my field (psychology) to circulate the manuscript in a limited way to a small number of people who are experts in the area and/or who would be willing and able to provide useful comments, for the purpose of soliciting their feedback and suggestions for improving the manuscript before submitting it for formal peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seems that this could lead to a tricky situation if the editor of the journal ends up asking some of those same people who provided feedback to serve as reviewers for the paper, since they will have already read the paper and in a sense &quot;reviewed&quot; it one time already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have two questions about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the perspective of a person who has been asked by the authors to provide comments, and then later asked by a journal editor to review that same paper for publication: what is your policy, or your perception of the common policy, for what do to here? Do you decline to review the paper because you've already seen it? Do you agree to review the paper, but perhaps provide many of the same comments verbatim as before (at least for the parts of the paper that were not changed), and perhaps let the editor know that you've read it before? Or do you see your prior reading of the paper as totally irrelevant and just approach the review fresh and as normal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the strategic perspective of the authors of the paper, is it better to ask for comments from people who you know are likely to be asked later to review the paper? Or is it better to avoid sending the paper to these people, and instead send it to people who are not as likely to be asked to review the paper but could still provide useful feedback?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3906" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T08:21:02.363" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T08:32:53.303" Title="Soliciting pre-submission manuscript comments from people who could later be peer reviewers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2013-12-18T08:16:12.683" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects to this question: what should happen and what actually happens. Soliciting comments on a manuscript is of course perfectly fine and a useful endeavour. As you state problems may arise if persons commenting on the manuscript is asked to review it. Such a person should simply decline to review the paper when requested. It is thus possible that such a person reviews the paper anyway but then the problem is between the reviewer and the editor, that is beyond your reach. What you can do to simplify for an editor is to list persons who have commented on the manuscript. It will then be up to the editor to decide what becomes a breach of objectivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your topic is narrow enough that the number of possible reviewers are limited, you need to consider if you &quot;use up&quot; potential reviewers in the process. Again, I think being open about who has commented on the paper in your correspondence should allow the editor to find good reviewers. Just because you avoid soliciting someone's opinion does not mean the editor will ask that person for a review so assessing such effects is difficult and generalized answers of little use. Knowing the field and potential problems is the only way to assess pros and cons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T08:16:12.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2013-12-18T08:23:45.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would this necessarily be a concern? If they reviewed your work positively in the past, it's only logical for them to keep that evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should be more worried about is the fact that those individuals who you would probably go to to get a presubmission evaluation might have a bias towards you based on their (presumably somewhat close) relationship to you, which could make it harder to give  objective advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10093" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T21:39:35.250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T21:39:35.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2013-12-18T08:25:09.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, if there are no conflicts of interest (same university or funding), the referee should inform the editor that is already in contact with the author and let him choose.&#xA;In any case, consider that many journals require authors to indicate qualified referees and the scientific community is a forum for discussion.&#xA;In conclusion, be transparent, fair and honest, but do not make choices instead of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T09:33:37.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T09:33:37.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-18T10:00:18.917" Score="6" ViewCount="1724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reporting on an engineering project that is in its early phases. Therefore, there are no results, but there is already a quite detailed plan on how the problems in the project can be conquered. Now I was asked to present the project at a conference. I want to present the current state, but I'm not sure how to structure a conclusion as there is no result, and I can't evaulate, if the planned methods will be successful. Still I believe presenting the intended methods will bring value to the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you conclude a project presentation that doesn't have any results but already has a quite concrete and detailed plan? What content could I provide? Or can one just not provide a conclusion in a paper? That seems a bit unbalanced...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T03:52:10.410" Title="Paper on project without any result - how to conclude" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-12-18T10:24:53.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What goes into the &lt;strong&gt;conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; section in a paper is a bit field-specific. I am doing research in computer science (services / software engineering), and oftentimes, the conclusions are basically the place where you summarize the main points of your paper. It is not &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; in my field that the conclusions contain hard data / findings. If the paper is of more positional nature (a roadmap paper, a &quot;Towards ...&quot; paper, etc.), the conclusions will be more of an outlook on the challenges ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T10:24:53.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-12-18T11:58:36.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;strong&gt;conclusion of a paper&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;conclusion of a project&lt;/strong&gt; are two different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, the conclusion of a paper is the summary of the paper while the conclusion of a project is the end results of the project. Your paper has the current state and the future plan of the project. These can be the conclusion of the paper. They are not necessarily the conclusion of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel comfortable with having &quot;Conclusion&quot; section in your paper without stating the true conclusion of the project, my suggestion is to write a &quot;&quot;Summary&quot; or &quot;Future Outlook&quot; section at the end of the paper. This is a personal taste, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many papers without &quot;Conclusion&quot; section either by authors' choice or the final conclusive results for the problem/conjecture were not obtained yet at the time the paper was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T03:52:10.410" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T03:52:10.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13029" CreationDate="2013-12-18T12:59:46.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key when soliciting recommendation letters is to find persons who can provide insights into your credentials applicable for the job you are looking for. From this perspective the view you shared that letters &quot;should be written by academics in the same field who knows the applicant's works&quot; is only a special case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying for a high level administrative job you need to find people at as high a level as possible. These should know your background, experience etc. but also be aware of the demands of the job for which you apply (this can be seen either in general or specific terms). There is thus no limit to whom you ask for letters but they will definitely not be as limited as for a regular academic position. Clearly anyone who has seen your capability to lead and administrate, for example, large projects, a department or research group will be appropriate. I can also add that you will most likely mostly look for letters from people in positions at similar or higher level than you (within academia, not necessarily so if you ask for letters from other professionals). But, the key is still to solicit support for the key aspects of the job to which you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T11:31:41.403" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T11:31:41.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14879" CreationDate="2013-12-18T13:18:02.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do some graduate schools want to have employment history on&#xA;  graduate school application forms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're not coming directly from undergrad, they want to know what work you've been doing.  In some cases, it may be entirely irrelevant, but nonetheless, they ask.  While references are typically obtained from academic institutions, if you've been in industry for a while, one of your recommendations may come from your employer...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are coming directly from undergrad, you may still have been employed during school or have completed some number of internships.  Again, while they may not be relevant, there's no reason not to ask, especially if they can positively affect your application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either way, employment, depending on what you did, could demonstrate responsibility, leadership, potentially research ability, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it likely that they verify it with SSN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This almost seems like you're trying to determine if they can catch you in a lie--they do not need a SSN to do that.  Don't fabricate anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T13:18:02.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-12-18T15:14:45.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper is about an analysis that has been performed to address some challenges and fulfill some objectives. The result of the analysis is a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plan should fulfill the objectives, it should be fault tolerant, it should consider the possible risks that may materialize during the project or it should do whatever it should do and it should be like whatever it should be (I don't know the specific details about the objectives and the analysis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the conclusion should be that the plan fulfills the objectives that were set for the design of such a plan. If it doesn't then you should try to do the plan again, because that would mean it's wrong. I guess it's right, that's the main conclusion and that's the reason to publish a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after the project you find out it was wrong, then that could be a good reason to write another paper. With lessons learned, mistakes, etc. so that nobody else makes the same mistakes (we should make some progress in the state of the art of mistakes as well ;-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: Future lines are not exactly conclusions, a conclusion is something that ends. Every end implies a new beginning, and thus future lines (imminent beginnings) are included in this section, but let me note they are two different things (and opposite to a great extent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T15:14:45.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:34:36.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will say the highest probability course of action, but nobody has a guaranteed entrance into a top 10 program. &#xA;1. Practice the GRE extensively. If you score 800 in math that will help. Verbal score is not a hindrance if everything else is right, but if you score above 95% in verbal that will show.&#xA;2. Get in touch with professors in the top 10 programs, especially some that might have connections to you either through your schools, country, or area of interest. Start an intelligent conversation with them. Show them how interested you are in working with them. For this you will have to do thorough research on their work, but it is the best way of showing how badly you want to work with them.&#xA;3. Get excellent grades and develop relationships with your current professors to obtain the best letters of reference possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, people tend to focus on the quantitative and the impartial, a typical economist bias, but develop personal relationships can pay off in putting you ahead of the curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:34:36.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14878" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:39:10.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a reference letter from your supervisor. Inspite of the fact that the letter may not be that great, it plays an important role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But apart from that OK letter, you can also get a very good letter from the people who were satisfied with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end you will have two letters with you to show and will give a fair opinion about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:39:10.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1369" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:44:41.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with dchandler. The journals have to require it and publicize it on their websites. There is no other way. There is another example from S. D. Levitt of Freakonomics fame in which a paper had erroneous conclusions that were demonstrated by trying to replicate the results. This is a serious issue that needs attention. Scientific rigor goes as far as the academic rigor, but academics have regrettably, large incentives to &quot;make mistakes&quot; in their coding to obtain conclusions beneficial to their research programme. There hardly is a more pressing issue in academic research than making the research process public. Technically it is a breeze to do, what is required is the political will for the journals to implement it. Hopefully, the issue can be raised in future annual meetings of the corresponding associations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:44:41.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14879" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:46:38.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that something will be verified but still its best for you not to write anything which is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And your employment history tells a lot about you, here is a list of some points apart from those mentioned before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shows that you have the capability to handle industry environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If its a really good company then it shows your excellence because you got through a very difficult interview process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shows your communication skills and people management skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shows your ability in analytic tools also.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it will be good if you mention all your employment history, be it in a education institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:46:38.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:54:47.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Converting to PhD should not be dependent on an idea, I think.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do PhD then go for it. If one idea does not work other will. That's what research is all about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from taking up that idea further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor does not have enough experience in that field that&#xA;means you are entering at your own risk. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a good 2-3 months detailed literature survey to understand it better and then take a call.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:54:47.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14877" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:59:23.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of codes are free if you use it for research purpose, you just&#xA;  need to include right citations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a code is commercial or GPL license then you need permission, for&#xA;  that you can contact the author directly and discuss the same&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want your code to be freely available just make it open source&#xA;  licensed that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each country has different rules for patents and stuff, so be careful where the code is available etc. So discussion with author is the best thing to do. The license is usually specified on the website where you get the code from and also in the .cpp or .h files header.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9136" LastEditorUserId="9136" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T13:46:37.417" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T13:46:37.417" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-12-18T17:09:31.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could include information about metrics for success, what a solution might look like, future directions, etc. And then the conclusions for the paper would summarize what you presented, rather than what you're going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T17:09:31.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1915" CreationDate="2013-12-18T17:12:21.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your GRE scores would be very important, in this case. For a writing sample, a term paper in linguistics would be better than your MA thesis, given its length. Your writing sample should show your linguistics knowledge, if you're applying to linguistics programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T17:12:21.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14928" CreationDate="2013-12-18T17:12:44.323" Score="4" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might seems like a silly question, but I don't understand why grad schools ask for GRE score on the application form. In almost all instances, they also require official score to be sent to them before they even start reading application anyway. So is there a reason why they ask for self-reporting of those score?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is there any harm in not putting the score into the application? As in let's say the GRE being taken too late, and the score is not known at the time of application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(talking about both revised general and subject score)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10101" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T09:47:59.903" Title="Why ask for GRE score on the form?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14900" CreationDate="2013-12-18T17:51:58.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the GRE scores go the the university admissions department, not to the department in which you are enrolling for graduate study. The graduate adviser will read your application and determine whether or not to accept you (your GRE score is one of the metrics that he/she will use). If you are accepted by the department, then the University orders all the official paperwork for verification. If you have the scores, i would put them on the application.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10102" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T17:51:58.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14904" CreationDate="2013-12-18T19:11:07.240" Score="4" ViewCount="3839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student of comparative politics currently considering what specific topic I want for my Master's Thesis. On the basis of the choice, the university will allocate an appropriate professor - given that they understand the choice of course. However, the boundaries for topics are mainly limited by the field and the length; 80-100 pages. As such, I am unsure how wide or narrow I should aim to be with the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a general idea for the topic, and a fairly good understanding of the field, but the length is an abstract I find hard to deal with. Basically, how much should I limit myself in the scope and use of selected theory and empirical content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this varies between universities and fields, but some general guidelines on determining how to go about determining what can reasonably be achieved with a year of writing for a Master's Thesis would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10103" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T06:37:13.223" Title="Determining the scope of a Master's Thesis" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-12-18T19:39:02.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While research is inherently risky, there are two red flags:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said that he thinks that idea is feasible &lt;strong&gt;but doesn't know what would be the approach&lt;/strong&gt;, and not sure whether the results would be positive in terms of PhD because &lt;strong&gt;there several parallel domains&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this tells me is that your advisor does not have the specialization to attack this particular idea that you are proposing; moreover, there are other areas of research that may be examining the problem that you are discussing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of potential issues that come across from this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't have an advisor who's familiar with the area, so you have to spend more time (either doing your own related work, or finding other faculty/collaborators) to discover the appropriate methods. Instead of having your advisor go, &quot;Use this equipment and this research method&quot;, now you have to possibly discover what the method is and then acquire equipment for it. You will make mistakes numerous times because no one is there to help you avoid common mistakes. This makes your results take longer and uses more money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are parallel domains, then there is a risk that the results that you and your advisor find from the work (that most likely took a long time because people are unfamiliar with the method) are possibly not as significant or as important as they first seem because this other area's already identified them first. Others familiar with the area might ask, &quot;Why didn't you look at XYZ and ABC first?&quot; and reject the paper. As a result, it will take additionally more time to familiarize yourself with these parallel domains in order to identify that what you're doing is important, relevant, and novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think personally that (1) is a much greater risk than (2). Most people never come into an area with knowledge of what's there, so surveying related work, talking to people, and learning about the research area is usually work that has to be done anyway, but (1) can be very deadly. (1) and (2) in combination can be very dangerous, since it might indicate that your advisor simply doesn't have a lot of interest in Method (1) and in Result (2) - which means that your project might end up with less priority, less input, and less money. And all of that results in less papers and less impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less papers, less impact means less opportunity to do important, meaningful work (and fewer job opportunities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it does depend partly on what your personal goals are. If you do want to pursue this path for the sake of expanding your knowledge and the knowledge of the world at large, then one possibility would be to switch advisors or to find out who's doing this work in parallel domains and collaborate closely with one of these other researchers so you can get technical knowledge from those people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T19:39:02.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14902" CreationDate="2013-12-18T20:26:37.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this applies to all subject domains, but in computer science, most of the &lt;strong&gt;Master's Theses&lt;/strong&gt; that I have seen were quite broad.  They gave an overview of the subject and a more detailed analysis of whatever subtopic the author chose to cover.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of them had little empirical content.  From what I can tell, the goal is to analyze a few works related to one's topic and formulate several salient questions that could be addressed in the future.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reiterate, a master's thesis differs from a PhD dissertation in that the goal is not to provide novel content, but to show that one has a good understanding of the material, is comfortable with analyzing current or previous research, and that one has the ability to come up with new, exciting ideas to build upon said research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine what is reasonable, you should consult with an advisor, I do not think that you can answer this question without already having some sort of topic in mind.  On that note, if possible, I think that providing insights is far more important than reviewing topics that most people in the field are already familiar with.  So, if you have enough content, you could easily cut some of the overview and concentrate more on your ideas, which if good, would look more impressive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to &quot;selected theory&quot; vs &quot;empirical content,&quot; I think that's entirely up to you.  Whatever serves your thesis better is what I would incorporate into it.  This probably seems like a very hand-wavy answer, but it really does depend on exactly what questions/issues that you're attempting to address.  I may be wrong, but I doubt that there's any sort of formula that dictates how much of either you should use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T20:26:37.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5724" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:47:57.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise to develop a relationship via email with professors at your target schools. Dig in and learn about their research and show how interested you are in working with them. Also target assistant and associate professors at those schools as they are more likely to be in the admissions committee paying their dues. They might be the difference if everything else is good.&#xA;I know Penn accepts some students from schools I had never heard at all. They try to diversify, just the odds might be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:47:57.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:50:15.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely. Economists are routinely hired at finance departments, as well as public policy, public health, and even marketing departments. Sometimes they have appointments across different departments including statistics. For instance Francis X. Diebold has appointments in the Department of Economics at Penn, as well as the Finance Department and Statistics Department at Wharton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:50:15.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6092" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:55:44.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really. It is assumed that if you are a good student you would be able to get good reference letters from your masters courses. It would have to be from your undergraduate thesis advisor or some sort of exceptional activity you did during undergrad, not just a regular class with a good grade, if at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:55:44.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:58:05.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed. Economics Letters is a journal where people read summaries of papers and get a good idea of the literature coming out in different specialties of economics, before moving on to reading full technical papers in other journals. So yes, it is quite understandable to submit a summarized watered-down version of a paper to Economics Letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:58:05.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:00:43.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible but very rare. Professors think, if you want to work with us in your dissertation why could you possibly want to go abroad? Some people do internships abroad during the summer while they are studying. Others begin to work with a professor who then moves to a university abroad and the student follows the professor to the new school. That usually implies that the student ends up graduating from the second school and it is a major move. &#xA;Finally, some students get a scholarship which sustains them for a year or two to study with a researcher at a top school. At Penn some professors received European students on a regular basis for a year or two, to work on papers together and the students then went back and graduated from their school having done their paper and network at Penn. But if you wanted to go from there to Princeton or MIT, good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:00:43.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8026" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:26:51.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could enter a mathematical finance masters or a financial engineering masters. There are also math masters designed for non-math majors, but I would find it hard to enter a straight math masters without a math major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:26:51.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3272" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:29:01.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible. Many PhD programs don't require a masters, just an undergrad, so it is definitely possible, but as mentioned, why would you want to do that? Is it in complementary subjects that you plan to you later on? It would be awfully hard to do well in both programs. They are much more demanding than undergrad. I would suggest first doing the masters and then moving to the PhD, but it is your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:29:01.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12989" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:33:54.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your dream is to do a PhD in math then go for it by all means, but take into account that you are not putting yourself in the best situation. Could you delay your entry into the PhD program to pay half of the debt with your current good-paying job? You could delay and apply to other programs as well to see if you get more funding. I mean by all means pursue your dreams, but please take into account the financials of it. Also, it might not be your dream after all, once you have spent a few years in the program. The reality might be different than the dream, and for that reason I would suggest working a couple more years, paying off the loan and then entering with a better situation the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should be able to pay the loan after the PhD straight after graduating, just as if it was part of your mortgage, but you'll have to make some sacrifices, and I assume there is the possibility of you getting married, having more responsibilities but also possibly another source of income. Please take this into account when making your final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:33:54.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9611" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:36:46.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the US, what you are requesting is highly unlikely. There is no peer-review that is institutionalized enough to keep control of research quality and avoid people taking advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:36:46.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:40:37.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should try to fight it diplomatically but legally with the school. It doesn't seem fair or legal. It would be nearly impossible to continue in another institution unless you have relationships and also the reputation of the former school is considerably higher, which you wouldn't want to do anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends if really the time you were away was strictly due to sickness. If you took several years more afterwards it is unlikely for you to win. Doctoral programs routinely turn away people who started, left, went to the real world, didn't like it, and want to return. They believe that somewhat freshness of knowledge and being current in the topics is important. Also they have some strange ideas about academic virginity that you want to take into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:40:37.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2013-12-18T23:03:02.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you are talking more about economics in your question, but in fields closer to engineering, doing internships at company research labs seems almost mandatory for excellent PhD students. Visiting other universities is less common, but certainly not unheard of. As such, I would not agree with the general tone of most answers here. I would say, &lt;strong&gt;for engineering&lt;/strong&gt;, spending significant time outside of &quot;your&quot; lab is both common and beneficial to your further career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even know of (some) formal exchange programmes that are established to send students abroad. For instance, in Singapore, programmes exist for both incoming and outgoing visiting PhD students. These exchanges can last between 3 months and 2 years, as far as I know, and are supported by government grants. The government of Austria (my country of residence) also has multiple funding programmes running that scholars in various career stages can apply to for funding research visits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T23:03:02.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-12-19T00:16:34.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just do what your advisors told you. They are going to grade you anyway and give you letters of recommendation. Why would you want to do something different after already asking for what you are proposing? Would you want to annoy them just to get more material in your dissertation. Do you think it actually advances your career opportunities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T00:16:34.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="792" CreationDate="2013-12-19T00:18:36.020" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main issue is that a lot of entrepreneural mindset is eliminated from faculty, but if the faculty has the right mindset there is no limitation to a venture, especially if the faculty has tenure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10098" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T00:18:36.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-12-19T00:44:56.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit late adding this, but another reasonable option is: let the market decide for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply for postdocs this year, based on the research you have already finished.  If you get offered something good, then write up your current results and defend.  If you don't, then spend another year in grad school improving your research, and hopefully you'll be in a better position to reapply then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you'll want to have your advisor on board with this plan, and make sure you have funding available for the extra year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T00:44:56.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9773" CreationDate="2013-12-19T02:05:19.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the market decide. If your results are ready when the job market comes along then your adviser can feature them prominently in his/her letter, whether or not it's a part of your thesis. You can complete the high quality work as a post-doc as well. If your adviser can see that your chapter-x has potential then so can the professors in schools trying to hire you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying in school a year longer only makes sense if it will significantly impact how you are valued by the market and if it enables you to significantly improve your portfolio of working papers. Your committee member's comment that &quot;original work can be done in post-doc..&quot; makes me think that he/she was being euphemistic and was perhaps worried that you maybe be trying to delay facing some harsh job market truths in the guise of doing &quot;original&quot; &quot;chapter-x&quot; stuff .. if everything goes fine &quot;which is never the case in research&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of a thesis is to get a job to enable you to contribute in research. If your current thesis gets you a job then move on and don't look back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T02:05:19.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T06:53:36.873" Score="25" ViewCount="3229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native speaker. However, I'm doing my PhD in an English country and I read Academic papers which are in English. How can I improve my English from those papers? Any ideas? Although sometimes those papers are not written by native English speakers and may still have problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10112" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T20:08:36.857" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T16:47:50.583" Title="How to improve my English from Academic papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2013-12-19T07:09:43.753" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The old adage is: &quot;the language of science is bad English&quot; (and at least in computer science it is 100% true). That being said, I have known PhD students who have failed mainly because of their lacking English language skills – they had ideas, but they could not communicate them to anybody, and they could not write them down in a paper for the life of them. You need decent English to write any paper, and you need pretty good English to write papers at top venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask how to improve your language skills &lt;strong&gt;from reading papers&lt;/strong&gt;. I would say, you can't do that effectively at all. Clearly, reading anything written in English will help you to some extent, but if you feel like you need to improve your English, taking &lt;strong&gt;one or more (good) courses in technical English&lt;/strong&gt; will help you more than reading through a few dozen papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is one language-related skill that reading papers for is really useful – if you are setting out to write the first or one of your first papers of your own, nothing beats analyzing existing papers (at the same conference, in the same journal) to find out how papers in these venues are usually structured. This gets you started much faster than drafting something only for your advisor to tear it apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T09:37:40.317" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T09:37:40.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T07:39:23.777" Score="5" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;In statement of purpose for applying to a PhD program, is it good to mention about learning from some professor's lecture notes and books (not papers, because don't get to read them yet), and finding them helpful? &#xA;Will it make the statement more personal and therefore good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it better not to say so, and rather to keep the essay short?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T08:41:16.597" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:19:03.567" Title="In statement of purpose, good to mention about learning from some professor's lecture notes and books?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T08:49:07.380" Score="10" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently hired as a research track scientist not funded directly by the university. As part of my contract agreement, I am required to secure my own funding in order to remain hired. However, government funding has dried up &lt;em&gt;drastically&lt;/em&gt; over the last few years, and my best and just about only shot is to seek private sponsorships. A brief conversation with the department chair has confirmed that the department doesn't really care too much about the source of funding as much as whether I can get sufficient funding or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all of this, does anyone have any suggestions for a list of private individuals or organizations willing to fund basic research in theoretical physics without any &lt;em&gt;immediate&lt;/em&gt; practical applications? How should I go about contacting such private sponsors, and what is the proper protocol for asking them for money? It appears most funders in the private sector care mostly about getting short term commercial monetary returns from what they prefer to call an &quot;investment&quot; instead of funding. How can I encourage them to think about longer term benefits which might take as many as a few generations to reap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, sarcastic remarks along the lines of Benjamin Franklin's &quot;What's the use of a newborn baby?&quot; or Michael Faraday's &quot;One day you may tax it.&quot; go on very badly to people in the private sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10113" LastActivityDate="2017-09-08T11:27:01.300" Title="Finding and requesting research funds from private sponsors for basic research with low short term marketability value" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14900" CreationDate="2013-12-19T09:47:59.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's to make the application form easier to review. That way, all the fields on the application form can be printed in one handy package, which could then be sent to a program chair for easy review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one in the admissions office wants to have to gather and collate transcripts, GRE reports, and other application information into one printout (or file) just to be able to send the package somewhere for review. Moreover, when reviewing, no one wants to shuffle through a bunch of papers just to find the information they are looking for. This way, GRE scores are always right there on the left-hand side, in Box 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word, it's for the sake of convenience. It's much easier on everyone at the university if you simply type your GRE scores into an application form where you are already typing so much other pertinent information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why you have to submit the official results, too, that's simply to verify the scores you self-reported. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T09:47:59.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2013-12-19T10:41:33.277" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I understand that there's a big difference between scientific and day-to-day language, I actually think you need both to succeed in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you do need to excel in research (e.g. publish papers, communicate ideas), only the &quot;top level&quot; will be done in pure scientific and formal language: writing papers and scientific presentations. A lot comes from communicating your ideas, either in formal and informal settings. The &quot;level&quot; of English varies from setting to setting: at some point, you would not want to host a prominent researcher in your country, and take him to lunch only to realize you do not know how to translate the menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think you need to improve your English overall, and the best way to do it is to expose yourself to the language as much as you find comfortable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you usually &lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt; (non-scientific literature), &lt;strong&gt;switch&lt;/strong&gt; from your native language &lt;strong&gt;to English&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when watching &lt;strong&gt;movies/TV shows&lt;/strong&gt;, don't go for the dubbed versions: go for the &lt;strong&gt;original language&lt;/strong&gt;, first with the subtitles in your language, then in English, and then no subtitles at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try and find yourself in &lt;strong&gt;social situations where English is the main spoken language&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Listen&lt;/strong&gt; to people and &lt;strong&gt;talk&lt;/strong&gt; to them. I saw a big change in a lot of people in just a few months from this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a &lt;strong&gt;course&lt;/strong&gt;, possibly in technical English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specific terminology and style of writing will come in time, with immersion in your field, but it is okay to &lt;strong&gt;use a dictionary&lt;/strong&gt; for rare terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;in addition to just using a dictionary&lt;/em&gt; (translations are not always stellar), &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesaurus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;use Thesaurus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to find synonyms and antonyms. It is also useful when you know the correct word, but you feel your writing is too repetitive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have some kind of &lt;strong&gt;spell checker&lt;/strong&gt; activated when you type (not only your papers, but also your posts, chats and e-mails), use it whenever it tells you that you misspelled the word, and &lt;strong&gt;try to remember your mistakes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start using an &lt;strong&gt;English-English dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;, as often as you can when you come across an unknown word. For me, just typing &lt;em&gt;&quot;define:whatever&quot;&lt;/em&gt; in Google works just fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="64096" LastEditDate="2017-04-11T11:42:07.347" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T11:42:07.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T12:27:41.977" Score="2" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Longer monographs should have an odd number of chapters [the&#xA;  Internet,1700-xxxx].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this rule also apply for papers? I've got a paper with four chapters and I'm wondering if I should make it five. I could split up the outlook &amp;amp; conclusion part, but that would result in two really short sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the style police suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastEditorUserId="8549" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T14:44:04.083" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T18:40:38.087" Title="Balanced number of sections in paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14930" CreationDate="2013-12-19T12:56:54.003" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that any style guide or policy (besides maybe some journal about aesthetics in writing) will force you to an odd or even number of sections or chapters. A scientific text should get the number of chapters it needs and not a number that fits aesthetic principles–basically you write it to tell the scientific community about your findings and not to please them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you manage to write a scientific paper in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haiku&lt;/a&gt; form, this will be nice but it may also make some referee think you don't take your research serious enough. More or less the same holds for odd or even chapters. If you force the text to fit a certain number of chapters by dividing a chapter into two pieces, the reviewers might also consider &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; bad style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastEditorUserId="10039" LastEditDate="2019-09-24T18:40:38.087" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T18:40:38.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2013-12-19T13:48:05.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the whole, indication of awareness, of taking initiative, is a very strong positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if one attempts to do this artificially, to &quot;create an impression&quot;, there is risk of &quot;looking silly&quot;, to say the least. For example, do not try to mass-produce in an afternoon &quot;awareness of Prof. X's notes and papers&quot; for Prof. Xs at a dozen+ different schools to which you're applying. Such things tend to result in extreme superficiality, and inevitably some silly errors, such as referring to Prof. Y at University Z while purportedly addressing the admissions committee at Univ. W about Prof. X. Good for a laugh at your expense, sure, but, ... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T13:48:05.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2013-12-19T14:37:36.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other good observations... : the idiosyncrasies of English are not easily codified in &quot;rules&quot;, so considerable familiarity with &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; good examples of standard use, to allow faithful &lt;em&gt;mimicry&lt;/em&gt;, (in addition to more formal study and hearing-experience) is surely helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, rather than &quot;composing&quot; in a vacuum (worst of all translating into English...), it is very convenient to be able to &lt;em&gt;recall&lt;/em&gt; already-vetted phrases and wording-choices and simply re-use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially true with regard to &quot;articles&quot; &quot;a&quot;, &quot;an&quot;, &quot;the&quot;, or their absence, and related seemingly-innocent modifiers. Also, verb tenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus: imitation from good models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T14:37:36.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2013-12-19T14:47:03.377" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not want to convey the message, &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am applying to your school because I think Professor X is great.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Everybody knows Professor X is great.  That's why they hired her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, why should they want &lt;strong&gt;you?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A message you do want to convey is, &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am applying to your school because my research goals are well-aligned with existing interests in the department.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  If you can incorporate Professor X's notes and books into that story, great.  Otherwise, leave them out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T17:19:03.567" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:19:03.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T16:40:18.333" Score="6" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of a research program students (like me) may be lazy or find things hard and do things that make their supervisors get angry such as not completing specific job in the right time. They may be strongly criticized by their supervisors and their supervisors may get an idea that these students are not good enough. How can students change this idea that is in the head of their supervisors? What should they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10112" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:13:58.460" Title="How to change the idea that supervsiors got about you?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14930" CreationDate="2013-12-19T16:43:45.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's something of a story that &quot;having an odd number of chapters in your thesis&quot; will make it more likely to get past the committee, or something like that. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.clack/phd.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this personal website about theses&lt;/a&gt;, the author states that &quot;Chapter headings - use 7 or 9! An odd number of (total) chapters gives a balanced appearance to the work (CC has a reference to back this up).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I confess that I heard this as well when I was writing. I didn't end up structuring my thesis as a result of that advice but I heard it too. In the end, there's a 50% chance that your paper will have an odd number of chapters after you structure it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I cannot find any other substantive evidence (other than the UCL link above) about the number of chapters in a thesis I must conclude that, at best, the effect of the number of chapters on the quality of a thesis is unknown; ostensibly, the odd or evenness of chapters having no effect would probably apply to scientific papers and scientific journal articles as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T16:43:45.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14935" CreationDate="2013-12-19T16:54:32.333" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same way you would change anyone's perception of you for any other reason: Prove them wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you started out lazy, then kick yourself into high gear: Get tasks done ahead of time; predict future work, and get it done before it's asked for. Turn out quality work at a high pace. This sounds hard &lt;strong&gt;because it is&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately, you may have burned good-will at this point, and you need to rebuild it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you found things hard, or found that the supervisors expectations of velocity were unreasonable, discuss it with your supervisor. Discuss what background she may not know you have missed, discuss how you spent your time, and why things didn't get done fast enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key here is the relationship. Your relationship sounds like it's on rocky ground, and if you're in it for another 3-5 &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt;, then don't underestimate how much effort you're going to need to making sure that relationship doesn't break down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T16:54:32.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14935" CreationDate="2013-12-19T17:13:58.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;... and, if your supervisor is an experienced, mature person, while they may have been irritated by sub-par &quot;performance&quot;, such things should not completely surprise them. People in grad school are in a transition time in life, not only regarding the stresses of grad school, etc., and have not yet &quot;arrived&quot; themselves at the mature professional state they will (hopefully) reach. In particular, helping people &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; to that state is part of a supervisor's job with grad students (and probably any senior person in any professional situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while it's not good to have under-performed to the extent of setting-off your supervisor, and not a &quot;good start&quot;, there should be much room for &quot;forgiveness&quot;, if you can take a lesson from such a scenario, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:13:58.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9382" CreationDate="2013-12-19T19:56:58.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get an ORCID ID - &lt;a href=&quot;https://orcid.org/register&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://orcid.org/register&lt;/a&gt;.  This is an international, non-profit initiative to &quot;provide a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10133" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T19:56:58.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14930" CreationDate="2013-12-19T20:40:47.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You write as many chapters as you need in order to get your message across. this applies to all types of writing, papers, reports or theses. I am sure some people might avoid 13 chapters or whatever number they feel unsettled about, but that will not have anything to do with scientific writing. Likewise there is nothing that says any form of scientific writing needs a certain number of chapters. That said, the Introduction-Methods-Results-and-Discussion (IMRaD) format, which forms the basis for most scientific papers, leads to four main chapters and in addition an abstract and a Conclusions chapter. Again, this is because it is a standard logical form not a &quot;magic&quot; number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, many other typographical rules that influence the formatting of pages and chapters. For example, a chapter should start on an odd page number to follow traditional rules. There are thus many aspects of typesetting that influences the format of printed text but not the number of chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T20:40:47.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T21:20:10.843" Score="6" ViewCount="1341" Body="&lt;p&gt;When submitting a writing sample for a graduate school application, what exactly are review boards looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask, because when looking at my own writing I find it is difficult to judge beyond the grade I was given and when I can judge, there are different strengths and weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, writing wise (clarity, concision, etc.), my strongest writing sample is on a topic that was written for a course in my field (Art History) but is still relatively tangential to the field itself (about visuality rather than Art History per se). That being said, topic wise, I have a paper that was written on the same topic as my fourth years honours thesis (still a work in progress) that speaks to the areas that I want to continue studying. It is still a good piece of work that received an A grade, but I personally feel that the writing and organization is weaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is better to send as a writing sample? The more on topic, but weaker piece, or the stronger tangentially-related piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10137" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T04:34:01.887" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:38:53.230" Title="Writing Sample for Graduate School" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T22:46:56.223" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the M.Eng students in Electrical Engineering have apprenticeship? Do the students get money for their apprentice training? &amp;amp; how much? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9060" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T23:15:14.143" Title="is there apprentice training in master of engineering?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14944" CreationDate="2013-12-19T23:15:14.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really aren't &quot;apprenticeships&quot; associated with most traditional college degree programs. On the other hand, many engineering programs, including electrical engineering, do have what are usually known as &lt;em&gt;internship&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;co-op&lt;/em&gt; (short for &quot;cooperative learning&quot;) programs available. These programs are inherently designed to allow students to work in engineering-related companies during their degree program. The conditions that apply to each program are school-specific and even department-specific, so be sure to check with the individual departments you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T23:15:14.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14959" CreationDate="2013-12-19T23:32:34.507" Score="6" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, alongside my day job (high school teacher), I have been taking up casual short-term research assistant jobs - these are not only paid, but also include me being a co-author of the paper(s) that result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my CV, I would like to have all this information, what would be an effective means to include all achievements of these projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping for specific examples if people have done this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T23:52:19.537" Title="How to effectively explain casual research assistance projects on CV" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14946" CreationDate="2013-12-20T09:52:08.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For HR specialists reading your CV there will be important not just employment history, but also another perspectives of your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a project history you have done or participated, then they need to know short one simple sentence of project description and your role on the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publications you have made or co-author. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is significant enough, put this to the Overview, what should be on the front page of your CV. Overview generally should contain teasers for the rest of CV. How many projects, how many publications, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take an example of different perspectives for example from Linked-in portal, which are: Overview, Employment history, Project history, Personal initiatives, language skills, Certifications, Courses, Skills, Education, Recommendations, Publications, Organization membership, Prizes, Academical Results, Patents, etc. Order is up to your priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: So, I can imagine you could have Overview, Education, Project history, Academical results and Publications in top order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6534" LastEditorUserId="6534" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T09:58:48.083" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T09:58:48.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-20T10:01:19.940" Score="3" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did research on drug delivery for my masters degree and it has been published. But in the end I knew that I had no interest in it at all. Actually my interest was computational drug design, which I couldn't find a professor specialized in that in my school. Now that I want to apply for a graduate school, I'd like to work in a computational field. Although I know a lot about it, I have no published experience.&#xA;My question is: Is it a wise decision? I mean, having no published experience would lower my chances of getting admitted in that course, but on the other hand, if I chose drug delivery, I might have not much motives to improve due to the lack of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10145" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T02:00:19.283" Title="Applying for a graduate course not related to my previous research experience" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14949" CreationDate="2013-12-20T11:37:46.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say, go for it! Two reasons:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1) If you stay in academia, you're going to use your creative and imaginative skills a lot. And my experience is that they don't work much if you aren't interested in what you're doing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) You will have an interesting edge over other candidates since you come from a close, but not overlapping area.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It will take determination to enter a new area, but I think you're absolutely on the right track in pursuing what you're passionate about; and yes, you're still in time! Don't give up. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10009" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T02:00:19.283" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T02:00:19.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-20T12:40:54.077" Score="15" ViewCount="3527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a international student in a ivy league school under J1 visa ( i can work only in school). I am now working as a researcher after I got the degree. I did sign the contract that I will work for 2 years with funding. The contract said that I will work mainly for one particular project but I also have work with any other works that the school want too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser has two funding project in his hand. One is a cellphone project and another one is a Darpa project. In the beginning, I worked with a cellphone project. This project is something plan to be commercialized and funding by private investors. There were two people mainly working on this cellphone project, me and my friend. We both have separated funding from different sources to work on this project. After I had finish the project ( 6 months), I was moved to work in the Darpa project, with another team. My friend who I worked with in a cellphone project is still working in the final part and marketing it (also continue to find money from investors). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, my cellphone-project friend's funding were all gone ( he started this work one year before me). His fund is about two years and he cannot find the investors to put more money in his cellphone. Then this is my problem because I am not a main person in both the cellphone and the Darpa project. My adviser want to move my money to support my friend and want me to quit (because no need for my programming skill anymore, programming part is done). He started by telling me that I watched YouTube in the lab. (He did see me once that I listened to the music while I was programming). He told me that no one in the lab watch YouTube, everybody just read paper for relaxing. (All of my friends watch YouTube and Facebook, trust me). Then he continued with I am not eager to improve me code and make it faster. He told me that all PhD, researcher will eager to make it very fast. ( I programmed something is called SIFT and the speed is the best I can do, due to the nature of the algorithm ).. Anyway, 3 months ago he told me the speed is good enough for this work, that's why I didn't improve it. He told me that I have a problem in communication ( I asked him could you give me some examples about the communication problem, then he changed the topics). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am holding J1 visa, If he kicked me out, I have to go back with nothing. I feel this is very unfair. When he asked me to work, it is very nice. However when I completed the work, he want to kick me out and get the money back. I have no idea what to do? What should I do after this? I feel really bad about my adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: my professor is the member of the start-up-company of the cellphone project. but I am not, I am just a reseacher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10149" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T18:13:47.257" Title="My advisor tried to find my faults and kick me out of the research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14951" CreationDate="2013-12-20T16:36:58.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation sounds both contentious and untenable, which are signs that you need to start escalating your concerns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've tried speaking to your supervisor and it didn't go well, or if you aren't comfortable speaking to them, then go to the department head, ombudsperson, or chair; There's always someone (usually multiple someones) to handle conflict between student and supervisor. You're going to need to show the history of the situation, and how it's gone wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down before that meeting, and make your case for yourself: Show the requirements of the program, how you're fulfilling them, the changes your supervisor wants, and why they must not be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited: Actually, I realize now, I'm not entirely clear. Is this your academic supervisor, or your workplace supervisor, or are these two one-and-the-same? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T16:36:58.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2013-12-20T18:47:38.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading good papers from your field would improve to some extend your technical language specifically the style and structure in your field. I recommend you to read a few good books about writing science and manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7651" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T18:47:38.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14946" CreationDate="2013-12-20T19:29:47.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Detail the employer and your role, make clear that your work was part-time or casual. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indicate that you contributed to a number of reports, perhaps even citing the number of reports that you contributed to. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a specific reference to any reports that are appropriate to the job you're applying for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10154" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T19:29:47.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15550" CreationDate="2013-12-20T21:04:35.183" Score="8" ViewCount="3864" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know of any other ACO (algorithms, combinatorics and optimization) graduate programs besides the ones at Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have searched, these two schools were the only ones that offered such a multi-disciplinary program. I like this intersection in CS/MATH. The only other multi-disciplinary programs are scientific computing ones where the focus is in numerical algorithms, differential equations, and parallel programming. Scientific computing would be my second choice type of program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are TONS of scientific computing programs, where aren't there more ACO programs? I think both topics are fascinating, but I just have more fun with ACO types of problems. Ideally, I would enjoy a 70:30 ratio of ACO and Scientific Computing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really want to do an inter-disciplinary program because, in a general computer science program I would most-likely have to do systems (ewwww!) and in a general math program I would have to study analysis and geometry (which is cool, but I would rather focus on ACO!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any other ACO programs besides the ones offered at CMU and GA-Tech?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why are there so many scientific computing programs vs ACO programs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all the help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T01:47:40.963" Title="Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization graduate programs" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14946" CreationDate="2013-12-20T23:52:19.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer your question, you need to first understand &lt;em&gt;who your CV is written for&lt;/em&gt;. If your CV is for you, and you are simply trying to document what you did, then you can simply list each research involvement as something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;January 2014--July 2014&lt;/strong&gt; Research volunteer, Dr. Bigwig's lab. Collected samples from subjects and ran computer simulations. Contributed to 5 publications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you will also be able to list the publications to which you contribute.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are building the CV because you want to actually use it for something (getting a raise, getting another job, going back to school, etc.), then you should seek to formalize your relationship with the lab:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a title? If not, ask for one. Since you say you are being paid, you probably have one already. You should know the title and list it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List the dates of the appointment. Typically they are for a year or a few years, even if you are only being paid for a small fraction of that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you are currently a high school teacher, you may wish to list your research appointments in a different section of your CV than your teaching appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8518" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T23:52:19.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14966" CreationDate="2013-12-21T00:22:54.507" Score="4" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to start planning my bachelor's thesis in computational linguistics, and I'm looking into how I can make the process as smooth as possible. So far, I've found that using some sort of version control system for keeping track of one's changes seems like a good idea. I've also started collecting papers using Zotero for easily exporting to BibLaTeX and keeping notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But those are only tools. What I'm most uncertain about is the actual writing process, especially since my native language isn't English. Is there a collection of common mistakes I could benefit from reading, or other every day tips and tricks? Anything, really!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10157" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-21T19:14:20.077" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T18:02:31.620" Title="What should I read or know before I prepare my bachelor's thesis?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T00:56:54.560" Score="6" ViewCount="3186" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to do this? If I find a research group/researcher working on something I like and I just want to do my thesis there. Is it necessary that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to go there as an exchange student OR&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will have to enroll in their masters program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the only way to do what I am asking about it via an exchange program,but is there any other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10158" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T21:41:03.187" Title="Doing masters thesis in another institute" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T01:02:50.820" Score="6" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a website where a list is maintained and constantly updated for undergrads/graduate students looking for internships/competitions/conferences in whatsoever field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a website will be an invaluable resource!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10158" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T15:17:41.850" Title="List of international internships/student programs" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T01:09:38.893" Score="26" ViewCount="2963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is a stigma attached to holding too many soft-money positions when looking for a tenure-track position in the area of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computer science, postdoc positions were uncommon, but after the Dot-com bust and a general trend toward not hiring tenure-track faculty in the early 2000s, there are now many more postdoc positions in that discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people who hold too many postdocs (or too long of a postdoc) get disadvantaged? Do they acquire a stigma of &quot;This person can't hold a tenure-track job&quot; or &quot;This person bounces around too much&quot; or &quot;This person can't do independent research and relies too much on soft money&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of a handful of faculty members who have been hired after multiple postdocs and visiting faculty positions so it seems that it isn't a permanent roadblock, but it could be a path I might not want to go down just in case it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T04:02:38.183" Title="Is there a stigma in computer science toward too many postdoc positions?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;soft-money&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14961" CreationDate="2013-12-21T02:33:31.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty broad question, but if you are looking for a general guide on how to write there have been a number of books suggested to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1852338024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for Computer Science (Zobel)&lt;/a&gt; This is a decent book on explaining the principles on why and how you should write computer science articles. It's very computer science specific, with a bit more emphasis toward databases and operating systems, but I think it's applicable to most technical fields (of which computational linguistics should fall into).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this one because it's a general guide to writing that outlines the process and the structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Style (Strunk and White)&lt;/a&gt; A commonly-recommended book that a lot of people swear by but I found it a bit too low-level for my liking and actually had a hard time finishing it. A professor described it as &quot;too prescriptive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020137921X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bugs in Writing (Dupre)&lt;/a&gt; This is an okay book as a reference manual for improving your prose, but isn't a good guide for figuring out the writing process. There's good advice in this book (and it's actually rather fun to flip through just to learn about various style points) but can be difficult to use as an actual guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226899152&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Williams)&lt;/a&gt; I've gotten through a few parts of this book and it gives very specific advice on how to proceed on improving your writing, especially explaining specifically how to introduce ideas in paragraphs, how to flow them together to create longer manuscripts, and how to restructure and correct text so the main ideas come through. As I surmised, it is in fact very analytical and detailed and does describe the rationales behind its recommendations. I think this book is a great resource for those who have some words written, who know they have to make their writing &quot;flow better&quot; or &quot;more clear&quot; but aren't really sure how to do it. It appears to be an especially valuable book for the &quot;second pass&quot; through anything, where you have written down your initial ideas in part-writing, part bullets, and are trying to convert it into a real readable piece of work. (Previously, I wrote: This book was JUST recommended to me and I haven't read it, but it is apparently very analytical and detailed, and outlines the rationales behind why one should write in the way it discusses. In fact, I think there a jab at the Elements of Style in this book where the author laments that &quot;Be clear&quot; is GREAT advice. We all KNOW that. The real problem is, &quot;How is it that I can actually implement 'be clear' in my writing?&quot; However, I haven't gotten far enough to comment on it yet.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's a little about what to read. As for what you should know? Well, that's a more difficult question :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T18:02:31.620" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T18:02:31.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14970" CreationDate="2013-12-21T03:47:04.567" Score="16" ViewCount="32400" Body="&lt;p&gt;While browsing the web-sites of various German universities I have come across the term &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-kl.de/en/studium/studiengaenge/bm-inf/how_to_apply.ma/&quot;&gt;restricted admission&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. What does it mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do German universities discriminate students on the basis of their age?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything called &quot;unrestricted admission&quot;? If so, what does that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T09:53:12.647" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T05:48:42.873" Title="What does &quot;restricted admission&quot; mean in German universities?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24481" CreationDate="2013-12-21T03:51:04.653" Score="7" ViewCount="2509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing undergraduate in engineering but I want a transition to humanities for masters (history, anthropology).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Should I take  prerequisite courses at a community college or through online/distance education? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10161" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T17:05:23.107" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T19:41:01.937" Title="How does an engineering undergraduate apply for master in humanities?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14963" CreationDate="2013-12-21T06:20:12.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though it may be outdated now, my father and now myself are both part of AIESEC&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aiesec.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.aiesec.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6771" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T06:20:12.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14967" CreationDate="2013-12-21T09:32:19.313" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany, access to universities is regulated by the &lt;strong&gt;Numerus Clausus&lt;/strong&gt; system, which basically says that the number of students admitted to any given programme at a university can be either &lt;strong&gt;unrestricted&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;restricted to a fixed number of students&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an unrestricted programme, students just need to fulfill the basic formal criteria (they need a german &lt;strong&gt;Abitur&lt;/strong&gt;, or an equivalent). For most restricted programmes on bachelor level, prospective students need to apply and are then ranked based solely on their Abitur grades (plus a few exceptions for corner cases, foreign students with no german Abitur, etc.). For restricted master level programmes, many universities (including, apparently, TU Kaiserslautern, as linked by the original poster above) have adopted a more US-style admission system, which is based not only on previous grades but also on letters of recommendation, statements of interest, interviews, etc. TU Kaiserslautern also has its selection procedure &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-kl.de/en/studium/studiengaenge/bm-inf/how_to_apply.ma/auswahl/&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt;. This will vary per university, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: to answer your subquestion (which I happened to have missed the first time around):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do German universities discriminate students on the basis of their age?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not in general, and certainly not officially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2013-12-21T10:00:00.583" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T10:00:00.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14983" CreationDate="2013-12-21T10:08:17.140" Score="18" ViewCount="17434" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple semesters after beginning my PhD program (in the US), I was dismissed from the program because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My GPA was slightly below the program's minimum (after being on academic probation for one semester already).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After months of work as an RA in a research group, at the end of the semester, my adviser informed me that he was not satisfied with my research and would not continue to fund me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After that, the department was not willing to hire me as a TA, because TA funding was seen as an &quot;interim&quot; measure, and having a new adviser was necessary to continue in the program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find a new research adviser because everybody would freak out about my GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have done very well on exams, and I had a great GRE score. What are my options now? Applying again? What could I say about my messed up situation in applications? What if I applied to another school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10165" LastEditorUserId="8289" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T21:24:26.947" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T21:24:26.947" Title="Academic dismissal from PhD program. What next?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-12-22T21:35:41.420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2013-12-21T10:38:50.960" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is going to sting, but it's how I read the situation based on what you've written here. It sounds like there is something going on that you haven't addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a department wanted to keep someone who they felt was a promising student, who they thought could contribute with good work, I think they'd find a way to waive the GPA for another term, seeing that it's so close to the threshold. On the other hand, if they felt like a student was not worth keeping, they might be relieved that the student's GPA fell below the specified threshold, so they could use it as grounds for dismissal from the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the lab reports, there's a difference between being &lt;em&gt;late&lt;/em&gt; and being &lt;em&gt;unreliable&lt;/em&gt;. One is a fact, and the other is a perception. You emphasize the fact, but I suspect it's the perception that is behind their unwillingness to rehire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the GRE score, those scores used to measure potential &lt;em&gt;from an admissions perspective&lt;/em&gt;. Once you're in the program, GRE scores become pretty much meaningless; from that point on, you're judged by the work you do at the institution. (The fact that you even mention it makes me wonder if you have a habit of overestimating your own value in a way that annoys your professors and your peers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your options, I wouldn't recommend reapplying. That's an uphill battle; they seem to be sending pretty clear signals that they'd rather be done with you. That leaves transferring somewhere else. Given that your GPA is so close to 3.0, I'll bet you could find a school willing to accept you as a transfer student; however, they might have second thoughts based on some of the reasons for your departure. I would be very careful about who I listed as a reference from the school that is dismissing you now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to look in the mirror, and try to more accurately assess why you are being let go. As I mentioned, I think it has to do with intangible qualities such as personality, reliability, and teamwork – things that are hard to quantify, but easy to spot notice once you start working alongside someone, especially in an environment where the goal is to achieve a complex and long-term endeavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T02:35:13.563" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T02:35:13.563" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T16:28:59.563" Score="3" ViewCount="893" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering getting a PhD or an MBA in the United States. I do not have a bachelor's degree, but I'm working on finishing a MSc in Computer Science from a UK university. By the time I'll be done with the degree, I will have more than ten years of experience in the IT sector in various positions and in various corporate environments (startups, corporate, government).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most universities in the US waive the undergraduate degree requirement if applicants have a UK master degree (without any undergraduate degree) from an accredited UK university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10170" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T22:34:46.193" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:34:46.193" Title="Can I be admitted into graduate school in the US without undergrad degree (if I have master degree)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T16:52:50.133" Score="2" ViewCount="22677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I study in India and in here we have 10 pointer system. I wanted to convert my CGPA to american based GPA system of 4. I googled and got this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msinus.com/content/convert-cgpa-into-gpa-389/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does that mean I need only &gt;8.5 to get a 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a stupid question to some but please consider that I know nothing of american CGPA system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10163" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T03:11:14.717" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T03:11:14.717" Title="Indian CGPA to US GPA system" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-12-22T16:19:42.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2013-12-21T16:56:58.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm from India and I must say that getting into IIT's is a pretty much of a big deal here. You can be sure of the fact that the kid is hard working. But a GPA of 6.96 ~ 7 is Okay-ish. Average. 9-10 is brilliant. 8-9 is about average and very good.&#xA;You can ask what other things he excel in. Extra activities he participate in etc..etc..&#xA;Report cards don't show someone's potential. Do they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10163" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T16:56:58.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2013-12-21T17:14:32.550" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realized that a PhD program was not working out for me for various reasons. They were trying to get me to transfer to their Masters program. I decided a more generalist Masters in my home town would be preferable because continuing where I was would only continue the difficulties I faced. My old cohort is now facing the publish or perish monster while teaching undergrad students at State schools across the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you need to take one step back to take two steps forward. In the end, you get that PhD, and it's publish or perish. Your ability to publish will be greatly hindered if you've been struggling along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a step back and get a fresher perspective. Maybe earning a Masters in applied mathematics or another applied science that has requirements that would create a record of academic success instead of failure would give you a firmer foundation on which to earn your PhD, perhaps at a better school. While you're doing that, you can keep the bigger picture in mind, do more self-studies, and build a toolbox of skills that would help you succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T17:14:32.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14964" CreationDate="2013-12-21T17:52:54.463" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple simultaneous trends which are working against one another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of PhD recipients is growing at a much faster rate than the number of available tenure-track positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More and more locations have been instituting term limits on the length of postdoctoral positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring committees are not as receptive to applicants who have done too many postdoctoral positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to a lot of challenges for many academic aspirants. Personally, my impression is that the dangers are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remaining in any single postdoctoral position for more than about three years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepting more than two postdoctoral assignments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once either of those thresholds have been crossed, I think it starts to hurt an applicant later in their career. The exception to this might be &quot;research professorships&quot; and &quot;staff scientist&quot; positions that are seen to be more permanent than a postdoctoral position. Even in these positions, however, there is always the challenge that it can be difficult to transition to a different position afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T17:52:54.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14964" CreationDate="2013-12-21T18:36:14.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science, it's not yet common for people to be doing multipe postdocs before acquiring a faculty position. It's more common to see someone doing a single postdoc (or a virtual postdoc by working in an industrial lab). So it's hard to say whether there is a stigma or not. If anything, I suspect that having a postdoc might improve one's chances at getting an interview at department, assuming that the candidate has used the postdoc to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beef up their resume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establish connections (and letters of reference) with well known researchers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general matter though, if someone appears to have gone through a series of postdocs, I might at least wonder why. But I'm sympathetic to the vagaries of the job market and might not think more of it if the candidate looks promising in other respects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T18:36:14.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14975" CreationDate="2013-12-21T18:43:37.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A US GPA is computed as an average of grades, mapped as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A = 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B = 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C = 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D = 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;F = 0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some universities, there are interpolations between these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A- = 3.67&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B+ = 3.33&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on for B-, C+ and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of an A+ being awarded a 4.33, but that's not the case in my university where A is the maximum grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in my recollection, this maps non-linearly to the Indian CGPA system which is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A = 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B = 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C = 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D = 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the non-linearity, you can't just for e.g divide your score by 2.5. Moreover, there are statistical normalizations that complicate the process. Personally, if possible, I'd just list the CGPA as is. Your transcripts will reveal the grade specifics, and that's more useful than just the summary number. I wouldn't trust the link you provided since they don't appear to provide any rationale for the mapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately I'd have a hard time seeing an Indian CGPA of 8.6 and considering it a 4.0. Even with grade inflation, that would be over optimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T18:43:37.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2013-12-21T19:52:46.530" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the points in J.R.'s answer.  I'd like to specifically address your question: &quot;What if I re-apply to another school and hide my records in this school?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is a very bad idea.&lt;/strong&gt;  As pointed out in J.R.'s comment, most departments will require as part of your application that you list all schools you have attended, and send your transcripts.  It would be unethical to omit your current program, and judging from your comments on J.R.'s answer about copied homework, ethical behavior is very important to you (which I commend).  And on a purely practical level, it's extremely risky; if you get caught, it may very well end your career in physics and academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that in the US, federal privacy laws prohibit your current institution (let's call it University X) from releasing your education records without your permission.  However, these rules do not apply to so-called &quot;directory information&quot;, which include your name and dates of attendance.  If University Y calls up University X and asks if you have ever attended there, X will tell them.  They won't tell them how you did while you were there or why you left, but Y will know that you falsified your application.  So if anyone at Y ever suspects that you attended X, they can verify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't mention X in your application, Y may not think to do this.  But if they eventually find out (and they probably will, see below), you'll be kicked out of the program and the years you spent at Y will have been wasted.  If you received a fellowship or tuition waiver, you could potentially be required to pay it back.  If you make it to graduation but they find out later, your degree could be revoked; this will probably get you fired from whatever job you hold by then.  Basically, once this becomes known, your professional career will be over.  It's a Sword of Damocles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's going to be very hard to ensure that nobody at Y ever finds out you were at X.  Interview questions: &quot;So what were you doing for the two years after your bachelor's?&quot;  You'll have to never mention your time there or anyone you knew at X in any conversation with advisors, professors, or fellow students.  And the academic world is small: there's a very good chance that your advisor or someone else at Y knows someone at X, and your name could easily come up in casual conversation.  &quot;Hey, I saw your new paper with your student user10165; I guess he's come a long way since his time with us at X.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: &lt;strong&gt;Don't do this.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T19:52:46.530" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13732" CreationDate="2013-12-21T20:22:48.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Institutions prefer their recognized terminal degree to be the final education before its graduates continue in their careers. By doing so, the graduates provide the evidence of the efficacy and value to society of the institution's academic programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you have said, in Europe, the MSc is not recognized as a terminal degree. An institution in Europe from which you might graduate with a MSc should expect, if you continue your studies, for you to be successful in the program to which you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The correct way to ensure that you contribute to the local reputation of the institution to which you consider applying is to ask them if the degree is intended to be a terminal degree, or if it is considered strong preparation for the terminal degree that you wish to pursue.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also inquire about this at your terminal degree school of interest, and you should strongly consider the advice that the institution you want to pursue your terminal degree at gives you in that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I inquired at Columbia about their PhD in Economics, and they suggested, as I expected, that I complete a Masters in Statistics first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication, in the spirit of your notable tactfulness, is the best way to ensure that you meet the expectations of the institutions that you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T20:22:48.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-21T21:53:17.347" Score="5" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD students usually go through a specific topic in depth for several years: understand it and contribute to its literature. Some topics are multidiscipline by nature. Thus, while studying, students may find nice contribution opportunities in not-directly related areas to their research problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is it better to be goal-driven (i.e focus on the thesis problem alone) or opportunity-driven (i.e spend your PhD in different problems you encounter in this topic)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T00:02:58.787" Title="Should PhD students be goal or opportunity driven?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14986" CreationDate="2013-12-21T22:22:00.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although naturally the details of the landscape differ from subject to subject, here is my picture from mathematics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the obvious point that one should &quot;both&quot; stay focused on a long-term project &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; be alert to incidental opportunities, I would claim that the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; kind of thesis projects (and projects in general) are those that help &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; incidental opportunities along the way to a worthwhile large-scale goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This in addition to &quot;educational&quot; benefits of well-conceived projects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious hazard is to get distracted from a reliable, long-term project by too-speculative &quot;cooler&quot; possibilities one encounters along the way. The hazards here are like &quot;... but don't quit your day job&quot; as advice to aspiring rock stars, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T22:22:00.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14986" CreationDate="2013-12-22T00:02:58.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate students should be somewhat opportunistic. How far afield from their &quot;home base&quot; they should travel, however, is a different question that depends upon the expectations of their field, and what is allowed by the terms of their appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a student who is entirely supported by a professor's research grant to study a particular topic will have a much harder time justifying spending lots of time on external problems that may be interesting but might not be covered by the grant in question. If such an arrangement is desired, then some sort of negotiation with the faculty member is probably needed to make sure everything is handled in above-board manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, someone who is entirely supported by external fellowships that do not have funding &quot;strings&quot; attached is much more likely to be free to pursue whatever opportunities may present themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T00:02:58.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14962" CreationDate="2013-12-22T00:11:51.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends strongly upon what university you're attending now, and where you want to do your research. For instance, in Germany, students are allowed to do a master's thesis anywhere in the world, but they are responsible for organizing this themselves. Other schools and departments in other countries may have more restrictive policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exchange program may or may not be necessary, but this is entirely dependent on the specific policies of both the school you're attending &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the school or institute you'd like to do your thesis work at. The best guidance I can give you is to first ask the graduate students' office or &quot;graduate officer&quot; of your current department to ask what the relevant regulations are for your home institute. Then talk to the other institute. Of course, start such a process well in advance of when you want to do the thesis work; a semester at the minimum, a year is more strongly recommended, as it may take several months to organize the required paperwork and visas (if you're planning on traveling abroad to do the thesis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T00:11:51.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15013" CreationDate="2013-12-22T08:15:46.817" Score="13" ViewCount="2551" Body="&lt;p&gt;In computer science, and probably other disciplines as well, it is common to end every paper with a &quot;future research&quot; section. I always wondered what is the utility of this section. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. How common is it, that a question from a &quot;future research&quot; section is actually researched by the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; research group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. How common is it, that a question from a &quot;future research&quot; section inspires future research by &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; research groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these questions can be studied quantitatively, even semi-automatically, by comparing the contents of &quot;future research&quot; sections to the titles and abstracts of papers published in a later date. Has such a research been done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T08:36:48.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T09:33:37.347" Title="What does &quot;This question is left for future research&quot; imply?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14990" CreationDate="2013-12-22T10:21:26.623" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot provide a quantitative answer, but from my personal experience I can say that these are often questions that the the same group will study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that due to the publication process, at the time the paper is published the research is often much more advanced than the results published in the paper. For this reason, the researchers may wish to add &quot;future research questions&quot; regarding what they are currently working on (and may even have some preliminary results on). In this way they &quot;set up&quot; the conceptual continuity and importance of their current work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T10:21:26.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-22T11:16:46.853" Score="8" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main opinions about originality and contribution of ISI (journals which are indexed and listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomsonreuters.com/journal-citation-reports/&quot;&gt;JCR report&lt;/a&gt; by Thomson Routers)* survey/review journal articles compared to original articles in ISI journals. Some scientists consider survey papers lacking originality while others think the opposite especially for survey articles presenting the state-of-the-art and research challenges. So, I am wondering, in general, which type of article has the most impact on an applicant's success when applying for a postdoc or tenure track position; survey or original article? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*It was asked earlier, so it is wise to put its meaning for clarity.&#xA;-Certainly having both of them is the best, but among these two which one has more impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:07:08.640" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T05:15:46.287" Title="Survey or original article: Which one is more important to get postdoc or tenure-track position?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13732" CreationDate="2013-12-22T11:34:14.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you enroll in one of the &lt;strong&gt;13&lt;/strong&gt; universities of the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni.international.mext.go.jp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Global 30&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; project, an elite program, which offers degree programs in English. You can use the their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni.international.mext.go.jp/course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Course&lt;/a&gt; web page to find out detailed information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do MSc and PhD in different universities in Japan, I am afraid you don’t have much choice in Global 30 schools.  And not every Global 30 school offers the program you want. For example, you only have &lt;strong&gt;less than handful&lt;/strong&gt; of Math graduate programs available in Global 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are proficient in Japanese, it is another story. You do have plenty of choices. As far as I know, Japanese graduate students switch schools for various reasons, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-11-08T03:27:53.747" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T03:27:53.747" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2013-12-22T12:43:30.443" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everybody can tell, you are emotionally stressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice to you, &lt;strong&gt;calm down!&lt;/strong&gt;. This is not the end of the world. You still have options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go to industry if you want although I think you prefer not. You still have the passion for Academia since you are asking this question on this site. So, I am not going to suggest that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stay in Academia, others have given you excellent answers. I am not going to repeat them. I want to point out things others may have missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you have to admit that you messed it up. How to re-enter Academia is your question. I think you'll have to look for the schools in the next lower tier. Transferring to a school of the same tier may not be possible at this time. For example, if you are in the top 20, apply to the top 50. I think you have the chance. If you still don't get to top 50, go to top 100. There is a will, there is a way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to your advisor and tell him you would like to transfer to another school. Tell him that you made a mistake and want to restart your academic career somewhere else. He will be glad to help you to transfer because he has some responsibility to fulfill. At least, you were his student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, calm down. Being emotional will not help you. Find another school is your first priority. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me address your specific issues here,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And what to tell about my messed up situation in applications? Is it recommended to apply to other schools without mentioning that I had attended this one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question boils down to, &lt;strong&gt;Can I erase my past?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is no. You can't. The key is the recommendation letters. Whom do you go to for those letters? The people who knew you during your undergraduate days? They know you were in your current school. Are they going to wonder what happened to you in the past couple of years? In these days, information travels fast. A couple of e-mails between your undergrad prof. and the profs. in your current school will reveal everything. Get help from your current school to transfer to another school is the practical solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T03:00:52.480" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T03:00:52.480" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14995" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/community-wiki&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;community-wiki&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;community-wiki&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns posts turned into Community Wiki status. The tag should only be used when the post is turned into a Wiki&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14996" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" Score="0" Body="[community-wiki] concerns posts turned into Community Wiki status. " OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T12:45:30.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14999" CreationDate="2013-12-22T16:18:33.190" Score="7" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have asked my advisers this question recently (since in a year or so, I expect to go on the job market) and received a variety of answers, specific to the USA. Very generally, as I understand, with reference to the US, there seem to be jobs which are either primarily research based (R1 universities) or primary teaching based (liberal arts colleges).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that in either case, you are expected to do some amount of teaching and some amount of research but the focus varies depending on the university. In my university, research is &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; seen to have more importance than teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering, specifically with reference to the whole world, whether there are academic jobs where teaching and research are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; given equal importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in discipline and country variations in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T08:54:51.280" Title="Are there tenure track academic jobs where teaching and research are given equal importance?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14997" CreationDate="2013-12-22T18:44:10.253" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a TT at a small liberal arts college let me just say that to gain tenure I have to do both. In my field this amounts to having five or six new articles or a book before tenure. There is a very large spectrum of liberal arts colleges and the top end (figure top 100) all claim that research active professors are better able to teach up to date content in their field and to better demonstrate to their students why the field is exciting and worth studying. (By `all' I mean I do not know of a counter example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very top end of the liberal arts spectrum you have schools that give their professors R1 teaching loads and more funding. The only thing they would lack are the graduate students. Sure at the lower end of the spectrum are places that only expect teaching. Then there are the community colleges which openly admit they are teaching only institutions but they acknowledge that their mission is distinct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another section of schools I'd suggest you could take a look at are the second tier state schools, places like CSU Pamona, or University of Central Florida. These are not flagships and focus more on teaching than R1s but you still have to be research active to get tenure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time you go to a conference, chat up those folks who seem to be pre-tenure and ask them what their institutions demand. The US is a country with other 4000 colleges and universities. They do not form a linear order from liberal arts colleges to R1 universities. So as always, the situation is more complex than you might think at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:44:10.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14997" CreationDate="2013-12-22T18:46:59.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic problem is that you have &quot;research institutions&quot; and &quot;teaching institutions.&quot; As a result of this, most schools have a pre-selected bias toward placing either research or teaching as the primary metric in determining tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As BSteinhurst indicates above, at most schools you do have to do both teaching and research. The difference is that in the &quot;minor&quot; area the standards are considerably lower. At a school such as MIT or Harvard, for instance, significant teaching credentials before tenure is awarded is not necessarily looked on favorably by all departments, as that is considered a potential sign that too much time is being spent on teaching relative to academic activities. Similarly, I doubt that faculty members at liberal arts colleges are expected to bring in large amounts of research grants or publish multiple papers per year in high-quality peer-reviewed journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:46:59.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14992" CreationDate="2013-12-22T18:55:41.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no simple answer to this question, because there are a lot of variables left undefined. I think this is what we can call an example of a &quot;false dichotomy.&quot; For instance, consider the following examples from physics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A first-author &quot;original&quot; publication in a journal such as &lt;em&gt;Physica A&lt;/em&gt; might not be as useful as a first-author review paper in &lt;em&gt;Reviews of Modern Physics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being third author on a review paper in &lt;em&gt;Reviews of Modern Physics&lt;/em&gt; might not be as useful as first author on a paper in &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The stage in one's career also makes a difference in some fields: a postdoc might not be asked to do a review in some fields, but might in others. (Tenure-track professors are a separate category in this respect.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think there are a lot of issues to be considered in this process. However, if one is a postdoc, this is also a conversation to have with one's research supervisor. In general, such articles would be written with their involvement and participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:55:41.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14974" CreationDate="2013-12-22T18:56:39.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simply fact of the matter is that you have to ask each program you are interested in directly. Some schools have a specific bachelor degree requirement, some don't. Like all bureaucracies the costs of bending this rule can be quite large. Being an international student might actually make it easier since the offices that deal with international students have to do a lot of personalized evaluations anyway.  What all schools do have is a contact address for exactly these kinds of questions usually it can be done by e-mail now. So my best advice is to ask directly the people who make these decisions and not the &quot;internet.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you learn whether or not there is a possibility of this plan working then you can worry about funding. The resident versus non-resident price difference only applies to public run universities but can be very significant. It does vary by which state the school is in does really matter. For example in North Carolina I know of a person who work for three years as a sheriff deputy (county-wide police officer) who was not granted in-state status at their universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:56:39.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-22T21:28:09.347" Score="8" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen plenty of places where authors are rated on how much they publish and are cited. There are also metrics like the h-index and i10-index that try and assign a number to the relative quality of a given researcher (for better or worse). But, is there anything similar for individual articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that people would want an easy way to see if a piece of research has been reproduced or not, peer reviewed for quality of methods and/or analysis, retracted, cited by other papers, the quality of the papers cited, etc. I would think that this would be an extremely useful tool to help people see if the paper they are reading, and potentially citing, is a quality paper or not. However, I've never seen or heard of anything that does this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a service or metric out there that has something like an h-value on a per article basis rather than a per author basis? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10705" OwnerDisplayName="caffein" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T22:20:57.853" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:50:25.993" Title="Does anyone have rate the relative quality of scientific papers, rather than authors?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-22T23:38:16.093" Score="9" ViewCount="7191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Computer Science PhD student in a US university. Recently, I worked on a problem and wrote a paper. When I asked my advisor to submit the paper to a good journal (such as IEEE Trans. on Computers), he became upset with me and forced me to submit the paper in a very poor quality open access journal. I need good publications to get a faculty position after PhD. Now I'm thinking to work on some other areas on computer science simultaneously with my PhD dissertation so that I can publish my work in a good journal without including my advisor's name. Can I publish my own work (not my dissertation work) as a PhD student without including my advisor's name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10201" LastEditorUserId="11633" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T01:12:50.837" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T06:50:29.673" Title="Publishing paper as a PhD student without advisor's name" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15005" CreationDate="2013-12-23T00:57:28.713" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that any PhD-level scientist in the United States is &quot;too stupid to understand your research,&quot; as you claim. Furthermore, you don't have anything other than your own beliefs that the work that you're doing is of sufficient quality for a high-impact journal like &lt;em&gt;IEEE Transactions&lt;/em&gt;. Why do you believe the results are significant enough for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, have you actually made an attempt to include your research advisor as part of your active research planning process, or have you decided he can't help you? Again, as you said, he's a senior member of the department, which means he probably has many more years of experience as a researcher than you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, trying to do multiple projects at once will lengthen your stay relative to focusing on one stream of research. Therefore, I would strongly recommend that you first try to mend the relationship with your current advisor before trying to jump into a course of action that will in the long run likely cause you more harm than good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all that said, if you can't switch advisors, then you have to deal with the one you have. That means, for now, trying to deal with the situation as it currently stands. For instance, you could ask why the paper you wrote couldn't be submitted to the better journals you wanted, and what you would need to do so that the next paper can be submitted. &lt;strong&gt;Get this in writing.&lt;/strong&gt; Then, this will give you additional ammunition, particularly if what he demand is unreasonable. And with respect to the situation of asking other researchers what they think of the quality of the paper: next time around, when the paper is ready to go out, ask your advisor if you can send it out to some of his colleagues in the field as well as your sources, and solicit their opinion about where it should be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another concern here: where is your thesis committee in all of this? If your work is of sufficient quality to merit publication in better journals than the one you're submitting to, then they may be able to get your advisor to cooperate with such a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T06:43:22.037" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T06:43:22.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T06:52:50.237" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have simulated and aerodynamic concept from a patent based on aerodynamics for reducing Drag. Can I publish my paper ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is general trend ? &lt;strong&gt;Most patents on Aerodynamics concepts are just ideas or first they obtain promising result experimentally or numerically, then they publish patent.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10207" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T08:42:43.060" Title="Working further on idea from patent for student project and publishing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10251" CreationDate="2013-12-23T07:33:00.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please see the following link &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.framingham.edu/content.php?pid=481207&amp;amp;sid=3943382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;. However, it is more about psychology and non-engineering journals. I with there was such an repository for CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4216" LastEditorUserId="4216" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T04:54:44.710" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T04:54:44.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15007" CreationDate="2013-12-23T08:42:43.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a paper solo is hard. Not only do you need to do all the experimental work yourself (in this case, simulating aerodynamics), but you also need to be on top of the relevant existing literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need the latter, so that when you come to write up, you know &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; gets written up, &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; it gets written up, and &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt; it gets written up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without that, you won't be able to write a paper that would get accepted by any reputable journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find precedents in the literature for a particular patent, take the names of the holders of the patent, and then search for them as author names in the usual literature databases for your subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are specific literature databases that will give you false negatives, but few false positives: that is, they will find much but not all of the good relevant literature, with relatively little junk literature, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sciencedirect&lt;/a&gt;. Then there are general literature databases, that are much more inclusive, which means you're less likely to miss important papers, but they'll be buried amid a lot of junk results - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google scholar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your specific question: filing a patent is usually (depending on the country) time-consuming and expensive. Which means that patent-filers will either have done their due diligence on novelty and validity, including experimental and numerical analysis; or they've got sufficient money (or are so unaverse to risk) that they can file the patent application first (perhaps to establish precedence, or just out of vanity), and then do the work later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T08:42:43.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14997" CreationDate="2013-12-23T08:54:51.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what would constitute valuing teaching and research equally. As best I can tell, every department at every school has it's minimum standards in each category. If you are seeking institutions with high standards for both, I would second BSteinhurst and Noah Snyder's referral to top liberal arts colleges. There are many outstanding faculty at liberal arts colleges, and I am aware of a few faculty advising doctorates at nearby research universities. As an extreme example, Bryn Mawr's math department has a PhD program despite being at a liberal arts college. Additionally, there are research oriented institutions that pay more than lip service to teaching. In particular, Dartmouth and Wesleyan come to mind as having this reputation. This can also vary a great deal from department to department, even within the same institution. You may discover that certain departments in your area value teaching or research to an unexpected degree, relative to institution-wide standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T08:54:51.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14992" CreationDate="2013-12-23T09:23:14.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, for the most selective positions, original research is more important.  If you apply for a top-tier tenure-track faculty position, the conversation will focus on questions like: What has their contribution been to the field?  How impactful has it been?  What are their prospects for future contributions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Survey articles can sometimes have an impact on a field (e.g., if they reframe a problem in a new way or present new connections), but most commonly, they don't offer a major new contribution.  As such, it is unlikely that they will be considered a major contribution.  For a typical job candidate, when people ask about their contribution, the first answer will typically be original research they were involved in.  I'm not saying this is a hard-and-fast rule, and I'm not saying survey articles are pointless (not by a long shot!), but I think it is rare for a candidate to be hired on the basis of a survey article; usually, candidates are hired because of their novel research contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T09:23:14.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15005" CreationDate="2013-12-23T09:24:34.157" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are actually two questions here. Firstly, the question you explicitly asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I publish my own work(not my dissertation work) as a PhD student without including my advisor's name ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course you can. Assuming it will be of high quality, it will be accepted. That being said, it is somewhat unlikely that you will be able to generate first-class research completely on your own, without a professor or at least a more senior student or postdoc to help you get started. A problem might be that if you decide to submit to a conference, your advisor may refuse to pay for your conference trip. However, from your previous posts I understand that you work in a field where publications happen mainly through journals, so presumably that is not a big issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think you also have a second question that you did not explicitly ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will publishing alone, behind the back of my advisor, help me get a faculty position?&lt;/em&gt; (this is assuming that you are indeed able to get some good publications accepted without help)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not at all. You will need a glowing reference letter from your advisor to have a shot at any reasonable tenure track. Communicating explicitly or implicitly that you decided that your advisor was an &quot;idiot&quot; and hence took matters into your own hands will &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; in any way reflect positively on you in a hiring process. Hiring committees, by and large, tend to be risk-averse, and your story has a big flashing warning light all over it. &lt;strong&gt;What you will need to do to get out of this is transfer, to a different professor or to a different programme&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T09:24:34.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14990" CreationDate="2013-12-23T09:33:37.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The existing answers are good.  Let me just add one more phenomenom I've seen in my area: it is not uncommon for the &quot;future research&quot; section to contain ideas that the authors don't plan to follow up on, but they think might be interesting.  Maybe they hope to inspire other researchers.  Maybe they're just curious, but don't have time to continue to pursue those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, the future work section is used by authors to respond to criticism that &quot;you should have done experiment X&quot; from reviewers.  Adding a sentence to the future work section is an easy way to respond to the reviewer and be able to claim you've acted on their comment in some way: it lets the authors respond to the reviewer comment with something like: &quot;our future work section makes clear that we didn't do experiment X and we consider it out of scope for this paper, but we agree it would be interesting, and we've added it to the future work section&quot;.  You can form your own opinion about whether you think this is a good phenomenom or not; I'm just reporting on what I've seen.  Sometimes I've even seen authors include this kind of statement in the future work section of a submitted paper, as a preemptive innoculation against comments the authors anticipate getting from reviewers.  I don't know whether it is really effective, but you can keep this in mind when you read future work sections.  Occasionally this additional perspective may help you understand better why sometimes stuff gets written in the future work section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T09:33:37.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15015" CreationDate="2013-12-23T13:12:26.203" Score="2" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some tenure track positions require you to submit a CV and fill out online forms with the same information. Do search committees use the online information or just the supporting CV and teaching and research statements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T13:47:51.303" Title="Online job application systems" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15014" CreationDate="2013-12-23T13:47:51.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think both. Scanning lists of applicants within the electronic system, only the info entered is visible. Only when looking more fully at an individual file (as opposed to scanning aggregate lists of applicants) is the &quot;custom&quot; information visible. So it's good to take the trouble to be sure that the &quot;entered&quot; information is accurate, otherwise the CV itself may never be seen, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T13:47:51.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T16:14:41.433" Score="10" ViewCount="22881" Body="&lt;p&gt;For PhD applications, I have mentioned that I am interested in some research areas. Besides, I am thinking about mentioning some professors' names, so that it shows I have read their websites and I am not just sending out generic statements applicable to many schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it good to mention some professors' names in the statement of purpose, if I don't know them personally? In what cases is it good, and in what cases it isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is it good to only mention &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those whose research directions are aligned with my research interests, or/and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those whose books or notes I have heard of, or better, might have read some parts of, or/and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those who are already established and famous (such as having certain titles), or/and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those that are directing the PhD graduate programs, or/and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those that are heads of the departments? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will other professors who are not mentioned think? How will you do, if it were you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T17:40:33.033" LastActivityDate="2019-11-30T18:02:32.933" Title="Can I mention professors' names in the statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15016" CreationDate="2013-12-23T16:49:27.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm bewildered that anyone might think this was a good idea. It's gauche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning a professor's name doesn't show you've read their website. And showing you've read a professor's website doesn't really say much anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namedropping? Leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as for mentioning books you have heard of: surely now you are joking. Just in case you are not: that's beyond gauche, it's crass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T16:49:27.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14951" CreationDate="2013-12-23T18:13:47.257" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, well, you have a problem.  By the terms of your appointment, you are entitled to stay for the 24-month period.  The faculty you're working with made a commitment to support you for 24 months, and generally speaking, it is his duty to do so.  However, that's not the whole story.  You also have an implicit obligation to do good research that advances his interests as well.  And, depending on your goals, you probably also need his intellectual support and mentorship to achieve many of the benefits of a visiting scholar position.  So, you need to work out a mutually satisfactory resolution with him.  This is more a situation for interpersonal negotiation and compromise than a situation where standing on your rights and thumping the table is going to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might need to make some compromises, compared to how you thought this position was going to work out.  To help with that, to begin, you should start asking yourself some hard questions and figure out what your goals are.  What are your career goals after you finish this position?  What would you like to achieve?  Are you looking to get a good reference letter from the faculty you are currently working with?  Are you looking to strengthen your c.v. with a stronger publication record?  Do you think you can do good research on your own, with no mentorship, collaboration, or support from your faculty member?  What kind of job are you looking for after you finish?  Are you looking for a research position, or for an industry position?  Can you make productive use of the next 16 months (in a way that will help your longer-term career prospects)?  How strongly do you feel that you want to stay in the current position for the full 24 months if you have no support and no interest from your existing faculty member?  The answers will determine how you act at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that there might be no perfect solution to your situation, so your job at this point is to try to guide things to the least-bad outcome that is at all feasible.  To do that, you absolutely must know what your priorities are and what your &quot;nice-to-have's&quot; are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see a couple of possible options for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could sit down and have a frank talk with the faculty you are working for.  You could say, look, you offered me a 24-month position, you made a commitment, now it is your obligation to fulfill it.  You can be polite but firm.  However, this might not win you any friends, so if you were hoping for a good reference letter from this faculty member or collaboration and mentorship for continuing research, you might be out of luck, and you could be stuck in a toxic environment for the next 16 months.  If you take this tack, you are basically offering the faculty member nothing positive in return, so the best plausible outcome is that the faculty member honors his commitment and ignores you for the rest of your appointment.  The worst outcome is that the faculty tries to find some way to screw you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could try to understand better your faculty member's situation and then try to find a way to make yourself valuable to him.  Personally, I think this is probably a much more promising direction.  You can always fall back to the &quot;you have an obligation&quot; option above if this fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your position his actions might appear arbitrary and capricious, but there is probably a logic behind them from his perspective.  You could try to understand what is motivating your faculty mentor and then use that to see what you can offer him.  For instance, maybe he is under tight pressure to see results, and you are not contributing in the way he had hoped.  Keep in mind that you are biased; you might feel like you did an awesome job and met all of his expectations, but he might not feel that way.  Or, his goals might have changed.  So, you could try to understand his perspective, and then figure out how to make yourself valuable to him.  Basically, look for a way to make this a win-win situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say the faculty seems more interested in working with your friend right now.  Well, that's a valuable clue.  Maybe your friend is making contributions in some way that you aren't.  Have you considered trying to find a way that you can contribute, that your faculty member would value and that would make him eager to keep working with you and make supporting you a priority for him?  Have you tried asking some questions to probe about that?  His needs can change over time.  There's an unwritten assumption, when you join someone's group, that you will act as a team: that you will both act in each others' best interests.  In particular, this is not a zero-sum situation (or it should not be); if you're doing things right, when you do great work, it should benefit both you and your faculty.  You need to be flexible.  If your faculty member's needs change, you might need to change your focus and your energy to support his direction.  If your faculty member's needs have changed and you are not adapting to make yourself a valuable member of the team as his goals change, then that could explain his reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say your faculty has a DARPA contract, and that contract continues, but you are not a main person on that project.  Well, have you considered trying to make yourself a main person?  Have you considered making yourself indispensable to that project or finding a way so that you can make major contributions to the success of that project?  This is not something that is appointed or handed out; what makes you a main person is not a title that someone else hands to you, but rather your own independent action.  In the research world, people typically aren't going to tell you what to do.  Instead, they're expecting you to identify a way you can be valuable to the project, and then go do it.  You're a smart person; I'm sure you can find a way to make a contribution to that project that they will find helpful, and that will be beneficial to your career.  Go do that a couple of times, and before you know it, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be a main person on that project, not because anyone else decided you are, but because you decided to become one and you put in the energy and hard work to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, we only get your perspective, not that of your faculty member's perspective.  Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't fully appreciated your faculty member's perspective yet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my advice is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enter this with a willingness to compromise and change.  Adapt.  Be prepared to find a compromise with your faculty member.  Don't start from the position that you're entitled to a great working situation; you may be, but realistically, at this point, that kind of attitude won't help you attain one.  Open your mind to compromise solutions you might not have previously considered, even if you have to accept something that's less than ideal from your perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find someone else you trust (a secondary mentor, another faculty member, something like that) and talk to them about the situation.  Ask them for advice.  Respect what they are telling you: be a good listener (if you find yourself arguing with them, time to back off and listen and try to understand what they are telling you).  See if this can get you any additional information about what might be motivating your faculty or ways you might be able to resolve the situation.  You're in an Ivy League school; odds are that someone else in your department cares about visiting scholars.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go talk to your advisor.  Ask questions.  Listen.  Empathize.  Try to find a win-win outcome that both of you can feel like offers something positive.  You can be frank and honest that your relationship seems to have gotten off on a bad foot and you'd like to work out a way to improve the relationship and find a way to be useful to him that also benefits your career.  Ask him for help crafting a performance improvement plan that from his perspective would help you do a better job of meeting his expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not start from a position that you are entitled to his enthusiasm.  Do not accuse or argue.  This is not a confrontation or a debate; this is a negotiation.  You start by trying to gather information and understand your faculty member's perspective better.  When you understand his logic and motivations, then you can try to brainstorm together ways that you can change your behavior in a way that benefits both of you (especially him).  What you can offer is your willingness to devote your time and energy to work on problems that are relevant to his needs, and your flexibility and willingness to change.  Maybe after having this kind of conversation, you will find some new project or new focus that both of you will be excited and enthusiastic about.  Or, failing that, maybe you can find some compromise solution that is tolerable for both of you: maybe neither of you walk away exactly excited about the collaboration, but you can both live with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job at this point is to make the best of the situation.  Realize that the resolution might not be perfect.  Sometimes, that's life.  You just have to roll with the punches and work with what you've got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T18:13:47.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T19:21:13.913" Score="11" ViewCount="4425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received offers from a few graduate schools to interview in the coming months, but there are only so many February weekends available and two schools already have the same interview weekend. I accepted the first one when the invitation arrived, and now the second has arrived. Both are top choices in my book, so it's hard to drop one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be done about conflicting interview dates for science grad school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10021" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T04:43:02.923" Title="What should be done about conflicting invitations for graduate school interviews?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15019" CreationDate="2013-12-23T19:25:00.177" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happened to me when I was interviewing for graduate schools—two different schools offered only one weekend per year, and picked the same weekend. However, a number of students had the same problem, and contacted them. As a result, the departments in question agreed to &quot;share&quot; the weekend, with part of the time spent at one school, and then part at the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the schools are not geographically close, and you have no way to split the weekend in such a manner, then you should contact the schools in question, to let them know that you have a scheduling conflict. In some cases—particularly if the department is large—they may be able to schedule you to visit on another date. To some extent, such a visit might be even more useful than the scheduled group visit, because you get to see what the department is actually like when they're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; trying to impress everyone!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T19:25:00.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T21:14:42.953" Score="2" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know what politics or rules the journal Physical Review follows in regard to not writing an institution in the affiliation field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10218" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T21:39:43.780" Title="Does the journal Physical Review require an institution in the affiliation field?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15022" CreationDate="2013-12-23T21:39:43.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, there is nothing preventing someone from submitting a paper to a journal without a formal institution as part of the reader's address. You might have to write something in a web form such as &quot;self-employed&quot; or something similar if institution is a required field for submitting the form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is fair to say that under most circumstances, if you are submitting a paper without institutional affiliation, it will probably be subjected to heightened scrutiny relative to a paper with more &quot;traceable&quot; affiliations. Unaffiliated authors are usually treated with some skepticism in the academic community, and papers by such authors tend to to be viewed as &quot;crackpot&quot; papers. (Granted, having an affiliation does not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/2/1/1&quot;&gt;preclude the possibility&lt;/a&gt; of submitting such papers, but the likelihood is somewhat lower.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T21:39:43.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15040" CreationDate="2013-12-24T01:20:00.117" Score="11" ViewCount="1285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I taught a Business Communications course that brashly asserted that good presentations follow the 7x7 rule (max 7 lines of text per slide, max 7 words per line). I also &quot;learned&quot; this in my undergraduate communications courses at a fairly decent state university (and in some MBA prerequisite work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see docs online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/courses/6200/extras/PPT_Design_Delivery_students.pdf&quot;&gt;Columbia&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00750.html&quot;&gt;and&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sc.edu/cte/guide/powerpoint/&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kumc.edu/SAH/OTEd/jradel/Effective_visuals/132.html&quot;&gt;sources - this one linked to by MIT...&lt;/a&gt;)that hold forth in the same manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uab.edu/Communicationstudies/humancommunication/11.2.5.pdf&quot;&gt;this bit of research that may give some credence to the above doctrine&lt;/a&gt;, although it failed to reject the null hypothesis, that there is no difference in number of lines per slide, in favor of the idea that retention was better for 5 lines per slide versus 10. (But it's still &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, some kind of evidence, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So if the evidence is spare and specious, why are we reciting it like it's the gospel truth?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In industry (and to a lesser extent in graduate level education) we sometimes see vast amounts of information contained in single slides, and it is unclear what is the specific downside of this, particularly when well-warranted (i.e. the visible whole paints an important picture that would otherwise not be seen viewed at finer granularity, slide by slide). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of information is packed into those slides, but I print them off one or two to a page. Decks don't get much bigger than a dozen or so pages, and the information I'm particularly interested in may be packed into one or two slides. And the audience is fairly sophisticated, whereas the accepted introductory wisdom might be targeted to more average audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So the question is, are these heuristics worth sticking to? Or are they artificial constructs designed to give criteria for ranking the ability of neophytes to follow instructions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or are they a little of both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T16:02:21.107" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T16:02:21.107" Title="Presentation Rules (e.g. 7x7 in Undergrad Communications Courses): are they supported by evidence?" Tags="&lt;best-practice&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15016" CreationDate="2013-12-24T01:52:43.733" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your statement of purpose should be specific to &lt;em&gt;yourself and your research interests&lt;/em&gt;, first. Mention names only when the owner's work is both relevant and pertinent to your research interests. As JeffE stated, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your statement of purpose should paint a persuasive and intriguing picture of who you are, and should not be a hodgepodge of famous names and those whom you want to impress. You are trying to sell yourself and your ideas. Mention those whose work you have both read and found relevant to your research (and perhaps cited in your own work), but avoid name-dropping solely for the sake of impressing those who may read your SOP. That said, you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; tailor your statement of purpose to the specific department you are applying to. This may include mention of the work of individuals in the department, or those whose work has informed their research. How much of this you should do is a judgement call on your part, and you should lean away from appearing to name-drop for the sake of making an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T01:52:43.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15019" CreationDate="2013-12-24T04:43:02.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I absolutely agree with Aeismail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact one or both of the schools, TELL THEM you have a conflict for the proposed date, and ask if you can reschedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They know you're talking to other schools. They know you have a life and/or a job. You aren't the only one who is going to have to make this request. This isn't the only day when they're going to be scheduling interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the same answer will apply when interviewing for Real World jobs. Or indeed for most things. Simply being honest with people and asking if they can work with you to solve a problem is almost always the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T04:43:02.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T10:08:50.293" Score="18" ViewCount="906" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a third-year computer engineering PhD student. My dissertation topic is re-configurable caches (computer architecture) and my supervisor is a very nice person. I have four publications with him in well-known conferences in my area. But currently I'm in a weird situation. In my 2nd year I fell in love with computational neuroscience and started working on it with another professor in my university simultaneously with my PhD research. Obviously my PhD supervisor encouraged me. Recently I got two high-impact journal publications as a first author on cognitive neuroscience. I am very happy with my dissertation topic but also want to include my neuroscience papers in my résumé. I would like to try for faculty positions after the PhD. Do you think my résumé can create confusion among potential recruiters or will it show multidisciplinary research interests? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10203" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T11:15:05.617" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T16:14:25.240" Title="Will a graduate student publishing in different disciplines confuse potential employers?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15027" CreationDate="2013-12-24T11:07:38.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a similar situation (atmospheric physics and education), I was advised to include them all in my resume.  A caveat that I was give is that the majority of papers be in the area that you wish to pursue as a career, but by writing in 2 areas, this can open up more opportunities for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I was given was that all the papers demonstrate, as you have said in your question, strong interdisciplinary research skills.  Additionally, all papers show that you are capable of writing research that contributes something new - with this, it does not necessarily matter that they are from different disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T11:07:38.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15027" CreationDate="2013-12-24T11:17:39.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly agree with the latter. I am in a similar situation right now (change of plans regarding my Ph.D topic, even field if you like),I was strongly encouraged by my supervisors to publish a journal paper in my previous field (which I did eventually). I can understand your fear of having an impression of jack of all trades-master of none, but if you've managed to publish good papers in both fields, it actually shows you've mastered (or in the process of mastering) both, which in turn means you can conduct your research in an independent manner and contribute to existing knowledge. I reckon academics as well as industrial parties would acknowledge this fact if you include that in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9019" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T11:17:39.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15027" CreationDate="2013-12-24T11:21:45.600" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only real danger you will have with prospective employers (presuming that you look for a postdoc before your faculty search) is that a potential advisor might be concerned that if you aren't engrossed in their research, you will seek out opportunities in other areas. If it's their money that's supporting your time, then you'd be expected to devote your effort to the line of research you've been hired to do, not what you'd like to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that you'd have to explain in your cover letter in any case. But you'll need to explain—as you have—that your lateral move was encouraged and done with the support of your current advisor. Otherwise, it could be a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T11:21:45.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15033" CreationDate="2013-12-24T12:23:22.980" Score="6" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't know any languages other than English (e.g. German, Italian, French, etc), is it okay to cite the abstract (which is in English) of a foreign article without reading the full text (which is in the native language)? I appreciate if you provide a reference too (e.g. APA Manual, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9185" LastEditorUserId="9185" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T19:26:02.143" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T19:26:02.143" Title="Is it okay to cite the abstract(English) of a foreign (non-English) article?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15032" CreationDate="2013-12-24T12:48:53.107" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you and your co-authors are responsible for the contents of your manuscript. You can cite abstracts of works you haven't read in full, in any language, including your native tongue. However, misuse of such abstracts can always be called out by the reviewers of your paper. You will be responsible for defending your choices in the review process, if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, however, citing a foreign-language abstract ultimately is no different than citing one in English. The exact details depend on the citation format for the journal you intend to submit to, so check their guidelines. In general, you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; translate titles of articles or journals into their English language equivalent (unless the journals have done so themselves!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T12:48:53.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T14:14:40.757" Score="23" ViewCount="2104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm part of a trade group that's looking to hire a professor to write a whitepaper on our industry. We plan to release and promote the study to help people understand our business. What's the best way to do that? Find a professor in our niche and reach out to them directly? Or do you go through the department chair or some other means? Are professors generally receptive to this sort of for-profit work? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10232" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-13T16:07:35.587" LastActivityDate="2020-01-19T08:48:51.710" Title="How can I hire a professor to write a research paper?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4787" CreationDate="2013-12-24T14:19:19.573" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright laws vary by country, so this answer may be UK specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be safe rather than sorry, it probably is a good idea to copyright clear third party works, especially if your dissertation will eventually be uploaded to an online depository, which is becoming more common. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/library/subjectsandsupport/spiral/etheses/clearingcopyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imperial College London&lt;/a&gt;, as an example, specify that proof of permission to include third party works needs to be included in the electronic copy of the thesis and this may be a policy at other universities too. In addition, the source needs to be carefully referenced in a note to the figure. Not doing this can cause unwanted delays in depositing the thesis in the archive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I found it rapid and free to include single figures from published journal articles in the thesis. Just as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/fx&quot;&gt;F'x&lt;/a&gt; says, requesting permissions can be done in a day, although it's probably best not to leave it to the last minute. I was sent through to Copyright Clearance Center's Rightslink from the published journal articles each time I requested permission and the process was straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T14:19:19.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2013-12-24T14:42:16.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option, in the field of astrophysics, is to submit your code to a repository, and register it in the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) at &lt;a href=&quot;https://ascl.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ascl.net&lt;/a&gt;, which is indexed by the SAO/NASA's Astrophysics Database System (ADS), the official compilation of literature (and now source code and datasets) in astrophysics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's your case, you look at this link to find out how to submit your code to it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ascl.net/submissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ascl.net/submissions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page has additional resources telling you how to cite said codes, and this is what a citation might look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Garrido, J. et al., 2013, AstroTaverna, Astrophysics Source Code Library, record ascl:1307.007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the record being held at &lt;a href=&quot;https://ascl.net/1307.007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ascl.net/1307.007&lt;/a&gt;, and the ADS entry at &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ascl.soft07007G&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ascl.soft07007G&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10233" LastEditorUserId="10233" LastEditDate="2018-04-03T15:17:01.033" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T15:17:01.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15035" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:01:32.147" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several issues at work here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue here is credibility. The fact that you want to hire someone to write a study of the industry creates a conflict of interest: since you are paying the bills for such a paper, then presumably there won't be anything significant which could be construed as either negative or critical of your industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compounding the matter is that you then want to publicize the study you have paid for, which makes the credibility issue that much more serious for the faculty member in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any professor whose opinion on this might actually mean something would likely not want to touch such a project with a ten-foot pole, because this doesn't pass the &quot;smell test.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T15:01:32.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15027" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:02:34.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would disagree with one premise that underlies your question and state flatly and unequivocally that it doesn't matter one bit what &lt;em&gt;most employers&lt;/em&gt; may think.  Whether you choose to go deep in one research area or publish widely is something you can resolve by looking at what you want to do in life and weighing your current opportunities to make the most of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why would you care about any employer that is so confused about your studies that they don't take the time to understand deeply your unique talents as someone who delayed entering the workforce to complete a PhD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you might have some soul searching to do to figure out why you are choosing to frame this current research time allocation dilemma in terms of nebulous &quot;future employer&quot; impressions, but try to look closer to now as opposed to what you think might look superficially good to others but ultimately not reinforce who you wish to become. If you have identified a small set of high likelihood employers and they generally prefer breadth or depth, then now you have an interesting question if you want to maximize your chances with this narrow set of employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, only you can decide if ruling out some employers due to their views is a feature or a bug in your plans for your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10235" LastEditorUserId="10235" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T16:14:25.240" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T16:14:25.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15024" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:05:41.523" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;All axiomatic principles with respect to presentations should be taken with a heavy dose of salt, not just a pinch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important issue at hand is that you need to communicate your information to an audience effectively. Putting too much text on a slide makes audiences read the slide, and possibly tune out your elucidations and elaborations of the material on the slide. Similarly, putting too many graphs on the same slide causes the same problem—there's too much to focus on, so you get &quot;lost&quot; in the course of the talk, which again is entirely unhelpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Principles such as the &quot;7 x 7&quot; guideline are an attempt to balance between having too much and too little information on a slide. They're useful as rough guidelines, but need not be treated as strict rules to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T15:05:41.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:45:20.797" Score="32" ViewCount="16502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math PhD student and on the postdoc job market for the first time. I would like to know how job offer (hopefully) comes and what I should keep in mind in accepting the offers. I am interested in the US job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is: When do most job offers go around? I am aware of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/deadline-coordination/deadline-coordination&quot;&gt;earliest deadline&lt;/a&gt; (most math department agreed with this).&#xA;So I think the early offers go around in January and only the best people get an offer in January. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me about your experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to ask about my application after a certain time? I think once one accepts an offer, one cannot decline the offer. So I may want to send inquiry to the school I want to work for before accepting the offer from some other schools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also heard of short lists (for assistant professorship). Could anyone explain how short lists work (I have only vague idea of what they are)? And are there short lists for postdoc positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10237" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T01:38:34.520" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T07:01:46.440" Title="Some questions about math postdoc offers" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14474" CreationDate="2013-12-24T17:27:53.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was at the European Sociological Association conference this year and only in one session did I encounter a distributed paper. The paper was duly given out at the start of the regular session and the (experienced) chair asked the author without any warning to present it. Although the author hadn't specifically prepared a presentation for his distributed paper, he did talk us through the paper and the audience asked a couple of questions based on superficially skim-reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific queries, the level of feedback would probably depend on how much time the Chair decided to give your paper. You might be able to negotiate this with the chair by email or in person just before the session, especially if the session is generously timed or somebody has dropped out, both of which are quite common at the ESA. It might even be possible to give a short Powerpoint presentation based on the paper as well. The advantage of a distributed paper could be that your paper ends up in people's hands and they might read it if they suffer a bad talk later on that day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T17:27:53.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15041" CreationDate="2013-12-24T19:25:21.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can at least comment on the &quot;short list&quot; phenomenon—the other areas are outside of my purview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;short list&quot; is the list of finalists for a position. These are the candidates who are invited to the campus for a formal interview. However, it can also refer to the final ranked list of candidates to determine in what order they will be invited to accept the position being offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, short lists are restricted to faculty positions and &quot;competitive&quot; postdoctoral fellowships (such as the named fellowships at the US Department of Energy national laboratories, and at most mathematics departments as well) that are done at a departmental level. For a traditional postdoctoral vacancy, no such list is likely to exist, because hiring is done by the professor whose grant is supporting the position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T20:10:23.680" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T20:10:23.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15041" CreationDate="2013-12-24T21:14:16.260" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my two cents (I am faculty in a math department, and I've served on postdoc recruiting committees):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most math postdocs are department-wide competitive positions (e.g. &quot;RAP&quot;).  More rarely they are attached to specific profs on specific grants.  This answer addresses the former case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offers do go out as early as late January but the process extends well into February and even March.  I've heard of people getting offers even later, once the landscape has &quot;settled&quot; more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short list is an internal list of top candidates, so that if one rejects a postdoc offer, it's easier to decide whom to give an offer to next (by only considering people from the short list).  Offers are not always given in order starting from the &quot;best&quot; candidate -- as you can imagine there is some game theory involved on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely appropriate to contact places upon getting an offer.  You can write: &quot;Dear [X], I got an offer from [Y] but would prefer to go to [X] instead.  I have a deadline of ...&quot;.  Lots of things often get decided under such circumstances.  And you can send such an email to multiple places. I wouldn't do it to toy around, but only write to places you genuinely prefer over [Y].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until you accept an offer, you can feel free to try to drag out the deadline, contact other places you prefer more, etc.  Universities try to get the best postdocs they can, and students try to get the best positions they can.  Everyone understands this is how it works.  But once you accept an offer, you can't really change your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2018-07-07T07:01:46.440" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T07:01:46.440" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15024" CreationDate="2013-12-24T22:10:45.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I have never heard of the 7X7 rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasingly, I find that in my area (HCI/usable privacy), there are few actual words on each slides. Rather, points are made with images, visualizations, animations, videos and sound clips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard any of my advisers, fellow colleagues and other academic acquaintances in the greater areas of computing and information science ever mention this rule. Rather, the objective has always been to get your point across in the minimum number of slides as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T22:10:45.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15035" CreationDate="2013-12-24T22:50:21.620" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some professors are available for consultancy work. Find one or two in your specialty, and approach them: some universities have directories of experts listed by subject, to help you identify suitable researchers. You'll find they're typically lower-priced than the equivalent grade of management consultant, as well as doing better work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though you're paying the piper, you won't be calling the tune (with the exception of a handful of rogues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that they'll publish what they find. It is highly likely that there will be some of it you don't like, which will mean you won't want to publicise the final report. They will write one or more papers based on what they've found, and if the university's legal team has done its job properly, you'll have no say in the content of those papers, nor how the university promotes them, so it will be out of your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn something about your industry from an academic angle, you will get your money's worth, subject to real data being available. Academics are sometimes able to get access to information that others could not, precisely because of the pressures on them to remain independent and treat data impartially. However, the fact that you're funding them may impair their access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do bear in mind that an academic will typically put a lot of work into describing the uncertainties: so on first skim, the impression you'll get from the report is that it mostly says &quot;we don't know this, and we can't know that; there are indications of those. More research is required&quot;. The report may take some digesting, as a lot of academics are very experienced at writing, but surprisingly few write lucidly and accessibly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for promotional material, this really is the wrong tack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-12-14T19:53:45.867" LastActivityDate="2017-12-14T19:53:45.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15049" CreationDate="2013-12-25T05:30:39.210" Score="13" ViewCount="945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Chemistry (I'm very much interested in Biology too), and I am new to this world of Academia. It would be very helpful if someone could answer my questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly does one do in a PhD? I know that in the first year, you take a lot of advanced courses on your specific field of study, and then you decide on a topic and start researching. But when do you stop? I see that there is no definite time limit for completing a PhD. It can be anywhere from two years to... is there an upper limit? Do you complete a PhD when you have discovered something new and published a paper on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise a lot of what I'm saying might be my own ideas of what happens. Please feel free to correct me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10240" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T10:26:51.830" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T10:26:51.830" Title="What exactly does one do in a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15048" CreationDate="2013-12-25T06:04:36.633" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer some of your questions, a lot of this will vary from university to university, and vary by location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One major aspect is to determine your research focus as early as possible and plan long and medium term objectives, and how these objectives are to be met at the beginning, in consultation with your advisors (that is the advice I was given).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is usually an upper limit of how long a student can take to complete the dissertation, and it is generally expected that the research, experiments, dissertation write up is performed within the time frame dictated by the university.  Note, the length of time taken to complete the PhD is not necessarily a measure of how credible it is. (I completed my PhD in Physics in 2.5 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papers are often published in consultation between you and your advisor(s).  But, during my PhD I was advised that it is a good idea to get some publications completed while you are studying (I completed 4 while completing the research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Courses&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This varies between universities and places, for example, I was not required to take any courses whatsoever - just pure research.  That is something you will need to check with any university you apply to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my PhD while working full time in an unrelated field, so I arranged regular (fortnightly) Skype meetings with my advisors, where short term goals were set and the medium and long term goals checked up on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are doing sciences by the looks of it, it will involve a considerable amount of experimentation (potentially) - some of it can be tedious, make sure you plan and get into that as soon as possible, while ensuring you get the most accurate possible data in a safe and efficient manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You complete your research when you have met your objectives and have, through research and experimentation, 'answered' your research focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens then varies between universities, some you will be expected to defend your thesis, and some, as in my case, your thesis is peer-reviewed.  Once all that is done and your advisors and the university are satisfied, you will be told that you have passed (in my case, I received a letter stating as such).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the research never really ends, once you have that passion for that topic - you may find that the research continues, but now to be published as papers (this also has been my experience).  Find a topic that ignites the fire in you and you'll find that the PhD is just the start of the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally and critically, make sure what you are doing is something that you find fascinating, something that you won't mind putting in many hours of research and work into.  Choose something that is either your passion or something related to it.  Get ready to challenge yourself on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorDisplayName="user7130" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T06:16:08.257" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T06:16:08.257" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15058" CreationDate="2013-12-25T06:50:10.730" Score="3" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on research in the field of renewable energy and technology transfer. The research methodology that I have applied in my study is called the “Technology Foresight”, where I am using methodologies such as STEEPV analysis, Delphi surveys and scenario building and so on. My question is with relevant to the conferences. With the literature survey that I did at the initial stage of my studies I came up with a technology Foresight model that can be applied to my study. This is sort of a unique model which my supervisors suggest me to publish it in a conference. The reason they asked me to do so, is to network with other research community who are very much familiar with this methodology “Technology Foresight”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have no idea as how to find good conferences which consider “technology Foresight” as one of their main them. My supervisors are also not that familiar with this methodology as they are from the renewable energy and technology transfer fields. I would really appreciate if you can suggest me good conferences in the field of “Technology Foresight”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9410" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T18:45:55.667" Title="Conferences on “Technology Foresight”" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15024" CreationDate="2013-12-25T09:48:41.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Style guidelines have some merits in balancing between too much (typically) and too little content per slide. If you find yourself consistently having way more content per slide, you can probably improve. These kinds of things are also very domain-specific, so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That said...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We routinely use slides that violate this &quot;rule&quot;. Clearly a wall of text won't help your audience in any way, but  restricting yourself to such formats for no particular reason won't magically make presentations better either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer slides with some more content over going back and forth between slides (while it may make sense for the presenter, it is terribly confusing to watch). Sometimes you simply need to include a fair amount of information on a single slide to be able to associate different bits and pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I despise what I like to call &lt;em&gt;Blitz&lt;/em&gt;-slides, which contain so little content that they only last 5-10 seconds before moving on. I'm starting to see this often, particularly by non-scientists (though I may be biased). &lt;em&gt;Less isn't always more&lt;/em&gt;. For me, a good slide contains enough material to let the audience ponder about the matter, whatever it may be, to kindle their interest in what the presenter has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best validation is to present slides for someone who hasn't helped in making them as a test prior to the actual presentation (&lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; better than style concerns such as X words with maximally Y characters on Z lines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T10:13:27.417" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T10:13:27.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15056" CreationDate="2013-12-25T09:49:44.450" Score="28" ViewCount="4972" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at the beginning of my PhD studies. Although that is a bit too early to plan one's carrier after thesis defence, one should still have some long-term goals in mind. Hence the question - what can one do during one's PhD (mainly as far as long-term activities are concerned) to maximise the chances of getting accepted for such a position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few things that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High quality research published in high reputation journals (obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creating a contact network at conferences, research visits and through scientific collaborations. One might get to know one's potential postdoc supervisor or recommendation letters from established researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Online visibility through blogging, social networking etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good teaching experience. PhD students often have to teach but some might try to get on with the necessary minimum. Having a good record (e.g., from student evaluations) can be advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experience with grant administration - helping one's supervisor with grant proposals, reports for grant committees etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe some experience with paper reviews (towards the end of the PhD). Or is it still early for that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other things I missed? I am looking specifically for the situation in theoretical physics and PhD without coursework but experiences of others might be relevant and interesting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastEditorUserId="8164" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T18:50:38.537" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T07:36:17.500" Title="How to maximise one's chances of getting a good postdoc position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14302" CreationDate="2013-12-25T14:34:02.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Application fees are primarily there to moderate the number of applications and in the case of universities receiving huge numbers of applications partially finance the application process. There is of course many services for which one can argue to cover costs. This includes personnel to handle applications, personnel to evaluate applications, costs for paper handling (at least earlier including postage if anything had to be handled through regular mail). When looking at the costs for taking in the money and possibly distributing it within a system that likely involve many persons it becomes clear that a well defined cost analysis is not likely done, it is not cost effective. Instead the pricing can be used to signal, for example, prestige and to ward off chance applications. The level of the  pricing will likely be determined by these factors but also include considerations to what levels will be reasonable for the uptake of students &lt;em&gt;visavi&lt;/em&gt; ethical and social goals for the university. In short, the pricing is more of a tool &quot;for&quot; recruitment than a precise estimate for the costs involved in the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T14:34:02.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2013-12-25T17:04:43.027" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am also in your current situation and look for the same. Here is something I have learnt so far which are important to get postdoc job in good quality institutes. Here is the list without order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish in under-spot conferences and seminars &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference letter from pioneers of the domain (if you can liaise)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International collaboration, research, and publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Face-to-face visit. If possible try to make an appointment with potential postdoc supervisors and visit them in person. It helps both of you to better evaluate and decide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search among friends of your friends for an open position. I use Microsoft Academic portal &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to search co-authors of my supervisor or academician friends of mine to see if there is any potential postdoc supervisor in their network. So you can give a try and if found, ask your supervisor or your academician friends to play a role and introduce you to potential boss. I think it should work well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upload your papers everywhere you can (take care of copyright issues) and try to increase their visibility and citation; the higher citation, the better chance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make your professional account in Google Scholar and keep that up to date. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enroll in academic organizations like IEEE and get membership. It gives lots of benefits and is like a mark of attachment and care to the society.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration invitation. Try to prepare a paper and get in touch with potential postdoc supervisors to invite them collaborate. This can be a venue to exchange couple of emails and get to know each other more. You can later use this opportunity to request for position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to get chance to visit potential labs as visiting scholar. some institutes welcome visiting PhD students under different schemas like student exchange or international collaboration.- Volunteer job in varied community; not necessarily academic environment. Try to show your passion to work independently in every workplace regardless of the details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Online Connectivity. Active participation in online networks like Linkedin, Researchgate, stackexchange(here), and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patent is also important since institutes are increasing concern about patents and desire their postdocs to produce patent beside publication. It also enhance your industrial career too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep sending application for advertised positions and don't get disappointed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep sending email and follow up to potential postdoc supervisors with potential postdoc projects (it depends on your field) even if they have no current position. Your messages may impress them and motivate them to hire you to work on a project you define. If yes they can apply for funds (I know one of my friends in CS got offer in this way).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope these points help you better hunt a good postdoc in good research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Patent is modified to address some concerns on wording.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT2:&lt;/strong&gt; Some change in the order to better highlight their importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="6393" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T15:50:00.493" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T15:50:00.493" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15050" CreationDate="2013-12-25T18:32:19.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You won't have done your work in isolation: so you've already built up a list of references that you're working from. From this list, pull out the top ten that are most pertinent to technology foresight.  If necessary, supplement this with a quick literature search in the usual places for papers in technology foresight in other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that list of papers, take the list of authors. Now, look at the web pages for each of the authors - they'll mostly, if not all, have a page of publications. You're looking for the section on conference papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a note of the conferences that they've presented technology foresight work at. You're looking for those conferences which keep cropping up on the pages of your authors of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should build up a picture of where the key players present at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be careful with &quot;futurology&quot; conferences - they can be a real mixed bag. Some lack rigour, don't report on the development of protocols and methods, and lack other academic qualities. And thus they will bring you no useful networking, nor constructive feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find some of the energy-systems modelling conferences useful too, as they can have sections devoted to scenario development, which will overlap a fair bit with technology foresight - but don't invest too much effort there, because it's a bit of a stretch, unles your own work overlaps a lot with energy-systems models. FWIW, my opinion is that you shouldn't spend too much time looking at the International Energy Agency (IEA): they've been behind the curve for decades, and that's not changing yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://irena.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)&lt;/a&gt; have been looking a bit at foresight and technology transfer: they're a very young and growing organisation, so there might or might not be something useful there, but do keep an eye on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/NERNevents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC)&lt;/a&gt; maintains a list of international energy conferences that you might find useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the technology transfer aspect, I guess development conferences might be where it's at, but that's a lot further from my own area, so that's just wild speculation on my part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Disclosure: I'm not directly affiliated with any of those organisations, but friends and colleagues are.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T18:32:19.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15060" CreationDate="2013-12-25T18:34:34.223" Score="7" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen in many research projects that they give people who fill the questionnaires or participate in the experiment (more often the latter) some amount of money to acknowledge their help. But I can't pay that much because it's a small project. But also I want to attract many people to fill my online questionnaire. Is that right (according to research ethics or anything else) to say to them that I will give only &lt;strong&gt;random gifts&lt;/strong&gt;, for example only 10 gifts when more than 500 people participate? &#xA;My concern is that the participants subjective perception that they will receive the gain for their participation is &lt;strong&gt;not true&lt;/strong&gt; (in terms of probability) and maybe I'm cheating on them, in a sense ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9185" LastEditorUserId="9185" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T18:49:18.330" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T18:49:18.330" Title="Could I arrange random gifts for the participants in my research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15059" CreationDate="2013-12-25T18:48:07.980" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questionnaire design is a science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within that science, there is a body of literature on the ethics of incentives, and on maximising response rates. Behavioural economists and other social scientists have put a lot of work into this: you just need to make best use of their findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because questionnaire design looks easy, and lots of people do it shoddily, doesn't mean &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; should. Apply to questionnaire- and incentive-design the same academic rigour that you will apply to the analysis of the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: the answer to your question is in the literature, so consult it: and then you've got some proper peer-reviewed literature to cite in your methodology section. And discuss the ethics with your university's committee and with your more experienced colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T18:48:07.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2013-12-25T22:30:43.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Papers on physics which utilise code should primarily describe the algorithms and their relevance to the physical problem at hand, and not focus on nuts and bolts of the code. There are several reasons for this: the printed article is the wrong place to include code, as page space is generally limited and not suited to formatting of code; there are issues with copyright as in most cases the ownership of the code is transferred to the journal, or if open access then put in the public domain; generally the audience of a paper should be broad enough to be useful to a wider range of researchers than your specialist area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have suggested, you should release your code on GitHub or similar and apply a suitable licence, and simply refer to it in the paper. There are some exceptions to including code in a paper, generally when understanding the algorithm is essential for the reader or complicated, in which case pseudo code is acceptable since the essential information is included without any language specific distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T22:30:43.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-26T02:00:37.237" Score="11" ViewCount="1358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to be able to sell my text book to my students in e-book format. I know there is the kindle store that takes 65% of the sales price, which is in my eyes too much. Are there any e-book stores for teachers and professors that provide their service for a fair price?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10258" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T23:15:31.523" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T23:15:31.523" Title="How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-26T04:39:01.417" Score="15" ViewCount="1164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply for postdoc positions in computer science (CS) departments, preferably in the US or Europe. I have searched several computer science departments/research groups at different universities to see the current projects and Postdoc researchers. I saw that most current postdocs are men. So, the following questions came into my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it because either women did not apply for the position, or were the women's applications unsatisfactory to get the position?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that women do not have much interest and hence success in CS than men? or lets say are men &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt; better in CS than women?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although it is unethical, is it true to assume that the CS members have tendency to hire men more than women in reality? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If answer to Q3 is &quot;yes,&quot; what would be the most effective motivations to encourage&#xA;the hiring of women postdocs in CS?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For women who have recently finished their PhD's, is it better to apply for academic research fellows or industry research positions?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10259" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T21:42:08.137" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:42:11.177" Title="How can women improve their chances to get postdoc positions in computer science?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15095" CreationDate="2013-12-26T05:36:39.777" Score="11" ViewCount="3228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether dismissal / withdrawal from a PhD program should be listed as disciplinary action on subsequent applications. A Master's program application usually asks questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you ever been found responsible for a disciplinary violation at any post-secondary institution you have attended, whether related to academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct, that resulted in a disciplinary action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was academically dismissed from a PhD program after four semesters for not being able to maintain the minimum GPA. I plan to fully include this information in my application (e.g. through transcripts from the institution from which I was dismissed), and address why I was dismissed (and what steps I have taken to address academic concerns) in my Statement of Purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;: However, I am not sure if my dismissal counts as one that is due to &quot;disciplinary violation&quot; related to &quot;academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct&quot;. I was simply dismissed due to not being able to maintain the required grades. Should I answer the above question in the negative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10260" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T12:26:06.980" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T12:26:06.980" Title="Should a dismissal from PhD in graduate application be listed as academic misconduct?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;disciplinary-action&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-26T05:47:00.050" Score="10" ViewCount="2480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to pursue a PhD in CS (in Europe). I have ended my master's degree like two years ago (also in Europe) and I have 4 publications in the area. Actually I am working in the industry so I have left the academic world. The question that I have is how to address a potential supervisor (which in most cases I have not known in person): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I sent him/her my CV straightforward and ask for possible open research topics in which he/she needs PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I ask him/her some assignment or task to prove that I have the enough background to fit into his research group?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually very worried about how to manage this situation, it is not so easy in this time to get PhD positions in some countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T06:06:00.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T10:45:47.360" Title="Any tips for getting a PhD position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15067" CreationDate="2013-12-26T05:57:00.617" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that failing to meet the grade standards do not constitute an academic misconduct or a behavioral misconduct. In my opinion, those refer to cheating, sabotaging others' research projects etc. So I would answer that in the negative. Actually, I would want to be more sure than a random StackExchange answer in answering that question, so I would contact the department to ask, or ask one of my professors from undergrad/grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, as a word of advice, many schools have a separate section (&quot;other circumstances&quot; etc) for explaining that awful thing on your application. If I were you, I would save my SOP for actually talking about the research that I am interested in, and not make that a place where I make excuses. You have to give them a reason to be excited about you. By explaining your circumstances in the SOP, you lose your best shot, and they would at most feel mediocre about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10256" LastEditorUserId="10235" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:16:01.927" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:16:01.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15066" CreationDate="2013-12-26T07:30:00.250" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only answer for Europe, but I assume JeffE is going to provide high-quality info for the US anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I saw the most of current postdocs are men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With some exceptions, this is unfortunately very true across Europe. And not only post-docs. It gets worse the higher &quot;up&quot; you go in hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1- Is it because either the women did not apply for postdoc or women's applications couldn't make the CS community or individual faculty members satisfied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Vienna, where I did my PhD, we simply received basically no female applications. It was not a question of my professor not being satisfied with the female candidates - in the majority of cases, there simply were none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2- Is it true that women do not have much interest and hence success in CS than men? or lets say are men -in general- better in CS than women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that women are able to do CS just fine. We just &quot;lose&quot; them some time during school. How this happens is a question of reasonably heated debate (gender studies etc.), and I do not feel qualified to answer it competently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3- Although it is not ethically feasible, is it true to assume that the CS members have tendency to hire men more than women in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will surely be true for some individuals, but by and large the official university policy in most places is that &quot;equally qualified&quot; female candidates should be hired over male ones, and this actually seems to be the case. In general, as most universities are pretty desperate to increase their quota of females in higher positions, being a top female researcher will actually make it easier for you to get a strong postdoc or junior faculty position in Europe. &lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I should make clear that the last sentence is based on personal opinion and anecdotal evidence more than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5- For the women who newly finished PhD, is better to apply for academic research fellows or industry research positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow your heart. I don't feel gender should play into this decision. Anyway, in Europe there are preciously little &lt;em&gt;industry research positions&lt;/em&gt;, so for the most part it's either academic research or industrial practice over here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T07:39:36.297" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T07:39:36.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15066" CreationDate="2013-12-26T08:00:12.543" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it due to lack of applications or lack of qualifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure it is mostly due to the lack of applications due to the extremely small number of women studying computer science. Listen to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/11/podcast-54-the-one-with-all-the-anachronisms/&quot;&gt;episode 54 of the stack overflow podcast&lt;/a&gt; where they discuss how few applications they receive from women. If you consider women are a very small minority of people who have CS bachelors degrees (qualified for SO position) then we can assume that only a tiny percentage of those will continue studying for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that women aren't as interested in CS? Or are they not as good at it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obvious it is the former, women are not as drawn to the profession. Although they are as good as men at CS, if not better. There are societal pressures and influences that may subconsciously guide women to work in a profession that is considered more feminine (humanities, nursing and teaching for example). In this way women are more attracted to other areas because of social influence and simultaneously pushed away from CS. I feel that most of the time these are not conscious decisions. However it may be a conscious decision but women don't like explicitly stating social pressure as the reason for their career choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the case where women would like to work in the profession but are repelled by the idea of working alongside mostly men as they feel they won't fit in with the group. They may also feel that they would be discriminated against in the hiring process and career progression. There are many reasons why women are not as interested in CS but not being as good as men is not one of those reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do some members of the CS community favour men over women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some, but only a small minority of people favour men over women. In fact many organisations encourage the hiring of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a woman apply for an academic institution or for an industry position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is up to the specific person and you cannot simply generalise by gender in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastEditorUserId="4360" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T22:42:11.177" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:42:11.177" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15068" CreationDate="2013-12-26T09:19:49.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While answer to your question needs more detail, but in general the answer looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting PhD in different universities is different. In many universities , faculty member receive application from the PhD applicant and evaluate individually. However, in other universities mostly in US, the application is evaluated by the committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, certainly, the best way to start is to initiate a communication with potential PhD supervisors by sending an Email -as you said- along with your CV, academic history, SoP, and research proposal (proposal is not needed in US, but should not be a problem if you send). However, I think it may not really work if you ask them for assignment (maybe it works in some universities that I don't know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I noticed when I was searching for my PhD is that many supervisor write some notes on their pages and provide some instruction for potential students to follow. If you don't simply follow them you won't be able to get position from them. Try to read their pages as carefully as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit that there are tension in getting PhD position. But it is all right and should be okay. Some guidelines may help you figure it our.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, to successfully secure a PhD position, you need certain qualifications and certificates listed as following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bachelor degree in relevant course with high GPA/CGPA (this is must)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master degree in relevant course with high GPA/CPGA (This is not really a MUST-have requirement, since many universities offer PhD without having Master).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English Proficiency certificate (for English speaking countries) if you English is not your native language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2/3 reference letters in your favor (no wonder).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE for US-based universities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money to pay tuition fee (supervisors consider this as well. If you need financial assistance you should be really good compare to others).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thats all REQUIREMENTS. But, they are not sufficient to convince a potential academician to offer you position, especially paid positions which are very competitive. If you want to enhance your chance, I think in CS you need the following qualifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good quality publication(s) in good publishing venues (top ranked conference and journals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research experience (It may be true that Master by research graduates have better chance here).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working experience in relevant areas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching experience &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional certificates from well-known organizations like Microsoft, and Oracle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer jobs in the society (I heard a lot about it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic or professional Awards like best student, best thesis, and best paper award. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRE and SAT certificates &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intellectual properties (patents)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I think the most important thing is the first impression that you make using your first Email, CV, SoP, statement of research and so on. If they look professional and neat, it attracts potential supervisor's attention and will evaluate your application optimistically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't give up. You have to find the RIGHT supervisor, in the RIGHT university, at the RIGHT time, using the RIGHT channel. Keep trying and you will succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T09:19:49.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15099" CreationDate="2013-12-26T11:37:45.317" Score="1" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently enrolled in a 4-year mathematics undergraduate program in a university (let's call it A) in South Asia and here are the circumstances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are very few math majors in the program. I suffer and feel the lack of peers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professors are extremely friendly. They work on harmonic analysis, representation theory, Fourier analysis, analytic number theory, functional analysis, category theory, game theory and C* algebra. However, we don't have people working in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory and other areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of four years, I can at best get courses in real analysis (in one and several variables), complex analysis, general topology, discrete mathematics, analytic NT, ODE and PDE, linear algebra, groups, rings, fields and other courses from the research interests of my professors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get an Honors degree, I'll additionally write a Bachelor's thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are two other places in our country (Let's call them B) which are really good- their programs are tougher, they offer more grad courses, have the best peer group, etc.,have some of the best researchers in the country, cost much less. To move to B, I will have to sit for an admission test and start afresh.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they do not have a provision for Bachelor's thesis and are 3 year programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My primary concerns are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since I want to apply to the top universities in the US, I feel not getting courses like differential geometry, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology at my current institution A will severely affect my application. But I will write a Bachelor's thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I move to B, not writing a bachelor's thesis will make my application weaker as I will have no proper independent project or something like that to show my research potential but I will get grad level courses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Should I try moving to B or stay at my current institution, A?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Am I at a significant disadvantage being at A compared to B?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am willing to provide further details without divulging my id. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10263" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T12:13:26.623" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T12:13:26.623" Title="For graduate admissions, is it better to attend a well-known undergrad program with advanced coursework or one where I can write a bachelors' thesis?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15076" CreationDate="2013-12-26T12:21:09.210" Score="6" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether it is good practice to present a reference list (works one actually cites) as well as a bibliography (additional literature that has been used but that is not referred to). Is there any difference between MLA and APA in the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both MLA and APA go quite deeply into how to construct a reference list, but a bibliography is seldom mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="7121" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T13:11:19.313" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T13:11:19.313" Title="Should one provide a reference list and a bibliography in an academic paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-26T12:31:51.627" Score="12" ViewCount="1034" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11937/the-nightmare-of-being-an-independent-researcher&quot;&gt;The nightmare of being an independent researcher&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9611/applying-for-research-funding-as-an-independent-researcher&quot;&gt;Applying for research funding as an independent researcher?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1252/on-getting-reviews-for-research-work-as-independent-learners&quot;&gt;On getting reviews for research work as independent learners&lt;/a&gt; and reflecting on many a post PhD academic who, for whatever reason, are not able to get a foot in the door in academia after they complete their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this go both ways - the post-PhD after a while just gives up and gets any job they can, or they go down the path of independent research (usually, as in my case, while working full time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From experience, this independent research is following on from the PhD topic, still in collaboration with others and at least one established academic, but it is the kind of situation where experiments are performed on the weekends in the backyard, using equipment borrowed or made, and more often than not, all self-funded.  Papers still get published and conferences attended (where possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What my question is, what strategies are there to maintain motivation in independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, how well recognised are independent researchers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T04:54:02.510" Title="Independent research post-PhD strategies" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15074" CreationDate="2013-12-26T12:33:37.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, academic papers have traditionally provided the lists of works referenced, rather than bibliographies. Primarily, this is a matter of space, as well as recognizing work that has actually been used. Otherwise, it's too easy to include a bunch of random entries that have nothing to do with the paper in question. (It's still possible to do so in a works cited list, but you at least have to make the effort to work it into the paper &lt;em&gt;somehow&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should only include both lists if the journal in question allows such behavior. If you are publishing the paper in a venue that does not have such requirements, then you are of course free to include both lists if you choose. (Although I would not repeat the references list in the bibliography list, again to save space.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T12:33:37.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15127" CreationDate="2013-12-26T13:46:36.337" Score="35" ViewCount="48977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read several articles about literature reviews. At the same time I found some guides about literature &lt;em&gt;surveys&lt;/em&gt;. I am confused... how is a literature survey different from a literature review? What is the standard procedure to conduct a literature survey without making it a literature review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10267" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T23:52:20.623" LastActivityDate="2019-03-30T04:02:19.063" Title="Literature Review versus Literature Survey. What is the difference?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15084" CreationDate="2013-12-26T14:57:11.867" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title is quite clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author of an article is unknwon, should one refer to the title of the article, or to the magazine itself? The same goes for electronic sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say this is my source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“An Interview with Susan Bassnett.” &lt;em&gt;Channel View Publications Blog&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;  Channel View Publications. n.d. Web. 5 dec. 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I refer (inline) like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bassnet states that ... (&quot;An Interview with Susan Bassnett&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or like so &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bassnett states that ... (&lt;em&gt;Channel View Publications Blog&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:11:38.667" Title="Should one refer to the title of an article or to the title of the magazine when the author is unknown (MLA/APA)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15048" CreationDate="2013-12-26T15:26:30.073" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it may be important to remember the purpose of graduate school and a research education. When you receive a PhD, it signifies that you have reached the pinnacle of the education system (some compare this to a pyramid where the Phd education is at the top; there is no higher way of organized education). You have reached a level where you should be able to learn on your own without supervision or advise. More specifically, you should also have reached a level of critical and creative thinking where you can successfully function as a researcher, coming up with new ideas, applying and receiving research grants, be considered an expert in your field, able to teach and advise PhD students. These are all overarching goals with a PhD education. As you can see it is partly a deep understanding of your field but also deep understanding of general academic skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phd programs are different in terms of length and content. Some will have up to two years of courses (such as math programs in my country) and some may not have any course requirements (sometimes defined by an individual study plan defined by the student and his/her advisor). The course work is there to provide necessary background for the project done within a PhD. In most cases, I would argue that the exact courses taken during a PhD are of little formal value, the PhD thesis is what counts in the end. In general, the course work should provide you with whatever basic skills you need. My own experience in graduate school was, however, that I found that I did not need all the courses I planned for when I started. I simply felt that courses became inefficient ways of learning, that I could do it on my own faster. This, for me was a revelation, but, I believe, a natural development. So the amount of course work is individual and depends on the field/topic you are studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length of a PhD project will vary from, for example, 3 year as is the case in the UK to maybe 6-7 years in other academic cultures. Around four years seems to be a fairly normal period. What is achieved within this period is defined by the results but not in terms of excellence of the results. There is of course nothing wrong if you come up with ground-breaking results, but that is not something that can be ordered. Instead the importance lies in the skills you display in terms of the scientific investigations (techniques, analysis) through the conclusions you draw from your work and to how well you write up your findings in a thesis (be it a monograph or a collection of papers). Your advisor should be there to coach you to take the necessary steps towards reaching these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T15:26:30.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14833" CreationDate="2013-12-26T16:48:03.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distance-learning students report retaining and applying less than face-to-face students&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students overwhelmingly report retaining and applying less from online courses versus face-to-face courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://74.220.215.89/~businfm5/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-ABC-Waner.pdf&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ588152&quot;&gt;However, this may be due to a difference in factors other than distance learning.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irrespective of why, there is an overall perception of lower value created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distance learning creates value, and may still be the best option for many students&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some students live far from institutions that offer degrees in their desired fields. Sometimes the closest institution of higher learning may be 100's of miles away. Even if there is an institution nearby, it may not be well suited to the students' abilities. Distance learning provides students with options they would not otherwise have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is distance learning taken seriously?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Distance learning is not as respected as face-to-face learning. However, it may provide credentials that otherwise would not be available to successful people who carry gravitas that they have earned through means other than that education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your education to be taken as seriously as possible, you should prefer getting your degree at a brick-and-mortar institution and attending classes in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the institutional gravitas is of less importance than going through the course of study and earning the degree itself, perhaps if you require the knowledge gained or the credential on your resume to advance in your job, then the distance learning aspect is of lesser importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; distance learning be taken seriously?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some distance learners may prefer distance learning because of an inability to stick to the deadlines required in face-to-face classes, and perhaps they perceive the classes as easier to succeed in than a local school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others might not have local options available, or their lifestyle (perhaps as caretakers or providers) requires the flexibility that distance learning offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best not to paint all distance-learners with a broad brush. There is a great deal of heterogeneity in the distance-learning population, and although they have chosen to earn a degree that is known to carry less weight than a face-to-face, each should be evaluated on an individual basis, taking into consideration the reasons and circumstances under which the degree was earned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T14:38:52.737" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T14:38:52.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15081" CreationDate="2013-12-26T16:49:14.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;em&gt;MLA Style Manual&lt;/em&gt;, which is excerpted on many sites (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Williams College Library homepage&lt;/a&gt;), they recommend using a partial title as the citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the case above, you'd probably write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bassnett states that . . . (&quot;Interview&quot; 201).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;unless you have multiple works with unknown authors whose title starts with &quot;Interview.&quot; Then you'd need more of the title to distinguish it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bassnett states that . . . (&quot;Interview with Susan Bassnett&quot; 201). Smith responds by claiming . . . (&quot;Interview with Robert Smith&quot; 12).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T16:49:14.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15081" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:11:38.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purdue OWL&lt;/a&gt; says for APA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unknown Author: If the work does not have an author, cite the source by its title in the signal phrase or use the first word or two in the parentheses. Titles of books and reports are italicized or underlined; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ideally you would write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In &quot;An Interview with Susan Bassnet&quot; (2001) Bassnet said ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some silly statement (&quot;Interview,&quot; 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you have two sources from 2001 with no author, you would use 2001a and 2001b, so you would not need to change the short title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:11:38.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13064" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:35:09.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your university does not calculate your GPA, you should also not calculate a GPA unless you are told to. Most people do not care about your GPA from graduate level programs. As for reporting the PhD work, it really depends on what you did. Assuming you passed all the university requirements to be actually a PhD student, some universities require you to pass qualifying exams before you are actually a PhD student, you can list the PhD if you want. If you always intended to take the Masters and quit, you don't have to list the PhD if you do not want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:35:09.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13175" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:40:06.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying to graduate school (either PhD or Masters level), it helps to have letters from any past research supervisors or graduate programs. The fact that your advisor at Dept A refused to write you a letter means that you probably do not want that letter. Letters from people who only know you from class or teaching are not as useful as research letters, but they can still be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:40:06.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15094" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:40:37.433" Score="4" ViewCount="1438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a degree in computer science but I don't have any research experience. But everyday I read research papers from free journals. I also managed to understand the content of them. Now I want to do a research like that. Can anyone help me to learn standard procedure of doing a Computer Science research and publish it in a free journal ?, it's better if you can some give books reference on &quot;how to do a computer science research&quot; with your answer and format of standard thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read about several question like &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/531/doing-research-without-a-phd&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt;. But they don't tell about standard format of thesis and research methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10267" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:49:58.817" Title="Doing a masters degree level research without following a Master Course" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14253" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:54:44.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common scenario for many students. The answer really depends on your flexibility and any networking you have done. If you are willing to live in any country and gain the appropriate visas and work for nothing, then you will have more opportunities than if you restrict yourself to a single university and require to be paid competitively. Ideally you will have some professors who can help you find a lab that might be interested in your services. Otherwise you will need to do a lot of work to find someone who is willing to look at your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to simply set your sights on a lower ranked MS program and do well in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:54:44.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14335" CreationDate="2013-12-26T18:03:36.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends. Obviously if the score is required you need to send it. If you are applying to top programs, a 68% at anything is not going to help your case so I would not send it if it wasn't required. At lower ranked schools, a 68% might be okay, but again it is probably not going to impress anyone. I would probably draw the line at the 90th percentile for providing something that is not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T18:03:36.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15066" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:15:20.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to consider is the atmosphere at a particular institution. Where I attend, about 20% of our CS staff are female. That is, unfortunately, quite high for a CS department. But the problem is not unique to Computer Science. This disproportion exists across many of the sciences. Try to find an institute where the number of women---both faculty and students---is high. That department will be one that is already proactively hiring females. If the tables were turned, I would be more comfortable in that setting, anyway, but that may be my personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T20:38:47.957" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:38:47.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15064" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:48:31.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rate charged by the vendor depends on the price: the 65% rate usually applies to books costing more than $15 or so. Below the threshold amazon charges 30%. Apple's iBooks charge 30% for all prices, and so provides a cheaper option with a similar service, as long as everyone uses the apple's proprietary hardware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would reconsider your pricing to a more reasonable level. As self publisher you get a much larger slice of the profits, and in my opinion academic textbooks are priced excessively. If you cannot give the book away as others have suggested, then the other factor is that a low price would encourage more students to buy outright rather than share, and you also remove the second hand market, thus having many more actual sales. With this model students pay less to learn and you probably earn more money, and in a sense everybody wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:48:31.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15089" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:49:58.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that there's going to be a single book that describes what you want, however, I'm going to make some suggestions which may help you on your way. I'm a little biased towards CS and research-heavy MSc, so I think I can be of some help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Topic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A master's degree typically is going to consist of two phases: One of breadth: where you try to find what you're interested in enough to specialize, and one of depth: Where you start to push towards the &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot;&gt;edge of human knowledge&lt;/a&gt; on that subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already reading papers, then you should be finding the kind of papers that hold your interest the most, those which have you tracking down their references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've already got a topic, start to find the papers from the best conferences and journals (in CS, good conferences are often as good or better than Journal papers) in the area. Creative use of Google can often track down full-text even of papers which are officially 'paywalled'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of your reading here is to identify a gap in the understanding. This might be as simple as working on comparative evaluations of techniques, or as complicated as trying to create a new technique for yourself. What you'd like to do is answer a question the community is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're doing your reading and trying to find your topic or get up to speed on the state-of-the-art, you should also be building up your background. There's always room to grow your background to support research. In CS, there are certain foundational topics which are (almost) always going to pay dividends when doing research: Algorithms and algorithmic analysis, statistics and probability, and utility programming (Data munging, shell-scriptng, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you get further into a specialization you'll notice more techniques being deployed which will require more background --- i.e. your specialization might require more calculus than you know, which then will involve learning the calculus required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you asked for a methodology, but in my experience, research is a process of creativity and perseverance. At the highest of levels, you're going to come up with an idea, work on it, and find out it doesn't work. Rinse and repeat until you find out something that works --- in a special case. If the special case is interesting or common, you might be able to publish it! Otherwise, you'll work on generalizing the idea until you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communication&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be recognized as a member of the research community, eventually you'll have to publish. This means learning to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest learning to write informally first -- Start a blog, and document your learning. If you're not a native English speaker, use this time to practice writing in English. Get everyone and anyone you can to read your blog, and tear it apart on style, grammar, content, concision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your confident in &lt;em&gt;informal&lt;/em&gt; English, start to transition into Academic writing. Read good papers. Take notes on what makes them good in your mind. Read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://lemire.me/blog/rules-to-write-a-good-research-paper/&quot;&gt;writing good papers&lt;/a&gt;. Write papers. Take previous projects, and start writing them up like you would submit them. As you write, you'll find the holes and flaws. Finish it anyhow, then sit down, and edit them: Why wouldn't they be accepted. Keep doing this! As far as format and outline, it's going to vary from field to field, and even venue to venue to some extent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Caveat:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to be a very difficult process to do alone, with little guidance. Ideally you'll seek out and find a mentor. This might involve actually signing up with a school for a Master's program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the pieces I wrote about above will be an order of magnitude easier with an academic guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:49:58.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15067" CreationDate="2013-12-27T00:07:33.923" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Academic misconduct&quot; is not the same as &quot;Lack of academic performance.&quot;  &quot;Academic misconduct&quot; is things like claiming undue credit, fabrication of research or sources, outright plagiarism, etc.  Simply not making the grades might reflect on your academic aptitude, but (unlike academic misconduct) does not necessarily reflect upon your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10275" LastEditorUserId="10235" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:15:52.113" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:15:52.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14658" CreationDate="2013-12-27T01:34:12.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are Learning Contracts Common?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have earned over 169 undergraduate credit hours and earned a Masters degree from decent state schools (in Florida). I have also taught at some small business schools in NYC. I have never seen learning contracts in practice. I would venture to guess that they are uncommon, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=%22learning+contracts%22&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;amp;as_sdtp=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one may find reference to them in academic literature.&lt;/a&gt; I would also venture to guess that the reason that they are uncommon is that they would require a great deal of individual attention per student from the institution offering them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;About Contracts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal contracts while having set components have many possibilities of variation, and I would expect learning contracts to be no different. &lt;a href=&quot;http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Elements+of+a+Contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For example, legal contracts require competent parties, legal subject matter, meeting of the minds, offer and acceptance, consideration, etc...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant aspects of legal contracts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legal Subject Matter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject of the learning would have to be restricted to the scope of the institution's design for offering the contract. It is important that the contract should be as specific as possible in this regard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offer and Acceptance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One party should propose the terms, likely the student, and another party would have to accept, likely an advisor on behalf of the institution. When one party accepts the other's terms, we then have a contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Performance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms should be clearly stated. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadline, degree of flexibility allowed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If keeping a journal and/or writing a paper, Quantity of Content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If keeping a time-sheet, degree of completeness, terms for making up missed times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subject Matter, scope boundaries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The institutional representative who will determine completeness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consideration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is consideration, i.e., compensation, for the one obliged to complete the contract (the student), if considered to have performed, as meeting one of the terms of completion of perhaps a series of hurdles towards earning a certificate or degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the question of Modification, if the original agreed-upon terms allow for future modification, then so be it. There would likely be an expected period after which the two parties would assess the progress, and then determine if the terms of the agreement should be adjusted. If no agreement can be reached, the original agreement will remain in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enforcement of Performance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the terms of the agreement are reached, then the contract can be fulfilled. That is, when the student delivers evidence of their learning, likely contingent on an assessment agreeing that it is good delivery, the institution can deliver their consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These contracts do not appear to be common (if we exclude academic codes of conduct). They can be modified by agreement, but terms for their modification should be clearly stated prior to the performance period to properly manage expectations. Enforcement is managed by the terms of the contract, likely that the institution has to agree that the student's evidence of learning is sufficient to merit verification that they have performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression, although unevidenced, is that students with learning contracts tailored to their educational goals would be more likely motivated to focus more on the objective of learning than those checking off boxes in a standardized curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T13:41:42.427" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T13:41:42.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15148" CreationDate="2013-12-27T01:36:50.107" Score="5" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;My professor sometimes asks me to referee papers for him. &#xA;Should I list the corresponding journals in the professionals activity section of my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10277" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T15:44:54.767" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T15:44:54.767" Title="Refereeing papers on behalf of a professor: should it be listed on a CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15073" CreationDate="2013-12-27T04:14:11.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would try to move to B based on the assumption that B is better than A and A is probably less recognizable in the US than B schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that research potential is an important factor the admission committees of top schools will pay attention to. However, bachelor thesis is not the only way to show that you can do research. You can do research papers with professors' supervision at school B if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest B since you can learn a lot more in B than in A. Building the foundations during undergrad stage is more important than doing research prematurely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you apply graduate schools, you need to provide GPA, GRE/TOEFL scores, recommendation letters and any evidence that you can do research.  One of the first things the admission committee will look at is your transcript to determine if you are competent in math. If you stay in A, all you can show is basic to intermediate level math courses. Given that all other conditions will be equal, i.e. you'll get the same GRE/TOEFL scores, about the same recommendation letters (I am not too sure about that), the only thing you can use to beat other applicants is your very good quality bachelor thesis. But, how can you write a very good thesis without having solid math knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I am suggesting B. I do understand how tough is the admission exam in that part of the world. It's bloody. Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T07:48:37.110" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T07:48:37.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15098" CreationDate="2013-12-27T04:24:17.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is the very prototype of service to the professional community that you want to show that you are willing to perform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that Scrooge linked to has good advice for how to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T04:24:17.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15075" CreationDate="2013-12-27T04:54:02.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By an &quot;independent researcher&quot;, do you mean that you are not associated to an institution, or that you have become independent from your advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first case, I am not certain what to say; it really seems that if you are not associated to an institution, you have to deal with a lot of stuff; prejudice from more traditional academics (if he is good enough to be doing research, why is he not associated to an institution? Hence, his research must be terrible), difficulty in accessing published materials (although this is becoming easier and easier, where many recently published papers are in public domain one way or another), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I suggest that you have at least a few &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; close academic contacts who are well-respected. These people should be able to explain your situation (about why you are not following a more traditional route) and become your champion. They can also occasionally get you the research papers that you cannot access otherwise, and should you decide to return to school, they will vouch for you by writing you letters, etc. They can also invite you to give talks, participate in conferences, and in general make sure that you are not forgotten in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think staying in academia as an outsider is much harder if you cannot find people like this, and in all the cases that I have seen, these people sooner or later leave academia. So you need to plan ahead -- if you are still in school, cultivate these relationships. If you have already left, start by getting back in touch with your advisor and close friends who may still be in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, I think everyone feels some nervousness (and hopefully some excitement) from becoming independent. I think the most crucial thing is to make sure that you have some low-hanging fruits as well as the ones that are just outside your reach as your research projects. Keep yourself busy, and you will find that you have become a pretty good researcher during your time as a graduate student!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T04:54:02.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14833" CreationDate="2013-12-27T05:05:00.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, distance learning does not have a huge effect on a PhD. People in your field will know enough to judge you by your work, and many PhD students spend semesters away from their home institutions, or away from their advisors, and they turn out just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worrying part is your bachelor's degree -- in the US, PhD admission is competitive (at least on the top level; I am not sure what the competition is like in the lower-level universities), and the fact that you won't know any of your letter writers personally is already going to hurt you A LOT, as there is no way your letters are going to be as strong as the ones for the students who attended universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that you are an American, so it is possible that distance learning is considered pretty prestigious in your country, and you have some contact with the professors. But if I were you, I would trade the possible prestige that is associated with your distance-learning university, for a lesser university close to home that I can attend in person. You would get better grades, and better letters that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T05:05:00.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T08:13:44.383" Score="10" ViewCount="14169" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should issues about past academic performance be addressed in the Statement of Purpose or a separate letter to the admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had originally posted about my situation here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15067/listing-academic-dismissal-from-phd-in-graduate-application&quot;&gt;Should a dismissal from PhD in graduate application be listed as academic misconduct?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the answers to that question suggested that instead of using my statement of purpose to address academic concerns, I write a separate letter addressing the issue. However, others have suggested that colleges are unlikely to read such materials with the application. I have written a short (500 word) explaining the circumstances under which I received my bad grades and what I have done so this doesn't happen in the future. I have also written a short (500 word) statement of purpose that does not address my academic performance at all. Should I rework my SOP to incorporate the academic issue, and skip the additional letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10260" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T19:18:07.487" Title="Explaining bad grades in application: SOP or separate letter" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14926" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:35:02.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funding from industry is generally going to be tied to the ability for them to leverage it into profit. Funding from non-profits are not always interested in making money, but they ant to be able to leverage it into profit, donations, or press. Generally you need to talk to potential finders about their interests and tailor your research to meet their needs and wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:35:02.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:38:53.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am only familiar with the humanities through my wife. When she reads writing samples for admissions she seems to talk about the quality of the research, organisation, and clarity. She doesn't seem to care about topic so much. It seems many Art Historians change their topic area early on during the PhD process in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:38:53.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14963" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:43:10.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the global field independent level the answer is no. At the national field specific level the answer is often no, but some countries have reasonable systems. In the UK jobs.ac.uk handles many academic jobs, but internships, competitors, and conferences are not particularly related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:43:10.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:46:10.177" Score="10" ViewCount="8170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use a map downloaded from Google maps in my PhD thesis. Does Google allow me to do this? Do I need permission from Google?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T17:32:23.797" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T17:38:21.757" Title="Can I use a Google map in my PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14968" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:46:59.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on the country. In the US, most undergraduate programs offer enough flexibility to take a lot of electives. You can also extend you studies by a semester to pick up additional prerequisite classes. In the UK, there is generally not enough flexibility to take electives and you cannot easily extend your studies. Further, you likely would not have the prerequisite A-level classes to get into a humanities program. It a probably best to go talk to someone in the relevant department at your university for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:46:59.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15003" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:50:25.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rating the quality of a paper is extremely difficult. Journal impact factors tell you little about the quality of individual papers. Citation counts are also misleading since papers that are wrong tend to get lots of citations. There is really no substitute for reading and making your own decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T10:50:25.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15064" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:59:30.980" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fairness is a difficult question to answer. You need to ask fair to who: the publisher, the author, or the students. Publishers provide a number of services (e.g., editing, typesetting, printing, and marketing). It is fair for them to get paid for their efforts. Obviously it is fair for authors to get paid for writing. It is also fair to expect students to pay for high quality learning materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question then becomes what is a fair price to charge students and how much of that should go to the publisher. The fees charged by many publishers depend on the number of copies sold since they have some fixed costs that they need to recoup and some costs that scale with the number of copies sold. If you think the service being offered by the publisher is unfair, you can always self-publish and do the editing and marketing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the selling price, this really depends on the quality of the book relative to other similar books. That said, in my opinion selling your book to students in your class is unethical since the students are already paying for the teaching material indirectly through tuition and fees. I don't think of it as being different from selling lecture slides, notes, and exam keys and in the limit if you just want to make money from your students you could just sell grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T12:46:35.093" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T12:46:35.093" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15110" CreationDate="2013-12-27T11:02:32.830" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google provides you the right to employ a Google Maps map on your thesis. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Permission Guidelines for Google Maps and Google Earth&lt;/a&gt; (first two points of &lt;em&gt;The basics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Using maps in print&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they ask you to provide correct &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines/attr-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attribution&lt;/a&gt; for those pictures. It will be something like “&lt;em&gt;Map data ©20xx Google, Sanborn&lt;/em&gt;”. As they write, you have to find the correct copyright statement on the map you would like to reproduce in your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, it may be possible for you to use  &lt;a href=&quot;http://openstreetmap.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenStreetMap&lt;/a&gt; which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Data material&lt;/a&gt; and has more permissive licensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T17:38:21.757" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T17:38:21.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15118" CreationDate="2013-12-27T11:58:37.460" Score="5" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to pursue PhD with only BE degree and 16+ years of Software Industry experience? I know that most of the institutes expect a Masters degree to pursue PhD.  Do they consider Industry experience to relax this criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, then the big question - Is it worth it to pursue a research/academic career after 16 years in Software Industry?  Has anyone done this? what are your experiences like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9843" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T07:44:48.170" Title="Is it feasible to pursue PhD with BE Degree/16+ years of experience, and is it worth it?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15126" CreationDate="2013-12-27T12:07:29.120" Score="7" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it strange that most US departments have so little transparency in tenure-track jobs searches. In the UK the system is a little cleaner. Jobs are generally announced in one place (jobs.ac.uk) and the interview date is often set in advance. In the US there is no central list of jobs and it is difficult to determine where in the process the search is. Why don't search committees set a date for the short list to be decided at the outset and make it publicly available? Even for searches that move sequentially through the short list inviting candidates one at a time for interviews, could still send out a notification. It seems it would reduce the stress of the search for many applicants and not be too much work for the search committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T21:39:13.293" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T21:39:13.293" Title="Why there is a lack of transparency in US tenure-track job searches?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15116" CreationDate="2013-12-27T14:10:30.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your assumption depends on your location. If you are interested in obtaining a PhD in Computer Science at a school in the US, then in fact many programs do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; expect you to have a Master's degree prior to beginning your doctoral studies. However, if you've been in industry for 16 years, it may be difficult to secure the letters of recommendation required for entry. Certainly letters from employers are accepted, especially in your case, but if they do not show a strong desire and aptitude for research, they will not be worth as much. However, don't let that dissuade you. Apply anyway, if that's what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T21:50:24.547" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T21:50:24.547" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15123" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:46:27.577" Score="8" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the question implies,  I have two main research interests in the natural language processing and computational genomics domains.  While I have a preference for the former,  I am also very interested in the latter.  I ask because I am not sure if it would look like I am too unfocused for a PhD. Many professors seem to have multiple areas of interests,  some of which are not too related, but nonetheless I want to make sure that mentioning multiple interests will not hurt me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastEditorUserId="8022" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T17:15:28.000" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T22:58:52.657" Title="Should one mention multiple, albeit somewhat unrelated research interests?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15117" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:47:32.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math, jobs in the US are announced on mathjobs.org, and you apply centrally through this website as well. Although you don't always get notified on the status of your application, we have a place called &quot;mathjobs wiki&quot;, where people post &quot;rumors&quot; (in reality, since the TT interviews are announced on the department websites, it's not really a rumor) on the status of the job search. I am told that several other disciplines have something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have thought European searches have less transparency; it seems to me that many European (mathematics) departments hire based on who you know, and their jobs are much less advertised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:47:32.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15117" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:01:40.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will tackle the ``Jobs are generally announced in one place (jobs.ac.uk)'' part. As user14449 mentioned in his(her?)(its?) answer some disciplines have society run central job boards. The AMS and MLA are the particularly effective ones from my experience but even they do not attract all the jobs in their fields. Then each state university will post all of its jobs to their own Human Resources job board. But there will never be a centralized site like jobs.ac.uk because the US system is not a single system. many of the colleges and universities are privately run, the rest are run by the state governments, and four run by the military. There is no central authority that can determine how hiring is done beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws. So any such website would have to start off as a third party endeavor. And since the job ads in the Chronicle of Higher Education already service this purpose but do not cover the entire market it is hard to say that there would be promise for any new one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a side note on the scale of the US job market from Wiki there are ``4,495 Title IV-eligible'' colleges and universities. Title IV-eligible means students at those institutions are eligible for federally backed student loans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:01:40.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15125" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:06:01.427" Score="5" ViewCount="917" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many research articles numerical values are used for citing references in the text. I have seen the numbering of such references in pretty weird orders.&#xA;In some texts, the references are sequenced as they are cited in the article. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statement X[1], says that the technique ABC[2] solves the problem by utilizing the Y method[3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in a few, they seem to follow random ordering like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technique X[95,46,38] has been long used for solving the problem&#xA;  discussed in [12]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technique X[56] has been used in [23] to solve Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any standard conventions or best practice for ordering the references ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My field is computer science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T17:37:52.063" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:37:52.063" Title="What should be the order of references in a research text?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15119" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:08:19.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can convey your enthusiasm for the &lt;strong&gt;overlap&lt;/strong&gt; of these two somewhat distinct areas, you will be ahead of the game. A PhD candidate is expected to extend the limit of human knowledge, and one of the better ways to do so is to research within the overlap of two (or more) disciplines. I would tend to see having more than one area of interest as being an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Of course, as your question implies, a multiplicity of interests can backfire by causing a candidate to appear unfocused. Focus on the overlap, and make your application shine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:08:19.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14658" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:10:21.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen learning contracts been suggested for two types of situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) As a motivational tool, to make students realize that there are things that they want to learn to accomplish their career goals. The idea is that once the student realizes that what (s)he is being taught in particular course is important for them, (s)he should be more motivated to make an effort in learning the material because it is really in his/her best interest to do so. In this type of situations, it seems to be that the enforcement is very soft/flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) To ensure fair, non-subjective grading of students in independent studies, research programs and internship programs. Departments undergoing accreditation programs (like ABET) tend to do this because they need to prove/show that there is consistent grading, that the students know what is expected of them, and that they know their grading criteria. These learning contracts are obviously more strictly enforced, but it is up to any individual department implementing this to decide whether they can be modified on-the-go to adjust to unexpected challenges that may arise during the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, it doesn't matter if they are &quot;typically&quot; very strictly enforced or not, because you should not care about the general/average case; you should care about your particular institution and we cannot know what their policy on learning contracts is. Just ask them. I am sure they'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7978" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:10:21.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15122" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:12:58.880" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The order is determined by the standard applied by each journal to their publication. In some cases, references are listed alphabetically in the reference list. In this case, the order of appearance of the numbers in the text may seem random (this is equivalent to your cases 2 and 3). In some cases, references are listed in the order they appear in the text. This yields the first example you provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no right or wrong, there are different standards and which you need to follow is given by the journal in which you aim to publish.If you are concerned with which system to use in a report or your thesis, you should simply check with your department or organization to see which they follow. If there are no guidelines, I would suggest the system you find most commonly used in journals that lie close to your subject but you could essentially select whichever one you want as long as it is consistent and logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:12:58.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15117" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:26:58.467" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several factors at work here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember that there are several thousand colleges and universities in the United States. A central database of such jobs would be significantly harder to publicize and organize.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most universities in the US are private. They are under no such compulsion to post their jobs on any particular web site, unless constrained to do so by the funding sources that are supporting a particular position, or legal requirements to do so. (To my knowledge, there is no such requirement.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The more deadlines and constraints you build into the cycle, the more pressure you put everyone under—applicants, recommendation writers, support staff, and departmental faculty involved in the search.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think there are multiple reasons not to publicize the results of a search, and I think most hiring committees would be reluctant to do so. There could be a better job done of &lt;em&gt;announcing&lt;/em&gt; searches, certainly, and that would make things easier (but again, the places that currently advertise would likely complain about losing their business to a central source!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:26:58.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15080" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:38:44.090" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewing the literature relevant to a given field is a standard part of doing research, as this serves to put your work into the context of the larger discipline in which you are working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is an actual difference between the &quot;literature survey&quot; and the &quot;literature review,&quot; it's that the latter can serve as a paper in and of itself, and is much more extensive than a literature survey, which is typically a major part of the introduction of a research paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The literature review as a standalone article could be compared to a &quot;curated&quot; overview of the literature in the field—who has done what, how do papers relate to one another, and what are the most important present and (possibly) future directions of work in such a field. Such papers can also be considerably longer than a traditional research paper, and some reviews might cite as many as a thousand references!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, the literature survey of a standard research article is usually much shorter (1-2 journal pages), and will not cite nearly as many papers (anywhere from 10 to 100, depending on the topic and the amount of relevant literature available).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:38:44.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15080" CreationDate="2013-12-27T19:45:17.207" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I have written couple of survery/review articles published in prestigious journals &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&amp;amp;queryText=Heterogeneity%20in%20mobile%20cloud%20computing:%20Taxonomy%20and%20open%20challenges&amp;amp;x=12&amp;amp;y=12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=6563280&amp;amp;searchWithin=p_Authors:.QT.Abolfazli,%20S..QT.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804513001975&amp;amp;ei=ace9UtvtMYONrQe9joCYDQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF74joocee4060mK_VbwJLBRztjMQ&amp;amp;sig2=7LLVFBEmWVD8ZyNQZRPl8A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and hence I think I can give you some hint on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First View:&lt;/em&gt; One of the most important things to consider is that, these terms have been used differently in varied academic disciplines and even in some cases they are used interchangeably with negligible differences. Even in CS (my field), the way image processing scholars look at these terms may be different from networking researchers (I once experienced the comments I received from experts in image processing and realize how different they look at the works). So it might not be wrong if consider &lt;em&gt;insignificant differences&lt;/em&gt; between these two terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I describe here may be more applicable to CS.&#xA;There are two different views at these terms that I describe here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically a feasible description around these two terms is that in survey works you should review the published papers and analyze, summarize, organize, and present findings in a novel way that can generate an original view to a certain aspect of the domain. For example, if researchers review the available research findings and conclude that electrical cars are emission-free vehicles, another researcher can review the same results and present an argument that building batteries themselves produce huge emission. The second contribution opens door for new research around emission-free production of car batteries.&#xA;If we consider that survey paper is the result of literature survey, we can use the following definitions from CS journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to the definition of survey paper provided by IEEE Communications Surveys &amp;amp; Tutorials journal (one of the best CS journals), &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The term survey, as applied here, is defined to mean a survey of the literature. A survey article should provide a comprehensive review of developments in a selected area&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In ACM Computing Survey (another prestigious CS journal), survey paper is described as “A paper that summarizes and organizes recent research results in a novel way that integrates and adds understanding to work in the field. A survey article emphasizes the classification of the existing literature, developing a perspective on the area, and evaluating trends.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Elsevier journal of Computer Science Review, you will see here&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-science-review/http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-science-review/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; that “Critical review of the relevant literature“ is required a component of every typical survey paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, these two terms can be distinguished using following notes (or maybe definitions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature Survey:&lt;/strong&gt; Is the process of analyzing, summarizing, organizing, and presenting novel conclusions from the results of technical review of large number of recently published scholarly articles. The results of the literature survey can contribute to the body of knowledge when peer-reviewed and published as survey articles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature Review:&lt;/strong&gt; Is the process of technically and critically reviewing published papers to extract technical and scientific metadata from the presented contents. The metadata are usually used during literature survey to technically compare different but relevant works and draw conclusions on weaknesses and strengths of the works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second View:&lt;/em&gt; The second view over literature survey and review is that in survey, researchers usually utilize the author-provided contents available in the published works to qualitatively analyze and compare them with other related works. While in the former, you should not perform qualitative analysis. Rather it should be quantitative meaning that every research work under study should be implemented and benchmarked under certain criteria. The results of this benchmarking study can be used to compare them together and criticize or appreciate the works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically you can look at current literature and find which approach is dominating in your field. Hope it helps. I try to revise it if I came a cross other points or useful comments here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T19:45:17.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14755" CreationDate="2013-12-27T22:01:47.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues here. The first is the importance of the institute you get your PhD from being a University. This is a non factor as nobody cares about if you get your PhD from a research institute or a university. The second issue is the reputation of the place you get your PhD from. This has some importance, but your supervisor and the quality of the PhD are generally more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T22:01:47.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T22:58:53.547" Score="12" ViewCount="2213" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is simple: If you have a paper that got rejected two or three times (border-line* rejects every time) from top-tier conferences, would you polish it and resubmit it again to similar or another high rank conference or would you try some lower rank venues ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Border-line reject: every time got 2 good reviews and 1 bad review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Every time the paper got vague suggestions like: compare with this or that. And the first and second time we DID in fact address all concerns, but another concern showed up next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.P.S. I am concerned with CS conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10297" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T21:07:27.773" LastActivityDate="2021-03-22T01:51:51.527" Title="Would you submit your paper that got rejected in a top-tier venue to a lower rank conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15132" CreationDate="2013-12-27T23:10:26.067" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not continue submitting the same paper to top-tier conferences after three rejections.  The Universe Has Spoken.  Move On.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of my colleagues do submit such papers to lower-tier conferences, but I usually just send my papers directly to journals after two conference rejections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T23:10:26.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15132" CreationDate="2013-12-27T23:10:27.967" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only so long any paper, whether it be for a conference or for a journal, should be held up in the review process. While it is stuck in review, other people may be able to publish similar (or stronger) results, at which your work loses the &quot;novelty&quot; factor, which will make it less competitive in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a certain point, you have to cut your losses and move on. Where that point of diminishing returns for presenting in a top-tier conference is depends upon your risk tolerance. But I'd much rather get my paper presented or published somewhere within a year in a second-tier conference than wait for two years to present at a top conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T23:10:27.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T02:30:50.507" Score="5" ViewCount="9278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Online PhD application systems usually ask for relation between the recommender and the applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The applicant was in a PhD program and the recommender was a professor in the department. The applicant approached him for some research opportunities at first, and later did some research in one of the recommender's projects, directly mentored by an assistant research professor. There was no formal title of &quot;research adviser&quot; for the recommender to the applicant, or for the research assistant professor to the applicant, as the student was still in the process of finalizing research direction and adviser. The student then didn't finish the PhD, and later applied to PhD programs in other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the relation between the recommender and the applicant be &quot;research adviser&quot; in PhD application? What is best to describe that relation? &#xA;By the way, the recommender was also an instructor to the applicant in some courses. But a relation besides &quot;instructor&quot; was preferred, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="17534" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T16:24:32.710" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T16:24:32.710" Title="Relation between a recommender and a PhD applicant" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T06:45:57.863" Score="131" ViewCount="24079" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was suggested to me by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15064/how-can-i-sell-my-text-book-to-my-students-in-e-book-format&quot;&gt;How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format?&lt;/a&gt; which asked about the practicalities, but attracted many comments about the ethics.  So this question is to ask about the ethics directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have written and published a textbook, and I want to use it as the text for a course I am teaching.  I receive royalties from each copy of my book that is sold, so if my students are required to buy my textbook for the course, I will make some money.  &lt;strong&gt;Is it ethical to do so?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well-reasoned opinions would be useful answers, but even more useful would be pointers to institutional policies, professional codes of ethics, etc, that address this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are many ways to avoid profiting from the sale of my book to my students.  If my contract with my publisher allows it, I could distribute PDFs to my students, or have the university bookstore print out copies and sell them at cost.  Another approach I've heard of is to compute how much I earn in royalties on each copy, and refund that amount from my pocket to each student who buys a copy.  Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.  Certainly these are nice gestures, but I would like opinions on whether they are ethically required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: To address some questions that have arisen in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This question is hypothetical.  I haven't published any textbooks myself and have no immediate plans to do so.  In any case, my personal preference would be to make the book available to students for free, if at all possible.  So I've phrased this question in the first person for rhetorical convenience only.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I had intended the question to be only about the potential financial conflict of interest that could arise if I make money by assigning my own book.  Some of the answers feel that it is improper for me to assign my own textbook at all, whether I make money or not, but I don't think this point of view is prevalent within the academic community.  If it happens that my book (as a pithy but now-deleted comment put it) &quot;blows&quot;, I think most would agree that my decision to assign it is pedagogically unfortunate, but not unethical.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't literally mean that students would be &lt;em&gt;required to buy&lt;/em&gt; the book, only that they'd be expected to have it.  I might assign readings or homework problems from the book, so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them, but they could certainly achieve this by getting a used copy or borrowing from a friend.  But probably most students would buy new copies anyway, since that is the most convenient way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2017-09-26T19:37:42.017" Title="Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15135" CreationDate="2013-12-28T06:57:53.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may consider two roles for the students in previous institute; one as a PhD student looking for topic and the other is a short-term research collaborator. As the recommender was not engaged in your PhD job, he cannot be PhD advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since the recommender was primary investigator (or head) of the project student worked in, the relationship is &lt;strong&gt;research collaborator&lt;/strong&gt; or more focused, &lt;strong&gt;primary investigator in a collaborative research&lt;/strong&gt;. Your output of the collaborative research with him as technical report, conference paper, or journal article would prove the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think student needs to convince the new graduate school that why did he fail/dismiss previous PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T06:57:53.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15116" CreationDate="2013-12-28T07:44:48.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, even in the US, the situation apply to specific subjects of study. I would suggest you do a masters degree because it will help you and open up your ability to do a wider range of research. If the PhD subject your want to study has a coursework before research then the best way go about it is to do a masters degree because in most PhD coursework exams, you're required to know most of the things done at undergraduate and masters level. The best thing about doing a masters before doing a PhD is that studying masters degree takes only one year in most universities around the world. You can manage one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T07:44:48.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T08:03:22.227" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;This comes down to potentially conflicting principles.  Academic freedom requires that professors should be able to choose the most appropriate references for their courses, and of course the professor's own book will often be a perfect fit for the course that inspired it.  On the other hand, it's important to avoid even the appearance of assigning one's own book in order to make a profit: that would be offensive at any university, and often illegal at public universities (violating conflict of interest laws for government employees).  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaup.org/report/professors-assigning-their-own-texts-students&quot;&gt;American Association of University Professors statement&lt;/a&gt; on this subject elaborates on both of these issues, but doesn't find a good way of resolving the tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University policies are often more specific.  In many cases assigning one's own book either requires administrative permission or giving any royalties earned to the university.  See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~natalieb/textbooks2.htm&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; for a survey of the policies at eighteen public universities in the U.S.  My impression is that private universities are more likely to be flexible about this issue, but that's not based on a lot of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I doubt anyone cares very much unless the textbook is particularly expensive or the class is large, but in those cases I would strongly recommend donating the royalties to the department even if it is not required.  After all, you're then no worse off than you would have been if you had assigned someone else's book.  If you're not willing to do this, then it suggests that the royalties are attractive after all and may have played some role in the choice of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One special case is when you have self-published the book (or own the publishing company).  That looks terrible, because there you have full control over pricing and may be earning far more than typical royalties.  This is one of the few cases where I believe a strict rule is appropriate: if you are legally authorized to offer free or at-cost copies of your book to your students, then you should do so.  Anything less is clearly taking advantage of your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T20:22:37.790" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T20:22:37.790" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T08:20:32.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many top-tier universities, many professors use their own textbooks. This is not only because they are familiar with what they have written, but also because they are the most-respected researchers in their field. In my experience, no one has objected to this, and in fact, most students are excited to take a course from the author of the most famous book in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since others have already commented on the university policy, I want to offer my own personal view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I see why you can't use your own textbook. For undergraduate curriculum (and even the beginning-years of graduate school), most things that are covered are standard, and any textbook should be able to cover these topics. As an added bonus, YOU wrote the book, and it will very closely follow what you will cover in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is often helpful to have read that book that serves as &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; reference in the field, so unless you have a good reason for wanting to substitute your own textbook, I think that sticking to the standard textbook is a good idea. And hopefully, no ulterior motives (especially in the financial sense) are involved in the decision-making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, many professors who choose to use their own textbooks are able to distribute either the preprints of their textbooks, or they photocopy certain sections of their books and distribute them to the students for free. Especially if the textbook is required in doing the homework etc, they have always made the portions that are absolutely necessary for the work freely available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had not thought very hard about this back then, but this is possibly their way of coping with this question of ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T08:20:32.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15135" CreationDate="2013-12-28T08:22:44.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems fairly clear to me that this person is a &quot;colleague&quot; to you. The terms &quot;supervisor/advisor&quot; are reserved for the person who supervises your PhD thesis, for which you do not qualify for. Everyone else can be labeled as a colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend that you do NOT label him as a research supervisor, as the letters from your supervisor tend to get read more closely than your other letters; you are confusing the hiring committee (and lowering your chances of getting hired) by labeling him as your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T08:22:44.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14755" CreationDate="2013-12-28T08:31:36.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your PhD will be worth exactly as much as the PhDs obtained from other universities. In fact, research institutes have many excellent professors, and they are probably better in terms of the quality of the faculty than many second-tier universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you will have one serious flaw in your postdoctoral applications; namely, you will have zero teaching experience. Unless you are one of the best in your graduating year, teaching experience is absolutely necessary, and in the US, you need a letter of recommendation addressing your teaching. So in that regard, your prospects are not so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just write a great thesis, and you will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T08:31:36.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15135" CreationDate="2013-12-28T08:59:56.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a certain level of hairsplitting here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PhD advisor&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;thesis advisor&lt;/strong&gt; should definitely be reserved for the person advising a student completing her thesis research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;research supervisor&lt;/strong&gt; can be much broader in scope. For instance, someone performing a bachelor's or master's thesis needs a supervisor, as well as students doing summer research projects within your research group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the important thing is to make clear &lt;strong&gt;in the letter&lt;/strong&gt; the exact relationship between the referee and the applicant. Then no confusion is likely to ensue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T08:59:56.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2013-12-28T09:02:10.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dilemma here is more of what you feel in class than what your life should entail. I'm going to sound vague but I beg that you pick points from it. First, about feeling incapable, you should never let anything or anyone make you feel inferior. You have a life and your academia should not dictate much of it. The people you've met and those who you will meet will be in touch with you because they like you personality and not your PhD. As for your supervisor, lecturer etc, they are doing their work and you are liable to their happiness or disappointment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job Market&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that you're looking at the job market while making the decisions about what you want to do; on this, kindly know that the job market is ever changing and you should therefore do what you like. The labor market may require specialist in political economy now and by the time you complete your PhD, the political economy labor market becomes saturated and less rewarding. Doing what you like has an advantage in that you can always do something with it no matter the situation in the labor market. There is this discussion among HRs that always sound vague and shallow but it is important. It is about the zeroth and first degree. These two degrees are more important than the rest (other degrees). You will most likely get a job based on your first degree (undergraduate degree) than with the PhD or Masters degree. Just in case you intend to be a lecturer in political economy, the question is; What do you intend to lecture yet you lack most of the foundation around the subject of political economy. Most foundation are found in undergraduate level. I suggest you do a PhD that will built up to what you did in undergraduate and masters level. The lack of foundation is what is making PhD more harder for you but remember that there is no easy subject in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Money&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand how you feel after spending your time and money for this long. You're young (Only 29 years. Sorry if I sound rude) and can still start a new. I suggest that instead wasting time and money on a subject, that makes you loose what you've built for the last 29 years, you should change to a PhD that relates or is more relevant to your undergraduate and masters degrees. You will learn to love the other subject with time (Example: individual's ambitions and targets change over time after interacting with several things i.e you may find that at 10 years, you wanted to be a doctor but at 18 years you want to be an engineer). Don't base most of your decision on the money because you will end up missing the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are better place for the future by studying a PhD that is more related to your undergraduate and masters degree than by studying other PhD subjects. The future is about specialization and not diversity.&#xA;I can give so many reasons but think this is enough for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T09:02:10.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15041" CreationDate="2013-12-28T09:27:22.953" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a little more detail about timing of math postdocs offers, since that seems to be a particular focus of this question.  What I'll describe applies only to research-oriented postdoctoral positions offered by mathematics departments in the U.S.  Tenure-track jobs and anything teaching-focused are on a somewhat different schedule, and positions outside the U.S. may be totally different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is synchronized by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/deadline-coordination/deadline-coordination&quot;&gt;AMS common deadline&lt;/a&gt;, because most or all of the top candidates (depending on how strict your definition of &quot;top&quot; is) will have accepted offers by then.  In particular, just about every position will have been offered to someone by then, but many of those offers will be turned down.  Most departments will not set an earlier deadline than the AMS deadline, but they nevertheless encourage earlier decisions if possible.  When a position is turned down, a competent department will try to make another offer as quickly as they can.  Who gets the next offer depends not just on relative rankings of candidates, but also on factors such as research specialty and game-theoretic issues such as perceived likelihood of accepting the offer.  Administrative dysfunction may limit how quickly offers can be made, but it's not uncommon for a department to go through several rounds of offers in January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, it seems to work out more or less as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few people get offers in December, but this is rather unusual.  You shouldn't worry at all if you have no offers as of January 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people perceived as top candidates generally start to get offers in early January.  If you make it a couple of weeks into January with no offers, then you probably aren't going to end up getting tons of offers, but you shouldn't feel discouraged.  All you need is one offer you're happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As January progresses, more and more offers are made.  Quite a few candidates, but certainly not all, will get an offer in the second half of January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do get an offer, you should immediately do two things.  First, you should withdraw any applications to (or turn down offers from) places you are no longer interested in, so they don't waste time and so you don't tie up offers someone else is waiting for.  It's reasonable to hold onto several offers at once if you genuinely can't decide between them, but you do this only when truly necessary.  Second, you should write to any departments you would prefer to your current offers to let them know about your upcoming deadline.  The competition may increase their interest in you, and in any case they need to know they'll miss their chance at you if they don't move fast enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't yet received an offer, the second half of January is a good time to make inquiries.  You can do this yourself, but it's sometimes better if your advisor looks into it.  (All you can do is express interest, but your advisor can put in a good word for you and try to find out how things are going through back channels.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the AMS deadline approaches, there's a flurry of activity.  Many offers are turned down or accepted around then, and departments are eager to get their favorite candidates before they accept another job, so there's a lot of turn-over for offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make it past the first week in February without an offer, it's a bad sign.  It's certainly not a disaster, and plenty of strong mathematicians have gotten offers later than that.  However, this is the point at which you need to start taking action, with your advisor's help.  You need to figure out which positions are still open, and make sure they are aware that you are still interested.  It's really useful if your advisor can work his/her contacts to help figure out what might still be a possibility and to make sure you don't fall through the cracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more times passes, the more you need to actively search for a job, rather than just waiting to see what happens.  If you hit March, then you're in trouble.  You can still find a job then, but you need to be open to possibilities you weren't originally hoping for.  For example, there are often late job postings for unpredictable openings, such as a temporary replacement for someone on sabbatical or leave.  In March, you should be applying for every new opening you would be willing to take (and you should have a backup plan for what happens if you don't get a job at all, to help you decide where to draw the line).  This is also a good time to review options with your advisor.  Could you delay graduation for a year, or spend the next year as a lecturer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean for this to sound discouraging.  It's certainly possible to get a job quite late in the season, and you might even get lucky and find a really good job.  However, I think it's worth having an overview of what the plausible outcomes are at each stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: If you are hoping for a research-oriented postdoc in math, don't worry until late January, worry somewhat in February, and worry a lot in March (but don't panic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T09:27:22.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15098" CreationDate="2013-12-28T09:54:58.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if your professor explicitly lists you as a reviewer or sub-reviewer with the program committee of the conference/journal; no if your review is then edited by your professor before submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10305" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T09:54:58.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T11:18:47.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question but it involves much more than just ethics and financial considerations. It is also a matter of tradition &lt;em&gt;versus&lt;/em&gt; more modern thinking about free material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a custom &quot;book&quot; (not to be published anytime soon) for a new course since no existing book will fit. It will be free of charge, as developmental material, until it becomes published (which will happen if I think it is any good in the end). My old advisor used his lecture notes developed over years to produce a commercial book that can be used by many but is tailored to his (in this case) course. To write materials for your own course or on your research field is quite natural. For obvious reasons such books will suit their purpose best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think many would dream of having tailored reading materials in their courses; few have the opportunity to spend the time writing it. In many, if not most, university systems no-one will pay you for writing it so it will be done on your free time. Such books benefit the students by covering more or less exactly what the course is about. As teachers, we have probably been involved in (endless) discussions about the pros and cons of books: &quot;this covers this material, that book covers that, but not none is perfect. So which one to chose.&quot;. The small amount of royalty from own students is not enough to make anyone rich. From this perspective, and assuming the book (and the course) is any good, I think making the issue a matter of ethics is petty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice is obviously to provide a book material as, for example, free pdf material or try to have it printed (which is expensive) as a regular book or as print on demand. If one want others to use the material, publishing a book puts the material &quot;on the map&quot;. A book also carries with it prestige, not only for the author but for the department and the university. It may also signal to the student that the teacher is a &quot;name&quot; in the field. So there are many reasons for choosing a book but not many will first look at it as a source for revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, I cannot see anything wrong with using a book and receiving royalty as long as the book is good, the course is good, so that the students get the best opportunity to learn the material the course should provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T11:18:47.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T12:21:34.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I feel that it's ethical if you can, honestly and impartially, say that it is the best book to teach the material, and the price you are charging is reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are charging a finished-book price for a draft riddled with typos and errors, then it is definitely not ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T12:21:34.287" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14755" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:22:46.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any job where a PhD is actually necessary, it is the quality of your work that is important (it is you that they want to hire, not your supervisor or institution! ;o).  In particular, if you have good papers published in top journals, that ought to count for a lot more than the university where you study, as it is likely your ability to produce top quality journal papers for which you will be hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T13:22:46.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:24:49.307" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One arrangement with the publisher of my two &quot;text&quot;-books was that the price be reduced by the amount of the otherwise-royalty for any books sold through the university bookstore, so that, in effect, I was not collecting royalties from students at this university (whether or not I was the instructor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is making printouts from PDFs available at-cost to students at this university, which is what my contract with the publisher specifically allowed in one case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T13:24:49.307" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:38:46.157" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an example of what's done in other countries, in many German universities, professors publish their lecture notes in printed form for the students to purchase. While the students pay for these notes, the profits do not go to the professor, but to the research group of the instructor. This money can then be used for various purposes, including paying for undergraduate tutors who assist students in learning the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is a reasonable compromise: nobody personally profits, yet the purchasing of the notes does actually leads to community benefits (in the sense that the money is used to help support students at the university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T13:38:46.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:54:47.537" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not only completely ethical but should be mandatory. Your ultimate goal is to pass on your knowledge to your students, and what better way to do that than by using the textbook you wrote just for that specific purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must have been a reason why you wrote it in the first place - something was missing, or was glossed over, or poorly explained so you decided that you can contribute something to create a better product for students to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student benefits twice as much since if there are questions or something isn't clear, bamm, here is the author in front of them to clarify some point. You also get valuable feedback so that your next edition will be of even greater use to the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearup: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would only be unethical if the professor asks the students to buy directly from them , or force the student to purchase from a specific website using an affiliate code. As long as the student is given freedom of choice as to where the textbook is purchased new or used, it would be ethical to force students to buy a textbook written by the professor teaching the class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would only be unethical for a professor who strongly believes in some derivative of the teachings of Socialism. If the walls in the professor's office are adored with autographed photos of every former member of the politburo or they spend half the class defending the economic theories of Karl Marx (even though the subject they teach is Chemistry), then it would be unethical for them to charge their students for a textbook while preaching the spirit of camaraderie and international brotherhood of the proletariat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise its perfectly ethical for a professor to profit from a textbook they created for the benefit of both the professor and the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10308" LastEditorUserId="10308" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T01:36:38.437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T01:36:38.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T14:43:46.140" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run across this problem from the student side several times (and I was a college student in the prehistoric 1970s).  Profit motive aside, I generally observed that professors who used someone else's book were more likely to comment on weaknesses in the text and alternative proofs or derivations.  It's one of those internal bias things, in that no matter how good a teacher and writer you are, you're going to be unlikely to recognize defects in your own work or style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my recommendation would be to make your book available but make sure to have at least one other text incorporated into the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10309" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T14:43:46.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:43:29.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the dark ages when I was in school, several professors used lecture notes that they sold to students for the cost of duplication. I'm guessing it would be difficult to get the publisher to supply them to the bookstore at a price without royalties, so I think your idea of pizza for the class is a good way to remove the appearance of a conflict of interest. You could also offer an &quot;error bounty&quot; to students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10313" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:43:29.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15161" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:56:52.063" Score="8" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a month ago, when the deadlines for applying for postdoc positions at math at the US were approaching, I applied for several research universities via mathjobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the time that passed since, I made a new discovery, and am now in the last stages of writing a paper about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, once the paper will be uploaded to the arXiv, my application will be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for that to happen, I must update my c.v and my publication list, to include the new paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this in mathjobs, I will need to &quot;reapply&quot;. Given that deadlines passed, will this be a good idea? Can reapplying now with my new c.v and my new publication list harm my application because of deadline issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9656" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:34:12.863" Title="I wrote a new paper. Should I reapply for a postdoc at mathjobs?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14658" CreationDate="2013-12-28T17:24:15.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Started to think on our concept of &quot;learning plan&quot;, which sounds bit light-weight version of the learning contract of the original question(?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Commonality:&lt;/em&gt; In our universities everyone has the opportunity &amp;amp; obligation to do a (short) personal study plan (and this applies to all student levels). One example  here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helsinki.fi/socialsciences/studying/new/HOPS.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.helsinki.fi/socialsciences/studying/new/HOPS.html&lt;/a&gt; . Each university/department/professor might had some small differences of the content, but basically it was a self-made &quot;project plan&quot; for year(s)/goal ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Obligation &amp;amp; Adherence&lt;/em&gt;: &#xA;Personally, I think making the plan was really useful as it helped to outline the schedule and requirements, and helped to think how to get all done. However, main drive was assumed to come from student herself - the desire to advance in timely manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Enforce&lt;/em&gt;: (?) One enforcer is/was to obtain a certain minimum quantity of credits that had to be done per year to get the student benefits. Anyhow, I think our system relies mostly on the students' personal drive. It's relatively hard to get to desired faculty, so most of those who get in won't waste the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyhow it's bit tricky - one can has &quot;perfect&quot; study plan, but still studying can get stuck, for one reason or another...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10314" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T17:24:15.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15159" CreationDate="2013-12-28T18:04:10.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, &quot;reapply&quot; is merely a technical term in mathjobs and this should cause no problems.  See, for example, the statement &quot;Update (re-apply) applications as many times as you like, or whenever you have new info to add&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjobs.org/help/mathjobs/misc/flow.html&quot;&gt;MathJobs Workflow &amp;amp; Features&lt;/a&gt;.  I don't know why mathjobs uses the term &quot;reapply,&quot; which certainly has the potential to cause confusion.  I can't guarantee that nobody will hold it against you, but I'd be very surprised if anyone did (and I think it would be a big mistake on their part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updating your application may not be enough if it has already been read.  I'd recommend also e-mailing key people you would like to work with to let them know about your new paper once it is on the arXiv.  Of course you shouldn't spam large numbers of people, but sending out an announcement is perfectly appropriate if you restrict it to people who would genuinely like to hear about the paper for mathematical reasons, and not just as an advertisement for hiring you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T18:04:10.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T18:43:49.830" Score="25" ViewCount="2761" Body="&lt;p&gt;So we are all fans of some professor at some stage of academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I see one in an upcoming conference/workshop, &lt;strong&gt;should I ask them to sign a paper that they wrote as it's also one of my favorite papers?&lt;/strong&gt; (I'm sure I'm not the only one who brings a paper that someone else wrote when I know they will come for the conference/workshop).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How would you respond if you were the Prof asked to sign the paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has anyone done the same before?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5809" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-04-17T12:20:39.057" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T05:59:10.887" Title="Asking a celebrity Prof to sign a paper they wrote?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15162" CreationDate="2013-12-28T18:51:02.283" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just ask! In the past, before electronic publishing, one had to ask for physical reprints from authors. They usually signed them with a nice greeting, sometimes a signature, and occasionally nothing. I have sent reprints to other upon request and always with a signed greeting because I appreciate the request. I have a hard time seeing anyone being offended by it although an eyebrow may be raised by the request since it is now quite unusual. But it is a good way to strike up a conversation and contact the person. Personally I would try to approach the person away from an &quot;audience&quot; in order to not interrupt and have a real chance to state why you admire the work (person). I am sure some might say no but I would not be offended if someone asked me, not that I see it happening to me any-time soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T17:31:10.720" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T17:31:10.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15119" CreationDate="2013-12-28T19:26:47.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on you, the professor and when and how you communicate, .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mention Both&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Better mention both than fear. Until you handle the fear to stand for both interests it will not go away. When you are clear about what you fear you may know the answer already.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Showing that you have a broad interest means that you are open to change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may get angry at yourself for not having mentioned the other interest. Especially because professors know other professors to redirect to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; you can make sure that it is clearly understood that you have two interest. Such as by choosing a headline for each. The professor may then choose what to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; to the professor you get responses what (s)he likes most. Then you can focus on that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mention One&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When there is not enough time for both topics it could be bad to mention both. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning both can mean that the professor does not choose you because (s)he only takes in people with one interest who can be put under more presure because they can not choose to go somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes professors are really proud of themselves because nobody ever tells them they are wrong. You may have to adjust what you say so they do not fear your intelligence in a field they do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from a computer science background. There may be different cultural influences in other professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastEditorUserId="10319" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T20:08:57.483" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T20:08:57.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16140" CreationDate="2013-12-28T19:42:40.390" Score="-1" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently designing tests for people working in technology support. I am the current subject matter expert (SME) in my group for these topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exam is essentially open-book multiple choice, 25 questions. I'm trying to design it so that they are instructed as they take the test, as they will have to take it multiple times if they do not pass the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have documentation, in fact I've written much of it, even if it does not get the attention it should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to ensure I cover all bases for my questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I write the exam, I am finding I want to ask questions about issues I have not yet documented, so I'll need to add those things to the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best advice we have for constructing these sorts of exams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T14:35:49.210" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T14:56:35.297" Title="Designing Tests for Industry" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T19:57:08.143" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers so far have one or both of the following problems: (1) they ignore the existence of the internet, and (2) they seem to assume that profiting from the book goes hand in hand with assigning the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, there is a very simple and obvious solution for any professor in this situation with a shred of ethical fiber. The professor writes the book on a computer. Therefore the book is on a computer in machine-readable form and can be distributed electronically to the professor's own students, for free. There is no excuse for not doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the professor starts by writing lecture notes and distributing to the students. As time goes on, the lecture notes start looking like a book. At this point the professor has various options, some of which are: (a) simply continue to use the book internally; (b) make the book publicly available in digital form only, for free; (c) look for a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case c, the publisher is going to sink a certain amount of money into the book. For example, they may need to pay a professional illustrator, and they will certainly do some editorial work. The publisher will also ask for an exclusive contract. In the negotiations leading up to signing a contract, it's the professor's responsibility to negotiate something that allows the book to be distributed to the professor's own students free of charge. Often publishers will allow this, but they will only allow it on the version of the ms that was purely the professor's work. In fact, the publisher may have paid photo services to use stock photos, which are licensed under conditions that require the service to be paid a certain royalty per copy. The end result of this scenario is then typically that the professor continues to distribute a bare-bones version for free (possibly just to the professor's own students, possibly to the world at large).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of real-world examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carroll, Lecture Notes on General Relativity. His bare-bones version is publicly available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March01/Carroll3/Carroll_contents.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March01/Carroll3/Carroll_contents.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steane, Relativity Made Relatively Easy. His bare-bones version is available on a public university server, but is not linked to from his faculty web page. Presumably he tells his students the URL.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher is motivated only by profit. Some publishers may refuse to negotiate this kind of deal; the ethical author then has to look for another publisher. The publisher wants to make sure the book earns out their investment in it, and one way they have of doing that is to make sure there will be some significant number of sales at the author's institution. The author has to say, &quot;OK, but for ethical reasons we still need to give my students the free digital option.&quot; Finally, the publisher will want to price the book at the price that exactly optimizes their profits. This price will typically be extremely exploitative, e.g., $150 for a book used for one semester, or $200 for a book used in a multi-semester sequence. The author may or may not have any say in pricing. (JeffE's comment indicates that it can be negotiated in some cases.) The publisher's nefarious calculation of the optimally profitable price is predicated on the assumption that they can force the students to pay that price. Any competing option (used books, a free bare-bones version, ...) reduces the probability that a given student will pay the suggested retail price. Again, the author has to push back, and say, &quot;Yes, I know it may cut into profits a little, but for ethical reasons I need to make the bare-bones available for free, at least to my own students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T16:36:38.160" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T16:36:38.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T21:27:06.970" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unethical&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is unethical to profit by having students buy your textbook because you're their lecturer and they expect you to inform them and provide them with some useful resources for learning. The students also usually get a bad feeling when you keep recommending your book unless it was vote one of the best to use in tackling the given subject. I don't know/understand how you may be able to provide other books to your students at no cost while you provide your book at a cost. It looks fishy. If you feel that you can't give each student a copy of the book then you can recommend the university to buy the books so as to restock the library or you can offer your own copy or a single donated copy strictly for class use. This depends on the number of students you're dealing with and how often they have to use the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethical&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a case where you had published the book before meeting the students, you're allowed to sell the book to them at the market price or you may subsidize it for your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Logic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its always difficult to teach using your book especially when you reach a point where there are few discrepancy from other books. In the process of defending your ideas from the book, you may end up being seen as superior, dictator, rigid etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T21:27:06.970" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-12-28T21:27:06.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2013-12-28T22:28:59.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is only unethical to force your students to buy your text if you believe your text to be suboptimal, subpar, and inferior quality to other textbooks that are available.  In short, if you look at your text and say &quot;well, we really should use &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; one&quot;, then yes it is unethical to force your students to buy what you believe to be an inferior learning tool, just because you wrote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however, you think your text is the bee's knees, it is the shiznet, and you are the best author and authority to ever cover the subject, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;then it would be unethical not to use your text.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  You can't go around giving free copies, that is cheating the publisher.  And why in hell else did you write it, if not to be used by precisely your students for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; class?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T22:28:59.130" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15119" CreationDate="2013-12-28T22:58:52.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your PhD should be somewhat focused, but before that, you're not in general supposed to have real scientific results. I would surely mention both, unless you feel that one of them is significantly unsignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you managed to have multiple results as a master student, that makes you a very good candidate for a PhD, because not many people have that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T22:58:52.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15182" CreationDate="2013-12-29T03:37:38.703" Score="43" ViewCount="3107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be a postdoc in the coming academic year. While I have not decided on where I will be in September, it seems likely that I will be a research postdoc at a decent research university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aspect of a life as a postdoc that I had never considered before is the following: what is your social life outside of academia like as a postdoc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student, I had a very tight group of friends; we were friends from day 1 in graduate school, and that friendship continued throughout. Our friendship strengthened by going through many difficult classes together, staying up all night finishing homework, and studying for quals together, not to mention talking about how much it blows to be a PhD student, and worrying about the job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that I will not have this privilege as a postdoc. We are all there to do our jobs (i.e. research), and I do not see building the same kind of camaraderie amongst the newly-hired postdocs, for these reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are no excuses to spend a ton of time with one another (no homework, no quals to study for, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we will likely have different research areas, and possibly have nothing in common to talk about in terms of academics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are way fewer postdocs than there are graduate students. I would be lucky to have maybe three or four other postdocs hired with me by my department. Maybe we would get along, maybe we would not. I do not have the luxury of choosing the people that I like anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at least some postdocs must have family. I have found that married people are less likely to yearn for a close friendship. This narrows down the possibilities for friends even more (not that I would discriminate against married people, but they often dissociate themselves from, say, a late-night out of fun).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to hear from the people who hold (or held) research postdoc positions from PhD granting institutions. I feel that teaching postdocs would give different answers, as you would meet more often to discuss teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T21:13:00.737" Title="How to have a fulfilling social life as an academic" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14964" CreationDate="2013-12-29T04:02:38.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that multiple postdoc positions are harder on yourself than the others. Most people fully understand that a lot of the tenure-track selection that goes on can be somewhat random, and that the job market fluctuates. So I think that simply by being unlucky, you can get stuck with many postdoc positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my experience is that most people who go through multiple postdocs eventually get tired of the itinerant lifestyle of an academic. CS postdocs have enormous earning potential, and at some point, they get sick of it, and accept an industry-level job (higher pay, living in a great city, the settled-down grownup lifestyle, etc.) I mean, can you imagine being a postdoc for ten years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T04:02:38.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-29T06:09:40.153" Score="4" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple question, if there is few data points that allow concrete hypothesis (ancient history has many), should the information always be accompanied by some sort of disclaimer? A example would be you often hear descriptions of early nomadic tribes based upon generalizations given by a conquering foe only, very little if any from the nomads themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10345" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T07:10:00.330" Title="Should historical data be considered ambigious if not proven as fact?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15179" CreationDate="2013-12-29T07:10:00.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any time you have a single source for information (generalizations given by a conquering foe), there is no other supporting evidence, and there are no counter-examples, then yes, it should be accompanied with disclaimers since the data is actually quite weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be like saying &quot;John Smith reported the sky turned red just before the earthquake.&quot; This is far better than saying &quot;The sky turned red just before the earthquake.&quot; The latter implies that there are multiple independent sources for the information where, indeed, there might only be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T07:10:00.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15175" CreationDate="2013-12-29T08:07:00.537" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My limited experience of postdoc life is that there can be plenty of camaraderie; it just depends. I certainly hung out with the other postdocs, got invited to their homes, met their families, at least to a limited extent. So, yes, there is some bonding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways it is not that different from grad student life. While a postdoc is more like a regular job, and I think everyone likes the fact that you are not as dirt poor as a grad student, you also spend time commiserating with each other about the crappiness of the job and worrying about the job market. Depending on who you are working for, you may also spend time complaining about the boss (or bosses). Since postdocs on average last a shorter time, one is liable to see people come and go even more frequently than in grad school, which does make it more difficult to have longer term friendships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all this, it is probably a good idea to find other people besides those you work with to hang out with. This is true of any job, of course. One suggestion - go dancing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T08:07:00.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15175" CreationDate="2013-12-29T09:19:38.527" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;special&lt;/em&gt; thing for you coming out of (what seems) a pretty demanding grad school time is that being a postdoc is not so special at all. In most ways, being a postdoc is not unlike any other time-demanding job. You come to work in the morning, spend most of your day there, and, in the evening (whenever that is, time-wise), you will more often than not go back to your home and stay there to relax a bit. You bond with your co-workers, but usually more in an &quot;acquaintance&quot; than in a &quot;friends-for-life&quot; way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it seems to me that you are thinking that you can only hang out with people on your academic &quot;level&quot;. This has never been my personal experience at all. In all my work places, grad students often hang out privately with the postdocs that they work with, and many of the younger faculty staff often join in for ad-hoc parties as well. I guess it is all a question of how you want to appear towards your junior work mates. There are people that see fit to construct an image of aloofness towards their students, and others like to mingle. Nothing wrong with either, of course, as long as your work relationship stays reasonably professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T09:19:38.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11608" CreationDate="2013-12-29T10:39:24.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for late response but was busy with grades and research activities.  Colorado Technical University has always had the dissertation option however they had the four paper option as well.  The four paper option has been phased out completely.  The dissertations can be found on the IEEE Digital Library and through the institution's library.  Also the 12 research and writing courses are the dissertation courses for the three year period.  If you view the catalog and do a search on dissertation the word comes up a 144 times.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://catalog.careered.com/~/media/Catalogs/ctu_6/course_catalog.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://catalog.careered.com/~/media/Catalogs/ctu_6/course_catalog.pdf&lt;/a&gt; On pg 36 where you will see the following for the Doctor of Computer Science degree plan and description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graduation Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;  In addition to the successful completion of&#xA;  the above 96 credits with an acceptable GPA, students must also&#xA;  satisfactorily complete and defend their research proposal and final&#xA;  dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the program and degree is relatively small it is easy to come to conclusions.  It should be noted that the college has the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation and is a National Security Agency (NSA) &amp;amp; Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program (CAE/IAE). Additionally, the most similar degree would be the Doctor of Science (D.Sc. or Sc.D.) which very few institutions have. I hope this assist and thanks for checking as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See ABET accreditation at &lt;a href=&quot;http://main.abet.org/aps/AccreditedProgramsDetails.aspx?OrganizationID=192&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://main.abet.org/aps/AccreditedProgramsDetails.aspx?OrganizationID=192&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Mo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10351" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T10:39:24.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15188" CreationDate="2013-12-29T10:58:35.353" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a term paper on the subject of minimum spanning trees algorithms,&#xA;I need to cite &quot;Shortest connection networks and some generalization&quot; paper for the prim's algorithm made by Prim, after searching I found a manuscript of the paper.&#xA;My question is, can I cite the paper? is this allowed in the citing formats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10350" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T15:11:20.053" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:48:41.210" Title="Can I cite a manuscript in term paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-29T14:53:03.507" Score="5" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started reading papers about speech recognition and algorithms on medium sized graphs (~800,000 nodes and 4,400,000 edges with some connected text data). I think a problem of these papers is quite often, that it is difficult to check the experimental results. It is difficult to check them because of two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The source code that was used to generate the results is not (publicly) available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The data is either not at all available or it is not clear which version of the data was used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I start writing papers, I would like to make it easier to check the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem is easy to solve: I can simply provide the source code (e.g. on GitHub or my personal web space).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem seems to be much harder to solve. The data is often quite big (speech recognition: several GB; graphs: about 2GB). This is too much to upload it on my personal webspace / GitHub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I show which data I'm using in my paper? (Currently I give a link to the data source and note the data when I've downloaded it. Additionally, I note the date/version of the source if possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there projects that try to solve this issue? (e.g. by providing space for important / interesting projects like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblp.uni-trier.de/&quot;&gt;dblp&lt;/a&gt;, a version history and good download speeds)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T16:07:57.683" Title="How can I show which data I'm using in my paper?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15185" CreationDate="2013-12-29T15:15:16.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the problems you state are significant, and (I think) very problematic to the further progression of computer science as an actual science. I work in services / software engineering, and quite honestly, reproducibility of results is very, very bad in my work as well as in the work of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will comment on both of your issues, starting with the second one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data is either not at all available or it is not clear which version of the data was used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, this is actually the easier-to-solve issue. I would assume your department has IT resources (e.g., a department web space) that you can use for such purposes. Additionally, there are other, more field-specific, repositories that you can upload data to (for instance, there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCI machine learning data set repository&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gwa.ewi.tudelft.nl/pmwiki/pmwiki.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grid workload traces archive&lt;/a&gt;). Making data available to the public is really only an issue if you are not allowed to do so because of commercial interests of your data provider. For instance, I have access to real traces of executions of business processes of a big german logistics provider, which I am not allowed to give out. This clearly limits the usefulness of these traces to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The source code that was used to generate the results is not (publicly) available&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is sort of tricky in practice. Clearly, throwing your code to Github is easy, but this hardly solves the issue of reproducibility. You will still need to include pretty detailed usage instructions and documentation to make this code of any use to another researcher. This may seem trivial for a naive 1000 Lines-of-Code implementation of an algorithm, but, for instance, my current research prototype approaches 25.000 lines of Java code plus a bit of XML and Groovy. Just putting this up on a repository is not enough, if we consider that &lt;strong&gt;a paper can only be considered reproducible if it is possible to do so in reasonable time&lt;/strong&gt;. An additional problem in my field is that often prototypes are built for a specific execution environment. For instance, my department has a small &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstack.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenStack&lt;/a&gt; based private cloud, and many demonstrators that our students build realistically only run in this environment without drastic modifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the transition between a postdoc and a more independent research position, and one of my personal goals is to make all work that I and my students publish easier to reproduce. However, so far we are only making baby steps, but at least we are trying :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T15:15:16.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15184" CreationDate="2013-12-29T15:54:31.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can cite unpublished manuscripts; this is regularly done in academia. However, the important issue is that you must appropriately indicate that it is an unpublished manuscript, and cite (if possible) where the manuscript was found. This will allow for due consideration of the work in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T15:54:31.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15185" CreationDate="2013-12-29T16:07:57.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently (at least) two platforms have appeared which offer web space for sharing scientific data. They provide Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for uploaded datasets which can be used to refer to the data easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the more prominent option. All data is shared under CC0 license. There is a 1 GB limit for private data and no limit for public data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://zenodo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zenodo&lt;/a&gt; is part of a European research project. You can specify any license you prefer for your dataset. Currently they have a 2 GB limit per file but you can upload as many files as necessary. For larger files, you need to contact the administrators.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1084" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T16:07:57.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9557" CreationDate="2013-12-29T16:38:13.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After searching and collating ideas from numerous internet sources (a simple search provides plenty of sources of variable quality and usefulness) I have come up with the list below. In my own case there are over-arching rules about usage of university e-mail, which for example makes it clear that the university mail should not be used for private purposes and that all e-mails are public documents. Since each organization probably have such central rules, I have omitted such points and concentrated on good practises in the professional email correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be courteous&lt;/strong&gt;. Beware that written communication is more likely to be misunderstood than personal communication. Include courteous greetings and closings to prevent your e-mail seem demanding or terse. Don't hesitate to say &lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;how are you&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;appreciate your help!&lt;/em&gt; Sign your name and include contact details in the footer of the mail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be concise and clear&lt;/strong&gt;. Keep e-mails brief and to the point. Make sure your point(s) is (are) clear from the beginning. Be sure to fill out the &lt;em&gt;Subject:&lt;/em&gt; field and that it accurately reflects the content of your email. It is sometimes better to write several mails than to fill one mail full of questions on different topics, alternatively number them. Save long conversations for a telephone/Skype/personal meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proofread&lt;/strong&gt;. Read your email out loud to ensure the tone is that which you desire. Avoid spelling and grammatical errors. Try to avoid relying on formatting for emphasis; rather choose the words that reflect your meaning instead. A few additions of the words &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you&quot; go a long way! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid emotions&lt;/strong&gt;. Do not attempt to solve emotional problems or issues over e-mail. Instead, suggest a personal meeting. Always wait at least a day before attempting to send or answering emotional e-mails. Keep copies of all such correspondence and seek advice from colleagues to prevent issues to build.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Received e-mails&lt;/strong&gt;. Always try to answer an e-mail within a workday or two. Always acknowledge the receipt of a mail as soon as you can if you are not able to provide a comprehensive reply within a day or two.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sending E-mails&lt;/strong&gt;. Never use an old email to hit reply and start typing about an entirely new topic. Do not send e-mails during weekends or off hours since this may give off the wrong signals or excuse yourself if you do. Do not expect immediate answers to your e-mails. A couple of days is a reasonable delay. Use a phone or visit the colleague if something is urgent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using &lt;em&gt;Cc:&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Bcc:&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Return Receipts&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Include addresses in the &lt;em&gt;To:&lt;/em&gt; field for those who you would like a response from. Include addresses in the &lt;em&gt;Cc:&lt;/em&gt; field for those who you are just informing. Remove the addresses of those who your reply does not apply to when replying to an email with multiple recipients noted in the &lt;em&gt;To:&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Cc:&lt;/em&gt; fields. Use &lt;em&gt;Return Receipt&lt;/em&gt; sparingly since it can be viewed as intrusive and annoying; save it for when you really need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These points can be summarized by: &lt;strong&gt;Mail others as you would have them mail you!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T16:38:13.107" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9557" CreationDate="2013-12-29T18:05:34.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being highly responsive (and attentive) to email may be in direct conflict with productivity; only some messages have truly high priority (and senders often don't have full perspective on this).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some faculty, the measure of productivity is funding and publication, which are unlikely to correlate strongly with email responsiveness in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other faculty may have a role that requires responsiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty should have clear overall goals, and expectations for mundane tasks (like email) should be set with those goals in mind. For some, email might best be relegated to short bursts once a day (with selected emails assigned high priority, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9748" LastEditorUserId="9748" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T18:11:25.793" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T18:11:25.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15204" CreationDate="2013-12-29T23:02:21.117" Score="6" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're an academic researcher who has done some work in a particular topic.  You receive an email from a stranger, working at a small company, interested in your work and wanting to discuss possible consulting.  Sounds interesting, but you have research to perform, grant proposals to write, classes to teach...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What criteria should you use to evaluate whether or not this is worthwhile?  What are things you look for in possible consulting work? And what are turn-offs and things you want to avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8075" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:12:13.407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:12:13.407" Title="Criteria to evaluate consulting opportunity" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-29T23:38:18.283" Score="17" ViewCount="1581" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. A came to Dr. B asking for research ideas. Dr. B gave him a thesis, explained its value, why it's plausible, and how to test it.  Dr. A liked this, got Student C to do the work, and managed the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's time to publish their results.  How should they determine the lead authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8075" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T09:35:02.867" Title="Had the idea vs. did the work: Who should be the lead author?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15193" CreationDate="2013-12-29T23:53:32.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no easy answer. Providing an idea is certainly a good part of research but performing experiments, interpreting results and writing up the paper (discussion) are equally important (by equal I do not mean they are worth exactly the same, just important). There are several ways in which one can discuss the order based on evaluating the value of each component of the research process and then evaluate each persons contribution on each of these components. There have been a few posts (not necessarily in their entirety relevant to your question) here that discusses &lt;em&gt;contributorship&lt;/em&gt; which I will not reiterate here. Please check the following (particularly links in the answers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13946/4394&quot;&gt;Paper contributions and first authorship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12264/4394&quot;&gt;How should a student defend his 1st authorship in front of his advisor politely and effectively?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14428/4394&quot;&gt;Authorship for paper based on my thesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is that none of the different aspects are alone enough for first authorship so one must weigh all components involved in the research process. It is of course harder to accomplish this &quot;after the fact&quot; but if all involved agree to try I am sure you can come up with a good author order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:35:34.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15193" CreationDate="2013-12-29T23:54:04.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. A was a wise man, a negotiated such things when asking for the research ideas? :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if B is more senior than A, then in most fields the order would be C, A, B. First authorship goes to the student, who did the most work. Last authorship goes to the most senior researcher. Then, the only position left for A is the second authorship. (Assuming for example that C is a grad student, A is a post-doc or something, and B is a professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T23:54:04.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15200" CreationDate="2013-12-30T00:21:21.237" Score="15" ViewCount="4030" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems as though everyone in academia is trying to publish &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt;, regardless of whether they actually have something meaningful to say. The journals generate more &lt;em&gt;noise&lt;/em&gt; every year. &#xA;I understand that papers count for promotion and review, they mostly get counted but... There is room to question the actual motivation to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your primary reason for publishing?&lt;/strong&gt; How much of it is related to making a meaningful contribution to science/knowledge/understanding, and how much is for other reasons/purposes (tenure, CV, fame, pressure, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T13:25:03.857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T14:42:56.787" Title="Why do academics publish?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15196" CreationDate="2013-12-30T00:38:57.417" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the words of Lichtfouse (2013) &lt;em&gt;a research article is above all a communication tool and its purpose is to transfer scientific information from one individual to other individuals&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing a paper is for me the way to show that I am doing research and sharing it with others. But, it is clear that I also am pressured into publishing because promotions and the ability to attract funding relies on publications as a primary evaluation tool. So although I do not publish with the expressed intent of attracting more funding or my own promotions, I am well aware of the spiralling development that is ongoing. I do want to mention that publishing something primarily gives me personally a sense of achievement, that my research is good enough to pass the scrutiny of peers etc. As with, I surmise, mostly everyone else, I thrive from doing a good job and getting a sense of accomplishment. Publishing does that for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not people read my research can be answered by yes and no. Everyone does not read my papers but some who do not should and some who reference my work, really ought to read it, again. On the whole, I think papers get the attention they deserve, some get more and some get less attention than I think is fair. But, since my work gets referenced reasonably often, I think over and under referenced papers average out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;pressure to publish&quot; is definitely there and I believe that universities and funding agencies should try to improve the way they evaluate research so as to avoid &quot;salami slicing&quot; and other types of publishing effects. But, how such a system should look is difficult to say although many indices such as the &lt;em&gt;h-index&lt;/em&gt; can be used. Since there are no perfect systems, it is perhaps more important to look at the ethical aspects of publishing and make awareness of and discssion on publishing issues better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lichtfouse, E., 2013. Scientific writing for impact factor journals. Nova Publishers, New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T14:30:15.683" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T14:30:15.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15193" CreationDate="2013-12-30T00:42:54.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description is quite vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read the paper and I have questions about it, who should I ask?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should be the first author and in most cases this will fit with the description of C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideas of B are indeed important, but in most cases this is overlooked and underestimated. If B didn't publish his ideas or did anything about them, then A could claim he had the same ideas, and B only stated the evident (I have seen this many times). More often than not, the role of B is to appear in the acknowledgements of the paper, or not to appear at all, because the conversation between A and B may be considered either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a personal favor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an informal or non-profesional conversation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some mentoring or help that is to be thanked but not part of the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a combination of several of the above or other gray areas of not-real involvement in the paper and the &quot;real work&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically B gave his advice as a gift to A, and now A has to decide whether this gift is to be returned or not. If it is returned then probably B will be the second author, if it is not returned, then B will not be an author. This basically depends on how A sees B, he may be an ally, an asset, a friend, a superior, a rival, an enemy, an annoyance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discarded the option of B being the third author because I'm assuming A is more senior than B, if B is more senior than A then B should be the third and not the second author, this would also mean that B has more chances to appear as a coauthor. The reason is that the order from first to last author means the involvement in the work and the paper, but also on low-level work, while the last author is in the highest-level work, most abstract, theoretical, general, long-term-visioned, etc. Therefore the most senior is set to the last (even if someone else was less involved but involved enough to appear) to avoid suspicion on a less senior researcher (aka lesser being) giving high-level advice to a more senior researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time the focus, the stress and the effort is not on how things are, but how do they look like. At least this is what I have seen up until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: When I put examples I like to speak about Alex, Bernie, Cory, etc. I think this is easier to follow and I do also think that @order made a mistake between A and B. By your description, A seems to be more senior than B, the kind of senior researcher that manages human resources, that can pay C and that can tell C what to do. If that is the case, I doubt as well about the involvement of A in the paper and the work, while B and A can &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T00:42:54.227" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15193" CreationDate="2013-12-30T01:06:27.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lead author should be the person who carries out the bulk of the research work—including the planning, execution, and writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student C is the one responsible for carrying out the experiments &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; writing the paper, then C should be considered the primary agent of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who should be the &quot;final&quot; author is a different matter. I would suspect that this really should be professor B, who had the original idea. The role of doctor A is only as research manager, so his role is nominally weaker than that of either B or C in this process. So, ultimately, barring other negotiations and arrangements to the contrary, it should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Student C, Doctor A, Professor B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is some other distribution of roles beyond what is laid out above, it would need to be negotiated between everybody involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: In fields where lexicographic order is not used, the final author position also carries weight. It usually is the head of the research group or team that originated the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T12:12:57.740" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T12:12:57.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15196" CreationDate="2013-12-30T01:24:21.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;first question&lt;/strong&gt; is a relatively simple problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have the &lt;strong&gt;utility&lt;/strong&gt; of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some research being published in some rated venue: which will award them points according to some criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some research being cited, which will award also points according to some other criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some research being purchased: which will award some sweet additional income.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some research being read: which doesn't award any points per se, but helps to create some buzz around it, get cites, funding, etc. This requires the research to be published before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;making a meaningful contribution to science/knowledge/understanding&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the last bullet point, the rewards come from the inside of the researchers in that case, no raise, no money, no external reward. This means that if people focus on that too much they may not make any progress in their careers and they may actually fail in the search for funding or even a job. Therefore, successful people will have a strong interest/utility on the other points, the last one may or may not be important for them, but definitively secondary. They may say it's the primary goal, but they won't act like that, or they will fail. I'm an introvert and this sucks, but that is how the system is, it's mathematical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points and external rewards are very important. They may be important to finish a MSc or a PhD, to get a post-doc position, a job in industry, a tenured position, a raise, a project, funding, etc. But we are not done yet. They do also have &lt;strong&gt;resources&lt;/strong&gt; to get some attention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;social networks (twitter, linkedIn, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;blogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you remember the last point?, blogs seem to be perfectly suitable to making this kind of contribution, but they are not peer reviewed and they don't award any points, therefore, they are used like twitter. Get buzz, get attention, then link the paper so that people can read it. You can even summarize the paper in the blog so that people can cite it without actually reading it, which is wrong on so many levels that actually some of them cancel each other and happens to be right in some levels, at least IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally have some pieces of &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; that they can split like salami or maybe put together as a compilation to create a book, or they can even try to split, publish in conferences, then put together as a journal, then join with even more stuff and write a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically in the end researchers try to publish the research using the resources available trying to maximize the utility of their research, effort, time, publications, etc. Those who do it right (not focusing on the last point of the utility) get to do more and more research, and so the academia system works, and so it is driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically this is a problem of cybernetics. This is an emergent information system that is mostly driven in that way, with those dynamics and that convergence. Maybe we would have a better system if it was explicitly engineered and not emergent, but as usual, the ones that have the most power to change it are the ones that are most favored by the current system. There is always some strength in the stability of the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the &lt;strong&gt;second question&lt;/strong&gt;, the answer for me is &quot;no&quot;. I guess that's why I'm here writing with a pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T02:00:58.910" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T02:00:58.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T03:37:47.950" Score="3" ViewCount="4742" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you describe the relation between a course instructor to his teaching assistant? Is he the &quot;teaching supervisor&quot; to his TA? This is encountered during PhD application. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T03:56:51.833" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:55:50.547" Title="How to describe the relation between a course instructor to his teaching assistant?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15203" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T05:33:27.843" Score="2" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would you call the temporary advisor assigned to a PhD student upon enrolment, who is in charge of the student until the student finds his/her research advisor? &quot;temporary advisor&quot;, or &quot;course advisor&quot;, or ...? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T05:40:15.507" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:37:02.057" Title="What would you call the temporary advisor assigned after enrolment?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15192" CreationDate="2013-12-30T06:20:33.700" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Balance is always tricky but basically the guidelines that I follow are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the consulting will help me learning something new, +1 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the consulting will pay me a lot of money, +1 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the consulting will improve my reputation, +1 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the consulting will allow me access to something I want (new data), +1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it takes a lot time, -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it offers little or no pay, -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it could damage my reputation, -5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it would be a bit boring, -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I just do the math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T06:20:33.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15203" CreationDate="2013-12-30T07:03:35.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the program where I currently work, we call such advisors &quot;academic advisors,&quot; which makes the distinction with the &quot;research advisor&quot; or &quot;thesis advisor&quot; fairly obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:03:35.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15203" CreationDate="2013-12-30T07:09:05.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd imagine the particular terminology varies from one department to another.  I've heard that called a &quot;provisional&quot; advisor.  In my department you start with a &quot;provisional committee&quot; of two people.  The provisional advisor is assigned based on the student's research interests, so often they wind up being the &quot;real&quot; advisor too, later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:09:05.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15203" CreationDate="2013-12-30T07:37:02.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term when I was a first-year PhD student was a &quot;temporary advisor&quot;. There isn't a huge difference on how you call this person; people on the admission committee have been through graduate school too, and they'll get it. Don't worry on the details too much, and spend more time on the SOP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:37:02.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15201" CreationDate="2013-12-30T07:55:50.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the question is that you need to fill in the &quot;In what context have you known the applicant&quot; box on a PhD recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, then, for this particular point, I would not list &quot;research supervisor,&quot; since this is clearly a teaching situation. However, &quot;student&quot; also doesn't make any sense. So, if there's no specific option which clearly satisfies this, I would check off the &quot;other&quot; box, fill in &quot;teaching supervisor,&quot; and then explain the relationship clearly in the text of the recommendation letter itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:55:50.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15225" CreationDate="2013-12-30T08:53:18.253" Score="15" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is for those of you who have been on the hiring committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if the following scenario could happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applicant X applies to University Y; University Y looks at applicant X's profile, and says &quot;applicant X has very strong records. There is no way University Y is the best applicant X can do; hence we will not offer Applicant X a position (postdoctoral, or TT)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems worrying, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perhaps applicant X is just so mediocre, that he falls through the crack; University Y turns him down, but universities slightly better than University Y might think that applicant X is not up to their standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what if applicant X actually really wanted to go to University Y for personal reasons? Of course, maybe applicant X was hoping for something slightly better than University Y, so maybe he did not contact the department (in case he decides not to go to University Y).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even from the university's perspective, this is fairly complicated: University Y could take a chance and hope that applicant X will accept their offer, but perhaps it is more advantageous to extend the offer to the applicant next on the list instead of applicant X. There is no way of knowing which is the better choice, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, if such scenario happens, and if I want to prevent the first point, what do I need to do? I am wary of contacting the departments, because should the department be excited about me, and should someone push for my being hired in the hiring committee meeting, then I would feel obligated (to some degree) to accept that offer (even if a better offer comes along), since that someone has advocated on my behalf, on my request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T19:51:00.103" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T10:01:11.320" Title="Do hiring committees strategize?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T09:30:33.810" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a resumé for a PhD application. I'd like to know if there any good, and not necessarily free, services that evaluate and comment on a resumé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9306" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T21:26:56.167" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T21:26:56.167" Title="Are there any resumé revision services available for PhD applicants?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15224" CreationDate="2013-12-30T09:32:40.340" Score="8" ViewCount="3159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets assume your GPA is very high, say 3.95 or higher, at both your undergrad and graduate school institutions. I have always included it while applying to summer research programs and internships while still in my PhD program. But this is probably inappropriate on the postdoc market right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Perhaps this question is somewhat subjective, but, after checking out some other questions on this exchange, I didn't think it was overly subjective.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T10:26:36.100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:22:32.437" Title="When Applying for Postdocs Should GPA be on your CV?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15210" CreationDate="2013-12-30T10:40:36.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the scenario, as you described it, is unlikely to occur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a hiring committee felt a candidate could get a job at a more prestigious institution, then I think the candidate would simply be asked up front: &quot;It seems like you could get hired at a more prestigious institution – why are you applying here?&quot; Then, the candidate would have a chance to provide an explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the explanation seemed satisfactory (such as, &quot;I've always wanted to live in this city,&quot; or, &quot;My brother and my nephews live in a nearby town, and I was tired of getting on an airplane every time I wanted to visit,&quot; for example) then the committee would probably be glad for a chance to hire someone with strong qualifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one time where this may count against the candidate, though, is if the committee suspects this job is being used as a mere &quot;stepping stone,&quot; and the committee is hoping to hire someone who will stay for more than a few years. So, if the answer to the question is, &quot;I eventually want to apply to an Ivy League school, but I felt like a few years here might bolster my chances,&quot; then I could imagine a committee choosing another qualified candidate with plans to remain on faculty for a longer time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd be careful of what you said, and how you worded it, but I'd also advise you to be honest and up front about your motives and intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T10:40:36.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15196" CreationDate="2013-12-30T10:52:19.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, promotion-and-tenure motivations are strong, but it would be misguided to think that such cachet is the sole impetus for publishing. Even if relatively few people read the final result, there's a lot to be said for the publication process: comments from referrees, questions from conference attendees – these provide valuable feedback that can lead to new insights or help you gauge how much your overall research efforts are of interest and use to others in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's one thing to have a hunch that your research is signficant; it's another to have that verified by selection committees and the peers in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T10:52:19.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15218" CreationDate="2013-12-30T11:09:17.510" Score="6" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlahandbook.org/fragment/public_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Modern Language Association (MLA) norms&lt;/a&gt; we should use punctuation marks after the page number, within parentheses, that follows the closing quotation mark. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express &quot;profound aspects of&#xA;  personality&quot; (184).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if a question mark is inherent to the quotation? Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience&#xA;  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in&#xA;  practice?” (16)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this be cited? Possibilities I can see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience&#xA;  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in&#xA;  practice” (16)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience&#xA;  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in&#xA;  practice?” (16).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="7121" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T17:00:31.227" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T17:00:31.227" Title="Where should a question mark be placed in a short citation?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15216" CreationDate="2013-12-30T11:57:54.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Peter indicates, the question mark should remain with the original quotation, since it's in the original source material. Therefore, your second example is clearly incorrect. In addition, you &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; need the period following the citation, to indicate that you are ending the sentence in question. Therefore, you should use the last example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would also note that, as written, it looks like your example would also require the name of the author along with the parenthetical reference, so it would be more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage ith the experience of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in practice?” (Smith 16).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T11:57:54.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15221" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:00:06.823" Score="56" ViewCount="7462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical computer science PhD student. My childhood friend (my present roommate) is in the 3rd year of his pure mathematics PhD program. Very recently we both worked on a problem on combinatorial geometry and got some interesting results to publish. However both of our dissertation topics are way different from this work, so we don't want to involve our advisors in this matter. This was kind of our joint fun project. &#xA;We don't know whether it's academically unethical to publish paper(s) as PhD students without including our advisor(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: We have nothing to lose even if they reject our paper right away, but we don't want the editor of the journal to mail the chair about this matter. Maybe I'm thinking too much because I've never done this kind of thing before.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastEditorUserId="10373" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T18:04:18.413" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T13:59:28.243" Title="Can two PhD students publish without involving their supervisors?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15211" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:15:53.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, literally hundreds. Have you googled something like &quot;professional resume for phd application&quot; or &quot;professional resume writing services&quot;? You are bound to find something near where you live, including quite possibly your undergrad university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big question, I think, is whether for a PhD application you should be supplying a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;resume&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;curriculum vitae&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? CV's are usually more common for academic and research positions. If you are unsure about the differences, here are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grad.illinois.edu/careerservices/cvorresume&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/curricula-vitae-cvs-versus-resumes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;useful&lt;/a&gt; links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:15:53.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15219" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:18:48.353" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing unethical about publishing something like what you suggest. Personally I would be happy and encourage a student of mine if that happened. So from a formal side you need not to worry. I can add that authorship, or contributorship, does not include adding names to a paper if they have not contributed anything (or enough; see posts on authorship on this, Academia.sx, site). I would, however, be open about it with your advisor. I assume you have a good working relationship with him/her? The only thing that could complicate things would be if you are in a bad working relationship with your advisor or if your system is very hierarchical and not open to initiatives. Clearly only you can assess this. But, I do not want you to over-emphasize these &quot;risks&quot;. If you get stuff published on your own and in a field that is not directly within your topic, it will only be viewed as  a positive in your resume when applying for, for example, post-doctoral positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for risking rejection, I suggest you have someone whose views you trust to read and comment on the paper. Having someone independent look at the work is always good to work out details that can otherwise distract reviewers. This is always a good idea so it is not unique to your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T15:31:02.290" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:31:02.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15212" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:44:02.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No (to the question in the title), and yes (to the question in the post).  For postdocs no one cares about your grades.  They're only interested in the quality of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:44:02.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15212" CreationDate="2013-12-30T15:22:32.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Meckes's answer only considers &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt; postdoctoral positions. In such cases, he is correct: undergraduate and graduate GPA's do not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for &lt;strong&gt;non-academic&lt;/strong&gt; postdocs, however, the situation is very different. At large research centers—particularly those managed by corporations, such as essentially the entire US Department of Energy laboratory system—hiring is done by corporate employees, and must be approved by several layers of management. Several of the national laboratories even have strict GPA cutoffs for their employees, regardless of the length of time they've been working post-graduation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, if you're applying for positions only in academia, then there's no need to include GPA. However, for anything outside of an academic setting, it can actually help to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:22:32.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15210" CreationDate="2013-12-30T16:12:43.350" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens all the time and everywhere.  Strategic decisions about who to interview or make offers to are based not just on perceived quality or market value, but also broader considerations of fit.  It's an unavoidable part of the job market, and I'm not convinced it's even a bad thing overall, since it makes the job market work much more smoothly and efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tough issue to resolve as an applicant.  There are several reasons why it can be ineffective just to tell the department that you really want to go there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They may not believe you.  They may suspect you of deliberately exaggerating your likelihood of accepting just in order to get an offer, perhaps so you can use it to help negotiate a better offer elsewhere.  (The academic job market is exactly the sort of high stress, high stakes environment that brings out some people's worst sides.)  Even if they're convinced you're completely honest, they may feel you'll change your mind once you learn more about your other options, or that if you come you'll end up feeling like you made a mistake and they'll have a bitter, resentful colleague who wants to leave.  An applicant who suffers from imposter syndrome may say &quot;Wow, I'd be thrilled to get an offer from University X, which is the best job I can imagine getting&quot; but might not remain as thrilled after getting offers from A, B, and C as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many reasons you could give may be viewed as kind of insulting.  If you explain that you really like the city or want to live near relatives, then it can come across like you are saying &quot;Sure, your department would otherwise be beneath me, but I'm willing to put up with you for non-academic reasons.&quot;  The department might be willing to hire you even if they think you feel superior, but they won't be happy about it.  In order for this to work, you have to be very careful about tone.  Two-body problems are widely accepted as an understandable reason, and of course academic reasons can be highly effective, but anything else has the potential for giving a bad impression if you aren't careful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So announcing your preferences may not always work.  Still, it's really your only option, so it's not worth worrying too much about how it might fail.  To put things more positively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to emphasize aspects of the department that excite you, and not just side benefits such as location.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's often more effective if you or a mentor convey this information through personal contacts, rather than just talking with the search committee chair.  In particular, hearing from someone senior can add credibility: there have been a number of times I've reassured a department that a student genuinely wanted to work there (and wasn't just confused or suffering from imposter syndrome).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you already have an ostensibly more impressive offer and can say &quot;I would very likely turn down my offer from University A in favor of a compelling offer from you,&quot; it carries a lot of weight.  At the very least, it eliminates the fear that you don't understand your options.  (But say this only if you are quite sure!  If there's even a small chance you would choose A after all, then you should make it clear that you have not made a final decision and might change your mind.  It's unethical to try to manipulate anyone.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T21:58:49.767" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T21:58:49.767" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15228" CreationDate="2013-12-30T17:22:29.657" Score="17" ViewCount="12835" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received three letters of recommendation for applications to this spring semester, but I chose to decline admission for personal/financial reasons. I am now applying for fall admission, and I would like to ask the same professors for letters of recommendation again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to request additional letters of recommendations from professors to new universities for the second time? With no other prospects, I need their recommendations in order to be accepted. Should that desperation be included or excluded in the request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1252" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T18:25:31.767" Title="Is it appropriate to request letters of recommendation from professors a second time?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15226" CreationDate="2013-12-30T17:55:17.327" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a letter of recommendation is very time consuming.  Submitting or sending a small number of recommendation letters is not very time consuming.  If your letter writers still have your letter on file and if minimal changes would need to be made to the letters, then asking them to submit letters on your behalf a second time is a very reasonable request.  You should explain to them why you are asking them for another letter, but you do not need to convey desperation.  Most recommendation writers are happy to help people in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6478" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T17:55:17.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15226" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:25:31.767" Score="27" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing recommendation letters is part of our job as professors.  It is perfectly ethical to request that we do our job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conveying desperation in your request is neither necessary nor productive.  You have nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, anyone can (and should!) turn down your request in good conscience if they feel that they cannot write you a strong recommendation letter.  If someone says that they can't write you a strong letter, &lt;em&gt;believe them&lt;/em&gt; and ask someone else.  You &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; don't want a weak letter in your file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T18:25:31.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:28:44.823" Score="24" ViewCount="2795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written 14 grants for my principal investigator (PI), from conception to writing the entire thing, which has resulted in over $10 million in funding for my PI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refused to write any more grants for him; however, he threatend to fire me if I didn't. I was fine with that, at which point my boss told me that if I wrote the 14th grant and we got it, I could take it with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I did and we did get it. &#xA;Now he's refusing to give it to me, threatened to fire a technician/friend of mine, and has insisted that we got the grant because of his name (not the idea/grant itself). He knew his name was there from the beginning — how can he argue that at this time? This grant would have been submitted as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/research/training/programs/postdoc/pathway-parent-k99-r00&quot;&gt;K99&lt;/a&gt; for myself, but instead I had written another, independent grant thinking I'd have two shots to get a grant. I didn't get the K99, but the other grant should be mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is/was my key to obtaining a faculty position. I also have previously filed an initial patent form indicating that the idea was conceived and developed by me. I'm on the grant as co-investigator (my boss said I cannot be listed as a Co-PI since I work in his lab) but no budget has been given in my name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T20:17:28.757" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T20:17:28.757" Title="What to do: PI lied to me and is keeping my grant!" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15219" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:29:57.137" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;yes&quot;, but many advisors may respond differently to this. I think it depends much more on the advisor than on any established &quot;academic norm&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisor might not be happy that you are using up your time for &quot;trivial pursuits&quot; on the advisor's grant money when you should be doing &quot;real work toward your thesis&quot;. (For the record, I would consider this as a bad reason to be unhappy with your students). Often, if you can ensure that the side project doesn't take up that much time, you can mitigate this risk a little.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisor might be happy that you are independently pursuing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisor might not want a part of this paper simply because of lack of time/energy but otherwise be happy that you're doing it. This is pretty common, for example, in the case of class projects in which you end up with something that's actually pretty significant and the class professor would like you to help publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advisor might not want you to &quot;spread yourself out too thin&quot; later in your PhD career. I've been advised to be careful about coming up and getting involved with too many &quot;one-shot&quot; ideas that will never get developed and don't help your overall image. So, for example, if you're in the area of &quot;program analysis and testing&quot; (for example), publishing a one-off paper in a venue (maybe &quot;distributed computing&quot;) that you don't keep up with and won't be remembered in will result in a forgettable, low-impact paper. I think this is more of a risk when students are thinking &quot;of things to work on&quot; and aren't really focused or don't have a good idea of a research thread to develop. This is also more of a risk if your academic profile isn't very focused. For example, if you have a bunch of disconnected topics you're more in danger than if you have only one or two side projects in a whole field of papers on your main interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a note beneath this one, I think most advisors are mostly concerned that their students are &quot;too distracted&quot;. It's easy to do that as a Ph.D (&quot;I can explore anything I want!&quot;) - so advisors by nature of their jobs need to make sure that the thesis ends up having focus. Having ideas is a good thing, but putting those ideas into papers is a lot of work. Just to help put a bit of perspective here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am generally in favor though of at least letting your advisor know of &quot;side projects&quot; that you're involved in, even class projects, because often they will want to find ways of integrating that into some research work that you can be doing. A good advisor might see a connection between your combinatorial geometry &quot;side project&quot; and your main thesis research, for instance. It's also a good idea, in general, to have a tiny amount of breadth across one or more areas as well. It not only generates good ideas, but helps you keep perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T18:29:57.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15210" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:12:43.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In particular, if such scenario happens, and if I want to prevent the first point, what do I need to do?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be mediocre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wary of contacting the departments, because should the department be excited about me, and should someone push for my being hired in the hiring committee meeting, then I would feel obligated (to some degree) to accept that offer (even if a better offer comes along), since that someone has advocated on my behalf, on my request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good!  You &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; feel obligated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to maintain in this situation is honesty.  It's perfectly fine to keep your precise preferences confidential, but &lt;strong&gt;DO. NOT. LIE.&lt;/strong&gt;  Do not approach faculty to say that you are interested in their department unless you are &lt;em&gt;genuinely&lt;/em&gt; interested in their department.  Do not ask them to believe you would accept their offer over an offer from MIT or Harvard unless you would &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; accept their offer over an offer from MIT or Harvard.  Do not tell thirty different departments that you would consider their offer first.  Expect that the faculty you contact will also contact your advisor and/or other references and ask for a frank assessment of your priorities.  Expect faculty to be distrustful, because they have been burned many times in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Job applications are supposedly confidential, but stories of dishonest behavior do get around, and they follow their perpetrators for &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, being interested in a job is not the same as committing to accepting an offer.  If you are genuinely interested, then it is definitely a good idea to communicate your interest to your colleagues in the target department.  (Note: not &quot;contact the &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but &quot;contact your &lt;em&gt;colleagues&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.)  Corner your colleagues at conferences and ask intelligent questions about their department, just as you would in an interview.  If you can do so on your own (or your advisor's) dime, offer to visit and give a talk at a research seminar.  Don't just &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; you're interested; &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt; interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do not lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T19:12:43.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15229" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:35:10.870" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that you need to obtain qualified and competent legal advice, not just anonymous advice from a Stack Exchange site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some obvious things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have meticulous records of everything you claimed, including the previous grant proposals, showing that you were the one responsible for their execution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You really need to have some form of hard evidence that the PI promised you could keep the grant you earned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure everything you do from here on is also documented. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is a tough situation, and I'm not sure what your options outside of the legal system will be. You might also want to contact the grant sponsor to see what your options are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T19:01:46.957" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T19:01:46.957" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15219" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:37:34.787" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than repeat what others have mentioned in their answers, I'd rather touch upon another related issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In some cases not involving your supervisor also means not involving the institute that you are part of.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the issue of attribution, depending on the specifics this may have legal ramifications, especially if you are receiving funds from a grant. Theoretically, if you have used any resources supplied by your institute, including existing ideas, computing power or your own paid work hours, you may not have sole ownership of the resulting IP. Things may get even more complicated if your co-author is colaborating with a different entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may not need to do anything, you may need to get a waiver of IP rights from your institute or you may have to add something along the lines of a &lt;em&gt;&quot;This work was supported by...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; snippet. If I were you, I would discuss this with my supervisor, even if only to clarify any such issues...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T22:37:34.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15243" CreationDate="2013-12-31T01:16:56.163" Score="4" ViewCount="5114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still in the process of choosing which major in the SEAS of my school I should pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to go into an applied math PhD program after undegrad, so must I choose applied mathematics as my major? Or can I pursue electrical engineering or mechanical engineering? A double major isn't an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10384" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T00:11:41.317" Title="Which major for applied math PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T03:51:50.387" Score="2" ViewCount="1501" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally advisable the use of jargon's and abbreviations be avoided in your statement of purpose. So if I would like to mention a few MOOC's(which stands for Massive Online Open Class offered at portals like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.udacity.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Udacity&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coursera&lt;/a&gt;,etc) and the flow of my SOP necessitates the use of the word &quot;MOOC&quot;, what do I do? Is the term &quot;MOOC&quot; known widely (which I believe is true) or do I have to mention &quot;Massive Online Open Class&quot; (atleast for the first time). This usage could be decisive in situations where there is a strict limitation on the word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10388" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T16:30:01.517" Title="Use of Jargons in my Statement of Purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T03:57:38.583" Score="13" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current system of producing knowledge in academia, think-tanks, research laboratories funded by large organizations, and similar has the benefits that there is usually some oversight, the people involved have been trained on how to conduct and contribute to research, and how to communicate their results to the literate portion of the society they are supposed to aid.  (The above is subject to debate, but I prefer to assume it for the purpose of the question below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a person with no contacts to any of these contribute, or learn how to contribute, to the production of research, in spite of lack of oversight, funding, and training?  As examples, a person who finds an alternate and faster method of DNA replication, or finds influences of Jane Austen among current bloggers that suggest a certain societal trend, or has a new way of analyzing large portions of astronomical data, or finds a way of speeding up numerical simulations of models of biological systems involving capillary blood flow.  How does such a person present such an idea or method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can write to authors on the appropriate area; how likely is this to succeed?  One could look at an appropriate journal, attempt to copy the style, formatting, and phraseology of the articles and then submit their write-up to that journal, but without affiliation; with what result?  One might attempt to use the Internet to strike up conversations with like-minded individuals and find a willing ear and eye; are there enough willing ears and eyes?  One could start a blog or just put up a web page announcing the work; I have done that, but I have too many connections to be considered a complete outsider to academia, and I want to pose the question for those who are so outside.  Further, how could someone searching an index find that page among many that are computer generated using similar phrases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several spins one can put on this.  Let us further assume that the primary goal is to present the idea/form of knowledge, and receive little or no more than the recognition of making the contribution and the satisfaction of seeing it used.  In particular, potential degrees, awards, or jobs are not part of the scenario or motivation.  In this day and age, would blogging be enough?  Also, for fun and to make answers less trivial, assume the outsider is not and is not likely to enroll in a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added: To address a comment, enrolling in a university would likely provide many of the desired contacts, but with some cost.  The outsider may have had a university education, but this question makes the assumption that contacts there are stale or otherwise not accessible or appropriate, making this person more of an outsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T21:14:11.380" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T14:48:22.457" Title="Outsider Contributions: Are They Possible, and How?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2013-12-31T06:35:23.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your major won't matter as much as your demonstrated potential for research in applied mathematics, which you can develop in almost(?) any engineering discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I did not say that you &lt;em&gt;will automatically&lt;/em&gt; develop that potential in any engineering major; I said you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;Research potential is only incidentally related to your required classes.&lt;/strong&gt;  But it's considerably easier in engineering than in, say, English literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Off the top of my head, I can think of applied mathematicians with degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, pure mathematics, statistics, ....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T23:45:01.590" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T23:45:01.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15248" CreationDate="2013-12-31T06:41:46.583" Score="10" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different journals have different standards regarding author names - some mention only the first name (i.e. &quot;William Webb&quot;), some mention also an initial of the middle name (&quot;William A. Webb&quot;), some mention only initials (&quot;W. A. Webb&quot;), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when I copy BibTeX records of papers to my bibliography manager, the names are copied in different styles, and also appear in different styles in my bibliographic listing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is this a problem? Should I go over all my bibliography, each time I write a paper, and make sure all names have the same format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T15:55:29.197" Title="Citing full names of authors" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2013-12-31T09:23:40.720" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to be rude but JeffE's answer (which I cannot comment on-site as I don't have the necessary reputation) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever.&#xA;  Your major won't matter as much as your demonstrated potential for research in applied mathematics, which you can develop in almost(?) any engineering discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is so off-base, it's like saying that majoring in English gives you license to do a PhD in any field that involves writing in the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineering is certainly not a substitute for applied mathematics, and the transition can be very harsh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you need to localize yourself. Applied mathematics in the US is different from applied mathematics in the UK, which is different from applied mathematics in France. Similarly, applied mathematics at Harvard (which would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be with mathematics, but SEAS) would be different from applied mathematics at Courant at NYU or in the Mathematics department at Princeton (who don't have an applied mathematics department, but rather a &lt;em&gt;Program&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you will be expected to know all the core mathematics curriculum that pure mathematicians take in their first two years. From here, it will depend on what subfield of applied mathematics you're interested in. For example, if you are applying to a subfield that involves the classical mathematical physics (like solid or fluid mechanics), then you would need classes on those. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Engineering classes are vastly different from mathematics classes in almost all the mathematical topics. There might be some overlap in terms of, for example, fluid mechanics, but even then there is a big distinction between engineering fluid mechanics and mathematical fluid mechanics. For instance, mathematical fluid mechanics would involve more rigorous reductions and derivations of the Navier-Stokes equations (exploring techniques in asymptotic analysis, for instance). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; possibility of jumping from an engineering degree to an applied mathematics PhD, but again, this would depend on the country and the university and the department. If you want to examine the difference, look at the applied mathematics department at Cambridge University and compare to the applied mathematics group at the Courant Institute in NYU. Also, examine the PhDs of current faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T09:23:40.720" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15242" CreationDate="2013-12-31T09:26:23.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using BibTeX, then this should automatically be taken care of through choice of the &lt;code&gt;bibliographystyle&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not using BibTeX or a similar package, then you should go over your references to make sure they're consistent with the papers you've cited. However, you're under no obligation to find the full names of authors if they've published the papers with their initials instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T09:26:23.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15242" CreationDate="2013-12-31T09:27:52.150" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, you shouldn't change your bibtex database every time. Bibtex converts automatically from its native format &quot;Surname, Firstname I. and Other, Author&quot; to whatever the journal style is (for instance: F Surname, A Other), as long as you have full names in the database. Name formatting is something that people often get wrong at first when they have little experience with bibtex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should aim for having full names in the database, at least for those papers that you need to cite with an unabbreviated first name. Everything would be easier if all journals used initials, but it's a tough world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest initials for theses, preprints and submissions, and only switch to full names after the article is accepted in a journal that demands them (and after being asked by a copy-editor that demands them). This is the solution that minimizes the workload on the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T09:27:52.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15242" CreationDate="2013-12-31T09:41:34.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here is surely more that journals' bibtex export styles are highly inconsistent.  Many output the names in a similar format to what they would print.  So if you want full names and have only got initials, you're in for a few hours of tedious hunting and retyping. In other words you'd have to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want full names. If you have control over the format, pick a style with initials only, I suggest.  The journals I have published in use initials (and don't even print the paper titles or give clickable links) in the references, so having a mixture of formats isn't an issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T09:41:34.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15210" CreationDate="2013-12-31T10:01:11.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hiring committees often try and make an offer to a candidates they think will not only  accept the job, but stay long term. You also need to remember that for tenure track academic positions, the undergraduate ranking of a university really has little to do with the desirability of the position. It has some affect on the quality of students, but desirability is really about the start up package, teaching load, and benefits (both financial and personal). Ideally your teaching and research statements and cover letter would explain what it is about the department that makes you interested in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T10:01:11.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15242" CreationDate="2013-12-31T13:47:25.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me cite Donald Knuth (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/help.html&quot;&gt;this webpage&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you know any of these people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] I try to make the indexes to my books as complete as possible, or at least to give the illusion of completeness. Therefore I have adopted a policy of listing full names of everyone who is cited. For example, the index to Volume 1 of The Art of Computer Programming says &quot;Hoare, Charles Antony Richard&quot; and &quot;Jordan, Marie Ennemond Camille&quot; instead of just &quot;Hoare, C. A. R.&quot; and &quot;Jordan, Camille.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that a database with complete names is the way to go. The more complete the names are, the less ambiguous (consider all the different &quot;A. Smith's&quot;, &quot;X. Zhang's&quot; or &quot;H. Kim's&quot;…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T13:47:25.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15250" CreationDate="2013-12-31T14:52:23.657" Score="2" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering getting my BSc and MS in UK instead in US, since I prefer specialization rather than diversity in education. However, I'm not sure whether or not this choice will affect my chance to attend a competitive PhD program at an American university, since people who get MS tend to stay in UK to get PhD. This route may have the following problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will have to take some extra courses in my grad school in US to make up for classes not taken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may be disadvantaged in admission because of differences in the educational systems in the US and the UK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering these problems, should I rather stay in US to get BSc and MS? Or are they negligible? For me, it's the best if the time spent to get BSc and MS will be as short as possible. This may seem strange to people in US, but I want to consider the merits of education in both nations, so I can find the course of education which is the most suitable for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I want to study molecular biology.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T15:47:26.313" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T16:57:19.930" Title="Is there any major problem in applying to PhD program in US after getting BSc and MS in UK?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15249" CreationDate="2013-12-31T15:51:57.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me clear up an important distinction between graduate school in the US and the UK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Europe, the master's degree is generally a &lt;strong&gt;pre-requisite&lt;/strong&gt; for admission to a PhD program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the US, the master's degree is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; required for admission to a PhD program, and you normally apply to the PhD program with only a bachelor's degree. You can obtain a master's degree as part of the PhD program, but this is by no means a universal requirement. It varies between universities and even departments within a university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the UK, options are somewhat ambiguous. You can apply for a master's and PhD program at the same time, while others may require the PhD in advance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you are admitted to an American PhD program, you will take courses in graduate school, because that is the equivalent of the master's phase in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, there's no inherent advantage of applying or attending bachelor's or master's programs in the US or the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T16:57:19.930" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T16:57:19.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="46627" CreationDate="2013-12-31T16:42:13.717" Score="35" ViewCount="8044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've wasted about an hour trying to figure out how I'm supposed to categorise an ACM article using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/about/class/2012&quot;&gt;new 2012 taxonomy here&lt;/a&gt;, and how I'm supposed to represent those categories in my article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the plus side, the 2012 taxonomy has some perfectly apt categories for my paper (unlike the previous 1998 version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the minus side, the instructions are abysmal with respect to how it should be used, it seems to be completely incompatible with the standard TeX macros provided with standard &lt;code&gt;sig-*&lt;/code&gt; templates, and not only do the TeX macros provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/ccs_flat.cfm&quot;&gt;this interactive system&lt;/a&gt; not work (&lt;code&gt;\begin{CCSXML}&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;\ccsdesc&lt;/code&gt;), they don't even seem to even exist (at least Google turns up little if anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone actually using this new 2012 taxonomy and if so, is there any good guide on how to use it with a standard LaTeX &lt;code&gt;sig-*&lt;/code&gt; template?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Otherwise I think I'll just go back to the 1998 version ... as weird and archaic and seemingly useless as it is, at least it's a straightforward way to fill in those pointlessly mandatory category fields. Grrr.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T09:02:59.747" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T18:23:47.027" Title="Is the new ACM 2012 taxonomy usable/in use?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;latex&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2014-01-01T00:29:16.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost none of the applied math PhDs in the USA have BS degrees in applied math, because undergraduate degree programs in applied math are very rare (more commonly, one may have a &quot;mathematics&quot; degree but with an emphasis on applied math courses).  A large proportion of applied math professors in the USA do not have a Ph.D. in applied math, because most of the applied math doctoral programs only came into existence in the last generation.  For instance, my advisor's doctorate is in computer science, but his thesis was in numerical analysis.  So &lt;strong&gt;the name of the degree program is not key&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know people who have earned an applied math Ph.D. in the USA with undergraduate majors in &lt;strong&gt;engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science, and pure math&lt;/strong&gt;.  The non-math majors were from programs at very good schools with a heavy mathematical emphasis.  As a professor at a university that is modelled after US universities, I have supervised successful students and postdocs whose backgrounds are in all those areas, as well as others in mechatronics and operations research.  The transition for some was &quot;quite harsh&quot;, but they persevered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;the quality and rigor of the program is an essential factor&lt;/strong&gt;.  A physics BS from a top school usually knows more mathematics (and can reason better in mathematical terms) than a math BS from a lower-tier school.  Some computer science programs are, in fact, applied math programs; others involve very little math.  And some engineering programs at lesser schools are virtually devoid of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;the bottom line is that you need to know much more about a program than its name in order to determine if it will prepare you well&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that I myself double majored in Physics/Astronomy and Math as an undergrad, then got Applied Math MS and PhD degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T00:29:16.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15259" CreationDate="2014-01-01T01:29:12.463" Score="3" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;In preparation for my honours thesis, I recently completed a (free) Online Course on the broader field, presented by a world class expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to (am ethically required to?) put this in my bibliography,&#xA;though I will not cite it directly, instead citing papers that it referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What information should I put in my bibliography?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in the exact formatting, I'm using software to generate that.&#xA;I'm interested in what information I should put.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What category of material is it?&lt;/strong&gt; It isn't a lecture as it contained 16 lectures and a bunch of assignments etc. Is it a Internet Document? A Unpublished Work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should the teaching assistants be listed as Co-authors?&lt;/strong&gt; They wrote the assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I not be putting it in the bibliography at all, but instead acknowledging it more informally?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T12:18:08.533" Title="What information to put in Bibliography for a Online Course" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15258" CreationDate="2014-01-01T01:32:57.557" Score="6" ViewCount="1746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a young student checking pupils homeworks.&#xA;I've got a case - 2 pupils definetely cooperated when doing homework.&#xA;Do you have tips to determine who actually solved it and who copied? Got some ideas myself (like maybe one who copied had a better handwriting) but it is better to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10412" OwnerDisplayName="user3036878" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T19:10:22.320" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T21:24:35.250" Title="Plagiarizing problem sets and homework" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2014-01-01T02:19:39.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest repressing the natural urge of &quot;&lt;em&gt;They don't deserve this, I put in the work. They didn't, I deserve this.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; as while it may feel good, it won't get you anywhere. You might like to keep enjoying the fact that you have shown you are a hard working independent learner, to feel satisfaction (that you deserve).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at if from a Advantages and Costs of teaching&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching is a fantastic way to cement your knowledge. (Many say it is the best way.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This gains you friends, or at least positive acquaintances. These people become your colleges, and industry contacts once you graduate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gaining a reputation as a self-less helpful person, can open up doors to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching is a valuable life skill, that will help you rise through your chosen career&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving the quality and reputation of your institution. Obviously this is only a small step, but a journey of a thousand miles begins that way. If it becomes known that &quot;Graduates from X, really know there stuff.&quot; then you have increased the value of your degree, wrt getting jobs etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Costs:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time (this is a big one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boredom, repeating stuff over an over, one you have completely got it, gets you no where.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade Scaling: If your university scales the final grade, so that only your position relative to class average matters, letting other people fail will improve your score (by driving the average down). However you really have to cripple someone (or many people) especially in larger classes, to see any really benefit. It's a pretty cold strategy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the costs vs benefits, and be honest with your fellows, if it is not to your benefit to help them .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you don't have time, tell them (that you don't have time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have got bord, tell them you can't keep going over the same stuff, you've move on the other things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are a harsh enough person to be motivated by Grade Scaling, tell them &quot;We're in direct competition, helping you is only hindering myself.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T08:49:43.747" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T08:49:43.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15256" CreationDate="2014-01-01T02:29:36.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my anecdotal experience for dealing with copiers and plagiarizers. At the end of the day, everyone should be penalized. It's just a matter of sorting out who did what, and making sure they're aware that further offending can carry severe consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If discussing problems in groups is okay and encouraged (it should be!), don't forget to reinforce this. Just stress that the solutions themselves must be individual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The weaker piece of homework (i.e. less complete explanations and working, or missing parts) is likely to be written by the student who had no contribution (or a lesser contribution) to the solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's usually rather obvious that some copying has gone on, especially if they all make the same mistakes and lay out their working the same. Consider rounding up all the students and talking to them together to find out the full story. They've already been caught red-handed, so it's in their best interests to be honest with you!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's important to find out exactly what happened, because there are cases where someone has copied work without the other's knowledge. In this case, it's not fair to punish both parties. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the student doing the copying has accidentally written their friend's name or student number on the sheet rather than their own, that tends to be a dead give-away that it's a downright facsimile of other work (that has actually happened).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T02:29:36.340" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15255" CreationDate="2014-01-01T02:49:15.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be appropriate to acknowledge the &quot;head-start&quot; you got from that course in the &lt;em&gt;acknowledgements&lt;/em&gt; section of the thesis. It would be unusual to list a course in the bibliography unless there really was no more authoritative source available for some information or a method that you directly used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a bibliography is to cite the primary source of any information directly used in your work. If you use something from the online course worth citing, then you should cite it. However, it's unlikely the information in the course is new, so you should try to track down and cite the original source in a peer-reviewed article or textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T02:49:15.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15239" CreationDate="2014-01-01T03:36:52.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of our audience here are academics and the OP is &lt;em&gt;Not Quite An Outsider&lt;/em&gt;, I think I don't need to explain how important &lt;strong&gt;peer review&lt;/strong&gt; is to research results. If the outsider needs the explanation, please use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/peer-review&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;peer-review&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;peer-review&lt;/a&gt; to read related Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the outsider has at least two options: submit the manuscript to journals and/or having blog posts of his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the effective ways to get your paper to be peer reviewed is to send the paper to journals. It is true that some journals tend to ignore papers written by authors without affiliation. I personally have this experience. I am retired and am not associated with any institute. I do have experience that my manuscript was rejected without any explanation. However, the quality of the paper makes the difference. If it is indeed a very good paper, some journals would take it and send to referees. I personally have that experience, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option for an outsider is to have blog posts. I occasionally come cross blog posts when I search on the Internet (I am a retiree, I have plenty of time). My personal experience is that more than often good blogs are written by good scholars who are insiders. I bumped into many poor quality stuff written by outsiders quite often. They just don't make sense to me at all. I usually read the first couple of paragraphs to determine if I want to continue to read them. Unfortunately, most of them written by outsiders are of extremely poor quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the outsider has another option - arXiv. I think it does not make too much difference with regard to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the key issue is the contents. If you do have something very good, publish it. Somehow, somewhere, your article will be read by others. However, if you never receive college education, I seriously doubt your stuff is good. &lt;strong&gt;You do need at least basic level knowledge to do research.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T11:40:46.783" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T11:40:46.783" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15256" CreationDate="2014-01-01T06:03:38.283" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I do not teach physics I do have a solution that generally works quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main answer is: &lt;strong&gt;It does not matter who copied from whom - fail both.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one student allows another to copy, then both fail. I enforce this quite strictly and there are some students (who do not pay attention to the warnings I give at the start of the semester) who do it, but they never make the same mistake twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Moriarty said, it is possible that Student B copied from Student A without Student A knowing about it. I solve this problem but calling them both in front of me (private from everyone else) and tell them they have a choice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice A: Both admit that the copying took place with consent of both, and both fail that homework/assignment/test/whatever is being assessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice B: Student A says that Student B stole Student A's work, and Student A gets off with a warning to be more careful (but no punishment) and Student B fails the module immediately without the opportunity to recover (Student B must re-take the module from the beginning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have dealt with many cases this way and only three cases where the students ended up in Choice B. In this case, the offending students admitted that they stole work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should never support the student who allows another student to copy from them. That behavior is simply unacceptable and that needs to be made quite clear to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T06:03:38.283" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15263" CreationDate="2014-01-01T10:17:42.910" Score="2" ViewCount="468" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some new ideas regarding a concept in computer science and have done considerable independent reasearch work.None of the faculty members in my university seem to be interested in helping an independent undergrad thesis in computer science.I have some time to complete it formally, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone please tell me the steps to get my paper published ? What should I ensure about my paper before sending it for publication ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused as to what to do , there are so many things- transations, journals , proceedings, conferences ..etc , How are these different and where it is the best to send a research paper ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10411" LastActivityDate="2021-05-06T15:58:12.477" Title="Publishing a research paper" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15262" CreationDate="2014-01-01T10:27:29.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally for computer science the accepted methodology is to publish your initial idea or concept with some preliminary results in a conference. Then afterwards if there is still more to discuss you can continue publishing conference papers or target a journal for an in depth publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get started you need to find a conference that suits your area of research. For example if you are working in computer vision you might target &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pamitc.org/cvpr14/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CVPR&lt;/a&gt;. There are a number of databases full of conferences, which should help you find an appropriate venue. Then read the submission requirements. Usually conferences have a LateX template you can use for your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ensure your paper conforms to all conference regulations, has been spell checked and proof read by yourself and someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T10:27:29.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15262" CreationDate="2014-01-01T10:34:37.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First ask yourself: are your results groundbreaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then it is going to be very difficult to get it published as an independent researcher, because no one will believe that you are capable of obtaining such results. Mathematicians get journal submissions and emails proving the Riemann hypothesis all the time; unless the person has a track record of having a valid publication, your submission will not get taken seriously. It is a sad fact that academics judge you based on whether you are associated to an institution or not, but because of so many &quot;cranks&quot; who contact us, the attitude of mistrust has developed over many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you honestly believe it to be a valid piece of research work, then you should look at how the previous work that you base your results on were handled (if your research is completely independent of ALL previous literature in your field, then it is another sign that your work may be invalid, or that it will take a tremendous amount of effort to convince the academics that it is valid). Try to write your paper in the similar manner to the previous works (in particular, use LaTeX), and as a rule of thumb, submit your paper in the same conference/journal (or slightly worse) as those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T10:34:37.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15256" CreationDate="2014-01-01T13:55:58.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have also got in that situation with a couple of students that I was lecturing. I decided to fail both and sent an email, to both of them, saying that they were going to be penalized even with the disciplinary committee of the University to expelled them both. In a couple of hours the person that was guilty confesses his participation in this situation. I only decided to fail that person from the exam and leave the other only with a disciplinary warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short: Here you have only two ways, either you fail both of them which is simpler; or just look for the guilty person (which I usually do and I always discover the sinner&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T13:55:58.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15256" CreationDate="2014-01-01T14:01:09.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised that no one mentioned this solution yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find out by interrogating them: question them both on how they solved the exercises. &quot;So, tell me, which formula are you applying in this line? Why are the hypotheses satisfied? Show me the missing steps.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T14:01:09.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8586" CreationDate="2014-01-01T14:22:03.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very good question.&#xA;I usually deal with this like:&#xA;&quot;Vectors usually have magnitude and direction. Their components are usually scalars. There are more difficult cases, do you really want to deal with them now? [People sigh or say &quot;noooo&quot;] So, here is an example... Now we can continue.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, strict definitions give some comfort, but may also result in misunderstanding. It's good to confess that every detail is very difficult and even You, The Teacher, can not answer everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, you must know very well what you talk about. Then you can give some simple example, then a difficult one and ask them if they want to analyse it now. They usually say &quot;nooo&quot; and you proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are usually enthusiasts and passive people in a single classroom. It's a good practise to let enthusiasts give one or two questions above the course during the break, so that everyone gets what he's interested in. An interaction with your audience gives better feeling of what they actually need explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10412" LastEditorUserId="10412" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T16:21:17.780" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T16:21:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15256" CreationDate="2014-01-01T14:37:10.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you should remember that you are a teacher, and that you are responsible for your students' intellectual growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to randomly accuse one of the two students of &quot;copying&quot;, and if you are wrong, then think about the effects that this accusation could have. Aside from the hurt feelings, that student could lose confidence, since your accusation shows that you think that this student is worse than the student who copied. There is no predicting how your actions could change the students' lives. Honestly, from your posts, it seems like you are almost trying to make this a bigger deal than it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard way to deal with this situation is to have a meeting with both students, and to put both students through the same disciplinary action, unless one student confesses that he copied from the other student, in which case the punishment level could be adjusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing that shocked me the most from this post is the fact that you apparently seem comfortable with randomly accusing your own students. You should remember that you have HUGE effects on their lives, and make sure that you do not abuse it. Showing mistrust is one thing that you should never, never do to your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T14:37:10.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15242" CreationDate="2014-01-01T15:55:29.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would personally just leave the formats as is, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people feel strongly about having their names displayed in a certain way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be a huge hassle to find full names of all the authors that you cite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10408" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T15:55:29.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15238" CreationDate="2014-01-01T16:30:01.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important rules of writing is &lt;strong&gt;know your audience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're writing a statement of purpose, you are addressing an audience of experts in your general field. So, everyone in your field will know the basic terminology and jargon that is common to people throughout your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you are using a specific term that is not in standard usage throughout your community, you should not assume that everyone will know what it means. Therefore, for the first occurrence, you should write out the term in full. After that you can certainly list an abbreviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the term is &lt;em&gt;normally&lt;/em&gt;  or &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; known as its abbreviated name, then you don't necessarily need to expand it. In my field, for instance, there is something called the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy of equations. However, because it's such a mouthful, it's pretty much universally called the &quot;BBGKY&quot; hierarchy. In such a case, providing the full name isn't going to make much of a difference; if your audience doesn't know the abbreviation, giving the full name won't hurt. But this is such a narrow case of exceptions that in general it's a good idea to provide the full name at least once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T16:30:01.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15278" CreationDate="2014-01-01T18:17:32.343" Score="68" ViewCount="143271" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one write a strong (good) introduction into a research paper? Some introductions make me really curious about the rest of the paper while others do not. Although it is relatively easy to say which introductions are good and which are not, I find it difficult to distill what makes the difference. There is a previous question about writing introductions (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12170/how-to-write-a-ph-d-thesis-introduction-chapter&quot;&gt;How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?&lt;/a&gt;) but it is about Ph.D theses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T16:48:41.420" Title="How to write a strong introduction into a research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="49" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15276" CreationDate="2014-01-01T18:59:07.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some points to take into consideration (not an exhaustive list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correct grammar: for obvious reasons. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proper literature review: many readers find annoying when the authors claim to be the first people attacking the problem of interest, while the reader is well aware of other relevant references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State clearly the aims and main results in the introduction. It is frustrating when you have to read the entire paper to understand its purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not too long, not too short. A long introduction will make the idea of skipping this section really tempting, while a short introduction might compromise clarity or points 2 and 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cover points of interest for different audiences. For example, try to explain the impact of the paper or the topic in terms of both theoretical and practical issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10422" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T18:59:07.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15276" CreationDate="2014-01-01T19:56:19.707" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is very area specific. I'll start with the caveat that I write papers in computer science, so YMMV.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I think about introductions (which is not to say they are GOOD introductions) is that they tell the story of the paper in brief. Every paper has a story to tell, starting with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's a fascinating question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's what people have tried to do (in brief: not a full related work section, but a high level assesment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;here's the key challenge preventing further progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voila: here's our complete/partial/intermediate/awesome solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(additionally) and here's how it works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intro is typically the &quot;hook&quot; to read the rest of the paper, so you have to provide a birds-eye view that draws the reader in without drowning them in details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that separates a good intro from a bad one is knowing where that right level of detail is, so you're not either totally vacuous or mired in details. Getting this right is an art and depends on your field, your results, the problem, and your understanding of the target audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T19:56:19.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15281" CreationDate="2014-01-01T21:15:55.740" Score="1" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;As written in the title, I'm thinking of applying for masters in Europe (I myself am from Serbia), but I made a mess of my undergraduate career, so I'm looking for advice how to present this in my CV and SOP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's my background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back after finishing high school, I applied for a relatively well respected local electrical engineering school (University of Belgrade School of Electrical Engineering). Out of 500 students, I was 250ish. So far so good. My intent at the time was to study computer engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then came the first academic year. I passed a number of exams (mostly those I could pass with no studying at all, so as a result my grades were pretty bad, with my grade average being 7.0 out of 10, with 6 being passing grade), but I didn't have enough credits pass to the second year.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;No big deal, I thought, since statistics show that the four year program there usually lasts around seven years, with first year being the most difficult. I took some exams from the second year and tried to pass first year exams again. At the end of the year, I passed none of the first year exams, but I did pass some of the second year exams. Third time's the charm I thought, got some more second year exams and tried to pass the first year again. At the end of the year, situation was the same as last time: I passed none of the problematic first year exams, but I did pass some of the second year exams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By that time, I was pretty depressed, had gained quite a bit of weight, was having big problems with procrastination and was fed up with school politics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point I decided that it was time to switch schools. I moved to a younger, less-respected school (Union University School of Computing) and got admitted (barely) into second year there due to exams I passed at my previous school. I moved to a telecommunications study program there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second year, at my new school, I had around one and a half year worth of exams, but I managed to pass them. The downside was that my grades weren't all that good. They weren't bad, but nothing exceptional either. Third year went well for me. I passed all of the exams, raised my average grade to 8.0 out of 10 and became one of the best students in my (relatively small) class. In one particularly hard exam I was the only student that year to get a 9 with nobody getting a 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, the exam season for the winter semester of my fourth year is approaching and I'm thinking of what I'm going to do next. I've spoken to few professors and they all believe that I should definitely continue my education. I wouldn't have any problems continuing my education at my current school, but I don't think that it's best equipped for the field in which I want to study further. The focus of my current school is computer science, while the telecommunications program seems to have taken a back seat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read the question about getting a Ph.D. with bad transcript and fortunately for me course structure was such that just a few professors taught a large number of exams (for example six to eight hours every day for the whole semester with same professor and TA), so there are people who know me well and have a good opinion of me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that I could do much to improve my average grade. Perhaps the best I could do would be around 8.3 out of 10. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that I would have any problems with IELTS exam and I do think that I could prepare GRE well enough. I do understand that good grades there won't help me much, but on the other hand I at least hope that they won't have a negative effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of applying for universities that aren't very highly ranked, for example some from the bottom of the top 200 from the Shanghai list, but I'm not sure if that's low enough. Also I'm thinking of applying for two-year masters, but I'm coming from a four-year undergraduate school, if that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally my question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I really don't know is how to present me dropping out of my first school in my CV or SOP. I've been basically studying 6 years now, much longer than expected, with not that good grades and I really can't think of any way to present that in favorable light. I think that I matured in the meantime and my grades did improve, but on the other hand I moved a weaker school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9653" LastEditorUserId="9653" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T21:31:09.677" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T02:55:34.520" Title="Washed out from first undergraduate school, doing OK at second, thinking of applying for masters in EU" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15279" CreationDate="2014-01-02T00:50:01.247" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely get a letter from the professor who taught the course where you got 9/10 with no one else getting that grade or higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry to say it, but it sounds like you just chose not to study during your time in your first school, unless you forgot to mention some important piece of information. There is no way to sugarcoat the lack of effort, unless you did something else productive instead of studying for those exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that excuses exist for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people with bad grades, but it is certainly not true that &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; with bad grades can make their applications look good for graduate school admissions -- if such sugarcoating methods existed, it wouldn't be fair for the students who studied hard throughout their undergraduate career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next best alternative is to ask yourself why you want to pursue a master's degree, when you haven't shown a lot of promise academically. If you have a good reason for wanting it, your next best bet might be to get in touch with a professor at an institution that you want to go to for your master's, and show him how good/dedicated/passionate you can be, and then have that person vouch for you in the admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T00:50:01.247" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T08:18:09.107" Score="6" ViewCount="15092" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get admission to a master's program in economics without finishing up your undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have completed 105 credits so far for my BA Honours in economics and math degree, and still need 15 credits to graduate (120 required for graduation). However, a case of academic dishonesty could lead to my suspension from my current university. I know that I made a mistake at such a crucial time in my undergrad, but I can only learn from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem also I'm having is that some universities will not even consider my application as result of academic dishonesty. Apart from this my application is quite strong in terms of doing well in economics courses, strong letter of recommendations, and GRE score.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already published an economics paper in an undergraduate journal and feel as if there isn't anything to learn about economics from my university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can study economics independently and work to get &quot;food on the table&quot; and have some real-world experience under my belt before embarking on a journey as an intellectual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9378" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditorDisplayName="user9378" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T19:15:49.763" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T00:18:59.090" Title="Is it possible to be admitted to a Master's program after not completing Bachelor's degree due to academic dishonesty?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15288" CreationDate="2014-01-02T10:30:36.393" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's much room for optimism. Offers of graduate admission are generally preconditioned on actually completing the previous degree. Moreover, having your previous degree candidacy terminated on account of academic dishonesty will make you &quot;radioactive&quot;; very few graduate schools are going to want to bring in someone who got suspended for plagiarism or cheating. (Given that the entire research enterprise hinges on being able to trust reported results, why would a school want to take a chance on someone who has already clearly violated those principles?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[More generally, however: I do know of an economics professor whose PhD is in fact his only degree; however, the circumstances behind that are so unusual that they're unlikely to be replicated any time soon. (Basically, he followed a professor from Germany to the US while he was still an undergraduate in the days when the &lt;em&gt;Diplom&lt;/em&gt; system was in full force.)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T10:30:36.393" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15298" CreationDate="2014-01-02T11:51:17.343" Score="5" ViewCount="6317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a PHD in physics (not in US), and I'm applying for a summer school in US (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.santafe.edu/gevent/detail/education/1472/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;). I'm required to upload a statement of research interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched for webpages on how to write statement of research interest for a while but found that most of them are for applying for graduate schools. So my question is, what is the difference between statement of research interest for graduate schools admission and that for summer school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10431" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T16:56:46.133" Title="Statement of research interest for summer schools" Tags="&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15292" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:23:02.470" Score="2" ViewCount="2455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a scholarship student in my sophomore year in a double major programme in theoretical physics and pure mathematics. I wish to apply for an internship, for which they have asked me for my CV. I checked traditional CVs and I couldn't find anything that is relevant to my current situation. What should I put in my CV and what must I ignore? &#xA;The following is the skill set that I have in my arsenal. The internship is for a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;physics research topic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; so what must I include? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skills  (academic) : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physics (The courses that I have taken with my grades on them) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Math (The courses that I have taken with my grades on them) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Random courses in the branches of languages and arts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Currently involved in a theoretical research project in physics, but haven't really achieved anything in it as yet as I was headed tangentially in the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High school results (top 1% of the cohort)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skills (miscellaneous): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hyperpolyglot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;artist (professional impressionist and surrealist) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writer and poet (free verse)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;active quizzer and debater &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;football striker (out of context, but you never know ;) )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;swimmer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sculptor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interests: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Philosophy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychology &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Occult Sciences &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Art and art history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading (I would read anything with words on it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literature &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a couple of other things here and there. Also, is there any particular formatting that I should adhere to?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mailed the professor I wished to work with and he replied as follows:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Send me a CV and information on your coursework and results&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what must I put in and what must I deduct? Thanks in advance :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9596" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T23:55:38.633" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T14:28:41.240" Title="Preparing a curriculum vitae for an undergraduate internship" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15291" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:29:45.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like your list here is pretty comprehensive. I would focus less on the &quot;interests&quot; and more on the relevant skills and experience. interests are nice as a snapshot on your personality, but I wouldn't sweat it if the section is a bit barren or void of &quot;in depth&quot; content here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, a CV is nothing more than an expanded resume. If you have an existing resume, take a few moments to expand a bit on your roles and accomplishments beyond simple bullet points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10414" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T13:29:45.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15276" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:58:42.330" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently forwarded (what I think) is a guide full of excellent advice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/phd_paper_writing.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writing Tips for Ph. D. Students&lt;/em&gt; by John Cochrane&lt;/a&gt;. In it, Cochrane has a brief section of advice on the introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The introduction should start with what you do in this paper, the major contribution. You must explain that contribution so that people can understand it. Don’t just state your&#xA;  conclusion: “My results show that the pecking-order theory is rejected.” Give the fact behind that result. “In a regression of x on y, controlling for z, the coeﬃcient is q.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ﬁrst sentence is the hardest. Do not start with philosophy, “Financial economists have long wondered if markets are eﬃcient.” Do not start with “The ﬁnance literature has&#xA;  long been interested in x.” Your paper must be interesting on its own, and not just because lots of other people wasted space on the subject. Do not start with a long motivation of&#xA;  how important the issue is to public policy. All of this is known to writers as “clearing your throat.” It’s a waste of space. Start with your central contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three pages is a good upper limit for the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This just reiterates the point both Oldboy and Suresh made that the introduction should clearly state what the paper is about, and also some more detailed advice about avoiding generic intro. statements. (Note the upper bound is good for social science articles that may be from 20~40 pages, it should be much lower for briefer articles in different fields or journals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T13:58:42.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15288" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:05:02.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, no. What credibility do you think you have for your other good grades when you admit you cheated? It's entirely possible that you cheated other times as well and were simply more clever about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, most low-tier universities don't suspend students for cheating if it's the first offence. You get a zero in the course and move on to take it again or take another comparable course. The fact that suspension is on the table likely means that you cheated before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:05:02.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15291" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:30:29.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, what is the focus of the internship and is your resume focused on that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they asked you for transcripts with your application, they will know what courses you took; there is no need to reproduce them on your resume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody cares about your hobbies or non-relevant skills. If anything, to call yourself a sculptor, artist and polyglot makes you sound like an entitled pompous ahole who exaggerates. &quot;Occult sciences&quot; alone should get your resume thrown in the trash bin when you're applying for a &lt;em&gt;science&lt;/em&gt; research job, not to be a Ghostbusters crew member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your resume should answer the question, &quot;what makes me qualified for the job?&quot; What &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; courses have you taken? What &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; knowledge do you have? What &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; skills do you have that could be applied to the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:30:29.180" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15175" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:47:06.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers here. Looks like all the answers are US-based (from what little I know about US academia)... so let me add how it looks like from a perspective of a &lt;em&gt;European research lab&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I say &lt;em&gt;research lab&lt;/em&gt; because the association to the Uni is really very loose, mostly meaning rarely who is attending classes at the uni. It is a fairly big lab, and very transitional (not many people stay long). It comprises people that are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD students (some of whom have a class or two to TA) staying for 3-4 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master interns (staying for 4-6 months) and PhD exchanges (staying up to at most a year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;postdocs (staying for a year, to at most two)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;engineers (staying for anywhere between 6 months and 2 years)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;permanent positions (researchers + professors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of us have classes together, there is many areas of computer science in the lab so most of us don't even share deadlines. As I mentioned, it's a transition place where a lot of people come and go very fast. Still &lt;em&gt;the social life is quite fine&lt;/em&gt;. We &lt;strong&gt;meet on smoke breaks, coffee breaks, through officemates, through friends, ex uni buddies, cause somebody hears the accent of his nationality...&lt;/strong&gt; I have a pretty active social life, at any point the group of friends I go out with is between 5 and 10 people. Some postdocs, some PhD students (both in their last years and just starting), an odd Master student on an internship, some engineers. Some people have teams that are much more involved, so they have team-nights-out, and I've heard of young supervisors inviting their students to social dinners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the hardest parts for me is the fast pace of change: the group of people I went out a year ago has hardly anybody in common with right now. It doesn't mean that there weren't some nice friendships, but it's so easy to lose contact. Still, I also feel that I made some friends-for-life as well. A lot of different ways also exist for meeting people outside of work, such as dancing, language classes, evenings organized in town for foreign &quot;students&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:47:06.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15290" CreationDate="2014-01-02T15:20:23.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is, what is the difference between statement of research interest for graduate schools admission and that for summer school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you phrase the question suggests that you see this statement of research interest as a form to fill in some details. But it's not like there's a &quot;&lt;em&gt;P27.B: Statement Of Research Interest for Summer Schools&lt;/em&gt;&quot; form that's slightly different from the usual &quot;&lt;em&gt;P27.A: Statement Of Research Interest for Graduate Schools&lt;/em&gt;&quot; form in Annex B. These things don't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're approaching the question all wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research statement is a letter you write to a person with a specific purpose. So a better question would be &quot;what is the purpose of writing a research letter for a summer school?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is pretty much the same, but instead of trying to demonstrate why you and your background are a good fit for a grad school, now you're trying to demonstrate why you and your background are a good fit for a summer school and that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; will benefit greatly from &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's lots of tips on the Web on how to write a good research statement. Maybe some personal pointers ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost you need to appreciate that it will be read by a human being, not a machine. So don't make it boring or clichéd, esp. if that human being will have to read hundreds of statements like yours. Keep it concise and interesting. Many students are too concerned with filling &quot;the requirements&quot; than communicating; the key part of such a letter is communication, not topic lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second you need to figure out what that human being is looking for from you. Such statements are not just paperwork; they have a purpose. Why are they asking you for the document? Why will they spend valuable time to read it? What is important to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third you need to frame your personal context into what they are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can, try to figure out specifically who is going to read it ... what kind of technical expertise they have, what are their research interests, etc. That person will probably be a postdoc or junior professor in the area. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the research statement, they'll want to see how the student will benefit from the school ... why that student is worth the chair space. They will simply be looking for enthusiastic students with a convincing story as to why they will benefit from the summer school. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; the school is very narrow and technical, there may also be a check to make sure that the student has sufficient background knowledge to follow the topics. If you sound too expert in a topic, that's not good either; they'll want you to learn!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the text, discuss your research interests and goals. Relate your goals to the types of topics covered by the school. Add details; perhaps a specific lecture or lecturer or topic you are especially interested in and why. Be enthusiastic but &lt;em&gt;not fake&lt;/em&gt;. Don't get stuck in technical details. Try to make the letter sound personal, almost conversational, like a person wrote it ... versus someone taking a template and filling in topics. Edit and remove irrelevant statements. Get feedback from peers or an advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T15:20:23.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15290" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:56:46.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have attended several summer schools as a graduate student. In my experience, the primary purpose of having a research statement for summer schools is to weed out the random applications. For example, a person not actually in academia (often called &quot;cranks&quot;, because most of them don't have the necessary background nor the ability to carry out real research) applies to these things; it is a waste of resources to admit this person, and having them distracts the other qualified students in the summer school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you definitely don't need to put in as much effort into these research statements as the ones in graduate school, as the primary purpose of these statements is to show them that you are not a crank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here, you need to judge for yourself how much effort is needed. If you attend Harvard or Princeton, or if the organizers already know you, then one or two paragraphs describing your research and naming your advisor might be enough. However, if you attend a mediocre school outside of the US (where you expect no one to have heard of the school), you had better write about your research in some detail, so that no one dismisses your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T16:56:46.133" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T17:41:10.490" Score="1" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Officially, I am studying computer science. However, what I am actually doing is computational neuroscience. More over, the research I do is mostly &lt;em&gt;medical research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that there are programs for MD-PhDs. However, in most countries, there seems to be always some legal requirements one has to fulfill to enter such programs. These requirements are not given very clearly out in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an M.Sc in computer science, can I apply to such programs? More trickier question is would it be wise..? I mean, I could just go to a neuroscience program. However, I would be also really interested to help people with psychological, neurological, etc. issues (work in hospital), when having the MD title is a must?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10436" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T07:40:57.370" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T07:40:57.370" Title="Prerequisities to become an MD-PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15288" CreationDate="2014-01-02T19:56:34.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is really worth an answer but I have low reps and I can't comment yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically -- if you get an offer now, some schools (I did my PhD at a top-tier institution in the US) will not bother to check that you have a bachelor's degree; mine certainly didn't. You might even get away with it, if no one bothers to check your bachelor's degree (admittedly not very important if you become a full-fledged academic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically -- what you are asking is quite impossible, especially because you have committed an act of academic dishonesty. If someone finds out (and chances are good that they will find out, since academics like to chat and gossip at conferences), you could have your admission offer revoked, or even your degree revoked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, your situation is somewhat unrelated to your question. Most institutions will ask for transcripts from ALL universities that you have attended, whether you received a degree from them or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10408" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T19:56:34.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5179" CreationDate="2014-01-02T20:34:25.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it,  the rule is really about uncertainty. If at the time a collaboration is established, it is expected everybody will contribute, then the credit is shared evenly regardless of how the project turned out. This is like when a group of treasure hunters agreeing to share the loot evenly before embarking on a journey. Under this interpretation, adding a new author who's done no work is not accepted, as the author must expect to contribute when he is added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10438" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:34:25.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T21:47:47.863" Score="15" ViewCount="4781" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the thing. I am working in an lab under a new assistant professor of HCI and our lab itself is just two years old. We had an masters student graduating earlier and I am the second masters student from the lab to have finished my dissertation. We also have an PhD Candidate working in there. So at present we are just two GRAs in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help us out with some programming, we hired two students on an hourly basis. My advisor is not into micromanagement; hiring students and asking for an update just a week before deadline and placing a heavy trust on those students and till now it has worked fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asked to manage this student who is severely incompetent to say the least. They had developed, with 4 other students, an undergrad project which was shown to demonstrate the necessary skills, although I highly doubt that they did any work on that project. When we asked them to program an app, they could not do it so they went to another lab and made the GRAs there develop the app for them. The code was so horrible that I had to rewrite the whole program just before the deadline. I brought this to my advisor's attention and the response was they will fire both of them and asked me to stay back for one semester to help out with transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty good at what I do and have a stellar reputation in my department. Despite multiple requests from my advisor, I said I don't want to spend one more semester in the lab since I can earn much more by getting an industry job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What my advisor doesn't know is that when the new student was working, instead of developing the app on the tablet, he installed games on it and kept the tablet in his home for a month. This caused some hardships to the other new hire in the lab who could not complete the programs on time. Whenever I asked for the return of the tablet, the reply was that they came to lab but nobody was there. We were actually there in the lab during the whole time it was claimed to have attempted to return it. I was busy with interviews so I never bothered to tell my advisor about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At end of December, out of desperation she hired the student she said she would fire and  sensing desperation they asked  for GRA, saying they are interested in having a dissertation. My advisor agreed reluctantly. I came to know about this only last week when I called to find out what they were doing in the break. They sheepishly told me that my advisor was a fool and they were not really interested in a thesis but only in getting a free ride through college though being a GRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried they will not do any work and pay other people to write programs and a dissertation for them. One bad apple can destroy the work environment in a lab. So I finally emailed my advisor and asked if they can promise me an full time job by April, I will stay back and help  out in the research. I have also asked for an appointment to discuss an important matter of the new student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my advisor has already given him the commitment, but how can I convince them to drop this student? I have worked in my lab for a year and a half. I deeply care about the lab, and I don't want that student in there. What will be best way to approach my advisor about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke with my advisor yesterday and said in no uncertain terms that they are not into  micromanagement and this student will screw up her lab after I leave, they will never realize it and the will pay somebody else to write their thesis and the advisor's career will be on the hook. I promised that if the advisor find me the best student from class, I will teach them how to do basics of programming so that there will be smooth transition once I leave. According to that new student, she asked them to meet and said that she has no funding and it will be difficult for them to do a thesis without funding and suggested  trying other departments, and asked to meet  after a further week. Kind of indirectly telling them to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am not able to understand is when I asked my adviser yesterday it was said to me that it was never offered for the student to do a thesis with  but I am pretty sure it was agreed to work with that student when with them before the break. The new student was super confident about the fact that he will get funding for a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So can anybody please enlighten me as to why my advisor would lie to me here? Why would the advisor lie to me that they didn't offer a thesis when I see they pretty well did, I mean I am just an student, right? Are they embarrassed by their mistake and that's why they're not admitting it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T12:03:24.687" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T21:04:31.227" Title="How to speak to advisor about hiring an unscrupulous student?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15301" CreationDate="2014-01-02T21:49:59.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the &quot;legal requirements&quot; associated with MD-PhD programs are financing related. In general, such programs are usually sponsored and funded by national health ministries (or their equivalents). Therefore, it is preferred (or required) only to have legally qualified citizens participate in such programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the choice of major, in general, computer science is not one of the usual entry points for MD-PhD programs, which tend to be more closely related to experimental programs and majors (e.g., chemistry, biochemistry, biology, bioengineering). That said, there is more of an emphasis nowadays on computational science in medicine, and more and more MD-PhD programs are expanding their scope to include bioinformatics and computational biology. But it is still definitely not a universal, and CS majors will be at something of a disadvantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T21:49:59.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15306" CreationDate="2014-01-02T22:07:15.713" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you can broach the subject is exactly as you've laid it out in your comment. The student mentioned that he will take on a GRA position in the group. However, you're concerned that he is not actually qualified to do the research in the group, and that will give you an opportunity to lay out the case. You should have evidence that is stronger than hearsay, however, if you want to make a convincing case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also suggest some questions that the advisor can ask the student that will prove that he is not qualified to do the research. However, if your advisor is in fact &quot;desperate&quot; for help, it may not be enough to sway your advisor's mind. If your school offers &quot;provisional&quot; contracts to new graduate students, you may want to ask her if she can make a short-term commitment before guaranteeing longer-term funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T22:07:15.713" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15306" CreationDate="2014-01-03T01:58:31.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK. I'm actually surprised at the range of answers here, so I'm going to write down my take on your issue. It's possible that I'm doing things completely wrong, but I also feel like what I am about to write down is the normal graduate student response to situations like this in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly feel that there is absolutely no merit to yourself to talk badly about your fellow labmate to your supervisor. From your supervisor's perspective, it is possible that your labmate is terrible, but it is also possible that you just hate this guy (it's clear from your writing that this is not the case, but as a supervisor she might not know for sure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would probably take a more passive-aggressive approach by just refusing to help your labmate beyond what is expected normally, and just let his doom take its natural course. If he is that bad, he is bound to fail at some point. Why bother myself with it, and why get worked up about it? The only time where I would be more proactive is if my advisor asked me to collaborate with him. Then I would tell her that I would prefer not working with him, because of his previous actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, telling on your labmate could be viewed as inappropriate in my opinion, as it could just be interpreted as jealousy on your part, and reflect negatively on yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me emphasize that I am actually unsure of whether this is the right course of action, but since everyone feels so strongly about this issue, I figured that I would chip in. This is one of those cases where academia differs from real-life jobs, and there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; quite a bit of non-academics on this forum, so I am not sure if they are the only ones who have posted so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your academic career depends hugely on how your advisor views you, and if for some unfortunate reason she perceives you as a jealous person, that could reflect on her letters. It's different from the industry from what I've heard, where getting the job done matters more than how your direct supervisor might view you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would welcome comments from people, but please specify your ties (are you a grad student? professor? not in academia?) to academia in your comments. It would be interesting to hear the different opinions, and know where they come from.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T01:58:31.200" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T02:29:13.250" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is an academic probation for not finding a research advisor in time considered &quot;disciplinary sanctions by any university&quot;?  This is asked in a graduate school application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;sanction&quot; mean penalty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;disciplinary&quot; include the issue of finding a research advisor in time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T02:29:13.250" Title="Is an academic probation for not finding a research advisor in time considered &quot;disciplinary sanction&quot;?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-03T13:42:08.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15306" CreationDate="2014-01-03T03:22:05.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with user14449 above. While you may have the best intentions in outing this person's incompetence and negative attitude, it could very well backfire on you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this because I have a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard time believing that the lab supervisor was just &lt;em&gt;so super desperate&lt;/em&gt; that she had no choice to hire the guy she had just promised to fire.  All it takes to replace an undergrad in the lab is a job posting on the campus network and within a week you have a new person. Chances are that she did have the intention of firing him but subsequently found out that the kid's parents are academics too and/or big university honchos she didn't want to anger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only two viable options are to leave for a job in the &quot;real&quot; world or make him fall on his own sword. As user14449 said, sooner or later his incompetence will come to light. Since your supervisor already granted him funding, you can take your cue from her and give him even &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; responsibility. Include him in meetings, ask him to explain his work and ask him for suggestions of where the project should go next. (Obviously don't tell him ahead of time that you will be putting him on the spot in meetings). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to engage in this kind of skulduggery, just find a job elsewhere and leave. I personally can never understand why people fight tooth and nail for academic jobs in these kinds of environments. What's so great about this situation that makes this thing worthwhile? Why is this worth fighting for rather than exiting graciously? Your supervisor can promise you a job and just as easily renege on that promise like she did with the firing of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student who has worked both in academia and outside it, I much prefer the gloves-off approach of the real-world. No employer and/or team in the &quot;real&quot; world treated me as shabbily and exploitatively as grad students and professors. It's soured me on grad school, and if I ever do decide to apply it will be for a professional program where I don't have to deal with any of this baloney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T03:22:05.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15193" CreationDate="2014-01-03T09:35:02.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition, there is the possibility of having a paragraph &quot;Contributions&quot;. Some journals actually ask for such a statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the discussion about the order of authors becomes difficult, this can calm down the discussion, also because writing down who did what often points out the order the authors should have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T09:35:02.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2014-01-03T11:49:57.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling, in the limited context of mathematics in France, is that the research record is by far the most important thing. Of course, one should do its teaching duty carefully (&lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt; because it is one's duty, but also because being known as a very sloppy teacher &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; close some doors), but all other aspects are tertiary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Paragraph edited upon further reflexion]&lt;/strong&gt; I would only mitigate this in favor of the &lt;em&gt;visibility&lt;/em&gt; issue: good research needs to be shown in order to give you benefit, so you should have an up-to-date web page, post your preprints on the arXiv, give talks whenever given the opportunity, and in some circumstances propose one. Also some networking may be needed, in particular if you advisor does not network for you. This means for example seizing the opportunities to collaborate with more advanced researchers, send by e-mail your best work to a few people who you think might be interested, etc. Don't overdo it though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely advise against spending time on administrative things as grant funding and the like. Participate in a collective grant if offered, but that's not a PhD job to do the paperwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2017-04-10T07:36:17.500" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T07:36:17.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T12:00:43.027" Score="8" ViewCount="6430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I previously asked this question in Mathematics.SE (which is now removed from that site):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to be a professor and a researcher in academia if I only have a baccalauréat in maths and don't have much money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one kind user from France said that I can't unless I have a PhD. (French baccalauréat is only graduation from high-school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how to get a Doctorat in France? I search for informations about a PhD in general: like how much would it cost me?...etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I heard of 'classe prépa', should I take them first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10453" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T15:17:21.850" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T17:10:22.790" Title="How to get a PhD (doctorat) in France?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;france&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T12:20:04.443" Score="6" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied Social Sciences (Development Economics concentration) at one of Europe's top ranked universities and achieved excellent grades, but had to interrupt my studies just before taking two final exams, entirely due to personal reasons - thus not completing my undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was at uni, I obtained grants to run a new research project in my field with  sponsorship by some well-known professors. The progress of my work was published in an international journal and also a few industry magazines. I was also heavily involved in other projects around the university.&#xA;I mention these little details just to make it clear that I was not at uni just for the sake of getting a qualification, but because had a genuine intention of contributing to my field, to research and maybe become a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was addressing my personal issues, I started working, first freelancing but later at a mid-sized company and have worked my way up to middle management. My job is somewhat related to what I studied and also very analytical, although it's obviously business-focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what options I have...&#xA;- if I wanted to return to a research based position; &#xA;- especially, if returning to university might turn out to be too hard/long (might have to re-do the entire undergraduate studies while working)&#xA;- and whether it might be easier (but also possible) to try applying straight into think-tanks and development focused positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my concerns is that despite my good CV in business, I don't have the same quantitative-analytical and research skills of someone who studied at postgraduate level. It's one of the subjects I enjoyed most and even enjoy at work, but how can I prove myself to future employers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my question boils down to: how much do my achievements matter, and what else do I need to do to make up for no degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATES / Answers to questions in comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I dropped out of my own, for very personal reasons. In fact, I almost disappeared without notice and had to leave to another country. I am also a bit reluctant to discuss with my university about what those personal reasons were, but trust me they were very serious.&#xA;So I would have mixed feelings about returning to the same university.&#xA;I am sure I have disappointed many people there, and they would not understand why I left...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2 / Answers to rocinante's update :)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There must have been a misunderstanding. I didn't mention nor imply anywhere that I considered faking my credentials to advance my career. I started at entry level with my current employer and progressed from within, i.e. there were no academic requirements when I started, but I proved them that I had the skills required for my current level.&#xA;To be more specific, I am asking about whether there might be chances for alternative training to get into a more advanced research path. Adult learning, online courses, non-degree professional certificates.&#xA;For example, I have heard of several people getting into MBA programs after 5-7 years of work experience, but no degree.&#xA;Are there analogue routes into research?&#xA;I hope this clarifies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 3 / Answers to Ben Webster and rocinante&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Thanks both of you. It's true I should consider my old university; I am just very afraid that it might not work and considering what alternatives I may have should my attempts fail. I am also not belittling the value of degrees, BUT simply wondering how else I could prove myself, improve my knowledge, use a professional body route rather than academic etc. if the old university option won't succeed.&#xA;I know many doors will close, but I am determined and convinced that my potential, passion and skills far outweigh what's on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T10:14:17.433" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T00:47:09.453" Title="What options does college dropout with great grades, research projects and CV have to return to university (or thinktanks)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5179" CreationDate="2014-01-03T14:22:54.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one takes a superficial look at the authorship issue, it would seem unethical, i.e. one author does not physically contribute to the paper. However, viewing a paper from the perspective of contributorship, which I perceive as wider than the concept of authorship (which focusses on the writing, (see for example examples from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-submission/authorship-contributorship&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ&lt;/a&gt;) a more tangible part of the research process), the original described Hardy-Littlewood case is less clear. Since both authors work intimately together, it is clearly conceivable that their joint long-term discussions form a significant background to and lead up to the final publication(s). Hence they have both contributed to the paper even if it has not been explicit. The rules for contributorship set up by the Vancouver Protocol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final approval of the version to be published; AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may thus not be broken. It sounds as if point two of this list is not clearly enforced but if the last point is fulfilled then it is possible to view the second and third points as implicitly covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly the issue of ethics in what I would call a positive case such as this is not easy to deal with. The ethical rules should of course be followed in all cases but it is primarily the negative aspects that need to be scrutinized. If both authors can stand by each paper they are on, I would say all is ok. I should perhaps also mention the consortia papers that emerge from large projects such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/ATLASAuthorshipPolicy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CERN&lt;/a&gt; where authorships are bound by contract rather than actual physical contribution. Again, I would see this as a positive form of division of authorship which serves its purpose and although break the Protocol rules is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T14:22:54.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15239" CreationDate="2014-01-03T14:48:22.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add to Scaahu's answer, with which I of course agree. Basically anyone could in theory contribute to academic knowledge (I read that as research). But, it is easy to underestimate the amount of knowledge and experience that goes into successful research and publication thereof. The less you know about these required skills the more yo are likely to underestimate what is needed. Key is definitely to have a sound and up-tot-date view of research in the field or sub-field where the own interests lie. Add to that the skill to write up the science well, which includes not just writing well but understanding the format for writing well and knowing what is required and where to publish such work. i am not convinced blogs would work in all fields, I do not know of any such forums of any weight in my own field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since research educations are there to allow you to pick up the necessary skills for research, it should be clear that you need to have gained similar insights to be able to manage the entire research process well. I would guess that you may lack some of these skills; which, is of course unclear. Much can be learned by studying other's studies and at he same time pick up a god reference on the research process from idea to publication (write-up). Establishing a contact with a researcher in the field may provide additional help. We had such a person affiliated with our general research group while I was a graduate student and that person produced good contributions but probably would not have been able to without the support from the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T14:48:22.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1834" CreationDate="2014-01-03T16:21:40.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A qualification regardless of level and field of study is never a waste, one needs to realize how to use it wisely and appropriately. As we navigate life we shift perspective and interests, our education choices therefore need to reflect this. Ph.D provides sound research focus, MBA provides sound business and leadership focus. The two combined is a great and electrifying combination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10461" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T16:21:40.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2014-01-03T17:06:41.930" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same experience with arxiv and it took only 1-2 days after they change my paper track. However, they mentioned it may take up to several days. The arxiv helps says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Hold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your submission was identified by arXiv administrators or moderators&#xA;  as needing further attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submissions may be put on hold for a variety of reasons, ranging from&#xA;  questions about proper classification, pending moderator approval,&#xA;  presentation issues, copyrighted PDF, etc., to editorial concerns.&#xA;  Most of these do not require any further input from the submitter and&#xA;  will be dealt with in due course. arXiv urges submitters to be&#xA;  patient. Due to the large volume of submissions, it may take several&#xA;  days before a resolution is reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that oversize submissions are automatically put on hold, and this&#xA;  is one particular circumstance in which submitters should follow up&#xA;  with arXiv administrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submissions in this status will not expire. Authors must not create a&#xA;  new submission with the same content when a pending submission is on&#xA;  hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please be sure to include the submission identifier of the form&#xA;  submit/NNNNNNN when contacting arXiv administrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;wait for few more days and send them an email. They are quick in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T17:06:41.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2014-01-03T17:38:25.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the points already made, something that hasn't been explicitly mentioned yet is to &lt;em&gt;let your colleagues know that you are looking for a job&lt;/em&gt;. Everyone in your immediate lab group and advisory committee should know your name, what your specific research interests are, and that you're looking for a job. Most immediate department members should be aware of your general research area and that you're looking for a job. When you network, you should specifically mention that you are looking for a job and to &quot;keep an eye out for any positions&quot;. Your personal web space should state that you are looking for an academic job and to contact you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be rather obvious in the context of the question but I thought it was worth repeating since this is a very concrete and specific thing you can do to improve your visibility. Many people say &quot;network&quot; or &quot;visit departments&quot; or &quot;publish papers&quot; and these are essential to getting a job in the long term, but if you don't mention to all of these people that you're looking then they're not going to keep you in mind when they do see a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: if you network, tell people &quot;I am looking for a job&quot; and then ask them to &quot;send along opportunities that may be interesting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T17:38:25.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15330" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:19:12.777" Score="11" ViewCount="52410" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I am citing a person called Emilia Di Martino. How would she go in my MLA reference list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibilities I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Martino, Emilia di.&#xA;Martino, Emilia Di.&#xA;Di Martino, Emilia.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how would I refer to her work inline? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T07:26:06.240" Title="How to deal with particles in a last name in a reference list" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15326" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:35:20.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched her name in Google Scholar and the first paper &quot;CLIL implementation in Italian schools...&quot; includes a footnote on how to cite it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Di Martino, E. &amp;amp; Di Sabato, B. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short &quot;Di Martino&quot; is the surname and cite/use it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7978" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T18:35:20.943" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15315" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:46:54.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to get your Ph.d in france, you will first have to get a bachelor degree and a master degree. You need to get accepted for Ph.d though, though finishing your master degree in the high average of your class (honorary degrees) makes the acceptance more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance of your Ph.d varies on other factors as well, if a lot of people are applying for a spot with a better background than you, they might get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to be a professor and a researcher in academia if I only have a&#xA;  baccalauréat in maths and don't have much money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't neccesarily need a Ph.D to be a professor, if the AND researcher is important, than you will need one. If you just aim to lecture, they accept people with a master degree to lecture in the (professional) bachelor degrees. (Ofcourse, with a Ph.D you have more chance of getting the position)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T19:03:11.480" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T19:03:11.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15316" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:57:21.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm with @rocinante here: you're handicapping yourself if you can't get past whatever block is preventing you from discussing this personal issue with people from your past university.  I don't know whether it's embarrassing or emotionally painful (and you don't need to tell us, we're just yahoos on the internet), but you have to be able to give some account of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you should make a good faith attempt to finish your degree at your old institution.  I'm sure you did burn some bridges there when you left, but if you can't get past that to try, that doesn't sound especially driven to me.  Credentialism may be a little silly, but you're locking yourself out of a lot of doors if you don't finish your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you want to be successful getting a position in any area of research, recommendations from &quot;one of Europe's top ranked universities&quot; would be pretty helpful (for getting into a graduate program of any description, they are essential).  I know less about think tanks, but in most graduate admission committees, even with a completed bachelor's, no letters from professors you had as an undergraduate and an unexplained gap in your transcript  that's not explained extremely well in your personal statement would be an immediate disqualification.  So, not only should you go back to your old university, you need to set up meetings with the professors you disappointed, apologize sincerely, explain your situation, and knock their socks off with where you are now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T06:51:16.507" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T06:51:16.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15326" CreationDate="2014-01-03T19:13:09.157" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that there is a substantial difference in several continental languages between uppercase and lowercase versions of a last name: it is wrong to write &amp;quot;de Martino&amp;quot; if the person's last name is normally written &amp;quot;De Martino.&amp;quot; This is a historical artifact, where the use of the capital letter indicates nobility, while the lowercase letter denotes a more traditional relationship. Similar rules apply to &amp;quot;von&amp;quot; in German and &amp;quot;van&amp;quot; in Dutch, but not to &amp;quot;de&amp;quot; in French or Spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, when capitalized, the particle should always be treated as part of the last name. If lowercase, you can treat it as a suffix that goes after the first name. The exception are names like &amp;quot;de Gaulle&amp;quot; where &amp;quot;de&amp;quot; is followed by a one-syllable name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beethoven, Ludwig van&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clausewitz, Carl von&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;de Gaulle, Charles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Di Martino, Emilia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martino, Emilia di&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maupassant, Guy de&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Van Allen, James&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My source is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlahandbook.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MLA Handbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T19:13:09.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T21:00:03.990" Score="11" ViewCount="1569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently reviewed a paper and recommended Major Revision. I provided a referee report with some detailed comments on what the revision should address. I can see from the system that the Editor gave a decision of Major Revision, the authors of the paper have been notified and they already submitted a revision four months ago. However, the Editor did not invite me as a referee in the second round. I have been refereeing for over seven years and this is the first time that I experienced such a situation. I have been obsessing that the Editor found my report incompetent or not useful. But, the overall recommendation was the same (Major Revision) and the same journal asked me to review other manuscripts in the same time frame. What do you think the reason could be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10470" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T21:22:53.083" LastActivityDate="2018-01-04T09:45:13.183" Title="Editor didn't invite for a second review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15331" CreationDate="2014-01-03T21:03:53.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess would be that when the editor saw the revised manuscript and the comments from the authors, he deemed the revision to be less major than he initially thought, and decided to not send the manuscript out for review a second time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10471" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T21:03:53.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15331" CreationDate="2014-01-03T21:22:15.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are always difficulties second-guessing from what others actions result from. The fact you did not get re-invited, is not strange in my experience (as reviewer and editor). First, I assume you do not know what the other (I assume the journal uses more than one reviewer) reviewer provided in a second review. It may have been minor revisions and the editor could make a decision to provide a major revisions verdict but go directly to accept if he/she thought the corrections were good enough. This is an editors prerogative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always possible that an editor chooses a different reviewer for the reason you mention but given that you have done many reviews before, I sincerely doubt this is the case or reason. Another possibility is that the editor felt someone with different expertise was needed for some aspect of the manuscript, perhaps based on comments by the second reviewer. But, you will never know the details of the story and I would not think twice about the event. The fact that you keep getting requests shows your expertise is in demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T21:22:15.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15338" CreationDate="2014-01-03T21:27:23.290" Score="18" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Exams-and-Tests/What-is-a-good-exam?share=1#&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to a quora question, the answerer mentions how the 'entropy' of a set of exam results can be used to measure how well the exam differentiates between students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be computing the entropy of my students' exam results? How do I do it? How should I interpret the entropy information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: How is entropy related to standard deviation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10473" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-10-27T18:56:25.593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T18:56:25.593" Title="How to measure entropy of exam results" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15335" CreationDate="2014-01-03T23:36:12.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practicalities first. Take your list of exam scores and count for each possible value of the score how many of the exams got that score. In Excel the FREQUENCY function is useful for automating this step. To give some names call p_i the number of exams which have score i. From there you just add up -(p_i)log(p_i) over all the scores that actually happened. The base of the logarithm is not particularly important abstractly but what it does is scale your final &quot;entropy&quot; values so be consistent and only compare different classes when you are using the same base. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far this is just a computation to perform so what does it tell you? It tells you how much information the scores encode. A test that really differentiates between the levels of knowledge that students have will have values that are take more information to predict. That information might be that your students really know/do not know the material. Or it could be 15 of the questions are easy and 5 very hard so scores in the low-80's are going to be more common than they otherwise might be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What entropy will tell you is a quantified notion for how much more information is in your exam results than just randomly assigning numbers between 0 and 100. Like any attempt to summarize an entire packet of exams and the attached students with a single number, be careful to not push your data too far. The person in your link that was &quot;surprised how few professors compute and report entropy (or even know what it is)&quot; is a person who is in electrical engineering and computer sciences. Both of those fields use the notion of entropy regularly so his surprise maybe not be that surprising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="7561" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T04:32:00.637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T04:32:00.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15335" CreationDate="2014-01-03T23:44:29.210" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Entropy measures how much information you learn on average about each student from the exam results.  For example, imagine an exam on which everyone gets a perfect score.  In that case, you would learn nothing, so the entropy is zero.  If half the students get one score and half get another, then you learn one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit&quot;&gt;bit&lt;/a&gt; of information about each of them.  If you want to assign meaningful grades on the usual U.S. scale, you'll need at least several bits of entropy, and the 3.5 or 4 bits mentioned in the quora answer sounds reasonable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind the answer you link to is perfectly reasonable: if your exam results have low entropy, then that basically means they are clumped together on too few possible scores, and you don't have enough ability to distinguish between students.  On the other hand, I don't see much point to actually computing a mathematical measure of entropy (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29&quot;&gt;Shannon entropy&lt;/a&gt;), except perhaps for fun if you enjoy that sort of thing.  Instead, you can just look at the range of scores and judge how well they distinguish between students.  Think about how you might assign grades, and you'll rapidly see whether you run into problems, without any need for mathematical computations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, doing it by entropy is a little subtle anyway.  Strictly speaking, Shannon entropy pays no attention to the distance between scores, just to whether they are exactly equal.  I.e., you can have high entropy if every student gets a slightly different score, even if the scores are all very near to each other and thus not useful for distinguishing students.  The quora answer obliquely refers to that (in the discussion of bins), but still this means you can't just compute a single number without thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd view entropy more as a metaphor than a number most professors should compute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T23:44:29.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15288" CreationDate="2014-01-04T00:11:01.087" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply put, there is a small chance you could get into an MA program without a BA, and there is a small chance you could get into an MA program with the stigma of academic dishonesty on your record, but there is virtually no chance of getting into an MA program when you have no BA &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; of academic dishonesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you do what you can to make amends and get the BA.  If you can say that you were suspended due to academic dishonesty but turned over a new leaf, persevered and finished the degree, then you have somewhere to start from.  But if schools get the impression that you were kicked out for cheating and never bothered to go back and fix that, it will be a huge red flag that will make it nearly impossible for you to be accepted in good faith.  (You could still get accepted by lying or hiding your past, but you admirably mentioned in the comments that that's not what you want to do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T00:11:01.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T11:02:39.187" Score="21" ViewCount="13053" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research is in software engineering, but in a sub-field which is very close to social science. My papers normally contain sentences like &quot;We conducted a study with 56 participants.&quot; and &quot;Our previous study showed that [some assumptions are true]&quot; and &quot;We chose to use Cramer's V as the association measure, because [explanation why we thought it is better than other association measures]&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I am close to my Ph.D. thesis, I am writing more texts alone, and the thesis is legally required to be my own work. So &quot;we&quot; is factually wrong. But using &quot;I&quot; feels immodest, and it is certainly unusual. But I don't know how to change my texts to avoid it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine how to apply the advice from that other answer to my case. &quot;One conducted a study with 56 participants&quot;? &quot;The conducted study had 56 participants&quot;? &quot;A study was conducted, with 56 participants&quot;? Unlike describing a mathematical proof, these sentences sound terrible. And how to explain my decision to use Cramer's V, when it is based on personal opinion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice how to deal with the matter outside of the world of mathematical proofs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example why &quot;I&quot; might be needed. It is not only vanity; in the not-so-exact sciences there is sometimes lots of leeway involved. Say that I code some data. This is a very subjective process, and can be error prone. It is important for the readers to know that a coding was done by a single person, as this is considered less reliable than having somebody else repeat it and discuss any differences, and also because the coder has to take responsibility for any unusual decisions or errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2945/choice-of-personal-pronoun-in-single-author-papers&quot;&gt;more general question&lt;/a&gt; on the same topic. But the accepted and highly-upvoted answer is from the point of view of a mathematician, it says that the writing style is best constrained to declarative sentences such as &quot;Since p, it follows that q.&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T21:50:56.533" Title="What to use instead of academic 'we' when describing an experiment?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-04T13:35:54.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are customs and habits that differ between disciplines, between research groups and between individuals. I would endeavour to claim that the trend is away from passive phrased (e.g. &quot;was made&quot; etc.) to active we and I but perhaps also from royal we's and expressions such as &quot;this author&quot; in favour for being to the point using &quot;I&quot;. The key, however, lies in how the &quot;I&quot; is used. (in fact, &quot;this author&quot; may even be confused by the author of the latest referenced paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a paper you can safely use I whenever you report on things you in particular have done. In methods sections, it concerns the choices of methods you (and nobody else) has made and in the results section it concerns the results you (and nobody else) has obtained and your choice which ones to highlight. In the discussion section you can use &quot;I&quot; whenever you make a point that you stand by, you can use we in parts where you perform a discussion with the reader; we meaning you and the reader. In short, the &quot;I&quot; signals your contributions and puts you (and nobody else) on the spot for criticism. So as I see it &quot;I&quot; is not a way to brag (which seems to scare many), it is exposing the fact that you alone stand for what is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you try to find good (recommended by peers) papers written in different styles and think about the styles with the aim of finding your own comfort zone. It is a matter of style, not right and wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cap off I want to highlight a couple of books that I personally, being a non-native English speaker, have found very useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glasman-Deal, H., 2012. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English. Imperial College Press, London&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Day, R.A. &amp;amp; Sakaduski, N., 2011. Scientific English. A guide for scientists and other professionals. Greenwood, Santa Barbara CA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T13:35:54.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-04T13:36:25.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the conventions in social science, but the problem seems to be very close to what natural scientists face when writing a methods section, i.e., how an experiment was performed. If you look into the publications, you will see that these sections are almost exclusively written in the passive voice. The idea behind it is to take away the focus from the subject performing the experiment, putting more emphasis on tthe process instead. So you examples would become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study with 56 participants was conducted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cramer's V was chosen as the association measure, because...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Our previous study&quot; is still fine, when the previous study has several authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T13:36:25.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15349" CreationDate="2014-01-04T18:12:02.390" Score="6" ViewCount="3844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to an IEEE conference (Computer Science). My paper was not accepted for publication but it has been accepted for poster presentation there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference requires the authors to pay full delegate registration fees as is required for authors of published works. Is it a common practice ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a novice student in the field when I submitted the paper, but have worked a lot in past few months in the area. And I am not looking for any specific inputs into that work anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth doing a poster presentation in such case ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; (some additional information)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not a top tier conference &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am self funded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T18:54:10.017" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T06:57:15.937" Title="Is it worth doing a poster presentation?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15347" CreationDate="2014-01-04T18:19:15.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you done these kinds of presentations before? If not, it may be good practice if you are a shy public speaker and could use the practice. Also, if you are interested in meeting the other people at the conference, it would be useful to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T18:19:15.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15347" CreationDate="2014-01-04T18:27:49.280" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience publishing in CS, so I'll give you my point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The conference requires the authors to pay full delegate registration fees as is required for authors of published works. Is it a common practice ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. In general, every participant is expected to pay in full, no matter what kind of contribution he/she has submitted. You are paying the conference, not your publication. One could argue that this is the main point why many (weaker) conferences even have poster and short paper tracks - to get more people to pay full registrations and attend the conference without having to accept too many papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was a novice student in the field when I submitted the paper, but have worked a lot in past few months in the area. And I am not looking for any specific inputs into that work anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should comment that this is a somewhat questionable attitude. Even if you are not planning to continue a certain line of research, hearing what others think about your work will help you a lot in future research projects and papers. Also, I don't think that you can go from &lt;em&gt;novice&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;can't learn anything in the field anymore&lt;/em&gt; in the timeframe of a conference paper review process, so I'll wager that some in the audience will still have reasonable input on your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it worth doing a poster presentation in such case ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say this depends on practicalities. Is your advisor OK with paying your conference trip without a full paper to show? Is it far, will the travel be expensive? Is it a top conference that you want to attend for the conference's (and associated networking's) sake? Have you done many presentations, or will it at least be good training?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, from a scientific point of view, most poster presentations are not very valuable. They don't &lt;em&gt;count&lt;/em&gt; a lot on your CV (except, maybe, if it really is an absolute top conference), and you will not get that much feedback, realistically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T18:27:49.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1731" CreationDate="2014-01-04T21:08:20.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;no of course a phd wont help you at all why would any R&amp;amp;D firm want a educated person on their team; i am almost certain that you knew the answer when you typed the question. if it is worth it to you then do it for yourself regardless of the degrees you hold your ability to market yourself within the community of practice you want to enter will be the test&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10487" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T21:08:20.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9014" CreationDate="2014-01-04T22:15:24.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now 38yrs old and came across this site doing research for a graduate program. During high school I was not a &quot;good&quot; student. My grades were as bad as you could imagine and I paid strict attention to the grading methods that each teacher used. I did as little home-work as I could. Often home-work counted heavily in grading so I would need to max tests and especially semester finals (finals were usually 20% weighted in final averages). My typical finals week would require me to achieve 6-7 high &quot;A&quot; grades to achieve a D and pass the courses. My GPA at graduation was 1.82, I loved to listen to lectures and to read texts but I never wanted to do the mundane work of reinforcement. When I went to college I found a grading style that I was very comfortable with namely tests, essays, exams I finished my B.S. with a 3.83 GPA and did it in five semesters. Very little about my approach changed from high school to college except that I more than doubled my course load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had one high-school teacher that gave us a choice about how we would be graded. He was a geometry teacher and he gave you the choice of Option A: 100% based on tests or Option B: 50% tests, 30% homework, 20% quizzes. You had to choose on the first day of class and sign a contract. I chose test option, and felt a vested interest making my choice the right one for me. He had one extra credit question on every test that was related to the topic but much more difficult I finished his class with 104% grade and likely the lone A of my high school career. I never did any home work but I hung on his every word in class and spent time while I was running working through geometric proofs in my head. I would have likely done that anyway but he is still an inspiration to me now and he is among the influences that have lead me to want to teach after I retire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a kid can present a compelling logical and supportable premise that supports regarding you should thank them for helping to improve your curriculum or your communication process; find a way to benefit from their observations. It may be an opportunity to apply some constructivist principles or you might have to expose them to a harsh truth that they are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10487" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T22:15:24.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:53:32.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;SlideJar is a great platform (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slidejar.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slidejar.com&lt;/a&gt;) since it provides search and results at a slide level. It also has a way for you to provide real value to the folks who you want to share with as they can mash up individual slides into new presentations and save them for later reference. ANyone can set up their own slidejar site (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://neillasher.slidejar.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://neillasher.slidejar.com&lt;/a&gt; as a reference) and can actually earn revenue by people mashing up their slides and saving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:53:32.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2014-01-05T00:11:41.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult question, as so much depends on the individual. However, here are 2 questions you might want to ask yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q1: Are you exceptionally good at math? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, you could &lt;em&gt;consider&lt;/em&gt; doing a Master's in an engineering discipline. But if you are not first rate at math, I would suggest doing the Master's in math. Prelims are no joke, and if I knew I wanted to specialize in applied math, then I would take care to learn the basics of real analysis, topology, abstract algebra, and numerical analysis &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; well. You can always pick up the applications later (or as my advisor who was a mathematician working in biology told me, &quot;It's easier to go down&quot;) I worked as a mathematician for EEs for many years and by far, the rate limiting step is always math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q2: Do you want to work in industry or academics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, then you definitely don't want to do your MS in engineering. If the former, it could be a plus. One the of the biggest obstacles math PhDs face is that they find they often need a secondary field or skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The safe bet (for many may reasons) would be to do your Master's in math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T00:11:41.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2014-01-05T00:20:13.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Most stats programs do not require math GREs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The majority of math GRE is not from advanced mathematics. I strongly suggest you read up on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Stats programs generally do not require a lot of math background. A solid background in linear algebra, calculus, and multivariate analysis, along an upper level stats sequence is more than sufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Your references and any research you've done are going to be the important factors. Did you distinguish yourself in your math classes? Were you the top student? If not, applying to a top 20 school may be an unrealistic goal for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T00:20:13.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15362" CreationDate="2014-01-05T00:41:00.847" Score="4" ViewCount="3348" Body="&lt;p&gt;My colleagues argue that a meta-analysis / systematic review needs at least two data collectors (or authors according to them) as a &quot;must&quot;. I have not found any reference in the PRISMA (or any other sources about meta-analyses/systematic reviews) that confirms this claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any such protocol or consensus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T01:08:02.953" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T10:10:02.267" Title="Must meta-analyses or systematic reviews have more than one author?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;&lt;meta-analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15361" CreationDate="2014-01-05T01:22:27.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Although PRISMA does not require such a protocol, Cochrane Handbook does. However, it too does not &quot;necessitate&quot; it, but encourages it (at least to my understanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the Chapter 7 of the Part 2 of this online Handbook: &lt;a href=&quot;http://handbook.cochrane.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://handbook.cochrane.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6928" LastEditorUserId="6928" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T23:46:27.693" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T23:46:27.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15370" CreationDate="2014-01-05T01:38:44.443" Score="35" ViewCount="7208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often when I attend conferences and meetings, there are some social activities sometimes specifically for graduate students to mix with each other and get to know other students and build possible future collaborations and contacts. Once in a while I end up with a group of let's say all Chinese foreign students. I am not Chinese and I don't know any Mandarin/Cantonese. But it is a little frustrating and in my opinion quite rude when everyone carries on their conversation in Mandarin sometimes bypassing me directly and I have no clue what's going on and I stand there looking like a complete idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the gathering is something like a cocktail party, I would move on pretty quickly. But if it happens to be a formal dinner then I am stuck at that table and the entire evening might go by with me hardly talking to anyone. My question is, what can I do or say which will make them realize this and to consider other people around who may not know Mandarin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, this is in the USA and the students I am talking about are all foreign students attending American universities so it isn't a question of them not knowing English. Sometimes I know a friend or two and I would jokingly tell them only English which works for a couple of minutes and then everyone reverts to Mandarin again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4335" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T13:00:26.963" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:14:14.597" Title="What to do when no one speaks English around you?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15363" CreationDate="2014-01-05T04:40:21.180" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your frustration. I am in a similar, though different, situation. I do find it frustrating as well, when the situation turns as you described. However, as Zhou Fang pointed out, when a group of people share a common native language, it is very difficult for them to choose a common second language, though it is clearly an option for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as what to do, the key is for you to start driving the conversation. You should have some interesting stories or intriguing questions to bring up. When you are the center of the conversation, people will naturally want to involve you and, therefore, they will change their conversational language into English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is easily said but difficult in practice. To drive a conversation takes a lot of energy and a lot of preparation (unless you have the 'gift of gab'). However, this is the only way I see to accomplish what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you must be prepared for someone else to take the lead and then people start to move back to their native language but you should be able to add something to bring the attention back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, you must be careful not to come off as someone who craves attention. You can accomplish this by sharing attention in a meaningful way. However, it does take a constant effort to keep yourself involved enough that others want to keep you involved by choosing English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T04:40:21.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5511" CreationDate="2014-01-05T04:54:09.343" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came a cross a short but interesting editorial note from American Chemical Society written by a potential postdoc supervisor. She raises lots of advises like send few thoughtful emails rather than tones of thoughtless copies and pasted emails. I think it is quiet useful for every postdoc applicant regardless of his major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couple of interesting quotes from the author is of value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Funding issues aside, the majority of the&#xA;  postdoctoral applications I receive do not capture my interest,&#xA;  and I am sure this is true for most faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many email requests that I receive appear to&#xA;  be sent by someone who has taken a long list of faculty names/&#xA;  emails and sent oﬀ their application with little thought. I usually&#xA;  do not even read such requests after the ﬁrst few sentences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My advice to potential applicants: send far fewer but personalized&#xA;  emails. Read about a faculty member’s research and tailor your letter&#xA;  to the group. Obviously, include your CV,&#xA;  prior research accomplishments, your career plans, and how a&#xA;  position in the group would help move you toward your goals.&#xA;  Provide details that help sell you, including important&#xA;  interactions with colleagues, the skills that you bring to the&#xA;  position, and other key points that may set you apart.&#xA;  When writing an email to me, for example, I like to know&#xA;  why you selected my group: was it on the advice of a mentor,&#xA;  because you like a particular aspect of my research, or hope to&#xA;  gain a speciﬁc skillset? Next, explain what you can do for me.&#xA;  Most applicants list a myriad of reasons why getting hired is&#xA;  good for them. Perhaps not surprisingly, I hire people because&#xA;  it helps my research program. I want an outstanding researcher&#xA;  and also someone who has good communication skills. Reading&#xA;  your email is my ﬁrst opportunity to judge your ability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find the whole text of less than a page &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ac402163j&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10259" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T04:54:09.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2014-01-05T05:36:24.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A GPA of less than 3.0/4.0 will make you ineligible for any top 20 grad school in the US (and Canada), no matter if you apply for a Master's program or a PhD. The lack of math is not as big of a problem as your GPA. If a school accepts you but doesn't think you have enough math in your background, they will put you in a qualifying year instead of the grad program directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good GRE score is good to have, however the cut-off for considering your application is 3.0. If you don't have a minimum 3.0, chances are your application will be disqualified no matter what your GRE score is. These cutoffs are stated clearly at each school's admission requirements page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For admission consideration, your only option is to talk to the supervisor at your current school and ask if he/she knows anybody at a US school and could put in a good word for you. Otherwise, I am afraid that you are wasting your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T05:36:24.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15363" CreationDate="2014-01-05T05:59:38.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, what can I do or say which will make them realize this&#xA;  and to consider other people around who may not know Mandarin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way to broach this without having them think negatively of you. Anybody who wasn't raised in a barn knows that this kind of exclusionary behavior is rude. It's no different than carrying on a conversation with inside jokes that not everyone knows or talking in depth about a topic that makes other people feel stupid (e.g. the Cantor's Completeness Hypothesis in math)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most polite thing you can do is to interrupt their conversation with something like, &quot;Excuse me, but what are you talking about? May I join in?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T05:59:38.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15347" CreationDate="2014-01-05T06:57:15.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have very mixed feelings about poster presentations. Here is my take on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros of poster presentations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get to meet people. Sometimes (very rarely, IMO), the people that you meet through your poster session help you quite a bit through your career; invitations to seminars, eventually hiring you as their postdocs, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's one more line on your CV. Always helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were going to go to that conference anyway, it's something productive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In all honesty, what will happen most of the time is that you will be standing in front of your poster (quite awkward experience, I might add), and no one will be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; interested; they might ask you a question or two, but then they will want to move on to the next poster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a lot of time and effort spent on making that poster. Also, poster printing is expensive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many fields, poster presentations on CVs are not taken super seriously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I am concerned, poster presentations are &lt;em&gt;something to do&lt;/em&gt; while you are away at a conference. I personally usually opt not to present poster, because the outcome to effort ratio is quite low. As a rule of thumb, I would recommend that you present the poster if you are a graduate student of early years (if you have spoken in very few conferences), and be more selective if you are more senior in academia. For example, you might choose to present your poster if the conference is very prestigious, or if you know that someone that you would really like to know is coming to that conference. Otherwise, it doesn't make a huge difference in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T06:57:15.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15363" CreationDate="2014-01-05T10:30:27.137" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very relevant and interesting question. I agree with all answers so far that the problem can only be solved by being (pro)active, perhaps more than many young PhD students are comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, what I can add to the discussion is a bit of insight from the &quot;other&quot; side. See, I am Austrian (mother tongue is german), and in my line of research Germany is pretty well-established. Hence, when there is a conference in Europe, german speakers (Germans, Austrians, Swiss) often form about a third or so of all participants. In these conferences, random chatter (not so much technical discussion, which people are used to doing in english anyway) often starts in english when a non-german speaker is present, but usually changes to german when the non-german speaker moves away or seems to be not interested in the conversation (e.g., he/she is turning away, or does not contribute at all to the conversation). Of course this means that it is hard for a non-german speaker to join in on a conversation &lt;strong&gt;after it started&lt;/strong&gt;. Usually, if a non-german approaches the group, chatter will turn to english again, but this usually does not happen unless this person is already good friends with one of the people in the group (or would you approach a group of strangers talking in an unknown language?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't think there is much to be done about this - it is just natural that a group of people converses in their joint language that they are all most comfortable with. People are not actively trying to be rude - but, sometimes, what comes naturally is not what is appreciated by the largest group of people in the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some concret suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When at a formal dinner, and you don't know anybody, try to not be seated surrounded by larger groups of people who are clearly friends or come from the same university / country. This can make for awkward dinners, even independently of language issues, but it is easy to spot already when sitting down. For networking, it is much easier to get into conversation with other people in your situation (more or less alone currently).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At receptions or conference breaks, as you say yourself, I would usually just move away from people who are excluding me by speaking a different language. If you are actually interested in what they are saying, but can't contribute for language issues, rocinante's suggestion is best - just tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T10:30:27.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T12:32:41.740" Score="6" ViewCount="830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aBistability.svg&quot;&gt;this picture&lt;/a&gt; for one of my presentations. Do I have to mention the author there, and if yes, how do I mention him? It will be my first talk in English, so I don't really know how to correctly use/cite a picture from someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T13:05:40.197" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T13:05:40.197" Title="GNU Free Documentation License" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15371" CreationDate="2014-01-05T12:44:08.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it says on the page you linked it, attribution is required. So, all you need to do is add the author's name under the image in your presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is that if you do not include the author's name, you are implying that you create the graphic and if you did not, then you should attribute it to the true author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T12:44:08.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15382" CreationDate="2014-01-05T13:26:53.633" Score="6" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master computer science student. I decided to leave the academia after graduation, but I'm still into research and would like to do personal research independently for like 10 years. Suppose I publish a lot of papers in valuable journals, is it possible to get a PhD after that somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T12:55:48.123" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T09:33:36.453" Title="Is it possible to get a PhD with personal research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15376" CreationDate="2014-01-05T13:44:42.893" Score="13" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that a few tools uses in scientific research, request that if you use them,&#xA;you add the paper they were discussed in to your bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/#citing-theano&quot;&gt;Theano&lt;/a&gt; requests you cite: &quot;&lt;em&gt;“Theano: A CPU and GPU Math Expression Compiler”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scipy.org/scipylib/citing.html&quot;&gt;Scipy&lt;/a&gt; requests that you cite it as a misc reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this common?&#xA;Is it reasonable to cite a paper (in Theano's) case, that I have never read, because I have used the tool?&#xA;Is it ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T10:01:49.537" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T10:01:49.537" Title="Should I cite Papers to acknowledge usage of tools?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15374" CreationDate="2014-01-05T13:51:20.980" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be pragmatic here. Citations are a &lt;em&gt;currency&lt;/em&gt; in science. If the authors of a tool help your research by providing the tool to the general public, it is only fair to reference their work in the way they requested it to happen - and, certainly, citing a given reference in a paper that uses their work is not an unreasonable request. I cannot image why it would be unethical to say something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have used Theano [1] to evaluate XY (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in your paper, where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] J. Bergstra, O. Breuleux, F. Bastien, P. Lamblin, R. Pascanu, G. Desjardins, J. Turian, D. Warde-Farley and Y. Bengio. “Theano: A CPU and GPU Math Expression Compiler”. Proceedings of the Python for Scientific Computing Conference (SciPy) 2010. June 30 - July 3, Austin, TX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether this is common, I would say &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. Most authors of well-known tools in my area specify a preference for how their work should be acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are bothered by not having read the paper you are citing, there is a simple fix for that - read the paper, and decide for yourself whether it is worth citing in that context (but, generally, the answer will be yes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T14:01:27.867" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:01:27.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15401" CreationDate="2014-01-05T14:13:16.423" Score="10" ViewCount="1557" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master student in computer science. I'm still working on my thesis and probably I will publish a paper, however I really have no idea where to look for workshops and conferences. I often hear my supervisor talking about some conferences and workshops and mentioning them, but I get no idea how he knew about them. Is there such a central website or search engine for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm new in research, never published a paper before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T18:16:58.240" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T12:58:49.607" Title="Where to search for conferences and workshops in computer science?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2019-02-15T13:55:10.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15383" CreationDate="2014-01-05T14:44:21.227" Score="15" ViewCount="16733" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master computer science student in a German university and I will be graduating soon. I'm in a situation between accepting a PhD position or leaving academia to start looking for job. This is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard decision to make so I need some advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the people who do a PhD leave academia afterwards and start looking for jobs (is it also the same in the US?). Very few people continue with a postdoc and remain in academia after getting the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My question is then, what is the point of doing a PhD (especially if one gets a job in industry afterwards)? &lt;strong&gt;What are the benefits of spending 3-5 years obtaining a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt; What kind of goals should a person enrolling in a PhD program have?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of &lt;em&gt;industry&lt;/em&gt;, I realize that after a PhD they might start with a high position in the company. But, on the other hand, in those 5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it somehow medium or even a bit successful. Instead of doing a PhD, after 5 years of investing in their own company, they could be paid for working for themselves and not for others, having their own companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of &lt;em&gt;obtaining knowledge,&lt;/em&gt; if someone is curious about &lt;em&gt;knowing&lt;/em&gt;, they could learn new things by themselves. After graduation, finding a job or starting a company, knowledge could be obtained by buying books and reading during one's free time, or following extra courses. I don't think you don't need a university for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right in my analysis? Is it true most people go to the industry after the PhD (I'm especially curious about people in the US from top universities)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my analysis is at least partially right, and since there is other viable ways to become successful in industry &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to obtain knowledge, what are the benefits of doing a PhD? Is it only a good idea for people with strong plans to continue in academia, or are there other goals one can achieve (better) by obtaining a PhD? I am afraid that doing a PhD might be a waste of time if I plan to continue in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="12736" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T11:48:02.057" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T11:48:02.057" Title="What are the goals and benefits of doing a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15377" CreationDate="2014-01-05T14:47:50.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of different websites and mailing lists for different subjects.  Some researchers also maintain webpages of conferences in their area.  I mostly learn about conferences through two mailing lists I subscribe to and two researchers' webpages, as well as emails forwarded by my mentor (I'm a postdoc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best thing would be to ask your supervisor how he finds conferences.  He'll probably know the best sources for your research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One fairly general website I know about is www.conference-service.com, but in my area it's far from complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:47:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15373" CreationDate="2014-01-05T14:55:18.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities offer the option of a 'PhD by published works'.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8502/difference-between-phd-by-published-work-vs-h-c-phd-vs-dr-hab/8512#8512&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for more information.  Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:55:18.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T14:59:29.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the problem lies in that you view a job outside of academia as a failure, it is not. There are jobs that require a PhD in industry and elsewhere outside academia as well. What is a failure is foremost a question of the personal goals of the person in question. Industry and academia compete for the graduates to a large degree. It is obvious that how severe this competition is, depends on the subject but in technical areas it is definitely the case. In my own department it is very clear that people who finish a PhD end up in very good jobs. This, despite the fact that it is not a world were industry jobs are plenty, instead it is consulting businesses and government positions that are the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not room for every PhD in academia. Not everyone is interested in an academic career nor suited. In general a person with a Phd has deep understanding and skills to solve problems, disseminate results and communicate these to others. There are thus many positions that require such insights to take on positions of responsibility in organizations, be it private or public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:59:29.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15373" CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:12:48.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can do research in your own time, but I think getting your work published is hard where you are not affiliated with a university or research institute. You have the advantage that you will not use precious resources from the institute as you will be doing the research in your own time, but you probably do not have a large amount of priority over the normal PhD's and postdocs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should write a research plan, i.e. where do you want to go with your research. Writing such a proposal will show a supervisor you are serious and have some research skills (provided the proposal is any good). Once you have a number of publications, molding those into a PhD thesis is quite possible. In the Netherlands for example it is quite normal to bundle your papers, and write an introduction and summary as your PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think performing research next to a normal job can be challenging, as research tends to take a lot of time. So be prepared to let your PhD take 10+ years (possibly making it obsolete), or sacrifice a lot of spare/family time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T15:12:48.847" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:50:33.987" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;most of the people who do a PhD leave the academia afterwards and start looking for jobs (is it also the same in the US?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on how you see &quot;most&quot;. In my experience, about 50% of the students in top-tier graduate schools leave academia; most students in lower-tier graduate schools leave academia. In Europe, this percentage increases quite a bit, since the Europeans generally enter a PhD program to become a professor (In the US, some people enter the program with the intention of getting a PhD, and nothing more.) You can judge for yourself where you fit, since I don't know which school you are thinking of attending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in those 5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it somehow medium or even a bit successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure. But in those 5 years, your tech company could have gone out of business, too! Perhaps you will say that you learn from your mistakes, so that was a valuable period of time. But you learn from doing a PhD too. I'm not necessarily talking about technical things, but the fact that you are able to learn things faster than the non-PhDs (since that's one of the basic skills that research requires.) If you do a CS PhD, depending on how you choose your research topic, it could be useful in real life too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I mean you could definitely graduate, find a job or start a company and buy books and read all night or weekends! You don't need a university for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True. But grad students are reading all day, then all night or weekends (in theory; in reality they don't actually do this, but they still would have more time than you). You would learn slower. Not to mention that not having a mentor would make things much harder for you (you could tell your PhD supervisor about the courses that you liked, and particular ideas that you liked; from there, she could tell you about some papers that you might like. As an independent research, that's not an option).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last bit of advice: my father, who is also an academic, always told me not to go into academia unless I loved research. He told me that there are easier ways to obtain everything else in life; money, fame, etc. can all be obtained without being an academic, and more easily at that. And what he said was true for me. Being in academia extremely strenuous -- you'll deal with competitive peers in graduate school, maybe you won't get along with your supervisor, jealous colleagues, people who try to steal your work, thesis gone wrong, error in your paper, etc. I have encountered some of these, and each of these is enough to make you want to quit. The only reason I was able to hold on was because I found that I genuinely loved research. I knew that I couldn't have a job like this elsewhere, so I had to hold on. Any other reason will eventually drive you out of academia, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, I attended a top US institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10269" LastEditorDisplayName="user10269" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T15:55:41.870" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T15:55:41.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T16:36:25.253" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course they might get a high position in the company, but in those 5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it somehow medium or even a bit successful. After 5 years with doing that, they are being paid by working for themselves not for others and having their own companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big obstacle here is that people &lt;strong&gt;need to have a strategy and an idea&lt;/strong&gt; in order to found a start-up. If you don't have the &quot;next big idea,&quot; what are you going to do to convince outside investors and customers to do their business with you instead of someone else? The challenge is that many people finish their bachelor's or master's degrees and &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; don't really have a strong sense of what they want to do, in part because they don't know what their options are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in many fields, what kind of company can people found? What kind of company would a chemist or economist going to found after undergraduate training? In many fields, training at the PhD level is often needed in order to develop the ideas needed for bigger ideas to take root. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't universally true—perhaps you have found what your big idea will be through experiences at an internship or in a bachelor's or master's thesis. If that's what motivates you, great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you also equate leaving academia as &quot;failure.&quot; There are many people who do a PhD—including some of my own students—who &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; want careers in academia; however, they want the extra training to broaden their horizons and prepare themselves for a career in research and development in industry. For them, it's not a failure if they don't choose academia as a career, it's them achieving their desired objective!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way the PhD is a waste of time is if recipients choose to pursue a career that does not take any advantage of what they did as a PhD student, and those are relatively few and far between (at least in fields that what we consider &quot;professions&quot; instead of &quot;jobs&quot;). The reason for this is that a PhD (at least in the sciences) recognizes the ability to learn how to solve problems in an original and independent manner. In the humanities, a PhD tends to represent the ability to synthesize and analyze information in a meaningful way. The specific thesis project is the vehicle for expressing this ability, rather than the exclusive &quot;goal&quot; of doing the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T16:36:25.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15396" CreationDate="2014-01-05T16:54:06.353" Score="13" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has always kind of intrigued me. I have seen many students who are good in academics (the scale I am using for this is GPA, like around 3.8–4.0) and average in PhD research. I mean, they do research, but it's just the kind you would expect from an average PhD—publish dissertation, write to one or two top journals, and then graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen a few students who barely maintain their GPAs (they usually hang around 3.3–3.5) but are so good and focused in research that they do groundbreaking stuff, and some even have filed and received patents on their dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how much of a PhD is about taking courses and excelling them, and how much of a PhD is about excelling in research, and how well are they interconnected? From what I have seen, there seems to be no precise correlation between GPA and quality of research. Is it because PhD research concentrates only on a precise problem? Or is it because of individual motivational factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T12:56:00.620" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T12:56:00.620" Title="Can one be average in academics but great in research at same time in PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T17:04:10.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of subjective terms in your question so answering the overarching question if pursuing a Ph.d is a waste of time creates a few questions within itself, however, a few points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm in a situation between accepting a PhD position or leave the academia and start looking for job.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the position in question pays the bills and allows you to gain work experience (assuming that you do not have any), then accepting a position for a year or two and then going out into the corporate realm may make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I mean they spent 5 years on it and then they left to look for a job in the industry.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, university professors with tenure or on the tenure track tend to see the better rates of pay and benefits -of course there are a number of caveats since some schools can be considered more elite than others and location is a factor. There are companies such as Google and IBM that pay Ph.d graduates very well to solve real world problems and to further their business objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;in those 5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it somehow medium or even a bit successful.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running your own business usually requires a lot of time and effort -if you wish to be successful anyway. So folks may not wish to put in that type of commitment especially after surviving 5 years of Ph.d work, a relaxing 30 - 40 hour work week with paid time off and benefits could look appealing especially if there is a family with children involved or caring for an aging parent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My other idea is that if someone is curious about knowing and getting knowledge.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on if there is a genuine interest in research. If one wishes to see the fruits of their labor see the light of day in a commercial sense,then going to the private sector may allows one to see their research come to life and touch the masses. Another commenter made mention of potential issues with jealous colleagues, people that try to steal your work, etc -these elements also apply in the corporate world especially if there is some sort of compensation at stake (it is not always financial by the way) so each avenue (academia vs. corporate) has its on rewards and pitfalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suppose it comes down to your original motivation for school. Was the plan to work in academia, private industry or a combination of the two? Either way you go, you will gain a life experience that you did not possess before so, its comes down to how you wish to make it work for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastEditorUserId="10501" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T17:27:57.843" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T17:27:57.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15387" CreationDate="2014-01-05T17:14:58.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD typically consists of a smaller portion of courses (0-50%, probably averaging 24% of time) and the rest being research (including writing and publishing). In terms of excelling on courses, I would argue it has much less value than as an undergraduate. In my system, all PhD courses are pass/fail, the idea being you should learn only what you need so you can take part of a course if you need. In the end it will be the quality of your thesis and the particularly papers you publish that determines your degree of success, not the coursework. Doing well at courses involve being able to read up on material, organizing knowledge and remembering what you read. These are of course important skills to have. Research, however, includes many additional aspects that requires additional skills so whereas good grades, in terms of reflecting some of your skills, might help, it is not the full story of a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention motivation. Motivation is important. Another aspect is perseverance. Research can be tedious bordering of being dull in order to reach the goal. I have seen many who have had a rosy picture of research but who have not been able to cope with the work. Clearly motivation and fascination about your topic will help you endure the many hours you end up spending on the topic. I doubt many researchers do research without these aspects spurring them on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T17:14:58.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11737" CreationDate="2014-01-05T17:20:36.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think hiring a new Ph.D. to a full-time job is the best approach.  For the initial consult you may be able to hire a current Ph.D. student or two to a temporary summer job.  They would both be able to help you sort out if the idea is likely to pan out, and let you determine whether that person would make a good hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T17:20:36.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15377" CreationDate="2014-01-05T17:41:57.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some decent ones here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allconferences.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.allconferences.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also receive a number of invitations through a number of mailing lists that I subscribe to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find a number of them through technology publishers like O'Reilly for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://strataconf.com/strata2014/public/content/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://strataconf.com/strata2014/public/content/home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T17:41:57.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T19:16:34.400" Score="2" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in computer science and sometime in the (more or less) near future I have to publish my results. Yet, I am rather sceptic about the current state of publishing, aka peer-reviewed journals, especially when they are not open access. I have published before on Elsevier and honestly I am not sure whether I should do this again. I have political concerns as well as concerns about the quality of the peer-review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what &quot;new ways&quot; are out there for publications? &#xA;I am a big fan of StackExchange (especially StackOverflow :-) ), so I am asking if there exists a very similar forum for scientific publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly, a publication happens in form of forum post like this one. Instead of anonymous peer-review, every member of the forum can comment and rate the publication. Is there something like this out there? Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Great that someone had the idea a year ago :-) (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/towards-a-stackexchange-like-comment-reputation-system-for-research-papers&quot;&gt;Towards a Stackexchange-like comment/reputation system for research papers&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have been there any attempts to create such a system since then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10502" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T07:40:04.367" Title="Open Access Crowd Based Publications (StackExchange like)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-01-06T02:18:51.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T19:49:06.753" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;standard disclaimer: my experience is with computer science, and in general I have familiarity with STEM, but I know almost nothing about Ph.D training and skills acquired in other areas&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of misconceptions implicit in your question that other answers have picked up on, but that I thought I'd distill out here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very few people continue with a postdoc and remain in academia after&#xA;  getting the PhD. My argument is that wasn't the PhD just a waste of&#xA;  time for them? I mean they spent 5 years on it and then they left to&#xA;  look for a job in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assumption here is that the topic you do research on is the main consequence of doing a Ph.D. In a literal sense that is true: your dissertation is on a particular topic. But as @aeismail points out, the dissertation (and a Ph.D) is a vehicle for training you in a certain way of thinking: analytical, critical, and inventive. These skills are what get you hired at jobs 'outside academia', and it's fair to say that without the training you get during a Ph.D, you will find these skills difficult to acquire (I'll never say it's impossible). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that respect, it's not a waste at all. You spend some number years learning how to approach ill-structured, ill-defined problems, break them down, and figure out ways to solve them by yourself with no direction. This is a very valuable job skill that employers love to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course they might get a high position in the company, but in those&#xA;  5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it&#xA;  somehow medium or even a bit successful. After 5 years with doing&#xA;  that, they are being paid by working for themselves not for others and&#xA;  having their own companies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, starting a company requires a different set of skills. In the tech world, having tech skills definitely helps to run a company, but there are thousands, if not millions, of people with the requisite tech skills, and very few of them become successful entrepreneurs. So it's not enough just to have some technical knowledge, and so it's not the case that you can swap out X years of a Ph.D with X years of working and expect to achieve some degree of success. Again, not impossible but certainly not guaranteed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My other idea is that if someone is curious about knowing and getting&#xA;  knowledge. I mean you could definitely graduate, find a job or start a&#xA;  company and buy books and read all night or weekends! You don't need a&#xA;  university for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a Ph.D for this either. If you think that a Ph.D involves learning and reading, you're very mistaken. A Ph.D involves &lt;strong&gt;doing&lt;/strong&gt;. You learn to reach the cutting edge so that you can do something new and creative yourself. Reading and reading will not get you a Ph.D - it might not even get you a single creative work ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s I've worked both in industry and (now) academia after doing a Ph.D from the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T19:49:06.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15387" CreationDate="2014-01-05T20:06:34.540" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What i wanted to ask how much of PHD is about creativity and how much&#xA;  is about perserverance and how much is it about academics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The snarky answer is: &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly more unpacked version of this in no particular order would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Academics&lt;/strong&gt; (aka things you learn in courses) is important because we don't create in a vacuum. We invent new things, but also combine old things in clever ways, or modify others' ideas creatively for new purposes. Think of it as one component of the fuel for your creativity: why ignore it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creativity&lt;/strong&gt; is of course the key to doing something new, which is the most basic requirement for completing a Ph.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perseverance&lt;/strong&gt; is incredibly important, because most ideas don't come into your head fully formed and perfect. It may be that your first 10, or 100, or 200 ideas aren't quite right, but by studying them closely, and seeing what works and what doesn't, you're able to produce a genuinely interesting new piece of work. Slogging through the bucket of non-working ideas takes perseverance, and can't be replaced by anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T20:06:34.540" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-05T20:31:05.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you start a PHD, you are not sure if actually doing the research required for getting that PHD, will be fun enough (you do not do it for the money anyway). After finishing it (for those who do) then you know if you really like to be in academia or not. Previous answers (mainly of user14449) already highlighted the problems associated with academia, which are only visible from INSIDE academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a PHD does not neccessarily has to be another step in your ladder of &quot;success&quot;. There are many who are doing a PHD because a) they WANT to do it b) they know it in their hearts that they CAN do it. Even if they &quot;waste&quot; 5 years of their lives (as you put it) they want to do it, regardless if they get a job in academia, get a better job or become rich. It is like playing with a rock band. If you do it for becoming a rock star you will never become one. If you like music, you might actually have a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, only MSc students have the misconception that if they are going to create a new start-up company, they will become the new Steve Jobs and be rich beyond belief. The truth is that 99% of the start-ups actually fail (once external funding is spent) and only 1% survive. You say you are from Germany. How many CS start-ups are from Germany? Even there, most successful industries cooperate with reseach institutions like Fraunhofer or DLR which a) are connected to academia b) having a PHD certainly helps you to get a job there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real question is: What do you really WANT to do? If you like to do research regardless of money, go for the PHD. If not, go to industry. If in doubt, stick with industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T21:37:04.557" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T21:37:04.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15400" CreationDate="2014-01-05T20:52:55.877" Score="15" ViewCount="1751" Body="&lt;p&gt;I study undergraduate philosophy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a paper (beyond the coursework) that presents a solution to one of the unsolved problems facing our conceptions of personal identity. I regard it as worth publishing, but I get that, as an undergrad, I may not have much of a sense of what qualifies a paper as &quot;worth publishing.&quot; So I took a few precautions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I read the recently published arguments, and the arguments that preceded them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I critically thought about whether the argument could contribute to the field&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I presented the argument to some people accomplished in fields that depend on logical thinking {a physicist, a lawyer,a mathematician}. The mathematician told me of a few useful concepts in math that I should incorporate into the argument, I studied them, incorporated them, and re-presented the paper to him, and he felt it was clear and logically sound. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I asked some academically successful people {two medical doctors and a Harvard mathematics graduate} for their opinion on it. They agreed with me; however, none of them had much experience publishing research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I presented it to the prof.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prof's responses seemed defensive. However, I get that I may have had a defensive bent  that disposed me to regarding her criticism as her 'just responding defensively'. So I recalled the conversation to people who I believed would tell me that I had mischaracterized her responses, if they suspected that I had done so - and none of them did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also get that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most professors -like anyone- want to make the most of their time, and that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most people usually see what they expect to see, and that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most professors probably would not expect an undergraduate paper to contain much worthwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suspect that most wouldn't want to read it, and that if a prof agreed to read it, an extra measure of prejudice would affect her assessment of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say all of that to say that I have reason to believe I should try and publish the paper, but I didn't succeed when I tried the most obvious path to doing so (presenting it to the prof), and I don't suspect that I'd have much success asking other profs to read it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how might I get a journal or a professor to give the paper a fair shake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="9263" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T04:26:18.753" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T04:26:18.753" Title="Assume an undergrad has something worth publishing: how might (s)he get it published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15398" CreationDate="2014-01-05T21:26:49.967" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what you should do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find an appropriate journal with a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;double blind&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; review process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See what happens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Double blind means that you do not know the identity of the reviewers, and they do not know your identity.  The ostensible purpose of this setup is to encourage reviewers to evaluate the paper based on its academic merit, rather than the pedigree of the author(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, of course, there will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be politics in reviews, and many reviewers will nonetheless formulate theories about who you are and where you're from.  Moreover, things like hot trends in the field can influence judgement—which is why it's important to identify a journal compatible in spirit with your chosen topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also be judged on the &lt;strong&gt;style&lt;/strong&gt; of your writing, and the visual style of your submission.  Reviewers will be much more comfortable accepting a submission that looks like a published article than one with strange typography, layout, etc.  E.g., don't submit a paper written in MS Word when everybody else in your field uses LaTeX.  Strange as it may seem, you will look like a &lt;em&gt;nut job!&lt;/em&gt;  Even different linguistic tone and structure can make your reviewers think you are a quack, even if your idea is legitimately awesome.  In short: be a conformist when it comes to your first few submissions.  Once you understand how the game is played, you can start to break the mold (hopefully for the better!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even accounting for everything above, there is an extremely good chance your submission will get rejected.  Coming up with genuinely good ideas is hard; developing political/cultural/intellectual savvy in academia takes time and experience—especially as a lone undergrad.  And rejection will &lt;em&gt;sting!&lt;/em&gt;  But the submission process will be a valuable experience nonetheless.  After a few days, go back and read your reviews calmly, and think carefully about why the reviewers wrote what they did.  Was the typography too bizarre?  Are they protecting their political interests?  Or is your idea simply not as good as you thought it was?  The more papers you submit, the better you will get at answering these questions objectively and honestly.  Eventually, you will master the game and can just focus on the work.  I hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T22:27:24.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T22:27:24.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15377" CreationDate="2014-01-05T21:48:45.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very good site for CS conferences and journals call for papers and their respective deadlines is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Wiki Calls for Papers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T21:17:54.547" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T21:17:54.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15394" CreationDate="2014-01-05T22:06:46.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of anonymous peer-review, every member of the forum can comment and rate the publication. Is there something like this out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  The forum is called &quot;the academic community,&quot; the comments are called &quot;what they say about your paper in their paper,&quot; and the ratings are called &quot;citations.&quot;  They are not anonymous.  Actually, citations alone are misleading, since they can be negative as well as positive.  The real way to determine if your idea is good is to see if people use it to build new, interesting ideas / explanations / products / companies / whatever.  (I think they call that &quot;impact?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: publishing is the easy part (these days).  Getting people to say good things about your research is the real challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think you are wise to think about publishing in open-access journals—and not for some self-righteous political/philosophical reason.  The real reason for making your paper freely available is: &lt;em&gt;more people will read it!&lt;/em&gt;  Plenty of interesting people in the world live behind the Great Paywall of Academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T22:22:23.370" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T22:22:23.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15398" CreationDate="2014-01-05T22:37:35.003" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One additional comment to bolster Druorg's answer: you should also take a look at &lt;em&gt;undergraduate journals&lt;/em&gt;. The bar to publishing is substantially lower in such journals, and you won't have to worry about finding a faculty member to &quot;sponsor&quot; your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another avenue would be to talk to the academic advisor for undergraduates in your department. They may have some suggestions for alternative means of getting your work published, and would at least have some ideas about who else you could talk to!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T22:37:35.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15377" CreationDate="2014-01-05T23:41:04.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are serious about publishing, try one of these &lt;a href=&quot;http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~zaiane/htmldocs/ConfRanking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conferences&lt;/a&gt;. These conferences are good, even at Rank 3. You also have the list divided by the area of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10509" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T23:41:04.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15361" CreationDate="2014-01-05T23:52:21.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such requirement. It is frequently helpful to have multiple authors to help sort through the vast amounts of literature being covered, but is by no means a necessity. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1749-4699/5/1/013001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a colleague of mine&lt;/a&gt; recently published a fairly substantial review article on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in medical research, a meta-review serves a rather different purpose than the usual review article in other fields: it is collecting the results of a bunch of different experimental studies, and trying to reach an overarching medical recommendation. That's a rather different research function than a review article in other fields. In medicine, you would want to have multiple people reviewing the data to make sure that it's not one person unilaterally deciding everything independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T00:12:32.230" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T00:12:32.230" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15410" CreationDate="2014-01-06T02:01:51.850" Score="25" ViewCount="3093" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you're a 27 year old autodidact who has gained enough knowledge in a particular field of the formal sciences - like mathematics, for instance - to be able to take the highest course number from the selection of graduate courses for math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this autodidact wants to enter university for the first time. However, from his perspective, he thinks that it would be a waste of time to restudy what he already knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm personally wondering if there is a way to demonstrate that he is capable of taking graduate courses so that he could apply for a graduate degree without having to study all the courses at the undergraduate level again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd like to add that this question is really hypothetical. It's just something I pondered on my way to school today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10513" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T17:11:13.673" Title="Having the knowledge of a graduate student but not having the degree requirements for graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15408" CreationDate="2014-01-06T02:59:15.770" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're asking about graduate school in the US, probably the single most significant thing you can do is to take the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about/content/mathematics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GRE subject test for math&lt;/a&gt; (not the math section of the general test!), and score well on it. This test covers a broad spectrum of material that is taught in a typical undergraduate math curriculum, and so if you get a good score, it strongly supports your claim that you have the level of mathematics knowledge required to enter grad school. Without that key piece of evidence (i.e. a good GRE subject score), graduate admissions committees are likely to look at your statement that you have the knowledge to take graduate courses, contrast it with your lack of an undergraduate degree, and conclude that you're full of hot air, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course there is more that has to be done to actually get yourself admitted. In my own field of theoretical physics, even a 990 (the top score) on the GRE isn't enough to get you into a good grad school by itself. I would imagine the same is true for the top schools in math, though perhaps at a less competitive school, it might be. But I think to be safe, you should assume that you'll have to present some other sort of evidence of accomplishment that could be viewed as equivalent to an undergraduate transcript. You'll also need recommendation letters and various sorts of essays and forms. But a lot of that can vary from school to school, and is more likely to be negotiable if you talk to someone in the department. The GRE subject score is the one thing you really need to get your foot in the door, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T17:11:13.673" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T17:11:13.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15105" CreationDate="2014-01-06T04:28:31.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely explain it--it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; going to catch some attention, after all.  Admissions committees recognize that people grow, develop, and change over time; they just need to know that you have.  It doesn't need to be much, but it definitely deserves a paragraph just to acknowledge the issue and briefly outline why it's not necessarily reflective of your current self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10275" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T04:28:31.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T05:19:01.867" Score="21" ViewCount="2694" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title says it all. I want to read a book chapter from a prominent Oxbridge researcher, but I don't want to shell out the cash for the entire textbook in which it's published. Is it rude to contact the professor who wrote the chapter and request an electronic version? It's for my own research purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10517" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T12:50:42.560" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:27:48.157" Title="Is it rude to request a book chapter from the academic who wrote it if you don't want to buy the entire textbook?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15413" CreationDate="2014-01-06T06:17:56.787" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before writing to the author, you should try to find the chapter in other ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it available online?  You should make sure it's not in any obvious place (e.g., the author's home page or university web site) or findable by a web search.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have library access?  Even if the library doesn't have the book, they can very likely get it through interlibrary loan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have friends, colleagues, or teachers who might have the book?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little rude to bother the author to ask for a copy if you could reasonably get one another way.  However, if the book is unaffordable for you and you have no other options, then there's nothing wrong with asking the author.  I'd phrase it as a question, to avoid sounding too demanding.  The key thing to keep in mind is that you're asking for something unusual, just in case the author has an electronic copy they'd be willing to share (but haven't put on their web site).  It's also worth including a sentence about things like your lack of library access.  You may not get a copy, but it's worth a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T06:17:56.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15413" CreationDate="2014-01-06T06:32:16.427" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rudeness is largely a matter of tone, IMHO. If you express appreciation for the work in question, explain your situation, and ask if the researcher can help you, I think the researcher should appreciate your interest and want to help. Whether or not that's feasible is a separate (and often legal) question, but as for rudeness, there's no intrinsic reason your email has to be bothersome. Be nice, express enthusiasm, offer constructive comments if you have any, maybe try to phrase your problem impersonally so that it's not just about you and what you want (it's also about the author's impact, and how accessible the work is for the interested audience, which should matter), and avoid common faux pas like connotating entitlement, expectation, or violating cultural norms for emotional expression. Pretty much the same issues as you'd consider when asking for anything from a relative stranger. In summary, be polite!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To editorialize a bit, I'll add that textbook prices are sometimes ridiculous, especially given the economic realities of students, and there are far too many barriers to information access already, so on some level, a researcher who isn't especially beholden to the publisher should sympathize and want to support you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per @AnonymousMathematician's answer, you might also want to explain (briefly!) what normal alternatives (such as the answer's suggestions) you've tried and why they've failed you, if you decide to go the route of explaining a problem with access that may concern others. Another common faux pas is asking a question that seems to have an obvious solution; one should at least mention that these won't work, and make very sure that they don't before claiming that there's a problem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T06:38:29.590" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T06:38:29.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2014-01-06T07:08:26.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;look at the link below.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-school-pgsm.com/delocalized-programs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.business-school-pgsm.com/delocalized-programs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for delocalized institutions….understand them as partner institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxford Dictionary:delocalize&#xA;verb&#xA;[with object]&#xA;detach or remove (something) from a particular place or location, or from local limitations:&#xA;(as adjective delocalized)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merriam-Webster: Delocalize:&#xA;to free from the limitations of locality; specifically :  to remove (a charge or charge carrier) from a particular position&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitions aside:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some smaller institutions/colleges have partnerships with big colleges/universities to confer degrees. For instance if you attended an institute that offers degrees with a bigger universities' name, then Yes your diplomas were obtained from a delocalized campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attended a university with more than 7 campuses. &#xA;So if you attended any of the six campuses apart from the main campus or if you took your studies online; then Yes, your bachelors/masters degrees were obtained from a delocalized campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10519" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T07:08:26.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T08:12:09.533" Score="12" ViewCount="9312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing an e-mail to a member of Oxbridge staff. He is a &quot;lecturer,&quot; full-time staff, who co-ordinates a well-known program, but does not hold a PhD, only an MA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't call him &quot;Dr. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; or even &quot;Professor &lt;strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; so is &quot;Mr.&quot; sufficient? It seems too informal for someone in such a high-ranking position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10517" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-12-06T21:49:38.930" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T22:26:16.960" Title="How to address an Oxford/Cambridge full-time lecurer who is not a Ph.D.?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2014-01-06T08:30:10.167" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mr&quot; should be fine (though note that British style drops the period from common  honorifics). For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=321&quot;&gt;Trinity College Cambridge's list of fellows&lt;/a&gt; has two &quot;Mr&quot;s and four &quot;Ms&quot;s. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, be very sure that the lecturer you're emailing doesn't have a doctorate. Most Oxbridge (and I believe UK) lecturers are equivalent to some sort of professor in the US system, and the title of professor is generally reserved for academics somewhere between &quot;regular member of teaching/research staff&quot; and &quot;department head&quot;. Accordingly, most UK lecturers do have a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure, it's probably better to go with &quot;Dr&quot; rather than &quot;Mr&quot;, as if you do get it wrong one way or the other, that's the one that's less likely to offend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8091" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T08:30:10.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2014-01-06T09:44:08.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the etiquette for salutations in formal letters is pretty well established, email etiquette is less clear. While this &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/95604/official-e-mail&quot;&gt;question &lt;/a&gt; on the English Language SE was not particularly well received, I particularly like this &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/95689&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. The key part of that answer is that because of the prevalence of spam you need to establish who you are and why you are contacting the person as quickly as possible and not waste the valuable first line with a redundant salutation. If you drop the salutation (which some would say is the proper etiquette), you avoid the issue of how to address the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:11.743" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T09:44:08.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15408" CreationDate="2014-01-06T09:47:05.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many graduate programs are geared toward publishing research, much of which doesn't really require the highest-level graduate education to conduct, so if one could achieve a publication record, a history of research experience, or could secure letters of recommendation, that would probably help for certain programs. Getting to know one's potential advisors in advance might also help circumvent some of the usual hurdles (i.e., they might be able to help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T09:47:05.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14444" CreationDate="2014-01-06T10:19:51.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to this article, but if you do, you might want to look into it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wox.sagepub.com/content/5/1/97.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hargens, L. L. (1978). Relations between work habits, research technologies, and eminence in science. &lt;em&gt;Work and Occupations, 5&lt;/em&gt;(1), 97-112. DOI: 10.1177/003803857800500106.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fair amount of psychological research on eminence/genius/creativity out there, so work routine information might be available, but I'm a little more pessimistic about representative data on &quot;average length of time of being able to think continuously&quot; (partly because I'm unclear on what it would mean to think discontinuously). More general populations are more accessible, and some research may consider relationships between the factors you mentioned interested in and the factors that define your criterion group (e.g., intelligence, creativity, achievement, productivity). You might want to ask this again on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Cognitive Sciences site&lt;/a&gt; if you don't get the answer you're looking for here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:18.230" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T10:19:51.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15315" CreationDate="2014-01-06T10:33:42.717" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As somebody who's actually doing a PhD in France, maybe I can provide some more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, as everybody says, you have to get an equivalent of a Bachelor degree (I think that's &quot;licence&quot; in France), and the a Master degree as well. I didn't do this part of my studies in France, but, some things that I overheard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;of course, nobody is paying while you are doing that, and you most probably have to pay a yearly tuition (probably around 400eur)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think that there is some programs to get some scholarships that could help you, and you'll probably be eligible to help from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caf.fr/&quot;&gt;CAF&lt;/a&gt; for a while&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to supplement your income, I'm sure you can teach already in the last year of Master, and possibly (but I'm not sure), even as soon as you finish you Bachelors (aka &quot;licence&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other major expenses are living costs and eating costs: you can usually get a student dormitory (200-300 eur/month is plausible, but it depends on a city) and as a student, you get cheap student lunches (3-4eur/meal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I didn't do this Bachelor-Master part of my education in France. But, for the PhD I can offer more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a PhD in France is basically a normal &lt;em&gt;work contract&lt;/em&gt; lasting for (exactly) 3 years, with a usual possibility of extending it for 3-6 months&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to obtain a PhD, you have to obtain a grant. Sometimes, you apply to professors for a subject that is already funded, and sometimes you apply to the professors and then you submit your grant application together (like me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you still have to pay a yearly tuition (~400eur), but you will be receiving a monthly salary where the amount depends on your grant. It's usually between 1300 and 1600eur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in your first year, you are still possibly eligible for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caf.fr/&quot;&gt;CAF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's two type of PhD contracts: research, or teaching. The teaching contracts are harder to obtain, but it is usually easier in your second year than your first. If you need/want more income per month, a teaching contract gets you an additional 300eur/month on your salary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other major expenses are again lodging and food: again, sometimes dormitory housing is available, but renting a flat can be acceptable as well (around 300eur/month if your flat-sharing up to 550-600 if you're renting alone). Usually, the lab/university provides some kind of lunch discount tickets as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for some additional information about &lt;em&gt;how to get&lt;/em&gt; in to a PhD programme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in France, it is obligatory to do at least one internship in a research lab or a company during your Masters, but two are possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you are planning to stay in France, it is very customary for people to do their PhDs in the same lab where they did their internships, and some even just extend on their internship topics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your Master supervisor and all the contacts you made during your internships will probably be most helpful, as you can ask them for advice, or even if they know of a position / professor that would suit your plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;additionally, if you want to do your PhD outside of France (it always needs a Master degree), it's probably a bit harder to obtain (although your Master contacts can help you). It's a &lt;em&gt;paying job&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;a salary&lt;/em&gt; in a lot of European countries (some examples includ: Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T10:33:42.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15315" CreationDate="2014-01-06T11:32:00.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Penelope's answer is already very good, I just want to give some additional details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a Ph.D. is required to get a position in academia. To be even clearer, there are several positions and you can learn more about what is a &lt;em&gt;maître de conférence&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;em&gt;professeur des universités&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_rank_in_France&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. In France, a Ph.D. is not the highest academic diploma that one can get as you can prepare yourself to get the &lt;em&gt;Habilitation à diriger des recherches&lt;/em&gt; (HDR), which will allow you to supervise Ph.D. students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be eligible for a Ph.D. program in France (or &lt;em&gt;doctorat&lt;/em&gt;), having a Master's degree (or an equivalent diploma) is necessary. Now the French educational system is quite confusing if you are not familiar with it. Basically, after a french &lt;em&gt;baccalauréat&lt;/em&gt;, you can either choose to go to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Université&lt;/em&gt;: where you will need three years to complete your &lt;em&gt;Licence&lt;/em&gt;, then an additional two years to complete your Master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt; (CPGE) and &lt;em&gt;Grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt;: since you posted about mathematics, you will choose to go to a scientific CPGE, where you will attend a maths/physics intensive two-year curriculum that prepares you to take the &lt;em&gt;concours d'entrée aux grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt;. These &lt;em&gt;grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt; are given the right, by the government, to deliver a &lt;em&gt;Diplôme d'ingénieur&lt;/em&gt; (or Engineering diploma), which is equivalent to a Master's degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they both deliver Master's degrees (i.e., you can apply to a Ph.D. after them), the &lt;em&gt;universités&lt;/em&gt; are more likely to prepare you for academic research whereas the &lt;em&gt;CPGE&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt; are more suited for working in the industry. However, I highly suggest you to inform yourself about these two possibilities before choosing a path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to emphasize on a point mentioned by Penelope: during your Ph.D., you remain a student, which means you can have access to all the privileges offered to students regarding everyday life (housing, public transports, social security, ...) while being pretty decently paid. Unless you have a family to support and if you don't have any accidents, there should be no reason to have financial difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7357" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T13:56:02.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14444" CreationDate="2014-01-06T11:38:37.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This popular book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307273601&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307273601&lt;/a&gt; contains precisely descriptions of working routines of various creative people, including several scientists and mathematicians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T11:38:37.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15105" CreationDate="2014-01-06T12:35:42.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some web-based application forms have dedicated fields for comments on grades or academic hardships. I would first of all take advantage of these if possible, and second, read the fine print if not: some application guidelines will forbid submission of additional materials. This doesn't have to stop you, but I would contact the admissions staff either way if there isn't a dedicated field. It should be as simple as asking, &quot;May I enclose a brief additional letter explaining an issue in my academic history?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, that's what you should do however you can, unless admissions expressly forbids it, or if the issue at hand somehow affected your academic purpose. The statement of purpose is a fairly important and somewhat haphazardly scrutinized document, so anything tangential that interrupts your flow or the optimism and enthusiasm you express for your present and future work is likely to detract from the cohesiveness your message, the consistency and positivity of your tone, and the room you have to go into detail and cover other important information. You never really know what your readers are going to pay attention to in your writing, so it's best not to take any chances and leave it as flawless as can be, while conveying important but unexpected information through other channels if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T12:35:42.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:05:21.047" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, for people who enter a PhD program with &lt;em&gt;defined and established goals&lt;/em&gt;, and with at least some &lt;em&gt;understanding of what they are getting into&lt;/em&gt;, obtaining a PhD is &lt;strong&gt;almost never a waste of their time&lt;/strong&gt;. Some great advice on what is good to know before dabbling in research, take a look &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13355/4249&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, &lt;strong&gt;a primary goal of a PhD&lt;/strong&gt; is not to &lt;em&gt;obtain knowledge&lt;/em&gt;. I also know that from the industry point of view, it is sometimes viewed as equal to &lt;em&gt;X years of work experience&lt;/em&gt;, but that's not completely correct either: a PhD is about &lt;strong&gt;learning how to do research &lt;em&gt;independently&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. While it is possible to get those skills alone, (usually by a lengthy trial-and-error process), the best way is under supervision and with advice of an experienced researcher: a thesis adviser/supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is kind of a stepping stone for academia: you don't have to continue if you don't want to. If you have an aptitude for research, it is an valid option to explore. Research, while closely related to academia, is not only performed in academia. &lt;strong&gt;It is a time to taste research &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; academic life.&lt;/strong&gt; If it is something that you are interested in, even trying and deciding you don't really enjoy it is &lt;em&gt;not a waste&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, after obtaining a PhD, if you decide to leave academia, &lt;strong&gt;you will be qualified for &lt;em&gt;different types of jobs in industry&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; than somebody with just a Master degree. Somebody with a lot of &lt;em&gt;knowledge&lt;/em&gt; might know which known approach to apply to solve a well defined problem. On the other hand, when developing a new application/product, it will be the job of an &lt;em&gt;researcher&lt;/em&gt; to think of a best approach to a loosely defined goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, as a personal side-note, when I just started my PhD my supervisors asked me if I wanted to continue in academia or go to industry afterwards. They said they could help me shape my CV and research activity so it's better suited for my choice: I told them I had no idea and had to see for myself for a while longer. A year after, I told them that unless something drastically changes, I want to stay in academia, but I'm sure they would equally accept me wanting to go to industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, to comment on your &quot;starting a small company&quot;... doing a PhD, investing in a career in a company, or trying to start your own company are, in my opinion, all &quot;business ventures&quot; of the same type, and equally valid or equally a waste: if you do something you don't have an aptitude for and what you don't have motivation for, it's a waste of time. &lt;strong&gt;Doing a PhD is as valid for a career beginning as any other job. It's just that not everybody wants the same career.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T13:05:21.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15408" CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:45:09.683" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities' mathematics departments have placement exams for lower-division math courses, so, for example, you could &quot;test out&quot; of two years' calculus, most likely. Testing-out of upper-division courses is rarer, so there're not going to be formal procedures in place, but if you simply talk to departmental advisors, they can get the ball rolling to have your self-education appraised. It's just that there probably won't be formal procedures in place, due to the rarity of the event. Math faculty are more-than-happy to see someone who's had the interest and motivation to read on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear that doing the GRE math subject test (nevermind the other parts) is a good avenue for everyone. I'm not such a fan of that exam as a predictor or appraisal, in any case. One aspect is that it is a very superficial exam, in the sense that it tests test-taking ability almost as much as substantitive knowledge, since it is multiple-choice. Second, it presents a very stylized picture of &quot;undergrad/pre-grad&quot; mathematics... unsurprising insofar as it has to be shoe-horned into a timed, multiple-choice exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's also not clear whether you should &quot;try to do research&quot; in order to &quot;make an impression&quot;. _Being_interested_ and being &lt;em&gt;curious&lt;/em&gt; is one thing, but the further element of presumption involved in too-easily believing that with modest preparation one has unraveled mysteries untouchable by experts... blah-blah-blah... will not make a good impression. That is, honest curiosity and drive are unqualifiedly good things, not presumptious, not silly, all too uncommon, ... and are the features the math faculty would look for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last small point: it is very helpful to have in mind the &lt;em&gt;authors&lt;/em&gt; of the books or notes you've read, whether they're physical books or on-line notes, if only because the titles of most such things are toooo generic, while the best authors are well-known, and the specific virtues of their books/notes similarly so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: just talk to the math department undergrad-intake-advisors first, and they will steer you to the right people to talk to in order to have your situation  appraised. Some of the people may be a little skeptical, but mostly they will be happy to encounter someone who has the interest who's taken the initiative to study and think about things on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T13:45:09.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15363" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:17:27.090" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, this problem does not only happen in a conference: I think there is &lt;em&gt;two slightly distinct situations&lt;/em&gt; in which you can be surrounded by people speaking in a language that is foreign for you. The &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; is as you described: &lt;strong&gt;conferences&lt;/strong&gt; and other &lt;strong&gt;short-term events&lt;/strong&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; is (if studying abroad) coming to a &lt;strong&gt;language-homogeneous (working/research) group&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both, unfortunately, the only way &quot;out&quot; is to be at least slightly &lt;strong&gt;assertive&lt;/strong&gt;. It is not the most pleasant, but it's &lt;em&gt;natural&lt;/em&gt; for the (larger) groups that speak the same (mother) language to revert to it naturally in their conversations unless they are reminded to speak in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the conferences, I would say, it might even be easier of the two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in my experience, the first social event is some kind of a &quot;mixer&quot; where there is no fixed seating arrangements for the whole evening, so it's easier to identify the people open for conversations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also, approaching small groups of 1-2-3 people on poster sessions and lunch breaks can be a way to meet people who want to communicate in English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &quot;seating&quot; dinner is usually a few days into the conference, so by then I just try and locate the people I talked to during the last few days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the more &quot;permanent&quot; group, e.g. your team, it is a bit harder. They are an established group already most likely, and you want to get &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; as well as make them change their standard communication language. For that, you &lt;strong&gt;have to get noticed&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's always a problem of finding a balance between being present, noticed, and too aggressive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establishing your presence in the group by attending team coffees, greeting people in their offices as you come to work, and similar small gestures should get you well started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the longer &quot;group outings&quot; (my team used to do that - going out together a few times a month), it's usually easier to start a conversation with just one person, and hopefully other people will join in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finally, it's okay to sometimes gently remind them that you'd like to participate in general conversation as well, as long as you don't come across as rude or judgmental. Nobody likes to be shamed in public.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the bottom line is, &lt;em&gt;staying politely quiet won't get you far&lt;/em&gt;. You have to get noticed, you have to be interesting to others, and you need to make them want to speak to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that some people are not as socially comfortable as others, and &lt;em&gt;I know&lt;/em&gt; that all that can be hard, demanding, sometimes exhausting, and you don't always feel like it. Unfortunately, I don't know or see any other solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the best &quot;tactic&quot; I came up with is: when you know you will be in those kind of situations, actively mentally &lt;em&gt;prepare&lt;/em&gt;. It's easier if you know you have to do it, and it gets a bit easier every time. You take a deep breath, you dive in, and try your best to be a social butterfly. &lt;strong&gt;When you know you are attending a conference or coming to a new working environment, be prepared to put more effort in getting noticed for the duration of the conference/next few weeks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:17:27.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15361" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:26:38.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of an Epidemiologist, with some published meta-analysis experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Must&lt;/em&gt; is a very strong word. Some people have pointed to where, for example, the Cochrane Collaboration requires it, and PRISMA might not, but generally speaking I've never really encountered a situation where having a single author on a meta-analysis was a substantial barrier to publishing a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I would say that a meta-analysis or systematic review &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have a second person on the study team. Rarely is the literature being reviewed so clear, so well-laid out and so utterly free of ambiguity that a single person can read, digest and abstract the literature without making any judgement calls. Without having any papers where they search and simply cannot find what they're looking for. Without hitting that one paper they simply cannot make heads or tails of. There should be someone there to double-check your work, or a sample of it at least, to make sure what you described as the system in your paper and what you actually did match up. To look over those papers you've set aside in the &quot;Problem&quot; pile to see if they can see things you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I leave whether or not that person should be an author as an exercise to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some colleagues who essentially begin all reviews with a parallel, blinded double-abstraction of the papers once they've been found - or even begin all the way at the search being carried out twice. I don't know that I'd go that far, but it is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; helpful to have someone to double-check your decision making against. Despite being careful, reading closely and reviewing my own decisions, I have yet to work on a meta-analysis where I haven't been glad to have a second reviewer (or to be said reviewer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:26:38.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15413" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:27:48.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since one answer already mentioned the high price of textbooks, I'll add: I'm assuming you have already looked to obtain a used copy of the book, but without success. If not, though, I'd start there. I've obtained plenty of $100+ textbooks for less than 15 bucks by looking for used copies online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work though, when you make your plea, there are a few things you could do that might bolster your chances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't act as though you are trying to just scrounge a copy of the chapter; write the letter as though you are trying to start a research relationship. After you explain how the author's chapter will help you, offer to keep this person posted on how your research is going. Presumably there's some overlap of interests; otherwise, you wouldn't be after the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Let the author know that you're not necessarily opposed to the idea of buying the book outright, if you really like the one chapter. In other words, instead of saying something like this (not that you'd use these exact words, but perceptive recipients of solicitations can often read between the lines):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm only interested in Chapter 6; the rest of your book doesn't really interest me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm primarily interested in Chapter 6, but, if that small samples proves to help me greatly, I'll be looking for a chance to obtain the entire book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That need not be a lie, either. Sooner or later, some more-wealthy relative is going to ask you what you want for your birthday. This experience might help you answer that question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:27:48.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15438" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:38:59.647" Score="12" ViewCount="2915" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a bachelor student majoring on computer engineering and working on robotics. Last year as a part of my research, I worked together with a student and one teacher as a supervisor, so we published our article for conference together. But later we finished our research and all of us left the team. Now I am working on other research problem by myself and got some results and want to publish it. But this time I am alone, I have no supervisor on that research problem or any student partner. So I'd like to ask can I submit a paper for conference/journal by myself?&#xA;P.S. My current research project has no relationship with old one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10526" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T19:36:25.613" Title="Can I publish an article or thesis about my research without supervisor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15437" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:53:39.177" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You definitely submit a paper by yourself and if you write a high quality submission, it will be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was early in my research career I found it very helpful to have a collaborator such as a teacher/professor or a postdoc student with publishing experience to collaborate on papers. This often helps catching points or issues that you may overlook within your research as well as providing advice and guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10129" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:53:39.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T17:19:41.210" Score="7" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to sign a lengthly and detailed contract in order to teach a course as an adjunct at a local community college. The administrator requesting this information signed it with her title and her degree. The document was addressed to me as &quot;Mr.&quot; ... I have both a Ph.D. and a thirty plus year career at a major university where I retired as a named research professor (facts clearly indicated on the vita in the administrator's possession!). Am I wrong to expect to be addressed as Dr. in such documents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10528" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T06:45:17.240" Title="When should you require to be addressed by your title?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T09:26:04.363" Score="17" ViewCount="8230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard one of my lecturers says that it is always better to start the paper title with a verb. According to the lecturer, the verb leave that impression about something has been accomplished. For example, use &lt;code&gt;Design&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;develop&lt;/code&gt; etc. I tried to find any supportive resources about that but I could not. The other question, is it better to use &lt;code&gt;verb-ing&lt;/code&gt; or not (e.g. Developing vs. Develop)? Most of references that speak about choosing title do not pay much attention to the syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-14T07:33:20.473" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T07:33:20.473" Title="Is it better to start the paper title with a verb?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15377" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:06:17.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the conferences in Computer Science publish proceedings with Springer, IEEE or ACM (even though there are several dozens which self-publish or publish elsewhere).&#xA;All three publishers have lists of upcoming conferences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Springer&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;LNCS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-12-73665-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-12-73665-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;CCIS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/series/7899&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.springer.com/series/7899&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;LNBIP: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/series/7911&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.springer.com/series/7911&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IEEE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/calendar-of-events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.acm.org/calendar-of-events&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other great resources are mailing lists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mailing lists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DBWorld &lt;a href=&quot;https://research.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://research.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;AISWorld &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aisnet.org/AIS_Lists/publiclists.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aisnet.org/AIS_Lists/publiclists.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ACM SIG-IR list &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigir.org/sigirlist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sigir.org/sigirlist/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ECOOP info list &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.satd.uma.es/mailman/listinfo/ecoop-info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.satd.uma.es/mailman/listinfo/ecoop-info&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of conferences which do this just for money and not for disseminating knowledge:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being said - of course the best way is to ask colleagues working on a topic related to yours - like your supervisors, post-docs from your group etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-27T22:18:56.683" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T22:18:56.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:13:51.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a good title is perhaps the hardest part of authoring. Writing a good title is not so much a matter of style as a matter of good communication. Some key points I therefore try to follow for a title can be summarized as follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;predict and describe the content; recapitulate the conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;be succinct and comprise one or possibly two facts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;include one active verb in present tense to form subject-active verb-objective&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid complicated wording and use no more than three modifiers for any noun&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pair of good sources on general science writing which includes formulation of titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glasman-Deal, H., 2012. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English. Imperial College Press, London&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Day, R.A. &amp;amp; Sakaduski, N., 2011. Scientific English. A guide for scientists and other professionals. Greenwood, Santa Barbara CA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T08:34:59.140" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T08:34:59.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:15:31.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am neither a native English speaker nor a language expert but here are my two cents. I recall hearing (more than once) that it's best to start strong. In other words, what you feel your paper is really about should be the first thing you express; if it is &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; something that wasn't possible to do previously then a word expressing an action is a good call. Ex: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Refinement of XYZ process using awesome method A&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise if you are doing something in a different way then it might be good to point out what's new with your way of doing that particular thing; &lt;em&gt;&quot;Multispectral analysis of bioluminesce  in deep ocean habitats&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (random made-up example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first example you are &quot;advertising&quot; that you are refining XYZ process and that's the cool thing with your paper, whereas in the second example you are pointing out that you are analysing things in multiple light spectra. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either way the first word isn't a verb, but could be a noun form of a verb; i.e. &lt;code&gt;to refine&lt;/code&gt; -&gt; &lt;code&gt;refinement&lt;/code&gt;. The problem with using the &quot;-ing&quot; form is that it might give the idea of continuousness, which is out of place as the work is already done in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that makes some sense :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T10:15:31.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15459" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:16:37.947" Score="53" ViewCount="8357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master CS student. I had so many troubles in my life. I didn't have proper schooling and were in difficult situations which led to me being not so good compared to my peers now at the graduate school. For example I had problems with math and so and when I got into my new graduate school everyone was almost far better than me. Then I started working day and nights to improve my skills and after a year of &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard work now I achieved almost their skills. However in that time my peers were also developing their skills and doing fancy projects and so on. Sometimes when I get to look at their success and projects I feel &lt;em&gt;stressed&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;discouraged&lt;/em&gt; that I really still have way too long to achieve that. Or that I'm really putting &lt;em&gt;so much&lt;/em&gt; work into myself because of the problems I went through but at the end I find myself still far. Whereas my peers are enjoying their lifes and at the same time achieving something. I know life is not fair nor I'm jealous, but sometimes I just feel sorry about myself that I work really hard but without much difference :(. This is also is leading so some self-confidence issue, that whenever I see one of my peers I get stressed and sometimes afraid to discuss a topic with them because I don't want to look bad not  knowing that easy stuff for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is always leads to a voice in my head saying: oh if only a professor in MIT or Stanford sees how hard working you are, you might be there now. But of course I won't because I will always be far from the students there because of what I went through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do to overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T16:26:43.133" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T16:26:43.133" Title="How should I deal with discouragement looking at others success?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:20:31.250" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two issues here. The one is the stylistic sense that some people have developed over their life and that is not necessarily always to be generalized. The other is the strictness of such &quot;style advice&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first issue: Everybody develops some kind of preferences about stylistic things they like or dislike and things they believe to be (or have worked) better than others. This personal preference does not necessarily coincide with what is generally considered to be good style, which means it could be true in the special environment of this person but it could also be some anecdotal experience that has no broader foundation. Therefore I would be somewhat cautious to take such advice too strict when it comes from a single person and you cannot find it anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second: Let's consider this rule exists (which I don't know and didn't check), you shouldn't take it as a strict &quot;law&quot;. If you have a title that fulfils the rule and you feel good with it, then go for it. But don't try to twist your formulation just to meet this single criterion as the confusion that you create with it might outweigh the &quot;beauty&quot; that you win by starting the title with a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: Be careful with possibly subjective &quot;style advice&quot; and don't take style guides as strict &quot;laws&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastEditorUserId="10039" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T08:21:58.840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T08:21:58.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:37:02.250" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will apologize in advance, because this answer won't give you what you are probably looking for; but it might give some perspective so I will reply anyways hoping that helps somewhat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, know this: &lt;strong&gt;you are not alone!&lt;/strong&gt; It's actually pretty common to look at your peers (at the office and elsewhere worldwide) and feel shitty about the &quot;insignificance&quot; of your accomplishments compared to those of others. To further strengthen the point, I can say that I am battling with this every single day for instance, despite what I hear from others about the quality or importance of my work when I look around and see what others achieve I feel depressed... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly it's also good to try and remember that life isn't a competition. Well, some aspects of life are competitive, for sure, but you cannot go about living your day competing with others in every single aspect of your life. This is a &lt;em&gt;simple&lt;/em&gt; but a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; powerful insight, also very hard to digest it properly and take it to heart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of all the aspects your life, from research to parking your car, from buying groceries to whatever sport you enjoy the most... I can guarantee you that there will be several (if not more) people within your immediate surrounding that will be &quot;better&quot; than you in each one and single aspect, if you isolate them one at a time. But I can also assure you that they won't be the same people if you consider different aspects. Overall, you are the person you are and constantly comparing yourself to others in single aspects (and focusing on your shortcomings) will only drive you towards unhappiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does that mean you should just relax and go with the flow? Absolutely not! You have to play catch up, if you can identify your shortcomings in particular fields (like maths, or programming experience). It'll be frustration, it'll be long hours, it'll be effort... Try to focus on setting goals for yourself when you are in catch-up phase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend checking out &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot;&gt;S.M.A.R.T goals&lt;/a&gt; concept which helps in getting things done and bagging that sweet feeling of accomplishment, little by little. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this answer helps to some extent and it all works out in the end! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T10:37:02.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T11:36:44.897" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you're engaged in a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_comparison_theory#Upward_and_downward_social_comparisons&quot;&gt;upward social comparison&lt;/a&gt;, which is bound to make you feel somewhat inadequate if you're judging yourself by the different standards of achievement that may apply to them for all the reasons you mention. Upward social comparison might be a good way to form goals, but it's not a good way to judge your progress so far. Even if you'd had the same environmental advantages as some of the people you seem to be focusing on, you'd still both be working with different personalities and aptitudes, and probably different tasks too. Too many factors differentiate individuals' performance to take observations of your peers quite so seriously as reflections on yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal approach would be to judge your progress by &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; standards. You've known yourself long enough to have some sense of whether you're growing and performing at your usual rate. If you're improving steadily in these regards, I'd say that's plenty of cause for a decent amount of self-esteem. If you find yourself doing worse than usual, consider what's holding you back, and consider whether you've defined your goals realistically. I'm not saying you can't be responsible for underperforming—you should be able and willing to see fault in yourself—but you shouldn't blame yourself immediately without considering other factors that might be affecting you. This is all part of the broader matter of managing your expectations, and separating them from your hopes and aspirations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably wouldn't recommend relying too heavily on downward social comparison, but it is also an option if you need to calibrate your frame of reference with others in general, and it sounds like you might. You sound very focused on what you have had to overcome, not the fact that you've overcome it, and focused on what others have done with advantages you didn't have, rather than what others have done with the same disadvantages you had. How many of your peers had problems like yours in the past? How many people do you know with similar backgrounds who haven't made it to grad school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful not to get caught up in depressive cycles of ruminative thought as well. You sound stressed for at least two reasons that should &quot;cancel each other out&quot; in some sense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You had a hard life...&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But you still made it to grad school!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have trouble keeping up with people who haven't suffered the same disadvantages...&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But you know you've had to deal with a lot of unusual problems outside of school!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That you are still in the same program as those people who had it easier should help you feel better about your life, because it's only held you back somewhat. That you have been held back by your life's circumstances somewhat should help you feel better about being behind somewhat. Nonetheless, if you focus on each source of stress separately instead of focusing on these connections, each will make you feel bad independently, and each will remind you of the other reason to feel bad. Focus on the reasons you are where you are, not just where you are, and focus on what you can do about it, not just how you feel about it (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping_%28psychology%29#Types_of_coping_strategies&quot;&gt;problem-focused and emotion-focused coping&lt;/a&gt;)...and never forget how far you've come already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T11:36:44.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15374" CreationDate="2014-01-07T12:28:56.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to agreeing with the answer of &lt;code&gt;@xLeitix&lt;/code&gt;, I would also add that in some fields and journals, it is a specific requirement that tools and software are cited appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1549" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T12:28:56.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9058" CreationDate="2014-01-07T12:44:42.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Spain, examinations are graded in 0-10 (with 0 being failing everything, and 10 a perfect score), but then the actual marks for each subject &lt;em&gt;at universities&lt;/em&gt; is in a 4 degrees scale: 0-fail, 1-pass, 2-remarkable, 3-outstanding, 4-outstanding with honors. Marks are weighted by the number of credits (equivalent 10-hour blocks of study, including class attendance, labs, and estimated self-study) of each subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People with non-Spanish degrees have to convert their marks to this 4 point system, with the help of the following algorithm (in pseudo-code; you can find how to use it, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://sede.csic.gob.es/servicios/formacion-y-empleo/bolsa-de-trabajo/modelo-declaracion-notas-medias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in this form from the Spanish Council of Scientific Research&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Ti = 0;&#xA;Mi = 50+50*(SMi-Nmin)/(Nmax-Nmin)&#xA;if Mi &amp;gt;= 50 and Mi &amp;lt; 69.9 then Ti = 1&#xA;else if Mi &amp;gt;= 70 and Mi &amp;lt; 89.9 then Ti = 2&#xA;else if Mi &amp;gt;= 80 and Mi &amp;lt; 99.9 then Ti = 3&#xA;else if Mi &amp;gt; 99.9 then Ti = 4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the final average is the total sum of the weighted average (Ci times Ti) divided by the total sum of credits (ΣCi), where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nmax = maximum note in the source system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mmin = minimum note that gives a pass in the source system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ci = number of of credits for subject &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SMi = source mark for subject &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mi = intermediate 0-100 mark (with 50 being the first note that gives a pass)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ti = final mark in the Spanish system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use that kind of intermediate step to go from any mark system to any other. The only thing you have to change is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nmin and Nmax; it even works for system such as the German, where Nmax = 1,0 and Nmin = 4,0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the brackets and marks for converting from the 100-point system to the target system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10233" LastEditorUserId="10233" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T09:16:08.807" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T09:16:08.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T14:59:06.207" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, it is customary to give pep talk, the truth is that life is unfair. Your friends might get all the girls of your dreams without even trying (I assume you are a guy), your siblings might be more successful than what you will ever be and even your parents might be more educated than you. You can always blame this on your &quot;hard&quot; life and naively believe that if you actually put another 10% of effort you might minimize the gap between your achievements and theirs. The problem is, that sometimes people around you are more smart, more beautiful and even more hard working. You have to accept this as a fact of life. As Clint Eastwood said &quot;A Man's Got to Know his Limitations&quot;. What you can do is work within those limitations and stretch them to your absolute best. But even then, success is not linear and sometimes extraordinary smart, hard working people fall flat on their faces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although you should look to people around you for inspiration, trying to replicate their success is a dead-end. There will be always be someone more adequate, smarter, richer or luckier. So, instead focus on what you WANT TO DO instead on what you want to get. Do the best you can but mainly enjoy the process as well. Otherwise your dreams are toxic and lead you nowhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T15:10:17.547" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T15:10:17.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15373" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:59:41.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically there are ways to do this (at least in Europe, different countries are different). In practice however, doing PhD work is hard enough when doing it officially part-time with a set supervisor and approved plan. Without a supervisor, you need to be exceptionally exceptional to get a PhD thesis written (and sufficient academic papers published to satisfy expectations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way, the vast majority of PhD proposals in applications are not quite good enough (to execute), so the first thing a supervisor does is change the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T16:59:41.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T17:24:25.290" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally disagree with &quot;Accept it&quot; part of answers. Well, accept it. BUT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who are getting their success easy will eventually get bored and stop. Your habit to working hard WILL get you ahead of them sooner than you might expect &lt;em&gt;(at least, after graduating high school. Life is not like high school, it has no target to be teaching you while you're having fun in a campus)&lt;/em&gt;. It's like having higher speed and acceleration while starting behind: EVENTUALLY you'll get ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Persistence beats it all. It beats being smart, rich or naturally strong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go strive for those fancy projects too. In the beginning, you will be doing worse, that's normal. And then...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing: trying to catch up with a someone's success is one of the best motivations I had in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10561" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T17:24:25.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T17:43:36.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you shouldn´t compare yourself with others all the time. We need to be better than we were yesterday... If you are doing your part, don´t worry. There will be always people you consider better than you as always there will be people considering you better than them. CS is very vast... Don´t try to be the best in every field, it´s insane... Focus in something you like.. Good luck... And sometimes we need a break, relax, have fun to study better later... The important is the path, not the final line... Life is it, we are always trying to get in a new point.. And when we get there it takes only seconds and we start another run for the next. So we need to try to be happy during the path!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10563" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T17:43:36.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15474" CreationDate="2014-01-07T17:48:29.477" Score="20" ViewCount="33512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is considering a part time (~10hr/week) consulting gig with a large, well-established software company, doing a mixture of research and coding.  However, there appears to be little quantitative data on past consulting rates for &lt;strong&gt;academics&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e., professors, postdocs, and PhD students whose primary career is not consulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: How does an &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt; determine a fair rate for consulting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Assuming that a consulting gig is &lt;em&gt;actually compatible with their academic contract!&lt;/em&gt; I do of course realize that in many circumstances external employment is prohibited by a contract with the university.  I also realize that consulting rates are largely a function of 1. perceived expertise and 2. negotiation skill.  But a key component of successful negotiation is an objective view of the facts—in this case, some kind of upper and lower bound on reasonable wages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:12:22.147" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T13:53:56.240" Title="Hourly rates for industry consulting?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T17:55:17.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the question is how do I deal with the discouragement and overcome this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like another person said, you are NOT the only one. Actually, you'd be surprised to hear that some of the people you envy feel the same way. Even when by all measures, they seem to be so great and successful. Example: Scott Hanselman is a Senior Engineer (not sure of his title) at Microsoft and published the great posts &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheMythOfTheRockstarProgrammer.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I'm a phony. Are you?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's all in your mindset. I will never be the next &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bill Gates&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mark Zuckerberg&lt;/a&gt;, but I can always be better than I am today.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work on some side projects to help you learn more and improve every day. Yes, everyone is busy and this takes time. But, no one said becoming a great developer is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are a Master's student. You really haven't even started your career. My advice??? Be persistent and outwork your peers. I'll take an energetic, motivated person any day over someone with a little talent that is lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people deal with the feelings of ineptness. Just realize it's just a feeling and not based on much reality. You see the success of others, but you have no idea how many failures they have had or how hard they worked to get there. You look at their successes, but you have no way of looking at their failures.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10565" LastEditorUserId="473" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T04:03:48.607" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T04:03:48.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15470" CreationDate="2014-01-07T18:17:14.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to vary wildly by field, by sub-field, by school, by academic rank, etc. The best way to find out is to ask colleagues what they make, more senior colleagues what they'd expect and if they think a particular rate is reasonable, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While people are occasionally hesitant about asking salary questions, I've not run into anyone whose adverse to discussing the mechanics of consulting with a colleague getting started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T18:17:14.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15470" CreationDate="2014-01-07T18:51:50.940" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118/fomite&quot;&gt;Fomite&lt;/a&gt; correctly stated, it is going to vary a lot by field and also individual circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if the consulting work is roughly equivalent to what a non-academic in industry might be able to perform, then the rates will roughly be equivalent, too.  This happens a lot in the engineering disciplines, and especially often in computer science (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, many computer science professors can moonlight as software engineers).  In such disciplines, I have found that companies in industry often classify their engineers into five levels.  These go by different names at different companies, but they usually are along the lines of: associate, full engineer, senior, lead, and principal.  Associate is the level a freshly graduated undergrad would start at. Full engineer usually implies three to five years experience and/or a master's degree.  That is likely the level equivalent to a Ph.D. student.  A fresh Ph.D. just having defended would usually start at such a company at the senior level, so it is roughly equivalent to post-doc and junior faculty.  The lead level is usually achieved 7+ years after that, so it is roughly equivalent to tenured faculty.  Likewise, principal is equivalent to full professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have an equivalent job title in mind, you can use websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glassdoor.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;glassdoor&lt;/a&gt; to search for average salaries for that job title (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;Senior Software Engineer&quot;, &quot;Principal Electrical Engineer&quot;, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;).  I find that typical hourly rates are in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% of the yearly salary of an equivalent professional, but once again this may vary by profession; my experience is in the world of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that some companies will allow a slightly higher-end consulting rate if you can demonstrate that your abilities are above and beyond those of a non-academic alternative.  This is especially true if the nature of the consulting work is research-oriented and/or directly related to your research, or if you can reasonably argue that you could complete the task faster than a non-Ph.D or a full-time employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can usually charge a slightly higher rate for short-term work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many academics I know often do consulting in the form of acting as expert witnesses at trial.  Rates for that type of work seem to be more standard across disciplines, and is more of a function of how unique and qualified you are for the job.  Prep work for trial is usually charged at a standard consulting rate, but then days at trial can be charged as much as two to four times that rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T16:41:52.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15437" CreationDate="2014-01-07T19:36:25.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon for (PhD) students to publish independently of an advisor. So as eoinbrazil wrote already, if you have a submission of a high quality, you can give it a try. Many students do publish with their supervisors, however, for a couple of good reasons. Besides the obvious ones, here are some not-so-obvious ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Funding for conference travel: You mentioned conferences as publication venue yourself. Assuming that your paper gets accepted: do you have the funding to visit it? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The scopes of conferences/journals: there is often a disagreement between a call for papers and the types of papers that conferences or journals actually want. Having experience in this area helps a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The community behind a conference/journal: different communities focus on different things: some want the sales pitch, some are find with just the results. Some care about experiments, for others, the theory is enough. Some have a set of standard benchmarks, some don't. These are just some examples. Again, having experience with a conference or journal helps a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Selection of conferences/journals: Nowadays, with spamferences and spam-journals -- probably not a big deal for you, as your have published already and at the moment it is relatively easy to tell from a call for papers if a journal or conference is of reasonable quality. For the record, this may become harder, however.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Typically, you will be asked to state your institution at submission time. Does your university have rules about submissions? Some might have some reviewing process in place in order to avoid that papers are submitted that are so bad that even submitting them could harm the reputation of the university. If you publish with your advisor, she/he will make the &quot;internal review&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T19:36:25.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-07T20:29:07.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully I can give you a different answer, from my perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, everyone's achievements are different. If they are not, they are in direct competition in their careers - so don't try to achieve what they do. You have unique stuff to offer. I have hired a lot of academically smart people, but they have no people skills or street smarts - at all. The CIO I work for said what makes a good CIO is one who naturally has great people skills and social smarts, everything else can be learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be the turtle, not the rabbit, in the race. I suggest you try to make small achievements, and document them in a vita you should keep. Try to write an article on what you do.. perhaps applying people smarts, not tech smarts. Look for a perspective you have no one else around you has, and focus on applying CS to non-CS interests you have. For example, if you like music, do a CS project with music as the subject. Then put that in your Vita.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volunteering is always good experience the academically smart people may not be doing. Interact with people, socialize, and help others. A good tech leader will have team building skills, personal management skills, task/project management. So perhaps you have a knack for these.. you should look into them. Being a volunteer leader and an average programmer may speak more than only being an expert programmer with no leadership experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about the tech skills as much as the know-how skills. Every job you go to you will have to learn new skills. The question the employer will have is how can you make my company better if I hire you. They want someone who has enough technical skills to do the job, and then they look for non-tech skills that fit the company's mission and ideals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T20:29:07.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15470" CreationDate="2014-01-07T20:45:12.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the legal arena, private practice rates for pure research start at about $40 per hour while the rates for research and writing are about $60 per hour, on average.  In academics, these rates are much lower such that you typically see only law students working hourly in an academic setting.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10573" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T20:45:12.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15516" CreationDate="2014-01-07T20:51:54.477" Score="7" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math undergrad doing an independent study course this semester, and I want to practice my math exposition skills by publishing some reading notes online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing I shouldn't publish my solutions to problems (or examples) from textbooks, and the notes I publish should be made from more than one text to avoid ethical and copyright concerns, respectively. I'm assuming coming up with similar but distinct problems and examples will at least address the first issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is my situation, but to make this a broader question, what things in general should one avoid including when publishing notes online? By &quot;notes&quot;, I'm also referring to lecture notes as well as other expository articles published for free access online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5985" LastEditorUserId="5985" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T23:08:40.380" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:13:16.807" Title="What kind of content should one avoid when publishing (math) notes online?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14962" CreationDate="2014-01-07T21:41:03.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Exchange student&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing my masters thesis as an exchange student at another university but it is not necessary to enrol as a student at the other university (like aeismail mentioned). If you need a scholarship then you might want to look for a possibility as an exchange student but it has also additional advantages to go as an exchange student. You get informed by the student administration of the university about several topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Compatibility&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to ask first at your study administration/students office and afterward to find a supervisor for discussing with him the next steps. The thesis has to be compatible with your home universities restrictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Where to search&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then search for a compatible thesis and research topic. &#xA;It depends on the university how they publish the open postions, research projects and theses topics.&#xA;Most research groups have their own homepage where they publish open positions or topics for a research project/thesis. You can also write them a polite email to ask for an project you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alternative places&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some independent institutes or even companies that provide writing a Masters or even PhD thesis (dependent on your field of research) on behalf of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T21:41:03.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T00:31:23.317" Score="6" ViewCount="22270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student with a question on conferences. What is the main difference between an oral session and a poster session? I want to know the difference in detail.&#xA;I can understand the meaning a little bit, but what else can you tell me about the differences in the details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10547" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T00:38:13.553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T00:53:49.870" Title="Difference between Poster Session and Oral Session" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15484" CreationDate="2014-01-08T00:40:43.673" Score="0" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is pretty much the title.  If you are an academic, is it possible to get anyone to pay you to do research in mathematical finance?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can interpret the question broadly, to include mathematics or computational science that is used in finance, as long as this research has some real connection to finance as practiced today.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastEditorUserId="6278" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T02:48:03.077" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:27:10.523" Title="Does anyone fund research in mathematical finance?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15481" CreationDate="2014-01-08T00:53:49.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an oral session, speakers present their work one-by-one in a series of short lectures (usually no more than 30 minutes, and potentially as little as 10 minutes). Each speaker presents, takes questions for a few minutes, and is followed by the next one. These presentations are usually in a room with a seated audience, in a lecture-style format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a poster session, a number of presenters each prepare a poster (in a standard size) and mount them on boards in a large room. For a fixed period of time during the conference, all participants are invited to wander round the posters, reading and asking questions as they deem fit. Poster presenters typically stand by the posters and answer questions as people come by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10902/talks-vs-poster-presentations&quot;&gt;Talks vs. poster presentations: Which is better for advertising your research and building research networks?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2628/how-important-are-poster-sessions-in-conferences&quot;&gt;How important are poster sessions in conferences?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2330/what-are-some-general-good-principles-for-creating-a-poster-for-a-poster-session&quot;&gt;What are some general good principles for creating a poster for a poster session?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T00:53:49.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15482" CreationDate="2014-01-08T00:57:50.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the somewhat tendentious statements about mathematicians and funding mathematics, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Science Foundation&lt;/a&gt; in the US is one example of an agency funding research in mathematical finance. In fact, all I did was type &quot;nsf mathematical finance&quot; into google and I got three awards listed in the top 10. I'm sure there are many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T00:57:50.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T01:54:35.763" Score="18" ViewCount="18616" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/grants&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;grants&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;grants&lt;/a&gt; currently has the description &quot;Academic grants are non-repayable funds disbursed by government, trust, foundation or a society.&quot;  The tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/awards&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;awards&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;awards&lt;/a&gt; currently has no description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of formally naming the forms of monetary support that my university's research council is providing to its employees.  My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any formal document that describes the difference between a grant and an award?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in how the terms &lt;em&gt;grant&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;award&lt;/em&gt; differ from other terms such as &lt;em&gt;incentive&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;fellowship&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;scholarship&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;professorial chair&lt;/em&gt;, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I know that one who is applying for a grant submits a proposal to be able to get funding for an activity that has not yet been done.  I also know that some awards require nominations (and some disallow self-nomination) and are given for work that has already been done.  I know that grants usually require liquidation of the monetary support given; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.  Grants sometimes have clauses where the recipient is to return the monetary support if he or she fails to submit the expected outputs; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T13:00:30.073" Title="Difference between grants and awards" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-08T02:24:09.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many answers here are very helpful for me, as for a long time I've had the same feelings as you do now, and still do, to a lesser extent. &#xA;I also agree with millmoose's comment in that, while it's understandable that you are seeking for help with your situation, it'd be better if you ask people close to you, or a therapist, for aid.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, because your position is very familiar to me, I'd like to give you my own answer as well, if only to deal with my own situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problems manifested themselves around the time I enrolled as a student. &#xA;Whilst I love computer science, and especially it's theoretical implications, I felt insecure because I was weak at math and no programming background.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So, I started and for a long time I too compared my achievements with others'. &#xA;Without taking my own personal difficulties into account, I set high standards for myself, in order to prove to myself that I was better than they were.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I then failed my own high expectations, and that resulted into me thinking less of myself and more of the others.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This impacted my studies as well: I couldn't read at home, and at class I would not ask my teachers any questions (who actually expected my questions and were paid to answer them) or discuss the topic with my classmates, out of fear of how I'd come out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To &quot;amend&quot; the situation, I set even higher standards the next time, and so a vicious circle of expectation/disappointment ensued.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This had a great psychological and professional impact for me, but also very valuable lessons to be learned; I hope my lessons will help you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The greatest lesson I've learned is that your mistakes are your best friends, and your best tutors. All of us started knowing nothing at all, and we all learn and get better by making mistakes. Don't be afraid to ask questions; to show that you don't know.The answers, as well as the questions themselves, will help you grow.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But, no matter how much we learn none of us will ever get to know it all, or be perfect at anything. All the people that seem so perfect, they all have their flaws.Beneath the lines of accomplishments by great scientists lie dozens of failures (according to Wikipedia, &quot;Einstein was passed over for promotion [at the Swiss Patent Office] until he 'fully mastered machine technology'&quot;.Go figure).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me and you have flaws too. It's very natural, and it's very OK! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also hard to get used to this, and not be afraid of mistakes. I'm still trying myself.&#xA;What helps me is that there is actually no comparison to be made. We are not better or worse to each other; we are all equal, but different. And everyone of us is special in their own way.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I for instance, learned about myself that I may not be great at math, or any other field for that matter, but I'm good at discovering relations between stuff, and that matters too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What posdef also said helps even more: life is not all about competing, comparing and achieving stuff.Life is about the journey-the goal is just the pretext to get the journey going (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_P._Cavafy#Ithaca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ithaca&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is about enjoying what you do, and enjoying yourself, along with others just as non-perfect as me and you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude: just go for it, no matter how it turns out. Get in touch with others and their work and don't be afraid of it; you will learn from their rights and wrongs, and they will certainly learn something special from you too ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. This fall I tried to get to &lt;em&gt;graduate school for a master at CS&lt;/em&gt;, but didn't get admitted; I wasn't even called for the interview ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10578" LastEditorUserId="10578" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T03:01:59.693" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T03:01:59.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-08T02:44:17.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, sometimes we are just not that &quot;smart&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a class in image processing (graduate level) taught by Dr &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._R._Rao&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;K. R. Rao&lt;/a&gt; (invented &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JPEG&lt;/a&gt;), and I barely hung on by my fingernails and was behind all the other students. The other class members were all international students who didn't party but studied in their off time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They knew the subject better than me, but I got an A. It was an excellent class, I was persistent, very persistent. The point is get over the feelings and work as hard as you can, all your spare time on it (24/7 like) and see how you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &quot;Smart&quot; is only 1/2 the game. Look at the people in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mensa&lt;/a&gt;; 1/2 are nuts, and look at PhDs in Physics; 1/2 are nuts and really out to lunch long time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take a hard working normal guy over a super smart wandering type anytime. On the job, I had, as a system engineer, to coordinate and get the primadona engineers all moving in one direction and work together, about 5 guys in 3 locations and they had more than 10 patents each, one had over 50, and they were all older than me. They knew their fields far better than I. We came out with Wi-Fi. Learn to take downs with the ups, gather experience, lots of arrows in the butt, etc. There is high demand for people that can stand the pressure and survive.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was one guy in grad microwave class that made all 100s, the rest of us were in the Bs, and he busted the curve for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10579" LastEditorUserId="473" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T04:01:36.143" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T04:01:36.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T02:58:52.587" Score="4" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common meme that people often embark on and develop business projects while in graduate school. However, it's unclear how frequently this actually happens in &quot;real life&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, how responsible/ethical a choice is it, in say, a funded PhD program? I know that typically there is a guideline for hours worked for such a position, but that's almost a joke in comparison to implicit requirements like standards of research quality and publication rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that you are a student earnestly engaged in both the PhD topic and an unrelated side project, and you want both the PhD and the business to succeed (i.e., graduate, publish, launch side project as successful startup). To me it seems like the worst-case scenario in that situation would be running into a tough problem in research, while still putting in occasional hours on the side project, as that would look terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to hear about the details. How/when to disclose? How to maintain rapport with advisor? What are the ethical concerns? Is this feasible? How do these goofballs in the success stories get away with this? ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10580" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T16:55:42.940" Title="Responsibility/ethics of startups during graduate studies" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15500" CreationDate="2014-01-08T04:21:25.357" Score="8" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to a journal and I got extensive reviews, and the paper was rejected, but they encouraged resubmission if I successfully did a bit more science and made other drastic revisions. Note this is not the same as being conditionally accepted; I had to resubmit the paper. Well I did this and the paper was accepted the second go around with minor revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal has the policy that you may post a copy of the preprint, the draft prior to review, on your personal website with a link to the final article which is behind a paywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, since they rejected the first draft of the paper, can I ethically call the second draft, the one with major revisions and extra science, the pre-peer review paper. It was the raw draft submitted prior to the second set of reviews after which they accepted the paper. Or because that paper did benefit from the first set of peer reviews, I should post the original first draft? My guess is that I am allowed to post the second draft; what do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T05:02:45.000" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T16:47:23.703" Title="Copyright and ownership for rejected papers that are edited based on peer review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15439" CreationDate="2014-01-08T06:45:17.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of admin documents are produced by machine these days, the ones that aren't are usually done by clueless people who aren't paid an awful lot. It would be ideal that they addressed you as 'Dr.', but unless they deal with a lot of doctors they probably just shoved your name into the standard mail merge template. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd rather be addressed as 'Dr.' then raising the issue with them wouldn't be stepping out of line, after all you are the one providing them with a service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10582" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T06:45:17.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4866" CreationDate="2014-01-08T07:05:36.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I would translate the title as literally as possible or derive some half-translation i.e. chargé de recherche would become something like 'research manager' (one who is in charge of research) and directeur de recherche would becomre 'research director'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more of an educated opinion though, as I believe that people benefit from learning small bits of other languages when applicable, and it helps to aid cultural understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's also often how borrowed words come about. Take the word 'halal' for example, it translates into English as 'lawful' or 'permissible', but it has been adopted by the English language because of its specific context when describing food. Titles are the same, they describe what people do, so they should remain as close to the original context as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10582" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T07:05:36.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15486" CreationDate="2014-01-08T07:08:57.480" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you basically answered your own question: grants are something where you apply and get money based on what you say you will do. Awards are something you get for work you already did. Some awards do not include any money. I doubt you'll find an authoritative document, because there's no organization that sets rules for the entire academic community. I could image a certain amount of overlap/fuzz, so there could be things that one school/organization calls a grant that somewhere else might call an award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A confusing additional fact is that the term &quot;award&quot; is also often used as a verb applied to the noun &quot;grant&quot;, as in &quot;Professor X was awarded a grant for . . .&quot;.  I would not call this &quot;an award&quot; in the noun sense; it is a grant, and &quot;awarding a grant&quot; means &quot;giving a grant&quot; or &quot;deciding who gets a grant&quot;.  To me &quot;an award&quot; is the sort of thing described with &quot;Professor X won the ABC Award for . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a page talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://finance.tufts.edu/spa/what-constitutes-a-grant-vs-a-gift&quot;&gt;grants vs. &quot;gifts&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that restates some of the distinctions you already mentioned, but this is just one accounting context at one university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastEditorUserId="9041" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T07:26:12.173" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T07:26:12.173" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15492" CreationDate="2014-01-08T08:07:53.540" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems clear to me that the answer is post what you call your second draft. The first &quot;round&quot; is a closed chapter because of the reject decision. You should consider your new round as the round of relevance for the final publication; it is a new paper, the old is &quot;dead&quot;. The first round draft will be so different from the final that it cannot represent the final version. If you receive a major/minor revision, it means that the submission has intrinsic values that are clear to the reviewers and editor and in such cases the early drafts carry with them enough to mirror the final product. So from this perspective the reject decision is a clear line of separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T08:07:53.540" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T09:32:12.170" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I can study one academic article for a very long time. Usually I end up spending many hours mulling over one specific article on the first pass. When you were going through your undergrad and reviewing the assigned readings, how much time and energy would you put into a single article on average? I know articles vary in length and density so this is hard to put a number to, but I'm looking to compare myself to a &quot;normal&quot; length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much time on average do you dedicate to &lt;em&gt;article&lt;/em&gt; readings, per class, during your undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10583" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T16:36:01.690" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T16:36:01.690" Title="During your undergrad, how much time did you put into assigned journal readings?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15606" CreationDate="2014-01-08T10:08:32.860" Score="22" ViewCount="10473" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the desktop application for Mendeley, it's possible to import a PDF and have the bibliographic data automatically extracted (or perhaps looked up, I'm not sure).  This feature is more or less reliable.  However, Mendeley's code is closed source (they once promised to release the source, but then they were bought by Elsevier).  &lt;strong&gt;I'm looking for an open source tool that takes one or more PDFs as input and returns a bibtex entry for each&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the following, but couldn't get either of them to work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.molspaces.com/d_cb2bib-overview.php&quot;&gt;cb2Bib&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/pdfmeat/&quot;&gt;pdfmeat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, the fastest alternative I know is to copy/paste the title into Google Scholar, and click the link to bibtex.  That's very nice, but I'm wondering if there is something more automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:48:59.983" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T07:50:20.550" Title="Is there an open source tool for producing bibtex entries from paper PDFs?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="12" ClosedDate="2017-12-02T08:35:49.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T10:26:45.820" Score="69" ViewCount="8279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a very &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10798/interpretation-of-a-phd-degree-in-a-very-broad-interdisciplinary-field&quot;&gt;cross-disciplinary field&lt;/a&gt;, which has caused me some headache&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; over the past couple of years, partly due to the fact that my supervisor isn't very knowledgeable regarding the day to day (technical) details of my projects. He typically leaves any mathematical, or CS, aspect of the projects to me to figure out, and provides guidance when I have questions regarding the biology or biochemistry, as those are his fields of expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I hear, he's similarly loose in supervision even with the other grad students who are less cross-disciplinary and more aligned with his expertise. While I see the point in the supervisor providing the freedom to the grad student to develop as he/she likes, in my experience it can be troubling at times, allow me to explain: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often have extensive periods where I don't have concrete goals to work with, but only vague ideas. Similarly, since I don't get a lot of technical guidance there are often weeks-long periods where I don't &quot;produce&quot; anything but instead trying to dig information out on publications, CS blogs or StackOverflow, in order to solve a problem I encounter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's at times like these my daily concerns (stuff usually unrelated to work) take precedence over what I am actually trying to figure out. I find myself browsing for gadgets, or looking over my savings or reading the news etc. I have no illusions that this amounts to procrastination no matter how you look at it. Since I don't really need to report anything to my supervisor on a regular basis, these periods can be extensive which often leads to frustration. And having realised this, I would like to be more productive even when I am stuck at my project, hopefully minimise the time it takes until I come up with a solution to whatever it is that's hindering progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question boils down to: how can I make sure I work efficiently, i.e. I don't get distracted or succumb to procrastination, when I am stuck and only get very loose supervision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; See relevant questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7611/is-it-possible-to-measure-evaluate-ones-progress-or-development-in-quantitative&quot;&gt;Is it possible to measure/evaluate one&amp;#39;s progress or development in quantitative terms?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10652/ways-of-developing-non-core-skills-during-phd-studies&quot;&gt;Ways of developing non-core skills during PhD studies?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:18:33.897" Title="How to work efficiently under loose supervision during graduate studies?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;procrastination&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="41" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15501" CreationDate="2014-01-08T10:51:19.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer in such a way as to incorporate the difference between my undergrad and grad experiences; hopefully that will help justify keeping your question open and relevant. However, I'm trying to keep this relatively objective, because you don't want to get flagged for being too opinion-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably spent very little time reading as an undergrad, except of course when a test was around the corner (it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=LsVK0kSpzx8C&amp;amp;pg=PA193&amp;amp;lpg=PA193&amp;amp;dq=fixed+interval+reinforcement+studying&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=SmnltSEYvE&amp;amp;sig=Kz-jl0y460Xin4tq226kSm0yuSc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=UCfNUruEBaPksATe1oKgDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CEcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fixed interval &quot;reinforcement&quot; schedule&lt;/a&gt;; this is to be expected). I could usually get away with just studying all night the day before a test (that might work out to about 10 hours/month/class), but as a psychologist, I've since learned that this is a pretty poor way to study (at least in terms of how effectively you'll learn), so I wouldn't recommend it, unless it's the only way for you to balance your need to learn with your need to do other things with your life. There's something to be said for finding your natural style early and not fighting it too much just because it's not the best by some specific criterion like information retention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, my &lt;em&gt;very first class&lt;/em&gt; seemed to make a point of swamping me with reading. It was ridiculous, and somewhat infuriating. Lest this seem like I'm diving further into personal anecdotes and opinion, note that I'm not the only one who felt this way, and I know my program wasn't the only one to adopt this sort of pseudo-hazing strategy, which I once heard referred to as the &quot;Harvard Method.&quot; (Of weeding out the not-so-die-hard students I assume?) Can't find any internet info to corroborate this, but I'd love to hear if anyone who actually went to Harvard—like the professor of this class of mine did—noticed whether professors like to assign entire books to read on a weekly basis there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My later classes weren't quite so bad, but I partly perceived them to be better because that first professor was &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; over-the-top with tremendously long reading assignments due every week, and I had to learn how to skim effectively just to &quot;survive&quot; it. In retrospect, that was a good lesson (albeit learned the hard way), because my graduate studies involved much more reading in general, and more in-depth, weekly accountability. I couldn't just cram from a textbook for a test every month or two; I had to read (skim) enough of multiple separate articles (often denser, with disparate writing styles, and not uncommonly longer than your average textbook chapter) to get a sense of what I could talk about in a seminar-style discussion with much fewer other students to hide behind, all of whom knew my name, as did the professor. I definitely did more reading as a grad student; anywhere from 3–15 hours/week/class when I had classes (not counting reading to prepare as a TA, or studying for my own research purposes). I suspect these experiences are fairly common, but I don't really know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors affecting my reading time included how interested I actually was in an article, and how messy my personal life was on any given week, of course. I should also add that I sometimes felt I needed to study less than the average student, yet I also felt that I read a given amount of text more slowly than the average student, so I may not be the best representative (probably a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Multivariate_outlier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multivariate outlier&lt;/a&gt; in any case). Empirical summary statistics from educational psych literature might be of more use to you, though I don't have any sources on hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T10:56:57.297" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T10:56:57.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-08T12:29:24.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not from the US, let alone from a US elite University. However, once I faced the same question. It's a decision you have to make yourself. Some notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When choosing between an industry job or a PhD, there is no wrong decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other matters in life are way more important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I chose the industry and I'm happy with my life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I saw top-notch stock trading jobs passing by because I have no PhD. You just don't notice right now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see peers failing their PhDs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's about what you want to do the next years, not after that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT in response to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From childhood on we've invested in our futures. By going for higher education, we thought in the long term. At some point we'll need to reap the rewards. Nobody ever wished he had worked more in his life when he was dying. Working should be a means (imho), not a goal. So to continue following a working strategy for life, you'll need to value the SHORT term more as you get older. Otherwise you risk never being happy with what you have and always working for something that will never come. Slowly switching from long term thinking to short term thinking may start by looking at a 5-year timespan. You don't want to be unhappy for the next 5 years in order to hopefully have a better life after that. If you can be happy with less money and more interesting work, THAT should be the reason to go for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10591" LastEditorUserId="10591" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T14:10:44.400" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T14:10:44.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-08T12:50:01.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What has not been mentioned in the above answers is that the nature of a title tends also to vary significantly &lt;strong&gt;between disciplines.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the biological and medical sciences, the titles of journal articles tend to be summaries of the key findings of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overexpression of Gene A Leads to Suppression of the X-Y Pathway in Organism Z under Type A Conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect, the title serves as a minimalist abstract of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to this, papers in the physical and mathematical sciences tend to have shorter titles that don't necessarily say much about the content of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technique X for Studying Y in Material Z&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Proof of Theorem X for Conditions Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles in the humanities can be much more creative, and use wordplay, literary quotes, and allusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Touches of Sweet Harmony&quot;: A Study of Organ Construction in Shakespeare's England&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your title need not fit into the specific norms of your field, but in that case, you better have a solid reason for doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T12:50:01.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T12:58:20.377" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't provide a definitive solution, but I can offer an example that works for me in periods when I'm feeling distracted but need to get things done. During such periods, I take advantage of what's known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pomodorotechnique.com/&quot;&gt;Pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt;. The basic idea of this technique is that you should work in blocks of 20- to 25-minutes that are devoted to a single task: reading a paper, or writing a piece of code, or whatever else the task is to be. At the end of one such block (called a &quot;Pomodoro&quot;), you take a short 5-minute break, then begin a new unit. After four units, you take a longer break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other ways to help do this are to &quot;block out&quot; other distractions: use full-screen modes that avoid distractions, warning messages, and so on. Turn off the beeps and signals on your mobile phone (except for appointment alerts!). Suppress the &quot;new mail&quot; sounds and other warnings on your computer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other challenge is of course figuring out what to do in the blocks. That of course is a little trickier, but requires planning on your part. You should be thinking about this on a fairly regular basis (the frequency can vary, but at least every few weeks). Figure out what you've done recently, and what you need to work on next. Then, get it done! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the specific case of being stuck on a particular bit, it depends a lot on the nature of the problem. If the block is a structural problem (equipment not working, etc.), then you have to wait for it to be resolved and work on other parts of your project in the meanwhile. However, if the issue is that you need to figure something out, then that really depends on how you solve problems best. Some people do so by working on completely different topics for a while, letting the problem &quot;work itself out&quot; in the subconscious. Other people attack it head on. Sometimes it's helpful to think about the problem in a different way: what happens if you start at the &quot;solution&quot; you want to reach, and work your way backwards? What are the consequences of continuing your current method of solution? Does it get you somewhere you can work from? Are there related problems in other parts of your discipline, or in other disciplines? How did other people try to resolve them? Will that work in your circumstances?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T14:20:23.727" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:20:23.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:24:37.887" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;New Ideas, you need new ideas, new ways of doing things to achieve what you're looking for, and if it's being better than them, I think that's not a bad thing, I mean how many are they 10, 20 people. obviously that challenged you and without this you wouldn't have thought of changing your status Quo. and even better how about something you're interested in that they don't know anything about (it doesn't have to be sports) it could be in the field of CS too, but was left out for some reason, they're a limited no. of people and even if they are 100, they're not the rest of the world, so probably they are not good at something in CS, if you're interested in that thing (only if you're interested in it, passionate about and want to learn) this can be a great advantage of yours. go for it, be good at every other subject in your masters but be excellent at your newly found interest, a hint: it might be something related to business (think gates and jobs left school for a reason), this could be a killer. in my opinion frustration is the fuel for extraordinary success only if you keep at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10595" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T13:24:37.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15514" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:42:49.813" Score="2" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that sometimes (in a thesis for instance) one can thank his supervisor, family or whoever and give a small reflection on the work. A good place would be a preface, I think, though I am not sure whether this is common in academic papers. If not, what is a good place to place reflections and - more informally - thank-you notes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T15:28:01.293" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T15:28:01.293" Title="Are prefaces common in academic papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15515" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:51:14.933" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes stumble upon an article about an experiment, e.g a medical experiment done in some medical journal, or an article refering to a physics experiment done, and would like to know more exact details about the experiment and just in general as much information as possible about the subject.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I never wrote an article for a journal nor have I participated in the management of an experiment, but I understand documentation is done beyond what is written in the article, a journal article is a summary of the experiment and only elaborates on the important points.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example a lab book AFAIK is often kept and used during the course of an experiment.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But this question pertains to theoretical research as well, e.g in mathematics; I may wish to find more information about the process by which the author came to his findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there usually a more complete documentation available which delineates the whole process of the experiment/research-project?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One thing I found is this Wikipedia article about &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_notebook_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open notebook science&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but I understand this is not the norm. Still, I suspect I may be missing something (maybe a iece of documentation not as comprehensive as a lab notebook, but more so then a journal article.&lt;br&gt; &#xA;Is there anything more for me to do if I wish to dig deeper and understand the subject more thoroughly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10596" LastEditorUserId="10596" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:56:50.160" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:00:24.953" Title="Is a research article the most comprehensive information available about a research project?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15512" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:51:59.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the type of publication, I would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would not be typical for journal or conference publications to have prefaces since dead trees are at a premium and long prefaces are not useful technical material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common for journal and conference publications to have a short &quot;Acknowledgements&quot; note at the end of the paper (just before the bibliography), or linked as a footnote from the title. This note is typically for acknowledging funding sources of the authors, as well as people who contributed informally to the paper (but are not co-authors). Sometimes I like to thank (even anonymous) reviewers if their feedback was useful. However, these notes are concise: they are not prefaces where you would discuss, for example, the invaluable contribution of your cat or somesuch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For books, monographs, etc., prefaces are fair game. But do consider what you put in there. It is often the first thing a reader will read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T13:51:59.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15513" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:00:24.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there usually a more complete documentation available which delineates the whole process of the experiment/research-project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically not all of the details of the research can feasibly be published. Different areas have different methods to cope with this. Some journals will allow supplementary material to be submitted that's made available online through the publisher's site. Some authors will add links to homepages for the project where more details are available. Sometimes authors will publish an extended &quot;technical report&quot; (e.g., with full proofs or full methodologies that would not be feasible under a page limit) and publish it on their institute homepage or a site like arXiv. I believe some biomedical journals allow for publishing databases containing micro-data on experiments ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it varies widely. The most generic answer, however, is simply to &lt;strong&gt;get in contact with the authors&lt;/strong&gt; and ask them if more details are available! Their contact details should be provided in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:00:24.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15478" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:13:16.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright protects &lt;em&gt;published texts and images&lt;/em&gt;, not the underlying ideas. A concept such as a &quot;Fourier transform&quot; cannot be copyrighted, no matter how it's written or described. However, what you cannot do is republish the material that's been put under copyright without obtaining permission, or demonstrating a clear fair-use case. For instance, one or two short, relevant quotations that are properly cited in a 50-page manuscript will not get you into trouble. Reprinting larger amounts or more complicated material (tables, graphics, etc.), however, should be done via a copyright request to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot reprint the text of problems that have been published elsewhere (unless, of course, it's sufficiently generic that it could be found in multiple books. For instance, the following text would not likely be copyrightable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prove that a connected open subset of &lt;em&gt;R^n&lt;/em&gt; is pathwise connected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for the reason that there is no &quot;unique&quot; or &quot;original&quot; content here; literally any book in the field could pose the same problem in exactly the same way. However, a longer, more detailed statement of the problem, guiding you through specific steps, would probably not be publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the solution of such problems, so long as they represent independent scholarly work, need not be &quot;suppressed.&quot; Again, copyright applies to the authors' wording of the solutions of the problems; the method for solving them cannot be copyrighted! If you solve them yourself, and publish your own solutions, that's not violating copyright. (There is the issue of making the lives of future students easier, because you're publishing solutions online that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; could plagiarize from, but that's a separate issue from if you're &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to publish such material.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:13:16.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:25:41.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;WOW, There are many good responses and some good and some not so good advice.&#xA;I am a 49 y/o System admin/Engineer with no formal IT Training and &quot;Some College&quot;.&#xA;As far as feeling outclassed by your peers, I certainly can identify with that. I am assuming that you are in your 30's. &#xA;I have been working in IT for 20 years and have seen some very unhappy and miserable people. Constantly clawing and trying to &quot;One Up&quot; their peers. I understand that this is a very competitive field, however understand that your job is not your life. You are an amazing individual, because you are not arrogant and do see your own flaws. Please stay humble. Do not see yourself as lessor than your peers, you are much greater.You have come a long way. So if you ever find some difficulty just remember one of the difficult times in your past and appreciate your present. Often time some say &quot;It is rough but at least I am doing better than ... (Fill the blank). Well, your difficult times are in that blank. &#xA;Lastly, Put you peers in your shoes and I am sure NONE of them can stand. &#xA;Love your life, stop and and reflect, pray, meditate and most of all SMILE, laugh, and enjoy. Life really blurs by. Remember your past as a point of reference. Your peers cannot relate. ANY Employer would love to have someone with your experience, because you are an OVERCOMER, and handle difficulty under pressure, that make some of the best problem solvers&#xA;Experience is more than academics. Good luck, and take life by the horns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10598" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:25:41.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:30:55.767" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations, you have just been promoted to supervisor, you have to supervise a PhD student, set him some goals, check he doesn't procrastinate, push him to do his best, find venues to publish, topics to research, write papers to publish, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This PhD student is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, and since you are not very experienced on research I can guess you both will have a somewhat hard time and probably the results will not be very astounding (having a good background helps to choose topics better). But if you both work hard I'm sure you both will learn a lot, and that's what students are for, aren't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the good side of things, your new supervisor is 100% devoted to you, he watches you procrastinate, eat, sleep (kind of) and in every situation, even while in the shower. Very few people get that kind of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:30:55.767" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15527" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:31:48.513" Score="3" ViewCount="2253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently the BA undergraduate math major (4th year), and I got ~3.3 cumulative GPA.  I'm the average student who likes math a lot, so I took more than 10 graduate courses and higher division undergraduate courses in mathematics.  For two courses, I received two C grades in those graduate courses by the same professor (hard exams and finals).  I attempted to get better grade in one of those courses, but received the F (because of super hard final and midterm, and because of the same professor).  For the undergraduate courses, I got mostly A's and one B+.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I still have time to maximize my chance to get into math PhD program by (probably) research experience and great letters of recommendation, I believe that I am more likely not to get into the program (because low grades greatly affect my application).  However, I have one question to ask: is it REALLY over for me to get into PhD math program if I receive &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; grades in these courses or not?  I don't have lots of time to retake such courses, and if I do I will have to waste all money and time on doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't aim to get into top-notch universities with excellent PhD programs, like Harvard University.  All I expect is a good PhD program for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10597" LastEditorUserId="6690" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T07:23:01.890" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T07:23:01.890" Title="How does someone with C's and F's in graduate-level courses and A's and B's in undergraduate courses get admitted to a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:42:33.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Pomodoro Technique is great for when you find yourself in a cycle of procrastination. Combine with &lt;a href=&quot;http://selfcontrolapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;self binding&lt;/a&gt;. I've also had a lot of luck with creating minimum output requirements and tracking; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.beeminder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beeminder might help&lt;/a&gt;, at least until you've internalized the habits you want to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to set yourself up for success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest trying to attack the problem from many directions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend some time each week renewing your coverage of the literature. As you get further along a project, you'll find you have a better grasp of where to look, and what it is you want. You may find incredibly important work for you after months of search, just because it took that long to find the right words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simultaneously, spend some time each week &lt;em&gt;collating&lt;/em&gt; the information you have; create a wiki on your topic, and keep it up to date. Build a mind-map. These exercises will help you identify links and gaps in your conception of the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scripting.com/stories/2009/08/09/narrateYourWork.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Narrate your work&lt;/a&gt;: Keep a blog, a journal, that you dump every wisp of thought or spark of information into. Doing this will help you avoid loosing a spark of inspiration, while also freeing your mind to work on whatever task is actually at hand. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:42:33.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T14:47:46.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This began as a comment, switched to an answer, and just kept getting longer, so I'm gonna have to split it into sections...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reframing the problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree that it's &quot;procrastination no matter how you look at it,&quot; and I wonder how many ways you've actually tried looking at it. I say this somewhat confrontationally, but very sympathetically, as I've struggled with the sense that I'm just procrastinating throughout my free time in higher education, and ultimately rejected it. There's a lot more to life than work; this is easy to forget in grad school, and there's a lot of pressure to do so. Ask yourself whether you care about the things you spend your time on for other reasons you haven't fully acknowledged, or whether you're judging those pursuits as wasteful by someone else's value system, not your own. I see from your other questions that you have struggled (as I have) with the sense that other people judge success by the wrong criteria, and ignore opportunities for lateral growth if it doesn't follow their narrowly defined path to [_insert_short-term_work_goal_here_].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you sincerely think those other concerns of yours aren't valuable, ask yourself if you could stand to work instead every time you notice yourself switching your focus over to one of those concerns. If you can't, you may find that there is some necessity to the (non-work) concern at hand, and may want to reevaluate it again at that point while you're in the moment. If you still feel there's no value to it, ask yourself whether you are just looking for something else (anything, really) to do instead of working. Ask yourself if you don't want to work on some level, and if so, why that might be so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your situation (which was also my situation at times, in ways), you may be finding yourself more free from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;extrinsic motivation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (pressure, expectations, &quot;or-else&quot; negative consequences, and so on) than you have been for much of your academic career. The transition from inflexible, specific, structured deadlines (which probably begin in middle school and carry all the way through the first year or two of a Master's program) to a more diffuse sense of partly internalized pressure and guilt for not being a more diligent workaholic is a subtle transition that occurs most dramatically in grad school (or so I'd say, based on our shared experience with hands-off supervisors). As you slowly realize you're falling behind in some sense because you're taking time off from work to handle your own life, you realize you can't count on those old, structured sources of extrinsic motivation that almost feels like a fight-or-flight response to an encroaching predator (e.g., the &quot;cram-or-fail&quot; decision on the night before a final exam). Those of us who make it this far have probably mostly chosen to run into the jaws of the beast and do battle with it in our flight from abject failure, but some of us have only done this when we feel ourselves running out of time to make a choice of which it's going to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/Glossary/demo_glossary.cgi?term_id=%2233%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Avoidance-avoidance conflicts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; like those resolve themselves (or force you to resolve them) because when the deadline comes, you &lt;strong&gt;have to&lt;/strong&gt; choose. Without the climactic anxiety of the confrontation that motivates a resolution (however hard-won it may be even in these cases), conflicts can linger much longer in the post-deadlines careerscape. The emotional experience is different: the anxiety is more insidious than in-your-face, and can be tolerated much longer. You can start to feel the internalized sources of anxiety more as you worry less about others' judgment; you can become your own worst critic, and feel more guilty, depressed, or apathetic than truly anxious in the old familiar sense. This is still extrinsic motivation, but it's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory#Extrinsic_motivation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;introjected&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in that it's &lt;em&gt;internalized&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; are now the source of your own negative self-evaluations. (This need not be exclusively true to apply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reframing the solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of problem takes a different approach to resolve. You can probably find a million self-help blogs about how to be your own supervisor and boss yourself around so you can go back to the old model of operating under artificial, externalized pressure. E.g., &quot;I &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; spend one hour working everyday before breakfast,&quot; or, &quot;Whenever I read the newspaper, I &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; count the time I spend and put the same amount of time into [staring blankly at] my project.&quot; You can find a lot of similar answers to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5786/10518&quot;&gt;How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; the second most popular question here at the moment. One of the problems with approaches like (some of) these is that they'll give you a whole new way to go to war against yourself; you'll have to take your infractions very seriously if you're going to take the system seriously at all, and you're probably not going to want to. You'll have to tell/force yourself not to do what you want to do, even when you have good reasons or special opportunities (unless you complicate your system and give yourself vacation time, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;indulgences&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulligan_%28games%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mulligans&lt;/a&gt;, which might not be a bad idea). Another problem is that when you've put in your time or satisfied whatever other requirement you've assigned yourself, you'll feel just like you always did (if you were like me in this regard too) after finishing your self-assigned &quot;homework&quot;: ready to go blow off the steam however you can, which probably leads you back to those &quot;procrastinatory&quot; habits you're fighting. If it does, that's a sign that those habits might be the ones that replenish your energy, fulfill you emotionally, and help you feel more like a whole person, more like yourself, and less like a dusty, malfunctioning computer that's been cooped up in a cramped cubicle for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the better approach than stealing happy hours while you're off-the-clock (or stealing them from yourself while you're on) is to work more introspectively on your motives and values. I would think this—I'm a personality psychologist—but it's done me a lot of good. I still don't necessarily focus when I should (I'd probably have more publications by now if I did), but I don't feel like I'm wasting my time when I'm not focusing on work. I focus on what I'm doing instead, I enjoy and value it (or through patient introspection and experience, I gradually come to the conclusion that I don't, and I quit), and I don't beat myself up for it during or afterward. I trust that when I want to do something, there's probably a good reason, and I strive to understand it. If I can't find a good reason, I often find that I don't want to do it anymore; problem solved (usually). This has led to some extended &quot;vacations&quot; from work, during which I focus on other things I care about (e.g., a video game, or Stack Exchange!), but when I get to the bottom of what I'm after in these pursuits, and I get it, I'm enthusiastic to return to my work, and I bring new ideas to it. I integrate these diverse experiences, and I enrich my work in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm describing is a shift away from judgmental devaluation of extracurricular &quot;distractions&quot; to a recognition of and reconciliation with my broader set of values, which include my career, achievement, and financial success, but don't end there. I'm my own boss now (read: unemployed :P maybe you shouldn't listen to me!), so I get to enjoy that freedom (and pay the price for it)...and I do enjoy it. I enjoy my work too! Not feeling constantly indebted to it is very important for that feeling, that &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2008_KoestnerOtisPowesPelletierGagnon_JOP.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;autonomous&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;intrinsic motivation&lt;/em&gt; (see the same links as before) to arise. Finding joy, fascination, excitement, and the energizing yet relaxing release-through-work of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the flow state&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is all about letting yourself love what you do when the time is right, and knowing it's right because you've defined what you need to do on your own terms: terms of what you want to do (intrinsically), or at least what you really care about (&lt;em&gt;identified motivation&lt;/em&gt;, which is often good enough; same links as before). Once you really understand what you're after, your &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prescriptions-life/201311/helping-you-find-your-life-purpose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sense of purpose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, you can start organizing your projects around it and deriving natural, enduring motivation for your work. You won't want to quit and do something else so often, you'll start waking up eager to work, and if anything, you'll suffer for finding it harder to pull yourself away from your work to eat, sleep, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ0WpdTin4c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;make sweet love down by the fiyah&lt;/a&gt;, or whatever else there is to do with life that starts to seem strangely less important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Acknowledgements, credentials, disclaimers...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this sounds like a new-age meditation mantra or performance-enhancing nutritional supplement commercial, but I assure you, these are at least the implications of honest-to-goodness psychological theories of motivation (which are &lt;a href=&quot;http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3t34c68w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my area of expertise&lt;/a&gt;), passed a few times through a thick filter of personal experience. I'm not a typical success story myself (if a success story at all so far), but I have succeeded in rediscovering my love for my work and motivation for focusing on it in a big way by introspecting on these matters of my motivation and values, and indulging my urges to do other things than work at certain points throughout my graduate career. I think I'm a much better psychologist for having &quot;walked the walk,&quot; even if I haven't talked enough talk yet to convince others with my publication record, and I know that when I publish the manuscript version of that dissertation I linked above, it's going to be a hell of a lot better for all the time I've spent delving into statistics (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Cross Validated&lt;/a&gt;!) over the past few months when I &quot;should've been&quot; writing instead for fear of not publishing rapidly enough. Because I allowed myself to redefine my work in terms of what I value rather than in terms of what was going to get me the most immediate recognition and paycheck (again, extrinsic motives), and because I'm lucky enough to afford the opportunity costs, I put in two months of probably the hardest and most consistent work I've ever put into refining my research, put to rest all my old insecurities about my rate of progress, and apparently can't stop raving about everything I'm learning and how much better I feel about it all now. I don't yet know how long I'm going to be able to keep this up before I start &quot;procrastinating&quot; again (one might argue I'm doing that now), but the plan is to stay this way as long as I can: self-directed, secure, deeply enthusiastic, and well-aligned with my values and overall sense of purpose. The productivity has already started flowing out of this life transition, but it would take a lot more talking to prove it, so I'll leave it at that for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also note that there's some risk in this approach. It's a long road, you may not have the time and freedom to follow it as far as you need to for the results you might want, and it may not ultimately lead where you think you want it to right now. This is the stuff career transitions and midlife crises (not that I would really know about those first-hand just yet) are made of: confrontation with what you &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; want and care about, and its juxtaposition with what you're actually doing. Better to get it out of the way while you're young, I say, but maybe not when you're less than a year away from finishing your PhD, if there's some risk you won't as a result. If you can't afford to take your time, this isn't for you. It's a long-term approach that ought to pay off in the end, but there are certainly no guarantees, and it might take a very long time indeed. If you've had the patience to read this far, you just might be ready for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mainly offer this because you remind me of myself, and both of us remind me of what I study, and I'm currently my own guinea pig undergoing very informal road-testing of these theories, for which I could provide plenty more references, but which take some contextualized interpretation to apply here. It's definitely too soon to claim conclusive support for the theory from my own life, but I feel like I'm closing in on that result very rapidly now. In whatever you choose to do, I wish you the best results, and hope you'll come back to tell us what you choose and how it goes. If this self-indulgent autobiography of mine doesn't get downvoted through the pavement, I'll consider doing the same. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; In response to your comment on @aeismail's answer, I want to emphasize that part of the benefit of my approach for me has been taking my former advisor's voice out of my brain and rediscovering my own voice. Those two months of hard work (seriously almost all-day everyday studying!) were in pursuit of my own solutions to my own research problems. Because I started listening to myself better and allowing myself to direct my own research according to my priorities, I've learned probably a year's worth of statistics that helps me handle the conceptual bits of my own project in ways my graduate advisor was never going to even while I was still there. If you can give it the time, and accept that you're your own best supervisor, and avoid being or becoming your own worst critic, you can solve those problems as well as anyone can. Ask your supervisor and everyone else you can for input and guidance, but know that you're ultimately the one who has to steer the ship, and don't take your hands off the wheel for a second! But do pull over once in a while to stretch your legs and smell the roses; it's just another way of putting gas in your tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T14:47:46.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T15:15:16.107" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the more general form of the question is: (a) what do I need from my supervisor and (b) if my supervisor cannot/will not provide this, then what can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a few things I think supervisors are most important for early on in graduate studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Discipline and Motivation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to put in long hours to succeed in graduate studies and oftentimes you need to work &quot;blind&quot;: you need to work on things you don't know will succeed or not, or where you have no fixed goal in mind. Discipline can thus be a major issue for any relatively normal human being. Supervisors are supposed to track your progress on a regular basis and ensure you are putting in the required levels of effort, to encourage with a carrot and to use the stick if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor is not tracking your progress and setting goals for you, then you need to take your own discipline into your own hands. The simplest method is to set your own goals with deadlines, focusing on achieving one thing at a time. Make TODO lists that follow a rough plan you have in mind. If a task is too broad, it will never get done: each task should be small enough and phrased in such a way that you know how it can be achieved (even if the task is just &quot;problem solve X for one hour&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign yourself regular hours to work. If procrastination is a problem, &lt;em&gt;just start&lt;/em&gt;. Starting is the hardest part so unplug yourself from whatever you were doing, minimise the potential for distraction as much as possible, take a deep breath and start. It's that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Experience&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not enough to work hard, but you need to work smart. Inexperienced students often tend to invest more effort into unimportant minor details that they feel they can control, rather than important details where the outcome or process is uncertain. The job of the supervisor should be to provide context on the relative importance of various tasks, to stop students from getting bogged down in minor details and to keep the bigger picture in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience comes into play in other areas. For example, if you're starting out in publishing, or trying to publish to a venue you haven't before, experience is crucial so as to know what form the paper should take, what sort of narrative is accepted, what sort of &quot;boxes&quot; have to be ticked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no replacement for experience. However, you can find experience elsewhere than your supervisor. Are there more senior students or PostDocs you can collaborate with? Maybe there's a group outside of your institute you can collaborate with remotely? Working with other people (i.e., not having a monogamous relationship with your supervisor) is an excellent way to quickly level up your own experience and gain new perspectives!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Technical Expertise&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor is also supposed to apply his/her technical expertise to your supervision, particularly in the early days. But if they do not provide you sufficient time and effort in this regard, or if their own technical expertise does not cover your interests, or as you progress into more detail on your PhD, you will need to find sources of expertise elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, talk with other people. Try to seek out people with the skills that you require and try to develop a &lt;em&gt;mutually beneficial&lt;/em&gt; working relationship with them (i.e., don't expect them to help you out of the goodness of their hearts). Perhaps you could even find a co-supervisor or a &quot;mentor&quot; who can be credited on a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Web is also your friend. When I was a graduate student, I learned far more from playing around and trying things and from reading (on the Web) than from anything my supervisors (or lecturers) taught me. One of the most important lessons from graduate studies is &quot;independent study&quot; ... learning how to learn. When you do a PhD you are supposed to be the world's leading expert on your chosen topic. The only way this can happen is if you develop your own technical expertise in your area beyond that of your supervisor and your other colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Funding&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably if you already have a supervisor then you have a fixed source of funding. However, you may need additional funding if you go over length or funding for conference travel, etc. This can be very difficult for graduate students to get involved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are often calls that are aimed at students and require minimal input from a supervisor. These include student travel grants for conferences, governmental scholarships, prizes for submitted work, etc. Furthermore, other senior researchers will often have funds they can provide for part-time contributions; talk to people if you are stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some of the most important lessons that have to be learned during graduate studies are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to discipline and motivate yourself and organise your own work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand the nature of research itself, the broader research community and how your work will be viewed by them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to find, initiate and follow through on fruitful collaborations with other researchers and research groups&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to find your own sources of funding&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal of graduate studies is to gradually reduce your dependence on your supervisor until, by the end of your PhD, you don't need them any more. A good supervisor should understand and support you in this, particularly early on, but if this isn't working out, then you need to learn how to rely on yourself more (or find another (co-)supervisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T19:05:30.663" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T19:05:30.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T16:00:59.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;you need feedback or you will die, you are perfectly entitled to request to meet with your supervisor for an hour a week. If they are unwilling to give even that then there is usually a clause in most grad studies contracts that will allow you to nominate a &quot;second supervisor&quot; (replacement) if you are unhappy. Chemistry (of the personal type) plays a large role in the success of teams so it is important to work with someone you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following on .. if you have spare cycles and are happy with your progress see if there are others in the dept you can collaborate with - perhaps you will be credited on their publications too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publications are the currency of academia, like it or not, and time needs to be spent specifically targeting publishable work. So try and figure out how what you are doing today will lead to publications. Your supervisor didn't get there by accident they know very well how to play the game by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to my final point, it sounds like perhaps there is a communication gap twixt you and your supervisor, ask yourself if you have been prickly or defensive with them at any point - if you have then throw your ego out the window, listen carefully to their suggestions and get it done. You will need their good word above all else in order to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10600" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T16:00:59.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T16:38:46.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what I did to get through my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First you need to set a complete project time line, even if you feel it is not accurate, from the first day you start to the last day you finish. You list all the major parts of your research, when you plan to begin working on each section, and when you plan to complete them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find people (other faculty) that can help you on the predominant topics of your research. Seems like you may have two: Tech, and Biology. I had three on my research: Math, Distributed Computing, and Literature/General CS. I told each professor what area of my research I wanted focus from them on. They did not touch any parts of my research I did not ask them to focus on... it worked out rather well I am happy to say.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet with each of them. When you meet with them to discuss your research, ask them either (1) what needs improvement, or (2) how to solve your current issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't leave their office until you set a time up to meet with them again about what you just discussed, to present your results or status. No more than two weeks ahead! And follow up with them in one week via e-mail to tell them your status... this also keeps them on the ball in helping you if they have some things to look at (like reading your research).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put the data from #3 and #4 into a diary, and include how it meets your time line from #1. Modify your time line as necessary. Send out a regular update report to your committee and other contributing professors with all this information, plus a copy of your current research as Draft (version your drafts). Meet with your committee 2 to 3 times per semester (Beginning, middle, ending).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet with your Supervisor after every report you send out and ask him how you are doing. May only take 10-15 minutes during his office hours. Schedule follow-ups if your supervisor finds red flags. He has all the data now to make a determination on how you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this kept me on the ball every day. I kept setting obligations with professors, and met them. I sent out reports regularly for their review to keep me accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T16:38:46.367" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15492" CreationDate="2014-01-08T16:47:23.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to  Peters excellent answer (+1), one of the purposes of publication is to establish priority on discoveries and inventions, and this is established by the &quot;submitted&quot; date that appears on the final published paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal is suggesting that you could submit a revised version as a new paper, then the submission date will be the date of the revised version, so it is only fair to treat the second version of the manuscript as the first draft of that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals have decided to get rid of the &quot;revise and resubmit&quot; option following review so that papers are either accepted or rejected (with the possibility of resubmission).  This is done so that the journal appears to have a rapid processing time from submission to final publication.  I think this is deeply unfair to authors as it is misleading and also could prevent them from getting fair priority on their discoveries.  Generally it is also not actually treated as a new paper as it is sent to the same set of reviewers.  The journal shouldn't be allowed to have their cake and eat it as well, either it is a new paper, or it isn't - if they reject a paper, they should have no rights over it whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T16:47:23.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15520" CreationDate="2014-01-08T16:51:39.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the graduate level courses, was the grading scale the same for undergraduate and graduate students? This varies from school to school, department to department, even course to course. Were you taking these classes without all of the prerequisites? You should consider all extenuating circumstances and tell your letter writers so they can help better explain away your grades and focus on how amazing your research is. Give your letter writers bullet points (suggested for them to edit/ignore as they see fit) to include in their recommendation letters. Faculty don't enjoy nor want to spend that much time on letter writing so make it easy. In your email to a faculty member you might write something like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi Professor X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a reminder of things you might want to address in my letter of recommendation for &lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;_  (of course only if you agree with them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence of enthusiasm and ambition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-I took many graduate courses out of genuine interest for the subject despite not having taken many of the prerequisite courses. Even though I received the poor/mediocre grades in some of these courses, I was able to successfully translate some of the advanced knowledge and skills learned when I ... during my research project ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Some other way you can spin these poor grades into something positive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for agreeing to write this letter, I hope the above bullets make things easier for you; I know you are busy and have to write many of these letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks again,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Student&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is you want your letter writers to spin the poor grades into something positive that fits with a cohesive story about you. You personally addressing the grades may sound a bit like excuses. A professor addressing the grades won't. It should be noted that some schools do have strict unspoken GPA cutoffs, but many really good schools do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T16:51:39.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15539" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:03:38.737" Score="19" ViewCount="1635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm always confused when I see a lot of PhD students looking to publish papers, even if the papers are not so good. They publish them in not so important conferences or workshops. Is that a good thing? Is it good to have a lot of papers published even in not so popular conferences? Like what is better: to have 10 papers in not so famous conferences or workshops or 1 or 2 in a very famous and good ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never published a paper before and new to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T23:06:14.013" Title="Having a lot of papers published in unimportant conferences VS very few in good ones?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:05:30.250" Score="7" ViewCount="1172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I happened to visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijpam.eu/en/index.php/ijdea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the website&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;IJDEA&lt;/em&gt; (International Journal of Differential Equations and Applications) and was wondering – how good is this journal? There was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11217/how-good-is-the-international-journal-of-pure-and-applied-mathematics-http-w&quot;&gt;question here on Academia. SE&lt;/a&gt; regarding &lt;em&gt;IJPAM&lt;/em&gt; (International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, by the same publisher: Academic Publications Ltd.) and it seems this journal is not up to the mark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;IJDEA&lt;/em&gt;'s Editorial Board has some prominent members from reputed institutions that I just couldn't overlook. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E.W. Cheney and R.E. Showalter from UT Austin, USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;S.N Chow from the National University of Singapore, Singapore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E DiBenedeto from Northwestern University, USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A. Fokas from the University of Cambridge, UK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J. Marsden from CalTech, USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Late) P.A. Samuelson from MIT, USA &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C.W. Shu from Brown University, USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Given the presence of such top-class scientists on its editorial board, why are &lt;em&gt;IJPAM&lt;/em&gt;/&lt;em&gt;IJDEA&lt;/em&gt; and Academic Publications Ltd. considered predatory by &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: I'm assuming that the Editorial Board and quality of articles should be good enough to check the quality of the journal. Please correct me in case I'm wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T03:49:41.483" Title="How to judge the reputability of a journal that seems to be of poor quality, but has a distinguished editorial board?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15528" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:08:46.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of getting a PhD, the quality of the paper is more important than the venue.  Quality is always better than quantity, as it will only be your best papers that end up being cited and having an influence on your field of research, so you are better off in the long run focussing on quality work and avoid wasting your time on work that will not give a true account of your ability and that will not be taken up by others in your field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T17:08:46.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:18:16.847" Score="14" ViewCount="7218" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am conducting independent research (ie no university affiliation), do I need to worry about institutional review board (IRB) approval, if I am working in a field where it is normally required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10602" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T19:25:42.953" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T21:17:36.127" Title="Independent Research and institutional review boards?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;irb&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:32:56.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word you are searching for is &lt;em&gt;self-discipline!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I get distracted it is mostly because I lose the motivation for some topic. The next time when you get distracted from your work, take a break and/or try to work on another part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because your supervisor doesn't set goals for you means not that you can't set them for yourself. Important is, that you don't exaggerate it and thereby set yourself too much under pressure. Always setup goals that you can achieve in the given time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take regular breaks to get your head free. This is often underestimated!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you get distracted, work on another part of your topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set goals for yourself that you can achieve in the given timespan&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily goal: write at least x page(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly goal: finish section y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly goal: finish chapter z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you made progress or finished an important part reward yourself to keep up your motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PS:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't spend too much time on stackexchange&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are on facebook, limit yourself to one visit per day!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9210" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T18:41:26.107" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:41:26.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:44:54.893" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I signed up just so I could answer this question ;-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently found myself in a similar position at a new job. Not research, but still goal oriented with lots of investigation needing to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're running into a problem that I still have to deal with: mistaking goals for &quot;that other thing I need to do.&quot; For me, it was easy to forget that investigating how a particular thing worked, including research on StackExchange etc. WAS progress. That WAS a thing that needed to be done, and as such &lt;strong&gt;it should be on your to-do list&lt;/strong&gt;. It's easy to (as an over simplification) have a to-do list that reads &quot;finish research project.&quot; And then be overwhelmed by all the &quot;other&quot; things that have to be done in order to accomplish that goal. For me, my to-do list at one point consisted of &quot;automate all 37 regression tests,&quot; and then I got frustrated with how much time I was wasting just figuring out how the automation process worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality was, I needed a line item for &quot;figure out how to RUN automatic regression tests,&quot; followed by a line item for &quot;figure out what components are needed to fully define a regression test,&quot; etc. Each of those things ended up needing to be broken down further, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to think that you're not making progress, but that's probably just because it's not on your to-do list, when it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Then, if your to-do list is sufficiently granular, it will tell you &quot;you're goofing off, not getting stuff done&quot; ...and then you have to listen to it ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10603" LastEditorUserId="10603" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T21:14:00.330" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:14:00.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15531" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:49:55.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on if you are planning on publishing the research. From my understanding many in house studies in industry are not subjected to an IRB process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing is a different story. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9062330&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amdur and Biddle (1997)&lt;/a&gt; found that 47% of biomedical journals had policies about IRB approval. While I don't have any data to support it, my guess is this number is higher now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/guidances/ucm126420.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guidelines for IRB&lt;/a&gt; say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IRBs may agree to review research from affiliated or unaffiliated investigators, however, FDA does not require IRBs to assume this responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many university and hospital IRBs will not approve studies from unaffiliated individuals since approval often limits the liability of the PI. There may be some university and hospital IRBs that approve studies from unaffiliated individuals and there are definitely private companies that specialize in this type of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T17:49:55.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15529" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:59:41.060" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've already identified part of the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deceased individuals like Paul Samuelson and Ilya Prigogine should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be listed as &quot;editors&quot; of a normal journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor-in-chief of the journal should be clearly identified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're claiming to have an Impact Factor when they're not indexed by the services that publish Impact Factors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see Beall's &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/&quot;&gt;full list of criteria&lt;/a&gt; on his blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scholarly Open Access&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T17:59:41.060" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15528" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:15:12.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two objectives in participating for academic conference. First one would be networking. This is getting to know the other academic and industry personals that are working, studying and researching in similar field. This will open many opportunities for PhD students. Other advantage would be constructive criticisms. Experts who take part in such conference will give constructive comments for your presentation. The questions they raise may show you a new way of looking at your research question. Likewise there are many advantages a PhD student may get by taking part in conferences. A good conference is a one which is relevant to your research area, which is popular among the experts in the respective field and one which many expert and interested parties will take part. Thus in my opinion education institutes, supervisors and of course PhD student should prioritize the quality of conference before counting the number of conferences that you attend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9410" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:15:12.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15529" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:21:05.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editorial board is one way that many journals (both predatory and not) try two establish themselves. I cannot find an in depth analysis by Beall of editorial boards but, in a comment to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/06/18/jscholar-a-new-oa-publisher-from-frisco-texas/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; on editorial board makeup Beall says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes publishers add names to editorial boards without asking for permission. As part of my analysis, I sometimes email and ask ed board members if they really agreed to serve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/02/28/whats-up-with-dr-george-perry/#more-1364&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; which looks at the editorial responsibilities (100+ journals) of a Dean in the Univ. of Texas system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary some people get put on editorial boards without their knowledge and others will agree to be on large numbers of editorial boards so you cannot use the editorial board membership as a good judge of makeup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:21:05.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15528" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:22:45.593" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;People do things for a variety of reasons. Even writing a paper for smaller workshops has some benefits for everyone (from a PHD student to a professor) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good reason for the affiliation to cover expenses for the suggested trip. Usually CS workshops are co-located with important conferences and even a workshop paper may cover your expenses (not every time if you continuously abuse the system) to actually watch the entire conference. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Workshops have limited attendance but may still be organized by reputable professors / scientists close to your area of interest. So, they are very good for networking. In a major conference, it is easier to get &quot;lost&quot; inside the many participants. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Practise makes better. If you write 5 papers (even when some of them were for a workshop) writing your 6th paper is going to be easier, instead of trying to write your &quot;seminal&quot; paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers have the &quot;strange&quot; habit of sometimes rejecting your paper. In this case, sending your paper to a smaller workshop (after rejection in 1-2 major conferences) where it gets accepted, lessens the sense of rejection and still &quot;patents&quot; your results on which you can expand later. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Workshops sometimes have a &quot;best paper award&quot; which may even lead to journal publication, when the same paper might not had a chance in a bigger conference. In workshops the competition is smaller (usually 10-15 accepted papers), so you have something like 5-8% chance for something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when you work on a specific project you  might discover something that although is not good enough for a major conference or later expansion, is still a compact solid idea that may help others. So, a good workshop paper may disseminate this idea to a larger audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, although quality should beat quantity, this is not the usual case. In some research projects, grants applications it is better to state that &quot;A is the author of more than 50 scientific papers with an h-index of ... &quot; than &quot;B is the author of 2 papers&quot;. Same when you look at the Google Scholar / DBLP record of an author. It is better to see 50 papers (which among them are 10 really seminal papers) instead of just 10 perfect papers that usually leave a gap in the author's bibliography (blank years).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, even workshop papers serve their purpose if you treat them as professionally as the rest of your papers (they are well written and still scientifically solid and correct).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T18:38:07.530" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:38:07.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:28:47.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Select your target journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analyse the most recent 100 paper's titles in that journal. How many start with a verb? How many have colons? What are the median and mode number of words in a title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your title follow the most common format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the first-order effect: maximising the chance of getting published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second-order effect is maximising the chance of getting cited. So repeat the above analysis, for the 100 most cited papers from the last ten years, in your  target journal. Adjust citations for length of time lapsed since they were published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now try to combine these findings into a happy blend that maximises both your chance of getting published, and of being  cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:28:47.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:49:31.547" Score="4" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I graduated from law school almost ten years ago, I have been working as a fellow for a law professor at a US law school. In that time, I have drafted over 25 articles and book chapters, but only been listed as a co-author on 8. I don't begrudge this split: The Prof has the established name and, in every instance, she has sat me down, outlined what she wants to cover, and then made comments and requested revisions on every draft I produce, but I have always done 90% or more of the actual writing. I greatly appreciate the confidence she has shown in my writing abilities and am just not sure how to convey this on my CV/job applications. My position is ending and I'm applying for new jobs that, in many cases, are looking for expertise in areas on which I've researched and written extensively, just not under my name. Is there any accepted way/format to mention publications one has drafted/contributed to without receiving formal authorship credit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10605" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:04:02.830" Title="Any way to get credit for publications that I drafted as a fellow for a law professor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:56:47.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is actually &lt;strong&gt;ethical misconduct&lt;/strong&gt;. If you were the primary drafter of an article, then you should have been listed as an author on those papers; the fact that you have not is inexcusable on the part of the professor. In the scientific world, such a revelation coming to light would be sufficient grounds for retraction of the articles in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So right now, the problem is that if you try to claim ownership, you may be creating a lot of problems. I don't know what the right solution is, but you should definitely talk with someone at your law school such as an ombudsperson &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; talking to your advisor. The last thing you need right now is having a former advisor who can &quot;spike&quot; letters of recommendation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:56:47.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2014-01-08T21:01:30.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've touched on a number of related problems, some of which are common to all grad students (anyone can procrastinate, even if they have a supervisor that requires more regular feedback), and some problems that are specific to your situation (a supervisor that is not very knowledgeable about your project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no reason that your supervisor has to be the only person who helps you with your project. There are many other professors and academics around who might be more familiar with your specific goals, so make use of them. This can include professors who you've taken courses with (choosing course projects that relate to your research is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak). But there's no reason you can't just approach a professor out of the blue, and ask them if they could meet with you for an hour to help you with a specific problem. Most professors would be very glad, and the worst that can happen is they say &quot;no&quot; and you're back to where you started. You can also contact academics around the world, for example if you've read a paper by her or him and need help figuring out the details. Most academics love to talk about their research and get their ideas out there, so they'll probably be happy to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to your more general problem of procrastination, that's something that I'm still struggling with. One tip that I have is to treat it like a job: Put in a solid 8 hours every day, from 9 to 5 ish, just like you would have to at a job. Then go home and relax in the evenings. When I started grad school, I was wasting a lot of time during the day, and then I'd get home and feel like I should do some work because I did nothing all day, so I'd work in the evening. That meant I didn't relax in the evening, and so I'd procrastinate more the next day. Procrastination is not really relaxing, because you always feel like you should be doing something else, so you can't switch off. If you can separate your work and the rest of your life into nice blocks, and make sure you do some really relaxing leisure activities in your off time (reading, sports, music, etc.), you'll feel a lot better (at least I did). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9558" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:01:30.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2014-01-08T21:04:02.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TED, I agree with aeismail is an &lt;strong&gt;ethical misconduct&lt;/strong&gt;, but it is difficult to judge your professor: even you wrote the paper, it depends from your contract; eg if you were payed as &quot;ghost writer&quot; or &quot;technical professionist&quot; or &quot;translator&quot; and you didn't partecipate to research or discussion, you can not expect too much. I do not think it's your case .... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway: yes I have seen in some cv a sentence like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I participated in the works and project a, b, c as a technician expert and/or reviewer &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9456" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:04:02.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:30:34.183" Score="17" ViewCount="2656" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor and his PHD Students are writing regularly to journals published by a publisher, which is on Beall’s list of Predatory Journals. I emailed Beall and he told me that the journals were advertising as non-profit but usually publish if you pay them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in US. So recently the PHD Student and advisor published to this predatory journal’s conference taking place half way down the world and obviously it got accepted. So my advisor approved the student’s trip to that country (almost 1500 $, so it had to be approved by chair), but the chair rejected it saying it’s not worth the expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to directly email my chair and point out to him about my advisor’s publishing record. I am angry that instead of publishing to genuine journals, my advisor (who I believe is incompetent but has good political clout in the university) is publishing to these scam journals and wasting university money to achieve her tenure requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am still working in lab, I need advice on how to approach my chair so that I can keep myself safe from possible wrath of my advisor and at same time negate the contributions of these journals for his tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 1: The conference listed Google Scholar as one of its sponsors, so I emailed Google and they told me they never sponsored this journal and will order removal of their name from the sponsors list. So yeah, these are all first rate scam journals and I have all these emails, if I ever need to communicate with the chair. I have done my investigation; I just need to get my results across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T22:38:50.950" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T10:23:46.003" Title="How do I complain to chair if my advisor regularly writes to scam journals to get tenure?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15547" CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:49:39.840" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your relationship with your advisor is extremely important for you getting a PhD. I would only contact the chair if you are absolutely certain that you would be able to find a new advisor if things went bad between you and your current advisor. When her tenure comes up for review, someone on the panel will know that these are scam journals. The fact that the chair has already denied one of her expenses means there is likely a red flag in her file (metaphorically). Now if she forces you to publish in one of these journals, you should absolutely complain, but don't complain about what she is doing with other students unless you think it is worth losing your advisor completely and creating enemies in the department. You can talk to the student who actually was going to go to the conference suggest he complains, but ultimately I think that is his responsibility. So again, refer to the first point; make sure you have an escape plan so to speak, and make sure that you are OK with potentially not earning your PhD because you stood up for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T23:49:39.840" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15453" CreationDate="2014-01-09T00:29:42.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people are giving the exact opposite advice I would give. Most papers go un-cited! You absolutely don't want to be too conventional. If you want to analyze titles experimentally do the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get together with a bunch of postdocs, grad students and professors in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a popular journal in your field to analyze and a date range, at least 5 years older than the current date but not too old to be ridiculously obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone choose 5 papers they remember being really important that received a lot of citations, 5 really important papers that received few citations and 5 middle of the road papers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at the titles. Is there something different about the highly cited papers' titles?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes consider going with that, if the answer is no, use your own style and creativity, and ignore most things (although you should follow some common sense).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This actually sounds like a fun party idea. Note the methods are probably really flawed since I just thought about this. Feel free to comment below on an improved experimental design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T00:29:42.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14958" CreationDate="2014-01-09T01:09:45.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider applying to &quot;Operations Research&quot;, &quot;Computer science&quot;, and &quot;Applied Math&quot; programs (note applied math and not math), all of which can potentially have concentrations in your desired field of study. Make sure the schools have professors publishing in the journals and conferences that interest you. Courses you tend to take in these programs include. Every course below can be used towards a degree in applied math at Cornell (not sure about other places).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis of Algorithms - CS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simulation - OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Machine Learning - CS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combinatorial Optimization - OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Algorithmic Game Theory - CS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimal Learning - OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theory of Computing - CS (complexity theory)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stochastic Dynamic Programming - OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Networks - CS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematical Programming - code word for analysis with an eye towards optimization and algorithms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonlinear Programming - OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that Cornell has a very strong theory component to both their OR and CS programs and you should probably look into them. No matter which program you choose at Cornell, you can bet that you will be able to take a lot of OR,CS and math courses and count most of them towards your PhD requirements (this may not be true at all other universities, you'll have to check). The above list is just a sampling of some of the courses offered at Cornell in OR and CS. Combinatorics is offered in the math department. The difference between all these programs will be in the required courses you have to take, for example OR requires stats, CS requires the theory of programming languages etc., but no one likes every single course they take in their PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Actually at Cornell, Applied Math has the most flexibility of any program. As long as you have some background in undergrad algebra and analysis (which you can make up during grad school) You can affectively create your own curriculum, with very few requirements. Its very easy to focus on ACO there. Note that many applied math programs are not so flexible, so you really have to look around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T01:47:40.963" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T01:47:40.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15547" CreationDate="2014-01-09T01:59:21.337" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the chair may already be aware of the situation, if they are not approving travel to said conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically those in the field, especially those who've been around a few years, and especially those in positions of authority in universities, will know which journals/conferences are high quality and which are not. These are generally backed up by various metrics (e.g. impact factor), which try to quantitatively assess the quality/impact/popularity/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are often measured on such metrics, rather than simply number of papers published. A single article in Nature, for example, would give significantly greater benefit to one's publication score than a dozen in the International Conference for Scamming and Profit. I would hope your university uses such metrics in some way or another, and from what I've seen, more and more universities are doing this, with a variety of standard/external and customised/internal performance metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you really feel you must make a point of it, I'd suggest simply having a discussion about the List of Predatory Publishers, rather than a specific discussion about your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find the chair is well aware of the list, but has their hands tied by university policy. Or they may be enlightened by the list and be able to have the tenure policy changed to exclude or reduce the benefits of such publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember it's not your job (and &lt;em&gt;is someone else's job&lt;/em&gt;) to assess the advisor's academic performance, and you want to be careful how you come across if you try (a) tell them how to do their job, (b) make academic assessments of tenured staff as a student, (c) heavily criticise your advisor, which will likely be ignored if there's any suggestion of an existing grievance between the two of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all you know, your advisor and the chair may be close friends, or at least closer colleagues to each other than &lt;em&gt;&quot;some unqualified upstart of a masters student!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (hypothetically their words, not mine :P)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10620" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T01:59:21.337" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-09T04:11:51.693" Score="15" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently deciding where to do my next Postdoc. I have had many Interviews, and have two solid offers on the table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first offer is in a highly ranked private University (not Ivy League nor MIT), with a professor who seems real nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second offer is from a somewhat lower ranked institution (State University) but I clicked way better with the professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both opportunities seem really appealing for me but I'm wondering whether later hiring committees will look at which institution I worked rather to with whom I worked, both professors are rather young and are just starting shop, so is not a matter of a renowned professor either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm probably just looking to see what you would do if this were your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T14:48:43.013" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T06:49:08.540" Title="Should I work an the advisor I &quot;click with&quot; or an advisor at a higher-ranked institution?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15556" CreationDate="2014-01-09T08:10:21.323" Score="6" ViewCount="2766" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Questions:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I express interest to receive invitation to serve as a reviewer in a top ranked conference? Currently I am registered with the conference review system (i.e., EDAS) and I receive review invitations from ordinary conferences, but I consider review in high quality conferences. Is there any feasible way to express interest and show that I have technical expertise to judge papers in a particular area. I know that having certain academic qualification (like master and more commonly PhD) and research experience is must to become nominated in top conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; Researchers more or less receive invitations to serve as reviewer of a journal or conference. I guess the process in journals to identify reviewers is one of three main channels &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author suggests potential reviewer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewer's profile is in the review system from previous submission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers can express interest to become reviewer in journals (Some journals have link to register).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and there should be other ways to feed information into the journal review system (that I might have missed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in conferences, it is slightly different because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;normally there is no registration link to express interest (I have not seen), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;usually there is no option that authors nominate reviewers while submitting a paper to conference (at least I have not experienced the same). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the only way left compared to journal is that reviewer registers with the conference review system for paper submission. So in future, when organizing committee is selecting TPCs and reviewers, they can invite already-registered members to play as reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T22:04:09.197" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T22:04:09.197" Title="How to show interest to serve as a TPC or reviewer in top conferences?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15555" CreationDate="2014-01-09T08:47:32.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only answer for computer science, but around here TPCs of conferences are generally by-invitation only. You cannot (officially) &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt; for it per se - typically, the organizers will form the TPC based mainly on previous members, filling any openings with outstanding members of the community not currently part of the TPC. Usually, these outstanding people are personally known to the organizing committee, so no formal search or something like that is conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, writing to the organizers expressing interest cannot hurt, but my impression is that if you do not already know them, your request is sadly likely to be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that I did not mean to imply that it is all just a matter of &quot;knowing somebody&quot;. Seeing that you are still a PhD student, you will likely simply not be high-profile enough at this point to be considered for the TPC of a really good conference (these usually only consist of eminent faculty). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T09:35:06.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T09:35:06.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2014-01-09T10:30:45.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an update, you might want to have a look at probably the largest organized group discussing this and similar issues - FORCE &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.force11.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.force11.org/&lt;/a&gt; - stands for &quot;The future of research communication and e-scholarship&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.force11.org/white_paper&quot;&gt;Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; they say that new models of reputation are required, etc. However, a ready to use system is not yet developed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T10:30:45.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15561" CreationDate="2014-01-09T11:10:31.207" Score="5" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;x is a stochastic function of y:&#xA;    x ~ N(2y, 3)                      (1),&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;how do I refer back to that... non-equation?  Do I still put &quot;see Eq. (1)&quot; although (1) is not an equation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10633" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T20:39:27.720" Title="Referencing Non-Equations (&quot;See Eq. (15)/See Ineq. (15)&quot;)" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2014-01-09T11:24:36.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematically you are true... it's not an equation. Technically I would say, that everything, that is display-style math and has a number attached for identification is called an equation in such contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T11:24:36.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2014-01-09T12:37:40.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely don't want to use Eq. (1) for mathematical reasons (~ is not equal), I would suggest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;See Formula (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although this is not conventional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone suggested &quot;See (1)&quot;. I personally would not use it because it has some ambiguity to me. Does it mean &quot;See Sec. (1)&quot; or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T13:44:05.327" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T13:44:05.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15528" CreationDate="2014-01-09T13:10:50.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that this might vary a bit between different fields, so I'd say ask some professors in your own department for their take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll just answer from the perspective of Philosophy. It looks a lot better (in terms of impressing academic hiring committees) to have papers accepted into big meetings of the national organization because everybody understands how hard it is to get one of those accepted. It isn't clear how competitive the northwest iowa caucus of young philosophers meeting was to get into, consequently the committee won't really know how important an achievement that was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd say published papers &gt; conference presentations. It isn't an either/or. give the paper at a conference first, then send it off to a journal. But try to think strategically for the semester about what to send off where and when in order to make those deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T13:10:50.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2014-01-09T14:12:45.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the right thing to do will depend on what's conventional in your field.  In pure mathematics, it's standard to refer to all displayed equations, inequalities, etc. using just numbers in parentheses (for example, &quot;using (2.1)&quot;, without specifying there whether (2.1) is an equation).  You could add a descriptive noun if you'd like to emphasize it (e.g., &quot;using equation (2.1)&quot;), but you don't need to.  If you do add a noun, it could be considered strange to refer to anything but an actual equation as an equation.  This style of referencing displays creates no ambiguity, since citations use square brackets and all other numerical references have an attached noun or symbol to indicate whether they refer to a theorem, section, etc.: [1] is a citation, (1) is an equation or other display, Lemma 1 is a lemma, Section 1 is a section, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system described in the previous paragraph presumably doesn't apply to the author of the question, since abbreviations like &quot;Eq. (1)&quot; or &quot;Ineq. (1)&quot; are not standard in pure mathematics, which suggests he is in another field.  However, it's worth keeping in mind that conventions vary between fields, so there won't be an absolute answer to this question.  To know for sure what would look reasonable, it's important to know the context (i.e., the audience for the paper and where it might be published).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T14:12:45.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12580" CreationDate="2014-01-09T14:30:01.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many schools will require you to take remediation courses if they do not feel you meet the course requirements for the graduate program. They will be fairly upfront about what they think you would need, but it will mean taking more Bachelors level classes at cost before being accepted to the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would show any additional work you have done to improve your programming skills, including code you have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of qualified people do not apply to top schools (I.E. MIT) because they do not believe they would get in. But I would not recommend focusing on any one school and instead find a few programs you like and apply to all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools will allow you to take classes as a non-degree seeking student, which would provide both a way to prove yourself and also gauge the program and its suitability to you. I would check with the program to see how many credits they accept through this method though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I am in the same boat. I majored in Mathematics with a minor in Physics but have been working as a programmer for the last three years. I am now looking into online masters programs in Computer Engineering or Computer Science.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T14:30:01.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15553" CreationDate="2014-01-09T14:34:43.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm probably just looking to see what would you do if this were your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own personal experience (coming from the other side of the question): I recently accepted a tenure track position at a university. I'm very happy with the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my visa application process for the new position, the consulate gave me a letter that the university had sent them as proof of employment. The letter contained details of the hiring process. There I learned that they had offered the position to someone from Oxford before me; someone older with half the publications and one-sixth the citations I had. The letter stated that he was first choice because he had a strong research profile and he was coming from a reputable university. I was coming from a strong department in a &quot;provincial university&quot; in a small country. The other person turned down the position. I accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a bit stung by the letter because I read it as an implicit rejection of my background (over which I had little control).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone also told me later that in the board meetings, during the hiring process, there was a professor who raised concerns about where I was coming from ... a &quot;provincial university&quot;. Apparently the more bureaucratic members of the board were my most fervent supporters: I had a lot of highly-cited publications, I was sure to bring a lot more, who cares where I came from? I wasn't told the full details, but I inferred that some of the more senior professors seemed to be more attracted to the Oxford thing than raw research metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course the hiring process was much more complicated than that; but this was the gist of the letter and the bits and pieces I heard afterwards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if that anecdote is useful to you but again there is no universal answer. It depends entirely on your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that yes, in many situations, the university you do your PostDoc in makes a difference for your future career. I don't know the US system well, but I guess it would be even stronger the case there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But you and your personal publication record are far more important&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general advise would simply be to pick the university where you feel you would be most productive (in a &quot;healthy&quot; way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T14:34:43.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12978" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:14:29.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is coming from the experience of graduating with a B.S. in Mathematics (with a Physics minor) and then work as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had comparable programming experience before graduating and had actually planned on taking a second major in CS before dropping in in favor of Physics. I quickly realized that I would only find work in a programming position. It was quite a shock to work on a enterprise class application with hundreds of classes and a complicated architecture. I was incredibly lucky to find a position that was willing to train me up to speed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that sometimes I will use my math background to come up with an algorithm easily that other programmers will be stunned by. Other times I will feel critically behind the curve, especially when asked to design/architecture a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have filled in some of these gaps by supplementing my education through MOOCs, reading tons of books and forums (although I have only now started contributing), and picking my coworkers brains. I have had a goal of improving my skills with software patterns, and adding a new language/technology every year. However, keeping up with my mathematical skills (especially linear algebra and statistics) has opened many doors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, improving &quot;soft skills&quot; like communication, networking, and organization is very important. In a lot of positions the goal in training is for you to generate business for the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the lingo right away is critical. Once you know what &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be done it is simply a matter of finding out how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After three years as a junior programmer I am starting to look at Masters programs and I feel much more prepared and my job will be partially reimbursing me for classes. In addition I have a much better sense of what programs will benefit my career and how. For the type of work I am interested in I am looking into CS programs but also Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I was incredibly fortunate to find a position that nurtured my abilities. To be clear, my supervisors were expecting a year before I contributed in a meaningful way, a lot of places will not take that bet on anyone. In order to get where I am I worked &lt;strong&gt;hard&lt;/strong&gt;, usually 50 hrs at work and an additional 10 hrs of outside research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T15:14:29.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15572" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:34:30.307" Score="2" ViewCount="3168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a paper at the moment and very bored and then I thought if I write a paper, I would like the writing style to be not so boring or having some kind of humor. Is that allowed in academic writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why so serious?&quot; - Joker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T15:47:21.693" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T15:47:21.693" Title="Sense of humor allowed in academic writing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-01-09T16:16:08.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15571" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:46:59.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with humour in scientific writing but it is still advised against. The reason for this is a question of communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that the purpose is to convey an idea as succinctly and precisely as you can and you want the recipient to understand everything that you write (my experience says this will never happen, anyway). If you introduce jokes, you run several risks: (1) the reader does not understand the joke, (2) the reader misunderstands the joke and (3) the reader is offended by the joke. These are not outcomes you wish to see and realizing that not everyone's taste is like your own it is easy top realize that the outcome is sure to be one of the three above in some cases. Jokes are different in different cultures and countries so what works in one place may not work in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as I see it the choice is how much you are willing to gamble. Reviewers and editors may of course weed out things that go too far so what you write is not necessarily what comes into print in the end but it still is mostly up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T15:46:59.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:47:18.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone feels this way to some extent.  Most people have developed this issue over many years.  I ran into the issue head-on in the jump from middle to high school.  In primary and middle school, I was &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; first in my class.  Then I went to a better district with more rigorous studies, and I started almost failing my classes while my peers received the equivalent of a 5.0.  So I had to consciously figure out how to deal with the feeling of inferiority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle this issue is to keep a few things in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 &amp;ndash; Everyone has a different skill set.  Unfortunately, society trains us to focus on our failings.  Everyone has standard levels they must reach, but we're not so encouraged to advanced quickly in what we &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; good at.  It's a major flaw of society to force everyone to an inflated level in things they aren't good at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 &amp;ndash; Instead, you should focus on becoming excellent in what you are good at.  Then, whenever you feel inadequate in one field, just remember how good you are in another.  If you focus both on improving your strengths and flaunting them, it makes you a productive and satisfied member of society, not to mention very appealing to recruiters and those in charge of promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 &amp;ndash; Some people say life isn't a competition.  Others say you need to work hard and play catch up.  You have to find your own balance between the two.  If you're too far on the competitive end, people think you're a jerk when you're above them in a subject or you feel depressed when you're below others.  If you're too far on the peaceful end, you lose the desire to work hard and learn more, regardless of whether or not you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 &amp;ndash; Find out what you like to do, find out what you're good at, and find out where the two cross.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLES:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on fixing the bad &amp;ndash; The underdog movies &quot;Turbo&quot; and &quot;Rudy&quot; come to mind.  Rudy, the shrimp of a kid who can't run fast, wants to play college football.  He spends all his time training, and gets one play in the season.  He feels like a hero until the movie ends and he realizes that play doesn't get him off the bench for next season.  Turbo the snail wants to win the Indy500.  It takes a freak chemical spill to turn him into a snail version of a superhero.  These are some of the people we look at for inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on your strengths &amp;ndash; &quot;Monsters Inc.&quot; and &quot;Monsters University.&quot;  When Mike tries to scare kids, he fails.  He's simply not scary.  But he knows everything about being a scarer.  Sully's scary, but is horrible at memorization and logic.  In the end, Mike doesn't become a scarer; he coaches Sully and plans everything.  Mike does what he's good at and gets to be in the same environment he would be in if he were good at scaring.  Mike and Sully each use their unique, innate skills to their advantage and come out on top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you're good at composition, history, and time management, but you dislike history and time management.  Become excellent at composition, keep history relatively neutral, and accept the fact that time management is a requirement for everyone.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By the way, how many people in your field are good at math?  Probably a lot.  How many are good at what you specialize in?  If you do it right, not very many.  You can't speak Mandarin, even though it's the most popular language on the planet.  What do you do?  Forget about it, unless you're planning on traveling to China.  Why do you need it?  Instead, learn a language that impresses people and is often used in your chosen field.  For example, France has a lot of customers for robotic tech companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a huge misnomer.  &quot;Hard Work&quot; is not actually what people want.  Employers don't want employees to stay two hours late every day just to get their tasks done, then come to work tired because of another three hours of unpaid labor at home.  Teachers don't want students to be stressed out and think of the school experience as a bunch of bad memories.  &quot;Don't work hard; work smart.&quot;  Use what you have at your disposal.  They use the term &quot;Hard Work&quot; to indicate that you can't slack off and not do what's expected of you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, if students come from higher-class high schools, it's basically like they went to college early on financial aid.  They've already gone through all these classes.  Yes, you're going to have to go through the classes they've already been through.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By the way, I'm in my first year of community college now.  There were high school Juniors in my Calc II class with better grades than mine.  There are also people into their third year of college failing their third bout of intermediate algebra.  We have peers who can barely speak English, and we have foreigners who speak my language better than I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the end, everything is subjective and relative.  Don't beat yourself up.  Try to focus on your strengths.  It's not a necklace, and you are much stronger than your weakest link.  If you're not good at a subject, figure out what's the highest level you need to have to be good at what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10638" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T15:47:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:11:23.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I submit a manuscript, I value the work of the reviewers a lot. Revision work is, most of the time, an excellent exercise that allows you to question your own work, and improve it. In a way, getting my article accepted in a reputable journal is one of the few signs that what I do is of some quality (or not, if it is rejected). So, peer review &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a system in which people 'vote' for your work, and suggest edits, similarly to SO Q&amp;amp;As. When people cite my work, it is the equivalent of the upvotes on SO. Of course, exactly like on SO, the more popular your domain is (your academic 'tag'), the easier it is to get upvotes. But people you care about are usually clever enough to figure that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, is peer-review a perfect system? No. But neither is SO's voting system. At the end, what one needs to do is use one's brain when reading something: &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are probably not too bad at judging quality of the work published in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being said, I think that it is a good idea to have an alternative system of evaluating research. I find that the discussion of articles on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubpeer.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pubpeer.com&lt;/a&gt; to be a good way to anonymously criticize published literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that I have the chance (or was it a choice..?) to work in a field where there is little political involvement. So I could imagine that comments of readers would be for the most part constructive and in the worst case, irrelevant. But that is not the case for everyone...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T18:03:07.797" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T18:03:07.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15553" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:45:54.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it really depends on the person you want to work with and also the difference between the reputation of both universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I personally think that going to a person who you &quot;click&quot; with and perhaps can establish a deeper academic relationship with would be more important than just a name of a university or the risk of being in a non-productive environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that you are building your future collaborators and that can help you alot when you are applying for tenure, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of a couple of people who recently did a post doc in highly reputable universities in North america and Europe but are extremely unhappy with their progresses and publication records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10297" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:45:54.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2513" CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:48:34.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publish them online for maximum impact or try a genuine academic publisher for prestige. Lambert will basically offer to print out individual copies of your thesis for a very high price (thus making a lot of money). Plus they use fake accounts in social media among other shady practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalology.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/lambert-academic-publishing-or-how-not.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journalology.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/lambert-academic-publishing-or-how-not.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10648" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T18:43:10.010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T18:43:10.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2014-01-09T19:47:36.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question reminded me of the blog post linked below.  See what you make of it!&#xA;Generally speaking, existential decisions that are based on binary alternatives can easily be wrong, since there are usually many more alternative pathways in reality.  Thinking in terms of binary options is just not the best way of coping with life, I think, if you excuse my binary assertion... ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T19:47:36.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2513" CreationDate="2014-01-09T19:50:59.457" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this review from Jeffrey Beall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/05/lambert-academic-publishing-a-must-to-avoid/#more-921&quot;&gt;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/05/lambert-academic-publishing-a-must-to-avoid/#more-921&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I highly recommend checking his list of 'predatory academic publishers' and reporting any new one you see to him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this blog entry:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishing-continues.html&quot;&gt;http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishing-continues.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's what people started to call a 'predatory publisher'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will bring you nothing but an expensive hard copy of what you apparently already published. Your local printing joint will probably do a better job, for less $.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T14:33:22.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T14:33:22.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-09T22:26:00.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking at a lot of profiles (this is common when you're doing academic job searches or literature reviews) you might have a tendency to focus on the accomplishments that other professors have, and then lump them all together into some kind of imaginary &quot;summation superhuman&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One institution hired that guy because he invented XYZ. The next hired the other because he has N papers in Science and Nature. The other one hired ABC because he got K dollars of funding. Suddenly, they're all molding together in your head and you feel like you have to invent something, get N papers in Science and Nature, and get K dollars of funding before you can even have a hope of succeeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you look at a lot of CVs and profiles they highlight all of the good things. Don't &quot;sum&quot; them up into some kind of super researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T22:26:00.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15528" CreationDate="2014-01-09T23:06:14.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, you want refereed papers in the top 5 conferences or journals in your field. That is, if you can. I mention conferences because in some fields conferences are refereed and are equally respected as top journals, but in most fields &lt;em&gt;you want top-quality papers in top-quality journals&lt;/em&gt;. Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics (i.e. people who will look at you CV when you look for a job) know full well the huge gap between average papers and top-journal-quality (I would guess a subjective factor 2 to 5 at least). There are several reasons, besides the obvious ones, to aim high:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell your advisor your are aiming very high. See how (s)he reacts. (S)He will treat you accordingly (including telling you right off that he thinks you do not have what it takes if such is the case).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That will oblige you to chose interesting and relevant research questions. Papers about unimportant stuff never get published in top journals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That will oblige you to make sure you advisor can coach you (is that where (s)he publishes?). If needed, you will switch advisor (or department, university) before wasting too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On top of purely scientific results there are many things to learn from aiming high while you are still a student. That includes countless hours of rewriting, much better structure, language, dealing with referees who know their stuff, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It does not make sense to go to school in a very competitive field and not try to do your absolute best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now is the time to learn from the best while you still call yourself a &lt;em&gt;student&lt;/em&gt; and ask for help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Top papers live longer, they still help you CV 10 years down the line (and accumulate citations meanwhile).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average is boring, average is everywhere, average is... average.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academia is a &lt;em&gt;winner-takes-all&lt;/em&gt; game. Job openings are highly competitive. Candidate #1 gets the job, candidate #2 gets nothing more than candidate #10...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can go to a few conferences. Write a damn-good paper first, then try to present it to the best conference you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, I published 4 papers out my PhD work in top-5 journals. The other two in good journals. I got a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T23:06:14.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T00:40:19.873" Score="5" ViewCount="836" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have already completed a master's degree, but  no longer belong or have contact to the institution in which I followed my master's degree; how to approach one professor to see if he or she wants to supervise me? Actually I see lots of different areas that I would like, but I feel afraid of not having the enough background (I can only contact the potential professors by email because well I am actually in the North America area, and I would like to aim for an European university)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that some times there are some published open positions, but in those cases mostly the competition is really fierce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice, mostly based on experience, will be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T02:12:47.073" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T20:20:28.093" Title="How to get a mentor or supervisor for PhD studies in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15586" CreationDate="2014-01-10T01:27:52.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply to PhD programs in your area of interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visit the schools that accept you into their programs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During your visits, talk to professors about (a) whether they're taking students and (b) whether you share mutual interests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try emailing professors before you apply, to get a sense of whether their school/department/research group is a good fit.  But be warned that many will ignore your email unless you've already been admitted to their program.  (Expert tip: pay close attention to the warnings and admonitions posted on their personal home page!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much better way to make first contact is to attend conferences or workshops in your area of interest (and make a paper/poster presentation, if possible).  These events let you meet many potential advisors all in one place.  Plus, you get to hear about their work, and get a sense of their personality, hygiene, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel afraid of not having enough background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and me both, pal.  It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;impostor syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;* in academia has it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*…except for the real jerk-Os.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T01:27:52.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2014-01-10T03:09:11.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many will tell you to step up, or forget other people and focus on yourself I think it best to do something else entirely. I'm a non-traditional student. I too had fall-backs and work considerably harder to achieve my goals than some of my peers, but what has helped immensely wasn't hoping someone notices me, but making them notice me. So I say to you, find a mentor. Find someone in your field of whom you can confide and ask questions. When you start involving yourself deeply in your field both online AND in person with others who are equally interested in your work, and with those who are willing to listen and/or give advice when necessary you will realize just how good you have it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are always comparing ourselves to others, don't stop. It can drive you to be better, to be different. However, remember that you aren't the same as your peers. You don't want to have exactly the same jobs and lives as they do, so you can set your own goals. And in doing so, you will find that you can market yourself differently as well. Be different. Stand out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10660" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T03:09:11.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15592" CreationDate="2014-01-10T06:15:45.817" Score="9" ViewCount="2182" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15572/2692&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, and the subsequent comments, I found myself wondering if it is a rule for publishers to get author approval after edits before publishing a paper? I would assume so because of copyright issues but I would like to know if there are legal or ethical guidelines in the publishing industry about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, editors will make edits but they have always asked me for my approval before actually publishing the edited piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T09:33:45.657" Title="Do authors always have final approval over what gets published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15830" CreationDate="2014-01-10T06:31:32.453" Score="8" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15575/information-about-valuation-of-postgraduate-study&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I started wondering about students applying for graduate school and the letters of recommendation accompanying their applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say Student is studying at University A and one of his lecturers is primarily working at University B (lecturer was doing some adjunct or other kind of part-time work at University A). University B is a much higher ranked school. After graduation Student asks the lecturer for a letter of recommendation so Student can attend University B. How much extra weight is the letter of recommendation given in the application process if it is from a lecturer at the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that it would depend on how that lecturer's past recommendations have turned out but I'd like to hear from the experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it change anything if Student wants to become a PhD and would like to have the lecturer as Student's adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T16:54:01.743" Title="Can a letter from a professor not from my university but a high-ranking university carry extra weight?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15553" CreationDate="2014-01-10T06:49:08.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, you should go where you will be happiest.  Don't be afraid to go to a school with a lower reputation if you think it is better for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is more to being happy than &quot;clicking&quot; with the professor.  I would just say that you should be cautious about overvaluing &quot;clicking&quot; relative to other things.  There are a couple details I would consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does (or will, if he's new) the professor have a notable research profile?  If he is new as you say, do you think he will build a sizable research profile quickly?  When you apply for later jobs, you'll need letters of recommendation.  A strong letter of rec from a prof whose research everyone knows, even if he is at a low-profile school, will serve you better than a rec from a prof whose research is not read or valued, even if that prof is at a prestigious school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the department as a whole like?  And, if it's a postdoc where you'll be working on a particular project, what is that project like?  Are the other people working on it good people in both a personal and professional sense?  Where did they come from?  If you see that the project/department attracts high-caliber people, it is a good sign.  Also there is always the small chance that the professor is nice and clickable-with but has problems with practical/logistical matters that make working with him difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are many other factors, but these are ones related to the professor-vs-school issue that I think are particularly relevant. No one is going to hire you because you clicked with a professor; the reasing clicking with a professor is important that it suggests you will be productive in that environment.  So, I'd say you should scope out other info that may give you an idea of how productive you would be in that environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my impression is that hiring committees are likely to give more weight to the &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt; you worked with, and gradually less to the project, department, and school.  This is especially true because of letters of rec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T06:49:08.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2014-01-10T08:15:32.130" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the answer you are referring to there is nothing to say that approval is not required. The issue is rather that an editor can request certain things can be removed from the paper so the author cannot demand everything written is finally printed. Editors have the right and obligation to weed out materials that are, for example, offensive just as we can flag posts that contain such phrasings on Stackexchange. Jokes, which was the point of the post you referred to, are not edited out by any means as a rule but can be misunderstood or considered offensive and might be more likely to be edited out than other material during the review and editorial process. In such a case, the author will certainly be part of the process and asked to revise or accept changes. the point here is that the editor has the final say through approval of the paper as well as a responsibility to make sure the publication is free from material that violates, for example, ethical of the publisher. As an example, in Sweden, where I reside, I as an editor am responsible by law for what is printed in &quot;my&quot; journal. This responsibility may lie with the publisher in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, authors will definitely be part of the revision process and sign off on final proofs, it is just that some changes may not be subject to additional discussion and will have to be accepted. Does this happen often? Not at all. In my case, I have had to deal with this in heated &quot;Letters to the Editor&quot; where authors have been in a written, published, exchange over issues in a published paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (to expand based on earthling's comment): Basically all changes except typos and changes to adhere to journal or publisher style are subject to an &quot;OK&quot; from the author (although it would not hurt to also get an OK on these). The publishing of a paper is a joint venture between an author and the journal, so with a functioning working relationship both parties should agree on changes. But, again, some changes are non-negotiable, which does not mean they can be imposed without the knowledge of the author who always has the option to go elsewhere to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So changes can come in three forms, (1) those that can be changed without consent (e.g. typos), (2) those that must be made without discussion (subject to ethical considerations) and (3) those that can go either way after, say, clarification (most of the normal changes). In  cases 2 and 3 the author need to approve the changes it is just that for case 2 the option might be accept or withdraw the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T09:09:55.543" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T09:09:55.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9396" CreationDate="2014-01-10T08:31:09.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes humor can help readers to remember the essence of an approach. The best example I can give in this regard is from Leo Breiman's original paper about bagging predictors&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; (paper available &lt;a href=&quot;http://statistics.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/tech-reports/421.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). In the conclusion he summarizes the paper like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bagging goes a ways toward making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, especially if the sow's ear is twitchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* Used to make a stronger model by combining a set of weak ones, which is particularly effective when there is high variability between the weak models.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On very rare occasions, authors go even further and write a paper about a humorous topic, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ted/203S10/Projects/Zombies/Zombies.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!: MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF AN OUTBREAK OF ZOMBIE INFECTION&lt;/a&gt;. Humor can be a good way of bringing abstract matter under the spotlight for laymen to appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T08:37:05.200" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T08:37:05.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15605" CreationDate="2014-01-10T12:55:51.863" Score="63" ViewCount="15991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure that anyone who has spent some time reading academic papers have come across quite a few &quot;lemons&quot; among them, with bad grammar, strange word choices and incoherent sentences. Such papers are always a chore to read, even if the topic is interesting and the research is good, and I have found myself throwing away papers just because they are so awful to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strange thing is that these papers have been peer reviewed and are published in reputable journals. But still they are often near unreadable because of bad language. Why is this the case? Why isn't bad language picked up and corrected when peer review is done? I understand that a lot of these academics don't have English as their first language, but publishing a paper that reads like it was translated from Chinese to English with Google Translate and a thesaurus is not a good way to publish your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10666" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T18:22:02.097" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T18:22:02.097" Title="Why are there so many papers written in bad English?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15887" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:05:29.723" Score="20" ViewCount="3523" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably not 100% on-topic here, but this site is closer to &lt;em&gt;appropriate&lt;/em&gt; than others. Let me give it a try: I have collected about 50 publications relevant for a project of mine. For these publications, I have all the important information like author, title, journal, etc, but most importantly, I have the DOI for each paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asking myself, is it possible to retrieve the DOI of the references given in each publication through a web-service, an open database or any other service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background is that I would like to create a graph showing the connections between the selected publications. One semi-automatic approach which comes to my mind is to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Science&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt;, go through the stack of my publications and copy the DOI of the listed references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any better ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4021" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:48:27.073" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T12:05:13.967" Title="Retrieving the references in a publication automatically" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15604" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:12:01.203" Score="8" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my Ph.D. research I encountered a mathematical problem. I found solutions in some cases, but in other cases I couldn't find a solution. My advisors also could not help with this. I asked at Math.SE and MathOverflow, even offered a boundy, but got no hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I can proceed in my research without a solution to these cases (there are many other problems to solve anyway), they are very interesting and can contribute a lot to understanding the general problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem itself is very simple, such that even high-school children can understand it. So, I thought of the following idea: give the problem to talented high-school or under-graduate students that go to math olympiads, and offer a monetary bounty (in addition to co-authorship) to the first solver. Hopefully a fresh young mind can succeed where older minds have failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about this idea? Is this ethical? Useful? Done in the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T06:08:06.860" Title="Outsourcing a mathematical research problem" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:22:36.293" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Badly written papers can still serve the interests of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editors and the authors, if it concerns a hot topic (or considered as such), the article will potentially be cited by others even if they do not read it at all;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editors, if they have difficulties to find enough good papers to fill the next issue. They need to show their employers they are working;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the referees, if they are cited in the references;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the scientific editors, if they have conflicting interests (like being at the same time head of a university's department);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the list does not stop here (please edit).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are no scientific reasons, but they are dictated by the &quot;numbers&quot; and these numbers play a significant role for researchers applying to a position, a grant or a promotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be that the authors made a &lt;em&gt;really good&lt;/em&gt; discovery, want to publish to avoid being spotted, but prefer to keep their &quot;advance&quot;. So they publish intentionally in a way that is difficult to read. This reason is rare in my opinion, but I've heard of a case. In this situation, maybe it is a deal between the editor and the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10030" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T14:55:41.237" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T14:55:41.237" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-10T13:22:36.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:54:16.280" Score="2" ViewCount="4880" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my bachelor thesis I needed a certain source. As it wasn't accessible neither on the net, nor in my library, I decided to ask the author directly. She was kind enough to send me a draft of the text in question, explicitly allowing me to use it for private academic purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm in the middle of my thesis. How do I cite a draft that doesn't even have a date? If I had the published version, I'd simply cross-reference, but I don't, and adding the page number of a word document that my supervisor doesn't have seems utterly useless. Do I simply leave out the page number (it's a very short paper), or do I add the paper as an attachment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is something I'd normally ask my supervisor. Unfortunately, communication with her is not something I'm interested in, for personal reasons. I'm therefore looking for a reasonable advice that has nothing to do with her preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10669" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:50:13.240" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T23:40:57.083" Title="How to quote a draft in my thesis?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15597" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:02:27.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For problem easy to formulate as this one, this may be a motivating problem for students who want to tackle with &quot;real research&quot;, quite rewarding also for those who find a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this has been done in the past, but why not, as long as you give full credit of the proof to the students who find it and in case this is published, give them authorship. I would suggest, in case you have a winner, to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;endorse&lt;/a&gt; him or her on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;, so the credit will be fully his or hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10030" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T14:02:27.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15600" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:12:11.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know only two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you write &quot;&lt;em&gt;Author&lt;/em&gt;, private communication&quot; in your references;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you publish the unpublished material and add its author as an author of your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10030" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T14:12:11.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15600" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:15:23.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it has been published, ask the author for a pdf of the published version (from your question I got the feeling that the paper has been published). This would also be easier to share with your supervisor later on. It makes no sense to cite or quote a draft version if the paper has been published. At least ask if the draft has identical content as the published version. If so, you could maybe get away with using the draft but citing the published version in your reference list (not ideal though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, cite it as a working paper/draft, by including author, title, and the date when you recieved the paper, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0046.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago manual of style online&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA style guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T20:41:43.143" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T20:41:43.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15597" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:19:58.313" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a great idea to publicize the problem among young people who may have a lot of time on their hands, not a lot of other research ideas, and a desire to demonstrate their abilities through something other than timed contests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One awkward possibility would be getting stuck in a situation in which someone can't convince you that their solution is correct, but you can't convince them it is incomplete or wrong.  Of course this could happen with anyone, but it's particularly likely to occur with someone who is not an experienced researcher.  If you offer a bounty, you should be clear about the conditions.  (For example, that it all comes down to your judgment, and that you don't commit to spend unlimited amounts of time trying to understand a proposed solution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coauthorship is certainly mandatory if you publish a paper that depends on this solution (unless of course the students publish their solution separately and you cite it).  However, you may run into tricky situations in which it's not enough just to offer coauthorship for the first solution.  For example, if several people solve the problem independently and around the same time, then they should all be treated evenhandedly.  Or what if someone proposes a solution you don't believe, someone else proposes a clearer solution and you offer the second person coauthorship, and then the first person convinces you their solution was correct after all?  Of course these problems are not hard to solve (in the last case, you can't retract the authorship of the second person, but you should make the first an author too if you still can).  But the important thing to keep in mind is that you may need to make sensible decisions that go a little beyond the &quot;first solver is a coauthor&quot; rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final observation is that if you succeed in attracting students to this problem, you will likely get lots of questions and comments from them along the way.  If that appeals to you, then it's an advantage of this approach.  On the other hand, if your goal is to get a solution with a minimum amount of time and attention on your part, then asking beginners might not be fruitful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T14:19:58.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:51:22.427" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like V. Rossetto's answer (+1), but I think the level of cynicism it contains is more appropriate as an answer for why &lt;strong&gt;bad papers&lt;/strong&gt; are published (to which I would add that there is now a glut of mediocre venues looking for content ... everyone wants to be editor or co-organiser of something; and I would also add that, unfortunately, authoring and peer-review is still done by humans).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as for &lt;strong&gt;badly written&lt;/strong&gt; ... I feel a little balance is needed. In particular, I feel it's important &lt;strong&gt;to caution against a common hyper-sensitivity to language problems&lt;/strong&gt; in publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;badly-written&quot; is subjective. Sure, the readability of the paper is an important aspect of the quality of the paper, and there is some minimum level of language quality that is a prerequisite, but that level can be artificially high for some academics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of research is published in English by non-native speakers. Many papers are primarily authored by students in their 20's/30's who might be quite new to English and to writing scientific works. Even certain native English speakers will struggle to structure a paper in such a way that it reads well (sometimes because they are still of the belief that things have to be complicated and difficult before they can be published, so they write in a complicated and difficult way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of hypersensitivity, I am a native English speaker and for a journal paper I was primary author of, I once had a reviewer complain that the paper was poorly written. His/her main complaint was that we were confusing the semantics of &quot;that&quot; vs. &quot;which&quot; in the paper, saying that mixing the two up is not up to the formal standard of English required for journals. Eventually I did actually manage to stop laughing, but as I picked myself up from the floor, I realised I'd have to &quot;correct&quot; it for the revision. Three hours of Ctrl+F'ing &quot;that/which&quot; in a 40 page journal paper (and even worse, fixing the resulting bad boxes and widows again) wiped the smile off my face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that students new to reviewing, particularly non-native speakers, tend to expect a very high standard of writing. For example, I assigned a workshop review to a student once that wanted to reject the paper, primarily due to having &quot;several typos&quot;. These would take 5 minutes to fix and didn't affect the paper &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;. I asked the student if he had had any problem reading the paper? He said he hadn't. Did he learn something from the paper? Well yes, X, Y and Z. Why is he rejecting the paper? Necessary has two 's's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the quality of writing often sucks in published works, but I don't believe that a paper should be &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; rejected just because it could be labelled as &quot;badly written&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to communicate ideas with good science/maths, not to give an exposition of English grammar and phrasing. The original versions of many important publications were almost indecipherable in their writing. Even if an idea is written in such a way that you have to spend a few more hours to understand it, the idea itself might influence you and many other people in a positive way for many years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes such influential papers are rare, but there are many shades of grey in between black and white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And think of all the raw brain-power we will be missing out on if we perpetuate a culture that implicitly discourages non-English speakers from publishing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, for journals, I would tend to blame poor copy-editing and typesetting from the publishers. Most journals employ professional technical writers whose job is to avoid this situation. (I don't envy them their job, but still.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T16:34:37.103" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T16:34:37.103" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15504" CreationDate="2014-01-10T14:52:36.610" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org/&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; which in itself is a system for handling references, it comes as both a plugin to Firefox and as standalone. I use the standalone version to extract reference information from pdf and then export to, in my case, BibTeX &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; format. There are possibilities to export to other formats as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4142" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T21:13:18.810" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T21:13:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:19:42.560" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A reviewer who receives a submission which he/she has sent back a few times on grounds of serious problems with the scientific content or superficial presentation might just be happy at least those have been corrected and not bother also correcting typos and odd choices of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing: a lot of reviewers aren't native speakers themselves (me, for example) and don't pick up on all the errors or have a hard time formulating what's wrong with a given word or phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10633" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T15:19:42.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15586" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:37:20.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While @Dnuorg Spu's answer is correct for the US (and Asia, afaik), it is not all that applicable for Europe. Around here, US-style PhD programmes are still more the exception than the rule. In many european universities, one applies &lt;strong&gt;directly with the professor&lt;/strong&gt; before getting admitted into any sort of formal programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, what most professors do when they have openings for PhD students is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to their own (good) master students (sidenote: a master is a minimum requirement for PhD admission in most places here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failing that, contact friends and ask them for good master students interested in doing a PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failing that, write a job announcement to &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.cs.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/dbworld&quot;&gt;DBWorld&lt;/a&gt; or a similar mailing list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3 usually brings in plenty of candidates. However, weeding out the bad from the good is time-consuming and error-prone, hence, most professors are not happy at all if they have to fall back to step 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blind applications&lt;/strong&gt; are usually ignored, simply because the chance that a given professor that you have applied to blindly currently has open funding &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; is looking specifically for somebody with your skill set is not very large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know that some times there are some published open positions, but in those cases mostly the competition is really fierce. Any advice, mostly based on experience, will be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: give applying for some posted positions a try. Competition is fierce in numbers, but not necessarily in quality. We have had cases where we received 50+ applications, and decided to not hire anybody. Your chance is certainly better than villy-nilly mailing (or even worse, &lt;em&gt;calling&lt;/em&gt;) professors out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T15:37:20.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:50:59.377" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add something not contained in any of the existing answers: in some fields, language errors are more prone to create important misunderstanding in the mind of the reader.  For instance, in mathematics, even seemingly minor grammatical changes to the statement of a theorem will often drastically change its meaning.  My (purely anecdotal) sense is that in such fields, badly written papers rarely get through peer review at reputable journals.  But I'm sure someone will disagree, since these terms are subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, plenty of badly written mathematical papers get through peer-review in disreputable journals.  The result can be complete gibberish.  For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=2210&amp;amp;#abstract&quot;&gt;this entertaining abstract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I respect badroit's answer, but I still get annoyed when I'm asked to spend hours reviewing a paper and I find that the authors didn't even take a minute to run spell-check.  That's rude, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T15:50:59.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T17:49:10.357" Score="19" ViewCount="8170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering a PhD or Master's in engineering in the US, and I haven't really decided which makes the most sense for me. There are many questions and answers here that mention leaving a PhD program with a Master's and how it's not a &quot;failure&quot; or &quot;dropping out&quot;, but it occurs to me: what effect does this have on a person's adviser/professors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about references, future relationships, etc? Is it taken negatively or as an insult, or cutting ties, to bow out with the lower degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What prompted this question is that a few programs that most interest me state explicitly that there is very little funding available for Masters students (so you are mostly expected to pay your own way), but full funding and additional opportunities are available for those admitted to a PhD program. The way they are worded, they seem extremely interested in good PhD candidates, and not at all interested in Masters students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not considering seeking a PhD solely to get a Masters/funding, because that's just outright dishonest and I wouldn't stomach such deceit. But, what might the ethics be of not being certain whether you want a PhD or a Masters, but applying for a PhD program? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one's adviser and/or program and/or professors are explicitly harmed by having someone complete their Masters requirements, then I'd be much more hesitant to even consider a PhD application unless I was certain that's what I wanted. If being unsure is considered normal and the &quot;harm&quot; caused by bowing out of the program with a Masters not so great, then that would certainly ease things the other direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, these departments also specifically suggest you pick Masters OR PhD, and generally discourage you from applying to both. Thus my quandary!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10672" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T20:28:57.370" Title="Is it ethical to seek a PhD program if you suspect you may want only a Masters?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T17:49:28.937" Score="16" ViewCount="41883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am organizing a workshop and have invited a featured speaker to give a synthetic talk. What is the appropriate term for this role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T06:29:12.500" Title="What is the difference between a plenary and a keynote talk?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15611" CreationDate="2014-01-10T17:50:07.817" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came up with this answer while asking the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both terms indicate a sort of synthesis, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordnik.com/words/plenary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plenary&lt;/a&gt; seems to refer to being fully attended whereas &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordnik.com/words/keynote&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;keynote&lt;/a&gt; appears to indicate setting a common theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="344" LastEditorUserId="344" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T23:01:13.710" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T23:01:13.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2014-01-10T18:39:25.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, even corrected typos, grammar mistakes and changes necessary for correct typesetting are usually approved (or rejected) by the authors. Thats what the print proof is for. In my opinion that is absolutely necessary, because even changing a few letters could change the meaning of a sentence, and as an author I have the full responsibility for the whole paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've once made the weird experience that I found a paper listed in pubmed before we had received acceptance notification or print proofs. While nothing bad had happened to the paper's text, we decided never to go with that publisher again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T09:33:45.657" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T09:33:45.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2014-01-10T18:43:25.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I rely on the response of others here regarding nuanced comments. I take it they're saying that if we do facilitate appreciation, critique, and query within a journal, and even if we don't, those kinds of responses will flourish primarily outside the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, here is a notable hindrance to a reputation score system for published papers. How you respond to this hindrance constrains how you design, or refuse to design, such a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A voting system is a systematic decision about ranking multiple options that is based on multiple individuals' recommendations for ranking those options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trick question: Do we accept that definition? Because, if so, the problem is that no satisfactory voting system can exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arrow's impossibility theorem&lt;/a&gt; states that every systematic ranking based on the rankings from each of a group of recommenders is unsatisfactory in at least one of these ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The group's ranking is completely controlled by one single recommender. Comment: we could call this person the &quot;dictator&quot;, the &quot;editor-in-chief&quot;, or as @JohnMoeller said above the &quot;hermit gatekeeper&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The group's ranking sometimes orders two options differently from the ordering that was chosen by &lt;em&gt;every single one&lt;/em&gt; of the recommenders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The group's ranking sometimes orders two options differently, say, A and B, because recommenders changed their recommended rankings overall, even though &lt;em&gt;every single one&lt;/em&gt; of the recommenders kept unchanged their own ordering of A and B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8343" LastEditorUserId="8343" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T18:51:07.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T18:51:07.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15622" CreationDate="2014-01-10T20:17:29.230" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply for an MSc program in Northern Europe or the UK, starting September 2014, which typically requires two recommendation letters from my former university professors. I have the following dilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a personal relationship with two professors from my faculty, whom i know are going to give excellent recommendations for me. However, I chose neither of them as my supervisor for my Bachelor thesis, and I prefered to work on it under the supervision of a third professor, whom i have a slightly less personal relationship and spent limited time with during my undergraduate years (reason for that being my subject of choice overlapping with his/his groups research). In fact I only had extensive direct contact with one of his PhDs, under the guidance of whom i conducted my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I really want to ask is: Is it considered necessary for one of my LOR to be given from my thesis advisor? Is it going to look bad or somewhat odd to the eyes of the admissions committee if not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10676" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T22:28:47.557" Title="Recommender choice for admission to a MSc program" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15611" CreationDate="2014-01-10T21:06:37.907" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are both used (often interchangeably in my field). A plenary is a talk which does not have anything scheduled against it. A keynote is an invited talk in a conference or session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10100" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:06:37.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14961" CreationDate="2014-01-10T21:08:41.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best thing you can do is have a well defined topic. Since you don't mention that in your question, I don't know if you have a research topic/question yet. In my experience, that's by far the most crucial thing in having a thesis go smoothly. The student who know what they want to work on usually have everything fall into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10100" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:08:41.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:03:48.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can name seven reasons off hand (listed, roughly speaking, in the reverse order of the &quot;validity of excuse&quot; they offer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The stuff is so complicated that there is no way to explain everything &#xA;without writing a three volume treatise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The author is pretty much &quot;dyslexic&quot; or incapable of expressing himself &#xA;clearly for some other reason (it is amazing how many first rate mathematicians&#xA;are like that at least occasionally) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The language in which the paper is written is not the mother tongue of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) This is the first paper of an inexperienced author (a student, say).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Someone is in a hurry to set up his priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Neither the author, nor the referee care much about style, and the editors are &#xA;too busy with other stuff to take a close look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7) The journal is happy to get at least something that doesn't look like an outright garbage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, surely, there are many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T22:03:48.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15615" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:28:47.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible, it is always better if you can get a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; letter of recommendation from someone who has actually supervised your research, because they can directly comment on your promise &lt;em&gt;as a researcher&lt;/em&gt;. At the master's level, however, I don't know if it's quite so important as at the doctoral level, particularly because some fields may not require a bachelor's thesis (they may have a senior project, laboratory, or design course instead). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the present circumstances, this would be one of those times where you should check with the places you're applying and ask if you can submit a third letter of recommendation. Then you get the advantage of having two people who know you well personally, plus someone who can comment on your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T22:28:47.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:12:54.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I was asked to work with folk from a specific sub-discipline of our field.  I'm not a scientist, but had been doing IT support in the general discipline for 6 years at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They all spoke English well, and the majority were native English speakers -- yet their documentation had all of the same problems that you describe.  So I wrote up notes about problems that I saw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and they rejected every comment I gave them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem was that they had &lt;a href=&quot;https://dba.stackexchange.com/q/534/51&quot;&gt;developed their own jargon&lt;/a&gt;, and what I had assumed they were talking about wasn't actually it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems don't seem bad when you talk about it ... they had a 'prime key' which is somewhat related to a 'primary key', but not quite.  And the 'dataset name' isn't the name of the table where the data's being stored (the 'data series name', but a serialized string for a given query.  These are just subtle enough that you make assumptions when reading that they've obviously made a mistake, attempt to correct when reading it, and the whole thing just makes no sense by the time you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard people joke that jargon is a way for communities to keep out people who haven't yet given enough time to the community ... and I understand that sometimes different communities have &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualsolar.org/vocab&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;slightly incompatible definitions&lt;/a&gt; ... but you really need some sort of a warning for certain cases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in grad school, we had &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1780526547&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a textbook that spent a full chapter defining what they meant by information&lt;/a&gt;.  I thought it was horrible.  I even told the author that when I met him at a conference  (he told me some of my comments would've been more useful, but they had gone to press on the 2nd edtion just weeks before).  But I've since come to understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://igniteshow.com/events/ignite-agu-2012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;why he had to do it&lt;/a&gt; -- as painful as that chapter was to read, it would've been even worse to try to read the whole book without a shared understanding of 'information'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update&lt;/strong&gt; : I said they didn't seem so bad on the surface, and until you actually run into these cases you probably won't appreciate just what a problem is can be.  Although spelling wasn't originally called out by the question, here are a few situations where jargon can look like the problems mentioned so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spelling&lt;/strong&gt; : Some communities will use foreign words or the British spelling of words rather than an Americanized spelling to convey slightly different meaning.  eg, archaelogy's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/provenience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;provenience&lt;/a&gt; to distinguish between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/provenance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;provenance&lt;/a&gt; as used by archives and museums.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grammar&lt;/strong&gt; : Some communities may consider the same term to be singular or plural; eg, 'data' is considered by the scientific community to be the plural of 'datum', while the computer science community considers it to be an abbreviation of 'dataset', a collective noun and therefore singular.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Odd word choices&lt;/strong&gt; : Some communities, especially in the legal field, will assign specific meaning to words or phrases.  eg, Bill Clinton's insistence that he did not have 'sexual relations' with Monica Lewinsky.  In some cases, the specific meaning differs between communities (eg, an earth science, a 'data product' is composed of multiple 'datasets' (individual files; the relationship is reversed in solar physics).  Issues also arise with metaphor in informal speach, such as the American 'kick the bucket' or the British 'Bob's your uncle'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incoherent sentences&lt;/strong&gt; : When combined, the above issues &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; make statements seem incoherent because we &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; we understand the message based on our incorrect assumption that we understood each of the words within the statement.  It can be almost painful to read / listen to / etc.  If as an American, you've never seen early episodes of Jamie Oliver's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Chef&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Naked Chef&lt;/a&gt;, you'll realize that &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/784/67&quot;&gt;American and British cooking terms are different enough to cause significant confusion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with all of those issues, I don't want to say that the above problems never appear in published papers.  I peer-reviewed a paper last year that had many of the issues, and told the editor that I suspected the co-authors (American and British) had never read the paper; they didn't accept the poor spelling and grammar as evidence, but they did accept when I pointed out the co-authors' papers that hadn't been cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1622" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:43:05.177" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:24:14.577" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:36:01.703" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's simply about saving money. Until the 1990s, publishers of academic books and journals employed copy editors to put text into readable form. This, not least, was because the typesetter had to input text by hand, character by character, into the machine. Typesetters, although as capable as anyone else of making unintended errors, had high professional standards, and would find it painful to deliberately embody obvious errors into their work. Since typesetters had to read the material, it was necessary at least to correct errors that would make their life hard. Moreover, the publisher, commissioning editor, copy editor, and typesetter had a shared culture of seeking high quality for the customer who ultimately provided their living: the intended reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the advent of computerization, the expensive copy editor and typesetter could be cut out. The author is instructed to follow the style file, and the editorial job is now principally to check that this has been done---at least well enough for the output to appear at a glance to conform in style to the publisher's standards. Driving this compression, in the same period, were four other strong trends: the expansion of higher education; the increasing specialization of academic works; the establishment of English as the principal medium of publication for authors who are not native speakers of that language; and the measurement of academics' worth by the quantity of their published output. These trends all put pressure on publishers to produce a great multiplicity of titles. With money available to buy books constrained by general economic growth, and with libraries not having the highest priority in university spending, this profusion of titles could only be printed, at affordable prices for the end user, by sacrificing quality to cut costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is an oversimplified description of what has happened diversely in hundreds of publishing houses over the past 25 years or so. It applies particularly to titles with a low print run (say 500 copies), where the costs of copy-editing and typesetting are hard to recover from sales, and not so much to more popular books and journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10691" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T23:36:01.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T01:07:02.697" Score="19" ViewCount="1329" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD research interest is very aligned with my advisor. However, my concern is that if I want to stay in the academia, will my advisor become my competitor in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T21:40:23.010" Title="Competition with your advisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12580" CreationDate="2014-01-11T02:31:15.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Many schools will require you to take remediation courses if they do not feel you meet the course requirements for the graduate program. Some schools will allow you to take classes as a non-degree seeking student, which would provide both a way to prove yourself and also gauge the program and its suitability to you. I would check with the program to see how many credits they accept through this method though.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct. Also, many programs would let an individual in as a provisional student.  You would take undergraduate courses in areas of perceived deficiency, however, they would not count towards your degree program of course so your degree would cost a little more than folks that took the necessary classes as part of an undergraduate CS program. Typically its no more than 3 to 5 classes from what I have seen on average. If you are good enough, you can also test out of prerequisites which is another way to demonstrate mastery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions tend to focus on both math (most will not let you in without at least 3 undergraduate credits of Calculus and 3 credits of Statistics) and computer science classes -due to the fact that many programs are aligned/attached with their respective engineering programs. Each school is a little different. A few that I found worthy of perusing: Arizona State University, University of Chicago -Urbana/Champaign, DePaul University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also since you mentioned MIT here is a snippet of their offerings and policies:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tppserver.mit.edu/53/54.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tppserver.mit.edu/53/54.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current programs include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biomedical Engineering&#xA;Computation for Design and Optimization (CDO)&#xA;Computational and Systems Biology (CSB) &#xA;Medical Engineering and Medical Physics&#xA;Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience&#xA;Program in Polymer Science and Technology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following interdepartmental programs are affiliated with the Engineering Systems Division (ESD):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eaders for Global Operations&#xA;Supply Chain Management (Center for Transportation and Logistics)&#xA;System Design and Management&#xA;Technology and Policy Program&#xA;Technology, Management, and Policy &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic excellence is demonstrated by university grades, as calibrated by the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) that establish a rough comparison between schools. The grades are examined in detail, giving preference to recent performance and subjects relevant to Technology and Policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For North American candidates, a minimum average of B plus is expected. This threshold may be different for other countries where the grading system is harder. For example, a B minus or C plus level from the major French Grandes Ecoles appears comparable. The faculty evaluates the record subjectively, recognizing the diversity of grading practices and personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strong candidates for the program typically score in the top 10 percent of all three GRE areas (verbal, quantitative, and analytic writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T02:31:15.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T02:43:19.677" Score="10" ViewCount="1514" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems it's the second time that I came to ask a question here. But this time the situation is quite different for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've completed my B.S. 2.5 years ago, and entered a PhD program in a top notch school. My advisor is a domain expect in my field and he treats all of us very nicely and friendly, and he does know a hell lot of both academia and industry. I just received my master degree and interned at a uprising company in Silicon Vally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However for academic work, I'm not doing that well. The past 2.5 years I only published in a workshop. In the meanwhile many of my friends have published top conference papers. I feel really stupid that I can't do so. Since my mathematic background is not well to understand some papers, I tried to digest the math while I'm on free time. And now I could understand most of the papers that I read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that, I can't think of new ideas. Every ideas I try fails, constantly. I'm don't know why my mates could do so well in publishing. Because of this, I seriously feel a lot of pressure. Everyday when I wake up, I can feel the heart beats like dumb. However during the internship in the previous summer, everything is so smooth and I enjoyed the life there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, my advisor could let me graduate even if I don't publish. But I really do not want to let him down and waste his funding. The question is, shall I quit my PhD now and receive the offer if the pressure continues? Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10696" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T11:25:10.810" Title="Need suggestions on quitting a computer science PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15632" CreationDate="2014-01-11T03:07:00.603" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well i have been in similar situation like yours. I chose not to give up and that is why i was able to defend my PhD last month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was very frustrating.I switched advisers 4 times. Would you believe that? I was recommended to be expelled from the PhD program. My situation was much worse than yours. I was almost thrown out of the PhD program in 2010. How i was able to change this? Just like you, i interned in Silicon Valley in 2009 and 2010 where my manager sort of liked me and he stood for me. He and even his manager wrote two letters in my favor supporting that i should not be expelled from the PhD program. They argued that i should switch topic and adviser and continue PhD program. All i was looking for was a good adviser who could trust my skills and luckily i got it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, it was fine. The moral of the story is &quot; i did not give up in circumstances much worse than yours.&quot; Does your current adviser like you, have trust in you, have confidence in you? If so, don't worry. Regarding publications, choose mid-tier conferences first to raise your confidence and then go for top-tier conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now on communities like stackoverflow and various forums for hardware and software, discuss your ideas with experts, shape your ideas here. Talk to your contacts in the industry as to what do they think of your problem or in their opinion what are the hot problems to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another lesson is be pro-active. Don't procrastinate or live in your own world. Get up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10697" LastEditorUserId="10697" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T11:25:10.810" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T11:25:10.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T06:22:32.297" Score="2" ViewCount="2038" Body="&lt;p&gt;I majored in information systems and I deeply regret it.. I had an internship where I ended up doing some programming assignments, and I really enjoyed them. But it was also my senior year so I didn't want to switch to CS and spend another 2-3 years..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have been trying to take the gre to get into a software engineering program (UC Irvine and San Jose State University). But it's hard studying for it now that I'm out of school. I'm constantly trying to apply for jobs and trying to study for it. I did pretty bad the first time (148 on both quant and verbal and a 4 on the writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always been bad at these standardized tests. So not sure if I can get better scores the next time (still in the same process of trying to apply for jobs and study).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gotten A's in the programming classes that I've taken. It's just hard to get a junior level software engineering job because companies favor CS majors. As for internships, companies only want currently enrolled students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice? Also consider financial situations etc when giving your input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done a bit of googling and found that UC Irvine offers 2nd bachelors degree in CS or CSE. Anyone know of other schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for masters programs that don't require the gre, I've only found National University here in San Diego. Not sure what those type of schools are like and if they're worth it..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for writing so much, just having a hard time deciding right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T08:26:10.377" Title="Getting a 2nd bachelors or go for a masters?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15642" CreationDate="2014-01-11T06:49:16.240" Score="3" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing my PhD in the US. I am studying electrical engineering with a focus on magnetic sensors and signal processing. I am doing theoretical work (developing a model) and also developing software (mostly MATLAB and LABVIEW) and building hardware for my measurement system. I am also conducting measurements to validate my model. I find the research to be relatively interdisciplinary. I have a few papers (5) in applied physics and engineering journals. I should be graduating soon, within a year hopefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have lately been looking for postdoctoral positions, and I find myself getting more and more interested in earth/atmospheric sciences, particularly analysis of remote sensing data, and also building sensors for remote sensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I need a change of field, as I like to broaden my horizons. I need a fresh perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do I present my skills in a way that increases my chances of getting a postdoc in that field? Wouldn't a candidate with a PhD in earth sciences be preferred over me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10702" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T17:01:55.080" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T17:01:55.080" Title="How do I best present my skills when switching fields from electrical engineering to earth sciences?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15636" CreationDate="2014-01-11T06:52:55.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go for the masters degree. I went from a bachelors in music, to a masters in CS. The rewards of having a masters degree I feel is greater than a bachelors. And you have the ability to do that with the bachelors completed, so take advantage of it. You may have to take a few core CS courses which will extend your schooling a semester. Check the program you are interested in for deficiencies you will need to make up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suggestion. If it is possible for you to get a job at a university with a program you like, they may pay for your classwork to obtain a masters degree. Then you can take your time to complete the degree while working full time.&#xA;It will take you longer to complete the degree, maybe 4 years. But you'll be working, gain experience, maybe get your tuition covered, classes could potentially be in a nearby building, and have flexibilty to take a semester off if needed as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastEditorUserId="10572" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T07:18:35.347" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T07:18:35.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15636" CreationDate="2014-01-11T08:26:10.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a non-CS major (engineer, not electric or mechanical) it doesn't seem so impossible to get into the CS job market, but that is only given that you pursue your own personal/extracurricular coding projects and demonstrate your experience; after all, they carry out technical interviews anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also agree with a Masters degree (with or without work support) over spending so much time on just a bachelors. Furthermore, I don't know any details, but if you have a good GPA or have other raising factors, it could make up for a subpar GRE, but you should really have a good quant score considering its level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T08:26:10.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T08:36:21.673" Score="4" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Software Engineering (BS) graduate with first class honors, and I want to attend a US PhD program on artificial intelligence (international applicant).  I know MS is not a prerequisite for a PhD in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm considering doing MS at a local university (not in US) for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish some papers under my name during that time  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get recommendations from good professors (Currently I don't have anyone who is aware of my work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obtain good mathematical background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As sneak peek on doing &quot;independent research&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think the above given reasons are good reasons for me to follow MS or do you think that is a waste of time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate your opinion as I'm confused on making a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10704" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T01:44:47.963" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T08:39:22.870" Title="Reasons to do MS before applying for US PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15629" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:08:56.250" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might end up as competitors someday.  I've never felt like I was in competition with any of my former students or my own advisor, but some people are hyper-competitive, and others are unlucky enough to end up in awkward situations, so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it could happen, you shouldn't waste time in graduate school worrying about hypothetical future competition.  There are more important things to think about, and you shouldn't let these worries interfere with learning as much as you can from your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, becoming a successful researcher means developing your own research agenda.  Over time, you should drift away from your advisor as you explore your own interests.  (If you don't, it's a bad sign.)  In particular, as you become an established researcher your advisor will no longer play a central role in shaping your scholarly interests, and competition with your advisor will not be much more likely or worrisome than competition with other senior people in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T09:08:56.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15637" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:09:50.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One problem you will need to think about is if you aim for a research job within earth Sciences of a more technical job. The latter may be easier because your knowledge is certainly in demand. The former will be more difficult since you lack an Earth Science background. Note that I do not say impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will you compete&lt;/em&gt;. The answer is definitely not an easy no. But, the position you will be looking for will need to be heavy on, for example, signal processing to make you of interest. Usually working on data is followed by interpretations of the data in terms of Earth Science applications. You will of course have a definite disadvantage there. Having some documented understanding of Earth Sciences will be beneficial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to find a meeting where you could meet specialists and discuss opportunities and also just see what is done out there. If you are in the US then attending the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting in San Francisco (December) would be a good option. In Europe the EGU (European Geophysical Union) meeting in Vienna (April) will be good. There are also more specialized meeting on Remote Sensing. A good way in could be to strike up collaborations where your expertise adds to the mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Building sensors&lt;/em&gt;. The remote sensing sensors are built by electronics experts such as yourself and not by earth Scientists within the earth Science community (departments). Earth Scientists will provide input to what specs a sensor would need but that is usually the dividing line. So the answer to the possibilities lies outside Earth Science, you most likely would be looking at space agencies or physics departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, I would say that your expertise is valued in Earth Science but the total lack of documented knowledge in the subject(s) will make the opportunities smaller. I need to add that Earth Science, in its widest sense is a very broad and covers many different departments/subjects which is why trying to find some persons with research profiles that attract you a good venture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T09:16:42.017" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T09:16:42.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15645" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:11:33.010" Score="9" ViewCount="9672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am citing a Dutch work from the late 19th century. Not surprisingly, the spelling differs from the contemporary spelling. In APA, how would I use [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] in such cases of old spelling? In the guidelines it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/&quot;&gt;advised&lt;/a&gt; to &quot;insert the term sic in italics directly after the mistake&quot;. It seems dull to me, though, to insert [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] after each word that is spelt differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="7121" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T09:57:54.280" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T17:27:42.830" Title="Usages of &quot;sic&quot; when citing old spelling" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15643" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:23:15.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;[sic] is reserved for mistakes as you state. Old spelling is not a mistake. You could, for example use italics for the words that differ from modern to signal to the reader that something is odd. To make such signalling clear you should tell the reader early on that this is how you have chosen to deal with the problem. Alternatively you do not signal at all and simply &quot;warn&quot; the reader that old spelling of words will be included. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If footnotes are allowed you could footnote the spelling the first time it occurs and provide some information on the word. This is more of a service and will not fit all formats for publishing so I mention it as an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can come up with less obtrusive ways to deal with the old spelling. Using [sic] is as far as I can see wrong in the context of what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T09:23:15.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15643" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:26:44.023" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] is only used in the case of an actual error in the quote. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said that they was [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] calling him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in your case, it seems there is no error, just a change in spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would never use it in the following example, where the quote uses a different form of English (British) from the one wrapped around it (American).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While my favorite color is red, she wrote to me 'my favourite colour is green.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if I were quoting Old English, I would not consider it an error within a quote if the quote was written in correct Old English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you should not use [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] unless there is an actual error in the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T09:26:44.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T09:39:35.833" Score="9" ViewCount="21826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm confused by what the term &quot;research experience&quot; actually means in a PhD application. The following examples come into my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working as research assistant with university professor &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publishing research papers in conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work in R&amp;amp;D division of company (industry research)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all examples of the list above count as research experience? Or which ones do? If so, what are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which ones are more important and provide competitive advantage for getting accepted to good university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10704" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-05-12T09:08:56.287" LastActivityDate="2019-05-12T11:39:22.303" Title="What is exactly meant by &quot;research experience&quot; in grad application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15482" CreationDate="2014-01-11T10:21:43.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Man Group plc does just that, particularly through the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance. Further information can be accessed through the institute's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxford-man.ox.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, which also provides contact details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10691" LastEditorUserId="10691" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T14:27:10.523" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:27:10.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2014-01-11T10:43:39.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is better to amuse your addressee than risk causing offence. A journal editor addressed me as &quot;Professor&quot; in all email correspondence, even though I (twice) told him that I was only &quot;Mr&quot;. This amused me and caused no offence. But I can imagine that addressing a real Doctor or Professor as &quot;Mr&quot; would not be well taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10691" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T10:43:39.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15643" CreationDate="2014-01-11T10:53:46.817" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yet another possible way to handle your problem is by way of introduction. In other words, instead of merely saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As Vanmulken wrote: &quot;Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As the Dutch philosopher Vanmulken wrote in 1871: &quot;Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a casual mention of the author's nationality and the time period of the quoted material, most readers will be able to figure out the reason for the &quot;olde&quot; spelling, without drawing special attention to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T10:53:46.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15646" CreationDate="2014-01-11T11:38:11.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It means during your undergraduate or after your undergraduate or in masters (if you are going for a PhD program), what did you do that counts as research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In PhD application, the committee is looking for whether you already have warmed up for research or not because PhD is about taking a problem and doing research which only you could have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10697" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T11:38:11.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15643" CreationDate="2014-01-11T14:20:30.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, such usage of [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] would not technically be correct, and I agree it would be distracting anyway to insert if after each and every applicable word. You could add, in square brackets at the end of the quote, something like [original spelling], similar to this type of usage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise&#xA;  call for italics, such as for emphasis and the use of non-English&#xA;  words (see the Manual of Style). Indicate whether italics were used in&#xA;  the original text or whether they were added later. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And &lt;em&gt;flights of&#xA;  angels&lt;/em&gt; sing thee to thy rest! [emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10680" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T14:20:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15610" CreationDate="2014-01-11T17:21:42.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background comes from Biology so I don't know the details of engineering graduate programs. However, a graduate student is a significant financial investment for the graduate program and advisor. For the student it is the time and emotional investment. Graduate programs that offer funding i.e. stipend and tuition waivers to PhD students do so because it will take the student 4-7 years of full-time+ work to complete their courses and dissertation work. They are typically expected to devote all of their time towards their degree and are discouraged from outside employment. Thus the stipend to cover living expenses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A MS program is typically 2-3 years and varies in requirements from program to program, ranging from just coursework to coursework plus thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The learning curve is steep for someone who has no previous research experience and the time and money that is spent getting the student up to a productive level is significant. In our program, PhD students typically advance to candidacy around the time that a MS student would be finishing the program. Before this time the PhD student and the MS student are working under comparable conditions. This is also the time that if a PhD student were to not be meeting minimum expectations then they would be denied candidacy and exit with a MS degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is less pressure for a PhD student to begin a project that will result in their dissertation early on because they have more time. MS students must find an advisor immediately upon entering the program and thus begin generating something meaningful if they are to complete and defend a thesis. The body of work is much smaller than a PhD student and is typically just a demonstration of their advanced breadth of knowledge in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many advisors in my program view MS students as an extra pair of hands and receive less attention when it comes to mentoring. Their projects will often be small offshoots of a bigger project that a PhD student or post-doc is working on. You must understand that they are treated differently from the beginning not because of discrimination but because research projects take a long time to develop and often meaningful results do not come until a few years of work, which is too long for a MS student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you particular situation, I would say if you are unsure about which program is right for you I would say take some extra time to figure that out. Whether that means get a job in the area you are interested or something else. Just be sure if you sign up for a PhD that you really want to do it. It is a difficult and really trying path, not for the half-hearted. Even for those who are extremely passionate about their work will question their place there and consider quitting during the bad times. Going into a graduate program with a clear focus and interest (PhD or MS) will make things go much smoother. Do not expect to show up and someone tell you what to do, or you may spend 6 months to a year just floating along trying to find your way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now selfishly speaking you are right, you could enter the program as a PhD student and feel it out, but in my opinion I would discourage you from doing that. You will likely waste your time and take longer to get your MS than you would if you went in from the beginning knowing you wanted an MS. You also risk soiling relationships that you could otherwise depend on to help you later in your career. Who knows if the advisor you picked will be angry that you left the lab with a MS when they were expecting a full 5-7 years of work out of you. The people I know who quit their PhD program often quit because the tough times made them realize they liked the idea of having a PhD but didn't really understand what it was going to take to get one. Make sure you know exactly what to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, whatever you decide, pick an advisor very carefully. Advisors like bosses all have a range a personalities. Some are jerks that will call you during dinner time or saturday afternoon asking to meet with you. Some you will consider filing a missing persons report because you haven't been able to get ahold of them in 2 months. Make sure whoever you end up working with goes well with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10383" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T17:21:42.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15655" CreationDate="2014-01-11T17:52:47.693" Score="2" ViewCount="1477" Body="&lt;p&gt;We got this accepted article. A preliminary PDF version of the article is available online. The final look shape of the article is still under processing by journal publisher. However, I forgot to mention my acknowledgement while others did acknowledge their respective funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what should I do now to acknowledge my funding institute? Does it make any difference that I am not the corresponding author of the manuscript? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T18:09:52.450" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T14:45:35.190" Title="How to acknowledge funding after the acceptance of the manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15654" CreationDate="2014-01-11T18:09:27.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you can do is to ask the publisher/journal editor(s) (wherever the paper processing is with the journal in question) to make the addition. Since you are not the first author (assuming first = corresponding) you should probably go through that person. The likelihood of getting such changes done if the paper is published online is uncertain but worth asking about anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having your funding not acknowledged in the paper is not the end of the world so if changes cannot be made, well there are probably more papers coming later. It is of course always a god way to show the funding source where their money ended up. There might be funding sources that request such acknowledgements but there is no law. some authors never acknowledge anything. The fact that you are not first author is not terribly relevant. Any funding source adding to the total funding of the study is of importance to the results; the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, I would not worry too much about it. It was an omission, a mistake; it happened, you make an effort to rectify and you will likely remember it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T18:09:27.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2014-01-11T20:24:57.563" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thrown out of a small mid-western college (not a university) in my first year.  I was persuaded to apply to Harvard about 8 years later. I took the exams and was admitted. I paid my way by working a 40 hr/week full-time job, admittedly against the rules, at an electronics firm throughout the 4 years.  I graduated with a decent, but not outstanding A.B. in a scientific field, and had, incidentally, become Chief Electronics Engineer at the firm where I had been employed.  This was followed by employment in diverse research environments, then in a think-tank in Cambridge and, finally with two offers of tenured full professorship at major universities. I took one, and thus became a full professor at a major university without ever having taken a course in graduate school or having had any prior appointment as Assistant or Associate Professor. I am currently Professor Emeritus and continue to direct PhD candidates. The answer to the question is, therefore, YES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10722" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T20:24:57.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2014-01-11T22:50:23.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another counterexample: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/faculty.php?action=details&amp;amp;id=2847&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Walter Russell Mead&lt;/a&gt;, who joined the Bard faculty in 2005 and received tenure in 2010 if I am not mistaken. Admittedly, Bard does not grant doctorates, but it is regarded as a strong liberal arts college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm under the impression that there are strong incentives to have faculty with terminal degrees for accreditation purposes, but historically it was not unusual and you can find more recent examples, though they certainly fall in the improbable category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T22:50:23.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15600" CreationDate="2014-01-11T23:40:57.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from your question what the status of this &quot;source&quot; is --- i.e., whether it has been published, will be published, or may never be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it has been published, but you just didn't have access to the published version, I would cite the published version.  If you have a quote where you need to cite the page number, I would go ahead and cite the page number from the draft.  Although others might disagree with this practice, I've found it's not uncommon to find page-number citations that are off by a page or two due to citing different versions of a paper, different editions of a book, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it has not been published but is &quot;in the pipeline&quot; (i.e., has been submitted to a journal), you can cite it as &quot;forthcoming&quot;, or as &quot;to appear&quot; if it has been accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is unknown whether it will ever be published (i.e., it is just a work in progress that may or may not be submitted for publication at some later date), you can cite it as &quot;in prep&quot;, &quot;unpublished ms.&quot;, or &quot;personal communication&quot;.  Personally I tend to view &quot;in prep&quot; as meaning &quot;the author intends to publish this at some point but it's far enough in the future that we don't know where or when&quot;, &quot;unpublished ms.&quot; as meaning &quot;there is little chance this will ever be published&quot;, and &quot;personal communication&quot; as &quot;this was not even written as an article-type document but just information conveyed to me via email, conversation, etc.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T23:40:57.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15610" CreationDate="2014-01-11T23:51:41.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's ethical to apply to a PhD program if you have a good-faith belief that you want to get a PhD.  You don't have to be 100% sure, so it's okay to have some lingering doubt, but I wouldn't apply to a PhD if you're just 50/50 on the fence between MA and PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also research the precise nature of the programs you're applying to.  I don't know how it works for engineering, but for MA/PhD in general, some programs have the MA as a clear &quot;milestone&quot; on the way to the PhD: you do coursework and write an MA thesis, and after you finish you move on to do the PhD.  In this kind of program, the PhD is basically the MA plus more, so it can be easier to transition from MA-only to PhD if you later want to (since you won't have &quot;missed anything&quot; by doing the MA), and also easier to gracefully exit with an MA even if you begin by aiming for a PhD (because you won't have wasted any time on &quot;PhD only&quot; activities).  In other programs, MA and PhD programs are different from the start, which makes the up-front decision more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, learning more about the specific programs may give you more information about what the differences between MA and PhD options are within each program, which may help you make your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask faculty and/or students in these programs about these issues.  In particular you might want to get a sense of the &quot;culture&quot; around switching between MA and PhD, which is likely to be specific to each department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T23:51:41.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15646" CreationDate="2014-01-11T23:59:41.740" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say all of those count as &quot;research experience&quot;.  Which ones will be most valued depends on the nature of the program you're applying to, and the exact nature of the work you did.  In general, though, the more independent your work was, the better, and the more generic it was, the worse.  So if you were a research assistant but all you did was photocopy documents, that will not earn you many points.  If you were a research assistant who, e.g., conducted experiments, did fieldwork, participated in lab meetings, whatever, those will be worth more.  If you actually contributed to the writing of papers or presentation at conferences, even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, the more that what you did was something other people could not have done (i.e., it required your special expertise, not just &quot;more hands'), the &quot;better&quot; it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T23:59:41.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T02:38:59.607" Score="10" ViewCount="1931" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a serious problem with HW usually submitted by students.  A considerable fraction of the students are not neat with their HWs. By neat  I mean respecting the guide lines I provided them to follow, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A4-size paper, do not use detached papers from a notebook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use only pencil, so you don't scratch  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be organized, not sloppy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write clearly, so it is readable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately most of the students insist on not following these rules, or they will do it for some time, then they will start being sloppy again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one facing this issue? If not, how can one solve it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T05:48:15.013" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T00:15:34.480" Title="Nightmares and frustrations with students' sloppy homework" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T05:07:13.820" Score="7" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing up a PhD and looking toward teaching. I have a Masters in Math, Masters in Computer Science and am finishing up a PhD in Computational Science. I am wondering how important research is to academia jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love to teach and am very good at it and I could honestly see myself teaching for the rest of my life and not doing research (writing paper, presenting at conferences, etc is very stressful for me). My question is how important is research to getting a job in academia. For example, I see one person at my university is an associate professor and does no have a PhD. Is this person publishing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are full-time professors at community colleges publishing and active in on-going research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there ways to become a full-time, tenured professor without a great track record for research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10577" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T22:53:04.053" Title="How necessary is research for a collegiate teaching job?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15610" CreationDate="2014-01-12T06:04:16.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a situation similar to the one you are in now and am currently seeking a phd in engineering, so I hope I can provide some insight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question &quot;what effect does this have on a person's adviser/professors?&quot;, my answer is, of course, &lt;strong&gt;the greatness of the effect varies by situation, but in general is significant&lt;/strong&gt;. Different programs are different: in some programs you find an advisor immediately, in others you rotate labs for a period, and in others you do not select an advisor until sometime after your first semester. If you immediately have an advisor and begin working on research the first semester, as opposed to selecting an advisor/lab and beginning contributing to the research effort in the second year, then the effect on the advisor is greater. Depending on the project, it make take a lot of time for you to actually become useful in a lab, and this time relies &lt;strong&gt;heavily on resources&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;money spent paying you and training you on equipment, and the time of your advisor and of senior lab members getting you acquainted with the lab and the research&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you should expect positive references from your advisor if you leave the program immediately after having earning your master's degree. However, you and your advisor may be exceptional. It is just like an other personal relationship. The relationships you have with others in your field and program may not suffer; usually, that is because they have invested less time, money, and effort into you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In engineering and most of the hard sciences (in the US), masters students have a stipend that at least covers the cost of tuition and phd students usually have the cost of tuition covered and additional stipend money. A program that doesn't at least cover the cost of tuition for masters students is highly suspicious to me, and in my opinion, not a place that has enough resources to best educate you. I'm now curious of what programs you're looking at... in the US? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work involved in gaining a phd and a masters degree may be different. Some masters students are graduated after they pass a comprehensive test based on their coursework and are not required to write a thesis and work in research, therefore they do not publish, or help any faculty obtain grants. I can see this as a reason why masters students are offered less money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scholarships are available. Depending on your field of engineering: what is the value of obtaining a doctorate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with you: seeking a PhD solely to get a Masters/funding is dishonest. It's only January, &lt;strong&gt;simply applying for a phd is always okay&lt;/strong&gt; if you're not sure which degree you want. You have months to learn more about the program and its expectations, and your own goals. When it comes time to decide whether to accept a position in a phd program, you should know that, from my point of view, not being 100% sure you'll finish the phd is normal for people, even people that accept. If you are a traditional phd candidate, coming immediately from four or five years in undergrad, you may be in your early 20's. It may be difficult to make decisions and to be certain of the next 5-7 years of your life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, working on a &lt;strong&gt;phd program without being nearly 100% committed may be very difficult for you&lt;/strong&gt;. Your lack of commitment may be obvious to others that you work with. In the sciences, publishing and keeping a finger on the pulse of your field, is a time commitment many people do not expect or comprehend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10738" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T06:04:16.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15666" CreationDate="2014-01-12T06:06:22.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible.  Of course, you will probably teach more than you would if you were in a &quot;traditional&quot; professhorship (with teaching and research), but if you love teaching, maybe that is great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/What-Graduate-Students-Want-to/131903/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from the Chronicle of Higher Education has some useful statements, to wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;research and writing are not part of a faculty member's typical workday at a two-year college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The good news is that the vast majority of two-year colleges do not require faculty members to publish a single word in order to earn tenure.  [...] most community colleges do still offer tenure. In many state systems, earning tenure is simply a matter of doing your job in a satisfactory manner for a set period of time—generally, three to five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also positions at four-year liberal-arts colleges that are primarily teaching-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastEditorUserId="9041" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T22:53:04.053" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T22:53:04.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15597" CreationDate="2014-01-12T06:08:06.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to explain on MathOverflow how you ran into the problem. If solving this is key in solving an important problem in some area you may get more attention and someone whose research interests are a good fit may want to put in some time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for co-authorship my feeling is that the person who solves that particular problem should be the sole author (although you could be acknowledged for suggesting the problem). Then you can cite him/her in your work (as a paper of private communication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T06:08:06.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15610" CreationDate="2014-01-12T06:19:24.023" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the idea of waiting and getting a job is problematic for many fields, especially &quot;hard&quot; ones like math or physics. I just wouldn't want my mind to be all fuzzy and have forgotten what I learned throughout college. This is certainly done successfully quite often, but if you plan on at least getting a Master's, I don't see the use in waiting and atrophying/backtracking. On the ethical question, I think you have to ask that to yourself and find what your moral code is (I am a nihilist). Maybe philosophy.stackexchange could help you with this! What is unclear to me is whether someone like you who feels somewhat unsure is even less likely at all to graduate with a PhD than someone who goes in thinking R1 Tenure or death. Your waffling MIGHT even be a sign of mental health (a GOOD thing) is what I'm getting at. I'd say screw it and act rationally, take what I could.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastEditorUserId="10739" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T20:22:23.953" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T20:22:23.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15486" CreationDate="2014-01-12T07:10:46.153" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the United States of America's NIH and NSF, a grant is a contractual agreement for work that will be done, with payments in anticipation of the work. An award is the actual funds. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2012/nihgps_ch5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;description of the NIH Notice of Award&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/manuals/gpm05_131/gpm2.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one from NSF&lt;/a&gt; may illustrate the distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Here is an additional document from NIH entitled, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/awardconditions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Awards Conditions and Information for NIH Grants&lt;/a&gt;&quot; that underscores the distinction I've already made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9748" LastEditorUserId="9748" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T02:22:06.293" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T02:22:06.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-12T07:51:28.157" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could simply be students doing the minimum in order to get by. The solution is to raise the minimum. To do that, start denying points for non-compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Suresh wrote in his comment, electronic submission might be appropriate. In my classes I require that whatever students submit be word-processed written in a specific font. If the students do not follow the instructions then I treat them as if they never submitted at all. As you can imagine, seeing this one time in class gets everyone to pay attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, eliminate hand-writing if you can. Some students simply have very poor penmanship so it's best to structure things so they can use a computer. Ideally, save the paper and submit electronically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot eliminate hand writing them make it clear that if you cannot read (or understand) what they wrote then their score will reflect that. I have issues with some students writing in English (not their first language) and I make it very clear that I'm not here to judge their English but if I cannot understand their intention without guessing, I will simply mark it as gibberish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T07:51:28.157" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T08:03:47.480" Score="2" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked the following question by someone who was interested in pursuing a career in devops, but wanted to learn things in a more formal environment such as a masters degree. Is there / Can anyone recommend any graduate program in the US that would help prepare said person for a career in DevOps? He already has a Bachelor in Computer Science in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10742" LastEditorUserId="10742" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T09:50:14.487" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T19:42:10.977" Title="Graduate program focusing on DevOps" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-12T08:31:43.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, reasonable deductions should solve your problem. Be aware though that being a big stickler will make people less likely to take your classes. I did not hear about A4 paper before this post. I understand the uniformity, but from the other side of the desk its just one more thing to worry about. I am not saying your policies are right or wrong (whatever that may mean), but that aggressive application will drive away students who are not trapped into taking your classes, by simple rational choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T08:31:43.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15675" CreationDate="2014-01-12T09:03:01.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schools in the US operate on a department basis. Almost all big research institutions will offer research work in the subject field. If your friend doesn't know anything about where the subject he is trying to study is thought, I think he is wasting his time on a graduate degree. Graduate study is research intensive work that requires more commitment on the student's side then it does on the professor's or school's side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10706" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T09:03:01.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15689" CreationDate="2014-01-12T09:12:39.623" Score="6" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an incoming freshman and I am in a tight spot in terms of picking my major. I personally want to work with companies like Tesla and SpaceX who use code as a basis of physical things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to double major in Physics and CS, but is that a good idea, or should I minor in one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not just want to be a programmer sitting in an office coding all day, I want to build software that creates actual physical things like Tesla cars (fully electric car, everything from suspension to performance is powered by code). When I get a Masters, what would be most appropriate? A degree in Applied Physics or Computational Physics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10743" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T15:34:09.303" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T07:53:49.250" Title="Trouble picking a major" Tags="&lt;major&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-12T11:08:56.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can use a system of assessment criteria/rubrics for setting the grade of your class, you can include neatness (with a description of what is entailed) in your criteria. In academia as well as workplace, being able to follow instructions is valued highly. you can therefore build in these aspects in the assessment by pointing at the fact that clarity and other aspects is t strive for. If students realize the sloppiness affects their grade, I am sure most will take more care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on revising the grading criteria for bachelor's theses in my department. I have created a &quot;Instruction for authors&quot; that details the form and format of the thesis and text. In my case, I am considering making following these &quot;instructions&quot; a prerequisite to get the thesis graded. Our system allows students to revise their work and resubmit so another aspect is to build in that failing to follow the instructions will also lower the grade by one step (on an A-F scale).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since grading systems and ways to handle examination varies widely, you will need to see if any of these ideas can be transferred but the main point is to make sure students understand that breaking the neatness rules set up have negative effects. And, that there is a logical reason for why neatness is a valid grading criteria regardless of the topic of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T11:08:56.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T11:18:19.367" Score="2" ViewCount="982" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am presently really frustrated in getting a supervisor and admission into PhD Computer Science in any University in Europe or US. I recently graduated with MSc Geospatial Science with distinction (cgpa 4.8/5) and I have Bachelors in Computer Science. Ever since I finished my masters have been seeking a PhD admission in computer science in any average schools in europe or US, but all to no avail. I have 3 research papers in top international journal, I even had a research proposal of likely topic relating to Mobile Computing &amp;amp; Mobile GIS, and i seriously think the frustration is weighing me down, please is there something am not doing right or there is any other method of getting a supervisor apart from contacting them through email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10745" LastEditorUserId="10745" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T11:47:57.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T07:30:15.170" Title="Frustration in getting admission into PhD Computer Science, with background MSc Geospatial Science &amp; BTech Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-01-17T12:42:05.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T12:04:50.713" Score="9" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if it was a standalone question then the answer would be an unequivocal &quot;Yes&quot;. So I will present you my situation: while applying to graduate school I had mentioned that two of my papers are under submission at 2 different conferences (I had given the names of the conferences as well). One of them got accepted today and the other one was rejected a few days back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the thing is, I feel that informing them about the acceptance might increase my chances considering this is my first paper and I'm an undergrad currently (is this a myth?). But the issue is, if I inform the committees about the accepted paper alone then I feel guilty about the fact that I'm deliberately concealing information about the rejected paper. And if I don't, I feel I might not be making any use of the fact that the paper got accepted somewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone tell me what could be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T12:31:43.460" Title="Should I inform the graduate admissions committees (of all the Universities I have applied to) of the acceptance of one of my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2014-01-12T12:29:57.540" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The vector graphics language &lt;a href=&quot;http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;Asymptote&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a very nice tool for both 2D and 3D images. From its website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asymptote is a powerful descriptive vector graphics language that&#xA;  provides a natural coordinate-based framework for technical drawing.&#xA;  Labels and equations are typeset with LaTeX, for high-quality&#xA;  PostScript output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checkout a &lt;a href=&quot;http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/&quot;&gt;gallery&lt;/a&gt; for samples. Just like TeX, you can &quot;program&quot; your image and obtain exactly what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T12:29:57.540" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T13:13:32.230" Score="9" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a CS master student in a German university. Here we have to do a master project in one semester and the master thesis in another semester, so in total 12 months. In the project you start in defining and exploring the problem space and so on and building a preliminary software framework that will help you more in the thesis. In the thesis you build on that to expand your work and finally summarize everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem started with the problem definition. My supervisor didn't have an idea of what to work on, so he just came up with a fancy idea and told me to work on without knowing if it's logical or it can be applied or not. So I started working on that problem and trying to reformulate the problem into a logical project and thesis. I spent 8 months on that and finally I built the software framework and so on. However after finishing the work, I found that continuing with the problem in the same formulation as-is won't be logical and would make everything as rubbish work. So I found a better formulation to the problem that makes it much much better and would lead to publish a paper in a conference or a workshop. However my new formulation cancels out 75% of my previous work. This way I won't have much of stuff to write in my master thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent my proposal to my advisor for the thesis and I'm still looking for his opinion, but I'm very depressed with what happened to me. Having a better advisor with a far clearer idea wouldn't have led me to this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is what I'm going through normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T13:16:45.457" Title="My master thesis is going in the wrong direction" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15685" CreationDate="2014-01-12T14:07:48.670" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a researcher, you should expect to fail.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you will frequently finding yourself coming up with ideas that don't pan out, results that suggest that what you did previously was wrong, or that a particular problem can't be solved yet (you need to do time-consuming step X before you can tackle interesting problem Y). Encountering these situations doesn't mean that what you've done is wrong, it means that you're doing research. (If everything you do is always successful, I'd argue you're doing development, as opposed to research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success as a research comes from learning to cope with and overcome adversity. So I'd suggest that you use this as a learning experience. Rather than be depressed about it, try to work around your problems. It will be a valuable tool that will stay with you for the rest of your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with respect to handle the master's thesis itself, this is something that you need to discuss with a number of people: your &lt;em&gt;Betreuer&lt;/em&gt; (the person in charge of the thesis), as well as the head of the institute plus the person in charge of supervising students in your department. This is particularly important because your &lt;em&gt;Betreuer&lt;/em&gt; is not normally allowed to grade your thesis, unless the &lt;em&gt;Betreuer&lt;/em&gt; is a professor. Therefore, the people doing the grading may not be aware of the issues you had in the process. However, I would advise you to frame your questions in a positive way: that is, ask &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I do to make sure I end up with a successful thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rather than &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I get myself out of this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is much more likely to result in a satisfactory resolution than the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T15:33:40.297" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T15:33:40.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15610" CreationDate="2014-01-12T14:59:29.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What effect does this have on a person's adviser/professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really depends on where the funding is coming from. For example in the UK you might get a 3 year grant for a PhD student since PhD programs are fixed at 3 years. If the student switches to a Masters the I cannot appoint another student, the grant &quot;fails&quot; and the PI (and possibly the department) may be unable to apply to that funding agency again. This can also happen in the US, but student fellowships and student duration is a little more flexible. Externally funded PhD students who do not finish are a real problem for PIs. For students who are internally funded the impact is generally less, but departments can still hold it against the PI since the money was &quot;wasted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from funding, there is also the issue of the research. Some projects have a big ramp up times/difficult data collection. For some projects the work you do during the first year might make it impossible for another student to continue on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about references, future relationships, etc? Is it taken negatively or as an insult, or cutting ties, to bow out with the lower degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. I wouldn't say it is an insult (although it matters where you go at the end), but leaving on good terms and getting a good reference can be hard since you didn't complete what you set out to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The way they are worded, they seem extremely interested in good PhD candidates, and not at all interested in Masters students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, many departments only want to fund PhD students. Of course it becomes difficult to convince applicants who want a Masters to not apply to the PhD program and get funding. Some departments offer different degrees for their Masters students (e.g., an MSc) and their PhD students who &quot;drop out&quot; (e.g., MPhil). The idea being this will dissuade students from applying for a funded PhD when all they want is a Masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not considering seeking a PhD solely to get a Masters/funding, because that's just outright dishonest and I wouldn't stomach such deceit. But, what might the ethics be of not being certain whether you want a PhD or a Masters, but applying for a PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is highly unethical to lie/mislead people during the admissions process. One of your goals during the admissions process is to convince the department that you really want to do a PhD. While some students are unethical and lie, many students really believe they &quot;need&quot; to get a PhD and still drop out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T14:59:29.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15679" CreationDate="2014-01-12T15:13:45.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that double majors are for the most part a waste of your valuable time. This is coming from someone who did a double major. Man do I wish I could go back in time and take out some of the boring classes I took just to satisfy the beuracratic requirements of my second major for more interesting graduate and upper level classes of my choosing (some of which actually being in that major's field) and more time spent on extracurricular research/internship projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice. Outside of the first major, take the classes that interest you. If that allows you to get a second major or minor, great! If you have to take a bunch of basic classes that don't interest you just to satisfy the requirements of the second major, don't do it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually you can use a personal statement or CV to show people that you are the right one for the job or graduate program you want. Degrees in Applied Physics and Computational Physics are close enough that it shouldn't matter if you do go the double major route (I'd lean towards applied Physics given your interests though, comp physics doesn't say much more than your CS degree already does). However, in my opinion if you are set on C.S. and are just looking to do something related to the physical sciences/engineering, I would get a C.S. degree and then take a bunch of physics classes that interest you and build a portfolio of physics related projects you have worked on. Maybe apply to physics REUs that sound exciting. Many schools have undergrad research projects on electric, hydrogen and solar vehicles, so look for those if thats what excites you, and if your university doesn't have them look for summer opportunities that do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say for at least 90% of students, a double major is a bad idea. I'd discourage it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there are some cases where a double major may be a good idea. Say your first major is History and its your love and passion, but midway through school you realize that you likely won't get a good job with that major. Getting a second major may be important in this situation because the fields are almost complete opposites, but if the majors are somewhat related I still hold on to my general opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T15:23:59.600" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T15:23:59.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-12T15:47:03.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you should lower your standards a bit, but make harsh deductions if they are not followed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No pen is a bit strict, you could exchange it for no scratch marks. If they do a rough draft and then write a final copy in pen, that should be fine. Most mathematicians do not write in pencil.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A4 paper is a bit strict if you are teaching a class in the USA (since it isn't the standard size), in many countries it would be reasonable though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;legible writing - all solutions that cannot be read will receive a zero, please type your solutions if you have poor penmanship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd like to add removing points for a lack of staple. loose second pages get lost easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T15:47:03.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15629" CreationDate="2014-01-12T15:58:05.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really only two places academics &quot;compete&quot;: funding and jobs. Since you are only a PhD student now, it is unlikely you will be applying for the same jobs as your advisor in the future since your advisor has such a big head start. By the time you close the gap, you will likely have made a name for yourself. As for funding, this is somewhat field dependent. For example in the US in an NIH funded field you might get a 3 year post doctoral NRSA and a 4 year k99/R00 after your PhD before you would likely be in direct competition with your advisor, and then you would have the &quot;new investigator&quot; benefit. Following this road you would be 12 years out before you are really in direct competition on &quot;equal&quot; footing. In other fields you might be competing for funding from the same pool of money earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of close ties is that you can collaborate with your advisor after you finish the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T15:58:05.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T16:48:00.187" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a CS master student. During my early days looking for a thesis I noticed two categories of projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects a about completely new idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects about improving an existing technical concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the first one I mean completely new stuff (something I'm doing now as my thesis). Such projects require intensive thinking to formulate them and put them into academic contexts and logics. While a lot of the time will be used to try and test new things as well as justyfing and putting the results into proper academic context and logic, very few time could be spent learning &lt;em&gt;advanced stuff&lt;/em&gt; regarding your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other kinds of projects one would need to improve the running time of an algorithm or its performance. Such projects would require the student to go into very deep stuff regarding his field and become really advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I'm doing the first kinds of projects, I started to feel unconfident about myself and my skills when I see how the skills of other students who worked on the second type became. The reason behind that is I feel that my effort doesn't show up to people when they will probably read my thesis. Because they won't see advanced mathematics and algorithms as in the second type. How should I deal with this personal problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T03:31:28.823" Title="Hard new ideas VS Hard technical ideas?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15693" CreationDate="2014-01-12T18:07:36.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the answer is: Provide the landscape of your field, and show how the new-ground you are covering is missed by other people who passed the question by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your thesis is a branch of of another topic, then show where the branching occurs, and how people on the dominant branch missed it; If your topic is truly novel, then show the problem its solving and why you found it interesting enough to spend a year or more of your life on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that intuitively you know the answers to these questions; get them out and people will understand why your thesis has worth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;90% of the advice from your &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15457/how-should-i-deal-with-discouragement-looking-at-others-success&quot;&gt;last question&lt;/a&gt; still applies; It's incredibly difficult to do an apples to apples comparison between degrees, even under the same supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of this question in my mind, which prevents it from being a duplicate, is how to present new-ground while avoiding comparisons to other work which has a stronger theoretical background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A important part of the answer is almost certainly going to be 'Sit down and &lt;strong&gt;talk&lt;/strong&gt; with your supervisor about this concern'. That's what they are there for. They will have a clear view of how this will fit into the landscape of the field, and will be able to help you avoid the feelings of theoretical inadequacy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T18:07:36.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15398" CreationDate="2014-01-12T18:23:38.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's wonderful to see undergraduates with a desire to publish! I want to encourage you and also give a few tips that I learned when I first began publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the right journal is crucial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, see what journals in your field publish articles similar to yours, in terms of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;topic area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type and format of article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tone and voice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;authors (any non-PhD authored articles?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;degree of originality (some leading journals often focus on major ground-breaking articles)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, can you see your article fitting into the journal? Look at 4-6 issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also take the reverse approach -- find a few articles similar to yours and see where they published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, look at the journal's home page. Do they have an annual student issue? (Some do, especially those published by associations.) A few journals reach out more to new authors and indicate this on their web sites. These would be good candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, look closely at the author guidelines and make sure your article fits in terms of length, format, etc. You will also see guidelines on how to submit a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have some more general advice. There is a considerable process of socialization and mentorship involved. The way to get this mentorship is to build relationships with some of your professors. Talk to them after class or during office hours. Get to know who is really interested in developing students in their scholarship. Ask them for advice. I know you already tried to do this, but it sounds like a lot of the people you asked were not in your field. It's very important to get this advice from your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also ways to approach professors that tend to more successful outcomes. Humility is important as is the ability to take constructive criticism. You clearly have put a lot of energy into this paper and it is an excellent first step on your pathway to being published. But it may be that you are not yet quite ready to contribute to the field. If not, you want to know where you need to grow and develop. This is really difficult to hear and we have all had to accept rejection in our journey with publication. Don't let rejection stop you, if that happens. Make sure you pick someone supportive and be open to the outcome, as long as the person can give you something constructive to work on. If the feedback sounds reasonable to you, go away and work on the issue identified. Keep learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10754" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T18:23:38.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15699" CreationDate="2014-01-12T18:49:24.937" Score="13" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thesis  (Canadian Research Based, Computer Science), collects three separate research projects (with a tenuous connecting thread). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While collating these projects into a single document, I have looked into other theses coming out of my university and others in my field, and have realized that it's looking like my thesis is going to be very large. Probably twice the average length of others in my field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which makes me wonder: Did I do &lt;strong&gt;too much&lt;/strong&gt; work for a thesis? Should I have pushed my supervisor, cancelled the final proposed project (#3) and graduated on the strength of the first two? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be graduating 6 months after my target deadline, with multiple publications, and so burnt out that my initial plan to pursue a PhD has collapsed. Can't change the past, so I'm asking here mostly out of curiosity, and for other future students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T17:47:30.423" Title="Is there such a thing as too much work for a Master's Thesis?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15707" CreationDate="2014-01-12T18:58:24.387" Score="4" ViewCount="1509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in my final undergraduate year and I really want to go to graduate school, but there are some problems: I'm not sure if I can get recommendation letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;lt; rant&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;My current advisor is insane and unfair. She didn't let me take part in a conference paper that she and another student worked on. That was a very good chance for me to improve my chances of getting to graduate school, but now it's lost. She slightly modified the Caesar cipher and the other student just wrote a program that demonstrates her &quot;algorithm&quot;, and it took him several days, while I could've done that in 4-8 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second time around, I decided(took her advice) to take the research category in a course where we have to make a project my the end of the semester. She didn't guide me or provide me with any references or resources that could help me. She just tells me &quot;write it and I'll read it&quot; or &quot;look it up and understand it&quot;. I spent most the semester trying to get my head around the research topic and implement the algorithms, until I finally had to change to the development category because I was going to fail the course otherwise. Now she tells me that &quot;she lost trust in me&quot; and that she won't waste her time with me again.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;lt; /rant&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously my relationship with her is not very good, but what can I do now? Is doing research(or &quot;research&quot; in this case) at the undergraduate level mandatory for applying to graduate programs? My previous advisor liked me and my relationship with him was very good, but he left. If I could find him, can I get a recommendation letter from him? There is also another professor that is no longer at my school, can I get a recommendation letter from him as well? I've never worked on something with them or been their assistant, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10756" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T21:57:43.940" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T21:57:43.940" Title="Getting letters of recommendation for a master's degree if I don't get along with my current advisor" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15697" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:14:55.913" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear how to judge the &quot;size&quot; of a thesis (page length or word count is probably not very good), but one can clearly do too much research for a Masters or Doctorate. That said a factor of two difference is not really that big since there is always going to be a healthy overlap between the &quot;largest&quot; Master thesis and the &quot;smallest&quot; PhD thesis. If your Masters thesis is larger than the average PhD thesis and larger than the vast majority of Masters theses, then it is possibly too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student you need to be asking yourself why you are getting the qualification. Most students put in much more work than that which is required to simply graduate. You should make sure you push your supervisor to help you achieve your goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T19:14:55.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:32:16.427" Score="6" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a extensive paper for my study. It's about some computational stuff, has 5 chapters and will be - all in all - roughly 60 pages long. Reading some papers and theses I noticed, that often people start each chapter with some kind of an overview, describing what's going to happen next. Though on the one hand, I find this helpful sometimes, on the other hand it pulls me out off the flow of the actual work. In some papers, it seems even that certain things, which are going to come up are announced repeatedly and I feel a bit over-informed of the papers structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I'd like to know: &lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should each chapter start with such an overview and - if yes -, when and to what extent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10753" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T21:51:04.200" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T02:07:15.200" Title="Should each chapter in an extensive paper start with an overview of the chapter's contents?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15675" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:42:10.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;hmmm like you stated DevOps is relatively new.  I have not seen DevOps being taught as a specific discipline; usually the DevOp skill set comes from the software engineering side of the fence in the US. Is he in the US or in India? See if any of these tickle his fancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://unomaha.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2013-2014/Graduate-Catalog/Graduate-Degree-Programs-Certificates-Minors/Management-Information-Systems/Management-Information-Systems-MS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://unomaha.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2013-2014/Graduate-Catalog/Graduate-Degree-Programs-Certificates-Minors/Management-Information-Systems/Management-Information-Systems-MS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://unomaha.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2013-2014/Graduate-Catalog/Graduate-Degree-Programs-Certificates-Minors/Computer-Science/Computer-Science-Concentrations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://unomaha.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2013-2014/Graduate-Catalog/Graduate-Degree-Programs-Certificates-Minors/Computer-Science/Computer-Science-Concentrations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's two versions of this degree, a professional one and a research one; the link below is of the research variety.  This institution also has campuses in London, Brussels, Dubai, Paris and Sydney along with a few other locations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/eng/admissions/grad/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bu.edu/eng/admissions/grad/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Illinois has a partnership with State Farm Insurance&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ece.illinois.edu/students/grad/overview/ms.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ece.illinois.edu/students/grad/overview/ms.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MastersDegrees.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MastersDegrees.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Wisconsin has a partnership with Microsoft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.wisc.edu/academic-programs/graduate-program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.wisc.edu/academic-programs/graduate-program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T19:42:10.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15398" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:42:22.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, for one, have a paper published in a reaonsable quality journal (not impact factor, still well indexed and well recognized by the community), I'm the only author and I was in 4th year of my university, at the beginning of my masters, when I submitted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about the fact people don't know your name. Papers get reviewed by their text, not by their authors (well, some reviewers don't follow this rule, but from my experience, these are exceptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T19:42:22.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2014-01-12T20:18:13.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I took over being the Graphics Editor / Typesetter of one journal, I realized that there used to be no proofreading stage for the articles! I of course insisted that the articels are proofread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However, we give the authors only a limited amount of time to claim any corrections, but not less than 2 weeks.&lt;/em&gt; This is because the journal is quite small and we need to &quot;schedule&quot; the articles into the issues to make the issues reasonably equal in size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after the approval, small changes appear; the Chief Editor goes quickly through the text just before publishing to catch last small typos and mistakes: missing full stops after figures' captions, corrupted text-flow on the page (widows/orphans standing out badly etc.), wrong capilatization, and stuff like this. However, we never modify the text itself in this phase, not even by adding or removing an article (since this can change the meaning of the text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, by law, nobody is allowed to publish anything signed by your name without your approval. The reality is that this rule is violated quite often and it's difficult to do something about it. As well, remember that by submitting an article, you agree with the policy of the journal that can state for instance: &lt;em&gt;&quot;By submitting an article, you give your permission for it to be published, and you confirm that all authors have agreed to this. The Editor's Office is allowed to make modification to the text without the authors' agreement.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T20:18:13.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2014-01-12T20:39:27.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in some other answers, and with some addendum.&#xA;Five examples of the same text in different styles (please, excuse my English):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may now apply (15) to (13). From (12) we then see that (14) is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may now apply Eq. (15) to Eq. (13). From Eq. (12) we then see that Eq. (14) is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may now apply Eq. 15 to Eq. 13. From Eq. 12 we then see that Eq. 14 is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may now apply Equation (15) to Equation (13). From Equation (12) we then see that Equation (14) is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may now apply Equation 15 to Equation 13. From Equation 12 we then see that Equation 14 is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You can substitute &quot;Eq.&quot; by &quot;Ineq.&quot; etc., whatever you want.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such chains of links to equations are much common than for figures or tables. Now tell me in Examples 2 and 3 where the sentences stard and end. Yes, after a while, one sees that the sentence ends after &quot;(13)&quot;, but it takes a lot of time to realize that. In Examples 4 and 5, the text gets unnecessarily long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;equations should be refered solely by their number in parentheses&lt;/strong&gt;, references of course solely in brackets. For figures, enumerated lists, examples, sections, theorems etc., one should spell out the name (abbreviated or not, that's a personal taste) and add the number without any parentheses, even if it originally had some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a numbered list: &lt;em&gt;&quot;(1) apple; (2) banana&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is still refered as: &lt;em&gt;&quot;In Item 2 we see that banana is a banana.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; If you refer items a lot, it's worth giving them a style that doesn't clash with the one for equations, like (a), (b), (c), ... or (i), (ii), (iii); then you can refer the items without the word &quot;Item&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some solutions of (3) were obtained by Doe in [11]; we list them in Table 5 and they are plotted in Figure 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T20:39:27.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15764" CreationDate="2014-01-12T20:52:36.683" Score="0" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;In EndNote, I know there's an option to automatically download PDF files for the references you have in your library. Is there any way to do the same thing in some kind of non-commercial software, like for example Mendeley or BibDesk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T17:29:30.940" Title="Automatically, and freely, download PDFs for a set of references" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;databases&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-04-20T06:42:18.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15700" CreationDate="2014-01-12T21:41:38.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single right answer for this. A short chapter may not need a paragraph outlining the structure and content, while some chapters may have a quite complicated structure. Use the structure of the chapter to help you decide. The more sections and subsections, and the more you try to do in a chapter, the more useful an introduction should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you include such a description, it should provide the user with the key information they should be looking for as they read. What level of description that should be is up to you to decide; there is no universal standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T21:41:38.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15698" CreationDate="2014-01-12T21:53:38.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presenting a weak conference paper is only very slightly better than presenting no paper at all. It may even be worse, if someone evaluating your application saw the presentation and came away unimpressed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no requirement that you get a letter from someone like your present advisor. Such a relationship is clearly not productive for either of you, and including a letter would definitely not help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to get letters from people who can comment on your work skills, so your old advisor &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be acceptable. Other people with whom you have worked—so long as it's technical in origin, even if it's not explicitly research—could also write letters for you. If you can't get three such letters, then you should get them from people who know you beyond taking classes with them. Only if you exhaust all other possibilities should you rely on people who know you only from classwork.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;strong&gt;find yourself a new advisor&lt;/strong&gt;, if at all possible. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T21:53:38.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15700" CreationDate="2014-01-12T22:05:00.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach is that it is almost always useful to have some form of overview, even for extremely short papers. However, this overview can range from one or more paragraphs to a single sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a short paper each paragraph usually presents one or more results. I would try then to start each paragraph with a short overview sentence regarding what the sub-question is, then present the results, and sometimes conclude with a summary sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that an overview does not necessarily have to interrupt the flow of a paper. In many cases, if the paper is constructed such that it follows a single narrative, it is possible for the overview to establish a conceptual connection between sections. In its simplest form this would be &quot;Given that we found X and Y, we now asked whether Z&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T01:34:48.823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T01:34:48.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2014-01-12T22:29:55.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;TikZ/PGF is great when you get it to work. However, designing your stuff in this language can really be frustrating at times. If you want something a little bit easier to learn, but you still want to program your illustrations rather than drawing them yourself, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://processing.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Processing&lt;/a&gt;. There are a lot of excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://processing.org/tutorials/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tutorials&lt;/a&gt; on this language, some of them specifically aimed towards people with no prior programming experience (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://hello.processing.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to check out what some examples of what Processing is capable of (and how you can do it yourself), take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://processing.org/examples/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;. As an added bonus, if you learn processing, you can later use it for creating animations, interactive applications, games, and similar things, some of which might be useful in a scientific context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some random examples of what Processing can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GSPDO.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yyXVa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/34528189&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; for an example of an animation with Processing, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/66775875&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; for a tutorial on how to use Processing for data visualization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastEditorUserId="141" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T13:50:46.303" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T13:50:46.303" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T13:55:19.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T22:54:36.677" Score="5" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if there are academics (such as mathematicians) who use welfare checks to free themselves up to just do research? That is, as an alternative to the ivory tower, either due to preference or failure to meet selection criteria. How successful have they been without an official post? I feel like this would be an ideal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastEditorUserId="10739" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T23:16:59.420" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T23:59:39.593" Title="Welfare academics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15710" CreationDate="2014-01-12T23:59:39.593" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what at all is &quot;ideal&quot; about this plan, to be frank. Social welfare recipients usually receive only enough money to ensure subsistence, if even that much. Moreover, in places like the US, there are major time limits placed on the amount of time someone can be on unemployment &quot;insurance&quot; and receive such funds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if you do get such money, it would almost certainly not be on an ongoing basis, nor would it be a particularly comfortable life, unless you have sufficient additional resources (other working family members) to supplement welfare payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, being unaffiliated with any institution means that you don't have access to the resources of such institutions (journal access, computer and laboratory access, and so on). Obtaining these resources without institutional affiliations can be very expensive, and could completely negate the benefits of being &quot;free of the ivory tower.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T23:59:39.593" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T00:34:35.163" Score="15" ViewCount="1386" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read general recommendations on how to choose a PhD programme/advisor, it seems that many academics agree that one of the most important factors is the reputation of the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next year, I may have the opportunity to undertake a PhD under the supervision of a &quot;superstar&quot; faculty who is considered an authority in his field. However, the professor in question recently moved to a university where the official language of instruction is one that I don't speak (though I would be allowed to write my thesis in english), and thus I would most likely not be able to gain teaching experience during this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, most job offers for postdoctoral or tenure-track professor positions that I see advertised online require a teaching statement and that one of the letters of recommendation address the teaching ability of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of this, my question is the following: Is teaching experience for entry level academic jobs so important that it is always better to have a fair amount of it while completing a PhD no matter how well-reputed your potential supervisor could be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10761" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:44:37.140" Title="How to balance academic reputation of PhD supervisor and teaching experience" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15712" CreationDate="2014-01-13T01:44:20.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go where you can do the best research, and don't worry about teaching experience. I had no teaching experience whatsoever when I was hired as an assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could depend on your field: in my field (theoretical high-energy physics), postdoc applications almost never ask for a teaching statement, and postdocs don't teach. Junior faculty jobs do require a teaching statement, but my impression is that it's one of the less important elements of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T01:44:20.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15700" CreationDate="2014-01-13T02:07:15.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last time I wrote a long paper with a multistep argument, I endowed each &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;section&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (there were 15 or 16 of those and the total article length was 87 pages in the 12pt font) with the &quot;objective statement&quot; (&lt;em&gt;In this section we show that there exists a partition of the set $E$ into &quot;cells&quot; with the following properties ...&lt;/em&gt;, etc.). Moreover, I italicized these objectives. The reasons I did it were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) some of the sections were devoted to things that are known to experts but hardly to the &quot;general audience&quot;, so which sections to read and which to skip would heavily depend on the reader's general background&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) If you read the italic font alone, you can see the general flow of the proof without computations or technical details. You may then concentrate on &quot;most suspicious&quot; or &quot;least known&quot; places first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had mixed feelings about doing so too, but it looks like the readers have liked it so far. In general, the main question you should ask yourself is whether what you do will facilitate the reading. Everything else (paper economy, stylistic beauty, etc.) is secondary. If you expect 20-50 people to read what you wrote and if you can spare each of them mere 20 minutes (the minimal time needed to verify the ubiquitous phrase &quot;direct computations yield&quot;), you advance the general human progress by 7-14 hours already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that what I did was different from the &quot;Chapter&quot; approach because I put only one complete logical step into each section. Also it was not about the Lemma/Sublemma/... division, which more often than not reflects the technical convenience rather than the logical structure. Some sections contained several lemmata needed to carry out the corresponding logical step and some lemmas were done in two steps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing I want to say is that, when reading, most people, including myself, prefer a repetition to an omission, and being over-informed to being under-informed, so few people, if any, will criticize you for being too clear or too slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T02:07:15.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15712" CreationDate="2014-01-13T02:47:19.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do it! If you are worrying about the teaching experience you can always spend a summer at at an outreach program teaching motivated high school students, underserved community members, ect. That kind of teaching experience can lead to a very strong teaching statement even with no college teaching experience. But anyways, you should focus on your research, while faculty positions generally do require some proof that you aren't an awful teacher, postdocs for the most part do not. Often a postdoc is a person's first time teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T02:47:19.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15712" CreationDate="2014-01-13T03:14:00.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd advise caution: completing a PhD with no teaching experience is risky, as you're putting all your eggs in the &quot;research&quot; basket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other answers mentioned, there certainly are jobs that don't necessarily require teaching experience.  These are likely to be jobs in places where research is paramount; probably the top-tier research universities.  There is massive competition for these jobs; the number of such jobs in such a year is at best a few percent of the number of new PhDs.  Only the most successful researchers will have a chance at getting them, and if you don't turn out to be one of them (or discover you just don't enjoy research that much), you'll be out of luck in this arena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At most of the remaining institutions, teaching is more important and experience will be valued, and you'll be in competition with candidates who have substantial experience.  So if you don't have any, you may be out of luck here too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't share MHH's confidence that alternative teaching activities such as high school outreach will be viewed as similarly valuable by a search committee.  Community college teaching might, but it also involves a higher level of responsibility and time commitment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would leave only the bottom of the barrel of academic jobs: those who don't care too much about research accomplishments &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; teaching experience, and just need a warm body with a PhD.  These won't be nice jobs: they'll have high teaching loads, low pay, and limited instructional support; and even so there's intense competition for them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining option would be to leave academia for industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, if you aren't able to gain meaningful teaching experience, you'll be committing yourself to aiming for the most difficult jobs to get, without much of a fallback plan (within academia) if that doesn't work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: My experience is limited to the US, and mostly in mathematics.  Things may be different elsewhere.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T03:14:00.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T04:56:41.397" Score="3" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a college sophomore and I am debating transferring out of my current school, Hunter college. My GPA is 3.56 and I am a CS and psychology major, concentration of behavioral neuroscience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have always been interested in research but the resources in my school seems very tight and my overall experience has been very unsatisfying. My ultimate goal is to try out for MD/PhD program with a background in BCI (Brain computer interface) but my school offers no program in any close proximation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should I transfer out or hold on until the end of my 4 years? And also is my GPA reasonable to transfer into better schools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/new-york-university-2785&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NYU&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/wake-forest-university-2978&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WakeForest University&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should I focus on graduating from my current school or plan to transfer to a more prestigious school?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10766" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T16:25:09.407" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T16:25:09.407" Title="conflicted whether to transfer or not" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-04T17:56:45.980" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-13T05:46:23.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @earthling stated above, requiring word-processing (possibly also electronic submission) will eliminate the majority of the problems.This requirement gives you standard paper size, no scratches, and legible printing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Enforcing this is relatively stright-forward, if a little harsh. Automatically deduct a set portion of the available credit for any assignment that is not typed. Make this very clear on the first day of class and &lt;em&gt;follow up with the promised consequences!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, being required to type homework will not automatically improve students' ability to write in an organized manner, nor will it improve grammar and sentence structure. Strongly encourage students to utilize the writing lab/tutoring center for assistance with organization and clarity. This will probably work better when homework consists of several larger assignments rather than multiple smaller assignments. Knowing that a significant chunk of their score rests on a single assignment may motivate students to seek help. Also point out (assuming it is true at your univeristy!) that students who seek feedback on writing almost always score higher than those who do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T05:46:23.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15728" CreationDate="2014-01-13T08:35:03.483" Score="6" ViewCount="24769" Body="&lt;p&gt;If grad schools says the deadline is Jan. 15th, do I have to submit application before Jan. 15th? Or I can still submit on Jan. 15th?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10770" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T10:28:38.220" Title="Can I submit application on the deadline?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15727" CreationDate="2014-01-13T09:04:01.823" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most commonly the deadline is inclusive, i.e., &quot;January 15&quot; means that the deadline is &quot;at some moment during January 15&quot;. What does this mean can vary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;online&lt;/strong&gt; applications, it's usually 23:59:59.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;mailed&lt;/strong&gt; applications, there are two options and exactly one of them is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;either the &lt;em&gt;poststamp&lt;/em&gt; has to be January 15;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or it has to &lt;em&gt;arrive to the institution&lt;/em&gt; by January 15.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For applications you &lt;strong&gt;deliver in person&lt;/strong&gt;, usually the &lt;em&gt;opening hours&lt;/em&gt; of the office where you have to bring it apply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, it should be specified in the conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please remember that &lt;strong&gt;timezones&lt;/strong&gt; can play a role here, and everything is &lt;em&gt;in the timezone of the institution where you apply&lt;/em&gt; unless stated otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/From comments/&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;If you doubt the precise conditions, just call them or e-mail them and ask for clarification.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It will cost you less than solving any troubles afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T11:02:22.637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T11:02:22.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15683" CreationDate="2014-01-13T12:31:43.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Norris' comment is right.  I will elaborate a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad, having an accepted paper is much more significant than having a rejected paper (i.e., the net perception is very positive even if they learn about both).  Furthermore, rejection is probably temporary (you'll probably resubmit after improving it and it may get accepted) whereas acceptance is permanent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell them about the acceptance.  If they ask directly, tell them about the rejection.  But there is no reason to feel obligated to broadcast a paper's rejection.  The people reviewing your application certainly don't list their paper rejections when they apply for a job or a grant!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T12:31:43.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T13:49:27.160" Score="4" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an independent researcher working outside of academia with no past track record so far. Is it still possible to apply for research grants anyway, and how should I go about doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have a very good research plan, but the catch is, I need some funding before I can carry them out. How can I convince grant agencies to give me a chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10776" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:21:32.747" Title="Grant funding for independent researcher with no past track record" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:09:37.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make their choices easy by giving details and examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all the required materials, show the students where they can buy, what specification they should look for (2B pencil, 0.5mm mechanical pencil, etc.), and how much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For organization and legible writing, provide a few examples on what you consider as organized and legible. Annotate with your comments if necessary. You can then attach a &lt;strong&gt;learner's contract&lt;/strong&gt; at the end, let the students sign to attest that they can produce work with comparable legibility and clear assignment of section titles, etc. This should be done once, at the beginning of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This contract and printed example are necessary. The examples allow the students to judge their work more objectively, the contract instills a sense of seriousness and responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distribute an assignment coversheet with checklist on it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the groundwork is laid, give each of them a homework cover page whenever you give an assignment. The page should at least list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A place for student to write down their name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course code/title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assignment title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due date/time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A checklist of your requirements for student to check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The checklist can contain your &lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;measurable&lt;/strong&gt; criteria. After each criteria, attached a box that, if checked, would indicate the criterion is fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students will have to check all these by themselves, and then staple the front page to the assignment before handing it in. In terms of how to deal with unchecked items, it's all up to you, as long as the consequences are clearly printed on this cover sheet. It can range from &quot;If any of these item is unchecked, your work will not be higher than a B-&quot; to attaching corresponding points to be taken away for each violation, then you can let them pick which to forfeit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you had someone checked the box without being organized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. I specify that all the assignments need to be typed so I never had the problem of self-claimed organization that actually looks messy. My checklist consists of mostly clearly yes-or-no's: &quot;1-inch margin,&quot; &quot;mentioned sample size in the Methods,&quot; &quot;did not report p-value as zero,&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your question did prompt me to think about a method we use when hiring interviewers. When we hire interviewers, we sometimes give them a sheet with numbers (0-9), some common phrases (such as &quot;Not application,&quot; &quot;N/A,&quot;) and words likely causing confusion (-y vs. -g, double t, etc.) printed on them. Then, we ask the candidate to copy the numbers and words by hand. Those forms are life savers whenever we're confused by their hand writing on the data collection sheet. We have used them in a pinch when entering data, and we have used them to advise data collectors who show deteriorating handwriting quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess you may modify your standard a bit. Instead of showing them some pre-existing copies of assignment, give them a couple pages of sentences and formulas and ask them to neatly copy them. Afterwards, if you're happy with the quality, they may proceed to sign the contract. Keep both writing sample and the signed contract together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this prevent students from blindly checking the box? Not entirely. But at least now you have a good sample and a bad sample from the same student on the file, and it'd be easier to point out what went wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T18:04:37.120" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T18:04:37.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15712" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:44:37.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematics in many language is the same, it's not that hard to learn if the language is reasonably close to what you know (French, Italian, Spanish, German are close to English). In any case, learning how to speak Foreigner is always a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So applies for research universities applications. If you are interested in teaching for liberal arts colleges, they really want a US teaching experience. Other countries typically have much better prepared students entering university, so your experience would be less interesting for them, because you would know how to teach more advanced students than the ones they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10772" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:44:37.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15595" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:45:03.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The role of a reviewer is clear: Review the scientific quality of the paper, no the language one, as long as the language is &quot;bearable&quot;. The problem is on the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much is published. Journals are missing good Language Editors, but as well good Copy Editors and good Typesetters. If they have these people and they are good, they have to deal with too much work to do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:45:03.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15697" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:48:53.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard for me to understand some of your thinking. If your MSc thesis has already resulted in &quot;multiple&quot; publications, that means that you are actually closer to getting a PHD than most of your co-students, who have to start from scratch. A few weeks of rest, should be sufficient for you to actually recover from your &quot;burnout&quot;, although it is quite unusual for students to actually refer to burnout from a MSC thesis. As multiple others (before me) have stated, the stress in a REAL job could be several orders of magnitude larger than the stress related with a bachelor or MSc degree (PHD is another case altogether). Also, the fact that a MSc thesis has provided multiple publications is also a good indicator that a) your supervisor knows what he is doing (which is a huge PLUS) b) you probably have what it takes to actually be successful in a future PHD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if you found the work for your thesis boring, stressful or simply too much for you, perhaps a PHD is not for you (and vice-versa). So, think it over (after some weeks of rest) on what you actually want. I am sure you will make the right choice (whatever that is) for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T14:54:10.803" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:54:10.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15732" CreationDate="2014-01-13T15:13:04.513" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an enormous range of different types of grants.  Some are from large government agencies that are correspondingly bureaucratic; others are from private foundations that may take an idiosyncratic approach to deciding who to fund.  So the answer may depend on what sort of funding you are looking for.  To a first approximation, it will be difficult to get government funding as a truly independent researcher (without some affiliation with a university, non-profit agency, think tank, industrial lab, etc.).  That would be the first place I'd start, by trying to get an affiliation that would allow you to apply for grants through an established institution.  If you can't convince anyone to let you do this, then your grant application is probably hopeless anyway, and if you can, then it will be a big help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second issue is how literally you mean you have &quot;no track record&quot;.  If you have a minor track record (e.g., a degree and some publications in related areas), then it might be possible.  If you literally have no track record at all (no relevant degree, no history of related work, no relevant prior accomplishments, nothing), then it will probably be impossible to get a grant.  Even if you have a great idea, there would be no evidence that you are actually capable of carrying it out.  Maybe it's not strictly impossible - theoretically you could present an idea so obviously great that merely coming up with the idea would itself be strong evidence of competence - but it's highly unlikely to be worth the effort of applying if you have no track record at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T15:13:04.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15732" CreationDate="2014-01-13T15:26:26.193" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, this is going to sting a bit, but, practically, this is not going to happen, no matter how brilliant your research idea and plan is. In practice, the &lt;strong&gt;scientific credentials&lt;/strong&gt; of the proposal author / proposed principal investigator are very important to project / grant acceptance. Having no affiliation with a well-reputed research institution is already a strike against you, but not having a track record is a knockout criterion for each funding agency I am aware of. To give you one concrete example, the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) will, according to their published rules, not even scientifically review a proposal with an &lt;em&gt;insufficiently experienced principal investigator&lt;/em&gt;. From what I have heard, other agencies have similar formal rules. In short: you &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; need a co-proposer with sufficient standing in your field, otherwise you are essentially wasting your time preparing the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this seems unfair to you, but try to see it from the point of view of the funding agency. While &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; may have strong confidence in you and your project, you are a huge risk factor to the agency. You have no demonstrated experience in leading a project, maybe not even in participating in one, you are not embedded into on of the traditional research environments, you do not necessarily have the resources to even conduct the research project, and, from a legal point of view, if you just take the provided grants and run away, there is no organisation that the funding agency can sue to get their money back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T15:26:26.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15740" CreationDate="2014-01-13T15:59:22.850" Score="24" ViewCount="2307" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9523/is-it-acceptable-as-referee-to-contact-an-author-on-a-paper-you-review&quot;&gt;This is related to this question&lt;/a&gt;, but it is more a special case of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reviewed a manuscript, which was submitted to a reputable traditional journal. The journal has a single-blind review system. I liked the manuscript a lot, as it was closely related to my research interests. However, the authors did not do a great job in reporting the manuscript, and I provided a long review with several suggestions for improving the report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggested major revisions, but the editor rejected the paper. That is ok for me; it is the editor's responsibility to take such decisions. What is important is that the process is now closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By re-reading my review together with the other two referee's reviews, I came up with a couple other suggestions that I truly believe would benefit to the manuscript. &lt;strong&gt;Would it be a bad practice to contact the authors now that the paper is no longer under review?&lt;/strong&gt; I do not mind unveiling my identity, and I would do that only because I want to advance the research in the paper. That is, I just want to help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T20:15:21.103" Title="Is it appropriate as a referee to contact an author after the editor rejected the manuscript?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15739" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:17:57.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a good thing to do, &lt;strong&gt;since the reviewing process for this journal is over&lt;/strong&gt;. I would certainly appreciate it if I where the author of that article (passed the frustration that generally follows article rejection).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's almost certain that it will be submitted somewhere else, so your (free) inputs will benefit the authors and the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is valid, of course, only if you are &lt;strong&gt;not reviewer again&lt;/strong&gt; in the next submission, you should definitely decline if it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T16:34:09.390" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:34:09.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15732" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:21:32.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, depending on what you mean by &quot;No Past Track Record&quot;, this is going to be hard if not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many granting agencies, in their grant reviews, have a section on the environment/institution/etc. Essentially, this is asking &quot;Are you in a place that can get this research done&quot;. And it often extends to more than just practical questions - do you have institutional support? Is there a sufficient mentorship scheme for new investigators, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most of these, many grant reviewers will look at an entirely independent scientist and say &quot;No.&quot; Or score you rather poorly, which in today's funding environment is essentially the same as saying No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much you need, there are however a number of Kickstarter-esq crowd funding platforms for science. These might be a place to make your case directly, if the amount of money you need is modest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:21:32.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15739" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:34:07.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a paper has been either accepted or rejected and is, so to speak, through the system, there is nothing that should prevent contact between author and reviewer. One problem is that it is sometimes difficult as a reviewer to know if a paper has been rejected since such decisions are not declared openly and are known only to the journal and the author(s). It is the non-appearance of the finished product that signals rejection. This is true even if you provided a suggestion for rejection since you do not know what the second (or more) reviewer suggested and how the editors decided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you should probably go through the editor therefore you contact the author to make sure you do not complicate the processing of a paper that might still be under consideration within the journal. Contacting the editor and explaining your intent will clear all such potential &quot;hazards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:34:07.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15697" CreationDate="2014-01-13T17:47:30.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As with many questions in academia, the answer is &quot;It depends.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Too much&lt;/em&gt; is a subjective term, but I think it probable that you did not put &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; work into your thesis, in that the extra work should not cause the work to be of lesser quality, nor should you be judged negatively on the basis of having a larger than average thesis. Although there are limits as to how much extra work is beneficial and how much may be perceived as an attempt at padding; in general, having done more research will be a plus no matter what your plans for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;--and this is the 'it depends' part--you have probably put too much work into the thesis if the following apply to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have lost the continuity and focus of your work. (How tenuous is the connection between your several projects? Is it a long stretch to connect them in the same work, or are they just  different views/portions of the same problem?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You had to neglect other important aspects of your life to complete the third project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have done research that would better have waited for the PhD program. (This point is debatable; the amount of work that is needed for a successful PhD thesis is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8747/7921&quot;&gt;hotly debated topic&lt;/a&gt;, and it is not clear whether it is generally an advantage to have done doctoral level research now.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are facing a long-term burnout as a result of over-work during your Master thesis. Don't jump to this conclusion too quickly--take some time off, and give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing except be lazy and have fun. Even a week of this total vacation can do wonders to relieve the stress that we over-achievers put on ourselves!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately only you can decide whether or not you have put in &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; work on your Master's thesis. But before you decide that this is the case (and also before you give up on attaining a PhD), take a break, recuperate, and give yourself a chance to see the world through less-stressed eyes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T17:47:30.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15757" CreationDate="2014-01-13T18:11:27.820" Score="36" ViewCount="13219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am starting a post-doc in Cognitive Neuroscience and I am interested in publishing my work in high impact journals (e.g., Nature, Science, Behavioral and Brain Science). I have already published review articles in not-so-high impact journals, and I would like to know your thoughts and tips for publishing in high-impact journals. I will be responsible for submitting these papers to these journals and I will be seeing them through to the end. Ay helpful advice and tips would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10780" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2016-09-06T18:15:27.233" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T00:17:55.720" Title="What are the super cool tricks to getting published in high impact journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2014-01-13T19:19:04.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are publishing in emerging fields where much research has not been done, you have good chance to get published, even though its not groundbreaking. First movers are always at an advantage. Just like patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="21166" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T12:22:53.927" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T12:22:53.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15751" CreationDate="2014-01-13T21:01:30.020" Score="9" ViewCount="1270" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many interviews does a typical good liberal arts school do at the Joint Mathematical Meetings every year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I'm on the math job market for the first time this year.  For the most part I applied to postdocs, but I also applied to a handful of very good liberal arts places this year, any of which I would prefer to a postdoc.  I assume that with my rather short publication list and teaching history I'm a long shot, but I do have a couple interviews lined up.  Really I'm just trying to gauge whether I have a nonzero chance at an offer (assuming not, but it will be good practice for a few years down the road).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10785" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:12:04.227" Title="JMM interviews?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15750" CreationDate="2014-01-13T22:28:33.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Employment Center runs for three and a half days with time increments down to 15/20 minutes. So you could physically expect three interviews an hour for about 30 hours for a physical (and totally absurd) upper bound of roughly 100. But from what I have seen going through this Employment Center three times is 30-40 is more realistic and I have seen schools do as few as 15-20. Often they also do phone/Skype interviews with interesting candidates who did not attend the Joint Meetings. This gives you a rough estimate of how long the list you find yourself on is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you have a short publication list and teaching history. If they are willing to talk to you they have already decided that you are interesting enough to spend their time with you. So be ready to tell them quickly why you are worth more of their time and why you are interested in their school (have an answer for this one). Also do not forget the thank you e-mails afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T22:28:33.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2014-01-13T23:02:13.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been indicated from other answers, it is generally not acceptable, or a good idea. When you reference materials you need to specific so that the reader cane trace your sources. There is, however, one exception that I can think of and it concerns thematic or special issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, some journals issue issues devoted to papers adhering to specific topic or theme. This can be a set of invited papers around a specific question, or a selection of papers coming out from a workshop or symposia session. Often such issues are tied together by an editorial explaining the theme and the contributions of the individual papers to that theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to reference such issues rather than the individual papers if the issue can be seen as contributing a collective view. This can, for example, be a state of the art view of the topic. The point is that the issue becomes similar to, for example, an edited book rather than individual papers and the referencing concerns the collective contribution of papers, not the individual. As soon as something needs to be sourced from a paper within the issue the paper needs to be referenced, the issue reference is then not sufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is possible to reference entire journal issues but only for very specific (or actually general) purposes, not to replace referencing a bunch of individual paper from which ideas have been gained. This makes the use quite limited and pointing at a source for information rather than the information itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T23:07:33.973" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T23:07:33.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T06:46:49.060" Score="25" ViewCount="3860" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am consistently facing this issue: NO one (&lt;em&gt;except some reviewers when I submit a manuscript&lt;/em&gt;) provides me with a detailed/core criticism of my PhD work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor usually gives me general advice; sometimes he tries his best to understand and propose some trial-and-error approaches for the problem (most often I have tried these approaches before he proposes them). I simply &lt;strong&gt;cannot find someone who will smack me on the face&lt;/strong&gt; and tell me the truth about my research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After chatting with another PhD student, I found he has the same issue. However, he told me it is because PhD students have very specialised knowledge on a particular topic that makes it very hard – even for supervisors – to comment on it in a detailed manner. Well I still can't believe that's true in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should you do when you can't find smack-on-the.face feedback? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2016-02-12T07:20:40.133" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T12:29:27.827" Title="What should a PhD student do when he receives no feedback on his work except some reviews on his papers?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15682" CreationDate="2014-01-14T07:30:15.170" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At all decent universities. Ph.D. admission is competitive. Apply following the official procedures to a dozen universities. Make sure your application file really is complete and on time at each. You will not be admitted based on contacting faculty informally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10799" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T07:30:15.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2014-01-14T07:33:57.977" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;High impact journals, or in other word, top ranked journals (based on IF) are those publishing the state-of-the-art research works with high percentage of novelty and originality. In my &lt;strong&gt;own opinion&lt;/strong&gt; following tips are very important in getting into the high impact journals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a real challenging problem whose solution/amendment significantly impacts on the domain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formulate the problem (using mathematical modeling, visualization, or empirical experiment depending on the domain) and let peers/reviewers see the significance of the problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Propose a solution with high degree of novelty in a way that has not been undertaken before for the same problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughout the research try to follow the conventions of research in your domain in the highest possible level, especially when it comes to evaluation and validation of your work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In data collection phase, try to follow the most appropriate approaches and use accurate tools to measure/quantify. Maybe looking at similar papers can help you in this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid silly mistakes. Usually reviewers do not expect to see silly mistakes in the work. If you make small obvious mistakes, how can reviewers ensure the rest of your work is error-free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show high level of confidence in understanding and expertise over the domain. If you need to review related works in your paper, try to select those closely related to your work; not any work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present your work nicely. Avoid English errors (no grammar and no spelling). Use professional drawing tools to draw high quality figures, draw nice tables, use proper sizing for objects in the paper, not too big, not to small.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is an approach by some young authors that leave some works to be done in revisions stage, which is not correct to me. Don't send incomplete work to any high quality journal. There will hardly be any chance to correct mistakes. The review is more to evaluate the significance of the work, the novelty, relevance to the journal, and research practice presented in the paper. Reviewers are not English proof reader and their job is not to correct you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be lot more tips that I will compile as I noticed. Hope it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T19:13:31.960" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T19:13:31.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15755" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:49:03.620" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first reaction is: why do you need a smack in the face? Research education aims to educate PhD students to become independent researchers able to perform research, publish it, write applications for new research supervise new PhD students etc. Once you pass the PhD defence the only smack in the face you get is when your papers are rejected, your funding application is rejected etc. Towards the end of a PhD it is normal that your knowledge in your topic stretches farther than that of your advisor. From this perspective, a smack in the face is not the most obvious test of your progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand if you feel you do not receive feedback on your work. In an ideal situation you should be able to discuss your science and use such feedback to improve. Your advisor should be able to read your manuscripts and provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve it before publication (or if your write a monograph, before you defend). Now all advisor-students relationships are different since we deal with personalities. To some extent one need to adapt and find ones own way in that relationship, I know this from my own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although your situation is perhaps not ideal, it does not sound as it is truly problematic. It sounds like you get more feedback than you can expect after your PhD. If you need specific feedback on any part of the research process, you should look around to see if any other persons can provide such. For PhD students getting papers past peer review is the hardest hurdle to cross and as such the sign of the worth of your research. Most advisors try to help students reach this level so the worst smack in the face they consider is the dreaded rejection. If you get your material past peer review, you are really doing (perhaps more than) fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T08:49:03.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15739" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:10:58.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should ask yourself the question: &quot;do I want to exchange or collaborate with these guys ?&quot; When I read things such as (I'm quoting you)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;it was closely related to my research interests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I came out with a couple other suggestions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I care for the research in the topic to advance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I would like to let the authors contact me back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the feeling that you might well answer &quot;yes&quot;, it really sounds like a good prospect for them and for you. In that case, you really should create a contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revealing yourself as the referee X of their freshly rejected paper is however a bit hazardous, because you don't know how they have felt the reviewing process. They might believe that you, referee X, also sent privately words to the editor suggesting rejection. You won't be able to know that until the authors know you and trust you, this is why it seems more reasonable to remain, at least for a while, under cover. If after some time exchanging with them you feel confident enough that there is no resentment, you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; reveal yourself, but I would suggest not to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is therefore not solved at all: how to contact them? An idea: Read through their website, homepages, previous publications and look for keywords that you would use for a google search. Enter them in google and try to obtain some of these web pages or articles among the first google results. Then write an email starting by a short introduction of yourself and explaining (very) briefly how you found their names and stating that you are interesting in exchanging with them. Use some keywords as hooks, show enthusiasm and suggest some ideas, but do it in such a way, they don't figure out that you very much more about them. That will be an acrobatic e-mail!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10030" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T09:10:58.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15705" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:22:40.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As suggested by @embert in the comments to my original question, this is possible with the help of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citavi.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citavi&lt;/a&gt;. After you've imported your references, go to &quot;References&quot; -&gt; &quot;Check availability and find full text&quot; (the process is explained &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citavi.com/sub/manual4/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From initial testing, this feature only seems to work when you have the DOI number for the articles. However, when you do, Citavi finds and downloads the PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T12:22:40.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15868" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:56:59.690" Score="15" ViewCount="1826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked for a publicly funded body. Whilst there I designed and developed a number of epidemiological surveillance applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have left the organisation but since then I have noticed that some of my ex-coworkers have started to publish papers based on the data collected by the systems that I designed without crediting myself in the publication (in at least two cases directly referring to my system in the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the publications wouldn't be possible without the systems I developed would I have any remit to ask for credit and/or authorship? How is this viewed any different from a co-worker using someone's lab results without credit for their own publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10803" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:06:01.930" Title="How to handle not being credited for research software development in papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:31:07.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;yEd&lt;/a&gt; for flow charts. You can easily arrange lot's of components, which is quite a pain if the tool does not provide functionality to do that (Inkscape does for example, but yEd does this even better). Also, the connections between components remain fixed, so rearranging a graph does not require you to redraw the connections. The tool is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:31:07.060" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-14T15:31:07.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15755" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:37:31.720" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the real world (after graduation), the only time you are likely to get feedback like that is from a friend or (if you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; lucky) a mentor.  I suggest asking yourself: &quot;of all the people I know, who would be the most likely to understand this after I explain it to him/her?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, invite that person over (or out) to share beer and pizza, or whatever people sit and talk over where you are.  (&lt;em&gt;coffee and cake?&lt;/em&gt;)  Sit and talk.  Ask what (s)he's doing, be genuinely interested and express your appreciation. Then tell what you're doing.  If they say &quot;that sounds interesting,&quot; ask if they'd be willing to read and tell you &lt;em&gt;what they really think&lt;/em&gt; about it.  If not, ask yourself the question in the previous paragraph again, and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to say &quot;the reason I asked you over is because I thought you'd be able to understand what I'm doing, and I just wanted to talk about it with you.&quot;  It's true, and almost anyone would be pleased to hear that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10805" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:37:31.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15739" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:47:03.637" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One important consideration is whether the paper is publicly available (for example, being circulated on the web as a preprint).  If it is, then it's perfectly reasonable to get in touch with the authors and offer suggestions.  You don't need to address the question of how you heard about the paper if you don't want to.  If you do want to reveal yourself as a reviewer, I think it's fine, but I've run across people who disagree about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's much trickier if the existence of the paper is itself confidential.  If for some reason I submitted a paper without circulating it publicly, and then after rejection a referee contacted me privately with detailed suggestions for improvement, I would feel uncomfortable.  It would look a little too much like an attempt to become involved in the research or writing, and I would wonder whether the referee might take offense if I just said &quot;thanks for the suggestions&quot; and didn't engage in further discussion or collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have confidential knowledge about a paper, then you must not even appear to be using it for your own benefit.  For example, you can't ask to start a collaboration or try to find out more about this research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's no public preprint, then it's safest to make contact through the editor, and at the very least you should ask the editor about what you intend to do (the editor may well object, and in any case you need to avoid seeming secretive about it).  Even if the editor approves, you should be careful, since innocent actions may be misinterpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:47:03.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:53:20.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Not more than he wants.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must be very sensitive to when you annoy him, and &lt;strong&gt;don't annoy him&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if he wants his interactions with and about you not to be flavored by his (occasional) annoyance, which is rare, he's still human, and they will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other answer will be defective, not knowing how much will annoy him.  Many don't mind, or even enjoy, responding to one email per day, and some will find that obnoxious.  You might even try asking him something like &quot;if I have questions between our meetings, and want to email you, is that OK?&quot;  You can probably judge from his response a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, realize that &lt;strong&gt;NOT ALL EMAILS ARE THE SAME&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2-sentence email that is clear, concise, to the point, and asks a single question with a definite answer that he already knows and can give you a 2-word answer &quot;counts&quot; much less than a long, rambling mini-essay that asks him to analyze, or worse, research something and give a multi-part reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I try to make sure each email asks a single question, and can be read and answered in 2 minutes or less (preferably 30 seconds).  I also find I get a lot more (and more useful) answers to such emails than when I let them get longer.  Also, I find that as long as I keep to that format, even 2 or 3 emails in a day is not too many for most people.  OTOH, even one rambling email per week is too many for most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10805" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:53:20.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:23:26.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to academia in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What most posters here are avoiding mentioning is that what you are describing is pretty common in some departments (Philosophy, Religious Studies, Biology, Cosmology, and most others ending with -ology or &quot;Studies&quot;), and pretty uncommon in others (Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Mathematics, Linguistics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, on some campuses it is more common than on others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should discuss it with other PhD candidates in your department on your campus, &lt;strong&gt;just&lt;/strong&gt; to find out how common it is there.  Only then can you know whether it's a good idea to &quot;make it an issue.&quot;  If it is common, making it an issue will almost never improve your situation, and you should either learn to tolerate and minimize it, or else find another place.  If it is not common, you have a chance that making an issue of it might improve the situation, but even then, I suggest trying a gentle approach first, since if it works, the results are better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I found that &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; responding with a judgement of my own about &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; practice or lack of practice (which certainly seemed silly to me), and as much humor as I could muster, over (a fairly short) time greatly reduced the frequency of obnoxious comments. If you are consistently &quot;classy&quot;, &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; people will sooner or later realize they are being low-class, and at least moderate their behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With humor, be very sure to avoid being even slightly nasty.  Keep it in good taste. Never joke about the other person's religion, no matter how harmless the joke is.  Never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10805" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T16:23:26.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15773" CreationDate="2014-01-14T17:28:04.483" Score="19" ViewCount="1348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student applying in different places for postdoctoral positions and asking various faculties for position. It happened that, due to limited resources, I am not getting much response. However more than one faculty (from different institutes all in Europe) gave positive responses. The caveat is, I have to jointly write a research proposal with them for grant application/some fellowships. Whatever be the outcome of the proposal(s), I am starting my collaboration with them soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dilemma starts here. The fellowships each one suggested are very competitive. Those faculties themselves informed me that getting those fellowships became more difficult in the present financial situation. Now is it ethical to do apply for multiple funding agencies in this way? Fortunately, each of them suggested applying for different fellowships. I am slightly afraid of the morality of the whole issue (like: what if all of the projects get funding). Please help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T22:36:06.170" LastActivityDate="2021-04-11T19:24:46.987" Title="Ethical nature of multiple post-doctoral applications" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15772" CreationDate="2014-01-14T17:39:17.540" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong or strange to apply for several fellowships and funding as you describe. The opposite would mean you have to gamble on one and hope it comes through. What can be a bit problematic is perhaps if each proposal causes a lot of work for somebody in a department if you later is a no show despite funding. In such a case it would be good to let people know you are sending in other applications as well so they are not completely in the dark about your situation. I am sure everyone will be sympathetic. If they are not you may not want to go there anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk of getting money from several of your applications seems like a luxury problem. Yes, you have to decide which one to go for but that should be a pleasant problem. I would tackle the problem &lt;strong&gt;IF&lt;/strong&gt; it becomes reality and not worry about it at this stage. Your first step is to get applications in, not worry about what to do when and if any funding comes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T17:39:17.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15755" CreationDate="2014-01-14T18:40:29.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, he told me it is because PhD students have very specialised knowledge in a particular topic that makes it very hard -even for supervisors- to comment on it in a detailed manner. Well I still can't believe that's true in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well if the implication is that your work as a PhD so specialised that nobody can give you useful feedback, I don't believe it either. If you cannot communicate your work in a manner that someone knowledgeable in the general area can understand and provide feedback, then your research should be doomed to fail since you won't be able to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more likely is that your supervisor is insufficiently &quot;incentivised&quot; to put the effort required into understanding your work to give you useful feedback. There are many shades of grey here too. Different supervisors approach supervision at different levels of abstraction. Some are hands-off details. Some are hands-on details. Some need little incentive. Some need lots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Similarly, if you cannot interest someone enough in your research for long to engage them for feedback, I think your research is, in the longer term, also in deep water since you'll need these communication skills when applying for funding grants, to gain citations for your papers, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you're looking for feedback other than your supervisor or colleagues ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about in your area, but in Computer Science, there are ample ways of getting feedback on your work at conferences and other such venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically these conferences hold events specifically for mentoring students called a &quot;&lt;em&gt;Doctoral Symposium&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Doctoral Consortium&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Mentoring Lunches&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, etc. The format is different for each conference, but typically students submit a paper outlining their topic; the paper is peer-reviewed under special criteria. If accepted, the student is paired with one or two &quot;mentors&quot; (senior researchers who know something about the topic) at the event. The student presents their work to the broader symposium and afterwards gets some alone time with their mentor(s) who are typically instructed to be friendly to the student, but also to give some tough love if needed. As a bonus, many conferences publish the papers from these events in their proceedings, giving you a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another excellent opportunity for feedback is to attend a relevant summer school. At least in some of the schools I've lectured at, in between talks, the mentors have provided ample time to talk with students about their topics and plans, where at the end of the week, each student goes away with the perspectives of three or four mentors as well as a multitude of their peers. (More interactive schools tend to be in remote locations; everyone hangs around afterwards. Less interactive schools tend to be in universities; everyone goes home afterwards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, think about getting your PhD topic accepted for a poster session somewhere. PhD posters can be a good way to get casual feedback from a wide range of folks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to go so far away, organise a talk in your school and invite people. Put a lot of effort into making the talk engaging. Try to invite as broad a range of folks as possible and try to get feedback from your supervisor on the talk itself beforehand. Present and take questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple catch with all these methods of feedback is to think: how can I make people want to give me feedback, how can I make people comfortable to give me negative feedback, etc. @Jeffiekins suggestion of beer and pizza is a good one. Generally you should never expect feedback; you should earn feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like in a poster session, if your poster looks unappealing and you look disinterested standing in front of it, and instead of engaging with the person, if you simply read through the text-heavy poster while they wait, then giving you feedback certainly won't be their first priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar principles apply for your advisor (and elsewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T18:40:29.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15772" CreationDate="2014-01-14T19:32:17.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a lot what kinds of grants or fellowships you are applying to. In any case, you have to check the guidelines of the fellowships very throughly. It is not uncommon that you have to indicate if you have submitted a similar proposal elsewhere (stating precisely where). It may even stated that &quot;cross submission&quot; is not allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T19:32:17.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-14T21:55:55.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to write three-four examples yourself, scan and upload to your webpage, to show how is it supposed to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T21:55:55.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:58:07.123" Score="14" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewers are expert in their fields who can understand your work but are also potential competitors if they worked in the same field as you do. How frequent is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work so they can stall your publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you were a reviewer, would you be excited to learn that I have published research that are superior to yours or prove that your research direction was wrong? Another extreme example, if you were an HIV researcher/reviewer, how excited/horrible would you feel if I publish a cure for HIV and will be nominated for Nobel prize tomorrow and you will be sitting down there listening to my talk?  What incentive do reviewers have to give out good/fair review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="10039" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T08:43:51.097" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T07:57:53.013" Title="How often is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T00:46:00.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens. Meanwhile, of course, it is difficult to document or argue about it... which is not surprising given that the people perpetrating this are not stupid, so will not leave themselves open to the simplest trail-of-damning-evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of &quot;how often?&quot; is essentially impossible to answer, exactly because no one wants to, or would wisely, document such things...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, yes, there is such a possibility, for sure, and it can have an impact. But, apparently, we are all to pretend that it is not happening, and to rationalize that there are other good reasons, etc. In terms of behavior-of-humans, this is similar to our collective rationalization that the seeming-issues seemingly-debated in politics touch reality directly. That is, there's scant purpose in rebelling too strongly, because then one disconnects from the actual process of &quot;politics&quot;. On the other hand, it would induce insanity to believe too much that those things reflect sense or reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T00:46:00.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15788" CreationDate="2014-01-15T01:04:26.707" Score="3" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently admitted into a PhD program, and am currently a MSc Student. Both me and my advisor expected me to graduate this spring, which would mark the 4th semester. Because of that, I applied to PhD programs, and got into a good one. But now I think I might need a bit longer to complete the Thesis portion of it; I could switch to MA which is course based and head on to PhD 1) I am not sure if they will still accept me if I do not have an MSc (the strength of my application was the skills I learned during my thesis) and 2) I want to finish my thesis, because well, I want to publish the results and am interested in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my options? Many programs do not allow deference, and getting into a PhD program is so hard to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10813" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:48:56.377" Title="Master's Thesis unexpectedly going south but admitted into PhD program next fall" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15894" CreationDate="2014-01-15T01:18:56.913" Score="17" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v323/n6088/abs/323533a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;old paper&lt;/a&gt;, published in 1986.&#xA;It is in the form of a &quot;Letter to Nature&quot; (which is a scientific journal).&#xA;It doesn't appear to be typeset in TeX, at least not TeX as we know it today.&#xA;Furthermore, it is a scanned copy, so it is just a image, embedded as a PDF.&#xA;The lack of multiline equations, and highlight-able text is getting to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm considering re-typesetting it myself by hand in LaTeX (it is quite short)&#xA;for my own benefit and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is still being cited today, and is used in university courses to teach the subject. It seems a waste to have gone to the effort to retype it neater, and then just leave it in my draws.&#xA;If I re-typeset it, what can/should I do with the new version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I host it online myself (giving full credit to the authors)?&#xA;Should I send a copy to authors, for them to do with as they will?&#xA;Are there issues with the fact that it has been published in Nature? Perhaps they have some copyright on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T23:38:51.140" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T23:38:51.140" Title="Re-typesetting an old paper, what to do with the result?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T01:33:22.613" Score="12" ViewCount="66975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior undergraduate (electrical) engineering student, exceedingly interested in &lt;strong&gt;physics&lt;/strong&gt;. 4 years ago when entering university, for some reasons (better: &lt;em&gt;illusions&lt;/em&gt;) I chose engineering as my major, while I was interested (and also really knowledgeable) in physics . Soon after the first semester I realized that I've decided wrong, and I must have chosen physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since our university is a technical institute and does not have a strong physics department I decided to &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt; physics on my own, without changing my major.But I took and passed the basic &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt; physics courses (advanced quantum mechanics, advanced statistical mechanics, electrodynamics I &amp;amp; II), have done a few research projects and had a paper published (maybe 1 more in the future). I have &lt;em&gt;explored&lt;/em&gt; lots of research areas in physics and I think I have a good potential for doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While concentrating on physics, I was inattentive to EE courses. Today, while searching for graduate programs, I saw that some schools require a minimum GPA, usually 3. I just calculated my GPA and found out that it is 2.95!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do all universities have a GPA threshold? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm changing my major and also have a good GPA in graduate physics courses, is there any way I can compensate for my (very) low electrical engineering GPA? (like by taking subject GRE, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I first (somehow) get a masters degree in physics and then apply for a PhD, can I throw away this electrical engineering GPA in my PhD application ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other suggestion is warmly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10814" LastEditorUserId="38446" LastEditDate="2016-03-12T15:25:48.157" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T15:25:48.157" Title="Do all universities have a minimum required GPA for graduate school application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2014-01-15T01:36:21.303" Score="-3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Participate in discussions strictly related to academic papers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't read only - be active in your discussions and write as much as you can (you can make errors but you will self-eliminate them with more practice).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10815" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T11:00:54.180" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T11:00:54.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T01:44:02.440" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, bad and/or fabricated reviews are common if you are in a competitive industry. It is harder and harder to find a &lt;strong&gt;genuine&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;unbiased&lt;/strong&gt; reviewer who has no hidden interests or agendas. You can watch some industry forums, where writing service owners and freelance writers allegedly post misinformation or untrue statements about each other in order to discredit their competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing, you need to be careful whom you entrust your research work. Even if they don't use it today, they may use it tomorrow (or they may change some details and claim authorship). Hopefully, I didn't scare you too much though ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10815" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T11:00:34.383" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T11:00:34.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15722" CreationDate="2014-01-15T02:02:11.637" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't transfer. Try to learn to make use of the available resources. Focus on &lt;strong&gt;hard work&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;your own research&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes studying a difficult book is more rewarding than having access to high-tech instruments and possibly not really understanding how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10815" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T04:32:18.980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T04:32:18.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15782" CreationDate="2014-01-15T02:51:16.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the details of your situation, but the conventional advice would probably be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pound out a thesis that's good enough for your advisor to let you graduate. It doesn't need to be outstanding or publishable, or include every idea you've considered. It just has to get you the masters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start your PhD program on time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project still interests you, continue working on it in your spare time. Stay in contact with your masters advisor. When it's far enough along to publish, do so (perhaps with your masters advisor as a co-author).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T02:51:16.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2014-01-15T02:52:12.763" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright is almost certainly owned by Nature.  I don't know what sort of rights the authors retained in Nature's copyright agreement from 1986, or how to find out other than by asking Nature or the authors.  My guess is that Nature will not want you to distribute the paper, and the authors may not even have a copy of the agreement or remember what was in it, but who knows.  Nowadays Nature allows authors to post their own version of the paper on their own web site or institutional repository six months after publication.  This clause couldn't have been in the 1986 agreement (there was no web back then), but maybe Nature would agree to it retroactively.  If so, then the authors could legally distribute your retyped version.  It's hard to say whether Nature will agree or whether the authors will want to bother with this, but it could be worth asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you could retype and distribute it without permission.  Even aside from the illegality, it seems a little rude to distribute a retyped version without checking with the authors.  For example, if you introduce typos, readers may not know who to blame, you or the authors.  On the other hand, the authors probably can't legally authorize you to distribute it, so it's an awkward situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's too bad our laws and customs make it difficult to arrange things like this.  When someone does retype a famous paper (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html&quot;&gt;Shannon's 1948 paper introducing information theory&lt;/a&gt;), it can be a really useful service for the community.  I hope you are able to find a way to do this with Nature and the authors' permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T02:52:12.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15693" CreationDate="2014-01-15T03:31:28.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best idea (personally) is to focus on what you feel the most confident with. If you are not 100% passionate about the new idea (point #1) then you'll be much better off working on improvement of an existing idea (point #2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10815" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T03:31:28.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15722" CreationDate="2014-01-15T04:26:22.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about what you accomplish - whether you stay where you are or transfer. Yes, if you can transfer to a school with a stronger reputation and hit the ground running, that &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; put you in a better position. That said, it's not going to be easy to transfer in with only a fairly high GPA at a less-rigorous school, and you'll lose some time in making the transition/adjusting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A transfer can be a warning sign - is this someone with a pattern of not finishing what they start, or was this an isolated, carefully-considered, strategic choice? If the latter, no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I consider applicants, what they do (e.g. specific field) is far less important than how they advance and accomplish, what aptitude they have demonstrated for gaining new skills and working with a team. I'm sure there are things that could be accomplished at your current school, even if the topic is not your first choice. The letters from mentors carry a lot of weight. It takes time to establish strong relationships after a transfer - keep that in mind if you already have an advocate on the faculty at your current school (and consider getting their advice on this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; decision; regardless of whether you stay or go, the real challenge is making the most of the available resources and developing strong mentors among the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9748" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T04:26:22.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T04:34:22.973" Score="71" ViewCount="20251" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my professors has been in the IT development fields for over 40 years. He thinks he is up-to-date with all the latest research and technology. But I believe he's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is - he hates when a student (like me) dares to point out his mistakes or flaws in reasoning. Or when a student suggests a better (modern) solution to a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with such a situation - should I keep challenging him or keep quiet until the end of semester? I don't want to lose grades (he's been known to give lower grades to students who asked him too many questions he wasn't able to properly answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10815" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2020-02-05T05:39:48.597" LastActivityDate="2020-02-05T05:39:48.597" Title="Should I challenge my professor who thinks he's always right?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="29" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15722" CreationDate="2014-01-15T04:38:58.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in neuroscience or BCI. However, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bpendure.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BP-Endure program&lt;/a&gt; where your current school Hunter College is a major partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their web page,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the academic year students will work with a research mentor at Hunter or NYU and during the summer in one of the partnering institutions. The BP-ENDURE program selects students from both Hunter College and NYU to participate. &lt;strong&gt;Hunter&lt;/strong&gt; students will receive funding in the form of tuition remission and a stipend during the academic year and will also receive summer funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure why you said &lt;em&gt;the resources in my school seems very tight&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;my school offers no program in any close proximation&lt;/em&gt;. Are you having difficulty getting into that program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transferring to another school may cost you a lot than what you'll gain. You may lose the credits you already have and retake courses you have taken plus your financial loss. However, if you have other difficulties with your current school(which you have not mentioned), then transferring may be an option for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; specifically, stay there and study hard, grab any opportunity to enter into the BP-Endure program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general&lt;/strong&gt;, however, if your research area requires resources you don't have in your current school, it's worth considering transferring. You need to weigh on the cost vs. gain. You can either stay in the current school acquiring fundamental knowledge and apply to a graduate school where you would have better resources after you graduate, or transfer to another undergraduate school with &lt;strong&gt;much better&lt;/strong&gt; resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T06:15:21.253" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T06:15:21.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T04:47:17.950" Score="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Probably not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you pointed out, you may lose out on grades by challenging this professor. A larger problem, in my opinion, is when you (the student) approach the class with an attitude of discovering the professor's many mistakes. With this attitude, you also lose out on the opportunity to learn from his expertise. While this particular professor may not be as &lt;em&gt;modern&lt;/em&gt; as you would like, it does not mean you cannot learn from him!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep quiet&lt;/strong&gt; until the end of the semester, except when you have a valid question. And don't  approach intending to prove him wrong; approach intending to find out how you can learn from what he knows.  &lt;strong&gt;Ask questions because you want to learn, not because you want to prove the professor wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; If you believe you know a better solution, it might be appropriate to ask &quot;Would this solution also work? If not, why not?&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Ask, don't tell.&lt;/strong&gt; Your professor is human too, and most of us have a hard time always responding graciously to a smarty-pants student who thinks they know more than we do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T04:47:17.950" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T04:48:42.483" Score="-4" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've authored a math research monograph (which can be however used as a textbook, as it is structured like a textbook).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth to make short version of it containing only definitions and theorems (no proofs) in the natural pedagogical order (not the order of proofs, as in the actual book)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be legal after copyright transfer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2018-02-17T10:33:01.733" LastActivityDate="2018-02-17T10:33:01.733" Title="Shortened version of a math book (without proofs)" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;monograph&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15796" CreationDate="2014-01-15T05:15:27.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll have to talk with your publisher (and lawyer) about what rights you retain after transfer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T05:15:27.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15722" CreationDate="2014-01-15T06:58:26.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I transferred schools during undergraduate under a similar situation, but with a different academic focus. The school I ended up transferring into was far more competitive, so I got what I wanted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I also ended up staying in the program for an additional year because the school I transferred into required that I take &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; version of the same courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I finally graduated, I was proud that I was pushed harder and learned more, but found that many of the same opportunities existed despite having gone to a better university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since completed a masters without any intentions of continuing towards a PhD, but I found that I do enjoy research, so now I am in the second year of my PhD studies. Actually, I regret having entered into the PhD program but that is beside the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lessons that I've learned from about 8 years of college at this point are that undergraduate research appointments are... well... not all they're cracked up to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better research opportunities are available for masters students, and the best for PhD students, and even that is a completely relative situation depending on a huge number of factors. I've seen two of my fellow PhD students transfer universities after their professor took a job elsewhere. I've seen PhD students in very competitive departments get stuck with a lame professor; and I've likewise seen PhD students in lame departments find an awesome professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, to make research opportunities more difficult to gauge: its commonly known amongst graduate students that the pecking order for research appointments benefits the PhDs the most, and the undergraduates the least. Often the undergraduates are used for all the crap nobody else wants to do, and while learning the basics might be good for an undergraduate, the work is usually tedious, boring and repetitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Masters students are usually given more application based work, which is really good for honing skills, and the PhDs are given the more theoretical work, which even then can be a professors sloppy seconds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is to stay exactly where you and look for research opportunities with a professor that you really enjoy and want for mentorship. If you have a particular project in mind, then do an independent study with them. Having a solid GPA and having demonstrated an individual drive &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; speak volumes more than attaching yourself to a bunch of names (though I don't underestimate the name attachment in academia). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As a second thought, I can't tell you how much it sucked switching universities and becoming distant with those friendships I made. Yeah, I made new friends that were also really awesome, but starting over can be lonely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastEditorUserId="10817" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T07:04:03.847" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:04:03.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15784" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:10:02.040" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't say &quot;all&quot; for sure, but I think you'll find that many if not most schools do have a minimum GPA requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you can compensate for a low GPA depends on how the school handles it.  In some cases it may be difficult, as admissions committees may literally scan apps for GPA and put all that do not meet the standard in a &quot;reject&quot; pile without even reading the rest of the application.  In other cases the minimum may be &quot;soft&quot; and they will read the app.  My advice would be to: A) get advice from a professor at your school you have a rapport with; and B) contact faculty at the schools you're applying to (or considering applying to).  I would not just bluntly ask the GPA question on its own, but email them in general saying you're interested in the program, and mention the GPA issue along with whatever else you ask them about the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You almost certainly cannot &quot;throw away&quot; your undergrad GPA in a PhD application.  Even if you have an MA, most schools will want to see &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your college transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also take advantage of the time you still have during the year to bring your GPA up as much as possible.  Even consider doing this by taking easy classes that you might not otherwise take.  Personally, if I were in your situation, I would even consider delaying graduation by a year or part of a year, if it's financially feasible and your school will allow it, just to have more time to take classes and bring up your overall GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already made a significant blunder in letting your GPA get that low, as a GPA below 3.0 will be a red flag to many graduate programs.  However, from what you say, you would be a strong candidate in other regards.  If you can get people to look at your app long enough to read your statement of purpose and see your grad coursework, then you probably have a decent shot.  To do that, you should leverage your strengths.  If you have taken many grad classes, done research, and published a paper, you presumably have good contacts in the physics department.  Lean on those people to write you glowing letters of rec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:10:02.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:13:47.403" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever seen a skit on The Chapelle Show called, &quot;When keeping it real goes wrong&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me when I tell you that every class in every semester has a student that thinks he or she knows it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be hard to stand in front of a class and have all the answers. Sometimes when I've stood up there and say something, I've felt rushed to give an answer so I don't look stupid, and it just came out all wrong so I looked (or felt) even more stupid. Then I just walk around for two days realizing how stupid I am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the best professors can be wrong, but the better ones will at least correct themselves in the next class or send out an email explaining something further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle the professor isn't necessarily to try and show them up in class, but to either go to office hours and ask for clarification. If you still think they are wrong, explain where you found the answer and show them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If its worth the time to engage them at all, then that can be best way to do it. If they don't respond well in that situation, then its not worth your time and you should just keep quiet and focus on your grade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe me, as an undergraduate I've battled many worthless TAs only to have the head of their department say that they have to back up the TA because that's just how its done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I got to graduate school, it was a different ballgame and I really put a professor through the ringer with the department when she tried to give me a bad grade because she was incompetent. But when I did that, I slowly went up the chain, documented every conversation and interaction, highlighted the syllabus, noted changes she made mid-semester to the syllabus, and then made a formal complaint. In turn, the professor was reprimanded by both the head of faculty and head of graduate studies, and my grade was fixed. But that was a serious slog to get through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:13:47.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15784" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:26:20.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of politics in academia, and being nice or knowing the right people can get you pretty far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would look at the universities that you want to study graduate level physics at, travel out there, and speak with the professors. They are used to meeting with students that are looking at several different graduate programs, so its all part of their job. You can ask them if they'd like to get coffee, and it doesn't hurt to look at the campus map and know which coffee shop is around the corner from their office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read and know their work before hand.&lt;/strong&gt; They almost always have a CV listed on their personal web page, with the most recent publishings at the top. Start with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect to spend no more than 30 minutes talking to them, but if the conversation is good, it can go an hour or more. At that point, you can talk about your background, your interests, why you transferred from EE to physics and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're in town, talk to some other professors in that department; it can just be a casual swing by the office. Talk with the graduate student advisors in their office. See if you can get a tour of the labs, and while you're in there, talk to more people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guarantee you that when your application is being reviewed, they will recognize your name and give you a much higher consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades are not everything. I made it into the #1 ranked program for my masters with a 3.0 GPA and a decent GRE score, then leveraged the 3.8 GPA to jump to a PhD program. Two years were knocked off my PhD requirements for having an M.S. And, I did the schmoozing all over again when I applied for the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: One last thing, as was mentioned elsewhere, take some extra classes to get that GPA up. Even if they're summer courses, just get it up enough to push you above a 3.0. The last 60 hours are the most important. It demonstrates your level of commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many schools have a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS). Its not a masters, but its graduate level studies. If you get really good GPA in a CAS, then you'll make up for the low undergraduate GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT #2: One more thing... heh... part of applying for any graduate program isn't simply a matter of if you meet the qualifications. The best programs always have people storming at the door. What the admissions committee is also going to look at is whether or not they are a good fit for you. So they will try to figure out not only if you have what they need, but if they have what you need. That includes deciding whether or not you would be in over your head after a year of study and then drop out, having wasted a slot that could have gone to someone else. And, there is one thing that benefits you, and that's having studied EE. That means you're essentially a non-traditional physics student. You can say that you're interested in studying the intersection of EE and Physics, and that professor Y's research would be the perfect compliment to augment your studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastEditorUserId="10817" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T07:33:56.267" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:33:56.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15782" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:48:56.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to what Nate said, explain your entire situation to your thesis advisor. You might be surprised how sympathetic they are and willing to give advice on how to get through the minimum. Unfortunately, a lot of PhD studies is about getting through the minimum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just myself reached the point where I can stop taking classes and focus on my research, but that took almost two years beyond my masters... so basically 4 years of graduate 400/500 level coursework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and second years went like this: get excited about classes starting, first week introductions and orientation, gradually become consumed by all the coursework, become a zombie from lack of sleep, taper off and start to question my sanity, then blitz to the end to finish final projects. In my 3rd and 4th years, I was on my iPad halfway listening to the lecture because the coursework was like a programming language: same principals with a different syntax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:48:56.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:57:24.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To echo Paul's statement above, it happens. To what extent just depends on unknown and incalculable variables. Odds are, if you are in the game for long enough, you'll hear about it, see it happen, and experience it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the field of study becomes increasingly narrow, and so the pool of people that can provide peer reviews likewise become increasingly narrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, you'll even start to recognize the style of writing from blind feedback and can identify the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, what will really tick you off is coming up with an original idea, telling a colleague about it, and then 6 months later see that idea become the title of an article written by someone in your field at another university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That actually happened to me, and the title was verbatim. I'm still peeved about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:57:24.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:17:14.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the situation as something like you're going to paint an abstract image - you're free to sketch whatever you can imagine but there has to be a meaning or purpose for what you're doing. The point is this: your professor is probably unaware of what you consider as &quot;flaw&quot; in dealing with his students, as such, serving as his &quot;shadow&quot; could make him realize such thing. But if he is aware, then the problem is not to think about the ways to harmoniously deal with him; rather, you should adjust with the kind of classroom atmosphere that he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's indeed &quot;abstract&quot; because no one else really knows the best way to have the kind of learning environment or teacher that you want other than you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10819" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T08:17:14.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15835" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:31:02.547" Score="10" ViewCount="2706" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started searching for a graduate programs that fits my research interests in the United States, I noticed that some universities have separate &quot;Computer Engineering&quot; and &quot;Electrical Engineering&quot; departments, while other universities have a combined department &quot;Electrical engineering and Computer science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do some universities choose to divide or combine these disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T17:43:58.297" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T11:23:42.917" Title="Why do some US universities have &quot;Electrical Engineering&quot; and &quot;Computer Engineering&quot; vs. &quot;Electrical Engineering and Computer Science&quot; departments?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:37:08.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How often is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work so they can stall your publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly there is no hard data on that, but I would wager much less than people think that it happens. I can only echo Matthew G.s sentiment above - In my experience papers in my field (software engineering) are rejected because of (roughly in order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad reviewer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actively malicious reviewer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when people get a reject, it is much easier to conclude that bullet 3 or 5 happened than 1, 2 or even 4. However, that does not necessarily make it so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the way to achieve modest success in science is to &lt;strong&gt;do your best work&lt;/strong&gt;, and accept that occasionally bad things will happen to you. Achieving success in science is a bit like playing poker. There are hands that you play well but another player gets undeservedly lucky, but over the course of an evening (or career), the bad players usually lose and the good players usually win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T08:37:08.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15640" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:39:22.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have already listed many good reasons for completing an MS before a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one, it can give you an introduction to a field of study on a graduate level. That allows you to be introduced to many of the more prominent people in the field, some of which you might find out are worth studying under. In that case, it would only help you when it comes time to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you publish and then subsequently present at a conference, then you can meet with a lot of other faculty from schools you're interested in, and you can strike up a conversation. In turn, you can stay in touch with that person and visit them later when it comes time to apply for the program. They may in turn vouch for you during the admissions review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common for PhD students to have already completed an MS, even if its at another school. And, virtually all programs will take that into consideration and credit you 30 hours of coursework towards a PhD completion, so long as the courses are directly relevant to the PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned halfway through my first year of PhD studies that as far as my university is considered, there is no differentiation between a MS and a PhD student, we are all part of the Graduate College. So all of the MS hours are in effect graduate hours, and thusly they are also PhD hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T08:39:22.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:45:55.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question cannot be answered, nobody knows how often this happens. If someone knew the answer it wouldn't be relevant anyway, because it would be ephemeral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we are talking about here is a form of corruption or perversion and pretending it's not happening or pretending it's impossible is the worst thing that can be done because that will only make it worse. Those who are corrupts get an advantage from a system that is not well designed for the present times, their behaviour is rewarded and so the system converges to a corrupt state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore it's important to fight corruption (and changing the system, but I don't want to go too offtopic). So, how can we minimise the risk for this so that it happens less often?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preprints: arxiv.org (and similar services) can keep your preprints online, and they have become standard in some areas as physics (AFAIK). If reviewers try to publish papers that they have rejected the evidence is there, in the preprints server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open reviews: some journals have open and public reviews. The reviewer may still give a bad review based on personal interests but in this way that would be more obvious. Transparency is not a solution to corruption, but it helps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editors: if you have a problem with a reviewer you can raise your concerns to the editor. I have seen people doing this several times and they never had positive news on the result, but this is something that you can do in any case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose wisely your venues: if the editor is not trustworthy (and the reviewers are anonymous) you may prefer to choose a different venue. In a free market (of papers and venues) with perfect information these venues should theoretically disappear after some time, but practice and theory are not the same (in practice).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably more things that you can do, I hope more people will suggest some in the comments (actually I'm making this post a community wiki post, so feel free to edit). But in short, doing nothing about it (as other answers and comments seem to suggest) would be a very bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.&quot; - Edmund Burke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: The reasons why the system is not well designed are long to explain, it has grown larger (there has never been so many people in academia in history), the fields have grown more specific, the world is more globalized, there is a stronger competition, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD2: I also agree that probably bad reviews are so because of other reasons, but one of them may be a bad reviewer or a reviewer having a bad day (as people seem to suggest), and what I suggest minimises the impact of this as well (e.g. open reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally we should consider how often papers that are &quot;not that good&quot; get a positive review for other hidden interests (friendship, they are on the same project, they promote the same approach/idea, etc.) this causes an unfair advantage and other papers may get rejected more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T10:21:39.583" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T10:21:39.583" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-15T10:21:39.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15806" CreationDate="2014-01-15T08:49:16.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For starters, the descriptions for these areas of study in the US are not the same as they are in Europe, or other parts of the world. Sometimes they are not even the same for schools throughout the US. It is up to that particular department to provide a name of the program. This provides some flexibility to alter that name with the times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, many modern computer science programs began in mathematics departments and were not split until a few decades ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, computer engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science are separate fields of study. Electrical engineering may never actually make use of a computer system, and may focus on radar systems or radio waves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer engineering may focus on the combined series of electronics that work together to comprise the computer system. For example, transistors, capacitors, circuit boards, or processors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And computer science may never go into the electronics of a computer system, but focus entirely on the software implementation, algorithm design, protocols, signal reliability, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrical engineering and computer science might be a hybrid of the two, such as programming embedded hardware, creating APIS, or digital signal processing in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T08:49:16.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2014-01-15T09:12:12.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the experience that individual has gained throughout the course of their career is the best indicator of whether an individual has earned the respect of their peers, my impression is that the PhD title is generally more recognized with the public at large (basically those unfamiliar with how advanced degrees are awarded within academic institutions). This is purely a social construct that isn't germane to the field of advanced study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the issue as someone calling a chiropractor a &quot;Doctor&quot; even though there is no award of an MD, or not understanding that a D.O. and an M.D. are basically the same thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some universities in Europe do not traditionally award a &quot;PhD&quot; because they have a different three letter acronym for their doctorates. That does not mean that the individual is any less accomplished, its just a different system than the one in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one way to explain it to your students is to note what other fields have a similar award. In law, there are Juris Doctorates and PhDs; and in art there are MFAs and PhDs. The primary distinction appears to be what you have already recognized, that one is more about application than research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be a bit snarky, there are some fields of study altogether that do not get much appreciation, education being the main one with the award of the D.Ed. I do see some eye rolling when that one comes up, but I've also seen eye rolling from guys in the so called &quot;pure&quot; or &quot;hard&quot; sciences and their opinions of anyone in the humanities or &quot;soft&quot; sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As to directly answer your question&lt;/strong&gt;, Yes, there are published articles discussing the &quot;perception&quot; of one degree over another. I took a quick stroll on Google Scholar and found a number of published, peer-reviewed articles discussing this very question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one titled, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13600800500120027#.UtZOKGRDtmk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doctoral Differences: Professional doctorates and PhDs compared&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T09:12:12.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T10:48:35.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's his job to instill to his students he knows everything so they will listen and follow him. All you would be doing is damaging what he is trying to build with his students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't go well for you, nor offer you anything positive in the course and most likely harm your grades.  If you know more then most, then instead of using it to attack your teacher, do something that will equally give you what I believe you do want from the teacher -- &quot;His respect, &amp;amp; knowing you are very knowledgeable&quot; -- by offering assistance to other students who do need help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you get to show your intelligence in the field, your teacher will love the help in class with most teachers already being spread thin, and he will most likely shine on your grades better. Even if &quot;YOU&quot; do make a mistake, because of the effort at assisting others, he may overlook it when grading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="6194" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T12:24:42.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T12:24:42.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T10:56:16.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me put it like this, he is the teacher and you are the student. Ask yourself if the things he is wrong about, are really worth mentioning. If not, then it is probably best you keep quiet, and don't compromise your grades. There are always going to be people like him. If you keep trying to challenge him, you may very well become a 'right' fighter yourself, like him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10827" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T10:56:16.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15722" CreationDate="2014-01-15T11:13:15.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well your GPA seems very good and i feel you can get admission in any other college. If you think you are not satisfied with the performance of your institute then there is no point of staying there because at the back of your mind you will always be thinking that you could have been to some better place. I believe that you should have been more cautious before choosing your institute because switching it is a bit difficult task. If you would have assured before admission that an institute is accredited as per standards, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iao.org/iao/institutional-accreditation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iao.org/iao/institutional-accreditation/&lt;/a&gt;, then you would have an enhanced sense of credibility. My advice is to look for another institute which you feel is as per global standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T11:13:15.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15823" CreationDate="2014-01-15T12:26:59.387" Score="18" ViewCount="1567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year PhD student in probability from the UK. I enjoy what I do, but here is a problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as I dig deep into my study, I realize I have to read a lot of stuff I do not fully understand and they often arise in fields of study which are not probability, but related areas: e.g. PDE theory, functional analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a basic understandings about some of these things, sometimes I might even feel I have enough to get by, but I am unsatisfied. This is perhaps due to the fact I never studied some of these topics as an undergraduate, but to be fair, no one told me an understanding of PDE theory is very useful to probability (I even think this only depends on what you do)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do want to know more and previously I tried to attend multiple courses in a term to make up for some of this - this was not effective. Going to 1 or 2 courses a term is fine, but doing any more is a big drain of time if I want to fully understand the material lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So have others experienced this? What is the best way of getting around this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10156" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T21:25:02.310" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T22:01:06.907" Title="What do I do if I feel there are many things which need to be learnt to do my research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15486" CreationDate="2014-01-15T13:00:30.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a distinction, and if there is, it is very subtle. Looking at the US NIH list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/funding_program.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Types of Grant Programs&lt;/a&gt; a subset of the activity codes considered &amp;quot;research grants&amp;quot; include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R01 NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R15 NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R21 NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So some grants are grants and some are awards and some are both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to &amp;quot;grants&amp;quot; the NIH has a line of &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/training/careerdevelopmentawards.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;K-Awards&lt;/a&gt;. The names of these do not ever use the term &amp;quot;grant, but the FOA generally says that the funding type is &amp;quot;Grant&amp;quot;. For example for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-14-044.html#_Section_II._Award&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;K01&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding Instrument - Grant: A support mechanism providing money, property, or both to an eligible entity to carry out an approved project or activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you bring Fellowships into the game, things get even crazier. The NIH has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/training/nrsa.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA)&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-11-113.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;F32&lt;/a&gt; is an award, fellowship, and grant while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-14-015.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T32&lt;/a&gt; is an award and a grant, but not a fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T13:00:30.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-15T13:24:42.223" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the editor is fair, it doesn't matter terribly much.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision to reject a paper is not taken by the reviewers.  &lt;strong&gt;The decision is taken by the editor.&lt;/strong&gt; The role of the reviewers is to give a &lt;em&gt;recommendation&lt;/em&gt;, upon which the editor takes a decision.  If a reviewer recommends rejection (or acceptance, for that matter), the editor is free to ignore this recommendation (this has happened to yours truly).  If the editor suspects that a reviewer recommends rejection because of potential competition, or for any other improper reason, then the editor should not weigh this recommendation heavily.  This is one of the reasons why there should always several reviewers — at least in my field (atmospheric remote sensing), I've only come across cases with two or three reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly: &lt;em&gt;The editor knows who the reviewer is&lt;/em&gt;.  If a scientist makes a habit of recommending rejections for improper reasons, he or she will get a reputation among editors.  Editors are usually well-known colleagues in the field, so you really don't want to be known as the envious guy (or gal) who will reject major works of research because it was &lt;em&gt;not invented here&lt;/em&gt;.  In the best case, they won't be asked as reviewers any more.  In the worst case, it may harm a scientific career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the scenario described above is somewhat naive, but in those cases where I've either been a reviewer, or been corresponding author, it would apply.  The same for open review papers (such as the geophysical journal, published by EGU, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/volumes_and_issues.html&quot;&gt;Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics&lt;/a&gt;).  It might be different in other fields, this I don't know.  I hope that even in other fields, the editor does more than copy-paste and blindly follow whatever reviewers recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T14:26:13.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T14:26:13.183" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15820" CreationDate="2014-01-15T14:41:55.773" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;so have others experienced this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; smart person feels like that when starting their studies. The majority of the people for which this is not true are usually not the second coming of Terence Tao or Dr. Sheldon Cooper, but simply affected by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot;&gt;Dunning-Kruger Effect&lt;/a&gt;. You are not supposed to know everything, and in fact you never will. You already have a head start on your colleagues, who have simply not yet discovered (or wilfully ignore) that they do not fully comprehend many of the seminal papers in your or related fields. You, at least, can work on this in order to produce better research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what is the best way of getting around this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &lt;em&gt;getting around&lt;/em&gt; this. To paraphrase the title of your question, many things &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; to be learned. That's part of doing a PhD. The trick is to &lt;strong&gt;learn what you will really need for your research&lt;/strong&gt;, and to not get lost in the things that are interesting but ultimately not relevant to you. This requires some experience. Hopefully, your advisor or a postdoc will put you on track of what to focus on for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As funny as the advice mentioned by @dgraziotin above sounds - in practice, what you really need to develop is a good mental filter to select the 15 or so papers from a 30k papers field that are really relevant to to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T14:41:55.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:00:13.890" Score="18" ViewCount="2126" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been a subject that has occupied my thoughts for the past years but haven't really managed to formulate it completely for myself. I have this feeling (and I can't say it's more than a feeling at this point) that native speakers of English have an easier time with getting their article published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should make it clear, right away, that I don't mean just because you are a native speaker you can get whatever published, but given a particular project, if the main author is a native speaker the article is more likely to get accepted, or at least draw more positive reviews. I motivate the potential existence of such a bias on the fact that it's likely that a native speaker does a better job in writing than someone who has English as a foreign language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I do not have any data to back this theory up, I would like to ask if you have come across any numbers/facts regarding any such bias in the publication/acceptance rates in general, as well as high-IF journals specifically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I should perhaps rephrase and add a bit more details to the question here. I do not refer to small grammatical mistakes, misspellings or anything of that nature. What I am referring to here, is the wider vocabulary a native-speaker has in his/her disposal, the phrases and expressions that they use that might not be readily and easily available to non-native speaker. I could perhaps summarise it the differences as the metaphorical chocolate chips that a native speaker can and most likely will bake into the cookie that is the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am clear on the point that the clearness criteria is still the most important and that's why I did not talk about the rejections (it's natural that non-native speakers get their papers rejected based on language more often compared to native speakers). As a non-native speaker myself, it is beyond any doubt that I need to write my manuscripts with a clearly understandable language in order for them to get published, but again that's not really what I am asking here. I am more interested in whether or not articles written by native speakers come across as &quot;better quality&quot; based on the fact that they are more likely to utilise their edge with the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course other factors at play, but it would be interesting to see if there are any stats involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T16:33:19.697" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T03:16:50.603" Title="Is there such a thing called native speaker bias when publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15824" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:13:37.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me share with you my personal experience and feeling about this issue. I am not a native English speaker and I am aware that my word choices and the patterns of my sentences makes it clear to my audiences and especially my readers. However, I have received several positive compliments in the referee reports of my papers about my writings. Therefore I strongly believe that people who are in charge of deciding about accepting a paper mostly consider the logical and grammatical correctness of the writing of the paper ( and of course its scientific value). So I would be very surprised if I see such a phenomenon as you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T15:13:37.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15824" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:19:40.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes but the issue is not as clear as you state it. To publish a paper, it must meet certain criteria which include form, clarity and of course scientific contribution. If you are a native speaker it will be easier to meet these criteria and particularly those that deal with language issues. The disadvantage we, who are non-native speakers, meet is to be good enough with regards to these criteria. The point is not that grammatical errors as such may make acceptance less likely but if the language makes understanding the paper difficult or even make one misunderstand the paper, then it becomes a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problem can be called bias but it can also be seen as not meeting the standards required. From the latter point it is not clearly a matter of native &lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt; non-native speakers but a matter of being able to express the science in an intelligible way. I am chief editor of an international journal, albeit not with the IF of Nature, and out of all papers we reject (50% of all submitted) a small part is based on the above problem. In most cases it is due to poor science and then with no particular emphasis on native or not speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T15:19:40.320" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:51:55.910" Score="4" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;At what point should a student decide they shouldn't try to be a researcher anymore, assuming they still have the desire? My personal situation is that I have ample cognitive ability (in the opinion of my professors and me), but the &quot;mental&quot; side just doesn't seem up to the challenge and my grades are sporatic, even as an undergraduate. I would have to drop a lot of money on a Master's program to get into a PhD program highly ranked enough to possibly make it research-wise, but that would only (possibly!) work if I succeed. Part of me feels like indulging my dream further would just build up to a worse let-down, even though I have no competing priorities such as creating a family, becoming rich, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T16:53:55.457" Title="When should you stop &quot;doubling down&quot;?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15590" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:59:53.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting a good letter is more important than getting a letter from a professor at University B. So if the professor in question only knows you through your attendance of his course, he most likely won't be able to speak to your research potential. As that is the most important aspect of an application for graduate school, this would not work in your favour. (The points in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2599/8185&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; are excellent guidelines for who to ask for reference letters.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is otherwise qualified to write a good letter for you, then the fact that he is from University B might work slightly in your favour, as admission committees tend to give greater weight to letters of recommendation from researchers that they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T15:59:53.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15820" CreationDate="2014-01-15T16:21:48.693" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Man... I have this problem on an hourly base. Here I will throw a bunch of &quot;strategies&quot; I have been accumulating for you to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sleep on it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously. If I have to actually learn everything I think I should learn, I'd need to be live beyond 480 years old. And since the more you learn, the more you don't know... this route is not viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the times, I suppressed the impulse and slept on it. In the process I usually think about this questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I need to learn this or do I want to learn this? Would the new knowledge make my work complete or make it better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the piece stand alone fine without it? Can it still contribute to the research questions I need to answer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I explain what I wouldn't learn as a potential extension/development in the Discussion section? Perhaps other people can work on it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually after a couple rounds of iteration, I could ditch most of what I wanted to learn, and focus on learning the skills that would make my projects a complete project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep a wish list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be it a go or not, I always write that down whenever I thought I need to know something. I use EverNote to document all these strayed thoughts. And if I come across any relevant materials (review articles, short courses, software, etc,) I'll document them with the same tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Draw a skill tree&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also pays off to sit down and analysis what are your knowledge and skill sets. A skill tree is simply just a conceptual framework or mind map that links up your skills and domain knowledge. Some people may grow a big deep-rooted tree while some may favor a garden of little bit of everything. We need both types of people but generally I would consider in academia it is better to have a good big tree with some side bushes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you can focus on a few major branches, what are the domain knowledge? What are the skills associated with them? And what are the applications that are associated with each skill? I found it easier to start with my courses I have taken and the syllabi of those courses. You can also consider using some competencies published by professional organization as a blueprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, my big tree is statistical analysis applied in biomedical studies. If someone asks me to work on a project about, say, psychometrics, which is part statistics part psychology... I may return to look at my trees and think if this new skill will make a logical branch, or it's too far off. And if it's too far off, is it worth to plant a new one for this? And what kind of root (aka basic courses or books) do I need to plant? Then decide if it's a go or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this exercise pretty useful because i) it's therapeutic, you may be amazed by your domain knowledge. And you're likely going to feel better about yourself. And ii) having a bird view network helps a lot on deciding the relevance of the desired skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think return of investment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before diving into the skill, think how much the skill can help you back. There are many sides to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it lead to higher competitiveness or salary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it complement/strengthen your skill tree? Would there be any synergy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you re-purpose or re-use this skill? How versatile it is?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will I be using this skill enough to rip the benefit of the time and resource I spent in the learn process? etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Return of investment exercise is best done when you have competing desired skills to learn. Put them side by side, design a rubric if you must, and evaluate which one is better to go for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gathering good resources is 80% of the game&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay... after much thought, we decided to learn a skill. When learning a new skill the major problem is not knowing where to start. I usually perform this beginning rituals: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read up on Wikipedia or other encyclopedia to acquire general lingo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a couple relevant review articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule a meeting with a someones proficient in that skill/knowledge and ask for a few recommendations on i) text book, ii) journals, iii) controversies, and iv) prominent schools of thought and researchers in the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for some syllabi that teach these knowledge and document their text books, software, course structure, etc. Those usually give you a good sense on what to cover.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather all materials, and start working on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immerse at least 20 hours into it with undivided attention&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a slight modification of Kaufman's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1591845556&quot;&gt;The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast!&lt;/a&gt;. The book itself is not super groundbreaking but Kaufman also pulled a stunt journalism and explained how he learned some new skills and brought them up to functional level in 20 hours. It's an entertaining read, but what I got away from it is the importance of preparation and immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually spread my learning into many 90-minute chunk, and then make sure to enter these blocks first at the start of every week. I laid out what I need to learn, read, do exercises, watch videos, perform self-evaluation, talk to others (e.g. your committee members or other scholars)... It's actually pretty amazing looking at how I become a half-baked specialist in a matter of week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the learning process, I focus on learning the basics really well, and I write down a lot of questions (for me or my specialist friends to answer later.) I also try to figure out the flow the ideas and their connections. When working on a problem I don't insist of getting it right, but I do insist on getting why it's wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compose a self-learning syllabus every 6 months&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every semester I also compose a self-learning syllabus. Basically I design courses for myself. I started doing this last year because I was getting tired always having to catch up with tasks that require me to learn new skills. I wanted to turn the table: I am going to learn some skills that I chose, and I'll look for opportunities in the tasks that I can apply what I learn and enrich the contents. I feel that being even just very so slightly more proactive has injected a good sense of control into my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remarks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't say I am a successful learner, but I am moving along bit by bit. Action, even just very little each time, is the most important ingredient. Hikers may know this feeling... all the hills look so darn tall, but once you stepped onto the trail, the scenery was great, the air was fresh, and suddenly you forgot to wonder how tall the hill was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T16:31:04.263" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T16:31:04.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15828" CreationDate="2014-01-15T16:53:55.457" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one can answer this question but you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, some points to ponder: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There exist funded research based masters programs. Depending on the field and geography they will vary substantially in quality, but &lt;em&gt;conceivably&lt;/em&gt; you could delay answering that question by going somewhere for a Masters and seeing how well that goes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grades are going to have an effect on you getting in. In terms of success, what really matters is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_%28personality_trait%29&quot;&gt;grit&lt;/a&gt;. Smarts get you somewhere, but you need to learn to tolerate challenge and failure to succeed in research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have nothing else on your plate, in terms of family or ambitions, then now is the time to experiment with possible paths. So long as you don't define your self-worth based on success in a PhD, the worst that could happen is you decide research isn't for you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it research you want to do, or is research just the only entrance into a field you can see. Sometimes people think they want to do research, but it's because that is the only job they know in that field. Maybe spend some time thinking about alternative entrances into the field you're interested in! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T16:53:55.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15838" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:06:38.820" Score="15" ViewCount="2372" Body="&lt;p&gt;My undergraduate research adviser is expelled from the university for political reasons (in Middle East) after more than a decade of teaching and research. Now they have even forced the department to remove his name from the faculty list on the website of the department and they have taken away his academic email address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am applying to graduate schools in US and I want to include his recommendation letter in my application. What are the chances that the admission committee rejects my application due to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My adviser not being listed on the department webpage. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not having an official email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional info: He has tens of publications which indicate his affiliation. He does have the letter head of the university, which can be used to print the letter on. The webpage of the department cannot be easily found by one search. One must find it through the university website which can take some effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="8289" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T18:40:16.743" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:23:44.490" Title="Recommendation letter from a research adviser who is expelled from the university" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15820" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:14:11.020" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I learn (quickly) all the material that I need in order to be&#xA;  proficient in my area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then Penguin_Knight's answer has some excellent suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I avoid feelings of despair and hopelessness when I think of&#xA;  how much I have to learn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then the trick is to change the premise. You're not acquiring knowledge in a Ph.D as if you're drinking from a (very large) cup that needs to be finished before you can move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, you've been plonked down without preparation in the middle of a raging river, when all you've ever dealt with before are little rivulets that drip into a cup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly, the goal here is not to try and &quot;drink the river&quot;, but merely to observe little eddies and streams in the torrent and learn something about them. As you become more and more proficient, you'll see more and more of the river and you'll be able to manipulate it better, but you are never &quot;in control&quot; of the entire torrent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be stretching this analogy further than it can go, but hopefully my point is coming through: that you shouldn't fall into the fallacy of having to learn &quot;everything&quot; in order to be a competent researcher. Rather, as Penguin_Knight says early on, you should think strategically about what you really need to learn and how you can pick up relevant skills based on what you're working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T17:14:11.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15806" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:20:10.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually politics or prestige.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in the days when the computer science discipline was heating up (mid to late 1990s), there was a big discussion on where to put computer science. Traditionally, it was a science, but at that time the economic outlook for high-tech (which included electrical engineering and computer engineering) was really, really hot, and it was fashionable to have a department that encompassed &quot;everything high tech&quot;. Thus, there was a big push to move computer science to the Faculty of Engineering. This was augmented at the time by the birth of &quot;software engineering&quot; programs and by a number of papers discussing programming and software development as more &quot;engineering design&quot; than &quot;science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-forward twenty years or so, and you have what we have now, where programs that are related to &quot;high-tech&quot; are roughly grouped together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated already, the disciplines are different. I won't repeat @TinActon's words since he's summarized them well. However, they operated under the same high-tech umbrella for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, you don't choose the department - you choose a program, but it's more likely that there's synergistic (industrial) collaboration in a department that has EE, CE, and CS together, as the industries that hire in EE, CE, and CS tend to overlap a lot. However, that's not to say that there isn't cross-disciplinary opportunities for CS and the other science fields either. Biology and chemistry and physics all have a very high dependence on equipment and techniques developed in the EE/CE/CS side, and similarly EE/CE/CS benefit from the work being done in the sciences side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T17:20:10.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T18:08:05.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether this teacher is dangerously wrong or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If his teaching the wrong things to everyone then he needs to be challenged. Challenging him in class won't help. Talk to him in his comfort zone and find out what you can. If he is genuinely a bad teacher, you need to find your campus support network and work out how to escalate the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in this case it sounds like he is a good teacher, trying to get through a lesson as others have said, but not necessarily completely up-to-date or good at putting down smart-arses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, learn what you can, he might have old ideas that are really great! When you can teach his class, critique it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T18:08:05.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15820" CreationDate="2014-01-15T18:37:01.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have 2 choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) as a probability researcher, invent the infinite probabability drive and use this to increase the probability that you can instantly learn everything that will ever be known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) go back and read xLeitix's great answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T18:37:01.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15833" CreationDate="2014-01-15T18:50:18.130" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky situation, but as long as everyone is careful and honest, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would recommend.  Yes, you should ask your former advisor to submit a reference letter on your behalf, from his non-academic email address.  You should mention in your statement that he has left your university, but you should not say anything about &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; he left.  Any further details are up to your former advisor to reveal, if he wishes to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your former advisor absolutely should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; submit his letter on university letterhead, because he is not affiliated with the university.  He should include a very brief bio describing his &lt;em&gt;former&lt;/em&gt; affiliation and listing his departure date.  If possible, he should include some external evidence of his scholarship, like a pointer to his Scopus or Google Scholar profile.  If he wants to describe the circumstances of his departure, he should keep the story &lt;em&gt;very brief&lt;/em&gt;; his letter should focus on &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;, not about him, his former employer, or their political conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T18:50:18.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-15T20:02:55.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many answers suggest to lower grades for unneatness. I do not like this solution becaause at least once, you will still have to grade unneat homework. Another solution is to fix the deadline earlier than you really need, and simply refuse to take any homework that does not match your guide lines. This can only work for guidelines that can be judge in a glimpse. Also, as mentioned in other answers, such harsh behavior needs you to be crystal clear about what you want, and to explain why you want it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This methods warrants you the students will care about your guidelines, and avoids you dealing with the kind of stuff you do not want to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T20:02:55.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T20:05:26.903" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never &lt;em&gt;challenge&lt;/em&gt; a lecturer. Ask. If it's something that isn't directly related to PRECISELY the point they're currently teaching, ask during office hours rather than in front of the whole class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Praise in public, criticize in private -- and criticize by asking &quot;would this have been another answer, and if so why is the one you showed us better&quot;, rather than by acccusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting Dean Inge: &quot;There are two kinds of fool. One says 'This is old, and therefore good.' The other says 'This is new, and therefore better.'&quot; Before demonstrating yourself to be the latter type, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;politely&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; make sure you understand what was actually being taught and why. You may have completely missed the point he was making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that this is just as true when working with a boss, or even when you're the boss. Start with a discussion rather than assuming one or the other side is inherently true and that there must be a winner or loser. In the end, the boss &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have the final say, because they have to consider more than just the technical merits of that one point, but you're a lot more likely to have a pleasant and productive experience if you try to work with people rather than against them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thought: &quot;who thinks he's always right&quot; is more of a comment about your attitude than about that of the instructor. Of COURSE he thinks what he's teaching is correct, or he wouldn't be teaching it. That doesn't mean he can't be wrong, but it does mean you need to respectfully justify your objection if you want it (and yourself) to be taken seriously. And unless the error is a simple typo/&quot;thinko&quot;, that's likely to take more time than should be sliced out of most lectures. Talk to him afterward. He can always announce a correction at the next lecture if you convince him that one is needed. And if you can't convince him, ask yourself why not rather than assuming he's just being an ass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastEditorUserId="10225" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T03:33:42.070" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T03:33:42.070" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15820" CreationDate="2014-01-15T22:01:06.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to keep it in perspective is to realize that these feelings are only going to become more extreme as your career progresses, but they aren't actually a problem in themselves.  Instead, once you get used to them, they can actually be a source of joy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're never going to catch up, because the amount you learn will grow at best linearly with time, while the amount of research you recognize to be relevant and important will grow rapidly (seemingly exponentially) as you learn more.  You'll never be able to say &quot;Well, now I've got a solid foundation in everything I need to know,&quot; because each topic you learn will naturally suggest two more.  And the more you understand how deep and interconnected everything is, the more you will realize how limited your understanding actually is.  Anyone who thinks they have the world all figured out is not a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, this is cause for celebration.  The scope of your favorite subject is unbounded!  In a few years, you will happily be using ideas you barely understand right now, or perhaps haven't even heard of yet.  From a broad enough perspective, you have interests in common with researchers who superficially seem to be doing something utterly different.  Why would you give up infinite possibilities in favor of a limited world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can sympathize with feeling overwhelmed.  I remember sitting in a class thinking to myself &quot;This is beautiful stuff, but I'm glad I won't need to use it myself, because that would be a lot to master in addition to my own research area,&quot; and then, a few years later, realizing to my horror that I did need to master it.  It's not easy, but you shouldn't let that put you off.  Research isn't easy for anyone.  Famous mathematicians are also missing knowledge that would help them in their research, just like you are, so nobody can judge you or look down on you for your ignorance.  Ultimately, we are all ignorant and struggling to become less so.  Fortunately, what we learn is enough to justify the struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for concrete suggestions, the other answers have lots of useful information, especially &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15831/&quot;&gt;the one by Penguin_Knight&lt;/a&gt;.  One thing I'd emphasize is the importance of keeping at it over time, even if progress seems slow.  It's easy to get depressed if you work intensely on something and have to give up when you can't sustain the time commitment.  By contrast, slow but continual progress will really accumulate over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T22:01:06.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15891" CreationDate="2014-01-15T22:04:42.413" Score="28" ViewCount="25552" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do the admission committees learn about an applicant by knowing which other programs and schools one has applied to? Does applying to another program which is more prestigious make the applicant seem more serious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="8289" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T01:27:40.013" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T23:24:00.440" Title="Why do graduate school application forms ask applicants to name the other schools to which he/she is applying?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-15T22:06:00.683" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in the United States, critical thinking is one of the core values of our higher education system. This is a social and institutional value that is opposite to the values seen in many other cultures, where the professor is always right, even when s/he is wrong. A competent college professor in the US should always welcome skeptical comments from students. The word &quot;skeptic&quot; itself comes simply from the Greek verb &quot;to think.&quot; If you're not being skeptical, you're not thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these values are not universal. For example, the educational system in India is infamous for teaching by rote memorization and discouraging critical thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a professor, I've often made mistakes in class and been very grateful to students who corrected them. I often joke to my students that if I inadvertently wrote 2+2=5 on the board, I worry that they would come up to me after class and ask, &quot;Professor, you wrote 2+2=5 on the board. I always thought it was 4, but is 5 the answer you want us to give on the test?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not refrain from asking questions in class because of any fear that it will confuse other students or make the professor fall behind and not have time to finish the lecture. Mistakes are very confusing to other students until they're corrected, and the reason you have a textbook is so that you have a source of information for any topics that there wasn't enough time to cover in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you should exercise normal tact, consideration, and humility. The goal is not to fight a battle with your teacher, it's to help yourself and everyone else in the class understand the subject correctly. There's the joke that at the age of 20, I knew everything, but now that I'm older I know a lot less. In computer science, there are basic principles that don't change much over time (a quick sort scales better than a bubble sort), but there's a lot of other random junk that amounts to styles and fads (choices of particular computer languages). Don't fall into the trap of thinking that there's something wrong with your professor just because he doesn't emphasize the flavor of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he's been known to give lower grades to students who asked him too many questions he wasn't able to properly answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard for me to imagine how you would know this. It's not as though you have access to records of what these other students' grades were on every assignment and a side-by-side comparison with what the grades would have been if they hadn't asked questions. It seems just as likely that these students had overblown opinions of their own abilities and therefore felt their grades were unfair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T22:06:00.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T22:23:26.957" Score="3" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a medical school graduate student. However, I wish to apply for a PhD program in molecular and cell biology, I'm interested in understanding the interactions within and between cells at molecular level. However, it seems that at many programs, courses on physics and mathematics are required. I didn't take any mathematical or physical courses. Is it possible to take these courses without having to go through the whole bachelor's curriculum? If this is possible, how could I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10895" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T23:55:22.057" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T11:25:51.487" Title="Applying to a graduate program in molecular and cell biology" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-16T00:05:52.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries, it is not acceptable to lower grades for things like neatness; however, you could go for a cause and effect scenario: &quot;if you do not follow the guidelines, your paper will be returned to you to be resubmitted according to the guidelines.&quot; If this causes their paper to be late, assuming late submissions get a grade-deduction penalty, then hopefully the students will learn to follow the instructions to avoid having to redo their work and to avoid receiving a lateness penalty. Also, you won't have to mark the sloppy version!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10680" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T00:05:52.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2014-01-16T00:09:30.457" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD quitter, I can relate to your situation. Before discussing the main topic, I’d like to state that I didn't notice you were not a native English speaker before you mentioned it. Neither am I. And I haven’t read the other answers before writing mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back on topic: I was confronted to some of the same issues when I was working as a PhD student in the U.S., originally coming from France. My decisions were made easier because I believe the professor who supervised me despised me. I quit after 3 years, leaving the field of research completely. At the time the logic was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There just were not enough jobs in research, even for the top tier of students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was slower than other students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was not motivated and had no support from my supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a tendency towards procrastination (like I do), you can spend ages staying in a position that you don’t like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I suggest is giving some thought to the following questions, which I think are those that matter the most:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do I want to do in the next years? Don’t limit your options yet. Think freely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I get there? Imagine what could be the best strategy to get there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If point 2 involves quitting your current position, think about it as a career move. No one wants to hurt feelings, but we’re talking about your life, not anyone else’s. If you explain that your decision comes from logical thinking, this should not be an issue. Offer to leave your notes in pristine condition; offer to train or work with a new student for a couple of months. You may be surprised by your supervisors being supportive with the new direction you want to take. An experienced supervisor will certainly try to step in your shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I currently work, we've had 4 directors (the top guy in the company) in two years, each one quitting after 3 months or less. They are supposed to care the most about the company, but they have no problem moving along if there’s something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD was a childhood dream for me too. Now I don’t care. In my field a PhD means going from one postdoc position to another until the age of 35 or more. Sixteen years have passed since I quit. I’ve been working for years as an independent contractor in IT. I was recently hired by my main client, but I’m not sure if I’ll stay. (If 4 directors can resign, I can too!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About learning every day, be sure that you can still do it at any age, whatever your job is. I never gave up doing “research” on a personal level. So many books are written on everything. The internet is a blessing. YouTube is a great source of knowledge with lectures, documentaries, video blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing some of the specific issues you mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a world outside academia. Academia is like a box, but it is only after you get out of the box that you realize this. The academic ways of thinking are very formatted. Being successful in academia requires diplomatic and political skills that are not involved in research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About regretting academia: just think about the miserable times you had. This should cure you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About your supervisors disappointment: don’t worry too much about them. Your mother is going to be a lot more disappointed ;-) No, just joking. When I told my father I was quitting my PhD, I was expecting he would be upset. He just said, “Oh, I see. Okay.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About losing contact with the wonderful people: you will lose some contacts whether you get a PhD or not. Even if you stay around, some won’t. But you’ll stay in touch with the best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not pretending to offer a turnkey solution, only a few ideas to think about. Obviously my answer is biased in one direction: this is from my personal experience, but you really look like you have had enough of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10903" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T02:12:13.783" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T02:12:13.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15664" CreationDate="2014-01-16T00:15:34.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons for students not to follow guidelines. One of them is that often each professor has his own guidelines, and one HW perfect for one will be unacceptable for another (and vice-versa). Prof. X wants Times 11 on A4, Prof. Y will read nothing but Helvetica 12 on Legal, etc (increase the figures for older profs). Your guidelines should be sensible and minimal, otherwise they will just be an exercise in obedience (which students detects easily and despise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Departmental or faculty guidelines may help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T00:15:34.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15824" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:16:50.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the effect is due to native speakers writing better in that language --- whether that's due to fewer grammatical errors, larger vocabulary, it's not really a native-speaker bias as such.  You could say that native speakers have an &quot;unfair advantage&quot; in the sense that they have a leg up in using the language, but I think it's incorrect to call that a bias.  Tall players may have an advantage in basketball, but that on its own doesn't mean that there is a &quot;tallness bias&quot; in player selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it's not clear how reviewers (or anyone else who hadn't met the author personally) could know that the author was a native speaker, as opposed to just a good writer in the language.  I'd say that to argue it was a native speaker bias specifically, you'd have to show that native speakers as a whole were given preferential treatment over non-native speakers, independent of their writing ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different question, though, would be whether there's a &lt;em&gt;writing quality&lt;/em&gt; bias.  I think it's possible that articles with a &quot;better&quot; writing style (whatever that may mean) get an edge over articles that are competently but not so eloquently written.  It could be argued that this is a bias, if it means that interesting and important results are less likely to be published due to writing-quality issues at the top end of the scale.  Everyone agrees that some minimum level of writing quality is needed for the article to be readable and useful, but if excellent writing &quot;above and beyond&quot; that minimum gives an article an undue boost over others with equally important findings, that could be a bias.  Again, though, it would be a bias in the relative evaluation of characteristics of the &lt;em&gt;articles&lt;/em&gt; themselves, not a bias related to the &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt;'s status as a native or non-native speaker.  In particular, this would mean that native speakers who aren't very good writers would also be adversely affected by the bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any data on this issue, but I'd be skeptical that there is a bias towards native speakers per se.  I could believe there is a bias towards better writing (even when extra-good writing &quot;doesn't matter&quot; in terms of the scientific value of the article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T03:16:50.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15875" CreationDate="2014-01-16T04:38:27.860" Score="31" ViewCount="46544" Body="&lt;p&gt;What percentage of PhD theses (e.g., physics ones) are rejected nowadays? And why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T12:04:08.623" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T18:34:29.303" Title="What percentage of PhD theses are rejected nowadays?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2014-01-16T10:40:01.930" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Docear&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haven't tried it yet but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.docear.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.docear.org/&lt;/a&gt; seems to stand out as one of the leading open-source alternative to mendeley. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Docear is basically a marriage of &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JabRef&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeplane.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freeplane&lt;/a&gt;. It uses JabRef as a backend for its reference management and Freeplane to organize references, annotations you make in the pdf, and any other information (including images, links and crossreferences) in a mind-map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the original author of this answer pointed out it is indeed open-source—licensed under the GNU General Public License.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.docear.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/img_521c9b6f881df.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10664" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:48.983" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T23:57:56.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15861" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:12:50.743" Score="7" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I learn or look for some information, I find scientific article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/&quot;&gt;ieeexplore.ieee.org&lt;/a&gt; or similar, where articles are paid. Most of the articles are written by some professors of universities or students about their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, why do they sell their results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was a professor and made some work, I would like to gain some acknowledgement for it and I think there is no better way then see others work based on mine. So why not to publicly share the article for free? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that private companies sell their innovations because that's the main source of their income, but people at universities are usually paid and writing articles are part of their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what are the advantages of selling results instead of sharing for free (is there any other except money)?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does selling your results have any negative influence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I may not have enough backstage knowledge about how it works on universities and I don't want to offend anybody. I also don't mean work people do in their own free time, but work they do on behalf of universities. This just slows down the development and overall research in field in my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10931" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T11:28:02.557" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T00:53:55.793" Title="Why many research results are presented as paid articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11193" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:22:55.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be changing. A recent article in the &lt;em&gt;Washington Post&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/19/how-one-publisher-is-stopping-academics-from-sharing-their-research/&quot;&gt;How one publisher is stopping academics from sharing their research&lt;/a&gt; (2013-12-19), describes a recent 'spree' of takedown notices sent by Elsevier to Academia.edu, the University of Calgary, the University of California-Irvine, and Harvard University. This seems to be a new development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The letter to Harvard identified 23 articles that it requested be taken down from University-hosted pages in mid November. &quot;We had not received takedown notices for scholarly articles before this, as far as we know,&quot; says Peter Suber, the Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Open Access Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia.edu, which is a for-profit company, and also a competitor of Elsevier-owned Mendeley, got about 2,800 requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is also covered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/elsevier-versus-open-access&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/posting-your-latest-article-you-might-have-to-take-it-down/48865&quot;&gt;The Chronicle of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T11:22:55.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15857" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:27:39.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The publication business is largely just that, a business. Publishers make money from selling their product, they need money to keep staff to provide the services as well as make a profit among other things. No journals that I am aware of, or at least have been in contact with, salary authors for what they write. I am sure there may be the odd exception but in general, research articles render no income to the author. Books may be a different story of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last decades or so Open Access publishing has become more common and some research funding agencies demand results are published in such journals. Check, for example,  the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Access&lt;/a&gt; for an introduction to Open Access or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://open-access.net/de_en/homepage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Access Net site&lt;/a&gt; for additional information. Open Access does not mean everything is free but it moves the charges from the reader to the author so that authors pay to have their papers published. There are free services for publishing. As with everything else, some less scrupulous business models have sprung out of the Open Access idea such as so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;predatory journals&lt;/a&gt;Unfortunately. So awareness is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T11:27:39.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15857" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:28:59.233" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors who publish their research results normally do not earn money from these paid articles. It is the publishing journal who earns. There are even journals who ask the author to pay for publishing the articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the authors of the paid article directly and ask them for the copy of the article. Be polite, explain why do you need it for. In most cases, you will get that copy for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try put the article name and authors into Google search. Another similar article by the same authors may exist and be free to download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T00:53:55.793" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T00:53:55.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15857" CreationDate="2014-01-16T12:22:01.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others pointed out, publishing has its costs (editing, maintaining website, creating and distributing print versions etc.) and that has to be paid for. Either by the readers, or by the authors. Each has its pros and cons and it depends on many things, which of the approaches the author takes (funding agency might require the article to be made freely accessible, the author may not have the resources to pay the publishing fee himself, there can be some customs in their field that everyone follows or something else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, anyway, like to point out a different issue here – the number of readers is not affected much by the article being behind a paywall or not. Scientific articles use very technical language and assume certain level of knowledge in their readers, making them less accessible (or even completely unaccessible) to general public. The only readers then come from academic environments, and universities usually pay for subscriptions to the most important journals in each field. Other researchers can thus read scientific papers without any (visible) costs on their side. As long as there are universities willing to pay subscription fees, there will be journals where readers have to pay for articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T12:22:01.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15793" CreationDate="2014-01-16T12:29:50.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on the country and university specifics. However during my studies once happened for me to observe students replacing professor they deemed it is not competent enough for the particular course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student group should apply to university management asking to replace the teacher as not good enough. Of course, such application must list multiple factual errors in presented material, uncovered topics that you consider important for the subject, examples of undelivered information that you think would be highly relevant to the given lecture and the like. Significant number of students should apply so it would be difficult just to represent this as a personal conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the teaching person is not a head of laboratory / department but instead is under supervision of another competent professor, you may also talk to his supervisor. Some universities concentrate on research so deeply that teaching may be delegated to somebody more junior and less experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot find enough arguments or supporters for this procedure, the professor is actually competent ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T13:05:30.520" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T13:05:30.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15852" CreationDate="2014-01-16T13:52:47.313" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very small, as every failed PhD defence is also a shame for the professor. As a result, the professor will not allow to proceed with defence of the really weak work. And he will listen for other professors that would usually tell in advance they think to vote against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, most likely, the following will happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a PhD student just does not work enough, the professor&#xA;will not allow to continue studies after some time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a PhD&#xA;student is mad with some own theory or topic that academic community&#xA;unlikely to accept, the professor will not allow to defend such a&#xA;work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is really a bad luck with your topic, the professor will&#xA;change the topic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the professor has made a strategic mistake and&#xA;your diligent work does not give results that could be published in a&#xA;good journal, the professor should normally try to publish anyway in less reputable sources, good enough for PhD defence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD supervisor is more interested in your success than a lecturer is interested in the progress of the student. Same professor that writes low grades with relatively little attention (as long as he is sure the student deserves) will spend more time when acting as a PhD supervisor, will try to help, will try to fix the topic. This is because PhD project is also &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; research project. And who would want ones research project to fail? Of course, the professor tries to find a good PhD student for his project, or, if this was not successful, at least to fire lazy or uncooperative student in the first year. But this is way before the actual PhD defence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If to ask differently, how many PhD students do not get they degree at the end, this really depends a lot on the traditions inside the institution. However in all places I have seen this was below 20 % or about. The first post doctoral position is also seldom a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next serious threshold you will need to pass is the professor position or at least a permanent researcher position, if you want to stay in science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2016-05-18T18:34:29.303" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T18:34:29.303" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15765" CreationDate="2014-01-16T16:30:21.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the comments on your question, I think this is really context specific and the role of an author can vary quite subtly from area to area. I'll try give a general answer to the general question first, and then look at the specfics of your case afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to handle not being credited for research software development in papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is whether or not you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be credited for the software you developed in the paper. The answer is predicated on what precisely the contribution of the paper is and what the contribution of the software is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, (part of) the core contribution of the paper is describing optimisations and techniques that you invented and applied in the software, then I think it is more than fair that you should be credited as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, the core contribution relates to a methodology for doing X where your software was specifically designed for that methodology, then you should probably be credited as a co-author or, at the very least, mentioned in the acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the core contribution of the paper is not directly related to the software itself but the software is used to some ends, then you should probably not be credited on the paper (otherwise Linus Torvalds would have millions of publications). But if the software system was described in another paper and played a significant/specialised role in the current paper, you could expect a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the publications wouldn't be possible without the systems I developed would I have any remit to ask for credit and/or authorship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your reasoning is a little flawed here. Making a research paper &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; does not entitle you to co-authorship (as a simple counter-example, if paper A builds upon the results of paper B such that paper A would not be possible without paper B, the authors of paper B should not expect co-authorship on paper A). Providing part of the core contribution of the paper—the reason why it was accepted in the first place—entitles you to co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed something crucial in your comments that you didn't clarify in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Since xxxx &lt;strong&gt;our system&lt;/strong&gt; has collated data on x cases and found that..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The authors should absolutely not be claiming credit for a system they did not design or build.&lt;/strong&gt; This is clearly wrong. (And it also indirectly suggests that part of the contribution is indeed the system and the authors are trying to claim credit for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you know the authors, you should talk with them, show them the relevant quotes in the papers and tell them that you are not happy with them claiming the system as their own. Tell them that if they wish to continue claiming the system in future then you should be a co-author on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to escalate, you can contact the editor(s) of the journal(s) involved and tell them your story. The editor(s) might agree to let you publish a letter referring to the specific paper and outlining your case. This should be considered the &quot;nuclear&quot; option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Not in answer to the question, but this quote in the transcript of Hamming's address &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You and Your Research&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (well worth a read for anyone in research) reminded me of this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also did a second thing. When I loaned what little programming power we had to help in the early days of computing, I said, &quot;We are not getting the recognition for our programmers that they deserve. When you publish a paper you will thank that programmer or you aren't getting any more help from me. That programmer is going to be thanked by name; she's worked hard.&quot; I waited a couple of years. I then went through a year of BSTJ articles and counted what fraction thanked some programmer. I took it into the boss and said, &quot;That's the central role computing is playing in Bell Labs; if the BSTJ is important, that's how important computing is.&quot; He had to give in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T17:40:40.030" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T17:40:40.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15842" CreationDate="2014-01-16T16:45:35.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things I (as someone sitting in academic admission committees) would learn from this question is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the person flexible (willing to move)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did (s)he just apply to some randomly selected institutions or is there a clear dedication to one field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are my main competitors (and this might be the true reason for this question).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T16:45:35.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15491" CreationDate="2014-01-16T16:55:42.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I did something like that, and I must say it eats up all your time. As said in one of the comments, it is only likely to succeed, if there is a close relation between thesis and company, otherwise you won't find enough time for both of them and fail.&#xA;If your thesis is closely related, you should inform your advisor very early in the process, because most advisors think all ideas emerging from their institution are their ideas or at least inspired by them. Despite of that, a good advisor could open some doors and be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, you might even be forced to do this (depending on the situationin your country), e.g. in Germany most contracts do not allow side business without anouncement to your employer. Of course, as long as it can be considered a hobby, noone can sue you for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do a great job if the PhD-programm can sell it as a success story, because their funded project resulted in a new start-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T16:55:42.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15844" CreationDate="2014-01-16T17:16:18.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of PhD projects in molecular and cell biology concentrate on experimental work and you will need to read a lot about other experimental works, results and conclusions, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also need to read about structures and interactions but this will be similar to human anatomy and physiology you have already tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is unlikely to be a problem for a medical graduate. I would say, go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T17:16:18.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15765" CreationDate="2014-01-16T17:36:54.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably too late to deal with this after the fact, but much of the discussions that have occurred over the last few years regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.force11.org/datacitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proper scholarly credit for data&lt;/a&gt; also apply to software.  In 2012, I presented a poster at the American Astronomical Society on &lt;a href=&quot;http://sdac.virtualsolar.org/docs/SPD2012/2012_SPD_citation.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Recommendations for Data &amp;amp; Software Citation in Solar Physics&lt;/a&gt; that is broadly applicable to any research data or software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one tricky part is that many journals will consider something simply posted on a website is often considered grey literature rather than 'Published'.  For this reason, it's useful to get a DOI assigned to it, as you effectively make the citation look like any other cited work.  If you're not attached to an institution that can mint DOIs, a possible work-around would be to post something to &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FigShare&lt;/a&gt; and they'll assign one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1622" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T17:36:54.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15852" CreationDate="2014-01-16T19:07:15.630" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm only personally aware of one student who failed his PhD defense (this is at an R1 US university). After his advisor refused to approve his thesis, he went over his head and got the department chair to schedule the defense anyway. Results were predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &quot;major revisions&quot; are very common, especially, I hear, in the humanities (in engineering, it's far more common to receive token feedback -- if the committee reads the thesis at all! -- than demands for substantial changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outright failing a student during a defense is an extreme embarassment, for the department, for the PhD committee, for the advisor, and of course for the student, so there is every incentive to ensure that a thesis that goes to defense will pass. Moreover, since most theses these days are compilations of previously-published work, it is very easy to tell well in advance if the student is expected to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if an advisor has doubts about the quality of a student's thesis, he will either ask the student to spend more time improving it, or &quot;suggest&quot; the student start looking for jobs in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T19:07:15.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T22:03:41.103" Score="5" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came out recently with a publishable idea. I analysed it theoretically, and now I need to simulate it - which will take huge amount of time apparently.  I wanted to publish the idea, but I can't wait until the simulation is over. My professor suggested to go for a letter journal (each paper has a limit of 4 pages). This is the first time I write a letter paper, and it does not seem easy at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions or advices to keep the content within the limit of 4 pages without overcomplicating the paper?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish this is not a vague question, or too specific.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: my field is computer science, but the journal is managed by electrical engineers (IEEE Communications Letters - if it is Ok to name it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="4472" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T15:37:30.437" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T15:37:30.437" Title="Suggestions for writing short papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15857" CreationDate="2014-01-16T22:59:36.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had two papers published with IEEE when I was an undergrad.  There is no provision for me, or any of my co-authors, to be paid by IEEE.  In fact, I was required to pay steep conference registration and publication fees, and also a fee for an extra page on one of the papers, to have the papers published by IEEE.  I recall that some conferences also actually require you to attend the conference in order to have the paper published, so, add mandatory hotel accommodations and an airline ticket to that as well (although I'm not complaining, since I got plenty of support from my universities, and conference trips are always a lot of fun).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way the paper publishing world works is, after and if your work is accepted by a conference, you pay various registration fees and publication fees, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transfer your copyright to the publishing house like IEEE&lt;/a&gt; (there are some &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/bib/online.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tricks around this&lt;/a&gt;, like giving up the copyright instead, by placing your paper into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public domain&lt;/a&gt;), or, as is the case with some other publishers, give them a non-exclusive irrevocable royalty-free licence, and then they publish your work on their web-site (with a right of collecting fees from web-site users, too), as well as possibly into a printed proceedings of the conference that's given to all attendees (sometimes for an extra fee, too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universities in the US, Canada, England and other contries, pay IEEE some kind of subscription fees, so, anyone on the university network is automatically given unlimited free access to all such papers that are published by IEEE.  Otherwise, if you're using a home connection, or your university lacks any such agreement with IEEE, then IEEE collects individual fees for every paper directly from end users (and gives none of it to the authors of said papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by other answers, many authors also place a copy of their papers on their own web-site.  This is often done illegally, since they often no longer own the copyright to such papers, so, depending on the circumstances, IEEE and such can potentially resort to legal methods to enforce its copyright against the illegal copies.  For practical reasons and bad-publicity considerations, this is not actively done in reality.  It is also the case that after having the copyright assigned to itself, IEEE and other publishers generally give some kind of non-exclusive licence back to the authors with some limited rights on what could be done with an exact copy of the paper.  IANAL, but I think the language of such licence is generally restrictive enough that you're not actually supposed to provide the very same copy of the paper elsewhere to the general public in an unrestricted access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, these academic conferences are different to the technical conferences around open-source software.  With technical conferences, there is a lot of members of the general public who want to see the presentation of the author, and such members of the public pay modest registration fees, which, when taken together, together with some contributions by big-name sponsors, are enough not only to support the web-site with free access to all the resources, and potentially a publication of the paper proceedings, but are also often sufficient enough to even cover the airfare and other travel expenses of the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6026" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T22:59:36.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15765" CreationDate="2014-01-17T05:06:16.490" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The style guidelines used for citations in the paper usually include &lt;a href=&quot;http://software.ac.uk/so-exactly-what-software-did-you-use&quot;&gt;guidelines for the citation of software&lt;/a&gt;. In most cases, the question is not so much who was responsible for writing the software as how can other researchers acquire the software (theoretically to reproduce the results). As others have mentioned, though, if they are discussing algorithms that you introduced into the software as if they were their own work, there may be a significant problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is the question of the conditions (contractual and otherwise) under which the software was developed and whether that software is somehow unique, or just automates tasks that are otherwise tedious. The vast majority of the software I have written belongs to the people that paid for it to be written and the majority of the credit I have received has been in my salary and my resume, and the occasional thank you from a co-worker that wasn't followed up with a &quot;...now can you change this?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10964" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T05:06:16.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15878" CreationDate="2014-01-17T06:09:14.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, follow Tara Bs advice of reading such journals (this will help in choosing the appropriate one as well). &#xA;Second, try to describe your idea on a level of complexity, you would explain it to your grandparents in max 10 sentences (assuming they are no experts in your field). This gives you a nice outline of the most important concepts and context of the idea. &#xA;Now dig into the topics which are really relevant, and explain them in more detail. Keep the state of the art as short as possible (but demonstrate that you know the relevant literature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have no simulation results yet, your simulation system is the result of your paper. Therefore &quot;methods&quot; are the way you built your system and design considerations. In the results, you can show some data from pre-tests if available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep your major paper in mind, especially make sure, the full paper will not be regarded as self-plagiarism of the short paper. But if everything goes well, you can cite your short paper in the methods section of the long one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (computer science / informatics), one would often choose a conference paper instead of a short paper, but this really depends on your scientific discipline and strategy of your institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T06:23:15.587" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T06:23:15.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15833" CreationDate="2014-01-17T07:43:35.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An attempt to represent the former scientist as &quot;not a scientist at all&quot; in my opinion does not make any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, the university professor should have publications. These publications stay forever. Not only they confirm the competence, also the article headers always include information about the authors affiliation. If the journals have been at least moderately reputable, such publications can be easily found on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply ask for a letter of recommendation. Of course, to make verification easier, he could also write a couple of sentences about himself, pointing to his most successful publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T14:23:44.490" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:23:44.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2014-01-17T07:52:48.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is fully possible situation. The editor tries to pick the most relevant reviewers, but these are also the most probable competitors, as they work on the same topic. If two near parallel research projects are close to publishing they results (and who will be first), yes, this is a problem. However if the works are different enough not to invalidate significance of each other, most of the reviewers will not be biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It even happened for me to observe the competing laboratory simply delaying the review for a long time (as this also delays the publication) and ultimately refusing to provide it, openly stating that &quot;we are competitors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, many journals allow authors to provide a list of competitors that may not be capable of unbiased reviewing for that article. If some other laboratory is very much a competitor, or if have already been problems with such a reviewer in the past, the author should ask the editor to pick somebody else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T07:57:53.013" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T07:57:53.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15629" CreationDate="2014-01-17T10:41:16.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a very nasty situation for the whole science system, when PhD student is already a potential competitor for the supervisor. This often leads to PhD studies lasting forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However scientific systems in most countries have more than enough measures to exclude such a competition. Most important, you frequently cannot progress from PhD student to professor inside the same institution, using the benefit that &quot;you are already here, and everyone knows how good you are&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, there is no reason for the supervisor to press down exactly you. Another competitor will come from the side anyway, and the supervisor will be with better chances after having good shared publications on your PhD project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competition does may happen if the professor assigns say some quite junior post doc to supervise a PhD student. Such post doc may then want to take over promising project for instance, be the first between authors, etc. However if this goes too far, it is usually possible to ask the actual professor to remove such a &quot;supervisor&quot; out of head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T10:49:43.107" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T10:49:43.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15844" CreationDate="2014-01-17T11:25:51.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US it is not uncommon for universities to allow students to take individual courses without seeking a degree. This is especially true of some of the larger introductory type courses that are required for getting into grad school. It is probably worth contacting the schools you are interested in applying and telling them you have not taken all the prerequisite courses and if there is something that can be arranged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T11:25:51.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15596" CreationDate="2014-01-17T12:39:05.680" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Scopus and Web of Knowledge contain all the information that you need and have APIs that can be used to automate access:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://info.sciencedirect.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/tools/api&quot;&gt;http://info.sciencedirect.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/tools/api&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/products/related/webservices/&quot;&gt;http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/products/related/webservices/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never used them personally, but I hope this kind of information can be accessed using them. Each site indexes articles with their own unique key, so you can use those instead of DOIs if you only need them as unique keys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of them is free; you can probably access them through your university's subscription though. Be sure to check the usage limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T12:39:05.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T13:13:12.710" Score="2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Mphil student from India. My field of interest is complex analysis. I plan to go abroad for my PhD. I know the process of GRE exams and all. But I want to ask, is talking to any professor, with whom you wish to work for PhD, from your desired university, helpful in getting admission? &#xA;Can it be helpful somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10981" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T13:18:11.873" Title="contacting advisor before admission can be helpful?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-17T14:53:18.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15888" CreationDate="2014-01-17T13:18:11.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could certainly talk with them and discuss your ideas and options and if you find the connection is a good one you could ask for a letter of recommendation from them, but short of a letter I don't think a professor has a whole lot of flex/power when it comes to admissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly if they vouch for you that is a positive thing, but unlike a &quot;job&quot; I feel the role at the University is based more on your academic experience and aptitude than who you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10414" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T13:18:11.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15896" CreationDate="2014-01-17T13:36:37.477" Score="1" ViewCount="1726" Body="&lt;p&gt;My tex based on Espanta's answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@techreport{AAMI,&#xA;    title = {Recommended Practice for Testing and Reporting Performance Results of Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Algorithms},&#xA;    institution = {{Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation}},&#xA;    year = {1987},&#xA;    address = {Arlington, VA, USA}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is shown correctly now after Espanta's answer in Bibliography.&#xA;However, the thing is shown in my text similarly as before :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y4rCV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &lt;strong&gt;AAM (1987)&lt;/strong&gt; is shown. &#xA;I do not know what I should have in the text body for this citation, since the citation does not have author but institution.&#xA;I think &lt;strong&gt;AAMI (1987)&lt;/strong&gt; is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the correct way of citing this organisation in IEEE style?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9009" LastEditorUserId="9009" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T15:58:50.017" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T16:14:32.670" Title="To cite an organisation correctly in IEEE style" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15842" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:09:49.197" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that some programs look at is whether you are likely to come if they accept you. Say you have a 4.0 gpa, perfect GREs, great letters of recommendation, and publications in respected journals from your undergrad research, and you apply to a bunch of the top schools and some mediocre schools. If there isn't something in your personal statement explaining why you are applying to the mediocre school, and that school sees all the other great schools you applied to, that school may not accept you because they assume even if they did, you would surely go elsewhere. Why would a university do this? Well its a waste of money to fly you out, but more importantly when someone gets put on the wait-list awaiting your decline of the offer, that person may accept other offers from schools that did not wait-list them. I have been told first hand by members of admission committees that the &quot;where else did you apply to&quot; question is used at least partially for this purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, at the university administration level, they like to keep track of which universities they compete with for students. I have seen Universities present statistics on how many students reject their offers, and which universities they end up in. So the question is also probably there for statistics tracking purposes unrelated to the admission process. This is a potential reason why even the top schools will ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2018-12-29T23:24:00.440" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T23:24:00.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14463" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:40:53.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prerequisites in combinatorics will not be significantly different from the overall prerequisites in the program to which you are applying.  Having taken a combinatorics course would be beneficial, but there is no need to take many of them as an undergraduate.  You mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bsmath.hu/&quot;&gt;Budapest Semesters in Mathematics&lt;/a&gt; in a comment.  They offer a lot of combinatorics courses, more than some U.S. universities, and there is certainly no expectation that a typical applicant will have completed this many courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I expect the main issue will be whether you are applying to pure or applied math departments, since combinatorics could be located in either.  For pure mathematics, the admissions committee will wonder how many of your courses were based on rigorous proofs (for example, applied complex variables and mathematical methods for sciences courses might not be), so it would be best to be clear about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend applying broadly and seeing what happens.  Even if your coursework is not ideal, you may still be admitted, with the expectation of having to catch up in a few topics.  Ultimately, it depends on how compelling your application is overall, and your transcript will be just one factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:40:53.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15895" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:52:51.283" Score="8" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wandering what was the work load of a journal reviewing editor? More precisely, if someone would like to apply for such a position, how much time is required to do the job correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of course aware that it might highly depend on the type of journal and/or field of research, but I would like to have some general feedback / experiences / advices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T15:09:06.530" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:06:41.370" Title="What is the work load of a journal reviewing editor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:55:08.693" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright will be owned by Nature, so it would be illegitimate (and, as @AnonymousMathematician says, somewhat rude) for you to distribute it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However sending a re-typeset version to the original authors isn't &lt;em&gt;distribution&lt;/em&gt;, but simply correspondence.  If they want to re-distribute this, they're in a better place to do so than you are.  This may not have occurred to them, and your action in suggesting they do so, will be at the very least encouragingly flattering!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt Nature would be opposed in principle.  Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/license.html&quot;&gt;author licence policy&lt;/a&gt; says that ‘[Nature Publishing Group] actively supports the self-archiving process, and continues to work with authors, readers, subscribers and site-license holders to develop its policy.’  That's a fairly vague remark, of course, but many universities and funders now &lt;em&gt;mandate&lt;/em&gt; 'self-archiving' papers, and journals have no option but to go along with this; therefore the authors may have already have a way of distributing this in a way which is low-hassle to them, and unobjectionable to the journal(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detail: Authors aren't, typically, allowed to distribute the publisher's PDF version of a paper, but &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; increasingly allowed to 'self-archive' and distribute the 'post-refereeing authors' version' (that is, the same text as in the published version, but typeset by the author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, get in touch with the authors.  It sounds like you'll be doing the community a favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10983" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:55:08.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15893" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:08:12.773" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct in that the total time will first of all vary between journals and fields but also slightly over time. I am chief editor of an international journal in the environmental sciences. The time each reviewing editor spends on a paper with our journal can be broken down as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must scan the paper upon receiving it for assigning reviewers (probably takes an hour, maybe less)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign reviewers (does not take much time but can be drawn out over time when reviewers decline to review)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read reviews carefully and provide authors with guidelines on what to focus on (probably takes a few hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carefully check the revisions and decide on the faith of the paper (takes a couple of hours at least depending on extent of revisions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the paper goes to major revisions you need to go through steps 2-4 again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the paper is accepted then spend maybe 15 minutes to half an hour formulating a suggestion for final decision (depends on what might need to be written)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be summed up for one paper as probably more than half a day. Then the question is how many papers you are requested to handle per month/year etc. You can then easily multiply by the number of papers to get a reasonable idea of the total time you will need to spend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to this, you will need to act whenever a paper arrives, so you are expected to be more or less on call all year. Most journals have systems for indicating when editors are away but that only works for assigning new papers; if you have started the process you will have to see it through ... and keep chasing late reviews and delayed revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although I cannot give you an idea of workload, you have some tools to figure out what will be involved. Knowing the number of papers you are expected to handle is the most important statistic to figure out. Then depending on your field, you may have a sense of whether my estimates for scanning and reading materials are reasonable. I am sure they will vary depending on discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T20:06:41.370" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:06:41.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:43:10.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are referring to is a technical report or white paper from certain company. Then it should not be misc type. I think if you change your item from misc to technical report, the IEEE style in latex will handle it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct field in citation style should be&#xA;Authors(if any), title, publisher, address, year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:43:10.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2014-01-17T16:14:32.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Referring to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not know what I should have in the text body for this citation, since the citation does not have author but institution. I think AAMI (1987) is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other problem remains with having appropriate text when citing the document in the body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(comment to @Espanta)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using LaTeX / Bibtex, you are not supposed to control how the citation appears in your text. &lt;strong&gt;This is the task of the style that you are using&lt;/strong&gt;. Unless you have clear evidence that this is not the case, I would assume if a given journal requires you to use a given style, then &lt;strong&gt;whatever text the style generates should be ok&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T16:14:32.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15899" CreationDate="2014-01-17T16:21:18.933" Score="8" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out if a paper is open access or not. My university subscribes to many non-open access journals. Some journals offer mixed models where some papers are open access and others are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journal websites tell me I have accessed them through an institutional subscription, but if the journal uses a mixed model of open access, that does not mean all papers are behind a paywall. Is there a reliable way to tell if a paper is behind a paywall? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular I am interested in knowing if this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v323/n6088/abs/323533a0.html&quot;&gt;Nature paper&lt;/a&gt; is behind a paywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="7978" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T16:24:44.897" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T17:11:32.897" Title="How to tell if a paper is behind a paywall?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15898" CreationDate="2014-01-17T16:48:49.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your particular question: When trying to read it from home, it tells me &quot;To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).&quot; (costs: 30 $US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can easily check this by logging in from home, some public WiFi, or even with your mobile device (as long as it is not using WiFi in your university network to connect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T16:48:49.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15898" CreationDate="2014-01-17T17:11:32.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a particular paper you can use the advice provided by OBu above, by trying to click the link over public wifi without logging into your universities library (or you can even use a public library computer or your smartphone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to discover if a particular journal (not article) is open access, mixed access or completely behind a paywall, you can't use this method. for mixed access journals/publishers, the easiest way to tell whether ALL of their articles are behind a paywall or only some is to read the section entitled something like &quot;Instructions for authors&quot;. If open access is an option this will always be mentioned somewhere in the instructions for people submitting papers to the journal (because they can pay to make their article open access). The reason why you can't just look up a paper at home and look for &quot;To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).&quot; is because this may only be the case for some of that journals articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T17:11:32.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2014-01-17T17:24:35.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While both answers above are correct in that you'd be violating copyright by typesetting the paper and distributing it, it sounds like your intent here is to create a document for your understanding, and that duplicating the paper is the way you're proposing to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to think of how you'd prepare lecture notes based on this paper. It's very common to see lecture notes that go into detail on a single paper. Now you can't reproduce figures/tables from the original work without permission, but you can definitely explain the paper using your own understanding it, and referring readers to the original source for any specific figures/tables/results. Since this particular paper is quite mathematical in nature, you should be able to explain it &lt;strong&gt;in your own words&lt;/strong&gt; reasonably well without actually copying it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T17:24:35.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T18:47:16.647" Score="7" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;A journal publishes a special issue on a controversial area of research studied by a rather limited community of researchers.  Would it be acceptable for the editor of the journal to use the authors of the papers comprising the special issue as the pool of reviewers, so that each paper is (anonymously) reviewed by two of the authors of the other papers ?  Would this constitute a conflict of interest, given that all of the authors will be receptive to other papers supporting this line of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The editor also works on this topic, and it is an area with some controversy.  Should the editor include scientists who have published papers critical of this topic in the pool of reviewers, even if he personally doesn't agree with the criticism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:57:07.017" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:57:07.017" Title="Is it acceptable for authors of papers in a special issue of a journal to review each others' papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15903" CreationDate="2014-01-17T19:05:26.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I would say it would be very poor judgement to use only authors from the special issue as reviewers. But, if the theme is such that they would constitute the best choice for reviewers it might be difficult to avoid. The best way, in my opinion, to try to circumvent the problem is to use one reviewer from the group and one external. this way it is possible for an editor to identify issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem with the scenario you paint is that it seems you suggest the editor is more trustworthy than the authors, or conversely that authors would be worse than the editor. Although I am sure some special issues may suffer from problems such as those you describe, most scientists, editors and journals want high quality work, not sloppy work and so the process is to some extent self-correcting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of publishing, the term conflict of interest is usually not considered other than in situations where, for example, an author has received help from a person who later is requested to be a reviewer or where the author feels that a certain person will not provide a fair assessment of the work. Usually such conflicts will be flagged by the people involved since the editor is in no way positioned to know about all such potential problems. It is thus not difficult to trick the system but uncritical reviews are usually quite easy to see through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T19:05:26.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15906" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T19:46:19.523" Score="8" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a paper submitted for publication in a journal by Prof. Bertie Wooster references a paper by Dr Augustus Fink-Nottle, but that paper was the subject of a critical peer-reviewed comment by Prof. Roderick Spode.  Should I insist as a reviewer that Prof. Spode's paper should also be referenced and the criticism at least mentioned, even if I personally do not agree with Prof. Spode's point of view?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuition is that the reader of a paper should reasonably expect to be made aware of any element on which Prof. Woosters work is based that has been seriously called into question, so that he is able to form an opinion on the matter.  Am I being unreasonable in this expectation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T22:12:26.427" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:00:49.973" Title="Should referencing critical comments on papers that have been referenced be obligatory?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8574" CreationDate="2014-01-17T20:27:16.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though they make valid points, I feel that the existing answers (esp. by @Peter Jansson and @Anonymous Mathematician and the comment by @JeffE) put too much weight in the role of editors. I think this might be misleading for some folks, and (coming along quite a bit later) I want to try balance those answers out with another perspective informed by own experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; you negotiate with reviewers, but any time you submit a revision with a response letter, &lt;strong&gt;you must&lt;/strong&gt; negotiate with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, editors are largely hands-off. Typically they won't read the paper in detail, but instead they try to provide a meta-review: a consensus verdict from the reviews given to them and a summary of the main points to address. The editors make the final decision about rejection/acceptance based on the information they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But crucially, when you submit a revision and an accompanying response letter, it is the &lt;strong&gt;reviewers&lt;/strong&gt; that will look again at the paper and the treatment of their comments and decide how to proceed with their next review (and it is those reviews that are, in turn, considered by the editor). When you submit a response letter, you are implicitly &lt;strong&gt;negotiating with the reviewers&lt;/strong&gt;: you are telling them which comments you addressed and how; more importantly you are telling them which comments you only partially addressed or didn't address at all and why; and you are effectively negotiating with them as to why your paper should now be considered ready for acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear (and this is mentioned in other answers) it is not a good idea to only address the comments given by the editor. Your response letter should be aimed primarily at the reviewers. If the reviewers are happy, the editor is typically happy, not the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yep, sure, reviewers will frequently give you comments you disagree with, but you must respond to everything and I highly recommend at least compromising by partially addressing every comment. Sometimes it is even sufficient to treat the spirit of the comment, not the literal content. For example, a reviewer might push you to do additional work that you feel is very clearly out-of-scope; but then you should ask yourself why the reviewer brings this up? Maybe it wasn't made clear in the paper that it was out-of-scope? In the response letter you can state that you did not present the additional work, but instead that you better clarified why it is considered out of scope in the introduction. This way you acknowledge that there was a flaw in the paper and that the reviewer has a point, but as an author, you chose a different solution to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From the other side of the fence, I know that as a reviewer, I get p*ssed off when the comments I volunteered are not even responded to or are dismissed without good reason. Yes probably some of the comments I give are not useful to the authors but I want to at least see that they considered the suggestions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, though the editors co-ordinate the revisions and the verdicts, it is the reviewers that provide the feedback and, in my experience, it is the reviewers you should aim to negotiate with towards getting your paper ready for acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may have genuine disagreement with a reviewer or will encounter the infamous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-record/0812/p100.open.cormode.pdf&quot;&gt;adversarial reviewer&lt;/a&gt;. Making your case to the editor is then the best course of action. (If reviews are going around in circles for three years, as in this case for example, then it is the responsibility of the editor to step in. In fact, in the terminology of the adversarial reviewer, this is known as the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-record/0812/p100.open.cormode.pdf&quot;&gt;Iterated Goldilocks Method&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T20:35:00.680" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:35:00.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15906" CreationDate="2014-01-17T20:38:46.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on why you reference the paper. If you reference it because of the details that were later commented on, there is definitely reason to also mention the disagreement. I would consider that a basic aspect of any referencing of relevant literature. If, on the other hand the comments by Spode have later been shown to be wrong (Jeeves, 2008) or irrelevant the &quot;historic&quot; discussion has little relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think your sense is correct. But, the necessity to reference both depends on the reason for referencing. The two are not eternally linked for every aspect of the original paper, only the parts where opinions differ and from which the discussion has arisen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:38:46.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15629" CreationDate="2014-01-17T21:40:23.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most of the other answers here have missed an important point: following your PhD, you should not be staying in the same narrow subfield as your advisor. If you are directly competing for grants with your advisor, then you've done something very wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of doctoral and postdoctoral training is to teach you to be an independent researcher. If you are doing only what your doctoral advisor did, then why do you have your own lab? You should be sufficiently distinct in your research profile that it's clear why &quot;you are your own boss.&quot; (And if you can't come up with enough ideas to justify your own group, then you probably aren't ready to be an independent faculty member yet!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T21:40:23.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T22:21:41.023" Score="16" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in pursuing my own part-time postdoctoral research in computer science, with a view to getting one or two publications over the next two to three years. My motivations are personal interest, and also to keep my options open in case I decide to apply for an academic or research post in 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure where I should start looking for a project.  Should I read academic papers until I get ideas?  Should I just try and brainstorm my own ideas?  Should I go back to my current university supervisor, or my previous PhD supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My Background&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am nearly 41 and married with two children (aged 10 and 13).  I gained my bachelor's in computing in 2006. In 2012 I submitted a thesis in artificial intelligence (case-based reasoning) and the PhD was awarded in 2013.  My family are not keen on moving and we live in an area with very few high-tech or academic employment opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see a way to extend my PhD research.  I have never worked as a post-doc; before the PhD I was a database administrator and immediately afterwards I was a software developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, late in 2013 I found a position on a UK government scheme known as Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.  I am employed by a Scottish university to work within an English manufacturing company, to use AI techniques to solve a particular engineering problem.  I am based at the manufacturing company and I see my university supervisor very rarely.  I am not allowed to publish anything from this employment. The contract ends in August 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KTP project will probably use standard AI methods; I won't be inventing any new techniques.  If the manufacturing company consented (and they will not!) it would be possible to publish, but it would only be as an interesting application of AI, not a new way of doing AI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a substantial training budget (GBP £2000 a year) which—with the approval of my employer—I can spend going to conferences, buying books etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed the idea of doing research with my university supervisor, either performing experiments myself, or a literature review paper.  She made some nice noises but she was not overly enthusiastic.  I think she is worried that it will divert me from the KTP project (for which her university gets paid a lot of consultancy money) and possibly upset the construction company who I am based with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interests and skills lie in artificial intelligence (neural networks, case-based reasoning), computer-aided design and software engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have my PhD supervisor on my LinkedIn page and I could approach her.  However, I worry that she will think it is strange if I ask to collaborate with her, given that I am currently employed by a different university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can commute to my current workplace (it's about an hour away) and there are 2 good universities (and another two not-so-good ones) about 60-90 minutes' commute from our family home, so location is the biggest restriction for me, I can't force my wife and children to move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10994" LastEditorUserId="9117" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T20:09:55.087" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T19:18:50.050" Title="How should I start my own private post-doc research project?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15911" CreationDate="2014-01-18T00:59:14.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partial answer: &lt;strong&gt;start reading!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read for both breadth and depth, and be sure to occasionally step outside the boundaries of what you are familiar with, even exploring fields that seem only tangentially related. In the process, you will almost certainly discover an area that is begging to be explored further. Indulge yourself, dive into the literature, buy books and attend conferences (for which you say you have a budget), and keep excellent notes while doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may discover that you can write a literature review fairly easily, and will probably also find that you have identified exactly what you wish to pursue for your research project. At worst, you will have spent many enjoyable hours increasing your knowledge; at best, you will be well on the way to completing your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T00:59:14.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15918" CreationDate="2014-01-18T04:59:50.480" Score="3" ViewCount="690" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm beginning my graduate study in theoretical computer science soon, and I've been admitted to two graduate schools in Northeastern Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those makes it a rule to grant compensation for travel to conferences to graduate students who finished their master's thesis.  However, for beginning graduate students, they said they cannot be sure if they can fully afford their travel costs for conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graduate school requires the students little coursework and all I will do there will be do actual research.  As you may know, conferences are important in computer science and reputable conferences are usually held far removed from us in Northeast Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do with journals and preprint servers, and possibly without reputable conferences, in the field of theoretical computer science, as a beginning graduate student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, the cons of the other school are that the professor supervises too many students and that he hasn't been nice to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11000" LastEditorDisplayName="user11000" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T13:26:08.500" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T10:29:09.580" Title="As a beginning graduate student, can you do without conferences in theoretical CS?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15920" CreationDate="2014-01-18T05:52:52.907" Score="3" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received an email from a department administrator that NSF rules have been changed (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf14001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link here&lt;/a&gt;), such that &lt;em&gt;all investigators must fill out a conflict of interest (COI) form.&lt;/em&gt;  They then go on to list a cadre of examples which meet the definition of investigator and a statement that all investigators must fill out this form.  Our university has the definition of investigator &lt;a href=&quot;http://orcr.arizona.edu/coi/uapol/investigator#investigator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, are graduate students typically considered investigators by the NSF?  If so, we certainly do not receive the recognition that PIs and other &lt;em&gt;listed&lt;/em&gt; investigators get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4572" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T04:33:43.473" Title="For NSF proposal and grant purposes, do graduate students meet the definition of &quot;investigator&quot;?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15913" CreationDate="2014-01-18T07:04:18.137" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In CS, conferences and journals serve different purposes: conferences are great for networking and exchange of ideas, and the important ones are having low acceptance rates so publishing there is worthy, but still, many (most?) are not listed in citation indexes and often people are just checking there for &quot;real publications&quot; (aka journal publications). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit due to many comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Just to clarify this: I did not say that it is GOOD to judge someone based on journal papers, I just said some people do! I personally had to learn this the hard way since I had many good conference publications which were not regarded as &quot;publications&quot; in some contexts.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit end&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you do write journal publications, you made an important step towards a successful PhD (I know several advisoors who want to have x journal publications (x in {1..3} as pre-requisite), but you are missing the interaction and exchange of ideas. Especially in the first half of your thesis, this would be very valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe the people at grad school were just honest: Usually there are not enough travel funds to let everyone travel to every conference - one has to build a strategy on who visits which conference and how often. It's just a matter of resources since an international conference visit costs about 2.500€ and most funding schemes would not allow for more than one international conference per year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend asking a grad student who is already there, how this is handled in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="10941" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T10:29:09.580" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T10:29:09.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-18T08:58:24.347" Score="5" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a grant application for a post-doctoral fellowship, and I need to provide a publication list. In the list of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, I wonder if I should include the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impact factors of the journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of citations the paper actually raised?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the papers raised a pretty large number of citations (several hundreds) despite being published in a low IF, so I wonder how to carry this information...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1358" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T09:30:55.150" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T19:00:50.743" Title="Should I include impact factors / number of citations in publication list?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-01-19T19:38:21.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14080" CreationDate="2014-01-18T09:13:53.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no law for this so apart from any instructions for the application, it is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;impact factor&lt;/em&gt; (IF) will tell the evaluation committee if you publish in good journals (they probably know this anyway since they would be familiar with the field. If you have published in good journals then you should definitely do so. But, a lower IF does not mean the paper is not good but shows that your science can pass the competition to get accepted in higher ranked journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;citation index&lt;/em&gt; is of course nice to show if you think it is to your advantage. It is impossible to say what numbers are and which are not. Partly because the turn-over time between disciplines vary and partly because it will depend on for long you have written papers. There is a period of varying before your work becomes cited, usually at least a year. I had a paper that now has a very high index but had just a few until five years after publication. So what is a good number for you depends on factors that only you and peers in your discipline can evaluate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you think these numbers are to your advantage you should definitely add them. Considering you are at the beginning of your career no-one would necessarily expect high citation index and so the IF may be of more interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T09:13:53.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15913" CreationDate="2014-01-18T10:03:36.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conferences are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important in CS. Journals are also important, but they tend to accept more mature work, and therefore might be especially hard to publish into as a beginning graduate student (which, in your terms, seems to refer to someone who hasn't finished his/her master thesis yet). Nothing is impossible, of course, but you have to be careful not to end up with no publications after 4 years, just because you were aiming too high. In addition, some journals are very slow to respond, so you might spend half a year or even more waiting for a decision. In the mean time, you cannot send this work anywhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask students there how the official policy is, it might just be that they don't want to fund you a trip to a small workshop in Hawaii, but the question could be different if you were to get a paper at POPL. You should also consider that there are good conferences coming to Asia, and many conferences offer financial support to students (including reducing the registration fee, sometimes even helping with transport/accommodation). Finally, if you're writing your paper with someone else, such as your advisor, this person might be able to travel to the conference and present the paper (which would be a shame for you not to attend, but it still counts as a publication in your CV). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; Some clarification: technically speaking, the only important thing is to produce good research, and to write good paper. What you plan to do after your PhD also matters, but if you'd like to stay in Academia, you will need at some point to get a job, and you will be judged on your papers (on other aspects too, but papers are very important). Now, to answer your question: &lt;strong&gt;yes, you could get a job with only journal publications&lt;/strong&gt;, as long as they are good. &lt;strong&gt;Is that the best strategy? Probably not&lt;/strong&gt;. Conferences are very important because they allow you to meet other people, to be exposed to state-of-the-art research, to confront your ideas with the community, to get published within a relatively short time period, to receive more frequent feedback, to construct your research project in a more incremental way (present your idea at some workshop, work on a good conference paper, present the extended version to a journal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can give you one example, I've presented some of my work at a workshop with no proceedings (so it didn't count as a publication), and I met there someone who accepted to be one of my external PhD examiners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T11:56:25.560" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T11:56:25.560" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2014-01-18T10:07:27.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the NSF, in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf14001/gpgprint.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grant Proposal Guide&lt;/a&gt;, does not actually define the concept of an &quot;investigator.&quot; Instead, it chooses to define the different categories as &quot;senior personnel&quot; and &quot;other personnel.&quot; Typically, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students fall under &quot;other personnel.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, in such matters, I would opt on the side of caution and just have the graduate students fill out the conflict of interest form. It doesn't take very long, and having it in place makes life easier for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T10:07:27.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15911" CreationDate="2014-01-18T10:12:11.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing &quot;unsponsored&quot; research would be tricky, but at least it's more feasible in artificial intelligence than in other fields (such as experimental particle physics or cell biology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, working with your PhD advisor on new projects after you have finished your doctoral research is considered a very bad thing. The reason is that this suggests that you are still dependent on your graduate advisor, and are effectively still &quot;riding her coattails.&quot; Consequently, it suggest you're not ready to stand on your own, which makes you much less desirable to hiring committees. Furthermore, in places like Germany, if you have only published papers with your graduate advisor, one can argue that you're not actually yet qualified to be an independent principal investigator, which can reduce your ability to apply for and receive grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean that you can't finish up papers that are part of your graduate thesis work after you graduate. It just means that you shouldn't start up anything new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T10:12:11.517" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14080" CreationDate="2014-01-18T11:46:36.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach for this is simple - I add &lt;strong&gt;all information that I think will help my case&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a high citation index for a researcher of your academic age? &lt;em&gt;Mention it explicitly in your CV.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have published in high-impact journals? &lt;em&gt;Add the IFs to your publication entries.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a particular paper that won a best paper award or is very highly-cited? &lt;em&gt;Highlight the paper in your publication list and name the award / citation count.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is not &quot;boasting&quot;. You are simply making the job of the reviewer (correctly assess your merits) easier by highlighting the information that is likely important to them (awards, important publications, etc.) instead of letting them search for themselves for the high-value needles through the haystack that is your publication list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the papers raised a pretty large number of citations (several hundreds) despite being published in a low IF, so I wonder how to carry this information...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add both informations. If your paper was high-impact, it should not matter too much that the journal &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt; is low-impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T11:46:36.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15927" CreationDate="2014-01-18T12:47:03.960" Score="1" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently deciding my next step in life and am pretty confused about my options. I am an English language teacher with an MSEd in TESOL and have a growing interest in both computer science and linguistics. I have been considering getting my PhD in linguistics, possibly with a focus on computational linguistics, but I also am really interested in beginning to develop applications, especially ones related to language and education (i.e. Android apps, python-based language tools, etc.). &#xA;I have little math experience, but do have some client-side programming skills (HTML, JavaScript, PHP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So lately, I have been considering getting an MSCS (online) in order to build the requisite skills and also enhance my job prospects (a language teacher doesn't make much).&#xA;I've been looking at online programs that offer courses in AI, MT, NLP, and human-machine interaction. But, I've also been considering skipping the MSCS and doing Coursera, CodeAcademy, and other free tutorials to learn the development skills, then making some GitHub or publishable projects. I have done CodeAcademy for Python and picked it up pretty quickly. The problem with these free education sources, however, is that I lose motivation quickly. However, If I had paid for them, my motivation would be sustained because I spent the money and want to get my money's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my vague question is: Do I do a MSCS or focus on what’s freely available, build my skills, and hope I get good enough to not need a real credential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moderator’s notice: Please do not take this as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3657/7734&quot;&gt;shopping question&lt;/a&gt; and suggest specific courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7317" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-07-25T08:51:49.563" LastActivityDate="2019-07-25T08:51:49.563" Title="Master’s in computer science or free online classes?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-07-27T02:56:57.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14080" CreationDate="2014-01-18T13:57:51.050" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not put journal impact factors in your CV.  Here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By doing so, you imply that the IF is a useful indicator of the value of individual article(s) you have published in a journal.  However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126010/pdf/9056804.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the IF is not a useful indicator&lt;/strong&gt; in this regard, and was never intended to be&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You also give the impression that &lt;strong&gt;your research does not stand on its own merits&lt;/strong&gt; -- that it is worthwhile only because it was stamped by a high IF journal.  If your research really is important, use the grant application to explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As other comments have stated, &lt;strong&gt;anyone in the field already knows the good journals&lt;/strong&gt; -- and they're often not the ones with the highest impact factors.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0278&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IF is poorly correlated with expert opinion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may still disagree, so I will appeal to your self-interest.  Including the IF will leave a poor impression with evaluators who understand the limitations of the IF.  They may even be signers of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://am.ascb.org/dora/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Declaration on Research Assessment&lt;/a&gt; (DORA), which states among other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment. These limitations include: A) citation distributions within journals are highly skewed [1–3]; B) the properties of the Journal Impact Factor are field-specific: it is a composite of multiple, highly diverse article types, including primary research papers and reviews [1, 4]; C) Journal Impact Factors can be manipulated (or &amp;quot;gamed&amp;quot;) by editorial policy [5]; and D) data used to calculate the Journal Impact Factors are neither transparent nor openly available to the public [4, 6, 7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General Recommendation: Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, by trying to use the IF to establish value of your research, you're only broadcasting your ignorance, as even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Validity_as_a_measure_of_importance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia can tell you&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that impact factor is a journal metric and should not be used to assess individual researchers or institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T19:00:50.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15923" CreationDate="2014-01-18T14:46:12.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a very difficult question - and a bit opinion-based, too! &#xA;Maybe you should step back a bit and try to figure out, what your future job perspectives might be. If you want to be an employee in the CS-field, I would recommend a MSCS. On one hand because wou'll learn new things you would not pick when you can choose your courses freely, on the other hand because you get an official certificate from an established university. Depending on the country you are living in, this might be important.&#xA;On the other hand, if you want to stay in linguistics and just improve your skills, you can stick to online courses and tutorials since they allow you to learn what you are currently missing at your pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to dig deeper in the field of language processing, I would strongly recomment building some strength in mathematics and theoretical CS as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T14:46:12.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2014-01-18T14:48:09.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD degree tells that you can work independently on your own, that you are able to critically decide whether a particular method in a textbook is good or not. PhD holders are needed in industry though in small amount. Industry needs them as PhD holders have been trained to bring innovations and make a field advance. Whether the PhD research field was narrow or not, the skills that you developed while tackling your PhD work will help in many different fields. For example I hold a PhD in a field other than dealing with computer science and yet during my PhD studies I had to choose between a plethora of programming languages available and I learned Object-oriented programming and code re-use. The skills that I have thus mastered in software engineering can be applied to any field that I will work in the future where computer programming is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one answer pointed out, during the PhD studies you have doubts about your own capabilities. It happens as you may be tackling a problem that has been here for a long time and your analyses over several months are revealing that you are nowhere close to make any new discovery. You may be the best of your batch in your Bachelor degree or be the best of your MSc batch but that is no guarantee that you will be successful in doing a PhD degree. I have seen many intelligent friends putting an end to their PhD studies as after a year or two they see that they cannot handle the stress of not being able to produce any tangible output. PhD studies are not about scoring good grades at exams. You do not have to know equations by heart; You are not sitting for a 3-hour written test to answer questions that are based on your textbooks. No, you are on your own with some support from your supervisor. Your supervisor is here to offer advice but it is up to you to decide what you want to do and convince the funders and other partners of your ideas. You are the one choosing the textbooks and other publications to read. Reading 200 books on the subject rather than say just two is never a guarantee that the PhD studies will be successful; What is required is to think beyond these textbook equations and come up with new ones, with new analysis techniques or with new algorithms that are universally applicable. When you are learning an equation, you are learning it very deeply and then you realise that how much you didn't know about that same equation when you were a Bachelor degree holder or an MSc degree holder. At lower levels, you are only taught what you need to know in order to solve some specific problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD degree means that you are excellent at managing your time. You have advanced courses to read, you have some teaching and administrative work to do, and you have to handle your research work with confidence. So you find yourself waking up at night and start doing some analyses by hand or on the computer as you think that you are on the verge of finding some good results which have escaped you for months. You work the whole night and if in the morning you see that you are not getting anywhere, you still have the courage to wake up and go to your office at the University. It is only someone who has done a PhD degree who knows the hard work and patience that is required. So this is why PhD holders will always get the attention of a recruiter who himself/herself is one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone with an MSc degree is limited in his/her own thinking. Every PhD student who has taught MSc students knows this. While an MSc student can perhaps think of one or two methods of tackling a problem, a PhD student or a PhD holder knows many more methods and knows also which method may be the best depending on the situation at hand. This is why in industry, the top posts among researchers are filled by PhD holders. This is because people with the best brains, and who know a whole range of techniques and methods are needed to innovate. This is also why in some countries PhD students are required to read advanced courses since they have to know more than what MSc degree holders do. Among these courses, there may be pedagogy-related courses. But pedagogy courses are only here to improve communication skills and understanding of the audience. Isn't this true? So such a PhD holder with pedagogical skills has learned how to deal with people around him/her of various intellectual levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the idea that PhD holders do not have business skills. Well, it depends on what you are doing at work. There are lots of successful smaller companies in engineering created by PhD holders. Even during the PhD studies, the PhD student is aware of the funding that he/she has and so he/she finds tools and equipment and software that the budget will allow. Similarly in industry, a PhD holder will use the least resources to get the job done as he/she is very much familiar with costs of equipment and software in his/her field. Would a company not want this PhD holder who already know how to manage the money? A PhD project normally lasts for five years or longer in some cases; This shows that the PhD holder can manage a project spanning over a long period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business skills can also refer to interaction with other people regarding the scientific research. Many PhD students have to establish cooperation in academia or in industry either at the national level or at the international level. The supervisor may help in this but finally it is the PhD student who decides with whom to work. So the PhD student has to be aware of how much information to divulge to the new partners and how mutual benefit can be achieved. So this demands business skills. Would an employer not want such a person around him/her who knows how to collaborate and negotiate with others? Thus the PhD holder has gained business skills not through books but through real-life experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD holder is also someone who can defend his/her ideas successfully in writing or orally. Publishing in very good journals is tough and defending the PhD thesis at the viva can last for hours. Being successful at the viva shows that you are mentally very stable, and are able to withstand pressure and all kinds of irritable questions one after the other for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD holder after so many years of hard work has already built his/her own toolbox. Just as a carpenter who has to sharpen once in a while the tools that he/she uses daily, so does the PhD holder the same. A PhD holder cannot sit idle; He/she has faced lots of obstacles when for example deriving new equations during the PhD studies, and in his/her free time after getting the PhD degree, he/she will come back to these equations and think again about those obstacles in order to find ways not to meet them in his/her future career. This is what I am doing in parallel with my job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes indeed PhD holders always tend to look for the best solution(s) to a given problem. This is not an indication that he/she will take time to do the job in industry. No, the PhD holder has developed his/her own toolbox as I said before and will be very efficient at finding the best solution(s) in a reasonable amount of time since he/she knows which method works and which does not. It is true though that PhD holders will tend to be accurate and reluctant to use faster algorithms that are not robust. Whom do you trust: A PhD degree who will make the right calculations though perhaps taking a bit longer or the one without the PhD degree making the calculations really fast and present the results to you using fancy colours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When starting the PhD studies, a PhD student will have to sort of see everything around him/her with new eyes. Anyone who has read &lt;em&gt;The Loss of the Creature&lt;/em&gt; from &lt;em&gt;The message in the Bottle: How Queer Man is, How Language is, and What One Has to Do with the Other&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;Percy Walker&lt;/em&gt;  will get the point. The PhD student at the beginning of the studies has to unscrew his/her brain and put it aside in order to get rid of any preconceived ideas and replace with an empty brain that is ready to let the PhD holder see beyond the tip of his/her nose so as to make independent progress in a field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that a PhD holder is a systematic person who does not run from a difficult problem. If the research that he/she had been doing in the PhD studies was not difficult, then the PhD project would not have existed in the first place. Most PhD projects are open. This implies that the PhD student is given a field to work but outputs and outcomes of the work are yet to be known. It is up to the PhD student to think about the strategy to adopt and which path to follow after consultation with the supervisor. After a few years of hard work, the outcomes and results obtained may be very different from what were expected in the beginning of the project. When the research is taking a different direction, sources of funding may change. It is up to the PhD student and to the supervisor to motivate for the change so as to convince the funders of their new research direction that could bring better insights about the original problem. In contrast during a normal MSc thesis project of about six months duration, the project is well structured by the supervisor so that the MSc student is able to finish the work in a timely manner. The MSc holder is working along a well-structured path and is most of the times sure to succeed in the thesis work. But such is not the case for the PhD student. There is no guarantee of success in the PhD studies. So we see that a PhD holder is someone who is very mature and who can embrace failures and successes equally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD holder is someone modest enough to know that the path of learning has just begun. To get a PhD degree is to have been able to reach the top of the mountain, and realise that there is still much to see and learn. It is thus obvious that persons with MSc degrees who haven't been at the top of the mountain do not recognise how much PhD holders know. So the best prospects of securing a job in industry is to make sure that your future boss also has a PhD degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question about potential pitfalls of having a PhD, I would say none. A PhD holder knows where he/she stands in life and he/she knows what it takes to succeed. He/she is not afraid of failures and of setbacks as he/she has been used to them a lot during the PhD studies. The only mistake is to work in industry under a boss who is not a PhD degree holder; The boss will not recognise the strength and value as well as will not understand the mindset of the PhD holder. Where the boss can only see one or two problems in a given situation, a PhD holder will see many. Communication between the PhD holder and such a boss will hence suffer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work experience cannot replace educational qualification. At a job interview with an interviewer holding a PhD degree, you will be asked if you know or do not know something. You will be asked about future changes that you consider might take place in your field of expertise. You will share valuable experiences and talk about limitations of existing tools, algorithms and software. It is only those interviewers with less educational qualifications who will lay emphasis on previous job experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And always remember that today most PhD works are applied research; This means that PhD projects are created in order to solve problems that industry face. If industry would have had the necessary skills to solve all their problems, then PhD projects would only be started by Universities alone and the projects would all be dealing with fundamental research. But this is not the case. Doing a PhD degree these days means that the PhD student is gaining much industrial experience as he/she is acting like a bridge between academia and industry and he/she is reinforcing the link between the two. He/she is pinpointing out the obsolete methods that industry is clinging to and is helping industry adopting more reliable methods as a result of the PhD work. What is important is that the PhD work is original. This word &quot;original&quot; has changed meaning over time. Centuries ago, it meant to have a PhD work that builds upon some original concepts which are firmly rooted in place whereas nowadays &quot;original&quot; implies that your PhD work is not someone's else work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a Ph.D. degree is not for the faint-hearted; You need nerves of steel and you really learn how to manage the vast amount of information that you gather in your research. The successful Ph.D. student is the one who can &lt;em&gt;recover&lt;/em&gt; the knowledge already out there and make improvements for the betterment of the society. Doing a Ph.D. degree requires great sacrifice and commitment. This is why it is appropriate for a Ph.D. holder to work with people who also have earned one. But I agree that the level of Ph.D. degrees do vary around the world; A Ph.D. degree spanning over a five-year period with advanced courses to read and with teaching activities should be the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11006" LastEditorUserId="11006" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T06:39:25.540" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T06:39:25.540" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-19T03:34:29.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15923" CreationDate="2014-01-18T17:18:07.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What OBu said: This is going to depend on what your goal is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to work as a programmer, generically, then a MOOC might be a good way to skill yourself up. As far as studying, fundamentals are going to pay off no matter where you work: Algorithms, Software Engineering, Math, etc. The problem with MOOCs is that it's not clear if they are going to get you through the door when job hunting; so be sure to focus on creating work that can demonstrate your skill, and help get you over that barrier. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to create research, write papers etc, then you could always &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15094/1165&quot;&gt;try to create your own research program&lt;/a&gt;. Having said that, if you don't have an established history of auto-didacticism then this is going to be difficult to maintain. A real masters program helps guide you down paths, and force you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/761/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prune those search trees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to work as a programmer, in the NLP/MT/AI fields, then you might have to do both: MOOCS &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; an MSc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side note; be warned that there are lots of MSc. programs out there, varying in style and quality. Some are essentially just more courses, while others are intended to produce new research. Be sure that the MSc. program you register for is going to &lt;strong&gt;get you what you want&lt;/strong&gt;. Do your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T17:18:07.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12603" CreationDate="2014-01-18T17:44:15.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your legislation and the exact circumstances (funding sources), you may have retained certain rights for secondary publication regardless of what the copyright transfer says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the case e.g. in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11226/725&quot;&gt;Germany&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in addition to the copyright transfer, check your local copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T17:44:15.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15906" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:00:49.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I basically agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15908/725&quot;&gt;Peter Jansson's answer&lt;/a&gt;. But I'm wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's clear the follow-up papers need to be cited if they are important for the topic at hand. In that case, I'd not only reference them but sum them in a sentence or so. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they are not immediately relevant, I'd still mention them, like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... paper [Fink-Nottle] and the follow-up discussion [Spode, Fink-Nottle2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, even shorter &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... paper [Fink-Nottle, Spode, Fink-Nottle2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO this is very low effort, and it is being nice to readers who want to look into the first Fink-Nottle paper (possibly because its topic is closer to what they are looking for than the major part of the present paper).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:00:49.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15931" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:13:55.447" Score="6" ViewCount="4230" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper is accepted in one of the Taylor and Francis journals and Today I figured out that I made a mistake in one row of one of my tables ( the minimum of one of variables in statistic analysis table is 0 in the paper but the actual value is 1). In fact, it does not affect the other parts of paper and the verification part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editor will provide the proofread of my paper in a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, Will the editor give me a chance to edit the paper again? or he will change the grammatical problems his self?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if I ask the editor to correct that row of paper, will he give the paper to reviewers again? I am worried that if I ask him to correct that mistake, he ask the reviewers to review my paper again. I need my paper to be published soon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11008" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T18:25:15.477" LastActivityDate="2017-09-02T09:46:28.203" Title="Could I change part of my paper after acceptance" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:22:48.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you have not proof read the paper yet, you simply ask the editor to make the changes to the table as part of the proof reading process. This is perfectly fine as long as the changes you make are trivial and does not change the basis for your conclusions. The worst case would be if the paper was accepted due to the data you reported and your changes will change the results so that the conclusions no longer can be made. The proof-reading stage comes after an accept and it is not allowed to make substantial changes. By substantial, I mean both by volume (changing a lot of text) or by quality (changing data upon which the decision was made).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supply the changes to the editor as part of the proof reading process but make sure you explain that the changes in the table does not influence the results and conclusions of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:22:48.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:37:27.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once the paper is published, there's no changing it. This seems to be the case whether it is physically printed in a magazine or first displayed online. Some journals will publish retractions, which are usually listed as a separate publication explaining what should be different in the original publication, though I'm sure that's not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can say with certainty for PLoS One, if you need to issue revisions in that stage between acceptance and publication, they will fix minor issues if it doesn't fundamentally change the direction of your paper. Editing is hard work - it doesn't make sense to send it back for revisions if the paper hasn't changed too much. You'll want to send a copy of your revised paper to the editor, along with an letter/email detailing exactly what has changed in the paper and &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; how it doesn't affect the other parts of your paper. Remember that the editor is also one of your reviewers, so if you can make the case that the mistake is indeed minor and take the time to correct it yourself, the decision to send it off for a seemingly pointless re-review becomes less attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: A co-author made a small mistake that was corrected after acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11009" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:37:27.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15937" CreationDate="2014-01-18T19:26:35.280" Score="4" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, graduate students at my university go through three rotations. I've done two and will need to choose a permanent advisor after this next one. So choosing a rotation is similar to choosing an advisor, yet the philosophy can be slightly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Funding&lt;/strong&gt;: Does the PI have funding for at least one year? Having that planning time to find other sources of funding without having to TA is indispensable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Choosing a permanent advisor&lt;/strong&gt;: The purpose of a rotation is to find an advisor and lab I am comfortable working with, as this will lead to a happier and more productive few years of my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;New skills&lt;/strong&gt;: Doing rotations in multiple labs will give me perspective. I should be learning different skills from each rotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Research interests&lt;/strong&gt;: I should find a lab with research interests that align to mine. I don't want to be stuck working in a field I don't enjoy for the next X years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;strong&gt;Prestige&lt;/strong&gt;: An advisor with strong industry connections can leverage those connections to help me break into industry or finding funding for my startup. A recommendation from a professor famous in your field can be my ticket to a tenure-track position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I reconcile these different points? I'm a bioinformatics grad, if that makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11011" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:07:12.870" Title="How do I choose a lab to rotate in?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2014-01-18T19:33:15.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if &quot;super cool&quot; ... There was a history when one laboratory has published a highly impressive discovery in a very reputable journal. Then they found a mistake in they experimental setup, and applied with another paper to the same journal, just to say the previous result is wrong. This was also accepted and now they have two publications in highly reputable journal ... for nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I believe this &quot;trick&quot; was not intentional and I am far from recommending it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T19:33:15.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2014-01-18T19:56:23.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theoretically yes not but this is generally difficult, as requirements for the article will be higher and chances to prepare it really well are lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to cooperate with some scientific institution that may also give good ideas how to improve the article. Maybe some extra experiments could be done using resources of that university. Or, if you represent a company, maybe a shared grant can be written getting more money for your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, unless you have experience in writing the scientific paper, it is very difficult to put everything into required structure, provide reasonable introduction with all necessary references and the like. A university professor can do this much easier as he does all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T19:56:23.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15373" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:06:50.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD studies are &lt;em&gt;studies&lt;/em&gt;, same as master degree. So you need to cooperate with university or other scientific institution that has been &lt;em&gt;licensed&lt;/em&gt; to grant this degree. Same as you cannot get driving license without applying to the road police (regardless how well do you drive), PhD degree also cannot &quot;emerge automatically&quot; from the number of published articles or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions may be willing to review existing publications and grant the degree on that basis but generally anyway it must be institution, supervisor and, most often, topic. Many will not allow this path so I would advice to check if you can find one, before you start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is not uncommon for the scientific institution to allow PhD studies without providing the funding (funding may be provided, for instance, by the company where PhD student currently works, or maybe PhD student have enough resources to support himself). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T09:33:36.453" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T09:33:36.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15933" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:07:12.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would focus on choosing an advisor and a project as your priorities. These will be the two most important decisions you make as a graduate student. The project you pick will be your preoccupation for the next five or so years, and your advisor will be one of the most important figures in your career. New skills and funding are secondary to these, and the issue of prestige almost shouldn't enter into your decision at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I would actually argue that it's not just choosing an advisor; it's choosing an advisor &lt;strong&gt;and a group&lt;/strong&gt;. You will almost certainly be spending more time with your fellow group members than with your advisor. Therefore, you need to make sure that you can get along with both your advisor as well as your future colleagues. A miserable working environment is not worth the trouble, if another viable option is available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure that the project you want to work on interests you; it'll drive you to accomplish more, and you'll be better motivated to make it your own (which is what you need to do to succeed as a graduate student).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:07:12.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15196" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:19:17.340" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A list of &lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt; publications is the most serious document to prove the competence in science. And, very often, no competence - no job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor that has no publications for several years may at the end lose the position. This is a reasonable requirement, as it forces to stay up to date with the knowledge. Otherwise the quality of teaching would drop because alternative ways of discarding low competence professor (like group of students requiring to replace him) are way more difficult and problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, publication is a normal, usual way to recognize the PhD work. It may be possible to get PhD without publications but this is usually understood as a sign of unsuccessful work that puts shadow on both student and supervisor. Nobody wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some systems like European may require a scientist to change the institution periodically, providing mostly temporary positions as long as you are not a professor yet. If you have finished a two year post doctoral position without a paper published, that is the end of you scientific carrier - you will not get the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this also means that scientists try to publish something often even when they could generally work for several more years to make a better publication instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T14:42:56.787" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T14:42:56.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9181" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:35:21.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is of course always much better to have publications in high impact journals, but this also depends on who is publishing. For a professor or post doc, the impact factor of the journal is  very important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However PhD student or undergraduate is usually understood as somebody who still cannot deserve a very high significance of they research work just by they competence and hard work. It is often looked just like a success and matters less. As a result, publications in low impact ( &gt; 0 ! ) journals in this stage are also good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:35:21.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9925" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:49:59.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In British universities, the relevant point is when the result of the viva (thesis defence) is published. This usually takes the form of the result being pinned on a board in a corridor somewhere in the adiministration building - I like to think of the corridor being subterranean with the sound of constant dripping water, the only visitor ever to enter being the person who pins the results up. This is normally about a week or so after the viva, if you pass without corrections, or a similar period after the examiners have said that you have corrected the thesis to their satisfaction. Then you can call yourself doctor and have all your bank cards changed! The graduation could be 6 months after you pass, and when you get your certificate the date of the award will be the publication date rather than the date of the graduation ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11013" LastEditorUserId="11013" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T21:39:40.403" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T21:39:40.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15949" CreationDate="2014-01-18T23:05:30.553" Score="0" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently thinking in which country to spend my undergraduate period, UK or US. I'm going to apply for PhD program of Molecular Biology in US university after graduating from undergrad school. So, it seems better to stay in US during undergrad period to prepare for PhD program admission. But I prefer undergrad programs of UK, because of its specialized and accelerated curriculum. Is it a rational choice to go to UK just because of my preference of its curriculum?       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T10:53:00.683" Title="Will going to an university in UK be profitable for me in the future?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15941" CreationDate="2014-01-18T23:36:40.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think it is to early to think about graduate school if you haven't even started undergraduate. I would go with where you want to live, and where you think you will have the most research opportunities, and where you think you will get the best grades. Most of all, I would go where you think you will be happiest in life, and not academics. It is infinitely harder to do good work, no matter what field, when you are not happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T23:36:40.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15941" CreationDate="2014-01-19T00:02:23.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic success is only one component needed for acceptance into graduate programs; you also need to have advisors who can comment favorably on your capabilities &lt;strong&gt;as a researcher&lt;/strong&gt;. That means you should focus not only on where you can do well academically, but on where you can also get the opportunities to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one thing which you should be aware of is that in the US, admission to PhD programs generally occur directly after the bachelor's phase. This may or may not be the case in the UK. The consequence of this is that, depending on the requirements of the (US)  school, even if you have a master's you may need to repeat some coursework or take additional classes upon enrollment in the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T00:02:23.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-19T00:40:12.127" Score="11" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask some of my former professors to come to my country and teach a small workshop, with undergraduate students, for a couple of days. I am doing this because I would like to raise the interest in my career, which is computer science, inside the faculty that I am currently working in. So the question that I have is: what would be the recommended things that I should offer to them, so that they are more likely to agree to pay a visit to my faculty? I ask this because I believe that I must submit like a report of expenses to my faculty dean or coordinator, so he or she could see if its feasible or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What expenses should my faculty cover? I was thinking of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plane tickets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accommodation and meals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Material for the workshop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T11:25:27.093" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T11:25:27.093" Title="Asking a past professor to teach a workshop/short course" Tags="&lt;travel&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15948" CreationDate="2014-01-19T02:23:40.667" Score="31" ViewCount="4527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a very difficult personal problem. My head was not in the right place, and outside of getting through my administrative duties, my brain just couldn't function the right way to run wet lab experiments and come up with good research ideas. As a result, I did not work as much as I should have, and when I did I was all over the place. I concealed my emotional pain pretty well, and put up a good face while in the office/lab, so no one suspected personal problems, but my work definitely suffered. My parent's illness looks to be getting better now and after some counseling I feel like my life is back on track. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I feel like it is possible that my advisor's opinion of me has greatly declined due to my lack of productivity in the past. Would telling your advisor about personal problems, after they are over, with the intent of the advisor understanding a lack of productivity be appropriate? Would doing so just sound like excuses and make things worse?  I assume it would have probably been better if I had mentioned it back when I was going through the problems, but is it a good idea to mention it now, or just cut my losses, work hard and hope he forgets about those unproductive years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is. When is it appropriate to bring up personal problems with an advisor? In this case and in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T19:56:54.113" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T20:17:51.130" Title="When is it appropriate for a PhD student to discuss personal problems affecting his productivity with his advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15947" CreationDate="2014-01-19T02:52:36.153" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as possible. Problems are made to be transcended, not pushed over time. You already said your adviser is a cool guy, right? Go ahead and talk with him, say the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a long said term, even cliche sometimes, but the first step to change is recognizing that you have a problem. You already recognized you have it, so now it's time to fix it. Don't be afraid of what he'll think about you, what really matters is that it's true. If he can't understand your situation, then he doesn't really know how to be a adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you're a student, you're there to learn. Better learn now where you can be mistaken with no serious consequences, then out there, where your problem can really damage you financially and/or much more emotionally, since people don't know how to handle with other people's problems, or know and just don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11017" LastEditorUserId="11017" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T17:03:40.000" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T17:03:40.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15941" CreationDate="2014-01-19T03:21:54.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among some of the valid points raised by aeismail and Neo, I would also say it makes a big difference how good the university you are admitted into is. Probably Cambridge Univ. or Univ. of Chicago are fine for most Life Sciences choices, but Univ. of South Cambridgeshire or of Northwestern Illinois aren't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are shaping yourself as a person still; keep it simple and don't dwell on details. Go to a reputable university, built up yourself as an academic person and as you are there you will see and hear more stuff. You say &quot;PhD in Molecular Biology&quot; now but in 4 years time you might say &quot;PhD in Neuroscience&quot; (not to mention the possibility of you going off to industry with a good salary. :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without wanting to put you off, as Neo said, it is a bit early to think about your grad-school at this point. Go in a good university and be the best you can, the rest will come naturally (and even if you don't end up in an US PhD programme, you might still have great fun elsewhere!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T03:21:54.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15998" CreationDate="2014-01-19T05:20:04.320" Score="16" ViewCount="13917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in multiple places that it is a good practice as an academic to keep a &lt;em&gt;research journal&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;For example, Marie desJardins' paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~mariedj/papers/advice-summary.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful.&#xA;  Write down speculations, interesting problems, possible solutions, random ideas, references to look up, notes on papers you've read, outlines of papers to write, and interesting quotes.&#xA;  Read back through it periodically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first attempt was to write my ideas in a log book.&#xA;I soon gave that up because the book would not always be with me when I wanted to write something in it, and because I knew eventually I would lose it and not be able to retrieve information from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current approach is to write a huge LaTeX file which I store in the cloud.&#xA;In it, I chronicle my daily thoughts about my research project, to take notes of what is discussed in meetings with my adviser.&#xA;However, I simply feel overwhelmed by the volume of writing and the amount of repetition that I find in my research journal.&#xA;I also have other files which serve similar purposes.&#xA;For example, I have a file called &lt;code&gt;results.pdf&lt;/code&gt; where I write out all my theorems and propositions and their proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you tried and how has a research journal been of benefit to you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you do all your &quot;rough work&quot; in a research journal, so that you can refer to it later?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What system do you use as your research journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you log all your experimental results into a chronologically organized research notebook? (Since I am not from a biology/chemistry/experimental background, I am curious as to how people who do lots of experiments manage to organize their results and ideas.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T17:57:40.933" Title="How to keep and organize a research journal/log/diary/notebook?" Tags="&lt;workflow&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="15" ClosedDate="2014-07-03T16:39:13.360" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-19T06:07:31.487" Score="6" ViewCount="3054" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you made a smart move in solving an important question that your advisor did not think of and all of a suddenly your advisor becomes jealous because you have made your advisor look bad. What are the best way to manage situation like this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:48:39.620" LastActivityDate="2020-08-24T14:38:11.857" Title="How to manage your advisor's jealousy over your work?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15944" CreationDate="2014-01-19T07:56:30.063" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the expenses you've listed above (travel costs, local accommodations and meals) are typically sufficient. Registration fees for the workshop would also usually be waived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing you might consider offering, if funds are available, is a small stipend to be used by the faculty member to sponsor a &quot;young researcher&quot;—a graduate student or postdoc—who can also attend the workshop and take part, perhaps by offering a poster or contributed talk. (Or, if it is not possible to offer a stipend, perhaps the registration fees could be waived for the young researcher instead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T07:56:30.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15957" CreationDate="2014-01-19T12:09:21.887" Score="5" ViewCount="4092" Body="&lt;p&gt;In US education system, the university academic positions start with Assistant Professor. But there are some occasions that positions for Endowed Assistant Professor are advertised. I could not find what exactly is &lt;em&gt;&quot;endowed Associated Prof&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Is there any difference with assistant professor? Is it a type of position different from tenure track or the title endowed comes from the particular funding source? There is a similar discussion about endowed chair in US system &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/what-is-an-endowed-chair-exactly-how-does-it-compare-to-a-normal-position/12608#12608&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I think that is slightly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know, whas recruitment committee members are concerned about when hiring endowed assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T01:13:55.100" Title="Endowed Assistant Professor vs Assistant Professor" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15956" CreationDate="2014-01-19T12:55:28.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really is very little difference between the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12608/53&quot;&gt;answer Chris Gregg posted&lt;/a&gt; and the answer for this question. An &quot;endowed&quot; assistant professorship is a position which provides funds for the group of the faculty member appointed to the professorship. It can be either salary, or perhaps additional funds that can be used to support members of the group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, applicants are not hired directly into such positions; instead, they are hired to the department first, and then appointed into such positions after a few years. They often have names like &quot;career development assistant professorship&quot; which indicate that this is a transient award, not a permanent one. If the hiring advertisement actually specifies the position as an &quot;endowed&quot; assistant professorship, I don't think it really changes the hiring process, except that they're looking for the best candidate who satisfies the conditions of the endowment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T12:55:28.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15953" CreationDate="2014-01-19T14:25:32.293" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor is already a professor, this is highly unlikely as the difference in the competence is way too big. If such thing really happened by pure chance, just ignore and concentrate on work instead. He is a professor. He is competent. He should manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such friction may only happen when, for instance, the professor assigns near finishing PhD student, young post doc or the like, to help the starting PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such &amp;quot;low level supervisor&amp;quot; may provide a lot of useful assistance, so you need to think twice before attempting to run away from it. But if you really do not want him, and are also sure you can get without him, go to the professor and ask to remove that supervision. This usually works no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2020-08-24T14:38:11.857" LastActivityDate="2020-08-24T14:38:11.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15953" CreationDate="2014-01-19T14:25:57.103" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd distinguish between three scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have accomplished something genuinely magnificent (e.g., you just proved the Riemann hypothesis), then it may be natural for your advisor to feel a little envious, particularly if it was something your advisor had hoped to do someday.  Hopefully they'll soon switch to feeling proud of their amazing student, and in any case your career success is assured by your great accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In less extreme circumstances, this could be a real problem.  If your advisor feels threatened by your success, then you may need a new advisor, since you certainly don't want an advisor who goes around explaining how you aren't as great as you seem.  Before you reach that point, it's worth discussing these issues.  For example, you could say &quot;I've felt some tension recently, and you seemed upset with me at the X Symposium.  Am I doing something that's making you unhappy?&quot;  This may be an awkward conversation, but it's worth a try.  It's possible that you are somehow making the problem worse (for example, by publicly saying things about your advisor that could be interpreted as disparaging, even if you didn't mean them that way), or that your advisor will feel a little sheepish that you noticed this behavior and will try to change.  If talking about it doesn't work, then I don't know what to suggest.  You either find a new advisor or put up with it as best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's also possible that it's all in your head.  I become suspicious whenever I hear someone attribute other people's behavior to jealousy, since it's an awfully convenient excuse.  Until you have really clear evidence, you should keep an open mind regarding other explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T14:25:57.103" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14494" CreationDate="2014-01-19T16:28:34.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be helpful to learn about the specific strengths of your language, since good examples should illustrate its strengths (yes, this is more a meta-answer, but maybe exactly what you should be looking for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The&lt;/em&gt; standard example is printing &quot;Hello World&quot;; everything else depends on the language and its features. E.g. you might want to demonstrate simple database queries, easy list processing, recursion, string manipulation, logic deduction, complex mathematics, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T14:24:53.227" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T14:24:53.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2014-01-19T17:38:08.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is really nothing special that causes your paper to be accepted in a high-impact journal. If we start by looking at Science and Nature, they publish material more like a newspaper would than a scientific journal ( I am not saying it is without worth, they just have different criteria for their selection). The material needs to be extraordinary by, for example, being &quot;sensational&quot; in some way, by affecting many, or by causing a change in paradigm. It is really hard to design your research to obtain such results. They may be a result of good design but also luck. So if we disregard from results that fall into the science/nature categories and focus on more normal science output the following (adapted from Lichtfouse, 2013) will be the basis for high-impact publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select your journal carefully&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be careful to follow the instructions for authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus the article on one finding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare one figure that shows or illustrates the main main finding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain your new finding in the abstract, the discussion AND the conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete any irrelevant results or those that are not explained&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distinguish clearly between the results from your study and those of others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include a good dose of education and dissemination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read your article at least five times before submitting it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure your manuscript is written in good English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this may look like generic advise, it is followed by so few that it will set your manuscript apart from the majority. Some of the points also involve serious work so it is perhaps a deceptively simple list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lichtfouse, E., 2013. Scientific writing for impact journals. Nova, New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T18:42:44.653" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T18:42:44.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15064" CreationDate="2014-01-19T18:09:12.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;strong&gt;Amazon&lt;/strong&gt; for you. I &lt;strong&gt;wrote 4 books&lt;/strong&gt; which are on Amazon and also have e-book versions of them. On Amazon, you can choose the price/royalties for each book as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;strong&gt;Calibre&lt;/strong&gt; to make your PDF, ePub files. Then you can just upload all in a very quick way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10781" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T18:09:12.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16093" CreationDate="2014-01-19T19:53:32.807" Score="7" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently hunting for research internships and going to apply for several positions. To make the admission officers accessible to my stories and experiences in further detail, I have created a personal Google Site showing those details and added the link into my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it comes to my research part. I have one paper that is just informed to be accepted by a conference. However, since the conference is not held yet, the paper isn't available online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to make the paper accessible to the admission committee. How should I do that without harming my and my co-authors' interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I upload it to arXiv? Can I upload it to my own Google Site? Should I inform my co-authors of this? Does it really matter to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T22:30:26.783" Title="Can I put my accepted-but-not-yet-on-IEEEXplore paper online?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15966" CreationDate="2014-01-20T07:05:35.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comment from  Nate Eldredge said: read your copyright agreement and ask co-authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can definitely list the paper in your publications if you mark it as &quot;accepted for...&quot;. If the admission committee is interested in reading it (often it is just interested in the title, unless this is the summary of your previous work), they can ask for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T07:05:35.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15953" CreationDate="2014-01-20T07:57:01.753" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Say you made a smart move in solving an important question that your advisor did not think of and all of a suddenly your advisor becomes jealous because you have made your advisor look bad. What are the best way to manage situation like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, whenever somebody tells me that their advisor is jealous of their work, I get rather suspicious. Usually, students that make smart moves and solve important problems do &lt;strong&gt;not in any way reflect badly on advisors!&lt;/strong&gt; Quite the contrary, hence there usually is absolutely no reason to be anything than happy for the student's success. That she (I am taking from other comments that your advisor is female?) did not think of the solution herself matters little - in practice, most concrete solutions to research problems come from students and not the advisors. Again, this would not reflect badly on the advisor in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am speaking from my personal experiences. Initially my advisor was very friendly[more like a co worker than a boss], but the moment she realized what i had accomplished and how the industry was blown away by my work and offered me internships,she kind of started acting more I say formal[like a manager]. We filed for patents and wrote to CHI (holy grail of HCI Conferences) which was unprecedented for MS students from an small university in the Midwest. The moment I realized this, the more I hated and resented her and and I think she realized this and our relationship went downhill from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a statement of yours from one of the comments. First of all, congratulations on the CHI paper as well as on the patent applications. However, that being said, the entire paragraph reads like you maybe got carried away a bit by your own success (&lt;em&gt;how the industry was blown away by my work&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;holy grail of HCI&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;unprecedented&lt;/em&gt;, etc.). Reflect for yourself - is there a chance that your advisor is not so much jealous, but simply annoyed by your high-handed behavior as of late? Are you rubbing your success into her face? Have you maybe even made sure that she understands that this was &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; success, and not in any way hers as advisor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the last statement (&lt;em&gt;the more I hated and resented her and and I think she realized this and our relationship went downhill from there.&lt;/em&gt;) kind of worries me. These are pretty strong words. Surely, more than a little bit of distant behavior and perceived jealousy has happened for you to &lt;em&gt;resent and hate&lt;/em&gt; your advisor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out, I am not capable of reading, as the second quote is not from the OP but from @james234. Anyway, I'll leave the answer here, as it seems to reflect the gist of such advisor/advisee problems quite well (even if it does not necessarily help the OP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:23:43.827" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:23:43.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15956" CreationDate="2014-01-20T09:29:54.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, at least, some departments have multiple positions called &quot;So-and-so Assistant Professor&quot; (e.g. Szegö Assistant Professors at Stanford ), which are non-tenure track, 2&amp;ndash;3 year visiting positions &amp;mdash; basically, a postdoc who teaches (with teaching duties similar to, or somewhat lighter than, the senior faculty).  I don't know whether this practice exists in other fields.  For such positions, the hiring considerations are similar to other postdoc positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T09:29:54.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15977" CreationDate="2014-01-20T09:30:46.867" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper and adding an errata list (spelling out some mistakes that were made in previous versions of the paper), should that list contain the same meta-information as other pages, i.e. header and footer text and a page number? (If it's relevant, I am using APA for this paper but cannot find any information on the subject.) Additionally, should it be included in a table of contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T21:42:12.293" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T15:20:31.973" Title="Should an errata contain header and footer text and a page number?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T13:51:59.730" Score="6" ViewCount="1380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a finishing Ph.D student in pure mathematics in the US.&#xA;In November, I received a 3 year postdoc offer in Europe on a PI's grant with a December reply deadline and accepted starting in 2015. Recently, I was offered an NSF MSPRF at an American school, starting in 2014. My plan is to use the NSF in 2014-2015 and 2016-2018 and go to Europe for 2015-2016--the NSF and my US host institution are OK with it.&#xA;However, when I accepted the European offer I did not specify that I would be staying for only a year (I had no other offers at that point).&#xA;A what point am I obligated to tell the European PI that I will stay for only a year? Now, before accepting the NSF? After starting the position in 2015?&#xA;More generally, in Europe is it considered normal or unethical/breach of contract to leave multi year (mathematics) postdoc positions after a year?&#xA;I know it's considered normal in the US but the postdoc hiring here is done at a departmental rather than individual level...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9565" LastEditorUserId="9565" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T14:05:38.413" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T18:36:06.957" Title="Accepting European math postdoc offers and leaving after a year" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15972" CreationDate="2014-01-20T14:32:25.803" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this depends a lot on the hiring practices from country to country and from university to university. For instance, if you're offered a multiyear position on what amounts to a renewable annual contract, then there's much less of a problem leaving after one year than if it's a single multiyear appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, essential communication with &lt;strong&gt;everyone&lt;/strong&gt; involved is required &lt;strong&gt;before you start the positions.&lt;/strong&gt; If people are not aware of what you want to do, and you spring it upon them as a surprise &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you sign the hiring paperwork, you're setting yourself up for much bigger problems than if you talk to them and make sure everybody's OK with your plans in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T14:32:25.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15972" CreationDate="2014-01-20T14:45:44.063" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going for one year would fulfill your obligations as I understand them, but I can't guarantee the PI will see things the same way.  You should discuss it as soon as possible, to settle the issue and so the PI can at least make realistic plans.  (I'd be a little offended if I discovered that someone visiting to work with me had dramatically changed their plans without telling me until much later, even if I thought the change was otherwise reasonable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several plausible outcomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PI might insist that you have made a commitment to stay for more than a year.  I don't think this is reasonable or likely, but it's better to find out now than later, so you can figure out what to do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PI might be fine with one year.  Then you won't have to worry about this issue any further.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PI might accept one year but seem unhappy about it.  In that case, you could explain that you would really like to come for a year if possible, but you would be willing to withdraw if the PI would prefer to hire someone else for the full three years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T14:45:44.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14963" CreationDate="2014-01-20T15:17:41.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is one particular site that lists different internships, but you can defintiely look into joining listserves and organizations for you industry. For example, I work in international education and I joined NAFSA as well as their email listserv to learn more about industry trends, internships, and job openings. On an international level, you can check out websites like Go Overseas.com for a list of all international internship providers with reviews and website links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11044" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T15:17:41.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15970" CreationDate="2014-01-20T15:45:29.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consult the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Style manual&lt;/a&gt;, which you can probably check out of a library. The full manual is not available online, although I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/quick-guide-on-formatting.aspx#Lists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this information about lists&lt;/a&gt;. You may want to consider the guidelines for appendices, since this list sounds like an appendix (if it is long). &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/Documents/How_to_Format_and_Cite_an_Appendix_in_APA_Style.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This document from Walden University(pdf)&lt;/a&gt; describes how to format appendices using APA), but is mum on header and footer. I expect that you should include such information. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consult the recipient of your paper. If this paper is being written for a class, ask your instructor. If this paper is to be submitted to a journal or conference, then said journal or conference likely has detailed guidelines available for lists and appendices. If such information is not available, you should contact a member of the editorial staff. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2014-12-30T15:20:31.973" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T15:20:31.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16010" CreationDate="2014-01-20T16:16:29.430" Score="9" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in the US (mathematics) and I expect to graduate in May. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got invited to speak in a European conference in June, which is in the awkward time between graduation and my first job (I expect to get a postdoc, and those start August or September). My current department has told me that they cannot fund me after I graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference offers some support for young researchers, but it is very meager and I will be flying trans-continentally. I was wondering if there is an outside source that might fund single-conference travel grants for young mathematicians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11047" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T16:09:09.197" Title="Travel grant for summer conference between PhD and first job?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T16:19:07.693" Score="0" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can you find the top journals in a scientific field? I am an HCI graduate student, but I sometimes write to industrial engineering articles if it involves ergonomics. Right now, I'm trying to understand what standing the journal &quot;IIE Transactions&quot; has compared to other journals in the field of industrial engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told that the impact factor is not a good indicator to find top journals. What other indicators are useful for identifing top journals within specific fields, like industrial engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T11:14:08.607" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T11:14:08.607" Title="How do i find top journals in my area of interest?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15979" CreationDate="2014-01-20T17:30:52.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to your advisor about this. They will have a very good mental model of what the publication landscape in the area looks like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~zaiane/htmldocs/ConfRanking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt; exist for your field, however they largely just reproduce intuitions your supervisor would already have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T17:30:52.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15972" CreationDate="2014-01-20T18:36:06.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you know what is the appropriate action and what is not! You are probably hoping that somebody gives you a justification to do what you have planed. But even a teenager knows that when you accept to work with somebody for three years and later you change your mind and make another plan which conflicts with your agreement, &lt;strong&gt;you are obliged to let the PI know about your new plan as soon as possible.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, there are probably several other good candidates to fill the position that you want to leave after one year. In this way you take an opportunity from a fellow human being without even using it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T18:36:06.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T18:45:03.277" Score="4" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would I be accepted at a Phd Program @Harvard when my '''education''' didn't go beyond high-school? I have however done lot of self-study after graduating from high-school by studying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electrodynamics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General Relativity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quantum Mechanics ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and all the maths that is related to those physics areas.&#xA;So do I have any chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11051" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T22:17:41.353" Title="Phd program @Harvard when my '''education''' didn't go beyond highschool?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-20T23:01:51.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15986" CreationDate="2014-01-20T18:46:54.477" Score="20" ViewCount="3548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started my 2nd semester of my part-time master, I was given a thesis topic last week and expected to submit an abstract this week.  Because advisor told me -&gt; I would have not choice. However, I just wonder:&#xA;Is it normal to submit an abstract to a conference when the research is NOT completed? Or people normally completed the research then write the abstract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read a topic asking about how to write an abstract without having the result&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7428/how-to-write-abstract-for-conference-when-you-have-no-results-yet&quot;&gt;How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;So I have basic understanding of what I should not write in my abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11049" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T12:22:35.653" Title="Is it normal to submit an abstract to a conference when the research is NOT completed?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15979" CreationDate="2014-01-20T19:36:02.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are problems with the &lt;em&gt;Impact factor&lt;/em&gt;, but to find &lt;em&gt;top journals&lt;/em&gt; in a field (as in leading/high reputation) the IF (relative to others in the field) is usually a good proxy. The problem with IF is mainly that it is a fairly poor predictor of citations to individual papers. Alternative journal rankings can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SCimago&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eigenfactor.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eigenfactor&lt;/a&gt;. However, I do not have any knowledge about HCI and industrial engineering in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside @MatthewG recommendation to talk to your advisor, I would also suggest that you look at what you are reading and what journals the papers you are citing are published in. This is usually a good way to find suitable journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T22:18:47.090" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T22:18:47.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15983" CreationDate="2014-01-20T19:36:53.493" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it normal to submit an abstract to a conference when the research&#xA;  is NOT completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure.  There are plenty of fields where the purpose of a conference is to discuss research that is &quot;still cooking.&quot;  In fact, many &lt;em&gt;journal&lt;/em&gt; publications can be viewed as interim reports on larger research programs that are still in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might use this opportunity to set a goal for (roughly) the piece of your thesis you want to have done by the date of the conference.  It's ok if that piece is relatively small, and nobody at the conference will hold you strictly to what you say in the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, some people submit abstracts on one thing and then talk about something entirely different... I won't advocate that behavior as an intentional strategy, but I will say that many people (myself included) prefer a great talk to exacting consistency with the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T19:36:53.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15982" CreationDate="2014-01-20T19:56:59.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's definitely &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;. What you need is:  (1) someone the PhD program at Harvard acknowledges to vouch for your academic skills, and (2) show them you have those skills. (1) is normally accomplished by including letters of recommendation from your college professors. You need to be creative in choosing your recommenders. (2) is normally accomplished by including a writing sample in your application (this is normally required anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by the way, you're accepted &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; a program, not &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; a program. If your application contains grammatical mistakes like that, you're unlikely to be accepted. That's just the way it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T19:56:59.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15982" CreationDate="2014-01-20T22:17:41.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You PROBABLY don't have any chance at the moment. Have you published in the field? Do you have any projects that you could show to a professor (outside Harvard first?) that might shed light on your exceptional ability? Without ever going to any college you would have to be extraordinary enough to be an exception to Harvard's admission criteria. Of course, alternatively you could try taking some graduate level classes somewhere else, build a relationship with a professor, and either join their program for a preparatory master's or get them to comment to Harvard on your abilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T22:17:41.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13559" CreationDate="2014-01-20T22:32:39.987" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, if you are applying for an academic position (e.g., assistant adjunct prof applying for assistant prof), regardless of whether it is at the same of different institution, it is absolutely essential that you use the letterhead for the institution with which you are currently affiliated. I realize that this is different for private companies, where &quot;company&quot; letterhead implies official communication on behalf of the &quot;company.&quot;  But in academia, the letterhead is an indicator that you are recognized as a member of a scholarly community and you have the rights, privileges, and responsibilities associated with your academic appointment. In academia, it does NOT mean you are conducting official institutional business.  Official institutional business will have &quot;Office of the Chancelor&quot; in the letterhead or &quot;Office of XYZ Department Chair.&quot; If the chancellor or department chair were to apply for jobs, they would probably still use institutional letterhead but not have this &quot;Office of the __&quot; line in the letterhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your institutional letterhead is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL when applying for academic jobs. Even (especially) if you are a grad student. Everyone knows that you are not speaking on behalf of the institute, the letterhead is an indication of your membership in that scholarly community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8902" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T22:32:39.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15995" CreationDate="2014-01-20T23:20:26.977" Score="5" ViewCount="5634" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon finish writing my Bachlor thesis in physics and I don't know whom I &quot;have to&quot; put in the acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two professors who will grade the thesis, one the head of the work group I'm writing the thesis at and the other one from another work group. I didn't have much personal contact with any of the two other than getting their signatures for some paperwork and talking about half an hour about the subject. They appear on the thesis as advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual advisor is a PhD student from the work group; a practice fairly common, at least at the physics department. He has been really involved and helped me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was thinking to thank the head of the work group for the possibiliy to write the thesis there and one or two sentences for the actual advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most of my fellow students seem to mention a lot more people like the second  advisor (Professor), friends, boy-, girlfriend, family...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem with that is that the second advisor is not involved at all in the process (he works in a related field, but the workgroups don't really collaborate), but I am concerned that it might be seen as an insult. I can see why one thanks close friends and family in a PhD thesis where one works on for years but I think it is a little melodramatic in a Bachelor thesis (which takes four months, not full time). But I'm afraid this might come off as ungrateful or heartless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it expected or recommended to put second advisor, friends and family in the acknowledgements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9720" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T21:18:09.337" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T21:18:09.337" Title="Whom do I have to thank in the Acknowledgements section of a Bachelor thesis" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T23:47:07.567" Score="8" ViewCount="5022" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just offered a postdoc at 34 000 USD a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether this is an ok offer. Can someone give me feedback on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11058" LastEditorUserId="739" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T14:24:30.910" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T14:24:30.910" Title="Postdoc salary. Fair offer?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-21T21:29:00.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15992" CreationDate="2014-01-21T00:47:34.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The absolutely crucial thing is that you clearly acknowledge and delineate any work, original ideas, results, images, figures, tables, charts, quotations, prose, etc., that were contributed by someone other than the primary author (i.e., you).  Failure to do so could taint your academic reputation, and in extreme cases, might be construed as plagiarism (or some other form of academic misconduct).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that somber admonition, the remainder of your acknowledgements are a pleasantry which can be doled out entirely as you like.  I agree that extensive acknowledgements in a bachelor's thesis are a bit misplaced.  On the other hand, it's a good opportunity to think about the people who &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; made it possible to complete your BS research—e.g., lab techs who helped run and maintain equipment, or administrators in the department who made sure all the paperwork went smoothly.  These people are extremely important and are often overlooked (even in PhD theses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for secondary members of your thesis committe, it's up to you.  You can easily say something simple and honest like, &quot;Thanks to Professors X and Y for agreeing to be on my committee.&quot;  But I doubt they'll be insulted if you don't acknowledge them for a deep and lasting impact on your research career.  They've signed off on BS theses before.  They know it's no big deal (for them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T00:47:34.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15993" CreationDate="2014-01-21T01:41:15.360" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like it's on the low side for the sciences, but not unheard of.  For comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-12-033.html&quot;&gt;NIH NRSA postdoc stipends&lt;/a&gt; start at about $39k for people with no previous postdoctoral experience and go up from there.  Postdoc salaries can vary a lot by field, location, institution, etc.; if you have no other offers to compare with but want to know what's typical, I'd recommend searching online to find information that fits your background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Paul Garrett pointed out, you also need to consider the cost of living.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/&quot;&gt;CNN Money's cost of living calculator&lt;/a&gt;, $35k in Nashville is the equivalent of nearly $70k if you were living in Brooklyn.  Of course these calculators are far from perfect, but they give you some indication of how prices and rents vary across the country.  If you are going to live on $34k, Nashville is a good place to do it, and I would expect typical salaries there to be lower than in more expensive locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, unless you believe there is discrimination or bias involved, I wouldn't worry too much about abstract notions of fairness, or even comparisons with other people in different circumstances.  Instead, I would focus on three questions.  What do you need to live happily in the short term?  What are your long-term goals and prospects for achieving them?  And what other options do you have, including not just similar postdoctoral offers but also career changes?  Only you can weigh these considerations and decide whether a given offer is acceptable to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T01:41:15.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15951" CreationDate="2014-01-21T02:26:48.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be aware that &lt;strong&gt;only you will ultimately be able to answer this question!&lt;/strong&gt; Each individual works differently, so take the following &lt;em&gt;cum grano salis&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've noted, a physical notebook does not always work well. Not only it is difficult to carry and easy to lose, it is also not easily searchable. (Despite this, I personally use a series of cheap notebooks and paper folders to enhance my thinking and contain random notes during the initial stages of research.) For many researchers, electronic files are the best alternative to paper. Your LaTeX file is a good beginning, and sounds like all you really need is a way to organize the huge mass of material now contained in a single file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest breaking the file into several files, each containing a separate aspect of your current journal. How you organize this is ultimately up to you. Use the logic and structure that meshes with the way your brain works. Only one hard and fast rule: &lt;strong&gt;Never have a file labeled miscellaneous!&lt;/strong&gt; This will end up catching all sorts of odds and ends and junk, and you will NOT be able to remember what the file actually contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T02:26:48.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2014-01-21T03:03:41.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question probably varies quite a bit from one institution to another, although there would be some things in common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tenured at a community college in California. Here are the main factors that I think explain why adjunct faculty at my school are paid less:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Full-time faculty are unionized and have a fairly effective union. Adjuct faculty do not have effective union representation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Full-time faculty have many duties that adjuncts do not. They keep scheduled office hours, go to division meetings, perform miscellaneous contractual duties such as sitting in the bleachers at graduation, and do committee work (hiring committees, faculty senate, curriculum, ...). I teach science, so part of my work involves helping to keep our lab curriculum going (retiring old labs and developing new ones, participating in discussions of what equipment to buy, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it because there is a vast amount of oversupply of teachers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a community college, I don't think supply and demand have much explanatory value. We don't do research at a community college. Part-timers have to do the same classroom work as teachers, and the non-classroom work doesn't require any special qualifications. Therefore the supply is the pretty much the same in both cases. Supply and demand may explain more at fancy research universities, where tenured jobs require exceptional creativity and research ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the rational reasons I listed above, there are probably many irrational ones. For example, community colleges may simply be emulating fancy research universities, or the structure may have become &quot;baked in&quot; as part of how society is organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it because there is decreasing income and funding for academic institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this works as an explanation, at least here in the US. The use of adjunct faculty arose between about 1950 and 1970, and I don't think it's changed much in the last 40 years. The period of 1950-70 was not a period of disinvestment in education in the US; on the contrary, that period saw a huge increase in the amount of money flowing through higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T03:33:03.980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T03:33:03.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T03:05:12.510" Score="10" ViewCount="3994" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of this post &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15041/some-questions-about-math-postdoc-offers&quot;&gt;Some questions about math postdoc offers&lt;/a&gt; but please let me ask a similar question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently on the math postdoc job market. Some of my friends were informed that they are on the short list but I haven't heard anything from the job market after 2/3 of January. According to the above post, the most job offers are made in the second half of January. I am afraid that all good positions are already taken and I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are most of the good positions such as &quot;****** assistant professorship&quot; already taken around this time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11064" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T16:48:21.720" Title="Postdoc position offer in mathematics." Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2014-01-21T04:11:27.727" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about this, since hiring committees do not necessarily visit web pages, even if they plan to make a postdoc offer.  If your application was reasonably detailed and your papers are available elsewhere (for example on the arXiv or as part of your application), then there's no reason why someone would need to visit your web page.  Even if your papers aren't available elsewhere, the number of visits you might see is both small and unpredictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are most of the good positions such as &quot;** assistant professorship&quot; already taken around this time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all of them will be offered to someone by the end of January, but those offers will not all be accepted (so there will be multiple rounds of offers, which may extend beyond the common deadline).  I would bet that most, but not all, of the most prestigious positions have already been offered to someone, but I don't know actual statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that early offers tend to cluster on the most popular candidates, so substantially fewer people get first-round offers than will eventually be hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inquiring this week is reasonable.  It's worth asking not just your favorite schools, but also schools you are less excited about.  (It may signal to them that they have a shot at you after all, and increase the chances that they will make an offer.  At this point, you'll presumably be happy to have any reasonable offer, and once you have one you may be able to use it to provoke other places to make offers.)  Asking this week leaves a little time for schools to act before the common deadline, although you shouldn't despair even if the deadline goes past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you applied to relatively few schools, it might be a good idea to add some more even now, but don't panic.  Unless you're in an unusual situation, your job search doesn't sound really problematic at this point.  (I can understand that it is worrisome, but there's a big difference between not getting a first round offer from a top department and not getting a job at all.  Of course I can't predict how your job search will end, but I've seen people get excellent offers after having had no signs of interest this late in January.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I highly recommend having a chat with your advisor about your job search.  If your advisor is not worried, it may help you stay calm, and if you do reach the point where your advisor really starts to worry, I hope he/she will have suggestions for what the two of you can do to make sure you get a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T04:11:27.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2014-01-21T04:47:27.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do but rarely. The standard application file normally contains all information needed for screening and the grapevine provides the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are most of the good positions such as &quot;** assistant professorship&quot; already taken around this time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mean &quot;named assistant professorships&quot;?. Yes, they may well be. However, the normal (nameless workhorse) postdoc offers haven't been even considered yet in many places. The way it usually works is that the tenure track hiring is done first. Another thing is grants. Right where I am, we'll have or not have postdoc positions this year depending on whether we'll get or not get grant funding and nobody expects to hear from the NSF before the end of February (especially after the circus show by our 485 mouth goat herd in Washington D.C.; I still have a strong desire to send them all to deliver the equipment to the Antarctic research stations in small boats with no food; the only thing that would spare them if it were for me to decide is that I would hate to lose the gadgets). So, I wouldn't worry too much yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It never hurts to get the information. Just be careful about how exactly you phrase your request and whom you contact. The last thing I would want as a member of the hiring committee (I was on 3 within the last 5 years) is to have to write &quot;polite and thoughtful&quot; responses to each and every of 70+ postdoc applicants before their consideration has even started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T04:47:27.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15993" CreationDate="2014-01-21T06:30:49.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, most Ph.D. chemists that I've seen graduate and move to post-docs get around $40k. The amount depends on how much was budgeted in the grant proposal that is paying the post-doc salary and typically there isn't much wiggle room. Considering the dwindling grant resources, current hiring climate, and level of competition in this field, most are happy just to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your question of fairness, did anyone else offer you another post-doc for more money? If not, I'd consider it fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11068" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T06:30:49.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16004" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T07:05:10.440" Score="4" ViewCount="12286" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was offered an admission of offer (math) today and I found out that I have till Feb 15th to accept the offer. Most schools in my country (Canada) actually send out offers during Feb, and there is a low probability that I will get an offer then, is it okay to ask schools to extend the offer date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt; I am Canadian. Schools in Canada don't generally give out scholarships until NSERC hands out theirs. My school gives entrance scholarships after you get NSERC, in which case, they announce it in March, wayyy past the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7349" LastEditorUserId="7349" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T15:44:16.280" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T14:08:54.000" Title="Is it possible to ask offers of admission to extend the deadline?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15983" CreationDate="2014-01-21T08:02:16.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The idea of the conference is to talk about the current research, not about the published articles. Conferences can also be used to discuss works that may or may not evolve into articles. And while conference abstracts are not rated as high as articles, they do help PhD student to support the significance of the work - especially when, because of various reasons, the article at the end have not been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if your work is close to completion, or even there is already an article in preparation, or otherwise the topic is very successful and highly promising, professor may suggest to avoid disclosing details that may help for potential competitors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T12:22:35.653" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T12:22:35.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16004" CreationDate="2014-01-21T08:18:16.560" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's definitely okay to ask.  They're certainly not going to rescind the offer because you ask for more time.  Depending on the school, their applicant pool, how bad they want you, and (probably) how rigid their administrative structure is, they may grant or refuse your request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should, of course, word your request very politely and recognize that they have the right to say &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T08:18:16.560" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16008" CreationDate="2014-01-21T12:51:51.153" Score="13" ViewCount="19200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today at work, we had a discussion about writing styles of research papers. One of the topic was if the phrase &quot;&lt;em&gt;We can see that...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is appropriate for research papers or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some people were convinced that the phrase does not belong there others had no problem with it. Since my mother language is not English and I am a &quot;writer beginner&quot; I was tactically silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to &lt;em&gt;google.scholar&lt;/em&gt; the phrase and it showed me a lot of papers with it. However, we all know that not all papers out there have proper writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the phrase &quot;We can see that ...&quot; appropriate for a research paper? If so, at which circumstances? At which circumstances it is not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T15:03:46.733" Title="Is the phrase &quot;We can see that ...&quot; appropriate in research papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16007" CreationDate="2014-01-21T14:20:28.490" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of scientific writing is to transfer knowledge and information with high degree of clarity, precision, conciseness, and a reasonably natural tone. When editing written work, a quick litmus test is to slash away each phrase then evaluate if the sentence can do without it. &quot;We can see that...&quot; is a very popular candidate to be slashed because in 99% of the cases, the sentence's meaning wouldn't change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We can see in Table 1 that the average age is 56 years old with a standard&#xA;  deviation of 7 years.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The average age is 56 years old with a standard deviation of 7&#xA;  years (Table 1).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When describing graphs or illustration, we tend to see &quot;We can see that...&quot; a lot more frequently than in other plain text; most of these can also be deleted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In Figure 1, we can see that females are the majority (67%).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Females are the majority (67%, Figure 1).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... or replaced by the graphical components on which that the viewers should focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In Figure 2, we can see that the sales of graphic novel have been&#xA;  steadily increasing since 2011.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The sales of graphic novel have been steadily increasing since 2011,&#xA;  as indicated by the dotted line in Figure 2.&quot; OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The sales of graphic novel (dotted line in Figure 2) have been&#xA;  steadily increasing since 2011&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a few random thoughts from also an ESL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I tend to focus on how efficient the sentence is rather than how formal the sentence is. I will, on any day, take a PhD candidate who writes clearly than one who writes formally. &quot;Formal&quot; bad writing scratches the inside of my cranium.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing, I tend to gear away from pragmatic advices that say &quot;You always have to...&quot; or &quot;You never should...&quot; Languages and usages change along time; it's more important to be able to tell my ideas to the current crowd, than to be able to write an ancient script. Beginning learners should feel free to stick to a handful of &quot;rules of thumb,&quot; but as the learning progresses they should develop their own judgment and some flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A journal is only as formal as the editors of that journal go. Check the guideline to authors, read the specified style manual, and read a few current issues for an overall landscape, and then write. Leave all other &quot;formal this&quot; and &quot;formal that&quot; behind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T15:03:46.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T15:03:46.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16004" CreationDate="2014-01-21T14:33:05.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To pick up on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16006/739&quot;&gt;David's answer&lt;/a&gt; -- UK (and the Commonwealth legacy counties like ANZ) have zero administrative wiggle room. US admission committees may be more lenient (I was asked once by our grad admissions director if I knew of any good applicants that they could get a couple of weeks past the deadline), but you need to have a strong case to have any leverage in deadline extension negotiations -- i.e., to be sure you are on the top of their pool (e.g., offered a good competitive scholarship). If you are not, you will hardly get your date extended. In most programs, there are dozens of applicants with a continuum of qualifications and a handful of places to offer, so if you can't commit to taking the spot, it is way too easy for the admissions committee to extend the offer to the next person in line. If you think you have a low probability in your own country, where your credentials are easier to evaluate than in a foreign country, you should seriously consider accepting with gratitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T14:08:54.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15978" CreationDate="2014-01-21T16:09:09.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a travel grant administered by the Association for Women in Mathematics: &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/awmmath/programs/travel-grants/mathematics-travel-grants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://sites.google.com/site/awmmath/programs/travel-grants/mathematics-travel-grants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/prizes/sponsored/postdoctravel.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.siam.org/prizes/sponsored/postdoctravel.php&lt;/a&gt; (this requires affiliation with a US university; while your current graduate school and/or future postdoc employer might be unwilling to provide funding they are likely to be more flexible with `affiliation')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard rumors that a postdoc employer starting in August/September might be willing to support travel in the summer before the appointment starts, but this might just be wishful thinking on my part (but it can't hurt to ask?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T16:09:09.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T16:09:35.293" Score="15" ViewCount="2448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently won an NSF mathematical Science Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at University 1. At this University, the math NSF postdocs have a have a much lower salary and benefits than regular &quot;named postdocs&quot; (XYZ Assistant Professor)and during their 2 years of half-time NSF support teach two thirds the amount (despite only half the salary coming from the university). I did not get a regular postdoc offer from Uni 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I have a 3 year postdoc offer from a fancy institute at US University 2, with significantly higher salary than regular postdocs at Uni 1 (which is already much higher than NSF postdocs at Uni 1), more travel funding than the NSF MSPRF, and NO teaching unless I want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research wise, Uni 1 is a better fit.&#xA;Would it be reasonable for me to leverage the Uni 2 offer to perhaps convince Uni 1 to raise my salary during my NSF postdoc there to the level of their regular postdocs and maybe give me the title of a regular postdoc at Uni 1 for one or two years when I am there?&#xA;Or perhaps reduction in the number of courses I have to teach?&#xA;If so, does one go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9565" LastActivityDate="2020-02-27T01:38:59.453" Title="Negotiating mathematics postdoc salary when having an offer with higher salary" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2014-01-21T16:18:55.697" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am also an applicant this year, and I have heard from some places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to guess that an offer was on its way (although one is never sure until you have the offer in your hands) by looking at the webpage counter for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; schools. However, other offers/shortlists came as a complete surprise, as I had gotten no visits from these schools since I submitted my application. There were also schools who visited my webpage very frequently, but I heard that they offered their position to someone else. To sum up, the webpage counter is not very reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are most of the good positions such as &quot;** assistant professorship&quot; already taken around this time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To nitpick, these are not necessarily the best positions. For example, Princeton's postdocs just go by the generic name of &quot;Instructors&quot; (except the top candidate, who is the Veblen Research Instructor). To answer your actual question, several departments have offered most of their positions. On the other hand, many departments have not had their postdoc committee meeting yet; for some, school hasn't even started yet. Also, just be aware that many candidates sit on several offers at the moment, trying to coax a better offer from their top choice etc. But I think that a lot of these positions will free up again on February 3, the common AMS deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are supposed to talk to your advisor about this! They are there for you, and he/she would be the best judge of your situation. Some advisors can also contact their colleagues to inquire on your behalf, which may be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many positions did you apply to? Many fantastic mathematicians apply to 50-60 places. In this case, it is worth applying to more places at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't stress out! Breathe! As an applicant myself, I know how you feel. It will all work out in the end. You've done all you can, so sit back and relax, and be patient. No matter what happens, you are still a bright mathematician who will be very successful in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10447" LastEditorUserId="10447" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T16:24:15.253" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T16:24:15.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18194" CreationDate="2014-01-21T16:23:29.417" Score="2" ViewCount="2221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am holding bachelor degree in applied math and physics, which I received in Moscow State University. I have rather normal grades (average 4.3 out of 5). My BS thesis (&quot;Weight optimization of monospar composite wing of russian unmanned aircraft) was recommended for publishing in scientific journal.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Everything seems to be ok, unless I have a passion for programming. I have implemented several mobile applications which are available in the AppStore and which are my main income now. Once I started to get enough money, I started to think about my MS degree in computer science field. However, I do not have enough minimum background for graduate program, hence I decided to take the missing core courses. The way of applying to undergraduate program and spend 5 years again seems to me time-wasteful (i am 23 now), so I come up with decision to become special/visiting student and get the necessary transcripts and become more competitive while applying to MS program. However, some universities do not provide engineering courses, some of them are too expensive (~50k per semester, I am able to spend ~18k); in some universities to become special student I must be invited by faculty member.. In other words, it is not as easy as I expected to take undergraduate courses. I kindly ask you to give me some tips how to enter to computer science field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11067" LastEditorUserId="11067" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T18:03:45.967" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:10:52.567" Title="what is the best way to take missing courses before applying to MS?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16011" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:06:05.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there is a difference between University 1 &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; you, and &lt;em&gt;having&lt;/em&gt; you because you come with an NSF. That makes a huge difference in whether you can leverage for a higher salary or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that University 1 did not offer you their regular postdoc title sounds like a hint to me that they will probably not be up for negotiation. Though, it doesn't hurt to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10447" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T17:06:05.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15064" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:59:18.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about avoiding technology and web-stores - you probably have a very local bookstore selling textbooks, maybe even an in-house store of your university. Go to them and ask them to  sell your book; they know how to do that, students are used to them, and they don't charge 65%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T17:59:18.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T18:38:57.897" Score="2" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my school, we call a list of courses (or classes) a semester or a term - as in Spring 2014 semester that includes 5 classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a word that means &quot;list of semesters&quot;, whether it has been completed or not, for the actual degree. I've heard this called an &quot;undergraduate career&quot;, but I think that can get confused for one's actual employment career. Does anyone have another word for this that would specifically refer to their college career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11082" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T14:27:19.453" Title="Name of a college career" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15159" CreationDate="2014-01-21T21:32:08.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had several of my pre-prints be submitted in the flurry of activity between job application and the last few months.  I haven't decided if it's still reasonable to re-submit or not . . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know, or at least, this has been my own experience, that there is something funky going on in the mathjobs database on 'submission' dates and 'updated' dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had one application that I know that I had sent in by the deadline (I have an email from mathjobs indicating that all my material had been submitted) on such and such a date, but then when I highlight the little info image next to the job on the status page, it is several days afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I did not un-apply for the position (as it was one of my top 5 post doc choices ), but I did do an update of the application, at some point (change some of the preprints to submitted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only heard from two places so far (post-doc wise) on interviews.  I'm really not going to start sweating until a bit after the coordinated deadline, but it's not fun when it's all up in the air and you have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, quick q and I'll probably run this by my advisor, but would it be appropriate to indicate the mathjobs fubar in the database to the school of interest?  I just don't want that to be the deciding factor for a position to be submission of materials on time or not, especially considering the mathjobs system is just plain wrong (and I can prove it)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T22:34:12.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:34:12.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14553" CreationDate="2014-01-21T21:49:03.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the relationship you have with your PI, I would think it would be general to assume that there will be quite a bit of work / research / papers (however you want to define work apart from the integral of a force curve over the distance) to do after the completion of your current postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think it would be more reasonable to go somewhere else for your second post-doc position at a lateral position as you will be extending your contact base for people to work with and because the work under the previous fellowship will probably still continue (at some level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that a title would not be of any import, unless you can come up with something that would be reasonable and continue on past your time there, i.e. the beginnings of some type of endowed post-doc chair and some associated name to go with it.  Even going from post-doc to say 'Research Assistant Professor' would be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T22:35:15.740" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:35:15.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2014-01-21T22:00:18.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own thoughts after finishing a math ph.d. this year and being on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0 -- stay in the program!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 -- publish.  Do not only publish with your advisor.  Work with other people in the department who may have overlapping interests.  Try to stay as broad as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 -- outreach.  There will be a wide-variety of opportunities to help out in local high school events. Take charge and be a leader, i.e. leading a session for 7th graders on the joys of Pascal's Triangle and how cool it is (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 -- conferences.  Go to conferences.  Talk at them.  Do poster sessions.  You'll meet many potential collaborators this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 -- network.  See above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 -- professional organizations.  join these!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 -- apply fro the nsfgrfp, or any other graduate fellowships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7 -- help in undergraduate research (hard to do but possible for very approachable types of problems)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8 -- be congenial and get to know people in your field and outside of it.  try to think of potential ways that there are overlaps between disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9 -- read lots of papers for your background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 -- in your case, as a theoretical physicist, learn the maths that are associated to your area, i.e. algebraic geometry and probably gauge theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;11 -- and finally . . . don't panic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:00:18.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2014-01-21T22:43:33.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just at the JMMs in Baltimore and was out to lunch with a past supervisor.  We eventually had several people join us, one from a nice Middle Eastern Country (which I had also incidentally applied to and he recalled my name ... which is nice!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, he made a specific point to indicate to me (and the others at our table) that their department had some funding to bring in some candidates for talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this question was more for how to get invited to a talk at a specific institution, but there are many ways that this can happen!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're best bet is indeed representing yourself.  It shows initiative.  Especially if you've met the person at the conferences / talks within your community.  The other thing is that if you ask them in person, or mention something in passing, they might make an offer to have you come visit and talk.  Otherwise, a nice polite email indicating you would like to talk at some point would be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T22:43:33.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2014-01-21T22:57:35.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a web presence is a must in academia (at least nowadays!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least you should have a site for the current course you are teaching, as a graduate student.  This is not necessary, but it is starting to become expected by students (although, who cares what they think ;) ).  I think a webpage is good because you can update it at a moment's notice, almost everyone has access to it, and if not, it's easily done, and you can also provide solutions for problems, quizzes, and past exams, as well as have links for cool math-y things (my area of expertise), wolfram alpha apps, java apps, matlab code, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I believe that this post was inquiring more along the lines of having a webpage as an early researcher.  In that regard, yes and yes (and dare I say yes again?).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a general page of your research interests, several sub-topics, collaborators, and even, (dare I say it?), a personal portion of it about you, is a good idea.  People expect to be able to access documents for pre-prints, post-prints (assuming you have the appropriate copyright), software, CV, etc., and at this point it is not unreasonable for them to think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest having a site not at your university.  You can redirect your university site to your other site and you don't have to worry about migrating files over when you move from grad to post-doc to post-doc to tenure-track at a tier 1 research institution (except for maybe the last transition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you host your own site, you can have your own diaspora pod running, and we can move more towards open-source networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T12:01:30.920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T12:01:30.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15750" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:12:04.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on the market this year and attended the JMMs in Baltimore.  After not tailoring my application whatsoever to liberal art schools (which I don't advise) since my primary goal is a research post-doc position, I had 5 different interviews (TT AP) and 1 post doc interview (which, I understand there were not many post-doc interviews anyway . . . and none at the employment center).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, most places, (from what I know), have about 40 interviewees they talk to.  The goal is to whittle this down to 2-3 candidates that they can invite to on-site interviews (and possibly more if they have more than 1 opening, i.e. they may invite 6 people for on-site interviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the JMMs, these are speed-date interviews.  They want to know if they like you as a person and can foresee you spending your entire life at University X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:12:04.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:18:41.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The university and hiring committee is already committed to paying for your flight out (plus room and board).  As such, I think it would be reasonable to offer to pay for half the cost of the ticket IF you accepted an offer at another university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not ask beforehand about anything, but this gives them the opportunity to not be so out on the money and can pay for someone else's ticket out there -- what's $200 out of a $400 ticket compared to hiring the right somebody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:18:41.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15136" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:24:04.487" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: I think it is neither ethical nor good (in terms of education, independent of ethics) to force students to use your textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assuming that we are talking about a &quot;normal&quot; lecture, as opposed to a workshop about your book.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: I see 3 different (but connected) difficulties here. None of them needs to be a problem, but together, they can trap the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;requiring a particular textbook&lt;/strong&gt;: to me this is less of an ethical problem if it doesn't boil down to forcing the students to buy that particular book.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think it preferable from an education point of view to teach students that they left the kind of school where exactly one solution exists, and now they are in a world with lots of sensible alternatives. Giving  recommendations* (plural!), IMHO it is a most important point to make that the library holds even more useful books [also on that topic].&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;more or less &lt;strong&gt;forcing students to buy a textbook&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Recall that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecture#History&quot;&gt;origin of &quot;lecture&quot; is that a (text)book was &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; to the students&lt;/a&gt;. So historically, the lecture was a solution to the problem that books were too expensive for students to buy.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why buying the textbook is necessary. Even if book and lecture are (naturally) close. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I might assign readings or homework problems from the book, so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would that be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is is that difficult to prepare a slide of the homework problem which is displayed at the end of the lecture or a pdf that can be downloaded?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading: I have to say that at university I've never experienced assigned reading from a textbook. So my question to you is: is it really necessary to assign reading chapter 7.4 as opposed to assign preparing the principles of pH electrodes? Also, I've seen reading materials for download.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Making small parts of the book available to the students is probably possible even if the contract with the publisher doesn't let you distribute pdfs to the students. At least, e.g. in Germany, it is even possible to hand small parts from any book (not only yours!) to the class for teaching purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the self-study aspect of the textbook, there is the textbook collection of the library. The university libraries I know have sensible numbers of the important textbooks to be borrowed by the students plus a number of copies that stay in the library so they are always accessible.  Are the books there really not sufficient? If so, why not? Why are the important books not there? How can books be bought?&#xA;(How to get &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book into the collection is part of the next point:)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible conflict of interest because it is &lt;em&gt;your own&lt;/em&gt; textbook&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;This is the interesting part. But, if you take care of the first two problems, there is already &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; less space for an actual conflict of interest (≈ a real problem for the students) here.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or, taking another point of view, I perceive taking unfair advantage of the position***  as a &lt;em&gt;symptom&lt;/em&gt; of (un)ethical behaviour which is closely bound to the whole character. In that I perceive it less of a single problem that is solved or not by a particular line of action on this point but rather a problem that appears with some people and not with others.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In yet other words, people who take advantage of their position tend to do that in more ways than just this (e.g. in the combination of my three points - at which point @JeffE probably recommends to run). The formal action of not requiring their own textbook doesn't help much. Students will conclude from the general reputation/perception of taking unfair advantage that the book is required - whether it is stated openly or not. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it is one of the topics where those who do worry whether what they do is ethical are the ones who don't need to &lt;em&gt;worry&lt;/em&gt; (because they do act ethically) - it would be far more important that those who don't would start to worry...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether to donate copies of your own textbook to the library, &#xA;make a donation that reimburses the library for your royalties, or &#xA;convince the library to buy it like any other book, and/or &#xA;whether and how you want to reimburse students &#xA;is IMHO unanswerable as a general question.&#xA;I think valid points can be made for and against** each of the options here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good and sensible decisions will depend a lot on the particular circumstances and even more on the personality of the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I object to this option on the following ethical grounds: If my problem is that I'm too poor to buy textbooks, I don't want to spend money on pizza but would rather like to save that money towards the next textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* A professor &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; recommending his own textbook sounds about as convincing to me as a vegetarian running a sausage factory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Here's the advocatus diaboli against each of the points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Donating books to the library? Someone is buying fame!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reimbursing the royalties - same as above, but more greedy (or the one above was more desperate for fame...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convinced some committee to buy the books? Surely there is a textbook-buying circle emerging: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reimbursing students who buy the book: that's an obvious attempt to whitewash the reputation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*** As long as you do not take advantage of your situation, the conflict of interest is at most &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; problem (i.e. you are worried). If you take unfair advantage, the students have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T23:34:21.710" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:34:21.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16031" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:53:42.277" Score="7" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone with a Ph.D in field X get a job in academia or industry in field Y, even if the  job posting says &quot;PhD in field Y required?&quot;. If not how will going back to get a second post graduate degree be looked upon by academic and industry employers in field Y?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Background:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finishing my PhD in Mathematics and am currently on the job market.   Ideally, I would land a math post-doc position, however, I have also been looking at industry jobs (as some of these would be more satisfactory than say a 4/4 teaching load or 3/3 or whatever it would be), but most of these seem to indicate that I would need a M.S. or PhD in Computer Science.I have a background in math as well as in C.S. (B.S. in C.S., B.A. in Math). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't get a post doc offer, I am considering attending a school for a master's in C.S. in machine learning or a related field.  Considering I have all the math background, I believe I would be a good candidate for a M.S. or PhD in C.S.  And there are a lot of interesting problems where the two areas overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it reasonable to return for a second degree if I don't get my dream post-doc offers, especially to make myself more marketable to industry?&lt;/strong&gt;  I am seriously considering this option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T02:40:06.893" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T02:40:06.893" Title="Is an Additional degree required to qualify myself for post doc/industry position outside my area of expertise?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16018" CreationDate="2014-01-22T00:54:39.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always used the following words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program - as in &quot;our undergraduate finance program&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course - As in an &quot;international finance master course&quot;: WARNING: This can be confused with an individual class/module&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid the use of the word degree because it can be confused with the piece of paper one gets at the end. I would also avoid the use of coursework as it implies the subjects one will study. However, to be fair, I have heard both of those words used quite frequently and one fun thing about English is that it gets modified by common usage, even when that usage seems wrong to some of us - we must go with the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to be cautious about using the word degree is the common separation, by some, between a certificate (short duration), a diploma (medium duration), and a degree (longer than the other two). Using the word degree could cause confusion to some who might be looking at a certificate or diploma program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T14:27:19.453" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T14:27:19.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-22T02:16:15.463" Score="5" ViewCount="1429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating an email signature and I am not sure what the protocol should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Locc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Department of Social and Consumer Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or should my position within the dept. be referenced??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Locc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social and Consumers Science Department Chairman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11085" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T02:50:47.727" Title="What is the proper protocol for addressing one's title and position in an email signature?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16027" CreationDate="2014-01-22T02:23:12.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable (your original question), yes. Is it necessary to get the job you want, probably not!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Requirements&quot; for a job are often just loose guidelines, and in some cases are used to scare unqualified, untalented, or under-confident people away from applying. Good employers will usually loosen these requirements (or sometimes even outright ignore all of them) for the right candidate. Someone with a B.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in math is exactly the type of person who could potentially qualify for a position that asks for a Ph.D. in CS. Requiring a Ph.D. in CS might be used to scare away all the coding ninjas who might otherwise apply. It is all about the story you are able to tell in your resume and interviews. Make the skills you have learned while completing your math Ph.D. appear as transferable as possible. Talk to math grads who are now in industry and peck their brains. Your degree is lucrative if you know how to sell it. I wouldn't recommend getting a second Ph.D just to go out into industry. At the very least apply to a bunch of jobs and see if you get some interviews before you go off and spend 4-6 more years in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of several people who have Ph.Ds in math and applied math without a B.S. in CS who went into industry. Many of the jobs they took said Ph.D. in CS required. Some companies just want really smart mathy people in these positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T02:23:12.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2014-01-22T02:43:15.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PI stands for PRINCIPAL Investigator, i.e. the head investigator.  Under this guideline grad students and postdocs ARE still investigators, albeit, not principal ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T04:33:43.473" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T04:33:43.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2014-01-22T02:51:02.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should go ahead and book your non-refundable ticket now. If you get a job offer from your preferred school prior to this interview, ask them when they need their decision by. If they say a date prior to this interview ask if you can extend the date until after this interview. They will almost always agree to this if they truly believe you are the best position for the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do this for two reasons. (1) Who knows, while at this school you may fall in love with it! But (2) if you don't, and you get an offer from them, you can use it to bargain with the other school. Note you should do this tactfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if worse comes to worse, you have a job and can afford to sacrifice several hundred dollars on a plane ticket. I'd worry about this scenario only afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sometimes if you tell a school &quot;I've gotten a great offer from another university, but I really like your program. Is there any way for me to move up my interview so I can have your decision before I have to get back to the other university?&quot; They will agree. You should only do this if it is conceivable you could accept their position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T02:51:02.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7484" CreationDate="2014-01-22T03:44:39.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure why you can't just tell them you have already accepted an offer, and leave it to them to cancel the interview. If they cancel the interview on the ticket that they agreed to reimburse you for, then they have to reimburse you. This shouldn't make them mad because they have the choice of interviewing you or cancelling, so they are no worse off than any other scenario in which you accept the first job offer. It is assumed you will have job offers, so its a risk on their part in participating in the process. Additionally, you could ask about this scenario from a different phone number or anonymous email to get what information you can about the university. Disclaimer: I am not a professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T03:44:39.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16036" CreationDate="2014-01-22T04:39:47.773" Score="18" ViewCount="19095" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I have received an offer for PhD studentship in Biology from a lab in Germany. I have completed my Bachelors degree and I have solid 2 years of research experience with 3 peer reviewed publications. Now to formally enroll as a PhD student they are asking me for Masters degree which I don't have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is it possible to enroll without masters degree into PhD in Germany? I know that in US, UK Masters degree is not a pre-requisite for PhD. How about in Germany? Can't my research experience be accounted as qualification ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11088" LastActivityDate="2020-04-27T13:24:58.813" Title="PhD in Germany after Bachelors" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2014-01-22T05:37:00.280" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you cannot start a PhD program without a master's degree in Germany. Some programs feature a dual-degree option, whereby you're admitted to a master's program as well as a PhD program. US and UK programs do basically the same thing, which is why the master's degree is not a prerequisite—you earn it, or the equivalent, along the way to the PhD after the bachelor's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in German universities, most PhD positions are actually government jobs in what is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/west/&quot;&gt;TV-L system&lt;/a&gt;. More precisely, it's what's called a &quot;TV-L E13.&quot; Now, one of the requirements of the TV-L E13 is a master's degree in the appropriate subject. There really isn't a way to waive this requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What perhaps can be done is to ask if the group is willing to sponsor you as a &quot;Wissentschaftliche Hilfskraft&quot;—essentially, a part-time worker in the group—while you complete the master's program. (If they're eager enough to hire you with a bachelor's, then they should be willing to support you while you get the necessary training.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T05:37:00.280" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16030" CreationDate="2014-01-22T06:14:11.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no formal protocol for a &quot;signature block.&quot; You can put as much or as little as you would ike. If you know the recipient well, for instance, the block is unnecessary. For more formal occasions, however, I would include as much of your affiliation as is appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I. M. Professor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  My Job Title&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  My Department&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  My University&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Other contact information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are chair, I'd indicate that specifically. Instead of the second and third lines, those could be combined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chair, Department of X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T17:20:24.933" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T17:20:24.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2014-01-22T07:42:30.560" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, is it possible to enroll without masters degree into PhD in Germany? I know that in US, UK Masters degree is not a pre-requisite for PhD. How about in Germany? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Germany, as well as many (most?) other places in central Europe, a Master's degree is a formal requirement for starting a PhD.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is mostly historical: in Europe, we did not really have Bachelor's and Master's degrees until 2000 or shortly thereafter. Until then, a &quot;Diploma&quot; (sort of equivalent to master's degree, a bit of a mixture of MSc and MBA) was the first degree you could get from an university. Around 2000, the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process&quot;&gt;Bologna process&lt;/a&gt; went into action, with the goal of homogenizing the way how higher eduction works across Europe, and the chosen target model was the traditional Bachelor / Master / PhD model of US universities. Of course, adopting this model in the somewhat different realities of european universities meant that what was really implemented in many places was sort of a half-hearted mixture of old and new system. For instance, in my country of origin (Austria), almost every study basically just took the their old &quot;Diplomstudium&quot; (old curriculum, where the equivalent of MSc was the first degree) and more or less randomly awarded a BSc after 3 years. Of course, at this point, the student did not have a completed education in any way - the curriculum was fully designed that students do another 2 years after master studies afterwards (and the majority of students does so). As a result, public opinion, for instance in industry, of people with &quot;only&quot; a bachelor are not very good -- in many ways, those are considered people who stopped their studies prematurely. In a similar vain, universities also require a &quot;completed&quot; undergrad study (which, in Austria, means doing the entire 5-year original master studies) before being allowed to enroll into a PhD programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that being said, I find it more than just a bit awkward that your department in Germany did not clarify this in advance. This issue is not an unknown quantity in Germany -- everybody who hires even occasionally from outside of Europe should know about this and handle this issue in advance. I am afraid it will be a difficult problem to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can't my research experience be accounted as qualification ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt it. &lt;strong&gt;This is not just a small administrative hurdle&lt;/strong&gt; -- in many places (I do not know about Germany, though), the requirement of a Master to get enrolled to a PhD programme is defined by national university law, so it is not a requirement that a university or professor can just waive for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T22:11:32.843" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T22:11:32.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15765" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:06:01.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key here is that it is a publicly funded effort. Any intellectual property belongs to the public. &#xA;Just as if you developed that system for a corporation let say at work. The product is owned by the company. They paid you to develop it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example you do not own the system it was developed with public dollars. Even if you were volunteering the works you created belong to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11100" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:06:01.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:07:43.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it is possible. I have no masters but I have Honours (not really known or recognised outside the Commonwealth) and 3 years work experience as a research assistant. I had no trouble enrolling in my PhD in the Netherlands. The actual university guidelines say that candidates must have a Masters unless they have been given a special exemption by the director of the institute. If you've been given an offer then it's likely an exemption will be made, unless the rules are more strict in Germany than in NL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11102" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:07:43.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16052" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:12:42.063" Score="16" ViewCount="2857" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a thread on StackExchange could help your research. A technical problem, an inspiring discussion or even an idea. How can I acknowledge this kind of contribution? (considering that many users on SE do not use real name and it is very difficult to reach them privately) Has anyone done that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10431" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T09:42:04.373" Title="How to acknowledge ideas/clue/discussions on StackExchange?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:23:53.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of some cases when it is possible: e.g. when the university offers a so called &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;fast-track PhD program&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case you are required to have at least a B.Sc. in a related field. Then within the first year of this fast-track program you basically start working on your M.Sc., but you don't write M.Sc thesis. Instead of that when the first year is over, you keep working on your topic for the next couple of years and make a dissertation out of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out e.g. this page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsn.uni-muenchen.de/studies/ft_program/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gsn.uni-muenchen.de/studies/ft_program/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11103" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:23:53.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16047" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:30:54.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most citation systems (e.g., MLA, Harvard, Chicago) have a means of referencing web pages. Therefore, if there are specific discussions and conversations that you can point to, then I would simply refer to those pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, however, I would probably just leave it to a statement in the Acknowledgments section, since there isn't an actual &quot;public record&quot; which can be cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:30:54.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16051" CreationDate="2014-01-22T13:20:32.407" Score="52" ViewCount="3501" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/terms&quot;&gt;academia.edu's terms of service&lt;/a&gt;, it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By making available any Member Content on or through the Site or Services, &lt;strong&gt;you hereby grant to Academia.edu&lt;/strong&gt; a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with &lt;strong&gt;the right to sublicense, to use, view, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast and otherwise exploit&lt;/strong&gt; such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site or Services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems crazy, and posting anything there would clearly violate even the most lenient publisher agreement (for instance, many math publishers allow me to post the final paper on the internet, but not to sell it).  Furthermore, these terms seem potentially very harmful to the users.  What is their rationale for employing such terms?  And why would anyone in their right mind even consider posting a paper there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note (as of July 2016):&lt;/strong&gt; this part of the terms of service have changed and seems slightly less horrific.  Though other parts seem more insane, and also in contradiction with each other, like they own all your intellectual property rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="19607" LastEditDate="2016-07-28T10:38:22.453" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T19:24:12.777" Title="Why does academia.edu reserve the right to sell, modify, and &quot;exploit&quot; my papers if I post them there?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16050" CreationDate="2014-01-22T14:07:21.777" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not necessarily crazy for academia.edu to ask for these things (although, as I say below, I certainly don't think users should agree to these terms).  I imagine their lawyers advised them to use an agreement that covers all possible use cases as their business model evolves.  For example, if they decided to charge their users membership fees, and only users who paid the fees got access to the site and could view profiles and download papers, then that would be tantamount to selling the papers and other user data (so they couldn't do it unless they had permission to sell this content).  Posting ads on their web pages could be considered a form of commercial exploitation of the data, so they want to make sure they can do it.  They might someday want to change file formats, such as converting PDFs into future super-PDF formats, and having permission to modify content submitted by users guarantees that they could do this.  Even if they intend to take things down upon receiving requests from users, having irrevocable permission to post them means users cannot sue them for failing to take them down quickly enough.  Basically, this agreement says they can do anything they want, which is obviously very convenient for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, Harvard's &lt;a href=&quot;https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/modelpolicy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;model open access policy&lt;/a&gt; also retains very broad rights (although not the right to sell papers for a profit).  I believe the motivation is that universities can be trusted, and it's better for them to retain more rights than fewer, in case they need them someday.  See the notes to line 7 in the model policy for more discussion of this point.  Of course, the difference is that academia.edu is a commercial website, and even if they are trustworthy now, they might become less so in the future or be bought by someone untrustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the other hand, even if it's not crazy for the site to ask for these rights, it's certainly crazy for users to agree!&lt;/strong&gt;  I'm amazed that these terms of service are being used, and I assume just about nobody using the site has actually read them and understood that they are permanently granting the right to sell arbitrarily modified versions of their papers.  I hope you send them a complaint, as well as publicize this on the internet, because they need to change these terms as soon as possible.  In addition to being completely unreasonable, they clearly conflict with a large majority of copyright agreements for papers, as you point out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorDisplayName="user75565" LastEditDate="2017-12-26T19:24:12.777" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T19:24:12.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16047" CreationDate="2014-01-22T14:21:19.733" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED according to the PiotrMigdal's comment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you like to point out the SE contribution to your work I would suggest to acknowledge the community by any acknowledgement you consider suitable. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors would like to express their appreciation to the Stack&#xA;  exchange, inc. community for many useful inputs and valuable comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or if you like you can be more specific&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We would like to thank to community of Stack exchange, inc.,&#xA;  especially, Cross Validated group (section?) for advices regarding the data processing and data&#xA;  visualization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can combine what ever you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that only one user was the core of the contribution, you can mention only him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Special thanks goes to Piotr Migdal, who significant contributed to&#xA;  the quality of this answer with his valuable and well-aimed comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the person would be (or would like to stay) anonymous and you would still like to acknowledge the contribution, you can write the acknowledgement to anonymous person (as well you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentit.co.uk/support/help.php?version=v3_02&amp;amp;topic=authors&amp;amp;query=Unknown%20Author%28s%29&amp;amp;template=support&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;citate a source with unknown author&lt;/a&gt;). This happens typically when you refer to web-pages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We would like to acknowledge the discussion regarding the deep learning algorithm at Stack exchange, inc. in Cross Validated section&#xA;  (Available at:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83092/regression-in-deep-learning&quot;&gt;https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83092/regression-in-deep-learning&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  Accessed: 44rd August 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think that much better would be to try to contact the person/people. You can do it either by contact info or by comments. They can be willing to step out of the anonymity for you or, what is more, have some further discussion on the topic of your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you would like to express your gratitude, you can always contribute to SE :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T09:21:51.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-22T14:27:20.950" Score="8" ViewCount="12588" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student in Australia studying Bachelor of IT.&#xA;Australian education system as the norm here is to take 4 subjects per semester and these subjects are pretty much &quot;dumbed down&quot;. So a lot of subjects don't really teach much, for instance for Algorithms and Data Structures subject we weren't taught complexity at all, so during technical interviews for my internships, I was not able to give any answers in regarding to complexity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this will be my last semester, and I feel like I still need more coursework for Computer Science and spending more money for Australian universities just sounds ridiculous at this step. Since almost all US and UK universities need honours award from Australian degrees (and that's extra $26k), I will not be applying to any US universities . I applied to one UK university that never mentioned requirement of honours and got rejection. I have applied to UBC in Canada but it will also cost me about CA$15-20k/y. So I had a look at European universities and found out that German and Swiss universities charges about 500-600 Euros per year. I found out that most German reputable universities don't really offer fully English Masters degrees in Computer Science, however that's not the case. ETH Zurich prefers students with honours as well. I found that EPFL has a good education and I would like to study Distributed Systems, which they offer quite a lot subjects on that, however what concerns me is after graduation job security. As I mentioned, my purpose of studying Computer Science is not to become an academia but to have stronger Computer Science skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway so far it sounded like very specific, but my question is not that specific. Would it really worth studying Computer Science in Switzerland, with the consideration of graduate job prospects as well as doing internships and the fact that I don't have EU citizenship? I know that Google would accept international grads, but are there many companies like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11104" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T22:29:40.803" LastActivityDate="2020-03-26T17:38:34.403" Title="How useful is studying MSc Computer Science in Switzerland?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;switzerland&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16053" CreationDate="2014-01-22T15:08:41.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general comment: I feel there is a lot of &lt;em&gt;fluff&lt;/em&gt; in this question which (as you seem to figure out yourself) makes the question seem more specific to you personally than what it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after reading through rather unnecessary backstory (no offense :) ) I think this was your actual question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found that EPFL has a good education and I would like to study Distributed Systems, which they offer quite a lot subjects on that, however what concerns me is after graduation job security. As I mentioned, my purpose of studying CompSci is not to become an academia but to have stronger Computer Science skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, job security with a MSc in Computer Science, also, even especially, with a focus on distributed systems, is very good in Switzerland and the surrounding countries. Lausanne is considered a good to excellent university in Europe. However, if your current school is as bad as you describe it (no complexity theory??), you may find the masters in Lausanne quite challenging. Not impossible, but you will probably spend a lot (!) of time learning the fundamentals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT: (this has been added after my original answer)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;with the consideration of graduate job prospects and the fact that I don't have EU citizenship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how not having an EU citizenship factors in. I am also a foreigner working in Zurich, but coming from an EU state. I have heard that things are not always easy for non-europeans around here, but I cannot offer any concrete info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T15:08:41.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16061" CreationDate="2014-01-22T15:51:13.150" Score="0" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if I want to get the reference in APA, what web resources provide this style? I found a way through Refworks, but it requires several steps. Is there a faster way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5689" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:10:14.697" Title="What is a fast way to get the reference in a specific style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2014-01-22T16:16:06.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see people claiming that Masters is an absolute requirement to start PhD in Germany. I am not an expert in the field but my supervisor in my university does not have a Masters, he has registered PhD studies immediately after the Bachelors. He is a German and was a student at the same uni. How he did it I don't know. What I know for sure is that such a case exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T10:59:13.400" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T10:59:13.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-01-22T16:20:50.293" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latex-project.org&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;, and use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org&quot;&gt;BibTeX&lt;/a&gt; which will automatically format your references in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reed.edu/cis/help/latex/bibtexstyles.html&quot;&gt;various styles&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T16:20:50.293" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-01-22T17:05:55.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; has a nice tool for this. If you search for the article, under each of the search results is a &quot;cite&quot; button which will automatically show you the reference in MLA, APA, and Chicago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11083" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T17:05:55.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-01-22T18:12:40.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Zotero you can choose a format to export items among several, including APA. Then you can drag and drop a set of items and the references are formatted according to what you chose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even define your own formats with some Javascript programming if you plan to do this very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: you should have added the reference before in Zotero before, which is a one-click operation (assuming the data is right), or you can import a set of references from BibTex and other formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T18:12:40.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16065" CreationDate="2014-01-22T19:45:50.780" Score="34" ViewCount="19303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been recently offered a couple of Postdoc positions, and I was wondering how you as professors would prefer to be informed if a candidate would rather work with another institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know we are professionals, and these things are to be expected, and probably the professor has another candidates to choose from, but I just want to be as respectful and professional myself as possible, so how would you turn down an offer, or would like to be turned down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T13:37:10.253" Title="What is the best way to turn down a Postdoc offer?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16063" CreationDate="2014-01-22T20:43:51.723" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just send a short but polite note telling them something like: you appreciate the offer but have decided to accept a different one. Maybe tell them (especially if it's true!) that you respect their research, hope to see them at a conference or visit their institution in the future, or something nice along those lines. Don't overthink it, just be polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T20:43:51.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16063" CreationDate="2014-01-22T20:48:45.250" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it short and honest.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear So and So, thank you for your offer for a postdoc at Blah. It's&#xA;  an attractive offer, but I've decided to take a position at Foo-Bar&#xA;  instead. The work you're doing over at Blah is very interesting and I&#xA;  look forward to interacting with you in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you have more than one rejection to send out PLEASE PLEASE don't do it generically. Tailor it to each place individually. It takes a little more time, but it's a fair exchange given that they took the time to give you an offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T20:48:45.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-01-22T21:18:42.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend using &lt;strong&gt;bibtex&lt;/strong&gt;: the procedure is very simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Create an empty file and name it &quot;myreferences.bib&quot; (or any other &quot;.bib&quot; name)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Go to the website of the paper you would like to reference to and download the bibtex code. If this option is not available you can search for the article in Google Scholar and click &quot;Import into BibTeX&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Copy/Paste the cose into your &quot;.bib&quot; file&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Enter your latex article, add the references at the correct points, and write, just before the &lt;em&gt;\end{document}&lt;/em&gt;, command: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\bibliographystyle{plane}&#xA;\bibliography{myreferences}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a list of bibliography styles see for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~surajit/present/bib.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~surajit/present/bib.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Compile your code using Latex. Compile your code using Bibtex. Compile your code using Latex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T21:18:42.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16063" CreationDate="2014-01-22T21:44:48.890" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the previous answers: short, honest, polite.  I'll add: prompt.  As soon as you accept an offer, let the other institutions know immediately.  That will let them move on with their search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T21:44:48.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16050" CreationDate="2014-01-22T22:23:52.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;General Prohibitions&amp;quot; Section of academia.edu's Terms of Service, starts as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General Prohibitions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You agree not to do any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined with what the question points out from these Terms of Service, their business model could even &amp;quot;secretly hope&amp;quot; to directly compete with scientific journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T22:23:52.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16050" CreationDate="2014-01-22T22:51:26.533" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;member content&quot;, not just papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data analytics is a huge thing for web sites like Academia.edu. If they wanted to, for example, add advertisements on the sidebar, they might use your user data (post history, your messages, the contents of the post you're reading) to recommend ads that are relevant and pertinent to your interests. In that situation, they're using your member content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they come out with an advertising campaign talking to academics about why Academia.edu is awesome, maybe they'll have someone on camera with the web site in the background. That would be using the content in promotional videos. They don't want to have to ask the commenters for explicit permission to do that, so you waive that when you sign up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, it's not worth it for the lawyers to try to separate academic papers that are posted here from everything else, so they just say &quot;member content&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like papers being there... then don't post your papers there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T22:51:26.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-23T00:53:30.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in cognitive psychology and frequently use, &quot;In the present investigation.&quot; There are sometimes workarounds you can use to avoid passive voice such as, &quot;56 adults participated in this study.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11083" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T00:53:30.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16053" CreationDate="2014-01-23T00:53:46.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly there are really cool universities in Europe where you can learn much about Computer Science and related subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the rankings of universities in the world you will see that ETHZ and EPFL are ranked among top 50 unis for CS subjects. Last time I checked ETHZ was somewhere around 7 and EPFL somewhere close to 20. However keep in mind that the rankings are important for future employers but not that important in terms of teaching. Wherever you go in Switzerland and Germany you will face the same approach to science, with top class professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me clarify some stuff for you, first of all tuition fees in Swiss are not around 500-600 euros! They are a bit higher, however the real problem with living in Swiss are the living costs. I hear it is damn expensive over there. Especially if you think about Zurich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Germany, the semester fees are less than 300 euros. So you will be paying at mos 600 euros per year for studies. In some federations of Germany you even get a semester ticket, which you can use for traveling for free by bus and by train withing the borders of the federation where your University is located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that all the programmes offered by universities are not &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; in English. However the selection of courses which is provided for international students is pretty nice. Additionally, at the moment there is a lack of IT people in Germany. My professor said &quot;The only way not to find an IT job in Germany is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;to die&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; early&quot;.&#xA;If you register for master studies in germany, the state requires you to have at least 8000 euro in bank for 12 months. So they have calculated that as a student you can live comfortably with that money. However, you are free to spend as much as you want. This is the minimum that I told you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested for English studies, bear in mind that Sweden provides CS studies mostly in English (over 80% of the population is fluent in English over there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main thing that you have to consider when registering for your future studies is the difficulties that you will face due to &quot;poor&quot; background at the moment. Studies will be very demanding (I know it form myself, I've been in the same position), but with hardwork you can achieve everything. However, if you are not ready to invest extra time to your studies, do not bother going to ETHZ or EPFL, or top universities in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I answered you question, if you have further dilemmas let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit1: Since you are aware of your drawbacks coming from the Bachelors, analyze well the curriculum of the university where you are planning to apply, and before that make sure to watch some of the free courses (related to that curriculum) provided by top universities online: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mooc-list.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.mooc-list.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courses provided in Masters studies are usually a continuation of the courses from the Bachelors, so check what the students have studies during bachelors in the unis that u are planning to apply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selam ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T00:59:09.867" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T00:59:09.867" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-23T01:01:02.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked my supervisor directly. She said that she is OK with using &quot;I&quot; in the dissertation, but that it is &quot;uncommon&quot; to use it in articles. As she is always a co-author on our papers, I guess none of her students had to deal with the problem in the context of an article anyway :) And because she did not mention internal reports even though I specifically asked about them, I think that she doesn't care what I use in them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just the opinion of one professor, and the answers here show me that there doesn't seem to be a good convention. So, my take-home message from the whole problem would be: ask your professor, he will probably have a position on it and it is wise for you as a student to follow it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T01:01:02.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-23T01:04:02.463" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of the authorial 'we' is very common in academia even for single-author papers, as argued by many and properly referenced in the other question that you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personally, I would keep 'we'&lt;/strong&gt; also for the thesis without bothering. I doubt anyone would misunderstand, but if you wish you can include a quick remark in the introduction: something like &lt;em&gt;Despite the use of the 'authorial we', common in academia, this thesis is the sole work of its author&lt;/em&gt;. In many cases you are required to state that you are the only author anyway in some boilerplate forms in the front matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks much better to my eye than changing every sentence to a contorted passive form. Readability matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T01:04:02.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T01:52:21.980" Score="13" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new worker in real functions with little experience and few published papers but not in top journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I together with my two colleagues found a new characterization of a well-known class of functions (first Baire class). I am pretty sure this is new. However, we cannot decide the extent of its significance because we are unable to find a good application. But suffice it to say there are some old results in the area that admit a very straightforward proof using our characterization. For instance, functions with countable discontinuities can be shown to be of first Baire class using our characterization with a very easy proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, is this enough for publication? I am afraid to submit it and got a snobbish review. By the way, I am from a third-world country.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T09:17:35.000" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T09:17:35.000" Title="How do I determine if my contribution to an area of research merits publication?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T02:03:46.787" Score="18" ViewCount="1488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD candidate in computer engineering. I saw an announcement for a post-doctoral position on the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote to the professor having that open position asking him if I could come to visit him and his lab, and talk about the position.&#xA;He replied yes. We agreed on the date and I asked him if he wanted me to prepare a talk with slides to give during the visit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He answered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are welcome to give a talk or we may just have a meeting. It's fully up to you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;what should I do?&#xA;Talk or just a visit?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meeting would be more relaxing and confortable, and provide no stress and no extra work.The talk would need time to work on it, and would be more stressful, but may explain better my previous research projects..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you suggest to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8234" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T20:41:11.480" Title="Potential Post-Doc supervisor visit: should I give a talk or just have a meeting?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16076" CreationDate="2014-01-23T03:33:48.567" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would come prepared with a talk.  Depending on how many people are in his lab, or if you are going when his lab is having a meeting, you may want to give a talk then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's nice not to give a talk and to just have a meeting more generally.  But, it may be better for your potential colleagues to know the kind of research you have done before and what you are interested in if there is any overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, it's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T04:31:29.653" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T04:31:29.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16030" CreationDate="2014-01-23T03:48:13.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My signatures are usually of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Official Department Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T03:48:13.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16075" CreationDate="2014-01-23T06:17:05.693" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't submit a paper, you're never going to find out it's publishable—unless someone beats you to it. Basically, if you and your colleagues believe you have a publishable advance, then write it up and submit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note: have you solicited feedback from colleagues in the field? Has it been presented at a conference somewhere? What have you heard and done to &quot;talk the work up&quot; with colleagues? Has anyone told you it is (or is not) publishable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T06:17:05.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16076" CreationDate="2014-01-23T06:24:07.850" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless told you shouldn't, you should &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; opt to give a talk under such circumstances. It makes discussions with your potential future advisor and group members much more meaningful, because your interviewers now have a much better sense of what you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, a solid presentation of technically sound research shows that you have achieved one of the most important skills needed for a researcher: the ability to effectively communicate your work! As a postdoc, your advisor is going to expect you to have most of the research skills needed to complete your work with minimal supervision. Giving a good presentation will clearly demonstrate most of your credentials in a way that a face-to-face talk will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, giving a talk to a (mostly) friendly audience is always good practice for your future career. (People get better at giving presentations by giving presentations!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T06:24:07.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-01-23T07:57:38.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing in MS Word, just go to References and select APA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DFWRW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Word References&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then Insert Citation, Add New Source and fill in everything you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will handle your in-text referencing as well as your &quot;Works Cited&quot; section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have added a reference, using it again is as simple as Insert Citation and clicking the existing citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T07:57:38.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16053" CreationDate="2014-01-23T08:02:52.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;EPFL is one of the better technical universities. This has two consequences: 1) it will be hard (as @xLeitix notes, if your current school doesn't even teach complexity, you will be in for a challenging time at EPFL), and 2) you won't have a problem to get a job afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that differences between schools are not as pronounced in Europe as elsewhere. For instance, I am pretty sure that you will not be able to attend a German or Swiss university without exposure to algorithm complexity. Consequently, employers (both academic and industry) in Europe don't really care all that much about school quality. Grades, internships and the impression you leave at the interview are much more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of costs of living in Zurich. Zurich compares with New York City. It's horrendous. (I used to live there.) Lausanne should be somewhat better, but Switzerland is generally an expensive place. If you seriously plan on going there, check local rents and/or supermarkets (coop.ch or migros.ch - you should be able to find this week's offers even without speaking German) and convert them from CHF to AUD to get an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the language: Zurich is German-speaking, but Swiss German is very hard for a non-native speaker, even if you did take German classes. Lausanne is French-speaking, and the Swiss French is closer to &quot;standard&quot; French than Swiss German is to German. Francophones dislike speaking English, so you will get by more easily in Zurich than in Lausanne in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switzerland is not in the EU (although it of course cooperates), so your EU membership is not all that important. With an ETH/EPFL diploma, you should have no problem getting a job anywhere in Switzerland or the EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T08:02:52.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16075" CreationDate="2014-01-23T08:15:07.593" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your work merits &lt;strong&gt;submission&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether it merits &lt;strong&gt;publication&lt;/strong&gt; depends on the journal. It's always good to consult with experts ahead of time, but failing that the best approach is to find a journal that seems in tune with the results (maybe it's the one where the prior work was published, or one that contains most of the relevant material that you needed for your result). Then submit it and see what happens. In the worst case your paper will be rejected, but then you'll expect to get review feedback, which is really what you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T08:15:07.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16047" CreationDate="2014-01-23T09:42:04.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathoverflow, which is the SE site for research mathematics, has a cite button, hidden inside the widget that pops up when you click &quot;share&quot;. The citations it produces have the following form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;user1347 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/users/1347/user1347&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/users/1347/user1347&lt;/a&gt;), Can one make Erdős's Ramsey lower bound explicit?, URL (version: 2009-11-02): &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/q/3789&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/q/3789&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@MISC {3789,&#xA;    TITLE = {Can one make Erdős&amp;amp;#39;s Ramsey lower bound explicit?},&#xA;    AUTHOR = {user1347 (https://mathoverflow.net/users/1347/user1347)},&#xA;    HOWPUBLISHED = {MathOverflow},&#xA;    NOTE = {URL:https://mathoverflow.net/q/3789 (version: 2009-11-02)},&#xA;    EPRINT = {https://mathoverflow.net/q/3789},&#xA;    URL = {https://mathoverflow.net/q/3789}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the Bibtex is far from perfect (no escaping of non-latin characters and capitals, no &lt;code&gt;\url&lt;/code&gt; command for links), but this could give you an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, this still uses the username as &quot;author&quot;, so it doesn't really answer your question. This is an issue that has also been discussed in several places on mathoverflow and math.stackexchange; see for instance the amusingly-named question &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/98082/etiquette-question-how-to-acknowledge-bugs-bunny&quot;&gt;how to acknowledge Bugs Bunny?&lt;/a&gt; and the meta.MSE thread linked there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T09:42:04.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10212" CreationDate="2014-01-23T12:29:15.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before creating a hypothesis, it may be necessary to make experiments and discover the &lt;em&gt;laws&lt;/em&gt; (Ohms law, Newtons laws and the like). Laws are not hypothesis. They do not suppose anything, just describe discovered regularities (correlation, regression, sometimes more complex curve fitting) in a way more compact than raw experimental data. If you have good experimental data without hypothesis, you may simply be in this stage of exploration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovering the laws may be required before any hypothesis can be formulated. Try to propose and test your hypothesis now, maybe it is time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2015-09-05T19:10:45.873" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T19:10:45.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15344" CreationDate="2014-01-23T12:46:06.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm facing the same problem, though in German language/natural science (conventions may vary somewhat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with the passive construction is that it doesn't say at all who did it. Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The algorithm was implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can the reader be sure it was you as opposed to your colleague giving you his code (particulary, if the corresponding paper is authored by multiple coauthors)? I'm told I cannot expect the reader to look up the source where the author is explicitly stated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for some (ver key points where I need to make really sure everyone gets the fact that I actually did work myself that is fairly common (e.g. in other groups in my field) to be done by colleagues, collaboration partners, students or technicians I use &quot;I&quot; even though is so uncommon that I get comments about the use of &quot;I&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that commonly studies like the one with 56 participants have someone planning it, someone (else) doing the experiments/collecting the data, and someone (yet else) analyzing the data: make sure you properly acknowledge the contributions of your collaborators in the acknowledgements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use constructions like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study with 56 participants was conducted [ref]. This thesis focuses on [whichever part &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; did]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, &quot;This thesis shows that...&quot; or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throughout this thesis, Cramer's V is used as the association measure, because ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;get you a long way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T12:46:06.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8256" CreationDate="2014-01-23T13:34:42.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (both sides: visiting and being where other students visit), the purpose can range all the way  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from very narrowly defined purposes, such as learning a particular technique/method&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(I'm chemist. You will not learn phyico- or bio-chemical lab techniques efficiently via skype sessions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to &quot;exploratory&quot; purposes like finding out whether a collaboration is feasible and brainstorming topics.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course this implies that it may turn out during the stay that for some reason the initial idea is not or not yet feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or even just networking.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the time, the visiting student gets a place, brings her/his own laptop and does research the way he does it at his university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience this happens when&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collaboration as intended turns out to be impossible early during the stay: then the best option for the student may be to use the time away from the home lab to catch up with that pile of things-to-be-done. Depending on how far away the host institute is, getting an earlier flight home plus possibly the hassle of finding some place to stay because you sublet your room and the discussion whether you will be reimbursed for a room that you leave earlier but don't get refunded for that may be out of question. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External constraints and/or bad planning lead to the visit being just in the wrong time: I once had the option to do a visit but that was possible only during holiday time at the host institution - not that I didn't meet the people I wanted to meet, but the meetings were spread over a longer time. (I did get quite some work done off the todo list in the meantime - but I certainly was a bit &quot;homeless&quot; at the host institution for some of the time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad planning of the type that some supervisors decide who (student) is to visit whom (student) and when, and one or both of the directly affected people don't really have the time.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: Consider the cost of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;further up the career path, people travel thousands of km for a visit of few hours. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had a scholarship where I was expected to put in a full day's travel to have a 1 h meeting with my mentor or give a 10 min presentation. Likewise, the mentor put in almost a full day's travel in order to have a few hours visit to my lab. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what the guest's institution gets out of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Besides the obvious &lt;em&gt;chance&lt;/em&gt; to successful collaboration or training on certain methods if the research stay is successful,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can be seen as part of the student's training (that applies particularly if e.g. a scholarship pays for the visit) &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a way, you have to learn how to do a research stay before becoming really efficient at that,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;just like your home institution is probably not going to get that much out of your first conference visit, but without a fist, there will never be the efficient 5th conference visit. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even just &quot;living&quot; in the hosting group will add experience how other groups handle their research life.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly, they wouldn't have gotten the student without: e.g. when I negotiated for the PhD student position, my prof threw into the deal that he would put me in contact to some other groups so I could do a research stay abroad (we did work, though, and I was paid by the hosting institution, not by my home institution)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T13:34:42.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8256" CreationDate="2014-01-23T14:52:51.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers cover your question from the student's and general research point of view pretty well. But if your question is why do &lt;em&gt;universities&lt;/em&gt; encourage visiting students and student exchange, I can think of 2 reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publicity  and improvement of their international reputation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gaining a few more points in the university rankings (example: Times Higher&#xA;Education has criteria named 'International Outlook')&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a less utilitarian note: international collaboration is, on the long haul, generally  beneficial to research (even though there are a lot of exchanges that bring much less to science than to the local nightlife sector).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T16:40:55.113" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T16:40:55.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16063" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:05:05.620" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I really like Suresh's answer. Short, straight, polite, and mentioning you would like to work with them in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I did my post-doc, I had the same problem: I applied for more positions than I could accept 8^)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning down the offers I could not accept was along Suresh's lines,  but with one major point added: I did not send emails/write letters, I &lt;em&gt;called the professors and talked to them  personally&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, I met all of them again during my post-doc. The world of research is very small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11139" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:05:05.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15596" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:20:45.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's backwards from your proposed approach, but you could also use Google Scholar. It (apparently) has no API yet. Thus, someone created a python module to parse its output. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icir.org/christian/scholar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.icir.org/christian/scholar.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar only gives you the articles that &lt;em&gt;cite&lt;/em&gt; the given article. So you can build the links that are &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; the article, rather than &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madhavajay.com/kalki/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Citation Visualisation Tool&lt;/a&gt; seems to be based on this approach. However, the bookmarklet doesn't seem to work (for me in Chrome) when I browse Google Scholar as shown in the video on that page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T15:35:07.467" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:35:07.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15966" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:37:54.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not urge as much caution as the other answer/comment. Of course, checking with your co-authors and publishing agreement won't do any harm but ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... I would &lt;strong&gt;strongly urge you to put the pre-print of the paper online and add a link in the CV&lt;/strong&gt; since the folks handling your application may want to see the paper but may not be bothered to email you for it ... they will have a long list of CVs to get through, esp. in the initial phases where a &lt;em&gt;confirmed&lt;/em&gt; publication could really make you stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emphasise this because I've seen lots of CVs for research internships and they often try to conncoct publications, mentioning &quot;&lt;em&gt;paper communicated to XYZ&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, or mentioning internal technical reports, etc. Having a link to a full-text will show them that it is not a vapour-paper and will let them get an idea of the quality of the work. Better still if you can add a link to the list of accepted papers for the conference with your paper in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for contravening a publishing agreement ... any decent CS/EE publisher will, at the very least, allow you to put the pre-print -- the version you submit to them -- online on a personal homepage. If for some reason they don't, you shouldn't publish your work with them. Putting papers on homepages is a common practice that should be &lt;strong&gt;strongly encouraged&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher is IEEE themselves, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/rights_policies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it's for sure no problem&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk of putting your paper online on your personal page&lt;/strong&gt;: a 0.000001% chance of getting a cease and desist letter from your publisher asking you to take it offline, in which case you take the paper offline and never submit to that publisher ever again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk of not putting your paper online on your personal page&lt;/strong&gt;: a small but significantly greater than 0.000001% chance of the folks handling your application not taking the publication into account and you not getting a job offer as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:37:54.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12502" CreationDate="2014-01-23T16:29:11.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An historical example: Alan Turing was named a fellow at Cambridge on the basis of work that Lindeberg published over a decade prior. Admittedly, this was not a PhD thesis, but I am under the impression the import is comparable. Keynes, for example, had no PhD but was named a fellow prior to becoming a professor.&#xA;There is no evidence to suggest that Turing was aware of Lindeberg's work, but I am under the impression that they're approaches were quite similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard similar stories on a less grand scale. No doubt the results of many theses have been previously published. Should it matter whether this connection is discovered before or after the thesis is submitted, assuming the new results did not draw on the old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T16:29:11.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T18:05:11.153" Score="3" ViewCount="1616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Computer science major at University of Wisconsin Madison.&#xA;I just want to ask you if i can get into graduate school with such a low GPA.&#xA;My current GPA is 2.9 and i have 20 more credit which makes me possible to go over 3.0&#xA;But I have finished my freshman year with 2.0 GPA and took 2 years of ESL program.(English as a second language).&#xA;I have done 2~3 internships in korea and plan to do 2 years of more working experience after i graduate from college this summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried about my GPA because it is quite low and my CS GPA is only about 3.4&#xA;DO you guys think i have chance of getting into any top 30 or 40 graduate school out there in computer science field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11149" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T21:06:59.757" Title="Undergraduate international computer science student [Can i go to grad school?]" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-01-23T22:55:00.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2014-01-23T18:34:39.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything is possible.  In your cover letter highlight your strengths, perhaps mention that you have managed to have a BLAH GPA while at the same time learning English as a Second Language.  If you word this properly, you can show that this is a strength, i.e. you had to properly manage workload balance while at the same time earning your degree.  Highlight your internship experience.  Make it known that you have a firm understanding of what is being done in industry and the type of problems one would regularly come across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, you have just as much of a shot as anyone.  The worse that can happen is that you won't get in anywhere.  I highly suggest you apply to as many schools as you can as this increases your odds of being accepted, at least somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T18:34:39.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2014-01-23T18:41:54.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most graduate programs that have competitive admissions (as would probably be the case with &quot;top 30-40&quot; programs, whatever that means concretely) require a minimum GPA to be considered for admission (see for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Gradadm/msphdadm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UC Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you can do is look up some of the programs that interest you to see if they have a minimum GPA requirement. If they do and your GPA is lower than what they're asking for, then the answer to your question is almost certainly no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, suppose that you were to satisfy the minimal GPA requirement of some &quot;top 30-40&quot; programs. Provided you satisfy their other minimal requirements, it is possible that you could be accepted. However, a low GPA will be seen as a weakness in your application. The admission to &quot;top 30-40&quot; programs are most likely going to be very competitive, and you will be competing against candidates who will have a high undergraduate GPA together with a strong application overall. Consequently, you would need to compensate for this. This could be done, for example, by managing to get well-known faculty write amazing letters of recommendation for you, or by demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10761" LastEditorDisplayName="user10761" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T21:06:59.757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T21:06:59.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2014-01-23T18:59:41.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by graduate school.  If you mean a masters program, then you can definitely get in, even at a top 30-40 school, assuming you have some sort of explanation for your grades and good letters of recommendation/evidence of work to ameliorate your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to a PhD program, may I suggest that you instead apply to masters programs first.  This allows you to get a new GPA to associate with your name, research experience and recommendations.  Then, you can apply to PhD programs and not only have a much better shot of getting in, but you will also be more prepared and have a much better idea of what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T18:59:41.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16103" CreationDate="2014-01-23T20:10:50.847" Score="5" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a US-based researcher and was offered a position as a postdoctoral researcher at a Swedish institute. The offer came in December, and I have negotiated some terms, which the school accepted. All of this happened via email and very quick. As the school accepted the various terms exactly as I wanted, I decided to accept the offer and wrote back saying that I will be joining the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is where the issue comes in. I know I need to file some paper work to proceed, which exact steps I am not yet sure about. I have sent two emails inquiring about the issue to the professor in charge, but I have not gotten any response back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it strange that my emails are being ignored and this is making me worried. Some acquaintances over in Stockholm has suggested that because many people take time off during the holidays, things can slow down considerably in December-January (I haven't been there and I have no idea how things work there), but it is almost end of January and I do need to get the paper work done soon to be able to relocate on time. What should I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T20:28:02.317" Title="communication after job offer and acceptance" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;sweden&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15586" CreationDate="2014-01-23T20:20:28.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe, usually you have to apply directly in a PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EPFL (in Lausanne) has a special PhD admission procedure that can be good in your case. They can take you for 1+3 years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the 1st year, your goal is to find a PhD advisor and a lab. You have to do two 6-month research projects, take some courses, and you're expected to find a lab for the PhD that way;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the 1st year, you pass a candidacy exam where your topic and advisor get accepted, and you have 3 years to complete your research program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you get paid during the 4 years of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T20:20:28.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16101" CreationDate="2014-01-23T20:28:02.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's time to get the phone! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know some people working in your future institute, try to catch them by Skype. You can also look for some assistant or secretary telephone number in the institute. As long as you don't call by midnight, nobody will be annoyed by your call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, in Europe, things usually slow down in December / January, and mails accumulate or get trapped in spam filters. So, when in doubt, try and make a phone call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T20:28:02.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15966" CreationDate="2014-01-23T20:35:46.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own submissions at IEEE conferences and journals, I remember the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are allowed to put a pre-print online if it is mandatory in your institution. I believe the sentence did also mention that it should happen on your institution pre-print server, so the extension of this notion to Arxiv needs to be worked out (though it is common practice, as far as I have seen);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are not allowed to publish online the final version of a paper. The final version is the one with the manuscript number, journal issue and so on;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be careful when it comes to anonymous submissions (like some IEEE conferences). You have to wait until the official publication of the acceptance list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T20:35:46.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:00:53.567" Score="3" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor, call &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;, who is with strong probability about to be my future MS Thesis supervisor/advisor, seems very interested to work with me. Mostly on lectures, &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; seems interested in my ideas and is very encouraging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, out of the class, &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; is totally unreachable, uninterested in my problems. e.g. very slow to respond questions, once I needed an important paperwork to be done and X totally slacked it, although a ceratin mouthful &quot;sure I will do it&quot; promise. I had really hardtime to fix related issue with much frustations, because of &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;'s attitude. And &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; did not give me any apologies for this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that profs are busy beings, managing tons of stuff at the same time, but I expect not to break a given promise or not to give promise at all to do something. I am really fed up and tired of this repeating behavior.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started to think that, it is not a good idea to work with &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;. I seriously doubt that professor would be reachable in my thesis study, not to mention to be helpful in my future academic pursuits, such as a strong letter for a Ph.D. application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I expecting a lot ? Also, I want to kindly inform &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; that, I do not want to involve any future studies with &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;. What kind of wording should I use ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11159" LastEditorUserId="11159" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T22:29:15.077" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T06:56:23.530" Title="Careless uninterested potential advisor" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16112" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:02:55.760" Score="14" ViewCount="3814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my dissertation and I have drawn a diagram explaining how a algorithm works. Recently, I've found an ebook, legally obtained, illustrating the same algorithm, but with more details and better drawing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to use their figure instead of mine if I properly give the source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the copyright rules (highlight is mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Author(s) 2014 &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. &lt;strong&gt;Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.&lt;/strong&gt; Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking because of the highlighted excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my dissertation fits the &quot;reviews or scholarly analysis&quot; rule, so is it ok? This juridical part is very delicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I have contacted the book's author; he was really nice and said that there are no problems of using his illustration. But, he advised me to contact the publisher (he even pointed me a page to do that). As the page was not working well, I sent an email to the publisher's staff to which they answered asking me some information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;your name, address, and email address;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;ISBN of the book requested or journal title, volume and issue number, author/editor,   year of publication of book or journal;      &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;which material you would like to use indicating page numbers and figures numbers;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;will your publication be open access?               &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;purpose of using Springer-Verlag's material; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;number of copies of your publication to be printed;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;name of your publisher or the company/institute.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm just waiting for their answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher gave me permission and I added the image to my dissertation. Here are the conditions that I had to follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for getting back to me. With reference to your request to&#xA;  reuse material in which Springer Science+Business Media controls the&#xA;  copyright, our permission is granted free of charge under the&#xA;  following conditions:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Springer material&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;represents original material which does not carry references to other sources (if material in question refers with a credit to another&#xA;  source, authorization from that source is required as well);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;requires full credit (book title, year of publication, page, chapter title, name(s) of author(s), original copyright notice) is&#xA;  given to the publication in which the material was originally&#xA;  published by adding: &quot;With kind permission of Springer&#xA;  Science+Business Media&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;may not be altered in any manner. Any other abbreviations, additions, deletions and/or any other alterations shall be made only&#xA;  with prior written authorization of the author and/or Springer&#xA;  Science+Business Media.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This permission &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is non-exclusive; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is valid for one-time use only for the purpose of defending your thesis and with a maximum of 100 extra copies in paper. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;includes use in an electronic form, provided it is an author-created version of the thesis on his/her own website and his/her university’s repository,  including UMI (according to the definition on the Sherpa website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is subject to courtesy information to the corresponding author;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is personal to you and may not be sublicensed, assigned, or transferred by you to any other person without Springer's written permission; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is valid only when the conditions noted above are met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Permission free of charge does not prejudice any rights we might have to charge for reproduction of our copyrighted material in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7057" LastEditorUserId="7057" LastEditDate="2018-11-16T15:36:45.387" LastActivityDate="2018-11-16T15:36:45.387" Title="Does copying the book's figure for my dissertation fit the copyright?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:26:08.517" Score="4" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes professional bodies issue diplomas and postgraduate diplomas which, for example in the UK, are recognized at a very high training level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am not sure about is whether these, even though not issued by universities, can help enter university at academia or research level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11161" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T13:54:07.917" Title="Are professional body certificates any helpful in getting into academia (if I don't have any undergraduate education)?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16106" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:34:23.440" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors are busy and are always juggling multiple commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that you are unimportant to them but maybe some judicious memory jogging is required for them to remember what X has promised you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another excellent strategy which I have adopted is to show up to my committee members' open office hours with issues when I need them solved instead of bothering them over email. Usually I need 5-10 minutes of their time to explain my issue and solicit future directions. That works really well. I am not a big fan of long meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your specific question, if you want to not work with X just tell X that you do not feel that you can work with them in the future. It might be helpful to have someone else lined up before you do so though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T22:34:23.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:41:45.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are critiquing the image or expanding on what was said then technically you are in the clear. In the real world it comes down to what Springer decides and the country that you are in. The exemption there is not really an exemption in the US. That is copyright law, the part called fair use. How the courts see it if you were sued is a different issue and Springer has the deep pockets here and could make your suffer no matter what. Whether it is worth it to Springer depends on the circulation of your thesis. If you can reproduce the graphic yourself you will obviously be better off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11060" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T22:41:45.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:39:53.243" Score="4" ViewCount="5083" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here's my situation: I'm a senior electrical-engineering major student in a decent-ranked university (60-80), and I've been working in a lab in our department and published 2 papers as the second author (conference paper, IEEE) and currently I'm in charge of two projects so I may publish more before I graduate. The thing is: I have a low GPA (2.9), but there is a reason: I've been an athlete of the fencing team in our university, and for two years I've been the vice captain of it. I have to go to practice every night, Monday to Thursday, so I don't have a lot of time to study. My boss, who got her PHD degree from CalTech, trusts me a lot so I will have a kickass recommendation. She refers me as a student who's &quot;not very good at theoretical learning, but always creative and can solve practical problems very well.&quot; She also granted me the fellowship. &#xA;I want to go to those well-ranked engineering schools, like UIUC or Berkeley, and pursue a master's degree (and even a PHD, if possible). Although I do have a good research background, I'm worrying about my gpa. Most schools do have a gpa threshold, but is it possible for me to get into these schools? Thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11162" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T04:45:30.363" Title="Can I get into grad school with a low GPA?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-24T08:12:46.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2014-01-24T00:13:49.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact, I think that your proposed use would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fall under &quot;fair use&quot;, in the sense that you are not addressing the other authors' work, but merely (!) using some of their stuff. The fruits of their labors... which is what various reasonable notions of intellectual property are meant to protect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you write the copyright owners and they say &quot;go ahead&quot;, you are legally fine...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, legal correctness and moral/ethical correctness are not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be better to take the trouble to make your own graphic that is good enough. At the very least, in addition to investigating literal copyright issues, you might contact the people who made the graphic and ask their permission. If everyone says &quot;go ahead&quot;, out of generosity or whatever, then you are &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T00:13:49.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T00:25:25.983" Score="6" ViewCount="17399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from the University of Michigan with Psychology and Communication Studies degree.&#xA;I am planning to apply to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) master's degree and Information Science master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of who do not know, HCI is an interdisciplinary field, combining mainly computer science, cognitive psychology, and design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two GRE scores and I have trouble deciding which one to send for my application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Score 1: Verbal: 158 (78%) / Quantitative: 165 (91%) / Writing: 4.0 (58%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Score 2: Verbal: 162 (89%) / Quantitative: 161 (81%) / Writing: 4.5 (78%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second set of scores has higher verbal and writing values, but the first has a higher quantitative value.  Which should I send?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11163" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T09:51:12.637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T06:37:40.113" Title="Which part of the GRE is more important to admissions committees?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16111" CreationDate="2014-01-24T01:07:10.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can file for academic petition where university will initially reject your application but an academic committee will review it and may give you conditional admit. What happens in these cases is if you get more than 3.0 GPA in first sem , you are in the program permanently otherwise you are out.It may be better to speak with the department or program coordinator to get better understanding of this and they may have prior knowledge about these cases and may let you know if there is a good chance of your getting petition getting passed or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately you can go to industry and work for couple of years before applying. An Industry experience definitely will add more value to your application and will show the committee that you are a serious candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T01:07:10.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-24T03:41:36.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt it really matters which of these scores you send, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think GRE general test scores are particularly important in the first place.  How they are used may vary between institutions or fields, but in my experience admissions committees do not pay any attention to them.  Maybe there are other committees that do pay attention, but I'd be surprised if anyone relies on them as a major component of the evaluation process.  [EDIT: As David Ketcheson's answer demonstrates, there's more diversity in how these scores are used than I had realized.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Small, random fluctuations are normal if you take the exam several times.  This is widely known among people on admissions committees, and it's reinforced by seeing the applications that include multiple scores.  This means no sensible admissions committee member will attach great importance to small distinctions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I believe you are overthinking this, and either set of scores will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T14:49:04.783" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T14:49:04.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16111" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:45:30.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grades are a factor but not the sole one.  There is always a possibility.  An option is to apply for a M.S. program first.  If you are able to get in and maintain good grades, you should be admitted into a Ph.D. program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T04:45:30.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T00:02:54.937" Score="8" ViewCount="4918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for postdoc positions and I received a few interview offers. I thought not many institution have interview process for postdoc positions and they give offer only based on application material. Do I have false information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user122319" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T11:54:10.133" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T11:54:10.133" Title="Are there usually interviews for postdoc positions?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16119" CreationDate="2014-01-24T05:12:01.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think it depends on the situation.  Being on the market myself (math) and also applying for postdocs, I was under the impression that there would not be many interviews.  However, I did get two post-doc interviews, so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take is that this depends on the situation.  Many times if they are departmental postdocs, there wouldn't be an interview (or so I gathered).  However, if you are applying for a postdoc that is tied to a specific PI, then there would be an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the climate may be changing in such a way where departments are conducting more interviews now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T05:12:01.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T05:32:49.670" Score="13" ViewCount="4958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a lot of trouble understanding the material in one of my courses. I feel like the professor often rushes through the material, leaving me without enough time to catch up in my busy schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor is also really esteemed for his/her research contributions and speaking to my adviser about this (who also happens to be close to this professor) would make me feel very uncomfortable. I even spoke to my peers in the course about this and they seem to agree about the speed at which things are delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I often think about what I can do in this situation since exams are coming up. One idea that I ponder is the possibility of privately hiring a tutor within the faculty who could better explain the ideas in the course to me; after all they have relevant teaching experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not certain if this is a good idea or not and because of this, I would really appreciate feedback relevant to this idea. If there aren't any appropriate solutions, what else can you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't really want to give out any other details that would compromise his/her reputation. So I'll just leave it at that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11166" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T22:39:57.757" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T22:39:57.757" Title="Is it possible to receive private tutoring for graduate-level courses from faculty members?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16119" CreationDate="2014-01-24T06:57:35.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the social sciences and most department postdocs search committees seem to interview before their final selection. I had a few Skype/phone interviews for positions I was shortlisted for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other postdoc fellowships, like national competitions by grant making foundations, which make decisions without interviews though. One I was a finalist for, only asked for a full 10 page proposal and a budget narrative for the final round. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the other person said, I think this should really depend on the field, country, and type of postdoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="11154" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T21:06:32.033" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T21:06:32.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16121" CreationDate="2014-01-24T06:59:39.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me give you a few thoughts (which might be slightly off-topic) from a professor's perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I usually design my courses in a way that the average student has a significant work load to keep up with the topic without frustrating them. (with 'average' I mean what I think the average student &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be able to do after finishing the class - so this is a bit biased and independent of the actual students in my class)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This leads to the situation that there is about 20% which keep up with (more or less) ease (I try to give them some extre assignments which are usually to hard for the rest of the course), ~50% are doing more or less fine (they have to work hard, but come along), and ~30% are having a very hard time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ones which are having hard time are usully not having the required pre-requisites for the course (I talk to each of them and try to find out which problems they are having), this could be they dont have the knowledge and skills needed, but some have problems organizing their daily life etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the group you are in (I know, it's very rough classification and might not be helpful in your case), you can follow different strategies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are usually among the top performers in your class, you just might have some misconceptions which prevent you from putting the topics in the right part of your brain. I'd suggest talking to your adviser or your professor about this. They can help to disentangle your thoughts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are in the &quot;average&quot; group, you are the core audience of the class. Your professor &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be interested in getting feedback about speed and perception of the content, but you must decide by yourself whether they are interested or not. If they seem to be open, I would suggest talking to your adviser and ask him about additional material or whether s(he) can recommend a tutor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you feel you are missing some pre-requisites, you should clearly identify for your self, what you are missing. Try to get this first, even if it's not part of the course or you already &lt;em&gt;shoul&lt;/em&gt; be knowing it. If you skip this opportunity kow, life will only become harder. After you know what you are missing, try to find appropriate ressources to learn thos skills (online courses, personal coaching, taking a class again, whatever). Additional tutoring will not help as long as your brain is not ready for the topic (unless the tutor helps you with getting this knowledge and skills).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I assume that my studnets are working in groups. Many assingments are very hard to complete for one person, you often need discussion about the topics. One thought gives the other and having a group of peers working on the seem topics is very helpful. If you are learning alone at the moment, try to find some peers and team up with them. It is optimal if they are a bit better than you, but the most important thing is to talk about the course content and try to find different approaches to understand it. Tackle the problems from different directions and see which one is the best for you. That's the real skill you are learning when you are studying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally regard taking a tutor as a last resort, but that's a bit opinion based. A good tuutor is a coach helping you with the things described above (which is great, go, get one!), a bad tutor tries to think for you and focuses only on the course topic which is at hand. You won't learn much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And coming to the question whether it is ok to ask a faculty member: It depends! You can not ask someone who is actually involed in the course (directly or indirectly), otherwise one could argue that the course is intentionally to hard and the faculty members are doing side business by helping the studnts to succeed. This would really be unethical (end even if it is not the case, it might look like this to an outsider). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find someone, who is not involved in the course, and (s)he is willing to do it, I see no problem, unless there are no rivalries between your professor and the person. Still, I would prefer someone from a different institution since teaching students should be their main job, anyway. I personally would not take any students for private tutorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="10941" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T09:10:15.993" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T09:10:15.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16119" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:07:01.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally would never employ anyone (even grad students) without an interview, and at least in Germany and and my field (CS), I'd say that most professors do interviews for post-docs since this is really a trust-relationship. On the other hand, the German system differs a bit from the US-sytem (our post-doc positions can often be compared to an assistand professor in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T07:07:01.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16121" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:13:37.553" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a faculty member, I feel that most students who struggle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't put enough time into the course materials; most courses are designed with the expectation that you put into the course around 10 hours a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't seek out help, or don't speak up to communicate their difficulties; there are office hours by the professor, as well as the TAs, and most of these people would be very open to hearing your opinions of the course. If the course is going too fast, tell them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't talk to their peers; sometimes understanding the material requires talking to others about it. You may &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; have been confused by the material, but by struggling through the assignments together, you will probably all learn (but remember to credit your friends).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done all of the above and you are still struggling, then hiring a private TA may be the next step. One tip for choosing a good TA: I actually think that asking someone just a couple of years ahead of you is the best thing to do. They see from your perspective, and they often understand/remember what was hard about the material better than the faculty members. It's cheaper, and you'll learn better. As a faculty member, I would &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; agree to privately tutor a student. Teaching is only a small part of my job, and I prefer to be doing research instead of spending more of my time with an undergraduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11171" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T07:13:37.553" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16119" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:20:20.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you're a mathematician (seeing as how your question migrated from math.SE), I believe that you get interview if you applied for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;European institutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tenure-track level positions at liberal arts colleges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lower-level research universities who want to gauge the applicant's interest (was the applicant applying to this position as a safety, or is he/she genuinely interested?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(only sometimes true) positions where research and teaching are equally valued, or where teaching is valued more highly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(only sometimes true) if a particular researcher is hiring postdocs out of his/her own grant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11171" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T07:20:20.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:23:57.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to supplement Anonymous Mathematician's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would lean towards the second set of scores. Writing skills are often overlooked in academia, but since you will be writing a (hopefully great) thesis, I would put the most emphasis on the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other scores are basically the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11171" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T07:23:57.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16106" CreationDate="2014-01-24T09:26:55.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Shion's answer: Sometimes, I could be X... And the reason is described in Shions excellent answer. It does not mean X is uninterested, but there are important and pressing tasks which easily cover 60h/week in my position, and then there are still the not-so-urgent-but-still-important tasks left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually tell the students to remind me again if I did not do what I promised until xyz, and if they don't do that, I assume it was unimportant (well, usually I try to do what I promised, but still, things are slipping through).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest talking to your potential supervisor and (politely) talk about your concerns. If they don't get your point, it is totally ok to look for an other one and they can not be surprised. If they get your point, you should try to find some arrangement which would help you in similar situation (e.g. you are allowed to be a pain in the ass of your supervisor). For good students whose work I value, I really want them to push me. On the other hand, I definitely don't want to micro-manage someone. So it's a matter of balance and communication about it helps a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T09:26:55.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-24T09:30:20.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Score 2 Writing: 4.5 (&lt;strong&gt;78%&lt;/strong&gt;) is significantly better than Score 1 Writing: 4.0 (&lt;strong&gt;58%&lt;/strong&gt;). This is one of the indicators that you may have better chance to succeed. Your presentation skills will be very much needed in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Score 1 Quantitative: 165 (&lt;strong&gt;91%&lt;/strong&gt;) is better than Score 2 Quantitative: 161 (&lt;strong&gt;81%&lt;/strong&gt;) but not that much. They are both fine. If the graduate school program you are applying to concentrates heavily on math/stats, Score 1 looks better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just learned info from the comment the OP made, the student has the option to send single score or multiple scores. (This is why I like this site so much. We exchange info.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is, send Score 2 if applying to a design oriented  HCI program (your presentation skills will be important in this case). Send Score 1 if the graduate school program is math/stats oriented. Send both scores if you are not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, please note that not all schools require GRE. Good Luck !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T03:52:59.633" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T03:52:59.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16108" CreationDate="2014-01-24T09:35:48.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, these topics are discussed on a case-by-case basis. For example, the professional institute can have some kind of agreement or understanding with some universities, but not with others. The best you can do is to choose a research program that you want to join, prepare your record (including professional diplomas) and ask the faculty that rules the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities may accept you without conditions, but I guess the most common case will be that you will have to take some extra courses in their program and get the corresponding credit in order to fit your profile and knowledge to their exact expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T09:35:48.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-24T09:57:52.107" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I will say that in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; departments, GRE scores are a very important component of your application.  For instance, I work in a department where each year we get applicants from hundreds of different universities in 70 or more different countries.  Comparing GPAs between all the different educational systems is very difficult (we do it, but place relatively less weight on it due to uncertainties).  Meanwhile, the GRE is a single standard.  Also, whereas some departments in the USA can rely primarily on GRE subject tests, it's quite rare for international students to take those.  The bottom line: good GRE scores will never get you admitted by themselves.  But in some places at least, poor GRE scores will eliminate you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as to whether the verbal/writing or quantitative scores matter more, I think this depends heavily on the field.  If you were applying to a math/science/engineering program, the quantitative score would be by far most important.  It's generally thought that good writing can be taught to you later (and technical writing is different from the persuasive writing the GRE tests you on, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that if you were applying to an English or fine arts program, the verbal/writing scores would be more important.  The fields you're applying to are somewhere in between, and I don't know them well enough to say for certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: see @shion's answer for the opinion of someone who knows more about your particular field.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T06:37:40.113" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T06:37:40.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2014-01-24T12:46:01.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the more relevant part of the rules is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the figure, you are duplicating a part of the text. The relevant copyright law is that of where the publisher is located, not your country. Finally, regardless of this, they say &quot;permission for use must always be obtained from Springer&quot;, which seems pretty clear. This doesn't necessarily mean you will need to pay to use the figure, but you do need the publisher's permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Brief excerpts&quot; in your bolded text probably refers to a short quotation, which of course would need to be indicated as a quotation and referenced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10680" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T12:46:01.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T14:18:42.827" Score="3" ViewCount="493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a dilemma about doing a marine science research degree in Queensland Australia vs in the USA (california or florida). I have been accepted to schools in both countries and offered scholarships to pay for my studies. I have personally spoken with advisors that I would work with from both countries and both have great projects that I am interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just wondering if anyone has insight into the quality of life and research at either location?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also concerned about the strength of a PhD from Australia if I wanted to go back to the US to do a postdoc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your input!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11182" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:29:51.730" Title="Better to do PhD program for Marine Science in Australia or US?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15168" CreationDate="2014-01-24T14:56:35.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the comments you state that the exam is used for certifying competency. This means that it should be extremely difficult for incompetent individuals to pass at the possible expense of failing competent individuals. Given the constraints of multiple choice, 25 questions, open book, and the ability to resit the exam, the definition of competency is important. You are going to need a very different type of test if competency means the ability look up information in a book versus the ability to know the information without using a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the exam is testing the ability to look up information, then what you need to protect against is people memorizing the answers (i.e., abacda ...). Having a larger bank of questions, randomizing the order, and randomizing the answer order will decrease the ability to memorize the test. You also want to prevent people from taking the test home with them and probably want to impose a minimum wait between retests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If competency means knowledge about the subject, your constraints are going to make it difficult. At a minimum you probably want to impose a time limit, but better would be to make the exam closed book. You should also test each concept with multiple questions and choose new question on each exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T14:56:35.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:04:47.100" Score="2" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a UK or US citizen but I would like to get a scholarship to study in a master program in either financial mathematics or quantitative finance. My GPA is around 3.65-3.7 but I will still like to study in the best school I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any clear guidelines on how to increase one's chances of getting a scholarship in a subject like this to attend a decent school in the UK or US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11185" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T05:25:55.100" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T15:57:39.537" Title="Best ways to obtain a scholarship for a Masters in financial mathematics/ quantitative finance" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:03:32.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department (HCI/Information Science), the popular notion is that having a very good score on your GRE &lt;strong&gt;will not get you in&lt;/strong&gt; but having a poor score (relative to the rest of the applicant pool) &lt;strong&gt;can keep you out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially true for PhD applications and somewhat true for MS applications. For the latter, the pure numbers (GRE/GPA) matter more while for the former, your statement of purpose, research experience and letters of recommendation are what tips the balance in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, generally for most HCI/IS programs, all parts of the GRE matter equally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logistically, it also does not matter which score you send because ETS will send all your GRE scores in the last 5 years i.e. admissions committees will see everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T17:03:32.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:12:11.767" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be sure to make your papers available somewhere (to the extent the jounral policies allow, or more at your own risk). The options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal webpage –&lt;/strong&gt; IMHO a must-have, but I'm in math/TCS, in other fields it can be different.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt; –&lt;/strong&gt; open-access reliable scientific works repository, I like it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; –&lt;/strong&gt; looks similar to other social networking sites, but is more carrier-oriented, you can put any publications there, and link them to either your homepage or arXiv or whatever, or don't link them at all, that's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; –&lt;/strong&gt; I have no true experience with RG since it's not so popular amongst my colleagues. But it seems to me that you can both put the whole article there, or just put the reference there with the option that people can ask you to send them the paper. This is very nice since you need not to break any journal's policies to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; –&lt;/strong&gt; IMHO a no-no since &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16050/why-does-academia-edu-reserve-the-right-to-sell-modify-and-exploit-my-papers&quot;&gt;their Terms of Service are pretty bad.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I have a homepage, LinkedIn and I put everything on arXiv. It seems to be a good amount of various resources, so that people can find me easily, but I don't spend too much time with maintanance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T08:49:31.970" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:13:34.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one seems to have mentioned this: of course legally you should contact the publisher, which in most probability is the copyright holder, but surely you should also ask the author how he or she feels about it. I would not like seeing my work being used without having been contacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T17:13:34.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:45:27.367" Score="6" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently on a visiting research assistant position at a US university for a year. My visa will not allow me to start a similar position in the US after this stint is over, and I am looking for another yearlong research position before I start a Masters/PhD program from Fall 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current research involves Vision with Graphical Models. I am interested in pursuing research in Vision, or Computational Biology involving Graphical Models and Machine Learning methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it possible to work as a Research Assistant in this field, outside the USA, without a doctorate, and without being a student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11186" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T04:39:58.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:04:28.783" Title="Do Machine Learning and Vision Labs outside the USA hire non-student,non-postdoc Research Assistants?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16139" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:29:51.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality of life is very subjective.  If you like nature, you will struggle to find the same quality of life in the U.S. as you do in Australia.  If you like big bustling cities, then your quality of life will be better in the U.S. than in Queensland (Brisbane is lovely, but hardly bustling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People care more about the strength of the school in the Ph.D. subject than they do about the university overall.  If you intend to stay in marine science, it doesn't really matter whether you get a Ph.D. from e.g. James Cook in Australia or many places in the U.S..  If you're not sure marine science is where your heart is, a university with a bigger name overall will help you.  Australian universities are competitive internationally; it really depends what your choices are.  (U.Q. is not, say, Stanford, but I don't think there's anything in Florida that would really give you a big edge over U.Q.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:29:51.730" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16108" CreationDate="2014-01-24T20:32:31.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to sansuiso's very good answer: In some countries there are legal pre-requisits which are required for a certain position. E.g. if you want to have &quot;Dr.&quot; in Germany (~about PhD), you are required to have a masters degree (there are some rare exceptions, but this is the normal process). Therefore you can have as many certificates and be as skilled as you want, you won't get in without taking this step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So check whether there are formal requiremnts in the country you are interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="2700" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T13:54:07.917" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T13:54:07.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16076" CreationDate="2014-01-24T20:41:11.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter how you decide: Bring some slides and be prepared for short presentations. It might be good to meet several people, sit around a laptop and discuss some ideas. This could be more fruitful then a presentation to a wider audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T20:41:11.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T20:57:26.923" Score="20" ViewCount="3924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q:  Should I keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Scout_%28Boy_Scouts_of_America%29&quot;&gt;Eagle Scout&lt;/a&gt; (the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America) on my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that this is an appropriate item to include on a CV.  However, CV is loosely translated as ''the course of my life'', and this is an achievement that takes a lot of perseverance, and something that is earned and not just given away.  It requires a significant amount of time and volunteer work to complete a project that gives back to your community and also shows leadership and management skills which, you don't normally acquire until a little further in your academic career, but shows the ability to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this award detrimental to include? looked down upon by hiring committees? not even given a second glance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found a satisfactory answer for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is kept on the CV, where should it go, i.e. award or outreach (both I think would be appropriate items, and it may be that if deficient in one or the other, one could move it around).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T23:11:13.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:31:32.253" Title="Eagle Scout rank on CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;awards&gt;&lt;outreach&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-24T21:25:58.663" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't include it.  I doubt it makes much of a difference, but you yourself say it's not an appropriate item. I agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand a little bit, let me say this: the things you should put on your CV are those that directly connect to the job you want to have.  Something like a job you had in an unrelated field is worthwhile in that it shows you were employed and not a hobo, but most other things that aren't really directly part of your career (jobs, education, publications, info about teaching, conference presentations, grants, etc.) is just a distraction, and will make it look like you are padding.  I think high school achievements are especially bad in that they focus things too much in the past.  Nothing on my CV goes earlier than my junior year of college (and probably I should cut that; nobody cares where I studied abroad).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's good to have lots of things to list on your CV, but you also want to keep the average high.  There are only a few things on there that are really important, and you don't want to distract people from what they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to discuss your experience as an Eagle Scout in a personal conversation, say if you have an informal dinner or drinks during an interview, but I just don't think the CV is the place for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; A point which a deleted answer raised also occurs to me: one reason to avoid putting extraneous things on your CV is that you can't control what associations people reading it might have.  For example, the Boy Scouts of America have stirred up a lot of controversy with their stances on homosexuality, and for many people that maybe be the first thing that pops to mind.  It's unfair to connect one scout to that, but people aren't logical.  They read &quot;Eagle Scout,&quot; they think homophobia, and they have a negative reaction to your application that they weren't even conscious of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read an application for graduate school by a student who listed on their CV membership in some political groups with which I vehemently disagree.  I don't think that should affect my judgement of their file (luckily, I'm not on the committee, so I didn't have to try to make a judgement), but I honestly did not want to know about that aspect of their lives.  I'm sure they thought it showed something about leadership, but to me it looked like very poor judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T23:30:53.560" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T23:30:53.560" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-24T21:53:27.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the position you are applying for. I would not include it in an application for a professorship, but for a post-doc I would keep it in under &lt;em&gt;&quot;misc&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;additional information&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. If there is a structured application form and they are asking for it, then include it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:31:32.253" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:31:32.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T22:26:37.370" Score="18" ViewCount="4885" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should I do if I have lost faith in my PhD advisor (leadership, research direction, everything)? I have worked in this lab for three years and from my observation, none of my advisor's project work out and zero publications so far. Since I already had a gut feeling that everything would eventually go on a dead march, I have tried to propose to him an alternative approach but my advisor never listens (or only listens passive-aggressively). Guess what, my advisor ran out of funding, and he blamed us (the graduate students) for no publication. Now we all have to serve as TAs. I somehow manage to pump out my own project but my advisor didn't quite like it unless it's his idea. He told me he had no funding for my proposal and continue to gamble on his own project. (Come to think of it, no funding was a lie.) Recently, I am publishing my paper and the way he edited my manuscript is always cursory, mindless and pushy. I have a feeling that I am destined to fail the moment I joined this lab, any advice? Any experience similar to mine? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I joined the lab because his research topics are interesting but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't &quot;hit&quot; the point. For example, you know you need different tools to solve a problem but he just keeps using the same one again and again and my mind just get narrower and narrower. Also his work were simply a rehash of the previous one, like switching apple to orange, and everything else stays the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T11:36:41.367" LastActivityDate="2019-12-24T11:39:16.830" Title="Losing faith in my PhD advisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16153" CreationDate="2014-01-24T22:48:54.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sorry for your situation. I think many of us had confronted situations like this some time in our academic tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you should make your own mind about how to handle it, I personally suggest looking for another adviser. If you feel uncomfortable and you don't want to end your relationship in a bad term (assuming your current adviser will not take your decision easily), you can always think about adding a co-supervisor. This way you'll be on track and will be mostly working with your second adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10297" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T22:48:54.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16153" CreationDate="2014-01-24T22:50:54.787" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you two just don't get along. You are not interested in what the other is working on, and there seems to be no respect between the two of you. You need to think about working with someone else, or you need to be more open-minded about your advisor's suggestions and his ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a very small percentage of advisors are universally terrible for everyone. Most student-advisor problems come from the fact that you are incompatible. You either need to make serious effort to understand one another, or you had better get out before it is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11171" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T22:50:54.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-24T23:02:23.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, as someone who isn't an eagle scout, it seems inappropriate. But I will tell you this, every person who I personally know in academia who also happens to be an eagle scout has for some reason left it on their CV (there may be some selection bias here, but in each of these cases I didn't find the fact out by reading their CV, so probably it's not that big - sample size of 2 though is very small - 1 postdoc - 1 grad student on the job market for postdocs - note no professors). Anyways, based on this fact, I surmise that other eagle scouts will see it as a positive. So if there is an eagle scout on the hiring committee it may very well be a net positive! Now the probability there is an eagle scout on the hiring committee is very low (as you point being an eagle scout is an amazing accomplishment and very few scouts ever get it). I'd leave it out based on my initial reaction, which I think is the reaction most people would have. I see why you might not want to leave it out though. This line shows a lot of qualities that may be important in academia but most people would find it irrelevant even though it is an amazing accomplishment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you &quot;organized&quot; a massive charity event that is at least loosely related to academia as part of your eagle scout badge, you probably should list it, but not necessarily just putting eagle scout down. You might &quot;sneak&quot; it in by saying &quot;organized ... as a part of winning my eagle scout badge&quot; or something like that, and stick it in the service section. But if you do include it, at least make an attempt to make it sound relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T05:38:12.460" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:38:12.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16160" CreationDate="2014-01-25T00:32:47.233" Score="7" ViewCount="5092" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an assistant professor job in engineering. While working on my Ph.D., I had the chance to mentor graduate students in my research group (suggesting experiments, helping them analyze results, etc.), and I also mentored an independent studies student for a summer. Would these types of activities even loosely be considered as &quot;service activities&quot; by a search committee, or, if the question comes up during an interview, just say that I don't have any such activities to mention? If the latter, what are some good ways to respond?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T02:51:50.457" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T02:51:50.457" Title="What are some examples of &quot;service activities&quot; for the inexperienced/up-and-coming academic?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16157" CreationDate="2014-01-25T02:21:57.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for the question in the title, some common examples would be organising a seminar, helping to organise a conference or workshop, or serving on a committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the activities you mention are generally considered 'service'.  They are definitely activities worth mentioning in other contexts, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really don't have any experience in 'service activities', then perhaps a good way to respond to questions about service would be to admit that you don't have such experience so far, but express interest in gaining such experience (with specific details of the kinds of service you are especially interested in).  I have no idea whether this is good advice, though, as I'm only a postdoc myself and have never been on a search committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T02:21:57.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-25T03:13:05.377" Score="8" ViewCount="8137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international student and I'm currently studying pure mathematics in undergraduate level with a relatively low GPA (~3.5/4.0). I've recently read so many positive reviews about the universities in Singapore. I checked the &quot;National University of Singapore (NUS)&quot; on the internet for its international ranking and it was ranked 9th in mathematics!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much do you think the ranking of a university positively affects my future career? For example, one of my dreams is that I can study in some Ivy-league university in the USA or some grand ecole university in France like Paris Sud 11 in the future, but because of my low GPA I'm afraid that that will never happen for me. Do you think that going to the NUS can help me to get accepted into world top universities in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9254" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-17T18:09:58.033" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T18:09:58.033" Title="Is it a good idea to go to a university just because of its high international ranking?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;&lt;singapore&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-11-18T08:08:39.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16161" CreationDate="2014-01-25T03:52:02.267" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rank is not an absolute index, it's relative. University X may have rank 9 this year, 15 next year. University Y may be ranked 16 this year and then rises to 10 next year. Different ranking agencies have different ways to rank universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see those rankings as references. It's a factor. I would put more attention on the programs/faculty when selecting a school I want to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will not choose a school just because I want to increase my chance getting into Ivy-league universities. One reason for that is, I might have even lower GPA in a high ranking school. Of course, we can argue that better schools may have better professors so I can learn more. The bottom line is still, how hard do you study? In particular, you don't need expensive labs in order to study math. So, ranking may be important, but not a decisive one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T03:52:02.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16168" CreationDate="2014-01-25T04:55:38.377" Score="9" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you are writing a letter of recommendation for a freshman student of yours who is applying for an undergraduate research position in a field very different from yours. You can of course say some things about how well she did in your class. However, you had a student that this person reminds you of who went on to do great undergraduate research in the exact specialized field that she is applying for, getting two first author publications. Would it be inappropriate to spend a paragraph comparing the two students and how that in your class they shared all of these great qualities that you think were the driving force for the previous student doing well as a researcher. This seems like it may be a bit unorthodox, is it advantageous or perhaps utterly inappropriate to compare students like this? I'm split, ideally I should just be focused on her but the fact that she reminds me of this student is really the most compelling argument I think I can make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:10:55.877" Title="Is it appropriate to compare students to other successful students in a letter of recomendation?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16157" CreationDate="2014-01-25T05:04:52.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student, you're not expected to devote much time to professional service.  Even assistant professors are usually intentionally spared time-intensive service roles.  Expectations increase as you become more senior.  I was never asked about service in an interview for a post-doc position, and your postdoctoral supervisor would probably rather hear that you don't have time for service because you spend all your time on research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only service activity you should naturally expect to be involved in is that of refereeing papers, but that generally won't happen until you have one or more accepted publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also organize a minisymposium at a conference -- that's considered service and is a great excuse to get to know researchers in your subfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T05:04:52.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16157" CreationDate="2014-01-25T09:33:17.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is specific to the US, but on many graduate school admissions, search, or internal program related committees, there will be a graduate student representative serving alongside professors. I have seen people put this as service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also volunteer to preside at conferences, organize sessions, or serve on journal editorial boards, review as an ad-hoc reviewer if you have opportunities to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of showing general commitment to the field and scholarship, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is contributing book reviews for journals (or other publications with book review sections). This will not go under the &quot;service&quot; section of your CV, but under a separate &quot;book review&quot; heading and will be a nice way of showing commitment to the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have also heard warnings against overdoing these things, especially when you do not have a good enough publication record. It can be seen as proof of inefficient time management, and not having one's priorities straight. As book reviews are not peer reviewed, and easy to get, they can be seen as &quot;fluff&quot; to your CV, if you have too many with not much else going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="11154" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T20:39:10.267" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T20:39:10.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16145" CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:04:28.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer to the question &quot;is it possible?&quot;: yes, it is. E.g. in Germany, we can employ a person having some academic degree. The more important question is: What would you be willing to earn because at least in Germany, academic position usually are not the best paid ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to earn money and get experience, I would recommend a job in industry. If you really want to learn and develop yourself, and you don't have to earn much, look around in Europe. If you bring your own money (e.g. DAAD scholarship), you could start in my lab ;o).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:04:28.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16163" CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:10:55.877" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This makes the letter of recommendation more personal and shows, you really want to support her. It makes a difference to all the other &quot;this student has good grades and is always on time&quot;-letters. So go ahead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:10:55.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:30:32.480" Score="18" ViewCount="3759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year postdoc in pure mathematics (geometry/topology with strong background in analysis) with undergraduate statistics and probability background (with also measure theoretic probability). I also have some programming knowledge in ForTran, C and Matlab, but I never used them in my pure mathematics career in my graduate school for the last 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my next job, I'm considering doing a postdoc in machine learning (ML). The reason behind this switch is: I'm satisfied with my pure knowledge so far and have been wanting to see some real-life applications of mathematics, and also keep my options open in both industry and academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How hard is this switch going to be? I guess I've all the required mathematics background, but will it be hard to pick up the necessary computer science skills, even if I work in more theory-oriented problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly are the programming knowledge I need to master to work in ML?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a website/email-list where I can get notifications on jobs in machine learning? I'm looking for jobs in Europe mostly, but information on the US would also be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T18:32:00.413" Title="Switch from pure mathematics to machine learning as postdocs?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:47:41.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add to @tohecz's answer that one important point to consider are the self-archiving policies of the journals you publish in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/article-posting-policy#accepted-author-manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elsevier&lt;/a&gt; usually allows you to put your accepted manuscript on your personal home page but not into repositories like ResearchGate (exception is arXiv)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsevier's AAM Policy: Authors retain the right to use the accepted author manuscript for [...] permitted scholarly posting provided that these are not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsevier believes that individual authors should be able to distribute their AAMs [...] e.g. posting to their websites or their institution’s repository [...]. However, our policies differ regarding the systematic aggregation or distribution of AAMs [...]. Therefore, deposit in, or posting to, subject-oriented or centralized repositories (such as PubMed Central), or institutional repositories with systematic posting mandates is permitted only under specific agreements between Elsevier and the repository, agency or institution, and only consistent with the publisher’s policies concerning such repositories. Voluntary posting of AAMs in the arXiv subject repository is permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:47:41.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16153" CreationDate="2014-01-25T11:15:38.157" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't &quot;hit&quot; the point&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I guessed he hate me for that and trying to stall my work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any risk that he will rant me to the co-supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just had that bad feeling about the project he led and many of his direction doesn't make sense to me. Doing his way or my way is doomed anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only one suggestion that we can give you. Get out of there. There is no telling whether his research is indeed &quot;doomed&quot;, or whether you just have different angles of attack and ideas. In the end, it does not matter. You have no respect in his guidance and will need to find an advisor whose &lt;em&gt;advise&lt;/em&gt; you actually trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T11:15:38.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16161" CreationDate="2014-01-25T12:10:03.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is more important who you will be working with, than what university you will be at.  There exist productive scientists who are great at supervising PhDs, while working at medium-ranked universities.  Likewise, there exist tenured scientists at highly ranked universities, who are far past the peak of their career and lukewarm about PhD students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your PhD, what matters most, is your publications and possibly reference letters.  If you have great publications and superb reference letters from famous scientists in the field, I don't think you will miss out on this or that post-doc because whoever reads your letter doesn't immediately know the university where you got your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my opinion, based on quite limited experience — having recently finished my PhD at a university that is not top-ranked, proceeding to do a post-doc at a university that is.  I don't think the name of the university where I did my PhD is a handicap.  In fact, I've always been better at doing research than at writing exams, so if the place where I'll be going for my post-doc would accept PhD candidates purely based on GPA, I'd never have gotten in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T12:10:03.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16161" CreationDate="2014-01-25T12:24:04.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to go to “National University of Singapore”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be. I have recently visited NUS, and talked to a lot of smart faculty and some truly outstanding students. Personally, I can only recommend both NUS and NTU Singapore. Singaporean universities are well-funded and offer a reasonable research environment. Singapore itself is also a nice place to live, with a quite interesting mixture of different cultures, lots of food, high standard of living, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;just because of its high international ranking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oh god no.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go to NUS, then because of the reasons stated above. It think convincing the world that university-level rankings are a good thing is the largest disservice that the US has done to research. Let me make this clear - if you graduate from NUS and do uninteresting research, &lt;em&gt;nobody will hire you&lt;/em&gt;. If you graduate from another reasonable university and do good research, &lt;em&gt;you will find a post&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think that going to the NUS can help me to get accepted into world top universities in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only for the reasons stated above - NUS has an environment that certainly enables you to do world-class research. For this reason, NUS may certainly help you get into a top university, but it does not make you accepted. The hard part (being a good researcher) will still be required from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T12:44:10.083" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T12:44:10.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16161" CreationDate="2014-01-25T14:05:46.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be enlightening for you to carefully study how these rankings were formulated. Some of them are based entirely on reputation and subjective opinions. Some of them are based on a suite of detailed metrics – factors which may or may not be of much interest to the typical graduate student. Seldom, if ever, are they formulated by a team that visits university classrooms to evaluate lecturers, or interviews graduate students to accurately determine overall satisfaction with their programs. These rankings don't come close to telling the whole story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools have meteoric rises in the rankings just because their institutional research department is able to collect all the right data and send it back to the organization doing the rankings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that most of the highly-ranked schools are not good schools, or that they are undeserving of their good reputations and high rankings. However, you can get a very good education an unranked school, and you can get a below-average education at a very highly-ranked school. There are several factors that determine how well someone does in graduate school and beyond, and school ranking is probably &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a very big factor in the overall scheme of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T14:05:46.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16153" CreationDate="2014-01-25T17:49:40.453" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we get along okay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at your question (and if you're so inclined, look at your previous questions). As user11171 and xLeitix point out in a previous answer, the advisor-student relationship is broken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, it almost doesn't matter whose fault it is (but see below). Since the trust in the relationship is gone, even well-intentioned gestures will be misunderstood, and unless there's a strong desire on both sides to repair things, the best bet is to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future though, as you look for a new advisor, it's important to keep in mind that &lt;strong&gt;on average&lt;/strong&gt; advisors are not malicious agents trying to harm their students. Again, I emphasize &lt;strong&gt;on average&lt;/strong&gt;. Which means that behavior that carries multiple interpretations can be interpreted as benign but neglectful rather than as malicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T17:49:40.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16169" CreationDate="2014-01-25T17:59:54.087" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) How hard is this switch going to be? I guess I've all the required&#xA;  mathematics background, but will it be hard to pick up the necessary&#xA;  computer science skills, even if I work in more theory-oriented&#xA;  problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not a problem&lt;/strong&gt;: picking up the math associated with ML. You've got the right background and you'll find it easy to understand the papers after an initial learning phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potentially a problem&lt;/strong&gt;: understanding why certain questions get asked and what's considered interesting. This is where mathematicians and computer scientists tend to diverge, and translating your intuition for questions might take some time. But a more mathematical mindset can also lead you to ask interesting questions that CS folks are NOT asking !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What exactly are the programming knowledge I need to master to work in&#xA;  ML?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how theoretical the postdoc is, anywhere from &lt;strong&gt;none&lt;/strong&gt; to R, python and matlab, and maybe even some distributed large-scale learning framework like GraphLab. But you should definitely get some familarity with the first three - ML is a good example of &quot;no problem formulation surviving first contact with the data&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Is there a website/email-list where I can get notifications on jobs&#xA;  in machine learning? I'm looking for jobs in Europe mostly, but&#xA;  information on the US would also be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good mailing list is &lt;a href=&quot;https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/ml-worldwide&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;ml-worldwide&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Another is the Google group &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ml-news&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;ml-news&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T20:29:22.953" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T20:29:22.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16185" CreationDate="2014-01-25T20:45:41.200" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently preparing an online tool for scholars, and part of that work involves creating a database with different categories for students at different stages of their college/university education (i.e. freshmen, second-semester juniors, first-year graduate students, etc). I'm struggling to find a standard classification system to use that would allow distinction between all of the stages in an undergraduate and graduate education. I could just use &quot;first-semester senior&quot; and the like, but if there's an existing standard - particularly one that even allows for students that don't use semester classifications - I don't want to complicate things with my own classification scheme.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a convention, especially an international convention, that distinguishes between all or most of these stages in educational progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T21:28:20.183" Title="Is there a convention for referring to a scholar's academic status?" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16184" CreationDate="2014-01-25T21:01:40.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no international standard. You will at best find national standards. The problem is that an undergraduate degree can range from 3 years (there may even be shorter ones but I have not heard any examples) to 4 or 5. In some countries a masters degree is a graduate degree in some it is an undergraduate degree. moving to graduate school, Phds range from fixed three years through fixed four years to &quot;individual length. A masters is not necessary to do to move from an true undergraduate studies to PhD, which means it will be an optional step in an education for some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you will have problems defining a solid difference between undergraduate and graduate with the masters belonging to both. You can of course call students by the year they are at at each level but it would probably be beneficial to then know if it is m'th year out of n years to be possible to evaluate. The terminology for undergraduate students at different levels common in, for example the US, which you mentioned in your question is certainly not used internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this &quot;mess&quot; you should probably try to find a system that is as simple as possible and, for example, in the case of the masters simply define it for the site as undergraduate or graduate. Referencing to the year into an education will probably be understood by everyone. There are attempts, for example, within the European Union to synch levels and educational systems but so far there is much left to do to reach such goals if it ever will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T21:01:40.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16184" CreationDate="2014-01-25T21:28:20.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;E.g. in europe, we collect &quot;ECTS&quot;-points (ECTS = European Credit point Transfer System) which sum up the time (successfully) spent for courses, in addition to semesters. So a student can have 50 ECTS and be in his/her third semester. Usually one does 30 ECTS in one semester (at least in Germany). Each ECTS should be an overall workload of 30h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a bit more objective than just taking the semester into account, but in most cases it just confuses people ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case I would recommend going back to the system's specification and clarify what the information is used for and what the consequences are. Checking this might make it easier to come up with a good solution (or might end with removing the requirement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T21:28:20.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16157" CreationDate="2014-01-25T22:57:32.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a current graduate student there are 3 primary ways in which I provide service to the academic community and mention them on my cv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing articles in journals and conferences. I regularly review for a top journal in information science and a couple of the top conferences in HCI (Human Computer Interaction)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am the student member on our department's PhD admissions committee. My responsibilities include evaluating prospective applicants with the rest of the committee, matching applicants with interviewers and organizing the PhD visit day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have been a student volunteer for top conferences in my area. Some of my other colleagues have been student volunteer chairs for said conferences or they have been in the organizing committee for such conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only my personal services to the academic field and my department recognizes and honors these services as an integral part of being a scholar (teaching-research-service). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T22:57:32.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T00:16:47.273" Score="7" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to decide between some math postdoc offers, and I can't decide what is important for a postdoc position. I have talked to several senior mathematicians including my advisor, but they all seem to have different opinions. I just want to hear some more opinions on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How important is prestige? Suppose that I have an offer from school X, which is fairly prestigious (something like top 10, which isn't a well-defined notion). Also suppose that I have an offer from school Y, which is not as prestigious but a better match research-wise. Suppose that the ranking of school Y is approximately n (again, not a well-defined notion). For which values of n should I choose school X over school Y? My goal is to become a tenure-track professor in a PhD-granting institution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What makes a good postdoc supervisor? I can think of the following criteria: compatible research interests, being well-known in one's field, compatible personalities, generous with time, etc. Am I missing anything else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10447" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T06:00:48.253" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T16:12:56.110" Title="How to choose between multiple math postdocs offers?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16113" CreationDate="2014-01-26T03:08:01.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my heavily quantitative social science program, I have heard some professors saying that GRE quant score is a good predictor for 1st year GPA of grad students. I do not know how seriously they consider GRE math score into admissions, but I am sure they give it more of a passing notice. That said, I think both your scores look fine and they do not really differ much. If I can, I would just send both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T03:08:01.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16206" CreationDate="2014-01-26T03:46:15.177" Score="4" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since University of Alabama offers me full-ride scholarship, I will probably go to this school rather than more competitive schools, not because I'm poor but because it seems silly to me to pay $200,000 for merely an undergrad education, even though I can buy a house by that money. I'm going to get PhD, and the name of undergrad school doesn't matter in my career. I'm worried about research opportunity in the school since I want to excel in admission of PhD program, but I think I can make up for it with my enthusiasm and knowledge. I'm going to major in Biology, and I want to study about regenerative medicine and stem cell in grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until I will graduate from my high school, I will certainly have about 12 AP scores (mostly 5's) and be able to get about 50 credits, even though the school's graduation requirement is 120. It seems easy to graduate within 3 years (or even possible to do within 2 years), but graduating early seems to put me in a disadvantageous position in grad school admission. I can probably get 70 credits in two years, and then what should I do for the next two years? Can I concentrate on research for this period, or should I take classes to get about 30 credits per year? Should I apply for grad program in the third year and try again in the next year if the admission won't be successful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some opinion not only related to the topics about college credit but also my choice of school, please tell me that, since I still can change my choice of university. Other schools of my choice are such as Reed, Carleton, U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, and U of Manchester. I'm an international student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastEditorUserId="10941" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T08:21:57.817" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T17:40:35.363" Title="Should I stay in my uni for four years even though I already have 50 credits?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16119" CreationDate="2014-01-26T04:55:02.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on the search committee in math major. I know one case that one institute sends out offer without interview this year but it interviewed the applicants last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11140" LastEditorUserId="11140" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T09:22:55.913" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T09:22:55.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16190" CreationDate="2014-01-26T05:13:10.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I know nothing about Biology at all. I can't comment on specifics. Instead, I rather say something about the comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think double-majoring using the available time gives me a significant advantage in my admission? Or should I just concentrate on the area which I will study in grad school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are far away from grad school yet. Undergrad education is for you to build the foundation of your academic career. You need to use it to broaden your knowledge base. Many courses can be benefit for you. You should consider taking the courses about humanities, fine arts, other sciences (math, chemstry, physics, computer science, etc.) and writing, etc.etc. Just don't limit yourself to a specific field. You won't know you're interested in something until you learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is from the bottom of my heart. I wish someone would have told me this when I was an undergrad student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T05:13:10.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T05:15:34.517" Score="4" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to highlight the changes I made to a text (report, thesis etc) to the supervisor? Red colour/adding bubble comments, you name it. I use Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5689" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T11:15:51.110" Title="How to highlight the text changes to the supervisor?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16193" CreationDate="2014-01-26T05:43:39.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Word, you can use the 'track changes' function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit on the amount of changes you're making though. Track changes will mark every cut and paste, every comma and deletion of every double space. This can make it too difficult to read. Personally, I've resorted to just underlining the most important changes so that my supervisor can see them easily, and adding the occasional comment bubble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T05:43:39.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16190" CreationDate="2014-01-26T06:53:25.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a friend of mine once said: &quot;Why you want to finish college early, man?  The sooner you finish college, the sooner you face life!&quot;  (And he lived this philosophy, spending four years at the community college followed by two at a university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about grad school just as you begin your undergraduate education.  Take classes in things that interest you or that you think might interest you.  If you have units from AP classes, great; treat that as opportunity to take a broader range of things that strike your fancy, instead of intro classes that you might have otherwise had to take for general ed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by your third year you find you still want to go to grad school doing the same thing you mentioned, you can explore undergraduate research opportunities, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, my advice would be, if you have extra units coming in, use that flexibility to &lt;em&gt;improve&lt;/em&gt; your undergradate education, not shorten it.  If you decide you want to shorten it when the time comes, okay, but don't lock yourself into that plan now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T06:53:25.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16196" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:05:35.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in the &lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in other parts of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, or Oceania.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="22013" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T18:25:16.330" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T18:25:16.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16197" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:05:35.237" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the United States higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in other parts of the world." OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="84834" LastEditDate="2018-08-02T01:49:27.193" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T01:49:27.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16200" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:22:05.460" Score="8" ViewCount="9087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a research grant which specifies that the proposed research should be novel and innovative. However without previous experience, it is not clear what degree of novelty is required. For academic publications the requirement is generally that the presented results should be non-obvious (novel) and making a significant improvement in understanding about the topic. For this reason straightforward incremental advances are liable to be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When considering grants, is a similar degree of novelty required, or is it expected that the proposed research is a new departure from what has has been done before? By way of example, say you have done research on a certain sample to investigate physical property A, would a proposal to investigate physical property B qualify as novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2020-01-22T21:30:53.853" Title="What is expected when &quot;novel&quot; and &quot;innovative&quot; ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16198" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:46:01.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dumb (but maybe best) answer is: It's what the reviewers and the funding agency regard as &quot;novel&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, this might be true for your example (e.g in medicine, it can be very valuable to investigate just an other aspect), but in most cases you should aim for something which is significantly beyond the current scope of the field (but still reachable). It should not be a straight-forward engineering approach (since this is development, not research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T08:46:01.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16198" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:48:08.817" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of adding words like &quot;novel&quot; and &quot;innovative&quot; is to weed out proposals that may be poorly researched and thus copying others or or involve repeating other works in a slightly different setting (or equivalent). The phrasings makes rejecting proposals easier since it provides a critieria (one among many) against which it can be judged. Funding agencies are also keen to see their funding go to research that can be judged to contribute &quot;significant&quot; results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience says that what constitutes &quot;novel&quot; and &quot;innovative&quot; is difficult to assess in detail. In my field, environmental/earth science, some themes become &quot;fashionable&quot; or hot and signals these aspects, or rather absence means less likelihood to receive funding. These themes include finite element modelling (70s), acid rain(70s/80s) and climate change (currently). This can be seen as a communal will or interest to steer research in certain ways and so showing you can significantly contribute to these goals was/is more or less necessary to provide you with a good chance for obtaining funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to define &quot;novel&quot; and &quot;innovative&quot; will be difficult. And, as a side point, your research either is or is not &quot;novel&quot; or &quot;innovative&quot;, there are no degrees. You need to come up with ideas that are truly new (testing new grounds) or which promise results that are significantly advancing science but more importantly, you need to convince the reviewers in the funding agency about your case. This means to avoid &quot;more of the same&quot; proposals, to be sure your idea has not been worked on before (know your field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book, I strongly recommend for all is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Friedland, A., Fold, C.L., 2009.  Writing Successful Science Proposals, Second Edition. Yale Univ. Press&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T08:48:08.817" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T13:16:06.863" Score="2" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case that I got one paper published, which of the aforementioned repositories have more relevance (so that I can determine that my work has not been published in a nobody-knows-about, fake conference)? I have read that some papers that are in IEEE Xplore belong to bogus or fake conferences and there is also the same problem with Scopus. I have also seen that in some occasions Scopus miss some citations of my articles, while for example in Google Scholar they appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well the bottom line, which repository is better viewed for backing up that one publication was in a reliable conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T09:06:13.377" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T09:06:13.377" Title="Which is better at verifying that a conference is reliable: Scopus, IEEE Xplore or DBLP?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;repository&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;indexing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16203" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T15:06:48.500" Score="4" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for Postgraduate degree research but for that I need to submit a Research Proposal with the application and it is very confusing for me because I never did any kind of research before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been a small business owner for the last 7-8 years and I want to do research in the same field (Entrepreneurship or small- or family-business related), but I just don't know how to narrow down and select a specific topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest some guidelines to select a topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11214" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T14:18:02.787" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T14:18:02.787" Title="Research Topic Suggestions" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16190" CreationDate="2014-01-26T16:17:38.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, for admissions purposes, unless you are a prodigy, staying 4 years will be beneficial. Of course, you could get in somewhere after 2 years but the competition for jobs is such that you want to be able to compete with other people in your situation (they do exist, I had a somewhat similar situation in that I came into my undergrad with almost a year of credits). You could take the opportunity to (when you are confident you are ready) take many graduate level courses in and around your field. I think a lot of people are overblown about anti-specialization. I took my upper division math and lower division math at the same time, often taking 3 math courses at the same time and I loved it, miss it now. I think you should pursue your current goal wholeheartedly but take 1, maybe 2 courses a semester outside of it (if your APs don't satisfy all your GENED or your department has weird requirements, this will happen accidentally) at least in the early going. If you decide to switch plans at some point, you will have engrossed yourself in hard material (coursework, labs), the skills of which will transfer to WHATEVER OTHER ACADEMIC PLAN. Of course, because you are in biology not math, your field is not self-contained but this can be adjusted for in course selection to that end. Also, you might consider taking only 4 classes a semester early on (or forever) but make sure they are hard-hitting, if you might have problems with time management incongruous with your intellectual aptitude (depending on financial aid requirements!).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T16:17:38.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16190" CreationDate="2014-01-26T17:15:16.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an academically talented student likely to complete a Ph.D., the most important life decision will be where you go to graduate school.  An undergraduate degree from Alabama, whether in 4 years or 2, is unlikely to lead to a good graduate school for you.  I don't know your field, but in mathematics (my field) Alabama is among the worst places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should go to Michigan, which is the best choice academically of the ones you've listed.  And wherever you are, you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get high grades, and take some graduate classes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to know several faculty in your area very well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage in research, and publish if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find some way to distinguish yourself, such as teaching experience or academic clubs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second major can be an insurance policy, and can open doors to graduate programs straddling the two areas, so is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Followup: You should go to a Tier I institution, such as what &lt;a href=&quot;http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/basic.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carnegie&lt;/a&gt; classifies as &quot;very high research activity&quot; RU/VH.  Alabama is not on that list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastEditorUserId="7222" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T17:40:35.363" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T17:40:35.363" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16209" CreationDate="2014-01-26T18:56:29.577" Score="0" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out if the following article is a primary or secondary source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://genome.cshlp.org/content/20/5/547.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://genome.cshlp.org/content/20/5/547.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning towards secondary but here are my cases for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primary: Published in a peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondary: It seems to be mostly a summary of other works so it might not be original research.&#xA;Can anyone confirm this for me? Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11217" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T19:13:29.707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T06:17:55.663" Title="Need help distinguishing between a primary and secondary source" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16207" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:37:51.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primary&lt;/strong&gt; source material is &quot;direct evidence.&quot; This can include published reports of original research, but also journals, diaries, direct interviews, government records, and other types of &quot;produced&quot; work. (It need not be a research or scholarly work to be a direct source; thus the claim that it's primary because it's published in a peer-reviewed journal carries no weight in this argument.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a &lt;strong&gt;secondary&lt;/strong&gt; source is a source which reports on the work of others, whether it is published or not. Citing a secondary work does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; make it a primary work; it's the relationship of the cited work &lt;em&gt;to the original subject&lt;/em&gt; that determines if it's primary or secondary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, a &quot;Perspective&quot; column that summarizes ongoing work in the field is a &lt;em&gt;secondary&lt;/em&gt; source, as it is analyzing the original work of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T19:37:51.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16207" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:38:01.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case of review articles, the original sources which were used to create the text are the primary literature. But, if the author draws own conclusions, creates statistics, etc., this would be considered a primary source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not deep enough in the field to judge that for the article in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T19:38:01.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16203" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:43:09.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to work as a Postdoc in this field? The answer to this question (as long as it's a scientific answer and not reputation etc.) can lead you to a good research topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, thechniques like creative writing, brainstorming etc. can be helpful, but this is a bit out of scope for this platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T19:43:09.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T23:17:32.067" Score="12" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;After hearing about an incredibly contentious tenure case at my alma mater and several other contentious ones, I'm curious to hear how such issues come to be. Some issues that seem to be at play: personal animosity between faculty, dispute about the merits of the candidate's research, scarcity of resources and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, religion and other aspects of identity. Some of these are legitimate, while others are clearly not. For those curious as to how nasty things can get, I recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/175/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The account is both appalling and fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do faculty see these issues coming? Are there tell-tale signs they might miss? One person I talked to was quite surprised both by the animosity one fellow faculty member had towards him and by the degree of influence this brought to bare on his tenure case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once such issues have been identified, how can the candidate defend against them? At what point should he/she be prepared to defend against them? From the other side, what processes exist to prevent such biases from influencing the process? Are they functional, and to what degree? Are there better practices that could be implemented to avoid such discontent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T15:17:34.387" Title="What leads to contentious tenure cases and can they be avoided?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16203" CreationDate="2014-01-27T02:17:10.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been a small business owner for the last 7-8 years &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you run into issues/problems in those 7-8 years? Are those problems specific to your own business? Could other business owners have the same or similar problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you &lt;strong&gt;generalize&lt;/strong&gt; those problems so that you can conduct research on possible solutions to those problems in &lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt; approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you find the causes of those problems from &lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt; perspective? How would you propose to do so? Should the government play a role or not? How could the society as a whole participate? Etc. Etc. There are hundreds of topics out there. Take your pick. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T02:17:10.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16202" CreationDate="2014-01-27T07:01:34.263" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who is reasonably experienced in your field (i.e., anyone who might hire you) will know which venues are &quot;relevant&quot;.  They won't base this on IEEE Xplore, Scopus, or DBLP, but on their own knowledge of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, anyone who would hire you will also know enough to evaluate your work directly to some extent, rather than relying on the reputation of the venue as a proxy for the value of the work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T07:01:34.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16053" CreationDate="2014-01-27T08:27:45.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In have been recently taking Master of Advanced Studies in ETHZ, Zurich. From that I have seen, most of courses are optional. Each of them just gives some number of points and you simply need to collect enough. If it is initially not obvious which courses are good, it is not uncommon to take more than planned and drop some you find less useful. Of course, there are also mandatory courses you must take and pass they exams, but in general you most likely will not study that you see useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETHZ seems quite oriented to self-dependent work and significant percent of the knowledge is acquired outside the lecture time (literature, assignments, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some courses are in German but there are also many English courses, as ETHZ hires professors from the whole world. Have never heard about somebody giving lectures in Swiss German in the university or even secondary school. Standard German is used for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T08:27:45.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5454" CreationDate="2014-01-27T08:43:15.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Viewing LinkedIn recommendations may require to register and login. Just because you have a LinkedIn account, does not mean your employer has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, I would suggest to include the full text of the LinkedIn recommendation, not just a reference to it. But then it becomes not much different from just an ordinary recommendation that is just placed for public viewing on some website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T08:43:15.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16228" CreationDate="2014-01-27T10:24:56.550" Score="2" ViewCount="12145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a literature review for a project and due to the nature of the project (website and database) I haven't used any books etc. I have used a number of websites to get information on subjects such as hosting a website and a database using Azure, is it acceptable to use websites in a literature review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11229" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T05:57:37.600" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T11:35:48.097" Title="Is it acceptable to use mainly websites in a literature review?" Tags="&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16106" CreationDate="2014-01-27T13:02:42.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not obvious how this professor will look into your PhD. You also say he can be good and devote enough attention when he thinks this is appropriate (during the lecture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious way to decide is to look around. Does the professor have other PhD students? Not very good if you would be the only one over many years. Which percent of these PhD students been successful? Maybe you can talk with them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, that are most serious works of the professor laboratory? Recent &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or ten years without publications? Of course, asking such things directly is very tricky but try to visit the laboratory website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding the professors overall attitude to exactly PhD work may help to decide. Heavy involvement into ongoing research projects and other relevant activities (so no time for general talking, etc) may actually represent the professor positively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T13:02:42.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16220" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:04:21.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely put into references the official user documentation of your web server and database engine, as this software have not been just invented by you from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While websites can also be used in references, it seems to me that you may need more in depth coverage. Try to Google and find some real publications. If the topic seems too broad, it should be some reviews. If there is a Wikipedia article, check which references it uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:04:21.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14300" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:09:44.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Library may allow you to access generally online resources behind the paywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while using printed material instead of online resources does not bring much benefit, some online resources (like scientific journals) are often paid, and you may need a library computer to get access to them. This is one of the reasons why you still may need to go to the library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is university dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:09:44.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13466" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:10:47.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common to cite own works in science, and this is not considered a bad tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:10:47.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16220" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:21:15.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Website or not website is not the point. Printed journal articles are favored over website because i) they are peer-reviewed, carrying some degree of authority, ii) they are archived and retrievable, with payment or free of charge, and iii) once published, the contents do not change until they are formally revised, rebuked, or retracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it would mean that when citing websites, a few more steps need to be done to increase their worthiness. First, you'd need to assess the credibility of the website and be able to critically evaluate the contents. In journal articles this step is done to some degree but in websites you're on your own. Second, you may need to do most of the archiving (including downloading, dating, and archiving the data sets you may download, or printing and dating website into PDFs, etc.) or use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_archiving&quot;&gt;website archiving&lt;/a&gt; to save a cross-section of the websites. There are free services like &lt;a href=&quot;http://perma.cc&quot;&gt;http://perma.cc&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org&quot;&gt;http://www.webcitation.org&lt;/a&gt; available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they are archived, in your paper, it is a good practice to cite both original link and the archived link as well as the date you accessed the original link. For details, consult the project leader or editor. Some journals specialized in publishing Internet-related research such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jmir.org/cms/view/Instructions_for_Authors%3aInstructions_for_Authors_of_JMIR&quot;&gt;Journal of Medical Internet Research&lt;/a&gt; may also provide useful format-related examples in their guide to the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T14:26:25.353" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:26:25.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16106" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:43:35.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, I want to kindly inform X that, I do not want to involve any&#xA;  future studies with X. What kind of wording should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No wording should be used. Don't send anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you may be very angry or upset, but there is no point to send a message to imply you will never work with this person. If the professor does try to contact you for possible projects or studies, just simply say thanks, and proceed with saying that you have thought about this and have decided to pursue other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you send a no-involvement-in-future message, you'd just end up looking obnoxious. This is not grade school, we don't tell everyone that &quot;I am not going to play with you, and don't you dare inch your elbow over the side of my desk, or I am going to tell the Dean.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:43:35.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16212" CreationDate="2014-01-27T15:17:34.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One source of problems is a lack of communication over what are the expectations for the tenure candidate to meet before becoming &quot;eligible&quot; to receive tenure. But a substantial amount of the issues can lie with either someone in the decision-making chain, or the candidate himself or herself. In the latter case, this makes a tendentious situation inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, there is the rather notorious case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N1/1sherley.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;James Sherley at MIT&lt;/a&gt;, who alleged multiple issues, including racism, and claimed that he believed his papers from his previous institution would &quot;count&quot; toward his tenure case. (Meanwhile, at MIT, his publication list in five years amounted to a total of &lt;em&gt;six&lt;/em&gt; publications, three of which I believe were editorials.) He went on to hold a hunger strike to protest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that there really isn't a way to prevent things from becoming contentious unless everything is made &quot;open&quot;: criteria are specified in advance, and everybody participating can follow along the entire process. (That is, the candidate can attend the meetings where the tenure case is being discussed.) However, I suspect this is unlikely to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T15:17:34.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13466" CreationDate="2014-01-27T16:53:21.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received a referee report a few weeks ago where my referee told me I needed to cite more of my own papers in the literature review section. So it definitely doesn't seem like it is bad practice, especially in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11047" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T16:53:21.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16233" CreationDate="2014-01-27T17:22:04.670" Score="7" ViewCount="1686" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the verge of writing up a PhD thesis, is it fine to include the content of the work which is submitted to a conference and is &quot;under review&quot; at the time of writing up. More specifically if the conference has 'double-blind' review process.Or is it advisable to wait till the review decision on publication is out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, KR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T11:18:30.097" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T11:18:30.097" Title="Can I include under-review content in my PhD Thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16232" CreationDate="2014-01-27T17:28:12.823" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure this may vary but this is standard procedure for our theses since they are based on papers. A student will typically have about four papers/manuscripts in their thesis ranging from published through all stages of revision in a journal to not yet submitted manuscripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to check with your local guidelines what is expected from a thesis to figure out the details but it would seem difficult to demand all published papers unless the period to complete a PhD is open ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T17:28:12.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-27T21:15:04.577" Score="6" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assisting an undergraduate student with developing plans for summer 2014, and I'm considering the viability of study in Cuba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any U.S. users who have traveled to and studied in Cuba and can recommend a robust, reputable Cuba study program, ideally run by a U.S.-Cuba university partnership? Fields of interest to the student are political science, civil society, and history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a Google search returns several options, but I'd still appreciate input or advice from fellow academia.SX users&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:42:57.007" Title="Feasibility of Study in Cuba for U.S. Undergraduates" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:33:45.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found several resources that are helpful for introducing motivated undergrads to the concepts of survey design and analysis. My own favorites are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0803927436&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1412977886&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Methods in Psychological Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These books provide a good overview, and are accessible to beginners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T00:33:45.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:58:38.217" Score="-6" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I  happen to be involved in this project in which my advisor has made such a bad decision that the result turned out to be mediocre/uninteresting. While I am not the lead author, I will be one of the co-author for this. In that case, why should I endorse for my advisor's bad decision, when I don't have any means to change the course of this project? I know I won't look as bad as the first author, but still this will be one of my publication. I doubt my advisor will say something like this in the rec: &quot;Oh yes, the bad publication was my idea, my student just followed my direction.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;How can I prevent this from ruining my future career?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T06:04:50.320" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T06:04:50.320" Title="Advisor's bad decision results in co-authored mediocre publication. How to prevent this from ruining my career?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16237" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:32:25.877" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I can't imagine that being coauthor on an uninteresting paper could &quot;ruin your future career&quot; or even damage it significantly; a paper is a paper, so I think at worst it has a very small positive value.  To actually be a negative, the paper would have to be horrifically wrong or plagiarized or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, not to question your judgment, but you do probably have a lot less experience in the field than your advisor.  It's just possible that the project is more interesting to the community than it seems to you; when you're deep in a project, it's often hard to see the context that it fits in to.  Consider discussing the project with other researchers in the field (check with your advisor first to make sure you're not giving away too many details too soon), and see what they think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the project is really worthless, as I said, I don't see it actively damaging your career.  Just wrap it up, get it out the door, and start working on something more interesting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T01:32:25.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16237" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:43:31.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Nate Eldredge wrote in his final sentence, stop worrying about the past project and start thinking about your next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be judged much more strongly based on your more recent work so just make sure that your upcoming work is more interesting. You cannot change the past so don't spend time worrying about it. You should spend your time on your future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One uninteresting publication is not going to sink you unless the science is bad. If it shows you do not know how to do research that might hurt you. If the science is really bad, you might consider removing your name from the paper but since you only complain about the results being uninteresting, let it be and move on to something better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T03:48:48.327" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T03:48:48.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16188" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:52:20.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the quality of your research is more important than prestige.  I would go with the university that is a better research match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what makes a good postdoc supervisor.  I think this depends completely on the individual and how one conducts research.  The two extremes are: hands off -- I have plenty of ideas and give me something to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best is a combination of the two.  This shows you are able to work independently and work well with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T01:52:20.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16237" CreationDate="2014-01-28T04:46:45.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Judging by your past five questions (in fact, every question that you asked on here), you clearly have issues with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that your advisor is actually that bad. No one can be that bad, and survive academia. It is most likely the product of your not actually caring about your advisor's interests (and vice versa), and the lack of communication between the two of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is still some time left, I recommend that you seek out another advisor instead of ranting about your advisor on academia.SE, which doesn't actually solve your problems in real-life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are close to graduating, I suggest that you &quot;pay your dues&quot; to your advisor; he let you use his lab and equipment, not to mention granting you access to his expertise, for the past 5+ years. The least you can do is to &quot;suck it up&quot; and pretend to care about your advisor's interests (and put some work into it). After all, you'll need your advisor's letter to stay in academia!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T04:46:45.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16263" CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:41:17.510" Score="7" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;The data collected using &quot;&lt;em&gt;Applicant Confidential Data Form&lt;/em&gt;&quot; will be used by US-based universities to monitor University’s Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Programs as required by the US government. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen that in (some) cases, faculty job applicant seeking academic job in US-based universities are asked to submit this form &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; they successfully submitted their initial application. The point is that, typically there is no instruction in &quot;call for faculty member note&quot; to fill this form and submit along with application. But the faculty search committee asks after while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it raises a question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the faculty search committee sends this form to &lt;strong&gt;ALL&lt;/strong&gt; the applicants or particular applicants who are allegedly suitable for the job. Is receiving this notification from the committee can be considered a positive sign in recruitment process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T09:32:09.290" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T09:32:09.290" Title="What &quot;Applicant Confidential Data Form&quot; has to do with tenure-track positions?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16243" CreationDate="2014-01-28T06:04:23.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not read anything into such a form as this. In many cases, the university may require it, but the department doesn't mention it, or only sends it out afterwards. However, the nature of the form is not one that it should only be given out to &quot;suitable&quot; candidates; it's something that everybody who applies could be asked to fill out. So it is unlikely that this means anything, either positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T06:04:23.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2014-01-28T07:20:41.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate from BITS Pilani, India. We have a 10-point Cummulative GPA. Here is a table converting the CGPA to GPA &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7XUi5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-convert-indian-gpa-percentage-to-us-4-pt-gpa-scale-124249.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-convert-indian-gpa-percentage-to-us-4-pt-gpa-scale-124249.html&lt;/a&gt; This has some detailed insights into the CGPA and the method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11241" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T07:20:41.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21595" CreationDate="2014-01-28T07:28:50.297" Score="10" ViewCount="1623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer by profession and was wondering what a professional doctorate (PdEng) would add to my career if I plan to work in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not talking about a Phd rather a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Doctorate_in_Engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professional Doctorate program (PDEng)&lt;/a&gt;.It is a 2 year program and used for getting a job in a very specific sub discipline of a field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T12:09:16.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T15:05:17.687" Title="Is a professional doctorate beneficial for someone looking for a career as a programmer in industry?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16248" CreationDate="2014-01-28T07:33:30.707" Score="5" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a membership from an organization e.g. ieee.org and I have some options for my email ID which I want to use in academy and professional work. I'm not a native English and I'm not familiar with the culture involved. I have these three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(consider my name as Serim Doe, which Serim is my first name and pretty rare, I didn't want make example of John Doe which is very common name).&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serim@ieee.org &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doe@ieee.org&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S.Doe@ieee.org&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer Serim@ieee.org since it is more concise and shorter, but I want to know if making ID of only the first name is appropriate or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10352" LastEditorUserId="10352" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T09:21:49.600" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:01:49.237" Title="Which one of these is more appropriate for academic email" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2014-01-28T09:37:26.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, everthing said in the comments applies (in short: everything goes, it's up to you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe (and especially in German speaking countries), it is very unsusual to call other people by ther first name, therefore serim@ would be considered inappropriate and people might be confused and think of it as your last name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you think international, I'd propose s.doe@... or, serim.doe@... . Most companies and universities in Germany use the last version since it helps in avoiding name collisions (of course it's no guarantee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T09:37:26.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T09:52:57.913" Score="14" ViewCount="3077" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a TA in several modules and one thing I couldn't find yet is a system to help me manage student lab submissions. Most online collaborative tools I've seen do not allow me to, or make it quite complex to receive files from students and download all of them at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in my university, there is not such a strict discipline, in the sense that late submissions are often tolerated; if students forget to send their files, I'd like to gently remind them to do so; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I use e-mail for managing student submissions, but there are several limitations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students forget to send the e-mail, or send it to an incorrect address, or simply quit the course, but since I do not know in which case they are, I have to manually e-mail students from which no submission has been received;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students have no guarantee I actually received the email, so I have to ACK them;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students sometimes send an e-mail but forget the attachment, so I have to check each of them and notify the student;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students sometimes send multiple versions, and if there is a deadline between them, it might change the grading criteria;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have to manually open each email, download the files to a separate folder, and ACK the student. This is quite boring.&#xA;Something that would help me save some time and automate things (like sending reminders, one-click download of all files, etc) would be of great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I've seen Moodle and Piazza, but none of them seem to actually help much with student file management, or I missed something. Any indications of tools for the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11248" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T08:45:47.763" Title="Online tool for receiving student files" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-01-28T09:59:40.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, moodle CAN do it (you can define a task &quot;file upload&quot; which has a due date). Give it a try and if you like it you are fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not like it and wrote my own solution... (but I heard moodle improved the functionality so this might be sufficient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T09:59:40.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-01-28T10:06:38.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a dropbox account for assignments and use a tool which allows anyone with a link to submit files without accessing your dropbox account. It will be a browser window where the student uploads the file. Ensure that you communicate to students a 'file naming' format like: StudentName_AssignmentName.doc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways to upload to dropbox without access: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-send-files-dropbox-dropbox/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-send-files-dropbox-dropbox/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11241" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T10:06:38.553" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16232" CreationDate="2014-01-28T10:09:47.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do it, but you should clearly label it as &quot;submitted to xyz&quot; to make clear it is not accepted, yet. You should update the status (&quot;accepted for xyz&quot;, no additional remarks) according to the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, you can (and should) write about the topics in your thesis since it is your work you are describing. The only difference is that the statments you are making are not peer-reviewed, yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it is a good idea to ask your supervisor about it since some can have different opinions on this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T10:09:47.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-01-28T11:56:59.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is do you really need student assignments to be downloaded. I say this because I used to but I recently started using TurnItIn. However, I only use this for plagiarism detection, I do not use it for marking (university policy is that I MUST mark the paper copy...yes I know the dangers there, but that's for another day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you didn't mention the larger issue you are trying to solve, I'll continue just with your direct question about how to download many student assignments without a million clicks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did is simply setup an email account for students to email to (not my main email account). I instruct the students to use specific filenames (StudentID_StudentName_AssignmentName.docx) and they email me. I use a standalone email client (not webmail) so it all downloads to my computer. My client has a preview pane so I simply drag-drop to my assignment folder, move to the next message, drag-drop, repeat. I do this for 200-500 students per assignment per semester and find it does not lend itself to much more automation than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, it takes me 2 clicks per student (literally) and I end up with all student assignments in one folder. It handles ACK'ing the student on the server (auto-responder) but I could also use read-receipts but those don't usually work with webmail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to email students who did not submit, that's more complicated. I handle it during the marking process (let's see the file...ooops, they forgot...time to email them...or fail them for not submitting properly). TurnItIn will tell you which students did not submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for students submitting multiple versions, as long as they submit with the proper naming convention, you will overwrite the older with the newer. I'm not sure if that is what you want or not but I would assume so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T11:56:59.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T12:45:19.160" Score="7" ViewCount="6513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have selected a single question for my master's thesis, within my field of Foreign Language Teaching. Most papers I have read contain just short literature reviews providing some background for a research study that occupied most of the writer's time. I think I could understand my question better if I focusing all of my effort on creating a 100-200 page literature review, examining and critiquing all existing literature on the subject, rather than on trying to come up with some new results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a master's thesis be comprised of just a literature review? Do journals publish literature reviews on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T13:15:22.283" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T13:15:22.283" Title="Can a literature review be a &quot;master's thesis&quot;?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16256" CreationDate="2014-01-28T12:53:46.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking two different questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can publish a high-quality literature review in some, but not all, journals. However, many journals also &lt;em&gt;solicit&lt;/em&gt; such reviews rather than take them automatically, and many will have length restrictions associated with them. So check with the journal before you start working!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for a master's thesis, that depends a lot on the requirements of your field. In the humanities, you would probably have to do some searches for primary references, but a large-scale literature review is an important part of such a work. In the sciences and engineering, however, you are much less likely to be able to submit such a thesis. The usual standards there require more original work than can typically be accomplished with a literature review. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T12:53:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16256" CreationDate="2014-01-28T12:56:29.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in my Faculty (of Computer Science), a master thesis can be &quot;just&quot; a literature review. A literature review can be an important contribution, and is part of what is usually called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_research&quot;&gt;secondary research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should consider performing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review&quot;&gt;systematic literature review&lt;/a&gt;, which is a literature review comprising several analytic and precise steps to enhance the reliability of the study. A systematic literature review is a time consuming research activity but a very useful one. Please verify that such a review has not already been conducted recently, before starting it by your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22systematic+review%22&quot;&gt;Systematic reviews are publishable research&lt;/a&gt; and often get many citations. As for thesis, I think that any publishable research activity can be a student's master thesis. &lt;em&gt;However, ask your (potential) advisor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorDisplayName="user7112" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T13:06:47.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T13:06:47.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T13:10:56.980" Score="7" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the market for math postdocs and was just offered some positions. Essentially my situation is as follows. I have two offers from AMS Group I universities. One has higher &quot;ranking&quot; and is in the top 15, and the other in the 30s. However, the lower ranked university has a great group and there is a greater potential for collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned that if I go to a lower ranked place, faculty positions at a good institution will not be easy to find. How important is it to go to a famous university for you postdoc? I'd also like to hear about the experiences of mathematicians who didn't go to a top 10 university for the their postdoc, but worked their way up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11252" OwnerDisplayName="user61891" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T13:55:43.620" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T13:55:43.620" Title="Should I choose a postdoc with greater potential for collaboration over a higher ranked institution?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-01-29T12:23:23.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16243" CreationDate="2014-01-28T16:15:25.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received this form from hundreds of employers that later rejected me. I think schools that use it will send it to every applicant. So it doesn't mean anything except that your application was received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the reason for it being a separate form, rather than part of the application, is that it's meant to be for statistical purposes only, and should not affect the hiring procedure. The best way to achieve this is to ensure that the hiring committee never sees it. So they send a separate form, to be returned to a separate office within the institution, which holds it confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T16:15:25.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16281" CreationDate="2014-01-28T16:53:53.967" Score="94" ViewCount="38013" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I handle silly questions? By silly, I mean questions that are unrelated to the material of the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I am a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_assistant&quot;&gt;TA&lt;/a&gt;. Recently, a student asked me a very silly question at the end of a lab session. I say silly because: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was not related to the lecture, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was asked at the end of a lecture - and the classroom was already full with the students of the next class, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have previously talked about this issue. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student insisted that I answer his question many times. So, I told him: &quot;&lt;em&gt;It is already late, but let me know about your question&lt;/em&gt;&quot; .. when he asked it, I told him: &quot;&lt;em&gt;You can't be serious, this is not a question!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He got upset, and he told me: &quot;&lt;em&gt;You are paid to answer my questions!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got angry, but how should I handle similar situations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I have previously talked about this issue.&quot; -- Yes, I talked about this issue even though it is not part of the course and the lecture. I talked about it to add more applications to the course material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T01:32:31.180" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T03:16:59.420" Title="&quot;You are paid to answer my questions!&quot; - how to handle silly questions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T17:08:07.943" Score="92" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;you can't be serious, this is not a question!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't say this. Regardless of the question, this makes it sound like you think the student is either (1) intentionally wasting time or (2) very stupid. You can't make progress from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, if it's a quick question that's related to the topic of the course, but not the lecture necessarily, then the best thing to do is to take a moment to answer it anyway, since (1) the student might think the two things are related and it'll clarify things if you just explain it now, and (2) it'll be much less hassle that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it requires an in-depth explanation, and you don't have the time for it because you have something else to attend to, tell the student that and also find the student a solution, whether that is telling him/her (1) to email you, (2) to ask you at the next lab, or (3) to ask the lecturer during office hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8091" LastEditorUserId="8091" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T17:18:57.757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T17:18:57.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T18:45:21.207" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to waiwai's excellent response, a good model to follow for TA's and faculty alike is professionalism.  All too often, academics behave in an arrogant and demeaning manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you feel if your doctor told you &quot;you can't be serious, this is not a question!&quot;?  What about your lawyer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T18:45:21.207" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16270" CreationDate="2014-01-28T18:48:21.227" Score="2" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to say that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4 illustrate ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;how could I mention them?&#xA; is the above sentence correct?&#xA; or I should say figure 1 to figure 4 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11259" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T18:57:23.640" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T18:57:23.640" Title="how could I mention sequence of figures in a research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;cross-referencing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16269" CreationDate="2014-01-28T18:56:29.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact format should be determined by the publication in which you publish your work (assuming this is what you do). You should be able to write Figures 1-4 or alternatively Figures 1 to 4 (although the former is what I am used to seeing). If the format uses abbreviated forms then Figs 1-4 would be the format. There is no need to repeat the word figure before both numbers in a sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T18:56:29.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T19:00:48.243" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'll assume that the student did actually ask a very silly question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that needs to be always taken into consideration in situations such as this is: Is the student aware of the silliness of the question?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be obvious to you that the question is indeed silly, it may not be obvious to the student. You haven't posted any in-depth information about the whole background of the case, but it could very well be that the student is misunderstanding something extremely fundamental. You claim that the question is not related to the lecture, but at the same time, you say that you have in fact previously talked about the issue. In student's mind, that could somehow relate the issue to the lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing that could be very problematic is if student has a flawed thought process. This can cause the student to relate things that are not actually related and to find cause and effect relationships where there are none. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, due to administrative problems at my university, we were required to take an advanced course in one field before taking an introductory course. I already had some experience in that field, so a number of my fellow students asked me questions when they had problems with that exam. Some of them were actually very silly! Often, the silliest were for me the hardest to explain since that required figuratively digging through their brain in order to find the cause of the reasoning that got them to ask me the question in the first place. It often turned out that there was a mistake in reasoning somewhere or that they misunderstood something at a very basic level. One more thing that I noticed is that some people would try to avoid fully understanding the issue. Often, after explaining A for example, I'd have conversation going something like &quot;Is A clear?&quot; &quot;Yes!&quot; &quot;Really?&quot; &quot;Yes, really.&quot; &quot;100% clear?&quot; &quot;Yes, crystal clear!&quot; and then it turns out that it wasn't clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just explaining the initial problem and stopping there in cases such as the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph is just treating the symptoms of a disease and not the cause itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I'd like to mention is that (at least in my environment) those who ask questions do actually care about the subject they're learning and in general have a valid problem. It's usually those who don't ask questions that have no idea what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I'll write a bit about &quot;You're paid&quot; problem itself.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's commonly repeated that there are no bad questions, only bad answers. In my opinion, whoever produced that piece of wisdom didn't see enough questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to make a policy explaining what you should do in cases of inappropriate questions. Are you or are you not payed (or for some other reason expected) to answer such questions? What should you do in case you get a student who's too stupid to pass the course you're TA-ing for? What about students who can't form an answerable question in their mind? What about students who ask malicious questions? I was quite surprised to hear from one student at my school that he asks a certain TA senseless questions just because he like to see her struggle to answer them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only thing I can advise here is to think hard about what you are and are not expected to do. Talk to your colleagues about that and talk to your superiors about that. Make the limits clear to yourself and  to your students. This way, when you come to a similar situation again and you explore all other options, you can honestly and with clear consciousness respond to &quot;You are paid to answer my questions!&quot; with &quot;No, I'm not!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd like to recommend to you to keep the tension low if at all possible. In this particular case, you mentioned that the student insisted that you answer the question many times. That probably means that the question is important to him. Is it normal that students should ask you more than once to answer a question? Is that expected in your culture? I never had to ask a professor or a TA question more than once in during my whole education so far. You provided an answer that upset the student. Were you aware that the student would be upset by such answer?  If you were, think about why you gave that answer. Was that student confrontational before? Does he ask too many questions? Were you having a bad day? Did you give such an answer just because the student asked at an inappropriate time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9653" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T19:00:48.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16278" CreationDate="2014-01-28T20:21:20.730" Score="7" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my current major (Medical Lab Science) I am not required to declare a minor at my university. However, the program's supervisor informed me that through taking all of the required courses to complete the program, I will only be one credit in chemistry away from being able to declare a chemistry minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it? Is there any real positive prospect in declaring a minor if it's not necessary, given my major?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11120" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T22:14:55.470" Title="Should I declare a minor if it is not required?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;&lt;major&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T20:32:28.547" Score="-5" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor said he will edit and submit my manuscript for me but the version he submit to the journal was full of mistakes that was not original in the manuscript that I send to him. Is there anyway that I can also be a corresponding author so I can monitor what he send to the journal? Just to clarify, I'm the first author on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T21:10:48.890" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:29:05.527" Title="Any way to prevent my advisor from destroying my publication?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16260" CreationDate="2014-01-28T20:46:20.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest going where you think you'll be happiest and do the most productive and visible research, taking into account whatever factors of these places are relevant to you.    Ultimately your chances at a faculty position will depend on the strength of your results and on your letters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages of going to a more prestigious place is that, in general, such places have a higher concentration of good mentors and collaborators.  Such factors make it easier for most people to get good results and high visibility.  But in your specific field, for your specific needs, a lower ranked department might be the better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were saying you were considering department #100 over #5 (via some standard ranking), I might suggest you consider such a choice very carefully.  However, a &quot;30s&quot; department might easily be a better choice than a &quot;top 15&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T20:46:20.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16273" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:12:43.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, my answer is a bit off-topic, but maybe still a good advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I take a look at your recent postings, I would suggest you either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your advisor about &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your concerns, in an undisturbed setting, maybe together with a third person both of you can trust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to his/her boss / dean of faculty, ... but be as objective as possible!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for an other advisor. When you opt for 3., you should reflect the whole situation and check, where you could have behaved differently in order to avoid similar situations in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit academia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I'm that off-topic is, under normal circumstances a paper submission by any co-author should be no problem and all authors have to agree on the submitted version of the paper. What you can do is retract the paper by contacting the editor of the journal. I would not do that if you opt for 1. (then your supervisor should contact the editor and tell he sent the wrong version of the paper and send a good one), but if you opt for 2.-3. you could do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:12:43.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16272" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:39:36.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not? What's the disadvantage? An afternoon of paperwork? One extra class you have to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to the advantages: Let's say you are looking for work, can't find any in your chosen field (medicine), and so begin looking to work in a chem lab. Being a &quot;medical lab science&quot; major doesn't necessarily mean you know how to do a lot of chemistry, it may just mean you know things about handling biohazards like blood carefully. A hiring manager who doesn't know your school or that program doesn't know how much or little chem is required for such a major. You can't prove you know any chem unless they ask for a transcript or you have relevant work experience. But having &quot;Minor in Chemistry&quot; on your résumé would show that. So you could potentially land a low-level chem lab job easier that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10209" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:39:36.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16235" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:42:57.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the issue with obtaining a license to visit Cuba, I would say the feasibility of a US undergrad being able to study in Cuba is quite low. International study in a third world country is difficult and Cuba presents even more problems for US citizens. US credit and debit cards do not work in Cuba. You cannot wire money to Cuba, and you cannot legally exchange US dollars for Cuban currency. Staying in approved hotels and eating at approved restaurants is very expensive. Using the black market and finding less official housing and food is difficult and I think would be beyond a typical undergrad. I think anything related to political science would be a touchy subject. Finally, Cuba is very very hot in the summer, making getting anything done difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:42:57.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16243" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:51:04.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having received these cards from many of the same institutions at Nate I speak from a lot of the same experience. There is a point I want to amplify from his answer though.  In the US it is actually illegal for this information to influence the hiring process officially (there is lots of reason to suspect that unofficial ways of using this information still have an effect). But this means that the information, if collected, must not go to the hiring committee or anywhere near it. Some electronic application systems can handle keeping this information separate, but those that can't have to be supplemented with physical cards. Institutions that still allow paper applications also must be supplemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The offices which send out and handle these cards are charged with making sure that the institution as a whole is being a Equal Opportunity Employer and complying whatever Affirmative Action requirements they are under. Once you start considering why paperwork related to legal compliance is the way it is the question gets much larger and won't always have a satisfying answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:51:04.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:56:13.023" Score="174" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I got angry, but. . how should I handle similar situations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Got angry? No good!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not necessarily paid to answer his question but you are paid to help advance knowledge and learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the tone of your answer doesn't let us know exactly how &quot;silly&quot; the question was (was it silly because it was personal question that had no bearing on the course? Was it silly because it was not relevant to the course material but possibly relevant to the overall subject? Was it silly because you had already covered the material in class? Was it silly because he was asking at the end of the lab session?) so unfortunately the exact way in which to respond might vary, but you might try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a matter of time and you can't answer it because you have to clear the room, tell him, &quot;Give me a few minutes to pack up my things to get out of the classroom.&quot; Clear the room, entertain question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a matter of you having another appointment, then get him to submit the question over email or in writing or before next class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's silly because it's not related to the lecture, I usually do my best to entertain these kinds of questions because it sometimes means the student is interested in other topics around the material. If my class is on object-oriented design and programming in Java, but the student asks me about &quot;how can you use design in procedural programming languages like C?&quot; I'd probably give some ideas on how it could apply to that situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a personal question that you don't want to answer, you can say, &quot;I don't feel comfortable answering that&quot;, &quot;It's none of your business&quot;, &quot;I can't talk about this&quot;, or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a stupid question because it's sooooo obvious or because you covered it before, then, sorry, it's not a silly question but is something the student needs explanations for. Get him to visit you over office hours for extra help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a matter of the student talking on and wasting time with questions, then you can ask the student politely to keep questions for after the class. If the student is trolling you with questions and is otherwise being a nuisance this option usually works as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is rude for him to declare &quot;You are paid to answer my questions!&quot; but it's also rude to say that &quot;Your question is silly&quot;. You are the teacher, the role model, the example, so you should be more patient with them than they are with you. Besides, if you tell them  you'll answer it later, you can simply say, &quot;Just wait - I haven't answered your question &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T03:09:31.040" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T03:09:31.040" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16272" CreationDate="2014-01-28T22:14:55.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for the minor if that one extra class is a class you think you will enjoy taking or are interested in. If there is a different class or academic extra curricular activity (research,  internship, etc.) that you'd rather do, you should do that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Double majors and minors are usually not that meaningful to employers and graduate schools as most people think, unless they are in a very unrelated field. You can always make your resume highlight the classes you took in the field most applicable for their job. Very few companies or graduate schools will care that you have a minor, especially in a field as related to medical science as chemistry. Even if taking this chemistry class prevents you from taking a different chemistry class you'd prefer to take, take the more interesting one, and then highlight the things you learned on resumes and interviews. If you'd take the class required for you minor (after reading the course description) even if this minor wasn't offered, definitely do it. However, I suppose you wouldn't have asked the question if this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I really regret taking the one extra class I did to complete my minor. It blocked me from taking a really interesting project based class in the same field. People came out of that project class with great experiences an exciting line on their resume like &quot;built ....&quot; or &quot;Developed a new theory of ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for when to declare the minor, I really see no advantage or disadvantage for doing it later vs. now. You might as well declare it now, so you don't forget, I guess. Usually no university privileges (like priority registration) are associated with having a declared minor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T22:14:55.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-28T22:35:21.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;- whether you have other volunteer experiences&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;* If your last volunteer experience was only in Boy Scout, then I wonder why you didn't get involved in other things in undergrad/grad. If you are listing a bunch of experiences, it probably doesn't hurt to include it.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;- whether this experience is related to what you are applying for&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;* If you see this being relevant to an education or outreach aspect for the position you are applying for, then perhaps it is a good idea.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you list this as part of your career achievements, I might think that you are a bit desperate (as if you don't have anything else to write about and just want to pack your CV). Not to say that this is not important, but for an academic position it is not directly relevant; if you want to include it, it should go into &quot;miscellaneous&quot; or &quot;volunteer experiences.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5988" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T22:35:21.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16188" CreationDate="2014-01-28T23:22:45.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;nagniemerg is absolutely right that at the end of the day, your results will be much more important than a name on your CV.  I think being at a prestigious institution is very useful for getting a first look at your application (which is a f***ing valuable thing, as Rod Blagojevich would say); if the rest of what's there doesn't stand up, getting that look won't help much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would think carefully about how sure you are that institution Y really will provide a better research environment.  Prestige tends to correlate (far from perfectly) with having an active department with a lot of seminars and visitors, which can often be more valuable than day-to-day contact with a single advisor.  Having higher-quality students and colleagues can make you a better researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think there's a lot to be said for the uncertainty of life.  Maybe you'll go somewhere and whoever you were going to work with will get a job somewhere else, or have a baby, or go on sabbatical.  Maybe you'll start a collaboration with someone you don't even know exists yet.  It's all very hard to predict, and on some level you have to go with your gut.  You could do a lot worse than just going with the most prestigious option, but if other factors seem to point another direction, I don't think you should just ignore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;  I wrote this is a bit of hurry last night, and I realize it might be a bit unhelpful. However, it's honestly quite difficult to say anything general, and you indicate that senior mathematicians who know you and know what your options are cannot come to a consensus.  To me this indicates that probably you will not be able to conclusively figure out where is the better choice.  This is not to say it doesn't matter, but once the uncertainties are sufficiently large, one might as well flip a coin (or at least flip a coin until you get the answer you want).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T16:12:56.110" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T16:12:56.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-28T23:42:11.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't put high school achievements on a professional CV unless it's at the level of a medal on international science olympiad or a top 10 Intel talent search finish.  I don't think Eagle scout is quite at this level.  That said, it probably won't make a big difference either way, unless your CV has enough questionable things that it looks padded (which is bad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T23:42:11.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T23:49:31.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically the student is wrong regarding the payment part. You are not paid to answer any question at any time. And I'd be more interested in how to handle impolite students/clients, if this is the case, than in the silliness of their questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I doubt that your account is accurate. At one place you claim that you have already dealt with the issue during the lecture and at another you claim it was not related. Besides that, you find it acceptable to post the reaction of the student, but do not find acceptable to disclose what question he asked, which would have been essential to know how to react towards it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question has a truly obvious answer, or if the student is truly lost, follow a Socratic approach, asking questions to make him realize how easy would have been to him to know the answer. This part is probably somehow related to your job, which is to educate people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T20:09:13.710" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T20:09:13.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12721" CreationDate="2014-01-28T23:54:57.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the title question:&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;Yes, you should include your university affiliation.&lt;/strong&gt; (Particularly important if you plan to stay in academia or go to grad school--and at this point I would advise at least keeping those options open.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yuhao Dong, Student, Department of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yuhao Dong, Candidate for BSc, Department of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly indicates &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; you have done the work, as well as specifying that you are a student rather than a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T23:54:57.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-28T23:57:18.217" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't care how smart you are or how much of a rockstar you are in your field.  You can be the most brilliant physicist on the planet, but you shouldn't be teaching PHYS 1101 if you can't convey basic information in a professional way to an &lt;em&gt;uneducated&lt;/em&gt; audience.  I emphasize &quot;uneducated&quot;, because that's what your audience is.  They don't know anything.  It's your job to turn someone who knows &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; into someone who knows &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.  That's what being a professor is about (and, by extension, what's expected of you as a TA in a teaching position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not be easy all the time to do this.  Teaching is a skill just like anything else.  Having knowledge doesn't mean having the ability to convey it effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is briefly, how to handle silly questions?  By silly, I mean questions that are unrelated to the material of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it very hard to believe that a student came up to you randomly at the end of a lecture and asked you about something that is utterly unrelated to the course work.  If you teach math, I'm fairly confident a student didn't approach you asking about the digestion mechanisms of an African elephant.  Let's say you're a TA for MATH 1101 and going over basic calculus, and they ask you a question about geometry.  To &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, who supposedly understands all of this stuff, their question may appear completely unrelated and off-topic.  But they &lt;em&gt;don't know any better&lt;/em&gt;.  If the question genuinely is outside the scope of the course, explain to them &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; that's the case.  &quot;Well, you see, quadratic formulas are actually only very loosely related to differential calculus, so your question is a bit outside of the scope of this course.  You'll learn more about that in MATH 1103.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He got upset, and he told me: &quot;You are paid to answer my questions!&quot; ... I got angry [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not unreasonable to get angry when people verbally attack you or your profession, but as a teacher in any capacity, like it or not, a big part of your job is essentially &lt;em&gt;human relations&lt;/em&gt;.  You aren't there to sit at a podium and rant about whatever your little heart desires.  You're there to &lt;em&gt;convey information&lt;/em&gt; to people.  Human beings.  Each of whom has their own ways of learning, their own things they think are important, their own philosophies, their own lives.  It's your job to actually &lt;em&gt;connect&lt;/em&gt; with them and get something you're saying into their skulls.  It's a skill of &lt;em&gt;human interaction&lt;/em&gt;.  So while you're free to experience whatever emotion you want, you must always still act in a &lt;em&gt;professional manner&lt;/em&gt; toward your students.  It's part of your responsibilities.  It doesn't matter if you think your student is a rotten turd; you degrade yourself, your department, and your entire institution by &lt;em&gt;treating&lt;/em&gt; him that way.  Again, if you don't think you can handle dealing with people on a day-to-day basis, and thus with the inevitable conflict, go back into research or leave academia entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of how to handle conflict in a professional manner: &quot;I'm sorry that you're frustrated.  I have another lecture to give right now, but why don't you come to my office hours or send me an e-mail so that we can discuss this further?  If I can't resolve your issue, you may have to go see Professor So-and-so, as he has more knowledge and experience than I do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the issue is that you've come here asking for advice and have given absolutely &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; detail about your problem except that a student asked you a question after a lecture which you thought was stupid.  So all anyone can do is conjecture and try to make assumptions based on their own experience.  If the goal of your question is genuinely to handle these kinds of situations effectively and to become a better teacher (and not just to rant about a student you dislike, as seems to be the case), how could you possibly expect to get a decent answer with the information you've provided?  How would &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; answer such a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I think we already have the answer to that; you'd just tell them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can't be serious, this is not a question!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6516" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T06:37:59.573" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T06:37:59.573" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-01-29T00:00:21.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a longer and more comprehensive CV, I would keep it. It's an achievement and it tells people who know a little about the Boy Scouts that you've learned a few things about leadership and engaged in significant community service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would put in &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; at the end with other trivia and less important tidbits. An an extra, it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; end up being a slightly positive thing for some readers. For those of that don't care, make it very clear that you don't place this among your most important achievements as a scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T00:00:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T00:00:57.127" Score="20" ViewCount="9184" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where is the money going to? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can it be that interested students pay so much, but many academic salaries are so low (excluding the obvious full professor in a field where the industry pays for getting research results, like IT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:31:47.130" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T11:32:52.477" Title="Why is college tuition high, but academic salaries low?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-01-29T00:16:01.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An increasing fraction of college budgets is being spent on things &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/education/10education.html&quot;&gt;other than instruction&lt;/a&gt;.  Administration is a big part, including management and special programs like various tutor/counseling centers, compliance officers, legal, IT, etc.  Also soaking up money are sports programs, construction costs, scholarships (to raise prestige), advertising, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T00:16:01.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T02:48:38.630" Score="3" ViewCount="2685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an undergraduate degree (B.E.) in Biomedical Engineering. Right now, I am working on a M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics and will be done pretty soon. I have very minimal research experience, and no papers published. I will be working in industry for the next year (since I didn't apply for any PhD programs this application season). However, I would like to get into a PhD program as soon as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interests are in the field of AI and Machine Learning. From the research I have done, most AI/ML research is done by Computer Science departments; so that is where I must head. What are my chances of getting into a good AI/ML program coming from a different background and no relevant research experience (although I have no direct research experience, I follow the literature and learn as much as I can on AI/ML in my free time)? What can I do to best increase my shots of getting into a top CS department known for AI (Stanford, Cornell, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of working for a year, maybe I should seek a research assistantship at an AI lab (less pay, but if it can get me into a top program then so be it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11274" LastEditorUserId="11274" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T02:56:35.530" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T02:08:19.950" Title="Chances of getting into a CS PhD program from a math/engineering background?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-29T02:58:45.740" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A student, recently, asked me at the end of a lab session, a very silly question. I say silly because:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1) it is not related to the lecture,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2) it is asked at the end of a lecture - and the class room was already full with the students of the next class, and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3) I have previously talked about this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how any of these make the question &quot;silly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) It is not related to the lecture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be a silly question if it was not related to the &lt;strong&gt;course material&lt;/strong&gt; (I once had a student ask me about my favorite flavor of Jell-O, for example), but not all questions need to be related to the &lt;strong&gt;lecture&lt;/strong&gt;. Part of teaching is synthesizing concepts. I hope you don't compartmentalize your lessons so much that you wouldn't answer a question about Lecture 3 during or after Lecture 6. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) it is asked at the end of a lecture - and the class room was already full with the students of the next class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how this makes a question &quot;silly.&quot; At worst, the timing is bad. Why not just step into the hallway and answer the question? Or, if you don't have time for that, ask the student to visit during an office hour? Or start your next lecture by answering that question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) I have previously talked about this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one is most alarming in my mind. So, you talk about an issue, and you expect every student will understand it completely, the first time through, and never ask for it to be explained a second or third time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that students can be stubborn and selfish and have a sense of entitlement. But professors can also be arrogant and condescending and not have a very good grasp of pedagogy and andragogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the case here? I believe that some standardized tests have an answer that goes something like, &quot;Not enough information given.&quot; A student telling an instructor, &quot;You are paid to answer my question!&quot; seems like a naïve view of academia, particularly if the question isn't relevant. However, your definition of a &quot;silly&quot; question leaves plenty of room for the student to be making a valid point. If the question is related to the course, then you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; answer that question – even if the room is full, and you have talked about it before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T02:58:45.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16296" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:08:30.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly if you can prove yourself in the field then you should have no problem. I would suggest reaching out to various universities and trying to prove your knowledge. For instance my math advisor has a bachelors in engineering, a masters in economics, and a phd in math. It just depends on how much you know and how much you want it. It is most definitely possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11285" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:08:30.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:13:44.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer is a combination of a few things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy student loans (as mentioned by nagniemerg in a comment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More demand from employers for higher ed degrees (because of the large, underutilized labor pool)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increasing use of adjuncts, which are paid very little (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/14729/2692&quot;&gt;see related question&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's really a combination of more customers being able to afford the product, limited competition due to high barriers of entry, along with teaching labor being cheap because it is abundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:13:44.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2014-01-29T07:24:45.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how straightforward it is to deploy, but you can use the open-source SE-like &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biostar-central&lt;/a&gt; developed at GitHub. It is used to host &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biostars.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biostars.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10726" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T07:24:45.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-01-29T07:25:06.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use an online tool at my school called Blackboard. I think they host it in house on their servers. There's a teacher - student relationship where the teacher adds students based on their login id to the course they are teaching, and students login to view content. Teachers administer content and can control everything in the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It supports (but is not limited to) quizzes and tests (timed, untimed, multiple attempts), storing downloadable files for students, message boards, wikis, and a gradebook that has all previous scores, etc. There's many more options, I've just included some of the important features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11082" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T07:25:06.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-01-29T07:48:49.120" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supply and demand. The value of something is what people are willing to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is college tuition so high?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because students will pay it anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much tuition to charge, what would you base your decision on? You would probably want to charge as high as possible, since you're trying to bring in money for your school. And you would find (as many current committees do) that you can go pretty high and still have millions of students crawl over each other for the privilege of giving you piles of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would universities lower tuition? Top schools already dismiss 20 applicants for every one they accept, despite the insane tuition cost. Clearly, either education is an inelastic service, or there is a ridiculous shortage - either way, HYP could probably charge 10 times what they do now and still have no trouble finding students. I would say that the main reason they don't is a combination of concern for their reputation and a fear of being sued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may ask why the students are willing to pay so much; but that's an involved matter which is outside of the scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are academic salaries so low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because professors will take the job anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much salary to pay, what would you base your decision on? You would pay as little as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many areas, money is the prime motivator. So, at least the top companies will pay top dollar for the best employees, because the best employees have a string of job offers lined up and you have to give them something extra to take up &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; offer over all the other. Unfortunately, it so happens that in academia, money is not a good motivator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most eminent professors are old and content and they couldn't care less if their professorship made them $75k or $85k - they'll still want to work at that one school that they like for the reputation and the work environment (like colleagues and quality of graduate students). The ones that do care about money probably have a side business that brings in huge sums of money which makes their salary look like peanuts in any case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small time professors are either terrified of being fired (if not tenured) or can't get over the conflict between their ego and their lack of recognition, so they will readily take a pay hit to work at a more desirable institution if it means they can increase their own prestige.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post-docs and other grunts will take pennies to work for a slightly more famous institution, because they think the association is vital to getting a faculty job after their post-doc. I'm sure many of them would &lt;em&gt;pay&lt;/em&gt; (if they can afford it) to work like crazy for a guy who is famous enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grad students are... Well... Grad students. The typical PhD candidate, when told that his job is essentially slavery, smiles and acts like it's a hilarious joke (&lt;em&gt;even though he acknowledges that it's true&lt;/em&gt;). Many grad students already &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; pay to work like crazy, and not even for famous people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you convince a thrice Nobel prize winner to be professor at &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; institution and not Next Door U? Pay him an extra grand every month? He's got three Nobel prizes, he doesn't care. And since he doesn't care, you might as well pay him a pittance - and as a nice bonus, you can tell all the other wannabes &quot;Look, even &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; gets paid so little! Be content with your salary!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask why professors don't care, the answer is easy: Most people who care about money realize by the time they leave college that becoming a professor is not an optimal strategy for making money. To be a &quot;greedy&quot; professor, one must essentially wake up on their 30th birthday, and suddenly decide that even though all their life they haven't cared about money at all, from now on, money will be their chief concern. People who are old enough to have earned a PhD rarely have their worldviews change overnight so drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where is the money going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Admin staff, marketing, sports. Things such as cleaning staff and building maintenance are also factors, but crucially they are less dependent on the school budget. Whereas those three mentioned areas will benefit the most from budget increases (but perversely, academic salaries will be &lt;em&gt;harmed&lt;/em&gt; the most by budget &lt;em&gt;decreases&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For details: Depends on the university, and may be determined by consulting the annual financial report of the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:53:18.950" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:53:18.950" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16521" CreationDate="2014-01-29T09:22:58.060" Score="19" ViewCount="2943" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, during some idle time in the office, a colleague of mine has discovered that I am currently ranked at position 20 worldwide by &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; for my subfield regarding the last 5 year impact. While certainly flattering, this ranking is also quite clearly bogus, as many much more eminent academics are ranked far behind me in this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Occam's razor explanation that there simply is another researcher of my name in my field can be discarded, as Microsoft Academic profile does indeed list my, and only my, publications (as well as a profile pic that they seem to have grabbed from an old university web page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is the following: &lt;strong&gt;how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings&lt;/strong&gt; (of individual academics, but there are also rankings of journals)? It seems clear that not all citations and publications are considered equal (otherwise I would not end up so far to the front with a comparatively meager set of papers and citations), but how do they decide what is &quot;worth&quot; how much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly looking for answers that refer to papers or web links coming from MS insiders  on their ranking algorithms. Barring that, some well thought-through speculation from outsiders is also ok :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just discovered that Microsoft Academic Search seems to employ the notion of a &lt;em&gt;field rating&lt;/em&gt; for conferences and journals, and the rating for some of the venues that we prefer seems to be unreasonably high. However, that still does not fully explain my curious case (and it still leaves open the question of how these field ratings are generated in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T09:38:23.117" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T17:45:27.370" Title="How does Microsoft Academic Search generate its rankings?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T12:18:54.397" Score="8" ViewCount="2269" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several questions on this site relate to a situation where someone gets several offers simultaneously: for example, see &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16188/1033&quot;&gt;How to choose between multiple math postdocs offers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.  But how does this situation arise?  In my (limited) experience, offers do not come simultaneously, and need to be replied to almost immediately (within a week or so).  For example, position A could have the application deadline 1 February, have interviews mid-February and announcements mid-March, while position B could have everything one month later.  To have two open offers at the same time seems very unlikely in a specialised field where positions are not open on a weekly basis.  Then how does this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T08:14:20.270" Title="How do people get simultaneous offers?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-29T12:38:36.727" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as a poorly titled question since the key issue is not the student's behaviour but yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever wondered why &quot;there are no silly questions&quot; is such a widespread position? It's not because there are no silly questions, we know perfectly well that there are, just as we know that there are students who will ask questions they could answer themselves if they'd simply bothered to listen and some students who are thicker than too short planks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why say &quot;there are no silly questions&quot;? Because there's a much bigger problem with students who &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; ask questions not asking those questions and thus not getting the information they need than there is with students asking silly questions. By adopting and respecting the position that &quot;there are no silly questions&quot; you help create an environment in which students feel free to ask their questions and thus create a more positive and helpful learning environment for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your student shouldn't have said that to you; but you behaved badly first and you're the one who is supposed to be a professional not them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastEditorUserId="5614" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T03:16:59.420" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T03:16:59.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:01:49.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the firstname sends a signal of casualness. If you want to signal professionalism it's not a good strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit like wearing a suit and a tie. You are sending a signal by wearing those clothes. &#xA;There are professional contexts where you have to wear a suit and a tie. If you move mainly in those contexts, firstname@ieee.org might appear for people to be too casual. But it's not strong and I doubt that it will offend anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have an email address @ieee already signals some professionalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you however move in areas where people don't wear suits and ties, firstname@ieee.org might be entirely okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:01:49.237" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:23:48.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think they happen mostly by having a relationship with the person doing the hiring. That means that the offer isn't made through a tight bureaucratic process but can be more flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many positions are never publically announced and the only way to access them is through networking. Some position will even be created to be able to hire a specific person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:23:48.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:44:04.380" Score="12" ViewCount="2033" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about college education, or more specifically, admittance into college education in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since as far as I remember, I've always heard that colleges or universities in the US have a sort of special preference for admitting people that are considered &quot;minorities&quot;. I would like to know if this is true, and if so, what it entails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I myself was born elsewhere but moved to the US at an early age, and eventually became a citizen. I don't know where this places me as far as &quot;minority&quot; programs go, if they exist. I imagine there'd be a sort of hierarchy such as scholarships &gt; minority with scholarship &gt; minority, but I really have no clue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This interests me because I am studying in a university outside the US, and I'm considering applying for a PhD program in the US. I'm aware that schools function differently, but if someone knows of this topic for a specific school it'd help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11312" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-24T03:10:14.330" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T03:10:14.330" Title="Are ethnic &quot;minorities&quot; given preference in PhD admissions in the US?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;ethnicity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:49:49.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, the answer is easy: most American math postdocs are selected on about the same schedule.  There are some variations of 4 to 6 weeks, but that still leaves plenty of room for second round offers from an early school to coincide with first round offers from schools that run later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, there's been a tendency for schools that tend to compete over people to try to race each other to making offers, so the number of simultaneous offers ends up being higher than the number of schools would suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, a one week deadline to respond seems a bit short. What I've seen is more like two, with the ability to ask for an extra week or so which is usually granted if there's a chance of another offer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just for clarity, by most I mean more than half; there's a big early cluster and then additional positions being considered for months.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:49:49.140" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16308" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:05:12.247" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a slight preference in the US for what are known as &quot;underrepresented minorities&quot;—that is, people who belong to groups who are not adequately represented in college enrollment relative to their proportion in the general population. That currently includes groups such as Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans, but not groups such as Asian-Americans. So long as someone is a citizen, it does not really matter if one was naturalized or was a &quot;born&quot; citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that quotas are used, but it can be used as a &quot;plus&quot; quality in terms of admissions and hiring decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:05:12.247" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:11:12.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a question in itself makes no sense, try to think about the motivation behind the question.  Answer the question behind the question.&#xA;Just because someone is bad at phrasing a good question doesn't mean that he's not worthy of an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are however cases when you don't want to invest the time to help a particular individual at a particular time.&#xA;In that case I would simply say: &quot;I need a moment of rest to be at my mental peak at my next lecture. If the question is important to you, come back at office hours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you don't want to answer a question at a particular time don't say: &quot;It is already late, but let me know about your question.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:11:12.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16313" CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:55:17.083" Score="5" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it considered bad practice or unethical to remove some references/citations between the initial paper submission and the final one? I submitted an 8-page conference paper, it got peer-reviewed, it got accepted, and now I have to submit the final &lt;strong&gt;6-page&lt;/strong&gt; version. In order to cut down on length, I'm thinking of removing some less important/relevant references that I included in the initial submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any general &quot;rules&quot; against that? It's an IEEE paper btw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11327" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T17:05:01.263" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T18:44:43.087" Title="Removing some citations between initial and final submission of paper" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16312" CreationDate="2014-01-29T17:08:23.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are of course entitled to add or remove parts of your paper to adhere to length and content guidelines of a conference or journal. If such changes lead to a change in the references being cited, then that is reasonable. Of course, it is also reasonable for the journal or conference to determine if the changes that you've made affect the overall quality of the paper. So it cuts both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T17:08:23.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16312" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:24:41.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every paper is written with one thing in mind: making a contribution to your field. If, by removing a citation you are impacting the quality of your contribution, then it needs to be left in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I think the section of your paper the reference is in could help you determine if it's making an impact on your contribution. If it's from the related works section, and you have plenty of related work, then no big deal - remove it. But ... if it's directly in support of your contribution, then removing it may have more impact on what your trying to accomplish, and you should find a way to keep it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11335" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T18:24:41.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16312" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:24:52.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general no major changes should be made to a paper after acceptance unless either requested by the editor or, if suggested by you, approved by the editor. There are of course trivial changes and there are major changes that can result from making removing materials in a paper. When a paper becomes accepted, it is considered ready for publication by the editor. If you then make changes to the paper (apart from correcting spelling or grammar) you need to communicate these to the editor and make a good case for why you need to make them and how you can ensure they do not alter the content and more importantly the basis for your conclusions. The reviewers have reviewed the paper with all the information included and in the worst case your paper may not have been accepted were not all of it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So making significant changes after acceptance is not to be toyed with and consulting the editor is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in your case lies, as pointed out by dgraziotin, in that you need to shorten the paper after acceptance which is normally considered too late. On the other hand, if the editor asks you to do so, then I would assume the editor will see to it that the reduction does not significantly influence any vital parts of the logic and reasoning leading to your conclusions. In such a case you will need to follow instructions, the responsibility for accepting the paper with the final revisions still lie with the editor and you have not done anything unethical or wrong. I will, however, say that the order of matters seems jumbled within the organisation of the conference peer review system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T18:24:52.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16312" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:44:43.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paper is not accepted until the editor says it is.  Having a glowing referee's report is not the same as an acceptance; at best it is &quot;provisional acceptance&quot;.  In this case, the editor wants additional changes regarding length.  If these changes can be made to the editor's satisfaction (which may include sending the revised version to referees again), only then the paper is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to do the best you can, and to address your changes in your cover letter.  Honestly, how much space do your references really take up in an 8 page paper?  Most likely you can make the cuts you need in the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T18:44:43.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16296" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:53:46.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High GRE scores open the door (quantitative reasoning and to a lesser extent analytical writing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Math / Statistics background will raise eyebrows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a portfolio of projects to show the department that you can in fact code, will get you assistantships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be pro-active but not a pest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying to a university, you might want to peruse the various web pages of faculty to see what fields they are publishing in. If you find a field that piques your interest, or that you've done some similar work in, contact the professor directly and seek advice. Be careful though. I get emails all the time with prospective students phishing for assistantships. I can tell when it's a bulk / canned email that was sent out to a ton of faculty just looking for someone to bite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with a personal tone: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello Dr. ______________ I was looking at your work on _____________ and wanted to let you know that I am very interested in this research topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably would be even better if you could tell them that you already applied to their university, but I understand that you would go broke with all the application fee's if you applied to every university that peeked your interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briefly explain what your seeking (cool research, with possible assistantship). Be patient, you might not get a fast response, if ever. These guys are busy, and probably getting a bunch of emails as well. Start early. At least a full 12 - 18 months out. This way you can narrow down your choices and not have to worry about application deadlines coming up too quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication skills can be big. If your comfortable in front of a classroom, and your english skills are good, maybe looking for a teaching assistant position could increase your chances. This does mean you won't as much research, but at least your getting your foot in the door. This will give you more opportunity to show a particular faculty member what your worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11335" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-03-22T02:08:19.950" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T02:08:19.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16381" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:11:08.987" Score="8" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently applying for one &quot;entry-level&quot; faculty position in the UK (CS). Differently from other applications I have seen, in this one they ask the applicant to address each of the items listed in a &quot;Person Specification&quot; section of the job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 15 points, ranging from simple yes/no questions (&quot;Do you have a PhD?&quot;) to more elaborate ones (&quot;Evidence of Teaching excellence&quot;). I've addressed everything I can think of in my document so far. However it is quite long, 3.5 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how long is a statement of this nature expected to be? There are no page limits that I have seen. Should I try to shorten it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11338" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T15:43:51.183" Title="Length of Supporting Statement to Faculty Position application" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16341" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:21:17.217" Score="26" ViewCount="6854" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is inspired by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16265/you-are-paid-to-answer-my-questions-how-to-handle-silly-questions&quot;&gt;other question&lt;/a&gt; about dealing with stupid questions. The popular answers all seemed to assume that the student really wants to hear an answer. While this is a reasonable assumption, and the answers are very good, they don't cover trolls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you are teaching a computer science lab and a student asks you why our noses run and our feet smell. I agree that you should act professionally no matter what the student does - but what behavior would be considered &quot;professional&quot; in such a situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T12:11:27.497" Title="How do you deal with trolling students?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:22:34.380" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://piazza.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Piazza&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool for this.  It's similar to blackboard but without the need to host in on school servers.  The interface is also very good.  It has built in emailing options and discussion forums.  You can have students submit homework from the page you make for the course on the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11279" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T19:22:34.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:51:21.093" Score="6" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering taking what should be considered a remedial math class, though is actually credit bearing at my university, so I can spend more time solving monthly problems/ studying graduate level theory on my own. Would subverting the curriculum, and reducing the problem of acquiring credit hours to a problem solved in or before middle school, be looked down upon by graduate schools? I have always heard that graduate schools only care about your math grades, only care about how much math you have studied.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T18:52:53.223" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T15:44:16.293" Title="Is it advisable to take trivial classes to better focus on independent study?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16323" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:06:30.383" Score="2" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have honorary degrees ever been conferred on someone lacking a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T20:10:18.467" Title="Are Honorary Degrees Awarded to Those Lacking PhDs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16322" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:10:18.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;all the time. Honorary degrees have been awarded to popstars, athletes, etc. &#xA;See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_degree&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3966" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T20:10:18.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:55:34.100" Score="4" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a research project for a class. It was a simple idea but I checked literature and no one had applied that method  to that problem before. My method uses a bit of heuristic type stuff. If no one thought of it before is it because it is a bad method or should I publish? Having the name of my instructor is a problem; must it always be on a paper? What if I am instructed not to publish? My instructor is quite busy  and has no intention to deal with the issue and does not read projects so I can't really rely on him to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to send it to a conference as the quality of it would not be very high. Should I wait until I have improved my skills for publishing in a respected conference or try to make it published at some other place, like 1st, 2nd 3rd IEEE on foobar of foos type conferences as a starter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11347" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T18:08:37.813" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T18:08:37.813" Title="Publishing a work; not sure what should I do" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:27:51.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should ask someone famliliar with the field whether it is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;really unpublished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good idea. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes ideas are very old and might be published in books which are not available online, and therefor harder to find. Or you might have used the wrong terms for your search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after that you still think it is a unique and useful idea, you should try to publish it. The &quot;useful&quot; is important here, sometimes people are publishing new stuff which noone applied to the problem before just because it makes little sense with regards to the big picture of the discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your instructor did contribute to the paper and the research, then it should be on the paper unless he declares it is not necessary. I would ask my student to come with a paper outline first (so you could approach your instructor with a clear plan of the publication), we improve the sketch and then the studet writes the first draft which I as a supervisor try to bring it in a form which suits the standards of the respective conference or journal. Usually, this involves some feedback rounds and includes additional scientific discussion etc. . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your OP I got the impression your instructor might not be willing to put much effort in it, but sometimes people when they see someone is willing to go an extra mile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on your own, try to read some books about scientific writing, there are lots of formal errors which can be easily avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I definitely encourage you to try to publish, it is a good experience and, if successful, is great for your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:27:51.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16321" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:38:58.933" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you are talking about applying to graduate programs in mathematics, rather than in other disciplines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take remedial courses so that you can focus on &quot;graduate level theory&quot; on your own seems like a spectacularly &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt; idea. Why would a grad school take someone whose transcript shows remedial courses instead of accomplishments in upper-level undergraduate and graduate coursework? It also weakens your overall transcript in the process, since the remedial course will stick out like a sore thumb. Moreover, without some mechanism for documenting the work that you've done on your own, you won't easily be able to convince an admissions committee that you've &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; done the work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do graduate-level work, just take the graduate-level courses corresponding to what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:38:58.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:43:04.583" Score="3" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was enrolled in a PhD program within an experimental topic (experimental physics), but 6 months in the project I had a talk with my supervisor: I was not satisfied with the lack of theoretical work (at my interview we had decided that there should/would be some).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few meetings followed, where we concluded that it would not be realistic to do any major theoretical work at all. Together with my supervisor we decided that it was best for me to stop my PhD-program and he encouraged me to enroll for a new one in theoretical physics, such that I didn't waste 3 years of my life doing something I would regret. He wrote a recommendation letter for me and I got accepted into a theoretical program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is my problem&lt;/strong&gt;: I now have to write a short statement now on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I have discontinued my former topic and started a new one. However, I am worried that it might sound as if I stopped due to conflicts/disagreements with my supervisor, which was not the case at all. Quite the contrary, he was very helpful through the whole process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be interpreted as such if I write something along the lines of &quot;&lt;em&gt;former project could not accomodate my theoretical ambitions&lt;/em&gt;&quot;? How should I tackle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:56:36.190" Title="Explaining change in PhD project" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16327" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:56:36.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just be direct and honest: you wanted to do more theoretical work in your project and, as you said, you &lt;em&gt;mutually&lt;/em&gt; decided a different project and program was in your best interests. There's no reason to try to hide the fact, and mention that your former advisor was fully aware of and supportive of your request. That should satisfy any concerns that you're doing it because you didn't get along with your advisor or because your project failed or anything like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:56:36.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16296" CreationDate="2014-01-29T22:02:05.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terry has a great answer, so I'll just add a bit more...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest hurdles are your math, logic, and coding skills.  If you can prove you have these, then you'll be in good shape.  CS, on a theoretical level, is far less coding than you might think.  I had professors in CS who didn't even have computers in their office, and made a point to never use/require computers in the classroom.  Simply put, there's a lot of thinking, work, and research to be done on paper before you even attempt to program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, since you're into AI, that means you'll need to code quite a bit.  I don't know how much you know about AI, but I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach&lt;/a&gt; which, in my experience, is the de-facto entry to AI in academia.  It's usually split between two courses, sometimes one of which is undergrad, and the other grad level.  It has used various languages over the years, but the two most notable ones are Lisp, which deals with list comprehensions, and Java, which is a typical Object-Oriented language.  Having experience in both would be very beneficial for you on your CV as well as when you actually start working/researching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11349" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T22:02:05.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16336" CreationDate="2014-01-29T22:46:55.367" Score="11" ViewCount="1195" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation is thus: my institution allows professors to buy out of teaching a class.  This semester, my advisor has done so and as a result they needed someone to fill in.  After discussion with my advisor, I applied for the position to gain teaching experience (having had none previously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus far, teaching the class has gone smoothly but our department has a huge waitlist problem.  When I originally applied for the position, the class had 40 spots.  Later, without my input, it was increased to 60, and there were still over 50 people on the waitlist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to the class starting, my advisor attempted to get the department chair to increase the class size to 90 so that more waitlisted people could get in.  However, the chair responded by saying that the department felt that it was important for graduate students, particularly in their first attempt at teaching, to have a good experience, so they didn't want to increase the class size so drastically without my approval.  I responded telling them that I didn't feel comfortable taking on so many students when I hadn't taught before and the issue was dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the second week of classes, my advisor is again pressuring me to admit any waitlisted students that would like to take the course, increasing the class size to 70+.  I've told him several times that I am not comfortable with this and thought the issue was closed.  However, one of the waitlisted students has gone directly to my advisor and now he's specifically telling me to admit this student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it stands, I currently have 62 students in a 60 person class and I understand that taking on one extra student is technically not a big deal.  However, I feel uncomfortable for several reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It feels like I'm rewarding bad behavior (e.g., the student going to my advisor and forcing entrance into the class)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I admit this student for going to my advisor, I am concerned that every other student on the waitlist will go to my advisor and I'll get similar e-mails about all of them and suddenly my class size will be 70+ students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, I don't have to admit this student, but that would be going directly against what my advisor is telling me to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the long term, how much control should my advisor have over my class?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the short term, should I admit this waitlisted student?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:44:52.253" Title="Teaching a class because advisor bought out and advisor input" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2014-01-29T23:28:00.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In American sociology, hiring usually happens during the fall and winter months (although the 2nd tier market goes on to the Spring, which is a bit different from the fall/winter markets). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During these months, candidates (PhD Candidates, postdocs, VAPs, lecturers) send out applications for academic positions, usually in large numbers due to the high level of uncertainty and cut throat nature of the market-- Most positions get around 200+ applications (one postdoc competition I applied to last year was interdisciplinary social science and received 780 applications!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied to about 30 jobs this season, which number is actually considered pretty low (I am in a pretty niche field) and I personally know other people who have applied to nearly 100 positions. The fact is, candidates have limited information regarding the hiring (what the department is &quot;actually&quot; looking for- because many things are not noted in the vague job descriptions), and it is believed that, getting an interview, is not only the workings of credentials and qualifications, but also largely due to &quot;fluke.&quot; To up the chance, many people apply widely and in large numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, many candidates do not get anything after months of putting in applications, and a few lucky ones can get multiple interviews, offers, and so forth (interestingly, I find that probability of getting interviews does not correlate too much with publication records either, except for the absolutely top tier market). It is completely possible to have multiple offers and when you do, it definitely gives you more bargaining power in negotiating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T23:28:00.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2014-01-29T23:33:23.807" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You are paid to answer my questions!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, you are paid to do something rather more subtle than that. You see, contrary to common belief, the students are not your customers. Or at least they are not your only customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are paid to help students to learn &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to evaluate that learning and certify it as acceptable &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if it meets certain standards (which are set by the customs of your discipline and the expectations of people who will be looking at the credentials that the school does issue and are enforced by the accreditation agencies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So answering their questions is a part of your job, but so is knowing which question are meaningful or helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of which really illuminates what you should do when confronted by this student, but it does provide a better framework for understanding your job than the one suggested by the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T23:38:27.580" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T23:38:27.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16345" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:35:27.833" Score="31" ViewCount="21335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have one official first name which appears on my ID card. I have another first name which friends call me by. Is it possible to use my unofficial first name and official family name to publish scientific papers? How can I prove to someone that I am one of the authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11374" OwnerDisplayName="yashar" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T14:34:02.467" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T11:41:42.970" Title="Choosing my name as an author when publishing a scientific paper, can I use my &quot;unofficial&quot; first name?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2014-01-30T00:17:15.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In faculty hiring, it's not uncommon for the following sequence of events to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate interviews at University A and University B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometime later, University A starts making noises about making an offer (usually over email and on phone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate puts out feelers to University B, hinting that if they were thinking of making an offer, now might be a good time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University B makes offer (email/phone) to candidate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Much negotiating merriment ensues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;.....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Profit (for candidate at least)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, there might even be more than two players involved in the bidding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the candidate can trigger multiple offers if they play their cards right. Or it can happen by fortuitous timing. But the approach described above is quite common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T00:17:15.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16330" CreationDate="2014-01-30T00:23:32.820" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the long term, how much control should my advisor have over my class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None, for the duration of this instance. The advisor bought out. You're in charge. End of story. Now you might need some help in standing up to your advisor, and you need to bring in the chair of the department (who's already shown a willingness to help) and/or other senior faculty who manage curriculum activities. Don't do it confrontationally: merely say that you're really uncomfortable expanding the class size and don't feel like it's right to selectively admit students who have access to your advisor, but that you'd feel more comfortable with a faculty intermediary to help mediate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the short term, should I admit this waitlisted student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. you're right that this is both setting a bad precedent as well as being unfair. Again, as for how to proceed, see above. You haven't indicated exactly how the advisor is pressuring you, but I think it's fair to point out to them that this undermines your authority as the teacher, and you really need to maintain your independence because you're &quot;only a student&quot;. Anyone with teaching experience should understand the importance of establishing authority and presence in the classroom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T00:23:32.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16308" CreationDate="2014-01-30T00:37:45.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since as far as I remember, I've always heard that colleges or universities in the US have a sort of special preference for admitting people that are considered &quot;minorities&quot;. I would like to know if this is true, and if so, what it entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's sometimes but not always true, and at schools where it is true, the definition of the preferred groups varies. For example, in 1996 Californians passed Proposition 209, which, among other things, requires public schools to have admissions policies that are blind with respect to race, sex, and ethnicity. So, for example, UC Berkeley is not supposed to give preferences for admission to an African-American applicant, but Stanford can (and probably does). It would be up to Stanford to define their preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many private schools have some admissions policies that, considered by themselves, would tend to &lt;em&gt;exclude&lt;/em&gt; disadvantaged students. For example, MIT has need-blind admissions, but RPI isn't need-blind and doesn't have a policy of meeting full demonstrated need. This would tend to reduce access to RPI for students who come from working-class families. Many private schools have a practice called &quot;legacy preferences,&quot; which means that they are more likely to admit the children of alumni; for example, George W. Bush would have benefited from such a policy when he applied to Yale. One of the original purposes of legacy preferences was to exclude Jews. Being Asian is probably a disadvantage in college admissions. A 2004 study by Espenshade et al. puts the admissions penalty for Asians at the equivalent of about -50 on a the old 1600-point SAT scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At places like California public universities where there is no longer affirmative action, politicians and administrators have invented a number of ways of trying to preserve &quot;diversity.&quot; For example, a certain number of spots are reserved for students who rank high in their high school's graduating class, even if the school's academic standards and offerings are weak. Admissions officers are said to look for whether the student has taken the most challenging curriculum offered at their high school, so, e.g., a student at an elite public high school that has an IB program could be at a disadvantage if s/he didn't do IB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T00:37:45.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16330" CreationDate="2014-01-30T01:05:51.220" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are the captain of that ship. You must never forget this, nor should you ever let anyone else forget this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have issues with being asked for special things like this and I generally refuse, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The school naturally wants larger class sizes because it means more revenue with less expenses (more students per teacher)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The larger the class, the more classroom management work there is to be done which limits the energy I can dedicate to conveying the points I'm trying to convey, which in turn lowers the quality of the experience for my students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I not a fan of using your power just to show you have power, I do suggest, especially when you are just starting teaching, that you start small and work your way up...and that you push back when others, including your adviser, are trying to get you to do something you are uncomfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first semester is always the hardest (my first semester showed me everything I thought about the right way to teach was wrong). You must also set the tone about who is in charge and when it comes to your classroom, you are. You should not admit anyone beyond what you think you can handle and I think a class of 60 is plenty for your first semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When negotiating issues like this with your adviser, you must be able to speak from experience. You will have that next semester. For now, stand strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T01:05:51.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16364" CreationDate="2014-01-30T01:08:19.633" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've been offered a job at a company specializing in my field of study. However, one of the things they ask is that I take one less course, so that I can spend more time working for them. This makes me hesitate,  as I feel someone looking at my transcripts may take my less full schedule to be a product of laziness. In your experience (as I am sure my situation is not unique), does this come across the wrong way? It seems like academic institutions in general seem to prefer that you take as many classes as possible. &lt;strong&gt;Is real work experience more valuable (to admissions officers, in my case) than just taking more classes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11356" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T18:09:19.427" Title="Is job experience more valuable than taking more courses?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16319" CreationDate="2014-01-30T01:53:18.593" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't One Right Way, any more than there is one right way to teach or manage a class room as a whole. I've most taken note of a few styles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Old-school&quot; academic style. They state clearly in the rules/syllabus they will treat everyone professionally, with respect, and they expect the same from all students. They will be more than happy to call you out, right then and there, for inappropriate behavior, and they will call a spade a spade without hesitation. They will, if necessary, be so clear and blunt that it will make you cringe, and if the person will not take direction then they will be shown the door - no one is required to be in their class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Humorist. My dad always use to say, &quot;ask a silly question, get a silly answer.&quot; Sometimes its just a fun invitation for a little ad lib comedy. Real smart asses find, if they push it too far, they will quickly end up the focus of the joke in a rather uncomfortable way (some people's version of humor gets very cutting in a hurry). These sorts tend to deal with such people like comics deal with hecklers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Redirection - judo master. This sort of style will take any question, no matter how assinine, and turn it into a good question that relates to the task at hand. &quot;Why do feet smell? Well, neurobiologists studying sensation often utilize specialized applications of neural networks to improve their understanding, but first we'll need to have a good hold on the fundamentals - which brings me to the next slide on genetic algorithms...any other questions on this slide before we continue?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sweet and simple, KISS. This style would just say, &quot;that's not within the scope of this class, or course. Any other questions about this slide/class/topic?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tangential. Maybe you just have extra time or enjoy talking about what they asked about. It has nothing to do with the course, or maybe even anything important, but go ahead and answer the question fully, in depth, with citations, if you know it. Go nuts. Have fun with it, and sometimes you can over-load them with so much knowledge and facts about something they didn't actually care about that they will simply reply with a nod and feel sorry they asked. I'm sufficiently good with this that someone once remarked, &quot;never trifle with someone who has a vastly longer attention span than you do.&quot; But obviously you'd better not be pressed for time!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Troll right back (thanks to Shion). Tell them you'll be happy to cover his question next class if he'd like, you think it would make some nice variety to add to the mid-term and comprehensive final. Tell the student you aren't sure of the answer, but you love to learn something new every semester - why don't they look up the answer and prepare a 5-10 minute presentation? You'll even give them a bonus point! You can ask them to email you after class if they'd be interested in the bonus point. If they take you up on it, schedule it for an office hour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, most of the time you just really must assume good intent, because otherwise you will - especially if you are not in a fantastic mood - bite someone who genuinely wasn't trying to be unpleasant, or just wanted to be a touch playful. &lt;strong&gt;Anything you do to that student will ring much more loudly in the ears of the other students than the one you are addressing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be careful to promote a positive environment that encourages other students, rather than one that gets locked in on the one wise-acre who might just be playing a clown for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T14:24:11.483" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T14:24:11.483" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16319" CreationDate="2014-01-30T02:31:02.723" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a student asks you why our noses run and our feet smell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question. Please ask the experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; answer I'll provide. Professional in the sense that I only say what I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful if you try to use some sense of humor to answer those questions. You can easily step out of boundry. In particular, the two examples you have may have something to do with health/privacy issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student keeps asking this kind of questions, you'll know he has other reasons to do so (such as another student has running nose or came to classroom with bare foot). Talk to the student privately or take it to your superiors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received comments about part of my answer &quot;Please ask the experts&quot;. I'll explain. I am recommending to pretend the trolling question is a serious one. I cannot guess what trolling questions the OP was asked. There are many possibilities. Many trolling questions are of personal type. I give an example here. A young male handsome prof. teaches in a college. He is asked all kinds of questions every new semester. The most frequent one is &quot;Professor, when are you going to get married?&quot; The prof. always replied &quot;Sorry, I don't know the answer. You need to ask my fiancee.&quot; In this case, the expert is his fiancee. You can use other serious ways to answer the trolling question. The point is to be &lt;strong&gt;serious (or jokingly serious if you can)&lt;/strong&gt; about it so that the troller won't be able to continue the trolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T06:16:16.770" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T06:16:16.770" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16330" CreationDate="2014-01-30T02:54:52.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poor thing... Well, I am not going to teach you to say no because after all he is your adviser and you probably don't want to directly upset him over this teaching fiasco. However, I can provide some tips to be less miserable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;refocus&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't just look at the enrollment, &lt;strong&gt;look at your mode of teaching&lt;/strong&gt;. Some teaching methods, when passing a certain number of students, do not change dramatically even the number of students keeps increasing. For class size less than 20 there may be more group work, interactive discussion... but once it passes 60, upping to 70 should not make you revise the syllabus to any considerable extent. Doing this favor can buy you some brownie points from the department and dean, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, once you're over that class size phobia, &lt;strong&gt;use your position to negotiate&lt;/strong&gt;. Ask for a pay increase, if the payment is fixed, ask for a couple extra TAs, if there isn't any, ask for a copy of new software, a few books on teaching and engaging students (those suckers are expensive,) a laptop, a set of whiteboard pens, a plane ticket to an upcoming conference, parking reimbursement, publication fee, journal subscription... whatever you can think of. (I actually was in a similar situation once and I got a conference + hotel + air fare paid for.) Get the most support out of it and &lt;strong&gt;don't be shy! Your department needs you and it will do fair things to keep you a happy teacher&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, &lt;strong&gt;stop over induction&lt;/strong&gt;. Just because you allowed your adviser to send k more student can never imply he can send k + 1. You're trapped in your little logic maze. &lt;strong&gt;Counter offer&lt;/strong&gt; him sincerely. Tell him that you really appreciate the student's desire to join, and you can up the quota, but in turn make your adviser promise making no more of such exception because &lt;strong&gt;the students will be very confused of who is actually in charge, and that will not go well along the semester&lt;/strong&gt;. He, besides being a jerk, may just be excited that people actually want to learn a subject that he loves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, &lt;strong&gt;learn to deflect&lt;/strong&gt;. You can often find a pivotal point to transfer the conflict between you and your supervisor to between someone else and your supervisor. For instance, tell him that you'll think about the 2 extra students, but don't inform the students yet. That way the students will not start broadcasting the trick. Respond yes to the registrar at 4:50 pm of the due date of the add/drop period. Want more in? Your supervisor will have to talk to the registrar, who already seems to be on the side of keeping the size manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, excrement like this happens in academia on an hourly base. When you are at the lower end of an intricate power ladder, try to compensate, balance, and leverage. Having taught a big class is a good experience, and judging by the popularity I think the students will be motivated. Do get the most fun out of it, and best wishes to your first course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Response to comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Negotiations don't normally work once the semester has already&#xA;  started. You cannot reasonably expect to get extra teaching staff&#xA;  support after the allocations process is complete and courses are&#xA;  underway. That's one of the reasons for having registration limits in&#xA;  the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this comment &lt;strong&gt;further highlights how self-imposed rigidity can limit our options&lt;/strong&gt;. First, just because I said TA doesn't mean I won't take a grader, I will even just take a couple more people to move chairs and tables, why not? It depends on OP's needs and I merely provided some examples. Second, tertiary institutions operate in so many different forms and traditions that if we have seen one academic department, we probably have just seen one academic department. Perhaps in our department it won't work, perhaps in OP's it does. I have only worked in two institutions, and this negotiation mechanisms worked in both of them. Once, as I have said, sponsored a conference trip. Another allowed me to up the food budget so that I can have two nights of presentation with refreshment and gave me US$350 budget for course-related expenditure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point, to me, is not if the class has started or not. It's the &lt;strong&gt;OP still has power to say no&lt;/strong&gt;. As long as that is in effect, some form of negotiation should be able to take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T13:44:52.253" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:44:52.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2014-01-30T03:21:50.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since no answers are supposed to be opinion base on this site, this answer comes with a warning: the following is my opinion. Take it for whatever you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the above answers seem to be aimed towards quitting, either because they think that's what you should do or they've decided that's what you're going to do (it seems this way to me anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word of advice from a fellow PhD student: &lt;strong&gt;Do not quit&lt;/strong&gt;. Irrespective of how much you're enjoying your PhD, it's a qualification of your ability to research and approach a problem. Not the specific subject matter. Yes it shows you have a depth of knowledge in the specific subject of your PhD, but it's also used as a proof of your capacity for research. I'm a lowly PhD student as yourself, so this advice isn't coming from me. I've spoken to a few lecturers at different university before starting my PhD (and since) and this was the consensus. A final reason to stick with it is the human factor. As other answers have said, you &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be turned down for future research positions just because you left this one - you shouldn't, but you may be. The Lecturer who's managing the future PhD is going to want to fill the position with someone who will fulfil the job. They may not say they'll turn you down because you've left a PhD before but it will be part of the consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11359" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T03:21:50.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T03:46:24.880" Score="0" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to incompatibility with my current advisor, I am currently looking for other advisor on his back. Any advice? I am so scared that what if he discovers that I'm looking around. Now I have tried to set up new email account so I can deny everything if things get ugly. Any people have the same experience, can you share your trick with me please? It is pretty much a very dangerous covert mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="10694" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T03:53:26.763" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T22:53:01.020" Title="Look for a second advisor while on the first, any advice?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16333" CreationDate="2014-01-30T04:03:04.630" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the field, and in particular on the venue in which you are publishing. It's possible that some journals and conferences might have policies about this, which would of course override anything you read here. But in general: nobody checks (or cares) whether the name you put on a published paper matches your official name. So if you use an informal variant of your name, e.g. if your name is &quot;Stephen&quot; but you publish as &quot;Steve&quot;, nobody will bat an eyelid. If you use a nickname or publish under a pseudonym, it would be a little odd if the nickname is something that sounds very informal, but still, it probably won't cause problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What people do care about is building a record of your work, and putting a face to the name if they know your face. So you should (1) be consistent with the name you use to publish, and (2) make sure other people in the field know that it refers to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T04:03:04.630" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16346" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T05:07:30.313" Score="17" ViewCount="3218" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main troubles in my academic experience can be summarized in two popular (if somewhat cheesy) sayings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Careful what you wish for&quot; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;With great power comes great responsibility&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout my high school and undergraduate education I kept (naively, I now reckon) chasing the dream of ultimate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1436&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;academic freedom&lt;/a&gt;, where I would be able to study freely and learn at will, unencumbered by artificial constraints like scheduled classes, deadlines, curricula, etc. So I went after it, first getting a master's and now a pursuing PhD, but now that the classes and assignments are finally over, I find myself &lt;em&gt;unable to handle the freedom I wished for&lt;/em&gt;. It wasn't even a sudden change: at each step, as the external support/control structures grew thinner, I had to rely more and more in self-discipline, but I failed to recognize my ineptitude on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'll be the first to admit that this issue isn't new or unique (indeed, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2219/1348&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5786/1348&quot;&gt;most&lt;/a&gt; voted questions on this site deal with this kind of problem), but here's why I'm &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; asking this question: &lt;strong&gt;what I'm aiming for isn't tools or best practices&lt;/strong&gt;; &#xA;todo lists, well-defined schedules, website blockers, I've tried pretty much all of those, and I've also read a lot about procrastination, motivation, flow, etc. I've been battling these issues for several years now, and I've been through this cycle many times, attempting new tools and techniques that work for a while, only to find myself back in a self-defeating loop of procrastination. I recently decided to seek psychological counseling precisely because I recognized I wasn't able to deal with this alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I recognize my dependence on a structured environment to be productive, but also (due to attempting and failing many times) my inability to create and maintain such external structures. I'm therefore looking for strategies to improve my ability to motivate myself to actually follow the rules I try to impose on myself. So rather than creating friction in trying to control my behavior, &lt;strong&gt;I'm seeking strategies that make it the &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;path of least resistance&lt;/a&gt; to be productive and organized.&lt;/strong&gt; My hopes, since all else has failed so far, is to use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_it_till_you_make_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fake it till you make it&lt;/a&gt; approach to eventually become an actual organized and self-disciplined person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have suppressed all sorts of notifications (a common advice), and don't keep my email or any such pages open in the background, to minimize the chance of interruptions. I also changed the chair in my desk to one that makes it less easy to slouch, based on the principle that &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=h7NewH-XWgUC&amp;amp;pg=PA82&amp;amp;dq=&amp;quot;where+our+bodies+go,+our+minds+will+follow&amp;quot;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;body posture affects mental state&lt;/a&gt;. Setting defaults such as these essentially &quot;outsources&quot; decisions I would otherwise have to make consciously, thus depleting my willpower. I also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://beeminder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beeminder&lt;/a&gt; to &quot;outsource motivation&quot;, but it doesn't fit perfectly to every case. I'm interested in hearing how others dealt with the need to gradually develop the ability to self-regulate, particularly in the context of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I think my question was a little more pessimistic than it should (and definitely too verbose, sorry!). To be clear, my previous attempts &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; lead to some long-term improvement, but in a rather slow, two-steps-forward-one-step-backward kind of way. &lt;strong&gt;I'm not claiming those techniques don't work&lt;/strong&gt;, but I believe it would be useful for many people to have a compiled list of environmental changes that &quot;outsource&quot; the need to make small decisions that otherwise have to be made each time, since most productivity advice focuses on the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1348" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2020-12-04T03:49:51.760" Title="Strategies to strengthen self-discipline as a PhD student" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16344" CreationDate="2014-01-30T05:31:45.353" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see anything dangerous or necessarily covert about looking for another advisor, and I'm puzzled by things like using a new e-mail account you can deny was yours.  (Are you planning to make contact under a fake name?  Pretend someone was impersonating you if your current advisor finds out?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be nearly so worried.  It's completely reasonable to switch advisors, and I know plenty of people who have done it without any trouble at all.  You don't owe your current advisor anything, and there are no good grounds for anyone to object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you could cause offense if you are tactless.  Don't tell your advisor &quot;I'm switching because I'd prefer a competent advisor.&quot;  But there are plenty of reasonable excuses.  For example, you could say your interests are developing in ways that are a better fit for an advisor with a somewhat different specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fair or not, your advisor is probably not happy to be working with you either and may actually be relieved when you switch.  In comments on other questions you have expressed a fear that your advisor will badmouth you to other potential advisors.  That's possible, but you could also run into the opposite phenomenon: sometimes an advisor who is frustrated with a student will try to convince other faculty to take on the role of advisor, since then the student will be someone else's problem.  (The less cynical version is that the student may get along better with an advisor with a different personality.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend keeping two things in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You seem very interested in criticizing your advisor.  Now is not a good time for that, whether it's addressed to your advisor or to a potential replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You seem worried that you are doing something underhanded.  If you act nervous and suspicious, people may suspect you are up to no good.  Looking for a new advisor is not doing anything wrong, and you may get a better reaction if you treat it straightforwardly and calmly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T05:31:45.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16346" CreationDate="2014-01-30T05:46:50.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished High School and I'm about to start University. I had a similar problem when studying for my final exams. This really helped me so take it or leave it, here's what helped for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't commit to doing huge mountains of work, you will only find procrastinating easier. Only plan to do a small bit and if you don't get into the rhythm of things then that's all you have to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Go for a jog/run. I would go at a regular pace until I really wanted to stop, then I would go just a bit more, to the post ahead, then to the next post and so on, forcing myself to keep going. Then, with the same attitude in mind, I would study just doing one more paragraph, and the next, and so on. Little Victories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Remember: Every time you fail or feel like stopping, somebody else just gave up and each time you keep on trying, you do better and better than the people who gave up when you didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11363" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T05:46:50.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16350" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T06:26:42.657" Score="1" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computer engineering undergrad (from Asia) and now trying to pursue my graduate studies in bioinformatics (in US). I have quite a strong programming skills and now more than one year of experience too. Since I do not have a strong background of biology, is it good to choose that field? Also, I have been doing some research to get any assistantship (have applied to few colleges) but could not start a communication with the professors. How should I approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be great to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11366" LastEditorUserId="11366" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T03:01:23.833" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T16:06:30.883" Title="Undergraduate in Computer science and now graduate in Bioinformatics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T06:32:21.750" Score="6" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student studying wireless networks/telecommunications, and I have developed a set of lab exercises related to the field. We have used them with &gt; 100 students so far in B.S. and M.S. classes on computer networks, wireless networks, and wireless communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the first few cohorts, I asked them to rate each exercise with respect to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overall rating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;difficulty of lab exercise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how interesting the material was&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experiment design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and to rate self on knowledge of topic before and after the lab. I also ask for general open-ended feedback (&quot;How can we improve this exercise?&quot; &quot;Any other comments?&quot;) and recently introduced automated systems to measure exactly what students are doing in the lab. This gave me a general sense of which exercises were interesting to students, and which they thought were useful. Now I am looking for a way to evaluate how effective the labs are at educating students - not just their popularity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been doing some reading in CS education research (although education research is not my field, so I can't devote too much time to getting up to speed on all the methodology), but I haven't come across a study design that I think would be a good fit for my scenario. I am under some constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not the instructor for the class. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I just run the lab exercises via a website. I don't meet the students in person. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't have the ability to set up a &quot;control group&quot; by offering one section of the course with the lab and one section without. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't ask my students to do a lot of work that is only for purposes of methodology assessment (e.g. I can have them fill out a short pre-class survey, but not much more then that). I can ask them to do some things that are also learning assessments (like quizzes on the lab topic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given these constraints, how can I effectively evaluate the educational tools I've developed? (specifically, learn whether they actually improve students' understanding of the course material)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to a comparable cohort from one year to the next, or between two sections. In the end, I came up with a set of questions that I think will help evaluate the exercises, even across only one group of students, all of whom are participating in the lab; I describe this in my own answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T22:12:12.937" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T07:16:58.950" Title="Evaluate the effectiveness of a set of CS lab exercises for education" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T06:47:44.173" Score="16" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to post an repository on github that includes data and analysis code in R. The analysis and data forms part of a journal article submission. I'm happy for people to view the code and data prior to publication (in particular, it might be an easy way for reviewers to examine the code). However, I do not want anyone publishing  analyses of the data prior to acceptance and publication of the journal article. After publication, I want to encourage people to re-analyse, re-use, re-publish (e.g., with a GPL licence with an encouragement to attribute).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I could just keep the data and analysis code a secret until after publication, but I thought an appropriately worded licence might be more appropriate. I thought about just writing in plain English that the work is copyrighted at this time, and will be converted to GPL at a later date following publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a standard way of licensing data and code so that people cannot republish the data and code until the corresponding publication has been published?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or is it better just to keep the data and code secret until after publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I suppose there is a legal perspective to this, but I know that academia has its own norms and conventions regarding attribution and respecting the wishes of authors. So I'd be particularly interested in answers framed in that context. I.e., My broader aim is to be the first to publish my own research, generally get attribution, but also allow others to build on that work. So I'd be interested also in what is considered good practice when you are in the situation of wanting to share data and code while an article is being peer reviewed, but not wanting to lose your right of first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T08:31:42.080" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T22:08:31.463" Title="Licence that converts to GPL after publication but is copyrighted prior to publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-30T07:17:56.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A1 :  The legal department at your university or company should be able to help you out with this type of request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A2 : This depends on the journal to which you are submitting.  Read their rules on copyright of submitted software and publication beforehand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other comments / ideas : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have software freely available that I have submitted to a journal before publication (although, this may not have been the best idea) and software that is also ready and that I use that I could make freely available, but have not as of yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative would be to say that interested parties may email you for access to the code before publication happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could always publish the data (or paper explaining the data) on a pre-print server so that you cannot be scooped and then also publish the corresponding code.  This will outline clear dates as to who published the research first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T07:17:56.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2014-01-30T08:14:20.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you believe in the &quot;element of luck?&quot; Many people say that if you have this, you'll be able to achieve your life's goals in easier means as compared to others. And relating this to your question, those who receive simultaneous offers are probably &quot;lucky&quot; at that particular point in time. Unfortunate are those who really work hard but are not given such opportunity. Anyway, according to successful people especially those involved in real estate business, &quot;persistence pays&quot; - so never stop chasing what you truly deserve! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11372" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T08:14:20.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-30T08:18:03.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You write that you &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;do not want anyone publishing analyses of the data prior to acceptance and publication of the journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but I don't think there's any license to enforce that. Once you publish data, other people are free to work with that data, and publish their analyses (although they might not be able to republish the original data, at least not in the same format as you did). As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Scope&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; writes, copyright does not cover information itself, it just protects the way that it is presented, or the verbatim description. If you want to prevent others from publishing analyses of your data, I think the safest way is to keep the data confidential until you publish your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you don't put a license on the data, you have whatever copyright protects there, so others will not be allowed to re-publish the data in the same format. Therefore, I think the risk that others publish an ernest journal based on your data is not that high, unless it's really spectacular data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code is a different issue of course. You hold copyright on that, and if you don't put a license on it, others won't be allowed to republish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T08:18:03.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-30T08:41:11.200" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I doubt that copyright protection is of any use. The copyright on the code itself does not&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; extend to data produced using the code. Similarly, the copyright you would hold on the paper submission covers&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; that particular presentation of the data, but not the data itself. So as long as someone is physically able to view your data, I believe there is no &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; avenue to prohibit them from doing their own analysis on their data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for another researcher to take the output of your code and perform their own analysis in an attempt to scoop you, when they know you have your own paper doing the same analysis pending, is ethically very questionable. If it came to light that something like this happened, I think the academic community would strongly frown on it. That's a very strong incentive for any other researcher not to do this, and so I personally wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, if it does happen, the other researcher will have to cite your code anyway so you still get credit. This can actually be a good thing. I would recommend including in your code a notice of the form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please cite the following reference if you use the results of this code in a publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[reference to paper or code]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(see &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/diazona/SOLO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt; from my own publication history) If you're worried about someone else abandoning all pretense of ethics and just using your results without citing them, rest assured that it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; difficult to pull that off, and it constitutes academic fraud, which is a career-ender if it's discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, as a practical matter, you have a very large head start on anyone else who might want to publish an analysis of the outcome of your code. Don't underestimate the time and effort it takes for someone else to go through your code in enough detail to learn what it does and figure out how to use it enough to generate original results, and then to write and submit a paper and have it reviewed, typeset, and published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more point worth mentioning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I'd be interested also in what is considered good practice when you are in the situation of wanting to share data and code while an article is being peer reviewed, but not wanting to lose your right of first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have a right of first publication. Not legally, anyway. If you want to ensure that you are the first one to have an opportunity to publish a paper based on some result, the standard practice is to keep the result private until you are close to publishing the paper yourself. But keep in mind that &quot;publishing&quot; in this context doesn't have to be peer reviewed. For instance, in physics it's very common to put a paper on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; before submitting it to a journal. That establishes the authors' claim to the result before it enters the peer review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*informed layperson speculation; see a lawyer for a definitive statement&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2015-07-30T22:08:31.463" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T22:08:31.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16333" CreationDate="2014-01-30T09:55:14.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer of David Z covers all important aspects regarding the name choice. In order to prove your authorship to someone, you would have to show &lt;strong&gt;correspondence letters&lt;/strong&gt; with the publisher. You will typically receive several of those, the most important one being the acceptance letter stating that the publisher will publish your manuscript. If you show these to anybody, it should be sufficient proof that you are an author, especially if the address on the letter can be clearly linked to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is not just an issue with using pseudonyms. Anybody with a sufficiently common name will face exactly the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T09:55:14.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2014-01-30T10:05:12.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are adressing a topic which (in my humble opinion) is one of the most difficult ones: How to measure effictivenes of teaching methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only good way is to have a control group (and make sure they are large enough, randomly asigned, subgroups represented equally, et.c). In most practical situations this is just not feasible. (I have the same problem at the moment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I plan to do (so it is just an idea, not proven to be correct - fedback is wellcome!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask students who did the class twice how they liked the new format and whether it helps them in learning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare outcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think 2.) is the one we should aim for since the ultimate measure of successful teaching is compentent students leaving the university. Since it is hard to measure their competence late in real life situations, the only thing we can do is measure their perfomence by tests / exams. So I'll compare the results of my current group with the one from last year and look for failure rate, attendeance at test, ... Given that your tests are comparable, this gives at least an indication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T10:05:12.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16362" CreationDate="2014-01-30T14:46:03.763" Score="6" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we all know, you typically abbreviate something the first time that particular term shows up in a paper.  However, I've been told in the past that certain things in a paper should be written in such a way that 'it stands on its own'.  One such thing would include the abstract of the paper.  So, perhaps a &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; appears in the abstract that I want to abbreviate.  Now one of two things can happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) If &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; appears more than once in the abstract, I could abbreviate the first instance and then just use the abbreviation from that point on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) If &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; appears only ONCE in the abstract, then I shouldn't abbreviate it because then I would have defined an abbreviation that I would not have used again (given the concept of 'the abstract should be able to stand on its own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with (2) is that people will immediately think that the 'first instance' of &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; should be abbreviated and don't immediately consider the 'stand-alone' idea so I'm either having to revise or try to put up a convincing argument for what I did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've been told by some that tables and figures should be able to 'stand on their own'.  So, if the abbreviation for &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; appears in the table somewhere (or the caption), then I should explicitly spell out &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;STRING&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and then define an abbreviation for it right then and there, even if I have already done so earlier on in the text of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is, what is the proper way of handling these abbreviations and is the idea of 'this piece must be able to stand on its own' valid (and if its valid, what exactly does this idea apply to)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a computational chemist so we pretty much are forced to use the alphabet-soup of acronyms.  MP2 is preferred over &quot;second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory&quot; and is commonly used.  CCSD(T) is preferred over &quot;The&#xA;coupled-cluster method that includes all single and double substitutions as well as a perturbative treatment of the connected triple excitations&quot;.  The list can go on and on.  If this wasn't abbreviated in an abstract, having to 'spell it out' even a few times would make for an incredibly long abstract, figure caption, table, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9569" LastEditorUserId="9569" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T15:19:09.963" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T19:47:01.903" Title="Abbreviations (abbrv.) in journal (jrn) articles (artcs)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-30T15:00:25.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your right as a owner of intellectual property, allows you to release and allow reuse of that &quot;property&quot; in any way you feel correct.&#xA;The use by a third party of your &quot;property&quot; is not allowed unless the party has a way to demostrate that you have somehow allowed it.&#xA;The way you allow it is up to you.&#xA;Obviously that creates an enormous exercise for the judge, that could be called to decide on the fact. Essentially there is a big legal hole, because I could decide for example to sell a book and to allow the purchaser to read it ONLY ON NIGHT from 8pm to 11:59pm.&#xA;That means that if you use the book in other times you are penaly responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that is the reason that the legislator should take some decisions because if not a lot of problems may arise.&#xA;The limitions that the author may impose, may be illegal etc.&#xA;Most important is that fact that licenses may be so long and articulated that no normal person may be able to understand them and so that person shouldn't be liable for the infringement of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way my opinion is that you may impose any rule you may like. That is a one paty action and the other party should demonstrate that she is legaly using your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11383" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T15:00:25.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16360" CreationDate="2014-01-30T15:17:21.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first comment will be, do not abbreviate just because something occurs more than once. Abbreviations other than established ones (within your field) such as DNA, EDTA make reading more difficult. Of course all established abbreviation were new at some point but the message is, be restrictive. I understand your field may be in need of many abbreviations so make adjustments to these general comments accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as for the abstract, I would recommend to not abbreviate anything even if it occurs more than once or twice (again barring established abbreviations). The abstract should be seen as a separable part which is (hopefully read) by a wider audience than the paper itself. If you need to abbreviate something in the paper, do so in the main paper as the &quot;first occurrence&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tables and figures should be made to stand alone if possible (which probably is 80+% of the time). Often figures and tables may be the parts others take up when they describe your work. To have self-explanatory figures and tables is thus useful. With a table the table caption should be an integral part so I think it is reasonable to have abbreviations in the table body as long as the abbreviations are explained in the table caption. The same could apply to figures as well but I would go further and aim for making the graphics along self-explanatory even without its caption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T15:17:21.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-30T17:59:16.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who prevents you from releasing the code under GPL only after the article has been accepted for publication? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case, probably you cannot add GPL header to the files in advance but unless it is very large project, this should not be a really big problem (you may write some script to add headers if it is really a lot of files).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you setup a public repository on GitHub, by doing so you allow to &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;view and fork&lt;/a&gt; it. If this seems not acceptable for you, publish on the university server instead and only publish to GitHub when you open source it. You can add any restrictions you want as long as it is your fully owned code. Just I am not sure if it will be easy to enforce these restrictions if somebody does violate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T17:59:16.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2014-01-30T18:09:19.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;job experience provider&quot; would write a good recommendation for you afterwards (surely you must also deserve it), this may matter more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you skip some very basic course that your future company sees as very useful for your work. For example, if the future company focuses on C++ development, a course with good marks in C++ programming may matter more than work in some company that required HTML/CSS only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, take that job but think well which course deserves dropping most of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T18:09:19.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T18:39:29.023" Score="6" ViewCount="47999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student of IT in India.  I'm in my fourth semester and want to work on some project during summer.  How should I write the email to the professor asking for the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-08-28T13:34:44.553" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T13:34:44.553" Title="How do I ask a professor for a summer research project?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-01-30T19:01:18.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason tuition is so high is so that the institution can charge a variable rate. Many people (in absolute terms, though not as a percentage) are able and willing to pay full tuition, and lower tuition loses those dollars. At the same time, many institutions advertise how large their financial aid awards are, which is essentially providing a discount. Variable pricing strategies of this form are quite common. It's not all that different from a lot of fashion companies: set a seemingly outrageous price because the smart shopper won't pay retail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T19:01:18.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16379" CreationDate="2014-01-30T19:18:24.363" Score="235" ViewCount="41693" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the USA, college sports are popular, and colleges &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_scholarship&quot;&gt;may offer scholarship based on athletic skills&lt;/a&gt;.  Yet, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridatoday.com/usatoday/article/1837721&quot;&gt;universities spend significant money on sports&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1086&quot;&gt;nobody earns as well as the head of the sports team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that the universities are losing money on it, and it's not their core task, then &lt;em&gt;why do they spend big money on sports?&lt;/em&gt;  Who benefits, and how?  Do all &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment&quot;&gt;major universities&lt;/a&gt; have commercialised sports teams, or are there major exceptions of universities choosing not to take part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T13:21:06.367" Title="Why do American colleges and universities have sports teams?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;college-athletics&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="29" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-30T19:56:16.360" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;The University of Chicago's president (can't remember which one) chose to not have sports teams many decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the practice of having college and university sports teams arose from one of the older functions of &quot;colleges&quot; and &quot;universities&quot;, namely, as finishing schools for children of the wealthy, especially young men. (As opposed to theology seminaries, or medical or law schools, or teachers' colleges.) Just one more entertainment for them, but/and obviously the degree of quasi-professionalism was much less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it seems that alumni generally are more entertained by sports than by science or literature, say. I think it is believed that maintaining general alumni enthusiasm via sports may spill over into donations for other things. Certainly the box office revenue and alumni donations make sports programs &lt;em&gt;close&lt;/em&gt; to self-supporting, sometimes running at a profit, depending on how one does the accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T19:56:16.360" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-30T20:24:55.960" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partial answer is that the proposition that universities lose money on sports is controversial.  Some sports bring in large amounts of money, making the athletics department as a whole not lose too much money, and most universities believe that the alumni donations brought in by the existence of sports teams more than make up for any remaining loss.  (For public universities this is even more extreme, since the state legislatures that apportion money are often very fond of those athletic programs, to the point that state universities do better in state appropriations in years when their most important teams are doing well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T20:24:55.960" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T20:36:49.100" Score="32" ViewCount="3345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things that make multiple research projects different and single project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inertia that sets in once I have spent a few weeks on single one of them. The 'switching cost' seems too high to me, and it leads to not much being done first few days of switching to the other project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pressure of producing 'visible' results every few months to keep manager/sponsors happy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pressure of keeping up with literature related to multiple topics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do optimize my work productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T10:24:26.213" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T10:24:26.213" Title="How do you manage to work on multiple research projects?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2014-01-30T20:40:19.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any given concept or niche, there is often a huge gap between the time when it's interesting to research that topic, and when it's mature enough to commercialize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter if we're talking about new hardware, new chemical processes or new AI algorithms, there tends to be a decade or two between the point where there are major unresearched and novel parts of the problem, and where it's profitable to scale it as a business; and the problems you need to solve in order to demonstrate a proof of concept are very different from the type of problems you need to solve to make it cheap, predictable and attractive to consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most researchers are (and should be) working on areas that are far too bleeding edge to be commercialized yet. Most new product development is working on technologies that are already too mature and 'boring' to generate significant publishable research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, if you see a new 'bleeding edge technology' product in any area, there probably is a 10-20 year old academic paper describing the concept with an implementation that sort-of works if the stars are right, takes impractical effort to make, and practical use requires complementary things that aren't available yet. After some time... the prerequisites have commoditized, someone else has driven the costs down, and you can implement a lot of time in polishing the concept in order to build and sell it - but most researchers would rather research new things than polish the 'old' ones for consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T21:46:37.217" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T21:46:37.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T21:14:32.500" Score="24" ViewCount="4792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a German PhD student in South America and am worried about whether my PhD title will be accepted in Germany (as Dr.) and internationally in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you successfully complete a PhD in the EU, you are allowed to carry the title &quot;Dr.&quot;, as any PhD in Germany does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working in a faculty with a professor with international experience, who, for research reasons, left a reasonably strong department in Europe for the position in South America, which is incidentally one of the strongest two departments in South America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am attending international conferences every now and then, have two papers published in international journals (one jointly, one alone) and two more papers in preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all I know, I can reasonably expect that my research performance (and eventually, my PhD thesis) is not below the European standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The default format for PhDs from a non-EU country is something like &quot;Hans Wurst (Doutorado, Universidade de Ipanema)&quot;, which looks like I should just use my self-confidence instead and not mention that I did a PhD unless someone asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's off-topic, because this might just be &quot;too localized&quot;, but of course I am wondering if it is possible to have my PhD accredited to use my PhD title in Germany like any &quot;normal&quot; PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also wondering, whether the international community is as strict as German law, or whether I should just call myself &quot;Hans Wurst, PhD&quot; on job applications, my professional webpage, etc. (where the place will be listed somewhere), and hope nobody tells me it should be &quot;Hans Wurst (Doutorado, Universidade de Ipanema)&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I make a mistake in my career planning in that the only title that is worth carrying (until full tenure, I guess) I can't carry without a large number of not-so-fancy accessories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11404" LastActivityDate="2018-10-19T13:48:45.140" Title="Non-EU PhD title in Germany" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1767" CreationDate="2014-01-30T21:59:28.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The university cannot claim ownership of the company as such, however, they can claim ownership of some intellectual property without which the company is worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way how it could gain ownership of company shares is if you make a copyright/patent licencing deal which would include those shares as part of the compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T21:59:28.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16373" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:17:32.777" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did I make a mistake in my career planning in that the only title that is worth carrying (until full tenure, I guess) I can’t carry without a large number of not-so-fancy accessories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. You make the good old German mistake of thinking that ‘carrying’ the title has any relevance whatsoever. You will have the equivalent of a doctoral degree from a respectable university (presumably) backed with a reasonable publication record. This is what’s going to matter. Whether it will be called a doctorate or a PhD does not matter to any employer (that you would actually want to work for). Also, for practical purposes, the people that care about such things &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be calling you Dr. Hans Wurst anyway, even if you technically have a slightly different title. It’s close enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The default format for PhDs from a non-EU country is something like “Hans Wurst (Doutorado, Universidade de Ipanema)”, which looks like I should just use my self-confidence instead and not mention that I did a PhD unless someone asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t quite understand. You don’t want to mention your PhD because of ... what exactly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m also wondering whether the international community is as strict as German law, or whether I should just call myself “Hans Wurst, PhD” on job applications, my professional webpage, etc. (where the place will be listed somewhere), and hope nobody tells me it should be “Hans Wurst (Doutorado, Universidade de Ipanema)” instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, on anything but the most formal documents, I have seen people in similar situations call themselves anything out of: Dr. Hans Wurst; Hans Wurst, PhD; or Hans Wurst, PhD (Universidade de Ipanema). All of those mean essentially the same thing to the pragmatic observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clarifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, I am not German myself, but Austrian with strong ties to Germany (and Austria is &lt;em&gt;the place that Germans make fun of because we are presumably so fond of our academic titles&lt;/em&gt;), so I do think I am able to comment on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I think it is required to distinguish a few things which are somewhat mangled up in my above response as well as the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Will the OP formally be allowed to carry the title Dr. Hans Wurst?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not without going through nostrification, as indicated in other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Will people informally still refer to him as they would to the holder of a European PhD? (e.g., put a Dr. Hans Wurst on his door in the office?). Basically, would people in their day-to-day life consider the difference to be a technicality?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I am convinced that would be the case in most places. If non-EU people were treated as “not really doctors at all”, we would not have any foreign faculty or postdocs. In Vienna, while I did my postdoc there, we had people who had received PhDs from Austria, Germany, the US, and China, and they all were uniformly referred to as “Drs.” by peers and university administration alike. It may not be formally correct, but people are also not stupid (in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Will it make a difference in his professional life?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the university is indeed excellent (I have personally never heard of it, but my knowledge of African universities is very limited), it should really not make a difference. I guess the main problem is that if the university is not very well-known, a hiring committee might not go through the trouble of actually finding out whether or not the university is good. However, at least in academic posts, I would not assume that the OP will have any disadvantage in comparison to a holder of a German PhD. International experience is usually considered a big plus. The examples provided by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16377&quot;&gt;aeismail&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16376&quot;&gt;Nate Eldredge&lt;/a&gt; are completely opposed to every personal experience I’ve ever had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:05:38.503" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16373" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:42:28.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address your last question: the international community is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; as strict as Germany.  Here in the US, there are no formal regulations on the use of the title.  If you hold an earned doctorate from a reasonable university somewhere in the world, nobody is going to complain about your use of &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Ph.D.&quot; or both.  Even holders of honorary doctorates, or those from non-accredited universities, usually get away with it.  On the other hand, we typically don't use those titles as universally as Germans do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T22:42:28.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16373" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:48:31.847" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;How your PhD is counted depends a lot on from which country you obtained it. Currently, degrees from Australia, Canada, Japan, Israel, and most doctoral-granting American universities are recognized as fully equivalent to &quot;Dr.&quot; Beyond that, however, the PhD is listed as a PhD, so long as it's been granted by an institution accredited to give out doctoral degrees. (It has to be legitimately &quot;earned.&quot;) You just would not technically be allowed to call yourself &quot;Herr Dr. Hans Wurst&quot;; you'd be &quot;Herr Hans Wurst, Ph.D.&quot; (or whatever the formal name of your degree is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the classification of the degree &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; matter in Germany. Someone who holds a &lt;em&gt;Dr. rer. nat.&lt;/em&gt; (sciences), for instance, will have a harder time getting a position in an engineering faculty than someone who holds a &lt;em&gt;Dr.-Ing.&lt;/em&gt; (engineering). PhD's may or may not count as being equivalent to either degree, unless the specific regulations of the universities allow for this. (This can make a difference in setting up thesis committees, depending upon the regulations of the faculty in question. Yes, it's really annoying, but that's the way the system is set up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, as Nate says in his answer, the rest of the world is nowhere near as strict as German law (even the modified version now in effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can apply to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kmk.org/zab.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen&lt;/a&gt; (Central Authority for Foreign Education) for recognition of a foreign-obtained degree as equivalent to the corresponding German degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="13017" LastEditDate="2018-10-19T13:48:45.140" LastActivityDate="2018-10-19T13:48:45.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16371" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:58:38.553" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no easy solution to the &quot;task switching&quot; problem; it really is a strong function of how you work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous job, I had a rather distressingly large number of projects to work on—as many as eight or nine, depending on how you define a project—at any one time (oddly enough, my academic position requires me to work on just as many projects, but in a supervisory capacity). For me, what helped to have to &quot;task switch&quot; was the fact that I had to provide regular progress updates at team meetings, and meet deadlines for the project. I couldn't spend weeks on a single project, because then I'd have to scramble to meet the approaching deadlines for everything else I was working on. So deadlines and meetings where you have to talk about your progress are good ways to make sure you keep on top of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to literature, I'd suggest setting aside some time each week for literature searches and literature reviews. I'd also use this as a chance to &quot;switch gears&quot; for a bit—use this time to keep up to date on the project that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; taking up the majority of your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you're going to put away a project for several weeks or more, then you should &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; keep good records before switching your focus. Make sure you leave yourself a note of what you just finished working on, where you left things off, and what you think the next steps for the project should be after you return to it. That way, you're not figuring out where you left off—you've told yourself how to get yourself back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T22:58:38.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:00:57.957" Score="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one side effect of a university having a famous sports team as mentioned by Federico Poloni in a comment: people know your name. This helps recruit new students, it helps alumni impress potential employers with a degree from somewhere they have heard of! I only know that Boise State University is actually a real university (and as it turns out a pretty good one) because their football field has blue turf.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One feature of American colleges and universities that is easy to forget is that they are often in the middle of nowhere. Pennsylvania State University is in a town named State College. You can guess which came first. So imagine you have thousands of young men and women in a place that is barely a town. What do they do on Saturday afternoon? Some will start organizing teams to play sports and then start going to nearby schools to play their teams. This grew greatly since the old days but the idea that a residential university is partly responsible for providing non-academic activities for their students take part in still exists as a real force. At smaller schools which do not have sports scholarships the sports teams are more about playing because the students enjoy it and it is just part of campus life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also at many schools the mission statements include character formation such as &quot;building leadership skills.&quot; If this is the case you can actually argue that having some level of athletic competition on campus actually is part of the core mission. Maybe not an absolute vital part but one that contributes to the mission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of course ignoring in large part the money and corruption that is part of the NCAA Division I level of college athletics. Of which there is an extraordinary amount of both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most schools, except for d3 schools, break even with their athletic programs. Americans want to be proud of something, that something for colleges is athletics. Most people wouldn't want to go to Harvard if they didn't have a good football team. I helps to bring diversity (age, interests, grades, and money) into colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T02:51:25.467" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T02:51:25.467" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2014-01-31T03:16:00.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address your revised question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My broader aim is to be the first to publish my own research, generally get attribution, but also allow others to build on that work. So I'd be interested also in what is considered good practice when you are in the situation of wanting to share data and code while an article is being peer reviewed, but not wanting to lose your right of first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual practice in my field (mathematics) is that when the project is finished, you submit it to a journal, and simultaneously post it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;, a public preprint server.  This establishes your priority in two ways, and lets people start building on it immediately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T03:16:00.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16318" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:13:17.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not refer to what you are writing as a statement. I would say it is a response. Responses should be as long as they need to be, but not longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they have given you a person specification with 15 points, and ask you address every point, then, yes, your response is going to be long. There should be no need to guess on this. They have asked you to be thorough so you should be thorough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is common for companies to use person specifications to ensure they find a proper match for a position it is rare for me to see someone use it in the manner you describe. However, it does not sound crazy, just like they want to really be sure that they are getting all the information they need, and they clearly want to be thorough. In the end, the goal of the person specification is to make sure you eliminate, as early as possible, those people who are very likely to be a poor match for the position/organization. If you can respond appropriately to each point, then you are much more likely to be called for an interview. So don't leave anything out that answers their questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T04:13:17.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:28:58.410" Score="9" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got 2 offers for a tenure-track position (computer science). One at a well known &quot;tier 1&quot; institution and one at an institution that would be considered &quot;tier 2&quot;, both in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people I know in academia would immediately go for option 1, considering it a great opportunity. While I do agree that this would look great on my CV, I'm somewhat cautious due to reports that tier 1 institutions are &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; reluctant granting tenure to anyone who doesn't find the cure for cancer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm well aware that getting tenure at a tier 2 institution won't be a field day either, but looking at their previous record, a high percentage of assistant professors at that institution did make the cut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11419" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T21:37:51.383" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T21:37:51.383" Title="How to choose the right institution for pursuing tenure-track?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T05:36:29.180" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are good answers already for why does there continue to be a huge emphasis on sports in American academia but none really answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that sports in America were introduced at universities out of necessity.  Where in most parts of the world there has been long traditions of clubs or the local handling of games/sports, America had nothing.  One small town might play another small town in a &quot;sport&quot; but that didn't satisfy everyone.  You had elitist or exceptional athletes that wanted to compete against their equals, not Gary the blacksmith.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is mid 19th century and America is boiling.  A nation divided on many subjects.  So instead of a local rowing club or in today's terms playing for your company team, the easiest thing to gravitate to is a local university.  They had the money, organization, place to play the game, and so on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And back then universities had opinions and power concerning government and policy.  So the elite universities (most were in this group at the time) wanted to take their debating and add physicality to it.  Races, rowing, simple games.  It invoked pride and if Harvard won the rowing competition then they must be right about slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't even ask who has time for games in mid 19th century?  Well you are probably a male, somewhere between 20-35, you have lots of money, and no job - you go to school.  This is the epitome of sports culture.  Where are all of these people stacked at... Universities.  So it was just the perfect storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now once it started the early collegiate sports scene really was much like we see today - except it was admittedly like that in the late 19th century and early 20th century.  What do I mean?  Well players were old.  You might not have many players on your football team under 20 and a few in their 30s.  Some players student-status was highly questioned.  There weren't really any rules at first and when they started the rules in the late 19th century there were ways around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Players were paid, sometimes &quot;pros&quot; went back to college, there were boosters... the schools were driven by pride, power, and money.  Maybe the only things different were (lack of) media and that they were not preying on teenagers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the evolution of sports in the 20th century has gone from we have money and power so we will form the best teams, to we will get money and power from having the best teams.  The big D1 schools are the worst.  They hide huge huge earnings by allocating costs to sports teams so they can make millions/billions on tuition and licensing - yes everyone buys Texas Longhorns shirts for their Economics department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities &quot;claim&quot; to be losing money.  There have been economic impact studies done showing that almost none that made the claims were even near losing money on sports.  When they factored in advertising, enrollment, exterior sales, and so on.  Really the only thing that makes sports somewhat costly for universities now is Title IX.  Very few women's sports make money and most women wouldn't go to a university because their softball team is good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now we have the NCAA, colleges, tied-in businesses getting profits and tax breaks for players that are playing for free.  This may change now that there has been talk of unionizing but could be years and years down the road.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if this happened and the landscape changed were the big sports went to a club system there would still be sports in American universities.  They would function because students expect this now.  Things would probably work like they do for club sports at current universities or how things work at most DIII schools.  You play local teams, you drive to the game, pay for your equipment, maybe offset a little by entrance fees or a nice booster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why are there sports in American colleges?  Pride, money, free-time of students, and the fact that there weren't other organizations to handle these things in the new America.  Why will sports be played in American colleges in 100 years?  Same reason they are played at clubs in France.  Tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11420" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T05:36:29.180" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T06:18:19.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I couldn't understand in American culture. Last summer, I've read an article - an interview with some south-american novelist (I can't remember his name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said, it's a psychological trick. Generally, people going to university are among the best. They were the best, or one of the best in school. Now some of them have to be worst. People dislike being the worst, even if they are the worst among the best, and it's very discouraging. Many talents could get lost because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if we get sportsmen, they would be usually the worst in the class, and they would be perfectly happy with it, as long as they would get promotion and could concentrate on sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a logical argument for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5657" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T06:18:19.443" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16382" CreationDate="2014-01-31T06:58:06.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your two offers ! As for your question, it's hard for us on this forum to gauge your choices. Tier 1 and Tier 2 are tricky categorizations (bottom of Tier 1 ? top of tier 2 ? area specializations ?). More generally though, it sounds like you're worried that getting tenure at the Tier 1 university is extremely difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is something where some data gathering might help. It shouldn't be too hard to determine the number of cases that went up for tenure at T1 in the last (say) 5-10 years, and how many were successful. This is in fact a legitimate question to ask the chair of the department. You can ask how the process works, and you can even ask current assistant professors if they feel they're getting &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16212/what-leads-to-contentious-tenure-cases-and-can-they-be-avoided&quot;&gt;good guidance on the tenure process&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do the same for the T2 university as well. Then you'll have more specific information to work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can tell you whether you will get tenure at T1 or not, but with this data you can get a sense of whether it's &quot;yes unless you mess up&quot; or &quot;no unless you cure cancer&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to determine which university offers you the best home for your research efforts for the next X years &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;without worrying too much about what comes at the end of it&lt;/a&gt;. This is not to say that you should walk into a situation where no one gets tenure, of course, but your data collection should help with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T06:58:06.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T07:11:17.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am gong to assume that the NCAA is a reasonable proxy for &amp;quot;commercialised sports teams&amp;quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/membership&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NCAA has 1,200&lt;/a&gt; members which while large is not every accredited US university. A quick check of your list of major universities reveals Pomona, with an endowment of 1.6 billion, is not a member of the NCAA. Despite its sizeable endowment, with only 1,600 undergraduates I am not sure it qualifies as a major university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the who benefits part, I will just quote the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncaa.org/about/what-we-do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NCAA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is that NCAA student-athletes are graduating at a higher rate than other college students. More than eight out of 10 student-athletes will earn a bachelor’s degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Student-athletes work hard throughout the year to be among those who qualify to compete for 89 NCAA championships. That experience teaches them time management, leadership skills and the importance of working toward a common goal. They are the tools for success that last a lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T10:58:58.823" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16319" CreationDate="2014-01-31T07:50:55.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29&quot;&gt;Don't feed the trolls.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student is most likely looking for attention.  If you give it to him/her, then s/he would be encouraged to repeat the disruptive behavior.  I recommend that you reply &quot;That question is not within the scope of the course&quot; then quickly continue with the class discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T07:50:55.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16360" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:01:46.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion the general rule is that abbreviations should be used exactly when they make reading easier; in particular, in some circumstances it will be easier to understand a sentence when a long term is abbreviated (provided the abbreviation has been defined of course). The same rule should apply in abstract and captions, except that the cost (in term of reading comfort) of having to look for the meaning of the abbreviation is usually greater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem comes from the fact that we tend to use abbreviations when they make &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; easier (or quicker), and this does not coincide with reading easiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T19:47:01.903" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T19:47:01.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16360" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:43:53.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the abbreviation is so common that people use it instead of its real meaning (e.g. I'd call EDTA EDTA, but if I'm asked for the spelled-out name I mentally reconstruct that from the structure of EDTA - as opposed to knowing ethylenediamintetraaceticacid and reconstructing the structure from that) I'd use the abbreviation in the abstract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the abbreviation is really common, but not the &quot;primary name&quot; of the thing in question, I'd spend that one word in the abstract and give both. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Otherwise, I'm a big fan of a table of abbreviations. That way it is much easier for a reader who is not deeply familiar with the field to find the meaning than to search through the text to where the abbreviation first occurred.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11678/shall-acronyms-in-scientific-papers-be-expanded-exactly-once&quot;&gt;Shall acronyms in scientific papers be expanded exactly once?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T08:43:53.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T09:47:26.573" Score="5" ViewCount="2554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been thinking about a second PhD for the last year. I am currently a doctoral candidate in civil engineering at University of Texas at Austin (ranked 6th in my discipline) and working as a student statistical consultant at the university consulting center. I am working on spatio-temporal modeling of count data using Bayesian hierarchical models, with computationally efficient techniques for my dissertation. (I will have publications on this very soon; two of them are in review). I do have 2 publications in my area but their topic is the application of statistical models. I am also going to get a Masters in statistics next semester along with my PhD in civil engineering. I have done many courses related to Bayesian statistics including graduate level mathematical statistics, theoretical MCMC, stochastic volatility and time series models, statistical consulting, advanced econometrics (non-Bayesian), discrete choice modeling and one course on data mining (graduate level). In my field, I see massive datasets but very minimal statistical expertise, particularly on the big data side. This has motivated me to pursue something beyond my Phd and beyond my discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in handling large datasets and perhaps, machine learning applications. I would like to know whether a PhD in machine learning is going to help me realise my dreams. I do not have any formal research experience in data mining or machine learning. But, I do a lot of Bayesian hierarchical modeling on smaller datasets. Given my experience, I am not sure whether I can secure admission to a good program in the machine learning area. I appreciate any suggestions and advice on whether to pursue another PhD and the feasibility of securing admission to a good program in a PhD machine learning track. I am assuming basic financial assistance for any PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks much in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11429" LastEditorUserId="54237" LastEditDate="2020-09-04T13:02:36.490" LastActivityDate="2020-09-04T13:02:36.490" Title="Contemplating about a second PhD in statistics/machine learning" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;&lt;machine-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16360" CreationDate="2014-01-31T09:49:18.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would write it out in full the first time that it appears in the abstract, and again the first time that it appears in the main text. This isn't authoritative, however, it's simply what &quot;seems right&quot; to me. The abstract needs to stand on its own, and the introduction should also make sense to somebody who hasn't just read the abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, as some have said, in some fields there may be abbreviations that are so generally accepted that there is no need to expand them. To pick something that is not field-dependant, nobody would expect an author to spell out LASER or RADAR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T09:49:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16318" CreationDate="2014-01-31T11:04:49.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, HR departments are playing an increasing larger role in the hiring process. According to HR departments only applicants that meet all the essential requirements can be considered. If you have an applicant who meets all but one essential requirement and all the desirable requirements and another applicant who meets all the essential requirements and none of the desirable requirements, you must hire the one that meets the essential requirements. If you want to modify the essential requirements and do the search again, you must demonstrate that none of the applicants meet all the essential requirements. You can only hire non-EU applicants if there are no EU applicants that meet all the essential requirements. Further, if any applicant from the redundancy pool can meet all the essential requirements with some additional training (usually under 6 months), then they must be hired over external applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind, it is absolutely critical that your letter clear address how you meet all the essential requirements and which desirable requirements you meet. You want to provide anything that could be considered evidence to support your application. I would not worry about the statement being too long, although it should not address qualities that are not explicitly mentioned in the job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T15:43:51.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T15:43:51.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16390" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:04:15.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site has had such questions come up before. Usually (as in this case), I think the correct answer is that doing a second PhD is not necessary, and not a good use of your time. In my opinion, shared by many (most?), multiple PhDs are very rarely a good idea. As people have remarked elsewhere, a big part of a PhD is learning how to do research (hopefully) under supervision and guidance. The supervision and guidance do not necessarily happen in practice, anyway. Usually much of a PhD is deadwood and bureaucracy, like required courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion are that PhDs are not a necessary qualification in any case. Before they existed people did just fine. Check out the history of the PhD on Wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know enough statistics to write research papers, you just go ahead and write papers. Once you know enough to do so, it is not rocket science. Machine learning is just statistics done by computer scientists for some reason, maybe because the statisticians are not interested in doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your general aims and perspective are sensible. Knowing things like Bayesian statistics and modelling is useful when working with data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my field, I see massive datasets but very minimal statistical expertise, particularly on the big data side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this sounds accurate. Statistical expertise is not very commonly available or applied by non-statisticians, but it would be useful to them if they knew how to do it correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of suggestions wrt things you could usefully focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;English language skills. Very important for a researcher. This is &#xA;particularly important if one does not speak English natively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Computational skills. This is getting to be also a truism, but&#xA;people in academia  don't usually know what they are doing re&#xA;programming and software development. A better understanding in&#xA;these areas will probably pay dividends for researchers in the applied &#xA;sciences, though there are differences of opinion as to how much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of these skill sets would be usefully served by getting a second PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in Statistics, but I don't think I need to  have one to offer the preceding opinions. Mostly they are just common sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:16:08.907" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:16:08.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:14:30.867" Score="8" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I talked with a professor for possible thesis guidance and mentioned that I aim to publish papers at top venues as soon as possible. The Professor got somewhat offended and said publication is not an aim and that I should aim to be problem oriented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe true, but I did not understand why that prof got offended and felt so bad about publishing. Do you have any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11433" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:18:24.363" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T18:47:57.397" Title="Is being publication oriented bad?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14276" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:15:00.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; need to be an expert in machine learning to own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm. If you had a choice between (i) going as a junior researcher to an existing firm right now, or (ii) spending 3-5 years in a machine learning PhD; well, (i) will take you much faster to your end goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also not just about machine learning. You also need to be good at signal processing, econometrics, object oriented programming, have great domain knowledge, big data experience, linux programming skills, scientific programming ability (R,Matlab), scripting experience, etc. The best way to get good at all areas at the same time is just to go into a firm right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is most important is research experience. It matters far less what type of research you did (as long as it was heavily quantitative) than the fact that you actually have good research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:15:00.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16390" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:20:57.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As other people already stated, multiple PhD's is almost certainly not a good idea. How to transition into machine learning depends on where you want to work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academia, you can try to get a postdoc position in machine learning, in that way you can build your career by writing publications and get up to speed with machine learning during your postdoc research. This could be problematic as you might have to compete with people that have a PhD in machine learning. But this can be overcome during the interview stage. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;industry, you can simply apply to entry level machine learning positions (look for data science positions) and take it from there. Once you convince a company that you are a worthwhile addition, you can learn the ropes on the job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would recommend already getting up-to-speed a bit in machine learning, try some online tutorials, etc. This can really help in securing a new position in either academia or industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:20:57.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16396" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:31:49.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditions of writing a monograph as a thesis vs. writing a thesis based on a number of papers/manuscripts and a cover paper to tie everything together vary between university systems (academic cultures). Because many aspects of academia including evaluations for positions and grants to a large extent is based on published papers, the latter system is gaining interest. In my country, Sweden, it has always (in modern times) been the norm. So in your case the reaction can be caused by one or both of tradition and local academic culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor has a good point in that the aim of writing a thesis should not primarily be to publish papers. Graduate school is about learning both practical and philosophical knowledge of how to conduct research properly with the aim to become a functioning research individual. At the same time, writing papers is a vital skill that must be included in such education so one does not preclude the other and my guess is that the response, hence, mostly is the result of tradition and culture rather than right or wrong. To be offended seems a bit over the top in terms of a reaction but I do not know the person to judge where such a reaction might originate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of many who have defended a monograph but written and published papers on the material included in the thesis. A monograph allows inclusion of much more details on experiments and results than the paper format does. This can be seen as an advantage of the monograph. On the other hand, a thesis consisting of papers usually also contains a cover paper in which the same type of details can be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end the thesis you write will follow the local traditions or rules and my suggestion is to follow these but to aim to think about papers in parallel. Hopefully you will have an advisor that agrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:42:43.947" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:42:43.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16396" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:56:23.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I talked with a professor for possible thesis guidance and mentioned that I aim to publish papers at top venues as soon as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can only speculate, but maybe the professor was annoyed by your usage of &lt;em&gt;as soon as possible&lt;/em&gt; more than by your intention to publish (if this was indeed what you said to him in verbatim). Maybe he inferred from this wording that, to you, PhD school is an unnecessary nuissance that you expect to leave behind you quickly, so that you can go on to greater glory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in general a professor &lt;strong&gt;should really not&lt;/strong&gt; be opposed to you publishing in good venues on principle, as this would mean that his students are basically locked out of an academic career for good - and which advisor would want that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your titular question &lt;em&gt;Is being publication oriented bad?&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if it means you do only &quot;easy&quot; incremental research in order to minimize risk. No, if you just mean that you do not only want to do any research, but are actively looking for topics that are publishable and which will have an impact on the scientific community or, in some cases, industrial practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:56:23.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16396" CreationDate="2014-01-31T13:44:08.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with wanting to publish, and wanting to publish more and better. The fact that you are goal-driven can only be a plus, from my and many others' point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt; the question arises when you start thinking about the implications of wanting to publish more and better. I will be a bit crass here and give a somewhat unconventional metaphor. I guess no one can deny that having sex is a good thing, in a way like publishing. If you go around telling people (especially those who are supposed to be your seniors) that you intend to get laid &lt;strong&gt;as often&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;as soon as possible&lt;/strong&gt; with the as hot girls/guys as possible... Well let's say they might start questioning your motives and personality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting the metaphor aside, being an academic is mostly about doing research and from time to time communicating your work, primarily (but &lt;strong&gt;not exclusively&lt;/strong&gt;) in the form of publications. Unfortunately the academic society has evolved in a way that how much you publish and where you publish often gets more attention than the quality, originality or the usefulness of the work you do. While I will not go on to claim that the two are not correlated, I personally do not believe how often and in which journals you publish your work is a &lt;em&gt;definitive&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;descriptive&lt;/em&gt; indicator of &lt;em&gt;how good of a scientist&lt;/em&gt; you are (anyone is of course entitled to disagree with me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the professor in question, might have gotten offended by the fact that your primary concern/ambition does not come across as doing good science, but rather solely being successful within the current norms of academic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T13:44:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T14:28:03.993" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, you're less likely to have multiple professional teams in the same sport representing the same city. The number of franchises is set by the professional leagues themselves (with the US government exempting them at different times from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/10/20/DI2009102001567.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;antitrust&lt;/a&gt; monopoly regulations).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cities in the US that have two teams have either stolen an existing team from another city, or they've been able to convince the professional leagues to expand the set number of teams (the latter of which very rarely ever happens). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, there are no such restrictions, if a homegrown team is good enough, it will just start moving up through the ranks even if the city it inhabits already has other teams that are playing at that level. This artificial scarcity is what's providing American Universities with the opportunity to have semi-professional teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike major team sports in North America, where franchises are&#xA;  awarded to nominated cities, most European teams have grown from small&#xA;  clubs formed by groups of individuals before growing rapidly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clubs therefore had an equal chance to grow to become among the&#xA;  strongest in their particular sport which has led to a situation where&#xA;  many cities are represented by two or even three top class teams in&#xA;  the same sport. In the 2011–12 football season, &lt;strong&gt;London has five teams&#xA;  playing in the Premier League, while Liverpool and Manchester also&#xA;  have double representation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_Europe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[source]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, in the case of American Football, 32 franchises is not nearly enough for a country like the US (which has way more than 32 cities potentially capable of supporting one or more real football teams at the professional level). And the cities could all battle it out with their own football teams, to see which ones are the better ones that should enter those leagues, but the professional leagues do not want teams selected that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11434" LastEditorUserId="11434" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T23:52:07.623" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T23:52:07.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T14:45:23.360" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to looking at this from the perspective of universities, it's also worth looking at this from the point of view of professional sports leagues.  In Europe soccer is based on a free market system with intense competition for players between leagues and between teams in the same league.  As a result, teams sign younger and younger players.  Thus top soccer players don't go to college (or even high school).  In the US, by contrast, the leagues are strong cartels who collude to keep down the cost of talent.  Both football and basketball in the US have strong salary caps (limiting how much a team can spend overall, and in basketball on how much they can spend on each player), revenue sharing (where the richest teams have to give money to the poor ones), etc.  In particular, the leagues are able to enforce an age minimum.  In basketball they require that americans be one year removed from their high school graduation date, and in football that's 3 years.  This means there's a huge pool of future professionals who are barred from working in the professional leagues.  In steps the NCAA, which is again a cartel which keeps down labor costs, and who has barred any member schools from paying their athletes.  This seriously decreases the costs of running a sports team, and thus makes the cost/benefit analysis more favorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T14:45:23.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T14:53:17.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to understand why big college sports exists in the US, I think it's important to understand the role that they play.  For someone coming from Europe, I think this is the best explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Big conference American Football is the closest U.S. equivalent to international  soccer in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ohio State-Michigan game is our equivalent of a Netherlands-Germany soccer match.  It's what gets millions of people of all ages across a state out wearing team colors and rooting together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes a lot of sense that &lt;em&gt;states&lt;/em&gt; should be running sports teams to play each other in the US the same way that countries in Europe run sports teams to play each other in Europe.  (Remember that many US states are larger than a lot of European countries.)  That the states happen to run their teams through their state-run universities is a bit strange, but the underlying concept of state-based sports teams makes a lot of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T14:53:17.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T15:59:12.057" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of these answers address the existence of large sports competing at the highest level, or historical reasons for why sports first appeared. Here, most of the major points have been covered. It's important to note that the effects on alumni donations and new student enrollment (quantity and quality by standard metrics) are not speculative. See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w18196&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w13937&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;. At the college where my dad teaches, when the basketball team makes the NCAA tournament, their applications increase both in quantity and quality. For this reason, the president loved the basketball team despite not caring a whit about sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to address why smaller colleges would choose to have sports programs, despite negligible ticket sales and no TV contracts or media coverage. The rationales they present are typically in the form of character building, and this aspect should not be ignored. As a college athlete, I learned a great deal about social interaction and that awful buzzword 'teamwork'. At our athletics department banquet, someone always quoted the (apocryphal) words of the Duke of Wellington, &quot;The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.&quot; As institutions pride themselves on crafting the whole individual, it makes sense that they provide the opportunity to play sports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important aspect is recruiting. My choice of college was heavily influenced by the opportunity to play volleyball. Since graduating, my alma mater has added six new sports teams, all of which are sports traditionally played by the children of upper-middle class families. This is not coincidental: colleges are competing for students, especially those who can pay full tuition. For an explicit discussion of the economic benefits to the institution, scroll down to the Division III section of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/scoring-big-new-football-teams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on why colleges are adding football teams (the first section addresses the financial and aspirational benefits to larger colleges).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the role of sports in helping students identify with their college is immense. This is larger at universities with major sports programs, but still non-trivial. When we played our rival, people came out and watched (which they almost never did otherwise). At those competitions, students identified with our college in a visceral way. As seen above, this can significantly influence the student's relationship with the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T15:59:12.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16455" CreationDate="2014-01-31T16:13:57.580" Score="5" ViewCount="5147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had recently submitted a paper to an IEEE conference and got accepted, but for poster presentation. This is the very first time I have written a paper. Although it is a great achievement for me given my inexperience in the field, my goal is to get it published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does IEEE publish papers accepted for posters presentations? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I pass on the poster presentation and send my paper to a journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11447" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:31:24.657" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:31:24.657" Title="Paper accepted for poster presentation in IEEE, what are the chances of it being published?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16413" CreationDate="2014-01-31T16:46:25.317" Score="6" ViewCount="4624" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am applying for a LLM programme at SOAS and am having certain difficulties while writing the required personal statement. According to their guidance, the statement should be &quot;describing your ambitions, suitability and interest for the programme you have chosen. This should be around 1,000 words in length&quot;, but I simply can't even fall under 2,000 words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is should I post the longer version that describes me better and for which I believe gives me a greater chance to be accepted, or should I simply delete half the text so I could manage their quota? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11450" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T17:03:08.653" Title="I'm writing a personal statement for a Master's degree. The length requirement is about 1000 words. I have written 2000. Shall I shorten it?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16412" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:10:59.700" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's some variability about how strict people are about word limits, so if you have any kind of inside knowledge (like someone who knows the culture at SOAS), they may be able to give you better guidance for this specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of reason to think they don't care about the word limit, I'd worry about going over, especially about going &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; over, like double the suggested length.  You should consider that if you're that far over the limit, your personal statement may not actually be quite what they're looking for.  Perhaps it's overly detailed, or trying to make too many separate points at once.  In other words, you should at least consider that this indicates a problem with your statement of purpose that you're not seeing.  (And you should try to get input from someone else who could give you a fresh eye on it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risks are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's possible they count words and ignore/mark applications that don't follow directions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if they don't count words, people reading your application are likely to notice that you're statement is double (!) the length of most others.  At a minimum, they'll probably discount your statement of purpose on the grounds that you had a lot more space than everyone else, which might take away much of the benefit of the longer statement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worse, they might be annoyed at having to read twice as much or upset that you didn't follow directions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, they might take it as an indication that you're not that serious about the application: it could mean that you weren't paying attention, or that you're recycling a statement you wrote for someone else without much effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T17:10:59.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16412" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:14:02.113" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit on the programme, but the general answer is &quot;stick to the 1000&quot;. Here are some good reasons for a committee enforcing such policies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone has to read it. All of it. From everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be unfair, if everyone stays within the limit and you don't. Some people just stop reading after 1000 words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most things which can not be described in 1000 words are not better described using 2000 words. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tipps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to be focused&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid empty phrases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T17:14:02.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:37:09.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that the universities are losing money on it, and it's not their core task, then why do they spend big money on sports? Who benefits, and how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Big&lt;/em&gt; money is only really spent on Football, and to a lesser degree, Men's Basketball. Football generally does turn a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-economics-of-college-football-a-look-at-the-top-25-teams-revenues-and-expenses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;profit&lt;/a&gt;, provided you are a successful enough team. Think of it as an investment. Pouring money into your football program is a huge risk. What if the team performs poorly? What if there is a lack of interest from students and the community? Your money could easily be wasted if this were to happen. That being said, if the team wins and the community supports it, there is a great deal of profit to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The money that lost in athletics usually comes from other, less popular sports. College football teams have multi-million dollar TV deals and merchandising rights. Certain programs have helped develop a brand for their university and in turn generate a demand for everything from t-shirts to admissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less popular sports however, do not generate such buzz but still require money to stay afloat. When &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Title IX&lt;/a&gt; became law in the '70s, it did amazing things for women's athletics and civil rights as a whole. Unfortunately, public interest is not that high for many &quot;Title IX&quot; sports. These teams, by law, must exist and while more popular sports such as football and basketball can generate profits, the less popular sports consume more than they can generate. This is where the losses come into play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, why do colleges and universities bother to host athletic teams if in the end they only cost money? It comes down to branding. Each college and university in America is competing for the best and brightest students. American higher education is a business, and a great majority of these schools exist in order to turn a profit. Why would a student choose to go to the University of Alabama over Harvard if he or she were accepted into both? Because of Alabama's brand. Harvard may offer a better education and hold a more prestigious position in the academic community, but Alabama wins national championships and that appeals to the youth of America. This also entices kids from the opposite of the country to attend school there. Each state hosts multiple colleges and universities, so a popular sports team can be a good reason to lure a kid out of his or her home state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plain and simple, college sports teams (as a whole) are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;loss-leaders&lt;/a&gt;. They are investments in marketing and allow the schools to have a national appeal. This appeal allows schools to justify higher admission costs and creates a demand among high school graduates nationwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11452" LastEditorUserId="11452" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T18:40:45.883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T18:40:45.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:44:21.437" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for several summer schools, workshops, and travel funds. I've also applied for a few fellowships. Almost all of these have extended their deadlines for application submission and/or supporting material submission. I've completed (or plan to complete) all of the applications before the original deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the typical reasons that deadlines are extended? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it'll increase my chances for admittance since I submitted my application before the original deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11454" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T18:02:39.903" Title="A quick question about deadline extensions" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16416" CreationDate="2014-01-31T18:02:39.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible reasons for extensions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not enough applications have been received&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The applications/applicants are not up to he expected standard (Almost the previous point in th esense that more applications is hoped to raise the standard)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something has happened in the bureaucracy that means an extension is necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sending in an application to meet a deadline is always necessary and being early may set your application apart from the others but there is no guarantee. Having an impeccable application is a better bet on getting noticed than sending it in early. By impeccable, I mean well written, clear and concise, including all the necessary materials in neat order. But early is certainly not a negative but may not really show to the persons responsible for evaluating the applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T18:02:39.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16365" CreationDate="2014-01-31T18:14:28.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about something like the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed your course on letter writing and would like to learn more about it. Would it be possible to do a summer project with you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Your student of IT in India&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't do a course with him, there must be something that singled him out amongst the other 50 professors at your IT institute (and I don't mean his new glasses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatives might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoy topic X [your professors specialty] and have used it to program a simple program ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to read your paper &amp;quot;Letter writing for IT students&amp;quot; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked for a letter, but allow me to suggest to go and talk to him directly. Make sure you know why you want to do a project with him. From a short conversation, you should be able to tell, whether he is willing to invest time into guiding you through a summer project. (He might be away on conferences or other business.) If he seems like he might be very busy, you might consider doing a project with someone else. (If your professor is too busy to meet with you every few days, anyone, even me, can give you a research project: &amp;quot;Research about topic X as much as you can and let me know what you found&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say that you have never done a summer project before, and ask him how much time he expects you to put in (per day) and how often he might be able to meet with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this can be settled in a short conversation of 5 minutes. Via email, this all might take well over a week, or the professor might just not care to reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11404" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T19:57:21.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16396" CreationDate="2014-01-31T18:47:57.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong in what you said to the Professor. You stated your concrete end goals as clearly as you thought you could. However, its not in your Professors control as to whether you will be published in top journals quickly. Even if he is the best Professor in the world, he cannot make that happen for you. So, what you need to look for is a Professor who is willing to support you in your goals and help you help yourself to get there. In addition, you may want to define some other qualities you are looking for that are not strictly in line with your stated goal.&#xA;A Professor is a coach and a mentor.&#xA;Here are some qualities of a good coach : &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.earthlink.net/~tfakehany/point.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://home.earthlink.net/~tfakehany/point.html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalgamecoach.com/articles/CoachingQualities.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mentalgamecoach.com/articles/CoachingQualities.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The main thing is you dont want a judgmental Professor because judgment is the antithesis of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11458" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T18:47:57.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16365" CreationDate="2014-01-31T19:36:45.467" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get &lt;strong&gt;many&lt;/strong&gt; letters of this kind, and I now summarily delete them without replying. Let me explain why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money: it's never clear in these letters what kind of support the student wants/expects. The default assumption is that I would pay for them, and as an academic with limited resources, I have very little incentive to pay for an undergraduate to travel  from India to the US to work with me, especially when it's unlikely they'll be able to do much in three months. Which brings me to &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project timeline: most letters of this kind are of the form &quot;I'm interested in BROAD TOPIC A and want to work with you because you're interested in NARROW TOPIC B&quot;. For a three month internship to work, a project has to be very focused, and set from day 1. There's no time to explore. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-interest: There's very little gain for me here, or at least none that's mentioned in the letters. If I want to hire an undergraduate, I can do it locally. I can even get financial support (sometimes) for doing that. I can't do that with a student from abroad, and I can't even vet them in advance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So any successful letter needs to address these three issues very effectively and quickly (because I delete these emails without reading more than a few lines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I know of at least one example where a student came from India to work with a colleague and that summer project turned into an application to grad school. The student is now at my university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T19:36:45.467" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16424" CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:56:44.720" Score="16" ViewCount="2176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm TAing a class that uses Piazza (an online student forum), in addition to the traditional office hours. A student made a (private) post, where he uploaded a MATLAB figure and asked whether it is correct. The figure is what the first question of the homework assignment asks for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I supposed to tell him whether his answer is correct/wrong? Especially over an online forum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think so, because that would be giving out the solution. How do I reply without sounding &quot;mean&quot;? Do I tell him to come to office hours instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's my first time TAing ever...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11327" LastActivityDate="2021-04-12T18:52:51.257" Title="Student asks TA if his result (figure) is correct" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12342" CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:59:08.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are your papers really your own papers, or maybe you have some coauthors? That's when it becomes complicated. It will be hard to claim that the text you copied is &lt;em&gt;exclusively&lt;/em&gt; your own work when the original paper is drafted and signed off by other people. On the other hand the thesis should be your own work exclusively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10710" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T20:59:08.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16422" CreationDate="2014-01-31T21:51:50.693" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the most standard &quot;trick&quot; students use to get answers out of professors/TAs :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is as a professor, but I think the basic principle works for TAs as well. What I usually do is turn the question back to them. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;S: Is this answer correct ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Me: Well, what do you think ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now things can go in different ways: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;case 1: S says &quot;well I'm not sure&quot;. In which case you can say, &quot;well how might you go about verifying that your answer is correct&quot; ? this might then lead to a discussion of how to check answers without you having to commit to commenting on their particular answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;case 2: S says &quot;Well I think it's correct&quot;. Then you can say &quot;Ok then :). I understand that you think it's correct&quot; and leave it at that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might persist and say &quot;can you tell me if you think it's correct&quot;. At which point you can say &quot;No, but how would you go about checking its correctness&quot; taking you back to case 1 and the &quot;methodology&quot; of checking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying pedagogical point is this: you don't want students checking answer correctness with you ahead of time because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) learning to check your own answers is an important part of learning. It allows you to diagnose problems and identify the correct path to an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) it's unfair to those who don't ask, and it's a waste of your time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) using this socratic approach allows you to assess how &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; are approaching the problem, and allows you to guide them in &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; approach, rather than spoonfeeding a prescribed answer. Everyone approaches problems differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s Students often also ask for hints. The material I teach is usually mathematical, so they're asking for hints for a proof. There you have some more leeway, but the trick is to draw them out into explaining their thought process, and then trying to gently nudge them without revealing the answer. It takes some practice and a lot of Socratic dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T21:51:50.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-01-31T22:20:12.850" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few false-assumptions that must be clarified, I feel, to answer this question properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why are academic salaries low?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in the US, if you compare them to most citizens of the country they simply are not. Naturally if you compare them only to Hollywood Stars they are paid a pittance, but let's get clear on the facts by the numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US the lowest ranking full-time faculty professors receive salaries that are in the top 70% of all wage earners in the US. A full professor pulls in a salary that is in the 86% to 97% percentile of all wage earners over the age of 25 in the US. It also does not hurt that &quot;professor&quot; is consistently found to have some of the highest job satisfaction ratings across all jobs in the country, which certainly makes the job all the more desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has led to there being more people who want to be a Professor than there are positions available both nationally and internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why is college tuition high?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing, and it isn't always easy to remember this: &lt;strong&gt;college education is a durable, long-term investment&lt;/strong&gt;. And for many - though &lt;em&gt;not all degrees from all institutions&lt;/em&gt; - it is still an incredibly lucrative one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, college is perhaps the single most amazing investment pathway available to many Americans; it is one of very, very few that does not require you already possess wealth to take advantage of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Earnings-Gap-Narrows-but/142175/&quot;&gt;one nice survey points out rather thoroughly&lt;/a&gt;, even a bachelor's degree, on average, cuts your relative risk of unemployment in half (8% to 4%), raises the median earnings over 40 years of work to 65% higher than those who only have a high-school diploma, and many other pleasant benefits. In the worst of economic downturns a person has never, to date, been better off (at least statistically) to not have a college degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, only 1% of college students take out more than $75,000 in student loans. Now if you are one of those (and one of my friends racked up over $200k)...I'm very sorry, that is one hell of a debt service. But no one suggests that's necessarily financially wise, or at least everyone knows it will be unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Fancy Words: Price Discrimination&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Universities in the US publish reports on this, but for most places I've considered the percentage stated is that 70% of students receive financial aid, and for 40% of students this aid covers all costs to attend (and often extra which is given back to the student to assist in general living expenses). This includes federal student loans, which are provided by the government at artificially low guaranteed rates - and service on the debt is deferable if you are unable to obtain gainful employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line here: this is price discrimination, where some people pay more than others. But just as with the sticker price on a car lot here, most people do not pay as much as the official tuition posted. Endowment Universities, which often have the highest posted tuitions in the whole world (think Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc) regularly cover 80% or more of costs to attend for selected applicants who do not come from a wealthy family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Universities are just still crazy expensive though, but that's a different subject!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;College Isn't Just For Academics&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably just a minor artifact of wording, but let's be clear: most people who go through college, even through graduate school, do not become employed as academics. Academics are the minority of the population, even for the graduate population. Therefore there are many, many more market factors at play in between the price of tuition and the salary of a full-time academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;So Where Does The Money Go?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Um...well, everything else, basically. A standard metric of business is 20-30% of a budget is salaries/labor, and the rest is...all the other stuff! Buildings, campuses, food, insurance, chemicals, equipment, computers, various and sundry apparatuses for science and art folks. Then add in advertising/marketing, travel and reimbursable expenses, college libraries, IT infrastructure, maintenance, custodial, utilities, &quot;community involvement&quot;...and we still haven't mentioned the other costs of &quot;research&quot; activities not otherwise included. Then there's the extra-curricular, like sports, clubs, and other supported campus organizations, &quot;student life&quot; and entertainment, &quot;campus development&quot; like building yet more buildings and parking lots to allow expanded enrollment, etc etc etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most public institutions the actual charged cost of tuition to students is less than a quarter of the income required to balance a yearly budget. I must admit to ignorance about private institutions, largely because I have never been involved with them and because their budgets aren't usually made public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T22:20:12.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16409" CreationDate="2014-01-31T22:33:35.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the conference. Many conferences publish the one page abstract that you're sometimes required to submit with the poster, but not all of them. If you didn't have to write the 1-page summary as part of the submission, don't expect it to be published. The poster itself is almost never published (I personally recommend that you make the poster available on the web).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite that, you CAN still list it as a publication on your CV, but posters are generally not worth very much and it's good to compartmentalize them to their own section of the CV so that your (eventual) journal and conference papers get priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit more description about &quot;weight&quot; and whether you should pass or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the weight of a publication (all else being equal, like let's assume for a moment that every paper's research content is the same) depends on the venue it's in and the type of publication it is. Posters are on the bottom, then short papers, then full conference papers. Usually, you get a poster because the work isn't developed enough to fill up a full paper. One thing to note is that if you &quot;compartmentalize&quot; your work well enough, you should be able to get the poster out and then later extend it to the journal without any issues - that is, if your journal builds upon your poster (quite often by adding more results, more interpretations/implications from the data, more analysis, etc.) then you'll have no problem with having both the poster and the later journal paper/conference paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to take a moment to say that while this usually is okay for posters (poster to journal/conference paper), taking this path from a short paper/note to conference paper is often wrought with more problems. Because short papers already present an approach and sometimes results, you need to ensure that the full paper builds SIGNIFICANTLY on the short paper for it to be a real contribution. I've been seeing more recently people highlighting differences between short papers and long papers as a result (ex: &quot;This paper builds upon the work presented in [1] by adding a thorough evaluation through two lab studies and one industrial field study&quot;). You need to do this because if you don't, and someone does a web search for the topic of the paper, they might find your short paper and then be all like, &quot;So it looks like someone has done this before&quot;. Unlike in a poster, where you really don't get that much space to talk about much of anything, you can usually discuss something of substance in a short paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in general, it's usually okay to present posters and then later expand them into journals or conference papers. Poster presentations are healthy in that they are a quick and easy way to get yourself &quot;out there&quot;, solicit feedback from the community, and get further ideas for what you want to do with your work. You can usually use the feedback from the poster session to build upon what you have and get a stronger research direction in the future. But do be aware that you're not &quot;self-scooping&quot; yourself by putting super-important results in a poster, because posters have low impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T00:54:57.623" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T00:54:57.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16495" CreationDate="2014-02-01T01:19:24.710" Score="9" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you keep a list of all papers you have read? Are there any good tools for that? and do they allow people to publish what they have recently read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool I'm envisioning would allow people to follow each-others readings. I find it hard to determine which new papers are worth my time, and one of the greatest benefits of having a wonderful advisor was to get recommendations of which work to follow and which wasn't all that important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any tools that sufficiently many people (incl. professors) use to record and publish what they read? Or am I the only one who would find that useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9763" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T07:17:24.053" Title="Keeping track of and sharing what you read" Tags="&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16412" CreationDate="2014-02-01T01:40:40.943" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at it from the point of view of the person who has to read 200 of these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,000 words: expected;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,100 words: not noticeably different;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,200 words: looks maybe a touch long but whatever;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2,000 words: &quot;wow, long [turns the page] blah, blah, blah [turns over again without even reading] why does this idiot think I want to read all of this?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're applying for an advanced degree in law. A critical skill in law is getting your point across concisely and simply, without extraneous waffle and without going on so long that the jury gets bored and the judge gets annoyed. If your personal statement is twice as long as it should be, the person reviewing applications can see that you lack a key skill without even reading the words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T01:40:40.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16412" CreationDate="2014-02-01T04:18:58.840" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the writing style in your statement matches the writing style in your question, you should just do some creative revising. Cut the fluff and write more concisely; for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am applying for a LLM programme at SOAS and am having certain difficulties while writing the required personal statement. According to their guidance, the statement should be &amp;quot;describing your ambitions, suitability and interest for the programme you have chosen. This should be around 1,000 words in length&amp;quot;, but I simply can't even fall under 2,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is should I post the longer version that describes me better and for which I believe gives me a greater chance to be accepted, or should I simply delete half the text so I could manage their quota?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Much of that is extraneous and overly wordy:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Currently&lt;/strike&gt; I am applying for a &lt;strike&gt;LLM&lt;/strike&gt; programme &lt;strike&gt;at SOAS&lt;/strike&gt; and am having &lt;strike&gt;certain&lt;/strike&gt; difficulties &lt;strike&gt;while&lt;/strike&gt; writing &lt;strike&gt;the required&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; personal statement. &lt;strike&gt;According to their guidance,&lt;/strike&gt; the statement should &lt;strike&gt;be &amp;quot;describing your&lt;/strike&gt; describe &lt;strike&gt;your&lt;/strike&gt; &amp;quot;ambitions, suitability and interest&amp;quot; for the &lt;strong&gt;chosen&lt;/strong&gt; programme &lt;strike&gt;you have chosen. This should be&lt;/strike&gt; in &amp;quot;around 1,000 words in length&amp;quot;, but &lt;strike&gt;I simply can't even fall under&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;I'm over&lt;/strong&gt; 2,000 words.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strike&gt;So my question is&lt;/strike&gt; should I post the longer version that describes me better &lt;strike&gt;and for which I believe gives me a greater chance to be accepted&lt;/strike&gt;, or should I &lt;strike&gt;simply&lt;/strike&gt; delete half the text &lt;strike&gt;so I could manage&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;and meet&lt;/strong&gt; their quota?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am applying for a programme and am having difficulties writing my personal statement. The statement should describe &amp;quot;ambitions, suitability and interest&amp;quot; for the chosen programme in &amp;quot;around 1,000 words in length&amp;quot;, but I'm over 2,000 words.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should I post the longer version that describes me better, or should I delete half the text and meet their quota?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original version: &lt;strong&gt;99 words&lt;/strong&gt;. Revised version: &lt;strong&gt;58 words&lt;/strong&gt;. I've cut your word count almost in half but I believe there is minimal loss in content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you've done this already, but I thought this was worth mentioning, in case you haven't. By the way, in the past, when I've had to meet word count ceilings, I've usually been able to do it &lt;strong&gt;without&lt;/strong&gt; eliminating core information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T04:18:58.840" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T07:16:02.033" Score="6" ViewCount="1601" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, is it possible to apply for a second masters degree in &lt;strong&gt;MS&amp;amp;E&lt;/strong&gt; (management science and engineering) or statistics (&lt;strong&gt;MS in statistics&lt;/strong&gt;) after a masters degree in &lt;strong&gt;computer science&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will my application be treated compared to other applicants? (with a bachelors degree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11481" LastEditorUserId="11481" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T10:44:45.327" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T09:22:17.173" Title="Is it possible to apply for a second masters degree in a different field of study? (different department)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T13:34:25.703" Score="1" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was talking about a probable research topic that I got in mind for following a Phd in Computer Science to one of my past Lecturers. This professor told me that I should make a research proposal and see what happens with the evaluating committee. The research proposal was made and it got finally accepted. Now the issue is that this university, in which they accepted my proposal is not so well known worldwide. So I would like to apply to another more renewed university with the same topic, I think that could help me better in my academic career. What should I do? It is unethically to move to another university with my research idea? maybe my past professor could feel like betrayed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T16:42:55.823" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T19:32:41.200" Title="How to bring one's PhD research to another university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16434" CreationDate="2014-02-01T14:52:16.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are free to take &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; idea wherever you would like. You cannot take your professor's project proposal to another university without her permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor at your school seeing this as a &quot;betrayal&quot; is a separate issue. A good advisor will of course want a good student to stick around. A good &lt;strong&gt;mentor&lt;/strong&gt; will want what's best for the student—regardless of what's in the mentor's best interests as a potential advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my advice is just to talk to the professor and let him know that you'd like to apply at other universities as well. (It's your right to do so, of course.) Ask if the professor would be willing to write letters supporting you. If the professor isn't supportive of this, you'll have your answer. (And if the professor is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; supportive, then do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; get letters of recommendation from that professor!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T14:52:16.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T15:11:15.493" Score="9" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12237/7921&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on how to find an masters thesis topic, but I am looking for advice on how to advise undergrad students who are looking for a thesis topic. Finding a thesis topic is a little bit different at undergrad level because it is the first time. How can I best help a student find a good thesis topic at undergrad level which will help them to get into a good university for masters and/or PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11488" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T10:47:55.660" Title="How to advise a student looking for an under-grad thesis topic?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16436" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:20:08.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did not read the answers regarding master thesis topic search, but at least in Germany I see no difference in search strategies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is: Look for something which is in the field you want to go into, find something which is challenging but manageable, and get a good advisor who helps you if you struggle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you manage to find all three, you did a very good job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T16:20:08.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:30:49.073" Score="4" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please refer to this previous question of mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8970/as-someone-with-low-grades-how-can-i-prepare-myself-to-study-msc-in-cs-in-usa&quot;&gt;As someone with low grades how can I prepare myself to study MSc in CS in USA?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15760/would-it-be-a-good-idea-to-quit-my-job-to-prepare-for-the-gre-and-toefl&quot;&gt;Would it be a good idea to quit my job to prepare for the GRE and TOEFL?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bangladesh&lt;/a&gt;. With a background in IT, I am doing a job in a bank. I am 32. Honestly speaking I am done with my job. With an ambition to do a PhD from a USA/Canadian/German university, I have understood that my current job is actually going to get me nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some answerers of the previous questions pointed out the importance of having a job in the related discipline, proving research capability, involving in research activity, being a part of a research group and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After considering all these points, I am actually strongly planning to quit my job and get enrolled in a &amp;quot;Masters with thesis&amp;quot; program in CSE in a local university. My previous degree was in Information Technology which is, I guess, considered a professional discipline. So, I am going for a CSE degree. As far as I know, Information Technology degree is not considered a fundamental discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan is this: (1) I shall complete a masters degree in CSE with a thesis, (2) write and publish one/two research articles and finally (3) complete GRE+TOEFL, if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing, I want to secure a funding either in the form of Assistant, Teaching Assistant(TA), Research Assistant, Research Fellow or anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please tell me about my prospect as a Masters-by-thesis candidate along with a funding after completing this series of actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the risk of quitting the job worth taken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user4271" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T07:00:40.520" Title="How will a &quot;local&quot; master's in CSE look when I apply for a Graduate funding in the USA?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16412" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:35:13.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of assigning a word count limit is to determine if you can be concise AND follow directions AND still get your message across to the reader.  For example, if you are asked to drive someone across town but in an effort to impress you take them to the next state that isn't accomplishing the assigned task.  If you can't get your message across within the word limit then you are failing the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11489" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T16:35:13.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:52:48.193" Score="12" ViewCount="1679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a math Ph.D student in the US who has just accepted a four year postdoc--NSF postdoc at a US school interrupted by a year in Europe. For better or for worse, I am only slated to teach for two semesters in those four years--likely during the second semester of my 3rd year and 1st semester of my 4th. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply for tenure track positions in the US afterwards and am wondering whether the relative lack of teaching as a postdoc will adversely affect my application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be looking for volunteer teaching opportunities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it matters as a graduate student I had fairly extensive teaching experience, serving as sole instructor for courses in various levels of calculus, multi-variable calculus, and linear algebra for four years in addition to mentoring REU students and grading/TA-ing graduate and advanced undergraduate courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9565" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T21:34:32.313" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T21:34:32.313" Title="What is the importance of postdoctoral teaching experience for US tenure-track jobs?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T17:27:06.183" Score="5" ViewCount="851" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone corroborate the fact above? If it’s true, how did it come to such a high number, do they have some slots reserved, or is it easy to enter German PhD programs? Would it also be easy for foreign graduates (in my case chemistry) to join a German PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 1 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemiestudium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rund 91 % der frisch diplomierten Chemiker begannen nach ihrem Abschluss mit der Promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;91 % of the recent chemistry graduates enrolled in a PhD program. [This does not imply they completed it.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 2 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uni-due.de/isa/fg_naturwiss/chemie/chemie_hs_frm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Universität Duisburg–Essen&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wie jährlich durchgeführte Erhebungen der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) zeigen, begannen in den letzten Jahren über 80 % der Absolventen nach dem Diplom bzw. Master mit einer Promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to yearly inquiries by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) [Society of German chemists], 80 % of diploma or master graduates enrolled in a PhD program in the last years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T09:22:03.583" Title="Do 90% of all German Chemistry graduates start a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2014-02-01T17:50:29.257" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two semesters of teaching in four years sounds almost ideal for a postdoc, so I would not be worried about that -- if you are aspiring to be a mathemagician rather than teaching-focused mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T17:50:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16441" CreationDate="2014-02-01T18:26:43.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gdch.de/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&amp;amp;u=0&amp;amp;file=fileadmin/downloads/Ausbildung_und_Karriere/Karriere/PDF/gdch-2012chemie.pdf&amp;amp;t=1391970038&amp;amp;hash=1df38456259e085387965d2b422d35ce4e0bf339&quot;&gt;German Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt;, apparently 90% of master's recipients in chemistry &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; start doctoral studies afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partly this is because PhD &quot;admission&quot; is largely not an admissions process at all in Germany. Individual faculty members who receive grants can hire master's recipients as &quot;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&quot; (literally &quot;scientific worker,&quot; but &quot;research assistant&quot; is a better translation). They can do this without recourse to going through a department-level admissions process, and can skip outside advertising altogether if they have an internal candidate they can appoint instead. And, since many students follow the rule of &quot;Was der Bauer nicht kennt, isst er nicht&quot;—&quot;What the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat&quot;), many students do their entire education at one school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it's much easier to get a PhD position if you're already in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T18:26:43.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2014-02-01T19:44:20.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't answer your question because I am in France and not aware of the practice in the US; but a similar question can be asked everywhere, so let me give an answer to the equivalent question in France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience in a few hiring committees, teaching is secondary to research in the assessment of applicants, if considered at all. More precisely, an excellent research record seems to compensate almost any other consideration, and a very good research record leads hiring committees to barely look at teaching to see if it seems ok. I have seen a candidate be ranked very high (and be recruited elsewhere) without &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; kind of teaching experience (and a quite limited skill in French). So, for the sake of one's career, I would say that focusing on research is the winning move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this situation is very unfortunate, and I guess and hope that many other departments consider teaching more seriously. Also, for one's own sake, one should try itself at teaching and get regular practice before applying to jobs that will involve a significant amount of teaching. This need not be intensive though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T19:44:20.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16731" CreationDate="2014-02-01T20:09:32.980" Score="6" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have around two months before the application deadline to a masters program in humanities, and I want to increase my approval chances. I don't have papers in the program major (got one paper in mathematics though), but I already have enough material for a short article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wonder if there is a way to improve my admission letter by listing a publication in a subject close to the major. Is preprint (via some analog of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt;) the best I can have within the time limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11496" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T07:56:28.993" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T07:56:28.993" Title="How to get my humanities paper published in the short timeframe before admissions deadline?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16441" CreationDate="2014-02-01T20:17:53.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system in Germany differs from the PhD system in some points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually there are no (or very little) courses you have to take. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One assumes, you are capable of doing your own research projects (at least after a year or so)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are mainly involved in projects running at one institute - and it's up to the chairperson to select the person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might have to do some work which is not (or just slightly) related to your PhD, like teaching courses, taking over part of the administrative work, etc. (this strongly depends on the group you are in).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often it is requested that you write one or more grant poropsals (and be successful so that the person coming after you is financed). This also depends on the group you are in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of several proessors who say &quot;you are employee of the institute and you have the opportunity to use some of the time to work on your PhD&quot;. You should make sure, your &quot;work for the institute&quot; overlaps significantly with your PhD-topic, otherwise you won't succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason why so many people in Chemistry have a PhD is, there are so many students and industry can just select the ones with the best qualification. I'm not very familiar with the situation in Chemistry, but I now some biologists and there is the same mechanism working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other fields, it is quite different, e.g. in engineering, computer science, etc. the PhD-rates are significantly lower (I don't have numbers, but my guess would be &amp;lt;15%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tipp at the end: If you can bring some money (e.g. a DAAD-scholarship), I expect your chances to be quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T20:17:53.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-02-01T20:21:00.670" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to start here with a disclaimer, This is my opinion based on how I think it came about. I have no references except life experience from which to draw this opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, sports teams came about because they needed to tire out their students. A large group of young people with nothing to do except study need an outlet. If all they did was sit in their chair and study all day, students would become restless. Restless powder kegs of young people developing world views is not good for stability.  Provide a healthy distraction that keeps people fit and active. If you aren't a member of the teams at least you can go out, get some fresh air, watch and play vicariously.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sports also provide a method by which people goal oriented can be motivated to remain strong and healthy; similar to Shaolin monks developing their exercises to enable them to stay awake during religious lectures(sounds like college to me). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once these sports teams were in place, a desire for organization and status essentially lead to formation of leagues and regulations. Arms race capitalism happens and here we are today.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, above people mention there are places in Europe, far from everyone else that make due without sports teams. To put some sizes in perspective, Penn State, mentioned above, in the city State College, is in the center of Pennsylvania and surrounded by barely populated farm country. Pennsylvania as a &quot;state&quot;(technically, commonwealth), is literally half the size of the United Kingdom. If you were on that campus back when the school was founded back in the 1850s, there was really nothing to do and no where to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my 2 cents, thanks for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11499" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T20:21:00.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2014-02-01T21:36:15.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the type of job you are going for. If you want a job at a R1, then not having teaching experience hardly matters. If you are applying for regional universities or liberal arts colleges they will place much more importance on teaching (and since these job entail a much heavier teaching load, usually 3-3, but I've seen up to 5-5s compared to say, 2-2 at research Unis). Many of these schools will ask for a teaching portfolio as part of the job application instead of a teaching statement. You will have to submit past teaching evaluations, syllabi, and also the standard statement of your teaching philosophy. If this is what you are going for, you will want to have some of these material ready before you go on the job market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T21:36:15.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2014-02-01T22:21:16.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your level of grad student experience, I wouldn't worry a lot.  I think it will hurt you when it comes to jobs at liberal arts schools, but for a research university, it sounds like you already have a reasonable amount of teaching experience.  Make sure you save any evaluations you have from grad school, as those could be useful if there's any question about your teaching.  Similarly, with your teaching during the postdoc, make sure someone actually comes and observes one of your classes and can write a letter based on it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As general advice, I would be more worried about starting a TT job as an inexperienced teacher than not getting a job because of it.  I personally had a relatively low level of teaching experience when I started my first TT position (one lecture course and 3 semesters of TAing) and I think it would have been beneficial for me to have a bit more, but I don't think it ever hurt me with a hiring committee.  I think it doesn't matter a tremendous amount whether you get the teaching experience you do get as a grad student or as a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth seeking out volunteer teaching/outreach projects assuming they don't consume too much time.  They're often a lot more fun than teaching normal classes and they're helpful for NSF grants, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T22:21:16.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16436" CreationDate="2014-02-01T23:57:57.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An undergrad thesis is not expected to be mind-blowing or even necessarily that original (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16470/42498&quot;&gt;@Cape Code's response&lt;/a&gt; about Lit Reviews, often a great option). Look to make some incremental improvements on a paper you've read that really interests you. Maybe you did a project for a class that you did very well on and would like to explore a bit more deeply. Starting from scratch is quite daunting for an undergrad (even a grad student or professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The least successful undergrad theses are often the ones that tried to be too groundbreaking and in the end the author had nothing because they couldn't make significant progress. Most theses are good enough to be accepted, if you get the work done. They do not have to be publishable. You usually only have about 1 year to finish an undergrad thesis, while completing a full load of courses. This is way different from a PhD or even a masters thesis where usually more time can be devoted. This is your first time at research, so have fun with it and don't worry too much about the consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often an advisor might hand you a project to work on, but you should come to him/her with general interests and having already read some of their papers and personal website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T10:47:55.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-02-02T01:36:09.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do all major universities have commercialised sports teams, or are there major exceptions of universities choosing not to take part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., most major universities have sports teams, but not necessarily &quot;commercialised&quot; sports teams. For the most part, the bigger and more well-known the school, the stronger the commitment to big-time athletic programs, although there are some exceptions – a few very well-known universities do not have major sports programs. For example, MIT and Carnegie-Mellon are known for academics first, and sports teams second, although even these schools field intercollegiate squads in sports such as tennis, track, and volleyball. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why they have sports teams, that is rooted in &lt;strong&gt;tradition&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_athletics_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collegiate sports rivalries go back into 1800s, and grew from there&lt;/a&gt;. It's part of campus life, in the same way other extracurricular activities are. The U.S. is a sports-obsessed society, and, to some extent or another, sports programs attract a rather strong spotlight in both high school and college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do they spend big money on sports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every school spends big money on sports, and not every school spends big money across all sports equally. In the U.S., universities form athletic conferences. Some of the more well-known athletic conferences include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pac-12.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pac 12&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_Conference&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SEC&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigten.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big 10&lt;/a&gt;. (The Big 10 so rooted in tradition that it still calls itself &quot;The Big 10&quot; even though there are presently 12 teams in the conference). Other conferences, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mac-sports.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mid-American Conference&lt;/a&gt;, are comprised of teams that would not be considered athletic powerhouses.  Teams in the same conference compete against each other in several sports. The Ivy League consists of some of the oldest and most prestigious schools in the U.S., and they compete against each other in both major sports (football and basketball), as well as other sports (such as volleyball, golf, and ice hockey). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key thing to understand is that not all schools devote the same amount of resources to their athletic programs. Conferences are generally made up of universities of comparable size, in roughly the same geographic region, with a commitment to athletics commensurate with other schools in that conference. Moreover, some schools might be known for having a very strong team in just one or two particular sports (for example, Wichita State University usually fields a very strong baseball team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joining a major conference means a major commitment to athletics – you wouldn't see Eastern Texas Baptist University trying to join the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.big12sports.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big 12&lt;/a&gt; unless they were prepared to dedicate the resources needed to field competitive teams in that conference, and the conference wouldn't let them join without that commitment, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why a vast amount of money is spent on sports teams, that is rooted in &lt;strong&gt;prestige&lt;/strong&gt;. In a sports-obsessed culture, a well-known sports team can put your university on the map. The average person on the street couldn't tell you much about the chemistry program at USC, or the computer science courses offered at Notre Dame, or the economics department at Michigan State, but five men in a barber shop could talk about their football teams all afternoon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds if not thousands of universities in the U.S. The state of Georgia, for example, has about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.50states.com/college/georgia.htm#.Uu2gaPb6yR4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;six dozen&lt;/a&gt; places where a student could obtain a degree. Most of these schools probably have sports teams, but only about four or so have have big-time, big-money commitments and nationally-recognized sports teams. The rest of the schools have athletic teams with everyday students who just happen to be on the diving team, or the wrestling team, or the softball team, participating in what amounts to an extracurricular activity, rarely playing their sport in front of more than 50 fans.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T01:36:09.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2014-02-02T01:58:13.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that at R1 US universities, for better or for worse, the reality is that pretty much nobody will even read your teaching statement.  Unless your letters explicitly talk about how terrible a teacher you are, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence: In my three years of postdoc-ing, I only taught the last semester (and only for fun), so it didn't even make it onto my applications which were due before that.  It didn't stop me from getting a tenure track job at a math department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T02:14:40.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T02:14:40.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16409" CreationDate="2014-02-02T02:05:36.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the particular conference and the field.  In computer science (where the main publication venue is conferences), many conferences divide the published papers into &quot;talks&quot; and &quot;posters&quot; (eg NIPS, AISTATS, ...), and there's no difference in terms of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most other fields, however, acceptance at a conference means nothing, and you have to get published in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: ask your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T02:24:00.207" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T02:24:00.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T09:43:58.273" Score="1" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold a bachelors in Engineering from an Indian university and have six years of work experience in the software industry. Is there any foreign university that offers a PhD related to finance in distance learning mode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11515" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T11:43:05.800" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T11:43:05.800" Title="Regarding Phd in distance learning mode" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14695" CreationDate="2014-02-02T10:09:06.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An introduction should funnel the reader from the wider perspective, in which your study is part, to the formulation of your thesis theme or question(s). This means you need to establish the wider perspective where your work improves our knowledge as well as identifying the gap in knowledge where your work attempts solution(s). In terms of writing this can be accomplished in several ways, although similar content-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a short research paper you start out by writing about the wider perspective leading into identification of and statements about a gap of knowledge where your paper fits. You follow up by reviewing the literature to establish what is known in detail and perhaps highlighting the identified gaps. You may finish off by recapping your work and the main conclusion to the gap(s) identified earlier. Some prefer not to do so in the introduction; a matter of taste or tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write your introduction in the way just described as a long chapter (due to the literature review) but you can also choose to split the text into several chapters. You would then have a chapter called introduction which will only contain the wider perspective and identification of a gap in knowledge. Sometimes it can be useful to add a short chapter detailing the aims of the thesis where you can expand on the questions based on the identified gap. You then follow up with a chapter called &quot;background&quot; or something more descriptive, but which contains the literature review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since all theses are different, some may have one question to solve, some may have several and somewhat disparate around a main theme, the way to write the introduction will have to be adjusted. for the former case the main template can be followed but in the case of several research questions around a theme some adjustments are needed. Exactly how to solve this is difficult to say since it depends on the type of questions and how they are tied together. But, it is necessary to make sure the place of each question in the greater scheme of things is known and that the literature review clearly shows what is known about each topic. This can in an extreme case mean to have a single short introduction of the major perspective and then have sections for each of the questions, almost like a set of papers (if it is not built from papers/manuscripts); each complete with introduction, methods, results and discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T10:09:06.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16462" CreationDate="2014-02-02T10:57:34.520" Score="5" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to defend my thesis. I have implemented new technique but the results are same(as with the old technique). So how should I defend it? Is this necessary to get the better results or implementation of new technique matters in thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11516" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T12:51:50.313" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T18:26:46.117" Title="How to defend Masters thesis?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T11:32:49.567" Score="9" ViewCount="33491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply for many math PhD programs in order to maximize my chance of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main question is how should I ask for recommendation letters. In particular, should I ask for a generic letter (in the sense that it's addressed to &quot;the admission committee&quot;) to use for all my applications? Or should I ask for multiple letters from the same person for every university I want to apply to (presumably the letters have the same content, except maybe in who it is addressed to)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most PhD application deadlines are in December. But I finished undergrad at the end of last year. Should I ask for these letters now so as to not increase the time between when the professors know me and when they write the letter (this may mean I'm sending a letter dated February in November), or should I ask closer to the deadline around November this year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11517" LastEditorDisplayName="user11517" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T11:40:50.540" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:05:24.983" Title="Asking for Recommendation Letters for Multiple Grad School Applications" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2014-02-02T11:42:30.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of asking now, while you are still fresh in the minds of your professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already know where you'll be applying, and the number of schools is relatively low (say, three or less), then there's no harm in asking for three letters. Once you get much more than that, though, it might be better to ask for a generic letter from each professor. I know I wouldn't want to write six different versions of essentially the same letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that admissions committees are used to seeing fairly generic letters. So long as the content speaks well of you, I don't think it'll be counted against you if the letter is generic. (If that assumption is wrong, though, hopefully some folks will chime in here and let us know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T11:42:30.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16613" CreationDate="2014-02-02T11:43:18.987" Score="24" ViewCount="15137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to attend some conferences this year, but we are running out of funding until 2015, so I need to look for other options. For instance, I organized a special session in a conference, and attained 12 speakers, so accommodation was free and also registration but not travel expenses. So my question is, if you do not have funding, which other options you know for attending conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Given my position (PI of a research group), I can not ask for student travel grants, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T19:46:09.490" Title="How to attend conferences without funding" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16458" CreationDate="2014-02-02T11:48:16.253" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though your major contribution to expanding the extent of human knowledge is in showing how the new technique can be used to confirm results (X) which were obtained by the old technique. So when defending your thesis, you better be very sure that you show how this new technique enhances our understanding of X!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsure how to best present this, talk to your advisor. In fact, even if you believe you know how best to present your contribution,  &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor!&lt;/strong&gt; Take advantage of his/her experience and knowledge of the field to position yourself where your contribution can make the greatest possible impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to prove that you have expanded human knowledge, so focus on how this is better than the old technique, not on how you have gotten exactly the same results. Again, your advisor should best be able to show you how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T11:48:16.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2014-02-02T12:44:59.620" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to give an answer based on my experience in the US, so it may not be applicable in other countries but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether your recommenders use a generic letter is not a decision you get to make. You tell them where to send the letter, but at least in the US, you do not get to see it, and all you know about it's content is what they tell you.  I would let them use their judgement about how to personalize it, though if there is something you think would particularly important at one school vs. another, it's a good idea to mention this to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, when they write the letter is not something you have control over.  In all grad school applications I've seen, the application is electronic and the recommender directly submits via a link that's generated when you fill out your application.  They'll know when the deadline is, and will probably be annoyed if you try to insist that they write their letter months before the deadline.  If you're applying to a place that still uses paper, submitting the application months before the deadline when your paper application isn't there is just asking for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; make sense is to write your recommenders now, and say &quot;I wanted to let you know that I'll be applying for graduate school in November, and I was hoping you would be willing to write me a recommendation.  I wanted to let you know relatively early since I know that by fall it will have been a while since I graduated.&quot; Don't hesitate to remind them about interactions you've had, or about anything you think would look good in the letter.  Professors often have to write many such letters, and if you put your good qualities at their fingertips, they're more likely to end up in the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Looking this over, I think I could have been a little more concise.  Providing your recommenders with info is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; good idea; that's why I suggest that you do email them now.  They can write a better letter if they know what you plan to do and if you remind/tell them about your accomplishments, etc. But when you ask someone for a recommendation, you can't really micromanage.  You need to say where the letter needs to go and when the deadline is, but there's not much else you have control over.  It is unfortunate that memories fade (though they'll fade less if you give a reminder of your existence now), but that's how it goes.  That's just the price you pay if you don't apply to a Ph.D. right as you finish your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T15:05:24.983" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:05:24.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2014-02-02T13:23:31.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an objective point of view, this is a matter of publication ethics. You appear to clearly be the first author, meaning you have provided most of the input from original idea through intellectual work including drawing conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear to me if you are past your PhD or in the middle of the PhD. Again, objectively, this would not make any difference but in practise, it involves more. If you are past your PhD, your advisor is not much more than any colleague and you as first author should be able to decide what to do with your work, still considering any co-workers who has made sufficient input to warrant co-authorship. If, on the other hand is still in your PhD you need to think about what you need to do to finish your degree. There must be people around with who you can discuss your situation and the way forward. Providing clear advise on this is quite individual and involves much more than can be deduced from your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, you should make an attempt to properly assess the contributions from all involved in the work. This will provide you with something tangible to use when discussing or defending your rights. Note that you need to include all parts of the process from original idea to the finished product. Many forget the initial question which is where an advisor usually provides much insight. At the same time, providing non-scientific input on writing, is not worth as much as many would think. After all, you could probably buy such a service and no-one would dream of co-authorship. It is as you have indicated the scientific intellectual work that counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A difficulty arises when someone, in this case the advisor, refuses to publish  the material. Of course if the reason is that the material is not good enough that is one thing, if it is a personal conflict it is another. The rejected paper is a non-product as I see it. To resubmit, you need to make revisions and then resubmit. You need to send the manuscript to your co-authors (advisor) and state that you are planning to submit to another journal and that you would wish to retain him (and the others) as co-author(s), and invite comments and input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to look at the following links &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.se/search?q=authorship+conflicts+apa&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-GB%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;gws_rd=cr&amp;amp;ei=tkTuUvqLOqeU4ATz1IGwCA#q=authorship+apa&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-GB%3aofficial&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/fine-1993.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Am. Psych.&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/fine-1993.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PARE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uu.edu/programs/nursing/documents/AuthorshipGuidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Union University&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorder.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AuthorOrder.com&lt;/a&gt; to provide a few. the point is: build your own view and knowledge about authorship/contributorship to strengthen your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T13:54:09.547" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T13:54:09.547" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16467" CreationDate="2014-02-02T13:39:16.093" Score="10" ViewCount="3655" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things you should know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was not a dream school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was considered &quot;safe/moderate&quot; i.e. the kind of students who get in&#xA;have more or less similar profiles like mine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From graduate school student discussion forums , seems like no one else got&#xA;rejected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This really hurts. If this school rejects me, what hope do I have with others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9186" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T05:57:48.720" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T15:08:12.710" Title="How do I deal with graduate school rejection from an university that I considered easy to get into?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2014-02-02T13:44:10.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the advisor made a substantial intellectual contribution (or, in fields where it's relevant, procured the grant supporting the work), there's not much the author can do to publish the paper without the advisor's permission. The advisor would have claim to authorship rights if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the paper grew out of work proposed by the advisor, or was supported by funds accrued by the advisor;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the student discussed the work with the advisor and gained useful feedback or guidance about the direction or results of the project;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the advisor contributed to the writing of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is definitely true; it's not clear if the first two points hold, but they very well could, given the situation described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if the advisor has authorship rights, the student is more or less screwed if they try to publish. If they publish the paper, with an author who has not given permission for submission or without an author who has authorship rights, then that is sufficient grounds for &lt;strong&gt;retraction&lt;/strong&gt; of a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T05:45:34.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T05:45:34.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16465" CreationDate="2014-02-02T14:28:52.107" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from purely personal experience, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. Of course it's possible that your application was weak and that generally the other schools will feel the same way. On the other hand, it's also possible that something you wrote just didn't appeal to someone working on the applications at this particular school and you were looked over. In my own experience applying to graduate school I actually got rejected from some of my 'backup' schools but was accepted (and was given extra incentive to come to) one of my 'dream' schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T14:28:52.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16473" CreationDate="2014-02-02T14:47:38.453" Score="2" ViewCount="825" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a double major in my BSc, first one is Electrical and Electronic Engineering and second one is Computer Science [probably it was a bad idea because my cgpa is low, but anyways I have decided to do it]. Now it is time for thesis. Since both of the major are closely related, either I can go for a single big thesis that is something in between both of the courses or I can go for two different thesis. Now the thing I am concern about is that, single thesis or double thesis which one will look good at my Masters Admission Application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11488" LastEditorUserId="11488" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T17:41:40.770" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T11:07:18.170" Title="Single or double thesis for double major?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16484" CreationDate="2014-02-02T16:24:08.893" Score="2" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the recommended way to ephasize proper nouns and jargon in academic writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually use italics to emphasize specific proper nouns (e.g., the name of a software: &lt;em&gt;Gitolite&lt;/em&gt;). Until now, I did not emphasize technical jargon at all. However, my editor suggested to highlight jargon with double quotes (e.g., &quot;the gauge hierarchy problem&quot; or &quot;spaghetti code&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good practice? If so, should I use the double quotes only for the first appearence of a jargon term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11525" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:53:54.363" Title="Emphasizing proper nouns and jargon" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16436" CreationDate="2014-02-02T16:24:44.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always the option of asking for a thorough, methodologically sound, literature review on a given subject. Especially if you have too many students to allow them to do experiments in you lab for example. By allowing a certain freedom in the subject to pick, you give the personalized aspect without the risk of choosing a broad or unfeasible practical project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature reviews have the advantage of teaching the undergrad how people usually do research. It can also confront them to the diversity of scientific opinion or the large variation in paper quality and thus develop a critical approach to literature reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find these skills to be of great value at the undergrad level. And hey, the result might actually be useful to your research, which will be gratifying to the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T11:58:48.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:58:48.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16367" CreationDate="2014-02-02T16:35:50.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;We shouldn't forget that most American universities were founded at a time when there was great admiration for classical culture.  Academics in the mid 1800's would have been well aware of the Athenian ideal of &quot;A Perfect Mind In A Perfect Body&quot;. The Apollonian and Dionysian ideals were very alive for these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was only the demands for a relevant education in WWII and the 1960's that ended the classical educational curriculum with it's requirement that all students learn Latin or Greek. American universities remain a forest of Ionic columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a good sense of the position of 'sport' in the culture of the upper class in the 1920's by watching Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd remind that one criterion for Rhodes scholarships is that of athletic prowess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even as late as my own adolescence in the 1970's there was an assumption that the 'best' [male] students were the athletes. The ideal was Tommy, the quarterback of the high school team, and Suzy the cheerleader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also remember that many universities in the US were training grounds for the military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, universities were more likely to have grown from the church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11527" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T16:35:50.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16346" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:15:38.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have only one advice, which was and is the only working solution for me: &lt;strong&gt;change your environment drastically.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you tried hard to work in your office, and that you decided to suppress any things that can distract you from work. It also seems that it does not work at all. The problem can be the place instead of the furniture, or the potential distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the solution was quite simple, and worked and still work very well : I NEVER work in my office. I think while walking or cycling or doing manual work. I wrote stuff on papers at home, in a bar, in a starbuck, in a public park, etc. And finally, I am going back to the office only for the things that need a computer (e.g. writing papers, grant proposals, and slides for the lectures).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, you will probably have a routine : a walk in the morning, then a coffee in a place where you draft your ideas, then the rest of the day in the office, for the boring stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T17:15:38.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16468" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:16:51.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write one thesis&lt;/em&gt;, so you only have to write one introduction and discussion section, and only have to go through the thesis formatting nightmare once. If you prefer two small projects, you can make two projects two separate chapters for your thesis and just try and figure out a way to relate them in your introduction and discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Make the title of your thesis sound applicable to the field of study you want to get your masters in&lt;/em&gt; (no one will read your undergrad thesis on the admissions committee and I doubt anyone will care whether you wrote two theses or one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you have a low GPA. Perhaps two smaller projects (still for one thesis) will allow you to &lt;em&gt;collaborate with two different professors&lt;/em&gt;. Why is this advantageous? Because that is potentially two very strong letters of recommendation. Many undergrads have one good letter of recommendation and the rest are just professors that taught a course they took. If you have two very strong letters, that is quite impressive, and will do more to get you into graduate school than anything related to your thesis, short of publishing it in a peer reviewed journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="42498" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T11:07:18.170" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T11:07:18.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16479" CreationDate="2014-02-02T19:47:56.557" Score="13" ViewCount="17216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently applied for PhD programs in mathematics. I received an offer not long ago, and in light of this offer, there are only a few schools that I would consider an offer from. From past years results (and this year's), I expect to get results from two of them in the coming week, but another of them usually only sends out their final decisions three or so weeks from now (though they do, and have, sent decisions already to some applicants). I would like to make a decision fairly soon, and knowing about the status of my application at this final school would indeed make a difference in any decisions I make. When is it acceptable to ask them about the status of my application? Should I simply wait until they send me the result, or is it OK to ask earlier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more generality, so that this question might be useful to somebody that's not me: in general, when is it acceptable to ask schools about their admissions decision if they've not notified you yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10060" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T21:09:11.067" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T20:40:05.543" Title="When is it acceptable to ask a graduate program about their admissions decision?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2014-02-02T19:48:55.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to add my perspective, since I have been in sort-of an opposite situation. In many places and fields, &lt;strong&gt;improving the writing is considered as a part of the job of your supervisor, and if the result is yours, it is yours.&lt;/strong&gt; I mean, your supervisor is there to learn you how to write papers, and only if you do the research together, it is necessary to include his name on the paper. (Disclaimer: this is only one point of view, and only on the ethics, not on the legal view).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; I have a paper where I'm the only author. We were writing the paper down together with my supervisor, and it was certainly her who had more ideas on how to write things down (especially the introduction and the conclusions), which articles should be cited etc. Still, all the ideas were mine, all the proofs were mine (it's theoretical CS), so she said that I should be the only author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should you do?&lt;/strong&gt; No, you should not, in my opinion, submit the results without your supervisor's consent. IMHO you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to approach him again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask someone else at the same department for help. Just be careful who you choose, either it should be someone you know well and who knows you well, or someone who is dedicated for these cases: someone who should be approached in case of conflicts. The solution is not clear at all, and having insight from someone close in topic, scientific habits etc. could be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish your thesis electronically on some public repository; this is at least a step how to make your result visible to the community, and you certainly doesn't need your supervisor's permission to do that. For instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; accepts theses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T10:24:38.813" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T10:24:38.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16483" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:16:25.160" Score="28" ViewCount="34759" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before his/her contract ends, for whatever reason? How early should a prior notice be submitted in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T17:17:36.127" Title="Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before contract ends?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:18:10.773" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's a specific reason, such as a deadline at another school, that it would be helpful to know your status, then I think its very reasonable to send a message to the graduate director at a program you're considering.  Asking just because you're curious is generally discouraged, but if you have new information, then its reasonable to ask for an update.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:18:10.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:38:05.760" Score="4" ViewCount="1655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once wanted to do a PhD in the UK, but found out that the opportunities were limited for those coming from outside Europe (I did my PhD in Norway instead). I think it is still the case today. I am wondering why this is so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional thought: I am wondering, for instance, if the vacancy were open to anyone in the world, would it not increase the chance of getting the best applicants? Also, what differences are there in the UK system compared to other countries (e.g. Norway) which open their PhD vacancies to anyone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T09:59:23.683" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T23:18:55.950" Title="Why are many funded PhD programmes in the UK not open for non-EU applicants?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16478" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:42:18.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math, it's reasonably common for people to leave a 3 year postdoc after 2 years to take a tenure track job (or rather, it was reasonably common before the job market crashed).  But fields which have postdocs attached to particular grants may be quite different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:42:18.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16478" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:47:40.200" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (I'm a postdoc now, and hence also know a few other postdocs) leaving before the end of a contract is perfectly normal. The nature of postdoctoral work is that you have to be ready to take the next opportunity when it arises - other people certainly aren't going to make sure the timing lines up nicely for you! Of course if you leave very early in the contract, that might annoy people, but assuming you're reasonably sensible, everything should be fine. Remember that the people employing you have either been through the same process, or observed it over the years&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how early the notice should be, that depends on the contract and the labour laws where you are. There may be certain legal minimums that have to be observed, but the figure seems to normally be 2-3 weeks. Of course your employer may let you out early by agreement, but as your employer is probably technically the University, don't expect a bureaucracy to be particularly flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little side note, I gather this might be a bit different in the US, though currently in the process of changing (perhaps someone who went through the US system can add to this). A postdoc in the US has lower status that it does in Europe/Australia/New Zealand/..., so it might be the case that your employers &lt;em&gt;haven't&lt;/em&gt; been postdocs at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:47:40.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16478" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:48:26.943" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, a postdoc is a normal contract between an employer and an employee, and as such, terminating it earlier than its date depends on the contract and/or the country. It should be normally specified on the contract, otherwise the laws of the country should apply. For instance, in the UK, I have had a notice of 1 month, in Italy, it was 3 months.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is normally acceptable for a postdoc to leave before the end of the contract, although it depends on the situation. If the employer does not provide any guarantee for further employment, and if the postdoc has found another offer, starting earlier than the end of the current contract, then that's the rule of the game. If the postdoc has found a much better offer (for instance, a permanent position), then that's also the rule of the game. If personal reasons are involved (going with a partner, going back to home country, etc), that's quite fair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By acceptable, I mean that the employer should normally not make any problem (assuming the legal obligations are fulfilled), and might even be supportive in the end of the contract. A case that might not be acceptable is to leave in the middle of a contract, breaking some work commitment (e.g., an experiment to run) for a reason that might not appear very strong. But in the end, it depends a lot on the relationship between the postdoc and the employer. The point to remember is that Academia is a small world, and that in general, it is worth keeping good relationship with former employers. In doubt, talk with your current employer, or with a mentor at the place you're working at to know what the rule normally is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:48:26.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16469" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:53:54.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question was tagged 'publications' - if you plan on submitting work to a particular journal, it would be worth checking to see if they have a house style for jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T21:53:54.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16478" CreationDate="2014-02-02T22:52:39.057" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to previous answers: if your postdoc includes teaching, you should finish out the academic year, or at the very least finish the current term, and give your department chair as much notice as possible, so that they can find a replacement or adjust teaching assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T22:52:39.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16492" CreationDate="2014-02-02T23:00:17.123" Score="34" ViewCount="12218" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been quite a few questions about how to dress to an academic interview. However, no answer to these questions addresses what one should use to carry their things in. For example, is it acceptable to carry your things in a backpack, cheap shoulder/messenger bag made of synthetic materials, briefcase, expensive leather bag, purse etc? A backpack with a suit would look awfully strange. Maybe a cheap messenger bag would still look OK. Links to photos of acceptable/preferred bags would be nice. Is the etiquette different for post-docs vs. faculty positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T16:47:48.827" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T23:59:42.733" Title="What to wear on one's shoulders to interviews? (bags, backpacks, etc.)" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16478" CreationDate="2014-02-02T23:08:46.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a Computer Science postdoc in Europe. I have the understanding (and full support) with my professor that I will be gone if a faculty position presents itself. I guess, given that postdocs are really just researchers in queue for a faculty position, I am assuming other postdocs will have similar arrangements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I am assuming whether your professor is annoyed by you leaving depends on how much he depends on you, how much time you give him, and how valid your reasons are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before my current job I did postdoc at the university where I also received my PhD. I told my old advisor many months in advance that it would be good for me and my CV to leave my almer mater and home country, and he was fully supportive (== good reason, many months of changeover time). On the other hand, the same professor was pretty pissed when another postdoc quit his position to work in industry more or less without prior warning. &lt;strong&gt;Circumstances matter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T23:08:46.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11802" CreationDate="2014-02-03T00:04:47.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tackle one aspect at a time.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, on one pass, concentrate on fixing punctuation and make a conscious effort not to do anything about the other things that will inevitable jump out at you. (You can flag them for later attention if you're afraid you'll forget, but it is important not do too many things per pass.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vary your focus.&lt;/strong&gt; Shift from looking at the big picture to looking at the details. One on pass, evaluate each paragraph in light of the entire paper. On the next, evaluate each sentence or phrase in light of the paragraph; you don't necessarily lose sight of the larger structure, but it is less important on this pass.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask others for help.&lt;/strong&gt; This may mean asking your advisor to critique for you and/or have friends and family members proofread. Another set of eyes is invaluable; I am indebted to those friends and colleagues who have patiently answered my demands for feedback and blunt criticism!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leave it for a while.&lt;/strong&gt; To echo the thought of Andy W above, there are times when stepping away from a paper is the surest cure for drafting fatigue. One caveat; don't stay away too long! When you put the paper away, have a clear idea of how long you will be away, what you will do during that time, and what needs to be done on the manuscript when you come back. (Attach a note as a reminder for yourself!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final note: YMMV. Every author works differently, and what works for me may not work for you. While I struggle with trying to do everything on one pass, I have worked with others who were fine with the minutiae, but absolutely could not see the problems with the big picture except with help from friendly critics. The tips above work for me,and I offer them in the hope that others may learn from my success without needing to endure my failures! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T00:04:47.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2014-02-03T01:00:08.417" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bags, shoes, hats, it's all the same answer as for clothes. Post-docs vs faculty positions, it's the same answer. If you've any specific instructions from the panel who will interview you, follow them. Otherwise, follow local customs for smart professional attire. Err on the side of looking smarter and more professional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T01:00:08.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18690" CreationDate="2014-02-03T01:02:27.663" Score="8" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 year and a half away from completing my integrated MS in Medicine, I have decided that, once complete, I won't be pursuing life as a clinician and want to do research in Neuroscience instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I already have a paper published (jointly) and two more almost ready to be submitted, after having worked in both the genetics and pharmacology labs, where my tasks ranged from data gathering (&quot;pen and paper research&quot;) to Western Blotting and micro surgery in mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My grades are not very good though, and I'm looking for ways of making my CV more appealing, besides asking for a summer intership in one the groups I like (all in Germany by the way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would having a specialization (Neurology, Psych, etc) be a plus? On which skills should I work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11543" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:19:51.007" Title="How to make an MD more appealing for a PhD program in basic research (neuroscience)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14695" CreationDate="2014-02-03T01:33:24.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a lot of PhD dissertations, the introduction consists of material that would have been learned in a graduate course in your subfield. For example, the introduction to mine was a presentation of some basic ideas about low-energy nuclear structure that would have been contained in a graduate course in nuclear physics. Such an introduction is one of the least useful pieces of writing you'll ever do. Only a very small number of people will ever read it, and of those, only an even smaller number will learn anything from it. The text it contains will not be usable in a paper published in s journal. The only people who will benefit from it are maybe 2 or 3 people on your committee who are not in your subfield, and those people could just as easily read some other treatment of the topic. For these reasons, you should either not write such a chapter at all, or make it extremely brief. The whole concept of a PhD dissertation is a bizarre anachronism, and if your university offers an alternative, such as stapling together a set of published papers, you should take it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T01:33:24.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2014-02-03T01:40:31.593" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen them in all in faculty job talks in our department for the last few years. I have seen messenger bags, backpacks and briefcases; some of them have been made of expensive leather and looked really classy/professional and I have even seen them made of cheap, fraying materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it does not matter - except maybe in incredibly conservative departments. We hired one of the folks who had a pretty cheap looking backpack. The fact that he/she had multiple publications in the top journals and conferences in their area probably mattered more. They were all wearing suits though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T01:40:31.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2014-02-03T02:01:24.117" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, at least in the UK (I couldn't be sure about other countries), this probably matters a lot less in academia than it would for a corporate job.  The most important thing is probably that you feel comfortable with your choice.  It's extremely unlikely that you would fail to get the job simply because of your choice of bag, but if you are feeling uncomfortable all day about, say, wearing a backpack with a suit, then that could end up having a negative effect on your interview performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I interviewed for my current job, I carried my larger items in my backpack, and I did feel a bit silly wearing a backpack with a suit, but fortunately I was offered to leave my backpack in the secretaries' office for the day, and I had all the things I really needed to keep with me in a small leather handbag.  I think I would have felt uncomfortable carrying the backpack around with me all day (even though it was a good-quality and quite new one), especially as the other candidates were quite smartly dressed and didn't have backpacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T02:01:24.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16428" CreationDate="2014-02-03T07:17:24.053" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are several products to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.CiteULike.org/&quot;&gt;CiteULike&lt;/a&gt;, which is completely web-based, has good support, allows you to share your library, see who has read which papers, which papers are trending in the last seven days, and has a good recommendation system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to say this, because I've always had good support from them, but its functionality doesn't really extend beyond that, and that's a problem: I was really enthusiastic about it, but I notice that I've barely used it in the last 14 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot;&gt;Elsevier-owned Mendeley&lt;/a&gt;, where you can add people as contacts, and share what you own. Recommendations are also provided anonymously, based on overlaps between your library and other people's. It has a desktop application, which I have used, and a website, which I very rarely use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://zotero.org/&quot;&gt;zotero&lt;/a&gt;, which does allow you to share your bibliography with others, and to see who is sharing what. I found that it also insisted on duplicating all the pdfs on my local drive too, which meant I quickly uninstalled it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's EndNote Web, which might allow libraries to be shared publicly, but I found the interface frustratingly unusable, so couldn't say either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there are several applications which allow you to share the metadata of the papers you read, on the web. However, the user experience, ergonomics and functionality is patchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T07:17:24.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2014-02-03T08:52:09.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you wear a backpack on both shoulders with a suit jacket, it will make the suit bunch up in front and the sleeves look too short. Also, you will probably pop the button(s) if you wear the jacket closed. If you don't need to bring anything heavy to the interview and strongly prefer your backpack, then wear it on one shoulder only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone else said, choose to bring what you are most comfortable with. By comfortable, I am referring to the ability to quickly find whatever you might need during the interview. It is awful to be dredging through a bag or purse, trying to find something while one or more potential employers are waiting! I have done that, and it was flustering, distracting. The same is true about latches on a briefcase or satchel, if you choose that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An academic interview is so important. Even if you don't wear a suit, or don't have one, make sure that your shoes fit well, hair is combed, and your socks match. No one is likely to notice or care, but doing so costs you nothing and will minimize self-consciousness, especially if you need to stand to write something on a whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T08:52:09.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T09:41:33.993" Score="15" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a footnote at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16482/1033&quot;&gt;this answer by on leaving a postdoc early&lt;/a&gt;, user Luke Mathieson writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A postdoc in the US has lower status that it does in Europe/Australia/New Zealand/...,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that postdocs in the USA &lt;em&gt;typically&lt;/em&gt; have lower pay than in (say) Sweden or The Netherlands (I did not look into other countries).  I don't know if pay is quite proportional to status.  In the way postdocs are perceived by others—undergraduates, graduate students, pre-tenure academics, tenured professors—is there a difference in postdoc status in different parts of the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise this question is somewhat subjective, so I'm looking for either testimonies based on people who have worked as or with postdocs in both western Europe and North America, or in-depth articles exploring this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T23:19:24.917" Title="Is the status of postdocs perceived differently in western Europe vs. North-America?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T10:14:47.927" Score="3" ViewCount="1245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen several articles in internet about a general bias against hiring long term unemployed people in non-necessarily academic jobs, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/08/18/its-true-long-term-unemployment-can-make-you-unemp.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/02/the-long-term-unemployment-crisis-is-out-of-contro.aspx#.Uu9lePvT5sU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;I was wondering if there is such an unwritten rule in academia as well?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure someone might say it is not the case and according to the rules X and Y, it is considered a discrimination and it is forbidden by law and so on. I am not asking what the written laws say. &lt;strong&gt;I would like to know if there is such a bias in hiring committees or not? And if there is such a thing how can a long term unemployed academic do to overcome this obstacle?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T17:30:33.700" Title="Is there any unwritten rule against hiring already unemployed PhDs?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2014-02-03T10:41:17.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any case (academic or not), you always have to account for any hole on your CV. The main idea here is that someone always loses skills when he doesn't have any activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, holes in CV can have many different root causes (disease, looking for a job in a country struck by the economic crisis, humanitarian work, taking care of children at home...). It is usually best to either write it down explicitly (disease for example) or to turn it into some positive, meaningful experience (humanitarian work, etc.). For example, someone who took care of children at home can have learned some organization skills, done some scientific blogging or contributed to some scientific tool on spare time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will not always be accepted by a recruiter, but it's better than holes in the CV that just raise suspicion about one's commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T10:41:17.863" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16512" CreationDate="2014-02-03T12:21:19.683" Score="26" ViewCount="3197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper more than a year ago, but still I haven't heard anything back from the editor. As of today I have no idea whether my paper has been accepted/rejected or is in a review stage. Only thing I know is that it has been received, for a got a confirmation of this soon after the submission. Needless to say that I've tried several times to get in contact with the editor to find out about my paper's fate, but I got not a single reply to my status update requests. What should you do in a case like this? I was thinking of writing to the editor again to let him know that I'm withdrawing the paper from him and submitting to someone else? Is this a good idea? Are there other paths one might walk down to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11564" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T16:23:40.593" Title="What should you do if you don't hear anything back from editor after a whole year from first submission?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T12:26:05.917" Score="3" ViewCount="2167" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following question was posted on Math SE, but seems to be more related to Academia SE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next year I will start studying maths at university. I'm highly interested in biomathematics, but in my country there aren't specific courses for students. At least there are very few Ph.D. programs. So I'm thinking of taking a 3-years degree course here and then a Master degree and Ph.D. in another country. Are there such courses in UK or US? If so, which are the entry requirements (in terms of, say, English language certificates, couses taken, etc)? How can I prepare to such courses? Are there any suggested readings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11566" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T12:21:35.137" Title="Master degree and PhD in biomathematics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2014-02-03T12:39:30.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is an unwritten rule, precisely, but I think once you are not employed in academia (even if you have a job somewhere else), your chances of getting a position in academia decrease extremely rapidly.  Competition for positions is so massive, and there are so many well qualified applicants that I think someone who is not currently in an academic or research position is unlikely to be taken seriously.  Not to mention that you typically aren't doing the kind of research and networking you need to get a position if you are unemployed (not always, but often).  I think some fields where it's very hard to get work are a bit more forgiving (though, of course there there is even more competition), but this is part of what keeps people in adjunct positions, since it is a way of staying &quot;in the game.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T12:39:30.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T12:40:44.777" Score="31" ViewCount="5019" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach at a large R1 state university, and I just received my teaching evaluations for Fall 2013. Usually I get excellent evaluations, but this time my evaluations for Calculus II were an unpleasant surprise. My numerical scores were mediocre, and representative student comments included: &quot;Answers were obscure&quot;; &quot;can sometimes be cryptic when answering questions&quot;; &quot;didn't really answer questions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These comments do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; appear to be sour grapes, as the same students didn't complain heavily about the workload or grading of the exams. Moreover, I got excellent teaching evaluations when I taught Calc I a year ago, at the same university, with the same philosophy and style, with similar course policies, and with a comparable workload. Clearly, I did something wrong with regard to this course in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I e-mailed both of my TAs, and only got encouraging comments (&quot;I thought you did a good job&quot;). I then e-mailed the class, and explained that my teaching evaluations were poorer than I expected, and asked students to offer criticism and suggestions for the benefit of future Calc II students. No responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, apparently my teaching left room for improvement but I have no idea what to improve. This is quite uncomfortable -- is there anything useful I can do here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T21:40:02.187" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:40:02.187" Title="How can one learn from poor teaching evaluations?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;&lt;course-evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16502" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:07:53.333" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you get hold of the editor's phone number?  I've sometimes found it very effective to call someone when they haven't been replying to emails.  However, I've only done this with academics I knew personally.  But it still might be worth trying, before you take the fairly major step of withdrawing your paper after more than a year (the advantage of eventually having the paper accepted by the journal you currently have it submitted to is that the date of submission will be on the published paper, and of course this date will be much later if you submit it somewhere else now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:07:53.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:08:24.987" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Since the comments you mention have to do with the way you answer questions in class, perhaps it is time to explain your approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes all you need to do is explain at the beginning of a course why you are doing certain things. For example, if you do not like giving full answers to questions so that your students still need to work out part of the answer (and it sounds like that is perhaps the case), explain on the first day of class why you think this approach is beneficial. Perhaps you noticed that your students were more engaged and did better on exams after you started this approach. Let your students know that! It will help them buy in to the strategy. Explaining potential peculiarities of your instructional approach is especially useful if you are teaching the &lt;strong&gt;second or third&lt;/strong&gt; course in a sequence, and you did not teach the earlier courses (this is the case). The students are used to different styles. If they were used to an instructor telling them the complete answer all the time, then they will not like what you do unless they understand it. You probably had fewer objections when you taught calculus I, since &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; set the expectations for those students on how a calculus class would go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Ask some of your colleagues to periodically sit in on your class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good way to catch negative behaviors that you might be unaware of. The other benefit is appearing open to constructive criticism about your teaching. Having colleagues sit in on your courses also helps separate &quot;students did not like what I did&quot; from &quot;what I did was bad&quot;. Just because students did not like, does not mean that it is a poor method of instruction (see point #1 above). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:08:24.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:10:50.020" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways this can happen. scaaahu provides one good reason, that students found Calc II harder than Calc I and was not prepared for it. Another reason could be that some person or group of persons in the student group infect the others with a sentiment. I have seen this happen and it only takes one dominant person to get others on the train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your description of the evaluations and your digging into them, with no response form the students, should tell you that the problem primarily is not yours in terms of teaching etc. The only thing you may consider thinking about is how you introduced the class. Setting the tone at the beginning of the course (or earlier if that is possible in your system) and thereby preparing them for the course can be a powerful tool to reduce complaints. This is all about the expectations and if expectations are wrong, it may lead to discontent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I was writing this a good response from Ben Norris was posted so I can only agree with that reply and let my anwser add to his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:10:50.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:30:32.583" Score="1" ViewCount="695" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5.0 credits/year describes a full-time undergraduate course load at my school. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5.0 credits/2 years describes a full-time graduate course load at my school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may not enroll in more than 3 credits/term (6/year or 1 extra class/term).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;400 level courses at my school can count as a 0.5 credit toward either an undergraduate degree or toward a master's degree. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An undergraduate student may take a full course load of 400 level courses. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My attempt to answer my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps graduate courses require twice the work that undergraduate courses do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But if that were the case, then one could take mostly 400 level courses and do nearly half as much work as she would do if she took graduate courses. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps 400 level courses require the same amount of work (say twice as much) as lower level graduate courses require. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But if that were the case, then an undergraduate student who enrolled in a full course load of 400 level courses would have enrolled in a course load equivalent to 5 credits/term when the university calls 3 credits/term an overload and prohibits students from enrolling in more than 3 credits/term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why would a full-time master's program require a half-time course load?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="9263" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T17:10:20.480" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:03:46.193" Title="5 credits/year is a full time undergrad course load - why would a full-time 2-year masters require the student to earn 5.0 credits to graduate?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:34:08.397" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Norris's answer is excellent but I would add one additional point to it. When you are asking for constructive feedback from the students, you must do so in a way that students feel completely comfortable that their honesty is not going to come back to bite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of every semester, I email all of my students a web-based survey with some open and some closed questions specifically so I can get their honest opinion. Again, the key is that all responses are anonymous. I believe if I asked them to email me (not anonymous) I would get nothing but praise, which does not help me improve at all. While I do still get many positive comments, there are usually some small gems in there which help me improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:34:08.397" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16503" CreationDate="2014-02-03T14:25:49.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe &lt;code&gt;Coursera.org&lt;/code&gt; has a few MOOCs in biomathematics (or at least courses very closely related to it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11570" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T14:25:49.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16502" CreationDate="2014-02-03T14:35:39.113" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the editor isn't responding, it's time to escalate. The journal's web page should give contact info for an editor-in-chief and/or a managing editor. Contact one or both of them and let them know that you would like an update on the status of your paper, but cannot get a response from the handling editor (include dates of submission, dates you sent emails, etc). They should    take care of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T14:35:39.113" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T15:12:15.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Answers were obscure&quot;; &quot;can sometimes be cryptic when answering&#xA;  questions&quot;; &quot;didn't really answer questions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it sound to me that students never really understood the core content of Calc II. It was a problem I personally struggled with and needed a tutor to solve. Often students will be able to complete homework and quizzes of Calc II content (especially tougher content of sequences and series), even though they don't fundamentally understand what is going on. Calc II is quite a course, as many students test out of Calc I and their first college math course is Calc II. With often a new way of thinking, and representations of problems that students have never seen, Calc II is extremely difficult. I'd suggest (especially with like Power, Maclaurin series, etc.) that you take extra time to explain to students at the most basic level what is going on and move forward. Relate it to real life scenarios if possible, and give a few examples of where such problems are used in real life. I think they're missing key connections which make understanding the course a lot easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't think you're a bad teacher, I think there is a slight disconnect here between you and your students. Obviously your level of understanding at the content is much higher than theirs, and what you may think is an easy subject to understand, could be the complete opposite to your students. While your students probably understand how to complete many of the problems in Calc II, from what you've said I doubt they have a true understanding of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11572" LastEditorUserId="11572" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T15:55:16.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T15:55:16.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T15:42:50.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the noise in course evaluations is around 1 point out of 5.  My evidence for that is that I once taught the same course twice at the same time with the same book, the same syllabus, the same homework, and very similar exams.  Not only was the evaluation rating on my teaching different by almost one point out of 5, but the ratings of how appropriate the book/homework/exam was were also different by around 1 point out of 5.  I had another similar experience TAing two sections of the same course (where the quizzes and exams were set by the professor) and where the class got rated 6/7 in one and 5/7 in the other.  Students' expected grades have a huge impact on the ratings.  So although you should definitely pay attention to your student ratings, it's also very important to smooth out the noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T15:42:50.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:14:40.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't wait for the end-of-semester evaluation. It does not give us a chance to improve the students' experience. And it usually causes the teachers a lot of remorse and confusion. Instead, &lt;strong&gt;incorporate a mid-term evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;. Send online questionnaire to students and solicit their comments on aspects like i) if their expectations are met, ii) if the objectives are fulfilled in a regular base, iii) challenges they face, iv) and suggested improvements. Address their concerns and lay out your revision right after you have checked the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use anonymous channels such as online questionnaires (Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey) or forum (TodaysMeet, which works like Twitter.) Compared to getting students' criticism from their e-mail, I think I will have better luck to talk a tiger into giving me its hide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T16:40:13.800" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:40:13.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16303" CreationDate="2014-02-03T17:45:27.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Microsoft Academic Search, like Google Scholar, is a proprietary vertical search engine and its algorithms and ranking systems are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; open source, you're unlikely to get a detailed &quot;how&quot; answer unless a disgruntled former Microsoft employee decides to chime in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Academic Search does make some details of its rankings and results system available, however. &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/About/Help.htm&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; offers a basic explanation of the search engine's approach. For both Microsoft and Google, citations play a major part in search result rankings, which has subjected academic search engines to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/458503/Academic_search_engine_spam_and_google_scholars_resilience_against_it&quot;&gt;criticism&lt;/a&gt; in the past. As the Academic Search page above indicates,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the information associated with Microsoft Academic Search author profiles is derived from the tens of millions of scholarly publications that are currently indexed by Microsoft Academic Search. Most of these publications have reference lists that Microsoft processes. The indexed publications and reference lists help create a snapshot of individual authors' publication history, productivity, and impact. As more content is indexed within Microsoft Academic Search, the accuracy and completeness of the author profile data improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Academic Search rankings can be distorted by factors including citation counts, incomplete publication indexes, and the field rating system you mentioned, it will inevitably produce some inaccurate results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Speculation alert&lt;/em&gt;: it seems to me that the lion's share of ranking is accomplished through automatic citation list analysis, which is not necessarily a good indicator of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prominence in one's field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of publications (instead, it seems to emphasize how often a publication is cited elsewhere).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Academic Search is still in Beta, and I suspect that their rapidly growing index may not always be in perfect step with their ranking algorithms - in my personal experience with the search engine, there do seem to be cases of highly-ranked scholars or papers suddenly plummeting, then re-appearing again, which I assume is a consequence of ranking algorithm tinkering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T17:45:27.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16505" CreationDate="2014-02-03T18:51:24.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only have I taught engineering courses for 10+ years and had to have students (corporate students) fill out evals after every 2-4 day class but I also built/run the company's evaluation system.  In my opinion the following are things that heavily influence evaluations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student's view of the topic.  If students don't want to take your class because they hate math but yet have to fulfill a requirement then your evaluation will be lower - for sure.  This is the #1 factor.  You can easily see this if you add questions to your survey like &quot;What is your interest in CLASS_FIELD?&quot; (1-5) or &quot;Why did you take this class?&quot; (choices being part of major, liked topic, whatever, other).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students want learning to be easy.  If you made them do a lot of nonsense work for little payoff they will not be happy.  I had a teacher make us write these essays once a week and the 15 essays were 10% of our grade.  Just a ton of work and it mattered very little to our grade.  &quot;How would you rate the workload (I don't like that word but you get it) of the class taken?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be clear about your goals of the class.  Make sure you discuss at the beginning what you will cover and a brief outline of chapters in a book, other materials covered, and if there will be class discussion questions not found in those.  You do not have to tell them exactly what topics are on the test but there needs to be a happy medium between &quot;Know Everything&quot; and &quot;Here are the exact topics&quot;.  Your survey should have a question that says something like &quot;Were the tests and assignments reflective our your expectations from the syllabus?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a teacher you need to make sure that your goals are aligned with the school's goals.  Is your goals to have happy students after your class?  Seems like the easier classes would rise to the top then or the classes that are more topical at least.  The way to truly evaluate you as a teacher is to test their retention of the materials at 3-6 months.  Not a flat out test, but do they still understand the concepts of the class?  Even this can have a lot of noise because batches of students will fluctuate (but you could fix this with a pretest).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Culture and individualism.  Nothing you can do in an anonymous survey to get around this.  Basically there are certain cultures and groups that feel like a 3 out of 5 is really really good.  While others may think that is horrible.  You can label whatever but you cannot account for this noise in numbers.  However you can figure out if this is the issue with blank essay boxes - at least one that is mandatory.  If you really want a good mandatory feedback question (which is negative) &quot;What about this class would you change?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge of the instructor and comprehension level of topic.  You are teaching Calculus I and II right?  Moderate level of difficulty.  So you probably get some brownie points with students if you know your stuff well AND more importantly you can explain the difficult points in an easy to understand way.  I see instructors at my company get good scores because they are an expert (maybe the only expert) in a field.  Some of these people can barely form a coherent thought but still good scores.  But still that is the expectation of some students - they want the best/smartest teaching them.  So... &quot;What was your instructor's skill level on the classroom topics?&quot; (1-5) &quot;How well did your instructor explain classroom topics?&quot; (1-5)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how do you make students fill out an eval.  Well in my company (100 instructors) we tell them the eval is used to do attendance so they don't get credit without it.  If your school cares they would do the same.  If you want to know what range of questions get people to respond, I gave some hints but that is a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we tend to call our evaluations the &quot;happy forms&quot;.  This is because generally the instructors act all happy before giving the online surveys out (they are fully anonymous and they generally follow Kirkpatrick I).  I have witnessed instructors saying all kinds of positive things to their class and even some passing out treats during the eval/survey.  Of course students will give the instructor better scores.  Your variance from one class to another could have had just as much to do with your attitude and mood the 30 mins leading up to your survey than compared to the entire semester.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11420" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T18:51:24.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T19:09:42.120" Score="9" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;flipped classroom&quot; seems quite successful and growing in popularity in high school. Students get their lectures at home from youtube or kahnacademy, write clarifying questions about the material and then bring it to class. This allows the instructor to focus on practice and application. Does anybody have any information about its success or failure when implemented at university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11580" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T11:18:57.017" Title="Has anybody had any success with a college level &quot;flipped classroom?&quot;" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T19:31:11.993" Score="14" ViewCount="4767" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've had a little debate at work about whether a paper that presents good research, but that is at the same time very poorly written (either sloppy presentation, or not written in the native language of the authors), would nevertheless get a lot of citations. Are there good examples of such papers, specifically ones that present seminal work in some field, but that are very difficult to read because of the language or are riddled with errors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T23:34:48.503" Title="Are there examples of highly cited papers that very poorly written?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16480" CreationDate="2014-02-04T00:12:31.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most PhD funding in the UK comes from Government run research councils, for instance the ESRC, who allocate funds to groups of Universities known as Doctoral Training Centres. Given the restricted level of funding available applications are only open to students who are citizens of an EU member state. Funding may also be available directly from individual University departments but this is so limited in availability that they tend to prefer their own graduates or current students. In either case a requirement for funding is to have a Master's level degree from a recognised University, which is often interpreted as being a UK institution. Basically it's a very small pot of money that's available so applications have to be restricted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your edit: to get research funding in the UK (certainly for Psychology, and I assume for other subjects as well) you must demonstrate that your research falls into the national research plan. In other words, the UK government is only interested in certain areas of research which will be of long term benefit to the UK economy. While I accept that opening up funding to everyone irrespective of nationality would attract the best of the best, from the Government's point of view there would seem to be little point to spend money helping non-nationals get PhDs if, ultimately, the knowledge and skill sets which they have paid for are then lost from the country due to people returning home once the degree has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastEditorUserId="11304" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T13:45:24.757" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T13:45:24.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16543" CreationDate="2014-02-04T03:04:03.800" Score="16" ViewCount="5824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in the mathematics department of a university that has a new, small, mathematics bachelor's degree program, and no graduate mathematics programs.  Some of our students are looking for advice on how to successfully apply for graduate school.  I don't know what to tell them.  Everyone in my department (myself included) applied to graduate school so long ago that I think our advice may not be relevant.  I don't think anyone else who works for my university knows more than my department colleagues do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are good things for students at a small school to do to get into graduate school in mathematics?  In particular, what are some things that might not be obvious to mathematics professors who've been out of graduate school for a few decades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In response to this question being put on hold for being &quot;too broad&quot;, here is my modified question: &lt;strong&gt;What advice would you give students applying for graduate school in mathematics in 2014 that you would not have given them a decade or two ago?&lt;/strong&gt; In other words, how would the advice differ?  I am thinking both about what students have to do as undergrads and about the application process itself (which I assume is done online nowadays).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T03:29:10.847" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T08:43:35.570" Title="What advice would you give students applying for graduate school in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16536" CreationDate="2014-02-04T05:57:09.403" Score="65" ViewCount="39585" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization. This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits? Do academic institutions frown upon this practice? Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11589" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T10:23:06.133" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T13:58:41.390" Title="Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2014-02-04T07:25:39.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is clearly a grey-zone in that a range of scenarios exist from a self-written letter uncritically signed by someone and sent off to using the self-written text as a base for expansion and critical rewriting by the signee. The former devalues the whole idea of recommendation letters whereas the latter may not be too different from verbally asking about the purpose of the letter. I ask students to provide a text that contains information they think should be in the letter (based on, for example, what information is requested in the application) and then make the changes I see necessary to put my name on the letter. this means I add my valuation of their academic traits. I do this when students apply for money from minor funds but never if they apply for an academic job. A key aspect for me is that the letter will carry my name and I therefore need to stand behind it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text I ask a student to provide provides me with details bout the project that I can consider and reject if I deem it not to be possible to support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where this becomes problematic, to say the least, is if one would simply sign off on a letter, edits or not and don not even care what it contains. This will be contributing to inflation in the meaning of such letters. I happened to have a very strict advisor in this sense, and as graduate students we always considered whether or not it was useful to get a letter from (in this case ) him. But, the positive in the letter was a real positive. The problem was of course you never knew what sort of letters the &quot;competition&quot; provided in applications. Hence not taking letters of recommendation seriously causes inflation and reduces the worth of them. This is probably why personal references (in the case of job searches) who you contact over conference phone become more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T10:21:09.187" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:21:09.187" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2014-02-04T07:49:00.953" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certainly different degrees of flagrancy here.  I know some good professors who will ask for a short paragraph just to &quot;get the juices flowing&quot;, but will then modify and expand it into a full letter.  I don't think that is wrong, although I wouldn't do it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor signs a letter written by the student without making any modifications, or if the final letter consists mostly of the student's words, I consider that fraudulent -- but it is primarily the professor's fraud.  After all, the professor is the one signing his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write letters, I require the student to give me all the relevant records as well as a description of what they think I should emphasize in the letter.  Not a single word of their description would ever be pasted into the letter, and I don't use it as a starting point for the text. It is simply their opportunity to remind me of the impressive things they have done, which I will then write about if I agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can't write a letter for them in my own words -- for whatever reason -- I will decline to write one at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T18:38:15.507" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:38:15.507" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16534" CreationDate="2014-02-04T08:02:55.920" Score="1" ViewCount="3069" Body="&lt;p&gt;They ask to submit those both files.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;What is the difference between the two?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9009" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T08:15:08.813" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T08:15:08.813" Title="What is the difference between Article File and Related Manuscript File in Nature?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T08:13:56.257" Score="17" ViewCount="5619" Body="&lt;p&gt;Throughout my life, I have always had some issues with what I, my peers and my teachers referred to colloquially as &quot;paying attention&quot;. By this I mean a very specific ability to not make mistakes. Some very good examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mathematically competent adult getting a calculus question wrong because of a simple arithmetic mistake, such as 5+3=15.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A well-prepared student getting a multiple choice question wrong because it was asking &quot;which of the above are not true&quot;, but he mistakenly selected the ones that &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A skilled roboticist damaging an expensive circuit because he accidentally wired the components incorrectly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mixing up two terms which refer to different things, despite understanding very well the concept that either term refers to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typos and simple grammar errors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I do not mean attention in the sense of being able to concentrate on and pay attention to a topic. I am specifically talking about the ability to not make mistakes (where mistakes are simple errors, which you know are wrong but do not notice at the time - &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; errors you committed because you lacked understanding of a key concept or because you didn't know any better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this &quot;attention&quot; obviously influences ability to do well on tests, it also affects my day-to-day work in 2 key ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When performing an involved experiment, things such as mixing up samples, accidentally skipping a step of the procedure, forgetting to clearly label the samples and so on may ruin the whole experiment - either because the experiment no longer works when that simple mistake is made, or because the mistake has made the results uninterpretable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When working with a tool that does not provide much automated error checking, I can end up producing data or programs that are incorrect due to some mistakes I made. It may take me a very long time to detect these bugs - and until I do, all conclusions I draw from my results are unreliable (and I am not aware of this!). Even after I discover the bug, the work done up to that point is still wasted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, my question: Is &quot;attention&quot; in this sense (ability to make few mistakes) a skill, or innate? Is there any way for me to improve this skill? Can it be trained, or is it an invariant quality of a person that they can only accept and accommodate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, for the &quot;making mistakes when doing something complicated&quot; problem, there exist the solutions of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;break it down into simpler chunks which you are less likely to make mistakes with&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;restructure your complicated activity such that mistakes are rendered obvious&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not very interested in these sorts of solutions, because restructuring the task is not always possible, feasible and efficient. Some things simply cannot be made any less complicated than they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while I welcome discussions of the physiology of this problem, it is very unlikely that my problem is ADD or a similar disorder. As the saying goes, to err is human - but some humans err more than others, and I am interested in understanding why (and more precisely, what strategies are available to make oneself err less).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T08:50:52.040" LastActivityDate="2020-08-19T15:51:21.927" Title="How can I improve my attention and make fewer mistakes?" Tags="&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16532" CreationDate="2014-02-04T08:14:29.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The text in Nature states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submission to Nature [...] is taken to imply that there is no significant overlap between the submitted manuscript and any other papers from the same authors under consideration or in press elsewhere. (Abstracts or unrefereed web preprints do not compromise novelty). The authors must include copies of all related manuscripts with any overlap in authorship that are under consideration or in press elsewhere. If a related manuscript is submitted elsewhere while the manuscript is under consideration at Nature Communications, a copy of the related manuscript must be sent to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, related manuscript files means any &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; manuscript that overlaps with the one submitted to Nature and hence runs the risk of duplicating the Nature paper in some sense. Nature assesses such papers to see where and how the overlap occurs and, probably, rejects the submitted manuscript is the overlap is deemed significant to that it may be considered duplication. This is likely to safeguard the uniqueness of the Nature paper when (and if) it becomes published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T08:14:29.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2014-02-04T08:17:29.777" Score="42" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some profs lie, cheat and steal as well...occasionally in their professional life.  Just because a practice is common does not make it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly &quot;reasonable&quot; to ask for several letters of recommendation for graduate admissions.  That many students will not have had substantial personal contact with faculty is something to keep in mind as one progresses through an undergraduate program.  Also connections need not be especially deep in order to result in a good letter: if the writer can be confident that the student will succeed in the graduate program she is applying for, that is enough.  Often a truly outstanding performance in a single course is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, this is a form of plagiarism and academic fraud.  What you pass off as your written word must actually be yours except where you explicitly document to the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do academic institutions frown upon this practice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of them do, yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the institution and probably the nation in question but in the United States: yes, it certainly could be.  If I found out that this happened in an application that I read, I would at the very least throw out the entire letter; I would probably be inclined to dismiss the entire application. I would probably not contact the faculty member because in my view they are equally culpable (if not more so because they should know better), but I would be much more skeptical of letters coming from that person and even that institution in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above takes a hard ethical line, as I am very frustrated with other answers to this and related questions that seem resigned that one must accept unethical behavior in this situation.  But here is a different kind of answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A graduate admissions letter that a student writes for herself is going to be a bad letter compared to a &quot;real&quot; letter written by a qualified faculty member.  A graduate admissions letter is a communication between one mature academic and another: how would a 22 year-old young adult know how to write such a letter in a convincing way?  Without having read hundreds or thousands of other similar letters, how would she know what the faculty want to hear?  She wouldn't.  If you write your own letter, you are at best forging an ineffectively written letter.  Surely you deserve a better one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for faculty being very busy: yes, we are.  As for having lots of letters to write: yes, we do.  But writing such letters is &lt;strong&gt;part of our job&lt;/strong&gt;, so a faculty member who does not take time out to write a good letter is not a good faculty member, at least not in this aspect.  Writing a good recommendation letter usually takes several hours and often more than one sitting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you help your professor write a good letter (on their own!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Give them &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of time to write the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are busy, and our schedules are uneven.  If you give me something to do six weeks in advance, then maybe in week three I'll find a spare afternoon and be able to do it.  Leaving much less than a month for someone to write a letter is getting off on the wrong foot and already implicitly asking for less than the best possible letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Provide information about yourself rather than waiting for the faculty member to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not write the letter yourself, but you should certainly include all information that you think might be pertinent, and you are well within your rights to highlight certain information that you think might be especially pertinent.  Preparing something like a CV but tailored for a good letter rather than a job would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Do everything in your power to minimize the attendant clerical work in submitting the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty members are busy and also, honestly, a bit lazy/snooty about routine work.  If you tell me to mail a letter to a certain address, then there is going to be a whole day in which I print out the letter and don't get around to correctly putting it in an envelope.  If the letters still need to be mailed (fewer and fewer do, and most but not all faculty members prefer to do things electronically), it would be wise to provide a self-addressed stamped envelope.  If the submission is electronic, again try to ensure that the faculty member needs to do as little as possible.  Ideally we get a website and a password, we enter those in, and we immediately upload the letter.  Much more than that is asking for trouble.  My own university makes faculty members jump through many more hoops to submit a letter, and this worries the hell out of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3') If your letter needs to be sent to multiple locations in a way which requires the faculty member to do something multiple times, see if you can figure out a way for the faculty member to submit the letter only once.  E.g., perhaps there is an administrative assistant (AA) at your institution that will agree to receive the letter and take care of the nitty gritty of sending it to various places.  You may have to ask for this, and you should ask, as nicely as you possibly can.  Given the choice between getting a faculty member to do this clerical work and getting an AA to do it, you want the AA to do it: they are superior in every way.  Always remember to be extra nice to the AA's: you want in fact to be nicer to them than the average person they have to interact with, as then they will notice and do better work for you than the average person they have to interact with.  If you're asking an AA to do something which it is not absolutely clearly part of their job description, go ahead and ask but be extra extra nice: a small gift at the end is a classy move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Don't be shy about checking up on the faculty member to see whether the letter has been written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I frankly expect this, to the extent that if you ask me for a letter (including giving me all the information) and &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; check back again, I almost believe that you changed your mind and didn't really need it after all.  It is totally acceptable to ask multiple times for the faculty to turn in the letter.  I'm afraid that there has been &quot;email alert inflation&quot; in recent years, to the extent that if I only get one email about something, it feels almost optional.  Really important things have a way of resulting in multiple emails coming at shorter and shorter intervals.  Even to get me to write my grant reports they are not shy about sending several.  You should always be nice about this -- at any point the faculty member could in theory change their mind -- but we are grateful if it is your mental energy which is being spent on making sure it gets done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T09:09:00.887" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T09:09:00.887" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16533" CreationDate="2014-02-04T09:15:01.987" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was unfortunate enough to grow up in an academic upbringing (almost from pre-school up until university) that is a) purely competitive and b) relies solely on multiple-choice exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were drilled for years to try and avoid such small mistakes, since they prove to be extremely costly when millions of people take the same test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice to you is to &lt;strong&gt;make a habit&lt;/strong&gt; of checking your work, with &lt;em&gt;a clear set of mind&lt;/em&gt;. I know it's not always possible (usually due to lack of time) but it's a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; important skill to keep in mind that such mistakes do happen from time to time, and having some time at the end of a test/experiment &lt;strong&gt;entirely dedicated&lt;/strong&gt; to checking your work is &quot;money&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge there is no fail-safe way to avoid such mistakes. Humans aren't really designed (from an evolutionary point of view) to stay focused for extended periods of time, especially when implicit calculations occur. Which brings me to a &quot;corollary&quot; advice; &lt;strong&gt;make a habit&lt;/strong&gt; of writing out all your thoughts/calculations &lt;strong&gt;explicitly&lt;/strong&gt;. The benefit with that is that it allows you to immediately spot irregularities in your work when you go back and check your work later prior to the point-of-no-return (i.e. you hand in your exam, or turn on the electricity switch or whatever). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T09:15:01.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2014-02-04T09:27:56.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is too short for an answer. However, I do think it is worth an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell your students to get on this site ! There are plenty of questions and answers about graduate school admission. If they don't find their questions answered, then ask their own questions to get useful advices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your students may have the same general questions as how to apply for admission. They may also have specific questions regarding their individual situations. The best advice is, get on an excellent, informative and reliable Q&amp;amp;A site and that's us!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T10:02:34.760" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:02:34.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2014-02-04T12:30:08.993" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is a grey zone at all. Senior professionals in all domains, not just acadaemia, routinely sign letters that they did not pen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directors signing press releases written by communications managers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vice-chancellors signing letters to government officials written by deputy vice chancellors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academics submitting journal articles that were &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; by a co-author, although the research is shared.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's completely irrelevant who actually put the words together, unless there is a question over the copyright of the text - which there clearly isn't here. All that matters is that the person signing the letter stands by its content and takes responsibility for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a reference letter for yourself that is over the top, they won't sign it. No ethical issues here whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I can't answer whether other institutions would frown on the practice for other reasons though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, some research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tip: Don’t ask the candidate to write a draft of &#xA;  the letter for you. Most heads of labs say this rarely &#xA;  saves time and sometimes leads to a weaker letter. &#xA;  It is better for the candidate to provide you with &#xA;  all the necessary information, from which you can &#xA;  then pick and choose as you write your letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... (and for the applicant)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may be asked to write a draft of the &#xA;  letter. As mentioned on page 1, many &#xA;  heads of laboratories say this is not a good &#xA;  idea. However, if you are asked to do it, &#xA;  do it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhmi.org/sites/default/files/Educational%20Materials/Lab%20Management/letter.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.hhmi.org/sites/default/files/Educational%20Materials/Lab%20Management/letter.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When requesting a letter of recommendation, don't be surprised if your instructor or supervisor hands the forms back to you and says, &quot;Sure, why don't you go ahead and write the first draft yourself, and I'll revise it and sign at the bottom.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petersons.com/college-search/letter-recommendation-writing-yourself.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.petersons.com/college-search/letter-recommendation-writing-yourself.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The “draft” that you provide to the recommender to sign shouldn’t be a draft at all – it should be a perfectly polished letter ready to be signed, sealed and delivered.&#xA;  Don’t be insulted when your supervisor decides to edit.  They’ll want to apply their own language and voice to your content.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  I’ve been asked to write lots of letters of recommendations for students, but I’ve never felt strongly enough to throw the responsibility back at someone.  That’s not to say I haven’t managed some phenomenal students; I just haven’t had someone come along who I think is up to the task.  So, when he or she does come along, that person will really be top notch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://studentbranding.com/writing-your-own-letter-of-recommendation/&quot;&gt;http://studentbranding.com/writing-your-own-letter-of-recommendation/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the standard practice is for references to write their own recommendation letters, it’s becoming increasingly common for time-strapped individuals to ask you to pen the first draft of a letter yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vault.com/blog/job-search/how-to-write-your-own-recommendation-letter/&quot;&gt;http://www.vault.com/blog/job-search/how-to-write-your-own-recommendation-letter/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question: Is it OK to Write My Own Letter of Recommendation?&#xA;  Answer: The only time it is acceptable to write your own letter of recommendation is when the person you requested the letter from asks you to do it. Even then, it is important to be honest in the letter. Don't write anything the other person wouldn't have written. When you have finished, ask the person to look over the letter, verify the information, and sign. You should never forge someone else's signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://businessmajors.about.com/od/recommendationletterfaq/f/WritOwnRecLet.htm&quot;&gt;http://businessmajors.about.com/od/recommendationletterfaq/f/WritOwnRecLet.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see much (any) evidence of any ethical quandaries in a professor requesting and submitting a letter of recommendation directly from the student. These examples aren't cherry-picked - they're the first few hits that came up when searching for phrases like &quot;own letter of recommendation&quot; or &quot;letter of recommendation myself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, yes - if requested to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do academic institutions frown upon this practice?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hell no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11599" LastEditorUserId="11599" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T12:26:51.513" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T12:26:51.513" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16555" CreationDate="2014-02-04T12:38:18.697" Score="26" ViewCount="7701" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16529/546&quot;&gt;Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a related but somewhat different question: Given no choice, is it acceptable to write a recommendation letter for self?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is based on real cases. In non-English speaking countries, many professors don't know how to write good recommendation letters in English. The professor may know how to write papers in English in his field. But, when writing recommendation letters, he has limited vocabulary to write about his students. In other words, his English is not proficient. To make the matter worse, some professors may only be able to  write simple English sentences. The professor may tell the student the contents of the letter in his native language and ask the student to translate it into English and then signs it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student may want somebody else to write the letter because he does not want the professor to do this unethical thing. But, the professor just happens to be his advisor (undergraduate or master). The student may want to suggest that his professor ask the professor's colleagues for help to write the letter. The professor may say no. Therefore, the student writes the recommendation letter for himself by translating the professor's draft in their native language into English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable? If not, what should the student do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T03:01:09.830" Title="If you have no choice, is it acceptable to translate a recommendation letter for yourself?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2014-02-04T13:04:42.770" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally had the experience of applying to graduate school from &lt;a href=&quot;https://simons-rock.edu&quot;&gt;a very small college&lt;/a&gt; that has not produced many math Ph.D.s (though oddly enough, I'm not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.toronto.edu/~ryoung/&quot;&gt;the only 2002 BA graduate&lt;/a&gt; working at an R1 university in North America) not &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; far in the misty depths of time.  Of course, I only have a couple of data points, but let me try to give my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one thing is you've really got to get the basic stuff right: take the hardest classes available to you from the selections you have (and you should note in your letters that the student did this!) and ace them.  Do well on the general and subject GREs.  I assume you could have told them those.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest non-obvious thing is that it's essential to seek out experiences outside your small program.  If you're at a large school with its own graduate program, probably you have all the resources you'll need at your fingertips, but in a smaller program, I don't think you really have the ability to fully prepare someone for graduate school.   Study abroad is good for this (I went to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.budapestsemesters.com&quot;&gt;BSM&lt;/a&gt; in Budapest, but there are other programs).  So are REU's (I did the one at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.math.lsu.edu/reu&quot;&gt;LSU&lt;/a&gt;).  On a smaller scale, you might be able to take more advanced courses at a nearby college (for example, students at Smith and Amherst can take graduate courses at UMass), or do a guest semester somewhere in the US (like at the Penn State &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.math.psu.edu/mass/&quot;&gt;MASS&lt;/a&gt; program). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These will, of course, be generally enriching experiences, but they also help by giving some real points of comparison.  Graduate schools know what an A at BSM means (where they might not know it for your school); a professor who supervised you at an REU can speak with authority about having supervised many talented young people, and having some experience with which of them succeed in grad school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is working at summer mathematics program like &lt;a href=&quot;http://promys.org/program/counselors&quot;&gt;PROMYS&lt;/a&gt;  or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathcamp.org/index.php&quot;&gt;Canada/USA Mathcamp&lt;/a&gt; (there are many other) though I think you should give some weight to activities like REU which are more likely to result in letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I'll just note that what I've written about is still advice from the Web 1.0 world, but it's not so clear to me what Web 2.0 has changed about the admission process.  I think it has made communicating with other people going through the process easier (for example, you can see in essentially &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=math%2a&amp;amp;t=a&amp;amp;o=&amp;amp;pp=25&quot;&gt;real time&lt;/a&gt; which schools are sending out acceptances and rejections.  This seems more likely to drive you insane than help though).  I think for students at a smaller school this can be a boon (for example, the applicant profiles in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=1523&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; could be helpful for understanding where they might get in, though it's worth a reminder to take things with a grain of salt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one thing I didn't know was that it's very reasonable to contact the Director of Graduate Studies at programs that interest you if you have questions.  Don't be a pest about it (only email if you have a real question), but communicating with applicants is part of the job, though my DGS may not appreciate me telling the internet that (sorry, Tom).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Web, of course, has also changed research about grad schools a lot.  In theory, you can know a lot more about individual professors now than it would have been easy to figure out even 10, but especially 20 years ago.  It's not super clear to me that this will help very much though.  I generally feel like researching individual professors before starting grad school is a mug's game, since you're so likely to shift interests.  I think it's much wiser to choose based on the program, and then worry about getting an advisor after a year or so of grad school when you know a bit more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T12:58:42.880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T12:58:42.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13405" CreationDate="2014-02-04T13:29:02.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13413/4249&quot;&gt;Nikolas' answer&lt;/a&gt; is already pretty great. I'm not doing physics, but I'll try and stay as general as I can. Here's some specific advice I got from my supervisor and things I realized while doing my own lit review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is normal for a big section of referenced papers to be the same across a lot of survey / literature review papers. Those would be the &lt;strong&gt;papers that &lt;em&gt;first introduced&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a problem, a concept, an approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the &lt;em&gt;seminal papers&lt;/em&gt; from your (sub)field, you usually want to describe &lt;strong&gt;the current state-of-the art&lt;/strong&gt;. This would be based on current papers based on the original problem, concept or approach that adopt the problem for a different environment, apply a concept for a different purpose or represent an improvement to the approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Computer Science, it would be okay to talk about a structure or a problem (&lt;em&gt;seminal paper&lt;/em&gt;) and then talk about the &lt;em&gt;current best algorithm(s)&lt;/em&gt; to solving the problem (&lt;em&gt;state-of-the-art&lt;/em&gt;) without mentioning every single &quot;evolution step&quot; of the algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Basically, to sum up and dump up these two points: you cite the &quot;first&quot; and the &quot;last&quot; paper dealing with the same thing.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Of course, there's exceptions to this: if there's any groundbreaking papers between the &quot;first&quot; and the &quot;last&quot; paper, sometimes intermediate papers can also be viewed as &quot;seminal papers&quot; for the subject/field.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This might depend slightly on the type of document you want to produce, but usually it is okay for you to explain the technique / method in detail, while for practical uses of the technique, you just &lt;strong&gt;mention&lt;/strong&gt; (and cite) &lt;strong&gt;several successful applications of the technique&lt;/strong&gt; without going in to detail about how exactly the method was adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if  your goal is to &lt;em&gt;publish your literature review as a survey paper&lt;/em&gt; (which is usually worth a shot), you should think about how to &quot;get a new spin on things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every paper, including survey papers, is supposed to be a scientific contribution. That means that you have to &lt;strong&gt;find something that makes your survey useful&lt;/strong&gt;, or in some context better, then all the existing surveys. This might be a change of context in which the methods are examined, it might cover more material, offer new classifications of the methods or new links between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say you have to think of at least one type of reader (a reader with one type of goal) who will take your review and say: &lt;em&gt;&quot;That's it!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, while he can not say that any of the current surveys out there are exactly &quot;it&quot; for him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T13:29:02.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16560" CreationDate="2014-02-04T13:41:34.367" Score="43" ViewCount="5120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc at a university in the UK. Before I came here, a friend warned me that racism is common in the UK. True enough, during my first few months here, I have already received a couple of racist gestures and jeers, including one instance inside the university campus, possibly from a student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to ask is this: what part can we play, as academics and students, to reduce such instances of racism in the academic settings? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from Indonesia, and being Chinese, racism has been a part of my life. I have seen signs of improvement, but when I grew up, I still remember how it was. I am not complaining about UK, although I must admit that during my study in Norway, I experienced hardly any instances of racism or discrimination whatsoever. I am not asking which country is the worst. I share my experience just to show that it is real. I am not asking how to cope with racism, either. I am asking if there is anything I can do, or we can do, as academic community, to reduce instances of racism in academia, to make it a better environment for an increasingly international academic population. I am citing UK, because that's where I am now; it could have been another country. But wherever I am, I have a part to play in making it a better place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:17:49.040" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T08:53:19.950" Title="What can academics and students do to reduce racism in academia?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;&lt;harassment&gt;&lt;ethnicity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16533" CreationDate="2014-02-04T14:56:53.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience comes from theoretical physics and I do not know how well that can apply to you but I will anyway post my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with calculations, one should evolve certain intuition for what can be right. For example, if you are calculating temperature of a gas in a problem from thermodynamics and you get a value of -20 kelvin, you must have done something wrong. Most of the time, it will be more difficult to know if one did an error in the calculation but one can still check if a given calculation scales with given parameters in an expected way or not. Such an approach is usually much faster than going through the whole calculation step by step (you just need to look at the result). On the other hand, it requires a good understanding of the problem you are solving (so that you know what you should expect) and some practice. Moreover, it can be used to find incorrect trends only; if you overlook a prefactor of two or three, you won't find it in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach also works with any numerical problems. By varying parameters of the calculation, you can check if you get the expected behaviour. The time requirements there might be worse, though; If you have a complicated calculation, running it several times with different parameters can be very time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T14:56:53.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16545" CreationDate="2014-02-04T15:41:18.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do unto others as you would have them do unto you&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that this is really the only thing that is in your control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the popular song goes, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM&quot;&gt;Everybody's a Little Racist&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot change minds of people forcefully but you can only change the way in which you behave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I don't think that I have faced any instance of racism inside the ivory tower in the US. Socially, yes. Academically, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T15:41:18.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T16:36:37.370" Score="4" ViewCount="7190" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; The best guideline I have found so far is the Chicago Manual of Style 16th ed, section 14.58 &amp;quot;DIVIDING A BIBLIOGRAPHY INTO SECTIONS&amp;quot; (I have boldfaced the part which best answers my question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bibliography may occasionally be divided into sections--but only if doing so would make the&#xA;reader's job significantly easier. Where readers need to refer frequently from notes to bibliography, a&#xA;continuous alphabetical list is far preferable, since in a subdivided bibliography the alphabetizing&#xA;starts over with each section. Rarely should books be separated from articles, since a book and an&#xA;article by the same author are best listed close together. &lt;strong&gt;It may be appropriate to subdivide a&#xA;bibliography (1) when it includes manuscript sources, archival collections, or other materials that do&#xA;not fit into a straight alphabetical list;&lt;/strong&gt; (2) when readers need to see at a glance the distinction between&#xA;different kinds of works--for example, in a study of one writer, between works by the writer and&#xA;those about him or her; or (3) when the bibliography is intended primarily as a guide to further&#xA;reading (as in this manual). When divisions are necessary, a headnote should appear at the beginning&#xA;of the bibliography, and each section should be introduced by an explanatory subhead (see fig. 14.9).&#xA;No source should be listed in more than one section. For alphabetizing, see 14.60--62.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to find a style guide or similar on how to structure or organise a bibliography or reference section at the end of a book. Perhaps this applies most to a dissertation thesis where there are many different types of references. I am not looking for citation style guides on how to format specific types of references (I can find many such guides), but rather how to order them into groups by type, or even whether to do it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my dissertation, I am currently considering a structure roughly like below (very simplified and inaccurate but only to get my point across). Now suppose I add more sections for journal articles, anthologies, etc... and this bibliography grows quite large, say over 30 pages or so. What is considered good practice here? See the two examples below. I find the first alternative a lot more tidy and easier to read, while the second is cluttered and just doesn't feel right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found some recommendations which contradict each other. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/library/teaching/writingyourbibliography.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/library/teaching/writingyourbibliography.pdf&lt;/a&gt; on page 3 says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not divide your bibliography into separate sections for different document&#xA;types.&#xA;References should contain all of the information required for a reader to find a source. Standards&#xA;have been set for different document types to ensure that each reference contains the information&#xA;necessary to aid retrieval of the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is no further explanation why there shouldn't be separate sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/docs/thesis-guide-v51.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/docs/thesis-guide-v51.pdf&lt;/a&gt; says on page 15:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bibliography at the end should be divided into Primary and Secondary Sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/infoug/stylesheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/infoug/stylesheet.html&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bibliography should be divided into manuscript, printed primary, and secondary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing as a historian/scholar and we tend to work with many different types of sources, so not just books and journals but also manuscripts, letters, promemorias..yes even postcards, maps, brochures, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm open to hear what it's like in other fields as well and regardless of national traditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Ordering by document type:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Unpublished documents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Archival sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letter from Ms. A to Mr. B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letter from Mr. B to Ms. A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other unpublished documents&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miss A. Diary notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Published sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Public documents&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parliament records, 1980:CA-2:12231-13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parliament records, 1980:CA-2:71236-01.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Literature&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foucault, &amp;quot;The History of Sexuality&amp;quot; 1960.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Latour, Bruno, &amp;quot;Science in action&amp;quot; 1987.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stevenson, Sue, &amp;quot;This is a book title&amp;quot;, 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2) Ordered by alphabet only:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foucault, &amp;quot;The History of Sexuality&amp;quot; 1960.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Latour, Bruno, &amp;quot;Science in action&amp;quot; 1987.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letter from Ms. A to Mr. B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letter from Mr. B to Ms. A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miss A. Diary notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parliament records, 1980:CA-2:12231-13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parliament records, 1980:CA-2:71236-01.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stevenson, Sue, &amp;quot;This is a book title&amp;quot;, 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11611" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T08:21:32.897" Title="Style guides on structured/ordered bibliography?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T17:28:16.760" Score="24" ViewCount="32346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of leaving my PhD programme in life sciences at a top university in the UK. A PhD is simply not for me and I find the work/life balance to be intolerable; in addition, my PhD so far has included an industrial placement at a Fortune 500 company that was very eye opening and enjoyable. I am looking to leave academia permanently and apply for graduate schemes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether it is better to leave the fact that I quit a PhD off my CV, or to have the failed PhD / MPhil on there, or to mask it as '18 months of lab experience' or something similar. Is it possible to make the fact I left a PhD sound good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11617" LastEditorUserId="11617" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T21:38:05.937" LastActivityDate="2018-04-15T22:06:06.390" Title="Is it possible to make leaving a PhD look good on a CV / Resume?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16548" CreationDate="2014-02-04T17:55:52.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first person to ask is your advisor and/or committee members for whether dividing the bibliography into types is a good idea, and then if they've seen other examples. Next, check with the graduate school or other group that will be accepting the dissertation for publication. There is likely already a style guide and templates. Third, if there is still no clear guidance, look at previously published dissertations in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a bibliography grouped by type could make it difficult to find references from the text. You don't really want to make your advisor or committee members do more work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no reason that you can't keep a working copy of the bibliography sorted by type, just be aware that you'll likely have to convert it into one list at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I can't recall seeing a bibliography sorted by type. I have seen ones divided by chapters or sections. I find this type of bibliography difficult to work with, as I have to find the chapter's list, then the individual reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I have STEM degrees, but attended a liberal arts university as an undergraduate, so I have no graduate level experience in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastEditorUserId="5711" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T18:03:13.050" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:03:13.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16552" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:13:46.897" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on the reason for leaving, e.g. I know several people who did not finish their PhD because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they got good jobs just before finishing the PhD. One may say that their next employers hired them just before they got into the official postdoc market.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(The offers were clearly based also on the expertise they gained during their work at the PhD project) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the company they founded as side job (same profession) went well so they more or less gradually switched over to work at that full time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are IMHO perfectly good reasons for not finishing the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So e.g. if based on your experience at IBM you end up as their employee IMHO that is a perfectly good and also nice looking explanation for leaving the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd not leave the PhD formally before the next working contract starts - this way the CV will not have a gap. And after all, even if you don't like the PhD work that much, I think it is better to go on with that than to be unemployed: quitting PhD followed by being unemployed may leave a completely different impression from the situations I described above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:13:46.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:15:56.217" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for asking this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of recent strong comments I have made on closely related issues elsewhere, let me say that I think that getting a letter &lt;em&gt;translated&lt;/em&gt; from one language to another is an absolutely kosher academic practice.  The classy thing to do would be to also include the original (e.g. how do you know that the readers will not speak that language?) and also indicate who the translator was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the translator should not be the student.  That is a problem because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) It is an obvious conflict of interest.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(ii) Recommendation letters are often meant to be confidential, and this violates confidentiality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely cannot get anyone other than the student to translate the letter then you should clearly indicate &quot;translated by the student&quot; and expect to have your honesty applauded and the letter largely dismissed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say that my heart opens up for a student who is living in a context where there is no qualified third party to translate a letter into English.  I have been to academic departments in several non-anglophone countries and never encountered such a situation...but of course I have not been everywhere, nor to a random sampling, nor to any academic department in a &quot;third world&quot; country.  That's a tough situation.  Translating the letter yourself does not seem like the best answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say the following: if you are a non-anglophone student whose English skills are far superior to those of the faculty at your university [and assuming that you are applying to anglophone graduate programs, of course!], then you might try to cultivate relationships with anglophone professors elsewhere in the world.  Twenty years ago that would have been preposterous advice, but due to the proliferation of mathematical interaction via the internet, it seems very viable today.  For instance there is a small but positive number of students with whom I have had sufficiently substantial interaction on MathOverflow and (more often) math.SE so that I would be glad to write them a strong recommendation letter.   If you are a math student, you can always try writing to any professor and having mathematical interactions with them.  They are not obligated to respond (I certainly do not always respond...), but they often do (I often do...) especially if you show them something truly promising.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[At some point in the previous paragraph I forgot that I was supposed to be writing for a general academic audience rather than an academic &lt;em&gt;mathematical&lt;/em&gt; audience.  But since I am not sure how far my advice extends outside of mathematics, I will leave the m-word in.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among US students applying to US graduate programs, it is increasingly frequent for at least one of three recommendation letters to come from the director of a summer undergraduate research experience (REU) than a faculty member at the university.  Such letters are not necessarily the most penetrating -- they read very similarly, perhaps because of the implicit motivation to paint one's summer research experience in a positive light -- but they often get the job done, i.e., they lead to admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say that a letter of recommendation for graduate admission is not always the most important part of the application.  If I get an application from a university that I have not heard of, and letters from faculty that I have not heard of and whose reputations I do not know, I can only take the letters so seriously no matter what they say.  (And it is quite true that not everyone knows how to write a good &quot;American-style recommendation letter&quot;.  This does not necessarily get counted against the student; it just doesn't get counted for them.)  If you are coming from an &quot;obscure program&quot; then your goal is to convince the readers of the applications that your training is equal to (or superior than!) the training that students in more familiar programs get.  So it can be helpful to include very specific information about coursework: e.g. not just the title of the course and the course grade but the textbooks used.  If you wrote a paper which does not make any research contribution but shows a solid understanding of graduate-level material, by all means include that as part of the application.  Also be sure to take all the applicable standardized tests and do your best on them (and don't cheat on them!!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T21:16:31.213" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:16:31.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9844" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:30:01.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of question is, incidentally, why it's very good to have a clear &quot;Who gets to do what?&quot; document before you set out - for example, I had  very frank discussion with some people providing data for my PhD as to what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; expected to get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the content of your dissertation, my take is not really - the whole point of academic research is to put it out into the world, and its not exactly surprising that the folks who employ you might find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I wouldn't be inclined to ask for money directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, if the company does indeed end up using it, the fact that they did so, and your intellectual output is contributing to the bottom line should absolutely come up in your next promotion meeting/performance review, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:30:01.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16545" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:44:43.717" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recognize that you may or may not have an implicit bias, and examine your own actions accordingly. This also goes for sexism. For example, rather than simply assuming &quot;I'm not a racist!&quot;, sit down with something like the list of invited speakers for a conference and genuinely ask &quot;Did we include people of color? Did we include women? Were they more than tokens?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all things in academia, reducing bias benefits from rigorous, systematic thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:44:43.717" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16545" CreationDate="2014-02-04T19:35:25.767" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the forms of racism that UK universities suffer from is that they use unfiltered student opinion to inform hiring as well as evaluation of academics.  Academics with foreign accents or unfamiliar (or particularly formal) appearances that the students don't like then suffer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly this form of racism is widely understood and largely eliminated in the retail sector where no one would be allowed to choose the race of an employee based on the preferences of their customers.  It is also a form of racism we could easily eliminate from academia if we honestly faced up to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the point of my answer has been slightly lost (see comments below). The point is that the students are not asked &quot;Can you understand what the academic says clearly?&quot;. They are merely asked to rate the academic using a number and are not required to give any reasoning. This hides any prejudices they have and allows the hiring/evaluation committee to use racial preferences without having explicitly to admit they are doing it. The committee just says &quot;They got low student evaluation scores&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11625" LastEditorUserId="11625" LastEditDate="2017-11-03T08:53:19.950" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T08:53:19.950" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11135" CreationDate="2014-02-04T19:57:36.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field in the social sciences, scholars are divided into &quot;article people&quot; and &quot;book people,&quot; depending on the nature of their projects (and of course, many people work on both, but there are differences in preferences and focus). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oversimplifying a bit, article people tend to write their dissertations on something like a 3-paper model, where they combine published or publishable articles, and add on a front and back end. The book people simply write, for their dissertations, something that looks like a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue that the &quot;book people&quot; have, is that it generally takes longer to actually turn the dissertation into published book through a contract with a proper academic or university press. (and in my field, unlike what some of the previous posters said, a dissertation is NOT considered &quot;published,&quot; it is considered an &quot;unpublished dissertation manuscript&quot; and should be cited as such.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because these book projects take much longer to complete (often will take a whole 4-5 years more), many PhDs working on books request a &quot;dissertation embargo&quot; with their school library so that their dissertations will not be made public immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having a hard time, finding a recent dissertation, this embargo might be the reason. You can of course email and ask the author, but some are worried about getting &quot;poached&quot; and other issues regards to dissertations that are being developed into proper books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T19:57:36.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:13:33.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I can believe that some unscrupulous professors would simply take the student's letter and sign it, the one prof that have asked me to write a reference letter have mostly done it as an exercise for me to evaluate myself. I wrote a letter and brought it to him and then he gave me feedback about the letter and what I said about it, and then showed me the entirely different letter that he ended up writing himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T20:13:33.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16552" CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:43:21.960" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my discipline (computer science), almost all of the people I know who declined to finish the Ph.D kept it listed on their professional profiles with a &quot;not complete&quot; note under it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did list their experience though under &quot;work experience&quot;, as &quot;Research assistant&quot; or similar and continue to keep their accomplishments listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think keeping it there, even if unfinished, is better than having a long gap of 2-3 years, because big gaps of nothing are going to look worse than employment in that period that you decided (for varying reasons) to not complete. You can explain away &quot;I decided not to do a Ph.D&quot; in a phone screen but it's harder to tell someone &quot;Well, I actually tried to get a Ph.D but didn't finish, sorry I didn't list it on my resume&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T23:37:31.310" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T23:37:31.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:44:45.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a breach of confidentiality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the recipient of the letter is not informed that the student translated it, then that is (at the least) unethical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the recipient of the letter &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; informed that the student translated it, then I see no immediate breach of ethics. But it's no longer a confidential opinion, may have been subtly altered by the student, and likely won't carry much weight as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In either case, how can the recipient be sure that the student's translation is true and unbiased?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper way forward, as I see it, would be to get the professor to write the letter himself and then get the letter professionally translated. Enclose copies of both the original letter and the translation, declaring that the letter has been translated into English (by either a professional translator or another professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T20:44:45.963" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16552" CreationDate="2014-02-04T21:20:41.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you earned a degree along the way, certainly list that in the&#xA;education section. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were a research assistant, put that in&#xA;your work experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't add &quot;failed PhD&quot; or &quot;or incomplete&quot; or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody will judge you for quitting a Ph.D. program if you decided you don't want to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T21:20:41.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16552" CreationDate="2014-02-04T22:05:57.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're no longer interested in working in academia or research, having a PhD is often a strike &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; you in a job search. I regularly encounter negative bias against a PhD in professional and social situations. So unless you're applying for a job in a field that requires, or at least explicitly values PhD training, I'd list your 18 months as 'lab experience' of some kind. You don't want a gap on your CV, but you also don't want to trigger the negativity that too many people associate with the term &quot;PhD&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6292" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:05:57.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T00:40:47.867" Score="3" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context material chapter of my masters dissertation, between other things, I must write about the state of the art on the thematic presented. There are some very expressive and simple schemes in other authors works that I would like to use. I was wondering: is it legitimate if I create schemes by myself that convey the same structure and information and reference the sources in the following manner: &quot;Image based on [Reference]&quot; ?. The result would be different looking (colors, shapes, and several other visual elements) schemes that would express the same content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4881/how-much-do-figures-need-to-differ-to-avoid-copyright-claims/4884#4884&quot;&gt;How much do figures need to differ to avoid copyright claims?&lt;/a&gt; but I wasn't sure if the context of that question is enough for the answers to apply for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11632" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T06:17:47.873" Title="Creating a schematic figure based on an existing one" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16597" CreationDate="2014-02-05T01:35:49.127" Score="3" ViewCount="2872" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm getting my &quot;Licentiate of Computers/Systems&quot; degree soon, in Argentina.&#xA;The degree is composed by 40 courses of 68 hours of lectures each. On top of that, you have to add the time you spend on assignments, studying for exams, etc. Depending on the course, you might have to spend from 30 hours to 250, but of course, this depends on each person.&#xA;You are supposed to take 5 courses per semester if you want to get the degree in 4 years (full-time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to convert my degree credits/hours into ECTS, given that, if I understood correctly, ECTS points do include studying and assignments hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Please, let me know if more information is needed in order to calculate the ECTS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11578" LastEditorUserId="11578" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T13:23:45.370" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T14:19:20.847" Title="How to convert courses and hours (from a non-european university) to ECTS?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7242" CreationDate="2014-02-05T01:48:33.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though this thread is old, this may be helpful info.  You can use the Onenote program incuded in MS Office.  It tries to do OCR on any document you either scan and drop into a Onenote page or &quot;print&quot; from pdf into a Onenote page.  For notes that it cannot OCR, you can add annotations with searchable keywords.  To separate pages of a large pdf document you can use a program like PDFill Free.  Not a perfect solution, but can still be a big help in making handwritten notes into electronically searchable documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11635" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T01:48:33.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T03:02:18.063" Score="3" ViewCount="1683" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia we follow something known as the ERA ranking, when submitting papers to journals and conferences. My lab stresses publication in venues which are graded as only A or A(star), as per this system ( ERA-A increases possibilities of funding). In the area of biomedical engineering there is a specific conference which I found is ranked as ERA-A. Not a lot of international biomedical conferences are ERA A-ranked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is I found a lot of negative reviews about the conference organizers online and therefore am skeptical about sending my paper there. Yet, I also know that an ERA-A rank publication very early in my doctoral program can make a good impact on the committee, when my doctoral assessment review comes up later this year. Moreover, this will release some pressure/tension in terms of the doctoral review and I could go on to work on larger targets without worrying about the doctoral assessment ( since it would be considered good progress if I can show an ERA-A paper in the first year of my program). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However much I try, I have failed to understand how this conference gets a top australian rank, when there are so many negative things said online about these conference organizers. One possibility, is that this particular conference is the only one which may be famous. The other is a lot australian academics might have been ranking it as ERA-A. But if so, why only Australia? What does the rest of the world say? The third possibility is that the online reviews are dubious claims made to malign the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to evaluate the quality of a conference like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7142" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T21:46:25.430" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T21:46:25.430" Title="How to evaluate the quality of a conference that has a high ERA ranking, but whose organizer has a lot of negative reviews online?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2014-02-05T04:28:15.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Online tutoring and teaching - It can be less time consuming especially in the area of their expertise. Good instructors are scarce and they are online and offline companies that are always looking for quality instructors. Companies like &lt;a href=&quot;https://generalassemb.ly/&quot;&gt;General Assembly&lt;/a&gt;, [Udemy], &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.venturesity.com/&quot;&gt;Venturesity&lt;/a&gt; (sorry for the shameless plug :)) etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11637" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T04:28:15.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16571" CreationDate="2014-02-05T06:17:47.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I think it would be insufficient to say : &quot;Image based on [Reference]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, from what you've written, it's not just the image you're using: you're also using the intellectual content that is the structure and information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, not only do you need to cite your reference for the image, but you also need to credit the origin of the structure and the information explicitly in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Image based on [Reference]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also say something like (using the example of the image being a classification of the existing literature):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In creating this classification, I have followed the classification scheme set out in [Reference], using information from [Reference] and [other Reference]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T06:17:47.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16583" CreationDate="2014-02-05T08:27:57.943" Score="3" ViewCount="3247" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking around online, there are some statistics that foretell doom for PhD students; some examples of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of faculty to retire in the next 10 years is at the lowest in 30 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of PhDs awarded is around 100,000, while the number of professor positions open is around 16,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there has been approximately 40% budget cut for math between 2008-2011 (but there was a hiring freeze put on most state universities in 2009-2010, if I remember correctly, so this may not be entirely accurate).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more statistics, see this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marccortez.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/phd-job-crisis-640x4627.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://marccortez.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/phd-job-crisis-640x4627.gif&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The creator of this argues that the number of grad students and postdocs is way too high, while the number of professors is on the decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is not true for math. Postdocs are considered to be a mandatory part in our career (and postdoc positions are quite competitive!), and while many people do a second postdoc, I rarely see people with more than two postdoc experiences. Also, there aren't so many adjunct positions; some postdoc positions are called adjuncts, but these usually expire in 1-3 years. So I would like to know the real statistics. In particular, I want to know these figures for last year (percentages with respect to the number of PhDs will also do):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of PhDs awarded (all figures from here onwards applying just to the US)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of PhDs hired as postdocs at PhD-producing institutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of PhDs hired as tenure-track professors at liberal arts colleges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of postdocs finishing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of postdocs hired as tenure-track professors at PhD-producing institutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of postdocs hired as tenure-track professors at liberal arts colleges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of postdocs hired as postdocs at PhD-producing institutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, I would like to know how harsh the funneling process is in math; I know from experience that many grad students leave academia without obtaining a job as a postdoc. Is the same true of postdocs? How about the tenure-track level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T12:54:50.543" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T13:44:33.867" Title="math job market statistics" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16582" CreationDate="2014-02-05T08:49:51.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly the best information you'll find is from the AMS Annual Survey: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey&lt;/a&gt;.  I don't know that it will answer all your questions (in particular, it's mostly focused on newly graduating Ph.D.'s; it doesn't track where people end up after postdocs), but if the data isn't in there, probably nobody has it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T08:49:51.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T09:23:45.403" Score="15" ViewCount="15041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to cite a paper which was published online (Open Access) in 2012 and later published in a printed journal issue in 2013. Which publication year should be used in the citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11646" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T10:10:23.187" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T11:03:19.990" Title="When citing a journal paper, should I use the online publication year or the print publication year?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T09:41:11.743" Score="9" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a university at an Information Technology department. My colleagues claim we are 'computer scientists'. However, from what I observed, most of our work is pure implementation and often follows the Engineering Method, not the Scientific Method (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebuddies.org/engineering-design-process/engineering-design-compare-scientific-method.shtml&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt;). What is the proper scientific output for research on a real life problem (how to transform a data model encoded in XML Schema into a useful web form for entering/editing data) that involves implementation of a new software (a new data model annotation language and a web form generator software)? Is the resulting software a scientific or an engineering result? What would constitute a proper scientific result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11646" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T17:19:58.563" Title="What constitutes a proper scientific result in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16585" CreationDate="2014-02-05T10:07:40.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As StrongBad said, the general rule is to follow the guidelines outlines by the publication venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is none, then as a rule of thumb, &lt;strong&gt;cite the journal version&lt;/strong&gt;. The reason depends on the type of online publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the paper was an early access version of the later journal paper and&#xA;thus identical, the journal paper in some sense replace the online access&#xA;version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the 2012 paper was posted at arXiv.org or the like, then the later&#xA;journal version went through peer reviewing, whereas the earlier version did&#xA;not. So the journal version can easily be more mature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that one role of citations is to assign academic credit. Credit towards a paper that appeared in a reputable journal counts a bit more, so citing the journal version is also a courtesy to the author(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason, for your paper, it is of importance who had an idea first (e.g., when you give a chronological overview of related work), you can just add a note like &quot;An earlier version of the paper appeared in XYZ in 2012&quot; to the bibliography entry of the journal version to make that clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T10:07:40.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16586" CreationDate="2014-02-05T10:49:19.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a similar research area myself, I can say that in practice the borders between &lt;strong&gt;science&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;engineering&lt;/strong&gt; are often not clear-cut in applied computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, usually, the starting point of our  research is indeed a hypothesis, but more of the style &lt;em&gt;it is possible to build a system that does X using Y in order to achieve Z.&lt;/em&gt; (and, consequently, &lt;em&gt;this new way is better in some meaningful regards than the traditional way of doing it via X^&lt;/em&gt;*). Naturally, the way to falsify such an hypothesis is to set out and do a proof-of-concept, optimally in a realistic setting, and compare it against the traditional way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the proof-of-concept implementation here is &lt;strong&gt;not the scientific output&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a vehicle for scientific validation. The &lt;strong&gt;scientific output is the knowledge that X can indeed be usefully done via Y to achieve Z&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe, the proof-of-concept can be improved into an open source tool or product (either by the researchers directly or by partner companies), but this &lt;strong&gt;productization&lt;/strong&gt; is not science anymore - this is pure engineering (we know that it can be done, but now it needs to be done &lt;strong&gt;properly&lt;/strong&gt;, which takes time, effort, and domain knowledge - all things that researchers often don't have in spades).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the resulting software a scientific or an engineering result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the scientific result, but it was used to validate the scientific result. It may be considered an engineering result (depending on the quality of the proof-of-concept).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would constitute a proper scientific result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly dislike the term &lt;em&gt;proper&lt;/em&gt; in this context, as it implies an ordering of value between science and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T10:49:19.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T12:14:46.040" Score="6" ViewCount="4604" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently presented a paper at a conference which was published in its proceedings.  Now it is time to submit an &quot;extended&quot; version with &quot;30% new content&quot;.  The new content isn't a problem, I've added several figures, a couple of genuinely new findings and some helpful illustrations that I developed while preparing my talk.  However, the instructions from the publisher state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;In the extended paper clearly cite the conference paper and list it as one of the references.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this can be interpreted in one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a new article that assumes knowledge of the proceedings.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is kind of a scary option because it implies that it really has to be a new work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explain that an earlier version exists and what's new here.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a comforting interpretation but seems kind of uncharacteristic for the style in most journal articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best path to follow here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6074" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T13:06:06.820" Title="How to cite a conference paper in an &quot;extended&quot; journal version?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16593" CreationDate="2014-02-05T12:24:18.303" Score="5" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a systematic literature review but I was wondering how to handle  papers which fit the inclusion criteria but are hidden behind paywalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to exclude them and state as an exclusion criterion in the methodology section &quot;works that are not freely available are excluded.&quot;? Also some papers are accessible from my University without me noticing the paywall so should I rewrite the criterion to &quot;... that are not freely available or included in the authors university contract&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7324" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T12:57:31.960" Title="Conducting a systematic literature review and paywalls" Tags="&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16590" CreationDate="2014-02-05T12:42:03.767" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that either of these strategies is likely to be appreciated much by reviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few papers are actually entirely unobtainable to researchers. Most papers are either part of a university subscription, available as preprint from e.g., the author's website, or at the very least most authors forward you a preprint on personal request via mail. The purpose of a scientific review is to review, to the largest extend possible, everything that is out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limiting yourself to only Open Access material, while morally commendable, means that you are not surveying the state of research, but only the state of what's available easily. This will make your literature review significantly less appealing to reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, I would definitely not go for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also some papers are accessible from my University without me noticing the paywall so should I rewrite the criterion to &quot;... that are not freely available or included in the authors university contract&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That just seems like a lazy excuse for not finding out what licence the used papers fall under. Even if the paywall is hidden to you, you can certainly figure out whether the paper would be available without subscription.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T12:42:03.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16589" CreationDate="2014-02-05T13:06:06.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper is an extended version of work published in [1]. We extend our previous work by A, B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some new figures etc. will probably not really count as &lt;em&gt;new content&lt;/em&gt; (this would probably be called new presentation rather than new content). New findings and new data, that's what people will really be interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common pattern that I often see in my field is that the conference paper has most of the ideas in place, but a rather cursory evaluation. The journal extension then has the ideas of the conf paper + whatever input came out of discussions at the conference + a more or less large-scale validation. The &quot;nucleus&quot; of the paper is reproduced more or less in verbatim. To be fair, I am not sure if this is even ok from a copyright point of view, but it certainly is common practice in my field FWIW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T13:06:06.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16573" CreationDate="2014-02-05T14:19:20.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're getting a degree in Argentina, then you should be concerned about the eligibility/mapping of the actual degree, not on the ECTS of individual courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ECTS of individual courses would apply if you want to get a degree in EU but have some of your earlier courses of an unfinished degree to count towards that new degree;  However, if you want to continue studies in, say, a masters programme then you'd enroll based on your Licentiate degree as whole, and none of the courses would be spearately treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you need 'proper ECTS conversion', then you'll most likely need an official statement about that from the institution giving you the degree, not anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T14:19:20.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16600" CreationDate="2014-02-05T14:22:11.503" Score="13" ViewCount="2705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a habit of using two styles of in-text citation: with and without author name(s). The two examples below describe what I mean: (# here represents a bibliography index)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...which is in agreement with simulations presented in &lt;strong&gt;Lastname et al. [#]&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and just&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...the X method &lt;strong&gt;[#]&lt;/strong&gt; was here used to model...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(in the latter case, reference # might contain an in-depth description of the X method).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mix these styles freely, depending on what I deem to be appropriate in each individual case. Am I correct to do this or would you consider it to be bad style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11656" LastEditorUserId="11656" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:21:31.487" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:21:31.487" Title="Is consistency in citation style important?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16598" CreationDate="2014-02-05T14:24:12.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with using different sentence patterns to introduce a citation. In fact, it gets quite tedious to read the same sentence structure over and over again. So, feel free, as you suggested, to use the style which is most appropriate for a given need in a given situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T14:24:12.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16598" CreationDate="2014-02-05T14:34:20.233" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your title question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is consistency in citation style important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On first reading this, it sounded as though you were planning to mix two citation styles such as APA and Chicago. Obviously, this would be unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, in your example, you are using two entirely compatible forms for your in-text citations, which is perfectly acceptable. I would strongly prefer this over the awkward and boring alternative of using exactly the same form for every citation. Continue to use the form that is most appropriate for the situation. Variety is acceptable, even commendable, as long as you are not violating the standards for your documentation style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: To clarify the point above; mixing the &lt;em&gt;in-text&lt;/em&gt; citation style &lt;strong&gt;Lastname et al. [#]&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;[#]&lt;/strong&gt; is OK! What is not OK is using two separate documentation styles, for example, also using the in-text citation &lt;strong&gt;(Last name, year, page)&lt;/strong&gt;, which is proper is APA documentation style, but not in Chicago documentation style!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T15:18:50.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16598" CreationDate="2014-02-05T14:58:35.310" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is fine, as long as you make sure that the names of the authors are part of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, mixing citation styles is not recommended. However, your examples both reference the citations in the same way: &lt;strong&gt;[#]&lt;/strong&gt;. The other thing you should keep in mind is that sentences should still make perfect sense if all citations are omitted. To this end, I would change your first example to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...which is in agreement with simulations presented &lt;strong&gt;by&lt;/strong&gt; Lastname et al. [#].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T14:58:35.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16461" CreationDate="2014-02-05T15:36:31.550" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know your question is based around the assumption that &quot;funding cannot be found&quot; but I write my answer as a challenge to this assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes you can go out and find funding in odd places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long anecdote:&lt;/strong&gt; I was working in a research lab as an undergraduate.  We had very little funds pretty much all the time being in an undergraduate-only institution (with respect to my field of study which is chemistry).  We had some great work that we wanted to take to a fairly prestigious conference halfway across the country but we had no money to go.  Myself and a co-worker knew how much this conference would mean to our boss so we decided to go on a crusade to find money to make this happen.  We marched out of the lab with all pertinent information in hand and took it straight to the top.  We literally walked into the president's office (of the Uni) and asked the secretary if we could meet with him.  She was immediately concerned and amused at what we were trying to do.  Of course we weren't able to see him straightaway, if at all, for our shenanigans.  But she did allow us to make our case to her to see if she could help us out any.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This turned out to be a very profitable and endearing experience.  She dropped some contacts in various departments and suggested we go talk to them.  She even left us with some business cards to take with us.  We immediately contacted every single person on her list and, much to our surprise, we received some very positive responses.  I remember one office in general, &quot;Undergraduate Enrichment&quot;, which dealt directly with the promotion and advancement of undergraduates.  They were nearing the end of the fiscal year and they had money lying around in some accounts that had not been used.  Well, long story short, they gave it to us.  All of it.  We managed to pick up a little bit here, a little bit there, through a few departments, and were able to come up with all the funds we needed.  It wasn't a cakewalk though.  My friend and I went as far as to appear before Student Government where we asked for funds and had to present our case to, for all intents and purposes, a group of dimwits who were not only apart of Greek life, but ran Student Government strictly around the idea of advancing Greek life (i.e. they didn't give two squats about anything we had to say) and it was one of the most painful and grueling 40 minutes of my life standing before them.  We managed to squeak about $500 from them which topped us off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; My friend and I dove in feet first and asked around for money.  Found the funds in some of the oddest places.  We went on the trip and were able to present our research in a prestigious conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't give up my friend.  Be proactive and think outside the box. You may walk away being quite surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9569" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T15:36:31.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16586" CreationDate="2014-02-05T17:19:58.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what area of Computer Science you're in.  However, I think where things are getting confused for you may be in what you do with the thing that you built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &quot;scientific&quot; perspective, particularly for Computer Science, the key lies in explaining why.  After building the system, your goal is not only to have accomplished the construction but to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare it with existing solutions to &quot;prove&quot; your unstated hypothesis that your system is better while explaining -why/what makes- it better; or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If no solution exists, tie your solution in with previous work and explain not only how it solves this problem, but why it works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you do is you build a solution to a problem and stop there, without trying to explain the why or testing it against the often unstated hypothesis of &quot;my approach will be better than other approaches&quot;, then that may be what you're referring to as an engineering method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;science&quot; or &quot;research&quot; method that you seem to be looking for is in the aftermath of building the system and seeking to add to the theoretical knowledge of the field by testing and explaining why your approach is faster/more efficient/easier to use/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, in addition to the big two factors of reliability (is it reproduceable?) and validity (is this a problem people care about, does this move the field forward, are you using the correct measures to prove your hypothesis, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T17:19:58.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T18:21:07.553" Score="1" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to seek a summer research attachment in the US institutions. CalTech offers a really attractive program, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sfp.caltech.edu/programs/surf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SURF&lt;/a&gt;, to the undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in order to apply for the attachment fellowship, CalTech requires the applicants to contact a faculty member first and proceed with other admin stuff only after receiving the endorsement from the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a non-CalTech student, I have no academic network that spreads to any professor in CalTech. In such a situation, can I directly email the professors that I am interested in working with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I can do it, but my concern is that a professor will normally ignore this type of email, especially when he/she is currently not short of people in the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to initiate such a research proposal effectively so that the professor will not overlook my email and actually think about taking me in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T18:53:25.653" Title="How to initiate an application of a research attachment fellowship directly with the potential advisor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16608" CreationDate="2014-02-05T18:53:25.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they expect you to get in touch with faculty first, and they widely accept students from beyond CalTech, then they're expecting you to reach out - no undergraduate has a particularly robust academic network beyond their institution (beyond a few edge cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the best way to do this, in my view, is to email the professor, give them a brief introduction about yourself, your research interests, that you're applying for the SURF program, and that you'd like to work in their lab. Link this to the work they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd consider doing this for several professors, unless there's just one whose work matches your own. Worst case, they'll ignore it, but professors often at least read these, especially if they're from institutions they recognize, have concrete information, and are in coherent English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, this is how I got my first undergraduate research position, and ended up with a wonderful colleague I work with to this day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T18:53:25.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T20:36:51.450" Score="15" ViewCount="2463" Body="&lt;p&gt;The normal case is that students should obtain a recommendation letter for graduate school from the professor under whom the student has performed research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am taking a course conducted by a field-famous professor, from whom I wish to obtain a recommendation letter for my grad school application. However, due to some reasons, &lt;strong&gt;I am not able to do research under him, which implies that our only connection is that course that I am currently taking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, maybe one year later, he may refuse to write me a letter, because he does not know me well, or even has forgotten me. Even if he is willing to write me a letter, being not familiar with me, he may not be able to write a decent letter for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By &quot;decent&quot;, I mean a letter that actually can help. I know that as long as he is willing to write me one, he can simply say &quot;the student obtained a good grade from my course&quot;. I don't think this kind of letter will actually help, IMHO.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So besides obtaining a good grade for this course and frequently asking valuable questions, &lt;strong&gt;what can I do to impress him so that I can obtain a decent recommendation letter for my future grad school application? How to make him understand me better?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T20:43:42.067" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T04:50:07.580" Title="How to obtain a fair recommendation letter from a professor who knows me via course, not research?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16610" CreationDate="2014-02-05T20:47:06.347" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Visit the professor and explain your plans and your wish to have him provide a letter in a brief but structured way. Slip in some of your (positive) thoughts concerning his course and, if you were inspired by it, the importance of the course for your current interest. I do not think you can do more. If the person is not interested, I doubt you can do anything to change the view that would not be annoying in the end. It is possible the person has forgotten you but if you stood out even a little in the class, my bet would be the opposite. As I see it you only risk getting a no, and not much could be done to change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T20:47:06.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16610" CreationDate="2014-02-05T20:51:49.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following, but it all depends on the situation at your university, how much time and effort you are willing to exert for this, and how complicated are the reasons that make you unable to do research under him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unpaid research&lt;/strong&gt;: Suggest to do some work under his supervision without a return (without being paid)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teaching Assistantship&lt;/strong&gt;: Try to be his teaching assistant in one of his courses, this will open a lot of doors for opportunities to approach him and give him a good impression about you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach his students&lt;/strong&gt;: If he has PhD students try to approach them and suggest helping out in something just for the sake of learning, by time you'll get in close contact with your guy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show off&lt;/strong&gt;: the basic approach of all, drop at his office and brag about yourself, and ask him for a recommendation letter based on your relation during the course and your grades. Although I don't see this very meaningful, but I see some recommendation letters where the referees say how much the student has learnt during an internship that the referee had nothing to do with.. But it works and some universities accept such recommendation letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T20:51:49.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16461" CreationDate="2014-02-05T21:12:09.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have funding from your research group's resources, you obviously have to find someone else to cover the costs of your conference visits. It's not easy to achieve, but there's a number of options to pay for at least part of the costs, and if you can combine some of those, you might even be able to make this trip without stressing your own purse too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not sure whether that applies to you, but in some fields, there's conferences where invited speakers get paid everything, including registration, accommodation, and travel. Usually you have to be well connected and famous to get such an invitation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you note in your question already, there may be ways to get a registration waiver and maybe even accomodation paid, for example by taking part in the conference organisation. That leaves to pay for travel, for example by the following:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is usually much easier to get travel costs reimbursed when giving a seminar talk at another research institution than for a conference. If you can arrange an invitation to a research institution close to the conference location, they may be able to cover your travel costs. It would be difficult for intercontinental travel, but for national or continental trips it could be a good opportunity to get part of the costs paid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The base line is to be creative, to use your academic network, and to try to cover different types of costs from different sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T21:12:09.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16545" CreationDate="2014-02-05T21:18:18.337" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things we can do, here are some that I have been doing as a foreign student in the US and now an edcuator. And hopefully it would help sparking some more new thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Aim for promoting diversity, NOT eliminating racism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Politically, you will have a lot more buy-in in organizing a &quot;diversity week&quot; than an &quot;anti-racism week.&quot; Racism is not something we can eradicate because it stems from the sense of superiority and difference in power, which will always exist in various degree. And in a personal level, given the same race/ethnicity, one person may think a certain treatment is totally fine while the other one may show a strong sign of being offended because the treatment promotes racism. You cannot win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the more one tries very hard not to be a &quot;racist,&quot; the more difficult situations one can get into. A fun example: an African American colleague of mine went to watch &lt;em&gt;12 Years a Slave&lt;/em&gt; with her husband and after the movie ended, a white couple came up and said, sorrowfully, &quot;You people really had it hard, didn't you?&quot; I found that attitude of &quot;We had treated your ancestors so badly that now I am going to make up for it,&quot; a bit of, well, racist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, promote diversity. Diversity is less &quot;silo,&quot; it incorporates many other aspects like religions, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, etc. What's more, it gives us some goal to achieve, something to build instead of some infinite amount of pests to destroy. This new goal will certainly improve your mental health and open up a lot more possibilities in improving the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Promote critical thinking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embrace critical thinking in both study and teaching. A lot of racism-related phenomena wouldn't pass the most fundamental critical evaluations. Equipping students with this invaluable skill will help them dissect the situation with higher clarity and certainty. Racism itself is very biasing, to the extent that it's nearly hilarious. For instance, if a member of Purple race commits an atrocious crime, the members of Green race tend to attribute the blame to the whole Purple race. While among the Purple race they tend to attribute the blame to the very criminal as a &quot;bad seed,&quot; outlier, or isolated incidence. A simple thinking exercise on situations like this one opens up discussion among students quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional benefit of being able to critically think on your feet is that you can instantly downgrade an intense racism argument to a logic-based, evidence-based discussion, pointing out the pitfall in their thought process rather than pointing out that they are a racist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know your history well, and be ready to listen to other's history&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found myself somehow have become the go-to person when someone has questions about my country. It is, to some degree, a polymorphic racism. Just because some girl is born in Japan doesn't mean she can dance like a geisha, just because some guy is from China doesn't mean he can recite all the characters in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. However, I do take this consultant role seriously, and try my best to be an ambassador. I tell them the good, the bad, and the disgusting, no reservation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't check your identity tags too soon&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat similar to that poor answer with like 10 down votes. Sorry to say that but I do agree with that answer to a certain extent. I have never sorted out a clear list of identities for myself. It's not like I am in denial, my identities are always somewhere but I don't tend to flaunt them right at the beginning of an interaction. I feel that in a lot of the times, conflicts happen because we decided that the action or treatment has clashed with our identity a little bit too soon: You said something against penguins, and I am a penguin, so I have to be upset now and punch you in the face. I would, instead, opt for understanding where they come from first. If the situation is non-hostile, I would proceed to explain (with critical thinking and evidence) that it's not always the case, and move on. You can correct the information, you can never correct a person's attitude, they have to do that bit by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find an optimal environment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it's important that you are promoting diversity in a place that you feel reasonably tolerable and accepting. This whole process of achieving understanding is going to be very long, and it's not worth risking your happiness or even life just because you want to make a statement in a hostile place. In conclusion, don't cave in, be present and remind others of our existence. They don't need to like us, but they do need to know we are here to stay, with a strong will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T21:38:59.473" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T21:38:59.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16585" CreationDate="2014-02-05T22:34:38.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each article, to be properly indexed, is assigned some &lt;strong&gt;minimum information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journal name given in a correct way. However, this can be 3 of more different things for one journal, e.g. &quot;JAir&quot; = &quot;J Aircraft&quot; = &quot;Journal Aircraft&quot; (randomly chosen journal that has 3 proper names); you can choose any, but usually the middle form is prefered (i.e., basic abbreviations, but not the shortest ones, those are known as &quot;astro. abbrv.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journal volume. Starts at one when the journal is introduced, and counts one by one in a way that is basically decided by the publisher, with some rules.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(a) Article's first page, or (b) in cases of per-article page numbering, article code, or (c) in cases of per-issue/number page numbering, number of the issue in the volume (usually called just &quot;number&quot;) and the article's firts page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two more bits of information that are &lt;strong&gt;usually required:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least one author's name&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publication year&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is one more thing that is more then welcome, but &lt;strong&gt;not necessary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Article's title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every volume is published throughout only one calendar year (but multiple volumes can be published in the same year). &lt;strong&gt;The year of the publication of the article is the year of the volume in which it appeared.&lt;/strong&gt; No matter if it appeared as &quot;e-first&quot; one year before, or if it appeared on arXiv 2 years before, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you cite a paper that has appeared as an e-first on the journal's webpage, but has no volume assigned yet, you cite it as &lt;em&gt;&quot;To appear in Journal of Beer Drinking, 2013&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, even if it's obvious now that it won't be in a volume in year 2013 (since it's already 2014 and the previous volumes are closed). In this case, it's necessary to provide more information to make the citation unique: advised is to provide the article title, which is usually unique in a reasonable time scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T22:39:44.557" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T22:39:44.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2014-02-05T22:40:47.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;F'x's answer is good. I would just add that your collaborator should check his institution's thesis guidelines. Mine had specific directions on how joint work should be included in the thesis, such as an extra paragraph explaining who did what part of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your collaborator's advisor should also be in the loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T22:40:47.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16582" CreationDate="2014-02-06T05:38:52.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't an answer, but it's too lengthy to fit in the margin...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to adopt a deliberately contrarian point of view here and criticize the assumptions underlying the question from a quantitative perspective.  Since we're both mathematicians, I hope you won't mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to make the point, you might go a step further back and compare the ratio&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(# of Master's graduates each year)/(# of admitted Doctoral students each year)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to see how &quot;harsh&quot; the funneling process is at that step.  But that's clearly ludicrous, since the majority of students getting master's degrees don't want to get a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the analysis you're proposing has the same problem.  A very large fraction of graduating Ph.D.'s don't want a university post-doc position.  Many of them want industry jobs -- a mathematician friend of mine from grad school chose a position at Google over academic opportunities and is very happy.  Others take government research jobs -- in applied math, named DOE lab post-docs can be much more competitive than university post-docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other big issue is that the academic job market is a global one, and increasingly so with each new year.  Very many of the positions within the US are filled by foreigners, and very many individuals from the US happily take jobs in other countries.  I know one individual who was offered an NSF post-doc &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a named term assistant professorship at a top-three US university in his field, but turned them both down (along with multiple other offers) to take his dream job -- outside of the US.  Your analysis would count all of these people as failure stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T05:38:52.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T06:19:28.587" Score="2" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question can be elaborated as follows: When graduate students work together on a research project, are they usually expected to work on the &lt;em&gt;same exact things, at the same exact time&lt;/em&gt;, or would it be more reasonable to have a division of labor and divide the work load?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11675" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:48:13.917" Title="How exactly do graduate students collaborate on a research project?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-06T11:39:02.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16620" CreationDate="2014-02-06T07:48:18.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really like any other collaboration. Presumably the (student) researchers are working together because they have a common interest in a problem and possibly have some complementary expertise that's useful for solving the problem. So they'll interact and as the situation merits it will divide up tasks (or work on some aspects together). There really isn't a single rule for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T07:48:18.293" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16625" CreationDate="2014-02-06T12:26:37.607" Score="11" ViewCount="13839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit worried because one of my papers have been more than 2 months &quot;with editor&quot; status. It's a science journal (field: drug residue, food), from a famous editorial and impact factor 3.3. I'm used to 48h desk reject and I was wondering about the options of being so long with this status 1) very busy editor 2) my paper was forgotten 3) there is a mistake on the website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, normally we have the option to send an e-mail to the assigned editor, but in this case there is only &quot;view your submission&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end it took 2 months but... We are under review!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11683" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2015-02-28T04:50:40.373" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T04:50:40.373" Title="&quot;With editor&quot; status for 2 months: is it normal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-02-28T07:10:24.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16624" CreationDate="2014-02-06T12:42:49.897" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Times vary a lot between journals and, I believe, disciplines. Two months seems like a relatively long period to me but not unheard of. Out of your three reasons I would not opt for 2 or three depending, of course on the form for submitting manuscripts. If it is digital I am sure 2 and 3 would not be high on the list, if it is manual, by post or e-mail, then the likelihood is higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a busy editor is one possibility. It is not clear from your question if this is &quot;with the editor&quot; after submission or &quot;with the editor&quot; after review. If we consider the former, the most likely reason, in my experience, is that it has proven hard for the editor to get reviewers to accept to review. This occasionally happens to me and I can say that it has no clear relationship to the possible quality of the paper. In the case of the former (after review), the busy editor becomes a more likely candidate since the editor should study the reviews, decide on the faith of the paper, and possibly provide guidelines for your revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any indication, from for example peers, what typical handling periods are in the journal where you submitted your manuscript, you should definitely contact the journal to ask about the status of your submission. Such requests are commonplace (too common in fact) so try to assess if the two months is long or normal in the case of this particular journal before contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T12:42:49.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:10:27.977" Score="4" ViewCount="2409" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/em&gt;: I am asking on behalf of my friend, so I can not give many specific information. Still, I hope the information provided will be enough to give advice.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that a person got a position as a PhD candidate in a ok lab in Europe a bit less than a year ago. After a few months, the person realized that the current PhD project is not a good match for her (language barriers, communication problems, different work approach and pace from majority of the lab...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After considering the situation, the person decided to apply for a few a different PhD projects in North and South America where the topics are a better fit, and where it is less likely to have language problems (the person found some open applications and researched them on her own time, while still working normally for her current position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While finishing writing the applications and cover letters, a dilemma emerged about &lt;strong&gt;at which point should the person mention (if at all) the current involvement in a position as a PhD candidate?&lt;/strong&gt; Fully aware that lying is not an option, the basic dilemma is weather to &lt;em&gt;mention it in the cover letter&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;the first interview (if it comes to that).&lt;/em&gt; (The CV format required for most applications is such that the current PhD position is not readily apparent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the questions would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;whether to mention the current position as a PhD candidate in the cover letter / application, or at some later point in the process?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when mentioning the current position as a PhD candidate, how much detail about the current position (and reasons for looking for a new one in order to leave the current one) is the right amount of detail?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T16:34:33.560" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T14:20:33.363" Title="How to write a cover letter for a PhD position while involved in another PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16631" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:06:48.723" Score="2" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing an essay, if I have cited some paragraph from a book in the footnotes, do I need to include that book in the bibliography after the essay? Or I only need to include books that have not been cited in the bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11690" LastEditorUserId="11690" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T04:24:48.160" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T04:24:48.160" Title="Do I need to repeat the books quoted in footnotes in the bibliography?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14926" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:33:46.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Step in their shoes and figure out what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; would be gaining from giving money to you. The question is not only about the benefits as such, but &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; will benefit. 'One day you may tax it' may be actually reasonable to a large government, but it is absolute nonsense to a private company, who will NOT be able to tax it when other companies use it. &quot;What's the use of a newborn baby&quot; also implies that the adult will be useful - but it will NOT be useful to the company unless they can own &amp;amp; control that long-future result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you want to get industry funding for research where the results cannot be commercialized in the short term, then anyway your results have to be valuable from &lt;em&gt;them in particular&lt;/em&gt;, rather than the whole industry including their competitors. So if it's too early to produce a commercial product/process, at the very least the end result should be some protected IP - usually patents - that would be a property of the funding organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an investment, then take a look at how large the return benefit would be, when would that be, and how likely it is that it will/won't work out.  If it's a 'sponsorship', well, sponsorships generally are a PR/marketing issue - in order for that to work out, the company needs your research and/or your name to be visible and known (not to academia but to their customers), so that they'd get some marketing benefit by their customers seeing (a lot of) their association with you and/or your research topic. It sometimes happens (for example, with high-end audio products; or IBM's Watson project is a case of such PR), but it's clearly not an option for most researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative might be private philantrophists - but that is based on individual relations, connections to very rich individuals, and your PR ability to convinve them that your research is so valuable to the world. Looking at how some other researchers have achieved such funding, it generally requires writing a popular book or a few of them, and years of public promotion of your research direction and ideas; that seed tends to grow into an ability to fundraise for continuing such research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T15:45:29.983" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T15:45:29.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:44:26.847" Score="12" ViewCount="1581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently graduated and my co-chair offered me a postdoc position which I haven't started yet. I first thought he was trying to help me. Now I am getting other good offers from others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received a very good postdoc offer and was in a very good lab. I told my co-chair, that I will leave if I get that one. After the interview, the main PI told me that he will contact my references and will get back to me within one week. Later, he sent me an email saying he offered the job for someone else. Before the interview, he was writing me and even shared some confidential information even before they released them through the HR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way he handled my application gave me very high hopes on getting the job. Now I suspect that my co-chair who was known to my future PI changed the post-doc hiring committees view of me. He has given me very good reference letters in the past for other academic positions that I can start in several months if I was selected. I am now confused, and not sure how to handle this supervisor. Any help/advice greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11693" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:31:17.863" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:31:17.863" Title="How to deal with my academic advisor who offered me a postdoc position and try to prevent me getting other offers?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16629" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:11:46.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common reason why job references are normally asked from the former employers but not from the current employer. If the current employer would like to keep a specialist, adequate recommendations just cannot be provided because of the conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get alternative recommendations. Maybe your work included cooperation with other laboratories, or maybe you had some more junior &quot;intermediate&quot; supervisor, or maybe you have worked along speciality at least part time? Suggest these people instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case, you may even ask for recommendation from another co-worker like you. Not very good yet better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T12:32:03.020" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T12:32:03.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16627" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:22:37.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using OSCOLA style, then the footnotes will include all the necessary bibliographic information and a bibliography/works cited is not required.  See, for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ouulj.law.ox.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal&lt;/a&gt;, which follows OSCOLA style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, most styles that require a Works Cited/Bibliography have &quot;in-line&quot; or &quot;parenthetical&quot; citations, rather than footnotes (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt; style). The key thing to remember is that the purpose of citations is to allow your readers to consult your sources for themselves and, where you are citing secondary sources, to give credit to the authors for their contribution to the scholarly conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T16:22:37.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:28:22.243" Score="10" ViewCount="1758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a non-EU citizen, currently doing a postdoc in mathematics in Europe, and I'm thinking of doing a habilitation. Since my google search didn't yield much, I'd appreciate if you could please answer my following questions regarding habilitation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If I understand correctly, habilitation is the highest academic degree you can receive and people do it for getting a permanent academic position in Europe.&#xA;How many years or how much/many publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a 'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it for the defense of habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How about university A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for getting the degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) (Kind of vague question, somewhat opinion-based too) How much does the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a successful habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="6259" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T16:41:39.093" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:13:42.893" Title="Doing a habilitation in Mathematics in Europe for a non EU citizen?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;habilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T17:54:35.710" Score="3" ViewCount="1292" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently submitted an article to IEEE's &lt;em&gt;Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics&lt;/em&gt; journal. It is the first time I submit to a journal so I am a bit unfamiliar with the process, being used to conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their website they mention that the review process usually takes between 6 and 12 months. I am wondering, does this refer to the time taken by all reviewers to take a single iteration on the manuscript or, does this include more review iterations? I.e. does this time take into account also the time needed by the authors to revise their manuscript according to their comments and resubmit it? How much time does one have to do these revisions? Provided that it is not rejected... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11338" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:58:20.557" Title="IEEE TVCG length of review process" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16733" CreationDate="2014-02-06T18:24:55.347" Score="1" ViewCount="4829" Body="&lt;p&gt;My brother wants to switch to Electrical Engineering and possibly do a Master's degree (with thesis). He also has a BSc and MSc degree in physics but not much formal training in EE (except some basic electronics, solid-state physics and advanced electromagnetism courses). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the most important factor in grad school applications is research, he has tried to contact professors and labs so many times for even non-paid internships, with no results. The other option is to apply to BSc degree or just about any MSc degrees in order to take the prerequisite courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should he proceed? What are some advantages or disadvantages of getting a BSc in EE (using some credits from the previous degree) vs doing a Master's program in EE with thesis that accept him and take the prerequisites courses? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:27:17.407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:27:17.407" Title="Switch fields from Physics to Electrical Engineering in US: MSc vs BSc?" Tags="&lt;physics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;electrical-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T18:34:10.780" Score="15" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined a new lab a while ago, and am having an issue with keeping the credit for my work. Two instances so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I co-authored a series of papers with the professor and a senior graduate student. I was always the first author, and it'd be fair to say that I contributed 95% of the research work and 70% of the writing. Somehow the other student was invited to give several talks on our work at various department seminars. I hadn't known until recently when I accidentally discovered his slides in our shared repository. The problem is that, in his slides, he only put his name, and there was no mention of my name/no credit given to me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before joining the lab, I developed a research software, which was quite successful and widely used. When I joined the lab, I transferred the development to the lab, and a graduate student helped me to extend the software a bit. When programming, I always sign my code with my name: (C) 2010-2013 by My Name (Email). Just today, when I looked at the code (publicly shared on github), I discovered that the student had deleted my name from all the files and replaced with his name: (C) 2010-2013 by His Name (Email). He even hadn't joined the development until 2012. If people just look at the code, they would think he were the sole author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I want to keep the credit for my work. But I don't know what I should do. I feel that there is a culture in the lab that people just don't respect the credit for shared work. I don't want to cause heat in the lab. Both those students have been in the lab for longer than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11699" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T20:08:54.770" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:58:06.217" Title="Keeping credit for my work" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16648" CreationDate="2014-02-06T19:37:37.177" Score="33" ViewCount="1774" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read the following in a description of a workshop:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have about 15 participants and seek an “Oberwolfach style” with a relatively low density of talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find anything about this style in Internet. But I found out that there is The Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach, and according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Research_Institute_of_Oberwolfach&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It organizes weekly workshops on diverse topics where mathematicians and scientists from all over the world come to do collaborative research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the sense of this “Oberwolfach style” is still vague to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11703" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T14:39:15.103" Title="What is &quot;Oberwolfach style&quot;?" Tags="&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-06T20:04:59.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask him, politely, like if you were interested to compare your slides (maybe you also participate in seminars) or if you don't, pretend to be really interested in his slides to learn. Again, politely, tell him that you are happy that he used your work (&quot;oh, you did well showing our work&quot; something like this) and force him to include your name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About second issue, talk to him about it openly. But think about the long-therm consequences and short term consequences. Is it really important to keep that credit? Which are the colateral damages of putting this issue on the table? Are you leaving soon the department? Or, on the contrary, are you in tenure track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if he is not cooperating, think about stealing his girlfriend :D (he'll learn how you felt about your software) And, at the end, you're lucky to be first author, you could be 2nd or 3rd author even doing everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11683" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T20:04:59.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16632" CreationDate="2014-02-06T20:07:49.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting this by answering some questions for &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1)  people do it for getting a permanent academic position in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that even being a professor does not imply a permanent position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;junior professorships run 6 years, and according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniorprofessur&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; only 8% of the junior professorships can be considered proper tenure track (applying for a permanent position at the same university without a public job advertisement), for another 4-10% of the junior professorships it is possible to apply for a permanent position at the same university, the remaining majority will not be considered for a permanent position.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Hausberufungen&quot; (&quot;in house appointments&quot; = offering the professorship to someone from the same university) are somewhere between extremely uncommon (having a fishy taste) and forbidden. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also regular professors can have a probation period before getting a permanent position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many years or how much/many publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A junior professorship is 6 years and is supposed to be an equivalent alternative to the habilitation, I think that gives a first rough estimate. Besides, I'd recommend that you look into habilitations in your field: they are published in the respecive university libraries and nowadays usually available electronically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a 'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it for the defense of habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative habilitations are very common. Again, look at some in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How about university A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No idea. But the habilitation is supposed to show that you can teach the whole field and one distinguishing criterion (from dissertation) is that also the presented research must cover some breadth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for getting the degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure, but as a habilitation in maths means that you are allowed to teach all kinds of maths I guess that would not be a problem. I know physicists and engineers who habilitated in chemistry (though doing the scientific work in a chemical institute). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) How much does the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a successful habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in practice in order to become a professor you either need a habilitation or become junior professor (for 6 years) and then successfully apply for a professorship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;number of habilitations / year is about 1600. Approximately 650 professors are pensioned / year, so  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bildung/weniger-habilitationen-in-deutschland-keine-lust-auf-dicke-waelzer-1.1387701&quot;&gt;approximately 1/3 of the people who habilitate actually become professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Update for maths &amp;amp; natural sciences: ca. 160 profs pensioned / ca. 260 habilitations per year =&gt; would correspond roughly to a 60 % chance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;roughly 3% (total: 1439) of all professors (43 862) are junior professors, that is aproximately 240 new per year.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Maths &amp;amp; natural sciences: 305 of 7500 = 4%, corresponding to ca. 50 / year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniorprofessur&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says that somewher between 1/3 and 2/3 of the junior professors work at their habilitation despite being junior professors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PersonalHochschulen.html&quot;&gt;Here's what the Statistische Bundesamt says about these subjects.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T20:20:05.200" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T20:20:05.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T20:40:51.000" Score="5" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010057&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rule 7: Start writing the paper the day you have the idea of what questions to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like very good advice, not just because you would pace out the act of writing your paper over the entire duration of your research, but it would also help you stay focused and keep track of your progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in practice, how is this possible? To start writing a paper, I must first know what format and style it should be written in. To know that, I would consult the guidelines of the journal in which I want publish. But the choice of journal depends on the quality of the research and notability of findings. But if I start writing on the day that I start my research, how can I know what journal the research will be good enough for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if I shoot high and assume I am going to have a Nature paper, what do I do if a year down the line, it turns out that I was unable to succeed in reaching my goals and Nature would not possibly accept my research? Now I have to rewrite from scratch for another journal, and the time I spent slowly building up my Nature manuscript is wasted. I might as well have focused on research only at first, and left the writing part for last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What journal's submission guidelines do I pick to follow this &lt;em&gt;Rule 7&lt;/em&gt;? The most prestigious journal? The humblest journal? Some generic set of guidelines for &quot;no journal&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 9 from the same text says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rule 9: Decide early on where to try to publish your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how can you know ahead of time where you will be able to publish, especially if you don't have much experience publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T21:40:50.083" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T17:47:10.643" Title="How can I choose ahead of time where my research should be published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16639" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:05:59.307" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Format and style should rarely, if ever, be your first concern in writing a paper. Your top objective should be describing good research to your readers. You need not worry about how to cite a paper or if you should use British or American English spellings at first. (Or at least not until you complete Rule 9!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, what this is rule is advising you to do are tasks such as organizing your thoughts, collect references, write up your methodologies, and think about the graphics you will want to use to help illustrate your points. This is more or less the same advice given by people like George Whitesides in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1305035664639/Whitesides-ACS-Writing-a-Scientific-Paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;talks&lt;/a&gt; and as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.200400767/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;editorial column.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowing where to publish is not that difficult. Look for where the work you're drawing from is currently being published. If many of the papers you are citing are from journals X and Y, one of those will likely be a good home for your paper. Which one to select might be a matter of which audience you're trying to reach: for instance, &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Physical Chemistry&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Chemical Physics&lt;/em&gt; cover very similar sets of areas. However, the former journal is mainly a chemistry journal, and the latter is primarily for physicists. (There is, as you might imagine, a lot of crossover.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:05:59.307" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16639" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:06:11.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good indicator of where to publish and who is more likely to publish your work is to look at your citations.  Its a good bet that a journal that you cite heavily has an audience interested in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as having an adaptable, journal independent formatting for your paper, you may want to write your paper in LaTeX.  You can easily switch formats by changing the .sty files particular your journal of interest.  These usually include predefined reference templates so that you can simply include a separate .bib file with your reference information and the necessary formatting will be automatically be generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T21:20:19.247" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:20:19.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18507" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:07:28.843" Score="19" ViewCount="2197" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the longest gap of unemployment that will likely not affect your chance of getting an academic position (post-doc or faculty)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if you graduate from your PhD in December or January but most post-doctoral/faculty positions in your field don't start until May-Sept, is a partial year's worth of unemployment looked down upon in future job applications? If not, what is the longest gap that won't look so negative while applying to future jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T07:07:53.233" Title="Gaps between PhD and employment?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:17:46.920" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first point, the only conceivable reason for omitting your name is that the student was under the mistaken impression that in a presentation you only need the name of the speaker. It's not an uncommon mistake that students make when they're starting to present work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the usual way to fix this is to have a big &quot;Joint work with X and Y&quot; just below the name of the speaker. And there's absolutely no reason not to do that. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the student to include your name on all presentations and even on abstracts announcing the presentations (again, using the 'Joint work with..' formulation. If the student resists, then it's time to go to the advisor. There is &lt;strong&gt;no reason&lt;/strong&gt; your name should not be on the presentation if you've contributed to the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, how come this other student is giving all the talks if you're the primary author ? Maybe you should ask your advisor if you can give a talk on this at the next opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:17:46.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:21:25.180" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Talks with one name only&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I think that customs vary between having a long list of authors and a long list of collaborators* and only the &lt;em&gt;speaker&lt;/em&gt; spelled out on the title, possibly including a long list of &lt;em&gt;authors&lt;/em&gt; on the abstract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* e.g. a slide listing the contributions of all the collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend having a look how other people in the department handle this, and then maybe expressing astonishment (semi)publicly because where you came from it was handled differently. I think it is preferable to have a public discussion and the customs/style of the lab developing in some way than to offend everyone just because your previous lab put authors and not the speaker on the front slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related issue: I like to know who tells what about my work. But OTOH, I think it is quite usual that you don't recognize your own work when a collaborator presents it... There are also drawbacks to being spelled out on the first page of a talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Only student's name in code&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is much clearer. And, as you say the code is in a git repo, it is still easy to sort out things now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first step, talk to the student privately and request that he rolls back these changes and adds &quot;Contributions by &quot; (ideally a contributions line for each logical step in the development with date and name - but the git messages can do that as well) only where he actually contributed code. Of course, if he is the sole author of new files, those stay &quot;his&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a field where software isn't (yet) really a category of publication in the mind of most researchers. However, the usual result of not thinking about that is that there is no statement of authorship nor of a license. In contrast to that, deleting author lines is an active step.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As a second step, I'd explain that deleting the authorship lines from source code is as serious as taking a colleague's manuscript and submitting it under his own name without even mentioning the collaborator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a next level of pressure, you could explain to him that you talk to him privately as you do not want to unneccessarily endanger his graduation: from a legal point of view this is a clear violation of your author's moral rights (not necessarily copyright - although also the terms of the license could have been violated). Violation of author's moral rights is an offense that is extremely relevant for academia and thus may put him onto the fast lane to being thrown out of his programme without graduation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Which you also should keep in mind if you need to go to your boss with the problem: be careful not to destroy more than absolutely necessary here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Always assuming of course that the copyright is actually yours as opposed to your previous employer's. But, if you find out that you just have author's (moral) rights, but not the copyright that is a point that makes it necessary right now to &quot;heal&quot; the legal issues by putting the proper copyright and authorship lines into the code ;-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T21:32:57.943" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:32:57.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16639" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:40:10.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was provided this advice by a few successful professors (in computer science): keep a track for a &quot;small pond&quot; and a track for a &quot;big pond&quot;. A small pond is a yearly conference that has a pretty small community, is reasonably specialized in its area, and is often accessible as far as acceptance rate goes. Every year, you should aim to have a paper here and get known in the community over time. A big pond is a yearly conference that is large, has good impact and reputation, and is more general to the field rather than to your specialization. Again, aim for this conference every year, but keep in mind that because it's bigger and more prestigious, it's also more difficult to get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ends up happening is that, almost by default, you get at least two yearly targets for publishing - and as a result you know where you're writing every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice isn't exactly the same when it comes to journal writing, but the general principle can still apply. Pick a couple of journals that are well-known in your field: a specialized one and a more general one, and use them as your main targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you select targets? Well, as suggested, the places that you cite are pretty good places to go to. Your advisor is likely to have a few favorite publication venues (and it's usually a good idea to publish with your advisor). When you read and write often, you will start recognizing which journals and conferences have respected papers in them, and what the bar is for getting accepted is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall: start writing early. Research questions, for example, are generally going to be similar no matter what venue you submit to. Your methods are not going to change based on the venue you write for. Your results are not going to change based on the venue you write for. It's safe to write these things down early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does change with venue is the style guidelines (easy enough to just use a new LaTeX or Word template, or even to copy and paste) and the audience (mostly with respect to Introduction/Motivation and Implications/Discussion of results). It's important to choose the venue for these reasons - I personally consider it a bad idea to not customize the intro and the discussion sections to tailor it toward what a particular community expects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:40:10.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-06T22:04:43.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's be real.  They (well at least the grad student) are going behind your back on both of the issues to make themselves look better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either they feel they have contributed much more to the project than you believe or they are just really unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say that you did 70% of the writing - is that the real writing or does that involve formatting and proofreading?  I just know that a person in my field (tech engineer) who acts as an &quot;editor&quot; would not necessarily be credited on the discussions about the topic or paper but would certainly be credited in the paper itself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need to handle this swiftly but show restraint.  You first need to figure out if this is a problem with the lab or the person.  You need to figure where you relationship is with the grad student and professor and whether you wish to continue either.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stay on good terms with the grad student it is simple.  You go to them and say - &quot;I know you switched my name on code, I know you are presenting these things as yours, please change these things or I will take the next steps.&quot;  If this person wonders what the next steps are - and needs the threat as motivation - then they should be done to you.  Then you move on to professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you talk to the professor about these things and he/she seems astonished and takes action see where that goes.  If the professor doesn't offer an opinion you may need to go to the next level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know for a fact that students have been expelled from universities that I have had affiliation with for removing copy-write/author information.  This isn't an &quot;ooops&quot; case by the student.  The git stuff is borderline dumb/illegal but the presentations are just the icing on the cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't trust the student again.  I don't know enough about the situation to comment on the professor.  The other student could have easily conned the professor into thinking the stuff was theirs.  I think some of the other answers are a little too conservative.  If it were just the presentations I might agree with them but changing author info on code is blatant.  I would not start ambiguous conversations acting like what this person is doing might/might not be &quot;incorrect&quot;.  They are in the wrong.  Confront them or professor and follow chain of commands at school and git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11420" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T22:04:43.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16636" CreationDate="2014-02-06T22:43:30.187" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is indeed a reference to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mfo.de/&quot;&gt;Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach&lt;/a&gt; (Oberwolfach Mathematics Research Institute), a conference center in the small German town of Oberwolfach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Institute has developed a rather idiosyncratic style of meetings.  The most common events are weeklong workshops on specific topics, whose participants are invited by the organizers.  Speakers are chosen from among the participants on just one or two days' notice.  The talks are indeed relatively &quot;low density&quot;, perhaps 4 or 5 x 45-minute talks per day, so not all participants will give talks.  Long periods are left unscheduled to encourage informal discussion and collaboration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conference center is isolated and so most people don't leave the campus during the week.  Participants are housed and fed onsite and meals are communal.  As Aru says, there are also measures to &quot;encourage&quot; a more social atmosphere: seating is assigned and changes from meal to meal, and Internet access is not available in the guest rooms until 10pm or so (edit: Najib Idrissi's comment below suggests that this policy has changed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-05-09T14:39:15.103" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T14:39:15.103" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2014-02-06T23:05:26.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to suggest instead of asking if you could self write the letter, send your advisor an email that says something like this. &quot;Thank you so much for agreeing to write this letter for me. We have done a lot of great work together over a long period of time and I'd like to highlight some things that you may wish to talk about in your letter (of course feel free to choose not to use any of these examples if you so desire):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow your letter writer to at least have some phrases he/she could say in relatively good English, but you aren't actually writing the letter. The advisor will likely edit them and add more phrases, but at least it is a good starting point. This way, no confidentiality is breached because the advisor can still ignore all of your examples and you have no idea whether he/she chose to do so or not. I also like Pete Clark's idea of sending in an untranslated letter if it is in a language that can be easily translated in most English speaking institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T23:05:26.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T00:40:24.863" Score="7" ViewCount="3388" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching career opportunities, I have stumbled upon an alumnus of the school I am currently at, who is a relatively new faculty member there. In a sense, this person's career is what I want &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; career to be like. It seems like they could offer me very valuable advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not know this person and do not know anyone they know. I thought I might write a polite email to them asking for advice, but I'm not sure what the prudent way to phrase it would be. And on that note, whether prudence would preclude even doing such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the polite way to ask a professor how to get a job like theirs (specifically, at an institution such as theirs)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="780" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T08:54:50.943" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T08:54:50.943" Title="Approaching faculty members I don't know well to solicit career advice" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16650" CreationDate="2014-02-07T02:05:00.010" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send this person a brief e-mail, explaining the followings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you found out about him/her, and give a 2-sentence introduction of yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That his/her career path and/or research interests overlaps with or inspires yours very much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask if you can have a phone conversation for 15 minutes to answer some questions. You can also ask for a meeting if he/she is nearby.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List the brief questions that you plan to cover. Don't be too broad. Think if these 15 minutes are really the only time that he/she will be willing to talk to you, what would you like to get out from this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide 4-5 dates/times for him/her to pick, and invite them to suggest some dates if none of them works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid asking for reference letter, inside contacts, or any kind of favor beyond just formal career advices. He/she may not feel vested enough to do that, and if you push, he/she may close up. Also, don't attach any CV/resume; that would look like you're looking for a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also don't ask &quot;How did you get a job at an institution like this one?&quot; Zoom out and ask for the job search process he/she went through. Ask him/her to elaborate on the thought process and how the pros and cons were weighed. Once the topic gets going, you can probe a bit further, but the focus should be on the faculty member, not the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the date, be on time, and honor the 15 minutes (or whatever you both agree upon) limit. At the end of the meeting, ask if you may ask for his/her opinion very occasionally through e-mail in future, and then establish the mentoring relationship from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you got home, follow up with a thank you e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricks are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't ask them to write back. Replying e-mail on this kind of issues takes a lot of time and thought, plus he/she may not know you well enough to know if the recommendations are suitable for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it low stake. At most they'll lose are 15 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it thoughtful by listing highly relevant questions. This shows that you really did look at their work and know something about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T02:21:23.563" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T02:21:23.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16655" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:15:51.043" Score="9" ViewCount="9413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied for PhD scholarship in Computer science at a European university. My master is from Malaysia. Unfortunately, my application has not been selected (only 9 has been chosen among 116 applicants). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email I received informs me that I can file an appeal form attached against the decision made by the committee. Although having a form is supposed to be helpful, I have not written such an appeal before and am not sure what to write. The form is one page (A4) and five lines of it starts with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I expose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I have to fill the five lines and other five lines start with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And therefore, Kindly ask you for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, what should I write here? I have no idea about appeals and their justifications and consequences. The only thing I can add since my original application is that another paper has been published. I really believe I am very strong candidate for the program as it conforms exactly to my research area (which I had published two conference paper in). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is therefore, &lt;strong&gt;what and how to write in the two sections of the form if I decide to write an appeal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T01:48:17.440" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T10:40:26.553" Title="What to write in appeal for a rejected PhD application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:34:48.697" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you certain that you would have been better than at least 107 other applicants? Are you able to demonstrate it? Or do you have strong evidence that somehow your application was discriminated against/overlooked? (Information of this kind is what should be in an appeal form)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't understand the format of your appeal form. The appeal form already have the words &quot;I expose&quot;? If you are writing it, it sounds very accusatory, and it probably won't win any extra points for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having two conference papers is pretty good, but I don't think that it is exceptional in computer science. Which conferences were they published in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T03:34:48.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:36:36.663" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't say why you are appealing the decision.  If only 9 out of 116 applicants got a scholarship, then it is overwhelmingly likely that they turned down many strong applicants.  Do you have a good reason to believe that your application is stronger than the 9 who received the scholarship?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you're not under the impression that simply not having received an award is grounds for appealing the decision.  What if all 107 unsuccessful applicants appealed the decision?  The program would surely have to reconsider having an appeals process or perhaps even giving out the scholarships at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T03:36:36.663" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16650" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:41:31.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your question is of the form &quot;how do I become a professor at the prestigious university X?&quot;, then I don't think that it is worth contacting this professor. But if this professor has an interesting career that no one else has, then I suggest that you follow the steps that the others have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T03:41:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:44:41.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate student, so I'm not particularly knowledgable about these issues. I had a thought I think is worth bringing up, though: Both of the incidents you brought up involve students. Is it possible that the students are simply unaware of what's expected or otherwise made simple mistakes? If so, talking to them in person would quickly resolve the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bring this up because it seems to me that you're in a position to get the students in question in serious trouble if you want to, possibly putting their academic futures in jeopardy. If they aren't being willfully antagonistic, it would be cruel to rake them over the coals (although it doesn't sound like you want to do so). Please take a gentler approach to start unless it is clear that they are deliberately acting selfishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: @blankip made me think about my answer some more. The students' unethical behavior might be bad enough to warrant some kind of punishment, regardless of how aware they are of it, not just a heart-to-heart talk. My biggest concern is that it also seems unethical (or at least cruel) to me to try to have the students expelled, subject to legal action, or something similarly extreme when they're relatively new to academia unless it's clear that they were deliberate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6030" LastEditorUserId="6030" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T04:58:06.217" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:58:06.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16636" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:49:05.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been to Oberwolfach several times. Oberwolfach's schedule is something like two or three talks in the morning, followed by lunch and free time until around 3 or 4 (I don't remember exactly). Then they serve you cake, and you go to a couple of more talks before dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there is no wi-fi in your rooms (until 10pm or so -- new addition!) you are expected to socialize and discuss mathematics with your colleagues during the free time, which often leads to fruitful collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T03:49:05.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16438" CreationDate="2014-02-07T04:33:45.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're going to need to prove to admissions that you are better than the other candidates.  Why should you be picked over all the other applicants who also have completed a masters degree and published a paper or two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people I know who have been accepted to PhD programs have a passion for their field which drives them to do something extraordinary.  Go ahead and get a masters, publish some papers, but make sure you have something to prove that you're worth a universities investment in your education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:33:45.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16635" CreationDate="2014-02-07T04:43:03.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presenting Your work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the student was presenting your work.  Was he presenting it as something he researched by himself, or was he presenting on some work that the lab had been working on.  It can be valuable to present research results to other labs and even across disciplines.  If he phrased it as just a discussion of the latest work in the field that should be fine.  If it was phrased as &quot;this is what I did&quot;, then there's a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copyright of software&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What license was the software released under?  Did you transfer the copyright to the university?  Did you work on the software on university time?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you worked on it during university time this could be  tricky question.  Normally software is protected under copyright, but this could be seen as &lt;em&gt;individual works for hire&lt;/em&gt;.  Either way he shouldn't have removed your name and added his.  The software should probably contain the universities/lab name for copyright with you AND him listed as contributors.  You're an academic, so here's a paper to read on the topic.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:43:03.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16650" CreationDate="2014-02-07T04:48:12.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received emails from students before soliciting advice, or even sending me resumes asking to work in the lab.  More often than not they had spent very little time even becoming familiar with our research or looking into the university.  If you want a busy professor to give you advice, you need to earn it by proving that you're serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get familiar with the research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the professors CV (this can show you the path they took)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know exactly what you want to ask, and make sure it's clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider asking a student in their lab what they did (presumably they have a similar goal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EDIT: As a general rule, if English is not your native language have someone look over your email for grammar mistakes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:48:12.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16633" CreationDate="2014-02-07T04:58:20.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Review time is usually time from submission to final acceptance (ready to print).  After you submit most journals will assign your submission to a group of reviewers based on their specialties.  Those reviewers will read your paper and write up any comments, questions, or concerns.  They also typically issue a recommendation as to whether the paper should be 'accepted', 'provisionally accepted', 'changes requested', or 'rejected' (my terms).  All of that is uploaded to a central website, and when everyone has responded those comments are sent back to the authors.  If it wasn't accepted outright, you'll usually have a chance to address comments or concerns by making modifications (clarifying graphs, numbers, etc.) and resubmitting for reevaluation.  This can go on for a number of rounds of back and forth.  If your paper is eventually accepted, you are notified and sent a proof of what it will look like printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now sit back and watch the citations roll in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IEEE's TVCG process may differ a bit.  I'm familiar with publishing CS papers, but most of my publications are in Bio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T04:58:20.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2014-02-07T05:05:51.543" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The appeal form is likely for situations when you feel that your application had strongly misrepresented your abilities. For example, you had some examinations recently re-graded and your grades were notably increased. Or you had previously been accused of academic dishonesty but have been cleared of blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot expect the admissions committee to thoughtfully reconsider all the other 106 unsuccessful candidates as well, as I'm willing to bet most of them feel rather hard done by as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:05:51.543" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16438" CreationDate="2014-02-07T06:29:48.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD positions in universities are limited and given to outstanding students who have a potential for research. If your aim is to pursue your PhD in USA/Germany/Canada etc., I'd highly suggest applying for a Master's in those countries UNLESS your local university is well-known, with good professors and coursework. Your application will be evaluated on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your GPA &amp;amp; Test scores&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reputation of university you're graduating from (Master's, undergrad) // And as Daisetsu says, the researchers you work with &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research aptitude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reputation of the journals you're published in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your statement of purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letters of recommendation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous work experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also ask yourself, &quot;Why a PhD?&quot; What is your career trajectory and will a PhD help you? What about an MBA? How many years can you invest in this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, no one here can tell you your chances of getting into a University for a PhD apart from the admissions committee itself. Spend some more time reading up the requirements of the colleges you're keen on and then arrive at a well informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11712" LastEditorUserId="11712" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T11:16:33.000" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T11:16:33.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16438" CreationDate="2014-02-07T09:02:49.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment yet, so I decided to post another answer in case you end up missing the edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officially, there are no age limits when it comes to pursuing any degree. However, the main purpose of a degree is to enhance skills or gain experience in a different area. This requires a lot of commitment- both personally and in terms of time and money. That's why most people finish their studies early on. The more you're out of the habit of studying, the harder it is to keep up with the class too. It's also difficult to support your studies when you have a family to take care of. Note: I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it requires a lot of planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to MS by research/ PhD- again, the universities look at your fit for the program. If you have 10 years of working in marketing or accounts they &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; not consider you to be the best fit for a CS program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, ask yourself- &quot;Why?&quot; Make a list of courses that align with your previous education, your current job and your intended career. Then look at the universities that offer it and what their requirements are. That will give you a better idea. If a PhD is what you want, go to a research center in your area and ask if there are any openings for RAs or start thinking about your Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11712" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T09:02:49.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2014-02-07T09:11:27.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would ask: is there anything you could include in the appeal that you didn't already include in your application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you have published two papers. Did you mention that in your application? If so, that you don't really have any new information to give them – that is, you have nothing to &quot;expose.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that information was not included in the application for some reason (perhaps because you applied before the papers got accepted, or because there was no place on the application form to mention such accomplishments), then I would advise you to go ahead and file an appeal. Mind you, I'm not saying that your chances of success would be very high, but this might be one of those situations where you wouldn't have much to lose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to appeal, I would recommend keeping the appeal short and too the point. Too much rambling might come across as quibbling, and probably not help your case. Simply mention that you have something new to mention, and that you would appreciate it if they would kindly reconsider. Don't say, &quot;I think I'm a strong candidate;&quot; let your academic record speak for itself. And only inclide information that was not part of your original application; otherwise, you risk irking the committee. (I can imagine three folks in a room, looking at your paperwork with ire and disbelief, saying to each other, &quot;There's nothing new here – why is he wasting our time?&quot;, or, &quot;Which part of ‘No’ does this fellow not understand?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T09:11:27.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16461" CreationDate="2014-02-07T10:26:20.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundraising is an idea, organize a short event about your research with a donations stand or a low entry fee, sell T-shirts or something (make it legal though), and contact the company you'll be buying tickets from and tell them that if they give you a discount you'll promote them. Depending on how well you do it you could get enough, schools around here gather 2-3k in such events. Of course the discount part requires very good handling and a very professional look or they'll just laugh at you.&#xA;Another idea is to find a more permanent sponsor, some local rich guy with a benefit from your research maybe. But you will have to stay serious at the conference, he'll keep an eye open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T10:26:20.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2014-02-07T11:14:58.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, do not waste time on the appeal. There is no shame to loose the competition when only 9 from 116 applications are selected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn that you can from this rejection (maybe some feedback have been provided) and write the next application. And one more later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T11:14:58.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T11:17:58.030" Score="0" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelor's degree in Applied Nutrition and Dietetics and an MBA from a AACSB accredited university. I have about four years of work experience in the field of healthcare management. I have worked in corporate (pharmaceutical) and government (health) sectors. I am interested to further my education to sharpen skills specific to healthcare management. Is it a right career choice to go for a second Master's degree in Healthcare Administration (MHA)? or is it advisable to go for a Ph.D program in healthcare management? What would be the pluses and minuses of getting a second Master's degree (MHA) after MBA in terms of more employ-ability? &#xA;Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11721" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T13:54:59.820" Title="Advice for a career in healthcare management" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T12:27:41.360" Score="7" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book239646&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Doing research in the real world&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by David E. Gray, there is a section on experiment design. When discussing validity and reliability, the author defines “criterion validity” as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is where we compare how people have answered a new measure of a concept, with existing, widely accepted measures of a concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a little later, in the “Reliability” part, there is a subheading “Equivalence”, which says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another way of testing the reliability of an instrument is by comparing the&#xA;  responses of a set of subjects with responses made by the same set of subjects on another instrument (preferably on the same day). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I got this right, we are both times measuring if there is a difference between the answer on our new instrument and another, existing instrument. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a practical difference between the two concepts, or only a philosophical one? And whether practical or philosophical, what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the actual difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; The author discusses validity and reliability in general, then lists 7 different aspects of validity and 5 different aspects of reliability. &quot;Criterion validity&quot; and &quot;reliability equivalence&quot; are only one type of each, respectively. Please consider in your answer that this question is not about validity vs. reliability in general, but only about these two specific aspects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastEditorUserId="103" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T22:55:50.140" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T17:22:24.727" Title="Difference between criterion validity and reliability equivalence" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16671" CreationDate="2014-02-07T12:55:19.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Validity&lt;/code&gt; is comparing the new results with the existing literature, without doing extra experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Reliability&lt;/code&gt; is comparing the new results with some extra experiments that you carry on with some other settings/devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I agree with @StrongBad that this question is off-topic, but there is no SE site on research in general and I think this question is quite interesting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T12:55:19.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16671" CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:08:15.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criterion validity&lt;/strong&gt; concerns with &lt;em&gt;measuring the right thing&lt;/em&gt;. For instance, GPA is likely to have criterion validity to measure a student's academic understanding. While the change in weight in the last semester has much less criterion validity to measure the same trait. Basically, if the measurement you use and the trait you want to measure has a high correlation, then there is likely criterion validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reliability&lt;/strong&gt; concerns mostly with &lt;em&gt;measuring the thing right&lt;/em&gt;. For instance, if GPA can measure a student's academic understanding, and percent attendance can also measure a student's academic understanding, then GPA and percent attendance should correlate, aka, they are reliable. Before subjected to reliability assessment, the tests are usually checked if they are criterion-valid. However, it's possible to have two tests that are highly correlated (reliable) but invalid. Such as using dietary fat intake and serum lipid to predict a college graduate's earning potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that there a few different types of reliabilities, the one you cited is more about &lt;em&gt;alternate forms reliability,&lt;/em&gt; there are also &lt;em&gt;test-retest reliability&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;inter-rater reliability&lt;/em&gt;, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, they are not interchangeable. Validity happens between the true trait (or behavior) and the measurements. Reliability happens between two measurements (or modes/instances of measurement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T13:22:43.963" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T13:22:43.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:11:55.697" Score="38" ViewCount="6719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply for graduate school to become a mathematics professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start. This is obviously a very difficult question to answer, but I'll explain my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I have above-average math talent, although I wouldn't consider myself a genius and I've had people in my classes smarter than me. However, I've gotten high marks in nearly all math courses and I've written a honors thesis which has also received very high marks. I've also worked as a research assistant. Basically, I think I've done pretty well and perform competently in all the mathematical challenges that has come my way so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But being a math professor requires original ideas and lots of publishing. I haven't had any significant original ideas, but it's probably true that most people at my level of education also haven't (correct me if I'm wrong here). My main concern is how do I know if I would be able to generate enough original ideas to keep publishing and maintain a successful academic career? Unlike working in mathematical modeling in the private sector, where one cannot really get &quot;stuck&quot; in the same way, it seems like a risk to be a professor since it's really hard to guarantee that you'll always be able to produce new research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11517" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T13:16:04.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T08:42:42.937" Title="How do I know if I'm good enough to be a math professor?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16674" CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:46:06.133" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in the same situation as you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By good fortune, I lived in a city with an excellent mathematics department. I chose a graduate course that looked interesting and asked the professor if I could sit in on his course. He kindly agreed, and I did so -- including all the homework and a term project. He was impressed, wrote me a rec letter for grad school, and I had the good fortune to succeed -- I am now working as a math professor. So it's possible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely advise the same to you if practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I recommend that you ask this question to whoever will be writing your rec letters, as they are familiar with what it takes to succeed in mathematics graduate school. (If they are not, then you probably don't want to get letters from them.) If they believe you are strong enough to get accepted to, and succeed in, top programs, then that's a very good sign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider hedging your bets by only applying to top (say, top 25) graduate programs. You can also get an excellent graduate education at second-tier schools -- indeed, I am a professor at such a school -- but you face longer odds if you graduate from such a school, and if you don't mind the prospect of being admitted nowhere, then being very selective is one way of partially mitigating your long-term risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might investigate what it is like to work at a not very prestigious institution, such as a regional branch campus of a state university. Would you prefer such a job to your current one? The answer to that question should inform how much of a risk you are willing to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T13:46:06.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16670" CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:54:59.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just some thoughts and hopefully others will provide more ideas for you. I am answering with the assumption that you're in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I don't think a Master in HCM is going to be a good fit. These programs want to prepare workforce for the HCM but you have already done that with real experience under your belt. Unless their syllabus contains a good amount of materials that you absolutely want to learn, or you feel that you're lacking the theoretical base for a PhD, I wouldn't suggest that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD program seems sensible. And I'd also suggest checking out programs such as DrPH (Doctoral in Public Health) degree which usually gears toward applied rather than theoretical. I believe a DrPH selection committee will value you more than a PhD committee does. Regardless, since you want to come back out and work rather than stay in academia, look for a large mix of applied components with perhaps 30-40% research training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As employment potential... I guess that depends on what you want to be. But generally, if I am to read a resume of an HCM candidate, I'd value experience and knowledge in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program monitoring and evaluation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Health economics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost effectiveness analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics, biostatistics, or econometrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qualitative methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leadership training and conflict management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budgeting and management of organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grant writing and management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should open up some doors. Save some credits to specialize (it's better to have a broad research/work interest and a focus one, because funding streams are different in these two levels.) For instance, if you want to work in some large hospital, you may add a couple courses (or summer training or capstone project) in clinical trail management and electronic medical record. If you want to serve more specific group such as undeserved Hispanic population in California, then you can add a couple more components in health equity, community participatory research, and coalition management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my ultimate confusion is that you have already worked in HCM for 4 years, which means you were/are employed. What prompted you to get more employ-able? What is that extra thing you want? If you want to advance to the management position, then I'd perhaps suggest checking what kind of degrees these people have, and perhaps talk to a couple seniors and mentors in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, I'd suggest opting for a slower pace and complete your degree while keeping the job. The affordable health care act is going to be an experience and you should keep involved in the field while studying. Apply what you learn back to your office, make your company treasure you (or even invest more in you.) When the degree is done, and if you're not happy enough to stay, then consider leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T13:54:59.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T10:06:03.447" Score="2" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem: I need a value for a specific physical quantity. I found several papers with contradicting numbers. How do I make sure to not miss the most accurate data by e.g. missing the newest publications on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: What is a good strategy to find the most reliable sources due to newest insights (where to start, which websites to use best, which books etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10589" OwnerDisplayName="DaPhil" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T18:26:26.207" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T18:26:26.207" Title="Literature search: Finding the most reliable data" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16677" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:27:47.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) runs a web database where you can look up constants: &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These might not be the most recent ones, but they are regularly updated, reliable and represent, sort of, the academic consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are similar databases for specific fields of research. E.g. in particle physics, there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pdg.lbl.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Particle Data Group (PDG)&lt;/a&gt; which publishes the &lt;em&gt;Review of Particle Physics&lt;/em&gt; (and the much shorter, yet comprehensive &amp;amp; handy &lt;em&gt;Particle Physics Booklet&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21912" OwnerDisplayName="Jonas" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T13:27:47.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16700" CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:51:23.833" Score="17" ViewCount="11318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am in the last semester of my Master studies in computer science in Germany. I am further contemplating about the possibility of applying for PhD position somewhere in Germany, Switzerland, (and maybe Austria). There are other candidate countries as well, but these are the main ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a year or so I should be done with this studies. I wonder what is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the PhD position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;question added after edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone with similar experience tell me how these things work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T08:45:39.813" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T09:30:22.313" Title="What is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;switzerland&gt;&lt;austria&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16674" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:13:52.980" Score="41" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can remember freaking out about this as I was writing my first paper.  It was the only publishable work I had ever done, and I remember thinking to myself &quot;What if this is the only idea I have in me?  Or what if, instead of getting easier, generating ideas gets even harder as I have to scrounge around in deeper recesses of my brain?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, generating ideas turns out not to be as intimidating as it sounds.  In practice, it's very rare to sit down in a chair and say &quot;I shall now think deep thoughts.&quot;  Instead, any depth comes as a spin-off from much more mundane activities.  You read papers, you idly wonder about things, you come up with questions you care about, you figure out how to investigate them, you grapple with technical obstacles, you study things you hadn't realized you needed to know, you chat with colleagues and ask them questions, you work with collaborators, etc.  Each of these activities is pretty natural, and they all feed into each other in a complicated web.  At any stage you may come up with or run across new ideas, but they are generated organically rather than being something you have to worry about explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can expect that a strong graduate program will bring you to the point where you can do this reliably.  Of course some people will be faster or more prolific, some will have more striking or creative ideas, some will work on more important questions, etc.  You can still improve many of these factors through practice and mentoring, but at that point the question is a little different.  Not whether you can do research, but rather how to reach your full potential as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd recommend not worrying about this too much.  Doing research is a skill that most undergraduates don't have but that graduate schools can teach.  Once you get up to speed, generating ideas doesn't end up being a bottleneck.  [In fact, you'll end up having more ideas than you have time or energy to investigate yourself.  This lets you suggest some to students to help them get started with research, without worrying that you are giving away a limited resource you need for your own research.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing good research is necessary but not sufficient for getting a job in a research university.  It's difficult to assess talent and predict career success, but one way to get a crude approximation is by looking at what happened to past students in your position.  When you are admitted to graduate school, you can look up former students of advisors you are considering and see what happened to them.  For example, you can find lists of students using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/&quot;&gt;Mathematics Genealogy Project&lt;/a&gt;, and then you can search for them on the web.  This is certainly not perfect: some advisors don't have many students yet, job markets change over time, some former students are just not representative of your situation (if a potential advisor used to be at a less prestigious school, then placement records from that school are not so relevant), etc., and of course there's always random variance.  However, it will give you a crude picture.  If the advisors you are considering have had many students who got jobs you would like, then maybe you will too.  If very few of them got jobs you would find acceptable, then you are taking a much bigger risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T16:13:52.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16679" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:22:35.733" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good place to look for open positions in academia in CH is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eth-gethired.ch&quot;&gt;ETH-gethired&lt;/a&gt; website. In Switzerland, you will usually be hired by the university or research institute and receive a salary (about 3.6 to 4.5k CHF/month). In exchange you typically have to do TA work (assisting with practical sessions in courses, correcting assignments, etc.) and sometimes technical tasks (taking care of lab equipment). In some universities (like the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH and EPFL) and for some programs, a formal application to a competitive graduate school is also required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, you can get funded directly by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snf.ch/en/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;Swiss National Science Fund&lt;/a&gt; which leads typically to a lower pay but less or no teaching tasks. But it is seldom the grad student's task to secure funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scout the lab websites for positions not listed in my link, and don't be afraid to apply spontaneously as well, if a place sounds particularly interesting to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T19:51:51.530" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T19:51:51.530" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16679" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:51:05.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In general,&lt;/em&gt; doctoral studies in both Germany and Switzerland are paid research employees. In Germany, for instance, &lt;em&gt;Doktoranden&lt;/em&gt; (doctoral students) are formally called &lt;em&gt;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt; [&quot;scientific (or academic) workers&quot;]. They are paid as government employees according to a fixed scale, and have a contract outlining their duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for these programs, you apply as if you were applying to a job outside of academia, except you send a CV in place of a résumé. The hiring is done directly by the group of the professor who has the open position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; some exceptions, primarily related to American-style doctoral programs. For these, your application is in a style similar to that of a graduate school in the US (form, letters of recommendation, statement of purpose, etc.). These are typically fellowship-based positions that carry a stipend. They usually also have a reduction in teaching and supervisory duties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, however, you should never have to pay (or get an outside scholarship) to do doctoral studies in a scientific field in Germany or Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T16:51:05.223" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16639" CreationDate="2014-02-07T17:47:10.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write while I do the research, but I don't attempt to write the text of the journal paper from the get-go.  What I write at the start is essentially a set of research notes, which often gradually evolves into a lengthy technical report.  The journal article is written by extracting the most valuable and interesting parts of the report and adding some expository elements (introduction and transitions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible and sometimes worthwhile to &quot;publish&quot; the technical report as well, for instance on the arXiv or sometimes in an institutional series.  In that case you may want to spend more time polishing the report itself.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.1317&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an example of a 47-page report that's much too long for a journal article&lt;/a&gt; -- at least, for most journals in my field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it makes sense to submit all or most of the report to a journal with no page limits; for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6651&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this lengthy report&lt;/a&gt; will soon appear in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lms.ac.uk/publications/jcm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Pete Clark says in the comments, I find that the most valuable effect of writing as I go is that writing things down carefully clarifies my own understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T17:47:10.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2014-02-07T17:59:09.907" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Webster has already wrote a great answer about how to get into a good math grad school, so I will not repeat that answer here. I do, however, want to interpret your question more broadly (what advice would I give to seniors applying for grad school?) and give you some advice. In particular, most of the things that I am about to talk about were not so much of problems back in the 70s, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one tells you about the darker side of academia when you are an undergraduate student. But academia is really, really hard. Here are some cons of becoming an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the most serious problem by far is the fact that you do not have any choice on where you live. You just go to the best grad school that you got into, then after that, you apply to around 60 institutions for your postdoc job, and cross your fingers. Most schools give you two weeks to decide on your position, then off you go to some random city that you have never thought of. The same deal repeats for your second postdoc (if you are unlucky), or tenure-track. If you fail to obtain tenure, you might have to do another postdoc or tenure-track. So you are actively changing cities every 2-3 years for the next 10-15 years of your life. As an undergraduate student, this is not a serious problem, but when you have a significant other, and you are past 30, you really do want to settle down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;academia is an extremely hierarchical society. Whether you get a job or not depends on your letter writers, one of which must be your advisor. As you obtain letters from people senior to you, it is often very difficult to express your opinions, as it is very easy to burn bridges. Academia is also very small; words travel fast. If you mess up in one place, chances are, everyone knows about it. Sometimes, it's not even your fault, but people can get very, very upset at you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the job market is very tight these days. The schools that I consider to be the top grad school are Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan and Chicago. These schools alone produce about 100 PhDs a year. I think that there are around 300 research postdocs available each year in the US (if you apply to every PhD producing institution, I think that you would send out around 80-90 applications; let's assume each school hires around 3 people, which I think is being generous). You can do the math.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only the universal issues that apply to practically every PhD student. Then there are issues that apply more strongly to some people than others (elitism displayed by some mathematicians, competition among peers, difficult advisor, your thesis problem being scooped, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I advise that you need to be very, very sure that you really love math. I have been through many of these issues, and honestly, your love for the subject is the only thing that will keep you going. If you don't have the passion, you will regret your decision very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also perks of being a mathematician, of course. I do enjoy the flexible schedule (aside from teaching and committee work, research can be done any time, anywhere), being able to travel to conferences, and the job security that follows, if you make it to the ranks of a tenured professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T17:59:09.907" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16497" CreationDate="2014-02-07T20:00:40.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big difference is that most places in Europe don't have a tradition of assistant professorship, or, more generally, tenure-track faculty. Here's an example of the &quot;typical&quot; career progression of an academic in Austria (durations can vary by a lot, I just give examples here for illustration purposes):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phd Student (4 to 5 years finished with Doctorate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Postdoc (6 to 10+ years finished with habilitation / &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot;&gt;venia docendi&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Privatdozent&quot; (undefined length, non-tenured position, somewhat comparable with a non-tenured associate professor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full Professor / Chaired Professor (tenured position).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is no assistant professorship, and (2) that no tenured position before Full Professor exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, in this system there are postdocs with many years of experience in their field. They often have developed their own small group, work very loosely with a faculty mentor or completely independently, have their own funding and supervise PhD students that are &quot;quasi&quot; theirs (postdocs are not formally allowed to supervise PhD students before habilitation, but it is common practice that the mentor of the postoc formally supervises the postdoc's staff without involving her/himself much in the actual process). &lt;strong&gt;These postdocs are often considered assistant professors&lt;/strong&gt;, even going so far as to call themselves assistant professor on their web pages and business cards despite not actually being professors &lt;em&gt;de jure&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general takeaway is that being a postdoc in Europe &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; have higher status than in the US, but it is not true for &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; postdoc. As postdoc status can last a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; long time in Europe, one needs to look very closely at the person himself to see how senior she/he actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T20:00:40.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T22:32:30.800" Score="10" ViewCount="2262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first-year undergraduate student in physics. Since starting my studies I've tried to get involved in research as much as possible. Recently, the team I work with encouraged me to submit an abstract about my current project (which is the first serious one that I've taken on) for an upcoming conference. I did and I got accepted with a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is: &lt;strong&gt;How should I approach this to benefit the most? Or maybe there isn't even a point in me going at all?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm under the impression that most of the typical advantages of attending a conference such as networking, or keeping up-to-date with recent advances aren't really applicable to me as I simply lack the necessary knowledge. So far I've only taken a basic mechanics course and I have some working knowledge that I've acquired while working at the lab but nothing beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional information: the conference is obviously not a high-tier one. Judging by previous editions, about 150 attendees are expected, around 1/3-1/2 of that international (this is all in Europe by the way). Travel funding is provided by our department [active participation, in form of a poster, was part of the requirements to get that funding].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11735" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T14:23:58.287" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T14:23:58.287" Title="Attending conferences as a first-year undergrad" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2014-02-07T23:10:06.550" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;keeping up-to-date with recent advances aren't really applicable to me...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not so; that's a myth. Your poster got accepted, and that means &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; are now &lt;strong&gt;part of&lt;/strong&gt; the &quot;recent advances&quot; in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go. Tell people what you are doing. No, people won't flock to your poster and ask for your autograph; however, chances are, someone there will find your work interesting. You might get to talk with people who have done similar work. You might get a few pointers. You might get some affirmation that you're working on an interesting problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to a conference once where I was just starting out in the field. One of the world's most renowned experts attended my talk. Imagine my surprise when, a year later, my advisor returned from the same conference, he told me that this same expert approached him, and asked, &quot;Where is that student of yours? I really liked his idea...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You never know what kind of benefit you might get over the course of a few days when everyone there shares expertise in some common interest. Sometimes it's someone who can help you out, or nudge you in the right direction, or motivate you, or challenge you (hopefully in a constructive way), or merely encourage you by nodding their head as you speak, seemingly interested in what you are doing.  Maybe you'll end up with a business card and a contact number of someone who can help you down the road as your research progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, you stand to learn a lot from them, too. Who knows? Maybe someone will light a spark that will ignite a passion later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, most people like talking about their own research. So, if you attend a session that interests you, but a lot of it goes over your head, try to sit with that speaker at the lunch table. I'd bet that, more often than not, he wouldn't mind explaining some of the fundamentals to a bright and curious student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I'd bet you'll come back a bit more rejuvenated, somewhat more enlightened, and a lot more encouraged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T23:10:06.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2014-02-07T23:17:58.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before the conference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually the organization will release a conference directory. Read that before hand and highlight the sessions you'd like to attend. Have one primary and a secondary in case if the primary is a total bomb you have a second choice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather maps, travel apps or travel guide of the city you'll be visiting. Draft a few places for sightseeing. For guidebook, just a little one should be fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double check the dimension of the poster boards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your poster printed earlier. Don't wait till the last day. I usually opt for fabric posters because they can be folded and stuffed into the luggage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes you can reuse your posters (e.g. internal research day in your university, etc.) So, don't print any conference name or date on your poster directly. If the organizer requires you to display abstract number, print that on a separate piece of paper, and display that next to your poster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-print some returning labels if you want to do some sightseeing around the city after the conference, you can mail the poster tube and conference materials back to home.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to talk and see if any of your friends have friends in the city. It's easier to get a closer non-touristy look of the place if you have some local guiding you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring some push pins for your poster just in case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're planning to give out an A4 version of your poster, it's time to print some as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring some business cards (or print some in case someone would like to contact you.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on a 1-2 minutes speech that summarizes your poster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you're there&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try going to the conference center the day before and weed out all the transportation problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the room and board for your poster before hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you are free to join presentations and look at posters, follow your previous chosen options. &lt;strong&gt;Don't be too greedy,&lt;/strong&gt; if you aimlessly take in everything you will get overwhelmed and tired very soon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some conferences organize local tours and dinner parties. Take advantages of those.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have some note-taking device ready for main points, resources or references. Also bring your phone w/ camera or digital camera with you in case you want to take a picture of a poster (with permission of the presenter.) &lt;strong&gt;Focus on comprehension, not recording.&lt;/strong&gt; I have seen some conference attendants just walking around taking picture of every single poster as if they are rare birds. Meanwhile, they didn't even greet or talk to the presenters who were right there; it was sad to look at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's absolutely okay that you don't know their subject. Just be straightforward: &quot;I study [whatever] so am not too familiar with this, could you tell me what are the implications or applications of your findings to the field/my field?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try challenge yourself by asking at least one question in each session or on each day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When manning your poster, ask any viewer if they'd like a summary, and give that 1-2 minutes talk that you prepared. Ask them to ask you any questions. Sometimes conversations take off, sometimes not. Don't feel awkward if nothing is said.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Befriend the poster presenters around you, as they probably share the same research area as you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the off-conference time, do some sightseeing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save all the receipts, boarding passes, etc. for reimbursement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After the conference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to travel if you have developed a travel plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate what you learned, assess what interested you in the process, and what kind of techniques or information you can incorporate into your research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, don't confine what to learn. Because sometimes we don't know enough to know what should or should not be learned. Just be open, pick a good mix of topics that are about 50% that you are familiar with, 30% somewhat but not sure what they are, and 20% completely over your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't just look at the academic side. Connect with people and learn something about how they craft their research, or how they speak eloquently, etc. It's not all about the contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T23:41:44.847" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T23:41:44.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16524" CreationDate="2014-02-07T23:34:48.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Heidegger's &lt;em&gt;Being and Time&lt;/em&gt; might fit this criteria. Though the philosopher's work was important to the field, he was criticized for the use of convoluted, imprecise language that managed to confuse &lt;em&gt;other philosophers&lt;/em&gt; (Bertrand Russell being one such critic). In fact, the philosopher Paul Edwards published a collection of articles under the title &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1591022363&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heidegger's Confusions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in order to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;rescue [Heidegger’s] valuable ideas from the logical confusions in which they are embedded and from the willfully obscure and perverse language in which they are frequently expressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to more recent (and research-oriented) writing: talk of the poor grammatical quality of academic journals has been around a while. Take a look at this quote from the &lt;em&gt;Chronicle&lt;/em&gt; article &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Bad-WritingBad-Thinking/65031/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Bad Writing and Bad Thinking&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people—publishers of scholarly work, editors at higher-education publications, agents looking for academic authors capable of writing trade books—who think about the general quality of scholarly prose would admit that we're in a sorry state, and most would say there isn't much to do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although an example other than Heidegger's writing doesn't come to mind, it doesn't seem you'll have to look very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7795" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T23:34:48.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12400" CreationDate="2014-02-08T02:22:55.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Web search for &quot;active voice&quot; and you'll find that a great &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; top universities (MIT, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, and several more) have taught their science students to prefer active-voice writing in their reports, papers and articles for &lt;em&gt;more than 20 years&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, America's leading science magazines (&lt;em&gt;Nature, Science,&lt;/em&gt; etc.) now clearly urge submitting authors to lean toward active-voice writing in the lion's share of each submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the U.S. government's plain-language law (enacted in 2010 and fully on display at www.PlainLanguage.gov) now ranks among &lt;em&gt;several&lt;/em&gt; laws worldwide that urge technical writers to &quot;make it clearer and plainer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which always will include a predominantly &quot;active&quot; form of writing, with clear cause-and-effect linkages dominating. (Passive voice leaves cause and effect fairly vague.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11744" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T02:22:55.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16679" CreationDate="2014-02-08T07:34:40.150" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak for Austria (place where I did my PhD) and Switzerland (current place of employment), but my answer should be applicable for Germany as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wonder what is the Phd application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the Phd postion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both models exist, but the far more common one is that you are just employed as a researcher while doing your PhD. This has advantages and disadvantages. Typically these positions are financially rather attractive (at least as far as PhD student salaries go), currently at about 2400 EUR 14 times a year in Austria for full-time employment, a bit more in Germany, significantly more (around 5000 CHF 12 times a year) in Switzerland. All of these salaries allow you to conveniently live (no need for a diet of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=12&quot;&gt;Ramen noodles&lt;/a&gt;) in the respective places. On the other hand, as a researcher you are not &quot;just&quot; working on your thesis. In addition, teaching has to be handled, support in administrative matters will be part of your job, and you will need to work on matters of your research project that you find neither interesting nor advance your thesis work in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application process is generally as for any other job - find out what jobs are offered, contact the person per mail, send in CV, (usually) do an interview via Skype, wait for an offer. The hardest part is probably finding out what research groups currently have job openings. Positions are generally not announced very widely (if at all). However, just because you cannot find an ad for an open position with a specific professor does not necessarily mean that he does not have a position available. Both places that I worked at had open positions &lt;strong&gt;almost at all times&lt;/strong&gt; for a really qualified student. What &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; helps here are connections - do you know somebody who is already an &quot;insider&quot; in academic circles, maybe a PhD student or postdoc? If so, ask him to put you in contact with some faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, look for universities that you might consider joining, find out from their web page what faculty there handles your topic, and send them a &lt;strong&gt;short&lt;/strong&gt; mail. Keep it crisp - both of my professors so far have been insanely busy, and any mail from an unknown person with more than one short paragraph will never be read carefully. Just tell who you are, what your current university is, and that you would like to talk about the possibility of doing a PhD. Give them a week to answer and then send a quick and friendly reminder (my current prof is the dean of the faculty, and given the size of his inbox mails sometimes do get lost - that does not mean that he is necessarily not interested). Maybe, the professor will put you in contact with one of this postdocs or PhD students to &quot;chat&quot; via Skype or in person (if possible) - consider this the technical interview, because afterwards the prof will ask the person that you talked to whether they think that you have the technical skills that are required for the selected field. What you should not do is send an overly long formal application - most professors get many of those from rather dubios applicants from the far east, hence formal blind applications are generally discarded unread. Don't be one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are generally not expected to &quot;come&quot; with your own topic. Your broad overall theme will be defined by whatever project / position pays your salary, and on top of that you are expected to define your concrete research project together with a postdoc and/or the professor some time into your PhD (say, about a year after starting). What you &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; know is roughly what interests you research-wise and contact only professors that &lt;strong&gt;really do this research&lt;/strong&gt;. This sounds like a given, but I work in services and software engineering, and I have lost track of many applicants interested in robotics, AI, formal methods, etc. I have already discarded. Don't be one of those, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T07:34:40.150" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16674" CreationDate="2014-02-08T08:42:42.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect of the question is whether you are willing to move. Even targeting &quot;only&quot; low-mid tier research universities, there are many more good applicants than positions, and if you want to end up in particular area then the risk not to find a job is very high. So, to get higher odds you should be ready to get a PhD somewhere, do a couple post-docs at different places, and then (hopefully) be hired in yet another place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your fear with the long-term ability to do math research, I would say that if you manage to find such a job, then you most certainly have what it takes. Sure, some of us loose their way, but it is usually because of particular events and possibly the way they handled it. In all cases I know, at the time of their tenure no one could see a difference between them and ultimately more successful colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T08:42:42.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16456" CreationDate="2014-02-08T11:29:42.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, most PhDs can probably be (largely) conducted at distance. I live quite a way from the University at which I'm registered for my psychology PhD. However, you might want to try contacting the Open University &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.open.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt; which is the UK's very highly regarded distance learning University. They do offer PhDs and I would assume that since they are geared up for distance work they might be one of your best options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T11:29:42.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11499" CreationDate="2014-02-08T11:36:46.493" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK it's relatively unusual to apply for an MPhil - MSc and MRes are much more common. MPhils really exist to cover failed PhD candidates. When you apply to study for a PhD in the UK, for the first 12-18 months you are placed on &quot;probation&quot; (even if you alread hold an MSc/MRes). After this time, a review (and mini-viva) of both your progress and quality of research is conducted and you are either &quot;confirmed&quot; as being a PhD candidate or are relegated to MPhil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastEditorUserId="11304" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T20:01:34.383" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T20:01:34.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-08T13:23:14.747" Score="3" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a low Undergrad GPA, around or below the cutoff of most of the masters programs that interest me. I have since started pursuing a graduate certificate (Mining Massive Datasets from Stanford) and am doing much better (A's) than I did as an Undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I expect in terms of how universities look at the non-degree courses I have taken towards the certificate? I realise I could draw attention to the grades in my personal statement, but is there any precedent for including post-degree courses in the GPA calculation for cutoff purposes? How might they be weighted? What can I do to emphasise them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few more specifics for my case if the question is too general: I did my bachelor's in Math and graduated in 2012. I am interested in a Machine Learning-focused Masters in the US, UK, or Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11746" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T23:05:27.493" Title="Non-degree courses and Masters admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16626" CreationDate="2014-02-08T14:04:14.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just be forthcoming about the reasons why you're switching.  If you have evidence that you have a track record of success (grades, publications, etc.) in your former PhD program, there is little reason to believe that mentioning this information will count against you.  Even if you don't have a particularly &quot;good&quot; track record, it's important to be forthcoming about your experience nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to a successful transfer into a different PhD program is how you justify changing programs.  This falls more into the category of your &lt;em&gt;personal statement&lt;/em&gt;, rather than your CV.  If it is because you realized that you have stronger research interests in another field and wish to pursue research with a top professor in that field, then I don't think any institution would frown upon this regardless of your track record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with your track record, and I don't want to make any assumptions about you one way or another.  Thus, I want to address one more key issue:  If you are changing programs because to avoid &quot;impending failure&quot; at your previous PhD program, this will most likely be interpreted as &quot;jumping ship&quot; and institutions will not look highly upon this.  If you happen to be failing in your PhD program, you need to do some introspection and ask yourself some tough questions.  &lt;em&gt;If a PhD is what I really want, why am I failing?&lt;/em&gt;  The more open and forthcoming you are about these questions in your personal statement, the more strongly you can justify your reasons for pursuing a PhD in another institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T14:20:33.363" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T14:20:33.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16141" CreationDate="2014-02-08T15:51:54.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't answer for the US, but it is highly unlikely that you would get any sort of funding in the UK. Unfortunately UK funding is very hard to obtain (even for British students) and is, in any case, largely restricted to EU nationals. Further any Masters level UK funding is generally awarded as a precursor to a PhD. This is known as &quot;1+3&quot; funding. Good luck though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastEditorUserId="11304" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T15:57:39.537" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T15:57:39.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13353" CreationDate="2014-02-08T16:16:52.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend looking at the job market and seeing what jobs sound appealing to you. Next go to Coursera, Youtube, etc. and see if you like the subject by watching a few online classes. If you think you can adequately self learn the subject then that is the best option. Employers might look at the PhD -&gt; MS like you are a professional student that lacks direction (plus it's a boatload of money). You want your resume to say, I have a PhD in physics which means I'm smart and I self taught myself all this stuff you require for this job because I am self motivated. It shows independence; if you need to learn something new on the job, they know you can do it, because you have done it before. Don't waste time getting an MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two exceptions to this, and it may apply here. (1) If in your new field of study you can't adequately learn the vast majority of the material without the infrastructure provided by University lab facilities containing tons of expensive equipment, then it would be reasonable to pursue the masters. (2) An MBA program that is all about networking, pretty much requires face to face interactions, although an MBA is usually thought to be best pursued after having some industry work experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question, however, is yes, you can definitely get into the Masters programs. For most private schools masters programs are cash cows that fund the university. They let in all students they think are good enough to succeed in their program. The bigger question is whether it's a good idea for you to make this career move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T20:10:27.643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T20:10:27.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-08T21:08:16.037" Score="8" ViewCount="3508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for a mid-range private school that teaches the career I want primarily (software engineering) and a prestigious public school for computer science (it doesn't have software engineering). So if I make it into the public university, I would evaluate between the specific career of the private one and the economic help of the public one, and choose the most appropriate one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, reading their entrance rules, I saw that if I decline the offer of admission in the public one, I could not apply to it again for the next two admission cycles (at two per year, that means a year and a half). What is the philosophy behind this? Applying to several schools benefits  students, giving them more schools to choose from. And it also raises the funding because of the payment that is done to give the entrance exam (which is not one of the things public schools in my country can brag about). And it doesn't harm anyone, because the next one in the list would enter. The only collateral damage I can think of is extra administrative effort, but a year and a half vetted from applying to the university because of that seems too much for me. So, why? Is there some extra side effect that they are accounting for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information @Pete L. Clark requested: I am living in Peru, and here the admission process in public universities is pretty simple: You just present your legal and education papers, pay for the entrace exam, take it, and see if you are admitted or not. So, everything boils down to that 3-days exam. But once it is finished, you are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11756" LastEditorUserId="11756" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T02:37:10.703" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T13:15:59.797" Title="Why would a school prevent reapplying after declining an offer of admission?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16706" CreationDate="2014-02-08T23:05:27.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was an international student and did not have amazing bachelor GPA. But I got accepted master degree in NY, plus without TOEFL which was requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met department chair once. So, probably the department chairman liked my works and it was a good enough first impression on him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&#xA;Show your works to department chair. Proof that your bachelor GPA is &lt;em&gt;just some numbers&lt;/em&gt; on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10781" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T23:05:27.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16712" CreationDate="2014-02-08T23:06:59.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the issue here is that if a student has already been offered admission and turned it down, then the school has already given that student due consideration in reviewing the application. Reapplying in the following year means that the candidate was apparently unsatisfied with any of the offers of admission received, which included the school in question. So what would have changed in such a short period of time that meant the offer wasn't good enough &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt;, but is good enough &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T23:06:59.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16712" CreationDate="2014-02-08T23:25:30.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Programs don't like to be used as a &quot;backup&quot;, because offers to people using them in this way delay offers to others, sometimes to the point that the other people give up and accept offers from yet-other places. Thus, making offers that fail tends to degrade the quality of candidates who will accept offers. Thus, since you declined once, obviously chances are good that you'd decline again, thus again somewhat-lowering the quality of candidates that will be made an offer early enough to accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T23:25:30.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16724" CreationDate="2014-02-09T03:54:23.920" Score="33" ViewCount="102873" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I must mention that I found  these questions helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5330/14341&quot;&gt;Prospective PhD contacts potential supervisor but receives no answer after 2-3 emails, what to do?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9644/14341&quot;&gt;What to do when emails to a potential advisor are not replied?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1450/14341&quot;&gt;Should résumés be attached in a mail to a professor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, I am looking for more precise answers to the questions below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan to apply for a PhD in Computer Science this year in several countries, mainly Europe, Australia and Canada. I am looking for a PhD  with funding. As far as I know, I should contact potential supervisor as a first step. However, I am not sure about how much detail should be included in this first email. Specifically, with regards to the first email, I would like to hear advice on on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, how much detail should I provide?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I ask about the chance of getting funding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I send documents or only if s/he asks for? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement of purpose/motivation, what is the right length? Is s/he ready to read two pages about every applicant sends him/her email?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that this is the first email to the potential supervisor and he might spend only 10 seconds scanning it, What is right answers for the questions above that make the supervisor starts a discussion rather than sending negative response or even ignore the email? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T07:49:27.037" Title="How much detail to include in first email to potential PhD supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="35" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16721" CreationDate="2014-02-09T04:35:09.687" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;At most write an email about 6-8 lines long; people are busy. You should introduce yourself, explain what kind of research you want to do, ask he/she if she is taking on a student, and reference a few of their recent papers that you are interested and why. Include a small CV attached in the email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor responds, and offers to answer questions, then ask about funding. Statement of purpose length should be specified in the application process. Don't send your statement of purpose unless they specifically ask for it on their website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the field, but using these general guidelines almost every potential advisor responded this application season. Just because they respond doesn't mean you will get in, but it should improve your chances if you come off in a positive light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T04:35:09.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T11:22:07.943" Score="6" ViewCount="4868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to pursue my PhD program in Germany. Is there any special format for academic CV to for applying there?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T23:36:34.990" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:36:34.990" Title="Is there anything special to the CV format for PhD applicants in Germany?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16721" CreationDate="2014-02-09T11:36:40.393" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is going to extend up &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16700/10094&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; earlier answer to a similar, although broader, question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: I have worked with two pretty well-known professors in Austria and Switzerland, and can provide some insight into how they tend to hire. I assume other professors have similar MOs, but not every person is the same, so your milage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, for both of them, the first step towards starting a PhD is to send them a &lt;strong&gt;short&lt;/strong&gt; informal mail stating your interest in joining their group. Your challenge is to get the professor interested despite him reading maybe a 100 mails a day. You can already see why a two-page text has a 0% chance of being read, same is true for an attached CV or an elaborate research proposal - you need to convince in maybe 10 seconds. Your second challenge is to separate yourself from the &lt;strong&gt;dozen or so other people&lt;/strong&gt; that are trying the same every week, mainly coming from universities in the far east.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that light, here are answers to your questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, how much and deep details should I provide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go for &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt;, honestly. Discuss concrete research ideas at a later point, when the professor has shown interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I mention anything about fund chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;God no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I send documents or only if s/he asks for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statement of purpose/motivation, what is the right length? Is s/he ready to read two pages about every applicant sends him/her email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget it. None of the professors that I worked with is interested in those &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt; application documents at any point during the process. They will either want to skype with you or have one of their senior staff skype with you, and then you would explain the things you would write into a SOP. To be clear - I have received a PhD student, a postdoc, and a senior postdoc position without ever being asked for a SOP or letter of motivation. Those are required only if hiring is done by a committee, e.g., for faculty staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of a mail that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; work on the people that I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear FIRST-NAME,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking into options for getting a PhD. I have looked into your work on IMPORTANT-THING-PROF-IS-WORKING-ON, and I would be really interested in joining you on this line of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently graduated from XY with a degree in YZ, and I have a background in SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE. I have done internships at BIG-NAME-A and BIG-NAME-B and already published X papers on SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE during my masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be happy if we could discuss matters further via Skype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you in advance,&#xA;YOUR-FIRST-NAME&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YOUR-WEB-PAGE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the informal tone. This might be a personal preference of the people I know, but an informal mail is significantly more likely to be read by both of my professors than a very formal one. Further, note that it will be required that you have some measure of achievements that the professor can relate to - graduating from a university that the professor maybe has never heard of alone will not be enough to get him interested. Already having published and/or having done internships at well-known companies (well-known also to the professor!), especially those that are known to have competitive selection schemes (e.g., IBM), helps a lot here. Do not bother sending your GPA etc. - people in Europe tend to not be interested in grades in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that might help with the people I know is work on open source projects (e.g., being a committer or committee member to one or more Apache projects, having a well-maintained Github page with interesting tools and Gists, etc.), but this may be mostly because I work in software engineering (and people that know how software is built in real-life are very valuable to us).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important topic is english language - if you cannot speak / write english well, &lt;strong&gt;let the mail be proof-read by somebody who can&lt;/strong&gt; (according to the way the question is written, this should not be an issue for the OP, but this may be relevant to other readers). Mails in terrible english are almost always discarded immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the above sample contains a link to a web page. &lt;strong&gt;Have a personal academic web page&lt;/strong&gt;. This is the place where you would put a &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; picture of you and all your academic achievements (papers, CVs, research interests, internships, links to open source projects you contributed to, industry projects that you worked on, whatever). Make it look professional and pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this mail still has a high chance of being ignored. In that case, give the professor a week or so and then write a a one-line reminder as a reply or forward of the original mail. If he does not respond after that, &lt;strong&gt;move on&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Then he is just not that into you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T11:43:51.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16712" CreationDate="2014-02-09T13:15:59.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess whether backup applications (and re-applications next time) are or are not a problem depends very much on how many prospective students do how many backup applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No problem if a small percentage of prospective students apply for one other university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if lots of the people who want to study apply at several places, you end up in a situation where the administrative part of the whole process runs into chaos because one or two more rounds acceptance letters and waiting whether the student accepts are needed. And of course, the chances that a student who ended up on the waiting list with you accepted somewhere else or meanwhile took a job because they thought it unlikely to get a place to study would be high. Thus, administration has &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of additional work and also stress. You cannot start the application process too early (e.g. the final exam of the schools is needed). But you need to allow a reasonable amount of time for the student to accept or decline the offer of the univerity and students will tend to send the refusal late (or forget to send it at all) because they wait for acceptance of another university. If you are too late sending out the acceptance (for those on the waiting list), this is anywhere between stressful and impossible for the students to accept: they have to find housing and move, and if courses already started they also have to catch up with the learning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, universities cannot overbook like airlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the situation becomes highly stressful for everyone involved: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the university has a high unnecessary workload (n &quot;backup exams&quot; have to be graded for each student), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;university administration also has a high workload and pressure: they need to react &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt; on the refusal letters of the students and may need several rounds of acceptance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students who do not get accepted immedately at the university of their dreams have to stay ready for moving immeditaly without knowing where. Also the prospective student may &quot;hang in the air&quot; because they don't apply for a &quot;regular&quot; job / training while there is still a substantial chance of getting a late acceptance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether the fact that you have to pay for the exam is just another symptom of this same problem (or the univiersities' fear of that): both rules may be designed to keep down the number of backup applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways to try avoiding this administrative mess: In my country (Germany) the most overrun fields of study have a central application: you file your &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; appliation including a statement of backup universities (and backup subjects) and then get an offer according to this. If you end up at a university that was not your first choice, you can anyways start there and try to change later on.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Nevertheless, the last letters of acceptance are usually sent out when the semester has already started (to fill in places of students who accepted but didn't show up or because this is round 3 of the acceptance: the student on the waiting list declined). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T13:15:59.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16728" CreationDate="2014-02-09T14:28:04.673" Score="14" ViewCount="11646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a couple of articles for two different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include these articles in my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11571" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T10:47:21.137" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T10:47:21.137" Title="Should I include journalistic articles in my CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16726" CreationDate="2014-02-09T14:41:11.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think there is a standard ,unless such articles are commonplace in the specific field (e.g. journalism). I definitely think it is worth adding such materials to a CV since they indicate activity. You need to think twice, however, whether or not they provide a positive aspect when you use your CV. Suggestions for appropriate headers could be many. your suggestion sounds good., you could consider something like &quot;Scientific debate articles&quot; or something more descriptive that encapsulates their contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T14:41:11.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16726" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:06:22.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have written a couple of articles for 2 different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include them in my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, certainly, as long as you clearly separate them from your academic publications.  Strictly speaking, they are form of publication, so it wouldn't be lying to list them together with your research papers under a vague enough title, but this would be a very bad idea.  It would come across like you are trying to make your publication list look longer by inflating it with non-academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[If the newspaper articles had nothing at all to do with your academic work, then mentioning them probably wouldn't make sense.  However, it sounds like they do.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely not press release, since a press release is something else: it's a document given to journalists to inform them about a possible story they could write about.  Occasionally newspapers publish lightly edited versions of press releases, without gathering much more information, but this is considered bad reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a clear standard for how to list this information.  You could list it in several ways: outreach, other publications (if you have a &quot;scholarly publications&quot; section, say), writing for the general public, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T15:06:22.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:22:28.643" Score="4" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a complete name bibliography from a search but I'm only allowed to have the surname and then the names'initals. Is there a way to get them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11773" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T12:58:04.523" Title="Is there a way to get a complete name bibliography from Scopus? How can I set my scrape, in that case?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;scopus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16734" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:34:18.820" Score="11" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general question is; let's say that you are PI and apply individually or jointly with other research groups to a grant, and you get it. After some months, you move to another institution; can you generally &quot;move&quot; all the money and resources you were awarded with or should you abandon them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question goes for &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;H2020&lt;/a&gt; projects or any other national or international funding schemes (NIH, NSF, UK, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="284" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T15:28:13.867" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T15:28:13.867" Title="What to do when you get a grant and move to another institution" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;eu&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16446" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:04:08.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journal review times in the humanities tend to be longish and I doubt that you'd have a paper accepted in a journal of sufficient quality to impress anybody. (I just got back yesterday a round of comments from a paper I submitted in September.) If I were you, I'd maybe try to submit a paper to a graduate conference instead. Look around for Ph.D. granting programs in your field in the area and send them a paper/abstract. It's much less work for you to write up an abstract, and a much higher likelihood of actually getting something accepted in a reasonable timeframe. An undergrad getting something into a grad conference is probably sufficient to make the committees think you've got potential as a researcher. Maybe it isn't quite as impressive to have a presentation as a publication, but I doubt that'd be a big factor here. To get accepted to a grad program, you just have to get past a threshold of potential, and doing something that puts you way, way above that threshold (publication in a reputable professional journal) just isn't really any more helpful to getting accepted than doing something that just barely puts you above that threshold (a grad conference presentation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception here: if you have a paper or something that one of your profs was just raving about and told you that you just have to publish it in Such And Such Journal, then yeah, maybe shoot it off, but don't expect it to get picked up in time to make a difference in your apps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:04:08.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16730" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:04:25.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is allowed depends on a number of factors. For example the funding agency may not allow you to move the grant. This is especially true if it is an international move or if the grant requires a resource that is not available at the new institution. It also depends on your current institution. They may not allow you to take equipment that was previously purchased on the grant with you. You new institution may also not allow you to bring the grant over if it does not provide sufficient overhead. If the time remaining on the grant is short, the two institutions may decide to not formally transfer the grant and work off of a sub contract instead. That said, generally for non-international moves you will be allowed to bring over the unspent money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:04:25.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:28:59.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on his goals.  Since he wants to do research, it doesn't matter that much whether he has a BSc or a master's as long as he can convince the department he applies to for his PhD that he has the necessary knowledge.  A master's might be slightly better since he will naturally get more research experience, but it is possible to get research experience as an undergrad by volunteering in your professors' labs.  The disadvantage of going straight to a master's is that he won't have the same background as the other students.  This means that either (a) the department will ask him to take prerequisite courses, at which point the master's program will take almost as long to finish as the BSc, or (b) he will be expected to catch up with the other students on his own time, which will be a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he thinks he might want to work in industry at some point, I would recommend doing the BSc.  Engineering is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Engineer#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;professional designation&lt;/a&gt; in the US, so without the BSc, he can't call himself an engineer.  This doesn't mean he can't get hired, but it means he will get hired under some other job title (&quot;technician&quot;, say) and may get paid less than he would if he were hired as an engineer.  Considering that this would affect his whole career, I would recommend investing the extra time up front, especially if he can shorten the BSc by reusing some credits from the physics degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:28:59.740" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16730" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:52:26.213" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And in particular this goes for H2020 projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happened to a colleague of mine for FP7, I assume H2020 will be pretty much the same. Essentially, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Find a &lt;em&gt;proxy&lt;/em&gt; to formally finish the project on your behalf. That is, find somebody at your current institution with a high enough status that he is allowed to take over the project without much administrative quabbles (e.g., a senior professor), and formally hand over the project to him when you leave. You will of course still do the actual work - the handover is just a formality. Of course this requires a significant amount of trust and goodwill (on both sides), so you better be good friends with the person that proxies for you. As long as you both are at the same institution, the administrative effort of this solution is not too high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Officially &lt;em&gt;transfer&lt;/em&gt; the project to your new institution. This requires an amendment of your DOW (description of work), and the sanctus of your new institution, all partners of the project, and the european commission (i.e., of the PO and the responsible lawyers on EC side). This will take &lt;strong&gt;long&lt;/strong&gt; - expect the entire process to take possibly a year or so. Additionally, there is a chance that some negotiations between you, your old institution, and your new institution are required (e.g., to answer the question to what percentage the overheads should be transferred to the new institution). H2020 proposals are good money for universities, and you should not expect your old institution to let go of such a project easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Clearly, option 2 is only available if your new institution is also eligible for H2020 funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:52:26.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T17:58:06.173" Score="5" ViewCount="3012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a self funded PhD student and have been told by my supervisor that her name should be first on any future journal I will be publishing during my studies under her supervision as &quot;this is the only thing she gets from her PhD students&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just wondering if the ordering of author names matter? She is going to help me only by proof writing my article. All research will be done by myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is she legally allowed to say it? Should I accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11777" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T05:38:26.170" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T05:38:26.170" Title="Should the PhD supervisor's name be first in a scientific journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-02-10T09:34:02.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16735" CreationDate="2014-02-09T18:12:06.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields first authorship signals who has contributed the most, scientifically, to the paper. Included in this is not only efforts to do experiments and drawing conclusions from the experiments but also to originate the ideas on which the paper is built as well as writing the paper. It is quite normal that the first paper a graduate student writes may have the main advisor as first author because of the wealth of input an inexperienced student may need. As time progresses, I would say the student should move to the first author position as the work becomes more and more independent. The goal is, after all, to train you to become an independent researcher. So the statement that the advisor should be first author on all you produce would not be considered reasonable in many disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you accept it? From an ethical point, no. In reality, you need to think of your future and assess what effects such actions would result in. Not knowing the way publications normally look in your field it is difficult to say anything specific but when considering general authorship guidelines as detailed in, for example, the Vancouver protocol (do a search on Academia.se to see details) the person who fulfil all criteria should be an author and the person who contributes most should e first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T18:12:06.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T18:27:23.717" Score="16" ViewCount="9127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to translate an English book, but before translating it, I want to be sure if the author will permit me to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not doing this for financial gain. Since it is a book about a new subject, my professor asked me to translate it, so that students in my country become better familiar with the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you please provide me a good text to email it to the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11259" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:58:40.203" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T07:21:03.510" Title="How do I ask the author of a book in English if I can translate it into my native language?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2014-02-09T18:35:34.097" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases books are published through a publisher and certain copyright laws apply that may be shared between the publisher and the author. Exactly where the right to decide on translations lie may vary. You therefore need to contact both the author and the publisher to look into what might apply and to what extent they are interested in such translation.  My suspicion is that it will not be as easy as just getting permission to translate. When a book (or any publication) is translated, there will be a need to get a translation that properly represents the original content. A publisher may not be content with &quot;anybody&quot; translating the work, they may request some form of review etc. So, the bottom line is that you need to contact publisher and author to see what is possible and under what conditions. It is possible they accept translation into a different language for different reasons but they will most likely want to retain some form of copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T20:21:08.460" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T20:21:08.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T19:09:15.557" Score="6" ViewCount="1222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok I need some advise on my situation. I obtained my BSc in Mathematics and Physics in Spring 2011, but I've been working in a programming position since then, in actuarial business. I want to apply to Financial Mathematics, but I need two reference letters. I was not a very good student back then, I skipped a lot of classes, didn't take care much, yet I've done ok in terms of grades. Anyway, the point is, I rarely spoke to my profs, so I'm not certain how I could ever be endorsed. I'm doing very well at the job, but I believe reference letters from academia are much more valuable than those coming from the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think it's worth mentioning that I applied in the past, but got refused. Still, my personal situation has much positively evolved since then. I'm just not sure how can convey it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any comments/advise !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11779" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:45:28.010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:45:28.010" Title="I need a reference letter but I've been out of school for 3 years" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16461" CreationDate="2014-02-09T19:46:09.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have ideas on how to obtain funding other than personal money.  However, if using personal funds, you may have some options to decrease your overall costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First note that I am not a tax professional.  Attending conferences is normal for this type of business.  You should be able to deduct travel expenses to any conferences you attend.  This includes airfare, lodging, and, depending on distance, food.  Because these are expenses not reimbursed by your employer, you should be able to write them off.  Consult your tax professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T19:46:09.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16735" CreationDate="2014-02-09T20:07:41.297" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am just wondering if the ordering of author names matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a small number of academic fields -- like mathematics -- the overwhelmingly majority of jointly authored papers list the authors' names in alphabetical order.  In these fields, a non-alphabetical ordering of the authors stands out like a sore thumb: the average mathematician knows it is meant to look bad for the latter-listed author but is not sure exactly what it means.  In a field like this, if you hear a potential advisor say this, you should say &quot;Thank you, I'll look for someone else&quot; and walk out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most other academic fields, the ordering of the authors conveys important meaning in a manner which can be subtle and vary from field to field.  There are some academic fields where being the &lt;em&gt;last&lt;/em&gt; named author carries a lot of prestige, but in my understanding this is the kind of prestige awarded a very senior person.  I don't know of any academic field in which putting the junior author at the end looks good for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, here is another kind of answer to your question: the ordering of names must matter &lt;em&gt;to your potential advisor&lt;/em&gt; or she wouldn't have brought it up!  Therefore if you yourself are not sure what rights you are signing away in such an agreement, you should be especially skeptical.  I think the first thing that you should do is look around to see how common this practice is among other faculty and students in your department.  (If you are in an academic context far from the American one, it would be more prudent to do this even if you are in a field like mathematics than to immediately walk out of the office like I suggested above.  I don't know what the standard arrangement is at every math department in the world...obviously.)  This will be easy to check just by looking at the publications of the faculty members.  Also asking the other students can help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She is going to help me only by proof writing my article. All research will be done by myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proofreading is not the same as advising.  An agreement where your advisor guarantees in advance not to advise you in most meaningful ways &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that she will insist on first coauthorship sounds like an especially bad one.  It also sounds unethical to me by the general standards of academic ethics, although subfield ethics may have a role to play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is she legally allowed to say it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every form of bad behavior is illegal (thank goodness).  I can't speak to the law over the entire surface of the earth, but in the US there are certainly no laws pertaining to this kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that what potential advisor is really trying to say is that she does not want to be your potential advisor.  Sometimes people have trouble saying &quot;no&quot; outright; this happens in academia (where the tenure process takes a good shot at making &quot;yes-men&quot; and &quot;yes-women&quot; out of academics) but also in life generally.  A lot of times I have seen academics offer to do things for students only under quite unreasonable conditions that they clearly (to me) expect the students to turn down...only to have the student not know so clearly that the conditions are unreasonable and accept them.  Of course both parties end up unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I feel reasonably confident that your advisor is trying to tell you to go away.  What I am unsure of is whether she's telling it to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; specifically or to all students generally: the rather oafish &quot;this is the only thing she gets from her PhD students&quot; seems to indicate that this professor is simply not onboard with the practice of having PhD students at all.  But either way, I advise you to look around: probably you can do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T21:01:05.613" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T21:01:05.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16741" CreationDate="2014-02-09T20:21:29.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your case it sounds like the strong letters you want from your former instructors are just not going to happen.  None of your professors from 2011 or before can speak to your recent good work in a mathematically relevant branch of industry.  They can only try to remember what kind of student you were back then, and it doesn't sound great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I would go with letters from people in industry who have skills and qualifications that would be respected by those in Financial Mathematics.  If possible, all but at most one of your letters should come from someone with an advanced degree, and you should make sure that they know you well enough to convey the positive arc of your trajectory in recent years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also take any relevant standardized tests especially seriously: you certainly want a great score on the MATH part of the GRE.  I'm not sure whether the GRE math subject exam is required or applicable for master's programs in financial mathematics: I guess it would be at some programs but not others.  I think that either way it would be good to take some practice versions of this exam, and if you can see that you'll do well (over the 50th percentile is now a good performance from an American student) then you should consider taking it even if it's not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also have to face the reality that you'll be admitted to a lesser quality program because of your &quot;checkered academic past&quot;.  If you're really serious about graduate school, you can spend one or two years in a lesser program, really light up the place, and then transfer into a better program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T20:21:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16726" CreationDate="2014-02-09T20:37:21.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very impressed that you wrote articles about academia that got published by daily newspapers.  I think that information is well worth including on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of what to call it: I don't think there are any codewords here, at least none that will be reliably decoded by your entire intended audience.  Rather, just clearly identify what you've done, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Articles published in &lt;em&gt;Daily Xer:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Title1, date1; Title 2, date 2;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Articles published in &lt;em&gt;City Y Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: Title3, date3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like your readers might not know that the Daily Xer or the City Y Times is a daily periodical, you should include that information as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of where to put it on your CV: well, think about in what way writing these articles will be impressive and valuable to readers of your CV.  Does it show off your high quality writing skills?  Does it show your willingness and ability to communicate technical or insider issues to a very broad audience?  And so forth.  Once you figure out what is the &quot;primary virtue&quot; demonstrated by this activity, you will know where to put it in your CV (perhaps with a section of its own title, but the title should indicate to the reader how you answered the above question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T20:37:21.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T20:55:41.780" Score="3" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an undergraduate degree, and I do some of independent research on my own, so I was thinking if universities have some kind of offer where I can use it, and I mean in exchange for my research I'll get the master degree without following the course, or anything that looks like that, any resources or references where I can look ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11780" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T18:49:49.213" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T21:48:31.513" Title="Can I use an independent research to get a master degree?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16892" CreationDate="2014-02-09T23:49:15.853" Score="6" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am getting ready to submit a method paper which describes a dataset that I had created. However, I was late getting the paper ready, and a couple of other colleagues used the dataset in their own papers, and those papers are already online (I am coauthor in them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other papers do not describe in detail how the dataset was constructed. I am afraid that if cite them, it might harm my chances of getting my own paper on the dataset published. Any suggestions on what would be the right thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10474" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T03:31:16.523" Title="Citing papers that use unpublished data that I want to publish" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16433" CreationDate="2014-02-10T04:17:01.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know about your school, but in my school, the title of your degree doesn't really matter much PROVIDING THAT YOU HAVE SUFFICIENT ACADEMIC BACKGROUND in the discipline that you are interested in. For instance, if I am a BSc in Statistics grad, and if I have taken significant number of Computing Science courses, then given that my GPA is high enough, I will be admitted to the Computing Science department for their MSc program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9861" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T04:17:01.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16433" CreationDate="2014-02-10T09:22:17.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always possible to &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt;, whether you will be &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; is a different matter. The best thing to do is to speak to the academic who is the programme director (or similar title), explain that you are interested in applying for the course and see what they say. They will know what the general rules are as well as being able to provide specific guidance. The fact that your current masters degree is in a related subject (different department, but probably the same faculty) means it should be considered relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied for a MA in Classics &amp;amp; Ancient History after getting a BSc in Computer Science, and then went back to do an MPhil in Computer Science, so it is possible to move subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11791" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T09:22:17.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16726" CreationDate="2014-02-10T09:45:32.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definately think that you should add them to your CV, but, as other have mentioned, under a separate heading from you academic publications. My suggestion is to use the heading &lt;strong&gt;Popular science articles&lt;/strong&gt; for these (if all of them are indeed science), or &lt;strong&gt;Newspaper articles&lt;/strong&gt; for something more general. I've seen both of these used on CVs. &quot;Press release&quot; would not be suitable to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability to express scientific results in layman's language is clearly valuable (both inside and outside of academia), so generally I see such an addition as a plus on the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T09:51:49.687" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T09:51:49.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16723" CreationDate="2014-02-10T10:40:22.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no special format for an academic CV in Germany. In general, CVs in Germany differ somewhat of Angloamerican CVs (see for example this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.de/20130131/47649&quot;&gt;newspaper article by The Local&lt;/a&gt;). It might be the case, that German professors and selection committees expect a more German CV. However, that should not be a boundary, as academia in Germany is internationally oriented. The Career Center of the RWTH Aachen offers an  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rwth-aachen.de/global/show_document.asp?id=aaaaaaaaaadcphi&quot;&gt;English information sheet about German CVs&lt;/a&gt; that might be helpful. In addition, you could use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home&quot;&gt;European CV&lt;/a&gt; from the  European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training as an orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T10:40:22.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16762" CreationDate="2014-02-10T11:02:05.713" Score="9" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries and at certain universities, graduate students are advisory members of the committee during the PhD defense. In other countries like the Netherlands, a PhD defense takes place in public and everyone might ask questions at the end. Therefore, I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should another graduate student serve his/her role as an advisory member of the PhD committee?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of questions should one ask in a public PhD defense?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should he/she prepare for the defense (other than obviously reading the dissertation)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T14:13:02.803" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T14:13:02.803" Title="Which role should other graduate students serve in a PhD defense?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;defense&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-10T11:57:20.440" Score="56" ViewCount="5215" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most (or at least many) fields of academia, peer-reviewed publications are essential.  For a compilation thesis, no papers means no PhD.  For tenure, you need papers.  To get grants, you need papers.  Universities may distribute internal funds based on the number of papers per group.  In short: &lt;em&gt;publish or perish&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is quite cheap to offer someone co-authorship.  Send a nearly finished manuscript to a colleague/friend at another university for review... colleague reads it, offers some advice, perhaps just minor.  First author offers co-authorship in return, and colleague has another co-authored paper for possibly less than a day of work.  One can discuss if it is the right thing to do, but that is not my question here.  It happens.  &lt;em&gt;(NB: I am&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;suggesting such has happened in the examples listed below!&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criteria for co-authorship differ per field, but some papers have &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of co-authors.  Perhaps due to having an instrument that was used in an inter-comparison/validation study.  Some examples of papers with lots of co-authors, not particularly extreme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;Kasai, Y., Sagawa, H., Kreyling, D., Dupuy, E., Baron, P., Mendrok, J., Suzuki, K., Sato, T. O., Nishibori, T., Mizobuchi, S., Kikuchi, K., Manabe, T., Ozeki, H., Sugita, T., Fujiwara, M., Irimajiri, Y., Walker, K. A., Bernath, P. F., Boone, C., Stiller, G., von Clarmann, T., Orphal, J., Urban, J., Murtagh, D., Llewellyn, E. J., Degenstein, D., Bourassa, A. E., Lloyd, N. D., Froidevaux, L., Birk, M., Wagner, G., Schreier, F., Xu, J., Vogt, P., Trautmann, T., and Yasui, M.: Validation of stratospheric and mesospheric ozone observed by SMILES from International Space Station, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 6, 2311-2338, doi:10.5194/amt-6-2311-2013, 2013.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;Milz, M., Clarmann, T. v., Bernath, P., Boone, C., Buehler, S. A., Chauhan, S., Deuber, B., Feist, D. G., Funke, B., Glatthor, N., Grabowski, U., Griesfeller, A., Haefele, A., Höpfner, M., Kämpfer, N., Kellmann, S., Linden, A., Müller, S., Nakajima, H., Oelhaf, H., Remsberg, E., Rohs, S., Russell III, J. M., Schiller, C., Stiller, G. P., Sugita, T., Tanaka, T., Vömel, H., Walker, K., Wetzel, G., Yokota, T., Yushkov, V., and Zhang, G.: Validation of water vapour profiles (version 13) retrieved by the IMK/IAA scientific retrieval processor based on full resolution spectra measured by MIPAS on board Envisat, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 2, 379-399, doi:10.5194/amt-2-379-2009, 2009.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Again, I would like to stress than I am absolutely not implying that there is anything inappropriate about these two examples!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I rarely see papers written by sole authors, and I have the &lt;em&gt;impression&lt;/em&gt; that such papers were more common in the past — but I have no evidence thereof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?  In other words, is the number of authors per paper increasing and if so, does this reduce the value of a co-authored publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3108/1033&quot;&gt;What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T14:07:01.297" Title="Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:27:27.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of dangers when it comes to publishing as a basis for evaluations. One is certainly as you mention more authors included although they have not fulfilled the basic criteria as for example outlined by the Vancouver protocol. A second effect is so-called salami-slicing where the results are sliced to produce as many publications as possible. There are tendencies such as these and journals have started to act against the by requesting disclosure of contributions by the authors. Salami-slicing should be corrected through the review process and may be more difficult to identify since reviewers and editors do not know the full extent of any particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against all this is the fact that science has over roughly the past century (different in different disciplines) steadily moved towards larger groups and consortia performing research. This results in many co-authors, particularly on papers synthesizing results from the larger projects. The number of authors have therefore increased but due o several and opposing reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of co-authorship has therefore also changed over time. I believe the view of co-authorship varies between disciplines, maybe even a lot. In the disciplines with which I am familiar authorship alone is not sufficient to value a paper. For better or worse, we also look at the impact factor to try to assess the value of co-authorship. This means it may be possible to value a co-authorship of one key paper as more valuable than first authorship of another more run-of-the-mill paper. What this implies is that valuations are not necessarily simple arithmetic although that is certainly how it is often treated. In terms of a thesis, there was a time, not too long ago (when I finished my PhD), when single authorship was looked as the only acceptable form but now, it is a rarity. we do however, require all papers to be listed with a detailed author contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly the main problem is different kinds of free authorships. as this becomes common so will actions to reduce the problem. Top journals have started this and I am sure many others will follow. At the same time the reasons for &quot;cheating&quot; must also be reduced which puts responsibility on persons evaluating applications where publications constitute a basis for decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T14:07:05.573" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T14:07:05.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16758" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:39:22.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would do is to ask the committee chair what are my rights and responsibilities as an advisory member. In short, what is it expected from me. I guess I would be expected to ask questions but I will not participate on the final decision of the defence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participation in a PhD defence committee seems to me as a good opportunity to learn critical thinking about research. The thinking every researcher should apply on his/her own work. Therefore, as a preparation I would recommend: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as you mentioned) &lt;strong&gt;Carefully read the dissertation and&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you find something which is not clear to you even after several readings, ask about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look at some of the references you find interesting and try to ask yourself: &quot;Is this reference appropriate here? Why?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in case some formulas or computations are present, you can try to reach the same result as the PhD candidate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you are interested in methodology you can ask the &#xA;candidate why he/she used that particular method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to do more, you can try to &lt;strong&gt;find another works on the same topic, read them and compare them with the dissertation&lt;/strong&gt; as it is always good for discussion to have more information about the topic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of public PhD defence, the audience can be very broad from family members who do not know what is the research about to an expert from another department who came to rise his/her ego by asking non-answerable questions. Here, the question depends on the person who is asking. No background knowledge is expected here and one should not feel restricted by the circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that &lt;strong&gt;one can ask really about anything as far as his/her intentions are good&lt;/strong&gt;. If the question is irrelevant the PhD candidate or one of the committee should kindly explain why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T12:39:22.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16766" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:33:58.880" Score="3" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to believe that starting with a well defined goal is an undeniable prerequisite for publishing a quality paper on a certain topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, can a PhD revolve around a fuzzy subject, that offers the student a lot of freedom of choice regarding what problem to solve, as long as the problem is solved using the methods in that field of study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More explicitly, is it possible to develop a quality research paper in an applied scientific field without fixing the goal beforehand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2819" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T13:45:09.933" Title="Publishing without a pre-defined PhD topic?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16764" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:45:09.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question contains two related questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;can a PhD &lt;em&gt;revolve around&lt;/em&gt; a fuzzy subject... as long as the problem is solved using the methods in that field of study?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to &lt;em&gt;write and publish&lt;/em&gt; a quality paper without a well-defined goal?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In research, almost by definition you do not know what you are going to find. (See the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/14855/7921&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.) If you did, it wouldn't be research! So it is definitely possible to have your PhD 'revolve around' a fuzzy subject. But when it comes to writing the actual paper, you &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; need a well-defined goal for the paper. The paper may not, and probably will not, cover the entire scope of your research. So although your research goal may be nebulous--at least in the beginning--when you are writing a paper to report the findings of said research, you should be able to very clearly articulate  the purpose of this specific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T13:45:09.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16801" CreationDate="2014-02-10T14:26:09.093" Score="3" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing my thesis, I was putting down some definitions of terms as they are used in the scope of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to move them to the glossary and write their definition as well? &#xA;Looks like the Glossary is used mostly for acronyms in the thesis/diss I have seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastEditorUserId="1428" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T09:28:21.970" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T09:28:21.970" Title="Definitions in Glossary?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;glossary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2014-02-10T14:56:08.770" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take &lt;em&gt;inflation&lt;/em&gt; to mean that the number of co-authors grows faster than what the content/effort of the research merits: that would imply that if there is a non-negligible amount of such an inflation, it does affect the value of the authorship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of co-authors per paper is increasing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Co-authorship inflation is perceived as a problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perceived amount of contribution depends greatly on the position in the author list: first, last and corresponding author are perceived as contributing much, middle authors are perceived as contributing only a bit.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long version: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the number of coauthors per paper is clearly increasing, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/authors1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pubmed provides statics about such questions&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GI4Fc.png&quot; alt=&quot;average number of authors per paper over years&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me mainly take the optimistic position and list sensible valid reasons for increasing numbers of coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are well known and widely discussed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;large combined scientific efforts like big instrumentation, the practical implementation of such long author lists widely and somewhat controversely discussed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increasingly interdisciplinary research&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But I think that also the density of researchers has increased, which greatly facilitates collaboration.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. I'm in a 100 000 inhabitant university town. The university has about 20 000 students and 7 000 employees (incl. professors - not sure whether this count includes technical personnel or only research staff). That alone is more than the whole town had inhabitants in 1900. PLus we also have a university of applied sciences and a number of non-university research institutes. I'm in of those reseach institutes, with about 300 employees.  So there are several thousand researchers with whom I can collaborate even person to person by bicycle/foot.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This high concentration of researchers facilitates intra- as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. These papers then naturally have more co-authors. Say, an &quot;instrumentation&quot; group develops a customized sensor for a group tackeling some application and yet other people develop the data analysis for the paper.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition, email, skype and cheap travel (plus I'm in the luxirous position that there are basically no legal travel restrictions as I'm German and EU citizen) makes it much easier than, say, 30 years ago to know, meet and collaborate with colleagues from all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Specialization, particularly now that I'm at such a big institute.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. where I'm now I usually receive readily prepared samples for measurements. Actually, being specialized on data analysis I often receive just the measured data (and I'm very lucky if people bother to have a chat beforehand on the design of experiments with me). Someone else prepares the samples and someone who mainly works on instrument development does the measurements. On contrast, where I was before everyone did all of that for their own topic and samples (of course also having emphasis on some part of this work flow). Of course all these people here contribute significantly to the paper.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But it also means that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a continuous distribution size of contributions. I've somewhere seen a notion that weights the papers by 1/total no. of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, also abuse of co-authorship, such as honorary authorship, does happen, and maybe the specialization can become a salami-slicing of contributions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I very much like the possibility of including a &quot;contributions&quot; section and decided to do that whenever possible. I think it can help checking against the abuse. At the moment (in my field), I think the existence of such a paragraph alone is a quite strong sign of no abuse of co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think there are also valid reasons that mean that nowadays more authors are on a paper without the amount of work of the different persons involved having changed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nowadays, sometimes technicians who did a lot of the work (and often also contribute to the development of the lab methodology) are mentioned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also I believe that students who do research nowadays have a far better chance to end up on the author list. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a gray zone, which also depends on customs/tradition is how to deal with the higher-up levels of supervision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vancouver&lt;/a&gt; says: providing funding alone is not sufficient (and of course the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg_im_profil/reden_stellungnahmen/download/empfehlung_wiss_praxis_1310.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DFG goes along the same lines&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;German tradition says: head of the institute is responsible for all that is going on in his/her institute, and thus is always included.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To be clear here: this does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean (and AFAIK has never meant) only an organizational responsibility, but a scientific responibility, i.e. supervision of the project. The gray zone IMHO comes from the fact that the proper contribution can superficially &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; similar to improper (i.e. no proper contribution) -- it is difficult to judge from the outside: A very good supervisor may guide in a way that is hardly perceived. If this good supervisor is looking after a good student, after putting his intellectual facilities to the project may find that the good student does well, and not many changes are needed. This is a proper contribution. Yet it superficially can look very similar to a bad supervisor who does not contribute his intellect to the project or paper and just waves everything through - regardless of whether the input is good or not.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this paper is interesting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2247376/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wren &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;: The write position. A survey of perceived contributions to papers based on byline position and number of authors,&#xA;EMBO Rep. 2007, 8(11), 988–991.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;DOI:  10.1038/sj.embor.7401095&#xA;PMCID: PMC2247376&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, we also asked respondents for their perception of general trends and attitudes towards authorship of scientific publications. &lt;strong&gt;Forty per cent of the respondents (35/87), for example, agreed that granting authorship to someone who does not meet journal authorship criteria was a common occurrence. Half of the respondents also agreed that author inflation makes it significantly harder to judge whether or not a candidate merits promotion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this does not answer the question whether there objectively is an inflation in co-authorship, it means that this is at the very least widely suspected and perceived as a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the outcome of that paper IMHO boils down to: perceived as authors are the first, last and corresponding authors, the middle authors are generally perceived far less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I share the suspicion that a significant amount of co-authorship abuse happens. However, my field is small and I think I have a reasonably good overview of what is going on. This includes a (subjective) idea of where I'd suspect honorary authorship or small contributions and on the other hand also some idea of who likely contributed what (specializations) to the paper. In addition, of course the listing of the instituions makes a lot of that clear (e.g. if someone from a statistics department, someone from a clinic and someone from a spectroscopy lab is listed that gives me a very good guess who &#xA;did what).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T20:23:03.020" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T20:23:03.020" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16771" CreationDate="2014-02-10T14:56:32.093" Score="36" ViewCount="5990" Body="&lt;p&gt;In German, as well as in other languages, people have Non-English characters in their names. e.g. ß, the umlauts etc..  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I frequently face problems when flying, opening bank accounts, etc., particularly abroad, since replacing the ß with ss changes more more than 25% of my family name as compared to how it's written in my passport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it is desirable to write one's name for submissions, the way one's name is written correctly. Can one expect to run into problems, and will sooner or later end up with different publications being published under different spellings of the name, or is it safe to go for the correct spelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7959" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T14:00:25.597" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T13:52:30.897" Title="Special (non-english) character in name. What to do as author? Internationalize or not?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-02-10T14:59:36.213" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, always &lt;em&gt;be consistent&lt;/em&gt;. Whatever you decide, that is what you will always have to use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the first point, might be better to strive and use your real name as it is with the non-english characters. You will have less problems in the future to prove your authorship in case questions rise. Complain to systems who do not accept your non-english characters... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T14:59:36.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-02-10T16:42:33.243" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately. this is a very real problem for many people. Any major &quot;irregularities&quot; in the name of an author—particularly the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; author—can cause problems. You don't even need to use non-English characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this from first-hand experience. I have very little problems with most of my papers—except for those I have published with two colleagues as first authors, one of whom has a hyphenated last name and the other whose name contains an apostrophe (compound Dutch name). On a regular basis, I need to write places like Web of Science to correct the publication records (e.g., the paper is listed as a cited reference, but somehow they can't seem to connect it to the original record, depriving us unfairly of citations). This has actually been a bigger problem with the hyphenated last name—the paper has about six or seven citations (provable!), but only one is listed in Web of Science. (Google Scholar seems to find them all, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other problems will also crop up in attendance lists, email accounts, registration for conferences, and other things where Unicode acceptance in databases is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that your &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; name does not need to match up with your &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; name. For instance, many female academics keep their maiden name if they started publishing under it when they were graduate students. This is the case even if they've legally changed their name after getting married. And I agree with Armand that it is more important that you use a &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt; name—once you decide which version you want to use, stick with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:42:33.243" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16671" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:26:21.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slightly off-topic as the terms you ask for are more specific, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is some ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by different terms in this quality control/validation/method context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in machine learning the &quot;validation set&quot; is often used to optimize parameters - as opposed to proving whether or not the model &quot;does its job&quot; (a shortened version of one definition of validity). The latter is measured with the &quot;test set&quot; (again, in my opinion, a rather ambiguous name).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=2iTNOip-scYC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Handbook of validation in analytical chemistry&lt;/a&gt; spends several pages to compare and discuss differences between several definitions given in literature and norms specific to the field of analytical chemistry. The bottom line of these definitions is that in analytical chemistry, validity is not only about measuring the right thing (as @Penguin_Knight nicely explained), but also about measuring the right thing &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd therefore recommend that you state what you are speaking about rather than relying on these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="22520" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T17:22:24.727" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T17:22:24.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16781" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:43:08.800" Score="3" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an electrical engineering major (my home university is ranked #25 nationally). I'm about to start the fifth year(engineering takes 5 years in my country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also granted a national science scholarship last year, and was an exchange student at University of Colorado at Boulder. I did very well over there (3.9/4.0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my country, electrical engineering and electronic/computer(EECS) science are different. Electrical deals with power systems and telecomunications, while EECS deals with microelectronics, dsp, embedded systems, theory of computation and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My home university doesn't have the EECS option so I had to choose electrical engineering, since I hadn't money to move to another place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;at CU Boulder, I basically only took classes in advanced math (even grad school level) that is my passion for life and computer science(another passion). Since I got back I'm not very motivated with my program, because I want to study EECS and math and not power systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm attending the math summer program(summer here is January and February) at one of the leading math research institutes in my country(and even one of the best in the world) and I was invited to start the Master of Advanced Studies in March. They offered me a scholarship, so all my expenses will be covered. Since I didn't complete my undergrad studies yet, they offered to transfer my Engineering course to the school of engineering and math(ranked #1 nationally), and then after 2/2.5 years from march I'd have a bachelor's of electronic/computer science engineering, a second bachelor's degree in math and Master of Advanced studies in math. The only &quot;problem&quot; is that in the end, I'd have taken 7/7.5 years to complete my bachelor's of engineering program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is the following: Will this &quot;long time&quot; for completing the engineering program harm my chances of being accepted by grad school, in math or computer science in a top graduate school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I argue in the applicant's form that I took 7.5 years because I moved on, I wasn't happy with my course/university, and when I chance to study my passions at the best schools in the country so I went forward ? (that would in fact be true)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the whole thing I'd have 3 degrees(by # 1 institutes) in a total time of 7.5 years and a really good education, but I'm a little concerned about this &quot;time to complete&quot; thing, I really don't know how it works, specially in US&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you everybody,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dmitri&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T22:35:25.760" Title="May additional time in college harm my chances of going to grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2014-02-10T20:43:08.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;On the other hand, I rarely see papers written by sole authors&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on the field you are researching. In the sciences you'll often find papers written by 6+ authors - probably because they're a collaborative effort between a team which might be spread across several institutions. In the arts, however, it's not uncommon to find single author articles - especially in fields such as classics and ancient history. If you look at the publications by staff in that department at the University of Manchester you'll find many single author papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/classicsancienthistory/people/&quot;&gt;http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/classicsancienthistory/people/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking through the 100+ publications I cited in my ancient history articles, I can find only one which had more than one author, whereas in my computer science thesis there were only 12 with one author - most of which were unreviewed technical reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11791" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T20:43:08.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16819" CreationDate="2014-02-10T21:44:57.283" Score="3" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am mostly very happy with my teachers - they are almost all good or excellent at teaching, nice as people, and knowledgeable about their subjects. However, my chemistry teacher is a poor teacher, has behaved very unprofessionally in the past, and I suspect possibly does not know much about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that this teacher is, in my opinion, lacking in both subject matter knowledge as well as knowledge about how to behave with students. I want to study chemistry but I do not want to study with them. Changing schools is a tremendous challenge for me and because of my other teachers, I would strongly prefer to stay in my existing school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any options here to avoid this teacher in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The issue was resolved, as the teacher failed to pass the exams they would have been teaching (teachers at my school have to do the exams every so often, presumably to check that they are competent), and I am very happy with the teachers I have instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10677" LastEditorUserId="10677" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T18:20:24.617" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T18:20:24.617" Title="How can I avoid having a specific teacher?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16776" CreationDate="2014-02-10T22:35:25.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking a long time to complete &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; degree can be a bit of a red flag in US graduate admissions. However, this does not apply in your case, because you will have three separate degrees. The fact that you have transferred from one school to another also mitigates the lengthier time you've spent in those study programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hadn't done this &quot;master of advanced studies,&quot; spending 7.5 years as an undergraduate would probably not be looked on too favorably. But in your specific circumstance, it's not as bad as it looks at first blush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be a question, however, about why you want to do EECS at the graduate level, given that your master's degree would be in a math-related field. But that would be up to you to explain in any case as part of your statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T22:35:25.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2536" CreationDate="2014-02-10T22:44:19.990" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Australia&lt;/strong&gt;, the typical hierarchy is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level A. Associate lecturer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level B. Lecturer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level C. Senior lecturer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level D. Associate professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level E. Professor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the typical Australian ranking system, there is no &quot;assistant professor&quot; . In this academic ranking system associate professor is a high ranking. I think that both associate professor and professor in Australia would correspond roughly to professor in the United States. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is noted in the comments, a small number of Australian universities have adopted (or adopted and then reverted back from)  the American system. So you may find Assistant Professor is used occasionally. Assistant Professor probably maps onto Australian Level B (Lecturer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervision of a PhD student depends on university regulations. At my university in Australia, there are several requirements in order to be a principal supervisor. In particular, (a) you need to have completed your own PhD or in rare cases be of equivalent standing, (b) have been an associate supervisor of PhD student to completion, or completed a set of training and experiential activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2018-11-04T03:23:10.023" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T03:23:10.023" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-10T23:27:32.370" Score="8" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a paper in the field of image reconstruction, or computational biology if you will. Now matter how I slice or dice it, it is one of these stories that cannot be told in 3500 words or so. Not only are there several equally important methodological points that need to be discussed to get a complete story, there is also quite a bit of background required to point out the subtle flaws in the currently popular ways of approaching this particular problem; and it takes some words to clearly point out what may appear to be a subtle problem from a distance, especially while making sure to be fair to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't intend to butcher what I feel is a solid and profound story for the sake of cramming it into some word budget. I am no fan of needless verbosity, but I really am going to need about 20 pages to do this right. I strongly prefer to publish in an open access journal. And I would imagine that an open access online journal does not have as much of an incentive to be stingy with word counts, no? PLOS computational biology would be a logical choice, yet they do have a restrictive word count. I can't find any open access journals that appear to be sympathetic to my plight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something? Or should I just write the whole article first, make that into the supplement, and then write a 3000 word teaser with nonstop references to the supplement to substantiate my claims? I am somewhat afraid that people will actually miss the point without an explicit disclaimer at the start of the 'article', along the lines of 'hey, if you want to read the actual story with a good flow to it, you need to start reading the supplement. this is basically just a drawn out abstract.'. If you are referring to the supplement, the convention is to refer to a figure of secondary importance; not to three pages of text you kind of have to read first to understand the rest of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a helpful perspective on such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11814" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T19:04:04.980" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T19:04:04.980" Title="Open access journal for long-form publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16795" CreationDate="2014-02-10T23:41:52.653" Score="41" ViewCount="6040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper with my adviser.&#xA;Some of the key contributions of our paper include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A computer simulation model of an inventory system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A set of simulation experiments and results to validate the simulation model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An implementation of an inventory policy which we propose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simulation results of our proposed inventory policy and inventory policies which are currently used in practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to make our computer code freely available to others.&#xA;The simulation model was written in the Java programming language so other researchers should be able to run the code on their own computers fairly easily.&#xA;By sharing our computer code, we hope that other researchers will develop inventory policies which they can test using our simulation model.&#xA;(Of course, it would be beneficial for us if they would do so and cite us in their paper!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What is a good way to go about sharing our computer code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do I host the code?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which software license should we &quot;publish&quot; the code under?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I make it easy for other people to run the code?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T08:34:53.363" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T16:55:45.630" Title="How to share computer code?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-10T23:50:18.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, It is related to the specific code you want to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to give an example, for JavaScript code you can share it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jsfiddle.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jsfiddle.net/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;We can test our JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online in the web. There is also an option for inviting people to collaborate in developing our code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T23:50:18.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2014-02-11T00:55:36.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://arXiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;? They are open-access and handle quantitative biology e-prints. Here's an excerpt that may interest you from &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/sizes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their &quot;Oversized Submissions&quot; help page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have trouble submitting a very long paper, such as a long review article with many small figures, or a thesis, AND you are sure that you have efficient figures, then contact the archive administrators to ask for an exception (be sure to quote the automatic rejection identifier and to explain the large size).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T00:55:36.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-11T01:12:14.887" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent, the answer will depend on what you wish to accomplish with this release.  There was a fantastic &lt;a href=&quot;http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~asampson/blog/sociallicenses.html&quot;&gt;blog post recently&lt;/a&gt; on that precise topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code is of great shape, and you hope others will build on it, then choosing the licence is going to reflect your philosophy. A BSD style license if you just want the algorithm and code out there, or perhaps a Copyleft (GPL) style licence if you want to make sure improvements return to the commons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code isn't in such great shape, but for transparency's sake needs to be out there, consider something along the lines of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/&quot;&gt;CRAPL&lt;/a&gt;, which acknowledges the messy nature of modern computational sciences. I think the preamble is worth quoting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I. Preamble&#xA;&#xA;Science thrives on openness.&#xA;&#xA;In modern science, it is often infeasible to replicate claims without&#xA;access to the software underlying those claims.&#xA;&#xA;Let's all be honest: when scientists write code, aesthetics and&#xA;software engineering principles take a back seat to having running,&#xA;working code before a deadline.&#xA;&#xA;So, let's release the ugly.  And, let's be proud of that.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the actual mechanics of putting the code up, use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org&quot;&gt;Bitbucket&lt;/a&gt;. These services are going to give you code hosting, a home for the project, the ability to manage contribution, and the ability to track bugs and issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="11547" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T20:26:40.737" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T20:26:40.737" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16798" CreationDate="2014-02-11T02:29:53.510" Score="9" ViewCount="9422" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently submitted a paper, and now I'm creating some slides about it for future presentation. There are papers that we have cited in our paper and I need to cite them in slides too because they are directly related to our work. What I would like to do is inline citing when you just mention author's name, or conference name, or the year. I have seen works in which what is mentioned is the first author's family name, e.g. &lt;em&gt;(Patterson, 2013)&lt;/em&gt;. And I've seen those who just mention conference name and year, e.g. &lt;em&gt;(PPoPP, 2012)&lt;/em&gt;.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know which one is more appropriate, or actually correct? Where to use one, and where to use the other? Or should I use something different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11817" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-11-13T17:39:49.030" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T17:39:49.030" Title="How to properly cite other papers in my slides?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T02:51:13.373" Score="10" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if arXiv allows authors to upload expository papers (for example, a paper in which the author explains a specific topic). If this is the case, how should those papers be written? And will they be automatically moved to the General Mathematics section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11818" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T03:10:26.313" Title="Is it possible to upload expository papers to arXiv?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2014-02-11T03:10:26.313" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/moderation&quot;&gt;official line&lt;/a&gt; appears to be that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;arXiv accepts only submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue. This excludes [...] reports that do not contain original or substantive research [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I see expository and survey papers appear there all the time, and nobody seems to mind.  I think if your expository paper is of a quality that you would consider submitting to an appropriate journal (there are many that publish expository papers) or lecture notes series, then it's fine for arXiv.  If it's just your course notes on the fundamental theorem of calculus, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why they should be moved to &quot;General Mathematics&quot;; they should be categorized with the topic that the paper is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T03:10:26.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16794" CreationDate="2014-02-11T03:38:01.210" Score="4" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to PhD programs in two fields and I am interested in the space between two fields, where one is applied to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my particular case I'm interested in researching Software Engineering as applied to Robotics. I will use a similar but slightly different case as an illustrative example between the fields of Software Engineering and Machine Learning, which I am also interested in. Software Engineering applied to Machine Learning could incorporate better ways, such as new language syntax, to design and implement Machine Learning Algorithms. The opposite would be using machine learning to solve Software Engineering problems, such as automatically discovering database regularities in a data mining application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I see understanding, researching, and being able to apply software engineering to robotics as an area that will expand enormously in the next 10-15 years, much like how software engineering research has expanded as applied to mobile devices and data centers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in both fields, but ideally I would be studying how to apply software engineering to robotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I explain my interests to both Robotics and Software Engineering professors, respectively?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I communicate why this matters at all, and more importantly why it matters to them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I focus primarily on Software Engineering programs, Robotics programs, or both to reach my goal?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers based on analogous situations from other fields are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11816" LastEditorUserId="11816" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T23:07:06.233" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T01:02:37.537" Title="Ph.D. in the space between two fields?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16793" CreationDate="2014-02-11T04:12:52.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know little about either of these fields, but will try to give a generally applicable answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best bet is to &lt;strong&gt;find an advisor who already has some appreciation for the intersection of these two topics&lt;/strong&gt;.  Convincing someone who only works on one of them that they are important together -- and that he/she should supervise a thesis involving both -- may be difficult. However, since the fields you mention can often be found within the same university department (computer science), the latter approach is also possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To decide which type of programs you should look at, ask yourself &lt;strong&gt;in which field will I innovate&lt;/strong&gt;?  If you will apply standard software engineering techniques to do something new in robotics, focus on robotics.  If you will devise novel software engineering ideas that are useful with respect to existing robotics applications, then focus on software engineering.  Of course, the answer is rarely clear cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important&lt;/strong&gt;: if you're not substantially innovating within either field, it may be difficult to convince a committee that you deserve a Ph.D. (even though the combination may be innovative).  You can't usually get away with work that is worth half of a Ph.D. in each field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T07:52:40.610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T07:52:40.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-11T04:51:33.307" Score="38" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Answer to 1: Where should I host my code?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what your University offers you, you could choose to host it with the University, or perhaps with an open-source repository such as Github, Bitbucket, SourceForge, or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these services have a &quot;paid&quot; subscription option for private repositories if those are required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answer to 2: What open-source license should I choose?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is relevant because we're having this discussion right now within one of our own research projects. I happen to know a little about open source software, having researched it in the past and having taught a few courses on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though there are a lot of open-source licenses out there, they really end up coming in two main families. They're either permissive open licenses (ex: MIT, BSD, Apache) or they are Free (GNU Public License v2 or GPLv3). Here's a brief lowdown by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opensource.org/licenses&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Source Initiative&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Permissive open licenses&lt;/em&gt; These licenses generally allow you to release your code and anyone can do anything with them that they want as long as they retain certain copyright information with the code. In reality, this has a number of implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone could take your entire code base, create a product with it, and sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone could take parts of your code, put it in their own project (commercial or not).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the license is more permissive, you yourself could take the code, close it, and then keep under wraps any future releases so you can make money off of the code or hide it from the public.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the license is more permissive, you might generate more interest as a result. People may take code from other projects and use it to improve yours. On the flip-side, they could also make improvements for your source code and never share them back with you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip-side, the GNU GPL is a Free Software License that disallows you from doing certain things. In that sense, it's more restrictive, but does so for a number of ideological reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you release software under the GPL, you can't close-source it. Ever. It's going to remain in the open, and if someone asks you for the source code you are obligated by the terms of the license to provide it (if you host it on Github or another public repository, then you have already satisfied this requirement).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A company could take the code and make products with it and sell it (it's their right to do so), but they would have to do so under the condition that any source code that they write for the project is also released under the GPL. Because of this, a lot of companies who make a lot of money writing software don't like this because they have to continually release code to the public. On the flip-side, any cool stuff that they do gets put into the public under the GPL, so you could fold it back into your project and improve it. They can't take your code, improve it, and then never share it again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to have used any GPL code in your project (let's say you took a few lines out of the Linux kernel or Git version control or whatever) then you'll have to release your code as GPL as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the choice of license affects more about how you want the software to be used (and the eventual community it might bring in). If you plan to commercialize the software, (and implicitly allow others to do the same), then you might want to lean BSD. If you don't want people to take your hard work and profit off of it without showing you the results, then you want to go GPL. If you don't care either way, then you could probably just choose one. I think BSD is popular in academia precisely because of the commercialization aspect (for example LLVM is gaining a lot of traction because of its permissive license).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answer for 3: How do I make it easy for others to run the code?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make it easy to run code by engineering it to be easy to run and by being extremely detailed with your documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Packaging/distribution can actually be pretty hard and usually take more effort than most people would think. A good way to make the software easy to run is to test it on multiple machines. Make sure that you're not forgetting any of the libraries that you're using in your software project, for example, and when possible, try to use software libraries that are common and well-maintained. Use mainstream languages with easy-to-manage package repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When appropriate, use installers, installer scripts, Makefiles (distutils, which uses automake/autoconf is better), etc. Even shell scripts are better than nothing. If you can provide binaries and/or an installer, that will make things even easier. The problem is that this is a LOT of work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accompany it with documentation. Ideally, the documentation will contain a description of how to set it up and run it, with descriptions of necessary packages/libraries, data that you might have to get, and what to type or click on. Usually, something called README or INSTALL will attract attention. Put the instructions on the web page as well, most of the hosting solutions also allow you to have web pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this all helps. The hardest part of the process is by far Step #3 and most people don't get as far as to use good techniques like installers, automake/autoconf, and so forth because it's a LOT of work and development often moves faster than you can write documents. However, no one is grading you on your style so it's often easier to get it out than it is to clean it up and prettify it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T23:01:41.313" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T23:01:41.313" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T05:35:57.743" Score="2" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to apply for a PhD in the CS realm in the next cycle, particularly something with an AI flavor like Machine Learning or NLP. I am a bit of an anomaly in CS as I have undergraduate majors in a very different area (one was history...). I am finishing up a Masters focusing in signal processing at a well-renowned school and have a good GPA and top GREs. I was a CS minor undergrad, but started too late into college so I couldn't have gotten the major, although I took the core courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I finished undergrad with plenty of accolades (and I TAed in CS for 3 semesters), and I have excelled in the engineering courses at the Masters level, I am really concerned about my chances to get into a great PhD program. (There are a number of reasons why I want to pursue PhD, but at the same time, &lt;strong&gt;*&lt;em&gt;for  me&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/strong&gt;, the time commitment doesn't feel warranted if I'm not working with great faculty at a great institution.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some research experience (an undergrad honor thesis in my majors--I know it's not exactly related--and I'm a co-author on a couple non-CS papers published in IEEE journals from some summer work), but nothing really in depth I've done on my own. My Masters is a non-thesis program so I've had trouble finding an adviser who'll take me on (I want to do a thesis anyway). I've also had trouble finding (and being accepted) to worthwhile summer research opportunities (academic settings related to my interests). I have actually really enjoyed my previous research opportunities, and I know that for PhD admissions it's research, research, research (and some recs). So here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I find my way into substantive research endeavors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With my eclectic background, how can I rise above the thousands of CS undergrads with plenty of relevant research during the admission process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any suggestions how to sell my academic background as a positive?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: Of course I think I'm qualified (every applicant does or else they wouldn't apply). I also think that my unique background is a bonus. I'm concerned that those making hiring/admission decisions will feel differently. (edited since first posting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for the advice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11819" LastEditorUserId="11819" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T06:33:27.410" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T12:24:21.257" Title="How to enhance my prospects for a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-11T05:37:14.727" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Matthew G. and Irwin have given great answers, but I'd like to provide some additional &#xA;resources and references for those interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, take a look at answers to this similar question on scicomp.SE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/questions/1879/what-material-should-i-include-with-a-journal-article-or-post-online-in-order&quot;&gt;What material should I include with a journal article (or post online) in order to make my computational research reproducible?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reproducibility was the subject of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://icerm.brown.edu/tw12-5-rcem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 workshop at ICERM&lt;/a&gt;; you'll find a lot of useful material on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the wiki&lt;/a&gt; and in &lt;a href=&quot;http://icerm.brown.edu/html/programs/topical/tw12_5_rcem/icerm_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the final report&lt;/a&gt; (see especially appendices D, E, and F).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Archival/hosting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:You can get a DOI and permanent hosting for a snapshot of your code via &lt;a href=&quot;http://mozillascience.github.io/code-research-object/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://zenodo.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zenodo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Licensing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Licenses_and_copyright.2C_citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this section of the wiki for an extensive list of resources&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Making it easy to run the code&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some sites and tools out there aimed specifically at this.  These also solve the hosting issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/khinsen/active_papers_py/wiki/Home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ActivePapers&lt;/a&gt;: An ActivePaper is a single file containing all the software and datasets related to a research project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.runmycode.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RunMyCode&lt;/a&gt;: This service is based on the innovative concept of a companion &#xA;website associated with a scientific publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major hurdle is often re-creating the correct environment (including libraries and such) necessary to run the code.  To overcome this, you could&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Tools_that_capture_and_preserve_a_software_environment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;distribute a virtual machine&lt;/a&gt; or use Vagrant or CDE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensure that your code runs on some cloud platform, like &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wakari.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wakari&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cloud.sagemath.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SageMathCloud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amazon web services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Windows Azure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be useful to put your code in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Notebooks.2FPublishing_Tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;worksheet format&lt;/a&gt;, where you can intersperse comments and even mathematical formulas (for instance, using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipython.org/notebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPython notebook&lt;/a&gt;  or a Sage worksheet.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/ketch/8554686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ketch/effective_dispersion_RR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ketch/optimized-erk-sd-rr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ketch/diffractons_RR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ketch/downwind_IRK_RR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; of my own efforts.  They're far from perfect, but may still be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:53:56.063" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T12:50:07.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16790" CreationDate="2014-02-11T06:50:58.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an applied mathematician, I like to go for the format [Author1, Author2 JST '99], where &quot;JST&quot; is an abbreviation for the journal. I truncate longer author lists with &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;, and add initials in some cases to reduce ambiguity [Li RC, Guo CH, LAA '05]. With the help of a macro, I put the citations in square brackets (following the LaTeX usage), in a different color (dark grey) and font (&lt;code&gt;\small&lt;/code&gt;/&lt;code&gt;\footnotesize&lt;/code&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course every solution to this problem is a compromise between brevity, readability and googleability, but it seems to me that this one works well in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T06:50:58.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-02-11T08:23:38.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make less problems with computer search and indexing tools of various perfectness, I would suggest to use consistently English characters only in your English publications. If the non English character is basically an English character with extra crown or something the like, probably it will not be any problems with the proof of the authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While of course keyboards can be easily configured to support national characters as well, think about the foreign users. Would they be capable of typing your special character into search box? Most likely, they will type the Latin equivalent instead. Smart search engines will treat it as the same, others may just not find the results. Various specialized sites with own databases may be important to you yet have less search capabilities than Google or Yahoo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possible alternative is to use the widely known several letter Latin alternative of that character that may exists (sch, zh, etc). However search tools are even less likely to treat special character and its multi letter alternative as the same. Also, doubts if it is the same name are much more likelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T13:45:51.990" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:45:51.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13726" CreationDate="2014-02-11T08:46:14.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't release code, then your work is not de-facto reproducible; and if you will get me as a reviewer, I will do everything in my power to either get you to publish code, or get rejected. Rare exceptions to the contrary, where an implementation is trivial. But implementations are rarely trivial; and often a great place to sweep a lot of quirks under the rug which conveniently arnt mention in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, it is not hard to get away with not providing code; journals are particularly lax at enforcing or even adopting standards, even though most people in the field will decry the lack of reproducibility of published work. But nobody will resent you for providing code either. Writing code you actually feel comfortable releasing out into the open requires work of course. Time which you could spend doing other things. If you don't feel comfortable zipping up your code and providing it right now, that's probably a good indication that any papers written about said code arnt ready to be published yet either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is a tension there, between doing what is right scientifically, and doing what is right for your career. But as for me as a reviewer; no code == no publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11814" LastEditorUserId="11814" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T08:51:32.983" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T08:51:32.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16767" CreationDate="2014-02-11T08:58:37.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing so will add value to your thesis, if you do it well, and help the readers. Most people don't do this because they think of it too late or do not have the energy. Start doing it early and do it well, or don't do it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T08:58:37.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16679" CreationDate="2014-02-11T11:24:48.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, you would have already an interest in a particular research topic that you'd like to learn more about. I think that's the first crucial step before you do anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you have selected your research area, you can look for researchers/professors that are defining the frontiers in that area and live in DE or CH. Once you shortlisted the names, which could take some time since you might need to visit each lab's website to find out more about its research, you should apply for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; positions that you find interesting. Try to arrange interviews with the professors or group leaders and try to get an idea how your PhD life under his/her supervision would look like. Of course, it may be quite hard to extrapolate from a single interview but &lt;em&gt;it is better than pure email conversation&lt;/em&gt;. Don't forget: PhD is kinda like a marriage with your supervisor. You need to get along with him/her really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing the interviews, you can narrow down possible destinations for your PhD. I would then look for other issues: salary, city, culture etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the salaries in Zurich and in DE since I lived and worked in both places as PhD student. In Zurich, the salaries are well above the average PhD salaries. With 60% employment (e.g., biology PhDs or some first year CS PhDs) you get ca. 3'000 CHF after taxes. For a 100% employment your salary becomes ca. 4'500 CHF after taxes, which is around triple the money you can make as a PhD in DE. Of course, the city is more expensive but you end up having more money in your back account compared to a PhD in DE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I said above, your PhD topic and your supervisor's personality are much more important than your income. You should never forget about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9413" LastEditorUserId="9413" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T12:11:44.190" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T12:11:44.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16796" CreationDate="2014-02-11T11:34:08.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless I am mistaken, &quot;next cycle&quot; is half a year from now. There are many ways to enhance one's PhD prospects, but many big ones are no longer available to you due to timing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Peters in &lt;em&gt;Getting What You Came For&lt;/em&gt; cites an ETS study about how important various parts of the PhD application are considered by committees, on a scale from 1 to 5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.9 Undergrad GPA in major field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.8 Recommendations from faculty known by committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.7 Undegrad GPA in last 2 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.6 GRE verbal score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.6 whether undergrad major is related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.5 Undergrad GPA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.0 Educational or career aspirations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.0 Recommendations from faculty unknown by committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.0 Whether applicant is known to the committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.9 Academic achievements (papers, projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.9 Quality of undergraduate school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.7 Personal statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.7 Interview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.6 Work experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.6 GRE analytical score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.5 Non-faculty recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.5 GRE Subject score (related to program)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.9 Other test scores&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.9 GRE Subject score (related to undergrad major)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.6 Particular subscores on GRE Subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have half a year. Some of these things, like your GPA, obviously cannot be changed. What you can do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to publish or present at a conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you don't get low grades from any classes you are taking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you get strong recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Study for the GRE, especially the verbal part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make contact with faculty at the programs you think of applying to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research thoroughly the programs you are interested in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start working on your Statement of Purpose so you have time to edit it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T11:34:08.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16796" CreationDate="2014-02-11T12:24:21.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends in which country or &quot;world&quot; you live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD programs and similar are very different around the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- U.S.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Uk&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Countries like Sweden&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Switzerland&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Central Europe like Germany/Austria&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- India&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each country has a very different culture in general and a different university culture in turn, and also different resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one example: in India PhD positions are hard to get, in Germany/Austria there are sometimes 5 applications for a single job, so just by chance it is easy to get a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In research in technical disciplines (computer science, electrical engineering), my option is that the most important thing is mathematics. It is the hardest and most gerneral applicable topic. This is also, in my eyes, the most important topic for applied research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know mathematics it is hard to do functional programming. You need Category theory to use Monads, Functors, etc., to write programs in functional languages like haskell. There are state of the art programming languages based on Higher Order Logic and others that are based on Martin Löw type theory. Without an excellent mathematical background one is helpless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to analyze and predict signals in electrical engineering, this is comparably easy if you know how to do harmonic analysis and state of the art statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T12:24:21.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-02-11T12:48:02.733" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the given problem which I assume to be &quot;Heß&quot;, I'd go with the ß spelling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For me the most important reason for this recommendation is that in German &quot;Heß&quot; and &quot;Hess&quot; two different last names, and both rather common ones. Thus using the transliteration not only creates confusion whether or not the name was transliterated, but also roughly doubles the basis of people who could possibly be meant (e.g. inside Germany ca. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/he%25C3%259F.html&quot;&gt;20000 Heß&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/hess.html&quot;&gt;18500 Hess&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the last decade or so, there has been a tremendous improvement of dealing online with characters outside the absolute standard latin character set. I think this will continue, so using the ß will become less and less of a problem. As you say, google already knows how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worst thing that happens in addition to maybe sometimes being transliterated to &quot;ss&quot; or even &quot;sz&quot; (which is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; uncommon in German, so while Germans would be aware of the possibility that Hess could be a transliterated version of Heß, Hesz would be considered something really different) would be that you find your name misspelled with a β (beta instead of s-zett). However I don't think that this will happen much more frequently than people misspelling my &quot;natively pure ASCII&quot; last name by exchanging the last &quot;e&quot; by an &quot;i&quot; - and having a common problem means that scientific data bases know better how to correct it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People may not know how to pronounce it, but that is very common with any kind of foreign name. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T12:48:02.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16809" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:10:27.247" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am completing my undergraduate honours.&#xA;To do some of my experiments I am considering applying for some supercomputer time.&#xA;I would be applying to a external organistation who manages supercomputer for research in this state.&#xA;It funded by a partnership of universities (including my own) and the state and national government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the conditions on the application is that the listed &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Project Leader&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; be a non-student member of a university.&#xA;Can I (after talking to my supervisor), fill out the paperwork, listing him as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Project Leader&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;?&#xA;Even if his (direct) contributions are minimal, I would still be going to him for advice regularly, so he would be providing leadership on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I would be the person doing all the interactions with the people from the supercomputing organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:28:48.477" Title="Can a honours supervisors be called a Project Leader?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16793" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:14:24.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bridging two topics is more complex than a simple PhD devoted to a single topic. You must be lead by a professor who is also highly interested in and &lt;em&gt;actually helps&lt;/em&gt; with your research plan, not just &quot;allows&quot;. Professor should take care to make a plan of the suitable PhD research project from this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start from finding such a supervisor and drop the idea if you cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:14:24.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:19:33.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers given are well detailed and include it but given a bunch of other choices.  Choice is obviously good.  Without specific advantages listed though I am suggesting you just go with github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rationale is that I feel that github has become a clear leader in the field of code storing and sharing.  It's underlying technology of git as a modern dvcs system has largely replaced older technologies such as svn.  It now has over 2.8 million users which is quite impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Github is also great for code collaboration, allowing for multiple people to edit and merge their changes in in a controlled but decentralized fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Github allows you to have both public (anyone can view) as well as private repositories that you control view access to.  For updating, you add the requested users ssh keys to grant update access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11825" LastEditorUserId="11825" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T22:37:58.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T22:37:58.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16806" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:28:48.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is a fairly standard description of a supervisors role in undergraduate research projects. Typically supervisor, despite potentially limited input, are responsible for the research conduct of their students. This might include booking of resources (e.g., labs or super computer time) and ethical approval for research that involves human and animal testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:28:48.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16812" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:29:06.027" Score="6" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a journal is not indexed this way, is it an academically honorable one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11571" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T13:40:06.320" LastActivityDate="2019-09-03T04:57:06.333" Title="Is it important to publish my article in a journal indexed on Thomson ISI?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:36:25.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm strongly advocating for keeping your name unchanged, as far as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most software can write it down (software = Word, HTML and LaTeX probably);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's based on latin alphabet (that is, to every character you can assign a character on the English alphabet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow the Rule 2, you should be safe since most indexing software strips off all &quot;decorations&quot; from the letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I hate when my name is written without diacritics, because it's simply not me. And heavens, we're living in 21st century and we have unicode and stuff!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, &lt;code&gt;ß&lt;/code&gt; is a true nutshell, since it has a unique transcription to English (&lt;code&gt;ss&lt;/code&gt;), but it's not based on stripping diacritics. I'm not aware of how big difference is &lt;code&gt;ß&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;ss&lt;/code&gt; in German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;With my journal typesetter hat on:&lt;/em&gt; I would allow &lt;code&gt;ß&lt;/code&gt; in your name in an article. I wouldn't allow a cyrillic name, for instance, if the author insisted, I would keep both forms -- cyrillic and transcribed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:36:25.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16810" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:39:24.643" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we momentarily disregard from discussions regarding the cons of ISI and Thomson-Reuters who run the service etc. and focus on the usefulness of ISI indexed journals for ones career, the answer is yes, it is important at least to some extent. The importance is in part depending on your discipline since ISI indexing is not evenly distributed over disciplines. But generally speaking the ISI listing means the journal publishes papers that are referenced, which is an indication that it is research of some quality and importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean non-ISI-listed journals are not &quot;honourable&quot;. But, when choosing a journal in which to publish, you need to make sure it is read by other in your field so that your research is seen and your ideas known by others. You should make a survey of journals that are of reference and if you find ISI-listed journals there is a reason to consider them if your papers fulfill their quality criteria because they will be  seen as prestigeous references when you are evaluated for a position etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T18:39:44.127" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T18:39:44.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16790" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:46:45.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in my field, it's certainly the habit to mention only the authors and the year, unless it's really old. So I would have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theorem [Doe, Soe, 2010; Smith 1997]&lt;/strong&gt; There is ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone needs the full citation, he has the proceedings / book of abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only interesting things in the citation are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; result, you borrow it from elsewhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which people did it -- quite likely you have some of them in the auditorium, they can get upset if you don't credit them, and they'll be pleased if you point them out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How old is it -- is it something known for years, or is it a &quot;hot result&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you publish the presentation online after the conference, it might be a good habit to add the whole bibliography of the proceedings as a last slide. It can be in a small font since it's only for people to read it on the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The key of a talk is not to be precise, but to show the most relevant information!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:46:45.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16790" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:55:19.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is probably not applicable to presentations using &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of citations, or using them on a lot of pages (but then, I think a good presentation shouldn't cite too much, so it's okay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to using whichever citation style best works for you ( (Smith, 1995), [Smith et. al., CSJ, 2007]*, or even just [1] ), plus changing the text color sounds like a good idea, why don't you &lt;strong&gt;add the expanded citation in the slide footnote in a smaller font?&lt;/strong&gt; If it's not more than 1-2 or maybe 3 cites per slide, on no more than a few slides, it could work nicely and even allow you to use the basic [1], [2,3] citation style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it could be a good idea to &lt;strong&gt;include the list of most important citations on the last slide&lt;/strong&gt; (maybe not showing it in the presentation, but useful for possible questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Something like this: &lt;strong&gt;:)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* Smith, Jones and Doe: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Very important article&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, Cool Science Journal, 2007&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;or:&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1] Jones and Smith: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Yet another important article&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, 2000&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:55:19.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2536" CreationDate="2014-02-11T14:12:58.920" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;France&lt;/strong&gt;, the position &lt;em&gt;Assistant Professor&lt;/em&gt; is a permanent position. As research activities are also done in labs in addition to the universities, the positions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;assistant professor &lt;em&gt;(maître de conférences)&lt;/em&gt; : permanent teaching position, but can not supervise PhD students alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is typically working towards a &lt;strong&gt;habilitation&lt;/strong&gt; (HDR, &lt;em&gt;habilitation à diriger des recherches&lt;/em&gt;), a longer-lasting standalone research project of about 5 years, during which the person co-supervised a few PhD students. After defending the project in front of the jury a person with an HDR can supervise PhD students alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;professor &lt;em&gt;(professeur des universités)&lt;/em&gt; : permanent teaching position, can supervise PhD students alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;full researcher &lt;em&gt;(chargé&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;directeur de recherche)&lt;/em&gt; : permanent research position without teaching, can supervise PhD students alone if holder of the HDR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:48:42.087" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2536" CreationDate="2014-02-11T14:20:10.267" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Czech Republic&lt;/strong&gt;, and I suppose that in some other &quot;former Eastern block&quot; countries it's similar, there are 3 types of university permanent positions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;asistent&lt;/strong&gt; -- usually translated &lt;strong&gt;assistant professor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;docent&lt;/strong&gt; -- usually translated &lt;strong&gt;associated professor&lt;/strong&gt; -- you become a docent when you do your habilitation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;profesor&lt;/strong&gt; -- usually translated &lt;strong&gt;full professor&lt;/strong&gt; -- you become a profesor when the president of the Czech Republic promotes you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no other distinguished levels at the universities. However, the Academy of Sciences is completely seperated, and it's different there. Nobody is, however, called a professor there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T22:12:59.540" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T22:12:59.540" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-11T14:54:28.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my graduation paper I shared my code by printing it all out as a companion volume to the main research paper.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Mind this was pre-internet, and the paper (and code) was classified so very few people would ever read it. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I did put it all on floppy and included copies of that with the printed paper as well.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;These days, you'd likely put it on a server somewhere where all those who have access to the paper can access the code, and nobody else.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Of course you will need to figure out who that will be. Most research papers are considered company secrets (or department secrets) and not for public distribution. Your code would fall under the same restrictions.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Just throwing it out there on github, google code, or source forge without prior permission from your employers/coordinators isn't going to make you many friends, in fact you could end up with a rather hefty claim for damages and/or prison time for doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11647" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T14:54:28.480" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16746" CreationDate="2014-02-11T14:56:00.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the possiblitity to get a research-oriented Master, which is the thing closest to what you asked for. Here is the link to one example course that I found during a quick search:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't state which field of study you are interested in and in which area of the world, so this is probably not precisely what you are looking for. However, as Nate Eldredge already wrote, you can't expect to spend only a single day at your Master's University. They will want to make sure that you meet their standards, and typically, this involves at least a moderate course load for a Master's degree. Also, the degree of independence in research that you are asking for is probably not the same than the one that you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T14:56:00.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16779" CreationDate="2014-02-11T15:25:00.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two parts to answering this question. First, you should make sure that the teacher is &lt;em&gt;incompetent&lt;/em&gt; and not merely &lt;em&gt;unlikable&lt;/em&gt;. Second, if the teacher is incompetent, there are a number of options available to avoid studying with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the first point, it is important to note that a teacher can be unlikable, and perhaps even appear ignorant (to students), while still being great at his or her job: making sure you learn things. For example, group work and peer instruction are known to be effective teaching strategies. At the same time, they are also quite unpopular with students, and some students even take the view that the instructor is not doing their job when these strategies are applied (even though the &lt;em&gt;outcome&lt;/em&gt; may be very good). Professionalism and teaching style are very personal traits, and I've not seen any evidence that they have strong impact on student learning outcomes. It sounds like maybe your personal dislike of the instructor is clouding your judgement about whether they could be an effective teacher. A teacher has only one job: making sure you learn things. If they can do that job effectively, then it shouldn't matter whether you like them or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to students who have finished the course, and find out what they've learned. Often its only after such a class is complete that students realize they've learned a lot. If you know you'll get a lot out of the course, then you should probably take it even if you don't like the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the second point, if the teacher really is incompetent, and former students are in strong agreement on this point (and they really don't seem to have learned anything about the subject), then you do have some other options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many schools will let you take online courses from other universities for credit. For a chemistry course with a lab, this may not work out, but otherwise this might be your best bet. You can shop around, find an instructor that you like, and still get credit for the course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the instructor is genuinely incompetent, you could speak with the school administration, and make a formal request for a different instructor. Often your request will be ignored, but I have seen this result in a new instructor being assigned once. Again, it is important that you make sure this is an instance of incompetence and not unlikeability. This is a serious step, and could have implications for the instructor's job (especially if they lack tenure). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might be able to wait it out, and take the class with someone else. At the university undergraduate level, this can be the easiest solution, provided that the course is not a major prerequisite in your program. At the high school and grad school level, there may not be an alternative instructor in that subject area, so this may be infeasible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend the class, but plan to use external resources to study. Consider forming a study group at the start of the semester, and meeting several times a week to talk about class material. Use online courses like those offered by MIT's Open Courseware, or any of the MOOC companies, to supplement the lecture material, and shop around online to find the best textbook at your level for this topic. You can make sure that you've learned the material well, even if your instructor is unable to help you learn it.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T18:57:19.603" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T18:57:19.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16823" CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:39:10.077" Score="5" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to approach professors when looking for a Post-Doc position ? Are there any particular search tools for this type of position ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a similar question on this website: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15052/how-to-maximise-ones-chances-of-getting-a-good-postdoc-position&quot;&gt;How to maximise one&amp;#39;s chances of getting a good postdoc position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is more directed towards the way one should contact potential advisors, specially if they are in foreign countries and a face-to-face meeting is not possible. Is it better to contact directly the Professor or rather contact fellow PhD/PostDocs of that laboratory ? Is an e-mail sufficient or should you try to contact that person through tools like LinkedIn or ResearchGate ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good time to do so ? 3 months, 6 months, a year before finishing the PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should one be specific on what you would like to work on or rather general so that more possibilities are available ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a really open discussion topic where there is not a &quot;correct&quot; answer, so feel free to share your personal views and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T18:44:26.723" Title="Post-doc positions in Mechanical Engineering" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1726" CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:46:09.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of a thesis depends on several factors, the PhD student, the advisor and the work environment of the department where they work. th ePhD student should do the work and come up with own ideas and drive the work forward, more so towards the end than early on. the advisor, in most cases have established the basic research questions for the project in which the student works. The advisor also has a responsibility to facilitate understanding of the scientific method, ethics and plain knowledge to the student through the advisory role. The department may or may not have resources to provide a good work environment which includes size of collaborating research groups, lab space etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this view it may be likely that a top tier university has more funding, has attracted &quot;better&quot; (however you wish to define that) scientists and lastly may attract better students (at least from the perspective of competitive application processes). It is, however, clear that these ingredients may not necessarily lead to success but it would not be a wide stretch of the imagination to say that basic conditions may be better and that this is reflected in the theses produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line, however, is that a good research environment is more likely to produce better work than just top tier ranking. In some cases bad luck may lead to poorer output, for example if the ice samples from Antarctica on which you completely rely for your work melt in a freezer accident. The question that remains is to what extent good research environments are determined by tier ranking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T16:46:09.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16821" CreationDate="2014-02-11T17:07:59.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: &lt;em&gt;I'm not in mechanical engineering, but am a potential post doc advisor.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: ootential advisors are (almost) always on the lookout for good people, even when they don't have money to hire them, because they always have grants submitted, so any time soon they may receive another grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fine to contact potential advisors directly, but beware that they will receive many such emails, including many that are easily considered as SPAM, due to their impersonal and indirect nature. This means that your emails need to be personal, and they need to quickly establish what you do and what value you could be to the potential advisor, for instance by finding a real connection with their research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a concrete research proposal is also a valuable idea, but beware that a potential advisor may not be interested in supervising a topic that is outside their core research focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contacting a potential advisor 3 months in advance would put you in the running for any positions that the advisor may have open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contacting a potential advisor 6 months in advance might be a way of putting your name in the advisor's mind, but it would probably be too early to actually get a position. That said, the advisor may have applied for some funding, and this may come available after those 6 months. Then having your name in the advisor's mind would be a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contacting a potential advisor 12 months before you finish might be useful if there is a funding opportunity that you both could apply for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, contacting the potential advisor 3 months before you finish might lead to an opportunity 12 months down the track, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T17:23:55.433" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T17:23:55.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16904" CreationDate="2014-02-11T17:36:56.380" Score="7" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply to a PhD program in France, but I am having trouble understanding the admission process.  How should/could I submit my application? &#xA;Is it proper to contact the Professor I would like to work with and ask about any openings? If yes, what should I include in my mail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am only familiar with the admission process in US institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8940" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T16:47:31.617" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T16:47:31.617" Title="What is the process for PhD applications and contacting professors in France?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;france&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16826" CreationDate="2014-02-11T21:37:18.953" Score="18" ViewCount="18764" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are PhD students generally invited for such reviews? I was under the impression they would prefer someone with a Doctorate degree or more experience in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages/disadvantages of accepting to review? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The general discipline that the paper treats is related to my field of study but my active research is not necessarily related. Is it still OK to accept the invitation to review?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8719" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T21:46:41.073" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:23:51.463" Title="I have been invited to peer review a manuscript for a reputable journal. This is my first so I have a few questions to the more experienced" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2014-02-11T21:46:15.260" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual that PhD students get invited as reviewers, after all a PhD student will likely be a true expert in the field of the PhD. If you are a student during your first years of study, the request may be a little premature, generally speaking but if your are in your final year then it will be a good experience. What you need to consider is whether you can provide an insightful review of parts of or preferably the entire paper. You should have a sense of why you were invited, i.e. why your expertise may have been asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer review is a vital part of the publishing process so getting experience of reviewing other's material is very worthwhile. If you continue in academia this will be expected of you so you will have to start sometime. You can definitely add reviewing for journals in your CV, not mentioning what you reviewed but certainly for what journal you have reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yo have not done a review before you should probably ask someone (or preferable more than one) more experienced within your field for a brief outline of what should be included in the review and how to formulate the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T21:46:15.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16575" CreationDate="2014-02-11T22:06:53.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After taking a look at some of the feedback online, I would say your third possibility is correct.  The websites speaking against IASTED sound as if they were all created by the same person/people, and they appear to be using keyword spamming to defame IASTED conferences.  Actually, the malicious websites I saw were attacking not only IASTED, but the IEEE, WORLDCOMP, and several other major conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BioMed series is in its eleventh year, and is technically cosponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.  In fact, the IEEE EMB has been involved in many of the past iterations as well.  Just a quick look at the information from last year’s conference (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iasted.org/conferences/pastinfo-791.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iasted.org/conferences/pastinfo-791.html&lt;/a&gt;) shows established speakers from credible universities, including the chair, Prof. Aldo Boccaccini.  I have colleagues who have worked on IASTED conferences, and they will attest to the double-blind peer review and plagiarism checks in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would trust the ERA rating; agencies like this are very careful as to which conferences they will endorse.  Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11836" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T22:06:53.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1798" CreationDate="2014-02-11T22:44:31.140" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add one more point to JeffE's answer - though I have no idea how localized this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over here, the &quot;I-did-the-work-myself&quot; declaration contains a phrase that noone but those named in the acknowledgements did help with the work.&#xA;So in addition to thanking all the people whom you like to thank for moral support etc. (where forgetting someone would be impolite, but usually not have any further consequences), it is &lt;em&gt;legally&lt;/em&gt; important not to forget anyone who helped with the work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T22:44:31.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2014-02-11T22:48:35.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plos One&lt;/em&gt; do not have an explicit word count limit, and computational biology should be on-topic for them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are no explicit restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information, although we encourage a concise and accessible writing style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further info see &lt;a href=&quot;http://plosone.org/static/guidelines&quot;&gt;http://plosone.org/static/guidelines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, have you seen that &lt;em&gt;Plos Computational Biology&lt;/em&gt; has two types of articles, Research articles and Software articles, and that the 3500 word limit only applies to the latter (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/guidelines&quot;&gt;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/guidelines&lt;/a&gt;). For Research articles they only say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although we have no firm length restrictions for the entire manuscript, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T22:58:52.117" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T22:58:52.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16824" CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:19:19.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD candidate in France (economics) and yes, you can (and, in fact, must) contact a professor first. He or she will then direct you to source for funding and through the whole administrative process (the funniest part...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T00:19:19.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16993" CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:21:19.467" Score="40" ViewCount="12861" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under &lt;strong&gt;double blind review&lt;/strong&gt; for one of the IEEE journals? I am suspicious that it may violate the double blind review requirements and I couldn't find any thing in the journal's homepage specific to this issue. In general IEEE allows preprint versions to be uploaded to arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11839" LastEditorUserId="11839" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T10:57:10.860" LastActivityDate="2019-11-14T16:35:12.383" Title="Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16833" CreationDate="2014-02-12T01:03:40.527" Score="83" ViewCount="32018" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recent question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16831/is-it-legal-to-upload-a-paper-to-arxiv-when-it-is-under-double-blind-review-for&quot;&gt;about the legality of uploading to arXiv&lt;/a&gt; made me realize that I don't have any understanding of why one would upload to a preprint site.  (I don't work in a field where they seem to be common.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would one be concerned about getting a manuscript on arXiv, if it's already under review with a journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because of the long publishing timeline of journals?  (That could explain why computer science &amp;mdash; which publishes much more in conferences &amp;mdash; doesn't seem to do much with them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T19:22:53.387" Title="Why upload to academic preprint sites like arXiv?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="43" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16832" CreationDate="2014-02-12T01:49:56.830" Score="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, there are several reasons to post to the arXiv:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It provides free access to papers that might otherwise be hidden behind paywalls.  Of course you could achieve this by posting on your web page, but your web page may move or disappear, while the arXiv is far more stable.  This means it's better for archival purposes and it's better suited for citations.  [Note that this is not just about preprints: it continues to be relevant long after publication.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It attracts readers.  Many people pay close attention to arXiv postings in their area, in a way that doesn't happen as much with journal tables of contents.  I don't have statistics, but my impression is that a substantial fraction of the people who learn about my papers do so through the arXiv.  If you can get noticeably more attention for your research with almost no additional effort, why wouldn't you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It establishes priority.  Submitting to a journal does not: if you submit to a journal without circulating your work publicly, then you may still end up sharing credit with anyone who makes the same discovery before your paper is made public.  The way to establish priority is to distribute your work so widely that any competitors cannot credibly claim to have been unaware of it.  Submitting to the arXiv is the easiest way to show that you have done so: it's widely read, and it preserves all versions of the article with time stamps.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's conventional.  This varies somewhat between subfields, but once arXiv use reaches critical mass in a given area, it becomes the standard way of announcing to the world that you have completed a paper.  At that point, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; posting to the arXiv looks strange.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared with other fields, mathematics and physics are anomalous in making heavy use of the arXiv, with physics even more so than mathematics.  As I understand it, in high energy particle physics the arXiv replaced an elaborate system of paper preprint distribution that was used in the late 80's (and it rapidly became popular since it was obviously better than the paper infrastructure).  Usage spread to other areas of physics, from physics to adjacent areas of mathematics, and then further into mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things are trickier in other fields, because many of the advantages depend on network effects.  If nobody in your field pays attention to a server, it's not conventional, and it counts for little or nothing regarding priority, then there's less reason to post to it (although it still has some value).  I'm not surprised that it catches on only slowly and spreads primarily to adjacent fields, but I expect green open access servers like the arXiv will become more popular over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T01:49:56.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16832" CreationDate="2014-02-12T01:52:03.103" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the main reasons to use arXiv and similar preprint servers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To disseminate your paper without waiting for the peer review and publishing process. This is a serious issue - in mathematics, for example, peer review often takes a year or more, and it can be several more years before your paper gets to the front of the queue to actually appear in print.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make the paper permanently available to readers who don't have a subscription to the journal where the paper is published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, to disseminate and solicit comments on a paper that may not quite be ready for publication, while at the same time establishing priority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, from the computer scientists here, I've gathered the impression that CS uses arXiv very heavily, to the point that it practically supersedes journals as a way to distribute papers. Perhaps I'm mistaken, or it varies by subfield?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T01:52:03.103" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T05:48:30.287" Score="10" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a third year undergraduate right now. I submitted a review on Cell motility, waited 6 months and got a rejection. The first reviewer appointed the manuscript as &quot;publishable with corrections&quot; and gives recommendations. The second reviewer didn't like it at all and made harsh comments. It seems that the first reviewer went throughout a longer analysis of the manuscript (based on his careful comments), while the other discarded it quickly, without too many protocol. The Editor's comment at the end sounds a bit like &quot;We could be friends in the future, but go somewhere else this time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I agree with the majority of their points and I know most papers are rejected nowadays (so I'm not desperate with this issue), I'm confused. Is the papers worthy of revision and resubmission (to another journal) or should I tank it? I've to be careful with duties (Thesis, Assistant job, etc.) because I don't want to spend an extra semester at College due to this nuisance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11847" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T08:36:26.663" Title="Paper Rejection on Molecular Biology, What should I do?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16837" CreationDate="2014-02-12T06:49:05.463" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on submitting a paper as an undergraduate that one referee found to be publishable with corrections.  That's impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you really the sole author on a biology paper as an undergraduate?  Biology is not my field (I'm a mathematician), but that sounds unusual to me.  Even if you are, you must be doing the research under the supervision of some faculty member, right?  If so: &lt;strong&gt;ask them for guidance&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From where I'm standing, I would think that what one referee at a reputable journal finds publishable with corrections should be publishable by another journal, and perhaps even one of roughly equal quality. But you should not take the word of someone from a different field who doesn't know your work or your manuscript.  Again: ask for guidance from a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: The fact that the referee with a more balanced recommendation looks like they did more work and understood the paper better is unfortunately a familiar phenomenon to me.  The refereeing process in academia is far from perfect: it works well when the referees decide to be conscientious and fair...but there is almost nothing inherent in the process which forces referees to be conscientious and fair or even allows one to discern with anything approaching certainty whether any given referee has been conscientious and fair.  It is a bit frustrating.  All I can think to do is to try to apply the golden rule and hope for karmic benefits to accrue eventually (if I may mix metaphors slightly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T06:49:05.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-02-12T07:24:49.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legal? Sure. There's no law against it.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Contract violation? Possibly, ask the editor.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Ethical? Something else entirely. Quite possibly not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11647" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T07:24:49.840" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T08:13:51.127" Score="7" ViewCount="1061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a research scientist, and as part of my role I am expected to perform some form of public outreach and engagement. I enjoy outreach activities and giving public lectures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a suspicion that free public lectures are usually poorly attended. I suspect that the attitude is one of &quot;Well, it's free and you get what you pay for&quot;. Certainly the quality of artistic performances that I've seen is strongly correlated with entrance fee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is a reasonable expectation that my Faculty would pay for the costs of lecture room hire, advertising, possibly even tea and biscuits, I wonder if there is an advantage of charging a nominal fee to attend, to overcome the low-quality perception of a free lecture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T18:55:06.233" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T18:55:06.233" Title="Should I charge entry for a public lecture?" Tags="&lt;fees&gt;&lt;outreach&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2014-02-12T08:28:16.913" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt exclusivity as represented by an entrance fee would attract people to a lecture. After al, it is the subject that is of importance. thus the advertisement is key and the way you set your topic in a wider perspective. If the topic concern people such as climate change, environmental issues, medicine to mention a few, people will come. It will be more difficult to attract people to topics they either do not know anything about or are not interested in (or in the worst case, is not widely reported in media). Thus, my negative perspective is that the success of attracting an audience is to a large extent a question of how the topic is known by and an interest of the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would advice against charging for the lecture and put all efforts into making the lecture as interesting as possible for the intended audience. And, to do this by coupling the topic to a larger picture that is relevant to the public. And finally, if you do not get a huge audience, it does not mean there is anything wrong with your research or lecture, public interest varies over time and research can have huge relevance for important aspects of society and life without attracting a wide audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T08:28:16.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16837" CreationDate="2014-02-12T08:36:26.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, congratulations are in order!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, without deeper understanding into the field noone here can really tell you whether or not it's worth reworking and resubmitting. Even with deeper knowledge in the field without seeing the manuscript in question, and the reviews, it's hard to say anything. The only person that can and will most likely give you valuable feedback on this is your supervisor, or whoever is last name author on the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general papers typically get rejected more often than they get accepted, sometimes on sound reasons, sometimes on petty differences and small issues, and sometimes based on arrogance of the editors/reviewers (if you happen to bash a technique or an idea they are emotional about). The common practice in those situations is to make the best out of the reviewers' comments and either resubmit to the same journal (unless of course the paper was rejected by the editor based on not being interesting for that journal), or more commonly to another journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes your interpretation of the impact of your work might differ from those of others (like editors) in those cases aiming for a journal with slightly less impact factor, or broader scope, might help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T08:36:26.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-02-12T09:58:01.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mix two things, especially in the comments to the answer by &lt;strong&gt;jwenting&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fair review process,&lt;/em&gt; which in the journal you chose means double-blind review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Free access to information&lt;/em&gt;, which in your opinion seems to mean that the article should be open-access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the second can be true, it cannot mean you break the first one. So: It's quite wrong to pre-publish an article if it's under a double-blind review. At least unless you have a permission from the Editor to do so. Once it's accepted, it's just between you and the copyright transfer rules of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since IMHO violating a contact is basically illegal, my opinion is that pre-publishing it is very likely both illegal and nonethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T09:58:01.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16523" CreationDate="2014-02-12T11:18:57.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oxford and Cambridge University courses in England have always operated a bit like this.  In my Oxford Maths course, I'd attend 1 or 2 1-hour long lectures on the subject, have worksheets to do, then have classes in college of about 5 students to 1 instructor where we would discuss and work through the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're suggesting is basically the same, but having recorded lectures.  Given that most of the lectures were non-interactive, it amounts to much the same thing.  In general, I found it a very successful approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11446" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T11:18:57.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2014-02-12T11:40:17.983" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just add to Peter's answer couple more remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;strong&gt;important to write reviews&lt;/strong&gt;. I can tell you that the list of names of people who don't do reviews is, at least amongst people I know, a &quot;public secret&quot;. I mean, people who don't do reviews are known for it and it's certainly a negative thing.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; On the other hand, if you reject because you don't feel strong enough to do it, that's fine. Still, there has to be &quot;first&quot; once.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's your first review, &lt;strong&gt;tell that to the editor&lt;/strong&gt; once you decide to do it. Just a brief mail: &lt;em&gt;I have recieved the preprint and I will review it. However, I would like to bring to your attention that this is the first review I am writing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; After all, in many cases (especially at conference reviews), you have to choose a &quot;confidentality score&quot; from 1 to 5, which exactly says how strong do you as a reviewer feel considering the review.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss with your supervisor. It's surely ethical to ask someone close to you for opinion/help, so don't hesitate to approach him if you feel so. You may agree with him that you read the article yourself, mark what things you consider problematic, and then he helps you classify which things are crucial and which are not, and how much positive or negative the review should be. After all, &lt;strong&gt;your supervisor&lt;/strong&gt; is not only your research director, he &lt;strong&gt;is there to help you&lt;/strong&gt; (but not to do your job) with all parts of the scientific work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There're people who reject reviews in Elsevier and Springer and some other publishers' journals, because they don't like the fact that these companies profit from it a lot. That's probably fine, too.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; It's in general good practice to reply to the editor and say whether you accept. Unfortunately, not many people do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T11:40:17.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T12:10:30.077" Score="7" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm already in the second year of my PhD studies and my advisor insists on pursuing a very vague track, in order to produce &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; results that &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be publishable. The problem is that the topic itself was extensively studied in the past two decades and there's little maneuver space without overlapping with others' past ideas (it's in applied Computer Science). My adviser seems to be constrained by his grant committee to have a solution for the topic's problem using a certain kind of technique that will be outperformed by other, more specific algorithms right from the start. Although it has other benefits, they're not interesting for this particular topic (since they're not going to be used in any way). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it simple, how can you tell your advisor that what they want you to do is like killing flies with TNT and then have the denotation site rebuilt in order to get rid of those flies? (in an elegant way, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should mention that my advisor has a different area of expertise than the one chosen for my PhD program and often seems not to having the slightest hints on what state of the art means for that particular field and why it is important not to reiterate past methods and algorithms just because they can be applied in a slightly different field from the one they were initially proposed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11853" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T17:44:48.063" Title="How to convince your PhD adviser about the research value of the topic?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2014-02-12T13:44:53.900" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember this issue from my econ 101 class (far too long ago). The teacher said &lt;strong&gt;&quot;As the price of something goes up, demand goes down, all else remaining equal.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; A student responded &lt;em&gt;&quot;But if you increase the price, you increase the 'perceived value' of your offering thus more people will want it then your demand will increase.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One saw things from a marketing perspective and one saw from an economics perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teacher, however, responded that &lt;strong&gt;the student's statement is generally only true for luxury items&lt;/strong&gt; which demand higher than normal market prices for their category of product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your thinking is in line with the student in this story. I would not consider a talk from an academic to be a luxury item (even for a 'rockstar academic'). I would go along with Peter in his answer and posdef in the comment: The cheaper (best=free) the lecture, the more likely I am to go and the more likely I am to encourage my friends to go, since they cannot complain about it being too expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T13:44:53.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27637" CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:34:04.457" Score="4" ViewCount="14584" Body="&lt;p&gt;When delivering a presentation at an academic interview, what are some keywords which should be included in the title of the presentation? Should the title be in the first person? What are some good examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The position I am considering is &lt;strong&gt;assistant professor / lecturer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine some choices to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The interview presentation for JACK JAY&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The presentation for lecturer at Uni Awesome by JACK JAY&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JACK JAY'S presentation as candidate lecturer at Uni Awesome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T15:47:13.813" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:06:35.727" Title="How to phrase the title in a presentation at an academic interview?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:18:09.780" Score="7" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing my PhD, and am about to take up a postdoctoral/visiting professor position this Fall. I do have the option of taking leave for six months to attend a Mathematics institute, which is having a thematic year in a field of my interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clear that I need to be as productive as possible in the next three years to get a tenure-track position. Since I do not have a very specific problem that I'd like to work on with people at the institute, I'm worried that I'd be wasting six months of my time at the institute. On the other hand, its always nice to meet new people, make connections and learn new math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to hear the community's experiences so I can make an informed decision. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11862" OwnerDisplayName="user128063" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T18:08:39.950" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T18:08:39.950" Title="Career advice about a short stint at a mathematics institute as a postdoc" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2014-02-12T16:03:57.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just throw it out here. Perhaps others can upload their suggested topic slide as well? That would be fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like to appear to be overly kissing-up, so I'll opt for toning down the university. My talk would have been broadcasted and posted for a while at the institute so the audience should know why they are here. So I'll just focus on up-playing my topic and who I am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be prudent to clarify with the hiring committee chair on the format and topics to be covered. But beyond that, just be at ease with the format stuff; focus on the contents. Be very, very certain that you cover just enough background to show you can think in breadth and depth, explain what your research questions are, and present your methods and results in alignment with your questions, and state briefly the implication. For job talk, leave a few minutes to elaborate how your work can grow into your career path, and highlight potential synergistic collaboration with some hot areas that your target institute is good at (e.g. &quot;I'll also love to collaborate with the specialists at your Marine Dietary Assessment Center to cast a more critical look at the diet-obesity association.&quot;) You'll need to read their website/reports up on that. Find some friends, colleagues, and mentors to sit in your practice sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/erQ9h.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T16:18:36.627" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T16:18:36.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16847" CreationDate="2014-02-12T16:23:20.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are rushing ahead of yourself. In popular areas as applied CS, all areas one way or another may be considered overcrowded. Take any hot topic right now and you are going to see multiple publications with incremental updates / improvements. Still, a new dataset or a new test case ignites new research and so-on. No CS problem may be considered entirely solved. The fastest algorithm may be impossible to use for some datasets, its preprocessing may not scale and slower algorithms may be more parallelizable and more attractive to use. New hardware (CUDA / multiprocessor chips) change the way we write algorithms and so-on. There is a not a single criteria for what is the &quot;best&quot; solution. Stil, this is something you cannot know just by a literature survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you actually implemented any of the previous solutions to get a grasp of their advantages / disadvantages? Will you be able tomorrow to implement on your src code the state-of-the-art in this suggested problem or you assume it is too perfect to improve (to avoid the trouble of actually doing the implementation). Have you asked /contacted any of the authors if they can provide datasets or binaries for their solutions? Have you actually created multiple datasets to test previous solutions (and yours)? Or is everything just in your head. If yes, you must get them out of your head and into your PC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you actually implemented a quick and dirty (1-2 months) implementation of your advisor's suggestion, get some insight of how it behaves and 100% confirmed that your results are much worse than state-of-the-art solutions then no one (including your advisor) will object to you changing direction (no one likes dead ends). But this time will not be wasted. You have learnt what went wrong, you improved your coding skills and you see the research area more clearly. Maybe then, you can even come up with a test-case where your solution is way better than previous works, you perhaps know how to combine this problem with other related sub-problems and you have a solution that works (although not optimally) to partially satisfy the grant's requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, out of the books / papers and start writing some code!! It is more fun after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T16:37:24.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T16:37:24.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16853" CreationDate="2014-02-12T16:25:47.817" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did precisely what you're discussing (attend a semester program at a mathematics institute immediately after graduating), and I'd strongly encourage it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you're worried about wasting six months of time because you don't have a specific problem to work on with the people there.  Unless the only work you're expecting to do in the next six months depends on someone who's at your postdoc institution, presumably you can expect to be at least as productive at the institute as at your postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a newly minted PhD, you want to be productive, but not just by continuing to work in the exact speciality you carve out in a thesis.  So you don't want to only be working on the specific problems you're already thinking about right now: you exactly want to encounter other perspectives and other problems and get some work done on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is basically the point of a thematic program.  Even if you aren't going in with a specific problem in mind, you may well discover one.  Someone may want to work on something with you, or may mention something as an open problem, or it may just come up while talking to people.  And even if it doesn't, and you end up doing most of your work by yourself in your office, you'll still get a lot of exposure to the broader state of your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, of course, you'll meet a lot of people, which may pay off down the road.  Even if you don't end up working on something with the person in the next office while you're there, you'll hear a lot about they're specialty, and perhaps a year from now suddenly realize that they're the perfect person to ask about something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T16:25:47.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T17:03:26.060" Score="36" ViewCount="12247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lecturer at university that I find very hard to understand. My lectures are taught in English, but my lecturer is of East Asian origin, and English is not his first language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the lectures incredibly hard to follow, just trying to understand what is being said requires a substantial effort, and I find the material is challenging in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;no textbook&lt;/em&gt; for the course, but we are given printouts of the lecture slides that are used in the lectures (six to each side of an A4 page). While the lecture slides do contain the material, they don't explain it like a good lecturer would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've spoken to my tutor about the course, telling him that I find it very hard to follow the lecturers. Many of my peers feel a similar way to how I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let me point out that I bear the lecturer no ill will; I just want to do well on the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4579" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T03:21:37.943" LastActivityDate="2020-10-23T01:54:27.640" Title="A lecturer is hard to understand, what to do?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;language&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;lecture-teaching-method&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16858" CreationDate="2014-02-12T17:13:26.517" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partially this will depend on how specific the course is. If this is a general &quot;Graduate level intro to X&quot; class, my first suggestion is to look for an equivalent course provided on one of MOOC sites. For instance, if your course was an introduction to machine learning, you might have a look at Andrew Ng's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot;&gt;course&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the graduate level however, its entirely possible that the material you're being taught is difficult or impossible to find online (it could be a professor's seminar course afterall, in his or her specific research area). If this is the case, consider asking the instructor for more resources. He may know a good textbook from when he learned the material, or might be able to suggest lecture notes from another school that are available online. Phrasing this as &quot;I'm looking for more to do and more to read!&quot; can be a good strategy for getting help without offending the instructor, if you are concerned about this.&#xA;You might also try talking to other faculty members in this area (if there are any at your school). In my experience, most faculty members are happy to take a little time for one-on-one instruction if you're polite and genuinely interested. This is especially true if you're in the same lab. At minimum, these people may know of resources that your own instructor does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you have to tough it out, there are good study strategies that you can use. A great starting point is to form a study group with the other students. If they're getting it, they can explain it to you. If not, you can figure it out together, and at least you'll know it's not you alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T17:13:26.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2014-02-12T17:21:23.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think whether or not charging a fee is a feasible idea depends on the circumstances. There are several factors at play here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your role.&lt;/strong&gt; This is the hearer's primary perception of you.  E.g. I think it is quite common that authors who read from their book charge some fee. This would be perceived like the artistic performance you mention, and it is also the case for journalists talking about e.g. political topics. On the other hand, it is really (at least here) uncommon to charge entrance fees for scientific lectures for the public.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The topic.&lt;/strong&gt; The &quot;norms&quot; of fees for lectures may vary according to your topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about some medical topic and charge even a nominal fee, I think there is a risk of repelling people more than one could attribute to the fee: you may leave a slightly &quot;fishy&quot; impression that you are talking &lt;em&gt;for the fee&lt;/em&gt; and thus maybe you are saying what you think the audience wants to hear as opposed to giving an independent opinion. Just like the default opinion is &quot;be cautious&quot; if the lecture were sponsored say, by a pharma company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it would matter in this case if the fee is so nominal that it doesn't even cover the rent for the lecture hall. Of course in this case, you could turn the argument and say &quot;I'm charging a fee of you, dear audience, so that I do not need to go to pharma industry for sponsoring&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For topics which are also discussed politically, I think the reasoning should be roughly similar. Though people are used to hearing speakers that have a clear political opinion, and there are scenarios where it would probably be perceived as normal if entrance is charged (see the book author reading).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you are going to give an awesome experimental lecture, I think no concerns about your integrity would be linked to the fee. People may be willing to pay just as they pay the entrance fee for a science museum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that none of these points looks like drawing a larger audience (unless maybe the fees are to cover extra advertisement), just like repelling some or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A completely different consideration: &lt;strong&gt;Why not choose a smaller lecture hall?&lt;/strong&gt; It is not very pleasant to be in an empty-looking lecture hall, neither for the speaker nor for the audience. Much better if the hall small enough to be well filled. And a slightly overfilled lecture hall leaves the nice impression that far more people did come than were thought to come... May also be creating an impression that this lecture is an insider tip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T11:02:13.773" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T11:02:13.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16869" CreationDate="2014-02-12T18:04:58.517" Score="21" ViewCount="9291" Body="&lt;p&gt;After my PhD (Mechanical engineering) in 2013, I have been employed as a &quot;visiting assistant professor-TERM&quot; for 2013-2014 at the same university (in the USA). In this time I have been applying for several post-doc and faculty positions all around the world. The following fortuitous situation has now developed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was interviewed for a post doc position at a famed lab in Europe and received a job offer. This job offer is contingent on me getting security clearance for this lab and getting a long term visa. One of the ground rules laid out was I would not accept other post-doc positions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prior to this post-doc interview, I had interviewed for faculty position at US universities. Fortuitously a few weeks after this post-doc job offer, I have been offered full time faculty position at two other universities in the USA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now the reason I did apply for post-doc jobs is that they would help me build my network, publish more and help with an eventual faculty position!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am in some moral quandary now:&lt;/strong&gt; I know that I have given the post-doc PI my word and I will not renege on it. However, the faculty positions are definitely more lucrative and long term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I accepted the post-doc job because I was asked to make a decision soon and since I am a foreigner, timing is everything for me and a &quot;job in hand is worth two in the bush&quot; &lt;code&gt;Groans at quotation&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The options (likely and unlikely) that present themselves to me are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unlikely:&lt;/strong&gt; Postpone the faculty positions to Fall of 2015. I don't think these universities would want to do that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Likely:&lt;/strong&gt; Angle for better pay/better title at the post-doc jobs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping that given the experience in this forum, people could throw some light on this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: Advantages and disadvantages of these positions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages and Disadv. of Postdoc:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(+) Great change of work, reputable lab, exposure to different work culture, deadlines, work pressure, expanding professional network on both sides of atlantic&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(-)1-2 years only, relatively poor pay&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adv. and Disadv. of faculty position&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(+) Faculty position nuf' said. Much Better pay, &quot;long&quot; term&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(-) Will miss out on once in a lifetime post doc at great lab&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T18:16:53.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:18:15.820" Title="Accepted post-doc and have subsequently received offers for full time faculty position - quandary" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16862" CreationDate="2014-02-12T18:17:17.410" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I shouldn't start the answer with the judgey part, but if you don't feel like you can accept the faculty positions because of your previous commitment, why the hell didn't you pull your name from consideration the moment you accepted the European job?  On my personal list of academic job hunting sins, not withdrawing your name from a position you've decided you can't accept is much worse than declining a postdoc offer for a TT.  So, there's really no ethical choice at this point, so you may as well do what's best for you long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of starting the TT job with a delay.  This is very common in mathematics (my field); I've done it, and I know dozens of other people who have as well.  I can imagine reasons it would be harder in mechanical engineering, but it's worth a shot.  An important thing to remember as a job candidate is that once you have the offer, the tables are reversed.  They've shown their hand, they've made a time, financial and psychic investment in you, and their other candidates are slowly slipping away as they wait for your answer.  They really want you to say yes, so a concession like letting you take an initial leave is a small one.  After all, they don't even need to pay for it!  Universities are very flexible about letting you do things if they don't have to pay for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, really they should want you to do this, since you'll come to them better trained, with more fresh ideas, and a wider perspective.  So sell it on those grounds, and I bet you'll succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T18:17:17.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16821" CreationDate="2014-02-12T18:39:17.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nicholas, I am a mechanical engineering PhD and have had success applying for post-doc positions. Here is my profile (which may be relevant):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not the best publication record in peer reviewed journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High throughput of papers at peer reviewed conferences  (ASME-IMECE, ASME-HTC, APS DFD) and some allied niche meetings (Wolfram conferences, Suborbital researchers conferences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Significant teaching experience (teaching labs, undergraduate courses and graduate level courses since the opportunity presented itself). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now with my profile in mind, I applied to Post doc positions &lt;strong&gt;more than 12 months in advance of my graduation date&lt;/strong&gt;. I applied for post doc positions in early to mid 2012 in anticipation that I would join or receive a positive job offer for early 2013 and mid/late 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When approaching professors through their emails or through post doc adverts, this is what I focused on: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All&lt;/strong&gt; my applications were via email to either the Professor/PI or through post doc websites such as academicKeys, MathJobs or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CFD Jobs&lt;/a&gt; and similar others. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All&lt;/strong&gt; my applications leveraged my ability to churn out conference worthy results and my teaching skills and how they related to time management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In all cases, if I thought that my research was particularly relevant to the position I was applying to, I included a &quot;snippet&quot; of a figure or plot from my research in the cover letter and described it's applicability to the job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some cases I also included that I was available to have a conversation via a telecon/videocon/skype meeting and a good 10-15% of the PIs responded to it by having a chat with me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last two bullet points resulted in a 100% success rate for &lt;strong&gt;me&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T18:44:26.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T18:44:26.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16862" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:32:41.913" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an inherent risk when hiring good postdocs that they could get a faculty job offer and leave. Take the faculty job offer and decline the postdoc offer. It's what almost everyone in your position would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Trying to get a year off from the faculty job so you can work at the postdoc job for one year as promised is a very reasonable thing to do first. But I think it's generally a mistake to decline a faculty offer in favor of a postdoc job, unless you are very confident you can get an equal or better faculty offer in the near future.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T19:32:41.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16868" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:40:50.010" Score="11" ViewCount="1594" Body="&lt;p&gt;If research was done and paper was mostly written at institute A, but then it finally got accepted while the author moved to institute B, say, 3 years later. Should the affiliation of the author be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only Institute A: because 95% of the support was from here, and work was done here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both Institute A and B: in some sense, both institutes supported the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only Institute B: this is where the author is affiliated at the moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11151/changing-affiliation-on-publication&quot;&gt;Changing affiliation on publication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T22:38:45.890" Title="Affiliation on a paper written mostly in previous position" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16866" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:50:37.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;strong&gt;some journals have specific rules about what counts as an affiliation&lt;/strong&gt;. So if the journal has such rules you should follow them. These rules are variable, and I have seen all three of the options included. In my opinion, affiliation should match your current contact information &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt;, on top of that, match any affiliation where you conducted the research,  if possible. Note this means options (2) is best. If the journal has a rule precluding option (2), be sure to thank any institution you don't put as an affiliation in the acknowledgment section. All universities deserve credit for what they contributed. That said, in my experience the majority of people in this situation (not a huge sample size), use the affiliation that either matches their current contact information or their contact information from when they submitted the paper. However, this doesn't mean it is what they should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T22:38:45.890" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T22:38:45.890" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16866" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:56:05.717" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no fixed rules but I would opt for your option (2). The affiliation is intended to aid in facilitating contact with the author but is of course useful to a department to show count the paper as a product from that institute. By listing your former address first indicating that that is where you did most of the work and then adding the second as &lt;em&gt;present address&lt;/em&gt; provides the best and useful information for all parts. Option (1) means your present location is not disclosed which is a missed opportunity to locate you. Option (3) has the disadvantage that your former department are not associated with the work you performed there. So although all are acceptable, (2) would be the best (most polite and useful) way in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T08:21:32.763" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T08:21:32.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16862" CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:01:21.080" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A job offer which is contingent on a visa and (especially) on a security clearance is not a present job offer but the promise of a future job offer if certain conditions are met.  I had a PhD student who wanted to accept such a job, but his security clearance didn't come through in time for him to start the job (note: I'm not saying that he failed his security clearance; it just wasn't resolved in time, even though he started the procedure months in advance).  Thank goodness my student was also pursuing other job offers: he is now in a one-year temporary position with the intent to start the aforementioned postdoc next year...still assuming his security clearance comes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little confused about the &quot;no other postdoc offers&quot; clause.  Surely it cannot be that &lt;em&gt;just by applying for that job&lt;/em&gt; you promised not to apply for other postdocs?  (Why would anyone apply for a job under those conditions??) And as I understand what you've wrote, you haven't signed any forms or officially accepted anything but only given your word to someone that you intend to take the job.  (If you did intend to take this job, then as Ben Webster writes, you certainly should have written back to other jobs that interviewed you and informed them that you are off the market.  That was a mistake.  I wouldn't beat yourself up about it too much though: none of us gets much experience in these matters from the point of the job applicant.  Later we get the rest of our career looking at things from the other side, and &quot;the right thing to do&quot; becomes increasingly clear.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't formally accepted the postdoc -- and you can't do so before a security clearance comes through, in my understanding -- and the tenure-track job is much more desirable to you, than I think you are legally 100% in the clear in taking the tenure-track job.  Ethically speaking: well, you haven't acted in the best possible way, as mentioned above, and I would not lightly go back on my word to a senior academic who did me a great service....so it shouldn't be a light decision, but in my opinion it would still be understandable and ultimately acceptable if you took the tenure-track job under these circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would indeed be a classier move to explore the option of deferring the tenure track job and taking the postdoc for one academic year, or even one semester.  Deferring a tenure track offer is quite common in the contemporary academic world: in my department (mathematics, University of Georgia) about half of our recent hires have completed a postdoc and arrived one year later, and recently we had someone &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; a one-year postdoc at UGA with a tenure-track job waiting for her afterwards (which she did then go on to take).  You should understand though that that simply may not be possible for reasons having little or nothing to do with their desire to have you: the decision will probably be made rather on their ability to find personnel to cover your academic responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it may also be a good idea to communicate your thoughts to your putative supervisor.  Maybe she will be totally okay with it, and with her blessing your conscience should be pretty clear.  Or maybe changing your mind will cause trouble for her in a way that you don't see.  Either way it seems respectful to keep her informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T21:18:15.820" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:18:15.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23718" CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:55:07.780" Score="74" ViewCount="33705" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are now may different ways of increasing your research visibility: Google Scholar, laboratory/faculty/industry or even personal websites, LinkedIn, to name a few. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your opinion, how does &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; fit into all of this ? Is it really a good way of increasing the visibility of your publications and finding fellows with common research interests, or is it just a &quot;waste of time&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T08:58:08.420" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T17:21:08.477" Title="ResearchGate: an asset or a waste of time?" Tags="&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:57:53.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work is publicly funded in some way, then your outreach should be free. If attendance is poor, consider finding some other venue for your outreach, such as an event hosted by a school or museum where you will have a more &quot;captive&quot; audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11865" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T20:57:53.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16875" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:02:27.577" Score="4" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities do not accept international secondary school qualifications unless there is an agreement between countries. The agreement I think compares the standard used in the country of the university (e.g. GCSE A-levels or SQA (Advanced) Highers in the UK) with the qualifications of another country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International Students with unaccepted qualifications are given a conditional offer in some UK universities. The student has to do a &quot;Foundation Course in ......&quot; in an institution affiliated with the university (an &quot;International College&quot;) and by passing with a certain grade, they go to 2nd year of a 4 year bachelor's degree or to 1st year of a 3 year bachelor's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside the topics related to the degree, the foundation course focuses a lot on academic skills such as writing, presenting, note taking etc..&#xA;On the university transcript, the first year appears as a &quot;credit transfer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question (finally), does the admission committee look down on such certificates even if the student got the bachelor's degree with a high GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes a difference, I would appreciate it if answers are given related to: 1- entry to MS degree 2- direct entry to PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11866" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:10:46.100" Title="Does the admission committee for graduate studies look down on foundation courses" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16847" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:05:06.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to say very much about this without knowing some of the details of your research area. However, I think you are probably being a bit harsh on your supervisor, for a couple of reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, every PhD student has to start somewhere, and replicating work from a good paper, or otherwise solving and already solved problem, is a perfectly reasonable way to getter a better understanding of the area you are working in. You will gain an appreciation for some of the subtleties of the area and some insights that will help inform your future, hopefully more novel, work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if this is part of a funded project then it has to be done. Gaining experience on a funded project, especially if you can collaborate with others, is good training for your future career and a good way to make contact with people you might work with in future. It may also be that follow-on funding from this work could become part of your own future work on your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, if you can get a publication out of this work, even if it only obliquely relates to your PhD topic, will help you establish a reputation. When you come to your viva, if you have a authored few publications it will be difficult for your examiners to fail you since you have already demonstrated an ability to work at PhD level, as validated by the fact that your papers have been peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on, but you get the picture. Your supervisor probably has a number of reasons for wanting you to take this work on and it would benefit you to talk these reasons over quite openly. Don't assume that the work has no value!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11865" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:05:06.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16858" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:08:08.777" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are dodging the more difficult question - should you confront the lecturer about this problem? The answer is definitely &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. The lecturer is a professional, he or she will want to gain honest, helpful feedback to improve their performance. They are probably completely unaware that students are finding it difficult to understand the lectures, and they will not become telepathic in time for you to sit your exams. So, be polite and professional about it, but find a way to let them know. Use email if you have to. And in the mean time search out Google Scholar to gain a better understanding of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11865" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:08:08.777" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:10:46.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, if the GPA is high, this shouldn't be too much of a big deal. Normally I would look upon such a class as equivalent to an introductory-level course, and would not &quot;look down&quot; upon such a course. If the grade in such a course is poor, however, that could affect the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about reviewers at another school evaluating this course appropriately, you could always include a note about it somewhere as part of your application (either master's or PhD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:10:46.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:13:23.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As jwenting points out, there is nothing illegal in doing this. Further, since you don't really have much of a contract (yet) with the journal, there are few possible negative outcomes from this - apart from immediate rejection of your submission. Most importantly, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In all situations where you do not know if it's OK to do something with a paper, either before or after publication, &lt;strong&gt;ask the journal first&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor. Failing to do this can be interpreted as acting in bad faith and it is likely to set the editors against you from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the manuscript freely available (and possibly easily googleable) completely negates the purpose of the double blind review, as it publicly divulges your identity as the author of that manuscript. I would see this as the conflict of two things you want: (1) you want to publish in this highly-respected journal, which at least partly built its reputation through things like double-blind review, and (2) you want your paper available to everyone as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two things are incompatible, and you need to choose one of the two. You're not giving away much; you simply need to sit on the paper for maybe a month or two (or however long the review process takes) and you can then upload your eprint. You're not &quot;opposing information dissemination&quot;, you're under an embargo of sorts, which is perfectly reasonable and which you're submitting to voluntarily through your choice of journal. (Note, in particular, that public policies that mandate the open access of taxpayer-funded research do not usually require this until six months &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the publication; they definitely do not apply before it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:13:23.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:23:51.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, PhD student often have more time available than Faculty and they are actively keeping up with the literature themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disadvantages - a good review takes quite a bit of time. Advantages - it's useful experience, you can add it to your CV, you will learn a little bit more about active work in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, that's fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of writing a good review, you will find a lot of helpful advice from any Google search. The one thing I would add to that is that (at least in Computer Science) it is sometimes quite easy to spot reviews from PhD students as they tend to be harsh and unhelpful. As a student yourself you are probably used to getting a lot of feedback on your work, and that is good. Don't be tempted to take your frustration out on the poor person who has written the paper you are reviewing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that at least part of the purpose of reviewing is to &lt;strong&gt;increase&lt;/strong&gt; the quality of work in the field. If you review a paper which is rejected, likely it will be submitted elsewhere. If you accept the paper, the authors will improve it before final submission. So the purpose of the review, apart from quality control, is to tell the authors specifically how to improve their work. Avoid being vague in your criticism and avoid taking an unprofessional tone. Even if reviews are &quot;blind&quot;, write as if the authors know you (and chances are that at some point you will meet them). Think about how you would wish your supervisors to give you feedback, and take your own advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By far the best reviews I have ever had have not been the most complimentary ones, or reviews from the best places I have submitted to, but they have certainly been the most helpful. They contained comments like &quot;X is a poor presentation of the data, use the technique mentioned in paper Y&quot;. Or, &quot;the author has used technique Z, this is outdated and should be replaced with W&quot;. The worst reviews I have had may well have been correct in what they said, but they have also been rude and unhelpful. For example, &quot;X is not novel&quot; is a fine criticism to make, but to be &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; you need to say where X has been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11865" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:23:51.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:28:24.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why this hasn't come up on this thread yet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is the main open-access repository in the biomedical and life sciences. It has its own added metadata, and it is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIH_Public_Access_Policy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mandatory recipient&lt;/a&gt; of all research funded by the National Institutes of Health and a number of other funding bodies. There are also specific versions for &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canada&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Europe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:28:24.527" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16880" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:44:09.297" Score="3" ViewCount="928" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a graduate level research project, with the bonus of being listed as a co-author if I make a significant contribution (which I likely will). I am still an undergraduate, but have significant experience (professional and educational) in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is this a big deal? If I go to grad school in that field, would this allow me to obtain a PhD quicker? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I don't go to grad school, but choose to work in the field, would being listed as co-author on a research project of this level hold enough weight to warrant listing on my resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5836" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:01:15.047" Title="In what ways would co-authoring a graduate research paper as an undergraduate help me?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16879" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:48:39.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't exactly &quot;allow you to get a Ph.D quicker&quot;. However, you would have more experience in academic writing than if you hadn't contributed to the writing in the paper. Writing a paper isn't just &quot;writing&quot; a report - a lot of analysis, interpretation, and technical work goes into papers and these are skills you want to have as a Ph.D student. Being a co-author on a paper will make your application stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go into any job, you can list this as a project that you have worked on. If you are familiar with the contents of the paper, then you can talk about it as if it was another project that you've worked on. Having your name on the paper is verifiable and can look pretty impressive especially if you are familiar with the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:48:39.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16879" CreationDate="2014-02-12T21:50:30.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The benefit will hopefully be that you get to learn how to prepare and write a scientific paper. If you continue to graduate school then having been involved at this level will obviously be a positive. If you are not planning to continue with research you will still benefit from learning the process since academic writing is something you will likely continue doing in a professional role. In addition you will have some insights into how papers are written which may help you read and assess papers and reports. Since communication through written reports is key for any academic work this will be of use to you. It may not count for very much when applying for a job but you should also consider the skills you will improve when taking part in such a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T21:50:30.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16879" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:01:15.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It won't let you get a PhD quicker, but it will improve your chances of getting into PhD programs.  It will also give you valuable experience in the process of writing a paper and getting it published.  This could result in you publishing more papers during your grad school career (because you'll be better at it), which could improve your chances of getting a desirable job after you finish your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:01:15.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:10:44.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A possibility that I have not seen mentioned: contribute the lecture as part of a fundraiser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stems from the belief that while information should be free, the actions of distributing it should not.  If you find an organization (possibly even on campus) toward which you are sympathetic and might have such returned because of the subject matter of your lecture, you might offer the lecture as part of a fundraising effort, requesting a minimal contribution.&#xA;This may achieve both goals of increasing its perceived value (as suggested elsewhere in this thread) and having you perform more of a service than just delivering information.  A side benefit is that the recipient organization normally will handle the logistics of scheduling the talk and getting the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check with your university on approved ways of doing this: I have not done anything like this in this millenium, so the rules may have changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:10:44.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16785" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:21:41.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the answers above are great. I would just like to add that, if you plan to publish it on your lab's website or any personal website, you should also copy it somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.designntrend.com/articles/9739/20131220/significant-scientific-data-disappearing-alarming-rate-researchers.htm&quot;&gt;many fields&lt;/a&gt;, it appears that data (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gettinggeneticsdone.blogspot.fr/2013/01/stop-hosting-data-and-code-on-your-lab.html&quot;&gt;including original programs&lt;/a&gt;) is disappearing all the time. When a lab moves to another University, closes, or undergoes any kind of restructuration, its website is likely to change, and data stored there can be lost. So, unless your University has a centralised repository, you should put your code where it can stay for decades, for instance on Github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11867" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:21:41.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:28:56.387" Score="7" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on the waiting list for a Ph.D. program I applied to. I sent an email indicating that the program in question is my top choice and that I am interested in discussing my qualifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reply I received an email asking whom I see as potential advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reply also indicated that the department is looking in to some of the issues I discussed in my application, and that there are multiple things to consider including how well research interests match, funding and time constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've set up a meeting with the person to discuss these topics. I've already updated my list of potential advisors, but there was not sufficient time to contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I prepare for this meeting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11816" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T04:05:24.053" Title="How to prepare for a meeting regarding a Ph.D. program I'm wait listed on?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16894" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:43:07.327" Score="25" ViewCount="9634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that I've contacted professors in the United States and referred to them appropriately as &quot;Dr. Smith&quot; or &quot;Professor Smith&quot; based on their having attained a Ph.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If they respond to me informally, should I continue to address them formally? If so, for how long?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11816" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T23:06:41.130" LastActivityDate="2020-12-20T20:06:41.070" Title="After initial contact, how long should I address a professor as &quot;Dr. Smith&quot; or &quot;Professor Smith&quot;?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:55:02.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dr. [Last name]&quot; is more common and also more versatile because it covers people with a doctoral degree but not involved with academic organization. If you do know that person does teach or you are/were in his/her class, then &quot;Professor [Last name]&quot; works as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formality can be toned down when the other side writes something like &quot;Please call me [First name].&quot; Otherwise, keep using &quot;Dr.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that it's safe to be more collegial while the other side still keeps addressing you formally as Mr. Hundt or Dr. Hundt, you can take the initiative to say &quot;Please call me Andrew.&quot; Usually, a socially viable person (notice that social skills can be scarce among PhDs, but give it some patience and eventually this will happen) should reply and say, &quot;Please call me [First name] as well.&quot; If not, look pass the awkwardness and keep using Dr. [Last name] until perhaps you two get to meet and be more acquainted during the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T23:01:17.753" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:01:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T23:11:06.477" Score="26" ViewCount="2357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a US-based researcher who recently accepted a postdoc in Sweden. My offer letter states that I will be entitled to a 6-week annual vacation during my appointment. Being from the US where I have been in charge of structuring my own schedule (except for teaching), this obviously confuses me for several reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, I am not sure if we are legally entitled to vacation days in the US, but even if we were, I have never seen people officially take &quot;vacations&quot; in the US. This is, in my mind what school administrative staff or office workers do, not academics. Over the past years, I have structured my work and vacation time around my teaching schedule and figured out when to rest and when to work on my own without having to count days or ask my department's permission. Of course nobody cares when I take vacations as long as my vacation time does not overlap with my teaching schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So the fact that my new department is emphasizing &quot;legal vacation hours&quot; is a little strange. What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, does the fact that the school is counting vacation days mean that I have to be in my office during &quot;normal work hours&quot;? I've never heard anything sillier, because for academics, number of hours in office does not equate productivity, and I actually like switching up my work location time to time rather than being stuck in an office! (In the US, I only show up to school about 3 days a week-- mostly when I have to teach and want to be in office. Other days, I just go to a local cafe to write. If possible, I'd like to keep things this way...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if anyone can clarify what academic vacation means in Europe and if it really differs from the US? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="11154" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T23:44:56.720" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:02:04.813" Title="What does it mean to have vacation time in European academia?" Tags="&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2014-02-12T23:28:20.117" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;For email, the general rule of thumb is to address the person in the same way in which they sign their emails to you. If they always sign as &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Doctor&quot;, you should address them by the same title. If they sign informally; i.e.  &quot;Chris&quot; or &quot;Dr. J.&quot;, address them by that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets a little more complicated when speaking face to face, and here I tend to err on the side of formality, and use Doctor or Professor unless and until they ask me to do otherwise. As @Penguin_Knight states above, you may need to take the initiative and ask them to call you by &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; first name and hope they get the hint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:28:20.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2014-02-12T23:37:22.253" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to European vacation regulations :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are entitled to X days of vacations per year. Literally. There's no hook to it. You simply ask the employer, basically your direct supervisor (head of the group, department, dean?), and if there's no reason to say &quot;no&quot;, they will approve it. Of course taking time off during days when you are teaching needs to be explained very very well, but if your vacation days do not interfere with teaching obligations, or similar duties, you will be given the time off. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally at universities, unless you have a very fussy boss, nobody cares when you take vacations time (still recall non-interference with teaching), but most people take several weeks off in the summer and people with a family also during school vacation periods (country dependent). In companies, the system tends to be stricter, you should plan any longer breaks several months ahead and coordinate with your colleagues so that it does not happen that everybody leaves for two weeks and a company stops. At universities that is a non-issue, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal vacation time means you are entitled to that time. The employer is obliged to give you that time off. Suppose they will refuse to approve your vacations when you wish to take them (e.g., when you work in agricultural sector you shouldn't leave at the harvest time). In that (rare!) case, they will have to select and offer you another period of (usually at least two weeks of uninterrupted) vacations period some other time in the year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is another potential surprise for you. If you won't take all your vacations in a year, since you are entitled to that time, it will be (in all countries and places I worked, but there might be local differences) shifted into the next year when you will be entitled to the standard X days per year according to the union negotiations PLUS whatever carry-over from the last year. The regulations regarding how far into the future that contingent of vacation days can be pushed differ, but normally the carry-over is useful in the very next year in full. Sometimes you might even be obliged to take it. Because if not, the employer might have a problem - again, you are entitled to vacations. And the employer can even force you take time off in order to use that vacations budget. The reason is that they don't like the idea of accumulating and then even making use of several months of vacations in a row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being in the workplace during working hours, again, regulations differ but most of the time there is at least a certain period (10oo-15oo?) when you are obliged to be there. But in reality at universities I never heard of anybody making any fuss about this (except for Eastern European universities, where it can be a matter of local department politics - but that is of no concern to your case). Think about it as a legal issue. If something happens to you at office hours (a car accident), it might be considered a work-related accident, so the employers try to counter-act that by requiring you to be in the office unless allowed not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You structure your time. It doesn't have to be the way you describe. What use does an employer have of burned out and stressed out employees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even later edit:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Just for completeness, being entitled to take vacations also means that often you will be able to trade days off for salary. Usually the union contracts regulate, or prevent this, but for example when you are leaving, the employer will either compensate the unused fraction of the annual vacations budget by money, or will force you to take it right before leaving the position - during that time you will receive the regular salary up to the date of leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1265" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T12:05:59.757" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T12:05:59.757" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16858" CreationDate="2014-02-12T23:40:45.733" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a lecturer in Asia, I appreciate what you are saying. I have some colleagues who are Asian who are quite clear when they speak English and others with whom I require a minute or two to even recognize when they are speaking English because their accent is so strong. You have to work with what you've got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you could confront your lecturer, as snim2 said in an answer, you need to be delicate about this. The lecturer could find you condescending or insulting. Even if the lecturer does not think you are being purposefully hurtful, making a lecturer self-conscious about his accent might make him an even worse lecturer (of course, it could help, depending on his personality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend talking to the lecturer and simply say something like this: &lt;strong&gt;Hi teacher, I'm finding it necessary to read more about this topic in order to do well in your class. Could you point me in the direction of some reading material that I can use to improve my understanding of your subject?&lt;/strong&gt; (then stop talking)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the reading materials, focus your learning there, perhaps with some genuine emails to your lecturer, if he allows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the lecturers I've met with horrible English will happily go out of their way to find some material for you to read. Either they will recommend a textbook, some articles, or they will have some material they have collected on their own. I don't believe I have ever met a university lecturer who would be offended by this approach nor have I met one who would not support a student with such a request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:40:45.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16747" CreationDate="2014-02-13T00:26:42.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have at least 40 % new material you can submit your paper to journals and you should also cite the other paper without any hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11839" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T00:26:42.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T01:26:51.940" Score="9" ViewCount="3065" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how the search committees take into account feedback that is provided by faculty members who meet one-on-one with a candidate. I am curious about both the process as well as how the committee considers the feedback when making their decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, does the faculty member who meets with the candidate email the committee as soon as the discussion is done to write about how the meeting went? Are they evaluating the candidate on &quot;culture fit&quot;, technical prowess, teaching/research, etc.? Do they have veto power over a candidate? Do they meet with the search committee and discuss candidates after everyone's met with each one? Is it the same faculty who meet one-on-one with the candidates, or does it depend on who's available that day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm rather interested in the process of how it works, for those who have been on search committees, and that is why I ask this question. I am most interested in responses for research interviews for institutions in the United States but experiences from other locations would be valuable as I am sure that the process is not identical even within one country (or even one department).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/946/interview-strategies-for-faculty-positions-to-focus-on-their-research-or-your/947#947&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; is highly related, but isn't specifically addressing what I am wondering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:09:53.137" Title="How do search committees use feedback from one-on-one faculty meetings during an academic interview?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2014-02-13T01:59:07.017" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is so highly dependent on particular universities -- let alone particular regions -- that it is probably best just to ask students and faculty what is the culture at their particular university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give one example.  At most American universities you should begin by calling all your instructors by &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Professor&quot;, although in some cases your instructors will be neither one of these and should probably say so in response.  For anyone who is either a Doctor (i.e., has a doctoral degree) or a Professor (in the United States this usually means &quot;is on the tenure track&quot;, but already there are variations...), it seems a bit rude not to use one of these two appellations.  When students call me &quot;Mr. Clark&quot; I assume they are just forgetting that they are not in high school anymore.  But whether &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Professor&quot; is preferred is highly variable.  At my university it seems that &quot;Dr.&quot; is the go-to appellation: I have even heard other faculty refer to me as &quot;Dr. Clark&quot; when talking to students.  Nevertheless I prefer being called &quot;Professor&quot;: getting my PhD was nice.  Getting a tenure-track job took place three years later, and that's when I really made it big.  However at some places you call people &quot;Professor&quot; because you are not sure whether they have a doctorate, and for the ones who do, &quot;Dr.&quot; is the superior honorific.  Et cetera...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I believe I learned some of this from Paul Halmos's &lt;em&gt;Automathography&lt;/em&gt;, which I highly recommend to all academics and not just to mathematicians: to mathematicians I would &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; that you read it if I could!  He goes on to explain more nuances than I did above.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you call your instructor also depends on things like their age, their gender, and honestly perhaps even their ethnic background.  As a tenured Caucasian male, the desired aura of authority is already there: I don't have to do anything special to summon it. On the other hand I am still &quot;young&quot; -- closer in age to some of my students than some of my colleagues -- so if I met a student in a non-academic context I would not want any deferential treatment.  (This is also a generational thing: telemarketers, phone company employees and so forth now call me and refer to me by my first name, and I wonder where our civilization is heading...) I am totally okay being called by my first name by any university student.  Whether they are similarly okay doing so is another question, but I encourage this behavior particularly from former students and in contexts outside out of the university campus.  If I were 65 years old and wearing a suit, calling me by my first name would seem less appropriate.  (In fact I had to steel myself at first to call all of my colleagues by their first names, even the ones who were famous mathematicians before I was born.  But that is definitely contemporary American academic culture: any of my colleagues who calls me &quot;Dr. Clark&quot; is signalling that they want to strangle me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that it is especially important not to use less formal appellations for female faculty.  I covered a colleague's class a few weeks ago, and one of the students asked a question, beginning with &quot;Miss Matic said...&quot; And my answer began &quot;Well, first things first: it's &lt;strong&gt;Dr. Matic&lt;/strong&gt;...&quot; I then got the student to agree that that was the correct thing to say before moving on to address the question.  Also I feel honorbound to stand more carefully on honorifics when addressing minorities.  It is sad to me that contemporary American society has not gotten past the point where this seems necessary...but it hasn't yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T01:59:07.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16747" CreationDate="2014-02-13T03:31:16.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the new paper you are submitting adds something significant on how the data was generated it should be OK to include it again and cite the other papers- it would be not formally correct to not cite them especially since you contributed the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11877" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T03:31:16.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T03:53:30.837" Score="53" ViewCount="23311" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or how would you like to be addressed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate TA, I went by my first name. But I thought that some students were becoming too friendly. They took things for granted (for example, asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse, or showing up to my office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you ask? Sign my email Dr. LASTNAME? That sounds pretentious. Should I just use initials (FL for FIRSTNAME LASTNAME)? I sign all my emails with my first name, but doing that for students is an open invitation to call them by my first name. How do people transition from a graduate TA to someone with a PhD in front of a class full of undergraduate students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**EDIT: I have had several students be truly rude to me, but in keeping with the spirit of anonymity, I did not describe in detail what happened. But My colleagues were shocked and appalled at some of the behaviors that I have encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I do very well with evaluations, often nearing perfect score, and my students score well above average in multi-section calculus classes. As you might imagine, my classes are fairly well-attended with high level of  participation. Of course there are pros and cons of familiarity, but I am somewhat puzzled at this display of lack of authority in my classroom, as all of my colleagues also go by their first names. I hope this is more information.**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorDisplayName="user9646" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T09:33:56.940" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T02:57:01.743" Title="How to sign your email to students, so to avoid their immature behavior?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T06:38:51.577" Score="3" ViewCount="2823" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two days ago I was in discussion with a colleague of mine about the possible PhD studies destinations. We both agreed that the chances of getting post-Doc job or any full position are higher in the country we finish PhD (Maybe you have different opinion). However, we ended up discussion two potential (native English-speakers) countries, namely, Canada and Australia. We both had a vague idea about post PhD stage (academia or industry), so we had not much to share. My question is which country is &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; better in terms of the following (computer science field):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research sector prospects (is there any studies indicate which country has stronger research profile in computer science - my gut feeling is Canada at least from  the world universities ranking in computer science)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic career path (What are the possible career paths for PhD graduates? (tenure track, postdoc, lab researchers ... etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finance benefits (taking into account the living cost in both countries, which of the countries, the academic career stand stronger comparing to the industrial jobs in terms of financial benefits)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice to improve the question is most welcomed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T07:10:39.667" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T07:10:39.667" Title="Canada vs. Australia for the academic career" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-02-13T18:02:27.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16793" CreationDate="2014-02-13T07:00:18.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think David Ketcheson's answer is the right way to approach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that I'd like to add to it is that you might not be that original: there are plenty of interdisciplinary programs that do this sort of heavy collaboration between fields, there could already be a program that focuses on what you want (or something close to it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Machine Learning is the intersection of Statistics and Computer Science. There are Statistics departments that do ML research, there are CS departments that do ML research, and Carnegie Mellon University has and entire Machine Learning department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T07:00:18.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16847" CreationDate="2014-02-13T07:46:44.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have serious doubts about the value and success of your PhD project, try to change the supervisor and the laboratory. It is the job of the supervisor to persuade you that the project will succeed under the normal expected work input from your side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supervisor may use arguments like he and his laboratory has multiple published works in this area, there are some preliminary results that show good prospects, it has never been a failed PhD project under his supervision, etc. If heard and proven, these may be reasonable to consider. From the other side, your case as described looks miserable, if you see everything correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important, do not try to suggest and push alternative topic yourself as you are not competent to do this. Even if the supervisor would yield at the end, your idea may actually be worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2016-03-11T17:44:48.063" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T17:44:48.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16824" CreationDate="2014-02-13T08:44:25.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: in France you have to find first the supervisor, then you apply for a funding. If you have a funding of your own, you have to find a supervisor to be admitted. In both cases : you need the supervisor first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is various things to know when you apply for a PhD in France :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is forbidden to be a PhD without having funding. In France a PhD student is considered both as a student and an employee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The funding can be a state funding, an industrial funding, a funding on a research contract (either from a national funding agency or a company), or you can also do your PhD while working elsewhere (some teachers in secondary schools are doing their PhD this way).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Industrial funding and research contract are basically given to the supervisor, who can choose alone amongst all candidates. So for PhD with those fundings you have to contact directly the targeted supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State funding is given by a committee to a bundle (candidate, subject), this means that a professor, with a subject, has to find a candidate and then propose to the committe this candidate on his subject. Then the candidate is on his own : (s)he will generally have to send an application letter, with a reference letter from the supervisor, and if (s)he is shortlisted, (s)he will have to make a short presentation (either on location or using skype or a similar service).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last case: you are funded on your own (job, external funding for foreigners). Even in this case, the procedure is that you find the supervisor, then you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T08:44:25.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T08:57:54.300" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like JeffE's comment, I always prefer students to call me by my first name. My male &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; female, Asian &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; white colleagues also prefer to be called by their first name. There are some exceptions where they insist on some title according to local custom for showing respect. However, I do not have the problem you describe (students expecting unreasonable things and acting in completely unprofessional ways). The reasons that I do not have to deal with these problems is because I simply do not accept them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I am fairly strict but also fair and I always try to be open, transparent, and predictable to my students. They know if they arrive to class late, they are absent. If they submit late, they fail. They want more time, they won't get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see how what I allow them to call me (excluding rude names) would result in overly familiar behavior. Indeed, many of my Asian colleagues are far closer to students than I would ever allow myself to become. The ones who demand more formal forms of address are the ones who seem to get the closest with students. Perhaps this is how they remind students that they are still the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, student behavior is driven by your attitude towards them and you can convey a tone of seriousness in the relationship without requiring formal salutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T22:33:56.873" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T22:33:56.873" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16947" CreationDate="2014-02-13T09:10:49.203" Score="10" ViewCount="1386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an upcoming interview/campus visit for an assistant professor TT position with a US R1 university in the sciences. They have asked that I bring a details about my desired startup package to the campus visit. I have never heard of anyone being asked for details about their startup package prior to an offer being made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to have two effects. First, to some extent my startup package depends on what is already available in the department and the interests of the department. Second, it seems it potentially changes the negotiations. With an offer in hand, you can ask for more in your startup package, since they may not give you what you want, but they won't take the offer away. If I ask for too much in my startup package before having an offer, they may not even make an offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I have three questions. First, is it common for US universities to ask for details about the desired startup package prior to making an offer? Second, how does this change what I should include in my startup package request? Third, can I ignore this request and only give them a general outline of what I need to do my research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T00:24:35.170" Title="Request for startup package details at interview stage" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T09:46:54.153" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;As earthling says, student behavior toward you is influenced by a lot more than how you have them address you.  But that doesn't mean that how they address you isn't a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can depend a lot on the culture of your institution and department.  If all the other faculty in your department have students address them by last name, and you stand out as more informal, it may well make it more difficult to establish authority in the classroom.  (Especially if you are, e.g., younger / more soft-spoken / shorter / more female than many of your colleagues.)  On the other hand, if the students are used to addressing all of the faculty by first name and you stand out as more formal, you may come across as either unfriendly or as trying too hard.  You should ask your new colleagues about what the common practice is in your new department.  (But you also don't want them to think you're overly worried about student interactions.  Explain that you're just trying to get to know the local culture so you can fit in.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide, you can establish what you want to be called with how you introduce yourself at the beginning of class.  (Amazingly to me, many instructors never think to introduce themselves to the class.)   At different institutions (with different cultures, and at which I held different positions), I've either started the first day of class with &quot;I'm Mark&quot; or &quot;I'm Professor Meckes&quot;.  If you do decide to go by last name, you should definitely not sign email to students with only your first name.  I use my full name; many other people I know use initials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T09:46:54.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T10:10:04.000" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add to the other answers by taking a wider look. The way students and teachers address each other is not only a difference between universities etc. it is also a cultural difference. Some cultures (countries) are more title oriented than others. In Sweden (and the rest of the Nordic countries), titles were largely laid aside in the late 1960s/early 1970s. If a Swedish student approached me as &quot;Professor Jansson&quot; I would almost be shocked. If a foreign student did the same I would not react since I am aware that titles are handled differently around the world. Being aware of differences should therefore be in everybody's mind and also that adhering to local customs may be necessary, regardless of ones opinion on the matter. It should be said that laying titles to the side is not the same as removing politeness and respect. So awareness of the local culture shows respect and etiquette but realizing cultures vary is also a sign of tolerance. As long as both parties tries to be respectful and help each other to find the proper (local) way much will be gained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T10:10:04.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16832" CreationDate="2014-02-13T10:25:22.573" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add one point not mentioned by other answers so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fast moving fields (e.g., most of computer science), a great benefit of publishing technical reports in recognised/citable series (at least an ISSN)  and/or arXiv is to get a citable reference &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; publication in a more serious venue, such as a conference, or a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the workflow is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write and polish a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;before a submission to a serious venue, publish it as a TR/arXiv preprint (unless this clashes with a double-blind, or copyright policies of the target venue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submit to the target venue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;right the next day you can write a next paper referring the work you published as a preprint. It can be either an incremental work, or something else using the result you achieved recently, etc. All this you can do way earlier than the paper really appears in proceedings, or a journal issue.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the work was accepted at the target venue, good for you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if it wasn't, you still can refer to the work, while improving it and submitting next time/elsewhere/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, the turn-around time is what this is all about. Of course one should be later careful regarding replacing references to TRs with references to the really published stuff in CR versions - if there's time/space for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T10:25:22.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T10:34:09.707" Score="15" ViewCount="1906" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose candidate A has only published alone, and in an alternate universe candidate B has an identical list of publications, most of which are with coauthors. All else being equal, would a typical hiring committee rate A higher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answer depends highly on the field; I'm especially interested in (pure) math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11884" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T03:05:22.240" Title="Are single author publications given more weight in math hiring?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T10:36:30.640" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether&#xA;  asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the&#xA;  rudeness that I've encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, what students call you will probably have some impact on how they behave, but I would not stress about it. As you say in a comment, many white males (myself included) don't have these types of authority issues. On the other hand, my wife used to regularly have students tell her inappropriate personal things because they think she is their mother or act inappropriately because they think she is weak/helpless. The way to resolve these issues is to tackle them head on and not change what they call you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a male I keep my office door open when meeting with students to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct. My wife keeps her office door open to try and prevent sexual misconduct and to cut down on the student crying. She has developed a low tolerance for students going off topic and stops most in their tracks by asking if she should call the student counselling services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US and UK system, I find that telling students what you expect and making it clear you are not their friend from the first day of class helps a lot. If you are a women you also need to make it clear you are not their mother. Tell them extensions require a doctors note or a death certificate. Tell them that personal issues should be taken up with counselling services. Point out that sexual misconduct and bullying is not tolerated in your classroom and that you will report any and all incidents. Then explain you have office hours and what types of issues can be discussed during them. Finally, explain how they can contact you (e.g., no text messages and grammatically correct emails). Somewhere in this introduction, you can tell them what to call you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for signing an email, don't. A signature is redundant with information in the message header and in this case can only cause problems. An auto attached footer with your full name and titles and contact information is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T14:43:34.837" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:43:34.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T11:02:14.290" Score="3" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know of a good and easy-to-use application to create simple but visually appealing vector figures such as spheres, planes, lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should permit transparencies for example, and 3D coordinate representation to be able to show concepts in the 3D space, such as tangency or crossing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11888" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T17:53:18.063" Title="Application to create 3D figures for papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-02-13T18:04:56.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T11:11:18.933" Score="7" ViewCount="6191" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my works I cite several times this kind of publications, but I don't know the recommended procedure to refer to them at the end. For articles I usually take &lt;code&gt;bibtex&lt;/code&gt; code from Google Scholar or a similar site, but these papers do not figure there. I'm not sure even whether the &lt;em&gt;best writing practice&lt;/em&gt; is to cite them or just to cite the main article, when referring to some specific information that is not published in this main article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9715" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:49:10.220" Title="How to cite Nature's &quot;Supplementary Information&quot; papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2014-02-13T11:56:39.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The parts of the question about vacation days have been answered above.  Formally, you're supposed to arrange your vacation days in advance; in practice, this usually means going to the person you report to (e.g., the professor you're working for as a postdoc) a reasonable time in advance and saying, &quot;I was thinking of taking X time off; is that going to be OK?&quot; The answer is usually yes, unless you're supposed to be teaching in that time, in which case you'll need a really good reason to be away and you'll need to arrange cover.  &quot;Reasonable&quot; just means, you know, reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to the &quot;Can I work in a cafe instead of my office?&quot; part is that it's up to your employer, so ask them.  You will probably find that your employment contract specifies your &quot;normal place of work&quot; as being the university department. However, academic staff are usually trusted to work sufficient hours in a suitable place without being managed in detail. As long as the people you're working with are happy for you to work outside the office, that's fine. If you're working collaboratively with somebody else, you might be expected to spend more time in the office than in cafes, so you're available for discussions but I doubt anyone would demand you work in the office just because &quot;that's where you're supposed to be.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it's probably not going to be an issue. You and the people you're working with will quickly figure out something you're all comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T11:56:39.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T12:46:10.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Localized answer: I'm in Germany and in my work experience also [the north of?] Italy thinks along the same lines. Both languages have the concept of changing pronouns as well as first name vs. last name to express different grades of formality and closeness)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spoken interaction with students&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The default here is to address TAs by &quot;Sie&quot; (formal pronoun) and last name. Addressing in everyday spoken language by Dr. is becoming more and more unusual, it is still the default with people who are much older and/or are known to put much emphasis on this formality. Same with Prof., the default being slightly more on formal side. Needless to say, the TA or prof also adresses the students by &quot;Sie&quot; and last name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For mass courses (labwork practica where I have different groups of students on every occasion or seminars), we just stay with the formal way of adressing. These courses typically have a comparably low number of one-to-one interactions with the student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When students join our research group, I offer the &quot;Du&quot; (informal pronoun): this is done by (re)introducing yourself &quot;By the way, I'm Firstname&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a student I found it &lt;em&gt;very awkward&lt;/em&gt; if the teachers weren't clear about this: in our culture it is clearly up to the more senior (also or even mainly professionally more senior) person to offer to drop the formalities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;e-mails&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For inner-German emails I'd still consider it rude not to put an opening line and a closing line to the body. For e-mail exchange with other countries I adapt to their customs as far as I know them. In my language the way the recipient is adressed and the email is signed state how formal or close the relaionship is to be. This is information the email adresses and the full email signature cannot provide. The full signature below the &quot;--&quot; line is the place where full professional grades and position go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emailing with students without these &quot;instructions&quot; may be perceived as rude or also as &lt;em&gt;insecure&lt;/em&gt;. The mass-course email starts with &quot;Dear Mr./Ms. X&quot;, or less formally &quot;Dear seminar group A&quot; and ends with &quot;Best, Firstname Lastname&quot; or less formally just with &quot;Firstname Lastname&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I close with abbreviation (&quot;VG C&quot;) only with close collaborators. In that case, opening and closing line may be dropped as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Students becoming &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; friendly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to live up to the stereotype that Germany are direct to the level of being rude. Here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In German language, the concept of &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; friendly with a negative connotation does not exist, friendly is unambiguously positive. From that perspective, I'd say that your &quot;too friendly&quot; is a euphemism for something along the lines of presuming and rude, not respecting you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &lt;strong&gt;in the described situation I'd try hard to avoid any euphemisms about the student behaviour&lt;/strong&gt; as they may be perceived as a sign of you lacking confidence in yourself, and submitting to the badly behaving student: your language offers them a very easy way to ignore your request. If that happens (and I'd think it more likely to happen with rude students...), good-bye to the student respecting you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even (or maybe: particularly?) in a culture that relies less on formal distinctions (like the formal way of adressing) if someone doesn't know and doesn't get the hints how to behave themselves, it may help to tell them in clear words what is expected and that not behaving accordingly leaves a very bad impression. I'd take them aside to tell that, and I'd make a point that I don't particularly grudge this first time - but that I'm concerned because in a professional environment such non-respecting behaviour may cut their throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T12:46:10.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:36:49.413" Score="6" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people use ps over pdf format for their paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some advantages of ps format over pdf format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T09:40:31.987" Title="Is ps preferred over pdf format in some cases?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16919" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:41:47.580" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no advantages of PS over PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any modern computer system that can display PS files can also display PDF files. (The converse is certainly not true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any modern computer system that can produce PS files can also produce PDF files. (Again, the converse is not true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any material that you can present with a PS file can be presented equally well with a PDF file. (Again, the converse is not true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastEditorUserId="351" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T09:40:31.987" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T09:40:31.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16906" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:47:54.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've also never seen this at universities in the US (or elsewhere in the world) but I've seen it a lot in industry. I'm guessing someone came in to 'shake things up' or they hired a consultant and are trying things differently this time. Therefore, I will answer with respect to industry which I'm guessing will actually be applicable in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common negotiation technique to get 'the other guy' to make the first offer with the belief this puts him in a weaker position. This seems to be what they are doing and as you stated in your question, when they make the first offer you are indeed in a stronger position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your last question, could you ignore their request and simply not give them a number, tread lightly on this point. Some hiring people will become angry when you don't follow the rules and will count it as one reason not to make you an offer at all (or lower your offer because you are unable to follow simple instructions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as how to actually handle the negotiations, like any negotiations, it is MUCH better if you are negotiating from a stance of understanding how you can work together to benefit each other. That is, don't get locked into a 'the more I get, the less you keep' train of thought. The goal is to be creative and find a way that you can actually ADD value to the equation and then divide that new value between the both of you...leading to the win-win settlement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is if you must make some kind of an offer blind and you have no personal rapport developed with your counterpart, it is very difficult to go down the win-win path. At that point, I would see if you can find a way to change the situation and start building some kind of relationship (even a telephone call can make a huge difference with regards to finding a genuine win-win solution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are stuck and you cannot have any any meaningful conversation before you give a number, then the best I can say is to make a serious statement about what you would like but make it in terms of ranges (say between $100 and $120 &lt;em&gt;[replace with reasonable numbers for you]&lt;/em&gt; per month depending on the rest of the details). By offering a range you have retained some flexibility but allowed them what they demanded: Something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might guess, they may lock in on the lower number. However, you have not committed to that lower number firmly because of 'the rest of the details' you included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T13:47:54.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:48:02.140" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not worry too much about it. The way you're being addressed has very little to do with the respect students give, otherwise all these tyrants in the history would have been very respectable. Just go with how your peer professors being called, and use that as a benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more importantly, try not to pick one imperfection and magnify it to out of proportion. Zoom out and evaluate these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;... asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse... &quot; Does the syllabus specify that there has to be an excuse? If not, why do they have to give one (or worse, make one up?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;... office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious... &quot; Hmmm... I can't understand what the problems are. If it's crossing the line, then casually, with a bit of humor, tell them jokes will be for another time, focus on the questions on [the subject].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did teaching and learning actually happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the flip side, with this &quot;friendliness,&quot; are the students also more willing to ask questions and give comments in class? When you walk by the groups during their discussion, did they immediately incorporate you, or close up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, may I humbly suggest you not to stand out there, getting all ready to be offended? In the contrary, when these &quot;bad&quot; behaviors happen, an educator should use the opportunity to teach, not to internalize the (real/imaginary) lack of respect, get all angry and proceed to pout for the rest of the day. We are their first line to test their  professional interactions, and both the students and the teacher will benefit by being leaning towards more reflective than judgmental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally to answer your question. I teach in the US and go by my first name. One year, I decided to keep a beard (bad decision, please don't ask) and all the students called me professor. Having tried both, I will not think twice opting for first name-based interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T13:48:02.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2014-02-13T14:26:24.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, Doctor is reserved for individuals who have completed their doctorate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think most educators that have taken on the arduous task of completing their PhD would be offended by students addressing non-PhD professors as 'Dr.'. Although there are several PhDs I know who prefer NOT to be addressed as 'Dr.', I would never make that assumption unless specifically requested to refrain from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11893" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:26:24.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2014-02-13T14:55:09.890" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer will just clarify Swedish conditions since that is where you are heading. The following applies to Swedish universities and other state employment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fixed number of days of vacation are given by law and varies a little depending on seniority and other factors. The basic number is 35 workdays a year. If you are employed a shorter time the number decreases directly as the fraction of the time of a year you work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vacation days are salaried and you also receive a smaller amount extra for vacation days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be asked to place your vacation days in advance. You can always change the dates later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will not be insured for work-place accidents by your employer on your vacation days. This means you should retract vacation days if you actually work when you should be on vacation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You cannot save more than 31 days of vacation in total to be carried over from one year to the next. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you complete your position, days of vacation not taken will be reimbursed as payment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A work week is 40 hours and you should normally be at work. However, there are possibilities to get permission to work from home, particularly during summer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality no-one really cares if you work or not on vacation days but as I stated above there are possible negative effects one should be aware of. No-one cares where and when you work. As a post-doc you will probably not be involved in much bureaucracy and so all you need to figure out is when your collaborators want you to be there and learn the local &lt;em&gt;modus operandi&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not advice you to be invisible since part of a career in academia means involving yourself in activities and politics of departments. People will probably not be very up-front with their opinions about your presence/absence but will not look very favourable on someone who gets a salary and an office and never shows up. A funny law in Sweden is also the coffee(tea)-break, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. this is a time and place where you socialize with others in the workplace apart from immediate colleagues. You absence from these will not go unnoticed. This will not prevent you from working elsewhere for weeks at a time if you wish but showing some presence outside of mandatory chores will likely be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:55:09.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T14:55:23.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another localized answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in Ukraine and when I was doing PhD, I was giving also some Calculus workshops instead of my supervisor, so undergrads were calling me by my first name and father's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common practice in many post-soviet countries and probably many Slavic countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably preferred if they called me Sir [FirstName] or something like that instead of calling me by my first name and father's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I have never send emails to my students, so I didn't have to sign my emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I have done some wrong things like accepting their friend requests in social network. I shouldn't do that because they didn't take me seriously and were trying to solve some formal issues through social network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it doesn't really matter how to sign your email. More important is how do you allow to treat yourself, you shouldn't allow students to bully you or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I allowed my students to treat me too informal, now I realize it was a huge mistake. I shouldn't ever do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11894" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:55:23.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7211" CreationDate="2014-02-13T15:12:16.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I just came across this questions. I think walkmanyi already came up with a nice overview. However, I realized that the SCImago Journal Rank indicator was not mentioned so far. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCImago_Journal_Rank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; SCImago uses the same formula as that for the calculation of the Thomson Reuters impact factor. SCImago also features many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=conference&amp;amp;tip=jou&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conferences&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11892" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:12:16.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16915" CreationDate="2014-02-13T15:49:10.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementary information is always part of a paper. Just cite that paper as you would normally do. If you want to specifically mention in your text that you are referring to supplementary information you can just call it by its title, something like &quot;(Supplementary Figure 2)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:49:10.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16914" CreationDate="2014-02-13T15:49:15.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_vector_graphics_editors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia link&lt;/a&gt; you can find a list of different vector graphics softwares available, giving some details on their use and characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question it is hard to say what is it that you want to do and seems similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/software-to-draw-illustrative-figures-in-papers/15766#15766&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. Plus, there is probably not a single answer to this question. I personally use &lt;strong&gt;Inkscape&lt;/strong&gt;, which is quite powerful in terms of possibilities and it's &lt;em&gt;Open Source&lt;/em&gt; !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T17:53:18.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:02:04.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson&quot;&gt;Peter Jansson's&lt;/a&gt; answer is right on the spot. I'd just add a few more pieces of advice and &amp;quot;exemplary&amp;quot; cases I picked up along the way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most people here in Europe will refer to their PhD/postdoc as a &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;school&lt;/em&gt; (you're not going to school, you're working)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it's almost the &lt;em&gt;perfectly evaluated job&lt;/em&gt;: people judge you by how much you produce, not how much time you behind is in you office chair (of course, the &amp;quot;almost&amp;quot; part comes from all the things &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson&quot;&gt;Peter Jansson&lt;/a&gt; already warned you about: you should be there and visible)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you have an obligation away from the office, or in some cases, it's simpler to work from home, nobody usually has a problem with it. Last year, I think I had maybe 5-6 days when I did not go to the office at all and worked from hom, and another 5ish when I had obligations in the middle of the day and would spend half a day working from home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these included after-flue recovery (e.g. I felt fine but was coughing frequently... I worked from home as to not disturb my noise-sensitive officemate), some tasks were just simpler to do from home (some tests etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People in Europe actually would like you to have free &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; time and not to rush all the time: (this might be a bit special cause I'm in France, but) I strongly suspect that our lab cafeteria is closing at 5:15PM to deprive people of coffee and make them go home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This whole &amp;quot;free time&amp;quot; of course does not work: I know people coming to the office around noon and leaving between 10PM and midnight on a regular basis. Nobody minds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;... unless you don't have any overlap with your team and especially your supervisor. You should have a schedule that overlaps with their at least partially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where I am, it's not really sunny really often, and there's a lot of people that start missing the sun very soon. I had a friend who would spend every single sunny afternoon in a cafe (working) instead of the office. He was sharing the office with his supervisor -- and it was okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is very rare for you to be able to take a long chunk of vacations at once (except for 1st year PhDs): precisely cause of deadlines, proposals and other things that wait for nobody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the most frequent uses of vacation days among European PhD students is extending their conferences and other official travel. The university does not generally mind for which days they buy the plane tickets, so virtually anybody takes a few days up to a couple of weeks of vacation at every cool, exotic and new conference location they're sent to :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, basically, you should feel your team/lab dynamics. If it's a very coherent team, you might want to be there for the morning and/or afternoon coffees and lunches between often and always, otherwise you get a bit more flexibility. Of course, it might be that you got a postdoc in a very strict lab, but I don't think that is very common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the lab/office can be a nice and fun place (even a nice, modern, spacious above ground facility with enough windows and sun ;)). You might just arrive and realize you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to spend time in the office: I realized I much prefer working &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; in the office, staying longer or coming earlier when needed. It helps me to stress out much less about work, especially when I'm away from the office and supposed to relax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, I just want to add that I was almost as surprised with your description of US-(non)-vacation system as you seem to be with the European system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:02:04.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:17:46.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about the perspective of a student on the subject? I went to school in south Texas (Houston, to be specific), as location may be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every TA I had (graduate and undergraduate) was addressed by his or her first name, including myself when I worked as an undergraduate TA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost all of the professors were &quot;Professor LASTNAME&quot; or &quot;Doctor LASTNAME.&quot; There were two major exceptions I was aware of:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of my computer science professors went by either &quot;Doctor LASTNAME&quot; or a &lt;em&gt;nickname&lt;/em&gt; with approximately equal frequency. I personally always used his nickname, as my father would always use the name when speaking to or about him. (My father was a graduate TA when this particular professor was an undergraduate.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a particular adjunct professor whom I always called by first name. In this case, I was the exception to the rule, because this professor was a close personal friend (and drinking buddy) of my father.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the man who taught the &quot;Game Content Creation&quot; course was called by his first name, and he was not actually (directly) employed by the school; he was the lead developer at a local game company which occasionally poached from the school's CS department. He worked with the head of the department to create the course when he learned the school had a license for 3DS Max which was going unused by any course at the school (the Architecture department would point at 3DS Max, say &quot;this exists and some people use it,&quot; and then go back to AutoCad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the professor who I had a close, friendly relationship with (the head of the CS department), I still called &quot;Professor LASTNAME.&quot; In fact, to this day I think it would feel strange to call him by his first name. (Heck, I think I would feel strange calling my high school CS teacher anything but &quot;Mister LASTNAME,&quot; and the two of us grew very close over the years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as emails go, all of the professors and TAs I exchanged emails with signed their email with &quot;FIRSTNAME LASTNAME,&quot; occasionally with their department, position, and contact information as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9209" LastEditorUserId="9209" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T14:25:49.390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:25:49.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T19:06:23.050" Score="12" ViewCount="3010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seen this happen in other research labs in my university and I am trying to get into the mind of my advisor and understand what his intentions are! We are an HCI lab of two people. In last year, we have hired and fired &lt;em&gt;seven&lt;/em&gt; people. They get hired, work for a month or two, my advisor is not satisfied them and removes them from the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor is new to the lab, it was given to her upon joining in Summer 2012. Another PhD student and myself have been working since beginning of the lab before the professor. We are the only permanent fixtures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the defacto programmer and I program all the projects in lab. I had asked my advisor for PhD last week, as I completed my thesis defense last year, but she said she needs to check her funding and will get back to me. At same time she is putting out a word to other professors that she needs good RAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interim, an established tenure professor in our department in operations research had asked me to join his lab as PhD student for a project in data mining. He said I am very good at Computer Science and he needs my skills for his projects. I had asked him if its common in his lab to change people constantly and he told me there were only four people working in his lab for past 5 years and he said always asks for input from his own students in lab before contacting anybody for RAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor I am currently working with has never asked me or the other PhD student for advice before taking on people or firing them. It puts an uncomfortable pressure on me as I feel that she is not happy with my work and looking for replacement. I really don't like working with new people every two months. So why is my advisor doing this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How frequently do you hire and fire people in your labs?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T17:31:13.783" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:31:13.783" Title="Is it Common to hire and fire people in lab frequently?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2014-02-13T19:22:27.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be uncommon to have high turnover, but so what?  You don't know the circumstances of those hires -- perhaps they were favors or trial runs that were likely to fail.  Or maybe your advisor has high standards, or just got unlucky.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might not enjoy the high turnover, but that should be a small factor as compared to your own degree, future job prospects, and own job security.  If you're worried about these, you should address these issues directly with your advisor (and not the indirect issue of lab turnover).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T19:22:27.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2014-02-13T19:28:38.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends not only on the field, but also on the institution doing the hiring.  At some places, a joint publication and a sole-authored publication are identical in terms of &quot;credit&quot; toward promotion decisions.  At the other extreme, other institutions consider a three-authored paper as one-third credit.    There are many in between as well.  Truly elite places don't care about how many papers or the authorship, but whether you've amazed the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if the publication record is substantially more or less than expectations for the position, the authorship doesn't matter.  A place that expects its hires to have a dozen papers won't be impressed by an applicant with 5, even if they're sole-authored.  A place that  expects one or two will be delighted with the same 5, no matter how many authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T19:28:38.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T19:48:59.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., &quot;white&quot;) man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SoCal&lt;/a&gt;. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; to object to. I guess I should've said &quot;simplistic&quot;, because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), &lt;strong&gt;they will find something objectionable&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. &lt;a href=&quot;http://eubie.com/genme.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kids these days&lt;/a&gt;...&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; inattentive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the &lt;code&gt;teacher = robot&lt;/code&gt; fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and &lt;em&gt;the instructor&lt;/em&gt;, so I thought I could get away with it in &lt;em&gt;my class&lt;/em&gt;. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/funder/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professor Funder, PhD&lt;/a&gt; instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to &lt;strong&gt;how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations&lt;/strong&gt;. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is &lt;em&gt;best for students' education&lt;/em&gt;, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it's an &lt;strong&gt;interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inter-rater reliability&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_analysis_of_variance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;multivariate ANOVA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably consult questions like &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/70558/32036&quot;&gt;this one on Cross Validated&lt;/a&gt; about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T02:17:02.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:42:12.173" Score="12" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume you are just about to finish your PhD and you are facing the decision of whether to go for a postdoc position or for an assistant professorship. Which one should you choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's ignore the salary for the sake of this question. Then which of the two is better? What about the benefit of short-time employment and getting to work with lots of different people (in case of postdoc) vs. being stuck at one place for several years (assistant professor). Is it beneficial to work with different groups or is it irrelevant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a career involving several postdoc positions look like the individual could not get other (''better'') employment (even if they deliberately chose one over the other)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will a postdoc position give you more time for research because you don't have to teach or have to teach less? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it generally better to seek professorship rather than postdoctoral fellowship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Student" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T21:00:49.643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T21:00:49.643" Title="Postdoctoral fellowship -- what is it about?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16937" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:52:39.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The typical perspective for U.S. people in this situation is to try to balance the following three items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The desire for a permanent, tenure-track job, and its associated stability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The desire to do as much research as possible in one's life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The desire to not starve to death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally those just completing their PhD's are not eligible for tenure-track jobs that have a large research component, because their track record is insufficient.  Therefore it is common to take a postdoc (or two, or five) to bolster the research record.  This has the immediate effect of meeting the second and third goals, and has the potential to open up more research-oriented tenure-track jobs.  However too many postdocs and it becomes more difficult to get tenure-track jobs (and further postdocs).  The implication is indeed as you suggest, that these positions have been taken because the individual could not get a suitable tenure-track job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few people consider &quot;assistant professor&quot; negatively because of being &quot;stuck at one place for several years&quot;; the only reason to turn down such a position is because it may be a bad fit, as compared to the sort of place one wants to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" OwnerDisplayName="vadim123" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:52:39.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16937" CreationDate="2014-02-13T17:25:52.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vadim makes some valid points. The one I would amplify on is how good a fit the school with the assistant professorship is as far as your career goals are concerned. You've got to be careful. When I started out, I thought I could go to a small school, build up a research record, and move on to a research university. It didn't happen. I started out at a small school near a research university. My school had an atmosphere that totally discouraged research (I wish I had known that). Teaching three courses a semester wasn't that bad, but keeping fifteen hours of office hours a week was. Throw in committee work, etc., and there wasn't a lot of time to do much research. The school I'm at now has a base teaching load of four courses a semester, and expectation for advising, committees, and so on. They claim to support research, indeed it is a significant component for advancement, but the general climate works against any serious work. What output I have managed, not nearly as much as I wanted, has been a struggle. That being said, I have certainly managed to satisfy Vadim's goals 1 and 3. As far as goal 2, let's just say that I'll need something to do when I retire, assuming I can remember anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, be careful. Personally, if you have the ability I would opt for a postdoc or two. But be realistic about what you want your career to look like ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the road. Then, do what you think gives you the best chance to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" OwnerDisplayName="Chris Leary" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T17:25:52.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2014-02-13T20:19:22.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This certainly isn't normal - when people complain about the high turnover in academia they're normally talking about contracts of one or two years rather than a couple of months. However, as @vadim123 says, perhaps there are reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO the most important thing is whether your adviser and fellow group members are people you feel comfortable working with, and whether they are giving you the support you need for your research. If not then you'll end up being miserable and producing bad work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11904" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T20:19:22.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16858" CreationDate="2014-02-13T21:43:59.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try getting familiar with the terms used in this area. Our first DSP lecture was about &quot;disco time systems&quot;, took us half an hour to realize it was &quot;discrete&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would aks if he/she could use slides with some bullet points on it. Do not mention &quot;everyone&quot; has problems understanding him/her, this might be embarrassing because you talked about it with others. Just say you have (sometimes) problems following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No experiences or assumptions made about how this is perceived in asian cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11908" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T21:43:59.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2014-02-13T21:45:56.487" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All else being equal&lt;/em&gt;, solo papers can only be weighted more highly than joint papers in hiring decisions.  This is probably especially true at the very top: e.g. a joint &lt;em&gt;Inventiones&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Annals&lt;/em&gt; paper makes your application look fantastic.  A solo publication in either of these journals is a golden ticket for many academic jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things get much more complicated when one tries to determine &lt;em&gt;how much more&lt;/em&gt; to weight solo papers than joint papers.  To the best of my knowledge few departments or universities have hard-and-fast rules or even written guidelines about this, so much of this evaluation goes on in the minds of the individual evaluators.  The truth is that in some situations jointly authored papers will count to exactly the same degree as solo authored papers, and in other situations the existence of coauthors will cause the work to be substantially discounted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a dramatically increasing prevalence of joint papers in the mathematical profession.  Thirty years ago they were quite rare; and they are even more common now than at the beginning of my career, which was not much more than ten years ago.  There are now, for instance, certain conferences and workshops in which several people sign up in advance to work on a certain problem under the guidance of a senior mathematician.  And then everyone who came to the workshop gets their name put on the paper, even if everything they did was under the guidance of someone else.  This is a model much closer to that of the laboratory sciences than what used to be common in mathematics.  In my opinion, it is time for the profession as a whole and various groups within the profession to put down in writing some feelings about the merits of joint papers.  Of course this will be hard to do since the matter is so complicated: it matters whether your coauthors are &quot;senior&quot; or &quot;junior&quot; to you, it matters whether they have supervised you, it matters what percentage of your papers are joint and whether your papers are always joint with the same coauthors....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I see certain publications listed on young people's CV's and think &quot;I find it unlikely that they had a significant intellectual contribution to that work.&quot;  That's a problem both ways: i.e., people may be wrongly evaluating the merits of this type of work in either direction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T21:45:56.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2014-02-13T21:52:39.080" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it is uncommon to hire and fire people that quickly in almost any context.  Evaluating and hiring good people takes time.  Training people to do anything useful takes time: usually more than two months of time.  What you're describing is incredibly inefficient and, as you note, bad for morale.  It's also bad hiring practice in a small lab to not conduct a group interview with the potential coworkers.  To be frank, your adviser does not seem very good at the HR aspects of running a lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a counterpoint, it depends very much on the funding situation.  A new professor, unless they're particularly lucky, may not have very much funding on-hand.  Especially if their funding agencies pay out the award in installments, they may literally have to let people go because the funding has run dry.  To be quite honest, a new professor supporting 2 full-time PhD students and their own summer salary is already looking at an annual outlay of $100k-$150, at least in the US (most of which is tuition, since they're supporting two students through grad school).  Many grant agencies (e.g., NSF) typically award $100k-150k per anum grants.  So they could be scraping very low on their funding and have to cycle through people for that reason (e.g., can afford them for the summer, have to dump them in the fall due to tuition costs).  Funding has been particularly tough the last few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if they are not sure if they can cover your tuition, but the other professor certainly will?  It's possibly time to jump ship to the other guy.  Currently, having just finished your masters and early in your PhD, this is the best time to do so.  If I were you, I would do the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the tenured professor to ensure this is a serious offer, backed by grant or internal money.  Inquire about how long currently awarded funds are likely to last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the situation sounds good, ask if it would cause any political problems to talk it over with your adviser.  Ideally, you want to do this (they are a reference), but not if it might sink the sure offer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it won't ruin the new opportunity, tell your current adviser the situation and ask the same questions (is there money, how long).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they're comparable, choose the one that seems like a better fit for your interests and your academic security.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's lopsided, go for the funding security and find a way to work your research into what you are doing.  To be frank, I would avoid any PhD that you can't get funded for.  If there's not enough money in the area to train you, why would there be enough to hire you when you finish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if your adviser takes it personally that you are exploring other opportunities when they can't assure you funding next semester?  Jump ship.  A boss who takes things personally is a bad boss.  I had a great programming intern last summer, who we would have loved to keep as an RA.  Unfortunately, a big chunk of funding was delayed due to Congress playing chicken.  A company affiliated with the university offered four years worth of tuition and stipend, guaranteed.  We do work he is more interested in and we could almost certainly cover him over that whole period.  But the key word is &quot;almost.&quot;  I told him that I would not blame him at all if he took their offer (which he did).  I hope he's doing great over there.  If your adviser doesn't have that attitude, it's time to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T21:52:39.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-13T22:10:44.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a guideline regarding how the students should address you, go by the culture of the department, if the other professors are using last names, use last names, if they're using first names, use first name, if there's no clear pattern, use whatever is comfortable to you. If you sign your emails &quot;Firstname Lastname,&quot; it's not an invitation to do anything, since full names are awkward to use in conversation, and it puts the burden on the other person to decide how to address you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It won't.&lt;/strong&gt; If someone is being inappropriate, react immediately and let them know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;strong&gt;favors&lt;/strong&gt; like extensions and flexibility, you need to be clear from the start on what your policy is, &lt;strong&gt;outline the policy in the syllabus, and stick to it&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not just a matter of respect, but also a matter of fairness to the students: if the students that aren't playing by the rules are getting their way, the rest of the students are being put at a disadvantage. There will of course be situations where the policy will need to be broken, but those should be extreme (death in the family, student hospitalized/severely ill, natural disaster, global war, etc.) and rare.&#xA;Sticking to the policy also applies to office hours, btw. You are obviously free to move your office hours for your own reasons, but being overly available to students outside office hours can be a bad thing if it gets out of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not a professor at the time of this writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="11880" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T20:38:55.753" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T20:38:55.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17469" CreationDate="2014-02-13T23:37:47.733" Score="20" ViewCount="64354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in teaching a class at the community college level.  I'm not interested in it as a career, but rather because I like teaching people about computer science.  How likely is it that I would be able to teach a evening class at a local community college with a masters degree (Computer Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a lot of formal experience teaching (TA/tutoring).  I spent most of my time doing research in the lab, but during that time I mentored/managed/herded a number of undergrads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe being a TA would be a nice way to get my feet wet and see if it's for me.  Is that possible, now that I've already graduated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a regular 9-6 job that I would have to work around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:16:07.827" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:16:07.827" Title="Can you teach at a community college with a master's degree?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;credentials&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16906" CreationDate="2014-02-13T23:41:59.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very unusual: I've never heard of this happening before. Since they're asking about the startup package (and not salary, which is less elastic at a university) that changes things slightly though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to get away (at a first approximation) with a list of things you need (without specifying a price tag). Typical elements of a startup package include summer salary, support for students early on, space for offices/labs, and equipment. All of these can be specified without particular price tags: i.e you need support for X students for Y years, lab space to support this kind of machine, or these many students, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're pressed to put a price tag (which would be also unusual), then you'll have to have some number ready for things that you can price (equipment for example, for which you could add a generous inflation factor). For other things you can ask them ! (how much does a student cost, what is typical lab space, and so on). Again, the goal is to provide as little information as possible while satisfying the unusual requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if you're asked to put a price, you should preface with &quot;while it's a little unusual to ask this now, and while I can't be certain what things will cost once I'm in a position to purchase them&quot;, and ask first whether there's some flexibility in these numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T23:41:59.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16906" CreationDate="2014-02-14T00:24:35.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to keep in mind: The reason that startup packages are typically negotiated at a later stage is because they are not a major factor in determining whether to take someone for a tenure-track position. I think that in your case, even though you are asked for this during the first interview, it will still not be a major factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that unless your startup package requests are extremely unusual or the university is unusually poor, this will probably not affect the outcome. So I would not worry about this aspect too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T00:24:35.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2014-02-14T00:32:59.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This situation is very complicated.  First, there's no hard and fast rule as different mathematicians have different opinions.  Second, it really matters how individual facts (like whether one paper is coauthored or singly authored) fit into a larger picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People want to hire candidates who have demonstrated that they have their own research program and their own direction.  Coauthored papers can hurt with this.  This is especially true if a candidate has too many papers coauthored with their advisor, or almost no singly authored paper, or too many papers coauthored with a single more senior person, or all papers coauthored with the same person.  (Of course, other factors like letters can counteract against this narrative.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, people also want candidates who are influential on their field.  Coauthored papers are one way to show that other people are interested in your research program.  (Of course there's other ways to demonstrate this, like giving talks at great places or letter writers say you're influential on them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general my impression is that a paper with n authors counts as less than a singly authored paper but as much more than 1/n of a singly authored paper, and that in some sense the perfect situation is to both have effective collaborations &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; also do good work solo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T03:05:22.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T03:05:22.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2014-02-14T01:03:00.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scenario you describe is not uncommon in my lab. Let me explain why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my department, we get some funding for RA work for M.S. students &quot;free&quot; (i.e. out of department/university funds, not research grants). The rationale behind this is that is valuable for M.S. students to get some research experience, so the department/university wants to make it possible for more students to get these positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We therefore have a fairly low threshold for hiring students for these positions. We obviously prefer to hire talented students - we ask other faculty to recommend students to us from their classes, etc. But since the money is &quot;free&quot;, we're not as selective as we would be in hiring for positions that are paid out of our grant money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, there is a lot of turnover in these positions - we hire a few students, try them out for a semester. If they don't work out very well, we don't hire them again the next semester so someone else can have a chance. If they are talented and hard-working, then we hire them back, and also offer additional support out of research grants on top of the department-money stipend they're already getting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all labs in the department do this. Some feel like it's worth it to use the department funds to cast a wide net, in hopes of picking up someone good, and to give many students a chance to gain experience. Others will hire very selectively because they don't want to waste time and energy on random M.S. students, many of whom won't work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like this is going on in your lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T03:48:05.653" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T03:48:05.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16642" CreationDate="2014-02-14T01:07:01.870" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Form a corporation.  That can keep you employed until you get the position you want.  Who knows, you might even figure out a way to make money in the process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I am a software engineer.  I have had a C-Corporation for the last 20 years.  Whenever I'm between contracts / jobs, I work on something I've wanted to pursue personally.  It could be writing an iPhone app, or integrating a PC into my home theater system.  If it takes me long enough to find another gig, I'll list my experience doing whatever it was I accomplished as an entry in my resume.  It keeps me from having unusually long gaps, and occasionally, I'll even generate revenue doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For another example, a friend of mine is a research chemist.  Together, we designed a gas chromatograph that was accurate enough to be useful, yet inexpensive enough to be available to even high schools.  This was a number of years ago and we were using a Commodore-64 to control the temperature of the oven containing the stationary phase coil, as well as collecting the detector data in real time.  As we never brought this product to market, I would classify it as either an R&amp;amp;D effort, or a proof of concept project.  Either way, it was useful from a resume perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually thought this was a helpful and viable idea and I would not have mentioned it if I didn't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, a little evaluation of a potential business opportunity probably wouldn't hurt most career academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11911" LastEditorUserId="11911" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T07:07:53.233" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T07:07:53.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T01:19:01.697" Score="6" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Ph.D. in Engineering and I figure a medical degree will be highly valuable to gain a better understanding in my research area (biomedical/neuroscience). However, unlike science/engineering graduate schools, medical schools do not pay your tuition and financial assistance is primarily &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; based, rather than &lt;em&gt;merit&lt;/em&gt; based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there avenues for an interested candidate to pursue a medical degree in the US (perhaps part-time, while working as a post-doc in a relevant field) without taking on significant amounts of debt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11912" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:50:58.893" Title="Are there avenues/options to pursue a medical degree (with funding) after a Ph.D.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-14T02:23:07.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you earned your advanced degree why not use it?  You shouldn't expect to be friends with your students either. Kids today seem to have all too few figures of authority in their past and they end up being horribly prepared for careers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11914" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T20:15:13.813" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T20:15:13.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16961" CreationDate="2014-02-14T03:36:35.350" Score="9" ViewCount="14608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been fortunate enough to get accepted with 5 years guaranteed funding to my 2nd choice graduate school. While the guarantee is great, the funding is only for 9/months out of the year. Would it be rude to ask them to guarantee summer funding to me for the first year until I can write a grant to get on a RAship? I know I should be more appreciative, since not everyone gets funding, but just an increase of about ~3k a year would make living there so much better and I do not want to accept an offer at a lesser institution just because of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the most polite way of doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make it clear that I am not trying to get more money for the sake of getting more money, moreover that I am just not comfortable with so little money and such a high living cost in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T03:00:51.350" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T03:00:51.350" Title="How to politely negotiate PhD funding offer?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16954" CreationDate="2014-02-14T04:15:25.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of graduate students negotiating salary. Where you go to graduate school matters a lot in your career; I have seen many sub-par people from top graduate schools obtain pretty good positions afterwards just on the merit of the fact that they go to a great school; so, another student on your school's waitlist would be just as good as you would be in the future, if they were admitted in your place, assuming that you are not exceptional (which I am assuming, since you said that you are thinking of going to your 2nd choice school). That is, the institution holds all the cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At postdoc or tenure-track level, negotiation happens because you have expertise that no one else can replace. But right now, you are quite replaceable, so it doesn't make sense to negotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask, but I can guarantee right now that negotiation will not happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T04:15:25.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16954" CreationDate="2014-02-14T04:20:37.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, congrats!  That is very good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can commiserate with you on the expensive living in grad school (I'm in NYC...).  Maybe in other fields it is more common, but I haven't seen very much negotiation in Economics.  It seems that there is sometimes a little talk between the student and school to make sure that they even get the funding, but the funding packages we receive seem relatively fixed.  I do know that we can get more funding by working as research assistants or teaching assistants.  If your funding is a fellowship (basically no catches, you get the money without being required to do anything extra) then you should ask about getting funding by working as an RA or TA.  Also, have you received your funding letter?  A lot of the schools that I have friends at only have a month or two that you don't actually receive funding.  Your best bet is to check with the secretaries or PhD coordinators at your school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, probably the best way to find out more is to email some of the other grad students at that school and ask what they have done to stay alive during the summer months when there isn't funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9882" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T04:20:37.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16963" CreationDate="2014-02-14T04:37:51.257" Score="4" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the chances of getting a postdoc position or full academic position higher in the country you are going to study your PhD in? What if you are not a citizen? Is it important to take into account postdoc stage and career path possibilities when you decide the country you want to study PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T12:11:16.093" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T19:30:46.590" Title="The chances of postdoc position higher in PhD country" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16958" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T04:45:44.273" Score="6" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person is working in the industry and wants to ask a few questions to an academic researcher (based on a paper published by them), what is the correct protocol to follow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'? Should the academic insist on knowing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other consideration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:33:18.870" Title="Contacting an academic researcher by an outsider" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16958" CreationDate="2014-02-14T05:00:04.373" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any specific protocol, nor do I think there needs to be.   I think that every academic is somehow &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for the work in their published papers, and that responsibility includes at least some degree of responsiveness to questions about those papers.  But, as usual, some ways of going about this will do better in eliciting responses.  For me, I would want to know that the person who is contacting me about my paper (i) actually understands it, at least to a sufficient degree and (ii) that corresponding with them about my work will actually be helpful.  This includes some degree of knowledge of what they want to do with the work in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I should say though that I work in parts of pure mathematics in which it would take a truly brilliant mind to find direct industrial applications.  So most of my correspondence is from students, other mathematicians, or people who aspire to be one of the above.  For people who work in more applied fields, please discount this answer accordingly.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean &quot;I am asking this question on behalf of my work for Company X&quot;: I think so, yes.  When correspondents do not identify themselves in this way, I am less likely to respond at all, and if I do, I will usually ask for some identifying information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; want to answer a question which is framed in that manner?  I would help out a good friend who came to me in this way, but not a stranger.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, asking for help from an academic and not being willing to be forthcoming about what it is used for doesn't sound right to me.  If you are just prevailing on the goodwill of an academic to publicly explain her work, then have the good grace to say what you need it for.  If on the other hand you are actually trying to extract further expertise or information used for some proprietary purpose, then just writing to ask for it doesn't sound appropriate to me.  If you want to use someone's professional expertise for some proprietary purpose -- or really any purpose other than just advancing your own knowledge -- then you should invite the professional to enter into a paid consulting relationship, it seems to me.  In such a relationship, how much information about the use of the professional's expertise will be provided is something to be negotiated in advance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T05:00:04.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16967" CreationDate="2014-02-14T05:01:07.550" Score="46" ViewCount="5396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student. I've never taught a lecture-style course before. I just filled in for my advisor at the last minute, giving a lecture in an undergrad course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I taught from the lecture slides that my advisor had prepared, drawing diagrams and examples on the whiteboard where I thought it was warranted. I stopped often and asked if anyone had questions, and if nobody did I posed questions to them, e.g., &amp;quot;What do you think is the benefit of this system over that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What did you learn about X?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression was that approximately 30% of the class was pretty engaged, asking and answering questions, etc., 50% were taking notes and paying attention but not really speaking up, and the rest were zoned out. I think this is normal (from what I remember from being an undergrad), so I thought I was doing OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, towards the end of the lecture, a few students said that I was going much faster than normal. And, I did get through more slides than my advisor said I should expect to, so they're probably right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What clues do you look for to &amp;quot;read a room&amp;quot; to tell that you're going too fast, even though people seem to still be &amp;quot;getting it&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do to slow down, beyond asking if anybody has questions and bringing up more examples (I can only think of so many examples)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking specifically about teaching undergrads, because I think they are more difficult to read than postgrads, or senior academics in the audience of a conference talk.  But I would appreciate answers that apply to the latter scenario as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I understand that things like clickers and discussion groups can make a difference, but I am asking specifically how to improve my lecturing, not how to restructure classes so I spend less time lecturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related question is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer&quot;&gt;How to improve myself as a lecturer&lt;/a&gt;, where one answer says &amp;quot;Never assume that students follow you&amp;quot; and suggests you &amp;quot;see if they get the idea, sort of get the idea, or don't get it at all.&amp;quot; I tried to do this, and it seemed like the students that were willing to engage &lt;strong&gt;were&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;getting it.&amp;quot; Apparently they were getting it, but I was still going at a speed that made their heads hurt :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T05:08:17.297" Title="How do I 'read the room' and adjust my pace while lecturing?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16954" CreationDate="2014-02-14T05:20:03.683" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always ask, and the polite way to do it is simply to ask politely, while indicating that you have a strong interest in enrolling in the program.  The best circumstance is that you have a financially superior offer from another program which is of equal or slightly better quality.  Then the graduate program in question may see a small amount of additional funding as a reasonable expense to ensure your enrollment.  (If the other program is more than a little bit better, then everyone will be expecting you to go to the better program...unless you have personal reasons to want to go to the less good program, in which case you do not need a financial incentive.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;user45756 &quot;guaranteed&quot; that such a request would not lead to summer funding.  Of course no one person could possibly make such a guarantee, and I have &lt;em&gt;very occasionally&lt;/em&gt; seen additional funding given to graduate students to help attract them to a program or keep them in a program.  But user45756's answer is still accurate in spirit: in the overwhelming majority of cases you get what you get.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the expression &lt;strong&gt;The squeaky wheel gets the grease&lt;/strong&gt; is very applicable to academia: people who ask for a little bit more* tend to get a little bit more.  Your request for summer funding is unlikely to magically result in a higher starting salary, but it may well result in your being placed higher on lists for various summer funding opportunities.  I think it is a good idea to say something like &quot;I understand that additional funding may not be possible, and I very much appreciate your offer.  However, I am sincerely concerned about quality-of-life issues while enrolled as a graduate student, and I would very much appreciate being told of any other funding, scholarship or teaching opportunities that are or may become available.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: It is true though that people who don't know the culture well enough sometimes ask for &lt;em&gt;a lot more&lt;/em&gt; when they think they are asking for a little bit more, and that often causes them to be taken less seriously or ends negotiations.  (Imagine if you had an assistant professor job interview at a public American university and, after shaking hands with the department chair, told them that you were holding firm at a $100K starting salary.  It is more than likely that you've just talked yourself out of any possibility of a job offer.)  There is a real art to asking for something in a way which makes clear that you will be grateful for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; response that you get, not that you feel absolutely entitled to getting your precise demands.  A graduate student asking for extra funding should make extra clear that they are &quot;just asking&quot; and will be grateful for any response they will get.  I remember one long-ago friend who was hoping that the MIT mathematics department would &quot;get into a bidding war&quot; with some other department of comparable quality.  Of course that didn't happen, and though he did start a PhD program somewhere quite good, I could tell from this behavior (I was a first year graduate student at the time) that he didn't quite get the academic culture.  I believe he dropped out within a year.  (And then I lost touch with him, but I am willing to guess that he now makes much more money than I do...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T18:57:14.783" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T18:57:14.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16958" CreationDate="2014-02-14T07:44:43.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best, read one or more of they articles carefully, say you have read it and like it. To make sure this is not just a polite phrase, talk about something inside the paper that would show you really understand it and are interested in it, ask some questions that may be interesting to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to invest some work to prepare for such a conversation, but this is an excellent starting point from where you can then continue without any formal protocol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T14:33:18.870" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:33:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16957" CreationDate="2014-02-14T07:53:37.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my surroundings (Germany, Switzerland), normally it's not a problem to get the first postdoc after you get a PhD in the same country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a PhD in some country that is (sometimes wrongly) believed to have an inferior level of scientific merit may actually block the further scientific degree carrier abroad: impossible to start PhD studies a second time (&quot;already has PhD&quot;), and impossible to get a postdoctoral position as well (&quot;bad PhD&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, it is important to weigh the situation and think where and how to earn the PhD degree. I know people who have dropped basically complete PhD works right before defence just to be able to restart in another country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T19:30:46.590" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T19:30:46.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="870" CreationDate="2014-02-14T07:57:20.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing is preventing you from trying PhD in another laboratory at least one or two times. It is appropriate, in some cases may be recommended and is usually accepted as a normal case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe if it is an adjacent laboratory next door, a potential new supervisor may not want to conflict with your former supervisor, but this seldom expands outside one institution, and even there largely depends on personalities involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T07:57:20.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2014-02-14T09:01:48.967" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably many different solutions to your problem. I will focus on what you could consider with your presentation. I think it is very easy to be too fast: you know the material, you feel awkward if there is a silent moment, nervousness/adrenalin kick etc. So there is a basic property of lecturing that prompts one to go faster than we may think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using slides you present ready written material for the students to copy. This means they write things while you speak, and what they write may not be what you are talking about. As a result they may split their focus and get confused. In the old days, the lecturer usually wrote on the board while talking. Hence students saw, heard and wrote the same material in the pace it took the lecturer to write it. I do not think the lecturer managed to talk about one thing while writing another, so the whole lecture hall was in sync and at a pace most could follow. This automatic adaption mechanism is partly lacking today, and it is possible to overload slides. It is of course possible to provide slide sheets of the slides to the students, but that will not promote a slow-down &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, and I do not think it helps understanding either, because students tend to not take notes as a result (I have no proof of this, but it is my experience when using such sheets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if possible, I think breaking up your presentation to lecture more interactively on a white board may help, apart from breaking the monotony of a slide show. To do breaks with questions is a very good way to keep students focussed to continue with that. You also need to think about what students need to take notes, so that they actually have a chance. Finally, I would recommend you to take a course in university pedagogics. In many countries in Europe, such courses are mandatory for teaching and also a requirement when applying for positions. I do not know how this applies in your neighbourhood, but having a course in pedagogics is never wrong; hopefully you can find one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, reflecting on these matters is good, and you gain experience as you teach. There are also scientific sources such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ashe.ws/?page=186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Higher Education&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291468-2273&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Higher Education Quarterly&lt;/a&gt;. There are many other sources, and a search on Google scholar on relevant keywords should give additional useful hits. Hopefully your university allows access to some of these journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T17:38:56.147" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T17:38:56.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2014-02-14T09:08:32.013" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it's easy to be misled by a few good students who are able to engage with you and answer your questions. This doesn't mean the majority of students feel the same way of course. I always try and bear in mind the weakest (and often the quietest) students in the class and try and not be lured into accelerating due to a few bright sparks at the front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking if there are any questions or bring up examples is a good way to try and gauge the classes response. But if the class is shy or unresponsive (as is often the case initially) I find it very hard to know whether I'm boring the pants of them or they're completely lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple trick is to give a short relatively straightforward exercise and ask everyone to do it there and then. It should only take a minute or two. You can then briefly walk through the students and ask them how they are getting on. It should become obvious if many of them are struggling. Walking among the students and directly interacting with them isn't going to suit everyone though and if the class is large (or the seating is inaccessible) it will be more difficult. But it's crucial to get some feedback and if that means taking a more proactive approach then why not? I make sure to smile and encourage them since some students will be nervous if the lecturer asks how they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T09:08:32.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2014-02-14T11:10:28.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the online course is relevant to your current field of work/study it would help. For example, a graduate student of science could mention a course on scientific computing but a course taken on criminal law would be irrelevant. Also online courses taken can only be shown under professional development and not under academic qualifications since these are non-credit courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4210" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T11:10:28.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16994" CreationDate="2014-02-14T12:45:11.087" Score="9" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short: It's easy to find bibliographical info, but how to guess page numbers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper in English. I want to cite certain book, originally published in French. It is translated to English and Russian. I own a Russian translation. I'd like to reference English translation. I don't have access to other language versions and I'm not going to purchase them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11496" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T09:54:40.533" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T09:54:40.533" Title="Is it appropriate to guess page numbers of a book from its translated version?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16970" CreationDate="2014-02-14T12:45:11.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;After expressing my question, I understood that I can find the English translation in Google Books and look into contents with page numbers. So I can have references like &lt;code&gt;(1998, 36-67)&lt;/code&gt;. Actually I can even search within a book, so I can find exact page numbers for the passages referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11496" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T12:45:11.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T15:36:03.563" Score="7" ViewCount="13953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field? Do they expect an HCI researcher to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11253" LastEditorUserId="11253" LastEditDate="2020-01-10T17:18:35.020" LastActivityDate="2020-01-10T17:18:35.020" Title="Job market after PhD in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2014-02-14T16:05:45.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I've done in the past but no longer have need of – because I have restructured my courses to do less lecturing and more in-class activities (which you said you did not want to do) – is to simply help the students communicate non-verbally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of class, I used to tell them: &quot;OK, I know that I know the material well, and I know you are unfamiliar with it, but I don't know how unfamiliar, so there will be an issue of how fast I am going. I can't stop all the time and ask, so here is how you can tell me to speed up or slow down: If I see everyone nodding their heads up and down I assuming that you are saying, 'Yes, I understand that.' This will make me speed up. If I see you stop nodding, then I will assume you are saying, 'I think I might understand that, but I'm not sure,' and I will start to slow down and start repeating myself in various ways to make sure you get it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this introduction, I would start. I started with the simplest material, and everyone was nodding. I started going faster. 75% still nodding; the others were asking questions of those 75%. No worries. I started going faster. Well, eventually, I was covering material so fast, everyone stopped nodding and stared at me with their eyes glazed over. We took a 5-minute break and continued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All-in-all, actually, it worked quite well, other than the fact that I ended up going as fast as I did. As Peter wrote, we naturally speak about our subjects far faster than students can absorb the information, so having some signs from the students is exactly what we need. My suggestion is that you don't guess the signs, but rather you help them to understand how they can control the speed of the session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T17:45:22.993" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T17:45:22.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2014-02-14T16:31:18.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've done many of the things that one should do in lecture to feel the &quot;needs of the room&quot;. Well done ! It is indeed true that undergrads are harder to read for the reasons you mention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long is the lecture ? When I teach 80 minute lectures, one piece of advice I was given that I continue to use is to force a 5 minute break in the middle regardless of how I think the room is doing (I have an alarm on my phone set for that time so that I don't forget). The five minute breaks allows students to get some water or take a bathroom break (things that can impair concentration), and it also gives people time to reflect on what they've been hearing and ask questions more &quot;privately&quot;. You can also recap the first half of the lecture when you restart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 50 minute lecture, you might find this less useful. However the typical attention span of a person is around 15 minutes (based on numerous studies that I don't currently have citations for - sorry JeffE), and so even in this shorter setting, forcing a break at around 25 minutes might provide the same kind of reset mechanism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't solve your problem entirely, it's a low-cost solution that can be used without extra work/prep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T16:31:18.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16978" CreationDate="2014-02-14T17:34:27.530" Score="10" ViewCount="10545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Indian student. I am not related to any kind of mathematics research. So I do not have proper idea about it. I may join in as a PhD after a few months. I want to get a picture of the research status in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;India has several mathematics research centres, institutions and universities. I want to know the status of mathematics research in India. How many and which of them are of international standard? What about the impact factor of their mathematics publication? What is the status of computer science, which is almost neglected by Indian Mathematicians. Is my idea true? I know that none of our institutions and universities in top 200 of the world ranking. Please give me some idea on it and sufficient resource so that I can convince myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have completed a PhD in India. Will it be accepted internationally. When? Why and Why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8569" LastEditorUserId="10370" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T13:34:20.837" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T21:27:34.173" Title="Mathematics research status in India" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16973" CreationDate="2014-02-14T17:46:31.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a little puzzled by your career goal and perhaps, this is rather early for you to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your immediate goals are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Scientist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your future goal is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entrepreneur&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I am aware, you don't &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; a phd to be a software developer and certainly not for an entrepreneur. So, discussion about a PhD in HCI is moot there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also excellent data science jobs available with a bachelors or masters degree pre-requisite but a PhD can certainly help there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD candidate in HCI usually goes towards one of three ways - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can gravitate towards usability design/usability studies/usability analysis. This requires ~60% knowledge in social sciences (e.g. theory, experimental design) and ~40% knowledge in the computing sciences - basically in applications (e.g. applied ML, application development)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can also gravitate towards data analysis i.e what industry calls data science (I am not a fan of that term). For that, ideally they should have ~70% data analysis knowledge (ML is not the only approach for analyzing data) and ~30% social science knowledge. (i.e. if you are in the Facebook data science team and studying rumor propagation then you better have a very good intuitive grasp of cascades, diffusions and homo/heterophily theory). Many data scientists have 0 knowledge of their domain - which is both a reflection of their demand as well as the inchoate state of what &quot;data science&quot; actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are those rare few who manage a zen-like balance between social and computing sciences. They are equally good in qualitative and quantitative methodologies and have appreciation for all spheres of knowledge. Generally, I find these folks in academia (which is not to say that you won't find such folks in industrial research - you will!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answers to your particular question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. This depends on what your specialization is and what you have done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Do they expect me to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Not necessarily. Again, this depends on who you are and what you have done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Finally, does having a PhD in HCI hinder my chances to achieving my career goal&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but its not a function of HCI but the fact of being enrolled in any PhD program. As I pointed out, you don't need a PhD to do software development or to be an entrepreneur. There is some advantage in having a PhD if you want to go specifically into data science but you can also see many counterexamples in industry - those who enter the data science domain with a MS and do extremely well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, your current plan of action depends on what you want to do immediately. I urge you to ponder and self-reflect whether spending a sizable chunk of your adult life in a PhD is really worth it for you if all you want to do is to write code or start a business or analyze data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most&lt;/strong&gt; PhD candidates from my departments and other similar ones in the US (CMU, UDub, GaTech etc.) either go into academia or into industrial research. I know of a few examples of folks who dropped out of their PhD with a MS because they realized that they don't want to do research but they want to contribute to industry in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T17:46:31.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2014-02-14T18:05:17.717" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a lot of questions all interspersed within your question block so I will try my best to answer. Here is a disclaimer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a past graduate student of the Indian Statistical Institute&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics research, especially in theory, is pretty good in India. The top institutions (in no order of ranking) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, Bangalore)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indian Institute of Technology (KGP, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are quite good internationally and attract the best Indian students. The entrance exams are quite tough and many of the BS, MS students go on to do PhDs in top world institutions. Those who stay, are also quite good and publish papers in the usual top journals. The problem is neither funding nor red tape in my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that compared to most &quot;top&quot; mathematics departments, these institutes are rather small (i.e. ISI Bangalore had ~only 20 full time faculty in my time and of those, 10 published regularly). You see, its only in recent years, that regular publications have become quite the norm and its usually being driven by younger faculty (usually those who have done their PhDs from US or Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isibang.ac.in/~athreya/Research/prepub.html&quot;&gt;him&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isibang.ac.in/~jay/research.html&quot;&gt;him&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isibang.ac.in/~rsreekantan/CV.pdf&quot;&gt;him&lt;/a&gt; for reference in theory and on the applied, computing side, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isibang.ac.in/~bsdsagar/Publications-BookReviews.html&quot;&gt;him&lt;/a&gt; [He is my MS thesis adviser] This is one small example from one school. I can assure you that the situation is similar in the other schools that I mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Indian PhDs go on to do postdocs internationally. Why just last year, we had a postdoc (who finished his PhD in ISI Kolkata and was joining IIT Bombay this year) in the ML lab here. He was great and very smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if you get a PhD in Mathematics in India and do good research while you are at it, I don't see why you shouldn't get international postdocs. Tenure track job positions will be restricted to the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia because USA and Europe have their own PhD glut problem. But, thats cool because most of these schools I mentioned are hiring very well. In fact, I plan to apply for several tenure track positions in CS departments in India when I graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T18:05:17.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2014-02-14T18:13:59.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite teachers during my undergrad program was my honors mathematics professor. I originally started taking honors classes in high school precisely because I hated slow-paced classes, and was sick of the boredom. Overall, this move didn't spare me entirely, of course...but in that particular math class, &lt;strong&gt;the pacing was wonderful&lt;/strong&gt;. It might not have been if it wasn't an honors course, but that wouldn't have been my professor's fault: it would've been a matter of the rest of the class preferring a different pace than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor always kept in tune with the class' preferences across a variety of differently challenging topics in a very straightforward manner: he &lt;strong&gt;polled the classroom at the end of (nearly) each lecture&lt;/strong&gt;. It only took a fraction of a minute. It might've gotten just a little bit irksome, but I'm sure it paid off. There were times when the majority was less than happy, and the method often revealed some difference of opinion. After a few weeks, we got quite used to his polling system, but it could've been introduced quite plainly in one day with a PowerPoint or scale of voting options drawn on the blackboard. Simply, his options were: &lt;code&gt;too fast&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;just right&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;too slow&lt;/code&gt;, and if he felt it necessary, he would sometimes add &lt;code&gt;way too fast&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;much too slow&lt;/code&gt; as a fourth option or follow-up question. &lt;strong&gt;The class would vote by show of raised hands.&lt;/strong&gt; For the most part, people weren't too shy to vote, even if it was to express uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not be the case outside of an honors course, where I would expect academic self-confidence and participation in general to be weaker...but I tried this a bit myself when teaching an upper-division (non-honors) psychology course at a separate university halfway across the country (USA). I varied the structure of the questions a bit too much, and was occasionally confusing as a result, but would usually make an effort to &lt;strong&gt;introduce the options&lt;/strong&gt; I had in mind &lt;strong&gt;before taking votes&lt;/strong&gt;. I got a lot of good feedback about a variety of concerns this way without even realizing that the classroom was clicker-equipped, much less with any effort to set them up or read their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other functions of in-class polling:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In one particular class, I asked late in the quarter, &quot;How many of you aren't getting the grades you want, but feel you are keeping up with the lectures and reading material and don't know what else to do?&quot; Then, &quot;How many simply can't keep up with the lectures and reading material?&quot; More people answered affirmatively to each than I was comfortable to see. This was probably the most useful feedback I received in the entire course, including course evaluations afterward (the only institutionally mandated form of feedback, sadly) and my own open-ended, short written response question administered halfway through about each student's primary concern with the class. For the people who didn't know what else they could do, I reviewed the variety of resources I'd made available to them, and suggested a few ways in which they could help each other study by using the normally available systems the university provides online, including a Q&amp;amp;A forum and wikispaces for student-coauthored study guides. For those who simply couldn't keep up, I slowed the pace overall, held a review session outside the normal class hours, and made the final test somewhat more forgiving. I wish I could say it was enough for those students, but at least I can say I tried everything I could think of, and as a result, it could've been worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T05:08:17.297" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T05:08:17.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16898" CreationDate="2014-02-14T18:41:40.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a student for 7 years and had lots of TAs. My brother was a TA for a couple of years too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite TAs were the ones who let us use their first names, because it would give a more relaxed tone to the class. When you're in the lecture, the person teaching is meant to be called &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Dr&quot; because that's what he is. In the tutorials and labs, you prefer to call them by your first name because they're really just one of you, but with more education. It gives the students the feel of having someone who can relate to them teaching them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you're the one who sets the guidelines with students, and the name they call you has little to nothing to do with it. My brother had people in his class trying to add him to Facebook. He would decline, and eventually set his privacy settings tighter so that no one could find him unless they had a direct contact. He even set his Twitter to private because of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should walk into the tutorial the first day and state clearly &quot;If you miss the deadline, you will fail or get a penalty each day it's late.&quot; and then say that you have deadlines for marking and every person who asks for an extension is pushing back the date it will be graded for everyone. If you stick to it with only exceptions for students with doctors notes, they'll know they can't mess with that. The first time you give a kid an extension with no good excuse, or even a semi-good excuse, you're telling that student and everyone that student talks to that you give extensions out. It will be hard to start this now unless you tell the class that they've been taking advantage of extensions and that you won't give any out, but you need to commit to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as students being disrespectful, you should state at the start of the semester  that you take the respect laws very seriously. You can even do this now if you're finding it too much of a problem. Then even read some of that rule (respectful speak, respect between teacher and student, etc.) and give examples that are close to reality so that they understand what you're talking about. Even state what the repercussions are. Look very annoyed so the students realize you're not saying this out of needing to, but out of necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you're an assistant professor, you'll have an easier time with people being too informal with you, unless you do things like make lewd jokes or say things like &quot;It's due around now.&quot; Just be firm with you treat them and they should stay in line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T18:41:40.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16973" CreationDate="2014-02-14T18:57:54.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to be a software developer, they see your HCI background as a plus to their developer, because you'll understand tasks better and see things that they may not. If you don't have experience in things like UX, design, and user studies, don't apply for the jobs that need them, because they will test you on it. If you do want those jobs, good news! You have two years still to learn those things!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BSc in CPSC with a concentration in HCI and a minor in Visual Studies and Art History. I took the minor because I wanted to learn how to express my ideas better. Eventually I'll go back and get a MSc in HCI. There are multiple HCI jobs open, but you usually do need that experience that you mentioned as you'll be doing things like designing the interfaces and doing research on what is good and what isn't. I am a Software Developer at my job, though a front end software developer. They loved the idea of a person who had HCI and design in their background and respect my opinions on it, but they have other people who do the designs. This sounds like the type of job you want. If that's the case, simply put your degree on your resume with detail on what you learned and excel in because of it, but only apply for software developer jobs. They will respect what you did for school and it can only help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your first question, I have always had my HCI concentration be considered technical because I did work with HCI in school. In other words, I made the designs, coded it myself, and defended and tested to show that it was GOOD human computer interaction. So I guess for you, it's only technical if you've been doing work with your concentration in a technical way. If you have people creating the designs and user stories for you, and the low-, medium-, and high-fidelity mock-ups, and then you just implement them, that's not HCI technical, you're just coding while someone else does the hard HCI stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T18:57:54.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2014-02-14T19:50:21.800" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of information, I doubt I can improve on Shion's answer. However, I'll add some comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a disclaimer. I don't know much about Indian academia, but I was a grad student in math for a while, a long time ago, at TIFR. It did not go well. I also know (knew, perhaps) a fair number of Indians doing research mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First India nominally has a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of universities. However, the vast majority of them are not research universities. At least in mathematics, my impression is that most of them don't count for much on an international research scale. That, of course, does not necessarily mean you will get a bad mathematical education there. It all depends on personal experience, including one's advisor (sometimes out of the way places have good research people), the local academic community, including other students and faculty, and the general atmosphere of the place itself. Plus the internet, with sites like Mathoverflow, is definitely having a levelling effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the important places for mathematics, as Shion says, are the handful of (mostly government sponsored) research institutes. There are also the various IITs, which do have math departments, which for the most part are better than the &quot;regular&quot; universities, but probably not as good as the research institutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go to study at the research institutes, I think you can get quite a good mathematics education there. I don't think it is any worse than the education you would get at a good Western university, and in some ways it may be better. For one, thing you will experience less distractions. See below. For example, the School of Maths at TIFR was, and I expect still is, quite a high powered research place, and has good connections with the international research community. There are regular visitors from abroad to give talks and visit. TIFR Faculty travel abroad frequently on visits, giving talks, taking sabbaticals and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as Shion says, they are mostly smaller places (though I think the TIFR school of maths is quite substantial). Second, as a math student, you are likely to find yourself &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; socially isolated. These places pay very badly, regardless how good a mathematical education they impart. They also tend to be located in expensive metropolitan areas. For example, the TIFR is located at the tip of South Bombay. Bombay is possibly the most expensive place in India. You won't have enough money to do much of anything. Plus, of course, you'll be very busy studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These institutes are additionally typically not part of a university campus, so you aren't surrounded by the considerable variety of people and happenings you experience in a regular university environment. You'll be stuck with your fellow students, postdocs and faculty, for the most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These issues are to some extent true of a mathematics student anywhere, but they are, in my opinion, more extreme in India. I was a grad student in the US, and it was not nearly so isolated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some advantages for an Indian citizen to being in an Indian research institute as opposed to say a European or US university, however. First, you won't have to put up with being treated like a third-class citizen, and being constantly pushed around by government and university bureaucracy. Second, you'll have all the time in the world to do your research. Indian research institutes, unlike Western universities, don't bother their students with things like teaching duties. Since they aren't regular universities for the most part, they don't have much by way of undergraduate students anyway. There will probably be opportunities to teach courses if you want, though, if only at neighboring colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize if you don't mind going years at a stretch doing not much but study maths, you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final word about areas represented. I think Indian math research institutes skew heavily towards theory. I think there is some CS, but again theoretical. The TIFR for example is entirely theoretical, though I believe there are some people there who do consulting. My impression is that the IITs are more applied. If you are interested in things like machine learning, those might be better places to look at. Areas like statistics are also poorly represented. There is ISI, but not much of anything else at the level of statistics graduate study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of this may be factually inaccurate. I am sure some of it is biased. Factual corrections appreciated; I am always happy to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T17:15:58.393" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T17:15:58.393" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17120" CreationDate="2014-02-14T22:15:25.670" Score="13" ViewCount="4294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m approaching the end of my PhD adventure and I’ve started looking around for job opportunities. Recently, I found a job posting that fits my career goals quite nicely, but it has more managerial ingredients in it than pure research. It is concerned with managing/coordinating multiple research teams – something I’d like to do eventually but maybe at a later stage after gaining some more research/management experience as a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, I found the job description really encouraging:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requirements: experience in project management or a strong desire to learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s why I decided to try my chances anyway. Lucky enough, I'll be interviewed for this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I have had students (BS, MS) who did their theses and semester projects under my supervision. Additionally, I’ve had a graduate-level course on general management and took the lead role in a small research project. Even though these experiences were valuable, this job would arguably require managerial skills at a higher level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is as follows: What type of difficulties/changes should I expect from this transition that I may undergo: from a technical PhD to a research manager/coordinator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9413" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-02-01T19:56:50.927" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T23:46:21.623" Title="Transition from PhD to project-manager position" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16986" CreationDate="2014-02-14T23:12:02.710" Score="31" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not &quot;subpublish.&quot;  Let me say what I mean.  I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; papers, it is best if &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; is minimized.  I was trying to understand why.  My advisor cited the reason of &quot;reputation&quot; and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible.  (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for &lt;em&gt;fixed mathematical content&lt;/em&gt; why it looks bad to come out with many small papers?  Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper?  One would think that if I &quot;subpublish&quot; that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.  The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11983" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T02:02:35.360" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T04:01:30.893" Title="Should I publish a given unit of work in more smaller papers or fewer larger papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2014-02-15T00:34:52.320" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address the reputation aspect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about a typical reader of your papers. Most likely they will only look at one paper you have written. Unless you impress them with that one paper the likelihood of them reading anything else you have written depends on whether that first paper convinces them it is worth their time to read another. So the more content that is in each of your papers the more impressed the reader will be with you. If the first paper of yours someone reads has a small amount of mathematical content then they probably won't expect too much from any of your other papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your formulation the ideal &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; may not always be 1, but each paper should actually have something worthwhile in its own right to say. You shouldn't expect someone to read more than one paper to get to only one meaningful idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side comment, the author does not find referees. The editor does. Sometimes the author may suggest candidates but the editor or the suggested referee can always say no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T02:03:16.600" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T02:03:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2014-02-15T00:47:50.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is highly field specific. In  many STEM fields, multiple small papers are preferred because the field moves very quickly and people would get scooped if it took them 2-3 years to write a paper. This is much less of a concern in mathematics. Most mathematicians are very careful and take their time to write thorough and complete larger papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T04:49:40.190" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T04:49:40.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2014-02-15T02:43:53.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some situations, people will judge you by counting the number of papers you have written. Administrators in funding organizations or universities might do this, for example, or HR people working for job search agencies or prospective employers. They won't read the papers, and they wouldn't understand them even if they did. So, in these situations, more papers is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11940" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T02:43:53.187" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2014-02-15T06:23:23.750" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers.  There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries.  However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers.  There are several reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers.  A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like &quot;by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]&quot; because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now.  But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers.  Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural.  Basically, this is a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt;.  Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch.  Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications.  Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial.  These are not messages you want to send to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals.  Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV.  Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully.  For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work.  Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One would think that if I &quot;subpublish&quot; that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project.  On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing.  If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T06:23:23.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17003" CreationDate="2014-02-15T06:41:47.470" Score="8" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way for a new PhD student to approach an interested faculty member to discuss becoming their student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to come with a few thesis project ideas prepared to pitch? Or is it better to come in expecting to have the faculty member to pitch them to the student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the student has a year or two after joining a group to formulate an actual research proposal - but at the beginning of the program, when approaching potential advisers, there is only limited time, and limited knowledge of the lab's current focus and planned future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the answer depends very much on the actual faculty member in question. But in what ways does it depend? Are there any aspects to the decision that remain invariant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in the physical sciences (biology) but to make the question useful to more users, perhaps it may be better if we could have answers covering the peculiarities and commonalities of this question for different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T12:34:27.410" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T21:41:52.523" Title="How to approach potential PhD advisors" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2014-02-15T10:08:23.947" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(My answer somewhat overlaps with previous answer, but contains parts that in my opinion need to be said. Beware that I am a fundamental mathematician, and that my advices should be taken with extra caution in other fields.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that in most cases a good way to go is to &lt;strong&gt;get each paper tell one story&lt;/strong&gt;. This both means that the story should be complete, and that there should not be two stories in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in many cases choosing the perimeter of a paper is a subtle issue and your interest and the interest of the community do not necessarily align completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pros for publishing several smaller papers:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can be difficult to get a long paper published in a good journal, because of a limited number of pages published each year (this sounds weird at a time when most papers are distributed electronically, but many math journals have this issue). For example I had a long paper, containing different independent results on a common object, rejected by a journal after the referee found the results nice, but the paper too long for its worth. Maybe one of the result would have been equally sexy on its own, and the paper would certainly have been much shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your CV will have more lines, and this can sometimes help. Every hiring committee I attended to put an emphasis (too strong in my opinion) on the number of papers of each applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are different results that may be of interest to different communities, putting them in one paper mean that they will appear in only one journal, maybe not read by both communities, and that there will be only one title and one item and review in each database (MathReviews, Zentrallblatt). This can make one or both of the results more difficult to find, less visible, therefore less useful to the community.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pros for publishing less, longer papers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can be difficult to publish a short paper in a good journal, as it might appear as not tackling a challenging issue. Of course, a short paper solving a long-standing open problem will be easily published, but when you have to convince an editor and a referee that your question is good and that answering it deserves merit, short paper may (unfortunately) hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long papers can impress people on CV. I have heard in hiring committees remarks like &quot;she publishes 30 pages papers, this is serious work&quot; or &quot;Ok, he has a lot of papers, but he mostly seems efficient in maximizing the number of CV lines from little mathematical content&quot;. If your introductions are all the same, it can look like salami publishing; in our &lt;em&gt;publish or perish&lt;/em&gt; era, one is expected to salami publish without looking like he or she is salami publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, two or more results complement each other and are together worth more than the sum of their individual worth. In this case, a unique large paper may be much better than several smaller papers that individually will look minor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Concluding comment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see that I gave each argument both ways. This is why I think the issue is subtle, and that each case has to be considered closely. The &quot;one story&quot; guideline can help but is not very precise. Finally I would advise to try to maximize the benefit of readers (remembering they have limited time); try to imagine what a referee that does not yet know your work will feel reading your paper, and make your choice so that he or she thinks &quot;what a nice result!&quot; (the result needs to be somewhat impressive by itself, but also to be clear and clearly delimited). In most cases and in the long run I believe it will also be close to maximize your own benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T10:08:23.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-02-15T10:35:54.900" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just received an email from the editor and I am writing it here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Dr. * * *,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We cannot prevent an author to upload her/his paper to Arxiv. However, because of the double-blind process applied in Communication Letters, we don’t encourage it.&#xA;There is only one restriction: Your paper should stand alone without any supplementary material and/or reference to an ArXiv post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11839" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T10:35:54.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16970" CreationDate="2014-02-15T12:19:44.390" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your original question, if you have access to a Russian translation and you want to cite the English translation, but you do not have access to the English translation, then you really need to focus on citing what you have access to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I understand it turns out you do have access to the English version as stated in your answer but for future reference, you should not cite a version of a text you do not have acces to. The reasons are more than simply that you don't know the page numbers. It is possible that there is a problem in the Russian translation but the English version does not have that problem. Likewise the opposite could be true. Basically, the two versions could be slightly but meaningfully different. Because of this possibility, you should only cite what you have access to. Otherwise, cite through a third-party &quot;Jones wrote in 2001 (cited in Simpson, 2005).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T13:01:25.280" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T13:01:25.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-15T13:07:09.803" Score="6" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am soon to finish a long PhD, and am thinking about postdoctoral applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student I did a lot of quality work and have some publications in respected journals/conferences. However, I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it. Also, while my work so far is primarily applied and methodological, I am interested in theoretical work. I do not want to continue doing the kind of work I have done so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple questions under the theme of the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More general question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience for students from mathematics and physics the answer to (2) is often &quot;no&quot;. However, coming from an applied area wishing to do more theoretical work, the standards are unclear to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11948" LastEditorDisplayName="user11948" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T17:01:56.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T00:40:14.493" Title="strategies to secure more independence in a postdoctoral position?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16997" CreationDate="2014-02-15T14:04:41.863" Score="15" ViewCount="3911" Body="&lt;p&gt;On 13th August 2013 I received the following email. I  have cut and pasted it below. I haven't bothered to insert back any of the links, but can do so if anyone is interested. I would not normally post private email to a public forum, but this is obviously a form letter, one step up from spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time I dismissed it as one more attempt by a journal to get me to do something for nothing as usual, but then I got a followup from the same person on 12th February 2014. It is in my experience fairly unusual to get a followup to this kind of invitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it would do no harm to ask people here what they thought. I haven't changed my mind on it. I don't see any advantage to the proposed work. They aren't offering any money of course. It is not a publication. It isn't an opportunity to get involved in a collaborative project. It looks like a opportunity to become some kind of unpaid new-fangled Web 2.0 type editor for some kind of new-fangled web research platform. It would probably be lots of work. So, I don't see anything in it for me. I'm not sure what is in it for the journal either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize my questions in a convenient fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason anyone one can think of that I might want to be&#xA;involved in something like this? Note - I'm by no stretch of the&#xA;imagination a senior researcher. Such an invitation &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; make sense for&#xA;a senior researcher, but I don't see why such a person could not simply&#xA;create his own web site to showcase his research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why is the journal trying to organize something like this? I don't&#xA;quite see what is in it for them either. Perhaps just the opportunity&#xA;to make money off submissions to an ersatz journal?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I came across[LINK][LINK] your “SNPpy--database management for SNP&#xA;  data from genome wide association studies.” published in “PloS one”&#xA;  and thought that it would be an excellent fit for the &quot;Research&#xA;  Topics&quot; initiative in Frontiers. We have recently partnered with&#xA;  the [LINK]Nature Publishing Group [goo.gl]  to expand our&#xA;  researcher-driven Open Science platform, and I would like for you to&#xA;  consider suggesting a consolidated topic of the latest research and&#xA;  perspectives from your field in a Frontiers journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However please note that our invitation is not restricted to the&#xA;  subject of this work. You are free to propose a Research Topic of your&#xA;  choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This [LINK][LINK]short video [goo.gl] gives you a better overview on&#xA;  the potential of Frontiers Research Topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may also want to browse on the [LINK][LINK]Research Topics&#xA;  homepage [goo.gl] and [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl] to check the final&#xA;  format of a Frontiers Research Topic as an e-book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like in the example above, Frontiers will create a dedicated homepage&#xA;  for your Research Topic, where you can manage contributions and&#xA;  maintain an ongoing dialogue with post-publication feedback from the&#xA;  research community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in pursuing this project, all it takes to get&#xA;  started is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt; - A title and a short description of your Research Topic;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A list of contributors you plan to contact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wanted to find detailed information on how to launch a Research&#xA;  Topic, please browse [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you are interested in organizing a Frontiers&#xA;  Research Topic, and do not hesitate to contact me by phone or email&#xA;  with any questions. I’m looking forward to your reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T14:23:34.807" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T14:23:34.807" Title="An invitation from Frontiers (Frontiers Research Topics)" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16996" CreationDate="2014-02-15T14:42:46.157" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, a &quot;Research Topic&quot; is a collection of papers on a specialized topic.  It's basically a special issue of one of their journals, although it's presented slightly differently, and they charge publication fees for the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really turns me off is the publisher's spamming practices.  I've had exactly the same experience you have: they send what's pretty obviously a form letter (populated with your name and one publication title/journal, seemingly randomly selected) and then some months later send a passive-aggressive reminder asking for a reply.  Maybe this is a coincidence, but I also got a follow-up message from them on February 12, so perhaps they sent out a whole wave of them on that day.  In any case, the fact that they feel they have to advertise by spamming makes me suspicious, and the reminder messages are irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T14:42:46.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-15T17:15:16.203" Score="11" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started solving problems from the American Mathematical Monthly. While I will definitely continue this, I am not sure how much this will help for math graduate school admissions (assuming I submit my solutions and they are recognized by the Monthly). How significant would multiple solutions to Monthly problems be in admissions? What about having the published solution to a problem? One issue is that I don't know how difficult the problems are presumed to be: all I know is that I personally have solved at least one of them! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T06:37:33.710" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T03:42:12.950" Title="Significance of American Mathematical Monthly Problems in Math Grad School Admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10355" CreationDate="2014-02-15T17:23:23.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option for the special case you describe is to take the math subject GRE after your self studies. This would validate your knowledge of the undergraduate curriculum in pure maths. They might take into account that you did not take any of the courses (you probably won't get the same score you would have gotten as a math major, because you don't know real analysis, topology, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T17:23:23.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10355" CreationDate="2014-02-15T18:05:55.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are of course reasonable, but my own viewpoint, perhaps an outlier, is that energetic/extensive self-study is a much more positive indicator about motivation and self-discipline and genuine interest than course attendance with good grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is the obvious point mentioned in other answers: how to measure or certify self-study? The GRE subject test is very iffy, in a variety of aspects. Thus, the ideal circumstance is coursework &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; self-study, to have certifiable conventional (&quot;passive&quot;) education as well as demonstrating initiative and interest. Further, very often the available undergrad curriculum really doesn't prepare people for grad school, so I'd strongly recommend substantial self-study in any case. Perhaps best under the aegis of math faculty who can provide some certification in letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be missing from self-study, if that's all one has as mathematics background, is the &quot;regular drill&quot; on basic reflexes that, in any case, routine coursework does cultivate. If one has to stop and think too much, the slowdown/cognitive-load can make routine things effectively impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, beware, the usual first year-or-two of math grad school include &quot;routine&quot; coursework and exams that do presume a &quot;standard&quot; undergrad background, including routine drill on a fairly standard body of material. With an extremely thin or idiosyncratic background, one must play a lot of catch-up. This can have several bad effects: may give the impression of incapability, may make you tired and discouraged, may stifle natural interest. So &quot;brace yourself&quot; if that's the path you find yourself on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T22:14:16.710" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:14:16.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2014-02-15T18:12:30.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let me say that your choice of words really rings an alarm bell with me. The general impression is that you are very ready to be inhonest, and (in agreement with that) your default position seems to mistrust your future employer and you seem to expect suspicion as opposed to taking in the situation openly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if someone does not trust me, a natural question for me is: why should I trust them? I would not want to work with someone with this attitude towards work. And moreover, I wouldn't want to have someone messing up the working atmosphere in my group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But don't worry: I'm not in the position to hire anyone.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it is even &lt;strong&gt;necessary to be honest&lt;/strong&gt;, and it is most probably futile to try to get away with anything else. Academia is a small world, and phone, skype and email reach very far nowadays. Particularly if you say that your field is so small that you do not care to name it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. But you should have a positive reason to apply there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that you are &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to develop your own ideas in a postdoc position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Yes, why not. I had interviews where we discussed openly how much own ideas would be possible, welcome, and what the bottomline of things-that-need-to-be-done-no-matter-what would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can ensure you that there are good mentors and leaders, including also mentors and leaders who are even good at teaching leadership in research. But such learning can only work if you trust your mentor. That in turn makes financial and intellectual dependence a non-issue. It may not be easy to find a good mentor. But on the other hand, you could also learn from someone who is not your direct supervisor. That way, you'd have the financial and intellectual freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: if you feel you need mentoring how to develop research questions, how can you feel ready to apply for a postdoc position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How come? How could your supervisor prevent you from thinking your own thoughts and from having your own opinion and judging of what needs to be done and how? As a research professional, crititcal and independent thinking is one of your core tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: you were a professional already when you started the PhD. If that wasn't necessary, it would be appropriate for an apprentice to apply for a PhD position.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And if you had gone to work in industry instead of in academia, you'd aslo have been profesionally responsible for everything you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T21:04:25.073" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T21:04:25.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16970" CreationDate="2014-02-15T21:22:56.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should cite the version you have available, since section numbering, pagination etc. can get shifted. The proper way to do it is to simply cite both, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Doe06] John Doe. &lt;em&gt;Prostory.&lt;/em&gt; Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of: John Doe. &lt;em&gt;Spaces.&lt;/em&gt; Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the citation contains the necessary information, and this is completely acceptable. Second option is to make it two citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Doe06] John Doe. &lt;em&gt;Spaces.&lt;/em&gt; Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Doe10] John Doe. &lt;em&gt;Prostory.&lt;/em&gt; Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of [Doe06].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T22:27:46.393" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:27:46.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16991" CreationDate="2014-02-15T21:41:52.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This is for Computer Science and Medical Informatics, I suspect that most STEM fields are similar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it better to come with a few thesis project ideas prepared to pitch? Or is it better to come in expecting to have the faculty member to pitch them to the student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if a faculty member is looking for a PhD student, they already have one or more projects in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one reason for this is funding, and what faculty need to do to get it: The process of coming up with a grant proposal, submitting it, and getting a response takes months, and some grants can only be applied for once a year. That means that when you, the student, are joining the lab, there already is funding for you from a grant, and some general research goals are outlined in the grant proposal that your research needs to fall within. Some grants are more general than others, and there are also &quot;training grants&quot; out there the goal of which is to train you in a field (almost no constraints on the research topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason is that faculty also have research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously doubt that you will need to pitch an idea out of the blue. It's possible that the faculty member will give you a general idea of what the direction of the research will be, since it would be under the constraints of their own interests and under the constraints of whatever grant is funding you, and then you would need to propose something more specific within those constraints. It's also possible that they will have something much more specific in mind and it will just be a matter of saying whether you're willing to do that research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]t the beginning of the program, when approaching potential advisers, there is only limited time, and limited knowledge of the lab's current focus and planned future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why you need to read up on the potential advisor's interests, look at their publications, look at the publications coming out of the lab, and figure out what the research focus and direction of the lab seems to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T21:41:52.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16919" CreationDate="2014-02-15T21:48:29.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for the final format, no, there are no significant advantages, as the other answers point out. There are however a couple of quirks in TeX (which is the standard typesetting program in many fields) regarding ps and pdf support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/pstricks-base&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pstricks&lt;/a&gt;, which is a popular package for producing drawings, only works if you compile to a &lt;strong&gt;ps&lt;/strong&gt; file (there are workarounds, though).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ctan.org/pkg/microtype&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;microtype&lt;/a&gt;, which is a package for making automatically small typographical adjustments to the document and producing a better-looking line breaking, only works if you compile to a &lt;strong&gt;pdf&lt;/strong&gt; file.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So users of the former package are encouraged to use ps, while users of the second are forced to use pdf. Of course there are converters in both directions, so it is not a binding choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T21:48:29.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17008" CreationDate="2014-02-16T00:27:01.430" Score="7" ViewCount="1503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do I need a consent to record audio of a presentation at a scientific conference in USA (provided that the conference does not explicitly prohibit such recording)? I'm guessing since it is not a private conversation, it's okay to record it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is out of curiosity. I do not actually have clear intentions of recording talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:20:41.220" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:20:41.220" Title="Is consent required to record audio of a conference talk in the US?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16919" CreationDate="2014-02-16T00:31:09.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;PDF was carefully designed by Adobe to fix some problems with PostScript as a format for interchanging files (as opposed to printing). PostScript was a full-fledged programming language, which means that its behavior could be impossible to predict. For example, people have written programs in PostScript that do things like emulating a calculator. In PDF, they removed just enough of the programming capabilities to make the behavior of a PDF file more predictable. (In technical terms, they made it Turing-incomplete.) This is a good thing, since you don't want to trust someone else's software to run on your computer every time you open their document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was all great in theory, but more recently Adobe added more programming features back into PDF (by adding javascript), and in fact there are now some security issues associated with PDF. Therefore there is no longer any clear security-based reason to prefer PDF, but in any case PS is essentially obsolete as a document interchange format, and if you give someone a PS file today, they are unlikely to know what it is or how to open it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T00:31:09.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2014-02-16T00:56:39.957" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on the committee members, but I wouldn't expect it to help much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get a really clever solution published, or they publish a problem you submit, that could make a difference.  It certainly wouldn't mean as much as a research paper, but it could be viewed as the same sort of thing on a smaller scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the potential impact is not large.  Solving Monthly problems would be viewed favorably, as evidence of talent and effort, but it's not likely to mean the difference between admission and rejection.  (Still, it's worth listing on your CV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T00:56:39.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2014-02-16T01:16:50.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question.  Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission.  If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate.  If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording.  (Are you stalking the speaker?  Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements?  Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?)  If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why.  For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities.  Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T01:16:50.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-16T04:02:11.700" Score="12" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;The faculty senate at my school recently took a position on a professional issue that was highly confrontational toward the administration. After union negotiations resulted in a pay raise, the senate reversed itself on this issue. It was later revealed that the original position had been advocated by the union as a way of applying pressure in contract negotiations. Some but not all members of the faculty senate knew about the union's advocacy of the action. There was no direct or logical connection between the professional matter (the hiring of a vice chancellor) and the contract negotiations. A large number of union officers are also on the senate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do other schools have rules or standards of ethical conduct that cover this type of conflict of interest? Is it considered normal for there to be so much overlap between the union leadership and the senate, or for the senate to act so closely in concert with the union as part of labor negotiations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T18:04:50.037" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T18:04:50.037" Title="Are there widely accepted rules related to union officers being on faculty senate?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;&lt;governance&gt;&lt;labor-union&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-16T11:12:54.423" Score="5" ViewCount="1136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a CS/EEE person. A resident of India. I am hoping to apply for an internship in either BARC or TIFR. These are internships related to research. A senior told me that having a Research Internship in his CV counted against him for a technical job interview.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is this true? Should I rather apply for a Technical Internship instead? The kind of job I am looking to do later is a technical one, not one related to research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CS/EEE -- Computer Science / Electrical and Electronics Engineering&lt;br&gt;&#xA;BARC -- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;TIFR -- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11970" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T14:28:28.760" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T04:49:50.857" Title="Would research internship experience lower my chance of getting a technical job?" Tags="&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17014" CreationDate="2014-02-16T11:25:08.983" Score="51" ViewCount="11037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. &lt;strong&gt;He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis?&lt;/strong&gt; Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T11:15:18.183" Title="Is it usual for finished PhD students to send out physical copies of their thesis to unknown persons?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-16T11:34:22.877" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interested in the work, usually people that you have been in contact with before, or are in contact with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of the thesis printing and mailing is generally reimbursed by the university (of course, all within reasonable limits). In countries where printing the thesis is not so common, I can imagine that the practice of mailing around copies is not common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T11:34:22.877" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-16T11:45:52.417" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries you print a large number of copies (as stated by Pieter Naaijkens), in some only a single digit number which should then be distributed to a specific set of recipients. Regardless it is not unusual that a person might distribute copies to people that might have some interest in it. It is, however, not a must and the recipients is up to the author. When you send a thesis I think it is wise to write an accompanying letter explaining why the thesis is sent to the specific person. To send them without such a personal note may come across as a little odd and can of course be misunderstood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my PhD in the US and made a larger number of cheap copies (do not remember how many) to distribute among friends. I sent a few to others whose research I had built on. This was outside of the, at least then, mandatory five bound copies. In Sweden, where I now reside, printing of about 250 is mandatory and the student can print additional copies at their own cost. We recommend students to think about sending their thesis to people they can imagine would be interested in it. Since the life time of a thesis is usually quite short, most will soon be properly published, it is a good way to advertise your PhD and your work right after you have completed the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T11:45:52.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17024" CreationDate="2014-02-16T12:40:16.100" Score="2" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master student and I'm the phase of preparing my thesis. I've searched many papers related to my thesis but I'm a bit confused in what to focus. Do I need to take only a paper (or few papers) and to focus basically on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11969" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T03:08:36.627" Title="Do I need to focus my writing to specific paper?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17016" CreationDate="2014-02-16T13:05:33.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt; Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic. This is particularly important since you state that most of the published research in this area dates from 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even though you feel that you are not prepared to tackle original research in this area, consider at least having a section outlining possible future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T13:05:33.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2014-02-16T14:21:30.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, most large conferences in the US &lt;strong&gt;prohibit&lt;/strong&gt; unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if &quot;caught.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T14:21:30.963" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17028" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:38:50.023" Score="132" ViewCount="34242" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has often been said that there is no such thing as a dumb question. And yet - perhaps due only to inattention, lack of sleep, or hunger - otherwise brilliant people sometimes manage to ask some pretty inane questions during talks. (&quot;Yes, but how does the rover manage to drive around on the moon in the first place - shouldn't it just fall back down to Earth?&quot;) Or worse: make false or bizarre assertions. (&quot;I don't see how your thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How do you answer these kinds of questions in a way that makes &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; feel good about the interaction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sort of three parties to consider here: yourself, the person asking the question, and the rest of the audience. You could, for instance, amuse and satiate the rest of the audience by poking fun at the person (&quot;True, but why would you want to leave a paradise made of cheese?&quot;). Humor &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; win over the audience, but the person who asked the question will spend the rest of the time ignoring the talk and thinking about how little he likes you. In contrast, you don't want to pander (&quot;Ah, interesting point - I didn't realize the moon was made of cheese. Is it Gruyère or some kind of Stilton?&quot;) because, although the person asking the question now feels respected, the rest of the audience thinks you're a schmuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the question could be re-phrased as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; how do you convince someone they're mistaken without making them feel stupid? (And what if they're stubborn?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation is especially delicate if the question-asker is an established and respected member of your field (since their questions and opinions will automatically carry some weight and authority) - or worse, a person interviewing you for a job! I'm interested in both external tactics (i.e. what do you say?) as well as internal strategies (i.e. how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorDisplayName="user12395" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T23:17:51.593" LastActivityDate="2020-04-14T22:54:57.367" Title="Useful strategies for answering &quot;dumb&quot; questions in a talk?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="45" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:48:33.150" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might work better if you are a non-native english speaker. You could try repeating the question: &quot;If I understood you correctly, you are asking me whether the moon is made out of cheese?&quot;. This could give the asker the chance to snap back into reality. If he confirms, then all is permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a non-native speaker, you should be given at least one free chance to be repeated a question without annoying the audience :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11338" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T17:48:33.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17016" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:53:56.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best answer to this question has already been given as a comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should ask your advisor. The fact that you are asking this question suggests that you and your advisor haven't discussed in detail what your thesis should consist of. It's important to have this conversation, even aside from the particular question you are asking here. (You don't want to risk discovering much later that you and your advisor had different visions for what the thesis should be like.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good answer to so many questions on this site (I have started to think that there should be an &quot;Ask your advisor!&quot; closure option), but it seems especially true here.  From the OP's comment I can see that the master's thesis is being done in &lt;strong&gt;mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;.  The expectations and requirements for a master's thesis in mathematics are so highly variable across institutions and countries that I can think of almost nothing (other than &quot;Ask your advisor!&quot;) which would be guaranteed to be universally applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics programs in the US, it is especially unclear what work constitutes a master's thesis, especially in pure mathematics.  Unlike the situation in many other countries, there are relatively few full-time master's students in American universities, even compared to the number of master's degrees awarded: in my experience, more master's degrees go to talented, ambitious undergraduates who get them alongside their bachelor's degrees, or to PhD students who have decided to drop out of the program and get a consolation degree.  In my case I got a master's degree along with my bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago, and for such a top university you might be surprised to hear how minimal the requirements were: I had to complete all nine trimester courses that first year graduate (i.e., PhD) students take (I did so over two years) and pass a &lt;em&gt;pro forma&lt;/em&gt; foreign language exam.  [In particular &lt;strong&gt;I did not write a master's thesis&lt;/strong&gt;.]  When I went on to my PhD studies (at Harvard) I found that I was about as well prepared as most of the other students.  I don't recall that my having a master's degree came up once during my five years in a PhD program...with the possible exception that some students would, a year or two into their program, fill out paperwork and pay a small fee to get a master's degree, whereas I already had one of those so chose to keep my money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having been heavily involved with the graduate (mostly PhD) program at the University of Georgia in recent years, I can say that here a master's thesis is whatever the advisor and student agree that it is, subject to the approval of two other committee members.  Writing a thesis is one route; there is another route involving more coursework and some exams.  Among master's thesis advisors I've talked to, the sense is that the student should take the thesis as an opportunity to engage with some piece of mathematics at a deeper level than they have done before, to the extent that they have &lt;em&gt;mastered&lt;/em&gt; it and can show this mastery with an original (or at least, independent) exposition.  This description seems rather at odds with the one given in another answer to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NO. Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably a correct description of some academic fields, but not for mathematics.  Very few mathematics undergraduates are reading &quot;real&quot; math papers at all.  The task of reading, understanding and writing about even &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; &quot;real&quot; math paper may in fact be sufficient for a master's thesis.  There are even certain papers out there for which rewriting them so as to contain the level of detail and completeness that would satisfy a master's thesis committee would be a real service to the mathematical community.  I think that most PhD students in mathematics do not &lt;em&gt;use every seminal work in [their] field&lt;/em&gt;: I didn't, for instance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying that just any old thing will suffice for a master's thesis in mathematics: I am saying that the &lt;em&gt;global&lt;/em&gt; requirements are very few, so it becomes more important to talk to your advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have so far supervised one master's thesis.  My student carefully read and wrote about two papers concerning geometry of numbers and Legendre's Equation ax^2+by^2+cz^2 = 0.  She then tried to extend the techniques of the second paper to diagonal quadratic equations in n \geq 4 variables.  Much of this was easy, but the key was the existence of a &quot;magic sublattice&quot; defined in the three-dimensional case by the necessary congruence conditions for Legendre's Equation to have a solution.  After much trouble (and some help from me), she was eventually able to prove that for more than three variables such a magic sublattice did not exist.  She wrote up a thesis which contained expositions of the two papers she read plus a proof of this result (plus a few more small things, totalling a few pages).  I remember that she was concerned that her thesis was rather short: 45 pages double-spaced.  I thought her thesis was an unusually strong one and told her so.  (If people are wondering, I think her result is not yet publishable -- it's along the lines of showing that a certain proof strategy cannot work, and such things are hard to publish in mathematics -- but that the work could be continued and made publishable.  I honestly think that makes it an above average American master's thesis in mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T03:08:36.627" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T03:08:36.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16870" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:55:39.723" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally find one aspect of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; very useful, although I find that its benefit for me is only in small part due to any effect it has on my research visibility. Perhaps others can say more. But I do find it very helpful for keeping up with the state-of-the-art in my area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m in an interdisciplinary social/medical science field where people publish in a very wide range of journals, and I try to keep track of several different literatures. So for me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt;, in letting me follow researchers to see what they’ve published recently, is a nice complement to journal Tables of Contents. It’s a nice way to keep track of what others are working on without too much effort. I choose to follow both researchers I’ve met and strangers who recently published a useful article and might publish more in the same area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, I have the settings organized so that I am not following any “interesting Topics”, only people. This avoids having questions and answers in my live feed (which I find totally useless). Consequently, my live feed contains only new articles other academics in my fields are adding, and going through this from time to time in a moment of procrastination is fantastically useful. Of course, using ResearchGate in this way is only worth it if a largish proportion of researchers in your sub-fields are on the site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T13:53:53.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T13:53:53.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:57:28.210" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in full agreement that there are in fact dumb (or, more accurately, non-productive) questions, and I do not think that it is your responsibility as a speaker to make the asker of the question feel better about himself to the expense of the rest of the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this sort of thing happens to me, I try to answer &lt;strong&gt;accurately, politely and to the point&lt;/strong&gt; as I see it, just as I would try to answer any other question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: &quot;I don't see how your the thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: &quot;I am afraid we have to disagree on the assumptions here. In my experience, the moon is likely not made out of cheese, hence this is somewhat of a non-issue in practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do the same if giving an interview talk. In that case, I would assume that the asker is likely just testing me. Rambling on, evading, or taking the suggestion seriously might actually be perceived as a negative in that case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T17:57:28.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-16T20:10:48.903" Score="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;If somebody asks a dumb question, they're not going to feel good about the interaction whatever happens. If possible, get them back on the right track but avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as sarcasm and move on as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely thing is either that the questioner has missed something obvious or misunderstood something you said. So, in your first example, just point out that the rover is held there by the moon's gravity and move on. They're going to be embarrassed to have missed something so simple so it's important that you don't make them feel any worse about it; at least they'll probably understand the rest of your talk, now. In the far less common case of somebody making an assertion based on something that just isn't true, point out that the thing isn't true (&quot;Well, the moon isn't made of cheese.&quot;) and move on. If they want to debate the point, offer to discuss it after the talk but don't let them derail you: everyone else in the room, you included, came for a talk about your thruster design, not an argument about whether the moon is a dairy product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T20:10:48.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-16T20:59:07.557" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two useful responses are (1) to ask to rephrase/elaborate the question, and (2) to ask to discuss the issue after the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them time to think about their question a little more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give you time to hear them out and figure out why they asked that question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussing the issue after the talk has the added advantage of preventing anyone from getting embarrassed in front of a large audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also addresses the &quot;mindset&quot; issue: the question might seem stupid only because it is asked in a profoundly stupid way. If you leave open the possibility that you misunderstood the question, a lot of embarrassment can be avoided on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T20:59:07.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2014-02-16T22:04:38.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end I decided to try the following, based on my understanding that lab exercises are particularly suited for repairing misconceptions that students might hold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before students complete the lab procedure, they have to answer an open-ended question about what they think the results will show, based on their knowledge of the course material.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the lab, students have to write whether their initial guess was correct. If not, they have to explain why they originally made that guess, what factor they hadn't considered that led the actual results to be different, and what (if anything) they understand now that they misunderstood before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This serves as both a learning assessment for the students, and a methodology assessment for the lab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The students earn a grade based on whether they eventually have a good sense of what's supposed to happen, either before doing the lab procedure or after. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pre-lab and post-lab questions together help me quantify to what degree the lab exercises address misconceptions that students have about the content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T07:16:58.950" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T07:16:58.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2014-02-16T22:31:17.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that there is a big difference in breadth vs depth. If you have a paper on a broad subject that is interesting to 50%+ of the researchers in that conference, then obviously a speaking slot is needed, but if you have some advances that are important but in a niche that really interests 5% of the attendants... then a poster would be more efficient in dissemination than a speaking slot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been to conferences where I'm interested in something like 5 out of 50 posters, but those 5 topics were very important to me - it's impractical to have everyone speak, but it would be bad if those poster presenters wouldn't be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T22:31:17.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-16T22:32:06.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies by country and probably by field as well, which means I can only speak from my own experience in physics, in the US. What my experience says is that it is exceptionally rare to do this. Typically, a student will have one copy of their thesis printed and bound for their adviser, one for themselves, one or two for the university library if required by policy, and perhaps one or two for the student's parents, if they're interested. Each one of these copies costs $50 or more, and costs are borne by the student, so there is a large incentive to print as few copies as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently (in the past few years), I believe a lot of universities have switched to electronic archival of theses, which means the campus library no longer requires a printed copy. In these cases, a finalized PhD thesis might never get printed at all, depending on the preferences of the student and the adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, to me, it is unheard of to send unsolicited printed copies of the thesis to other researchers. Of course, in physics some PhD theses are uploaded to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; for electronic distribution, so interested researchers can get access to them that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T22:32:06.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17037" CreationDate="2014-02-16T22:35:13.250" Score="23" ViewCount="6591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a rush to accomplish academic goals since I remember myself. Started my PhD right after undergrad and did my Masters on the same time. Now I am about to submit my thesis and feel kind of burned out, having spend so many years in a far from perfect working environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia has always been my goal (I like both teaching and research and I am not interested in industry), which is why I started a PhD on the first place, but I really feel I need a big break to think clearly of what I really want before applying for a post-doc. I also read this somewhere: &quot;The rest of your life you are going to be a scientist. This could be your last chance to be something else. Take it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I thought a &quot;late gap year&quot; would be ideal for me. I would get to travel, which I love, volunteer in wildlife conservation and in schools of developing countries and take some time to clear my mind, so that when I am back, I can take the right decision for a post-doc and be totally dedicated in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to now I have a decent resume with a 5th paper in preparation (including first-authored) and several international conferences, fellowships and awards. However, I am very concerned on the impact such a gap would have on my CV, since I want to apply in high reputation universities/institutes, where competition is fierce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I tell a future PI I did a gap year and if not, what would be the appropriate excuse for a year off? Also would this gap have an impact in future job-seeking (mainly for positions in academia)? Finally, I am also worried about the reaction of my current PI (who has been asking me lately, which lab I am planning to apply for a PD) when I tell him my plans. The last thing I want is a reference letter from an angry PI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;EDIT&lt;/em&gt;*My field is Molecular Biology. I performed my PhD research at several European countries and I am flexible with post-doc positions (Europe/Israel/US/...) depending on the projects available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11985" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T21:52:25.337" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T21:52:25.337" Title="Gap year before post-doc?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17039" CreationDate="2014-02-17T00:35:46.137" Score="4" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a bit of an unfortunate experience with an academic institution where I completed the coursework for a theology Ph.D. without high enough grades to continue. There were other things that were unfortunate about that experience, but the best advice I have been given is that if I try to return to studies, I need to explain why I don't have a reference from my previous Ph.D. programs, and if I document things that were wrong, that comes across as &quot;&lt;em&gt;I am a negative person who will publicly backstab a university by criticizing it after exhausting his appeal options&lt;/em&gt;&quot; rather than &quot;&lt;em&gt;XYZ happened and if you can document it, we will make accommodations.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (Additionally, I've tried to document the talent I have, but documenting that I am talented, no matter what talent I document, doesn't seem to trip any light bulbs of recognizing I may be a promising student.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In graduate school admissions, what is a convincing non-negative way of explaining &quot;I don't have references from my prior program?&quot; And is there any way to get connections made between &quot;gifted&quot; and &quot;promising student&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11992" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T02:36:05.503" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T02:36:05.503" Title="How to frame incomplete previous studies when applying to new graduate school without being too negative about previous program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T00:37:03.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say to try to think up of a &quot;smarter&quot; question that is related, but more difficult, and answer their dumb question in the context of answering the smarter one. It would allow everyone to move forward feeling good, and the person that asked the question would be grateful for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11459" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T00:37:03.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16870" CreationDate="2014-02-17T00:46:39.100" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; has been negative. I was searching for a paper online, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; page came up. I signed up as a member because they promised to send me a pdf of the paper. They never sent it and instead sent unrelated spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T13:53:17.320" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T13:53:17.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17033" CreationDate="2014-02-17T00:50:26.623" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you include information about geographic location (both the current one and the one(s) in which you intend for the future) and your field, you can get more specific advice.  Advice which is generalized across all the world's academia is at times extremely superficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will speak from the perspective of American academic mathematics.  In this subculture, taking a full year off before starting a postdoc looks bad: the competition for postdocs is extremely fierce right now.  For every postdoc position there are at least five other people who wanted that position but couldn't get it.  So employers really want to give jobs to people who are sure that they want them, not those who are feeling &quot;kind of burned out&quot; or &quot;need a big break to think clearly of what I really want&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a full year off &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of applying for postdocs, then unless you have something amazing to show for yourself at the end of that time, the year off will definitely hurt your applications.  Whether or not you can actually do work during a &quot;year off&quot; seems highly field dependent: in mathematics this is certainly possible; in laboratory science this seems much less feasible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some advice that I would offer you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you want to take some length of time off, try to secure a job upon return &lt;em&gt;before you take the time off&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens then in some sense you do not really have an employment gap, and that will look much better on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Consider taking a smaller amount of time off than a year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year is a really long time to put aside one's career.  In fact many people would have trouble supporting themselves (especially if they have families or dependents, which I guess you do not) over such a long unpaid stretch.   It is also more than enough time for your academic skills to atrophy.  In some academic fields (pure mathematics not so much, although in some subfields this could still come into play) a year off is enough to make your entire research program less fresh and cutting edge.  Anyway, imagine that you are competing with many talented young people who spent the first year after getting their PhD working their butts off.  Do you really want to spot them an entire year headstart?  As other people remarked in a closely related question: whether it is fair or not, you should imagine that a big clock in the sky starts ticking the second you receive your PhD.  From that point on, people will be evaluating your work not just in an absolute sense but relative to the time elapsed from that point.  Adding in an extra year makes almost anyone's profile look much less strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should consider taking a shorter amount of time off: either a semester or a long summer.  As the American academic calendar runs, you will have a built-in vacation of about three months just by virtue of being an unemployed PhD over the summer.  I really enjoyed this time: I moved into an apartment downtown in the city where I grew up but hadn't spent more than a few weeks at a time for my entire adult life.  It really was refreshing and recharged my batteries.  However, it also depleted my savings: by the time the new semester rolled around, I really needed the paychecks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need much more than three months' break from a career, you should ask yourself: are you sure that this career is really for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T00:50:26.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T00:58:20.803" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just answer the question. You will spend less brainpower and not waste time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Given that there are 24 letters in the American alphabet, why does &quot;l&quot;  come before &quot;a&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;[If I understand your references[context] properly][As far as I know]&lt;/code&gt; , there are actually 26 letters in the American English alphabet. &quot;A&quot; actually comes before &quot;L,&quot; at least as far as I've learned in &lt;code&gt;[give reference.]&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then just move on like nothing happened. Because nothing has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11995" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T00:58:20.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2014-02-17T01:00:24.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what is a convincing non-negative way of explaining &quot;I don't have references from my prior program?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you dwell on it, it will sound like you're making excuses. It's not really worth spending more than a sentence describing unfavorable circumstances that made you leave this place or that place. It might even be better to not mention at all. Just make sure you have favorable references from somewhere to go with your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there any way to get connections made between &quot;gifted&quot; and &quot;promising student&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through achievements. If you say &quot;I am good at X,&quot; no one cares, or really believes you. If you say &quot;I did A, B, and C,&quot; it's good if you can say &quot;I received award Y,&quot; by pointing to things that demonstrate that you are good at X, then you will look good. Talents only count to other people if you use them to achieve results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T01:00:24.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17047" CreationDate="2014-02-17T01:04:36.740" Score="3" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently on track to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science and Physics. I am on the fence on which masters program I should pursue. I want to deal with new technologies like sustainable energy and things like Tesla motors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which degree would be more beneficial for the field I described or is there another engineering program that would better fit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10743" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T13:35:52.817" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T13:35:52.817" Title="Computational Physics or Engineering Physics, which deal with new technologies related to energy?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-17T01:05:41.057" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have, so far as I can remember, physical copies of three PhD theses that were not written by my own students.  (I do not have a physical copy of my own PhD thesis.)  Two of these were indeed PhDs from the Netherlands, where they bind the theses in an attractive way and clearly send them out rather broadly.  One of them is from an older student in my department, whose work was very influential to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have certainly been happy to have all of these theses.  The one from the student in my department I have certainly consulted at length.   The other two less so, but a colleague of mine once borrowed it (and then duly returned it).  I am not aware that any of these three theses are freely available on the internet, so it is not purely an empty gesture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've probably realized by now, your behavior was a bit rude.  What are the chances that someone sent you a PhD thesis by accident??  Offering to give back something that someone sends you without first inquiring into the circumstances in which they sent it is really not great behavior.  When someone gives something to you -- in circumstances other than a bribe or some similar kind of implicit &lt;em&gt;quid pro quo&lt;/em&gt; -- the polite thing to do is say &quot;Thank you.&quot;  It would be a classy move to apologize to the person whose thesis you tried to give back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T01:05:41.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T02:22:00.297" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with dumb questions is their ability to make you &lt;strong&gt;stop in your tracks with your mouth open&lt;/strong&gt;, when you're supposed to be the hardened professional.  Its not a good look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've spoken on IT subjects to some reasonably large crowds of paying attendees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I do to avoid the deer-in-the-headlights effect that weird questions can have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately respond to the question, by acknowledging it.  That puts me back in control of the room, and makes my mouth shut (instead of hanging open in amazement) and gets the folks in the room looking at me instead of the questioner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To respond I tell them what I think of the question, but I use &lt;strong&gt;these two euphemisms or code-words&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of saying a question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;crazy, insane, stupid, or barking mad&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;say its&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;intriguing&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And instead of saying a question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;pointless, inane, destructive, or insulting&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;say its&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;interesting&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get this down you have to practise it.  Use your colleagues as guinea pigs when you practise your talk, and ask them to come up with some stupid questions so you can ace these &quot;code word&quot; responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell your close friends, work associates and fellow speakers how you will use these euphemisms or code words (interesting and intriguing), and then when they hear you say  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;OK, that is an interesting question&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they'll know you mean &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;WHY WOULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING - ARE YOU MAD!&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get some back-up then.  If you're really heating up with a flush of horror, and losing it up there, your friends in the know can come and rescue you by chiming in with something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, even after that you've got nothing.  You've played for time with the response above, saying the question is &quot;Intriguing&quot;, but the question is so off the wall you &lt;strong&gt;still&lt;/strong&gt; have no way to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what you can do since you have got control of the floor again, is you can go back to the audience with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Show of hands - who here has an IT security plan for cosmic rays?&quot; &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful.  You don't want the audience to laugh at the guy, so make it clear you're taking the question seriously, or at least semi-seriously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result you're looking for is that others see the question as low priority.  Then you can offer to &quot;take it offline&quot; and speak to the questioner after you get off the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, don't worry that the intriguing and interesting code words will become known and you'll be seen as not being sincere.  Its a bit of an &quot;in joke&quot; and if folks know it they can have a bit of a chuckle with you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its still about the most polite way I know to say something is a bit mad, without really offending people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11999" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T02:22:00.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T03:02:22.257" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the OP specifically mentions the case of job talks and none of the other answers do, let me concentrate on that in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) In a job talk, unless you specifically know otherwise, you should assume that everyone in the audience is someone who could have a direct hand in hiring you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the job talk I gave at my current university, a graduate student asked me a question about the arithmetic of Fano varieties.  I began my response by carefully explaining what a Fano variety was and then quickly moving on to say that things like the circle method worked when the variety was &quot;sufficiently Fano&quot; in a certain precise sense.  By the end of the day I learned that the person who asked me the question was not actually a graduate student but rather a youthful-looking tenured professor in algebraic geometry.  In other words, she had forgotten more about Fano varieties than I would ever learn.  Nevertheless, despite the fact that my answer was pitched a little too low for her, it &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; answer her question in a helpful and not condescending way, so she found my more-careful-than-necessary explanation more charming than offensive, and she joined me for lunch the next day.  After I accepted the job, she quickly became one of my closest colleagues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corollary to 1: In a job talk, you cannot afford to answer anyone's question in a way which pokes fun at them with the hope of gaining points with the rest of the audience.  The one person who got snubbed will remember that at the hiring meeting more than everyone else put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) In any talk [i.e., a one-shot performance, unlike a course] you need to answer any single question in a way which keeps the overall talk on track.  You don't want to spend more than a minute answering any single question, even if you know the answer and are happy to give it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus you need to answer all questions in a globally efficient way.  Since the question is about &quot;stupid questions&quot;, I presume this means questions that you know the answer to.  (If you don't know the answer to a question in a talk, probably the best strategy is to &lt;em&gt;clearly acknowledge&lt;/em&gt; that in the moment you do not have an ideal answer, but that you'll think about it and be happy to get back to the questioner later on.  It is tempting to stop short and wrestle with the question a bit -- this shows some positive traits, especially if you come out with the answer -- but it violates rule 2) above.)  Moreover a &quot;stupid question&quot; is probably one for which the answer will not be enlightening to the rest of the audience, anticipate something that will come up later, or otherwise be worth spending much time on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the best way to answer a &quot;stupid question&quot; in a job talk is: directly, politely, and quickly.  E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Assuming I've heard and understood you correctly, the answer to your question is X.  I'd be happy to elaborate, but I think it won't be so relevant to what I want to talk about today, so can we take this up after the talk?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this phrasing creates a polite amount of reasonable doubt that a stupid question was asked after all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all goes well, the questioner will drop the point and you can move on.  Unfortunately, especially if the questioner is a high-status faculty member in the department, they may not want to drop it.  In this case you should ask them to repeat the question, and you should take another crack at answering it, then say something like &quot;And now I really feel like I need to move on, so that I can get through what I came here to say.  But please feel free to talk to me about it afterwards.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say that I know a few &quot;big dogs&quot; who ask stupid questions that I have trouble believing are actually sincerely stupid questions.  In other words, it is not unheard of that someone &quot;plays dumb&quot; during a job talk.  I do not condone this behavior -- on the one hand, an interview is a two-way street and the would-be employers should be modelling their best future behavior just like the would-be employees, and on the other hand it is not so clear to me what constitutes a good response to such bad behavior so I'm not sure what they're hoping to gain (I hope it's not just trying to derail candidates that they have already decided they don't like: how ogrish) -- but I have seen it happen.  But the above strategy is designed to combat this type of question as well: you want to give little to no offense but become minimally derailed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T19:13:45.287" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:13:45.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T06:45:41.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are [almost] always three sides to a disagreement, your side, the other person's side, and the right side which is somewhere in the middle.&quot; Loosely paraphrased from a talk by Napoleon Hill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that it is your fault (something that you said or did not say) that lead the person in the wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The earths gravitational field is of no significance at this stage of the expedition; this is one of the factors that allow for the possibility of prolonged exploration and experimentation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The surface of the moon has a terrain that is very similar to some places on earth and through careful analysis and experimental data our team has concluded that the thrusters will achieve between 7 and 8 thrust juice on each of the potential launch sites.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12009" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T06:45:41.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2014-02-17T10:29:46.793" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a hands-on approach then Engineering Physics seems like the logical option, if, however, you want to think about the problems on a more abstract level, Computational Physics seems like the right choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are doing Computer Science, you probably love, as many of us do, the power of coding languages, and might feel more comfortable using these to solve problems, once again that would mean computational physics might be more your thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is how you want to deal with these new technologies. If you want to really work with these new technologies, I'd opt for engineering physics. You might want to take a look at some of the courses in these master programs and see which suit you more, or you could engage with master students of these courses to get a better insight in the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T10:29:46.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2014-02-17T12:26:49.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be institution dependent rather than &quot;country dependent&quot;. If the university or other institution publishes a lot of international publications, these works will probably be known for the foreign scientists reviewing your potential future application (they must be competent in the area!). In other words, you need to care more about the status of your institution, laboratory and supervisor rather than about the general status of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to see problematic laboratories and unsuccessful research projects everywhere. No country is protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T12:26:49.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T14:10:12.013" Score="14" ViewCount="6622" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing a paper I discussed its first draft with a certain colleague (he is from a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; university, so it is not likely that he will be automatically ruled out as a reviewer as suggested in the Visoft's answer). He made a few helpful suggestions but by and large didn't like the paper: he would like the results to be compared with the ones one could obtain using his favorite method -- but this is a separate piece of hard work, and his favorite method is, to put it mildly, far from being universally recognized by the community of experts in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to acknowledge his helpful suggestions in the paper but at the same time I would like to rule him out as a possible reviewer (some journals give you an opportunity to let them know whom the paper should NOT be sent for review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION:&lt;/strong&gt; How should one word the acknowledgment of this colleague's helpful suggestions in the paper in a way compatible with excluding him as a possible reviewer, so that the editor who will handle the paper does not get confused by the whole situation and honors my request to exclude this person from the list of possible reviewers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, which is the best way to state the reason for excluding this person from the list of reviewers (conflict of interests, or something else)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T14:43:44.337" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T06:31:13.703" Title="Acknowledging the discussion with someone in the paper but excluding this person as a reviewer: how to do this?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T14:37:44.927" Score="12" ViewCount="5927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a desire to teach at one of the colleges/universities in my area. I think my experience in industry and my own educational background would be an asset to an IT program. However, I'm finding that when looking for positions, all require previous teaching experience. This requirement exists at the technical college, local community colleges and two universities in my area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to start by teaching a night class or two. How does one go about translating valuable industry experience (combined with Bachelor and Masters degrees) to the teaching requirements that are desired by the institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12026" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T23:55:37.620" Title="Without teaching experience, but industry experience, how can I begin teaching at college level?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17050" CreationDate="2014-02-17T14:39:06.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;learning, welcome to Academia StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you should add the name of your colleague to the acknowledgment section of your paper because he gave constructive hints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The authors would like to thank Mr. xxx for the helpful suggestions regarding chapter X, &quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the editors rule out automatically reviewers based on their affiliations or proximity with the authors (previous work together, previous shared affiliations, etc). So there are very small chances that a colleague of yours be your reviewer. I only heard of this situation once, on some conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal asks you for a list of possible/avoidable reviewers you can list him/her here. However, the list is just a suggestion and the editor might choose another reviewers. Best reason for reviewer rejection is, in your situation, to explain that you worked together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, you might mention other methods and rule them out based on some (semi)objective criteria (rarely used, without available implementation, debatable, etc). Anyway, be prepared to accept the reviewer's comments even if they require implementing some rare and weird techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8955" LastEditorUserId="8955" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T14:54:47.133" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T14:54:47.133" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17050" CreationDate="2014-02-17T15:00:33.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I assume that you do not mean &quot;colleague&quot; in the narrow sense of someone at your institution?  That would make a (nearly?) universally inappropriate choice of reviewer, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question: I must admit that I don't have much direct experience with &quot;suggested excluded reviewers&quot;.  I am almost never asked that question on papers I submit; I think I might have done so once: when I did it, the idea was to help out the editors by pointing to someone that they might have thought had a lot of directly relevant expertise but that I knew would not actually be so interested in reviewing the work in question.  The point is that I interpreted this as a (ever so slightly pathetic, I might add: I think this occurred at, by far, the lowest quality journal I have ever submitted to) request from the editors for me to help them out in finding a good person for the job, not excluding potential reviewers for &quot;conflict of interest&quot; reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this I am not totally clear on what constitutes a &quot;conflict of interest&quot; for a reviewer: in doing any referee work one volunteers to give one's professional opinion.  I don't have any &quot;academic enemies&quot;, but moreover I once recommended for rejection a paper by one of my closest friends: and it was a very good paper; I just thought that it was not good enough for the journal to which it was submitted.  (Because I knew the person I also felt that he could get a better publication by working on it a little longer, and in fact that is what happened: about a year later he published a magnificent paper in a higher quality journal.)  Oh, back to you: is it clear that your colleague would actually be an inappropriate referee for the paper?  Were his opinions about doing the alternate method actually fully &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; opinions, or is that just his more personal reaction to the paper, reading it in terms of his own interests?  Moreover, does his alternate perspective really lack validity in some sense?  If so, then wouldn't a good editor not choose him anyway?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize the above: it is not clear to me that &quot;X already read my paper, and he didn't like it so much&quot; is a sufficient reason to exclude X as a potential referee.  You wonder what the language of exclusion should be, and I agree: you'll have to work a little harder to paint this as a &lt;em&gt;conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt;: I'm not seeing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But okay, now a direct answer: well, they asked you if there's anyone you'd like to exclude, so it's really up to them to evaluate the reasons.  If you don't want this person to review your paper I would say so using exactly the reasons you've told us: then it is up to the editors to decide whether to grant your request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give one other piece of advice which may seem a little shady at first but which I claim is mostly practical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider not acknowledging your colleague in the first version of the paper you submit, knowing that you will put this acknowledgment back in the published version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning this, let me first say that you cannot do it if his contributions were beyond a certain point: it would then simply be academic dishonesty.  But many acknowledgments are subjective largesse: you have not just won an Academy Award, so you don't thank every single person that helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the reason why I recommend this if it is possible is to short-circuit the dopey editorial practice -- &lt;strong&gt;which I have seen happen several times&lt;/strong&gt; -- that the editors send a paper to a certain reviewer &lt;em&gt;because she is explicitly acknowledged&lt;/em&gt;.  What a frustratingly lazy practice this is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editors who ask the author's opinion on referees tend (in my direct experience) to be lazy types, who just might choose someone in the acknowledgments...and might do so thinking they are doing you a favor!  So the idea of delaying the acknowledgment to forestall a bad editorial choice seems ethically defensible to me.  Finally, if the editors are asking for the author's opinion perhaps they will also ask you for especially plausible referees?  If so you should think hard and suggest really good choices: i.e., the most qualified people, not necessarily the ones who would like your paper the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: After airing out my advice to unacknowledge your former collaborator X, I am having trouble standing by it.  Based on what you say there is a good chance that X actually would be the referee, and if he can then see that your paper has been modified according to his advice but that you have not mentioned him, then it is possible that he might be personally hurt by it and that this might come out in the referee report.  I think the &quot;unacknowledgment&quot; suggested above is only feasible if the version of the paper you're submitting does not bear any mark of X's helpful suggestions.  As I said, whether X is an appropriate referee for your paper really is up to the editors to decide.  You can help them out by giving them all the appropriate information.  Doing much more than that could be ethically problematic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Upon further reflection I can only &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; remember the practice of being asked to referee a paper in which I was acknowledged happening once.  I'm sorry for the inaccuracy.  However that one time was from a leading journal, and I made sure to ask whether the editor was aware that I had been acknowledged in the paper, and he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T06:31:13.703" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T06:31:13.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-02-17T15:23:29.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get in touch with the institutions you mentioned and offer to substitute. Like everyone else, teachers get sick from time to time or have to go on leave for a variety of reasons after the term has started. When you offer to substitute, you are offering a solution to a problem that is almost an emergency--most professors do not have understudies (yes, large universities have TA's but smaller institutions were mentioned in the question0. Once you have substituted a bit, you will be in a better position to know if you like teaching and you will have at least a minimum amount of experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't say whether teaching experience in your field is required, or just teaching experience in general. If it's the latter, you could go overseas and teach English (or teach in an ESL program) or take an education course that provided for hands-on experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the easiest way would be to substitute. You could also contact high schools as well, they try to put an emphasis on IT when they can and someone with your industry experience--even if just a few days per month--would be a real catch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12028" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T15:23:29.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1348" CreationDate="2014-02-17T15:28:23.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you a native speaker? If you are not, don't bother. &#xA;If you are, try substituting. Teach adult education courses. Military courses. Speak to your own professors for suggestions. You may have to relocate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12028" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T15:28:23.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:12:55.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it could be of interest that in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe there exists a tradition of sending to many places in the country where the Ph.D. studies are done (especially major libraries and universities) not the full Ph.D. thesis but the so-called thesis summary (&quot;autoreferat&quot;). The sending is usually done by the institution where the Ph.D. studies are done and takes place &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the viva, so that, at least in theory, the interested parties may visit the viva and ask the questions to the author of the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T16:12:55.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:40:47.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the options listed in tohecz answer, it could be quite helpful to set up a &lt;strong&gt;Google Scholar Profile&lt;/strong&gt;, see e.g. these links for details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fyi.libmedia.nymc.edu/?p=2517&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fyi.libmedia.nymc.edu/?p=2517&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.lib.uci.edu/content.php?pid=215869&amp;amp;sid=3311417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://libguides.lib.uci.edu/content.php?pid=215869&amp;amp;sid=3311417&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T16:40:47.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:57:07.873" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Franklin puzzled over how to disagree with other members of Congress in a manner that would not alienate others - especially when the facts were on his side . He had discovered that, simply by changing a few phrases, he came closer to that goal than he could have imagined. Instead of saying, for instance, &quot;All scientific knowledge clearly rejects that assertion&quot;, you avoid the direct disagreement entirely by saying &quot;It is my considered opinion, and I believe, from what I have studied on the subject, that the moon's surface is composed of quite different material. If you feel you have new knowledge on the subject, please get together with me after the presentation. I'd be very happy to discuss this subject with you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12031" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T16:57:07.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16632" CreationDate="2014-02-17T17:39:16.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for France, you should rather google for the whole name (&quot;habilitation à diriger des recherches&quot;) and look e.g. here for starters: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation_universitaire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation_universitaire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note that the contents is quite different from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T17:39:16.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T18:19:30.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many nice answers already to OP; however this will attempt to answer the related question that was not asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you recognize that a question you've been asked is &quot;dumb&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is that you can't.  While the question may in fact be dumb, it is also possible that the question is very good and you have misunderstood or misheard it.  Perhaps the question you thought was about the moon rover falling back to Earth was actually about the moon rover falling over due to its testing having been conducted back on Earth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answers have shown, there is no really satisfying way to answer a dumb question, so better to assume that the question is not dumb and rather that you have failed to understand it.  My advice is to say that you're having trouble understanding the question, and asking the poser to give you more clarification after the conclusion of the talk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If indeed it's a dumb question and everyone in the room (but one person) knows it, this defuses the public situation and lets you deal with the poser in private.  If you have misunderstood a good question, this allows you to discover this in private rather than embarrassing yourself.  And if it's an off-the-wall question that could be either good or bad, this allows those people not interested (i.e. everyone) to leave and not have to endure the exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T18:19:30.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:00:38.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sent printed copies of my thesis to the people I mentioned in the acknowledgment section. That is about 20 persons. I obviously didn't think they would read it, and in fact the content was already obsolete at the time it went through the printer, it was more of a way of marking the event, and well, letting them know that I thanked them in my preamble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not be surprised, however, that someone would get puzzled if I sent them a copy and they had no direct tie to my work. I mean, I don't send pdfs of my articles to people I think would be interested in reading them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2017-04-15T11:15:18.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T11:15:18.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:01:34.633" Score="9" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research is an activity, a process to obtain knowledge, which has been greatly empowered by the scientific method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can collect lots of information about research, consider impact factors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is data and information there, that data could possibly become knowledge through some analysis, hypothesis testing, and in general terms &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;. So what I'm talking about here is research about research, meta-research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'm interested to know whether this has been done in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if this has been done (I guess so), I would like to know by what name, so that I can search for it. It's easier to find information about fluid dynamics when you know it stands by the name of fluid dynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: I'm not interested in philosophy or epistemology, but science and hard verifiable facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some lack of that, whatever that is. Related article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700&quot;&gt;Scientific method: Statistical errors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T01:08:27.467" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:45:30.627" Title="Are there any documented cases of meta-science or scientific meta-research? Does that have a name?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16632" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:13:42.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer for France, but some answers may be field-dependent (I am in mathematics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) If I understand correctly, habilitation is the highest academic&#xA;  degree you can receive and people do it for getting a permanent&#xA;  academic position in Europe. How many years or how much/many&#xA;  publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the highest academic degree, but in France permanent positions are available earlier: &quot;maître de conférence&quot; (a kind of associate professor) and &quot;chargé de recherche&quot; (same but without any teaching duty) are tenured positions that only needs a PhD. Also  In mathematics, I'd say that nowadays people are usually hired within 2 to 4 years after their defense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Habilitation is need for Professors positions, which are more or less equivalent to full professor positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes usually from 6 to 12 years to complete a Habilitation (this is probably field dependent, and mathematics are certainly on the junior side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a&#xA;  'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you&#xA;  publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it&#xA;  for the defense of habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is common. In fact, usually one even only write a survey of their results and quote the articles. May be strongly field dependent, I do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in&#xA;  university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How&#xA;  about university A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that you would apply to university B. Most people apply when &quot;maître de conférence&quot; or &quot;chargé de recherche&quot; rather than postdocs, but it is not impossible to apply as a postdoc, there are famous examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if&#xA;  you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for&#xA;  getting the degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not an issue. You'll need to find referees and a jury that complements well if you want to present everything, but usually you do not include your PhD work. I chose not to present my earlier post-PhD work to get a more consistent Habilitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) (Kind of vague question, somewhat opinion-based too) How much does&#xA;  the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a&#xA;  successful habilitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, it would help to get a professor position; if you work abroad I do not think it is mandatory, but good referees report and the composition of the jury can help an application. It would actually &lt;em&gt;hurt&lt;/em&gt; an application to a Maître de conférence position, as you would be seen as too senior for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware that Professor position are rather rare these years, and that Maître de conférence position do not have an internationally competitive salary (but outside the region of Paris, one lives quite well on it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:13:42.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:19:59.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been some research done on citation patterns. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis&lt;/a&gt;. A recent post asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16759/is-there-an-inflation-in-the-number-of-authors-per-paper&quot;&gt;Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:19:59.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:39:16.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you asking about scientometrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia: &quot;Scientometrics is the study of measuring and analysing science research.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a major field of study in its own right, with its own journals, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation analysis, mentioned by James Barrett, is one area of scientometrics; there are many others. For example, formal studies of the  prevalence of research fraud also fall in this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T19:51:55.057" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:51:55.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:43:53.930" Score="37" ViewCount="2057" Body="&lt;p&gt;I value the reputation of the journals to which I submit articles. Mostly, I wish to confront my work with the most competent researchers in my field through peer review, in order to have an expert opinion on its quality. In my field, the best ranked/most reputable journals are dominantly subscription-based (although all offer 3'000$ open access (OA) options, that not many researcher choose). So I give priority to reputation/quality over OA policy. On the other hand, I'm well aware that subscription journals are a big weight on universities budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;does OA* really help access to science and save taxpayer money?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arguments I know about that suggest it does: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of the arguments (very efficiently publicized by big OA publishers like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/about/openaccess&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frontiers&lt;/a&gt;) that OA is good karma because it gives access to science 'for free'. People argue that when the taxpayers pay for research, they should also get to read the results without paying a subscription.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons for which I'm not sure it does:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that if every article costs 500-3000$ just to publish, and the total number of article explodes, taxpayers (or private scientific funding agencies) are not winning a lot in the change. I also think that people can go to the library to get access to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps. I published in both OA and subscription-based, and I will gladly submit to OA journals if they end up being the highest quality ones in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I'm talking about OA journals with article processing charge. I'm aware of the existence of completely free OA journals (funded by universities I presume), but they are only relevant for a few research topics. And not mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; apparently the science funding agencies of the UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/uk-open-access-movement-sways-towards-low-cost-repositories-1.14953&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;think that gold OA is not that good of a strategy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2018-05-06T08:35:36.773" LastActivityDate="2021-05-08T10:29:07.830" Title="Does gold open-access with article processing charge (APC) really help access to science and save taxpayer money?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:56:14.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sociology of science is another possible avenue. It may not qualify as the most data driven way to study science but it does shed some interesting light on the effects of intermediate reports, naming of concepts, and funding strategies amongst many other topics. You may liken it more to the study of scientists rather than of science per se. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:56:14.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:57:00.250" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science&quot;&gt;Philosophy of Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science&quot;&gt;History of Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_scientific_knowledge&quot;&gt;Sociology of Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics&quot;&gt;Scientometrics&lt;/a&gt; to name a few meta-sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(General trick for meta-science: use &lt;em&gt;X of Science&lt;/em&gt;, where &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is a science.&#xA;To generalize it even further, for meta-X, use &lt;em&gt;X of Y&lt;/em&gt;, for some &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:57:00.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-17T20:49:51.130" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also think that people can go to the library to get access to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're assuming that libraries can pay for access. That's not the case anymore. Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices&quot;&gt;Harvard univerity&lt;/a&gt;, one of the richest in the world, can't pay for all the journals its researchers need. I think none of the Universities I know have access to all the journals it needs. So, you can imagine a public library won't grant access to all the existing literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's even worse in developing/not too rich countries. In this case, you can notice that most Open Access (OA) journals adapt the cost of publication to the wealth of the country the article comes from (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/newsroom/viewpoints/global-participation-initiative/&quot;&gt;Plos&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be a problem for small enterprises, that aren't very rich, so they can't subscribe to journals and have to pay &quot;per view&quot;, but need access to the latest research in order to innovate. So, non-OA journals are an impediment to the technological progress too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I will also add the fact that, even in rich countries, it is not always that easy to go to a library. For example, when answering here on Stack Exchange, I try to add links to research articles which can be more precise than my own answer. If the OP is really very interested in a complete understanding of the answer, he could go to a library. But in most cases, if he doesn't have access to an article through the Internet, it will just waste an opportunity for him to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I published in both OA and subscription-based, and I will gladly submit to OA journals if they end up being the highest quality ones in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're pointing to a real problem here. If the &quot;best&quot; journals are not OA, do you have to compromise your career (or your students') to publish in an OA journal? In fact, some people would answer that the Impact Factor-based ranking of journals doesn't make much sense (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23805088&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;). And it is one of the reasons for the creation of Plos One, a &quot;mega-journal&quot; accepting articles only based on their scientific value, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; on an estimate of the interest its conclusions might have in the future. But for sure, this is a hot topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another real problem here is money. If the Universities have to pay both for keeping access to non-OA journals, and for publishing in OA journals at the same time, it will be even more expensive. No university can afford it. A proposed solution is &lt;em&gt;green Open-Access&lt;/em&gt;, where the articles are just put in repositories, and nobody needs to pay neither for publishing, nor for accessing. With a good post-publication peer-review system, this could work. But it also implies a huge paradigm shift, with new problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is in fact kind of green OA. But, depending on the license you agree with when you publish in a journal, that's &lt;a href=&quot;http://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/&quot;&gt;not always possible&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11867" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T20:49:51.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T21:03:10.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Carl Sagan was a master of this.  He would look at the person kindly, with interest, and answer politely and to the point.  'It has been show that the moon possesses its own gravity well and that holds the rover to it.'  or 'It has been shown that the moon is not in fact green cheese, but is made of off rocks and minerals not so different from the earth'.  etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12043" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T21:03:10.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-02-17T22:50:45.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look for positions for sessional/part time instructors and apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example posting might be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uoguelph.ca/sessional_ta/sessionjobpost/se28180-mathematics-and-statistics-math2170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sessional Instructor&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.uoregon.edu/unclassified.php?id=4253&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adjunct Instructor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of them require some evidence that you've done well in a similar course, so it may be prudent to have transcripts handy. It may also be prudent to email the department directly and say that you're interested in adjunct teaching and to ask about opportunities that they have, and to express your qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T23:33:45.787" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T23:33:45.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-17T23:51:53.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For job talks and exams, another point to consider when formulating an answer to a &quot;dumb&quot; question is that the question posed by one attendee may in fact be a jab at another attendee. On my committee I had two faculty members that, putting it lightly, did not get along with each other. During my prelim and defense, I had to tread carefully when responding to questions from either of these two individuals in an effort to &quot;keep the peace.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... as well as internal strategies (i.e., how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, my internal strategy suggestion would be to keep in mind that the question may not be what it seems, e.g. may not be &quot;dumb,&quot; as I explained above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T02:49:46.293" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T02:49:46.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-02-18T00:03:48.837" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen community colleges hire people with less than a master degree to teach IT. These people did have quite a few industry certifications, held respectable positions in the local community, etc.  I heard people at the school saying &quot;If anyone questions that person's qualifications, we have enough to support our decision.&quot; The CC in question was in a very small town, which I think had  a lot to do with that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, your qualifications might be just fine. The issue is whether a school needs someone. The only way to know the answer to that question is to ask. Meet with the appropriate people at some local schools and explain your situation. It is quite common for schools to use adjuncts: partly because they are cheaper, and partly because they have current industry experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen a school which is angry when presented with an additional labor choice. So, you do no harm by scheduling a meeting to see if they would be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the teaching experience, that is more easily gained than you might think. You can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11422/2692&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; here to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11416/2692&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T23:55:37.620" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T23:55:37.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2014-02-18T00:10:06.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to &lt;strong&gt;honestly&lt;/strong&gt; show how your work is your own and you need to show that the research question you worked on is important. The people hiring you want to see that you do groundbreaking work on important problems, they aren't looking for a story about how an original research problem came to you in a dream. You need to talk about what you did. You should devote very little space to what other people did, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not if you justify your interest in the proposed research. It would be good to show some sort of conceptual connection between the proposed research and the previous research, but probably not essential if the proposed research is something &quot;hot&quot; in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing original research ideas (under constraints) is usually the point of a postdoc. It's not really something you need to clarify, and not something that needs to be in the ad. Do make sure that the ad is compatible with your intended research direction, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The postdoc isn't the PI. At a postdoc position there will usually be a few senior people who can be your mentors. So you'll get mentorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meaningful&lt;/em&gt; mentorship isn't exactly something you can ask for (or that can be given on-demand). It's like friendship: it doesn't really make much sense to &quot;ask for meaningful friendship,&quot; it's something that develops with people who are the right fit for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intellectual freedom is sort of implied in the position, as mentioned before. The postdoc's job is to do original research on a particular topic. Obviously there are constraints to what research you can do, but that's true at all levels: everyone has constraints on the research they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for financial freedom... I'm not entirely sure what one needs to do to get fired from a postdoc, but I think that having original ideas isn't that thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T00:10:06.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2014-02-18T00:40:14.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time for some tough love.  What your future employers want is a steady stream of scholarship, increasing in quality, quantity, and self-sufficiency. This includes both those hiring you for a postdoc and those hiring you (hopefully) for a permanent position afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally to switch from subject A to subject B requires time and produces a gap in the stream.  This is very bad.  Even if there is no gap, switching topics renders much of your hard work publishing papers less relevant to future employers.  All other things being equal, I would prefer to hire a specialist in subject B rather than someone who straddles both B and A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're Terry Tao, you can work your way through the entire &lt;a href=&quot;http://msc2010.org/Default.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSC 2010&lt;/a&gt;; that's just being brilliant and prolific.  However if you're a mere mortal it's a bad idea to switch specialties until at least after tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. If you are less than forthright about how experienced you are at working independently, this cannot possibly lead to a result in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T00:40:14.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16793" CreationDate="2014-02-18T01:02:37.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As David Ketcheson suggested, &lt;strong&gt;the ideal scenario&lt;/strong&gt; would be to find an advisor who works in both fields. But even if you find one, he/she will probably have preferences on one topic or the other. Both fields are extremely wide and highly &lt;em&gt;&quot;trendy&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I believe it comes down to which field you would like to go more in-depth. Either find a highly specialized advisor in Robotics with some knowledge/applications in Software Engineering, or the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective (as a Mechanical Engineer), I would suggest to go for in-depth research in Robotics, which has quite sophisticated dynamics, control and solid mechanics, and couple your research to Software Engineering, with for example the design of an efficient graphical interfaces for control purposes or advanced image processing techniques for trajectories planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just examples, as I said before, both fields are extremely wide in terms of possibilities, so it is up to you and your advisor to find a middle-ground that suits you both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T01:02:37.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-02-18T01:38:53.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a postdoc at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and do collaborate with some researchers at UNISA. However, this is with the Department of Decision Sciences, rather than Computer Science - I don't know the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to PhD studies, generally the advisor plays a large role, too, compared to the university. I'd recommend to look at what and where the potential advisors for you publish, where their co-authors are from etc to get a vague impression how connected and well-regarded they'll be in your chosen discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T01:38:53.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2014-02-18T03:40:22.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that in general it is OK to ask if you haven't heard from the program in a long time or if you, say, see decisions being posted on The Grad Cafe. Sure, you don't want to be e-mailing them every week, but a short e-mail to the graduate department (not necessarily the graduate director, but the person listed under who to contact for graduate admissions) shouldn't hurt and they shouldn't be offended or annoyed by it. If they are getting swamped by such e-mails, it is not hard for them to just ignore them and not reply. If they only get a couple, however, they might actually give you a better estimate of the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I also consider answering e-mails asking such questions to be a part of the job description of whoever is the contact person for graduate admissions. Yes, the graduate director should not deal with such questions, but that is why I also think the graduate director shouldn't be listed as the contact person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up, I only think it's &quot;inappropriate&quot; to constantly bugger them, but not to send a polite e-mail asking about your status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4514" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T03:40:22.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-02-18T03:52:29.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own personal experience, I recommend seeking out adjunct positions at the community college level. To get some teaching experience, I sought out a school in my hometown which also had apprenticeship-type programs and they were looking for someone to teach a semester's worth of courses for these students. All I had was a M.S. in engineering at the time plus some industry experience. Seek out the current faculty at some community colleges in your area and ask them if they know of any positions for which you could take on as an adjunct. As far as I know, the position that I was able to obtain was not advertised; I found out about it from a professor at the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T03:52:29.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17013" CreationDate="2014-02-18T07:12:59.690" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally uncommon to me. I'm doing my PhD thesis and if I were that student, I'd send first an email asking whether there is an interest or not. In any case, I'd not expect that someone will read my thesis (book) just for fun or because &lt;em&gt;that might interest you&lt;/em&gt;. Even PhD supervisors complain reading PhD theses that look like books!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12056" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T07:12:59.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-18T08:12:41.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In bioinformatics, it is common to do the data mining, generalization and normalization, putting together results of multiple past research projects. See for instance the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.genevestigator.com/gv/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genevestigator&lt;/a&gt; project that does normalized analysis of multiple available micro-array experiments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind this project was that while raw data obtained by different laboratories are largely of the same type, the subsequent processing and normalization is often too different to make the numeric results actually comparable. The project collects raw data and applies the same normalization for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2017-07-13T10:45:30.627" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:45:30.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17050" CreationDate="2014-02-18T08:17:35.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a normal procedure. When sending a manuscript together with the letter to the editor, it is normally possible to list several researchers or laboratories as competitors, not appropriate for the reviewing of this publication. This is especially appropriate if topics overlap and a lot depends on who will publish first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor will simply pick some other competent reviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T08:17:35.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-18T08:48:47.880" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on JeffE's comment: the diamond open access (free for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; authors and readers) certainly does benefit the taxpayers while for the golden open access (the author-pays model) it is less clear, as detailed in the answer by AlexIok. A detailed discusion of differences among different kinds of open access can be found e.g. here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: To make things clear, this answer was written for the original version of the question that dealt with OA in general rather than with the author-pays model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T07:44:18.583" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T07:44:18.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T09:24:46.287" Score="20" ViewCount="8851" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although in mathematics the &lt;em&gt;letters&lt;/em&gt;, i.e., really short articles, just a few pages long, are perhaps less common than in the other fields (see e.g. the comments by Pete L. Clark under his answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17050/acknowledging-the-discussion-with-someone-in-the-paper-but-excluding-this-person/17092&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;), sometimes such a letter really is the best way to communicate the result. It is also quite clear that for this very reason (that the letters are quite uncommon), such letters are not likely, save for some &lt;em&gt;very exceptional&lt;/em&gt; situations, to be a good fit for the top pure math journals like the &lt;em&gt;Annals&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Inventiones&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;JAMS&lt;/em&gt;, etc.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently in earlier times the best place for publishing letters in mathematics was the French journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1631073X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Comptes Rendus&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. This journal still exists but I am not quite sure whether it is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; place for letters in mathematics anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option that comes to mind could perhaps be the math section of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PNAS&lt;/a&gt; but again I am not quite sure how this journal is actually standing with the pure math community, especially outside the US.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should certainly be other worthy alternatives, so I look forward to the answers pointing them out as well as discussing the journals mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION:&lt;/strong&gt; What are the best (in terms of standing in the math community and being widely read by mathematicians) journals, or perhaps sections of mathematical or even multidisciplinary journals, for letters in mathematics nowadays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am specifically interested in the journals which would tolerate the papers which are on the border of mathematics and mathematical physics (just to clarify, this refers to the subject matter rather than, say, lacking in rigor). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/journal/11005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Letters in Mathematical Physics&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/0951-7715&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nonlinearity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; appear to be a bit too niche, I would prefer more broad-scope alternatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T18:15:21.683" Title="Which are the best journals for letters in mathematics (bordering with mathematical physics)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="13" ClosedDate="2018-04-17T05:39:48.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T12:08:59.330" Score="12" ViewCount="1524" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason, I was always under the impression that people that are included in the acknowledgement section of paper are not contacted to review your paper because they would be predisposed to give a favourable review. However, after reading the discussion in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17050/66&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; it seems like it is standard to send papers out for review to people in the acknowledgements section if there is not another conflict in place (like being from the same institution, for example). Which is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do editors send a paper out for review to people in the acknowledgements section?&lt;/strong&gt; Can I suggest a person I acknowledge for helpful comments as a potential reviewer (assuming there aren't other conflicts of interest)? If the field matters then I am interested primarily in mathematics, theoretical computer science, and biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T04:21:12.380" Title="Acknowledgements and reviewer selection" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17097" CreationDate="2014-02-18T12:22:23.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For some reason, I was always under the impression that people that are included in the acknowledgement section of paper are not contacted to review your paper because they would be predisposed to give a favourable review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly true in my field (software engineering). I was also reasonably confused by the underlying assumption of the question you linked. It certainly does not seem to make sense to me to ask people that are clearly closely related to the authors for fair peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; happen a lot in practice is that authors mentioned in the bibliography of a manuscript get asked to review a paper, especially if the editor is not from the same field and does not know any experts in the field by heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, this is particularly common for grant proposal evaluations (at least in Austria), as the people assigning reviewers there are usually not scientists themselves. Hence, they rarely have deep insight into who the big players in a field of study are, and instead select persons that are not obviously related to the proposal authors and have published a healthy amount of related papers cited in the bibliography of the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T12:22:23.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T12:23:51.770" Score="2" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have papers X and Y published. Each of those produced papers Xc and Yc for different conferences. Xc was presented in a conference with proceedings while the conference of Yc didn't have proceedings. Both Xc and Yc are published in the arXiv and have my name on it as I'm one of the authors in X and Y. However I did not give any of those talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is do/should I include these papers on my CV? If affirmative, under which section and how to specify that I didn't give the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5894" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T00:39:41.040" Title="Include conference papers with/without proceedings in CV" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:08:55.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the topic of &lt;strong&gt;save taxpayer money&lt;/strong&gt;, I think it is important to consider the question - where does the money to pay the publisher come from, in an &quot;author-pays&quot; system? Presumably, PIs will have to add the cost of publishing into the budget they submit in grant proposals. This may increase the amount the grant giver is required to give PIs, or perhaps they will be able to do less research for a given grant. Either way, the taxpayer may end up paying &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; for research, and it may be research they are not interested in, so even if they can access it all freely, they may not care to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the counterargument to this is that if universities are no longer required to pay subscription fees, the amount they take from a grant should be reduced, and so the PI will end up with more or less the same amount of money as under the old system. I think this may eventually be the case, but the transition time will probably be somewhat difficult, and I would imagine that universities will be loath to give up a very steady source of funding - they will just find some other use for the money if not subscription fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T13:08:55.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17099" CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:11:06.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my CV, I have a section called &lt;em&gt;Conference Papers&lt;/em&gt;, where I highlight the papers for which I gave the talk by underlining my name in the list of authors. You can definitely list these papers, as you contributed to them. Drawing positive attention to the papers you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; present probably gives a better impression than highlighting papers you did not present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to list the conference papers once they have appeared in a journal (or are accepted), is to simply add a note to the journal publication with the conference information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customs for conferences with and without proceedings vary. Some researchers separate these into different categories, while others do not make this distinction. Essentially, it's up to you. Researchers who are familiar with your field will know the relative merits of these venues regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm in theoretical computer science, where conference papers count as publications. Fields that place less value on conferences might have other customs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastEditorUserId="8185" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T00:39:41.040" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T00:39:41.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:18:02.653" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one way to answer all questions (other than obvious &quot;joking&quot; ones): Answer it seriously, just like you would a &quot;smart&quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must share with you guys a question I heard asked at a cooking class. After the chef went through the quantities of a simple recipe, a student asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you make less?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chef paused briefly (the stupid question light was clearly &quot;on&quot;), but answered it properly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You add less ingredients. Keep the proportions the same, say half of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie, he answered it &quot;seriously&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12077" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T13:18:02.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17107" CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:03:54.297" Score="10" ViewCount="7509" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title puts it, what is the real meaning of this stage of a peer reviewing process and how are the odds for having a submitted paper accepted change if it's accepted for this stage? (Does it mean anything other than the editors decided not to reject it from the start?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2819" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T06:20:23.553" Title="In a peer review system, what does &quot;accepted for first look&quot; mean for a submission?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17103" CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:09:35.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This means that the paper is sent out to reviewers and the chances of acceptance are at the mercy of the reviewers. If the reviewers find it good enough , it will be accepted(usually pending additional experiments). How the actual odds change depends on the journal but I'm not sure if most journals even publish these statistics in detail. I would sit back and wait for reviewer comments as you've done what you can. Congrats on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11877" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T14:09:35.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17103" CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:21:08.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually tried to figure some of this out recently as I've been working to get my first article published.  I will try to elaborate on the little bit that I know about the review process and maybe others can chime in and let me know if I more or less have the process right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you submit your article to the journal.  It is then received and submitted to one of the associate editors I believe.  I don't know how carefully they read it in this stage, but they make a decision whether to &quot;desk reject&quot; or send it out to the reviewers.  If they desk reject your paper then no one else at the journal gets a real look at it. (I think this is what the accepted for first look means; that your paper is not desk rejected)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they decide that it is worth having someone take a look at it then they inform you that it is accepted for a first look.  At that stage they send it out to several other reviewers.  For the papers I've submitted it has usually been 2 or 3 reviewers.  They take somewhere between 3-9 months to read the paper carefully and provide good feedback.  They then submit a recommendation for what should be done with the paper either 1) accept, 2) reject, or 3) revise and resubmit.  If they accept or reject then the outcome is relatively self-explanatory.  If they ask you to revise and resubmit, it means that they thought it was pretty good, but that they had some issues with the paper that would need to be cleared up prior to accepting the paper for publishing.  You can make the revisions that they ask and then resubmit the paper and you once again get one of the 3 decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9882" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T14:21:08.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:28:22.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many academics don't self-archive, especially for non-recent work, and consider the idea of sending a pre-print out - first, this implies that the reader knows that they can ask for this (given you're talking about the general public, I don't think it's a great assumption to make), and second &lt;em&gt;that you'll do so in a timely fashion&lt;/em&gt;. Consider the circumstance where you're a faintly scientifically literate family member trying to make sense of what the doctor's are telling you about a loved ones medical condition - it's very possible that sending out a preprint, or a PDF, if you can even find a corresponding author, the email address is still current, etc. will come only after several weeks, which can be extremely frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, if they can't get past the paywall, how do they know if it's worth reaching out to you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think &quot;Will save the taxpayer money&quot; is a little bit of a red herring. The argument I've always heard, and advanced, is not that it will save the tax payer money, but &lt;em&gt;given they have already paid for the reseach&lt;/em&gt;, Open Access gives them access to what they paid for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not it will save them money, I think that's a question that changes based on the dynamics of the journal publishing industry. Right now, I'd say the answer is no - in addition to authorship fees, I have yet to see a library be able to drop a major publisher because there's sufficient OA coverage in a field (or group of fields). I suspect the cost savings for individual users not having to pay $50 or whatever it is for access to an article pale in comparison to library subscription fees, mainly because per-article readership is fairly low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someday, perhaps, but I think cost is one of the weaker arguments for OA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T15:11:17.887" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:11:17.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17103" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:22:45.087" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;First look&quot; is a stage in the ScholarOne Manuscripts (S1M) system used by many journals. The First look stage means that your manuscript, after an &quot;Accept&quot; decision is scrutinized to see if it adheres to journal standards (a.k. Instruction for authors) and that figures are of sufficient quality (resolution for bitmaps). The journal editor(s) handle(s) this stage. Your paper may be returned to you to fix specific formatting problems BUT NOT changing the content. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://mchelp.manuscriptcentral.com/gethelpnow/training/admin/tutorials/productioncenter.pdf&quot;&gt;S1M pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;First look&quot; is not a general name for a stage but is specific to S1M. Other systems or journals may of course be using such a term for other purposes but it is not a general publishing term. The stage it represent will, however be found in all journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T17:09:34.237" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:09:34.237" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17050" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:32:10.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been suggested by others it is easy to exclude people from being reviewers. You usually provide a cover letter for your submission and you can point out that certain persons have been involved with the work but are not authors. You can thank the person any way you want in the acknowledgement. A person who is involved in work and who is asked to review a paper should also decline with the obvious excuse that they have a conflict of interest. Thus everyone in the process has some obligation to keep reviews on track and objective. It is furthermore possible and even requested at the time of submission to list persons who may have conflict of interest or who are &quot;non-preferred reviewers&quot; due, for example, to personal conflicts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the main question. you can phrase the acknowledgement anyway you want, it is not the place to list people who may have a conflict of interest, you should do this in the cover letter or, if the submission system provides it, when non-preferred reviewers should be listed. The cover letter, is however, the best place since you can describe the problem to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:32:10.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17097" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:41:28.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acknowledgement is there to thank people for their help in the work. It is not a place to provide information to the editor on who may have conflicts of interest. You list such persons in a cover letter with an explanation for why there is a conflict. This will make the situation clear to the editor. Persons in the same department will pretty much be excluded by default but if an obvious connection is not present it should be pointed out in a letter. It seems a little odd to thank someone without there being any connection to the work so I would not recommend trying to suggest such a person as potential reviewer. At the same time a person who ha a conflict of interest should decline to review with the excuse that there exists such a conflict. I would say such behaviour is good etiquette and good ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there have been instances where a person received a strong reject review on a crap paper by a high-ranking scientist and then used the name in the acknowledgement thanking for input on an earlier version of the manuscript. The manuscript was almost the same but the signal was the high-ranked scientist approved it and so reviewers were unwilling to reject it. Hence the acknowledgement is not a place where a seasoned editor would look for valuable information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:41:28.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9651" CreationDate="2014-02-18T16:39:05.913" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professor at a state school in the US, and American professors are currently the targets of a lot of undeserved grief (e.g. it is currently fashionable to believe that we are &quot;lazy&quot; and work much less than a full &quot;business week&quot;; that is not only a mistake but likely a dishonest, politically motivated mistake).  So keep that preamble in mind when I say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is one of the most unambiguously unacceptable behaviors from a course instructor that I have heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me try to count the ways (but there are so many that I may get tired before I finish):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) One of the most basic understandings between the student, the instructor and the university is the duration of the course.  By a certain extremely public, agreed upon, well-publicized deadline, all of the coursework must be complete, and by a slightly later date that your instructor has been carefully informed of, the course grades are due.  Planning to defer submission of the course grade after this date is just not the way the American academic system works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Giving a grade of &quot;incomplete&quot; is not withholding a grade: it is assigning a certain kind of unsatisfactory grade.  [Once in college a rather elderly professor literally did not submit any of the grades for the course I was taking.  It was a little strange -- in these days we actually received transcripts in the mail over the break so the inquiry was less immediate than it would now be -- but he apologized and submitted the grades very soon after the start of the next quarter.  &lt;em&gt;That's&lt;/em&gt; withholding a grade.]  In order to assign an incomplete, the student must not have completed the official coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The instructor is not suitably respectful of the obvious problem which can occur if you assign students' grades too late: you may prevent them from graduating.  Many American universities have policies to &lt;em&gt;expedite&lt;/em&gt; final coursework and grading for (would-be) graduating students.  Moreover, in the universities I've been involved with, beyond the written rules there is an unwritten culture that as an instructor you should think twice about any course practice that interferes with a student's timely graduation.  (Sometimes it turns out the student &lt;em&gt;fails&lt;/em&gt; your course and therefore does not graduate on time.  That's &quot;okay&quot;, but most of instructors would indeed think more carefully about assigning a failing grade under these circumstances and feel honorbound to convey the failing grade to the student sooner rather than later.  What if their parents show up in town only to learn that the student did not actually graduate?)  This practice is not hard to understand: one of very few commonalities among American academics is that we were all students at one time, so we should have some sympathies for the student perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) This course requirement is unusual and potentially problematic, and it is not listed on the course syllabus.  I think that the whole point of the course syllabus is so that instructors cannot totally change their course requirements / grading schemes in the middle of the course, and that seems to be what is happening here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Teaching a university course is not like playing a game of Truth-or-Dare: it does not give you authority to compel the student outside of the classroom and the dorm room / study carrel.  Submitting a paper to a conference is a real-world action with real-world ramifications (the OP is rightly aware and concerned about this).  It is creating work -- possibly rather pointless and frivolous work -- for other busy academics and/or professionals.  It is setting a student up for harsh critique even up to the point of ridicule.  It is also bullying a student into publishing something they didn't actually want to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I got tired.  What should a student do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talk to the faculty member in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an in-person conversation.  You should think carefully both about want you want to say and how to behave in such a conversation.  Your goal is to convey the specific problems and hardships this course policy will impose on you.  (You don't want to frame it as an ethical or hypothetical discussion.)  Be calm but very specific.  Bring in a copy of the course syllabus and refer to it at some point during the discussion.  Bring in a copy of an academic document that says you need to have your grades by a certain date in order to graduate.  Say specifically: &quot;I'm concerned that this course policy will jeopardize my graduation.  Can we address this?&quot;  If your instructor says &quot;Don't worry about it right now&quot; then explain why you are worried about it right now.  Talk about your family's travel plans, talk about the financial implications of having to enroll for another semester....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The point of the above strategy is this: I imagine that your instructor likes this course idea from his perspective.  Clearly he has not taken the time to think about it from your perspective.  If you make him see the negative consequences, he is much more likely to repent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be brushed off in your meeting: this is a serious matter.  If in the course of the meeting you don't see things working out to your satisfaction, you should let him know that you intend to talk to (e.g.) the department chair about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, apparently this took place almost a year ago.  What happened??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T18:38:19.953" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:38:19.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17112" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:11:12.947" Score="36" ViewCount="11094" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I need a break from the reviewing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often in my field I review papers from researchers in Asia (reviews are not double blind) which are poorly written. By poorly written, I don't mean that the prose is not pleasing to the eye, that there are problems with how the writing flows, or that there are innocuous typos or spelling mistakes. Instead, the grammar used by the authors differs seriously from normal English, and often produces significant changes in the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually such papers are ultimately readable, but one has to go back and re-read sentences or paragraphs several times to infer the meaning (and this is with strong knowledge of the research area!), so I generally won't reject a paper solely for this reason. However, I would feel remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn't instruct the authors to improve this aspect of the paper. I'd like to provide helpful advice for the authors without just giving them a laundry list of the errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically I highlight a few places where I had significant trouble understanding what they actually meant to say, and suggest seeking a professional editor before publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are these reasonable things to suggest?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What other suggestions can I make?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T00:05:11.077" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T05:27:07.940" Title="What suggestions should I make when reviewing a poorly written paper?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:26:30.730" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To comment on language is fair, to suggest improvements and even making corrections goes beyond what can be expected, depending on the degree of problems. There is of course a fine line between when something can be salvaged with a little editing and where things start to lose meaning. Many journals and publishers provide services (albeit often at a cost) for non-native speakers. What you can do is to try to help the author(s) if possible by providing examples and making minor corrections. But, it is not your job to be a service. You should state your opinion about the paper, clearly separating the scientific aspect (indicate if your think the science holds) and the language issue. It is particularly potent to state when the language obscures the scientific message. In the end it is the editor who should decide what must be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:26:30.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:33:08.013" Score="6" ViewCount="1865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon start my thesis, and have read a bit of literature, particularly a few short papers. One professor recommended using a template, displayed below. However, I generally feel that the questions in the template don't apply well to the papers I have read, and my answers get very &quot;artificial&quot; or &quot;forced&quot;, while some aspects are not answered by the template at all. Obviously no template can fit perfectly for every paper, but perhaps there are better templates out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any standard templates for this purpose? Perhaps a list of questions to ask oneself when reading? Or other structured ways of note writing for scientific papers or similar literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title of paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A short summary of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the issues that the paper addresses? Describe the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did the authors do? How did they approach the problem. What did&#xA;  they do? What methods did they use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the authors conclusion? What do they claim about their&#xA;  results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you think about the work presented in the article? Explain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rating&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Give a score [0 - 10] 0: awful, 10: brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12090" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T01:31:22.203" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T08:32:40.527" Title="Template for taking notes for a paper?" Tags="&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2014-02-18T18:02:31.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can't be any more minimalistic than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you have some metadata: title, citation, abstract, comment (your conclusion) and rating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That fits every intellectual work, you could apply it to movies, songs or anything that has an author and about which you can have an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are a few other fields that cannot be any more minimal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;issues: why is the paper written and published? There has to be a reason for that work to have been done, presumably people don't enjoy wasting their time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approach: which is basically what they do. There was a reason to do something (and then publish it) an &quot;issue&quot; and something has been done about that &quot;issue&quot; so that it is less of an issue in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conclusion: there was an issue, something has been done, is it still an issue? are there more open issues?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite simple if you think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Survey papers and so on basically solve the issue of summarizing something, they cite other papers, so you should also fill this template for those other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you having trouble with some other kind of papers? This seems to capture everything that is relevant. Do you miss something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:02:31.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2014-02-18T18:12:09.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a template for myself, pretty similar to that one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Journal name, article name, reference information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One-line description of the problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;What They Did&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;My conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue was that, in almost all cases, I was studying their paper to better understand either (1) the field in general or (2) how to solve a problem I was having. I found that, &lt;strong&gt;for note-taking purposes&lt;/strong&gt;, focusing on mainly what they did and then recording for posterity my &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; conclusions and thoughts about their research was much more useful than re-reading my synopsis of what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; concluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:12:09.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-18T18:55:33.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can avoid humiliation for the person who ask the question by pretending they mean something else than the obvious, like they're using a metaphor or hyperbole.  For example, you could start an answer to the question about the thrusters by saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I assume when you say that the moon is made of cheese, you are in fact referring to the dust filled craters where the soil composition is indeed as soft as a cheddar cheese.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you can continue answering about the physics of lifting off a rocket from a soft soil.  This way the asker rather gains credit from the public for his amusing way to ask the question, instead of being humiliated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise in the question about the rover, you can answer about the problems of traction based propulsion on a low gravity body, pretending that's what the asker wanted to ask all along.  In this case, you'd probably get some weird looks, but when the person who asks the question is indeed a well respected member of the scientific society, everybody in the audience will assume there's some kind of &quot;high level&quot; joke going on and they're just missing the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12093" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:55:33.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T19:03:14.637" Score="25" ViewCount="132342" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of weeks ago I met this person who had come to our institute for an invited talk. Her domain of work was same as my area of research. Later I discussed with her some of the topics and asked her if there are any openings in her company (she is in the industry as an R&amp;amp;D head). She responded: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Send me your CV, I will look into it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to write to her. How do I begin with that? Should I send my CV in the first mail itself? If so should I also include a cover letter? What's the best way to introduce myself?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11088" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T14:11:50.580" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T09:18:09.090" Title="Best way to respond to a request for CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-18T19:17:15.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your intent is to not make them feel dumb. You need to assume every question is real, regardless of what it is, and so you won't be surprised by anything anyone says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step would be to repeat it back to them. Maybe you thought they said something like &quot;How does the Rover not fall to the Earth?&quot; when they really said &quot;How does the Rover befall on the Earth?&quot; Two very different questions but they sound somewhat similar, and the second question is a little less dumb (despite being strangely worded). Assuming you heard it right, this will allow the user to hear the question again, which might spark them to think about it and say &quot;oops! Never mind!&quot; and laugh it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did hear it correctly and they're still curious, simply answer it like you would any other question. Don't just outright say &quot;Gravity.&quot; and then move on, instead explain the moon's gravitational acceleration and how that affects the Rover's ability to move. If they ask about the moon being made of cheese, explain what the moon's surface is made up of instead of saying &quot;It's not made of cheese.&quot; Saying something along the lines of &quot;The moon's surface is a composite of.... This provides a solid base for the Rover, and allows the thrusters to work as expected.&quot; would be much better for the student's ego, and provide extra information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has asked a stupid question in their lifetime, and you have to think about how you would want to be treated in that situation. If your professor laughed about it, along with the rest of the class, you'll feel not only extremely embarrassed but upset that your question wasn't answered. Having a realistic answer that not only helps you to understand the content better will eliminate embarrassment and cause the students to not be scared to ask questions in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T19:17:15.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17117" CreationDate="2014-02-18T19:35:08.420" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well... there are lot of important variables not mentioned, but this is how I will generally draft it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Madam Give-me-a-job,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was great talking to you after your talk on Jan 17th, 2014 at&#xA;My-Little-Institute. I found your experience and nature of your job&#xA;fascinating. In our conversation about pursuing a career in&#xA;Whatever-you-are-working-in, you were so kind to offer giving comments&#xA;to my CV. And if you don't mind, I would love to take up your&#xA;generous offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attached please find my CV. I would love to follow up with you in two&#xA;weeks and set up a phone conversation to discuss how I can strengthen&#xA;my profile so that I can be a more competitive candidate in this job&#xA;market. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to your invaluable critiques and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely yours,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penguin Knight&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't treat it like a lead to a job. She might just say that to be nice. If I come off too pushy, I may not even get a chance listening to her comments. For that reason, I &lt;em&gt;will not attach a cover letter&lt;/em&gt; that details my experience, research interest, and why I am suitable for the position. There isn't even a job, a catch-all cover letter is difficult to write and hard to be made impressive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for follow up and act on it. A lot of the &amp;quot;send me your CV&amp;quot; didn't get follow up because the candidate really just &amp;quot;sent the CV&amp;quot; and that's the end of it. I specifically tweaked it as wanting advices from her, making it easier for both parties to engage in another conversation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No need to worry about &amp;quot;what if she really just gives me comments?&amp;quot; She probably knows and remembers. If my CV is really good, she will mention the availability of openings. If there isn't or I am not good enough, then I can use this chance to flush out weaknesses and improve them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T13:15:05.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16983" CreationDate="2014-02-18T19:37:03.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've taken Project Management classes and have taken lead roles in regards to projects and BS and MS students, you'll find Project Management to be a more intense version of that. For example, you'll be needing to ensure everyone is working at the pace they should, getting the needed work done, and be prepared to figure out ways to remedy issues that occur. You will be working closely with stockholders, include managerial people, customers, etc, and you need to have the ability to answer any questions they may have regarding your project, even though you yourself are not the one directly creating that content. You'll need to figure out how to effectively communicate with people under you to get a sense of what they're doing and how things will impact the project. Be prepared to do scheduling of the project, which includes figuring out things in terms of Man Hours required for project in contrast to what you have available as resources. A lot of these things are similar in respect to what you've done in school, though to a higher degree: there's more riding on it, and these people aren't grading you, they're expecting it to be done right the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as difficulties, if you have done all the above in classes or with your BS and MS students, then just be prepared for the faster pace and higher volume of stockholders. It can be a bit overwhelming, but doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a technical PhD will help you in these situations, because you'll have a better understanding of what your workers need to complete their tasks, how fast it will take them, and what it is exactly that you're working on. In fact, it will give you a leg up on other candidates or PMs that don't have technical backgrounds. If you can listen to a technical explanation of what's happening, and relay it to stockholders in a way that non-technical people can understand, you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastEditorUserId="71698" LastEditDate="2018-02-01T23:46:21.623" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T23:46:21.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-18T20:11:48.410" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Edited to address Anonymous Mathematician's great remark)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, my understanding is that you asked a math question: is it better for the tax payers to have academics publishing in Gold Open-Access, compared to the standard journals? Neglecting the fact that the tax-payer won't have access for free to articles published in regular journals, this could be answered by a comparison between the current &lt;strong&gt;closed system&lt;/strong&gt; (all the costs are concentrated in the library subscriptions of journals) and the &lt;strong&gt;open system&lt;/strong&gt; (all the costs are concentrated in OA journals processing costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to have good figures, so I will make a number of approximations... Feel free to correct/adapt these as you like. I also consider only Harvard - other institutions may give very different outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, trusting this &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&amp;amp;tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, the total library expenditure for research purpose is 3 750 000 $ /year for roughly 20% of Harvard's collection - in other words, the total yearly spending of Harvard's library for science publications amounts to the mind-boggling 19 000 000 $ / year (!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing that Harvard has roughly 2000 faculty members &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University#Academic_organization&quot;&gt;cf the Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;, the total expenditure &lt;em&gt;per faculty&lt;/em&gt; is between 9000$ and 9500$ &lt;em&gt;per year&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the typical faculty publish maybe 3 papers per year (depending on the field!), any cost lower than 3000 $ &lt;em&gt;per publication&lt;/em&gt; in OA journals is worth the money for the tax payer, as this means that the overall cost per year and per faculty is below 9000 $. Furthermore, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676&quot;&gt;this article from Nature&lt;/a&gt; the true average cost of OA publication is around 2300 $ (with some good journals well below), making the open system a better value for tax payers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastEditorUserId="8849" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T22:25:27.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T22:25:27.127" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17117" CreationDate="2014-02-18T20:30:53.787" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't make a big deal of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FirstName,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good to meet you the other day. Interesting presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attached is my CV as discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best wishes,&#xA;  Your full name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people are busy and they're not going to read more than a couple of sentences anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the longer the email, the more desperate and obsequious your tone; save time and your dignity - keep it brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12077" LastEditorUserId="12077" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T02:04:13.107" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T02:04:13.107" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17070" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:14:20.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add a slightly different point. It's slightly off-topic because this is not OA in any of the colorful meanings, but it is on topic for possibilities to lower costs and get the taxpayers access to published papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany one reaction to the library subscription costs is that now the DFG negotiates nationwide (not only university libraries) subscriptions with some publishers. I believe the DFG is a big enough player to stand their ground when haggling with Springer, Elsevier &amp;amp; Co. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textkritik.de/digitalia/katzengold.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I found some numbers&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total costs for scientific libraries (Germany-wide): 793 M€ / a &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;therof infrastructure costs for buildings and staff: 548 M€ / a&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for buying books and journals:  245 M€ / a&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the Nationallizenzen cost ca. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goethe.de/wis/bib/dib/de6630674.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;110 M€ / a&lt;/a&gt; (according to the text linked above they started with much less)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did not find numbers on how much subscription costs the libraries saved. All in all, I assume that the total costs probably stayed roughly the same (at least that's what I hope) but the availability is increased.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing from taxpayer's point of view is that everyone can access these papers without the need even to go the next university library (need to get a login, though but that's not difficult).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T21:14:20.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17117" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:21:59.383" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello (Speaker-name),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We spoke on (date here) when you came to our institution and presented&#xA;  on (topic here). I very much enjoyed your speech and our discussion&#xA;  afterwards on (a few words on what you talked about) and possible&#xA;  openings in your company. As discussed, I've attached my cover letter&#xA;  and resume for your consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing back from you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Your name here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My post is making the email a bit less formal, as I assume you talked to her in an informal way. By bringing up where you guys were, when you met, and what you talked about, you're likely sparking her memory (unless she gave two talks and had identical conversations that day, which is unlikely). I'd also keep the email relatively concise, because your intent is to seek jobs, not make a new friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would attach my cover letter, because the cover letter gives a better indication on not only what your skills and past experience is, but also on what your desired position is. It also gives the employer a bit more indication into what you're like as a person, and whether or not they'd want to hire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all, of course, assuming you're emailing her and not mailing it. If you mail it, I would put a shorter version of this email into the cover letter and only send the cover letter and resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T21:21:59.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17094" CreationDate="2014-02-18T22:46:11.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a good question because I don't really know what &quot;letters&quot; means in the world of mathematical publishing.  While I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.uga.edu/~pete/plclarkarxiv8v2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a paper published in &lt;em&gt;Math Research Letters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, I am having trouble pointing to a single way in which that paper is different from any of my other papers: it is slightly short (12 pages) but I have several other papers which are shorter, it contains complete proofs, the syle is not especially conversational or different from the norm...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to &lt;em&gt;Comptes Rendus&lt;/em&gt;: it still exists, and it is still a very high quality journal, so far as I know.  I do not have a &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; paper, and I wish I did, but setting aside the limitations of my own research achievements I am not sure exactly what papers to submit to this excellent and highly French journal.  My understanding though is that it is roughly analogous to &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the AMS&lt;/em&gt; but of higher quality (or better taste?).  For instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.uga.edu/~pete/atkinlehnerfinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I have a &lt;em&gt;PAMS&lt;/em&gt; paper&lt;/a&gt; and think that would be in the right ballpark of &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; but that I would be lucky to get it published there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was suggested in the comments that the publications in &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; are more like &lt;strong&gt;research announcements&lt;/strong&gt;.  I don't think that's true.  They're short, punchy and written in a somewhat telegraphic style, but they certainly do include proofs.  Quite recently I had the occasion to go to the actual library and pull off the shelf a &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; paper.  It was lovely, and short enough so that I transcribed (and translated, but big whoop: mathematical French is so easy that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can do it) it in its entirety on my notepad.  (If you're interested, it is Guy Terjanian's first paper, referred to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/shortfinitesatz.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;...and as I learned slightly to my chagrin, one could regard the research contribution of this note of mine as being a fleshing out of a mild Alon-style generalization of Terjanian's argument.  Actually there is another theorem he proves in that paper as well which is more interesting.  To me this is a &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; paper &lt;em&gt;par excellence&lt;/em&gt;: a small but perfectly polished gem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that &lt;em&gt;Enseignement Mathematique&lt;/em&gt; is somewhere in this constellation of journals: more apparently elementary than &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt;, less laconic, but still high quality work which is somehow in &quot;good taste&quot;.   And note that the title of the journal would lead you to think that it publishes expository papers, but I don't think that's really the case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all this, let me come back to where I started:I am not sure what a &quot;letter&quot; is in this context, other than a short paper which is high quality and is written in a relatively laconic way.  I have, unfortunately, zero expertise with physics, including the substantial portions of mathematics that overlap with physics.  Maybe the concept of a letter is better understood by that portion of the mathematical community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added at the end: okay, let's see how &lt;em&gt;MRL&lt;/em&gt; describes itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dedicated to rapid publication of complete papers of original research in all areas of mathematics. Expository papers and research announcements of exceptional interest are also occasionally published. High standards are applied in evaluating submissions; the entire editorial board must approve the acceptance of any paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus there is some kind of vestigial connection with abbreviated papers, expository work and research announcements, but by and large it is no longer what that journal is about.  I think this is rather typical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Since I was specifically asked to comment on PNAS, and I am a little gun-shy about leaving things in comments at the moment (see the meta site for more on this...), I will add the following non-answer answer: I have very little direct experience with PNAS.  I tried to think of a single paper that was published in that journal and I came up with Milnor's &quot;Eigenvalues of the Laplace operator on certain manifolds&quot;, a famous one page note.  Based on that one paper (!!) I will guess that PNAS is like &lt;em&gt;CR&lt;/em&gt; but for laconic treatments of even more important results.  (I will also guess that most of their papers are more than one page long...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T23:07:47.967" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T23:07:47.967" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17117" CreationDate="2014-02-18T23:32:24.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;CV and cover letter in an email and maybe send physical copies as well.&#xA;Just a friendly brief email with the attachments in the companies preferred format.&#xA;Make sure to mention the sort of position you are looking for in the cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12099" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T23:32:24.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T00:56:32.907" Score="8" ViewCount="2904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper already submitted to a journal. Now, I want to try and submit an abstract to International Congress of Mathematicians 2014. The abstract basically contains the same thought and spirit of the submitted paper though I plan to rephrase it differently from the abstract and introduction of the submitted paper. Does this violate publication ethics?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T20:17:09.000" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T20:17:09.000" Title="Can I submit a conference abstract that duplicates a submitted paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2014-02-19T02:05:01.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not ethics, but you do need to check if it violates the policies of either the journal or the conference. That's something that you should be able to find out from their websites or by contacting them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, ICM doesn't seem to list an explicit policy about dual submissions on the website, so you'll need to email someone (probably &lt;code&gt;abstract@icm2014.org&lt;/code&gt;) to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a dual submission to a journal and a conference has been allowed, whereas a dual submission of the same work to two journals, or to two conferences, has not been allowed. Even then, some conferences are less strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="11880" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T02:11:52.193" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T02:11:52.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2014-02-19T03:00:30.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are submitting an abstract for a contributed talk or poster at the ICM and your paper is submitted to a math journal, then there is no issue.  The mathematics community does not consider the abstract to be a publication and there is no conflict with simultaneous submission of a paper.  In fact, this would be common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a paper for the ICM proceedings (i.e., you are giving an invited talk), then this could theoretically be an issue.  It would be polite and proper to inquire with the journal to make sure they are OK with it, but they will certainly say yes.  ICM proceedings papers are considered expository, and being invited to speak is an honor, so there's no way anybody will interfere with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T03:00:30.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2014-02-19T03:14:11.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;[I speak from experience with math journals.  As always, if things differ in your neck of the woods, I'd like to know.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of the writing of an academic paper is one of the two main things that the referee is being asked to evaluate in her determination of the suitability of the submitted paper (the other of course being the content of the paper).  In mathematics the quality of the writing and the quality of the content are usually largely separate entities, although I think it is an oversimplification to regard them as totally separate (to write a math paper well requires more mathematical thought than to write it decently, which requires more thought than to write something badly but that a qualified expert can see essentially does accomplish what it sets out to do).  I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; that this is less true in the humanities, but I'm not fully qualified to say more than this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;default&quot; for math journals is that they say that their papers should be sufficiently well written in order to be published: of course this is a nearly useless statement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I include that vacuity to contrast it with what &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; other journals do: namely explain to what extent expository considerations are weighted in with the &quot;content&quot; of the paper in arriving at a decision.  For instance some journals say that they welcome &quot;expository&quot; papers.  In my experience &lt;em&gt;they rarely mean this&lt;/em&gt;; much more often what they actually mean is that it is unusually important to them that the papers be well written, and that a research paper which has fewer results but that is truly attractive in its writing may be worthy of publication.  The MAA (Mathematical Association of America) journals take exposition much more seriously: for the &lt;em&gt;Monthly&lt;/em&gt; they seem to be about equal; for &lt;em&gt;Mathematics Magazine&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;College Math Journal&lt;/em&gt;, good writing seems to be more important than content.  I am tempted to tell a personal story here, but I will save it for a more appropriate time.  Well, except for this: I got a referee report back from the &lt;em&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt; saying &quot;I give this paper an A for the mathematics and a B for the writing.&quot;  For any non-MAA journal that would have been a strangely worded stamp of approval, but for the &lt;em&gt;Monthly&lt;/em&gt; it made me nervous, and I worked hard on yet another revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some research journals which have a reputation for accepting sloppily written, but contentfully deep, papers.  The one which stands out in my mind is the &lt;em&gt;Asian Journal of Mathematics&lt;/em&gt;.  It sounds bad, but in my field I get the impression that if you have proved a great result and for whatever reason can't indulge in the luxury of writing it up properly -- by properly here I mean &quot;formally completely and correctly&quot;, not &quot;well&quot;! -- then &lt;em&gt;AJM&lt;/em&gt; is the journal for you.  And it sounds worse than it is: if I'm right then it's good to have journals like that, and in some ways of course they are better than the journals which publish perfectly polished, but very minor, work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to your question.  What to do if the writing is bad?   The answer is that you should indeed report on this and try to discount the value of the paper appropriately (neither too much nor too little), according to your best understanding of the demands of the journal (or conference?).  It seems quite reasonable to me to write back to the editor asking whether the journal (or the editorial group) has definite opinions on the desired writing standards.  Working off the cuff, it seems reasonable to identify three levels of bad writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) The prose is not pleasing, the writing doesn't flow, and so forth.  In other words, the style is bad, up to the point where the paper becomes less pleasant to read but no farther.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that for many journals and conferences this would be a minor offense.  Especially, if you are participating in an international academic scene, then really the authors are doing the academic world a great service by writing in a language that the vast majority of the contemporary academic world has learned to read.  You speak particularly of Asian authors.  Well, it is rather gracious of them not to write in, say, Chinese, isn't it?  For this level of bad writing I think it is best to mention it but make clear that it doesn't really detract from the paper.  It would be nice to offer to help out in the editing, if you want to, but it is not clear that it's your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) The writing is bad enough so that it interferes with the meaning, and an expert has to work harder to read it than she would for a decently written paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be what you are describing.  Here I think I would really ask for guidance from the editors of the journal: the worth of the paper should be downgraded for this, but by how much?  A paper which one has to struggle to read but ultimately succeeds in doing something brilliant or ground-breaking is still a great paper.  (And in my field, very few brilliant or ground-breaking papers are really &quot;easy to read&quot;.  At a certain point you get past the writing altogether...provided the writing lets you!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) The writing is so bad that a qualified expert is unsure of the meaning, either at multiple lesser points or at at least one key point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case you can't certify that the content is legitimate, so you have to recommend the paper for rejection, right?  You should indicate exactly why you are rejecting the paper; in many situations, a paper which is rejected for bad writing (but not obviously defective content) may only then get the attention to writing that it actually needs and then come back as an acceptable paper.  When I reject a paper for bad writing (which rarely happens, but it has happened) and I suspect that the content is also not sufficient, I try to at least hint at that in the report...otherwise the danger is that everyone's time (including yours!) will be wasted by a revision which is more superficially acceptable but still defective on a deeper level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T03:14:11.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2014-02-19T03:37:58.120" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak with some authority in this subject, since I did my PhD in Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, yes, their English writing skills are sometimes real bad, which usually happens in small Universities that do not have budget for proof readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I reviewed such papers, I sometimes rewrite full paragraphs for them and show them what would be expected from a well written documents, I take the time, because I know they are doing their best effort, and probably will take those suggestions at heart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend them books, like Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, which is not perfect, but gives good pointers on how to write correctly. You know, the whole Give them a fish or teach them how to fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My decision ultimately is never guided by the writing, but I always note to the editor that the paper is in a stage where it needs heavy rewriting so it can hold up to the standards of publication of the Journal (I usually review for a high regarded Journal, which tends to be more picky on the grammar thing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T03:37:58.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17097" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:21:12.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're talking about my comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I am speaking from direct experience.  I did have the occasion to think more carefully about this since seeing your question, and at the moment I can remember exactly once when this occurred.  (I have refereed probably about 40 papers over the years, and I can't tell you that I went back over all of them...)  So once is only once.  But this one case is awfully distressing: it was at a very famous journal, with a very famous editor, and the acknowledgment in question was very far from random or frivolous: the paper was, in fact, a continuation/improvement of a recently accepted joint paper between the author and me!  So in my mind this somehow &quot;counts twice&quot;.  But do other mathematicians know for sure that this happens?  I would be very interested to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also add that it almost never happens that I get asked for a list of recommended or excluded referees: I think once or twice out of about 30 submissions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It it tempting to speculate more broadly about why this practice -- which I think everyone here agrees is not kosher if authors do not clarify/disclose information about potential referees -- may in fact exist.  But actually I have some academic work of my own to do tonight (and not so much &quot;tonight&quot; left).  So maybe later...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T04:21:12.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17146" CreationDate="2014-02-19T05:26:56.153" Score="4" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the midst of my quest for potential countries to find a funded Ph.D position in computer science, I came across Austria. However, my initial impression was there is no big chances for international student there for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the universities websites are not fully available in English (In contrast to German universities websites, Austrian's one have many brochures and sub-links related to postgraduate studies in German only)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have sent few emails inquiring the admission and I received responses apologizing for not accepting international students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every time I google (Ph.D computer science Austria) I get results about Australia instead. (I know the way I used to search here is trivial but isn't this an indicator?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question here, do you agree with my impression or not? If yes, do you have more information that Austria has no many chances for international students? If no, would you explain why. Generally, do you advise to go ahead with my search in Austria or it is waste of time. All answers and comments are appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T08:53:53.880" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T08:53:53.880" Title="Funded PhD position chances for international students in Austria" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;austria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21652" CreationDate="2014-02-19T06:23:09.697" Score="9" ViewCount="1286" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that in experimental fields it is not uncommon that an abstract is required to have &quot;specific&quot; unpublished results 9 months or so before the conference. The problem is if you are a theoretical/mathematical researcher in these lab based fields often your mathematical model and derivations are the crux of your research and a numerical exploration comes later. How do you write an abstract for these fields highlighting that you derived the model, proved a bunch of existence and uniqueness properties (that they likely don't care about) and have just started your exploration of numerical examples (likely the only thing they care about) without having anything definitive to say yet about your numerical examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most definitive thing I could say about the numerical examples is, &quot;We show that for a given set of parameter space we observe X and for another set of parameter space we observe Y. This is the consequence of X being true in contrast to Y being true in our field of application&quot;. To be clear I don't know anything about the structure of the parameter space that yield the two distinct X and Y scenarios yet, but I do know that both X and Y are possible given some preliminary simulations, and that the difference between X and Y is interesting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is this is not a conference that includes a proceedings. You have an abstract and a talk, but no paper comes out of it. Papers are strictly for peer reviewed journals in this field. The answers to this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7428/how-to-write-abstract-for-conference-when-you-have-no-results-yet&quot;&gt;How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?&lt;/a&gt; seem to be more geared towards fields where papers come out of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:56:10.863" Title="How to write a math abstract for a conference in an experimentalist dominated field without &quot;specific numerical results&quot;" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:00:27.027" Score="5" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you develop your own research project during your PhD years and want to carry on the research project with you to post-doctoral and beyond, are there any restriction that you can or cannot carry on the project?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T12:00:29.487" Title="Carry your PhD project with you to post-doc and beyond" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17136" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:23:57.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, this depends primarily on your supervisors (old and new) and/or funding. If they give you the green light you're good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have been working with industry or parts of your research have been patented there may be legal issues if you intend to collaborate with other parties (both companies or universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T07:23:57.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17139" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:26:10.257" Score="12" ViewCount="3743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see questions on this site that describe  extremely unethical behavior by professors (e.g., not giving a student authorship when it is obviously warranted). I've also seen some  behavior of this kind firsthand (not by my own advisor, thankfully), and realize that many of the perpetrators are &quot;repeat offenders.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the object of the unethical behavior is a student/advisee, for whom it may  not be personally beneficial to lodge a formal complaint. (The student, understandably, does not want to do anything that will jeopardize graduation, reference letters, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that many students won't go on the record about unethical behavior by a professor or advisor, how do academic departments and universities find out about these incidents? (Do they?) What do they do to prevent the offenders from doing it again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking about actual university regulations, since I am specifically interested in cases where no formal complaint is made. Rather, I am asking what practical action one could take (e.g.as a faculty member of the same department, a dept chair, a dean of some kind) to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Become aware of the incidents (dept gossip is the only way I know about, is there a better way?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Officially or unofficially try to stop it from happening again &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I know that in my own department, I will warn prospective students of an unethical advisor. I am a student though; I imagine this would be  inappropriate for a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T08:11:20.700" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T17:10:48.943" Title="What do departments/universities do about unethical behavior by faculty?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17138" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:46:24.327" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem as I have experienced it is hearsay vs. facts. By hearsay, I mean rumours or coffee-table talk and the like. The university and departments can do a lot but not on hearsay. I know of one case where all PhD students finish and then distance themselves for life to the advisor. If one of them had made a formal complaint, things would have been easy but no-one has. In this case the department has behind the scenes &quot;decided&quot; not to grant the person any more graduate students. I am sure many who read this can see that it is highly unsatisfactory &quot;punishment&quot; since it is all happening behind the scenes, but without official complaints there are no other ways to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To widen the perspective a little. When it comes to discrimination due to sex and  ethnicity the situation is different, there not much is needed for action. A person can be unfairly branded by almost anything regardless if any evidence exist (such as a student unsatisfied with grades and eager for revenge accuses someone for -ism). In such cases, we, rightly, have the approach no smoke without a fire. Unfortunately the other types of misbehaviours are not generally acknowledged as problems of similar dignity and so a wealth of hard evidence is required and lost of benefit of doubt exists in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although much can be done, many cases go on for long periods due to lack of hard facts. Sometimes problems are taken care of behind the scenes but these cases can drag on for very long periods. The fact that they are handled behind the scenes does not carry legal certainty and can be a problem by themselves. So clearly problems exist but the processes of &quot;pressing charges&quot; are unclear and uncertain. So to cap off, it is a legally tricky situation where anything but an open process carries unsatisfactory issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T07:46:24.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17136" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:58:59.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as the article is published, any laboratory can plan experiments described in that article, continuing the research. I see no reason why the original author should not be allowed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this is often not as good idea as it may look like. Assuming the PhD student have worked seriously over PhD time, all &quot;low hanging fruits&quot; of the topic may be already picked up and published in journals. And if your parent laboratory continues that project as well, they put up the competition that may be very difficult to win. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probable exception would be if the continuation of the topic requires to apply methods that are not well developed in the originating laboratory, and you are starting a post-doc in the new laboratory with your current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T07:58:59.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17136" CreationDate="2014-02-19T09:37:52.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a career perspective, it's a bad idea to carry your PhD project as your &lt;strong&gt;primary&lt;/strong&gt; work further into your career. It's perfectly normal for people to finish up the publication of papers related to one phase in a later phase of their career, but it's not so good to keep working on basically the same project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that you don't want to be &quot;pigeonholed&quot; as a researcher who only studies a narrow topic. In most fields, it's not conducive to a successful career, because it makes a researcher look as if uninterested in other research fields (even if that's not the case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if the funding and willingness of the advisors is available to support such a path, it's not one you should follow (absent a very specific reason to do so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T12:00:29.487" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T12:00:29.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17144" CreationDate="2014-02-19T10:29:27.143" Score="18" ViewCount="2173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been enjoying quite a lot of literature, all published within the last ten years, on how to handle projects, ideas, development, thinking, and so in with processes like Extreme, Agile, or Lean.  I have searched for similar literature on academic research and projects, but I couldn't find anything modern and relevant that links various parts of the research process, such as project management, hardware/software/experiment development, or refactoring of collaborative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any recent publications about applying these methods to academic research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12113" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T04:55:35.530" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T04:55:35.530" Title="Is there any research on applying Agile/Extreme/Lean methods in academic research?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;project-design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2014-02-19T10:35:26.763" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/hicks08scram.html&quot;&gt;Adapting Scrum to Managing a Research Group&lt;/a&gt; by Michael Hicks and Jeffrey S. Foster, describes the experiences of adapting Scrum to running a research group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who don't know about Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile software development&#xA;  framework for managing software projects and product or application&#xA;  development. Its focus is on &quot;a flexible, holistic product development&#xA;  strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common&#xA;  goal&quot; as opposed to a &quot;traditional, sequential approach&quot;. Scrum&#xA;  enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging&#xA;  co-location of all team members, and verbal communication among all&#xA;  team members and disciplines in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the&#xA;  customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often&#xA;  called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be&#xA;  easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As&#xA;  such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem&#xA;  cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing&#xA;  the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging&#xA;  requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is built around the idea of a sprint, a short burst of activity. Again, from wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sprint (or iteration) is the basic unit of development in Scrum. The&#xA;  sprint is a &quot;timeboxed&quot; effort; that is, it is restricted to a&#xA;  specific duration. The duration is fixed in advance for each&#xA;  sprint and is normally between one week and one month, although two&#xA;  weeks is typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each sprint is started by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the&#xA;  sprint are identified and an estimated commitment for the sprint goal&#xA;  is made, and ended by a sprint review-and-retrospective meeting,&#xA;  where the progress is reviewed and lessons for the next sprint are&#xA;  identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum emphasizes working product at the end of the Sprint that is&#xA;  really &quot;done&quot;; in the case of software, this means a system that is&#xA;  integrated, fully tested, end-user documented, and potentially&#xA;  shippable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emphasis is thus on highly dynamic, short cycles of work, and interaction between the team&#xA;members and the customer to get the right product delivered by rapidly ensuring that the development team is on target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, returning to the paper: it  advocates 2 or 3 short meeting per week with the entire research group, rather than infrequent meetings between supervisors and PhD students. In these meetings goals, progress and achievements are reported on frequently. One outcome is that it helped quickly identify when a student was off-track, unmotivated or stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used the technique for my research group for a while. It was good for the various members to learn about what the others were doing, but as everyone was doing quite different things, in the end it didn't create any synergies I'd hoped for. Now that I am in a different institution and the new research group works on topics that are closer together, I think it could work, but we've decided to use a different approach to our research meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T14:44:28.693" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T14:44:28.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T12:27:28.400" Score="36" ViewCount="3455" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is about plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas. Copy-and-paste plagiarism is included but not likely to happen in the cases relevant for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the publication of a paper prior to peer-reviewed publication on the ArXiv (or another preprint server), there are usually two main positions considering a possible theft of the idea (or somebody coming up with the same idea):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If somebody manages to publish your idea in a peer-reviewed journal before you do, you can prove that you came up with the idea first or at least independently if you have published your paper on the ArXiv. Therefore it is a good idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed. Somebody could make a living of plagiarising ArXiv papers. Therefore it is a bad idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any &lt;strong&gt;example cases&lt;/strong&gt; (or even studies) supporting either of these statements? Such examples would include, but are not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has anybody ever successfully resolved a priority dispute with a publication on ArXiv?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has anybody ever accused somebody of plagiarising an ArXiv article (with the fact that the plagiarised article was published on ArXiv affecting the outcome).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it is really examples and not a theoretical analysis of the statements, I am looking for. (Neither of the two positions fully reflect my opinion and some of the soft premises¹ are debatable. However, debating about these viewpoints on a theoretical basis or attacking some of the premises is usually futile.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ e.g., that scientific credit is only decided by peer-reviewed publication&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:32:03.880" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T15:53:53.727" Title="Are there any examples for an ArXiv publication nurturing or preventing plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17134" CreationDate="2014-02-19T12:33:56.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD in the German-speaking part of the world works a bit differently. Typically, you would find an advisor that has project funding or the like and is willing to hire you as a &quot;scientific employee&quot;. Being admitted to the PhD studies itself is most often not that difficult once you have an advisor - there are formal requirements, for sure. But with a Master degree from a &quot;proper university&quot;, this is likely not to be the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The employment part is also very relevant when it comes to visa questions, health insurances, and the like. It may easily be that the reason why you have been told that no international students are taken is that without the prospect of getting employed in a Professor's research group, there is little hope for getting a student visa for PhD studies (that's just a guess, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A notable exception to the above guidelines are graduate schools. A well-known example is the one of the IST Austria (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ist.ac.at/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ist.ac.at/&lt;/a&gt;), which has internationalization as one of its explicit goals. You might want to have a look at their web page. But even the text on that page talks about &quot;employment as a PhD student&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T12:33:56.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2014-02-19T14:19:56.500" Score="40" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes that peer-reviewed publications determine scientific credit, which may be true in some fields but isn't universal.  In mathematics, it is not relevant at all for assigning credit.  Peer-reviewed papers are of course more thoroughly checked, but they do not give you any additional intellectual credit, so this difficulty does not even arise.  (In particular, for assigning credit an arXiv paper beats a published paper with a nontrivially later submission date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper? Or are there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to answer, because how could you tell?  If the plagiarist doesn't copy any text, but rather just takes ideas, then it's virtually impossible to prove that anything was stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, it works like this.  If someone publicly circulates a paper, then there's a brief window in which people who have made the same discovery independently have a chance to announce this fact and claim a share of the credit.  They should do so more or less immediately upon learning about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, if too much time elapses, then the community doesn't count it as simultaneous discovery, but rather at best rediscovering something that was already known (which gives far less credit to the rediscoverer).  There's not a clear cut-off for the timing, but I see it as follows: days later is definitely OK, weeks later might be OK, months later is generally not OK, a year later is definitely not OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest weakness in this system is that there's a window in which it's possible to steal someone's ideas and claim you came up with them independently.  This is certainly uncommon (indeed, claims of independent discovery are uncommon, regardless of whether they are true or false), but it's hard to know for sure how rare it is because of the difficulty of proving plagiarism of ideas.  Most claims of independent discovery are obviously true (because there's a manuscript that couldn't have been written so quickly, or there's a history of talks or discussions with other researchers, or there are nontrivial variations on the ideas and applications), but every once in a while someone makes such a claim without clear evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when there isn't much documentation, I'm inclined to believe claims of independent discovery.  Faking this takes a lot of chutzpah and effort, it's not something you can get away with repeatedly, and it's an awkward situation you wouldn't want to put yourself in unnecessarily, so it seems reasonable to give people the benefit of the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I don't think the real danger is outright theft, where someone who wasn't working on this topic at all notices a new paper and says &quot;That looks nice!  I think I'll steal it.&quot;  Instead, the most worrisome situation is when someone was actually working on similar ideas, but hadn't really finished sorting out the details.  When they see the paper, they immediately recognize some of their ideas, and the remaining details feel so natural that they say &quot;Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind.  This paper is merely fleshing out my ideas.&quot;  They honestly believe that they had practically completed this work, when they might have been somewhat further than they thought.  There's a whole continuum here, from people who are basically right in their beliefs to those who are completely wrong, and it's not clear where to draw the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I have no idea how often someone claims independent discovery based on exaggerated beliefs (again it's basically unprovable), but I imagine it happens occasionally.  It's certainly unfortunate if it takes place, but it's not nearly as bad as outright theft.  The worst-case scenario is having to share credit with someone who is less deserving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T15:10:56.213" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T15:10:56.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:07:21.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description of having to read sentences and paragraphs several times to figure out what they mean, it seems that the writing is a significant hindrance to people understanding the paper. Since a paper is only written once but (hopefully) read many times, the burden should be on the writer, rather than on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a journal paper (and assuming that you feel it has sufficient technical strength to be accepted), advise the authors to consult a native speaker or other expert to improve the writing and advise the editor not to accept the paper until the writing is improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For conference papers, it's harder to know what to do, since there's only one round of reviewing. Ultimately, though, it's the PC's problem, not yours. Write your review about the technical quality of the paper, advise the authors to improve the writing and advise the PC that you found the paper hard to understand because of the quality of the writing. They can weigh up whatever factors they want to take into account when deciding which papers to accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T15:07:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:37:56.510" Score="5" ViewCount="1693" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the most common ways to find open postdoc positions in physics, in Europe?&#xA;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://inspirehep.net/collection/Jobs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inspires&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academicjobsonline&lt;/a&gt;, but on both sites, there almost haven't been any new positions in my field (4 in total since december).&#xA;Are there any other sites / tricks I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: my subfield is theoretical QCD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12122" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T13:54:15.213" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T19:06:10.637" Title="How can I find open physics postdoc positions in Europe?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:41:29.893" Score="13" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university recently made a direction that lectures attendance is mandatory. Now my question is, are there any studies that compare mandatory and not mandatory lectures quality? The university is trying to increase its quality and this was its main step this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More description:&#xA;As lecture quality comparison I mean, when is it easier to concentrate, study, teach and learn? When lectures are mandatory, there are a lot of students that doesn't have real interest in subject and are disturbing and making noise. That influences all students, as you can't hear what professor is saying, professor is disturbed and interrupted in teaching. So are there any studies that prove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this in overall a good step of university? I believe that good professors can motivate students to come to lectures, and if lectures are empty, it's a sign of something (not necessarily bad quality of professor) and this doesn't solve it at all, or am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12126" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T04:55:21.987" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T04:55:21.987" Title="Relation of lecture mandatory attendance and lecture quality" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;&lt;lecture-teaching-method&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17150" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:44:35.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many jobs are only advertised on the website of the respective universities. Often professors post positions on their home pages or group pages, so it may be a good idea to keep an eye on them. Sometimes job openings are also mailed around to colleagues, so it is a good idea to let people know you're on the market, so they can forward these announcements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your particular subfield there may be other relevant websites as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T15:44:35.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:10:03.913" Score="3" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation, I got a MSc from a renowned university in Europe and I have been working as a lecturer in a non-EU country until now. I am in my mid thirties (upper part =)) and I have came to an important decision to make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have been offered to work as a full time lecturer with all my benefits in a local renowned university in the country that I am staying&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the same time I have an offer to follow PhD studies in a ZA university, but I am not very keen about it, mainly because the problems with the crime rates and low salary per month&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen that there are a lot of possibilities for getting funded PhD positions worldwide, but I am afraid of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That after my studies and if I do not get an academic position in the place that I did my PhD studies, to not be able to get another academic position as the one that they are currently offering me (I will be ending my PhD at 42 years old approximately)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a high interest for academia, unfortunately the universities in the country that I am working are not so much oriented to research, but only to lecturing. That is why I feel like bored and stressed to do the same task everyday, to do research is very hard because I must occupy my little free time and most of my ideas get stuck after a while (mainly because there are not other academics to talk about problems encountered along my projects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not really like just to end with the MSc and I feel that is something missing in my life, this has lead me to a problem of anxiety and depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T01:06:22.927" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T01:06:22.927" Title="crossroads between continue working or going to a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17151" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:12:56.617" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school also has a mandatory attendance policy. While some uninterested students do cause problems there are classroom management techniques to handle that. For example when my students get out of control I warn them. If they continue then I remove them and mark them absent for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do understand you are looking for studies I want to make clear that there is not much reason for lectures to drop in quality just because you have a forced attendance policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, I could see how in-class activities have lower participation in such a situation and that could lead to reduced learning for the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:12:56.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17151" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:22:12.333" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a great step for the University. If a student comes to the lecture, they will learn something whether they intend to or not. This should, theoretically, raise the grades of the students in the classroom, which will raise the grades in the University as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of this in a case where you're in a lecture and the professor puts his notes online. Students see this and decide they don't need to go because they can simply read the notes themselves and learn it on their own. This doesn't necessarily mean the prof is bad, it just means that the students are a bit lazy. Even if they do end up reading the notes (which is rare), they're still missing out on critical notes, hints the prof may give, and emphasis on certain topics. Even asking or hearing other students questions. When I was a student, I was in a class that was full and our professor posted his quizzes online, making it so you just had to look up the answers on the internet or take the quiz with a student that did attend class. In the end, I was one of 5 students out of 60. That class had a very low class average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that students could be in the class that are disruptive, but having mandatory attendance doesn't restrict the prof from kicking those disruptive students out and taking away their attendance for that day. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to remove extremely disruptive students. And if they're there but don't care about the topic, they shouldn't be in the class anyway, or should at least understand that you need to take the class and should make an effort to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a study to show you about this, but if you look at it from the view where it's good and think about it, it's pretty obvious there are reasons for it. Schools without the mandatory policy look at schools that have it and see that there's benefit for it, which is why that put it in themselves. No school would put a mandatory policy in without checking into its effectiveness, especially if it's the main step to making their school better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:22:12.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17150" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:28:10.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should also look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.physicstoday.org/jobs/work_function/postdoctoral-research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jobs.physicstoday.org/jobs/work_function/postdoctoral-research&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/physical-and-environmental-sciences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/physical-and-environmental-sciences&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurosciencejobs.com/jobs/physics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eurosciencejobs.com/jobs/physics&lt;/a&gt; , and &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.sciencecareers.org/jobs/europe/postdoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jobs.sciencecareers.org/jobs/europe/postdoc/&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:28:10.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17151" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:41:25.947" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact there are many studies undertaken in this topic. Below you may find the link to some of these papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877129713001639&quot;&gt;Classroom attendance: Factors and perceptions of students and faculty in US schools of pharmacy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691709002330&quot;&gt;Student nurse absenteeism in higher education: An argument against enforced attendance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775712000325&quot;&gt;Student and teacher attendance: The role of shared goods in reducing absenteeism&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691712002420&quot;&gt;Why do students miss lectures? A study of lecture attendance amongst students of health science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388013000613&quot;&gt;Does lecture attendance affect academic performance? Panel data evidence for introductory macroeconomics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272706001393&quot;&gt;The impact of charter school attendance on student performance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find tons of papers in this topic. Look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleListURL&amp;amp;_method=list&amp;amp;_ArticleListID=-524267511&amp;amp;_st=13&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000228598&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=12975512&amp;amp;md5=a36fef0c6b3e326ad9b150e3ada774a3&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.my/scholar?q=effect+of+student+attendance+on+learning&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot;&gt;her&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:41:25.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10251" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:56:29.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elsevier has recently launched a new toolbox including lots of useful information about journals. If you visit any Elsevier journal's homepage (I assume it works for all Elsevier journals], you will see the following box there,&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/atJQI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click on it and select 'Speed' link and it takes you to another page like &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/1084-8045/speed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (example for JNCA journal). The following information let you know the latest turn around time of this particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IeJsf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope other journals start similar approach.&#xA;Thanks and hope you find this post useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:56:29.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2014-02-19T17:58:22.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO it would be better to have a web page containing the links to all the professional profiles you have (ResearchGate, LinkedIn, etc.), and give a link to this web page (rather than several links to separate profiles) in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T17:58:22.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17153" CreationDate="2014-02-19T18:14:26.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, nobody can tell you what the best decision &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt; in such a decision is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, what you need to look at are the &lt;em&gt;opportunity costs&lt;/em&gt; of your different options. What do you gain from each of the different possible choices? Equally important is to ask yourself what will you have to give up to pursue those choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, you need to ask yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is being a researcher compared to being a lecturer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How difficult do you think it will be to get a position when you finish your PhD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your offer of graduate admission worth the upheaval it would cause in your life?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other questions like these. Once you get a feel for how important these issues are &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt;, the easier it will be to make a decision. It will still be a very tough decision (these sorts of choices always are), but &lt;strong&gt;ultimately it will be your decision, and you'll need to be comfortable with the decision you've reached.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T18:46:11.320" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T18:46:11.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T18:47:49.403" Score="21" ViewCount="1558" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past year I have been doing a postdoc in a Neuroscience lab, the position advertised was for computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first year, the work was mostly related to my discipline, but my PI's funding got cut and now he has been pushing me to write and do experiments in an area that is entirely out of my expertise or even my field (electrodeposition/ impedance characterization). To be honest, I do not like the area, and was not written anywhere neither in the job posting or the offer letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a postdoc offer in a different University, and have already accepted, but my PI is pushing me to delay my start date or even come back over the summer to finish these experiments and the paper. (Probably at my own expense, the position is in a different US state)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I would like to apply for a Tenure track position after the coming Postdoc, I would like to know how much can this affect my chances, would a publication in a field that is not even remotely similar to my own (Machine Learning) can hurt me more than help me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to think on ways to turn it around so I can come with a feasible explanation on how is a paper on that topic even going to help build my ML expertise, but so far I have come with nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T15:05:51.870" Title="Are papers entirely unrelated to my field going to hurt my chances in the future?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17161" CreationDate="2014-02-19T18:51:53.843" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;A legitimate scholarly publication can only help you (although it might not help much).  If you're really worried you can always just leave it off your cv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T18:51:53.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:00:32.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can give two views:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, quite often you share office with other people from the same department. However, offices are in general a no-meeting space as long as your office mates are there and are not part of the meeting. You have black/white-boards on the corridors, several small meeting rooms etc. Of course, coming into an office and chatting for 1 or 2 minutes is usually fine. On the other hand, people even go to the corridor to answer their cell phone, so that they don't disturb others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Czech Republic, it depends mostly on the space available. However, in general at the universities, silence in an office is less a standard than in France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T19:00:32.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17153" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:01:14.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are contemplating a choice that has a high risk of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of not completing Ph.D.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of not liking research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of not finding even a lecturer position afterwards, much less a research position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of unhappiness due to the conditions during the Ph.D.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of being academically unrewarded/isolated even in a research position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all things unfold perfectly, then you will achieve a research position in some years.  You may like this more, but will objectively be similar to the position you have now: indoor work, no heavy lifting, job security and benefits, education field, some things you like and some things you dislike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like a poor risk, particularly for someone already pushing 40 -- the potential upside is smaller.  My advice is to correspond with scholars at other institutions, to achieve your spiritual fulfillment while still earning a good paycheck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T19:01:14.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17168" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:14:29.633" Score="9" ViewCount="24703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my professor. She has two surnames. So far, I've been using only her first surname; however, I'm curious whether that's, generally, how I should address a professor with two surnames. I don't know whether the addressee's culture affects the answer, but the professor is from Spanish South-America. (I've noticed that some Spanish people use only the first of both last names, but most English people who take two names ask others to use both names.) Also, I don't whether familiarity matters but we communicate frequently enough that I begin my emails with 'Hi Dr...' instead of 'Dear Dr...'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="9263" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T19:19:53.433" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T13:02:34.207" Title="Should I use both surnames when addressing a Spanish professor as 'Dr' in an email?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17165" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:25:13.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot do any harm if you are more polite when writing to someone with a significantly higher academic state than yours. So unless she's ever written you a mail signed less formally, stick to the formal way of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually quite unlikely that she gives any attention to it. When she replies, the way she signes at the end is how you should title her next time, with &quot;Prof.&quot; added, which she'll very likely exclude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write: &lt;em&gt;Dear Professor Doe-Toe,&lt;/em&gt; ... &lt;em&gt;Sincerely, John Brown&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She replies: &lt;em&gt;Hello,&lt;/em&gt; ... &lt;em&gt;Regards, J. Doe&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time you write: &lt;em&gt;Dear Prof. Doe,&lt;/em&gt; ... &lt;em&gt;Best regards, J. Brown&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who are really really informal. One professor at my university always uses just the first name at the end of e-mails. She really does not care, but politeness in my environment (Czech) says that you shouldn't reply so much impolitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T19:25:13.603" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17094" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:29:54.927" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Pete L. Clark, I do not quite know what a letter is: short papers are usually quite similar to regular paper, only shorter and usually called notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the venue suitable for short articles, there are quite a few. First, you should now that most journal could accept short papers, but certainly you have more chance to get accepted in a journal specifically targeted toward short paper (except if you solve a known problem or reprove a notoriously difficult theorem, in which case no reviewer can use the length of the paper to argue it does not have much merit). Let me give my impressions on the journal that come to mind (to remind that this is from a biased perspective, I will often refer to the French mathematical community), limiting to journals that to not claim being restricted to a subfield -so called generalist journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CRAS&lt;/strong&gt; (Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris): this journal publishes both research announcements and complete short papers. The announcement part is less and less relevant, but I do not know whether it is less present now. Sadly, while CRAS published top-notch papers, it cannot afford to be very selective anymore. It also suffers from the research announcement role: French hiring committees often blankly dismiss CRAS papers, partially because they may be only announcements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PNAS&lt;/strong&gt; (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA): this journal is not very well-known from French mathematicians, but publishes some quite good papers. I think it has a particular taste, but I cannot find the word to describe it. Beware that even if it has a page limit, the format is very dense so articles are not necessarily that short overall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PAMS&lt;/strong&gt; (Proceedings of the American Mathematical society): this journal is explicitly for short papers, but the page limit recently moved from 10 to 15 (AMS format). As far as I can judge it is selective, and sometimes publishes excellent papers. It is reasonably well regarded, benefiting from the sisterhood of Transactions AMS.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bul. LMS&lt;/strong&gt; (Bulletin of the London Mathematical society): this journal is the LMS counterpart to PAMS, and is somewhat similar (although a little less known and considered, maybe). Since the LMS series has three journals (Bulletin, Journal and Proceedings in increasing order of paper size) instead of two for the AMS, I guess that the average Bulletin paper is somewhat shorter than the average PAMS paper, but the different format makes it difficult to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AMM&lt;/strong&gt; (American Mathematical Monthly): this journal is well-known and extremely selective. It publishes papers of general interest, of varying length. The notes are typically a few pages long. It is even possible to publish mathematical facts of a few lines, in a grayed box. Since it is considered somewhat recreational, publishing in the Monthly gives less weight to a CV than its harsh selectivity would do for any other journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elemente Math.&lt;/strong&gt; (Elemente der Mathematik): this is a Swiss cousin to AMM, much less known and much less selective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MRL&lt;/strong&gt; (Mathematical Research Letters): this does barely belong to the category of note-publishing journals: it does not usually published paper more than 30 pages, but the average paper there is not a note as far as I can judge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T23:36:24.223" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T23:36:24.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17165" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:30:09.777" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mexican here!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have two surnames, and to be perfectly honest we do not mind if you use both or only one of our last names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People call me Dr Palafox and my former advisor (Who is the head of the CS department) Dr Benitez. We are talking people from all the spectrum of workers, from administrative and cleaning staff to general directors. So is perfectly fine to use only one last name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually is going to sound weird if you end up using both names, because we rarely do. Even the President is rarely called by his 2 last names, unless is a very specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T19:30:09.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T19:59:24.333" Score="6" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in pursuing a degree in Computer Science. Universities I've reviewed have &quot;Major In Computer Science&quot; , but give &quot;Bachelor's in Informatics or Computing&quot;. There is no &quot;Bachelors In CS&quot;, I simply couldn't find it. So &lt;strong&gt;are Informatics and Computing the same as CS ? or IT?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was looking for programming jobs, degree requirements were mostly CS. If I go to the university I mentioned above (Major in CS, but Bachelor's in Informatics), will I be able to write in my CV that I have CS knowledge?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9199" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:53:47.527" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T03:26:06.033" Title="What is the difference between CS and Informatics degrees?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17150" CreationDate="2014-02-19T22:40:18.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, most postdocs in high-energy physics have application deadlines anywhere between the previous September and the end of December. That is, for postdocs starting in fall 2014, you need to be filling out applications in September-December 2013. At this time of year, though, there are just not many people listing open positions. It's not just you; I've been looking at the listings as well and very little has been posted since the first week of December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T22:40:18.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17161" CreationDate="2014-02-19T23:06:27.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with vadim's answer above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A legitimate scholarly publication can only help you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the concern about the 'helpfulness' of a paper in an unrelated field, I would tend to see it as a positive thing, showing that you are not restricted to working/thinking in/knowing about one area only. You have proven that you are capable of scholarly research in a tangential area; this should help rather than hinder your TT search. Of course, you may find that some possible positions will be unappealing to you if you really hate electrodeposition/ impedance characterization. If that possibility is a large concern to you, then you might consider leaving the paper out of your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not believe that leaving the paper out of your CV would be a good solution, unless the paper is also of very poor quality, in which case the point above does not apply and you really don't want to use this experience when searching for tenure track jobs. If the current project is of poor quality, you may be better off moving on to the next, more compatible post-doc, and also politely declining your (current) supervisor's offer to continue/finish the project you are working on now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T23:06:27.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17161" CreationDate="2014-02-19T23:27:39.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that a publication in a totally different field will simply be ignored and certainly wouldn't help, unless the job you're applying for is specifically interdisciplinary and across departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publication in a different subfield can help or hurt depending on its quality (and somewhat on how you're selling yourself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T23:27:39.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17179" CreationDate="2014-02-19T23:33:49.267" Score="31" ViewCount="7352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a lab. This evening, thinking that my advisor had already left for the day, I started telling my peers in the lab that she has a bad attitude about a few things, and she was showing off a lot about her work last summer. Out of nowhere, she walked into the lab and was visibly upset, and I feared that she had heard what I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just finished my masters and had asked my advisor about pursuing a Ph.D. She kind of gave an OK and I am supposed to meet with her tomorrow morning to discuss about it.  Although our relationship has been on and off at times, I feel bad because she helped me a lot in past and now she will feel I am an ungrateful jerk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will be the best way to approach this issue so that I can minimize the damage to our relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12133" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T09:39:28.630" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T12:34:40.243" Title="Advisor walked in while I was complaining about her; How can I minimize the damage to our relationship?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="27" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17151" CreationDate="2014-02-19T23:37:05.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is that the question has no answer, because classes are not all alike. If you're taking a foreign language, then obviously attendance is extremely important. If it's a creative writing class, then students are critiquing each other's work in class, and there's no substitute for that experience. Classes come in different sizes and are taught using different methods. If the class is 500 students in an auditorium, and the professor gives old-fashioned straight lectures, then maybe watching the lecture on video would be just as good -- if not better, since you could repeat some parts and skip others. If the class is 25 students and the professor uses modern interactive teaching methods, then attendance is probably extremely valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of having a university-wide rule strikes me as a stupid idea. It's one-size-fits-all, which I've argued doesn't make sense. It's an improper violation of academic freedom. What it sounds to me like is this. This school got worried about their &quot;success rates.&quot; Success rates are not a good measure of the quality of education, for a variety of reasons. At the community college where I teach, students consider it normal to take every class two or more times in order to optimize their GPA. (They can drop up to the 12th week and get a W on their transcript.) Furthermore, success rates can easily be raised simply by lowering standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T23:37:05.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2014-02-19T23:49:44.440" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I left academia about 27 years ago after completing my doctorate and a couple of years of post-doc. Since then I have published about 6 papers on physics and mathematics in peer-reviewed journals so it is certainly possible to publish without any affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this week for the first time I experienced the rejection of a paper purely because of the lack of affiliation, so I can confirm that some journals are now rejecting manuscripts purely on this basis. The paper I submitted was &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8217&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv:1401.8217&lt;/a&gt; which reports my progress on Lebesgue's Universal Covering Problem including a new upper bound. This work is not going to make any seismic waves in the world of mathematics but it is a well known hundred year old problem and previous improvements on the upper bound have been published and well cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted to the Hindawi journal &quot;ISRN Geometry&quot; because it is open access and currently has no article processing charge. These are useful conditions for someone with no funding or easy access to subscription journals. It was also convenient that they do not ask for TeX layout and will do the formatting to their style themselves. I had written in Word and was glad not to have to reformat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After about two weeks I received a message from someone at the editorial office to say that I just had to submit a new manuscript including my academic affiliation for the review process to begin. I was given two days to do this. I replied quickly to say that I had no such affiliation. Two hours later I received a final rejection notice  &quot;I regret to inform you that it was found unsuitable for publication in Geometry.&quot; No more details were given. The paper had not been sent to a reviewer and it was clear that the only reason for the rejection could be the lack of the requested affiliation. The person who signed the message does not have any academic record that I can find and is not one of the long list of editors for the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T23:49:44.440" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17188" CreationDate="2014-02-20T01:00:28.397" Score="15" ViewCount="13388" Body="&lt;p&gt;following different CS conferences I see the following phrase very often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something similar to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't overestimate if I said 80% of the conferences (I have followed) have this attitude. This brings me to the question of whether this is true or people (conference organisers) admit a lie when say this. Why does this attitude exit in CS conferences? Do other fields experience the same thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T23:35:17.883" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T23:35:17.883" Title="&quot;Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended&quot; is this real?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17175" CreationDate="2014-02-20T01:02:53.557" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well... I am not an entirely mentally normal person so take my suggestion with a lot of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The damage is already done, and you probably cannot do too much on her side. Your side, though, can be fixed. If it bothers you enough to make a new account and ask this question, you probably do care, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I will approach it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before the meeting, prepare a thank you card and/or perhaps some little snacks/gifts (chocolate usually work, as long as she is not diabetic Other choices are small office plants, coupon to a nearby restaurant, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to meet with her and act as if none of these had happened. If she confronts you, apologize and emphasize that the experience made you feel very bad as well. Remember to emphasize the feeling. Depending on the outcome, if she confronts, then talking about PhD project is probably a bad idea. Leave the gifts and thank you card, and tell her that &quot;I fully understand why you are upset, I hope you can give me another chance to talk about this in another time. I'll be outside in the lab if you need to talk to me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If she does not confront you, then go ahead and talk about the PhD project. Pay attention to it, because it may actually be things you spend a few years on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it's all set, regardless of the outcome, give her the thank you card and the gifts. No need to mention your stupid chat. Just say something like &quot;Just my thanks to your constant help through my Masters studies, and I look forward to working with you as a PhD candidate.&quot; Or if you're unlucky &quot;Just my thanks to your help through my Masters studies, I learned a lot and I hope these little gifts will make up for all the hard times I caused you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she talks to you about the PhD, then she has forgiven you (unless she is a psycho who has decided to torment you.) If she decides not to and withdraws the offer, your thank you gift will also work. Either way, you'll have a chance to express your thanks, and that probably can help you feel better about your mishap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please be professional in the future. Badmouthing is a really bad habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="28605" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T12:34:40.243" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T12:34:40.243" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17175" CreationDate="2014-02-20T01:28:29.490" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you have said, I am not sure even if she heard you. All you need to do for now is to &lt;strong&gt;STOP&lt;/strong&gt; this attitude. You will never find a &lt;em&gt;perfect&lt;/em&gt; supervisor... Yes, you can talk with a friend about how difficult your life is with this supervisor. But this should be out of the lab and avoid -- as much as you can -- other students with the same supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show her that you value her research and expertise (in case you don't value her research, then find another supervisor).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not talk about anything happened unless she started the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely disagree with @Penguin_Knight on the gift thing. Being so nice in a typical meeting indicates something weird is happening. Do not do it. (I believe this is a cultural thing some people may see it really good others will think about it in a very bad context.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T15:25:32.247" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T15:25:32.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T02:26:07.937" Score="3" ViewCount="6346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing an NSF proposal.  I ordinarily like author-year citations because they seem more scholarly and give the reviewer instant information about who(m) I am citing.  However, multiple people have advised me that it makes the text hard to read, and I've heard that the &lt;em&gt;most important thing&lt;/em&gt; for NSF proposals is that they are easy to read.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still- I hate flipping back and forth between text and citations- it seems like that causes a readability problem of a different kind.  At the same time, numerical citations are much more concise and help me make my page limit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am in a bind.  What do you people think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12107" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T02:36:59.213" Title="NSF Proposals: numerical citations or author-year?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-02-20T02:32:43.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't hurt to find out who does the scheduling for the department, and meet with them in person. Tell them your career goals, and ask them to keep you in mind should any unexpected openings come up. Leave them a business card. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing may happen for a year or two. But, sooner or later, a professor is bound to retire, or take a sabbatical, or be unable to teach because of an illness. A college may be all set on paper, but then have a sudden, last-minute need to hire an adjunct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach requires a little bit of luck, and a mighty good first impression, but it could open a door for you down the road.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T02:32:43.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17181" CreationDate="2014-02-20T03:02:57.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of reference formatting, this is the only paragraph I can find in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/nsf04_23/nsf04_23.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSF guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reference information is required. Each reference must include the&#xA;  names of all authors (in the same sequence in which they appear in the&#xA;  publication), the article and journal title, book title, volume&#xA;  number, page numbers, and year of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @Suresh, I misunderstood the meaning of it and I agree that the instruction does not specify either numeric or author-year format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the page limit is 15, all inclusive, numeric system would give you a few more lines at the end. And you don't need to hate flipping back and forth, because the reviewers will do the flipping. However, should you feel so strong against it, call and talk to the grant program manager or contact person and ask if you can use your preferred system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T13:34:13.297" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T13:34:13.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2014-02-20T04:57:08.767" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extensions are common in conferences because many people procrastinate and or otherwise just need a little more time to complete their paper, prompting a heavy demand for extensions.  Unless the conference is overwhelmed by submissions (which is very rarely the case), there's usually room for a little bit of flexibility in the submission deadline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a lie... Organizers tend to anticipate it based on past experiences in previous conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T05:04:19.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T05:04:19.240" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2014-02-20T06:08:01.450" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warning: personal opinion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I view conferences that regularly shift submission deadlines as a little suspect. You're right that this happens in CS conferences, and it soon becomes pointless because everyone expects the extension (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJXHY2OXGE&quot;&gt;Nobody expects the extension!!&lt;/a&gt;&quot;). But your estimate of 80% is rather off. Almost none of the (many) conferences I submit to have deadline extensions for submission of the full paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't underestimate the level of pleading that goes on. People will always ask for an extension if they have even a smidgen of hope that the pleading will work. It's only when a conference takes a firm stand for many years that people stop asking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T06:08:01.450" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17175" CreationDate="2014-02-20T07:05:49.097" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an issue with your advisor you should approach her about it in private, calmly, clearly, and with an open mind and an idea of what you want. If you choose to speak to others without approaching her then you cannot be surprised at unexpected consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the current situation; if your advisor definitely heard you, then apologizing to her in person, privately, would be the honorable course of action. Of course, if there's a chance she did not hear you, this would not turn out well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I recommend that you simply approach her with your concerns as you originally should have (and do it soon, because if she did hear you, the longer you wait the more permanent the damage may become). Also make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to get out of the conversation ahead of time. This is a reasonable approach whether she heard you or not. If she didn't hear you, then this brings your concerns to light in a mature manner. If she did hear you, this opens up the potential for a conversation about the incident. If she chooses not to mention it, at least you approached her with your concerns and gave her an opportunity to legitimately hear where you were coming from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, whether she heard you or not, don't simply pretend that this situation didn't happen; go into it with the mindset of &quot;yes, it &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; happen, and that means it's time to have a real conversation about the issues that have been bothering me before the tension gets even worse&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not grovel, this only shows that you do not feel comfortable with your ability to handle confrontation, and raises &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; red flags (too many to list) and defenses (even subconsciously) to the person you are groveling to (one of the worst cases being that the recipient takes it as &quot;I can't believe you think I'm so foolish as to fall for your grovelling&quot; and thus fails to reciprocate any respect). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not be close-minded or have a &quot;putting your foot down&quot; or &quot;shoot first ask questions later&quot; attitude, this will normally put somebody on the defensive immediately and kill most chances of progress. Be calm, clear, and treat her with the same amount of decency and respect that you would expect from anybody else -- even if you strongly disagree with her behavior. Going into these kinds of things with a clear head (and a clear goal) will also help give &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; confidence that can keep &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; from getting on the defensive and closing doors / burning bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And most importantly, do not forget that you may not get what you want out of this conversation; but at least you will end up doing your best to be reasonable and work with the situation. The relationship may not be perfect, but it is there and it is up to you to make the best of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12142" LastEditorUserId="12142" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T15:54:07.067" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T15:54:07.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2014-02-20T07:37:17.497" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answer, but just to add another data point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might as well list it on your CV, but you shouldn't expect it to help very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did (along with a few others) graduate admissions for the math department at UGA for four years -- and in fact am about to get involved in it again later this week, despite not being on the committee anymore -- and I remember exactly one student who listed it on his CV.  It was sort of interesting but not particularly impressive, and if I remember it right we did not admit him in the end.  He had a rather distinctive name and, while flipping rapidly through the &lt;em&gt;Monthly&lt;/em&gt; problems in the months and years since then, I've noticed that he has submitted several more problems as well.  I am starting to wonder what happened to this student...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret the decision we made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I have to say -- and this is a very personal opinion, not a professional one -- that it seems to me that &quot;problems&quot; sections in journals like this are a bit old-fashioned.  They do not seem to play a nontrivial role in contemporary mathematical life.  I remember having exactly two conversations about Monthly problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) As a first-year graduate student, I did solve a Monthly problem.  (This was the one and only Monthly problem that I can remember having thought about for more than five minutes, and I think it is telling that, while I usually have quite a good memory for mathematical minutiae, I remember precisely nothing about the problem.)  Rather I remember standing in a mezzanine outside of the mathematics department and telling a fellow student that I had solved a Monthly problem.  She politely congratulated me.  I asked her whether I should actually submit the solution.  She said that she couldn't  see why not.  I ended up not submitting the solution (thus I can't be completely sure that I correctly solved the problem...and it is telling that I don't care very much!).  Okay, that was not my most riveting anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) This is slightly more amusing.  As a postdoc I remember having lunch with one of my close friends.  He told me that he was flipping through the problem section of the Monthly and his eye was caught on a problem that had been proposed...by him.  He racked his brains about this and did not succeed in recalling anything about the problem or his submitting it.  He did have a friend who was involved with editing the problems section at the time, so he guessed that must have had something to do with it (his friend was very conscientious; it is not plausible that he would have done it as a joke or prank).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that most Monthly problems are easy: on the contrary, I am a relatively experienced, relatively successful research mathematician, and I still sometimes at least pass my eyes over these problems while flipping towards the reviews, and I rarely if ever see one that I think &quot;Oh, surely I could solve that very easily.&quot;  I'm just not really sure what the point of solving them is: I have plenty of other math problems that I'm trying to solve!  It's a little like math contests, only adults can participate too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I think that MathOverflow has significantly overtaken solving Monthly problems as being a minor way for young people to show their talent.  There are a small number of undergraduates that I would admit in a heartbeat because I have come to see their brilliance on MO (and to a lesser but still probably sufficient extent, on math.SE).  Most of these students are so brilliant that they do not condescend to apply to my graduate program, and I assume that if they did the rest of their application would be so superior that I would not have to spend much time explaining to my colleagues doing the admissions why their performance on math Q&amp;amp;A websites makes me confident that they will be excellent graduate students...but still.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that participation on MO and math.SE is really better than solving problems or doing well in math contests...not better in an absolute sense, but closer to what mathematicians actually do and thus more indicative of academic mathematical career potential (as opposed to raw talent; certain kinds of raw mathematical talent are less useful to a career mathematician than one might think!).  Still not that close, of course: the fact that I have a higher reputation on MO than any of several Fields Medalists and other true luminaries that regularly contribute there is ample evidence of that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T03:42:12.950" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T03:42:12.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17197" CreationDate="2014-02-20T08:22:45.907" Score="35" ViewCount="75150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in mathematics, though I don't know if the answers to this will be field-dependent. There have been previous good questions that answer what to ask graduate students &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/353/what-are-some-good-questions-to-ask-current-graduate-students-when-visiting-scho&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and only somewhat relatedly &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8507/what-questions-should-one-ask-to-the-former-current-students-of-a-professor-befo/8514#8514&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (about what to ask students of potential advisors). However, I don't know what good questions are to ask professors themselves. The big question is, of course, &quot;will I be happy at this school?&quot;, but it's not clear to me what the 'right questions' are to help me get a feel for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, what should I know about the program/school that are suitable questions to ask a professor during a meeting at these visit days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10060" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T00:48:53.233" Title="What are the 'right questions' to ask professors at a visit day for prospective graduate students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17181" CreationDate="2014-02-20T08:23:13.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor actually gave me a copy of the proposal for an NSF grant that funded some of my research, it had numerical citations. But also note that this is the style most commonly used in my field (machine learning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="11880" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T09:20:20.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T09:20:20.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17161" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:18:11.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interdisciplinary research, especially at the interface between computer science and biology, is pretty hot at the moment. In that sense, a paper in neuroscience could even be helpful, especially if you later want to apply machine learning to that kind of area.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The down-side is that doing these experiments takes time, which is time you could spend doing something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it wasn't for the fact that you already have another job lined up, I'd say you should weigh up the possible advantages (increased experience of possible applications of your ML research) against the obvious disadvantages (time spent away from your core expertise).  However, since you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have another job lined up, just go for that. Tell your current PI that you appreciate his efforts to keep you in a job even after his funding got cut but that the work he has for you just isn't your cup of tea. You're under no obligation to come back and finish the experiments (and, hey, if push comes to shove, your new employer can't give you that much time off, right?) and, since you're not an expert in that area anyway, your current PI can probably find somebody who can finish them better than you could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; If even makes sense... As you can probably tell, I know next to nothing about machine learning and even less about neuroscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="13017" LastEditDate="2019-07-22T15:05:51.870" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T15:05:51.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13984" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:23:37.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: it looks ilke it, yes. I don't know where you are in the world but, when I've looked at academic jobs sites in the UK and USA, there have always been lots of ads looking for people to develop software for research teams &amp;ndash; especially in bioinformatics but also in any area of science where computer modelling can be applied profitably. I've not looked closely at these ads but my impression is that, unlike the group discussed by EnergyNumbers, these are mostly fixed-term positions within a specific research group, tied to a specific grant. But the demand does seem to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T09:23:37.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17169" CreationDate="2014-02-20T10:35:33.700" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This greatly depends on the country the university is in, and the language spoken there. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Croatia, &lt;em&gt;informatics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;IT&lt;/em&gt; are really roughly a same thing.&#xA;What you want to study, in the strongest technical uni in the country, would correspond to something maybe best translated as &lt;em&gt;computer studies&lt;/em&gt; (with a possible specialization in &lt;em&gt;computer science&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;computer scientist&lt;/em&gt; from Croatia speaking with another Croatian might get slightly offended if somebody called him an &lt;em&gt;informatician&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In France, the only term they have to describe computer science is &lt;em&gt;informatique&lt;/em&gt;, and the person doing that for a living would be &lt;em&gt;informaticien&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many French people will be talking about &quot;informatics&quot; when speaking in English.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I personally speak in English, I would never mix the terms &lt;em&gt;computer science&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;informatics&lt;/em&gt;. If I wanted to refer to somebody who might not be doing research (any more) I might switch to &lt;em&gt;computing&lt;/em&gt;, or be more specific with the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be biased since I'm Croatian and come from that culture, and I'm not fully sure what the difference between &lt;em&gt;IT&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;informatics&lt;/em&gt; is, but there's a definitive difference between &lt;em&gt;informatics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;CS&lt;/em&gt; in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line would be: &lt;strong&gt;don't look at the Universities title when choosing, look at their program instead&lt;/strong&gt;. Look for classes whose descriptions match your interests and skills you want to obtain. If the program matches with your interests, that that is most probably the right university for you (without talking about the Uni's quality right now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T10:35:33.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17192" CreationDate="2014-02-20T11:20:00.933" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question.  I am a tenured (associate) math professor at UGA.  To be (too?) honest, I sometimes find graduate visitation days to be slightly awkward.  With most of the students, they and I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to have something to talk about; for many of the students, we &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have something to talk about at some future point; for a few of the students, we will become so close that it will be hard to remember these first awkward conversations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just remembered a visitation day where I almost sullenly plopped myself down at a barroom table next to a certain prospective student and a bunch of current students.  They were more trying to have a conversation than actually having a conversation.  At one point the topic turned to some elementary topology problem the prospective student had in mind for some reason.  One of the current students was studying topology and she got interested and started to try to work it out.  Alas I was still bored, and after a few minutes I quietly uttered a few words.  The current student paused for a second, then her eyes lit up, and very soon after I got my chance to politely excuse myself and get another drink.  That prospective student is now my PhD student, but the bond was not forged on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still, we should try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) I hear you study X.  I've studied only a little bit of it so far, but I remember learning about Y.  Can you tell me a little about your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you tell me about your work?&quot; is a very natural question that sadly can often be a showstopper.  The honest answer for many professors when talking to perfectly capable students who may later turn out to be &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; students is often &quot;Not very meaningfully, no.&quot; Above I tried to frame the question in a little better way.  How is it better?  Well for one thing, asking a professor in a department you're visiting what they do can come off as lazy: almost everyone has a wealth of information available on their webpage now.  If the student really cared, wouldn't they look a little bit in advance?  So the framing of the question shows that the student has looked a little bit in advance.  It also clues the professor in to what might be an appropriate level at which to pitch the explanation.  If X is number theory (as it is for me), then if Y is &quot;Wilson's Theorem&quot; I'm going to say something very different than if Y is &quot;the Chebotarev Density Theorem&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still it's probably best not to say too much.  I remember asking one professor this when I was a prospective student and he said, &quot;Yes, I study number theory, as do several other faculty members here.  I guess what distinguishes me is that I've also become very interested in representation theory, and my work uses that to a larger extent than the others.  Does that make sense to you?&quot;  The person who said this to me was Dick Gross, and yes it did make sense, and as a two sentence orientation to who he was and what he did it functioned brilliantly then and it still does, but I see now what a lot of confidence and experience he must have had to know to say so little.  And he asked me if I understood, and if I hadn't he probably would have said something else: he seemed like a nice guy...and it turns out that he is.  (I don't remember what I said after that.  I think it would have been like me at the time to try to show some knowledge by asking a question -- that's a young math student type of thing to do.  So I'll imagine that I asked &quot;What kind of representation theory?&quot; because I would have known that there were finite groups, Lie groups and so forth.  And Gross would have replied &quot;Algebraic groups&quot;.  At that point I would have had to admit that I was totally lost...and my being lost would be of no lasting significance: suffice it to say that I have since learned about that topic!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Do you do any computer work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's an increasingly important question.  Nowadays a math student has to locate himself on the spectrum of more computation / less computation.  If you're thinking about working with a faculty member, you definitely want to know this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Are you interested in real-world applications of your work?  Have you ever done any consulting or other outside work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, a key question.  You should already be starting to think about these sorts of questions for yourself.  I, for instance, have absolutely zero contacts in industry, so I would be a terrible advisor for a student who was inclined in that direction, even if we had common mathematical interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) How long have you been here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a nice question for one human being to ask another.  The professor will probably respond with some personal information about the town or their housing situation or their family or...something.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Where did you get your PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would think that would be a kind of backward-looking question to ask a professor, but actually academics ask each other that kind of thing all the time.  Sad to say we really do try to have little portions of the CVs of hundreds of people memorized, even though we can look much of it up instantly if needed.  Also this question subtly asks the professor to put himself in your shoes.  It may also lead to some kind of insightful contrasting between the professor's PhD experiences / program and the current PhD program.  On the other hand many faculty did their PhD at better places than the ones in which they are currently employed, which can be a little embarrassing.  But there are various ways to spin this; maybe a temporal comparison is more interesting than a programmatic comparison.  If a faculty member is old enough they can tell you that their graduate stipend was 75 cents a day plus all the potatoes they could carry, or something fun like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6) Do you have any PhD students?  [Then ask plenty of followup questions.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's getting serious.  You want to find out whether the professor is even on the table for being a potential advisor.  And if a professor names his students, you can then go and seek out those students and talk to them about their advising experience...that can be very enlightening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7) Are you happy here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a bold question, and you might try to come at it a little obliquely, but again it's a very standard question for academics to ask each other.  Currently academia has an itinerant feel to it: we are all looking elsewhere around the terrain and asking each other, &quot;Hey, long time no see, could you show me a blade of grass over there?  Hmm, that's pretty green, right?  I mean, do you think?  How does it compare to &lt;em&gt;this blade&lt;/em&gt;, would you say?  Greener?  In what ways?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when you ask this question you may hear that the professor has already made or is currently making plans to leave! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8) How would you compare this program to other programs Y and Z?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, we're good at this, by and large.  Even if we inflate our own program (it seems to be called for to do this at least &lt;em&gt;a little&lt;/em&gt;), we are likely to be quite honest and rather knowledgeable about other programs.  If you go to five different places and ask around, you're likely to get some good consensus data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;9) What advice would you give to a student who wanted to be successful in your program?  Are there any specific pitfalls to be avoided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an obviously good and relevant question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you can't ask &quot;Will I be happy here?&quot; for a simple reason: &lt;strong&gt;we don't know&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you're lucky, we know &lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt; and we know &lt;strong&gt;us&lt;/strong&gt;.  We don't know &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;.  I think that you can in some ways get better information about the answer to this question by talking to students than to faculty, but any way you slice it, it's something you're going to have to largely figure out for your own.  No one at the visitation day is going to know you like you do, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T06:44:42.667" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T06:44:42.667" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T12:00:15.397" Score="4" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year I have been submitting my CV to different faculties for a lecturing position. Of all the ones that I applied only one was more serious and wanted to keep in touch (institution A), the other one (institution B) was completely silence and only they reply with a general &quot;we are interested, but we will tell you when there are open positions&quot;. Actually the following has happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Institution A has offered me a full time position with good salary, and the freedom to make research or even to work in other places part time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Institution B contact me a few days before the offer of institution A, telling me that they would like me to work part time with them; when I told them that I would like to have a full time position they started to tell me &quot;that procedure is going to take time&quot;. A couple of days passed and I got the offer from the job that I mentioned in the first point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now last week Institution B called me and they told me that they want not only to offer me a full time position, but also a position as a student coordinator of the career. The drawbacks are: the salary is 14% less than A, the hours are not; fixed that means that one should stay for overtime unpaid if the goals have not been reached, the research is keep to the minimum and I will not have the chance to work in another place part time. The only benefit is that I will be have a higher rank than in A. This same institution has already booked me for some partial hour lecturers in a couple of courses. I have been sincere with them when they called me and I told them that I have been offered another position (from institution A), so I need to wait to their answer. Even with that institution B has continue insisting me for getting the job with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by factors of time, research and money; institution A seems a pretty good choice, but how I can reject politely the offer from B without being &quot;marked&quot; for not working there or not to burn bridges with them. Maybe somebody could say &quot;why I do not want to burn bridges with them?, well it is just to have like a backup plan. Also institution B has the story that they are used to cut off their lecturers at any time they want, so what to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T12:42:42.533" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:30:40.317" Title="how not to burn bridges between two academic jobs?" Tags="&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T12:34:45.677" Score="7" ViewCount="1219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our university provides computer lab rooms for the students. We will soon build some new ones, and possibly re-build some of the old ones, and we are looking for new solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have now looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wAtwv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=university%20computer%20lab&amp;amp;tbm=isch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google image search on &quot;university computer lab&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, it seems similar to other universities all around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we would like to re-think the old ways and provide a better environment for the students, as envisioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdio.org/implementing-cdio/standards/12-cdio-standards#standard6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDIO workspaces&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Workspaces and laboratories that support and encourage hands-on learning of product and system building, disciplinary knowledge, and social learning&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a new floor plan with smaller rooms, &#xA;or new furnishings, something like what is described in&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pupnmag.com/view/article.php?articleID=6234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Design and Synergistic Collaboration Revitalize Gallaudet University's Harkin Computer Lab&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to hear from others who can share experiences from some alternatives. What have you tried? Did it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11361" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T02:38:14.963" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:38:14.963" Title="What are some good ways to provide computer labs for the students?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;facilities-services&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T12:44:05.960" Score="1" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;A student at my college will graduate soon and go to the US to study full-time, on a visa. His family however, are planning an important event sometime in the middle of the semester, and they hope that he can return to his home country for two weeks, then return to the US to finish the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During that semester, he will only be taking courses and will not be receiving any grants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do colleges typically have a policy prohibiting such arrangements? Are professors generally willing to accommodate such requests, e.g. adjusting deadlines for homework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T14:20:55.420" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:21:08.977" Title="How do schools typically handle a request for short-term leave from a student?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17199" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:46:25.343" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;What stood out to me is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This same institution has already booked me for some partial hour lecturers in a couple of courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you, in any time, either written or orally, communicated with institute B indicating that you will take up the position (even just the part time one)? If so, the &lt;em&gt;polite thing&lt;/em&gt; would be to honor this commitment with Institute B, even just for one term (if you really want to work at Institute A, you can try to talk to them to see if they can arrange for the offer to be deferred for a year or a term). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; indicated to institute B that you would take up the position, and they, &lt;em&gt;without your knowledge&lt;/em&gt;, advertised you as a part-time lecturer for their courses, I would be very, very wary of joining their faculty. It is simply not the case that a department can strong-arm a potential hire into working there &lt;em&gt;just by listing his or her name on a website&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the above: the job market is competitive. It is expected that you will be looking out for your best interest. As long as you have not made any formal commitment to either of the institutes, you are free to choose which one to affiliate yourself with in the future. If you really prefer the offer given by Institute A, you should just be honest and reply to Institute B and say that Institute A has given you a better offer and you regret that you will not be able to work for Institute B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really should not be a situation that counts as &quot;burning bridges&quot;. From your description it sounds like just the normal competitive hiring process. If the administrators at Institute B are the type that will hold your declining of their offer against you in the future, I really doubt you will want to work for them anyway. (That just doesn't sound like a healthy work environment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T13:46:25.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17201" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:17:46.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Colleges do not prohibit such events because colleges &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; prohibit such events.  On the contrary, colleges have policies explicitly permitting absences for certain specific reasons: travel on university business (including athletics), documented medical emergencies, deaths in the family.  There is typically a special grade of &quot;Incomplete&quot; awarded if the material missed is critical, such as a final exam; the student takes the final soon upon returning and the grade is adjusted accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what the professors will do, this is highly variable.  Some will be accommodating and will extend deadlines, others will mark missed work with zero, while a few might even kick the student out of the course.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, there is a simple solution for this student.  While enrolling for classes, at the very beginning of the term, he should speak to the professors involved and explain the situation.  If any professor is particularly hostile, then he should take a different course instead.  In extremely unlucky circumstances, a specific course will be essential to take that term (and no later), and the professor will be very hostile.  In this case it might end up that the student takes longer to graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:17:46.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17201" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:21:08.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will highly vary according to the institute, or even according to the professor because some institutes leave the professor to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the student should do is to e-mail or meet with the professors who will be teaching in his/her chosen courses, and inform them that he/she will be a away for two weeks, give the professors the actual dates of departure and return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, deadline can be moved and sometimes even exam can be rescheduled. But it's mostly about how flexible the professors are willing to be. If the professors wouldn't accommodate, then the student should not take that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the student should make arrangement about getting the lecture slides or notes that he/she will be missing, and perhaps ask for the lecturers' permission to let a friend of the student's to record the lecture, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember all of these communications should be done preferably before the semester starts. Never just disappear for two weeks and then come back to negotiate for accomodation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:21:08.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17199" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:30:40.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should very politely say to institution B that you appreciate their efforts to get you an offer, but it's not as good as your other offer.  Then there are three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say your better offer is for 15% more money.  This commits you to institution B if they raise their offer 15%.  If they don't raise their offer, it commits you to institution A.  If they raise their offer less than 15%, you may choose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say your better offer is for 15% more money and no overtime, and that you will need 25% (or whatever you choose) more money to make their offer competitive.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say your better offer is for twice the  money.  They can't match this, so this commits you to institution A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:30:40.317" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:57:56.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple: Tell them the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they've committed a simple slip of the mind, they will accept your correction.  Everyone else will recognize it for what it was and&amp;mdash;hopefully&amp;mdash;be tolerant of the kind of error they could just as easily have committed themselves.  (If the questioner is surrounded by nasty jerks, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can't fix that.  Even more not-so when considering the format and time constraints of a Q&amp;amp;A session.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they persist in their error and they hold a fringe view, offer to debate them after the formal Q&amp;amp;A.  If they persist in their error and they're a substantial minority (or more), announce that you will give priority to any question about something else, but proceed to debate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that way, those not interested in the debate will know that you want to satisfy them, while those interested in the debate know that you're not just ignoring them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you debate the questioner(s), good debating manners apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly state your own position and how you arrive at it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate that you listen to the opposing side by reflecting their arguments back to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to narrow down the scope of disagreement; in particular, try to find any root disagreements which could be the cause of subsequent disagreements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For example, if they disagree with you about whether 2+2=4, they may start from the premise that whatever Big Brother says is true.  If you know &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, you can skip all arithmetical arguments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep narrowing the scope of the disagreement, the discussion must sooner or later come to a point where the two sides look at the same evidence and arguments and come to two different conclusions.  At that point, I think everyone will have learned what is possible to learn from the discussion, and so it's appropriate to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12154" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:57:56.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17225" CreationDate="2014-02-20T15:44:56.603" Score="3" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there examples of mathematicians who had to lose years before proving themselves in the field? I'm asking since in most of the cases I noticed a steady career path for most of the mathematicians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10417" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T16:19:30.417" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T00:14:20.997" Title="Is there examples of mathematicians who had to lose years" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17200" CreationDate="2014-02-20T16:10:01.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a couple of comments from local experience (CS Biased).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When building your lab, you have to ask what it is that makes it special. In many universities, you can expect that some very high fraction of the students are going to have their own laptops (this will vary by discipline, of course). Simply providing a generic computer may be a waste of resources -- a desk and a power-plug, with an external monitor and keyboard could be sufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take is that a computer lab today should serve a distinct purpose: Teaching a course on computer graphics: Have a lab with beefy hardware that will minimize waiting time when attempting renders. Teaching a physics lab? Perhaps have a data-capture system integrated into the workstations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, labs get used more when students see the value of going to the lab. A lab with large (or even dual) monitors will get used more, because it's A) less likely the students have that equipment at home B) more likely the students will understand the value of using that lab -- higher productivity  for example. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider a 'virtual lab': If the reason the lab is there is because of a peculiar software requirement, think about providing a virtual machine instance of the lab machine for the students to use at home. This can ease the grading workload on TAs too, by eliminating platform differences as an excuse. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T16:10:01.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T17:47:32.020" Score="4" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;This forum looks like the perfect place to ask a question that is being bothering me for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm 22 and a college dropout for numerous reasons (economic and mostly because I didn't like the major that I was studying, which led to depression, etc.) &#xA;Anyway, I recently discovered MOOCs (coursera, edx, udacity, OCW-MIT, etc.) and khanAcademy and I immediately fell in love with science and more precisely computer science. I also fall in love with the brain and love to think about thinking, decision making, logic, critical thinking, neuroplasticity, etc...&#xA;I also appreciated cognitive psychology and the philosophy of the mind but I haven't gone any deeper to those two.&#xA;So, you can say MOOCs changed my life because I'm able to learn things that I never would have consider ever studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of pursuing a Cognitive Science degree which can expose me into computer science and some kind of neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing is that here in Greece, Cognitive Science is only a postgraduate degree so I have first to finish an undergraduate degree in Computer Science or in Philosophy and History of Technology (those are the only two majors from which students are accepted for the Cognitive Science degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I spend the next year of my life into studying for a test that will get me to the University (in order to get to a University you need to give exams in May, I'm not ready to give it this May so I have to give it on the May of 2015)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it to study Computer Science for four years to pursue the Cognitive Science degree which is my primary goal ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The possibility of studying abroad is out of question given the economic situation of my family, unless a scholarship for studying abroad is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12157" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T22:57:09.867" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T22:57:09.867" Title="Relevance of computer science degree to pursue a career in cognitive science" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17209" CreationDate="2014-02-20T18:09:56.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think further ahead: what do you want to do &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you finish the Cognitive Science degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do want to go into academia and work as a professor (probably after some research postdocs) in the field? If that's your ultimate goal, then that's the most straightforward career path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's something else, figure out what the prerequisites for that thing are. There are too many people who got into grad school pursuing a degree in something because they thought was cool only to discover that after they graduate, they have nowhere to apply their degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's worth it depends on you. Weigh the costs to you against the benefits to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T18:09:56.260" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T18:34:42.967" Score="4" ViewCount="697" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have good results for publishing a paper in a math journal, but I've never published one. I need a propose about any good math journal in mathematics for young mathematicians who have never published a paper. It can be with impact factor or with international board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11969" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T01:42:11.870" Title="Math journal for young mathematicians" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2014-02-20T18:40:08.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is a particular professor in mind, it may be a good idea to contact him.  After I retired, I received a few such inquiries, and wrote back telling them I was retired an no longer taking students.  This is another reason (different from &quot;improve your chances&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4484" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T18:40:08.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T19:59:26.007" Score="21" ViewCount="2826" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to various department sortings and organizations, I have a degree that is, functionally, a computer science degree but because it belonged to the College of Mathematics, the degree is formally &quot;Mathematics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this leads to many employers thinking that I have a mathematics background when the reality is far from this: I don't think like a mathematician or particularly enjoy its work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something I can do with my CV to reduce this bias? Is it as simple as changing &quot;Mathematics&quot; to &quot;Computer science&quot; even if it isn't the official title of the degree? Are there other options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T17:56:00.617" Title="I have a degree but it isn't actually what it looks like it is. How do I list it on my CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;credentials&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17214" CreationDate="2014-02-20T20:37:07.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the employer. Any academic employer will look at your publications, rather than what your degree actually says. So I see no problem there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is for an undergrad degree, I think is out of the scope for this particular forum, since this is mostly oriented towards jobs in the Academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I do think you might have problems with different titles in your undergrad, I would recommend mostly just applying for jobs and in your CV make the comment that it is oriented toward CS, many universities CS departments spawned from the math department, so I do not think there should be much of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T20:37:07.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17207" CreationDate="2014-02-20T21:06:43.660" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vladimir Berkovich, as he writes &quot;I finished studying in 1976 and got a Ph.D. a year later. Getting an academic position would be too much luck, and the best thing I could hope for was the job of a computer programmer at a factory of agricultural machines... As a result, I practically stopped doing mathematics.&quot; The context here being the he was Jewish in the Soviet Union and made trouble for him. He did not really start working on non-archimedean analytic geometry until 1985 and then did not really return to academia until 1987 when he was able to emigrate to Isreal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is from his introduction to: &quot;p-Adic Geometry: Lectures from the 2007 Arizona Winter School&quot; published by the AMS.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T21:06:43.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17200" CreationDate="2014-02-20T21:31:34.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Matthew says, many people may have their own laptops. Obviously, this depends on the university. I know of universities that make laptop ownership compulsory. Perhaps you could comment on how common it is for students to have their own laptops and bring them to the university. So you should think about what kind of value you can add for such people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to have laptop docking stations available. Or if not, at least have external keyboard, mice, monitors available that can be plugged into a laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice big good-quality monitors (26 inches or larger) are a good idea, and are not that expensive these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good ergonomics is a must. Buy the best workstation chairs you can. I have the Steelcase Leap, which is not perfect but a decent chair. Keyboard trays are probably also a good idea. Humanscale is popular. Of course, there are many other brands, depending on location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding some whiteboards around the room would also be reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are keeping actual computers in the lab, then consider having computers running operating systems different from those students may have encountered. Encouraging people to use the free Unix-like systems that are now common in scientific enterprises is a good idea. E.g. the systems based on the Linux kernels, the various *BSD systems. If such systems are already widely used in your university, this is probably unnecessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T21:37:45.610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T21:37:45.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17211" CreationDate="2014-02-20T21:55:34.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're a student you should consider Involve, or other publications geared toward student authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T21:55:34.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17214" CreationDate="2014-02-20T22:08:46.030" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would list it directly with the degree. I have a similar issue in that my degree is Geodetic Science, but my focus was in (at the time) computer-assisted mapping, now known as GIS. People try to call me a geodesist, but I'm not really. I would use something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;M.S. Mathematics (specialty: Computer Science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: I finally remembered what the various tracks were called in our department--a concentration, not a specialty. Other synonyms include focus, even research or research topic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastEditorUserId="5711" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T17:56:00.617" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T17:56:00.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17207" CreationDate="2014-02-20T22:21:41.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a theoretical mathematician but John P. Snyder was trained and employed as a chemical engineer. He came up with a map projection useful for a United States Geological Survey (USGS) satellite-based mapping system (Landsat), then was hired by them as a cartographer. He published several more map projections and recast others to take advantage of electronic calculators and computers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was over 50 when hired by USGS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T22:21:41.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17209" CreationDate="2014-02-20T22:31:28.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a EU citizen you have access to the education in the entire European Union, so you can look around for the Cognitive Science programs in the other EU countries too. It is quite possible that some of them would not require a previous graduate degree and would be taught in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may happen that there would be tuition fees (if I recall correctly, this is the case e.g. in the UK), but as a EU citizen you also can work in any EU country without almost any extra formalities (pretty much under the same conditions as a citizen of the country you are in), so you can earn the money to support yourself through your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T15:25:09.680" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T15:25:09.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17214" CreationDate="2014-02-20T23:35:10.567" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your CV, state that you have a degree in &quot;Mathematics, specializing in Computer Science&quot; or something like that.  If you're sure it's not misleading, you could even say you have a degree in Computer Science from the College of Mathematics, Whatever University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, explain in your covering letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T23:41:19.543" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T23:41:19.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17226" CreationDate="2014-02-20T23:50:10.973" Score="9" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;My CS department greatly lacks invited talks hosted by faculty members and/or seminars organised within/by the department. Except for the seminars done by graduate students as a requirement for their degree, during the last year there was no seminar organised by the department/faculty member. If curious, the department size is relatively small (around 20 faculty members) and some faculty members are well-known figures in their areas. As a PhD student I like seminars and wondered how to address this to the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T10:15:32.637" Title="How to address the lack of seminars in my department" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17207" CreationDate="2014-02-21T00:14:20.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large number of Mormon mathematicians have taken time off for a 2-year mission, including Jim Cannon (a founder of geometric group theory), Stephen Humphries (found minimal generating set for mapping class group), and Tyler Jarvis (recent Annals paper on string theory). Very little time is spent on math during a mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4455" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T00:14:20.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17224" CreationDate="2014-02-21T01:24:04.283" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to change the culture of a department as a student.  You should definitely tell your advisor, and the department chair, that you wish there were more lectures.  You might also talk to other students and encourage them to express their feelings if they feel the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you should take action.  Is there a student chapter of the ACM at your school?  If not, organize one.  Then organize monthly seminars by inviting faculty and students in your department and from nearby schools to present their work.  If you can get a little funding, invite one of the world leaders in your area to give a seminar at your school.  You might be able to get funding through the department or through the ACM (I know SIAM gives funding for such things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires work, but it sounds like it will be worthwhile to you.  It is also a great excuse to meet important people in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T01:24:04.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17211" CreationDate="2014-02-21T01:42:11.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a high school student or an undergraduate, then you might want to read the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/q/36850/12357&quot;&gt;Journals for undergraduates&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/q/7329/12357&quot;&gt;Math journal for high school students?&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/q/49197/12357&quot;&gt;What are some examples of journals that will accept undergraduate student research?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T01:42:11.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T02:37:07.690" Score="3" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to know possible methods of finding some good case studies for a dissertation. I was asked to keep my question generic. I am doing a 1 year MA in Development Studies, specifically I want to look at Social Entrepreneurship. However, if one can tell how to find case studies on any topic, that would be helpful, Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12036" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T13:22:40.087" Title="How to find case studies for your dissertation" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17224" CreationDate="2014-02-21T03:10:47.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have somehow the same problem (not that we don't have seminars - but we don't have enough in my opinion). The graduate student association in our department (CS as well) tried once to organize such seminars. There were many interested professors and students, especially when it comes to topic that are not very technical [a professor told me that such lectures are more useful for the students]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to make these seminars frequent, it was found that the best thing is to do is to make the seminars specific to one topic. In order to do this, there is a need for a group of researchers led by a professor (or more) - all working on the same area. Some professors tried to do something like that, however, only the big labs were successful in this mission (i.e. labs with many professors and students). Issues are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) finding large number of speakers, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) intellectual property, some researchers simply do not want to share their ideas with others. [in fact, the association tried to do a conference each year, but the fear of IP theft was the biggest obstacle and the lack of motivation for researchers to publish in an non-indexed conference]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion, you need a lot of support in order to organize frequent seminars in your department, but it is not impossible. Talk to young professors, they are the most motivated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4472" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T03:10:47.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17357" CreationDate="2014-02-21T03:26:32.797" Score="7" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are writing a paper, and want to share the raw data.&#xA;My advisor suggests that I share the data as an Excel file, but I believe that a plain text file (such as a text-delimited or comma-delimited file) would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a standard format for sharing data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I convince my advisor that a plain text file is a better format for sharing data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T08:00:48.343" Title="Is there a standard format for sharing data?" Tags="&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17237" CreationDate="2014-02-21T04:05:32.310" Score="27" ViewCount="8889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a TA/grader for an online course in introductory programming. We have students ask us questions related to homework/labs/etc. on Piazza where we can have quick back-and-forth with questions and answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some students ask questions that are either require very basic logic, or are one of the first parts of the course. Also, some students ask for what we think of their code after every little change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I (at least) try to ask them back questions that will lead them logically and to think critically about the material, and to come up with a solution themselves. However, this leads to not much success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how to best respond to students who ask us these questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12165" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T05:06:03.800" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T00:01:48.990" Title="How to deal with students asking very incremental questions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17245" CreationDate="2014-02-21T04:24:40.650" Score="108" ViewCount="108627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying a combined bachelor of engineering (electrical) and bachelor of mathematics; I just started this year and will graduate in 2018. The reason why I am doing double degrees and not a single degree is because I love both electrical engineering and mathematics and I could not ignore any of them. So with this in mind, I am thinking of doing two PhDs when I graduate (one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics). Is this a good path or I should concentrate on only one of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12172" LastEditorUserId="9264" LastEditDate="2017-08-25T00:14:51.093" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T17:04:48.890" Title="Is doing two PhDs a good path?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="64" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17230" CreationDate="2014-02-21T04:30:09.513" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends greatly on the field and kind of data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fields do have relatively standard formats: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Astronomy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FITS&lt;/a&gt; is considered pretty much the standard for imagery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In machine learning, CSV/TSV is relatively common -- though as the data set sizes get larger and richer, other formats come into play. You can troll the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCI ML Repository&lt;/a&gt; to get a feeling for what's common.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general though, I'd argue that plain-text based formats are what you want to preserve. If, happiness of happiness, your paper becomes hugely influential and you only provide an &lt;code&gt;.xls&lt;/code&gt; file, you can bet the first thing that's going to happen is a bunch of ersatz plain-text copies will appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to annotate your data, and that's what is swaying your advisor to Excel, perhaps consider something like XML or JSON -- easy for the computer to process and plain text based, yet free-form enough that you can annotate it however you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T14:47:17.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T14:47:17.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T04:42:34.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is essentially impossible to do two PhD's concurrently, but if you like you can begin a second PhD after completing the first.  Keep in mind that many people drop out of (even the first!) PhD, and are generally quite drained by the time the conclusion arrives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T04:42:34.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T04:44:22.873" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Loving two fields is not a good reason to do two PhDs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work you do in a PhD is so specific and focused that I guarantee it will &quot;ignore&quot; most of mathematics &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; most of electrical engineering. Matt Might has a great illustration of this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot;&gt;PhD school in pictures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time you finish your current degree, you'll have a better idea of what specific area (i.e., subfield) of research you are most interested in (if you still want to do a PhD at that point). Then, decide whether it would be more at home in a mathematics or EE department, and apply to grad school accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T04:31:15.137" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T04:31:15.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17238" CreationDate="2014-02-21T05:13:46.647" Score="11" ViewCount="1094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Australian citizen and studying at University of Newcastle (Australia). Does your graduate school reputation has any effect in your academic career? So if I decide to do my PhD at a US university (like Harvard or Stanford) instead of doing it at an Australian university (say University of Melbourne or Australian National University), would that make me more successful in my academic career? Does that make me more employable? Say that after doing my PhD, I apply for an academic position at a Canadian university, which of them would help here more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12172" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T05:59:05.373" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T06:02:46.213" Title="Does graduate school reputation have any effect on your academic career?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17231" CreationDate="2014-02-21T05:59:51.103" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;You refer to a &quot;quick back-and-forth&quot; in your question. A danger with being &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; responsive is that it becomes easier for a student to ask the TA than it would be to reason it out on his own, look up material from earlier lectures or from the Internet, etc. It also encourages students to &quot;check in&quot; with the TA more often, e.g. about tiny changes to their code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps limiting your responsiveness could help. For example, announce that you will visit Piazza at 4 PM every weekday and answer all the questions that have accrued since your last visit. Don't answer questions multiple times per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, students won't expect immediate &quot;coaching&quot; from the TA, and might be more motivated to work through small problems themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T05:59:51.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17236" CreationDate="2014-02-21T06:02:46.213" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long answer is, it depends. Ultimately, your future career will depend on your publications and other output, their quality and their impact. If you can produce a number of high quality publications from a lower-ranked university, this will be better than producing nothing of interest from a higher-ranked university. However, the chances of &quot;succeeding&quot; are higher at higher-ranked universities, because they have &quot;better&quot; people to help you along the way. They also have higher standards and more pressure. So there will be a bit of a trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the University of Melbourne and ANU are good places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T06:02:46.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17242" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:02:50.993" Score="10" ViewCount="17987" Body="&lt;p&gt;The field of research is the biological sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate student B worked on the project for 2 years: he did experiments to gather genome-wide data and analyzed part of that data. He defined the direction and feasibility of the project, and developed the methodology; if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-doc A picked up the project for 1 year after graduate student B left the lab, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, contributed 4 key figures (exactly half of the figures) and at least half of the scientific conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was agreed upon that A and B would be co-first authors, but currently they are listed as B, A, et al. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] Additional information: &#xA;In this field, you can specify 'co-first authors' at the time of submission, and it is written as such under the author's list on the final publication as &quot;X an Y have contributed equally to this work&quot;. Which of course is a big source of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastEditorUserId="12049" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T10:23:18.613" LastActivityDate="2020-03-05T14:36:46.377" Title="Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:18:03.473" Score="-1" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pursuing a masters degree in Economics (correspondence). I also want to enroll in a MBA program (correspondence). Am I allowed to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12179" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T06:58:49.697" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T08:00:49.333" Title="Can I pursue an MA and MBA simultaneously?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:21:47.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going 100% for two subjects might be hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way, which might however be an opportunity for you, is to write an electrical engineering PhD that is very mathematical. Vice verse there are certainly many mathematical problems that arise from electricity question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this you will surely be able to study at both fields. Also, no matter what field you would choose, you would need to make sure that your thesis really belong to that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12177" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T07:21:47.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17239" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:47:10.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any way to view this other than as a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  (Not necessarily an innocuous misunderstanding: perhaps someone is trying to pull a fast one of some sort.)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematician, so maybe I am especially sensitive to logical issues, but I can't think of a situation in which someone tells me something that sounds like a logical contradiction in which I wouldn't just say, &quot;I'm sorry: I must be confused because that sounds contradictory.  Could you please explain it again?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only guess at the resolution of the contradiction is that someone is in fact trying to change their mind about the ordering of the authors.  I know little about the conventions and nuances of author ordering (because in pure mathematics the order is almost always strictly alphabetical), but I do think I understand the meanings of all the terms involved, so I can only imagine that if you submit a paper to a journal saying &quot;by Bravo, Alpha, Charlie....Please note that Bravo and Alpha are co-first authors&quot; then the editors will respond by calling attention to the contradiction.  What else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T07:47:10.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2014-02-21T08:32:40.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been thinking about this since asking the question, plus I have done some actual note taking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me personally, I have found the following points to be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why did I read this paper: Perhaps my professor recommended it, in which case it probably is relevant despite what it initially seems to me. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My takeaways for the thesis: Ideas, inspiration or references, that I can use for my thesis&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;General takeaways: What I learned, that is relevant/interesting/useful, which however are not directly useful for my thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I did not understand (entirely): Maybe some terminology, maybe some theory. I am writing them down, so I might get a chance to ask them later, or I might revisit it later after having gotten a better understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I should (perhaps) look into: Projects, literature, websites. Typically other papers that they reference in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12090" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T08:32:40.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:02:27.967" Score="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that most people who ask about the possibility of doing multiple PhDs are missing something fundamental in what a PhD is and what it's for.  This is an understandable misperception because the general populace knows little about what PhD programs are all about, to the extent that even most people who enroll in a PhD program &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they know what they're getting into and then find out that what they had in mind is an approximation to the truth (sometimes a good approximation and sometimes not).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the various fictive media (novels, comic books, television, film...) having multiple PhDs -- often in confluence with a very youthful persona or explicitly pointed out that they were attained at an early age -- is a standard trope for a certain type of characterization: depending upon the genre it can signal super-genius types, intellectuals, or nerdy/socially awkward types.  For instance, Professor Charles Xavier graduated from Harvard at the age of 16, and he holds PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology as well as an MD in Psychiatry.  This is obviously meant to be a real-world grounding for his vast mental powers.  On the TV show &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt;, the youthful medical student Martha Masters has previously attained PhDs in applied mathematics and art history, and the characterization is less positive: they are not trying to suggest that she's a genius &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; -- House is the genius! -- but rather that she has an extremely overachieving personality type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Charles Xavier and Martha Masters are fictional characters.  Moreover I imagine they were written by people who are not so familiar with PhD programs.  In real life, having PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology and Anthropology is not the hallmark of a super-genius: rather it would mean that the person is pathologically obsessed with graduate study.  PhD's are not merit badges -- more of them is not better.  Rather a PhD is the necessary and grueling training for a specific type of professional career.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;interested&lt;/em&gt; in a subject then you read and learn about it.  You get a PhD in a subject because you want that subject to be an essential part of your career (which of course ought to imply that you are very interested in the subject).  Moreover, although the PhD provides specific technical training in a certain subject, it does not provide &lt;strong&gt;exhaustive&lt;/strong&gt; training: in most cases people spend the rest of their careers continuing to train in these areas.  Rather the point of a PhD is to give you enough specific training so that you can henceforth direct your own training and learning.  Otherwise put, a lot of what you do in a PhD is &lt;strong&gt;learning how to learn&lt;/strong&gt;.  But learning how to learn is actually a rather robust and subject-independent skill.  If you learn how to learn genetics, then if later on your interests turn to psychology or biophysics you will be in a much different and better position to &lt;em&gt;train yourself&lt;/em&gt; in these areas.  In some ways, doing a PhD in one of these subjects and then turning around and doing another is like becoming an internet millionaire who wakes up one day and decides that she wants to sell electronics...so she shuts down her website, gives all her money away, and starts the business out of her parents' basement.  (Or maybe it is like what happens in some of my dreams: I am doing high school all over again, and somehow it is not going as well as it did the first time around.)  Why are you starting over from scratch?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that &quot;academic transfer&quot; makes better sense between some fields than others.  If Martha Masters got a PhD in art history and then decided that she wanted to do applied mathematics instead then she would not have been able to &quot;segue&quot; from one field to the other: she would indeed have had to go back to school.  But that makes her story a bit sad: getting a PhD is very difficult and very time consuming, but it is not really a feat of strength, and getting two PhDs in two unrelated areas does not show how much of a super genius you are; it shows that you really changed your mind considerably about what you wanted to do with your life and maybe wasted a lot of your time.  No matter how smart you are, I don't see how you can get a PhD in art history and then one in applied mathematics without spending at least eight years.  You can't just skip to the end and pass the thesis defense by virtue of your preternatural brilliance: there is coursework, residence requirements, and various other mandatory things which necessarily take time.  Her character is comic-booky: it is not really plausible that she could have these two degrees and have gone on to be a medical student while still being in her 20's, no matter how brilliant.  [Well, &quot;no matter how brilliant&quot; is a little too strong: if she had graduated college at age 16, then the math works out okay...] Moreover, for someone who is that brilliant it would really be sad that she can't seem to figure out anything else to do besides infinite schooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrical engineering and mathematics are rather closely allied fields.  For sure do a PhD in one or the other.  While doing a PhD in either one you can choose the amount of involvement you have in the other field, i.e., you can do a very mathematical electrical engineering PhD or a math PhD on a mathematical topic with important applications in electrical networks.  Then after you get your PhD you can continue to learn and train in one or both fields as you see fit.  It is entirely plausible that you could land an academic job in one department while having gotten your PhD in the other department.  This is an ambitious goal, but any academic job is an ambitious goal.  Getting the second PhD is unlikely to be directly helpful once you have it, let alone worth the sacrifice of 4-6 years of your life!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: By the way, when you mention &quot;mathematics&quot; and &quot;electrical engineering&quot;: I think of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Bott&quot;&gt;Raoul Bott&lt;/a&gt;, a brilliant and beloved professor whose long career at Harvard ended while I was studying there.  I think that his story will be inspirational for many people with this confluence of interests.  Check out his bio: he balanced his early interest in these two fields nicely...and only needed one PhD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T21:46:24.853" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:46:24.853" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17239" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:10:39.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is being &lt;em&gt;co-first authors&lt;/em&gt; supposed to work in general? I come from a field where authors are typically ordered by contribution, but, &lt;strong&gt;by definition&lt;/strong&gt;, there has to be exactly one first author. Being the first author of a paper is not some honorary title that can be split - it is simply &lt;strong&gt;the first gal/guy on the author list&lt;/strong&gt;. Hence, by convention in my field, this is also the gal/guy that the authors have agreed upon has contributed most to the paper and should receive most recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important here is that just because &quot;A&quot; is the second author of the paper, it does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; imply that he did not do anything substantial. It merely means that the authors have agreed that her/his intellectual and technical contribution was at least a tiny bit less central to the paper as &quot;B&quot;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, &quot;A&quot; has no right to require alphabetical ordering. The editor will not care, because how would he even know that &quot;B&quot; was supposed to be a &lt;em&gt;co-first author&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important question here is whether &quot;A&quot; has a right to feel injustice because she/he in fact believes that her/his contribution was in fact larger than &quot;B&quot;s, hence, that &quot;A&quot; should be the first author. This is a question that we cannot answer. Note that the number of figures contributed per author does not seem extremely important. Likewise, who ultimately submits the paper is not the deciding factor. That &quot;B&quot; has spent multiple years working on the project sounds like she/he had in fact a lot of impact on the work, though (assuming that she/he did in fact not just idle around and procrastinate, which we cannot tell of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T09:10:39.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17214" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:12:34.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very relevant problem for majority of the engineering school graduates in Sweden. Based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.se/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process&amp;amp;ei=nRYHU-LgBcaBtAb1v4GAAQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHHyHQYAwGMfuy3r_fm5XZlr1gtsw&amp;amp;sig2=jgHcO8q9MisKWKxVnBLw1Q&amp;amp;bvm=bv.61725948,d.Yms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bologna Process&lt;/a&gt; all MSc level programs are essentially cut into two bits; one that roughly corresponds to a Bachelor's (approx 3 years) and one that corresponds to Master's (approx 2 years). So far so good, the issue is that you get 1 diploma and you are supposed to have 1 title however there are numerous ways you can do your 3+2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they have done to amend that is to formulate it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;M.Sc. in Engineering X with specialization in Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which could be something you do in your CV as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; I have the same issue even for my PhD, my group is part of a department that has a much different focus compared to what I do. So much so that there is pretty much zero overlap between my departmental association and my day-to-day research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even there the I will be getting a PhD title with a description along the lines of:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PhD in [dept_name] on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course one would and should write more about the actual work regarding the PhD, like the thesis title, and a short description of what it's about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really is a clumpy way to describe what you &quot;are&quot; and what you have &quot;done&quot; but it's getting harder and harder to define and classify research as fields start merging into one another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T10:28:13.190" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T10:28:13.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:28:13.667" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you also interested in getting two jobs or having two families &lt;em&gt;simultaneously&lt;/em&gt;? At some point in life people make decisions, long-term decisions that chart out a path for their lives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you love both subjects is nothing but positive, and the fact that you have the drive and will-power to pursue higher education in both is admirable. It really is... But here I have lay out some points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to do a PhD in two disparate fields simultaneously: probably.. I reckon it depends on the faculty/university and what they are willing to accept. Normally you can't get two PhDs from the same faculty (at least here it is not possible) and again, normally, universities do not accept other professional commitments while doing doctoral studies (with the exception of medical reasons). That is especially the case if you are officially employed as a grad student and not on stipends.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to go for two PhDs in disparate fields simultaneously: no, probably not. Doing a PhD alone is challenging, and I don't mean &quot;&lt;em&gt;OMG, it's too much work&lt;/em&gt;&quot; but rather &quot;&lt;em&gt;OMG, wtf am I doing here!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;OMG what am I gonna do with my life?!&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Don't believe me? Just look at the most voted questions here, a healthy portion of them are about managing the mental burden of PhD studies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered doing a cross-disciplinary PhD where you get to play with both subjects, meld them in a pot and make something awesome out of it? ;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it works out for you, best of luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS&lt;/strong&gt; - also worth reading: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1836/when-does-one-go-for-a-double-doctorate&quot;&gt;When does one go for a double doctorate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T12:43:23.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:47:01.690" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's too early for all that&lt;/strong&gt; - it is impossible to know now what you will enjoy by the end of your first degree, and there is no bonus for deciding early. I started my Physics degree loving space and looking forward to rocket science, by the end I wanted to do theoretical quantum physics, and now I do scientific/numerical computing. If you enjoy Maths and EE, you may end up enjoying a specific part of EE, like signal processing or quadrotor flight algorithms, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You won't want to do a second PhD&lt;/strong&gt; - A PhD is characterised by a lot of legwork, a lot of self-discovery and usually a capitulation to reality over hope in order to get something finished for the thesis. The important parts of that are not worth repeating. The only time a second PhD is worth doing is if you realise after completing one that you want to do research in another field, and that you can't make a path from one field to the other. A PhD is essentially the first step on a research path in a particular field, so make sure it's a field you want to do research in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What happens after the PhD(s)?&lt;/strong&gt; - A doctorate is just a step on a path to being a researcher, a lecturer, a professor. It is often the last piece of education people do just for the sake of a qualification. Afterward, if you go into research, you will have to choose a field, closely related to your PhD topic. You cannot go into two fields; the closest is to go into an interdisciplinary area between the two, hence quadrotor flight algorithms or sigproc. If you don't go into research, some experience of work would be a far better qualification for your CV than a second PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My advice&lt;/strong&gt; - Spend your current degree exploring the different fields. When you're intrigued by something in a course, follow it up with the lecturer, do some additional projects in your own time. Lecturers love people with enthusiasm and drive for a topic, and they will find time and resource for your project, perhaps with an eye to larger projects later. That process will be instructive, and help you understand what work you enjoy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realised I enjoyed numerical computing when I spent hundreds of hours expanding on a genetic algorithm project in my second year. Two years earlier, I wanted to build rockets. I would still like to build a rocket, but I would derive much of my enjoyment from simulation and design, rather than fabrication and testing; you will find that there are specific fields that match your skills and pique your interest, so &lt;strong&gt;accept that you will specialise&lt;/strong&gt;, at least for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T09:47:01.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:13:20.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do suggest completing your Bachelors first to see how you feel about progressing onto postgraduate studies. Having said that, I'm an individual who is completing two Masters degrees simultaneously. It may seem like an impossible task, but really it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like you I love both fields and really didn't think I should choose one over the other. I also work full-time (Executive position), and lead a pretty full life with sports, yoga, meditation, etc. It's all about knowing how to organize your time and still maintain balance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if at the end of your Bachelors you feel you can do it, go for it. Why not? It's your life. The key is try to balance your life. You don't want to find yourself coming to a point where all you do is work and have no play. Then again, if you love your fields that much, work can be more like play. This isn't an impossible task at all. Passion for what you do, coupled with focus and organization are the key to your success. Really. Take it from me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, do what feels right to you. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; know what's best for you, not anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12188" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T10:13:20.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17224" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:15:32.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your faculty isn't huge but, at the same time, it's bigger than many research groups that have successful seminar series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is to establish why there aren't already seminars. If the reason is just that nobody has bothered to organize any, you can deal with this; if the reason is that the faculty members aren't interested in attending seminars, you might be wasting your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important piece of information that's lacking is your location. If your university is in, say,  the middle of North Dakota, it's going to be difficult and very expensive to organize a seminar series with external speakers. Every speaker will need flights and a hotel and, even when you pay expenses, speakers are unlikely to take a 2-3 day trip just to give a seminar to 20-30 people. On the other hand, if you're in, say, England, and there are several other universities within two or three hours' travel from you, things are much more practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to get the ball rolling might be to organize informal lunch-time seminars. Start with the grad students and try to get a few faculty on-board. The idea would be to have a 30-45-minute whiteboard talk while people eat lunch. No slides, so people don't have to spend hours preparing; lunch-time so it's not taking time out of people's days; typical topic would be &quot;What I've been working on recently&quot;, so things stay relevant. Once you have a seminar culture started, you can think about doing something bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T10:15:32.637" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:26:00.353" Score="51" ViewCount="6426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Progression in academia, in general, seems and feels extremely linear, i.e. you do your undergrad, then you do graduate studies, then you do a post-doc (or two, or three ... ) and eventually if you are good/persistent/well-connected/... enough you might get funded to start your own group and live the rest of your professional life in chasing grants, fighting with faculty and editors etc [&lt;em&gt;yes, I am exaggerating&lt;/em&gt;], which I don't find particularly appealing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative to this scenario is to quit academia and go to the industry, often labeled as &quot;selling out&quot; by senior scientists I have personally met and discussed this subject with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But life in general never gives a clear bisections, like you do either A or B, but there are typically a number of options to choose from. Thus I figure there should be some shades of gray in between the white and black. As a resource to other doctoral students I figured we could perhaps accumulate the possible career paths for people that have finished their PhDs, besides trying to climb up the ladder of academic ascension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ones I can think of are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;specialized (lab) technician:&lt;/strong&gt; working for instance with complex instruments. I have noticed in our lab that having an experienced technician operating and maintaining the heavy instruments is invaluable for the group. Not only for the sake of projects going as smooth as possible, but also for teaching grad students how to properly use the instruments. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;popular science author/editor:&lt;/strong&gt; I have read quite a few popular science books by people with PhDs on fields that I know little about (here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1851688331&quot;&gt;a good example&lt;/a&gt;). Similarly, magazines such as Illustrated Science typically need a middle layer between cutting-edge science and interested (but not adequately educated) readers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;research position at industry:&lt;/strong&gt; I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;production position at industry:&lt;/strong&gt; from what I understand this is the more typical scenario where people that go to industry after doing a PhD end up in. Based on my discussions with people (in academia) these positions typically include little to none intellectual development or acquisition of new skills. Thus not-so-desired or looked-down-upon by academics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question(s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what other career paths are there, that I might have missed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;am I correct in my understand of the above 4 paths? are there any insights that you would like to add? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T11:10:00.193" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T23:57:05.150" Title="What post PhD path alternatives are there?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="35" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:26:03.440" Score="1" ViewCount="8370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in my senior year of engineering in Computer Engineering from India. I plan to do a Master of Science (preferably non-thesis) in the field of Computer Engineering from the US this fall. In fact, I've secured admission at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I, however, was planning to do an MBA in Finance directly after my Masters, or maybe after gaining some work experience after the Masters, since I also like finance. How good or bad is the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12189" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T04:33:06.113" Title="How good is the idea to do MBA after an MS" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9642" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:56:07.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen researchers posting their papers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researchgate&lt;/a&gt;, explicitly asking readers to submit questions or criticisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resaerchgate aims to be a social networks for scientists. While posting your paper there may draw the attention of people who don't already follow your work, I'd see it as an additional channel to communicate with collegues, and not as a replacement for beeing present at conferences or similiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an active researcher, so the dynamics on researchgate might look different to me than to they would to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7971" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T10:56:07.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:10:08.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely not. Try to concentrate on one first and do the other as a hobby. You will get a lot better because you don't have double-pressure. Alternatively, when you finished the first doctor degree work for several years (I'd say 10-20) and then you can possibly start with the other doctor degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12192" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T11:10:08.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17263" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:14:54.430" Score="6" ViewCount="8219" Body="&lt;p&gt;For one of my accepted papers, the publication editor sent me this note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AUTHOR: Please provide a short “Graphical Table of Contents”&#xA;  abstract (maximum 80 words or 3 sentences) summarizing the key&#xA;  findings presented in the paper for Table of Content (TOC) entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please explain what that means? I understand the bit about 80 words max abstract but I don't understand why it's tagged &quot;graphical&quot;. Is it supposed to be illustrated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="501" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T12:49:53.253" Title="What is a &quot;Graphical Table of Contents&quot; Abstract?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:26:44.587" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truthfully, there are few, if any, reputable universities that will allow you to pursue 2 PhDs at the same time. Also, most universities will not accept students who already have a PhD, especially when they overlap with one another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T11:26:44.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17231" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:42:31.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If some of the questions are very basic, they could probably be answered by fellow students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often encourage students to answer questions posed by other students on the discussion board. It's nice to log on and see a question already answered, even before I've read it. One professor I know even awarded some extra credit to students who answered questions, with excellent results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you could also provide some feedback that helps define the ground rules as you go along. For example, early on in the term, at the end of an answer, you could append something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I didn't mind answering this question, since it's still early in the course. However, as the course progresses, I'm expecting this forum to be used for more substantial questions, rather than simple checks. Students shouldn't need to ask for help here for such basic issues; this isn't supposed to be the first place you go every time you encounter a small snag. Make sure you've put in a good effort into solving your problem first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe not every student will get the message, but such feedback may steer most students toward the desired behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T11:42:31.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17267" CreationDate="2014-02-21T12:23:24.120" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student who has been admitted to a graduate program in US. I am collecting information about the &lt;em&gt;study plan&lt;/em&gt;. For example, what courses can be taken? How many courses can I take outside the department? Any typical study route for reference? Can I work with more than 1 professor on research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a study plan in our college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Googled around, but I can only find very rough information about the general policy on the website, which I went through several months ago. What I need is detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:&#xA;What is the equivalent of the &lt;em&gt;study plan&lt;/em&gt; in America? How can I collect information about the &lt;em&gt;study plan&lt;/em&gt; of a graduate program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastEditorUserId="8091" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T12:40:24.190" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:52:26.280" Title="How can I collect information about the study plan of a graduate program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T12:42:46.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases you simply will not get offered the second PhD, even if you apply, and this remains true also if you try to do these two PhD positions in different countries. I am not aware if these are written rules, or unwritten rules, but, really, mostly no avail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike master studies, PhD is often supplemented by stipend that, while small in general, is enough to sustain a living. Probably because of that there are some efforts to avoid a &quot;professional PhD student&quot; who would keep &quot;studying&quot; till retirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T17:04:48.890" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T17:04:48.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17257" CreationDate="2014-02-21T12:49:53.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some publishers (ACS I'm lookin at you) have what they call GToC, which is like a ToC with small images. You might have seen such in some magazines, here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spd.org/spd/images/SI-Apple-Tablet-Table-of-Contents.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accompanying the image is usually a short text that is sort of like a teaser for the article, in a way the coolest tidbit about what you have written. I believe that's what they are asking for here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T12:49:53.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:12:32.573" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that you're talking about career paths for PhDs in STEM fields. One major area of employment that you missed is the national lab path. The lab route is, in a sense, a middle ground between industry and academia. A scientist at a national lab is engaged in basic science research. The labs do work for government organizations like DOD, DOE, DHS, all sorts of acronyms. Rather than writing grant proposals you would be writing proposals to take on projects for these agencies. Depending on your area of expertise, you may be expected to publish your results in journals, or publish results as technical reports. At Pacific Northwest National Lab, there is a fundamental sciences directorate that is committed to basic science research (chemistry, physics, engineering, biology, mathematics) that mainly publishes in journals, and there is a national security directorate that mainly publishes technical reports (often classified).&#xA;There are also many research labs that contract to the federal government such as HRL, Matrix, MITRE, and Lincoln Laboratories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists at government labs publish without the &quot;publish or perish&quot; atmosphere of academia. They enjoy more freedom in choosing their own career path than a researcher in industry. There is also more respect (and demand) for interdisciplinary research than in academia. Since you are competing for federal dollars, the research you do is also more likely to be used than research in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness -- In addition to the scientist path at research labs, many choose to go into project management. This requires a deep knowledge of the subject area, and pays better, but you might stop doing the actual research yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done internships at Pacific Northwest and Los Alamos national labs, and my comments are based on discussions with employees at those labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9397" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:12:32.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:14:39.173" Score="1" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first year Master's degree student of computer science in Northern Europe. I am paying for my living expenses and do not have any kind of assistantship or funding. I have a full funding admission for the same subject in Canada. I would like to know if it is a good idea to accept the offer and start my studies there and also continue my current degree remotely (Since the second year is about completing the thesis, and I can do it while I'm in another place) or drop my studies completely here (since I would like to move to Canada or USA later and have money issues to continue my current studies). &#xA;If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12199" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T13:47:32.207" Title="Can I pursue a new Master's in another country, while I'm pursuing one?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:24:08.030" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm on my second PhD, 40 years after the first one.  My first one was in mathematics, and I worked as a university teacher in maths for many years.  I agree with the general advice given here.  A PhD is as much research training as anything else.  In the course of it you work intensively in a specialised area and learn how to develop an achievable project that can be done in the time you've got. You will pretty much be living and dreaming your project. It would be very difficult to be so intensively involved in two completely unrelated projects at the same time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, see how your current course goes.  If you're still enthusiastic about both fields, look around various universities and see where there are interesting projects across both areas - aiming to do one PhD, and then maybe a post-doc position of some kind, if things work out that way.  I knew a guy who studied the applied maths/engineering of the very high-speed spinning machines used in the textile industry - weird instabilities could lead to disaster.  Another project I came across involved applying image processing techniques that had been developed for astronomy to classifying microscopic images of cells for medical research.  There are lots of interesting hybrid fields out there: the more engineering/physical side of robotics, remote sensing, aspects of fibre optics, the bionic ear and bionic eye - lots of innovative signal processing needed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my second PhD, it is in fine art, but I'm writing computer programs to &quot;evolve&quot; artworks (not a new idea, but there's plenty of room for new work).  I need to engage with the history of art and other aspects of the discipline, since I'm in an art school now, though one if my supervisors is in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12202" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:24:08.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17261" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:37:17.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best option is to e-mail the school you are going, and ask for a copy of &lt;em&gt;degree audit checklist&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;degree requirement checklist&lt;/em&gt;, which usually list the required and elective courses you'll need to complete for a certain degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also ask for a &lt;em&gt;course schedule&lt;/em&gt; and an &lt;em&gt;academic calendar&lt;/em&gt; of the recent academic year and get an idea on which semester/trimester and time slots were those courses made available. And in the calendar you can get a gist of when is the start and end of the semesters/trimesters, last date for adding/dropping courses, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, some schools may include the degree requirement information in their &lt;em&gt;student handbook&lt;/em&gt;. It wouldn't hurt to ask or search for a PDF copy of the handbook as well. You should also find details on cross registration to other institutes. Also be careful that universities tend to have a handbook for the whole study body, and then the smaller departments within them may also have their own smaller handbooks. Make sure to get all the copies that are related to your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These terms should give you a good start. But do bear in mind that by the time you start to study, some of the information may be updated in the new academic year. So, you may plan, but be ready to be flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for if you can work with one or more professor on research. The answer would depend on many things: some students got assistantship to help the professors, some work as if the professors hire them, some work for academic credit (as a directed study.) There are too many variations that I doubt you will find a single document telling you everything. This question is probably best asked on the orientation day once you arrived there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for digging into their site, try to use some suffix in Google to enhance your results. For instance, try to search for &lt;code&gt;degree requirement checklist site:MyInstitute.edu&lt;/code&gt; to confine the results from the domain of &lt;code&gt;www.MyInstitue.edu&lt;/code&gt;. You can also modify it into &lt;code&gt;degree requirement checklist site:MyInstitute.edu filetype:pdf&lt;/code&gt; to search for only PDF documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with the planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T13:52:26.280" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:52:26.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:46:51.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is outside CS, but in my field, I've only had three conferences extend submissions, and they were all for low numbers of submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One I know because the day a office mate and I submitted (the last official deadline day) we were abstracts 001 and 002, and we were not early morning people. This one, ironically, is probably the closest to your experience, and arguably &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a CS conference, even though I'm not in CS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One has a chronic problem with this, because the session they're recruiting for (its a big enough conference that there are multiple sessions each with their own abstract committees) is a lot of work without much payoff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One was because the sequester made travel by federal employees in the U.S. impossible, which meant a quarter of the abstracts were suddenly gone. So the &quot;late breaker&quot; deadline got moved way back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my experience its fairly &lt;em&gt;uncommon&lt;/em&gt;, and either symptomatic of a larger problem with submissions, or some unforeseen circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:46:51.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17214" CreationDate="2014-02-21T14:16:07.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest, for your CV/Resume, that you present yourself as a Computer Scientist and you present the University up-front, as opposed to the college, and that you frame the PhD as being in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mathematics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computational Mathematics&lt;/a&gt;, and then list the topics that you studied, classes that you took, and technologies that you used in getting your degree (depending on how you prefer to frame it), and then finally your actual degree. e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Studied algorithms, numerical methods, and symbolic methods. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Took Monte Carlo methods, computer simulation, theory of computation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Used R, Matlab, and C to solve multithreaded Linear Algebra problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You were presented with a PhD in Mathematics with a concentration in Computer Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T14:16:07.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17231" CreationDate="2014-02-21T14:26:24.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is a bit tangential, but should help somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Archive your Q&amp;amp;A:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I face similar problems, but on an annual, seasonal base. Every semester I find myself answering the same fundamental questions. Then I thought I should probably spend my time on more valuable activities, so for different courses I set up a WordPress or wiki site to compile a list of Q&amp;amp;A. Whenever there is a question e-mail to me, I posted the question (in a de-identified format) and my answer. Students can comment on the blog or directly edit the wiki if they have anything to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, six years down and the sites are going well... I can't be happier that I made the decision. The initial investment was high, but it started to pay off pretty much instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide a questioning protocol in the syllabus:&lt;/strong&gt; In my syllabus I also included a section called &quot;What to do if I have a question?&quot; In the section I put information about how to search different resources, how to test the codes step by step, how to find a popular discussion board and what are some I would suggest, what other reference books one can use for more/less advanced readers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I specifically explain &lt;em&gt;how to properly ask a question in e-mail&lt;/em&gt;. For instance, I specify that in the e-mail they should describe what they are trying to achieve, software that they use, data set that they use, problem (with relevant error message and screenshot.) I also specify what are not the right ways to ask question, which includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Please take a look and see if I am on the right track.&quot; -- &lt;em&gt;We do not check your homework without you specifying a question. The grade will tell you if you were on the right track. And the suggested answer scheme will guide you to improve your work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider giving some very explicit hints, and ask the student to identify what went wrong:&lt;/strong&gt; This one hits me hard, because I felt giving the steps to them make them learn less. However, there have been some students who were really lost. And in those case, I would consider calming them down by providing an anchor point, which is the steps to the right answer. I then follow up with them by asking &quot;Now, you have the suggested steps guiding you to the answer, compared to your original scheme, can you identify what might have gone wrong?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be very sure that you did give enough examples and self-assessment opportunities:&lt;/strong&gt; When developing questions, I will make sure to start with some that are very similar to the examples I show in class or notes. Sometimes, we may want to try to tweak the questions right from the get go by introducing what we think are &quot;simple logic.&quot; That, to me, is not the correct approach. If the task is how to deal with XYZ, then show them how in the class, and then test them the exact same skill sets in the beginning of the assignment. From there and on, you can start introducing slight variations, so that now it's about XY'Z... just a bit of a twist, bit by bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For us who have sorted all topics nice and tidy in our brain, we can immediately tell the unimportant from the important (think a super nice walk-in closet on a lifesyle magazine.) For the students, their pieces are like a pile of things in a dorm room. For that reason, I wouldn't worry too much if they ask seemingly very simple questions... because when you don't have all the pieces laid out structurally, some simple stuff can look huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T14:32:08.903" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T14:32:08.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2014-02-21T14:27:00.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually when a conference extends a deadline it means that they don't have enough submissions, or that the ones they do have suck, and they're hoping to find a couple more good ones if they can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were a case of a couple of people needing extensions, the conference organizers would just privately contact those people and allow the extension. You only &lt;em&gt;publicize&lt;/em&gt; the extension, when there aren't enough submissions in quantity or quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not in CS, so YMMV, but I suspect it's the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T14:27:00.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T14:54:17.347" Score="3" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated (BSc and MSc) from the top university in my country and I'm currently a PhD candidate on another strong university. I expect to defend my thesis in a few months. After that, I plan to stay in academia pursuing a tenure track, and at both mentioned universities I can get a decent position (I've managed to include a number of my undergrad professors in my grad studies or at least collaborate with them at some point, mostly because of my supervisor). However, my hometown is also an university town, and I could certainly apply for a position there, but the uni there lacks the prestige and esteem of the former two.&#xA;Through my qualifications, I'm confident that I would advance faster through the academic ranks, contribute to the society in my hometown and introduce some changes to the faculty there. Another obvious big advantage is that I would be residing at my hometown.&#xA;On the other hand, the staff and research are much better in the former ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor suggests that it would probably be better for me to be at home, since I think about it in the first place, given that, by keeping and broadening my connections I would experience no significant penalty, at the same time the local academic society would benefit through my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So should I apply for a position in my home town, where I would be a big fish in a pond, or should I apply at the other universities, where I might be more like a small fish in the sea?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12212" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T00:08:06.150" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T18:54:24.700" Title="&quot;Be a small fish in a sea, or a big one in a pond&quot;" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-22T01:38:36.343" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17066" CreationDate="2014-02-21T15:28:37.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the objective of meta-science is to determine what are the good ways to perform science&lt;/strong&gt;, it immediately runs into a major methodological hurdle: it is necessarily going to beg the question. That is why work by e.g. Popper counts as &quot;merely&quot; philosophy of science. So if that is the meaning of your question, then the question &lt;em&gt;&quot;Give me meta-science that is not philosophy of science&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is similar to &lt;em&gt;&quot;give me an answer to 2+2 that is not 4&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. It will only result in bad answers, because you are excluding the only good answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the objective of meta-science is to better understand what happens in the practice of science&lt;/strong&gt;, then you cannot exclude sociology of science, as science is a social activity (you mention impact factors yourself: I do not think any discipline is better suited at understanding those than sociology, or the related field of scientometrics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is poorly formulated and cannot be answered satisfactorily. The current first answer (Piotr Migdal) would be the best answer if the question was modified in such a way that it can be answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11883" LastEditorUserId="11883" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T15:40:34.487" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T15:40:34.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17278" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:00:28.860" Score="12" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD researcher in my first year. For the first 3 months all my supervisor made me do was read related papers on IEEE, so a LOT of literature review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently in trying to recreate the result of another paper I was reading, I wrote some code on segmentation that appears to work really well and has got my supervisor's attention and interest. He thinks this may lead to a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He asked me to write a technical report on it. So I wrote a simple report in MS Word which included a brief explanation of the method with graphs and result images but he said this is not what he wanted. What he expects from me is a IEEE style report/paper, including introduction, algorithm/method explanation, mathematical representation, experiments, future work etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I believe he thinks too highly of my code, its just a for loop applied at different settings. That is all..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the mathematical representation of a for loop? How do I make it look more professional? As I know my reports are those of an undergrad standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11689" LastEditorUserId="13017" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T09:53:05.013" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T09:53:05.013" Title="How to write a technical paper of a not so significant idea?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17277" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:10:51.463" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite possibly, your supervisor is encouraging you to write early, to learn how to write, and to get into the habit of writing your results down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would gain a lot by watching this youtube video by Haskell inventor Simon Peyton Jones on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA&quot;&gt;How to write a great research paper&lt;/a&gt;. Part of his message is that you can do the research while you are writing, meaning that many ideas will come to you as you are writing things down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask how to write a paper. Didn't you just read a whole bunch? Pick one that you found easy to follow and inspiring. Model your paper on its structure and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the actual work. A formal model of a for-loop has already been done, so I suspect that this is not the right level of abstraction to consider. What is the data to which your for loop applied? What did it mean? What did the parameters mean? How are the results of your code interpreted? Were some better than others? On what scale?&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Part of science is learning to ask and answer the right questions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T16:41:32.460" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T16:41:32.460" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17274" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:54:44.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply for, and fully investigate, all such possibilities. But I would go even farther: 3 places is not nearly enough to apply to, especially if you are interested primarily in tenured track positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deciding which job you want to take before you've actually been offered one is perfectly natural, and is a perfectly terrible practice! It so often leads to disappointment, missed opportunities, and general dissatisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now would be the time to expand your horizons! Find new institutions you might like and apply to them; put the word out about your availability through advisors, fellow researchers, friends of friends in academia, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chance of getting any one position is terribly unflattering, regardless of your background or standing. If you can find a dozen places that you'd be happy to go to work - relative preferences for one over the other not withstanding - then your chance of getting something you want improves remarkably. Don't put yourself in the position of being disappointed because you had to &quot;settle for your last choice&quot;, instead of &quot;winning one of your top 3 picks&quot; just because you didn't look into more possibilities. (This is advice I have to give myself over, and over, and over again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T18:54:24.700" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T18:54:24.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T17:54:16.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's barely even a good idea doing one PhD, let alone two! What you need to decide is what career you want. If it's to be a researcher, then doing a PhD is appropriate, because it is training to be a researcher. Once you have that career, why do another one, unless moving to a vastly different research area that requires very different research methodologies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T17:54:16.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T20:45:00.683" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several kind of management jobs in the industry where your PhD can be an asset (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16983/transition-from-phd-to-project-manager-position&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for example),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or even creating your own startup! In fact, doing your PhD, &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you might have come across some ideas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;research position at industry: I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies have a research department. Some do quite fundamental research, but most of them are rather development-oriented. In the latter case, it is an other way to consider things: you want a product that works, even if you don't understand precisely how it works. It can be very interesting too, but it is different from academic research; you might like it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11867" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T20:45:00.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:08:39.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nice piece of advice on going to industry is here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/leaving_academia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to leave academia [and go to programming, data science or quants]&lt;/a&gt; (at least I've found it valuable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the question is what you've learnt (some you take for granted, like ability to be manager of your own project), which kind of connections you made, what is the kind of job you would like to work, etc. Then, well, you can think about &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; jobs, forgetting that you were a PhD (except that additionally you can consider a very few highly academia-related, e.g. science popularization, lab technician).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, at least among my friends (and places I am looking by myself) is it is mostly &quot;jobs in tech&quot; - software engineering, web development, quants and data science. The last one seems to be one where a PhD student can have an edge (over s standard programmer) due to being immersed with different numerical tools (and general research methodology, etc). There are even some courses aimed at PhD graduates, for  example &lt;a href=&quot;http://insightdatascience.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Insight Data Science Fellows Program&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigdive.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BigDive&lt;/a&gt;, which is more general, but I wholeheartedly recommend it, as an alumnus).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case &quot;what are you missing&quot; - I wouldn't split it in 4 paths. Especially as in many places there is no clear distinction between production and R&amp;amp;D (it may depend more on actual company, project, people involved, your drive to learn, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But clearly, you miss whole &quot;free&quot; part related to being a consultant, freelancer or starting your own business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T18:10:59.470" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T18:10:59.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:40:53.610" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, in your case, it should be obvious that it is way, way too soon to even think about a PhD of any kind.  In many ways even one PhD is too much these days - given the employment market today, opportunities for PhDs are slim to none.  Best advice? Keep in mind that having a PhD often closes more doors than it opens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12241" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:40:53.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:56:56.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important difference between a bachelor's degree and a PhD is this: when doing a PhD, there is no maximum amount of effort one can usefully put in, nor is there a maximum level of attainment one can achieve. (Whereas with a bachelor's, once you have got top grades in all your courses, there's not much more you can usefully do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposing, what is very unlikely, that you have the academic ability and the huge amount of motivation and energy it would take to do two PhDs simultaneously. Then instead you should do one PhD, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in a shorter time than is usual&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing an astoundingly good thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publishing significant work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which you have largely done on your own&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and having gained an exceptional depth of knowledge about your chosen field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you to do all or most of this will be no more work than two simultaneous PhDs, but it will get you a lot further. Graduate students who do PhDs like this (they are quite a few) tend to quickly build prestigious and desirable careers for themselves, whereas 'professional students' who spend their lives amassing diplomas in different fields usually don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:56:56.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T22:05:13.067" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Selling out?  Hardly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a researcher in industry, and I love it. I get to work on important problems and my work is expected to translate into real products in roughly 5-10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While working on my PhD, I felt that the academic mindset was overwhelming. I have never had any intention of doing anything but research in industry, but I was certainly in the minority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my reasons for choosing my career path were/are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many people in academia seem to be overly focused on publishing, even before they can make reasonable and meaningful conclusions (which can contribute to a mass of conflicting literature). To me, conferences are for discussing interesting work, but publishing is for disseminating conclusions (&amp;amp; supporting data) that can have a meaningful impact on a field of knowledge. In industry, I have to write up reports all the time, but only the important stuff gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am a scientist, which is just the modern term for a &quot;natural philosopher.&quot; I take my role as a philosopher very seriously, but as much as I love knowledge, I believe it is irresponsible to use other people's money to pursue research that is unlikely to benefit those people in a timely manner. Pure research is a hobby; Applied research is a job. In industry, I am free to pursue pure research when I have spare time, but I get paid to work on real problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In an academic setting, it is far too easy to pursue research in a very narrow field in which everybody knows everyone else. No thanks! I love that my job forces me to work outside my comfort zone, with a wide variety of people that I would never interact with in an academic setting. I have grown personally and professionally from these interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working for a company, I am usually guaranteed funding for something... but not necessarily things I think are important or interesting. As with any funding agency, I have to propose research projects that the company is willing to pay for. I have some early-stage projects that require minimal funding, but also others that require huge investments and therefore must offer much in return. However, I can also apply for funding through both private and government agencies. We often do this when we want to pursue a new area of research and/or collaborate with other organizations.  (Note that we also fund grants for others too, so some of my work involves reviewing those proposals.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, very few people can actually get a job doing research in industry. It is highly competitive, and you often need far more than just a PhD. I worked in industry for 2 years before starting my PhD, but internships can also be great experience.  (Unfortunately, most PhD programs frown on internships or other outside jobs... which is very disappointing!)  Of course, networking also helps.  I have found that most research jobs are not advertised, so you have to actually talk to people.  In my case, I asked the VP of research for some career advice and ended up with a job offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.  Doing research in industry is very different in some ways, but similar in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12243" LastEditorUserId="12243" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T22:19:15.197" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T22:19:15.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T22:38:10.943" Score="27" ViewCount="5009" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work got accepted into a very good category in a very good conference in my field. Due to complicated visa issues it will be very hard for me to attend that conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't attend the conference they are certainly going to remove my work from the proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried I won't be able to claim any sort of achievement if I don't attend this conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I still add it to my CV and specify that my work got accepted in this conference in a very good category?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12246" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T19:53:53.677" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T00:49:20.217" Title="What to do if I can't get a visa to attend a conference that accepted my paper?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-02-21T23:21:15.370" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your paper gets withdrawn, then there may be no public record that it ever was accepted (and if there were, it could potentially be misconstrued as a withdrawel for other reasons). I can't say I've ever seen such an item on a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, even if you cannot make it to the conference in person, you can try to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) have someone else give the talk in your place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) give the talk via telecommunication, e.g. Skype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both options are certainly not too unusual in my field (theoretical computer science/math). If you have to go for the second one, make sure not to leave contacting the conference organizers for the last moment, and be aware that this causes quite some work for them. If you can provide enough detail on your visa issues that it is clear that it's not just &quot;You waited too long to apply&quot;, most people will be quite understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T23:21:15.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-02-21T23:57:15.480" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need to find some way to have the paper presented. At the most recent conference I attended, a speaker was unable to attend for visa reasons and sent in a video talk. That talk was played back by a friend who also took some (simple) questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At pretty much every conference I've been to in the past few years in the US at least one person has had visa trouble, so it's not uncommon at all. But you will need to do due diligence to try and get the visa as far as possible. Once that fails, then the above three suggestions (someone else, a skype talk, a video talk) become available, depending on what the conference organizers want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T23:57:15.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17150" CreationDate="2014-02-22T02:30:49.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open positions in public institutions often will &amp;amp; have to be announced on a public job database, not so likely on private job databases where you find mostly industry positions (e.g. in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often higher academic positions are listed in printed newspapers in Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to look on the sites of the national phyiscal societies (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pro-physik.de/phy/stellenmarkt/jobsHome.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pro-physik.de/phy/stellenmarkt/jobsHome.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/455/213&quot;&gt;In this answer&lt;/a&gt; I gave some tips how to find websites of research groups specializing in field X, you can add here &quot;positions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T02:30:49.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-02-22T05:29:12.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently gave a presentation at a conference on behalf of a colleague who was unable to attend, so it's certainly a possibility in at least some fields (I'm in theoretical computer science). I had nothing to do with the research, but I do know the person, so I was able to talk to them beforehand and get a decent briefing on the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know some of the other attendees, that may be a possible route to getting your work presented. In my experience of glancing at the rules of various conference (all CS though), there is only a requirement that the work is presented - it doesn't strictly say by whom, and that at least one of the authors registers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1370" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T05:29:12.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17304" CreationDate="2014-02-22T06:51:33.530" Score="2" ViewCount="75216" Body="&lt;p&gt;My GPA of bachelor is about 3.0, and I just want to know how much it would approximately be in German Grade? Would it be lower than 2.7 in German Grade?&#xA;I have read other questions on this website, but none of them could help me, can you simply tell me how to convert GPA to German grading system? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12262" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T08:46:42.893" Title="How to convert GPA to German Grade?" Tags="&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-22T23:27:19.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T07:35:22.387" Score="-4" ViewCount="2672" Body="&lt;p&gt;After so many incidents happen that my advisor trying to bad mouthing to my committee, sobstege my publication, secretly removing me from my PhD projects I feel I cannot trust my advisor anymore. Now, I feel everything he said was insincere and full of lie. My advisor always says positive thing but all end up negative. He is not consistent of what he said and what he actually does which disgust me. I don't want to let him handle my manuscript or assign me project because I always fear that he will do something underhanded. If I really grant a PhD from my advisor, I would be ashamed of such lineage. All I want now is live in bubble space undisturbed focusing on my own topics. I want to be myself as a phd student and one day as a professor. What should I do? Please help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="10694" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T07:44:44.300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T09:52:22.230" Title="What to do if I can't trust my advisor no more?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-02-22T10:04:33.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17300" CreationDate="2014-02-22T07:41:19.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switch advisors. There is really not much else you can do*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*If the person does something truly unethical and you have definitive proof you can try to bring it up with someone who has more authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that that isn't an option, and it sounds like you're planning to stick it with this advisor until you get your PhD. Things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think it's realistic to get a PhD at all with this advisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are all of his grad students just as miserable, or just you? What are the successful students in his group doing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are your letters of recommendation (you need 3, typically) going to be from when you apply for postdocs/jobs after you graduate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear options (purely for completeness, I &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; recommend them):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply to a PhD program somewhere else (you don't have to finish this one, you can apply while you're still in this one, actually, and only quit the program if you get accepted somewhere else).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit academia. (Warning: it's hard to get back in once you're out.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am not sure how you define &quot;successful&quot; (fellowship, publication, support)? I know there are people who were quite supported by my advisor because they know what my advisor like, and it's their way to get ahead. That's fine and that should be the norm but I'm not the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful means publications (well, that depends on the field), research that is progressing in a clear direction, completion of milestones towards the degree. The advisor having successful students ultimately is measured by how good the jobs the students he graduated got are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like he has students that are content to have him as an advisor.&#xA;It also sounds, from your &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16153/losing-faith-in-my-phd-advisor&quot;&gt;other question&lt;/a&gt; and the comments there that you think that your advisor is incompetent, which means that you don't take him seriously.&#xA;This creates at least half the problem, because if you don't take him seriously, he won't take you seriously, which, among other things, includes telling his colleagues about how terrible you are, and not trusting you to write a manuscript for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're staying in this PhD program with this advisor, you will make your own life a lot easier if you at least imagine that your advisor might not be incompetent.&#xA;When he gives you an idea for an approach, make an honest effort.&#xA;If it doesn't work, try to figure out why. If you figure out why, don't look happy about it: look concerned about it. If you have an idea that you think will work, propose it as a solution to this problem you just found. And by &quot;propose&quot; I mean actually ask him for what he thinks about it, and be interested in what he has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what &quot;taking him seriously&quot; means. If you start doing that, he might start taking you seriously for a change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also try to have insightful research-related conversations with some other faculty (preferably the rest of your committee), maybe even have one or more of them meet with you and your advisor when you discuss research ideas (make sure to plan meetings so that everyone is in the loop, don't try to surprise anyone). Build those professional relationships for some good recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T09:28:10.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17299" CreationDate="2014-02-22T08:07:29.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the specifics of your system, no, it's not possible to tell you how to convert &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; grades (or anyone else's) from one system to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what you do need to know about the German system is that it works &quot;backwards&quot;: a 1 is the best grade, and 5 is a failing grade. The &quot;1,0&quot; corresponds to an A or A+ in an American style 4.0-system, and then moves in increments of 0.3 or 0.4. 4.0 corresponds to a D, and anything below that would be regarded as an F.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T08:07:29.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T08:09:46.990" Score="-3" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read many ISI papers, and now I want to publish my own paper, but the subject I want to write is about marketing and brand development, which lots of people are writing in this topic. Is it possible if I don't do any mathematical or analytic researches and just write my paper based on other papers and my own knowledge and by mentioning the sources and books that I wrote my paper?&#xA;My main question is, can I just write descriptive words and mention some issue in just words, and I don't do any math or numeral calculations?&#xA;And what ISI Journal do you suggest me to send it, which will easily accept it, and has a good Impact Factor, and doesn't cost me too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12262" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T11:41:20.103" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T21:20:51.920" Title="How to write a paper about marketing for publishing in ISI Journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17299" CreationDate="2014-02-22T08:46:42.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A GPA of 3.0 is (usually) exactly a B, which is coincidentally 3.0 in German Grade. Note that this is an estimate. Also, the correct way to calculate it would be not to convert the GPA directly, but to go through the transcript and re-compute the average using the German Grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tool I found after a second of googling:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has grade tables and even a calculator that can do the math for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T08:46:42.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17300" CreationDate="2014-02-22T09:52:22.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read your question I must take into account that I am hearing one side of a dispute, so it is likely to be biased and incomplete. I don't know who is in the wrong but I can see a few pointers. Firstly you make very few specific complaints about what your advisor has done. You say he is trying to sabotage your publication and remove you from projects. It is the job of your advisor to decide when your publication is ready. He has much more experience of this than you do. He can see better than you what direction you need to go in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No advisor takes on a student to sabotage them. An advisor can only have a limited number of students and they want them to succeed. You claim that things he says are insincere which means that he is saying positive things that you will not accept. It sounds like most of the anger is on your side. You even indicate that other students are getting along with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a personality or culture clash between you and your supervisor it may be possible to talk to your department head about a change, but it is more likely that you are on a slippery slope towards failure and it would be better that you listen to your advisor who seems to be trying to help you. Put your ego aside and consider the possibility that your advisor who has been working in the field for many more years than you may know it better than you. If you still genuinely think that your ideas are better and you want more independence then you need to discuss this calmly with your advisor. He may agree to let you take that route but that is only likely if you are exceptionaly talented. If he doesn't he should explain why and you need to listen and find a compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing, your English grammar is not very good. I dont know if you are an English speaking native, studying in an English speaking country or writing papers in English, but if any of these are the case then you need to improve your English. It will have a bearing on your ability to communicate with people including your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T09:52:22.230" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17303" CreationDate="2014-02-22T11:40:51.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing for an IF journal should follow standard good practises. First you need to have a well defined question/hypothesis for the work. You need to provide a solid and up to date background for the work (Introduction providing an overview of all relevant literature, i.e. earlier work). You need to successfully show significant (new) results and conclusions. Then you need to write the paper well, which means no spelling and hopefully no grammatical errors, clear and concise language, good structure. Finally you should adhere to any instructions for authors regarding how the journal requests papers to adhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is actually not so difficult in theory. To what extent this will be easy for you depends on your experience. Based on your question, it sounds as if you are thinking more about a literature review with some own thinking on the topic, avoiding new data and data analysis. This does not sound like the easiest way to gain acceptance. Likewise, knowing your field also involves understanding what journals accept what sort of papers. You seem to be at an disadvantage also here. The best advice is therefore to try to connect to someone who knows the field better and ask for assistance in, for example discussing the problem, and possibly helping with the strategic decisions regarding format of the paper and where to send it. One has to know the details of your work to provide such advice and that is clearly beyond the scope of this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as already stated by scaaahu, &quot;easy accept&quot; is not a concept known to the majority of us when it comes to scientific publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T11:40:51.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T12:41:46.450" Score="2" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided to apply to PhD studies and in one part it says that my CV should contain: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Study curriculum with rankings&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;What does that mean? because they are also asking me to submit my studies transcripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T13:28:18.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T19:15:00.367" Title="Meaning of &quot;Study curriculum with rankings&quot;" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17307" CreationDate="2014-02-22T12:46:30.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study curriculum means the list of titles of courses/subjects and their contents, credits, and so on. In other words, the syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term 'Ranking' is generally associated with the institution. Probably they are asking for the ranking of the university/college you attended. 'Ranking' may also imply your position in the class of X number of students. It may also simply mean the semester-wise serial number of courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whitman.syr.edu/recruiters/programs-curriculum-rankings.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You can have a look at this link.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorDisplayName="user4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T12:52:11.943" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T12:52:11.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17314" CreationDate="2014-02-22T13:23:55.607" Score="15" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; There is currently a proposal for a new Math Teaching site that will be entering private beta once enough people sign up. One question that came up during its question is (basically): Is teaching math significantly different from teaching any other subject? Would it be better to broaden the scope to all education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my own opinions, but I don't have enough experience teaching non-math classes to know. And now I am really curious about variation in teaching methods across disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I have this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence (such as refereed sources) to show that teaching mathematics and related fields uses significantly different methods or skills than teaching other subjects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that teaching ability and/or techniques transfer across a wide variety of disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4455" LastEditorUserId="4455" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T14:34:23.057" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T14:34:23.057" Title="Are the methods used in math-based teaching (including physics, engineering, etc.) substantially different from those used in other areas?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2014-02-22T13:45:45.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One evidence that some &lt;em&gt;teaching abilities/techniques transfer across a wide variety of disciplines&lt;/em&gt; is the existence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ukpsf#whatisframework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)&lt;/a&gt;, which &lt;em&gt;&quot;provides a general description of the main dimensions of the roles of teaching and supporting learning within the higher education environment&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently attending a training course at my university to obtain some qualifications for this framework, and this course is attended by people from many disciplines (from maths to history, including medicine or economy), and the teaching techniques we are learning do not depend on the field (and the people in charge of the course are explicit on that fact). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some particular aspects can be specific (for instance, techniques specific to teaching in a laboratory with potentially dangerous equipment might not be relevant to mathematicians), but for instance, learning how to conduct an interactive exercise can be done similarly in most fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, perhaps the proposal in question looks for techniques for very specific topic, for instance, how to teach Pythagoras theorem, or some nice examples of matrix operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T13:45:45.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2014-02-22T17:53:19.277" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the University of Georgia &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.coe.uga.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;we have a program&lt;/a&gt; (which is not identical to a &quot;department&quot;, but is close enough so that the distinction has always eluded me) in &lt;strong&gt;Mathematics Education&lt;/strong&gt; and thus we have undergraduate &lt;em&gt;mathematics education majors&lt;/em&gt; and also &lt;em&gt;mathematics education graduate students&lt;/em&gt; (both master's and PhD).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly close ties with both the mathematics department and other education disciplines -- e.g. the mathematics courses I teach have a substantial population of mathematics education majors -- but such undergraduate majors also take plenty of courses with the name &quot;Math Education XYZW&quot;.  These courses are split into &quot;content&quot; and &quot;pedagogy&quot; courses.  This distinction was very hard for me to wrap my mind around (it literally took me a few years to do so, although obviously I was not working very consistently on it!): see for instance&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coe.uga.edu/mse/academic-programs/mathematics-education/b-s-e-d/program-of-study/major-courses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, and please read carefully: the courses that they list as Content are actually in the math department (one or two of them are taken mostly by math education majors, but many of the others are also required courses for undergraduate math majors).  Rather the distinction between &quot;content&quot; and &quot;pedagogy&quot; -- which are the terms used by UGA students and faculty who talk to me about this -- is a distinction being made between two types of courses in the longish list of Professional Education courses.  Thus e.g. compare&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMAT 3800.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Course Title:   Connections in Secondary Mathematics II&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Course  Description:    Exploration of secondary mathematics topics related to number and measurement with an explicit focus on reasoning that connects critical topics of secondary mathematics to one another and to problem situations. Sample topics include proportional reasoning, number theory, and probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMAT 4800&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Course Title:   Teaching Secondary School Mathematics I&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Course Description: Introductory ideas about mathematics education, including current mathematics standards and policy documents, learning theories, and teaching strategies. Students will explore how secondary students think about and learn mathematics, examine how to select and modify tasks, use appropriate technology, and apply their learning in an accompanying field experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to give rather strong evidence that the answer to the OP's first question is &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;: Math Education is rapidly becoming distinct enough from Education in general to count as its own discipline.  (Obviously there remain many connections and commonalities between Math Education and other kinds of Education, just as virtually any academic field overlaps significantly with others.)  In particular, yes, math education students learn math-specific teaching methods.  This is indirect, though strong, evidence that there are differences between the teaching methods of various subjects.  But my other point is something that is not explicitly in the OP's question: more than just teaching methods, techniques or ability, there is actually &lt;strong&gt;additional content&lt;/strong&gt; that math teachers learn and that other teachers (and students of mathematics who are not intending to teach!) do not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also introduce you to my colleague &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~sybilla/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sybilla Beckmann&lt;/a&gt;.  Beckmann (who was trained as an arithmetic geometer and holds a faculty position in the UGA mathematics department; her office is next door to mine) is truly* one of the very top American experts in the field of mathematical education of teachers.  (Beckmann is also largely responsible for my awareness and understanding of the issues presented above.  In fact I will contact her and ask her to look over this response to make sure I have gotten things right.) One of her initiatives over the last few years has been to promote the idea of an explicitly identified &lt;strong&gt;mathematics teaching community&lt;/strong&gt;. In this regard, please see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201103/rtx110300368p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;.  Also, Beckmann writes on her webpage &quot;Longer term, we plan for this project to include an electronic self-organizing journal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, this is definitely a thing.  It is a thing which has grown in recent years and is liable to continue to grow in the near future...and everyone seems to agree that we want/need it to grow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: So much so that I need not justify it here: just search the web for her and you'll see it right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: My colleague Sybilla Beckmann took time out of her busy workday [on Saturday!] to quickly look over what I wrote above.  She pronounced it &quot;basically accurate&quot; and went on to add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teaching methods in math are definitely different from other disciplines. Work of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Shulman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lee Shulman&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Ball&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deborah Ball&lt;/a&gt; on mathematical knowledge for teaching has been transformative for the field in that regard. Some sources to refer people to: the CBMS Mathematical Education of Teachers II on the CBMS website. It refers to various other sources. Math education is a separate discipline with a large body of research amassed over the last 30 - 40 years. It connects to other education research but is its own separate field. At UGA, the math ed program is within the department of mathematics and science education (it used to be a separate math ed department but was joined for administrative reasons some years ago). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added links to the wikipedia articles on Shulman and Ball, and I recommend at least skimming these.  Shulman is responsible for the idea of &lt;strong&gt;pedagogical content knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;, a concept which is rather slippery at first [or at least, it was to me] but really seems to lie at the heart of an answer to the OP's question: it is precisely the material that you need to know as a mathematics teacher that you do not learn in your mathematics courses and cannot learn in non-math specific education courses. To nail it down more specifically than this is beyond my expertise -- e.g. the above two course descriptions were intended to convey this distinction but looking back it seems even more complicated: none of EMAT 3800 would be appropriate material for aspiring teachers of most subjects other than mathematics, and &lt;em&gt;some but not all&lt;/em&gt; of EMAT 3900 would.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two linked wikipedia articles give entry points into the vast body of literature &#xA;on these matters; people who were interested enough to read this far are encouraged to delve into the literature itself.  And when you do, come back and tell me about it!  I am an academic mathematician and thus a mathematics educator, but I have no specific training in mathematics education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T05:14:00.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T05:14:00.060" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T19:52:41.800" Score="8" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Master thesis is under review, may be it will finish in a week. I had a discussion with my thesis supervisor about a potential PhD position. He applied for a 1 year grant, with my name as student beneficiary. Together we decided to apply for some more grants once I graduate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I got an interview for PhD in another much better university. If I clear the interview, this employer would contact my supervisor for reference and my supervisor might think that I am playing a double game. Did I do something unethical? How to handle this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will inform my supervisor about the interview sooner anyway. I am extremely worried about this scenario that I could not focus on preparing for the interview at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8183" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T02:55:50.663" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T02:55:50.663" Title="How to responsibly apply for more than one PhD position?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17315" CreationDate="2014-02-22T21:02:06.797" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No reasonable person can fault you for exploring different options since &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there isn't a guarantee of a job &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you haven't committed to this job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely tell your advisor so that you'll be in the right frame of mind for your other interview and can excel there as well ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T21:02:06.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-22T22:28:20.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can not sail in two boats, a foot in each ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;First make up your mind about GOALs in life,  what are your objectives . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how best to  get them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;PhD  for what purpose ,  NOT just for sake of  having on Name plate outside house or   for filling CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worry not, you have enough time to take that decision,  but  Decide about your GOALs today,  you will have a better life, well managed.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12287" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T22:28:20.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17346" CreationDate="2014-02-22T22:30:18.600" Score="3" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm graduating with a BS in Math in April 2014, and I'm starting a Math MS program in September 2014. I realized (a little late) that my true passion is in Exercise Physiology. How do I get from a Math MS program to an Exercise Physiology PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only relevant courses I've had are freshmen-level general biology, junior-level chronic disease prevention, and senior-level plant physiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12288" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T07:58:41.257" Title="How do I go from Math BS/MS to Exercise Physiology PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-22T23:06:29.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question depends on your goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience in the software industry, if your goal is to go into industry, a PhD often gives the impression of someone who is &quot;overly academic&quot;. Someone who holds a doctorate may be seen as someone who preferred to stay in the comfort of academia. I imagine someone who had done two PhDs would be practically unemployable in the eyes of many hiring managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to work in industry: I'd advise dedicating time to locating a company with highly skilled teams doing work that really interests you. Build relationships with those people and go work on those teams. I imagine working as a team on a real world project might be more enjoyable and inspiring than a PhD. You'll probably learn faster and broader too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd advise observing the general demeanor of people doing PhDs too...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12289" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T00:41:33.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T00:41:33.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-23T01:08:13.870" Score="11" ViewCount="2406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a friend who is applying for a PhD in my lab. He happens to be from Brazil, on an F-1 visa. He was told by my advisor that his citizenship status affects the sources of funding available to support his work. I was always under an impression that the principal investigator applies for research grants and funding does not depend on visa status (if any) of the students under his guidance. Was I wrong in making this assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9306" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T19:20:46.723" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T19:20:46.723" Title="Research grants for international PhD candidates" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17320" CreationDate="2014-02-23T01:24:58.477" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It absolutely depends on the source of funding. Each organization has their own rules. By and large, the NSF (since you mentioned F-1 visas I assume this is US-centric) allows foreign students to receive funding from grants, but this intent has to be disclosed at the time of submitting the grant request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DARPA has slightly tighter rules although I'm reasonably sure foreign nationals can be funded. But if you're from a &quot;country of interest&quot; like Iran, there can be other complications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, while these are not PI-requested grants, the NSF-Hertz graduate fellowships are exclusively for US citizens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s This even applies to PIs. There's a large DARPA program that you're not eligible to apply for unless you have a SECRET clearance, for which a necessary but not sufficient condition is that you're a US citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T01:24:58.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-02-23T11:08:55.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happened in my lab. The solution was to either present the work by a co-author, or present the work by a lab mate that was attending the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention that in the second case (non-author, lab mate) you need to get in touch with the &lt;em&gt;conference staff&lt;/em&gt; in order to expose the case to them and make sure they agree. Some conferences consider it a &lt;em&gt;paper withdrawal&lt;/em&gt; when none of the co-authors attends the conference to present the work. Also, you will still have to pay the author fees, even if you can't assist to the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T11:08:55.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17320" CreationDate="2014-02-23T15:32:00.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question (or the supervisor's answer) does not indicate clearly if the supervisor is planning to incorporate your friend into one of his grants as support personnel, or is planning to have your friend write his own doctoral fellowship grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first option, the student's visa status does not matter in most of the cases. I have seen CDC and NIH grants used to fund foreign students. My PhD was also funded by NIH (I was not listed as an investigator) when I was holding an F1 visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only wrinkle I can think of is that, the PI (principal investigator) might have budgeted a full time salary of, say, $50000 a year for an assistant. Due to F1 visa's limitation, the student has to be a full-time student, which means he cannot get full-time salary as a worker simultaneously. The usual approach is to resubmit a minor adjustment and change the budget into $25000 part-time salary and $25000 scholarly support. At this point, some problems can occur as some grants might have specified that they wouldn't fund school fee (which means your friend may have to look for scholarship to supplement his study. But he will have some stipend from the grant), and the agency may also question the feasibility of cutting a position's time in half. etc. Otherwise, I cannot think of other significant reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the latter case, then visa status matters a whole lot more. If your friend is going to write his own grants, it is true that a lot of grants do not accept proposal from non-US citizens. Try to scout around some grant websites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grants.gov&lt;/a&gt; and do a search. The site allows you to screen out grants by applicant's visa status. As far as I have seen, PhD fellowship grants mostly welcome all kinds of visa status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, clarify with the said supervisor, and start assessing the grant availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T15:32:00.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-02-23T18:33:38.177" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option that's not quite included is what I'll call the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;we love you for your brain&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In certain parts of STEM (especially physics/math/computer science), you can get a certain kind of industry job not based on the subject of your research, but merely as someone with &quot;analytical thinking&quot; skills. Wall street 'quants' are the best example of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your specialty is a different non-STEM discipline a similar phenomenon can occur. People coming out of the humanities with strong critical writing/reading skills can end up in grant-writing positions, or technical writing positions with corporations, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T18:33:38.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17277" CreationDate="2014-02-23T18:49:34.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the wording of your question, it looks like what you wrote can be summarized as &quot;I wrote this code and obtained these results&quot;. Even if your code and results are correct (I assume they are, if they got your prof's attention), this is not a publishable paper. The reason is that &quot;I wrote this code and obtained these results&quot; is something that you can say of any piece of code that actually works, no matter how trivial or mundane. What your prof is expecting you to write is a paper that says &quot;I wrote this code and obtained these results, &lt;em&gt;and this is interesting to you, dear reader,  because...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. There are a bunch of reasons why your code is interesting: it might run faster than standard code for certain cases; it opens up a different way of attacking a certain problem; it shows that a certain cases have some properties that set them apart from their complement class; and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had decided to go into industry after getting your BSc, you would be paid to write code that works, period. In grad school, on the other hand, whether your code actually works is to some extent secondary (cf. Knuth's quote &quot;Beware of this code: I've proven it correct, but I haven't run it yet&quot;). What matters is whether your code teaches your peers (grad students, postdocs, profs) something new about your (sub)field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T18:49:34.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17307" CreationDate="2014-02-23T19:15:00.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do these instructions come from an institution in an English-speaking country? If this came from an university in my homeland, I'd interpret it as &quot;list of all courses taken with grades&quot;, clumsily translated into English. Besides that, it's not unusual to ask for this kind of information in when applying for a PhD (at least in Italy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T19:15:00.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17333" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-02-23T19:21:54.027" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T19:21:54.027" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T19:21:54.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17334" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-02-23T19:21:54.027" Score="0" Body="Question specific to academic life in the United States of America and to their university and higher education system." OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T19:42:37.630" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T19:42:37.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:07:51.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The methods we use in physics are certainly different from the ones used in math. We have lab courses. Also, there is a huge pedagogical literature on overcoming students' preexisting conceptions of physics, and the literature seems to show that straight lecturing never does an acceptable job of overcoming these preconceptions. The classic paper is Hake, &quot;Interactive Engagement Versus Traditional Methods: a Six-Thousand Student Survey of Mechanics Test Data for Introductory Physics Courses, Am. J. of Phys, 66 (1997) 64, and I believe it's available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:07:51.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16344" CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:43:43.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is better to have a single supervisor than two. Because every time you show some work, there will be two advices and many revisions to your papers,thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you know the professors thoroughly, don't consider having two supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7720" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:43:43.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16344" CreationDate="2014-02-23T22:53:01.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to incompatibility with my current advisor, I am currently looking for other advisor on his back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you mean &quot;behind his back&quot;? That's okay, people usually don't tell their advisor (or employer, in the business world) when they're looking for another one to switch to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any advice? I am so scared that what if he discovers that I'm looking around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he finds out and confronts you about it just tell him that you don't feel like you are able to contribute to the research that he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now I have tried to set up new email account so I can deny everything if things get ugly. [...] It is pretty much a very dangerous covert mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope, that's just paranoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any people have the same experience, can you share your trick with me please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I switched, after a year with my first advisor. The work he was having me do didn't interest me at all, and to be honest, I wasn't doing it as well as I probably could (lack of motivation reduces work quality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I simply asked about the department for who was looking for graduate students (like I did in the first year to find this advisor in the first place). I didn't tell my current advisor, but I also didn't take any paranoid measures like switching email accounts. I used my official university account for everything. After finding a new advisor, he contacted the old advisor, making sure everyone is good with the switching arrangement, I finished up my semester of work (up to the end of the contract of the funded project) with the old advisor, I had a meeting where I gave an overview of the work to the person who will take it over and answered some questions, and then I started working with the new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, everyone was fine. I'm even collaborating with the old advisor a little on some research right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T22:53:01.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17344" CreationDate="2014-02-24T01:20:34.620" Score="5" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a master student at a university in Korea and going to graduate next June. By now, I think about doing PhD and have to make a decision on &amp;quot;stay&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;leave&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My professor is very nice and quite well known in my university. The&#xA;working conditions are good, PC, seats, no time restriction... (but everyone working like crazy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor really nice to me (actually us - foreign student), I was found a good scholarship  for the master course ($1300/month) while&#xA;the    average is $700-600.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't have to make much effort on searching for a PhD position (don't need to take English test like IELTS, toefl) and the salary is good in comparison with other universities in Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not really face to face talking but I agree with my professor to continue PhD there before I go to the graduate university. (Which I&#xA;am most afraid of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My background is not good since we focus on publishing only very narrow field. I'm not very good at programming &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt;/C++ as well, I use Matlab all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure about another place but in my University, they focus on&#xA;research not the graduate course. My background is quite weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My professor is very very busy and not really good in my current topic.&#xA;Almost every member in my team have to find their own way (follow the topic of their project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this environment is not very good for the PhD. The communication between Professor and student is like a one way communication. We obey what ever we are told. Not really two way communication or discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm 25, single, and want to do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I continue my PhD on the current Lab or looking for PhD position in some where else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps: I'm looking for PhD position which related to signal processing and Compressive sensing. My current's topic is image/video compressive sensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Updates.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mar. 2014&lt;/strong&gt;: Thank for your advice, I decided to stay for my PhD but more for my personal issue. For my current PhD it is little disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my support is lower than what I discussed with the professor before starting PhD. We agreed on $1000 but later paid me $800/month due to lab situation (the other PhD salary is still the same $1000 or higher). After asking  many times, I now have to do an internship 1 day/week as an solution with $250 salary more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor is very busy, even for checking my conference paper before sending.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jul. 2015&lt;/strong&gt; Now I'm a little doubtful what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor has no time for us and even for my journal paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One PhD student left without a word&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice for someone considering study in Korea: Master is enough, go somewhere else for PhD!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11841" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T09:56:38.437" Title="Stay or leave for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T02:21:24.323" Score="11" ViewCount="4898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the middle of a complicated situation, and I'm wondering whether this is commonplace in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short: I'm an international student, and I recently completed my master's degree in CS. I had been working with one adviser (Prof A), I completed my course work in December, but since Prof A couldn't find worthy candidates to fill my place, Prof A told me that if I assist her with her research projects for one more semester, she will help me find a job. Fast forward two months, she told me in a meeting that she tried to help but she can't and that I should look for a job on my own. I recently asked if I could pursue a PhD in her lab. She said no, as she has no funding. I've successfully applied to a different lab (Prof B), only to find out that all professors are provided funding for first-year graduate students. &lt;strong&gt;Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation has since developed that I've been able to play my acceptance to Prof B's lab off of Prof A, and she was very happy to take me on now that I'm working on B's research; she clearly hopes to get research funding out of this new-found collaboration. This seems incredibly callous to me; she clearly has no interest in my situation, and simply wants more grant money. &lt;strong&gt;Is this normal behavior for academics?&lt;/strong&gt; I was on the edge of being deported, and she clearly could not care less about my personal situation, only for her research money. &lt;strong&gt;Are all academics this callous?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T14:15:25.913" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T14:15:25.913" Title="I have been betrayed and isolated by my advisor and I am mentally drained. What should I do now?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17340" CreationDate="2014-02-24T03:09:48.047" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;So essentially, what you need is someone to take you on as a PhD. It looks like your current advisor just isn't interested in having you be her PhD student. This other professor is interested in having you as a PhD student, but you aren't interested in his research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like neither of these is an option for doing a PhD. This means that you need to find someone else to be your advisor. Think about who else is in your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, your only choices are probably to find a job or leave the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not mentioning trying to apply to another university because I think admission season is almost over for most, but there might be some places still accepting applications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-edit things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you don't know if she lied. You have no idea under what constraints she operates. Yes, you've been told first-years get funding, but a PhD is more than a year, so what is she supposed to do with you after that, if she really doesn't have funding? That would have been worse, spending a year working for her and then being deported, don't you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if she did lie, she might have done it because she doesn't tell you what's really preventing her from taking you on. What if you're not as good a researcher as you think you are and she doesn't want you working on her project? What if she got funding from a grant that requires the participants to be citizens, and she's trying to get another student, who actually qualified for it, to join her? There are lots of possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal? Academics aren't special. People lie. I lie sometimes. I'm sure you lie sometimes. Lying is as normal in academia as it is anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, the above answers the rest of your question too. You assume you know her situation and motivations when the fact is that you don't. You conclude that she's callous---maybe she is, maybe she isn't---again, sometimes you're going to run into a callous person, might even get (un)lucky and stumble upon a sociopath, that's just the risk you run when interacting with people. Nothing special about academia there either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="11880" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T04:17:45.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T04:17:45.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17232" CreationDate="2014-02-24T03:28:19.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to some of the existing answers, a desire to do two PhDs in different fields may be a sign that you want to combine your interest and skills in those two areas. This is very reasonable. There are also arguably several better alternatives for combining two fields in a research career than completing two separate PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main option is to &lt;strong&gt;do a PhD in one field that links in with the other field&lt;/strong&gt;. With regards to the linking, you can have a PhD supervisor who works at the intersection of the two fields, you can get a co-supervisor who works in the second field, you can self-teach yourself the other field, or you can do formal training in the other field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this discussion concrete, I can point to many examples where a person combines skills in one field to complement another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I personally completed a PhD in psychology, but have endeavoured to acquire skills in statistics (through courses, self-teaching, a Post-Doc with a statistician, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know a student who has a law degree and is completing a PhD in forensic psychology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I knew a professor who had published books on music, and studied the psychology of music.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after your undergraduate studies you find that you still enjoy engineering and mathematics, you may be able to find a PhD in one of these fields that links with the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T03:28:19.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17339" CreationDate="2014-02-24T06:14:20.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you say you like the research where you are and you are fairly productive there, you can probably successfully get a PhD there. It sounds like your advisor is not perfect (busy, etc) but few advisors are &quot;perfect&quot; from their students' perspectives. And if you stay, you won't have to interrupt your research to apply to other schools and transition to a new group. Staying where you are is a &quot;safe&quot; choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go somewhere else, some of your weaknesses (which you are able to ignore in your current position) may be exposed, and you'll have to work on improving them. And you will probably meet new collaborators (especially if you go to anther country) and be exposed to new ideas and techniques that will be difficult to learn, but will make you a better and more capable researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question depends on what you want to gain from your PhD: Do you want to get a degree and some nice publications? Then staying where you are sounds like the easiest way. Or do you want to improve yourself and broaden yourself as a researcher? Then you might be better off leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that - of course, even if you stay, you can still challenge yourself and improve yourself and your capabilities. But since you don't have to &quot;prove yourself&quot; in your current position, there's nothing forcing you to do so - you'd have to be exceptionally self-motivated and disciplined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T06:29:36.197" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T06:29:36.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17230" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:27:35.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything Matthew G. has said. But I wanted to offer some additional thoughts on your second point about convincing your advisor to use a plain-text file format. Demonstrate any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send the Excel file to a friend running Linux and ask them to open it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save the Excel file in Excel 2007+ format and try to open it in an Excel version from 2003 or earlier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to open the Excel file in a text editor to make changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then repeat all of the above with a CSV/TSV. The portability of the plain-text format will be shown to be unmatched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T07:27:35.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17318" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:58:41.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way to get into any PhD program is to apply to it.  If you are interested in staying at your current institution, you can seek out faculty in Exercise Physiology (assuming there are any; I must admit that I know nothing about this particular program, including how common it is) and ask them whether your coursework so far would make you a reasonable candidate for the program, and if not, how much more you need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One obvious question: are you interested in using your mathematical training in a significant way in your future career in Exercise Physiology?  If so, then continuing on to get the MS is math could be an advantage: I imagine that relatively few Exercise Physiology PhD students have that much mathematical training, but like in most academic fields there is always room for people who do have that training and want to use it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having a real change of heart, I have to ask: why begin a master's program in math if you have decided you don't want to use mathematics later in life?  Why aren't you trying to take courses in Exercise Physiology?  Also, I am a mathematician, so I can say that getting an MS in math is not a triviality: it most typically takes two years, and if your heart's not really in it, it could drag for longer than that and really not be fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T07:58:41.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17351" CreationDate="2014-02-24T08:12:03.360" Score="42" ViewCount="22315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am soon finishing my PhD in computer science and I decided to leave academia for the industry (not industry research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not clear about what to include in the CV. &#xA;I currently structured it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work experience (including teaching positions and internships)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected Honors, Awards &amp;amp; Fellowships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programming Skills &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected journal publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected Workshops, Schools  &amp;amp; Conference Talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which in its current version results in a two page CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am neither sure about the ordering of the above items as well as the importance of each. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example while I have ten publications I only mention two of them in the CV. On the other hand I mention about eleven Workshops, Schools  &amp;amp; Conference Talks. I think this is not the right balance. On the other hand I am not sure how much companies (like Facebook, LinkedIn, ...) care about theoretical publications. I also do not mention any research visits I did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, what academic information do you include in a CV for non academic positions and how important is each of the items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10277" LastEditorUserId="16022" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T22:58:48.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T22:58:48.453" Title="CV for leaving academia after PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T08:32:25.043" Score="5" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a student is enrolled in a PhD program in the US and is in the first or 2nd year and has not started his/her thesis work but has only done coursework. The student has always been in the same lab (no rotations). Say such student for whatever reason wants to switch to a PhD program in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should such a student handle contacting PhD advisors and other institutions? Should the student mention in the first e-mail that he/she is already enrolled in a PhD program or can this be mentioned in the first phone call? Or should it be mentioned at all? How much would this situation decrease the chances of getting accepted into a PhD program in Europe? Or should the student first quit the current PhD program before applying to any other program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T12:30:26.827" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T12:30:26.827" Title="Switch PhD program: how to contact possible PhD advisors when already enrolled in PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17348" CreationDate="2014-02-24T08:36:48.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Email, honesty and avoid burning bridges.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can freely email (and otherwise) contact potential PhD advisors, of course remembering that they are always busy, so you need to be concise and have something of interest to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be honest about your current situation. If you are not and then the potential new advisor finds out about it, it will look bad and will likely ruin your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not quit your current situation. That would look worse than wanting to change/improve your circumstances. And if you fail to find a new position, you'll be left with nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T08:36:48.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T08:53:48.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason to omit your publications, since in your proposed ordering they are at the end. You definitely want to indicate your programming prowess as soon as possible. It might also help to insert a line above the Education section indicating your areas of expertise and interests. This is useful for bots that look for keyword matches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T08:53:48.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T09:11:45.447" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current structure of your CV looks like an academic CV to me. You put too much emphasis on the academic credentials. You definitely need to rewrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the industry (not industry research) companies are looking for are your &lt;strong&gt;skills and experience&lt;/strong&gt;. They are not interested in how many publications you have or how many conference talks you gave. They are interested in how much you know about &lt;strong&gt;solving problems&lt;/strong&gt; so that you can help them to make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to emphasize your programming skills, the contents of your publications (what kind of problems you solved in those papers), the internships, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't under-estimate your teaching experience. Emphasize it. Many hiring managers had told me that they like the teaching experience on my resume. I asked them why. They said I must know how to communicate because I can teach. Knowing how to communicate to others is an essential skill in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T09:11:45.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T09:25:46.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may find the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://versatilephd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Versatile PhD&lt;/a&gt; helpful, as it provides guidance on how to transition from an academic research track into the non-academic market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that you need to stop thinking in terms of the incentive structure of academia (i.e., firstly publications, secondly grants, positions, and awards) and start thinking in terms of skills that you can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usually means you need to organize your resume in terms of employment or projects and the skills and competency you demonstrated therein. If you have project management skills (supervision of research assistants, for example), programming skills put to use in projects, or other skills (meeting deadlines, working collaboratively with others, etc.) these are the things to emphasize as bullet points under jobs/projects rather listing out academically-valued output (pubs, presentations, grants, visits, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're applying for entry-level jobs in industry, I see no reason why your resume should be longer than one page. If you have an online presence, you can always have a longer CV online that possible employers can look at if they're intrigued by what you have to offer from your short-form resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T09:25:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T09:30:24.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if you are writing a CV for particular position or a CV to put on a web-page.&#xA;A common advise is to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv.htm&quot;&gt;fit the CV to the particular position&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (What makes a good CV? section) you are applying for. So lets assume that you are writing something like your CV template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a template I would suggest to put as much papers, experience, skills and relevant information as you can think of. This may significantly shorten the time of CV preparation for any particular position in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on, when you will prepare a version of your CV for particular job, you will delete all points which are not relevant as you want to keep your CV as short and as relevant as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the question: &lt;strong&gt;you should put that academic information which is relevant to the application&lt;/strong&gt;. In some jobs, it can be relevant that you are able to write long texts, in some others that you are able to lead a group of people, speak in public or your innovative thinking and so on. So put everything now and choose the relevant content for each CV later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that the list of the conference talks, or the papers is way to long you can include only 5 the most important or the ones which can be easily checked. In case you really want to emphasize the quantity of your work, put list of the papers/conferences on a separate paper or provide a link of such information in the accompanying letter or mail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T09:30:24.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17355" CreationDate="2014-02-24T11:35:26.737" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is citation index?&#xA;How are such indices calculated?&#xA;How can any journal become part of an index?&#xA;These are my questions about various indexes that are used at academic environments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12334" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T11:45:12.563" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T12:30:59.403" Title="What is citation index?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17354" CreationDate="2014-02-24T12:30:59.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually an entire field dedicated to answering the question about how to measure scholarly impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two indices that you could probably compute by hand in a little bit of time are the h-index and the g-index. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are an author thinking about submitting a draft, and looking for a good journal in your field, one place to look is on Google Scholar. Go to scholar.google.com, then click on `metrics'. Google has auto calculated the h-index and g-index for the last five years of a lot of different journals in different fields. Generally speaking journals with higher h or g numbers are going to be better places to publish. (Not an ironclad rule, so check with a trusted advisor before sending something out, but a good rule of thumb)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an editor of a journal and you want your journal indexed, then just write to the editor of Journal Citation Reports and ask about the process to be included. Be prepared for a lengthy wait though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_Citation_Reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_Citation_Reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T12:30:59.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17239" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:15:56.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When talking about Grad Student B, you said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not a good definition of &quot;most important contributor&quot;, I don't know what is. B should be the first author. If you want to make sure that A gets due credit, and the journal in question allows this, I would suggest adding a footnote specifying who did what (I typically ask my undergrads to do this when they write joint term papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T13:15:56.470" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17230" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:58:39.660" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Consider non-proprietary format as a good practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find an argument in the Tim Berners-Lee &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5 star approach&lt;/a&gt;. When discussing Open Data (something we should be embracing more in academia as well), he presents the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the star scheme, you get one (big!) star if the information has&#xA;  been made public at all, even if it is a photo of a scan of a fax of a&#xA;  table -- if it has an open licence. The you get more stars as you make&#xA;  it progressively more powerful, easier for people to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★     Available on the web (whatever format) but with an open licence, to be Open Data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★★    Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★★★   as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★★★★  All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★★★★★     All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best to publish in an non-proprietary format (csv would be fine) as you claimed.&#xA;Stars 4 &amp;amp; 5 are for Linked Data structure which is a nice thing to aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Publish in a reliable repository thinking long-term preservation&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation and versioning are very important if you want to alter something on your data-sets in the future. &#xA;I would recommend you publish your data in &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt;. Research made publicly available of figshare gets allocated a DataCite DOI at point of publication. It supports versioning as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative for a repository is &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedata.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DataVerse&lt;/a&gt;  suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17230/is-there-a-standard-format-for-sharing-data/17357#comment34434_17357&quot;&gt;Thomas&lt;/a&gt; below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T08:00:48.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:01:02.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: The industry hiring process is entirely different from academia.  You'll have to adapt but it isn't that hard.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: It's not clear from your answer whether you're in the US or elsewhere so please translate my US-centric answer to fit your situation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received specific advice on this subject when I was doing the same thing years ago.  It's a variant of &quot;speak to your audience&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A one-page resume is for the human resources filters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A detailed CV is for the people with whom you want to have a detailed conversation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human resource filtering problem is a serious one.  From the point of view of HR, everyone in the world is applying to the job, regardless of experience, requirements or even location.  HR might not even know what all the technical jargon means but they're looking to filter that pile down as fast as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to write the one-page resume carefully to fit the position description and set of requirements.  Yes, they're looking to see if you've ever held paying work and who they can call to confirm that.  However, they're also looking for certain called out buzzwords and key points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if they use the phrase &quot;required experience elements&quot; in the position description, make sure that your resume has a bold &quot;Experience elements:&quot; section.  If the description asks for &quot;Java&quot;, make sure your resume describes your use of Java for each position or project that you list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the resume is all about taking away their excuse to say &quot;No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CV is an entirely different thing.  Someone who's interested in your CV knows a lot about the details of the position and wants to have a detailed conversation with you.  With the CV, you have the ability to reduce a lot of the friction: you're already volunteering plenty of the &quot;tell me about this project...&quot; content up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rewrite the resume from scratch for every job, tuning the words to fit the position description.  It's not that onerous: it's only a page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Offer the CV in correspondence.  These days, I would probably point them to LinkedIn or careers.stackoverflow.com&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I was called in for an interview, I would brought several paper copies of my resume and CV tucked in to my portfolio of previous work.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat all of the above far more times than I like to remember and eventually you find a paying job....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12344" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T15:01:02.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:44:18.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since others have this covered fairly well, I'll add only this: make sure that your main bullet points are recent!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're applying to colleges, they want to know what you did in high school.  They don't care about K-8(in the US).  They want to know extracurricular activities, standardized test scores, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're applying for grad school, they want to know what you did in college.  What's your overall GPA, what's your major's GPA, GRE scores, extracurricular activities, undergrad research positions, internships, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're applying for your fifth job in your career, they want to know what you did at your previous jobs.  They may still be interested in knowing your Alma Mater, graduation date, and GPA, but they're less interested in all of the details.  You've had 4 jobs since college, and they want to hear about your successes in those jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, when leaving academia for industry work, they will want to hear about your grad work first and foremost.  Others have mentioned the kinds of information you should include - such as skills - so I won't say much other than to say these look good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work experience (including teaching positions and internships)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected Honors, Awards &amp;amp; Fellowships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programming Skills &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience can easily translate into communication experience.  Communication is a great skill to have in the industry, and if you're able to communicate with technical and non-technical folks alike, that is a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honors, awards and fellowships are proof that you're not lazy, that you're motivated, have initiative, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, your last two bullet points about publications and workshops probably won't gain you much, if anything.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, make sure to highlight your accomplishments in college, nothing earlier than undergrad, and focus on your graduate years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11349" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T15:44:18.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24190" CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:50:34.910" Score="4" ViewCount="2357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished writing personal statement and as far as formal etiquette concerns, there should be a date at the beginning. Is this a date I started writing the statement or the date I am sending it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And is this the right format of the date: February 24, 2014?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11891" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-06T05:12:34.347" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T05:12:34.347" Title="Which date should I include in personal statement?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:54:01.273" Score="6" ViewCount="493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm graduating this summer (2014) and trying to find a job in the UK so I can go live with my husband. I am thinking of applying for the Newton Fellowship, however, they have a really strange schedule and timing. That is, I wouldn't find out about the award until late October, and the position wouldn't start until January 2015. That would leave me with an awkward six months without a job or funding, unless I managed to get a short-term job. I've decided to start applying for other positions (lectureships and funded post-docs) with an eye toward the more immediate future and because the Newton is very competitive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what happens if I take a 1-2 year post-doc offer and then find out I am awarded the fellowship? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to use the funds wherever I am? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I accept a job-offer do I have to notify the fellowship and withdraw my application? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12347" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T13:26:52.503" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T01:38:22.220" Title="Flexibility of the Newton Fellowship?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T16:20:58.913" Score="18" ViewCount="2276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been in engineering PhD for 6 months and now considering transferring to another university. The reason is not academic, but family -- I'm in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend. We're both serious about this relationship and plan to get married. However if I keep doing my PhD in my current university, we'll be separated for many years &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering transferring my PhD to university closer to him. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I contact the potential future advisor first before telling my boss I'm leaving? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When should I talk to current advisor and how (focus on my family reason?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to get his letter of recommendation, or I'll screw up this relationship entirely?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will it possible to transfer to an university better than my current one? (honestly getting to a higher place is not my purpose, believe or not, but around my BF's place are almost all very good universities (1 tier higher than my current one), which actually refused me when I applied them last time. So I'm very concerned if I could be able to enter them now)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that comfort me is that because I work hard, my current advisor seems have good impression on me. But I don't know whether this will help. If anyone have any ideas, would you share your suggestion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12348" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T01:02:05.253" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T04:48:29.813" Title="How to get letter of recommendation from current advisor if transferring PhD to another university for family reasons?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17369" CreationDate="2014-02-24T16:51:46.447" Score="34" ViewCount="3666" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a male Ph.D. student in engineering, I have not had a problem with long hair at any of the reviews I've attended with funding agencies, conferences, etc. However, I wonder if search committees will view long hair in a negative light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would particularly like to know if anyone has known of any instance in which a male candidate's long hair worked against their chances of obtaining an academic position, but I've edited this question title to be more general with respect to a candidate's outward appearance attributes &lt;em&gt;which are under their control&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T19:19:17.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T19:19:17.287" Title="Are search committees biased in terms of a candidate's looks, such as long hair for men?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17362" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:35:22.400" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is generally an emotionally sane person, he should be able to understand your position. If your advisor is not, you're better off finding out as early as possible, and then to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the right time to talk to your supervisor is right now, for two primary reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you're working in a lab, it is quite likely that your supervisor would want to hire a replacement for you, which takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor may have contacts to the relevant universities, and be able to help you moving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to what to talk about, there are two important aspects besides your wish to be closer to your family:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll want to reassure him that you are not leaving unfinished things around. Wrap up your experiments as far as possible before you leave, and be available to work on manuscripts after you're gone, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you plan to take your thesis topic with you? If so, you probably should discuss intellectual ownership with your advisor. Even if you feel it was your idea, he may disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, is there any risk that your current lab has some &quot;secret techniques&quot; that you'd &quot;hand over&quot; to the competition? If so, try to address potential concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T17:35:22.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T18:15:45.043" Score="10" ViewCount="2744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a conundrum.&#xA;Due to a change in areas half way through my PhD, I find myself at the end of my training with no significant publications. I have one in press, and several in prep so in the next year I should have 3-4 if all goes well. I'm also at a top ten university in the US and have good recommendation letters etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue is: I need to get a job as soon as possible &lt;strong&gt;in Europe&lt;/strong&gt; to be with my partner. I have applied to both post-docs and to some assistant professorships at smaller schools in his city thinking I should at least try but I'm feeling seriously under-competitive where the norm in my field is at least three papers by graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an option to stay on as a grad student for a 6th year at my institution, but it would have to be remotely (as I will move to Europe anyway) and frankly, I don't want to have to do that (both because it's too hard to do research and I make little money). But it is a safe option, and might give me time to write up all the backlogged data I've recently acquired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my options are to take an extra year with very little pay and apply later, or apply extensively and effortfully to jobs that will probably reject me, though there is a small chance I'll get one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your experience, will people even consider PhD's with very few pubs, or impending pubs, and if so, are there things I can do to make my application look more competitive, e.g. should I explain myself (I don't want to make excuses though) or highlight grants and presentations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I just cut my losses and suffer through living abroad with no money and taking the extra time I would have spent applying to a million places to write up a bunch of papers and then try again next year with more confidence and competence, and maybe landing a better job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I ended up getting short-listed for five institutions, two of which are top-tier, and ultimately was offered two assistant professorships and one post-doc. I am sure I would have been better off with more pubs but I'm glad I ended up applying for reach jobs as ultimately I think I ended up with some great choices, met a lot of people in the field, and most importantly, got a job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all your input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12347" LastEditorUserId="12347" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T22:22:44.243" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:22:44.243" Title="Applying for jobs without significant publications: is it worth the pain and what to highlight?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-24T18:18:59.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll just add a few points a couple of friend as recruiters told me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Interviewing process usually goes through HR first, believe me, they could not care less about your publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the short form CV, is the one you usually give out first. And since is HR people who will be looking at it first, you have to put emphasis on WHAT tools you know how to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My research consisted on the optimization of distributed systems &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is mute for an HR, and more than one TI manager. But if instead you rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During my research, I used extensively tools like HADOOP and JAVA in a team setting, using collaboration systems like Github (even saying subversion might not help at all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sentences are saying the same, but in the second one you are specifying which tools did you used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that academic buzzwords like &quot;parallel computing&quot; , &quot;probabilistic inference&quot;, etc. Do not mean much for many recruiters. They care about the tools, and how long have you worked with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a github repository with some examples, that might help them as well (I'm assuming you are a programmer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T18:18:59.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17365" CreationDate="2014-02-24T18:58:09.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: this question is seriously underspecified. For a reasonable answer we would probably need at least the city you are looking for, your field, your qualifications beside publications, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I feel that the Assistant Professor market in Europe is &lt;strong&gt;insanely&lt;/strong&gt; dry in most fields, and, honestly, getting an Assistant Professor position directly after your PhD graduation is very unlikely even with an extremely good CV. If your CV is not &lt;strong&gt;absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; top-notch for your field, I am afraid applying is largely a waste of your time. On the other hand, at least in my field, getting a PostDoc is often comparatively easy and uncomplicated, and reasonably payed in many places. A PostDoc is also a really good time to write up a backlog of publications and improve one's CV, so maybe this is what you should be shooting for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T18:58:09.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T19:07:02.957" Score="14" ViewCount="3164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having some trouble understanding exactly what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/authors/transfer-of-copyright-agreement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Physical Society (APS) transfer of copyright agreement&lt;/a&gt; does and does not permit, and I was wondering whether someone here may have a clearer insight or previous contact with them to know exactly what their position is. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/copyrightFAQ.html#eprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyright FAQ&lt;/a&gt; is, I feel, not clear enough on the subject, and it's not quite clear how I should contact them about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant paragraphs from the copyright transfer agreement are, I think&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. The nonexclusive right, after publication by APS, to give permission to third parties to republish print versions of the Article or a translation thereof, or excerpts therefrom, without obtaining permission from APS, provided the APS-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not republished in another journal, and the third party does not charge a fee. If the APS version is used, or the third party republishes in a publication or product charging a fee for use, permission from APS must be obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4. The right to post and update the Article on free-access e-print servers as long as files prepared and/or formatted by APS or its vendors are not used for that purpose. Any such posting made or updated after acceptance of the Article for publication shall include a link to the online abstract in the APS journal or to the entry page of the journal. If the author wishes the APS-prepared version to be used for an online posting other than on the author(s)’ or employer’s website, APS permission is required; if permission is granted, APS will provide the Article as it was published in the journal, and use will be subject to APS terms and conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter one looks pretty inclusive, but it does not specify whether all licensing schemes for e-print servers are acceptable or not. Similarly, in their  I am worried, in particular, by a note in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/license&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv license help page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Creative Commons Attribution license in particular, permits commercial reuse and thus conflicts with many journal agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, posting to an e-print server may be construed as overstepping the rights granted by point 2 of the agreement, since it can be used by a third party as permission to republish it in print and charge a fee for it. If that is the only objection, then choosing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CC Noncommercial-ShareAlike&lt;/a&gt; license would be compatible with the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two specific questions about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is my reading of these publicly available documents correct?&lt;/strong&gt; Did I miss important information either on these or other publicly available resources?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have specific experience with them regarding this question? Is there some specific contact for these matters?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I believe the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-exclusive license to distribute&lt;/a&gt;, which is the most restrictive arXiv license, is definitely compatible. This question is mostly about the Creative Commons licenses.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T02:50:54.647" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T02:50:54.647" Title="What arXiv CC licenses are compatible with American Physical Society publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17363" CreationDate="2014-02-24T19:20:12.167" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me place my answer in the context of American academia.  I'm sure that in some other parts of the world social conventions are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contemporary American academia is one of the more formally progressive and tolerant subsets of western society.  There are American schools which recognize a student's right not to have any gender!  Although this is an extreme point, academic culture places a premium on toleration of personal differences, to the extent that most hiring committees are instructed not to take such &quot;irrelevant things&quot; as personal appearance into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do they?  I think all human beings do, in some ways.  I do believe that people who are more physically attractive make more attractive job candidates, all other things being equal (and there are lots of studies to back this up).  Recently for health reasons I lost a substantial amount of weight, and I think that my relations with undergraduate students are noticeably better, e.g. resulting in higher evaluations.  Of course this probably has at least as much to do with the way I (nonverbally) communicate that I perceive myself: being more comfortable in your own skin shows.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, if long hair feels natural and good to you, then I would recommend that you keep it.  Like Samson, it may somehow be a source of strength for you.  I was going to say that even the fact that you're asking about it seems slightly strange, but then I remembered that as a graduate student I would shave my goatee every fall (when I was teaching) and let it grow every spring (when I wasn't).  I have now had a goatee continuously since getting a PhD in 2003!  I also used to dress more nicely for class than I otherwise would.  While I still think that one should not wear clothing which is especially ratty in any professional context, I have long since learned that nobody cares whether I wear sneakers or a jacket or anything like that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that it is not 1964 anymore: the men who were long-haired youths in the 1970s are now some of the senior people around, and many are still proudly growing long what remains of their hair.  Both of the men who have been department heads in my time at my present job grow their hair longer than what conservative mores would recommend, and the current chair has hair halfway down his back.  It is really no big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me say finally that the odd faculty member who mutters something sour about your hair probably had other reasons not to like you.  And if not, do you really want colleagues who are so superficial and intolerant?  Times are tough, but I think one needs to make feeling comfortable in one's own skin a high priority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T23:55:27.473" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T23:55:27.473" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17363" CreationDate="2014-02-24T19:38:13.283" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all agree that they &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt;, but the truth is that probably they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;, at least some of them. It's difficult to control subconscious feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to play the game in your favour, though: wear an elegant, smart outfit and make sure your hair is well groomed (there is a difference between &quot;long hair&quot; and &quot;hasn't seen a pair of scissors in years&quot;). What people are usually biased against is not long hair &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but the feeling of untidyness and negligence that they associate with it; you have to disprove this unconscious mental association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I've had long hair for 1/3 of my life, and cut it a couple of years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T19:38:13.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17363" CreationDate="2014-02-24T19:57:04.167" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are making a mountain out of a molehill. Just cut your hair and grow it back when you get the funding, job or whatever. Just keep it neat. Dress up nicely and conduct yourself well. Unless your hair is like the guy below, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/93DFR.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chris Barnes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11743" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T07:45:30.057" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T07:45:30.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T23:08:26.357" Score="61" ViewCount="8943" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published a paper in a fake journal. I want to withdraw the paper from that journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After successful withdrawal from the fake journal, can I can submit the same paper to a legitimate journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12359" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:47:15.560" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:47:15.560" Title="How can I withdraw a publication from a predatory (fake) journal and resubmit to a legitimate journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17365" CreationDate="2014-02-25T00:14:20.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, OP, you are listing the papers in press and under review under your publications too, right? You don't have to wait till the thing is actually printed to put it on your cv, so long as it is absolutely unambiguous what status each paper has, whether it is under review, been sent back for revision, accepted for publication but forthcoming, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also list current working drafts if but only if those drafts are good enough that you would not be embarrassed to email them to a search committee member instantly upon request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T00:14:20.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17374" CreationDate="2014-02-25T00:19:03.837" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two main barriers for this to happen, and I would not attempt to cross either unless the circumstances were truly exceptional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your paper is already published, you will most likely have transferred either the paper's copyright or a very wide license to the original journal. You can probably force the journal to retract the paper, but if you want the copyright you will have to ask for it back, and it is legally up to them whether they want to give it back or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most journals have a policy of only accepting works which have not already been published. This would make it very hard for your paper to get into the second journal, and the editors would most likely have to make an exception to their rules. This is up to them, and I would advise you to contact them beforehand to see whether they would be willing to do something along these lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst case scenario is one where the paper is very visibly retracted, you do not get the copyright back, and you cannot republish it anywhere. I can't really imagine any degree of shadiness of the original journal that would make this outcome preferable, because a retraction will leave a very visible, very black mark on your publication record for a long time. As mentioned in the comments, retractions are vivid indications of academic misconduct, plagiarism, or just plainly incorrect findings, and rarely of anything else. Therefore, you should be really careful that this doesn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to take this in stages. First, read all the documentation you have available. Read very carefully, in particular, anything you have signed, either in paper or electronically, to the original journal. Check all their publicly available policies, and particularly those on licenses and copyright. Check also what your new target journal states as their requirements that submissions be 'new, unpublished work'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, contact your new target journal first, to see if they will re-house your paper after it's been withdrawn, and what conditions they would require for this. Do not move forward until you have good assurances of a good home for your paper, or you risk ending up with a homeless paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you should contact the original journal. If you gave them the copyright, you will have to ask for it back but you should be prepared for them to say a plain no. I suppose that if you gave them a more restrictive license then you can ask that they take it down and find out how you can revoke it, but you should be aware that author contracts do not normally include anything like that. Be polite and explain why you are doing things but be prepared for things to turn adversarial; you are after all out to affect their revenue stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly, though, why don't you consider your options in terms of fixing the damage this publication has done to your record? Publishing in a predatory journal without knowing it is something that can end up happening to anyone (which is why one should always exercise maximum care when opting for a new publication venue). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the venue of publication does not affect the quality of your paper, but only (potentially) how it is perceived by others. This can be palliated by other means: for example, take the paper to conferences and explain and defend your findings to your peers. Work especially hard at making sure the material finds its way to the hands of people who will use it and cite it, and that will help validate it as good research in a possibly shady journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal is not very visible or accessible, post it to an eprint repository if it is possible (though of course only if other republication options are exhausted and allowed by your original journal, or if you are prepared for your relation with them to turn adversarial). Consider building a bigger paper, formally a derivative work, which you can then publish in a journal you're happier with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there are many options available to mitigate the damage done by a paper in a journal you (and whatever review boards you might come across) don't like. Think them through before you attempt something which is as potentially damaging as this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="820" LastEditDate="2017-07-17T17:44:12.710" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T17:44:12.710" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17363" CreationDate="2014-02-25T00:53:38.820" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;By request:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to your question is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.improb.com/projects/hair/hair-club-top.html&quot;&gt;Luxuriant Hair Club for Scientists.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T00:53:38.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17420" CreationDate="2014-02-25T01:35:12.907" Score="5" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with deciding to which type of school to go in order to gain a better research experience. Basically, the research experience is the most important factor for me to decide my college, since I want to be a strong applicant in PhD admission. Most reputable, research universities are far larger than LACs (liberal arts colleges), and they (except for top schools like HYPSM) are not so friendly places for those who want to conduct their own research and engage in research from Sophomore or even Freshman. To get rich research experience, I want to be involved with research as early as possible and not only during the summer but also throughout a year. Just for example, Reed College has mandatory Senior thesis like Princeton, and profs are eager to help even Sophomores to do their research. However, in research universities, I can take graduate-level courses and touch with cutting-edge research as a research assistant. So, I can gain more advanced knowledge than those in LACs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you tell me your recommendation both for me and those who have the same aspiration?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*If my question is too vague, please just compare UC Berkeley/University of Michigan vs. Reed College/Carleton College. I'm sure this will be a good comparison, since the quality of the students are almost equal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T11:17:16.097" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:12:27.890" Title="In which type of schools can I have better research experience in Biology, liberal arts college or large research university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17380" CreationDate="2014-02-25T02:52:03.330" Score="113" ViewCount="12476" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is in response to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17374/how-to-withdraw-publication-from-fake-journal-and-resubmit-to-legitimate-journal&quot;&gt;this very interesting question&lt;/a&gt;. The original post mentioned that they wish to retract their paper from a &quot;fake&quot; journal. I don't know what a fake journal is but better safe than sorry so I want to make sure what defines a fake journal. In the comments, other people also mentioned &quot;shady&quot; journals and &quot;predatory&quot; journals. This is the first time I encounter these descriptions so I would like to know more about what they entail. I would be interested in hearing about your experience with such journals as well, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastEditorUserId="72231" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T14:12:56.473" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T14:26:34.537" Title="What are &quot;fake&quot;, &quot;shady&quot;, and/or &quot;predatory&quot; journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17379" CreationDate="2014-02-25T03:15:41.130" Score="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;fake&quot; or &quot;shady&quot; journal is a low-quality journal that does little or no quality control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are often called &quot;predatory&quot; because they prey on people who are under a lot of pressure to publish, charging high author fees for promises of quick publication. (Since they do little, if any, peer review, the time from submission of a paper to publication is often very quick in these journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They often engage in deceptive practices to make themselves appear legitimate, such as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretending to be affiliated with a reputable professional society&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claiming an &quot;impact factor&quot; when they do not have one, or when they have an &quot;impact factor&quot; from some entity other than Thomson Reuters ISI &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listing important academics on their editorial board, when these people never agreed to serve in this capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing in one of these journals can be very damaging to your academic career. At best, it shows that you don't know what journals are considered reputable in your field; at worst, it makes you look like you are trying to &quot;get&quot; publications without doing the work required to publish in a reputable, high-quality journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An academic librarian named Jeffrey Beall kept a list of open-access &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172309/https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;journals&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publishers&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; considered to be &quot;predatory.&quot; (The links are to archived versions of the pages).  His lists were quite well-known - you may hear people refer to &quot;Beall's List&quot; when talking about predatory journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between the growth of open-access and the Internet making it possible for literally anyone to start a &quot;journal,&quot; these &quot;journals&quot; have been popping up at an alarming rate. The NY Times even ran a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story&lt;/a&gt; about it recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T14:26:26.383" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T14:26:26.383" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17379" CreationDate="2014-02-25T03:20:18.643" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeffrey Beall, who works for the University of Colorado, Denver, maintained a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of predatory journals. He also publishes his &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170103170856/https://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;criteria&lt;/a&gt; for determining which journals/publishers are predatory. (both links are to archived version of the pages) The criteria are numerous (and I find many of them amusing). The main thrust of the criteria are such things as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of transparency (in both business model and editorial process)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disregard for intellectual property&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promise to publish anything in exchange for money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dishonesty (in business model and editorial process)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor (or no) peer review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="72231" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T14:25:29.590" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T14:25:29.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17395" CreationDate="2014-02-25T04:26:39.287" Score="5" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to submit a manuscript for a special issue in a journal. The guest editor puts a deadline for &lt;em&gt;Confirmation of Intent&lt;/em&gt;. What does this mean? What the editor expects from the authors at this level? are there any samples of such thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T17:05:58.960" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T17:05:58.960" Title="In journals submissions, what does &quot;Confirmation of Intent&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T05:15:54.073" Score="6" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in going to grad-school but I have been working at a &quot;real job&quot; as a software engineer for the past few years (since I graduated with a BS in Math in 2010).  What are the best ways to to break back into the academic world?  How can I spin my work experience in a positive way to departments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I would be getting a phd to study Mathy CS, or CSy Math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12363" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:26:04.293" Title="Getting into gradschool from a &quot;real job&quot;" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T05:59:08.973" Score="6" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a philosophy major. I sometimes wonder how some professors and PhD candidates know as much as they know about subjects outside of their discipline. For instance, I read one philosophy paper by an author who proficiently used methods from other disciplines {agent-based modelling, computer programming, game theory, advanced set-theory} to argue his claim . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a big part of earning a PhD is learning how to learn; the author of that paper evidently learned how to do that. When I imagined myself doing the same, I imagined being able to learn the concepts independently, but feeling unsure about how well I had learned them. So I wondered whether completing, or challenging, classes would be a viable strategy for learning about matters relevant, but not pertinent, to my graduate studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are undergraduate classes ever used as a means to learning what a PhD candidate needs to learn to earn his PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="9263" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T14:04:34.690" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T16:30:26.447" Title="Are undergraduate classes ever used as a means to learning what a PhD candidate needs to learn to earn his PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17384" CreationDate="2014-02-25T06:22:40.530" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: sometimes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;: see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: this describes a STEM-related experience. Not sure how this translates to other disciplines - like philosophy - where instructor interpretation plays a very large role&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only relate my personal experience. In grad school I did take a number of classes, but somehow, even though as an undergraduate I was able to juggle 5-6 courses effortlessly, I found it much more difficult to sit through lecture after lecture and do homeworks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For certain kinds of material (let's say real analysis, or topology) the discipline of a full length course can be quite useful. But most often what you're looking for is some specific concept or set of concepts from a different area. As you &quot;learn how to learn&quot; better, you quickly realize that the most efficient way to do this is to find some lecture notes, or even find an expert who can explain the key ideas in an hour or so. At that point, if you're experienced enough, you know what to take away, which ideas are important, and which ideas you don't need to understand to get your job done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the other factor is time: you're trying to master a body of work in your own research area, and you don't have a lot of time to spare mastering a whole other area as well. But it's surprising how much you can learn from late night paper binges and frantic googling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now of course there are MOOCs and other learning aids that help the self-directed learner. So you can pick up things at your own pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T16:30:26.447" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T16:30:26.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-02-25T06:46:48.120" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I offer the following evidence from credible and official sources &lt;strong&gt;against&lt;/strong&gt; doing a PhD in Computer Science at UNISA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Low graduation rates&lt;/strong&gt;:  17 doctoral students graduated from the College of Science, Engineering, and Techonology (which includes the PhD in Computer Science degree) in 2010, 2011, and 2012 combined. Compare this to the 99 doctoral student enrollments five years earlier in 2005, 2006, and 2007 (combined). Graduation rates are expected to be somewhat low for distance learning students, but rates this low are a bad sign. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://osprey.unisa.ac.za/pg/req.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inadequate supervisory capacity&lt;/strong&gt;: The school admits that &quot;many [research] areas in the School of Computing have reached supervisory capacity&quot; and says that &quot;long waiting lists started forming due to lack of supervisors,&quot; which is another worrying sign.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://osprey.unisa.ac.za/pg/req.pdf&quot;&gt;Same source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very, very low research output&lt;/strong&gt;: Research output is arguably the most important indicator of a reputable PhD program. On &lt;a href=&quot;http://osprey.unisa.ac.za/supervisors.php&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, 6 professors in the School of Computing (which offers the PhD in Computer Science degree) are listed as having openings for PhD students. I looked up the Google Scholar and/or DBLP profiles of these 6 (for those that had them) and consulted personal pages of the rest to get a sense of their research productivity. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Averages across two years (2012 and 2013), the number of publications per person per year was 0.58 on average (range of 0-1.5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of the 7 publications I found for these professors in 2012 and 2013, 3 were in conferences or journals with the name &quot;Africa&quot; in the title (i.e., not international venues). So the average publication rate per person per year in non-local venues was 0.33.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T06:46:48.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17378" CreationDate="2014-02-25T08:56:50.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that any university &quot;type&quot; is universally better or worse for gaining undergraduate research experience. The culture with respect to undergrad research varies so much, even within one school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to look up the Biology faculty in the schools you are considering, and identify those you would be interested in working with. &lt;strong&gt;Do your homework&lt;/strong&gt;  - don't just spam the entire department. Then email them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor {X},&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am {applying to, accepted into} the B.S. program in Biology at {University}. I am interested in pursuing a PhD in {specific area related to X's research} when I graduate, and am hoping to start doing research early in my B.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in your ongoing research on {subject area}. {Say something intelligent about subject area that demonstrates your ability to contribute.} Do you take on undergraduate research students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I highly recommend reading the tips here for contacting a prospective research advisor: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/advice/prospective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/advice/prospective.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, you'll get a good sense for where you're most likely to have undergraduate research opportunities, and a head start on finding a potential research advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T08:56:50.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-25T10:39:08.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're looking into joining a Dev Shop, I'd ensure that your CV includes your engineering skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I mean by engineering skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which source control tools are you familiar with?&#xA;Which test frameworks have you used?&#xA;Have you used any CI tools (i.e. Hudson)?&#xA;Which Agile methodologies do you use?&#xA;Have you contributed to any open source projects?&#xA;Do you have a github account so that interviewers can see your code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a perception that developers from Academia tend to be a little light on these skills, so it's important to ensure your CV describes them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12371" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T10:39:08.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2951" CreationDate="2014-02-25T10:41:46.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those who can afford Adobe Acrobat, there is a function called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/file-compare-two-pdf-files.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;compare documents&lt;/a&gt;. Here is how I usually proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generate the PDF of my submitted article. My PDF can even miss several items, like tables and figures (often submitted separateley). Then, I proceed to compare &lt;em&gt;the text&lt;/em&gt; of my PDF and the proof. Text-only comparison is an option to be checked when comparing the documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is a screenshot of what I obtain. It is the proof with some highlighted parts of text. When I move the mouse pointer over the highlighted text, I see what the change was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the screenshot, I can see that I wrote &lt;em&gt;psychometrics”1.&lt;/em&gt; while they wrote &lt;em&gt;psychometrics”.1&lt;/em&gt;, inverting the &lt;em&gt;dot&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HRIQj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach works pretty good with tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is not a great answer to tell people to buy an expensive proprietary software. However, it works fine for me. Hopefully there is a free/opensource PDF solution that does the same job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T10:41:46.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17379" CreationDate="2014-02-25T11:10:48.580" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;... and a very good question indeed. The present answers do a good job, but it's worth emphasizing that there is a whole continuum between legitimate journals and what amount to conning schemes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Predatory&quot; is used to describe a journal that hinges its business model on getting article processing charges from authors, whilst providing a very low quality journal. &quot;Fake&quot; is less defined, but it carries the connotation of a journal that pretends to carry out rigorous peer review but in fact doesn't (which is what makes it damaging on a CV: it looks like you too want to skip formal peer review but pretend you still did it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Shady&quot; is a much more informal term, and denotes a journal anywhere in that continuum. I intentionally used this term in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17376/820&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to keep it broadly applicable, in terms of any journal of possibly not-so-good standing which is, after publication, thought to have a negative impact on one's CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T11:10:48.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T11:37:42.817" Score="4" ViewCount="25466" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are considering to offer double majors between my department and other departments. While looking at examples from other universities, we came across other terms such as dual degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the undergraduate level what is the difference, generally speaking, between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double Major &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dual Degree &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two Bachelors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moa&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="9547" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T11:48:45.003" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T16:00:03.317" Title="What is the difference between dual degree, 2 Bachelors and double major?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17362" CreationDate="2014-02-25T12:12:40.057" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I did this.&lt;/strong&gt; I moved to a higher-tier department that had previously rejected me, after two years in my first PhD program, to be close to my SO.  My former advisor and the other faculty in my research area were nothing but helpful and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sooner you talk to your current advisor the better. The last thing you want to happen, no matter how friendly and understanding your advisor, is for someone to ask him &quot;So why is Jae leaving?&quot; before he knows you're thinking of leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honest and direct.  Keep in mind that you are asking for help—which is your advisor's job—not for permission to leave.  Try to bring your advisor in as a collaborator in your move.  Reassure him that you will finish whatever tasks are still on your plate, and that you are willing to help choose, train, and/or mentor your replacement if his thinks that would be appropriate.  (Follow through.) Try to leave doors open for future collaboration, either through visits or remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, ask for a strong letter of recommendation, and for suggestions for potential advisors to contact.  Since your target schools have already rejected you, you need strong evidence of excellence beyond your undergraduate record.  Your current advisor is the strongest source of that evidence; people will take his letter very seriously.  Conversely, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; having a letter from your current advisor will raise a red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you can pick up a master's degree before you leave, that will raise fewer eyebrows when people look at your CV in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T12:12:40.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17382" CreationDate="2014-02-25T12:13:08.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @vadim123 said in the comment, this is to estimate the size of the special issue. If it were too small, the journal may decide to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make a very small special issue;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;join special issues from two conferences into one;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cancel the special issue and propose acceptance of the paper through a standard process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the special issue is too large, they would typically make it into a supplement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should you do?&lt;/strong&gt; Reply &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; for your participation in the special issue, and if yes, then the estimated length, like: &lt;em&gt;&quot;We'll provide the full proofs while in the 10-page extended abstract there were obly sketches, it'll be circa 20 pages long.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; If they wanted more information, they would have asked for it explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T12:13:08.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2014-02-25T14:06:55.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Double Degree&lt;/strong&gt; often means you get two full Bachelors degrees, which may be from two &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; universities, in two entirely unrelated subject areas. Often these programs are designed to be completed in 5--6 years total. I have also sometimes seen it used with reference to graduate programs. For example, a double degree Masters/PhD program, though this is rarer in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Double Major&lt;/strong&gt; means you get a single degree from one university, but with a speciality in two related subject areas. For example, you could be a Physics/Chemistry double major. Typically this means you satisfy the core requirements of both programs, possibly using the electives of one to fill in the core of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two Bachelors&lt;/strong&gt; means you get two full Bachelors degrees. Sometimes this is used as a synonym for a Double Degree, sometimes it is differentiated by requiring that both degrees be granted by the same institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T16:00:03.317" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T16:00:03.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17412" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:02:31.817" Score="3" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very interested in psychology research, especially exploring patterns and reason of behaviour, and mechanisms of human mind. During my PhD, I spent considerable amount of time exploring cognitive and neuropsychology literature, and conducted quite a few behavioural and user studies. I'm very confident of my skills in designing experiments and statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to be employed by a psychology department merely with&#xA;these skills and knowledge?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I rather try other types of jobs&#xA;which could compromise between my interest and skills?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little bit more about my background: I did one-year taught master course in &lt;em&gt;psychology&lt;/em&gt;, but both my undergraduate and PhD were in &lt;em&gt;computer science&lt;/em&gt; departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12385" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:28:03.727" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:28:03.727" Title="Is it possible to get into Psychology research after a PhD in HCI (human computer interaction)?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;psychology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16509" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:53:06.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear here if you think a 'half-load' of courses is too high, or too low for a Master's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a perspective from my university. Here, your course work serves two purposes in your masters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Course work is there to rectify gaps in your background. As a school with a huge international student population, we have a huge amount of variance in skill-sets. As a result courses are there partially in order to help make up for missing background, or to get the students onto more common footing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introduction to topics. Here you're admitted without having to declare a supervisor or a topic. The first year of courses serves to introduce students to topics and professors-- possible supervisors. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After two semesters, most students have paired off with supervisors, and have started their research, which will dominate their time for the subsequent 16+ months, until they defend their thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T15:53:06.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2014-02-25T17:40:42.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We see a number of students who apply to graduate school after an undergraduate degree in math/cs followed by some years spent working at a not-any-realler-than-faculty job. In short, what admissions committees would like to know is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what have you been doing since then, and in what way does it influence your current interests and desire for grad school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have you continued working on projects on the side ? (not a problem if not, but good if yes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I don't view work experience as a negative in CS. In fact it's a bit of a positive because the student then usually knows what they want to do and is a lot more focused about it. There's a lot more maturity as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T17:40:42.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:23:46.587" Score="10" ViewCount="1709" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main concern:&lt;/strong&gt; I am looking at PhD programs in Germany and the UK (vs US programs). Ideally, I would like to end up at a small liberal arts college (I got my BA from one). So I know I want a program with teaching requirements. I think this rules out France and Switzerland, but I believe many German PhD programs have teaching requirements. I also think the UK has teaching opportunities as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are there other factors I should be thinking about?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specific Concerns I've thought of&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, am I wrong in my assumption that there are only small liberal arts colleges in the US? Or are there places in Europe, where you can get the same research, teaching, and mentorship balance? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that liberal arts departments are smaller. Should I be worried that a foreign school that is good in my field might not be known in the department that I am applying to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I had a friend at Oxford, who said that she would need to do a postdoc (in a field that doesn't normally require them), because US universities will not see her 2 year masters + 3 year PhD, as equivalent to a master + 5 year PhD in the US. I'm in the sciences and my field doesn't normally require a masters. Should I also be concerned? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am currently a Master student in a European program that allows us to do research in multiple countries (theoretically anywhere that will take us, but we have specific connections to France, Germany, and Switzerland). So far I really like the science culture here. I like how easy it is to collaborate with and even work in different labs. In my experience, PhD students in the US just don't have the mobility that EU students. I have an interdisciplinary focus, so this is very attractive to me. I also am interested in a very specific topic and there is better funding for it in Germany and (I think) in the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, it is hard to find a school with more than one lab working on the topic, I'm most interested in, so I like the idea of applying to the lab rather than the school. I am willing to consider working on related areas, but I'm not sure if I can spend 5 to 7 years working on something that is only tangential to my main interests. On the other hand, my Master program has a general focus and I would be interested in taking more classes that are specific to my main interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12390" LastEditorUserId="12390" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T21:59:12.063" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T22:37:30.657" Title="How would a small liberal arts college view a PhD from Germany or the UK? Factors other than teaching ops?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:51:07.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to get a job teaching in America unless you do the degree in America. This is because so much of getting an academic job, especially at a small teaching college is going to depend upon personal connections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it from their point of view. The hiring committee wants somebody who is a good scholar, a good teacher, and a good citizen of the department (in some order, which factors are more important differ from school to school). It's really hard to evaluate somebody in depth along all three of those axes. It's even harder when you have a pile of three or four hundred applications for one job. So you use shortcuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One quick shortcut is no Ph.D. in hand, or a Ph.D. from a place that has a bad reputation. That cuts your pile to 200 or so applications. Then you look and see who doesn't have any good publications or presentations. Now you're down to 100 or so candidates, all of whom are very strong, but you're only going to be able to interview about 20 or so. So the next thing you look at is letters of recommendation. The way you get from that pile of 100 to the pile of 20 is by having letters of recommendation from people that members of the search committee have heard of. There's a chance that they've heard of your famous german mentor, but there's an even better chance that they haven't. Take two scholars X and Y of equal ability, but where X is an American and Y is a German. Let X and Y have equally good publication records and so on, it's still far more likely that the search committee has heard of X than that they've heard of Y, because they've got to conferences with X and heard X's papers and been impressed by him over drinks, etc. This matters hugely in terms of getting hired in the ultra competitive world of academic hiring, and so doing a degree abroad is always going to handicap you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception I can think of are Oxford and Cambridge. American scholars tend to know the names of those folks, and those two universities have such a strong reputation that you might not get penalized in this way having the degree from them. Everywhere else is a danger zone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T18:51:07.303" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17413" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:15:21.900" Score="2" ViewCount="4391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first-year student at a top 100 university studying computer science. I have looked at all the different fields of software for which I can get into and I am personally most interested in exploring a career in AI and/or machine learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality. Its obvious that I need to learn computer programming but are there any other less obvious topics which I should study up on? I have heard that I need to know every field of math, quantum mechanics, physics, and a bunch of other stuff, what is the reality of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last question, is graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12392" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T07:34:23.303" Title="How should I pursue my interest in AI and/or machine learning?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:20:28.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother teaches English at a community college. I know her TA graduated from a different university. Her TA is also my best friend from kindergarten and after said TA's parents died, my mother has been very involved in her TA's life. So I know that it is possible to TA after you've graduated, but it would help to have some connection to the college. However, there might be more of a demand for TAs in CS than in my mother's field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to &quot;get your foot in&quot; might be to take classes at the college. My mom had applied for jobs at this college for years, but it was only after she took a few classes that she got her job. Her classes were in other departments, but when her professors found out she was interested in working there, they introduced her to people in the English department. Suddenly she wasn't &quot;random applicant&quot;, but rather &quot;that person my friend introduced me to and I had that nice conversation with&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T20:20:28.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17410" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:21:43.497" Score="44" ViewCount="6068" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you have finished a PhD when does it become inappropriate to ask your advisor for advice, read over a manuscript, or do any other &quot;advisor things&quot;? Presumably if every student an advisor ever had continued to act as if the former advisor was still his/her advisor, the professor wouldn't get anything else done. Basically how should one interact with the former advisor once the PhD is finished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T03:08:35.933" Title="When should you stop asking your PhD advisor to do advisor like things?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:36:04.923" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor, at two different points in my academic career, said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I am your advisor for life. You can always count on me.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I think it's time for my old students to start finding new people to comment on their work.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took away from this that your advisor should always be available at some level, it's part of the point of taking on students. You are part of their scientific (or otherwise scholarly) contribution. At the same time, post-PhD you have to develop your own network of support, which is part of your growth as a scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you know when to do this? I think the best answer is simply to ask your advisor (see, they're always there to answer the hard questions). Hopefully they'll give you an honest opinion - either to keep asking them for help or that they think you're ready to fly on your own. Either, if you don't feel confident that you have enough peers to count on, it's probably a sign that you both can still ask your advisor for help &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that it's time to put some more energy into expanding your professional network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T20:36:04.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17418" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:41:58.097" Score="5" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I asked in a previous question, I ended up with a project that is not nearly close to my interests or research expertise, and my PI is pushing me so I publish something in that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that made me wonder. Is it usual for this to happen in Academia? I'm not talking &quot;Topic was A and ended up with slightly related topic B&quot;, No, I'm talking a topic about a whole different field (even) than topic A, let say Topic Omega (Different Journals, Conferences, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reviewed my CV and the Job posting of almost 2 years ago, and it clearly said the job was on building algorithms for Brain Machine interfaces using Machine Learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I ended up building electrodes (heavily balanced toward doing electrode characterization) for Brain Signal Capturing, and the paper he wants me to publish is in this topic, that is not nearly related to Machine Learning. Also, nowhere in my CV I even stated that I had nor the expertise nor the experience to deal with these particular field. And at the end of the day, had he advertised it as a heavily experimental postdoc I would not have applied at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are talking Postdoc level here, not a grad student who suddenly switched topics. I just want to know if this is normal, or just a bad situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing that this is normal might reduce my level of frustration, but if it is not, at least I can speak up in the exit interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T23:13:27.903" Title="Is it normal for PIs to change projects to unrelated research" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17398" CreationDate="2014-02-25T20:53:45.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've met people who were Computer Science PhDs and actually were part of Psychology departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did HCI, I think it gets harder to do Psychology, after all is a whole study area by itself, since yours was more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to find a laboratory that has both of them, and that way you can get involved in some projects so you can learn other things about psychology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not presume to know about the filed, but I'm guessing there are multiple laboratories that might have a psychologist as well as a computer scientists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, build up your creed as a Psychologist by going somewhere where there is interaction between the two fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T20:53:45.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17407" CreationDate="2014-02-25T21:01:52.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]s graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Go into AI&quot; is pretty broad. What sort of job do you want to be doing? Theoretical research? Software development? Engineering? To get an idea of what jobs are out there you can look through the job postings at Google Research, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Amazon Research, and so on. All of these do ML and AI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have position all along the spectrum from things that only require undergraduate degrees to things that require PhD's. I have no experience with the non-PhD path, so I can't tell you much about that, but a lot of their internships are geared to ML/AI PhD students spending their summers there, and then those same people get their degrees and apply for research jobs at those companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you what is useful to know for ML and AI, besides programming: In computer science, you need to have a good grasp of the theory, taught in courses like Theory of Computation and Algorithms. Some schools also teach an undergraduate AI course. Machine learning can be viewed as the intersection between computer science and statistics, so basic statistics is important. A lot of AI and ML has to do with (mathematical) optimization, for that you need a good grasp of linear algebra and multivariate calculus. Some methods (like neural networks) require understanding differential equations and partial differential equations (but I would put those down as fairly optional, you'll learn the relevant material if you ever need to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality is, if you are going to go to a graduate program in AI/ML, you'll learn all the AI/ML-specific things you need to learn there. What you need to know to get accepted into the program is very variable on a program-by-program basis, but the reality is that the coursework probably won't be the most important thing in the admission process. If you're going straight for a job out of college, employers probably won't care much about your coursework either. It will be all about how you do at the interview, which will be very variable on an employer-by-employer basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, my suggestion is to think about what job you want to end up doing and work backwards from there to figure out what you need to do to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T21:01:52.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14563" CreationDate="2014-02-25T22:11:06.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a third option which you may want to explore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) Current research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) Plans for future research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) Past experience in this area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, structure this the way you would if you were talking to them rather than writing to them. Simon Peyton Jones recommends &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA&amp;amp;list=WLpf0TFZ7aQ_eEqzonLZBCdeyQcrIpXGVf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this approach&lt;/a&gt; for writing a research paper, but the same concepts work well for any types of writing. Explain your idea to someone else, and then write it in the same order, using slightly more formal language. When I am explaining my research interests to someone, I will often say something like this, &quot;I am working on Idea B now, and I expect this to continue in to Idea C in the future. This line of research grew out of my previous exploration of Idea A.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T22:11:06.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-25T22:18:15.423" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I'm not sure if it ever becomes &quot;inappropriate&quot; to have your advisor continue to give you advice, to read manuscripts, or even to help write them (as long as that person gets authorship credits), unless of course, your advisor says, &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universities however evaluate a tenure-track faculty member based on his or her ability to do independent research, which means that if your entire CV is filled with publications co-authored with your advisor, they will not consider you as doing independent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T18:33:27.167" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T18:33:27.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-25T22:32:26.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the Ph.D. the advice should get more career-y, and less student-y. So less, &quot;hey will you look at this paper for me&quot; and more &quot;i've got this really great paper, but i'm not sure whether to publish it in a Journal X, or just expand it into a book?&quot; Or, &quot;man I hate my first job, but i'm getting close to tenure, do I need to go on the market again and try to move up before I get stuck?&quot; stuff like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T22:32:26.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-25T22:49:17.150" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the answers here are very good. I'd just like to add one extra point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are often two kinds of advice one looks for in one's career:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should &lt;strong&gt;someone&lt;/strong&gt; do in this situation ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what should &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; do in this situation ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first class of questions are things that often get asked on this forum, and are relatively easy for someone more experienced whose advice you respect to answer. And in fact it's useful to cultivate a few such people whose opinions you respect. When you're a student, most of your questions are of this kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second class of questions are much harder: they're not really about the situation but about you. So the person answering has to know both the situation and understand some things about you. Sometimes (and not always) an advisor can provide that dual insight since they are both experienced, as well as experienced in understanding you. Again, this is not true for many advisors, but it can be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the best person to answer the second type of question is yourself :), but sometimes the perspective from outside helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What typically happens is that as you &quot;leave the nest&quot;, you stop asking your advisor for answers to questions of the first kind, and you might occasionally still ask them for advice on the second kind of question. There are no hard and fast rules here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T22:49:17.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17411" CreationDate="2014-02-25T23:13:27.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, no, it is not normal for a PI to shift focus so radically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the normal run of things, when hiring at the PostDoctoral level (and lower), the PI will have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitted a funding request with a detailed outline of the research plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have received acceptance of that plan and a budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advertised open positions accordingly to the budget looking for people with the necessary skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire people with the necessary skills for the duration/budget allowed by the funds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervise execution of the research according to the initial plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... pretty much in that order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topic shifts would normally occur where funding for a project has run out (which should correspond with the end of the PostDoc contract) and the PI wishes to find funds from other projects to keep the PostDoc employed and to extend the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shifts might also happen if the PI is pooling sources of funding together, which can sometimes happen: they might decide to juggle resources between different projects on the fly. This, however, is far from an ideal situation, esp. for managing researchers on temporary contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions I would ask in your situation are: in which of the PI's projects you are working on, has it changed recently, where the funding for that project came from, and what the original proposal was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have moved project, you should ask why. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are in the same project, you should ask why the topic changed so radically all of a sudden.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T23:13:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T23:43:28.513" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Machine Learning , Data Mining studies uses various data sets. If used data sets are not well known data sets, following points of these data sets should be explained. More can be added but these points comes to my mind immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;features/attributes (number, data type, domain definition)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many instances exists in this data set?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test / Training data (Random Sampling, All data used..)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feature Reduction techniques&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any preprocessing/post processing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my question is: Where should I put this data set explanation in article sections? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methods (Experiments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or entirely new section under Data Set heading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T05:43:24.443" Title="Data Set Definition , Where to Place (Introduction, Material and Methods)?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17378" CreationDate="2014-02-26T00:00:02.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to a small liberal arts college and worked at a large university lab, that had undergraduate interns. From both experiences I agree that it is the lab and not the school that matters. However, there are conditions that you will be more or less likely to find, depending on the type of school. In general liberal arts colleges will give you more personal attention and large universities will have more resources. Funding at liberal arts colleges is focused on undergraduate education and funding at larger universities is focused on research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal Attention:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Liberal arts:&lt;/em&gt; A lab is led by a principal investigator or PI. Liberal arts colleges often do not have graduate students or have few graduate programs. So, at a small liberal arts college you will work closely with your PI and get to know them well. I left my college with great letters of rec that helped me overcome a poor GPA (due to a medical problem in my first two years) and get into grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;University:&lt;/em&gt; The undergrads were trained by PhDs and post docs and had little contact with the faculty. Post docs and PhDs can often be great teachers, though, since they either are students or were students recently and might be able to anticipate the student's perspective. At a university, they will normally write your letters of recommendation and the faculty will sign them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Independence:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Liberal Arts:&lt;/em&gt; All of our grants were training grants, so the emphasis was on teaching, as opposed to producing results. This means you will get to do more independent work. I got first hand experience with the equipment (EEG) and techniques (analysis of FMRI and EEG data) that few undergraduates get to use. Additionally, I know of at least two of my friends who published, as first authors, in major research journals. This is not uncommon in my school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;University&lt;/em&gt;: The undergrads had to learn a program that is no longer used by most labs in the field. There was little room for mistakes (all of the labs grants were research grants), so the undergrads were given the task of modifying previous work and really did not develop any understanding of how the program actually works. However, this lab was an older lab. I also believe students at an older lab at my undergraduate school had a similar experience, where the methodology they were taught was not consistent with current standards in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Connections:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are pretty equal in this area. Liberal arts college professors often collaborate with people at larger institutions and can connect you with other labs. I have friends who got summer jobs at Stanford and CalTech this way. At the large university, one of our undergrads got to go to Oxford for the summer, because of the professor's connections to a lab there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Equipment and Resouces:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Liberal arts:&lt;/em&gt; We did not have access to some of the most expensive equipment (an MRI, for example). However, one of my professors also worked at a local university that had access to an MRI and we got to use it there. Ideally, you should get some lab experience at a major research university, so you are exposed to techniques that require more expensive equipment. You can do this during summer internships. Getting more experience at different labs will look good on your application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, a liberal arts college is more likely to have grants that will help students study at other institutions. My college had several such grants for student research grants. Additionally, all senior thesis was funded by the department. The senior thesis funding and one of the summer fellowships both require students to focus on their own original ideas. In most fields the first author is the person who had the idea for the project. This is how undergraduate students were able to become first authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;University:&lt;/em&gt; Universities will have the best equipment, but they are less likely to have funding for student research. The institution I worked at had grants for students, but they were only for work at that university. They also had no specific grants that would allow students to propose their own projects, based on their own ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12390" LastEditorUserId="12390" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T00:12:27.890" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:12:27.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17423" CreationDate="2014-02-26T00:06:20.657" Score="2" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand this regarding aspects of funding only and not quality of research.What is difference between funding an PHD and an MS student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought both took courses, get some stipend and advisor funds them.Maybe for PHD they fund students for 5 years instead of 2 years of MS ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other major difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand PHD student's research output expectations are completely different.I am asking this question with specific regards to state universities in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T02:25:37.523" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T03:38:26.957" Title="What is difference between funding an MS and a PHD student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17421" CreationDate="2014-02-26T00:15:12.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: this is US-specific and quite likely engineering specific.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only potential difference is that the rates for funding Ph.D students (post-candidacy) might be different to that of an MS student. But the difference is usually between types of funding(RAship, TAship, etc), not who gets funded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:15:12.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17421" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:02:36.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a US-based answer and  maybe specific to Mathematics, but I think this generally applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, the difference is only whether or not you have been admitted to the PhD program or not.  Many times it is the case that you can be admitted to an MS program but not a PhD program until after you have passed some type of qualifying exams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the university, you may see an increase in your pay after successfully completing the necessary qualifying exams, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not necessarily the case that an advisor will fund you during your MS or PhD.  At many universities, you will have an offer of a TA position (not related to research, as the name suggests), and you are required to teach / grade / hold recitations (depending on the university) in order to fulfill your TA contract.  Often, you can attain funding from an advisor so as to 'cover' your teaching load for the semester or potentially the summer.  The benefit here is that you are primarily spending your time on research and are not under a TA contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, if you have been admitted to a PhD program and passed your qualifiers, you will have the opportunity to teach higher level courses that a MS student would not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="11084" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T03:38:26.957" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T03:38:26.957" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17421" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:54:06.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers pointed out that the amount of support for PhD students (post-qualifying exam) can be higher than M.S. students. However, in addition to funding levels, funding &lt;strong&gt;sources&lt;/strong&gt; for PhD and M.S. students can be very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my lab (US, engineering), most of the M.S. students working as research assistants are supported by funds allocated by the &lt;strong&gt;department&lt;/strong&gt; to the professor every semester. This money is given specifically for the purpose of creating extra educational and training opportunities for M.S. students, through participation in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in my lab, the funds that support PhD students usually come from their advisors' &lt;strong&gt;research grants&lt;/strong&gt;. (A small number of PhD students are funded by the department for a year, but this comes from a very limited &quot;pool&quot; that is separate from the M.S. student money, comes directly from the dept to the PhD student - not the professor - and is much harder to get. Some PhD students are funded by external fellowships, like NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't ask about undergraduate researchers, but we also have those in my lab, and they are often funded by the NSF from Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in my lab there are certain funds that may be used only for undergrads (from NSF via REU grants); certain funds that can go only to M.S. students (from the department, via a pool of money allocated to create research opportunities for M.S. students); and certain funds that can go only to PhD students (from the department, via a pool of money allocated specifically for one-year PhD fellowships). Then there are funds (mainly, from the professor's research grants) that can be used to support any kind of student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course just an example - other labs will have entirely different &quot;pools&quot; of funds that they may draw from, which may or may not have restrictions as to who may use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is entirely possible for a professor to be able to fund an M.S. student (because it comes out of departmental M.S. research opportunities money) and not a PhD student (because they don't have enough active research grants, or all their grant money is already committed, and the department PhD fellowship pool is empty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T03:38:10.067" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T03:38:10.067" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17426" CreationDate="2014-02-26T02:35:55.163" Score="1" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a similar question last year, but the stakes have changed slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I have an offer from a top 5 program in Chemical engineering (my major). There are a couple of extremely accomplished professors in fluid mechanics here, which is what I want to study in grad school. However, I am not so interested in attending this school for graduate school because it does not send many people to academia post-graduation, despite being a top 5 program, mostly because it isn't a very big name school. Or at least I assume this is the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deadline to reply to this school is March 5th. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate things, I am waiting on a reply from a much more prestigious university for a summer internship. While the school has a much better name, its ranking is slightly less (number 6 for chemical engineering). I think I have a very good chance of getting this internship (my PI went to grad school here and wrote a very strong letter, plus I have a good resume otherwise). However, I learned today that they will NOT be able to get a response back to me before March 5th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am much more interested in attending School 2 (slightly lower rank, better name), because they very frequently send people to academia, which is my long term goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;School 1 (higher rank, worse name) was pretty firm in the March 5th date, so I don't think I can ask for an extension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Financially, School 1 offered me a slightly better deal, I'd be netting about 2k more over 10 weeks. However, that isn't as important to me, since the experience is worth far more than the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize for the long question, but any advice or guidance would be appreciated. Am I putting too much emphasis on the name and rank? I don't want to be greedy and put all of my eggs in School 2's basket, and be left with nothing if I end up not getting it after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5724" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T03:21:13.993" Title="Which summer internship to take?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17425" CreationDate="2014-02-26T03:21:13.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since these are both REUs, I do not think attending school 1's summer program will affect your chances of attending grad school and continuing in academia.  Most REUs are designed to give students an opportunity to see if they can conduct scientific research and / or enjoy it.  Depending on the university and the discipline, they may be considered 'recruiting' camps for people to attend that university's grad school program in your discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have a fairly strong inclination to working in academia, you do not need the experience other than to confirm your suspicions and to make you a better candidate when you apply to graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what I would suggest --- ask when you think the earliest day / time you would be able to get a response from School 2 on acceptance or rejection, and then from there, try to see if you can eke out some more time on School 1's deadline so that you don't end up shooting yourself in the foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be able to talk with your current PI and see if he can hear anything through some back channels as to whether or not you have a decent chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, it's up to you.  Consider all your options wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T03:21:13.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T04:31:08.790" Score="2" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am enrolled in a Ph.D. program at a leading institute in India. However I am facing certain problems which are administrative in nature and hence want to restart my Ph.D. at another institute. I am seeking clarification on the possibility to pursue Ph.D. from two institutes simultaneously. For your reference, I have already completed the course work at the current institute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12405" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T13:42:22.457" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T13:42:22.457" Title="Pursuing Ph.D. at two institutions simultaneously" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-26T16:53:57.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:20:10.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you already have industry experience, then highlight it &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to your academic achievements. Given that you don't have any industry experience, exploit your PhD thesis &lt;strong&gt;as an actual project&lt;/strong&gt; in term of how did you manage, designed, developed and why it is significant especially to industry. It automatically qualifies as a project if it was not in theoretical computer science, otherwise you need to justify how the theoretical aspect is valuable for industry. From this point of view, you can add your PhD time frame as your &lt;em&gt;work experience&lt;/em&gt; and demonstrate that research was actually working on a project. For many tech companies, even personal pet projects are considered valuable, so in that sense a good research project is invaluable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your CV should flow from a Summary, Skills, Experience and then Education. Remember, the industry is interested in your computer science skills not your qualification. The final and probably most important point is that you should aim for organizations closer to your field or at least the jobs which are closer to your skills rather than applying to every single developer/analyst position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="8542" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T05:35:58.257" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:35:58.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17432" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:32:45.077" Score="12" ViewCount="6677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my masters studies. My question is, &lt;strong&gt;will my age (29) affect my chances of getting a funded PhD position?&lt;/strong&gt; I finished Bachelor of Engineering when I was 24 (took 6 years to graduate, normally my program was 5 years). I worked as a Lab course assistant (teaching the practical part of the course at a local university) for 2 years before I started my MSc a bit late due to financial reasons. I started working in industry a year ago (for same financial reasons) in a computer science field but irrelevant to the research area. I know that most of PhD &lt;em&gt;scholarship&lt;/em&gt; positions &lt;em&gt;officially&lt;/em&gt; require the applicant's age to be under 35, but do not they prefer someone who is 25 rather than 34? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two conference publications, one in IEEE, and about to send the third for journal publication. My field is computer engineering with a focus on the software side and I am trying to apply in Europe mainly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T20:04:52.880" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T20:04:52.880" Title="Will my age affect my chances of finding a funded PhD position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17686" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:42:24.593" Score="54" ViewCount="28087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this infogram circling around various social networks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/06n84.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appeared in &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/AdamGDunn/status/432520636716441600/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Tweet&lt;/a&gt; with the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Got a PhD? Your chance of becoming a Professor is 0.45%. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a bit sceptical of the claim and of shiny info-grams in general, I traced the image back through &lt;a href=&quot;http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2014/02/08/thinking-about-the-pipeline/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294970126.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; by the Royal Society (see page 14), featuring various reputable academics in the introduction. The report cites a number of other reports from UK organisations as its source (I did not dig deeper). The infogram seemingly pertains to graduates of PhDs in the UK in STEM fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the figures literally incredible. I cannot believe them. Fewer than 1-in-200 PhD graduates become professors? This would imply, for example, that STEM professors in the UK would need to graduate 200 PhD students just to &quot;repopulate&quot; themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to compare these estimates with figures sourced elsewhere. And so my question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are any other studies or sources of data for estimating the number of PhD graduates who end up with professorships?&lt;/strong&gt; (... preferably within the STEM areas and not restricted to the UK)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a related question specifically for the maths field and referring to tenure-track positions but none of the answers really address this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8236/what-percentage-of-phds-in-math-actually-get-a-tenure-track-academic-job&quot;&gt;What percentage of phds in math actually get a tenure track academic job?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Pointer to a follow-up question asked by @gerrit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17461/how-many-phd-students-does-a-typical-stem-professor-graduate-during-their-entire/18096&quot;&gt;How many PhD students does a typical STEM professor graduate during their entire career?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T08:38:00.463" Title="What ratio of PhD graduates in STEM fields ultimately end up as (tenured) professors?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:42:47.687" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: no. Quite the contrary, many universities value the experience (preferably from industry) so it is beneficial. Also, your conference papers will be the most important factors in getting the PhD position and/or funding. I'd also emphasize that you should highlight the fact that you have a journal article (preferably A or A*) in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not seen any such requirement which is restricting PhD or any academic degree to a specific age. In fact, doing so is illegal in most (read: all) European countries as it comes under age discrimination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To narrow it down further, different funding bodies could impose their own restrictions per project, for instance DAAD's grant that you mentioned is &quot;to promote and fund young artists&quot; according to them, that is why it is restricted to a certain age group. A similar example could be feminist studies where it could be restricted to a single gender. Again, this has nothing to do with general conditions of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="8542" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T08:40:14.157" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:40:14.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16150" CreationDate="2014-02-26T07:05:37.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a &quot;Non-academic activities&quot; section at the end of my CV that mentions that I'm a semi-decent long distance runner and that I used to moonlight for an amateur comedy troupe. But then, I do this because I can afford to do so: we are talking here about &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; bullet points that come after about 150 separate items including publications, talks, grants, teaching, advising... so it's obvious that I'm not including this to make my CV look longer than it actually is. If your CV is substantially shorter than this, you might want to think twice about including this kind of section. If you do include it, &lt;em&gt;please please please&lt;/em&gt; do not write anything banal or mundane there. I once read a postdoc application to my department that included the line &quot;Hobbies: watching movies&quot;. The CV in question wasn't great anyways, but this line was the metaphorical nail in the coffin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T07:05:37.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17431" CreationDate="2014-02-26T07:54:43.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under stable situation, this probably can always be approximated by dividing the number of professor positions by the number of the PhD student positions, and normally makes numbers below 10 %. Same way you can calculate your chances of getting any other reputable, sufficiently well paid position below professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart lots of hard work, making to professors also requires a great deal of success. Counting on this is same as counting on getting a gold medal in Olympics: somebody does, but if this is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; your reason to participate, be ready for disappointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T07:54:43.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:16:11.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years after finishing my PhD I emailed my advisors (I had two) asking for advice about something.  I prefaced the email with something like, &quot;How long after finishing a degree is one entitled to ask one's advisors for advice?&quot;  One of them responded, &quot;When they start asking you for advice, you might want to reconsider.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:16:11.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:26:04.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen people coming from top companies like Google into PhD and still they struggle a lot during their PhD. So, when it comes to research, the work experience is not everything. You can see it from a couple of different perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given that your &quot;real job&quot; is relevant to your future program, a good practitioner style CV would be beneficial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, if your &quot;real job&quot; is truly cutting edge AND you maintain good relationship with your past organizations AND you can demonstrate that you can use your industry experience to involve organizations in a way that it will add empirical component to your  research, THEN it is quite an attractive offer for universities. Too good to refuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, if your &quot;real job&quot; is yet-another software engineering job and distant to your future program, then your industry experience is somewhat irrelevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of it all, for US universities a low academic scores such as GRE could be deal breaker with or without experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:26:04.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17431" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:53:30.213" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a shiny info-gram, but I think there is a lot wrong with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It transports the (common) misconception that the 53% leaving to industry after their PhD are sort of &lt;em&gt;failed professors&lt;/em&gt;. At least in CS, and probably a lot of other STEM fields as well, many PhD students start with the full intention of leaving academia sometime. Hence, the better question the diagram should be asking is &lt;em&gt;How many of those that want to become professors actually do?&lt;/em&gt;. Basically, I could come up with similar low percentages for every field. Let's say less than 1% of all working population of a city works in supermarkets. Does that mean that supermarket jobs are horribly hard to break into? No, because most people do not have the career goal of working in a supermarket in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly for the 17% non-university research. In CS, good industry labs (like the ones at IBM or Microsoft) are preferable options for many researchers, so they would not take a professorship even if offered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As already stated by commenters above, the title &lt;em&gt;professor&lt;/em&gt; means different things in different places. In Austria, for instance, many high school teachers are officially &quot;professors&quot; (tenured even), despite not having a PhD or ever doing research. In Great Britain, very few people are professors (most are lecturers or senior lecturers). In Madrid I know an academic research lab (not affiliated with a university) that calls their staff members &lt;em&gt;research professors&lt;/em&gt;. Job titles are almost never clear-cut.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I do think that there is a problem. If we assume a reasonably stable system (number of professors in a discipline stays more or less constant), then every tenured professor is in average allowed to see &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; of her/his students through to also become a tenured professor. Given that many tenured professors (at least here in Europe) maintain groups of 15+ PhD students at a time, I is pretty obvious even without digging into the data too much that the job market for professors is insanely competitive (which, incidentally, captures my personal experience hunting for tenure-track positions pretty well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:53:30.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:23:58.337" Score="4" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using an online library, tool, framework or something similar, what is the proper way to reference it in an article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I work in Computer Science). For example, I want to say that many popular implementations of the method presented in &lt;em&gt;[article reference]&lt;/em&gt; use a slightly modified version of the main formula. I mention some examples for the implementation (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://opencv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenCV&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vlfeat.org/man/man.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VLFeat&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When thinking of a way to reference this, I have several dilemmas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could &lt;em&gt;put a small explanation in a footnote&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;add it to the list of references&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could use the link to the &lt;em&gt;main webpage&lt;/em&gt; or to &lt;em&gt;an online manual&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do I reference it at all?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5482/4249&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; about how to reference Python is somewhat similar. The difference is that the tools I want to reference are fairly well known in my community (unlike Python for biologists). &#xA;In short, &lt;strong&gt;I am looking for a good way to acknowledge tools, frameworks or libraries &lt;em&gt;not associated to any article&lt;/em&gt; in my writing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T10:11:25.740" Title="How should I cite a tool or a library in my article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8337" CreationDate="2014-02-26T10:24:45.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the PhD world... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the advisers have little time for you and your ideas are always bad... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Until you realize that the PhD is a learning process as well! Learning how to do research, how to be independent, how to have integrity and how to push the boundaries of science by a tiny delta... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the course of those 3 years I am sure you have learned a lot and have become critic about what you do and what others do as well. That is the first step to understand your work was not all in vain!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a hint from your adviser, something he inspires you to do and something you think he is right about! (there has to be something, after-all he is still your adviser after 3 years...). &#xA;Use that hint as inspiration (although you don't love the muse) and work on something you believe is good. Your adviser is not the only reviewer of your work, scientific community (those papers we submit) are also an evaluation of our work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get inspired from the adviser, evaluate your work through scientific community and have confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T10:24:45.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17438" CreationDate="2014-02-26T10:47:51.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there where an article related to the presentation of the tool, framework or library then a proper citation should be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a good way to acknowledge tools, frameworks or libraries not associated to any article, (such as the case of Python) then you can do this in a footnote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T10:47:51.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17448" CreationDate="2014-02-26T10:51:08.230" Score="0" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying for a Ph.D. (computational biology) at IMSc, India (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.imsc.res.in/graduate_programme_0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;). They are asking a covering letter, a statement of interest, a curriculum vitae including university grades/marks. When I searched about statement of interest, some webpages were dealing this same as thesis proposal. So I am confused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is statement of interest, statement of purpose and thesis proposal same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:46:04.060" Title="Statement of Interest for Ph.D. admissions" Tags="&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17438" CreationDate="2014-02-26T10:51:08.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd put emphasis on the &lt;strong&gt;literature review&lt;/strong&gt; section of your article and/or thesis. From this perspective, there are two possible citation styles. First, instead of referencing a programming language, reference the concept that you are writing about. For instance, instead of saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;C++ (Stroustrup, 1986) is a programming language.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Stroustrup (1986) extends C to develop object-oriented programming by doing so and so.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, you enrich your literature review and not simply accumulate references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the tool is quite novel and not used anywhere in literature yet, then cite who and where it was developed. For instance, SuperComp has developed SuperLang that you want to cite. It could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;SuperComps (2014) develops Superlang for this and that so on and so forth.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference for it could be an online resource, book, manual, etc and will simply follow your referencing style e.g., APA, Harvard, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can simply cite OpenCV, VLFeat as either website, online resource, related paper, or patenting or licensing author(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="8542" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T11:07:18.020" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T11:07:18.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T11:44:34.127" Score="1" ViewCount="8962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very basic doubt. What is the purpose of &lt;em&gt;career objective&lt;/em&gt; in a Ph.D. admission form especially when the applicants are from a wide variety of a subject backgrounds? For example take the case of a PhD admissions in computational biology where students from even electronics background are allowed to apply. The prior knowledge from masters is not going to help them much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastEditorUserId="8284" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T10:36:14.310" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T12:02:24.063" Title="What is the purpose of career objective in an Ph.D. admission form?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2014-02-26T14:01:36.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that in Russia they have an equivalent to the standard Ph.D and a sort of &quot;second Ph.D&quot; after that, that is way harder to get than the first. One of my Russian friends argued that it is harder and rarer than the European &quot;habilitation&quot;, but I guess it is open to debate to see whether it is just a matter of opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the corresponding article in Wikipedia:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor_nauk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor_nauk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On an unrelated topic, I think the name is quite cool.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T14:01:36.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T14:12:01.073" Score="3" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a choice of Master's programs in statistics, one of which is formally a program in applied statistics, the other is formally in math with an applied statistics &quot;track&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courses in the 2 programs are about the same, so I am wondering how much the label of the degree really matters (I most likely will not work in academia unless I am doing contract work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any insights you may have,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T16:26:54.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:55:13.283" Title="How much does it matter if my Masters is in Stats or Math (in Stats track)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2014-02-26T15:27:10.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good question Artem. Establishing a good system such that your research can be known to other researchers in your field (or even in other fields) seems to me the way to go. The main problem I see is for those of us that do not work in fields where the hiring people are themselves interested in having a web presence. Most cancer researchers do not seem to care much about having one. Few have a website for their group and many of those that do don't seem to care much about it. Twitter and blogs are almost unheard of for experimentalists. They don't use them much and don't expect you to have one. I wish I could say that the new generation is a lot more adept but that doesn't seem to be my experience with the biology grad students and postdocs I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7913" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T15:27:10.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17445" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:44:54.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, do you want to end up applying for a job that is looking for a &quot;Degree in Statistics (or related field),&quot; or a job that is looking for a &quot;Degree in Mathematics (or related field)?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employers don't usually ask for transcripts and don't look at your list of courses, they just look at your resume/CV, which will just have the title of your degree and perhaps your GPA (or some other summary grade if not in the US). If you look like you don't quite have the right qualifications on paper, you'll need to explain how a &quot;mathematics&quot; degree qualifies you for a job in statistics, or vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:44:54.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17441" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:46:04.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary difference between a &lt;em&gt;statement of interest (or purpose)&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;thesis proposal&lt;/em&gt; is the specificity. A thesis proposal outlines a specific project to be pursued during the thesis research, and will usually be written at some point during the process. However, in many cases, this is done &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the graduate student has been accepted and joined a particular research group, rather than before admission has been granted. When asked for at the admission stage, it's usually in cases where the assignment to a particular research advisor is done at the outset of the doctoral program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A statement of interest, on the other hand, simply details the kinds of problems or research areas a given student would like to pursue as a graduate student. This is usually asked for in admission cases where the decision is being made at the departmental level, rather than the individual faculty member level. A student is not specifically committing to a particular project at this stage—nor does the department necessarily want such a commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:46:04.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:54:59.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the idea of age restrictions is not to punish non-traditional educational paths, but to target &quot;younger&quot; professionals who are just getting started in their careers, rather than &quot;returning&quot; students. Thus, in some cases (including the DAAD link provided), you'll notice that there's a two-pronged requirement: either be under a certain age &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; have procured the degree within the last &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; years. This allows programs some flexibility while not excluding candidates who have made their way in a manner other than the traditional route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:54:59.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17438" CreationDate="2014-02-26T17:08:41.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good citation has the following properties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives credit where it is due for an (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) that is not your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directs the reader of your paper where to look, if he/she wants to verify that your claims about the (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) are correct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of the following can be used to cite a tool, as long as the above properties are satisfied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the authors of a tool explain how they would like it to be cited, follow those recommendations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a paper or tech report about the tool, cite that, because that is what the authors would probably want (if they didn't specify). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is no paper or TR, cite the website of the tool. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in most cases, you're not the first person to cite the tool - go search Google Scholar for the name of the tool, and find out how others cited it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T17:08:41.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T17:46:50.787" Score="2" ViewCount="2918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to be applying to graduate school next year in Statistics or Biostatistics and due to some financial constrictions, I will not be able to attend unless the tuition is waived at the the minimum. I am hesitant to commit to a 5 year PhD program for a funded education since I may run into some financial issues a few years in and may not be able to complete it. I know that most schools use their Masters program as a cash cow and thus are usually not funded. I was wondering if anyone here knew of any statistics programs that go against this and actually do fund their Master students? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12425" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T06:18:19.610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T06:21:18.343" Title="Do any statistics program provide funding for masters students?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2014-02-26T17:47:41.263" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the risk of answering a question that the OP may not actually be asking....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest myths to deprogram grad students of is the idea that the Ph.D is &quot;the highest degree&quot; or is in fact in a well-defined ordering relationship with other degrees. It is true that a Ph.D will typically require other degrees as a prerequisite, and it is also true that (as far as I know) no degree program requires a Ph.D for admission. However, there's no useful sense in which the Ph.D is &quot;highest&quot; in anything. It is a certification that you can do research, and is almost always a mandatory step before getting a research position in academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by that logic, an MBA, a J.D or an MD are also &quot;highest&quot; degrees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T17:47:41.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2014-02-26T18:00:54.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply to PhD programs that can or will award a master's degree after you pass your qualifiers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you have funding and you may find that the funding is enough to continue even if other financial constrictions happen. You don't know for sure that they will happen or that other circumstances may mitigate the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be possible to ask the department for a leave of absence (for a year or two). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a worst case scenario, hopefully you can finish with a master's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T18:00:54.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17457" CreationDate="2014-02-26T18:24:39.347" Score="10" ViewCount="15390" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the proper way to address a person who is an office in the military (USA) who at the same time has a Ph.D.? Would it be Dr. General John Doe or General Dr. John Doe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12427" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:38:11.970" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T01:19:52.660" Title="How to address a military officer with Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17459" CreationDate="2014-02-26T18:34:07.063" Score="51" ViewCount="2390" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals like &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; have impressive impact factors. How and why did these top journals become top journals? Why are they able to sustain their statuses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T19:29:46.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T20:37:15.550" Title="How and why did the top journals become top journals?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-26T18:56:01.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stringent review standards, leading to highly integritous articles, could account, in part, for what has led these journals to become 'top' journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12429" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T18:56:01.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17454" CreationDate="2014-02-26T18:59:04.627" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything I've seen suggests that &quot;General John Doe&quot; without any &quot;Dr.&quot; is correct (you've never heard of &quot;General Doctor David Petraeus&quot; right?); for example, military doctors are usually addressed using their rank, not as &quot;Doctor.&quot; In part it just sounds clunky to try to use both titles.  Similarly at Virginia Military Academy (bizarrely, in my opinion) all of the faculty are officers in the Virginia state militia, and are listed on the website with military titles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vmi.edu/Content.aspx?id=4294974313&quot;&gt;http://www.vmi.edu/Content.aspx?id=4294974313&lt;/a&gt;), not with the title &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Doctor.&quot;  I think &quot;General John Doe, Ph.D.&quot; is more common, though discouraged in some sources I read.  I think it's hard to go wrong just addressing someone in the military by their rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I should probably say that isn't to say that you never combine Doctor with another title:  &quot;Herr Professor Doktor&quot; is standard in Germany, (though I'm not allowed to call myself that, since I have a doctorate from the US) and &quot;Reverend Doctor&quot; (or even &quot;Most/Right Reverend Doctor&quot;) are established titles, though more common in Britain than the US.  Just in the specific context of military titles in the US, it's not standard to mix them with other titles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T19:19:42.500" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T19:19:42.500" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-26T19:01:29.607" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is analogous to &quot;why is Harvard a good university, and able to maintain its standing as such?&quot; A partial answer is that (1) it was founded a long time ago, and (2) it was founded by serious people. Given that, further serious people will tend to gravitate to the same institution, creating an inertia in the rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from &lt;em&gt;The Crucible&lt;/em&gt; (set in the year 1692):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am not some preaching farmer with a book under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T19:01:29.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-26T19:02:12.973" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;All journals that have a high standing have the standing because of the support of the community. If the community loses interest, the journal will drop in the ranking. The top journals have therefore attracted authors for one reason or another. The editorial staff of journals try to maintain this status by making sure the work published there is of good quality and will be cited. It is thus not impossible for new journals to attain high status as long as authors provide the necessary papers. To this mix, we now also add the impact factor and other bibliometric factors. They matter now but have not been the driving factor for making the older journal what they are today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with a more modest journal and I can definitely state that improving your impact factor is far more difficult than to drop in ranking. But, if your ranking becomes high enough (no specific number will be relevant since it varies between fields) a journal will be self-fuelling since many want to publish their material there and competition stiffens leading to a strong selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the standing of Science and Nature, is part their long history, in part the hard work by the journal itself and in part the, now, need for authors to publish in as high ranking journals as possible since that is what forms the basis for most evaluations in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T19:02:12.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T19:04:52.727" Score="12" ViewCount="3785" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17431/1033&quot;&gt;discussion on this infogram&lt;/a&gt; made me wonder about the number of PhD students that a full research professor successfully graduates in their entire career.  By professor, I mean a full professor, not an associate or exclusively teaching professor or other positions referred to as professor depending on field and location.  Of course, the answer is not a single number, but rather a probability density function that is a function of field, place, time, university, and probably other factors.  To narrow the scope, I formulate the question as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For selected fields and countries, what are recent figures on the mean and standard deviation (alternatively median and median absolute deviation, in case the distribution is non-Gaussian) for the number of PhD students successfully graduated per professor throughout their entire career?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T13:59:10.157" Title="How many PhD students does a typical STEM professor graduate during their entire career?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17431" CreationDate="2014-02-26T19:21:25.887" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in Physics World has more information, and appears to be the source of the figure in question (I'm not entirely sure if it is the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; source, as the article draws it data from elsewhere).  The article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://physicsworldarchive.iop.org/full/pwa-pdf/25/10/phwv25i10a40.pdf&quot;&gt;available to subscribers&lt;/a&gt;, and the full citation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harris, Margaret. &quot;The academic pyramid.&quot; Physics World 25, no. 10 (2012): 54-57.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.iop.org/dl/physicsweb/2012/PWOct12graduate-careers-web-small.pdf&quot;&gt;presently mirrored here&lt;/a&gt;, and my information is drawn from the mirror.  It answers some questions on data sources that were lost when the image got its own life without proper context.  Data are for STEM fields, and are relevant for the United Kingdom.  The figure caption reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Transition points in typical academic scientific careers following a PhD. Based on data from the Higher&#xA;  Education Funding Council for England, the Research Base Funders Forum and the Higher Education&#xA;  Statistics Agency’s annual “Destinations of leavers from higher education” survey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistics&#xA;  suggest that the vast majority of people who&#xA;  complete science PhDs will never obtain a&#xA;  permanent academic post. This is vividly&#xA;  illustrated in a diagram published in 2010&#xA;  by the Royal Society as part of a report on&#xA;  the future of scientific careers in the UK&#xA;  (figure 1). Drawing on data from various&#xA;  UK sources, the diagram follows a “typical&#xA;  academic career” through a series of post-&#xA;  PhD transition points, when large numbers&#xA;  of people leave the university environment&#xA;  for careers in, say, government or industrial&#xA;  research. These data show that less than&#xA;  0.5% of science PhD students will ever&#xA;  become full professors, while just 3.5% will&#xA;  obtain lower-ranking permanent positions&#xA;  as research staff at universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For physicists, that 3.5% figure is probably a little low.  Slightly older data collected by the Institute of Physics and the&#xA;  US National Science Foundation suggest&#xA;  that the fraction of physics PhD students&#xA;  who obtain permanent academic jobs has&#xA;  historically hovered between 10 and 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...) But many more &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want to stay in academia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, according to an August 2012 survey carried out&#xA;  by the American Institute of Physics (AIP),&#xA;  nearly half (46%) of new physics PhD stu-&#xA;  dents at US institutions want to work in a&#xA;  university. The next most popular career&#xA;  plan among those surveyed, attracting 18%&#xA;  of responses, was “unsure”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, the article points to the UK group &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitae.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Vitae&lt;/a&gt;, UK science advocacy group &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceisvital.org.uk/&quot;&gt;Science is Vital&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/statistics&quot;&gt;US NSF Statistics page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for physics, it appears between ¼–½ of PhD students who want to get permanent academic positions, ultimately succeed in doing so.  That's a quite different figure than 0.5% (but still problematic, as the article discusses in some detail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T20:11:02.733" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T20:11:02.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T21:02:02.167" Score="1" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;When viewing a Pubmed citation, author names are listed in the format &lt;code&gt;Surname Initial Initial&lt;/code&gt;.  This means that when I am inputting a citation into EndNote I have to either type the names in manually or copy and paste then edit the order of the names into the &lt;code&gt;Initial Initial Surname&lt;/code&gt; format that EndNote accepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. the Pubmed author list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frayling TM, Timpson NJ, Weedon MN&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would need to be rearranged to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TM Frayling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NJ Timpson&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MN Weedon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by hand in EndNote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that I can do this more efficiently?  Perhaps by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a preference on PubMed to have authors displayed in the second way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modifying a preference in EndNote to have it accept the first way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a more efficient way to record new items to the EndNote database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12435" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T07:44:50.873" Title="Can I rearrange the given names of authors in Pubmed for importing to EndNote?" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;pubmed&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17467" CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:32:29.177" Score="11" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for a NSF post doctoral fellowship in mathematics last fall...and I got rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to obtain any feedback from NSF or from the reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12436" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T00:09:13.217" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T00:09:13.217" Title="Is it possible to obtain feedback from a declined NSF postdoctoral fellowship?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:36:56.913" Score="5" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed during my application process for post-doc jobs that several say &quot;1-2 year appointment&quot; or &quot;possible renewal for second year&quot;. I understand from this answer that it is in everyone's benefit to not be &quot;stuck&quot; in a postdoc situation for too many years for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8229/21&quot;&gt;fear of starving oneself&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, if not mentioned, what is the general criteria for a renewal of postdoc appointment to a second year (or perhaps to a third)? Most of the applications I have put in to labs/univs. are not clear at all on renewal criteria. Is it based on need? performance? Mutual understanding? Does anyone have examples on some of these situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T00:18:02.690" Title="Renewal of postdoctoral appointment" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:44:18.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether a minimum length is justified depends on the purpose of the assignment.  For a typical problem set, of course it would be ridiculous.  The purpose is to solve the problems, and a short solution is even better than a long solution.  However, I sometimes assign term papers to teach students about technical writing.  Writing a very short essay would defeat the whole purpose of gaining writing experience (and writing one perfect paragraph is very different from writing twenty good pages, in terms of the level of organization and skills required).  In these assignments, the students are given quite a bit of choice regarding the topic, and I offer guidance and feedback.  If the paper is not long enough, then either it's poorly written or the topic was too narrow, and the student should figure this out early enough that the topic can be broadened if necessary.  I'm not sympathetic if someone says &quot;I started writing my twelve-page paper the night before it was due and discovered that I could only think of four pages to say on this topic.&quot;  [Of course precise rules are silly, and I make it clear that there's a little flexibility.  I wouldn't penalize someone for turning in eleven pages with no fluff, while twelve pages with a lot of fluff would count as bad writing.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T22:44:18.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17464" CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:50:34.720" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I applied for a NSF post doctoral fellowship in Math last fall...and I got rejected.&#xA;  Is it possible to obtain any feedback from NSF or from the reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it's not possible.  According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12496/nsf12496.htm&quot;&gt;program solicitation&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;No written reviews are generated during the review process for this program, so the Fellow will not receive copies of reviews for proposals submitted to this program solicitation.&quot;  This agrees with my understanding that no feedback is provided.  There is definitely no feedback from the reviewers, and I believe the program officers also do not supply feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T22:50:34.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17465" CreationDate="2014-02-27T00:18:02.690" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that unless there are funding issues, there would be some resistance to firing a postdoc unless there were real problems: the startup cost/time for a new postdoc can be high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having posted ads like these myself before, I can say that one non-funding-based reason to mention a 1-2 year postdoc is to allow for a hedge in case the hired person turns out to be really bad. In that case, you have the option of doing a first-year review and dismissing the person (i.e the default bit is set to NO and some activation energy is required to make it a YES)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the reverse case of a two-year postdoc, the default bit is now YES and significant activation energy is required to make it a NO. If not done right, this could even lead to charges of unfair dismissal and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So since there's a glut of postdocs and a short supply of positions, the &quot;buyers&quot; have some power to shape the position to suit their needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T00:18:02.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2014-02-27T02:02:04.440" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach physics at a community college and have been on a number of hiring committees for full-time positions, as well as participating in a bunch of hires of part-timers. Different departments and different individuals have different priorities. Some full-timers who have a master's might actually feel threatened by a PhD applying for a part-time position. Often we get applications, for both full- and part-time positions, from people with PhD's that clearly show that the applicant has no real interest in teaching and thinks it should be easy to get a community college job as a fallback. A PhD will typically be somewhat of an advantage in applying for a part-time job, especially if the course to be taught is at a high academic level (e.g., differential equations). The bigger problem is your lack of teaching experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of randomness involved, and you can maximize your chances if you're in a big urban area and apply for a lot of jobs. Sometimes a full-timer gets sick or there is some other last-minute reason to hire someone to teach a class. In these emergency situations, you basically have to be available, meet the minimum qualifications, and give a non-disastrous interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you want to teach in the evening is a good thing. Many full-timers don't want to teach evening classes, so often those are the hardest to find a teacher for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think MHH is right that this discussion is going to be more valuable if we widen it to include full-time positions. For full-time positions, the value of a PhD seems to vary greatly. At my school, for example, the math department has 3 PhD's and 27 people with masters', while the natural science division has 21 with PhD's and 11 with masters'. One department clearly considers a PhD more important than the other does. This may be partly because the math department's offerings are bottom-heavy with remedial classes. For a full-time position, there will typically be a list of minimum qualifications, which are set by law, and a list of desirable qualifications. The two biggies on the list of desirable qualifications are teaching experience and a PhD. It helps if you have both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we hire for a part-time position, we're hiring someone to teach a specific course. If the course is low level, then we don't care as much about whether the candidate has a PhD. When we hire a full-timer, theoretically we want someone who can teach every course their department offers, but realistically we usually have something more specific in mind. When someone with a master's is hired full-time, usually that person ends up getting slotted into teaching gen ed courses, remedial courses, or other low-level courses for the rest of their career. Many people are very happy in such a slot, e.g., I hear that many folks in math see teaching remedial math as their ideal job, and they have no interest at all in teaching calculus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T02:28:08.107" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T02:28:08.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17472" CreationDate="2014-02-27T02:21:55.567" Score="12" ViewCount="3019" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics (and other sciences) there are thousands of concepts, theorems, lemmas, etc which are named after some mathematicians (scientists). However, this nominations are not always very straightforward, especially if we are going to assign a new name for new concepts. For example, I can imagine the following scenarios and I would like to know what general protocol we should apply in each case: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A concept may have several origins in different fields and due to several individuals. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A concept is built on another concept which already have a name and this can happen several times. For example &quot;Hecke pairs&quot; is a concept in mathematics, then Bost and Connes make a particular Hecke pair famous, so we have &quot;the Bost-Connes Hecke pairs&quot;. Should we name all influential people  in each stage of advancement of a concept?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If an author invents a concept, is it appropriate to name it after him/herself,  or he/she should wait others call it after his/her name?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A concept was invented by some author &quot;X&quot; in long time ago, and then it has evolved to something very modern and somehow different. Should we still call it by the name &quot;X&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not hesitate to add new items if you can imagine other scenarios too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would like to ask another related question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we use acronyms in stead of the full names, especially if the names of several people are involved?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T20:49:56.627" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:49:56.627" Title="What is the general protocol to name something after somebody (some people)?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2014-02-27T02:26:20.390" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My parents met in English graduate school.  They became more enamored of each other than their program, so they each got out with Master's degrees and taught community college (full time, at the &quot;associate professor&quot; level) for many years.  This was a little while ago, though; my father passed away in 2000 and my mother has been retired for about ten years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my parents' day, some of their colleagues had PhDs, and my understanding is that the main reason that they never had the academic rank of &quot;full professor&quot; was the lack of a PhD.  (Nevertheless salaries were decent, based in part on a strong teachers' union, in which my father played a key role way back when.)  Degree inflation in academia is an ongoing process, and I would expect that a higher percentage of community college faculty have PhDs than before.  Also the precise meaning of the term &quot;community college&quot; varies quite a lot from one region of the United States to another.  I now live in Georgia and eventually noticed that almost nothing is called &quot;community college&quot; around here, but some PhD graduates from my department (mathematics, UGA) go into to teach in what I think are, more or less, what would in other regions be called &quot;community college&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the fact that your goal is to teach some courses rather than have a permanent job / get benefits / get a competitive salary makes your goal much more reasonable.  Most community colleges have a substantial percentage of &quot;adjuncts&quot;; in my understanding it is quite rare for these people to have PhDs.  Wanting to teach courses at night should also make you desirable -- more in some areas than others, but overall it is a definite positive.  Also, I would have to think that just about any academic institution in the country teaches courses on computers at this point, so that's a good choice too (the number of people who know something about computers is also quite large, but having a master's degree should get you in the door).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you know this already, but many courses at the community college level are at the level of a high school course: e.g. many community colleges offer no mathematics course more advanced than &quot;business calculus&quot;.  (This of course does not mean that such classes cannot have significant intellectual content or that you won't sometimes get very good students: they can and you will.  As Richard Feynman liked to say, &quot;We are not that much smarter than each other.&quot;)  You should check to make sure that what they mean by &quot;computer science classes&quot; is compatible with the courses that the institution(s) is offering: as above, this will probably vary significantly from one place to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall, what you suggest sounds very possible, sounds like it could be fun, and sounds like you will be rendering a real service to people.  I hope it works out for you: good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T02:26:20.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17470" CreationDate="2014-02-27T02:51:00.493" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good questions.  I will only tackle the last two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) In mathematics, it is (virtually?) universally bad form to name something after yourself.  This is high on the list of things that amateurs/newbies do that make the professionals/veterans roll their eyes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people have joked that the best strategy to get something named after yourself is to give your nice new concept such a terrible name (or lack of a name) that the rest of the community converges on naming it after you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after something has been named after you, it is not necessarily completely kosher to speak your own name when referring to the concept.  Rob Kirby famously speaks of &quot;the calculus of framed links&quot; (or, I think ironically, &quot;the calculus&quot;) where others speak of &quot;the Kirby calculus&quot;.  At one point Armand Borel writes of &quot;the subgroup whose name I have the honor to bear&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets a bit ridiculous: when you give a talk and state one of your own theorems, it is most common to write out the names of your coauthors and not write out your own name.  In my student days I saw a lot of first letter then dashes.  Nowadays I mostly see the name dashed out entirely.  Come to think of it, this reminds me of the Jewish practice of leaving letters out of the name &quot;Jehovah&quot;, although the theological implications of treating &lt;em&gt;your own name this way&lt;/em&gt; are much more profound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) I don't know whether we &quot;should&quot;, but we often do. In general, it seems to me that mathematics has gotten used to naming things after certain people, and we often name things after people who would never have understood the things that are named after them.  The example &lt;strong&gt;Hilbert space&lt;/strong&gt; (coined by von Neumann in its present generality) is a famous one.  The example &lt;strong&gt;Euler system&lt;/strong&gt; has always struck me as being especially ridiculous (I asked my advisor about this, and he told me that the name comes from Euler products: that's quite a stretch).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people in mathematics are somehow especially good at getting things named after them.  In my field, perhaps the outstanding example is John Tate: he has curves, algebras, half of the Shafarevich-Tate group, half of Hodge-Tate weights, half of Lubin-Tate formal groups, a pairing...As a graduate student, I was struck by the fact that I was giving a talk on Galois cohomology of products of Tate curves, analyzed via Tate local duality.  The title of the talk, &quot;Tate-Tate-Tate Stuff&quot; was a riff on the title of the previous speaker's talk (&quot;Hodge-Tate Stuff&quot;) and this Tate-ish ubiquity.  When Tate showed up for the talk, I got very nervous...but he was cool with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, John Tate is a true luminary.  The fact that so many things bear his name is only possible because of the immense amount of fundamental work that he did.  But the converse does not hold: e.g. Barry Mazur is a mathematician with a similar impact on the field, but he has...what?  A manifold and a swindle?  (Both of these come from his work in topology at the beginning of his career.)   Instead we have the &lt;strong&gt;Eisenstein ideal&lt;/strong&gt;.  These things are strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T05:23:34.890" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T05:23:34.890" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-02-27T03:08:35.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that something industry has been trying to do is encourage more employees to seek out mentors and/or become mentors -- either in working effectively with the company, or in specific skills (which may result in the new kid teaching the oldtimers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to waste their time with trivia you could teach yourself, and have the grace to be embarassed if you have to ask for advice on something you really should already know... and accept that sometimes the right answer is going to be &quot;go read X and come back to me if you have specific questions&quot; -- but if someone has the answer you need, there's nothing wrong with asking them how to approach the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T03:08:35.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17470" CreationDate="2014-02-27T03:45:59.610" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to disabuse you of the idea that there's a reliable system to name things after people, I present to you: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy&quot;&gt;Stigler's law of eponymy&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if that's not enough, you'll occasionally have item A invented by author X but named after Y, and item B invented by author Y and named after X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My usual joke about this is that something is usually named after the last person to invent it, because they're the one to popularize it enough that no one else can reinvent it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T03:45:59.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2014-02-27T04:04:47.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funding problems can come up in PhD programs regardless as to whether you expect them. For example, students who take more than 4-6 years often are given lower priority for department TA-ships, and lose their funding. The message here is that it is hard to predict your financial situation, and leaving a PhD for under extreme financial circumstances is always a morally acceptable thing to do (leaves of absences are very possible in this situation). You should do a PhD if you are truly passionate about pushing the envelope in statistics. In other words you think about statistics for fun. If this fits you, you should accept a funded PhD offer regardless as to future financial situations that may or may not manifest. Now if you are not passionate enough about the subject to pursue a PhD that is another story. In this case persuing one just because it is &quot;free&quot; and dropping out with a masters is generally looked upon as a major faux pas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't have interest in a PhD, another option would be to try online masters programs which are often cheaper and allow you to finish the degree while doing part time or in some cases even full time work. With an online degree program you can live with family members or move to a city with a low cost of living. The University of Washington has a program in data science, I believe. It certainly isn't free, but its about an order of magnitude less than a traditional &quot;cash cow&quot; masters degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the above are too expensive take some free MOOCs (corsera etc) in your field of interest. Focus on skills as opposed to a degree. Apply for some jobs and if you don't get anything, go back to the drawing board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option, and probably the best one if you are lucky enough to be successful down this road is to get a job in a field the combines your skill set with the tools you want to learn. So if you have some background in data science, stats, math or engineering, consider looking for jobs as opposed to degree programs. Often these jobs will fund your masters degree later on, if you choose go back to school. It generally comes with a constraint where you agree to stay with the company for at least a year or two after attaining the degree, but for most people this is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T04:59:33.550" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T04:59:33.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17481" CreationDate="2014-02-27T06:08:34.163" Score="12" ViewCount="2702" Body="&lt;p&gt;An undergrad who's worked with me for just over a year (for course credit or for pay, depending on his preference in any given semester) presented a poster on his work with me at an event hosted by my lab. Afterwards, the student told me that he spoke to Professor B at the poster session, and Professor B suggested a project that he'd like the student to work on with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had a meeting with Professor B to talk about the specifics, after which Professor B emailed me and asked whether I would recommend the student. I indicated in my response that the student is very capable and I would rather &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; lose him, to which Professor B responded, &quot;He's planning on working with me for course credit next semester.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was Professor B's behavior in this case OK&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under what conditions is it OK to hire another lab's student?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;OK,&quot; I mean &quot;not considered inappropriate behavior by the professor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiring another lab's student is of course a continuum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the one hand: Student from Professor A's lab appears in Professor B's office, says &quot;I've heard about your research and would really like to work with you.&quot; Professor B says, &quot;Sure, I'd like that a lot.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand: Professor B attends event (open house, workshop, etc.) hosted by Professor A, where Professor A's student gives a talk about his ongoing research with Professor A. Professor B chats with the student after the talk, then says &quot;You should work with me next semester.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is either or both of these considered OK/not OK? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the type of student (PhD, MS, undergrad, high school student doing summer research) make a difference to your answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the terms of the student's position in either lab (earning course credit, getting paid, just getting supervision) make a difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it matter how long the student has been working with Professor A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should Professor B ask how Professor A feels about it before offering Professor A's student a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an active, ongoing situation - I am not looking for advice on how to respond to Professor B, or whether I should say something to the student. (The student chose to continue his work with my lab and not to work with Professor B.) I just want to know whether Professor B's behavior was appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T08:08:37.403" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T08:10:21.297" Title="Is it OK to hire another lab's student?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-27T03:23:13.267" Score="6" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get exciting ideas about math a lot, and I was wondering if it is a bad idea to share them in question form to vet them, expand them, or show their lack of novelty. I know free exchange of ideas is good, but is it wise to exchange so broadly so early? If someone uses my idea from SE I know they are supposed to cite me, but could they take the career credit despite my having &quot;The Idea&quot;? Would I be a coauthor to the first paper from the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T08:59:30.270" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T08:59:30.270" Title="When should ideas be shared on stackexchange?" Tags="&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;public-domain&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17478" CreationDate="2014-02-27T08:02:04.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, there are two factors to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prior to Prof. B's offer, had Student expressed an interest (or committed) to remain in your lab next semester?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prior to Prof. B's offer, had you (or anybody in your team) already invested time and effort in the specific research that Student would be doing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to both of these questions is &quot;no&quot;, then Prof. B is totally entitled to try and get Student into his team. We'd be talking about a student whose connection to your lab finishes, as far as anybody is concerned, at the end of this semester. So why shouldn't other people try to hire him? On the other hand, if you had already prepared this semester with this student in mind, and/or he had already committed to staying with you, things are different. Prof. B would effectively be disrupting part of your lab's work, and you should let him know that he would be. You should also tell Student that it is not good behavior to suddenly abandon a project after committing to it. If he really wants to leave you under these circumstances, it should be because Prof. B can offer him something you can't (for example, if my brightest MSc student told me &quot;I have been accepted to this super prestigious PhD program, under the supervision of Prof. Superstar, so I'm leaving at the end of the semester&quot;, I'd be annoyed, but I'd let him go for his own benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T08:02:04.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17478" CreationDate="2014-02-27T08:10:21.297" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following scenario: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've been working with a professor for a year now, and at one of his&#xA;  events, I presented a poster. Another professor came up to me and&#xA;  started talking, and it turned out that this professor had a very&#xA;  interesting project related to my interests. I'm applying to grad&#xA;  schools in a year, and if I can get two recommendations from faculty&#xA;  it will really help my application. Should I work with this professor&#xA;  or not ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students have agency too. There's a lot of context and background missing in your description that Koldito alludes to. But in general students should be free to make their own decisions about their research activities and honor existing commitments that they've agreed to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if I were Professor B, I might suggest that the student talk to you first before deciding, but it's also possible that B did that, and the student indicated that no continuing commitment existed. If I were advising the student, I'd also suggest they clear things up with you first. I might also suggest that depending on the level of interest in the project they have with you, they give you the right of first refusal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this exact situation has happened to me with students (twice). They worked with me for a while, and then found a topic that made more sense to them with another professor. I wished I could have convinced them to stay, but they did well with their advisors and I was on both their committees, with no hard feelings at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T08:10:21.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17479" CreationDate="2014-02-27T08:13:23.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several points that you should consider in this respect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time our novel ideas are not as great as we think and there might be simple answers or counterexamples for what we have in mind. So it is better to think about a question in mathematics for a while and study some of the related literature, before sharing it with others. This has happened to me a lot, just see some of my questions in mathoverflow!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have an idea but you do not know how to tackle it, it is a sign that your idea is so raw and you don't own it yet. I experienced several times that a great idea is the one that comes with a clue for solution and extension. Otherwise, it is at most a spark in a well functioning brain of a hard working mathematician. I am being kind to mathematicians:-))&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your idea looks so great that can solve some big problems or answer some famous conjecture and you know how to pursue it, why do you want to share it? &lt;strong&gt;Just do it!&lt;/strong&gt; And I believe such an idea deserves several years of works. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you ask related questions around your idea without giving a whole picture and what is your ultimate purpose. In this way not only you did not reveal it with every body, but you can also gather lots of valuable insights and knowledge to think about your main idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read related questions and answers on mathoverflow or mathstackexchange. A great deal of wisdom are contained in these questions and answers and sometimes you get a clue about your idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most mathematicians have bigger fish to fry. So, I do not worry to share some of my ideas with them, However, I do not think mathoverflow or mathstackexchange are good places for such interactions. Talking with mathematicians in conferences and/or even sending them emails look better procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T08:20:03.223" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T08:20:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17486" CreationDate="2014-02-27T08:45:57.467" Score="18" ViewCount="6627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been just had an abstract accepted to one of the top conferences in my field, but I'm cancelling my participation for personal reasons (short story: my wife is going to give birth to our first child a couple of weeks before the conference, and at that point I'd rather stay at home than spend several days in a different continent; this happened because I neglected to check the actual conference dates when I submitted the abstract; let that be a lesson for all of us). When I informed the organizers, they suggested that I still should add the conference to my CV, with an indication that I didn't actually present, i.e., under &quot;Peer-reviewed conferences&quot;, I would write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A genius solution to an insanely difficult problem&quot;. Conference Everybody Wants To Attend XXIV, May 2014, Prestigious American University (unable to present).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts about this? If the organizers hadn't said anything, I would have left it out of my CV; but then, the particular organizer I corresponded with is a big name in the field and way more senior than I am, and she didn't seem to have any problems with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T07:13:34.520" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T07:13:34.520" Title="Should you list acceptance of an abstract to a prestigious conference on CV when unable to attend due to personal reasons?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-27T09:18:19.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals gain their status mainly by being the first to offer publications in a new field and secondly by recruiting influential people in the field as editors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a journal has a high impact factor people will want to publish there because authors themselves are judged on the impact factors of the journals they publish in. This means the editors can set a higher standard for acceptance. Since the impact factor is based on citation rates it then increases further. Most academic journals publish only papers and have very little editorial content, so this positive feedback mechanism is the main thing that maintains their top ranking. The mechanism operated even before impact factors were formally measured because people still knew roughly what the impact and standing of a journal was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very hard for a new journal to get a good reputation because it takes two years for them to even be given an impact factor and this will remain low because they will fail to attract the best papers initially. A new journal needs to offer something different to succeed. They may specialize in a new field that does not already have a top journal, or they may offer open access for low charges in order to get going, but the established journals are always very hard to dispose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other factor that keeps a journal in the top ranking is its editorial board, but this is not because the editorial job requires their skills and knowledge. What the journal needs is  a good supply of peers willing to review articles well and it is not easy to persuade academics to dedicate their valuable time to this chore when they don't get paid for it. The main reason they do agree to review articles is to impress the editors because the editors are influential people in the field who may help them get their next job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors themselves take on the role because of the prestige of being an editor for a top journal and because they get an opportunity to identify reviewers who understand the field so that they can recruit them. This establishes another positive feedback that helps maintain the journals top spot. One of the few things that can destabilize a top journals position is the resignation of its most influential editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this amounts to a good system for academia is very much open to debate. Most top journals are in the hands of big commercial publishers who understand how the system works and who have cleverly developed and promoted the journal impact system to their advantage. They make huge profits taking money from scarce scientific funds when most of the hard work in publishing is done by unpaid authors, reviewers and editors. Efforts by academics to change this usually fail because they don't understand how the system works, or because they dont have the time or funding to realize their ambitions. Another reason seems to be that governments and funding agencies like the big profitable corporate publishers so they tailor legislation to suit the publishers rather than the academics. Also the academic societies (APS, AMS etc.) who supposedly oversee the interests of the fields are themselves funded mostly through their journals so they have a massive self interest in perpetuating the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T09:18:19.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2014-02-27T09:21:34.257" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it is a peer-reviewed conference, I think it is OK to mention it the CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about your particular conference, but in such conferences the biggest step is to get accepted (extended abstract/paper) and you did. So you did the job, they liked your idea and in normal situation you would present there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can happen that you are not able to present and you cannot find anyone to do it for you. However, you met all the requirements to be there, so it has its place in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be more correct you can mention the abstract as well because not everybody can know if the abstract or whole paper is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A genius solution to an insanely difficult problem&quot;. Conference&#xA;  Everybody Wants To Attend XXIV, May 2014, Prestigious American&#xA;  University (accepted abstract, unable to present)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="4079" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T13:10:21.950" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T13:10:21.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17443" CreationDate="2014-02-27T12:02:24.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single answer for this question and must be determined on a case by case basis. I will rule out the career objective section of your CV since it's a matter of personal preference. Assuming you're asking about a section in an official application form, there are number of ways to address. In most cases, the career objective will indicate how your future research and/or potential research project relates to your long term career goals. It becomes significant when the application is for a funded PhD and/or the research project is related to industry. Most universities are interested in the publication of research in top journals, so you can address this issue by demonstrating the potential of your proposed research. In this way, you also implicitly address the question of becoming a future academic. Finally, if you are coming from industry to academia, then you can mention your transition from organizations to academia. The last point is somewhat trivial unless the proposed research is in industry as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T12:02:24.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2014-02-27T14:58:01.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no specific requirement in the UK for teaching as a part of a PhD. The exception is when a University grants funding on the proviso that teaching work is undertaken - however, this is a separate contractual issue to the academic requirements of obtaining the PhD itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, most departments in the UK rely upon their PhD students for teaching (normally running tutor groups) and the available hours are handed out as evenly as possible. All you can do is to ask the department to which you are thinking of applying if teaching hours are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T14:58:01.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2014-02-27T15:47:06.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not lived or worked in Europe, so discount accordingly, but my understanding is that, &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;liberal arts college&quot; does not really exist there.  Also higher education in Europe is (at least in many parts; less so in the UK) already significantly more specialized than most US undergraduate education: the &quot;Diplom thesis&quot; that Germans write to get what is chronologically closest to an American bachelor's degree is often of a greater depth and sophistication than an American master's thesis (in mathematics, anyway).  I am not really making a direct comparison, but one key to your question is that American liberal arts colleges and American research universities lie on a certain axis with respect to educational philosophies, and on this axis a European university would not lie between them but on the research university side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liberal arts colleges look carefully at their applicants for their familiarity with the issues of the above paragraph: they want their candidates to have had some direct prior experience with the liberal arts side of things.  Candidates who have gone only to American research universities have real work to do to convince liberal arts colleges that they understand and value the liberal arts college product, to the extent that I think they should be doing some teaching-related activity which is above and beyond standard graduate student teaching.  With this kind of additional work and attention, research-university candidates can still be successful...but I have still found that liberal arts colleges pay a bit more attention to &lt;strong&gt;pedigree&lt;/strong&gt; -- i.e., where you got your degrees -- than research universities of the same quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that doing your graduate training in Europe would be a strike against you, yes.  If I were at a liberal arts college, I would worry that the culture of teaching in Europe is so different from that of the US that some of the acquired teaching experiences could actually be detrimental to acquiring good American liberal arts teaching practices.  That's my general answer.  The fact though that you went to a liberal arts college yourself is a huge point in your favor: that seems to be the best possible way to show familiarity with the liberal arts college ethos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I would say: if you know that your goal is to end up at a liberal arts college, doing graduate work in Europe is not the best preparation for that, no.  But since you have liberal arts college experience, it shouldn't absolutely exclude you; rather, if for other reasons you find a European graduate program very desirable, you should be thinking from the beginning about how to keep yourself attractive to liberal arts colleges while doing so (e.g. a summer teaching opportunity in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T15:47:06.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:06:42.133" Score="5" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose we perform experiments with input parameters (temperature, humidity, processing time...) and collect resulting data (thickness, structure, mech. properties...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a tool (or set of tools) to organize, process and export data from such experiments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key features are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structured files decomposition (raw text files).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic math operations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Filter and sort by given parameters (show/export data from samples treated at given temperature and humidity for various times).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generating tables with given parameters and list of &quot;constants&quot; (table of times, mech. properties and thicknesses and list containing temperature, humidity...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vector graphics output and/or output suitable for MATLAB (graph of thickness as function of time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated (or easy-to-create) LaTeX output (report sheet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, any idea, hint or recommendation how to create it is appreciated. Right now I'm thinking of a spreadsheet (Excel) as core database and MATLAB as the processor (filters, sorting, graphics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9200" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T19:38:04.480" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T07:40:50.083" Title="Tools for data organising and processing" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13355" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:12:22.200" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This and related issues were also intensively discussed on ResearchGate, see e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_wish_you_had_known_about_the_process_of_doing_research_that_you_did_not_know_before_you_started_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_wish_you_had_known_about_the_process_of_doing_research_that_you_did_not_know_before_you_started_it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_things_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_things_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T17:12:22.200" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-02-27T17:12:22.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17508" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:30:18.400" Score="24" ViewCount="4233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently asked to review a paper, and ended up recommending a rejection of the paper. The journal has, apparently, asked the authors to revise their paper, and the journal has come back to me asking me to review the revised paper. There is, however, no option offered for me to decline. I will likely recommend rejection again as I see that the main problem with the paper is still not addressed. What should I do in this case? Should I write to the journal that I am not willing to review this paper again, or should I go ahead with the review and recommend rejection for the second time? Since I need to provide my comments to the authors again, what should I write while still being constructive? This was my first time recommending a rejection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T18:06:32.090" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:35:01.493" Title="Recommended rejection of a paper, but invited to review the paper again" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17495" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:37:32.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would store data in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CSV&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. text file with a table, with values separated by commas) rather than XLS files (the first is easier to import from and export to anything). Otherwise many tools will do the job (if you are familiar with MATLAB - why not using it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For general data processing and manipulation, &lt;strong&gt;Python&lt;/strong&gt; (with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scipy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SciPy&lt;/a&gt; stack) is capable of everything you mentioned. In particular &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipython.org/notebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IPython Notebook&lt;/a&gt; is great for data exploration and presentation (you can use code, comments and LaTeX in such notebook - also for reports). For tabular data, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://pandas.pydata.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandas&lt;/a&gt; (R-like DataFrames).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reports also you can create files in Markdown (with LaTeX), and then convert them to pdf with &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt; - may be much easier than generation of LaTeX code. (To get you some taste what is Markdown - look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackedit.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StackEdit&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And alternative to Python is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://yihui.name/knitr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;knitr&lt;/a&gt; for report generation. If you are not sure, if to choose R or Python, then for your task R seems to be an easier and better way to start (especially with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rstudio.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RStudio&lt;/a&gt; as an interface).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a bigger list and links to tutorials, take a look at a list of &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/stared/9130888&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software for scientists&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T19:01:55.970" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T19:01:55.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17502" CreationDate="2014-02-27T16:34:46.100" Score="10" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a biologist and very recently there has been a movement to increase the use of preprints in publishing biological research.  This has generated a lot of discussion about preprints and their merits and has spawned a few servers (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biorxiv.org/&quot;&gt;bioRxiv&lt;/a&gt;) but I have not gotten a good sense of how I should incorporate the preprint server into my normal publishing workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" OwnerDisplayName="KennyPeanuts" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T03:50:47.030" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T08:05:22.970" Title="How should use of a preprint server be incorporated into the publishing workflow?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17499" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:34:04.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The role that pre-prints have in the collective workflow of people in a field depends half on each person's preferences and half on how it gets established as a means of communications. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' workflows for using a pre-print server (though there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; wrong ways to use one), and you should use the one that fits you best personally and lets you communicate best with your colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a broad spectrum of reasons you might want to upload a preprint, which are explained in detail in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16832/why-upload-to-academic-preprint-sites-like-arxiv&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. To give a brief summary, you might upload a preprint or postprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to provide free access to your content to researchers and students in institutions without subscription to the journals you publish in, which is also a way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to help increase the use of your papers by the community, and hence the number of citations;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to establish priority of a result, and particularly as a way to get more widespread credit for having introduced an idea at an early stage;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to open a manuscript up for public comment from your colleagues after you feel it's mostly ready but before you're prepared to set it in (published) stone;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to make it visible to people who browse it often as a way to see new results;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to cite as-yet-unpublished work in some other paper, in a way that referees of the second one can see it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to fulfil open-access conditions on a grant;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or for many other reasons. Whether these (or others) apply to you will determine how you use the repository. Some of these are personal choices, and may come down to how much you feel you stand to gain from non-institutional readers having access to your work. Some of these are field-dependent, and hinge on there being a significant fraction of the workers in your field that regularly check the repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appropriate time to upload will typically vary on a case-by-case basis. You might upload at an almost-finished stage, at the time of submission to a journal, at time of acceptance, at the time the paper is published, or even six to twelve months after that. Each of these corresponds to some or other of the motivations above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that's important to keep in mind is that you must have a good idea of prospective journals you'd like to publish in, and of what their preprint policies are, &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you upload, as it can rule out certain publication venues if you're not careful. This is again field-dependent; many physics journals take that as standard but biology ones might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" OwnerDisplayName="episanty" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T18:49:11.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17497" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:05:47.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;That the paper was not rejected probably depends on the second (or more) reviewers comments. I would consider it normal to ask if reviewers wish to review the paper again. That you were still asked may be a mistake, most electronic systems would require you to make a decision on that point. There may also be a flaw since a rejected paper would not need a second review and the paper was not rejected based on your suggestion. One can only speculate. I would consider it only fair to write to the editors and state that you are not interested in re-reviewing the manuscript. You could state that your impression is that a similar result would be likely were you to do the job. But, honestly, why you decline the review is no-ones business and you should have been asked before being faced with the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T18:05:47.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17499" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:15:06.223" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Workflow may be different, but the one I am familiar with is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;put preprint on arXiv along with sending it to a journal&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;after the final version is confirmed, update the arXiv with the newest version of text (with your formatting)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(in case there are serious mistakes or omissions, update arXiv at anytime)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes version on arXiv is put before the submission to a journal, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is some work that need to be done before the submission, but we want to have it before a conference we are attending, or a talk at another department (so we can point the preprint to the reader),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we haven't decided yet where or if we want to send it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in some cases, arXiv is used &lt;em&gt;instead of&lt;/em&gt; a journal, especially if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the work is not suitable for publication in a journal (e.g. a PhD Thesis, textbook), but we want to disseminate it, preserve it and make it easily citable,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author prefers it that way (e.g. it is a short note, or the topic is unconventional and the author prefers to avoid struggling with editors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T18:46:20.020" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T18:46:20.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17510" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:57:21.443" Score="2" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I have done quite a lot of research work for a particular project.&#xA;I am working in the field of operations research (i.e. applied math/physics),&#xA;so this work primarily takes the form of propositions, proofs and numerical experiments.&#xA;In the process of my research,&#xA;each day I write up my daily progress in my &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_notebook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lab notebook&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;which in my case takes the form of a very very long LaTeX file.&#xA;I am now trying to write up my work as an article for submission to a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What is an efficient process which I can use to write the journal article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related links:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/stephendmumford/the-mumford-method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mumford method&lt;/a&gt; sounds interesting.&#xA;However, as Mumford is a philosopher,&#xA;his writing process seems to me to be less relevant to writing in the sciences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T19:04:04.327" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:01:56.597" Title="Efficient process for writing a STEM journal article" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:18:31.260" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you start with a collection of journals and people who want to publish quality papers in them, who arrive over time. Suppose that each new quality paper is sent to a journal which is chosen at random, but where the probability of choosing journal X is an increasing function of the number of quality papers which have already appeared in X. Then you are dealing with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment&quot;&gt;preferential attachment process &lt;/a&gt; and you will find that after a long time, most of the quality papers will be appearing in a few top journals and there will be lots and lots of mediocre journals with very few quality papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally it's a very simplified model, but the same argument can be used for the sizes of cities, views of Youtube videos, distribution of wealth, etc. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch18.pdf&quot;&gt;Chapter 18 of Easley and Kleinberg's&lt;/a&gt; textbook for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5842" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:18:31.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17504" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:20:29.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should think an annotated outline (indented list of titles) would be effective.  Do a basic outline of the article with however many titles, and under each title put one or more of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;link(s) to the text to use from your journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a short phrase to use in conveying the point of the titled section&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an idea of how much (word, line or paragraph count) to use to fill this out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;links to other outline titles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the structure looks good (or even make a few structures to pick from), go back over&#xA;and fill in the body under each title.  The annotations will help you keep track of&#xA;certain goals (word length, number of ideas, enough persuasive sentences, logical&#xA;coherence), and it is easier to manage a high-level version of the article this way.&#xA;It also makes editing easier if you prioritize which titles to cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:20:29.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17470" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:26:38.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following has been my impression as a biologist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the general protocol to name something after somebody (some people)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is none. For certain things, such as names of genes or species, there is a protocol for submitting a name to the relevant databases, which is a right reserved for authors of the publication. This name can be anything you want, although certain standards are encouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often name species after their own name. For plasmids, the convention is to acronymize the name(s) of people who created the plasmid and make it the name. For genes, this would be considered tacky (the fashion seems to be to naming them after &amp;quot;clever&amp;quot; puns instead) but I'm sure you could get it to happen with enough perseverance. But there is nothing special about it being &lt;em&gt;your name&lt;/em&gt;, because the name of the thing is arbitrary. You are allowed to give it any sort of name, your own name is just one of the (less interesting) options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concept may have several origins in different fields and due to several individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concept is built on another concept which already have a name and this can happen several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concepts are not formally named after people. When originally published, the authors may or may not invent a term for the concept they discovered, to facilitate its discussion. It gets named after them, when the research turns out to be so seminal that everyone cites and recites it, and the authors begin using &amp;quot;the Smith protocol&amp;quot; as shorthand for &amp;quot;protocol described in a recent high-profile publication by Smith and colleagues (Smith et al. Nature 2012)&amp;quot;. If it yet persists the test of time further, it may become a de facto tradition to call this the &amp;quot;Smith protocol&amp;quot;, especially once textbook authors start electing to use &amp;quot;Smith protocol&amp;quot; as the canonical name in their own texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an author invents a concept, is it appropriate to name it after him/herself, or he/she should wait others call it after his/her name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception I name earlier notwithstanding, absolutely not. A scientist would get laughed out of the room if he tried to present something he blatantly named after himself (some subtle reference to his name, like an anagram of his first name, might be begrudgingly accepted), unless he was perhaps a famous Nobel laureate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he was a famous Nobel laureate, people would still laugh, they would just wait for him to leave the room first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concept was invented by some author &amp;quot;X&amp;quot; in long time ago, and then it has evolved to something very modern and somehow different. Should we still call it by the name &amp;quot;X&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I assert the naming of concepts happens not through formal procedure, but as a consequence of frequent references to the original publication, then an improved &amp;quot;Smith protocol&amp;quot; may be named the &amp;quot;Doe-Smith protocol&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Doe protocol (based on the Smith protocol)&amp;quot; or even just &amp;quot;Doe protocol&amp;quot; if Doe manages to publish a paper which provides a useful reference for the improved version, and the improvements are substantial enough that people feel the need to cite and refer to Doe's paper at least as much as Smith's paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were trying to get something named after you, the realistic strategies in biology are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discover and name a new species, plasmid, gene, etc. And hope the nomenclature committee doesn't think you're being too arrogant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe a new experimental or mathematical/computational method, and fail to give it a nice name yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a definitive reference which synthesizes several existing ad-hoc variants of a concept into one unified theory, and fail to give it a nice name yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 1, formal procedures exist and are detailed by the agency you submit your name proposal to. For 2 and 3, you basically write the paper, and wait for everyone and their brother to start citing your landmark publication - hopefully they will talk about your research so much that the name you used will prove too cumbersome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The famous Southern blot is described as only &amp;quot;a method of transferring fragments of DNA from agarose gels to cellulose nitrate filters&amp;quot; in Southern, 1975. Although extensions of this method, like the Western, were important discoveries, their popularizers got a bit less glory since it turned out that geographical puns were more fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eagle's minimal essential medium is described as &amp;quot;a fluid medium&amp;quot; in Eagle, 1955.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Okazaki fragments were not referred to as such in Sakabe, Okazaki, 1966.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:26:38.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17497" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:35:01.493" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has happened to me a couple times. As Peter Jansson has pointed out, what probably happened is that, while you recommended rejection, reviewers 2 and 3 said &quot;it's actually publishable if the authors solve such-and-such problems&quot;. This is the kind of situation where a sympathetic editor will make a &quot;revise and resubmit&quot; decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, you have it easy. Just write a very short review along the lines of &quot;in my first review, I recommended rejection of this article because of [problem that made you recommend rejection]. As the authors have not addressed this problem, I'm regrettably forced to maintain my previous evaluation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[FWIW, one of the times I reviewed a paper like this, the journal actually ended up publishing the paper in question, with the problematic section still exactly as it was  when I reviewed and rejected it. Go figure]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:35:01.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17455" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:54:56.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One related comment- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some comments here that are equating high-impact factor with high prestige. I think this generally holds true, especially for people working firmly within the boundaries of a single discipline. For these people, of course, reputable journals are going to be more widely read and thus cited more frequently, and have higher impact-factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people whose work are more inter-disciplinary, the relationship between prestige and impact factor are not so straightforward, because the size of the disciplinary audience can be very different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my work is interdisciplinary and lies at the boundaries of sociology, economic geography, management/organizations, and Asian studies. Journals in each these fields have different audiences, number of scholars, and thus, different impact factors. For example, Asian studies have a number of high quality high prestige journals that publish excellent papers, but because the size of the core audience, even the top journals hardly have impact factors that exceed 1. For management, however, because the field is very large, even journals that publish not-so-rigorous studies tend to have high-impact factors, easier exceeding top journals in social science/humanities. There are a number of journals that have impact factors over 5 or 6, and even mid-range journals have impact-factors around 3. Sociology and geography lie somewhere in-between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be a natural tendency for people to try to publish in journals with high-impact factors. However, I would say, at least in my field, there is definitely higher prestige that will be attached to work in, say, top tier Asian studies journals (say, impact factor of 0.5-0.6) or a top- sociology journal (impact factor around 2-3) than a mid-tier management journal (impact factor of 3-4).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T20:54:56.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17504" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:01:56.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the process of writing papers is pretty individual to each researcher. What works for me may not work for you. That being said, the following are a few rules that I usually give me mentees and students when we start writing a paper together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As &quot;Not Quite An Outsider&quot; states, do start with an outline. Look through related work for papers with a similar scope / methodology / idea and start by imitating their outline. However, do not do so blindly. Instead, focus on &lt;strong&gt;understanding&lt;/strong&gt; why the authors of your related work chose to structure their paper the way they did, and check whether their (assumed) reasoning is also useful for your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that your paper needs a &quot;story&quot; - you know your material and reasoning, your readers do not. Start at the beginning, and end with the conclusions. Avoid statements that are not understandable at the point in the paper where they appear (rule of thumb: when you feel writing something along the lines of &quot;as will be explained later on&quot;, you likely have a bug in your structure).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan the length of your paper. Fill each section with some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loremipsum.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lorem Ipsum filler text&lt;/a&gt; of roughly the same length as you plan for this section. This allows you to see how much space you actually have for each part of your paper. During writing, when I start a new section I remove the filler text and replace it with what I actually plan to say at this point. I sometimes even go as far as drafting where in the paper I will have which figures, and put placeholder figures there instead when doing the outline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the paper &lt;strong&gt;in order&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e., in the same order as it will appear in the final paper). This is a bit controversial - I have seen many experienced paper writers suggest various other orders (&quot;Start with Related Work&quot; - &quot;Start with Conclusions&quot; - etc.). To me, the problem with writing in a different sequence is that it is very easy to lose track of what a reader actually knows at this point in the paper (hence destroying the story of your paper). For instance, you would end up using concepts and ideas that you actually only discuss at a later point. This makes papers unnecessary difficult to understand. I feel it is also much easier to produce a convincing line of argumentation when you produce the material in the same order as it will be read.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In any way, later rearrangements will be necessary. After reading the paper, you decide that you need to switch some subsections around, or that you do not need Section 3 at all. Stay flexible and don't be too much in love with your current outline just because it is how you initially wanted to do it. One additional sidenote in this is that you write your paper in LaTeX. This makes later changes in the outline trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the text the way you suppose it should appear in the paper. Do not draft too much - there is no point writing throwaway text unless you really do not know how to write this section / part properly at this point. Only go on to the next section when the last one is pretty much done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As soon as a section is pretty much done, get some feedback on it. Remember that your paper should already be coherent and complete up to this section, so there is no harm in sending it to colleagues or your supervisor and asking them to tell you whether the paper makes sense up to and including Section X.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:01:56.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17526" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:07:42.633" Score="9" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently admitted to a doctoral program to be part of their inaugural class for a new interdisciplinary science and engineering department. The program is located at a top-tier university in the United States and appears to be very well funded by the founding university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The faculty that they have hired so far are all well established researchers in their respective fields. These faculty have also successfully brought the majority of their students and post-docs with them, so there should be no major loss of continuity as far as research is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My primary concerns are that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the graduate curriculum itself is new&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the program (outside of the reputation of the individual faculty/university itself) is currently not very well known. Will this look bad to prospective employers (both in industry and academic), or is the reputation of my faculty advisor more important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professors may need to spend more time doing administrative activities for the new department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other risks are associated with joining a new program, and are there any professional/academic advantages to doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12472" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T01:31:01.880" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T01:57:54.350" Title="What are the risks of doing a PhD in a new department?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17515" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:28:14.533" Score="8" ViewCount="4467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently obtained my PhD in mathematics and started a post-doc this year. I have 5 published papers, across a wide spectrum of journals (in terms of quality, from very good to mediocre). However I never received any off-prints from the journals and it seems that to receive those one has to pay. On the other hand all the professors that I know of have always a lot of off-prints for most of their journal publications. I always wanted to have these neat looking off-prints but it seems that the winds have changed and journals are becoming &quot;cheaper&quot; (behavior-wise) than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads me to the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a recent change? Is it considered the norm now to not send off-prints free of charge?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these professors perhaps ordering the off-prints through some departmental fund?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything that can be done about this situation? Can I pressure the journal into sending me off-prints free of charge (e.g would trying to refuse signing the publishing agreement, unless they provide the off-prints for free work?). Have people tried boycotting journals not offering off-prints? This kind of cheap behavior really strikes me as pushing the boundary of what is acceptable. Not only we do most of the work for the journal (refereeing, writing, etc.) but on top of that journals are expensive and do not even offer off-prints anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12473" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T06:17:10.903" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T06:17:10.903" Title="Have most journals recently stopped providing off-prints to authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:50:27.907" Score="20" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several friends and acquaintances have recently died from cancer. The chemo treatments are crude and destroy quality of life. Furthermore, chemo treatments depend on the efficacy of antibiotics for protection while one's immune system is compromised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to do better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is developing the &quot;personalized medicine&quot; processes? It seems like there should be a way to look at the DNA of a cancer and reprogram it to settle down or go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My expertise is in systems engineering and software development - not in the biological sciences. I am just retired, so I don't need reimbursement. How can I contribute to improving this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answers depend on more fundamental research, that is why my question is:  How can I contribute on a volunteer basis to cancer research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I plan to upgrade from a 2006 MacBook Pro to something that can run BOINC problems a bit quicker. Rosetta@home seems like a reasonable target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found Rosalind - a site for exploring bioinformatics. &#xA;The next step for me is to ask friends who might have contacts in academia.&#xA;Thanks for looking!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12474" LastEditorUserId="12474" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T20:13:15.230" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T21:56:54.150" Title="Are there opportunities to support cancer research through volunteer IT or software development?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17512" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:52:12.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Offprints were a key part of the publication process before the digital era since digital versions did not exist; a smaller number of them commonly included in the page charges. Since journals are now digital and are also moving away from printing as a whole, reprints are things of the past. That your professors get them is most likely because they are used to have it this way but I am sure there will be journals from which they would not be able to get them other than the now standard pdf. I am not sure they get them for free anymore either. A pdf is easy to distribute and carries virtually no cost, to the publisher (journal) or the environment. I am sure the publishers were happy to see them go but the move was not primarily a financial move, it was a lack of demand. Some publishers still provide reprints but since they are no longer part of the standard service, they may charge for them. After all you get a pdf for free to distribute in a similar manner as the reprint. I have been publishing long enough to have a shelf full of useless reprints that in addition exist as pdfs as well. I am also an editor for a journal and for us it is also a question of when, not if, we move away from printing altogether. And in that case the publisher has no part in the decision since we are a society owned journal with no page charges. So I am not sure why you believe the reprint is so important. There is little demand for posting reprints to others when a pdf exists that can be sent over e-mail. I can understand that sending a paper copy can be more personal than e-mailing a pdf but I still think the demand for a printed copies is very low indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:52:12.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17512" CreationDate="2014-02-27T21:55:25.357" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off-prints are a remnant from the days when photocopying hadn't been invented and, if you wanted your own copy of a paper, the only reasonable way to get one was to write to the author and ask for an off-print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing off-prints to authors certainly seems to be becoming less common.  Some journals still provide them for free, some only for a fee, and some not at all.  I don't think most people care, and among those that do care, many prefer not to receive the off-prints.  It's been years since I received a request for an off-print, so when I do get them they just end up sitting in piles in my office while I offer them as party favors to anyone who enters the office.  Some decline and probably many of the rest recycle them, since electronic copies are far more convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I pressure the journal into sending me off-prints free of charge (e.g would trying to refuse signing the publishing agreement, unless they provide the off-prints for free work?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't try pressuring them, which could come across as both eccentric and rude.  Instead, you could try begging, by explaining that you are a postdoc with strictly limited funds but would really love off-prints and hope they could provide them at a reduced cost.  I have no idea whether this could work, but the worst that can happen is that they'll say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have people tried boycotting journals not offering off-prints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are welcome to investigate which journals provide off-prints for free and submit your papers there, but I doubt many people will join you in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:55:25.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2014-02-27T23:17:29.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some more specialized ones for math:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/LAG/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linear Algebraic Groups and Related Structures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://eprint.iacr.org/complete/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cryptography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12475" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T23:17:29.830" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-20T19:19:58.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-27T23:52:34.413" Score="6" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;When did universities start to segregate their certifications into undergraduate degrees (bachelors) graduate programs (master's and doctorates)?  More importantly, why did this separation occur?  What prompted the need for separate levels of certification in academic settings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T01:16:48.253" Title="How did graduate schools come into existence?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17519" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-02-27T23:56:03.960" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T23:56:03.960" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T23:56:03.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17520" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-02-27T23:56:03.960" Score="0" Body="Regarding inquiries into the evolution and development of academia as an institution from a historical perspective." OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T00:23:10.700" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T00:23:10.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17527" CreationDate="2014-02-28T00:28:08.647" Score="7" ViewCount="2256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about what makes reasonable grounds for rejecting a paper and came across the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/classes/phd/Hints-Review.html&quot;&gt;... two major revisions are not allowed.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean that only two rounds of review at the maximum are allowed? Is this always the case? I do remember recommending major revision twice, and indeed the editor stopped the review process and decided to accept the paper without the authors having to revise their paper the second time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T06:44:48.107" Title="Is there a limit to the number of rounds in a peer-review process?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17523" CreationDate="2014-02-28T00:47:02.560" Score="4" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never been in a University in my life, but I enjoy reading research papers to expand my knowledge and go deeper in the understanding of details which are not covered by books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent paper shows that this substance X causes reaction Y. Many others have shown that reaction Y can cause a dangerous consequence Z. I'd like to ask the author of the paper if he thinks substance X can trigger consequence Z. No one seems to have answered this question and, if they did, they're out of my radar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many papers covers details and little aspects of how reaction Y causes consequence Z, however I've found that a Wikipedia article does a good job in summing up all of these papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I link the Wikipedia article to the Doctor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should I link the 20+ papers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming consequence Z is well known in the field, should I give for granted that he knows of it (thus not linking anything)? Can putting the links to something that is well known make me sound like a pretentious prick?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12478" LastEditorUserId="12478" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T00:57:52.227" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T12:31:05.517" Title="Can I contact the author of a paper for questions, even if I've never studied over high school?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17522" CreationDate="2014-02-28T00:54:34.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;About your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you want you can link the Wikipedia article or make a small summary explaining your thoughts, usually Professors or researchers do not have too much time to read long emails; so try to keep it up simply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) explained before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) It is nothing bad that you point to the other papers of consequence Z, if he knows about them he will tell it straightforward&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, do not feel bad that you did not have any formal education. Just address to the researcher in a respectful manner and tell him/her that you are interested about his job. You do not need to send your CV or a motivation letter just for asking something, but beware, you can or you cannot get an answer (usually depends how much interested of free time the researcher you are appointing has)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T00:54:34.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13479" CreationDate="2014-02-28T01:05:54.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://zombal.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zombal&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have nothing to do with Zombal. I don't get paid whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a statistician working in the government sector, and  I don't earn a lot. So I too was looking to get some side income. I found Zombal through &lt;a href=&quot;http://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/zombal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt;, which makes Zombal look quite good. I have yet to give it a try because I don't quite have the time (yet) and like @penguin_knight, I am not sure I want to do more stats after work.&#xA;But since you are asking how you can get side jobs, I am throwing this out as an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12479" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T01:56:55.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T01:56:55.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17518" CreationDate="2014-02-28T01:16:48.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bachelor, master, doctor degrees are medieval European in origin. Wiki has a reasonable page on medieval universities. The primary need for these levels was the certification of who was allowed to teach and what they were allowed to teach in the university. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages being what it was was concerned with proper teaching to avoid passing along heresies (which universities got accused of from almost the beginning of their existence) which meant you needed a license to teach and to preach in those days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T01:16:48.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17511" CreationDate="2014-02-28T01:57:54.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The risks are as you describe, although I suspect that the third item is not as serious (unless your advisor has a formal administrative role). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros are that you will have a lot more input into how the curriculum and the program is shaped. As a new department, people will try things, and not everything will work. There will be many opportunities to suggest improvements and how to do things differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the parent university is well known, it's in their interest to make sure the new program succeeds, so you should also get some benefit from the level of attention paid by them. By bringing a number of faculty over, they've expressed &quot;buy-in&quot; to the new institute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T01:57:54.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17521" CreationDate="2014-02-28T02:02:00.303" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long answer short- It depends on the editorial policy of the specific journal or the current editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, 4 or more rounds of revisions is not completely unheard of. Despite people's frustration with such policy of unlimited number of revisions (Imagine being that person who got a rejection after 4 major revisions and the manuscript being under review for 3 years? --- this is not uncommon in the social sciences), some journals do retain such policy. The top 2 journals in sociology are notorious for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently serve on an editorial board of a reputable journal in the field (one of the top 5), where the current editor has changed the journal policy to not extend second R&amp;amp;Rs. In this journal, you only get once chance to revise, and the result of the revise can either be an outright accept, conditional accept (which will come back with very minor change suggestions-- for example, cite an overlooked source, change the title of the paper, rewrite the conclusion, etc), or reject. I think this is a positive step forward, especially since many editors in the field tend to be very nitpicky about minor/aesthetic issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="11154" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T18:39:59.790" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T18:39:59.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17607" CreationDate="2014-02-28T02:49:25.320" Score="12" ViewCount="5883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got a BA in English at a pretty good school, spent the next 10 years in a fruitless pursuit of screenwriting with a day job in a legal department, and now that I'm sick of all that, I'd like to do something mathy. And it seems pretty clear that that's going to require going back to school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a HUGE redirection -- a ridiculous one, really -- I assume I should get a second BA/BS before even considering a masters, right? I did well in math in school, but I left off at single variable calc. (I'm currently studying linear algebra on my own and loving it.) But what, really, are my chances for even getting into a decent second bachelor's program?? I'm thinking of taking college extension classes to get more experience and recommendation letters for that purpose. If I get some online bachelors degree (EDIT: or a post-bac), are any (reputable) masters programs even going to consider me?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may well ask what my eventual goal is, but I'm at such a basic level that I'm not sure that that question is all that relevant. If I were to pick a goal just for the sake of aiming for something, getting a job in statistics sounds interesting, but who knows what I'd want to do after getting a second bachelors. I'd like to try my hand at research, but that sounds way too pie-in-the-sky given my background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any advice or feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12481" LastEditorUserId="12481" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T03:01:58.300" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:30:40.533" Title="Getting into math ten years after a BA in English" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2014-02-28T02:57:41.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers assume that the mentoring relationship can be saved, and that there are specific actions you can take to help the mentee. I want to add that sometimes, that isn't the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student who is the main &quot;experimentalist&quot; in my group, I mentor many other students (grad, undergrad, even high school summer research students). Some are very good, some are very bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, like mmh, I mentored 6 or 7 grad students when I myself was an undergrad (because I was more experienced with the particular project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mentoring students is hard when you are yourself a student&lt;/strong&gt;, especially when your mentees are officially at a &quot;higher level&quot; (of study) than you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the official faculty advisor, you don't have the ability to enforce consequences for the student's poor performance. Sometimes you feel that the mentee isn't putting as much effort into the mentoring relationship as they would if the mentor was a professor. A student mentor is more approachable than a faculty mentor, which can be good (mentee feels more comfortable asking questions and admitting weaknesses!) or bad (mentee doesn't respect and value mentor's time because he's &quot;only&quot; a student!) depending on the mentor and mentee personalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, unlike a faculty mentor, you have the distinct advantage that &lt;strong&gt;the student is really not your responsibility.&lt;/strong&gt; If you feel the mentoring relationship is not working out, you can always say the following to the faculty member who &lt;strong&gt;is responsible for the student:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I've been spending a lot of time working with X and I feel like it's not really a productive mentoring relationship. He is taking up a lot of my time, without putting in the effort that he would need to learn what I can teach him, and then become more independent. Please find someone else to work with him to get him up to speed.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T10:07:24.257" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T10:07:24.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2014-02-28T06:21:18.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should look for schools that don't offer PhD's in statistics, only master's.  Then they will hire their MS students as statistics TA's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T06:21:18.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T05:24:53.277" Score="3" ViewCount="4847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm told there are conventions in scientific papers around graphs. I'm publish material for a general audience based on a the findings of a scientific paper (unpublished) and having a disagreement with the author of the paper about how graphs must be presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically asking here about the conventions for scientific publishing. I'm very aware that conventions outside scientific papers for graphs are much more open, I take my visual data cues mostly from Edward Tufte's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm being told that displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater accuracy in modelling data and therefore should be absent in the case of this carbon sequestration modelling since it's not the results of measurements? (I would have thought significant figures on axis, axis spacing and fundamentally the caption explaining the data source and assumptions were more relevant to that)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm told that titles are a no go, captions only. (I've found a Uni spec online for science papers saying titles are mandatory). I'm told titles are rare in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any right or wrong to these matters of convention or is it just opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" OwnerDisplayName="Alastair Leith" LastEditorUserId="201" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T08:32:33.893" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T17:02:18.987" Title="Grid lines on graphs" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T08:52:41.033" Score="5" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a research on family business and there are few survey available on internet providing a lot of key information/data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For examples, there is one detailed survey done by a accountancy firm (2000 interviews around the world) and showing very interesting results which I want to use in my research paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This accountancy firm is sharing this survey with viewers on their site, they are even allowing to download the .pdf copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, can I use this information (of course I will give credit to them for this information) OR do I need permission from them to use these facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12490" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T09:24:40.710" Title="Can I use facts from surveys which are done by others and are available on internet?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17533" CreationDate="2014-02-28T09:06:23.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no right or wrong when it comes to grid lines. There may be conventions varying between disciplines. The basic question of whether to use such lines or not, is if they add something useful to the reader to better understand the data displayed. A go figure should communicate as many thought as possible to the reader without to much effort. If you want to get some ideas of thinking about graphics, try to locate the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The visual display of quantitative information&lt;/a&gt; by Edward Tufte. There are many constructive thoughts about displaying information there worth considering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end you need to look at how others publish similar data and figure out if a &quot;standard&quot; has developed. It may not be the best way to display data but since many are familiar with the format it becomes an efficient communication. Otherwise you should try to display the data as clearly as possible, lines or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T09:06:23.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17538" CreationDate="2014-02-28T11:46:49.823" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this investment bank specialized in the mining sector. I had access to one of their presentations where they have data regarding the production and end use of some chemical elements. They do not cite the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that is good or bad, trustful or not, to cite these data in my PhD thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12495" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T12:54:09.520" Title="Is citing data from a presentation not trustful?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17537" CreationDate="2014-02-28T12:18:31.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the source has been used, it generally must be cited, otherwise you assign yourself results or conclusions obtained by other researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing the source is not a question for its reputability. If you think the source is not reputable enough, do not use it in your work. It is not very common but I have even seen &quot;personal communication&quot; as a type of the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T12:18:31.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17522" CreationDate="2014-02-28T12:31:05.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can contact any professor asking about they research projects, assuming you are polite enough and really interested in the topic, not just in talking with somebody from the &quot;real science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kind of response (if any) largely depends on the personality of the researcher, how busy is he at the moment, how frequently he receives a contact requests of this kind and how good is your question (a really good question contains majority of the answer asking to explain which alternative is true or to clarify particular point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no particular rules that would force a scientist to ignore or to respond your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T12:31:05.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17537" CreationDate="2014-02-28T12:54:09.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your research topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are conducting research on the marketing value of a chemical element, the trustfulness of a presentation without citation sources is unknown at best. All you know is that they did the presenation for purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are conducting research on the investment bank marketing strategies, this presentation can be a research subject. The trustfulness of the presentation can be a research topic by itself. However, you will have the citation issue if the presentation is not publicly available as @xLeitix pointed out in the comment above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T12:54:09.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17542" CreationDate="2014-02-28T13:09:39.497" Score="8" ViewCount="75294" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm reading a journal article for which the reference for example is stated as &quot;Journal of Examples 3, 74-78 (2014)&quot;, how can I tell whether it's the volume or issue number that is given? In many circumstances, I understand that it's quite easy to tell. For example, if the number is quite high, it's probably not the issue number. And if it's a journal which I know have been in existence for long (for example Science), I can surmise that if I'm seeing a low digit, it's probably not the volume number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes it's not unambiguous. In the example given above, is it a new journal which  has only released three volumes? Or is it just issue three of some, unknown volume number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a system to all this madness? Is there a way to always tell what you're actually looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T12:45:31.773" Title="How can I tell whether it is the volume or the issue number that is given?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17541" CreationDate="2014-02-28T13:14:49.753" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is only one number, it's the volume.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are two number, it's first volume, then issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T13:14:49.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17548" CreationDate="2014-02-28T13:35:46.050" Score="5" ViewCount="1516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done a short summer research internship at a department of a famous University in Europe. Unfortunately, this was last summer and I reminded my professor several times now to give me some sort of written confirmation that I actually stayed at his department.(3 times per E-Mail and one time, when I left him). He always said that he will do it, but he always pointed out that he is very busy currently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this sounds true? I mean, it has been half a year now and apparently there is not much to do about it instead of just waiting or is there? I also just asked for a few lines, not a confirmation letter of anything similar and I also told him that I would need this for my home university(Which was true)- but he did not really react upon that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to pressure him by being more &quot;rude&quot; in my mails, this is not the way I deal with such situation, but I think his behaviour is very annoying and I want this piece of paper now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you deal with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9368" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T00:48:31.140" Title="Lazy/Busy Professor does not give me my confirmation" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17546" CreationDate="2014-02-28T13:43:13.767" Score="12" ViewCount="5908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of updating my CV. Since I often get labeled as &quot;the bioinformatician&quot; I get to play with many different languages and technologies, and similarly what people expect from a bioinformatician varies from person to person. So I figured it would be a good idea to indicate how much I &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; I know in respective fields/languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14080/mention-impact-factor-or-conference-acceptance-rate-in-cv&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I came to wonder whether or not its acceptable to have self-assessed ratings of your technical skills, such as: proficiency programming languages, familiarity with relevant software etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own feeling is that such ratings are useful to indicate what you feel most confident or comfortable with. It would also be useful to show any potential future employer the level of competence you have in different fields. If you think about it a bit, it is common to have some type of rating for the languages one speaks, so I think an analogue to programming language proficiency should not be that alienating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there is the risk of rendering your CV like, as a friend of mine put it, a role-playing game character sheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common to have such ratings on skills? Are there any potential problems with it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; What I was thinking is a small listing something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mGBDG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T21:25:27.283" Title="Is it acceptable, or advisable, to include self-assessed ratings of your skills on your CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2014-02-28T13:47:41.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While my answer is pretty close to Pete Clark's, I'd like to put it a little differently: by doing a Ph.D. In Europe, you are taking a huge risk; there's a reasonable chance (not surety, probably not even balance of probability, but real chance) that you will end up with a record that will make you completely unhireable at a liberal arts college.  Similarly, no matter what, you will be closing off the possibility of some liberal arts schools who are not going to consider a foreign Ph.D.  Keep in mind, no matter where you're applying, there are going to be people with strong teaching records from institutions in the US in the candidate pool, and it's going to feel much lower risk to hire one of them rather than someone with a foreign Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to emphasize, I'm not saying all, but some number will.  I would only consider staying in Europe if you see a benefit that outweighs that risk, which I am not seeing in your current question, but I don't know the whole situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, you're taking a reasonably large risk by getting a Ph.D. anywhere and hoping enough liberal arts schools are still hiring by the time you finish.  Nothing in life is sure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good experiment: look at the CV's of young faculty at the sort of schools you're interested in being hired at.  See what you find on them; that will probably be more valuable than whatever we're telling you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also know, a lot of American academics think that in Europe, quality teaching is valued even less than in the US (I'll note, I'm not making a judgement about whether this is true, but simply that this is a widely held bias), so even if you have considerable experience with teaching in Europe, it may not actually help much.  Schools are going to look not just at quantity but quality.  They like to see class evaluations and reports from classroom observations, for example, so look carefully at what you'll be able to get those wherever you're going in Europe, and whether the courses you'll be doing are at an appropriate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: it's possible that one could make this work out, but it's a big risk, so I would only consider it if you see a big benefit on the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T13:47:41.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17544" CreationDate="2014-02-28T14:03:02.867" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;What scale do you intend to rate yourself on?  Maybe that sounds like a silly riposte, but that's a serious issue.  If you say you're proficient in Java, how does the person reading the CV know what on earth you mean (assuming they're willing to take your word for it).  I would be much more inclined to focus on what experience you have with a language (I have X many years of Java programming experience, I've done such and such projects), since that's actually something which people understand the meaning of.  You also don't necessarily need to cover this in a lot of detail in your CV, since if you're applying for a job where these skills are relevant, you can mention it in your cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: In response to the proposal of using stars or a 0-5 rating:  &lt;strong&gt;DON'T DO IT!&lt;/strong&gt;  If you want to write &quot;I'm proficient in Java and have some experience in C&quot; that's harmless but won't make too much of a positive impression either without some more concrete information.  The stars will make you look eccentric at best, and lunatic at worst.  I know that some times the usual convention about how to do things seem constraining and silly, but if you've never seen something on a CV before (and I've never seen giving yourself numerical ratings on an unknown scale), there's probably a good reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T10:47:26.273" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T10:47:26.273" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17544" CreationDate="2014-02-28T14:24:16.063" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's get some terminology clear. A self-assessment is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am proficient in Java and Python, and have a good working knowledge of C++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to self-assess, if only because, in the absence of an external standard, self-assessments are difficult for others to evaluate. What does &quot;good working knowledge of C++&quot; mean, for example? If my work depends on a program that involves many thousand C++ lines across dozens of files, can I count on you to maintain, debug, and expand it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want to do is accomplishment-listing, which looks like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I took CS304 &quot;Advanced C++&quot; (grade: A) and CS407 &quot;C++ Applications in the Life Sciences&quot; (grade: A+) in Alma Mater State University (2010-2011). At BioInfo Inc. (2011-2013), I helped develop the C++ backed of the following programs...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is much more helpful for prospective employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T14:24:16.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17543" CreationDate="2014-02-28T14:27:07.260" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would address this by contacting the professor's &lt;em&gt;administrative assistant&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;secretary&lt;/em&gt;. Usually, such &quot;form letters&quot; do not need to be actively written by the professor in question—just signed by the professor. The assistant can prepare the letter, and get the faculty member's signature; in some cases, the assistant may even have a digital signature available, so the professor's direct involvement isn't even necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T14:27:07.260" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T16:06:14.827" Score="9" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Breakdown of a larger issue - &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17516/12468&quot;&gt;full story here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a masters research project as part of a grant project my professor received. Her project was to redo a standard, widely design using a new technology as a feasibility comparison, to see if the technology should be adapted as an accepted (possibly standard) design. My thesis project was to redesign key part of the original design in order to provide her with design parameters; we then iterated over each design twice more to finalize on common parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took a couple months to get clear criteria from the sponsor, and we finished a couple months behind schedule, but ultimately our work was a success. Our work was combined in a single dual report to serve as both my thesis and her official report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following my successful defense, with no changes from my committee, she bluntly refused to sign off on my graduation paperwork until she had official acceptance of the report from the entity funding the grant. She admitted this was an entirely separate issue but &quot;wanted something to hold over my head in case they ask for changes&quot;. This delayed my graduation significantly, which has had serious consequences for my professional career. As far as I can tell, the was done solely for her benefit to secure full grant payment (to her) and not as any part of the school's needs or my graduation requirements.&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;If all the requirements of a prescribed study program are met, are there any situations when it would be appropriate for a professor to deliberately delay a student's graduation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T08:12:05.687" Title="When can a professor refuse to sign off on a committee-approved thesis?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;student-employee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18066" CreationDate="2014-02-28T16:31:52.757" Score="13" ViewCount="1167" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Breakdown of a larger issue - &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17516/12468&quot;&gt;full story here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17551/12468&quot;&gt;(delayed) approval of my thesis paperwork by my professor&lt;/a&gt;, the review staff of my small (~20 grad students?) department took weeks to give me each round of revisions. After the second revision, having already had my thesis for nearly the entire semester, the reviewer admitted to &quot;forgetting&quot; about my paperwork for over a month. She followed that up by telling me she was shelving my paperwork to &quot;focus on other students who still have a chance of graduation this semester.&quot; Even though I should have graduated the semester previous, and had been waiting months for her to finish the review so I could get my thesis bound (required by the graduation process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewer was fired shortly after the end of that semester, the new reviewer and I got it finished up in just over a week, and the dean of the college wrote a letter to the graduate school requesting my graduation be back-dated. This was refused with only blanket statements about 'policy'. Obviously I should have escalated the issue much sooner, but I wasn't world-weary enough to realize that &quot;the people in charge&quot; were being so negligent and unprofessional, or to realize that I could do anything about it. I think students in general are often too intimidated by the people in the 'ivory tower' to speak out and ask for better treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can students know when they are being treated unfairly? How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored? Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T16:24:07.340" Title="Can a student seek redress for the administration neglecting their paperwork?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;paperwork&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17533" CreationDate="2014-02-28T17:02:18.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On grid lines&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the points you would like to make with the graph. If you're just going to show an upward or downward trend, then the grid lines are probably redundant. If you'd need refer back to a certain point of a curve, and knowing the vertical position of that point would be crucial, then grid lines can help. It's not about the graphs (or I may go so far to say even within publication culture,) it's about the points you are trying to get across. If the grid lines will get people there with less puzzling or work, then yes to grid lines. In all other occasions, then no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm being told that displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater&#xA;  accuracy in modelling data and therefore should be absent in the case&#xA;  of this carbon sequestration modelling since it's not the results of&#xA;  measurements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps the oddest graphical rule I have heard in the last 12 months. For most grid lines are just an extension of the tick mark on the axes. As long as you provide the tick marks on the y-axis, anyone can draw horizontal grid lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, however, not advisable to provide tick marks or grid lines finer than what your instrument or model can discern. For example, if your measurement or prediction is in the unit of meter. Then, at most I'd just put grid lines at 0.5 m increment. I wouldn't go so far to put 0.01 or even 0.1 m increments. That would imply some precision that I never had. I believe your partner author's concern may be more related to this problem. In that case, you two need to talk and make sure at least the tick marks make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On caption vs. title&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm told that titles are a no go, captions only. (I've found a Uni&#xA;  spec online for science papers saying titles are mandatory). I'm told&#xA;  titles are rare in journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are rare in my field (biomedical.) We use captions (located &lt;em&gt;below&lt;/em&gt; the graph) most of the time. The caption usually starts with something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure 1. The [would have been title]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[texts explaining the graph.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a title in the illustration, it only serves to duplicate information, making it redundant ink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, depending on fields and journals, the rule may differ. Check with the journal's guideline and other published work in that journal for clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T17:02:18.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18178" CreationDate="2014-02-28T17:02:43.170" Score="3" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Breakdown of a larger issue - &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17516/12468&quot;&gt;full story here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17551/12468&quot;&gt;deliberate delay my thesis paperwork by my professor&lt;/a&gt;, and after &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17553/12468&quot;&gt;my department ignored my thesis revision requests&lt;/a&gt; for over 6 months, I finally got my graduation paperwork completed (with a $200 late fee) just after the start of the 3rd semester after my thesis defense. My official graduation was therefore graduated &lt;em&gt;a full year after my defense&lt;/em&gt;. Due to the concurrent program I was in, this meant my undergraduate degree also did not post until that date - &lt;em&gt;2.5 years after I finished my undergraduate classes&lt;/em&gt;. As my profession requires 4 years of &lt;em&gt;post-degree&lt;/em&gt; training for licensing, this has significantly delayed my professional career. If not for delays beyond my control by school personnel, I would have had time to complete the graduation paperwork and finish my degree a full year earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went the the director of my program and was kicked out before I could do more than state my problem - &quot;I don't believe the department could have held you up; students just don't know how to be responsible.&quot; I finally got issues escalated to the dean of the college, and he agreed that the department had grossly mishandled things. He contacted the dean of the graduate school, who refused to even hear the case - all that he or I ever got back from the graduate school was blanket statements about 'policy', which I presume meant their own and not some oversight body. Even when I (repeatedly) went to the graduate office in person, the (brand new) graduate dean refused meet with me. I suspect that the program director (a very aggressive personality) had preemptively contacted him to ask him to ignore me; the dean of my college was retiring that semester and presumably carried very little weight in department politics. However that is purely conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why would the graduate dean refuse to talk to me? Liability concerns? Or just pure pomp and disregard for the woes of a lowly student?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree to the semester I had completed all my coursework and successfully defended my thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T18:05:21.520" Title="Can the graduate school administration change graduation dates?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;&lt;paperwork&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17558" CreationDate="2014-02-28T17:40:01.757" Score="41" ViewCount="4011" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interviewing for faculty positions, how can you find out whether a particular work environment would likely be toxic? (Either generally toxic, or particularly bad for you as a {woman, early career researcher, researcher in a particular subfield, etc.})&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can such environments be avoided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you ask about this during a visit or interview? &lt;strong&gt;Who&lt;/strong&gt; should you ask (faculty, deans, students) and &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; should you ask that might elicit the relevant information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways to detect a toxic environment, besides for asking people who know to be on their best behavior for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8507/what-questions-should-one-ask-to-the-former-current-students-of-a-professor-befo&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17192/what-are-the-right-questions-to-ask-professors-at-a-visit-day-for-prospective&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/158/how-to-evaluate-potential-advisers-on-grounds-other-than-their-research-publicat&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for prospective PhD students, but not for faculty candidates (as far as I know). I believe the answers will be different for faculty candidates - for one thing, PhD students are likely to be honest when telling a prospective student about their advisor;  faculty members talking to a candidate about their colleagues, not so much. Also, the interview/visit procedure is different for faculty candidates, as are some of the relevant indicators of toxicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: I read this question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/02/toxic-avoidance.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FemaleScienceProfessor&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T23:43:05.063" Title="How can I detect a toxic environment while on the interview circuit?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17572" CreationDate="2014-02-28T18:24:40.810" Score="3" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to finish my undergraduate degree in June and from September I will follow a masters course in the UK. My field of interest is theoretical/mathematical physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had considered applying for a PhD program in the US but I have observed that most graduate programs require following some masters courses and completing an examination before starting your PhD research. If I had known I would have applied for the whole graduate program but all deadlines were around Christmas. So I would like to ask some questions about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I guess this will depend on the specific program, but, would there be a possibility of doing some kind of fast-track?, i.e completing the examinations upon arrival and starting your research immediately. Or will I need to spend a year attending to these courses? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I believe this may be a common issue for European students. Does anyone know somebody in the same situation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12387" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T18:27:31.423" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T02:47:53.047" Title="United States PhD fast-track" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2014-02-28T19:00:07.440" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I found useful was to be very watchful of how the interviewers act towards each other. Typically some sort of meal is part of an on-campus interview and you will be eating with several of the faculty members. If they can't make it through the meal without doing something objectionable you probably have a toxic environment. The funny thing is that they know to act properly towards you but will still forget to do so to their colleagues even though you are right there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example there was one such dinner where I was pressured into drinking alcohol the night before the real part of the interview and the junior (and female) faculty member who was present was the target of most of the jokes from the senior male faculty members. Both of these details did not help their chances of getting me to accept their offer. Fortunately I had another offer to take instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means going to catch every situation you want to get away from but the general idea is to watch their behavior. In larger departments where the jerks are kept away from the candidates you may have to be more active in searching for these issues. I was mostly interviewing in small departments where I was able to meet everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T19:00:07.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2014-02-28T19:18:44.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;for one thing, PhD students are likely to be honest when telling a prospective student about their advisor&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree. In fact, I have seen the opposite. A PhD student's future is &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; in the hands of their advisor in a way that not even TT faculty depend on their chair, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this question is the same for both prospective students and faculty. You cannot ask directly but must read between the lines. I find that staying more quiet than normal during a conversation will sometimes inspire the other to fill in the silence in some very ... revealing ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12506" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T20:28:33.413" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T20:28:33.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2014-02-28T19:19:36.157" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;A comment on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/02/toxic-avoidance.html&quot;&gt;FSP&lt;/a&gt; post offers the following answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One tell tale sign at the last university where I worked, was that almost all the research collaborations in the department had fallen apart, many due to personal conflicts. If a department doesn't/can't collaborate I'd call that a bad sign. Lots of collaborations, especially interdisciplinary ones, suggest some rudimentary ability to interact with other humans :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T19:19:36.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17565" CreationDate="2014-02-28T20:45:47.323" Score="22" ViewCount="11251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I am creating figures for publication, I often wonder if I should be using a serif or sans-serif font. I browse the journals in my field and notice that there is no standard, just chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have typically chosen serif font to match the typography of the body text; however, I have read that sans-serif stands out among the serif body text. My rationale for choosing serif text is because it allows me to reproduce the symbols from the text exactly in my legends (and/or annotations). To me, this seems clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a source or standard that recommends one or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T23:03:11.793" Title="Publishing figures: Serif or Sans-serif fonts?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17564" CreationDate="2014-02-28T21:23:19.817" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to typographic design, it can be dangerous to adhere to rules of thumb. Sometimes (actually most of the time) sans-serif fonts work, sometimes they don't. It would depend on tradition, trend, and overall feeling that the fonts project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal does not specify. I would usually favor sans-serif. The reason is that unlike my texts, I am not always sure how much the editorial team may size down my illustration. Sans-serif has a pretty good property that they are quite resistant to shrinking, and can still be legible at relatively small size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, if the publisher uses any software to smooth out the edge of the fonts after resizing (e.g. through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aliasing&lt;/a&gt;,) serif fonts can sometimes appear broken at their thinner strokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, some illustrations that just don't look right with sans-serif. For instance, line labels and angle labels of trigonometry problem sets and formula like &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Trigonometry.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; are much nicer with bold and/or italicized serif fonts, monotone ink-drawn anatomical charts (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://img0.etsystatic.com/023/0/6607786/il_570xN.494030876_fmxm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;) will just look very odd if we put on sans-serif labels. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edisondrama.com/graphics/LifeofShakespeare.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;timeline&lt;/a&gt; describing Shakespeare's Life may look ridiculous if sans-serif fonts are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those difficult situations, look for serif fonts that are beefier or with more uniform stroke width. As they can likely withstand shrinking and aliasing. In addition, look for fonts that are slightly wider, and have a good &quot;x-height&quot; (literally height of the font &quot;x&quot;). Some possible candidates are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caslon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caslon&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baskerville&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Garamond&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palatino&lt;/a&gt;. Avoid cursive fonts, or fonts with some very thin lines like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Times New Roman&lt;/a&gt;. A more in-depth discussion on squint-free fonts can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://layersmagazine.com/art-of-type-squint-free-small-type.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this blog page&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/3330/what-is-the-best-font-for-extremely-limited-space-i-e-will-fit-the-most-readab&quot;&gt;thread on SE UX&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:24.060" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T21:37:46.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17543" CreationDate="2014-02-28T23:02:50.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hah! It took me 4 years to get a confirmation for my exchange student year to get my degree. After numerous emails and even official letters from my University which all got ignored, the only thing that finally worked was a flight back and running around there for a week, where everyone was telling me they had no trace of my stay whatsoever and putting the responsibility on someone else. So I hope you don't need to do those extreme measures but stay prepared and first go to your departement and let them write a formal letter. Also phone calls may work better than emails. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7324" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T23:02:50.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17564" CreationDate="2014-02-28T23:03:11.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Helvetica/Arial on all my figures, as it is a neutral font that doesn't detract from the point of the figure - to present data. It lacks the flourishes of most serif fonts, or stylistic features of othe sans serif fonts. As others have commented sans-serif fonts are more readable at small sizes, hence their overwhelming use in road signage. Since most figures are small when reproduced, readability is paramount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T23:03:11.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17557" CreationDate="2014-03-01T02:47:53.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many departments don't have hard deadlines for the graduate school applications, but they might have some test requirements that you need to take for the school to finally accept your application (i.e., many public universities need a GRE score for all applicants).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the departments are fine with it, you can still apply and take the tests in the next month or so, although a lot of departments will start accepting PhD students soon (if they haven't started already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tests are usually a general test GRE, a subject test GRE, or the GMAT, but they may vary. Since you're from the UK you don't need the TOEFL english test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to email/call individual professors or departments and ask for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of cases the graduate student assistants can give you a lot of answers directly since they handle most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually departments have a faculty member in charge of the graduate student program. They are also good contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I applied for my PhD in the states I was still in school in Europe, so I went through a similar situation, although I was done with the standard tests by that December (eight years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12515" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T02:47:53.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17574" CreationDate="2014-03-01T04:23:20.937" Score="7" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am  in my first year at grad school, and I am thinking about changing from EE/CS to BME. My supervisor is the professor in both departments (actually, full professor of the first and joint appointed of the second).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken some modules that are required by both departments, and my project is related to biomedical science. I wonder if there are any possibilities that I can switch? Should I go and talk to the BME administrative before I mention it to my supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T17:45:43.247" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T17:45:43.247" Title="Is it possible to change PhD department, but keep supervisor if he has joint appointment in the other department?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;joint-appointment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17573" CreationDate="2014-03-01T07:29:52.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely talk to your advisor first. While I doubt that continuity of funding will be an issue, there could be other ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your advisor should be allowed to advise students in BME (sometimes 'joint appointments don't by default come with the ability to be the advisor for a student). You may need to get a co-advisor in BME (or not: it depends on the rules)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you may need to formally reapply. There might even be the possibility that you are rejected (but I'd be very surprised if that happened). It's usually never the case that you can just switch between departments. This also means that there will be deadlines, paperwork and possibly even some fees. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;since you're in the first year in grad school, committee composition is not an issue, but for someone later on in the program that could be a problem as well. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor will/should know the answer to some of these questions and the BME administrative staff (graduate advisor or equivalent) will know the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T07:29:52.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17495" CreationDate="2014-03-01T07:40:50.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find Google Sheets is easier and more powerful in many ways than excel. I have done a couple of projects with a sheet of raw data coming in via csv, then other sheets to process it. If you're clever, it can be done so that when the raw data are updated, everything else falls into place. Google Charts is basic but has some neat features for looking at data. The Transpose, Filter, Sort and even query (SQL) is very cool if you have lots of data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can collaborate in teams, commenting on interesting findings, etc. Graphs output to PNG or PDF look great in latex. Data are available in the cloud, not just on some file server in a lab. Tables are a special kind of graph that can be shared on web pages and have user-selectable options for sorting, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T07:40:50.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T11:31:37.733" Score="8" ViewCount="4225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a 3rd world country and at one of top universities in my country a professor offered me a PhD position. I will pursue a part time PhD while working full time. I have to decide on whether or not to accept his offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD chances in U.S. or other western countries where an established academic community exists is infinitesimal. This is due to my undergraduate degree is from another nationally lower ranked school than the nationally top ranked university I mentioned. Professors at my undergraduate school have no connection with western researchers and no cares about them, my undergradute professors also do not care about the international academic community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the institution I was offered to pursue a PhD is nationally reputed and having a PhD degree from there carries a nationwise reputation, I believe that my postdoc chances from decent to good schools in western countries are very low. My professor has a title as Professor, but his h-index is extremely low (&amp;lt; 10), while his western colleagues usually have an index of greater than 30, and usually renowed ones have an index of gretaer than 50. Also his students do not seem to secure good postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started to dislike my professor too. I may work with him a few years and apply for a PhD after obtaining some publications, but still I will need his connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be my only chance for a PhD and I am not sure what to do. What are my chances in western academic system after this PhD ? Should a PhD done with a professor whose work does not receive much citations and who publishes rarely ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12523" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T18:54:18.140" Title="Should a Ph.D. be done with a low h-indexed professor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T12:16:15.680" Score="15" ViewCount="1665" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a year, I will be taking a difficult entrance exam at a renowned postgraduate school. There are many competitors, most of whom are smart. Despite that, I'm aiming at becoming #1 in the exam, and that's why I have started preparing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have interviewed a few top candidates of the past years and already learned which books I should read and how much I should study every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that learning more about planning would help me a great deal. But those books on planning and goal-setting mostly focus on reaching financial goals. I have not managed to find any books befitting my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is that, because the duration is quite long, I'm afraid that my enthusiasm may start weakening after a few months into it, no longer performing at my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is my question: How can I a make one-year study-plan for myself, and remain motivated in the long run?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, any suggestions about books, software, etc. that will help me reaching my goal will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12521" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T17:33:21.433" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:19:14.367" Title="How to make a one-year study plan for a difficult exam and remain motivated throughout?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-01T12:31:15.110" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picking a PhD supervisor based on his h-index is like picking a car based on his horse-power; you ignore a huge number of factors that are probably equally important if not more. It is drivable (can you work with this person?), is it expensive to run (do the guy needs to pampered and treated like royalty?), are other owners happy with their purchase (are his other PhD students happy with his supervision?), etc. etc. Getting a really fast car only to crash it cause you can't drive it does mean much and getting a supervisor who after a year's time makes you want to quit your PhD doesn't mean much either. Most probably in both cases people are going to think less of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most important thing is that you say that &quot;I have started to dislike my professor too.&quot; that is a major problem and you should not pick a supervisor that you dislike. I do not mean that by being &quot;homies&quot; with supervisor; I mean about mutual respect and ability to work efficiently and with understanding about each other maybe &quot;small quirks&quot;. (eg. My supervisor avoided setting up morning meeting with me because I am a night-person; it was fine, he even joked up about it at times &quot;Next week I have X thing going on so we probably need to meet at 11.00. I know you'll just be out of bed but that is my only available time.&quot; That did not mean though I was not expected to be always punctuational for our meeting or having worked seriously on the projects at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To recap: As you present things I would say &quot;do not to work with this professor&quot; but not because of his low h-index but because you say you do not like him and that his PhD students seem not to take good positions (low after-sales value :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that US institution are out of the equation effectively; &quot;fine&quot;. Have you thought of PhD programmes in Europe? Some small, not too famous but reputable universities in EU can be stepping stones for a post-doc in US  (Given you do excellent work at your PhD obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastEditorDisplayName="user8458" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T14:47:51.150" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T14:47:51.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-01T12:32:05.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a low h-index doesn't mean that your professor is a poor scientist, in the same way that having a high h-index doesn't guarantee he/she is a good one. The primary reason is that the h-index is bounded from above by the total number of publications, so people who have entered the field recently have a lower h-index than those that have been working there for decades, simply because the former haven't had so much time to publish enough papers. Additionally, the h-index only cares about a minimum number of citations per publication, and it doesn't take into account the total number of citations per publication or the importance of those citations. For example, if I publish two papers in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; and then retire from academia, my h-index will never be higher than 2, even if those two papers are completely revolutionary and get cited a kazillion times by the biggest guns in the field. In contrast, if I publish 20 papers reporting trivial and mundane results in &lt;em&gt;North Dakota Community College Engineering Bulletin&lt;/em&gt; that only get cited by a bunch of my colleagues in a seventh-rate journal, I can potentially get my h-index up to 20. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way of deciding if you want to work with this person is to spend an afternoon reading through some of his recent work, and then to ask yourself: &lt;em&gt;Does this person's work look interesting enough that I want to spend the next several years talking to him every day?&lt;/em&gt;. Or &lt;em&gt;If I was already a professor, would I advise my own students to go get a PhD under this guy?&lt;/em&gt;. Or, if in doubt, ask these questions to your current mentors, who probably will have a more informed opinion than you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T12:32:05.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-01T12:56:43.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question of how good your advisor will be is of secondary importance here because the real question is will you do a PhD or not? PhD positions are not easy to come by (depending on the field of study.) This may be your only chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of advisor is of course important, especially when it comes to getting your post-doc positions. You need to ask whether you are confident enough in your own abilities to write notable papers that are going to compensate for the shortcomings of the advisor. Have you discussed  with him the projects that he will want you to work on? The biggest danger is that he will want you to do something that you are not inspired by. If you like the projects he proposes and feel confident that you can do well even if your advisor's help is limited then you should go for it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least you will still be working part time so you have a backup. Why not give it a try and be prepared to drop out after one year if it does not look promising (but don't tell the prof that obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, if you do go for it try to have a more positive attitude. No advisor is perfect but they are usually on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T12:56:43.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T13:05:20.753" Score="18" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;While attending a course sometime back, I recall an instructor saying, &quot;I need to warn (other instructor's name)...their course syllabus is available to anyone!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have access to an LMS for my classroom-based course, so I just post my course details to a regular Web hosting service. On the Web site, students, or anyone else, can easily locate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the syllabus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exam study guide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;homework instructions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot think of any reason why this would be a problem, but recall the comment, so wonder if there might be some issue I have overlooked. Is there any reason why any of this information should not be open to the public?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T13:13:35.693" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T19:10:02.580" Title="Is there any reason to not make course details public?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2014-03-01T13:12:53.893" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, I would answer no! There are, however, several issues that may prevent people from publishing material openly. One is if it contains copyrighted material, another is if the material contains hints that can help students gain an unfair advantage. In your list, the only possible issue could be with the third if those in any way could lead to an unfair advantage (not that I can think of how). That said, many publish homework questions, lecture materials etc on web sites that can be found by a search. I have benefited from finding such materials when developing my own courses and I am very grateful for that. Returning to your three points, I think they provide a good basis for students to decide what they can expect from the course and hopefully will attract the right students to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T12:26:24.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T12:26:24.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-03-01T13:19:27.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you know, most conferences accept papers on the condition that one of the authors attends the conference to give a presentation. Of course, sometimes things come up and somebody who planned to attend cannot; organizers are sympathetic to that, as discussed in the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it's worth pointing out that, if you knew at the time of submitting the paper that getting a visa would be difficult or impossible, you should probably have agreed that one of your co-authors would attend the conference from the start. If all your co-authors were in the same situation, it would, I think, have been best to contact the organizers for advice before submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T13:19:27.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17623" CreationDate="2014-03-01T13:29:35.920" Score="20" ViewCount="5651" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad student I was, for the most part, shielded from issues like high-level bureaucracy, departmental duties and politics, and long-term career advancement.  Obviously these things become more important when you're looking for a faculty job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; As a faculty member in the U.S., what are the most tangible differences between being at a public vs. private university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e., how does it affect your day-to-day life, or alternatively, key events like promotion, student recruiting, etc.?  Obviously the question depends a great deal on the particular department and perhaps its ranking; I am interested mostly in departments &quot;near the top&quot; &lt;em&gt;[ed: of some fairly arbitrary ranking systems...]&lt;/em&gt;, but broad answers are also useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T13:54:59.617" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T05:41:18.720" Title="Difference between private and public universities as a faculty member?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17584" CreationDate="2014-03-01T16:01:14.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, the private universities apparently tend to pay more to their faculty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaup.org/file/2012-13Economic-Status-Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aaup.org/file/2012-13Economic-Status-Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/faculty-pay-survey_n_3038924.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/faculty-pay-survey_n_3038924.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the private universities should, for obvious reasons, be less affected by the state budget cuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T16:01:14.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17590" CreationDate="2014-03-01T16:03:53.593" Score="5" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;This semester I taught an optional course for undergraduate students. While I find it normal that fewer students attend optional classes, presence in class itself was low even for the enrolled students, and now the only requirements for evaluation have not been met by most of the students. Only 7 out of a total of 21 students have turned in their final written essays until the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, the university grading system allows for students who have not passed the exams during the semester to take a &quot;recovery&quot; exam/written assignment. Through this loophole, students who have not even written their essays may pass if they get good grades in this &quot;recovery&quot; exam. While I think it is somehow unfair for the other students, because it allows procrastination and delays of over a week, and gives a second chance for students who did poorly during the whole semester no matter what the reason, it is not clear if I am supposed to apply this &quot;recovery&quot; exam or if this is optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, if I do not do this (accept procrastination and delays), most students will not pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just accept it or be strict with rules and deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12512" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T16:44:27.380" Title="How to deal with procrastination and delays in final assignment of undergraduate class?" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2014-03-01T16:10:59.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @PeterJansson explains putting material online has many advantages for the students. But I believe that there are two small conditions for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, that the author keeps control of the material. By this I mean that is not just posted somewhere on the internet where the author cannot modify it. This is because usually the material created and typesetted by a single person has not gone through a publishing process and usually has many errors an typos that the author should be able to correct anytime. This is the reason why I believe any uploaded material should always explain the way to contact the author (at least an email address). We all have found note on the web plagued with error that the author either can't correct or doesn't even know they exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, that the existence of the material and the way to access the last version of  it is explained to all the student attending the course. The problem is that we cannot control what happens whith the files once we upload them but at least we can tell students where to get the right version of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the way to avoid the only way to prevent the only form of unfair advantage I can think of which is some students having a more recent version of the notes or some students not knowing that the notes exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12387" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T16:10:59.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17588" CreationDate="2014-03-01T16:44:27.380" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the students were reasonably expecting the option of a recovery exam, it seems unfair to deny it for the current run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In future, you could offer the recovery exam only to those who tried to pass in the regular way, i.e. handed in an essay on topic (but maybe bad and hastily written - so more unpleasant grading for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I would suggest talking to some students to figure out why they didn't hand in an essay. Maybe it was plain procrastenation, maybe it was wise prioritizing because they had other, more important deadlines in the way, maybe they found the course not that interesting and decided not to complete it. In my experience, undergrads often have more self-awareness of their learning process than we would expect :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T16:44:27.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T18:59:09.627" Score="3" ViewCount="2131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished my B.S. and I am now finishing my M.S. thesis (already finished M.S. classes). My original thesis topic was not getting me anywhere and I came to my adviser asking him to allow me to switch to a new topic that I have already started working on. The professor allowed such a change and I believe my new work is much better and more interesting. Unfortunately, the new thesis topic is not my adviser's area of expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I have been late in turning in my thesis for several semesters since I've also been working full time much of the time after I finished my B.S.. This makes it feel like my university does not really care about my success anymore and I am not even being pressured to finish writing my thesis as I would have been if I was a full-time student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be finishing writing my thesis on this new topic, but much of the work I have done have not been checked by anyone with a Ph.D. This worries me. Should I just crowd-source some comments for editing my thesis from friends and try to just get it turned in and accepted so I can present? Or should I seek out more professors who are more familiar with this new topic and try to have them read it (it would take at least several hours to do this and, keep in mind, I am not a full-time or even part-time student right now)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my work is good and I will pursue trying to get it published in a journal once my actual M.S. is done, so I am not too uncomfortable with the things I've written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12531" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T01:21:53.907" Title="How to finish Master's Thesis when my adviser is too busy to help me thoroughly edit what I have written?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2014-03-01T19:52:34.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look into babysitting. A lot of professors and staff are looking for reliable people to babysit (and maybe tutor) their young children. That is how I supplemented my income through graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T19:52:34.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T19:58:06.357" Score="18" ViewCount="2221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that I write a paper about a controversial topic like global warming denial, the link between vaccines and autism, why different races have different IQ. After publication, the paper gets the attention of mass media, and as a counter measure, serious experts start explaining why the paper is completely wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that count as citations towards a higher h-index?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="12387" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T01:41:58.727" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T00:09:32.853" Title="If I write a really bad, but controversial, paper, can I increase my h-index?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-01T20:14:43.250" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;h-index counts citations regardless of the content of those citations, so citations by people criticizing the paper, disagreeing with it, or pointing out that it's nonsense do still count as citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a plan to improve one's h-index, this seems like a bad plan for a number of reasons.  As a concern about the meaning of h-index, it's a concern, though there's room to argue about whether this sort of situation is common enough to matter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T20:14:43.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17599" CreationDate="2014-03-01T20:30:37.170" Score="5" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I bet most of the users here had one of the following bad experiences: your idea and someone's idea happen to be very similar, manuscript topics got scooped, etc. Among these bad experiences, the worst is perhaps finding out a very similar paper was already published after the experimentation, simulation, writing, or even submission was done. This is very time consuming and stressful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this question is very general and field-dependent. However, I would love to learn from your experience on &lt;strong&gt;how to efficiently look for related works in one's own field.&lt;/strong&gt; For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where (websites, publishers, pre-prints... )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When should we find or update these related works, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of tricks have you used to perform such searches efficiently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help you orient, my background is electrical and computer engineering, communication and image/video processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11841" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T00:02:45.137" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T01:36:18.773" Title="How to explore/identify similar works in one's own field?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17598" CreationDate="2014-03-01T20:41:43.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scholar.Google.com, IEEE, and ACM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After every major conference in your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See 1, find a paper, then follow its references and the papers that cite it. Repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T20:41:43.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17521" CreationDate="2014-03-01T21:46:19.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this always the case? &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I often see reviewing software that does not have the &quot;major revision&quot; category for the second revision. On the other hand, a colleague told me that he had a paper in the &lt;strong&gt;seventh&lt;/strong&gt; revision at a very respectable journal (actually it was a debate about proof details in math…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T21:46:19.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17598" CreationDate="2014-03-01T23:31:32.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the sources listed in A. Henley's answer, try also other databases like SCI (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webofknowledge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webofknowledge.com&lt;/a&gt;) and Scopus (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scopus.com&lt;/a&gt;) to get a more complete picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T23:31:32.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-02T00:04:39.730" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes, you can!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But that it is possible is by no means to say that it is ethical, practical, wise, or otherwise commendatory.&lt;/strong&gt; I would be especially concerned about becoming known as the 'person with a kooky idea' rather than as a serious academic researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question becomes, &quot;It is possible to write on a very controversial topic, create a media firestorm, attract a lot of attention, increase your h-index, and still keep your credibility intact?&quot; The answer will be highly variable dependent on the validity of your research, your previous reputation, and the sheer capriciousness of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, assuming that your work is valid,  even if you have proven the viability of a very controversial position, your work is likely to attract some negative attention as well as attempts to disprove your research (or you-- &lt;em&gt;ad hominem&lt;/em&gt; attacks are unfortunately common). However, if your work can and does stand up to scrutiny, all the brouhaha may actually work in your favor-- you have proven a controversial theory to be true, your h-index will increase and your credibility is not only intact but also bolstered by your success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your work does not stand up to scrutiny (which seems to be the scenario you are picturing), you will have made a public fool out of yourself and the slight increase in your h-index will be more than offset by the decrease in your credibility. Neither the counter-moves of serious researchers nor the attacks of fanatics are likely to help your academic career, especially if your work cannot stand up under scrutiny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, write a really bad, but controversial, paper &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if you are willing to sacrifice your credibility for the slight increase in your h-index.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T00:04:39.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17598" CreationDate="2014-03-02T00:43:07.757" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to searching the published literature (as the other answers suggest), if your subfield is a very active one you'll also want to know about &lt;strong&gt;almost-published&lt;/strong&gt; literature. There are two ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify the important conferences in your field, and look through the list of accepted papers as soon as it becomes available.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By following Austin Henley's suggestions you will notice that some names come up especially often as authors of related work.  These are researchers doing work similar to yours, and therefore there is a good chance that their next paper will also be related. Find their homepages and monitor their publication lists on a regular basis. Many researchers list their &quot;to appear&quot; papers, which may not yet be available from the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you suspect significant overlap based on a paper title you see in the program of an upcoming conference or the author's homepage, you can request a preprint from the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T01:36:18.773" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T01:36:18.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17592" CreationDate="2014-03-02T01:08:39.057" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have two major concerns about getting quality feedback from your advisor: (1) he's busy, and (2) he's not as familiar with your new topic. I'll address these separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Getting high-quality feedback from someone very busy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get the best feedback possible from your advisor, make sure that whatever you send him to review is as polished as possible. If he's pointing out typos and areas where the writing has issues, he's not going to have as much time to evaluate the content, which is where his feedback is most valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will also help if you identify and tell him about the areas where you think you most need extra high-quality feedback: &quot;Could you tell me what you think of the formulation in Section 3, I'm not so sure about that part.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Getting high-quality feedback from someone not an expert in the topic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though your advisor is not an expert in your new topic, he's an expert in &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; and he knows what good work looks like. He knows when an argument seems weak and &quot;hand-wavy&quot; and when the evidence on offer doesn't support the claim.  So he's still likely to have good advice even if he isn't as familiar with your topic as you would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, for PhD students at least, it is generally assumed that the student knows more than the advisor about the thesis topic by the time the student is about midway through the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On crowdsourcing thesis feedback&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, it's still useful to get comments from others in addition to your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your friends to read your thesis to (1) find typos and obvious mistakes, and (2) note areas where they think something is unclear, so you can improve the writing. This will help you make sure the version you send your advisor to review is as polished as possible, so you'll get better feedback from him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know some professors who &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; expert in your topic, you can send them a copy, but follow the advice for getting feedback from someone very busy: Make sure what you send them is very polished, and identify where you want their help the most. If you don't know any professors who are expert in your topic, then after your advisor gives you his feedback, ask him: &quot;Do you think we should also send this to an expert in the topic for review? If so, do you know anybody we could send it to?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T01:21:53.907" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T01:21:53.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17627" CreationDate="2014-03-02T02:15:01.347" Score="22" ViewCount="4630" Body="&lt;p&gt;In July 2012 I submitted a bachelor's thesis on a machine learning topic. I designed an algorithm that I developed in Java.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have found a publication (September 2012) by my supervisor with all the results of my thesis, including images, with only a thanks at the end for the &quot;Java implementations&quot;, but all of the results and the designed algorithm were taken from my thesis. The supervisor has not added anything to what I had already written in my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me she had to add my name as a co-author of publications. Of course the supervisor helped me in the writing of the thesis but having only revived my job in publishing, then I was expecting my name as a co-author because she has not added anything new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What recourse do I have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One problem is that my thesis, about 140 page,  was written in Italian and the pubblication was in English. For this reason I suppose it's hard to write to the Journal to show him my thesis.  In addition, my thesis is not published online on any official channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project and the thesis was made by me and one other student with the constant help of her (supervisor). But on the publication the name is of Supervisor, Co-supervisor and one more people (i suppose this people have translated 140 italian page in 5-6 english page) but why not me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In add now I'm in other city, in other university and now i have no bridge between my supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If i have no more contact (only an email) with supervisor is there any way to write to the person who published that? and how can I prove that content is that of my thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12537" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T12:30:23.157" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T20:13:41.407" Title="My supervisor plagiarised my bachelor thesis: what can I do about it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17528" CreationDate="2014-03-02T02:23:21.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not prepared for a Master's program right now, which I think you recognize. That said, it may not take too long to prepare yourself. I would recommend looking at requirements for continuing education and graduate programs at nearby regional universities. Many of them have programs designed to accommodate a student with your needs. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www20.csueastbay.edu/csci/files/docs/comp%20sci%20pdf/msmath.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; are the requirements at CSU East Bay, a regional school near Oakland. Note in particular the Post-baccalaureate unclassified status. You might not expect it, but many such programs are quite strong and have a solid record in placing students in PhD programs. Don't discount them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T02:23:21.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17528" CreationDate="2014-03-02T02:29:02.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want to go into math, should you get a BSc?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say &quot;yes&quot;. It often is quite doable to pick up a new subject on your own if you have academic experience, but English and Mathematics are so far apart that I'd doubt there would be a lot of synergy. Mathematics has its own way of thinking, which is probably picked up best by going through an undergrad degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should you go into math?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enrolling for a degree is of course a rather strong decision. In my experience quite a few of those who start anew later in their lifes drop out rather early. Maybe taking an online course first could both be a good preparation if you go through with it, and helpful to figure out if you really want to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you get in somewhere?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about your country, but both the UK and Germany often have places reserved for mature students, which have fewer formal requirements. So in those countries, getting into a decent program would be quite doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A final comment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me at least mathematics is great fun. If you believe you'd like it, and you are willing to put in the effort, give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T02:29:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-02T06:56:47.413" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really: note that by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; of the h-index this paper can increase your h-index &lt;em&gt;at most by one&lt;/em&gt;, unless you are lucky enough to get citations of the type described by David Richerby in the comment below (&quot;X, despite making significant contributions to the subjects A [1-3] and B [4,5,7-13], has some unorthodox opinions on the subject C [6]&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, attracting this kind of citations is very field-dependent, and I doubt that even if this strategy works out, be it with a single paper or in David's way, it would really pay off, especially given the losses in reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T16:45:09.760" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T16:45:09.760" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17606" CreationDate="2014-03-02T07:05:54.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this paper was published in a journal, you can write to the editor and state your case (or better, if you can, have a senior colleague to do that: (s)he would have more clout with the editor) and ask which are the available options (retraction, publishing a comment stating your authorship, etc.). It would be helpful if your thesis was available online for all that time at some respectable (and easily accessible) place like the University online repository, and the thesis has a reliable date stamp preceding the date of submission of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caution&lt;/strong&gt;: if you follow the above advice, &lt;strong&gt;be prepared to burn all bridges with the person who plagiarized your work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Following the suggestion given in comments below by Pete L. Clark: you may wish to consider discussing the situation with the supervisor first and, if you could agree on that, write to the journal together requesting the correction (adding your name as an author) rather than pointing out the plagiarism case. However, be warned that the odds of reaching such a compromise with the supervisor are, in my opinion, rather slim, and you should still be prepared to burn all bridges with the supervisor if the conversation doesn't produce any reasonable outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it would be extremely unlikely to obtain (supportive) letters of recommendation from this supervisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T20:13:41.407" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T20:13:41.407" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17528" CreationDate="2014-03-02T07:12:10.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I commend the OP on having the heart to contemplate such a step. I'd like to mention a factor that has not yet been mentioned in the other answers - your age, and more specifically, the responsibilities that you have to shoulder while attempting such a career switch. If you do decide to apply for a undergrad program in maths, and happen to be accepted in a reasonably good one, you'd be starting from scratch in a field governed by abstract concepts that take a good deal of focused work to wrap ones head around! This is a lot easier if all you have to worry about is yourself, and don't have the weight of other responsibilities (family obligations, relationships etc) to bog you down. Even if you don't have such responsibilities, you'd have the inescapable feeling of being a generation behind your peers, and unless you have a very determined and strong force of mind, you would be having to fend off doubts regarding your decisions/capabilities at regular intervals - which could hinder your focus significantly, and make your mental faculties less acute than they ought to be!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a personal opinion of mine - I've seen many later-career grad students struggle with these issues, and hence I thought it was wise to know about the possibility of such a train of events before committing to such a momentous decision!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T07:12:10.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-02T08:19:28.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar dilemma when I decided to pursue the PhD. The rank of the program is important but the intersection of your advisor's work and your interests is the critical factor. If your research is not related to that of your advisor, he will not be able to offer insights to guide you along. You can get in-depth guidance about literature searches, literature reviews, and selecting and arguing a thesis from many outstanding reference books. Furthermore, your advisor cannot cover the breadth and depth of these reference books in the few short meetings that will be allotted to you. What you need is concise, trenchant insight that is relevant to the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12546" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T08:19:28.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17617" CreationDate="2014-03-02T09:14:24.517" Score="5" ViewCount="1522" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have any file containing the information of peer-review process lengths of mathematical journals?If yes, It will be very helpful for me.&#xA;Thanks for your helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12548" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T09:22:06.877" Title="Lengths of review process of mathematical journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-02T09:19:35.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you probably can't, because for it to gain a lot of attention it needs to be intriguing in some way.  Simple rubbish isn't; there's plenty of that already, and the peer review process screens out most of it.  You could try some huge publicity campaign, but if you're that good at publicity, maybe you're in the wrong field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding just the right balance of plausibility, tension, incorrectness, and publicity is very hard.  One indication that this may be the case is that the number of highly-cited bad/controversial papers is much smaller than the number of highly-cited good papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write a good paper.  It's easier (not easy!) and more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T09:19:35.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2014-03-02T09:22:06.877" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AMS maintains a list of the backlogs of research journals, which should give you some indication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most recent one (I think) can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T09:22:06.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17619" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-02T12:24:24.310" Score="5" ViewCount="3164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your undergraduate CGPA is quite low, but you were somehow accepted into a respected Masters and PhD program, and completed your postgraduate work quite successfully. Your undergraduate major was the same general field as your postgraduate research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are now beginning your academic job search. How would the low CGPA affect your chances of getting a job at a top-tiered academic institution in the US or UK? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, then what else can you do in the meantime to counteract the negative effects of that low CGPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(btw, I am asking this for a friend, not for me as I am not in academia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-13T00:27:03.750" LastActivityDate="2020-03-30T19:16:05.513" Title="How much does a low undergraduate CGPA affect chances of getting a faculty job in a top-tier university?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17619" CreationDate="2014-03-02T12:37:50.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For applications for faculty positions people would usually state only their undergrad degrees with date, subject and university. For postdoc applications, one could include more detail, but I don't think anyone would get suspicious if no grades are listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, having low grades on your undergrad studies would have no direct impact on jobchances after the PhD, because people simply wouldn't know about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T12:37:50.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17700" CreationDate="2014-03-02T13:02:51.473" Score="20" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every year we organize a competitive international call for PhD students (in the area of biology). What measurable criteria should we use to predict their academic success and award them research fellowships?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that part of the question is ill-defined because it is not clear how to define “success” for a PhD student. But since I imagine that many of us have this problem and have potentially thought of a solution, I would love to read your thoughts on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12550" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T19:00:22.567" Title="What are predictors of the success of PhD students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17619" CreationDate="2014-03-02T13:36:17.160" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have already done &lt;strong&gt;Masters&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;PhD&lt;/strong&gt;, your CGPA in undergraduate is least to be bothered. If you are in academia, your quality of research matters more than the grades that you have obtained long back in undergraduate studies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your credential will grow, your resume will be filled with much more valued contents rather than just grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12552" LastEditorUserId="12552" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T14:05:35.947" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T14:05:35.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17584" CreationDate="2014-03-02T13:37:21.633" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few anecdotal observations. It &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be said that these are trends, and exceptions to everything I say are plentiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As just-learning said, private universities tend to pay a little better. Also, they seem to have less faculty turnover (perhaps for this reason).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Public universities often have more BS committee work. For example, my university periodically mandates a lengthy process of &quot;post-tenure review&quot;. Negative or positive reviews have no consequences, and therefore the process is a complete waste of time, but we have no choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least among top-notch research universities, public schools are usually large, and many private schools are small. Large schools typically have advantages (big seminars, lots of courses that can be offered to students, etc.) and disadvantages (lots of grading, people can feel lost in the crowd, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A corollary to the above: public universities often influence their towns more, simply because there are more people working and studying at the university. For example UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke are excellent universities (public and private respectively) which are ten miles apart, and it is Chapel Hill that has the really outstanding K-12 school system. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Especially at public universities, there might be many clubs which are largely student organizations, but faculty members and others also participate in. Especially if you are not yet inclined to &quot;settle down&quot;, this could be a huge positive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The campuses tend to be different. Many private universities are surrounded by lush greenery, where at public universities it is more common that you can walk across the street and get something good to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sports culture is more prevalent at public universities (although it is also very big at many private universities). I am a bit of a curmudgeon, annoyed at the overwhelming football culture at my school. But those more laid back than me simply enjoy the games.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Student attitudes tend to be different. At wealthy private universities many of the students will be more optimistic, and more ambitious goals and dreams seem to be more common. The downside (from what I have heard) is that entitlement and grade-grubbing are also more common.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Public universities serve the public. My university enrolls a number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college. I attended a graduation ceremony, and when many names were called there was a palpable and obvious joy on the part of large crowds in the audience supporting them. Witnessing this was a deeply moving experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T13:37:21.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17577" CreationDate="2014-03-02T13:55:25.530" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you not to rely upon external entities for motivation. Rather then relying upon just some books and software, practice &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Self Motivation&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each day think about the &lt;strong&gt;happiness and satisfaction&lt;/strong&gt; that you will achieve once you got an admission in the targeted postgraduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, browse through the &lt;strong&gt;list of notable alumni&lt;/strong&gt; from the same school and make a target that you will also feature in the same list some day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will encourage you to put 100% effort each day without losing excitement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12552" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T13:55:25.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17626" CreationDate="2014-03-02T14:09:55.997" Score="22" ViewCount="7007" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several math research articles on my site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my articles are published in open access journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my articles are currently available only from my site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may probably publish something in a closed access journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question: Should I put these kinds of articles at arXiv (and possibly replace articles on my site with redirect to arXiv)? I think yes, because it would increase visibility of my articles, as many people search on arXiv and/or receive arXiv mailing lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to put an already published article also at arXiv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T15:38:52.893" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T07:51:35.477" Title="Can I submit published articles to arXiv as well?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17625" CreationDate="2014-03-02T14:13:40.457" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well you can put your published articles on arxiv just for visibility purposes, but you will be having problems with the copyright of the journals and conferences in which your work is published. Essentially, the editors will not get too busy to track you down, but it is not ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one way to go around this problem, publish in arxiv the draft versions of your articles, the ones that are a little bit different from the published ones. In that case you would not have any kind of ethical issues (you can also put them on your webpage, but always look to the copyright forms)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T14:13:40.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17606" CreationDate="2014-03-02T14:48:19.803" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, your story does not seem implausible to me at all. Here in central Europe, some computer science departments seem to have a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; lax mentality when it comes to acknowledging research contributions coming from undergrads or non-research master students. In some places, this thinking seems to be so ingrained that even otherwise honest and fair researchers do not even consider putting the name of undergrads on papers despite their work making up a significant part of the paper's research contribution (something that the same faculty would never do and, in fact, consider highly unethical, if the student was a PhD or a master student on a research track). I guess part of the problem is that around here, the majority of students heading for an industry career (which is almost everybody at many large universities) does not care one way or another, so nobody really complains about this practice (which, of course, does not make it ok).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(the following is written under the assumption that what you wrote is actually correct - clearly, my advise is terrible if you vastly overstated your contributions)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If i have no more contact (only an email) with supervisor is there any way to write to the person who published that? and how can I prove that content is that of my thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; get in touch with your supervisor. Keep the mail friendly, but do make clear that you are not ok with how this has went down. If (s)he is one of those that simply did not consider whether you should actually also be a co-author of this paper, there is a good chance that (s)he is in fact pretty embarrassed by the incident. Presumably, the first thing that the faculty will explain that this &quot;is just the way it works around here&quot;. Don't accept this excuse (even though it might be factually true). Be aware that you are in the right here, and that you raising your valid concerns to the conference organisers will &lt;strong&gt;at least&lt;/strong&gt; be &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; embarrassing for the faculty (and, as stated on this website once, reputation is the currency of science), so you do have some leverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I think the onus is on the faculty to come up with a solution here. It is not like &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; need to think of a way how this can be resolved sufficiently. &lt;em&gt;Maybe&lt;/em&gt; your supervisor will think of a solution for your issue that is acceptable for you.  As a last resort, you can contact the organisers of the conference, as stated by just-learning, and give them the information that you also gave us above (now deleted). Be aware that you will likely gain little by this move, though - presumably, either nothing will happen or the paper will be removed from the proceedings. In any case, the reputation of the authors will likely be tarnished quite a bit by this incident, and, as stated in another answer, you will have certainly burned all bridges with this group of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T14:48:19.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17254" CreationDate="2014-03-02T15:22:15.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are very diverse field. A general advice, MS may be done without any industrial experience but MBA should be done only after working for a couple of years with proper industrial exposure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12552" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T15:22:15.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17625" CreationDate="2014-03-02T15:25:11.397" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you first of all check &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the copyright transfers you signed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the publisher's FAQ on rights you retain as author&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Many publishers nowadays allow you to self-archive the version of the manuscript that passed the review. Some do not allow self-archiving on public repositories (but e.g. Elsevier makes an exception explicitly for arXiv). For a quick overview have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot;&gt;SHERPA/RoMEO site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and your local copyright legislation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__38.html&quot;&gt;German UrhG&lt;/a&gt; now allows secondary publication (e.g. to arXiv) of your manuscript (including the version with exactly the content of the published paper) for journal contributions that were financed mainly by public grants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T15:25:11.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17633" CreationDate="2014-03-02T16:51:55.557" Score="2" ViewCount="1326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really need some opinions/advice on my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm studying for my master degree in mathematics. I have always (since I was 14) wanted to do my own research one day. As I grew older, I knew that mathematics was what I wanted to do. So I went to the university to study mathematics. After having encountered a course in group theory I knew that I belonged to the algebraic part of mathematics. I did my bachelor project in group theory and when I became a graduate student (September 2013), I took courses and made a project supporting my interest in algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the way I created the vision that I would finish my master degree as a dedicated student in algebra. In order to realize this vision my plan was to study abroad for one semester taking new algebraic courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My situation today is that my study abroad semester begins tomorrow. As mentioned my dream is to do my own research, but more generally/important: &lt;em&gt;I want to develop new ideas and be dedicated to something and I would love to follow/explore my passion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought (as many other students): I should get a PhD. So I did some research and figured out that there was an available position at the university I'm currently studying at in geometric group theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about geometric group theory, but I do know that I love group theory. &lt;strong&gt;So I would really like to know if this is an opportunity or if I should just forget it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to pursue a PhD for anything in this world. I just want to stay focus on creating a meaningful work life around my passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further remarks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a student from Denmark and I'm studying abroad in Austria for one semester. After my study abroad semester I still have to study one year for my master degree in Denmark. However this year consists of a half year with elective courses and a half year where I'm making my master's thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t know much about the PhD position. I found it from a Google search (: “PhD position group theory”). There is only given a starting date and an e-mail address for contact. I’m going to attend a course held by the supervisor of the project, so the whole thing is a coincidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have investigated my opportunities for a position at my home university. One of my supervisors, a professor in group theory, told me that he couldn't offer me a position, since it was a question about money, but would like to recommend me. I don't think the university accepts PhD students without a master degree and the positions are without project descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is also another university (in Denmark) with a talent program where it is possible to get a PhD position without having a master degree. I contacted them and they told me I should apply after my study abroad semester (because I would have a stronger profile). But I don't know my chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12557" LastEditorUserId="12557" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T20:18:48.290" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:18:48.290" Title="Career advice – mathematics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17619" CreationDate="2014-03-02T17:26:45.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have done since your undergraduate days is far more significant than how focused/motivated you were at that time. Everyone understands that students are still figuring out their priorities, and that adolescents are insane by definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about it anyway, you may want to have an answer ready in case someone asks you about them. Mine would be a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- I was spending too much time on student activities, mostly on volunteer projects though I admit D&amp;amp;D ate a great deal of my spare time as a freshman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- I was still figuring out what I wanted my actual career path to be. (In fact, my degree says EE but I've wound up returning to CS ... my grades would have been better if I'd stuck with my first love, but I felt I needed to balance my knowledge of software with more hardware insight.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- I was more concerned with learning the material than with proving I had learned the material. As a result, I tended to work hardest on homework in the classes where I was struggling, and sometimes blew off homework in classes where I felt I didn't need the practice. If you could look at my records in greater detail, you'd see a fair number of courses where my final grade was a B because my homework grade was C but I blew away the final. Obviously, I've gotten smarter about time management since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that every one of those, while true and admitting a failure, also acts as an opportunity to discuss what I learned from that failure, what &lt;em&gt;strengths&lt;/em&gt; it demonstrates to offset the failure, and why I'm a good candidate now. Use it as an opportunity for storytelling and marketing; make lemonade out of the lemons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T17:26:45.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-02T17:36:11.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address your last question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a PhD done with a professor whose work does not receive much&#xA;  citations and who publishes rarely ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many considerations as pointed out by other answers.  H-index is one measure that might help you understand, at a glance, things about a scholar, but given the seriousness of your situation (wanting to do a PhD) you should dig deeper.  For instance, does the professor have a low H-index because he is new to the field (as mentioned by Koldito)?  Or is the H-index low because his area is highly specialized, and quite small?  These might be reasons for relaxing how important this metric is in making your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, his H-index is low because he does not publish often (e.g. he does not value publishing as a scholarly work), or because he publishes in venues with low impact, these might be good reasons for concern.  Similarly, you note that others in his field who would be experts from the west would have an H-index &gt; 50; if this professor isn't an expert in the field then I would consider that cause for legitimate concern too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked a second question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This might be my only chance for a PhD and I am not sure what to do.&#xA;  What are my chances in western academic system after this PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your insight that his previous students don't tend to get good postdocs is something to consider, especially if other students in the university are able to secure quality postdoc positions.  My personal experience has been that if you want to secure a position in the western academic system you need to do something there first (a degree, a postdoc, etc.), so making sure your PhD puts you on the path to achieving this sounds like it is important for your goals.  I would encourage you to ask the adviser directly who he collaborates with and how you can get experience through the PhD working with scholars worldwide.  Be explicit about your goals.  If he decides he doesn't want to work with you because of this, then he probably isn't the right supervisor for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a final note of advice, your social networks and institutional affiliations are more important when you are looking for that first academic job than your h-index.  H-index is used more regularly for judging things like tenure, promotion, etc.  In the western system, from my experience, you want people to know at a glance that you have credentials that are rigorous and prestigious.  If doing a PhD with this professor won't put you on this track then you should seriously consider your other options.  But dig deeper than the H-index to investigate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12558" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T17:36:11.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17630" CreationDate="2014-03-02T18:20:03.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a lot of trouble nailing down your question.  After reading it several times, I think you mean that you have an opportunity to go on to study a PhD in geometric group theory at your current university.  (Is it specifically relevant that you are going abroad tomorrow?  How does this fit in with the rest?)  From this I am guessing that you are not in the US, because in the US one would not have a position in &quot;geometric group theory&quot; specifically; one would just apply to the entire math department.  It could be helpful to know what country you are studying in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think you are really asking whether you should go on to do a PhD?  You say that your motivation is to do mathematical research: for that you essentially need a PhD, yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Along the way I created the vision that I would finish my master degree as a dedicated student in algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, okay, you're studying algebra.  I feel like I'm missing some nuance here: what's the &quot;vision&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned my dream is to do my own research, but more generally/important: I want to develop new ideas and be dedicated to something and I would love to follow/explore my passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I feel like I'm missing a nuance.  Doing your own research means precisely to developing your new ideas and being dedicated to something.  Doesn't everyone want to &quot;follow/explore their passion&quot;?  That comes off sounding mean, which is not my intent: rather, I feel like you're trying to say something here and I'm missing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know much about geometric group theory, but I do know that I love group theory. So I would really like to know if this is an opportunity or if I should just forget it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems clear that a PhD in geometric group theory is an indeed an opportunity to do everything that you said you wanted to do...in geometric group theory, which is a subfield of the field that you say you like.  Whether you will like GGT specifically seems best answered by learning some and finding out.  If the PhD program is so specifically invested in GGT that if you find out you don't want to do GGT &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; then you'll need to leave the program, then you should study GGT on your own / during your master's degree first in order to find out whether it's interesting enough to you to spend years of your life on.  (I think GGT is really interesting.  If I hadn't done arithmetic geometry, I think I would have had fun with it.  So I assure you that there is nothing wrong with that subsubfield of mathematics!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to pursue a PhD for anything in this world. I just want to stay focus on creating a meaningful work life around my passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huh?  This time I don't understand at all.  Please elaborate/rephrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T18:31:52.047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T18:31:52.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17576" CreationDate="2014-03-02T18:54:18.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a graduate advisor for many years and I am giving you suggestions based on that experience. I hope I don't sound overly critical, just a couple of things I usually tell incoming PhD students about their expectations of graduate school. This may be because I work mostly with undergraduates transitioning directly into graduate school, so often I have to play the antagonist in these discussions to challenge my students to think about their own plans for their own future. And to be realistic. So here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, I think that you should also consider the amount of effort you are willing to put into the PhD. Typically, PhD students are asked to commit full time to it, and though this varies with the discipline, my experience working with PhD students  is that the more time they spend developing themselves as academics and masters of their field, the better they do professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that you do not like your mentor/professor much. Are there others on your committee (or academics you are considering to be on your committee) that you do prefer? It's not unusual to not see eye-to-eye with your mentor - it is unusual that you don't want to continue working/ knowing him after your graduate - but rather his connections. Typically, his word to his connections is what begins your immersion in his network - so you will have to be careful to either keep that disdain in check or work will not be fun and challenging (as it should be) and will end up being a chore and make you more frustrated - and isolated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, about rising in the ranks of academia. Being a part of the Western academic society is not the ultimate social status. Being a highly valued academic in your chosen field of work is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T18:54:18.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17606" CreationDate="2014-03-02T19:06:06.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary question here is what you would like to see happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are angry that your work was plagiarized, but are scared that it will impact your current work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically universities have an ethics group or commission. Look into one at your past-supervisor's university. These groups often keep their work secret and use mediation to resolve such issues. That would be a good place to start to know the options available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T19:06:06.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2014-03-02T19:42:03.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your supervisor put you in this mentoring position, you need to let her/him know that you've run into this issue with the mentee. Then have the conversation with the mentee that &quot;It's time to start taking a more hands-off approach: I'm happy to give advice on how he might solve a problem, but it's his responsibility to sit down and implement that idea.&quot; (your words are perfect!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I supervise Higher Ed grad students - some are eager to work independently, others not so much. Be consistent with your expectations with all mentees you supervise. Help him by directing him to resources that will help him and set a weekly time to meet where you both go over progress made. You're not the one learning here, the effort is required from the one doing the learning. Be nice, but be firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastEditorUserId="12532" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T20:00:46.170" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:00:46.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-02T22:30:15.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most bad papers are ignored not cited for being wrong. You would have to get it into a good journal and get people to praise it etc. before other researchers will think it is worth critcizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12569" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T22:30:15.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16893" CreationDate="2014-03-02T22:57:36.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been on a hiring committee twice. We don't typically have formal &quot;one-to-one&quot; meetings, but we do make a lot of time for informal discussions with the candidate and one or more faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each time, we have hired in an area which I'm very interested in but only know a very little bit about. So, I always have &quot;stupid&quot; questions in the back of my mind which I can ask to the candidates. This gives me a good opportunity to be favorably impressed by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I like to do is start talking about my own research area. Sometimes candidates will know at least a little bit about it and will ask very interesting questions. This also makes a positive impression, especially when it leads to a long discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care much about &quot;culture fit&quot;, but candidates do, and they often ask a lot of questions about my university, the department atmosphere, and what the city is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T22:57:36.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17646" CreationDate="2014-03-02T23:00:49.507" Score="5" ViewCount="3209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Ph.D student (in a science related field, I don't want to be too specific) who seems to think that getting a professor job in New Zealand (his home country) would be no problem since he &quot;knows people&quot; who &quot;like him&quot; and just has to &quot;ask around&quot;. New Zealand is his native country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some very serious doubts about this since I know how hard it is in the US to land a good postdoc, much less a tenure track appointment. Can anyone who knows about New Zealand's universities fill me in? Is it really an &quot;old-boys club&quot; like the student seems to suggest? Are there really a lot of jobs to go around to New Zealander's with a degree from a good university and good postdoc experience. (I do mean good, not top 5 etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12571" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T23:17:10.817" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T07:54:52.447" Title="Are academic jobs easy to get in New Zealand for someone with a good PhD and Post-Doc experience?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;new-zealand&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17625" CreationDate="2014-03-02T23:02:12.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Albeit not a mathematician, I like to add this: if your work was supported by a public agency and got accepted for a peer-reviewed journal, public agencies may have a policy to make these manuscripts available for everybody. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See (as example) the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicaccess.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public access policy&lt;/a&gt; by the U.S. National Institute of Health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication.  To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the journals listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMC&lt;/a&gt;, some articles are &quot;Free Access&quot; immediately (if published in journals like like &lt;em&gt;European Journal of Histochemistry&lt;/em&gt;), delay of six months (like &lt;em&gt;Organogenesis&lt;/em&gt;) or twelve (like &lt;em&gt;Optics Express&lt;/em&gt;), for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not a mathematician, I'm glad to see NIH &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; fund work in mathematics, too (according to their publication database).  Of course, NIH's public access policy is in regard to the single articles published, not the entire journals listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11909" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T23:02:12.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17644" CreationDate="2014-03-02T23:51:51.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be subject-dependent, but my impression is that it is certainly not like that in mathematics (my subject).  I come from New Zealand and would probably like to return to live there eventually, but I'm expecting to have to do at least one more postdoc (I'm already on my second, but my first was just one year) before I have any chance of a permanent job there.  (And I do know people there who I think probably like me and, more importantly, are interested in my research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so few universities in New Zealand (eight, but one is small and primarily agricultural, I think) that there are by no means anywhere near enough academic jobs available to employ all New Zealanders with PhDs and postdocs from 'good' universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I can imagine that if your student does indeed 'know people who like him' in New Zealand, his chances may very well be better there than for US universities of comparable standard (this is assuming that 'liking him' partly includes being impressed with his academic work).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T23:51:51.180" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17619" CreationDate="2014-03-03T00:05:21.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My grandfather was famously (within the family) asked just this question (concerning poor undergraduate marks) during his interview an M.Sc. program. His answer was roughly &quot;As an undergraduate, I enjoyed being an undergraduate; now I am ready to concentrate on my studies.&quot; He was accepted eagerly, and the subject never came up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12573" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T00:05:21.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2014-03-03T00:44:50.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my undergraduate institution there was a transgender logician graduate student. He taught me category theory. As far as I remember none of us had ever any problems with his regular mini-skirt outfit. In my graduate institution there was a graduate student who changed gender and made it known to everybody (faculty and students). Again, there were no issues that I've heard of, the relationship of that person with their supervisor remained very good (as far as I can tell) and the person went on to a very good job later on. Keep in mind that I did my undergraduate and graduate degree in fairly &quot;liberal&quot; places. Overall my experience was that if you let people know, but then move on with you regular life then it doesn't become an issue. Also it is not unlikely that some of your colleagues already &quot;know&quot;. I guess there is always an amount of risk involved with full disclosure. Keep in mind that people shouldn't judge you on what you do in your private time. Another factor is if you already have tenure, and if you don't and things go bad if you will try to explain them by your transition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12473" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T00:44:50.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-03T01:42:40.110" Score="2" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sentence with two concepts and two quotations from two different authors. It goes like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some is true because of &lt;strong&gt;concept one&lt;/strong&gt;, that is &quot;&lt;em&gt;quotation one&lt;/em&gt;&quot;,&#xA;  and &lt;strong&gt;concept two&lt;/strong&gt;, that is &quot;&lt;em&gt;quotation two&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concept one&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;two&lt;/strong&gt; are both from Author A while &lt;em&gt;quotation&lt;/em&gt; one and &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; are from Author B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be an elegant way to cite both authors at the end of the sentence making sure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader will be able to attribute each concept/citation to the write author,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader will be able to understand which work (and from which page) the quotation is from&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12575" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T09:02:57.753" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T07:01:02.220" Title="Style in citing two authors in the same sentence" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17649" CreationDate="2014-03-03T02:26:46.807" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is suppose to be a &lt;strong&gt;research paper&lt;/strong&gt;, one can cite both the authors in &lt;strong&gt;Chronological&lt;/strong&gt; manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case &quot;concept one&quot; is from Author A and &quot;quotation one&quot; is from Author B and those are repeating in the same order, so citing them as \cite{A, B} will work fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12552" LastEditorUserId="12552" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T06:26:01.143" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T06:26:01.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17660" CreationDate="2014-03-03T03:04:40.197" Score="6" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem: I have a professor that accepted me to take on a thesis when i'm ready but another one offered me one also. The second one did it while the first professor was in the room and I felt the obligation to deny it, even though we have way better communication with the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of them know each other very well (they even have neighboring offices) and denying one of them will complicate things and the worst case is that none of them will give me a thesis because I will seem too selfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question:&#xA;How can I choose the second one (if the offer is still on) without making a mess?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12578" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T11:13:43.363" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T11:13:43.363" Title="How to handle getting offers from two PhD supervisors who know each other?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17651" CreationDate="2014-03-03T03:13:45.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;[I am assuming that you are in the American system where PhD students are admitted to and funded by the program as a whole rather than any particular advisor.  I can't speak for the etiquette in other systems.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really see a problem here at all.  At any time you can work with any faculty advisor who will have you.  Switching advisors may seem awkward from the student perspective, but in fact it is very common.  If you haven't even started working with one advisor, then no time has been invested in the advising relationship, and you can start working with someone else without any qualms whatsoever.  (Even after you have started working with one advisor, you can still switch at any time, but if you've worked with one advisor for a while then it does start to feel a bit awkward.  Sometimes one must do awkward things...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the two professors know each other well, then of course they will find out about it, yes, but it should not be embarrassing or problematic for them: it's just the way things work.  If you are sure that you want to work with the second professor, talk to the second professor to make sure that this offer is still on the table.  Then accept it and immediately tell the first professor that your plans have changed.  No biggie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T03:13:45.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-03T03:28:05.693" Score="2" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this question is off-topic here, but I have applied to some Canadian master's economics programs as an international student along with my Canadian classmates. Even though I have a better academic record than they do, I didn't get into the schools with as much funding as my Canadian classmates. My question is why is it so? Based on my knowledge and experience, I don't think that schools in US have this type of a double standard policy, as I received enough funding from some public universities there. I know I could be wrong as I may well be generalizing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10475" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T03:47:42.947" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:25:10.173" Title="Are Canadian applicants favored in graduate admissions or funding for Canadian graduate programs?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17653" CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:06:17.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the details of your classmates funding, it's difficult to say whether there's bias. Having said that, Canadian students will be at a definite &lt;em&gt;advantage&lt;/em&gt; when trying to get funding at a Canadian University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some students, funding at the Masters level will be formed from multiple sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Government Scholarships. Some of these are open to international students, others are not. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/International-Internationale/Students-Etudiantes_eng.asp#foreign&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSERC Vanier&lt;/a&gt; scholarships accept international applicants, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/students-etudiants/pg-cs/cgsm-bescm_eng.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSERC CGS M&lt;/a&gt; does not.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University scholarships: These are typically funded from a variety of sources which will have varying requirements. Some must go to students from Canada, some must go to international students, some are purely merit based. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TA/RA-ships. My experience is that these typically aren't restricted based on international status, but I can't say for sure. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's easy enough to imagine that your friends funding could simply include scholarship money that is unavailable to you as an international student. Most universities realize that international students aren't on perfectly even footing, and will have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studyincanada.ualberta.ca/TuitionAndScholarships.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sections of their websites&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to funding for international students. This could be of great help for you, though the money  might not come soon enough for you to be able to make it work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to mention, is that some countries have scholarships for outgoing international scholars. These vary hugely, but should also be considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T04:25:10.173" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:25:10.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16893" CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:09:53.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am in a US R1 institution in a department of computer science.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All departments have their own style. Ours is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each candidate is &quot;governed&quot; by a search committee (we often have multiple searches in different areas) consisting of 4-5 faculty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each candidate is &quot;hosted&quot; by one specific person on the committee: the host's job is to be the candidate liaison to the process, as well as managing the interview schedule, and making everything run smoothly from the department's point of view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Immediately after the interview, the host sends out mail to the faculty requesting formal feedback via email. The host will also typically buttonhole people in the hallway to get informal &quot;vibes&quot; as well. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;after the formal feedback is collected (and anonymized depending on how things go), and after all candidates have been interviewed, the search committee sits down to assess the pool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, faculty feedback plays the following role (the committee has already discussed the technical merits and strengths/weaknesses of the candidates):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is there a clear consensus in favor of a candidate ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are there candidates that are drawing strong (and well-founded) opposition from the faculty ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If the committee decides to choose one particular candidate to put forward to the faculty at large, will there be significant opposition,&#xA;  and why ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;what is the overall sense that the faculty appears to have about the candidates in general ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this is done, the committee might choose to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present a candidate as a consensus choice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present two candidates as co-consensus choices that the faculty at large can vote on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decide that no candidate has crossed the bar for a faculty-wide vote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions that aren't covered above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no one person (not even the chair!) has a veto over hiring someone, but obviously people closer technically to the candidate will have a &quot;weightier&quot; opinion. The way our structure works, it's possible (though unlikely to happen) that the committee will nix someone that the faculty all like, which is a sort of collective veto&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;faculty are assembled to meet the candidate based primarily on possible match of interest, and occasionally also for tactical reasons :). The host will make sure that people who are stakeholders in the hire meet as many candidates as possible. But there's of course an element of &quot;who's available that day&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:09:53.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18727" CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:31:12.380" Score="41" ViewCount="4279" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have undertaken a small statistical study of M.S. students in our department, including their application information and their eventual performance in our program. The goal is to develop criteria for making admissions decisions for new applicants based on their likelihood of success in our program (as predicted by the performance of recent, similar students). I won't get into the details of the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One outcome of this study was that different attributes predict success for students with undergrad degrees from different countries. For example, for applicants to the program from schools in country X, but not schools in country Y, undergrad GPA is correlated with the  students' GPA in our program; for schools in country Y, but not X, GRE scores are correlated with the student's GPA in our program. (I'm simplifying a lot here.) A &quot;toy&quot; example I just &lt;em&gt;completely made up&lt;/em&gt; to illustrate is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xJzc4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(of course, for real applicants the criteria and the relationships are more complicated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many possible reasons for this: for example, we could think that the grading system is more consistent in X so undergrad GPA is a better predictor there, and in X students study &quot;for the exam&quot; so the GRE becomes virtually meaningless as a measure of knowledge. I could speculate, but I don't think it would be helpful. The bottom line is, we find that different factors predict student success among different populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if we wanted to admit students based on their likelihood of achieving a certain GPA in our program, we would apply an undergrad GPA cutoff for students from X, and a GRE threshold for students from Y. (Again, this is vastly simplified from the criteria our study actually suggested.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it fair to apply different criteria to students with undergrad degrees from different countries in admissions decisions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the answer change if this would significantly skew the admissions decisions in favor of a particular country of undergrad study (because statistically, applicants to our program whose undergrad degrees are from X have done much better than those with undergrad degrees from Y).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that we're effectively saying, &quot;Students with undergrad degrees from Y with a GRE score &amp;lt; T will be rejected, but students with undergrad degrees from X  with GRE &amp;lt; T may still be considered for admission (pending other criteria).&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if we ignore these statistics and reject students with undergrad degrees from X with low GRE scores, we are rejecting applicants even though we have no valid reason to believe that they won't do well in our program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To those who doubt the results of the study:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I say the study is &quot;small&quot; I don't mean it isn't statistically significant - just that it was not designed to be generalizable beyond our applicant pool. (This is the same reason why I won't give too many details about the study - I don't want anybody to read it and try to generalize from our results.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As we know, the sample size is not the only factor that determines whether a given effect is significant. We found that the results are significant, given the sample size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The results also seem &quot;sane&quot; (which of course is subjective). It's not unexpected that undergraduate grading standards (and the standard-ness of grading standards) differ by country; or that different educational systems and cultures prepare students differently for standardized exams like the GRE and TOEFL; etc. The specifics of the results (i.e., which criteria are good predictors for which undergrad country) are consistent with what students who studied in those countries have told us about grading standards, student culture, and exam prep. So, we really have no reason to doubt them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T02:41:02.633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T22:50:15.447" Title="Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="24" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27885" CreationDate="2014-03-03T06:20:40.967" Score="3" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a grad student and I was wondering if it is common (or good practice) for applicants to sessional instructor positions to submit teaching statements. The positions I'm looking to apply for do not specifically ask for one (instead asking for a letter of application, listing courses of interest), and it might seem like a good opportunity to also develop a teaching statement, but only if it necessary as I haven't yet taught a course and I'm not entirely sure what I would write about (I do have considerable TA experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1174" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T14:08:08.933" Title="Should a sessional instructor applicant submit a teaching statement?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17651" CreationDate="2014-03-03T07:40:55.713" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently posted a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17478/is-it-ok-to-hire-another-labs-student&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; about being on the other side of this scenario - a professor in my university offered to take on a student who had already agreed to work with me (and had been working with me for the previous year already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice from reading that question and its responses that while I was a bit annoyed with the professor, I wasn't upset with the student. In fact, I advised the student to choose the advisor he thought would be best for him, and gave him a good recommendation to the other professor in case that's what he chose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because &lt;strong&gt;the student is supposed to act in his/her own best interest&lt;/strong&gt; (while still being responsible and professional, of course). It's not being selfish, it's being smart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first professor shouldn't get upset with you for pursuing an opportunity that is better for you - if he/she does, then you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; don't want to work with someone like that, anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go talk to the second professor: &quot;I was thinking some more about your offer to advise me on my thesis and I have reconsidered my original decision. Is the offer still available?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he/she says yes, accept the offer and go talk to the first professor: &quot;I really appreciate your offer to advise me on my thesis, but I've decided to work with X instead. Thanks, again.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T07:40:55.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T09:03:37.803" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to advise against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You say your sample size is small. And honestly, unless you hired a professional statistician, I have doubt the analysis was carried out properly or shows exactly what you think it shows. Good statistics are hard to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming my google results are truthful, National Origin is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class&quot;&gt;Protected Class&lt;/a&gt; in the US. You can't discriminate against people because of it. I assume this is an american institution as you talk about GRE, but similar applies in other places. &lt;strong&gt;EDIT: OP has since clarified a misunderstanding of mine - the judgement is based not on the student's country of origin, but the country of the school they attended, which makes me less certain this point still applies.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're department is actually, seriously proposing to say to people &quot;Sorry, while you have the same official qualifications as another candidate we accepted, we're rejecting you because of your country of origin&quot;? I mean, really? Whoa. Just stop and play back how this kind of justification would sound in almost any other circumstance. Think about how the &lt;em&gt;press&lt;/em&gt; will make it sound when they (inevitably) get wind of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SUBSEQUENT EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this question interested me, and I've bounced it off a couple of other people in my lab. Their main concern seemed to be that grouping by country was just to coarse a measurement, as every country has its own mix of good and bad schools. The basic idea, though, didn't seem to elicit the same gut reaction as it did from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I've googled and found at least two examples of courses that vary their requirements based on country of origin, so there is precedent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/for/international-students/is-entry-requirements/is-minimum-overseas-entry-requirements.html&quot;&gt;https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/for/international-students/is-entry-requirements/is-minimum-overseas-entry-requirements.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sydney.edu.au/business/futurestudents/postgraduate_study/pg_coursework_studies#app_req&quot;&gt;http://sydney.edu.au/business/futurestudents/postgraduate_study/pg_coursework_studies#app_req&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe I've got this wrong, and should just be ignored. At any rate I'm no longer sure it's quite so clear cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastEditorUserId="7061" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T12:00:42.537" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T12:00:42.537" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T09:19:13.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the answer change if this would significantly skew the admissions decisions in favor of a particular country of undergrad study (because statistically, applicants to our program whose undergrad degrees are from X have done much better than those with undergrad degrees from Y).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that we're effectively saying, &amp;quot;Students with undergrad degrees from Y with a GRE score &amp;lt; T will be rejected, but students with undergrad degrees from X with GRE &amp;lt; T may still be considered for admission (pending other criteria).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my ears this sounds analogous (with certain exaggeration) to: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;we only want rich, white men from successful parents that could afford to send them to good schools through out their childhoods.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that this is not what you intend but you got to realise that having different criteria based on the country of undergrad studies is unethical, biased and I can't see how you could implement something like that without having major headaches. You can, by all means, have different criteria for an &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; (for instance by having an interview) but if you clump up an entire population based on some statistics, which you can't elaborate on for some reason, I call that discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, you cannot evaluate the chances of an &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; being successful or not, without giving that person a &lt;strong&gt;fair&lt;/strong&gt; chance. If you deem a particular GPA/GRE score to be &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot; for your graduate program, all applicants that satisfy that criteria should be considered good enough, regardless where they come from. Any additional selection criteria could be justified only if it warrants additional information, such as TOEFL score for those who don't have English as a mother tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other option would be to calculate &amp;quot;success rate coefficients&amp;quot;, something like a multiplicative factor for the GPA/GRE score for applicants from different undergrad institutions, which &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; in theory be a fair assessment, but practically unfeasible considering the number of possible institutions involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative would be to devise a test for your institution, that you consider to be more fair than using GPA or GRE score. But even that, judging by your comments, is not an acceptable solution. Honestly it sounds a bit like you just want confirmation of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T23:13:24.437" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T11:36:12.150" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it has to be bad. GRE is a measurement of how good you are at doing exams, and not necessarily the most relevant kind to your graduate work. Some universities and education systems are very good at making people excel at set fixed format exams; but they don't teach them how to think by themselves and be creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, GRE is a very biased measurement in itself, and it is not very well designed (just look at the ridiculous maths part). Also, it is based on a lot of fairly simple exercises, whereas in some universities, we are used to completely different kind of exam: a few long and complicated exercises, and perhaps don't have the ability to work fast enough in simple and repetitive tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T11:36:12.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17690" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:39:01.520" Score="22" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about maintaining email records when changing institutions. I’m writing it here because it seems to be a problem quite specific to the academic context of managing long-term relationships within the context of a series of short-term posts which seems to typify post-doc life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I’m in a new post-doc position, my student email has about 6 months left to run before everything is deleted when the account is closed, and which probably contains several thousand carefully filed emails (academic collaborations and correspondence, supervision and PhD project, university milestones, passwords, agreements...). Probably about only 30-40 of them will be crucial to me over the next couple of years, but it’s difficult to know which ones. I’d like to keep a fairly complete paper trail. I am also preparing to encounter this problem again when my post-doc post finishes in 18 months' time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague who was in a similar fix ended up mailing hundreds of emails to her new account, which is clearly less than ideal. Another colleague just prints everything and stores it in paper files. If I wasn’t in academia I would switch emails to a more permanent one, but it is essential to use the proper address for work correspondence, so this doesn’t appear to be an option, unless if anyone has any ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Technical bit: The previous system used Outlook and exchange on the web; the current system uses Outlook and outlook.com; the next system could use anything. To complicate things, Outlook has been auto-archiving files which means there are multiple .pst files, so this option looks a little nightmarish. I'm a mere social scientist, so eager to avoid a very technical solution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody found a reasonable system for handling this sort of problem, whether manual or automated, other than finding a permanent academic post?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T01:09:27.643" Title="Keeping email records when moving between posts" Tags="&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:56:26.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think its all about the jobs that the first PhD could not bring to them. I myself have a PhD from an Egyptian university, but it seems that nobody is willing to offer me a post-doc position because I don't have 10 journal papers with extremely large impact factor as a PhD student from an advanced country would have. Of course the conditions are very different between a university in Egypt and another one in the United States or Europe. That's why I will keep looking for another PhD from a very high ranked western university.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12595" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T17:02:08.663" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T17:02:08.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-03T14:00:57.340" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use a permanent account while still having the emails sent to your official address.  I do this by getting gmail to check my university email accounts for me (Settings &gt; Accounts &gt; Check email from other accounts).  I am then able to reply to those emails directly in gmail, while having them appear to come from my university address (there is an option to always reply from the same address to which the email was sent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this solution can be any use for the emails you have already received (you may be able to use it, if you can for example mark all your emails as unread, so that gmail maybe sees them as new), but it might be worth starting now to reduce future hassle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T14:00:57.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17687" CreationDate="2014-03-03T15:58:46.193" Score="3" ViewCount="964" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to get some directions on how to prepare for a MS Degree in Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm interested in getting a Ph.D in Statistical Learning or related area in 5-6 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I took some courses in Mathematical Statistics and I struggled because I do not have recent coursework in Analysis, Measure theory, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I studied electrical engineering with a very heavy mathematical component from a very decent University 20 years ago however, it is amazing how much I've forgotten.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've always been fascinated by mathematics and I'm very tempted to build a solid foundation before partaking in doctoral study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am working at the moment - my job is flexible and I'm saving to take off a year or two for the final years of my doctoral work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a couple of graduate degrees in the area of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd like to build up to where I was 20 years ago: calculus, linear algebra, diff equations, calculus of complex variables, frequency domain analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to take courses that are typically reserved for math majors like proofs, analysis, group theory, algebra, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think the best way to accomplish the plan would be a decent community college or extension program like (UC Berkeley extension) that offers online classes -- any recommendation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12597" LastEditorUserId="12597" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T03:21:59.917" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:10:51.157" Title="Community College or extension programs as a way of preparing for a Masters in Mathematics" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T16:00:34.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the underlying questions are (ought to be) first, whether it is fair to reject a student because you cannot accurately measure their potential to do well in the program; and second, if you can perform equally accurate measurements on two groups as long as you use different criteria, is it okay to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering the second question first: I think the answer is &quot;yes&quot;.  The reason is made apparent by advocating the alternate view: should you take students who are likely to do poorly simply because you fail to apply a more sophisticated measurement?  That seems pretty boneheaded, and not very fair to the best students.  You should leave the analysis up to computers, as they are good at this sort of thing and impartial, but it's a good idea if you can implement it.  Don't forget, though, that data on whether a score distinguishes students within your program does not tell you about whether it helped you reject students that didn't make it in!  So you should be skeptical but open to the idea if that's where the data leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question could be rephrased as: &quot;if I know I'm not getting a good sense of some students, can I just ignore them all?&quot;.  And that guides my advice there: no, that is not fair.  Find a way to do your job better--to get more information so that you can get a good sense of these students, or just accept that you would rather make mistakes in acceptance than find a way to do better on your predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting these two together: if you have equal statistical power across groups when subdividing one population, then great!  Use the information.  But if you end up with one group better-measured than the other, you should only apply different criteria if you can show that students who are great and do all the right things in their less-measured context still have a shot at being admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, simple thresholds for individual scores, e.g. &quot;We only take people with GREs above X&quot; are rarely a smart way to run admissions unless those thresholds are set amazingly low.  You should be thresholding an overall score to get the top N students, so you'd be applying different weights for GRE in one context vs. another.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T16:00:34.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T16:37:17.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that you are interpreting your data incorrectly and using the results in an unethical and discriminatory way. Your model is not identifying groups of individuals who should not be accepted, but rather groups of individuals that require additional support so that they can reach the full potential predicted by their past performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following example: For a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with ability or commitment, women have historically been less likely to become full professors in STEM fields than men. To reject female applicants base on a model that captures this historical effect is completely unethical. What the model would show is that female applicants need additional support to maximize their potential (e.g., flexible working hours and mentoring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T16:37:17.763" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-03T17:40:39.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had similar problems in the past. I think for the future, @TaraB's solution is the best one, given that gmail's reply-to features and identity management are quite good, and they also permit archiving of email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for the past data, if you're technically savvy, it's not hard to write a small script that can ping your server, download all the email and store it locally. I in fact run such a  script once a month to flush out my mailbox and organize emails in monthly folders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T17:40:39.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-03T17:41:05.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Outlook, your best bet is to &lt;strong&gt;export&lt;/strong&gt; all of your mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click &lt;em&gt;File&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Open &amp;amp; Export&lt;/em&gt;.  Select &lt;em&gt;Import/Export&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick &lt;em&gt;Export to a file&lt;/em&gt; and click &lt;em&gt;Next&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick &lt;em&gt;Outlook Data File (.pst)&lt;/em&gt; and click &lt;em&gt;Next&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can export a particular folder, or select your account if you want to save everything.  (Make sure &lt;em&gt;Include subfolders&lt;/em&gt; is checked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hC1yv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Export Outlook Data File&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlook will save your data into a single PST file you can keep and open in Outlook at any time.  Everything is saved in the PST file; you need not have access to the original email account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12600" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T17:41:05.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:37:28.050" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was waiting and hoping that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65/jeffe&quot;&gt;@JeffE&lt;/a&gt; would expand his comment, since I share the opinion he expressed there, and moreover I think he is far more qualified to give advice on the subject. (Quite possibly, if he decides to expand his comment to an answer that has better facts and arguments than what I am about to offer, I will delete my answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;DISCLAIMER: I do not know either where you are, what the laws are like there, or if your final decision can have any legal repercussions. I advise seeking legal counsel for any questions of that sort.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;it if fine to have different criteria for students that obtained their undergrads in different countries&lt;/strong&gt; (and/or in different institutions), as long &lt;strong&gt;as you can ensure the criteria are fair&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how to approach ensuring that the criteria are fair, I have no idea, but I definitely know that if in some countries the GPA is indicative of a person who has potential as a researcher, in some countries it is simply not (I for example did my Masters in Croatia, and I know both people with around 3/5 GPA that made excellent PhD candidates and people with a perfect 5/5 GPA that I do not think would be capable of much independent thinking that were happy to take jobs where they have strictly defined output they have to produce and no research to speak of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two different examples of using &quot;different&quot; criteria in the admission process, but unfortunately both of them are for the wrong level of study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First one is about undergrad admissions to my former Computer Science Faculty* in Croatia. While the big majority of the candidates take a standardized test and are admitted based on that, a small amount of students (maybe 1%, maybe even much less) are &lt;em&gt;invited&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These invitations work as such: the Faculty regularly does a continuous performance study on the previous invitees according to their High schools, as well as (I assume), overall performance of students from different High schools. Each year, a number of invites is extended to High schools, who can then &quot;award&quot; their students with those invites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the performance study and possibly High school size, some schools get a larger number of invites (up to 5, I think), while some get only 1 invite or even none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, actually, I think it's fair. E.g. the strong mathematical High schools will get the most invites (those are the schools &quot;prepping&quot; their students for technical studies after all), strong general schools would get some, and weak schools would get none. And still everything would be re-evaluated year after year. Also, additionally, nobody still loses their fair chance to enroll: this &quot;invited&quot; students make less than 1% of the enrolled students, while everybody can still take the standardized test.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second example is about the interview for a PhD position / pre-PhD internship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, a permanent professor from my lab started looking for a person to hire for an internship with a strong chance of offering them a PhD upon the completion of the internship. I mentioned that my ex supervisor used to supervise people with a similar profile to what was required, and that I could ask him weather he has somebody interested (and good enough) to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he received the preliminary application documentation, he asked me to comment on the profile because he was not familiar with the Croatian University system at all. I said that good grades were &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; indication of a good student, but bad grades do not have to be an indication of a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was also some other points in the CV adding value to his application, not directly obvious to somebody non-Croatian. After talking to an ex post-doc of his (who worked a bit with the applicant), the professor decided to interview with the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few days later, he told me that based on the interview, he offered the applicant a position. He also told me that &lt;em&gt;he would most probably not interview a person with that profile&lt;/em&gt;, if not for what me and his Croatian ex-post doc said about the &quot;interpretation&quot; of the profile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with both these cases. The (&quot;absolute&quot;) criteria is indeed not the same for everybody. But still, in both these cases, the goal was to be fair, to base the decision on the applicants abilities, and finally &lt;strong&gt;to judge the applicants abilities and potential &quot;on the same scale&quot; for all applicants&lt;/strong&gt;, just based on different information that was available, finally causing different &quot;absolute&quot; criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*In Croatia, the Universities are not wholesome entities, and all the administrative decisions are made on the level of the Faculty. There is no identification of students with the Uni in Croatia; if you ask a Croatian studying &quot;at home&quot; where he is studying, he is going to provide the information about his Faculty.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDITION&lt;/strong&gt;. I wanted to add that, despite what any statistical research might show, &lt;strong&gt;if students from different countries have the &lt;em&gt;same, internationally standardized tests&lt;/em&gt;, then I think making a different criterion would be wrong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, for the country X, those tests are not good indicator because students get prepped exactly for those types of exams, but there just might be a few students who learned the material in the &quot;proper way&quot; (as do the majority of students from the country Y), who might get rejected for no real reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, bottom line, I think&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;studying, and then declaring your own criteria to interpret &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; (non-standardized) national grading schemes is fine&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;even&lt;/em&gt; if they use the same scale &quot;on the outside&quot; -- e.g. two countries which both have a national standard grading schemes on a scale 1 to 5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;but, &lt;strong&gt;if a criterion is based on an internationally standardized exam, that same criterion should be used with everybody where applicable&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. everybody who took that standardized exam).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a compromise-suggestion, I think it would be fine to say that you accept all students from everywhere if their score is &lt;em&gt;extremely high&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. &gt;95%), and all the students with &lt;em&gt;medium-to-high&lt;/em&gt; scores (e.g. between 75% and 95%) will be considered based on additional criteria (where you can introduce personal interviews, standardized test from your institution, personal research statement + recommendation letters)...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit2:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;This opinion was supported&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;when I talked to&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a person with a background in law&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(not in academia thou).&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA; The final verdict was: interpreting criteria that are initially different (e.g. GPA) differently is OK, but if something is standardized on an international level, it would only be OK to either take it in to account equally for everybody, or not at all. (purposefully using OK instead of &quot;allowed&quot; or &quot;lawful&quot; since I don't know the laws at your place). With a note that, unfortunately, &lt;em&gt;What is lawful and what is just and fair is sadly not always the same.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T22:09:21.827" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:54:18.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to add that your examples are not likely to succeed. If you attract media attention, the debunking papers will be published in newspapers, not in peer reviewed journals, and it will not count towards bibliometric indexes. For it to work you would need to attract attention in your field, and therefore, fool experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, there are some exceptions, one &quot;good&quot; and one &quot;bad&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very groundshaking papers, like some of the ones published by Nature. They explore a very new frontier, and are likely to make mistakes. They do get attention because the ideas are refreshing. Even if they are not correct, the mental process is useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some multidisciplinary fields, most experts tend to be in one of the sides. For example, some branches of biomedical research are dominated by doctors and biologists, but there are not many physicists or statisticians. In these fields, people may incur in mistakes outside of their area of expertise (for example, a doctor may not have understood the electronics involved in his machine, and why his results are flawed). In this case, one could write a honest paper that has a fundamental mistake, and the reviewers are from the same area of expertise as the author and don't catch it; or someone could take advantage of his rare expertise and introduce wrong procedures on purpose. The first case is not unheard of, the second I haven't seen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T18:54:18.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2014-03-03T19:10:02.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me put it this way, if I know of a published book that explains the topic of the course very nicely, do I have an advantage compared to my fellow classmates? One could think that. It is unfair? Not really, anyone could have done the same research as me and find the same book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities actually encourage professors to publish their class notes. It is a good way of getting prestige, as other professors can base their course plan on yours, or students may find the notes useful. In both cases, it is a very good publicity for the university, and very cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright issues are probably the only possible limitation, but they depend greatly on the subject: for modern English literature, you will need to comment on extracts of copyrighted books, and perhaps you want to avoid any legal fuzz regarding whether you are under fair use or not; but in mathematics there are hardly any copyrights in theorems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason not to have things public is if you are going to publish them as a book. But that is another ethics debate for another time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T19:10:02.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-03T19:21:52.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disk space is cheap, so you might as well archive (almost) everything.  You never know when you might need it later.  But I think the technical details of how to do so are outside the scope of this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One consideration for academics, though, is that some of our email may have confidential information: student grades, or correspondence about disciplinary issues, or search committee business.  Your institution may not want to you to keep a personal copy of such emails after you leave.  If you keep them, and they later leak out, you could conceivably have legal problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before archiving a personal copy of my emails, I search through them to purge information that should not leave the institution, or is otherwise too risky to save.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar issue if you want to keep your email in the cloud (gmail or similar); you and your institution both have to trust the provider to keep the data private.  I know some institutions forbid users to forward their email to gmail for this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T19:21:52.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17431" CreationDate="2014-03-03T20:20:07.620" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just looked up some numbers for Germany: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2013, 8700 PhDs were finished in maths/natural sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;average age at finishing (all fields): 32.5 a&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;average age at becoming professor (maths/natural sciences): 40.5 a  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;predicted number of retiring professors in 2021 = in 8 years = when last year's fresh PhDs reach the average age of becoming professor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(maths/natural sciences): ca. 190&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;190 : 8700 ≈ 1 : 46 or 2.2 %&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the tables show only overall numbers, and no details for maths. But I think that this result is influenced by the fact that the majority of chemistry and biology students go on for a PhD (though I guess that a non-negligible fraction leaves for industry [slightly] before finishing the PhD - which after all may not be that different from doing a PhD in order to get a better entrance position in industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PruefungenHochschulen.html&quot;&gt;exam statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PersonalHochschulen.html&quot;&gt;university staff statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T15:16:09.707" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T15:16:09.707" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17673" CreationDate="2014-03-03T22:34:30.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fear that not so many community colleges would offer the upper-division courses a math-major sort of person would want, especially to aim toward graduate school in mathematics. Further, you'd be needing letters of recommendation for grad school, and community colleges would not generate letters that would help you, since the letter writers (by far most often) would not be familiar with grad school from the side of mentoring and supervising grad students (even if they themselves did have a Ph.D.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that community colleges are usually much cheaper than &quot;universities&quot;, but the coursework, context for coursework, and outlook of faculty teaching the upper-division courses you need, and their letters on your behalf, are things that you can't avoid but need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T22:34:30.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2014-03-03T22:37:30.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not impossible to get a PhD in Europe and then get hired in the US. I got my PhD in the Netherlands and a couple of years later got shortlisted for a tenure-track job at Stanford, no less. One of my grad school advisors got his PhD in Belgium and then got almost immediately hired at a SLAC (he then decided to return to Europe after a few years), as did a girl who was in a cohort a couple of years behind mine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why these stories are relatively uncommon is because the structure of graduate programs in Europe and the US is quite different. In Europe, there tends to be a disproportionate emphasis on producing a dissertation. I've met a number of people who have spent their &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; time in graduate school (three or four years) working on their dissertations to the exclusion of everything else. In contrast, in US programs, the dissertation is just one requirement among many; before you even start to write your dissertation, you have to spend a couple of years taking courses, write one or two qualifying papers, and/or pass a qualifying exam. As a consequence, students with a US PhD tend to have a breadth of knowledge that students with a European PhD typically lack. Unsurprisingly, the European students that get hired or shortlisted in US institutions are invariably those that make a deliberate decision to delay writing their dissertation until their last 12-18 months, so that they can have a couple of years to take the kind of courses and do the type of research that gives them a breadth of knowledge comparable to that of their US peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to study in Germany, what you want to look for is the kind of school and the kind of advisor that will push you to get out of your narrow topic of research and dabble in other subfields. If you can't find this much, you'll be better off going to a US graduate program of comparable standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T22:37:30.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11617" CreationDate="2014-03-03T23:34:24.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a 2nd Master's right now in Philosophy when my first was Philosophy of Religion (same classes basically). Both schools are American. There are some schools that are often recommended for people trying to get a 2nd MA in Philosophy. You most certainly CAN do it, at least in the humanities, although there are some cons to going about things this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12608" LastEditorUserId="13138" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T08:11:06.157" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T08:11:06.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-04T00:28:22.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two distinct problems: having a permanent email address so that others can reach you even if they don't have your current details, and keeping an archive of your past emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Email address&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an email from my alumni association that's pretty much guaranteed to be for life. If you don't have this chance, you can rent a domain name for your own use for around $10/year (if you aren't picky about the choice of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain&quot;&gt;top-level domain&lt;/a&gt;). It's impossible to predict what the Internet will be like in the 40 years or so that an academic carrier lasts, but it is plausible that such methods of contact will remain relevant and affordable. At this price, you get the opportunity to make &lt;code&gt;http://your-chosen-name.tld/&lt;/code&gt; point to some website and &lt;code&gt;whatever@your-chosen-name.tld&lt;/code&gt; redirect emails to some email provider; hosting the actual website and storing emails is a distinct service. You would typically set a web redirection to &lt;code&gt;http://example.edu/~lplatts&lt;/code&gt; and an email redirection to &lt;code&gt;lplatts@example.edu&lt;/code&gt; and update when you change institutions (or redirect to some other service of your choice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions may insist that you write the email address they provide on papers that you publish while they're paying you. Journals often allow you to specify two email addresses, though this can be crowded if you're co-financed by several institutions already. If you don't have your permanent email address in your published papers, a web page that's easy to find by typing your name in Google (or whatever becomes the de facto standard search engine) is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Email archive&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend that you keep an archive of all your academic emails on a computer that you personally own. Keep your emails also on an online service to be able to access it anywhere, but don't leave your data at the mercy of an institution that you'll be leaving sooner or later or of a commercial service that could fold or become unusable (e.g. due to an unacceptable change in the terms of service) at any time. In other words, uploading all your emails on Gmail isn't enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most academic institutions consider that academic emails are related to your academic career and therefore your property. On the contrary, most companies consider your emails to be company property and won't let you walk away with them. If you have some data that may be considered confidential to your institution, they may not like you to walk away with it. Make sure to check your institution's policies. If you're only allowed to retain some of your emails, classify them in separate folders and export only those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend making sure that all your email is available in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird&quot;&gt;Thunderbird&lt;/a&gt;. Thunderbird is the email client from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation&quot;&gt;Mozilla Foundation&lt;/a&gt; that also makes the Firefox web browser. Thunderbird runs on the major desktop operating systems (Linux, Windows, OSX) and has a decent GUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_.pst_files&quot;&gt;import Outlook's &lt;code&gt;.pst&lt;/code&gt; files into Thunderbird&lt;/a&gt;. This way, you won't depend on a proprietary tool, you can move your archives onto any machine that has Thunderbird installed. Do this regularly even if you keep using Outlook. On your last day at an institution, import your last emails into Thunderbird and burn your mailbox to a CD. When you arrive in a new institution, either use Thunderbird or export your old emails to whatever the standard format there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;em&gt;additionally&lt;/em&gt; upload your emails to a service such as Gmail (currently free and with a practically unlimited mailbox size). This has two benefits: you can access your emails from anywhere, and Google's search is better than anyone else's. Once you have your emails accessible in Thunderbird, you can upload them to Gmail by configuring Thunderbird to access that account and copying the emails to Gmail. Do this only if you're willing to trust Google's privacy (depending on your field, you may not be willing to allow a potential competitor to process your emails, for example if you're researching search algorithms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="160" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T00:28:22.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17668" CreationDate="2014-03-04T01:09:27.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a quite different answer than all others, but many email services are accessiable via IMAP. Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://offlineimap.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;offlineimap&lt;/a&gt; one can synchronize between two IMAP servers (say old and new university) as well as your computer and an IMAP server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows for moving mails, keeping a local backup of all mails, as well as using this as a general-purpose email solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I synchronize between one IMAP server (my universities') and three different computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage is that this requires some knowledge of unix-like tools, and reading the offlineimap manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T01:09:27.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11617" CreationDate="2014-03-04T01:18:56.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting a second masters degree in the same field may be allowed, but it's extremely rare and I don't think it's a good use of time. I don't think it will help you get admitted to a PhD program. It would just look like an anomaly to the admissions committee. I think it would make more sense to apply directly to PhD programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9464" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T01:18:56.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T01:24:24.947" Score="12" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;For paper submission, I have recently spent some time struggling to find appropriate classification. The main question is: who needs this information and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I thought that they could be used by the editor to find an appropriate editor or referees, but I have had two experiences contradicting this hypothesis. In the first one, I was only asked to provide classification AFTER the review process. In the second, I was requested to point myself to appropriate editors and referees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I do not look at those numbers, and that is true for other colleagues. The only exception is when I am trying to find appropriate classification and look at other related papers for inspiration. In such occasion, I sometimes found classifications which did not seem to match the content of the paper. Apparently people do not care much for this. Another aspect of the question is: how bad is it to have a bad classification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T12:17:20.340" Title="How important are classifications (ACM, AMS, PACS...)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17695" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:11:22.613" Score="27" ViewCount="3842" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently located in central Europe. When I was hunting for an assistant professor position some months ago, I was also planning to apply to some US institutions for Tenure Track positions. However, one senior professor with some experience working in the US told me pretty much straight-up that this will be a waste of time, as &quot;US universities do not hire people from outside the US/Canada on Tenure Tracks&quot;. Relativizing somewhat, stated that &quot;of course exceptions exist, especially if they personally know the applicant, but generally you will get onto the &lt;em&gt;reject&lt;/em&gt; pile immediately as they don't know your school well enough.&quot;. I was counselled to apply for a postdoc at an US institution first, if I really wanted to get into an US school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking over the CVs of some existing assistant professors in good schools the statement could  be accurate (almost nobody with the job title Assistant Professor seems to come directly from outside the US - many &lt;em&gt;graduated&lt;/em&gt; somewhere else, but the last position before was almost always an US institution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In your experience, is this sentiment correct? Does it even make sense to apply for a TT position in the US from outside (under the assumption that your CV is reasonable for a TT in the first place, of course)?&lt;/strong&gt; Computer Science is most relevant to me, but any information from any STEM fields would be interesting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-26T17:57:45.757" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T17:57:45.757" Title="Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17694" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:35:57.503" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the &quot;I don't know your university&quot; element can have an influence on whether your application gets summarily dismissed to the reject pile, it's less of an issue than one might think. We all travel to Europe and Asia for conferences now, and meet colleagues who come from different countries. I can probably name the top few universities in my field in many European countries, as well as personally know people in each of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's a more mundane logistical reason for potentially avoiding applicants from other countries: expenses. There's always a risk in getting someone to come for an on-site interview, but with a foreign candidate the expense and logistical work (visa processing, payment methods and so on) are more onerous. We always want to find strong candidates, but when there's a large pool of highly qualified candidates in the US, it can be convenient to focus on those that we expect have a chance of actually making it through the interview process and coming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the question of whether someone from Europe (as opposed to someone working there) really does want to come to the US, or is just casting a wide net. But that can be addressed in candidate statements or even conversations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this means that foreign candidates are disqualified. Far from it. But it creates a moment of doubt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T07:35:57.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17778" CreationDate="2014-03-04T11:25:44.230" Score="7" ViewCount="16633" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Background: I am an EE graduate, working in a Software Company from last 2+ years as an Application Developer(Java &amp;amp; J2EE). Recently I started thinking of going back to college and do my Master's in CS, as most of the jobs in industry require a degree in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Country of Residence: India&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countries of Interest for University Applications: US, UK, Australia and EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that there are prerequisites to get admitted to those programs. Specifically, I need to have completed courses in Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Theory of Computation, Compilers and Computer Networks. My undergraduate degree did have courses like Computer Networks, but nothing else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some other Universities, I can get admitted to MS in CS, but then I need to complete those courses at the College before starting graduate school coursework. I understand all of those things, as I took various Computer Science Courses online. I understand all the things that there are in undergraduate Computer Science Course. So here are my options:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Take a post-bacc Course in computer science. (That Costs a lot in money and Time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Do Nothing and apply without requirements being completed and let them decide whether or not I should enroll in UG CS courses at college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Do some online Computer Science courses on edX, Coursera and show them that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one of them is more favourable to a person working in Software Industry with an EE background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12618" LastEditorUserId="12618" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T19:25:10.693" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T14:17:26.247" Title="How can I complete the prerequisites for Masters in Computer Science on my own?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17621" CreationDate="2014-03-04T15:34:18.477" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The major quantifiable predictor of success in research is... success in research. People who have done research successfully in the past are more likely than not to continue to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students that have not done research in the past, the best predictor I have seen for success (whatever that may be) is expressed in a quote from &lt;em&gt;The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research&lt;/em&gt;, by Marian Petre &amp;amp; Gordon Rugg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A willingness to learn for themselves and good judgement about when to stop and ask for feedback.&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not exactly quantifiable, but you can get a sense for it in an interview. &#xA;(Of course, this quality can be learned, so a lack of it doesn't necessarily predict an &lt;em&gt;inability&lt;/em&gt; to succeed at research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* &lt;em&gt;I took this quote completely out of context; the authors there are actually discussing the role of the PhD advisor, and they mention this quality in reference to a student &quot;who can be pretty much left to get on with it, with supervisory meetings being something that both parties enjoy, and where each party learns from the other.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T15:34:18.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17697" CreationDate="2014-03-04T15:46:14.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should add your country of residence to your question since this might affect the answer.&#xA;In Germany, only 1) would be accepted since all others are not from an accredited institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be possible to enroll to a program and do all exams in one semester, but you should check this in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T15:46:14.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17694" CreationDate="2014-03-04T15:58:23.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to speak out of personal experience. I did my PhD in Japan, and then started doing a Postdoc in the US, my University in Japan is regarded  in most rankings as a better institution that my current one in the US (not by much, but still).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied roughly to the same number of postdocs while in Japan and now, that I'm changing gigs as well. In Japan I got only 3 replies. While now I got many more replies and much more requests for interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's that to that. I'm also Mexican, with a valid travel visa (yes, they asked that), so we as part of NAFTA can get relatively easy working Visas (we only need a letter of acceptance). Also, a trip from Mexico City to LA is cheaper/shorter than a trip from Washington to LA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think our experiences have many differences, but in my personal point of view, yes it is easier to get positions if you are already in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to be blunt, few people in the US are going to take you seriously if you do not have at least a postdoc (in whatever institution). Even James Watson (Nobel Prize Laureate) did a Postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T15:58:23.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17621" CreationDate="2014-03-04T16:03:38.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; You should not be looking at what people do or how they are, but how what they do looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, how are they qualifications, specially considering consistency between them, it's not about the average, but the average and a small standard deviation. The greater the deviation, the less predictable they will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note: you will probably reject geniuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Success&quot; is now defined as &quot;publishing&quot;, it's pretty clear how to define it since people that have to define quality and metrics are focusing on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be wrong, some people say it's wrong to use P-values to test your hypotheses, some people say it's wrong to use h-indexes to measure the quality of researchers, but it's certainly becoming more and more common. These values provide a warm feeling of objectiveness and it's very hard to refuse to that. IMHO, they are here to stay, and without any doubt, they are here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having clarified that, I have a personal hypothesis (not verified at all, sorry) that people that get good grades are better at publishing. The reason is that we can consider that the corrections of an exam and the reviews of a paper are similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, in both cases is not about how much you know or how much you can do, but on the contrary it is about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conformity&lt;/em&gt;. Using the same language, terminology and not producing something shocking or hard to understand that will cause failing the exam or the paper being rejected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writing skills&lt;/em&gt;. Trying to predict (consciously or not) how the person reading your paper/exam is going to interpret it, avoid misinterpretations, show self-confidence, clear ideas, clear structure, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Concision&lt;/em&gt;. This is more than a writing skill. Time is limited in exams, pages are usually limited in papers (and the less pages, the more papers, that's also good, in principle). But it's even more than that, because most of the time it's not about how much you know or how much you have done, but avoiding mistakes. An exam that replies perfectly to half of the questions (and only that) will look better than one that replies perfectly to 90% of them but then makes really stupid mistakes in the other 10%. A paper with a small contribution may get accepted (depending on how small it truly is), but a paper with an important contribution and then an important mistake will get rejected (even if the mistake is only in the mind of the reviewer because the terminology used does not conform to what is usual and this makes reviewers very confused).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's really about being compliant with the state of the art and moving step by step further, with small steps, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20130114&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;baby steps&lt;/a&gt;, avoiding mistakes. How can you know whether someone can do this? Looking at their grades, and specially to the deviation of their grades from the average, it's not just about high grades, but consistent grades. It's not about how much they know, but about how often do they mess up, because if they do often, chances are they will do it at least once per paper, getting all rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the case for me, from time to time I'd do something really &lt;em&gt;&quot;brilliant&quot;&lt;/em&gt; in an exam, the teacher would not understand it and I would get a qualification of 0 in that exercise. I have never cared about qualifications, but learning, now publishing is just like any other qualification. &lt;em&gt;Success&lt;/em&gt; is just like any other qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T16:03:38.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T16:17:09.877" Score="3" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation, I have obtained a MSc in Computer Science in Europe with some publications in the field. Actually I would like to follow PhD studies, but the problem is that a lot of them are asking to have a proven track in Machine Learning (also in Europe). I have not followed any course on that topic and the things that I have learned about that field was from books, Coursera, or the Internet. I really like the field, but I regret that I did not follow any course beforehand, even though I know theoretically and practically the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can address that in my PhD applications? or should I follow another MSc with specialization in Machine Learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T11:16:11.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T11:16:11.520" Title="another master's or PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17693" CreationDate="2014-03-04T16:30:13.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the ACM page &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/about/class/how-to-use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to use the Computing Classification System&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An important aspect of preparing your paper for publication by ACM&#xA;  Press is to provide the proper indexing and retrieval information from&#xA;  the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS). This is beneficial to&#xA;  you because accurate categorization provides the reader with quick&#xA;  content reference, facilitating the search for related literature, as&#xA;  well as searches for your work in ACM’s Digital Library and on other&#xA;  online resources. It also ensures correct placement when a review&#xA;  appears in Computing Reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/msc/msc2010.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar verbiage&lt;/a&gt; for the AMS MSC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the institution needs it for their own databases and search mechanisms. The AMS probably needs it for something similar. So your use for the classification system depends on how much you expect people to search for your work using the classification structure provided by the institution. For math, I'd expect it to be used a lot: for CS, not so much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T16:30:13.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17712" CreationDate="2014-03-04T18:11:33.007" Score="6" ViewCount="1585" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do U.S. college accreditation agencies forbid teachers with only a bachelor's degree to be on the faculty of an accredited U.S. college?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T21:38:19.237" LastActivityDate="2020-01-04T20:20:48.027" Title="Can non-PhDs or non-Masters be on an accredited college's faculty?" Tags="&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-04T18:52:29.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supposedly yes, but mostly they ask people with a master's degree minimum (depending of course of their publications in the field for both cases). If not they aim for PhD or post-docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T18:52:29.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T19:15:44.443" Score="6" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Indian citizen, applying for Fall season graduate studies in the USA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are international students like me eligible to apply for Federal aid (FAFSA)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12631" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T23:39:12.567" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T20:20:02.263" Title="FAFSA eligibility for international students" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17710" CreationDate="2014-03-04T19:31:15.687" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://studentaid.ed.gov/eligibility&quot;&gt;No&lt;/a&gt;. You must be &quot;a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen&quot; (i.e., a permanent resident with a green card) to get federal student aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T19:31:15.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-04T19:34:22.883" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean.  If you are asking a theoretical question about whether there are rules that forbid it, then the answer is that it is theoretically possible, at least at some universities.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_M._Gleason&quot;&gt;Andrew Gleason&lt;/a&gt; was a tenured professor of mathematics at Harvard from 1953 through his retirement in 1992, without ever having attended graduate school.  (Technically, Harvard awarded him an honorary master's degree when he became a faculty member, but he had no master's degree when he was hired and never received a Ph.D.)  The rules vary between universities, but I do not believe Harvard's have changed since Gleason was there.  For another example, if you &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee&quot;&gt;invent the World Wide Web&lt;/a&gt;, you can become a professor with no master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is impossible in practice.  Unless you have received some sort of major academic recognition (a big prize, universities specifically soliciting an application from you despite knowing you have no master's degree, etc.), it's not even worth thinking about, since the chances of being hired are almost indistinguishable from zero.  If you are aiming for an academic career, choosing not to go to graduate school means giving up on that career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm assuming here that you are asking about fields in which there are very few famous practitioners without advanced degrees.  I can imagine that in certain fields (perhaps art, business, or politics), there might be more people who would be attractive to universities despite having only a bachelor's degree.  But even in those cases, it would require truly impressive achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T19:34:22.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17704" CreationDate="2014-03-04T19:49:38.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it is odd for universities to ask you this, assuming that they did &#xA;you have several options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend credit courses pertaining to Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence and re apply&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get some industrial experience in those fields and re apply&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select a program that does not require Machine Learning background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to dept advisers telling them that you will attend these courses &#xA;when you are admitted, probably get a conditional acceptance or &#xA;you do not want to do PhD in machine learning fields but something else&#xA;(assuming that is the case) and approach the faculty member to back you up. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T19:52:10.977" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T19:52:10.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17714" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-03-04T20:03:14.000" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T20:03:14.000" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:03:14.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17715" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-03-04T20:03:14.000" Score="0" Body="(Please, use other tags.) Note: StackExchange questions should be generalizable and possible to be answered in an objective way. Please, split your problem into objectively answerable questions." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T16:09:48.697" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:09:48.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-04T20:13:31.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most papers of this nature tend to be written by senior academics near the end of their careers, and so it has little impact on their h-indices as they already have a sufficient number of papers with more citations than the controversial paper is ever likely to attract.  Less senior academics at the start of their careers (where it might have an impact on their h-index) tend to be more circumspect and careful (as their lack of experience tends to make them more self-sceptical).  As a scientist, self-scepticism is a vitally important quality to be carefully nurtured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:13:31.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17719" CreationDate="2014-03-04T20:15:08.747" Score="3" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year PhD in Computer Science at a UK university. Recently, my supervisor has asked me to join a funded research project consisting of other post-docs and lecturers, i.e. I'll be the only PhD student in that project. My supervisor believes that it will be helpful for me to join since my research topic and a project's theme have many similarities, which I also agree. However, he doesn't mention anything about if I get paid to work in that project. So, I wonder if it is normal for a PhD student to work in a funded research project without getting paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="12635" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T20:26:03.887" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:54:25.257" Title="Is there a financial benefit for PhD student to join a funded research project" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17717" CreationDate="2014-03-04T20:47:32.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not in the U.K., but in my part of the world, it's common (one might say usual) for computer science PhD students to be paid. Is the determination of whether a PhD student is paid related to whether the project is funded? Not necessarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When is it appropriate to ask about payment?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you talk to your supervisor about this? Instead of asking &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it normal to &lt;em&gt;not be paid&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ask yourself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it unusual to be paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any scenario in which is is &lt;em&gt;not unusual&lt;/em&gt; to be paid, it is neither inappropriate nor offensive to (politely) ask whether you can be paid for work you are doing.* In your case, it is definitely appropriate. So, go ahead and talk to your supervisor about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/12/24/journal-editor-agrees-to-review-paper-then-demands-payment/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example of a scenario where it is not usual to be paid, and it was therefore inappropriate to ask for payment. As you can see, it's an extreme example :)&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T20:54:25.257" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:54:25.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17772" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:10:49.390" Score="2" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that in France, as late as the early 20th century, although I'm not sure if this is true now, a university student (undergrad or grad?) would take a nationwide &lt;em&gt;concours&lt;/em&gt; exam to receive the &lt;em&gt;aggrégation&lt;/em&gt; &quot;to be aggregated&quot; in the French school system and be able to teach at &lt;em&gt;lycées&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;high schools&quot;?), &lt;em&gt;académies&lt;/em&gt; (universities), and &lt;em&gt;grandes écoles&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was one with an &lt;em&gt;aggrégation&lt;/em&gt; essentially a TA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T15:18:39.613" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T15:18:39.613" Title="What is the history of teaching assistants (TAs) in France?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;&lt;france&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17722" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:14:42.467" Score="34" ViewCount="93263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for several postdoc positions recently. One made an offer which I accepted. Since then I've been invited for an interview for one of the other positions. Is there any benefit to attending? Is it an opportunity to make potentially useful contacts (in a relatively small field)? I should add that I have no experience with academic interviews (the position I secured was through contacts). Expenses will be paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:57:38.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T23:31:48.587" Title="Should I attend a job interview after I've already accepted another offer?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:20:25.647" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you've accepted a job offer, you are supposed to inform other places that you've applied that you would like to withdraw from consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they still want to invite you over to give a talk knowing that you can not be considered for the position, go ahead. But, &lt;strong&gt;you must tell them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do otherwise would be a &lt;strong&gt;serious breach of ethics&lt;/strong&gt;. You do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want to gain a reputation as someone who engages in unethical behavior (don't assume they won't find out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T21:58:55.540" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T21:58:55.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:33:34.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;must inform them&lt;/strong&gt; that you've accepted a position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; invite you for a talk, you  should go because presenting to new people will give you more visibility, more feedback on your work, and if you make a good impression then a potential place of employment in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might still invite you for a talk because it is fun for them to attend good talks and learn about interesting papers. Even if you don't work for them, by spending a day there you might meet someone interesting and you might wind up co-authoring with someone there on something in the future. Only good things can come out of spending a day with other researchers who are excited about stuff similar to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastEditorUserId="6674" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T14:32:19.677" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:32:19.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:47:48.363" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me emphasize a point made in other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you accepted one offer, you should have withdrawn your application from the other employers &lt;strong&gt;immediately&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you had done so, this situation would not have arisen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should immediately write an email to the school offering this interview, saying you have accepted another offer, and apologizing for not letting them know sooner.  They have a right to be a little annoyed with you; you've wasted some of their time, and if they'd known you were off the market, they could have moved on to pursue other candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you made a mistake; well, people are human and these things happen, but you should act quickly to put it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a comment on another answer, you consider the possibility of not telling them, and attending the interview anyway for the experience (and the free trip).  &lt;strong&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/strong&gt;  In academia, attending an interview for a job you know you won't take would be considered &lt;strong&gt;extremely&lt;/strong&gt; unprofessional and possibly unethical.  Interviewing a candidate is expensive, in terms of time, money, and opportunity cost (time they spend interviewing you is time they don't spend interviewing candiates who might actually come; the longer they take to get to those candidates, the greater the chance they will take another job first).  Don't think they won't find out; academia is a small world, people talk, and you can easily make enemies doing something like this.  Moreover, the people at your chosen instituion can find out too (the other institution's colloquium schedule is probably public) and it won't make them think well of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle they could ask you to come anyway just to give the talk, but it's unlikely.  They will probably want to use that time and money right now to speak with another candidate.  It's quite possible they are still interested in hearing about your work, but they'd be more likely to invite you to visit sometime in the future, after job season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T21:54:00.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T21:54:00.390" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2014-03-04T22:02:34.203" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of suggestions  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There should be no &quot;invisible&quot; people.  Do faculty greet students and administrative staff with a smile and words like &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you?&quot;  Do they greet janitorial staff?  A culture that values people for being people has a certain energy to it.  Likewise, how do you interact with the secretary making your arrangements, people you see in the hallway during your interview?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider the structure of the interview.  Will you visit with everyone in the department on an individual basis?  Does everyone in the department have the opportunity to meet you, even if its not one-on-one?  Departments thrive on discourse, its up to you to find out if its civil or disruptive.  One way to check this is to be in a position before the &quot;job talk&quot; to observe the dynamics of the room as various members enter.  If the room goes quiet when someone walks in, try to observe why.  Do eyes roll when someone asks a question designed to demonstrate their knowledge as opposed to find out about yours?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When hiring (from the perspective of chair, dean, &amp;amp; provost), I want the candidate to know the unit's story and dynamic.  That means a commitment on my part to allow the candidate to experience some of the discourse mentioned above.  If all you see is harmony, then its either group think or a group that's been cautioned to hide the unpleasantness.  You might ask your direct manager what people skills you could bring to the department that would build a stronger team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get specifics.  You are interviewing the institution at the same time they are interviewing you.  For example, if you ask what people skills you can bring to the team, and the response is just be nice, think twice.  Productive working groups should be built upon mutual respect for each others' strengths and a willingness to overlook some of the weaknesses.  With that said, a healthy department will have a sense of what it needs to get stronger as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read &quot;Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking&quot; by Malcolm Gladwell and trust your gut.  If you're sensing something is wrong, it probably is.  For this to be effective, you need time to reflect.  If you're being pressured for an answer immediately, you should be concerned.  Not that you need 2 weeks to think about an offer, but you should know how much time you need to make a reflective decision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is a very small world in the academy with LOTS of information available, especially in the public setting.  Want to know about the larger faculty culture?  Go look up the minutes from the last 12-24 months of faculty senate and look at the faculty in department/college you'll be joining.  Go to the website of the local newspaper and search for articles regarding the institution.  Have you looked at the faculty satisfaction survey on the Chronicle of Higher Ed?  Looked up articles on the institution on Inside Higher Ed?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point - healthy people are attracted to healthy environments.  Think about who you are and take a look at what you want, make sure its consistent with the institution, and don't be fearful of asking difficult questions.  You're worth it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6417" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T22:02:34.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T22:10:23.553" Score="16" ViewCount="838" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper with colour diagrams that I wouldn't like to convert to grayscale for publication. I think colour greatly helps to understand some complicated patterns. I know most journals accept colour pictures upon payment, but I'm not willing to pay for letting others publish my own work and get benefit out of it. Forum Mathematicum is a nice journal which publishes colour pictures for free, but I recently published a paper there and wouldn't like to repeat. Do you know of any other nice options? The paper is on algebraic topology bordering with quantum algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12637" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T23:58:01.377" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T08:55:03.253" Title="Mathematics journal publishing colour diagrams for free" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17835" CreationDate="2014-03-04T22:31:44.987" Score="10" ViewCount="1765" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a free, authoritative, trustworthy online database where one can look-up the accreditation of any college or university in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T04:05:24.313" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T16:55:32.713" Title="Free Database to Verify the Accreditation of any College or University in the World?" Tags="&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-04T23:26:11.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible (at least for part-time appointments).  I am part-time faculty at the University of Washington, and not only do I have just a bachelor's degree, my degree isn't even in the same field as my faculty appointment.  My real world skills and knowledge combined with my mentoring/leadership experience are all that were required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would be very rare for full-time faculty to not have at least a master's.  UW policy requires the master's degree for full-time faculty and a PhD for professorships, and some departments are adopting rules requiring a PhD for any full-time position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12639" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T23:26:11.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-04T23:28:37.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extensive and creative work experience can trump higher ed degrees in cases where the person has something exceptional to bring to the faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind attaining higher education degrees is that one becomes specialist of a discipline and that lends credence to teaching and research. Becoming a faculty member isn't instantaneous, there is a tenure track process which has its own requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several accreditation entities, you have to be more specific about which discipline  and accreditation entity you are referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T23:28:37.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T23:35:21.870" Score="2" ViewCount="2285" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various questions (and excellent answers) here about what to do when one accepts a job regarding existing applications. The general consensus is &quot;withdraw existing applications&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write with a variation on this that I have not seen addressed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone accepts a soft-money research position at one institution, and that position will start in 1.5 or 2 years, must they still withdraw and cease applying to other institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some context: The current role is post-doc. The goal is TT. The soft-money research position is a good step and starts when the post-doc ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems strange the candidate is effectively removed from the job market for ~2 years (1.5 until position starts, and one assumes it is bad form to apply for other jobs immediately in a new position), even though the next position is not committing to salary. It seems like other TT applications that are pending, or new ones that might be submitted in the next 1.5 years, could lead to the desired TT job, in which case the soft-money position would not be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this approach unethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soft money is a common term in my field. It means the institution provides no fixed long-term salary support. You are responsible for your salary by grant-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several questions about why the 1.5 year delay. This is part of dual career hire. One got TT, one got soft-money after post-doc ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12641" LastEditorUserId="12641" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T04:11:56.920" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T10:47:23.647" Title="Continue applications after accepting a position" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;soft-money&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17731" CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:14:16.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, setting up academic jobs more than one academic year in advance is uncommon precisely for this reason: each party gets nervous that the other will back out.  Thus for instance it is relatively common that one wants to accept one position and &quot;finish out&quot; a current position, and in my experience it is quite often acceptable to stay for one additional academic year and very rarely acceptable to stay longer than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested to hear more about the circumstances in which a position gets offered and accepted 1.5 to 2 years in advance.  As for the ethics: formally accepting an academic position involves (i) announcing your intention to do so and (ii) signing something saying that you accept the job, with a certain start date.  I do know that some positions which are funded by external grants need to be accepted conditionally on final funding of those grants (I was quite recently involved in such a situation).  This is potentially awkward, as the risks involved in a conditional offer not coming to fruition are highly asymmetrical: for the employer it means that some people's time has been wasted and that certain proposed projects will not get carried out; for the employee it means that a highly trained, valued worker is out of a job for a year through no fault of their own.  It may be that one has the ethical right to turn down a conditional offer for an unconditional offer under certain circumstances; I don't think you should use this an excuse, but if you honestly have doubts that the offer will become actual, then I think at some point you are entitled to take a real job rather than a virtual one.  (I would be interested to hear more about this point from others.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really signing on a dotted line a commitment to a position far in the future, conditional on funding, and with an uncertain salary...well, it is not clear to me why one would sign such a contract.  Barring exceptional circumstances you probably shouldn't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like the standard unit of &quot;going through with the position you accepted&quot; is one academic year.  In other words, if you agree in writing to take a position, then ethically speaking you should keep it for at least one year (I think).  Most formal contracts I am familiar with are academic year to academic year anyway: I am a tenured faculty member and I still sign a contract every August.  In my department we have the understanding that a postdoc, for instance, should feel to vacate the position at the end of any given academic year if they get a better job: in fact, these usually count as success stories, including on our part.  In general vacating a postdoc for a tenure-track job seems especially understandable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above makes me unsure of what the etiquette might be on a position that starts so far in the future.  As you can see, I am skeptical that such an arrangement should be as ethically binding as a standard offer, but it depends on the understanding both parties had when entering the arrangement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: The additional information seems helpful.  Is the current postdoc at the same institution as the partner's tenure-track job and the future &quot;soft-money&quot; gig?  I gather not.  Anyway, in this case the &quot;soft-money&quot; job sounds more like a courtesy to the tenure track partner than anything else.  Have &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; signed any paperwork saying that you intend to take the job?  If not, I think you're totally fine not to end up taking it (however if your partner plans to stay this should be done carefully so as not to cause trouble for him/her) and they probably will not even be that broken up about it.  Probably you haven't signed a contract for something so far in the future, right?  If you did sign a form signifying your intent to work at a certain job, it seems to me that you need to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; if you can not take the job rather than tell.  But it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which they would hold you to a future job that you no longer want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T07:39:26.877" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T07:39:26.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:22:27.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a category known as &quot;Professor of Practice&quot;, which some schools use to explicitly recognize folks whose teaching authority comes from experience and demonstrated skill in the field rather than from academic credits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're talking about tenure track, most schools will ask even these folks to have (or quickly obtain) a &quot;terminal degree&quot; in their field. That may only be a Master's for some fields, but Bachelors generally won't cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T00:22:27.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:36:03.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's difficult to get straight answers out of people, but sometimes just asking, &quot;Are there any politics within the department to look out for?&quot; to multiple faculty on your one-on-ones will provide some insight. People who make a confused face and say, &quot;No, no&quot; or vehemently say, &quot;Absolutely not!&quot; are likely not lying about it. Those who sigh, or those who get wooden, or those who decline to speak about it might indicate some problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience most faculty members are rather honest and have a hard time denying problems when asked straight up about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T00:36:03.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17728" CreationDate="2014-03-05T01:03:36.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In US, US news college rankings will give you this information&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other databases that you can search are&#xA;US Department of Education databases&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/search.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/search.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T01:03:36.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2014-03-05T02:14:49.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not forbidden.  Accreditation is based on many factors and percentage of terminal degree holders is one of those statistics that is considered.  Even the most prestigious colleges may have a number of MS/MA/MFA on their faculty.  In rare instances, even people without degrees might be on a faculty.  You may find these rare people on performing or creative arts faculties -- writers, actors, painters, filmmakers, etc. that have outstanding bodies of work or accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T02:14:49.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T04:24:01.150" Score="6" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the most efficient way of checking the academic degrees of an international pool of job-seekers? The tough thing is that many graduated from institution of non-English speaking countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T19:05:42.187" Title="How to check international academic credentials/degrees?" Tags="&lt;credentials&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17747" CreationDate="2014-03-05T04:47:13.683" Score="127" ViewCount="23291" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17718/campus-dress-codes-for-a-student-in-university&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; about university dress codes reminded me of an incident that happened when I was an undergrad, in which a classmate came to school wearing a really offensive and &lt;strong&gt;misogynistic&lt;/strong&gt; t-shirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; uncomfortable, especially since this was an engineering program and I was one of only three or four female students in a class of about fifty. I had another class with the same student later that day and he was still wearing the shirt. I remember wishing at the time that a faculty member or &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; with more authority than me would do something about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should a professor intervene if a student in their class is wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students? If so, how?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes: are there any scenarios in which a professor should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do anything even though a student's clothes contains material that is hostile towards another student or group of students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I come across this scenario as a TA, in which a student (who may be a peer in my program of study) in my class is wearing something offensive, what can I do about it? I don't feel comfortable (or safe, for that matter) as a woman confronting a male student about an item of clothing that is offensive to women. On the other hand, I feel like it is my responsibility to keep a non-hostile environment in my classroom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discriminatory harassment&lt;/strong&gt; is forbidden by the university's code of conduct and includes: placing written or graphic material which demeans or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual or group because of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age or disability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The item of clothing in question contained a slogan and image that is indubitably demeaning and hostile towards women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T18:47:58.963" Title="Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;harassment&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="41" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17752" CreationDate="2014-03-05T05:44:04.463" Score="18" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed a part of my project and communicated a paper to a conference. Let's call the paper's title as &quot;&lt;em&gt;project x: for this and that&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Now, I wish to open-source &lt;em&gt;project x&lt;/em&gt; to facilitate reproducible research and to have more (at least some) people use it (and cite it!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any specific drawbacks or risks involved in open-sourcing &lt;em&gt;project x&lt;/em&gt; on, say, Github or Sourceforge? Do note here that I would still be improving on &lt;em&gt;project x&lt;/em&gt;, and possibly sending the extended version to a journal (my area of work being Computer Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that if a conference/journal requires double-blind review and my project is searchable on the Internet, I am revealing my identity to the reviewers. This is bad, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other cons I should be considering? And are there any pros of open-sourcing &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; a making it into a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="5851" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T09:35:13.363" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:50:51.137" Title="Open-source the project code before or after publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T06:18:16.080" Score="4" ViewCount="2339" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone let me know whether IJCA (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijcaonline.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ijcaonline.org/&lt;/a&gt;) is a valid open access journal to publish our research work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BR,&#xA;Tharindu from Sri Lanka&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12653" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T08:10:51.040" Title="Is IJCA a valid open access journal?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-03-05T12:57:24.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T06:34:00.760" Score="9" ViewCount="2543" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to go to graduate school for applied/computational mathematics, specifically a program like this &lt;a href=&quot;https://icme.stanford.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://icme.stanford.edu/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I'm trying to decide whether to take graduate level theoretical math courses in areas like Algebraic Topology, Differential Geometry, etc. (which I don't currently have any experience with, but I could still take), or just take courses in application areas (the ones I'm interested in are statistics, biology, chemistry, computer science). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My math education in the latter case will consist of basic linear algebra+calculus, a course on PDEs, a course on abstract algebra, a complex analysis course with an applied focus, a couple mathematical modeling courses, basic number theory, basic probability theory, a couple numerical analysis courses, and upper-level real analysis. So not a ton, but not negligible either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a lot of math in the non-math courses I will take (algorithms, theory of computing, quantum mechanics, optimization, stochastic processes, machine learning, etc., some of which are grad-level) However, this schedule is perhaps lighter on mathematical theory, and contains zero grad math classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I drop some of the courses in application areas (although courses with significant mathematical content that yet focus on applications are perhaps my favorite type of courses) and take graduate-level theory courses to increase my readiness for and chances of getting accepted to graduate school? Or will I have ample time for that in graduate school and should I take courses I enjoy more (and have greater aptitude for) while informally studying theory on my own? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do I need to take more theory even as an undergrad, and even though I'm not gunning for pure maths? (I do not plan to go into academia after graduate school, in case that matters.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastEditorDisplayName="user70612" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T13:30:54.713" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T13:30:54.713" Title="Taking higher level theoretical mathematics vs taking less math and more courses in application areas?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T06:47:14.407" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor definitely has some shared responsibility for maintaining a harmonious atmosphere in the classroom. Given that the university has a code of conduct in place (as per the edit) it gives the professor some leeway to address the situation. But it might be difficult to do so without some initial prompting from the concerned students (because as a professor I can't claim to know what is likely to be offensive to students). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer question 1, yes, if the issue is brought up or if it's otherwise clear that the T-shirt is disrupting class. As for question 2, it follows that if no one brings up the issue, the professor might not do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a TA, then there must be a professor. In that case, you should bring it up with them. Maybe they can &quot;drop by&quot; by accident when the student comes, and then they can deal with it without needing to imply that you're the one who brought up the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T06:47:14.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T07:01:28.253" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel like the clothes that a student is wearing is fostering a less than nurturing atmosphere in your classroom, it is definitely in your best interest to end this. When you're in a STEM field, it's concerning to see a misogynistic message on a shirt and I think you should find a way to end it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the content of the shirt, I would debate whether or not I brought it up in front of the rest of the class. If it had some relation to the course and performance, I would have a hard time not bringing it up front-and-center to the class in order to stop any type of stereotype threat that may pervade the course.   My debate on whether to confront during class would be based on thinking about the mentality of the students that are being oppressed in this case and what they may think, whether it be &quot;that student is not wearing that anymore&quot; or &quot;I cannot believe the instructor did not say anything about that shirt,&quot; the latter of which was your response in undergrad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stray away from anything that was accusatory or telling the student what to do, but would focus on asking leading questions that explained why it was not appropriate. This approach depends on the personality of instructor and your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more neutral thing to bring up to the student would be something about professionalism in the classroom. A discussion on college being about preparing one for a profession and/or higher scholasticism, and then ask the student if the classroom is really an appropriate venue for his wardrobe choice. Really, how to approach the student would depend on your comfort level, the context of the whole situation, and the explicit description of the Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy at your university. A higher-up may be able to help with regards to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an answer to your question per se, but I think this raises a good mindset in order to answer this question for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T07:01:28.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T07:13:50.923" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an instructor -- or a TA, or whoever is leading a formalized academic session -- you have not only the right but some responsibility to enforce at least minimal standards of acceptable behavior.  Some behavior is borderline and you do want to look to the other people in the room to see whether it is bothering them.  Some behavior really isn't, e.g. discriminatory harassment as mentioned above.  In particular if a student wears a tee shirt bearing what is clear to you is a slur related to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Race, ethnicity, skin color (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; include the n-word) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sexuality (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_sexual_slurs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;general examples&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homophobia (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Homophobic_slurs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; include the f-word) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misogyny (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Misogynistic_slurs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; include the c-word)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Religion (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_slurs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Any&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; other group or person &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then as an instructor you should get them to leave right away.  You say that you don't feel &quot;safe&quot; confronting a male student about this.  This concerns me a little bit, as you are an authority figure even as a TA and especially as an instructor.  If you are not willing to enforce your authority directly then I think you need to have alternate arrangements in mind that will do so: e.g. you could try to call campus security and not continue the class until they arrive.  But I think one should realize that one absolutely has the right, and sometimes the obligation, to ask a student to leave the classroom under certain circumstances.  If I were in this situation and the student were a 250 pound athlete, I would still ask him to leave unless I had some specific intuition that he would react physically or violently to that request.  I don't have to feel like I can physically overpower someone in order to exert authority over them.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="32794" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T18:47:58.963" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T18:47:58.963" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17741" CreationDate="2014-03-05T08:10:51.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This journal is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; of predatory journals, which is a strong indicator that you should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; publish your work in this journal.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17379/what-are-fake-shady-and-or-predatory-journals&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; and its answers explain what a &quot;predatory&quot; journal is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also be interested in the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, which describe how to evaluate the quality of a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T08:10:51.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17750" CreationDate="2014-03-05T08:25:38.573" Score="34" ViewCount="80394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to submit a paper and the format requires a running title in addition to the actual title. What is it for, and is it supposed to be longer or shorter than the actual title? Should I abbreviate the title, or take the opportunity to convey another message that could not be included in the main title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastActivityDate="2020-01-20T06:03:09.733" Title="What is a &quot;running title&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17749" CreationDate="2014-03-05T08:29:38.300" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/running+title?show=0&amp;amp;t=1394008058&quot;&gt;Running title&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;the title or abbreviated title of a volume printed at the top of left-hand text pages or sometimes of all text pages&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows readers to determine which paper they're looking at just by glancing at the top of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your actual title is already very short, use your actual title. If your actual title is not very short, use an abbreviated version of it as the running title. (The maximum length is often set by the publisher; for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/05/mysteries-of-the-running-head-explained.html&quot;&gt;APA style&lt;/a&gt; sets the maximum length of the running head to 50 characters, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apsstylemanual.org/oldmanual/parts/runninghead.htm&quot;&gt;APS style&lt;/a&gt; allows 55 characters, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T08:40:53.937" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T08:40:53.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17743" CreationDate="2014-03-05T08:49:50.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take the applied maths courses (the second option). If that is what you enjoy and would like to pursue in grad school then it will benefit you more than theoretical courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take more theoretical courses to mean a lot of epsilons and deltas and theorems etc. If you are more interested in statistics, biology, chemistry and computer science then these courses will not be as useful as more applied mathematics courses. In applied mathematics you're more interested in constructing interesting algorithms or models that work without worrying about the theoretical details too much. That's not to suggest that applied mathematics is any easier, it's just that the focus is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any specific ideas what area you'd like to work/study in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T08:49:50.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2014-03-05T09:10:09.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Double-blind reviews are usually more common in conferences. For example, I don't know of any journals using double-blind review in my field (machine learning). I'm going to assume revealing your identity is not an issue (if it is, circumstances differ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever relevant I provide an implementation along with a paper. This also helps reviewers, in case they want to fiddle with an algorithm under slightly different circumstances than those reported in the paper (which is a good thing!). When an implementation is provided, the option is there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros are increased visibility, reproducibility and (in my opinion) credibility since you allow everyone to try for themselves instead of taking your word for it in the paper. On rare occasions, your software may become quite popular during the review period, which may positively impact the paper under review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential con is that someone may discover a critical bug in your implementation. From the perspective of software engineering this is always helpful since you can then improve the software. For the associated paper this may be a good, bad or irrelevant thing, depending on the type of bug:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One that does not influence the results reported in your paper: no big deal. Simply fix and move on. Best case this improves the user experience of your software, worst case you lost a bit of time fixing something unimportant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One that &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; influence the results: big deal. This will &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; delay a potential publication. Ofcourse it is better to find such errors and fix them instead of publishing erroneous conclusions, but this may have an impact on credibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T16:50:51.137" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:50:51.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17693" CreationDate="2014-03-05T09:56:52.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This classification would normally be used by librarians to catalog the books/journals/proceedings accordingly. There is more than ACM and AMS - there are at least other 10-15 frequently used systems, each meeting needs of a specific customer - be it a library or consortia of academic institutions. Almost any publisher, beyond ACM, would use one or several classification schemes.&#xA;In theory, the classification of proceedings should depend on terms you provide for the article, in practice, it is not necessarily the case, as you say. There are a lot of things to be improved in classification, also using semi-automated approaches for finding right keywords for papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T09:56:52.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19859" CreationDate="2014-03-05T10:48:52.743" Score="5" ViewCount="2022" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to a Ph.D. program (in the field of robotics) and I have a hard time to fill the personal interests. I initially was going to avoid that section but then I got convinced that it's not a bad idea to have it. But I digress...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my hobbies is reading* about science, mostly in mathematics, [astro]physics and science in general. The problem is, I don't know how to write this in a clear, honest and concise fashion. I don't want to simply write &lt;em&gt;&quot;reading&quot;&lt;/em&gt; because I don't want to be that generic applicant! Also I want it to be clear that this reading is not related to my professional field. And last but not least, I don't want it to sound fake!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*also watching or listening. Sometimes I also code for fun, generally speaking I &lt;em&gt;fool around&lt;/em&gt; the science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12666" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T04:15:27.260" Title="How to properly add &quot;scientific reading&quot; as personal interest in CV?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17693" CreationDate="2014-03-05T12:17:20.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's for classification purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From practical side, I've heard that they use it for matching referees or seeing for what you can be a referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never met any scientist searching according to such classification. (Except for scientometrics or similar purposes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T12:17:20.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17728" CreationDate="2014-03-05T13:42:27.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Council for Higher Education Association has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chea.org/search/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Database of Institutions and Programs Accredited by Recognized United States Accrediting Organizations&lt;/a&gt; listing schools accredited by US accrediting agencies, but this also includes schools in other countries that are also accredited by these US organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T13:42:27.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T13:49:08.833" Score="2" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply for PhD studies in Computer Science in a university in Europe, but I have seen that among the requirements is &lt;strong&gt;a brief research plan&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose that the field in which they are offering the PhD is in topic X focused in Y. For what I know the research plan is the outcome of an agreement between the potential supervisor and the applying PhD student; so what to put there if I only know X and Y, but still have not contacted any of the supervisors (the application does not say explicitly to do so)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comment: I know about topic X and a little bit about the specialized topic Y, but I am afraid that if I propose to do some research in Y, maybe, it would appear as a numb or dry topic to them and I end up losing this opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T06:03:40.100" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T06:03:40.100" Title="Suggestion about research plan" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17768" CreationDate="2014-03-05T13:51:43.093" Score="21" ViewCount="5799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach undergraduate level courses in the humanities. Following practice in my department, I have let students take their texts for consultation during their written exams. They can choose a number of questions they want to answer from a set of questions. After a few semesters, I have begun questioning the validity of such an approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually had one exam in this form and one final essay in the end of the semester. The issue is, although the subject dealt with in the first part of the course is more or less objective, I find students &quot;copying&quot; my classes much more than using the texts to answer the questions. A complicating factor is that most students cannot presumably understand the material, available only in English. To make it clear, most of my students cannot read English (I could mention the material is not available at the library, but that is another matter). And it is a required course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What bothers me is that with this approach I cannot, as suspected, measure the level of understanding of the students. Some of the questions deal with very basic issues and concepts. Even then, the overall level of reading, understanding, and writing, as evidenced by their exams and final essays, is very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought about changing the syllabus next semester, to one exam (without consultation), perhaps another exam and the final written assignment, but I am quite unsure of the results. Perhaps a lot of students will fail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I too concerned, or is this the way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12512" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T08:01:35.343" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T08:01:35.343" Title="Is it good practice to let students consult their text materials during exams?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="24" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T13:59:38.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually exams that allow the students to use their text materials is because of the density of the topics. I mean there is a lot of material to be covered and for that reason not easy to memorize, or in some cases it is futile to make the student to remember some specific topics (like in my field of CS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I see the students prefer to paraphrase your material instead of what is covered in the text book; that could be a direct consequence that they find the questions in the exam too easy to answer, and with the answers directly related to your material. In this situation what I do recommend is to twist the difficulty a little bit higher, so you can force that the student has read the material from the book beforehand; and also that can show that he or she knows the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general it is not bad to let students to use textbooks during the exam, the bad thing is not to adequately tune the difficulty of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: English is almost a universal language and it must be a prerequisite before following some courses. In any case if they are too lazy to learn a new language then try to get translated copies of the required textbooks (or just prepare one for your own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T13:59:38.890" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T14:06:24.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First step in any conflict should be communication. If I were in your shoes I would have likely go up to the person in question and ask them what message they want to convey by wearing that particular attire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I have this belief is that what constitutes offensive is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; subjective, as one might take offense at anything really. Please note that I am not saying or implying that it was the case for OP, but without knowing the level of &quot;offense&quot; in question, it's hard to make a generalized judgement. In that case, it's always a good idea to &lt;em&gt;peacefully&lt;/em&gt; confront the person and tell them that you feel offended. That's my first point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point I would like to make is that the primary responsibility for sorting out your disagreements is on your own shoulders. It is in general frustrating to expect someone else to intervene and fight your battles for you. People of authority (the teacher in this case) might not notice the offense, or not realize how uncomfortable it makes you feel, unless you actually make that clear for everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the specific scenario that is depicted in the OP, I cannot imagine why you would not be allowed to point out that your classmate's attire is offensive and not suitable for public spaces, let alone a classroom. If the person reacts badly, then you have more of a case for disciplinary action against the classmate with the offensive clothing. Then the professor/TA/security and even other classmates would likely to be on your side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person reacts in a favorable way (i.e. apologizing for the offense, and explaining that they did not mean to offend anyone) you have even taught your classmate something about good manners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T14:06:24.520" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17762" CreationDate="2014-03-05T14:37:02.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as anything, the purpose of the research proposal (in the UK at least) is to show potential supervisers that you have the ability to construct and justify academic research, can write clearly and put forward coherent arguments. It is unlikely that you would be held to the specifics of your proposal. Once you have been accepted somewhere, it is generally accepted that the details of your research will (at least) be refined, if not completely changed! Just think of it as a way of demonstrating your abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T14:37:02.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T14:49:34.447" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in mathematics, so my experience will be different from yours. What I have found with tests on which I have allowed students to use their text or notes is that the students have not prepared as well as they should have, and waste a lot of time looking for things in their notes. Ultimately, they end up doing worse, as a class, than they usually would. Now, in math we have a lot less material for a test than in, say, history or political science, so there may be some legitimate reasons for allowing the students to consult other sources during an exam, but I do not recall ever being allowed to do so in the humanities courses I took as an undergraduate (mainly in political science and diplomatic history). I think a significant component of a college level education is learning how to absorb, and synthesize, relatively large amounts of material. So, my students have only their own brains to consult during an exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T14:49:34.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:00:18.873" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take a compromise approach to the problem of bringing materials to an exam. I allow students to bring one or two sheets' worth of notes &lt;strong&gt;that they have prepared themselves&lt;/strong&gt;. No magnifying glasses or other &quot;reading aids&quot; other than standard prescription glasses are allowed, so they can't simply photoreduce a whole bunch of pages and then use it—it's something they have to hand write or copy themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such an approach forces students to prepare the material, but still gives them some flexibility not to have to commit everything to memory (Is that sign positive or negative? Is that denominator regular volume or molar volume?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T15:00:18.873" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:12:25.473" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally don't see the harm.  However, if that interview went well and you were to be offered the job, accepting it would obviously be a crappy thing to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't see any issue in going for an interview, even with no intentions of accepting the role.  Experience in interviews is really important.  And on the plus side, you don't have to go in completely nervous because you've already got a job, so it'd be easy for you to sit back and relax!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12676" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T15:12:25.473" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17720" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:42:10.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends both on the time period you want to consider and on the fields. Let me try to give a partial answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; is indeed a nationwide competitive exam designed to recruit high school and &lt;em&gt;classes préparatoires&lt;/em&gt; teachers. For a long time students began preparing for it after 4 years of university study, as it required a &lt;em&gt;maîtrise&lt;/em&gt;. Nowadays, presenting the &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; requires a master's degree, but for most students the master would in fact coincide with the competitive exam preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of successful candidates will end up being teachers in high school, junior high or (for a few) &lt;em&gt;classes préparatoires&lt;/em&gt;. In first approximation, the answer to your question is therefore &quot;no&quot;: the &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; is not primarily designed to select &quot;TA&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having the &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; is not neutral for &quot;TA&quot; positions. Nowadays, for PhD students, it is much easier to obtain a teaching job if you passed the &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt;, as you will be given priority over students who did not. Additionnally, in some fields (mostly humanities) it is a requirement to have &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; before even beginning a PhD (I am pretty sure there is no official rule to that effect, but an extremely generalized practice). So in a way, yes, having the &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; helps become a TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some decades ago  (since your question is about history), there was a faculty position called &lt;em&gt;maître assistant&lt;/em&gt;, which seems to correspond pretty well to &quot;TA&quot; (the &lt;em&gt;maître assistant&lt;/em&gt; was apparently in charge of making students work in small groups) and was indeed accessible with &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt;. This position no longer exists: it was merged within the &quot;corps des maîtres de conférence&quot;, to enter which you need a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that in law, political science, economics and management &lt;em&gt;agrégation&lt;/em&gt; can play a role very different from what I describe above. As I understand, they are designed to recruit university professors, but I really do not know much about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T15:42:10.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:53:44.883" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt; But why not take advantage of those benefits by not telling them I've already accepted a position? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are asking that question after seeing the answers here, and acknowledging that it is &quot;unfair&quot; (actually it is dishonest), raises serious questions in my mind about your integrity and character.  To be fair, you are possibly a young man who haven't quite made up your mind whether you are also going to be an honest one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that you have something to gain by dishonesty, you're in a great deal of company (see Nick's answer, for example).  You will always find those who applaud your dishonesty as willingness to make &quot;tough decisions&quot;, &quot;take on the grey areas&quot;, &quot;get the job done&quot; and so on, who all the while find ways to manipulate you in dishonest ways for their own perceived gain, and to your perceived loss.  If you wish to be that sort of person, then you may expect to draw persons of like mind into your circle of acquaintances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find that honest people do not respect and trust you; you will furthermore find that dishonest people pretend to respect and trust everyone and actually respect and trust noone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are in a phase of existence where we as a society are deciding whether to base our actions on &quot;survival of the fittest&quot; or &quot;the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.&quot;  To not decide is to decide for the former.  Cast your lot and reap as you sow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12678" LastEditorUserId="12678" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T16:04:46.567" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:04:46.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18345" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:55:44.857" Score="5" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching a course in which the students complete two group activities.  For these activities, I require the students to submit a peer assessment.  I planned to use a procedure I had experienced as an undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assessment requires you distribute 100 points between your team members (not yourself). Each students points are totaled and are multiplied as a percentage with the student's team grade to give an individual grade on the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process makes sense for teams of at least 3 members. How can I generalize this method to 2 person teams? Is this evaluation fair for small teams (2 or 3 people)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12677" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:30:52.690" Title="How to handle peer evaluations in two person team assignments?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:12:19.207" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should professors intervene? Yes. Now, I think there's a level of personal judgement to be made here. Some people might overlook certain shirts. Some might think certain types of shirts are more offensive than they really are (ex: someone who's vegetarian might not like &lt;a href=&quot;http://site.shirtmandude.com/pot-leaf-vegetarian-t-shirt-sq.jpg&quot;&gt;this shirt&lt;/a&gt; and I'd personally wonder if they have a sense of humor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as discussed above, the &quot;you can't go wrong&quot; points are for race/national origin, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, age, and disability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were a teacher (professor or a TA) and I identified something (or it was brought to my attention by a student) that someone is wearing an offensive shirt, then I would probably start by taking the student aside and letting them know that their shirt is offensive to some people, and that it displays remarks that make others uncomfortable, and that the student should not wear that shirt (and others like it) to this class again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do this in private mostly because I don't feel that there's really a lot of benefit to publicly shaming someone who chose such a shirt - maybe they're a new first-year student who hasn't quite learned appropriate behavior yet, or maybe they're going through a phase, or maybe they just didn't think when they put the shirt on because they were drunk one night in Vegas when going T-shirt shopping. Give them a chance to improve. If they never wear the shirt again to class, to me that's a win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it happens again then I would not hesitate to walk up to the student after lecture starts and say quietly, &quot;We discussed that you were not to wear shirts like this in class. Did you understand me last time? Do you think that this shirt is appropriate?&quot; If the student isn't able to change the shirt or cover it up then I'd ask him to leave the class and then at that point would make an announcement about appropriate shirts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are someone who is made uncomfortable by a shirt that someone is wearing then you should tell someone about it. Don't hold it in. Unfortunately lecturers generally only have control of their classroom (for example it's hard for a faculty member to kick someone out of a building, generally) but things like this can be reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:12:19.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17779" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:17:00.463" Score="1" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing an undergrad in Computer Science, and am seriously considering entering in the honors program at my school.  I fulfill all the requirements (certain courses, GPA, etc) and now I just need to find a professor that is willing to work with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An honors project at my school is a two-part process:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First there is a Directed Study where the student and the professor work one-on-one to bring the student up to speed on the subject material that may be required for the thesis project.  This happens over one semester like a regular course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the directed Study, the student sets to work on the actual project/research, and presents their findings whenever they have completed their project (usually two semesters).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read the backgrounds on all the professors in my faculty, and have identified half a dozen who do research which would be similar to my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem now is that I don't know how to &quot;apply&quot;.  I have prepared a one page &quot;pitch&quot; which talks about my background, my project idea, and why I think that professor would be a good fit (based on their research interests), which I was going to email to my half-dozen potential professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this too formal?  Too informal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I go to a Canadian University.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I study Computer Science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am away on an internship, or else I would go talk to the professors in person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12680" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:43:04.800" Title="Finding a Professor for my Honors Project" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17697" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:35:18.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had two bachelors in Music and Art, minors in Marketing and CS. I then held a Computer Science career. When I went into the CS Masters program 7 years after obtaining my last bachelor degree, I had several deficiencies. I was accepted with two understandings. (1) I will complete the deficiency courses that are prerequisites to Masters courses I am to take, and (2) my current career in CS demonstrates I have the aptitude to succeed despite my entering the program with deficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your best option is your #2, to enter the Masters program and complete the deficiencies in your coursework. When you write your letter of intent for application to the Masters program, I would describe these two aspects as they apply to your situation, personality, and drive to complete your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other option for the US market is your #1, to complete the deficiencies from an accredited institution, then transfer the completed coursework with you when you apply. You must be careful with this option, to ensure the University you are to apply for a masters with will accept the coursework from the other institution. Before taking the coursework, it is best to call the University to ensure the courses will transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This other option is best if you are under the following circumstances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Currently working, and can take the deficiencies at night through an online University, or through a local college offering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will save money/time from taking the deficiencies from the alternate institute.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your option #3 will not work, as they require the coursework credit from an accredited institution. Internationally, they usually require a demonstrated bachelors degree in CS. But post-bacc work needs to be completed as previously described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you are best to just enroll in the University Master program and take the deficiencies there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I took the deficiencies for my masters program, I'd take deficiency courses one semester, and then the Masters courses that required the deficiency the next semester. In this way, except for the first semester, I was taking at least one Masters course every semester. Look at the University course catalog to see which courses have the least number of prerequisites that are your deficiencies, and then take those deficiencies first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T16:35:18.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17777" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:11:29.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what it is worth, I successfully 'applied' for a similar program as an undergrad simply by sending emails to the potential mentors. I used a one or two paragraph pitch, then asked if they would be willing to explore the possibilities. This meant that the professors could have agreed to meet me to discuss the project without committing themselves to anything. It also meant that if I had decided that I didn't want to work with a particular professor after meeting them in person, I had left myself an option to gracefully decline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I ended up with a very successful honors project in this way. Good luck with your endeavors!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T18:16:47.463" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:16:47.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17809" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:02:59.430" Score="5" ViewCount="2258" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated 3 years ago from a big state research university.  I had an irrelevant sociology major and graduated with a 2.9 GPA mainly because I had no inclination that I would ever want to go to graduate school and thought it was more important to just make sure that I had a job to support myself and graduated on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After graduation I had a crappy office job for 2 years and took some random IT graduate courses which lead me to eventually get a job as a programmer at a large marketing firm for about a year and I got really interested in the more complex world of computer science especially computer vision, modeling and simulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be beginning a CS Master's program this summer at a medium sized state university with a concentration in Modeling and Sim.  I plan to to the thesis option and I've already begun contacting professors about research opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GRE score is 162/155/4.5 but I didn't study because I found out I had to take it at the last minute.  With some prep I think I can at least bring that up to about 165/160/5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, do you think that with my thesis, a publication or 2 and a stellar GPA my masters work would over-shaddow my crappy undergraduate career enough to get me into a good PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;em&gt;dream&lt;/em&gt; department would be Caltech.  But I'd at least like to go somewhere reputable if I'm going to bother with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diversity note in case this helps my cause: I'm female, 1st generation college student, armed forces veteran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BAD UNDERGRAD: 2.9GPA/unrelated major&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do really well on my CS Masters program, get some research published, and get my GRE score up to like a 165/160/5 do you think a top program would ignore the transgressions of my youth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:40:33.413" Title="My Plan to Get into a CS PhD Program" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:15:05.627" Score="156" ViewCount="28671" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software engineer and I have been working with people with academic backgrounds for several years. Many times, I've noticed that (even otherwise brilliant scientists) produce code of extremely low quality (unless their background was precisely Computer Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since those people are very good in doing their research - and eventually obtain remarkable results - it seems they are clever enough to write &lt;em&gt;decent&lt;/em&gt; code. Is it just that they don't think it's worth the effort? Plain arrogance? Lack of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that in academia the most popular languages are C/C++ and Python (neglecting MATLAB and other vendor-specific languages). The language where I have seen the most amazing pieces of junk is actually C++. The main points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Really, really naive C++ code. They claim they chose C++ over Java/Python/whatever because &quot;it's faster&quot;, but they &lt;code&gt;new&lt;/code&gt; everything, even an array of 3 &lt;code&gt;float&lt;/code&gt;s that is deallocated few lines later, where 3 is known at compile time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have learned pointers from C and they use only them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of them (not most of them) have read some random blog posts about OOP and now put &lt;em&gt;virtual&lt;/em&gt; everywhere, using abnormal levels of abstraction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are convinced of pointless optimization choices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They lack proper memory management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They copy/paste massive amounts of code from project to project and within the same project as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in this list I am omitting the problems with the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, rather than the product. Scientists use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no version control,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no automated builds,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no documentation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no software process at all (neither &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt;, nor traditional &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;waterfall&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The workflow is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I devise the algorithm, I write it as a massive 10k LOC piece of C++ and I click &lt;code&gt;build&lt;/code&gt; somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this assessment could be probably biased by my own experience, I have inspected some open source projects run by researchers (and maybe a few software engineers) and cited in many important papers. Virtually all of them were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crashing on corner cases,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;had ugly GUIs,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the code - in my opinion - was ready for a complete rewrite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12686" LastEditorUserId="54237" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T08:57:41.070" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T05:20:53.617" Title="Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="86" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:37:42.480" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second interview: Of course you can't tell ahead of time if they will make you an offer, or if their offer would be one you would accept, but the question is, if the second interview resulted in a job offer, would you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;consider&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; accepting their offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps for you, the second place is the place you'd rather work. Maybe it's the place you've always dreamed of working. If this is the case, you should go to the second interview, without telling them about the other position you have accepted, and see what comes of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the &quot;second place&quot;, there is nothing wrong with that. In light of their offer to interview you, you are reconsidering your acceptance of the previous job offer. It is not a &quot;wasted effort&quot; on their part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the &quot;first place&quot;: If the second place offers you a position, and you accept  it, you will have to tell the people at the first place that you have reconsidered their offer and have decided to accept another position. I can tell you that this should not shake them up too badly. I'm sure it's happened to them before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are free, and many places often do, continue interviews in spite of making an offer to you that you have accepted. You may not work out for them, or they might find someone &quot;better&quot; that they would rather have working for them. Unless there is some sort of &quot;contractual obligation&quot; that you have not described, if you were to go and work for them, they could replace you, and you could move on to another position, at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you really want to work at the first position, or if you feel you have some &quot;social obligation&quot; to proceed with the position at the &quot;first place&quot; due to your relationship with your &quot;contacts&quot; there, and wouldn't consider any offer the second place might make, you should tell the second place you have accepted another offer before the second interview so they could decide if they want to proceed. And they might... If for some reason, they really want you, they might feel they could woo you away from the other position with a great offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11762" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:37:42.480" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17785" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:37:53.983" Score="9" ViewCount="2050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to download this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;O. Faure. Numerical pathwise approximation of stochastic differential equations.&#xA;  Applied stochastic models and data analysis, 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but when I use Google Scholar, the paper cannot be accessed. I cannot even access the paper from within my campus firewall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the following image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CKKNf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Google Scholar search results&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is the title of this paper black, not a blue link, in the list of Google Scholar results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11945" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T10:34:02.830" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T06:36:26.753" Title="Why do papers sometimes appear unlinked in Google Scholar?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17777" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:43:04.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An additional data point: Consider approaching the profs whose classes have intrigued you the most, and talk to them about what projects &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; have on their books, with no man power to do them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes* they'll have fantastic projects even better than what you come up with, because they have expertise in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) not always though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:43:04.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17783" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:43:12.313" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper appears black because Google Scholar has not found the full-text of the paper during its crawls. Rather it has extracted the document as a citation from other documents it has seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence Google Scholar knows that the document exists (it has been cited) but does not know where to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:43:12.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:54:49.643" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given how far away from your original undergraduate degree you've moved (several years' work experience, change in degree program, and so on), it makes it very hard for a PhD program to give your undergraduate transcript &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much weight in the admissions process. You will also be able to stress how far you've come as part of your application, either in the statement of purpose or in a &quot;other notes&quot; section—and you should take avail yourself of the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being female and a veteran, that will matter much more to schools than being a first-generation college student. (Being a female applicant in CS certainly can't hurt your chances if you're a qualified candidate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:54:49.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:01:45.630" Score="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll have a go at this. This is mainly my personal view based on my use and implementation of academic software. Like many of the comments already mentioned, I don't think bad software is specific to or even more frequent in  academia. That said, I think there are a few reasons why it occurs that are specific to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Software is not a priority&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academics, the key performance indicators are all about paper publications. Software, while highly useful in my opinion, has very little value. More often than not, software implementations are side tracks or proof-of-concepts at best used to bump up the citation count (ofcourse exceptions exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a software engineer, I am sure you are aware of the knowledge, time and effort required to produce quality software. Given the &lt;em&gt;publish or perish&lt;/em&gt; mantra in academia, this time investment is often spent writing a new publication. It's a risk-reward consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal point of view is that quality software is very important. For example, often, the first step in comparing a new algorithm with previous state-of-the-art is reimplementing the state-of-the-art due to a lack of implementation. Obviously this introduces a time delay and can cause a series of bugs. That said, I think in general little will change until software gets valued by performance indicators somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Researchers are not programmers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most researchers have little or no programming experience, though YMMV depending on the field. I think it's fair to say the majority of researchers learned to program by themselves when confronted with problems where they need it. Superficially learning a language is typically not the problem, but you need more than superficial knowledge to produce quality software (choosing data structures, design patterns, deep knowledge of the language, ...). This is a hurdle for self-taught programmers without a computer science background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem that less experienced programmers face is not realizing when refactoring is necessary. You can find countless pieces of poorly structured software. In research, this is a natural consequence of iteratively implementing while designing an algorithm which evolves into a monstrous piece of software full of hacks. That monster might still do what it was meant to, though, if you know exactly how to ask it nicely. For many researchers that's where the story ends: get the results and put the beast away forever. It often takes a serious time investment to wash the monster prior to talking it out for a walk in public. This is not always worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trends in machine learning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is machine learning, in which software is being valued increasingly. Examples of this trend include a growing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mloss.org/software/&quot;&gt;software repository&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.org/papers/volume8/sonnenburg07a/sonnenburg07a.pdf&quot;&gt;position paper by some big names in the field&lt;/a&gt;. I am very happy with this evolution, because quality software allows the field as a whole to progress faster and increases reproducibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A current patch to the problem is being able to publish papers about peer-reviewed software implementations. I know this is possible in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmlr.org/mloss/&quot;&gt;machine learning&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt;. Such software is usually of higher quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T19:10:24.603" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T19:10:24.603" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:42:18.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a professor intervene if a student in their class is wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor should hold a discussion with a student when that student is in violation of the school's code of conduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the clothing isn't in violation of the school's code of conduct, a professor will have to decide whether asking the student to desist is worthwhile or not.  In some specific situations, asking a student to stop doing something may actually bring about a situation where they start intentionally coming close to, but not quite, violating the university code.  In that case they may be offensive more frequently than they are currently, randomly picking out what to wear each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any scenarios in which a professor should not do anything even though a student's clothes contains material that is hostile towards another student or group of students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't against the school's code of conduct, the professor has little room to insist that certain clothing not be worn, but they can request a student stop wearing such clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As above, though, it may actually exacerbate the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I come across this scenario as a TA, in which a student (who may be a peer in my program of study) in my class is wearing something offensive, what can I do about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will assume, for the moment, that the clothing in question is not against the school's code of conduct, but it offensive to everyone, in every time, every situation, culture, place, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I'd evaluate how often it occurs.  Is this student consistently bringing offensive messages to class, or is this a once or twice a semester problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I'd evaluate how much it affects the class.  Is the message visible to every student in class throughout the period, printed on the upper back with the student sitting in the front row, or is it hard to see except when the are standing up with arms at their sides, and then only by the instructor?  In either case, does it prevent other students from paying attention, learning, asking appropriate questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, I'd ask others how they felt about the issue.  Does it actually bother them, and did it bother them before you brought it up? I'd make sure this isn't merely a slight against me only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I'd decide, based on this information, if intervention is necessary. If it poses a significant, frequent problem, then I'd probably bring it up.  If it poses a significant infrequent problem for a few students, I'd probably bring it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple, &quot;Please don't wear that shirt to this class again,&quot; privately and quietly as they walk out of the class might be sufficient for most cases. Some professors excel at public shaming in a simple effective way.  A humorous comment during the lesson referencing the student's poor taste in clothing might dissuade them from wearing similarly offensive clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't feel comfortable (or safe, for that matter) as a woman confronting a male student about an item of clothing that is offensive to women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a real problem.  If they are communicating something, and you, who are in charge of the classroom, choose not to communicate, then who is going to handle the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must, get a third person to back you up.  Preferably someone with authority, and make sure the student understands not just that it's inappropriate, but how it makes you feel.  If it's not just offensive, but threatening, to you then you have all the more reason to make your work environment safe.  Tell your instructor that you can't teach a class where students are threatening you, and that you find certain articles of clothing threatening.  Make your case according to the student code of conduct and it'll be that much stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you really shouldn't take a passive role in your teaching.  You are learning skills now that will benefit you as an educator later, if that's the career you choose, and you need to learn how to do hard things.  This might be one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I feel like it is my responsibility to keep a non-hostile environment in my classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not just for the students, but also for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11901" LastEditorUserId="11901" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T15:45:33.350" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T15:45:33.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:49:55.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come from an engineering background, and we were allowed to bring our books and notes. This was in the 80s and 90s so there was no Internet to access. I found that if I didn't know the material that the books and note were no help, and that searching the materials just wasted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the test asked the exact same question as was in an example covered, the materials were not useful as a resource during the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should take only one experience like that to persuade a student to learn the material rather rely on the books and notes as a crutch. Consider it a bonus life lesson for the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12692" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T19:49:55.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17804" CreationDate="2014-03-05T20:50:14.057" Score="6" ViewCount="10799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am starting a MS in CS program this summer. My department is small and my particular concentration is both narrow and new. Currently only 3 professors at the school are listed as having research interests in my area of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have contacted 2 of them. One is tenured and one is an assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the tenured professor has &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of published work in the field already and would probably be the better recommender come PhD application time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not eligible for assistantships yet until I finish some prerequisites I lacked from my undergrad. But I want to get in and prove what a good little research assistant I can be as soon as I can so I can beat out the other assistantship applicants when the time comes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; If they don't respond to my emails, how long should I wait to follow up with them as not to be annoying? Should I just wait until classes start and go talk to them then? I'll be taking a class from the assistant professor this summer in a subject outside my research interest. What's the best approach to get people collaborate with me?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry this sounds like lots of questions in one, but I only have a year and a half to become the best PhD applicant ever and I want to make sure I do it right!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12685" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T03:13:56.317" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T03:13:56.317" Title="Contacting professors about research: if they don't respond to my emails, how long should I wait to follow up?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17743" CreationDate="2014-03-05T21:03:00.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really quite a subjective question. However, even if you are planning to work in applied areas, it probably makes sense to get a good grounding in basic theory first. For example, you say you are interested in statistics. If so, you should definitely take at least one advanced probability course which uses measure theory, and also a measure theory course. These should definitely help later on, even if you don't wind up using advanced probability theory. Some material at the level of the Billingsley book &quot;Probability and Measure&quot; is kind of what I am thinking of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More strictly pure courses like Algebraic Topology, Differential Geometry are a bit more debatable. They &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be useful in applied areas, depending on what you are doing, but will probably not be. They might be worth it from a mental broadening perspective, but that is really subjective. I've worked in applied areas some, and have never needed to reference theory of this kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think if a course is well taught (which may not be the case, of course) and forces one to work on the material, then it is better than self study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I have a PhD in Statistics, which may cause some biases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T21:30:12.243" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T21:30:12.243" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17793" CreationDate="2014-03-05T22:20:43.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whats the best approach to get people to let me help them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Impress them. Demonstrate that you genuinely can help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you face is that professors are busy. Though professors need students, any decent professor that &quot;takes on&quot; students (be it in an advisory, mentorship or official supervisory role) knows that it's a commitment. In as much as working with a good student can be rewarding and productive, working with a bad student can be a huge time-sink and personally draining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good professors often get lots of offers of &quot;help&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to demonstrate that you'll be one of the good ones. You need to surprise them, show your motivation, your interest, your enthusiasm, your skills, your ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read a difficult paper authored by the professor in the area. Approach them to tell them you found the paper interesting and to talk about the finer details of it. Try to challenge them about weaknesses of the paper (&amp;lt;- depending on their character). This demonstrates your ability to read papers independently, as well as your knowledge of the area, your ability to think critically and your enthusiasm for the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try putting together a list of elevator-style ideas for research topics in the area. Tell the professor that you are interested in doing research, why you want to do research, and try pitching some ideas to them. Try flesh out an idea or two with them: ask them questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any sort of work relationship, if you meet with them face-to-face, it's also important that you come across as someone &lt;em&gt;easy-going&lt;/em&gt; who would be pleasant to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: If they don't respond to my emails within some time frame when is it no longer annoying to follow up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach them in person. Emails from strange students don't last long in the harsh environs of the INBOXes of senior professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T22:20:43.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T22:53:55.297" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask that the teachers try to also be understandable for those of us with testing anxiety.  I was always very thankful to have notes or the text with me during tests because it allowed me to relax some and actually be able to focus when answering questions without fear of forgetting some small detail.  I also found that I prepared more when allowed to bring notes because I took time creating them which made my foundation of that knowledge stronger. When I didn't have notes, all bets were off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12700" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T22:53:55.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-05T22:54:47.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question is what you're attempting to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the proposed notes are material which the students are going to need &quot;off the cuff&quot; -- data and operations which are absolutely basic to the discipline they're learning -- then it makes sense to test whether they have memorized it, since consulting reference materials every time will slow them down too drastically for them to work productively at the next level up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're material which a practitioner will generally not have memorized and will look up anyway, then it isn't unreasonable to make references available to the students... while pointing out that being able to work without the hardcopy references will let them solve the problems faster and with more confidence and thus may improve their grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these cases presume two very different sets of exam questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T22:54:47.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17803" CreationDate="2014-03-06T00:00:23.057" Score="5" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received an offer for admission next year. I would very much like to accept the offer, but I'm not sure the 50% TA position will be enough to cover the costs of commuting and an apartment near the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the interviews last weekend, one of my likely advisors stressed the point that when an offer was made (they didn't come out and tell me then, but were very clear that my chances were good) it would be negotiable, but he didn't elaborate and I didn't feel comfortable asking what he meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I broach the subject of receiving more funding without coming across as ungrateful, and is there any way to know what kinds of additional aid the university might have available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T00:45:49.723" Title="How do I negotiate an offer for Ph.D. funding?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-03-06T09:40:21.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17594" CreationDate="2014-03-06T00:09:32.853" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a clever idea, never thought of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are famous for the wrong reason.  Of course, what's being worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.  Unlike Hollywood, publicity does not equal fame, nor does it generate grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12702" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T00:09:32.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17801" CreationDate="2014-03-06T00:45:49.723" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you are polite and don't come with a list of unreasonable demands, you don't have to worry about seeming ungrateful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I broach the subject of receiving more funding without coming across as ungrateful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;When we spoke last weekend, I got the impression that the level of funding could be negotiable. Is that still the case? I appreciate the 50% TA position very much, but I'm concerned that it won't cover my living costs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any way to know what kinds of additional aid the university might have available&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are there any other kinds of aid (besides the TA position) that I could be considered for?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T00:45:49.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17793" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:05:33.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with badroit's answer. I would also like to add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what was in your original email, so this may not apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your email requires some thought or effort on the part of the professor to respond to, then it will sit in his inbox until he has a chance to sit down and compose a proper response. Since you are an unknown student and he is very busy, this is low on his list of priorities and he may never get to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you politely follow up a week or two later with an email in which you ask to &lt;em&gt;meet&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor Y,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am going to be a student in your department next semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been reading about your paper on Y and I am very interested in talking to you about it; do you think we could schedule a time to meet next week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This email is easy and quick to respond to (&quot;Yes, how about Tuesday at 10?&quot;), so you may be more likely to get a response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know this doesn't make sense, since the professor would still have to expend time and effort to meet with you. But spending a half hour on a meeting on some future date seems much less of a burden than spending ten minutes &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; to send an email to an unknown student.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:05:33.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17793" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:07:11.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did several internships when I was an undergrad. Here is my advice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Meet the professors in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Look out side of your department, the best internship I did was for NASA. CS degree is highly sought after in other colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Talk to and buddy up with other students that are in an intern position. They will make good references and will tell you when there is a spot open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Be prepared to take the first one or two for no pay. My first two were for credit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Talk to all the Professors, Some of them will take you on more to do some quick task they don't want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Don't be afraid of a few no's. It's not personal, it just they may not have the time to train you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My internships are what set me apart for my first job, and they really will help out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12705" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:07:11.507" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:17:31.923" Score="2" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am organizing a conference at a major University. Much of the funding for the conference has come from the an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation award received by a particular scholar. He controls the funds tied to the award and has chosen to give some funding to support the conference. Should this be acknowledged on the advertising material associated with the conference? What wording should I use, if so? It looks strange to me to include the name of the academic, viz. &quot;This conference has been made possible by Prof. X&quot;, but if I simply say &quot;This conference has been made possible by the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation&quot;, this gives the impression that they directly funded the conference, which is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12706" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:30:22.757" Title="Acknowledging funds from an award tied to a specific individual" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17806" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:30:22.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this kind of acknowledgement. It was phrased something like &quot;We are grateful to Prof. X for supporting the conference through his Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funding.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:30:22.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:38:43.537" Score="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit disappointed at the number of comments from people who say they need to know what the exact statement on this particular T-shirt was so that they can judge whether it was truly misogynistic before answering the question. The question is clear: What is the appropriate response &lt;em&gt;given that&lt;/em&gt; a student is ``wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students''? Debating exactly what constitutes misogyny (or any other form of hate speech) is not the point here. Surely a question about whether a particular slogan is offensive would be too localised for academia.se, whereas the question of how the role of professor and/or TA affects how/whether one calls out offensive speech/behaviour/etc is excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of the other answers express surprise/concern at the OP's comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't feel comfortable (or safe, for that matter) as a woman&#xA;  confronting a male student about an item of clothing that is offensive&#xA;  to women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the comments on this page illustrate why it can be so hard to call out misogyny as a woman. Women who call out misogyny are regularly accused of being &quot;too sensitive&quot; and told to &quot;lighten up&quot;. On this page we've seen people who think they'd be a better judge of whether something is offensive than the person who &lt;em&gt;actually experienced&lt;/em&gt; it, suggesting it may have been all in her head, refusing to trust her judgement, and claiming that no young people are misogynists. All this just from outlining a story that inspired a general question about calling out offensive behaviour. Is it any wonder that women may find it difficult to confront the person who's actually wearing the offensive T-shirt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to actually answer the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most universities should have something like a code of conduct which forbids discriminatory harassment. The one quoted in the question certainly seems to apply to a T-shirt with an offensive slogan. In this case the professor (or any student in the class) would be within their rights to object to the T-shirt. I might say something like &quot;that T-shirt seems to be in violation of the code of conduct; please don't wear it to this class again&quot;, ideally in much the same tone as I would say &quot;If I don't have your homework by tomorrow you will get a zero&quot;, but I'd say it loudly enough that anyone paying attention could hear. As with any instance of calling out something offensive, I would only do this if I felt safe enough: you should try to create a safe environment in your classroom, but not at the expense of your own safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel safe or comfortable enough to call out your student (and I can see this happening especially if that student is also your peer), there might be other people you can talk to, for example the professor of the class you're TAing, or the head of the graduate program in your department, or the student's advisor. This might also be helpful if the student does not respond well when you first address them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1291" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:38:43.537" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:40:33.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that you will be a shoo-in somewhere if you can do good work at the Master's level, while building relationships with the faculty. The fact that your undergrad degree was in sociology almost makes your low GPA irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely aim for Caltech if that's what you want, and there is faculty you want to work with. But don't get too hung up on big name schools. There are lots of other schools which maybe aren't as highly ranked but could be a good fit for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0097X0FOM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;, which helped in writing my statement of purpose. The author is another person who graduated below 3.0. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a personal anecdote to give you encouragement: I was a mediocre undergrad at a big public university, then went to work for a number of years before deciding to enroll in a part-time Master's program at a smaller state school. I had a great experience working with my final project advisor, who encouraged me to apply to a PhD program. I am still working on publishing the results, but in the meantime I have been accepted to a PhD program for the coming year. I never imagined it would happen, but it did. If I can do it, so can you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12707" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T01:40:33.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:42:25.090" Score="10" ViewCount="2143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that my university has been considering &quot;internal&quot; candidates more strongly for permanent faculty positions. These are candidates who have received their masters degree and/or a PhD at the same university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when candidates are interviewed, the top contenders are invited for an &quot;on-campus&quot; interview/presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any ethics involved with one internal candidate attending the other internal candidate's &quot;faculty interview presentation&quot;? Wouldn't there be bias established in that manner for or against both candidates since one candidate would receive &quot;pointers&quot; (in)advertently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be a different situation if the competition for the internal candidate was to be an external candidate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:58:15.860" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T22:58:15.860" Title="Is it ethically problematic for an internal candidate to attend the job talk of a candidate for the same job?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17812" CreationDate="2014-03-06T02:00:37.387" Score="8" ViewCount="853" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2011, I passed the Master's degree in mathematics with more than 80 percentile. I had a dream of becoming a research scholar in one of country's reputable mathematical institutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, here in India, PhD candidates have to pass a test called National Eligibility Test before facing the interview board of such institutes. To prepare for the test, I disconnected myself from the outer world. Unfortunately, I failed the first three times but managed to pass the test in my fourth attempt, and subsequently joined the institute of my dream for PhD in 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I didn't do anything other than preparing for the test, I have a hard time filling the 2-year gap in my CV. Whenever I look at it, that 2-year void pains me as most of my fellow scholars can show an uninterrupted career path on their CVs. I do understand myself that my mathematical knowledge grew in that two years, still I can't find a single demonstrable item to support my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people either clear the national test in the first or second try, and most of the rest would choose to leave the field forever, or get involved in guest lectureship in some institutes while preparing for the test. For me, however, I found it hard to make the time for anything else on top of studying, and hence I did nothing else. Now, I really wish to have such examples in my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;have you lost many years in order to prepare for tests or exams? If so, can you suggest some examples on how to explain that lost time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10417" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T02:25:56.753" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T03:04:39.863" Title="How to handle multiple years lost to test preparation on CV?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17811" CreationDate="2014-03-06T03:04:39.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @socialsciencedoc's comment, although I think that what s/he describes is a more common phenomenon in the social sciences than in STEM fields.  In the former, it's rare to be a 20-something PhD, and in the latter it most certainly isn't: not getting your PhD in math until you're 30 makes you (slightly, and certainly inessentially) older than average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I am not really scrutinizing gaps in candidates CVs until &lt;em&gt;after their PhD&lt;/em&gt; (at which point I am!).  Having a gap between undergrad and grad is still very common in STEM fields: e.g. many people do a couple years of high school teaching before the siren song of academia lures them back.  One of my current PhD students did some high school teaching (among other things...) and will be over 30 when he gets his PhD.  In his case, he acquired some skills in his &quot;gap years&quot; that are proving useful to him as a student and future mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending multiple years &lt;em&gt;only studying for an exam&lt;/em&gt; is not something that most Western academics would be so familiar with, I'm afraid.  I'm not sure how to spin that positively.  So I would just not explain the gap at all.  Put your energy into what you can now control: getting a PhD in a timely manner (in math, four or five years is ideal; six is still totally fine; after that it begins to look like you lack sufficient locomotion) and, of course, proving some great theorems in your thesis work.  My eye would probably slide right over this gap in your CV...and I think that is exactly the way you want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: I missed this sentence reading your question the first time: &quot; I do understand myself that my mathematical knowledge grew in that two years, still I can't find a single demonstrable item to support my case.&quot;  That's great; truly.  So your time was actually well spent, and I'm very glad to hear that.  You don't have to further justify that that time was well spent: it got you into the great university that you now attend.  So I think you have little to worry about, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T03:04:39.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17814" CreationDate="2014-03-06T04:49:58.870" Score="14" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently reviewed a paper for a (reasonably reputable) journal and found that it was already published (verbatim, by the same authors) in another journal (a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17379/what-are-fake-shady-and-or-predatory-journals&quot;&gt;fake&lt;/a&gt; one).&#xA;I wrote the following review: &quot;&lt;em&gt;This is a duplicate publication, it appeared two weeks ago in Journal X, here is the link to the copy on Journal X's website&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing suggests that they submitted the paper to Journal X around the same time they sent it to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospect I should have emailed the editor instead of going through the review site. But anyways, within a day or two the review site showed that the associate editor had seen my review, and the editor listed for the piece changed from the associate editor who was originally assigned to the editor-in-chief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the decision letter that went out to the authors was just a standard rejection letter, with my review appended to the bottom. (The standard rejection letter thanks the author for submitting the piece for consideration and wishes them success in finding another venue to publish it in...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that this is a poor strategy for disincentivizing attempts at duplicate publication; at worst, one risks a rejection if found out.&#xA; (Disregarding for the moment what the consequences would be if they were successful, both papers were published, and then they were found out by someone else.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the publisher's website and though it specifies clearly (and authors have to certify at the time of submission that the piece is not published or under review somewhere else) that duplicate publications are not permitted, I didn't find any specific details on what the consequences might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this normal procedure? Do editors usually follow up and try to impose consequences for attempted duplicate publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kind of consequences are usually imposed for &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to publish the same paper twice, if caught by a journal while in review?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T11:25:10.327" Title="Are there usually consequences for attempted duplicate publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2014-03-06T05:45:06.947" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. First of all, as far as I know, there is no penal system in academic publishing. Reputation is everything. (BTW Many of us have made big or small mistakes when we were young and ignorant, learned our lesson, everyone moved on.) Of course, a journal could always shun authors &quot;indefinitely&quot;, if they attempt to violate codes of conduct. There is not much more a single publisher can do. In cases like yours, the responsibility falls back entirely on the academic community - whose members are also editors and referees like you - and the control power of one's reputation within it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, as you said, the editor presumably consulted with the editor-in-chief, which shows it is not a trivial problem to handle, and they decided to proceed as they did. If the journal had rules in place, such as that they would have to refuse future submissions from the same authors, they would inform the authors, but that's obviously not the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not specify if those authors are known in your field or obscure. If the editor knows the author personally (which I doubt in your case), the dynamics is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12712" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T05:45:06.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17816" CreationDate="2014-03-06T05:54:09.573" Score="56" ViewCount="16817" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the proper course of action if while teaching an undergraduate or even secondary school course an assignment violates the religious beliefs of a student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more concrete example of where this might happen, let us consider an art class with a Muslim student (&lt;em&gt;Disclamer: I am not an adherent to, or scholar of, Islam; please forgive me for any misunderstandings this post might contain&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within Islam it is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haram&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;haram&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (forbidden by God) [1] to &lt;a href=&quot;http://islamqa.info/en/39806&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;produce images of non-plant living creatures (including humans)&lt;/a&gt;, this is called &lt;em&gt;tasweer&lt;/em&gt;.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if I were to assign a portrait of a person to the class as an assignment, what would be the most ethical option, should a student raise a concern to me about this? Would it be appropriate to assign an alternate assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: Similar to a christian sin, but with a stronger connotation from what I can tell; literally: taboo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2]: I believe this is from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hadith&lt;/a&gt;, but one that is deemed to be the most accurate/reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10283" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T12:23:35.953" Title="What to do if assignment is against student's religion?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;religious-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="21" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-06T06:09:22.677" Score="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can make an accommodation that allows the student to participate &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;without violating his religious observance, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;without compromising the educational goals of the class, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;without requiring an extreme amount of effort on your part, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then it is reasonable to make the accommodation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regularly miss classes and exams due to religious observance. My school has a very clear policy on the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If students have to miss a class session, exam, or are otherwise unable to participate in a course requirement due to religious observance, they must notify the professor and a certain dean in a timely manner (the definition of &quot;a timely manner&quot; is further specified in the policy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If said student follows the above requirement, they cannot be penalized for their religious observance and the professor must offer a fair alternative (e.g., makeup exam or assignment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university has no policy on the matter, feel free to adopt mine, and specify it in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would not take a class where I know the main requirement of a class would violate my religious observance. Indeed, I know people who have refrained from pursuing a &lt;em&gt;career&lt;/em&gt; because a non-negotiable required class for that field would require something that violates their religious observance. *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the course is Figure Drawing and someone registers knowing that he cannot draw the human figure... I don't think you are required to let him pass the class by doing still lives instead. If the course is Introduction to Art for Non-Majors, it may be possible to offer an alternative to the portrait assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies more generally as well. If a student in good faith (i.e., not to get out of doing work) considers an assignment &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;illegal,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unethical, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;compromising to his health/safety, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it seems reasonable to offer an alternative assignment if it does not compromise the educational goals of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/33937/may-a-kohen-become-a-doctor&quot;&gt;Can a Kohen become a doctor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:08.800" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T17:43:43.397" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:07:42.320" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't get the people trying to suggest a private conversation etc.  The whole point is to restore the confidence of female students to work in a reasonable atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This just calls for &quot;You are not wearing this T-shirt to my classes.  Get out and come back once you are wearing something appropriate.&quot;  His bad luck if he relied on wearing that shirt through the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't start class until he's gone, if necessary calling campus security.  Ask the other professors to do likewise when encountering similar material in order to maintain a professional and workable atmosphere, to avoid being considered the only one with standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12714" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T07:07:42.320" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:36:33.783" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I habitually wore Black metal T-Shirts, which can have offensive lines, as an Undergrad, which never got me into trouble. But, some people asked me why I like this kind of T-shirt and I tried to explain my reasoning.&#xA;This worked very well and I formed strong friendships with some of these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I, personally, tried hard not to judge people from their appearances - which was never 100% sucessfull, but I think is a worthwile attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the best first step is simply asking the person WHY he is wearing this t-shirt. Every person with a provacating T-shirt gets asked now and then, so it should be no big deal.&#xA;Running to your teachers first is similar to running to your mommy and not really grown up behaviour.&#xA;Disclaimer: I come from germany, where a much wider range of clothing is deemed acceptable in academia, especially social sciences and CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12715" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T08:52:29.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T08:52:29.390" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17821" CreationDate="2014-03-06T08:21:25.477" Score="20" ViewCount="1544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from engineering, when you write a paper, the goal is to be objective and analytical.  We use references and try to define terms for a clear understanding.  The goal at least is to provide facts that support a hypothesis in as unbiased a way as possible.  I think there may be some difficulty in always remaining unbiased, but recently I came across an article that seems to be written like an opinion piece more than a piece of academic work.  After going through it I looked up the author, who is a professor of women's studies.  She writes about robotics being sexist.  Does women's studies have different goals in academic writing than engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be specific, it is these types of sentences that confuse me on the intent of the academic writing in women's studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enter HRP-4C, a new-generation gynoid that was unveiled in the spring of 2009 as a body double of and for (or to replace?) the average human female.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would a journal allow the publication of the unsupported rhetorical question &quot;or to replace&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The android wears his maker's unfashionable beige shirt, dark trousers and black windbreaker jacket.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it professional to call a world-famous robotics researcher &quot;unfashionable&quot;, and why is it necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . . exact body consists of silver and black plastic molded to resemble a &lt;em&gt;Barbarella&lt;/em&gt;-like custome, which accentuates her ample breasts and shapely, naturalistic buttocks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no supporting information of how the square, minutely curved metal is purposefully making the visual the author interprets.  But what I don't understand with this is instead of referring to the robot by its name or the paper, the author continues to refer to it as &quot;robo-Barbarella.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I just happen to come across a unique piece of writing, or are there very different styles of writing in academic disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T19:29:30.210" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T17:39:24.010" Title="Is there a difference in academic writing styles between engineering and women's studies?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-06T09:31:29.903" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not the job of places of learning to give way to superstition. Indeed, quite the reverse: the whole Enlightenment Project was about bringing light into darkness, and all the Academia I'm familiar with puts itself broadly in the Enlightenment tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, this answer will read as uncompromising. Because, from experience, I've found that rigorous education is incompatible with compromising that rigour in favour of molly-coddling someone's religious beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no sane middle ground. If you're going to start compromising the quality of your teaching to avoid offending someone's belief, you'll quickly find yourself running out of space. Someone's going to get offended that you're teaching males and females at the same time, sat next to each other. Someone's going to get offended that &lt;em&gt;anyone's&lt;/em&gt; drawing the human figure, let alone that they have to. Someone's going to get offended that you don't mention their pet crank theory alongside science as if they were somehow of equal merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a particular course's actions are in contradiction to a student's religion, then there are two routes here. If the student is legally a child, then the student completes the actions - they are under the school's guardianship when in school. If the student is legally an adult, then they have the problem, and it's not fair on any of the other students that they should make their problem, the institution's problem. They can either fail that part of the course, or they can do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student's beliefs contradict knowledge, science or art, that's not the problem of the place of learning. That's the problem of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is about children, then the responsible adults are guilty of abuse, for bringing that state of affairs about, and the school should do as much as it reasonably can to make amends for that failure. Note that I am not saying that a religious upbringing is necessarily abuse. I am saying that teaching children nonsense such as creationism is abuse, because it can cripple that child's future opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is about adults, then they've taken responsibility for failing that part of their education, and should be marked down accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been something of a hot topic in Britain recently, where the teaching of &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanism.org.uk/2013/05/06/public-funds-being-spent-to-send-children-to-creationist-charedi-and-steiner-nurseries/&quot;&gt;creationism&lt;/a&gt; and other ignorances is on the rise, where state-funded schools have been breaking equality laws by selecting staff on the basis of &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanism.org.uk/2014/03/04/three-muslim-state-schools-identified-discriminating-hiring-staff-basis-sex/&quot;&gt;gender&lt;/a&gt;, sexuality and religion, and where pressure has been put on educational establishments to subvert the teaching of several branches of knowledge, including &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanism.org.uk/2014/03/02/ofqual-exam-boards-collude-faith-schools-censor-questions-evolution/&quot;&gt;the censoring of some exam questions on evolution&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanism.org.uk/2014/02/10/satirical-spaghetti-monster-image-banned-london-south-bank-university-religiously-offensive/&quot;&gt;the censoring of two university atheist society's display of the Flying Spaghetti Monster&lt;/a&gt; and of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2013/12/FreshersFairStatementDec.aspx&quot;&gt;&quot;Jesus and Mo&quot; t-shirts&lt;/a&gt;, because these were inconsistent with some extremist religous interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia is the bulwark against ignorance and superstition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that religion = ignorance and superstition. Creationism = ignorance and superstition. Refusing to draw the human figure = ignorance and superstition. Avoiding listening to or playing music = ignorance and superstition. Preventing females from being educated = ignorance and superstition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T17:31:13.780" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T17:31:13.780" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2014-03-06T09:44:09.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many academic fields work on the premise that you examine the evidence and present an unbiased analysis of that evidence. There are fields (e.g., creative writing and the arts) that take a very different approach. That said, many fields that take an objective unbiased approach to the analysis focus on the readability much more than in the sciences. For example, the use of &quot;robo-Barbarella&quot; seems much more informative that the clinical/objective HRP-4C. Had the original creators of HRP-4C called it robo-Barbarella, there would presumably be no issue. In terms of the fashion comment, I am not sure &quot;maker&quot; refers to the actually person who did the welding, soldering, and programming, but rather the stereotypical fashion sense (or lack thereof) of CS people in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T09:44:09.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2014-03-06T09:59:01.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon last year on a &quot;black list&quot; of authors in the context of an IEEE conference. I don't know if such lists are common and known among editors. I think that each area of publishing (engineering, medicine, biology, etc.) have its own habits. But again, this is at editor/journal level and not at reviewer level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, I think that you should give the authors some benefit of doubt. &#xA;Take one busy PhD coordinator, an eager to publish student, some communication discontinuities, add in the mix the publishing invitation spam and you get a good paper submitted to a fake journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, after the advisor recognized the error, was too late to withdraw the paper. So they sent the paper to a regular journal so a hard worked paper doesn't go to waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it is allowed (and sometimes encouraged) to extend a paper already presented at a conference with new results, new comparisons etc. and submit it to a journal. However, in the cover letter, the authors must clearly specify that! And cite the older paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8955" LastEditorUserId="8955" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T16:07:36.530" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:07:36.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17810" CreationDate="2014-03-06T11:45:35.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an internal candidate you should talk to the search chair about which events you plan on attending and not attending. One of the jobs of internal candidates, like all member of a department, is to help recruit the individuals being interviewed such that whoever is given the offer, hopefully you, is more likely to accept the offer. That said, you do not want it to appear you are trying to gain an unfair advantage. Many departments interview the internal candidate first which helps deal with this issue. When you are interviewing after an external candidate, the thing to remember is that in most cases watching what someone else does is not going to help you. One case where there could be a definite advantage is if the search committee has some fixed interview questions and you attend an event that gives you access to these prior to your interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A case where it might be appropriate to attend a job talk would be if your department struggles to reach critical mass at job talks. In this case having an extra body present can be very helpful. Unless attendance at the talk is pitiful, I would suggest you refrain from asking questions or talking to colleagues about the quality of the talk. Another example would be if you are currently a PhD student applying for a TT position, it might make sense for you to have lunch with the external candidate with the other PhD students. This is especially true if you have a post doc lined up in the department such that you will be there the next year and potentially collaborating with the new candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T11:45:35.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-06T12:41:47.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really cannot expect that the assignment should be counted as done just because of your religion. However, if you are a student,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to ask the professor to adapt the assignment. If picturing humans&#xA;is not allowed, maybe picturing geometric figures is ok. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask representative of your religion if the activity is really disallowed in your context. Most of religious restrictions are about actions, not about studying (may be exceptions of course).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know you should drop studies but are too weak to do this, the representative of your religion may just forgive you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the person teaching, you may think about adapting course (is the disallowed activity essential?) and still check with representative of religion if the students do not interpret restrictions unnecessarily broadly. Additionally, you may discuss with your administration the possibility to suggest the alternative but equally serious and difficult course for such students. Some universities like Zurich ETH allow to choose between many alternative courses, with only small percent being mandatory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if there are many assignments contradicting the religion, this probably shows that it may be lots more problems at work later. If you are not allowed to kill, that is the point of attempting the carrier of the jet fighter pilot? Even if you can actually &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt;, saying nobody is killed in flight simulator or during bombing tests, this may not make much sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T14:08:35.360" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T14:08:35.360" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17831" CreationDate="2014-03-06T12:44:03.840" Score="21" ViewCount="43985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got the following info from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide&lt;/a&gt; website in relation to citing Kindle books or ebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If no fixed page numbers are available, you can include a section title or a chapter or other number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering is there a preferred method of citing in this case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am history Mlitt student and have only recently started to use a kindle for research purposes. At the moment I use the loc (location) reference that is produced by the kindle in the notes text file you can download from it, that shows all your highlights/bookmarks, but I am confused as to the proper citation method as my supervisor queried if this was the standard way of citing a kindle. I have a copy of my history department style-sheet but it makes no reference to kindle editions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-09-19T21:59:02.987" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T17:59:12.123" Title="How to cite Kindle books/ebooks when no fixed page numbers are available?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;&lt;technology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2014-03-06T12:53:50.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am personally aware about the history when as little as several sentences from the &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; of the own article has been reused in another article (not even results or conclusions). The history became public, dragging various of events that were not very severe but unpleasant enough to avoid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggest better not to do this. Of course, this also depends on the policies of the both journals but most of them disallow duplicate content. To make the long story short, it might be sad consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T05:59:12.760" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T05:59:12.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-06T12:54:30.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been touched upon by the two lowest voted answers, so I am going to give it a go myself to make it clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, except for orientation courses where memorization is the central issue, open book examinations are incredibly good, &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; they are only as good as the questions you ask. The thing you should be aware of is that with examinations like this you're able to far more complex questions which are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; about specific sections of the text, but rather about the course as a whole. For example, rather than asking what the effects were of the actions of a specific individual on his field of study in his time you can suddenly ask students to describe the trend over a far greater time period. Or you can ask for an analysis of the approach of a set of individuals on a very specific detail. What you should be aiming for is comprehension of the matter, questions which can not be paraphrased from the covered materials as they simply were not explicitly covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another existing 'trick' is to make the exams so huge that students never have any chance of finishing the entire exam. If you go down this route you have to make very clear which depth and length you expect for each question, but the nice thing of this technique is that you can see quite clearly how well students know the full width of the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have to be honest that a lot of these kind of examinations - open book exams in general - are often none the less not well done. It becomes more about just learning the index of the books well then understanding the topic matter, but in essence I believe it is crucial for a good modern education to not be based around memorization - we have the internet for that - , but rather comprehension and recombination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11353" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T12:54:30.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-06T12:55:21.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends heavily on what you're testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a computer science paper, where you want to test your students' knowledge of basic data structures and algorithms? Then you probably don't want to let them have text materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a first year linguistics mid-semester test, where you want to test the students' knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet and different places and manners of articulation? Then you probably don't want to let them have text materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a second year linear algebra exam, where you want to test the students' ability to apply different methods to solve various systems of linear equations, but you don't need  them to remember whether a projection is &lt;code&gt;v.n/n.n * n&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;v.n/v.v * n&lt;/code&gt;? Then you should probably let them handwrite their own notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you testing the knowledge of something? Or are you testing the ability to apply that knowledge to solve a problem or compare two algorithms, historical events, methods of solving an equation, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12726" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T12:55:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-06T13:21:00.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your school allow tests to be given and answered in your native language?  If so, then ask questions in your native language and have them answer in your native language.  Those who do not understand the text will fail (they cannot pass by just copying the English text, as you have required their answers to be in the native language), and those who do understand the text will pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T13:21:00.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17833" CreationDate="2014-03-06T13:45:27.783" Score="95" ViewCount="21375" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my classes, I had a student who generally understood stuff faster than the others. In tutorials, he would ask a lot of questions, mostly of the kind&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I tried this method instead of what you suggested, is it correct?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this probably sounds like the dream student, but I quickly realized that he was not really after my input, but rather seeking acknowledgement of his superiority (possibly showing off before his friends). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exchange would often go like this. If what he suggested was correct, fine, I would say &quot;&lt;em&gt;great!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and move on. But quite often there would be flaws in his argument, which I would naturally point out. He would always assume that I misunderstood him and when I was (finally) able to show him that his argument did not stand, he would say something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh yeah, that's what I meant to say, but I phrased it wrong&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this was an math class, so &quot;phrasing it wrong&quot; really means &quot;failing to prove&quot;. When he asked a genuine question and I started providing an explanation, he would cut me off halfway through with something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Right, I get it, it's because this and that&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and convincing him there was actually more to it was yet another struggle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned because I really feel he could be an amazing student if he would only accept that he does not know everything beforehand and therefore sometimes makes mistakes. Also, it seems like my time could be better used than in convincing a student that I'm worth listening to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can one explain this to such a student without humiliating him?&lt;/strong&gt; Simple reasoning and proof by example (you'd think after the tenth time I pointed out his mistakes he would have learnt that he sometimes does them!) apparently just bounces off of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T19:54:00.287" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T02:08:18.843" Title="How to tell an over-confident student they still have a lot to learn?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="21" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17825" CreationDate="2014-03-06T13:51:08.857" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/06/how-do-you-cite-an-e-book.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA blog&lt;/a&gt;, the location number is actually a bad idea because it has limited retrievability. The blog also mentions that since Kindle's third generation, e-books have started to have real page numbers, you may try looking into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-website-material.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;apastyle.org&lt;/a&gt; suggests that for materials that are not paginated, consider citing chapter number or chapter heading plus paragraph numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T11:13:34.407" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T11:13:34.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T14:17:31.957" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest against [a deleted answer telling to put a lot of weight on simplest textbook examples] (I consider &quot;ha! you missed the example from chapter 2&quot; to be highly unpedagogical, as it is &quot;appeal to authority&quot; and &quot;you should read and remember rather than think&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think two things may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give him problems and require &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; solutions (it is harder to boast, or mask omissions, when one writes), solved &quot;down to the last $\epsilon$&quot;, as you &quot;want to see the proof, not just be convinced that he can prove it&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give more advanced problems (still, which are within his reach), for which answer cannot be hand-waved (e.g. &quot;what is sum of&quot;, &quot;give an example of set, such that...&quot;) OR don't tell the answer in advance (so instead of &quot;prove X given Y&quot; ask &quot;decide whether X holds for all Y&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, I would tell him (in person) that he is very smart, and you give him more advanced problems because of that. (And that he still needs to learn to be precise enough for mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he does want to show you that he is smart, and as you do not acknowledge it he, well, tries again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I would not undermine his skills. In mathematics &amp;amp; theoretical physics I know a lot of people who underestimate their skills, but not many who overestimate &lt;em&gt;for a longer time&lt;/em&gt; (such subject makes one humble, sooner or later). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T16:55:39.507" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:55:39.507" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T14:33:14.430" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that generally your focus is misplaced. It appears to me that by focusing on how to deal with this one student, the learning environment of the other students is somewhat compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I would strongly suggest that you need to put this dude into his place. Let's not ask &quot;How can one explain this to such a student &lt;strong&gt;without humiliating&lt;/strong&gt; him?&quot; Let's think &quot;How can one explain this to such a student &lt;strong&gt;through humbling&lt;/strong&gt; him?&quot; There are numerous indications that what he does is disruptive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example 1:&lt;/em&gt; In tutorials, he would ask a lot of questions, mostly of the kind &quot;I tried this method instead of what you suggested, is it&#xA;  correct?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tutorial is about A and he decided to use K method to solve it. Wonderful, but were the actual materials covered? If he seeks this kind of &quot;Look at me! I am awesome!&quot; feeling, I will deter that gratification by allocating the last 10 minutes to discuss alternative approaches on solving the problem set. Don't feed the troll, make him wait and train on his patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example 2:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Oh yeah, that's what I meant to say, but I phrased it wrong&quot;. Note&#xA;  that this was an math class, so &quot;phrasing it wrong&quot; really means&#xA;  &quot;failing to prove&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you actually tell him this thought? You do not need to say &quot;You are wrong.&quot; You can, however, say that a certain attitude or a certain pattern is wrong: &quot;While your attempt is well intended, I wish to stress that in mathematics, one wrong phrasing can buy you the direct ticket to failure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example 3:&lt;/em&gt; When he asked a genuine question and I started providing an&#xA;  explaination, he would &lt;strong&gt;cut me halfway&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Right, I get it, it's because&#xA;  this and that&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an unprofessional behavior and you should have slapped him right there. Simply smile, slowly raise your palm to signal a stop, and calmly say &quot;Please hold on and let me finish, there is more to it, and I want to present a full picture.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think this student needs circumstantial challenges (in other words, come to feel how the world actually runs) and he should turn out fine. I am more concerned for the rest of the class; If I were one of the students, seeing this alpha male's obnoxious behaviors go unchallenged, I would seriously doubt why I should be here, and should I even ask a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T14:33:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17728" CreationDate="2014-03-06T15:46:16.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For information about &lt;strong&gt;European&lt;/strong&gt; institutions, the best starting point for such an online search is possibly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enic-naric.net/&quot;&gt;ENIC-NARIC network&lt;/a&gt; (European Network of National Information Centres on academic recognition and mobility) which lists the national accreditation organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of accredited &lt;strong&gt;Swiss&lt;/strong&gt; higher education institutions can be found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crus.ch/information-programme/recognition-swiss-enic/recognised-or-accredited-swiss-higher-education-institutions.html?L=2&quot;&gt;site of the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities CRUS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A database of accredited study programmes in &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt; can be found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hs-kompass2.de/kompass/xml/akkr/maske.html&quot;&gt;site of the German Accreditation Council&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.nvao.net/home&amp;amp;tab=programme&quot;&gt;Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders NVAO&lt;/a&gt; has a similar database of &lt;strong&gt;Dutch and Flemish&lt;/strong&gt; study programmes and institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T15:46:16.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17825" CreationDate="2014-03-06T15:47:42.580" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for citing a page number is so the exact quote can be found in context. In an electronic book, one can just do a search and find the exact location faster than just looking for the page number in a traditional book, so I would say it is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide a better idea of the context, you can cite the chapter and section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T15:47:42.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17810" CreationDate="2014-03-06T16:22:07.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, as I inquired about in the comments, most job interviews have both public and private aspects.  Public means that they are open to the entire department (or maybe, and probably in some formal sense are, open to the entire university community): e.g.  there should be at least one &lt;em&gt;job talk&lt;/em&gt;, and most often this talk will be advertised on the calendar like any other talk, sometimes called a &quot;special colloquium talk&quot; or something like that.  That makes it a departmental event.  As a department member you certainly have the right to go.  There are also usually some private &quot;interview&quot; portions: this is several faculty members asking questions of the candidate, either one-on-one or in groups (or at meals; even lunches and dinners are part interview, really).  These are usually not public events; rather they are activities on the part of the faculty search committee, though in some contexts, e.g. at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) students and other non-faculty members may play an auxiliary role.  Certainly as a candidate for a job you can't be part of the search committee to hire into that job: that is the Cadillac of conflicts of interest!  So you should try to distinguish in your mind between &quot;search committee activities&quot; and &quot;public events&quot; and be sure not to attend the former.  (As usual, if you are in doubt, ask.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to make a few comments on StrongBad's (good, I upvoted it) answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the jobs of internal candidates, like all member of a department, is to help recruit the individuals being interviewed such that whoever is given the offer, hopefully you, is more likely to accept the offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least at a large research university, it probably not the case that all department members are involved in recruiting for faculty jobs (either temporary or tenure-track).  For instance students are usually not involved at all other than maybe wandering into the job talk (though at a SLAC they might be), and temporary faculty are not on search committees for permanent faculty.  So I don't necessarily agree with the above sentence.  Moreover being involved in &quot;recruiting&quot; for a position one has applied for again sounds like a whopper of a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you are interviewing after an external candidate, the thing to remember is that in most cases watching what someone else does is not going to help you. One case where there could be a definite advantage is if the search committee has some fixed interview questions and you attend an event that gives you access to these prior to your interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I completely agree with that, and it answers one of the OP's main questions.  Most academic interviews I know are not sufficiently formalized that watching someone else's in advance would help you with yours.  Most questions asked in academic interviews are not content questions or &quot;gotcha&quot; interview questions: they are questions &lt;em&gt;about you&lt;/em&gt;.  I also think that a job talk is a strange place for asking pointed interview questions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is my answer: being an internal candidate for a job is potentially awkward enough so that you should seek some guidance about what to do.  If the job talk and the interview aspects are not separated sufficiently clearly in your department, then I think the ethically correct thing to do is just stay away from the whole thing (but tell the faculty in advance that you are planning to do this, in the unlikely event that they have other plans).  If the question really is attending another job candidate's talk: I see no ethical problem with it, and if you're in a department where it really is expected that faculty in your position attend all such departmental events (again I'm thinking of a small department) then maybe you should go.  It is an academic talk after all and you might learn something.  However I think that you should really (forgive my colorful language) shut the hell up as an audience member in this situation.  Interacting with another candidate in any active way is also a huge conflict of interest.  If you have a sincere academic question, of course you can find a way to communicate your question to the candidate later on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how multiple internal candidates makes much difference.  I guess that if I knew the other candidate very well and was very friendly with her, I would be more inclined to come to her talk rather than skip it...and especially I would be more inclined to ask what her preference is.  I would not do that for an external candidate because it's a potentially loaded question that they shouldn't have to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:22:07.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T16:25:04.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your student was probably smarter than all of his teachers in high school, and has never experienced academic failure --I think a lot of college freshmen start out that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would sit him down, and tell him plainly:&quot; You aren't getting your money's worth from this class, because you aren't taking advantage of my teaching.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are, nothing will get through to him but a F on his report card (maybe not in your class, but it will happen sooner or later).  However, you will have done your best.  If he doesn't respond, I would limit the amount of time you spend on him, and focus instead on students who might have less raw talent, but who are more open to learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12743" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:25:04.900" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:01:35.050" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a professor intervene if a student in their class is wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the situation, although IMO the answer in this example is yes. People do not have a right not to be offended, and offending people may be a positive thing in an academic environment, where people need to have their assumptions challenged. Nor is hostility, in and of itself, impermissible in a school environment. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a problem with behavior that is offensive toward a group that is underrepresented in the field being studied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a problem with hostility that creates reasonable fear in other people, or that inhibits collegial discussion, or that is directed toward an underrepresented group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if an 18-year-old comes to my classroom in Goth clothing and acts resentful toward the world, it's not a big issue. It's hostile, but it's hostility that isn't a big problem. If a student wears a heavy metal t-shirt with a satanist message on it, it's not a problem because Christians aren't an underrepresented group; they're the dominant group, and it won't hurt them to be exposed to contrary ideas. Ditto for a t-shirt saying &quot;Darwinists burn in Hell.&quot;  But in an engineering class, a misogynistic t-shirt creates a hostile environment for women, who are an underrepresented group in engineering. A t-shirt reading &quot;one faggot, one bullet&quot; is also a problem because it could reasonably cause people to be afraid for their safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So IMO the t-shirt you describe &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem in the context in which you describe it. The question is then how to handle it. If possible, do your homework and get bureaucratic buy-in before confronting a student about this kind of thing. Otherwise you can end up not being supported by your administration; as we've seen in the answers to this question, reasonable people can disagree about these things. In this situation, I would probably not say anything at all to the student during class. I would then go and have a five-minute conversation with my dean about what school policy is. If it's clear that school policy puts me on strong ground and that my boss will back me up, then I would email the student and say, &quot;Your t-shirt that said X was unacceptable in my classroom for reason Y. I have discussed this with my supervisor and we are in agreement on how school policy applies here. Please do not wear it to class in the future.&quot; This private method of handling it lets the student not be embarrassed in front of others (which is a &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; deal to many 18-20 year olds) and makes it unlikely that we'll have a big classroom confrontation that would detract from instruction or possibly put me in physical danger. If the student then shows up wearing the t-shirt again, despite the email, I would tell him to leave class, citing the email warning and chapter and verse as to my authority to kick him out. (In my case, there is a specific provision in the state education code that gives me that authority.) If he refused to leave, I would call Campus Safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T21:35:25.517" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T21:35:25.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:08:44.643" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also think that he seeks recognition, from you and maybe from his peers. I also think giving him more advanced questions might humble him, but I think this wouldn't be the most effective way, because it wouldn't give him the recognition he seeks from his peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is how I have dealt with these kind of students, and how my teachers dealt with a much younger version of me :) And it proved to be very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever he offers his new version of a solution, don't argue with him, but tell him &quot;this sounds like an interesting approach, I think you should share it with other students&quot;. And ask him to come and write his solution on the board and explain it to the other students. You should also go and stand or sit in the far end of the class, so basically you temporarily switch roles. This has three effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- &lt;strong&gt;He will ask fewer questions:&lt;/strong&gt; Even though he wants to show off his superiority he doesn't want to stand in front of all students and explain a solution EVERY TIME. Even if he likes to, his fellow students will be fed up with him, and they will communicate it in their own way, in or out of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- &lt;strong&gt;It humbles him&lt;/strong&gt; When writing and explaining to other fellow students, they are going to ask him questions and point out his mistakes. If they don't, you can ask them to ask him questions if they have any, or to point out the mistakes. If they manage to do so, he will feel that he is not that smarter than his fellows after all. If they don't, you should give them hints to find his mistakes. Also, since this is in written form, and in front of many people whom he communicates with on a daily basis (much more than you), it is much difficult for him to hide his lack of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- &lt;strong&gt;He will think more about a solution before jumping in and offering a wrong one&lt;/strong&gt; Because he is explaining it to many people, and not only you. Thus, the cost of making mistakes will be higher, and he will think his new solution through before proposing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now these effects will not happen over night, but after 2-3 class sessions I expect him to improve his attitude enormously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us know if this, or any other suggested solution, helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11253" LastEditorUserId="4572" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T07:46:51.380" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T07:46:51.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:29:12.873" Score="34" ViewCount="43381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible at all to do a PhD without a Master or a Bachelor's degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then I meet someone who claims he knows someone who knows someone who was able to do a PhD without previous degrees (maybe only with high-school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true, was it true in some specific cases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T15:51:38.917" Title="PhD without previous academic degree: truth or myth?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17841" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:33:04.183" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;My (former) thesis advisor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Mazur&quot;&gt;Barry Mazur&lt;/a&gt;, has only a PhD.  In fact, according to Stephen Krantz's &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Apocrypha Redux&lt;/em&gt;, he does not have a high school diploma either, having left Bronx High School of Science after his junior year to attend MIT.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is that he had not completed an ROTC requirement at MIT but had already been accepted for graduate school at Princeton.  Princeton was not insistent that this requirement be completed, so Barry did not take it seriously.  (I have heard more colorful stories about this, but not from him, so I won't repeat them here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might say that this is a technicality.  I would agree with that but still claim it to be an interesting (even slightly inspirational, in some weird way) case.  Moreover, Barry was 22 when he attained his PhD, so some actual schooling must have been skipped (or highly abridged).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T13:04:00.980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:04:00.980" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:38:39.030" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recognize this student's desperate need for approval.  If you are going to try to work on him, try to nudge him in the direction of deriving satisfaction from the math itself, rather than impressing others with his abilities.  You might try this line of approach--&quot;I knew a guy once [Hi, my name is Mike, I'm the guy, btw, just so you don't have to feel you are being deceptive.] who had a light turn on in his head at one point that changed his life.  He realized that he got much more out of loving the math itself than loving the attention he got from being good at math.  He had a lot of raw talent, but he realized he was wasting effort trying to impress people when he could have spent that effort getting better at, and more out of, the math.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a really delicate thing for you to approach, however, because that need for approval is probably due to some severe self esteem issue which you don't know the source of (and possibly the student doesn't either).  Seeking approval from other people is like an addiction--you can't change it over night, and you find yourself returning to it again and again even when you wish you could stop.  [Eventually, you post on message boards all over the internet seeking upvotes... :) ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach you could take would be to be much more indirect about his psychological issue, but possibly accomplish something in the same direction, while overtly focusing only on the math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think you know that you are better at this than the other students.  But I think you're aiming too low--you can really learn to excel at this.  Do you want to do that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he answers in the affirmative, tell him what you think he needs to do.  A critical skill in academia is learning from other people, so he needs to not cut people off in the middle of an explanation.  A critical skill in mathematics in particular is precision.  He needs to learn that &quot;I meant to say x&quot; is not going to cut it in math.  If he meant it, he should have said it, otherwise, it's wrong.  Tell him that up to now you have not wanted to be too hard on him, but if he wants to be really good, you're going to quit pulling your punches and not let him weasel out of a failure to make a complete argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, ask him if he wants a coach, or a coddler.  If he wants a coach, you're going to judge every statement like a mathematician reviewing a submitted paper would.  If he doesn't want that, then it's his choice; you tried.  At that point you have done what you can for him, and all that's left to decide is whether he's enough of a distraction in class that you need to address that aspect for the good of the other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastEditorUserId="12746" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T07:24:45.947" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T07:24:45.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-06T18:04:27.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an educator, the most appropriate response is to immediately escalate the matter in a neutral way - present only the facts.  The educational institution has staff and lawyers to interpret scenarios like this and provide recommendations to the teacher.  I would not recommend making any immediate compromises or snap-judgements with the student.  Educating students is stressful enough.  Let those who specialize in this type of issue resolve it, and you can focus on the education of your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12749" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T18:04:27.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-06T18:12:23.017" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to write an answer based on the student's perspective.  I'm graduating college now, but I feel like I was almost just like this kid in Freshman year of college / Senior in High School.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned the kid is smart, and quite talented.  Too much for his own good.  I hated mathematics and still got A on it while not even paying attention to the teacher.  The kid needs to be challenged but not at the expense of the class.  I later figured out I like challenges the most, and more hands on things than math even though I was super quick to learn it.  I sat in the back, solved a rubik's cube, and waved the teacher off because I didn't need to do my homework.  The previous week I corrected a question on the midterm exam and got extra credit because no one else saw the flaw.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what my genius math teacher did to me that worked wonders looking back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Instead of just numbers on the sheet, take what he is excited about learning and have him a problem on that.  For me it was programming so he said can you graph this on a computer where it shows and calculates the area under the curve?  Hah! I didn't even know what I was getting into.  Yeah! sure no problem.  By trying to do it in a way that made sense to me I willingly did more various types of problems than we would have in class because I was trying to graph areas under all sorts of various curves.  He tricked me, and I liked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just use what he likes, and find a real world problem :D.  Even if it were surfing or something crazy ask him to calculate how high and fast he could go on a wave given a certain value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Group project that is required to participate in and peers give a portion of your grade based on rating.  I didn't really care about my grade honestly because I knew I could pass any test.  I cared more about what others thought of my abilities.  When we did the group project and some of it was extra credit we all got a's because I wanted to solve the extra credit and I let my group do the other 2 regular problems.  It's a way of allowing your student to satisfy his show off ability and still learn.&#xA;we did not always do group projects, only a couple in the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12748" LastEditorUserId="12748" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T18:52:22.530" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T18:52:22.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17841" CreationDate="2014-03-06T18:21:09.103" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a BA and a PhD, but no MA/MSc. More common than this are people who get into graduate school with an undergraduate degree in a completely different area of study. Just in my household, my wife's did Information Technology as her undergrad degree, and then got into a Chinese History graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, all it takes to get into grad school is convincing the admissions committee that you are a good enough student of their field. Completing a lower degree in the appropriate area of study is typically the easiest way to convince them, but if you have the necessary background knowledge and a lot of potential, nobody is going to turn you down just because you lack a diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T18:21:09.103" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T19:29:30.283" Score="20" ViewCount="2448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a few months into my PhD, but I'm finding that I'm not interested in the my project. I joined my research group with a masters in electrical engineering. I wanted to do research that incorporates electrical engineering and biology, but somehow I ended up with a project that is exclusively biology. A I'm worried that if I continue down this path, I'll end up stuck in a career I don't like. I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project. Here's what I see my options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish my PhD with the project I currently have and switch fields immediately after&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to switch research groups &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit school and get a job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually I would like to work in industry developing medical devices. How feasible is it to reach this goal from where I am now? I'm also interested in hearing from people who were in a similar situation I am in now and what they choose to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T16:39:36.760" Title="Dislike PhD project" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-06T19:54:43.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want &quot;create&quot;? Robots like google? or persons that have resolve problems, analyze and creative responses... let robots memorize and let hummans create and be creatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12760" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T19:54:43.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17841" CreationDate="2014-03-06T19:54:57.920" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;was possible&lt;/strong&gt; in some departments of German universities to start studies after a high-school diploma (&quot;Abitur&quot;) directly with the PhD as target degree.The German Wikipedia page about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor#Anforderungen&quot;&gt;PhD degree&lt;/a&gt; discusses that point. Unfortunately the English version doesn't mention it. While that possibility was abolished about 25 years ago, there's still people around who got their PhD in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such person is the former German minister of research and education, &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan&quot;&gt;Annette Schavan&lt;/a&gt;. She got her PhD as first degree with six years of study after the high-school diploma. But now that the university disclaimed her degree due to plagiarism in the thesis, she is essentially left without any academic degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T19:54:57.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-06T21:07:09.447" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I try to answer, I think it's really difficult to advise on such a major decision without knowing you and your situation. Personally, the best advice I can think of is to seek out a senior researcher who is unbiased, who knows the area, who knows your context and who can talk you through your decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But based on what you've said, since you are early in the PhD process and since your reason for wanting to switch seems genuine and not a temporary disillusionment (i.e., your PhD project is in a field you are not interested in and that's not going to change), you should probably try to apply to other PhD positions, keeping your current position until you find something better (or at least see how difficult it would be to find something better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, need it be said, you should take the advice of your supervisor with a pinch of salt: they are biased and will want you to stay in the PhD, even if it's not in your best interest. You don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to work on the current project: you can always quit and go somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T21:07:09.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-06T21:23:59.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, and foremost, &lt;strong&gt;this is your PhD&lt;/strong&gt;. Not your supervisor's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that you choose to address in your PhD &lt;strong&gt;needs to come from you&lt;/strong&gt;. You might take guidance on this from your supervisor(s), but if you don't own the problem wholly, then I doubt you will have the drive to survive the slings and arrows that will come your way during your PhD, including the general malaise that hits almost all PhD students during their thesis. &lt;strong&gt;If you are working on a problem in which you are not fully invested, I doubt you will succeed.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've done the right thing in bringing your concerns to your supervisor. If he is resolute that you must continue on a path that you don't feel sufficiently in control over, or which is not addressing the question you seek to answer, then I suggest you switch research groups - or indeed find a suitable job for the time being. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the job you mention - medical devices - I suggest you make contacts with the recruiting agents for a number of firms and get their feedback on the general qualities that their successful hires have. Try and identify recent hires yourself and introduce yourself, asking them for a little about their training. This will give you a good idea of how to proceed with your own training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find people on this website to offer advice, however I think that their answers might be off-topic for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T21:23:59.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-06T21:27:15.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now this is just &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; opinion and it worked for &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;. Per Steve Martin in the movie &quot;Mixed Nuts&quot;, &quot;In every POTHOLE, there is HOPE&quot; (if you re-arrange the letters and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was faced with a similar situation. I sought out the challenges of the project I disliked and tried to, as dispassionately as possible, look at the aspects of the project however small that I would consider working on. I did exactly that. Yes, I had to construct a convincing argument for my adviser as to why focussing on a sub-aspect of my project whilst not losing track of the bigger chunk would be useful for me and the project. Yes, I did have a quasi-supportive adviser and an quasi-supportive department chair who wanted me to succeed since the &quot;greater good&quot; of my public university was at stake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have already &quot;talked to your adviser&quot;, you may need to wait it out for a semester or so before you broach the subject matter again. i.e., if you find aspects of the project you like (time can change our perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't... perhaps you would need to cut and run to another research group or university since your professional life would be at stake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in summary, those are the two options that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; had:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on a sub-project of the main project. Link that to the success of the main project and work in that direction. Worked out for me! I am happier with my contributions to the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If things go from &quot;bad to worse&quot;, cut and run to another group/univ.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subplot&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, per Badroit's answer, you should generally heed your adviser's er... advice. Since they would generally look at the greater good and the bigger picture. But you would know best about his/her personality and you may need to use your gut feelings in such situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! Either way, it will be a character building exercise which will also provide you with interesting technical skills and temperament which are the subtle skills necessary for success in industry or academia (or so I am told).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T21:27:15.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17763" CreationDate="2014-03-06T22:28:21.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on my own experience as a college graduate, and, in short, is &quot;No, you are not too concerned, and, no books during tests is not the way to go.&quot; I feel that a teacher's two responsibilities are to encourage students to learn on their own, and to effectively relay information to them: few things are capable of so thoroughly sabotaging this process than offering an open-book test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teachers of mine have tried all kinds of policies during my college career, and, in deed, my entire student life. Open notes, open book, open book and notes, closed everything, study sheets, index cards, you name it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found these two strategies in particular to be the most effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd-most effective:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Usually about a week before each test, our teacher offered for us to turn in a blank blue book with our name on it (standardized bound sheets of paper for essay exams) that she would mark in a supposedly tamper-evident way, gave it back to us the next day, and allowed us to fill it with hand-written notes to our heart's content. We were allowed to use these notes and these notes only during the test, during which she would verify the authenticity of her markings on any study guides in use at her leisure. This was incredibly effective for me because taking the time to &lt;em&gt;write down&lt;/em&gt; information from scouring books, class notes, the Internet, and even collaborating with others doing the same thing, was, in effect, &lt;em&gt;actual studying&lt;/em&gt;. I usually found that I seldom needed it at all during the test because I'd committed so much of it to memory while creating its content! Additionally, it was a confidence boost to have it available, and that any time I felt like referring to it, I usually knew specifically which page of notes on which to find the answer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely the most effective:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The first day of class we were handed a list of 150 questions, and were guaranteed that our &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; final exam would be &lt;em&gt;exactly one randomly selected question&lt;/em&gt; from the list (possibly different for each student), and alone, worth &lt;em&gt;100% of our course grade&lt;/em&gt;. I had never so diligently studied for a class in my life!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12767" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T22:28:21.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-06T23:03:55.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the student chooses, or sucumbs to parental directives to refuse some components of education, then the student or their parents have to accept that they can't achieve so much in that realm. One day the student will have to make A PERSONAL CHOICE as to their direction. Offering them a free ride is not appropriate to that choice. If they persist with their choice, to not participate in some aspects of the multicultural society they live in, then they surely will be happy that they are not 'infected' with whatever perceived ill they deem to spring from the offensive activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do they want to be seen as masters (ie high grade scorers) of a system they partially or wholly reject? Do we really want to teach children to lie to themselves and others like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your choices (yes, even as a child) and take the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12773" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T23:03:55.557" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T23:36:41.050" Score="15" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a huge collection of PDFs of research papers. Many of these have valuable annotations. I also have a huge .bib file containing citations for these and many other works. Is there a reference manager software where I could import the .bib file and the collection of PDFs and somehow the entries in the .bib file could be magically linked to the corresponding PDFs? I would then like to use that tool to access my PDFs (of research papers).&#xA;I think this was a feature request for mendeley long back&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-general/suggestions/80946-automatically-find-pdfs-link-them-to-imported-me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-general/suggestions/80946-automatically-find-pdfs-link-them-to-imported-me&lt;/a&gt; .&#xA;As of today, I don't think that it has been implemented.&#xA;I tried Quiqqa (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.qiqqa.com/&lt;/a&gt;) , but had no luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="839" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T09:36:40.690" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T09:36:40.690" Title="How to automatically link LaTeX .bib references to a set of pdf full-text articles?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;latex&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T00:18:13.487" Score="7" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a California community college that has chronically underinvested in computing and networking. The school has been gradually increasing wifi coverage, which now includes all but a few areas of campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, you can walk through the cafeteria or the halls of the natural science building and see one student after another watching TV shows on a laptop. Yes, it's conceivable that they have an educational reason for doing so, e.g., maybe they're watching &quot;I Love Lucy&quot; in order to research a paper on media stereotypes for their women's studies class. But in reality, I think they just want to watch Spongebob for entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This causes severe problems, because the network was never designed to be a TV conduit for thousands of students. It apparently was one factor leading to the fact that the entire wifi network went down for the first 6 weeks of this semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My school's Acceptable Use Policy forbids various uses such as commercial activity, chat, and playing games, but it does not forbid binge-watching &quot;Breaking Bad&quot; over the school's wifi network. I can understand the concern that once the school starts blocking certain web sites, there is a slippery slope leading toward violations of academic freedom. However, it seems farfetched to say that we have to let students access Netflix while logged in to a student account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are technological solutions such as bandwidth caps for student accounts a good option? This would seem to sidestep the issue of academic freedom. Spending our way out of the bandwidth deficit does not seem to be an option; not only do we not have the money, but there is every reason to expect that demand would expand to saturate supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone describe best practices for keeping a campus computer network from getting brought down by inappropriate use?  An ideal answer would describe both a successful policy and how it was successfully enforced without infinging academic freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T00:24:00.557" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T05:13:09.413" Title="Best practices for keeping a campus computer network from getting brought down by inappropriate use?" Tags="&lt;academic-freedom&gt;&lt;facilities-services&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-07T00:28:41.590" Score="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @MarcClaesen's answer let me add a chemist's point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm a a programming-affine chemist. From my experience, that's a rare species. Maybe less rare on these sites. Though maybe not more rare than a  computer scientist in a chemistry lab who implements good laboratory practice...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One important point to keep in mind is that students (at least chemists) have &lt;strong&gt;no whatsoever introduction to computer programming during their studies&lt;/strong&gt;. They may have to take an introduction to using spread sheet programs and literature database search, but that's it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I meet students that come to do their research practicum and theses in a subfield that is heavy on data analysis. It is extremely rare to meet a student who has had already any kind of programming experience, even though this specialization &quot;concentrates&quot; maths-affine students. I'm still looking for good courses at the university where I could send them to get an &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; to programming.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;software carpentry&lt;/a&gt; concept. But note that even there is no introduction to the ideas and mindset of programming. Similarly, the introduction materials I know don't really start where the students would need to start.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(I've looked hard for good introductions, because I have difficulties to remember how the world looked before I started programming as a teen.)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So most non-CS scientists I know &lt;strong&gt;learned programming in a autodidactic and swim-or-drown way&lt;/strong&gt;. Note that most &lt;strong&gt;natural scientists&lt;/strong&gt; have a &lt;strong&gt;mindset&lt;/strong&gt; that will &lt;strong&gt;explore a programming language just like they explore the behaviour of unknown substances or instruments&lt;/strong&gt;. As programming languages are deterministic, it is comparably easy to get enough understanding this way to put together some script to calculate something. (I remember a colleague who had his first contact with programming language in Matlab during his Diplom thesis. Some year later, he &quot;invented&quot; the concept of functions.)  But during your thesis, you don't have time to learn good programming practice, even if you'd like to. And afterwards you're expected to work and produce results. Learning programming languages is not impossible, but it is usually quite outside the expected scope of what you are doing. The expected scope is usually that you know your way around just enough to get through a some calculations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A related practical problem I see is that there are &lt;strong&gt;no professional programmers at hand, so no good programming practice tutoring for the students&lt;/strong&gt;. I think this still is a blind spot in work group organization. None of the groups where I have been working so far had a professional programmer. Some groups were objectively too small to afford one (at least not unless that programmer would have been also good in the chemical/spectroscopy lab... - finding that is even more difficult than finding a chemist who has learned some basics of good programming practice).   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the &quot;monster&quot; programs I know started their life as a tiny little script by someone who just learned enough programming to put together the first useful lines of his life. During the next 2-3 years (usual setting: PhD studies) this steadily grows, and time will always only permit to change just what is needed right now. As people are nice, they give the monster to other people who are even less of a programmer. &lt;strong&gt;At the point where&lt;/strong&gt; one would say there is enough experience &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; step back and &lt;strong&gt;do a thorough refactoring&lt;/strong&gt; based on the gained experience, the PhD is defended, the student typically moves on to completely different work and &lt;strong&gt;the programming project is abandoned&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a scientist I have to say that the &lt;strong&gt;software development processes you refer to are not very well applicable to much of the scientific programming&lt;/strong&gt; I do: they require that you already have an idea of how the problem can be solved (How do you produce a deliverable [or design your architecture] if you don't have any idea how it could work?). Often, not even the outcome is known.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From a basic research point of view when you know how it works you've reached the &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt; of basic research. Then, applied development starts, and there I see how the software development processes can be applied but this is by definition out of the scope for basic research projects.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The basic research part, OTOH, may be described as a trial-and-error approach to producing the first bare-bones glimpse at a deliverable.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may be seeing only the &lt;strong&gt;tip of the iceberg&lt;/strong&gt; of scientific code where it would be (have been) justified to put in the effort of writing properly documented code with a defined interface etc. (other good practice like unit tests I'd prefer to see already with very early attempts...): possibly you don't see the huge amounts of code that are produced for research ideas that then turn out not to work that well and are abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;strong&gt;major difference in the usage perspective between most scientific programming I see and a traditional software project&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of that programming occurs in Master's or PhD theses. The scope of the whole thing is rather limited. It will usually be a one-person project, because a thesis by definition is a one-person project. So for the one-and-only developer the scope of possible use of the software is at most a few years or this one project, and usually also just this one developer is going to be the only user. This is radically different from &quot;normal&quot; software development. The contrasting basic research perspective is that even if the method should become widely used and it doesn't turn out that the idea worked just for the one problem it was invented for, the next thing that happens is that someone will improve the algorithm, possibly/usually leading to a totally different implementation. Or find out that it fits into a much more general framework, which would correspond to a totally different interface, etc. &#xA;In this situation it is not even sure that carefully designing an interface for the method will pay off at all.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm not saying that this couldn't or shouldn't be done with a readable implementation. But it is not the situation that encourages putting in the effort to learn how to write readable code.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;large part of the programming&lt;/strong&gt; I do is in scripting &lt;strong&gt;data analyses tailored to a specific experiment&lt;/strong&gt;.  Pragmatically, I generalize the code into reusable packages only when I either know from the beginning that I'll need it again, or when I actually encounter this situation. However, this is astonishingly seldom compared to e.g. what I encountered when working as a student as &quot;normal&quot; developer of a database application. However, partly this is probably because for some projects where I know that code will be reused, I set up a package/library from the beginning that I develop in parallel to the data analyses at hand. But then my perspective on that is completely different from the student scope as I expect to keep using this code base for years.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the nicest and most &lt;em&gt;astonishing&lt;/em&gt; (totally unexpected) experiences wrt. scientific programming I made was: I submitted a paper and released the software implementation in parallel. One of the reviewers asked how I ensure that the calculations are correct - which allowed me to answer that I use unit tests, and the package actually contains about twice as much code for the testing than for calculations. This was unexpected because it is already quite unusual in my field to release the code with the paper - but I had not seen before any paper explaining which automatic tests are provided for the implementation - so I hadn't expected that this information could make it into the actual paper.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I take this as an extremely promising sign! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another very promising sign is that when I explain to my collaborators* the concept of version control systems many like the idea and describe it as something they thought should exist but hadn't known actually exists outside the scope of Word change tracking. (Though for the research workflow I still think the VCS I know (svn, git) work as well as for pure coding projects.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;update a few years later:&lt;/strong&gt; getting non-programmer colleagues to use version control is still very much of an uphill discussion (also because VCS dealing with binary files did not improve as fast as I was hoping). I mostly went back one step and we now use nextcloud for sharing data, which while it does not provide real version control, it at least facilitates everyone talking about the same state of the data/files.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* also the not-at-all-programming ones who feed the measured data into the system, or who do e.g. the medical/biological interpretation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update:&lt;/strong&gt; From the experience I gained since I first wrote that answer, I'd now put the organizational aspects much further up:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've mostly left academia, I'm freelancing now but still have research projects where I'm in a subcontractor role for (academic) research institutions. For a certain pre-processing procedure I was commissined to supply, I met flat-out refusal to pay for &quot;unneccessary stuff&quot; like unit tests and encapsulating the working code in a library/package with its own namespace. The method is a data analysis procedure, so the most important type of bugs are errors in programming logics (against which unit tests can provide a certain level of guarding). It is to be used in R, i.e. in interactive work scenarios which implies high risk of messing up the user's workspace if third-party functionality is not encapsulated in its own namespace.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That refusal came from the upper management level of the research institute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@gerrit comments that university burocracy may not allow a group to have a professional programmer. I think this is likely true as a day-to-day reality. However, I also think it is related to this organizational blindness I'm talking about here. If upper management in academia did see the importance of using state-of-the-art working techniques in data treatment and software development, university administration would likely have a different view on this as well. And if grant proposals did include professional data and software management topics, things would maybe improve on that level as well.  I think academia is in somewhat of a vicious cycle here: everyone but students are considered very expensive, so project proposals don't dare including any &quot;technical&quot; staff. If the topic of data management or software development was brought up, our academic management did never consider anything but whether &quot;we could have a CS PhD student&quot; which is not a good fit: the projects need well-established and reliable working approaches rather than anything that would be considered sufficiently new to count as CS research so that the student could earn their PhD.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And of course, upper management may be convinced by their colleagues or by examples of how much professional treatment of these aspects helps, but as long as they are not convinced, it will be extremely difficult to find money and permission to try out whether and how much it helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T11:28:23.293" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T11:28:23.293" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-07T01:15:47.207" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eventually I would like to work in industry developing medical devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you tell your advisor this when you had your discussion ? Did your advisor tell you why you need to stay on this project ? It's possible that they had a better vision of how this might help you with your long term goals, but it's also possible they aren't really thinking about your goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had students who had strong opinions about what they wanted to work on, and did NOT want to work on what I suggested. &lt;strong&gt;They always won&lt;/strong&gt;, and that's how I think it should be. But it took time for me to understand their reluctance to work on my project, and it helped immensely when they came to me with their &lt;strong&gt;own&lt;/strong&gt; project ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So I'd suggest you think about a project that you'd prefer doing, and go to your advisor with that idea&lt;/strong&gt;. Hopefully it's not too far removed from your advisor's expertise (otherwise they'll have a hard time - well - advising). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T01:15:47.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17858" CreationDate="2014-03-07T01:18:47.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One options is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BibDesk&lt;/a&gt; (OS X), which can track links between files and associated citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, not a fan of what it does to the &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; file, but could suit your purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T01:18:47.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T01:33:58.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing from a student's perspective, and I've got this to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why try to humble this student? To me it seems that this student has his own pace at which he learns mathematics, and his pace and yours just don't happen to be perfectly synchronized. There are hard lessons in his future, to be sure, eventually something won't come as easily and will require deep and concentrated thinking on his part. But I think lessons like these are things that should be experienced with the body. Nothing teaches better than failure (or equivalently for well-motivated students, anything less than shining success), and these lessons you wish to impart to him will probably only be truly appreciated when he comes across his first real obstacle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more concerned about the potential to hurt your student's youthful self-confidence. Let his energy drive him! Definitely press (as my professors have) the need for practice and getting your hands dirty! But it would be a great crime to him to shoot him down just because you see him as overconfident - if he is, then he'll have to pay for it eventually, but that lesson is well earned and well learned and should really be experienced for oneself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7156" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T01:33:58.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17825" CreationDate="2014-03-07T03:45:41.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand, Chicago frowns on Kindle. Depending on how rigorous the context (class paper, proposed article), I would look at the print book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12779" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T03:45:41.760" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17870" CreationDate="2014-03-07T03:46:49.767" Score="16" ViewCount="3063" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, this is a problem I am really scared of lately. I am always willing to learn something exciting whenever I do any coursework. However, this adventurous mind of mine is risky and can often put my grades in jeopardy. Now, the problem is, there are &quot;unfortunate&quot; times where I have to collaborate with other students. It then becomes a serious issue of ego clash, when my classmate wants an easy way out, while I want to be all out conqueror (which I think should be the goal, since I am spending my time at college to learn something new, not to respect and elongate my comfort zone). So, it often happens that this internal squabble is very detrimental to the overall group performance and at the end of the semester the overall outcome results in a hodgepodge. Moreover, I end up having a bitter relationship with my classmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, my question is how can I motivate my project partners to do something interesting and challenging, without distracting them to think that the project is hard(which it ultimately can be).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S: Thanks  for pointing out my mistakes, I will be more careful with my attitude.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10851" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-04T08:49:49.583" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T08:49:49.583" Title="How to handle team member who is unable/unwilling to collaborate" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T04:16:39.520" Score="2" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Downloading full-text PDFs is often too slow:&lt;/strong&gt; My university has a subscription to most journal articles. Thus, most of the time I have full-text access to journal articles. However, for various reasons, accessing an article still takes perhaps 30 seconds. Although sometimes it's quicker, it's often still a 7-step process (1) search and find the article on Google scholar (2) login to the university system (3) get to the list of sources at my university that provides full-text; (4) get to the journal article page; (5) get to a full-text page; (6) save the pdf; (7) open the pdf in my preferred viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managing a library of PDFs is tedious:&lt;/strong&gt; That said, I find it tedious to have to manage my own library of PDFs. It often takes longer to work out whether I already have the article or not (Thus, I have to first search my hard drive and then search Google Scholar). I also have to enter the PDF into the library with no guaranty that I'll ever need it again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, there are two kinds of PDFs. There are those that I'm accessing for the first time, and there are those that I come back to again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I imagine a good system would be if some online system kept track of what I'd downloaded. If I did a search on Google Scholar and I'd already downloaded the PDF, it would just be a single click away (i.e., in a kind of cache).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way to meet the following requirements?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Near immediate access to previously accessed PDFs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Almost no time to store a PDF (or ideally something that operates in the background)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Integrated search through Google Scholar that works both for new PDFs and previously accessed PDFs (i.e., for a previous PDF it pulls the article out of the cache; for new PDFs you go through the normal process).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T05:30:04.127" Title="Immediate access to previously accessed PDFs integrated into a Google Scholar search?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17859" CreationDate="2014-03-07T05:13:09.413" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this as a resource allocation problem, not an academic freedom problem. Your network just does not have the resources to support many users with high-bandwidth demand (whether the demand is academic in nature or not), and your school does not want to apportion more money to upgrade network resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't really want to prevent a particular use of the network; if you did, it would be in your Acceptable Use Policy. You just want to prevent a user from hogging network capacity, which degrades the experience for everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instituting bandwidth caps (or a similar content-agnostic strategy) to prevent excessive resource use by one individual does not violate academic freedom. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amtrak.com/journey-with-wi-fi-train-station&quot;&gt;Amtrak limits use of WiFi on its trains&lt;/a&gt;; streaming music, streaming video, and downloading large files are disabled. This is understood to be a reflection of their unwillingness to spend the money that would be required to support high-bandwidth content, not censorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make sure that students still have access to I Love Lucy and other essential academic content, you can offer uncapped network access in specific areas (e.g., in the library). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you plan to implement this, you should announce the change, explain the reason for it, and expect students to be very, very unhappy about it. &quot;Network&quot; is simply one of the resources that students expect from a college; from their point of view, you are failing as a college if you do not provide a reasonable amount of this resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T05:13:09.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17866" CreationDate="2014-03-07T05:31:35.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always try zotero (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.zotero.org/&lt;/a&gt;). It is a browser plug-in and a stand-alone app. You can store PDFs in their &quot;cloud&quot; (free up to a limit or for a price if you need larger space) or in your web-dav server of your choice (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services&lt;/a&gt;). It syncs accross devices (laptop, work PC) and also has several tools for web scraping popular sites like ACM digital library... So, I think it should cover most of your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know about Google scholar integration though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T05:31:35.943" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-07T05:50:44.493" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are doing things the wrong way. Although university is a place to learn new things, it is also a place to learn how to allocate proper resources for solving particular problems within certain timeframes. This is a valuable lesson for all careers (inside academia or in industry). In that sense, your co-students are right (which makes you wrong). If a certain assignment requires 10 hours of work to deliver almost perfect results, allocating another 10 hours for a mere 1% improvement is (in most of the cases) a waste of time. Time is not free. You think it is (you are in university after all) but it is not. This extra 10 hours, may be spent better elsewhere in another assignment, in a preparation for an exam and so-on. This will follow you in you future life. If you work in a company that needs something done in a month, it is enough / encouraged to deliver &quot;almost perfect&quot; results within a month than perfect results in three months. After all, aiming for 100% perfection is a dead-end. All things may be improved one way or another and someone must learn where to stop and move-on to greater  problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think it is you that needs to change his mindset. You must always find the best way to be productive and deliver requested results but with minimum effort. Do not get me wrong. I do not mean slacking or doing the minimum to pass courses. I mean doing the best to conserve effort and still deliver almost perfect results. You can always strive for absolute perfection but only in your free time (not in expense of your co-students time). If you still do not want to do that, then take assignments on your own. We cannot change other people. Only ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T05:50:44.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-07T05:54:30.650" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am always willing to learn something exciting whenever I do any coursework&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, this adventurous mind of mine is risky and can often put my grades in jeopardy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less great.  I am concerned that you are setting up a false dichotomy.  Being ambitious in coursework does not have to involve risk of poor grades.  It is part of being a mature student and researcher to learn how to reach for the stars in such a way that not attaining your full expectations does not result in complete failure but in work which is itself still valuable.  (This is admittedly an &quot;advanced lesson&quot;: I have known people who have made it to the tenure-track without learning it...sometimes with grave consequences.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are getting an assignment -- let's say a coding assignment since I see you are a computer science student -- and planning something much more ambitious than is actually asked of you, even to the degree that the chance that you will not be able to pull it off gives you a bit of a thrill.  But you don't need to work in this way.  With planning -- and applying some insight early on; it's not all grunt work -- you can design a project in which you first complete what is asked of you and then move on to the more ambitious aspects that you are (happily) more interested in.  Coding work in particular is best done incrementally.  If you work on code over a long period of time, it is much more useful for everyone if &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the code that you write can be used (and tested, responded to...) right away than if you write things in a way so that you have nothing that works until the very end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far this advice is just for your own work.  In collaborative work I think you should be clear about (i) what you are definitely going to do -- i.e., what your collaborators can count on you doing -- and (ii) what you would like to aim for in your remaining time (which if you are talented and hardworking, you will almost certainly have).  Also, if you are actually more talented/quicker/have more time to put in, then it is reasonable to use at least some of your leftover time to try to help your collaborators with their projects.  That will certainly go a long way to getting your collaborators on your side and avoiding bitterness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when you are working with other people you should stop every so often and really try to view things from their perspective.  This sounds almost condescending, but it is not meant to be and it is really a skill: some people are good at putting themselves in others' shoes and others just can't let go of their own perspective; the former are much more valuable team players.  One tip here: would your classmates describe themselves as wanting &quot;an easy way out&quot;?  Or do they have goals which are just different from yours in some way?  Moreover, do they see your flirtation with failure that, in your own words, can often put your grades in jeopardy and think, &quot;Gosh, I wonder whether whoknows is going to come through with what we agreed he would do or come back proud of the fact that he bit off more than he could chew?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T06:58:30.547" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T06:58:30.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17883" CreationDate="2014-03-07T05:57:24.693" Score="3" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;While working as a research associate at an institute, I contributed to a research project through it's development and experimentation phases. From my contributions on this project I was listed as a second author on some research papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I list these papers on my CV, independently or in relation to this research project?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6589" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T17:09:14.580" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T17:09:14.580" Title="Can research papers be mentioned as projects in a cv?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="84425" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:15:28.183" Score="55" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading a journal article  where a researcher in psychology analysed their entire manuscript submission and publication history. The way I remember it, the researcher had around 40 publications, many in top-tier journals. A large number of the publications were rejected 2,3,4 or more times before they found a home. As an early career researcher, I found it to be a really interesting read for highlighting just how much rejection is a normal part of the publication process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know the reference to this article?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Equally, are there other equivalent documents written by other academics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I found the article. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/84425/62&quot;&gt;See answer below.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T03:17:48.237" Title="Article that shows the complete publication history of acceptances and rejections of a successful academic" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:21:51.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently taking part of an 8 week software development hack school.  The class has about 14 students with varying levels of experience and knowledge.  The informal format has been the best learning experience I've ever had for a couple reasons..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teachers meet each student where they are at.  Each student is encouraged to excel at their own pace.  This is great because it doesn't slow down the students with more development experience... This is HUGE!  Fast learners shouldn't be forced to learn at a slow pace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All assignments are project based (typically created small apps) and are generally &quot;graded&quot; on effort and not getting the correct or best solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varying levels of experience creates a highly collaborative environment.  I'm somewhere in the middle of the class and am not afraid to ask the more experienced students for help and they are not afraid to share their advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe it's a teacher's job to tell a student they have a lot to learn.  Life generally teaches us all how much we have to learn :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12784" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T06:21:51.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:25:52.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn something exciting about your coursework and do something risky, it does not have to be in the context of a graded project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do the collaborative work in a &quot;normal&quot; way, so as to be considerate to your classmates and their needs. Then do your &quot;risky&quot; project related to the course material on your own, just for the fun (and for the sake of learning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you ask nicely, the professor would even be happy to look at your independent project and give you feedback on it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T06:45:48.583" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T06:45:48.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:29:02.833" Score="1" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have been going around university websites to find a good post baccalaureate computer science programs. Most of them cost around $45k for living and tuition. Well, I was wondering is there any chance that post baccalaureate Students get Graduate Assistantships? Or Are they eligible to do any other on-campus Jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12618" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T09:28:45.727" Title="Can a Computer Science Post Baccalaureate Student get Graduate Assistantships?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:47:51.803" Score="1" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although graduating from a low ranked college I was able to become research associate at a well known research institution. My work there provided me with three research papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any possibility of getting a full scholarship for a MS program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6589" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T18:28:09.610" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T18:28:09.610" Title="Can MS be done with full scholarship?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18290" CreationDate="2014-03-07T06:51:28.393" Score="3" ViewCount="968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a completely introverted personality. I am seriously struggling with interpersonal relationships with my colleagues, to a point that I am actually at the brink of quitting my job. If I go abroad for a research degree, would there be any problem that may jeopardize my endeavor? My family is constantly warning me against leaving the current job and going abroad for a higher degree; they say that I will surely return without completing my course as soon as I face any rudeness, animosity, or harshness, be it from the adviser or the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A relative of mine in the USA has told me that she has been experiencing harsh behaviors from her PhD adviser due to her religion. One of my cousins in France has complained that he can never get any attention from his instructors because of his ethnicity. He is in service with UN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T23:25:02.547" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T11:45:12.880" Title="What are the major informal obstacles students face when they go abroad for a research degree?" Tags="&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2014-03-07T07:42:22.217" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the article you're referring to, because the researcher is in biology, not psychology; and the journal article doesn't include the list of manuscripts, only the recommendation to keep one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stefan, Melanie. &quot;A CV of Failures.&quot; Nature 468.7322 (2010): 467. Doi:10.1038/nj7322-467a. Web. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/nj7322-467a.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/nj7322-467a.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find the link to the author's actual CV of Failures (though I feel like I've seen it before), I can only find the article explaining it. However, if you search &quot;CV of Failures&quot; you will find some publicly available examples from other researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I keep an ongoing CV of failures as described in the Nature article and  I &lt;strong&gt;highly recommend&lt;/strong&gt; the exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T22:31:07.603" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T22:31:07.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10352" CreationDate="2014-03-07T07:47:38.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably you have included references in your article! Just check which journals you tend to cite most (or at least twice each in your article). Those must be good and relevant enough (since you cite the work published there in the context of your own work). Then check their guidelines to be sure (possible length constraints, level of detail, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not want to go to the most prestigious journals because you fear your work is not groundbreaking enough, or because you want an easy ride, or, as you said, because they rejected your article already, here is a relevant rule-of-thumb: do not publish in a journal which you would never cite for whatever reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12712" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T07:47:38.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17871" CreationDate="2014-03-07T07:51:59.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It cannot be a research paper without a project. Research papers are for describing the results of the projects. Even review articles represent projects to collect the information about the current status in the particular branch of the science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are a co-author, you have been involved into that project. Co-authorship always assumes significant enough involvement. Hope this answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T08:21:43.903" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T08:21:43.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17551" CreationDate="2014-03-07T08:12:05.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a mere common sense perspective, this is, clearly, grossly unethical.  However, professors at most institutions are given a huge amount of latitude in making decisions of this kind.  That latitude is intended as deference to the professor as the one closest to the situation and a recognized scholar in the field, etc, etc.  It's not intended to extend to capricious or unethical behavior, but I'm sure your case is, sadly, neither the only one nor the most egregious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the professor has already departed academia (and good riddance!), there's not much to be done about that particular individual.  In a few years, though, you will likely be getting contacted by your alma mater frequently as they are very interested in what you would like to contribute, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be some opportunity here to ask to speak to someone who will be interested to know why you are unable to donate.  Until they have clear policies in place that prevent the kind of abuse you were subjected to, you can't see your way clear to making contributions to an institution that, through their own negligence, damaged your career while it was in at its most vulnerable point.  Obviously there's no guarantee you will get through to someone who will listen, but it's worth a shot--if they do, it might prevent someone else from going through what you went through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To anyone else going through this, get everything in writing.  &quot;Why are you withholding your signature?&quot;  Get a paper trail, or it's your word against the infinitely more powerful professor's as to what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T08:12:05.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17886" CreationDate="2014-03-07T10:12:19.637" Score="5" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Framework programmes' (FPs) are main financial tools through which&#xA;  the European Union supports research and development activities&#xA;  covering almost all scientific disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a fellow of FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) project. As a hosting institution, the faculty I work at got funding to support me and related research. Where does the non-spent founds after the project ends? Do they stay within the university or are they returned to the European Commission (EC)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T19:19:00.263" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T19:19:00.263" Title="Where does the remaining money of FP7 projects go?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2014-03-07T10:46:21.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, the answer is: it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no experience with the Marie Curie programme, but for traditional FP7 research projects, the funding system worked as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your funding plan consisted basically of two large blocks: &lt;strong&gt;direct costs&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;indirect costs&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct costs included things like personnel (the largest part, usually), special equipment, or travel funds. For direct costs, the research institution needed to proof how they spent the money exactly. In case of underspending (for instance, if one planned for a postdoc but ended up hiring a PhD student), the left-over money has to be refunded to the agency (or, in some cases, can be transferred to another partner in the project). In case of overspending, the research institution has to cover the costs themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indirect costs, on the other hand, are a lump sum. They are calculated as a percentage of the planned direct costs (typically 25% for universities, iirc) and are meant to cover all the other costs of a project that are hard to account for exactly (things like the office space and heating for the people working in the project, etc.). These are paid out no matter what, and are not refunded. The research institution does not need to proof in any way that it actually spent all that money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your concrete question: everything that is designated as direct costs in the ITN proposal and is not spent will go back to the EU. However, all the indirect costs associated with the ITN will stay with your host institution regardless of whether they spend the money or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T10:46:21.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:00:45.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm a few months into my PhD, but I'm finding that I'm not interested in the my project. I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A few months in&quot; is still very early in a doctoral program, so it shouldn't be too early to switch research groups. If your adviser said that you &quot;must&quot; work on your current project, I assume that means, &quot;If you're going to keep working with me, you'll have to work on this project.&quot; (It's not too unusual for an adviser to balk at the prospect of advising a student who wants to start a new project, particularly if they don't feel they have sufficient expertise or interest. Some research efforts take months or years to get underway, and students can't expect every faculty member to put aside what they've been working on just to accommodate a new student's whim.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start looking around your school to see if there's another research group working on something more closely related to your interests. If not, you've left out a fourth possible option, which is to transfer to another school. If you're not even a year in, then it may not be too late to switch, particularly if you can find a faculty member who is working on exactly the kind of work you are hoping to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:00:45.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:43:32.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You present three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish my PhD with the project I currently have and switch fields immediately after&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to switch research groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit school and get a job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a closer look at each of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Finish my PhD&quot;: This is what you are doing now. This is the default option, the base with which you have to compare everything else. Be aware this is not a particularly easy path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Switch research groups&quot;: Do a quick search, can you find something? Because this option only makes sense if there is some research group to switch to, where it's possible to switch (being admitted, it's not like saying hi and crossing the door...), where the advisor is not a jerk/moron/whatever, where it's possible to do the research you want to do (it could be the same or even worse). We don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. Search, get information. It's not easy, IMHO, but you may have skills for this, I've no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Get a job&quot;: what kind of job are we talking about here? How interested are you in doing a PhD? (the one in option 1 and the one in option 2), would it be a dream job in what you want or simply something to earn some money? how much money? Again, search.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to invest/waste more time in searching than what you need to make a decision, in either case, you have already decided (by default), you are in option 1, you have not enough information to make a &lt;strong&gt;specific&lt;/strong&gt; decision and the clock is ticking. Any of those three options could be a life-saver or a death-in-life depending on &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; details (but most probably it will not be any of both, there is a lot of room in between).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: I know people that have started a PhD on a different topic after 3 or 4 years of working on a different topic. People that have started a PhD after years in industry and paying the loan for the house (big deal). People that have quit a PhD after 2 or 3 years. People that have published the thesis as a (free public) book, so that it's there in the record, but have no made the defense (and probably never will, because there is a limit in time for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, this ((academic?) life?) is not like the rails of a train where you make specific decisions that cannot be changed (ever), is more like a sea you sail, think about it in a more open way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, shipwrecking is possible, as well as going adrift, getting lost, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T11:51:43.193" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:51:43.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17877" CreationDate="2014-03-07T12:13:31.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes of course.  I personally had a full scholarship for my MS.  Even more specific, for example, no one from MIT media lab can be accepted WITHOUT a full scholarship (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.media.mit.edu/admissions/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.media.mit.edu/admissions/faqs&lt;/a&gt;) .  Your full scholarship is based on how much the university/professor/department needs you.  If you have the ability to perform at the level of a researcher or PHD student, there is no reason they would not want to pay for you to be working there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this depends on both school and country.  Some places may have specific rules on how you can have a scholarship.  It may be contingent on teaching assistant or research assistant positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T12:13:31.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17877" CreationDate="2014-03-07T12:28:11.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did an MS in math.  My tuition was waived and I received a stipend that was enough for me to live on (albeit very cheaply).  In return for this I taught one class of either business math or college algebra every semester I was there.  I think everyone that was there with me at the same time was on the same deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shouldn't be hard to get this information from the school or schools of your choice.  If they have a program like this they probably recruit for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be different from what you are asking, since it more or less involves working for the money, but for anyone that needs a way to pay for a Master's degree, this is definitely a way to explore.  I can't say how common an arrangement like this would be outside of mathematics, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should contact the school(s) you are considering attending and find out what kind of arrangements are made there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T12:28:11.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17841" CreationDate="2014-03-07T13:58:29.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mortimer Adler&lt;/a&gt; is one case. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/05/buckminster-fuller-education-automation-1962/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Buckminster Fuller&lt;/a&gt; got in, was kicked out then invited back. There are other ways of earning stripes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12725" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T13:58:29.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T14:06:59.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not take this as an affront against you, but rather as a strange way of learning, and then work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the student to allow him to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like your student has a psychological need to be &quot;right&quot; and feels mental pain from being &quot;wrong&quot;. As these things tend to be irrational, it doesn't need to make any sense to you or even himself. You can take this into account and instead of trying to prove him wrong, you teach him to take his mistakes not as failure but as key-points for tasks to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrases that could help your relationship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I see that in its core your explanation is correct, but some words could be misleading to a reader, so it might for example be better to use &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concept: Accept that he got 60% right, help him on the other 40%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I see that you are a very eager student. How about you formulate your findings into an essay so that the others can benefit from your knowledge as well? I will of course give you a bonus for it.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concept: Accept that he has a strong need to improve outside the bounds of the class, give him the opportunity to do so, and a reward if he does right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;That is a great answer, but have you taken into account that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concept: Reward him from being a good student, then encourage him to optimize the details without explicitly calling them wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Problems are Only Opportunities in Work Clothes.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Henry J. Kaiser&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastEditorUserId="12798" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T14:15:19.797" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T14:15:19.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-07T16:28:17.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this depends on what level you are teaching at.  Below college-level I think you may need to find an alternative (but just as difficult or more difficult) assignment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a slippery-slope when people institute their private beliefs on a teacher's assignment.  It is not like the assignment was for them to go to a Sunday mass.  If the assignment was hitting a lot of religious notes, you as the teacher should have a plan.  Have the students/parents sign-off on the topics/assignments or offer them another assignment to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are talking college level courses the assignments and tests should be on your syllabus.  If they don't want to do them then they can drop out of your class or they can get an F on the assignment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a teacher you are trying to teach them a skillset.  If that includes something that is against their beliefs they shouldn't get to pass the class because they don't have the knowledge/skill.  There is just too much grey area here and obviously the students could tell you whatever they want and it allows for animosity from students that have to do the assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11420" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T16:28:17.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T16:53:49.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly he is more comfortable processing problems in written format, but a little bit tongue-tied in verbal expression?  It seems quite a common combination - to be talented at abstract thought but less confident in oral communication.  I've definitely had that experience, of being frustrated and impatient with stumbling over concepts in speech, when they are perfectly clear in my head.  The fuzzy verbal arguments and the early interrupting could be signals &quot;I'm embarrassed / not comfortable in this mode of communication&quot;.  Maybe you could meet one of his non-standard solutions by saying &quot;can you write it down step by step and I'll check it over to see if it's correct&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12806" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T16:53:49.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T16:58:27.390" Score="3" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one leave one collaborative group for another, prior to the start of the research? This relates to switching project teams for graduate course work, switching research labs, or basically dropping any collaboration. How does one do so politely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My specific situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asked today by one of the best teams to join their group for our major University project. However, I have promised my friend 2 months ago that I will join his team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I join the better team without jeopardizing my relationship with my friend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12807" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T00:50:31.250" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T00:42:21.663" Title="How to leave a collaborator after being offered to join a new group?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17815" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:04:18.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing first: it is not your job to know every religion, belief or variation of it, it is up to the student or his/her parents to tell you beforehand what they cannot accept in class. Even between two of the same religion, no one can tell how direct one rule is taken by the one or the other. That said, your responsibility however is to give your students and their parents enough time in advance to notify you of potential issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work with a class where this can be an issue, a good idea would be to write down the topics for the upcoming course and hand it over to your students, and then explain why you are doing this. Depending on the age of your students, they might misunderstand this as cheating away from class. In addition you should give your students the chance for a fair alternative. If such alternative is not obvious, you should talk to the student or the parents in question to find one. If drawing an animated object is considered a sin, you could hand out a picture of someone to draw. Whether or not this complies to the religion, I however cannot tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Religion is nothing you can come by with logic, people believe the strangest things. For some of them compromises can be found, for others probably not. It is a good thing to try to find a compromise but in strange cases also valid to refuse them. If one's religion for example expects that boys and girls are taught in separate rooms, the only thing you can offer to the parents is for their child to change school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you need to keep in mind how the other students will treat a kid, which is the reason why they can't do something they want, cannot watch a certain movie or must skip topics they would have been interested in. Some things they can accept if it is explained properly, others probably not. And in the later case it might be for the better of the kid in question to not give into the believes, as the &quot;torture&quot; following that would be much worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:04:18.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17897" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:15:42.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First make sure that this is what you want. This is a very important thing to do. Being in a better team is a chance, but also a burden. They will expect you to cooperate at a certain level, which means: stress, lots of work and being on time. If you think that's worth the result and that you are willing to dive into that, then do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your friend is a good friend he/she will understand. I'd suggest to invite your friend for an activity that both of you enjoy a lot, then bring up the topic. Make it clear to your friend that you value the relationship and how difficult it is for you to take that decision, but also can't put down the chance. Ask him/her what he/she would do in your position to get your friend to see it with your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True friendship will survive that. And if not, then knowing that you took the right decision will help you getting over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:15:42.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:29:11.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not going to magically solve your problems. You will undoubtedly face similar issues. People outside often think that Academia is the life of the mind and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_tower&quot;&gt;ivory tower&lt;/a&gt;. It is not. A successful career, including tenure, often depends on how well you interact with your fellow academicians never mind your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an introvert can be very difficult. You can take this opportunity to re-invent yourself. You'll never not be an introvert but you can work on skills to minimize its impact on your life and career. Search out some books on the subject (there have been some popular ones published recently like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/&quot;&gt;Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very carefully consider who your advisor will be. You don't need the prima donna, but someone with whom you can work with successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Join Toastmasters or a similar organization where you are now or where you end up. Look for social, cultural, or technical organizations for your interests--and get involved. That may help you find connections and friends who can help you when the going gets tough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look into counseling, not to become extroverted, but to learn techniques to mitigate your introversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note: go for it! I'm introvert who's fine with friends. I'm a SME (subject matter expert) so knowing my stuff makes it much easier for me to speak up in a meeting, raise my hand in class (when I was in class), and so on. Don't let imposter syndrome get you either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:29:11.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:29:48.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many aspects writing software is an art. Many great painters haven't been born like that, they actually learned the art in years of training and with many bad results in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a sheet of paper and try to draw anyone you know. Even if you have a picture in front of you, it will most likely look comical. Now a real artist would ask you why you didn't see the shadows, couldn't come up with the right perspective, or put the ears at the completely wrong position even though you had a clear picture in front of you. It is however not your arrogance that caused that, it is your lack of experience in looking at the model in the right way. Technically it has something to do with you using the wrong half of your brain, and you can be trained to change that. Just not till tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists work theory-based. They have a theory, they want to prove it, they write code focusing only on the actual theory at hand. That is you seeing a nose, but not the shadows around it. If you'd teach them for month or maybe years to use the right techniques and &quot;strokes&quot; to do it the right way, they might change. However you should ask yourself if that is worth the time. Sometimes it is, but sometimes scientists should just stick to scientific stuff as much as painters should not suddenly start radioactive chemistry out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide on teaching them, keep the idea of the artist who starts on his first day in mind: it is not their arrogance, it is their lack of knowledge on how to use the right parts of the brain. There is a reason why &quot;Software Development&quot; is a 3-year apprenticeship, after which you are considered &quot;beginner&quot; level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:29:48.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:40:20.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people are so un-selfaware that subtlety won't work.  You may have to just directly tell him how he's coming off.  It's possible to tell someone in a way that it's clear that you're at least trying to give blunt but helpful criticism rather than just putting that person down.  It's definitely possible that the student will still feel humiliated if you choose to do this, but I think it's also an important life skill to be able to maturely deal with valid (or even invalid for that matter) criticism that you don't like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12769" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:40:20.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:49:11.570" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to supplement great answers by &lt;em&gt;Marc Claesen&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cbeleites&lt;/em&gt;. In academia, when people write code, it is common that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems are often open-ended&lt;/strong&gt; - so perhaps the data structure people start with will be used later for something else, for which it is suboptimal. Also, many things are not properly designed, because everything changes. Compare it to writing a typical commercial software, where things are specified from the beginning and usually far from cutting-edge (even if demanding, not &quot;the first time&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintainability is not a requirement&lt;/strong&gt; - a small piece of software, not used later, with no-one else going to take over the code (and it is way easier to understand one's own code than code by others - even if it is chaotic, you know what is where). Compare it with situation, where after the author leaves someone else is going to look after the code (or one need to constantly consider hiring one more developer to speed up the progress). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People work alone&lt;/strong&gt; or on &lt;strong&gt;legacy code&lt;/strong&gt; - very opposite situations, but giving similar results. In the first case (as above), people can understand their chaotic code; in the second (e.g. modifying pieces in old Fortran code) - people have to adopt in making small, often - not unanticipated, changes, adopting to the existing code base.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally (coming from pure academic background), I've learnt most o good coding practices, when collaborating with others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;by &lt;strong&gt;learning from others&lt;/strong&gt; - some coding practices does not require a lot of brainpower, but a lot of experience - the wisdom telling that a given &quot;smart solution&quot; will become problematic to maintain in longer run (as most of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge&quot;&gt;kludges&lt;/a&gt; (= ugly hacks)),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;by &lt;strong&gt;collaborating&lt;/strong&gt; - many times I realized that what was reasonably clear for me, was a totally unintelligible &lt;code&gt;cthulhu fhtagn&lt;/code&gt; (yet powerful) for others (and the other way as well - a nice code for someone else was a challenging riddle for me),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all in all, many good practices are in fact going to the &lt;strong&gt;least common denominator of skill&lt;/strong&gt; (and not-smart people are already close it); clever code by one &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be difficult for others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a dessert - &lt;strong&gt;the curse of the gifted&lt;/strong&gt;, a comment to the last point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are a brilliant implementor, more able than me and possibly (I say&#xA;  this after consideration, and in all seriousness) the best one in the&#xA;  Unix tradition since Ken Thompson himself.  As a consequence, you&#xA;  suffer the curse of the gifted programmer -- you lean on your ability&#xA;  so much that you've never learned to value certain kinds of coding&#xA;  self-discipline and design craftsmanship that lesser mortals &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  develop in order to handle the kind of problem complexity you eat for&#xA;  breakfast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lwn.net/2000/0824/a/esr-sharing.php3&quot;&gt;http://lwn.net/2000/0824/a/esr-sharing.php3&lt;/a&gt;; or abbreviated: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2000082800620OPCYKN&quot;&gt;http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2000082800620OPCYKN&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it was addressed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond&quot;&gt;Eric S. Raymond&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds&quot;&gt;Linus Torvalds&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a side note (as programming is more and more prevalent), now scientists realize that good practices and workflows are important, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot;&gt;http://software-carpentry.org/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T19:59:09.070" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T19:59:09.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17544" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:10:15.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you need a second opinion so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No way should you put the graphic you added to your question in your CV.  It looks very strange and does not help you.  When I see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) My eye immediately notices that there are a lot of missing stars.  Altogether you are giving yourself 63.3% of the maximum possible programming proficiency [whatever that means!].  That sounds really mediocre.  Most other candidates' CV will contain only 100% positive information about them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) While my eye notices that you haven't rated yourself so highly, my brain is very frustrated that it doesn't know what any of the ratings mean, high or low.  You give yourself 3.5 out of 5 stars on LaTeX.  If I want to take your LaTeX skills into account in my decision on whether or not to hire you...then what on earth am I supposed to do with 3.5 out of 5 stars?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:10:15.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:39:22.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should feed his curiosity and let the rest of your class benefit from his way of thinking alternate solutions to the problems. One way could be where you have already established there is a flaw in his solution; but, are having a tough time getting through explaining that to him and/or for him to accept it, share a portion of the board with him during class while you continue to teach the next concept to demonstrate that while his questions are encouraged, they are taking up too much of yours and other student's time just to level set with him. This will force him to think twice before defending a wrong solution. Who knows, he might also teach you something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion is to have different levels of homework based on your lectures over a span of a day or a week and increasing levels of difficulty for extra credit. The ability to do the more complex should exempt the students from doing the lower level. Finally, share the solution at the end of the deadline for submission and dedicate a 15 minute Q&amp;amp;A session over the complex solutions. &#xA;1. To demonstrate understanding of concepts&#xA;2. To use the concept in a real-life problem&#xA;3. To partially use multiple concepts over the span of the lectures or the level of understanding you expect your students to have at the point in the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The use of him implies him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12820" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:39:22.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17544" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:52:51.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do think there &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be some value to listing skills and your confidence in them, especially if they're not immediately obvious from your accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I agree with the others that the stars are not useful and do not work in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your CV lists: &quot;Project X: Did A, B, C, (implemented in Ruby)&quot; and &quot;Project Y: Did D, E, F (used HTML, CSS, Javascript)&quot; that doesn't really  tell me much about how much you've really done with each of these languages. In Project Y, did you really design your CSS or did you find some nice templates and modify to suit your needs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not always appropriate to describe in  such detail what each project entailed. If I'm looking for your expertise in a particular skill that isn't obvious from your experience, then a listing of skills and confidence levels &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; helpful.  But, there's a better way to do it than with star ratings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google's self-rating scale (&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/15004/at-which-point-do-you-know-a-technology-enough-to-list-it-on-a-resume&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt;) goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 – You have no experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 to 3 – You are familiar with this area but would not be comfortable implementing anything in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 to 6 – You are confident in this area and use it daily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 – 9 You are extremely proficient to expert and have deep technical expertise in the subject and feel comfortable designing any project in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 – Reserved for those who are recognized industry experts, either you wrote a book in it or invented it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your CV, a textual description (&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Ruby&lt;/strong&gt;: I am confident in Ruby and use it daily&quot;) is more useful and also makes you sound better than saying &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Ruby&lt;/strong&gt;: 6/10&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, the rest of your CV should go on to present your experience in Ruby, so the reader becomes confident that your self-rating is reasonable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't ask about this, but I would also strongly advise &lt;strong&gt;against&lt;/strong&gt; listing &quot;Microsoft Office&quot; as a software skill if you are looking for a technical job in a technical field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:56.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T21:25:27.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-08T00:16:56.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some tips from personal experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ambition is good, and as a student, the consequences of failure at this point in your life are lower than they will ever be again for as long as you live. Take risks if you can learn from them: the most important thing is to really think hard about why a project failed or succeeded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a drive to stretch the limits of your capabilities, take advantage of them now while you have a chance. Even though I have a fantastic employer, I wish every day that I could go back to high school and college so I could work on whatever projects strike my fancy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be conservative when you hold someone else's livelihood in your hands. If what the other students want is so much smaller than what you want, deliver the &quot;easy&quot; version fast. Change the challenge from creating something big to creating something small, but &lt;em&gt;quickly&lt;/em&gt;. It's important to learn the limits of how quickly you can do things. Programmers are notorious for pushing deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's one thing to have a personal failure, it's quite another to be responsible for the failure of an entire team. You want to be the guy who gets stuff done, the guy who everyone wants on their project, not the guy who only dreams and never ships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force yourself to make solid commitments and then deliver on them. Cut out a portion of the project and take responsibility for it. Then you can handle that part as you please, so long as you get it done when you're supposed to and it is what you promised. This isn't optional when you have an employer, so it's a good idea to get used to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, the difference between a good developer and a great one is not their ability to write software, but their ability to manage &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;. Great developers are able to consistently deliver quality products in the established time-frames. Perhaps when you face a group that wants to &quot;play it safe,&quot; you can use it as an opportunity to show that you have both programming skill as well as the pragmatism to manage your time effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12101" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T00:16:56.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-03-08T00:27:33.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For reasons everyone has mentioned, you must let the second place know that you've accepted another offer. In addition once you have accepted that offer, you really must commit to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if this second place is truly amazing, you can inform them that (1) you've already accepted another offer and (2) would still be interested in giving a talk (as people  have mentioned) and (3) would be &lt;strong&gt;interested in taking this position if it were deferred for a year&lt;/strong&gt;, in the chance that they don't find a good candidate this year (this is rare for post docs but does happen on occasion, depending on the funding source). This assumes that your current job only has a 1 year commitment (many jobs these days are 1 year with a possible extra year of support). This is a huge long shot. They most likely will say no, unless they have no other qualified candidate. This is the only situation I could imagine it being ethical for you do do the interview (with their knowledge).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T00:32:36.277" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T00:32:36.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17897" CreationDate="2014-03-08T00:45:39.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure that if you are going to do this, it leaves him enough time to find a new group (assuming this is related to a class or an undergraduate/masters project and not a phd collaboration). Going back on your word is one thing (subjectively unethical), but it would be extremely unethical to go back on your word if he does not have the time to adjust to your news accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you two have already formed a project idea together, view every idea you have told him as his. Absolutely do not take anything from your current project idea to the new team (especially if he is unable, or too lazy to, find a new team that has their own idea) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T00:52:19.167" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T00:52:19.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-08T05:38:16.230" Score="6" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a plain English dictionary (or glossary) for terms in education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend has stated a Math Education degree and is having trouble reading the material (e.g. the lecture slides), It is full of education jargon (e.g. constructivism, ) but these are defined in terms of more jargon so it is very difficult for her to make sense of the definitions. Furthermore, English is a second language for her.  Even for me for whom English is my primary language, I have difficulty reading the slides and other material and making sense of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a plain English dictionary or glossary of education terms that I could recommend to her. This would help her to learn the jargon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks,  Glenn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12833" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:48:22.427" Title="Is there a Plain English dictionary/glossary for education terminology" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-08T06:26:32.590" Score="4" ViewCount="2421" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat similar in broad topic to an earlier question I've asked, but not the same. I intend on applying to interdisciplinary mathematical/computational science/engineering programs like this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://icme.stanford.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://icme.stanford.edu/&lt;/a&gt; . As a result of the interdisciplinary nature, there are a lot of junior-and-senior-level courses that are relevant, and I want to take as many of these as possible so I have a good grounding for whatever more specific path I follow, within the field of computational science. However, I also know that graduate classes are looked upon favorably by many admission committees; so, should I drop some of the undergrad courses (that may be more relevant in subject matter) and take some grad ones? Because of scheduling and prerequisite issues, I would otherwise not take any graduate-level courses (or take at most one) until my senior year, by when it may not even matter in terms of admissions because some graduate programs don't look at your senior grades)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[As a follow up to this, would it be considered a bad thing to take a undergraduate course that may be considered important or even &quot;crucial&quot; in the final semester of senior year - when admissions decisions are already coming out - because of taking graduate classes earlier on instead?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastEditorUserId="12655" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T06:54:13.850" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:56:03.100" Title="How many graduate-level courses should one take to maximize chances of getting into graduate school? (PhD)" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17913" CreationDate="2014-03-08T06:46:08.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received an acceptance to a very computational cognitive science program. I had a single grad-level AI course, and I doubt very seriously if they even noticed it. I don't regret taking it, it was probably my favorite course because it was very loosely structured and allowed me to develop research experience, but it was also harder than a typical undergrad class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, from my (admittedly limited) experience, I would say take as many as you can earn A's in if you want to challenge yourself, but don't do it solely for the grad apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T06:46:08.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17913" CreationDate="2014-03-08T06:53:34.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graduate-level courses are helpful, but there isn't any magic formula that &quot;X courses with a grade of A or A- will guarantee admission.&quot; Every case is different, and good grades are by no means sufficient for admission, if your letters of recommendation are weak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying for a terminal master's program that is primarily coursework, then the rules are different, but for anything relying on research, your research experience and letters of recommendation will carry significant more weight than your classwork and test scores. What doing well in the graduate courses does is signify that you will be able to handle the coursework in your program, but it does not shed light on the rest of your abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my recommendation is to take graduate classes because you're interested in the subject and want to learn more about it, rather than just to impress an admissions committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T06:53:34.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-08T09:07:24.937" Score="32" ViewCount="5108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a writing course to different sections, across different days of the week. From the schedule, some students will take their mid-term exam early in the week, while others will take it later in the week. Recently, I found one student who was “just checking to see what the exam was like”, but was planning to go to another session to actually take the test. I realized there might be a variety of ways that students taking the exams on Friday would have an advantage over those taking it on a Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've taken the following steps in an attempt to address this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I build multiple tests, e.g. &quot;A&quot;, &quot;B&quot;, &quot;C&quot;, etc., which are of similar difficulty, have the same types of problems, but different subjects. &quot;A&quot; is given to one section, &quot;B&quot; to another, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provided a sample test that students can print and practice with and discuss with me in class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, there are several challenges to administering this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The classes are large, and the school offers me no assistance in managing the exams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many students regularly attend my lectures during sections that they did not register for, so I will not easily recognize who belongs in which time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any additional steps I should consider to make sure the test is administered fairly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2018-09-04T15:33:44.513" Title="How to prevent students from having an unfair advantage on exams, when they are held on different days?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-08T10:09:54.933" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some great answers out there and I would like to throw in my two cents on the subject as it is a very relevant issue I often think about, or discuss with my colleagues. There will inevitably be some overlaps with parts of existing answers, I only hope that I can give a slightly different perspective in those cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done applied maths as my major and did my masters in biological &amp;amp; medical modeling (whatever that means). I am past half-time on my PhD studies in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics&quot;&gt;bioinformatics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_biology&quot;&gt;systems biology&lt;/a&gt;. I almost exclusively work &lt;em&gt;in silico&lt;/em&gt; and have come to sire many of those monstrous, ugly and sad pieces of software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off I think you are making a small but important mistake in framing your question. You say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would instead suggest &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Why do software written by talented scientists end up being&#xA;  horrible?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is subtle but essential for the rest of my answer. After all it's not like scientists gather around a table and &lt;em&gt;decide&lt;/em&gt; to write horrible software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Many scientists who write code are not educated to write software&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a serious difference between knowing how to &lt;em&gt;code&lt;/em&gt; versus knowing how to &lt;em&gt;write software&lt;/em&gt;. I did almost as many courses in the CS dept as I did in maths, during my undergrad and masters, so I felt pretty confident with my programming skills. That is until I was faced with questions like packaging, dependency management, lifecycles, licensing etc. None of these were remotely within the curriculum during my studies. I don't know if those who do CS as undergrads learn these concepts, but I sure as hell never needed to until I all of a sudden had to know them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bosses/supervisors of many scientists who write code are not educated on writing software&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only do you need to learn a bunch of new stuff, but imagine you cannot explain why that is important for you to learn that stuff to your boss. I have this issue pretty often, as writing code is often held comparable to doing labwork at our department. People think writing code just happens on its own and preferably quickly. I have often had discussions with colleagues where they jokingly mentioned that all they want to hear from me is &quot;computer say yes/no?&quot; How long something new might take is very often underrated, having to write tests continuously is typically seen as a waste of time. Which brings me to my next point....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Good software is not valued in academia, at least not in the same way as industry&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The measure of competency in academia is publications, and the form of currency is citations. You are constantly in a form of competition to come up with something new and useful, and only the first one out there will get the prize. Clones do not exist or survive particularly long in academia. In contrast, in industry you can win market shares by better advertising, cooler GUI or lower price. In academia, if some method is already published, you need to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you have already published a method then additional features, clean-up, optimization etc of that proof-of-principle software is often not good enough to warrant a new publication, which practically means that you have wasted months of work for nothing. Sad but true... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Expectations change, you got to expect the unexpected&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be a small point but I can't stress it enough as it has come to bite me in the back over and over again. You simply don't get proper specifications for a new project. They are often either all too vague, or way too strict (unrealistically so). At times, something that wasn't &lt;strong&gt;ever&lt;/strong&gt; mentioned turns out to be implicitly expected. Then to add insult to injury the specifications change based on a new data format, some other database, new features or just that other cool thing the boss was thinking about when he was away on a conference... You write and rewrite solutions to the same problem, it becomes a clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;You typically don't get the support you need&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few programming PhD students at my dept we try to improve ourselves by keeping up to date with the trends. Learning best practises for instance via SO. But more often than not when you want to try something new you see hinders; either the IT dept thinks you are too much of a nuisance, or the boss thinks you are slacking off, or the people you are asking help from think that you don't know sh*t and you are wasting &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; time. For instance it's taken me several months of negotiations and mailing back and forth in order to be able to access our version control server from home. Eventually it just works faster to skip certain best practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The newest coolest CS trends aren't always well documented for people who are not experts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to get my hands dirty with several &quot;new&quot; technologies, which often have some steep learning curve. Sometimes it's really not worth the effort. Best example I have is Maven. As I often work in Java, I thought I should use modern tools for packaging and dependency management. But my conclusion, after having battled with it for so long, is @%&amp;amp;$ it! I really don't have the energy or time to go through that mess of a documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bottomline&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After giving myself grief over these in the past years, I came up with the following conclusion which gave me some inner peace: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I am not a software developer. I am neither educated nor paid to write software. Writing software is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; my job; learning to solve certain problems &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this answer gives you some insights as to why software written by scientists (exceptionally talented or otherwise) often don't live up to the standards established by software developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T10:09:54.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17923" CreationDate="2014-03-08T13:27:56.413" Score="11" ViewCount="12747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to various US Pure Mathematics PhD programs for entry this fall and the responses from my top preferences were not favorable, though some of my lower preferences were. I also have an offer to do &quot;Part III&quot; at the University of Cambridge, which is a 1 year masters degree via coursework (although there is an essay component worth about 1/6th of the assessment). I'm considering the option of accepting this, and then re-applying to the US schools with the hope that my application has improved and I get accepted into one of my higher preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: How do US Mathematics departments view the Part III&#xA;  program, and if I do it then will it have a good/bad/no effect on my&#xA;  subsequent application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to consider: The Part III program is intended as preparation for a PhD degree, unlike many Masters degrees that are intended as terminal degrees. Is this well known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An essay is part of the course - it usually involves giving a unified exposition of several recent papers on a certain topic. Though the content of the essay can be quite advanced, it often does not contain much original research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The course is from October '14  to June '15, while applications to US schools are due around December '14. This means I will not have had enough contact with Cambridge faculty to get a letter of reference from them. The marks for all the subjects taken are released around June '15, so I won't be able to include any of those marks in my application either. However in the time between now and October I will continue work with my undergraduate supervisor, which should improve my main letter of reference at least a little. My field is algebraic geometry, and my supervisor has said that it would be better for me to go through Hartshorne in the next ~6 months rather than forcing myself to research just yet. So I won't be getting any original research done by the time I apply again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7665" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T18:27:29.770" Title="Benefits of doing Part III at Cambridge (Pure Math) for US PhD applications" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2014-03-08T14:27:48.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Part III is quite common amongst US students nowadays, and is thus well-known to graduate admissions committees.  Probably the effect on your application will be good, since if nothing else it shows you are serious about studying mathematics; a school can also reasonably expect you to be considerably better prepared coming after a year at Part III than when you finished your BA.  So if one of your issues was a weak curriculum as a BA student (as opposed to poor grades or weak letters), then Part III could help quite a bit.  On the other hand, I wouldn't count on a dramatic change in your graduate school admissions, in part because as you note, you won't have your grades or a strong recommendation from Part III in hand when you apply for graduate schools the next time around. I wouldn't worry about the fact that Part III is not research based; obviously doing research before starting graduate school is great, but most graduate schools in the US are not really expecting you to have done much in the way of it beforehand, or to be even close to ready to start when you enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if money is no object, then Part III is probably as good as anything else you might do for having a strong graduate application in the coming cycle.  &lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I should probably also say that a matter of substance (as opposed to application strategy), Part III is probably on average better than spending a year as a grad student at a random respectable grad program in the US, since it will bring you into contact with a wide variety of other students and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think you should weigh that next to the possibility of starting graduate school at one of your lower preferences, and then trying to transfer after a year, or when you get a master's degree.  There's no guarantee this will work, but the same can be said of Part III.  If you've been offered funded admission at a respectable school in the US, and would have to pay your own way at Part III, I would look hard at whether you think it's worth the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I wouldn't count on the &quot;glamour&quot; of Cambridge itself to have a strong effect.  I honestly don't know how selective Part III is (maybe someone who knows can comment.), so I wouldn't rely on assuming that admissions committees will consider it as such.  There's some psychological &quot;band-wagon&quot; effect where getting one prestigious position reinforces getting others, but it won't work if the substance isn't there. Getting a BA from Harvard or MIT is helpful for getting into graduate school (if you have a strong record) because an admissions committee is more confident that getting an A in math class at Harvard really means something, and that a professor at Harvard has a lot of experience with talented undergraduates and thus can speak with some certainty about what it takes to succeed in graduate school.  So, if you went to Part III, got good scores on your exams and got a strong recommendation from a professor there, that could strengthen your application a lot as a &quot;second opinion&quot; reinforcing the recommendations and grades you have from your BA.  However, as discussed, those would only be available for the fall 2016 admission cycle, not 2015.  One possibility is to see about accepting one of your safety schools with a deferment to go to Cambridge, going to Part II in 2014-5, going to the safety school in 2015 and applying for transfer in 2016 or 2017 if you're unhappy there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One piece of information we're lacking is what your &quot;lower preferences&quot; are (don't put too much stock in USNW rankings, but they help to be concrete in a discussion like this).  It makes a big difference whether we're talking about a school in the rank ~25 (like UCSD), ~50 (like UVA) or ~100 (for example, South Carolina).  In the former case, I'd say it's a waste of time to try to try to move up unless you go and are miserable, whereas in the latter it makes a certain kind of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LATER EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Incidentally, yes, given that your undergraduate grades are already &quot;baked in,&quot; the main things you can still hope to change are your letters, and also your GRE scores if those were bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T15:05:29.393" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T15:05:29.393" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2014-03-08T15:29:00.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part III is pretty widely known, including in the US. Many of my fellow students who sought PhD positions there were successful; though, of course, they were students with strong academic records to begin with. Something to keep in mind, though, is that not only will you not have had sufficient faculty contact to get a proper reference by the American application deadline, and not only won't you have any results by then: you won't have even a record of your ongoing classes. There's no official course registration, and you only declare your exams in the spring. Until then, the academic section of your transcript is literally blank. So, unless you're prepared to wait an extra year to apply for your PhD, the only boost Part III can give your December applications is on its reputation alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: the essay is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mandatory, though it is highly recommended. In addition to giving you the closest faculty contact you're likely to have - thus making a reference letter possible - and being genuinely good practice at synthesizing complex research, the Part III courses are brutal. Being able to replace one of them with the essay is a gift. Also on the topic of reference letters: an academic reference commenting on your coursework as a whole is usually obtained from your Director of Studies (a fellow at your college) rather than from any particular course instructor you had. But there's no rule or anything, so if you were to get to know of your instructors and did well on the exam, there's nothing stopping you from getting a letter if he or she is willing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of primary research is a bit of a treat, to be honest. If you're doing a PhD in mathematics or theoretical physics, you will generally need to take some advanced courses before your research can really get off the ground. Being able to tackle some of those courses with intense focus for a year is a nice alternative to trying to get through them while also trying to justify your research pay, taking qualifying exams, and juggling TA duties. So, yes, you are paying your own way (unless you manage to get a scholarship) but, in fairness, you aren't really doing anything that would justify anyone paying you to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12843" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T15:29:00.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17918" CreationDate="2014-03-08T16:11:13.113" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have faced with &lt;em&gt;all of the above situations&lt;/em&gt; this semester alone! I teach two different sections spread over all 5 days of the week. How do I ensure heterogeneity of examinations? By administering different versions (different questions) of the examination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throw into this mix, my need to &quot;accommodate&quot; students with &quot;needs&quot; and different time frames that they require. The only way I managed this was have different versions of the exam and had to invigilate these examinations myself (no help from uni) at different times of the week and well into 6pm on a Friday. I ended up having 5 different versions with varying number if questions but &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; the same difficulty level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, some students cribbed at the end of the day about them not solving the same problem set as their peers but I had to (politely) ask them to deal with it. If they are thrust into a real world situation, outside the safe confines of a university setting, they may have to face non-homogeneous conditions on a regular basis with difficult time lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I self-tested these different versions and all of them took the same amount of time withing +/- 5 minutes for me. Yes, perhaps not the best metric but fair enough, I supposed. However, a lot of teaching may be subjective. You can try to use a grading rubric that you publish after the examination so that the students feel that it was a fair metric/yard-stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was for a first year engineering class on &lt;strong&gt;Engineering Mechanics&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T16:11:13.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-08T16:37:11.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great discussion, and I have thought the same many times. There is another kind of software as well, which isn't really mentioned above - programs developed within academia which aren't part of a research project. There are lots of software development projects that are more focused on logistics, teaching etc (clickers, video capturing, intranets, library software etc). Sometimes these are handled professionally and become collaborative projects etc, but very often they're the result of someone having some graduate assistants that know a bit of programming, who code up something that perhaps works - but of course has no documentation, testing, version control, requirements documentation etc - and when they graduate and move on, good luck for anyone who wants to try to maintain it... Part of this is also the &quot;false economy&quot; of academia, where certain kinds of labor are extremely cheap/free (for the people who benefit from it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am personally probably responsible for some crappy software as well, as a PhD student in computer-supported learning. I'm hopefully a bit more aware of best practices, version control etc than many, but I've never had any professional training, and what's perhaps more important, I've never been part of a community of practice, mentored by better researchers etc. In education, it's in a way even more difficult, because there are very few technically inclined students/professors. I of course use SO, mailing lists etc very extensively, but I am sure my code could be massively improved if I had a senior colleague down the hallway who was reviewing my code and providing feedback, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, one of the comments above made me think of this -- it's quite common for universities to have statistical consultants that are to some extent available to researchers. (We have someone in our library whom we can access for free for one or two hours, and then we have to pay a fee, but I know a lot of people take advantage of it, and found it very helpfull sitting down with them and going through their research design, their assumptions, the statistical design etc). It would be an interesting concept to have a &quot;software development consultant&quot; (not sure about the title), who would basically be a professional code reviewer... But could also extend to help people think through their needs, figure out useful frameworks or libraries, navigate version control, open source licenses etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, changing the incentive system to rewarding releasing (or improving upon!) high quality code, is incredibly important, but very difficult. I think Mozilla's &lt;a href=&quot;http://mozillascience.org/code-review-for-science-what-we-learned/&quot;&gt;Academic Code Review&lt;/a&gt; exercise is a really interesting experiment in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to writing Python scripts to parse MOOC clicklogs :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T16:37:11.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17918" CreationDate="2014-03-08T16:56:55.057" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various ways of preventing students from showing up on the wrong day or showing up more than once. The first step would just be to tell them straightforwardly that it's not allowed. You could also assign seats for the exam. Assigning seats has the added benefit of reducing opportunities for copying from a neighbor's paper; they can't just choose to sit next to a friend or sit next to someone they know is doing much better in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I teach a writing course [...] The classes are large, and the school offers me no assistance in managing the exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The enrollment of writing classes taught by a single instructor is usually limited because it's not practical for the instructor to grade large amounts of written work from a large number of students. At some schools, writing classes are large, but there are TAs who read papers. If you're a single instructor teaching a writing class to a large number of students, then that's a problem in and of itself; these issues with exam arrangements would then be a symptom of the more general problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T17:15:31.410" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T17:15:31.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17934" CreationDate="2014-03-08T18:45:34.560" Score="10" ViewCount="1438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working in the &quot;private sector&quot; since my late teens. I've gathered good web-development experience to be able to find work quite easily thankfully. I was never really interested in getting a degree, I only have a high-school diploma. I was passionate enough to study for myself and learn new things from colleagues and friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Web-development is still my passion, however recently I've been thinking about the actual work that I've been producing over the years for the companies I've worked for. It seems as though that even if the work is fun and challenging, I still get very little recognition for it: once the work is produced, my name is barely ever mentioned. I've been asking myself if all these things I'm building are really going to change someone's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I look at academia and research. Here people are doing things they actually love and study those subjects deeply with passion and generate new knowledge to help others within a specific field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody ever switched from an industry job to an academic job? I'm wondering if it's possible to do research without a degree. What suggestions might you have for someone in my situation that wants to get a glimpse of the life of an academic where you can build and study something you actually love and not always do what &quot;the company&quot; wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T03:11:55.133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T03:11:55.133" Title="How can I transition from industry to academia without having a college degree?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2014-03-08T18:53:45.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is just not true that your problems always return back to you wherever you go. I have seen people who feel lots better after they have changed the position. For instance, if the laboratory used to focus on exhausted topic or gets much less funding than before, unable to continue existing projects, or the new supervisor is trying to push some weird concepts, it may be very difficult climate that is not your fault at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the question looks at least you are self-critical enough. Try to be careful at the new job, remember lessons you think you have learned and do not repeat the mistakes. Take this into consideration and &lt;strong&gt;go&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T18:53:45.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17918" CreationDate="2014-03-08T20:34:27.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I have no idea what exams for writing courses even look like, so this is a general answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; talk to each other and thus information about the contents of the first exam is going to leak, no matter what you do. Therefore your goal should be that the information about the content of the first exam does not give any advantages on the second exam (keeping both exams at the same difficulty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are basically two ways to achieve this (and you do not need to consistently follow one throughout the exam):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make information that could be obtained from the first exam available to everybody beforehand, e.g., clearly state that there will be a question of a given type.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make information that could be obtained from the first exam useless in the second exam, e.g., by not asking a similar question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difficulty is now to recognise useful information. One pedantic example to illustrate this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose, there is a topic which is not central to your course and which is considered difficult or unfit for exams by your students to the extent that students have a good reason to assume that it is not relevant for the exam. If you (do not) ask a question about this topic in the first exam, students taking the second exam have a better estimate of the probability that you ask questions about this subject and thus have an advantage if you (do not) ask a question about it in the second exam – even if it is entirely different. So, if there is such a subject, you either have to announce beforehand that there will be a question about it in each (none) of the exams or you have to ask about it only in one of the exams. The latter case is however problematic considering the difficulty of the exams, unless you have two such topics at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further aspects to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another not so obvious information contained in the first exam is the general way you ask questions and what general aspects you consider important. Giving a sample test is a good way to provide this information beforehand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neither somebody who focusses on the questions of the first exam nor somebody who focusses on everything that was not asked in the first exam, should have an advantage. Thus some deviation from the rule of not repeating anything without announcing it is ok in my opinion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No matter what you do, somebody will complain about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some cases, you can compile a huge catalogue of potential exam questions beforehand (part of this can be the exercises to your course) and give them to your students sufficiently long before both exams. Announce that you will pick questions randomly from this catalogue for each exam (under the constraint of equally difficult exams) and do so. This is very fair, but a lot of work and if your catalogue is too small (which is unavoidable for some subjects), it encourages learning without understanding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T15:37:54.093" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T15:37:54.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17935" CreationDate="2014-03-08T21:19:45.837" Score="40" ViewCount="5556" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am preparing slides for a course (as I have been today, weekend be damned), aside from questions of pacing and exposition, I often find myself asking various questions &lt;strong&gt;about the layout of slides&lt;/strong&gt; such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good approach to take for titling slides?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include &quot;separation slides&quot; to chunk content?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the optimal amount of information per slide?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., &lt;code&gt;4/20&lt;/code&gt;) or just the current slide (e.g., &lt;code&gt;4&lt;/code&gt;)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all small questions but I think they add up to something non-trivial in the overall didactic potential of the slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my own opinions on these questions and I feel that I have a good intuitive sense of how to structure slides, but my hunches are just hunches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence this question is looking for either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pointers to scientific studies or other well-argued material on good slide design for teaching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First-hand answers to the above questions (and related ones) accompanied by solid argumentation/anecdotal experience (rather than just subjective preferences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for answers that specifically target teaching rather than research presentations. (For me, there is a significant difference.) I'm also looking for answers that target slide layout and design rather than talk structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And though I appreciate that the notion of good slide design varies between different subjects, I still think that there is a meaty intersection of good practices that one could follow across all disciplines. It is precisely this intersection that the question targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My students thank you in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11014/final-slide-when-teaching&quot;&gt;here's a nice slightly-related question on what to do with the last slide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T16:28:34.980" Title="Good slide design for teaching?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17928" CreationDate="2014-03-08T21:42:07.497" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If recognition is your key desire, academia will only be marginally better for you than your current situation. Just because your name is on a paper, doesn't mean anyone is going to care about your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like there's a couple of threads in your question outside of recognition though. I'll make some comments where I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To transition into academia and start working on your own ideas you'll need to probably start a degree program. Masters and PhD programs, more than anything, are training programs on &quot;how to work on stuff&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems obvious right now that you have hundreds of ideas and the skills to pursue them -- but the academic context is a bit different. Research typically fits into a larger context than a single project, and you'll need to  be able to sell your ideas to people who are experts in the area; most research projects that aren't 'consumer' oriented produce papers, not projects, so you'll need to learn how to write papers. The requirement for evidence is (or at least ought to be) high, which means that you'll need to learn what kind of evidence you have for your hypothesis, how to gather it, how to present it. All of this, the politics, the nitty-gritty of putting together a paper, is what you ought to get from a degree program. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15094/1165&quot;&gt;You can try to do some of this on your own&lt;/a&gt; to be sure, but it's not an easy ride.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get a feeling for what working in academia is like, without getting the degree, I'd seriously look into the possibility of becoming a programmer for a university. This helps you get a feel for what the work, environment, people are like. It could be that if you find the right project, your influence will be sufficient that you can get the recognition you want, without having to get the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reading your question, I get the feeling of a grass-is-greener illusion. One thing that might be worth considering is: How much of the problem just your job? Could you find work at another company, in another niche, doing some other kind of programming that could be better for you? I feel like you could get 99% of your desired outcome not from academia, but from a job change. Maybe you need to go deeper into the stack; work with a company that builds the web technology you use. Maybe you need to go higher in the stack; start building client applications to the web technology you use. Maybe you need to get away from the web... perhaps start looking at transitioning into games, or hardware, or.... the list is endless. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T15:14:02.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-08T21:48:34.647" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning I watched a video about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html&quot;&gt;how powerpoint is killing our ability to teach properly&lt;/a&gt;. It can be seen as a lesson in bad slide design. One key message is &lt;em&gt;if you are reading your slides to the students, you are not teaching.&lt;/em&gt; Ultimately, slides should just contain key information, and you should tell the rest of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding some of the other points: &#xA;animation of text should be left to Walt Disney;  there should be one idea per slide (slides are free!);  separation slides are a good idea to let the listener know when topics have finished, which is especially helpful if the separation slides are blank (or even black!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less is more. If you want to give the students more, prepare a handout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T21:48:34.647" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-08T23:06:55.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @David Clarke and I think the thing that will be most beneficial, no matter how your slide show is arranged, is making your slides available ahead of time.  There's 2 reasons I think this is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If I have the slides before class I have a more clear picture of where we are going than that one phrase about today in the syllabus does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When I don't have to worry about trying to write or type every word on your slide it's easier for me to be able to listen to what you are actually saying and ask questions without being scared I'll run out of time to write everything down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T23:06:55.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-08T23:30:06.750" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, I want to share my experience from students' point of view. I am assuming that you somehow make your slides available for students as study material. So if that is the case, the amount of information you put on the slides becomes a crucial trade-off. And we have to accept that some students who are not paying much attention during the lecture use those slides to learn the subject. Given that, I like the slides that somehow gives me a good idea about the topic, independent from the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that you should keep the amount of text on the slides at a minimum level, but to increase the teaching strength of your slides, you can put as many references to other course material or online sources. So that your slides are actually helpful outside of your lecture, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the layout(again from a students' perspective); &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bullets should be OK to support the flow of ideas, but definitely no&#xA;animations for bullets. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, I am not against animations but hey should be subtle and &#xA;not for text. Maybe you need to explain something on a figure, and a &#xA;gentle animation helps students to better see what is actually&lt;br&gt;&#xA;changing from the previous figure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would support titling the slides, as it helps students to&#xA;understand what you are talking about at that moment, in a highly&#xA;unlikely event of distraction :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Separation slides are also helpful for students to see what main&#xA;topics in the lecture are and how they are separated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Slide numbers, well I do not think it matters much, but it doesn't&#xA;hurt to put a page number like &quot;4/20&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are what I think about an ideal lecture slides. And for the third time this is a perspective from a student, and somewhat my personal preference, but I used to discuss these with my peers a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12838" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T23:30:06.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:00:52.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think that there is any standard policy for treating these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, remember that no matter what, all the editors and reviewers are humans like everybody, and they do know it when someone does it, and usually they are from the same branch and meet the authors at conferences etc. And no matter what, some information always leaks out, and such a strong negative information seems to leak out faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the ethics in such a way is seen as a strongly negative thing by many people, and they will likely treat you accordingly, while never saying that they know it. You probably can't speak about a career suicide, but think of it that way a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However (to make the post less negative and more fair): As the other answers say, we all do make mistakes, and others know this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should you do?&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing probably. Especially if one of the journals was a fake journal, I would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T00:00:52.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17918" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:17:49.567" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many students regularly attend my lectures during sections that they did not register for, so I will not easily recognize who belongs in which time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is handled as follows at my university:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students entering the exam room go to the exam proctor before they sit down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exam proctor has a list of students enrolled in the class&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student shows a photo ID to the proctor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proctor notes on the list that the student attended the exam on that date, gives the student an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61YOHQPHG-L._SL1500_.jpg&quot;&gt;exam book&lt;/a&gt;, and tells him where to sit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, students can attend only one exam (and if you want, you can enforce that they attend the section they're assigned to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I build multiple tests, e.g. &quot;A&quot;, &quot;B&quot;, &quot;C&quot;, etc., which are of similar difficulty, have the same types of problems, but different subjects. &quot;A&quot; is given to one section, &quot;B&quot; to another, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is OK, although if students aren't sure what types of problems you're going to give they'll still gain an unfair advantage if they hear about the exam from earlier sections. However, you can avoid this if you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Provided a sample test that students can print and practice with and discuss with me in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving plenty of sample exams ensures that students thoroughly understand the type of questions to expect. Then, if each section is given a different exams of the same type, but different problems, there is no advantage to hearing about the &quot;type&quot; of the exam from earlier sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can avoid having to build many exams by giving &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; about 80% of the exam &quot;content&quot; ahead of time. Then vary the remaining 20% between sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a writing exam where students have to read some text and write an essay in response to a &quot;prompt&quot;: give everyone the text ahead of time, then give every section a different prompt to respond to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You can do something similar in problem-set type exams, such as those given in science and engineering, by giving everyone the problem scenarios ahead of time and then asking each section to solve something different about the scenario.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the exam type, it may or may not be possible to design an exam of this type. However, if it is possible, it certainly reduces the likelihood that students will gain an advantage from hearing about an earlier section's exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T01:30:46.400" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T01:30:46.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:28:02.433" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach mathematics, which is traditionally done using blackboards.  I try to design my slides to recreate the best features of blackboards, as far as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use LaTeX with beamer rather than Powerpoint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I make the slides appear bit by bit, not even a full bullet point at a time.  Each step in a calculation appears on its own, so I can talk about it before the next step appears.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have occasional animated diagrams, in contexts where they actually add something to the explanation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conventional wisdom says that you should have a small amount of information per slide.  I don't know if that is good advice for other subjects, but it is very bad for mathematics.  Traditionally you can use several large blackboards and thus have definitions, diagrams and all stages of a long calculation or proof visible at the same time.  It is much easier to get lost if you do not have all those things in front of you.  I spend a lot of time tweaking my slides to get as close to that ideal as possible.  Often I have to put a bar across the middle of the slide, with reminders from previous slides above, and new content below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see examples from a number of different courses at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neil-strickland.staff.shef.ac.uk/courses/&quot;&gt;http://neil-strickland.staff.shef.ac.uk/courses/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T01:28:02.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17945" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:33:16.980" Score="10" ViewCount="2533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a manuscript last year to an IEEE journal, and the paper was accepted for publication. I recently submitted a new manuscript to the same journal, but, this time, the paper was rejected, and I was told that I should submit to another journal since my paper was not within the journal's scope. The two papers both target similar applications. Furthermore, the second paper uses some work in the first paper, making substantial improvements at solving a much more difficult problem. Based on the reviewer's comments (and my own personal assessment), I do not believe that the work presented in the second paper was &quot;incremental&quot; in nature. Far from it. Two of the three reviewers gave positive reviews. The third reviewer, however, mentioned the &quot;outside of journal's scope&quot; issue and the associate editor and editor-in-chief both sided with the 3rd reviewer, and the paper was stopped dead in its tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm scratching my head trying to come to terms with how in the world my first paper could be accepted by this journal, but the second paper focused on the same application space and achieving substantial improvements on a much more difficult problem (backed up with measured results) could be rejected. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T20:06:27.253" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T20:06:27.253" Title="Why would a journal accept my previous paper for publication, but reject latest manuscript due to being &quot;outside of the journal's scope?&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17928" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:36:37.503" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Matthew, I get the feeling reading your answer that you don't have an extremely clear idea of what switching into academia would entail, and a pretty starry eyed view of what life in academia is actually like.  While it's true that at its best, being an academic lets you work on exactly what you want to, pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge.  But it's a long slog to get to that point, and even when you're there, there are a lot of other issues at play.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you're independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want, but for most of us, we need to have a job, and just like any other job, a lot of the parameters are dictated for us.  You also often have to get outside funding.  In both cases, it's true that you aren't literally assigned research projects from on high (though some days that would be a lot easier than coming up with them yourself), but you do have an eye constantly on impressing your colleagues (on various levels) who make or influence decisions about funding, promotion and hiring.  Not to mention that one often has teaching or service duties which really are assigned from on high (though admittedly, I think these still have a lot more autonomy than jobs in most fields would).  I'm sure you can find plenty of horror stories about how this can go awry just reading the archives on this site.  And that assumes you can get a job, which is far from assured (especially if you want to stay in Italy!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T01:36:37.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:49:32.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, the problem is, there are &quot;unfortunate&quot; times where I have to collaborate with other students. It then becomes a serious issue of ego clash, when my classmate wants an easy way out, while I want to be all out conqueror&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been in both sides of this situation. I believe that the seriousness of the member depends on how useful or interesting they find the course or their personality (apathetic or enthusiastic). Everybody does not have to share your passion for a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in an engineering program, there may be some business courses. People who simply want to be well-rounded or want to create their own company might be highly interested in those courses, which is fine. Then, some members might only be interested in technical courses. These guys might know the importance of business, but might not find it interesting. Also, there may be some courses which are truly fluff or of little value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can justify the need for a course, then you can try to convince the others. If you cannot justify it, then perhaps you need to rethink why you took the course. If some are not interested in the course, then you don't have to penalize them for it. Try to see where they can be of help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you gauge the interest levels of the members in the beginning itself and agree upon the bare minimum effort (within reason) that is expected of each member. If you like the course far more than the others, then you can put the extra effort if need be. But, make it clear that the scores should be distributed according to the work and results. Also, I suggest that you don't try to be perfect all the time. When your income is in millions, why bother about tracking the pennies ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11743" LastEditorUserId="24106" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T13:40:34.523" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T13:40:34.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17942" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:56:42.873" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Four ideas: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was really out of scope last time, but they either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;didn't notice and mistakenly accepted it, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;didn't have enough in-scope papers to fill the issue, so they accepted yours even though it was slightly out of scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They made a mistake and your new paper is actually in-scope. However, you won't win any friends or improve your chances by trying to convince them of this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal has changed scope slightly in the last year, or is trying to change scope slightly now, or different editors have different ideas of what the scope is (as suggested by NateEldredge)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was some small detail about the first paper that made it in-scope which the second paper lacks, which we couldn't possibly identify for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T06:06:18.223" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T06:06:18.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T02:20:40.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you need to use slides? They change the classroom dynamic in a subtle but very important way, making the students look at the slides rather than at you. This is subjective, but none of my best professors used slides, except to show pictures. I strongly recommend using the board whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T02:20:40.990" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17865" CreationDate="2014-03-09T02:22:27.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other students may not have the kind of free extra time you have. You need to, as a group, do what you are assigned to do, and it is up to you to figure out what that means, but creating extra work for others is certainly not the way to go. It is good that you have ambition to learn above and beyond, but you do that on your own time. You do not force your group mates to do this, because they may have other priorities (quite possibly including doing the same thing for another class!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T02:22:27.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T03:31:03.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also teach math, as Neil Strickland said he does.  I use technology in my classrooms daily -- these days, an Android tablet with screen mirrored to a projector via a Miracast device (similar to an iPad with AppleTV/Airplay).  All that said, I consider PowerPoint and its ilk to be bad use of the technology for everyday classroom purposes.  I use the tablet in order to have quick and easy access to software for graphing or other visual demonstrations.  For example, in a geometry class, I use something like the Geogebra app to show constructions and other highly visual content.  But for the basic display of classroom notes, I use the Lecture Notes app for Android to show my handwritten notes, written with a stylus on the tablet screen, like a whiteboard replacement.  This addresses Neil's concern about possibly needing to keep whole boards of definitions showing: the app saves the whole, virtually unbounded sequence of pages of notes, so if I need to refer back to a definition, I just scroll back.  I rarely if ever use slides in a class.  Well, OK, on the first day of class, I put all of the syllabus and other administrative garbage that I have to recite onto slides, because I think my hand would fall asleep having to write it all over and over again for each class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think there are times and places when slides are appropriate.  If time is at a premium, such as in a 20-minute research presentation, I will use slides to keep things efficient and on track, but I will also always have the software for handwritten notes available in case audience questions take me in a direction not represented in the slides.  I am also a longtime TeX/LaTeX user, so these days when I make slides, I usually use HTML-based slides with MathJax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12863" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T03:31:03.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T03:46:37.750" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the law could make better use of formal logic. I've been accepted into a good law school. After I graduate, I'd like to use part of my career to explore ways lawyers and the law could practicably use logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a number of warrants, I believe that completing a graduate degree in logic (either a master of mathematics, or a master of philosophy) would help me accomplish that. That said, the university that operates the law school I plan to attend doesn't offer many logic courses. I have a school in mind whose math and philosophy departments teach a great deal of logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my circumstances are such that I'd need to complete my studies in logic while studying law. Preferably, I'd study logic during the summer terms and law during the other two terms. Although, many instructors don't work full-time during the summer, which could make that plan less feasible. Alternatively, I've considered completing the course work, or pre-studying, during the summer months, then rendering the course work and completing the exams during the regular terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum: I plan to study law away from the school where I'd like to study logic, so I could go to the school where I'll study logic during the summer terms, and only occasionally during the fall and winter terms. Thinking in or out of the box, what could I do to make this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="9263" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T04:26:47.383" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T19:21:10.107" Title="In what circumstances do departments permit graduate students to complete their program off campus?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T06:27:33.200" Score="6" ViewCount="1240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three close friends who are ambitious and young junior lecturers at universities in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore who are interested getting academic jobs in a top-tiered American university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How might they go about achieving this? What can they do in the meantime to increase their chances, compared to academicians who are already based in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of them are American citizens, although one of them studied in the US and another in the UK. They all work in the humanities and social sciences. I know that entering the academic job market in the US can be expensive, with all the traveling. And my friends live more or less at the other end of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7478" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:57:53.230" Title="What should a faculty member outside of the US do to move to a top-tiered American university?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17951" CreationDate="2014-03-09T06:27:33.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give some thoughts on my own question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreign lecturers in the US are common but from my anecdotal experience (I am not an academician) a lot of them began their academic careers in America, probably transferring from being a grad student there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For academicians who used to be based at universities outside of the US and Europe, my impression is that they were mid-career and already well-known and respected in their fields before they made the move. They were usually specifically recruited by the American university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having some sort of visiting professorship stint in the US and presenting work at conferences in the US might help with the exposure, I guess, but I am not sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7478" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T06:27:33.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T07:38:00.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to answer this without a lot of context--namely the content you will be presenting on the slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, your slides should enhance and accompany your teaching, rather than attempt to repeat it. The biggest mistake with slide-based presentations is to present the exact same content you are talking about. This leads to an extremely bored audience once they realize they can just read what you have on the slide and then ignore anything you are saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest two sources of inspiration for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first: Steve Jobs. While he wasn't necessarily teaching, he was communicating in his keynote speeches and a big part of his show was his slides. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=steve%20jobs%20presentation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google will show you a large collection of them.&lt;/a&gt; Again, he wasn't an educator, so don't literally go with what he did, but I do think his emphasis on 'one key point per slide' is a good baseline rule to go with. His slides were there to be a 'succinct conclusion' to what he was communicating verbally. You will also note that he pared down the content and rarely used bullets and other bits of noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second: Edward Tufte. I'd of course encourage you to read all of his works, as he's one of the 'grandfathers' of information design. But specifically, his booklet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within&lt;/a&gt; which mentions every graphic/info designer's favorite parable on the evils of powerpoint: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&amp;amp;topic_id=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How bad powerpoint design may be to blame for the &lt;em&gt;Columbia&lt;/em&gt; explosion.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions, albeit with a healthy dosage of opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are introducing bullets one-by-one it sounds like you are using your slides as verbatim cue cards. This doesn't serve the attention of your audience very well. It's also tedious and repetitive and ultimately you are just adding more monotony to the visuals rather than getting the audience to focus on what you are saying/teaching. So no, don't do that. It's a distraction, at best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you are communicating. If it's a diagram that can communicate more information via the animation, go for it. If the animation is merely for the sake of animating something, it is likely superfluous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chart junk&lt;/a&gt; (a term coined by the aforementioned Tufte. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a good approach to take for titling slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slide shouldn't have so much textual content that it needs it's own title. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I include &quot;separation slides&quot; to chunk content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what a separation slide is. But, in general, the majority of your content should be coming from you...not your slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the optimal amount of information per slide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No more than you need. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., 4/20) or just the current slide (e.g., 4)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason to number slides is to give your audience a countdown as to when it will be over. So, I'd say no, there's no need to number the slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last story: one memorable speaker I've seen is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maeda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;John Maeda&lt;/a&gt; He had given a presentation on digital design. When it got to the point of his talk where he wanted to communicate via slides, there was no powerpoint, but instead an overhead projector and a marker. He'd talk and draw. I found that to be one of the more compelling ways to communicate a point and, if you think back to grade school (for anyone over 40) that's how teaching was done. And didn't we all find the overhead projector and the teacher's marker an engaging way to communicate? It was immediate, personal, and directly connected to what was being said at that very minute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12869" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T11:53:54.577" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T11:53:54.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17951" CreationDate="2014-03-09T09:00:25.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As discussed here (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17694/is-it-more-difficult-to-score-a-tenure-track-position-in-the-us-when-applying-fr&quot;&gt;Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside?&lt;/a&gt;), getting a US tenure track position from e.g., Thailand might be tricky. JeffE pointed out that it is not necessarily impossible, however, your friends would likely need to be on the top of their fields in that case. Your friend from Singapore seems to be a different case, as the universities in Singapore (at least NTU and NUS) have an &lt;strong&gt;excellent&lt;/strong&gt; reputation around here (something that can, unfortunately, not be said about universities in Thailand or Indonesia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, my tip is to &lt;strong&gt;try to get a postdoc position in the US&lt;/strong&gt; first. Postdocs are often reasonably easy to get into (at least in CS, can't really say for social sciences), and can act as a step ladder of sorts to faculty positions. Anyway, your friends need to be aware that the academic job market is no piece of cake in the US. Hence, no matter what they do, they need to expect that getting a professorship at a top university may simply not work out, so they should have a fallback plan to account for this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T09:00:25.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T11:17:53.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best advice I have read, maybe in the whole world:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/design/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/design/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have applied Garr's advice for over 7 years and it has always worked to the point businesses pay me to design, give presentations (and coach senior managers), so he knows what he is talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12875" LastEditorUserId="12875" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T11:54:47.477" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T11:54:47.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2014-03-09T11:25:10.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with one case of duplicate submission (simultaneously, to two reputable journals).  I know that one of the publishers banned the authors for five years from submitting to any of their journals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, that is an appropriate consequence.  After all, the authors gave their word to both journals that they had not simultaneously submitted the paper to another journal.  In reply to some of the other answers posted here, I would say that &lt;strong&gt;lying&lt;/strong&gt; is not the same thing as &lt;strong&gt;making a mistake&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T11:25:10.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-09T11:51:50.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that this was an math class, so &quot;phrasing it wrong&quot; really means &quot;failing to prove&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's something important to learn in a math class. If some of your students don't get it, it might be worth to spend half an hour of your next class to explain the context so that everyone gets it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think teachers way to often spend to much time on trying to teach techniques while not teaching fundamentals of their subjects like this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T11:51:50.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2014-03-09T11:54:50.767" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;After popular request, I'm posting this as an answer. Hopefully it's interesting to see a different example (or inspiration) of a successful researcher sharing how much rejection is part of academic life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The economist Nattavudh Powdthavee keeps an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powdthavee.co.uk/diary.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online paper diary&lt;/a&gt; that displays the warts and all rejection trail for many of his (very interesting) papers. He also wrote some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krannert.purdue.edu/faculty/knaknoi/otefa/OTEFA_Newsletter_June_2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;musings about his most rejected paper, now in the OTEFA Newsletter&#xA;from p.7&lt;/a&gt; - 14 times - but I'm sure many can beat this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="9117" LastEditDate="2015-01-01T13:35:27.370" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T13:35:27.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17942" CreationDate="2014-03-09T12:38:44.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question and most comments assume that the publication process is more rational than it really is. This happened to me very recently: journals A and B rejected my paper one after the other; in both cases the editor and/or referee said that I should submit it to journal C. So I did, and now journal C tells me (with reports from two referees) that my paper is interesting and technically correct,  but not a good fit for their journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T12:38:44.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17966" CreationDate="2014-03-09T12:45:38.047" Score="77" ViewCount="13352" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I reviewed the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5414/what-are-the-advantages-or-disadvantages-of-using-latex-for-writing-scientific-p&quot;&gt;What are the advantages or disadvantages of using LaTeX for writing scientific publications?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; question on this forum and am sitting on the fence at the moment whether or not to use LaTeX to write up my masters Thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the feeling that it is best suited for Scientific work but my MLitt is in History. I have searched my university website about LaTeX and most results come back from the maths department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a part-time research student so my thesis with be approx. 50,000 words. At the moment I am using Libreoffice (I'm a Linux user -Ubuntu distro) to write up each chapter as a separate document which I was going to bring into a master theses document. I am using Mendeley to manage all my footnotes and bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be meeting my supervisor over the next couple of weeks and would like to discuss the matter with him as to if I should/can use LaTeX. I'm sure how familiarity or usage of LaTeX within the History department will impact on my decision but would also like to prepare my thesis in the best possible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edit 10/04/14: After a meeting with my Supervisor it appear that the History department has no preference on software for writing the thesis. Only requirement is that final thesis before defence is printed in ring-bound cover and the (hopefully!) accepted thesis is a hardback bound copy. My last written piece to my supervisor was done in LaTeX, using Texmaker on Ubuntu then exported to pdf, and other than some tweaking we need to do to the citation styling he was quite happy with the output. His advise was to use whatever software I was comfortable with (although he had never heard of LaTeX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be grateful for answers from people who have used LaTeX in the Humanities area so as to be best prepared for my own decision on whether or not I would like to use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Edit 10/03/2014) Just based on some of the answers, especially in&#xA;  relation to the learning curve with LaTeX, here is some more info that&#xA;  may be useful. Probably about 95% of my thesis will be text but I&#xA;  shall also need to insert some images (maps and photos) and will&#xA;  probably be entering some tables with stats. As stated above I use&#xA;  Mendeley for my refernece manager and have read some blogs where this&#xA;  is compatible with LaTeX so I think I would continue to us it if I go&#xA;  the LaTeX route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T11:11:33.827" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T21:26:47.863" Title="Should I learn to use LaTeX to write up a History Masters Thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;latex&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="23" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:08:23.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely your advisor has never heard of LaTeX, so don't expect too much from discussing it with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTeX has a fairly steep learning curve but it is good for working with references and &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; for working with math.  Since you don't need the latter at all, it may not be worth the effort for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T13:08:23.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:08:47.123" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm sure how familiarity or usage of LaTeX within the History department will impact on my decision but would also like to prepare my thesis in the best possible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that it should impact your decision strongly. You should prefer a tool that is used by your colleagues and supervisor to one that is slightly better intrinsically. They are the people who know what you need to do, and how to accomplish it with the tools they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer LaTeX to LibreOffice, but I would guess that the combination of LibreOffice and Mendeley have all the features you need. (One in particular that I'm going to call out is change-tracking. &lt;em&gt;Enable it as soon as you start, or you'll wish you had before long&lt;/em&gt;.) But the advantage of knowing your tool and having colleagues who know your tool outweigh most of LaTeX's advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T13:08:47.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:09:34.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question with a clear yes or no would be to oversimplify things. LaTeX is used for much more than just mathematics so I would not hesitate from that point of view. Learning something new is always useful so again, no argument there. What you need to ask yourself is if you are interested in learning LaTeX. this may depend on whether or not there are others using it in your neighbourhood. Being completely alone is tougher than having some other persons with whom to work when learning. Another question is to what extent LaTeX is used in your field for journal publications etc. So, try to assess how much use you will have in your field from learning it. Since LaTeX can be used for writing papers, books and reports as well as for making presentations (a la PowerPoint) and posters, it includes bibliography handling, it is a very useful tool for any field for scientific writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T15:06:37.160" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T15:06:37.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:49:58.587" Score="4" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us consider a quiz question whose answer is a proof. For instance, a question in mathematics, such as &lt;em&gt;prove that for every natural number $n$ the quantity $n^3-n$ is even&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How could such a question be implemented in a computer interface so that the computer can check the proof for correctness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple, yet unreasonable way would be to have a multiple choice format for the question, where every choice was one way of proving the relationship, but I guess the shortcomings of this are obvious...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-03-09T19:45:44.977" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T01:17:10.023" Title="How can a proof question be asked online?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T14:33:50.733" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing up a PhD in philosophy that I've written in LaTeX. Here's some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure your advisor is ok with leaving you comments in pdf. I suspect he or she will not understand the question and will not be able to give you any feedback unless you submit chapters in word format. This is a deal breaker. Don't make any more problems communicating with your advisor than absolutely necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lots of academic journals in the humanities still don't accept submissions in pdf or latex source form. If you are planning on submitting your stuff to a journal, you might save yourself time writing in word format.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are some tools available to convert latex to rtf, html and other tools. texht is the best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do decide to go LaTeX, don't get lost in the minutiae of learning how to tweak everything. It's easy to lose lots of time learning new packages and stuff when you should be writing, writing, writing. Use the wikibooks latex guide as your quick start guide when you need to learn how to do something fast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Especially if you're on Ubuntu, don't get the LaTeX distributed through Canonical's repositories. It's usually out of date (haven't checked in a while). Just go on and get the vanilla TexLive 2013 distribution from CTAN.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tex.SE site is really, really good. Like ridiculously helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are familiar with version control programs like git, mercurial, or svn you can actually keep a very precise idea of exactly how your thesis has grown over time. You can roll back changes, etc. This is kind of advanced stuff for LaTeX, so I wouldn't spend like a lot of time learning this stuff if you aren't already familiar with it, but if you are, it can be really helpful. EDIT:  Per @henry's comment below, see the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guide&lt;/a&gt; by Roger Dudler to get started with git.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2018-01-22T14:17:46.740" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T14:17:46.740" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T14:46:06.630" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my husband did his master's, he used LaTeX to write his thesis even though his supervisor preferred Word and everyone else in his lab used Word.  He encountered some pros and cons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pros of using LaTeX:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word gets very slow and buggy once your documents are past a certain length, say forty or fifty pages.  One of my husband's friends spent a day renumbering all of the figures in his thesis after the numbers mysteriously disappeared.  I'm not sure if this issue exists with LibreOffice, but it may.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mentioned breaking your thesis into smaller documents and combining them later.  This is easily and commonly done with LaTeX; &lt;s&gt;it would be considerably harder with LibreOffice&lt;/s&gt;. [Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17961/should-i-learn-to-use-latex-to-write-up-a-history-masters-thesis#comment36232_17967&quot;&gt;derobert&lt;/a&gt; pointed out that LibreOffice supports this through a &quot;master document&quot; feature.  I wasn't familiar with it.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's much easier to change the formatting of the document at the last minute if you discover that, e.g., your margins don't match your university's specifications or your references are formatted incorrectly.  It's also easier to keep the formatting consistent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The results are more aesthetically pleasing, if you care about things like ligatures and kerning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cons of using LaTeX:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX has a much steeper learning curve, as others have mentioned.  If you don't need to use it after you're done your thesis, it may not be worth the time investment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX forces a slightly different editing workflow since you can't turn on Track Changes.  Your supervisor will have to mark up the PDFs you produce or add comments to the tex file itself.  This may make your supervisor less happy about your choice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation: use LaTeX to write up something short that you need to write anyway to see how it works.  Then play around with some of the features you'll need for a thesis: add a footnote, a reference, or a figure.  Try the \include command, too.  That should give you a sense of whether it's something you want to continue with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user6782" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T15:38:43.100" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17981" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:01:57.813" Score="19" ViewCount="6127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been offered an academic position, and am now in the fortunate, but unfamiliar position of negotiating the offer.  I've seen a few blogs/comments/posts on this process.  However, I have no real idea how to evaluate the offer that's been made.  Coming from the position of a postdoc, the package seems impressive (given that, as a postdoc, my &quot;package&quot; consists of a very modest salary and health benefits).  However, I also realize the importance of maximizing (within reason) my initial offer, as this sets the baseline for, at least, the first few years of my faculty career and could provide support that would prove very important in the initial year or so while I'm trying to obtain grant funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm looking for two types of information.  First, what types of startup packages are standard for tenure-track assistant professors of Computer Science at a &lt;em&gt;public&lt;/em&gt; RU/VH (i.e. Research) university?  This is just to give me some point of comparison.  Second, what types of changes are reasonable to negotiate?  Can I ask for more summer salary support while still conveying to them my desire to obtain grant funding as quickly as possible?  The offer already includes a reduced teaching load for the first few years --- is it also reasonable to ask for an extra semester off prior to a tenure review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand these are fairly broad questions, but any input or suggestions would be very helpful.  I'm definitely interested in the job; I really liked the department and think it's a great opportunity.  I don't want to alienate anyone by pushing too hard, but at the same time, I want to make sure that I make every reasonable effort to maximize my chances for academic success, which includes maximizing my available resources by negotiating the best startup package I can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12886" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T21:28:58.507" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T21:28:58.507" Title="Evaluating and negotiating a start-up package" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:08:33.900" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some people, the crucial features of LaTeX are portability and permanence. With LibreOffice and (especially) MS Word, you are essentially at the mercy of whether developers decide to make all future versions backwards compatible (I have a couple of papers I wrote in grad school that are effectively inaccessible until I find a machine with MS Word 98 for Windows). In contrast, with LaTeX, the source file is just plain ASCII text, so it will be forever readable and editable in any computer, regardless of operating system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is not LaTeX-friendly, you can have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/829408/extract-text-from-tex-remove-latex-tags&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt;, the answers to which provide a number of tools to strip all LaTeX tags from a file, so you are left only with the plain text. From my experience, that is an acceptable compromise to most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T16:50:30.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:11:23.450" Score="0" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 23, I recently immigrated to USA (legally lol) and I'm loving the amount of opportunity here and I sure want to make good use of it. However, I'm confused about a major decision and need your opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated from India with a Bachelors in Engineering degree (Computer Science) from an okay-ish standard University. Lots of people I run into tell me that I should get into a Master's program, as it will not only give me a great education and name of a USA school on my resume but also teach me a lot about culture and life in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, I have my uncle who is a CEO and founder of a multinational and multi-million software development company, which is where I'm working right now. Since I live with him too, we talk a lot and he is my mentor. Despite his insanely busy schedule, he is always willing to talk to me and answer my questions and teach me stuff. Its good for me since my life goal is to start a software company myself in future and learning from him can be a game changer. Its bad for me because I'm kinda immature, and staying with him keeps me on a safe side (CEO's nephew).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what would you do if you were me? Sticking with mentor vs. getting a master's degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12885" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T17:37:24.757" Title="New to USA - Masters vs. Staying with my mentor" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17970" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:30:19.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you expect to get from a master's degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sounds of it, your career path certainly isn't going to be dependent on the credentials, but could perhaps be aided by a degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I could see you getting benefit out of a good Masters on a couple of counts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An introduction to where &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the state of the art&lt;/a&gt; lies. Since it sounds like you have an entrepreneurial bent, finding this state of the art could help point you in the direction of problems which have been solved, but not productized... could be a great start for a company. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another mentor. Having multiple people to bounce ideas off of is a valuable thing, especially when they have substantially different backgrounds. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A chance to exercise your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;grit&lt;/a&gt;, away from the perhaps comfortable situation you're in now. A masters will force you outside your comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The benefits you list are going to be there for sure; an immersion into American culture and life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, getting all of this doesn't &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; a Masters degree. You're already living in the USA, and you can try to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15094/1165&quot;&gt;stretch your research legs on your own&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T16:30:19.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:51:46.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of pointers to &lt;em&gt;scientific material&lt;/em&gt;, I am unaware of ones that are specifically focused on teaching. That being said, in terms of &lt;em&gt;slide design&lt;/em&gt; I do not share the opinion that teaching is fundamentally different than a research presentation - so good advice for research presentations in my opinion are easily portable to the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some work I am familiar with are from pioneers in data visualization research, Edward Tufte and Stephen Kosslyn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stephen Kosslyn's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195320697&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. I also see he has a newer book named &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=kosslynlab&amp;amp;pageid=icb.page250941&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Better Powerpoint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edward Tufte's essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The cognitive style of powerpoint: Pitching out corrupts within&lt;/a&gt;. Note this is also a chapter in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beautiful Evidence&lt;/a&gt;. (As already mentioned by DA.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tufte's work is more a diatribe about what is wrong with powerpoint. Kosslyn's writing style is to give autocratic advice in text and then have an appendix that points to scientific literature to back up his opinion. So even if you don't agree with Kosslyn's advice it is a good start to a literature review (which would mostly be oriented towards data-visualization and not necessarily experiments specific to slides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T16:51:46.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17942" CreationDate="2014-03-09T17:28:52.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There could be any number of reasons. Ultimately, since your two papers were different, it's perfectly possible that one was within scope and the other wasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your first paper was on the borderline of the journal's scope. Even if it wasn't, perhaps the extra analysis you had to do for the second paper was outside the journal's scope. For example, the people at CERN had to develop some serious computer systems to process all the data coming from the Large Hadron Collider. Those systems were completely necessary to solve the harder problems resulting from experiments with the LHC, compared to those done before the LHC was built. However, a detailed description of those computer systems would, I assume, be off-topic in a physics journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that there are some papers that everybody will agree are within the journal's scope, and there are many papers that everyone will agree are out of scope (e.g., political history in a biology journal). Everything else is subjective: some people will say it's in-scope, some people out. Some people will say it's in scope today but, if you ask them again in a year's time, they'll say it's out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T17:28:52.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17965" CreationDate="2014-03-09T17:29:36.820" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Checking proofs automatically from free-text is not something that is solved.&#xA;Even if you impose very strict rules on how to type stuff, you cannot expect a program to check it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is why: if your student were asked to type a computer program to solve a specific task, you cannot expect a computer program to check with 100% certainty that the algorithm is correct, in general. &#xA;This is not due to technical limitations; it has been proved that there is no computer program that can guarantee that the program it checks terminate (thus is not in an infinite loop, a common error in computer science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I suspect there will never be a generic solution to your question either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a better from of evaluating the students is to maybe give fragments of a proof, and ask them to order these in a way that makes sense. &#xA;Or even better, give the full proof, but instead ask questions about the details, with multiple-choice or simple free-form that only has a finite number of correct answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T17:29:36.820" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:08:37.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound like a flippant response but it's actually grounded in experience and much thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a STEM discipline where LaTeX is considered by faculty to be the ONLY way to do word processing so I've had time to really formulate my viewpoint here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I use Word here but I assume LibreOffice is of the same quality/functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Latex &lt;em&gt;used to be better&lt;/em&gt; than Word in terms of controlling your document with precision and with things like formatting, bibliographies, and equations. Now that word has evolved to it's current state there is no advantage to LaTeX unless, as someone has already mentioned, you are into kerning and typography-type stuff. You can easily adjust margins, bibliographies, styles, equations, etc in Word these days. It's just which you learned the idiosyncrasies of first and more thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Word is easier and more universally accepted. Everyone knows what to do with a docx file. What would a older professor who may not be a tech person in a history dept know what to do with .tex, .cls, .bib, or .ttf files? If you wanted to get feedback you'd have to put it into pdf and then getting comments would be annoying as others have mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I just used LaTeX for the first time to write 2 papers in the past couple weeks. I used the ShareLatex site and a template from an academic journal in my area. Without ShareLatex I could not have done it in a timely fashion. It does automatic versioning the entire time(at least for the time I used it). So every single time you make a change it keeps a copy of the document before the change. You can share it with others as the name implies and it will function like Google Docs in this regard. You can specify which compiler you want to use and some other options. It also lets you upload any and all files you might have associated with your document including fonts, images, template class files, etc. The only issue is when fine tuning formatting things make sure you look at the pdf because the little preview display isn't as high fidelity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inserting figures can be annoying. Especially with various file types. I had to convert all my figures to jpeg's to avoid issues I had with png's. They don't always go where you put them. LaTeX puts them where ever it sees fit. Yes there are settings to try to force LaTeX to put them where you want instead of where it wants but do you really need to be having a fight of wills with your word processor???&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: There is just absolutely no reason I can see to use LaTeX for the average person who is not OCD about kerning, ligatures and pristine fonts. Yes, it's fun at first playing with all the options and features but after awhile you just yearn for the simplicity of Word. In past years before the current state of mainstream word processors maybe LaTeX had it's advantage but now I get better results using Word and it's equation editor and formatting tools than with LaTeX. If you don't have equations and scientific things to display, as I suspect you might not, I would just write it in Word. If you want to play around with LaTeX for the typography aspects then copy what you've written into a .tex which you can then experiment with the nitpicky font details and see that when it's all said and done... the difference in output may be imperceptible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12891" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T18:08:37.423" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17965" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:31:23.113" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experimented with a system that provides students with a collection of phrases/formulae from which they can drag and drop a selection to construct a proof.  I think that this is a promising approach but there are still a large number of different ways in which students can get the answer wrong, and an even larger number of ways that they can construct an answer that cannot be parsed as something meaningful.  If you simply reject such answers without comprehensible feedback then you will just make the students hate you.  So you have to write a large amount of code that tries to analyse all possible answers and explain what (if anything) is wrong with them.  The logic is quite complex and I am not sure how well the students would understand the explanations.  I hope to return to these experiments at some point but at the moment I am not teaching anything for which they would be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T18:31:23.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17965" CreationDate="2014-03-09T19:08:57.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true that a computer program cannot check the correctness of an algorithm as explained in the answer by paxinum, but that is not what is required here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible in principle for a computer to check a proof. The problem is that the proof would have to be written in a very complete form with each logical step spelt out. This is far beyond what would be required in an exam. Remember that Russel and Whitehead famously proved that 1+1=2 using 52 logical steps to finish a whole book that set up the logical formalism they would need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice we write proofs with many details of the logical steps missed out and a computer would need a high level of artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neil Strickland's formulaic approach may be the best that can be done for now, but I think it would give too much away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T19:08:57.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-09T20:33:37.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my (student) perspective, there is no such thing as slides that are good both for lecture and self-study. Slides for lecture should contain as little information as possible (following general &lt;em&gt;good presentation rules&lt;/em&gt;). This will never be enough material for somebody who did not attend the lecture to learn (if you intend to provide such material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I had a professor, who made very good presentations. There was the concept of &lt;em&gt;business requirements&lt;/em&gt; included in them (just the notion, with no definition, which is good for presentation). I spent 10 minutes arguing with my colleagues who did not attend the lecture that it does not mean only how much money you have to spend for project, but also the whole environment the project will be held in. If they studied without me they would be mislead. I knew what it was supposed to mean because I noted it down on slides copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's when we come taking notes. My favourite workflow for lectures was when I could print the notes before the lecture (from Internet) and then take notes on them. This made me concentrate on the lecture very well, because I had to find the things that require additional notes in what the lecturer was saying, but I didn't have to note everything (I would not have time for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that using slides makes yourself &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt;: you don't have to type notions/names/equations on the blackboard, while your students still have to do this. You must take this into consideration if you want them to have correct notes (and then learn all the facts properly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;already&lt;/strong&gt; have the slides that include definitions, &lt;strong&gt;longer texts&lt;/strong&gt;, you can make them more &lt;strong&gt;lecture-friendly&lt;/strong&gt; fast, by making most &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt; words/terms/ideas &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12896" LastEditorUserId="12896" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T07:22:16.263" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T07:22:16.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17968" CreationDate="2014-03-09T21:18:43.460" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every department is different.&lt;/strong&gt;  Everything I'll write is specific to my (top 5 CS, public, RU/VH) department.  And while I know quite a bit about the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; of hiring new faculty, I do not know the precise &lt;em&gt;details&lt;/em&gt; of any recent startup packages (except for salaries, which are public).  My department head manages all startup negotiations directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our formal startup package is a bag of cash (formally: &quot;unrestricted funds&quot;).  New assistant professors can spend that money to pay their own summer salary, support students, but equipment, pay for travel, and so on, in the hopefully brief period before they have active research grants.  Precisely how and when they spend the money is up to them.  Moreover, this money does not &quot;expire&quot;; I still have a bit of money in my 15-year-old startup account.  Again, I don't have an exact figure, but I'd guess somewhere in the low six figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our teaching loads are already low — 1 course per semester — but there are courses, and there are courses.  The de facto standard is for our assistant profs to teach mostly smaller graduate courses (in part to attract students), with at least one semester without teaching in the first two years (to work on research and grant proposals).  However, it is important for assistant profs to teach a few required undergrad classes before tenure.  We usually pair new instructors with more experienced faculty the first time they teach such a class.  I don't know how much of this is formally described in our offer letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other department that offered me a job &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; years ago had much more restricted startup package.  They asked me to give them an itemized budget listing specific equipment (which they would buy for me), a specific number of student semesters, specific dollars for travel, and so on.  At the time, I found this approach unreasonably inflexible, but it's much more understandable now because...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least at my university, startup packages in each department are funded by indirect cost recovery from grants originating in that department — a small fraction of every grant I obtain goes to CS startup packages.  Thus, departments with more grant activity can offer larger and more flexible startup packages.  This is orthogonal to faculty &lt;em&gt;salaries&lt;/em&gt;, which (at least at my university) are paid entirely out of state money, making them much less flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, what types of changes are reasonable to negotiate? Can I ask for more summer salary support while still conveying to them my desire to obtain grant funding as quickly as possible? The offer already includes a reduced teaching load for the first few years --- is it also reasonable to ask for an extra semester off prior to a tenure review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly reasonable to &lt;strong&gt;ask&lt;/strong&gt; for anything, as long as you understand that the answer may be no.  &lt;strong&gt;Do not be afraid to ask stupid questions.&lt;/strong&gt;  Everybody knows that you're new and don't understand the department's budgeting constraints and standards.  That assumption of naïveté gives you the freedom to ask for things you think are &quot;obviously&quot; unreasonable.  They probably &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; unreasonable, but they might not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that if you're already negotiating startup packages, the department has already decided that they want to hire you.  That decision requires developing consensus among the faculty, getting approval from upper administration (not just for hiring &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; but possibly for hiring &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt;), and filling out a metric buttload of HR forms.  (Warning: Some universities still use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_brewery_cask_units#Butt&quot;&gt;imperial buttloads&lt;/a&gt;.)  There is almost nothing you can &lt;strong&gt;ask&lt;/strong&gt; that will change their minds about the basic offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about giving the impression that you're not interested in applying for grants.  Any such impression will vanish the moment you actually start applying for grants!  (Which is soon, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the best way to find out what's reasonable is to &lt;strong&gt;ask the other assistant professors in your target department about their startup packages.&lt;/strong&gt;  Just straight-up ask them.  They won't all answer, but some will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T21:18:43.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-10T00:07:21.170" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently made the mistake of writing a novel with each chapter as a separate document in LibreOffice. When I needed to combine them all into a single document, it wasn't pleasant. So that might be a consideration, depending on how many chapters your thesis has. As Imi mentioned, LaTeX definitely has better support for combining documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LyX&lt;/a&gt;. It's a word processor that uses LaTeX as a backend. You can get almost all of the abilities of LaTeX, but the learning curve is a lot shallower since it has more of the standard word processor features. It's a big help in following shane's advice not to get caught up in the minutiae of LaTeX. I use it for linguistics, where it seems to be pretty widely known. (Linguists have some of the same typesetting challenges as the math people). Newer versions have change tracking, as landroni mentions in the comments. Also, if you do decide to use source control, LyX can help you manage it, although it might take some coercion to set it up. LyX uses its own file format by default, but you can export to LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shane also mentioned, there are tools to convert LaTeX into other formats. &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt; can even convert LaTeX into Word or Open Office format. Both LyX and Pandoc are available for Ubuntu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I would probably do in your situation is write in LyX or LaTeX, then use Pandoc to export that to docx or odt for your advisor. You can read your advisor's comments in Word, make changes to your original, and export again. It sounds convoluted, but I do think you'll gain a lot in flexibility and tool support over using LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, you probably will have to put in some extra work to make the docx files generated by Pandoc usable. On the other hand, LyX and LaTeX can also save you a ton of time that you might have used struggling with LibreOffice's primitive support for pictures and formatting. (And special characters, not relevant to the OP's case, but very much so if you're doing linguistics or math.) If you're not sure, try testing your workflow on a small document: write something in LyX or LaTeX, convert it to odt or docx with Pandoc, and do the work to get the odt or docx file into a usable state. See whether you think it's worth it for what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12904" LastEditorUserId="12904" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T20:04:31.913" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T20:04:31.913" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17965" CreationDate="2014-03-10T00:09:24.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a rich area of proof assistants which deals with these problems. See&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coq.inria.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://coq.inria.fr/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nuprl.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nuprl.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a &quot;market&quot; where people can offer bitcoins for proofs checked by Coq.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://proofmarket.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://proofmarket.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="839" LastEditorUserId="839" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T01:17:10.023" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T01:17:10.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17985" CreationDate="2014-03-10T00:40:07.993" Score="34" ViewCount="9925" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been attending a number of academic / professional conferences recently and one thing that really awed me was the flawless and natural way in which the speakers presented on their topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, they had the occasional mispronunciations or awkward pauses but they spoke with authority and confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of them used powerpoint slides but were not reading from the slides; they were just talking on the points and they had so much to say on each point that I felt they could not do it without notes, but they were not even looking at their notes most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The advantages of not looking at their notes too much was that they could maintain eye contact and could use very interesting slides that were not crammed with the dot points of their speeches.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to think that they had memorised their speech notes but some of the presentations went for more than an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know rehearsal is important but I wonder how could anyone remember so much in a nervous situation. (Its one thing to know everything on your topic; its another thing to present that 'everything'!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;What background / foreground things do presenters do that make their presentations flawless and natural?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2020-06-14T08:53:09.583" Title="How to do a flawless and natural presentation?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T01:06:25.803" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;A natural presentation comes from practice, and lots of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From practice comes confidence. Excellent speakers rarely have more than a few words bullet pointed on their slides. This means that the audience's attention is focused on the speaker. The speaker then tells the audience what the speaker wants them to hear, or directs the audience's attention to an image displayed on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from not splitting the audience's attention between speaker and loads of text on-screen, having few words on your slides means that you are not tempted yourself to read your presentation to the audience. Such recitation is only suitable if you are analysing the text itself closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further to that last point, having only single or few key words on your slides forces you to know your subject and what to say on each point. You don't have the slides to fall back upon, allowing you to lazily read them to your audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me back to practice. One way of getting familiar with what you want to say on each point is to write down a few detailed notes for yourself. When you practice your talk, you can refer to these detailed notes. Next time through, distil your notes down to only a few key words. Next time through - or when you are confident - your notes should be only the key words on the screen for the audience, and are therefore redundant. No notes, fluent delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T01:06:25.803" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T01:11:05.250" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question: What background / foreground things do presenters do that make their presentations flawless and natural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I've ever seen a &lt;em&gt;flawless&lt;/em&gt; presentation by the way ... much like I've never seen a &lt;em&gt;flawless&lt;/em&gt; conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I think if you do not have a lot of experience, as ff524 says (edit: and Nicholas), practice is important. In particular, if you are going to present at a conference, for example, try present in front of (and get feedback from) your colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With more experience comes more confidence. With more confidence, presentations become less about &quot;speeches&quot; or memorised text and more about having a conversation with the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, when you prepare a talk, you can imagine the flow of exposition, how the slides should be ordered, what the audience will understand at that point, what questions they might have and how they could be answered, how to order the points of conversation, how to clarify the &quot;why&quot; before the &quot;how&quot;, how to ask the question and engage the audience's curiosity rather than just provide the answer. When you deliver the talk, you have the outline of the conversation you're about to have and you follow through with it, improvising the exact phrasing as feels right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it often helps to think about the audience as one person that I'm trying to engage with. An audience can be daunting -- a blur of faces -- but if you rather think of trying to engage directly with that guy/gal who came in late and is sitting right at the back of the room ... and make it almost more personal ... I think this is the attitude to have. (This is orthogonal to memorising exact phrasing, which I often find leads to unnatural talks. Having a few nice catchy phrases is nice, but they'll stick in your mind naturally when you prepare the talk.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T01:11:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-10T01:24:02.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides Edward Tufte which was already recommended by Andy W, I also like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indezine.com/stuff/atkinsonmaye.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Five ways to reduce Powerpoint overload&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course Nthe Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation, which tells you how to do everything wrong: &lt;a href=&quot;http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T01:24:02.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18009" CreationDate="2014-03-10T01:39:03.527" Score="113" ViewCount="18708" Body="&lt;p&gt;My biggest challenge as a PhD student is best summarized by the following from PHD Comics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Piled Higher and Deeper&quot; by Jorge Cham&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.phdcomics.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0eRfS.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence of working in research is that the end is never in sight - unlike other jobs, &lt;em&gt;there is always more work for you to do&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty good at making sure to take care of myself, because I know it's important. I can force myself to go for a run, get something to eat, participate in a regular activity that's not related to academia. But I can't turn off the voice in my head that keeps nagging me about the work that's waiting for me back at the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially true when there are deadlines and people relying on me to meet them. On top of my research, I have mentees I should be spending more time with, students we won't be able to hire if I don't get my grant-writing act together, collaborators who keep asking when I'm going to write up that work we did together last summer. &lt;em&gt;If I don't do this, nobody else will&lt;/em&gt;; it's not like a normal workplace, where your boss can reassign an important task if you are too overloaded to handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you avoid feeling guilty about all the unfinished (and unfinishable) work in academia?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am looking for specific, practical techniques based on research and/or personal experience, not suggestions that you just thought of but have never tried.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technique I've tried with limited success is to make a daily to-do list that is limited to three items, and tell myself that I'm not allowed to feel guilty about not doing things that aren't on the list. It works when I'm not &lt;em&gt;terribly&lt;/em&gt; busy... but most of the time it doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9200/how-to-avoid-thinking-about-research-in-your-free-time&quot;&gt;How to avoid thinking about research in your free time&lt;/a&gt; is related, but I'm not trying to avoid thinking about research in my free time. I'm just trying to avoid &lt;em&gt;feeling guilty&lt;/em&gt; about research in my free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also related is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2219/how-should-i-deal-with-discouragement-as-a-graduate-student&quot;&gt;How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student?&lt;/a&gt; but those answers seem to address how to convince yourself that your efforts are worthwhile. I (usually) realize that my efforts are worthwhile, I don't know how to convince myself that I'm putting in &quot;enough&quot; effort (whatever that means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T14:39:15.453" LastActivityDate="2021-01-13T17:28:53.413" Title="How to stop feeling guilty about unfinished work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="59" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T03:20:35.390" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you avoid feeling guilty about all the unfinished (and unfinishable) work in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You try to come to the understanding that there is always more work to be done, and that this is the way it is, not just in academia, but also in almost every other walk of professional life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disentangle the feelings of guilt and anxiety. There is work that you &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; have done/be doing (e.g. to test an idea fully, rather than assume the result; meeting deadlines) and there is work you &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; have done/or be doing (e.g. new ideas/extensions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concentrate on completing all the work that you know &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be done. Set yourself practical goals and list them, marking them off when achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set out time for the other tasks you know need to be completed. e.g. 2 hours a week for meeting student A, 1 hour for student B, 2 hours for grant writing. Stick to those arrangements. Now add in time for &quot;fun&quot; work stuff - perhaps not directly related to your main goals, but perhaps which interest you at the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping a track of how much time you are spending on different types of task, and seeing how you are progressing in each activity, will allow you to fine-tune your time-management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having time set aside for each activity type - and sticking to your timetable - allows you to feel less anxious about the work you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be doing, because you know that you've boxed off time in your schedule to set to work on them. It gives you the confidence to say, okay, I'm not doing mission-critical stuff right now, but it's the time of the week for reading/meeting people/setting up webpage and I know that I'll be back on that task when I've the time allocated for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T03:20:35.390" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T04:52:02.723" Score="14" ViewCount="17141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing my PhD and looking for postdoc jobs. I've published a decent number of papers (and also have a fair number of citations), and want to emphasize this on my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I actually state my h-index on my CV? If so, is Google Scholar the easiest/best way to compute this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2014.03.12 EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Thanks for the advice. I had originally planned to put my h-index at the head&#xA;of my list of publications (as a clickable link to my Google Scholar profile).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the advice from many of you I will just omit this altogether for now.&#xA;My scholar profile is easy to find (for potential PIs who care about such&#xA;metrics), and not explicitly stating my h-index myself avoids any negative&#xA;connotations among those who object to the h-index or calculating it via Google&#xA;Scholar (e.g. Google includes self-citations, arXiv/non peer-reviewed papers&#xA;etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12915" LastEditorUserId="12915" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T14:55:49.633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:42:10.853" Title="Should I put my h-index on my CV?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2014-03-10T05:23:20.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quite stunned that no one mentioned it here, but one great way to make a final slide is to put &lt;strong&gt;references&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;further reading&lt;/strong&gt; on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only does it give you the opportunity to talk about an opening to a wide landscape of wonderfully interesting topics (often a lot more than the abstract material you had to present), but it also leave enough time to students to write down the references they find interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you don't have a lot of references, you can combine the conclusion/summary with the references on the same slide, great effect too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3971" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T05:23:20.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T05:25:45.280" Score="12" ViewCount="1665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in my senior year of studying electrical engineering in an african university. I intend to apply to grad schools(Ph.D) a year after graduation, possibly to the top EE programs in the US (MIT, Berkeley, Stanford...) Despite the fact that ground-breaking/stellar research is virtually impossible to come by for undergraduates in my country, I have sort of gathered some. I have an accepted poster presentation(based on independent research) at the major national conference in my field, and  my present senior year thesis/project may yield three-five papers at IEEE conferences around Africa. I should also be able to get two publications(also independent research) in a continental journal which is popular only among  African Engineers in my field and not much outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My degree is a five year bachelors programme interspersed with three internships/co-op experience. One was a summer spent in a local R&amp;amp;D electronics lab/company in which we completed several design projects although all were adaptations/imitation of existing projects to solve problems facing developing societies like ours. Another one was a long internship (~8mths) in the EE division of a world-renowned company with huge presence in my country during which I worked on a major design project which required a lot of technical knowledge and was evaluated. I have also done some remote/virtual research for a foreign, not well-known, research institute in my field and I have completed a technical report (no peer review) of my research(not particularly breath-taking) which they publish in their report series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gpa though not near-perfect is on a 'first-class' (we use the british system) and so I am a high-ranking student in my university. We do not use the four point system and as much as I would not like to compare apples with oranges, if I convert my cgpa to the 4.0 scale it is just over 3.6 although our scale is much larger and high-end grades are more difficult to attain than what is obtainable in the US system. I am also a recipient of several national awards/recognition for academic merit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the aforesaid and also assuming that I ace the GRE (math especially since I'm in engineering), my questions are these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you think I can improve my chances of being a good fit for top U.S. graduate schools noting the difficulty/impossibility in doing any ground-breaking research especially as an undergraduate here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12913" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T19:26:40.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:07:40.703" Title="How can an undergrad from a country with little 'international' research improve his chances of being a &quot;good fit&quot; for a top PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2014-03-10T05:30:08.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no for two main reasons. The first one is the h-index will change rapidly with time, particularly for new graduated PhD students with only few years of publication history. The second one is that the h-index provides only a little information, the only possible values are likely 3,4 and 5 which can be increased with some luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read only few dozens of CV of PhD, but none of them really put down their h-index. Probably, a better way is to highlight the most important papers that you think which can represent you research interest and your contribution. It might be better to provide a clickable link to your Google Scholar profile in application email rather than in CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the h-index, Google Scholar indeed provides an easiest way to obtain it. However, I have some doubt on it as it also counts those citation from unrefereed papers, such as those in arXiv, and even worst, publications from some journal articles that can be written by anyone. It seems to me there are ways to play with the system, in particular, for small number of citation. But I think that it is somehow representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4277" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T05:30:08.120" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2014-03-10T05:34:08.520" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A range of statistics can be useful in providing a quick snapshot of your research productivity. Common statistics include: number of refereed journal publications; number of publications that meet a criteria such as you being first author or the journal being above a certain impact factor or on a discipline specific list of quality journals; h-index; total amount of grant funding; etc. These would supplement a complete list of your publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to h-index, make sure you make clear what citation database you are using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that some people on this site object to the bureaucratic reductionism that can result from using measures like h-indices, impact factors and the like. Nonetheless, just because they are imperfect, does not prevent them from being useful. Such measures should not replace actually reading your work to assess its quality, but they can be useful in getting a rough handle on the impact and status of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of anecdotes, I have read several promotion applications that have successfully incorporated a range of such summary statistics to make the case for promotion. h-index, total grant funding, total publications, average teaching scores are all evidence, albeit imperfect that decision makers who are often outside your area will use to decide how to allocate resources like jobs, promotions, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T05:34:08.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T05:50:22.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you avoid feeling guilty about all the unfinished (and unfinishable) work in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, recognize the difference between unfinished and unfinishable. Yes, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; always do more, but your duty is to do what you &lt;em&gt;promised&lt;/em&gt;. This means that learning what your own capacities are and only committing to what you know you can do* will eliminate much future guilt. The guilt comes mainly from the unfinished work that you promised to do, not from not doing other work beyond that. (If you actually feel guilty about not doing things you never committed to, I think you need to reevaluate your worldview. You can feel regret about those things, but there should be no guilt.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the &quot;to-do list.&quot; It feels great when a to-do list is cleared, but, the guilt only increases when you fail to clear it. It's really just another form of the failure to fulfil a commitment, but privately. So there are a couple of variations on the to-do list that eliminate that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;to-mostly-do list&quot; this is a large list of small specific things you plan to do in a bit more than the next day, the point is to make it hard to actually clear the list in a day, but easy to progress through it. That way, since you know the list is more than a day's worth of work, you are more psychologically satisfied with your progress and less dissatisfied with the unfinished items. Also seeing at the end of one day some of the things you'll need to do the next day can help increase productivity the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The timetable: break up your day into small periods of time for each task. You're promising yourself to &quot;work on X for an hour&quot; rather than to &quot;finish X,&quot; and you can be satisfied even if you ran into problems and didn't finish X.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, I think you're not taking free time seriously enough. It really takes a shift in attitude to think of your free time as time in which you're &lt;em&gt;not supposed&lt;/em&gt; to work as opposed to time in which you're &lt;em&gt;allowing&lt;/em&gt; yourself not to work. I don't know if anyone can tell you &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to make that shift, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all of this breaks when there's a close external deadline (grant/paper submission). Then you just work, eat, sleep, and work until you're done (but no time to feel guilty there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Actually, it's more complicated than &quot;only committing to do what you know you can do.&quot; Sometimes it pays off to take a risk and promise something that you aren't 100% sure about, but when you take a risk you need to know that it's a risk and be prepared to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11880" LastEditorUserId="11880" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T05:59:48.180" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T05:59:48.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-10T08:44:12.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're considering other software besides just Microsoft Word or LaTeX, then I would put a vote in for &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, which I switched to halfway through my Masters (submitted in December).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a bit LaTeXy in that it separates the composition from the formatting, with the latter done as a single rendering process at the end, but it also allows a high degree of style and formatting while you write, however this should be viewed as a 'preview' rather than actual formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was originally designed for novelists, but there's a growing community of academics using it going on the posts in the forums. I found it great for handling things like numbered lists such as figures and tables, and, particularly important for linguistics, example sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic workflow is that you compose in Scrivener and then 'compile', which will format the entire document and apply formatting in a single hit, then you can either print directly, or if you need further post-processing (like Endnote), then output as a useful format for you and take it to whatever program you need. My workflow was to go into Word and run Endnote, plus a couple of other small tasks, and then print. For a 50,000 word document, my time spent in Word was about 3 hours (including proofing). Scrivener also supports compiling to a LaTeX document using MultiMarkDown syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, some dot-points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great hierarchical sectioning support, in fact this is key to its organisational structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secure in terms of text data, which is stored in individual text files (one for each section/subsection)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Much easier to learn than LaTeX&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support available from the forum from the developers, and very quick response from them (I once suggested a feature and it was rolled-out two days later)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good support for multiple independent numbered lists (tables, figures)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good support for cross-referencing to chapters and sections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can output to .doc or .rtf and have track changes, but see last Con.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not free; $40 (PC) $45 (Mac) once-off purchase (free 30-day trial, free for Linux)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Originally designed for Mac, and other operating systems are still catching up on features. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33&quot;&gt;Linux&lt;/a&gt; release but it is in beta (however the features that are missing only affect the compile process, so you could conceivably write in Ubuntu and compile on Mac)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No support for Endnote apart from mapping ctrl/cmd-Y to open Endnote, that is, scrivener does not insert formatted bibliographic citations either in-line or as endnotes (but if you work using raw field codes, then pass them through to Word, it works great)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formatting presets in Scrivener do not map to 'styles' in Word (although again, there are workarounds)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not intended to be a complete typesetting program, but a writing program. You should expect to have to post-process your document in another program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Importing from Word is not very good. This will affect what you do with track changes and supervisor's comments (you'd have to incorporate them yourself manually).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry about the plug – I do not receive any kind of support from the makers of Scrivener; I just think it's the best writing software I've used, and since you're trying to weigh up the benefits and costs of switching to LaTeX, I definitely think you should consider it since it is compatible with LaTeX anyway, and is much easier to work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T08:44:12.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T10:06:54.377" Score="9" ViewCount="3830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to develop a extended version of an accepted conference paper. This extended version will be submitted to a journal for review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please tell me how to develop the same. Is there any need to provide complete/partial results in this extended version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it not only sufficient to further improve the idea instead of presenting the results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12931" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-27T16:26:15.570" LastActivityDate="2018-01-27T16:26:15.570" Title="How to extend and convert a conference paper into a journal submission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17997" CreationDate="2014-03-10T10:12:27.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to have some added value in the journal paper with respect to your already accepted conference paper. Typically extended versions take the results in the initial paper a few steps further, Ideally, extended versions are more thorough with regards to theory but may alternatively including a new set of experiments to corroborate the original work published shown at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partial results are less commonly introduced in such papers (in my field). Conference papers tend to be brief or discuss early results of novel work, so often some relevant material is omitted in them, which can then be placed in extended versions. This depends heavily on your field of study, so YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T10:17:32.770" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T10:17:32.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-10T10:20:06.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitively learn LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Word is slow, is instable, and the document is just, if you are not a guru at Word, ugly. You need a lot of expertise to control the blank spaces between words, to get a line break correct, to avoid orphan lines, etc., not to mention more advanced things related to type setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ease to use of MS Word is not real ease. It just makes any secretary think he/she can use it. For a two page document this might be OK, but actually it requires a lot of experience to get a document right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree that LaTeX has a steep learning curve. There are tools which make LaTeX pretty much WYSIWYG. Read the first two or three chapters of an introductory LaTeX book, install miktex and simatra PDF viewer on your windows, use EclipseTex for editing, it's pretty easy, and it does not required you to be a rocket scientist to type set documents that are nice to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll love LaTeX once you started using it. You'll wonder how it is ever possible to use Word any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9829" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T10:20:06.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2014-03-10T11:49:04.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do the same things as with scientific presentations: On the last slide I put a conclusion that consists of a few bullets of complete sentences and I read then out load as they are written down. This could look as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any continuous function attains its maximum on any compact set.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any differentiable function is also continuous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The derivative of a differentiable function need not to be continuous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I read the conclusion I just plainly say &quot;Thank you&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rationale behind this is: At the end of the lecture/talk I want to carry the main points in clear words (and not some formulation which pops up in my head during lecturing). Also, I do not write but say &quot;Thank you&quot; because I want the focus on me and not on the slides with the last words. (And also I find it a bit strange to write something personal like a thanks when I could also say it…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T11:49:04.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-10T12:01:12.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it is worth your time and effort, not that the effort required would be great, as other have said first off talk to your professor and ask if he has any opinions on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote the paper for my B.Sc. in LaTeX and to do so I learned it mostly by myself, with some help from some post grads but those were for issues you will not hit when writing an historical paper, in the spare moments between actually writing the code my paper was about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like yourself my paper didn't involve large swathes of mathematical formulas with lots of Greek letters but it did require almost Swiss-like precision, and I felt that with my limited command of Word I would be better of just starting from scratch with LaTex and knowing exactly the cause effect relationship between my actions and the document's presentation (I was and still am weary of losing all my formatting in Word due to a slip of the mouse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of LaTex's strongest points in its favor is the ease with which it can handle citations for you as well as index your pictures, give them captions and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you use Linux already is also a factor as setting up a good LaTex editor on Ubuntu seems much easier than on Windows to me, I highly recommend Kile as the editor it's not WYSIWG but it will keep you from making syntax errors due to the large amount of LaTeX snippets available and it also simplifies the &quot;make a pdf from all this mark-up&quot; process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point in LaTex's favour is the very friendly and responsive community at &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot; title=&quot;the Tex Echange&quot;&gt;the Tex exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to be honest that it was very easy for me to pick up LaTeX because I already had experience with HTML which is also a mark-up language, but in my opinion if you understand what happens when you bold a word on a Stack Exchange site (see the &lt;strong&gt;* *&lt;/strong&gt; and their effect) then you can understand LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7406" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T18:35:33.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-10T12:19:47.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to chime in with a big reply about what I consider really important - that it's you rather than your slides diong the teaching etc. - but I'll try and stick to answering the question. Also, I feeel that the kind of teacher that takes the time to go on stackexchange to ask about good slide design is probably aware of the big picture already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a university research assistant with around five years' experience in various teaching assistant jobs, some of which have involved slides, and four years' university experience as a maths student during which I've seen everything from brilliant to atrocious lecturing both with and without slides. Based on everything on presentation design that I've ever googled there seem to be a few basic rules that match well with my experience of which slide-presented lectures I found most engaging and in which of my own classes I noticed the fewest students falling asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Animations for bullet points&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, never. The one exception that comes to mind where this works well for me is highlighting the current point if you are displaying a number of points across a sequence of slides where you want to remind students which point you're currently on. Example: you're showing something's an equivalence relation which means it must satisfy three properties (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive). Here one could put these three keywords in one corner of the slides for all three properties, with the current one highlighted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a sequence of bullet points each one containing a chunk of text, you probably have a much bigger problem than animation: students will be reading your slides rather than listening to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Animation in general&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animations such as spinning-in text, fading in text with &quot;whoosh&quot; sounds and the like I think we can safely dismiss as for five-year-olds and under, and even then only because they won't have seen it too many times before to get bored. At a college/university level it just feels unprofessional to me. That leaves the &quot;stepwise&quot; animation where the teacher shows a concept step-by-step with the help of slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of all the presentations I can remember seeing or giving, it's overwhelmingly had a negative impact. Like all rules this is not without exception but I've seen so many bad animations that I tend to avoid them completely myself nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In maths/cs, something that's generally taught using an animation are graph algorithms such as Dijkstra's ([1], complete with animated gifs). I saw this presented twice in an undergraduate course, once with slides, once presented by the TA on a whiteboard - the whiteboard one was better by miles even though it was the very same example! I don't have any hard evidence for this but my feeling is that the teacher doing the steps themselves (whether blackboard, whiteboard or overhead projector) makes students pay much more attention to the teacher than if they're just clicking a mouse to advance the slides. Animated slides or gifs can work when the student's studying on their own, a two-entity interaction between the student and the material - which is not what's supposed to be happening when you as a teacher are in the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Titling, spearation slides&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big difference for me is between slides for presenting in class and handouts. Handouts need separation and titling because they're what gives them structure, in the same way as chapter/section titles in textbooks - in class, as long as I'm in the room I can do that myself so I need much less support on the slides. As a rule, I'd say the better a slideshow is for self-study, the worse it is in class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something I've had a good experience with are separation slides that are simply blank - the students pick up my style quickly enough that when the slide goes blank, it means the next thing they need to pay attention to is me as I'm about to tell them something, either by saying it or writing it on the board. If they wait for the next time I'm going to show a slide, they'll miss a lot in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My aim here is that I'm giving the class and slides come up every now and then to support me, not the other way round that the slides are driving the class with me mainly there as mouse-clicker and occasional commentator. With this style, I find that I need almost no &quot;structuring&quot; slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimal amount of information&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One concept. Unless you have to pay a charge per slide you show, a three-bullet-point slide is almost always better off as three slides. (Again, this does not apply in the same way to handouts, especially when there's a per-page printing cost.) If something can be presented with a single keyword, that's better than a whole sentence. Better still, replace words entirely: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad: &quot;(bullet) Dijkstra's algorithm has running time O(m + n log n).&quot; (This slide is essentially giving a parallel lecture to yours.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a bit less bad: &quot;Running time: O(m + n log n)&quot; (especially if you've just been discussing said algorithm)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;better: &quot;O(m + n log n)&quot; (in large font; and give the students the context by speaking to them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good: &quot;(icon of stopwatch) O(m + n log n)&quot; (Apparently the brain can process images and words in separate areas, i.e. in parallel, so an icon/picture actually reinforces what you're saying rather than contends with it. Useful tip taught me by a graphic designer.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Numbering&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For handouts, something like &quot;course title, date/number of lecture, slide x of y&quot; - imagine someone drops their stack of paper with the printed slides, then the footer/numbering should be sufficient to help them reassemble it all. For slides in class, I'm in favour of &quot;less is more&quot;. The more text there is on the slide the more it distracts, which is why a footer as above is terrible for a presentation. I'd stick with just the slide number - it conveys useful information (a student can at the end of class ask you &quot;I have a question about slide 14&quot;), I can't see how the total number of slides is useful during class itself, especially as some slides will take longer than others. (If someone really wants to know how long it will take until this class is finally over, they can always look at the clock.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12937" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T12:19:47.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-10T12:50:47.283" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes...unless...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have references, many of them.  Managing references is a complete pain without the facilities provided by LaTeX or one of the often  expensive tools for word (there may be something free for libreoffice, and it may be good).  It may be a little easier with the citation styles typical in humanities/social sciences than it is for physical sciences, but still not easy.  So unless you have access to a good tool for managing your citations in your wordprocessor, just go for LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cross-referencing between sections and to figures/tables is also much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; find a tool like LyX suits you - or you may like the freedom of just getting on with it in a decent text editor.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/339/latex-editors-ides&quot;&gt;This list&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can thoroughly support the view expressed above that you should start on a smaller document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to commenting by your adviser, such as for a dissertation, pdf comments on your work, or handwritten comments are fine, but for collaborative writing of a paper with non-LaTeX users things become &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; harder unless you're in charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dickimaw-books.com/latex/thesis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis&lt;/a&gt; by Nicola Talbot is well worth a read, it's from a CS background but don't let that put you off, it's clear and well written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you start writing in a word processor, you will end up sticking with it, which is fine, plenty of theses get written that way, but nobody ever finds the time to switch from one system to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that if you use libreoffice and you work with people who use MSoffice (or even for different versions of MSoffice) change tracking is rather fragile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T12:50:47.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T13:04:38.570" Score="4" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in understanding if measuring the time it takes for an adult to meet a training milestone is a training metric that is commonly used to assess progress and, if so, what adult learning theories or academics discuss this concept.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suspect that, during training, a group of adults would hit a particular milestone in a given range with some type of frequency distribution that would indicate normal.  I would further suspect that, as we approach either tail, there would be signs of something else going on that is either enhancing training or disabling it in some way and would be cause of alarm, where some type of training intervention would be required for the benefit of the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, is there any reasons why time to milestone is NOT important and should be ignored?  If so, what academic studies are behind that opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I may have thought the topics of this exchange were a bit different, but my problem may generalize to those studying in academia.  Here's the specific question I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A debate is going on regarding the number of hours it takes for a pilot candidate to solo.  One side is arguing it simply does not matter, that it indicates nothing as far as the training is concerned or anything about the skills of the pilot after license.  The other side is arguing that it does matter because it indicates the health and progress of the training.  If you captured this solo metric across the US, you'd likely see a distribution of hours from something as low as 15 hours to maybe as high as 30 with the MODE somewhere around 20.  The latter group is arguing that, if your student is approaching 30, or even passes it, something's wrong in the training environment that needs changed.  It is a special cause variation versus normal or common cause variation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping there was some literature that either supported or discounted the need to track time as part of an assessment in education or training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this on topic for this group?  If not, please let me know so I can post in a more suitable group.  I was going to post in the Aviation exchange, but I don't think that is suitable because I am looking for more of an academic opinion.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12939" LastEditorUserId="12939" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T12:55:59.810" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:06:31.633" Title="Time to Meet a Milestone" Tags="&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-01-03T20:35:10.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T13:20:40.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a sort-of-senior-ish postdoc, and hence in the somewhat awkward career phase where basically everything that does not have a clear other responsible seems to end up in my inbox. The process I use to not get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of wacky tasks that end up in my inbox is rather similar to what Nicolas does. It works for me (most of the time), it may work for you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, every few days, I take an hour to sit down with my calendar and my TODO list and &lt;strong&gt;plan&lt;/strong&gt;. For each task taking more than say 15 mins to execute, I reserve a slot on my calendar. I try to arrange so that each task meets its deadline, and keep some free space for incoming urgent things and some lump time for short administrative tasks not worth mentioning explicitly. When I see that there simply is no way to plan everything so that all tasks meet their deadline, I make compromises, i.e., drop or delay tasks, and (and this is the difficult part) &lt;strong&gt;do not feel guilty at all about that&lt;/strong&gt;. It works for me, because I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; from my calendar that there simply was no time to, say, write the paper for this medium-level conference and at the same time write this super-important grant application. The difference here is the certainty from your planning that everything simply could not be done at the same time. There is no point in feeling guilty about something that you ultimately know you could not change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that happens all the time, you have a different problem. Then your problem is not that you should not feel guilty about not getting your work done, but &lt;strong&gt;that you should not bite off more than you can chew&lt;/strong&gt; (== commit to more than what you can deliver). You say in a comment that your &lt;em&gt;second-biggest challenge as a PhD student&lt;/em&gt; is that you are over-committed. It seems like your &quot;second-biggest&quot; challenge causes the &quot;biggest&quot; challenge - you commit to things you cannot do, and hence feel guilty. The fix for that is, again, to plan, and not commit to things you know you cannot do in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T13:20:40.337" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T13:49:30.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I found to work best for me is &lt;em&gt;separating&lt;/em&gt; work from leisure time. I work in the office and I don't work at home (except for emails). If I have to work during the weekend or even until the morning for some deadline, I do that in the office (it's important that wherever you are this is possible, don't try to force your way in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I go to home I don't feel guilty because I don't have my computer (even if I have my files synchronized, just in case), and because I have learnt that if I don't rest properly (at some point, for some time) then I'm not productive and more time gets wasted, so it's better to simply forget about work and doing anything else (or nothing at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is done with two basic principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;prioritization of tasks. If some people depend on me for some task, I give a high priority to it. If something is unclear, it gets a low priority (it will get clear through time, probably), etc. Closest deadlines get higher priority, etc. It's similar to the important-urgent matrix, but you probably have some subconscious algorithm to assign priority to those things, basically try to imagine what would make you feel more anxious and do it first. Depending on your sources of anxiousness this method will work better or worse for your career, but it will reduce your anxiousness (if we don't consider how career progression would interfere with that).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't bite (much) more than you can chew. Sometimes people feel work is just too much because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; too much. This really depends on how much you want to push your limits (of workaholism), but doing so for too long (or any amount of time) is usually a bad idea, unless you are willing to fully sacrifice everything for your work, reaching your top productivity for some time and then suiciding as a disposable researcher. Consider that if you stay healthy and focused you will probably be more productive, and you will be able to provide more value and do more work on each of your hours. So your health and leisure time is not interfering with your work, it's &lt;em&gt;enabling&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of the above fails, there is a last thing you can try. Finish PhD asap (before it kills you), get subordinates (e.g. PhD students) and focus on reading and forwarding mails so that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; do all the work. You can do that from anywhere with your mobile phone, like a boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T13:49:30.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T14:35:30.340" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop saying &quot;I have too much going on, and nothing will work.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop self-defeating is the probably the first step. Of course we have &quot;too much going on,&quot; that's what we say when we lose control. Do realize that &quot;too busy&quot; can be a cause, but most of the time, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;too busy&quot; is more of a symptom.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Realizing that no one can drink up a whole river&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be it work, research, and teaching, they all work like a giant wheel or river that keep moving. No one can take the whole activity and &quot;finish&quot; it. Once I have realized that I am just moving things along from less to more refined shapes. It's noble to be a more responsible researcher/teacher, but the mindset has to be correctly set before burning one self out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use an urgency and importance matrix&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I got a task I mentally assigned it into a quadrant of the the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_91.htm&quot;&gt;urgency vs. importance matrix&lt;/a&gt;. Then when I plan my weeks, I make sure to distribute 2/3 of available time to all the high impact activities. For the rest 1/3, I use it to deal with urgent and low-impact items or emerging items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid paper-based To-Do list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To-do list can be a confusing way to manage time because the whole process is high maintenance (keeping a list, some sub-lists, and constant correction and update) and frustrating (the list keeps growing, and yes, crossing out tasks feels great, but then you have a messy list.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just use &lt;a href=&quot;https://evernote.com&quot;&gt;EverNote&lt;/a&gt; to document my projects and tasks. When they are done, I move the whole index thread to &quot;Archive.&quot; Index cards are a also a better alternative to a to-do list. When I am in a meeting or walking around, I put all strayed thoughts onto an inexpensive &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_book&quot;&gt;composition book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, &lt;em&gt;capturing strayed thoughts&lt;/em&gt; has a side effect on me as well. Most of the time, I kept mentally regurgitating works that I need to do and the long chain of tasks really bothered me. Once I spilled them out onto a piece of paper, then I stopped thinking about them for a while. When I have access to a computer, I change the thoughts into EverNote note page. This simple step empties up my mind to do some other more useful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Say no, say it a lot!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the urgent and low-impact? I just say  no. This includes, but not limited to: grant proposal invitation sent to me when the grant is due in 5 days, meetings that really do not need me to be there (but I always attend the monthly staff meeting and faculty research meeting, just to be collegial), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to suck at saying no, now I have a lot of elaborated ways to put it. And what's my elaborated way? Just say, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Thanks for the invitation/thinking of me. I am sorry that I can't help this round.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; And leave it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One great trick&lt;/em&gt; for those who cannot say no is: you do not have to answer right there and right at that moment. Tell the people that you'll give it a good thought, and then say no afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Block your time in your calendar way ahead&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't start filling in the calendar passively. Reserve your own time many weeks ahead. I fill them up with protected writing time slots. I write the best in the morning and love to do coding in the afternoon so I sprinkle all these little 30-, 60- or 90-minute slots across my calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I agree with @Nicholas' answer that this is a very useful technique. And this is not something that &quot;sounds like the kind of thing that is nice in theory.&quot; I use this and Nicholas probably does too, and it really works. The harder you guard your time slots, the better it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No more, just three tasks a day&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leo Babauta's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1438258488&quot;&gt;Zen to Done&lt;/a&gt; is an inspiring read and I'd recommend to people who think they have no time. I have adopted the idea of doing three Most Important Tasks per day. There are days that I barely got one done, there are days that I finished three by 1:00 pm and then spent the rest reading or learning new stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Become a time freak&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I time my tasks with a kitchen timer. I don't strictly follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique&quot;&gt;pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt; but I adopted the spirit of it. The way I operate is that I dedicated a chunk of time to a project, move it forward as much as I can, and when time's up, I consider my job for that project on that day is done. I do not binge work, because binge working is very prone to errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One very interesting side story. A colleague was chit chatting in my office and sudden the timer went off! The colleague jokingly asked me if her time is up. I explained to her my system. And oddly... since then whenever she visits me, she would add this question &quot;Can I have __ minutes of your time?&quot; before talking to me. Now everyone does that to me; and I do the same to everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time to time, chaos and mess happen to us because we have developed an image of being easy going and flexible, two major magnets for chaotic and messy people. In fact, we don't have to. A good dose of rigidity gets you off a lot of ad hoc committees, &quot;emergency&quot; meetings, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify what manifests the guilt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very important because the source of the guilt dictates how you resolve it. For me, the major source is fearing that I have upset the collaborators. I once dropped the ball on a secondary analysis and delayed it for half a year. Then this job gradually became low-impact/low-urgency. I decided instead of feeling awkward, I just went up to her after a meeting and apologize for not being able to finish the project. In fact, she didn't care as much as I expected; I felt a lot better having told her my thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fear is that people may think I am incompetent or chaotic. And for that, I have come to be very comfortable with myself. I resolved this issue simply for two facts: i) I am probably the person who cares the most what I look like in other people's mind. And ii) All other people are also busily caring how they look like in others' mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practicing being &lt;em&gt;mindful&lt;/em&gt; has many positive impacts on how I deal with these negative emotions. Now whenever I feel bad/good, I emotionally zoom out and look at the big picture, trace the connections, and examine the dynamics. I feel having this little slight detachment with emotion allows me to better tackle (either to avoid or to exploit) these emotions. Don't just feel guilty, ask why, why, why, why, and why. Yes, ask five times. Usually for me, three to four associations usually get me to the root cause, just like how they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toyota-global.com/company/toyota_traditions/quality/mar_apr_2006.html&quot;&gt;can get Toyota to their problems' cause&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remark&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess none of what I said is new. When it comes to time management there isn't really a silver bullet. From my experience, so far I have boiled down to only one truth: All time management techniques work if you use it regularly and seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T14:46:15.000" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:46:15.000" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T14:43:21.947" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: &lt;strong&gt;Keep forgiving yourself and keep working.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having the same problem, and only recently it got better.&#xA;I have it only for open-ended work (scientific projects, other personal projects - everything which is of type &amp;quot;I should have it done&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the same time it is not closed; even worse when others are waiting for results). It seems to be very different from &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; work (when someone gives me a particular task) and work with an expiry date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wisest (and most successful) piece of advice I found is this one (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookofhook.blogspot.de/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity-pitfalls.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls - Book of Hook&lt;/a&gt;, which has more good points and is definitely worth reading):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. Do not overpromise to make up for poor productivity.&lt;/strong&gt;  There's a tendency when we're falling behind to try to overcompensate with future promises.  &amp;quot;When I'm done, it'll be AWESOME&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I know I'm late, but I'm positive I'll be done by Monday&amp;quot;.  By doing those things we just build more debt we can't pay off, and that will eventually lead to a catastrophic melt down when the super final absolutely last deadline date shows up.  Just get shit done, don't talk about how you're going to get shit done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, somewhat related is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com.es/2010/05/cure-for-procrastination-forgive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;forgiving yourself for being not productive enough&lt;/a&gt; (constantly feeling guilty does not help; not only for me, but it seems it does not work for most of people):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key finding was that students who'd forgiven themselves for their initial bout of procrastination subsequently showed less negative affect in the intermediate period between exams and were less likely to procrastinate before the second round of exams. Crucially, self-forgiveness wasn't related to performance in the first set of exams but it did predict better performance in the second set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from a bit different angle, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elizabeth Gibert's TED talk on genius&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(it's about treating inspiration, but it is similar for everything - no matter how good you are, you won't do everything; so why should you be bothered by missing a few things?):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And [Tom Waits]'s speeding along, and all of a sudden he hears this little fragment of melody, that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it, you know, it's gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it. He doesn't have a piece of paper, he doesn't have a pencil, he doesn't have a tape recorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, &amp;quot;I'm going to lose this thing, and then I'm going to be haunted by this song forever. I'm not good enough, and I can't do it.&amp;quot; And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, &amp;quot;Excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving?&amp;quot; (Laughter) &amp;quot;Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from my personal stuff (I mean things that I found helpful):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using to-do list only for task (i.e. things I know I can do in a few hour max), not projects (it's depressing to have &amp;quot;finish this paper&amp;quot; on the same list for long months, cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1350&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;relevant PhD Comics strip&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;underpromise and overdeliver&lt;/em&gt; to oneself; i.e. committing to do each day less task than expected (this way, with the same results, it's &amp;quot;wow, I did things from the list plus 2 extra&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;I only made almost half of the first point out of 7&amp;quot;; extrapolating one's maximal efficiency does not work...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T15:20:06.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17951" CreationDate="2014-03-10T14:57:53.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publishing.&lt;/strong&gt;  If your field has &quot;A&quot; journals then publishing in them will add to your credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Co-authoring.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you can manage to have co-authors in the U.S., you can come over during your sabbatical or visit their school for a few months. Make more connections, gain more visibility, present your work in informal or formal workshops at all the nearby research schools. Once people know who you are, they will think of you when a need arises or your application will carry more weight when there is a systematic search for a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References.&lt;/strong&gt; Strong letters from reputed academics that are known to US schools. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Networking and presenting at conferences.&lt;/strong&gt; Networking at top conferences. If you can manage to have your work be presented at top conferences, that would give you lots of visibility and also opportunities to network.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying and Traveling in the US is expensive but the harder part is reducing the information asymmetry (about your future publishing potential) between you and your potential employers and also convincing them that you would join, even if you did get an offer. For example, some school in rural Virgina may want to hire you but they probably won't try because they don't think you will come live in a rural culture which would be very alien to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:57:53.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2014-03-10T15:12:01.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better is to put list of your academic results and publications into your CV. Good index values are fine and could be included, but put your results first. Value of index tells something about popularity of your publication, but nothing about subject matter, which is most important in CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6534" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T15:12:01.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2014-03-10T15:32:57.843" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two threads in answers here that I'd like to respond to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research is just like any other job. The tools needed to manage guilt are no different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. and no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nitty-gritty of work - deadlines, working in groups, answering to a 'boss' - are the same. That is indeed true. What's different about research work that I think ff524 is alluding to is the &quot;freedom trap&quot;. Because research work involves more freedom and more unstructured effort, and there's a direct correlation between output and success (not effort and success of course), the anxiety is not external (&quot;my boss needs this done&quot;, or &quot;I can't let my team down&quot;) but extremely internal (&quot;I am an inferior researcher if I'm not working all the time&quot; or &quot;someone else is getting ahead in their career while I'm slacking off&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is incessant. Every minute spent not working is tied up in internal accusations. And it's exhausting. And that's what we'd like to be free of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have an answer ? Not really. It's a slow process of realizing that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feeling guilty about work is a meta-worry that doesn't lead anywhere constructive (this realization only works in flashes :))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the other people racing ahead will also need to rest at some point. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a guilt-free mind is clear and prepared for research (whether it's leisure time or not: as ff524 says, this is not necessarily about partitioning work and free time so much as not feeling guilty when not thinking about work. Indeed, one of the pleasures of being a researcher is that I can think about my work whenever I like, even when day dreaming on a bus to work (ahem). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that respect, Piotr Migdal's answer about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;forgiving yourself and working&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is spot on. Guilt is rarely a constructive force, and it can lead you to make bad decisions to compensate. Blowing off that paper deadline ? it's ok. Dropping a fascinating research project because you're overcommitted ? that's ok too. Not spending enough time with students ? Hard to wave off, but it's ok. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But forgiving yourself only works if you &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt; yourself,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and again the Tom Waits analogy is brilliant. You have to &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt; that blowing off one paper deadline won't make you a lazy git who doesn't write any papers. That missing one student meeting doesn't make you an abusive advisor. That ignoring a collaboration doesn't make you a toxic personality. That if you can learn to trust in your own research instincts and drive that you'll be able to pick up and go full steam ahead, but this time with less guilt than before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a time-management answer, and you didn't want one ! So all that I can say is that reducing guilt is a slow process (I haven't figured it out yet), and you have to keep reminding yourself to forgive and trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T15:32:57.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T15:41:59.253" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found one source which is a collection which contains several hundreds of subsections with easily 100 authors I presume. It's a textbook on synthetic material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bean counter I am, I initially tried to incorporate every single author of every (sub)(sub)section of the book because unfortunately Springer, the publisher, only listed the authors for each chapter. The DOI import does not work on any level below. Just to make it clear for everyone's sanity: I only cited the collection so far and do not intend to work in the other authors by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to take on the task to simply enter any info of every author for his/hers contribution into your literature database (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; your paper/essay's or thesis' bibliography), how would you do that? Note it all down by hand in your favorite literature management software or do you have some tricks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10635" LastEditorUserId="10635" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T13:36:03.573" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T13:36:03.573" Title="How do you deal with many many authors for many sections and equally many subsections in a collection?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:44:59.253" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who has been trained in creating and presenting presentations, let me tell you the secret: it's practice.&lt;br&gt;With practice and learning comes confidence, and with confidence you manage to make up for all the minor flaws most people might not even notice with nothing but a simple smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one technical aspect to it, which has something to do with how the brain works. In stress or panic situations, the human brain has a functionality to switch off all higher-level areas to focus on the situation at hand. While this is perfectly good and useful when i.E. fighting lions, it is absolutely not helpful when in a test situation. So the prime rule for good presentations is: keep calm and present on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second trick is to generate so called island-knowledge. Basically you take all the required topics, then learn enough about them that you could hold a speech for each one of them without having to prepare. Once you did that you not only have the knowledge to speak more freely but also the confidence when it comes to questions. Because for every question asked or for every mistake you make, you know which island to hop to, to find an immediate solution that at least sounds professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is still the good old &quot;sorry, I don't know&quot; answer. If you preset something about a topic, it is perfectly fine if you do not know everything. Admitting that is a strong sign of confidence and the audience will honor you for not talking &quot;bullshit&quot;. Knowing that the audience will react positively if you openly lack some knowledge will help you to present that lack as perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastEditorUserId="12798" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T17:58:52.100" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:58:52.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11014" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:08:52.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I end each (3-hour, once a week) lecture with a slide that says &quot;next week&quot;. I let them know what we will be covering. For those who like to read ahead, and when we have a textbook, I'll tell them what chapters they might want to read. I remind them if they'll be getting an assignment, if an assignment is due, if some deadline is coming up, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of them start to pack up their stuff and make feet noises when they think the lecture is over. I actually tell them in week 1 that the lecture isn't over until they see this slide. There isn't anything important I need to say to it, so if the stampede drowns me out, those who care can read what is on the slide. And if there is no stampede, I can quickly summarize anything important on it and ask for questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:08:52.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:25:38.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, the best slides are those where they contribute to the lesson being taught, but don't reiterate exactly what you're saying. The worst slide design is bullet points that are, ver batim, what you are saying. A common misconception is that powerpoints are designed to use bullets to present everything. While bullet points help to organize some information, generally you don't want enough information on each slide to warrant bullet points. Walls of text stop people from even paying attention to at the very least the powerpoint, at the worst, the presentation as a whole.  Depending on your subject, you can either use short two liner quotes or such for a slide, a mathematical equation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best use of powerpoints are for visual cues. Many top tier presenters put no more than an individual picture on each slide. Something simple that either helps drive home their key points or makes it easier for the viewers to remember what is being spoken. The key here though is to make sure the picture is simple, as often times, people end up using pictures that are distracting, drawing the attention of the viewers away from the information being presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as animations go, they should be used sparingly at best, and it doesn't hurt to not use them at all. Again, this goes back to the distracting aspect of things. In addition, if you do use animations, be certain to not use too long or too many animations in a slide, as it does nothing other than slow down the presentation and break the fluidity of the presentation as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12950" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:25:38.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17997" CreationDate="2014-03-10T18:14:51.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies from journal to journal. For example, in some subfields of CS (where this comes up all the time), the informal rule is that the journal version should have at least 30% new content (including new experiments, new algorithms and so on), and this new content should be identified clearly in a cover letter. In other subfields (like in theory) the expectation is that all proofs will be presented in full detail (no sketches), but new results are not necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends greatly on the subfield and the journal. As always, when in doubt, &lt;strong&gt;ask&lt;/strong&gt; the editor of the journal, or colleagues who've submitted there before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T18:14:51.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T18:17:14.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no idea how to give a &lt;em&gt;flawless&lt;/em&gt; presentation, but to give a good one, follow points from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joseph A. Gallian, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advice on Giving a Good PowerPoint Presentation&lt;/a&gt;, Math Horizons, April (2006), 25-27 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.d.umn.edu/~jgallian/goodPPtalk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pdf here&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Don't be afraid of the word &quot;PowerPoint&quot; here - there is nothing specific to this program. Moreover, many points from there work for any presentation, including one only with blackboard or even one without it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any way, to make in better and better there is no shortcut to preparation and practice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T18:17:14.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T18:58:27.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that presenting is a teachable/learnable skill. You may want to consider classes, if you can find them, or doing your presentation for friends and asking for feedback. Some folks suggest investigating the Toastmasters organization as a way to learn public speaking skills; I don't know enough about them to have an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, practice makes better, and  -- as with most arts and crafts -- this is more about being able to recover gracefully so nobody especially notices the mistake than about a perfect performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterthought: a flawless presentation is highly unnatural...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastEditorUserId="10225" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T03:32:06.743" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T03:32:06.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1798" CreationDate="2014-03-10T19:09:18.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To mirror JeffE's answer: Your Acknowledgements section is for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. And possibly the small number of people who will actually look at your dissertation cover to cover. Write it in your own voice, and write it the way you want to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, this is mine, with identifying information removed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to gratefully acknowledge the guidance, support and&#xA;  encouragement of my doctoral advisor, Dr. Chair, and the members of&#xA;  my committee during my time at University, as well as Dr. Helpful for her&#xA;  continued mentorship and collaboration, and for logging many miles&#xA;  between City A, City B and City C while on my&#xA;  committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My gratitude extends to Dr. Data and Dr. AnswersMyQuestions&#xA;  at Nearby Institution for their enthusiasm and willingness to provide both&#xA;  data and clinical expertise, to Expert for references and advice&#xA;  about Topic and to my friends at University for many hours&#xA;  of mutual support, complaining and insightful discussions in the&#xA;  student room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This dissertation would not have been possible without&#xA;  funding from the FUNDING AGENCIES. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I would like to thank the makers of Dr. Pepper and the members of the&#xA;  StackOverflow and CrossValidated communities for their invaluable&#xA;  assistance in many a late-night coding session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's a little flippant, but in my opinion something in a dissertation should be, and to quote the Rifleman's Creed: There are many like it, but this one is mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T19:09:18.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17949" CreationDate="2014-03-10T19:21:10.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really something that will differ depending on where you are, what field, and even who your advisor is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, at my previous institution, the rule was that you couldn't work on your dissertation remotely until after your proposal date (meaning you are fairly far into your program - proposals at that institution were 2-3 years in for many) and only with your committee's approval. Some chairs could, and did, refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others were extremely laid back, and probably wouldn't have objected to skirting that rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T19:21:10.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T19:30:10.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice, as has been mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one concrete points with respect to practicing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to write &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what I want to say in the Speaker Notes section of the slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This point is a little contentious, because the first thing people usually learn about public speaking is &quot;not to read&quot;. I used to subscribe by this. Now, I've gone back to writing really really complete notes and reading for practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I get a whole community down my throat let me explain. When I was practicing in the past, I kept misstating things or adding 'um' or pausing and would have to retract my words, and then that led to even more awkwardness. So I thought, &quot;Well, I'm just going to write down exactly what I want to say then&quot; and not have to try to find the awesome phrasing by memory. So I did. What you then need to practice is &lt;em&gt;delivery&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that people have is that they often associate reading with how you do reading out loud in school - you just kind of drone out the text in a monotone voice that's drab and boring. In reality, you can read and still make it dynamic and interesting and fluid and fun. Do practice that. Imagine your favorite speechgiver - a famous world leader, a CEO of a company, and so forth. A lot of them are reading their speeches. Think of your favorite newscaster or comedy anchorman. They are all reading off of the prompter and yet it feels like they're just talking to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is pretty important that, when developing a dynamic reading habit, to get a sense of how you sound. Record yourself and play it back and see if it sounds like you're just talking to someone in conversation. That's how it should sound like. It shouldn't sound like you're reading a research paper. Figure out if it's the content that's doing this or if it's the delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you practice this a lot - just reading dynamically - then you're going to start to know your talk so well that you won't need the notes, and you won't need the slides, and you won't need to worry about interruptions or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: I don't write notes for every section for my talk: just the tricky parts that I stumble on. I often do it for the very beginning of the talk (Yes, I actually write &quot;Thank you very much for the introduction. My name is Irwin and I'm happy to be here today&quot; in my note slides because when I'm at my most nervous moment, I need to be able to start off without any ums, ifs, or buts), technical portions, and places where I have big &quot;A-has&quot; and &quot;punchlines&quot; and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T19:30:10.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18045" CreationDate="2014-03-10T21:01:50.590" Score="15" ViewCount="3134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that many ads say &quot;Review of applications will begin on Day X, and continue until the position is filled&quot;. I wonder how this kind of search works. Assume the search committee received a certain number of applications on Day X. Usually none of the applications is from a superstar that you definitively want to hire, but let's say between five and ten are good enough for you to hire one of them. What would the search committee do? Would they contact the candidates, arrange interviews and hire the best one there? Or would they still wait for a month or two just to see if a superstar would apply after all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12956" LastEditorUserId="32906" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T23:56:29.323" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T23:56:29.323" Title="Job applications reviewed &quot;until the position is filled&quot; (i.e. soft deadline): What does that really mean?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-10T21:04:34.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From 20+ years of Powerpoint use in instruction, here is what I have learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. If you really know the material and want students to focus on your elaborations rather than furiously write down what is on the slide and thus ignoring you, then use a &quot;slide build&quot;. If you are not concerned with that issue, put it all up there at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. It can be very useful in adding emphasis to a key point or assisting with comprehension (humans learn best when you tell a story with a beginning middle and end). If you have to explain an sequential concept (timeline, multi-step process etc) animations can help students visualize and retain the sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a good approach to take for titling slides?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles seem important to keep students on track. Multiple slides on the same topic labeled &quot;Background Information (1 of 3)&quot; seems to be the easiest to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I include &quot;separation slides&quot; to chunk content?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure. As was said previously, slides are free. Any help with structure is good. The best use would be to include some type of mental &quot;hook&quot; on such slides to pique interest for the next section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the optimal amount of information per slide?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of opinions Ive come across. The simplest is one topic with slide content adhering to the &quot;6 x 6 rule&quot; of no more than 6 bullets of 6 words each. Less is better. Slides provide a frame upon which the teacher elaborates with the details. You can always have duplicates of one slide with a slide in between with just a function or some other detail you want students to focus on and flip to it then back to the 6 bullets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., 4/20) or just the current slide (e.g., 4)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4/20 works well with more mature audiences. For younger students (K-12) it doesn't seem to matter much in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can break up instruction into 5 minute or smaller segments with some other activity then taking 15 minutes or so people seem to learn a lot more and stay engaged. Alternate back and forth for the allotted time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walk around in a random pattern (&quot;bumblebee technique,&quot; as one of my students called it). I can't find the link but supposedly research has shown that it helps an audience maintain attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use 30 pt or larger font in sans serif. This will keep words to a minimum and make it easy to read. Once again—some research I read a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use color gradient backgrounds, it is often hard to read. Use high contrast text and background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work in ways to check on comprehension throughout the instruction. Whether you poll students using their phones and texting apps, verbally call on students, encourage questions, etc. You have to think hard about your comprehension feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, remember it is an assistive technology and only you, the instructor can make it interesting and memorable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12957" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T22:08:20.857" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T22:08:20.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18028" CreationDate="2014-03-10T21:28:22.880" Score="32" ViewCount="8449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in mathematics, just in case that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted a manuscript to a journal, and got an extensive referee report from referee X. After sending the revision, the paper got rejected, so I sent it to a second journal where it got accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, I got a note from the editor of the first journal saying that referee X found a way to improve my results, and the editor gave me a pdf file from referee X outlining his/her ideas. Unfortunately, since my manuscript had already been accepted for publication I could not change it at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the improvement that referee X suggested is significant enough to merit another paper. I asked the editor to pass on an invitation to referee X to work on a joint paper with me, but the editor refused, saying that he didn't want to violate referee anonymity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the paper needs to be written, but I feel it would be strange for me to write a single-author paper when the most significant idea does not originate with me. (Referee X only gave me a vague sketch of the idea, there are things that still have to be worked out. I still have to do a lot of work, but the most important insight would be referee X's). I suppose I'm just going to write a few paragraphs in the introduction explaining the situation. I was wondering if there would be another way to handle the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11047" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T22:09:34.490" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T23:34:10.550" Title="How to acknowledge contributions of anonymous referee in new paper?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18027" CreationDate="2014-03-10T22:09:20.670" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can state something like &quot;I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier paper (give ref) for providing insightful comments and providing directions for additional work which has resulted in this paper. Without the anonymous reviewers supportive work this paper would not have been possible.&quot; The exact wording is of course up to you and what you see fits reality best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a pity the editor does not want to forward your invite (I assume the review system is not double blind?). Asking is not a breach. I can, however, see that an editor does not necessarily want to become a messenger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a clear statement in the acknowledgement you have done what you can and I am sure the reviewer will pick up on it sooner or later and maybe after your new paper get in touch. After all, there is really not much you can do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T22:09:20.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18027" CreationDate="2014-03-10T22:40:01.710" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my understanding of the details of the situation, the editor is not acting well in refusing to pass along your &lt;em&gt;invitation&lt;/em&gt; to the referee.  Doing so does not violate anonymity in any way (I am confident that the review process was not &quot;double blind&quot; -- i.e., the referee knows the author's identity -- in my experience, no mathematics papers are reviewed in this way.)  Maybe what the editor is thinking is that in order to accept your offer the referee would have to violate anonymity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is this an ethical issue?  I have always held it to be the case that a referee can disclose her identity to an author at any time, and I have done this more than once as a referee.  I can vaguely see some ethical problems which &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; arise if this process of referee-self-disclosure were very widespread, but it seems like a bit of a stretch.  I would be very interested if someone can explain to me why this is a real concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against the highly nebulous previous paragraph one must balance the ethical issue that &lt;strong&gt;academic ideas are not gifts that one person can freely bestow upon another&lt;/strong&gt;.  I wrote the previous sentence in full awareness of the fact that mathematics in practice does have some degree of &lt;em&gt;noblesse oblige&lt;/em&gt;: one often encounters very eminent and senior mathematicians giving ideas away to younger / less experienced / less eminent mathematicians without wanting anything in return: in mathematics we are inculcated to have a view that certain contributions are &quot;below our level&quot; and thus not worth taking credit for.  That is fine if &quot;not taking credit&quot; means not becoming an author on a paper.  But if it means not disclosing your contribution at all -- with the consequence that the begifted junior mathematician gets &quot;too much credit&quot; for work that had a significant component that was not his own -- well, that is hardly a victimless crime in our current highly competitive job-market.  In fact it seems to be a form of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The situation brings to mind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&amp;amp;story_id=118&amp;amp;part=all&quot;&gt;Karl Iagnemma's short story &quot;Zilkowski's Theorem&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  This was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories of 2002.  Remarkably, this was only one of two short stories in that anthology in which the main character was a practitioner of the mathematical sciences.  The other is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/11/12/011112fi_fiction&quot;&gt;Leonard Michaels's &quot;Nachmann from Los Angeles&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  Both were excellent!]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should write back to the editor to express these ethical concerns.  Getting the editor-in-chief of the journal involved (if this is not already the editor you are dealing with) is also a good idea at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really don't know the identity of the author, then you need to indicate clearly the circumstances in whatever paper you write.  You may also want to make it known in your circles that you would very much like to know the identity of the mathematician who helped you write your next paper.  Depending upon how small / tightly knit your particular subcommunity is, you may have more or less luck with that, but it's certainly worth a try.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T23:34:10.550" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T23:34:10.550" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T22:53:58.147" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing that you need to know is that it is not &quot;natural&quot;. If you're lucky enough to watch the same person give the same talk more than once (as I have) you will discover that it is a lot less spontaneous than it appears to be. Giving a live talk draws on several different kinds of preparation at once:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the talk itself is typically prepared and practiced over and over. There may be notes in the speaker notes section, or the bullets on the slide may be enough to remind the speaker what to say to each slide. The talk is organized in a way that makes it easy to remember all the points that need to be covered, to be able to drop some material if necessary, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the speaker has a wide collection of stories and jokes that can be used to provide time to think, to lengthen a talk that is going too fast and will run short, or to relax an audience that isn't interacting enough&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the speaker knows a physical vocabulary: where to stand, how far and how fast to walk, what arm positions to use, whether to pause at the far edge of the stage or hidden behind the desk, and what effect all of these will have on the audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the speaker knows the overall length the talk must be and often knows some milestones within the talk (finish demo 1 by 12 minutes; should have 5 minutes left when we get to dog picture) so that subtle lengthenings or shortenings can keep the talk on schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the speaker has learned to drop meta talk (oh, I see I covered these points earlier, hm, I guess there isn't time for this demo, ah, this is awkward I seem to have finished early) and to project tremendous confidence even while internally panicking over a demo that isn't working, a slide that has gone missing, or the sudden realization of the current time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hilarious to watch a well done &quot;spontaneous&quot; demo that is exactly the same every time. I tell you what, the speaker says, let's throw some code together to let you see what I'm talking about. Closing the Powerpoint (or at least minimizing it) and bringing up a developer tool, the speaker goes on: I can do this in C# I guess, of course it works in other languages too. Let's make a .... pause .... look at the screen as though trying to decide ... Windows app, sure that can work, I'll put a button or two and a text box, yeah, that should work. ... the demo goes on and on to all intents and purposes just being made up on the fly, but I'm in the back of the room with the demo script and I know the speaker is doing exactly what we planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to know the material well in addition to practicing. If you forget to mention something, you'll need to spot a chance to work it in later. If you get a question from the audience, you'll need to be able to answer it. And if you get thrown by a technical glitch and need to speak really spontaneously, you will need to know where you were headed for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is something you can learn. If you think it is natural and flawless, you may think &quot;I either have it or I don't.&quot; That's not true. You can learn the mechanics of structuring a talk, of laying out a slide so that it doesn't detract from the talking you're doing, of using your voice, your pauses, and your body to support your message. And you can practice over and over, and watch other people too, until you are good. Some people learn faster than others, but everyone can learn this if it's important to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T22:53:58.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-10T23:51:29.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of factors that are I have found to be important to giving a good presentation. I have not yet given a academic presentation yet, other than at undergrad level, but have attended some. In my professional career as an Accountant (I am also a part-time Post-Graduate) I have given some and attended many. The number of people I have normally given a presentation range between about 50 to 300.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good knowledge of topic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem like a given but you'd be amazed haw many poor presentations can be put down to this fact. This gives you the ability to expand on your presentation naturally if the need exists. It also can help if your preparation, for whatever reason, was not the best. Trust me it can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preparation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said about knowledge; preparation is very important. I've found over the years that this can vary from presentation to presentation. At first &amp;amp; I still do I would type out my whole talk. This would serve as a template for my talk and I would follow it pretty closely but would go off script if or when I felt it would be of benefit. Sometimes with time you can sense a vibe off a room that you may need to expand on a point you were talking about. On other occasions I would just make bullet points to keep me on track when I am comfortably with the topic. For me preparation also includes being comfortable in the space in which you are giving your presentation. I have found it is good to get to the venue early to survey the room that you would be speaking in. Walk the room if you can; note how big it is. Is there equipment for you if you need to use slides, a podium or table for you to use and water available. These may seem small issues but it's good practice so as to keep yourself in a good frame of mind before you speak. Nothing worse than 30 minutes messing with a laptop and projector to frustrate you before hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been dealt with in many of the answers so I won't dwell on it to long. It is important so the more you can do it the better. As said already if you can do a trial run with friends or colleagues that is good. I know in my university there are some workshops available that help with public speaking and I believe Toastmasters was also mentioned where you could practice. You can also practice on your own. Two techniques I use are 1. when out for a walk I run over in my mind little short sections of make talk and see how well I can present them and then check my notes when I get back; 2. (this may sound a bit vain) you can practice in front of a mirror which I think helps you get comfortable with how you look when talking and you may also notice bad habits you will wish to eradicate from you presenting style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confidence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is noted in most of the answers as well. You can be naturally confident or it may be some thing you have to work on. If it come naturally then nerves can play less of a role in your presentation style and people can notice a nervous speaker. That said, all the confidence on the world will not help you if you don't research your topic, prepare and practice. Where confidence is of benefit even if it acquired over time is that it helps ensure you are more relaxed when giving the talk and when you are relaxed you are better able to concentrate on what is important, the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T23:51:29.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16193" CreationDate="2014-03-11T02:27:03.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing the paper in latex &lt;a href=&quot;http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-highlight-text-in-latex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;use highlight&lt;/a&gt; to denote sections that have been changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might be too technical for most people, I would suggest using Version control if your advisor is okay with it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5277/why-use-version-control-systems-for-writing-a-paper&quot;&gt;Why use version control systems for writing a paper?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T02:27:03.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18036" CreationDate="2014-03-11T03:31:11.090" Score="20" ViewCount="1477" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this varies from different universities/research institutes/countries, however, is there a general percentage or ethical rule on how much money from a grant can or should be spent on food and meetings?  When I was a graduate student I didn't need to deal with this too much, but also never really saw any of my advisors going out to nice dinners or having meals with people on research funds, granted, they did do it with the internal budgets of the institute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current situation had me get a grant for around 20,000 USD, the project is 8 months, and was asked to list how much money I will spend on food and meetings.  I had always thought of this to be inappropriate as research money should be for research.  Am I over thinking it and this is a normal practice?  I was told 1k of the 20k could be for food, but asked for 200 instead, out of my own thinking of what should be appropriate for giving students or interns coffee  (this is separate than the money reserved for travelling to conferences).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-04T13:34:23.083" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T13:34:23.083" Title="Ethics of spending research money on food and meetings" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18035" CreationDate="2014-03-11T03:44:38.267" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many events one might hold to benefit a particular research effort, for which it is usual to provide at least coffee, fruit, and pastries (at least at my school), sometimes more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You invite a researcher to visit your university and give a talk about his latest work, which is directly related to, and will help bootstrap, your funded research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A major goal defined in your grant is to publicize a particular bit of research. You hold an open house and invite visitors from industry and academia to disseminate the results of your research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A goal of your research is to develop certain tools and methods and then publicize them. You hold a workshop or &quot;summer camp&quot; for grad students from other universities to teach them how to use the methods/tools you've developed for your research and get their feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a collaborator at another location working on this research effort with you. He visits your university once a year for a project meeting, including lunch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the nature of the project and the funding, one or more of these may be an  appropriate use of funds. Generally, to be permissible, it must be for an event that directly contributes to the goals of a &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; research effort (not e.g. a department event). Sometimes, the grant is given explicitly to host such an event (such as a workshop or summer camp).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Obviously: follow the rules from the university and the funding source about how the money may be spent. The NSF, for example, has very specific guidelines on the subject.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T04:26:39.233" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T04:26:39.233" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16193" CreationDate="2014-03-11T10:09:25.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use LaTeX, then, of course, it would be easiest if you and your supervisor would have access to the same versioning tool (e.g. git/mercurial/svn/...) where you both could check changes in the source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use LaTeX and your supervisor has no access to your versioning system then I suggest to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/latexdiff&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;latexdiff&lt;/a&gt; to produce a pdf that has the changes highlighted in nice way (see e.g. this image &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ocoat.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://crypto.junod.info/2010/07/03/latexdiff/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't use versioning then: Start now! If you still haven't started, keep versions by hand and use latexdiff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T10:09:25.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18013" CreationDate="2014-03-11T11:05:59.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, one of the following possibilities would be appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite the whole book, e.g., like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Smith and B. Doe (editors.), &lt;em&gt;Recent Advances on Synthetic Materials&lt;/em&gt; (Springer, New York, 2014)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your citation manager should provide a data type for this (in BibTeX this is &lt;code&gt;BOOK&lt;/code&gt;). In this case, you only give the editors and not every single author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should only cite a whole collection for purposes of providing a broader scope for your work, e.g., in the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite one article, e.g., like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C. Foo and D. Bar, Synthetic Materials and You, in &lt;em&gt;Recent Advances on Synthetic Materials,&lt;/em&gt; edited by A. Smith and B. Doe (Springer, New York, 2014), pp. 123–145.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, your citation manager should provide a data type for this (in BibTeX this is &lt;code&gt;INCOLLECTION&lt;/code&gt;). In this case you give the authors of the relevant section and the editors (depending on the journal style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what you should do if you are referencing a result or similar from an article in this collection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you were to take on the task to incorporate every author for his/hers contribution, how would you do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if I somewhat came to the conclusion that (contrary to the above) citing every author were appropriate, I would not implement this, simply because no journal, supervisor, etc. will print or accept such a citation and it would be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T11:49:22.833" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T11:49:22.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2014-03-11T11:15:32.140" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of great answers here, and most of them say &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt;. Well, I agree, but I didn't see this particular point in any answer yet, so let me try and explain what usually helps me &quot;keep the flow&quot; and how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it's all about &lt;strong&gt;practice&lt;/strong&gt;, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when I write the slides, I always have a rough idea of what I would like to say and try out a few (different) phrasings in my head (only the key points / words end up on the slides)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(ideally), I do multiple rehearsals, improvisation-upon-improvisation. At this point, it is not uncommon for the first rehearsal to last 4 or 5 times as much as the allotted time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at early-stage rehearsals, I will &lt;strong&gt;try multiple phrasings&lt;/strong&gt; for the same slide. If I start saying &quot;Um...&quot;, my sentences get lost in the middle or something similar, I will just calmly stop at this point and try a new approach to what I want to say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I tend to do around 2 more rehearsals after I get the presentation down to the allotted time (for me, personally, going on much longer I might unintentionally shorten the presentation too much)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;now, &lt;strong&gt;what, concretely, I get from all these rehearsals&lt;/strong&gt; is multiple, different ways to handle every slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason presentations sound flawless is because &lt;strong&gt;not just every sentence by itself is good, but the transitions between sentences, slides and sections are well done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, after doing 4-5-6 rehearsals for the presentation, &lt;strong&gt;you know multiple ways&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;say each thought&lt;/strong&gt;, and then multiple ways &lt;strong&gt;to transition to the next&lt;/strong&gt; thought, and even if you &quot;slip&quot; and say something other than the &quot;perfect, planned version&quot;, you still have a rehearsed back-up strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as for writing down the notes, I usually sit down after a rehearsal number 2 or 3, and focus only on &lt;strong&gt;difficult transitions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, in those few first rehearsals, I sill didn't find a fluent way to say something, or if I did but I stumbled around it, I will try and &lt;strong&gt;write down verbatim what I want to say&lt;/strong&gt;, sometimes even multiple versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just writing it down usually helps, but if I'm going to go over any notes minutes before presenting, these are going to be it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;finally, making a rehearsal if front of a test-audience helps. I dread anybody hearing me on the rehearsal number one or two, but I like for somebody to listen on around the pre-last rehearsal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this time, I usually &quot;know&quot; my presentation well enough so I can easily integrate suggestions in, but I still have a go to test if the suggestions fit fluently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this all helps the presentation sound more natural. Since you can handle multiple &quot;lingual&quot; situations, you do not sound like you're reciting by heart. On the other hand, you're sure that you have multiple &quot;fallback&quot; options which allow you flexibility and that all of them will deliver the same idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T14:33:52.770" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T14:33:52.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16193" CreationDate="2014-03-11T11:15:51.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a starting point have a discussion with your supervisor on how they would like you to present documents with changes in them. Have you own research prepared so as that you can answer any questions they may have on what you are proposing. It may end up that you will us a combination of methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you would find that using the track change feature in word would be of great benefit to yourself but it does include every change so may not be of the best for your supervisor reviewing. You would have to change the settings to only show the changes that your supervisor requires or requests. Here is a good blog entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://shaunakelly.com/word/sharing/howtrackchangesworks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How track changes works&lt;/a&gt; and the feature explained from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft office site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know from my own experience I put in the footer of the document version number and date submitted (Draft V.1.0 27/02/2014). This helps you keep track of the documents so if you supervisor gets a new version they know there is significant changes to it. Bubble comments on the document explaining new or major changes to content can inform your supervisor of the major changes since the last draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a note I am at the moment using Lireoffice (similar to word) but am considering switching to LaTeX. I am in a Humanities field (history)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T11:15:51.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24320" CreationDate="2014-03-11T12:55:40.167" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I want to do is copy a table found in paper 1 and expand upon it using information from different sources. I'm doing a literature review and the table I found gives a nice summary of  the literature, however I need to expand it since it is missing a few notable contributions. I want to maintain the format of the original table and merely add a few rows to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the table is not the problem, I'm just completely oblivious as to how I should properly attribute the original author of it in APA style + attributing the additions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12981" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:03:04.243" Title="Merge tables from different sources (APA citation)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18025" CreationDate="2014-03-11T16:14:50.413" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Review of applications will begin on Day X, and continue until the position is filled&quot; is also translated as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We want you to get your application in on time, but if you're totes amazeballs and late we'll overlook it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation is the same as what was mentioned. If you say that there's a hard deadline for submissions, and then Dr. Awesome Sauce applies a day later and gets hired, you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit from all the Dr. Not-So-Awesomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, academic hiring works on a calendar, and universities compete with each other. For example, in computer science it's rare to be making a first offer well into May unless you're at the University of I'm-So-Cool and know that you can afford to be last. And even then it doesn't always work. So practically speaking there's a deadline of sometime in March to make decisions on offers and start wooing your preferred candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you can't realistically process a new application any later than early-mid February (because it takes time to collect references and organize a trip)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T16:14:50.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18048" CreationDate="2014-03-11T17:20:00.570" Score="9" ViewCount="2554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very perplexed as to how the terms &lt;strong&gt;College&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;University&lt;/strong&gt; are archaically used to denote associations of people, but are in modern times being used to denote buildings or realty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are standard organizational structures in a legal sense for different Colleges in a US-based Research University??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the &lt;strong&gt;corporation&lt;/strong&gt; of the University Trustees makes the policies providing for faculty appointments in a College of Arts and also in a College of Education, will these different Colleges typically be like &lt;strong&gt;departments&lt;/strong&gt; in the same corporation, or do they have separate &lt;strong&gt;Legal Personalities&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the Colleges associations or corporations, or merely administrative units defined by the internal policy of the Trustees to distinguish different collections of offices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the Colleges have members, and if so who are the members? Are all the &lt;strong&gt;matriculated&lt;/strong&gt; members, or just current students? Are the faculty members of the College?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12988" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T17:35:28.567" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:12:13.210" Title="What is the typical Legal Structure of a modern College?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18046" CreationDate="2014-03-11T18:07:41.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, in a typical private U.S. research university the different colleges or schools that make up the university have no legal independence, and they are simply administrative units within the university.  (On the other hand, part of the endowment generally consists of restricted gifts, which can only be used in certain ways or by certain departments.  This can give the corresponding parts of the university more power or independence in practice than one might otherwise suppose.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do the Colleges have members, and if so who are the members? Are all the matriculated members, or just current students? Are the faculty members of the College?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is entirely a matter of university policy.  Current students, staff, and faculty would usually be considered members of their corresponding colleges, but this can vary (and some universities just aren't organized this way in the first place).  In practice, this generally doesn't mean very much: it may determine some requirements for students in addition to departmental requirements, it could be listed as an affiliation on your publications (although departments are more common), it might give a few privileges such as building or library access, and it tells you how to fill out university forms, but it's otherwise not a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T18:07:41.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18051" CreationDate="2014-03-11T19:17:25.017" Score="40" ViewCount="3239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, an electrical engineering undergraduate, am currently involved in a research project, wherein I help write all the codes, run all the simulations, and plot all the graphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is about to be submitted soon. I am hesitating whether to mention my desire to be listed as a co-author to my advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, I have no contributions to the idea and the theoretical analysis, as those are a bit too complicated for an undergraduate, or at least for me myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have done all the implementations of the ideas and plotted all the resulting graphs, which, I believe, will be put into the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, do I deserve an authorship (maybe 3rd or 4th)? Or it is reasonable to just acknowledge me in the Acknowledgement paragraph at the end of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I deserve one, should I bring this up now or wait until I have done all my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T20:49:34.897" Title="Doing all the simulations and plotting, do I deserve an authorship?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18049" CreationDate="2014-03-11T19:23:36.190" Score="53" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am hesitating whether to mention my desire to be listed as a co-author to my advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please mention it to your advisor &lt;strong&gt;right away&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may say, &quot;You're right, you should be a co-author.&quot; Or, &quot;Given your specific contributions, it wouldn't be appropriate to list you as a co-author, but you will be listed in the acknowledgements.&quot; Or they may say, &quot;Given your current contributions you can't be a co-author, but if you also do XYZ for the paper before it is finished, then it would be appropriate for you to be 3rd author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may agree or disagree with their answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't really tell you definitely whether or not you should be a co-author. (We don't know enough about the content of the paper, or your contribution, and it wouldn't be appropriate for you to give that level of detail here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you should &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; talk to your advisor about it (preferably right away, and definitely &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the paper is submitted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: The OP made the following comment -&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After digging out some info about the previous undergraduate students, I find all of them are not listed as authors. But they are indeed acknowledged in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think for some reason your advisor will be reluctant to include you as an author, you can do some preparation for your talk with them as follows. Then, if your advisor's first reaction is &quot;I've never given authorship to an undergrad before,&quot; you are prepared to politely and non-combatively make a case &lt;em&gt;to your advisor&lt;/em&gt; for why you think you merit authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check if your university or department has any formal policy on authorship. For example, here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://wustl.edu/policies/authorship.html&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/3503&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://skirball.med.nyu.edu/resources/facilities/protein-analysis-facility/nyu-protein-analysis-facility-policies-user-fees-auth&quot;&gt;policies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have no university-specific guidelines, you can refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/Section821.html&quot;&gt;IEEE rules&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In either case, identify to yourself things you have done that you think qualify you for authorship according to the guidelines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if your advisor's first response is &quot;No&quot; and you disagree (after listening to the reasoning), you can present your side (which your advisor may or may not agree with).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your advisor's assessment is &quot;No, you haven't done enough to warrant authorship,&quot; you can ask  &quot;What else I can do before paper submission that will 'bump' my contribution up to authorship level?&quot; I have had students in the past whose contribution to a paper didn't warrant authorship. In those cases, I told them: &quot;Your current contributions do not merit authorship (only acknowledgement), but if you also do X, Y, Z, you will be an author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; advising any kind of escalation at this point - you don't even know yet what your advisor will say! But you may feel more comfortable with some kind of plan in mind for how to explain your contributions (as you understand them) to your advisor &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; advisor says &quot;No&quot; and you don't think advisor fully understands your side.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt; as soon as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T20:49:34.897" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T20:49:34.897" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-11T21:20:06.080" Score="33" ViewCount="3573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was fortunate enough to get a position as a researcher for the Mayo Clinic's SURF Program this year. My PI's lab focus is on the the immune system's role in CNS axonal and neuronal injury, specifically through the lens of how innate and adaptive immune effectors interact w/ infected neurons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I do research under a professor at my college and I volunteered for a state university lab during the previous summer, this is my first REU/SURF opportunity, and I REALLY want to make a good impression. Here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the do's and don't's in terms of being a skilled and efficient researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am still an undergrad, I know that I will be a less useful asset to the lab than a grad student or post-doc, but what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for your help! Wishing you all the very best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13000" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T22:20:09.437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T14:27:07.687" Title="Do's and Don't's of Undergraduate Research" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18053" CreationDate="2014-03-11T21:53:56.497" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the quality that makes a student &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a burden is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A willingness to learn for themselves and good judgement about when to stop and ask for feedback.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a student isn't willing to try things out and learn independently, then it creates a burden on the supervisor. I really don't appreciate when a student asks me how to do something &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they do a basic Google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if a student doesn't know how to judge when he/she is &quot;stuck&quot; and needs help, this also creates a burden on the supervisor (because the supervisor has to keep checking on the student to make sure they're progressing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dos and don'ts (to avoid being a &quot;burden&quot;) that come to mind are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; ask your supervisor this question at the very beginning, to find out what he/she expects from you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; take detailed notes when you have a meeting with your supervisor or somebody teaches you how to do something, so you can refer to them later&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; keep a written record of your own attempts and progress (such as a lab notebook) to show your supervisor during meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; ask a question if you don't understand an instruction or something that is said, because it will be much better for everyone involved if you clear things up sooner rather than later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; mention your own ideas to your supervisor, if you have some that you think will make your research better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't&lt;/strong&gt; think that just because you are an undergraduate, you can't make much of a contribution. Obviously experience helps, but it's really only a small piece of what makes someone a skilled researcher. Willingness to learn is a much bigger piece, IMO. I've had high-school summer interns who were better than any of the M.S. students in the lab, simply because they put in more effort to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Source of the quote: &lt;em&gt;The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research&lt;/em&gt;, by Marian Petre &amp;amp; Gordon Rugg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T14:27:07.687" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T14:27:07.687" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18049" CreationDate="2014-03-11T23:00:29.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not have to have formed a solid opinion about whether your contributions merit coauthorship in order to ask the question of your advisor.  In fact I think that every young person doing work which is being used in any way in a published academic paper would do well to ask this question.  If you like, you can frame it not as your trying to suss out whether you have been unfairly denied coauthorship but that you are looking to learn more about the research process itself and inquiring into what sort of research contributions merit coauthorship.  (Even if you are seeking to do such a sussing out, framing it as a teachable moment is probably a better way to get a helpful, unguarded response.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, things go smoothly if the issue of coauthorship is raised earlier in the collaborative process rather than later.  It is hard for me to think of a situation in which it is &quot;too soon&quot; to ask this question, although if you ask it early enough the answer may not be definitive.  It is not good to be working on something and wondering whether one will wind up as a coauthor or not.  That's needlessly stressful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in my experience, undergraduates often have unrealistic expectations about what sort of work merits publication and/or coauthorship.  It seems, especially on this site, that a lot of undergraduates are hoping that their undergraduate research can be published.  In some cases it can, and how feasible this is must be highly field-dependent, but here is an inherent feature of undergraduate research: it is research done by someone who has much less subject-area knowledge and insight than &lt;em&gt;she will herself have later on&lt;/em&gt;, assuming she continues in the discipline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you don't continue in the discipline then you should ask yourself seriously why you want to be published in it.  Getting anything published anywhere sounds neat to any suitably bookish young person -- and it sounds neat to me too, and I am a published author -- but the reality of it is that academic publication takes a lot of time and work over and beyond the work that was done to write the paper.  If you are a 20-year old who has written an electrical engineering paper and then decided to go on to some other career, please think seriously about just putting that paper on your webpage and spending the time that it would take to get your paper published learning to play the guitar, or watching Lars von Trier films, or finding a cute boyfriend/girlfriend, or...almost anything else, really.  If you don't continue on in the discipline, then having a published academic paper is worth essentially nothing beyond the neat feeling you get by being published.  It does not convey the real life advantages that, say, being able to talk knowledgeably about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dogme95&lt;/a&gt; would.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note well: I am not saying that undergraduates cannot do good research.  They can: in rare but extant circumstances, undergraduates have done research which is better than what most other people in the field can do.  What I am saying is that almost every undergraduate who does research will do significantly better research a little later on, to the extent that I cannot think of a situation in which someone's undergraduate research became a big part of their professional profile.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: I did not mean to create the impression that I feel that in this particular case the OP's contributions do not merit coauthorship.  I can't know without knowing the details of the situation, and I wouldn't be a good judge anyway because I work in a field -- mathematics -- where the standards for what constitutes coauthorship are very different from in EE.  Let me reiterate the points that I did make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) The advisor is much better equipped to understand whether the student's work merits coauthorship than the student.  So statistically speaking, if a student is unsure about this, asks the advisor, and the advisor says the student has not done enough for coauthorship, the advisor is probably right.  Of course this unequal expertise and authority sets things up perfectly for a predatory advisor to exploit his undergraduate workers.  My answer is mostly directed towards the higher probability event that the advisor is acting honorably.  The main thing I advised the OP to do was to talk to his advisor about the standards for coauthorship.  I feel very strongly that this is the correct first step (and should have been taken before, in fact, since the OP has some anxiety about the situation).  If what the OP hears in this conversation is very unsatisfactory to him, then we can further discuss the situation.  I don't want to assume that will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) The line between getting acknowledged and getting coauthorship is certainly a gray area, even among adult academics.   For example, in the last few months alone I was invited to be a coauthor on two different papers.  I had to think about each one.  In the end, I turned down one request -- which came from two graduate students in my own department, including one of my own advisees -- and accepted the other &lt;em&gt;after doing more work&lt;/em&gt; so that I felt like my coauthorship was justified.  Both of these could have gone either way.  When I think about whether to include myself or someone else as a coauthor, first I weight intellectual contributions (in a way which may not generalize so well outside of mathematics, which is something I have recently learned by discussion with other members of the site) and second I think in terms of the professional implications of putting on or leaving off a certain person's name.  The paper that I left my name off of was the third paper coming out of a graduate research seminar organized and led by me [I was a coauthor on the first two], and the results obtained were ones that I specifically asked for.  Nevertheless the work done on this paper was by the students and not by me* -- my own direct contribution to this work was positive but indubitably of a smaller order than theirs -- and the advantage to each of these students of having a paper which does not have a faculty coauthor is considerable.  For me, having one more publication of a similar sort as the other two is not a big advantage to me.  In fact, by not putting my name on the paper I am in fact claiming a sort of academic seniority: I'm showing that I've reached a certain point in my career where I can successfully inspire and direct projects that I am not directly involved with.  So my answers come from the perspective of a faculty advisor who thinks carefully about which names to put on or leave off a paper...including his own.  This behavior does not make me an unusually virtuous member of my academic community: it seems like business as usual.  So I would like to extend the benefit of the doubt to the OP's academic advisor and assume that he is acting honorably until specific information comes up to the contrary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: In fact this third work involved computations that were so substantial that although I am, I suppose, capable of having done them, in practice I would not have been willing to devote the time and enthusiasm that my students did, and it would certainly have taken me longer to write a much kludgier version of the code than what my student came up with fairly quickly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T19:27:33.433" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T19:27:33.433" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T02:27:05.410" Score="5" ViewCount="4817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently applying for PhD positions (mainly - though not exclusively - around Germany and Switzerland). As I would like to start as soon as possible and would rather be paid than receive a scholarship, I am not applying via grad schools but directly to potential supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an arduous process as very many PIs interest me, though most do not have the financial freedom of creating new PhD positions on the spot. Consequently I have written a lot of emails and I have developed a short formula which I adapt to each individual PI. The structure is roughly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title: 2-3 buzzwords related to the PIs work followed by &quot; - PhD Opportunities&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introductory statement - &lt;em&gt;Who am I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short summary of my experience, explicitly mentioning points relevant to his focus and including a link to my full CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly state my preferred topics related to his focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly ask if he has a PhD position opening, possibly including a suggestion of what sort of project would motivate me, and what about him/his group precisely I found interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example e-mail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neurogenetics and Psychopharmacology - PhD Opportunities&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello, I am a Molecular Neuroscience major from Heidelberg. I have&#xA;  recently graduated from our MSc. program and am currently looking for&#xA;  groups in which to pursue my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have very versatile experience in neuroscience - ranging from&#xA;  molecular biology, microscopy, and genetics in model animals up to&#xA;  fMRI, eye tracking, pupillometry, and behavioural tests in humans (for&#xA;  more on this please refer to my CV:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://chymera.eu/docs/cv-acad-gen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://chymera.eu/docs/cv-acad-gen.pdf&lt;/a&gt; ). I would like to continue&#xA;  using a broad spectrum of methods in my research, and put my scripting&#xA;  experience (Python, R, Julia, MATLAB, SPM, FSL) to good use in the&#xA;  analysis of complex data sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am very motivated by research into mood disorders and genetics; and&#xA;  I would also like to augment my methods spectrum with&#xA;  psychopharmacology and NIBS over the following years. I find the&#xA;  addition of these methods particularly important because in my opinion&#xA;  they present the most solid ways of testing causality in correlations&#xA;  between human brain activation and behaviour (as observed via fMRI or&#xA;  PET).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have browsed your list of publications and I found your&#xA;  neurogenetics work most motivating. I would like to ask you whether&#xA;  you would be able to offer me a PhD position in which I could&#xA;  integrate the genetic focus of your group with brain imaging and brain&#xA;  stimulation (perhaps to elucidate brain area function or&#xA;  psychopharmacological treatment possibilities resolved for&#xA;  endophenotypes). I would also be grateful for the opportunity to&#xA;  discuss further project ideas with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christian&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally just write one email, and follow up 7-14 days later with a second one if there is no reply within the first week. Of the PIs that do not respond to the first email less than 25% respond to the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this email structure (and what I believe is a strong background) I get a reply rate of ~50%, of which all replies specify that the PI would like to take me on - in principle. Actual invitations for interviews, however, are at about 5%. I am thinking this could be a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any (different) email structure which you have found optimal? Are there any other details - such as tone and style - which you think are very important to note in such a context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13008" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T16:17:12.977" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T16:17:12.977" Title="Optimal structure of cover letter for PhD application submitted directly to PI" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18058" CreationDate="2014-03-12T02:44:26.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say you are waiting too long to explain why you are interested in the research group. Your motivation for writing and taking up the faculty members' time should come &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; earlier in the message—I'd recommend no later than the second paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest that you might also want to consider sending the message to the &lt;em&gt;Oberingenieur&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Akademischer Rat&lt;/em&gt; of the faculty members' group; he or she may have a better idea of what vacancies are currently available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &quot;cold calling&quot; does not get a high response rate; if there isn't an active opening, most potential advisors won't really respond unless they have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T02:44:26.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-03-12T06:01:31.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;summary: &lt;strong&gt;replication&lt;/strong&gt; or lack thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My observations (unfortunately, small n and a single POV) are that the main reason both non- and talented scientists write horrible software is simply &quot;the opposite of replication.&quot; They see no value in reproducible research, they don't anticipate their work will be replicated, and they certainly don't desire that their work be replicated. (They just want their work to be &lt;strong&gt;cited&lt;/strong&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a BSCS who did time &quot;in industry,&quot; including one well-known faceless acronym. All the coders I knew at least used and valued open-source software, and many contributed (esp @ my last straight-up code gig). OSS is only valued to the extent it is used and extended. (AFAICS--am I missing something? exotic languages that are studied but not used?) Of course, a given OSS is only used if it's robust, tested/testable, well-documented, etc (and only extended if it's public).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've gone back to school as an environmental modeler (mostly atmospheric). The folks with whom I've worked mostly don't even put their code in a public repositories (even the ones much younger than I--this is not a generational issue AFAICS), much less create documentation, modularity, comments (whether in code or in commits), and the other affordances one expects in OSS. This appears to be due (based solely on conversation--not strong empirical data) to their assumption (and, usually, hope) that their code will not only never be used by anyone else (and indeed probably never be used again by the coder), but never even &lt;em&gt;be seen&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I didn't understand this when I &quot;hired on&quot; as a grad student. (I knew almost nothing about graduate academia--I had just &quot;jumped out a window&quot; at the faceless acronym and only knew what I wanted to work on--and was esp clueless regarding the cultural differences between informatics (&quot;computer science&quot; being famously misnamed) and &quot;hard science.&quot;) I chose as my advisor the professor whose area of work most interested me. Once I started looking at his code, my vomiting was projectile. I tried to engage him about it, and his attitude was approximately (i.e., not a quote) &quot;papers matter, code does not.&quot; He never submitted code with papers or made code public, and used almost exclusively a fairly obscure, {proprietary, expensive} {language, development environment} (as, to be fair, do many of his colleagues, some of whom are Very Big Names in our smallish field). Having some philosophy-of-science background, and knowing that the models on which we work have real public-policy implications (e.g., serious spending), I asked how one might reproduce his results. He said (and this is a quote) &quot;they hafta trust us--we're scientists.&quot; He is no longer my advisor ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I suspect (again, on small n) the observations above do &quot;measure central tendency,&quot; all is not darkness and void :-) In my own field, there is exemplary software like &lt;a href=&quot;http://geos-chem.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GEOS-Chem&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, GEOS-Chem &quot;is what it is&quot; largely (IMHO) due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/geos/geos_chem_support.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GEOS-Chem Support Team&lt;/a&gt;, which provides a sort of infrastructure astonishingly rare in my field. Hence I suspect GEOS-Chem is, were software quality being measured over this domain with high coverage (am I missing something?), probably 2-4σ better than the mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13010" LastEditorUserId="13010" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T06:51:53.553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T06:51:53.553" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18064" CreationDate="2014-03-12T07:57:03.757" Score="26" ViewCount="8287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a MA student who frequently works with undergraduates on projects. One student has asked me if I can write her a letter of recommendation for graduate school. Are there any risks to me submitting a letter, as opposed to her finding a faculty member (who likely would not be in the same field as her interests)? For graduate school applications how much does the position of the person writing a recommendation letter matter, as opposed to his/her academic familiarity with the student? I have already advised her to check with the programs she is applying to in case they have requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I realize I left this unclear before-- she has two tenured professors willing to write letters. If I agreed to, I would be the third letter. The department is small, so there might not be too many options for an additional letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8778" LastEditorUserId="8778" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T07:33:12.400" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T07:33:12.400" Title="Writing a letter of recommendation as a graduate student" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-12T07:59:20.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES... and why not use both!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The learning curve for &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; LaTeX (with a good template) is actually relatively small, and will save you time/headaches in a large document such as a thesis since the formatting is automatically taken care of, and probably looks much better too (especially equations). Just paste your text into a .tex template, and create a .bib file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My process is to write the draft (unformatted text) in LibreOffice with each chapter as a separate document, referencing with tags only, and storing the figures in a separate folder. The reason is that I find it easier to think/edit in WYSIWYG. Once I am happy with the draft it takes &lt;strong&gt;minimal effort&lt;/strong&gt; to transfer it to LaTeX: I just go through and create a .bib file from copy and paste EndNote entries whilst I am inserting reference tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result looks perfect and I have saved time, avoiding the formatting problems that plagued my MS word undergraduate thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="9680" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T08:10:53.000" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T08:10:53.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18062" CreationDate="2014-03-12T08:33:27.957" Score="36" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow much does the position of the person writing a recommendation letter matter, as opposed to his/her academic familiarity with the student? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It matters very highly.  For most graduate programs it would be better to have a letter from a very eminent and trusted person which simply says &quot;Student X's performance in my class convinces me that she will be successful in a top master's/PhD program.  I highly recommend that you admit her.&quot; than a more personally insightful letter from a less well known faculty member, let alone someone who has not even completed the degree that the student is applying for.  If you have not yourself completed a master's degree, how can you certify that the student will be able to do so successfully?  (Well, of course it may well be that you probably can, but what degree of trust can the reader put into your letter?  Not very much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would recommend that even postdocs and temporary faculty should defer to more senior faculty, if possible, when writing letters, and in any case the student should make sure to get at least one letter from a senior person. If someone who has a PhD (let's say) but is otherwise very junior can say something about the student that other faculty cannot, it could be a good idea to send along a letter, but it would be better to have that be an &lt;em&gt;additional&lt;/em&gt; letter beyond the number required.  However, for someone like you who has not even completed the degree the student is applying for, I would simply say that you should not write a letter for the student.  If you want to help, I would recommend that you find a faculty member who is senior enough but doesn't know the student very well and give them the information that you wanted to convey in your own letter.  (Don't write the letter for them!  Just give them the information.)  It helps of course to find a faculty member that you are comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if you are in the habit of mentoring grad-school bound undergraduates, you &#xA;would be doing them a favor if you let them know as early as possible that it is in their best interest to make significant contacts with senior faculty as well as with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T17:17:01.293" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T17:17:01.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17555" CreationDate="2014-03-12T08:49:46.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sympathize with your plight.  I'm lucky to have not had such a long-lasting and impactful academic misfortune, but have been in some similar situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's more likely ignorance/miscommunication, but it is&#xA;very probable that the graduate dean doesn't know the truth. &#xA;Observation bias alone would make it easy to assume you shared the&#xA;burden somewhat, and you can be sure your issue was trivialized and&#xA;persistence cast negatively if they spoke at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accreditation may play a role in the college's ability to back-date a degree.  I can see how that could be a very slippery slope.  That said, &quot;a matter of policy&quot; is a rather dismissive reason and sounds more like he simply was trying to avoid the problem.  You should investigate both graduate college and institution-wide policies on changing degree dates to rule out a high-level ban.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've offered some suggestions on actions you can still take in your question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17553/can-a-student-seek-redress-for-the-administration-neglecting-their-paperwork&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  If it's impossible to change the degree dates, then his reason for not talking to you is moot at this point.  However, it could still be relevant if you go down the legal path.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T08:49:46.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17553" CreationDate="2014-03-12T08:55:04.380" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're not at the end of the line yet.  Getting the date changed may be not be an option, but there are still steps you can take before going full Edmond Dantes.  First, I'll try to answer the more general questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can students know when they are being treated unfairly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You usually know at a base level when you're being wronged.  You clearly were on multiple occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Being respectful and professional is key.&lt;/strong&gt;  The second you &quot;rage,&quot; you will no longer be taken seriously.  Avoid personal attacks at all costs and always check yourself before you go forward.  Assume that people are reasonable and willing to help, even when they seem otherwise.  Communication is about the message that's received, not the one that's sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carefully measured accusations of impropriety can sometimes help, but be &lt;em&gt;cautious&lt;/em&gt;, they will also burn bridges.  I had a strong disagreement with a professor where at one point he refused to discuss the topic further. In turn, I summarized our interaction and accused him of being unprofessional. When he defended himself, he included a restating of his understanding of my goal. At that point, it became clear he mistook my &lt;em&gt;request&lt;/em&gt; for my &lt;em&gt;objective.&lt;/em&gt; What seemed like arrogance and dismissiveness were really misunderstanding. We were able to resolve the matter and are now on good terms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Judicious use of carbon-copying.&lt;/strong&gt;  CCing the wrong person at the wrong point will actively work against you on the points of both respect and professionalism.  That said, there is a role for it when transitioning between administrative levels. When you CC someone in on an ongoing conversation, they can see the back and forth history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Clearly&lt;/em&gt; conducting yourself properly and respectfully&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being treated unfairly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a concrete goal they can do something about (simply complaining won't cut it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then you can attempt to escalate the matter to the person's direct superior by CCing them instead of generating a new e-mail chain.  You should be immediately switching the direction of your conversation to the new person at the same time, referencing the fact that your are doing this because you are out of options, and be in the right. You will be very, very heavily implying misconduct on behalf of the previous person in this case, but will want them to come to that conclusion on their own.  One could make an exception on this in extreme cases regarding ethics, safety, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are past the point where you can begin to CC someone's superior before taking it to them directly, as that requires some degree of personal familiarity. That does remain a potential, if very risky, option in other situations.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three further levels you can take this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The President of the College.&lt;/strong&gt; The individual College Deans still have to report to someone.  You do not want to telegraph your moves anymore at this stage. I don't have a good suggestion for the best way to frame your request for an appointment, but you can't afford them asking the Graduate College Dean for details prior to the meeting if they've already been compromised. Here are some more important tips for this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will also have some serious convincing to do that you're an adult. Be wearing a suit/dress and be immaculately groomed.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your greeting and synopsis rehearsed.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead with the impact this has had on you, not the history; your career and licensing is also their primary method of exposure to the working world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have every single piece of documentation you can scan or print, and have it ordered chronologically and separable by party at fault, if possible. Chronology is more important, as it shows your body of support and could reveal any collusion against you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The copy of documentation you bring with you needs to be something they can keep then and there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Accrediting Agency.&lt;/strong&gt;  This is no longer about degrees at this point, and it will do nothing for you directly.  I'm not even sure the issues at hand are relevant to them.  But they do vouch for the integrity of the school.  You will really just be filing an official report against the college at best, but if your degree dates remain changeable by College policy and they refuse to do so, it could be considered a form of academic misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legal Recourse. (Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer)&lt;/strong&gt; You could go the legal route, as suggested.  They are damaging your ability to earn income in an easily quantifiable way.  Legal fees, lost wages, and maybe some psychiatric care may be able to be recouped, but you will certainly be paying up front for this. This will probably cost you more money overall, not to mention the time and stress dealing with the court proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you take this matter to increasing levels of aggressiveness, you will find your support waning.  People don't like to get involved with other people's problems, especially when it ceases to benefit them.  I personally recommend stopping after the President regardless of the outcome.  Your health and happiness are the most important things you have, and this is already taking a sizeable toll.  &lt;strong&gt;You really have to ask yourself, in twenty years, will you be happier that justice was exacted or that the whole thing is a distant memory?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, find a good therapist.  If nothing else, it's a place you can vent where the negativity won't linger.  Your home should be where your soul can heal and rest, not where you dump the wastewater from washing the wound.  I hope something in here is helpful, and wish you the best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13011" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T08:55:04.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18053" CreationDate="2014-03-12T14:09:03.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of REU/SURF programs is to educate undergraduates about research, and to encourage them to make good decisions about graduate school.  Secondary benefits include advancing science and the careers of the participants. Note that these are not the same goals as of a PhD program (such as in ff524's answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very natural desire to be a &quot;skilled and efficient researcher&quot; is orthogonal to these goals; in some circumstances it will be counterproductive to be skilled and efficient.  Your supervisor sees the whole project while you only see what's been set in front of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should set your goals as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To learn as many details of the lab dynamic as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To participate in the lab dynamic in the manner you are expected to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To do the tasks you are assigned in a skilled and efficient manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To noticeably improve in your abilities and understanding, over the course of the program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(stretch goal) To have a good and creative idea that transcends the tasks you were assigned.  Share this idea with your supervisor; do not just implement it.  Do this at most once during the summer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand a bit on (2): Listen carefully, including to body language.  Your supervisor has a role in  mind for you.    Different faculty have different expectations with regards to issues such as creativity, asking questions, frequency of meetings, quality control, etc. You need to meet these expectations as well as you can.  Exceeding expectations may not be a good thing; that's why I recommend doing it at most once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T14:09:03.497" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T19:14:52.607" Score="4" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD student has been working with Prof A. However, after a year, the student decided that he doesn't like the field and wants to change his advisor to Prof B, who works in the same department with Prof A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would there be any potential adverse effects on relationships if the student changes PhD advisor from Prof A to Prof B within same department, especially when the student has strong previous connections with Prof B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Prof A advise Prof B not to take the student in such a case? Has anybody experienced cases like these and what the results were?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume Prof A is tenured and Prof B is not .and Prof A was against co advising from beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-08-14T04:35:27.247" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T04:39:19.030" Title="Transitioning between two advisors who work in the same department" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17825" CreationDate="2014-03-12T19:22:38.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got a look at a copy of the Chicago manual at my college and the guidance in that is a lot clearer than it is on the web site where the whole manual is not available without a subscription. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason given for citing a electronic edition of a book is quite clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The majority of electronically published books offered for download&#xA;  from a library or bookseller will have a printed counterpart. Because&#xA;  of the potential for differences, however, authors must indicate that&#xA;  they have consulted a format other than print. This indication should&#xA;  be the last part of a full citation that follows the recommendations&#xA;  for citing printed books [...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manual further goes on to state that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] electronic formats do not always carry stable page numbers (e.g., pagination may depend on text size), a factor that potentially limits their suitability as sources. In lieu of a page number, include an indication of chapter or section or other locator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further in the section it deals with unpaginated electronic sources in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For such unpaginated works, it may be appropriate in a note to include&#xA;  a chapter or paragraph number (if available), a section heading, or a&#xA;  descriptive phrase that follows the organizational divisions of the&#xA;  work. In citations of shorter electronic works presented as a single,&#xA;  searchable document, such locators may be unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems form reading the manual that the following are the preferred methods of referencing;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page number (where stable ones exist/some new kindle books match the&#xA;print edition) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter or paragraph number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section heading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;descriptive phrase that follows the organizational divisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to cite in MLA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noodletools.com/helpdesk/kb/index.php?action=article&amp;amp;id=206&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt; recommends the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MLA 5.7.18 defines digital files as neither on the web or a published&#xA;  CD-ROM. MLA recommends citing a book on a digital device using the&#xA;  guidelines for citing a book but replacing the format type (Print)&#xA;  with the name of the digital file format, followed by the word &quot;file.”&#xA;  For the “Digital file type” field on the form, enter a file format&#xA;  such as &quot;EPUB file&quot; (a non-proprietary file format used by Kobo, Nook,&#xA;  Sony and others).  If an e-Book reader uses a proprietary format&#xA;  (e.g., Kindle), you may use the name of the file type (&quot;AZW file&quot;) or,&#xA;  if this is not visible to you, the name of the device (&quot;Kindle file&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slawenski, Kenneth. J.D. Salinger: A Life. New York: Random, 2011. N.&#xA;  pag. EPUB file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are only citing a section or chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To cite a chapter or section written by the author of the book, cite&#xA;  the book and use an in-text reference to identify the specific section&#xA;  you're quoting or paraphrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the introduction or preface is&#xA;  written by another contributor, fill in the section of the form called&#xA;  Chapter or Section to cite the author, section title and page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T12:40:49.150" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T12:40:49.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18070" CreationDate="2014-03-12T21:15:53.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the personalities of the professors involved and in how the student handles the switch. If they really are working in two distinct fields, and if that is the real motivation of the student for switching, most likely there will be no issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T21:15:53.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18062" CreationDate="2014-03-12T21:20:57.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pete above - it is important to have PhDs, esp. senior faculty members as referees. If the student needs three letters, then your will add good specifics to her case. One common problem with letters from senior profs is that they are often too generic. I am a tenured prof, and review applications with reference letters all the time. Most of them are awfully generic. &#xA;-that being said, I had one of my former students from when I was a T.A. as a Ph.D. candidate from years ago who has asked me for several reference letters over the years: two for teaching jobs, and one to get into grad school. It might have helped that my letter was stamped as a faculty -albeit very junior from a small university - at that stage, but all my comments were about my observations as a T.A.. The student (who was very good) keeps getting in to whatever she applies into. &#xA;hope this helps. &#xA;S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13045" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T21:20:57.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10881" CreationDate="2014-03-12T22:37:24.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers have suggested outlines, but even with such an outline it's not always clear what is the best order to discuss everything (whether it's the choice of section or ordering within a section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I have seen used is to print out the whole document, cut out each paragraph, and pin them on a pinboard. Then it's easy to adjust the order of the whole document until the whole thing is coherent. You'll probably want to have a pencil on hand while doing this, because you'll need to adjust the text a bit to fit the order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oLgWd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;cut and paste&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T22:37:24.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T23:22:28.117" Score="18" ViewCount="10264" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's interview season. I've noticed that many of the applicants in this round are already assistant professors at other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any known number or record on how frequently (let's say, across North America) assistant professors who don't have tenure yet switch institutions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The market is already incredibly competitive. The academic institution has spent thousands of dollars on hiring a candidate and wants to retain them. If an assistant professor goes to another school and gets hired, then what you might end up with is this cycle of highly-ranking candidates swirling around and leaving empty positions in their wake. Alternatively, one might presume that the hiring system must be inefficient if, in a competitive environment, a university is unable to retain its hires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/science-professor/2011/01/19/faculty-movers/&quot;&gt;article (and associated comments)&lt;/a&gt; for example, illustrates how many faculty have changed institutions for various reasons; I also know personally at least two assistant professors who left their original institution to move to a new one within the first few years of them being hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the answer to this question, I would have a number of follow-ups (Do schools hate it if you apply elsewhere, and would they fire you? How does a department react when a recent hire leaves? Why do people switch? Are applicants often successful? Do people switch more than once?) but I'll start with this first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T09:31:53.610" LastActivityDate="2020-05-26T16:14:32.883" Title="How frequently do pre-tenured assistant professors switch institutions?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18098" CreationDate="2014-03-12T23:29:20.920" Score="41" ViewCount="5320" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't the best moment to ask the question, since I should be writing an overdue document and presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is there any place where a person with fear of writing can work? I am studying for a PhD in Europe in a STEM field. I was always quite good at school and university. I was on schedule with my studies, but the preparation of my master thesis was quite painful and I have the impression than I should have completed it in 60% of the time it took me. After a short experience in the industry in a field close to my own (but for which I didn't have all the skills), I took the opportunity of a PhD in my field. Of course before that I had been making interviews for jobs in my field, but never got anything. Being extremely introvert doesn't help. I already feel embarrassed writing my CV, and adding details as hobbies or strength points (actually I ended up skipping those parts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's been more than one year that I'm in this PhD and each writing task is really making me desperate. Initial proposal, internal reports, and presentations torment me for weeks. From this emotional distress, I am often impaired both in my writing and research work. I have ended up crying at home at night in front of a white page (once even at morning at work, but I managed to hide in the bathroom in time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm lucky that my advisor doesn't put too much pressure on me, but I feel so bad not being able to hand in what I am required, sometimes even after a deadline. The problem is that even if a deadline is reasonable, sometimes I cannot make it because it takes me 2 days to write 1 paragraph (no kidding). Guess how many papers submitted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I enjoy much more my time here than in the industry. I enjoy academic reading, I have thirst for knowledge and so on, but I see that communication is an essential part for a PhD student. So far I am willing to continue with the PhD program, but I am starting to doubt that I will ever be confident in writing and that this will cripple my academic future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion on how to turn the career path? Also a suggestion on how to overcome fear of writing would be good, but I am afraid I've already read all the good advice here on SE and in many blogs about procrastination, perfectionism, impostor syndrome... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If can be of interest, writing this question took me more or less 40 min.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13036" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T19:43:26.877" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T18:31:58.033" Title="Any place for people with fear of writing?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="36" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18078" CreationDate="2014-03-12T23:58:26.223" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My several-decades' observation suggests that this does not happen often at all, in all sorts of economic climates. Only the rare person whose work is both &quot;hot&quot; and who &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to play job-change games will do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, applying for other jobs does tend to alienate many (not all) faculty at one's current institution. But if one can &quot;get away with it&quot;, then it may be profitable, even while people resent it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been acquainted with situation in which there was anticipated to be some prejudicial nonsense at the tenure-decision time, so that people took a year's leave and found other (potentially permanent, but supposedly temporary) jobs as back-up. This is only sensible. Yes, people at the &quot;home&quot; institution used this as leverage to disparage the candidate... but one imagines that these people were wanting to disparage the candidate &lt;em&gt;anyway&lt;/em&gt;, so the fact that a person acted reasonably and in self-defense was irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I think the most common, and most sensible, case of such job applications is exactly when there's some anticipation that the tenure case will not go well. In some very rare cases a person has out-of-the-blue done something surprisingly good, and can launch themselves into a higher stratum of academe. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, such job apps would be a pointlessly antagonistic thing to do...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T23:58:26.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T00:01:47.370" Score="6" ViewCount="756" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im getting rejections from my PhD applications and it is rather difficult - emotionally. So, I am doing a 2+3 programme in a non-US country at the moment and I will finish my masters in 4 months or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have consulted my situation with my current advisor and other professors and they said since I have secured 5 year funding here I can just stay for another year or two if I want to. I am tempted but I don't know how it is going to look to admission committees when I apply again to the States for Fall 2015 entry. Should I just leave after my master's? Or should I stay another year? (I think I will learn a lot by just staying another year, I love my supervisor, and I really like the university but it has always been my dream to study in the States and I am definitely re-applying) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13048" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-14T04:27:15.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T04:27:15.070" Title="Is it a good idea to stay an extra year at my masters institution while re-applying to PhD programs elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T00:58:46.733" Score="16" ViewCount="4789" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a 19 year old I had to withdraw from a university because of depression. However, at the time, one professor refused to let me withdraw and gave me an F. On the strength of that grade I was dismissed from the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got myself together and went to DePaul and graduated Cum Laude. Now I have received an offer for an assistantship (full ride) and a stipend from the university I had to leave as a young student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to teach at university level and will someday be sending transcripts on to a PhD program from my MA. Will the dismissal show on my transcript? Will it matter? I appreciate you help and input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13051" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T16:44:31.607" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T16:44:31.607" Title="If I have an academic dismissal from a school should I ever go back there?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18084" CreationDate="2014-03-13T01:49:32.820" Score="11" ViewCount="3930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I already have a BSc degree from an unknown school in outside the US. I have convinced a professor at a top US school to let me join his lab to work on a project that he will propose and conduct experiments at his lab. In return for learning and having access to the lab and working on a project, I am supposed to help the lab with programming their machines. However, there is no pay, that is my title would be &quot;Volunteer&quot;. Therefore, I have to work in part-time or night jobs while working there (I have work permit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this common in US, that is to work in a lab without getting paid and working on a part-time job outside the lab to pay for living expenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:19:59.610" Title="Nonpaid, volunteering position in a lab" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18083" CreationDate="2014-03-13T02:19:18.003" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your description of being &quot;allowed&quot; to do research work in exchange for programming work sounds off to me. Learning and running experiments for a research project proposed by a supervisor is basically the &lt;em&gt;job description&lt;/em&gt; of a research assistant. It's work in its own right that people are typically compensated for in some way, not a reward for doing other (programming) work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arrangement you describe is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; common, and it might also violate U.S. labor law. &lt;strong&gt;Under U.S. law, it's illegal to let someone work for you for free unless they meet specific legal requirements to be considered a &quot;volunteer&quot; or &quot;intern.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Volunteers&quot; according to U.S. labor law are individuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;who volunteer their time, freely and without anticipation of compensation for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes to non-profit organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your intent is clearly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian in nature, so you do not legally qualify as a volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to be classified as an &quot;intern&quot; you must meet the requirement that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(among &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm&quot;&gt;other requirements&lt;/a&gt;). That is, the employer cannot expect to be dependent on your work for normal operations. I don't think you meet the requirements for an unpaid intern, though it's not possible to be 100% sure from your description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual interpretation of the U.S. labor law is that an internship has to be part of a &lt;em&gt;formal educational program&lt;/em&gt; (e.g., you are enrolled as a student and get credits for the internship, or write a report which you submit to your home institution) or a &lt;em&gt;formal apprenticeship&lt;/em&gt; for it to be legally unpaid. In fact, if you search for unpaid internships in the U.S., you'll find that most listings say that only current students who can earn college credit are eligible. It doesn't say in your post that you are currently enrolled as a student somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that there is no legal scenario in which a U.S. lab can allow you to participate in research there without paying you. (If the entire experience was supposed to be for your educational benefit - including the &quot;help the lab with programming their machines&quot; part - then my answer might be different.) But from your description, I don't think the scenario you describe is acceptable or normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally do not allow anybody to do work for my lab unless they are paid or doing a personal project (like a thesis) for which they earn academic credit. I've been told it would be legally problematic. For example: suppose I have an M.S. student working with me for academic credit. He graduates in May and has a job starting in September. I'm not allowed to let him keep working in the lab from May-September unless I can pay him (according to my university lawyers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T15:19:59.610" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:19:59.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2014-03-13T03:03:14.967" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Undergrad and graduate transcripts are normally separate things. If you want to make sure whether the undergrad grade would show up on your graduate transcript, that's a question you should ask the school's admissions and records department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the F is going to show up on your apps, you could choose to explain it in your statement of purpose, or you could choose not to explain it. A single F in a single course is probably not going to cause anyone any big concerns if all your later work from other schools looks good. If you choose to explain it, you run the risk that there will be people on the admissions committee who have medieval attitudes about mental illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T03:03:14.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18078" CreationDate="2014-03-13T05:56:37.927" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does happen. But it's not that common. I've been on faculty search committees for a number of years now, and out of the hundreds of applications I've seen, it's very rare to see pre-tenure faculty from other institutions apply. If and when they do, it's because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they're worried about their tenure case&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's a two-body problem (this is in fact the most &quot;reasonable&quot; reason to move)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have other reasons for wanting to move (location, opportunity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not a frequent thing. Because it's hard to do: clocks have to be negotiated, research programs have to be uprooted, students have to be moved (and let me not even start on the logistics of moving a family that might just be getting settled in the first place)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T05:56:37.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18078" CreationDate="2014-03-13T08:51:03.807" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first of all, I'm living proof that it does happen (twice!) from time to time.  My sense (which is purely personal, and thus can only speak to the situation in mathematics) is that applying for other jobs before tenure is very common, and even people who aren't especially serious about moving will do it &quot;just to test the waters&quot; or &quot;because it's the thing to do&quot; especially right as they are coming up to tenure.  Having been in a position to read files for job searches over the past couple of years, a lot come from people who already have tenure track positions.  It's considerably less common for offers to actually get made (in part because of a vague sense that people may not be especially serious about moving or that they may just want it as a bargaining chip), and less common still for people to move, though I'm far from the last person I know who's done so, and I know of several other instances of people having outside job offers that they ended up turning down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Suresh has the reasons down; for me, the issue has been the two-body problem.  I think generally people are quite understanding about the issue, and I haven't (directly at least) encountered hostility from my former colleagues about moving (and indeed I've cowritten papers with 3 people at institutions I've left since leaving), though I have gotten occasional jokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that the general reaction of schools is to negotiate to convince you to stay (or come back after you've left); I've never heard of anyone being fired because of applications elsewhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T08:51:03.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2014-03-13T08:51:54.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is your PHD. You have to write. Papers, reports, thesis. It cannot be done otherwise. On the other hand, you must know that all of us have collapsed (or constantly collapsing) under pressure, one way or another. Others have stayed in bed not wanting to get up. Others blocked out and could not perform. The &quot;stronger&quot; ones sucked it all in (externally) and developed serious health issues. So, you are not alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should fight it. Get a girlfriend / boyfriend. Talk to your family and friends. Exercise, do sports. As wiser people have said &quot;&lt;em&gt;Whatever it takes to keep your hands free&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. But even then, you might not be able to fight it alone and might need to seek some professional help. It is not a shame. It is actually a brave action to admit you are not always strong in a world full of hypocrites and wannabes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In term of practical advice. Select some successful authors in your research area that you really like their writing style. In the beginning, partially emulate their style. See how they describe the challenges and the related work. Rephrase the related paragraphs in your unique style. Then add in your what are you trying to do. That will be enough to make it through the introduction and the related work. Beginning is always the hardest part. Once those 1-3 pages are out of the way and you start to write &quot;your&quot; contribution and &quot;your&quot; experiments, you will see that things get easier. So, in the beginning emulate and adapt (but not copy) from the authors you like. After 1-2 written papers, you will see that you do not need to do that anymore and you have developed your style. Most of all, enjoy the process. Everyone has gone through your phase and you CAN and WILL get through it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T08:51:54.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18083" CreationDate="2014-03-13T08:53:37.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that one of the main points is: do they &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; you? If they do, well, ff524's answer is true and honest. But &lt;strong&gt;if they do not&lt;/strong&gt;, if their experiments already have all staff needed, if they gain nothing they need by letting you in and they will need to use some of man-hours to teach you and make sure you don't cause trouble, then it looks fair. You say you had to convince a professor. So it seems likely that he already had all the research assistants he thought he needed - and probably was also afraid you will use their time to learn (that's why you do it, isn't it?) so he wanted something in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be safer for professor and better overall for you if you could find a research assistant job where you are needed, not convince anyone to let you in where they seem not to need you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13060" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T08:53:37.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2014-03-13T08:54:23.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ph.D applications typically ask for transcripts from &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; undergraduate institutions you attended, so the question of whether the withdrawal will affect you is generally independent of whether or not you go back to that school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's extremely unlikely that it will impact you negatively; your subsequent good work more than makes up for it. If you absolutely feel that you need to explain it in your statement, I would not spend more than a few words and be vague (after taking some time off to deal with a health issue, I transferred to DePaul where....) However assuming your subsequent work is good enough to stand on its own (and it surely is if you were accepted to the master's programme with scholarship) I would advise not mentioning it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13061" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T08:54:23.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18083" CreationDate="2014-03-13T09:37:16.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO the real question is that it is an exploitive offer, or it is a good possibility. My opinion is probably the second, although a little bit of exploitation can't be closed out, a research job in the U.S. can have this price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It were an exploitive offer if you had (or will have) alternative opportunities to get an U.S. job. IMHO this isn't the current situation. If you want to get a real, paid U.S. job, first you should be already there. Out of the U.S. it is much harder (nearly chanceless), even if you have a work permit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss (professor) probably knows this, and it has to be a big chance, that you will get a much better (=paid) offer from him, or from any other, if you are already in the U.S. In this case it isn't an exploitive offer, but an opportunity, and you can see this volunteer-time as a trial period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are sure that you will be able to get better offers, then you should reject it, but I don't think this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10234" LastEditorUserId="10234" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T13:46:23.620" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T13:46:23.620" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17534" CreationDate="2014-03-13T09:43:17.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, there is nothing wrong with using results of surveys in you text. In many cases, this can help your argumentation and give the reader the idea of the state of the art. And in deed, surveys are used in research papers or other publications as a source of argumentation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survey papers&lt;/a&gt; have their place in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one papers using survey in the introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SME) are the most common employers across the world. In 48 out of 76 nations covered in &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/616/art%253A10.1007%252Fs11187-006-9002-5.pdf?auth66=1394874258_f092fe35f28c00155b0628ac0c9a1019&amp;amp;ext=.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ayyagari, Beck and Demirgüç-Kunt (2007)&lt;/a&gt;, SMEs employed more than 50% of the formal workforce&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/%7E/media/FPDKM/EnterpriseSurveys/Documents/Research%20Papers/Enterprise-Surveys-access-to-finance-and-SME.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&#xA;What have we learned from the Enterprise Surveys regarding access to&#xA;finance by SMEs?,Kuntchev V.,Ramalho R., Rodríguez-Meza J.,Yang J. S.,2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0816040389&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE TECH WRITER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE&lt;/a&gt; written by Janet Van Wicklen who uses surveys many times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1999 survey by the Society for Technical Communication (STC) found&#xA;that 95 percent of its membership had a bachelor’s degree or higher&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with references after every chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;STC 1999 Technical Communicator Salary Survey (Arlington, Virginia: Society for Technical Communication, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, before you will use the information you should check:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;reliability of the source&lt;/strong&gt; - you do not want to include results from a company which is considered to be unprofessional and discredit your research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;sufficient statistic sample&lt;/strong&gt; - surveys which say: 9 from 10 asked doctors recommend using alcohol as a medicament against cough will not help your credibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;check the survey closely&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid some misinterpreting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;include appropriate citation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;be careful when interpreting&lt;/strong&gt; the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOT to change numbers&lt;/strong&gt; : )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested, you can take a look at more surveys and related papers at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/research/researchpapers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enterprise Surveys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T09:24:40.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2014-03-13T10:52:30.123" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing you should do is to seek professional advice. Writer's block (in all its forms) is not uncommon and it is clearly possible to remedy. I cannot and will not get into possible reasons for why this occurs but clearly in a PhD, particularly early on, it may seem like a daunting affair. To avoid ones problems is not the solution. If you see yourself in academic jobs (in or outside academia) writing will be one of your main tools. To try to find a job where this is not necessary will be difficult unless you see yourself switching direction completely. So the advice is seek help now. You will not be the first one to do so and will not be the first who will be able to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T10:52:30.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18097" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18109" CreationDate="2014-03-13T13:38:29.007" Score="2" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am proofreading a grant from another researcher. This is going to be submitted to the NIH which follows AMA guidelines. A particular, long report is providing her several of the researcher's citations. I asked for page references to some of her stats since I couldn't read the whole thing, and I needed to verify her correctness in interpreting them. This document is hundreds of pages long and she cites 3 different sections in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is it necessary for her to indicate the actual pages in the citations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if so,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How to cite the same document at several locations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13073" LastEditorUserId="13073" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T17:42:24.113" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:45:25.843" Title="how to indicate citations from the same, long document at different pages" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2014-03-13T13:41:05.293" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do resonate with your experience because I was scared to write (English is not my mother tongue) and I am also an introvert. I have been reading much about writing and networking and here are some tried and working methods (by me) that I wish will also help you. In the case of real fear, I agree that talking to some professional will also be advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't &quot;write,&quot; instead, draft then edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My biggest &quot;A-ha--!&quot; moment was learning that most writers don't really write a perfect sentence at the first go, instead, they &lt;em&gt;draft&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;edit&lt;/em&gt;. And for me, my mind has eased up so much once I have learned this distinction and decided to split my writing tasks into drafting and editing. In drafting, I just freely interpret the data and plug in some discussion here and there, occasionally with some anecdotes, etc. I never edit them. Then, after a couple days, I return to edit the piece. On a good day, I got to keep about 40-60% of them; on a bad day, I may have to slash 80-90%, but also often have a good laugh at what I wrote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This finding really liberated me. I'd suggest you give this a try as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write to think instead of think to write&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of writing to tell people what you think, I found it easier to write it as if I am having a discussion with myself. I wrote the research question, and then gave some answers, and then went back to question the answers more. I was often surprised that many times I read the scribble and figured out &quot;Oh, this is what it is!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against crafting out a perfect sentence and then put it on paper. This is futile because mind works a lot faster and non-linear than typing/writing process. By the time a &quot;perfect&quot; sentence is written, a lot of useful thoughts might have been suppressed or forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dedicate times to write&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvia in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1591477433&quot;&gt;How to Write a Lot&lt;/a&gt; introduces a method that involves making a time and a space to write. I adopted the method this way: I block out time a few weeks ahead as writing/analysis time, then I guard that time. I cleared up the wall and the desk I face when I work on the computer so that I can only see the computer (and other books/articles I use) when I write. There is no picture, stationery, picture frame, etc. 120 degrees in front of my eyes. I also close down e-mail, silent my phone, and close the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boice in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/091350713X&quot;&gt;Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing&lt;/a&gt; even goes so far to suggest coupling important and crucial daily ritual (such as shower) with writing hour. No writing? No shower. I found this kind of stressful, but perhaps may work for people with a different personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document time as well as words&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity aside, it's more fulfilling to document my writing effort in both time and output. High output is, of course, great. But I have also come to realize that reminding myself I have been dedicating a fixed time regularly to write, albeit slow and low, makes me feel more confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goodson in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1452203865&quot;&gt;Becoming an Academic Writer&lt;/a&gt; explains some pretty nice workshops to foster a healthy writing habit. The starting one is to &quot;free write.&quot; Free writing is not new, and some people use this to warm up or tune into the internal writer channel. It's really simple, just sit down, open an blank document, &lt;em&gt;minimize the visible area so that you cannot see what you type,&lt;/em&gt; set a time limit, and pour out all sorts of thought that goes inside your mind. Anything, just type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, after the time limit (I started with 5, now 10,) you'll have a pretty clutter-free mind and clearer idea on what that day's writing is gonna be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use proxy of writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many ways one can put down an idea without initially writing it out. Drawing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452273226&quot;&gt;mind map&lt;/a&gt;, popularized by Buzan, can help forming a bird view of an article. Paper and colored pen are good enough, online tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://vue.tufts.edu/&quot;&gt;VUE&lt;/a&gt; are abundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doodling, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321857895&quot;&gt;Sketchnote&lt;/a&gt; recommended by Rohde, can also be a fun way to &quot;play&quot; with words and idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For scientific writing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21567769&quot;&gt;a paper&lt;/a&gt; by O'Coonor and Holmquist in 2009 suggests a pretty interesting method: basing your writing on a key output, such as a graph of the results, or a table of an analysis, and then build from there. For most experienced researchers this may be nearly common sense, but for those who think a paper should be written from Abstract to Conclusion linearly, this paper would help re-orienting them. My former supervisor, knowing my hesitation for writing, actually used this very method when advising me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a recorder to document your thoughts or use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_speech_recognition_software&quot;&gt;speech recognition software&lt;/a&gt; to dictate your spoken words into texts may also help you break away from the deep-rooted fear towards writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harness creativity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing output falls, I feel tired. After some trials and errors, I figured out that I feel tried not because I lacked energy, but because of too much creative thoughts didn't get to be expressed. So, I play music, pick a challenging recipe and make a potentially horrible dish (and eat it, butter + pepper + red wine always save the day), play LEGO, knit and crochet, come to answer questions... etc. I actually picked up a lot of habits through my doctoral study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introvert vs. extrovert&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an introvert is actually not bad! In most modern culture extroverts get a lot more praises and attentions, but if you cast a critical look at it, this world needs both types to run properly. Two books I read last year were quite inspiring: Zack's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1605095222&quot;&gt;Networking for People Who Hate Networking&lt;/a&gt; provides advices on how to focus your energy and properly carry out quality networking; Laney's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0761123695&quot;&gt;The Introvert Advantage&lt;/a&gt; provides a more holistic look at how extroverts and introverts work, and how to cope and thrive as an introvert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing remark&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck and, really, enjoy the ride even it's scary. After the PhD thesis, there will be more collaboration and you will not feel as lonely. When I am down and want some healing reading, I often flip through Lamott's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/a&gt; and Zinsser's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060891548&quot;&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/a&gt;. They are also a good choice before reading those more serious and pragmatic how-to guides on writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I feel cognitively/academically inferior/inappropriate, I would think about a remark of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins&quot;&gt;Florence Foster Jenkins&lt;/a&gt;, who slaughtered Mozart's Queen of the Night aria (Try listen to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNEOl4bcfkc&quot;&gt;Edda Moser's version&lt;/a&gt; first, and then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h4f77T-LoM&quot;&gt;Jenkin's version&lt;/a&gt;): &quot;People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.&quot; Before worrying doing it well, do it first, and you will improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is I have never met one person in my life who genuinely embraces writing as if they &quot;love&quot; to write. Most successful writers, when interviewed, often just say things like &quot;What tips? I just write,&quot; or &quot;I draft, and then I write, rewrite, and then I rewrite again.&quot; Betty's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has made a lot of people realize they can draw; I wish there will be a book called Writing on the Right Side of the Brain that will make people realize that we all can write, but we probably have to wait until the neuroscientists get over their fear of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T14:04:20.287" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T14:04:20.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18097" CreationDate="2014-03-13T13:46:29.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When citing a specific page or pages of a longer document (not generally necessary for published journal articles although that may also be mandatory in some fields) one adds the page number to the reference. In the Harvard system one would write &quot;Smith (1969, p. 24)&quot; or &quot;(Smith, 1969, p. 25)&quot;. There are as far as I know no hard rules when such references should be made but an author should consider the readers of the work they produce and facilitate finding the information cited as well as possible. In a short article of 10-15 pages this would not be difficult but in longer works one should consider providing pages. The point of references is after all to provide sources for information used in the article and one should not have to read an entire book to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand the second question correctly, citing different pages in a specific document is done as above and the reference in the reference list will be just the document itself; no need to refer to page numbers there. The reference list provides the litterature to find and the in-text referenes will provide information on where in the literature you need to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T14:08:44.143" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T14:08:44.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:41:18.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All mentioned pros and cons are valid, but... LaTeX is written by smart people for use by smart people. Word is written by smart people for everyone, including dumb people. Take your pick. For me, 5 dissertation years spent with LaTeX as an everyday companion was thoroughly enjoyable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T14:41:18.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18081" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:42:39.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Staying in your university for a year and reapplying is a GREAT plan. I know some of my friends who actually got into 15-20 ranked universities in the US for PhD, they reapplied to the top 10 universities again (for the next term) and they got in those top 10, and they transferred (well, you basically start a new PhD program in the top university). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for as you are not concerned about your age (getting old) or number of years (for some reason), you will be totally fine. Since your supervisor is nice, he/she will always understand if you want to go to a better school because its makes sense. Some would say, oh, for PhD it does not matter which university you go to, but it actually matters in most cases. At least, it can be a driving force for you to achieve great things in PhD and make a significant contribution to the scientific community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morally, it would not be the right decision to discontinue your current university with the funding. But it happens if you are aiming high and you have to be decisive. So its up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT, reapplying with one more year of experience with the SAME supervisor will not help. There are several factors involved. Not to mention luck which we cannot control. So BE CAREFUL. Top universities are hard to get into. This year MIT got 3000 applications for EECS PhD, UW got 1500 for CS PhD, and Purdue got 1200 for CS and they offered 40 students PhD admissions. Its incredibly hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So keep your UNIVERSITY as a backup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9405" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T14:42:39.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:11:09.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are opportunities in research that don't require writing, usually in engineering, building things about which some other people will write about. I don't know about your area, STEM is for stem cells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First point: you may not need to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you happen to need to write or you would like to overcome these issues (which I would encourage, even if it may be a bad idea), then I don't know how to help you, but since I started writing I now need to put an end to this. There are a few things you could consider (I'm not an expert in this topic, this is just from the top of my head):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you see, you don't need to worry [that] much about writing in a place like here. You are anonymous, and users here can get to be as moronic as I am (I think I'm the supreme in that ordered set), so no need to worry about sorting the ideas [that] much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;try to get a habit of writing, forums, blogs, whatever. Don't struggle to write properly (people clearly don't do so),   simply try to be natural, get a habit, have fun. Then, when you are confident (and fast) try to get better at it, you will get better faster (with your newly gained speed).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;think in words. I always thought everybody did this, I certainly do, I guess some people may not (maybe deaf people think in different ways). If you are commuting, waiting in bed to get asleep or in any other spare time with nothing better to do, think about anything you may be interested, but try to structure your thoughts in a conscious way into sentences and a discourse (no big effort, try to do this naturally). Writing is simply typing this. Typing may be hard for handicapped people, I don't want to make any assumption here, but if Stephen Hawking can manage to write stuff, I think you should be able too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;get a template. Don't write papers, fill the gaps in a template. You can even use some other paper or set of papers (taking bits and pieces) to create one. All the papers of the same type (experimental, formal, theoretical, whatever) have the same structure. In this paper we address the problem of $topic when there is some $novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We extend previous approaches by including $novelty. This provides&#xA;several advantages like $advantage1, $advantage2, $advantage3 in the&#xA;context of $limitations. We have performed an [empirical/formal/user&#xA;based/whatever] evaluation showing promising results about this&#xA;possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this is not a universal template, sometimes you&#xA;will add some novelty that is good, sometimes you will be able to&#xA;handle something that makes things harder and despite of that do&#xA;something cool, etc. there are different tacit templates for&#xA;different kinds of papers. When you get used to this, you will do it&#xA;automatically, the template will be engraved in your brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about plagiarizing if you are starting, your supervisor&#xA;will probably make many changes and plagiarizing is (should be!) about what&#xA;people do, not how they write it. As long as you are doing new&#xA;things, it should not matter much if someone wrote other things in a&#xA;similar style. Or simply draw inspiration from several papers, researchers seem to like    collages. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submit your papers to journals. I'm an introvert and I hate conferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: listicles are easy! BTW: I wrote an answer that very bad written, mostly stupid and fairly useless, but it's still better than nothing, isn't it? Some people say: &quot;Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.&quot; But this is not true in academia, it's more like &quot;What's important is that people talk about you, even if they only say &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; things&quot;. It's all about impact!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:11:09.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18046" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:12:13.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oxford University (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/375-092.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;constitution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) it seems was able to get the Crown to either recognize as or raise into corporations each of the Oxford Colleges. Additionally, the members of these Colleges (example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spc.ox.ac.uk/uploads/Royal%20Charter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;charter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), including students and faculty, also appear as individuals in the membership of the corporation of Oxford University. Oxford University as a corporate person seems to be a charter party exercising control over the Colleges, but is not itself a member of those Colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we get to USA State Universities, there seems to be some oddities where the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniformlaws.org/Act.aspx?title=Unincorporated%20Nonprofit%20Association%20Act%20%282008%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/1745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ohio's UUNAA&lt;/a&gt;) might implicitly turn Administratively created Colleges into &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/blackstone/bla-118.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;William Blackstone Corporations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. This is because UUNAA seems to assert that almost any group of people with a voting membership and a succession continuity plan and that isn't forbidden to acquire property will be able in principle to hold that property in &lt;strong&gt;mortmain&lt;/strong&gt; perpetually outside of Probate, just like any regular business corporation. In the USA, these entities would likely be deemed &lt;strong&gt;Quasi-Corporations&lt;/strong&gt;, in part because they probably don't have the same constitutional Due Process rights that a generic corporation would have. Any governance rights which the University Trustees have vested in the faculty via a Union Contract are possibly relevant for determining the legal status of the Colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since any legal personality for colleges seems unintentional in the University Policies I have read, I am going to assume until further notice that Anonymous Mathematician deserves the Check Mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12988" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:12:13.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:40:17.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In relation to Educational Terms, Kathlyn Griffith and Helen Kowalski have published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/dictionary-of-education-terms/oclc/354465415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dictionary of education terms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not the most ideal source Wikipedia have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_education-related_terms_%28A-C%29#A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glossary of education related terms&lt;/a&gt; that may be of some help as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also view a copy of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.cortland.edu/matresearch/OxfordDictionaryMathematics.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford Mathematics Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; at the link. While it's the concise edition (coming in at just under 900 pages!), it covers a lot of terms that you friend would encounter and has biographical information on famous Mathematicians as well.&#xA;It appears that many of its explanations give short examples as well. The English is clear and as plain as can be expected from such a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cut-the-knot.org/glossary/atop.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glossary link&lt;/a&gt; also has Maths terms searchable in alphabetical order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:48:22.427" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:48:22.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17738" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:51:47.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of checks that can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can ask for a copy of their degrees but for added comfort you can ensure that they get a third party to certify them. For example I know in Ireland you can get a lawyer to view the original of a document, they photocopy it and certify that it is a true copy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could ask the graduation department of their university to confirm that they graduated with their degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In cases where the certificates are in a foreign language you could have a pre-approved translation service that the applicants have to use to translate any documents. Again for example (in a different field) when my brother and his wife emigrated to a country in the UAE the immigration office would only accept their official documents if they had being translated by a certain translation service provider.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T19:05:42.187" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T19:05:42.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:57:14.533" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oxford University as a corporation grants &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/12-011.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;membership&lt;/a&gt; to the matriculated students who are currently pursuing a degree. However, in the US there seems to be a tendency for University legal business to be handled by a corporation of University Trustees which is a legal entity separate from the University as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the Trustees are said by statute to be &quot;included&quot; in the &quot;body corporate&quot; of a University, which seems to make two different bodies corporate, one being the Trustees acting in their special name, and the second being the University. However, it isn't made clear who else might be included in the University besides Trustees or for that matter whether  the term &quot;University&quot; can also refer to the buildings or district under jurisdiction of the Trustees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested to know if there is any State University which &lt;strong&gt;makes its students or faculty members of the University&lt;/strong&gt;. Please cite the relevant laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12988" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T03:47:04.060" Title="Do students and faculty comprise any State University in the US?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18108" CreationDate="2014-03-13T17:00:13.347" Score="0" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can any body tell me how long after the Master's thesis defense do it take the student to receive their Master graduation document (degree) in Spain, France, UK or USA? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking specifically about the degree &lt;em&gt;in paper&lt;/em&gt;, the one stamped with signatures, etc (which you can hang in the wall :) ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if the student were to defend their thesis let's say today. How long after that does it take to receive a piece of paper saying something like &quot;University of SUCH Master Degree in favor of SUCH&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know Spain, France, UK, USA are very different countries and all systems must have differences. Any country of the previous ones mentioned is good for me. It is a simple curiosity of mine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13078" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T19:14:41.407" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T19:14:41.407" Title="How long does it takes to receive a master graduation document (degree)" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18107" CreationDate="2014-03-13T17:03:52.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the university you attend and how many credits they require for a master degree. In out university, 30 credits (10 courses) needed to complete a master degree. But finishing time depends on you. You can take all these courses in one year (spring, summer, fall) or do it in two years or even three. Its totally up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graduation document, I mean the degree, would be awarded the last day of your last semester. That would be your official &quot;master&quot; title date. The will mail the document to your home address. Plus you can also collect the document on graduation day at the end of spring semester. If you have graduated in Fall 2013, you can attend graduation day in May 2014 and get the degree with fancy clothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9405" LastEditorUserId="9405" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T17:11:14.860" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:11:14.860" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18097" CreationDate="2014-03-13T17:45:25.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AMA citation guide does not accept &lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;op cit&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;loc cit&lt;/em&gt; references. Their protocol is listed here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/Ask/Help/Handouts/Citation_AMA_style.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/Ask/Help/Handouts/Citation_AMA_style.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the basic recommendation is that endnote references should include page numbers when necessary e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his early work, Smith found a significant difference between smokers and non-smokers&lt;sup&gt;8(p.23)&lt;/sup&gt; Age was also a factor. &lt;sup&gt;8(p.64,66)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13073" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:45:25.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18121" CreationDate="2014-03-13T19:09:07.067" Score="9" ViewCount="3340" Body="&lt;p&gt;BACKGROUND: I'm beginning a computer science MS program this summer.  My undergrad background is a 2.9 in non-related sociology sub-category.  The last time I took an actual math class was AP Calculus in my junior year of high school &lt;em&gt;cough&lt;/em&gt; 8 years ago because I did well enough on the AP exam to get credit for everything my major required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GOAL: Ultimately I plan to pursue a PhD in the Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Electrical Engineering with strong leanings toward AI/Machine Learning/Robotics.  &quot;Dream School&quot; is Caltech but any well-respected school with connections to the aerospace industry would be stellar (couldn't resist the pun, sorry.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I have solid grades in my MS program, 90th percentile general GRE scores, and a few publications do you think it is worth it for me to take the Math subject GRE in order to show that I have taken it upon myself to fill the gaps in my undergraduate math education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The program I am going to has a provisional entry option where you take 2 accelerated courses at the beginning which catch you up to speed on programming, data structures and foundational computer science.  The min GPA is 2.75 in any BS/BA program and as long as you get at least a B in both classes they let you continue.  I've worked as a developer/IT person for the last 3 years, my general GRE score was 27 points above their suggested minimum and I took a few random graduate computing courses at SPSU a few years ago and got As in all of them so I think those were contributing factors to my admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12685" LastEditorUserId="12685" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T20:24:10.653" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T07:06:31.070" Title="Math subject GRE to fill gaps in undergraduate education for PhD application" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T20:16:24.363" Score="6" ViewCount="3553" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I get A+ grades then it will raise my GPA in my undergrad institution, as well as for Columbia which is where I want to go to graduate school for statistics. &lt;strong&gt;Should I try hard to get A+ grades or should I be content with As?&lt;/strong&gt; Trying for A+ grades would not cut into any of my important academic activity such as research or my other classes because I already make all As, but it might slightly affect sleep and socialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; (from answer): To be clear I am an undergraduate right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13085" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T21:45:20.587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T09:40:46.110" Title="Do A+ grades (as an undergrad) matter at all for graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18110" CreationDate="2014-03-13T21:30:21.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need an answer from someone at the school to which you will apply.  I took part of an online machine learning course more than a decade after graduate school in mathematics.  The amount of linear algebra and multivariable calculus used there was minimal (it was an MOOC meant to be inclusive), and was more than I recall being on the GRE in an earlier millenium.  I don't see how I could have done the course without a solid foundation in linear algebra and multivariable calculus, if for no other reason than to be comfortable with the notation and basic concepts, much less the applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it makes sense to check out some of the online offerings related to your eventual program, see how the math strikes you, and confirm by talking to members of the departments.  My guess is that the GRE will be inconsequential and that you will have to deal with the math at some point in your trajectory.  You and a face-to-face advisor are best suited to determine where in that trajectory you should do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, take the Math GRE if the admission requirements recommend it.  Don't fool yourself into thinking the GRE will serve as an indicator for how easy it will be to do multivariable calculus or linear algebra.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T21:30:21.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18111" CreationDate="2014-03-13T21:37:35.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your undergrad school awards more GPA points for A+ rather than As then you should definitely try to get A+. As a matter of fact, you should always be trying to do your very best anyways. But for a top program this will be especially important. If you go to grad school, academia will be your full time 9-5 Mon-Sat job, so I would say go on and start early. treat your subjects that way in undergrad and excel in every way possible so as to get into the very best program possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T21:37:35.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18340" CreationDate="2014-03-13T21:50:51.557" Score="42" ViewCount="3916" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/13/lost-faculty-job-offer-raises-questions-about-negotiation-strategy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;story on Inside Higher Ed&lt;/a&gt; (based on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;) about a candidate who received a tenure-track offer from a U.S. philosophy department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She emailed the search committee with some requests related to: salary, maternity leave, sabbatical, teaching load, and start date. Her email ended with &quot;I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others. Let me know what you think.&quot; In response, the institution withdrew the offer, saying that her requests revealed that she wasn't a good fit for a teaching institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the comments on the IHE story or blog post are in support of the school, saying such things as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The candidate asked for too much and came across as &quot;entitled&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The candidate shouldn't have requested a light teaching load initially, when the school in question is a teaching institution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The candidate shouldn't have asked about a pre-tenure sabbatical, which is apparently unheard of at teaching institutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, one comment says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;indicates how important it is to do your best to understand the culture and needs of the hiring institution, both before and during negotiations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and another that it is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an example of knowing the difference between negotiating with a research school and with a small teaching school&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17968/evaluating-and-negotiating-a-start-up-package&quot;&gt;quite&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1336/what-items-should-i-ask-for-in-my-startup-package&quot;&gt;a few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4807/how-should-an-academic-negotiate-his-her-salary&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; on this site about negotiating a startup package, but these mostly describe the various things you can ask for, and which are likely to have more &quot;wiggle room.&quot; Most of the U.S. faculty who answered those are at research institutions, and they suggest that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's perfectly reasonable to ask for anything&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Definitely ask for all that you need, and let them whittle you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, that advice may be more or less applicable depending on the type and culture of the institution. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there really different norms with respect to negotiation in a teaching vs. research institution? What are they?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, more generally, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What can I do pre-offer to get a sense for what the institution's culture is, and what I can reasonably ask for?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly, the candidate in the story came from a research institution, got advice from her advisor there on negotiation, and never realized that her requests would be perceived poorly at a teaching institution. What could she have done differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially interested in a response from anyone who's been on a search committee at both kinds of institutions (though I don't know if we have anyone like that on this site). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T09:27:14.480" Title="Negotiating startup package given differences in institutional norms" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18110" CreationDate="2014-03-13T21:52:33.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either a particular subject GRE is required for a particular program or it is not. There is no middle ground. If is is required, you will not be considered without it. If it is not required, &lt;em&gt;don't do it&lt;/em&gt;: if you do badly, it can still harm you a lot; if you do well, it cannot help you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8321" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T21:52:33.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18118" CreationDate="2014-03-13T22:15:10.227" Score="45" ViewCount="3261" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background is in Economics/Finance(mostly), many topics in those fields (and I am sure other fields) require fairly complicated programming, enough to where one can easily screw something up. How do Academic journals defend against results that are generated by bugs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand nobody ever sees my code, it could be hundreds or even thousands lines of garbage code without a single function in it (not to mention no unit tests) laced with bugs, and I kept &quot;fixing&quot; things until my results &quot;made sense&quot;, and then happily reported them. How could a journal tell that my results are trash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T11:10:00.017" Title="How do Academic Journals protect against empirical results given by bugs?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18117" CreationDate="2014-03-13T22:26:23.367" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals never make any guarantees regarding the validity of the content published in them, though this may seem to be implied. Ideally, errors are caught during the review process. Note that this problem is not specific to programming bugs, subtle errors can occur in all kinds of settings including physical experiments. It is important to always be critical about any results in any article, even highly cited articles in top journals (though these are less likely to be wrong, they still might be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters to the editor are not uncommon in my domain when questionable results are published. In a worst case scenario, published papers can get retracted after the validity of their results has been formally rejected. Retractions for this reason seem to be fairly rare, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons why reproducible results are so important. If several independent researchers seem to reach similar conclusions, they are likely correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T22:31:38.090" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T22:31:38.090" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18111" CreationDate="2014-03-13T23:24:39.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends what field you are going into, as some grad programs have more qualitative criteria for selecting candidates; in the humanities and social sciences, your cover letter, research proposal, CV,life/professional/creative experience and an interview can matter more than GPAs, especially with so much grade inflation everywhere. I know people who got into fully-funded master's and PhDs with Fs on their transcripts which they were able to justify in their cover letters and/or interviews, and I also know of people who didn't get in (particularly in med school) for having a few C's. Can you be more specific about the kind of grad school you have in mind and what you know of the evaluation criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13045" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T23:24:39.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18110" CreationDate="2014-03-14T00:34:28.203" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, here's some advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like that you have an ambitious, but clear, long-term goal: to work at NASA's JPL.  That puts you far ahead of many PhD program applicants in a very important aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting into Caltech's PhD program seems like a less realistic goal to me, honestly.  They have one of the US's very best programs in CS/EE.  Very top programs have their pick of applicants.  They are likely going to not seriously consider applications with a low undergrad GPA just because that's one of the easier of many cuts they need to make in order to get the applicant pool down to a reasonable size.  Or another way to put it is: imagine that your application is very strong except for this one noticeable flaw.  They will be looking at plenty of applications which are similar to yours &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; that this flaw is not present.  What do you expect them to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately you don't need to go to Caltech to get a job at JPL (although it wouldn't hurt, obviously).  You need to go to a serious, reputable university (think UGA) and acquire and demonstrate the talents and skills that will get you hired at JPL.  One's academic pedigree is important but it is certainly not all-important, even in academia and still less in industry.  (I got my PhD in mathematics from Harvard, which afforded me the largest possible head-start on the job market.  It was quite an awakening to discover that my Harvard degree was much closer to a foot in the door than a golden ticket, and the amount of work that I had to do &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; getting my PhD from an absolutely top program in order to land a job at a serious, reputable -- but not at the very top -- university is still remarkable to me.)  You should be shooting for more like a top 50 program, I think, although you should not take my word for it but rather apply to a range of programs when the time comes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your undergrad GPA does look like a bit of a problem to me.  Since it happens that you got your undergrad degree at my university, I know that your GPA is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redandblack.com/news/greeks-maintain-above-average-gpa/article_e171ac95-4567-5d7b-a7a7-b247987bba33.html&quot;&gt;significantly below the average&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact having a GPA of below 3.0 is significant at UGA for reasons that you understand and thus I don't need to get into.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that your undergrad major is in sociology, and the big question is how much that will be discounted given that you want to study CS.  I'll be honest with you: it still doesn't look that great.  The best case scenario is that your undergrad GPA will be viewed as something which does not have much to do with your future graduate performance in a different area.  So &quot;irrelevant&quot; is the best case scenario.  As a member of an admissions committee, a student's undergraduate GPA in whatever subject is not irrelevant to me.  Succeeding at coursework is a skill unto itself, and while it is not the highest or most important skill that is necessary for success in a PhD program, it's definitely on the table.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I see that in this and another question you describe your major as &quot;irrelevant sociology&quot;.  I don't think you should say it in quite that way.  How relevant your undergraduate studies in a different discipline are to your candidacy as a CS PhD student is for the admissions committee to decide.  I detect a hint of disdain for sociology in your language, which to me is also not great: you are the one who chose your undergraduate major.  Just because it is very far from CS doesn't mean that you shouldn't have done well at it.  Candidates like you have a fine line to walk, e.g. in your personal statement: you need to show but not tell that there is every expectation that you will be an excellent CS graduate student notwithstanding the fact that you were a not-quite-mediocre sociology undergraduate student.  Your task is to frame your academic journey in a positive light.  Faculty reading graduate applications love to see &lt;em&gt;improvements&lt;/em&gt; in students' academic records: among other things, this shows not fully realized potential, and that's really important because almost no one comes into a PhD program fully equipped with the skills they need to graduate from it: it is a very dynamic process, over a period of years.  Especially we love to see that students are doing better in the graduate level material than the undergraduate level material.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your specific question: should you take the GRE math subject exam?  Other answers have already addressed this question, and I agree with them: if it's required for a CS PhD program (unlikely), then of course take it.  If it isn't, then don't: it's a tough exam, to the extent that much above the 50th percentile for an American aspiring &lt;em&gt;math PhD student at UGA&lt;/em&gt; looks good enough for us.  You could really know undergraduate mathematics perfectly well for all your future needs, take the math GRE, and get a score in the lower quartiles.  That won't look good for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do instead?  I recommend &lt;strong&gt;more undergraduate level coursework&lt;/strong&gt;.  You want to launder your GPA by showing that you can nowadays get excellent grades in the undergraduate courses that count for CS PhD program.  In most master's programs you can also take undergraduate courses.  You should look into this in your program.  If it is not possible, you should look into separately enrolling in some kind of &quot;post-bac&quot; program concurrently at the same institution.  If you can get mostly A's in undergraduate level math courses, then while your relatively weak undergraduate performance in sociology will not be completely forgotten, it will probably be forgiven by some top 50 program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[You might ask: isn't graduate level coursework better than undergraduate level coursework?  Not necessarily, no.  First of all taking graduate level CS courses doesn't necessarily show the mastery of mathematical foundations that you're rightly concerned about.  Second of all, GPAs in graduate programs are an entirely different species from GPAs in undergraduate programs.  I am unimpressed by a high graduate GPA.  I am only negatively impressed by a low one.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really do wish you the best of luck and hope you are working for NASA someday.  I encounter lots of un-stellar students teaching at UGA and think &quot;Well gosh, they're so young.  If they got their act together, they could probably be much more successful.  I wonder what lies in their future?&quot;  If you succeed in turning your career around like this, I'd really like to know.  Somehow your story will be inspirational to me and help me put more effort into reaching students who don't yet have the academia thing all figured out: we all have so much potential lying beneath the surface.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T19:17:54.977" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T19:17:54.977" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T00:48:37.163" Score="4" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been a plague upon my performance for what seems like all my life (or all my graded life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not an 100, it's a 98 because of calling bromine a gas carelessly.&#xA;No, it's not a 6/6, it's a 5 out of 6 because you didn't realize that such a simple question had a minor twist&#xA;No, it's not a 100, it's a 98 because you had all the right work but you mispunched the calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sick of making careless errors that can truly mean the difference between obtaining one grade and the other. I need to make sure that from now on, I don't, because it is killing me inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is of consequence, I don't have much time for sleep due to 6 hours minimum of work per night. I get around 6-7 hours a night as opposed to the recommended 9 for a teenager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any and all tips would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11629" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T07:09:04.687" Title="How to Stop Making Stupid Mistakes" Tags="&lt;grades&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2014-03-14T13:55:35.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18132" CreationDate="2014-03-14T03:29:02.230" Score="8" ViewCount="4444" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that most universities in Europe require an outline of the planned dissertation at the application stage. I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor. It also requires a thorough investigation on the state of art in the targeted area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission? Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="1070" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T06:56:31.067" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T14:05:47.567" Title="Dissertation proposal before admission: Is it possible?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2014-03-14T04:01:28.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually from what I have seen, as long as you can explain yourself and be honest, you should be good. A lot of good places look at the drive you have towards your goals and fortunately professors these days are getting out of the &quot;only-grades-matter&quot; attitude (albiet slowly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do what you want to do instead of pre-empting what may happen. I wish you all the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13091" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T04:01:28.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2014-03-14T05:03:24.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once had to write a thesis proposal for admission to a UK university. It was explained to me that this is more of an entrance exam than an actual proposal. It is also used to gauge whether your interests lie somewhere in the vicinity of what is generally done at the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how other countries or universities work, but I can't imagine that anybody would hold you strictly to a proposal you wrote before becoming a graduate student. It's normal to expect that your research should be adapted along the way based on your findings, even for an experienced researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal I wrote (which was successful) had to be short, so I went with the following format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theory so and so implies that A is true&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But this other theory suggests that the converse, B, would be true &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These could be pitted against each other in an experiment involving so-and-so (details details details)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time you need entirely depends on your knowledge of the field. It is good to invest quite some time in these things though, as they can really improve a lot the more you think about them. I'd say that it's best to try to finish it a good month before the deadline, and then take a look at it at biweekly intervals to make improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="322" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T07:21:42.410" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T07:21:42.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18128" CreationDate="2014-03-14T05:07:28.320" Score="3" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been cutting some sections out of my article and moving them into the supplementary information section so my paper will fit within the journal's length requirements.  However, some of the information (particularly the methods section) has citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should these citations only be referenced in the supplementary information section or in the main part of the article as well?  And how would the numbering work for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T05:57:24.320" Title="Should references in the supplementary information be included in the main text?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T05:40:09.133" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;A style I'm required to follow, unfortunately unnamed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1]   Last, G.L., Loo, B.F., Mooo, C.C., “My wonderful title” Int. J.&#xA;  Heat Mass Transf., 32(19-21), pp. 234-245, (2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[2]   Moobar, A.D. and Been, D., Book about pink ponies, New York:&#xA;  Wonderful publisher, pp. 34–41, (2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;numeric numbering in []s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;First, L.L.&lt;/em&gt; name style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;article title in quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;year in braces at the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I could find is MLA Seventh edition, but it never does numeric references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer some suggestions below: I didn't find a style file with the publisher. And no clear style description exists, other than the examples provided. (There is a few more, but the features I listed are the main thing in common.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again more information: &lt;a href=&quot;http://spie.org/x14101.xml#Word&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://spie.org/x14101.xml#Word&lt;/a&gt; is the instructions to follow. They provide an example MS Word file with manually typed citations. While I can use the LATEX file, I already have the paper in .DOC and need a citation style for that. So this is a question of its name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13093" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T23:11:21.943" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T22:50:01.743" Title="What citation style is this? It has numeric reference, title in quotes, &quot;Last, F.F.&quot; name style" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18126" CreationDate="2014-03-14T05:57:24.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citations that do not appear in the main article should not appear in the bibliography section of the main article. Instead, you should create a separate references list in the supporting information, and use a separate numbering scheme. Usually you can use the same numbering scheme as in the main article; it will be clear that references apply to the supporting information, rather than the main article. (You could add a footnote to that effect if you want to make this clear, since supporting information is usually handled &quot;as is&quot; by the publisher.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T05:57:24.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2014-03-14T06:01:21.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least at the European university where I work, we do not require such a proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, the thesis proposal is a &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; document, and therefore its contents are not considered binding. Especially given the nature of research, committing someone to a particular course of action before it even begins seems counterproductive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal should be allowed to evolve over time, and possibly be changed completely if found to be unworkable or unmanageable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T06:01:21.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18122" CreationDate="2014-03-14T06:13:08.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a student come to me trying to get back &quot;lost points&quot; on an exam, because the lost points dropped hm below what was needed to get an A, and he got an A- instead. This was in spite of the fact that his answers were demonstrably wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I spoke with him, he said that he needed to have the top grades in the class, because he didn't know how else he could demonstrate that he was a &quot;good student.&quot; I had to explain to him that the degree to which he was insisting on a regrade (effectively demanding that he be awarded the points, even though they hadn't been earned) actually could hurt him in the long run, because it turns people &quot;off&quot;—no one wants to work with an inveterate complainer. And, ultimately, if he wanted to go further in either the academic world or in a professional career, what he needs are good letters of recommendation from people who are willing to vouch for him and support his career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reason for including such a long-winded anecdote here is that the underlying issues are the same: don't worry about little issues here and there. (That doesn't mean don't complain if there's a &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; problem—clerical errors and mistakes do happen!) Small mistakes are a part of life, &lt;strong&gt;and we learn more from those mistakes than from successes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is going to think poorly of you because you make small mistakes. Just keep doing what you're doing, and try not to stress out about it when taking exams and doing your work. Worrying about perfection is a good way not to achieve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T06:13:08.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18122" CreationDate="2014-03-14T07:09:04.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it a good thing to be able to move on from small mistakes (everyone makes them and there have been studies about rates of error), it also good that you realize that you make &quot;careless&quot; mistakes. You will never be able to do everything 100% all the time and you might drive yourself crazy (and make more mistakes) if you try too hard, but there are somethings you can do to decrease your risks/catch yourself when you make mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare yourself mentally and physically. This means being fed, watered, having enough sleep and not stressing yourself out. It isn't always easy to do, especially when you put a lot of pressure on yourself to do well, but it will help you make less errors and catch them when you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For exams, always read questions twice and look over your answers. If you have time look everything over at the end. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have papers, proof read and have someone else look things over. It can also help to read what you wrote out loud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't rush through things if you can avoid it and still complete your task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you do make errors, keep track of what kinds they are. Do you misread questions more often or do you mix-up words? This will help you be more aware for next time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8778" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T07:09:04.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2014-03-14T07:30:37.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, to answer your titular question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely yes. Otherwise, all PhD students at this university would fail, wouldn't they :) ? Let me go over the rest of your question one by one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems that most universities in Europe require an outline of the planned dissertation at the application stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most&lt;/em&gt; seems a bit extreme. I know that this is how it works in some universities, but it certainly did not work like that in all places I worked in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor. It also requires a thorough investigation on the state of art in the targeted area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct. At my current university, people hand in their proposals during their second year usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is almost certainly not a very definite plan, but whether it can &lt;strong&gt;totally&lt;/strong&gt; change I am not sure. For instance, I would assume if it changed so much that it started to fall out of the area of expertise of your advisor, I would imagine things would get tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rsearch the state of the art in the field you are interested in. Take a few days minimum to browse over the keywords of the papers of the top conferences in the field. Find out which professor at your university publishes in these top conferences (if there is nobody, this university may be a bad match for your field of interest), and see what the typical keywords and style of his work are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about ~3 coarse-grained research questions that you think are not answered yet by existing work. You probably already needed to define a research question for e.g., your master's thesis. Make sure that the scope is a bit broader now for a PhD - you don't want research questions that are basically answerable within one paper in a few months of work (Bad: &quot;Q1: is it possible to apply algorithm A to problem B?&quot;). On the other hand, you do not want to be too general either (Bad: &quot;Q2: how can security be introduced in service-oriented systems?&quot; - this one is a real-life example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T07:30:37.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2014-03-14T08:08:19.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to do a similar task to get into PhD program here in Australia. It is mostly a formality and people's actual topic can vary widely. Actually it would be strange if you did not change your topic slightly. After 6 months - 1 year we are expected to give a seminar and a much more detailed proposal, this was the real one. Although again your topic can still change after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you provide some tips for writing such a proposal draft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask your supervisor for tips. Maybe they can provide you with a copy of one from a previous student. Usually the university provides a general outline of what you should discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T08:08:19.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:04:58.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer your question for a general case (i.e. not the school that you are applying to but what happens in most cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A drastically bad mark in your curriculum is much better than a mark which is just bad. To make it clear, allow me to clear my point with an example. In my country the max you can get from an exam is 20 and anything below 10 is fail. I somehow was absent during an exam an as result, I got 0.25 for my final mark (0 is was not acceptable by the software system). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was applying for post-graduate studies, that 0.25 was a concern. But the fact is, the committee easily understood that this mark is somehow a particular case, they simply asked me about it and it was dealt with within 5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm trying to make is, an inhomogeneous result in your career automatically tells that it is a particular case and it does not necessarily represent you. Moreover, post-graduate committees are more into your recent career rather than a dark point in your teenage years. Proceed with self-confidence and above all, with honesty and you shall prevail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12666" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T09:04:58.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18127" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:18:47.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system of referencing using numbers is called the Vancouver system. As alluded to by aeismail in his comment, each journal has some form of style based on this format. Hence, you need to know how the specific journal style works in terms of ordering the different bibliographic fields, for example, author, title, publishing year, journal, volume number, page numbers, doi etc. If no clear style description exists you can try to adhere to the specific style by looking at other published articles that use the same style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T09:18:47.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18151" CreationDate="2014-03-14T11:38:38.640" Score="4" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I put up a question on the SE network. I ended up writing an extensive answer myself and published it in the same question and on my blog. Later, I put a lot more thought into the topic and found additional results, which I did not publish yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since considered if that question might be usable as a topic for a bachelor thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disregarding the fact that I would need to convince a professor to accept an existing topic, does the publication of the question and some results in the past prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5640" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T12:52:32.130" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T18:32:33.010" Title="Is it possible to use my partially published previous work as a bachelor thesis?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18117" CreationDate="2014-03-14T12:09:45.553" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Marc Claesen's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There exist a few journals that require the code to be submitted and where the review explicitly included that code, e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/&quot;&gt;Journal of Statistical Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In one of my last papers, one reviewer asked exactly this question. Here's our reply in the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The checks include unit tests to ensure&#xA;  calculational correctness, which consist of ca. twice&#xA;  as many lines of code than the actual function definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I include this because even if the journal does not have an explicit policy regarding the code, both reviewers and authors can already start with better coding and testing practices:  I'm encouraged by this experience to include such statements also in future as author, and I will ask as reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T12:09:45.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18137" CreationDate="2014-03-14T14:00:32.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on what the institution's goals for a bachelor thesis are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions may want evidence that the student is capable of such work; in this case you've already met the requirements.  Some institutions want work done in the context of the thesis course; in this case you will need to do additional work, although it may be related to the existing work such as extending and documenting it.  Some institutions may want evidence that the student is capable of work-for-hire (i.e. assigned by faculty and not chosen by the student).  In this case you will need to do a thesis completely from scratch as chosen by the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T14:00:32.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18152" CreationDate="2014-03-14T15:16:31.580" Score="17" ViewCount="3759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Bachelor's Thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a seemingly convenient way of making my research paper successful, but I'm not sure if it counts as plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mainly concerned with the methods section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gathered many research papers that use the same methodology but discuss different topics (it is not about the literature review). I read the method section and take notes of how the author presented the information, the discussion raised, the sections included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is relevant to my research paper, I follow the same ideas. I take the information cited by the researcher; I mean good information from experts. I do further research on good quotes that are in the research papers I read, use them in my research paper, and cite the original source of the quote, which I also read, but I do not cite the research paper where I was first introduced to the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't cite the research paper where I found the quote because it is irrelevant to my topic. It only uses the same methodology. Moreover, I do further research on the information and usually cite the original source or a source on research methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T02:38:36.410" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T18:28:29.247" Title="Is there a problem with citing the original source instead of the source where the information was first found?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T16:27:51.657" Score="4" ViewCount="1634" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/general-science/science-handbooks/how-write-and-publish-scientific-paper-6th-edition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; advises writers to use the past tense when they write about unpublished research (including the research their paper reports), and to use the present tense to write about research previously published in a primary journal. So, presumably, writers should use the past tense to refer within their paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in a reply to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3608/in-what-tense-present-past-should-papers-be-written&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, a user commented that he uses the present tense when he references within his paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What tense should writers use when they refer within their paper? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do arts and humanities papers use tense differently than science papers do? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T17:05:44.580" Title="What tense to use in arts and humanities papers?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18143" CreationDate="2014-03-14T16:57:55.890" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is lack of attribution. You &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; need to cite your sources, period. If you are only paraphrasing or summarizing what someone else said, you only need to cite the relevant book/article/thesis/whatever. If you are citing someone verbatim, you also need to indicate the page numbers. If you do not do this, you are going to get in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you are not obliged to cite everybody who has said something relevant, especially when  working on popular topics where everybody and their mother have said something. You can always write something like &quot;see Smith 2000 and Thompson 2001, among others&quot;, or if you prefer the original source, &quot;see Smith 2000 &lt;em&gt;et seq&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T16:57:55.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18153" CreationDate="2014-03-14T17:14:09.163" Score="5" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some results, related to &lt;em&gt;imposing group structures on subspaces of finite fields with a metric&lt;/em&gt;, and I would like to publish my work. My advisor asked me to choose a journal, but I have no idea how to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some further results on a paper published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/linear-algebra-and-its-applications/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linear Algebra and its Applications&lt;/a&gt;. I have resolved a few open question they pose in their paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable that I publish my results in the same journal? What other options do I have? How do I know if it is a good journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13107" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T20:09:18.120" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T20:13:54.417" Title="Which discrete math journal should I choose to publish my findings?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2020-08-14T07:26:16.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18165" CreationDate="2014-03-14T17:54:28.880" Score="3" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper for an ACM transactions publication precisely using the &lt;code&gt;acmsmall&lt;/code&gt; format. However, I am yet to find a comprehensive Do's and Don'ts for writers with regards to style. For example, I've seen some papers say, &lt;code&gt;&quot;in Equation (5) ...&quot;&lt;/code&gt; while others abbreviate it to &lt;code&gt;&quot;in Eqn. (5) ...&quot;&lt;/code&gt;. I have also seen some papers merely refer to equations by their numbers i.e. &lt;code&gt;&quot;in (5) ...&quot;&lt;/code&gt; as is done in the IEEE. I've even seen these used interchangeably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first case is correct though, as it was used in a sample paper provided, however, are &lt;code&gt;Eqn. (5)&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;(5)&lt;/code&gt; acceptable equivalents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be consistency in referring to figures and tables though: figures are always referenced thus &lt;code&gt;&quot;in Figure 5 ...&quot;&lt;/code&gt; and never abbreviated, for example as &lt;code&gt;&quot;Fig.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I'm just picking styles from already published papers which I'm not sure is the best way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where does one find clarification on these issues? Which is right in the above cases mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastEditorUserId="13109" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T22:59:52.287" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T01:37:33.023" Title="Does ACM have a style guide for authors?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18137" CreationDate="2014-03-14T18:32:33.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posting on SE or on your blog does not count as publishing in the traditional sense (the work has not yet appeared in a scientific journal or conference proceedings). This means that it is unlikely to be a problem. Just make sure you discuss it with your potential supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T18:32:33.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18143" CreationDate="2014-03-14T18:38:30.407" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correctly citing the &lt;strong&gt;original source&lt;/strong&gt; of the idea/quote (which you looked up and read in context, as you should). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't (usually) have to cite the paper that exposed you to that original source. The purpose of a citation is to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give credit to the originator of an idea/quote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tell readers where to look to verify your claims about that idea/quote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, citing the original source satisfies both purposes and is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exception is a review paper, which doesn't add new research, but collects and comments on relevant sources on a subject. In this case, the curation of materials &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the novel idea contributed by the review paper. If you then go on to use the collection of sources you found via that paper, it's often appropriate to cite the review paper also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you use the interpretation of the original source found in the secondary source, you should also cite the secondary source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T18:38:30.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18148" CreationDate="2014-03-14T19:15:19.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One good place to start is the journals in which your most important references were published. (The authors of those references would be good candidates if the journal asks you to propose referees.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: ask other people that work in the same field what journal they would suggest. (While you are at it, send them the manuscript and ask them for comments, nicely.) Have you presented your results at a conference? Do you recall anyone there working on a similar topic? Ideally someone who sat in on your presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor should have at least a passing acquaintance with your field, so he should be able to suggest something. That he does not do so suggests to me that he is watching how you cope with this situation :-) How about other students of your advisor, does anyone work in this field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not easy to judge whether a given journal is good. @EnergyNumbers' comment is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T19:15:19.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17933" CreationDate="2014-03-14T19:23:36.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since a lot of the answers are perspective-driven rather than evidence-driven, I will give my own perspective and then accept the most popular answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off though, I wanted to address this comment I made in the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for answers that specifically target teaching rather than research presentations. (For me, there is a significant difference.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that for research talks, the meat of the content is in the paper already. The talk is an advertisement: a flavour of the content in the paper. When I prepare research talks, I'm quite happy to keep things at a high level of detail and to avoid bullets almost entirely and let those few people in the audience who are interested in more detail defer to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For teaching, the meat of the content may be elsewhere: it may be in a book or it may be in handouts. The level of textual detail in the slides does depend on a balance of what other material is made available alongside the slides, what can be noted in the talk, etc. For example, I'm currently preparing a course on a new area that is without an authoritative text-book; I'm preparing the course as I teach it. Though I could provide separate handouts, I prefer to use the time I have to capture the content in the talk/slides. Currently my strategy is to write text-heavy notes and annotations into each slide (where needed) to give the context and some description for the slide. This is lower-effort for me, meaning I can keep the slides for introducing topics and keep everything together, and the students can refer to the slides as handouts without being hit over the head with text during the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the idea of using (only) the board is in principle good for courses that are, e.g., mathematical in nature, and where teaching process is important. However, using the board is far too slow for subjects that wish to cover a lot of factual knowledge. For example, if I need to teach about the table of elements, I'm not going to draw that on the board. (Furthermore, I remember in many a board-heavy lecture as an undergrad, concentrating solely on transcribing everything to read later ... I think a lecture where a student is &lt;em&gt;constantly&lt;/em&gt; writing is a bad lecture.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, back to answering my own questions (parts of my answers are indeed informed by/similar to other opinions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bullets should be used sparingly and should contain short material, but they are useful to present taxonomies and high-level summaries. They also save time in preparation (vs. preferable visual slides). Bullets that are logical consequences of other bullets ... that follow from what was discussed ... should be hidden until that conclusion is natural. Bullets that answer questions should be hidden until the answer has been arrived at (interactively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animation for aesthetic purposes gives the feel of a board-room presentation in a marketing department. Animations should be as minimal as they can be ... for heavens sake, no whooshing around. However, animation of graphics can work well when explaining, for example, the dynamics of a system. It needs to be done well, however, and in clear stages! For example, here's a self-explanatory animation to teach bubblesort (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bubble-sort-example-300px.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9QACG.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... it's faster and cleaner than going to the board, and one can even &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; the worst-case performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who say &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;never use animation&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (or make similar blanket statements) I feel lack imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good approach to take for titling slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the title of the slide is often the only substantial text on a slide, I use whatever title helps set a context for that slide in relation to others. I don't really believe in slide titles like &amp;quot;Sorting Algorithms I&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Sorting Algorithms II&amp;quot; ... instead ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include &amp;quot;separation slides&amp;quot; to chunk content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. I find separation slides (with a short large title) to be very useful to mark the end of a theme, to give a chance for pause and overcap, to emphasise the flow of the talk and to also give a brief opportunity for questions before moving on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the optimal amount of information per slide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends. Slides are generally free and content is easier to consume in sparse slides. Generally a picture or a diagram you can point to while talking is sufficient. But occasionally you might have a lot of content that is interdependent, such as for comparison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RrnNr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taken from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This table is dense &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; it is best presented in it's entirety (with the help of colour) for the purposes of comparison. If the complexity of each algorithm were split over different slides, the comparison would be difficult to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good rule of thumb is to include a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;minimal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; amount of content that stands as a cohesive whole: put the question and the answer on the same slide (since one makes little sense without the other), put the comparative data on one slide (since the comparison cannot be drawn otherwise), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., 4/20) or just the current slide (e.g., 4)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that parts should be numbered rather than slides. For me, &lt;code&gt;4/20&lt;/code&gt; can sometimes be the psychological equivalent of making an audience watch a pot boil. Progress should instead be &lt;em&gt;emphasised&lt;/em&gt; on the level of learning and topics (e.g., using separation slides) rather than an arbitrary slide numbering. &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;We've looked at X, now we're going to look at Y and Z.&lt;/em&gt; ... &lt;em&gt;Okay, now that we've covered Y, all that's left for today is Z.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But slides should certainly be numbered! The audience/students may wish to ask a question or make a note about a specific slide!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T19:23:36.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18148" CreationDate="2014-03-14T19:53:51.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Helping you choose a journal is exactly the sort of aid your advisor should be giving you.  Often in the relationship between an advisor and a graduate student there is a lack of clarity and/or a miscommunication about what the student should be doing on his own and what his advisor could be helping him out with.  I remember that one of my students gave as part of an oral exam a talk on an important paper.  He asked me about it a little bit, but not as much as I was expecting.  When he gave the talk it was excellent, except that at one point he presented a sort of black box and said &quot;unfortunately I didn't understand this&quot;.  It was (to me) no big deal, but I had to wonder, &quot;If you understood everything except this one thing, why didn't you ask me about that thing before the exam?&quot;  He must have had different ideas about the amount of independence that was being asked of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the above story is this: given what little you've said, I am not yet persuaded that your advisor is unwilling to help you choose a journal for your paper: why wouldn't he be willing to help?  In general, here is a good strategy for getting help from any faculty member: rather than saying &quot;I'm stumped; please advise,&quot; try &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; and then get feedback on the merits of what you tried.  In your case you have the idea of submitting to &lt;em&gt;Linear Algebra and its Applications&lt;/em&gt; because you answer some open questions raised in a previous paper in that journal.  To me that sounds like an excellent idea: I have several times submitted to journals with the same idea (unfortunately, acknowledging that you have successfully answered questions from a prior paper does not guarantee that they'll want to publish your paper; I've had it happen both ways) and most of the journals that I've submitted to have been for less logical reasons than this (the other common strategy, related to yours, is to look through your bibliography and see whether any journal comes up more than once; if it does, if your paper is similar in subject matter and scope to any of those journals, then it's at least reasonable to submit there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an idea: why don't you come up with one or two more ideas for where to submit your paper which feel different from &lt;em&gt;Linear Algebra and its Applications&lt;/em&gt;: e.g. try a journal which does not specialize in a mathematical subfield; try a journal which is of significantly higher quality -- e.g. &lt;em&gt;Discrete Mathematics&lt;/em&gt;; if it doesn't sound ridiculous, maybe try something like the &lt;em&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt;.  Then bring these specific journal suggestions back to your advisor and ask for feedback.  If you don't get any feedback from this, that's strange, and it is probably worth asking (as sunnily as you can possibly muster) &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're not getting help on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T20:13:54.417" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T20:13:54.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18158" CreationDate="2014-03-14T20:51:36.700" Score="81" ViewCount="39144" Body="&lt;p&gt;In class, over the course of a semester, I tend to build up a mental model of individual students' communication abilities. For example, one student might seem more or less eloquent than another when they speak. One might make more cogent points than another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, I will receive an essay which appears exceptionally eloquent and cogent, from students who seemed distinctly average. Of course, I make the cursory checks for plagiarism (searching certain unlikely phrases, etc.), but if nothing comes up, I sometimes still remain unconvinced that the work is the student's own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sites offer to sell the services of trained academics and graduate students for menial essay writing, and often the questionable assignments look more like the quick and under-edited work of a master than the polished work of a novice. Of course, if the essays are paid for, and original, it's naturally very hard to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work? Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T14:51:11.630" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T01:45:30.813" Title="How can I determine whether a student has written an excellent paper themselves, or hired someone else to do it?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-14T20:55:09.950" Score="87" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the student to come to your office hours or a private meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, say: &quot;I was really impressed by your recent paper, it was an excellent piece of work! Let's discuss it some more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Student who did the work will be able to discuss said work intelligently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Student who didn't do the work is unlikely to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about said work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This still isn't proof of any kind, and you can't accuse student of cheating without some evidence - but if you're lucky, student will at least be spooked enough to never do it again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign essays that are a few steps beyond, but still closely tied to, what's been discussed in class, such that somebody who wasn't in the class will not be able to produce the kind of essay you're expecting (the effectiveness of this depends very much on the subject matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T21:55:20.617" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T21:55:20.617" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18160" CreationDate="2014-03-14T21:26:03.457" Score="2" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper to Proc. Am. Math. Soc.  My advisor said to submit to this journal.  It's been over 3.5 months with no response.  I have made several  edits to my paper, but none that essentially change the structure of a proof.  The original email contained the following message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submission of unrequested revisions is discouraged. If SUBSTANTIAL &#xA;  modifications are absolutely necessary after initial submission, the &#xA;  above link can be used to resubmit your article. Please limit the use &#xA;  of this link to one resubmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these words I would not resubmit, but I am wondering, since it is taking so long, should I just send in the current version to perhaps get the attention of the reviewer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13119" LastEditorUserId="5944" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T22:33:41.393" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T04:42:15.473" Title="Should I resubmit my paper to get the attention of a slow reviewer?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18159" CreationDate="2014-03-14T22:17:53.480" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is clearly answered in the comments by @Stephan Kolassa (making community wiki here just to post an answer for the question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely do NOT resubmit the paper! If you do, you could end up having everything rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the editors of the journal. 3.5 months is not such a long time for journal review in many fields (unfortunately) but it is sufficient time to warrant a quick friendly email to the editor asking what the progress is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though you should not pester the editor, contacting them after 3.5 months seems perfectly reasonable. But keep a friendly/deferential tone. (Don't demand or complain ... just ask for info.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And best of luck with the reviews. The first submission is always the most nerve-wrecking. If it works out, then great. If not, try not to sweat it too much. Rejection happens to nearly everyone.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T22:17:53.480" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-03-14T22:17:53.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-15T00:06:52.560" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish these random thoughts can supplement the other good answers and comments. Mainly, I wish to address the second question: &quot;Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't start off with negative thoughts/suspicion so soon:&lt;/strong&gt; Some introverted people can perfectly blend into the background in class, but produce very thoughtful written work because they actually put good amount of thought into the piece. It's like you have never noticed this person's existence until you have read the student's written work. For this reason, I'd suggest taking a more trusting approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set up a code of honor:&lt;/strong&gt; In some professional degrees students often have to sign a code of honor. You may check with the department head if something like this can be set up for all the students. You can also create your own and have the students read, discuss, question, and sign on the first day of the class. A code of honor will help clarifying what is and is not expected in the course, and will help to i) remind students to be honest, and ii) serve as a foundation contract in case someone really does cheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do believe there are students with malicious intention, trying the cheat their way through. However, I also believe there are some of them who did it because &quot;Well, the lecturer never said I can't.&quot; It is saddening that nowadays teachers have to lay out all these criteria, but I also would see this chance as bringing the students, who may be from diverse backgrounds, onto the same page regarding ethics and professionalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Downplay the grade proportion of the paper:&lt;/strong&gt; The incentive to hire a ghost writer is likely proportional to the percentage of the final grade attributed to that piece. Try lower it, and introduce some other forms of assessment that are less likely to be done by someone else: In-class exercise, individual/group presentation, etc. are some possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similarly, give smaller and/or more frequent writing assignments:&lt;/strong&gt; In questionnaire design, if one asks more questions on the same construct, the reliability tends to go up. Basing on this idea, you may consider giving more than one written assignment. This can let you i) detect within-student fluctuation (How did this person suddenly write so well?) and ii) perhaps allow students to express their thoughts or work on somehow different topics/from a different angle. Higher frequency may also introduce less incentive to hire a ghost writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implement a progressive assignment to foster the sense of ownership:&lt;/strong&gt; You may also consider modifying your assignment so that students will need to work on it and report to you step by step, from concept to review, from review to analysis, from analysis to draft, and from draft to final version. Spread them out across the course. This method will allow you to first get a sense of their thought process (which is a lot more objective than checking their in-class behaviors), and it will also enhance the student's sense of owning the piece as well as understanding of the contents. This can likely decrease the need or urgency to seek ghost writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be very clear what is and is not allowed:&lt;/strong&gt; I'd just put this in as a food for thought. We may often encourage people, especially those with English as second language, to either let native speakers look at their work or seek professional editors' help to improve their written piece. Is this allowed? Sometimes a run of very simple edit can make the piece quite eloquent, and some editors may either go to town in their editing or help the student to flush out their ideas more clearly during the face-to-face meeting. Is this allowed? I am not pro or against this practice of getting an editor's help; I just wish to point out that there can be much grey area when judging if no clear rules are laid out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T00:57:33.643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T00:57:33.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18159" CreationDate="2014-03-15T01:00:35.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I entirely agree with the &quot;do NOT resubmit&quot; advice of badroit. I just wanted to add something which was not addressed and yet seems like the natural thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your advisor. If he/she told you to submit there, he/she probably has some experience with the journal, either first-hand (as author or reviewer), or through colleagues. This will help you evaluate if 3.5 months really is unusually lenghty for this journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be surprised if it were. I have no experience with this particular journals, but for other journals in mathematics I have been told that it is unreasonable to expect an answer before 6 months and you can start worrying after one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good reason to enquire about the state of the review process is if you are expecting to send applications soon and a few weeks difference means the world to you. Even in that case though, as badroit very well says: &quot;Don't demand or complain&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T01:00:35.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-15T01:14:41.997" Score="30" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, begin any essay assignment with clear instructions on the amount of outside assistance that is allowed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universities have &quot;drop in writing tutors&quot; who are paid (albeit often rather modestly) to help students with their writing assignments.  These tutors are well-trained on how not to help too much: e.g. they probably do not write down as much as a complete sentence that the student has not already suggested.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having students expressly acknowledge the outside help that they get, even if absolutely legitimate, helps towards fostering good academic practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus if they go to the university's writing center or some similar entity, that's fine (assuming that above it has been clarified by the instructor to be fine; but if your university has a writing center then it seems like a bad idea not to allow your students to use it in at least some ways), but they should still acknowledge it.  This goes a long way to combating the problem of &quot;mysterious diction&quot;, i.e., the isolated turn of phrase that you just don't quite believe came from the student.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should really enforce this practice: if it turns out that a student went to the writing center and didn't report it, lower their grade at least slightly: this helps to reiterate that this is very important to you.  In fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Communicate absolutely clearly that in academia there is no sin worse than passing off someone's ideas and/or work as your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that most undergraduates know that this is something they are not supposed to do, but many don't seem to understand that this is a very serious crime.  To me at least, the crime is so serious that -- in light of the difficulties of definitively &quot;catching&quot; the student -- the penalties should be clarified in advance to be quite severe.  At my university, the absolute &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; penalty for this is a grade of 0 on the assignment.  I would say though that a student who paid someone else to write a paper for them and is caught deserves to fail the entire course.  Make this clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Structure a written assignment more than just asking for a full-blown paper at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the merit of being a good practice for other reasons.  Even in mathematics courses I sometimes ask students to write papers, and I have learned from hard experience that if you don't check in with them while they are doing the work then the final quality of the product is going to be ridiculously spotty: e.g. it will turn out that some students simply didn't understand what you were asking them to do to the extent that you do not recognize what they turn in as being a specimen (however poor) of what you asked for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a significant paper in an undergraduate course it could be appropriate to meet with the student several times before they turn in the final version: once to determine and have you sign off on an appropriate topic, and at least once to show you their partial work, giving you a chance to adjust them back on track if need be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you break the assignment up into pieces like this, then it becomes at the same time harder for a student to pay someone else to do it and also &lt;em&gt;easier&lt;/em&gt; for them to do it themselves.  I have to imagine that a lot of this professional paper-writing is done when a student realizes that they have waited until the last 24-72 hours before the paper is due.  &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; can write a good paper under those severe time constraints, but they can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider having a classroom component accompany any significant written work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works better in some courses than others, depending on both the size of the course and the subject matter.  Hearing 25 different presentations on whether and in what way Madame Bovary was a proto-feminist sounds like a rather dreary use of class time.  But let me say that in every graduate (math) course I teach, whether I assign written homework or not I always have a &quot;problem session&quot;, usually about once a week and lasting at least an hour, in which the students present their solutions to me and to each other (with whatever written notes they want, of course).  I don't do this because I'm worried that their written work will not be their own, not really, but it is definitely a different thing to cobble together a solution from two different texts and a website (this is a totally legitimate thing to do, in my courses: in fact this sounds like a reasonable description of some of my own research!) than to actually present it in front of other people.  (Again, I've learned this from hard experience: in many of the courses I teach, the course text is &lt;em&gt;my own notes&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes written on the fly and sometimes already written.  It is remarkable to me how I can give a better or worse rendition of something that I looked up from my own lecture notes on any given day.  Sometimes I don't succeed in getting the material as firmly in my head as I would like in the time allotted to prepare that day's lecture.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is both an oral and a written component, then layering is again a good thing: maybe the student turns in some preliminary written thing, then they give a presentation on it, then they improve their written work based on the feedback they got from the presentation.  Again, this seems more appropriate in some courses than others, but when it is appropriate the students learn a lot: perhaps they will even be too busy learning and working to think to get someone else to write their paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T01:14:41.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18149" CreationDate="2014-03-15T01:37:33.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take a look at the format that the ACM template gives to you, but there is no straight answer for an specific format. Try to focus more on the content (like they have advise you on one comment) that in the format. Actually I have seen in some ACM published papers that they put things like (considering your example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Equation 5... or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Eq. 5 ... or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(put the variant you think here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that is one of your least worries, if you had some problem with the format the reviewers will point to that, but if the content is good is what really counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T01:37:33.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18159" CreationDate="2014-03-15T04:36:34.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that mathematics is on the slower side when it comes to the review process. (1) In math there are often only a handful of people who are even remotely qualified to review your paper, so it is tough to find reviewers (2) It takes a very long time in some instances to check the validity of a proof. In some fields perhaps, 3.5 months may be pushing the long end, since in these fields they often only critique big ideas, writing, statistics and experimental design, these things are rather quick to check -- in comparison to a long or highly technical proof. In addition, numerical results are often unchecked in some sciences (especially in fields where you don't submit code with your paper) so even highly technical fields can have pretty quick review turnover. A reviewer in math is going to try and go through your proof in painstaking detail, will try to figure out if there are any counterexamples, even if she believes your proof. I've known several mathematicians to wait over a year before they get a decision on their submission. This is why the arXiv is so important in math; it helps date your discovery, since the review process takes so long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inquiring is fine, but be very friendly. Often journals allow you to check the status of the paper. When was this paper sent to the reviewers? If you don't know the answer to this you should try to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T04:42:15.473" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T04:42:15.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18168" CreationDate="2014-03-15T09:05:11.927" Score="6" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine several levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Graduate student.&#xA;(2) Post-doctoral student.&#xA;(3) Assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Cultural context]&#xA;(I don't know if this has any impact on the question, providing the information just in case)&#xA;In Japan, assistant professor(s) don't usually have their own independent lab. They work in the same lab &quot;under&quot; an associate or full professor. Their level of independency highly depends on the professor above them. Some of them may have a small team within the big team. Lab management and teaching grad students how to do experiments usually rely heavily on the assistant professor(s). In big labs, there may be several assistant professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In which cases can (1) and (2) expect to take corresponding authorship?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should (2) or (3) be granted corresponding authorship if they made the research with grant money they managed to get in their name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is/are the benefit(s) of having corresponding authorship? Is it a requirement to be considered for some higher level grants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the corresponding author always be the last author? Or is it OK for any other author to be corresponding author?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T09:59:21.577" Title="Who gets corresponding authorship in the biological sciences and what does it mean?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18167" CreationDate="2014-03-15T09:59:21.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The corresponding author serves as the point of access for readers to inquire about a paper. This does not imply it should be any particular author, though particularly common choices seem to be first or last author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding author should be the author that is least likely to change institutions. Changing institutions generally implies losing your contact details where you left (including email). The corresponding author should be the one that is most likely to remain a consistent point of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often the last author because that is the common spot for the supervising PI (typically tenured). This is not always true, for example some domains like maths and theoretical computer science organise authors alphabetically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T09:59:21.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2014-03-15T14:05:47.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to write a proposal as part of the admission process in a university in Ireland for a MLitt in History. Here are some thoughts based on what you have asked and my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had 2 meeting with my supervisor before the proposal was handed in. These meetings did not just entail discussion on the title, but they formed a part of it in so far as was this professor the best person in the department to supervise the masters. We had a working title quite early though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found in my case that the title may be refined after admission. It has not being the case where we have made a major chance but rather refined the project as the research is completed while keeping it within the overall framework of the original idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case the proposal did not have to be a long document. I think instructions were to keep it under 1,500 words. I used the following heading for my proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I'm going to research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research Methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What has been researched about topic already&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will this thesis add to existing knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I also put together a draft reading list of publications that I thought would form part of my research. This was not required but I felt it was a good exercise for myself and my supervisor appreciated a copy of it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking back I believe I had my proposal document completed in about 2-3 weeks(this includes drafting and amending).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T14:05:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T14:33:57.743" Score="4" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to extract a paper from my MSc thesis. But I am not sure how to point out that this paper is the synopsis of my thesis. What is your suggestion? In which section should I refer to the thesis, in introduction or related works? Is it allowed to insert some part of my thesis to my paper without modification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T14:08:04.097" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T03:31:13.020" Title="Citing my own thesis in the extracted paper" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18171" CreationDate="2014-03-15T15:14:06.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you only wish to point out that you have a thesis that may contain additional material, you could add a sentence in the acknowledgement to the effect that the work was largely &quot;funded&quot; by your master's project resulting in your named thesis. It is, at least in my field, not uncommon that people cite their own thesis for details that usually are not included in a regular paper. Typically theses contain much more detailed descriptions of experiments (or their equivalents), including error discussions, as well as contain more data (results) than is possible to fit in a paper. There must, of course, be a clear purpose for quoting your own thesis for information that cannot be included in a paper and I would state that you cannot cite a thesis for any critical points since those must be included in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T14:09:35.900" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T14:09:35.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18146" CreationDate="2014-03-15T15:28:57.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Verb tense often distinguishes a paper in the humanities from one in the&#xA;natural and social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally you would write in the present tense in the humanities (e.g. John Doe explains) and you would use the past tense in a humanities paper only for reporting historical events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UNC &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/verb-tenses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Centre&lt;/a&gt; have a good webpage with examples that explain the three types of verb tenses (present simple, past simple, and present perfect) that they say account for approximately 80% of the verb tense use in academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T14:46:19.403" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T14:46:19.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-15T16:48:46.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember one year when I was at university an exam in anther department had two sections, the 2nd section had the same number of questions as students, and each question was related to something in the student’s project.    One question had to be answered from that section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each year having a section like this, based on one essay would give the students a good incentive to at least understand what they handed in regardless of who wrote it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T16:48:46.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17555" CreationDate="2014-03-15T17:59:10.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Nauhaus' extensive comments in response to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17553/can-a-student-seek-redress-for-the-administration-neglecting-their-paperwork&quot;&gt;your related question&lt;/a&gt; apply here as well. However, there is a direct question that needs a direct answer and an emotional core to your posts that deserves more direct attention as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Could] the graduate school administration change [my] graduation dates?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your graduate school's administration cannot and will not change your graduate date if your request does not come with the support of your advisor and your department. The graduate school and the university may be &amp;quot;higher ups&amp;quot; in terms of a traditional administrative hierarchy, but in academic and curricular matters your department has absolute primacy. Any effort by the administration to &amp;quot;force&amp;quot; a graduation date on your department would be seen as an encroachment on their academic freedom, and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; would get the attention of outside faculty and peer institutions in a tremendously negative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be unrelated to the harm that has occurred to you, but it is a valid reason for the graduate school to deny your specific request. If you still have any credibility within your university's administration, you could get more traction seeking other forms of redress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subtext: Does the department get away scot free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will not get what you decided to ask for. This does not mean that your efforts have had no impact. They have cost your department in at least two ways: First, to the extent that you still have the sympathy of anyone in the administration the dispute has cost your department credibility and administrative reputation. As you press the matter in increasingly intrusive ways, this cost will decline and eventually flip into sympathy. No program wants to be pitied, but it's better than being disliked. Second, if you've reached the point where a dean refuses to meet with you then you've earned the &amp;quot;problem child&amp;quot; achievement regardless of the merit of your complaint. Your graduate program admitted you, and will therefore be seen as bringing a &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; (that would be you) to the university's doorstep. The administration—even the sympathetic administration—will call your department's judgement into question because they vouched for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your department has paid and will continue to pay for what you went through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;None&lt;/em&gt; of this will be visible to you. That is what professionalism looks like from the outside: calm seas and a gentle wind, nothing happening here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More subtext: Why should the department's error cost &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most important part of your question. As a student and teacher (can't and won't speak to this as an administrator), I have seen graduate students throw away their professional futures over pride and pocket change. It may not &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like pocket change from the perspective of a graduate student's meager income, but you need to review your relative costs in terms of a tenured professor's &lt;em&gt;considerable&lt;/em&gt; income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you have written here, it looks like you are burning your professional future to ash over four years of lost pay. That &amp;quot;problem child&amp;quot; tag you've earned is sticky, and it will follow you. No faculty wants to hire a colleague that brings trouble, and &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; faculty wants to hire a colleague that &lt;em&gt;escalates&lt;/em&gt; trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two ways to overcome this tag that I am aware of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be at the very top of your field. If your scholarly stature outweighs your immaturity, some good university will accept the latter's cost. This is emotionally easy—everyone would happily be the best at what they do—but it is intellectually difficult. Are you capable of being that good? What would achieving this cost you elsewhere? (It will cost you a lot. For example: Ever looked at the divorce rate for professors?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrate a &amp;quot;newfound&amp;quot; maturity. If it &lt;em&gt;looks like&lt;/em&gt; you learned from the experience, this will slowly offset the negative reputation you've acquired and allow faculty search committees to review your applications on scholarly merit. This is easier intellectually, you just need to be an employably strong scholar. This is very difficult emotionally because it requires an extraordinary humility. That's uncommon in academia; it can work against the strength of will and self-confidence needed to succeed as a professional scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deans, directors, and other professors may sometimes look like colonoscopy bags full of &amp;quot;pomp and disregard,&amp;quot; but the attitudes that give you this impression are the same ones that got them through a dissertation, tenure probation, and other indignities of the profession. You seem to have that attitude in larval form, and it seems to be acting out. These &amp;quot;dismissive&amp;quot; deans and directors have learned to channel their attitudes into socially acceptable forms, and search committees will be looking to hire only those professional scholars who have learned to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Nauhaus' comments elsewhere are going to be more valuable overall. The answer to your question about what the graduate school can do is little more than a footnote to his discussion of what you can do, and of what you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to do to recover personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6863" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T18:05:21.520" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18183" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:04:14.700" Score="3" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hope this is the right place to ask this. I'm currently enrolled in a Master's Computer Science degree in Europe. I've completed most of my classes with the exception of 2 + my thesis (which would mean I'm missing about 30 ECTS from the required total of 120 ECTS for a 2 year Master program).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to various reasons, I was forced to keep a full time job for the past 2 years which prevented (and is still preventing me) from finishing my classes but I stayed officially enrolled in the hopes that I would find the time to finish. Next year I won't be able to re enroll with my current faculty once more due to their rules preventing students from staying too long in the same school year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: what happens to the ECTS I've accumulated thus far if I don't finish this year? I was taking into consideration further postponing school until my current job is less hectic especially since it's possible to be switching jobs at the end of the year with one in the US. This of course in the hopes that I won't be losing the 90 ECTS I have accumulated thus far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any information you might have on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13133" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T13:46:44.417" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T13:46:44.417" Title="ECTS time validity and expiration" Tags="&lt;europe&gt;&lt;graduation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18188" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:17:40.050" Score="7" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there is a mathjobs website in the US called mathjobs.org, which is the main website for posting math jobs in the US universities. But is there a similar one for the computer science jobs? I'm asking because I searched for csjobs.org and computersciencejobs.org, but I couldn't find a relevant match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="6259" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T02:35:19.167" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T02:35:19.167" Title="Is there a website for academic computer science jobs in the US like mathjobs.org?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18179" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:41:28.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that this depends less on the ECTS system, and much more on your specific university. That is to say, &lt;strong&gt;I assume there is no general answer to your question&lt;/strong&gt;. You will need to get in touch with the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it sounds like you want to transfer to a university in the US (&quot;it's possible to be switching jobs at the end of the year with one in the US&quot;). In that case the &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; larger problem will be transferring your european credits to the US institution, even if they are not expired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T18:41:28.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18195" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:42:55.470" Score="12" ViewCount="1832" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a bachelor student at the second year of studies (Physics), but I'm an independent programmer since many more years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have some data about an algorithm I've done and I would like to present the results on a research paper - I have a high level of understanding of the theory behind, and some background of theoretical computer science. Is it &quot;reasonable&quot; to write a paper with no titles at all (high school) and without the name of my university maybe? &#xA;I don't know whether include it or not, since the topic is not related to what I study there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13135" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T03:47:38.103" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T03:47:38.103" Title="Is it possible for a high school student with no academic qualifications to publish a research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:51:38.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My academic advisor certainly seems to think that this would be possible! I have researched and written about several subjects that are outside my major, and though none have (Yet!) been published, none of my professors or advisors seem to think it strange that I might have knowledge and interests outside my major, nor do they doubt that I am capable of producing quality work in those areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may wish to find a professor in CS, and ask them to read and critique your paper. You will benefit from their academic experience, and their input makes it more likely that you can succeed in publishing a paper in an area outside your major. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Seek your advisor's input on this. If you plan to sink a large number of hours into a project outside your main research focus, s/he may not be altogether happy about that. This caveat may not apply in your case, since you are still in the undergraduate phase, but may be more of an issue later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T11:37:56.383" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:37:56.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18180" CreationDate="2014-03-15T19:13:24.467" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best source for CS jobs in the US is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/&quot;&gt;Computing Research Association (CRA)&lt;/a&gt;. They maintain a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/ads/&quot;&gt;jobs site&lt;/a&gt; that AFAIK most departments post to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T19:13:24.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18205" CreationDate="2014-03-15T19:53:01.793" Score="51" ViewCount="7526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking a course in a may-not-be-top-but-still-decent university located in North America. &lt;strong&gt;The course lecturer forces us to pay for an online learning kit from Pearson by adopting all the graded quizzes provided in that learning kit.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if one refuses to pay for the learning kit, he or she will have no access to all the quizzes, which in total constitute 20% of the final grade of that course. Moreover, all the text completion questions are basically exactly the same sentences copied from the eBook. Therefore, if you simply pay for the learning kit (~$50), then you will have a hard time doing the quiz as compared of those who buy the combo including the eBook (~$90).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you pay ~$90, during every quiz, simply do &lt;kbd&gt;CTRL&lt;/kbd&gt;+&lt;kbd&gt;F&lt;/kbd&gt;, you can always find the exact sentence in the eBook, and hence you can get nearly full marks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you pay ~$50, you can access the quizzes, but you may have to search somewhere else and spend more time on the quizzes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you pay nothing, the 20% marks are gone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, as a victim who unwillingly paid $90, &lt;strong&gt;find it irritating and unethical&lt;/strong&gt;, as I feel this is some sort of a coalition between the lecturer and the publisher. I understand that some lecturers do have recommended textbooks as well, but they are not mandatory! That is, if I can learn that course well by other books, I am free to do that. If I didn't buy the book and hence screwed the course up, that is my own responsibility. I cannot blame any one for that. But this lecturer's deed actually bans the students who do not pay for the learning kit from the quizzes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal? How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T01:53:08.167" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T19:27:35.103" Title="Is it ethical for a lecturer to require students to purchase an online learning kit where kit is used for course assessments?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="26" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18200" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:54:29.577" Score="18" ViewCount="50236" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I received an invitation for Phi Kappa Phi honor society. I do not know too much about those organizations and I was wandering what are the benefits (or possible disadvantages) of joining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was searching online and people keep mentioning that it is good for your resume, networking etc. However, it seems to me that I just need to pay for membership and they will put me on the list, how could it be beneficial for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please tell me if worth considering? And is it really beneficial to have those things on my resume? Do graduate schools or employers pay attention for those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13140" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T10:54:57.350" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T22:01:41.093" Title="Do graduate schools pay attention to joining Phi Kappa Phi or other honor societies?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;honor-societies&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16013" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:10:52.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that this applies to Russian Universities as my experience stems from the situation in Germany, but I'd recommend talking to the key people at your target University - academic counseling for CS, student representative, dean of students. See what you can find out about the admission process and whether they can give you any pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself have a Bachelor in Applied Math and a Master in CS. Before applying for the MS, I visited the University I wanted to get into and met with the faculty member who was responsible for the academic counseling for CS students. I talked him through my undergrad courses and other experience from internships and he encouraged me to apply right away although I technically did not have enough undergrad CS courses according to the admission guidelines. He also gave me a few pointers on how to write the application in such a way that the admission committee would recognize my practical experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His advice: He gave me the list of mandatory undergrad courses and told me that I should match each course with something from my previous studies or my practical experience, to show that even if I had no formal education in some areas, I at least knew the gist of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was admitted conditionally and had to complete the two undergrad CS courses in which my prior experience was lacking the most within the first year on top of my regular studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my second year I became the student representative to the admission committee and had a few applicants approach me on the same subject. I gave the same advice, because I noticed early on that the committee would often just hold the list of requirements up to the applicants undergrad transcripts and tick of the boxes.&#xA;Even such stupid things as differently named courses could throw the committee off, so I made it my job to go through all the applications and check the matching with the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one particular case, a student was very enthusiastic and even ran his own IT-startup business, but the gap between his undergrad studies in a different subject and a CS undergrad was just too big. We had to refuse him the first time he applied. For legal reasons, we couldn't do more than send the standard letter, but luckily he did the smart thing and approached us and between everybody in the admission committee and academic counseling we figured out a way to have him do undergrad courses for a semester and then delay the decision about his follow-up application until the exam results were out and we could make a case for him to be admitted on conditions, like I was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second question, which classes to take, will only be answered when you know what classes they look for in an applicant from another subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people in the application committee at my university really looked for theoretical background. Do we think this applicant knows what P vs NP is? Do we think he can analyze the runtime of an algorithm? Do we think he knows the difference between a proof and an experiment/example? Percieved knowledge gaps in other subjects like electrical engineering or computer networks or operation systems where often seen as less of a problem if the applicants motivation letter stated that he wanted to specialize in an area where he likely wouldn't need that knowledge.&#xA;When in doubt, the committee would often say that the funding depended in part on how successful the students were (i.e. it was better not to admit one than to admit him and have him fail) so they would discuss: Do we think that this applicant will complete his studies in a successful and timely manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So one more point of advice, which worked well during my time on the committee: Show in your cover letter that you have a clear idea of what you want to do in your masters, why you want to do it, and why you think you have the necessary background and motivation to be successful at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13138" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:10:52.567" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:20:06.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely write it up. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so and no downside. Writing a paper is a good exercise for future paper and report writing, and while you are doing it you are likely to think of new ideas about your research. You will also have to search for similar work that might be suitable for references and you may find something useful there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also put the paper online somewhere so that it is preserved and available to others who may find it useful. If there is data and/or code that goes with the paper you can use figshare for example. It does not matter if there is not much response to your work, that is common when authors have no background and does not mean it is not good. Someone may pick up on it later when you don't expect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to try to publish in a peer-review journal if you think it is sufficiently original and useful. That might require you to write it up in a specific format such at LaTeX. Again that is all good experience. You will have a much better chance of acceptance in a journal if you can use your university affiliation but you will have to make it clear that you are an undergraduate there to avoid problems and it might be best to check with your tutor. If you search around you may find a suitable journal that is specifically set up to accept work from undergraduates. If you can get it accepted it would look good on your CV whatever you plan to do in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only circumstance that would make it unwise to publish your work would be if the algorithm is original and of high commercial value and/or patentable in which case you would have to follow a different route to protect your intellectual property. However that is a rare situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:20:06.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17858" CreationDate="2014-03-15T23:15:31.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://tellico-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tellico&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A collection manager for linux which &quot;provides default templates for books, bibliographies, videos, music, video games, coins, stamps, trading cards, comic books, and wines.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.kde.org/development/en/extragear-office/tellico/importing.html#importing-pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference manual states&lt;/a&gt; the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If Tellico was compiled with exempi or poppler support, metadata from PDF files can be imported. Metadata may include title, author, and date information, as well as bibliographic identifiers which are then used to update other information.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that useful? If so, then you can check the site for &lt;a href=&quot;http://tellico-project.org/reviews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reviews of Tellico&lt;/a&gt; and it works on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Debian&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gentoo &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FreeBSD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;openSUSE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PC-BSD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fink (Mac OS X)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fedora&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linux Mint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pardus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ArchLinux&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T23:15:31.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-16T00:35:09.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your university allows instructors to charge for &quot;materials fees&quot; for classes—such as studio art classes or laboratory classes in the sciences—then it is not, strictly speaking, unethical to insist students access a particular paid resource. However, if such fees are not permitted, then it really is not fair to ask students to pay for quizzes if it would not be required for them to do so elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, although it may strictly speaking be ethical, I would agree with Pete L. Clark that such practices are not desirable. Being completely beholden to someone else's syllabus and teaching materials at the university level is not a good sign, as it shows more the desire to simply get things done rather than doing things well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T00:35:09.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-16T01:34:04.107" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a situation that is in my opinion exploitative and unethical. The majority of the blame lies with the publisher, but some lies with the professor as well. On the professor's part, it's not the kind of behavior that is universally agreed to be unethical, nor is it something that anyone would consider to be extremely unethical (like giving an A in return for a sexual favor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some background. For decades, publishers have exploited the fact that they could name a price for a college textbook, and it would very little effect on sales, because the adoption decision was being made by the professor, who wasn't the person paying for the book. Over roughly the last 30 years, they have raised the price of textbooks at a rate much too high to be explainable by the combination of inflation and any rise in the costs of production. The skyrocketing price of textbooks has caused many students to find other ways of obtaining the book, and one of these is buying used copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers hate the used market and will do anything they can to kill it off. Within about the last 5 years, they've found the magic bullet. They sell the book along with access to a web site, as described in the question. They convince professors to use the online services by appealing to their self-interest. They offer professors an extremely easy and convenient way to obtain an evaluation of their students' work, through the publisher's web site. In many cases, the professor buys in to the system, and then over the following years the price is jacked up more and more. This happened, for example, with Pearson's product Mymathlab, which now costs math students at my school $90 a semester! Professors may not be aware that there are free solutions. E.g., for people who teach math, some good free systems are Myopenmath and Webwork. For physics, there are free systems such as Lon-capa and my own software called Spotter. But the free systems do not have marketing power behind them and may be more work to set up. Therefore professors condemn their students to exploitation through the likes of Mymathlab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal? How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student, you can work through student organizations. Here in California, the student group CalPirg has been working actively on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a professor, I try to do my best to inform my colleagues about alternatives to proprietary textbooks and proprietary courseware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's legal -- well, I guess that depends on where you live. I think it's legal throughout the US. In Greece, for example, all textbooks are free -- although from what I understand their system is a disaster. Here in California, our former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to get more free and open-source textbooks adopted in K-12, and a state senator named Darrell Steinberg has been trying to do the same at the college level. (Google on SB 1052 and 1053 and California Open Education Resources Council.) Schwarzenegger failed. The jury is out on Steinberg, and I'm not sure his approach is a good idea. If you wanted to get this outlawed in California, Steinberg would be the logical guy to approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with trying to deal with this politically is that the current setup appeals strongly to the self-interest of two politically powerful groups: publishers and professors. It's against the self-interest of students, but students don't vote in sufficient numbers to be politically powerful, and they don't have the financial or political resources of the publishers or organizations like the California Teachers Association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T01:54:50.313" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T01:54:50.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18193" CreationDate="2014-03-16T03:34:11.067" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do graduate schools pay attention to joining Phi Kappa Phi or other honor societies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, eligibility for membership in Phi Kappa Phi is entirely determined by grades and class rank.  If so, it won't help with grad school applications, since the admissions committee already has access to far more information about grades than they would learn from knowing the applicant is a member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fields may have honor societies for which membership conveys more information, but I do not think there is any widely known, field-independent example in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience on graduate admissions committees in mathematics, I've never heard anyone discuss honor societies at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I joined an honor society as an undergraduate, not because I saw personal benefits to it but because my parents would have been disappointed if I had declined membership.  The only consequence for me has been that they occasionally send me a newsletter, but I'm told some people do find membership to be useful or meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T03:34:11.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17419" CreationDate="2014-03-16T05:43:24.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universally-agreed way to do it. I usually place the information about the datasets under the experiments section, before reporting the results. Also, I prefer to present parameters about the datasets (e.g., number of features, number of samples) in a table. If many datasets are used, and there are some points that needs to be clarified, I would create a subsection for the datasets under the experiments section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13146" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T05:43:24.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17858" CreationDate="2014-03-16T05:55:28.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://endnote.com/training/mats/enuserguide/eng/endnote7/enguide-full.pdf#page=15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EndNote x7 has this feature, known as &quot;PDF auto import.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried it and it got 0/3 of my sample PDFs correct, all from IEEE conferences initially downloaded from IEEE Xplore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the three articles was &lt;em&gt;closer&lt;/em&gt; to having a correct reference (the others were useless). But that article had PDF metadata visible in Acrobat Reader (Title, Author, Subject). EndNote got page numbers right (somehow), the DOI, but failed at the conference name, and reference type (EndNote mistakenly thought it was a journal article). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3859" LastEditorUserId="3859" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T15:01:45.850" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T15:01:45.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-16T08:05:36.653" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one, &lt;strong&gt;politely express your displeasure to the professor&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors aren't in tune with the cost of textbooks, and may not realize what a burden it is to shell out $90 for their course, when it's $90 that you can't recoup by selling back the text, or avoid by using the library's copy of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may even think they're doing you a favor by offering this &quot;interactive&quot; system, not realizing that you don't find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor isn't interested in hearing what you have to say, you can further express your displeasure in the end-of-course evaluation (my university's specifically ask about the textbook) and possibly in a &lt;strong&gt;respectful&lt;/strong&gt; letter (signed by your classmates) to the department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this ethical?  Wait, is it even legal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answers have pointed out, it's not universally considered unethical or illegal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As unpleasant as the result is in this case, it probably &lt;strong&gt;would not be a good thing&lt;/strong&gt; to set &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; many bureaucratic rules on what textbook or other educational resources a professor can assign. Given that the cost of tuition is usually many times higher than the textbook price, it is generally desirable for the professor to assign the textbook that will (in his/her opinion) offer you the best educational experience and therefore, the best return on your tuition investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, students tend to appreciate when the professor can find a low-cost option that is also educationally sound. But that's generally considered a bonus, not a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it sounds like the extra content doesn't contribute anything useful to the educational experience - in which case, you should let the professor know. (Again, politely and non-combatively.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to point out that requiring &quot;bundled&quot; course content that goes along with the textbook is &lt;strong&gt;closer to assigning a required software package&lt;/strong&gt; (which, unlike textbooks, you can't buy used or re-sell) than assigning a textbook. I agree with you completely that it's substantially different than being asked to pay for a textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every class I've ever taken that required specialized (non-free) software, my university installed the software on my laptop for me for free (given that I was registered for the course in question). In most cases, instructors try to use free software or software that comes with a free student license, because they realize that a software purchase is different from a textbook purchase. Or they'll provide the software on lab computers that students can use during set hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imagine if you had to buy a new non-refundable software package for almost every class you were enrolled in, including buying the same software multiple times for a sequence of intro classes on a subject.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, it's a waste of money, but your professors might not see that unless you point it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T08:05:36.653" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-16T08:14:40.503" Score="12" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any information about the trend of journals' preferences regarding LaTeX and MS Word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main concern is computer engineering and linguistics fields of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="1070" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T07:55:57.700" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T12:50:05.063" Title="Is there any information about the trend of journals preferences regarding Word over LaTeX?" Tags="&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18193" CreationDate="2014-03-16T10:10:51.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined an honor society as an undergrad. The largest benefit, IMHO, was having access to member-only scholarship applications. Most honor societies offer membership based on your grades--it is basically just an acknowledgement of your academic success as an undergrad, and is not likely to influence your admission to grad school. (Membership in an honor society will help if you decide to transfer as an undergrad.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is definitely worth considering mambership, though. There are usually opportunities for members to be active in leadership roles at local,national, and international levels. If you hold such a position, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; influence admissions or hiring decisions, and it certainly won't hurt your chances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T10:10:51.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18218" CreationDate="2014-03-16T12:47:55.523" Score="5" ViewCount="8853" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is about research proposal, I want to apply for a PhD program which requires writing a research proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly should I write for the methodology section of a research proposal in the area of mathematics? I have several ideas about my project, but I have not proved anything yet, so how can I know its methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12477" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T13:54:22.417" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T15:36:52.417" Title="Writing a research proposal in mathematics for graduate school" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-16T13:27:15.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One tip:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a sample of text and do a search in google surrounded by double quotes &quot; &quot;&#xA;This tells google to search for that exact phrase. It can also find paraphrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful when interpreting the search results, it should be very obvious if the work is stolen or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually do about 1 sentence worth at a time and about 1 sentence per every 3-4 paragraphs. I usually wait to bother on a search until I read something that I am suspicious of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I catch people all the time, this way, buying other papers (the sampe paper is often sold multiple times, or resold again later!) but mostly not-quoting properly. A clear letter to the student detailing my findings and asking for an explanation usually leads to a: 'I forgot to quote it'. I like small frequent assignments, because when the whole thing is copied and pasted, there is no where to hide, the student clearly cheated. (I let them slide the first time, but I don't make it look that way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13157" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T13:27:15.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18213" CreationDate="2014-03-16T14:00:50.467" Score="9" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often struggle when explaining people not familiar with academics or new to academics the concept of a chairmen at conferences or talks. At some point I have to say that this is somehow an academic tradition or a way to give small honour to people with reputation in some field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this and some obvious things (Someone has to make sure that the speaker is not running out of time, etc. -- Why not the organizer for example?): &lt;strong&gt;What is the purpose/what are the arguments of having a chairman?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T14:01:29.460" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T14:07:06.797" Title="What is the purpose of chairmen at conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2014-03-16T14:07:06.797" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how the conference is organized, the duties of a chair &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the session can include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting the abstracts that will be presented within a given session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizing the abstracts in the order of presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transferring unused abstracts to other sessions (where possible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advertising to solicit contributions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the session, the goals of the chair can include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To introduce the speaker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure time constraints are being adhered to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To moderate a question-and-answer session following the talk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If other questions have not been asked, to offer questions of her own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organizer of a session may or may not be the chair of the session. In larger conferences, in which you have many parallel sessions (some have 50 to 60 or more run simultaneously), it is entirely impractical to have a meeting organizer chair every session. For smaller conferences, however, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; done. In such cases, though, the organizer of the session is still called the &quot;chair&quot; of the session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible, at some conferences, that the organizer is unable to attend the session, as a result of illness or conflicts, for instance. In such cases, an &quot;emergency&quot; chair is appointed to run the session. (I had to serve in such a capacity at the most recent conference I attended.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T14:07:06.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2014-03-16T14:19:29.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If you want to learn things you would never be exposed to otherwise&#xA;and actually have some grokness without strings attached:&#xA;    Stay in school, but deliberately seek difficult courses on old-fashioned&#xA;    topics such as compiler design, operating systems, electrical engineering&#xA;    media fabrication (actually way cool), graph theory, set theory, etc.&#xA;Elif you just want a paycheck for the next few years working in some cool&#xA;framework or other flavor-of-the-week:&#xA;    Drop out *in good standing* and get a job in some startup company with&#xA;    the prior knowledge that it will fail, and if it doesn't a little&#xA;    success will transform the place you liked into a place you don't, and&#xA;    if not then you will eventually go from solving trivial problems you do&#xA;    know how to solve to solving non-trivial problems you lack the grokpower&#xA;    to tackle because you neglected to pay your intellectual dues.&#xA;Else:&#xA;    Change major, because this stuff just isn't for you, and I can't bear to&#xA;    knowingly recommend that someone of obvious intelligence relegate&#xA;    themselves to being another member in the Mole Man Army.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some interesting responses here; I can only tell you what I have experienced myself. What follows is a huge digression, but one that will hopefully illustrate the fact that you can't know the future, opportunity is entirely random, and old-fashioned hard work (often academic in nature) is the only way to satisfy the &quot;preparedness&quot; part of the luck/genius equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got involved in phreaking and computers when I was quite young, wrote quite a bit of useful software as a kid, never did homework but aced all my tests in school, did well in sports by hiding my inner geek from the rest of the team, etc. I was (and still am) obsessed with the idea of eventually starting my own computing services (hardware, software, everything) company. I studied a lot on my own on subjects not taught in my school and my grades (ironically) sometimes suffered from it. An emotional/social rift opened between me and the idea of school, me viewing it as worthless, the system viewing me as a misfit. Probably not entirely different from you, though the threads of the tapestry no doubt differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognizing this wasn't a sustainable situation I requested that my father send me to a military school so I could be forced into a regimented program. I wound up attending a great military high school where the high school classes were taught by the same faculty as the college classes and learned a great deal about myself, the world, and the nature of opportunity. I also learned just how amazing great educators can be -- a lesson that didn't stick until a decade of reflection had passed. I also decided to not attend college against the advice of my mentors and advisers. My parents, however, let me do whatever I thought best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My family is a bit plain: if I fail they won't help me because I've proven that I was a bad egg; if I succeed, however, I will be celebrated and given responsibility. I thought this terribly cold when I was younger, but have come to realize this is how the successful parts of the world work, except in the real world there is a strong chance nobody will subsidize your food or shelter (and if someone does it is usually a sign of an impending systemic failure). Though this has seen me in a few tight situations I have to say it has taught me a lot, and if my siblings and our general family relationship are any indication, it seems to work amazingly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't land an awesome programming job after turning down university acceptance letters. I got interested in the larger world and spent almost the next two decades traveling, teaching (yeah, weird), or in this or that military (most recently involved in the whole GWOT thing, first in the Army, then in a few different contract organizations). My ultimate goal of running a computing company was always in the back of my mind, but the time was never right and I was so involved in other things it just seemed like a different world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until I got out. Now I have started that company, things are finally beginning to pick up (after a long dry stretch, survivable mostly because of the community surrounding my ex-military relationships), and I can see a tiny bit of light at the end of this long, extremely difficult, &lt;em&gt;lonely&lt;/em&gt; tunnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me back to school and my not having been exposed to much of it. Because I didn't go to school I didn't even know there were canonical references to a huge set of problem spaces. I didn't know how freaking important it was to learn the precise differences between analog and digital data before trying to solve a really expensive customer problem that requires a customized hardware solution (and before you think that is a simple difference, go study up on it). I didn't really understand that the hyped frameworks are basically giant cake-sacks of leaky abstractions which fail the moment a new real-world requirement is thrown at them (usually something innocuous, like a customer saying &quot;in the next version, we &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need screen X to show Y&quot; -- and of course you, not realizing how scary a statement that is, simply say &quot;sure!&quot;). I had no idea how prolific operating systems are, or how fleeting their lives in the market. I didn't understand exactly how software is the thing that lets us emulate different machines within other hardware machines, and why that nugget of esoteric knowledge is so incredibly central to everything I will likely be doing for the next few decades of my life (and I say &quot;life&quot;, not &quot;career&quot;, deliberately). I hadn't even matured enough as a programmer to develop a healthy baseline disdain for all programming languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also realize now, after having interviewed and hired people, that most schools simply do not teach the things that need to be taught, and most people are simply too dull to grok the things I need them to grok and would have failed out of the courses I wish they had attended. And that sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So looking at it from the other side of the table, I would urge you to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; go on a 20-year action adventure as I did (unless that's your thing; I have no regrets) but not simply &quot;stay in school&quot; for the sake of getting some worthless paper that conveys nothing about your actual potential to a prospective employer such as myself. Instead I would urge you to seek out the hardest, most difficult low-level &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; high-level courses you can find that deal with computing. This may require that you achieve decent grades in some courses now to be eligible for the interesting stuff later, which may simply be the universe giving you a lesson in humility and due-paying (hint: it is easier to control your own expectations about life than to control the outcome of each phase of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll never &quot;finish&quot; in this field, so what you should seek is a strong foundation in leading concepts and underlying principles. You'll do a lot of learning/discovery by composing new ideas from seemingly unrelated concepts you've picked up by way of association with stellar people in your studies, but long after the base ideas were acquired. Being in a good comp-sci or engineering department is one of a very few ways of guaranteeing that you will constantly be exposed to such people. I view this as one of the most important elements of official schooling, and something online education will probably never be able to replicate (and hence I view resumes full of online degrees with suspicion; actually, I have my minions black out those lines before I get the resume if they think the rest of it is worthy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all of this is dependent on your goals, of course, which is why I wrote the if-elif-else clause above. I might be misjudging you, but I can easily imagine myself writing a very similar question two decades ago on Usenet, and wish someone would have written this sort of post out then (come to think of it, I may have had just such a conversation back then, and disregarded the advice as I was so wont to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13156" LastEditorUserId="13156" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T00:09:24.067" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T00:09:24.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18215" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18386" CreationDate="2014-03-16T14:46:54.007" Score="19" ViewCount="1061" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just what the title says. As far as I know, Knuth's undergrad thesis was so good that the faculty at his university decided to honor him with both an undergrad degree and a master's automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this thesis is available for the public to see. I suppose students at Case Western have full access to it, but I'm unfortunately not one of them. Is there a way to get access to this thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13158" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T02:01:45.937" Title="Is there any way to find Donald Knuth's undergrad/master's thesis?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2014-03-16T18:11:49.247" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many schools require papers to be submitted electronically, and then they are checked by a service like turnitin.com which will find the sources of any parts copied from on-line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once came across some text that seemed familiar.  Picked up a very old book and found that they had copied the preface (with several typos).  But the copy was a pre-written term paper for sale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“No, sir, I would never plagiarize.  If it’s plagiarized the guy I bought the paper from did it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13163" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T18:11:49.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18210" CreationDate="2014-03-16T18:56:26.913" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to try to ask some current students if you can see their proposals.  Obviously, what they did can't be all that terrible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, I would agree that methodology is not a extremely well defined concept in mathematics, but you can write something intelligent about it anyways.  How are you going to approach the problem?  Are there special cases that might be illuminating?  Stepping stone lemmata you might get to before the whole proof?  What areas of mathematics do you hope to use?  Unfortunately, I can't speak for the system in Italy, but certainly in the US with such research proposals, the main point is to see if the candidate can write about and analyze mathematics in a cogent way, not the details of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T18:56:26.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18231" CreationDate="2014-03-16T20:26:11.720" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a research handbook written by Creswell to guide me in writing my Bachelor's Thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I followed his research design model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I justify why I structured my Methods Chapter the way I did by saying that such structure was recommended by Creswell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I may say that Creswell suggested that this section should be included in the research design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in a developing country. My institution has no specific style guide.&#xA;They underestimate undergraduate research, but I cannot wait for my supervisor to tell me what to do as long as my sources are authoritative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3aTkUeH1MlEK4J%3awww.stfrancis.edu/content/grd/morrissette/unionphd/DSRE711-TopicsQualResearch/Creswell-ResearchDesign.doc%20&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link of a summary of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot consult my supervisor at the moment nor wait or state why here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="13102" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T21:01:32.223" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:32:54.340" Title="Should I justify the organization of chapters and sections in the research paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-16T21:05:47.483" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the, so far, three other fine answers, are these two important points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Was the compulsory extra course fee announced up front, at the time you signed up or paid for the course? If so, you may have little recourse. On the other hand, if this &quot;extra fee&quot; was sprung upon you after the fact, then this could be an example of trading/&lt;strong&gt;bargaining in bad faith&lt;/strong&gt; and is condemned universally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Even if the $50 fee for the basic learning kit were deemed acceptable, it appears that the students now have the option of either doing some homework themselves or paying another $40 for someone else (OK, in this case it's a some&lt;i&gt;thing&lt;/i&gt; else) to do it for them. That could be seen, in a small way, as &lt;strong&gt;buying an educational credential&lt;/strong&gt;, and should also be condemned universally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11478" LastEditorUserId="11478" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T23:40:53.760" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T23:40:53.760" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-16T21:12:32.603" Score="5" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a rather extensive research project for one of my courses, and would like to submit it to arXiv. But, I am not entirely sure about the copyright/other issues behind it. Is it acceptable for a student to submit their term papers online, and in doing so can I, as an undergrad, claim affiliation to my university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13165" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T13:11:49.990" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:28:30.007" Title="Submitting paper to arXiv as an undergrad" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2014-03-17T02:44:44.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;yes. I've had experience with grant reviewers noting things like a modest publication history all in all if the paper is good, the work is sound and you meet the editors guidelines and format the paper correctly for the journal...it should and will be published. Be extra cautious to acknowledge everyone especially those who loaned you or allowed you resources. I've seen personalities &quot;smirk&quot; at non-traditional success. You will be under more scrutiny most likely but I'm the end the end good science will prevail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13171" LastEditorUserId="13171" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T16:26:34.710" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:26:34.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18171" CreationDate="2014-03-17T03:31:13.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would be an excellent question to ask your advisor, who will be familiar with the norms of your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your thesis is already finished by the time you submit your paper, treat it as you would any other reference. In particular, you may want to cite it if you wish to refer the reader there for more details on certain points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it's not necessary to explicitly state that the paper is extracted from your thesis, though you could if you want. (If it's your first major paper, people will probably assume it's from a thesis anyway.) Normally the place to mention this would be either at the end of the introduction, or at the end of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T03:31:13.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21628" CreationDate="2014-03-17T05:31:00.107" Score="8" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that there are quite a number of graduate training programs across departments in my university that encourage multidisciplinary researches. For my case, I am an EECS/ Computational Biology grad student, and I am considering a training program in biophysics/nanotech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind taking one more course per semester, and finding co-supervisors from other departments as the program requires. My main concern: will there be any real advantages of getting that certification in term of (academic) career prospects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of his famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;, Sean Carroll advised: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t dabble. Another slightly counter-intuitive one. You might think that, while most of your research work is in area A, the fact that you wrote a couple of papers in area B will be taken as positive evidence of your breadth and intellectual strength. Very wrong. What will actually happen is that your work in area B will be compared to the best people in the world who spend all their time thinking about area B, and you will probably come up wanting. Even worse, it will be taken as evidence that your interests may wander over time — so that, whereas you were hired to be an expert in area A, maybe in a few years you won’t be doing that at all. Kiss of death. Deep down, there is a strongly anti-intellectual strain within academia; you were hired to work in a specialty and that’s what they expect you to do. Once you get tenure, of course, you can do whatever you want; so it’s important that the department be reassured that you don’t want to do anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if people will look down on me if they deem biophysics/nanotech a discipline too far away from computational biology (even when my thesis are dealing with all of them)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7401" LastEditorUserId="7401" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T03:57:40.843" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T03:57:40.843" Title="Graduate training programs from other departments, how helpful are they?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18219" CreationDate="2014-03-17T09:19:46.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I take your question correctly, it sounds as if you don't know whether to refer to the styleguide that informed you to structure your thesis in a certain way. So, in your introduction, you have a section such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next chapter of this thesis describes the background literature. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology and so on. Chapter 4 presents the experimental design, whatever … Finally, chapter 7 concludes and provides further possibilities for research. &lt;strong&gt;This structure is suggested by Cresswell (19xx)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's what you're thinking, then I would say no; don't reference the styleguide that you based your thesis structure on. Just like you wouldn't cite, for instance, the AP styleguide for your spelling conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:19:46.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18219" CreationDate="2014-03-17T09:32:54.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A style guide isn't really an authority for this, even if you're following its advice. Structure should be designed help the reader understand your overall argument, the paths you took through the literature etc. So your explanation of why the work is structured in a particular way should be aimed at that set of decisions (constructing clarity to serve their reading) being made explicit to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:32:54.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T14:16:40.127" Score="5" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematics21.org/algebraic-general-topology.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;My book&lt;/a&gt; was rejected by a publisher saying that my research is &quot;unmotivated&quot;. To motivate it, should I solve some long standing open problem? Or are there other ways to motivate publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is despite I have some short sections in my book which describes my idea of motivation: &quot;1.4 Our topic and rationale&quot; and &quot;1.5 Earlier works&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What motivation (except of solving long standing open problems) are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any text online on the topic of motivation in math research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" OwnerDisplayName="porton" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T03:57:06.830" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T05:31:29.873" Title="How to present the motivation for a book on mathematical research?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18239" CreationDate="2014-03-17T10:22:38.910" Score="12" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm located in Syria and I'm writing a motivation letter to be used in applications for master of computer science scholarships.&#xA;Would it be useful  to mention how I managed to succeed with my studies despite all the awful things that happened in my country and my city ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11754" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:10:45.580" Title="mentioning my country situation in motivation letter to demonstrate dedication for learning" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-17T10:40:53.223" Score="12" ViewCount="2346" Body="&lt;p&gt;What costs should be covered when inviting a university professor from another country to visit your university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine you wanted to invite a university professor from Harvard to a European university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13183" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T05:07:26.560" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T05:07:26.560" Title="What costs should be covered when inviting a university professor from another country to attend your university?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18240" CreationDate="2014-03-17T11:19:23.047" Score="4" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a nearly completed paper in CS. It deals with a memory module design, which, apart from being a novel idea, turned out to be of potentially commercial value. Now I was thinking of patenting it, of course, I doubt I will be able to make its commercial development a priority of mine until at least I finish my PhD (relatively soon) and find some &quot;solid ground&quot; in academia (I have some job offers, but can't specify any amount of time). However, I am under the impression that this should not prevent me from protecting my work. &#xA;As I am quite inexperienced with it, I must also ask if I'm having the right conception and approach to patenting here?&#xA;What is the procedure of patenting an idea that is to be published in a journal? Are there any consequences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13184" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T12:38:03.640" Title="what steps to take when research result is patentable" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18235" CreationDate="2014-03-17T11:25:49.733" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this question has any absolute answer. This depends on the professor (a &quot;famous&quot; speaker for a large public event will be a different issue than a &quot;regular&quot; professor that comes to give a talk for the students and faculty of the university), the host institution (a professor might be happy to go and give a talk at ETH Zurich, and maybe less so to travel to an unknown university), how long the trip is, and whether there are some pre-existing relations (i.e., whether the inviting professor is already friends with or at least an academic acquaintance of the speaker).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimally, it is standard that &lt;strong&gt;all costs of the speaker are covered&lt;/strong&gt;, including (sometimes) business class airfare and a nice hotel for the duration of the trip. If the invited talk happens as part of a conference, the conference fee or entry should be waived for the speaker. Further, it is customary at least in my field to give the speaker a small (local) present, such as a bottle of good regional wine, as a sign of appreciation directly after the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the speaker asks for money on top of this depends on all the things above, but this seems to be relatively unusual in my field. The only persons that actually get paid in money to come and give a talk are well-known public figures, like Tim Berners-Lee. I have recently had the honour to listen to a talk of Don Knuth, and rumor has it that not even Knuth was asking for direct payment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T11:25:49.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-17T12:20:50.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;ff524's answer is absolutely great and I wholeheartedly agree with all notions present therein. There is however one approach I would like to additionally highlight: Contacting the student council. This is &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; what the student council should be able to handle. It depends on the institution how much power they hold, but in most it should be enough power to at least raise the issue at a level where the institution will listen. I would not argue that this behaviour is unethical (except if the fee was secret till after the fact, which I assume it is not), however if students have an issue with it than it's the student council who is in place to voice the opinion of the student body as a whole. (If however this is only the case with a single course it's less likely for them to pick it up, but if it's the case with one course it's likely the case with more and at least they might do a survey on the issue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11353" LastEditorUserId="11353" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T00:13:38.027" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T00:13:38.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18234" CreationDate="2014-03-17T13:10:45.580" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should mention these issues.  Your situation is unusual, and it's helpful if the application puts everything in context for the admissions committee.  I don't know whether it will help your chances of admission, but if there are deficiencies in your application it might explain why you could not fix them, and in any case it certainly won't hurt your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:10:45.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2014-03-17T13:16:13.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently speaking with a colleague of mine who had done a lot of work in the IP area. The comment I received was that it took a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of time from initial idea to the awarding of a patent—typically about three years and potentially lots of money (thousands of dollars or euros, depending on the filing location). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your local laws, you may be able to use your manuscript as part of the &lt;em&gt;provisional&lt;/em&gt; patent application (an initial filing to the relevant patent office saying &quot;we're going to file a real application soon&quot;). However, as EnergyNumbers has suggested in a comment—you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; contact someone with knowledge of &lt;strong&gt;local&lt;/strong&gt; patent laws, as the rules vary greatly between countries. If your university has such an office (check with their grants and funding office for suggestions about whom you should talk to), this will save you the expense of hiring a patent attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:16:13.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18221" CreationDate="2014-03-17T13:26:21.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will leave the question of whether or not you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; submit the paper to arXiv versus another venue for discussion elsewhere. However, I do agree with the comment that you should talk with the professor who gave you the assignment about your plans, as he or she may have constructive criticism for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if your work represents an original contribution, and you feel comfortable with sharing it with the public, then yes, you can go ahead and submit it to arXiv. You should note, however, that in a number of fields, papers cannot be submitted until you have been &lt;em&gt;endorsed&lt;/em&gt;—that is, recognized as a valid submitter by someone who has already themselves submitted a number of papers in that area. If the professor of the course is someone who can endorse you, then that should be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:26:21.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18221" CreationDate="2014-03-17T13:28:30.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is acceptable for an undergraduate student to publish.&#xA;However, please consult it with someone in the field (to make it a decent publication - both in terms of its content and form).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright/authorship - it should be not an issue (unless it contains notes from the course or something). In case of doubt - ask your lecturer/TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation is a bit more tricky (especially if your program is not directly linked to a research department, or - is linked to many). Two typical choices are: one related to your program or one directly related to this course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the university will be happy to have one more publication with their affiliation (or won't care). In some, there are some strict rules when you can add their affiliation (e.g. you need approval of a prof.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:28:30.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18233" CreationDate="2014-03-17T13:43:59.813" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the publisher is looking for is a book that will attract many readers.  If crowds are already clamoring for a book, then the decision to publish it is easy, but that's uncommon.  Instead, the publisher generally has to try to predict whether an audience for the book will materialize when nobody knows they want to read it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;motivation&quot; the publisher refers to is anything that makes people want to read the book.  You need to demonstrate to potential readers that the material is interesting and exciting, that reading the book will be useful, that it connects to a larger scholarly conversation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, it's clear that you feel the book is valuable and would like many people to read it, but you aren't giving potential readers a lot of motivation.  For example, in Section 1.4 of the current draft, you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Somebody might ask, why to study it? My approach relates to traditional general topology like complex numbers to real numbers theory. Be sure this will find applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This book has a deficiency: It does not properly relate my theory with previous research in general topology and does not consider deeper category theory properties. It is however OK for now, as I am going to do this study in later volumes (continuation of this book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this amounts to saying you don't yet know how it will be useful and you aren't connecting it to the literature.  The lack of applications is a serious disadvantage, but not necessarily decisive by itself (some things can be published in mathematics just because they are beautiful or seem like they should be useful).  However, not explaining the relationship with previous research is a major problem.  It's nearly impossible to get an academic book published under these circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to be overly discouraging, but my impression is that writing a book on your work is premature.  Instead, I'd focus on connecting your work with the rest of the field, with the goal of getting a group of other researchers building on your papers.  Once you start to get more citations, you can bring them to the attention of publishers as evidence for a community that values your work and would benefit from a systematic presentation in the form of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T13:43:59.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-17T14:36:23.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is absolutely normal and very common at universities (and elsewhere in education) that you have to buy a specific textbook for your course in order to pass the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this lead to the bad practice that professors force students to buy their (or their friends') textbooks. I do not think you should blame your professor personally, because it is a very common problem (at least in my environment), and I am sure you will meet this issue thousands of times in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the ethical problems, I think this practice is very dangerous because exams are distorted  in a way that you can easily pass if you have the book. This will motivate even not-very-smart students to buy the book - and so get passed to the next semester and buy the next book as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea how this issue could be solved, but it is present everywhere as far as I know. You have to buy a textbook for your course, that's OK. The professor asks questions from the textbook on the exam, that's OK again. I don't see how you could get your point through in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a similar situation in a law's school, where books are actualized each year upon some minor changes in the law. On the exams, these &quot;new laws&quot; are always asked in order to force students to buy the new book each year, despite that it is 99% the same as last year.&#xA;It's been an issue for years, and it is a law's school where you would expect students to be able to find some legal way against this practice, but so far, they couldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13190" LastEditorUserId="13190" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T14:44:23.360" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T14:44:23.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18246" CreationDate="2014-03-17T14:49:56.610" Score="21" ViewCount="3090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a research paper and the reply has come back. The reviewers are positive overall, but one of them pointed out a flaw in one of my proofs. This happened because I made a wrong assumption regarding the proof. Now I have found a way to get around this and have a better proof. How do I present that my previous proof was wrong, the reviewer was right in saying so, and that now I have a better one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13193" OwnerDisplayName="dineshdileep" LastEditorUserId="7564" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T21:36:01.893" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T14:56:41.067" Title="How to reply to reviewers on an unintentional wrong proof in my research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18245" CreationDate="2014-03-17T15:46:15.303" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the reviewers and subsequently the editor does not consider the error enough to warrant rejection, you should simply make the changes necessary and submit the revised manuscript according to instructions. Since the reviewers spotted the errors you should acknowledge their helpful comments (unless this is not the custom in the field for some reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you may be lucky to get the chance to revise the manuscript since the type of error you describe, I would think, would likely lead to rejection. But, with a favourable verdict you just revise the manuscript and return it as per instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T15:46:15.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-17T17:08:07.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a lot like this student. For me, it took depression that robbed me of my mental speed to stop this (although I usually provided a satisfactory proof!) I think one thing you could do is limit his (and anybody else's) participation in class to a certain level. This is most important for keeping control of your class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as potential, be careful about projecting your values. He might just want to coast through life on his smarts, and finds finding these solutions fun or a way to pass the time while he's at class. Also remember if he's good at math, he probably also is good at other things: I remember faculty outside my major encouraging me to switch or do more work in their area when I wasn't even doing all the reading for them. You could give him something hard to work on if he wants to (especially to present, because he likes attention), but if he doesn't you have to treat him like every other student. As far as his arguments go, you could say something like &quot;I see. Why don't you fill in the details and get back to me?&quot; and if he gives you something wrong point it out and have him fix it (or end the line of conversation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10739" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T17:08:07.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2014-03-17T18:50:17.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If what you have is potentially patentable &lt;strong&gt;do not publish any critical element before filing the patent application&lt;/strong&gt; or you risk losing eligibility due to existence of prior art (even if it is yours!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that your university may claim ownership of the IP since it concerns ideas that you got in the context of a project while they were paying you (my university would claim partial ownership). This need not be a problem, as this also means they get to pay the piper. This is not necessarily an issue since, if your name is on the patent, you are entitled to a slice of the cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should really talk to patent experts. Your university probably has them. Most universities have a dedicated tech transfer office (TTO) which handles patents, spin-offs and industrial collaboration. They have the expertise to guide you in such endeavours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T18:57:44.620" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T18:57:44.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18252" CreationDate="2014-03-17T18:53:53.180" Score="4" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most journals, the reviewer is aware of the names and the institution that the paper is coming from. IMO, if the paper is from a top institution, the reviewer might judge it differently than the same quality of paper coming from a low tier institute (not always the case, but there is a chance). Also, a reviewer might not be fully non biased if the paper is from one of the groups that he / she thinks is a competing group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple way to get around this bias is to anonymize the source of the paper before its sent for peer review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't editors do that. Why isn't this model widely used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:03:35.393" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:03:35.393" Title="Should the editor share the names / institution information of authors with the reviewers" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18251" CreationDate="2014-03-17T19:05:38.690" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called double-blind review. It is common in some fields, though I seem to see it more in conferences than journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of issues with &lt;em&gt;double-blind&lt;/em&gt; review, next to the obvious overhead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It prevents uploading preprints, since authors risk revealing their identity. This can be a problem in fields with long review times like maths since results would be kept silent longer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a paper is accompanied by software, how can it be licensed? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't always work, particularly when working in niches with few active researchers. Sometimes you can guess the author with reasonable accuracy based on the content and style of a paper. Some people even manage to guess the reviewer based on feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some take it even one step further to go for &lt;em&gt;triple-blind&lt;/em&gt; review, in which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The authors do not know the reviewers' identities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reviewers do not know the authors' identities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person that selects reviewers does not know the identities of the authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I would like to take this opportunity to suggest &lt;em&gt;quadruple-blind&lt;/em&gt; review, which is triple-blind review in which the reviewers do not get to see the manuscript. To ensure anonymity, of course. You heard it here first!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T19:27:37.547" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T19:27:37.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18251" CreationDate="2014-03-17T19:06:32.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One word: tradition. Both ways have both advantages and disadvantages. anonymity carries with it the possibility to pass social barriers for what is objective scrutiny of a paper. This has become obvious in some journals that allow open anonymous discussion of submitted papers. Being known (both as author and reviewer) adds social control. On the other hand, anonymity allows a reviewer to express criticism that he/she would not dare to do openly because of, for example, hierarchical reasons. In some (smaller) fields anonymity is easily seen through. The lists can e made much longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question, the role of the editor as a mediator and evaluator is not touched upon. An editor knows both names of authors and reviewers and should make sure that the review process is fair from both sides. Anonymity does not contribute in this sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer, one also has the possibility to decline a review if one has qualms about the job. If you feel you need to withhold criticism because of the name of the author, then maybe you are not well suited for the review. In the traditional system you have the possibility of remaining anonymous although my personal opinion is that openness is better. I always feel I can take comments better if I know who they come from. I can evaluate if they are due to issues with language or a resear group with conflicting views etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T19:06:32.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18255" CreationDate="2014-03-17T19:36:07.910" Score="4" ViewCount="20264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received offers from two UK universities (Masters degree), first conditional and second unconditional. There's always a possibility that I won't meet conditions so I'd like to keep the second university as a back-up. Is it possible to do it like this, that I accept both offers and after I meet conditions, I will let the second university know, that I decided not to start studying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11891" LastEditorUserId="11891" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T13:33:36.570" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T13:33:36.570" Title="Can I accept two offers from universities and decide later on" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2014-03-17T20:11:47.523" Score="25" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do that, but it's &lt;strong&gt;not advisable,&lt;/strong&gt; for the simple reason that if either school finds out you've accepted another offer, then &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; schools could end up rescinding their offers, and would be within their rights to do so. (Programs want to know how many spots they have filled, so that they can accept more people if needed to meet their enrollment targets.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you need to commit to one school only. If the offer is conditional, then you should weigh the probability of meeting those conditions before accepting the offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T22:09:53.367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T22:09:53.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23605" CreationDate="2014-03-17T20:38:49.743" Score="7" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a journal article that included and referenced a figure (photograph) from a US patent. I found the patent, and I would like to use the same figure, and I'm wondering who the copyright holder is. Might it be free to use since the patent itself is public, or do I need to ask around until I find the copyright holder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9139" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T19:21:45.810" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T20:28:57.170" Title="How to reuse a figure from a patent? Is it free to reuse?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18259" CreationDate="2014-03-17T22:32:35.570" Score="29" ViewCount="8451" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my country, several universities are prefixed by &quot;Universidade Federal&quot;, which can be translated to &quot;Federal University&quot; (e.g., &quot;Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro&quot; to &quot;Federal University of Rio de Janeiro&quot;). When publishing a paper, should we translate this part of the name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a obscure topic; I have some teachers that use &quot;Federal University&quot; and others that use &quot;Universidade Federal&quot;. Once I heard that it is better to keep the original name of the university because it helps to keep its identity. However, even translated, it still is very easy to find. If you Google for both names, they will come up in the first positions of the ranking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we translate or keep unstranslated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7057" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:06:02.793" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T16:06:02.793" Title="Should we translate non-english university names?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18258" CreationDate="2014-03-17T22:41:25.963" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to check if the university has any recommendations about this. If none exist, then the second aspect is to consider if the university is well known under one or another form of the name. The purpose of providing an affiliation and proper address is for the sake of communication. Before e-mail and Internet, most correspondence went by post so a proper address was very important. Now e-mail is used, which means the affiliation is mostly to identify the author and the author's affiliation. Web sites are usually bilingual so finding the university or department is possible in both English and the native language. Most will probably use the English translation because it makes most sense if the remainder of the paper is in English. A point to make is that if one uses the native language for affiliation etc. then problems will arise for those not familiar with, for example, Cyrillic, Chinese or Japanese. So it seems the best way to communicate affiliation/address is to use English translations that are hopefully officially accepted by the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T11:31:14.340" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T11:31:14.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18258" CreationDate="2014-03-17T22:42:25.857" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that most English speakers will recognise that &lt;code&gt;&quot;Universidade&quot;&lt;/code&gt; means &lt;code&gt;&quot;University&quot;&lt;/code&gt;, especially in an academic context, so there's no need to translate the term. On the other hand, if you were referring to something less obvious to English-speakers, like &lt;code&gt;고려대학교&lt;/code&gt;, I'd add &lt;code&gt;&quot;(Korea University)&quot;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T00:15:02.130" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T00:15:02.130" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18263" CreationDate="2014-03-17T22:49:06.330" Score="15" ViewCount="8582" Body="&lt;p&gt;Out of five needed members for my doctoral thesis committee, four are fixed. For the fifth member, I approached Mr.A. He has no real connection to my research or topic but I contacted him because he was just as good a fit as anybody else in the department to be the fifth member. I have never worked with him or taken any classes but we did talk a lot in the first few years where he would just ask about my progress by the copy machine, etc. We don't even have a &quot;rapport&quot;. The relationship is absolutely neutral, nothing positive/friendly, and nothing negative. I asked him to be on my committee and he said yes. I said I'll get back to you with dates, etc. He is a senior tenured professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then about a month later, I was looking at the CV of some of the new hired (junior) faculty in the department Mr.B (this is his first year) and I see that we have a collaborator in common. Mr.B has published multiple papers with him and Mr.B is working with the same code and the code managing team that we are working with. He is definitely a good person to have on my committee. I finally see Mr.B after a few more months (because of busy schedule/travel/etc.) and he agrees to be on my committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how can I tell Mr.A, as tactfully as possible, after about four months of being quiet that he is basically rejected from my committee because I didn't know about Mr.B but now that I know, Mr.B is a much better match than he is? That I don't need him but I do appreciate his offer? I don't want to antagonize Mr.A or burn any bridges. Should this be in email or in person? Should I explain or just keep it terse? Should I keep it vague that I don't need him and thanks for his time? Or should I tell him about Mr.B and why he is a better match?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, this was before anything official/paperwork was done so there is no problem with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4335" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T21:37:10.383" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T00:25:37.923" Title="How to tell a faculty member that I don't need him on my thesis committee anymore?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18127" CreationDate="2014-03-17T22:50:01.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try looking at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&lt;/a&gt;. This website lets you search for a citation style by example, will provide details of styles that are a close match, and let you know how close they are. Hopefully you'll find the csl style you need. Then you can pop the style into Zotero or another referencing package that supports csl styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T22:50:01.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18261" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:08:29.443" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're making a bigger deal about this than necessary.  You enlisted Professor A to serve on your committee because you needed a fifth man, not because of any close research connection.  More recently, but still before signing any paperwork, you found Professor B, who does have a close research connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just tell Professor A that!  Problem solved.  You don't have to dither about how to present this information: send it in an email or send it in person.  The information of the previous paragraph is sufficient: you don't need to dwell on your connection with Professor A as much as you did in your question.  (But by the way: asking about your progress at the copy machine is what I would call &quot;friendly&quot;.  At least he knows who you are and something about your progress in the program, and he cares enough to ask about it sometimes.  That puts him ahead of the curve in many academic departments at many universities.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do not seem to realize is that if Professor A has no close connection with your work, it is overwhelmingly likely that he was being friendly indeed by volunteering to serve on your committee anyway, and he'll be equally happy or, more probably, a little happier not to serve.  Since he is a senior tenured professor he has lots of stuff to do.  Serving as the fifth man on a student's committee is not nearly such a prestige job that his layoff needs to be sugarcoated.  He'll understand, and he'll be especially happy that someone with more relevant expertise will be taking his place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2015-11-07T00:25:37.923" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T00:25:37.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18261" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:09:39.880" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can present it as a positive development that effectively does him a favor.  For example, &quot;I'm writing to keep you up to date on my thesis committee.  I've recently discovered that one of the new junior faculty, Dr. B, is an ideal fit for my research interests, and I was hoping to add him to the committee.  I realize you are very busy, so I thought it could make sense to replace you with him before filing the official paperwork.  Does that sound reasonable to you?  Thanks again for your willingness to serve on the committee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine he'll object to being replaced.  If for some reason he really wants to be on the committee, you could always try to set up a six-person committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T23:09:39.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18261" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:21:21.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did this about a year ago when I changed research tracks and advisers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I explained the situation to Mr. C, who was on my committee and a relatively good fit about Mrs. D, who was a much better fit with my changed research trajectory. It was no problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, it will not be much of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T23:21:21.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:44:32.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, for UK undergraduate admissions, you can accept two offers at once - but no more! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One will be your first choice; if you don't meet the conditions, then you have a shot at the second one. So in your case, you would put the conditional offer first, and the unconditional one as your &quot;insurance&quot;. (The other way round doesn't make sense, as you can't possibly miss the conditions on the unconditional offer!) You could also just accept one offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your choices carefully, because the subsequent process is automatic - if you meet the conditions then that's where you're going, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; you manage to convince the university to release you. That is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/undergraduate/results/better-than-expected&quot;&gt;technically possible&lt;/a&gt; but should &lt;em&gt;under no circumstances&lt;/em&gt; be relied on as a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/undergraduate/tracking-your-application/replying-your-offers&quot;&gt;Replying to your offers&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucas.com&quot;&gt;UCAS&lt;/a&gt; website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have assumed you are applying to become an undergraduate, as the language of conditional and unconditional offers is particularly associated with this system, and is very standard. If you are applying for a postgraduate position, or for a job, then please disregard this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T23:44:32.187" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2014-03-18T00:38:36.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In spite of the large monetary and time cost of getting a college degree in CS,&#xA;I believe that it is still a good idea to get your degree.&#xA;The main reason (to me) that a college degree is valuable&#xA;is that in order to get a degree,&#xA;you must learn the critical skill of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toolsofthemind.org/philosophy/self-regulation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;self-regulation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Regardless of your future employment, &#xA;there will be times when your work is going to be boring,&#xA;but nevertheless the boring work needs to be completed&#xA;for you to move forward in your life.&#xA;Are you able to discipline yourself in order to do what needs to be done&#xA;rather than what you want to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another useful workplace skill that you can develop during college is&#xA;how to organize your time,&#xA;how to work in teams,&#xA;and how to juggle multiple classes + projects + assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, another way to look at this decision is in terms of maximizing your minimum level of achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you achieve good grades at school or quit school now,&#xA;it may hurt your chances of getting a job at Google or Facebook in the future.&#xA;So you may regret this decision if your future desires/circumstances change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conversely, if you go to school,&#xA;you would find yourself slightly more qualified&#xA;(by being certified as having a degree)&#xA;than you would be without a degree.&#xA;Your worst job offer with a good degree is probably at least as good as&#xA;your worst job offer if you drop out of school now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the language of optimization,&#xA;getting a good degree is a more &quot;robust&quot; strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T00:38:36.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18245" CreationDate="2014-03-18T02:39:46.830" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just fix the proof. Especially if you feel that the reviewer gave helpful suggestions about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to fix the proof (beyond just pointing out that the original version was wrong), you could consider adding an Acknowledgments section thanking the anonymous referee for pointing out the error in the original proof of Theorem&amp;nbsp;X and/or their suggestions of how to fix it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to apologize for your mistakes, either in the paper or your reply to the referees' comments. In your reply, you should of course acknowledge the error, thank the referee for pointing it out and say that you've fixed the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2017-08-05T14:56:41.067" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T14:56:41.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T02:42:44.607" Score="1" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email or should I just wait? He said in the last email that he is checking something for me and will get back to me as soon as possible, but it's towards the end of March, I am little nervous and worried. I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13204" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T13:11:06.810" Title="It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T05:43:59.183" Score="10" ViewCount="2651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been considering a career change for awhile and recently discovered the Two-Slit Experiment, which, to put it frankly, blew my mind. I then started some hefty reading and investigation into all things Quantum (Bell, entanglement, QIT), which has led me here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 20 years experience in IT working as a programmer, having graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Science back in the early 90s. As mentioned, I have been considering a career change for some time (having become quite burned out in this industry), and have found something that has piqued my interest more than anything else. I am not yet sure which area of &quot;Quantum&quot; I will be most drawn to, possibly Quantum Information Theory/Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that there is a significant amount of Maths and Physics pre-requisites involved. It seems likely, given that I have not done any Maths or Physics study probably since I was doing my CS undergrad, that I will need to start over with an undergrad in Science/Physics in order to get the fundamentals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the ideal path of education to get to QIT/QIS or QM?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the path to QIT/QIS also via the Physics route? Can I leverage my CS background?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources (books, online courses, etc) that would help with the transition from CS-type thinking to Physics/Maths-type thinking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm considering Astrophysics as a minor (due to interest), but wondering whether it would be useful and complementary to Quantum Theory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this encompasses elements too broad or off-topic, I'm trying to get a better understanding on what is to come following this path. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13206" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T19:49:56.440" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T07:28:19.350" Title="Switch to Physics from CS Career" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T09:28:04.170" Score="2" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the midst applying to do my Master's degree in a university in UK. It is a distance learning course and I am a full-time working professional. The application requires me to name 2 referee and they should be someone who knows me in an academic or professional role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am feeling a wee bit uncomfortable to let my supervisor and boss know that I am intending to pursue Master's degree due to the fact that they value productivity more than academic qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I was somewhat an 'inactive' student while doing Bachelor's degree. I've never participated in any organization or published any publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, is there any avenue where I can find professional referee who will be willing to look at my application and endorse my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13211" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T14:20:00.197" Title="Where can I find referral for my post-graduate application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2014-03-18T10:37:20.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the professor is not willing to do his/her job, and instead makes the student pay money to a 3rd party for what the professor has already been paid to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect a course to be self contained and the professor to cover everything that is needed to pass the exams.     It is OK to require books to be used, only if they are provided in the university library in the way that is reasonable for all students to access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this as a professor that is too lazy to set their own tests.    If a student did the same, they will be expelled for copying someone else’s work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T10:37:20.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18275" CreationDate="2014-03-18T12:25:27.577" Score="3" ViewCount="1622" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which ISBN number should I use in my literature list? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have for example used a book about Design Patterns for my thesis. But I found that books have two ISBN numbers. Which is prefered to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example from a book I used as reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Print ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6 | ISBN 10:0-596-00712-4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13216" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T03:30:34.660" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T03:30:34.660" Title="When there are multiple ISBNs, which should be reported in a reference list?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17228" CreationDate="2014-03-18T12:31:00.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship(CASE), research and education center based at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, has a number of case studies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caseatduke.org/knowledge/casestudies/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://jab.sagepub.com/content/40/3/260.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; also was the first result in google scholar when searched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/productdetail.kmod?productid=3353&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability&lt;/em&gt; might be an option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T12:31:00.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18273" CreationDate="2014-03-18T12:49:05.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISBN&lt;/a&gt; numbers for a specific book vary between countries/regions and is thus not altogether very useful in international publications. When referencing a book, it is not customary to list ISBN-numbers, partly for the reason just stated. Instead you should be able to find a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doi (digital object identifier)&lt;/a&gt; number, at least if the book is relatively new. There is otherwise no general rules about including such numbers in reference lists. With books the fields that must (or at least should be included are author(s)/editor(s), year of publication, title, publisher and place for the publisher (City).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T12:49:05.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18271" CreationDate="2014-03-18T14:20:00.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As such, is there any avenue where I can find professional referee who will be willing to look at my application and endorse my application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can't just be based on the application, since the purpose is to provide additional information and personal impressions.  It's possible in principle to hire someone, but it's a bad idea in practice.  I see it on rare occasions in the U.S., maybe once a year or so.  Someone will have a letter of recommendation from an &quot;educational counselor&quot; or the like, who was hired to advise them on their graduate school applications.  These letters are almost entirely useless.  There's only so much information they could provide in principle (since the letter writer has no special expertise in the subject area and doesn't know the applicant particularly well), and the little they could say isn't particularly trustworthy due to the financial conflict of interest (they are hired to get people into graduate school, not to provide an unbiased evaluation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ff524 pointed out in a comment, you can ask colleagues other than your supervisor.  This is not quite as good as your supervisor, since they are not in as good a position to evaluate your work (and the admissions committee will assume that you asked your friends), but it's better than nothing and might be good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility for getting an academic letter is to take a single class now, as a special student rather than enrolling in a degree program, and to ask the professor for a letter once you have impressed them with your class performance.  However, this could be time-consuming or expensive, and there might not be any suitable classes available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T14:20:00.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T14:34:05.550" Score="12" ViewCount="6274" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the initial process to become a Mathematics's lecturer at a University in London. I want to be able to lecture in a top university in the United Kingdom such as Kings College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the academic ladder that I will have to climb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would my undergraduate program have to be from a good university or could I graduate from a mediocre university and then enroll in a masters program at a well known university followed by a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to become a lecturer and go into research in Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13219" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T19:33:00.680" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T00:52:09.860" Title="To eventually become a mathematics lecturer in the UK, does undergraduate degree have to be from a good university?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18278" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T14:38:14.423" Score="8" ViewCount="1657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been appointed to teach one course in Artificial Intelligence in one university. The reason was that the main lecturer is involved in other duties and for that reason he could not teach one group (there are two groups actually). The thing is that this lecturer has given me all the material: slides, exercises, exams, practices, final project and so on; and he told me explicitly to follow that material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been always a big fan of the freedom of teaching. I mean I believe that if two different lecturers teach course X; then it would be better if they can get two different approaches for the same topics. The Faculty academic coordinator has told me that I must follow the material exactly, because the examinations would be the same for both groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what to do in this situation? I am keen to take published material as a reference for a course, but not to follow all the material exactly from the other lecturer like if I were some sort of &quot;academic monkey&quot; (that only mimics what the other has made). I really feel frustrated about this situation and I do not know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually when I have gotten into this situation, in which I had to drop one group and that group has been assigned to another lecturer. I have given him/her full freedom, and only we gather around for making the practices and exams together. I really believe that is the correct way to do this things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD Some clarification points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other lecturer and myself be both have the same rank, I mean we both are lecturers, only difference is that the other lecturer has taught the course before and that is why he was appointed coordinator of only that course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In academic ranks, I got more academic background in CS (two master's already done); in the other hand he is a die hard programmer programmer that has participated in programming contests, but that's it. He has only a bachelor in Information Systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The material handed to me is simple, but it gets to my nerves that I must stick completely to it. I mean if a student is well prepared and every teacher follows the syllabic contents; then at the end it does not matter who made the final examinations. The student should be prepare for everything (except that the course is about, for example a Java certification, and I do not teach Java, but C). The point is that is a CS related course, and for that it should relies more in the algorithmic part that on some tricky-twisty programming stuff that tough programmers know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T00:12:23.963" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T03:02:19.520" Title="lecturing one subject with other lecturer's material" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18277" CreationDate="2014-03-18T15:47:33.783" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me point out that a career as you describe it not entirely plannable: There are many more who want it than who get it, and even if you are talented and work hard, success is not guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably won't matter where you did your undergrad once you've received your PhD, although going to different universities could be beneficial, as it would expose you to more different academic cultures etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have received your PhD, you'll want to do a good postdoc. Going to some top university abroad, or becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Cambridge or Oxford could be good choices. Make sure that you develop contacts at your desired university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some postdoc experience you can apply for eg a Royal Society Research Fellowship or an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship, to be held at your desired university. During that time, try to convince the university to offer you a permament position after the fellowship ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T15:47:33.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18277" CreationDate="2014-03-18T16:56:52.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Do you need to get a PhD to be a maths lecturer at King's College?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to answer this question,&#xA;you should take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/mathematics/people/academicstaff.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of faculty&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;of the King's College London Mathematics Department.&#xA;Glancing through the list of titles (&quot;Dr X&quot;, &quot;Professor Y&quot;)&#xA;suggests to me that all of the academic staff have a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Do you need to get a PhD from a good university to be a maths lecturer at King's College?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to answer this question,&#xA;I humbly suggest that you can spend some time&#xA;to look through the education history&#xA;of some of the academic staff of King's College London.&#xA;This will give you a sense of&#xA;the type of universities which you would need to obtain your PhD from&#xA;in order to be qualified to be a lecturer at King's College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Do you really want to do a PhD in maths?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read your question correctly,&#xA;you have not yet enrolled in college.&#xA;It is good that you have a high-level idea&#xA;that you want to be a maths lecturer.&#xA;However, it is hard to know whether you are capable of being a maths lecturer&#xA;and whether you would enjoy this as your job&#xA;until you have taken many undergraduate and graduate classes in mathematics.&#xA;Once you have taken such classes,&#xA;if at that point you are good at maths and enjoy it,&#xA;then it may be a good idea to apply for a PhD in maths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;My father's advice&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father got a PhD in mathematics from Berkeley&#xA;and has been employed as a maths professor for over 25 years.&#xA;When I was younger, I had wanted to be a maths professor just like him.&#xA;However, he advised me against this,&#xA;because the job market for academic math jobs is very competitive.&#xA;In other words, there are many more maths PhD graduates&#xA;who want an academic math job&#xA;than there are academic math jobs available.&#xA;As a result, if you aren't really really smart,&#xA;it may be hard to get an academic math job.&#xA;Some math PhDs may take a few post-doc appointments (which have low pay),&#xA;hoping to find a permanent academic math job,&#xA;but drop out and find some sort of regular job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father's advice was for me to study for a PhD in a related math-y field,&#xA;e.g. applied math, (non-theoretical) computer science, operations research.&#xA;In those fields it is easier to get an academic job.&#xA;I did follow his advice, and am studying for a PhD in operations research.&#xA;Most of the students who graduate from my department can get a tenure-track job,&#xA;or those who want to work in industry can get good jobs in Google, LinkedIn, banks, consulting, etc.&#xA;I would conclude therefore that most of the graduating PhD students in my department&#xA;are happy with their employment opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Do your research&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to find out more about the benefits and costs&#xA;of an academic math career as you go about your undergrad studies.&#xA;For example, talk to math professors to ask them&#xA;whether they think you have the ability to be a maths lecturer.&#xA;Also, talk to some current PhD maths students&#xA;to find out how they feel about their job prospects.&#xA;As Jesus once said, &quot;Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?&quot;&#xA;So before you apply for a PhD,&#xA;get a sense of what type of job you could get with the PhD,&#xA;whether you want to spend 3 or more years of your life with low pay as a graduate student/post-doc in order to get the job,&#xA;and what your chances are of getting this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T16:56:52.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:12:19.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an american who studied in europe for several years. Here are some things I think you might want to consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is always difficult to move to a new cultural environment. If you&#xA;already find social situations difficult, then these difficulties are&#xA;likely to intensify in a new setting. You will have to communicate&#xA;primarily in a foreign language, you will have to learn a new set of&#xA;customs and manners, and you will have to make all new friends in&#xA;your host country. This can be hard, depending on the country. In my&#xA;experience Americans are usually quicker to befriend foreigners than&#xA;Europeans.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think about where you want to live. If you want to live in america,&#xA;then maybe doing a Ph.D. in American isn't a bad idea. In general&#xA;though it is hard for people who do their degree in one country to&#xA;get a job in another country, unless the degree is from somewhere&#xA;really famous like Harvard or Oxford. (See my post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17405/how-would-a-small-liberal-arts-college-view-a-phd-from-germany-or-the-uk-factor/17406#17406&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an&#xA;explanation why.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with academic advisors is really difficult, even for people&#xA;with excellent social skills. This is a subject that deserves its own&#xA;separate consideration. Your advisor will have a lot of control over&#xA;your future career and this fact can sometimes make one be overly&#xA;deferential. Some advisors use their power over their students in bad&#xA;ways. It is very common for advisors simply not to do their jobs. It&#xA;is also possible for your advisor to steal your research, although&#xA;this is less common. The proper way to deal with your advisor is as a&#xA;senior colleague who is paid to help you. You want to approach him or&#xA;her with reasonable questions, and you want to insist on frequent&#xA;meetings to discuss your work. You need to be comfortable making&#xA;these kind of demands, even if you aren't the person in charge,&#xA;otherwise you run the risk of a bad advisor taking advantage of you.&#xA;This is true outside the academy too, but it remains a real factor&#xA;even in universities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not go into debt to do a graduate degree. It's almost always a&#xA;horrible return on investment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrutinize your motives. Why do you really want to do this? Do you&#xA;really have a burning research question that you want to answer? It&#xA;doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you are in a bad situation and&#xA;want a lifeboat to take you somewhere else and try something new. If&#xA;that is your mindset, I strongly encourage you to reconsider graduate&#xA;education. Graduate school is a very difficult environment, and when&#xA;you get to the point of academic hiring it becomes absolutely&#xA;viciously competitive. Graduate school isn't a good way to find&#xA;yourself, or explore and adventure in a foreign country--it's&#xA;professional training for a very difficult, very stressful job that&#xA;doesn't tend to pay very well. If you don't love the material itself, you probably won't last.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the very best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:12:19.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18269" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:32:46.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. They have probably forgotten about the correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reply to his last mail with the same subject line (and correspondence below) and say something simple like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hi X,&#xA;&#xA;I was wondering if there were any updates since we last spoke?&#xA;&#xA;Thanks,&#xA;Y&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:32:46.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18291" CreationDate="2014-03-18T18:09:05.013" Score="3" ViewCount="2775" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following situation: &#xA;The review of the literature chapter has seven sections: the first one is for the introduction, the five medial are for different themes, the last one for the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing the five medial sections, should I write an introduction and conclusion for each or just paragraphs discussing certain points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T19:30:09.240" Title="Should sections of a chapter have introductions and conclusions?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2014-03-18T18:53:24.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked at your other questions, which were quite enlightening. Given that you had already publicly revealed other relevant facts about yourself, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16438/285&quot;&gt;How will a &amp;quot;local&amp;quot; master&amp;#39;s in CSE look when I apply for a Graduate funding in the USA?&lt;/a&gt;, I don't know why you didn't include them in your question. Any such details are highly pertinent, and would help people give better and more &quot;customized&quot; answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize from your previous question, you are 32, live in Bangladesh, have an IT background, work in a bank, and are afraid your job is taking you nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm Indian, and left India to study in both the UK and the US, at different times. So my background is not so dissimilar, and I can relate to some extent. However, the fact remains that your question is so broad that it is difficult to give useful information without knowing you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are from Bangladesh, I'm guessing that part of your interest in further studies abroad is to get away from Bangladesh. Also, there are presumably not that many routes out of Bangladesh besides being a student. If so, I sympathize. However, from your previous question it sounds like you were planning to get a degree locally before going abroad. If so, it sounds like your question might be premature. If you aren't currently associated with a university or do not already have a relevant higher degree, then going abroad as a student would be very difficult. Are you still planning to enroll in a local Master's program? Or have you decided to go for a Master's degree abroad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer by shane, I think, covers some of the issues you will probably run into as an Asian student in the West. How good or bad a situation you find it depends on a complex set of factors including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your area of study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your university and location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The local community from your area/country. (Assuming you get on well with people from your background)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How successful you are at your subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of advisor you end up with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much you dislike your native country. If you really dislike it,&#xA;you may have an easier time adjusting to a foreign culture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to be from a very &quot;sheltered&quot; background, which is not uncommon in traditional Asian cultures, then living away from your family and culture could be good for you. In many ways the West (which it seems you are contemplating) is much more open culturally then a place like Bangladesh. However, how you respond will be up to you. You may find it frightening rather than empowering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I was from a sheltered background, and had a difficult time. Grad education is a rough business, and study abroad is not for the faint-hearted. However, I can say that I do not regret it at all. It was (I think) very good for me. I learned to be much more confident and independent. I am now quite a different person than the person I would have been if I never left India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, as shane says, grad school isn't the ideal way to go about self-improvement, if you have a choice. Of course, as I have observed above, you may not have a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T11:45:12.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18286" CreationDate="2014-03-18T19:30:09.240" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything that you write should be justified by the goals of the document. Introductions, conclusions and &quot;linking&quot; material between sections are written in order to support your overall argument (for example, by summarizing higher-level ideas) or to assist the reader (for example, by letting them know something about what they are about to read). So you need to think about the needs of each part of your document, and how the whole thing fits together, to discover where introductions and conclusions ought to be placed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introductory material does not need to be very long, and it does not need to occupy its own section. Within a chapter, it's perfectly fine to have a short introductory passage before the first numbered section. For smaller divisions of your document, it's likely that you don't need to say very much in the way of introduction. When you find yourself writing an introductory sentence that doesn't add anything to the section heading, you are better off just omitting that sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers can be served by short &quot;hints&quot; at the beginning or end of a section, that explain how the topics are linked together. This sort of thing lets you move more smoothly from one topic to another, and makes your overall argument more coherent. Without using many words, you can let readers know whether the new topic is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A later counterargument to the material in the previous section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A supporting argument from a different perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An additional example of the same thing we have just seen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Superficially different, but actually the same underneath.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is much better than having a template introductory sentence that just says &quot;This section is about ...&quot; without giving any indication how the section fits in to the overall structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions are the same: for a short section, there's no need to sum up what's just been said. That doesn't add anything. In particular, for a literature review chapter, you are likely to be better off having a general conclusion to the chapter (if there is a conclusion at all), rather than a separate conclusion in each section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T19:30:09.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18278" CreationDate="2014-03-18T20:26:46.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think your role in this situation is precisely to be an &quot;academic monkey&quot;. The other lecturer presumably wanted to teach both groups so that both would have access to his particular teaching style, including his expertise regarding what topics are most important and how to explain them. But he could not do so because he was too busy. So he does the next best thing: he brings in another lecturer, i.e. you, with the expectation that you will give the students a similar experience to what he would have given them. Make no mistake, emulating another lecturer's style is not an easy task, and the fact that he wants you to stick to his prepared materials does not reflect a lack of faith in your abilities (just in case you were thinking that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when there are different lecturers teaching different, disjoint sets of students, I think the benefit of having different lecturing styles is largely negated. After all, the main reason to have different styles of teaching is that different styles appeal to different people, and a concept that an individual student misses from one style, they may pick up from another. That only works if the students attend multiple lectures with different instructors. (Or if you manage to sort students by their learning styles and match up each one with the instructor that best suits them, but that is very difficult.) And in this case, if the main lecturer will be preparing the exam(s), it seems natural that he will do so according to his own teaching style, which means students who were not exposed to his style will be at a disadvantage. So it's really in the best interest of your students for you to emulate his style as closely as possible, which means using his materials and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, this answer and my first paragraph in particular is intended for the situation where the other lecturer is in charge of the course and, in your capacity as a lecturer of the course, you are acting as his direct subordinate. If that's not the case, my answer doesn't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T21:44:01.327" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T21:44:01.327" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18278" CreationDate="2014-03-18T20:35:37.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Academia there is always a lot of egos involved. Do not take it personal and let your ego get in the way. As you admit, you are not the main lecturer. He is. He prepared the slides, exercises, exams, practices, final project and so on. Excellent. Less work / stress for you. It is not your time to shine. In any job (academia or not) you must learn how to play &quot;second fiddle&quot; if needed. And this is one of these times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, teaching is much more than the slides, exercises, final project or exams. It is the teacher's personality, how he is in sync with the classroom needs, how to make the students participate in the course and how to make the lesson an unforgettable experience. You can and must try to do all these, regardless of the slides you use. So you can still make all the students want to watch your lecture (instead of his) if that is what it takes to boost your ego. Although it clearly is not a competition. It is just a job. So, do it as best as you can with the tools you are given. It is really that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the comments I see, there is too much focus on &quot;No-one should tell how to teach...&quot;. But this is not really the point. If professor B was supposed to teach both lectures and due to a newly assigned duty he cannot, would not that be impolite / inconsiderate for the new professor (Layla) not to give her (at least) the materials and slides he uses? If someone steps in for me, I would most certainly do all the necessary work for my coleague to have the most seamless transition by alleviating some of the stress /work for preparing lectures / slides, exercises. And if I was the subsitute I would appreciate this offer. Why must egos be involved in such a process and why should anyone not accept the offer given? If this situation continues for the next semester - year, Layla should have a saying on how the lecture should be done. But for this year I do not see the point in making too much fuss over it.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T21:08:21.080" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T21:08:21.080" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18309" CreationDate="2014-03-19T00:03:56.183" Score="21" ViewCount="21903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in mathematical research, but want to know if there are good jobs besides being a professor.  Are there any lucrative research-centric careers out there for someone with a PhD in pure mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13235" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T09:37:40.170" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T09:37:40.170" Title="Are there any research careers except professorship for a person holding PhD in pure mathematics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18300" CreationDate="2014-03-19T02:08:32.223" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in the job market for mathematics Ph.D. in the United States, a good start would be to take a look at the &quot;Data on the Profession&quot; section on the AMS website (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/emp-survey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;annual survey&lt;/a&gt; features &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/docsgrtd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;data on the salary&lt;/a&gt; of recent Ph.D. graduates depending on their area of expertise and the kind of work they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One potential shortcoming of the data mentioned above is that the statistics do not mention anything specific about what &quot;kinds&quot; of jobs the recent Ph.D. holders have in industry. To find out more about this, I suspect a good Idea would be to visit the websites of math departments, find their recent Ph.D. graduates and figure out where they work now. Of course, the majority of them will probably have research/teaching jobs in Universities, but I suspect a fair amount will be working in the Industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can always look up people on the list containing every (or probably almost every) Ph.D graduate in math in the US from 1999 to 2011 (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/degrees&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) and hope that some of them maintain a LinkedIn profile where they report where they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10761" LastEditorDisplayName="user10761" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T11:00:05.423" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T11:00:05.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18261" CreationDate="2014-03-19T03:26:30.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is usually no maximum number of committee members.  Rather than removing the extra committee member, I would suggest informing him that he is welcome to continue serving on your committee, but that if he wishes to quit he may do so without causing you any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T03:26:30.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18115" CreationDate="2014-03-19T03:41:54.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never been on a search committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A teaching institution hires people to teach.  A research institution hires people to conduct research. (primarily)  A teaching institution will not make negotiating concessions that prioritize research ahead of teaching.  A research institution will not make negotiating concessions that prioritize teaching ahead of research.  That said, many institutions that are widely viewed as teaching institutions wish to be research institutions and will negotiate accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need to be secretive when making a negotiating position.  I suggest you outright ask which aspects of the contract are negotiable.  You should also ask junior faculty at the institution if they will give you advice based on their experiences.  I also suggest asking the departmental secretary, who probably knows everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Union institutions may not be able to negotiate with individuals at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T03:41:54.460" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2014-03-19T03:50:35.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes you can leverage.  At my university, these people work in the EECS department.  You could just apply to be a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Study vector calculus and linear algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not really.  However, &quot;big data&quot; is quite popular in astro/astrophysics currently, so maybe you could get hired as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T03:50:35.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16885" CreationDate="2014-03-19T04:05:24.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For each faculty member you would be willing to accept as an advisor, know at the abstract level what their recent papers are about.  Search for grants they just received to determine what areas they may be hiring in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meeting, express enthusiasm for all of these subjects and describe how your background prepares you to work on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this department has space in only one or a few research groups.  You have no way of knowing which group(s) that is.  If you want to get in, you should market yourself as suitable for as many groups as you can.  It is normal for the openings available to vary by chance and for you to have no information about it; much is left to chance in graduate admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T04:05:24.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18308" CreationDate="2014-03-19T05:04:22.147" Score="17" ViewCount="1287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to submit my article in a peer reviewed journal which requires the contacts of three potential reviewers of my work. I can think of a few names whose works I have cited in the paper (who, I think will be the best judge). Is it polite to contact them via email to check their availability (of course everybody is under time constraints) before I put their names in the journal website? I am concerned that it can be regarded as a conflict of interest or an attempt to bias their opinions. What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T19:07:10.387" Title="Is It a Common Practice to Contact the Reviewers?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18306" CreationDate="2014-03-19T07:22:53.390" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;My strong advice is a clear NO! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal might contact other reviewers, not the ones you suggested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possible conflict of interest, even if you don't send your paper with the review request&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reviewing process is a business between the editor and the reviewer. It is specially designed to enhance the quality of the accepted papers (Blind, double blind reviews, etc). Once you contact the reviewers, any chance of a blind review goes up in smoke.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the potential reviewer that you contact, is not selected by the journal he/she might feel offended.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8955" LastEditorUserId="8509" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T00:23:41.457" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T00:23:41.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18300" CreationDate="2014-03-19T08:02:35.467" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak from personal experience. I have a math Ph.D. on a topic with absolutely no real world applications, I work in industry, and my job title is actually &quot;Senior Research Expert&quot;. So yes, there are research careers in industry. And while I won't get rich off it, I can't complain about the remuneration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, (almost) nobody in industry will pay you for thinking about stuff, going to conferences and writing papers. My research is extremely applied, and I am very much constrained by a) what customers will pay for and b) what is feasible given our code base and software architecture. I simply can't go off on a tangent and argue that a particular algorithm is very elegant, if it is not implementable in a reasonable amount of time or nobody will buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your Ph.D. topic, be prepared to change fields. I used to do something like discrete optimization - now I do statistics and time series analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I personally don't code (which the developers are very happy about), I work closely with the developers that actually turn what I thought up into software. Interpersonal skills and the ability to fit into a team and a software development process (Scrum) are much more important here than in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research mathematicians are rare, and few people understand what I do and why I'm paid. It took a long time and some very fortuitous circumstances for me to demonstrate that I do add value to the company, and I was lucky to keep my research job when my company was acquired - my new employer really doesn't have research positions as such, so I had to justify why I should keep my niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are about five other originally pure mathematicians in the team I work with, two of them with Ph.D.s. None of them do anything that could be called &quot;research&quot;. They develop software or do analytics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing: yes, there are math research careers in industry. They are few and far between. Be prepared for an uphill battle, to change fields, to do what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T08:02:35.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18313" CreationDate="2014-03-19T10:22:12.353" Score="12" ViewCount="880" Body="&lt;p&gt;My supervisor received an invitation to submit a paper to a special issue of a prestigious journal. Naturally, I have done most of the writing (80%) and all the results in the manuscript are my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, who has to be the first author? Is it him, for he is the one invited to submit the paper? Or is it me for doing most of the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13248" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T17:16:15.167" LastActivityDate="2020-03-16T01:33:45.577" Title="Invited paper: who has to be the first author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;invited-paper&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18312" CreationDate="2014-03-19T10:35:45.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person receives an invitation, the responsibility to deliver will be with that person. That does not necessarily mean that person will be first author although I suspect it will most frequently be the case. There are many posts on academia.se that deal with first authorships so I do not think I need to replicate many good answers here. Suffice it to say that you need to discuss the authorship with your advisor. Unfortunately, this should have been done early on because lack of an agreement on authorship ordering early on is what usually leads to conflicts in the end. I am not saying this applies in your case but the fact that you ask seems to go in that direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For authorship and contributorship discussions I can point you to two posts in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3355&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-submission/authorship-contributorship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal)&lt;/a&gt;. There are many other sources but they provide the core ideas on author/contributorship. It is easy to agree with these ideas, more difficult to live by them, particularly in a student-advisor relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-03-16T01:33:45.577" LastActivityDate="2020-03-16T01:33:45.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18273" CreationDate="2014-03-19T10:47:05.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many books have two ISBN numbers for each edition, and that's what's happening in the case you've cited. There are now two formats of ISBN, one with 13 digits and one with 10 digits. ISBN 10 is the older format. Since 2007, books have had both. The last digit in each case is the check(sum) digit, calculated from a hash of the previous digits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ISBN 13 is created from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the digits 978&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the first 9 digits of the ISBN 10 code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the recalculated check digit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what's going on in your case, and you can cite either the ISBN-13 or the ISBN-10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also the case that different editions of a book have different ISBNs. That's not what's going on in your case. But when that is the case, you use the ISBN of the exact edition you've been using: that way, the content and page numbers should tally up, for anyone who follows up your ISBN and page number citation to see the original in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T10:47:05.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18115" CreationDate="2014-03-19T12:31:44.503" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have only been a member of hiring committees at my present institution, a state research university.  However I have watched people go on the job market at liberal arts colleges and one of my oldest friends is the department chair at a liberal arts college.  I will try to ask him about this when I get the chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that the difference between quality and wealth of the university is playing more of a role here than the difference between research and liberal arts college.  I know someone who got a job at a top liberal arts college right out of her PhD.  Nevertheless she still did a one year postdoc before taking the position.  And getting eased into the new job in a way which affords her all the opportunities to keep her successful research program, um, successful is definitely a big part of the mutual understanding between her and her department and college.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story at hand, it seems that Nazareth College felt like the person it had offered the job to was making a slew of demands that could not be met by an institution of their caliber.  I am very eager to discuss the specifics of that strange situation, but that was not the question, so I'll just restrict to one thing: the applicant mentioned that she wanted a higher salary that was closer to the going rate.  The salary that she wanted -- $65K -- is the going rate in her field at some places (and probably less than the going rate in others; in STEM fields $65K would not be competitive at a reasonably research-intensive university) but is not the going rate at small, less than wealthy institutions.  If you want the salary that some other place is going to offer you, you really need an offer from some other place which has that salary.  That was the big outlier of a negotiation mistake that I saw (it does not justify rescinding the offer, though! to me, that is a truly bush-league way to do business) in the story.  By asking for a benchmark salary you are calling attention to the fact that the institution under consideration is not as good as some others, to which a fitting response be might be to have them call attention to the fact that you are not as good as some others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a time when a top fifty liberal arts college really didn't need or want the majority of its faculty to do significant research, especially if it took time away from their teaching and meeting with students.  That time has passed: my friend at the liberal arts college publishes at least a paper a year.  That is a higher publication rate than some of my senior colleagues who are full professors at my top fifty research university.  And I care about teaching more than the stereotypical &quot;research mathematician&quot; but not particularly more than the average in my department: almost all of us care about teaching, and are at least solid teachers across a wide range of levels and courses; more so than I would have expected, in fact.  When I visit a liberal arts college it is a very enlightening experience because the amount of emphasis and priority given to the basic academic goals are palpably different, even upon arrival.  But it's also enlightening because the basic academic goals are recognizably the same, just weighted somewhat differently.  I think that the difference between a good liberal arts college and a good research university should not be exaggerated...and I certainly think that the things that desirable job candidates are looking to secure in order to take jobs a these institutions are very similar.  Nothing that is reasonable to ask for in negotiations at a research university ought to get your offer rescinded at a good liberal arts college, that's for sure!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T12:36:54.883" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T12:36:54.883" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18269" CreationDate="2014-03-19T13:11:06.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;He might have forgotten that, or the task is lagging in a big queue. The trick here and similar situations is to have something under development which you share with that person and each time you announce some  progress in that, so in this way you remind him indirectly about your case. This can be a proposal, a statement of purpose, a paper, .... So you send an email announcing some small improvements in that shared thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have any such thing then think of something like a conference, a ... and send an email asking &quot;Does this help for my graduate studies?&quot; this is an indirect way of asking about your grad application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T13:11:06.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18326" CreationDate="2014-03-19T13:27:38.773" Score="17" ViewCount="8426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the agonizing period shortly after an academic job interview at a regional research school and I'm trying to analyze the day to estimate my chances of getting an offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall the interview seemed to go well. The talk was fine and the one on one interviews and meals seemed to go smoothly. But, I wonder how much of that has to do with my interviewers just being nice people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any people here with experience - on either side of the interview process - who can provide any feedback about how the interviewers might behave before they do (or don't) ultimately extend the offer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's relevant, I happen to know I was the last of four finalists invited to campus and it's been at least two weeks since another candidate was interviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T13:44:06.873" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T21:24:40.297" Title="Are there any telltale signs that an academic job interview went well (or badly)?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18115" CreationDate="2014-03-19T14:57:14.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on my experience as a student on the job market and on the experience of my cohort,on what faculty told us and the stories we heard from the junior faculty that our school hired. My school is a research school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our field, rookies generally do not negotiate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the star rookies do. If you're a rising star that is being simultaneously pursued by Harvard, Princeton, Chicago etc and you're tipped to win the MacArthur Grant or something then you have &lt;em&gt;Market Power&lt;/em&gt;. You get to negotiate and universities will throw money and perks at you to be able to hire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our school hired a rookie faculty where two universities got into a bidding war over her and she got a sweet deal eventually. From what I recall, a good 30K above the standard contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of us mere mortals, with no market power, there are no negotiations. The schools make it absolutely clear up front what they can do for you. The contracts are standard for a given university: a research fund, base pay and performance pay, teaching loads, preps, administrative burden, possibility of sabbatical, maternity leave etc. These features are usually identical for all junior faculty in a given department in that University. They're also usually trying to do the best they can and have no interest in short-changing anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research schools usually try to encourage rookies and give them a light teaching and administrative load for the first few years but after that as the low man(person) on the totem pole, it is understood that you have to have some flexibility in terms of helping the department when some unforeseen need arises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in smaller departments, hiring a colleague is a lot like getting a family member. You are going to be with them all the time, share a lot of decision making power, and you can't get rid of them. Therefore, how well you get along with them is very very important.  That's why when you have some special request about your contract, this conversation needs to happen in person or on the phone so you can gauge the other person's response and react to that. If you come across as tone deaf and difficult then that's not the sort of colleague anybody wants, especially if you're not some star researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastEditorUserId="6674" LastEditDate="2017-03-30T09:27:14.480" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T09:27:14.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-19T15:38:13.363" Score="2" ViewCount="1285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined &quot;X&quot; university (US) for my PhD to work with a specific adviser (Y). For 3 years, I prepared my background to work in Y's area (through education and research exp.). But now Y says that, &quot;I am not sure if we can work together. I am not saying no but I can not say yes too.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my admission process, Y told me that we can work together. And I made my decision based on this promise. Since everything worked out well, I did not feel the need to approach other faculty members from the department. But as a result, now, I am without an adviser. And Currently, my department is trying to patch me up in areas that are completely new to me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation has forced me to start thinking about my options and I came across following queries,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) should I graduate with a 2nd masters degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) since I want to gain my PhD, do I need to explain my 2nd masters in my statement of purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) is 2nd masters going to raise red flags while being considered for the PhD admission in new university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on (a), (b) &amp;amp; (c) will be really helpful. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13260" LastEditorUserId="13260" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T21:05:46.903" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T21:05:46.903" Title="A PhD student without an adviser" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18115" CreationDate="2014-03-19T16:46:58.123" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I agree that you should seek some specific information on the expectations of a research vs. teaching environment, I would suggest that this negotiation was doomed for a different reason...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know Linda Babcock (the gender/negotiations researcher who is interviewed in the story) personally, and she said that the story is true. Remember that one key issue is that the negotiation was attempted via email. Women are already disadvantaged in negotiation (see enormous research in this area) so they need to use specific tactics to moderate gender-effects of outcomes. These tactics are quite difficult via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I know several researchers who have excelled at doing research at &quot;teaching schools&quot; because they're the only ones bringing in the publications and research grants. Although interest in research may not be valued at Nazareth specifically, it is not a universal axiom for teaching-focused schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research doesn't support the position that negotiation is inappropriate for &quot;rookies&quot; or &quot;non-stars&quot;. New faculty get idiosyncratic deals (from lab space to maternity leave) all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13261" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T16:46:58.123" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18300" CreationDate="2014-03-19T17:27:32.047" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak from personal experience from my job market experience this year. This year I'm graduating with a PhD in math. I mainly applied in academia, but I sent out a feeler for some industry to see if I found things I liked and in case I didn't get a job (maybe 2-3 applications). I am in algebraic geometry, and nowhere near direct applications to applied math or at least the definition that the USA has for applied math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got an on-site interview for a really great research job in the Defense industry. There was a lot of activity in my department with people interviewing with quant jobs on or near Wall Street.  One student in my class took a startup job in the Bay Area. I got a job early on in the market in academe that I fell in love with, so I took myself out of the running and withdrew all my applications from industry and academia alike at the end of January. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A month later, Google headhunted me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do good work and learn how to communicate quantitative ideas, then a PhD in math can really help you achieve industry goals.  I think it is important to keep in mind that not everyone will get an academic job and a lot has to do with luck.  I would not do a PhD in math if earning potential is your plan. A lot of these opportunities prefer a computer science background and will pay better for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, to answer your second question, no one really speaks to you regarding salary until you get the offer, but in my interactions, the floor for starting salary for industry seems to be somewhere around 75-80k for these moderately prestigious industry jobs, and the ceiling seems to be around 150k. Results may vary depending on location and how valuable they believe you to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T17:27:32.047" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18319" CreationDate="2014-03-19T18:06:22.800" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if a department loves you, it's unlikely they'll show any overt signs (especially in an official capacity) because they want to maintain a reasonable negotiating position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But individual faculty are not always &quot;with the program&quot;. For example, it's happened to me that someone said (during an interview) &quot;I really like your profile and will be making a strong case to make you an offer&quot;. But while this might be flattering, it also depends on how much power that individual has over final decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T18:06:22.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18330" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:02:38.550" Score="17" ViewCount="1173" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the title, I would like to determine whether a paper cited by a student comes from a reputable source or not, &lt;strong&gt;given that the paper's content lies outside my field&lt;/strong&gt;. My first thought was to check the journal's website, as well as doing a Google Scholar search to see whether papers in other reputable journals cite papers from this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particular case I am concerned with is a Psychology paper, appearing in &lt;em&gt;AllPsych Journal&lt;/em&gt; [sic]. All the &lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/journal/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journal's webpage&lt;/a&gt; says is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The educational articles and papers published in AllPsych Journal are written by mental health professionals, psychology students, psychology instructors, and other authors outside the field of psychology. *   They represent problems, solutions, and suggestions about everyday life and its relation to psychology.  For submission consideration, please contact us via our feedback form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems dubious to me, but nonetheless, a Google Scholar search suggests that some reputable looking publications have cited works appearing in this journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose I have two questions then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any other techniques I can use to assess the quality of journals outside my field for this purpose. Ideally these should take relatively little time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this specific journal considered reputable in psychology? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T11:45:52.560" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T11:45:52.560" Title="How can I assess the quality of a paper outside my field?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;psychology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18321" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:26:03.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if Y had not intention of working with me then why did they accept me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to unpack this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe Y did want to work with you, and then things didn't work out: funding, or mutual incompatibility, or interest changes. Stuff happens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Y could recommend you for admission as a competent student without feeling there was an implied guarantee that you'd work together. Maybe there are others in the department with similar interests. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been said on this forum many times, an advisor-advisee relationship is more two-way than one might think. There has to be a mutual fit otherwise even two perfectly reasonable people with mutual interests might not click. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T19:26:03.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18328" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:50:43.400" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question concerns assessing the quality of papers &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; one's field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question seems to be more leaning towards the quality of &lt;em&gt;journals&lt;/em&gt; outside of one's field. Here's a brief list of pointers (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;some of which also appear in this question&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check if the journal has an impact factor (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2034/does-impact-factor-reflect-the-quality-of-a-journal&quot;&gt;some good journal's don't and vice versa, so beware of false positives and false negatives&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find out the most prominent literature indexes in the area and see if it's in there (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt; for Comp. Sci., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; for life sciences, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian ranking tables&lt;/a&gt; (don't take them too seriously: there is no such thing as a total ordering of journals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check for journal citations in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholar&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic Search&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;otherwise check paper citations in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholar&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic Search&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find out if the publisher is reputable (Elsevier, Springer, a good university press, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; to make sure the publisher is not &quot;predatory&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find out if the editors-in-chief are established academics (e.g., high h-indexes in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholar&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to experts in the area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apply common sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is particularly important. Though it is easy to discover if a journal is excellent or terrible, in between those extremes, there's a lot of grey. For example, new journals may be much-needed and drawing quality work from quality people, but they won't have a high h-index or an impact factor, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those grey areas, talking to an expert who knows the field is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AllPsych Journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem to be a formal journal, but rather an informal way for authors to publish educational articles online. All papers are published on the web-site, there's no mention of an editorial board, a publisher, a means of submission, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this says nothing of the quality/utility of the papers published there: just that it would probably not count in academic circles as a &quot;traditional journal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the quality of a paper itself independent of the venue, check how many citations it has in Scholar versus it's age, check the nature of those citations, check the h-index and background of the authors, etc. (Of course these methods are only an approximation for reading it and making up your own mind as to its quality, but since it is outside your area ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T12:58:32.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2014-03-19T20:15:08.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I first posted this as a comment but feel it deserves to be an answer.&#xA;If you want to contribute to science, and still love coding but want to develop software for scientific purposes, check out this blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-08-23-ten-reasons-be-research-software-engineer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-08-23-ten-reasons-be-research-software-engineer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I could add would be needless repeating of what you can read in the blog :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T20:15:08.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11659" CreationDate="2014-03-19T20:30:24.303" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;@earthling's accepted answer -- to use the passive voice -- is perhaps the convention in certain disciplines, but it is crucial to note that &lt;strong&gt;the active voice is the convention in others&lt;/strong&gt;. Using the passive voice will make a paper sound daft and amateurishly pompous in certain communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference is very much for the active voice, first person (plural in almost all cases). This is also the most prevalent convention in my community (applied CS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strongest argument (and it is a very strong one!) against passive voice is that it removes all responsibility from the doer: it leaves ambiguity as to who did what, which is crucial for proper attribution in scientific writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methods of Franklin et. al. were taken. The software was implemented in Java.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who implemented the methods? The authors of the current paper or Franklin and his pals? Who should be contacted if there's errors in the software? Who's to credit and who's to blame?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even aside from ambiguity, in the hands of a deceptive author, the passive voice could be used to subtly claim credit for others' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methods of Franklin et. al. were taken. These methods were extended to incorporate the inputs previously described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the authors make it sound a bit like they did the extending, but maybe they didn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second argument against the omnipresent passive voice is more subjective: that for many people (including me), it sucks to read, it sucks all humanity from the writing, any modesty it provides is entirely false, and it just generally sounds pompous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if using the active voice, which person to use? Again this is convention, but talking about yourself in the third person is again considered silly in many communities (although mandatory in some journals!). Also using the third-person can introduce the same ambiguities regarding what was &lt;em&gt;your work&lt;/em&gt; and what was the work of others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methods of Franklin et. al. were taken. The authors extended these methods to incorporate the inputs previously described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leaving convention aside, first person is the only voice with a clear &lt;em&gt;objective&lt;/em&gt; argument in favour of it: it avoids ambiguity as to who did what!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All arguments for passive voice refer to subjective matters of style or (false) modesty. (Aside from which, I feel that first person active voice is a more natural style!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, you should follow the convention of the venue you are submitting the paper to!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See these &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/writing/passive-letters.html&quot;&gt;letters to Nature&lt;/a&gt;, for more on the debate. &#xA;(The second author sounds ridiculously pompous to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T20:30:33.110" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:30:33.110" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18328" CreationDate="2014-03-19T20:31:44.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;@badroit already gave a very good answer on the general question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the specific question about AllPsych: this is not a journal per se, it is only a website with submissions from different people run by one person, apparently without any peer review, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I would rate this as only marginally better than Wikipedia. Whether it is admissible as a source in a student paper could be treated the way you treat Wikipedia entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T20:31:44.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-19T22:04:39.130" Score="6" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still working towards an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, however I don't believe it's possible to think about research too early. I'm thinking about going in the direction of Pure Mathematics - possibly in the area of Number Theory and Logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have edited the above title, as I think it reflects more the question I was trying to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was really wondering if anyone firstly has an answer to my above question, and also if anyone could recommend good places online where one could follow current research activity in the area of Pure Mathematics. Number Theory, Logic, and Foundations of Mathematics particularly interest me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4541" LastEditorUserId="4541" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T17:51:11.877" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T17:28:30.943" Title="How could one best go about research in Pure Mathematics, whilst holding a full/part-time job?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18338" CreationDate="2014-03-20T01:36:43.223" Score="4" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is common practice or not, but much like how we see co-authorship in research papers, I was wondering if an undergrad would be allowed to collaborate with other students (possibly from other institutions) for their research project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13278" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T02:48:53.860" Title="Are Undergraduates allowed to collaborate with other students for their dissertation research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2014-03-20T02:48:53.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes !&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduates are definitely allowed to collaborate with other students (undergraduate/graduate) for their senior thesis/research project/dissertation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the degree to which they can successfully collaborate depends on many things including their faculty adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, as an undergraduate I collaborated with students from Civil Engineering/Construction Management and used some of the results we obtained in my undergraduate thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am a doctoral candidate and I have worked with undergraduates in the past whose thesis has sprouted from the results of our active collaboration in a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T02:48:53.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2014-03-20T03:59:07.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other excellent answers, I would like to make a suggestion for you,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find the author's e-mail address and then send an e-mail to ask the author's full name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author replies, you get the answer. If the author never replies in a reasonable time period, find the author's professional name as suggested by others or use the name that appears in the paper you are citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T03:59:07.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18115" CreationDate="2014-03-20T04:29:16.713" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the time between asking this question and getting some answers here, I read many comments on the original stories and blog posts dissecting the situation, many of which offered useful answers. I am compiling some of them here for the sake of others. As with most information found on the Internet, YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a question I didn't ask but will answer anyways (since xLeitix expressed some doubt in a comment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does this really happen?!?!?!?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, though rare, it does happen. Here are a few examples I found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Universities_to_fear&quot;&gt;Academic Job Wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;When I told them I needed some time to think about the unofficial offer (and also noted how early in the hiring season the offer was coming), the interviewing professor emailed me back that it was clear I was only considering them as a &quot;last resort&quot; and that they were therefore rescinding the offer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They thought my request for a revised offer letter that included the new terms agreed upon throughout negotiation was demonstrative of a &quot;lack of faith&quot; which they seemed to take personally. They rescinded the offer and then blamed it on my need for this letter, and suggested that I be more careful in asking for this in future negotiations with other institutions (they claimed this advice was a show of &quot;mentorship&quot; on their part).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The dean rescinded the offer. By email. And then refused to take my calls. This is exactly what she wrote: &quot;After having read your stated requests, specifically the number of years to tenure and the MWF teaching schedule, I am sorry to say that we are not able to sustain our job offer to you. At this time I am rescinding the job offer.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two weeks after the job talk, I was offered the position and given five days to consider it... Upon sending my questions and considerations two days later, about 90 minutes passed when I received an email wishing me well in my further job pursuits.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yikes. Of course, given these stories you could argue that these candidates probably dodged a bullet. But let's assume you aren't necessarily afraid of a rescinded offer, but want to avoid making a bad impression. In that case, on to my &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are there really different norms with respect to negotiation in a teaching vs. research institution? What are they?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Also, per various sources, there are differences in negotiation culture between elite institutions and not-so-elite institutions, community colleges and four-year colleges, public and private institutions, those with current or former religious affiliations and those without, locations where a union is involved and locations where it isn't, locations with large adjunct pools and locations without, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one thing I hadn't thought of: institutions that are seen as &quot;less desirable&quot; places to work for some reason are said to be more sensitive to aggressive negotiation. In these cases,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Negotiating demands can come across as &quot;I’ll only agree to work at a lowly school like yours if you give me all this extra stuff.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/03/14/the-rescinded-offer-who-is-in-the-wrong/&quot;&gt;The Professor is In&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there were also comments that said things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was a candidate &lt;em&gt;just like&lt;/em&gt; W, I asked for very much of the same things (more, in fact), and still go the job. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The candidate in question herself  said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that her request for a starting salary of $65,000 equaled a less than 20 percent increase in proposed pay -- a request she says another college offering her a job had met. &#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/17/candidate-negotiated-out-job-responds-critics&quot;&gt;InsideHigherEd&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems like finding out the culture of a particular institution (rather than generalizing based on institution &quot;type&quot;) is more effective. Which brings us to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What can I do pre-offer to get a sense for what the institution's culture is, and what I can reasonably ask for?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Start by asking: is it negotiable?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A good strategy for starting a negotiation is to simply ask whether there is any flexibility in the terms of the offer... If you get a firm &quot;no&quot;, you don't have to risk upsetting anyone with specific requests.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this can even have some nice side effects! The same comment continues,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At my institution... I began by asking this very general question, and the chair immediately responded with a better offer-without my mentioning any specifics and without consulting the dean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pre-negotiate by phone&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both Amatya and Samantha Kady pointed out here how difficult it is to read a situation by email, and dozens of commenters out there said the same. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You negotiate over the phone (aiming for the sweet spot between being enthusiastic about the job - you want them to still want you - and asserting your own needs). Then when that's done, you get the agreement in writing. That lets you feel out some things and get feedback on what's doable or not, and on how the requests are being taken. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, know yourself. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/03/14/the-rescinded-offer-who-is-in-the-wrong/&quot;&gt;The Professor is In&lt;/a&gt; puts it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I NEVER want to see inexperienced candidates negotiate on the phone. Particularly women. People panic and get codependent and agree to all kinds of things too quickly on the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really know what &quot;codependent&quot; means in this context, but I can definitely see how some people might &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be able to negotiate as well over the phone. Those people might be better served using a phone conversation as a &quot;feeler&quot; and then proceeding to negotiate over email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Listen for subtle differences in responses to your requests&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One commenter said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The chair indicated that this was the ceiling for the starting salary... but since he didn't make the same claim regarding the startup, I detected further flexibility, and was able to get it bumped up to 200% of the original offer, by providing an explanation of how I would use the additional funds.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Identify and use your ally&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get an offer, there's a good chance &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; really likes you and wants you to be there. Identify that person, and ask them for advice on what to negotiate. They may even tell you about things you hadn't even &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; to negotiate for! Specifically, several commenters said that the department chair is often an ally. As one commenter said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had a really great Chair. She told me that I was very unlikely to get a salary increase but that there was room to move the start-up. I asked for both anyway, and sure enough, was denied a salary increase but got significantly higher start-up (which I can use for summer salary). The kicker? The Chair spotted something I never would have thought of, which qualified me for thousands of dollars extra. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your ally in the department knows much more than you, and much more than any mentor you might have, what requests can be granted easily and what should not be mentioned at all. Use this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ask about &quot;perks&quot; at the interview stage&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many commenters agree that asking straightforwardly about the &quot;perks&quot; (non-salary) at the interview stage helps you gauge supply and demand at the institution in question. Otherwise, you run the risk of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;telling somebody who's put in a full 7 or 8 years for a sabbatical that you want one in your first 2 or 3 years? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-new-kind-of-pfo-mid-negotiating-post.html&quot;&gt;PhilosophySmoker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, that does sound bad! Same goes for things like teaching load and lab space - you can find out during the interview stage what is in especially short supply at the particular institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Place requests in the context of the institution's specific mission&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a valuable piece of advice. As a commenter said, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, if the reasoning behind fewer teaching preps was to do a better job teaching or to have an appropriate research program (whatever that may be), then frame it that way. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/03/ask-not.html&quot;&gt;FemaleScienceProfessor&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Visit the library&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an interesting one that I hadn't heard before (though it only applies to a subset of institutions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m betting that W or other candidates often get their data from the CHE’s salary survey, which is near useless for this purpose because it is such an aggregate number... If you’re interviewing at a public school, ask for about an hour to yourself in the library. When you get it, go straight to the Reference desk and ask to see the salaries in the department that’s hiring (it’s usually public). Write these down, and when you get the initial offer you’ll know if there’s room to negotiate on this point. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/03/14/the-rescinded-offer-who-is-in-the-wrong/&quot;&gt;The Professor is In&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While public salary information is also available online in most cases, unlike the internal data this is usually&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;total annual compensation, a figure that includes summer school, stipends for additional administrative duties, and the like, rendering the number useless (if not damaging) to such negotiations. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/03/14/the-rescinded-offer-who-is-in-the-wrong/&quot;&gt;The Professor is In&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some commenters pointed out another, more-complete-than-CHE (though not department-specific), source of salary data: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter&quot;&gt;IPEDS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T06:14:57.367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:14:57.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18344" CreationDate="2014-03-20T05:15:03.387" Score="9" ViewCount="2284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a glaring omission in my CV because I do not have any scholarly (peer reviewed) publications to my credit. However, I have good industry-based experience (more than 10 years when I have written a number of manuals and submissions), and have recently completed a Social Science PhD from a reputable university. I am after some guidance on ways in which a person in my position would address this glaring omission in a CV so as to better highlight/present his credentials for academic purposes (e.g. to apply to join a university etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T13:15:55.570" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T03:42:27.667" Title="How to &quot;dress up&quot; a CV that has a PhD but no peer reviewed publication record?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T05:36:26.197" Score="3" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there recommended or standard published papers (not books) that show great research methodology/ scientific methods?  I am trying to help out a friend who is in business and they are trying to study aspects of humans (in terms of their clients).  I gave him the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226065669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Craft of Research&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but it's long and I wonder if there is a paper that could do the same job.  Basically I want to show him a good example of coming up with a hypothesis, accounting for variables (such as stating that something was done in order to eliminate a problem), and analyzing the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T10:04:20.317" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T16:39:30.580" Title="Are there standard example research papers for teaching methodology and experiments?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18342" CreationDate="2014-03-20T06:04:12.510" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have submitted manuscripts to peer-reviewed outlets, you can say so.  If you have anything under second-round review, be sure to say so because that's all the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't submitted manuscripts, you could do so.  One of my peer-reviewed publications was originally a paper I wrote for a Ph.D. seminar.  I blew the dust off, firmed it up and made it stronger, and I submitted it.  It was a nice little paper.  My point is that you have doubtless done work that you could turn into a submission with X weeks of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of people list their current research projects under a title such as &quot;Current Research.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware that search committees know all the tricks.  You're not going to fool anyone.  But, I'm sure your goal is not to &quot;fool&quot; anyone at all.  You just want to put your best foot forward, and there's nothing wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13286" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:04:12.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17774" CreationDate="2014-03-20T06:30:52.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this evaluation fair for small teams (2 or 3 people)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With peer-evaluation schemes like this, the fewer students there are in the group, the more vulnerable students are to gamesmanship and unfairly false ratings.   Even if they're not actually unfair to each other, their feelings of vulnerability to one another's unfairness is deadly for your student ratings.  They will blame you for putting them in this vulnerable position.  Plus, if there isn't exactly the same number of students in each group, it's difficult for students to feel that the scoring is fair.  More broadly, I have found that students hate &quot;allocate points&quot; schemes.  Perhaps it seems like I'm too pandering to students with regard to their student ratings, but I believe there are good reasons to take a hit on ratings (e.g., a rigorous course) and unwise reasons to take a hit on ratings (e.g., using a peer evaluation technique that they think is unfair).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach to this problem has been to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) promise that peer ratings will stay completely anonymous -- which can even be accomplished in two-person teams by combining the peer rating with another scored element (e.g., class participation) when reporting their scores.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) gather peer ratings as responses to some 1-10 rating questions (e.g., &quot;Attended all group meetings, 1 = Disagree Completely, 10 = Agree Completely&quot;) rather than an allocate points scheme, and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) delay the grief of doing peer evaluations until the end of the semester.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that what I do doesn't fit with your current plan, but maybe it's something to think about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13286" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:30:52.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18347" CreationDate="2014-03-20T06:40:20.253" Score="3" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether it is a good practice for someone to emphasize that he obtained his degree from a prestigious university by including the name of his university always after his title, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Name, PhD (Caltech)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this in few occasions, but felt that it could be a bit offending to someone. Is this a discouraged behavior? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13248" LastActivityDate="2019-10-25T14:08:20.537" Title="Is it good to emphasize that one obtained a PhD from a prestigious university" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18346" CreationDate="2014-03-20T07:18:23.007" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could be taken to mean that your PhD from CalTech was a high point of your career and you want to make sure people know that. Depending on the context, that may be a bad or good thing. At a CalTech alumni meeting, it could be very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorDisplayName="user68958" LastEditDate="2019-10-25T13:46:37.140" LastActivityDate="2019-10-25T13:46:37.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18354" CreationDate="2014-03-20T10:04:16.350" Score="75" ViewCount="187208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I heard about papers published in conference. But still I am not able to find the major difference between papers published in a conference and those published in a journal. What is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13294" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-01T21:11:18.993" LastActivityDate="2018-01-01T21:11:18.993" Title="Difference between conference paper and journal paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18117" CreationDate="2014-03-20T11:10:00.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem that is beginning to be recognised, and has been described by some as a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2013-09-science-crisis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crisis of reproducibility&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. There have been examples of papers in prominent journals being withdrawn after bugs were found in the researchers' code. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climateknowledge.org/figures/Rood_Climate_Change_AOSS480_Documents/Model_validation/Post_Computational_Science_Demands_PhysToday_2005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; describes some of the problems in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view there are three primary paths to addressing it,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach scientific programmers good software development practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make source code and datasets available and citable, with DOIs and with confidence that they will be available and unchanged for the long term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get journals to &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; that source and data are available (although comprimises must probably be made where data is commercially confidential), and that reviewers conduct code review. This may not be straightforward since (as noted in the Post &amp;amp; Votta article linked above) it will not always be possible to find one reviewer who is qualified to review the code and sufficiently expert on the science involved. (and that's before we even consider how long code review might take!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Carpentry&lt;/a&gt; project is aimed at addressing point 1 and 2 above, and may be of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T11:10:00.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18342" CreationDate="2014-03-20T13:09:37.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely write up your ideas/manuscripts as publishable manuscripts if you haven't already. After reshaping the manuscripts so that they are ready for submission, I would also suggest that you post them as preprints online (if journals in your field allows this), preferably to a preprint server. Depending on your field there are e.g. arXiv, peerJ, SSRN (most relevant for you), and biorxiv. This will allow you link to the paper, so that people can evaluate by themselves if your manuscripts contain good research. This is also a way of showing that there is actually a finished well-structured manuscript, and not just a manuscript title on your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, your best bet would be to fix manuscripts, submit to journal + upload to preprint server, and include on CV as &lt;em&gt;submitted manuscript&lt;/em&gt; along with a preprint link. As the previous answer stated, also make sure to update the status of manuscripts when they go out for review/revision. Just be sure that you are honest in how you present the status of your manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T05:44:27.117" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T05:44:27.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18336" CreationDate="2014-03-20T13:20:10.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A substantial fraction of activity is visible on arXiv, the main page for which is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &quot;number theory&quot; listings are at &lt;a href=&quot;http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.NT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.NT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, also, many mathematicians keep papers on their web-pages, so you can look backward in time effectively on these pages. And there are listings of many number-theorists' URLs at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.numbertheory.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.numbertheory.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, with the internet, it is possible to keep in touch with current and past activity to a great degree. Many journal articles are behind paywalls, unfortunately, but substantial information about such material is available by other means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and: &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;https://mathoverflow.net/&lt;/a&gt; is a Q-and-A for research-level mathematics and mathematicians, while &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://math.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; is for undergrad and beginning graduate-level mathematics. Old questions and answers are searchable in both cases. In the case of math stack exchange, some dubious or not-ideal answers propagate, so take things &quot;with a grain of salt&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you can find any way to have more direct personal contact with mathematicians, things can be communicated that you won't see in formal writing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:36:49.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18355" CreationDate="2014-03-20T13:40:01.043" Score="5" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to compare my results with other result, so I need to re-plot the other author's results against my results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I want use this fig as a way of comparing results&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2xSe7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so is there any way to do that or any software can do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13298" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T14:04:50.257" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:04:50.257" Title="How do I re-plot my results against existing results?" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18349" CreationDate="2014-03-20T13:44:06.837" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conference papers refer to articles that are written with the goal of being accepted to a conference: typically an annual (or biannual) venue with a specific scope where you can present your results to the community, usually as an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or a tabled discussion. The review process for conference papers is typically within a fixed window: everyone submits for a certain deadline, then the review committee (program committee) collaborates to review and discuss papers, then all authors are notified with accept/reject at the same time. Since the review process has a fixed schedule (to meet the schedule of the physical meeting), conference review times are quite predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conference papers are typically published in collections called &quot;proceedings&quot;: sometimes these are printed by university presses, by professional organizations, by big-name publishers, or simply online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal papers refer to an article that's published in an issue of the journal. The frequency of issues for different journals varies from one-a-month to once-a-year, or anything in between; it may not even be regular. The review process for journals often does not have a fixed deadline or schedule: though journals may promise things like &quot;reviews in six weeks&quot;, in my experience, this rarely if ever holds true. However, instead of conferences that typically have only accept/reject decisions, journals typically have a rolling review schedule and reviewers can opt to ask the authors for revisions, meaning that there might be multiple review phases (often limited to three, at which stage the paper is rejected/accepted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since conference papers have a fixed schedule and provide the authors a venue for discussion and feedback, they are generally for earlier-term work or for &quot;announcing/marking an idea&quot;, or for finding collaborators. Furthermore, conference papers tend to have fixed page-limits, which restricts the content to preliminary findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal papers tend to have generous page-limits (or none at all), but typically require the work to be more comprehensive and self-contained in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, in most fields, papers in well-recognized journals tend to have more prestige than papers in well-recognized conferences (esp. in terms of metrics). But this is a simplification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in some fields, conference papers are akin to talk abstracts, in areas like computer science, conference papers can be very meaty and there is a high churn of papers in conferences. Top conferences can have acceptance rates around 10%, and as such, A+ conference papers are often held in high regard within the community: these venues are far more competitive than many of the best journals. Still, even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference following the norm in other academic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T16:41:08.553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:41:08.553" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18353" CreationDate="2014-03-20T13:49:56.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to about this. The first is to contact the authors of the paper containing th graphs and ask if they can supply the data. Otherwise you can search for digitizing software on the web. I have one (open source) that comes to mind &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitizer.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engauge Digitizer&lt;/a&gt; but that is not the only one by far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T13:49:56.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18356" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:08:24.227" Score="5" ViewCount="4999" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Report&lt;/a&gt;, we can find any journal Impact Factor (IF) and 5-Years Impact Factor (IF5), which is, as far as I get it, the Impact Factor over the last 5 years (well, the name is quite self-descriptive...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What interests me is the difference between both indexes. I was wondering how to analyse this difference. If IF &gt; IF5, does it means the journal IF is globally increasing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And which one is more accurate while evaluating a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T14:57:44.037" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T03:53:21.547" Title="Impact Factor vs 5-year Impact Factor" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:18:31.030" Score="28" ViewCount="24091" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are best practices (if any exist) for labeling axes in plots/graphs for academic documents, such as theses, publications, or presentations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible options are to use the variable, spell out the variable, or a combination of both. For example, to label a time axis, we could write: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; (s)&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Time (s)&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Time, &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; (s)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any objective reasons to prefer one style over another, assuming the publisher does not specify which to use? Or sources suggesting a particular format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have browsed many journal requirements, but haven't found any that specifically address this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12510" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T05:09:34.730" LastActivityDate="2021-03-28T08:20:57.760" Title="Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs?" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:31:16.027" Score="5" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to a not-so-well-recognized university for my PhD studies. The reason behind it was that one of my undergraduate professors moved to that university for some financial benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been working in the research proposal for almost one year, and it got accepted. The problem is that I would like to continue with my studies, but I know that if I continue in that university I would not get many academic chances, and I will be obtaining my doctoral title just for the sake of getting the certificate and nothing more. Actually I would like to move forward to other more respected university with my research proposal. By the way this is my own work and is not related to any on going project from my supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can tell the professor that I would like to still have the professor's help in matters of getting recommendation letters? so I can move with my project to a more well-respected university? I just do not know how to mention that I feel that my academic future will be jeopardized if I decide to stay at this university. It's not a big deal for the professor, who already has a stable academic position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with this situation? I do not want the professor to get pissed off with me or to burn any bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T16:44:23.577" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T16:44:23.577" Title="how to express my thought to my supervisor without being disrespectful?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18357" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:31:16.177" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good practise is to make sure the graph is understandable even when taken out of its context (the paper). Hence spelling out the label helps to avoid misunderstandings. There is, however, nothing formally wrong with the other forms you mention although the label including both variable and variable abbreviation is not common in my field. On the other hand, it serves to couple the variable name with its abbreviation so it has its merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:31:16.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18356" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:45:35.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The impact factor is calculated over the two previous years (the 2013 number is based on referencing for 2011 and 2012). A high IF indicates that many papers are referenced very quickly (within 2 years of publication). This indicates high turnover rates for the journal. If the longer term value is lower, it could mean what you describe but can also mean that work published has very limited life span. In many fields where publications are slow to produce, in my case they may involve field and longer term experimental work, it is hard to gain many references very quickly and hence the longer term indicator becomes more important and higher. This is also true for small fields where the number of publications is too small for a regular IF to make sense. In field that I am familiar with the five year factor is higher than the ordinary IF bit it will likely vary depending mostly on the nature of the field; if publications have a long or short time span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another factor called the Cited half-life (The median age of the articles that were cited in a year) which in my field often exceeds 10 years indicating the longevity of publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/help/h_toc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal Citation Reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:45:35.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18336" CreationDate="2014-03-20T15:04:52.427" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published a little work in number theory while working full time. There is no big secret, just read about the problems that are at a level you can solve, solve the problems and publish the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing in a journal as an unaffiliated researcher is harder than for professional academics but not impossible. Learning TeX will help because many journals want LaTex submissions. Most background information is available online if you search for it. You can join polymath projects, use mathoverflow etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some advantages of working outside the system. You dont have to go around pleasing the people who might offer positions and you can work on what you want rather than what a math department or funding agency wants. So enjoy it as a hobby while earning a proper salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I will add a little more specific advice. If you were doing a doctorate in a university you would have a wise old supervisor who would make sure you are heading in the right direction. If you want to work outside academia there is a danger of getting on a track that has no hope of success. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can tackle a well known unsolved problem directly. This is a mistake very frequently made by outsiders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to start on simpler problems that you can handle and use them to build up expertise even if they are not of much interest to others. One way to find such problems is to start from a well-known one but then generalise it in some novel way to a bigger class of problems. Then look for special cases that can be solved and then generalise your solutions to solve a wider class of cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, use your skills as a programmer to find solutions of interesting problems and then look for patterns. When you find patterns, make conjectures from them that you may then be able to prove. Try solving the problems at &lt;a href=&quot;https://projecteuler.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://projecteuler.net/&lt;/a&gt; to perfect your algorithm skills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastEditorUserId="7466" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T10:21:24.333" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T10:21:24.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18358" CreationDate="2014-03-20T15:19:44.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal recommendation would be to say you're trying to complete your PhD with a university that specializes in your field of study/research. I would also recommend a certain level of honesty (not saying their school isn't as respected, just that you're trying to get into a school that is well known and respected for your specific pursuit.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people working in education understand and respect the pursuit of knowledge, not that they aren't unhappy about losing people, but they either respect you, or they don't. Either way you must do what's best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13300" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T15:45:30.560" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T15:45:30.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T16:02:00.863" Score="1" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is rather short one, how much information should I include when writing the introduction, and how much should be left out for the literature review&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; the reason for this question, is because my advisor told me that my introduction is to light and he raised several question that eventually will be covered in literature review. When I pointed that out, he said that the introduction should inform the reader about the theme being addressed by the thesis/paper so that the reader will have an overview of the paper from reading the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;note: my introduction contains the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.1 Background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.2 Problem Formulation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.3 Purposes of study and hypotheses being tested&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.4 Data Sampling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.5 Structure of the paper &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9229" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T16:33:04.667" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T04:40:44.850" Title="What should I put in the Introduction as opposed to the Literature Review?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2014-03-20T16:54:47.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(In economics at least.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction (5 pages)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• start with some broader motivation or backgrund&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– maybe a sentence or a paragraph at most&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• quickly explain your problem/puzzle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– show not tell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– don't say your work is pathbreaking or the problem is interesting (arrogant)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• clearly, concisely explain what is novel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– crystal clear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• report key results &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– no hiding the punchline! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• discuss implication&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– what does it mean for public policy? for theory? etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Layout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– a clear roadmap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– Section 1 does this. Section 2 does this. Section 3 etc...so they can find what they want. (This is the easiest paragraph to write)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12260" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T16:54:47.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T17:12:55.447" Score="7" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior undergraduate in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and I ultimately want to pursue a Master's degree in the field of Embedded Systems. However, my current financial situation prohibits me from paying for this, so I have decided to take a couple years off in order to save money and to apply for loans and scholarships. To that end, I have recently accepted a job in the IT department of a respected bank (I was unable to find a job in the field of Embedded Systems). Since I am not able to work in my target domain, will this time off negatively affect my prospects at top graduate programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13304" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T21:07:50.423" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:34:06.700" Title="Will my job have a negative impact on my profile as a graduate student applicant?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21179" CreationDate="2014-03-20T18:22:11.083" Score="2" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted applications for tenure track positions to several US universities via their online job systems (&lt;a href=&quot;https://jobs.xxx.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jobs.xxx.edu/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week I got a feedback from one of the schools that my application would no longer be considered. However, a week later, the status of my application on the portal is still &quot;under review&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This raises a question for me: after the department has decided to reject the application, how soon is the status in the online system updated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know that because I have not received a feedback from the other schools I applied, and am wondering if it's possible that the department has already decided to reject but the portal was not updated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12956" LastEditorUserId="12956" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T18:27:13.993" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:53:05.897" Title="Job portal of US universities: when is the application status updated?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T18:23:34.090" Score="4" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a video from my simulation and would like to add the link to my journal article. However, I do not want to post it on YouTube since I do not want my video next to some random video. Are there websites dedicated solely for this purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13309" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T10:14:48.267" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T10:14:48.267" Title="Are there websites for hosting solely academic videos?" Tags="&lt;website&gt;&lt;audio-video-recording&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T18:40:56.633" Score="5" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a research paper in English but the topic is about a different country and the data is written in a different language, Arabic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I translate the data into English?&#xA;If yes, should I include a version of the excerpt in the original language?&#xA;If yes, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from using excerpts of data, I sometimes have to mention certain words of the original language such names of participants and research fields, but I do not know whether I should use transliteration, translation or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T06:10:18.767" Title="How should I present data written in another language?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18306" CreationDate="2014-03-20T19:07:10.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel contacting the potential reviewers in the way you suggest would at least seem awkward. However, something that is common practice at least in some fields is to send your preprint before submission to people that might be interested. The list of potential reviewers tend to largely intersect the list of potentially interested people, so in some sense this is a way to contact them in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T19:07:10.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18372" CreationDate="2014-03-20T19:32:45.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would depend how much your translation of the story makes a difference to your thesis. If it doesn't particularly matter with respect to the finer details, it would be sufficient to provide the entire story in Arabic and then give a synopsis in English. If it's more critical that the audience knows what each line means, then give each sentence with its English gloss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to go to the extreme, you would have an interlinear gloss, which means that each word, or even morpheme, is glossed individually, and then a free translation given at the end. Here's a Hungarian example (from the Leipzig glossing rules):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Gila abur-u-n      ferma  hamišaluǧ  güǧüna  amuq’-da-č. &#xA;now  they-OBL-GEN  farm   forever    behind  stay-FUT-NEG &#xA;‘Now their farm will not stay behind forever.’ &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In linguistics we use these literally hundreds of times in a thesis, because this is where our data really is. It's probably more depth than you'd be willing to go into, and I would advise against it unless the Arabic syntactic and morphological features are absolutely critical to your thesis. The conventions that most linguists use (and tweak to their own subject language) with respect to the names of various grammatical features (OBL and GEN, for example) can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leipzig Glossing Rules&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd be fine to select from either giving the entire story followed by a synopsis of whatever detail you'd prefer, or a line-by-line transliteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T19:32:45.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18357" CreationDate="2014-03-20T20:36:52.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very particular about figures in my papers, as when I skim a paper the first thing I do after reading the abstract is look at the figures to determine whether the results are interesting or not, and on that basis whether to read the paper in more detail. Hence I always make sure the data is clearly presented through an appropriate use of symbols, colours and typeface, as well as a detailed stand alone caption describing what the data is and what it shows. As part of this I always label the axes in the form &quot;quantity (unit)&quot;. In my opinion a variable name 't' is insufficiently descriptive to make figures stand alone, and so doesn't communicate to the casual reader what the figure shows. Units are of course essential, and in the case of dimensionless quantities I usually include the variable name as the unit, eg t/t0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T20:36:52.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T20:51:35.303" Score="8" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;there's something I've been curious about regarding the funding of labs in graduate schools. I imagine it's different in different schools, but there's probably a most common scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is money managed for a lab? My most naive understanding is that the lab mostly gets money from grants. But what happens when a lab runs out of grant money? I assume the school doesn't want a major lab supporting several students and postdocs just folding, so I'm guessing they lend them money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the are several common facilities at my school that charge the lab when students use them (electron microscopes, etc). I know we're short on money right now, but I've never heard of anyone not being able to use the facilities. I would definitely make sense to me that the school internally lets a lab rack up debt to them with the expectation that it'll be paid back when they get grants in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how does it work for peoples' paychecks, and non-school payments? I know our lab also has a p-card. Does that mean we may be racking up debt externally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13312" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:08:54.173" Title="How does laboratory funding and money management work in grad school?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18336" CreationDate="2014-03-20T21:20:24.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have the opportunity to spend a lot of time (meaning: not even a part-time job) thinking of a wealth of problems.  This is great if I don't care about how I am going to handle my retirement (options: go homeless; die early; get adopted).  I can fuss with details, spend time on the Internet researching or messing around, and still get enough sleep, time with family, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can lead your life as you choose.  If you want to lead it best however, make sure that what you do is in line with your values.  If you can get satisfaction from e.g. spending an hour a day thinking and writing math, schedule that in.  If you absolutely want to integrate math into your current lifestyle, the major resource involved is time.  Make sure that resource is spent wisely.  (I've chosen to spend time away from math learning piano.  We'll&#xA;see in a decade or so how good a choice that was for me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the assumption that you have approximately ten hours a week to devote to mathematics,  I suggest building Internet and personal resources.  Involving yourself on online fora such as math.stackexchange and MathOverflow may help, if you don't clash too much with the culture.  Write up your observations in ways that might be understandable by others.  Engage with other people, and establish relationships (face-to-face or long distance) with the understood purpose of mutual mathematics enhancement.  If you can get a mentor, even better. Find out if you like to solve problems (&quot;repair work&quot;), build bodies of knowledge (&quot;catherdral or bazaar builder&quot;), or note interesting connections (synthesis).   If you can leverage your existing skills to the process, so much the better.  Get to know your research library.   If potential mentors have offered up their email, use it; don't be afraid to ask, and always respect the others' time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, manage your resources, primarily time, energy, and satisfaction level.  Hopefully nature will tell you which direction to follow, and a support group will tell you (what not to do) to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T21:20:24.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18376" CreationDate="2014-03-20T22:08:54.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bad things happen when a research group runs out of money. If it's a short-term cash flow problem (for instance, having to meet payroll in the aftermath of the US government shutdown of 2013), the university should be able to provide short-term funds to cover the gap. But this can come at a cost:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may not be possible to order necessary supplies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Travel may be restricted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal operations (usage of expensive equipment, etc.) may have to be partially or totally curtailed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it's a long-term, structural problem—for instance, because the group has grown faster than grant funds to support the group—the consequences can be much more dire:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New students and postdocs can't be hired.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support for undergraduate students (REU's, and similar programs) get cut.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may have to take on teaching assignments to receive their stipends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recently assigned students may be asked to switch into another research group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:08:54.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2014-03-20T22:26:00.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the journal will host the videos as supplementary material, but if you want to host it externally, there are options. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/about&quot;&gt;figshare&lt;/a&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/blog/A%20YouTube%20%20for%20Scientists/11&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:26:00.973" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-03-20T22:26:00.973" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18357" CreationDate="2014-03-20T22:58:07.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing technically incorrect about any of those forms. In journal submissions, there will be typesetters to check that your figures adhere to their style guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name of the quantity (e.g. &lt;code&gt;time&lt;/code&gt;) and its units (e.g. &lt;code&gt;s&lt;/code&gt;) are needed for clarity. It is generally better to add some concise descriptor to the quantity (e.g. Is it reaction time? geological time? etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preferences for how the units are displayed are somewhat subjective as well. An alternative format is using &lt;code&gt;/&lt;/code&gt; as a separator (e.g. &lt;code&gt;Time / s&lt;/code&gt;), though I personally think this format lends itself to confusion with derived quantities that contain division (e.g. &lt;code&gt;Dimensionless Time, t/tc&lt;/code&gt;, as another user mentioned, will also have a &lt;code&gt;/&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding the variable name (e.g. t) is often redundant in formal publications, unless equations figure extensively into the written portion and/or the naming is non-obvious or unconventional (say you used τ). Italicization will often be used to improve clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, consistency is critical. Choose a format, and use it for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; graphs in the same manuscript. Doing otherwise just appears sloppy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13317" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:58:07.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18233" CreationDate="2014-03-20T23:23:10.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that you have started the field of Algebraic General Topology you may want to convince other people that it is worth their while to learn about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking through the slides I see lots of words whose definitions I do not know. I have not read your paper and I am ignorant of the terminology in the fields you are generalizing. Perhaps there are theorems in two different fields that when generalized by your techniques turn out to be the same theorem. If you are lucky no one will have previously realized that they are the same theorem. If something like this is the case. I would pick such theorems, place them at the top of each of two columns on (digital) piece of paper and then use your general proof for each of the theorems but use the language of the field from which the particular theorem comes. This way people will be able to see what you have accomplished without learning lots of new language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1076" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T23:23:10.097" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2014-03-20T23:28:15.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to vary among disciplines.  I suggest you choose two or three papers that have been published in the journal you're targeting -- papers that attempt to do something analogous to what you're doing -- and copy those papers intensely.  Of course, I &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; mean plagiarize them.  I don't even necessarily mean that you would copy any particular words.  Instead, I mean that you would copy these papers in terms of how much info to give and where to give it, what kinds of issues you should cover and what kinds of issues you should avoid.  Doing research is different than writing it up.  In some sense, these papers become your mentors to show you the tone and style of the journal.  You've read a metric ton of these papers in the past, so it probably feels like you already know how they go, but when you follow a mentor paper closely there are things that will become apparent that you never noticed before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I recommend something I've done over the last few years that has helped me.  I keep a clip-file called &quot;Nicely said!&quot; in which I keep examples of how authors deftly handled tricky issues in their write-up.  I use these examples as &quot;mini-mentors&quot; to guide me when I must handle a tricky issue.  Here again, I might not use any of the actual words they did, but having an excellent example in front of me helps a lot.  I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13286" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T23:28:15.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T00:26:08.270" Score="17" ViewCount="921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am early in a tenure-track position. I undertook with a publisher to write a reference book a while back and with a light load to start with in my new position, I recently agreed to set a deadline of later this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I progressed quickly through some of the core chapters where I knew what I wanted to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have a heavier teaching load, preparing course material from scratch week-to-week, and am struggling to cope with my work hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But spending all my few spare cycles in the book seems to be carrying a huge opportunity cost. Though my research profile is sufficiently strong for me not to have to worry about journal output for a while, and I'm currently in the &quot;harvest cycle&quot; of a couple of journal papers that are coming through from about a year ago, I feel I am missing opportunities to start collaborations with other faculty members. I want to start on some new directions and target new communities with the help of new colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I feel like I don't have the bandwidth to bring the quality of the book to the level I would like. Writing the book has thus become a disheartening chore, trying to balance progress and quality. Working odd hours here and there, I can't dedicate myself to it. There are more pressing things to think about while showering in the morning. Every time I go to work on it, it's a cold start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path/17245#17245&quot;&gt;this rather excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; on an unrelated question, @Pete L. Clark mentioned the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With regard to writing books: one of my most distinguished colleagues, Dino Lorenzini, wrote an excellent and rather successful book near the beginning of his career. He now tells anyone who will listen that junior faculty should not write books. Of course sometimes the heart wants what it wants, but from a strategic perspective I think this is eminently sound, and I say this as someone who may turn around and write some books now that I am solidly into my mid-career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prompts me to ask, is it generally the case that writing a book early in one's tenure-track career carries too much of an opportunity cost? My hope is that the book will stand in good stead for my tenure application, and may attract citations in the long term (I believe it is in a good niche), but would I be better off with two-to-three more good journal papers instead (what I estimate the opportunity cost to be)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I'm looking for anecdotes on how writing a book helped/hindered early-career (tenure-track) researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:09:49.930" Title="Pros and cons of (co-)authoring a reference book in early career?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18215" CreationDate="2014-03-21T02:01:45.937" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally, I contacted CWU's library and was told by an archivist that Knuth indeed graduated from the Case Institute of Technology with a BSc and an MSc simultaneously in 1960.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he didn't need to present a thesis. It was not a graduation requirement at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a shame!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13158" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T02:01:45.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-03-21T03:17:26.850" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of getting the community to approach you, I suggest that you be the one to approach the community.  As an amateur (one who is outside the academic mathematical community), you are at a big disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you attend conferences and interact with others who are doing work similar to yours.  In my opinion, the best way to get attention is to present papers in good conferences and to publish papers in respectable journals.  By doing this, your reputation will improve and your work will be better known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T03:17:26.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2014-03-21T04:40:44.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, this varies a lot by discipline, type of manuscript, journal and so on. But speaking about a prototypical  psychology single study paper, a common structure is: (1) introduction, (2) method, (3) results, and (4) discussion. The introduction is commonly composed of (1) an opening; (2) a literature review; and (3) a description of the current study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this breakdown, what I call the opening is what you call the introduction. The opening is commonly between 1 and 5 paragraphs. I previously wrote a post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/how-to-write-introduction-section-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how to write an introduction in psychology&lt;/a&gt; where to quote myself, &quot;the opening section typically moves from showing why the research is important, to situating the research in context, and then to setting an outline of what is to follow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general a good strategy is to find some similar articles to that which you are writing and carefully deconstruct these. How are aims presented? How is the research motivated? How is the importance justified? How is the gap in the literature framed? Where is this content presented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T04:40:44.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T10:16:26.507" Score="4" ViewCount="978" Body="&lt;p&gt;i wrote a message to the Editor to inquire about my&#xA;revision sent about 4 months ago.  He informed me yesterday(March 20th, 2014)&#xA;that my manuscript has already completed 1 review.&#xA;However, we are still awaiting the last report.&#xA;from the remaining referee. My question is How long&#xA;should I wait for the response of the referee? and what do you advise me to do?&#xA;n.b. the journal belongs to Springer&#xA;Best regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13324" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T15:59:10.577" Title="How long should I wait for the response of the referee?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18394" CreationDate="2014-03-20T22:38:10.290" Score="8" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my masters thesis, I needed a to run a tool to filter out RNA sequences and then research on the filtered data. I researched online reading papers to find an appropriate tool and I found one that really fitted my needs. The tool was published by a renowned group in a good journal (IF around 7). The tool claimed to have been run on a 30 random datasets and claimed to have around 90% specificity and sensitivity. I was very happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I ran it on my dataset, the tool produced so many false positives and false negetives. Its accuracy was less than 10%. I ran on other datasets too and never got an accuracy of more than 20% in any one of them. To my surprise, the tool only worked well on the dataset that was published with the tool, with a good accuracy and no other input. I cannot believe that the dataset was randomly chosen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke to my PI about this and he said that he understands. He allowed me to choose another topic for my thesis and helped me a lot to complete. In the end I could successfully defend my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this common for groups (esp in Bioinformatics) to select a biased dataset as input and claim it to be random?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does reviewers really run the tools (or read the source code) that are accompanied by the paper in order to test it and see whether it really does what it claims or they only read the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can an end user later write to the editor and let him know that the tool published in their journal isn't what it was suppose to be?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" OwnerDisplayName="Ank" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T13:11:54.213" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T13:37:49.593" Title="Are datasets really random for Bioinformatics tools" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;bioinformatics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18393" CreationDate="2014-03-21T13:37:49.593" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing here is an &lt;em&gt;in silico&lt;/em&gt; form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_%28fallacy%29&quot;&gt;Cherry Picking Fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. Before answering your questions specifically, I would like to point out that before assuming bad intent or foul play, consider the biological variability in the datasets, and difficulties writing generalised solutions to biological problems. Take it from a 3rd year grad student and a bioinformatician in training, it's not straight-forward to develop tools for biological datasets. There are both &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;biological&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; challenges in writing &quot;foolproof&quot; software in bioinformatics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider for instance, that there are multiple ways to estimate error and false discovery rate (FDR). There are also varying levels of thresholds used in different labs. Any heuristic value, if hardcoded, might alter the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the biological diversity, as well as technical variability introduced by wetlab benchwork will likely have serious influence on the datasets. Once everything boils down to a large table of numbers, all of that variability is implicit and thus often forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, my answers to your question(s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; it's not common to pick datasets just to show that your model/software works, at least not publicly. That would go against scientific rigour and ethics. At the same time, you start from what you have available. I typically start with datasets we have in the lab, when I start developing a new tool. But in order to publish your method, you should typically show that it works on data from independent sources, or alternative data types etc. All in all, your results might not be representative of all datasets out there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is impossible to answer this question, factually. I am sure there are reviewers that take a look at raw data and/or source code, but it's unlikely that any reviewer actually digs into the source code, line by line, to see if everything checks out. But I am also certain that there are some who just see if you have actually made the source code or test datasets available or not, without actually look at them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can always do that, end-user or not. But beware, before you go blowing the whistle on someone else's handiwork (which probably took them a significant amount of time and money) you better get your facts straight. Claiming that they are selling false results or simply misinterpreted their results is a very serious accusation, especially if the authors are renown and respected in the field. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to writing a letter to the editor (who AFAIK have a duty of publishing scrutinising critique on something that has been published in that journal) you should check, &lt;em&gt;and double check&lt;/em&gt;, your results. &lt;em&gt;Make sure&lt;/em&gt; you are not misunderstanding the statements made in the original work. &lt;em&gt;Make sure&lt;/em&gt; you are not misunderstanding your own results. &lt;em&gt;Make sure&lt;/em&gt; what you have observed is not a side-effect of your datasets or your own use of the software, try to talk to other people who have used the software. And make sure, your supervisor (and others in the group) are behind you, get your own results investigated by your superiors and colleagues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything checks out you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;, inform the journal that the results in the original article might not reflect a general reality, and that you could not replicate the results on independent datasets, then show your results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T13:37:49.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18396" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:04:28.167" Score="5" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I presently work in a facilities-type role at a small Liberal Arts college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of working at the college is the ability to take two classes per academic-year (not including summer or winter terms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BS in Economics from a larger university as well as a pretty broad quantitative background and I'm interested in taking classes in mathematics, statistics, and computer science (they have an MSCS program here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm wondering is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How likely would it be for me to become involved in research projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be odd for a staff member taking a few classes to ask about doing research with a faculty member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping to pad my resume a bit for acceptance into a PhD or MS in Applied Math program down the line; but, I'm wondering if it's worth getting my hopes up about doing research even though I'm just a staff member taking classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13327" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T14:28:06.143" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T14:32:01.200" Title="College Staff Taking Classes and Doing Research" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18395" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:32:01.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, your request would certainly be unusual for most faculty members, but that also doesn't mean it wouldn't be accepted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main challenge would be if you were looking to be paid for the work. Under such circumstances, it might be much more challenging to get involved with projects, because the funding mechanisms (such as NSF REU grants, which fund many undergraduate research projects) would not be available to fund you (since you're not an undergraduate student!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're just looking to do it for the research experience, I think the biggest obstacle would be convincing a potential advisor that you're serious. I would recommend then that you make an in-person appointment, rather than trying to set something like this up via email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T14:32:01.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18391" CreationDate="2014-03-21T15:59:10.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i wrote a message to the Editor to inquire about my revision sent about 4 months ago. He informed me yesterday(March 20th, 2014) that my manuscript has already completed 1 review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have contacted the editor and they looked into it (and perhaps pinged the reviewer with a reminder), I don't see that there is much else you could do at this point (other than something drastic like withdraw, which would be entirely unjustified after four months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, we are still awaiting the last report. from the remaining referee. My question is How long should I wait for the response of the referee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as it takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and what do you advise me to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've just contacted the editor and gotten a response. My advice now would simply be to be patient. Try to put it at the back of your mind and focus on other work. (And don't message the editor again for another few months; have faith in them to do their job.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4 months for secondary revision is too long no?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many fields, unfortunately, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T15:59:10.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21608" CreationDate="2014-03-21T17:09:17.817" Score="12" ViewCount="1074" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common way to handle grant applications seems to be to request external reviews, to which the applicant can then respond. Reviews and response together are discussed at a panel where the proposals are ranked, and the top x% then are funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found myself in a nice, but perplexing situation: I got back the reviews for my first grant proposal, and all reviewers gave top scores (and very positive comments). Now I'm wondering whether or not to use my right to respond - all information I could find about responses boil down to addressing criticism, but what do you do if there is no criticism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The grant agency explicitly discourages using the reply to thank reviewers. The alternative option besides not replying at all could be to attempt to selectively agree with the most praising comments or something like that, but I'm not sure that is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="12047" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T20:10:43.007" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T19:56:12.763" Title="Responding to positive grant reviews?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T17:49:31.173" Score="3" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in learning about how to go about writing a paper, and obviously, an integral part of this process will be to read papers written by others, and study those. I'm curious about the idea of using software mapping tools as a means of logging connections between certain papers of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3490/is-there-a-network-map-of-subjects-and-how-they-connect-with-each-other&quot;&gt;Is there a network map of subjects and how they connect with each other?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13329/map-tree-of-citations-references&quot;&gt;Map (tree) of citations/references&lt;/a&gt; are related to my question, but I'm not sure the suggested software, &lt;strong&gt;Auto Desk&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;or &lt;strong&gt;Cytoscape&lt;/strong&gt;, would be entirely appropriate for what I'm interested in doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4541" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T19:20:40.093" Title="Mapping connections between topics covered in academic papers - does such a tool exist?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T18:26:24.417" Score="8" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a US citizen and native, my view of degree progression is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bachelors, 4 years of study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters, 1-2 years of study, thesis or portfolio required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doctorate, 3-4 years of study, comprehensive exams and dissertation required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this compare globally? My current understanding is that European schools invert the Bachelors/Masters terms. How does a global organization's human resources department track this for comparison? How do you ensure you are comparing apples to oranges? What are the names of the systems (if they have them, possibly American, European, or another nomenclature)? I recall looking for a simple presentation of this information before, and not being able to find it, so I hope to solve this once and for all here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2019-09-19T21:00:05.993" Title="How does a global organization compare global degrees?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-09-24T07:28:16.637" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18400" CreationDate="2014-03-21T18:53:35.830" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Finland (and other Nordic countries) the situation is almost the same as what you describe. Here, the degree progression is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bachelor's degree, 3 years (180 ECTS credits), includes a thesis without original research, e.g. literature review (10 cr)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master's degree, 2 years (120 cr), includes a thesis with research (30 cr)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doctorate, 4 years, completed by either writing a monograph or a stapler thesis consisting of a preface and four or more publications, some universities also require 6-12 months of coursework (40-60 cr)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prerequisite for a bachelor's degree is three years of upper secondary school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this applies for most other European countries as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastEditorUserId="13404" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T00:36:07.373" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T00:36:07.373" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18404" CreationDate="2014-03-21T19:03:18.190" Score="12" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in an engineering field in which conferences are roughly grouped in two types: theoretical conferences with fundamental concepts and related stuff (for instance, algorithms), and application-oriented where people present practical things (e.g. a use-case). These complement each other well, and many researchers attend both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finishing a part of my research which is both fundamental and practical. I have developed a theoretical research result (formulas, algorithms), and I have used it for a practical purpose developing a use-case. Although they are connected, these can be seen as separate work, and two papers can be published out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that the two conferences of my preference are scheduled in an unfortunate sequence: the practical conference comes three months before the theoretical, and its deadline for submission is also roughly three months earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means that if I write the practical paper which uses the theoretical knowledge before the one that introduces it and describes it, I cannot refer to the (unpublished) theory, and the subsequent theoretical paper may lose its value. If I tone down the theory and immediately jump to the practical part, the reviewers may ask questions. It's like writing a paper about results of testing a medication, before the medication was introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field is big enough that I am not worried about a person from the audience asking &quot;Hey, haven't you presented this three months ago on that conference?&quot;. I am focusing on how to write the papers in a proper manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to write these two papers in a non-chronological way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current idea is to just tone down the theory in the practical paper (summarise it in one paragraph), and to cite it as unpublished work, or as work under submission (although the paper will not be submitted or even written at that point). And then to extend the story in the theoretical paper which is dedicated only to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13332" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T13:53:38.527" Title="How to publish two sequential research papers non-chronologically?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18399" CreationDate="2014-03-21T19:19:43.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencewise.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScienceWISE&lt;/a&gt; is one of the attempts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ScienceWISE project aims to develop a scientist-generated on-line knowledge base fully integrated into the physics &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ArXiv.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ScienceWISE system allows scientists, in the course of their daily work to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dynamically generate professional-field-specific ontologies: add concepts and logical relations between them; provide expertly-written, community-ranked definition articles and links to other existing resources;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to create an interactive semantic environment, annotating scientific research papers, uploaded to ArXiv.org, and linking them to the ScienceWISE ontology, thus expanding content of their papers with supporting material in the form of encyclopedia-like articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(See also info on the arXiv: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/sciencewise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/help/sciencewise&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T19:19:43.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18402" CreationDate="2014-03-21T19:29:34.723" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description of your discipline sounds like something covered by the arXiv to me. In that case, the best option would be to write both papers in the &quot;right&quot; order and upload them to the arXiv. Include mutual citations. Now for the conference versions, there is no problem anymore: Just cite the arXiv versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T19:29:34.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23575" CreationDate="2014-03-21T22:04:42.063" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Google Scholar, I can explore the related articles or books individually - clicking on the &quot;related articles&quot; gives you the related articles for that specific publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will I find the most related publications for a batch of articles/books? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13112" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:59:56.397" Title="How to find the most related publications for a batch?" Tags="&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18411" CreationDate="2014-03-22T05:18:06.330" Score="72" ViewCount="14666" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a TA came to me asking for advice. He gave wrong information in office hours leading a student to a wrong answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The TA showed the student how to solve the problem via the wrong statistical test - the assumptions for the statistical test he used do not hold in this case. The answer generated from this test yields a test statistic that doesn't make any sense when you think about it's meaning. Kind of like if you were asked to &quot;find the length of the fence that encloses ...&quot; and your method produced the answer of -50 meters. The TA provided the student with step by step instructions, but did not do any of the numerical calculations. Had he done those calculations he would almost certainly have caught his mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student complains that she should not be punished because her TA made a mistake. TAs can change HW grades, if they have good reason to do so, and this TA wants to correct his mistake by rewarding the student the points on the problem. I told the TA that I would get back to him as I don't want to give my advice in haste. I think I want to say something like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to the TA: &quot;Thank you for asking for my advice in this situation; it is indeed a difficult position to be in. However, this situation concerns me, not because you gave wrong info or bad advice, as we all occasionally make mistakes, but because you seem to have told a student the method for answering the question. While it's OK for students to get help from their TAs, it should only be by reviewing concepts and asking them 'leading questions' that nudge them in the right direction. Note I am not saying that what you did is objectively wrong, as I should have been more clear in my instructions at the beginning of the course, but in the future telling students how to do a problem, in my opinion, is unfair to the students who can't make your office hours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to the student: &quot;Your TA contacted me recently about changing your HW grade. While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is reasonable, and therefore I can not give you full credit on this problem. Ultimately the majority of the points you lost were not for using this incorrect method (the TAs error), it was for not interpreting your answer and realizing it made no sense. As stated on the first day of class and in the syllabus I require all students to interpret their answers to make sure they make sense. Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the right thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T02:38:48.190" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T17:34:01.560" Title="Should I reward points for an incorrect answer if it is the result of misinformation presented in a TA's office hours?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T06:08:55.173" Score="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that in principle, the student is responsible for critically evaluating information from all sources and rejecting any that's incorrect.  I wouldn't simply award the student points for the incorrect solution, but on the other hand it seems unhelpful to just mark it wrong and leave it there (and despite your explanation, the student will likely perceive this as unfair).  In similar situations, I've done one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Allow the student to revise the answer, and regrade the problem; or&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discard the problem for that student, and recompute the score for the assignment based only on the remaining problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T06:08:55.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T07:01:51.290" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm not sufficiently clear on what the TA did and why it was wrong: in plenty of contexts &quot;[telling] a student the method for answering the question&quot; is exactly what TAs are supposed to do.  But again, I'm not sure exactly what happened nor what your understanding with the TA was.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let me only address the issue of what to say to the student.  The principle that they are ultimately trying to get at what is actually correct, not what any one other person tells them is correct, is certainly a key one in a STEM field.  In fact, to me this is one of the distinct and pleasant features of mathematics in particular: my freshmen students are very chary to point out even the most trivial errors in my boardwork, but they will eventually learn that if I forgot to multiply by 4-x then (i) my answer is wrong, (ii) it is partially their responsibility to point out that my answer is wrong (the consequences of it being wrong are going to hurt them more than it hurts me, since they are trying to learn how to do problems that they haven't done before), and (iii) if they do point out that my answer is wrong they can be confident that I will react to it constructively rather than defensively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students in STEM fields need to learn how to correct the errors that they encounter from teachers and texts, and they do: story about how I mangled something in my graduate course this morning and the students got me to see that what I had done was bogus omitted (okay, drastically abridged).  But lower level students have so much trouble with this: errors which to us look insignificant (&quot;of course it should say this...&quot;) can really ruin their day.  They're trying so hard to get a clue, and many of them are working in a state of cognitive dissonance that comes from having 99% of their inherent intellectual curiosity beaten out of them in their pre-university education.  In other words, they have unfortunately been highly trained not to try to understand but rather to do what they're told.  Most university students do clearly understand that more is expected of them and, thank goodness, many of them eventually regain the intellectual curiosity they lost, but you can't be an effective university instructor without knowing that many many students are just going to swallow anything you say which is too complicated for them to chew through in five seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when an instructor of any kind tells students something wrong, it is a big problem.  (Wrong is really the nightmare limiting case; I spend so much time trying to avoid correct explanations that I have learned from experience they will interpret incorrectly.)  If I say something in a lecture and realize later that it's wrong, I will come back and fix it in the next lecture.  If I have something which is wrong on study materials, I will try to correct it and send out a new copy ASAP.  If I tell them something that's wrong while they're studying for an exam, I won't wait until the next lecture but send along an email owning up to and fixing the mistake.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty much my point: students should -- ideally, and eventually -- take responsibility for correcting mistakes, sure, but so should we, and the two are not mutually exclusive.  Giving students points back when we make a mistake does not undermine the lesson of their own responsibility, in my opinion: it just does needed damage control.  When I ask a false question on a midterm or final exam (and it does happen, unfortunately) I either throw it out from the grading or give everyone full credit.  I am not testing them on their ability to correct my mistakes: to do doesn't seem instructive to me but obnoxious.  I remember once that a PhD student whom I was preliminarily advising took a qualifying exam which had a whopper of a false problem on it.  As soon as I saw the problem my reaction was &quot;I will be shocked if that turns out to be true.&quot;  But I have more experience than the students &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the luxury of having that reaction: my being wrong about it has no significant negative consequences for me.  It turned out that the student had received less than full credit for his solution to the false problem!  My reaction to that was essentially &quot;WTF?  Please grade this exam again.&quot;  And they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly advise you to give the student the points back on the homework assignment.  (&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: or discount the assignment, or let them redo the problem, or whatever so long as they are not getting irrevocably dinged for the TA's mistake.)&#xA;And sure, do make it a teachable moment -- talk to the student about how they can learn to better adapt to the very distressing situation of being given wrong information.  Tell them that at some point they will acquire enough expertise to look at an &quot;authoritative document&quot; and say &quot;I will be shocked if that turns out to be true.&quot;  But don't allow the TA's mistake to lower their course grade.  They'll never forgive you for that, and they won't learn how to correct their mistakes in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T07:56:12.230" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T07:56:12.230" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18349" CreationDate="2014-03-22T07:34:56.083" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many questions like this, you can get some kind of answer without including information on your own discipline, but it will be at best some kind of weighted average across different disciplines.  If you indicate your discipline in the question then you may well get both general questions and questions focused to your discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask about mathematics.  We do not have a very strong tradition of conference papers at all compared to most other academic fields.  The idea of a &quot;prestigious conference paper&quot; is almost an oxymoron to me.  There are a small number of yearly conferences which regularly publish their proceedings, but that the papers are solid and interesting and sufficiently thematically connected to one another that you might actually want to own the book they get published in is close to a best case scenario.  Actually I get annoyed even by this because conference proceedings that get published as books tend to be books which are very expensive, difficult to locate (by virtue of bibliographic information handled in a strange way) and often not carried by university libraries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I have 22 published papers and half a dozen other submissions, and I have never submitted a paper to a conference.  Curious as to whether this was my own idiosyncrasy, I just looked up the published papers of my two senior colleagues in my field (number theory).  One of them has no conference papers.  The other has three but the most recent is from 1989.  I do get the sense that this was a more common phenomenon about a generation ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't mathematicians like to publish conference papers?  Here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I don't get the sense that many people are getting their submissions to conference proceedings turned away: rather, I think most often they simply ask everyone who spoke in the conference [or in the section, or whatever] whether they would like to contribute an article.  They usually are &quot;refereed&quot; in some formal sense, but in my understanding it is usually nominal, and the proceedings are viewed mostly as a record of as many of the actual talks as they could persuade people to write up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Because they generally do want a paper from as many people who gave a talk at the conference as possible, the shoe is really on the other foot and they often end up having to cajole busy people to get around to polishing their lecture notes.  Thus unlike in other fields where I gather conference proceedings get novel work out quickly, in mathematics the proceedings can appear two years or more after the conference, which is slow even compared to journal publication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) There seems to be a sense that conferences (with certain obvious exceptions like the ICM) are more social occasions than serious professional events.  (I mean, if I want to hear about the crackerjack theorem you proved last week, it's likely I can just download it from the arxiv or your webpage or ask you to send me a copy.)  The number one reason mathematicians like to give conferences is to celebrate someone's birthday, and a popular followup is to train young people in the field: these are often called &quot;summer schools&quot;.  There is a sort of community awareness that -- again, with certain famous and not so recent exceptions like the Grothendieck Festschrift -- such conference proceedings are more likely to contain heartfelt remarks about one's revered former advisor than really cutting edge research.  I have even heard some people jokingly refer to Festschrifts as dumping grounds for inferior product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T07:34:56.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T08:53:59.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best thing to do is let the student re-do the task, and have a talk with your TA. Making a mistake is human, but if he worked out the whole problem using the wrong method - without realising the result didn't make sense - I'd say that's an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You expect your students to interpret the results of the calculation, and you expect them to choose the right method of solving it on an exam, so when a TA makes such a mistake, I'd question him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that making a mistake is the problem, it's the nature of the mistake. When I lecture on programming, I sometimes make &quot;thinko's&quot; or get a design element wrong, but I won't   make a whole algorithm in a faulty matter. It's a bit hard to compare lecturing programming to the more mathematical courses, because blackboard mistakes in a calculation are easily made and overlooked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, I have never used the wrong  throughout a whole problem, I'd realise I'm using the wrong method as one point or another, surely when the result is wrong (Once again, easier to notice in programming), but you'd expect a TA to be able to interpret the result, no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ofcourse, I have no idea what the actual mistake was he made, but from your post it seemed like a key mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T08:53:59.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18349" CreationDate="2014-03-22T10:10:33.813" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be useful to expand on something which is implicit in Pete's answer.  In pure mathematics, &quot;conference papers&quot; as described by badroit &lt;em&gt;don't actually exist&lt;/em&gt;.  Some (but by no means all, or even most) math conferences have published &quot;proceedings&quot;, but these are not collections of the talks (or posters, or whatever) given at the conference.  Likewise, in math there is no review process prior to the conference to decide which presentations will be given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, it is decided to have a conference, a bunch of people are invited, and some subset of them are asked to give talks.  (How all of that happens varies a lot from case to case, but that's an answer for another question.)  The point is that the speakers are chosen before anyone knows what they intend to talk about.  The talks themselves may be about work in progress, work that's already submitted or published, or a synthesis.  Basically, speakers give the same sort of talk they'd give in a departmental seminar which happened to have an audience full of experts. In particular, a talk frequently doesn't correspond to a single paper, or to work which is still available to be submitted for publication.  Thus the phrase &quot;present a paper&quot;, which people from many other fields use to describe what they do at a conference, sounds rather odd to mathematicians.  (At least, it does to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when there is a proceedings volume, all of the speakers &amp;mdash; and possibly also the other participants who didn't give talks &amp;mdash; are invited to submit papers.  Those papers don't necessarily have anything to do with the actual talks (although hopefully both have to do with the topic of the conference).  So the &quot;proceedings&quot; don't necessarily bear any resemblance to what actually happened at the conference, making &quot;proceedings&quot; rather a misnomer.  Basically, a proceedings volume is like a one-issue journal (sometimes it is an issue of a regular journal) on the topic of the conference.  Pete already explained some of the ways they are perceived differently from regular journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T10:10:33.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T11:41:47.183" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with your council to the TA but you should give the student the points (or not use this assignment toward the calculation of the student's grades). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it fair that the student is receiving credit for incorrect work? No, but the point of any learning environment is to promote learning and I think your draconian adherence to grade fairness in this case would undermine that environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This student appears to have made a good faith effort to learn, and the TA appears to have made a good faith effort to assist learning. Exercising some compassion will ensure that this continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T11:41:47.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-22T13:14:05.953" Score="3" ViewCount="6508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an article with in-text citations and list of references. I have not used any of reference managers, just used word. &#xA;Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13347" LastActivityDate="2020-06-27T15:29:10.877" Title="Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T14:15:26.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A student cannot be expected to trump their instructor's judgment when they know who grades the answer.  What if the student said, &quot;yeah I had my doubts as well, that's why I spoke with my TA?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I think you should give the student points or a redo in any event, I think you should also consider whether it was realistic for the student to be able to point out his TA's mistakes?  Would most the other students awarded points be able to do this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often in statistics the mathematical derivations require a much deeper understanding than simply learning to use the tools.  True in many disciplines in fact.  It sounds like you're holding this student to a much higher standard, which is why I think you should reconsider your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13349" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T14:15:26.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T14:34:49.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, homework exercise are there to help students learn, and are graded fairly lightly. The fact that your TA showed your student how to solve a problem, might or might no be a problem depending on the circumstances. For example, if a student had showed effort and reasonable understanding of the problem, and the TA explained the problem so that the student understood. No Problem. Of course if your TA just did a problem of the student, then there is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How difficult was the problem that you TA explained wrong? The fact that your TA doesn't understand the material, at least not all of it is a problem, in my view. Does your TA come to your lectures? Your TA should understand the material well, and they should be able to explain it. It is his job to help the students, not confuse them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would explain the right method to the student and give them full credit for the problem, and have a talk with the TA to make sure that they understand the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastEditorUserId="13088" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T14:47:54.900" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T14:47:54.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18430" CreationDate="2014-03-22T18:22:31.893" Score="4" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a research student. Though me and my advisor used to meet regularly, nowadays due to workload, I usually remain outstation and not able to meet him personally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do work continuously and meet him at least once a month but am not able to take as much input from my advisor as I would like. (limitations of my physical availability).He doesn't prefer video chatting and pretty hesitant in replying to emails in depth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting in crux, how to track research progress myself and update my advisor simultaneously. I would have preferred a wiki like page, whose URL(private) I can share with my advisor, where he could look at my progress and comment. It could also assist organizing my own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools would be recommended in such scenario ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T15:33:58.780" Title="Tools for remotely updating the advisor?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18897" CreationDate="2014-03-22T18:29:10.637" Score="9" ViewCount="2422" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are pros and cons of using public version control system such as github for writing my papers and reports ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it good to store copies of papers/reports being submitted to conference/journals on such repos. If no, wouldn't it make sense to not use them at the first place itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T21:42:21.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T21:42:21.730" Title="Advantages or disadvantages of using public repositories for paper writing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;repository&gt;&lt;version-control&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18428" CreationDate="2014-03-22T18:52:12.723" Score="4" ViewCount="1298" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a recommendation letter for graduate school contain the writer's contact information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11754" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T19:02:07.417" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T19:13:45.713" Title="Writer's contact information in recommendation letter" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18427" CreationDate="2014-03-22T19:00:20.087" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, probably.  In general when you communicate with someone it is good practice to make it easy for them to get in touch with you again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many recommendation letters (admittedly mostly at the higher levels) end with &quot;Please contact me if you want further information.&quot;  And while doing graduate admissions in my department &lt;em&gt;I have&lt;/em&gt; (occasionally) contacted a recommender for further information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to see the downside of this.  The people who read these letters are conscientious, busy professionals: they're not going to start spamming you or calling you up for frivolous reasons.  The lack of including contact information might possibly be perceived negatively, but we well know that such letters are written quickly by busy people, so it is more likely to be perceived as an oversight.  Furthermore, increasingly many academics have a website which tells how to reach them, so if I can google the professor's name and find out their email address that way, no problem.  I would still feel free to contact them if I had a question to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T19:13:45.713" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T19:13:45.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18437" CreationDate="2014-03-22T20:13:04.297" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Bachelor research paper using netnography or virtual ethnography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that this new methodology was mostly advanced by two scholars: Kozinets and Christine Hine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I managed to get Kozinets' book (2010) published by Sage, in addition to some of his papers, which I think is good in terms authority and currency.&#xA;I also have authoritative sources by Christine Hine but are more theoretical and do not offer step-by-step guidance like that of Kozinets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="13102" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T20:57:45.380" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T04:37:37.453" Title="Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18425" CreationDate="2014-03-22T20:52:46.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in this exact situation right now since I'm on sabbatical and (some of) my students are back in my home institution. Unlike your advisor though, I'm quite comfortable with skype/G+ and use them regularly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to keep track of progress, I use a flavor of &lt;code&gt;github&lt;/code&gt; that people in my department run (I also use &lt;code&gt;github&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;bitbucket&lt;/code&gt; directly). As long as your advisor is comfortable using version control systems, and can set up their account for automatic emails when you commit something, it's easy for you to keep them updated and for them to see updates you've made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also make sure to have an &lt;code&gt;agenda&lt;/code&gt; file in reverse chronological order to keep track of what we've been working on and what progress has been made since our last meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the advantage of version control systems like git/svn/hg is that it's relatively easy to see what has changed since the last commit, or since 5 commits ago, which will help your advisor. Although if they don't like video chatting or replying to email, I do wonder if they're technically savvy enough to use git :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T20:52:46.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-22T21:01:35.410" Score="21" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;How far should we go when considering the possibility that a (non spectacular, bur relevant) result has already appeared in any other language different from English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics? That would be assuming that foreign researchers will publish in English, if they are serious about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T17:34:11.120" Title="Non-English literature: should we check for prior work?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-22T21:04:15.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is correct, and therefore I can not give you back the points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is a student supposed to make sure their solution is correct, if not by seeking help from external sources such as TAs? I don't think your logic holds up here, and for that reason, it's not reasonable to penalize the student for the TA's mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I'm not suggesting giving points for incorrect work. Some &quot;neutral&quot; solution, like omitting that problem from the computation of the student's grade or allowing them to redo the work, seems appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors often make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's really practical to tell your students &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; to trust something just because it was told to them by someone with authority. Of course they should try not to do so more than necessary, and hopefully &quot;necessary&quot; means less and less over time, but some amount of trusting people with authority is necessary to jump-start the learning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be useful to make the point that even people with authority - professors, TAs, etc. - are beholden to a higher authority, namely correctness and self-consistency. If a student thinks something seems inconsistent or wrong, they should look into it further, by doing their own derivations and/or comparing multiple sources, until (hopefully) they eventually come to understand the thing that didn't make sense in the first place. If someone has made a mistake, it will be revealed in this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T01:05:32.643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T01:05:32.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18425" CreationDate="2014-03-22T21:17:23.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For wiki documentation, documents, RSS feeds and source code I would recommend a tool like redmine, which also has version control integration. This can be a local installation in some university server, in case you do not what project publicly available. But for progress, bugs I would recommend something like trello (&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/&lt;/a&gt;) for several reasons: a) it is a web based tool b) it is free c) you can add private projects and add additional users per project d) has automatic user notifications (e-mail) in case someone adds something to its dedicated trello blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a combination of redmine (for wiki, src code, documents and version control) and trello (for user notifications, blog bugs etc..) I think it is pretty much what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T21:17:23.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5696" CreationDate="2014-03-22T21:33:22.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18354/7746&quot;&gt;point of discussion on my answer&lt;/a&gt; here, I felt this might be a good place to offer an extended analysis (since it also serves as an answer to the current question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While in some fields, conference papers are akin to talk abstracts, in areas like computer science, conference papers can be very meaty and there is a high churn of papers in conferences. Top conferences can have acceptance rates around 10%, and as such, A+ conference papers are often held in high regard within the community: these venues are far more competitive than many of the good journals. Still, even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference following the norm in other academic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To which Suresh countered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the last line of the answer is just not true at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's based on my experiences (at different levels) evaluating work and people, and watching how others do it, and how people talk about research work. It's not an absolute statement, but CS departments have spent many years in battles with deans convincing them that conferences count for more than journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And JeffE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference&quot; — Speaking as the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a top-5 CS department: This is simply incorrect. I don't recall anyone on my committee ever pointing out a CS journal paper in any junior candidate's CV. (For interdisciplinary folks, it's important for research to be published in journals in the other area: Biology research in biology journals, for example.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is counter to my own experience in applying for jobs, and in my current department, where journal papers are held in higher esteem. I know there are Computer Science Departments with their own by-laws and policies whereby conferences can be given as much weight as journals, but this is why I said &quot;often&quot;, not &quot;always&quot;. It is also my experience that such departments tend to be the more famous ones: the ones with enough clout to have their own policies. Smaller/less-well-known departments (which are by their nature more numerous) often have to abide by wider faculty/collegial policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, to try to put some meat into the answer, I tried Googling for some tenure-track and hiring criteria in Computer Science. I'll pick out relevant quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uvm.edu/~cems/cs/RPT/RPT-TTT.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Computer Science at the University of Vermont: Guidelines for Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Publication of refereed articles in both journals and conferences is very important; in many areas of computer science, publication in top-tier conferences is considered as prestigious as publication in top journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/faculty/tenure/pdf/IT/7-12CSE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Computer Science &amp;amp; Engineering, University of Minnesota: Criteria for Promotion and Tenure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1994 NRC Committee on Academic Careers for Experimental Computer Science stated “The requirements for good research and engineering in experimental computer science and engineering (ECSE) are different from those of many other academic disciplines” and then added “Because conferences are the vehicle of choice in ECSE for the dissemination of research, well-refereed conference proceedings (as well as work published in refereed private journals) should be given as much weight as archival journal articles in evaluating a candidate's research portfolio for promotion and tenure”. Certain proceedings articles should be weighted equally or even more heavily than archival journal articles when evaluating the candidate's research contributions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.duke.edu/department/resources/bylaws.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duke University, Computer Science Department, By-Laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] recognising the important role played by conferences, book chapters, and other non-journal research documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.zeit.de/jobs/stockholm_tenure-track_position_assistant_professorship_96136.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Stockholm: Tenure-Track Position, Department of Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quality of the research should be documented by presentations at well-es­ta­blished conferences and publications in high quality international journals and conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://compsci.appstate.edu/faculty-staff/promotion-tenure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computer Science Department: Appalachian State University: Criteria for Promotions and Tenure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scholarly Activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examples of Indicators of Excellent Performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Publishes an article in a refereed journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Publishes a textbook.&#xA;  [nothing about conferences]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wright.edu/curriculum-and-instruction/college-and-department-bylaws/department-of-computer-science-engineering-bylaws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wright State University, Department of Computer Science By-Laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Primary indications of quality normally include, but are not limited to, the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;publication of research results and of extended scientific and engineering reviews in peer-refereed journals of acknowledge stature (particularly those of scholarly professional societies such as the ACM and IEEE);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Secondary indications of quality include, but are not limited to, the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;refereed conference proceedings;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two departments explicitly state that conferences can be considered as highly as journals, the next two state that conferences will be considered alongside journals without any explicit ranking, and the last two state that conferences count less than journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are six examples, and are biased due to having &quot;Computer Science&quot; in the title, meaning that they are CS-specific criteria (whereas I suspect many smaller departments would fall under more generic by-laws).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though many CS departments (esp. the more prestigious ones) have won the battle of giving conference papers their due weight, it is still my understanding that other departments have not, and must fall in-tow with faculty/collegial guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Journal vs conference publications when looking for a job in in computer science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. Though I may not have fully substantiated this here with only two anecdotes, I still hold by the position that in many CS departments (particularly smaller departments), journal articles &lt;em&gt;often&lt;/em&gt; (not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;) count for more than conference papers by merit of simply being journal articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://tagide.com/blog/2013/04/conferences-vs-journals-the-hidden-assumptions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some related discussion here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T21:43:49.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-23T02:42:54.323" Score="3" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering doing a masters or a PhD program outside of North America, in particular Europe or Australia. I had originally expected every graduate program to fund students the way North American universities do - as in, they (basically) fund every accepted applicant for somewhere between 12-24,000$ a year. I also was under the impression that funding covered your tuition and more. But the other day I talked to a representative from a small Australian university and she said that they did not fund international students at all unless they got a specific scholarship, which most did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious as to which major universities in Europe and Australia fund all / most of their accepted students, and if so approximately how much. My girlfriend (who is coming with me) has EU citizenship and I do not, so I'm wondering about both cases. We are both currently in Canada and applying for mathematics/statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly curious about the University of Amsterdam, ETH Zurich, the National University of Australia and the University of Melbourne, because those are the ones that I really can't find information about. However we are also considering other European countries (France, Germany, Spain, UK, Hungary, other places with good programs) and I would appreciate any information you had about institutes there too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="505" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T05:30:15.560" Title="International Student Funding for Graduate Programs outside North America" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18429" CreationDate="2014-03-23T04:37:37.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literature on virtual ethnography or netnography is not restricted only to these authors. A cursory Google Scholar &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=netnography&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,33&amp;amp;as_sdtp=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;search&lt;/a&gt; reveals many other authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, ~50% of my methodological approach in my work is through grounded theory by using semi-structured interviews. The gold standard for grounded theory is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Glaser, Barney G &amp;amp; Strauss, Anselm L., 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and I would wager that ~95% of papers using grounded theory cite only them in the methods sections of their papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not necessarily make your methods poorer or stronger. You should make sure that you understand the methodological process perfectly and then implement it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you do talk about credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability as well !  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T04:37:37.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-23T04:54:03.370" Score="3" ViewCount="3179" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can we send our research paper to two IEEE conference simultaneously, and then after acceptance, decide which conference proceedings to publish it in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13357" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T05:35:39.250" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T19:23:58.777" Title="Can we submit our research paper for review at two IEEE conferences simultaneously?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18438" CreationDate="2014-03-23T05:05:34.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is yes, but it is unethical. Even when you read the agreement before submitting your paper it appears that the work should be original, that means that it should have not been submitted to other conference or journal.&#xA;You must put in the shoes of the reviewers, in one hand you make them waste time by reviewing one paper that is already being checked up in another conference. Also you are getting one available spot that could be filled by another research paper by another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One advice, take your work in academia more seriously than just submitting like if its a game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T05:12:08.567" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T05:12:08.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18438" CreationDate="2014-03-23T05:30:59.367" Score="29" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is considered unethical in the academic community to submit a paper for simultaneous review at multiple venues (unless it is explicitly permitted by the publications, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you disclose this on submission). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/Section_822F.html&quot;&gt;IEEE guidelines&lt;/a&gt; on multiple submission prohibit multiple simultaneous submissions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication, nor which was under review for another refereed publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/Section_822F.html&quot;&gt;guidelines further specify&lt;/a&gt; that failure to disclose, on submission, that the work is under review for another publication, can result in (after multiple offenses)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;suspension of publication privileges in all IEEE Publications for 1 year and rejection and return of all papers by the author(s) that are currently in review or in any IEEE publication's queue (papers may be re-submitted after suspension term has expired).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, engaging in this practice can irreparably damage your reputation in the academic community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T05:30:59.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18442" CreationDate="2014-03-23T05:46:16.690" Score="26" ViewCount="21544" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;em&gt;Electronic Devices and Circuit Theory&lt;/em&gt; (10th edition) by Boylestad and Louis Nashelsky, I have found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/9317/how-many-ga-atoms-are-connected-to-one-as-atom-in-solid-state-gallium-arseni&quot;&gt;technical mistake&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can I do about this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To whom should I send an email, the authors or the publisher? (Also, there is no email address mentioned in the book or on the Internet to which I can send my suggestions.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have never written an official email of this kind. If I should send an email, how should I write it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13359" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-09-05T04:07:05.003" LastActivityDate="2020-04-12T07:07:56.903" Title="I have found an error in a textbook. What can I do about it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18441" CreationDate="2014-03-23T06:27:06.097" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, see if the book has a newer edition, and try to look at a copy and see if it corrects the error.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then try to find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The publisher's web page for the book&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author's professional web page, which hopefully has some mention of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An unofficial errata list (google the book's title and &quot;errata&quot; or &quot;corrections&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check in both places for an errata list, which may already have a correction of the error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then it is worth trying to report it.  Writing the email is the easy part: just politely point out that you believe there is an error on page NNN, and explain as completely as possible why you believe it is incorrect.  If you think you know how it could be corrected, you could explain that as well, but it isn't strictly necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is figuring out where to send it; publishers and authors should make this obvious, but often they do not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a major established textbook (which I assume this is), I would focus on the publisher, since the original author may well not be actively involved with the book anymore.  See if there is any contact or feedback information on the book's web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a faculty member, the publisher probably has assigned a representative for your institution.  You may get a better response by contacting your rep directly and asking them to forward your report to the appropriate person.  If you are a student and this is your course text, you could ask your professor to contact the publisher's rep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is an unofficial errata list, it should include contact information for the person who's maintaining it; send a report to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a text or monograph with a smaller audience, you will probably do better to contact the author directly; look for contact info on their professional web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good service to the community to report errors in books so they can eventually be fixed, so thanks for doing this.  However, if the publisher/author make it a huge pain to do so, that is ultimately their problem.  Make a reasonable effort to report it to an appropriate person, but if you don't succeed, there's no need for heroic efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T05:11:25.380" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T05:11:25.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18418" CreationDate="2014-03-23T06:53:39.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is quite easy to do, once you know how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, go to the References tab, then click on Insert Citation and Add New Source.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Afq8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Word 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, fill out the information as appropriate.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pm54s.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want your References List produced, go to Bibliography.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRIHC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is extremely helpful when you need to change some detail (say publication date) and you have many citations to the same material. Change it in one place and Word will update all of the in-text citations as well as the references list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T06:53:39.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18449" CreationDate="2014-03-23T07:57:12.983" Score="4" ViewCount="35293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do students with Masters Degree complete their PhDs (in US, but I am curious about other countries too) sooner than the one's who have entered the PhD program after their undergrad? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it depends upon the individual, project, major and the supervisor but is there a general trend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastEditorUserId="5851" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T08:05:50.493" LastActivityDate="2020-04-09T11:42:46.633" Title="Does a masters degree help completing PhD sooner?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18431" CreationDate="2014-03-23T08:15:12.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try my best to not ignore. If you are citing a paper that has cited a non english journal, I would read the citation to see if its relevant to my paper. Translation tools, although not always accurate, would give you a sense what the paper is talking about. &#xA;Maybe this article can answer your question to an extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T11:30:55.810" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T11:30:55.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18446" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-23T13:16:00.697" Score="2" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been offered a place for a masters program in 2 places. One which is fully funded and another one where there is no aid that has been offered at the time of admission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess if the everything else was the same between the two then the answer is obvious, which is to go for the funded one. But the problem in my case is this: &#xA;In the fully funded case I have been offered a place in a research group I have no primary interest in (and no previous knowledge of) and something which I would not have definitely chosen if I was given a choice. So in sum, although it comes with a lot of money, the work is something I'm unsure if I will enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, there is no aid. The tuition fee + living is something which is not completely unaffordable for, I hope to manage those with loans and some family money. Aside that, I feel there is a lot of flexibility (or at least some flexibility), as I can choose my domain of work and my advisor once I have enrolled, and maybe been through a semester. Also the coursework here is a lot more closer to my preferred area of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional info:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparing the two universities as such, the second one (the one without aid) is higher ranked than the other one (with full funding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given all this, how do you think I should make a decision and what is your opinion on the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Both programs are research-based and require a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7775" LastEditorUserId="7775" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T17:01:21.963" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T17:32:34.223" Title="What are some of the issues one should keep in mind while choosing between a fully funded offer and another with no funding?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18444" CreationDate="2014-03-23T14:36:04.133" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience in Biochemistry and Neurobiology (and I'm assuming most Biology and Chemistry fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, in the US, no it does not help in completing a PhD sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a masters is necessary for a person just to get into a PhD program, depending on the person's history and the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would help if the PhD had some requirement of a certain level of understanding or even amount of research work, but instead a PhD tends to just require an amount of time as an indentured servant to your PI - and that amount of time doesn't change if you have a masters. Although, if you're clever and a good salesman maybe you can convince your PI and committee that your masters time should count toward your sentence/years of labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13362" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T16:00:40.597" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T16:00:40.597" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:01:17.617" Score="5" ViewCount="1188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this question is appropriate for the forum here.  I was hoping to locate and read a thesis outside of the United States, specifically for someone who went to a reputable University in mainland China (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).  However, all of my internet searches have been largely fruitless, and the library site at the university dedicated to theses appears to be down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how to proceed in these circumstances?  I unfortunately cannot speak Chinese, and the person in question has been non-responsive for months.  Are these theses typically in English at top Chinese universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13363" LastActivityDate="2018-01-01T05:58:52.780" Title="How do I find or request a copy of someone's thesis if this person did their work in mainland China?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18444" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:02:15.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies by program.  In the US, in mathematics, &quot;par&quot; for a master's is 2 years.  In some PhD programs, this will cut a year off your time-to-degree.  In others, no help at all.  In rare cases, it will cut two years off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T15:02:15.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:10:15.207" Score="2" ViewCount="2245" Body="&lt;p&gt;This post concerns grad school options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am undergraduate math major who is going to complete my studies soon. I am considering finance/financial engineering. How math heavy is the financial math compared to pure math? Is it equally as challenging and tough? I am basically considering to change to finance because pure math is rather challenging for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more clarification, mention in comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13364" LastActivityDate="2018-01-23T09:22:09.987" Title="How Math Heavy is Graduate Finance" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18448" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:37:45.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try writing (in English) to the department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T15:37:45.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18444" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:38:02.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really, for example if you make your master's is like 2 years, and then your PhD in 4 years, roughly is going to be 6 years that you spent until you got your terminal degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I some universities is not required to follow a Master's first. I know the case of one undergraduate student who was always interested in research (when he was in his last year of bachelor he published two good articles in an important ACM conference); he applied directly to a PhD program and he got it. Now he has finished his PhD in only 4 years, and the background that he was missing he got it by following specific courses. So at the end all depends in your background and the passion you got for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T15:38:02.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18444" CreationDate="2014-03-23T15:54:41.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department, students who enter with a masters don't have to take much formal coursework, while those who enter without one have to take much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students with a masters therefore (in theory) have more time and focus to spend on research in the first year or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't seem to help them finish faster (maybe by a tiny imperceptible amount). Most students aren't working very much on what will become their thesis work in that first year anyways - it's hard to come in and hit the ground running. So while the students entering with a masters might have more time for research in year 1, it doesn't usually directly advance the thesis work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T15:54:41.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18446" CreationDate="2014-03-23T16:14:01.043" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are four outcomes to your master's program:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't complete the program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You complete the program and can't find a job dependent upon the degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You complete the program and get a job dependent upon the degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You complete the program and continue in academia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take the position with support, you will be better off in case (1) and (2).  Case (4) is a tie -- you can shift research groups for your Ph.D., and you will be better off financially, but you have to spend 2 years doing things you don't entirely like.  Case (3) is the only case that's a clear win for the no-support degree; you'll have 2 years of chasing your joy, and a fairly small debt that you'll pay off soon in a high-paying field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's left is to evaluate the relative probabilities of the four cases.  You need to be objective here, and use the evidence you have: the expert judgement of the graduate programs to which you've applied.  Admittedly two data points is quite few; it would be helpful to know if you applied to other programs, and what those results were.  However, in the opinion of the more prestigious program, you are not one of their best candidates (or else they would offer you support).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, choosing the no-support program is a large gamble.  You should take it if you're confident that the program made a mistake in not offering you funding -- you have tremendous talent that for some reason has not been revealed in your record.  Absent such a situation you should take the support.  You might change your mind and decide you like that sort of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T16:14:01.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18450" CreationDate="2014-03-23T17:11:02.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm writing this in the form of an answer instead of a comment is because I can't write a short enough comment to meet the character restrictions. So, don't take this as an answer, as I don't intend it to be. You've just asked a pretty broad question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is awfully familiar in content and application to the very same question that I asked myself when entering into college to study computer science. I found out that it is true that computer science is very math heavy and a good solid foundation in math greatly helps; however, it's not in the way that people normally envision mathematics being used when they hear &quot;math heavy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I will say is that while I'm not into graduate finance work, I've seen some graduate finance work as a programmer. Sure, there's math involved -- and lots of it. It's all math, numbers, and logic; but, then again, what isn't? People have said before that construction is very math oriented, and I'd agree with that to a point. Just like I found out with computer science, yes it's math heavy, but I'm not &lt;strong&gt;explicitly&lt;/strong&gt; solving mathematical equations every second of every day. The familiarity with mathematics and mathematical intuition developed from doing mathematics, something I call mathematical maturity, really benefits the perspective that problems are viewed from. I think that applies to everything else, too. So, I think  &lt;strong&gt;a familiarity with mathematics benefits all fields of study for people from all walks of life.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12865" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T17:11:02.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18450" CreationDate="2014-03-23T17:29:08.663" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Programs vary; it would be best to look at the specific requirements and prerequisites for the programs you have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, mathematical finance can involve a very considerable amount of pure mathematics.  A big piece is modeling assets via stochastic processes, and to understand those properly requires a firm background in graduate-level real analysis, measure theory, probability theory, and often functional analysis and PDE.  A mathematical finance course may well consist primarily of theorems and proofs, just like a pure math course would.  This is typically even more true at the PhD level than masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I would say that just because mathematics is challenging, that doesn't mean you should avoid it!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T17:29:08.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18400" CreationDate="2014-03-23T20:06:46.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in Serbia, the situation is similar to other Bologna countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prerequisite for university education is finished elementary school (9 years, recently extended from 8) and a four-year secondary school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next step is the choice between the &quot;academic&quot; and &quot;vocational&quot; studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the academic progression &quot;tree&quot; steps are as following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-year (180 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of &quot;something&quot;,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;followed by 2-year (120 ECTS points) Master studies giving title of&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;master of something&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4-year (240 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of &quot;graduated    something&quot; followed by 1-year (60 ECTS points) Master studies giving &#xA;title of &quot;master of something&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5-year (300 ECTS points) integrated studies, mostly in medical    fields, giving titles of &quot;Master of something&quot; or &quot;Doctor of&lt;br&gt;&#xA;something&quot; or &quot;Magister of something&quot;, depending on field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6-year (360 ECTS points) integrated studies, in medical field, giving    title &quot;Doctor of medicine&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-year (60 ECTS points) specialist studies, master studies as&#xA;prerequisite, not required for doctorate, giving title of &quot;Specialist&#xA;of something&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-year (180 ECTS points) doctorate studies, master studies as&#xA;prerequisite, giving title of &quot;Doctor of some sciences&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the vocational tree steps are as following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-year (180 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of &quot;vocational&#xA;something&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-year (60 ECTS points) specialist studies giving title of&#xA;&quot;specialist vocational something&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no direct path for transfer between vocational and academic studies, however schools are allowed to accept equivalence and credit certain exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any hard data about the pre-Bologna system at the moment, but major differences were that there were no master studies. Studies in the technical fields were all 5-year, while most humanities were 4-year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctorate studies were separated into two steps:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magister studies which had course-work and a thesis starting with &quot;technical qualification exam&quot; and ending with a minor thesis and &quot;research qualification exam&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctorate studies themselves which had no coursework and only required publishing an original thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, Bologna-style doctorate studies are combination of previous magister and doctorate studies and contain the technical qualification exam and the research qualification exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in technical fields, the thesis results had to be original to science in general, while in humanities, thesis results had to be original in Serbian science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9653" LastEditorUserId="9653" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T22:19:35.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T22:19:35.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18450" CreationDate="2014-03-23T20:14:11.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a math major studied in Canada. I am planning to do Financial Mathematic. I have talked to some professors from the Fin/Math department. They recommend me to take some thing like probability, real analysis, PDE, Functional Analysis. I would say it's a very tough program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13369" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T20:14:11.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16121" CreationDate="2014-03-23T22:16:28.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to provide a completely different perspective, mainly based on your comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, I would say in a class of 16 students, I spoke to 7 of them about this issue (at different times) and most seemed to talk about their issues (with the class) quite a bit. I'm not sure about the other remaining students though&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you have confirmed that many people in the class are struggling (note: it's not 100% clear from this quote that you have), this is enough to warrant talking to the professor about the general pace and difficulty level of the class. In this case You may want to schedule an appointment with the professor and speak to him/her about your troubles with the class and how you have talked with other students and that these students are having similar issues. Ask the professor about what he/she imagines the average work load is for the class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most professors want the class to learn and are willing to teach to the ability of the class, but many of them are not so good at adapting to subtle cues from their students; they need to be explicitly told to slow down or cover more basic concepts. Find out what your professor thinks about what the course should be like and then adapt what you say based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the instructor does not modify their course (or they try to but really don't change as much as they think they are). There isn't too much you can do about this, however, many professors will change the course significantly and you may find yourself happier because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whatever you do, do not make any accusations and try your best not to come off as entitled. Stay nice, and spend more time listening than talking. You may not end up needing a tutor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said: for most research colleges the answer is NO to your question (graduate students would be more appropriate, perhaps someone who TAed the course before - but not currently, and possibly not while this instructor was teaching the course). For teaching colleges, there are often not enough professors in the department to even find one that would be an appropriate match to the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T01:31:58.580" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T01:31:58.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18342" CreationDate="2014-03-24T03:42:27.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am almost sure, that your university has archived your thesis. In doing this it is always a citable work. In some countries it is also a very common requirement to obtaining a Ph.D. (or any equivalent), that the thesis itself has to be published in some form. The variations tend to range from books (registered with ISBN), digital copy (pdf-A), hardcopies at differnt libraries, or also microfilm. Hence the problem is more a problem of accessibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these kind of publications are not peer reviewed, and accessibility is a limiting factor, they are usually referred to as 'grey literature'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When publishing results of your original thesis, what you should probably also do, you might want to cite your dissertation at some point in this work. The library of your university (or equivalent institution) will certainly keep track of dissertations and you can ask them about how to cite them. (Also a good starting point is trying to find this work via some search engines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your CV you will also mention from which university and when you received your Ph.D. Depending on how deep you will go into this, you might mention the title, probably a short summary of the field you were working in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a lot of print-on-demand publishers that are specialized in thesis. However, this might not be the best solution, but it would be another way to make it citable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13372" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T03:42:27.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18436" CreationDate="2014-03-24T05:30:15.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, a Go8 university which has similar application processes to the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, funding for international students comes from three separate streams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The federal government (heretoforth referred to as the Commonwealth) funds several recurring 3 (minimum) to 4 (maximum) year scholarships each year per university depending on total research output. These scholarships are then allotted to the highest ranking applicants for PhD candidature from the respective faculties in a given university. These scholarships are referred to as IPRS (International Postgraduate Research Scholarships) and are extremely competitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Commonwealth also funds scholarships for students from developing countries through the foreign aid program. These are referred to as Australia Award scholarships and Prime Ministers scholarships. The application process is run through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website (DFAT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual universities offer university scholarships to applicants and these are usually part and parcel of the application process for PhD candidature. These are highly competitive and based on a ranking process through the entire university and the top (x) candidates who do not receive an IPRS are given these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third (and most common) funding stream is via the research funding obtained by individual academics. Depending on how keen a particular grant holding academic is to bring you into his group, he may offer to pay your scholarships out of his own research grant. Australian academics are very used to this so do not be afraid of asking for an assurance from your prospective supervisor that he is willing to pay your scholarship if you are unsuccessful at obtaining an IPRS or a university scholarship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a masters, you will have to pay for it yourself. Hope this was useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13376" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T05:30:15.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T07:04:08.670" Score="3" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in physics, and my career path of choice has always been in physics. Unfortunately, I have been struck with a series of chronic health problems which have caused me to be fired and homebound much of the time. However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home, provided I am also given flexible hours. The problem is, despite my continuing ability to continue working from home despite my chronic health problems, no employer so far has been willing to hire and pay me. The resulting financial problems have forced me to leave my chosen career path for the past few years, which only makes me look worse and worse on my CV, when coupled with being fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any organization or employer willing to hire researchers remotely? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13379" LastEditorUserId="13379" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T07:57:39.510" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T08:44:03.617" Title="Remote work employment opportunities for someone with chronic health problems" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18466" CreationDate="2014-03-24T07:19:41.013" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in US, you can apply for disability. You can also get plenty of tax rebates. I am not sure, if full time employees can work remotely all the time but contractors can, for sure work. I am sure there would be companies out there hiring contractors for short projects and letting them work remotely. You can work on one short project after the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you know computer programming, you can work as a software freelancer. There are plenty of freelancer jobs available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T07:19:41.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18635" CreationDate="2014-03-24T07:47:01.330" Score="1" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;The search engine which I typically use to browse journal papers is WebofScience. It allows me to sort by times cited, and check out who cited what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that to get to the actual article once I have found one I am interested in takes many clicks and loading time: 1. Click FindIt button, 2. Click a link from my library access, 3. Click view full text. 4. Maybe save the article too, and import it into my reference manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yUSLt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D1zZ6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5NNgg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other options...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously, my fastest process was to import the a list of selected references from WebofScience that I want to check out into EndNote by clicking the 'send to EndNote button', and then clicking find full text in EndNote to batch find the texts (works about 90% of the time, otherwise I had to manually click view PDF, save to my PC and then import).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have discovered that Zotero can download a reference and the PDF with a single click from my browser, but only when I am searching on Elsevier or Scitation websites directly (but cannot select multiple articles for import at once, and means that I will usually have WebofScience open in a separate window to do the searching and then ctrl-c/v the article names across).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an even faster way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="9680" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T10:41:46.633" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T10:02:41.270" Title="Fastest way to browse journal papers (from Web of Science)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18466" CreationDate="2014-03-24T08:44:03.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are asking this on academia.SE, I am assuming that you are looking for an academic job as opposed to working in industry. In that case, I am afraid your assumption&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may not be true for higher (post-graduate) academic jobs. I would say, being a postdoc or higher in physics is to a large extend a &lt;strong&gt;social&lt;/strong&gt; activity, as much of your job will consist of teaching, training the next generation of researchers, and networking. In general, all researchers after a certain stage find that they spend preciously little of their time on actual research (which you may be able to do from home, depending on your concrete subfield). Most of the time is actually spent on activities that require physical presence, at least some percentage of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, many research labs are quite flexible in terms of working hours and (partial) home office. In my lab, for instance, I would not assume that anybody would take issue with an employee working about 50% of the time from home (under the assumption that one would actually &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; at home, of course). However, the remaining 50% would probably require physical presence, simply because the tasks would require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T08:44:03.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16121" CreationDate="2014-03-24T13:20:03.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a student perspective, there are actually several things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you can go to the professor and/or the TA's office hours to get help with the material that you're struggling with.  You didn't mension whether or not you've tried this, but often if you aren't understanding things in class then the professor or the TA would be happy to go over it again with you and to try explaining it in alternate ways or more slowly.  If you're having trouble making office hours because of scheduling, the TA or the professor will often be able to schedule alternate office hours to meet with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you can ask other students for help.  You could try starting a study group or many students have mailing lists where you can ask for advice from people who have taken the class before.  In addition, in a graduate level class there are likely to be graduate students who are working in/doing research on some of the topics covered in the course---these are definitely people who might be able to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, as someone mentioned, it's unlikely that other faculty will have the time to provide private tutoring.  It's much more likely that a TA or another graduate student, probably one who is doing research under that professor!, would have the time and the inclination to tutor.  Some ways to try to get in touch with someone like this is through student mailing lists, the professor or lab's website, or by asking other graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most graduate students are pretty open and nice because they've been where you are in not getting a course, so don't be too nervous about approaching them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T13:20:03.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18444" CreationDate="2014-03-24T13:33:43.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the university and the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, most PhD granting institutions have pre-requisites for getting your PhD.  This may include coursework and will also require research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For research, one could argue that if you did research in the course of your Master's degree then you would have a time advantage in that you may be able to hit the ground running and engage in publish-able research more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In institutions that require coursework, the amount of coursework that overlaps with a Master's program can vary.  Often, even if you've taken similar coursework in another university, you would still need to fulfill the course requirements in the department where you're going for your PhD.  For programs that offer a combined Master's/PhD program, the courses for getting your PhD may be covered under the requirements for getting a Master's, so by already having a Master's degree you may only be shaving off a few of your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, at least in Computer Science, a Master's degree and a PhD are fundamentally different in what they're trying to educate you for.  A Master's degree is more like an advanced bachelor's degree where you're taking additional courses and gaining extra skills.  A PhD is for research.  Given that fundamental difference, it's difficult to say how much would transfer over and again, it would really depend on the university and the program's expectations of what you should have when you enter and what you requirements you need to fulfill once you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T13:33:43.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16063" CreationDate="2014-03-24T13:37:10.253" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;one additional thought: If the offer you reject is a good one (i.e. a lab you can see yourself work in), I really believe it is important to call the PI you turn down, confirm your interest in the research done in the lab, and make clear that it was a really tough decision for you to make. Being in similar situation coming out of my PhD, I ended up choosing lab A over lab B, and after a few months, I realized PI of lab A was a nightmare, so I contacted lab B again and had a productive postdoc there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13386" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T13:37:10.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18479" CreationDate="2014-03-24T14:43:07.967" Score="5" ViewCount="1475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of US News which publishes the rankings for US Universities every year.&#xA;But somehow I feel that they try to emphasize more on private universities than public(state) universities.&#xA;Also they have recently stopped showing the rankings according to fields of study(CS, ECE, Mechanical, etc) without paying them.&#xA;Google also could not help me find any reliable ranking organisation.&#xA;I would like to know whether there is any respectable ranking organisation other than US News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13388" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T16:38:15.627" Title="Reliable Rankings of US Universities?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-24T15:00:24.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were the one that taught the material incorrectly, would you still hold the student accountable for your mistake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The TA is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; assistant. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; must take responsibility for what the TA is teaching. The TA's words are your words by proxy.  However you resolve the situation, you should address it as if you personally made the error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the error was so obvious that you'd expect the student to catch it even if it came from you, and finalizing the grade is reasonable. The fact that your TA made the error instead of you is immaterial to that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13389" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T15:00:24.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18483" CreationDate="2014-03-24T15:17:02.100" Score="13" ViewCount="26027" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find out what the average duration of PhD studies are in the USA. Here in Spain it used to be 4 years, but it seems that Europe is moving towards a 3-year scheme since students are expected to do their MSc before they start. What is it like in the USA? Is some kind of shortening also occurring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2018-03-18T05:22:58.187" Title="PhD duration in the USA" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18476" CreationDate="2014-03-24T15:18:39.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both of these organisations are International but you can search by region and study area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Universities&lt;/a&gt; is complied by the QS Quacquarelli Symonds&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-stars/qs-stars-methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; explains the methodology they use to rank institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Times Higher Education&lt;/a&gt; rankings are compiled by the Times Higher Education magazine in the UK with the help of Thomson Reuters. According to their site &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T15:18:39.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18482" CreationDate="2014-03-24T15:56:36.767" Score="5" ViewCount="1598" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a paper accepted for a conference this summer, which presents the preliminary results of my PhD research. However, I'd like to present my final results at another conference in the fall, the deadline for which is in a few weeks, and which requires a full paper submission. My question is: would it be unethical to submit the first paper (in a re-structured form) in the hope that it will get accepted for the later conference, and then subsequently update the results before the final deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13392" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T12:48:09.663" Title="Is it unethical to submit an older paper to a conference and then update it after acceptance?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18481" CreationDate="2014-03-24T16:06:30.257" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;May I submit a paper to another conference that is essentially the same as a paper that is already published or accepted for publication?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;May I substantially change the content of an accepted conference paper after peer review?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* Unless it is disclosed to, and permitted by, the PC/editor.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T12:48:09.663" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T12:48:09.663" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18478" CreationDate="2014-03-24T16:14:44.883" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each program is going to be different.  Usually, the first couple years of a PhD program involves taking graduate level classes while the later years are dedicated to academic engagement in the discipline (for example, in Chemistry, you would do research in a lab.)  If you have a Masters degree relevant to the PhD, you may cut off some or all of the classroom portion of the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The qualifications for actually receiving the PhD also differ.  You may need to get approval from an academic board (this is usually at least part of the process in any case), you may need to write a thesis, you may even be required to be published in an academic journal.  (In the hard sciences, this is common.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the requirements for getting the degree differ, the time may as well.  For the most part, PhDs (with no Masters) should take between 4 - 6 years.  Getting a Masters degree first may cut off about a year or so of that.  While this is generally true, you will find many examples of people taking longer and I've known at least two people who graduated in less than 4 years with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is an average, you'll want to get info specific to your desired University, the degree, and even the group (or academic adviser) that you choose to work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T16:14:44.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18476" CreationDate="2014-03-24T16:38:15.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is a general list, @gman's answer, as well as other general guides, will do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to select a graduate program to apply for, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://graduate-school.phds.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phds.org&lt;/a&gt;.  You can specify which criteria are most important to you: research productivity, support for graduate students, diversity, funding, etc.  Based on your choices, you will get a personalized ranking of the graduate programs in your area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T16:38:15.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18481" CreationDate="2014-03-24T16:43:17.273" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to @ff524's absolutely correct answer, you can still submit to that second conference.  All you need to do is cite your first paper, state that this paper only adds results A,B,C.  It is possible that the modest additions to your first paper are enough to merit publication on their own; however you must be honest and let the editors/referees decide this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you may submit your updated paper, provided you are completely honest about its differences with the previously published work.  If indeed those differences are trivial (as suggested by the title of the question), then obviously this is pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T16:43:17.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18478" CreationDate="2014-03-24T18:30:36.570" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies so widely by discipline that asking for an average across all disciplines is unlikely to be very helpful.  Most individual disciplines do keep careful records of this statistic, and it should be easy to search for them on (e.g.) google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would say with some confidence that no American PhD program requires or even expects its students to complete a PhD in less than four years.  In some programs the &quot;party line&quot; is that it is desirable to complete the degree in four years, but in my experience this means that you start to feel the squeeze of increased teaching and/or decreased funding after four years, not that you get ejected from the program or forced to graduate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a discipline, mathematics, with a high entry cost but for which, once you acquire the necessary background and skills (with which a small minority of students do enter the program), there is no specific reason why you couldn't do all the work for a great thesis and write it up in a rather short amount of time, say on the order of a semester.  Nevertheless I have met very few people who have completed a math PhD in fewer than four years.  When we get to the upper echelons of talent, preparation and work ethic, this surely must mean that the culture of a PhD program strongly encourages students to stay for this amount of time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your final question: yes, many programs are trying to shorten their average time to degree as funding is being cut.  In my own PhD program (mathematics at UGA) I was involved in an initiative to do just this: up until recently we guaranteed six years of funding to incoming PhD students without master's degrees and five for students with an incoming master's.  We now guarantee five years to all students.  Note that this does not mean that we do not have funded sixth year students: we certainly do.  But it means that students will, throughout their time in the program, have to keep their eye on the five-year mark, which is something that our former arrangement was not doing: even very strong students would often stick around for six years for no especially good reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally let me also note that we changed (with my involvement) all our requirements to be independent of whether students arrive with master's degrees.  We have found that the difference in the level of preparedness of such students is not significant enough to justify more stringent time-to-degree requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T13:11:12.417" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T13:11:12.417" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T18:40:59.137" Score="5" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I conceived and co-developed (including the program itself and training protocols for participants)/piloted the program locally/managed three national pilots, and assessed the effectiveness of the program including formulating the written proposal to public and private funding agencies that laid out the essential elements of the program and writing reports. Years later, one of my co-developers claims sole responsibility on line (at a University web site) and at a non-profit spinoff's web site for this and another program I conceived and co-developed and has wiped me from the record. He does not credit our co-developers, upon whose ground breaking research much of this work rests. If one (say a member of a selection committee) were to take a tour of the Internet using the usual search engines, it would appear that my CV and resume are one big lie after another. I inquired of Legal at the University where I did the work, and they said they have no control over what a department head puts on line and that it is if anything a compliance issue. What does this mean? And also, do I have a moral right and what kind of recourse might there be? Basically 15 years of my life is now invisible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13398" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T03:15:08.183" Title="Claiming sole credit for an academic outreach program - not a written paper. Is there a moral right?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18487" CreationDate="2014-03-24T20:35:52.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, you should decide what exactly you feel is wrong, and how you want it to be.  You were involved in the early stages of this program, but others took the helm later.  They continued to put work into the program, and they deserve credit. Arguably visitors to the program website want to know about who's managing it now, not its history.  Do you want to be cited as a co-creator or founder or first director?  Do you want a section dedicated to &quot;early work on this project&quot; where you play a greater role?  Is this really that important, since in academia publications are the currency of value, not websites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, once you've decided what your objection is, you should take this objection to the co-developer in question.  Perhaps this is just an honest misunderstanding and he/she will rectify amicably.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, if you get no resolution, then you need to decide whether you want to pursue this further.  Read your co-developer's response carefully and objectively.  Do you think they have a reasonable case?  If so, you are unlikely to achieve anything positive by pursuing this (in fact, going to the legal department may have been a mistake).  You will (further) sour your relationship with the co-developer, and have the potential for getting a bad reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if you are absolutely certain that your co-developer's position has no merit, and you really want to pursue this further, you can try to apply pressure to your co-developer.  The legal department is the wrong avenue, as their job is to protect the university, not police it.  Try the dean, or otherwise the supervisor, of the co-developer.  If you can prove that the situation has cost you financially (farfetched) you might consider a lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T20:35:52.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18431" CreationDate="2014-03-24T20:57:09.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; about a previous record in another language, mention it! Strictly speaking, publishing something (even in part) that is a translation of something already published in another language without reference, is considered plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in practice, I don't think that honestly omitting a previous record written in something else than English would be held against you. It also depends on when this source has been written. Most modern scientific literature has at least its abstract in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being said, I think it's a good idea to check the literature in German, especially for chemistry, physics or engineering...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T17:34:11.120" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T17:34:11.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18481" CreationDate="2014-03-24T21:00:37.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;ff524's answer is true for the general case. There are two exceptional cases where you will be allowed, or actually required, to make substantial changes to the content. Note that none of them will happen because you want to add a bit more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, your paper might be put into a gatekeeping process. In this case, the acceptance is conditional on making certain changes and the reviewers being happy about these changes at a later reviewing stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gatekeeping only occurs when the program committee requests it; you can't trigger it (and don't want to). It only allows you to make the changes the reviewers requested from you (normally to provide better argumentation for your conclusions, or to describe your empirical methods in your detail), not to include any results you forgot about or didn't have at the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case is if you find an error in your research which renders your paper wrong. In this case, you should contact the program committee, inform them of the error, and offer to retract the paper. If you have the improved results, and they are not completely changing the main statement of the paper, the program committee may allow you to keep the paper in the running, but will require you to rewrite the parts based on the mistaken results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T21:00:37.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18496" CreationDate="2014-03-24T23:51:49.340" Score="207" ViewCount="55336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in the situation where you have a very interesting result. For instance, you have solved a very important open problem. However, you are not known in the field and do not have any remarkable publications. Your supervisor thinks the work is good and you submit the work to a high profile journal, but you get rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that the contribution is very strong. It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven: e.g., you solve the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewers strongly reject your work with no justification and they do not state why the result is wrong. Examples of reviewer comments include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The proof must be wrong.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;You cannot achieve such a result.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;You do not understand well the notion of ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what to do in this situation? Where to go? If your advisor accepts the work, but the reviewers from the top journal reject the work without even explaining the mistakes,  what should you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13406" OwnerDisplayName="user3439590" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2019-03-14T16:11:13.077" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T07:13:19.157" Title="I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="41" FavoriteCount="87" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T00:28:21.880" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your interpretation of events is: &quot;I have a heartbreaking work of staggering genius and the only obstacle to acceptance is that I am not well known and the elites are blocking my work&quot;, then you're unlikely to get good advice on what to do here or elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, as Raphael indicates, is that while it's &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that this interpretation is correct, it's far more likely that in fact your result does NOT solve the major open problem that you think it does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you admit that this possibility exists, then many steps present themselves, all listed in the very good links provided. Reaching out to people who might comment on your work, looking at the literature to see if approaches like yours have been tried before and have failed, seeing if your solution also solves related (simpler) problems, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T00:28:21.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T01:19:35.090" Score="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether the work is correct or not, the following statement applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The burden of proof is on the author to convince the reader of the result.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The community (e.g., editors, reviewers) has no responsibility to evaluate your work to your satisfaction. If the reviewers made a good faith effort to read your paper and were not convinced, then you must make your argument more convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This does not mean, make a few trivial edits and resubmit. This means, prove your results so thoroughly and in such excruciating detail, and with such demonstrably excellent understanding of the problem context, that they become inarguable. Then figure out a way to express the results in a convincing way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in the process of doing so you find an error, well, you'd be in good company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T01:19:35.090" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:19:44.630" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does your advisor say about all this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she really believes you have solved this major problem, she should be moving mountains to help you publish and disseminate it.  (It sounds like her name is on it too, so she has an even greater incentive.)  But you've used the rather lukewarm phrasing that she &quot;accepts&quot; it.  Better get her completely on board first, or get her to explain in more detail her reservations (which may indeed turn out to reveal fatal flaws).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage you have over the average crank is that, as a student, you already have ties to the scientific community, through your advisor.   &lt;strong&gt;Take advantage of this.&lt;/strong&gt;  Once you and your advisor are satisfied that your manuscript is of the best possible quality (see ff254's answer), post it on arXiv, and circulate.  Your advisor surely knows experts in the field, and should have enough reputation that she can get them interested in it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about your field, but in mathematics, this currently tends to be the way that the community handles solutions to major open problems.  You don't just submit it to &lt;em&gt;Annals&lt;/em&gt;, have the referees approve it, and then wait a few months until everyone gets their issue of &lt;em&gt;Annals&lt;/em&gt; in the mail and is astonished.  Instead, you get the community to study it &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;.  You convince a few experts that it is plausible enough to be worth their attention, and they look at it.  Either they find a critical flaw right away (the most common case), or they find a lesser flaw that you or someone else fixes, and maybe, gradually, a consensus develops that it is probably right.  &lt;em&gt;That's&lt;/em&gt; when you send it to &lt;em&gt;Annals&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that worries me in what you wrote is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which is it?&lt;/strong&gt;   The distinction is crucial.  If it contradicts people's intuition, that raises the bar a little, but scientists are used to being surprised.  If it contradicts something previously proved, that raises the bar a lot.  It puts on you the burden of not only showing that your work is right, but showing specifically why the previously accepted work was actually wrong.  (You can't just say &quot;Mine is right, therefore theirs must be wrong.&quot;)  You didn't say anything about having done that.  (And if you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; find a flaw in the previous work, then your claim is in fact along the lines of &quot;Mathematics is inconsistent&quot;.  The bar on &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; one is more or less on the moon.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T02:19:44.630" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:23:20.593" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some advice is to very carefully check that the proofs are correct, ask one's supervisor for advice, and seek third opinions. Perhaps the supervisor has colleagues in the research area who would be willing to read the draft and offer concrete feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal submitted to is good, yet the reviewers did not give any useful feedback at all, then there is almost certainly a problem with the abstract and introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract and introduction should make clear the new idea that allows this &quot;breakthrough&quot;. Presumably many have approached this problem in the past and failed; there may be widespread beliefs about why it is difficult to prove or perhaps even known &quot;barriers&quot; to attempted proofs. The abstract and introduction should clearly and briefly mention why such beliefs, objections, or barriers do not apply or how they were overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the abstract and introduction must give the skeptical reader reason to believe the paper could be correct, given the reader's background knowledge. If this is done, I would hope that reviewers would at least mention why they do not believe the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5899" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T02:23:20.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:25:32.317" Score="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question has some issues.  Given &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/21677/question-about-linear-equation&quot;&gt;some of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/instance-of-np-hard-and-np-complete-problems-p-vs-np&quot;&gt;the questions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/21675/is-this-proof-correct&quot;&gt;you have asked&lt;/a&gt; on other SE sites in the last few days, I have some reservations about whether your question is being asked in good faith, but taken on its own merits it is a reasonable question so I will try to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue is that, even in asking this relatively simple question, your writing is far from clear.  If you cannot write clearly in this situation, your chances of writing up a difficult piece of mathematics or theoretical computer science are less than good.  For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His/Her supervisor(s) accept the work and they published it in a highly known journal and they get rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laying aside issues of subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense, the entire sentence doesn't make sense: you can't publish a paper and get rejected.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It breaks what most people believe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what it means to &quot;break what most people believe&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;or what they have already proven,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What? Are you saying that your proof contradicts other proven results?  Taken literally, that would mean that you have shown mathematics to be inconsistent.  In practice this could only mean that if your result is correct then some previously published work is incorrect.  If that's the case then you need to be very clear about that and explain the flaws in the earlier work.  It distresses me that you don't really seem to believe this but are just throwing it off as loose language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i.e., He/She solves the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solving an open problem would not &quot;break what people have already proven&quot;....that's what it means for the problem to be open.  Also saying &quot;P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem&quot; is a strange bit of coyness: there is no other problem in theoretical computer science (and very few to none in mathematics as a whole) which is &quot;like&quot; P vs. NP.  So it doesn't make sense to give that as an example.  It's like saying &quot;i.e., he found the Holy Grail or some other famous cup&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other questions you have spoken specifically about having a proof of P vs. NP and then upon questioning have retreated from this.  This sort of vacillation about what you have done is a red flag of &quot;crankiness&quot; that will make professionals wary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reviewers strongly reject his/her work with no justification and they said that the result must be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying that the result must be wrong is not just a justification for rejection, it's the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; justification.  No professional reviewer will say something is wrong lightly.  Almost any reviewer who says this will point to at least one specific error.  If they do not, then in practice it almost certainly means that the entire document did not make enough sense to them to be more specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your advisor accepts the work, the reviewers reject the work without even explain the mistakes (it is the &quot;best&quot; journal in his/her domain) then what he/she must do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit a paper to the top journal in your field claiming a solution to the top problem in your field, and your paper does not make sense or does not evince even a correct understanding of the problem, then the editors are likely not to want to spend much time in response.  On the other hand, if you are sincerely interested in getting their expertise, it seems reasonable to write back very politely and ask for more specifics about the error.  If your response is in any way argumentative then you risk the editorial staff thinking that you will keep hounding them &lt;em&gt;ad infinitum&lt;/em&gt;, and at some point they &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; stop replying.  So you should write back saying that you are not considering resubmitting the paper to that journal but for your own progress it would be extremely helpful to know what is wrong with it.  You could also mention that your supervisor found the paper to be correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact you could be getting more help on this from your supervisor.  If you have really &quot;solved P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem&quot; and your supervisor believes your solution to be correct, why isn't your supervisor moving heaven and earth to be sure your work is getting the attention it deserves?  That doesn't add up.  The two possible explanations seem to be (i) your supervisor is being too polite with you: s/he does not actually believe that you have solved P vs. NP; and (ii) your advisor's imprimatur does not carry any weight in the community whatsoever.  The latter unfortunately means his/her opinion on the correctness of your work is not worth very much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to find out whether it's (i), (ii) or -- I do admit that anything is possible! perhaps the top journal in your field is unfairly ignoring your revolutionary work -- is to seek your advisor's help in getting another faculty member to evaluate the work, preferably someone in the department that you can speak to recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you seem to have some real worries that if an unknown person solves a famous problem then it somehow doesn't count.  This is really not the way academia works, provided the unknown person is capable of presenting the work in a way which makes sense to the experts (and if not, what a shame, but what else could one possibly expect?).  Have you heard of the recent example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yitang Zhang&lt;/a&gt;?  Zhang was a non-tenure-track lecturer at the University of New Hampshire when he stunned the mathematical world by proving the existence of bounded prime gaps.  He submitted his work to the top mathematical journal...and by all accounts they accepted it &lt;em&gt;with unusual speed&lt;/em&gt;.  In other words, they received a paper from someone they had probably never heard of, looked at it quickly and saw that it was a plausible attack on a huge open problem, and as a result they sprung into action much more rapidly and thoroughly than for most submissions they get.  This is an amazing story, but a true one, and it shows how the community responds to a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; situation like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T03:09:22.640" CommentCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18450" CreationDate="2014-03-25T03:43:30.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Courant is one of the top places in the world to get a MS in Finance. This is what their website says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://math.nyu.edu/financial_mathematics/content/05_prospectiveStudents/02.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://math.nyu.edu/financial_mathematics/content/05_prospectiveStudents/02.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you will need to have some grasp of Stochastic Calculus, Probability Theory, and Numerical Analysis. Some knowledge of Functional Analysis and Real Analysis/Measure Theory will help with the proofs but for the most part, from the point of view of writing Models, coding them up, simulating them, and calibrating them you will mostly be solving PDEs. You'll probably use MATLAB or C++ .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your program may also have a strong econometrics basis, so you will need to develop data skills and learn how to use packages like SAS, STATA, LIMDEP etc. The theory will involve some linear algebra and probability theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professors may not go very deep into Finance Theory but the type of math they use there involves Functional Analysis, Dynamic Programming, Martingales etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program will be fast paced and challenging, especially Finance Theory since you won't have a base for it but you should be fine with the math part of it if you have an undergrad degree in math. Remember, you will understand things better with each iteration so try to get some working understand in your first pass and also try to have a bird's eye view of what's going on. It is easy to get lost in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T03:43:30.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T04:20:00.620" Score="2" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received the following comment from a journal reviewer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a need to conduct a research-based intervention program which&#xA;  compare between other solutions and your solution. Such research can&#xA;  provide evidence and support to the importance of this solution over&#xA;  others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does he mean by &quot;research-based intervention program&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T13:10:17.827" Title="What is &quot;research-based intervention program&quot;?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T04:41:18.907" Score="2" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading this Harvard Business Review article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert/ar/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Making of an Expert&lt;/a&gt; and they were offering a PDF purchase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there major differences between the content of the PDF and the free article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13411" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T08:44:33.493" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T13:03:44.450" Title="What is the differences between purchasing Harvard Business Review PDF and reading the article?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18499" CreationDate="2014-03-25T05:06:26.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many publisher offer a teaser - an excerpt of an article - as an advert for the full article. The teaser may contain the abstract, some graphics, maybe a lay summary or press release about the article, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of your Harvard Business Review article, they let you read the first eight paragraphs, which gives you an idea of the article's content and style. The full article is about five times longer than that excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy the pdf, you get the full article, together with its references, and any supplementary information. (though in this particular case, there are neither references nor supplementary information).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that five pages of text can get turned into nine pages within a journal, thanks to graphics and other materials that appear in the PDF, but don't appear in a text-only version: for example, in the PDF of the article in question, the first page consists of a single image.  The text-only version may or may not contain the side-bars that appear in the PDF (&quot;Things to Look Out for When Judging Expertise&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T13:03:44.450" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T13:03:44.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18499" CreationDate="2014-03-25T06:04:36.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;EnergyNumbers' answer is quite complete. In this particular case of the HBR article, the link you provide leads to the first paragraphs of the article and not to the complete article. Notice that, after the first eight paragraphs (as well as at the beginning), the image of a key appears. This signifies that the rest (and likely most) of the article is &quot;locked&quot;. Should you be interested to read the whole article, you are instructed to buy it - or, in the event that you are a HBR subscriber, to simply login. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12712" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T06:04:36.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T06:24:58.493" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I add to Nate Eldredge's  comprehensive answer that, if your work shakes or shatters the commonly held views in your community, then it is very important that you reconcile those views with yours, by which I mean: show exactly where the community is &quot;wrong&quot; or &quot;not exactly right&quot; and why. Offer counterexamples, predictions, all you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relativity would be nowhere if it didn't reduce to good old Newtonean mechanics where the latter performed perfectly!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12712" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T06:24:58.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18448" CreationDate="2014-03-25T06:29:45.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try to locate collaborators of the person (thesis supervisor or coauthors of published work). They may be able to get in touch with him/her or they may even have a copy of the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12712" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T06:29:45.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18481" CreationDate="2014-03-25T09:28:35.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is completely unethical to substantially change a conference paper after acceptance, just as it would be completely unethical for a used car salesman to substitute a different car after you'd agreed to buy. The programme committee accepted the first version, based on the advice of the reviewers; they did not even see the second version. If the same thing happened in a journal version, the second version would be sent back to the referees but there is no second round of reviewing for conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I'm worried that you're even asking this. It suggests that, in your mind, the primary goal has become publication, rather than doing good research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T09:28:35.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18498" CreationDate="2014-03-25T10:20:25.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though s/he is unconvinced of the validity of your conclusions, and is attempting to tell you so without actually saying it! If this is so, then addressing this comment means providing more information on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your solution to the problem should be prefered over other potential solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not familiar with the term in this context--research-based intervention usually refers to targeted interventions/actions in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interventioncentral.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;education&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=research+based+interventions&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0&amp;amp;as_vis=1&amp;amp;oi=scholart&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=F1YxU6dYgtyqAcfygaAH&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQgQMwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T10:20:25.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-25T11:28:40.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite what people will say it is true that journals will reject papers using author profiling without a proper review. It is hard to say how many papers are rejected this way but Elsevier &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;say that they reject&lt;/a&gt; 30 to 50 percent of papers without a review for other &quot;technical reasons&quot;. See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://econ.la.psu.edu/~kkrishna/Papers/The_inside_scoop.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; about how editors can save time by looking at author attributes such as affiliation to reject papers without looking at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personal experience of this because I recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8217&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;made significant progress&lt;/a&gt; on a well known 100 year old open problem after experts in the field had said that future progress was likely to be very slow. The journal I submitted the paper to rejected it as soon as I confirmed that I had no affiliation. There was no reviewer report and they did not give any specific reason. I had complied with all their technical requirements for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I pointed out to them that according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;code of conduct&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;committee on publication ethics&lt;/a&gt; to which the journal claims to adhere &quot;Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript&quot; and &quot;Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.&quot; To my surprise they responded after a delay to tell me that they would look at it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that there are many claimed resolutions of problems such as P vs NP that can be dismissed at a moments glance. This can be done because there are well understood reasons why these problem are hard and a solution would need to address that. Many claimed proofs of open problems by non-academics descend quickly into non-standard language that makes it hard to even address why they are wrong so they are just ignored by the community. It is up to the authors to make sure they communicate their ideas correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do have a solution to an open problem my advice is to submit to an open repository such as arXiv. If you can't get an endorser use viXra or figshare (full disclosure: I am viXra admin) Do not pay attention to negative things said about viXra. It's purpose is just to give you an independent time-stamp and an archived copy you can point to. It does not attempt to review or give your work credibility in any way. The last thing you should do is submit to journals or send to experts without having a verified public copy because if it really is a breakthrough there is a real risk of plagiarism that can only be averted by having a prior copy archived.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastEditorUserId="7466" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T12:11:35.700" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T12:11:35.700" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16642" CreationDate="2014-03-25T11:32:52.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how you are using the term unemployed. Clearly someone with a paid academic position (e.g., adjunct teaching or lab tech) would not be considered unemployed. I am not sure if you consider an unpaid lab tech or a paid burger flipper as being employed. To me the real issue is being out of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot get a relevant paid position and but can afford to be without income for a few months, then a year gap, and probably longer, isn't problematic. In fact many labs will hire unpaid researchers. In this case you could continue to conduct new research, publish, apply for grants, and gain new contacts. You could likely stay in an unpaid position as long as you could afford it without any affects on future job prospects. If you cannot get an unpaid research position then it really depends on how long you can milk publications from your past research and produce new research without any affiliation to a research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot get a relevant paid position and cannot afford to be without income for a few months you can sometimes find paid work in a related field. Working as a paid lab tech (e.g., washing test tubes) or adjunct teaching. These types of jobs won't help you publish more or get grants and in fact take time away from publishing, research, and getting grants. That said they can provide a limited set of new skills and cotnacts so are probably sustainable for a year or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of getting even a peripherally related job taking an unrelated job (e.g., burger flipper) even for a short period (i.e., months) gap can be problematic. Not only will it slow down publishing, research, and grants it may make you less flexible about being able to take up a new related position (e.g., how much notice would you have to give). You are also not building new skills or contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the impact will depend on how important publication speed is in your field. If a few month delay in publishing will result in you being scooped, any gap is probably bad. Similarly the ability to do research without any resources will help you weather a gap. Similarly, if your field has new instigator grants with a clock that starts ticking upon graduation then gaps are bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T11:32:52.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18400" CreationDate="2014-03-25T12:18:33.250" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe most countries use the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) as have been stated in the other answers.&#xA;By this system it should be easier to compare a Higher education award from one country to another as the number of ECTS need to gain the award are now comparable regardless of the name of the award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the EU this is what ECTS achieve. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/education/tools/ects_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Site link here&lt;/a&gt; (This page also has a pdf ECTS users guide.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By making higher education comparable across Europe, ECTS makes teaching and learning in higher education more transparent and facilitates the recognition of all studies. It aids curriculum design and quality assurance and allows for the transfer of learning experiences between different institutions, greater student mobility and more flexible routes to gain degrees. ECTS is closely related to the modernisation of higher education in Europe. In particular, it is a central tool in the Bologna Process which aims to make national systems more compatible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EU also has this &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/eqf/compare/ie/fr_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; where you can set it up to compare the frameworks within Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some of the other answers you will also have seen reference to 'Bologna Process' This is the process that is overseen by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehea.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European Higher Education Area&lt;/a&gt; to assist with the standardisation of Higher Education awards across Europe. Their website also contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=86&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Reports&lt;/a&gt; from all countries in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK Government have also released comparison Documents &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/grade-comparison-of-overseas-qualifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link here&lt;/a&gt; for degrees around the world as compared to UK degrees. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehea.info/Uploads/SubmitedFiles/5_2013/113542.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Document&lt;/a&gt; details the characteristics of Masters degrees as viewed by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ireland (my home country) the National Qualification Authority have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfq.ie/nfq/en/FanDiagram/nqai_nfq_08.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interactive Framework&lt;/a&gt; page that shows the breakdown of all levels within the education system. They also produce a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfq.ie/nfq/en/documents/qualificationscancrossboundaries.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;document&lt;/a&gt; that compared the Irish framework with that of the countries of the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ireland there is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qualificationsrecognition.ie/qualification-recognition-service-database.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Qualifications Database&lt;/a&gt; where you can search by country to compare them to the Irish framework. This also includes undergraduate and professional degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European system, while very integrated, still has some differences from Country to Country at the moment, such as how grades are awarded on a per country basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_degree#Degree_systems_by_regions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; that, although not exhaustive, describes the degree system by region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T14:58:22.490" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T14:58:22.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18498" CreationDate="2014-03-25T12:58:27.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of the phrase &quot;&lt;em&gt;compare between other solutions and your solution&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; my guess is that the reviewer suggested some intervention that has a strong research component so that on top of improving well being, you also get scientific information out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, it would imply many things, among which: including a proper control group or other treatments for contrast, have appropriate power/sample size, prepare a clear protocol, randomization/group randomization, implement consent, plan all analysis before, etc. There are also some more meta-level components, for instance, incorporating cost-benefit analysis, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.re-aim.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RE-AIM&lt;/a&gt; protocol, effectiveness/efficacy research, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see the difference is that &quot;evidence-based intervention&quot; can be carried out with or without any intention to produce generalizable conclusion. We can perform a rigorous literature review, plan a program, and work with a community center to kick it off. No scientific design, no data collection, and no manuscript but yet evidence-based because all components were borrowed from carefully chosen published statistics or analyses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the tone, I don't think the reviewer seriously doubt your work. Void of context, I'd suggest you to incorporate that comment in your &quot;next step&quot; or &quot;recommendation.&quot; After all, if it's a pilot study paper, it's unrealistic to expect a full-blown comparison. However, if what you submit is based on a full scale program that has research-design-related flaws (e.g. no proper sampling, low sample size, no control group), then perhaps you can address it by providing effectiveness/efficacy outcomes from other intervention studies that involved similar sample participants to back up your program. You may also address those lacks in the response. This is hard to tell without knowing what you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T13:10:17.827" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T13:10:17.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18517" CreationDate="2014-03-25T14:00:50.030" Score="18" ViewCount="1699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to read an article on a particular topic. I really want to read and reference the proper original article, and attribute the work to the ones who deserve it; however, I'm finding it hard to determine just who that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found articles, all of which seem to be ripped off from the same source. It could be that one of them is the original, or none of them are. (Some of them are obviously fake.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm inclined to believe a particular one is legitimate. It's the one with the earliest date, which admittedly can be faked, but it's also in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, which I trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not even sure how much I can trust any digital source now, because one of the other articles turns up in search results from my own institute's digital library! It seems they're indexing a particular journal that is not trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I determine the original authors of the work, or who can I trust to tell me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of what I'm talking about, here's what I'm witnessing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ijltet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/6.pdf&quot;&gt;IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer&#xA;Network in Delivery of Message&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://airccse.org/journal/jwmn/0212wmn11.pdf&quot;&gt;Implementing a Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Communication in P2P Networks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajer.org/papers/v2%289%29/V029154162.pdf&quot;&gt;IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4976775&quot;&gt;SKIP: A Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Peer-to-Peer Networks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third article is the one that is returned by my library's journal index. The last one is the one I believe to be original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13420" LastEditorUserId="13420" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T14:19:29.967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T12:48:49.070" Title="How can I find the original article of an often-plagiarised work?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T14:58:54.507" Score="57" ViewCount="34442" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I wrote my syllabus for this term, I added the line &quot;Late work will not be accepted.&quot; In the past, I just took off a large percentage of the grade per day, but I became tired of the added work of managing papers that students handed to me at random times and places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students, naturally, complain this policy too harsh, especially when some larger projects are worth 25% of their grade. I searched the Internet to try to establish what the norm is. I found many syllabi from famous universities, but found very few even list any policies at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;no late work&quot; a typical rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T05:27:36.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T17:41:27.040" Title="Is &quot;no late work&quot; a common policy?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="21" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:25:19.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seen a no late work policy; on the contrary, most of the classes I have taken/TAed accepted late work and took off no credit when the amount of time late was reasonable (1 or 2 days if you were asking questions / professor knew you were working on it.) This is probably due to the fact that most of my classes have had 5-10 students in them; the classes that I have taken with 20+ students have all accepted late work with a similar penalty as the one you described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question follows: Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame? If an assignment is difficult, and not just time heavy, it might be worth relaxing a no late work policy in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is entirely possible to have a hybrid, in which weekly assignments are not accepted late but larger assignments can be late with penalty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T15:25:19.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18512" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:43:51.250" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there's no completely reliable way to determine whether a paper is plagiarized, but I think you're right in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://airccse.org/journal/jwmn/0212wmn11.pdf&quot;&gt;2012 IJWMN paper&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijltet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/6.pdf&quot;&gt;2014 IJLTET paper&lt;/a&gt; are pretty clearly plagiarized.  Of course I can't prove anything, and one of them could in principle be the original, but it would take quite a story to explain how the same text was stolen and published by someone else three to five years earlier.  A one-year delay might be due to refereeing or a conference rejection, but three to five years is a very long delay for CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajer.org/papers/v2%289%29/V029154162.pdf&quot;&gt;2013 AJER paper&lt;/a&gt; is a strange case.  It does copy some text without attribution, both from the 2009 paper and from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on software design&lt;/a&gt;, but it has worse problems than that: the paper seems to have virtually no content beyond mock ups of what the user interface might look like, with messages such as &quot;Your Secret Key is: 1004&quot;.  Even aside from the plagiarism, it's safe to ignore this article as having essentially no research content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4976775&quot;&gt;2009 ICNS paper&lt;/a&gt; looks to me like the original.  There are several tests one can do to try to gauge this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can do web searches for sentence fragments, such as &quot;vulnerable to a large spectrum of attacks&quot; or &quot;introducing IBC into P2P&quot;.  If you do a reasonable job of guessing distinctive phrases, you'll find a short list of potential word-for-word plagiarized papers.  (Annoyingly, search engines will sometimes miss matches due to not parsing PDF files well, so there's a random element to this.)  In this case, searches show that the 2009 paper took some wording from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4627256&quot;&gt;2008 paper&lt;/a&gt; by other authors, such as the bit about vulnerability, but seems not to have copied the whole paper.  The borrowed wording is objectionable, but it doesn't invalidate any originality in content.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can investigate the prestige of the journal/conference.  Plagiarists are less likely to get away with publishing in high-prestige venues, because their theft is more likely to be noticed.  I don't think ICNS is particularly prestigious, though, so this criterion doesn't help.  The papers from 2009 are archived by the IEEE, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/24/springer-ieee-withdrawing-more-than-120-nonsense-papers/&quot;&gt;IEEE archives a lot of junk on behalf of other conference organizers&lt;/a&gt;, so the IEEE archiving shouldn't be viewed as indicating high quality.  It's very different from journals or conferences run by the IEEE.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can see whether there are a lot of citations.  That wouldn't prove anything, but it would suggest that people citing the paper weren't aware of plagiarism allegations.  In this case, Google Scholar finds only four citations, so we don't learn much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, it looks likely that the 2009 paper is the original (although I've only looked briefly, so it would be worth doing a few more searches).  That's a remarkable collection of plagiarism you've uncovered, and I can see how it would be unsettling, but I think this is an unusual case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T15:43:51.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18512" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:45:41.963" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach is to filter by journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The so-called 'American Journal of Engineering Research' (article 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 'Academy &amp;amp; Industry Research Collaboration Center' (AIRCC,&#xA;publisher of the 'International journal of wireless &amp;amp; mobile&#xA;networks', article 2)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 'Association of Computer Electronics and&#xA;Electrical Engineers' (ACEEE, publisher of the 'International Journal&#xA;of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology', article 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are all fake journals and 'predatory publishers' as listed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;Jeffrey Beall's list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that no scrutiny was applied in the publishing process, in fact there was no editorial process whatsoever, and thus instances of plagiarism are to be expected. I would recommend not to cite anything found in these pseudo-journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other clue is the publication date obviously. The IEEE mark does not constitute an insurance of quality in itself, as pointed out by Anonymous Math. but I would say that it is your best shot in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T19:54:19.373" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:54:19.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:52:11.680" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am a student in Central Europe (Computer Science), but an enthusiastic one ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No late work&quot; rules are common for both courses with many (&gt;100) and with few participants. Usually, there will still be a couple of students trying to get a deadline-extension, but in my experience this number is far smaller if you make the &quot;no late work&quot; rule clear to everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that students have other work besides your course and make sure that there's enough time to do the assignment. I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks - if a student falls ill for a couple of days or is otherwise occupied, a second week will give him or her the chance to nevertheless produce a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even for regular homework assignments, I think that giving the students two weeks time will result in far better hand-ins: they can ask questions/request clarifications one week after the assignment was published in the lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13427" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T15:52:11.680" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:52:38.960" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure this varies between lecturers/courses; some universities may have more or less stringent policies but none that I have seen. In my own surroundings, a deadline used to be a deadline. This has softened over time due to many circumstances. Lecturers/teachers are more stressed and enforcing deadlines inevitably involves more work; students seem to find more and more excuses for not being on time. It is hard to point the finger in one or the other direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, however, interesting to think about the fact that deadlines are still deadlines in society. If you do not send in your tax report in time you are fined; if yo do not pay your bills you are &quot;fined&quot; etc. More critically, if you cannot finish a work task on time you may lose out on salary increases promotion or even lose a job, the latter particularly if you run your own business. So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can be done? Key is to be very clear on what will happen from the start. If you make assessment criteria you can state that a late task means fail/zero points or whatever the perspective is. At the same time you can say that for a larger task, points will be deducted or grade lowered a step at a time after each time period the work is late. My former advisor gave all of us the option of being late but told us that points will be deducted. It was up to us to judge if we would benefit from being late (Better answer gave more points than was deducted for being late). This fostered some form of responsibility where you as a student had the power to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I do not think that it is difficult to impose rules for lateness that allows students to assess the effects of being late. Learning is of course about learning a subject but it is also about learning to function in society (in the work place) and that involves developing work standards that are good. So when imposing rules that involve lateness, it is also important to make the rules very clear and also to provide suggestions for what you perceive as a good work ethic/schedule to pass the tasks well, i.e. provide the students with enough information to also see what will not work. If you fail to do so the lateness effects may only seem as punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T15:52:38.960" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:38:54.450" Score="22" ViewCount="7709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize for the length of this post but I feel it is necessary to accurately convey the severity of the situation. I greatly appreciate those who take the time to offer advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a prospective PhD student in a major research institution and am writing on behalf of numerous students frustrated with our department's qualifying exam (QE). Things have been getting progressively worse over the past few years such that my fellow students have decided to petitioned our department(dept.) head for a procedural change. Unfortunately, several students refused to sign the petition for fear of malicious treatment by the faculty. The response to our petition from the dept. head and other faculty was unfavorable to the point that we are considering filing a formal complaint with the University. I would like to gauge the objective opinions of unbiased parties as to whether our reasons for complaint are justifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will describe the QE procedure and summarize our complaints below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formal reasoning given by our dept. for having a qualifying exam is &quot;To determine whether the student has the knowledge, skills, and ability to conduct independent thinking and creative research.&quot; The QE is composed of 4 consecutive one hour written examinations, a research assessment paper on a pre-selected journal article specific to our research field, and an oral examination where we present the contents of our research assessment paper and then answer questions from 3 faculty members until they are satisfied. Students may retake any sections which they fail the following year. If after the second attempt, all parts have not been passed, the student must petition for a third attempt. If the petition is not accepted, the student must defect to the master's program. If that student already has a M.S. from the department (as is my case) then the student is forced to leave the program and 3 years of tuition is wasted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students are not allowed to see their graded exams or know their exam score. This privilege was removed without warning two years ago despite being present in our universities' student bill of rights. We are notified via letter of pass/fail status only. Also, no statistics are provided regarding the range of scores, number of students who passed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dept. never reveals what score constitutes passing or failing. We have heard via word of mouth from certain faculty who sympathize with out situation, that passing can range from 30% to 80% depending on the exam category and changes from year to year. This, however, is not administrable evidence and would most likely be denied by the faculty who told us if ever questioned. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exam content consistently strays outside the provided list of topics. The provided topic list appears to be lazily assembled by copy/pasting from course syllabi. The 4 exams are technically supposed to be covered by the 3 courses which the department requires all graduate students to take (they do not offer a graduate class covering the fourth topic). However, questioned are routinely posed from material covered in non-required classes, some of which are only offered every few years. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exams are written by professors who's field of research is entirely unrelated to the exam topic and/or professors who have never taught the class which the exam covers. This leads to major inconsistencies in the materials covered and puts students who took the class from a different professor at a disadvantage  Again, the dept. refuses to reveal who writes the exams. However, we generally figure it out in hindsight from off-the-record discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The passing rate of these exams is very low. Less than 20% of students pass all exams their first attempt. Again, we cannot prove it, but it is suspected that the decision to pass a student is biased based on whether it is the students second attempt. Also, many students who get A's in the covered classes are failing these exams. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After our meeting with the dept. head regarding our petition, it was announced that the subjective third attempt to pass all sections was no longer going to be allowed. This is unfair as many students have required this third attempt in the past. Also, students taking these exams for the second time (which were in February), did so under the impression that, based on past history, they would get a third attempt if needed. This new policy will effectively force them to leave without a degree. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list of complaints could go on for pages but I will leave it at that. I understand that a PhD QE should not be easy; however, are our frustrations warranted? I welcome both advice and constructive criticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13431" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T06:32:33.493" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T06:32:33.493" Title="Are frustrations with lack of fairness and transparency on PhD qualifying exam warranted?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;qualifying-exam&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:42:36.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I specify a due date, but have a 48 hr, no questions asked, grace period. If a student gets an assignment in by the due date, I give a small amount of extra credit (typically 0.25 pts added to his or her final percentage*). I do not accept assignments after the grace period. I never get complaints about this policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* I don't round final percentages. Students are in charge of their own rounding by getting the extra credit for turning in assignments by the due date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13430" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T16:42:36.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18579" CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:49:13.547" Score="12" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fourth year graduate student of information science. Broadly, I work in a rather interdisciplinary area at the intersection of location based social networks, usable privacy and surveillance studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am post &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradschool.cornell.edu/requirements/exams/exams-phds&quot;&gt;A exam&lt;/a&gt; - which in my university refers to a combination of qualifiers, orals and dissertation proposal/prospectus confirmation. I am regarded as ABD/doctoral candidate in my university. I go on the job market in another 6-12 months (depending on certain criteria such as in progress journal articles being published on time etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my specific field, folks publish in a combination of journals and conferences tending more towards the latter although my committee prefers the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser and I have been discussing the possibility of my presenting a general overview of my doctoral dissertation work in doctoral consortiums in various conferences to get feedback and exposure to the community as a whole. Some of the sample conferences where my work is a good fit are &lt;a href=&quot;http://ils.indiana.edu/faculty/hrosenba/www/web-sci-14/doc-consortium14.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2014.acm.org/authors/doctoral-consortium&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobilehci.acm.org/2014/doctoral-consortium/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I am looking to go into academia primarily (looking for both calls for tenure track positions as well as post doctoral positions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions to the academia.stackexchange community are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many doctoral consortiums are &quot;enough&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt; (assuming funding to attend multiple ones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T03:04:03.353" Title="Doctoral Consortiums: When, How Many and Are they actually useful?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21177" CreationDate="2014-03-25T17:04:29.690" Score="1" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is it correct to use comma after paper title and before end quote? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;[X] A. Author, &quot;Paper title &lt;strong&gt;,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Journal, vol. X, no. XX, pp. XXX-XXX, Year XXXX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems natural to use it after end quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9337" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:02:45.700" Title="Comma before end quote in bibliography" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T17:21:17.703" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue not covered by the many good answers is &lt;em&gt;proportionality&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with having firm deadlines and sticking to them, or allowing a grace period with corresponding deductions, and so on. But it's your job as lecturer to make sure the 'punishment fits the crime'. If you have a zero-tolerance late policy and a short time window for a hard assignment that counts for a lot of points, then the policy is disproportionately harsh even if it's fair and clearly stated. I bring this up because you mentioned assignments/projects that carry upto 25% of the grade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is partly why I use a sliding scale late policy, where students can turn in things late, but lose a percentage of their score for each day they're late, upto a week for a 2-week assignment at which point they earn nothing. If you wish to have firm deadlines for a project that accounts for a large portion of the grade, then you might consider creating intermediate deadlines to break up the penalty. This way, students can learn the consequences of missing deadlines without facing huge penalties. It is also more robust to unforeseen events that no one can control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T20:18:07.610" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T20:18:07.610" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18522" CreationDate="2014-03-25T17:43:33.180" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic reality of qualifying exams is that they can act as an &quot;outlet valve&quot; or &quot;quality check&quot; for various departments, allowing them to pick out the best students (if they admit more incoming students than they can accommodate in RA and TA positions) or to double-check their decisions (to make sure everyone is qualified). Of course, this only works if they are free to make the decisions however they so choose. This means that it doesn't make sense for them to post publicly exact scores, nor to publicize what a &quot;passing grade&quot; is. So you're probably not going to meet with a lot of support for public announcement of scores and distributions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most of your other points &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; valid concerns. You can't change the rules &lt;em&gt;ex post facto&lt;/em&gt;—if you tell somebody before their second attempt that they have up to three attempts to pass, then you can't later change your mind and say &quot;sorry, you only have two attempts.&quot; This is completely unfair. Similarly, asking questions on subjects that lie well outside the domain of what the exam should cover is also completely unreasonable. Passing should not be contingent on taking a class you haven't been able to take because it wasn't offered!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, though, is that it sounds that like the bigger problem is that the faculty in your department aren't taking their duties with respect to the qualifying exam very seriously. If this is in fact the case, then they should change the exam into something they can live with. Otherwise, they're wasting their time and yours, and possibly needlessly ruining people's graduate careers and professional aspirations. This is simply &lt;strong&gt;inexcusable&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately, short of raising a ruckus with the university administration (or being willing to file a lawsuit), I don't see much hope of things changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T17:43:33.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18522" CreationDate="2014-03-25T18:18:20.757" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, your concerns sound reasonable and valid, if the facts are as you've stated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if your department has decided to use a quota-based filter to limit admission to a Ph.D (only some X fraction of students will be allowed to go on). That would explain the general mystery surrounding the process and their unwillingness to post standards for passing/failing. While they're within their rights to do things this way, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Because if they were required to state this explicitly, no one would want to come to the department to play this version of Hunger Games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it's not clear what you can do. Some things are possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;can you document the instances of questions deviating from prescribed material ? While this wouldn't be a smoking gun (&quot;You should know this already&quot; - say the professors), it would at least force them to be more specific about what's contained on the exams. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;can you document the inconsistencies between material taught and material asked on the exams ? for the same reason as above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;changing rules midstream is a big NO NO. This is your strongest complaint if you have to take the matter up further. At the very least, students have to be grandfathered in. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you should remember one source of power you do have. Professors need grad students, if for nothing else than to do the work professors have promised their grant agencies they will do. Deans need professors to spend research money on students so they can say that they're using grant money effectively. None of this works without students. Obviously you can't take collective action without numbers, but a protest where you submit blank exams could make an interesting statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that should be a last resort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T18:18:20.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11785" CreationDate="2014-03-25T18:18:52.580" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to contradict Samuel too much, but his account of what can happen has definitely happened to some people. But it is extremely rare and I would argue a little over-simplified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For starters, my paycheck from a major Australian university has the word &quot;tenured&quot; on it. So my first point is, yes, continuing positions are &quot;tenured&quot; - but lets not get bogged down in semantics because tenure def means something different in Australia. Indeed I believe the union considers this to be a f(ph)urfy so let's say there is some subjectivity there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having tenure does not guarantee that you cannot be fired though. You can be. But as one manager said to me once, it is more expensive to fire an under performing academic than to simply retain them as long as they keep doing their teaching etc. I work with lots of unproductive academics and many have been asked to leave. They simply said no thanks and stayed. The only time I have seen academics forced out, they left with large redundancies and, simply put, wanted to leave. When you read about retrenchments at Australian unis in the newspaper, often more want to leave than are given packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gross incompetence or dangerous behaviour? Yes you can be sacked. But as far as I have seen you cannot be fired on a &quot;whim&quot; as someone suggested. A business case would be made (declining enrolments, lack of research activity, lack of administrative roles)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, as Samuel said, management teams will go after departments at times. But redundancy packages are often generous and often people from an eliminated department will be shifted to another department (good academics stay, crap ones move to a lower ranked uni).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't want to make this a peeing contest, but I have worked in the US system too and the Australian system is more protectionist of staff than the US system. But indeed tenure is probably harder to lose than in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am tenured at a Australian uni. I say this to people regularly and no one corrects me. But yes, I know union types that tell me my tenure is not tenure. I heard this a lot 5 years ago, but not recently&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, to answer the initial question, the Australian system, broadly speaking, is the British system. Tenure with probation (3 years, recently raised to 5 I think)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13434" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T18:18:52.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15219" CreationDate="2014-03-25T19:14:56.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your advisor supporting you, e.g. as an RA?  If so, he might be perturbed that you are spending time and energy on something &quot;way different&quot; from what you are paid to do.  Along the same lines, he may also be intent on your completion of your degree program in a timely manner so that he can free up resources, say for another student to enter the group after you graduate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13439" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T19:14:56.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T19:50:29.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad computer science/philosophy major at a top 10 school in the United States, I would say that 90% of the classes I have taken have had a no late work policy. Particularly after the end of freshman year, it's understood that you need to get your work in on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's usually understood in these classes that there is still the option to ask the professor for an extension, which will almost certainly be granted in cases of illness, etc, unless the class is just too large/has an automated grading system (checkouts of code on a particular date from SVN, for example) that prevents this. The late policy covers the case where a student just doesn't hand in his or her work when it's due and says nothing to his or her professor, and there is really no excuse for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12063" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T19:50:29.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:02:19.183" Score="3" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;Main Issue:  What credit should be given (and how should it be given) to the alma mater in publicizing old work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I entered and left a Ph.D. program in another millenium.  During this time&#xA;I produced some results, one group of which was to become my dissertation.  (At one point, my advisor said the equivalent of &quot;you have enough to graduate; write it up&quot;.)  However, all that I did distribute during my time as a graduate student was a couple of preprints, one of which later got cited in work of others.  I did not finish the dissertation and did not get the degree (although I did get to attend commencement and walk across the stage).  If it matters, during the time I produced results I got one TA (teaching) grant, and no other funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering self-publishing material related to the work I did in grad school.&#xA;I have already given presentations on some of the work;  I now plan to submit to ArXiv some of my work done while I was in graduate school; later I may follow up with results based&#xA;on this work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 1.  What kind of issues might I encounter in doing so?  Would the University have some recourse to discourage me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2.  If there are no intellectual property issues involved, what is an acceptable format?  (I was thinking: write a wrapper giving a brief history and introduction, insert my preprint verbatim, and close with acknowledgments and some follow up.  The preprint I distributed does not contain my dissertation, but is a key piece of it.  What would the&#xA;acknowledgment section look like?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 3.  If I decide I also want to go back and finish&#xA;my degree at that program, (ideally by finishing the remaining requirement of submitting&#xA;the finished and approved dissertation, however unlikely that may be), would doing this&#xA;self-publishing be contraindicated?  If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T22:15:33.947" Title="Issues in self-publishing old work. Recommendations for Necromancy?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:50:07.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that in general it depends. If assignments are going to be happening regularly or are kind of a hard mathematics course (think calculus, differential equations...) then I think the no late work policy is valuable.  This is particularly true if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand in a class that I teach most of the assignments are more project oriented.  As a result they will take longer than a normal assignment, and they are also far more open-ended (a solution from student A may look nothing like solution from student B, but they may both be completely valid).  As a result the approach that some students use may lead them to take longer on an assignment than others.  I use a sliding scale as discussed above;  Typically I allow 1 week grace where each day costs a few percentage points, and after that the assignment is not accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as for pros and cons,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students seem to like the flexibility, sometimes many of their assignments are due in one or two days and this allows some buffering (at a cost)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with a digital submission like blackboard the late grading is very easy to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assignments appear to have more work put into them, instead of students doing the bare minimum they tend to explore their solutions more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;since introducing the policy some students tend to turn in homework later (typically 1-3 days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some students treat the final deadline (1 week late) as the deadline, so a limited number of students will turn in their homework late consistently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I am happy with the solution though, and I would suggest offering a slight grace period where it doesn't make your life too difficult. The main approaches that I've seen being either % off per day, or x number of free late days for the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13442" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T20:50:07.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18522" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:25:02.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have implied two basic options: staying without fussing or trying to lobby for changes, or staying with some attempted hostile influence. But both cases are graduate students with low status dealing with tenured and like-minded-to-tenured professors. Someone who understood law could tell you legal strengths and someone who understood university policies could advise you on means of redress within the university. I can't do either, but I want to give another option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the option of entering another program. There would be losses, but what is written between the lines in your detailed &quot;Here are the details as objectively as I can give them; how do things stack up?&quot; original post is a question of &quot;Can I from my present position obtain an appropriate position within my university, or not?&quot; that does not consider seeking a more appropriate department and university. I know there are things you would lose by transferring out, and you might have to take some things again. But in terms of a hostile departmental administration, there are much better options than what you can work out within a university that does these things, even if you can improve some of them by academic grievance procedure (a point on which I do not offer informed opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a second master's and was dropped on suspicious grounds (passing was 60 points, minimum for entering Ph.D. placement was 63 points, I had 61 points... after I decided that the one area I really wanted to impress the department was my thesis, and the department made me change my thesis topic, which I declared at the beginning of the year, so completely that I retained none of my earlier study--two thirds of the way through the year; the 61 was a 61 for half the time I spent during the academic year and no credit or recognition earlier). I'm looking for a more appropriate place, even though it pains me I was not able to complete my studies there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the best, and a boss in or outside of academia who will be more humane in dealing with humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11992" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T21:25:02.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18532" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:32:04.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question in my mind would be the timeliness of the result. &quot;In another millenium&quot; covers a lot of ground. PhD research is supposed to make a new contribution to the field, but if your results have been overtaken by other work, then they may no longer be the kind of thing that your old school would be willing to give a PhD for. In any case, you should be discussing this with people at that school, such as your adviser (if that person still works there) or someone else such as the faculty member who currently handles advising for graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; timely enough to be worth a PhD today, then I don't understand why you wouldn't submit it to a journal rather than just putting it on arxiv, which makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T21:41:19.607" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T21:41:19.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:32:28.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends a lot on the culture and the institution. In America, er, a decade or two ago, I remember there was usually some penalty for late work at the Universities I and my friends attended, but &quot;no credit for late work&quot; was rare. However when I was at university in England, there were no penalties for late work in any of my classes. Even very late work was not considered a problem. Personally, I found that having all the time I needed to do the work, resulted in me being far more productive (if not as timely, but no one cared about that), and doing much more interesting and better writing, as well as not abusing my sleep by staying up all night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13444" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T21:32:28.277" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18532" CreationDate="2014-03-25T22:15:33.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is in response to Question 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The university only cares if some portion of your work is monetizable, i.e. leads to a product that people pay money for.  If not, they would prefer you to publish rather than not; it can only help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue is your advisor and collaborators, if any.  They may have a claim on that work.  Before publication you should contact them and discuss possible coauthorship.  Resolve this issue before investing any more of your time; see other posts here for what happens when authorship is not clearly agreed among all participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T22:15:33.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-25T22:38:41.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been a student that turned in HW late, and it varies widely depending on the professor. In general, I have found the humanities departments the most harsh about deadlines. The natural science classes are more lenient, with some professors clearly stating that they will accept late HW with a deduced grade. Others will accept late HW unofficially before they return graded HWs to students, and yet others will work with you more flexibly. There hasn't been a single professor of mine that hasn't accepted at least some late HW from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a TA, I fully accept late HW, with no deadlines, and likewise return the HWs to students late (you can call it a &quot;suggested deadline&quot;). My teaching principles are fairly libertarian, and my students tend to learn a lot during the semester. That's what I care about. The only time I care about HWs and examinations is to see whether I'm doing an effective job at what the students' pay me to do, which is teach them. It's only fair to examine the students to see if I'm failing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's appalling to see professors demand of their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, &lt;strong&gt;pay&lt;/strong&gt; the professors' salaries, demand of their students to learn a certain way within a definite deadline. Nothing in my experience has been more detrimental to my learning. I've gained the most out of classes that allowed me to turn in HW late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just in case anyone thinks that students who fail to &quot;respect&quot; deadlines are intrinsically procrastinators, I declare that it was quite the contrary in my case. The reason I submitted HWs late was to ensure I read the whole relevant text before attempting the HW. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing when I solved a problem, rather than use &quot;ad hoc&quot; methods to get something that resembles the correct answer. Moreover, I would often find a passage in a text that interested me, so I would pursue the topic and do some research. Sometimes this &quot;research&quot; would take a week out of my time, but I learned more from the self-driven pursuits than all the professor-imposed, who was paid by me to teach me, HW combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's time we do away with harsh grading policies and strict deadlines, because I don't know a single person who has ever learned that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I do know a lot of wage-slaves, also known as employees at major companies, who rent their bodies to their masters; and the masters certainly will demand of their subjects to have work done on time and subject themselves to meaningless evaluations by authoritarian figures. That isn't the environment in which people can learn and discover; that sounds more like mines, sweat-shops, and assembly line to me. Unless one wants to impose an assembly-line education, which is what's common in USA universities these days, I'd advise against serious deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13448" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T22:38:41.383" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18541" CreationDate="2014-03-25T23:19:50.033" Score="36" ViewCount="4555" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am not wrong, turbo codes was submitted to the ICC conference and rejected but accepted later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there are other similar works (strong works) that were rejected at first but then accepted and considered revolutionary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13450" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T06:04:44.563" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T15:26:55.907" Title="Is it possible for reviewers to mistakenly reject a quality paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18540" CreationDate="2014-03-25T23:53:53.470" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Higgs&lt;/strong&gt;'s 1964 paper on the Higgs mechanism was rejected by &lt;em&gt;Physics Letters&lt;/em&gt; (where his preliminary paper on the subject was published).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was told that it was not suitable for rapid publication and that he should send it to another journal. However, he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-heart-of-the-matter-54071.html&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt; heard that the paper had been rejected because the editors felt that &quot;it was of no obvious relevance to physics.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, Higgs acknowledged that the paper &quot;had been short on sales talk,&quot; and after adding a couple of paragraphs it was accepted by &lt;em&gt;Physical Review Letters&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://sss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/342.abstract&quot;&gt;early example&lt;/a&gt; of manuscript rejection, from 1842: &lt;strong&gt;Mayer&lt;/strong&gt; came up with the theory of conservation of energy, and wrote an article explaining his idea that &quot;energy is neither created nor destroyed.&quot; It was rejected by the leading physics journal of the time, ended up in an obscure chemistry journal, and was mostly ignored by physicists. When the physicists of the time rallied around Joule, who described conservation of energy later in the 1840s, Mayer suffered a mental breakdown. Towards the end of his life, he was finally given credit as a father of thermodynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; declined to accept &lt;strong&gt;Krebs&lt;/strong&gt;'s paper on the &quot;Krebs cycle&quot; in 1937. The work later won a Nobel Prize. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28819/title/Nature-rejects-Krebs-s-paper--1937/&quot;&gt;letter from the editor&lt;/a&gt; regretfully informs Mr. Krebs that the editor already has &quot;sufficient letters&quot; for the next 7-8 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seminal paper on quantum cryptography, &lt;strong&gt;Wiesner&lt;/strong&gt;'s “Conjugate Coding,” was &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604072.pdf&quot;&gt;rejected&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;em&gt;IEEE Transactions on Information Theory&lt;/em&gt;. (A surviving copy of the original typewritten manuscript says &quot;Submitted to IEEE, Information Theory&quot; on it.) It was published about a decade later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same subfield, the original manuscript by &lt;strong&gt;Bennet, Brassard and Breidbart&lt;/strong&gt; that introduced quantum key-recycle scheme (QKRS) was &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604072.pdf&quot;&gt;rejected&lt;/a&gt; several times by major CS conferences including STOC, and was never successfully published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ernst&lt;/strong&gt;'s work on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1991/ernst-bio.html&quot;&gt;rejected&lt;/a&gt; not once, but twice, by the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Chemical Physics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Binning&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Rohrer&lt;/strong&gt;'s report on their first experiments in scanning tunneling microscopy, which earned them a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986, was initially &lt;a href=&quot;http://scx.sagepub.com/content/16/3/304.short&quot;&gt;rejected&lt;/a&gt; on the grounds that it was &quot;not interesting enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a few examples. Many more have been compiled in various publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here are some more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2008-gonzalezalvarez.pdf&quot;&gt;Nobel-prize-winning&lt;/a&gt; papers that were rejected at first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cahnrs-cms.wsu.edu/ses/people/chouinard/Documents/GansAndShepard.pdf&quot;&gt;compilation of classic economics papers&lt;/a&gt; rejected the first time around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And here are some &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=380984&quot;&gt;famous papers in the field of medicine&lt;/a&gt; that were rejected the first time around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scx.sagepub.com/content/16/3/304.short&quot;&gt;This paper lists influential rejected papers&lt;/a&gt;, of which several earned their authors Nobel prizes and several became the most cited papers in their respective journals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And here are some more &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-008-2141-5&quot;&gt;reports of Nobel laureates&lt;/a&gt; who encountered resistance from reviewers and editors to their award-winning work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/342.abstract&quot;&gt;yet another list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T01:19:11.343" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T01:19:11.343" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-26T00:53:09.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate, I have had a few classes like this, but if it's a class with lots of HW assignments, usually the professor will grant extensions if you ask; sometimes there are also a set number of &quot;late days&quot; that students can use, so maybe you can do that so that the volume of late submissions is reduced, or just take 50% off for one day and 100% off for more than one (that way I doubt many people would ever submit late).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to make it clear that any professor should, of course, always grant extensions in the event of an emergency (family emergency / illness); to do otherwise is, well, barbaric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I don't think you're obliged to give full credit if there was no extenuating emergency circumstance (e.g. illness) and the student didn't ask you beforehand. If they thought they might not finish in time, it's definitely their responsibility to tell you that. That said, giving 0% for such a case is also pretty harsh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastEditorUserId="12655" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T20:00:36.630" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T20:00:36.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T00:53:20.137" Score="9" ViewCount="11160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to an internationally reputed journal. Two months after submission I was asked to suggest possible reviewers, which I did after a couple of days reflection. Since then it has been 4 months and the paper is still &quot;awaiting reviewer invitation.&quot; I sent an email to the editor-in-chief as this was the only contact information given for queries. It has been almost two weeks without any reply. The day before yesterday I emailed the managing editor to know if the paper is under review or still awaiting reviewer invitation, but still I have received no reply from either editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I get in contact with the journal regarding my paper's review status?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13453" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T16:12:28.650" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T12:02:55.453" Title="Article awaiting reviewer invitation 6 months after submission" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15219" CreationDate="2014-03-26T04:17:51.903" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, because I did this, and was actively encouraged to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor does not own you. If you did some outside work, and you think it's publishable, and your supervisor wasn't involved, the work wasn't building off their lab's work or using their equipment, there's no reason they need to be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you might &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to involve them, to get their input, keep them aware of other things you are doing so they can say nice things about the terribly clever projects their students are up to, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T04:17:51.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-26T04:20:52.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the appropriateness of such a policy depends on the class and the students within it, and even when it exists, I'd consider flexing it for extraordinary circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I once had a student who turned in late work because they were called up to respond to a national emergency. Is that really something I should have savaged their grade for, even if generally the class had a pretty strict deadline policy (because I was trying to turn grades around fast)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T04:20:52.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18547" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18548" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" Score="0" Body="Questions on rejecting or being rejected, as relates to a manuscript, graduate school application, dissertation, or other academic endeavor." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T06:11:40.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18426" CreationDate="2014-03-26T07:43:38.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One advantage of using those repositories (in public or private mode) is that you can show the changes and versions of some text. At the same time you can show variations of something through forks. Of course I have no idea why these features might be needed for publication of a paper, but if you are developing a paper collaboratively and you use some text based system, such as Latex, then it makes sense to use those repositories both for source sharing, backup and versioning, and alternative developments through forks. If you want to invite unidentified future authors (probably through fork) then it should be in public, otherwise private versions makes more sense for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T07:43:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18641" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:12:34.657" Score="12" ViewCount="3146" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our country (Bangladesh), a PhD from the US is considered as a pinnacle of achievement in one's life. But, in some of my discussions in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5990/do-i-have-any-potential-in-the-academic-field&quot;&gt;one of my previous questions&lt;/a&gt; I learnt that even a PhD from a US university is not enough to secure a job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: are there any statistics on the rate of employment amongst PhD graduates trained in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user4271" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2017-12-09T20:06:03.007" Title="What is the likelihood of a PhD-holder from the USA remaining unemployed?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T10:29:45.510" Score="13" ViewCount="2583" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you might have seen from my history I had a very bad advisor who deliberately underpaid me, stole my research work and undermined my career at multiple phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am done with my university and leaving next month. A professor in my department had been very supportive of me during these times, giving me advice on how to handle this situation, gave me recommendation letters to apply for PhD programs at other universities and also got me a internship. I just want to thank her for her help. I usually would have got a champagne or something but I know she doesn't drink alcohol. Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:03:10.620" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:03:10.620" Title="Gift to a supportive professor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18566" CreationDate="2014-03-26T12:35:06.240" Score="5" ViewCount="5631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a scientific manuscript in German and since I want to give the German readers the opportunity to understand everything of it, I will include translations of all foreign quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I do this? Let's assume the following hypothetical English text, where I want to include the original German quote (Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others &amp;quot;it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery.&amp;quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/PMAg4xywy4s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DK 2009&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: Where do I put the original quote in German and do I have to point out that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; translated it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current solution is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others &amp;quot;it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery.¹&amp;quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/PMAg4xywy4s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DK 2009&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹Original: Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4021" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T16:04:02.210" Title="Where should be original quotations be type-set in a translation?" Tags="&lt;translations&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5990" CreationDate="2014-03-26T12:55:21.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a PhD and then went into the software industry followed by banking. I did the PhD because I love science rather than for career enhancement so I never regretted doing it. In the software industry the PhD is not well valued. Three years of work experience would be much better. In banking the right PhD is useful for certain roles such as quants, hedge managers, analysts etc. In general a suitable PhD helps in some roles, has no benefit in others and may make you overqualified elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to do a PhD only if you are inspired by research, not as a career move. Only continue into a postdoc academic career if you are really sure it is your lifetime calling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is possible that coming from a third world country the PhD may open more doors for you. My own experience does not address that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T12:55:21.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18557" CreationDate="2014-03-26T12:55:22.307" Score="16" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Computational Biologist as part of an academic lab group working on the Immunogenomics of disease vectors (which may be relevant to the following).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am designing part of a web-page that showcases the members of the group by: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two portrait photographs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A personal statement (50 words)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary of their work (50 words)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fun group photographs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the &quot;Do&quot;s and &quot;Don't&quot;s in designing a members page of a group such as ours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know of any exemplar members pages or group websites?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A template in wordpress so far: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vigilab.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vigilab.org/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9764" LastEditorUserId="9764" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T16:16:57.803" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T16:16:57.803" Title="Design of &quot;Members Page&quot; for Academic Lab Website?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2014-03-26T13:29:43.047" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;All I know is what I want to see when I visit an academic's member page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their name and a picture (to confirm it's them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their rank and position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long they have been working in the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A full list of publications with links to full-texts and a good .bib entry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short bio / summary of work, including service and awards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some teaching information (if applicable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervision details (if applicable: whom they're supervising or they've supervised)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project information (which projects are they funded from/P.I. of, etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it professional, clean and brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to list details like publications on a separate linked page if they are too long/cumbersome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T19:30:58.763" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T19:30:58.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T14:00:17.023" Score="6" ViewCount="885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that perhaps most US graduate programs require non-native English speakers to get a certain mark on the TOEFL. Is this requirement typically waived for students who completed their bachelors degree in the US before applying to a masters program in another school also in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:41:07.287" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:41:07.287" Title="Are TOEFL requirements waived for foreigners with US bachelors degrees?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18559" CreationDate="2014-03-26T14:17:26.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in this position - as an international student applying to US graduate programs after being a US undergraduate. I contacted the graduate programs I was applying to to ask if they would waive the TOEFL requirement, and they all did (i.e. I didn't have to retake it). I heard recently that the requirement for a waiver (for my current university at least) is for an applicant to have been at a US university for four years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My backup plan if the graduate programs had seemed unsure about a waiver was to call someone on the phone and essentially demonstrate that I am fluent in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The TOEFL is expensive!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T14:17:26.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:47:20.960" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leslie Lamport details his history of publishing, including the Paxos paper, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his website&lt;/a&gt;. It took eight or so years to publish the Paxos paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lamport received the Turing Award in 2013; and Paxos and its derivatives are now at the core of almost all large-scale web-sites (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, ... ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the comments:&lt;/strong&gt; Lamport's &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#buridan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper on Buridan's Principle&lt;/a&gt; took 28 years to get published!  He explains the long road to eventual publication, &lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13468" LastEditorUserId="92" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T15:35:20.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T15:35:20.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T20:13:37.160" Score="1" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the cusp of selecting a MSc programme in Europe before re-applying to American PhD's and I'm at a loss how to decide which MSc position I should take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm strongly convinced I want to do a PhD with a person at Columbia U., UT Texas and some elite schools. All of these people have a shared interest (narrowly defined field of research) and I'm wondering how I can improve my chances down the road to study with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, a PI's at one of the schools I've been accepted to is working in the same field; goes to the same conferences, visits the PhD PI's and, is probably on quite good terms with them. I could not verify this any further without asking too obvious questions. So to me it seems like an advantage, however this MSc programme is not well established and hence doesn't have the 'prestige'  like the other programmes I applied to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tempted, perhaps because of my upbringing, to contact the PhD PI's I'm interested in and straight-up asking them if they'd recommend any of the MSc programmes. Would this seem overbearing? I can't really tell and the cultural differences make it more ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T22:15:27.773" Title="Aligning my Master's degree with prospective PhD's" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18554" CreationDate="2014-03-26T20:15:25.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some style guides (Chicago, MLA, etc.) have rules for how to do this; if you know that you are required to follow some specific one of these, then the advice there will be authoritative. That said, there are still several different options for how the original quotation and the translation are presented: the choice is yours, and then the various manuals may give you &quot;implementation details&quot; about such vital matters as the placement of punctuation. (For example, the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has extensive guidance in 13.71-13.79, but stops short of presenting the One True Method of including dual-language material.) I'm afraid I do not know which style manuals might be preferred for German-language texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your basic choices are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the original, or the translation, is the primary version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the secondary version appears in the body text, in a footnote, or in an endnote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you have decided that the translated version is primary, which makes sense if most readers don't care about the specific wording of the original, but may still want it to be available. You've also chosen to place the original text in a footnote, which makes sense for a &quot;mid-length&quot; quotation. If you only wanted to gloss a few words, it would be more natural to do this inline. If you had a more extensive quotation, then putting it in an endnote - or even an appendix - would avoid the problem of the gigantic multi-page footnote which can be so hostile to readers. So I think your choices are perfectly defensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case where &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the original &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the translation are from an external source, it is clear that both should be cited. Otherwise, you would not be giving due credit to the author and translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the translation is your own, and in principle you should note it as &quot;my translation&quot; in whatever way is compatible with your citation style. For example, perhaps your footnote would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; My translation; original: &lt;em&gt;Es geht nicht ...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or perhaps you would write in text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the whole bakery.&quot; [DK 2009, my translation]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics depend on which style guide you are following, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these &quot;my translation&quot; notes could be omitted, though that really depends on the quantity and variety of sources you are translating. If you have many translated quotations, some by you and some by others, then it would be clearer to retain the notes. If there is only one source which you quote repeatedly, then you could note &quot;my translation&quot; the first time and then not mention it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is an explicit note early in the document, saying that all translations are your own unless indicated otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T20:15:25.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18571" CreationDate="2014-03-26T22:00:30.453" Score="7" ViewCount="772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always want to read a high profile publication papers. It is true that they are in general hard to understand but they have very important results (in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens to me sometimes. Sometimes when I read a high profile paper, I found that the contribution is not very interesting, not worth to publish the work in this kind of high profile journal. Maybe I am the one who do not understand the paper but it is only me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do high profile publication contain &quot;uninteresting&quot; (i.e., not very important or novel) publications? If it is the case, why they accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13450" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T22:13:02.187" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:07:25.570" Title="Are there &quot;uninteresting&quot; publications in high profile journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2014-03-26T22:08:40.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some answers based on subjective experience in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you frame it, they are of little use. Most such events are collocated with better (top-tier) conferences in an area and those and their collocated workshops are actually much more useful forum for presentation of your on-going research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctoral consortia are primarily a vehicle for networking in the community. The benefits of attending an event like that include 1) getting to know better your peers in your &quot;academic generation&quot; (if you remain in academia, this might become useful later in your career: think of them as future collaborators); and 2) getting an opportunity to have one to one interactions with senior members of the community (think of them as future supervisors/employers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last third of your doctoral studies. Given the purpose of doctoral consortia I mention above, often the participants will be specifically selected to only include those in the later stages of their studies when your thesis is outlined, your main thesis-relevant contributions to the state of the art are already set and when you are supposed to start to look for a post-doc gig. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many doctoral consortiums are &quot;enough&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know, but for most people I know &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; was the right amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T22:08:40.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18565" CreationDate="2014-03-26T22:15:27.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of major issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the US, you normally do not need a master's degree to be admitted. Keep in mind that in the US, the PhD program normally begins with a coursework phase, which roughly corresponds to the European master's degree, &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the research phase.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, in the US, admissions are normally done at the departmental level, rather than at the level of an individual PI. The PI might have some say in admissions—particularly if she serves on the admissions committee—but there is no guarantee that you'll get admission to the school of your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in many schools and programs, particularly those where the advisor-graduate student &quot;matching process&quot; takes place after enrollment, advisors are normally &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; allowed to make commitments to particular students prior to enrollment. Additionally, the advisors generally have to show the ability to pay for the graduate students they take into their group, but also have the freedom to select any of the graduate students in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you may be spending two or more years pursuing a master's degree that may not be needed, so that you can take a chance on whether or not a particular advisor has both funding and open positions, and also wants you over the other students interested in joining the research group. There are a lot of places where things can go wrong here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my recommendation would be to talk to the programs, find out if you need a master's degree before applying (or if they'll exempt you from the coursework you've already had). You should also note that tailoring your application too narrowly to the interests of a single advisor is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; always advantageous in a US graduate application, because if the advisor who you're trying to appeal to isn't interested, the other faculty will probably pass as well, and you'll end up without an offer of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T22:15:27.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-26T22:17:08.280" Score="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, make sure you are not really a crank before trying to convince others. &#xA;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_%28person%29#Common_characteristics_of_cranks&quot;&gt;these common characteristics of cranks&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;If they apply to you then get professional help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the answer &#xA;I will assume that you have really solved a famous open problem.&#xA;In the following &#xA;&quot;he&quot; refers to a typical non-expert claiming to have a solution for a famous open problem and&#xA;&quot;she&quot; refers to an expert in the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no easy shortcut for you!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you are looking for a simple easy shortcut to get your solution verified by an expert&#xA;then this answer is not for you &#xA;and I can assure you what you want is not going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand the magnitude of your claim!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. If you are claiming to have a proof of P is not equal to NP &#xA;then you are the guy who is claiming to have a design for a rocket &#xA;that can be built with the currently technology and resources &#xA;to take a human to Andromeda and back safely &#xA;while experts are having hard time sending a human to mars. &#xA;If you are claiming to have a proof of P is equal to NP &#xA;then you are the guy who is claiming to have a time travel machine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand why experts are reluctant to directly engage non-experts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Many experts would be interested to know about any major progress in their field. &#xA;E.g. there are complexity theorists who &#xA;do read &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; P vs. NP related paper posted on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/ti:+AND+P+NP/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;(arXiv has a very lenient acceptance policy regarding P vs. NP claims).&#xA;They will definitely let other experts know &#xA;if they notice something interesting. &#xA;But &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are not the only one with such claims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are thousands of people who regularly make such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All previous ones suffered from trivial issues no expert would have made.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is your job to show you are not one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Her time is valuable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For most it is not really monetary. &#xA;But I think giving some numbers would be helpful. &#xA;In my university a graduate student is paid over $40/hour &#xA;to mark simple undergraduate assignments.&#xA;This is nothing compared to what an expert might charge for consulting in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-experts often lack basic skills and knowledge to understand her replies.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. he lacks mathematical maturity, &#xA;he does not know basic definitions and terminology, etc.&#xA;It is not uncommon that an expert tells a non-expert &#xA;what he has is not a proof. &#xA;She does not mean the proof is incorrect, &#xA;she means it is not even a proof in the sense that &#xA;an apple is not a proof.&#xA;He does not understand when he is told it is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong&quot;&gt;not even wrong!&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. To make him understand her reply &#xA;she would have to teach him those required skills and knowledge,&#xA;too much work just to convince him he does not have a solution.&#xA;Often he is not patient nor interested in learning (e.g. reading a textbook),&#xA;he is only interested in a confirmation of what he believes to be a solution.&#xA;Way too much work in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is often impossible to satisfy him.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Because of the points mentioned above, &#xA;he often insists on the validity of his claim &#xA;even after she tells him it is not. &#xA;At other times where he understands the reply&#xA;he considers it a simple easy-to-fix error,&#xA;not a fundamental one.&#xA;He tries to fix it and get her verify it.&#xA;This leads to back and forth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He underestimates the required time and effort on her part to answer his claim.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He thinks it is a simple easy job for her to answer his claim. &#xA;E.g. he expects her to give him a counterexample where his algorithm fails.&#xA;Finding a counterexample for an algorithm is a very difficult task &#xA;(as anyone who has marked undergraduate algorithms or complexity theory assignments would know). &#xA;Finding an explanation why an idea is fundamentally flawed and cannot work &#xA;is even more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He does not understand it is not a puzzle.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;She is not interested in the question just for its own sake.&#xA;She expects the solution to the question will be accompanied with&#xA;major advances in her field.&#xA;E.g. complexity theorists do not care about P vs. NP just for its own sake.&#xA;They expect the solution for P vs. NP will come with &#xA;major progress in our understanding about the nature of efficient computation and&#xA;its limitations.&#xA;Often he does not understand this.&#xA;He thinks of the question as a game or puzzle that he thinks he has won and that is it.&#xA;This attitude is frustrating for experts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be humble.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is much easier to get her to have a look at your solution&#xA;if you are genuinely humble and eager to learn and accepting &#xA;if you are told that you are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you understand what is required to solve the question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. understand that a program that seems to efficiently solve an NP-complete problem is not a proof, &#xA;understand that an idea does not make a proof, &#xA;make sure you understand the definitions and terminology, &#xA;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know the basics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I keep repeating this: &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;read a good textbook&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; on the topic and solve its exercises. &#xA;It is beneficial for you as you will know more and will be more convincing. &#xA;It is beneficial for her because you will not waste her time &#xA;with simple mistakes that you would have noticed yourself if you had read a good textbook. &#xA;It is annoying to deal with people who claim to have solved P vs. NP &#xA;but repeatedly make basic mistakes that &#xA;a good student who has taken an undergraduate course on the topic will not make.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use your real name.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect. &#xA;Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken, &#xA;so you can be taken more seriously. &#xA;If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't shirk work. Do your share before expecting help from others.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you want her to look at your solution you should spend 10 times more time and effort than she will spend helping you. &#xA;For claims about P vs. NP you have to do way more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will not get more than one chance.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Make it count. &#xA;If on the first page of your paper she finds a silly mistake or a basic error &#xA;(e.g. you do not even know the definitions of P and NP) &#xA;then she will be done with your claims forever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand the known obstacles for solving the question and why they do not apply to your solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. if you are claiming P is not equal to NP then you should have a good idea &#xA;why relaltivization and natural proofs barriers do not apply to your solution. &#xA;Similarly if you are claiming P is equal to NP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to prove simpler more acceptable claims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. if you have a proof of P is equal to NP then &#xA;you should also have a proof of simpler weaker major results like Factoring is in P. &#xA;If you can extract a clean proof for such claims then &#xA;you can first try publishing them.&#xA;Such results can be much easier to get verified as they are considered more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure your solution is not too strong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In other words, make sure it does not contradict other known results. &#xA;E.g. if your argument for P is equal to NP would also show that P is equal to ExpTime &#xA;(which we know is false) &#xA;then you are in trouble &#xA;(Scott Aaronson mentions a few more cases of too strong results in his blog post&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458&quot;&gt;Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check your solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Make sure there are no mistakes. &#xA;All steps should easily seen to follow from the previous ones. &#xA;Make sure you do not make extra assumptions at any point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recheck your solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Put your proof aside completely for two weeks or more. &#xA;Do not think about it. &#xA;Then go back and recheck it with a fresh mind &#xA;as if you were checking someone else's solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build evidence for your claims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. if you have a &lt;em&gt;really efficient&lt;/em&gt; algorithm &#xA;(i.e. its running time is a polynomial with small constants)&#xA;which you have proven to solve an NP-complete problem then &#xA;it should not be a difficult task to beat the state-of-art &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.satcompetition.org/&quot;&gt;SAT-solvers&lt;/a&gt; or &#xA;to break various cryptographic protocols based on hardness conjectures &#xA;(those conjectures will be false if P is equal to NP).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write easy-to-read concise clean abstract and introduction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do not put any unnecessary background/history/philosophical consequences/discussion of importance/general commentary. &#xA;It is a famous open problem;&#xA;every expert knows its significance.&#xA;Save them for your final version.&#xA;Right now you should focus on convincing her that your claim is correct.&#xA;She first wants an easy-to-read short error-free convincing high-level explanation of your solution. &#xA;It should also explain why any known obstacles do not apply to your solution.&#xA;It should also contain any other evidence that can support the correctness of your claim. If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure the rest of your paper matches your abstract and introduction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure every detail in your paper is correct.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Follow the standard structure of papers in the topic.&#xA;Check a few famous well-written papers in the area that have solved major open problems.&#xA;All definitions should be clear, easy to understand, and rigorous. &#xA;Every theorem (lemma, etc.) should be clearly and rigorously stated, and&#xA;the proof of each of them should follow their statement. &#xA;She should be able to see why each claim in the proof is correct based on the previous steps, definitions, and lemmas without too much trouble. &#xA;If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a general expert who &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; knows you check your solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am assuming that you do not know personally any expert in the area of the question.&#xA;The closer the general expert is to the area of the question the better it will be. &#xA;E.g. for P vs. NP, you can ask a mathematician, preferably a theoretical computer scientist.&#xA;Opinion of people who are not experts in the topic may not have much weight &#xA;but it will make sure you are not making some simple mistake.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Understand that at this point someone &#xA;who does not know you personally has no reason to check your solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; general expert who knows you &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; check your solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Rome was not built in a day. &#xA;You have to build confidence in your solution little by little.&#xA;Those you convince can become your bridges to reach the experts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If they are convinced ask them to show your solution to an expert they know.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. for P vs. NP, ask them to show it to a complexity theorist they know.&#xA;At this point you are less likely to be making a basic mistake and &#xA;you have good evidence to support your claim. &#xA;Your solution now requires the expertise of an expert in the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If she is convinced she will definitely show it to other experts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;News about any major progress in an area will spread very fast among the experts in that area. Other experts (complexity theorists in the case P vs. NP) will recheck your solution independently. &#xA;If they are convinced you will probably get an invitation to submit your paper to a famous journal (something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jacm.acm.org/&quot;&gt;JACM&lt;/a&gt; in the case of P vs. NP).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not claim to solve a famous open problem more than once.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As I wrote above, &#xA;you will not get more than one chance! &#xA;You do not have a right to ask her to see what is wrong with your fixed solution &#xA;if you made a mistake.&#xA;(The exception is when she &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; asks you to try to fix your solution and &#xA;send the fixed version back to her.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not expect an explanation for why your idea cannot work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is unlikely that someone would be able to show formally that an informal idea cannot work. &#xA;If the idea is formal enough then the reason that it cannot work can be a new interesting result in itself; &#xA;however, proving such results can be even more difficult than solving the original question. &#xA;In the case of P vs. NP,&#xA;if you are claiming to have an efficient algorithm for an NP-hard problem &#xA;you should not expect her to find an input where your algorithm fails.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand that she is not required to help you.&#xA;If she is helping you she is doing so out of generosity.&#xA;She has a right to stop it whenever she pleases without any explanation.&#xA;Be mindful of her time, &#xA;do not waste it for what you could/should have done yourself,&#xA;try to make her job in helping you as easy as possible,&#xA;and do not do anything that will make her regret trying to help you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T15:32:56.847" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T15:32:56.847" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18567" CreationDate="2014-03-26T23:20:32.467" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a paper is published in a very good journal (one that is sufficiently good that it doesn't need to accept boring papers to fill issues), that means &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt; (reviewer, editor) thought its contributions would be interesting, novel, and/or useful to a nontrivial subset of the journal's audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, this doesn't mean that the paper is interesting to everyone. (Very few papers are!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I usually find papers that say &quot;We applied a known technique to optimize problem X for some metric Y&quot; very boring, but others in my field appreciate these contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, you may find the paper uninteresting because you either understood &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; than the reviewer or &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than the reviewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It often takes some knowledge of the field to really appreciate the contribution a paper is making.  In most journals, the authors are allowed to assume that the reader already has some field-specific knowledge. If you read the paper without understanding this context, it will probably seem boring or not useful to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It works the other way as well. Sometimes, a reviewer reads a paper and thinks, &quot;This is an important contribution,&quot; but those with more knowledge understand that it isn't. For really good journals, the editor can usually find a reviewer who understands the field well, so this (ideally) doesn't happen as often.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I am sure somebody can think of a paper that was accepted only for e.g., political reasons, and is genuinely, objectively unimportant. These are rare enough that I don't think these are the papers you are asking about.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T00:02:06.657" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T00:02:06.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-26T23:22:54.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your students have the reasonable right to expect you to operate the policies decided by your department. Whilst I have every sympathy with the notion of 'a minute late = no marks' providing exceptional circumstances are accounted for, it's really not your decision but rather a decision that should be made by your department and uniformly applied across different courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unfair on students for your course to operate a different policy to the other courses they are taking because it (a) unfairly requires them to prioritise the work for your course over other courses and (b) it requires them to &lt;em&gt;notice&lt;/em&gt; that you've set different regulations. So, whether or not your method has merit, you should adopt the same system as other courses they are taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm kind of surprised that your university/department does not already have a formally stated and agreed policy on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T23:22:54.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T23:37:42.593" Score="5" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, my college began placing staff around the school to record when instructors arrive. The record is to the second. A school announcement also warned against arriving late and ending lessons early by even fraction of a minute. I am somewhat surprised to find this in a tertiary institution. How common is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T03:59:19.903" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T03:59:19.903" Title="Do any schools maintain records of when instructors arrive and depart the classroom?" Tags="&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18573" CreationDate="2014-03-26T23:43:42.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thinks it depends if the instructor is Tenured, part time or a contract instructor. For the later two, I would believe that the school would have some time sheet system for payroll purposes. Its becoming common. &#xA;Temple university has a template for time sheet for instructors&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.temple.edu/cjtp/pdfs/Instructor%20Timesheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.temple.edu/cjtp/pdfs/Instructor%20Timesheet.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check out this link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/kean_university_now_requires_f.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/kean_university_now_requires_f.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T23:43:42.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T00:19:05.460" Score="11" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my syllabus there is series of writing assignments that are worth 10% of the final grade.  Over the course of the semester there were supposed to be 4 assignments, however as a result of snow days and other extrinsic issues, the students have only turned in one of these assignments and I am not likely to be able to get any more in by the end of the semester.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, when I designed the assignment, I did not fully appreciate how difficult it would be for the students and how difficult it was going to be to grade.  At this point it is only going to be reasonable for me to assign grades based on whether the student put some effort into the assignment (i.e., check+, check, check-, 0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am left with the situation where 10% of a student's final grade could be the result of one assignment that was graded only on completion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, this poses 2 problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The final grade of the students that did the assignment will be artificially inflated, and &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the final grade of a student that missed the assignment for whatever reason will be reduced to a degree disproportional to the offence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way to deal with this situation fairly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have considered moving the assignment to another assignment group (e.g., counting it as a classwork assignment) but then I am not sure how to redistribute the orphaned points in a fair way.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T21:39:01.043" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T20:09:36.777" Title="How can I change the assignments in the syllabus in a way that is fair to the students?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18576" CreationDate="2014-03-27T01:57:26.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the assignments did not go as intended, and it is obviously not the students' fault. I would just turn this part of the grade into extra credit. For example, students who did the assignment get +2.5 points added to their final grade, and those who didn't, don't get anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T01:57:26.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18576" CreationDate="2014-03-27T02:36:31.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could just distribute the orphaned points equally among all other components of the course grade.  Just take whatever percentage they would have gotten over all the other components of the grade, and divide it by 90 (which will be the maximum without this assignment included).  Then their final grade will still be the percentage of the points they earned out of the total available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T02:36:31.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2014-03-27T03:04:03.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having attended one of the doctoral consortiums you linked to as well as one you haven't, here's my perspective (as a student) on what doctoral consortiums provide a venue for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Networking with peers and senior researchers in your field in a very targeted way.  A prolonged period of time ranging from 1-2 days is usually provided where you'll be closeted with other consortium students and senior researchers.  This gives you a set amount of time where not only will you have a bunch of students with you who are also interested in networking, but where senior people in the field who may not generally be approachable during a conference will be available and open to talking to you.  In addition, it also gives you a subset of people that you know will be at the conference that you can continue to network with during breaks and meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Getting an outside opinion on your research.  Doctoral consortiums will usually give you time to present your research so that the senior people in your field can give you feedback.  As a PhD student, sometimes it's difficult to get a perspective outside of what your advisor's agenda is.  Feedback during consortiums can help to provide new insights into how your work will be received in the larger research community, what people in the community perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses in your topic area, and how they think about what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) It gives you a place to practice presenting your research to a wider audience than just your advisor or your lab.  Even in a specific research area like human-computer interaction, which you linked to, there is a wide spread of topics that people will be doing research in.  Presenting at a doctoral consortium gives you a chance to really try to explain your research to a receptive audience that may have no background in what you're doing.  It's sort of like having a low stakes first shot at what you'll have to do when you eventually give job talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D) Depending on the conference, doctoral consortiums are arguably really nice for your CV because some of them are very selective and difficult to get into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all doctoral consortiums are the same, but generally they are targeted for the point in your graduate career when you've picked your topic, done preliminary work or published a paper or two in that area, but before you're really entrenched in your planned research and can still change direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that by getting that outside feedback from senior researchers in the field, they'll be able to give you a nudge in the right direction if they foresee real problems with your topic/work in time for you to make corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general opinion that I've heard/witnessed has been that going to more than 2 is overkill and that at that point you won't be getting much out of them.  However, it's really good to get into at least one as a student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last point, since you mention funding, many doctoral consortiums provide some level of funding for students that have been accepted to ensure that they can attend.  In addition, they will often cover the registration fee for the conference that they're attached to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T03:04:03.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T03:27:44.217" Score="3" ViewCount="1313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working as a software engineer for a few years now, and have a bachelor's in computer science and math. My interest and knowledge in physics has been growing since I graduated, but I never took any formal courses after high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, entering into a physics PhD would require a huge amount background knowledge comparable to a bachelor's in physics. My question is &lt;strong&gt;what would I need to do to prove that I had that knowledge, and actually get accepted into a program?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be enough to score high on the GRE, and have some strong letters of recommendation? Could I do it with enough statements of accomplishment on coursera? Or am I looking at a few more years of undergrad to get a second Bachelor's? Or could I get into a master's program, and use that as a stepping stone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13507" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T01:45:09.490" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T01:45:09.490" Title="What would I need to show to change fields and get into a physics PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T03:45:46.407" Score="14" ViewCount="3934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on the faculty of a large American university, and I have bought a lot of equipment (laptops, tablets, batteries, etc.) for research purposes using a startup package.  I will be leaving for a new university in September, and I am wondering what, &lt;em&gt;in practice&lt;/em&gt;, will happen to this equipment.  Obviously, it is the property of the university and I'm going to leave it all there, but is someone going to come through with a clipboard and make sure it's all there?  Do these kinds of things usually just get sent off to surplus sales?  How about the students of mine who will still be at the old university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13509" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T04:52:46.233" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T04:52:46.233" Title="What happens to equipment purchased using a startup package after an academic leaves the university?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18581" CreationDate="2014-03-27T06:20:45.487" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;What happens to your stuff depends on how your university classifies it. &lt;em&gt;Inventoried&lt;/em&gt; material—more expensive items that a university keeps track of—will almost certainly need to be accounted for. So that probably includes laptops and tablets, unless they're so old they've been removed from inventory (as not having any significant value anymore). Major laboratory equipment and furniture also fall into this category. Such materials will probably be held as &quot;surplus,&quot; and made available to other groups or departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, small-ticket items—such as stationery and miscellaneous office supplies—are not normally tracked. You won't be asked to reimburse the university for a missing stapler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T06:20:45.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18581" CreationDate="2014-03-27T08:26:59.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my old group, what we did was that every lab member could, when (s)he is leaving the group, &quot;buy&quot; their own hardware for a symbolic price if it was older than 3 years (3 years, because after this time span the hardware was considered without significant worth by the university). So basically, everybody usually kept all their equipment after e.g., graduation. Our lab head considered this as sort of his &quot;graduation gift&quot; to the student / ex-lab member - I am not convinced that the entire process was entirely legal, but apparently (as the equipment is formally without worth to the university) nobody ever actually complained (so far). In the rare cases where this was not possible (e.g., a laptop younger than 3 years), we simply kept the equipment back for emergencies (such as when the laptop of one of the lab members breaks and he needs a replacement while it is being repaired).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my new group, hardware is simply returned, put onto a big pile, and in most cases, forgotten. Every now and then the big pile of old hardware gets thrown away. I am sort of assuming that this is how most universities handle old hardware, as silly / wasteful as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T08:26:59.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18576" CreationDate="2014-03-27T09:29:45.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Same thing happened to my prof last year. Many assignments were planned, however due to things out of our control we were not going to be able to do every assignment. The prof held an open forum during class to collect ideas from us (only about 20 in the class, so it was easily manageable). The final concencus was to have smaller assignments replace the larger ones and any spare % went to the exam. Students who had already started the assignment (started early) had the opportunity to present it to the prof and it was up to the prof to reward extra credit . All the students found this fair and so myself and one other student got extra credit because we started an assignment that was replaced/cancelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;: Have an open forum with the students, present a few options and let them decide what is fair. Let them &quot;argue&quot; between each other in a mediated way to present the pros/cons of every option. Just remember it's not their fault, so every student needs to come out satisfied with the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my school (University in Canada) you are not permitted to deviate from the syllabus unless every single student agrees. If even one student says no, you are not permitted to deviate. Often times profs will talk to these individuals and give them &quot;incentive&quot; to agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--EDIT--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you should do is talk to professors in your department to see what they do in situations like yours. By no means is your situation unique, and seeing what your fellow professors do and maybe even the school policy may be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13210" LastEditorUserId="13210" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T12:30:25.067" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T12:30:25.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T09:30:58.593" Score="1" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a European non-EU student that went on an Erasmus exchange for one semester in the UK during my third year. Now, two and a half years later, I am applying to grad schools in the US, and the official transcript in my home university lists the courses taken in my exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was wondering if I need an official transcript from the Erasmus university as well. Getting this would be a big problem, since they only give them in person, and I have no way of getting one. Is it enough that the courses I took on my exchange are listed on my home university transcript, or will I have to do the impossible and get one from the Erasmus university too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13520" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:33:19.933" Title="Do grad schools need an official transcript from universities where I was an exchange student for only one semester?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T09:50:03.187" Score="13" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently teaching at a local college an Introduction to programming using C#. Most of these students have never had any programming experience. The only prerequisite is an ICT course that teaches basics of computing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finding that the students are facing issues with comprehending the concept of program structure and execution. I tried explaining with flow charts however they still face issues linking the flow of the code to the flow of the solution of to the problem being solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who are more experienced probably know of techniques or ways to structure the lesson or even curriculum to teach programming in a much better way (I am even guessing there might have even been studies about teaching programming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What known techniques are there for teaching students at a college level programming? Especially those who have had no prior experience before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:51:01.143" Title="How to teach programming to first timers at a college level?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18567" CreationDate="2014-03-27T10:18:47.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can take an other measure than subjective importance and this is the citation rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are statistics which indicate that even in high-ranked journals there is only a relatively small number of articles which are heavily cited - and those create the high impact factor. All others are cited once or twice (and therefore &quot;unimportant&quot; if you accept citation rate as an indicator for &quot;importance&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T10:18:47.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T10:35:57.693" Score="4" ViewCount="3024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, and they require a transcript. Now, I have a problem with my grades, in that I had good grades until my final year, where a combination of depression and a death in the family tanked my non-major GPA. During my final year, I went from a cumulative 3.55 to a 3.07, and also failed two courses. More specifically, my first semester of my senior year was awful, with a 1.22 GPA, and in my second semester, I managed to get a respectable 3.0, where I had to take 21 credit hours so I could graduate on time. So it's not as if I am a bad student, it's just one semester of badness which has to be explained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make this not look bad? I would like to explain myself in the personal statement that I am capable of rebounding from hardship, that I can rise to the challenge when confronted with adversity, that my performance in that one semester is not indicative of my abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am upset at the moment because after looking at my transcript, it's worse than I initially thought. As for my other materials, I believe I have good letters of recommendation, good industry experience, and I can write some kick-ass essays, despite the fact that English is not my first language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the bad grades are not in my major (CS), where I managed to keep a GPA above 3.5 during my studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips on how to deal with this? Any other tips I could use? I really appreciate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13524" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T05:10:42.510" Title="How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18588" CreationDate="2014-03-27T10:50:56.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am inexperienced in teaching people with no prior knowledge to coding, though the subjects I have taught were relatively new to most of them. (Reactive Programming/Asynchronous). I usually start off by telling them the importance of the lesson, in your case you could say.&#xA;&quot;The concept we are handling today is the basis of Object-Oriented programming, this is widely used and so important, the windows kernel even got a complete rewrite to accommodate this.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it's important to note that not every student comprehends this as quickly as others, programming is a different way of thinking about a problem than they are used to. Just like they probably had trouble understanding mathematics when they first got that in primary school. You have to keep in mind that because a part of the class understands it, that's no assurance everyone will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programming in general should be thought in a &quot;New way to think&quot; manner, you don't teach them literal code, but rather you should teach them &quot;How can I explain to this stupid machine, what it has to do?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd start off with teaching them about the primitives, then the arrays. Maybe as an assignment, let them figure out how to code 10 numbers of the fibonacci sequence? Just make sure they get enough coding done, books and lectures help, but eventually they'll need the experience in writing the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only once they understand how they can explain to a computer what they want it to do, you can start teaching them about object-oriented programming and patterns, but they first have to understand algorithms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do look forward to answers of people whom have experience teaching the inexperienced, as I might end up doing so one day myself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I hope this helped a bit :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9570" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T19:51:01.143" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:51:01.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18590" CreationDate="2014-03-27T10:59:13.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;They require a transcript, but do they allow any kind of supplemental statements as part of the package? If so, I would try to include some kind of simply explanation – something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might even try put a positive spin on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues. Even though my grades suffered, I learned a lot about priorities and biting off more than I can chew. Though my GPA might not reflect this, I emerged a better person because of that trying experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T10:59:13.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18588" CreationDate="2014-03-27T11:24:08.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've had pretty good success through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Carpentry&lt;/a&gt; initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are software carpentry &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bootcamps&lt;/a&gt; happening around the world: I'd advise going on one yourself, before hosting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They offer a well-rehearsed pattern of training, with lots of hands-on exercises, using open-source training materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mix and match bits of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://software-carpentry.org/v4/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;syllabus&lt;/a&gt; to suit: databases, particular languages, using the shell command line, source-code version control, OOP, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've put one cohort through a Software Carpentry bootcamp, get them to be the helpers on the next software carpentry bootcamp, for the next cohort of students. That way, they get to copy the successful &quot;see one, do one, teach one&quot; method used in medical training: they learn at least as much again when they're teaching the material, as they did when being taught it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T11:24:08.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-27T11:48:55.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember an answer I once got for a piece of work handed in a few minutes late (and rejected):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can you have nothing ready for 30 days and then suddenly have something in the last few hours?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I had been working on it the whole time, trying to constantly improve it, despite the fact that I had a working solution early on. Waiting was a mistake and helped me learn to prioritise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So welcome be hard deadlines, they teach &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;prioritisation&lt;/em&gt;, and save examiner time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13021" LastEditorUserId="13021" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T08:57:58.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T08:57:58.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18606" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:01:21.987" Score="22" ViewCount="2633" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much of the teaching content at universities in the US is delivered in imperial units instead of SI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that industry (e.g. Engineering) is still stuck using imperial units, but research and physics are much better suited to SI units, so I am interested to know how this is dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T09:56:02.163" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T22:33:31.963" Title="Do US universities still use imperial units in teaching?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18614" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:07:21.147" Score="0" ViewCount="1414" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm in my third year of university and I'm at the point where I have to choose my modules for next year. This is a simple question, but I really wish I asked it a long time ago because I have no idea of the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I pick modules I know I can easily pass that will get me a better final grade but probably won't teach me anything &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; should I pick modules that will be more challenging for me, will give me a lower final grade than if I picked the easy ones but with the benefit of teaching me a great deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose at the root of it the question is am I at university solely to strengthen my future career prospects or am I here for the purpose of learning. Regardless of my answer to that, I'd like to know what people advise regarding module picking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bare in mind that I don't say &quot;easy&quot; modules because they're easy but because I practice a lot of the required skills in my free time so I have experience. They will still have the same value as the hard modules if an employer were looking at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13527" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T00:34:34.467" Title="Should I choose easy modules?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-01-16T12:04:33.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18596" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:17:56.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Go neither for easy nor for challenging courses but for courses that &lt;strong&gt;interest you the most&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T12:17:56.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18567" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:34:40.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each journal has his own policy as for what kind of articles it is going to select, that is it will have a set of criteria weighted by different degrees of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among those criteria you will find: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;relevance to the journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;significance of the studied problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;originality and novelty of the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;achievement of the objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replicability if the paper describes an experiment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those will be drastically different for example between a subscription type of journal and an open-access one, mostly for financial reasons. The peer-reviewing is also executed in different ways, with different methods and emphases. One has to pay attention to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you will also find certain papers more &quot;interesting&quot; than others. The only way to find what you are looking for is to know what you are looking for exactly. Is it a journal focusing on novel content? Or just accepting the most methodologically correct ones? Ideally, to know how much you can trust different aspects of a paper, you need to know the details of its origin, that is who reviewed and selected it for you. Journals are a great tools for science, but they sure are not absolute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13528" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T08:07:25.570" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:07:25.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:46:41.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ordering names in publications is a very delicate matter and should always be discussed among the research team before submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, every co-author needs to have taken part in each part of the research: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;background research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;experiment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;paper writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proof-reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The importance of those elements determines who will be the first author. The most important parts are definitely the experiment itself and the paper writing. Whoever didn't take part in both of those can hardly be considered an author. This might be considered a bit controversial sometimes, but other researchers who only took part in a small part of the process should be added in the acknowledgements instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in many cases nowadays not everybody takes part in each part of the research process. This usually creates ambiguities, that should be solved in the best way, asking for advice from a research authority, with the enough experience and information to judge on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13528" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T12:46:41.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17755" CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:56:33.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe mentioning that is irrelevant to the contents of a resume. But if you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to mention it, do so in the hobbies section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;reading science digests every morning&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;used to reading scientific papers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;used to reading peer-reviewed publications&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13528" LastEditorUserId="13528" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T04:15:27.260" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T04:15:27.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18553" CreationDate="2014-03-27T13:10:51.597" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's nice that you want to do this for your professor. Thinking over what I would like (and have received in the past), the following comes to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a note (email, letter, whatever you prefer) saying essentially a longer version of what you said above. A heartfelt note of this kind is the best kind of thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you'd like to get something more tangible for the professor, a little token that they can place on their desk (like what Pete L. Clark mentions) is always nice. It doesn't even have to cost lots of money. I have students who made paper models for me (I teach geometry) and I have them all over my desk :). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T13:10:51.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18576" CreationDate="2014-03-27T13:47:31.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way to deal with this situation fairly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been several proposed solutions for redistributing points: use the single assignment as extra credit, offer an alternative assignment that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; feasible, just redistribute orphaned points equally, etc. Any combination of these &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be &quot;fair.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it is unfair to &lt;strong&gt;unilaterally&lt;/strong&gt; change the syllabus (even if change is unavoidable) once students can no longer drop the class without penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some students may be thrilled at the option to equally redistribute the orphaned points and use the written assignment as extra credit. But  a student who is great at written assignments, and was really counting on the ten points of assignment credit described in the syllabus to boost his/her grade, may think the only fair solution is to offer an optional alternative written assignment (one that is feasible to do and grade). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean that you have to poll every student individually, just include them in the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with a large class, you can present your preferred solution (or two proposed solutions) in class and solicit feedback. If there is no public disagreement, say &quot;Anyone who has a real problem with this change should send me the details of their objection and proposed alternative by email, and I will seriously consider the objections.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If the students are split between two proposed solutions, you can offer something like, &quot;Your grade will be the higher of Option A and Option B.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T13:47:31.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2014-03-27T14:40:54.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, whatever the order of authors, the contributions should be individually stated, as it is common in some fields and journals. This avoids problems like yours, and also (real cases):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first author just provided the research money, but did no actual work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first author is the PI in a collaboration. He overseed the research and gave orders, but the bulk of the job was done by his PhD students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone is important in the group, so he gets to be amongst the first authors, even though he did nothing. Students that actually did work have their names after him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The data was processed using a program that has been in use for three years. The programer was not involved in the paper, or finetuned the program for the purpose of the particular study, but he gets to coauthor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also, situations like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three or more researchers designed independent critical steps, all of them equally important to the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multidisciplinary collaboration, where new analysis techniques suggest new experimental techniques, that are implemented for the first time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where they all deserve large credit, and it is impossible to order them fairly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T14:40:54.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18595" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:06:33.303" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was an (engineering, US) undergrad, the textbook in one engineering mechanics class included problems using SI units &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; problems using imperial units. The problem sets for homework and exams came from the book, and could be in either SI or imperial units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You can see these examples in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073529400/information_center_view0/sample_chapters.html&quot;&gt;sample chapter&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every other class I've taken as a physics and engineering student used SI units exclusively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T15:21:46.787" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:21:46.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18596" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:16:03.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want to do afterwards? Academia or industry? What is your field? From what you say, &quot;easy&quot; modules would be the ones that interest you, so taking them will mean having formal training and proven experience. On the other hand, certain skills can be proven in many ways (you can show you know how to program by making contributions in open software projects). The formal training will allow you to get a much deeper understanding of the topic, provided the teaching and the course are good, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what is more valuable? Wide range of skills or deep knowledge of a few?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet another point to consider is how are your grades so far. Consider if you can afford loosing a few points, and what difference it will make. Perhaps the difference between a class 1 and 2.1 is bigger than a 2.1 and a 2.2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:16:03.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18581" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:27:55.703" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my alma mater, a public university in Spain, all expensive material is inventoried, and as it belongs to a public entity, cannot be sold when used up. Also, to get rid of an old computer (to get an idea: some are using floppy disks) requires a lot of bureaucracy. You need to prove that it is not useful anymore, and blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what they do is just drop the material in a given corridor, and wait for it to be stolen. If anyone -ever- comes asking for it, they will just check the corridor &quot;ah, it got stolen&quot;. Lots of trees saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other equipment not suitable for this scheme, well, we have a wide terrace with lots of space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:27:55.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:36:41.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about &quot;typical,&quot; but I have definitely seen it used.  I've taught mostly in design schools where understanding the importance of hitting deadlines is a core part of the training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, most instructors are a little more moderate.  Some will say students are allowed one late assignment per semester, some will accept any assignment late for half-credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own personal policy was this:  As long as you made a reasonable effort to turn an assignment in on time you could always improve your grade on that assignment by resubmitting any time before the end of the semester.  If you missed that first deadline, no deal.  But if you turned in a project at, say, 25% completion on the day of the deadline and then before the end of the semester managed to get in the remaining 75% you could have full points.  But that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing I go out of my way to say on day 1 is that communication is important.  I had a student who didn't show up for class all semester only to tell me two weeks before the end that he'd been caring for an ailing relative.  I could have made an accommodation in week one, but what am I supposed to do in week 13?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastEditorUserId="13535" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T17:41:27.040" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T17:41:27.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18595" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:40:26.007" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the US community college where I teach physics, SI is used exclusively in all science courses. (Chem courses do still use calories, which are not SI.) Nearly all physics textbooks use SI exclusively, although a few may mix in examples using feet and pounds here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:40:26.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18588" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:43:24.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with much of what's already been said.  What I would add is that you have to make it matter to the student.  Teaching programming as an abstraction -- which is the way many of us learned -- makes it harder to learn.  I will often give a good sized project to first semester students where I'll say, &quot;Solve a problem that interests you!&quot;  Even if I don't always get the best results that will always be the project the students enjoy the most and put the most work into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:43:24.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18596" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:32:17.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that the &quot;easy&quot; courses are the ones in which you already have experience. If you take those classes, the course work will be redundant and will not boost your knowledge. On the other hand, it seems that you are also concerned about your overall GPA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself what you want to do. Then look for classes that come under the umbrella of 'what I want to do'. Eliminate the courses from that umbrella that fall into the &quot;easy&quot; bucket and the &quot;very tough&quot; bucket (which might dampen your GPA) and pick from among the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12632" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T23:19:13.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T23:19:13.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:40:09.083" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;While most of the answers seems to have much confidence in the academic system, I would like to offer another viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is in fact much harder for an unknown (to a specific field) to&#xA;present a solution to the scientic community than normally expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; screw up and sometimes royally.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;First example: The infamous Monty Hall problem.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;More than 65% of all professional answers to Marilyn (with all sorts of academic&#xA;grades including statisticians) strongly rejected their answers, sometimes with&#xA;outright jeers and taunts.&#xA;This included Paul Erdos and Straight Dope Cecil Adams.&#xA;So even the majority of experts can fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second example: The also infamous neutrino anomaly.&#xA;The interesting thing here is not the error itself, but the reaction on&#xA;Arxiv. Anyone who would have dared to offer superluminal theories before&#xA;the announcement would have been immediately declared as relativity crank.&#xA;After the announcement papers came flooding in offering all sorts of&#xA;superluminal theories explaining what we know now to be simply a&#xA;bad cable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the problems an unknown may face ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp&quot;&gt;Arxiv.&lt;/a&gt; You need an affiliation from an university or research institute&#xA;and/or an endorsement from a know author. Arxiv can revoke or limit your&#xA;access without explanation. This requirement also applies to fully qualified&#xA;scientists which are working in companies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journals. Too many people are trying to get their results published in too few&#xA;respectable journals. Journals also pretty scale bad, you have to wait a long&#xA;time to get published. Lesser known journals may have lower barriers, but you&#xA;have the real danger that the contribution is missed. And even the lower&#xA;journals may reject the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scientists. The situation is different in various countries, but normally&#xA;scientists are overworked and underpaid. They have not the time nor the&#xA;resources to review contributions with the very slim chance to get a&#xA;scientific jackpot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone thinks the viewpoint is not valid, try just for fun to supply&#xA;a normal paper under a pseudonym and the home address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only viable option I see is to get contact to the scientists in the field&#xA;and try to work with them over the contribution which may be harder than it&#xA;sounds. The list provided by Kaveh is a good resource to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13452" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T17:40:09.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-27T18:24:27.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad engineering/computer science alum, I will say that I am biased towards having a late policy. Scale the assignment difficulty appropriately to account for &quot;extra&quot; time at a penalty and codify the policy to be clear and non-negotiable, ie 10% off per day. The other option is to tell students late assignments are not accepted, but extend deadlines appropriately based on student feedback. The goal remains the same: maximize participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I support this is pedagogical. It is not to account for students being irresponsible. It is to attract more students to complete an assignment, allowing them to be methodical and calculating with their learning experience while ultimately maximizing the value they receive from a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal with college classes, from a &lt;em&gt;pedagogical&lt;/em&gt; view, is to maximize turnout and participation. These are solid measures indicating that students are learning and that the college experience is economically valuable. If there is a no late assignment policy and 25% of students received a zero or extremely low mark for being unable to &quot;complete&quot; on time, we have an issue that could potentially be fixed with a course policy change. So I argue that it is better to have a late penalty while scaling content difficulty appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was exceptionally busy during my senior year, taking the max amount of credits where all classes were advanced level/difficult. I recall one class where the policy was no late assignments. This was a very difficult programming class. I was on the wire for time, and pulled repeated all-nighters to complete an assignment for this course- right past the due date. I was very stubborn and I refused to just give up, although in the back of my mind I considered the high likelihood I would receive a zero. It ended up being accepted with no penalty and I received a high grade where the average grade was significantly lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many would say this is not fair. But from my perspective, I learned more actually doing the assignment rather than being defeated - the alternative fate would have been to cease all work and receive a zero had the policy been uncompromising. As someone who is a perfectionist- I prefer not to stop until I know I have produced something that is robust and meets all requirements- this hits home even more for me. I believe that from a learning standpoint, accepting late assignments is far more likely to result in higher quality education. If a late penalty makes a course &quot;easier&quot;, scale the content appropriately. Or surprise the students on a case by case basis at the instructor's discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to get as many students as possible in a course to give a best effort attempt on an assignment given a variety of schedules, circumstances and uncertainty in the assignment itself. If after some date they receive a zero you will always chop off a number of students who &lt;strong&gt;can do the assignment&lt;/strong&gt; with more time, and would with the opportunity, even with dramatic penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13542" LastEditorUserId="13542" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T18:46:17.413" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T18:46:17.413" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:03:56.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important role for a college professor is to prepare the students for the real world.  And in the real world, deadlines are firm.  You think a customer or an employer cares that you have a &quot;good excuse&quot; for being late?  That you &quot;tried&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me, you'll be doing all your students a favor by accustoming them now to the reality that schedules are unforgiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:03:56.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:14:20.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem with a &quot;no late work&quot; policy is that it disincentivizes learning.  If a student forgets an assignment or can't quite finish it in time, they no longer have any reason to learn the material; they get no credit for learning it because they cannot turn it in late.  Because of this, I favor a 10% or even 20% per day penalty as oppose to a no late work policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think the &quot;prepare students for the real world&quot; argument is invalid.  In the real world, if you miss a deadline for something (work deadline, tax filing, etc.) you will get punished somehow, but you likely still have to complete the work; it doesn't just disappear.  Also, preparing the students for the real world is a secondary goal at best.  Helping students learn the material should always come before preparing them for the real world.  Internships and first jobs are much more suited for preparing for the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7169" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:14:20.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18621" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:30:24.660" Score="26" ViewCount="4397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went on a trip to Oxford with my school, and I asked a lady whether or not you have to go and discover something in a PhD? She said no, and it's more research. But I read up somewhere that you do have to discover something to get a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know precisely how a PhD works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will some subjects- like Maths or Computer Science- require you to go out and prove something, and are others- like English- just require the student to do extensive research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: by getting a PhD, I don'y just mean anyone getting it, I do mean someone who's actually studying for one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13543" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:34:40.783" Title="Do you have to find out/ prove something to get a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18587" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:33:19.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is likely to be specific to a particular graduate school, but I studied in the UK for a year during my US undergraduate education. The courses and grades were listed on my transcript. The graduate school that I applied to (and to which I was accepted) did not require a separate transcript from the UK university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:33:19.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18619" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:37:34.480" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting a PhD almost always requires one to have some original contribution to your field. That result doesn't always have to be an earth shattering proof of something completely original. Your work can build upon existing work, or draw connections between a variety of different topics that no one has noticed yet, or even just suggest that there is a problem that nobody has considered yet. The point is that there has to be something unique, and original that counts as your contribution to the body of knowledge. That isn't easy to do certainly, but it isn't impossible for normal people to accomplish through lots of time and hard work either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:37:34.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T20:38:36.083" Score="7" ViewCount="1409" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the University in which I will start teaching the course sequence for Programming goes in this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Algorithms and Data Structures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structured Programming Languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Object-Oriented Programming Languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you see, the first contact of the students with Programming is the &quot;Algorithms and Data Structures&quot; course in which several programming fundamentals topics are covered (variables, data types, if/else, loops) and also some data structures and basic algorithms. The weird part -at least for me- is that in this first course there no actual programming: all the topics are covered with Pseudocode and Flowcharts written in the Blackboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems kind of strange for me, and as a new teacher I have little power to change this (Senior teachers said that coding is for latter courses). So, I want to know if any of you is familiar with that teaching approach and if you can suggest me some textbooks that are using that teaching methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7674" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:21:46.187" Title="Introduction to Programming with Pseudocode" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2014-03-27T20:52:34.123" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;By attacking your own proof even stronger than the others do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, there is a reason why people in your discipline haven't been able to find the answer for centuries. The a priori probability that you are wrong is so high that even when you have created a good looking proof, the a posteriori probability that you are right is way too low. This means that, if you know enough of your own discipline, you should not be convinced that you solved it. Given a problem which has resisted solution for a long time, being convinced that you solved it just because you have a proof you believe in is a sure sign of a crackpot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So non-crackpot behavior in such a case will be to try to take the proof apart, shoot it down, tear it to pieces from all possible angles. This is what your peers will be doing, and this is what they will expect you to be doing. To forget your pride, your subjective biases, and to be merciless to your own result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They you only believe you after you have found more ways to disprove your result than they themselves can think of, tried them all, and failed in all of them. And your paper has to clearly show that this is what you did. Anything else will earn you the crackpot title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T20:52:34.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18622" CreationDate="2014-03-27T22:00:41.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the approach taken by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/&quot;&gt;Introduction to Algorithms course&lt;/a&gt; at MIT—or at least it was the case back in the early 2000's. The book by Cormen et al. takes a decidedly agnostic approach to programming, and presents everything in terms of pseudocode, rather than adopting any particular programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T22:00:41.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18628" CreationDate="2014-03-27T22:35:21.903" Score="43" ViewCount="35822" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor and lab colleagues think that Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals non-open-access charge authors for publishing a paper. (They usually only publish in local journals.) All the info I've found points to the contrary (except for &quot;gold&quot; open access journals, which do charge authors), but all I've found are people commenting on particular journals saying that they do not charge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, I've found very few journals that explicitly say &quot;submission and publication is free of charge&quot;. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jair.org/submission_info.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JAIR&lt;/a&gt; mentions that there aren't any &lt;em&gt;submission&lt;/em&gt; fees, but does not mention &lt;em&gt;publication&lt;/em&gt; fees.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/11704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frontiers of Computer Science&lt;/a&gt; does not mention charges at all in their instructions for authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I can't for the life of me find any definitive yes/no information online. (I don't have a concrete journal in mind since this all started because we are looking for one, but it'd have to be a machine learning/artificial intelligence journal.)&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Do Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals generally charge an author fee for their non-open-access journals?&lt;/strong&gt; It may include submission fees or post-acceptance fees as well as page or figure charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="13556" LastEditDate="2017-12-11T13:37:29.690" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T13:37:29.690" Title="Do Springer, IEEE, Elsevier charge a fee for non-open-access journals?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18625" CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:40:42.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be certain, you'd have to check the specific journal's author instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've published in two Elsevier and one Springer journal (in mathematics) and never paid an author fee. The Springer journal had an open access option, which would have had a fee, but we didn't choose that option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T00:40:42.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18625" CreationDate="2014-03-28T01:07:05.547" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never paid for the publication of any journal paper, including papers in Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, ACM, SIAM, and AMS journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of those journals do advertise &quot;page charges&quot;, but in my experience these are strictly voluntary.  I've never paid them, and my papers were published anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T01:07:05.547" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18625" CreationDate="2014-03-28T03:38:05.553" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers, but they are anecdotal, and you asked for some &amp;quot;definitive&amp;quot; answers to help you convince your colleagues and advisor. Here's what I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;IEEE&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the IEEE journals has a required charge for non-open access publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/publications_faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publication FAQ&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a detailed listing of paper charges by publication, download the List of Voluntary and Overlength Paper Charges (PDF, 287 KB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/advertisement/2012vpcopc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the current version of that list. You will note that some journals have voluntary &amp;quot;sustaining&amp;quot; charges for &amp;quot;normal-length&amp;quot; manuscripts. In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/author_reprint_info.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE policy&lt;/a&gt; specifically states that those charges are not obligatory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IEEE Policy 6.9 permits some types of periodicals to levy page charges. If your publication is one of these, it is your company or institution, not you, which is being asked for support. Payment is not obligatory nor is it a prerequisite for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the statement above &amp;quot;page charges&amp;quot; refers only to charges for not-open, not-overlength, not-color-print articles. Many IEEE publications do have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/advertisement/2012vpcopc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;overlength&amp;quot; page charges&lt;/a&gt;, which &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; mandatory - if your paper exceeds the &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; length then you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; either reduce the length of your paper or pay the overlength charges. The length of a &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; paper depends on the journal and publication type (normal-length &amp;quot;letters&amp;quot; may be as short as 1 or 2 pages, for example.)  Some also have charges for color figures appearing in print, although there is no charge for online-only color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More definitive info is available for each journal in the IEEE Xplore site, at the &amp;quot;About Journal&amp;quot; page, section &amp;quot;Author Resources&amp;quot;, link &amp;quot;Additional Information&amp;quot;, which opens a PDF with detailed &amp;quot;Information for Authors&amp;quot; (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/societyimages/tgrs/tgrs-info-for-authors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The document also does not include the recently added IEEE open access options, which do have required charges, which are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://open.ieee.org/pubchanges.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Springer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/authors/journal+authors/faq+for+journal+authors&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Springer author FAQ&lt;/a&gt; asks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO PUBLISH IN A SPRINGER JOURNAL?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer there is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the majority of Springer journals, publishing an article is free of charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a journal requires page charges, you will find them on the journal's springer.com homepage or in its Instructions for Authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charges might apply e.g. for color figures or over-length articles. The information on these extra costs will also be available from the journal's homepage or its Instructions for Authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charges for open access articles: If you choose to publish an open access article (&amp;quot;Springer Open Choice&amp;quot; article or in a &amp;quot;SpringerOpen&amp;quot; journal), there will be an Article Processing Charge (APC) to be paid by the author. As a consequence, the article can be freely read, downloaded or distributed from SpringerOpen.com and SpringerLink.com by any internet user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, even for open-access journals, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springeropen.com/about/faq/charges&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Springer advises&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SpringerOpen journals routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries; and individual waiver requests are considered on the grounds of hardship on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another Springer FAQ titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/authors?SGWID=0-111-6-792657-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why publish with Springer?&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page charges do not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I think is as close to &amp;quot;definitive&amp;quot; as you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Elsevier&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Elsevier journals do have author charges, and by searching the Elsevier site I did find a (very) few non-open journals with required page charges.  I did not find any in CS with author charges, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/773/c/6261/kw/charge/p/8045&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;policy&lt;/a&gt; I found is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am submitting my paper to one of your journals. How do I find out if there are page charges associated with this journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page charges are journal specific. Many journals do not have page charges for submitted papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine whether the journal to which you are submitting has page charges, you will need to find the homepage for the journal and check it's specific submission instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're looking for a definitive &amp;quot;No page charges,&amp;quot; Elsevier is not the answer.  In practice, however, there are literally only a handful of non-open Elsevier journals that charge author fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T21:06:07.503" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18622" CreationDate="2014-03-28T08:21:46.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a bad idea. The paper supports everything, and if you make a mistake, it takes skill and time to realise. On the other hand, if you write and run a program, bugs appear because the output is incorrect and you know it. Just think how difficult is to debug a broken program, imagine how much it would be if you don't even know if there is a bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable for a book to be language agnostic, so the reader can adapt it to their favourite one. But it doesn't mean one can just draw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another lesson to be learned is that there are  algorithms out there that look beautiful on paper, but they can become a hell to implement in actual code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, designing on paper is a good practice, but it is only valid if you consider all possible inputs. And again, this takes skill and experience, that firstly introduced cannot have. On the contrary, if you have the code, you can throw in anything you can imagine and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:21:46.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2014-03-28T10:02:41.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Google scholar instead&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages over Web of Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less clicks to access full text, or to save a citation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More literature (including books) is available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advanced search options (e.g. filter by Journal) can be accessed by clicking the arrow at the right hand side of the search box&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T10:02:41.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T11:07:35.650" Score="21" ViewCount="5978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, some students skipped some lessons without note (within the drop policy limits). I post basic instructions to a course Web site where any student can check, but since these students missed classes, the instructions are insufficient, so they send me E-mails or call asking me &quot;explain what to do&quot;. As the homework involves on-going projects, such requests is occupying much of my time. I can demonstrate aspects in the class that require extensive writing to explain in an E-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable practice to turn students away?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it my responsibility to assist students who fall behind in this manner to catch up with the other students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:23:23.240" Title="How to address students who do not attend, yet want to keep up with the course?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T11:16:36.290" Score="20" ViewCount="13792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with some students who will attend graduate school in the US. The schools they are applying for list minimum required TOEFL scores. Some have just reached the minimum scores required for admission to their schools of choice. Do admissions departments ever care about how close this number is to the minimum? In other words, will the students be at any greater advantage if they retake the test and get a higher score, or is the &quot;score level met&quot; simply a &quot;met&quot; or &quot;not met&quot; variable that goes into deciding whether or not the students are accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:42:15.260" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T10:52:31.473" Title="Do admissions care how close a TOEFL score is to the minimum?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18636" CreationDate="2014-03-28T12:44:14.737" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll look at these two points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your course is structured in a way that there is no any alternative way to acquire the materials you cover in class; attending the lecture is the only way. &lt;strong&gt;AND&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You have never expressed, either written in syllabus or spoken to the full class, that it's the student's sole responsibility to coordinate with other students/TAs to catch up with the materials they missed when they were absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If either of this is yes, I'd at least help the student once, and then make sure the whole class will know of point 2 as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are a lot of them waiting for you, try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name the chapters/sections in the assigned texts that will cover a majority of what you talked about in class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have them work in group to come up with a strategy on those &quot;what to do,&quot; and meet with them as a group to go over their questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group them and give a blanket tutorial. You can also make this a challenging task by asking each of the absentees responsible for sorting and summarizing the texts, or have them work on a problem set together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invest in either a cheap recorder or screen/voice capturing software to archive your lecture, so that you can prevent other situations like this from happening again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to give a &quot;should&quot; or &quot;shouldn't.&quot; Analyzing the situation case by case and contrasting with our teaching philosophy along the way should be sufficient to hint what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T12:51:29.193" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T12:51:29.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11625" CreationDate="2014-03-28T13:48:48.210" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people are paid to be innovators. How much they pay you for your billion dollar work can be as low as peanuts. If an employer wants to employ you in such a fashion it should clearly be stated in your employment contract. Some people would refuse such positions or not bother with working hard when away from work and instead spend the time relaxing.&#xA;Generally if your employer asks you to work on something then that should belong to them. Higher level mangers are employed to innovate in their respective sectors whilst certain conglomerates work in all sectors. It’s the University researchers such as your self that are paid peanuts and expected to hand over all billion dollar inventions.&#xA;In short, if an employer wants outside work inventions then it should be clearly stated in the contract! Some people are smart enough to create enterprises for themselves!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13578" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T13:48:48.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18640" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18642" CreationDate="2014-03-28T14:09:36.330" Score="4" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;A newbie here :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently a PhD student in a computer science program. My research interest is about quantum information science. Back then, I also got accepted into a Physics PhD program, but I decided to join my current department because the project is much more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my problem: when people ask me, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Hey, so what are you doing in grad school?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; , I feel quite uncomfortable to mention that I am doing a degree in &quot;Computer Science&quot;. Don't get me wrong. I love computer science. But I prefer to be regarded as a Physics person rather than a CS person (actually, I am doing a lot of theoretical quantum physics for my thesis). My feeling is that, the name of the department/degree ALONE doesn't do me justice in telling other about my research interests and experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny enough, my boyfriend is also suffering from the same problem. He is in the same CS department with me, but focusing on computational biology. His plan is to attend medical school after his PhD, so he usually shows a tremendous amount of angst when being asked the same question. People often joke about his decision, like &lt;em&gt;&quot;So why an IT guy like you suddenly wants to go to med school?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. The poor guy has spent quite a lot of time to do wet labs, and is drafting a thesis with 50% bio and 50% CS components, so I can tell that he really hates when people calling him an &quot;IT guy&quot;. While I understand that doing a bio-related doctoral research is a very logical transition for him to med schools, the name of the department alone is causing the confusion that he has abruptly changed his interests into medicine, rather than planned for it ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best way in our cases to &quot;market&quot; our research focus and experiences to other people? Should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Computer Science &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Quantum Information, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Computer Science with special focus on Quantum Information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the answers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13576" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T14:12:24.117" Title="Problem of mentioning the department affiliated with PhD degrees" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18552" CreationDate="2014-03-28T14:30:36.030" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the likelihood of a PhD-holder remaining unemployed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... I learnt that even a PhD from a US university is not enough to secure a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US National Science Foundation (NSF) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/surveys.cfm&quot;&gt;provides a bunch of statistics&lt;/a&gt; on where doctoral graduates in STEM areas (Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics) end up working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13302/tables/tab1.xls&quot;&gt;This spreadsheet refers to a sampled survey done in 2008&lt;/a&gt;, wherein the NSF provide statistics on the employment status of all PhD graduates from STEM areas trained in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across all of their fields, they count 752,000 relevant graduates, of which they estimate that 651,200 were employed at that time (578,700 full-time, 72,400 part-time), 11,400 were unemployed and seeking work, 75,900 were retired, and 13,500 were not seeking work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_rate#Measurement&quot;&gt;unemployment rate&lt;/a&gt; is calculated as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;UR&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;code&gt;UE&lt;/code&gt; / &lt;code&gt;LF&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;code&gt;UR&lt;/code&gt; is Unemployment Rate, &lt;code&gt;UE&lt;/code&gt; is number of people UnEmployed, &lt;code&gt;LF&lt;/code&gt; is the number of people in the Labour Force [working or seeking work].)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So for the 752,000 U.S. trained PhD graduates considered, the NSF estimated an unemployment rate of 1.7205% in 2008.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is compared with a U.S. unemployment rate of ~6% in mid-2008.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to return to your question ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the likelihood of a PhD-holder remaining unemployed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than three times lower than the general population (for US-trained STEM PhD holders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a small percentage of unemployment is inevitable as some percentage of people will always be between jobs for a short time. (Someone more in tune with economics may be able to comment on whether or not 1.72% is close to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment&quot;&gt;full employment&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but being unemployed for &gt;1.72% of your career while taking a break between jobs doesn't seem unreasonable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more detailed break-down of the total size of the labour force and the unemployment rate per field follows, so if you're in a STEM area, you can pick whichever field is closest to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#Field                                                    #LF      #UR&#xA;&#xA;All fields                                                662,600  1.7205%&#xA;&#xA;Science                                                   515,200  1.7275%&#xA;&#xA;  Biological/agricultural/environmental life sciences     167,200  1.9139%   &#xA;  - Agricultural/food sciences                             17,300  1.7341%&#xA;  - Biochemistry/biophysics                                25,700  2.3346%&#xA;  - Cell/molecular biology                                 19,700  1.0152%&#xA;  - Environmental life sciences                             6,500  1.5385%&#xA;  - Microbiology                                           12,300  2.4390%&#xA;  - Zoology                                                 9,800  3.0612%&#xA;  - Other biological sciences                              76,000  1.9737%&#xA;&#xA;Computer/information sciences                              16,400  1.2195%&#xA;&#xA;Mathematics/statistics                                     30,300  0.9901%&#xA;&#xA;Physical sciences                                         118,200  2.3689%&#xA;  - Astronomy/astrophysics                                 &amp;gt;5,000  [Supp.]&#xA;  - Chemistry, except biochemistry                         59,600  3.0201%&#xA;  - Earth/atmospheric/ocean sciences/other phy. sci.       18,500  1.0811%&#xA;  - Physics                                                35,600  2.2472%&#xA;&#xA;Psychology                                                100,500  1.2935%&#xA;&#xA;Social sciences                                            82,700  1.3301%&#xA;Economics                                                  22,300  0.4484%&#xA;Political sciences                                         19,500  1.0256%&#xA;Sociology                                                  14,900  1.3423%&#xA;Other social sciences                                      26,000  2.3077%&#xA;&#xA;Engineering                                               118,100  1.7782%&#xA;  - Aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering       &amp;gt;5,200  [Supp.]&#xA;  - Chemical engineering                                   14,700  2.7211% &#xA;  - Civil engineering                                      10,500  0.9524%&#xA;  - Electrical/computer engineering                        33,800  1.1834%&#xA;  - Materials/metallurgical engineering                    12,300  2.4390%&#xA;  - Mechanical engineering                                 16,400  1.2195%&#xA;  - Other engineering                                      25,200  2.3810%&#xA;&#xA;Health                                                     29,200  1.0274%&#xA;&#xA;[Supp.] means suppressed: numbers are too low to preserve anonymity.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The context is 2008, US-trained STEM PhDs. Unemployment started increasing in 2008 with the onset of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis&quot;&gt;subprime morgage crisis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is just paperwork. What you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; for your PhD is far more important than the degree itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course simply being &lt;em&gt;employed&lt;/em&gt; is not necessarily the same as having the great job that you always wanted, and certainly we cannot infer from these data that doing a PhD is always the best path for everyone to follow their dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T15:21:50.997" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T15:21:50.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18640" CreationDate="2014-03-28T14:46:00.147" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best way in our cases to &quot;market&quot; our research focus and experiences to other people? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing is all about knowing your audience. And thus you may market your PhD to different audiences in different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking to a person on the street, you could say &quot;PhD in Computer Science&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking to a Computer Scientist, you could say &quot;PhD in Quantum Information&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking to a specialist in Quantum Information, you could say &quot;PhD in X, Y &amp;amp; Z&quot; where X, Y and Z are detailed topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth of the matter is that a PhD is a PhD. Officially speaking, there's no such thing as a &quot;PhD in ...&quot;. So for the given person in front of you, try to communicate the area of your PhD as best as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as for the &quot;IT guy&quot; stuff, if that's how they chose to stereotype what you are doing, then that's their problem, not yours/your boyfriends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T14:46:00.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2014-03-28T15:05:02.860" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;sometimes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools will not care what the score is, as long as you have the minimum requirement that they advertise publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools won't care, even if you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have the minimum requirement (they may &quot;waive&quot; this requirement routinely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools will care: they may have one public requirement, and a higher (unpublicized) threshold that they &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; use in most cases. (Or: the school has one minimum and the department has a higher, unpublicized one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools will care: the minimum is required to get your application looked at, but even if it is met they still consider the score in admissions decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-29T18:40:57.947" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T18:40:57.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18425" CreationDate="2014-03-28T15:33:58.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that this was my dissertation project, and I co-founded the organization that currently maintains and develops it, but take a look at the Open Science Framework: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://osf.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://osf.io&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a completely free service for documenting, sharing, collaborating, archiving, and registering materials across the scientific process. You can use the site privately or choose to make pieces of your workflow public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should support the scenario you mentioned, and, if not, we'd be glad to use any feedback you'd be willing to provide to make adjustments. It can also connect and integrate services like Amazon S3, Fighshare, and Github, and we have a variety of other add-ons in the works (10 or so) including Dropbox, Trello, and Evernote. Some of those might be helpful extensions in managing the collaboration with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do follow-up if you try it--you can email me personally at my first name at cos.io if you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13581" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T15:33:58.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18648" CreationDate="2014-03-28T16:06:59.843" Score="4" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student in computer science. At the end of the year I will finish my coursework and be awarded a master's degree. Due to the nature of my research (machine learning) I'm considering taking additional classes to get a master's in statistics. The obvious pro is that I will gain a deeper understanding of topics that I will otherwise be generally self studying. The obvious drawback is that coursework takes time away from research. How do I weigh these pros and cons appropriately? Thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11251" LastEditorUserId="11251" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T16:13:44.083" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T17:44:08.620" Title="Value of (multiple) master's on the path to the PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18636" CreationDate="2014-03-28T17:09:54.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These students want to have it both ways. They want to skip class, but they also don't want to deal with the consequences of skipping class. The way you've been handling this so far has indicated to your students that this is OK with you. If it's not OK with you, then you may want to send a broadcast email to the class laying out a policy on this, and incorporate such a policy into your syllabus in the future. You have broad authority to set such a policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T17:09:54.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18645" CreationDate="2014-03-28T17:44:08.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem (at least in your question) to have skipped over a middle option: as a PHD student in computer science at an American university, it is likely that with no additional paperwork you can enroll in graduate courses in the statistics department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As with all things academic, it would be good to run this past your supervisor, but as long as you can explain (i) why you think it will be useful to you and (ii) why it will not significantly impede the progress on whatever else you are supposed to be doing, s/he ought to be supportive of it.  If the statistics coursework is directly relevant to your thesis research, s/he ought to be enthusiastic, even.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then take exactly the courses to develop the knowledge and skills you need.  I don't know your situation, but it seems very unlikely that what you want to learn will coincide precisely with the set of requirements for a master's degree in statistics.  And in terms of your credentials: unless you are looking for a post-PhD position specifically in statistics, given that you already have one master's degree and are going for a PhD, I don't see a second master's degree in statistics as having much value to you.  (Even then, unless your career goal is to be some kind of adjunct lecturer in a statistics department, a second master's degree is not guaranteed to be directly helpful: if you have specific career goals then you should ask around as to what credentials best help you achieve these goals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the value of the coursework itself versus the time for your CS research: Suresh's comment is the best answer that I can think of to that.  You're right; there are pros and cons to be weighed against each other.  We can't do that for you nearly as well as you can do it for yourself.  Your supervisor is the natural person to go to for some additional insight, but in my opinion the final decision is really yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T17:44:08.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18590" CreationDate="2014-03-28T18:06:54.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are extenuating circumstances that precipitated this dramatic drop in grades, use the opportunity provided by your personal statement to address this, as suggested by J.R. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second point you can emphasize that - in my experience is quite important - is that you rebounded from this very sub-par semester by doing respectably in your final semester. This provides more evidence that it was a fluke and that you are on the upswing. From speaking with admissions committee members (which is admittedly a bit different), I've been told that bad grades earlier in a record, followed by good grades are almost a non-issue (if you get passed the initial GPA screen, of course). Between this dynamic and a well-written personal statement, you should be able to mitigate the damage of a single bad semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="13252" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T05:10:42.510" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T05:10:42.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2014-03-28T18:27:11.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What ff524 said, but I will add that if you are interviewed they will judge you by that. It's reasonable since if you have the TOEFL with good marks but have already forgotten half your English, you are deemed unreliable, if you failed it on the other hand, but are at ease with English, it is easy to understand that you probably failed the essay or had a bad day. What they see with their own eyes is more important than an exam taken some time ago under who knows what circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T18:27:11.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T19:11:27.087" Score="10" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_in_higher_education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject and frankly, I am still clueless. I don't understand what shared governance means in practice, how it applies, who it is for, and how it actually works. (In most universities - I understand the details are university-specific.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of issues are decided by shared governance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who participates? (I understand this can vary by university; just asking about general trends)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does it work, on a practical level? (I understand what a session of the U.S. Senate looks like, I have no idea what a session of a faculty senate looks like.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the benefits and disadvantages of this approach to governance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of hierarchy typically exists? (Who reports to who?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related question is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1032/what-is-the-usual-role-of-a-faculty-senate-does-it-typically-have-any-real-powe&quot;&gt;What is the usual role of a faculty senate? Does it typically have any real power, or is it a rubber-stamp for the administrators?&lt;/a&gt;, but that only questions the extent of their power. I am trying to understand how this kind of system looks and works in practice, the way my high school Civics course taught me how the U.S. government functions in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context: I am most interested in large research universities in the U.S., though I welcome answers from other perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:00:23.167" Title="What is &quot;shared governance&quot; and how does it work in practice in academia?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18654" CreationDate="2014-03-28T19:23:46.253" Score="27" ViewCount="2320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that a top-N department at a big research university (for very small N) has the choice between two candidates for a tenure-track position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate A: a bright young researcher just done writing her dissertation, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate B: a more seasoned veteran with a several years of successful teaching, advising, and grant writing her belt (though &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; already tenured).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, suppose Candidate B has already demonstrated that, in addition to doing great research, she can successfully navigate other important aspects of the job.  Candidate A seems like a bigger gamble: perhaps she will succeed in these other roles... and perhaps not!  Assume that the department in question can essentially hire whomever it wants, with very little competition from other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What incentive would such a department have for hiring A instead of B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this question, of course, because I am a young candidate about to interview for a job at a top department, and I know that I am competing with more seasoned candidates.  How do I make a compelling case, despite my relative lack of experience?  What are some potential pitfalls to look out for during an interview? (E.g., questions that might expose my relative naiveté?!)  Do top departments really hire freshly-minted PhDs for tenure-track positions?  Or are they just panning for gold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="9538" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T20:14:53.803" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T11:13:16.347" Title="Why would a top department hire a less experienced researcher for a tenure-track position?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2014-03-28T19:34:32.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with &quot;sometimes.&quot;  Usually departments will set these criteria, not schools, based on the success of students who have a given score.  But once that bottom is set you meet it or you don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T19:34:32.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18652" CreationDate="2014-03-28T20:13:01.310" Score="26" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate A might have a research agenda (either based on her dissertation, or on her formulated research plan) that fits better with the research agendas of other people in the hiring department, or with strategic priorities of the department or even other departments at the university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate A might already have collaborated with members of the hiring department, maybe in writing grant proposals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate A might be cheaper, in terms of salary, lab space, funding or anything else the hiring department may need to cough up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hiring department may be afraid that the &quot;superstar&quot; candidate B has so many more attractive offers that she would not accept an offer at this department at all, so they would rather not expend the time to go through the entire process with her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candidate A might just have better contacts, because her Ph.D. advisor is big friends with the dean of the hiring department, or (less sinister) the dean has met candidate A at a conference and been very impressed with her presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: do a little research on the people and the priorities at your target department, and emphasize unobtrusively in your cover letter and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14180/will-anybody-actually-read-your-research-and-teaching-statements&quot;&gt;research plan&lt;/a&gt; how you could collaborate and find synergies. And tap your network. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T21:58:02.643" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18659" CreationDate="2014-03-28T22:29:57.113" Score="21" ViewCount="1524" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine would like to compare 25+ different Java implementations of the same homework. Is it OK (ethically/legally in the US) to share my students' class homework solutions with him for his research purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T21:26:57.317" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:26:57.317" Title="Can we use students' class homework solution for research purpose?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;homework&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18657" CreationDate="2014-03-28T22:42:00.917" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to run this by your Institutional Review Board (IRB), as you would any time you use data from human subjects for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you describe, it has a good chance of qualifying for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html&quot;&gt;IRB exemption&lt;/a&gt; under one of these categories (if identifying information is removed before giving the data to the researcher):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is using existing data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the data comes from normal educational practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but even then, &lt;strong&gt;the IRB needs to be the one to make that determination&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="3914" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T19:00:26.643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:00:26.643" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18554" CreationDate="2014-03-28T22:58:34.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In books where I have seen a very large number of quotations with authors supplied translations a statement was made in the introduction or preface that &quot;except as otherwise indicated all translations are mine.&quot; These were books where there were commonly three or four translated passages per page. They were mostly books written in English about medieval literature written in Old French or Latin. Even in these cases the original or translated text would be provided in a footnote since you would expect readers to want to refer to the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being that the exact choice of style might depend on the number of translated passages you will be working with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T22:58:34.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2014-03-28T23:40:40.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other useful remarks made: in my university, a minimum TOEFL score is considered a problem, to the extent that it drags down everything of the file. Partly this is based on our past experiences with such scores (statistically, over 30+ years) and the subsequent improvements-or-not. Specifically, minimal TOEFL score people seem not to usually improve much at all, even after a few years. Oof. Of course this says nothing about any individual, but we predict based on the statistical aggregate... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum set by the umbrella &quot;graduate school&quot; body that imagines it oversees graduate education and degrees across the university has lower expectations than our math dept. I cannot speak for other depts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, indeed, both higher and lower TOEFL-score kids who associate almost entirely with their home-language population outside of teaching and classes simply do not improve, do not learn finer points of colloquial English, etc. On one hand, I'm somewhat sympathetic to cultural dislocation... but if the issue is job performance, then we can see the obvious issue: cultural extraterrestrials are rarely effective in teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T23:40:40.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18657" CreationDate="2014-03-29T00:29:06.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Franck doesn't say where he is.  What ff524 says is true in the US.  Any research with human subjects must be approved by an appropriate review process beforehand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One horror story (allegedly true) goes like this.  A graduate student in music history spent her summer touring through Appalachia, convincing people to let her record them singing traditional songs.  But that research had to be thrown out, because of the advance approval process she hadn't known was required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4484" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T00:29:06.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18636" CreationDate="2014-03-29T00:47:25.967" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my student years, I quite seldom attended lectures. It clashes with my preferred method of learning: I always want to stop and think things through before moving on. Hence, I always fall hopelessly behind during lectures and am much better off spending that time reading the course material. I don't know how responsible the students who skipped your class are: whether they do their best to keep up with the course, but please be aware that some people just aren't suited for learning via lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what kinds of courses you teach, which country/university you're in or whether your university requires students to show up for lectures to get a passing grade, so let me just state my policy when teaching courses: All information on what is required of a student to pass the course should be made available online. So should hand-outs and instructions for assignments etc. I claim no responsibility to remind absent students of deadlines etc., but in my view, a student who skips lectures but who is responsible and willing to actively keep him/herself updated on what is going on in the course, should have access to everything required to take part in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11656" LastEditorUserId="11656" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T21:23:23.240" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:23:23.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18672" CreationDate="2014-03-29T08:12:31.230" Score="16" ViewCount="879" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to submit a paper when you are about to leave academia, say in the next year? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (Mathematics), the review progress is typically very long (At the moment I'm waiting for the first review for almost a year). I do not want to receive a review while I'm in the middle of a new job (probably without access to other academic people, articles, books, etc.). On the other hand, I've done something which is worth to published somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I submit it? How can I improve the length of the review (e.g., by chosing the journal?)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Some details: I'm about to finish my PhD and I have no co-authors for the latest paper who could handle big parts of revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastEditorUserId="4078" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T13:29:52.367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T18:20:22.930" Title="Submitting paper when leaving academia?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18668" CreationDate="2014-03-29T08:16:47.250" Score="15" ViewCount="63929" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the three types of research revolve around an argument, a thesis. They of course differ in terms of student level, that is complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, what makes a bachelor's thesis different from master's and PhD theses in terms of procedures of researching given that all of them may follow the same process of research, questions or hypotheses, review of the literature, methodology, results and discussion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-01-23T09:30:28.197" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T09:30:28.197" Title="What makes a Bachelor's thesis different from Master's and PhD theses?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2016-01-24T04:05:13.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18652" CreationDate="2014-03-29T09:11:54.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If anything, people are probably a bit prejudiced against Candidate B; people tend to be much more strongly influenced by any negative information than a lack of information.  They can imagine whatever they want about the future career of Candidate A, but Candidate B probably isn't getting much better than what they've already seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the key point where you are going wrong is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assume that the department in question can essentially hire whomever it wants, with very little competition from other institutions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every institution faces at least potentially serious competition for the candidates they want to hire (this is almost tautological; if you don't think there's a good chance a competitive institution will make a serious offer, then probably you don't think the candidate is good enough to hire).  In particular, no department can afford to say &quot;Well, we can just pass on Candidate A now.  We can just hire her later if she turns out to be a star.&quot; because, well, maybe they can't.  Maybe Candidate A takes a job somewhere else, and makes friends or starts a family and in 3 or 4 years doesn't want to move.  (Also, there's a little voice in the back of their head saying &quot;Maybe Candidate B doesn't really want to move now.&quot; Making a offer that's turned down is expensive in terms of time and losing other candidates.)  If nothing else, you're probably going in have to make a much more attractive offer, in terms of salary, etc. in order to get them.  Getting a younger person is &quot;cheaper.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T11:13:16.347" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T11:13:16.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-29T11:35:42.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a student, one of the first things we were told was &quot;No late work is accepted. Not even if it is only a matter of seconds. Not even if the printer catches fire or you're snowed in&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university had previously just subtracted from the grade, and had been warned by the authorities that this was against the rules. So they stopped doing that, and instead enforced a zero-tolerance rule of &quot;respect the deadlines&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And honestly, it worked well. The only requirement is that you make absolutely totally sure that all of your students are aware of these rules! Like I said, it was drilled into our heads on day 1 (and repeated regularly ever since). And it was enforced for the entire Computer Science department, not just for individual courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, students can always ask (preferably in advance) to have an agreed-upon extension in special cases (perhaps in case of extended sickness, or whatever else it might be), but if it's just a matter of &quot;I didn't finish in time&quot;, then tough luck. You either hand in what you have, even if it is incomplete, or you don't hand it in at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I kind of think it is the only fair policy. Lowering a student's grade for handing his work in late strikes me as much weirder. Their work should be graded on its quality, and nothing else. &quot;your ability to manage time&quot; should not be part of the curriculum. If two students hand in equally good work, they deserve the same grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the important point is that being late doesn't mean that you can't hand in your work. It just means that instead of handing it in late, but complete, you hand it in on time, but incomplete. And you get graded on what you handed in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13602" LastEditorUserId="13602" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T11:48:59.677" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T11:48:59.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18665" CreationDate="2014-03-29T11:45:21.033" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PhD thesis should be on a much higher level than the Honours/Masters thesis, offering a contribution to human knowledge that is of a sufficient level of &quot;significance&quot; to warrant publication in a respected journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Significance is highly subjective, and you also do not necessarily have to publish to be awarded the PhD (sometimes the peer-review delay means that they come out afterwards, or there may be some intellectual property issues that make it beneficial to refrain from publication). It is awarded based on your supervisors consent and a review of academics in your field. So the &quot;significance&quot; would probably be judged by them in terms of how much original work they see as a reasonable expectation at that stage of your development (first 3 years of serious/committed research). Unfortunately it also means that some people who probably do not deserve PhD's are awarded them anyway for fulfilling grunt work for their easy-going supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that some Honours/Masters thesis might even be more significant/higher quality than a PhD thesis. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the submission of the thesis will award the degree that they deserve. The university may have a policy to upgrade the student's enrolment if the supervisor senses that such progress is being made. However, it is impossible to upgrade to a PhD without completing Honours and I believe nearly every single university has a policy of a minimum period of enrolment before submission is allowed. A subsequent question that you may have is how to gain a PhD without enrolling in one, which is another level of achievement completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the difference between Honours/Bachelor and Masters it would depend on your university, but both have no requirement for publication quality research and are usually small tasks/ideas that are not worth the supervisors time to think about alone, or involve a lot of labor. In fact, in my school, many Honours thesis are of a higher level than the Masters, because the smart Honours students will either graduate into the work force or go straight into a PhD. The Masters students are usually those who cannot find a job and are not suited to research. However, I believe some other universities may require a mandatory Masters degree to start the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may get a better idea by looking at some titles/abstracts of completed theses. The PhD level will be something like a new method/observation/application whereas the Masters/Honours will be an application specific set of measurements/simulations or even simply a literature review to gauge the needs of future work. The word limits are also typically different (although note that quality is NOT proportional to the number of words), with PhD at 100K, Masters at 50K and Honours at 30K at my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="9680" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T12:00:15.630" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T12:00:15.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18670" CreationDate="2014-03-29T11:46:10.097" Score="5" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying a BSc so I'm not fully involved in academia yet. I'd still like to write some publications and have them peer-reviewed about specific subjects. &#xA;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers&quot;&gt;Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?&lt;/a&gt;, I can publish even without an affiliation, but do I need co-authors? If so, how to find any? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T15:47:41.720" Title="Can I write publications if I don't have co-authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18669" CreationDate="2014-03-29T12:09:59.423" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it definitely can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an idea then do a literature review of the subject and if you have a contribution that builds on the activity in one of the journals you find then publish there. Perhaps also look into doing a conference paper first. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18349/difference-between-conference-paper-and-journal-paper&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for the difference between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best co-author for your case would probably be a professor or grad student at your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, co-authors are not required. They can be useful though if you need their help/skills in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computer science, journal papers usually occur during one’s PhD. Bright Masters and Honours students usually start publishing conference papers, but journal papers are not unheard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T15:47:41.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-29T12:54:28.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The university I attended had a no late work policy, however, some of the modules &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; allow a 24-hour late work window, but work submitted in this 24 hours was capped at 40% (Minimum pass grade).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13607" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T12:54:28.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18664" CreationDate="2014-03-29T13:48:09.523" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the results are worth publishing, then the world should know about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, even if the paper is accepted, it is likely that you'll need to make minor or major revisions. If you do not expect that you will have the time to do this, then ultimately the paper will be rejected (or simply just vanish). So you need to consider whether you will, in 1, 2 or 3 years (or whatever the journal turn around time is) be in a position, mentally and otherwise, to address the review comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is to archive the paper on arxiv.org and hope that interested people find the work – for the good of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T13:48:09.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18640" CreationDate="2014-03-29T14:12:24.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sort of in the same spot as you, even if maybe to a lesser degree. I hold a master and PhD degree in Information Systems, even though all my research is really in distributed systems and software engineering. Some people kept asking me during my PhD time whether I am not worried that my IS degree will keep me out of CS postdocs or faculty positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after going through a few rounds of job search, I can report that &lt;strong&gt;the topic has come up a grand total of 0 times during job hunting&lt;/strong&gt;. Realistically, people simply do not care about the name of your degree / department. If you publish in X, you are a research in X, no matter what your degree says. If at all, the entire thing is an interesting tidbit for small talk, not something that anybody should be stressing out over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the case of your boyfriend - maybe the reason that people keep calling him &quot;the IT guy&quot; is &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; he is so annoyed by it? For some people, if somebody reacts so strongly to something that seems rather trivial to others, it would be prone to make him the butt of some inappropriate jokes ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T14:12:24.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18665" CreationDate="2014-03-29T14:25:15.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, there are three levels of tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recitation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a Bachelor's thesis, you would only expect 1 and 2, that is the student should &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; something (e.g. solve a well-defined problem) with the knowledge they have aquired during their studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Master's thesis, you would want to have a non-trivial amount of 3, that is the student should transfer the competences aquired during studies to new problems. This usually includes (more) extensive literature research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A formal difference that (imho) derives from the above is volume; Bachelor's theses typically award less credits than Master's theses and should thus take up less time and fewer pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T14:25:15.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-29T14:50:45.007" Score="1" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing the questionnaire for my Doctor of Business Administration research; for the purposes of this question (on Academia SE), I am investigating techniques used in customising cars. It is conceivable that a respondent has used several techniques, so I envisage repeating the same questions, each time for a a different car or technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that the same repeating structure would be needed in a medical exam, where the respondent can give data about several complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this technique? Does it have a canonical source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that this question might not be within the scope of this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T15:43:51.783" Title="Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-22T15:24:45.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18679" CreationDate="2014-03-29T16:14:53.893" Score="0" ViewCount="2064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my B.A. in 2005 and my M.Ed. in 2010.  I'm now looking at going back to school to do a Ph.D., but I'm not sure what to do about the references required for my applications.  I'm still able to get in contact with my advisors from both programs, but even so it's been a couple of years since I've talked to either of them.  Should I focus on tracking down old professors, or would it be better to find colleagues from my professional career to attest to relevant work I've done since graduating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13612" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T16:52:32.327" Title="References for Ph.D. admission application" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18678" CreationDate="2014-03-29T16:52:32.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will certainly want to track down old professors. It might be helpful to get letters from professional colleagues, depending on your field. (I am in mathematics, and in pure math this would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be helpful. But maybe, e.g. CS would be different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be very helpful if you could get a newer recommendation from a professor in the field in which you would like to study. There are a couple of ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you live near a research university, find a graduate course that looks interesting and ask the professor's permission to sit in on the course. Do all the work assigned for the course, and do it damn well. Ask the professor if he/she would be willing to give occasional feedback, and/or grade your homework. If all goes well, you can ask for a letter of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If this is not feasible (perhaps you live further away, or your working hours are not flexible), plan to do a lot of self-study and find some research university which is semi-close. Ask a couple of professors if you could make appointments with them, and solicit their advice on self-study and preparing for grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is especially friendly or helpful, ask if he/she could later evaluate the results of your self-study. Go work your butt off, then return and talk to the professor, demonstrate that you've learned a lot, and let the professor teach you some more. Repeat if there's time. Eventually, ask for a letter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these depend on having the time to informally begin your studies early in a serious way -- but if you want to get a Ph.D. this is a good idea anyway. These ideas also depend on the generosity of professors -- this will likely be forthcoming if you demonstrate that you are serious, and also that you intend to be very respectful of their time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T16:52:32.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-29T17:02:08.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a middle-ranking UK university and we have a rule of 5% per day for 5 days then zero. I think it becomes counted as a cost by some students. &quot;No late work without a doctor's cert&quot;, providing everyone knows well in advance, seems as fair as any other, what with the deadline being part of the test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T17:02:08.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18651" CreationDate="2014-03-29T17:41:38.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;shared governance&quot; seems to date back to a 1966 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaup.org/report/1966-statement-government-colleges-and-universities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statement by the AAUP&lt;/a&gt;. It was apparently a push for reform and liberalization in the management of colleges and universities, which had traditionally been run in a more top-down fashion. The legal structure of a school is usually that there is a governing board, and the trustees on the board make general policy decisions but delegate day-to-day authority to college presidents. However, there are some areas in which faculty and students should not just be treated as serfs by administrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty are the experts in their academic subjects, and therefore they are supposed to have primary authority over curriculum and grading. This authority is not absolute. At my school, for example, the physics faculty initiated a process to delete several courses that we thought were not needed, had not been offered in a long time, and had not worked out well in practice. To get this to happen, we had to shepherd the deletion through many bureaucratic steps, and we encountered opposition from the vice president of instruction, which we had to deal with through a long process of negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AAUP statement also says that faculty should have &quot;primary&quot; responsibility for decisions about &quot;faculty status,&quot; i.e., hiring, firing, and tenure. But &quot;primary&quot; doesn't mean that they control it completely. The responsibility is shared with administrators. For example, when we hire tenure-track faculty at my school, a faculty committee picks three candidates, who are then interviewed by the president, and the final decision is made by the president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some areas, such as budgeting, where control would traditionally have been exercised completely by management but the AAUP statement recommends that faculty have a role because of their expertise in their academic areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shared governance is generally expected to cover academic and professional matters, but not workplace issues such as paychecks and working conditions. If there is a faculty union, that would be the union's bailiwick. In practice, however, faculty senates may work fist-in-glove with the union on these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shared governance is not supposed to be a process where management accepts &quot;input&quot; from stakeholders and then makes decisions based on that input. That would be more of a corporate model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For students, the AAUP's statement makes some very limited recommendations, which are clearly described in the document itself as a political compromise reached during a period of upheaval in American education (the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The respect of students for their college or university can be&#xA;  enhanced if they are given at least these opportunities: (1) to be&#xA;  listened to in the classroom without fear of institutional reprisal&#xA;  for the substance of their views, (2) freedom to discuss questions of&#xA;  institutional policy and operation, (3) the right to academic due&#xA;  process when charged with serious violations of institutional&#xA;  regulations, and (4) the same right to hear speakers of their own&#xA;  choice as is enjoyed by other components of the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it does not, for example, advocate giving them a right to speak freely on social issues. In 1965, one of Ronald Reagan's promises in his campaign for governor of California was to &quot;clean up the mess at Berkeley.&quot; Since then, things haven't changed very much. For example, my school does not allow people to gather signatures on a petition except by standing on one specific patch of grass, and they have to register in advance and state what the petition is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For public schools, some of these issues may also be regulated by state laws. For example, in California, title 5 of the state ed code requires governing boards to &quot;consult collegially&quot; with faculty senates and to make room for &quot;effective participation&quot; by faculty and students. California state law also severely limits the circumstances under which a grade assigned by a professor can be changed against the professor's wishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does it work, on a practical level? (I understand what a session of the U.S. Senate looks like, I have no idea what a session of a faculty senate looks like.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elected faculty representatives from various departments meet and discuss items on an agenda. For the most part they can only make recommendations on policy -- they can't set policy directly. They can form committees and decide to accept or not accept the committees' reports and decisions. There are also advisory bodies, e.g., at my school we have a President's Advisory Committee, and one of its members is the faculty senate president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the benefits and disadvantages of this approach to governance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to a more top-down decision making process, it's intended to protect against political or short-sighted interference in academic matters. For example, it's supposed to prevent administrators from firing a professor who has controversial social views. Anecdotally, the main disadvantages I've seen are (1) that the quality of the decision making in a faculty senate is often extremely low, and (2) that the faculty senate may not show sufficient independence from the union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of hierarchy typically exists? (Who reports to who?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a structure that bypasses the hierarchy defined in an org chart. Faculty senators don't report to anyone. The org chart only includes management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;See also:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://facultysenate.tamu.edu%2FQuick_Links%2FShared_Governance_in_Colleges_and_Universities.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://facultysenate.tamu.edu%2FQuick_Links%2FShared_Governance_in_Colleges_and_Universities.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T21:00:23.167" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:00:23.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18665" CreationDate="2014-03-29T17:59:26.913" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go back to basic definitions... In history of university degrees (500 years ago)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bachelors degree is about learning existing knowledge.  Historically from the book(s) written by the univ staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A masters degree, after you have learnt what is already known and in books in your topic area, is about learning evolving knowledge - that is near recent and current literature in academic journals and conference presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A doctorate degree is about creating new knowledge by research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is now easy to understand a thesis/dissertation for each degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bachelors degree should be a critique of existing knowledge, often looking for inconsistencies in view points from different sources and synthesising arguments or positions in a DISSERTATION )that is you disserting !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A masters thesis (thesis is Greek for 'I believe') can be either an assembly of new knowledge from new published research or simply a critique and integration.  It might have propositions (not hypotheses) that the masters student offers as a conclusion from bringing together new knowledge from different sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A doctoral thesis is where the author undertakes research, usually collecting primary new data which is presented as both factual findings and conceptual findings and thus new knowledge in the form of a new model or theory.  Also possible, is to challenge existing knowledge and show earlier published knowledge is invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well that's what they all should be.  In practice there is some overlap and different universities and faculties have their own custom and practice.  It all starts to break down about 40 years ago when a masters degree become post graduate in time rather than post graduate in level.  Thus engineers with a bachelor degree might take an MBA to make them more employable and did more a less a bachelor degree in business in 18 months rather than 3 years as they were already a graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still thinking in the above categories can help students today focus on the overall agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have examined over 55 PhD theses. And several hundred masters theses and I base my approach to assessment on the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prof Peter Woolliams, B.Sc(hons), B.A., PhD,&#xA;Emeritus professor,&#xA;Anglian Ruskin College Cambridge, U K&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13615" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T17:59:26.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18664" CreationDate="2014-03-29T18:20:22.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think it's worth publishing, you should at least put it on ArXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend submitting it to a journal. If the paper is well-written and correct, it shouldn't need a great deal of revision, so it should be possible to do that in your spare time. You could also mention when you submit the paper that you'll be leaving academia so you might need more time than usual to make revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to bring your advisor on board as a co-author to deal with these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T18:20:22.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18385" CreationDate="2014-03-29T19:09:49.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the advice Peter Clark offers in the bit you've quoted. You're further along in your career than I am. (Defending in May). However, I've had many friends in your circumstances. Here are two things that I have gleaned from their experiences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) A &lt;em&gt;mediocre&lt;/em&gt; book has little impact on the field, just like a mediocre journal article does, except that the book has such a higher opportunity cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) A &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; book can actually be a kiss of death. People might laugh off a bad article, but if you put out a bad book, you might actually harm the good reputation you've built with your other publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) To write a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; book requires so much time, and such a high level of expertise, that it's usually not worth doing for a junior person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My sense is that these three sentences might not hold in all fields universally. Some fields are &lt;em&gt;book fields&lt;/em&gt; where you are expected to publish the dissertation as a book. In those fields, I'd assume there's more reasonable expectations about book length publications. But in primarily journal based fields, I suspect (1)-(3) are true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you write the publisher and ask for a long extension so as to be able to keep a more reasonable research/writing schedule? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:09:49.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17461" CreationDate="2014-03-29T19:15:25.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that it probably varies hugely, by field, by department and then again by professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fields might vary because of the different expectations about having co-advisors, the size of dissertation committees and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Departments might vary based on their teaching needs. A department (Department A) that the university needs to cover lots of intro classes might be funded primarily by teaching, and so such a department is going to have a  lot of graduate students. On the other hand, Department B that brings in tons of grant money might have more labs, but less teaching responsibilities, and therefore have a higher proportion of post-docs and lab assistants than grad students. Hence, profs at Dept B might have fewer students than profs at dept A, but that won't speak to the relative quality of the faculty at either institution obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it might also vary just from faculty member to faculty member. Some people are jerks and nobody will want to work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:15:25.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2014-03-29T19:19:51.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD programs are wanting to recruit people who are capable of doing advanced research. Grades are a proxy that people use to try to estimate which members of a population (almost none of whom have publications) will be able to acquire the skill set necessary to publish in the future. And, grades aren't a terribly good proxy. Therefore, the best thing you can do to get into a good grad program is going to be to keep publishing, and ideally in the best places possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you publish research, then you'll be able to get letters of reference that talk about your skills as a writer and scientist that &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; offset any difficulty with your grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to tell some kind of story to tell in your cover letter about why your grades are bad, and how they don't represent the work you will do in your phd program. (ideally a letter writer should address this fact too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T19:19:51.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-29T21:04:36.030" Score="8" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I'm only starting my mathematical career, I've only ever requested letters from my advisers. So I was wondering what kinds of letters sound good to people reading reference letters? How does a neutral but good reference from a famous researcher compare against a strong letter from someone not-as-well-known? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is admittedly very situation dependent and subjective. But I thought I'd solicit opinions anyway, since they're always interesting to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I'd appreciate it if you could share your personal experience too. When you were on a faculty hiring committee, PhD/postdoc admissions committee or anything else, what sort of letters had the most effect on you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11862" LastEditorUserId="11862" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T21:20:25.660" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T21:48:17.907" Title="What kinds of reference letters sound best to letter readers?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2014-03-29T21:22:41.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Designing a group web page is easy (and fun). &lt;strong&gt;Maintaining&lt;/strong&gt; a group web page is hard and boring. As a consequence, most web pages (and parts of mine right now sadly) are old and out of date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real solution is to keep as little information on this group page as possible, and decentralize most updates to the person whose information it actually is (and presumably who cares the most)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why @JeffE's statement is relevant. That information is mostly fixed, and points to where the real information is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless you plan to maintain this page as a full time job (in addition to your other work), put as little information on it as is necessary. Having no web page is much better than having a web page with incomplete information and stale links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T21:22:41.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18692" CreationDate="2014-03-29T21:32:34.397" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the targets you mention, the perception of the letter is highly biased by prior familiarity with the letter writer. It's very common to say things like &quot;&lt;em&gt;Well Prof. X doesn't like anyone, so if they call this person 'decent' they must be pretty awesome&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, or &quot;&lt;em&gt;Prof. Y loves everyone, so this letter is more useful for what it doesn't say than what it does&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, some of the things that help me when I read a letter (for postdocs or faculty hiring)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Caveat: I'm at a US university and am most experienced in reading letters from US-based researchers, so cultural differences are important&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who writes the letter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the nature of involvement they have with the applicant&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;was a student in my class&quot; is barely adequate, &quot;was my summer intern&quot; is not terrible, &quot;worked with as a colleague&quot; is excellent, &quot;was my Ph.D student&quot; is important, but can also get downweighted. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The level of specificity in the letter&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;We worked on problem X and Applicant came up with the key idea and did all the work&quot; is good. &quot;We were stumped on problem Y for ages and Applicant made the breakthrough&quot; is even better. &quot;We all worked on this problem and Applicant contributed ideas to it&quot; is lukewarm. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Points of reference&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;You've probably heard of Prof. Awesome who works in this area, and Applicant is awesome-er&quot;, or &quot;there are 5 people on the market this year in this area, and Applicant is at least 2nd best&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things not said, or said in code&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;Applicant prefers to work alone&quot; could sometimes mean &quot;Applicant is an obnoxious lout&quot; or &quot;Applicant has no social skills&quot;, depending on the context. &quot;Applicant works hard at their presentation skills&quot; could mean &quot;they give lousy talks&quot;. And so on. Here again, some prior familiarity with the letter writer helps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-03-29T21:48:17.907" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T21:48:17.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18858" CreationDate="2014-03-30T00:39:30.617" Score="6" ViewCount="3280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this question is okay to post here (I am only an undergrad), so please feel free to close/migrate if necessary. I won't be offended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate taking an undergraduate CS class right now. I feel the class is being taught like a graduate-level course, but we are being tested like undergraduates. I say this because I have taken graduate-level STEM classes in the past, and I think my professor is teaching the material as if we were graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The homework in this class emphasizes theoretical understanding and proof writing. When the midterm was upon us, we were given no practice problems to prepare for the test. There were no practice midterms either. Going into the midterm, I figured, well, the professor will probably test us on our understanding of the material. However, the midterm tested for speed and accuracy. There were several short answer questions that had little to do with the kind of understanding of the material we developed from the homework. In fact, there were questions for which we haven't yet had homework. I think he tried to make the test &quot;easy,&quot; which totally threw me off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did very poorly on my midterm, and now I am trying to figure out whether I can judge what to expect in a graduate-level class vs. an undergraduate-level class so I may avoid such poor exam performance in the future. I have come up with the following qualities to expect from a graduate-level STEM class vs. an undergraduate-level STEM class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graduate-level STEM Class&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis on depth of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Abstract material can sometimes be presented ad hoc: Less emphasis on linear presentation of material.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Theoretical presentation of material. Typically, we look at axioms/rules whenever we are presented new notation. We then derive everything from these axioms/rules.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often the material covered has so much depth that we are expected to have minimal breadth of understanding; We are expected to take what we've learned and focus on a particular are in great depth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exams, projects, and papers test understanding of the material, not the speed in which we can solve arbitrary problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Undergraduate-level STEM Class&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis on breadth of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Material is presented in a linear fashion, often starting with some concrete examples and building from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is often so much ground to cover that we are taught through rote memorization. We solve problems excessively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exams test for speed and accuracy of exact solutions to several problems. One often succeeds in such a class by performing many practice problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this accurate? If not, why, and what kinds of differences can I expect between graduate vs. undergraduate-level courses?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there other/better ways to find correlations between teaching and testing styles? How can I know I am prepared for an exam given a professor's teaching style (rote memorization vs. emphasis on derivations, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13625" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T14:22:08.147" Title="Expectation of students in Graduate vs. Undergraduate STEM classes" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;stem&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-30T01:20:19.400" Score="5" ViewCount="8157" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title says it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the committee typically contact your references (or request that reference letters be sent) a) before you phone interview b) after the phone interview but before the on-campus interview or c) after the on-campus interview? Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="13252" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T01:52:50.980" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T13:06:07.580" Title="Interviewing for tenure track jobs: When will the committee contact your references?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17830" CreationDate="2014-03-30T02:08:18.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a very similar situation. And my first thoughts were: &quot;Great! I have a smart active student&quot;. However, soon other students started to complain that he is confusing them, and they lose focus when I explain material outside of lecture material to him. Therefore, I stopped answering his complicated, though good questions. Ans said something along the lines off: &quot;This is a very good point; however, it is beyond of the scope of this lecture, but I would be happy to discuss it after class.&quot; We had some great discussions after class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main point: Your active student might be confusing others by bringing up new concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T02:08:18.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-30T03:15:43.540" Score="4" ViewCount="1832" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to reference The Bayeux Tapestry for a paper. Guidelines state to use &quot;standard footnotes&quot; and doesn't dictate any particular system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tapestry is located in Bayeux, France and the exact date and the creator are not known but thought to be approximately 1070 and commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the most appropriate way to reference such an item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13631" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T12:22:01.720" Title="Referencing a Tapestry (History)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-30T08:29:12.003" Score="5" ViewCount="3178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to go to graduate school to study computational molecular biology and biochemistry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my first three semesters as an undergraduate I finished my distribution requirements and started doing research with one professor.  During my fourth semester I started doing research with two more professors (working in computational biophysics and  computational linear algebra).  My work with two of these three professors has already led to work that will be published soon.  I am considering starting research with yet another professor (in statistical genomics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it wise to begin research with yet another professor?&lt;/strong&gt;  I fear that having engaged with too many professors makes my resume read like that of a dilettante rather than a promising computational biologist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T02:17:27.383" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T02:17:27.383" Title="Is it a bad idea to do research with multiple different professors at the same time?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18702" CreationDate="2014-03-30T09:35:25.743" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There comes a point where a person will be spread too thin – that's inevitable. Only you can really say how much you can take on before your workload starts to interfere with your academic goals and achievements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already doing the work of two students, I'd be cautious about expanding that to three. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm spending around 9 hours a day on research right now with ~3 hours in class, 1 hour eating, and 4 hours free time, on week days, and even more free time on weekends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make it sound like those four hours of free time are being wasted, when they might not be. Perhaps your brain is appreciating that rest more than you know. And I don't see any time allotted for physical fitness; besides being good for your health, fitness can be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=fitness+helps+you+think+clearer&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&quot;&gt;good for your mind&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide you want to try a third project, you should be honest with yourself, and up front with the sponsoring faculty member from the outset. &quot;I'm already working on two other projects, so, to be honest, this might turn out to be too much for me. But I'd still like to give it a try.&quot; Such a disclosure might make it a little harder for you to find someone willing to take you on, but it might help save your reputation if you find yourself in a position where you've bitten off more than you can chew. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T09:35:25.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18702" CreationDate="2014-03-30T09:38:50.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: congratulations and good luck. It seems you are quite enthusiastic about research. That said: be careful not to take too much on your plate, especially initially. Your time schedule seems very stringent which may lead to a burn-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the feeling that you are too erratic in your current research: there is no overall story to connect the different pieces you are (or plan to be) working on with different professors (computational biophysics, linear algebra, statistical genomics, mathematics, ...). It's true that there is likely some overlap but to do effective research you need to have a single point of focus, which you can tackle from different angles. &lt;strong&gt;What is your main focus?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say less is more. Having so many different professors in such diverse fields will inevitably hinder you from digging deep in each one. An important part in research is choosing your battles: deciding what to focus on and planning your work/collaborations in a meaningful way. It seems to me that you just want to do everything, which (while commendable!) rarely works out in the long run. You can't do everything, even if you want to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T09:45:09.927" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T09:45:09.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18513" CreationDate="2014-03-30T10:17:16.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the focus of teaching should be students' learning,&#xA;and all policies including late assignment policies should be designed with&#xA;the goal of improving student learning and experience.&#xA;A good fair policy would encourage learning and good behavior,&#xA;a bad unfair one would do the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think students generally care too much about grades,&#xA;it is important to refocus them as much as possible on learning.&#xA;Assignments, tests, and grades are tools for teachings not goals of teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard deadline policy is common but &#xA;I think it is also a common experience of instructors that &#xA;it doesn't work well. &#xA;It is important to think about why it is so, &#xA;if we understand why hard deadlines do not work well &#xA;then we can design better policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &#xA;the followings are the main reasons for missing deadlines in most cases &#xA;(roughly based on the justifications my students gave me &#xA;when asking for extensions in my previous courses):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technical difficulties: &#xA;small unexpected submission difficulties, &#xA;i.e. they have finished assignments but &#xA;they were unable to submit it before deadline, &#xA;e.g. they lost power just before deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Procrastination: &#xA;Considerable number of students leave working on assignments to the last minute. &#xA;They are also not good with estimating the time they need to finish assignments. &#xA;So they go over deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Special cases: &#xA;events beyond students' reasonable control prevented them from finishing assignments, e.g. serious illness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course we would not want to penalized students for the 3rd reason.&#xA;But we should also try to help those in the first two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common alternative to hard deadlines is having grace days, &#xA;but it has a too high administrative overhead in my opinion,&#xA;and it doesn't really work much better.&#xA;They will use up their grace days and &#xA;then go over deadline.&#xA;If we give them a grace day for all assignments &#xA;then we are essentially shifting deadlines in their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After discussions with a few more experienced instructors &#xA;I switched to something similar to Suresh's policy for my last course and &#xA;it worked quite well. &#xA;There was almost no serious complaint. &#xA;Here is the policy I used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1% penalty for every 30min after the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is easy to implement. &#xA;I use an online submission system so it is quite easy to compute and apply these penalties &#xA;using time-stamps for latest submissions, it is a simple script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it is effective way of helping the first two groups.&#xA;This policy gives them two extra days after the deadline if they really need.&#xA;Most late submissions miss the deadline by a small amount of time. &#xA;Being essentially a continuous linear penalty function it makes sure &#xA;the penalty is proportional: &#xA;a student who goes over the deadline a few minutes doesn't loose too much points. &#xA;I give students typically 2 weeks for submitting assignments. &#xA;I don't think it makes sense to give more that 2 extra days. &#xA;Too many days and too soft penalty &#xA;will essentially shift assignment deadlines in their minds and &#xA;cause further procrastination.&#xA;The hourly lateness penalty creates a sense of urgency that daily penalty would not. &#xA;I had around 100 students and they seldom went over a few hours. &#xA;I also put deadlines on Friday evenings. &#xA;Students who don't like doing assignments &#xA;hate to spend their weekend on them.&#xA;Student who submit their assignments on time &#xA;do not have to worry and spend their weekend working on assignments, &#xA;this adds an extra incentive for them to finish it by deadline, or&#xA;if not possible with as little lateness as possible.&#xA;In addition, &#xA;it also makes sure that the following week &#xA;we can focus on our topic&#xA;without them worrying about assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deal with the 3rd group&#xA;I don't use my late assignment policy,&#xA;I use an special consideration policy.&#xA;If a student misses an assignment deadline with a good reason, &#xA;e.g. serious illness supported by medial documents, &#xA;I apply my special consideration policy to accommodate them &#xA;e.g. I may move the points for the assignment to other assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T10:28:42.527" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T10:28:42.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18708" CreationDate="2014-03-30T10:54:20.560" Score="2" ViewCount="4169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on my thesis and facing the problem of choosing between &quot;I&quot;, &quot;We&quot; or &quot;the author&quot; when I want to talk about things I defined, decided etc. I am the only author of my thesis, but using &quot;I&quot; is not very common, is it? I saw quite a lot of work of single-authors that used &quot;We&quot; when referencing to themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The author&quot; seems nicer to me, but it is not common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations or remarks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13642" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T11:52:39.900" Title="&quot;We&quot; when I mean &quot;I&quot; or should I say &quot;the author&quot;?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-03-30T12:55:19.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18707" CreationDate="2014-03-30T11:10:07.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt; It varies. Ask your advisor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my advisor (Social Sciences, using APA style manual), 'the author' is always correct, and the use of 'I' hurts the eyes and the sensibilities! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many style guides now permit the use of 'I', especially for a single-author paper, you will find that many academics have been taught to avoid 'I'. They may express strong dislike for the use of 'I', and your work may subtly and unconsciously be considered 'less good' because of your pronoun use. 'The author' is always considered correct. The bigger problem is probably learning how to write fluidly and concisely with this construction. Vary your sentence structure, and absolutely do NOT begin every other sentence with 'the author found/did/decided'!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T11:10:07.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18707" CreationDate="2014-03-30T11:52:39.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;code&gt;We&lt;/code&gt;&quot; is correct, even if you are the only author, by &quot;&lt;code&gt;we&lt;/code&gt;&quot; you express &quot;&lt;code&gt;me and you, my dear reader&lt;/code&gt;&quot;. Therefore it's completely fine to use it in your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T11:52:39.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18699" CreationDate="2014-03-30T12:22:01.720" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://utas.libguides.com/content.php?pid=27520&amp;amp;sid=892673&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; from the library system at the University of Tasmania provides guidelines for citing works of art in the MLA style. Briefly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citing the original work (you went and saw the Bayeux Tapestry)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artist (Last, First). &lt;em&gt;Title of Work&lt;/em&gt;. Date. Medium. Location of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bayeux Tapestry&lt;/em&gt;. ca. 1070. Tapestry. Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France. (Since the artist is unknown, leave this field out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citing a reproduction of the work (in another source)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artist. &lt;em&gt;Title of Work&lt;/em&gt;. Date. Medium. Location (if appropriate). &lt;code&gt;Source reference.&lt;/code&gt; Plate/page # (if appropriate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bayeux Tapestry&lt;/em&gt;. ca. 1070. Tapestry. Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France. &lt;em&gt;Everything You Want to Know About the Bayeux Tapestry&lt;/em&gt;. Ed. B. Ayeux. Bayeux, France: Bayuex Publishers, 2014. Plate 3. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T12:22:01.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="46829" CreationDate="2014-03-30T12:35:16.640" Score="1" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for a scholarship whose application consists of a financial statement, in which I have to breakdown my income and expenditure to show how I manage my money. As the scholarship aims to help me paying for my living expense, I wonder if I should include it in my statement, i.e. assuming that I am awarded the scholarship and present how I should use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T08:53:32.477" Title="Complete financial statement as the part of scholarship application" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18697" CreationDate="2014-03-30T12:48:08.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the comments on your question suggest, the culture on this issue are highly field/department/institution dependent. Below are some reasons why different time tables may be considered (or not considered) for requesting letters from your references. However, if letters are not requested with the application, then a request for letters at a later time means that your application has made it past one or more rounds of winnowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &lt;strong&gt;contacting&lt;/strong&gt; references, it is probably safe to assume that such contacts can occur at all stages of the hiring process at most institutions/departments depending on the candidate. If such a contact occurs, it is probably a good thing. If the hiring committee was not interested, why would they bother to contact your references?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the initial application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an equitable way to handle letters of reference if you are not expecting a huge candidate pool or if your department wants to use letters of reference to help eliminate candidates that might not fit with mission and culture. For example, if no letters that accompany an application to a primarily undergraduate institution address the candidate's teaching style and/or efficacy, that may be a flag. A research institution may be on the lookout for individuals who too closely duplicate the niche specialty of existing faculty (ultrahigh vacuum single molecules spectroscopy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the initial application, but before any phone interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the way to go if you expect a large number of applications (or a large number of applications from candidates who are below the minimum qualifications). In this case, you can apply a first-pass filter to select only the candidates meeting the qualifications (e.g. a Ph.D. in Biochemistry or Molecular Biology preferably with a focus on proteomics) and remove the inappropriate candidates (M.S. in Electrical Engineering). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the phone interviews, but before potential onsite interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, given the cost of onsite interviews, this is another logical time to check references. Likely, however, letters have already been requested, and at this stage the hiring committee may be contacting the references for further clarification. For example, &quot;Candidate X is ABD with a proposed defense date of July 17, 20XX. We want candidate X to start on August 10. Will Candidate X be ready to defend in that time frame?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the onsite interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be no good reason to wait this long before asking for letters. Hosting onsite interviews is expensive (the institution or department usually pays for these, perhaps in contrast to industry). Again, references may be contacted to clear up questions. For example, &quot;Candidate Y is completing a postdoc with you on synthetic fuels from biomass. However, Candidate Y's research presentation was on supramolecular tensors. What is Candidate Y's experience in this area?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastEditorUserId="924" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T13:06:07.580" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T13:06:07.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18716" CreationDate="2014-03-30T13:19:25.540" Score="16" ViewCount="1329" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit technical question, but might be frequent enough in this community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PI and I disagree on which color space to use for figures and manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like CMYK, because I care about how it prints out. Even for online-only publications, a lot of people still print them out to read them. (I also care about black &amp;amp; white printing and color blind friendly colors, but that's another story). My main tool for editing figures is Adobe Illustrator with CMYK default (of course I can change it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PI likes vibrant red and blue colors which are in RGB space and not in CMYK. I agree that it has better visibility on screen or presentations. It would also be more flexible for switching for different requirements since RGB space is in general larger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best practice for preparing manuscripts with color figures (and possibly color text)? Do you make the figures in RGB which has a larger color space, and only adjust to CMYK when sending the accepted version to the publisher? Or let the publisher figure it out? (What about self-archived preprint versions?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't want to worry about color space consistencies and do more research!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T14:21:47.237" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T14:21:47.237" Title="Color space for papers: CMYK or RGB?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18715" CreationDate="2014-03-30T14:17:31.630" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You follow the publisher's instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your target journal asks for CMYK, you give them that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they ask for RGB, you give them that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they (are one of the few IME that) express no preference, then have a think about whether the charts will be viewed more on screen (use RGB) or printed on 4-colour printers (use CMYK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T14:17:31.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6144" CreationDate="2014-03-30T21:26:32.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This student has already had three opportunities to get a better outcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She could have learned the material and passed the original exam.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She could have shown up for the remediation exam.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She could have contacted the instructor in a timely manner about the doctor's appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She blew all three opportunities. There is no need for further hand-holding. The appropriate response is to let her grade on the original exam stand. Any other response is unfair to the other students, who played by the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speculation about the difficulty of scheduling a doctor's appointment at a particular time is beside the point. She still could have contacted the instructor in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speculation that it could have been an emergency is beside the point. She hasn't asserted that it was an emergency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerns about her medical privacy are beside the point. For example, if it was a life-threatening situation or an unforseeable situation, then she could have asserted that without volunteering the details. She didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:26:32.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2014-03-30T23:18:44.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as a tutor the last few years of my undergraduate studies and I wanted to add that to a student seeking help, a TA (or tutor) is someone &lt;em&gt;you believe&lt;/em&gt;. Your student would not think that what the TA said was wrong because they are a TA. If the TA made an honest mistake, as a teacher, you should bring both the TA and student together and explain what was wrong. You could then give the student half credit if they answered in the way that the TA erroneously showed them. You could use this experience to help the rest of the class. I do not profess to understand STEM, as I have a degree and History and am working on my MA in education, but I understand teachable moments. If you want to prevent this in the future, meet with your TA and make certain that they are helping students using the correct process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13655" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T23:18:44.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18745" CreationDate="2014-03-30T23:29:35.737" Score="1" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologise if I have missed this in the Harvard guidelines but I was wondering whether the order of multiple authors matters. For example a book by A Smith and A Jones. How should it be written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Smith &amp;amp; Jones, 2014)&#xA; Smith, A. and Jones, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or must it be written alphabetical of surname:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Jones &amp;amp; Smith, 2014) &#xA;Jones, A. and Smith, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand all the other rules regarding the list been alphabetical and date ordered where multiple authors exist but haven’t seen anything explicitly mentioning this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank You&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13656" LastEditorUserId="13656" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T01:57:33.787" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T13:13:00.860" Title="Harvard Multiple authors- Alphabetical or not?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T02:16:35.890" Score="4" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most colleges and universities in the US base their admissions on high school grades plus a standardized test (SAT or ACT). To decide whether a particular piece of data X is a good admissions criterion, people seem to focus on how well X correlates with college grades. (This may be freshman grades or total college GPA. Some people think  success in getting a degree would be more appropriate. For the purposes of this question, I don't think these distinctions are relevant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this correlation a completely incorrect way of evaluating X as a tool for admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. A student who has low X is admitted to a nonselective school, where standards are low and they compete with other low-X students. Grades at this school measure how well they did based on the low standards prevailing there. Students who have high X are admitted to a selective school. A &quot;B&quot; grade at Berkeley is not the same as a &quot;B&quot; grade at Cal State Dominguez Hills. A high-X student goes to Berkeley and gets a &quot;B&quot; in calculus. A low-X student goes to CSDH and gets a &quot;B&quot; in calculus. This shows up in the statistics as a lack of correlation between X and grades, since the students differed in X but got the same grade. But isn't that misleading, since the grades mean different things at the two schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some more logically justifiable statistic to use in evaluating whether X is a good admissions criterion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T22:56:06.790" Title="What is a correct way of evaluating the effectiveness of criteria for admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-03-31T03:26:28.817" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked an ethical question and got a lot of scientific, legal, and political answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethically, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do your best to admit people based on merit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be open about your policies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a serious and competent effort to ensure that your statistical methods are valid logically and empirically, and that they can withstand scrutiny from people who are experts in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carefully consider the historical legacy of racism, colonialism, and nationalism, and work hard to make sure that you aren't inadvertently reinforcing this legacy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your behavior so far is probably far more ethical than that of most people in your position, since most such people are probably secretive about their practices (you publicly asked for advice) and probably apply various heuristics without carefully considering whether those heuristics could withstand professional scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to expand this small, informal, unpublished, nonprofessional study into something more serious and systematic, done by people who have expertise in psychometrics and the (very difficult) methodological issues of the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are unfortunately operating within real-world constraints imposed by (1) the existence of countries where GRE scores are fraudulent, and (2) the existence of countries with such poor undergraduate education that undergraduate GPAs don't mean much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T03:26:28.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2014-03-31T03:39:21.147" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having quit a PhD myself, I can attest to the weight of conscience quitting can be. You will make more money, but you will see it all seep away toward bills you now don't have. And, ironically, those bills are not remotely associated with anything &quot;fun&quot; or &quot;cool&quot; or &quot;enjoyable&quot;. Nope. They are rent, they are student debt, they are car payments—and you know, having done computational physics, that a new car does not bring fulfillment. And living in the city? You will seep money from your pores for housing that is so substandard, you would be better off as a poor man in a rural area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for this what do you get? Well. I don't know. Maybe you will do well. I didn't. Two and a half years into this stupid experiment, I have not a penny in the bank, I have a broken-down car, and I guess I should be happy to be able to pay rent and meet my obligatory student loan payments. Yay!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no sense of doing something meaningful or big. No sense of moving toward something bigger, even if far down the line. I am stagnated, in a job that brings me little joy, and which allows be only to pay my bills and live day to day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do what you want. Others will cry to you how bad a PhD is. I am telling you otherwise. If you're going to get screwed, I'd rather get screwed in academia, where at least you get to feel like a) you do something meaningful, and b) you are moving toward something greater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will quit your PhD. I have no doubt. I've been there, and when you start questioning yourself this way, you already know what you will do, even if you're not sure of it. You will quit. Just know that you will wish you could go back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13666" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T03:39:21.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18770" CreationDate="2014-03-31T04:40:39.117" Score="15" ViewCount="4277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the majority of Elsevier journals use a standard dual column document class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some journals that are owned by Elsevier use an alternative single column format (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00219991&quot;&gt;J. Comput. Phys.&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-sound-and-vibration/&quot;&gt;J. Sound and Vib.&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the reason for using a different format for these journals? My first guess would be that since historically those journals were single column format they may keep this format, but why then did Elsivier move them to their own single column format (narrow margins and smaller font) instead of moving to dual column (easier to read) or just keeping the same words-per-line that the journals had beforehand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I find it more difficult to read the current single column format (post 2002)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T21:09:18.583" Title="Why do some Elsevier journals use a single column format?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T06:05:38.047" Score="4" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my master's dissertation with an adviser and was interested in the PhD program. Unfortunately I was told that my master's adviser didn't have funding and the other professor in department was doing an interesting research about an emerging field and he agreed to fund my PhD for next 4 years. He is aware that my previous lab let me go because of funding issues. Research in my previous lab and present lab are completely different, they are in no way related. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I still have strong interest in my adviser's work partly because some of the projects were my ideas and I don't want others to end up implementing them and also research is significant enough to have a journal published on it (an important addition to my resume). They have time till August to finish them off and I estimate they require at least 2-3 hours of work a day. I was considering volunteering for my Master's adviser and finishing off those projects. Will it be OK if I volunteer in my personal time to try and finish them? Do students ever do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12133" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T17:09:45.573" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T17:09:45.573" Title="Can I volunteer to work with my Masters thesis advisor, when I am funded by different advisor for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18732" CreationDate="2014-03-31T06:23:35.110" Score="26" ViewCount="2693" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual for institutes to advertise positions (faculty or not) for which there is an internal candidate.  In such situations, for external candidates, it may be difficult if not impossible to get in.  When a position is advertised, is it appropriate and useful to inquire if a position has an internal candidate already?  It might save a lot of time for the external candidate and possibly others (such as recommendation-letter-writers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T21:27:29.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T21:27:29.183" Title="Is it appropriate and useful to inquire if an open position has an internal candidate?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18731" CreationDate="2014-03-31T07:22:48.633" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that there are often-if-not-always internal candidates for open positions, in academia and outside. There are always students looking for Ph.D. slots, Ph.D. students looking for postdoc positions, assistant and associate professors looking to move up to the next level. (Same for non-faculty positions, but that seems OT.) Sometimes the people responsible for the position may not even know yet about such internal candidates, because they may not yet have sent in their application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question probably rather is whether these internal candidates are already frontrunners. The professor may want his extremely productive Ph.D. student to continue in the postdoc slot but may need to advertise externally for some procedural reason. The department may want to continue a certain research specialization and plan on promoting the retiring professor's assistant prof. In such a situation, external candidates will need to be very convincing to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: how often will the external candidate be told this? If the external advertisement is legally required, the hiring people may even open themselves up to litigation if they openly tell an applicant that they are only soliciting outside applications as a fig leaf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the department may explicitly be searching for &quot;new blood&quot;, so internal candidates may actually have worse chances than external ones. Which, again, nobody will tell you (or the internal candidate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it makes sense to tap your network and see whether the grapevine can tell you more than official channels. However, this kind of information can be unreliable. So if you hear from multiple sources that a given position will be filled internally, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; make sense to not make the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus: there will likely be internal candidates, but you will probably not know how good their chances are. If you are a good match for the position, go and apply. Don't worry about internal candidates. This is one part of the hiring situation you can't control, just like the mood of your interviewers. Giving up on an application because there is an internal candidate will be counterproductive in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T07:22:48.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18730" CreationDate="2014-03-31T07:34:27.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your personal time is yours by definition. A good idea though might be to talk to your&#xA;Ph.D. advisor. If your former and current research projects do not overlap to much and you do not use results obtained in one lab and not yet published in the other lab I don't see any problem. Of course there may also be some personal animosity or rivalry between the former and current advisor so its a very good idea that your Ph.D. advisor is aware of this other activity and does not find out about it from a third party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T07:34:27.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18731" CreationDate="2014-03-31T07:51:35.517" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is only really useful if you know somebody at your target institution personally and are able to inquire &quot;off the records&quot;. Formally asking a stranger whether an application procedure is just for show seems pointless - as Stephen says, the only realistic answer will be &lt;strong&gt;No, of course not&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that your connection does not necessarily need to be somebody on the hiring committee. Oftentimes, it is enough to know another PhD student, who can then open his ears a bit for you. If there already is an internal &quot;favorite&quot; for a given position, this is often not really a secret internally. For instance, I have seen a case where, when the contract of a highly distinguished postdoc ended, a call for a assistant professor appeared out of thin air with a scope that looked as if it was copied and pasted (which it might actually have been) from the postdocs research website. From the outside, this might not have been insanely obvious, but internally, everybody knew who will be hired for this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T07:51:35.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18731" CreationDate="2014-03-31T08:04:46.900" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually a good idea to make some informal contact with the person offering the job before you submit an application. Send an email to briefly introduce yourself and maybe ask some questions (are there teaching opportunities for example). I've heard of cases where there will be a delayed or curt reply which may indicate that they're not interested in you. On the other hand if someone is genuinely looking for someone they are more likely to reply promptly and positively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T08:04:46.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18730" CreationDate="2014-03-31T08:10:19.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your PhD is funded there will naturally be expectations from your supervisor and funding body to deliver results in the future. While you are free to work on other projects I would advise you not to divert too much time from your PhD project. Provided you can balance your time then yes why not enjoy yourself and finish your masters projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11923" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T08:10:19.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T08:36:41.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One column is just as standard as two column. Tradition, in conjunction with type-setting standards, likely determine the state of affairs. Many journals have traditionally been printed in a smaller size than letter/A4. For the large format, two column is more efficient. That is, you can squeeze more words into a page than for a single column. With smaller formats this is no longer true because the two-column format requires smaller font size to maintain readable lines; lines with to few letters are detrimental to the readability since it fragments the text. Hence it becomes more a matter of choice which way to go, one or two column. In addition, one column is easier to type set and one column figures in a small format also becomes small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T08:36:41.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T09:54:34.597" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematics journals (including many published  by Elsevier) are usually single column. I assume this is because of the frequent need for long equations. The longer lines are somewhat more difficult for the eye, but one gets used to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T09:54:34.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18742" CreationDate="2014-03-31T10:30:35.687" Score="26" ViewCount="4516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise this is a bit of a silly question, but I'm writing up a conference paper on a model that's named after a Hollywood movie. What is the appropriate way to cite the movie in the paper? Should it have its own entry in the references (and if so, in what format?), or should I simply say something like &quot;...after the 1986 movie of the same name&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1534" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T21:59:41.820" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T14:20:16.453" Title="Citing a Hollywood movie in a scientific paper" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18741" CreationDate="2014-03-31T11:03:17.033" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm coming from a humanities background so there may be some differences in actual citation styles but I think the following would be used by most styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name of movie&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Director&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distributor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year of release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medium consulted (DVD, VHS etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes the main performers(depending on citation format)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In text styles of course depend on whatever citation style you are using.&#xA;I know for example MLA is (Director, &lt;em&gt;Movie Name&lt;/em&gt;) and APA is (Director, Year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your example of Highlander in the APA style it would be (Mulcahy, 1986) for a inline citation and your reference entry (assumed DVD) would be  - Mulcahy, R. (Director). (1986). Highlander [Motion picture on DVD]. Thorn EMI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.american.edu/library/documents/upload/Film-Video-Citation-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Link&lt;/a&gt; has a pdf showing examples in MLA, APA and Chicago style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-12-11T14:20:16.453" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T14:20:16.453" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18750" CreationDate="2014-03-31T11:53:49.570" Score="7" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to write up my PhD thesis at the moment and for the theoretical part I have drawn some graphics that are of rather generic type -- crystal structures, crystal lattices and the like, similar to the image below (taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_crystal_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, just as an example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yj7Hg.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of image is very well-known in my field and can be found in every type of book about crystallography looking more or less the same. Also I am  100% sure that I have seen any of the features, that I have included in my own graphics, already in other publications, albeit maybe not all in one single graphic. Most of the graphics' properties, such as the atom positions and all the properties derived thereof, are commonly known facts, so only the style of the graphics may be something unique to a special graphic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have seen them so often and worked with them for some years now, I can draw them out of memory without looking them up. Also I draw them with the features that I need to show my point. Therefore it might happen that I am  reproducing someone else's graphics without being aware of it. As the question arose in the comments, in conclusion I draw graphics whose base structure is given by commonly known data using widely employed ways to draw such graphics, which contains the danger that someone could have drawn the same or a very similar graphic before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be OK or should I dig into literature to find if there are sources that could have been the inspiration for my own graphics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T20:35:25.160" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T07:14:49.337" Title="Do I need to search citation sources for a rather generic graphic that I have drawn myself?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18743" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:12:52.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not ok to use someone else's graphics without checking whether you have the rights to those graphics. That could easily be a breach of copyright. Nor can you reproduce someone else's representation without crediting them: that's plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can either create a novel graphic yourself, or you can find someone else's graphic where you can establish that you, and your publisher, will have the appropriate rights to reproduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've reproduced someone else's graphic (that is, both their style and their content), you will need to attribute it. Just having absorbed it and then unknowingly recreated it doesn't stop it being plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it really is a common enough type of image, you shouldn't have any difficulty in finding a citable version of it. You then add a caption, following the publisher's style guide, along the lines of &quot;image source: author's own, after Metebelis (1973, p10)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T07:14:49.337" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T07:14:49.337" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18723" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:38:09.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always use the order of authors as given in the book or article, regardless of the reference style (Harvard or otherwise). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The order of authors has some significance in many disciplines (for example, in my field the first author is the one who did the most work). So, no referencing system asks you to change the order of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T13:13:00.860" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T13:13:00.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18675" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:38:33.223" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is usually referred to as a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;checklist&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. This term also implies that multiple answers are allowed, while &quot;&lt;strong&gt;multiple choice&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; may mean either single or multiple answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends you how you structure it, the name can change as well. For instance if you line up all the customizing techniques in columns and all the cars in rows, the questionnaire then can be called a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;checklist matrix&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless what you end up calling it, people are usually not very good at identifying the names of all these questionnaire formats. So, I will suggest attaching a non-technical description (like your question's wording) and/or an actual sample question in your document to avoid misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T12:38:33.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18749" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:58:50.533" Score="69" ViewCount="8671" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three years of experience teaching as part of a team (many teachers, some with more experience, agreeing on a syllabus and preparing the tests together), but this year is the first time I am fully in charge of some courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After grading the mid-term exam for one of my class, I noticed I had a weird grade distribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ePCux.png&quot; alt=&quot;Abnormal grade distribution&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If this is useful, there are 24 grades, the set of grades is { 1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8 }, the average is 4.25 and the standard deviation is 2.01.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked carefully at all my previous tests, and I can confirm I have never seen a curve like this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my short experience, I have heard, read of reflected that a distribution with two curves would probably either mean that &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;) a large subgroup of students cheated or &lt;em&gt;b&lt;/em&gt;) as a teacher I am mostly addressing the best students and letting the others down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this looks like there are actually three curves, and I am wondering which characteristic of my teaching or my students could explain that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, if someone is aware of any scholarly work on this subject, that would be lovely. I couldn't find anything myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7788" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2017-01-21T20:09:31.870" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T20:09:31.870" Title="Understanding an abnormal grade distribution" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18741" CreationDate="2014-03-31T13:07:42.870" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research area (databases/distributed systems) projects often have a name taken from something out of pop (or not-so-pop) culture. It seems that if any reference for the allusion is given, it comes in a simple footnote. Your suggestion of &quot;after the 1986 movie of the same name&quot; would likely be perfectly adequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if some aspect of the movie actually influenced your work and you discuss it a bit, a full-on citation might be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12208" LastEditorUserId="12208" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T15:40:15.280" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:40:15.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T13:17:45.867" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several possible factors here: given the relatively small number of points available, lumping can skew how grades are distributed, particularly if they're also awarded in whole number increments. (That is, there's not enough refinement in the model to separate things out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that the sample size is relatively small; twenty-four students is not a particularly large sample size—your standard deviation here is two points out of 10! Also, you should try plotting the data according to half-integer bins (0.5 to 1.5, 1.5 to 2.5, etc.); you'll end up with a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically, I wouldn't try to draw any definitive conclusions from such a plot or distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="7788" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T20:10:46.437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T20:10:46.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18743" CreationDate="2014-03-31T13:19:00.300" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you create an image yourself that is not modeled after/derived from someone else's, you don't have to go out of your way to learn if someone has created a similar image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I create a flow diagram of a common process for my paper, it's likely that many other papers have a similar diagram (because the technique of using flow diagrams to illustrate a process is pretty standard). That's perfectly OK as long as I didn't intentionally copy them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As always: if the &lt;em&gt;technique&lt;/em&gt; of visualization or the &lt;em&gt;data content&lt;/em&gt; of the image is not general knowledge, cite it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T13:28:08.467" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T13:28:08.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:32:16.053" Score="2" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have a paper accepted in a &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; conference of my field but am not able to present it at the the conference due to certain factors, should this be mentioned on my Master's application? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, where/how should this be mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T08:00:22.897" Title="Mentioning accepted conference papers that were not presented" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:35:09.143" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a Kernel density estimate plot of your data, shown below. You have a central lump of candidates with 4-5ish and a second lower lump of students who've done pretty badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fLiqf.png&quot; alt=&quot;KDE plot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T14:35:09.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:07:54.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the Economics' journals that Elsevier publishes (and there are lots of them!) I think all (if not almost all) are single column. Which journals use double column? Why would they use double column? I referee a lot for Elsevier's economics journals, it would be a nightmare to read double column economics papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6556" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:07:54.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:21:02.130" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that the central limit theorem assumes independent samples. This is often a bad assumption for students. Cheating is of course a possibility, but it could also just be that they study in groups (most people find this very helpful). The spikes in your data could just correspond to groups who study together and have similar strengths and weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:21:02.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:29:39.543" Score="14" ViewCount="7897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was accepted into Ohio State University CS PhD without funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that people who can show their capability may get funding after getting into the program. Is this understanding correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is being accepted without funding a dangerous sign? Does this means that the faculty doesn't care about you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12679" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T02:42:39.113" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T02:42:39.113" Title="Implications of being accepted without funding to a computer science PhD in the United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:36:37.873" Score="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers that this may be an artifact of the histogram. May I humbly offer a few alternative ways to plot these grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cir35.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these essentially show that your effects are likely due to small &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; and possibly an essentially discrete underlying data generating process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;require(hdrcde)&#xA;require(Hmisc)&#xA;require(denstrip)&#xA;require(beanplot)&#xA;require(beeswarm)&#xA;&#xA;grades &amp;lt;- c(1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8)&#xA;&#xA;opar &amp;lt;- par(mfrow=c(1,6), mar=c(3,2,4,1))&#xA;    boxplot(grades, col=&quot;gray90&quot;, main=&quot;Standard\nboxplot&quot;,yaxt=&quot;n&quot;)&#xA;    hdr.boxplot(grades, main=&quot;HDR\nboxplot&quot;,yaxt=&quot;n&quot;)&#xA;    bpplot(grades,xlab=&quot;&quot;,name=FALSE,main=&quot;Box-Percentile\nPlot&quot;)&#xA;    beanplot(grades,col=&quot;grey&quot;,yaxt=&quot;n&quot;,main=&quot;Bean plot/\nViolin plot&quot;,border=&quot;black&quot;)&#xA;    plot(c(0,2),range(grades),type=&quot;n&quot;,xaxt=&quot;n&quot;,yaxt=&quot;n&quot;,xlab=&quot;&quot;,ylab=&quot;&quot;,&#xA;        main=&quot;Density\nplot&quot;)&#xA;    denstrip(grades, horiz=FALSE, at=1, width=1)&#xA;    beeswarm(grades,pch=19,main=&quot;Beeswarm\nplot&quot;)&#xA;par(opar)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: (sorry, I'm a statistician, I can't help it...) I went and took &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18752/4140&quot;&gt;Jack's kernel density&lt;/a&gt; estimate and resampled 24 &quot;students&quot; from it a couple of times. In each case, I plotted a histogram. The result is below. We see that &lt;em&gt;even an innocuous unimodal curve can lead to pretty bumpy histograms&lt;/em&gt;, because of the discretization and the small sample size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tj1lO.png&quot; alt=&quot;resampled histograms&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;dens &amp;lt;- density(grades)&#xA;&#xA;opar &amp;lt;- par(mfrow=c(2,4))&#xA;for ( ii in 1:8 ) {&#xA;    samp &amp;lt;- rnorm(length(grades), sample(grades, size = length(grades), replace = TRUE), dens$bw)&#xA;    hist(pmin(10,pmax(0,samp)),breaks=0:10,xlab=&quot;&quot;,ylab=&quot;&quot;,main=&quot;&quot;,col=&quot;gray&quot;)&#xA;}&#xA;par(opar)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T16:11:12.853" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:50:07.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason for one-column format has already been mentioned: especially for math papers, it's useful to display long computations and formulae (even with one column, it can be a nightmare to make them fit the page!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if anyone shares this, but I see another reason to prefer this format: when reading an article on my computer (which cannot display the entire page on the screen), I find it very annoying to get back to the top of the page when I finished the first column instead of just keeping scrolling down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect however that habit plays a large role in the appreciation of such and such presentation and that helps explain why the practices seem to be so homogeneous in a given field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:50:07.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18741" CreationDate="2014-03-31T16:02:52.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is just the name, I would not cite it. (Unless you really want to or the title may be otherwise strange, ambiguous or misleading (never assume that everyone gets any cultural reference, no matter how popular among your friends).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always though that it is up to reader's wit to catch the reference. The same as for project, grant or technique names being &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronymization#Contrived_acronyms&quot;&gt;contrived acronyms&lt;/a&gt;. For example, for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-resolved_optical_gating&quot;&gt;FROG&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating) I would be surprised by someone citing an article on amphibians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from my personal experience: I published an article with title &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/14/5/053028&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Qubism&lt;/strong&gt;: self-similar visualization of many-body wavefunctions&lt;/a&gt;, but there is no citation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cubism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T16:02:52.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2014-03-31T16:14:45.887" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It means you may want to look around for jobs on campus, like TA positions to pay for living expenses and tuition. Not having funding upon acceptance is not a mark against you, it just means exactly that. In biology funding is more common because the scientist will need to pay for materials and reagents. I'm assuming there aren't many inherent costs in CS research aside from a computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T16:14:45.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2014-03-31T17:14:51.093" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer applies exclusively to CS in the United States, or other scenarios in which the &lt;strong&gt;standard PhD offer comes with guaranteed funding&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Implication #1: How the department feels about you&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I will quote from an &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7711/role-of-funding-in-grad-admissionsus-in-theoretical-computer-science/7727#7727&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; by JeffE (who is a member of the admissions committee at a top CS department in the US) to another question (also about CS PhD offers in the US):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical PhD offer from a strong department includes guaranteed funding in some form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may come in the form of guaranteed RA/TA work, or something else, but whatever it is will be promised at acceptance. Therefore, the main implication of a PhD offer without funding is that (as you have intuited), the department does not consider you a top candidate for their program. As JeffE remarks in the same &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7711/role-of-funding-in-grad-admissionsus-in-theoretical-computer-science/7727#7727&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not accept a PhD admission offer without funding. If they really want you, they'll pay for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked: &amp;quot;I have heard that people who can show their capability may get funding after getting into the program. Is this understanding correct?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not impossible to get funding after beginning the program (e.g., if you really hit it off with a potential PhD advisor who has grant money to spare).&#xA;But this depends very much on &lt;strong&gt;luck&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;circumstance&lt;/strong&gt;, not just on &lt;strong&gt;merit&lt;/strong&gt;; so unless you like living dangerously, it's not an advisable strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Implication #2: How it will affect your future prospects&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you somehow manage to support yourself while doing a PhD, it probably won't matter to anyone that you were self-funded. Per Suresh's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8034/will-self-funding-a-phd-hurt-employment-chances/8036#8036&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to another question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing on your CV that needs to indicate exactly how you were supported during your Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T17:48:37.840" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T17:42:46.513" Score="9" ViewCount="976" Body="&lt;p&gt;A verbal offer has recently been extended to me for a tenure track position that I'm 95% sure I want to accept, although I have not officially (verbally or otherwise) done so yet. This position is slated to start at the beginning of the next academic year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I am working as a very junior-level &quot;soft money&quot; research faculty at a nearby university (with a considerably more renowned research reputation than the university where the TT job is, if that matters). I have a primary mentor there who I obviously have to notify about my change of position but the question is: &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt;? This mentor is a reasonable person and we get along fairly well but I'm not sure how s/he would react to this news. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is &quot;work in progress&quot; at my current position that I am fully committed to finishing and, in a perfect world, I would maintain my current research collaborations in my new position. I would even accept some minimal responsibilities (not necessarily requesting pay) after I leave to make the transition smoother and to ensure that these collaborations remain strong and I do not leave them &quot;high and dry&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice from the managerial end or from someone who has been in a similar position would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T07:58:43.670" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T07:58:43.670" Title="Leaving soft-money job for tenure track position that doesn't start until August: when to tell current advisor?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T18:29:44.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible explanation for the variety of formats is the fact that Elsevier acquired a lot of other publishers; they tend not to change the format of an newly acquired journal, probably for brand issues (the cover and style are well-known to the audience, changing them could be disturbing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not explain why the journals where single columned by their original publishers in the first place, but other answers have tackled this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T18:29:44.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T18:56:40.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult class scenario with pretty standard student groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Champions - &lt;strong&gt;ambitious&lt;/strong&gt; and hardworking / clever / interested&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mere students - &lt;em&gt;every hour on this subject hurts but I&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;pass it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Underachievers - no time, no effort or no idea how to handle the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the test wasn't important enough or was too difficult, breakdown above explains it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Champions didn't manage to max it out but they collected pretty nice scores of around 6-7 points. Mere students managed to learn enough to halve the test. Underachievers found out that without grasping the topic they aren't going to shine here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Groups 2 and 3 blend together, which is visible in plot from Jack Aidley, hope I can borrow it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fLiqf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the level high? Was the test well-constructed and offering questions of different difficulty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then I think that's the case and you just managed to see who your students are. You might want to find out whether the problem is lack of motivation or being unable to jump into the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13365" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T18:56:40.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18761" CreationDate="2014-03-31T19:06:56.907" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DO NOT&lt;/strong&gt; say anything at all until your TT offer is signed, sealed and delivered. Hopefully this can be expedited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that's done, you should tell your mentor the information as soon as possible just so that s/he doesn't get the news from elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overall message you want to convey is: &quot;I've enjoyed working here,&#xA;  and am excited to move on to the next phase of my career. I value the&#xA;  collaborations I've had with you so far and want to make this&#xA;  transition as easy for everyone as possible&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about their reaction though: that's not something you can control, and for the most part a mentor will be happy for you (as well disappointed). Just make sure above all else that you are straightforward and open, and don't try to hide/shade/evade the truth for fear of &quot;offending&quot; anyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; As regarding financial commitments, it might be possible to carry over some of the money to your new position, at least for travel/equipment/students. You should make a list of potential carryovers, and bring that up for discussion when you talk to your mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T19:06:56.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18768" CreationDate="2014-03-31T19:34:17.920" Score="22" ViewCount="12604" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across yet another infogram, originating from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/365-days-2011-in-review-1.9684&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Nature article&lt;/a&gt;, showing the top-40 countries in terms of scientific publications produced for 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTq5v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data are based on publications from Thompson Reuters/Web of Science. Similar data are available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from Scimago (spanning 1996–2012)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presented this way, there's some &quot;bias&quot; towards countries with a larger population. I was thus wondering if statistics on the number of scientific publications &lt;strong&gt;per capita&lt;/strong&gt; was available for countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... just out of curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2017-12-14T19:39:41.387" Title="Research publications per capita?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18767" CreationDate="2014-03-31T20:02:25.740" Score="39" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking the data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php&quot;&gt;Scimago&lt;/a&gt; for number of publications in Scopus for each country including the years 1996–2012 (&lt;code&gt;Pubs&lt;/code&gt;), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking the 2012 populations for countries from &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL&quot;&gt;Worldbank&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;Pop&lt;/code&gt;), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing a small script to join on country name and curating the subsequent results,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... we get the following (&lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;note that the list scrolls down!&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;No...Country.......................Pubs/Pop&#xA;1....Switzerland...................0.04948049&#xA;2....Sweden........................0.03949838&#xA;3....Denmark.......................0.03724673&#xA;4....Finland.......................0.03512776&#xA;5....Iceland.......................0.03384176&#xA;6....Netherlands...................0.03266005&#xA;7....Norway........................0.03235590&#xA;8....Monaco........................0.03153357&#xA;9....United Kingdom................0.03034517&#xA;10...Australia.....................0.03013565&#xA;11...New Zealand...................0.02928470&#xA;12...Canada........................0.02848185&#xA;13...Israel........................0.02841134&#xA;14...Singapore.....................0.02814340&#xA;15...Belgium.......................0.02684193&#xA;16...Austria.......................0.02538793&#xA;17...Slovenia......................0.02456816&#xA;18...Liechtenstein.................0.02302488&#xA;19...Ireland.......................0.02280205&#xA;20...United States.................0.02250084&#xA;21...Germany.......................0.02177218&#xA;22...France........................0.01953477&#xA;23...Spain.........................0.01643973&#xA;24...Greece........................0.01601820&#xA;25...Italy.........................0.01575377&#xA;26...Czech Republic................0.01557232&#xA;27...Estonia.......................0.01429077&#xA;28...Japan.........................0.01392641&#xA;29...Croatia.......................0.01346473&#xA;30...Portugal......................0.01319425&#xA;31...Luxembourg....................0.01267497&#xA;32...Korea.........................0.01157157&#xA;33...Hungary.......................0.01128115&#xA;34...Greenland.....................0.01071429&#xA;35...Cyprus........................0.00913291&#xA;36...Poland........................0.00899290&#xA;37...Lithuania.....................0.00829172&#xA;38...Bermuda.......................0.00745301&#xA;39...Faeroe Islands................0.00668606&#xA;40...Bulgaria......................0.00620812&#xA;41...New Caledonia.................0.00605143&#xA;42...Malta.........................0.00601626&#xA;43...Grenada.......................0.00528995&#xA;44...Palau.........................0.00510745&#xA;45...Latvia........................0.00497760&#xA;46...Romania.......................0.00432618&#xA;47...Kuwait........................0.00423781&#xA;48...Barbados......................0.00421932&#xA;49...Turkey........................0.00414781&#xA;50...Russian Federation............0.00408719&#xA;51...Serbia........................0.00399812&#xA;52...Chile.........................0.00394931&#xA;53...San Marino....................0.00374436&#xA;54...Seychelles....................0.00373640&#xA;55...Guam..........................0.00360543&#xA;56...Tunisia.......................0.00355685&#xA;57...French Polynesia..............0.00341107&#xA;58...Malaysia......................0.00339218&#xA;59...Brunei Darussalam.............0.00326268&#xA;60...Armenia.......................0.00315417&#xA;61...Jordan........................0.00314134&#xA;62...Lebanon.......................0.00309093&#xA;63...Puerto Rico...................0.00305665&#xA;64...Cayman Islands................0.00297030&#xA;65...Argentina.....................0.00288041&#xA;66...Qatar.........................0.00282271&#xA;67...Uruguay.......................0.00281334&#xA;68...Trinidad and Tobago...........0.00279863&#xA;69...Macedonia.....................0.00273227&#xA;70...Iran..........................0.00265369&#xA;71...Belarus.......................0.00262056&#xA;72...Oman..........................0.00247495&#xA;73...Bahrain.......................0.00247073&#xA;74...South Africa..................0.00244784&#xA;75...Ukraine.......................0.00241902&#xA;76...Brazil........................0.00232119&#xA;77...Cuba..........................0.00218313&#xA;78...Dominica......................0.00216227&#xA;79...Saudi Arabia..................0.00208004&#xA;80...United Arab Emirates..........0.00206949&#xA;81...American Samoa................0.00204978&#xA;82...China.........................0.00198446&#xA;83...Montenegro....................0.00175661&#xA;84...Fiji..........................0.00174223&#xA;85...Botswana......................0.00172363&#xA;86...Georgia.......................0.00166009&#xA;87...Virgin Islands (U.S.).........0.00164332&#xA;88...Tuvalu........................0.00152130&#xA;89...Mexico........................0.00137863&#xA;90...Costa Rica....................0.00135080&#xA;91...Andorra.......................0.00132721&#xA;92...Jamaica.......................0.00128646&#xA;93...Moldova.......................0.00127910&#xA;94...Thailand......................0.00123095&#xA;95...Marshall Islands..............0.00119874&#xA;96...Bosnia and Herzegovina........0.00116017&#xA;97...Egypt.........................0.00110861&#xA;98...Mauritius.....................0.00110573&#xA;99...Samoa.........................0.00093706&#xA;100..Panama........................0.00093654&#xA;101..Northern Mariana Islands......0.00091924&#xA;102..Gabon.........................0.00091696&#xA;103..Venezuela.....................0.00090597&#xA;104..Turks and Caicos Islands......0.00089432&#xA;105..Vanuatu.......................0.00086952&#xA;106..Antigua and Barbuda...........0.00084204&#xA;107..Gambia........................0.00084188&#xA;108..Morocco.......................0.00083801&#xA;109..Azerbaijan....................0.00080366&#xA;110..Tonga.........................0.00077186&#xA;111..Mongolia......................0.00076525&#xA;112..Colombia......................0.00075234&#xA;113..Belize........................0.00069432&#xA;114..Bahamas.......................0.00069362&#xA;115..Algeria.......................0.00066821&#xA;116..Namibia.......................0.00064132&#xA;117..India.........................0.00060709&#xA;118..Swaziland.....................0.00056459&#xA;119..Guyana........................0.00053183&#xA;120..Albania.......................0.00048797&#xA;121..Congo.........................0.00047290&#xA;122..Sri Lanka.....................0.00040530&#xA;123..Solomon Islands...............0.00040393&#xA;124..Maldives......................0.00039889&#xA;125..Bhutan........................0.00039767&#xA;126..Aruba.........................0.00039069&#xA;127..Kenya.........................0.00038740&#xA;128..Zimbabwe......................0.00038282&#xA;129..Senegal.......................0.00036806&#xA;130..Suriname......................0.00035732&#xA;131..Cameroon......................0.00034761&#xA;132..Kazakhstan....................0.00033660&#xA;133..Pakistan......................0.00032448&#xA;134..Peru..........................0.00029889&#xA;135..Ecuador.......................0.00029486&#xA;136..Ghana.........................0.00026906&#xA;137..Uzbekistan....................0.00025359&#xA;138..Benin.........................0.00025232&#xA;139..Bolivia.......................0.00024428&#xA;140..Nigeria.......................0.00024256&#xA;141..Papua New Guinea..............0.00023985&#xA;142..Nepal.........................0.00022093&#xA;143..Malawi........................0.00021098&#xA;144..Burkina Faso..................0.00020486&#xA;145..Uganda........................0.00020330&#xA;146..Sao Tome and Principe.........0.00020202&#xA;147..Guinea-Bissau.................0.00019536&#xA;148..Vietnam.......................0.00018557&#xA;149..Zambia........................0.00018529&#xA;150..Iraq..........................0.00017914&#xA;151..Syrian Arab Republic..........0.00017648&#xA;152..Tanzania......................0.00016707&#xA;153..Nicaragua.....................0.00016106&#xA;154..Lesotho.......................0.00015549&#xA;155..Djibouti......................0.00015471&#xA;156..Togo..........................0.00015159&#xA;157..Equatorial Guinea.............0.00014804&#xA;158..Paraguay......................0.00014026&#xA;159..Philippines...................0.00013611&#xA;160..El Salvador...................0.00012751&#xA;161..Bangladesh....................0.00012593&#xA;162..Mali..........................0.00011910&#xA;163..Kiribati......................0.00011906&#xA;164..Tajikistan....................0.00010988&#xA;165..Sudan.........................0.00010700&#xA;166..Cambodia......................0.00010468&#xA;167..Guatemala.....................0.00010131&#xA;168..Madagascar....................0.00010097&#xA;169..Mauritania....................0.00009194&#xA;170..Central African Republic......0.00008817&#xA;171..Ethiopia......................0.00008738&#xA;172..Honduras......................0.00008720&#xA;173..Comoros.......................0.00008223&#xA;174..Indonesia.....................0.00008169&#xA;175..Rwanda........................0.00007864&#xA;176..Yemen.........................0.00007203&#xA;177..Niger.........................0.00006895&#xA;178..Dominican Republic............0.00006860&#xA;179..Eritrea.......................0.00006035&#xA;180..Mozambique....................0.00005971&#xA;181..Sierra Leone..................0.00005720&#xA;182..Haiti.........................0.00004305&#xA;183..Turkmenistan..................0.00004156&#xA;184..Timor-Leste...................0.00004131&#xA;185..Guinea........................0.00003336&#xA;186..Burundi.......................0.00002853&#xA;187..Liberia.......................0.00002792&#xA;188..Chad..........................0.00002249&#xA;189..Angola........................0.00002123&#xA;190..Myanmar.......................0.00002040&#xA;191..Afghanistan...................0.00001626&#xA;192..Somalia.......................0.00000589&#xA;&#xA;Countries missed by the join ...&#xA;&#xA;Population not found for following countries mentioned w/publications:&#xA; Anguilla&#xA; Bouvet Island&#xA; British Indian Ocean Territory&#xA; Cape Verde&#xA; Christmas Island&#xA; Cocos (Keeling) Islands&#xA; Cook Islands&#xA; Côte d'Ivoire&#xA; Democratic Republic Congo&#xA; Falkland Islands (Malvinas)&#xA; Federated States of Micronesia&#xA; French Guiana&#xA; French Southern Territories&#xA; Gibraltar&#xA; Guadeloupe&#xA; Heard Island and McDonald Islands&#xA; Hong Kong&#xA; Kyrgyzstan&#xA; Laos&#xA; Libyan Arab Jamahiriya&#xA; Macao&#xA; Martinique&#xA; Mayotte&#xA; Montserrat&#xA; Nauru&#xA; Netherlands Antilles&#xA; Niue&#xA; Norfolk Island&#xA; North Korea&#xA; Palestine&#xA; Reunion&#xA; Saint Helena&#xA; Saint Kitts and Nevis&#xA; Saint Lucia&#xA; Saint Pierre and Miquelon&#xA; Saint Vincent and The Grenadines&#xA; Slovakia&#xA; South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands&#xA; Svalbard and Jan Mayen&#xA; Taiwan&#xA; Tokelau&#xA; United States Minor Outlying Islands&#xA; Vatican City State&#xA; Virgin Islands (British)&#xA; Wallis and Futuna&#xA; Western Sahara&#xA;&#xA;Publications not found for following countries mentioned w/populations:&#xA; Cabo Verde&#xA; Cote d'Ivoire&#xA; Curacao&#xA; Hong Kong SAR&#xA; Isle of Man&#xA; Kosovo&#xA; Kyrgyz Republic&#xA; Lao PDR&#xA; Libya&#xA; Macao SAR&#xA; Micronesia&#xA; Sint Maarten (Dutch part)&#xA; Slovak Republic&#xA; South Sudan&#xA; St. Kitts and Nevis&#xA; St. Lucia&#xA; St. Martin (French part)&#xA; St. Vincent and the Grenadines&#xA; West Bank and Gaza&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T19:30:36.150" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:30:36.150" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18729" CreationDate="2014-03-31T20:55:59.077" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Copy Editor speaking &lt;code&gt;;-)&lt;/code&gt; )&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When designing a journal's typesetting style, there are several things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the &lt;strong&gt;paper size restrictions&lt;/strong&gt;? Can you choose any paper size or choose from a short list, or is it fixed? For instance, Springer uses it's own paper size for many publications, The journal I typeset is stuck to A4 because it's the cheapest to print here, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;font size and family&lt;/strong&gt; is going to be used? The smaller the size, the more characters per line you get, as well, sans-serif fonts make it harder to follow a line of text in a long paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the &lt;strong&gt;typical contents of the papers&lt;/strong&gt;? For papers with many &lt;em&gt;long paragraphs&lt;/em&gt;, it's almost necessary to have narrow columns (I'll explain that later). For papers with lots of &lt;em&gt;colour photos and graphics&lt;/em&gt;, you want to allow graphical appendices since colour printing is then cheaper and printer handling easier. For lots of &lt;em&gt;math formulas&lt;/em&gt;, you prefer wide columns so that they fit better. For lots of &lt;em&gt;very small graphics and tables&lt;/em&gt;, you might prefer two columns so that you can put more easily two of them next to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who&lt;/strong&gt; is going to use the final template and how? Do you have a professional typesetter to carefully typeset all the papers? Do your audience use Word or LaTeX more? If they use Word, you think twice to make the journal two-column since you can be close to sure that people will mess the template up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is &quot;narrow&quot; and &quot;wide&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Narrow&lt;/em&gt; is basically anything with less than 66 characters per line on average. It's been proved over centuries that this is the limit width on which the eyes are able to follow the line correctly and switch to the next line correctly. With sans-serif fonts, the width should be a bit less since the serifs significantly help to follow the line.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wide&lt;/em&gt; is anything that allows you to conveniently typeset long formulas. The rule-of-thumb I know is: At least 50 characters per line on average. Remember that being too wide makes it difficult to follow the lines correctly. However, this is not much an issue if the only long text in the typical articles is the introduction and most of the other paragraphs are less than 4-5 lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision of Elsevier to make some journals one-column and another ones two-column on the same paper size might be, seeing the arguments above, quite justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T21:09:18.583" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T21:09:18.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18840" CreationDate="2014-03-31T21:01:12.163" Score="1" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently started my graduate studies and I am still new to some of it. I always worked in the summer during my undergrad, but I've heard that working in the summer while working on  a masters isn't what I am supposed to do. I can believe this, but I am confused. What are the benefits to taking a few classes in the summer? I don't need to retake anything because I failed or need the requirement, because I am just starting out. I need some advice on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13655" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:33:02.793" Title="What the benefits of summer school when working on masters degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-03-31T23:26:46.510" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just adding to the other statistical analyses here...you can't really be sure that this sample doesn't come from a normally distributed population of grades from similar students in similar classes. Here's some more R code for analyses and their output: &lt;code&gt;x=c(1.2,1.4,1.4,1.9,2.0,2.3,2.6,2.6,3.4,4.2, 4.2,4.3,4.6,4.6,4.8,4.8,4.9,5.3,6.0,6.2,6.4,7.1,7.8,7.8);qqnorm(x);qqline(x)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P3SXL.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt; Compare your grades to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_normal_qq.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Normal_normal_qq.svg/200px-Normal_normal_qq.svg.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skbkekas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skbkekas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your grades on the left don't fit the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%E2%80%93Q_plot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;QQ line&lt;/a&gt; wonderfully, but they're not deviating very systematically. The numbers on the right are from a normal distribution; other than being more numerous, they seem similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your grades are basically not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skewed&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;skew(x)&lt;/code&gt; = .12). They are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;platykurtic&lt;/a&gt;, but you don't have enough of them to disregard the possibility that this difference from a normal distribution is due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sampling error&lt;/a&gt; with much confidence. Here are results of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/1/227.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anscombe–Glynn kurtosis test&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;require(moments);anscombe.test(x)&lt;/code&gt;): kurtosis = 2.03, &lt;em&gt;z&lt;/em&gt; = -1.23, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = .22. FWIW, you can also test the null hypothesis that your data came from a normally distributed population using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_Wilk_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shapiro–Wilk test&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;shapiro.test(x)&lt;/code&gt;: &lt;em&gt;W&lt;/em&gt; = .95, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = .27), but &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/2492/32036&quot;&gt;normality testing may be 'essentially useless'&lt;/a&gt; (this may apply to dedicated significance tests of kurtosis or skewness too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_%28statistics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;modes&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_maximum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;local maxima&lt;/a&gt; as curves. @StephanKolassa, @aeismail, and @JackAidley have already demonstrated how misleading histograms can be in this regard. @RedSirius' comment is on-point as well, and you've acknowledged the effect of bin size in your comment, but haven't edited your question to clarify what this doesn't answer for you &lt;sup&gt;(hint hint ;) ;)&lt;/sup&gt;. It's unclear what more needs to be said here. You haven't got much evidence of anything unusual, much less have you given a serious external basis for your proposed interpretations regarding cheating or uneven service to students of different aptitudes, so it seems further speculation could only grasp at proverbial straws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may still be worthwhile to recite some (maybe insufficiently examined) academic truisms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's very hard to make one size fit all when students greatly outnumber instructors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the case of students who exert near-zero effort, you really can't help enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheating probably won't matter enough either if that's the main form of effort exerted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T23:26:46.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18775" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T00:40:43.813" Score="5" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international graduate student in my first year as a PhD candidate. I'm looking to transfer schools for two reasons- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time here with my health in jeopardy, so I'm looking to move to a school which is close to my extended family.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My research interests seem to be more aligned with a different school, which I had not considered when initially applying abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a good research background in my field, and a four year bachelor's degree from a highly accredited institution in my home country. While I've taken all the first year courses necessary at my current school, I'm just finishing up and I haven't chosen a permanent advisor yet because I'd like to consider transferring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? If yes, could you guide me on how this process works?&#xA;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13694" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T22:57:07.853" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T22:57:07.853" Title="International Students transferring between graduate programs" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18782" CreationDate="2014-04-01T01:42:06.253" Score="8" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;My coworker requested me to write a recommendation letter for an academic position  (postdoc). I myself am a postdoc, and afraid that my name may not be known well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order &lt;strong&gt;to support my credentials&lt;/strong&gt;, I was thinking of either including a short bio or attaching a full CV with my recommendation letter. Is this a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T04:55:03.440" Title="Is sending a CV with recommendation letter a good idea?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T02:12:07.923" Score="3" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to learn and understand a subject to a much deeper extent if I am able to play around/experiment/mess with something that demonstrates the principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a Neuroscience PhD program in the fall and would like to know how I could maximize the opportunities to experiment with various equipment at the university. I'm interested in working with things like fMRI, MEG, EEG, electron-microscopes, and supercomputers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How easy is it to informally play with these types of equipment when they might be sitting idle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm looking to do this safely without any intent to damage the equipment. Primarily, I'm looking to replicate the findings of classic experiments and discover aspects that didn't make it into the published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13693" LastEditorUserId="13693" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T14:51:52.757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:10:54.207" Title="How often do you get to &quot;play with&quot; scientific instruments?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T02:17:13.397" Score="4" ViewCount="37478" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I do a non-thesis MS program in statistics, will I be eligible for an admission in to a PhD program in Statistics later in my life? The MS program I am looking into is a non-thesis program but I still have to complete a research project requirement (which involves oral presentation as well as some form of a written report) towards the end of the program...I am still not sure if it can lead to a PhD program though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9861" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T12:43:28.873" Title="Can I be admitted into a PhD program with non-thesis MS degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T03:11:55.930" Score="17" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last term, I collected some important projects from about 200 students. When I returned all of the work the next week, one student claimed that they had submitted their work, but never received it back. A misplaced project was highly unlikely, as they were individually bound in a uniform, bright cover and carried in sealed bags, so I assigned the student a 0. Still, I would like to have proof of “no submit”, especially as my supervisor occasionally wants an explanation for failing grades. But not having something is not proof of never submitting. What method can I use in the future to prove that a student did not submit their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T07:03:28.363" Title="How to prove receipt/no receipt of work?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18779" CreationDate="2014-04-01T03:20:01.133" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt this will work with 200 students, but the first thing I do when I collect assignments is check to see whose assignment is missing, and send the relevant students a message via the class messaging system. This does two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if there was a slipup at either end, this catches it quickly. Most often, the student says that they're turning it in late (I have an automatic submit-late-and-get-deductions policy). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By using the class messaging system, I'm on record as having asked the student about the missing assignment. If they complain a week later that they did turn it in, I can point to the message and ask why they didn't respond to it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T03:20:01.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18776" CreationDate="2014-04-01T04:55:03.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little unusual. Typically you insert relevant material into the letter. Something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear So and So,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      I'm awesome in these 10 different ways&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now let me tell you about Candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T04:55:03.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18795" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:24:45.317" Score="1" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a source, which, across the three sentences I am citing, includes two parenthetical citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is my sentence, and now I cite: &quot;this is my source sentence one (Other Author 1891). And, he continues with more (A different author 1912).&quot; (My Source Author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must I include my sources parenthetical citations within my quotation? My inclination is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13700" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T16:14:17.050" Title="Inline citation within my inline citation (MLA)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17265" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:29:43.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having two MSc degrees is not unusual. And it can only be positive. However, you might find it not so useful at the end of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general it is not necessary to have two degrees in the same subject, so people would rather concentrate into getting only one, with the maximal grades, as it is sufficient either for getting a job or a PhD candidate position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, having another degree from another university shows that you could work succesfully in another environment, maybe with a different speciality or focus. The reason why people would take a second degree is often because of this focused extra experience, and because they can use their previous credits and/or knowledge to complete their second degree quicker (&quot;double degrees&quot; are common wherever there is an agreement between universities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my advice would be to go for this second degree only if there is some added learning value to it, as it is not necessary for the PhD itself, and you would rather use this time for preparing specifically to your future research, which will in all cases be much narrower and require much time. On a side note, once you get your PhD, as a researcher, your MSc's will not be much value anymore, especially if they are exactly in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13528" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T06:29:43.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18788" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:47:05.417" Score="3" ViewCount="1204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper, which in the application used a function from a programming language (in this case, it is OpenCV function canny edge detection).  When is or is not appropriate to explain the algorithm in mathematics/words and when or how should a function be referenced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, OpenCV explains the algorithm &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/imgproc/imgtrans/canny_detector/canny_detector.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/imgproc/imgtrans/canny_detector/canny_detector.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just provide a link to this, as I did not modify the algorithm but it is an important part of the implementation decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard way of deciding to reference the language, function, or original algorithm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T08:48:20.320" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T10:33:03.467" Title="Should I provide references to a function which is used as part of a programming language?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18787" CreationDate="2014-04-01T07:32:41.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case I would opt to cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4767851&amp;amp;url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4767851&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the paper in which Canny edge detection was introduced&lt;/a&gt;. Citing OpenCV as a whole is more appropriate than referring to a specific function, e.g. &quot;&lt;em&gt;we obtained our results using OpenCV [Bradski00]&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Since you use OpenCV, you should also cite the related paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only refer to a specific function in a software package if it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; implement a known algorithm and therefore requires special attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T07:32:41.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18779" CreationDate="2014-04-01T07:56:16.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to given students the ability to prove that they submitted (some form of receipt only you could have authored). The other direction, however, is harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hightech&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have them submit electronically with a system that you don't control and that stores timestamps with submissions. It does not show up there on time, you did not submit in time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lowtech&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have them sign when handing in (make sure to announce that submissions are only valid if signed off). You receive their submission, they sign some form for you (and you sign their receipt). Have witnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, there is no way you can make sure it's their fault; they can beat any system (&quot;I lost the receipt!&quot;, &quot;That's not my signature, somebody must have forged it!&quot;, &quot;You never told me to sign!&quot;, ...). As far as I know, German courts typically rule in favor of students (if there is any doubt), even in ridiculous circumstances. That may be different in other countries, but you may want to check back with your university's legal department to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T10:02:36.183" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T10:02:36.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18799" CreationDate="2014-04-01T09:32:52.577" Score="4" ViewCount="1991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a non-native speaker and writing my cv. In my subject (mathematics), there are small exercise groups where you have to grade the students' homework and discuss it with them; some are hold by students; some by PhD students or postdocs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the correct terms if you have done the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a (PhD) student student holding the exercise group, grading homework, but nothing more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are the one who is in charge of organization, i.e., you design questions for homework and the exam, you make announcements, moderate the meeting of those people having an exercise group (see 1), but you don't have an own exercise group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as 2, but you have an own exercise group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The course is so small that there is only one exercise group. You are holding this group and are in charge of the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T16:21:47.163" Title="What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T09:34:37.903" Score="6" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some degree titles have many components, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health&#xA;|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Special Education&#xA;|_A__|_B__________|_C___________________________|_D________________|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are these components called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T09:40:36.693" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T21:43:33.517" Title="What are the different components of degree titles called?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18785" CreationDate="2014-04-01T10:59:36.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA style detailed here&lt;/a&gt; you can use the following for inline citing as per the example you gave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citing indirect sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited in another source. For such indirect quotations, use &quot;qtd. in&quot; to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:&#xA;  Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as &quot;social service centers, and they don't do that well&quot; (qtd. in Weisman 259).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the information you gave, your cite would be (qtd. in My Source Author pagenumber)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be of benefit to enquire if your department have a style-sheet that would give guidance on referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T16:14:17.050" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T16:14:17.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18777" CreationDate="2014-04-01T11:44:23.857" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends to a large degree on who owns them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's your lab group, and your supervisor's happy enough, you can probably use them whenever you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're owned by the department/division/etc then there's likely to be a formal booking system. Once you've booked a slot, though, I'd imagine you can do whatever work you like on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provisos in this are cost and safety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost, because some of the stuff you're talking about is pretty pricey. An fMRI session can be charged at &lt;a href=&quot;http://mrrc.yale.edu/users/charges.aspx&quot;&gt;over $400 dollars per hour&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Safety applies to you and the equipment. You may well intend to be safe and not damage the equipment, but that can be easier said than done. As such, you're never going to be allowed to use certain items without having gone through the necessary training - so you'll have to convince your supervisor that doing such training is a good use of your time/funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your lab, play around time will I suspect be limited, save on equipment you use daily. But if you must get your hands on a piece of kit, fear not, for there are workshops and courses you can attend! These often occur in conjunction with a conference/meeting/etc of some kind, where a sponsoring vendor will kindly 'donate' a piece of equipment (in the hope you'll buy the same brand later down the road) and as a group you get the opportunity to spend a while using it under the company representative's watchful eye. Keep an eye out for these, and try to arrange to publish a paper in the conference, or give a talk in the meeting, and I'm sure you'll be given the funding to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T11:44:23.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18792" CreationDate="2014-04-01T13:01:07.010" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First to answer your titular question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a position does (in theory) not exist, as a TA as by definition supposed to &quot;assist&quot; somebody else and not run the show on her/his own (I am aware that this is not how it sometimes works in practice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you need to keep in mind that title and scope of academic positions, especially regarding teaching, are quite different between US and Germany, so you will likely not be able to do an accurate 1-to-1 mapping. I would write &quot;Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter&quot; in the CV and explain what you actually did. Translating it to english is prone to confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write &lt;strong&gt;TA&lt;/strong&gt;, people will underestimate your responsibility in the course, if you write something like &lt;strong&gt;lecturer&lt;/strong&gt;, people may infer that you already had a faculty position and will be confused by the perceived mismatch with the rest of your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T13:01:07.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18792" CreationDate="2014-04-01T13:24:52.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my program, such a person might be called 'head TA'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, in versions of my CV where I've wanted to highlight teaching experience, I write &lt;strong&gt;Teaching Assistant&lt;/strong&gt; followed by the responsibilities in italics. I have also done this for classes that I've taught (listed my particular responsibilities while teaching), since the amount of responsibility one has while teaching can vary widely - I've also listed class sizes, since that might be pertinent information for whoever is reading it. (My more research-focused CVs just contain lists of courses I've been a TA/instructor for, with no greater detail than that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T13:24:52.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18751" CreationDate="2014-04-01T14:03:46.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a paper is being withdrawn, then I would not give it any weight if I were reviewing a grad school application. The publications &amp;amp; presentations section of your CV is evidence of scholarly achievement, and so if the presentation didn't take place, there was no achievement -- I know of many conferences that have a nearly 100% acceptance rate, so having the paper accepted may simply be evidence of your ability to write coherently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13708" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T14:03:46.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18400" CreationDate="2014-04-01T14:07:15.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Global organizations &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; compare global degrees.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics matter mostly to academic organizations - which tend to be not global, so they are out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For global multinational companies, the HR organizations tend to be mostly local due to differences in employment legislation, labor markets, etc. As far the information matters for hiring and comparing local candidates, this is done by local HR, who don't compare global degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central corporate HR of huge multinational companies simply doesn't care about details of your degree, just as for most other historical data of any specific local employee. They care about the internal job titles, expenses and performance metrics; possibly some business area specific certification; but your degree doesn't particularly matter, it's an &quot;untyped line of text in a CV&quot;. If &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; of the organization deal with, say, R&amp;amp;D and worry about the degrees - then they do that locally. If the corporate holding company needs some rough statistics from all their local subsidiaries, then local HR's report their people by mapping it somehow to the &quot;mothership&quot; country standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, European area (including not-EU) has mostly standardized to the 'Bologna' process; there are local flavors but they're moving to be standardized. For the rest of the world, you'd have to consider each case (country pair) separately to say what is equal to what, all the simple rules-of-thumb are just rough approximations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2019-09-19T21:00:05.993" LastActivityDate="2019-09-19T21:00:05.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18779" CreationDate="2014-04-01T14:20:37.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts in addition to the above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a departmental office or library that can help with accepting submissions and giving receipts?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can the department hire a temp for a day to handle the submissions?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strongly suggest to the students that they copy and/or photograph their work, in case of disaster.  Provide a means for them to upload their photo albums to the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13709" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T14:20:37.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18792" CreationDate="2014-04-01T16:21:47.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think any of the duties you mention are consistent with being a teaching assistant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, your CV should list your official job title as it appears on your contract. But it's a good idea to add another line or two explaining your duties in more detail. You could also list the classes you taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T16:21:47.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18779" CreationDate="2014-04-01T16:36:04.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a large class, without or with receipts, set up 4 (or more boxes) split alphabetically. Students drop off the work and possibly sign a sheet. Either give them a quiz immediately while you double-check that you have all work, or check it later that day and query for any missing work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a sign-in sheet, and a student wants to turn in someone else's, he or she discusses it with you directly. That way you don't get, &quot;But I had Lisa turn in my work for me!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T16:36:04.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18767" CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:33:48.530" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementing &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18768/49&quot;&gt;badroit's answer&lt;/a&gt; (my point is not to use different source, but to show at the same time total and per capita data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking data &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Bank Open Data&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Population&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.JRN.ARTC.SC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific and technical journal articles&lt;/a&gt;, for year 2009 (for newer there is no up-to-data publication data), and using a short Python script, we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xZN0C.png&quot; alt=&quot;Bar chart of top 50 countries with most publications per capita&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only top 50 countries are shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Height: publications per capita per year (in 2009),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Width: country population,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Area: total publication count per year (in 2009).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source code: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/stared/9922461&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on IPython Notebook Viewer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/stared/9922461&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on GitHub Gist&lt;/a&gt;. (Quick and dirty, be warned.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T20:31:52.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18793" CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:49:27.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To take one of your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health&#xA;|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Master&quot; is the degree. Etymologically, &quot;degree&quot; comes from &quot;degré&quot;: the step of a stair (or  rung of a ladder). &quot;Degree&quot; can be synonymous with &quot;level&quot; or &quot;extent&quot; - it is a measure. You could say &quot;the level of a degree&quot;, but that would be a tautology. It's not incorrect, but &quot;level&quot; is redundant there - &quot;degree&quot; already says everything that you'd be trying to get from &quot;level&quot;. Degree is a very flexible word, and can be used to refer to just part A, parts A+B, parts A+B+C, and parts A+B+C+D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then either:&#xA;&quot;Psychology&quot; is the subject and &quot;Behavioral Health&quot; is the speciality, or &quot;Psychology: Behavioral Health&quot; is the subject. You might also hear &quot;field&quot; used instead of &quot;subject&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;of Arts&quot; doesn't really have a well-recognised name. You could call it type, kind, field, sort, school or faculty, but in the end, if you want to ask what sort of Master's someone has, you'll probably end up saying something like: &quot;What kind of Master's? Master of Science, Arts, MBA, something else?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T21:43:33.517" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T21:43:33.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18793" CreationDate="2014-04-01T19:08:01.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think &quot;Master of Arts&quot; is the degree, this is because in medieval universities the arts faculty was the first faculty one had to graduate from before being admitted to higher study. So the master of arts looks like it should be thought of as the name of a degree awarded by the arts faculty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:08:01.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18777" CreationDate="2014-04-01T19:10:54.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pat's right about the more expensive and controlled equipment like fMRI and MEG machines, but I wanted to add more about the other equipment.  I previously worked in an engineering lab that took on a lot of cognition research, and we had close ties with a neuroscientist and professor on campus, as well as a physics lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You didn't mention it explicitly, but do you know if you'll be working with a lab yet?  Some grad students are funded as TAs instead of RAs (or not at all!), which doesn't put you in front of the equipment until it's research time (if even then, depending on your thesis.)  Make sure your advisor knows about your desire to get hands-on; it's a good trait, and they'll know more about the opportunities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EEG equipment can be expensive, but pretty simple.  Same with GSR (Galvanic Skin Response.)  Clinical EEG data often requires gel or saline to make contact with the scalp, and can have 16, 32, 64, or even 128 electrodes in a &quot;cap.&quot;  It's possible to have a setup that requires two people to properly configure, which limits availability.  But other than that, it's only permission and careful handling keeping you from using it while idle, assuming there's a dedicated set of research EEG equipment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An electron microscope station would likely have a small library of prepared samples to peruse.  Preparation is not a trivial task for many things, so you aren't likely to get more than this without actively working with one for research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supercomputing abilities don't necessarily require a supercomputer.  Computing clusters are very common, and many institutes have them.  Some big schools have huge dedicated clusters, but many have small department-funded clusters.  You may have to search or talk with IT (who may not manage them, but need to know about them,) but it's still possible to get an account.  Department-sized clusters aren't large enough to handle college-wide access, but aren't often used at 100% capacity by their owners.  There may also be an associated Computer Science class that will give you access and teach you how to use one effectively, though it may not count towards your degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experimental labs are your best bet for finding equipment you can use, since medical facilities are pretty tightly controlled and clinical equipment is protected.  This may mean going cross-discipline depending on your institution, but that is often encouraged.  Ask around, but remember to be respectful of the equipment and the group's time and resources.  Having a plan ahead of time is part of this; if you have a concrete goal (think lab exercises rather than pure research) they will be more willing to share. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13011" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:10:54.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18619" CreationDate="2014-04-01T19:34:40.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fully agree with @shane's point: you need to have shown some original contribution. But I think something else is also important, and sometimes plays a major role: you have to show that you have mastered the &lt;em&gt;trade&lt;/em&gt; - which means, in practice, that you are able to perform whichever experimental/theoretical things a scientist in your field is supposed to be able to do, and write about the results in an understandable manner. In this way you show that you are worthy of being taken up in the community of scientists, which despite our feeling that science is about facts, is still rather important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T19:34:40.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29138" CreationDate="2014-04-01T19:48:54.287" Score="15" ViewCount="4920" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to get feedback more quickly, I've seen some teachers run a quick (certainly no more than 5 minutes), entirely optional, anonymous survey for students at the end of each of each class, meeting, or session. The idea is to get feedback on what is working and what isn't on a per-week basis before mid-term or end-of-term evaluations. What are good questions or prompts to use on a survey like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I am currently planning to ask something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any feedback on the &lt;strong&gt;BLANK&lt;/strong&gt;? (e.g., was it rewarding, challenging, about the right about, etc.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where &lt;strong&gt;BLANK&lt;/strong&gt; will be the readings, lecture, and discussion for the class session. I will also ask a general question like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Any other feedback or things you think I should know?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:25:15.963" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:25:15.963" Title="Good questions for post-class survey" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18793" CreationDate="2014-04-01T20:21:47.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of either (a) a consistent way of referring to the parts of the degree title or, more fundamentally, (b) a consistent way of deciding even what goes into the degree titles! None of my degrees have a colon or any listed specialty or sub-field. For that matter, what I translate from Latin as a masters degree is actually a Scientiæ Magister (which should properly be abbreviated SM, not MS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to academic tradition, all PhD are degrees in philosophy. As a result, a PhD in biology is a doctoral degree in philosophy (in the sense of thinking and research) with an specialty in biology. On the other hand, a DSci would be a doctoral degree in science in the field of biology. It's not clear to me that we would want to refer to the fields or specialties in that case the same way in any sort of rigorous way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18811/5962&quot;&gt;EnergyNumbers' answer&lt;/a&gt; seems like a good attempt to parse out the answer. That said, I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18813/5962&quot;&gt;Shane's answer&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;Master of Arts&quot; is the name of the degree. So, in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health&#xA;|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that A+B is the degree. A is not the degree because an MBA is simply not the same degree as an MS, MFA, MPH, MPhil, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C is the field, subject, area, or specialty. D is the sub-field, sub-area, or sub-specialty. I think adding a &quot;sub-&quot; makes this relationship clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would call &quot;A&quot; the type, or maybe the level, of the degree. I like level because if I were to ask someone what their highest level of degree was, I would expect to hear something like doctorate, masters, bachelors, or associates and would not expect to hear that it was a bachelors of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T20:30:30.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15276" CreationDate="2014-04-01T23:09:18.393" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing the body paragraphs then use the basic ideas of all of them and then create an introduction and concluding paragraphs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13717" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T23:09:18.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T02:33:05.577" Score="20" ViewCount="12290" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor is a brilliant new professor and my efforts don't seem to impress him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I show him something in person, we always have a very careful intensive discussion for hours. But he does make comments which seem to indicate that he doesn't think much of my abilities. Or he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have been taking months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I work as hard as I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do about this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T17:23:27.100" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T02:14:02.507" Title="I believe my advisor doesn't think I am smart. How should I deal with this?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-04-02T02:36:37.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a theory that can explain situational anomalies such as this in classroom that's as situationally accurate as I have time to puzzle out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To simplify the mathematics of the problem, I'm omitting some scale factors from my math which serve as little more than visual clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let an ideal bell curve be defined by &lt;code&gt;C(x)&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your set of students is &lt;code&gt;S&lt;/code&gt;, and you have a magical function &lt;code&gt;Q(s)&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;code&gt;s ∈ S&lt;/code&gt; which yields the &quot;quality&quot; of a student's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider a test.  The test consists of a set of problems (call this set &lt;code&gt;T&lt;/code&gt;).  Each problem &lt;code&gt;p ∈ T&lt;/code&gt; has a difficulty, given by &lt;code&gt;D(p)&lt;/code&gt;.  The probability of a student &lt;code&gt;s&lt;/code&gt; correctly answering a problem is defined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;P&lt;sub&gt;correct&lt;/sub&gt;(s, p) = &lt;/i&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgmP1.gif&quot; alt=&quot;borrowed from Wolfram Alpha, &amp;#39;integral of C(x - D(p)) from -infinity to Q(s)&amp;#39;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then follows that a student of higher &lt;code&gt;Q&lt;/code&gt; than the &lt;code&gt;D&lt;/code&gt; of the problem will be more than likely to solve it, and one with a lower &lt;code&gt;Q&lt;/code&gt; will be less than likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's define the ideal score of a student taking a test to be &lt;code&gt;S&lt;sub&gt;i&lt;/sub&gt;(s, T) = Σ P&lt;sub&gt;correct&lt;/sub&gt;(s, p), p ∈ T&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to take the ideal score on a particular test for each student in your classroom, you would get an ideal distribution, and chances are that if your students actually took the test, you'd get a distribution that at least roughly approximated the ideal one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to take away from what we have so far is that, for an population of students taking a test, the difficulty of the problems on the test mathematically affects the grade distribution you're likely to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assuming your student population is roughly bell-curved, you might see a grade distribution like your observations if your test questions have roughly these difficulty levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10+, 10+]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large number of students would get the 2 easy questions right, but since there are few questions of low-intermediate difficulty, some of the students on the lower end of the curve wouldn't be able to get any harder ones right.  On the very high end, there are some questions that might be extraordinarily difficult for the skill level of the students (this can happen for a number of reasons) that most of the class got wrong (assuming the grade is out of 10 points total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your class distribution is something like this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0-2| &#xA;3  | 1&#xA;4  | =2&#xA;5  | ===4&#xA;6  | ====5&#xA;7  | ====5&#xA;8  | ===4&#xA;9  | =2&#xA;10 | 1&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their ideal distribution (as defined previously, rounded a bit to reduce clumping) would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0  | &#xA;1  |&#xA;2  | ===4&#xA;3  | ===4&#xA;4  | ===4&#xA;5  | ===4&#xA;6  | ==3&#xA;7  | =2&#xA;8  | 1&#xA;9  |&#xA;10 |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which resembles, in a muted way, the observed curve you experimentally observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, realistic situations won't have such elegant mathematical solutions (like a student's probability of getting a question correct), so this model should only be viewed as a reasonable, educated approximation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR It's possible the questions on this one test were more difficult and less comprehensive than you thought when you handed it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13718" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T02:36:37.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T02:44:52.960" Score="30" ViewCount="4632" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be graduating my first Ph.D. student this summer. My student is quite strong and has done good work, and I am quite proud of him!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do face one conundrum. He has expressed the hope that I would be there for his Ph.D. hooding and graduation ceremony. It seems like an utterly natural, totally reasonable thing to ask for. I was tenatively planning on being out of the country at the time, so I need to decide whether to cancel my plans to attend his graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, missing my student's graduation seems like the equivalent of missing your best friend's wedding. Or perhaps worse, missing your child's wedding, or your own. On the other, this seems to be very common. My own Ph.D. advisor was out of town for my graduation and I asked another professor on my committee to escort me in his place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any kind of consensus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:49:49.553" Title="How strong of an obligation does an advisor have to attend his/her Ph.D. students' graduation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18821" CreationDate="2014-04-02T03:52:30.270" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obligation? Unless through your institution's academic responsibilities there is a requirement to attend, then none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you equate it to being on par with missing your own child's wedding, then I think you've answered your own question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only get one 'first Ph.D. student'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T03:52:30.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18821" CreationDate="2014-04-02T04:21:48.223" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your first PhD student!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any hard-and-fast rule about attending your student's graduation. It comes down to how much you want to be there, how strongly your student feels about you being there, and how compelling your other plans are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly some people who don't care much about this kind of thing. (I am one of those people; I gave my father wholehearted permission to skip both my high school and college graduation. Neither of us has regretted his absence from those ceremonies in the slightest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are some people who really care about graduations, and want the people who were instrumental in their success to be there. And you're right that it's a reasonable thing to ask for, if it's very important to the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, see if you can find out what category your student falls in. From your description (he &quot;hopes you will be there&quot;) it could really be either one. If it turns out he feels really strongly about it, you can look into canceling your trip; if not, I don't think it's a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T04:21:48.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T05:19:13.170" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are interpreting your advisor's comments about how your work is going as an indication that your advisor doesn't think you're smart or capable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that's not necessarily what it means &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;. It's only human for an advisor to express some occasional disappointment about how the work is going. (Every advisor thinks the work should be going faster!!! It's practically in the advisor rulebook.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some people (unfortunately) express criticism more often than they express praise. This could just be your advisor's style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not necessarily an indication of what your advisor thinks about &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; as a student and researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in answer to your question of &quot;How to deal with this?&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Instead of inferring what your advisor thinks of your abilities from his comments about your work, ask him directly what he thinks of your abilities!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your advisor: &quot;How am I doing, in general? What areas do I need to improve in? What strengths do I have that I can play up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your chance to find out what your advisor sees in you, get some constructive criticism about your research skills in general (not about your current project). It's also a chance for you to tell your advisor how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think you're doing, and correct any misperceptions he may have about how hard you are working or how long the work should take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T15:59:27.860" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T15:59:27.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:00:05.140" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;brilliant &lt;strong&gt;new&lt;/strong&gt; prof&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new professor is under pressure to produce results &lt;strong&gt;quickly&lt;/strong&gt;. It's entirely possible that some of what you're sensing is a consequence of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he does make comments which seem to indicate that he doesn't think much of my abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more specifics, it's hard to know whether (as @ff524 says) you're interpreting criticism of work as criticism of you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have been taking months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it ? We have no idea what kind of work you're doing, and how long it should take. Maybe your advisor is right. Maybe he's completely wrong because he doesn't understand how much effort it actually takes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, your first step has to be to &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt; to understand what he wants from you. It sounds like he's willing to spend time talking to you, so make use of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advisor-advisee relationship has an adjustment period where both individuals get used to the other's habits, rhythms and style of operation, and a level of trust starts to build. It sounds like you're in that phase, so keep lines of communication open and try not to interpret comments as personal criticism without clarification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T06:13:52.793" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T06:13:52.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18833" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:11:32.970" Score="12" ViewCount="7092" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm not sure what to do. I've been listed as a co-author on my first publication in X journal, with a decent impact factor. Now I just realized that my middle initial wasn't included on the first publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I start using my middle initial in future publications? I know it's only my first, but that paper could get plenty of citations in the near future. (just hypothetically)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to link the 2 names? Could I link them if I publish again in that same journal, specifically an ACS journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9662" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T08:00:35.510" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T08:00:35.510" Title="Can I add my middle initial to my author name in preceding articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:26:58.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I would try and push more communication. If you're not telling him what you're actually doing everyday then maybe he's just underestimating you. If you are communicating exactly what you're doing: (experiment X got messed up because of this, or I can't figure out why experiment B is showing this result, it took me 3 months to clarify this so that I could move forward...etc) then it's both really hard for you and your professor to gauge whether you're actually spending too much time on these topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe he can follow you in the lab for a day and see what you're doing?&#xA;He could potentially offer advice on how to speed up your work day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide weekly updates of what you've achieved that week. This can be helpful not only for him, but also for you. It helps to keep a kind of diary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if more communication does not help to strengthen your relationship with your PI and you've been there for less than a year, I'd consider jumping boat. Try looking for another professor that you connect better with. This can be a very tricky situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, since you sound kind of new and like you may not have a lot of other graduate friends, I'd consider suggesting buying a book on getting your PhD and the process of getting it. There are some good &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307589447&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt; out there on the topic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9662" LastEditorUserId="9662" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T07:11:10.760" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T07:11:10.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18827" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:56:07.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will probably &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10700/how-to-edit-name-on-existing-publications-after-a-name-change&quot;&gt;not be able to change your name on an already-published article&lt;/a&gt;. (Is it already fully published? You can of course change things at the proof stage.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is whether it makes sense to use your middle initial going forward. I think that yes. There are millions of &quot;John Smith&quot; out there, so it would be much better to be &quot;John Y. Smith&quot; so people can identify your papers among the many by other Smiths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawback, as you mention, is that people may not be able to link your very first article to you. Yes, that is not nice. But believe me, in ten years you will be much happier if people correctly identify your papers than if this one single article is linked to you (along with possibly a lot of other papers someone with the same name as you wrote, if you decide to leave out your middle initial in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus: literature databases are getting more and more sophisticated. I assume that things like missing middle initials should not be a problem for long in linking papers to authors. After all, later publications of yours will not only connect in terms of your name as an author, but also in terms of subject matter, collaborators, affiliations... All things that any decent machine learning algorithm can easily take into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T06:56:07.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-04-02T07:13:57.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If every student were able to solve every question with an independent probability p, then you would expect a normal distribution. But that is actually not a very good model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a good number of problems in your test that any decent student would be expected to solve. Solving all of them gives you grade 5. Therefore you get lots of students on grade 5; everyone who is doing reasonably well in this course; some are a bit lower because of stupid mistakes which just happen, plus a few who are just badly prepared and have no chance to pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have a few really hard problems. The average student solves none of them. Excellent students solve one or two or three, until they run out of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That kind of test could produce your distribution even with a very large number of students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11873" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T07:13:57.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18821" CreationDate="2014-04-02T07:43:31.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a phd student myself, and to be honest I couldn't care less if my advisor was at my graduation. The graduation ceremony is not something you should cancel any plans over. If you missed my thesis defense however ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13722" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T07:43:31.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19455" CreationDate="2014-04-02T11:15:13.687" Score="6" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would the latter be an issue with the funding body, when the project proposal and budget only covers the expenses for hiring one postdoc? Note: it is the supervisors who got the grants, not the postdocs themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T15:23:44.217" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T16:36:17.790" Title="Should postdocs work only on the projects they are hired for, or can they work with other people in the same research group on other projects?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18827" CreationDate="2014-04-02T11:22:52.933" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the modern day of vastly intelligent computer software and important internet presence, it is highly unlikely that a missing middle initial will be the cause of &quot;nonrecognition&quot; of your name. As Stephan wrote, a bigger problem is name confusion; it is definitely a good idea for you to start including your middle initial(s) in future publications. I'll answer here focused more on how to make sure the names are &quot;linked&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=k_bKV6gAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;My Google Scholar profile&lt;/a&gt;, which is compiled entirely by a computer (my only contribution there was identification of duplicate entries and removing them), even picked up some of my undergraduate term-reports which I put on my website many years ago (and which are now no longer available). Of my published papers, I've listed at various times my name as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Willie Wong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;W W Wong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Willie W Wong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Willie W-Y Wong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I don't seem to have had much trouble*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want better control over the articles associated to your name, you can always register for &lt;a href=&quot;http://wokinfo.com/researcherid/&quot;&gt;Web of Science researcher ID&lt;/a&gt; and/or an &lt;a href=&quot;http://orcid.org/&quot;&gt;ORCID&lt;/a&gt; which are both designed to help alleviate the problem of name collision and name changes throughout the career of a research scientist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fields which encourages the use of arXiv, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/author_identifiers&quot;&gt;author identifier&lt;/a&gt; also helps group all of your pre-prints, and allows you neat things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/myarticles&quot;&gt;a Javascript widget for your own website&lt;/a&gt; showing your recent pre-prints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For mathematics, the AMS maintains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/help/getauth.html&quot;&gt;author profiles&lt;/a&gt; (they recently upgraded this!) to which you can also submit corrections to include omitted paper or to exclude misattributed papers by other authors. (The AMS author profiles are only accessible through a MathSciNet subscription.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not that familiar with other fields, but you should look around to see if your scholarly society provides a similar service to help maintain a comprehensive publication record for authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*With Google, at least. Microsoft Academic Search has some trouble coming up with my complete list of publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T11:22:52.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10700" CreationDate="2014-04-02T12:38:05.380" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, there is almost certainly no way to change your name in already published papers. In line with the previous answer, I would like to call your attention to initiatives like &lt;a href=&quot;http://orcid.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ORCID&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com/Home.action?returnCode=ROUTER.Unauthorized&amp;amp;SrcApp=CR&amp;amp;Init=Yes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/a&gt; that aim at creating unique identifications for each researcher, so you can collect all your scientific output under a single ID, more or less independently of a particular name or spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7116" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:38:05.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18821" CreationDate="2014-04-02T12:49:49.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being hooded by my advisor was a really big deal for me. Without him, I wouldn't have gotten the degree.  If your student as explicitly asked you to attend, I would do it- if you have a good personal and professional relationship with this student, your absence would be significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13728" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:49:49.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:01:10.970" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to suggest something harder than anyone else has suggested, but which will pay off bigger dividends for the rest of your life.  Start working now on disconnecting your opinion of yourself from (your perception of) others' opinions of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, you have someone you really respect, who, you think, doesn't have a great deal of respect for you.  The best reaction you could have, which is in no way easy, is to completely objectify that observation.  Pretend you are someone else, observing the two of you.  The prof might be a brilliant jerk.  You might actually not be nearly as smart as the prof.  People are different, after all.  This could just be a fact.  But when you are looking at it emotionally it brings up fear of inadequacy, etc, etc, etc.  If you objectify it, however--pretend you are a Vulcan for a minute--you can see practical paths forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the practical things you can do?  It sounds like you are already working as hard as you know how to.  There might be ways you can work smarter.  If you were someone else looking in, you might suggest to yourself that you ask your prof &quot;I interpreted this comment you made--'when this takes you so long, why would you even think of that'--to mean that you don't think I'm making rapid enough progress.  Is that interpretation correct?  I think I'm working as hard as I can.  Do you think there might be strategies I could use that would improve my productivity?&quot;  Just one example.  The idea is to extract yourself from the emotional tangle and just say &quot;well, if this is the case, how can I use the prof as a resource to improve the situation?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your life is going to be full of people who you will perceive to either respect or not respect you.  Spending effort on figuring out who does or doesn't respect you, and trying to do things specifically to make people respect you, is a huge, frustrating, waste of time.  I know, I know, I know, that it is very hard to stop doing.  But when you find yourself in this situation, maybe you can think &quot;this is an opportunity to work on caring less about peoples' impression of me, and just focusing on doing the best work I can.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The payoff for this is immense.  Personal relationships will improve.  You interactions with other people will be more genuine.  Ironically, in the end, people will respect you a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body of work you do while working under this advisor is going to be &lt;em&gt;your work&lt;/em&gt;.  If you're doing good work, there will be someone at some point that recognizes that and you will get the practical results out of that which you need to further your career, even if your advisor &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; thinks you were that good.  Therefore, the more you are able to focus on making &lt;em&gt;your work&lt;/em&gt; the best it can be, the better it will be for your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try as hard as you can to not care about his opinion of you, and focus on making your work the best that it can be.  In the end, after all, that's the best way to make his opinion improve--but that is not guaranteed.  Your prof, as I suggested earlier, may be a brilliant jerk.  You may possibly just not be as smart as him, period.  He might never even be impressed that you worked hard even though you were not as naturally talented [btw--this is a &lt;em&gt;very viable&lt;/em&gt; path to tremendous success.  Hard work with a little talent will very, very often beat little work with a lot of talent.].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some sense in which his opinion of you is completely out of your control.  Try to get yourself in the mindset that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; completely out of your control, and that you need to focus on doing your work the best you possibly can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are sure you are doing that, your prof will make his decision--maybe a fair one, maybe not--about whether to respect you or not.  &lt;strong&gt;But the important thing is that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; will respect yourself.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;And if you have learned to work as hard as you can and not worry about what other people think of you, you will have learned something of inestimable value.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's a hard thing to learn, but you've got a great opportunity to do so, right in front of you.  So get to work :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:01:10.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9003" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:15:10.587" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unique ID services for authors like ORCID (&lt;a href=&quot;http://orcid.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://orcid.org/&lt;/a&gt;; non-profit) and ResearcherID (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researcherid.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.researcherid.com/&lt;/a&gt;; associated with Web of Knowledge) are the way to go. You can list all your previous names on your ORCID profile, as well as alternate spellings. Many publishers (including Nature, PLOS, etc) and funders (both in the US and elsewhere) are starting to use ORCID to help manage authors' identities. ORCID suggests placing your ID prominently on your website, CV, and anywhere else folks might encounter your professional identity, to help with name disambiguation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13715" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:15:10.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18816" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:21:41.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The K12 definition of this is an &quot;exit ticket,&quot; though it can be used effectively at any educational level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skim this article from Brown's &lt;a href=&quot;http://brown.edu/about/administration/sheridan-center/teaching-learning/effective-classroom-practices/entrance-exit-tickets/sample&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sheridan Teaching and Learning Center&lt;/a&gt; for ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:21:41.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:33:02.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trouble with &quot;what you're supposed to do&quot; is that it often applies to some imaginary archetypal student or, worse, students of a very specific class and privilege. Not all students have the means to go without working, to help pay their own way through school. Academia is &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; starting to wake up to this fact, thanks to the consciousness raising of folks like Sarah Kendzior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find a part-job related to your field of study, then it's definitely OK for you to work over summer break. I was able to do this while in my MLS program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unable to find work related to your field of study--and if you aren't involved in student organizations or showing that you're otherwise productive in your &quot;non-school&quot; hours by starting to attend conferences, write papers, etc--then I could see it being a drawback to have a job in your &quot;off&quot; time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13715" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:33:02.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:35:46.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have over-tailored the difficulty of the questions to the range of abilities in the class. This is a similar theory to @gnasher729's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is all guesswork based on the data, and you will have to decide yourself if it makes sense or not. But it would be consistent with the data if you had two extremely easy questions (which absolutely everyone could solve), three slightly harder, three harder still and two impossible ones which no-one could solve. Everyone fell into one of three levels, with some of the students also making one or two errors on questions which they knew how to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one point doesn't correspond to one question, than the same thing could still be the case, but with a different amount of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you tried to spread out the difficulty of the questions (as is normal) but a) you clumped to many questions of the same difficulty together and b) you spread the clumps out too much, with 4 of 10 questions not giving any indication at all as to the relative ability of the students (because everyone got 2 of them, and no-one got the other 2). My guess is that the time-limit of the exam was not a big factor, since people work at different speeds and time limits probably therefore smooth out grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is any easy way to test this theory. Did the students who got 2, 5 and 8 all get the same or very similar sets of questions right? My theory predicts that they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking closer at the numbers (this is still guesswork), I would now say that the 3 different ability groups correspond to something like 7.8 questions (with quite a few making  one or two points worth of mistakes), 4.8 questions (with most not making many mistakes) and 2.6 (with most making 0.5-1.5 points worth of mistakes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="5824" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T14:41:44.440" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:41:44.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:36:22.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of exemplar websites, I like the style of the Ketterson Lab group, who have very basic info on their site that includes a link out to the lab members' websites--where more up-to-date info is the responsibility of the lab members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~kettlab/people.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.indiana.edu/~kettlab/people.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13715" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:36:22.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:56:15.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that part of your issue is how you're doing the rounding for the graph. Instead of rounding up, let's just round to the nearest integer. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N0qE1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks far more like a normal distribution, if perhaps a little heavy in the back end. Honestly, rounding like this makes a lot more sense when dealing with a distribution of a class, because without this kind of rounding, something similar to what your graph looks like can crop up. This also explains why many of the non-integer graphs look rather normal as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12950" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:56:15.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T15:28:02.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need more context, but perhaps your adviser actually thinks highly of your abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he says that I am being very slow and that this stuff shouldn't have&#xA;  been taking months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I think your IQ is 150, and you are showing 130 level on a given problem, I would show disappointment in your performance: &quot;Are you trying hard enough? This is taking too long&quot;. However, if I thought your IQ level was 100, I would be praising you: &quot;You are doing great!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above might not be the case of course, but I it is something to keep in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastEditorUserId="13088" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T19:06:06.230" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T19:06:06.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18819" CreationDate="2014-04-02T16:14:20.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With so little information there is no way to know what does (s)he mean and what is the problem or solution, e.g. maybe the point is that you could use some help to work faster, maybe from an undergrad student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to divide the task that is taking months into smaller tasks to clearly see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where your supervisor and you don't agree on the times that it takes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where you could use some help or the task could be divided into different tasks, with more specialized people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where you could use a different approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the cause of the disagreement in the time that is required for that thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be even working on something that you should not, investing too much time in something that is not important enough to invest that time. Maybe that time should be invested in a different set of activities if it is going to take so long. You want to produce results and impact, and your supervisor probably wants that as well, it should be easy to agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more details about the kind of work that you are doing I don't think a better answer is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest something different to what everybody is suggesting. Try to be as fast and efficient as you can, try to get feedback from your supervisor about how to achieve that and what is exactly the problem, that will probably be the best for your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor cannot be specific on the problems that (s)he vaguely points out and cannot advise on how to overcome them, then your supervisor is not competent at supervising/advising and you will have a good reason to try to switch to a different supervisor or finish asap or whatever is your best chance to get rid of your (incompetent) supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, don't assume your supervisor doesn't like you and don't assume any incompetence on either side. Try to find the cause of the problem and discrepancy in time estimations and try to find a solution. I can't think of a more constructive approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T16:14:20.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18848" CreationDate="2014-04-02T16:18:48.990" Score="11" ViewCount="3106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, that a student is nearing the end of their thesis project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supervisor has an idea for a new method that can help to verify the results of part of the project. He does not think much of the significance of the idea at the time, [writes up a document outlining the procedure] and passes it to the student to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A week later, a problem arises. The supervisor questions whether the idea was in fact more significant than he originally thought - i.e. could form a paper on its own, and has realised that answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method would take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how would the supervisor go about retracting the new project from the student? From the student's point of view, they would have a strong motivation to try and implement the idea that has been brought to their attention since it is directly relevant to their thesis work. Yet the supervisor does not want to be hassled by the student on learning the specifics (that would form the content of the paper), and does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea. The student has not yet produced any results using the method that has been passed to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues that I see are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the supervisor tells the student to relax and think about something else instead, they probably would not listen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the supervisor works independently from the student to produce the paper (figures, text, observing trends), then the student could still claim that they were involved (?) since they would have probably started working on it too&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9680" LastEditorUserId="9680" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T19:24:37.787" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T07:56:41.963" Title="How/when to retract a project from a student?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2014-04-02T17:09:37.490" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard not to sense some kind of &quot;foul play&quot; by the phrase &lt;em&gt;He does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea&lt;/em&gt; and the phrase &quot;&lt;em&gt;just doing it themselves&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Who are they? The senior professor, the PostDoc or a graduate student? If the idea was not good, the poor student should bang his head to make it worthwhile. If the idea is good then you somehow want the student out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question is why? If you write a seminal paper based on the idea, one more co-author would not hurt you. Why don't you want the student involved? He will provide help and you can explain to him that he is not going to be the first author and immediately all your problems are solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the idea gets out of your head and into somebody's mind (and possibly his PC) it cannot be contained anymore. What will stop the student to implement it on his own? If he is fast enough, he may even do it faster than the busiest, more senior team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I do not answer the actual OP's question but this is deliberate. I consider highly unethical the fact OP thinks he can freely change your mind, make people work on his ideas and when those ideas seem promising (which is partially due to the student's work - although he clearly denies this fact) he claims full ownership and decides who else should work on his idea. The only reason I see legit for this kind of behaviour is if there is a highly ranked conference approaching and the OP (by doing the work himself) might make it on time, something that will be impossible for the student to do. If it is so, then the OP may explain it to the student and implement the idea himself. All other possible reasons are either questionable or possibly unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you treasure raw research ideas that much (and most of us do), I would suggest next time be careful who you share it with. When most people get an excellent research idea they only share it with the ones who will work on it. Once they share it, they should stick with these people, unless something unpredictable (work-related arguments, work relocation) happens. But even then, plan changes should be fully explained. And since from your previous questions I believe that you are possibly a graduate student, please do not start your academic career by questionable practises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T17:31:45.150" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:31:45.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2014-04-02T17:28:23.820" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the way this question is framed, &quot;retracting&quot; the idea sounds both difficult and unethical. Based on the information given here, my advice, and the only ethical path, is for the supervisor to collaborate closely with the student on the work. If the idea is good, the pair should work toward a co-authored publication. This question states that, &quot;since [the student] has more free time on their hands [they] could potentially have some results first.&quot; In this case, it sounds like collaboration with the student is very likely to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with students means teaching and mentorship. It means that supervisors are, &quot;hassled by the student on learning the specifics&quot; and it often means, &quot;answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method [in ways that] take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves.&quot; &lt;em&gt;This is part of the job of an academic supervisor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I completely fail to see why co-authorship and shared ownership of an idea &lt;em&gt;between a supervisor and student&lt;/em&gt; is a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, one of the most important jobs a supervisor has is trying to decide when and what to delegate. It was the supervisors job to be more thoughtful and they need to deal with the consequences — whatever they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T00:10:35.333" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T00:10:35.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2014-04-02T17:54:50.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too late, you should have thought that more carefully beforehand. You cannot undo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, this student is now your collaborator for this idea, so I'd suggest to get the best out of the collaboration that you can get. This means no races, etc. Try to give him chunks of work that won't require too many questions and interaction (if that's a problem) and try to publish asap, because you are collaborating with this person, but probably you are &quot;competing&quot; with other people in other places, who may be able to produce results faster than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time, think about it twice before you share your next idea, specially if you are going to be so possessive about them. Now it's shared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is being hassled, you can postpone investing time specifically on that until the deadline for publication is met. Priorities are priorities. The student may not care after that or may have no questions. By your wording the problem doesn't seem to be that, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can only hope there are micro-contributions in the future so that we can trace exactly how much did each person contribute to something and have the provenance of everything with a personal granularity. Either good or bad, it's not happening anytime soon. I'd think this would be good, specially if it helps to collaborate smoothly, there are many open problems that need to be solved, the more we can collaborate (if done correctly), the more problems we will be able to solve in less time, in theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” ― Winston Churchill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:54:50.997" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4745" CreationDate="2014-04-02T18:49:44.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me give an answer from my own viewpoint - that of someone who hires and 'supervises' postdocs on a regular basis (in my field, mathematics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider that a postdoc coming to my group comes for two reasons: (a) to bring new knowledge to our group, and (b) to learn things from our group. Both are good for the postdoc and good for the group - everybody profits from this arrangement. Learning things from our group is best done in close collaboration with the supervisor (me), while contributing to the group often benefits from a much wider scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tell my postdocs that I expect them to work half of their time on the project they are formally appointed for, and the other half on something of their own choosing - and I suggest that for this part they might also look for other connections within our group or department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this means for the OP is (as has already been said): discuss it with your supervisor, and ask yourself the question whether the 'outside' collaboration might also have benefits for your supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T18:49:44.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2014-04-02T19:27:14.380" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The stated scenario sounds awful, and the clarification makes it sound even worse. When you start a collaboration with a student you're advising (I'm using &quot;you&quot; colloquially), you don't get to &quot;keep the good bits&quot;. That's grossly unfair to the student who is after all attempting to learn from you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, research is uncertain, and you can't always predict what ideas will become interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which is why rules for collaboration are set up first, and are not contingent on the quality of the (potential) results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that in this case, there's a worry about the student &quot;slowing things down&quot;. But that's about convenience, not about doing the right thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I should say that because this is a &lt;strong&gt;student&lt;/strong&gt; and not a collaborator, all rules should be adjusted to give the student the benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T19:27:14.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17858" CreationDate="2014-04-02T23:28:13.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one nearly automatic way to do it using Zotero (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.zotero.org/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) import the PDFs in Zotero. One way is to select multiple PDFs and drag them into a collection (in the LHS pane) of Zotero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Select the PDF items (CTRL click in Windows for multiple selections), right click and select &quot;Retrieve metadata from PDF&quot;. Note that this step searches online databases for missing information and seems fairly robust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) import the .bib file in Zotero&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Go to the duplicates collection in the LHS panel and merge all the duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) In step 4, there may be false negatives if the automatically retrieved metadata (in step 2) is too different from the corresponding entry in the .bib file (step 3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Step 2 might fail on old scanned PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="839" LastEditorUserId="839" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T01:17:31.727" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T01:17:31.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18696" CreationDate="2014-04-03T02:09:29.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some truth in the differences you observe, but the distinctions are not very sharp. It's more of a continuum - as witnessed, for example, by the many textbooks that describe themselves as suitable for advanced undergraduate and early graduate levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of the instructor, the differences in teaching style are explained by two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graduate students are more experienced.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not only a question of them knowing more about the subject, but also of their (presumed) greater ability to be responsible for their own learning. Related to that, people who've opted for graduate study are assumed to be motivated to work independently. So the instructor can be a bit more free to skip over material that's routine, or doesn't present much of a conceptual challenge. In computer science, say, beginning courses will teach you a programming language; advanced ones will assume that if you haven't used the language before, you can pick it up without much explicit guidance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The topic is less well understood.&lt;/strong&gt; At a more advanced level, we have less to rely on in how to teach the subject. For early undergraduate courses, there's probably a choice of textbooks and related resources, and a body of expertise about how to present the material. A course that's closer to current research may not have been taught many times before; the instructor won't have much of a pool of local experts to consult; and there may not be any existing textbooks at all. So the teaching might have some rough edges, in the choice and order of topics to present, how much time is spent on them, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is what lies behind your observations, at least regarding the teaching. For assessment, I'd say there are other factors which dominate. Assessment is very sensitive to the precise nature of the course, the instructor, and the institution. I'm sure you can imagine being examined on your understanding of some algorithm by any of: answering multiple choice questions about it, proving something about it, writing an explanatory essay about it, implementing it on a computer, or doing any of these for some &lt;em&gt;variant&lt;/em&gt; of the algorithm  that you hadn't seen before. And any of these could happen in a course at any level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're somewhat aggrieved that the questions on your midterm were in a different style from your homework, and were less conceptual than the material presented in lectures. Now, it may be that your professor was (as you suggest) skewing the teaching towards the graduate end of the scale, and assuming that you would independently put the work in to make sure you could apply the theory correctly. In that case, the issue isn't that the exam was in &quot;undergraduate&quot; style, but that &quot;graduate&quot; teaching puts more of a burden on the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are other factors in play that govern the style of examination. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to know if you understand the theory, and I decide that asking you to apply it is a good way to find out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would be ashamed if somebody got an A in my course, but couldn't actually solve these applied problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I decide that routine problems will be quicker or easier to grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The homework already tested the students' broad understanding, and I decide the midterm should test something different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that any of these are what happened, or that they are necessarily &quot;good&quot; ideas. But there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; reasons why the midterm could focus on less conceptual material, that don't relate to an undergraduate-vs-graduate distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your final question is about how to know what to expect from a particular examination before you've taken it. Having thought about it at some length, I can't come up with any better suggestion than &lt;strong&gt;ask your professor&lt;/strong&gt;. There are so many possibilities, even for the same course taught by the same person, for what the exam might be like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T02:09:29.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18860" CreationDate="2014-04-03T02:11:25.677" Score="11" ViewCount="4322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking for my little cousin who is going to graduate school this year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has just signed an offer letter with school A, but just yesterday he got a better one from school B (may know school A quite well in the field). Is it legal for him to withdraw the signed letter from school A and attend school B, as long as he does it before the inter college deadline of April 15th? School A has also not yet issued any I-20 form to him (yes, we are international students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13576" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T08:03:07.640" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T08:03:07.640" Title="Is it legal to withdraw a signed offer letter from grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18859" CreationDate="2014-04-03T02:29:25.023" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following answer only applies for graduate schools in the United States that are members of the Council of Graduate Schools, and have signed on to the CGS Resolution Regarding Graduate Scholars, Fellows, Trainees and Assistants. (Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf&quot;&gt;list of these institutions&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, this agreement applies to offers of financial aid, not admission without aid. (Although many schools adopt a similar policy for offers of admission without aid.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution&quot;&gt;Resolution&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In those instances in which a student accepts an offer before April 15, and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any time through April 15. However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is: he can withdraw (in writing) his acceptance of &lt;strong&gt;financial assistance&lt;/strong&gt; offered by School A before April 15 (if School A has signed on to the Resolution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for general reference: you should really refrain from accepting an offer until you hear back from all the schools you are seriously considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T02:51:09.183" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T02:51:09.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T07:37:48.870" Score="10" ViewCount="870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've discovered that every time my supervisor has cited any of the papers or technical documents I've written she/he would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spell my name incorrectly or forget to add my name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spell the article/technical document title incorrectly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are citation made in articles already published (!!) or at final stage (where she/he denied to make any effort to try to correct them). Althought this means she/he also loses citations of these articles she/he is doing mistakes only on my papers/technical documents, not with others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am obliged to add her/him in every paper as co-author, although she/he never engages in any discussion concerning any of the papers or phd. This is not someone that has a flock of PhD and MSc students under her/his wings, the number of students are really reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I react to this? What should I do about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13760" LastEditorUserId="13715" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T15:48:19.660" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T17:27:39.250" Title="My supervisor spells my name incorrectly" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2014-04-03T07:56:41.963" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only time I can imagine retracting a project from a student, is if continuing with it would be detrimental to them or to the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retracting in other circumstances is unethical. It's a breach of trust. And it's a fundamental failure at the task in hand, of being a supervisor of research students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is my job, as a supervisor of research students, to enable them to become better researchers than me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;++&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first time I was told that, by a very wise colleague, I was shocked. I felt threatened. My students would go on to take my research, my grants, my future jobs away from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I took a deep breath, had a think about what my role was, and realised he was completely right. And I accepted it, and now I revel in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it ever got to the point where I didn't want to do what I practicably can to make them better researchers than me, then it would be time for me to step down from that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;++&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(yes yes, I know, it's my job to enable them to be the best researchers they can be, insofar as it does not ask for impracticable demands from me. The phrasing above isn't perfectly accurate. But it does have impact, and it does punch home an important message)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T07:56:41.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18864" CreationDate="2014-04-03T08:00:16.910" Score="12" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of months back, I reviewed a manuscript and recommended a Major Revision. Ten days ago, I received the revision for review, with a note from the editor asking me to expedite, since the review process had already taken a while (not due to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from both the initial decision letter by the editor and the authors' response, I see that my initial review did not reach the authors (I checked: my review is in the system). The other review, which &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; reach them, mostly raised points orthogonal to mine, so if I were to review the revision again, I would likely reiterate my original points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately notified the editor and expressed that I would be happy to re-review, but would appreciate a confirmation that this review would then actually reach the authors. No response. A week later, I wrote again. No response. That was three days ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I am a little miffed. Not so much that my initial review, which I did spend a considerable amount of time on, was not forwarded - stuff happens. More that I am not getting a response to what to me appears a straightforward question. After having been asked specifically to move quickly on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I am vacillating between either doing the review ASAP or waiting for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; kind of response from the editor first, but this second option seems passive-aggressive to me. Additional info: I know the editor, we meet regularly at conferences. I know that since he has been appointed dean, he is drowning in work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has this happened to anyone else? How did you react?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I overreacting? Should I just review and stop whining?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T10:46:15.160" Title="Reviewing a revision, after the original review did not reach the authors" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18863" CreationDate="2014-04-03T08:22:08.240" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot say whether the situation is due to sloppiness or due to some technical issue but it seems odd and something that should not happen. I gather that you were in an electronic review system of some sort and then the review should automatically be forwarded. In a journal not working with an electronic system, something like this is more likely to occur but should be a one off mistake in any case. Problems like these, if they recur regularly, will likely sink the journal reputation in the end. you probably have some sense of the standings of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of response may not mean much and I would not over-interpret it. It is of course not a positive reflection of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I would recommend you to basically re-use your earlier review. Look through it after reading the paper and authors comments to see if anything can be removed. If you catch anything new that needs corrections, of course, add it. You have done the work once and unless the paper is completely rewritten with significant changes to discussion and conclusions, your comments still stand. You can only reiterate your verdict of Major Revisions, which should lead to a third round. I think, under the circumstances that would b fair, unless the authors fully comply with your suggestions, in which case the editors can use his/her discretion (depending on a second reviewers response of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So bottom line: your initial review needs to reach the authors but with corrections for whatever has been changed. Unless you receive some explanation for what has happened from the editor, you have to draw your own conclusions about the quality of the journal and particularly the editorship. Try to form a well-founded opinion, whether you think the journal is worth your attention in the future. One mistake is reason for caution, but not reason for judging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T08:22:08.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18861" CreationDate="2014-04-03T08:41:01.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In accordance with the comments, I think you have two choices, get out or stick with it. Since you are determined to finish (no-one but you can weigh the choices) just try to do so and swallow the problems you describe. I am sure it is extremely irritating but focus on finishing and do not let your energy go to issues you cannot change. The sooner you finish the better. So, if you can, focus only on the work leading to your thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That advisors put their names on papers, is a separate discussion and one which has been dealt with here on academia.sx for many cases. Search on, for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; tag combined perhaps with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/advisor&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;advisor&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;advisor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you need to assess what you do and how you best should spend your time to reach your goal, the PhD. If you feel you are drawn into things that are not productive for this goal, use the goal as a reason not to involve: &quot;I really must focus on my PhD, I fear I may not be able to finish in time otherwise&quot;. Also, it sounds as if you have numerous publications already, so try to probe what is enough, if that is not already clear. Simply try to find the path of least resistance to get to the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T08:41:01.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18868" CreationDate="2014-04-03T09:26:36.860" Score="17" ViewCount="1532" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extensively using Google Scholar, I've realized that most of the articles belonging to  publishers that limit access to material (i.e. ACM, IEEE, Elsevier) also have PDF versions available for free, and these files usually are hosted by universities or other aggregators like ResearchGate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="695" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T01:37:08.613" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T07:56:39.907" Title="Is it legal for a university to post a copy of a copyrighted (pay for access) journal article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18866" CreationDate="2014-04-03T09:37:57.720" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question in the title: free access to an article depends largely on the version. It's almost always fine to post versions on your institutional page. Some journals do have embargo periods, during which you must refrain from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the field and journal, authors may post one of the following on their institutional website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;published version&lt;/em&gt;: article as it appears in the journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;accepted version&lt;/em&gt;: manuscript after peer review but prior to journal editting/typesetting; typically allowed after the article is published (ex: &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;preprint&lt;/em&gt;: manuscript before peer review (this is &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; always allowed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals encourage disseminating accepted versions, including posting them to repositories like PubMedCentral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, some fields make heavy use of preprint servers like arXiv to get work out to the public as soon as possible. This is particularly relevant for fields with long review times (maths, physics, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T11:43:58.277" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T11:43:58.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18866" CreationDate="2014-04-03T11:03:08.223" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/18866/1&quot;&gt;original version&lt;/a&gt; of the) question in the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are scientific articles of public domain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the answer is &lt;strong&gt;absolutely not, unless the relevant copyright holders declared it so or that its copyright has expired&lt;/strong&gt;. Note that public domain is emphatically different from open access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question in the body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the answer is &lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it depend on? Very simply, the &lt;strong&gt;publication agreement&lt;/strong&gt; or the &lt;strong&gt;copyright transfer agreement&lt;/strong&gt; or the &lt;strong&gt;licensing agreement&lt;/strong&gt; signed by the author when the article has been accepted for publishing. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/license.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the version for &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the one for IEEE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities#author-posting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elsevier compiled a handy table&lt;/a&gt; for their journals. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David Ketcheson points out below, a great resource for checking the self-archiving and open access policies of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sherpa/Romeo&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T07:56:39.907" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18816" CreationDate="2014-04-03T12:07:53.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always used the following in ALL of the classes I teach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you like most about quantitative basket weaving? [free text]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you most like to see changed for quantitative basket weaving? [free text]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How valuable do you feel your time has been in quantitative basket weaving? [1-10]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any other comments about the module?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To these I will often add 3-5 other questions which I'm curious about. Sometimes it is to test the waters on new things I'm planning on trying with them or future classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to keep it short. ~5 minutes is way too long. If you take more than 1-2 minutes of students' time, you are very unlikely to get many responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually ask these questions at mid-point and after the final class. However, if you want more frequent feedback, I'd suggest the &quot;one minute paper&quot; where you ask two simple questions (paper, electronically, whatever fits):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think is the most important thing you learned today (or this week)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you find the most difficult point to understand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One minute papers are useful for constant course corrections while the earlier questions are more to find out how to change the design of the module next time (or next half).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T12:07:53.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18816" CreationDate="2014-04-03T12:17:17.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 things you liked the most in X.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 things you liked the least in X.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See my answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer/5249#5249&quot;&gt;How to improve myself as a lecturer?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T12:17:17.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T13:16:07.063" Score="3" ViewCount="2022" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two offers for graduate study within the UK and I am trying to make a balanced decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My offers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Four year doctoral training centre at University of Oxford (approx. £14k/year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Four year PhD at the Cancer Research London Research Institute (LRI) (approx. £21k/year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the Cancer Research institute does not have a comparable international reputation when compared to Oxford. On the other hand, I've met the research group at the LRI and they seem nice. At Oxford I wouldn't be choosing my research group until after the first year. I already have significant ties to London and have been living here for four years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other factors should I be considering in order to make this a rational decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13765" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T20:31:47.787" Title="How do you decide between two PhD offers?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18871" CreationDate="2014-04-03T13:38:56.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering this on the basis that I was making this same decision myself a year ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the LRI will be joining the Francis Crick Institute next year as it opens, which may end up being esteemed in it's own right if all goes according to their plans. It depends what you want to do after the PhD, if you want to stay in academia and cancer research, then it is the supervisor's esteem that is more likely to help you in the long run, as well as the impact of your papers. The label on the institute makes less difference as you go on (within reason of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the recent publications of the group, maybe see how many have PhD students on good author positions in good journals; that's what will get you a post-doc ultimately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two being 4 year funded, the London one may be better financially overall. Integrated PhD programs (where you have 3 small projects in the first year, getting an MRes, then pick the final PhD project for 3 years, I presume this is the case for Oxford) in my experience tend to be more trouble than they're wort, unless you're not sure on picking a definite research project yet or don't have a Masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues can come from firstly, not getting the project you were hoping for after the first year, after the MRes, but now you're tied down to Oxford (may not happen, but does all too ofter) and also you now have 3 years to do your PhD, not 4. Why waste time on multiple smaller sub-projects at the start if you have a clear idea on what you want to do for your final project? Of course, the corollary here, if you don't have a clear idea exactly what you want your PhD to be on, then integrated programs can be a godsend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice on the rational decision front is don't. Relationship with group and particularly the supervisor is the main factor in a PhD, with a bad supervisor able to kill your career dead in the water, intentionally or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a passion for the research, and get on well with the group and supervisor then I would definitely go for that PhD. Lack of these both for 4 years will likely mean you either drop out, or have a horrible 4 years and then hate your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went for the lower paid, lower ranked Uni offer, and have no regrets. In fact, the higher paid one was industry funded, and they've since gone under, so I dodged a bullet there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastEditorUserId="13766" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T14:11:02.373" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T14:11:02.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18875" CreationDate="2014-04-03T14:22:57.343" Score="6" ViewCount="1465" Body="&lt;p&gt;My methodology is online ethnography. This methodology has certain limitations such as identity play, falsification, and artificiality of data.&#xA;However, its proponents have suggested some strategies for coping with these limitations and my study is based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused because I think the limitations section is concerned with limitations of a study that were not solved or accounted for, and that are to be avoided in future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should I discuss these limitations, that have alternative approaches or proposed solutions, in the limitations section?&#xA;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T23:35:28.517" Title="Should limitations of a methodology with proposed solutions be discussed in the Limitations Section?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:01:49.053" Score="4" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I graduated from college in 2012, I was quite excited about my job (although it is a small hi-tech company.) My goal has always been to either start my own business or get back to school for PhD. Ultimately, be able to live a life filled with research, and learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been working for almost two years now. And before going back to school, I really want to publish a paper and make myself a better PhD candidate. And ideally this would help me better discover my field, gain confidence, and maybe discover assistantship opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I've found a quite interesting topic for a paper that also leverages my work experience in transportation technologies. The paper is about accident prevention and I am targeting a public health professor.  I contacted the professor and I was not able get any response back yet. (It has been 2 days.) I am not sure about the right strategy to follow to communicate such idea and gain her interest. I wrote an email with 3 paragraphs and 350 words. And briefly tried to explain the  possible research context and my intention in starting a PhD. But maybe I was just supposed to ask for an appointment? It is a wise way to sent a follow-up email stating how valuable I think this paper would be? and ask for an appointment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13770" LastEditorUserId="13715" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T15:52:29.370" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T17:52:06.593" Title="Starting a research with a professor as a business professional" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18873" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:11:30.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the caveat that this is discipline specific, you could discuss your questions in several places in your article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you can begin to nod at this briefly in the methods section of your article. Every methodology has some drawback or limitation and my advisers always told me to acknowledge this in the beginning. For instance, while doing semi-structured interviews, I admitted that my sampling was convenience and snowball based and restricted to 30 participants. However, I followed this up by citing 2 papers which talk about appropriateness of sample size in grounded theory approaches and theoretical saturation and why this is not hamstringing my paper completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, one of the ways of validating qualitative studies from a methodological perspective is to look at issues of credibility, transferability etc. One of their solutions is to do member checks (especially for interview based studies) In one of my current projects, I did do member checks and talk about this approach as mitigating some of my methodological drawbacks in the &lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt; section of my article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you can definitely talk about this in the limitations section of your paper. There is no panacea to solving a human-centered research problem (and indeed various nuanced facets of every research project, however thoroughly investigated they might be are almost always incomplete) In the limitations section of my papers, I put down both theoretical as well as methodological limitations of my work and discuss potential ways to approach them in future work or follow up studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T15:11:30.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18874" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:58:15.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many professors take a while to respond to emails. I would give it at least a week before you follow up with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do send a reminder, keep it brief and polite, and send it as a forward of your previous email, so she won't have to go searching for your other message. Reminding her of why you think the paper is valuable could be a good strategy--if you do it in a way that's not heavy-handed and that you think is &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., it's actually of value to her career aside from another line on her CV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always nice to give her multiple options for responding--you might include a line to the effect of, &quot;If you'd prefer to chat about this over the phone, I'm happy to schedule a brief call at your convenience.&quot; Saves her time from having to compose a reply email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13715" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T15:58:15.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18879" CreationDate="2014-04-03T16:23:53.270" Score="7" ViewCount="2331" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prior student of mine is applying for a prestigious certificate in her field. She is asked to list relevant accomplishments. I was asked by the student to sign a this &lt;em&gt;verification form&lt;/em&gt; since I am in a position to do just that: verify the accomplishments. Upon reading the accomplishments, I noticed a misspelled word. It's one of those words that is commonly misspelled, and I suspect this will limit her chances of being accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I mention this to the student prior to signing my name? I am torn between wanting this student to succeed and having the student be self-reliant.&#xA;&lt;HR&gt;&#xA;Additional info about this student: This student is only a &quot;student&quot; in that he was in a professional development course that I had a hand in teaching. He is actually a practicing K-12 teacher.&#xA;&lt;HR&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was some discussion about the nature of the misspelling. The two words confused were &lt;strong&gt;colleague and college.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;I suppose the term &lt;em&gt;self-reliant&lt;/em&gt; was a poor choice by me in my original question. My question is more accurately stated as &lt;em&gt;Should I point out the typos when the student was not directly asking for such feedback.&lt;/em&gt; It is not my intention to teach the student a lesson, as my question came across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10371" LastEditorUserId="10371" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T19:13:16.087" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T22:11:17.723" Title="Should I point out typos on students' important forms that I am signing?" Tags="&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18866" CreationDate="2014-04-03T16:30:00.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities now have institutional open access policies.  Most of those policies assert a non-exclusive license to distribute research authored by university employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the university's pre-existing non-exclusive license remain in effect when a restrictive copyright transfer agreement is later signed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been considered in great detail by Eric Priest in a study published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1890467&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 10, p. 377, 2012&lt;/a&gt;.  This seems to be the most authoritative work available on the matter.  His conclusion is that the non-exclusive license granted by Harvard-style open access policies will remain in effect in such cases, at least under US law.  This is based on a careful analysis of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/205&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;section 205(e) of the US Copyright Act&lt;/a&gt;, which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e) Priority Between Conflicting Transfer of Ownership and Nonexclusive License.— A nonexclusive license, whether recorded or not, prevails over a conflicting transfer of copyright ownership if the license is evidenced by a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed or such owner’s duly authorized agent, and if—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) the license was taken before execution of the transfer; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) the license was taken in good faith before recordation of the transfer and without notice of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T16:30:00.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18877" CreationDate="2014-04-03T16:45:44.113" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would point out the error, especially if you have a reason to believe it will be taken into account in some nontrivial way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really understand why doing this goes against the student's &quot;self-reliance&quot;.  I point out errors of this kind in papers that I am refereeing, for instance, and when people read my own papers or course notes or whatever, they sometimes point out my own typos including spelling errors.* I don't think that either I or these other adult academic professionals are failing to show self-reliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: I do all my writing on a version of LaTeX with disabled spell-checking, so I have to spell my words correctly &quot;the old-fashioned way&quot;.  Mistakes do sometimes creep in.  I could be setting things up better, but anyway the New York Times occasionally has spelling mistakes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T16:51:52.260" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T16:51:52.260" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18861" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:27:39.250" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mis-citing articles (and worse, removing authors) is one of those crimes that academics take very seriously (and no one else really understands). If you were a collaborator, then repeated behavior of this kind would get your advisor in trouble not just with you, but with editors at the journals, reviewers, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you really should bring it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you go about doing it ? Because it's your advisor, you have to be a little more gentle: some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keeping it specific to each mis-cite&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;I noticed you cited my work, but you omitted my name: can you please fix it&quot;. It sounds like you've been doing this already though. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the technical solution&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;Here's a BibTeX file containing all my papers: you can use that for citing&quot; - this works only if your advisor uses some kind of citation manager to cite papers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the direct solution&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;I noticed that in this, this and this paper, you omitted my name from the citation. I'd really appreciate it if you could contact the editors and submit a correction: I'd like to get credit for my work&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, keep the discussion focused on outcomes and actions, rather than intent (because a) it's hard to argue intent, and b) you're in a position of weakness)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T17:27:39.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18877" CreationDate="2014-04-03T18:39:00.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that level of &quot;self-reliance&quot; is a false goal. How far are you going to take it? If you saw her drop her wallet in the street, would you leave it there so that she learns self-reliance? ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student handed you something riddled with errors, expecting you to proof-read it before signing, then maybe there would be a problem and maybe you could teach a lesson by saying, &quot;there are 12 spelling errors in this document, but because you should know better than to leave it to me to proof-read, I'm not going to tell you what they are&quot;. Assuming you believe that cruelty can be a kindness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple error doesn't say to me, &quot;this person unreasonably battens on others&quot; or even &quot;this person should be left to succeed or fail alone&quot;. The rest of the application is OK, right? Self-reliant people still make mistakes. So I don't think there's a question about her self-reliance, it's about her spelling. Having one's occasional mistakes pointed out doesn't harm self-reliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; teach her a lesson by leaving the error in (perhaps wait until she's rejected and then casually mention to her that in your view it could have been because of the error). Would you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; prefer her to be a better speller without a certificate, rather than a worse speller with one? If not you're almost morally obliged to help her. You may draw conclusions about my politics, but I question absolute self-reliance anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any man's death diminishes me,&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;Because I am involved in mankind,&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;It tolls for thee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T19:18:10.940" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T19:18:10.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18871" CreationDate="2014-04-03T20:31:47.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oxford is a small city with an atmosphere absolutely steeped in scholarship – some thrive in it; some find the pressure it induces extremely stressful. I would visit Oxford if you can and try to establish whether that atmosphere is for you. If you’re prepared to relocate, you’ll have almost no commuting time and may be able to live in college accommodation. It would be possible in such circumstances to concentrate very intensively on your work. You would be surrounded almost entirely by others doing the same. For some this is heaven, for others it is hell....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In London it would be much easier to collaborate across institutions, and therefore to meet a wide range of researchers formally and informally, all of which will help enormously in coming up with good ideas for post-doc projects, if you want to think that far ahead. Living in London, it will be very convenient to attend meetings and seminars at the London colleges as well as to meet with policy makers etc, if that is important in your area. It also means that you can rely on the friendship network that you already have in place, something to bear in mind as you may go through a bad patch during your studies and it’s good to have an established support network. The first year in the new Francis Crick Institute is likely to be slightly disrupted as everybody settles in (think usual teething problems like no hot water for months, no telephones etc.) but possibly a tremendously exciting time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But agreeing completely with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13766/reuben-john-pengelly&quot;&gt;Reuben&lt;/a&gt;, I would recommend taking some time to get to know your potential new supervisors and groups. Talk to former PhD students from the lab, try to go for a beer/coffee with some of the present students. The relationship with the supervisor(s) is absolutely vital. Try to work out what previous students go on to do – do they complete vaguely on time? Do they get good post-doc jobs afterwards? One advantage of going to Oxford is that it will give you one year to work this out, especially as you don’t mention wishing to work on a specific topic. But accommodation in Oxford is quite expensive, so £14k/yr may leave finances quite tight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T20:31:47.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18891" CreationDate="2014-04-03T20:56:11.843" Score="3" ViewCount="3853" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing my master's thesis, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will not be very good. This is partly because I have been unable to test the system I propose in the thesis properly, because testing it involves test cases that has to be manually performed, and I simply haven't got the time/resources/mental sanity to do more than a handful of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that having little testing could be viewed as a large, weak point in my thesis, and is easily attackable when I shall defend it.&#xA;My thesis is about detecting malware that requires human interaction (hence the testing difficulty), and by looking at some indicators I can determine what is malware and what is not. But my fear is that these results won't be very generalizable because of the small sample size. So my question is then: &lt;strong&gt;can a master thesis still be good if the presented results only cover a laughably small sample size?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10666" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T21:33:28.467" Title="Can a master's thesis still be good if it lacks demonstrable results?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18888" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:04:13.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good enough to publish your results: Most likely no.  Unless low sample sizes are typical of the research papers in the same field trying to collect similar data, you can't expect lack of results to be publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good enough to still pass with your masters degree: maybe...  It's up to your committee to decide.  You need to discuss this with your advisor and committee members ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T21:33:28.467" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T21:33:28.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18888" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:20:28.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can a master thesis still be good if the presented results only cover a laughably small sample size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be, if you can show a significant improvement over existing methods for said samples. If you can't do anything special with your &quot;labour intensive&quot; technique, it seems to have little merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T21:20:28.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18888" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:42:13.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Masters project (synthetic chemistry) didn't actually generate results other than failure and black goop (so nothing novel!) until the last two weeks of time I had in the lab, and even then, there was insufficient purity and quantity of my compound to do a complete 'standard' panel of analysis. It was the 4th year of an integrated BSc/Msci course, was graded including a viva and I achieved a mid 2.1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main purpose of a research Masters, at least in chemistry, is to accustom you to 'proper' research methods, while allowing you to pursue something novel and to demonstrate your ability to conduct research to a sufficient standard. In my cohort there was typically a tradeoff between novelty of project and quality of results, where one forgave the lack of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your thesis is written with an awareness of its deficits (aims far loftier/broader than the time/resources available sounds like a good start!) and you write good further work and conclusion sections where you tie this awareness in, making sensible conclusions and observations on the few cases you have achieved, I think it is definitely possible to write a good one! As Paul indicated above, you should discuss these concerns with your supervisor and possibly head of class (or equivalent). I am sure they will have dealt with someone with your concerns and circumstances before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T21:42:13.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18907" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:46:28.667" Score="6" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making a statement in my dissertation based on a comment written in the Linux kernel source code. I would like to be able to reference this comment. At least I would like to be able to name the file to which I'm referring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this (citing files in large pieces of source code) recommended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to go about doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13779" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T10:20:30.390" Title="Referencing specific files in source code in a dissertation" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18892" CreationDate="2014-04-03T23:08:33.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon in certain areas of CS to cite specific files. In your specific case, I would suggest that you include the git commit hash of the kernel.org sources in the citation, so that people can find the &lt;em&gt;precise&lt;/em&gt; version your referring to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T23:08:33.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18874" CreationDate="2014-04-04T00:03:20.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question doesn't specify how well-adapted the proposed research is to the particular public-health professor you've contacted.  I think this is a key issue.  Let me explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most academics have broad training, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; expertise across a wide range of areas, and then are true masters (in some cases, the top ones in the world) in a much smaller range of topics.  I considered at this point giving examples from my own experience to indicate what sort of things which are &quot;up my alley&quot; that would get me to respond quickly rather than to be interested in principle but respond only much later or never, but this ran into the following issues: (i) the examples would be meaningful only to mathematicians with some experience in number theory, which I think the OP is not, (ii) unfortunately every time I came up with what I thought was a description of &quot;my alley&quot;, I could then think of someone who sent me work or questions in that area to which my response was inadequate or even non-existent! But I think there is a lesson here: when you send a paper (or a question or an idea) to anyone, it is always a bit of a crapshoot: you may well get absolutely no response, and the reasons for this may have absolutely nothing to with you or your work.  In fact history is filled with examples of much more famous mathematicians rejecting -- or worse, ignoring -- much more important work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral of the above paragraph is this: you should cast a wider net.  If there is one faculty member that you feel is the perfect person to get involved with, then you may as well contact them first, and the job of your message ought to be to convey to them why they are a perfect match for the project at hand (and that the project at hand may be worthy of their time).  Even so, your perfect match may not see it that way or may simply be too busy to give you the attention you deserve.  (Again, apologies to all the people who sent me good work or asked me good questions over the years to which I did not respond.  I definitely respond to some of the correspondence I receive; I do not always have time to respond to all of it; and I sometimes make what looks in retrospect to be bad choices about what to respond to.  In particular, something promising that I don't have the time to think about at the moment tends to get put on the &quot;answer later&quot; shelf, but my algorithm for addressing correspondence does not have a step which ensures that the answer will actually come later.)  It is okay to write twice to someone when you think it is important, and the repetition can be distressingly effective: as I wrote elsewhere on this site, unfortunately for some types of correspondence I implicitly assume that if I only hear about it once then it cannot be so important.  This gets me in trouble from time to time, but not as often as it should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely though there will be several people who could help you with your idea.  The classiest move is to contact each of them individually and explain why their expertise is well-tailored to your idea.  The chance that you hear back from any one person increases dramatically this way.  And then you can get started with the person who you hear back from.  In some cases this may result in getting emails later on from people who were interested but didn't have time to reply.  Those, as they say, are the breaks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T17:52:06.593" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T17:52:06.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18426" CreationDate="2014-04-04T01:46:02.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few parts to your question, and I'm not sure which one is most important. If the question is about the value of version control, then you should see the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5277/why-use-version-control-systems-for-writing-a-paper&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; (which also has a link to a question about which one to use). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking about putting it on a shared repository, then here are some reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;collaboration with others&lt;/strong&gt;. If multiple authors are writing a paper, then it's very easy for different authors to edit different portions at the same time without too much worry about conflicts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;portability&lt;/strong&gt;: I work from different machines, and it's convenient to have a single location to check in/check out from so I don't have to worry about edits on my home machine versus my office machine versus a laptop and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking about making it &lt;strong&gt;public&lt;/strong&gt;, so anyone can read/edit the paper, then I don't see much of an advantage in that. When the paper is done, it might be handy to be able to download the source of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T01:46:02.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T02:05:55.807" Score="17" ViewCount="6905" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a continuation of my previous question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18819/how-to-deal-with-advisor-not-thinking-i-am-smart&quot;&gt;I believe my advisor doesn&amp;#39;t think I am smart. How should I deal with this?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just so happens that when I asked my prof for feedback, he decided to just drop me. Obviously I had asked for feedback when I saw some signs recently which indicated that he wasn't very happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what do I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really liked talking to this prof. I was enjoying the discussions. I thought things were well. But he seems to think that I get stuck with simple things! He probably also thinks that I am overambitious (in the few instances that I have tried discussing some other topics with him). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote to my prof asking him to reconsider his decision and reflecting on what could be the issues of his disappointment and what I could do to improve. Obviously he didn't reply.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met the grad coordinator. &#xA;He has schedule another between with all three of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether I should be optimistic about that meeting! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T13:42:07.800" Title="How do I convince my professor to keep me as his student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19002" CreationDate="2014-04-04T02:16:57.460" Score="8" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interviewing at several research institutions in the U.S. for a tenure-track faculty position all around the same time. I booked a multi-city flight to avoid having to fly back to my current hometown between each interview because that would be lame. &lt;strong&gt;I plan on asking the institutions for guidance on how to get reimbursed, but figured I would ask here about what I should expect or what is commonly done for this situation.&lt;/strong&gt; As an example, say for three interviews, ideally each institution would pay a third of the cost, but each institution has its own rules and they are not bound to do what other institutions would in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do U.S. research institutions typically reimburse a faculty candidate's airfare costs for multi-city trips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7484/how-to-buy-plane-tickets-for-job-interviews&quot;&gt;How to buy plane tickets for job interviews?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T01:21:48.897" Title="How do U.S. research institutions typically reimburse a faculty candidate's airfare costs for multi-city trips?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18898" CreationDate="2014-04-04T02:30:57.307" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible that you really &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; capable of doing the work, and that your advisor thought about this for a long time and decided that the kindest thing to do would be to drop you now, before you waste more time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also possible that you weren't really applying your advisor's criticism - for example, you weren't taking him seriously when he told you not to get distracted by new ideas, but to focus on making progress on your original research. Your advisor felt that he was wasting his time because you weren't listening to his advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should really talk to this professor's other students, and find out how they experience him as an advisor. If the other students get along just fine with him, and only you have this problem, then it's possible he just can't work with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in that case, he should really have spoken to you about the possibility of dropping you &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; he did it.  (Not just making comments about your work, but explicitly telling you, &quot;I can't keep working with you if this continues; this is what you need to do to show me you are making enough progress to continue.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, I'm going to answer this question as if you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a capable student, and your advisor is just unwilling to let you learn and work at a reasonable pace. (Obviously, I don't know you, so I don't know if this is true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your advisor isn't prepared to deal with a student who is capable, and clearly eager to learn and improve, then you should really reconsider &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; to work with him.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a professor like this in my department - brilliant, great to talk to, and there is a lot one can learn from him. But he is under a lot of pressure to produce results (he's new, like your advisor). He is constantly making &quot;threats&quot; to get his students to produce work (e.g., telling them their funding the next semester depends on whether their next conference paper is accepted - although he doesn't follow through on these threats). He isn't willing to let students grow and develop as researchers - he expects them to work up to his standards, immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor's students are leaving him in droves. They are either leaving school with an M.S. (instead of sticking it out for the PhD), or switching to another advisor. As a result, he's only published one paper in the last two years (which is far, far below standard in his field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you should think about whether you really want to work with this professor, and consider asking the grad coordinator for another advisor. If this advisor is not a capable advisor, you will not be successful with him, no matter how brilliant he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you decide you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to work with this professor,&lt;/strong&gt; do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; approach this meeting as a student who is begging an advisor to keep them on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, come as a student who is &lt;em&gt;willing&lt;/em&gt; to stay with this advisor, but understands that &lt;strong&gt;both of you need to change for this to work.&lt;/strong&gt; He will have to give you a reasonable chance to learn from, and apply, his constructive criticism. In return, you will agree to take his advice seriously, work hard, and do your best to improve and succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk about how highly you value this professor's experience, and how much you want to learn from him. Explain that you take his concerns (about getting stuck with simple things and getting distracted with new ideas) seriously, and want to work on fixing those things - but that growth takes some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, if you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; able to work things out, and you continue with this advisor, make sure to talk to him often about what he expects from you, and how you are living up to his expectations. Work hard to apply his advice and improve your research skills, and &lt;em&gt;make him aware of these efforts&lt;/em&gt; so that he doesn't think you are ignoring his advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T03:07:20.640" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T03:07:20.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:14:40.993" Score="2" ViewCount="691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working in the engineering industry. I am developing software in this field in my free time. I got stuck in some algorithm, and I'm looking for help from academia (either professors or students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to hire professors or students from universities to develop an algorithm for me?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do universities have some kind of forum to invite projects for its researchers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I also considered the option to hire from popular websites for freelancers; however, it is difficult to find many people who freelance in engineering. My budget is  between 500 USD to 1000 USD for around 10 hours of work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13764" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T09:42:21.123" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T22:31:10.423" Title="Is it possible to hire graduate students as freelancers?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18898" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:24:07.403" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not under any circumstances in any sense &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; someone to be your advisor that doesn't want to be. Your advisor has incredible influence over your success not only while doing your work, but afterwords, as he or she would be the most obvious person letters of recommendation should come from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some advisors are of the &quot;throw them in the pool and see if they swim in my field&quot; type, others are more of the &quot;this is a sort of apprenticeship where I will guide you into my field&quot; type, and there are many other possibilities. Choose one that doesn't want to get rid of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing you need is to have the person who has the most influence over both your academic life and great influence over your post academic life to have grudging feelings about the whole affair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I end with an old joke, but one that maybe sums up my recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really believe in that as a principle for lawyers or for myself, but I do think that trying to make the opposition situation work, where antagonistic feelings have developed, is going to be disastrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6319" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T05:24:07.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T06:38:02.820" Score="4" ViewCount="920" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my paper to one of the Elsevier journals in the field of molecular biology and evolution, I've got one major revision back; I fixed the comments, and sent it back to the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still &quot;under review&quot; for 1.5 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible that this review comes out with another major revision?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many major revisions can I get?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are usually the time frames for the second round of reviews?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13790" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T15:47:47.673" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:40:27.530" Title="How many major revisions are allowed when publishing with Elsevier?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18892" CreationDate="2014-04-04T10:20:30.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://integrity.mit.edu/writing-code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT handbook&lt;/a&gt; in relation to writing code you should use the following when citing code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, the URL and the date of retrieval are sufficient. Add more details if it will help the reader get a clearer understanding of the source.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you adapted the code, you should indicate “Adapted from:” or “Based on” so it is understood that you modified the code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page link above also includes the following in relation to open-source material&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you use code from an open source project, you need both to attribute the source and follow the terms of any open source license that applies to the code you are using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as always with citing, you should check with your Department to see if they have guidance or a citation style-sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T10:20:30.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18968" CreationDate="2014-04-04T10:35:41.920" Score="37" ViewCount="2416" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dominant narrative on how research &quot;should be&quot; done is to begin with a literature survey and then make your own contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I get the impression that it often happens the other way around - at least in fields such as CS where the cost of knocking some lines of code together is low (compared to, say, a 3 year medical testing programme).  Creativity knows no rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The obvious risk of this approach is that the research is subsequently found to be old hat, or better versions of the same thing exist already, or it commits an error already widely known in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reward, on the other hand, is that such creation might never have happened if the requirement of surveying the literature first was always met.  (Indeed some grad students have been known to quit before finishing the lit review their supervisor asked for - maybe they'd have done better if allowed to exercise their creative nature first?).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would conclude that it's an acceptable strategy when the individual is happy with that risk/reward balance (provided they already know enough about what they're doing to have some inspiration in the first place, that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other arguments/perspectives I've missed here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of very good answers here and there is no one right answer.  I'm not quite sure how to handle that.  In my experience this is the kind of thing that tends to lead to questions being closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; on SE sites.  I'm glad nobody has done so yet because I think the full range of opinions expressed below is a very worthwhile thing to read through.  Thanks all for your contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13793" LastEditorUserId="13793" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T15:36:07.100" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T17:13:22.217" Title="Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T10:43:37.957" Score="5" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be quite a difficult question to answer in general, but I suspect that the answer is &quot;yes&quot; as less-well-defined discipline boundaries mean having to read more to cover all bases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone with experience of both within- and across-discipline research weigh in on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13793" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:07:09.923" Title="Does interdisciplinary research usually require reading/reviewing more literature?" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T11:13:20.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that it only becomes &quot;research&quot; when reading up on existing literature is involved. Basically, if inspiration hits you and you just fire up your IDE to test it, you are not aware if what you are doing is in any way novel. That's not really the nature of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; (I should add that even if something is not novel in a scientific sense, it can still be extremely interesting and cool to do - however, it will likely never lead to a paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that a researcher is never allowed to just follow her/his inspiration. It has certainly happened to me more than a few times that I had a crazy idea and just ran with it. Oftentimes, the quickly led nowhere and I just forgot about it. Sometimes, initial results proved interesting and &lt;strong&gt;then I went ahead and did proper research before going further&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt; I have just noticed that I did not actually answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not really. If you are doing &quot;research&quot; (in the sense that you are hoping to publish it, and not doing it out of personal interest, or as a training exercise, etc.), the only senseful way is to start with a literature review. One needs to keep in mind that in most fields, most of the &quot;low-hanging fruits&quot; (i.e., obvious ideas) are long solved. So just going ahead and doing something in the hopes that it may be novel has a significant error rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T11:20:16.327" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T11:20:16.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18935" CreationDate="2014-04-04T11:32:06.873" Score="67" ViewCount="13675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen question on here regarding a citation error in a paper here: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12195/finding-a-mistake-in-a-published-paper&quot;&gt;What should I do if I found a citation error in a published paper?&lt;/a&gt;, but the nature of this problem is very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I came across an error in a paper (call this error 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have previously contacted the author before regarding a different problem (call this error 1, say) in this paper, and I got no response. (That was what I still believe to be an unproven proposition, and is actually also related to this problem.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I decided to ask here this time is the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am highly confident about error 2.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Its correctness has a direct impact on my current research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The mistake cannot be easily fixed. (At least it appears to me, for the time being). I have spent months on a related problem before revisiting this paper and realised that I have tried this same technique in problem, which did not work in my problem, which led me to check why it worked in his paper - and it turned out, it did not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The result was probably the first/the only result of its kind in the literature and the paper is fairly important with 150+ citations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do here? I have previously contacted the author and I have no reason to believe he would respond this time. I want it to be correct/easily patched because of reason 2. This paper was published in 1997 so it has been a while....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Precisely for reason 2, I would much prefer some way of getting the author to respond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I had a discussion with my supervisor. He immediately agreed with me it was a mistake. The thing is when we tried to use a similar technique for a different problem, we fell down the same trap about 10 times. At the moment, we have no fix and the mistake is serious enough that it takes away a lot of credit from the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10156" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T02:12:50.220" Title="What should you do if you spotted a non-trivial error in a highly cited paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-04T11:42:54.050" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ask someone else&lt;/em&gt; - your age listed in your profile suggests that you're a grad student. Have you talked to your supervisor about this? Even better, do you know someone in your own department that has collaborated with the paper's author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in the author's shoes. He's probably bombarded with emails all the time from grad students he's never heard of, so unless you've collaborated before then he may not even read your email. An email from your supervisor or one of the author's collaborators is much more likely to get serious attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T11:42:54.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18877" CreationDate="2014-04-04T11:46:20.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should point it out to her seeing as she is a former student - on another note I'd like to point out that in your query, you wrote 'I was asked by the student to sign a this verification form ' - errors can happens to anyone :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13795" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T11:46:20.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:16:13.537" Score="18" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about Title-IV eligable 4 year institutions in America, the majority of which are non-profit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colleges have a range of funding sources, including tution fees. Tuition fees have increased by ~500% in the past 5 decades, much faster than inflation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, given the increase in income from that source, and that the institutions do not make a profit, where is the money going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, is this offset by decreases in state funding? Are they spending a lot more on grounds maintainance or research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer answers that refer to some kind of data, for instance graphs, university financial report...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13799" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T13:25:55.687" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T02:17:59.230" Title="American universities - where does all the money go?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-05T04:39:23.290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:35:40.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with your conclusion that it is an acceptable strategy when the individual is happy with the risk/reward balance. My supervisor used to always encourage his students not to do a  literature survey but instead work on a concrete problem. Some students liked this approach, others did not like it and left to somewhere else within few months and still did very well in their research. I personally was undecided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An obvious reward of this approach is that you may be able to publish something interesting within a year from the start of your PhD study. On the other hand you may end up with a negative result that can not be published and thus you may decide to change topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending a year or so on a literature survey may seem like a waste of time, however it can really help in the process of building an overall understanding of the field and boost your confidence and ability to discuss with more experienced people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13800" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T13:35:40.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:55:31.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts. This is clearly a delicate balancing act by the individual and also an area of convention passed down from teacher to student in different fields. One of the main roles of an advisor is to keep the student on track and make sure they are not going off in &quot;unproductive&quot; directions. &quot;Unproductive&quot; involves extremes. The young researcher may be spending a lot of time experimenting without looking at the literature, or too much time looking at literature and not experimenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A young researcher who spends a lot of time on an idea and then the advisor quickly shoots it down as previously explored may find his/her balance is slightly off and need to &quot;recalibrate&quot;. But also realize this is a common scenario that has happened to all fledgling scientists, and even senior ones. Research and experimentation are a feedback loop which of course go &quot;hand in hand&quot;. One must be continually/flexibly &quot;jumping between both worlds&quot; at all stages of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, each scientific field probably has slightly different conventions. Some fields are more empirical than others. Some are &quot;younger&quot;, and yes there is some case to be made that computer science is a younger field than others, which means that the balance may be different in this field. Also, there is some case to be made that empirical research in CS is underexplored at this moment in the larger scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, computer science is a somewhat unique field in that, yes, the individual may be able to do scientific experiments without expensive laboratory equipment independent of his research laboratory, on &quot;his/her&quot; own time, and gain significant understanding/insight toward their research thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12098" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T10:45:04.560" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T10:45:04.560" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:57:59.040" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a certain extent this creates a false dichotomy. My mind is always turning with new ideas, and I may jot them down on paper and give then a bit of thought before I go and see if it is old hat with prior literature. The bit of thought may be a few hours of deliberation, or some simple experimentation or writing a few pages of a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a general knowledge of the field to be able to understand how to make a contribution. You then have an idea, read on that specific prior literature, and this will often refine your idea. The more specific your idea becomes the easier it is to find prior literature and see if/how it is different. It is not a one before the other - they are constant and reciprocating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consumption of the pertinent scientific literature though is forever and endless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T13:57:59.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:06:50.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing the state of the art is necessary, as well as having a clear definition of the problem that has to be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the student can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make old know mistakes, as you pointed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solve old problems that have already been solved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;worse than that, solve problems nobody cares about and where the solution is completely useless (specially in middleware that will not be used by any top layer or lower layer).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it can be a complete waste of an arbitrarily long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this is done by the supervisor pointing at a few selected papers or the students reading in a uninformed way trying to understand what they got into is a different matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the supervisor should guide the student in the first years. A few minutes to make a reading list can save months of reading not-so-interesting things, being lost in the broadness and vagueness of a not properly defined state of the art/problem/area, and a lot of frustration and misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:06:50.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18909" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:07:09.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a current graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very interdisciplinary committee. My home department is information science and my committee members are from electrical and computer engineering, communication and statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research stands at the intersection of social network analysis, privacy and surveillance studies and spatial statistics. I defended my dissertation proposal late last year and my literature review was ~50 pages with over 250 references drawn from 6 disparate areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my other colleagues who work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) (itself a rather interdisciplinary field) have lit reviews around the 40 page mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I constantly feel that there is always more to read and really important classical literature on privacy (dating from the 1700s) that I should read but haven't read in depth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before, committing to a dissertation in this field, I used to work in theoretical statistics, specifically estimation theory. My readings were focused and significantly lesser in number than the juggernaut that my annotated bibliography has turned out to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, more pertinent, TOREAD folder used to have 2-4 articles at any given time. Now, that is anything from 8-10 in addition to 1-2 books at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in response to your specific question, &lt;strong&gt;Yes!&lt;/strong&gt;, it feels like I have to read more now that I work in an interdisciplinary space to &quot;&lt;em&gt;cover&lt;/em&gt;&quot; all the bases.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:07:09.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:14:16.507" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't entirely agree with the answer &quot;No&quot;. This may be because my field is mathematics, though. Sure, not looking at literature beforehand means you are at risk of re-doing something that was already known and it's never nice to discover after spending lots of time working on something that it was already out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when you come across what seems to be a good question, I don't think it's such a bad idea to start by asking yourself &quot;Can I answer this myself?&quot; and not rush immediately to see what other people have already done in relation to this question. I see a possibility of positive outcome to not being aware of previous results for a significant time (of course not to the point of being on the verge of publishing and discovering the day before submission a very similar paper...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ff524 pointed out in a comment, &quot;if you are a researcher, [...] you already have some idea what's been done before&quot;. If you find an interesting question and don't know about an answer, it may be because it does not exist, but it may also happen that it does and has been overlooked before. Maybe it came out at a time when it didn't meet the interests of the community, or it came from another community, or the communication on the result was not so good, or &lt;em&gt;it didn't look interesting because the strategy was inappropriate&lt;/em&gt;. If you find this result early on, you will likely drop the question, not advertise it and the result (although of interest to the community) will remain unknown. If you start searching the answer without knowing about the previous result, it's likely that you will not follow the exact same path and that can be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe your way is more &quot;natural&quot; and makes the result fit nicely in a developing theory that didn't include it before. It's not such a bad idea to provide a new way of looking at something, even if the result &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; is not new.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe your way is more fruitful, in the sense that during your quest for the answer to the original question you will come up with new interesting questions which did not stem clearly from the way the result was previously established. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still risky, but in research you constantly invest your time in stuff you don't know the outcome of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:14:16.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:17:29.337" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;While doing my Master's thesis my advisor said that (up to the wording):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is better to spend the same time solving a problem than searching for its solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You learn more (compare: solving a problem in class vs googling for its solution) and more fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the time overhead (i.e. how much longer does it take to solve it)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you get the big picture?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If solving takes too much time, you may end up learning a lot but not doing new research. Also, without feedback (literature review or &lt;em&gt;even better&lt;/em&gt; asking experts if the problem is novel and worth pursuing) you may end up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solving already solved problems (perhaps with much more general methods) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or solving problems no one cares about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, any sensible research strategy involves both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T08:24:23.273" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T08:24:23.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18898" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:24:49.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider how the rest of the grad students in your group are faring and this professor's history with past students. If there are recurring problems with students, then you don't want to work for this professor.  If there are no such recurring problems, then he is probably correct about your aptitude for this work &lt;em&gt;at this time in your life&lt;/em&gt;.  You are going to need to take a step back an re-evaluate yourself and what you should be doing right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing from the comments that you are his first student, my inclination would be to drop him if I was less than 1/3 of the way through my research.  Being a brilliant contributor to his field does not mean he is a brilliant advisor.  In fact, he is the most inexperienced as advisors can come, having never graduated a student.  He has no context in which to judge you other than what he remembers what his graduate student colleagues were like at a different school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13802" LastEditorUserId="13802" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T16:48:54.597" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:48:54.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-04T15:44:25.857" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I reword that as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Independent problem-solving before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. I think in most cases it is a good idea to make an &quot;initial effort&quot; (the definition of &quot;initial effort&quot; depends on the scenario) to independently solve a problem before checking the literature. If you have not sat down and thought about the problem yourself, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you may not readily understand the solutions (if any) proposed in the literature unless you've worked through them yourself&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you may not know the extent to which solutions are appropriate if you have not tried to apply your own ideas or thought of alternatives&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you may not know what to search for ...  the core problem may not be as it initially seems but may reduce to something more well-known&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your own ideas on the problem may be influenced into the narrower-scope of what has already done (it might stifle creative problem-solving in the broader sense)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is important to avoid working on a problem for months without referring to the literature at any point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But certainly for a student, I would encourage them to think about and frame solutions for a problem strictly before they do a literature survey!&lt;/strong&gt; Once they show understanding of the problem and of some approaches then I think they're ready to read papers ... doing it in this order, they're much better equipped to recognise relevant papers and interesting approaches when they see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T21:36:24.610" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T21:36:24.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T15:45:38.087" Score="0" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I study undergraduate philosophy. My school of philosophy allows its students to use whichever citation style they prefer to use. I've used a few different styles; however, I haven't yet found a methodical one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer to use a style enables the user to derive the formatting for any given type of reference (e.g. a website, or a paragraph from a printed publication of a compilation of translated public-domain articles) from a set of just a few rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of a system like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T19:44:45.563" Title="Is there a self-consistent citation system?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:05:10.407" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Moriarty entirely. The first step is to get independent confirmation that there is an error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is to judge its severity and how it impacts on the conclusions of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third is to contact the authors directly and perhaps ask them to list or fix the errata on their homepage and on any pre-prints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly my answer is to introduce the fourth option. Many journals allow for publishing reviews, comments or corrections on papers that have already been published. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=5551138&quot;&gt;Here's an example of this in a reputable computer science journal (TKDE).&lt;/a&gt; Particularly if the paper is highly cited and the error underlines grave concerns about its contributions, this option is recommendable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal does not allow corrections, you may consider writing your own independent &quot;correction&quot; paper instead (as others have suggested), but this way, you may be expected to present new results, not just pointing out errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, like Moriarty, I would highly recommend that you get the advice of a more experienced researcher, in particular before engaging in the fourth or fifth option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T16:16:49.800" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:16:49.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:26:50.563" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write up a rigorous white paper demonstrating the issue.&lt;/strong&gt; This should be your first step, as putting the idea to paper will help you think of aspects you may not have thought of yet. If you can successfully convince &lt;em&gt;yourself&lt;/em&gt; in a written paper that this issue is valid, then...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Present the white paper to your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt; This has numerous benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor will critique your writing, which is always a good thing; you will become a better scientific writer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor can provide specific feedback on specific aspects of your argument by simply referencing what you wrote and providing counterexamples. This will make the process of convincing him that there is a problem much easier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can sucessfully convince your &lt;em&gt;advisor&lt;/em&gt; that the problem exists, then it's time for..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work with your advisor to reach out to the author.&lt;/strong&gt; Working with your advisor will significantly increase your chances of success. You may also be able to progress to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write up your findings in a letter or article of your own,&lt;/strong&gt; depending on the nature of the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that you state that this paper has been reviewed and cited many times. While it is possible that you have found something everyone else has missed, your ideas will need to be iron-clad before anyone will even listen to you. I would spend the most time right now making sure you haven't made a mistake before reaching out to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="9299" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T17:13:38.790" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T17:13:38.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18905" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:40:27.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give this an answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is posisble that you are again asked to make major revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's completely up to the editor to decide how many rounds of revisions are appropriate.  There's not a fixed number for all the publisher's journals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to ask someone in your field, ideally someone who's published in that journal before.  But it also depends a lot on how speedy the reviewer is, and how long the editor gives them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:40:27.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23567" CreationDate="2014-04-04T17:04:52.110" Score="3" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is some context, I am currently a graduate student in education but I come from an art background. Needless to say, writing papers is not something I've done on a regular basis since high school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I've gotten good grades on the two previous ones I wrote, I suspect they drained me a lot more than they should have had. I tend to be able to see the contradictions in everything, which I find is very helpful (as well as annoying) in my life in general but it makes writing position papers a living hell. I always feel like I am presented with a question that can not be answered and that I am forced to give a definite answer to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of question from a previous paper would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learner-centered approaches should replace teacher-centered approaches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I find an angle on how to go about it while feeling reasonably comfortable, things flow and it's not a problem but I always have this nagging doubt that it's not good because half the time I end up not really answering the question but dismissing it because nothing is this black or white. I tend to want to run everything by the teacher to get feedback because I'm never sure what we are really expected to do. I would fare much better if the question was in the likes of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should one take into account when choosing between teacher-centered&#xA;  approaches and learner-centered approaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong, I have opinions but I feel like they're not applicable in all scenarios.&#xA;Sometimes I feel like those papers are only used to see how well we can write, how well you can form an argument and be convincing but I see little value in convincing just for sake of it. How can I get out of this rut?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11673" LastEditorUserId="11673" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T17:54:54.760" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:00:46.047" Title="How can I better deal with position papers?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19001" CreationDate="2014-04-04T18:18:09.553" Score="3" ViewCount="3207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing figure legends but realized I don't actually know what to include or what to exclude. I wrote them based on intuition and tried to copy what I've already seen but I was wondering if anyone had good suggestions or references for making figure legends for papers and reports in the biological sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11877" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T01:55:01.003" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T00:53:51.273" Title="Making figure legends for papers in the biological sciences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18902" CreationDate="2014-04-04T18:40:26.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While people are, perhaps rightly, poking at your estimate of how long this will take and your budget, yes, its entirely possible to hire graduate students as freelancers. I worked on several projects during my graduate career as a consultant or freelancer. Generally speaking, there aren't great university resources for it, though you might contact a professor who works in the area to see if he or she have any students who might be interested in a consulting gig.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T18:40:26.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-04T19:13:49.920" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main answer to your question is easy: &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it a little curious that you have not done this already.  As a graduate student, you read a very famous paper (in mathematics, more than 150 citations is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; large number) that was written a while ago, and at the first sign of trouble you contacted the author of the paper.  That is already a little strange: although both are possible, the probability that you, a relatively young graduate student, have misunderstood something in the paper (or are applying standards that are different from those of the field you will be working in, or some other similar issue related to the fact that you probably do not yet have expert level knowledge and experience in this field) is higher than that the author has made a serious mistake.  Writing to someone that you don't know at all and who is much more senior than yourself and pointing out a mistake is not without risk: the risk is that you will be wrong and they will dismiss you in the future as a less than serious person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor is there exactly for such things: she is the person who is helping you transition from a neophyte to a journeyman to an expert, and she needs to see your mistakes and flawed reasoning in order to do this properly.  Some outside expert really does not: they can wait to see the finished product that you become.  Moreover, you are presumably reading the paper because your advisor wants you to, perhaps even because she directly told you to read it.  Therefore a mistake in the paper is your advisor's problem as well as yours.  Why are you holding that information back from her?  You shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I feel like the OP is getting a fair amount of advice that would be more appropriate in other fields than mathematics.  Especially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In mathematics it is very difficult to write a paper whose sole or even primary purpose is to point out a mistake (even if it includes a correction) in someone else's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a cultural reality of the field; it is certainly not entirely positive.  In many other academic fields, one can &quot;score points&quot; by pointing out others' mistakes, and in some fields this is one of the best ways to score points.  Mathematics is not like this: if you can get such a paper published it will &quot;take points away&quot; from the author and give you a certain amount of notoriety, but if this is for instance your first published paper then many people will look at you strangely, almost as if they expect you to make further trouble.  (Again, I'm not endorsing this cultural practice; I'm just describing it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I would say that contacting the editor of the journal in question is maybe step 10 of a procedure that is mostly designed to terminate after one of the first 9 steps.  You should do this only after you have exhausted every other possible avenue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In mathematics -- very much unlike in some other fields -- it is prohibitively unlikely that an editor will publish any &quot;commentary/correction/erratum&quot; by you unless she believes that you are mathematically correct in the point you're making, and convincing someone with standing in the field like a journal editor that you are mathematically correct is largely what you're trying to do anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, while I barely know what a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper&quot;&gt;white paper&lt;/a&gt; is and to the extent that I do I'm not sure it's the appropriate terminology here -- in content I do agree with @eykanal's suggestion: it will certainly help your advisor if along with communicating the surprising news that Famous Paper X is wrong, you can supply a written version of your arguments.  This can be hard to do: explaining why a difficult argument is subtly wrong is one of the sternest expository challenges in mathematics that I can think of.  It takes a lot to go from &quot;I don't understand the argument and find it rather unclear&quot; to &quot;I am convinced that it is wrong.&quot;  By the way, in writing to an author it is a good strategy to err on the side of the former quotation.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T22:24:24.547" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T22:24:24.547" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18925" CreationDate="2014-04-04T19:44:45.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work out which journals you are most likely to be publishing in. Read their authors' guides. Pick the citation style that occurs most frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start using that now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, you'll have all the tools you need in place for when you start submitting to those journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-managers&quot;&gt;reference management software&lt;/a&gt; these days typically includes the ability to incorporate new citation styles, often encoded in &lt;a href=&quot;http://citationstyles.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CSL (Ctitation Style Language)&lt;/a&gt;, as well as having the most commonly-used ones built in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any decent reputable citation style will be internally consistent enough, and will have rules for papers, books and various species of grey literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T19:44:45.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17728" CreationDate="2014-04-04T20:12:06.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an international database called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.univcheck.org&quot;&gt;UNIVCHECK&lt;/a&gt; that allows to validate whether a university is accredited or not. It is both a white list and black list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13816" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T20:12:06.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18939" CreationDate="2014-04-04T20:25:01.580" Score="16" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prospective graduate student is coming to visit a program and does not have a place to stay. As is sometimes the case, the program is not funding a hotel for the student and it seems likely that it would be an economic hardship for the student to host themselves. Let's say that the student is accepted to the program so this is more in the context of trying to impress the student and get her to join the program (although I'd be interested to hear if a similar situation with a non-accepted student would be different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate for a faculty member to try to arrange for a host stay with a current student in the department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate for a faculty member interested in working with the student to offer to host the student in a guest room in their home?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other or better options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T21:51:48.090" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T06:57:29.073" Title="Hosting a graduate student on a campus visit" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18938" CreationDate="2014-04-04T20:43:40.703" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always follow your school policy on the matter, if there is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate for a faculty member to try to arrange for a host stay with a current student in the department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's appropriate for a faculty member to ask current students if they can help, then tell the visitor, &quot;Here is the email address of a current student in the department who can help you arrange a host stay, if you're interested.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then let the visitor make contact with the student. Don't be pushy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate for a faculty member interested in working with the student to offer to host the student in a guest room in their home?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I vote &quot;no&quot; unless there's really no alternative - especially if the faculty member makes the offer directly to the visitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen something similar (students living in the guest room of a researcher in industry who they are working with for the summer). Those students apparently were OK with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have been &lt;em&gt;offered&lt;/em&gt; this (visiting a professor in another country for the summer, he offers me a guest room in his home). I did not want to live in this professor's home, and it was mildly uncomfortable and awkward to turn down the offer. There is a power imbalance here that can be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to offer a guest room in a faculty member's home, definitely do it through a third party (e.g., have a student contact the visitor and say &quot;Here are some possible hosts, including a guest room in this professor's home&quot;). This way the visitor can turn it down without having to worry about offending the faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there other or better options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your school has a dorm with spare rooms (or if a nearby school has a dorm), this is a good option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T21:07:26.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T21:07:26.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-04T23:04:49.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer may be field-dependent, but in theoretical physics it is: &lt;strong&gt;write your paper&lt;/strong&gt;. If the error is non-trivial, showing why something not works (or an counterexample) may be valuable. The same thing if the error is relatively simple, but most people are not aware of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a critical flaw in one paper gives raise to a new field - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0205076&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How the No-Cloning Theorem Got its Name&#xA;by Asher Peres&lt;/a&gt; (or for a longer story, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hippiessavedphysics.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00729622&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;erroneous paper&lt;/a&gt; (with an error being non-trivial at this time) resulted in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-cloning theorem&lt;/a&gt;, and later - quantum cryptography, quantum information etc. The error (assumption that a machine could copy any quantum state) could be addressed by a few lines of an elementary  proof there no such machine could exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T17:46:06.813" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T17:46:06.813" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18945" CreationDate="2014-04-05T00:20:31.503" Score="4" ViewCount="1350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 2 years out of undergrad and thinking about applying to some math graduate schools, specifically operations research and maybe financial engineering. I was a math major, with middling grades, and now I work in IT. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: it seems that even for not top-tier schools, a high GPA is crucial, as are great letters of recommendation, wonderful GRE scores etc. Why? If I'm willing to shell out 50k for grad school, and I've met the prerequisites, and I show an interest in the subject, why wouldn't a school want to have me? Is it purely so that they can claim they have a low acceptance rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if a grad school (again, not top 10 let's say) has a surplus of people who want to take that program, in a field like math, why not just hire as many professors as it would take to teach them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I don't get all this pressure to be perfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I am referring to masters programs in particular, where stipends are not as common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ok, Pete and Paul's answers make sense, given the current set up of grad school. I can imagine a different set up, however, that would make it less competitive for students, more profitable for professors and more about learning than prestige. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13820" LastEditorUserId="13820" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T01:51:33.630" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T01:51:33.630" Title="Logic behind masters programs admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18942" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:29:13.250" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not pay tuition to attend grad school, excepting possibly certain &quot;professional&quot; schools like medicine, business, law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, grad programs admit a number of students for which they have funding, and have faculty/mentoring support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programs do not get tuition money back directly (as counter-intuitive as this might seem), but have to calibrate grad admissions to match the faculty they have ... the numbers of which are determined by essentially unrelated issues. But, approximately, programs will not admit you if they are not confident that you can succeed in their program. So you should not begrugde that judgement. And, srsly, such judgements are made with much experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is the issue of prediction of success, which is an element that did not enter in undergrad studies. That is, programs do not &quot;admit everyone&quot; and then allow people to fail. Nor is it just a matter of &quot;trying hard&quot;. Beyond a certain point, there is an issue of natural ability. It is true that this is highly non-trivial to understand/detect/encourage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a considerable amount of disingenuousness in how we describe graduate programs...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps reaction-comments from the OP could help refine useful answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T01:29:13.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18942" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:35:18.370" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The line that jumped out at me and probably most other mathematicians reading your message was &quot;If I'm willing to shell out 50k for grad school&quot;.  Stop right there.  Most people who go to math graduate school get paid stipends; almost no one pays the full tuition themselves.  It is a little unclear why you are so willing to do this: it certainly does not seem like a wise career move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Graduate programs have limited resources.  If they admitted more PhD students then it might in the long run lead to more faculty, but this is an indirect and uncertain process.  Moreover every graduate student is a huge outlay of time and effort on the part of the faculty, and while programs are not being ranked according to their acceptance rates (I don't know that these statistics are even reported), they are certainly being ranked according to their &lt;em&gt;completion rates&lt;/em&gt;.  Math graduate school is a challenging proposition, and a lot of people who enroll realize it is not for them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The requirements for getting into a decent math graduate program are not &quot;perfection&quot;.  (In fact, a &quot;perfect&quot; academic record may in practice mean that the student did not suitably challenge herself.)  They are looking for an academic record that gives them confidence that the student will actually succeed in the program.  If you admit a student who is merely interested and willing to pay but turns out not to have the skills and the drive to complete the program, everyone's time has been wasted, and lots of the student's money has been wasted.  This is not a desirable outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Yes, the above remarks apply primarily to PhD programs.  (In fact I didn't understand the meaning of MFE, and I thought that OR stood for &quot;Oregon&quot; rather than -- my next guess -- &quot;Operations Research&quot;.  It's best to err on the side of spelling out abbreviations on a site like this.)  Master's programs generally do have lower entry requirements compared to PhD programs at the same institution, and yes, paying your own way is somewhat more common, although I would still not recommend it to any but the wealthiest students.  There are in fact some good master's programs in mathematics that one could get into by making clear in advance that no financial support was being requested.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say more than this really depends on the department.  Some places have extra resources for master's programs, but many do not: the master's program takes place alongside the more populous PhD program and is administrated and taught by the same faculty members with limited time and energy that they are trying to apply in the best possible way.  Master's students who are not strong enough to receive funding may in fact be the ones who require significant extra effort to get them to finish the program.  They may also require faculty to meet and discuss tough questions like whether or not they should be allowed to continue in the program.  Speaking from my own experience: a few years ago I was largely open to the idea that anyone who has the appropriate undergraduate degree and coursework and is willing to pay their own way should be given a shot in our master's program.  I do not feel that way any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T16:38:10.567" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T16:38:10.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18914" CreationDate="2014-04-05T02:17:59.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is completely different at different types of schools. At state schools in California, the increases in tuition have gone to offset decreases in state funding. At some private schools with big endowments, e.g., Princeton, it's simply not true that tuition has gone up dramatically. (Princeton is now about the same price as Berkeley for a kid from an affluent family.) At other private schools, the increased tuition may be paying for amenities like rock-climbing walls, or it may simply have increased because parents perceive high tuition as a sign of status and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T02:17:59.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18952" CreationDate="2014-04-05T05:04:49.697" Score="35" ViewCount="10324" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently received an offer from a group which pursues topics I find very motivating and whose equipment is above average for my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The salary offered is 50% of the German TV-L E13 salary, which I think is acceptable by academic standards. However, all other offers which I have received are 65% of TV-L E13, though all of these other groups pursue topics which to me are slightly less interesting. To give you a bit of background, 50% has been the standard for a long time, but since a couple of years ago most groups in my field are deciding to award their PhD employees 65%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very motivated by my particular interests, and had the salary been equal for all offers I would have taken this one without question. Sadly, the situation being as it is, I am quite split. Additionally, the professor made it quite clear that I would also have to get involved in teaching (not all other groups were as forward about this) - which I do not mind in the slightest, but which I think would give cause for extra consideration when calculating a salary. Regarding the professor's interest, he seemed very keen to have me on board, but also very confident I would take his offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask whether he could accommodate for 65%. But, since I am yet to decide, I would not like to lose the offer or put great strain on our future relationship if he refused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, academic culture treats monetary interest with a certain disdain, and I would like to ask you how I could best formulate my request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FEEDBACK: I have followed the advice offered here, and stated in an email to my prospective PI that I had received better paid offers, and that I would ask him if he could increase the pay, though I am aware of how difficult this could be for him. He took some time to reply (which initially gave me cause to worry), but apparently now he managed to arrange for 65%. I would encourage any of you to follow the advice presented here; and &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; try to negotiate as long as you do it &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; respectfully!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13008" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T02:59:09.743" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T02:59:09.743" Title="Safely negotiate a salary for a PhD offer - Germany" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18938" CreationDate="2014-04-05T06:57:29.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I'm afraid that's been the case at my alma mater more often lately due to budgetary issues...Kind of a pity we can't even afford to host prospective, accepted recruits when they come from out of state/country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've seen done is for the department staff to coordinate with the department's student representatives in organizing the whole recruitment visitation event, which has included making hosting arrangements for visiting recruits. Usually it has involved sending emails around to current grad students asking if anyone can host a recruit. Responses and outcomes have been pretty good from what I've seen. I think that's something of a small miracle, considering most grad students live rather modestly. I don't think I was ever in a position to host anyone, but it seems enough other students have managed to make it work that the department can get away with not supporting visitors' lodging needs financially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd expect faculty to have somewhat better accommodations available, judging from the few whose houses I've visited – much more spacious than any grad student's I've ever known. I'd also expect faculty to have a more vested interest in cajoling good recruits into enrolling, and also more interest in getting to know these students ahead of time. Faculty might have longer histories in the area as well, and therefore make better hosts and offer better introductions to the city outside the university. Some faculty are very busy, but some are tenured (insert joke about sea cucumbers here, but the implication that tenured professors aren't busy isn't to be taken too seriously), and no grad student has this luxury – they're all busy, or at least should be. For these reasons, I'm inclined to argue that faculty would actually make better hosts than grad students overall, if they could just be convinced to take that extra responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure a faculty member should host his/her own recruit. Personalities can clash in unpredictable ways when people share their personal spaces with one another, and a long-term advisor-student relationship is not one with which to take such risks lightly. People sometimes depend on a sort of professional distance in relationships with authority differences (i.e., superior-subordinate relationships, to whatever extent that fits the advisor-student scenario), and learn to regret lowering their personal boundaries through particularly bad experiences. These are easier to put behind oneself if one doesn't have to work with the other person continuously over several years thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, one wouldn't want to create an implicit expectation in a department that faculty should host their own recruits. Many people choose not to live in tidy, spacious, or peaceful places that a visitor of unknown sensitivities might need just to be able to relax and sleep. This is why it's important to request volunteers for informal hosting if it can't be done through a professional hosting service such as a hotel (or even a hostel). Some people are reluctant to host others for very good reasons, and shouldn't suffer others' judgment for failing to fulfill their expectations when they would be unreasonable. It's all too easy to produce a culture of implicit obligation inadvertently like this, so this justifies preventative precautions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@ff524's points are well-made on this matter too, and the dorm suggestion isn't a bad idea either, but from a recruit's perspective, I would prefer to be offered a room in a grad student's house / apartment / foxhole. Dorms tend to be dominated by undergrad culture, which at some universities won't make the best impression on recruits. There's enrollment-incentivizing value in being welcomed into a tight-knit, professional environment that gives a realistic impression of what life is like for other grad students, who presumably don't live in dorms (unless they're RAs). Staying with other grad students is a chance to talk about the university or the city over breakfast or dinner, whereas undergrads might make somewhat less useful company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether I'm giving undergrads too much credit or too little in saying no more or less than this...Some dorms and undergrads could make very nice environments I'm sure, but others could be downright awful. It seems to me that there's much more risk involved in the dorm proposition than in having other grad students host recruits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T06:57:29.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-04-05T08:26:39.603" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the mods here is a professor in a german university, I think he is able to add a better answer or at least confirm or discard mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as I know, many german PhD students, at least in CS, are actually employed full-time, which I assume means 100% TVL-E. In that sense, both 50% and 65% seem somewhat on the low side to me. At the very least, negotiating for 65% does not seem so unreasonable that it should offend anybody.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, don't be too disappointed if your negotiations go nowhere. I have heard from multiple people that academic salaries are oftentimes entirely unnegotiable in Germany (though not always)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;German PhD student salaries are internationally quite on the high side (also if you take costs of living into account), so even if you cannot negotiate, 50% might still be ok compared internationally. That being said, the question is always if the salary is enough for &lt;strong&gt;your standard of living / circumstances&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have a partner and two kids, maybe 50% simply does not allow you to live. If you are alone and live in a dorm, maybe 50% is plenty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In germany, some amount of teaching is usually part of the job. That the one professor told you this before is a good thing. However, there is teaching and there is teaching. I have certainly seen groups where teaching load could add up to about 75% of a PhD student's work time. This is obviously terrible (independent of money issues). The hard part is figuring out whether this is the case in your specific group. The best way is to ask one of the current PhD students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be too afraid that you may annoy your future professor. In my experience, the entire &quot;academics frown upon money issues&quot; is a bit of a show. The same professors who says such things at the same time have no quarrels at all negotiating their own contracts or department budgets. If your future professors gets annoyed by you mentioning that you have a number of better offers, you should likely go somewhere else anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for the actual negotiation, I would follow &lt;strong&gt;moriary's&lt;/strong&gt; remark from the comment - simply mention (friendly and non-threatingly) that you are torn on accepting the offer, as you have counter-offers at 65%. As said, nobody should get annoyed by that. We are all adults, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T08:26:39.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18974" CreationDate="2014-04-05T11:16:51.460" Score="5" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student and going to assess my instructor in a month, with whom I was not very much satisfied. I had been writing the teachers' evaluation in past but didn't see a scintilla of improvement even after years in any attribute of instructor or course-material. Maybe other students were quite satisfied and I was just a statistical outlier. Apart from my disbelieve, what is the most effective way to communicate with your instructor via evaluation-sheet?     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13164" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T07:50:55.857" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T09:20:00.770" Title="How to effectively evaluate your instructor?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-05T12:14:24.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can give all the relevant details in a reasonably concise way, then it may be appropriate to ask a question on mathoverflow.net.  I would strongly recommend that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You prepare your question very carefully, and review and revise it several times before posting to ensure that it is as clear and complete as possible and correct in all details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You phrase your question as &quot;I do not see how this can be correct, please explain what I am missing&quot; (even if you feel very sure that you are not missing anything).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your problem is in an area that is well covered by mathoverflow, then this should be effective.  Either someone will explain what you are missing, or the relevant experts will become aware that you have uncovered a genuine problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T12:14:24.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-04-05T13:33:02.527" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two fundamentally opposing issues here. One is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will not get a higher salary unless you negotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while at the same time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only way to avoid the messiness of failed negotiations is not to negotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to be prepared for the possibility that negotiations will not go the way that you want. So, really, the question is if the extra pay is so important to you that you are willing to walk away from the position if things don't work out the way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding for research groups in Germany can resemble a zero-sum game: faculty members get a fixed budget from the university, as well as a mostly set budget from funding agencies: they get a certain allotment of positions to fill, and get paid based on the salary needed to fund those positions. But what this means is that to give you the extra 15 percent of the position, they need to come up with the funding from somewhere. This may or may not have been budgeted for in the original proposal; if not, finding the money to do so can be quite difficult, particularly in non-science fields (where there may not be a large amount of third-party and industrial funding available).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the funding comes from the so-called &lt;em&gt;Planstelle&lt;/em&gt; (or university funding), the issue is fundamentally the same: giving you an extra 0.15 position means that there's that much less for somebody else. So 2.0 &lt;em&gt;Planstelle&lt;/em&gt; positions could be used to hire four graduate students at 50 percent, or three graduate students at 65 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, some faculties may have guidelines on what faculty members can offer potential PhD students; it may be worthwhile to contact the person responsible for doctoral students at the department in question to see if this is the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, unless the group is rather large, I'm rather pessimistic of the ability of the advisor to increase the offer. (If he could have, he probably would have done so, already knowing the state of competition in the field.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T13:33:02.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18991" CreationDate="2014-04-05T15:02:48.863" Score="3" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one get paid while conducting research at a US university lab, without being a staff, student, visiting student, or a postdoctoral fellow? What are possible titles that are acceptable by grants? Assuming the grant sources are NSF and IARPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visiting_scholar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;visiting scholar&lt;/a&gt; is a high level recognition. Is there an alternative for a paid researcher who does not hold a PhD and is not initially affiliated, but whose research is valuable to the lab? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13821" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T17:18:43.257" Title="Paid position at a US lab" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16503" CreationDate="2014-04-05T15:08:32.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden there are many universities strong in bioinformatics. The requirements are not very high (they depend on the program), and everything is in English and free for UE citiziens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T15:08:32.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-05T15:40:11.183" Score="1" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying the impact of the internet on a cultural practice in my country. I have been working on this project for months. I have already started data collection and analysis. However, lately I've become unsure of my principal research question.&#xA;So, I'm studying an online community through online ethnography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure it is only a problem with the wording of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the impact of the internet on ...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is a qualitative question because I've read that qualitative questions should not start with 'what'.&#xA;Is studying the impact of the internet on a phenomenon consistent with my methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T06:23:59.377" Title="Does starting a question with 'what is the impact of' make a good qualitative research question?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16503" CreationDate="2014-04-05T16:41:01.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that pretty much every credited and decently reputable university has some sort of bioinformatics or biomathematics program. Even the school I currently attend, Indiana State University, which by the way is an absolutely shit school for ANYTHING except business adminstration, aviation and education, have a masters level bioinformatics degree, though I'm unsure about any PhD program. However, I know that Purdue has a program for it's computer science BA students to have what is called a &quot;focus&quot; (very common in majors like CS because of the breadth of where you can take it- also, criminology is very common to have 5 or 6 focuses as well) in bioinformatic data systems, and you can then pursue a masters or PhD with said focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, even though none of that really answered your question, pretty much every university you go to will have some sort of bioinformatics / biomathematics (which by the way, I don't know if they're the same thing because I've always heard it called bioinformatics, which is the math behind biology... so I'm assuming there the same thing) program, and if they don't, they will DEFINITELY have CS / Math programs that are completely relevant to the study and very easy to get you into grad school on the basis of the only thing you didn't learn about bioinformatics was the application of principles you learned from your math classes to said field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most universities here in the US don't have specific requirements for transfer students beyond language certification. I.e., if you can speak decent English, which you can, then you'll be fine. Most of the Arabs in my Econ &amp;amp; CS classes right now can't speak a word of english at all and they're here so you'll be fine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13838" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T16:41:01.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:10:20.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 2 ct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who is funding the position? (I.e.: is the offer for a concrete project, funded by some funding agency)? If so, look up the funding agencies policies for PhD student funding (e.g. DFG recently changed the recommendation to 65%). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I don't think it will hurt to ask whether 65% are possible. After all, that is now the DFG recommendation. So you are not asking for an outrageous amount of money.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And, if they are not willing to increase the offer, they can easily tell you that this is not possible at the moment due to how positions are tied to projects or even that they don't do this in order not to have one highly paid student at the cost of some other student. (I've been in an institute where positions were more or less rotated among the PhD students in order to have roughly equal pay to everyone in the long run).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you asking for better wage without more work or are you asking for more money, possibly for more work, e.g. because you need to feed your family. Particularly the latter reason may be a good point to tell during the negotiation (depending on where the position is - noone will believe that you'd be able to survive at 65% wage in Munich if you cannot do with 50% in Leipzig).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There may be other ways to get more money, e.g. it may be possible to get paid the additional 15% if you are borrowed out to do teaching at some other institute for the respective amount of time. I've also been doing work contracts for university though my experience with (one) German university was that they took extremely long to pay (close to 6 months - seems rather usual: I've since heard that other universities have similarly bad reputation). However, this is IMHO only an option if you anyways think about running a free-lancing side-business - otherwise the burocracy will not be worth the hassle. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider also asking whether and when you can expect an increase to 65%. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update (&quot;soft&quot; advise triggered by the OP's comments)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The comments look to me as if the moment for wage negotiation is already in the past: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prof: &quot;[blabla] at the usual pay.&quot;&#xA;Chimera: &quot;... which I take to mean 65% TVL-13&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the moment I'd have considered the point to open wage negotiations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IMHO a vague offer like &quot;usual pay&quot; needs to be clarified into some hard number - so pinning that to something more concrete is not necessarily blurting out.  After all, &quot;usual pay&quot; could be anywhere from 50 to 100% TVL-13 (and formerly even from 50% WHK upwards - but I don't know whether that is still done)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the most important point that comes to my mind now: &lt;strong&gt;Wage negotiation does not safe you from making up your mind about what you want.&lt;/strong&gt; Quite the contrary: you need to know those &lt;em&gt;beforehand&lt;/em&gt;, otherwise you'll have no footing for the negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In any case, having messed up these negotiations (assuming you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have gotten the interesting project &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the higher wage which we don't know) is an experience for life. It may be good to settle your emotions by writing it off as &quot;Lehrgeld&quot;. Yes, 10 000 € net difference over the 3 a hurts (that pain will make the lessons learned last...). On the other hand you're probably going to make more expensive decisions (and even mistakes) during your lifetime (e.g. buying once during our lifetime new car instead of a used one will easily cost you more).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;At some point the most expensive mistake will be to keep fretting about this possible mistake instead of looking forward and trying to have a better next negotiation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think there is a deep wisdom in the advise to practice job interviews and negotiations several times with jobs you are not really interested in getting before applying where you seriously want to go. Includes clarifying for yourself the lessons-learned (also by asking questions like this here).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10 000 € hurt, but as others have menioned, larger important points aren't negotiable (e.g. how much time you'll spend for teaching) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or can be negotiated independently of the 50% vs. 65% question (e.g. your prof may be able to throw in helping you to get an international research stay etc.). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining thoughts are my very personal point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The unknown confounding factors (&quot;Munich&quot; vs. &quot;Leipzig&quot;, family or not) are too large here to give much advise. Obviously, with a job offer in Munich and a family to feed I'd negotiate more (possibly to the point of trying to reopen negotiations) than as a single applying in Leipzig.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd say that the 15% are in general not sufficient &quot;pain compensation&quot; for me for taking an uninteresting position. Of course that wouldn't stop me from negotiating.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But in order to weight this point you need to know that&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience (Germany, Canada, Italy) underlines rather strongly that the wage : costs of basic living are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; favorable in Germany compared to other countries. To the point where I think that with few exceptions, even for students money problems are usually (exceptions being feeding a family in Munich - you get the idea) rather on the side of expenses than on the side of generating income.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But take that as a very personal thing - your priorities may vary: I'm aware that I happen to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have inexpensive hobbies (not very interested in cinema and pub tours and instead hiking, wild camping, biking and having the beer &amp;amp; wine at our own camp fire/BBQ - and I don't need the alps that urgently if I have the Sächsische Schweiz or the Thüringer Wald just a few km away; also not feeling an urgent need to get to the Andes or the Himalaya as there are large parts of Europe still unknown to me). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be quite good at repairing/renovating stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;enjoy cooking our own meals with friends which also happens to be much cheaper than the pizza service and still cheaper than the mensa.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have studied in Dresden where rents were cheap, and now live in Jena which has crazy expensive rents compared to, say, Leipzig, which are however still low compared to about everywhere in former West-Germany. And to Italy (Trieste).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways these points gave me the independence even as a student to be rather free in the decision what job offer to take and to follow my interests. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it the other way round: my advise is to make up your mind also how much this kind of independence (which can tremendously help your negotiation position) is worth to you. If you make up your mind now, you'll be settled when the more important negotiations come after the PhD. If you find out that you are not the person who is willig or able to go that way, that is perfectly OK as well. But it will safe you a lot of pain to know and act accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You asked for &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt; negotiations, not e.g. for successful negotiation or how to avoid basic mistakes during wage negotiation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, just to let you know @TheChimera, of course I've also messed up job interviews. I believe everyone does at least once in a while.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T13:14:02.253" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T13:14:02.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18908" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:27:23.243" Score="16" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One point I don't see so far is that a quick experiment (in lab or in silico) can result in showing that the idea wasn't that great after all. And in that case, it is rather unlikely that literature says anything about it at all. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another point (rather in line with @Andy W and @badroit's answers) is that spending some effort of your own on the problem may be needed in order to find the relevant literature.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(I've had problems that I eventually solved myself, and where only the solution I obtained allowed me afterwards to find some relevant literature in a different field - simply because only the solution yielded successful search keywords)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, students solving old and known problems is often called &quot;education&quot; and considered necessary, not a waste of time...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, a few hours in the library often still make months in the lab necessary... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T19:27:23.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:37:58.447" Score="25" ViewCount="3410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently interviewing for tenure-track faculty positions at a number of top departments in my field.  Despite getting some very positive feedback about my interviews, I have not yet received any offers.  So far I have tried to avoid any &quot;game playing,&quot; being very explicit with each department about where and when I am interviewing.  Likewise, in follow-up discussions with hosts, I have been careful not to state any strong preferences for one school or another, mentioning that I still have additional places to visit (seems only fair!).  I am starting to wonder, however, whether this approach was a mistake, especially given that others in my field are already receiving offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how should I proceed from here?  Part of the issue is that I do not fully understand how and when offers are made, which leads to several questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it happens, of course, but how frequently?  (E.g., as a percentage of all offers made by the department over a 10-year period.)  A related question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually &lt;em&gt;hurt&lt;/em&gt; a candidate's chances?  E.g., perhaps it makes this candidate look like a &quot;sure thing,&quot; which frees the department to first make an offer to another, &quot;higher-risk&quot; candidate.  In general, when is a good time to express such a preference?  Finally,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 3:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, is there any mechanism in place to prevent candidates from &quot;falling through the cracks?&quot;  E.g., one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school; subsequently, the higher-ranked schools make her no offer and she is left without a job.  Likewise, if I express a preference for school X before visiting school Y, do I risk pissing off my hosts at Y?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 4:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Do I just need to relax?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am almost tempted to write an email CC'ing all the department chairs, providing a complete ordering of my preferences... they can duke it out from there.  (Or simply tell me that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of them want to hire me!)  In general, the whole game-theoretic aspect of this thing makes me a bit queasy.  Wish some brilliant economist would design a mechanism that is fair for both departments and candidates alike.  Right now, it definitely feels like a buyer's market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T05:59:48.370" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T01:58:25.813" Title="In a faculty job search, when and how should I reveal my preferences?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-04-05T23:23:56.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with aeismail that negotiation is probably not going to work. He seems to know about universities; I work at a research centre from the Helmholtz group. At our research centre, some professors are already trying to get 65% for PhD researchers. But it is a matter which the board of directors decides once for the whole organisation, not something a single professor can decide for his/her chair. So, until the professors get the board to agree, it will be 50% for everybody. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still talk to the professor, the ones I know are reasonable and open in salary matters and I haven't experienced a hostile atmosphere in talks involving money/responsibility/tasks negotiations. But there is a very high chance that he has no say in the matter. Besides, it is rare for a professor to have to fill a position quickly; if you don't accept the position, they can just wait for the next good candidate (and there are enough of them). So, I am afraid you probably don't have many levers, even if the professor sympathizes with you and wants to work with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to try it (there isn't anything to lose), but don't get your hopes too high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T23:23:56.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18972" CreationDate="2014-04-05T23:31:31.630" Score="7" ViewCount="26974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a downloadable list of all accredited U.S. colleges. I have found many options to search databases, but I am looking for a downloadable list, preferably in spreadsheet format such as xls or csv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13842" LastEditorUserId="10518" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T01:25:39.573" LastActivityDate="2019-10-16T17:19:38.283" Title="Downloadable list of all accredited U.S. colleges?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;databases&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-10-17T11:14:58.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18971" CreationDate="2014-04-06T01:37:04.797" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/GetDownLoadFile.aspx&quot;&gt;you're looking for on the U.S. Dept. of Education page&lt;/a&gt; in CSV/Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the header of the file:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Institution_ID    Institution_Name    Institution_Address Institution_City    Institution_State   Institution_Zip Institution_Phone   Institution_OPEID   Institution_IPEDS_UnitID    Institution_Web_Address Campus_ID   Campus_Name Campus_Address  Campus_City Campus_State    Campus_Zip  Campus_IPEDS_UnitID Accreditation_Type  Agency_Name Agency_Status   Program_Name    Accreditation_Status    Accreditation_Date_Type Periods Last Action&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T01:37:04.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18969" CreationDate="2014-04-06T02:11:43.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1&lt;/strong&gt;: How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say &quot;early offers&quot; only occur in exceptional circumstances. Universities have hiring policies and those policies require dotting i's and crossing t's -- paperwork and process -- particularly for tenured or tenure-track positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2&lt;/strong&gt;: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me put it this way: you do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; want to express that the school is not your top choice. The hiring committee are looking for a monogamous relationship. Talking about all the other schools you're going on first dates with isn't a great idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually hurt a candidate's chances? E.g., perhaps it makes this candidate look like a &quot;sure thing,&quot; which frees the department to first make an offer to another, &quot;higher-risk&quot; candidate. In general, when is a good time to express such a preference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes absolutely no sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 3&lt;/strong&gt;: To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you refer to the US? If so, I don't know but I would imagine there's very little communication on an inter-department level (though people in different departments may informally communicate). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, is there any mechanism in place to prevent candidates from &quot;falling through the cracks?&quot; E.g., one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school; subsequently, the higher-ranked schools make her no offer and she is left without a job. Likewise, if I express a preference for school X before visiting school Y, do I risk pissing off my hosts at Y?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This again makes no sense. A university is unlikely to avoid offering you a position because you might be &quot;too good for them&quot; or that you might get other offers (in the worst case, it only costs a university a couple of weeks to make an offer for a position that will last many years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A university may avoid offering you a position if you seem disinterested or if it seemed likely that you were using this position as a short-term stepping-stone to elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different departments are not going to compare notes. They are competing with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 4&lt;/strong&gt;: Do I just need to relax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yep. Maybe ease up on the coffee and take up croquet or smoking or something else instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T14:05:52.273" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T14:05:52.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18955" CreationDate="2014-04-06T02:47:00.490" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the most effective way to communicate with your instructor via evaluation-sheet?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word, &lt;em&gt;constructively&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are overly negative, there's a good chance you will be viewed as a malcontent with an axe to grind. If you'd like to maximize the chance for real improvement, avoid blanket negative statements. For example, instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This instructor was never available for consultation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This class would be better if the instructor was more available to students&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You send the same message, but with a more constructive – and therefore more credible – slant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should be realistic in what kinds of improvements you may expect to see. In my experience, some faculty take student evaluations very seriously, some don't. Some probably don't even read them; the forms are only completed because department policy demands it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another important factor, too: the inmates shouldn't run the asylum. Some faculty regard student evaluations with disdain, and there may be legitimate reasons why. Sometimes professors who are easy graders get better evaluations from students, while more demanding professors get poor evaluations from students who are either lazy or else come to class with a sense of entitlement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truth is, there are a lot of dynamics that go into this. Just from reading your question, there's no way to tell if you're a good student who unfortunately had a bad professor, or if you're a bad student who got their feathers ruffled by a very good (yet challenging) professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single evaluation won't have a huge effect either way, but, as I said at the beginning of this answer, I think your best chances for a positive impact comes by writing an evaluation with a more positive and constructive slant. In other words, try using the form to suggest improvements, rather than to harshly criticize. Such forms will be harder to dismiss outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T02:47:00.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16503" CreationDate="2014-04-06T04:06:35.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes there are MSc as well as PhD programs in Biomathematics. You should look for programs in &lt;em&gt;Biomathematics&lt;/em&gt; and/or &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Biology&lt;/em&gt;; this field of study is also branded as &lt;em&gt;Systems Biology&lt;/em&gt; quite often. A quick Google search returns quite a few hits both in UK and US. The Society for Mathematical Biology has a good (but I would say somewhat US-centric) list of such programs available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smb.org/resources/education/degree.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entry requirements usually depend on the program. Generally speaking good Maths and Stats (eg. Network/Graph Theory, Stochastics, PDEs) help a lot, as well as showing an interdisciplinary approach to your training. My best advice to prepare for such a course would be to be a great student. It is too early in your academic journey to focus exclusive in one area (eg. Stochastic Processes) and hope it will carry you through graduate school. Besides it will be very unlikely that a star-pupil in Maths will be denied entry to a graduate Biomathematics programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8458" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T04:06:35.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18964" CreationDate="2014-04-06T05:56:17.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any decent research question, I try to test it with all these criteria. Some of these sound very simple, but as I try to answer them, there isn't one of them that I find consistently simple. That might just be an indicator of my own limitations, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it look like the sort of question that gets answered in the journals (/ conferences / predominant outlet in my specialism) I want to publish in? In your case: are there impact studies in the literature that use qualitative ethnography?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it tell me who, what, when, where, why, and how? e.g. What sort of impacts? How will the impact be studied? Over what time period? Impact by whom, on whom? and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will I know when it has been answered well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a definite gap the literature?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will answering it make the world a better place (in however small a way, but at least in a net positive way)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this answerable with the resources (time, human, material) that I have available?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth putting a lot of effort into getting the research question right. John Dewey is credited with saying something to the effect of &quot;A question well put is half solved&quot;. Richard Feynman described research as being along the lines of: &quot;write down the question;  think hard about it; write down the answer&quot;; and it's too easy to assume that the middle part deserves all the effort, but the first part and the last part repay effort too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T05:56:17.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18955" CreationDate="2014-04-06T09:20:00.770" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18974/643&quot;&gt;J.R.'s answer&lt;/a&gt; focussing on constructive comments, I would add that the comments are often more useful if they are &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt;, rather than general. A specific comment gives the lecturer something precise to focus on when making improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, stating that &lt;em&gt;the description of endoplasmic reticulm was unclear&lt;/em&gt;  or &lt;em&gt;the first part of lecture 2 went too fast&lt;/em&gt; is better than saying that &lt;em&gt;lectures were unclear&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, these should be stated more constructively.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T09:20:00.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-06T11:38:06.080" Score="8" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have long academic experiences in African universities (where I studied and am based). I had various administrative positions such as head, dean, vice president. Academically, I have supervised tens of students and published many paper in high impact journals. Now I want to apply for a position in American universities (for example, a Dean position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I compare my credentials and academic/administrative experiences with current Deans of American universities, I am fully comparable, but my worry is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the search committee needs American experience for appointing someone in an American university?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the search committee consider academic experiences in developing countries not-competitive to American candidates?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that there might be personal views, but is it the general strategies of search committees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T17:04:50.283" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T04:55:28.363" Title="How important is the country of academic experience in applying for US academic jobs?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-06T12:05:57.423" Score="2" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually try to get citation from publishers website and import it into a reference manager like endnote. I have doubt about the correct form of conferences/proceedings/transactions name in citation. As an example, the provided citation for &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=6253489&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6253489&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; in IEEE format is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D. Bi-Ru and I. C. Lin, &quot;Efficient Map/Reduce-Based DBSCAN Algorithm&#xA;  with Optimized Data Partition,&quot; in &lt;strong&gt;Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2012 IEEE&#xA;  5th International Conference on, 2012&lt;/strong&gt;, pp. 59-66.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be misplaced but as you could see in the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;published in&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section of IEEE webpage of the paper, the conference name is the same as this citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same holds for proceedings and transactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this way of citation correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13855" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T21:16:48.767" Title="What is the correct form of conferences/proceedings/transactions name in a citation?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18982" CreationDate="2014-04-06T13:27:59.677" Score="20" ViewCount="3133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need an advice about returning to academia as a visitor/post-doc after working for a year in finance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finished my PhD in summer 2013 with a good record of publications (3 papers in high impact journals). Both my bachelor and PhD were in applied mathematics and theoretical physics. Towards the end of my PhD I felt burned out and was unsure if I want to continue the same line of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, almost all my colleagues who finished their PhDs around the same time struggled to find positions and all moved overseas, which was not an option for me at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this time a have kept in touch with my supervisor and colleagues. I also kept reading and searching for new interesting ideas. Recently I started to feel enthusiastic again and full of fresh ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is do you think it is acceptable to approach my supervisor/colleagues and ask for a position and what is the best way to go about this?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13800" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T08:55:04.297" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:55:04.297" Title="Returning to academia after a year in industry" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18981" CreationDate="2014-04-06T13:45:50.810" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not? What you write makes me think that you could tell them exactly the way you tell it here: Being recovered from the PhD and full of fresh ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not unheard of that PhD students need to recover from the PhD by doing some different kind of work for a while (such as a couple of years in industry, I've even heard of running a store in a completely different retail sector).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Personally, I think that it should be taken as a warning sign if this happens regularly. However, that consideration doesn't have anything to do with your position, but I think it is worth while remembering when you enter the side of PhD supervisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how much enthusiasm you've gained back I think it would be a good idea to sit down and recall what exactly drove you away and what caused you feel (close to) burned out - in order to avoid getting there again. I somehow think it unlikely that a postdoc position would be more calm than a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T13:45:50.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18980" CreationDate="2014-04-06T14:26:48.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Venue names are often inconsistent in such a manner. Even if you take your citations from a single source (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt;), you will sometimes find different names for the same venue across different years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When citing, the aims should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give enough information for a reader to unambiguously find a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give enough information for citation engines to unambiguously know which paper is cited&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present the citations in the format required by the publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep citations neat and consistent in style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to this citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D. Bi-Ru and I. C. Lin, &quot;Efficient Map/Reduce-Based DBSCAN Algorithm with Optimized Data Partition,&quot; in Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2012 IEEE 5th International Conference on, 2012, pp. 59-66.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to meet 1–3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards 4, I would say it is not very neat. I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D. Bi-Ru and I. C. Lin, &quot;Efficient Map/Reduce-Based DBSCAN Algorithm with Optimized Data Partition,&quot; in IEEE 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2012, pp. 59–66.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reads more naturally, avoids repeating the year and uses an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;en-dash&lt;/a&gt; for the pages (okay, the later is being super-pedantic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More correctly, you should probably have &quot;in Proceedings of IEEE ...&quot; but I always found that a waste of space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're fighting a page limit, it is common practice to just write the abbreviation for &lt;em&gt;well known&lt;/em&gt; conferences within the community (e.g., &quot;CLOUD&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you choose to format the venue, for the other conference/workshop citations, you should then include a similar style. In this case, all venues should include the edition (5th), the full title (International ...) and the abbreviation (CLOUD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And on a side note, I highly recommend switching to LaTeX/BiBTeX and pulling your citations from DBLP if you have medium-to-long term plans for researching in an area of Computer Science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T14:26:48.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19009" CreationDate="2014-04-06T15:28:17.393" Score="7" ViewCount="1814" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens that some students offer sex for grade. &#xA;Just considering the fact that popularity of this strategy can strongly weaken the quality of education, administrators should take some actions to avoid this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a department head do to control this problem in his department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to punish?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who to be punished? Student or professor? Or both ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking about legal actions or university policies or discipline matters. I just wish to know What should a head/dean do in this regard to preserve the education quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T22:44:05.343" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T02:26:49.210" Title="How should administration punish sexual abuse/trade for grade?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18962" CreationDate="2014-04-06T16:21:11.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that most universities have different titles for different functionally similar positions, I wouldn't sweat it too much. The only places where things are different in my experience with NSF are for faculty and post docs. I know NSF has a rule about the total amount of time that a person can be funded (without explicit exception from the Program Officer) on an award (2 months), but these rules are generally only applied to faculty since they are expected to get 9 months of support from their institution. NSF also requires a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf10_1/gpg_2.jsp#bfn28&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Postdoctoral Researcher Mentoring Plan&lt;/a&gt; for any proposal that will fund post docs. This is there to ensure that post docs have their careers promoted appropriately and that they learn appropriate collaboration methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you don't even have to work at a university to be paid under an NSF award. There are frequent subcontracting relationships created to send funding to other institutions including private companies and contractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T17:18:43.257" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T17:18:43.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-06T19:40:45.800" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me share my personal experience in a vaguely similar situation: Back in 2007 and within a couple of months of publication I spotted a huge mistake in a paper published in a journal that used to be A class but is more like B class these days. I wrote a proof of the error, showed how to correct it, and sent it to the journal. It took over one year of back and forth between the editor and I to get him to admit he had published a profoundly incorrect paper and to publish my &quot;Comment&quot;: but I'll say that I probably got lucky that he admitted his error, got lucky that he cared to correct it, got lucky that he read my correspondence, etc.. If my experience is any indication, it will be very difficult to get across to the editor(s). At some point, about 6 months into the exchange, when it was clear that the editor was assuming I was in the wrong (he never read the math bits), I wrote to another editor and asked him if he thought I could damage my reputation by insisting so much, and he told me not to worry and go ahead on the quest for truth (but there was nothing he could do to help). The bottom line is you will hurt several people's pride and could make some enemies. I personally couldn't care less, but I'm atypical. And if you looked at my career, you'd probably think twice about upsetting the editors of an influential journal. Whatever you do, all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11424" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T19:40:45.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18969" CreationDate="2014-04-06T19:50:06.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations for getting as far as you have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18973/5962&quot;&gt;badroit's answer&lt;/a&gt; is very reasonable. I had two follow ups and elaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems inappropriate, and slightly weird, to tell any school you are interviewing with where in your ranked list of preferences they currently fall. That's true for your top choice, your final backup, and everybody in between. Even if you are sure of your ranking, your preferences might change as you learn more about the programs and the particular offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you are legitimately excited about the possibility of joining a school's faculty, you should express that interest. If you feel like the faculty at the department would be great potential colleagues, say it! If you think they have great resources, say it! If you love the graduate students or the city, say it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comparison to dating with the goal of a monogamous relationship is a good one. Cultivating an air of disinterest seems unlikely to help and it's possible to show legitimate interest without being dishonest or leading people on. Everybody understands that you can be excited about one potential match, also excited about other potential matches, and that eventually you will have to make a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 4:&lt;/strong&gt; Do I just need to relax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like it. It also sounds like at this point, you've done most of what you can and the next steps are basically out of your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T23:59:28.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18969" CreationDate="2014-04-06T20:00:08.753" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've served several years on the faculty recruiting committee for my (US, top 10) computer science department, including three years as the chair.  Protocols vary significantly between different departments, different searches, and &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; different fields, so take my experience as a sample, not as a definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty hiring is best thought of as a complex multi-player game of three-dimensional chess, using invisible pieces that occasionally explode, where nobody knows who the other players are or what rules they play by, and nobody wants to reveal too much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question 1: How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens, but normally only when one of the early candidates emerges as an overwhelming favorite, and that candidate has another offer with an inflexible (or already extended) deadline.  But nobody wants to be forced into this situation.  It's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; bad form to interview someone for a position that doesn't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities allow limited gambling with slots.  A department might offer a position to candidate A, and then later make a second offer to candidate B for the same slot, under the assumption that at least one of them is likely to say no.  If A and B both say yes, then both A and B get jobs.  (I've seen this strategy go very &quot;badly&quot;, with four low-probability offers made on the same slot, all of which were accepted.  Gambling was outlawed for the next &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question 2: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially at universities that (a) forbid gambling and (b) do not let departments roll unused slots from one year to the next, departments do balance the desirability of various candidates against the estimated probability that they will accept an offer, to minimize the risk of not hiring anyone at all.  (This scenario also tends to generate offers with very short and inflexible fuses, sometimes while interviews are still ongoing.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just telling us that we are your first choice probably won't help much.  We &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to believe you, and we appreciate your effort in making that overture, but we don't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; believe you, because lots of candidates have said that and then left us at the altar.  And even if it's true, you really don't want the rumor that that you prefer us to reach someone else.  Best to keep mum until you have actual offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; that we are your first choice is taken very seriously.   For example, if you receive an offer from somewhere else, especially from another top department, telling us in time to make a good-faith counter-offer is certainly better than not telling us until it's too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually hurt a candidate's chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question 3: To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not at all.&lt;/strong&gt;  Different departments are competitors; sharing information is counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do, however, gather as much back-channel information as we can, for example by scouring our competitors' web pages to see who they are interviewing and when.   Sometimes I do hear rumors of the form &quot;So-and-so is about to get an offer from X&quot;, but those rumors &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; always trace back to the candidates themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, yes, this &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; happen, although I suspect more often at the interview stage than the offer stage.  See &quot;minimize the risk of not hiring anyone at all&quot;.  Nothing you can do about it.  Let it go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question 4: Do I just need to relax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, always.  I recommend building up an immunity to iocaine powder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2017-03-26T01:58:25.813" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T01:58:25.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18980" CreationDate="2014-04-06T21:16:48.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the reason citations are done this way (and now we're verging on &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;english.se&lt;/a&gt; territory) is to allow for meaningful alphabetical ordering/indexing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the &quot;IEEE transactions on&quot; is the generic part of the name, and should not be used for alphabetical ordering/indexing. This is analogous to how in indices you'll often see things like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Korea, Republic of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rather than&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Republic of Korea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T21:16:48.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18775" CreationDate="2014-04-06T22:53:54.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Transferring schools is best done as soon as possible. Your first year credits may transfer seamlessly with another university, but the farther along you get the less likely the transfer will be successful. I would find someone at the university who has experience working with international students (there might even be an entire department dedicated to such) and ask specific questions of them (eg how to apply to another program, how to transfer in good standing etc). Then be in contact with the university that you wish to transfer to and make sure that you meet all of their requirements and apply for transfer prior to dropping out or officially leaving the program that you are in. You do not want to mess with your student visa etc, so make sure everything has transitioned successfully prior to withdrawing from your current location. Moving near family is a good idea, but also make sure that if you are really moving for health reasons that your health will be taken care of there. Make sure that the student health insurance will cover everything that you need for it to cover and that you can access specialists etc in the area that you are wanting to move to. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13877" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T22:53:54.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18986" CreationDate="2014-04-06T23:06:31.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;About hose situations, I have came to be witness of two situations (taking away the part that there is a consensus between the two parts to get involved in some sort of romantic/sex situation; so I am supposing before hand that there is no harassment involved). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lecturer or the student proposes intimate relations for a grade change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teacher and student were involved in a romantic situation, also in this kind of scenario I believe is the same as case 1. Just because I believe there would be a bias for the lecturer or favoritism for her/his romantic partner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, about your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to punish?&#xA;This is not an easy one. I have seen one case in a Faculty in which the Dean decided to keep  the lecturer involved in a romantic situation, just because he was very good in the topic he was teaching. The Dean only talked with him, and after some advices it was like nothing happened. For me it was a big mistake, they should have at least suspend him for at least one or two terms. I said that because after this guy was dumped by the girl, he still continue getting involved with other girls in the Faculty, but being more careful about his behavior for not getting caught.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I believe that people involved in these situations should be, at least, punished with a suspension. It cannot be left unattended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who to punish?&#xA;Here the situation needs to be taken with enough care, mostly for the part of the student. I mean if you make a public suspension to the student, and make public the reasons behind that decision; the student will mostly be facing harassment from their own classroom mates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I believe to have a long talk with the student involved is enough, but the lecturer is the one who should be punished just because he is allowing that situation to happens and also if the is starting it, he is taking advantage of its position as a lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this could help you in taking a decision.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T23:06:31.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18933" CreationDate="2014-04-06T23:39:17.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the figure should contain a title which concisely captures what it's showing: 'Effect of manipulation A on measure B', or 'Level of A influences property of B', or 'B vanishes when A is larger than X', or some such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that you would go on describe what the figure shows, as precisely as possible - go panel by panel and say what's on the axes (and in which units), what denotes statistical significance in the image (e.g. gray shaded areas), what the colors mean, that sort of thing. You can also write what the main statistical finding is, using just words (i.e. no p-values or similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the basics. However, take into account that some journals allow unsubscribed readers to see the title, abstract and figures of their papers. If this is the case, try to imagine what it's like to be able to read just the abstract and see the figure with legends, and build from there. See if an experienced reader can infer what your specific contribution is from this information only (in fact, many people will anyway just skim over the figures before deciding whether to read the paper). This often means that the figure legend should also include a mini-recap of the experimental setup or specific manipulations next to the finding it depicts, but the exact contents will vary depending on what you're showing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T23:39:17.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18900" CreationDate="2014-04-07T00:38:59.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking for a postdoc and visiting multiple labs, I was asked to split the reimbursement for travel costs between the institutions. The exact details of how to split were left to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most institutions expect to fund the entire trip for faculty candidates, so I don't foresee any problems with you asking them to pay less than what they expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T00:38:59.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18900" CreationDate="2014-04-07T01:21:48.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once visited an institution where they asked me to get an itemized receipt from the airline that broke down the fare by leg. (This information wasn't on my original ticket so I had to ask the ticket agent at the airport.) They then reimbursed me for only the legs going to and from their institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when multiple institutions are involved, you will still have to split intermediate legs somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T01:21:48.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19004" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-07T01:33:20.273" Score="6" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the admission decisions are announced, accepted students made their decision, and the list of next year's graduate class is determined, what do graduate schools and respective departments in US universities typically do with the application materials (electronic or paper), including recommendation letters, transcripts and score reports, that they received from each individual applicant, in particular, rejected applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they keep them, in their entirety, for future reference or statistics? For how long, typically? Or, do they keep a summary of each application and the reasons for rejection and discard the rest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13821" LastEditorUserId="13821" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T01:44:01.757" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T14:03:08.393" Title="What happens to the application materials sent/submitted with graduate school applications in US after admissions decisions are made?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19006" CreationDate="2014-04-07T01:48:08.640" Score="16" ViewCount="1440" Body="&lt;p&gt;It recently occurred to me that probably more often than it should happen, while reading someones paper, they see a reference to a different paper, and just use the reference without looking.  In my area, a common example is in referencing data, such as average human height, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across this as I was looking for data on human dimensions from a somewhat smaller country that does not use English.  I found 9 papers that all referenced the same data sheet.  I then contacted the author of that data sheet and was informed that there is no online version (never has been), and the only print copy exists in that country.  The author herself does not have this book.  I'm guessing the only reason the other authors referenced the data was because the author of the referenced data wrote a paper that referenced her own data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not interested in how to format these citations. I would like to know if it is appropriate to cite this information at all, or cite that someone else cited it.  I am curious as I am not sure about the accuracy of the information.  If I do cite someone else's citation (which i am 99% confident they never saw the data), it seems like I can just make something up myself.  Is there a way to express that maybe this data is accurate, but that I'm not sure, since it is the only available source about that data?  Or should I ignore it all together and pretend as if there is no data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T20:55:57.653" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T20:55:57.653" Title="How much can you trust a reference of a paper that is not available" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19005" CreationDate="2014-04-07T03:07:41.150" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way to express this (not as a citation format), that maybe this data is accurate, but not sure, since it is the only available source about that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about something like: &quot;X, measured by Jones in 1950, is commonly given as the value for Y (as cited in Smith, 1989 and Cutler, 1995). However, the original manuscript by Jones describing this result is not generally available.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or should I ignore it all together and pretend as if there is no data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do this. If X is cited often in the field, then by pretending as if there is no data, you give the appearance of &lt;em&gt;not knowing&lt;/em&gt; your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you should &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; X (knowing that it is unreliable) depends on your purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work hinges on having an accurate value for X, then you definitely should not use X if you cannot track down a reliable source for it. (Nor should you make something up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using X just as a &quot;sane&quot; value for something, and it isn't central to your work, on the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you have a better value than X, and can justify why you are using a different value than everyone else in your field, go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if you need a value, you should just use X (unreliable as it is). A bit of unreliable data that is accepted in your field is still better than a bit of unreliable data that you just made up with no justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T16:17:17.257" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T16:17:17.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19023" CreationDate="2014-04-07T06:13:35.853" Score="5" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in stem cell, regenerative medicine, developmental biology, and genetics for reverse ageing. Since these topics are dealt with in one or both of medical school and school of science and professors have one or both of MD and PhD, I'm confused about my grad school prep. Also, I'm really not interested in clinical medicine, but I want to be a researcher throughout my life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think I need only PhD, but I'm wondering why some professors in these areas have MD? &#xA;Is it just because they decided to become researchers although they initially intended to work as a clinical doctor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T16:45:19.283" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T14:09:13.073" Title="Why do some professors have M.D. as well as/instead of a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18986" CreationDate="2014-04-07T06:50:23.263" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initially, like xLeitix, my response to this question was &quot;Say what?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I did some reading. For those who are interested, here are some articles on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-167-25-0078/outputs/Download/b6c430da-1eb8-4e2f-b519-8f10bf2dad13&quot;&gt;Sex, grades and power in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6612681.stm&quot;&gt;Kenyan tutor on 'sex for grades'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://peacecorpsclancy.blogspot.com/2011/02/teachers-demanding-sex-for-grades.html&quot;&gt;Teachers Demanding Sex for Grades&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/mar/04/liberian-women-battle-sex-grades-universities&quot;&gt;Liberian women battle against 'sex for grades' at universities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/410068.article&quot;&gt;Sex for grades in Africa's academy&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this context: if sex-for-grades is sufficiently &quot;popular&quot; in your department that it can &quot;strongly weaken the quality of education,&quot; then you have a bigger problem then how and whom to punish the next time it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should a head/dean do in this regard to preserve the education quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a department where sex-for-grades is common, you can't stop it by punishing it in an ad-hoc manner. You have to create a comprehensive policy; educate students, faculty, and administration about this policy; and then enforce it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a university policy (or your university policy is not sufficient), you can create a school-wide or departmental policy, depending on the scope of your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sexual harassment policy should &lt;strong&gt;clearly&lt;/strong&gt; describe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exactly what constitutes sexual harassment,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the consequences will be for those involved,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and (the most important of all), How to safely report harassment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you should then take steps to educate &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faculty, on how to protect themselves against sexual advances from students (steps such as: keep a strictly professional tone in emails and other communication with students, have meetings with students with office door open, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administration, on how to respond to allegations against students/faculty with sensitivity and discretion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students, on how they can report harassment without fear of retaliation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who to be punished? Student or professor? Or both ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;strong&gt;who to punish&lt;/strong&gt;: any faculty or administrative staff member who&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solicits sex from a student in return for grades, or threatens to fail a student who won't have sex with them, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;responds to an offer of sex for grades with anything other than a firm &quot;NO&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be punished.  Of course, it &lt;strong&gt;must say so in your policy&lt;/strong&gt; and you must make sure to &lt;strong&gt;educate faculty&lt;/strong&gt; about this policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students are usually the disadvantaged group in this scenario, and punishing students could deter them from reporting sexual harassment. Therefore, I would advise against punishing students in most cases. I can think of a few exceptions, where it is appropriate to punish students: e.g., students who make repeated sexual advances, despite being warned more than once in an official capacity not to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to punish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;depends entirely on what kind of punishment you can enforce, as a department head/dean. I have no idea what kind of power you have as a department head/dean in your educational system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically in the U.S. it would be handled at a higher level, as   Nate Eldredge pointed out, because department heads in the U.S. don't usually handle disciplinary matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T06:50:23.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18986" CreationDate="2014-04-07T07:04:53.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my university there is a rule which means markers are not allowed to have a 'conflict of interest' so if a professor is sexually involved with a student that is not against the rules however the professor would not be allowed to mark the student's work because it would be seen as a conflict of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's fair for professors and students to get involved with one another as long as they are consenting adults but I do agree that if that happens it would be unfair on the other students for that professor to mark the student's work (as I am sure most people would) and this is why I think a rule against that would prevent unfair advantage (or disadvantage - relationships can go terribly wrong!) so a rule against marker conflict of interest is a good way to prevent that happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your institution does not have a rule about it, then I would say you need to accept what is done is done and learn from it because it is the responsibility of the institution to have rules about these things. You cannot really make it up as you go along because when you think about it, that is not fair either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final point: A student making unwanted advances and a professor has made it clear to the student that he/she is uncomfortable with those advances this is a different issue altogether because that falls under the 'sexual harrassment' banner and is unlawful in many countries and most likely against the rules too. The best way to deal with that is sort of carry on is to support the lecturer if the lecturer was unable to resolve the situation after step one e.g of steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1.&lt;/strong&gt; professor speaks to student and tells them they feel uncomfortable about the advances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2.&lt;/strong&gt; verbal warning from the students personal tutor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3.&lt;/strong&gt; written warning from the school/institution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4.&lt;/strong&gt; final written warning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5.&lt;/strong&gt; Expel student&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 6.&lt;/strong&gt; Inform Police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem persists then the police would probably sort out a restraining order so just liaise with them and see what they can do according to the laws in your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if the lecturer is trying to get sex and offering better grades then the same logic would apply. That is sexual harrassment and if a student complained about that I would go through the steps but step one would be to not allow the professor to mark work of the student (and probably not any other student either) until the matter had been resolved completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1248" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T02:26:49.210" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T02:26:49.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23483" CreationDate="2014-04-07T07:18:17.003" Score="1" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in stem cell, regenerative medicine, developmental biology, and genetics for reverse aging. Since these topics are dealt with in one or both of medical school and school of science, I'm confused about my grad school prep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD program of stem cell &amp;amp; regenerative medicine offered by Stanford's School of Medicine accepts both MCAT and GRE (as stated in the following webpage.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://stemcellphd.stanford.edu/faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://stemcellphd.stanford.edu/faqs.html&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Also, the PhD program of my interest offered by Harvard belongs to both Harvard Medical School and School of Arts and Sciences. Thus, the boundary of PhD programs between medical school and school of science doesn't seem to exist. So, I'm thinking if I can prepare for PhD programs of med school in the same way as I do for programs of school of science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you tell me the difference of PhD programs between med school and school of science in terms of the following factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;standardized test (GRE &amp;amp; MCAT)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;admission standard (focus on research experience or focus on GPA &amp;amp; standardized test) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;competitiveness &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;undergrad classes required/recommended to take &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T02:02:21.143" Title="PhD programs of medical school" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19008" CreationDate="2014-04-07T08:22:01.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main tracks of medicine: clinical (the &quot;standard&quot; medical practice), and research. Typically, doctors who work in the latter tend to pursue combined MD-PhD programs, and consequently have degrees in both a traditional scientific research discipline as well as medicine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably was easier in the past to make such a switch with &quot;just&quot; a medical degree; however, the increased specialization in the field makes it harder for a medical doctor to switch over to a research track without the increased training (unless he or she is working on the &quot;clinical&quot; side of therapeutic treatments designed in research programs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T08:22:01.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-07T08:31:55.657" Score="5" ViewCount="2459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to re-apply for a PhD in the US next year, but meanwhile, I decided to enroll in a PhD in my home country&#xA;I read the similar post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18081/applying-for-phd-while-enrolled-elsewhere&quot;&gt;Is it a good idea to stay an extra year at my masters institution while re-applying to PhD programs elsewhere?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am wondering whether you should admit/declare (in your application), that you are currently enrolled in a PhD program or it is better to hide this information from the US universities?&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13887" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T00:27:02.073" Title="Should you hide that you are already enrolled elsewhere when applying for another PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;transfer-student&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19029" CreationDate="2014-04-07T11:11:03.000" Score="14" ViewCount="2755" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happened with a friend of mine and I am asking this question on his behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend was recruited for a sponsored research project in the university and offered a part-time PhD along with that. He is currently completing his coursework (2nd semester) which is pretty exhaustive. He has been working pretty rigorously and one of his poster presentation was accepted in a reputed conference within 6 months of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the coursework in this semester was tough, he wasn't able to give any tangible output in terms of publications or concrete results. Now, suddenly he has been asked by his advisor to resign. This has come to him as a surprise since he was expecting some scolding as his guide is known for being arrogant (and he is very reputed researcher in the field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is unsure whether to leave PhD or how to proceed and convince his advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe he is pretty new (1 year of coursework) to the domain and since the project is pure research, he does deserve a chance. But I am unsure of how one should proceed in such cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; (based on queries in comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part Time PhD: He was recruited as an employee for the project by the university. And also offered a PhD. The stipend comes from the project cost(funding agency) and not from university funds (as is the case for direct PhD recruits in my university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advisor being Arrogant: He is very knowledgeable and reputed but known for scolding students frequently.(Some faculty members also agree to this including my own advisor)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T06:26:28.643" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T06:26:28.643" Title="How to proceed when advisor asks you to resign?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2014-04-07T11:17:17.607" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The model of why adjunct positions are needed is two Ideas: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;real world, practitioner, industry background to augment academic background of PhD TT (or, just as often, master's degree, at the time this model was crafted) faculty;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sporadic need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facts though are that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applies to regularly needed faculty (instructor with legal practice teaches course in tort law)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applies to faculty who make use only of academic training but are used for overflow (freshman composition).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bundling of these two ideas together is because they both mean dramatically reduced cost and commitment on the part of the institution, something that the tenure system makes all but impossible. That's how the adjunct position &quot;augments&quot; the value of the &quot;regular&quot; (at one time, majority) faculty.&#xA;&quot;Win-win&quot; was a subterfuge from the beginning. The &quot;misuse&quot; of adjunct positions was there from the beginning, willfully, but only now gets greater attention because of numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13890" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T11:48:42.690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T11:48:42.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19005" CreationDate="2014-04-07T13:14:59.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, &quot;there is no online version (never has been), and the only print copy exists in that country&quot; shouldn't be an obstacle - that's what inter-library agreements are for; univeristy libraries generally are able to get [a copy of] that book for you even it's not online and the physical copies are all located abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not conventient and does take time for it to arrive, but if it's widely cited but suspect, then taking a look at the original (and publishing what you find out) would be a Good Thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T13:14:59.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19013" CreationDate="2014-04-07T13:29:19.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, you should not hide it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the alternative scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unbeknownst to you, the supervisors know each other and find out that you are re-applying without informing either.  This may leave you known as dishonest and cause lasting damage to your reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The supervisors do not know each other, and you do get the new position.  Your old supervisor will naturally find out that you leave, and likely be annoyed (he/she will hopefully have invested time in you).  As for your new supervisor... are you going to keep it a secret forever?  Is the previous place so bad you would rather have a gap in your CV?  I hardly think so.  Eventually, your new supervisor will find out — which may again be detrimental to your reputation, because if you suddenly leave place A for place B, who knows if you may leave place B for yet another place, again unannounced?  If I were a supervisor, I would be reluctant to invest resources (time, effort, money) in someone I'm not sure would live up to commitments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception one might think of is if your old place is so bad that the association would actively damage your chances.  But as a PhD student, I think that's very unlikely.  In fact, if you were at a bad place but realised it soon enough to change, that could be interpreted positively and the bad reputation of a former supervisor need not reflect badly upon you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, in my opinion you should not hide that you are already enrolled elsewhere, ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T13:29:19.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19021" CreationDate="2014-04-07T14:08:25.097" Score="12" ViewCount="14021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a bit confused about the proper abbreviation of &lt;code&gt;Doctor of Philosophy&lt;/code&gt;. I sometimes read that this person obtained his D.Phil from X University, while someone else obtained his PhD from Y University. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy#Admission_7&quot;&gt;Wikipidia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The University of Oxford also abbreviates their Doctor of Philosophy degree as DPhil but in other respects is equivalent to a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it up to me to decide what abbreviation to use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13248" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:02:52.660" Title="Abbreviation of Doctor of Philosophy: PhD or DPhil?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19018" CreationDate="2014-04-07T14:14:08.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No - it depends on the degree you were awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most universities offer PhD degrees, with a smaller subset (usually UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university&quot;&gt;red-brick&lt;/a&gt; universities &amp;amp; Oxford) that offer DPhils. Some of the 'new' universities of the late 60s-early 70s used to offer DPhils. I was awarded a DPhil at Ulster, but subsequent to this, they switched to awarding PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13895" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T14:59:10.553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T14:59:10.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19013" CreationDate="2014-04-07T14:15:02.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I answered a similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14983/1010&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;No, you absolutely must not hide it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application will request your complete educational history, with official grades and records from each institution.  At the end, you will be asked to sign a statement that everything is true and complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitting an application that is false or has significant omissions is considered &lt;strong&gt;completely unethical&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's very likely that the institution where you're applying will eventually find out, and there can be extremely serious consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they find out while reviewing your application, they'll reject it immediately, even if you would otherwise have been accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they accept you into the program and then find out while you're enrolled, they may kick you out of the program, even if you're doing well.  With a record of dishonesty, you will probably not get into another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enroll in the program and finish your PhD, and they find out about the false application years later, they can revoke your degree.  You will almost certainly be fired from whatever job you have at that time, and you will not work in academia again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you really do need to include your current institution in your application.  You'll probably also need a letter of recommendation from someone at your current institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T14:15:02.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19018" CreationDate="2014-04-07T15:33:42.880" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The awarding institution determines the abbreviation*; someone made a Doctor of Philosophy at Oxford is a DPhil, someone made a Doctor of Philosophy at Cambridge is a PhD, and someone made a Doctor of Philosophy at a university in Austria is a Dr.phil. (before the name, not after).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*At the time awarded, as pointed out in another answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum: As Jack Orion points out, the abbreviation is of the Latin &lt;em&gt;doctor philosophiae&lt;/em&gt;, which is why appears both ways around (Latin is more flexible in its word order than English). Many other degree abbreviations make their Latin origin more obvious (e.g. the MLitt for 'master of letters', &lt;em&gt;magister litterarum&lt;/em&gt;; the LLB for 'batchelor of laws', &lt;em&gt;legium baccalaureatus&lt;/em&gt;, with conventional doubling of the 'L' to indicate the plural).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6899" LastEditorUserId="6899" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T14:06:31.747" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T14:06:31.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18969" CreationDate="2014-04-07T15:34:09.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a saying in writing: &quot;show, don't tell.&quot;  I think it's a bad idea to make any comparative statements between schools (exception: if you have an offer from one school, immediately contact the others to withdraw your application or say you would prefer an offer from them).  It's much better to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; how excited you are about a school, by praising them and showing them in the interview that you've done your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the interview's over, then I think it's good to say generic things in your communications with search committees and chairs, like &quot;I'm really excited about the possibility of joining your department,&quot; but I wouldn't get more specific than that.  Always be honest, but often it's better to not say too much until things work themselves out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Shapley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brilliant&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mathematicians&lt;/a&gt; (with follow-up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_E._Roth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;economists&lt;/a&gt;) did design such a mechanism that is fair for both departments and candidates alike, and won a Nobel Prize for it (or at least the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, whose status as a true Nobel is somewhat debatable).  If you would like to know why it will never be implemented in this context, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/more-on-matches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read this comment thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2017-03-25T20:21:44.883" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T20:21:44.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19008" CreationDate="2014-04-07T15:36:05.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a fair number of either researcher MDs or MD/PhDs, and myself have only a PhD, so I'll try to give my perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do You Need One&lt;/strong&gt;: Probably not, if you're only interested in the scientific questions about what you are doing, and are not particularly concerned with it's direct application to patient care or the clinical setting. Basically, if there is a department &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; a medical school that can house your research, you're likely fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Would Someone Pick One Up?&lt;/strong&gt;: There are many reasons for a researcher to have a MD or an MD/PhD - they're interested in the clinical aspects of the research science they do, have seen their interests evolve over time toward more research and less patient care, or are in research areas that necessitate having the expertise that comes along with having an MD. There are some medical school programs that are more oriented towards producing new researchers than practicing doctors, and medical schools are &lt;em&gt;massive&lt;/em&gt; sources of clinical research in the U.S. It's really not surprising there's a number of professors out there with MDs - my doctoral advisor was one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also some...field-specific traditions. For example, there are &lt;em&gt;tons&lt;/em&gt; of MDs working in infectious disease research and epidemiology, because it spawns fairly naturally from &quot;Treat this weird infection&quot; to &quot;Why does this weird infection infected X people?&quot; to &quot;How do we stop this weird infection from spreading&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T15:36:05.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19040" CreationDate="2014-04-07T16:17:50.087" Score="24" ViewCount="3505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was unable to find any information online about this. I asked a colleague who told me that there are no restrictions on who may review an article, although he thought it was very unlikely that an un-published person may be asked to review. I would like a general answer to this question; nevertheless, the specific context is in the following paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am submitting an engineering research paper in the near future and the submission process &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; that I suggest at least three reviewers. One of the reviewers I would like to suggest has not yet completed their PhD, although they have three publications that are closely related to mine. I know that it will be up to the editor to decide whether to contact this person, but it made me wonder if there are any specific criteria that reviewers have to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9139" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T23:15:33.187" Title="Who can peer-review articles?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2014-04-07T17:23:02.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is pretty much the same as everyone else's: talk to your advisor, go over the suspected problem point with him; if there is no resolution, reach out to others in the department (your advisor should do this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I'd like to relate a few incidents from my own experience. As a graduate student, I independently discovered a result in number theory that did not appear in the literature. I was unaware of the significance of the result, but it came up in discussion with my advisor. He informed me that Professor X had found this result, but had never published it, and that I should not publish it, thereby &quot;scooping&quot; the (world-famous) expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While working with my second advisor, in a different area, I read a paper by a major player in that area who had developed a widely used technique. I mantioned to my advisor that there was a point in the proof of that technique that I didn't understand and he told me that no one understood the proof, but all assumed it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many years later, I now work in a different area. But while I was getting started in it I ran across a theorem in a book by a well-known expert in the field. What it said contradicted other things I had read. Not fully trusting myself, I reached out to the author who acknowledged that what he had written was not correct. He was very grateful for the correction and saved it against the advent of a second edition of his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I wrote a paper which contained an error, an error I should not have made because I was familiar with a counterexample to the statement I made. No referee caught the mistake, and only one person ever wrote to me about it, and I am very grateful to that person. Everyone reacts to these things differently, but I did not take offense at the correction. Granted this situation is a bit different than yours, because the correction came from a well-known source, and not from a graduate student. I would like to think I would have been equally accepting if the correction came from a student. I was embarrassed to be corrected by an expert, whereas I might have been peeved to be corrected by a student. However, were it you who wrote to me, you would never have known my reaction. I would have thanked you for pointing out the error, and perhaps have apologized for making it. But that's just me, and I'm far from well-known in the field. So, I have no idea of what my more famous colleagues have to deal with on a daily basis. The paper in question has never been corrected to my knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, everyone reacts differently in these cases. Work with your advisor. The most important thing for you is to determine if there is indeed an error in the paper, and, if not, to understand why the paper is correct so that you can move forward with a correct grasp of what the paper established. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T17:23:02.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19014" CreationDate="2014-04-07T17:32:17.333" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult situation. Regardless of the facts of the matter, there appears to be have been a breakdown of trust/communication: either the advisor has been sending signals for a while that the person didn't pick up on, or the advisor is indeed pulling this out of the blue, which also signifies a breakdown of communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best first thing to do is for the student to set up a meeting with the advisor to understand the advisor's reasons. It's possible that a face-to-face meeting might allow the advisor to express their underlying concerns in a more productive way that could lead to a concrete plan for activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that fails, or the advisor refuses to meet, the next person to involve is usually the chair of graduate studies at the department (or the equivalent). There is usually someone whose job is to oversee the graduate program and manage conflicts like this. They might be able to mediate a rapproachment between the advisor and student (or even find another advisor for the student). I've had to do this in the past when I served in this capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: &lt;strong&gt;if the facts are as you outlined&lt;/strong&gt;, then I think the student deserves a more reasonable explanation from the advisor as to why they're being terminated. Sadly though, in my experience  I've often found that students ignore signals being sent to them, and that advisors are unwilling/unable to give direct and clear feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T17:32:17.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19014" CreationDate="2014-04-07T17:55:21.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation: FUBAR. I'm quite sorry for your friend. Good thing is: things can't get much worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now he is a student and the professor is reputed, if he resigns then they are both just human beings. These are two different contexts and your friend is, more or least, with one foot on each of them. With the insight of the second context and a potential imminent resign, I'd ask, from a person to another, &quot;why?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's for the lack of results/publications, your friend should check why did that happen and whether that is going to continue in the future. It's not only a matter of doing and finishing a PhD, but also a matter of how worthy a PhD with few publications is in the end, considering the opportunity cost and all the effort and time that it is going to need. It may be a &quot;Pyrrhic victory&quot; and that is something very few people warn about (actually I haven't seen anyone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your friend deserves an explanation. Please keep us posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand. This is a failure in communication, as @Suresh pointed. We only have one side of the story, your friend's, through a third person (you), so it's hard to know. But the description you make of the advisor is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he is arrogant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he makes things suddenly with no prior notice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he doesn't provide arguments or explanations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do in such a situation (if possible, usually not easy) is to switch to a different supervisor, because that guy may be reputed and good at research, but he does not seem good (from your description) at dealing with people, managing them and advising in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, remember, it's hard not to be biased when all the information that we have comes from a friend of one of the parts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T17:55:21.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19037" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:09:57.127" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any way/resource for finding the list of universities offering a specific degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to find which universities have a specific program (both undergraduate and graduate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My target is the US and UK universities, but other countries are also useful (though, I think it is difficult to search because of different terminologies in different languages for a discipline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T18:39:51.403" Title="How to find the list of universities running a specific program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19057" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:16:51.983" Score="3" ViewCount="1984" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of different backgrounds in higher education systems, different titles are popularly used for administrative titles in academia such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;University level - President, Vice Chancellor, Rector, Principal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Faculty level - Dean only&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Department level - Head, Chair&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For leading a faculty, the only common term is &lt;code&gt;Dean&lt;/code&gt;. Am I right? or there are other alternatives too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more interestingly, the title of &lt;code&gt;Dean&lt;/code&gt; is only used for the manager of a faculty, not other positions. Correct me if I'm wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the historical meaning of &lt;code&gt;dean&lt;/code&gt;, and what is special about this title, which is only used for a specific level in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T00:34:55.280" Title="Is there an alternative to Dean title?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19038" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:24:27.937" Score="37" ViewCount="24480" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the crucial skills of a scientist is to identify research gaps. Unfortunately, students rarely receive much formal training in this skill during their studies. How can one get better at identifying research gaps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some problems that I have seen which make identifying research gaps difficult:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best problems are already identified or solved by other people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors of publications sometimes avoid being overly critical of their own work, and try to phrase their publication so as to make it seem definitive, and avoid admitting that they failed to explain a phenomenon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some scientists are wary of being scooped, and avoid mentioning what they see as future projects in the discussion section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due to publish or perish culture, there is pressure to split research efforts into minimal chunks - such chunks may seem like they are steps along the way to a solution, but in reality, trying to work on the apparent next step is risky because the author is likely to scoop you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High-profile journals such as &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt; probably prefer papers which answer many questions, rather than presenting many uninvestigated open ends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lesser journals may have publications that have only solved part of a problem, but those may be buried under a sea of uninteresting publications. (also the lesser journals are much more numerous and harder to get abreast of)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easy to confirm that an idea has already been done, but it is difficult to confirm that an idea is truly novel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T19:43:57.880" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T11:51:06.507" Title="How to get better at identifying research gaps?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19014" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:34:05.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with Suresh and Trylks advice. The relationship between your friend and his advisor is broken. That is a problem that your friend cannot avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is not only your friend's problem. It is his advisor's too and since he is the senior party, he is the one that needs to do more than your friend to fix it. I also do not get this &quot;resign&quot; thing. Your friend has a contract with the university, not with the advisor. It has also probably been assigned a committee for your friend's PHD that includes other professors except his advisor. If your friend is incapable for a PHD, again this decision is not entirely up to the advisor. It is the advisor that needs to prove your friend failed to meet the requirements of the project / PHD and your friend should not just &quot;roll over dead&quot; just because the advisor is not happy with him. So resigning is out of the question. If he has already a poster  publication, did well in the required courses then I think the advisor will have a hard time proving your friend is incapable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your friend should ask his advisor what he can do better to make things work. He should follow his advice, be extra nice and work extra hard. But there is absolutely no reason for him to resign. If the advisor is right (and as powerful as he believes he is), he can always fire your friend. But he will still have to justify to his fellow professors why he took a promising student such as your friend (otherwise your friend would not be selected for a PHD) and failed to &quot;advice&quot; him. It is your friend advisor's failure as well and both parties should suffer the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this advice is based on your &quot;word&quot; that your friend did actually 90-100% the best he could. In any other case, where the advisor repeatedly warned your friend about potential improvements and your friend deliberately ignored him then he should just suck it up, take it like a man / woman and suffer the consequences. But if the advisor failed to effectively advice your friend, then this failure should be fixed by both parties and not simply by your friend resigning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T03:07:30.380" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T03:07:30.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:35:36.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you should decide what is your major. For universities in USA you can use websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US News&lt;/a&gt; or like &lt;a href=&quot;https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BigFuture&lt;/a&gt;. You can google for finding university offering specific courses and degrees about UK. I believe for US universities US News is the best website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13901" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T18:35:36.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2014-04-07T18:39:51.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK graduate schools are officially ranked through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rae.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Assessment Exercise&lt;/a&gt; (being currently phased out to be replaced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ref.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Excellence Framework&lt;/a&gt;), so you can get a full list of programs that are of any worth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/selectUOA.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, rankings are produced from time to time by the National Research Council. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/Resdoc/PGA_044749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The most recent set&lt;/a&gt; is from 2009. The methodology and reporting format are beyond weird, but at least the list of programs is useful (albeit difficult to navigate in the Excel file format; I found my area, statistics, under &quot;Physical sciences&quot;, for instance, which is a very distant shot). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1995 rankings&lt;/a&gt; were done with involvement of real statisticians, so I trust them better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T18:39:51.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19034" CreationDate="2014-04-07T19:07:20.783" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding good research &quot;gaps&quot; is indeed a challenging and important task. It has different components that all require slightly different skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, a useful research gap is &lt;strong&gt;interesting&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;feasible&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;unexplored&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;interesting&lt;/strong&gt;: I think this part goes without saying. But how do you determine 'interestingness' ? This is a complex mix of structural aspects of the field and community opinions, so it varies a lot from area to area. But probably the best way to understand what's interesting is by talking to people, asking them what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; think is interesting, and &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt;, and also understanding how even the basic questions in your field came to be deemed interesting (an advisor/senior researcher can often help with the latter). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;feasible&lt;/strong&gt;: It's not hard to list the &quot;top 10 open questions&quot; in your field. And for some researchers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html&quot;&gt;that constitutes their entire research program&lt;/a&gt;. But that's not realistic for most people, and especially for students. Feasibility is about determining whether the tools exist to even make a dent on the problem. This requires a lot of experience in using different methods and understanding what they can and cannot do for you. It also involves thinking somewhat &quot;sideways&quot; about tools and problems, because it's likely that the obvious approach to an interesting problem has been tried. You will have to read papers very closely to find little gaps, or missing reasoning steps, that might suggest that a technique could get used. And you have to learn how to &quot;fail quickly&quot; when trying a new idea. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;unexplored&lt;/strong&gt;: While it might be educational to work on a new direction that has been explored before, you don't want that to be the fate of all your research explorations ! Here again, being plugged into your community and understanding what people have tried (or not) is also helpful. There are often &quot;folklore&quot; statements of the form &quot;Oh this doesn't work because...&quot;. Sometimes it's true. and sometimes it's not. But it's best to understand what people have seen and what they're trying. Related to this is the idea of &lt;strong&gt;knowing your strengths&lt;/strong&gt;: you'll accumulate a set of tools over time that you're an expert at. Make sure that you can use them: that gives you a competitive advantage. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get a lot of questions here about whether anyone can do research (even if they're not in a formal academic environment). The answer of course is yes. But where amateurs (in the sense of people not being paid to do research) can often slip up is in identifying gaps that are feasible and unexplored (finding interesting gaps is usually not that difficult to do on your own) because they're not plugged into a larger commmunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: In response to the edit, &lt;a href=&quot;http://intelligence.org/2014/02/21/john-baez-on-research-tactics/&quot;&gt;here's an interview with John Baez&lt;/a&gt; that directly addresses the first point (of all the good problems being taken). John Baez's other suggestions are very good as well, and form a nice 'counter' to the Hamming article linked above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T22:08:28.157" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T22:08:28.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19018" CreationDate="2014-04-07T19:10:14.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither D. Phil. nor Ph. D. are abbreviations for 'Doctor of Philosophy', but for 'Doctor Philosophiae' or 'Philosophiae Doctor' respectively. Sorry to be pedantic, but when this is realised it becomes easier to understand why the Ph. D. abbreviation exists at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13903" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T19:10:14.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2014-04-07T19:49:33.433" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who can peer-review articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anyone competent enough to be asked in the first place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For conferences (e.g., in engineering or computer science), peer-review is conducted by a Programme Committee. To be invited to be part of a Programme Committee (typically done by Chairs or Senior Programme Committee in larger conferences), you need to have a reasonable track record of research and a solid reputation in the area in question. I have seen PCs of reputable conferences in CS with many senior PhDs (I was in PCs myself as a PhD student).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For journals, you are invited to review by a member of the Editorial Board. They would weigh your experience and track-record accordingly. Again, you may get asked to review journal papers as a PhD student (I was also asked to review various journal papers as a PhD student).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, you may be delegated a peer-review by someone who was asked to do a review (where that person was asked by the EB of a journal or as part of a PC for a conference). In that case, however, the responsibility for the quality of the review lies squarely with the delegator. In this case, a junior PhD student might be given a peer-review but with the idea that the delegator will check over it and discuss before submitting. (This is a good way to learn the process of peer-reviewing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was unable to find any information online about this. I asked a colleague who told me that there are no restrictions on who may review an article, although he thought it was very unlikely that an un-published person may be asked to review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your colleague. The delegation of peer-review is left to the judgement of the EB/PC/Chairs. They will take into account seniority and research track record in their judgement. Formal restrictions would only serve to rule out qualified reviewers from an often already too narrow field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am submitting an engineering research paper in the near future and the submission process requires that I suggest at least three reviewers. One of the reviewers I would like to suggest has not yet completed their PhD, although they have three publications that are closely related to mine. I know that it will be up to the editor to decide whether to contact this person, but it made me wonder if there are any specific criteria that reviewers have to meet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest submitting the name of the supervisor of the PhD student you think would be a good reviewer. The supervisor offers the editor a more senior name, should be knowledgeable in the area and if not, can solicit the advice of the PhD student in question or delegate the review entirely if appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per my comment (and as a side note since it is not directly asked about) I find the practice of suggesting reviewers for your own paper a little strange (though I have seen it before on occasion). First there's the obvious possibility of selecting one's friends or of prior deal-making (assuming the suggestions were taken into account ... otherwise why would they ask?). Aside from that, if I'm submitting to a journal in my area, I expect the editorial board to have some members that would be sufficiently knowledgeable about my topic to get the paper in good hands. Having to suggest reviewers calls into question (slightly) the competence of the EB and/or the relevance of the journal. In any case, if the journal is otherwise reputable, this should not hold you back from submitting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T23:15:33.187" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T23:15:33.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:00:33.120" Score="8" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm writing a review article and I'd like to use figures &#xA;after [1]&quot; or similar? How am I expected to deal with copyright?  Obviously a review article is going to use existing figures, more or less--that's the point.  It seems from sites like IEEE that the expected practice is to pay, per figure, for each graphic used.  Is that really how things work?  Or is there some &quot;fair use&quot; clause that can be invoked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:24:52.967" Title="How do authors deal with figure copyrights when writing review articles?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:06:52.673" Score="2" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to do research (mostly computer science) at university &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;, including work on my master's thesis, parts of which I now want to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I recently started working at another academic institution, university &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt;, where my research focus is slightly different – so there's no big topical overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had submitted a paper a few months ago, I would have listed myself and my thesis supervisor as the authors, with my old affiliation of university &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;. But now, should I just change my affiliation to university &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt;? Would it be considered unethical to publish something that wasn't approved by them? (Even if I did it in my spare time?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the recommended way to follow here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13907" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T20:06:52.673" Title="I changed organizations, but want to publish old work -- what should my affiliation be?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-07T20:57:31.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19034" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:35:03.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way I know is to read, read, and then read some more. The more you know and truly understand about your field and other fields, the better you'll be at identifying gaps. There is no shortcut to this. It takes a lot of hard work and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13911" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T20:35:03.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19041" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:00:57.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules vary widely by publisher here. It also depends on whose work you're &quot;copying.&quot; If it's your own graphic, then there's usually no issue associated with it. However, if it belongs to someone else, then you should either request the permission from the rights holder, or redraw the figure yourself (if it's a schematic, then this would eliminate copyright issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, a journal or publisher may allow you to reuse people's work from within the same publisher's journals without fee. But again, this is something the individual publishers determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T21:00:57.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19068" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:33:30.907" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US and UK higher education system, who is responsible for a program curriculum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if planning to modify the curriculum by adding an uncommon course, who should approve this modification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that the change is truly uncommon. Can the department head decide about it? or needs the approval of higher officials (such as dean or VP for Academics) or there are boards and committees to decide uncommon changes (for the sake of education quality assurance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T11:47:35.177" Title="Who should approve changes in curriculum?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19041" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:47:11.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or is there some &quot;fair use&quot; clause that can be invoked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fair use exists in some jurisdictions (e.g., the US) but not others (e.g., the UK). The rules for fair use are somewhat vague, and most publishers would prefer not to rely on it. Talk to the journal that you're writing the article for, and ask them how they like to handle this kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a practice in some fields of paying royalties for this kind of thing, then I'm not aware of it. Authors want their work cited in review papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the figures you want to use are from an open-access journal, then you should read the license of that journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T21:47:11.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:54:16.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, this is a classic example of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/18651/1482&quot;&gt;shared governance&lt;/a&gt;. Typically there will be a well-defined bureaucratic process for proposing a new course. You write an outline and fill out a bunch of forms. Then the other faculty in your department review it. There will also be layers of approval by managers, but the managers are supposed to be reviewing the course for administrative stuff (e.g., maximum section size, which has fiscal implications), not for content (which is where faculty are the experts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important, especially at a community college, to make a course that will be useful to students if they transfer to another school. E.g., I recently proposed a course, Relativity for Poets, at the community college where I teach, and we wanted to make sure that it would transfer to the state university systems so as to satisfy gen. ed. requirements. At community colleges, these concerns may make it essentially impossible to offer a new and innovative course if there is nothing like it in the state university system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that a new course does go through all the approvals, it's still not guaranteed that the school will offer it. For example, they could decide that it's too expensive to offer, or there might not be enough demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T21:54:16.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19055" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:55:38.893" Score="2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an organization, a university has various types of regulations (academics, disciplinary, etc), which are separately documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do (at least) large universities prepare a comprehensive book containing the code of laws of the university in different sections. I mean a reference book addressing all regulations of the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when there is an official conflict between two parties, using that reference to justify their actions, instead of dealing with section documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, could you please reference them for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T13:27:18.527" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T13:28:15.493" Title="Do universities have a comprehensive reference document for all their policies and regulations?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;policy&gt;&lt;disciplinary-action&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2014-04-07T22:10:44.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add one small thing to @badroit's answer, there are two very common ways to get asked to be a reviewer for a journal or conference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know the editor or someone on the program committee &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submit an article yourself for review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gotten more requests to review from my PhD supervisor who edited a journal and from journals and conferences I've submitted to. Journals are particularly prone to this in my experience--I've had review requests come in within a few days of my submission of my own article. Conferences tend to be delayed by a year such that submissions to the prior year's conference can generate invitations to review in the current year. This seems to be especially true if you've had a paper accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that being said, eligible reviewers tend to be eligible submitters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T22:10:44.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19056" CreationDate="2014-04-07T22:25:50.080" Score="26" ViewCount="7473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have being planning to design an automatic pornographic movie detector with the machine learning knowledge that I just acquired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now in the stage of planning how to perform the system evaluation. The intuition is to just test the algorithms with some pornographic movies and some non-pornographic movies and compute the false negative/positive rates. I simply feel that for any evaluation method, I would have to obtain real pornographic movies to test the system!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here comes the dilemma. As you know (or may not know!), basically all the pornographic movies are not free. I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; regard it as ethical to just download illegal pirated movies, as after all they are for a scientific research, which values copyright a lot. On the other hand, it is a bit awkward for me to request funding from my PI to buy the porn videos! Paying them myself is definitely not a feasible solution, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How may I handle this case properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T01:13:44.253" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T06:04:25.987" Title="How to get pornographic movies for scientific research purposes?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19054" CreationDate="2014-04-07T22:40:16.537" Score="11" ViewCount="2363" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a department head needs a faculty member, how is the process of hiring one started and conducted (at least in US and UK universities)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of particular interest is the following;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finance: Department head should ask the Dean for financing the salary? Who is the final decision maker?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Selection: Is the department head responsible for forming the search committee? and is he responsible for approving the qualifications? Can higher officials (e.g. Dean) interfere in the selection?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After the selection, how are the official matters handled? Who signs the contract? and who can terminate it (if not tenured)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the role of human resources in this process?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T11:07:24.867" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T13:28:53.880" Title="What is the procedure for hiring a professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19053" CreationDate="2014-04-07T23:09:59.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(US-specific; public university)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find a huge variation in procedures across universities. There really isn't one standard method. Having said that, I can at least suggest what happens in (one) American public universities (private universities have different financing structure)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Financing&lt;/strong&gt;: In our universities, &quot;slots&quot; are line items that are approved by the legislature and are created ultimately by approval of the president of the university in conjunction with the dean of the college. There's a lot of negotiating that goes on to acquire one of these slots, and it's typically based on some &quot;soft&quot; arguments: &quot;look how much research money we're generating, and how many students we're bringing in&quot; and hard arguments: &quot;We can only get this gigantic grant if you promise to give us a faculty slot&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selection&lt;/strong&gt;: departments are usually quite protective of the search process, and control most aspects of it. Again, the degree of shielding depends on politics: it's not unheard of for deans to get actively involved, especially if the department is weak. Within the department, the chair might take charge of selection, or assign a committee to do it, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Official stuff&lt;/strong&gt;: a contract is ultimately signed by the university, and all official paperwork must go through them. Negotiations also happen with the dean via the chair. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HR&lt;/strong&gt;: They're usually involved initially, to make sure job ads are posted correctly, and in compliance with university, state and federal employment laws. They're also involved after the offer is made, especially if there are legal requirements, international issues and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T23:09:59.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19050" CreationDate="2014-04-07T23:18:55.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It will be called a &quot;Policy and Procedures Handbook&quot; or something like that at most universities in the US. The reason to have such a handbook is to ensure that employees follow proper protocols about a range of different issues. This protects both the employees and the universities legally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T23:18:55.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19052" CreationDate="2014-04-08T00:18:49.130" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't get this. This is a little like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classification.gov.au/Pages/Home.aspx&quot;&gt;Movies Classification Board&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.filmratings.com/&quot;&gt;Classification &amp;amp; Ratings Administration&lt;/a&gt; feeling awkward about asking to view the movies they are going to rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are developing an algorithm for detecting pornography, why would it be awkward to request funding to acquire test resources? This is an entirely &lt;strong&gt;legitimate application, that has huge potential, both economically and socially&lt;/strong&gt; (note: use of bold inspired by OP). There are many researchers all over the world working in similar fields. Clearly, at some point you will need to discuss your work with your PI, and presumably, they are already aware of the work you have been doing in the previous 6/9/18 months, and perhaps already requires justification against existing research funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the case, your work will need to be approved by, and comply rigidly with, your institution's ethics committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a number of steps you could consider before committing to viewing full-length extreme hardcore films. In making some suggestions, I'm going to make a few assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1 Your definition of a pornographic movie is one classified as&#xA;&quot;mainly concerned with sex&quot;, and involves extreme nudity and acts of&#xA;sexual behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your algorithm looks at exposed and interacting body content in some way, and does not work on quality of script and acting (otherwise daytime soapies will bring up many false positives)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your algorithm looks at small fragments of movie clips, and not the entire 60/70/90 minutes worth, or however long these movies go for. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your PI knows what you've been spending your previous doing, which is most likely already associated with existing research funding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some suggestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire a number of movie trailers; these are usually freely available for all types of movies, and typically run for about a minute. Contact the various movie studios directly if you need to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to your national Film and Television archive body. They are likely to have a number of suitable media to preliminary early test procedures on. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfsa.gov.au/&quot;&gt;Various&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/&quot;&gt;bodies&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bfi.org.uk/&quot;&gt;exist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to other researchers in this field. There might be a good standard set of images/movies that can be used to determine baseline effectiveness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to your local friendly adult shop and check out the &quot;specials&quot; bin. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, and not the best approach to take, look at the internet. I'm guessing if you typed in the right combination of words, you'd get unlimited supply of short, copyright-free videos, to use both as a test group and control group. But I stress, this needs to be done in strict accordance with your institutions policies for network and    computing use, and therefore should be approved by your PI and ethics committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whatever approach you take, the summary is: &lt;strong&gt;talk to your PI&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T00:18:49.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19033" CreationDate="2014-04-08T00:34:55.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title &quot;Dean&quot; is by no means restricted to the leader of a faculty (or college, or other similar unit). For instance, most US universities have a &quot;Dean of Students&quot; who is responsible for student services, discipline, etc. Some have a &quot;Dean of Residential Life&quot; who runs the dorms. My alma mater had a &quot;Dean of Student Activities&quot;, popularly known as the &quot;Dean of Fun&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T00:34:55.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19052" CreationDate="2014-04-08T01:09:09.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor knows that she is funding &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to do research about pornography, I don't think she should be particularly shocked by the the request. If your supervisor does not know, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; will be the more awkward conversation and it sounds like its time to have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, good options might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for freely licensed pornography. Creative Commons &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;provides a way to search for freely licensed material&lt;/a&gt; including a way to do Google searches for permissively licensed video.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to rely on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt; justification and go ahead and use copyrighted works you can find for free online (e.g., from free porn video websites).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could ask commercial pornography distributors to donate material for science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are risks with going with the fair use argument and it's always best to get your institution's general counsel's opinion first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T01:09:09.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19052" CreationDate="2014-04-08T01:18:19.970" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As you know (or may not know!), basically all the pornographic movies are not free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this not quite realistic: A fair chunk of the total internet bandwidth goes to porn.  There are a lot of &quot;free&quot; websites. And a lot of &quot;studios&quot; offer samples which would suit your research, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a two-hour porn movie to test your algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, what is the state of the art in this field? Is anybody else working in that domain? What are they doing, i.e. how are they getting films to test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13921" LastEditorUserId="9490" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T06:04:25.987" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T06:04:25.987" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-08T01:56:10.787" Score="0" ViewCount="728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m writing an academic document and I can’t seem to find any specific mention of how to refer to a personal work log. Work logs are essentially to be published journals documenting what happened when in a computing project (but not published in an official journal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.york.ac.uk/integrity/ieee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE referencing style guide from the University of York&lt;/a&gt; is possibly a weblog. What is the best citation type for such a work log?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13925" LastEditorUserId="13925" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T14:44:35.933" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T14:44:35.933" Title="IEEE referencing : Acceptable reference format for personal work log" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-08T05:11:59.500" Score="2" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently offered a six-month undergraduate thesis at two places. Let us call them A and B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking to apply abroad for my Masters in pure math next year. Hence, &lt;strong&gt;recommendations are important to me.  I am not sure which offer will yield a more useful recommendation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professors who have accepted me at A and B are both the leading experts in my field of interest (Algebraic Geometry), and have won the highest honour given for Mathematics in my country. The professor at B seems vey encouraging and helpful, and has found the time to go through my math blog and offer feedback, while the professor at A has a reputation for being abstruse, and hence perhaps not ideal for a person not experienced in research. However, A is a much more reputed and well known school than B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go to A or B? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will a recommendation from a well-known professor from a less well known school matter as much as one from a well known professor from a well known school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should my personal equation with the professor be the most important factor for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13929" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T15:54:39.930" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T18:40:36.750" Title="Which undergraduate research experience will help more for graduate admissions in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19060" CreationDate="2014-04-08T05:54:03.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's not published anywhere, be it in a peer-reviewed journal, conference proceedings, some book or whitepaper, then don't put it as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to our work log, we first frobnicated the machine, …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of including references is for interested readers to follow up on them. If it's some internal document nobody will ever see, then it does not qualify as a reference. It also makes it impossible for peer review to happen: you could claim anything and back it up with a reference to your internal document—and nobody could ever (dis)prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/04/can-you-cite-personal-life-experience.html&quot;&gt;has an entry on that subject&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you have other &lt;strong&gt;nonretrievable sources&lt;/strong&gt; (personal communications, like personal e-mail and phone calls), these &lt;strong&gt;do not get reference list entries&lt;/strong&gt; either (although they do receive in-text citations, because they involve other people than just yourself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13907" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T05:54:03.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19066" CreationDate="2014-04-08T07:24:07.033" Score="12" ViewCount="2487" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student and serve as an assistant to several courses. Now, the students were complaining that some rules of our course are not good for them - there are some restriction what has to be achieved in order to participate in the final exam, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they need a certain amount of credits in their homework,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everybody who has failed that course in the years before, have the get the credits for their homework again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have freedom in chosing the threshold, but the rules are written in the examination regulations (I'm also a member of the that examination committee) that is not the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some professors in my department who don't follow that rules; or (even) worse come up with some funny new rules contradicting the rules (like (you don't have to read this to answer the question)  &lt;em&gt;If you have 50% of the credits until the third to last week of the semester, you are able to participate in the final exam. If you pass, you pass. If you fail, you are only allowed to participate in the repetition of the final exam if you have 50% of your credits in the last week of the semester&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from them violating the rules, the problem is now that students come to my course and say: &quot;Hey, professor XX did not have the rules last year. Why do you have them? That is so unfair! And you can have it, too! Because, nobody complained last year! Cmon, we will not tell anyone!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as I hear something like that, I complain. The problem is then: No student would tell someone things like that (exept in the mentioned case when they try to convince me to do it that way, too); the professors are sometimes not informed, but also sometimes aware of that und don't write anything on their course homepage. So nobody can find out. If you find out (probably at the end of the semester), it is too late and if you want to declare that course as not following the rules, you are only damaging the students of that course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was talking to the responsible persons in my department; they see the problem, but they don't want to have fights within the department and they don't to establish automatic announcements from the professors what the rules for their course are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do against it? The atmosphere in my course was very bad because of that. I could go to the head of the faculty or the university who will end all that, but then I fair to be an abandoned person in my department. Also, I want not to damage students and declare their passed exams as illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T12:57:56.420" Title="&quot;But in the other course this was different!&quot; - How to react on this if the other professor did not follow the rules?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-08T07:27:48.203" Score="6" ViewCount="747" Body="&lt;p&gt;On some project grant applications, one gets a question on something along the lines of: &quot;If you are unsuccessful in your application for this funding round, how do you plan on funding this project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I answer this? Seems like some kind of catch-out question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13932" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T13:59:58.810" Title="How to answer question about funding a project" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19064" CreationDate="2014-04-08T09:24:10.793" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a standard problem in places where a mentality of &lt;em&gt;unwritten rules&lt;/em&gt; has become standard (you know, the places that have &quot;rules&quot; and actual rules). If this becomes ingrained in the university culture (both in the student body and the faculty), nobody can really tell anymore what is a an actual rule and what isn't (and, really, the answer will be different for each teacher). For this reason I prefer a relatively strict &lt;em&gt;no exceptions&lt;/em&gt; policy in my courses. I understand the downsides of this model (see for instance also here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3664/how-do-i-appropriately-penalize-late-projects&quot;&gt;How do I appropriately penalize late projects?&lt;/a&gt;), but at least everybody knows where he stands in such a model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that you are not in a position to change university culture, so you need to play the hand you are dealt. I see two main ways to go forward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Become more lenient yourself. If a number of senior professors deems it fit to not enforce the official rules or implement weaker rules, then maybe the official rules are in fact perceived too strict. In that case, maybe the answer is just to run with the herd and allow for more exceptions etc. yourself. Of course the preferred solution in that case would be to change to official rules, but it is well conceivable that this is not feasible for one reason or another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Announce &lt;strong&gt;very, very clearly&lt;/strong&gt; at the beginning of the semester that in your case the rules will be the rules, no matter how things were in previous years or with other teachers. Follow through on your claim, and build up a reputation as being a &lt;em&gt;strict guy&lt;/em&gt;. Note that being strict is not the same as being an unpopular / bad teacher. I have continuously followed this strategy in my teaching, and still receive good to excellent teaching evaluations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you follow the second strategy, some complaining, accusing and guilt-tripping  will happen. It is your task as a teacher to be able to distinguish between warranted complains (and react to them) and more manipulative ones (that are to be ignored). These examples you give quite clearly fall into the second category. What you need to do is find a number of polite standard answers to these statements, and then forget them. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hey, professor XX did not have the rules last year. Why do you have them? That is so unfair!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: sorry, but it is impossible to change anything in a course if I am forced to always do things exactly like the were done in previous years. I am trying to be more strict this year because I have seen that unclear rules are also not beneficial for many students, as nobody really knows anymore what the actual rules are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cmon, we will not tell anyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: while I appreciate that, I am afraid that I do not &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to make an exception here. Making an exception for you is unfair towards the other students that did not get this exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other minor comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I could go to the head of the faculty or the university who will end all that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if that is even true. In all places that I have been to, it would be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unlikely that a head of faculty micro-manages how professors do their teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, I want not to damage students and declare their passed exams as illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is understandable and correct. If you truely think that students were under the impression that a certain rule or exception would apply to them, I would let them pass as part of a transition period. If you think that they were aware that they should actually fail, but simply try to come up with a reason why this is not the case, then be strict and let them fail. Note that this is the reason why announcing your strict rules enforcement as clearly as possible is key. In your situation, being strict is only fair if you give your students advance warning, as the seem to be trained by your university that, by and large, teachers are lenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T09:29:29.123" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19069" CreationDate="2014-04-08T10:26:44.647" Score="5" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, it is common in the UK universities to offer honorary faculty positions to their partners from other universities or outside academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct me if I'm wrong, these positions are non-salary for the sake of official bonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, how one can express interest for this kind of positions and official connections? Who is responsible for granting these positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND do other countries have similar positions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-04-14T11:41:12.020" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T14:23:09.787" Title="How to get honorary academic position in UK universities?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:42:22.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proposing a new course or modifying the course requirements for any degree at my university requires several layers of approval:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department's (under)graduate study committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tenure-track faculty of the department, by majority vote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department head/chair, who transmits the proposal to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The college executive committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dean, who transmits the proposal to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The campus educational policy committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The faculty senate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last step is usually pro forma; without a formal motion for a vote, the proposal passes automatically.  Each of the other steps (and even the last step, if so moved) requires actual discussion and voting, and the discussion at higher levels is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; limited to administrative matters as Ben Crowell suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For courses, there is an escape valve called &quot;special topics&quot; courses, which can be offered on an ad hoc basis with only department head/chair approval. Most new courses start as special-topics courses; the formal approvals are only required to give the course its own number.  But special topics courses can't be used as degree requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T11:47:35.177" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T11:47:35.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19067" CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:58:41.653" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of UK universities have their policies on the appointment of Honorary positions on their websites. It appears from a number of them that the appointments are usually made upon the request from for example, the head of a school, within the institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears (from the University of St Andrews) that appointments are made when it is deemed to be beneficial to both parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An Honorary appointment is an arrangement which allows distinguished individuals from other institutions and organisations to collaborate with academic staff at the University of St Andrews and have access to certain University facilities to further their own research, cooperate on joint research or contribute to the teaching of the University.  It recognises an ongoing association with the University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of the policies it appears that the Head of School makes that application and it is the HR department that makes the final decision on the granting of the Honorary position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I relation to gaining a Honorary position, I would think that if you are well known in your field of research there is a better chance of gaining one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of links to policies for the following universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/teaching-and-learning/policies/Honorary.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of St Andrews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/policies-and-procedures/employment-and-contractual-arrangements/honorary-appointments/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swansea University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/docs/honorary_titles.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UCL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/so/2011/chapter11-section1.html#heading2-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cambridge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ireland (my home country) I believe they are occasionally awarded. Trinity College Dublin have Honorary positions in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcd.ie/hr/assets/pdf/Academic_Titles.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listing of academic titles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-12-29T14:23:09.787" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T14:23:09.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1930" CreationDate="2014-04-08T12:19:01.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am not mistaken, you may decorate your name with &quot;Dr. Dr.&quot; if you have two PhD degrees. Writing &quot;Dr. Firstname Lastname, PhD&quot; would probably also indicate two degrees, e.g. one from Germany and one from the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The information letter is no longer available, so I have not read that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T12:19:01.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-08T13:06:14.657" Score="2" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose I'm not the first person who came across this idea. I would like to compare math branches by means of numbers of articles published. I have access to two large math article indices: AMS' MathSciNet and arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is it possible (in either of them) to get the information &lt;em&gt;how many articles were published with a given MSC class, year by year&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T06:33:00.187" Title="arXiv or MathSciNet statistics by MSC classes and time" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19064" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:01:53.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was about to recommend talking to the responsible person in your department, and then saw you did that.  They handled the situation atrociously; as a PhD student, this sort of department conflict shouldn't be put on your shoulders.  You don't have the freedom to deviate from policy as easily as a professor (for instance, you're more vulnerable if the school suddenly gets serious about it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me if you've asked this, but a good question to ask the responsible person is a flat out: &quot;What should I do?&quot;  It's not your responsibility to fix the department's mess.  It's that person's job to give you an unequivocal answer about what you should do, and then back you up on it: either tell you to follow the rules, and that any student complaints should be directed their way, or tell you to break the rules and agree to cover you if there's fallout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I couldn't get a clear &quot;go ahead and break the rules, if anyone's upset you can say I told you to&quot; then I would go ahead and follow the rules, tell students you simply have no power over the issue, and that the person in charge is the responsible department official.  If they don't want to deal with fixing the problem, it's certainly their job to field complaints about the result.  That's very much my response, though, which includes a preference for following rules and insufficient regard for whether I'm annoying people who aren't following the rules.  It may not actually be the best advice for your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T14:01:53.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19008" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:09:13.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding why one would be interested in doing an MD/PhD combo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my region, and I believe this generalises to the rest of Sweden, clinicians are required to do get some research experience. So for most of those MD-to-be, that's the regular entry to academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if you are a clinician with a PhD on a field related to your clinical work, your chances of promotion towards higher positions in the hospital is significantly higher, apparently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, I do not have any references on the internet for the last statement, other than the word of my colleagues in the hospital (as well as friends who did medicine at the uni).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T14:09:13.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19052" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:14:13.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you're facing a no-problem kind of problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the largest porn streaming sites do actually pay content creators so they allow them to serve the videos for free. What you describe is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt; case, so, in theory, you shouldn't face any issues. Most studio-provided content on these sites are actually legally served for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using one of those sites, make sure you search the studio pages rather than the whole site. Searching the whole site can indeed return pirated results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I'm posting as a community wiki because I think this is neither an academic answer nor an Academia.SE-worthy answer. It's better as a comment, but it doesn't fit as a comment)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13942" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T06:55:16.203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T06:55:16.203" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-04-08T14:14:13.463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19076" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:38:27.627" Score="9" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my master's thesis and began to wonder if it is acceptable to comment on some of the publications I cite in my 'State of the art' part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have several papers where the results and/or methods are obfuscated. This is sadly not uncommon given the source of the author(s) are industry vendors who want to show their capabilities and domain expertise without actually revealing anything competitively substantial. The papers are all written by the engineering / research departments of various manufacturers and are published in scientific or engineering journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the 'errors' in their publications are surely due to out-dated methods and/or models. However some others are just plain misleading, most certainly as a way to obscure competitive information. I don't have hard facts that they are entirely erroneous due to the omission of their data, but deriving from my research I am pretty confident that some of their results don't add up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't want to just write down what they found out and how, but also comment on how correct/incorrect their results seem based on my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I best comment on these opaque industry publications?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13945" LastEditorUserId="23602" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T20:06:44.040" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:06:44.040" Title="Should I comment on a cited paper in the paper-review part of my master's thesis?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19075" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:49:00.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure about what kind of publications you are talking about when you say 'published by vendors' (white papers, brochures, user manuals?). But if you are referring to scientific literature, my answer is: by all means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't se why you would refrain yourself from commenting the possible limitations or drawbacks of published methods. Just stay modest and consider the possibility that these publications came out a while ago and that the general knowledge in the field improved since then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being critical, if done properly (give objective reasons), is certainly something to be encouraged at the Master's level, and yes the appropriate section for this is the &quot;State of the art&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T14:28:26.647" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:28:26.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19061" CreationDate="2014-04-08T14:49:25.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your question as: &lt;em&gt;Which will be more useful for graduate admissions (all other things being equal): a recommendation from a professor at a well-known university, or a recommendation from a professor at a less-known university with whom I have a more personal connection?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no one-size-fits-all answer here. The answer depends quite a lot on the degree of the difference (both the difference in reputation between universities, and the difference in how well each professor will end up knowing you personally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have intuited, a recommendation from someone at a well-known institution is worth a lot more than a recommendation from someone at an institution that is not well known. On the other hand, a recommendation that describes your specific talents at mathematics in complimentary detail is worth a lot more than a perfunctory letter that says &quot;Algebraically speaking did a thesis in my institution.&quot;  (Meanwhile, you know nothing at all about the letter-writing skill of either professor, which is another important variable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the impact on your development as a researcher. You would likely benefit from working with someone who takes a close personal interest in you. You would also likely benefit from being at a well-known institution that attracts many talented students and has a very productive research atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your decision will ultimately be a personal one, and we can't give personal advice on Academia.SE. However, since your goal is to go to graduate school abroad, I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out where undergraduate students who work with each professor end up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can ask them directly, or talk to their students. In either case, you'd like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many of their undergraduate students &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to go on to graduate school in mathematics? How many of these actually do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for the students that went to graduate school, &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; did they go? Are these institutions &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would consider attending for graduate school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;road less traveled&quot; can be great, and rewarding, and all that. But it's also more difficult. If there is a well-traveled path that leads to your desired outcome, &lt;strong&gt;get on that path&lt;/strong&gt; if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T14:54:45.143" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T14:54:45.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-08T15:46:59.533" Score="12" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have a paper that got rejected from a top tier conference. You think it is of high quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you submit the paper to arXiv, or keep pushing for a conference later on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10297" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T18:21:52.833" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T15:14:01.367" Title="Should you publish a rejected conference paper on arXiv?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19079" CreationDate="2014-04-08T15:55:03.730" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Submitting a paper to the arXiv does not preclude publishing it later in a journal or in the proceedings of a conference.  In fact, one should not think of a paper which appears on the arXiv as being published. (There's no peer review, for one thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my community (&lt;code&gt;hep-th&lt;/code&gt;, mostly) one always submits to the arXiv first, gathers comments, and only then submits for publication.  Of course, other communities might work differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fields I am familiar with (maths and physics, mostly), I would submit the paper to the arXiv in any case.  You can then decide how to actually publish the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1163" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T15:55:03.730" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19086" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:24:26.150" Score="14" ViewCount="2653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to move to the US, and thus, looking for a less-competitive faculty position to start there. Later, I can find better jobs, but at this stage, I just need to find a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an outsider, all the job ads are similar. How can I find which job is less-competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, is it really less-competitive to apply for a faculty position in Alaska or less-interesting states (due to geographical reasons, I do not know which).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; This is the additional question separated from my previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19078/competition-for-faculty-positions-in-the-us-is-on-the-university-or-city&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, as advised by a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T22:07:58.643" Title="How to find less-competitive faculty positions in the US universities?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19095" CreationDate="2014-04-08T17:15:00.920" Score="62" ViewCount="11836" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose you're writing an article about triangles, and you want to include a short proof of Pythagoras' theorem, but you can't quite remember how to derive it, so you pop over to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Algebraic_proofs&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Algebraic_proofs&lt;/a&gt; and check the proof there. It works mathematically, makes sense and is as far as you can tell, correct, so you include it. Now the proof on Wikipedia doesn't have a citation because probably someone has been taught it and copied it over to Wikipedia, but it's still correct. The only thing you could cite for the proof would be Wikipedia, would a citation be ok or should it just be copied down without a citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Ok, there have been many responses. Most with a firm &quot;no&quot;, but some giving the reason: &quot;Just get the proof from a book&quot; since it's so common, but suppose then it wasn't a common proof of something. Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, becuase it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia? Why is it so bad to say: &quot;I found this proof on Wikipedia, and the maths checks out so it doesn't matter who wrote it, it is correct, but that's where I found it.&quot; Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: &quot;Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in &quot;Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13951" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:04:30.403" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T21:58:06.410" Title="Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19081" CreationDate="2014-04-08T17:17:30.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well as you mentioned, depending on the geographical location, reputation of the university, strong graduate (PhD and masters), and the size of the institutions you can make a good guess about the competitiveness of getting hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your reasons, I've heard from many scholars that it's better to wait longer and get a proper position than starting in a teaching-only university and burning yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10297" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T17:17:30.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19081" CreationDate="2014-04-08T17:42:25.710" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although (see my comments), I cannot recommend this sort of career path, here are two ways for an outsider to determine which positions will be less competitive: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching load and pay. If the pay is poor, and the teaching load is high (say, 4/4 or higher), then the position will be less competitive. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look up the average SAT scores (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=US%20colleges%20average%20SAT%20scores&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&quot;&gt;easy to find via Google&lt;/a&gt;) of American schools to which you are applying. This is a reasonable (although not perfect) guide for the quality of the undergraduates that these schools enroll. Schools with lower averages will have less competition for faculty positions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; faculty jobs are highly competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T13:33:28.340" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:33:28.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T18:00:32.017" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; use something that isn't your own without a citation. &quot;Copied down without a citation&quot; is not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should also not cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source; you should track down a source that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; authoritative and use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use Wikipedia as a source?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason for not using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is that it is simply not reliable enough in many cases. Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, himself &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation/2305&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. &quot;They say, 'Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia'&quot; and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: &quot;For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; verify that the Wikipedia article is correct, you should not use it as an authoritative source. You asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is it so bad to say: &quot;I found this proof on Wikipedia, and the maths checks out so it doesn't matter who wrote it, it is correct, but that's where I found it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing Wikipedia as a source for an idea that isn't original to Wikipedia &lt;strong&gt;does not give credit to the original author of the idea&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a major reason for citing something in the first place. (The same applies to any &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_source&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tertiary source&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia#Citing_Wikipedia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Citing Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; itself advises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It will usually be more acceptable to cite those original sources rather than Wikipedia since it is, by nature, a secondary or tertiary source. At the same time, simple academic ethics require that you should actually read the work that you cite: if you do not actually have your hands on a book, you should not misleadingly cite it as your source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; you cite Wikipedia?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; appropriate to cite Wikipedia if you are commenting &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; Wikipedia. For example: &quot;The Wikipedia page on X shows that it is a controversial topic, with a large number of rollbacks indicating disagreement on the correct approach.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, Wikipedia can sometimes be a primary source on popular culture. In this case, you should  use it and cite it accordingly. &lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I gave an example of this in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19154/should-i-treat-specialized-wikis-with-the-same-scrutiny-as-wikipedia-itself/19172#19172&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use Wikipedia as a source for finding other sources, then the question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18143/is-there-a-problem-with-citing-the-original-source-instead-of-the-source-where-t&quot;&gt;Is there a problem with citing the original source instead of the source where the information was first found?&lt;/a&gt; applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oldsite.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Appropriate use of Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (highly recommend reading this one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.williams.edu/citing/wikipedia.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Should I use or cite Wikipedia? Probably not.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/user/dartar/article/1688924&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why you can't cite Wikipedia in my class&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Stand Against Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T14:43:57.570" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19064" CreationDate="2014-04-08T18:13:06.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;they don't want to have fights within the department&quot; -- there's your answer. The department would prefer to have inconsistency between different courses/years, than enforce consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't put it that way to the students, but acknowledge the truth to yourself, which is that there are better things for course assistants to do with their time, than worry about what other professors than &quot;yours&quot; do when they run this or other courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it isn't fair, but it's not exactly the assistant's job to make it fair or to decide whether a particular department or professor is applying the rules properly. You can (and have) raised the issue and got a decision. Since you know that there's a problem with students not knowing the rules, you can choose to make them clear to the students you see regardless of whether professors are required to announce them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that when you're assisting one of the &quot;bad&quot; professors, you are clear what rules you should be passing on to the students in that class -- the exam regulations or whatever this professor has invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;em&gt;as well as&lt;/em&gt; being an assistant, you're on the examinations committee. Oh ho ho ho. Well I never. Wellity well. With your other hat on, the shoe is on the other foot. That's where you make your case that a rogue department and/or rogue professors are disrespecting the exam regulations. As a committee you can consider whether the breaches are so serious as to overrule the department's desire not to have fights, and fight them :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The committee is also best placed to make a plausible recommendation how its rules should be enforced by policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T19:18:50.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T19:18:50.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T18:28:15.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you got your information from Wiki, or used the Wiki article to find a more authoritative source, it would be honest and proper to cite it. Cite what you use, at the very least! Acknowledge your sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not universally approved, and, as in one comment, many people will react negatively if Wiki appears in the references... and this could have in impact on a referee's reaction to your paper, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, Wiki's context for technical matters is a roller coaster... Best to see what Wiki says, maybe use Wiki as a pointer to key-words, to external/traditional sources. Then, if you are being honest, cite Wiki &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the/an-other more conventional/traditional/orthodox (authoritative?) source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, sometimes Wiki comes up with connections or sources or people I'd not been aware of previously, as well as often mentioning historical sources that many standard sources do not. Also, it is ... available! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself in the (unfortunate) situation of needing to conform to a retro standard of &quot;what's legal&quot; to cite, not only can you not cite Wiki, but probably shouldn't give URLs in your bibliography, either? Can't cite arXiv, either? Can't cite anything that was not refereed and &quot;published&quot; (in a now-archaic sense) in one of the known journals? Probably...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, looking forward, it is happier to be in a situation where you can be honest about sources! Obviously!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It seems that people react variously to two aspects (at least) of Wiki, namely, issues about authoritativeness, and issues about primariness of sources, which segues into giving credit where credit is due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad scenario is, as in @ff524's quote from Jimmy Wales, that someone uses Wiki &lt;em&gt;uncritically&lt;/em&gt;, and gets burned because something's wrong. This potential is arguably greater in Wiki than in other sources, but it's only a matter of &lt;em&gt;degree&lt;/em&gt;. Everything needs corroboration, if it really matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, pretending that Wiki is somehow a primary source probably is never correct, just as no old-timey paper encyclopedia was every primary. But I recall, quite honestly, being exposed to ideas accidentally in encyclopedias that I would not have known to look for at all otherwise, ... and a good encyclopedia, and the better articles in Wiki, &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; give external pointers of various sorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, how many mathematics textbooks manage to come anywhere &lt;em&gt;close&lt;/em&gt; to citing primary sources? :)  It's not easy, I agree! Not a good argument for not trying. I was amazed to observe, some years ago, that L. Ahlfors' &quot;Complex Analsis&quot; has no bibliography whatsoever, although there're many named-after theorems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The near-universal accessibility of Wiki means that many, many people will turn to it first, rightly or wrongly. Again, I use it often to get clues about aspects of mathematics distant from my prior experience, although I certainly do seek corroboration! To pretend that Wiki wasn't used when it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; used is a bit dishonest, as well as not giving credit to its utility, if not to its primariness as source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be different reasons for acknowledgements, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T19:18:27.143" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T19:18:27.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T18:30:39.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the title question, it is almost always &lt;strong&gt;No!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you may be able to find a venue in which you could 'get away' with citing Wikipedia for something like that, it is almost never a good idea. If I see Wikipedia cited as a source (for anything except a comment on Wikipedia, as @ff524 mentioned), it will raise a huge red flag. My immediate thought is that this writer is too lazy to search for and find a better source! &lt;strong&gt;Don't do this to yourself.&lt;/strong&gt; For something very common like this, you should be able to go to your local physical university library and -- without much effort -- find a book that references the needed theorem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question in the body, copying without citation, &lt;em&gt;even from a Wikipedia page&lt;/em&gt;, is plagiarism. Again, don't do this to yourself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a better source if at all possible, and no matter what, &lt;strong&gt;cite your source!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T18:30:39.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18143" CreationDate="2014-04-08T18:56:12.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following @ff524 's suggestion, prompted by my answer to a question about whether Wiki should ever be cited ... :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my opinion, based first on a principle of honesty and open-ness, that one should acknowledge sources one has used. Thus, if you use Wiki or a survey paper or an expository paper to understand a primary source, and/or to locate a primary source, cite Wiki/survey/exposition &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the primary source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I do not advocate citing Wiki/survey/exposition &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt;, and this is for more than one reason. First, one should mostly refer to primary sources... although in mathematics a primary source may be long ago, obscure, and inaccessible, so difficult to locate and not usable by many of your readers. Second, it is hard to gauge the authoritativeness (in reality, not in status) of Wiki/surveys/exposition, so &lt;em&gt;corroboration&lt;/em&gt; is invariably necessary. In fact, the same need for corroboration applies to almost any source, refereed or not, despite various mythologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, &quot;at this point in time&quot;, any bibliography that includes Wiki, URLs, or unrefereed material will often be stigmatized by referees and by many readers. This is not completely insane, as a hold-over from a time when a bibliography that included anything other than well-known, refereed journals was truly the sign of a crank. To my mind, the reality is much changed, and will continue to change, but, for those who find themselves in a situation demanding conformity to that old standard... well, maybe you have to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This enforced dishonesty about &quot;how one found things out&quot; is very disturbing to me, as, in fact, Wiki and surveys and exposition are often very useful to give pointers to primary sources, to bring up keywords and people and old sources that more standard sources omit. I acknowledge Wiki &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the other sources in bibliographies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;solution&quot; to the problem of being both honest and conforming to an old standard would seem to dictate never looking at Wiki, or any unrefereed source. Crazy. But one might find oneself effectively pretending to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T18:56:12.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T20:04:28.510" Score="45" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to try to answer the question of &quot;is allowed&quot; or &quot;isn't allowed&quot; but instead I'm going to try and answer if citing Wikipedia is, in general, a &lt;em&gt;good idea&lt;/em&gt; or not for research papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's five points I can think of for and five points against. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good idea:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Wikipedia is your source, and you learn something from what Wikipedia's editors have provided, then citing Wikipedia is the Nice Thing To Do™.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia is a convenient, well-known, easily and freely accessible source (vs. final-copy published papers that are pay-per-view if not out of your wallet, then indirectly out of your university's).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content aims to be written in an accessible manner targeted at a wide audience (vs. arguably the bulk of technical articles published in journals and conferences). Plus there's clickable links for jargon! Sweet!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notable or Featured Articles will probably have undergone more scrutiny from experts (w.r.t. bias, technical correctness, sources cited, etc.) than your average peer-reviewed article on a similar topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least with Wikipedia, readers should know where they stand with such a citation. Compare this with the artifice of citing papers for claims made in poor-quality journals or conferences that can be considered authoritative solely on the basis of being &quot;peer-reviewed&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bad idea:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Wikipedia article is subject to frequent editing and the content you cite it for may not be there when the reader goes looking for it (adding a date-accessed only partly addresses the issue since it will be difficult for the reader to start going through versions &lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt; but as per the comments below, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3aCite&quot;&gt;a citing service within Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; to cite a specific version of a page).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relatedly, the content may have been correct at the time of citing but errors may be edited into the content at a later point, making you look bad by association (&lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt;, again, citing a specific version could work around that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no minimal guarantee of the quality for most Wikipedia articles (which peer-review, at least in theory, should provide, depending perhaps on the venue).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia is not a first-party source: in theory, no new knowledge is &quot;created&quot; in Wikipedia. &lt;em&gt;Where feasible&lt;/em&gt;, you should try to attribute knowledge to those who create it (and optionally thereafter add a reference to those who report it or better describe it in a book or survey)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attribution for the content of a Wikipedia article is difficult: multiple editors may be involved in a certain piece of content, many editors are anonymous, etc. This means that there is no culpability for information (unlike peer-reviewed papers where authors have &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to lose by publishing crap). This opens up further possibilities, such as authors anonymously adding content to Wikipedia that they can cite to support the claims in their paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, back to academic convention and &quot;&lt;em&gt;isn't alloweds&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;is alloweds&lt;/em&gt;&quot; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, because it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia policies, it should have a reference to an original source. Cite that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't have a reference, or if you copy how the proof is expressed directly, I would recommend to add a footnote (rather than a formal citation) stating the Wikipedia article you found the proof on and how you verified it (and the CC-BY-SA licence if you copy the expression). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally avoid citing web-pages (unless they are normative online standards or something) if only to avoid getting your hand bitten off by a reviewer. Using footnotes is much safer in this regards and serves a similar-ish purpose (though it won't be counted as a formal citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In research, if enough reviewers believe something &lt;em&gt;isn't allowed&lt;/em&gt;, then de facto it isn't allowed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: &quot;Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in &quot;Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not say &quot;&lt;em&gt;Proof sketched for me by Fred, the guy who sits next to me, who had previously read it in 'Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc...'&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, what's important is the reference, not how you found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T13:37:11.807" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:37:11.807" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T20:53:24.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is &quot;allowed&quot; and &quot;not allowed&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's almost no reason to ever cite Wikipedia. If Wikipedia states something without citing a source, then you're basically citing &quot;Some random guy on the internet told me that...&quot;  If Wikipedia states something and does cite a source, check the source yourself, to make sure it says what Wikipedia says it says; then cite that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T20:53:24.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-08T20:57:24.233" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion a lot of the answers are too negative about wikipedia, at least when applied to the part of wikipedia that applies to mathematics (my academic field, and the field the OP asked about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little surprised to hear people describe wikipedia as &quot;unreliable&quot;, including links to university websites which say rather snootily to avoid it.  This is how I felt about the mathematics on wikipedia circa 2006.  It has gotten so much better in the intervening years, for the obvious reason: a lot of very mathematically experienced people (including at least one Fields Medalist, and also including me, for a period from about 2006 to 2008) put in a lot of time writing and vetting the articles.  Where it stands now is that wikipedia is the best single repository of mathematical information in the world.  It has been several years since I have seen anything that was wrong on a wikipedia math article.  Some of these articles contain content that is difficult to find in other places, and some of the content is new: it is far from unheard of that someone just put in their own proof of a theorem.  Many feel in principle that this sort of thing should not be done (I think I do; it's been a while since I've really thought about it), but in practice when someone writes a nice self-contained proof of a mathematical result, why delete it?  So there is some really great stuff there: I think that most research mathematicians who are frequent users of the internet have by now learned mathematics from wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have correctly pointed out, the question of &quot;when to cite&quot; is more complicated.  Let me consider several of the alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Should you refer to wikipedia for standard proofs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I believe that sometimes you should but I have never actually done it in a &quot;serious research paper&quot;, in part because of exactly the sort of internet-phobic practices that Paul Garrett refers to in his answer.  Recently I was writing a broad-audience article, and I wanted to say that a certain aspect of a classical construction -- the Galois connection between ideals of a polynomial ring over an algebraically closed field k and subsets of affine n-space over k -- worked verbatim with k replaced by an arbitrary integral domain.  I ended up referring to Lang's &lt;em&gt;Algebra&lt;/em&gt; for this.  That is really not (ahem) ideal: this is one of the most &quot;standard texts&quot; in the sense that a large percentage of professional mathematicians have a copy in their office.  On the other hand it is not free and even more mathematicians and math students don't have it.  But billions of people have internet access, and surely wikipedia (for instance) does a perfectly good job of explaining the point.  I wussed out and didn't give an explicit electronic reference, and I rarely do in formal writing.  (In fact I have &lt;em&gt;myself&lt;/em&gt; written many, many pages of mathematical writing -- as has Paul Garrett, by the way -- and I usually wuss out and do not refer to it in my formal writing either, even though I know exactly where I would like to point and a student would understand my research paper much more easily with that reference included.)  At this point, when I say that something is &quot;well known&quot; I assume that students will look for it on the internet, and as a code between me and myself, at least, I try never to say that in papers except in cases where a student who looked for it on the internet would quickly and easily find it (and when that happens I don't worry so much about tracking down a print reference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above case, the big advantage of wikipedia is its ease and convenience: it has almost exactly what any text would have but is much quicker, easier and &lt;em&gt;freer&lt;/em&gt; to access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Should you refer to wikipedia for non-standard proofs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if a wikipedia article has a proof which is &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; from the one that you would find in any expensive math text, should you refer to that?  If you want the reader to read that proof, I think you have to do refer to it &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; try to track down the source of the proof that made it into the wikipedia article.  However, the latter brings me to my &lt;strong&gt;biggest complaint&lt;/strong&gt; about the math articles on wikipedia: they're great for mathematical content.  They can be really bad as references: e.g. they can be taken out of some standard source without referring back to that source.  Or an article on the X-Y Theorem will have a statement of the theorem, motivation for the statement, the proof of the theorem, and then talk about further work and generalizations.  That would make for a great lecture about the X-Y Theorem, but for an encyclopedia article there's a lot missing: who are X and Y?  (Sometimes they don't even try to tell you, even when there are wikipedia articles on X and Y.)  Where was the X-Y Theorem first published?  (I'm sorry to tell you that many mathematically rock-solid articles don't contain this kind of primary source material.)  Is the proof included in the article the original proof of X-Y?  If not, where does it come from?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was involved with it, the culture of mathematical wikipedians was not good at addressing the above issues: if I asked for this information about an article, someone would usually nicely tell me that I was more than welcome to add it myself. I would mention that unfortunately I didn't know the source material that led to most of what other people included in the article...and there the matter usually got dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it may very well be the case that wikipedia has a proof of something for which it is not trivial to discern where the proof comes from.  As an example, wikipedia has a really nice proof of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz%E2%80%93Zippel_lemma&quot;&gt;Schwartz-Zippel Lemma&lt;/a&gt;.  It is not the original proof, &lt;em&gt;I think&lt;/em&gt; -- it's slicker.  Where does it come from?  I couldn't tell from the article itself.  This is not a hypothetical example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/dvirnotes.pdf&quot;&gt;I wrote a brief expository note including this proof&lt;/a&gt;.  As you can see, I did refer to the wikipedia article.  However, I should say that this is an article in the informal sense of the term: I wrote it up for myself, spoke in a colleague's seminar about it, and kept the document for myself.  I have not tried to publish it anywhere, nor would I, since it is &quot;just an exposition&quot; of a proof of Zeev Dvir's resolution of the Finite Field Kakeya Problem.  This brings me to my last point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) When should you &lt;em&gt;include&lt;/em&gt; proofs from wikipedia in your articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a wikipedia proof in your article in a critical way, then you should include a reference to it (or where it comes from, if possible).  However, if you are using a wikipedia proof in a critical way in your article, is your article a research article or even a &quot;serious expository&quot; article?  Why would a journal want to republish something that is available in a standard source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the OP's example he mentions including a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.  No math journal I know is going to allow you to include (any one of; I'm sure it gives several) wikipedia's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, but not because it comes from wikipedia: they're just not going to want you to rehash such old-hat stuff.  To be honest, the introductory passage &quot;For example, suppose you're writing an article about triangles...&quot; raises some eyebrows in this regard: are you trying to formally publish an article about triangles?  Good luck with that: it's going to be tough.  Such articles &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; published, but for every one that is, probably a hundred are rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that in a formal article -- even, perhaps even especially, if it's an expository article -- the burden falls more highly on you to investigate primary source material.  If you're teaching a class or something, then it's helpful to say exactly where &lt;em&gt;you got the material from&lt;/em&gt;.  But if you're writing an article, it becomes more important to track down the provenance of the intellectual content itself: that is a much more challenging thing to do.  Still though I think there are cases where the answer really will be that the argument appeared for the first time on wikipedia, in which case you should cite it there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) What about the &quot;unreliability&quot; of wikipedia articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really &quot;weak sauce&quot; for math articles, because unlike most encyclopedia articles, mathematics articles are &lt;strong&gt;self verifying&lt;/strong&gt; by any sufficiently qualified reader.  So saying &quot;Don't include this proof from wikipedia because wikipedia is full of errors&quot; sounds silly to me: on the one hand lots of published books have a higher density of errors than wikipedia math articles; on the other hand, every proof you read you're supposed to check anyway.  So don't worry about whether it's correct: &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; whether it's correct.  Most proofs in wikipedia articles are no more than a page or so in length, so they can be checked in a relatively short time.  If it's not correct, fix it or tell someone about it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@SteveJessop asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since you mention not being able to work out where a proof comes from: suppose you found a proof spray-painted under a bridge, that was slicker than the best proof you can find published. Are the concerns over such proofs on Wikipedia essentially the same as for that found on a wall? That is, there's no problem with verifying it correct, but if you can't print it or refer to it without giving credit then it's difficult to use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia seems better than &quot;bridge proofs&quot; because any interested party can access wikipedia and see the proof there as well as whatever documentation or lack thereof exists.  In the bridge scenario, one can question whether this is really where I found the argument or whether I did my due diligence in trying to track down its provenance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice: in the mathematical community, the scholarly task of giving the correct attribution -- either in the sense of where you found it or, still more so, the primary source -- is not taken all that seriously by many (compared to other branches of academia).  We agree that you shouldn't be passing off others' ideas as your own, and that if you know who the &quot;other&quot; is you should cite them, but &quot;I learned this trick from somewhere, and now I can't remember where&quot; is pretty common in mathematics.  In fact math papers tend to be written in logical sequence rather than psychological sequence, so that there is a key part of the mathematical writing process in which history is removed or rewritten, so to speak.  I can only hope you understand what I mean by that.  It's a subtle phenomenon and not an inherently negative one, but we do it in mathematics more than in almost any other field (and I do it more than the average amount for a mathematician: a big part of my research process is to take others' ideas and writing and rewriting it in one way or another).  In general I have grown &quot;more scholarly&quot; over the years, but usually with the suspicion that &lt;em&gt;at best&lt;/em&gt; the referees will not really care one way or the other.  I ended one recent paper with a section surveying the history and the literature of a certain problem.  That is very rare in a math paper.  I got zero comments about this section, and if the journal was better I would have expected them to tell me to shorten or remove the section.  In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/BCS_10_6_Pete.pdf&quot;&gt;my most recent paper&lt;/a&gt;, see Theorem 2.1 and Remark 2.2.  Remark 2.2 explains the history of Theorem 2.1.  It is almost as long as the proof of the theorem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T19:01:20.620" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T19:01:20.620" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T01:14:52.633" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking into PhD in Business program at various universities in North America, and I realized that many of those programs require their candidates to have &quot;a Master's degree&quot;. If I have a non-thesis, course-based Master's degree, am I still meeting this minimum admission requirement? or by &quot;Master's degree&quot;, did they mean a &quot;thesis-based research Master's degree&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9861" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T01:14:52.633" Title="Eligibility for a PhD in Business Administration program" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-29T13:53:52.250" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T02:40:23.567" Score="19" ViewCount="3785" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first year PhD in a large Social Sciences program at an American public institution. My CV is very weak as I am not yet published. I have research assistantship experience and teaching experience as well as a stint on a Fulbright. I'm applying to fellowships for the summer to gain more research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working on a fellowship application and would like to stand out amongst the crowd. Other than my attributes above, I have nothing! My CV barely fills two pages. Will I be written off because I don't have much experience? I need fellowships like these in order to grow my tiny resume- but- I'm worried can't compete to get them without more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13963" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T16:54:02.463" Title="First-year PhD student with weak CV/Resume; how to stand out in fellowship competitions?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19099" CreationDate="2014-04-09T04:16:18.550" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone starts out with no publications.  Never mind starting a PhD in that condition:  I &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; my PhD at a top-three program for my field without any publications, and I still got a good postdoctoral position.  How did I do this?  Because of my advisor's recommendation.  (And it was a sound recommendation: eventually I did get some publications...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate students -- and especially, early career graduate students --  recommendation letters are all-important.  Do you have a thesis advisor yet?  If so, go directly to her and tell her what fellowships you are thinking of applying for and asking whether that sounds reasonable and whether your application will be competitive.  If you do not have a thesis advisor, try out the same conversation with several faculty members in your department that know you through your coursework, research or TAing.  Emphasize that because you are young and unpublished, you think you will need strong recommendations from them to get serious consideration for summer research fellowships.  Select from among these the ones who sound most enthusiastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, faculty in your department should be very supportive of your endeavor.  On the one hand, such fellowships generally provide funding, and faculty are always very happy when graduate students can find external funding of any kind whatsoever, since internal funding is so limited and hard to come up with in these straitened economic times.  On the other hand, if you get the fellowship you will be getting funded for doing &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what you are supposed to be doing in the summer as a graduate student: research.  So if you feel like the faculty you've spoken to are not helping you enough with this, it could be worthwhile to discuss this with someone like the graduate coordinator or department head: not in a way which casts any blame on the faculty members, but just to emphasize that you want to do this very desirable thing and you haven't yet found the right person to help you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T04:16:18.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19099" CreationDate="2014-04-09T06:06:51.473" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be an idea to contact the career or academic advisory department of your university and ask for an appointment with them to discuss improving your CV and get their input on how you can improve it and what you should and should not put in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards gaining experience and kudos could be to consider publishing some of the Undergrad work you feel proud of. There are lots of open source journals which might be a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also network with researchers using resources like [researchgate][1] for ideas and to get experience peer reviewing articles so you can put your contributions onto your CV and maybe get some feedback on undergrad work you have already done to learn more about the whole process of peer review and network with other academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately getting ahead in academia is likely like everything else: more about who you know not what you know so putting yourself out there by banging on doors and networking is going to be the ticket to filling your CV with stuff. Ironically, it will probably mean you'll not need to show your CV to get the position you want the end, too perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such is life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1248" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T16:54:02.463" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T16:54:02.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19071" CreationDate="2014-04-09T06:33:00.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use R, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/johnros/scaping_arxiv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this script&lt;/a&gt; I wrote for scraping ArXiv metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1175" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T06:33:00.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T09:16:43.850" Score="1" ViewCount="1012" Body="&lt;p&gt;What methods could you recommend for attaining assistance when writing a master's thesis, in the particular case when one feels uncomfortable seeking any more help from the advisor, because of his own anxiety and the advisor's personality and busyness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an option available to get independent help? How would one go about finding help so that he can get the thesis finished? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13969" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T21:29:12.963" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:29:12.963" Title="How to find help when writing a master's thesis" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19053" CreationDate="2014-04-09T11:31:06.327" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Added dates to give a sense of the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how the process works at my university (US). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department votes (March or April 2014) to request a new hire or not. Usually at this point they will also specify--is this a hire in some particular field, or do we just want to try to get the best person in the field, regardless of speciality. This request is passed to the provost and dean.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the request is approved (May or June), the department forms a search committee which writes and circulates the job ad (Sept or Oct).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once all the applications for the job are in (Nov), the search committee reads the applications and selects between 15-25 people to interview at our big disciplinary meeting (January 2015). This is a first round interview that will usually discuss scholarship and maybe a little bit about teaching. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of that field of 15-25, the committee will select three finalists to bring to a second, on campus interview. (February) The on campus interview is much more strenuous, usually lasting a day or two. At our institution it always includes a public job talk, which presents some facet of the candidates current research before the full faculty and graduate students. Some places it also includes a teaching demo. Invariably there is also a dinner after the talk at which the candidate still needs to be pleasant, conversational, and collegial. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After all the on-campus interviews have been conducted, the department meets and discusses who they want to pick. (Late Feb, Early March) Usually this involves a vote. At some places the faculty's vote is binding, at some places the faculty vote is simply advisory and the committee makes the official recommendation. But, at every school I've heard of it is the Dean or Provost who actually makes the final decision. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, let's say the department has recommended candidate X to the Dean and the dean has no objection. Now the dean will call candidate X and offer him or her the job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually some rounds of negotiation will follow. If the candidate has other offers, then usually the dean will have to improve the offer. Once a verbal agreement is made, the dean sends a contract to the candidate to sign and return. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the dean signs the returned contract, then, presto the candidate is officially a tenure track faculty member. (April or May 2015)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorDisplayName="user10636" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T13:28:53.880" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T13:28:53.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19099" CreationDate="2014-04-09T12:47:56.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Pete L. Clark gives good advice. It's really your letters of rec that will probably stand out to committees awarding fellowships. I want to add one point though that may be helpful generally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to stand out from the crowd in graduate school is to write well. Most academics think of their writing in very functional, utilitarian ways. If you can write winsomely, using vivid examples, and occasionally graceful turn a phrase, you will automatically stand out from the crowd. What you are trying to do as an academic is to gain a readership for your work. You are much more likely to succeed in this if people actually enjoy reading your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend William Zinsser's book on Style to every graduate student I meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T12:47:56.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:49:17.347" Score="4" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be conducting a course with 10 students and will provide about 12 topics. Each student shall work on one topic. I will meet with the students and present the topics to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good method to assign the topics to the students? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to give them the option to choose their own topic, but I foresee problems when some topics are very wanted and others are not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13977" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T16:29:28.407" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T16:29:28.407" Title="What is a good method to assign topics to students?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19110" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:55:21.850" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen instructors/advisors assign the topics by random chance, followed by a brief 'trading session'. Students pick the topic out of a hat, but they then have the option to trade with other students. Of course, some students may be stuck with a topic that they didn't really want, but they should also have the option to work with you to tweak the assignment into something that they can be passionate about. Since you say that you will have more topics than students, you could also have the option to put their draw back into the hat and try again (after everyone else has drawn at least once). This method seems most likely to avoid the problem of a student feeling as though they were forced to take a 'very much not wanted' topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:55:21.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19115" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:08:20.490" Score="11" ViewCount="1497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been assigned to mark student reports for an engineering coursework, which mainly involves the use of a software. The main content of each report is around 15 pages. There are 45 reports in total. I am also required to write feedback to each student. I have not been involved in designing the assignment nor teaching the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor who assigned me this task told me that the marker last year took about 4 full days to complete the markings, and yet I have spent more than two weeks doing this (and not really doing anything else), and I am not yet done. I did need to spend some time familiarising myself with the subject matter and the software in the beginning, because I have never used the software before, but it is not that difficult to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is my first marking experience, I am wondering whether it is normal to have spent so much time marking. Is there any strategy I can adopt to complete the task more efficiently, especially in my case where I am not involved in designing the assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:45:20.513" Title="How to mark student reports more efficiently" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:24:41.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your advisors are the ones you should seek advice from, on how to write the thesis, and on fundamental research skills such as avoiding plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel uncomfortable about approaching your advisors / supervisors, you've got two options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either work out how to get comfortable approaching them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or get new advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:24:41.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:37:33.060" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper? In other words, is the number of authors per paper increasing and if so, does this reduce the value of a co-authored publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bit late but somewhat inspired by this question I did some research on author inflation within PLOS journals (due to their nice API). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full write-up is &lt;a href=&quot;http://benjaminlmoore.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/author-inflation-in-academic-literature/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, should you be interested, but the TL;DR is that author inflation does indeed appear to be happening, at least in this selection of journals mostly from the life sciences in recent years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are linear regressions per journal of yearly mean number of authors per paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://benjaminlmoore.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/plot_lm.png&quot; alt=&quot;Authors vs. times&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of the comments I was linked to a much &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.coudert.name/post/2014/02/21/Evolution-of-chemistry-writing-over-5-decades&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;longer-term study&lt;/a&gt; which revealed the same trend in a prominent chemistry journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of your question is harder to answer but cbeleites has given some good insight and references. +1 for a very interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:49.110" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:37:33.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19112" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:49:12.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marking assignment is a very demanding and time-consuming task, especially if you intend to do it thoroughly (and you should). It is also a big responsibility, as you have the students' success in your hands. It might be that your supervisor underestimated the time necessary to take care of it, although it's difficult to say without knowing the exact content of the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience of grading assignments and exams (topics: acoustics and fluid mechanics), 2 weeks of work for a class of the size you mention doesn't sound like a lot, especially if, as you said, you needed to get accustomed to the specific aspects of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether it is normal to have spent so much time&#xA;  marking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is yes, even though it depends on the type of exam. It might indicate that you take the task seriously, and it's a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to mark student reports more efficiently&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of my usual approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you clearly identify the 'gold standard' to which you will compare the answers. Is there a ready-made solution (from last year) or do you need to make your own (if it's the later, the 2 weeks time frame is even less surprising). &lt;strong&gt;The prof/instructor should help you with this step&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade a given section/exercise at a time, for all students and then switch to the next one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a quick overview of all the assignments to identify the good quality ones, grade them first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a break between individual exercises, maybe do some of your administrative or research work for a while (this to avoid overdose).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't take cases of very low quality assignments personally (student clearly didn't attend class, tried to get away with an all-nighter, don't care about the grade, etc.). Students have their reasons. It's not you, it's them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that you will theoretically be better and quicker at doing this next term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T15:14:25.593" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:14:25.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19112" CreationDate="2014-04-09T15:45:20.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; similar situation this past term. I was also tasked with grading engineering assignments that involved the use of software and a written component for which there were no solutions (mind you they were a little shorter than the ones you are grading). I am familiar with the software so it ended up taking me 5 days to mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jigg has covered most of the bases, I just wanted to add another tip for efficiency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an effort to give them good feedback I wanted to write thorough comments. But after I got going on the marking I found that many students were making the same kinds of mistakes and I was writing the same comments over and over again. Eventually I just created an excel spreadsheet that really helped automate the marking that looked like this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UGWl4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The totals for points and points available are summation formulas so I didn't need to do any totalling myself. As I graded each assignment, I just compared it to the solutions I came up with and judged how well each of them met the criteria (nothing new). When I saw something wrong I just copied a detailed comment from the comments list and pasted it in the relevant cell. When I was finished with an assignment I just copied the everything in the thick black border into the online comments section, entered their grade, and moved on to the next one. If there was something new (and incorrect) that a student was doing I created a new comment and copied it into the list. Sometimes I also wrote something like &quot;good work&quot; next to the assignment total, just so that there were some positive comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted this worked really well when the students were all doing the exact same thing, but if your students are writing about different topics, it might not work as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9139" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:45:20.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-09T15:56:13.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will not speak to the direct topic of your questions, which is proofs, because, to be blunt, that's not my field. I will say that there are some edge case where it's acceptable, in my mind, to cite Wikipedia - namely, where said Wiki has become the &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; repository of information for a given topic. These are rare, and usually pop culture focused, but they do exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have a paper which cites the Wiki for a game (which is even less authoritative as a source than Wikipedia), and it was cited without issue from reviewers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:56:13.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2014-04-09T15:58:42.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, your advisor is the one who needs to &lt;em&gt;accept&lt;/em&gt; your thesis. Seeking help from others may be useful for some types of questions, but you'll definitely want his feedback during the process to make sure you're developing the thesis to his standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:58:42.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:03:28.980" Score="1" ViewCount="3256" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19047/who-should-approve-changes-in-curriculum/19049?noredirect=1#comment39202_19049&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;, it was quoted that some universities have administrative or academic department head. I sensed this difference before (but do not remember specifically), but I always thought that the latter is the case: one of the faculty members of a department is appointed as the head or hiring a new faculty member to serve as the department head (or vice versa in some sense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How and why are administrative and academic heads different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:00:59.913" Title="What is the difference between academic and administrative department heads?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19137" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:10:51.453" Score="7" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;Historically, only full professors could have a specific chair, and assistant and associate professors could only wonder under supervision of a chaired (full) professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, every assistant professor is an independent academic, only with a lower salary and possibilities. On the other hand, a chaired position gains secured research funding, but no other faculty member is under his supervision (yes or no, this is my question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the classic chair system still exists in Japan (at least to some extent). Do universities in West Europe and North America still have such system to place junior faculty members (assistant/associate professors) under supervision of a senior (chaired professor) faculty member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T17:11:13.220" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T13:19:07.173" Title="Is the classical chair system (in which a senior professor supervises junior professors) obsolete?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19120" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:51:59.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany this depends on the university, and possibly also on the subject. I know of universities that still have a chair system officially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know of a university in which the chair indeed is the superior of assistant and associate professors in the sense that they are in charge of the chairs full budget and also of the budgets for associate and assistant professors. But I also know universities that do not have the chair system (both officially and practical). However, I can't tell which system is more frequent… I tend to think that chairs are more frequent in Bavaria but I may be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T13:19:07.173" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T13:19:07.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19120" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:52:28.650" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; in my experience at major US research universities, assistant and associate professors will, in general, work independently from full professors or individuals with named chairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the name, assistant professors are not usually assisting in the research of more senior faculty. There are exceptions including in very large multi-PI labs, in special non-tenured faculty research positions, and in other special circumstances. Of course, nothing keeps junior faculty from collaborating with senior faculty — and many do. If anything though, junior faculty are encouraged to do at work on their own or with their own students to demonstrate their individual intellectual abilities for the purposes of the tenure and promotion processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Named chairs usually refers to special permanent funded positions at a university. Usually, these chairs are in a particular area and have been funded to support a particular line of research. As you suggest, named chairs often come with special pots of research funding and are generally more prestigious. Some particularly old or famous named chairs are extremely prestigious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, by no means do all full professors or senior faculties have named chairs. Additionally, it's increasingly common to see junior faculty with named chairs as well including in temporary &quot;Career Development Chairs.&quot; Although named chairs are generally more prestigious than non-named positions, they do not usually signal a higher &lt;em&gt;rank&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., assistant, associate, full) and they certainly do not suggest a supervisory relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T16:52:28.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:56:38.693" Score="6" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;My basic question is, should I get copyright permission for a figure before submitting a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I realize there may be two different situations, and I'm not sure if they are different.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I get permission from original authors/journals before sending a paper for review or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should I wait to get accepted and then ask for permission.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that I should not waste peoples time for permission without being accepted first, but maybe the paper is stronger with figures.  For example, an image of a machine that the paper points out aesthetic features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it seems to me bad to submit a manuscript or paper and after submission finding out there is no permission to use the figure or image, and taking it out of the paper after being accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T15:36:32.297" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T22:16:32.623" Title="When is the best time to get permission for putting others figures in the paper? (Conference vs. Journal)" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19130" CreationDate="2014-04-09T17:10:07.383" Score="4" ViewCount="4127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there are two types of PhD students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) A professor offers a PhD studentship. Then, students apply directly and know their supervisor from the first day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, how a professor secure the funding for a PhD studentship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) A department offers PhD studentships. After admission, students can choose their supervisors or the department will assign them to available professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, how the capacity of each faculty member is determined to accept PhD students from available students of the department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the system varies from university to university, but I am curious to know the most common systems for each cases in North America and Eastern Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T02:48:40.213" Title="How are PhD students assigned to supervisors/professors?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19081" CreationDate="2014-04-09T17:22:41.377" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The U.S. academic job market (at least in my field, mathematics) is very competitive, regardless of the institution and its perceived quality. Now, competition comes in various flavors. We have a lot of people looking for few jobs. That automatically creates competition. You need something to make yourself stand out from the other candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My school is less-competitive as far as admission of students is concerned. Our student body is not that strong overall, although we get a fair number of really bright kids. We also have a 4/4 teaching load, and faculty salaries are relatively low. Our last job search was conducted almost ten years ago and we received in the neighborhood of 200 applications. At more research oriented schools, you may be competing with more applicants, and applicants who have very strong resumes relative to research. So, you're likely to be competing against a larger and more talented pool. This makes the situation even more competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that I was going to follow your intended career path, start out small, be able to spend some quality time with the family, and produce some great work that would allow me to move up to a better school. Didn't happen. I've been able to do some research, but not nearly enough, or of high enough quality, to allow me to move up. There are a couple of factors to keep in mind working in a less competitive environment, especially with a high teaching load. Your research time will be limited, and you won't have a lot of resources at your disposal (great library, colleagues who are fluent in your area, etc.). So, think carefully about what you want to do. Mine has not been a bad career, but it is not what I imagined starting out. As a general rule, it's easier to move down than up. So, I'd apply to the best places for which you're qualified and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T17:22:41.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2014-04-09T17:28:07.780" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) A department offers PhD studentships. After admission, students&#xA;  can choose their supervisors or the department will assign them to&#xA;  available professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this case, how the capacity of each faculty member is determined to&#xA;  accept PhD students from available students of the department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is generally the norm in US universities. How the capacity is set depends on various funding-related factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the department support all incoming Ph.D students via fellowships ? Then there's a budget associated with this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the department support all incoming students via fellowship or teaching assistant positions ? Then based on estimated enrollment of students in courses there's a rough formula estimating number of TAs needed each year, and this factors in how many students are leaving. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does faculty funding support students (either from Day 1 or eventually) ? Then the department will solicit information from faculty on how many students they expect to support that year, and make calculations accordingly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are estimates, and can go wrong. So departments usually need some kind of cushion  when doing calculations to adjust for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While departments might &quot;assign&quot; students to faculty when they enter, this is probably for administrative purposes so students don't slip through the cracks and have someone they can approach early on. Typically students and advisors choose each other once the students arrive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T17:28:07.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2014-04-09T17:49:56.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences departments in the United States, it seems to be a hybrid of the two; the department admissions committee must accept you even if the professor you want to work for has RA funding for you (as opposed to TA funding generated by the school/dept). They evaluate you knowing that you want to work with Professor A. It's almost a given that the student has contacted Professor A prior to the application. The influence of professor A is persuasive (I assume) but not the be all end all, since often times the departments are looking to build a diverse class of not just research interests, but personalities and experiences. This is at least how both my advisors explained the admissions process to me at my current institution. This also seems consistent to how I've been admitted to other places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T02:36:24.803" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T02:36:24.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2014-04-09T18:03:53.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was part of Student Association in my university and I used to get this question many times from newly admitted students for CS PhD programs. I have told those students also that PhDs in CS without funding is not a common scenario in US universities. Usually projects come along with the funds and part of these funds get redirected to you in order to conduct the research. You may want to try out other options. I am sure you will find something better. All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13901" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T18:03:53.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19158" CreationDate="2014-04-09T18:07:47.463" Score="14" ViewCount="2937" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the things one should consider, as a postdoc, before accepting or rejecting an invitation to contribute a book chapter? The proposed book is a handbook in a developing field of engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T09:59:48.127" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T13:54:48.983" Title="What are the things one should consider when invited to contribute a book chapter?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19133" CreationDate="2014-04-09T18:22:00.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It almost certainly won't earn you any money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably won't be read by many people. It will be cited by even fewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The collaboration may lead to future projects together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may involve a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might enjoy the process. Or hate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may or may not help your career progression, depending on your field, your career to date, and the posts you apply to. If it's a book that will become a standard for one or more taught courses, your contribution may be crucial for your future teaching career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, when the putative author is a rising young authority in an engineering field, it's a rapidly-developing field that's attracting significant international interest, and many universities are introducing new courses in the area, then, (depending on the publisher, the other authors, and the other chapters) there's potential for the book to have quite a significant audience, so contributing to the book chapter would be attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T10:42:42.860" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T10:42:42.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2014-04-09T18:30:38.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) A professor offers a PhD studentship. Then, students apply&#xA;  directly and know their supervisor from the first day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this case, how a professor secure the funding for a PhD&#xA;  studentship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either through departmental funding allocated to a particular faculty member (perhaps a new professor was given a 'startup package' from the department), or through external grant money (which would usually dictate that the PhD student is to work on a specific project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8738/what-sources-of-funding-do-faculty-in-computer-science-dept-in-us-universities&quot;&gt;What sources of funding do faculty in Computer Science dept. in US universities have other than NSF?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/248/how-are-the-personal-assistants-for-professors-usually-funded/249#249&quot;&gt;How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T18:30:38.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19120" CreationDate="2014-04-09T18:43:11.703" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of no American university in which any tenure track faculty member works under any other tenure track faculty member in any official capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between assistant professors and full professors is that assistant professors do not have tenure.  (Going far enough back in the history of my department, one sees &quot;tenured assistant professors&quot;.  I don't know what that's about.  I am not willing to claim that nowadays &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; American university has tenured assistant professors, but I do not know of any.)  &quot;Associate professor&quot; is ambiguous on this point: in &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; cases associate professors have tenure, but at my university the promotion and the tenure are distinct processes with slightly different rules, although they are similar enough and onerous enough that candidates get pressured -- perhaps a little unfairly, in my view -- to carry them out simultaneously.  There are a few really good places where &quot;associate professor&quot; is a title awarded to young faculty for which their future tenure is by no means assured -- I'm thinking of you, MIT.  But that's rare.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write that an assistant professor is &quot;with a lower salary and possibilities&quot;.  I wanted to let you know that this really need not be the case.  Academic salaries are most competitive now at the assistant professor level; since annual raises have been meager or nonexistent in many recent years, an associate or even full professor cannot be counted on to have a higher salary than a new-hire assistant professor.  In fact the amount of our &lt;em&gt;first offer&lt;/em&gt; to new-hire assistant professors in my department is very close to my current salary (I am an associate professor not so far away from promotion to full).  This means that if the candidate negotiates at all, they will get offered a higher salary than mine.  This has certainly happened.  (All this is a matter of public record.)  I think that there are no full professors in my department making less than new hire assistant professors, but there are some who are not making substantially more.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in my department and at many others, assistant professors do not have fewer &quot;possibilities&quot;: with the exception of certain voting rights in faculty meetings, they have identical privileges with all other faculty.  They may begin with less &quot;service responsibility&quot; than older faculty; that is probably an advantage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T18:43:11.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19140" CreationDate="2014-04-09T20:31:25.287" Score="8" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying Industrial Engineering in Spain, one of the broadest degrees here that includes the subjects of Calculus, Fluid Mechanics, Electronics, Materials and Programming in C, among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's one subject, Introduction to Computers, that I think has an outdated course. While this is a personal opinion, I do some extracurricular projects based on robotics (electronics + programming) and I see that there's a huge difference between the subject and what is being used in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this subject we are being taught really low level computer operations and iteration, learning how to reinvent a wheel that probably no one of us will ever need to reinvent in our career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I approach the professors about making the course oriented to the current years?&lt;/strong&gt; I know I will not benefit from it, but at least my fellow mates would. As most courses here, it was probably written 15/20 years ago and hasn't changed much in the time being. Besides that, another related question would be, &lt;strong&gt;is teaching outdated material the norm in most universities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small example of what I mean: We had a programming exam with the Outdated Library&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt;, in which I decided to write the function &lt;a href=&quot;http://arduino.cc/en/reference/map&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;map()&lt;/code&gt; as found in arduino&lt;/a&gt;. This made my code much easier to program/debug and faster to write. Most of the other students don't know something like this is even possible and need to go over each individual operation manually to map the different conversions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7385" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:05:05.723" Title="Approach the professors about making the course more &quot;relevant&quot;" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19139" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:05:05.723" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always some tension between teaching considerations in computer science and other fast-moving technology fields, and modern practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the field itself moves so fast, it is not necessarily &lt;em&gt;desirable&lt;/em&gt; for a computer science course to really be up-to-date. Even if you taught students up-to-the-minute programming libraries and paradigms in their freshman CS101 course, by the time they graduate, many of these libraries will be outdated anyways. Furthermore, developing new course materials (or updating existing materials) takes a considerable amount of time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, modern programming paradigms are often too complicated to introduce to complete beginners. A deliberate decision is often made to miss out on &quot;up-to-date&quot; in favor of &quot;simple for newbies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual goal, therefore, is to teach students fundamental ideas and concepts that are timeless. The context in which these ideas are taught will probably become outdated pretty quickly. It's understood that students won't use this specific context again, because it'll be obsolete by the time they graduate; the hope is that the &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; stick, so that the students can understand the new programming paradigms they will be expected to learn on their own in the workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ASCII is dying, replaced mostly by its vastly more complicated superset, UTF-8. But UTF-8 would be crazy to teach in full, with all its byte-stuffing practices that mean different characters take different numbers of bytes, and all the combining characters and normalisation and so on. ASCII has the fundamental idea of characters-as-numbers, which is a useful (and timeless) principle, even if the exact encoding itself is getting more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academiccomputing.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/teaching-programming-modern-or-educational/&quot;&gt;Teaching programming: Modern or Educational?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This seems &quot;stupid&quot; and is demotivating to students who &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; aware of current practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In practice, teaching ideas and concepts is more difficult than teaching specific technologies and syntax. So often students miss out on learning the &quot;timeless&quot; ideas - which were really the whole point of the lesson.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to &lt;strong&gt;What can you do about it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly tell the professor, &quot;I did XYZ as part of my project, and I think it would be interesting to share with the rest of the class.&quot; I often supplement my &quot;fundamental&quot; courses with &quot;modern&quot; concepts, and I love when these supplements come from the students themselves!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always ask the professor, &quot;How is concept ABC used in practice, today?&quot; I love getting this question from students - it gives me an opening to talk about fun stuff :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But understand that teaching outdated material &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the norm in many cases. There are good reasons for this; there are also good reasons &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do this. It's a difficult balance to strike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:05:05.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:22:53.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others that bypassing the advisor is not a helpful strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you should also understand that &lt;strong&gt;the point of this exercise (the M.S.) is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to just end up with a finished thesis&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's to show that the student has developed the mathematical/scientific/technical and professional maturity to produce a piece of M.S.-level independent work, in spite of any personal and interpersonal problems that come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student has a problem with depression, he should seek help from a mental health professional. If the student has a significant interpersonal problem with his advisor, he can ask for help from the person at the university who is in charge of graduate studies. If the student has a problem with writing, he can ask for help from the writing center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ultimately, it's up to the student to get things moving. Having someone &quot;walk him through it step by step so that he can get finished&quot; is probably missing the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:22:53.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:27:40.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are problems approaching the advisor for help, I would suggest talking to the PhD students and/or postdocs who work in the same group as the advisor. They might be able to help. It would also be helpful talking to other students who are supervised by the same advisor. They might not be able to help, but at least you feel that you are not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:27:40.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T22:43:22.557" Score="3" ViewCount="955" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student that just finished my first year in graduate school. The University I am at will only fund me if I work as a TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a community college in the area which I have a long working relationship with. The full time instructors are paid more than I am. They also get 6 credit hours per semester of paid graduate tuition at the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering going back to work at the college after I get my masters degree to have some more control over my life while continuing to work on my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether anyone on this site knows someone who has done this or has done this themselves? If so what were the worst and best aspects of the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13989" LastEditorUserId="541" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T04:52:11.457" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T03:20:41.627" Title="Finishing a PhD while working at a community college" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2014-04-10T00:02:17.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good start would seem to be compilations of grant proposals that have been made public by their authors, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabberwocky.weecology.org/2012/08/10/a-list-of-publicly-available-grant-proposals-in-the-biological-sciences/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more long-term approach would be to work on making grant proposals public more systematically, as discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/opening-up-research-proposals&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11244" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T00:02:17.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T00:26:16.330" Score="9" ViewCount="15257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a social science PhD student (with a quantitative bent) at a U.S. research university. If paperwork is not a concern, I would be equivalently interested in working as an academic and in private industries. However, one of my goal is to be able to stay in the U.S., thus to craft my plan I hope to know whether it is indeed easier to obtain H1B / green card as an academic than as a PhD-holding employee? My industry-relevant skill-set is statistical training and programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this question has far-reaching relevance for any typical international PhD students, I would also be willing to give more details regarding my training, my school reputation, etc. if it helps answering the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P/S: This is throwaway account for anonymity. I have been an avid user of StackExchange and would love your input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:19:35.693" Title="Is it easier to obtain H1B / green card as academics in the US?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2014-04-10T01:16:33.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, IANAL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The H1B process requires a declaration from the employer that the skill set provided by the candidate cannot be found within the US. This is typically not too hard to satisfy, and is required regardless of whether you're in academia or in private industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Green card process can change dramatically depending on which process you use. Academics will typically go through what is execrably called the 'Outstanding Researcher' process, which awards a green card based on scholarly excellence. But Ph.Ds in private industry also go through this process (I did!). It really depends on the willingness of the employer (because of the legal processing involved). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to go through the &quot;regular&quot; advanced degree process, which has different qualification requirements and has a different queue/wait time. Arguably, this could take longer, and I don't think academics ever go through this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the bottom line is: it depends on the employer, but there's a technical sense in which being an academic can help slightly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T01:16:33.763" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2014-04-10T01:37:01.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience there are actually three different cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A faculty members (having fund from a project with a company or a national grant or some other source) announces that there are PhD position(s) available. The topic you are going to work on is determined. Those interested, apply to the faculty member directly and s/he decides which one(s) to choose. After admission you become a student of the university of the faculty member, but the department or university don't have any say in the admission process. This method is usually used in Europe. This is similar to your &quot;case 1&quot;. (Your answer: As I said it can be from a project with a company, a national research grant or other sources).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A university or a department in a university announces that there are some number of PhD positions available. You may correspond with some faculty members and get their approval, but the university or department has the final say. i.e. you may get the approval of a faculty member but don't be admitted by university. In this case you apply to university (or department) and they sort the applicants based on some factors and admit those number of people from top of the list that they announced. For example if they announced 15 PhD positions, then the top 15 applicants will be admitted. In this case it is usually asked from applicants to correspond with faculty members and get their approval before applying. This is similar to your &quot;case 2&quot;. This method is usually used in Europe. (your answer: The capacity of each faculty member can be found out by corresponding with them.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no official announcement from university/department. The university approves new students each semester. There is no limit on the number of positions. The applicant corresponds with a faculty member, and after getting her/his approval applies to the university(department). Since there is no limit on the number of students (in contrast with case 2), almost all students who get the faculty member's approval, will be accepted by the university/department. This method is usually used in north America.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7321" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T01:37:01.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2014-04-10T02:48:40.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;US mathematics departments are usually a delayed variation on (2).  The department accepts applications.  The student &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; in their application mention an interest in working with a particular faculty member, and a faculty member could lobby for a particular student, but in neither case does this actually create a binding advising relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department don't announce a fixed number of available positions, but they decide how many students to offer admission (and funding) based on current enrollment, funding, and general faculty availability.  (Funding primarily comes from the department, not from the faculty.)  Some number of those students accept the offer and show up in the fall.  They may be assigned a pro forma advisor who helps them decide what classes to take, etc, but this person is not expected to be a research mentor.  Then, over the next 2-3 years, the student is expected to make contact with various faculty members and eventually find one who is willing to be their advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T02:48:40.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23574" CreationDate="2014-04-10T03:49:31.053" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will have a post-doc interview in social sciences, warned to be a bit nontraditional in the sense that it will focus more on general logical capabilities and unique/creative thoughts instead of specific sets of skill or fit with a particular project. The reason is because this is a training grant I guess. Literally, they want to emphasize on &quot;innovative&quot; aspects of applicants, though I think that it's quite tempting and ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess that I'd want to ask for questions you may have that can train the brain in this direction, some thing thought-intriguing like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the most significant finding in your field in the last couple of years and how does that mean to your specific work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any comments are welcome :) Btw, if you happen to be in social sciences, how would you answer the above question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12295" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:49:17.663" Title="Suggestions for a non-traditional interview?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19159" CreationDate="2014-04-10T04:22:35.480" Score="2" ViewCount="2357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe they are helping and I am the one who does not know how things really work and that's why I am seeking help here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to finish my Master in Computer science (waiting for the oral exam). And this is the time to apply for as many as possible PhD programs. The problem is that many of PhD programs ask for at least two recommendation letters (sometimes three) and they do not accept general recommendation letter. Rather, they send to the referee's email and ask him/her to write. Therefore, for each of them my referees should write a separate evaluation. So far I got them to write for three applications (two got rejected already). However, I feel I am still at the beginning and there are so many programs I need to try. I am totally aware of the program suitability and I should not apply for a program that I'm not 100% sure I have good chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem is that I chase my referees to write one letter and sometimes I miss deadlines because they are busy or not responding.  I found only this question is very useful &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13977/how-to-reduce-the-load-of-professors-writing-recommendation-letters-for-graduate?rq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but the issue is I follow all steps there to help them to write my recommendation letters, but they mostly do not. I am one of top 5% students of theirs and I published three papers with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I am stuck between the hammer and the rock here. My question is &lt;strong&gt;what is the best tactic I can follow at this stage?&lt;/strong&gt; Cut down the number of programs I apply for? Or talk to the supervisor about the issue. What advice do you have for me? I really appreciate your advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T09:49:34.790" Title="My Supervisors are not helping in writing recommendations letters" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19144" CreationDate="2014-04-10T05:50:25.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching at a community college while in grad school is certainly an option and I know people who have done it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My major concern would be workload.  I'd expect a community college job to be drastically more work, greater responsibility and stress, and less likely to accommodate your coursework and research time.  It can be very difficult in grad school to balance your time and energy among your responsibilities, and it's easy for  the short-term demands of teaching to push the longer-term demands of research to the back burner, ultimately sabotaging your chances of finishing your degree.    I certainly wouldn't suggest a full-time community college appointment; even part-time seems like it would be hard to manage.  But it sounds like you've actually taught at this college before, and have also TA'ed, so you'll be in the best position to make that judgment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university, you'll probably get to TA a variety of courses, including more advanced courses in your discipline.  This can be a great learning experience for you, and fill in gaps in your education that you didn't know you had.  It can also be an asset on the job market.  At the community college, I presume you'd teach introductory or remedial courses exclusively; that's a learning experience too, but not in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university, you're more likely to find fellow students and faculty mentors with whom you can discuss aspects of teaching, and being a TA can be a great social / bonding / networking experience.  If you stay in academia, you'll be able to get letters from well-known professors attesting to your teaching ability.  At the community college, you'll probably be more on your own, and a letter from the department head there may not carry so much weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, it might be better to plan on teaching community college during occasional summers (when TA'ing may not be available), or perhaps near the end of your PhD (and especially if your departmental funding runs out).  It seems overly ambitious to plan to do it throughout.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T05:50:25.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19151" CreationDate="2014-04-10T05:54:46.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you should not worry too much; you mentioned that you have already published three papers with them, and that is the important part. For a PhD what it counts more to the admission committee is to see if you have research skills, and that number of papers it is pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should try to approach one of your past professors directly, I mean to drop a visit and tell them about your problem. Take in consideration that most of them have a heavy duty work and that is why they are forgetting about your recommendation letters. Bottom line, approach to them directly and try not only with one, but with every professor that knows you and that have worked directly with you. I believe that they will be more than happy to help you. So relax and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T05:54:46.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19155" CreationDate="2014-04-10T07:17:50.890" Score="6" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am making a paper on the impact of popular TV shows on the spread of correct knowledge and facts about current and past events. Shows like South Park, The Simpsons and likely others often feature recent events in their storylines, as well as past events as well. These shows often have specialized wikias, usually in the form of &quot;showname.wikia.com&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These wikias are mainly maintained by a dedicated subgroup of the fanbase for that show, people who usually know a lot about it. This means that the information on there comes from more reliable sources. In addition, since most of the information stems from individual episodes, there usually isn't any information about that episode outside of the wikia or the episode itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like this, would it be appropriate to use the wikia as a source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11593" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:09:27.450" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T21:09:27.450" Title="Should I treat specialized wikis with the same scrutiny as Wikipedia itself?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19154" CreationDate="2014-04-10T08:56:30.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think wikia are any different to wikipedia: there is no expert quality-control editorial staff like a proper encyclopaedia has: there are only the site owner(s), and the collective wisdom and collective foolishness of the contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing about, and analysing, the wikia itself, then cite the wikia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you are writing about the thing that the wikia itself writes about, then where possible use the wikia as a lead to find sources, but not as a source in itself. For things such as a pre&amp;ccedil;is of a particular episode, then the production company or original broadcaster may have an episode guide. At very worst, you may have to cite the wikia itself: in which case, be sure to cite a specific version of a page, but IMDB may be a better source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T08:56:30.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-10T09:06:41.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One issue the other answers don't mention is the possibility of &lt;em&gt;circular reporting&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other answers have said, if there's a citation then you should follow it. If there's not a citation, and you use the result in your published paper, the article may then be edited to use your paper as its citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is dangerous, since referenced results will not be scrutinised as much as novel results. In this situation, it would be prudent to cite Wikipedia explicitly, so that such a circular arguments would become clear by looking at both sets of references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples in the link above are false information about the real-world, which are difficult to verify and hence should be avoided outright. The situation isn't as bad for mathematical proofs, since you can verify them before including them, but you should make sure to present the proof in a way that shows it's novel (and hence needs review), but also cites Wikipedia as the source (or else it's plagiarism). A footnote like those mentioned above would work for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13995" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T09:06:41.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19083" CreationDate="2014-04-10T09:08:53.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed? Yes, when appropriate.&#xA;It is appropriate to cite Wikipedia in a case study or literary scrutiny of Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For scholarly articles, jurored sources are often mandated. &#xA;For literary articles, source citation is based upon the origin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a literary examination of Xenophon's &lt;em&gt;Cyropaedia&lt;/em&gt; or Wikipedia's page on &lt;em&gt;Cyrus the Great&lt;/em&gt;, may cite the origin text to draw conclusions regarding (inclusive of, but not limited to) erroneous statistics or accurate accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T09:08:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19133" CreationDate="2014-04-10T09:31:23.103" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I get an invitation to contribute a book chapter (or conference paper in an invited session), I usually ask myself the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I have a reasonable contribution ready for the proposed submission deadline?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the venue I am invited to a good fit and does it provide the best possible visibility for my contribution?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I want to invite the person inviting me to similar occasions in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you should be able to answer at least questions 1 and 2 with &quot;yes&quot; before accepting the invitation. If your answer to question 2 would be &quot;no&quot;, it may still be wise to accept the invitation in view of question 3. For this type of invitations, I would try to find a smaller contribution which fits the visibility of the proposed publication venue. In a book chapter, for example a summarizing synthesis of some of your previous results might be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T09:31:23.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19151" CreationDate="2014-04-10T09:49:34.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how many letters you're asking people to write for you. However, when there is a separate form that needs to be filled out for each letter, that is asking for a considerable expenditure of time for your advisors. You need to be aware of this, and plan accordingly. You can't ask people to fill out fifty forms for you at once, and then complain when they can't get it done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not really about applying to &quot;as many PhD programs as possible.&quot; Your advisors should be working with you to select the schools and programs you are going to apply to, and you should be working with them to ensure that you are not placing too large a burden on them. This includes giving them a list that clearly states all the schools and programs to which you are applying, as well as the deadlines, &lt;strong&gt;as early as possible&lt;/strong&gt;, so that they have time to plan accordingly. Then, if there's no response a few days beforehand, you need to send a polite email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to keep sending out request after request for more letters in a season is a good way to annoy your letter writers. Organize and plan in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T09:49:34.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19171" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:13:18.890" Score="11" ViewCount="22081" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out  in another &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19120/is-the-classical-chair-system-in-which-a-senior-professor-supervises-junior-pro&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, the general tendency today as compared from classical times is to make junior professors (at assistant level) more and more independent. However, I wonder that assistant professors (common in the US university) supervise PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The philosophy of academic ranking is to prepare academics for academic/scientific tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, academics normally have postdoc experience before their appointment as assistant professors, it is not mandatory. Moreover, postdoc experience is not experience conducive for the supervising of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In relation to the above is it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it reduce the quality of the education/research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2021-02-07T09:51:23.517" Title="Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:24:51.177" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied for a computer science course at more universities, but one of them really convinced me with a very welcoming attitude. Even if I have not confirmed my place, I have a tutor and he introduced me to some professors in the university to discuss about some topics that I am interested in. But, I find myself in a rather delicate situation. I have just some basic knowledge in their subject, so a discussion with them wouldn't be so entertaining for them, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are a lot of things that I would like to learn, and so many questions to ask, and they seem willingly to answer (actually, ever they do not know that, I will go to their university), so, to what extent may I ask them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:11:05.007" Title="Discussing with university professors before being undergraduate" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19173" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:39:06.013" Score="22" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just got a response from a journal of the MAA that my manuscript is accepted as a filler.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The correspondence reads:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Editorial Board likes your submission and has asked me to move it&#xA;  to the &quot;Filler Archives.&quot; Filler pieces are used only on a space&#xA;  available basis. Hence, it is now in a queue with other filler pieces&#xA;  awaiting publication. It is impossible for us to predict if or when we&#xA;  will use it, but if an opportunity to publish it arises, then we will&#xA;  let you know. If you choose to publish it somewhere else, please&#xA;  inform us so that I can remove it from the archives&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is impossible to predict &quot;if or when&quot; they will use my submission, this could mean that I might wait &quot;forever&quot; for publication? I am a little bit confused and I would like if anybody has any similar experience to give me some advice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What should I expect about the publication of my paper given its acceptance under &quot;filler&quot; status?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8979" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T17:01:44.523" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T17:01:44.523" Title="What happens if your manuscript is accepted as a filler?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19174" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:41:26.980" Score="9" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the course of a research project, one may have new, more promising, ideas that were not foreseen and thus not covered in the original research proposal. What should one do in this case? Is it all right to work on the new idea under the original proposal? Or should one stick to the lines suggested in the original proposal and perhaps submit another proposal for the new idea although this means that one has to wait before he can work on the new idea? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T14:08:14.607" Title="How far can research deviate from the original research proposal?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19162" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:45:42.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most professors will enjoy talking about their subject with a student who is motivated and interested, so you shouldn't be bashful about asking them questions. Just try to ask &quot;good&quot; questions, as opposed to questions which can be easily answered with a moment's search on Wikipedia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1171" LastEditorUserId="1171" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T15:11:05.007" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:11:05.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-04-10T12:57:17.110" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is alright for an assistant professor to guide one or several doctoral students. He is not experienced in probably guiding PhD students, but, he is definitely experienced in conducting research, which will help him translate this to guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't it reduce the education/research quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, maybe. Supervising PhD students is a learning activity like most anything else. As such, it is to be expected that maybe when an assistant professor supervises her/his first student, s/he may do things that should would handle differently later on. But this is not tied to the status of the person, but to her/his experience in advising. So if you don't let assistant professors advise PhD students, they would start doing it later on and be equally bad in it, because when would they have learned how to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional concern is that there are only so many full professors to go around. While I concede that working with a more senior professor may have advantages, these advantages would likely disappear if every senior professor has to handle significantly more students (as the entire 'advising force' of assistant professors falls away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also add that, in general, assistant professors are not nearly as inexperienced as you seem to assume. Today, at least in my field (CS), there is hardly any assistant professor that did not have multiple years of postdoc experience, which also includes co-supervising master and PhD students. As such, I am not sure if the problem you seem to consider even exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit based on ff524's comment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question intends to ask, &amp;quot;Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students alone?&amp;quot; In some places, PhD students working with an inexperienced advisor are also co-advised by another (more experienced) advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is actually the case in many well-respected university (dutch universities come to mind right now). I think this is great if the main responsibility/load is still on the junior professor, with the senior person being more an advisor to the advisor than to the student. If the model degenerates into the junior professor basically being a proxy for the senior person, this seems counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53762" LastEditDate="2021-02-07T09:51:23.517" LastActivityDate="2021-02-07T09:51:23.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:22:32.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an assistant professor supervising two Ph.D. students. Everyone in my department seems to be happy with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps that there are senior faculty who are happy to give advice to me when needed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T13:22:32.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:31:25.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields, Today's assistant professors are older and more experienced than they were in the past.  By the time an assistant professor in math has a student start research they're typically 6+ years out from PhD (3-4 years of postdoc plus a couple years to settle before students are likely to ask).  I think that means its pretty reasonable for assistant professors to take students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T13:31:25.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19154" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:36:09.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you think Wikipedia is less reliable than a smaller, not widely known topic wiki?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We all know that Wikipedia is &lt;em&gt;only about 99% reliable&lt;/em&gt;. [1]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We all &lt;em&gt;know nothing about the reliability&lt;/em&gt; of the topic wiki.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not sound like a good base to conclude the topic wiki is more reliable than Wikipedia, - it's reliability is just much more unknown.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The effect is that every second person on the street can explain to you how Wikipedia &quot;is not reliable&quot;, &quot;contains errors&quot; -&lt;br&gt;&#xA;while you or your Professor have a hard time ensuring that the topic wiki is even somewhat reliable at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it's hard to tell whether a &lt;em&gt;&quot;dedicated subgroup of the [actual user base]&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is influenced by some important person or subgroup following some non-neutral motivation. What's missing compared to Wikipedia is transparency... or at least we are not sure it's not missing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Wikipedia has lots of transparency on even the tiniest discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;[1] &lt;sub&gt; &lt;em&gt;The 99% is just an example value for illustration, and wrong for sure. (But which way?)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13560" LastEditorUserId="13560" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T15:19:58.597" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:19:58.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:49:42.723" Score="25" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students? Don't it reduce the education/research quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For certain institutes I've been in, I would find myself asking the opposite question: &lt;strong&gt;isn't it wrong for senior professors to supervise students when they have little time for them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is not always the case that full professors have no time for their students, but I have seen it happen many times: I've seen cases where students were meeting their official full professor supervisors once a month (or less frequently) and putting names of supervisors on papers that the supervisors had never read. This seems to me to be prevalent in research institutes where the hierarchy tree has a high branching factor to get value out of available funds (few Full Professors, lots of PostDocs / Assistant Professors, even more PhD students and Research Assistants, etc.); in such cases, the priority for senior professors is getting funding for and managing projects. In my case, when I was a PostDoc in such an institute, I was doing the day-to-day supervision of a number of students whose supervisor(s) had no time for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it varies from place to place. But my hypothesis is that by the time you reach the Assistant Professor level, either you will have the necessary skills and personality to be a good supervisor, or you will probably never have those skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: I don't believe that seniority amongst professors is a good predictor for quality of supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T15:58:04.637" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:58:04.637" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19154" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:50:03.233" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the answers that say &quot;There's no difference.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, you should critically evaluate the content with respect to correctness, reliability, etc. However, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a difference with respect to the &lt;em&gt;nature&lt;/em&gt; of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia (for most topics) serves as a tertiary source. That is, it aggregates primary and secondary sources on a topic, but doesn't add original content or interpretation. (In fact, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aNo_original_research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;against Wikipedia policy&lt;/a&gt; to include original content or interpretation.) In these cases, you should find and use the original source, to verify its contents and to give credit to the real authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dedicated wikis on pop culture often &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; contain original content. And quite a few Wikipedia pages on pop culture do as well, even though they aren't supposed to (see e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology_of_Lost&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythology of Lost&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Lost wiki contains a great deal of interpretation and commentary (e.g.: an analysis of recurring themes in the series) - not just a rehash of the episode plots. This makes it a secondary source, not a tertiary source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use this &lt;strong&gt;original content&lt;/strong&gt; (having critically assessed its correctness and reliability), and of course if you do, you should cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose you are writing a paper on &quot;Use of the flash-forward technique in early 21st century television&quot; and you &lt;a href=&quot;http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Flash-forwards&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;read the following on the Lost wiki&lt;/a&gt; (or on an equivalent page on Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Lost, the flash-forward technique was introduced in &quot;Through the Looking Glass&quot;, although it wasn't made clear that it was a flash-forward until the end of the episode. The first episode to feature a flash-forward that was clearly shown to be one from the start was &quot;The Beginning of the End&quot;. &quot;Ji Yeon&quot; was the first episode to intertwine flashbacks with flash-forwards, although the flashback element was only clearly revealed to be in the past at the end of the episode, making its temporality a plot twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you then go on and watch the episodes &quot;Through the Looking Glass,&quot; &quot;The Beginning of the End,&quot; and &quot;Ji Yeon&quot; yourself, or read the episode scripts (i.e., verify the correctness of the claim by checking the primary source), you still cannot claim in your work that you identified the use of flash-forward in Lost all by yourself! The wiki page in this case is a secondary source with an original analysis and interpretation, and you should cite it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T17:37:34.837" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T17:37:34.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19164" CreationDate="2014-04-10T13:53:15.647" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is different from being accepted for publication (instead, it's closer to not rejected).  It means they might publish it soon, they might publish it at some point further in the future, and they might not publish it at all.  I have no idea what the statistics are, and they may vary depending on the current editor in chief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mathematical Association of America publishes several widely read, high-quality journals that focus on exposition rather than original research (most prominently the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly&quot;&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/a&gt;).  There's a lot of competition to publish in these journals, which means they reject many submissions, including almost all submissions to the Monthly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Monthly has a tradition of using short, interesting submissions as filler (and I think other MAA journals do as well, but I'm not certain).  This tradition arose in the print era, when it was more important to ensure that the number and layout of the pages came out right, and it has continued since readers enjoy the filler and there aren't many good places to publish pieces like this.  The filler articles are generally not considered particularly important, and they are chosen to fill the available space, to complement the main articles, or just because they caught the editor's eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why would someone allow their submission to be used as filler?  One reason is that there may not be other good opportunities for publishing it, but I think the general reason is that the author doesn't consider it a big deal.  The typical filler article is short and entertaining, but not a major part of the author's career.  If your submission really matters to you, either because you would feel insulted to see it used as filler or because your career would benefit from having it published soon, then the filler archives are probably not a good place for it.  (You might get lucky and see it published immediately, but probably not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T13:53:15.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19165" CreationDate="2014-04-10T14:08:14.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two opposing forces here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're probably not doing research if you can say exactly what you are going to do beforehand in the research proposal. At the heart of research is exploration. Hence it is expected that you demonstrate some agency and adapt the research as you explore the topic more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the people who fund you are funding you to work in the area of the proposal. Switching to a completely &lt;strong&gt;disconnected&lt;/strong&gt; topic on a whim is (generally) not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How far can research deviate from the original research proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is difficult to give a concrete answer to and it will differ from fund to fund. Most generally, if you can show the funding body a path from what you proposed to what you ended up doing (i.e., you can show that your intent was to follow the proposal, but you discovered new evidence that a better alternative was possible and you followed that alternative instead), then I think you're on safe ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, it will depend entirely on what your funding body is looking for and how they justify their funds to their bosses. You will have to try understand what the objectives of the funders are: is it publications, creation of a product, teaching and dissemination, contributing towards some high-level national/EU directive, etc.? Will your new direction likewise satisfy those objectives under what was originally agreed in the proposal? These are important questions. (Even if you stuck steadfastly to the topic proposed, groking the motives of your funders and what they will look for during reviews is vital for success. If you understand these motives well enough, then as a side result, you'll have the answer as to how much deviation is acceptable or even desirable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T14:08:14.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T14:22:49.913" Score="4" ViewCount="3773" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very nervous potential PhD student here! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, I have been applying to quite a few bioinformatics PhD programs in the US and been rejected from most of them. I did my masters in the UK, and had unfortunately fallen ill during its course and had to take a break so didn't end up doing great. My undergrad GPA is ok (3.12). I did however do good work during my Undergrad and masters, and have a really supporting recommendation letter to show for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a very promising interview with a professor from a Flagship State University who has agreed to supervise and fund me (Research assistantship). Suffice to say our research interests match a lot and I also think the professor would be a great supervisor. The professor has also been actively following up on my application within the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question here is, what are my chances of getting admitted? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department doesn't have a &quot;PhD program&quot; per se (i.e. traditional program where students are admitted and then find a supervisor). Students seem to contact supervisor and find funding through that route and then apply. I am not sure how the application processes work in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14005" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T17:13:00.563" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:04:48.143" Title="What is the likelihood of a PhD admission if a professor agrees to supervise?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-04-10T15:24:59.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it's appropriate. In many research-intensive academic departments it's the assistant professors (the younger researchers) that are doing the innovative research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had several friends who worked with an assistant professor years ago. That professor later won a Nobel Prize for the work being done in his assistant professor days, with the help of those students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14007" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:24:59.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19195" CreationDate="2014-04-10T15:26:02.713" Score="5" ViewCount="3196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the answer to this question varies depending on the field of study. I am asking it from an Engineering perspective. I am currently enrolled in a PhD program in Mechanical Engineering (carried out with an industrial partner) and would like to join a research department in the aeronautical/aerospace industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For PhD students in a similar situation, what would you consider to be the main advantages (and disadvantages) of doing a Post-Doc ? Should you target a better ranked university than where you did your PhD, same level or lower ? or should you rather join industry straight after finishing the PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to share your thoughts and experience. There's probably multiple answers to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastEditorUserId="9665" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T17:18:38.833" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T08:02:36.957" Title="Advantages and disadvantages of doing a PostDoc" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19182" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:03:06.670" Score="11" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;While giving presentations in conferences or talks in research meetings, is it ok to self-advertise that I'm on the job market (academic or industry)? Is it advisable or does it make more sense to mention that during networking in teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T16:08:16.303" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:51:49.580" Title="Is it advisable to self-advertise in conferences being on the job market" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19179" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:10:41.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many people do this and I don't see any problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it help? This is much less clear. But it seems very unlikely to hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T16:10:41.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19184" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:28:36.083" Score="9" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for a full professor position, and after the interview, I was asked for a copy of my PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was confused and want to know if it is the common and normal procedure or happened for me based on a specific reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, my strong works were done after my PhD, and I didn't know that my PhD project would be used for judging me (frankly, I'm not proud of that project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T18:22:55.740" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T19:36:46.903" Title="Is the PhD thesis needed for a faculty appointment?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19179" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:30:18.213" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is ok, but it may not be ideal.  Academia often frowns upon open self-promotion (more than it probably should, in my opinion), and flat out saying that you're on the market in a public presentation seems a little...well, &quot;desperate&quot; is too strong, but the next thing, perhaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts about how/when/whether to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cultural nuances can vary in very subtle and localized ways.  If you are going to a big conference in your profession or field, there must be other people there who are on the job market.  Look to them and see how they are behaving: is anyone else advertising their availability in their presentations?  If not, maybe don't do it yourself without an especially good reason.  If so, look to the audience members and see how they're reacting.  A little face-reading will probably tell you whether people are happy to hear this kind of information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider trying to disburse this information slightly less directly.  For instance, ending a talk with something like &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Please&lt;/strong&gt; come talk to me if you're interested in X [or, by implication, me].  I would be very interested to take these things further.&quot;  Then, when someone talks to you one-on-one or in a small group, you can work the fact that you're on the market organically into the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you go to a conference and you're on the job market, concentrate on making meaningful academic and social connections with people, especially potential employers.  Don't prioritize selling yourself directly.  If they meet you and like you and your work, you can follow up later by letting them know you're on the market.  And you should.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T22:51:49.580" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:51:49.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19181" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:44:42.873" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the general prerequisites in this day and age for a faculty appointment is an earned (as opposed to honorary) PhD from a (typically accredited) degree-granting institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, asking to see either a PhD thesis, a transcript, or the degree certificate is would be ways of ascertaining that you do, in fact, have a valid degree. This by no means implies that only your PhD matters in the hiring process; just that it's part of the process to ensure you're eligible. I wouldn't read too much into this beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T16:44:42.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19179" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:48:22.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In circumstances such as this, a little levity can help a lot. Outright saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need a job, please hire me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is going to come across as desperate, melodramatic or tacky. Presenting it a little bit more humorously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And if you'd be interested in a postdoctoral associate who can tell you about X, I may be able to help you out. . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something in a similar vein will not. You'll make your point, but it won't come across too negatively. Of course, if a potential advisor isn't amused by such a comment, this could be problematic—but I'd argue that someone who has no sense of humor whatsoever might not be a good advisor to have in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T16:48:22.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19175" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:51:10.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your odds are better than they might be otherwise, but they're not necessarily 100%, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the issue is that some schools may not recognize or honor such &quot;claims&quot; or &quot;gentlemen's agreements&quot; to fund people after they are accepted. More importantly, the issue is that US admissions are typically done at the departmental level, not the faculty member level. That means that a professor telling you that you'll be admitted is not necessarily a guarantee, because the admissions committee has to make that call. (On the other hand, if the advisor in question chairs or is a powerful member of the admissions committee, that changes things substantially!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T16:51:10.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19175" CreationDate="2014-04-10T17:11:22.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @aeismail answer; I would say it depends to the university policy/routine in handling applications.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Most likely there are three entities involved in any application:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;School/Faculty of Graduate Studies (GS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The potential supervisor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your chances depends on how applications are usually processed between these three entities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some schools they just need a commitment from a faculty member to accept you; ( that is, GS decision always align with the supervisor decision).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Others the final decision is made through GS - after receiving the input from the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T17:38:31.403" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T17:38:31.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19175" CreationDate="2014-04-10T19:04:48.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer is coming from my experience at one major research school in the US.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is department dependent. In some sciences (e.g. those where many professors have their own &quot;lab&quot;), it's essentially a &lt;em&gt;prerequisite&lt;/em&gt; for you to have a professor who is willing to work with you and let you join their lab. So, in this situation, having this commitment from a professor is not a particularly strong &quot;+&quot; for you, but not having such a commitment would probably rule you out entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other departments (e.g. my PhD department: Statistics), a vast majority (if not all) PhD students did not have an advisory commitment from any faculty member before applying. However, it did appear that those who ultimately failed the qualifying process (exams, etc.) were those who had not had significant research progress with any faculty. I don't know if this was a causal relationship or just the simple fact that those who were working on research were those that were generally better equipped to pass the exams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:04:48.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T20:19:07.560" Score="1" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I give an online test using a Course Management System (aka &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Learning Management System&lt;/a&gt;, LMS), I like to use the &quot;review answers&quot; capability to go over the test with the class and highlight questions that many of them got incorrect. This can reveal common misunderstandings, poorly worded questions, things I didn't teach adequately, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But given that the recommendation is to scramble the order of the questions and even the answers, how on earth can that work? This is why I DON'T scramble questions and answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a way of dealing with this? I have spent hours searching the web and found no reference to this issue. But anyone using a LMS must have encountered it? Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14016" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T13:55:21.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T19:18:42.623" Title="Reviewing test answers with students using a Course Management System" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T21:20:47.277" Score="18" ViewCount="6392" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my high school career, I had the unique opportunity to take multiple mathematics courses at my local university, and after graduating, I took two graduate level math courses: Measure theory, and a class on topological manifolds. This was a great experience, but it has left me in a shifty situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the department head if I could be admitted into the program since I took a full time course load receiving a B+ and A respectively, but it was denied due to the fact that I did not have a bachelors. The only option given to me at this university would be to enroll in the undergraduate program and take graduate courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be open to that idea, but it has multiple pitfalls. First of all, I am not guaranteed any research opportunities, which view as highly restrictive on my growth as a mathematician. In addition, I am not guaranteed funding opportunities like I would be in the graduate school. This in combination with the fact that I would have to take 50% more credit hours of course work would mean I would end up having to take out more loans than I would like. This is all very disappointing for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of enrolling in courses again, this semester I began independent study in algebra and differential topology using Aluffi's and Lee's book respectively on the subjects. In addition, I have been exposing myself to more theoretical physics, such as Yang-Mills theories and Supersymmetry. Because these subjects are capturing my interest as well, it seems natural that I take my studies towards Algebraic Geometry and String Theories. I really want to get involved with a program to help enable me with my studies, but I do not think an undergraduate program would be adequate. For those of you who are still reading, how can I work towards getting into a program which would enable my studies an empower me with supervised research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not think my undergraduate work would to be too relevant, since most of it was not rigorous; that is, calculation based. I took undergraduate courses in ODE's, PDE's, probability theory, analysis, mulitvariable calculus, and linear algebra. Unfortunately, I did not do well in the ODE, calculus, and linear algebra courses because they were during the summer, and I had not yet acclimated to the required amount of work. In this specific program, my course work is nearly equivalent to a bachelors degree, sans single variable calculus and a class in discrete math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14018" LastEditorUserId="14018" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T21:50:21.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T06:40:08.467" Title="Are Mathematics graduate programs open to admitting a student out of high school with graduate work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-10T21:34:43.180" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with math grad programs (your situation would be highly unusual in a CS grad program), but I'd like to question two statements you make about the non-viability of an undergraduate degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all, I am not guaranteed any research opportunities, which&#xA;  view as highly restrictive on my growth as a mathematician. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're good enough to take advanced material, grasp it and even approach an actual research question, then you're functionally equivalent to a grad student and many professors would be happy to take you on. The antecedent is important though: the fact that you've taken courses doesn't mean you're ready to do research, but this is precisely what REU programs are for, and faculty often get extra money to support students for UG research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In&#xA;  addition, I am not guaranteed funding opportunities like I would be in&#xA;  the graduate school. This in combination with the fact that I would&#xA;  have to take 50% more credit hours of course work would mean I would&#xA;  end up having to take out more loans than I would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not wrong here, but there are often scholarship opportunities available, so the situation isn't completely black and white. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: one reason that grad programs might be leery in taking someone without an undergraduate degree is because the UG degree is more than just a credential. It's a proxy for a long sequence of coursework that exposes you broadly to an entire field of study. In almost any discipline, a basic level of breadth is very important for research work: because you need to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;understand what questions are important and why&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;understand how different questions fit together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acquire the ability to see connections among different parts of an area. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can do an entire undergraduate program via self-study, but then you don't have a &quot;short certificate&quot; proving your command of the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T21:34:43.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19178" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:02:34.810" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a situation somewhat related to yours: I did a PhD in engineering with an industrial partner, and I'm now a post-doc researcher in a reputable university. It sounds, when you say 'doing a postdoc', that you have the impression that it is the logical 'next level' in the sequence: bachelors - masters - PhD - … but it is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no 'advantages' or 'disadvantages' in being a postdoc researcher for a while. It's just that, with some rare exceptions, you will not get a &lt;strong&gt;faculty&lt;/strong&gt; position right after you graduate from your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time spent as a postdoc is usually the time where you gain experience, hopefully make your peers aware of your existence, publish (or finish publishing) the chapters of your PhD thesis and maybe that study that you feel will make you stand out, etc. in other words: giving yourself the pedigree that will make you interesting for an &lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt; hiring committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have no intentions of becoming a professor, there are no real reason to 'do a postdoc', unless there aren't any other options (which I assume is not the case for you, as an engineer with experience in translational research/industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T01:07:48.767" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T01:07:48.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:09:31.873" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can't get into a good graduate program without a bachelor's (and it seems highly unlikely; I have never heard of such a case, even with child prodigies): Pick an undergraduate university that will offer you a full scholarship (I'm sure that if you have good SAT and grades, you will be able to find some such university), graduate as fast as you want to (could easily be done in 2 years at most public universities, with your background, assuming credits transfer which they should, and you might not even have to take summer classes), and aggressively seek out undergraduate research opportunities from day 1, both during the semester and during the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:09:31.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19198" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:13:01.157" Score="8" ViewCount="2830" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first time posting here and I apologize if this is not in the relevant forum or site.  My question is: is it possible to approach professors to changing their teaching style?   and if so, how would it be best to approach this topic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T05:10:13.790" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T13:43:02.757" Title="How to make suggestions to professors on how to teach?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:41:30.630" Score="6" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously a Principal Investigator (PI) has many responsibilities toward his or her subordinates, including mentoring them, helping to direct their research, providing funding, and resolving difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in practice, it is often possible for a PI to avoid many of these responsibilities and &quot;get away with it&quot;. By this I mean that failing to address these responsibilities has little effect on the PI's own career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is often understood that a PI should have some input when PhD students are writing manuscripts. A PI with a large lab may have a policy of leaving students to fend for themselves in this regard. With some intelligent selection at the hiring stage, this PI may ensure that most of his or her students are already capable of writing papers with no assistance. The few that slip through will fail to have a productive PhD, but this will not directly impact the PIs career all that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, a PI may be unable to come up with good research ideas, but this can be compensated for by actively seeking out graduate students who do have good ideas. Since it is rare to explicitly state in science who had the idea for a project, the PIs CV will still look good thanks to the papers the students end up publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an example of an obligation is applying for grants. If a PI is ineffective at securing grants, it is very unlikely that their career will not suffer. Students and junior lab personnel simply don't have the knowledge or experience needed to put together a good application, and while post-docs can secure their own funding, the majority of funds in a typical lab is brought in by the PI. If the PI decides to not bother himself with obtaining funding, the lab will become financially hamstrung, research will suffer, and even to a casual outside observer it will be obvious that the scientific output of the research group is appreciably constrained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, which responsibilities cannot be avoided by a PI without necessarily producing severe negative consequences? If after a cursory examination, a PI's career seems to be going well, which responsibilities can we be certain have not been neglected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T16:02:57.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T16:02:57.730" Title="What are the obligations of a principal investigator?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;responsibilities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T01:00:57.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're not going to get into grad school in Math without going through a Bachelor's first. Just like you won't get into grad school in any of the hard sciences without doing the foundational work first. There's good reason for this: you need the solid background in the fundamentals before you delve into a specialty. The specialties emerged out of the fundamentals, historically, and it makes no sense to try and skip ahead. Also, if you try to do this, you're doing yourself a great disservice, which you would probably realize later on. You'll be approaching your studies without adequate knowledge/experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to skip undergraduate courses anyway? There's a lot of mathematics to be learned in the undergrad classes, and if you truly love math, then you ought to welcome the chance to learn and explore. You say you didn't do well in calculus and differential equations, but these are foundational for so much mathematics that follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the main question here is not whether you can go straight into grad school (the answer is no), but what your true goal is: to learn and appreciate math, or simply to get into a field that you think is interesting without truly knowing what's involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to an engineering school that is well known for the hard sciences and engineering, I've had a lot of exposure to academia, have known, studied and worked with a lot of people in these fields, and have never heard of someone going straight from high school to grad school in physics, math, chemistry or engineering fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now that said, once you are enrolled in an undergraduate degree program, you can definitely take grad level classes, particularly once you get the basic prereqs out of the way, once you start showing your interest and abilities, it's pretty easy to take those grad classes even if you haven't finished your B.S. yet. I've had friends who basically worked on both their B.S. and M.S. or Ph.D. at the same time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14023" LastEditorUserId="14023" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T01:06:07.830" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T01:06:07.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T01:17:07.520" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of one case in which someone went straight from high school into a graduate program, so it is theoretically possible if you can find a university that agrees.  However, it's almost unheard of, and it would be a bad idea for just about everyone (even setting aside the question of whether undergraduate education provides any benefits beyond preparation for graduate school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I assume is that you'd like to do important research and are looking for preparation that will help you accomplish this goal.  The minimal standards for a Ph.D. are actually pretty low, and you can squeak by without knowing much or doing impressive research, but this sort of dissertation will set you up for career failure.  Instead, you need to enter a strong Ph.D. program, ideally one of the top ones, and really excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've completed enough courses for a minimal undergraduate degree in mathematics, but probably not enough to be competitive at a top grad program.  The applicants at these programs have generally taken a more extensive and rigorous collection of undergraduate courses (e.g., abstract algebra, topology, complex analysis), and it's not uncommon to have taken more than two grad courses, sometimes many more and in a few cases starting in high school.  Plus it's common to have undergraduate research experience or other substantial independent work, such as a senior thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, imagine yourself in four years.  That's who you're going to be competing against for admission, the other extraordinary high school students who went to college and became even more knowledgeable and impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could find a university that would admit you to graduate school now, you'd probably end up going to a second tier school, spending some time catching up on courses, and then writing a good thesis but not living up to your potential.  Your career would get off to an inauspicious start, you'd have trouble on the job market, and in the long term you'd likely end up with a less research-oriented job than you might have had otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I could be wrong about this: you might have exceptional luck or be the next Terry Tao.  But diving into graduate school at a young age with minimal preparation is an incredibly risky strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that's really hard to discern from college catalogs.  They usually focus on the minimal requirements to complete each degree and move on to the next level, but that's not how people do things in practice.  Instead, the vast majority of future mathematicians spend at least three years on their undergraduate studies, and generally four (in the U.S.).  The operative question isn't how quickly you can complete the degree requirements, but rather how much you can achieve along the way.  Preparing well for grad school is far more demanding than completing an undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I'd recommend is that you pick an undergraduate program in which you'll have really outstanding fellow students, so that you learn from and are pushed by them.  Being part of a cohort like this is probably the single biggest factor in success, and your goal should be to find amazing people to hang around with and discuss mathematics.  You should then take whatever undergraduate courses are needed to fix up your background (if any) and move on to graduate courses.  You should also look for research opportunities during the summer or perhaps the school year, but it's not worth obsessing over this.  No program will guarantee anything, but at the very least you'll surely have some success applying to summer REUs, and it's reasonable to hope for even more than that.  Perhaps you'll finish in three years, and perhaps you'll decide to stay for four, but either way you'll be far better prepared for graduate school than you are now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're in a great position to do well, with a remarkably strong mathematics background.  However, I'm convinced that the right question is how to get as much as possible from your undergraduate studies, rather than how to skip by them as quickly as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T01:17:07.520" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T02:14:08.960" Score="3" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering, how hard or competitive is it to obtain a slot for short oral presentation(20-minute talk) at the International Congress of Mathematicians? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, how many slots are allotted for such presentation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T13:04:43.703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T20:46:22.213" Title="How can you get to do a Short Oral Presentation at the International Congress of Mathematicians?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19202" CreationDate="2014-04-11T03:15:35.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer:  I don't know, I've never been on an Organizing Committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer:  You likely can look at statistics for attendance versus&#xA;capacity of venue.  At the last few  International Congresses I have attended, usually there are about 2000 or more from the host country, and anywhere from 1000 to 2000 from other countries.  There are about 20 plenary lectures, about 150 invited lectures,&#xA;about 1000 Oral Communications and not quite as many posters.  Also some interesting&#xA;prize lectures, roundtables, and a few other items.&#xA;(I am doing this from memory.  I don't think attendance has surpassed 5000 lately,&#xA;but I won't guarantee it.  I could be off on any of the numbers by a factor of 2, but I don't think so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have submitted abstracts for short communications since 1994, and have had them &#xA;accepted in all but one case (and in that case there were facilities for last minute &quot;impromptu&quot; sessions: the organizers kindly let me have a slot for one of those).  My unscientific guess is that the rejection rate is determined mostly by capacity, and that about half the local attendees and more than half of the non-local attendees submit abstracts, which would lead to about 2500 petitions for 2000 slots.  My estimate of the population whose desire to satisfy vanity overcomes their fear of public speaking  would suggest that 2000 petitions are for oral communication, and so roughly half are filled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;FUZZY DATA:&lt;/em&gt;  I submitted two abstracts this year, one a week or so before the first deadline and one a few days afterward, possibly after the first and before the extended deadline.  They were given designation numbers below 1900;  this supports my guesstimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;LESS FUZZY DATA:&lt;/em&gt; at this writing, about one month before the 2014 Congress, registrations are pouring in and number near 2900.  There are almost 500 posters accepted and a little over 700 short communications, with some designation  numbers reaching over 2300.  Not substantive, but if the code numbers reflect submissions, this would imply an acceptance rate near 7 out of 24 for oral&#xA;presentations, and a little less than half for all presentations.  Off by less than an order of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastEditorUserId="10390" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T20:46:22.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T20:46:22.213" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T03:30:30.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need a mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider your current experiences and gifts as a large and powerful chainsaw.  You may find some immediate gratification at cutting through swaths of wood at a pace you like.  However, you can burn yourself out, wreck the chainsaw, reduce your number of functioning limbs, etc.&#xA;(I didn't lose any limbs as an undergraduate, but I got sick of school in my second year and left it in my third.  If I had paid more attention to the people who were there to help me, my earlier years might have been more satisfying.)  If you give yourself the discipline to handle the routine and mundane, and also the time to have fun and work on things at which you excel, you will have something better than an awesome trajectory: you will have a life of enduring and satisfying achievement.  And you can still spend time doing graduate work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mentor will have to know you well to tell you what is best for you.  (A team of mentors might be better.)  I can imagine more disasters for you than successes if you try this without at least one.  Also, the Internet is no substitute for a mentor: this kind of life decision, while up to you, can benefit from talking face to face with someone who is interested in your personal as well as your academic success.  As commented elsewhere, hardly anyone cares how fast you did something as much as how well you did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T03:30:30.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1206" CreationDate="2014-04-11T03:34:22.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/half-academic-studies-are-never-read-more-three-people-180950222/?no-ist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smithsonian.com&lt;/a&gt; recently noted that there are about 1.8 million scholarly articles and scientific papers published each year in 28,000 journals.  About half of these are not read by anyone other than the author, a journal editor, and a couple of reviewers.  They report that 90 percent are never cited by other papers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14025" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T04:27:03.943" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T04:27:03.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19198" CreationDate="2014-04-11T03:43:36.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what your goal is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a particular course and a particular professor, and you want to see changes before the course ends, you may need some political power or not.  Many professors appreciate feedback, some don't, and you can usually tell by noting which ones ask for it.  If they do ask, follow their format for giving feedback, and add a note saying that you have more specific suggestions if they wish to discuss it further.  If they don't, you will either have to drop it or try a different tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the course has teaching assistants, you can usually give some feedback through them, although to promote understanding, you might give them a copy in writing to hand to the professor.  If there are none, you may have to submit feedback through the department; there usually are people in that department in charge of the quality of teaching, and they can advise you at least as well as on this forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue is more with a person than a situation, then I recommend getting advice from colleagues of that person on how to make such an approach.  Through the department is likely the best way, but it highly depends on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue is more with a class structure than a person, you can make suggestions, but they will likely be referred to the next class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The applicability of all of the above is subject to class size, level of instruction, and many other factors.  Without more specifics, I imagine your best answer in the long run is by using official channels.  That way if anything goes wrong, the process can be blamed and not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T03:43:36.370" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-04-11T03:43:36.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19178" CreationDate="2014-04-11T04:04:45.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would like to join a research department in the aeronautical/aerospace industry. It seems to me joining industry straight after finishing the PhD is the most logical next step for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of only two reasons you want to do postdoc, one is that you really want to stay in Academia and the other is you cannot find a good industry research job after you get PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some unfinished academic research after you have done PhD, doing postdoc may or may not let you finish it depending on what postdoc you can find. But, once you go that route, you may be further from industry. Good job opportunities are sometimes instantaneous. Grab it or lose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an industry retiree from the sector you are in. I know for fact that they need and they should have more PhDs like you to do more research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do postdoc for whatever reasons and your ultimate goal is to join industry, I think the rank of the university you do postdoc does not matter much. The usefulness of the research topic does matter. Industry wants profitability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if you really want to stay in Academia, then don't go to industry after PhD. You could feel unhappy. In that case, postdoc with  high rank university is what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T08:02:36.957" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T08:02:36.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19214" CreationDate="2014-04-11T04:06:45.597" Score="4" ViewCount="3459" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one cite materials taken from a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC)? This may be a specific case of the more general, &quot;How should one cite a university course?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a concrete example, consider how I should cite the &quot;Resampling Wheel&quot; algorithm for implementing a particle filter, taken from Sebastian Thrun's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.udacity.com/wiki/cs373/unit_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Artificial Intelligence for Robotics&lt;/a&gt; course on Udacity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T06:24:25.527" Title="How should we cite a MOOC?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19199" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:07:08.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, which responsibilities cannot be avoided by a PI without necessarily producing severe negative consequences? If after a cursory examination, a PI's career seems to be going well, which responsibilities can we be certain that they have not neglected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my (extensive) experience with large labs, the only responsibilities that a senior professor can never delegate are networking, certain types of review work (e.g., reviewing for well-respected grants) and certain committee / administration / board work. Basically everything else seems to be fair game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it interesting that your prime example are grant proposals - in many groups in my field, writing grant proposals is mostly a postdoc responsibility, so that is certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a duty that is never delegated. However, that might be an european speciality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say your question is actually standing on ill assumptions. You assume that successful profs. are distinguished from no successful ones via the things that they still do themselves. In practice, this is generally not correct. In my experience, most large labs work well because &lt;strong&gt;the prof. has a track record of acquiring good people to do things for her/him&lt;/strong&gt;, not because (s)he does so much her/himself. Further, successful profs. are able to establish mutually beneficial relations with those good people. That is, if you want long-lasting success, you cannot expect e.g., your postdocs to just write grant proposals for you all day because you told them to. You need to find a model how &lt;strong&gt;it is actually in their best interest to do so&lt;/strong&gt;. All successful profs. I know are supremely good at binding strong people to them via the power of mutual interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all of this is not to say that a prof. &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; to delegate everything, or that any given professor even wants to. I know many successful professors that would never delegate some aspects of their job (for instance teaching), either because of a sense of responsibility or because they just honestly like doing certain things themselves. This is just to say that I have seen almost anything being delegated in different large groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T07:07:08.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19198" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:17:53.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask students who have take that course before.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at ratemyprofessors website for his/her reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is no past info about him, then ask a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;smart&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;/&quot;deep&quot; questions POLITELY in class. If he get angry, then he probably not like your suggestion to change teach style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask other students too to see if they have same problems. Then, you will know that its not just you. If only you have problem and most people &quot;get it&quot;, then you can take their help instead of prof. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all 1 to 4 are okay, then politely suggest improvements. Show him what you have not understand and how he can explain better. If you need more problem solving in a class, then request for it. Choose words carefully. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11743" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T13:43:02.757" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T13:43:02.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19222" CreationDate="2014-04-11T08:27:42.473" Score="32" ViewCount="8518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I start my master studies this fall in quantitative finance/economics in Europe. Since this will just take 3-4 semesters I want to take a look ahead and obviously PhD is one option to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am wondering if it makes sense to go to the US for PhD, since I will have already a master's degree in two years. I read a lot about the US PhD's which can be started after bachelor and therefore are somehow like a European master &amp;amp; PhD combined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw some PhD programmes from well-known US universities and their curriculum contained almost just courses I will already have in my master. Wouldn't that be a waste of time to repeat them? Specially compared to my country (Switzerland) where a PhD duration is between 3-4 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every input/personal experience will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14029" LastEditorDisplayName="user12395" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T18:09:04.273" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T08:57:14.597" Title="PhD in the US compared to Europe" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;switzerland&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19208" CreationDate="2014-04-11T08:41:57.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields, it is common practice to look up the original publication in which a concept/algorithm was introduced, and to cite that. Many courses will give some literature pointers to help you with the search for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that citations are also meant to distribute credit for novel findings, so in this way, the researchers who came up with the algorithm get the credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T08:41:57.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19198" CreationDate="2014-04-11T10:37:42.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is a misunderstanding. Although professors are hired by the university to serve the learning experience of the students (among other things), they are not &quot;hired&quot; by the students. This is a logical misunderstanding in US universities where students pay tuition but this model does not apply to the rest of the world. In this sense, professors, like all regular employees should and are evaluated (in terms of performance) only by their employer (university / state) and not the customer / student. Also, professors stay in many cases, for many years in the same institution where students (undergraduates mostly) stay for a limited amount of time. Therefore although the student might or not pay for the university services he is bound to leave eventually, whereas the professor probably outstays generations of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that being said, one student's opinion is not really relevant. If the university has some sort of professor evaluation by the students, then the student by all means should clearly express his opinion. But going to a professor and just saying &quot;I do not like your teaching style. Change it&quot; is simply rude (and I say that as a student myself). How can I tell someone how to do his work when I have not done it myself? The same goes for all employees from waiters to bouncers (there such comments might get you in trouble), unless the employee has been rude to you and you must defend yourself. In all other cases, you should not tell people how to do their job, you can only tell them how you like to be treated. If you do not like the way they do business you must find someone else that suits your style. In universities where the professor grades you (and not the other way around) I would suggest even extra caution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also not forget that your guess on what is wrong or right is based on only one opinion (yours and your friends) where the professor has based his  teaching style on hundreds - thousands of students. His style might or might not suit you. There is not one-size-fits-all. But why he has to change his style for you, when the things you propose might alienate other students? The answer is simple. In 99% of the cases he simply will not. Also consider the fact that probably your comment on his teaching style will not even be an original one (somewhen, somewhere some other student might have expressed a similar discontent to yours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what can you do? Negotiate. Ask him / her for more slides if he has any; Ask him for more personal assignments or for pointing you to extra reading material, basically everything that will help you benefit more from his class. Ask him to repeat what you did not understand. But most of all ask nicely and with respect. That way if he says no, it will be his fault and not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T10:49:37.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T10:49:37.477" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19198" CreationDate="2014-04-11T12:54:13.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you might to do is go to office hours and ask thoughtfully prepared questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I looked over my notes on X, and I still don't understand how it's related to the rest of the material. Could you please explain further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The theory is interesting, but I'm still confused as to how this applies to examples. Could you suggest where I should learn about these?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;When you talk about Y, I gather I'm supposed to have mastered that already, but actually I haven't. Where should I learn about this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible outcomes vary. Maybe you will find that you signed up for a different course than you should have; maybe the professor won't care; but possibly, the professor will take your questions as some evidence that h/she should adjust his/her teaching strategy a little bit. (And will also answer them!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T12:54:13.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T13:20:19.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike some other respondents, I don't think this is impossible. In fact I have a friend who dropped out of high school for various reasons unrelated to his academic achievement. He spent several years studying math and CS, by himself, to graduate level. He tried in various ways to access a research-based course, culminating in him being offered a place to do a PhD in CS, without having either a Bachelor's or a Master's (which is a usual requirement to start a PhD in Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to follow a trajectory like this there are at least four necessary conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must be very good. Someone who looks like they are going to do a passable PhD and publish a couple of papers before stagnating or disappearing into industry is not going to get this opportunity. Someone who has already published peer-reviewed work might be a candidate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must have some good reason to not want to do an undergraduate course. You aren't going to be supported with this just because you don't feel like sitting in a lecture hall for several years, listening to things you already know. Most working mathematicians, including prodigies and household names, did exactly that. Usually you will be advised to do the BSc and study harder things / do research in your own time. Good reasons might include some disability or personal circumstances that make it extremely hard for you to get through the undergraduate system, or the fact that you are already spending most of your time doing professional level research. Money issues might or might not be seen as valid, depending on whom you ask.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to show that you are mature enough to be a graduate student. Undergraduate studies involve a certain amount of hand-holding for a reason - many students who have just left high school aren't ready to take full responsibility for their education. Even if you are a genius, a school will be worried about your abilities to perform well in your studies, while taking care of yourself on your own, and not succumbing to mental health issues, addictions, etc. Teaching or TAing undergrads also requires a certain maturity. The exception is if someone is going to take care of you (for example, if you have ASD, and you live with your parents who support you with all the non-mathematical things you need help with).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to put your case to a professor in a school you want to work at, including convincing her of the things above. This is key. There are various obstacles put in place to stop the over-confident, the under-qualified, and the insane from getting onto advanced math courses. If you apply in the usual way you will almost certainly be rejected. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to approach someone in a field you care about, write to them directly and explain why it is that you know you are capable of a PhD. Most people you approach will reject you out of hand. (Think Ramanujan - statistically you are likely to be less talented than Ramanujan.) If you get lucky, you might find someone who is willing to hear you out. Be aware that anything that gives the impression of a scattershot approach (standard letter template, not being able to explain why you chose that professor or that school) will rule you out very quickly. You should be looking for someone whom you have read and understood several papers by (if you aren't reading and understanding journal papers on a regular basis, why not?). You should be able to show them published or publishable work you have done, related to their own interests. This person, if they end up supervising you, will have to fight to get you in to their department, and then deal with an unusually onerous burden of formalities and paperwork to have you as their student. They aren't going to do this unless there is some compelling reason why they would want to work with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="5824" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T08:53:20.670" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T08:53:20.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T13:44:58.533" Score="3" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently considering junior faculty positions in the US and Europe—my partner is European, and for a variety of reasons (family, etc.) we would like to end up there in the long term.  Being from the US, however, it is unclear to me which is a better strategy for obtaining a permanent position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get tenure (or at least, &quot;be successful&quot;) at a good North American department and use that leverage to negotiate a position in Europe, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spend that same time / energy making personal connections in Europe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that the answer is not clear to me is that 1. the country in question has a relatively small number of permanent positions, and 2. my impression is that in many European systems, personal contacts still have a rather significant effect (even among candidates with excellent qualifications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in both &lt;strong&gt;quantiative data&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., what percent of hires are domestic vs. foreign in various countries/systems) as well as personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9538" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T16:19:00.327" Title="Easier to obtain permanent position in Europe after being faculty in US?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T14:05:08.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't focus on the letters you'll get from your first degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very likely that you will need to get a bachelor’s degree before going enrolling for an advanced degree, especially since you sound like you would do best in a highly selective program. But for now, what you need is a university and more specifically, a math department, that is willing to be flexible, encouraging of advanced work, and give you the chance to prepare yourself for a really top graduate program. You need this whether you are admitted as a masters student or an undergrad. Assuming you want to continue to a PhD after your first degree, you need to focus more on what you will be doing for the next few years, rather than the degree you’ll have at the end. You are better off finding an excellent school that will support an undergrad doing graduate level work (fairly common) than an OK school that will accept a grad student with uncertain credentials (very unusual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with, I’d strongly recommend contacting professors at well regarded math departments whose research you find interesting, and let them know your situation. This will mean you are looking at schools as though you were going to grad school even though you will probably be an undergrad. Find professors you think you’d like to work with, and arrange to meet them and meet their other grad students. In person is best, but at least talk on the phone. Apply to a few schools where the math department supports and encourages their grad students, not just a place with a good reputation. I've had a number of friends who have dropped out of PhD programs due to department politics or unsupportive advisors. Start yourself out on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many schools have scholarships available, and in some cases, a school will offer a full ride including a living stipend to the most exceptional undergraduates. The math departments and professors may be able to help you out here, too, if they especially want you. Just ask.  Don’t limit your options because of a preconceived bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14039" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T14:05:08.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19213" CreationDate="2014-04-11T14:18:48.937" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in the end it will be a personal choice based on what you want in your career on where you may do your PhD. Based on some of the queries you had in the comparison between a US PhD or a European one, hopefully the following will be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisj.net/en/socio-legal-master/doctoral-studies/how-do-phds-different-countries-differ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; is a good page that shows the difference between the system in Europe and the US for PhD. The main reasons from it why a US PhD would be longer is;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main difference between doing a PhD in the US and most other countries is the coursework component. In the US, there is usually a requirement that PhD student complete at least 2 years of coursework before they start their independent research. This means that a PhD in the US will take longer to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes there is a chance that you will be repeating coursework that you have done in your masters, but there is also the possibility that you may be able to get a wavier for coursework already completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know (in Ireland at least, my home country) there is now a move in some universities towards a structured PhD that will include some coursework in year 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per Piotr's comment it is typical that a PhD in Europe is pursed after Master's, while in US it contains Master's. In some cases in Europe it may be possible to go straight from a bachelor degree to a PhD. I know in my own case when starting out my advisor wondered if I would like to apply to complete a PhD instead of a Masters (in History). My sister also went straight from her bachelor to her PhD program (in mircobiology). Both these cases were in Ireland where you normally would have to have a first in your bachelor degree to be able to pursue a PhD directly afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page also details some other differences, such as how the committees are slightly different in both systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coimbra-group.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coimbra Group&lt;/a&gt;, an association of long-established European multidisciplinary universities have produced a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130401083155/http://www.coimbra-group.eu/transdoc/uploads/TRANS-DOC%20Survey%20findings.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survey on PhD Programme Structures and Administration in Europe and North America&lt;/a&gt; that has some insightful information as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T17:38:03.463" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T17:38:03.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:05:30.917" Score="32" ViewCount="12808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student who is currently undergoing therapy for mental health issues and I seem to be making good progress towards normalcy according to my therapist. Recently, I took an exam for a co-ordinated course and I completely panicked on the exam. I made a brave attempt to remain calm and answer the question to the best of my abilities and could only manage to earn 5 points overall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my predicament, can I approach my professor and department chairperson with a request to re-take the exam? I can of course ask my therapist to provide documentation detailing my case. Do universities make allowances for students who can demonstrate a genuine case for  a panic attack? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I do realize that I should contact the counselling center beforehand to make arrangements to take the test there but unfortunately, I was doing quite well and my therapist did not see a need to supply me with a note documenting my need. I completely blacked out when I saw the questions as they were quite long and bore no semblance to the practice exams or the homework questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14042" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T02:31:38.773" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T02:31:38.773" Title="Panic Attacks during an exam - Can the student be re-tested?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19213" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:06:59.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is that in the US, Bachelor's degrees take longer to obtain (4 years vs. 3 in Switzerland) and it's considered the actual 'college degree', while as you know, in CH&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; it makes little sense to stop at the Bachelor's level because is has no value except to give you entry to the Master's (with perhaps the exception of ETH/EPF Bachelors in informatics that can lead to direct employment, and professional schools Bachelors, of course, but they're off-topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, in general you go to 'grad school' which describes both Master and PhD studies. Masters are sometimes given to graduate students who wish or have to stop after a few years of grad school for a variety of reasons. As a consequence the Master's degree is less common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the point: what you learned as a Master students will not necessarily be redundant with first year graduate courses. And if it is, well good for you, you will just cruise through the exams and enjoy having time to concentrate on research instead of studying. Note that, since recently, most (if not all) Swiss PhD programs have courses requirements as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you will most of the time have less (or no) teaching assistant work. And there are incredibly good research groups in the US, some will give you the kind of expertise and exposure that you wouldn't get in a Swiss university. I don't think having to repeat a few courses should be a killing criterion if you are interested in a given research environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't know much about the economics domain, but for engineering, natural sciences and humanities, the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; time to get a PhD in CH tends more towards 4-5 years than 3-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; CH stands for &lt;em&gt;Confoederatio Helvetica&lt;/em&gt;, the multilingual abbreviation for Switzerland. I hold a Swiss PhD and I'm a postdoc researcher in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T19:44:11.017" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T19:44:11.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19223" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:14:26.977" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on my predicament, can I approach my professor and department chairperson with a request to re-take the exam? I can of course ask my therapist to provide documentation detailing my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach only the professor first. If you are already escalating to the department head in your first mail, the professor may not take it well. That being said, I see no reason why you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; contact her/him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do universities make allowances for students who can demonstrate a genuine case for a panic attack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most universities have a contact person responsible for accessibility and non-discrimination of students with disabilities. I am not sure whether they are in general also responsible for documented cases of mental health issues, but it would not surprise me. In the future, it makes sense to get in touch with the responsible contact person &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the exam, so as to clarify whether something can be done in advance to make taking the exam easier for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T15:14:26.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19223" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:16:04.893" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the US, your school is required by law (the Americans with Disabilities Act, often abbreviated ADA) to make reasonable academic accommodations for students with disabilities. This includes mental illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, schools have a formal ADA policy that describes the procedure for requesting accommodations. This includes a description of &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; to contact to make these arrangements. This person is trained in dealing with these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your next step should be to contact this person, find out what can be done about this exam, and find out what accommodations they can offer for future exams. (For example, they may help you arrange to take future exams in a separate room with no other students and/or with extended time, which may help you stay calm.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T15:36:07.957" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T15:36:07.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19220" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:42:52.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you actually deciding between particular positions in Europe and in the US?  It's not clear to me what you are actually suggesting doing in option 2. There's no question that you should be making personal connections in Europe, particularly whatever country you're hoping to move to, but unless you have a job offer there, you should just try to find a position where you can be successful and reasonably happy, whichever continent it's on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is true that it's dangerous to take a position, thinking you'll move later.  A lot of people find it harder than they think; in a lot of cases this is more because they get settled and lose their motivation, rather than it actually being out of reach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how serious a possibility it will be to move later if you're starting a position in the US, I think this is the wrong forum to ask.  You should find a senior person you can somewhat trust in your target country and ask them (if you don't have such a person, try to cultivate them).  It's going to vary a lot depending on the country, the field, and unfortunately with time (just because it seems hard now, the situation might change later), so I don't think general facts will help you much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T16:19:00.327" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T16:19:00.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T16:18:52.070" Score="5" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't immediately find the 4-year death-clock on the K99/R00 grant. I just want to know, is that the only major NIH activity code that restricts eligibility based on time since graduation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that individual institutes vary a lot in their policies, but I'm trying to get at least a rough idea of which activity codes to filter out before I go through in more detail through the RFAs that remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8083" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T17:01:45.907" Title="Do any NIH post-doc grants besides the K99/R00 have time limits from graduation?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T16:43:39.607" Score="4" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't found any guidance on NIH's websites so far whether or not someone who has a Ph.D. but is not yet full-time faculty (e.g. post-doc) is eligible to be named as a co-PI on an R01 grant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, the individual eligibility criteria are really vague-- it's not clear that they even exclude a post-doc from being a sole PI on an R01 grant. That makes me think that I'm looking in entirely the wrong place to see if I am eligible for a given RFA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a foolproof indicator of whether or not a given RFA is open to post-docs either as sole PIs or co-PIs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8083" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T17:59:01.343" Title="Is there a reliable indicator for which which NIH RFAs are open to post-docs?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T16:51:28.640" Score="7" ViewCount="987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student in Computer Science. Long story short: I do not have a good relationship with my advisor. I don't trust his guidance or his ethical integrity. Therefore, I am seeking external advice for my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my PhD I got one paper accepted in a first tier conference, two papers accepted in a second tier conferences, and other papers published in workshops and minor conferences. I have one journal paper accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all the work is on the same topic but it is scattered among three, mostly unrelated, subjects. Now my PhD is ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it negative that my work has been on three unrelated subjects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I cannot find a topic that allows me to merge all my results in my PhD thesis, I have to leave out at least half of my work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14038" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T19:50:58.670" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T09:06:22.147" Title="Is it a negative that my PhD research has been in several unrelated areas?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19233" CreationDate="2014-04-11T16:54:53.837" Score="6" ViewCount="3048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new really to submitting papers for publication.  I have an upcoming deadline for a conference.  My paper seems to fit the guidelines for a long paper but it is closer to short paper length than long paper length.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I submit it?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could I submit it as both a long paper and short paper?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I submit is as a long paper, could it be accepted as a short paper if it were rejected as a long paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3902" LastEditorUserId="3902" LastEditDate="2018-03-29T12:43:11.803" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T12:43:11.803" Title="Submitting Long Papers versus Short Papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19231" CreationDate="2014-04-11T17:03:34.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I submit it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length guidelines are generally for &lt;em&gt;maximum&lt;/em&gt; length. You can submit a &quot;long paper&quot; that is shorter than the maximum length allowed for a long paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've published papers 25% under limit without any comments from reviewers on the length. If there is enough original research content for consideration as a full paper, you should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should consider whether it actually is substantial enough for a full-length paper if it's so short (your advisor can help you make this determination). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; pad the paper with unnecessary text (fluff) and/or giant images to fill pages so it looks longer. This lowers the quality of your paper. (As a reviewer, I have seen authors do this and it looks &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt;.) If you decide you need to add to your paper to make it substantial enough to be a long paper, then you have to add substantial content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could I submit it as both? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not unless the conference explicitly says this is allowed (usually it isn't). Submitting the same (or a similar) paper as both a long and short paper will get both papers rejected as duplicate submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I submit is as long could it be accepted as short if it were rejected as long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the conference. It will either say something like, &quot;Rejected long papers will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be considered as short papers&quot; or &quot;Rejected long papers &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be considered as short papers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T18:44:25.153" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T18:44:25.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19192" CreationDate="2014-04-11T17:11:21.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are taking an online test, with questions entered into the LMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The LMS produces some sort of visual output&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You meet with students face-to-face&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used our in-house LMS, Moodle and Coursera. In all cases the software offers the students randomized versions of the questions, but produces a view for the instructor that shows student responses that are aggregated (sample given at end of post).&#xA;If my assumptions are true, you can pick perhaps the three most often missed questions from the test, make a screenshot, and present this to the class.&#xA;Or better yet, offer an often-missed question on a slide and have students work in groups to provide a higher-quality group answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We might be able to help you more if you correct my assumptions and provide which LMS you are using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample screen shot:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vya6h.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;basic quiz answers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T17:11:21.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19316" CreationDate="2014-04-11T17:38:32.240" Score="9" ViewCount="3051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a full-time job, and am a part-time PhD student who is experiencing tremendous struggles throughout the first year, compared to my previous schooling which was extremely easy. I want to know if I'm psyching myself out / over-thinking things, or if I'm being rational or not, given all the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My academic career began with a degree in Computer Science, but I took as many side courses in Mathematics as I could.  I did very well, loved it, and thought to do graduate studies. A couple of my professors thought it was a great idea, considering how well I did in their classes, and suggested going for a Ph.D., part-time as I have a full-time job, in the same school. They wrote me stellar recommendation letters and I got in without any issues, whatsoever (unfunded, but that was not a concern to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am nearing the end of my first year in the program, and it has been an unbelievable struggle. A family/personal emergency caused me to have to withdraw from my classes for the first semester; despite how embarrassed I was, my professors told me it was okay and that things happen, and that they still had complete faith in me. Now it's the second semester, and I am struggling to keep up in my classes.  I have always approached math via my intuition, but now I feel I am able to follow my professors in lectures and participate, but when it comes to studying or applying it that's when I struggle. Self-study takes so long and is very arduous and as I'm not used to it; I get extremely distracted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compounded with this, is that I want to discuss this with others, but I find it almost impossible to face my professors that recommended me, anymore. I haven't spoken to them since the winter due to shame. They had so much faith and confidence in me (and probably still do), but I feel that as a PhD I should do better, but I'm not. My performance is shocking and appalling to me, considering what I was used to doing. Talking to my adviser is out of the question as well, as when I discussed my last-semester withdrawal situation with him, he made a loose implication that &quot;he wasn't necessarily sure he would've admitted me, in hindsight,&quot; and he wondered aloud who was the one that did admit me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still in a position where I feel that I would not be happy unless pursuing graduate study in mathematics, as I want to learn this subject inside and out, be surrounded by a community that I find interesting and exciting, and researching and publishing new ideas. I just have no idea if my struggle is either completely normal, if I'm horribly under-qualified, or if I am just psyching myself out.  How can I figure out whether I should stick with my program or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14048" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T09:44:14.643" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T09:44:14.643" Title="I am having difficult first year in my part-time PhD program; How can I figure out whether I should leave it or not?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-04-18T11:39:28.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T21:33:32.620" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a paper about governance mechanisms at StackExchange in which I got a lot of informations out of questions (especially on meta). I have kept all my references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teacher is letting us pick which style we want to use for the paper as long as we apply it thoroughly. In my other courses, we use APA but if I start writing (StackExchange, 2014) everytime I use an info out of a question, my paper is going to be illegible. From what I've read, you're only supposed to cite things that you've paraphrased, ideas, not necessarily information that you've found or researched but I do want to give credit where it belongs and I would also like if my teacher would be able to retrace where I've found things but APA doesn't seem to include such a thing as a bibliography. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a bibliography at the end containing the documents I've consulted for my research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be able to have my citations as footnotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which style should I go for in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11673" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T20:41:02.010" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T20:41:02.010" Title="Help picking an appropriate citing style" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19237" CreationDate="2014-04-11T23:29:26.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One citation style that may be appropriate could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;  which has two documentation systems: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;notes and bibliography and;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;author-date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notes and bibliography system which should suit as per your question is described on the website as such;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notes and bibliography style is preferred by many in the humanities, including those in literature, history, and the arts. This style presents bibliographic information in notes and, often, a bibliography. It accommodates a variety of sources, including esoteric ones less appropriate to the author-date system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a History student this is the style that I am using for my masters thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The style uses the following example for a website as per your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Website&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A citation to website content can often be limited to a mention in the text or in a note (“As of July 19, 2008, the McDonald’s Corporation listed on its website . . .”). If a more formal citation is desired, it may be styled as in the examples below. Because such content is subject to change, include an access date or, if available, a date that the site was last modified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“Google Privacy Policy,” last modified March 11, 2009, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s Corporation, accessed July 19, 2008, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“Google Privacy Policy.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“Toy Safety Facts.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Google. “Google Privacy Policy.” Last modified March 11, 2009.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;  McDonald’s Corporation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts.” Accessed July 19, 2008. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T23:29:26.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:00:32.197" Score="2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;The arXiv documentation says that we should reference arXiv documents using references of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;arXiv:YYMM.NNNNv# [category]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;arXiv:0706.1234v1 [math.FA]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most papers that I am aware of do not bother to include the category.  i.e. they have references of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;arXiv:YYMM.NNNNv#&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I can't find a bibtex bibliography style which automatically includes the arXiv category (taken from the &lt;code&gt;primaryClass&lt;/code&gt; in biblatex).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the arXiv documentation page &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/corr/latexhelp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preparing TeX/LaTeX Papers for Submission&lt;/a&gt;&quot; suggests that arXiv documents should be referenced using just the arXiv ID, e.g. &lt;code&gt;arXiv:0705.1234&lt;/code&gt;  (i.e. without the category)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is it OK to produce a list of references &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; any arXiv categories (i.e. just &lt;code&gt;arXiv:0705.1234&lt;/code&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14154" OwnerDisplayName="Jack Kelly" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T09:11:39.570" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T09:11:39.570" Title="When citing a paper on arXiv, how important is the category?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19240" CreationDate="2014-04-11T15:30:59.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The arXiv documentation page on &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/arxiv_identifier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Understanding the arXiv identifier&lt;/a&gt;&quot; contains the following sentence which directly answers my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Note that the identifier no longer contains any classification information and thus reclassification after an article is announced is possible.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14154" OwnerDisplayName="Jack Kelly" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T15:30:59.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19213" CreationDate="2014-04-12T04:10:58.423" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to gman's answer: it's true that in the US, most students enter a PhD program immediately after the bachelor's, but by no means all.  It's not uncommon for a student to have done a master's elsewhere first.  As such, any reasonable PhD program should be used to dealing with incoming students who already have a master's, and be willing to adjust their requirements as warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be perfectly reasonable to contact any departments that interest you, and ask them about your situation.  It's very likely they will tell you that they are able to waive requirements that would be redundant for you, or to let you satisfy them in an accelerated manner (perhaps you take an exam or something).  Alternatively, they might have a compelling explanation for why they won't do that (perhaps their program looks similar to your background but is actually different in some essential way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T04:10:58.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-12T06:56:42.300" Score="6" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the average salary is generally 45K USD for science post-docs. However, I received an email from a team of researchers who I had an excellent interview with and basically asked, &quot;How much do you want?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what is the maximum amount of money I should ask for without being insulting. I'll be honest, although I don't do science for the money, this would definitely help make a decision for this particular posting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14061" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T19:29:41.543" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T20:47:31.640" Title="What is the highest post-doctoral salary one should ask for (immunology)" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19133" CreationDate="2014-04-12T13:54:48.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are other, more experienced, persons in the specific field, who would likely do a better job than himself, perhaps it is best for him, for the sake of all the potential readers of the book, to decline the invitation and recommend these other people instead. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An invitation is something that is unexpected, and meeting it would likely require an extra effort in addition to his normal responsibilities. Unless he is able to manage his resources well without encroaching what belongs to his family, for example, then perhaps it would be prudent, despite all the prospects it might offer, to decline the invitation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T13:54:48.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19289" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:09:10.123" Score="15" ViewCount="4236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate at a large public research university in the US, finishing my second year. I have done some theorycrafting around my graduation course requirements, and I have realized that it is possible, with some work (and generous CLEP testing), to graduate with a double major, Math BS + Physics BA, by next May. I would be meeting the bare-minimum requirements for both majors (in particular, for math, I will have only taken the 4-semester calculus series, lin. algebra, and the 2-semester abstract algebra series; plus some extraneous ones e.g. game theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to stay the extra year, I would comfortably qualify for a double Math BS + Physics BS, and I would have 3-4 more math classes under my belt (perhaps the 2-semester topology series, graph theory, advanced abstract algebra, real analysis, etc). (edit: this option, Physics BS rather than BA, stresses a more thorough physics courseload; 15 hours of upper level physics classes are required for BS over BA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit after several answers: Another 4-year option is to get Physics BA + Math BS, leaving my course load open to taking 3-4 math classes per semester. This, hypothetically, could put my post-lin-algebra courses at 2 sem. abstract algebra, 2 sem. topology, 2 sem. intro analysis, graduate level courses of the above, intro complex analysis, intro graph theory, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intent, if I were to graduate next year, is probably to take a year off from academics, and then apply for graduate/PhD programs in math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it be an issue in being considered for these programs, that I have only taken a meager selection of the course offerings in my undergraduate studies? And might it be offset by the fact that I graduated in three years with a double major?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14068" LastEditorUserId="14068" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T19:28:39.870" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T22:09:19.997" Title="Does rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program matter (for graduate/PhD applications)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:12:31.533" Score="8" ViewCount="5744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach in the school of sciences and engineering in the university where I work. I have asked professors several times if the final exams have to be comprehensive, and I usually get mixed answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I want to ask, for a course with two midterms and a final:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is some criteria or organizations that require the final exams to be comprehensive (for instance, does ABET accreditation or legal statute require it?), or does it depend on the school or the professor?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of having a comprehensive final?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will your answers to the above questions be different if the course components were 2 best out of 3 midterms plus a final, or if the course was a graduate course instead of undergrad?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T18:47:39.493" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T12:47:53.650" Title="Should final exams be comprehensive?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19249" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:24:21.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my large public research university (in the US):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In physics, exams are nearly always non-cumulative. The finals are treated essentially as a third midterm, none of which are cumulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In math, the it depends on the professor and the course. If it is one of the &quot;common&quot;/high-enrollment courses that students in e.g. biology, chemistry, also have to take, then the final is usually cumulative. In courses designed for upper-level math majors only (e.g. topology, graph theory) it is up to the professor, but usually cumulative (usually the courses are very linear; it would be impossible to pass a test over the final material without knowing the material from the midterms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In humanities, usually not cumulative. Or if cumulative, trivially so (e.g., one or two basic questions about the early material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: I should clarity, it's always up to the professor, I'm just outlining general departmental tendencies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14068" LastEditorUserId="14068" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T15:08:53.420" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T15:08:53.420" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19249" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:54:29.303" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address 1, I've never heard of any such policy on cumulative exams.  In my experience, such pedagogical decisions are made solely by the course instructor.  They make the decision as to what material appears on the final exam, or even whether to have a final exam at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of large multi-section coordinated courses, this decision might be made by the course coordinator (especially if all sections give a common final exam) or by agreement of the various instructors.  There might be some expectation that they will respect precedent unless they feel strongly that it should change, in which case they might be expected to discuss it at the department level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I think any explicit rule about the content or format of exams would be seen as a serious infringement on the instructor's autonomy, which is a central aspect of university teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T14:54:29.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19248" CreationDate="2014-04-12T15:15:59.800" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would be a great question to discuss with your advisor, or another faculty member at your school whose opinion you respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the &quot;bare-minimum&quot; 3-year program you describe would be woefully inadequate to prepare you for graduate study in mathematics, and I think most admissions committees would agree.  The fact that you did it in 3 years with a double major won't mitigate that.  A year of analysis is pretty essential, some topology would be very helpful, and taking a significant number of upper-division math electives will be a great way to build what people call &quot;mathematical maturity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your 4-year program sounds better, but honestly still a little on the light side.  Keep in mind that many applicants to top grad programs will have taken practically every undergraduate course their department offers, and maybe a couple of graduate courses besides, in addition to often having undergraduate research experience.  You also want to make sure you get to know (and impress) your mathematics professors well enough that they can write you strong letters &#xA;of recommendation, and taking more math courses is the biggest part of that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physics degree on your diploma will be nice, especially if you are looking to do a PhD in mathematical physics, but it may not go a long way to making up for weakness on the math side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T15:15:59.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19265" CreationDate="2014-04-12T16:35:03.250" Score="124" ViewCount="135550" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable or ok to report on students cheating?  Many times during a test or an exam, I have seen students in front of me either passing notes, or otherwise collaborating whenever the professor isn't looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to get into trouble, and I don't know if it's &quot;alright&quot; to rat on fellow classmates.  Part of me thinks they deserve being caught out, by virtue of trying to cheat their way through the course. However, I feel like I would get found out by other students if they were caught cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right course of action here? To be clear, I would never raise an accusation in the middle of an exam; it would only lead to me being ostracized by my peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7856" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-29T00:07:48.577" LastActivityDate="2020-11-18T13:25:45.710" Title="Is it okay to report classmates cheating on exams?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-12T16:45:06.783" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, this is a question with no easy answer. Ethics would state that you should &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; report someone violating the &quot;honor code&quot; (or whatever equivalent of it your university has) by cheating on an exam. However, there are also some problems with this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be difficult for the exam proctor to prove that cheating has taken place, even if you have observed the communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting it after the exam is not really possible, because again it will be impossible to prove afterward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making an accusation during the examination could lead to disruptions for many students, including yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you publicly raise an accusation of cheating during an examination, this could lead to ostracism from your classmates, which may be counterproductive to your educational career (in the present class and in the future).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think you need to set those two issues against one another and decide what is the better alternative for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T16:45:06.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19249" CreationDate="2014-04-12T17:20:51.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm responding to #2 and 3, as there are no rules regarding #1 that I'm aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pedagogically, there is evidence that &lt;strong&gt;repeated testing improves learning&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of the literature is via authors Karpicke and Roediger. &#xA;Here's a list of resources from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/TELC/&quot;&gt;research project&lt;/a&gt; at Washington University, and a rather &lt;a href=&quot;http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/GSI_2011.htm&quot;&gt;overwhelming overview&lt;/a&gt; of student learning and good teaching by John Kihlstrom at Berkeley.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why the benefits of a comprehensive final would be lessened by a &quot;two out of three&quot; midterm organization or different for undergrad vs grad level students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T17:20:51.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-12T17:28:58.830" Score="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an instructor, I want to know if there is an environment that allows cheating. Even if the student can't provide proof or only told me afterwards or anonymously, I can take action on future exams by better proctoring, exam versioning, and seating charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So telling the teacher afterward would protect individual students but improve the quality of the course overall, which is a win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastEditorUserId="12255" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T18:35:48.330" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T18:35:48.330" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19262" CreationDate="2014-04-12T17:38:20.880" Score="0" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Normale_Sup%C3%A9rieure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;École Normale Supérieure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;'s academic records publicly available anywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I would like to know what class rankings were historically there, as well as its students' rankings on the national &lt;em&gt;concours&lt;/em&gt; exam for &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agr%C3%A9gation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agrégation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T19:24:33.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T19:50:56.303" Title="École Normale Supérieure's students' class rankings and ranking on the national concours exam for agregation?" Tags="&lt;ranking&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19229" CreationDate="2014-04-12T17:52:43.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your institution's Sponsored Research Office (SRO). These organizations are often called by other names like Office of Sponsored Projects (or Programs), the Sponsored Programs Office, or something similar. It's their job to understand the rules and regulations associated with external grant funding for research institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience with NSF (not NIH), the eligibility requirements for institutions and PIs are spelled out in each RFA/RFP. I have frequently seen limits on the number of proposals that a PI or institution can submit, and there are frequent limits on the types of institutions that may submit (e.g. 4-year, degree granting colleges and universities only, etc.), but I have never seen a limit in the RFA/RFP for the qualifications of the PI or co-PI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My institution, however, does put limits on who may submit. Post docs, as far as I can remember, are not given blanket authorization to submit. They, and even more junior staff, are allowed to submit grant proposals only with an exception as approved by their unit head (dept. chair, center director, etc.) and, I think, the VP for Research's office. These are, in my experience, always granted for post docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the proposal preparation guide requires you to describe your qualifications for submitting the research, including prior work, prior grant support, and other relevant material. If you haven't been a co-PI before, a proposal with you as PI probably won't look as strong to the review panel. It's probably best to start as a co-PI with a more senior, experienced researcher as PI. This is true even if you will primarily lead the day to day work of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all based on my experience with NSF, but I don't think NIH is much different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-04-12T17:59:01.343" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T17:59:01.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19260" CreationDate="2014-04-12T18:03:01.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found half the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the link to records for rankings in the &lt;em&gt;concours&lt;/em&gt; exams for &lt;em&gt;aggrégation&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inrp.fr/she/chervel_laureats.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Les agrégés de l'enseignement secondaire&#xA;Répertoire 1809-1950&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T18:03:01.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:29:45.163" Score="0" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are many new math results first published in monographs (not in articles)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2018-02-17T10:31:31.050" LastActivityDate="2018-02-17T10:31:31.050" Title="Are many new math results first published in monographs?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;monograph&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:56:25.583" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honor is doing what’s right when no one is looking.&lt;/strong&gt; If your institution's Honor Code requires you to report cheating, I'd suggest you report the action to your professor or a higher authority. This is good for multiple reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can prevent the cheating student from gaining an unfair advantage over his or her fellow students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they're caught (and punished), they might realize their mistake. If you never report the cheating, this student might sail through the rest of the term repeating the same mistake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However make sure the suspected cheater doesn't come to know who reported him/her. You can meet the professor after the exam and explain what happened. If you don't wish to reveal the person's name, don't. If you're not comfortable with talking to a professor about your classmates, you can send an unsigned letter, explaining in detail what happened during the exam and if possible, include some ideas on how to stop them next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you do anything, think of the consequences. What if the other student discovers you're the one who reported the cheating? How would you feel if you confronted the cheater directly? If you can't imagine any of these situations, I suggest you let it slide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14075" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T19:56:25.583" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19270" CreationDate="2014-04-12T20:26:15.193" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a 3rd year undergraduate student studying chemistry, and I'm starting to think about grad school. I've enjoyed the different chem courses I've taken, so it's hard for me to pick a subcategory of chemistry to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there books or other resources available which describe in depth how the rubber meets the road for the different fields of chemistry? I've spoken with my professors somewhat and I plan to continue doing so, but I would like a text-based resource which I could refer to and look up or research the words and concepts contained in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related, but different question is this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2087/what-are-the-most-important-factors-when-considering-graduate-school-in-chemistr&quot;&gt;What are the most important factors when considering graduate school in chemistry?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14022" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T21:37:03.227" Title="Where can I learn more about the differences between areas of chemistry at graduate level?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;chemistry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19264" CreationDate="2014-04-12T20:39:33.260" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research monographs in mathematics certainly exist, but they aren't the standard form of publication.  They are generally not as prestigious as papers in strong mainstream journals, they may be less widely read, and they may be viewed as being less carefully refereed.  Some important work in mathematics has first been published in monograph form, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a very good reason (for example, extremely long proofs, or lots of valuable material that would be harder to understand or appreciate out of context).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some journals that publish extremely long papers in monograph form, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/publications/ebooks/memoirs&quot;&gt;Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt;.  If you want to publish a research monograph in mathematics, a series like this is a reasonable place for it, while a stand-alone book is riskier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T20:39:33.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19287" CreationDate="2014-04-12T21:00:40.523" Score="2" ViewCount="29805" Body="&lt;p&gt;I 'm writing a Master thesis. I have some terms that should be defined. &#xA;Where should I put this section? In the introduction or literature review chapter?&#xA;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are always exceptions to the general rule of writing theses. That's, some may not have a supervisor, guidelines, etc. This is another story. &#xA;Concerning definitions of terms, they can be presented as a glossary or discussed in a separate section. Where this section should be put is my question. I have seen theses having it in the introduction while others in literature review chapter discussing each term in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Example of a thesis discussing definitions in the literature review chapter: Contesting the Culture of the Doctoral Degree: Candidates’ Experiences of Three Doctoral Degrees in the School of Education, RMIT University. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CCoQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:6738/Maxwell.pdf&amp;amp;ei=3lRKU_XRJIqX1AX57YGQBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH49qA8whbEKYfW7o0ZUc3y14w-gQ&amp;amp;sig2=E43cEtacwZYnamibAbYLBQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A handbook for writing Master thesis recommends discussing definitions in the introduction: Bui, Yvonne N. How to write a master's thesis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, c2009.&#xA;You can have access to a summary of the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http://pirate.shu.edu/~baoxuemi/Reading_Notes_from_How_to_write_a_master_thesis.pdf&amp;amp;ei=w1VKU9fAL_PY0QXgsIGoCA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFI14tKPiUSY0tH5-Jq61Y777haDw&amp;amp;sig2=iaSCx84Qcykd1ButF9V7lA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the difference between discussing definition of terms in the introduction and doing it in the literature review chapter?&#xA;If the literature review chapter is about reviewing previous research on the topic, why should one allocate a whole section for example to defining a term or concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="13102" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T09:19:44.480" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T14:51:22.063" Title="Should definition of terms section be included in the introduction or the literature review chapter?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19237" CreationDate="2014-04-12T21:34:34.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest APA. It does have citation styles and there are many wonderful automatic generators out there that are up to date and will create the bibliography for you by merely data scraping website URLs and by entering the ISBN# of whatever book you may have used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/&lt;/a&gt; has a great article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bibme.org/&lt;/a&gt;    is a wonderful generator site I've used numerous times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T21:34:34.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19266" CreationDate="2014-04-12T21:42:16.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the EU, most graduate schools typically prefer you to have a Masters degree before applying for a PhD, it is apparently not so necessary in the US. The Masters is however, important for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can see if chemical research is what you really want to do, as most undergraduate programmes have no or very limited opportunity for original research, largely being focussed on equipping you with a set of techniques and skills to enable you to carry out chemical research. I have many friends who were 'all chemistry'd out' after their Masters, and left the field completely (Of my cohort over half are no longer in a chemical field).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can try out a field of chemistry in a research environment, either one you have come across during your undergraduate e.g. spectroscopy of small molecules, and enjoyed, or one that only really gets introduced at undergraduate level, if at all e.g. supramolecular chemistry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can try out a supervisor you are considering working under for a PhD, without the commitment of 3+ years on the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It demonstrates to a potential supervisor that you are capable of conducting original research to a good standard. Agreeing to take someone on with no prior demonstration of research aptitude is not something many supervisors would do! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD programmes can also vary a lot: Some are longer and have a first 'introduction' year, where they train you in the specific skills you need to complete the programme. This first, often taught year is very similar to the 4th year of an integrated Bachelor + Masters course. Some are just straight research from the start, with an evaluation at the end of the first year, the failure of which prevents you from continuing, and you leave with an M.res or similar. I could go on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To more directly answer your question, the best way to find out about the differences in day-to-day activity between the different areas of chemistry at PhD level is to try and talk to some current PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have completely free reign and no particular interest, I would suggest you aim to talk to students in most of these categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physical&lt;/strong&gt; lots of maths, often boils down to applied physics, in my opinion the least 'chemical' of these options. Can also overlap with analytical in areas like atmospheric chemistry or kinetics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analytical&lt;/strong&gt; (physical chemistry typically focussing on spectroscopic exploration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;often overlaps with &lt;strong&gt;computational&lt;/strong&gt; (modelling the behaviour of chemicals on surfaces e.g. catalysts, or the behaviour of proteins and their binding sites, or small molecules as entirely simulated objects, to name a few)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemical informatics&lt;/strong&gt; e.g. developing tools to help statistically analyse chemical behaviours for drug discovery, or to communicate chemical information electronically. Can be a good way into programming with a chemical slant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Synthetic chemistry&lt;/strong&gt; this comes in many flavours, organic and inorganic, but most are similar on a day to day basis (see below for exceptions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Medicinal/natural product synthesis&lt;/strong&gt; synthetic chemistry but typically much longer hours, often the most internally competitive/'macho' culture in the department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Materials chemistry&lt;/strong&gt; this can cover a very wide range of specialisations and include engineering and physics too; very dependent on the particular programme. Nanoscience is sometimes lumped in here, sometimes in organic and sometimes in inorganic!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In broad strokes, more physical PhDs can require greater discipline, because you don't have the obvious 'put this reaction on/analyse this intermediate' type workflow and can spend weeks waiting for computations to run/repairs to a piece of analytical equipment etc. It is easier to remain emotionally uninvested in the outcome of an experiment, because you are typically trying to find an answer to a question, rather than produce a specific result. By contrast, synthetic PhDs can have moments of soul-crushing defeat when reactions repeatedly fail, frequently requiring a lot of mental fortitude to keep trying things to get a reaction to work/work out a way round it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, doing a Masters first is a good idea, to ensure you want to go the PhD route and improve the strength of a PhD application. For picking a PhD (and to a lesser extent, a Masters) you really need to be able to narrow down your options by some/all of topic, supervisor, location and type of programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;addition from comments: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/students/graduate/gradschool.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to information provided by ACS for students looking to find out about graduate courses, should be a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastEditorUserId="13778" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T21:37:03.227" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T21:37:03.227" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19268" CreationDate="2014-04-12T21:56:47.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the guidelines for my Masters thesis we were told to put our glossary after the contents page and before the abstract section, with its own entry in the contents page. Does your course/institution not have any such guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T21:56:47.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-12T22:24:04.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could send an anonymous e-mail to the professor, informing him that you saw rampant cheating, without naming the students involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, request your professor to NOT mention the anonymous e-mails to anyone. If you have a reputation of being the most virtuous person in the class, then they might target you, even without evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11743" LastEditorUserId="856" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T11:13:00.883" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T11:13:00.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-13T00:55:05.170" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a professor for over a quarter of a century, I can assure you that your prof would like to know if cheating is going on. When I've been made aware of such nefarious activities, I've been able to catch the culprits on a subsequent exam, by giving the cheaters slightly different versions of the test. Although students engaging in cheating are ultimately cheating themselves, it's still nice when they are caught. This lessens the chance they will make it to Wall Street or Med school, or into government, where their cheating can have serious repercussions for us all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14079" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T00:55:05.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19249" CreationDate="2014-04-13T01:08:03.020" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of my final exams are cumulative, for a couple reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I've always felt odd about non-cumulative exams. It seems to send a message I'd rather not send: &lt;em&gt;“It's okay to forget about what you learned earlier in the course – you won't need that any more.”&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Often, what gets taught later in the course builds on earlier concepts. If A lays the foundation for B, and B lays the foundation for C, it can be rather challenging to test on C without testing on A and B also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I try very hard to test on higher-level concepts rather than on minutia, so a cumulative final fits my teaching style. I expect my students to be able to speak intelligently to the main themes of the course. I've told students many times: “Come to class ready to learn, and be ready to engage with the material via the in-class discussions. That's the best way to prep for the exams.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to structure my exams so that students who have paid attention in class and learned the material through other assignments should do quite well on the test – without the need to cram or commit the material to short-term memory. “By the last week of the term, you either know this stuff, or you don't,” I tell them. Many of my exam questions are essay questions that require students to analyze a scenario, and synthesize material from different parts of the course.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might not always work, depending on the nature of the material; some material doesn't lend itself well to such questions. This approach may not be scalable, either. (It's not uncommon for me to have six or seven pages of essay questions per exam. Most of the time, I have between 15 and 30 students per course, which keeps grading manageable. If I had 50 or 60 students, however, I might have to rethink this approach.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a footnote, most of my courses are 400/600-level courses. I don't know if the style I've outlined would be a good fit for freshmen and 100-level material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T01:08:03.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19248" CreationDate="2014-04-13T11:04:34.173" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Nate's answer mostly covers it, let me be a little more concrete: I just went into the files for graduate admissions at my own institution (the University of Virginia), and looked at the double majors we had admitted or wait listed.  I can't give details obviously, but I can say they are all way ahead (curricularly) of where you propose being at the end of your 3 year degree, and probably of the 4 year degree you suggest (6 classes beyond linear algebra is actually not very many).  I don't think there's any way that the 3 year degree you suggest could get you admitted into a top 50ish school (in USNW or NRC rankings) without some sort of exceptional factor, and if you have 6 post-linear-algebra classes, your background will still be a big disadvantage, unless you are looking specifically at applied math programs where your physics background will actually be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your general question: yes, rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program makes an enormous difference.  Graduate programs are under pressure from university administrations to graduate students in a timely manner, and generally don't want to have students with weak backgrounds who will hang around in the program for a long time (or flunk out).   Most schools have a set of exams you need to pass before moving on to your thesis, and (just as an example), at UVA, you must pass a topology or analysis exam within 2.5 years of starting the program.  Thus, admitting someone with no topology or analysis background would just be setting them up to fail those exams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While obviously, there's some sort of nebulous notion of talent that schools put a higher premium on (so you also want strong grades, and strong recommendations), background is relatively easy to measure, and is a very important factor in admissions decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T11:04:34.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-13T13:46:22.330" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would people think this is okay? &#xA;You talk about honor, but it is clearly an act of egoism.&#xA;You feel bad, because you did not get the same advantage, and therefore you hurt the person who received an advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should report that &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; has cheated, but you should not tell the teacher/professor who it was. That way the security will improve, but you will not hurt your fellow classmates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the teacher does not believe you, ignore the fool. To be trustworthy is an important trait, if you report the person who did it, you are breaking his/her trust.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do you think you feel bad about it in the first place? Your mother thought you right. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going around someones back and reporting them, making them receive a punishment, is in &lt;em&gt;no case&lt;/em&gt; honorable. Please do not listen to these puny people. Faith in humanity is low these days...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14095" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T15:02:18.050" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T15:02:18.050" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T14:22:13.400" Score="9" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite receiving a job (post-doc) offer in January &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16862/21&quot;&gt;I have kept applying to other positions (post-doc and teaching track jobs)&lt;/a&gt;. This was &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16869/21&quot;&gt;not a bad idea in retrospect, I suppose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This post doc job offer I received is in Europe (&lt;strong&gt;France&lt;/strong&gt;) and required me to apply for a &quot;long stay visa&quot;. I am currently a visiting faculty in a well known mid-western university in the USA. My citizenship is &quot;Indian&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did apply for a long stay visa and have not received it yet. In the mean time I have received a job offer for one teaching track (non-tenure but &quot;long term&quot; contract) job at my current university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been offered tenure track jobs anywhere since I have a backlog of publications right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Here is the problem:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My post doc job starts in 3 weeks time and I haven't received my visa yet. I have to make other arrangements too (air tickets, housing in Europe, other stuff for a trans-continental move).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have been given 3 weeks to decide and confirm my availability for the teaching track job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I prefer the post doc since it is a more appealing challenge. The downside is I have to exit the USA if I get my visa and go to Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The teaching track job offers me stability, a full time employment and a salary that is difficult to beat in the post doc job and in my home country of India.  The downside is that teaching track lecturers are treated as &quot;mules&quot; in the USA and are burdened with courses that &quot;tenure track&quot; do not want. This would mean that any research aspirations I have go down the drain since I won't be afforded time to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For me as a foreigner, it is not just working on my &quot;passion&quot; but also getting a lucrative position with which to support my family. I have to strike a balance between working on my passion and living in a developed country with a good salary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused as to what to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Here are options that occur to me (deferment of either position is not a possibility):&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait for 3 weeks and irrespective of the visa decision, take a risk and say &quot;no&quot; to the teaching track job and take my chances with the European visa and miss an opportunity to have a full time job in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait for the next 3 weeks, if EU visa is not delivered to my house, just tell the lab that I cannot wait any longer since I have to make a career decision and take the teaching track job and miss a fantastic research opportunity for a great salary but a job that could very easily become flavorless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some more detail that I need to factor in:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I love to teach and have received some teaching awards for graduate and undergraduate courses I have taught as a visiting faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I love research as well and understand that teaching and research are symbiotic activities and that the EU postdoc (which is a research position) allows me to do research and develop as a better teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; asking this forum to make my decision for me; I just want to know how to weight this situation rationally and try and cut my losses if things go to pot. What are some of the decision making paradigms that one would use in such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are other details that may not have occured to me, would prove useful, do let me know via a comment below and I will try to include them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Amendments to question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;what is the likelihood that the visa will appear in the next three weeks, and what methods do you have to estimate this likelihood?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consulate tells me that it takes between 2 weeks and 2 months for a decision on &quot;long stay visa&quot; to be made. It is week 3 of my wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There would appear to be no way of estimating the likelihood other than tracking the status on a status page. All it says right now is: &quot;Your application is under consideration&quot;. Contacting the consulate yielded the same answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T20:09:54.543" Title="Decision making paradigm for career planning" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;non-tenure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-13T17:03:24.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable or ok to report on students cheating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but if you're not convinced by the arguments in the other answers, consider this: &lt;strong&gt;is it okay to cheat?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then if those other students can do something that is not okay, why not you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said: the attitude that it's okay to do something wrong if other people are also doing something wrong is not a good one to hold in general. In this case it happens to lead you to the correct course of action though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T17:03:24.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-13T17:08:36.007" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a college professor and I have very little tolerance for cheating. Yes, I would like to know if it's going on, and, yes, I expect students who witness it to tell me so I can take preventive action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also used to be a competitive golfer. In a tournament every golfer is expected to monitor the actions of the other players in his group to make sure no one bends or breaks the rules. Since tournament officials cannot be everywhere on the course at all times, each individual is responsible for protecting the field by making sure that no one gets an unfair advantage over the field. That is a responsibility that competitive golfers take very seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student, likewise, needs to assure that there is a level playing field for everyone. Reporting cheaters is one way of doing just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T00:58:21.397" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T00:58:21.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19268" CreationDate="2014-04-13T18:56:57.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often encountered this type of problem in my own academic writing (and not only in theses). The problem is that it's often difficult to talk about something before you've defined what it is. But at the same time, it's awkward to write so much expository material before being able to talk about your own stuff. It's up to you to work out, for your document in particular, the best way to present these necessary definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you want to say what your work is about as soon as possible, you can't avoid mentioning at least a few of these technical terms before introducing them formally. For one thing, you may well have to put them in the title! Often, you can present &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; in the abstract and introduction to allow readers to get an idea of the technicalities, but not overwhelm them with detail. The trick is to make sure your presentation is accurate and useful. If you make it too vague (&quot;the Riemann Hypothesis is a very hard problem&quot;) then nobody is helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literature review chapter is often a natural place to put definitions. It's hard to say anything meaningful about the literature if you haven't introduced the terms that the literature talks about. Also, exploring the past contributions to your subject certainly includes identifying who came up with particular definitions, who disagreed, how they adapted the definitions, and so on. This is the case for the dissertation in your first link, which defines &quot;research&quot; in the literature review, in the context of conflicting definitions of what research actually is (p19). The author still talks about research in the preceding pages - but that is the point where she sets the scene for her own work, using that definition in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Material which is more basic or less contested could be introduced earlier, if you like. If it is general background, which readers need to know in order to understand anything you've done, but which the thesis is not particularly &quot;about&quot;, then the introduction is a fine place for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally, definitions could be in their own section - either towards the beginning, or as an appendix. I often see this in documents where the definitions are basic reference material. Some readers will know them already, and skip the chapter; others can read in more detail. Again, this option separates the definitions from the literature review, on the basis that the definitions are simply fundamental to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the choice is yours, unless your institution tells you what to do. I hope these thoughts will be helpful as you consider which option is best for presenting your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T18:56:57.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19282" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:09:54.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the purpose of this question is to ask for general decision-making strategies that might apply more generally, here are some (that also impinge on this case):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acquire information:&lt;/strong&gt; Get as much information as you can that would affect the decision: in your case, estimates of time for the visa process, and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine the &quot;real&quot; timeline for decision making&lt;/strong&gt;: in this case, do you really have to decide in three weeks ? can it be delayed slightly ? and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine how &quot;permanent&quot; the decisions are&lt;/strong&gt;: can you negotiate a 1 year contract ? Can you defer the postdoc ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Separate out facts that affect the decision from feelings/opinions&lt;/strong&gt;: Is it true that &quot;if the visa comes through I'm going without a doubt&quot; ? If so, then everything depends on facts regarding the visa. Is it instead true that &quot;if the visa comes through I have a preference, but I do enjoy teaching and like staying in the US&quot; ? In that case, there's a personal preference coming into play that isn't usually resolved by &quot;facts&quot;, and so timelines and data collection don't matter as much as (or are influenced by)  some soul searching. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T20:09:54.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19248" CreationDate="2014-04-13T21:15:19.527" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question makes me a little sad.  You are obviously a bright and ambitious student, and you have spent almost two years at a US public research university.  You are trying to &quot;theorycraft&quot; your future career, which is good.  But somehow no one has managed to communicate to you the basic goals of an undergraduate math major and the requirements for graduate study: how did that happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To once again answer the title question (the other two answers are completely on point): &quot;Does rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program matter (for graduate/Phd applications)?&quot;  The answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes, of course&lt;/strong&gt;.  Not only does it matter, but together with indications of your success in these courses -- course grades together with recommendation letters from your instructors -- &lt;strong&gt;it is what matters the most&lt;/strong&gt;.  Your question first proposed graduating early with a double major in physics and math, with coursework that to any math PhD admissions committee member looks &lt;em&gt;extremely minimal&lt;/em&gt;.  This is a terrible plan for getting into a PhD program in mathematics (not just a top one, but any one that I know).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me be clear: I am not scolding you.  I am lamenting the total lack of advice you have somehow been subjected to.  You are not the first bright, ambitious undergraduate who has asked a question on this site which evinces the misconception that the best students get through undergraduate degrees in as few years as possible.  This is quite the opposite of the truth: does anyone know where these misconceptions are coming from?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my opinion (as someone who served on the graduate committee of a top 50 PhD program in mathematics for four years): unless you want to work cross-disciplinarily in math and physics, the second undergraduate major in physics is not directly helping you get into a PhD program in mathematics.  On the other hand, it seems to be stopping you from taking the deeper and more advanced course offerings that are essential for you to even get consideration at a good (or even decent) PhD program in mathematics.  If your postgraduate plans include a career in which knowing a little bit about several different things will be beneficial -- and I can imagine that many careers in business and industry are like this -- then a double major could be desirable.  However, for a future PhD student, all else being equal a double major is time taken away from the one thing you're supposed to be devoting much more time and energy to learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you absolutely need the fourth year of your undergraduate program in order to be considered for a top program.  Unless you absolutely load yourself up with challenging and graduate-level math courses in that last year (which may not be the best idea for other reasons, e.g. it works against the level of your success in these courses), I would in fact be thinking about what to do &lt;em&gt;after you graduate in four years&lt;/em&gt; in order to make your grad school application more competitive.  You say that you want to take a year off before going back to grad school.  If you still want to do that after a four year degree, then thinking about how to get some additional mathematical training in during that year off might be a good idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T21:15:19.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2014-04-13T21:34:02.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that Universities and other academic insitutions (for example, the research hospital in which I work) are not subjected to caps on the H1B that companies are so it should be easier to get one if you follow the academic route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7913" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T21:34:02.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19248" CreationDate="2014-04-13T22:09:19.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding the other good answers, I would reiterate that, unless you are doing massive amounts of documentable self-study (which is entirely possible modulo the documentability), the senior-level undergrad or beginning grad-level courses you take substantially affect the appearance of your grad school application in at least two ways. First, your documented exposure to something approaching real mathematics. Second, the letters of recommendation from the faculty who taught those courses, testifying to your (presumably...) excellence in beginning-serious mathematics. Letters of recommendation are a very serious component of grad school applications, and if people can only refer to things scarcely beyond linear algebra, it won't help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, as @Pete L. Clark observed, you are being dis-served by lack of advising about the goals of your undergrad program, and about preparation for grad school. I realize that there are many ways for young people to disconnect from useful-but-official information, and many ways for institutions to fail to communicate effectively, but, either way, you're missing a bunch of critical info, which a site such as this can only nudge you toward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more time: the &quot;minimalist&quot; version of a math undergrad degree will doom your grad school applications. Finishing in three years versus four doesn't matter at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T22:09:19.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-13T22:57:15.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you send an anonymous e-mail to your instructor about who cheated in the exam and how, so that the instructor can take precautions, if he cares at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who not directly tell during the exam?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason is that if 2 students are exchanging answers, without any proof such as cheat sheet, then it is your word against theirs. In such a case, since there is no proof, their exam will be valid but you will be a rat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, although some people here think that you don't need friends who cheat (as if that is the only consequence), the world is not that fair. You may end up being the rat and completely ignored, and worst case, bullied. Some people are just cruel and may try to blame you instead of themselves for the failure. How they handle such a situation depends on their character, and you should not risk it. No honor code is more important than your happiness and comfort during your years in college. If the honor code is that important, your instructor should do his responsiblities first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are a student, not an instructor. Every instructor once was a student and even if they never cheated (very unlikely!), they witnessed other people that cheated. Any instructor should know that given the chance, a student may cheat. It is the instructor's responsiblity to create the environment that does not allow cheating. You shouldn't care more than he cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T22:57:15.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19302" CreationDate="2014-04-14T00:07:38.187" Score="45" ViewCount="7432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm teaching an online lab (to accompany an in-person course) to undergrads in their 3rd or 4th year of an engineering curriculum this semester. The aim of the lab is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to teach them any particular technical skills. It's only meant to supplement the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of the course by exposing them to some more advanced concepts in a hands-on way. The lab itself is the means, not the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So beyond a single &quot;orientation&quot; lab, they don't get a whole lot of training in debugging things that go wrong in the lab, and I don't expect them to become advanced users of the lab infrastructure. They're encouraged to post questions on a course forum if they have trouble running a lab exercise, and I answer their questions there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, some students post questions that would be closed immediately on a Stack Exchange site for lack of detail, and for good reason. Questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't log in to the website, please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I run the experiment, it gives me an error. Can somebody help me???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't see the results of the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with no further details. These are perfectly reasonable things to ask about, but the student hasn't even attempted to give me any details as to what went wrong. In the &quot;real world,&quot; people that ask questions like this won't usually get help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I operate the computing infrastructure for the lab, I can actually find out the specifics of what happened by checking the student's username against the server logs. So I can give them an answer even if they ask a really incomplete question (e.g., I can check the server logs and see that their experiment failed because they mistyped a command).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure if I should answer their questions (because I can, and I want to encourage them to ask questions if they have trouble), or if I should try to train them to ask better questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand: it seems like I am doing them a disservice by not teaching them how to ask for help properly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand: students are (legitimately) frustrated when they're using infrastructure they haven't been extensively trained in, and they can't get it to work. If I try to get them to ask better questions, they'll feel like I'm being deliberately unhelpful and making them jump through hoops to get an answer to their question. (I know this because that's been their reaction the few times I tried this.) They may stop asking questions and just give up on the lab exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I risk the actual course goal (delivering content to the students) in favor of a general educational goal (teaching them how to ask questions)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way to train students to ask better questions without making them feel like I'm not helping them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify: I already provide answers to commonly asked questions, and a lot of material to help students formulate better questions &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they ask. Some students ignore that material and ask very non-specific questions anyways. My question is how to address this once they've asked the question: should I walk them through the process of reformulating it before I answer? Is there a way to do so without frustrating them further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T05:06:26.020" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T05:06:26.020" Title="Should I answer students' questions immediately or teach them to ask better questions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T00:26:56.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should recommend your students that before posting a question they should REALLY try for themselves to solve it out; and at the end if they send you the question, ask them to submit all the details to you. So questions like &quot;my program does not run&quot; are not acceptable. You will see a change in their attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also remember that in the way you can get some questions that maybe will seem silly to you, but they are learning; and that is a process. I bet if you ask some question to another professor or a renewed researcher maybe your question will seem also silly to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, try to give the advice that I told you in the first part of this post, and remember that your task is teaching for now; and that requires patience and skills (which you will get in the long run)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T00:26:56.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T00:43:56.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like what you need is a couple of generalised forms/web forms and/or a student driven wiki/knowledge base specific to this lab. The latter is obviously more strenuous to implement, but might pay off in the longer term if you are going to be teaching this course for several more years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the forms approach, a stickied post on your forum with clustering like below might be a good starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general interface issues: can't log on, can't work out how to find x/y/z command&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;execution issues: errors and their likely resolutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other: can't find results, stylistic questions about approaches etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within each section you can indicate steps for them to proceed through on their own, both in resolution of specific issues outlined as well as in general, while also providing a format for a question if that doesn't solve their problem. This approach can address your goals simultaneously: showing them how to formulate technical questions properly, requiring a modicum of thought and problem solving to proceed and transferring knowledge with less burden on the teacher for the generic queries, freeing you up to spend more time on the specific or advanced ones!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer you more specifically: I think it is reasonable to require that the effort put into the question at least equals the effort required to answer it. Asking if they have tried the solutions in the FAQ or other questions should be a standard first response to such a vague question, then using logs/user to steer a dialogue to reach a solution. I think a good benchmark for focus/specificity would be 'could I help them without omniscient access?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastEditorUserId="13778" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T12:03:41.600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T12:03:41.600" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T02:00:29.710" Score="2" ViewCount="1336" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friends and I were just discussing about this question: do people need to have their PhDs at Harvard to get tenure at MIT (and vice versa) in STEM fields?  I know theoretically, the answer is supposed to be &lt;em&gt;&quot;No&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;&quot;It depends on many other factors&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. But I just skimmed through MIT's Biology and Harvard's Biophysics department; it appears that those two giants only want to marry each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there are are any detailed statistics of where faculty from H&amp;amp;M did their PhD and postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13576" LastEditorUserId="24823" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T23:28:15.497" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T23:28:15.497" Title="Do people need to have their PhDs at Harvard to get tenure at MIT (and vice versa) in STEM fields?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19230" CreationDate="2014-04-14T02:08:38.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the degree that you do have a PhD thesis &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; some other work (that, more over, has been published), I would say it is a positive thing, not a negative one. It is a good combination of &quot;breadth and depth&quot; as one comment has put it. The general advice I have heard many times for long-term planning, is &quot;the ideal is to try to distinguish yourself in two fields inside a discipline. One -everybody tries that. Three -and your image starts getting blurry&quot;. Or something like that (and with the caveat that &quot;fields inside a discipline&quot; may not mean the same thing for different disciplines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T02:08:38.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-14T03:33:24.703" Score="20" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a personal choice; there is no definite answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is &quot;ethical&quot; depends on the culture. In Russia reporting someone doing something wrong or mildly illegal is generally considered unacceptable, whereas in the United States it is generally considered acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to get into trouble, don't do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In most cases the instructor probably knows that there is some cheating going on. This is a part of life. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to see both sides of the coin. Imagine a single mother with two children working two jobs and taking some classes at night. She doesn't really need this calculus anyway, and it is not even her major. Would the world come to an end if she unfairly gets a B- so she could graduate?&#xA;Life is really a complicated thing... &#xA;(As a full disclosure, as an instructor I used to be very particular about punishing cheating, even when no hard evidence was present. However, as we get older, we learn that the world is not black and white...) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14102" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T03:33:24.703" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T04:10:44.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In class there are always good students and not so good students (I know you are teaching an online lab, but still). Do you feel that even goods students are having problems formulating questions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only not so good students have that problem, then it is probably a case of laziness or not care attitude. There is no much you can do about that. If you try they'll probably just get frustrated. And they probably can ask very good questions about something care about. [I think this is the case].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If even goods students have that problem, you should explain that their future co-workers or people in online-communities would not be able to help them, if they don't provide more details, and therefore they should provide more details in questions. Good students should pick it up quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T04:10:44.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T06:40:30.597" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a student myself I know how frustrating it can be to work with technics or facilities you don't know enough about. Sometimes this means asking fully detailed questions can be tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a difference between a student that tries to ask a question to get help with their problem, and one that just declares that they have a problem and thinks it is another persons business to deal with it. What you posted above is the latter. &#xA;They have encountered a problem and instead of trying to get help to solve it they try to make you solve it. That might even be clever, because as long as you DO solve the problem, they get maximum effect with a minimum of effort. And as soon as students realise that, even the good students won't bother to read your FAQs anymore, because it is a waste of time, when you obviously can identify and solve a problem as soon as they write &quot;Help, I have a problem.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally you have to keep in mind, that as a student you often take from the experience that people don't respond to your question of, &quot;can anyone help me&quot; as indicating that this person is just checking, whether someone responds. It is not meant to be a question, but a phrase to start a communication about the problem. That is something adapted from face to face communication. In the real world you don't go to people and start with a 5 minute monologue to your problem, you ask &quot;Hey would you help me?&quot; Wait for a &quot;Sure what is it.&quot; And than give your monologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I read above is not a question it is the reflex of a student to a problem. Before even thinking they are posting (in my generation a common reflex in every situation - we are the tldr - too long didn't read generation). If I were you I would respond with a reflex. Just answer with a standard answer that explains, that you need more detail to help. Students who get frustrated by this are already frustrated and beyond your reach. &#xA;If on the other hand a student tried to ask a proper question and just failed, you should provide the answer and give a hint on how his question could have been better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How frustrated your student will be is less a question of what you respond, than of how you&#xA;respond. &quot;I could solve your problem, but I wont because of your stupid question&quot; is of course frustrating. But even in a standard answer you can demonstrate that you care, that you take the other person and his time serious, that you would like to help and that you need more information in order to do so. I would try to phrase it, but as you undoubtedly realised I'm not a native English speaker, so I leave that to you. Just don't advertise the fact that you are trying to teach them something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14104" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T10:09:46.707" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T10:09:46.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T06:41:48.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In teaching martial arts, what we expect from a new student, and what we expect from an experienced student are completely different.  Even a student experienced in one style, is not expected to be of the same skill as a student of equal belt or rank, when they change style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology here, as applied to your situation would be as follows...&#xA;Ask the correct question, along with providing the answer.  Over time, the expectation is that there will be fewer times when the correct question will need to be explained and more times when it will be asked in the first place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you asked: &quot;blah blah blah&quot;&#xA;The place where the question is answered: document, memo, FAQ, whatever&#xA;The question you should have asked: &quot;how do I do Xxxx?&quot;&#xA;The answer: &quot;insert tab a into slot b&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first couple of times each person gets the whole answer.&#xA;After that, you start removing lines of the answer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Telling them where the answer is, and make them go look it up, is the first step.&#xA;Over time, you get to the point where you just parrot back bad questions, with no additional response.  In the case of &quot;good&quot; questions, you provide both the answer, and some sort of recognition of the form &quot;this was a good question&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part of this sort of approach, is remembering to reset your expectations with each new batch of students.  Remembering that each of them will arrive at the level of competence at different times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T06:41:48.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T07:05:35.230" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it seems pretty simple. Stop beating around the bush and tell them to not waste your time. If they want a specific answer then they have to give you a specific question. Or as an alternative you can ask equally bad questions until they ask you more in detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your examples above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q - I can't log in to the website, please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A - How did you try to log in? Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q - When I run the experiment, it gives me an error. Can somebody help&#xA;  me???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A - Help me first? What experiment and what error?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q - I can't see the results of the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A - What experiment? What steps did you take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After going back and forth a few times even &quot;slow&quot; students will catch on to that to loose less time emailing back and forth, they have to ask more specific questions from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your answers equally short, and use &quot;their&quot; language. When they give you more information, ask more detailed questions. They will find out the answer in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14107" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T07:05:35.230" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-14T10:14:20.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It strongly depends on the academic culture in your country. In most Western countries, the answer would be &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. The cheating is considered something unethical, and it's something one should be ashamed of. You should, still, do it (the reporting, not the cheating!) as anonymously as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in some other countries, the &lt;strong&gt;group solidarity&lt;/strong&gt; is more important that the &lt;strong&gt;written rules&lt;/strong&gt; and reporting to the officials the &lt;strong&gt;minor&lt;/strong&gt; cases (where nobody is hurt) is considered &lt;strong&gt;unethical&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Poland, I would strongly discourage anyone from reporting the exam cheaters to the proffesors, because if they get caught (the reporters, not the cheaters), they risk really &lt;strong&gt;serious&lt;/strong&gt; social consequences in the student community, which may severe their future opportunities (even for accademic career). Even if the professors are actively against cheating, they may feel uncomfortable with someone reporting it, and they may share that information with collegues, which may end up being public in end effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the professor's obligation to assure noone is cheating. Nowadays, thanks to Internet, it's quite easy to keep up with the newest techniques. If they don't do that, in some cases, it's even possible they don't mind when students use 'a little help'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of a lot of comments I'd like to express my personal opinion: &lt;strong&gt;cheating is bad&lt;/strong&gt;. But the system that fights cheating by encouraging the students to report their collegues is bad too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5657" LastEditorDisplayName="user5657" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T17:43:43.157" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T17:43:43.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-14T10:24:38.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody replies with RTFM and STFW anymore, we are losing the traditions of the Internet and that is only bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students should learn to make better questions, but they should also learn something much more important &lt;em&gt;how to answer their own questions&lt;/em&gt;, because at some point they will not be students anymore and they may not have anyone to ask their questions (specially in research, where people are meant to find knowledge beyond the state of the art).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some related readings (I can think of now) in this context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to ask questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=172086&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How not to ask questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ask the duck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;How to ask&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't give a man a fish, teach him to fish. In general I agree with this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/rubber-duck-problem-solving/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rubber duck problem solving&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... (there is always a but, nothing is ever so simple not to have it), additionally to giving students the tools for them to answer their own questions it's important to give them the information so that they can do that. There are a number of things that work quite well in that sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear definitions, terms, pointers, references and maybe even a glossary. It's much easier to search on the Internet for additional information when you can write a few words on a search box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed step-by-step instructions of the set-up and all the things they should do to get their work done. (RTFM is quite pointless if there is no manual in the first place).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A FAQ. If you are getting the same question repeatedly, then it's likely that something is not clear (which we could say it's your fault...) and it may be good to have a FAQ. If the FAQ deals not only with singular and particular questions but groups of questions then that's even better. E.g.(@cs): &quot;I have an error in the code, how can I solve it?&quot; There are many possible errors and the way to solve most of them is debugging, some instructions about how to debug would be very useful to solve &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About your final questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should I walk them through the process of reformulating it before I&#xA;  answer? Is there a way to do so without frustrating them further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, definitively. I would consider forcing them to reformulate the question is good for them and helping them to do so is very kind. Frustration may be good as well, as long as it is not desperation. Desperation could be good, but it's not for everyone (sorry, I've to link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heavensinspirations.com/carrots-eggs-coffee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;). I'd personally suggest to help them to improve their questions by asking your own, which very likely you can copy and paste from a template, because there should be a pattern in those questions. Allegedly, Socrates didn't make many friends by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;asking questions&lt;/a&gt;, so try not to ask more than necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this &quot;template&quot; or process is something they should be able to learn and do by themselves, to make better questions and (if possible) to answer their own questions by themselves. Answering in this way would be teaching by example. You can also make the template explicit and part of the FAQ or a sticky post, teaching by example is not incompatible with other forms of teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:04:42.127" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T10:24:38.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T10:26:59.813" Score="3" ViewCount="4094" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Spain, it is fundamental to do the first 3 years of bachelor and the last two years of master to get a job, so I find very difficult to understand the UK system. I am currently enrolled in Computer Science and I have to find out whether I want to do MEng or BSci.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with BSci I can later do a master MSci for a total of 4 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with MEng I can in the fourth year choose master courses but MEng is considered undergrad course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;M&lt;/strong&gt; in front of Eng is really confusing. I don't want to go into research but I would like to get a greater insight of Artificial intelligence and Big Data, thing that I could do either way choosing MEng or BSc+MSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between MEng and MSc in the industry? Given that I will spend 4 years any way, should I invest my time in MEng or Msc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14111" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T10:43:18.083" Title="Computer Science, MEng or BSci + MSc in the UK?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19307" CreationDate="2014-04-14T11:08:10.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/FHEQ08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in the UK gives a breakdown of what it considered a masters degree to be (See pages 20-23).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK a MSci (Master in Science) is generally a taught postgraduate degree, involving lectures, examination, and a short project. Sometimes you can complete a research MSci, where a longer project is required. According to the UK National Qualifications Framework, masters degrees are classed as level 7 qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%5fof%5fEngineering#United%5fKingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MEng&lt;/a&gt; (Master of Engineering) is usually taken to become a chartered engineer, who is an engineer registered with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engc.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engineering Council&lt;/a&gt; in the UK. The follow from the wikipedia page explains that other ways can be used to demonstrate entry standards such as a MSc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The MEng degree represents the minimum educational standard required to become a chartered engineer, but there are other equally satisfactory ways to demonstrate this standard such as the completion of a BEng Honours and a subsequent postgraduate diploma or MSc, or by completion of the Engineering Council Postgraduate Diploma. The UK MEng (undergraduate degree) is not recognized in Canada, USA, India or Europe as a true masters degree since a masters degree in these countries takes a further 1–2 years after a 4 year Bachelors degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MEng is also a level 7 degree under the UK National Qualifications Framework. It is considered a Integrated masters which is explained in the report (link above) as the following (pages10-11)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Integrated master's degree programmes typically include study equivalent to at least four full-time academic years, of which study equivalent to at least one full-time academic year is at level 7. Thus study at bachelor's level is integrated with study&#xA;  at master's level and the programmes are designed to meet the level 6 and level 7 qualification descriptors in full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK national qualifications framework can be compared with ones from other EU countries &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/eqf/compare/ie/fr%5fen.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T13:19:08.980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T13:19:08.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19315" CreationDate="2014-04-14T11:18:26.943" Score="5" ViewCount="2054" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I applied for several masters programs this season (taking into account the advice given on this site) and have received a request for a telephone/Skype interview with one of the German universities I applied for. The response came much more quickly than I expected and I still have no replies from other universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mail contained suggested date and time (ten or so days from the date the mail was sent) and asked me to confirm it. Unfortunately, at the specified time, I'll be on a highway, in a different country, traveling between two cities. In my response, I explained that I'll be on a trip and that I'm coming back two days after the suggested date and that I'll be available pretty much at any time after I return from my trip. The reply I got is that the time suggested is the only available time for the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: &#xA;My unfortunate situation aside, I wanted to ask is it normal for universities to be this inflexible when scheduling admissions interviews? Did I go out if line by attempting to negotiate the interview date? This is the first time I'm having any sort of interview, so I really have no idea what are the cultural norms in such case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9653" LastEditorUserId="9653" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T11:26:42.803" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T17:12:19.797" Title="Given only one possible appointment for masters application interview with no possibility to renegotiate date: Is this a red flag or normal?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19310" CreationDate="2014-04-14T11:50:28.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fairly normal if course admission is competitive, and if one's application really hasn't stood out so far as exceptionally good. The interviewers might have many dozens of interviews to wade through, and the only way to do that is on a very tightly planned schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given it's a Skype interview, and given the prevalence of laptops, wifi and high-speed mobile data, I don't think it's that extraordinary to expect that for such a significant interview, an applicant would schedule a stop during a trip, at a place with a decent data connection to do the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T11:50:28.520" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19307" CreationDate="2014-04-14T13:16:12.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: They are viewed as both roughly equivalent. MEng (or MSci for other sciences) is a 4 year course. BSc + MSc is 2 course (3 + 1 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer/other useful info: I studied an MSci in Physics not CompSci so there might be some minor differences between the subjects, I don't think they are significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although not directly asked I also feel its import to point out that MSc and MSci in the UK are different (MSc is one year, MSci 4years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally in the UK a single 4 year course is becoming more popular. Of my physics course ~60% did the 4 year MSci, ~10% did the BSc and then an MSc somewhere else and the rest only did the BSc. Now these numbers are only an example and details will depend on course and institution (many lower ranked uni do not offer a combined course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of content both options are likely to be similar. Possibly the BSc and MSc tends to be slightly more research/project based. Although this is very course dependent. I recommend you research the course syllabus for each option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main factor to recommend the MEng is funding. For UK students student loans are generally only available for your first degree. This means subsequent 1 year masters must be funded independently/by a bank loan, which is often prohibitive for many people. As you are a Spanish student I am not sure what the situation is for you. Obviously this is something you may want to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In favour of the BSc + MSc it offers more flexibility. You can chose a different institution or a more specialized course after your BSc. The flip side is you are not guaranteed a place anywhere. Additionally many jobs do not require a masters so it gives you the option to only complete the BSc (someone else might comment on how true this is in CompSci).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T13:16:12.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19310" CreationDate="2014-04-14T17:12:19.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it was perfectly reasonable of you to ask to reschedule.  Of course, it's unfortunate that they weren't able or willing to accommodate you, but that's up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll now have to decide what you want to do: interview while traveling, or alter your travel plans, or skip the interview altogether.  It might be worth considering whether an institution that seems so unwilling to accommodate prospective students is an institution that you'd want to attend at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T17:12:19.797" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19235" CreationDate="2014-04-14T17:23:06.733" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll keep this answer fairly general, because what you describe sounds like a fairly general situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transition from undergraduate to Ph.D work is difficult because you're going from a very structured environment (take classes; get grades) to a very unstructured one (take classes, but focus on learning rather than grades; deal with material that's more cutting-edge and therefore open-ended; start getting into research, which is really open-ended). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is hard, and it's normal to expect a period of transition where things seem out of whack. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coupled with that is the shame: people going to grad school are usually the ones who do well in undergraduate and have done well all their life in school. You've received praise from your teachers throughout, and have received constant encouragement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you're in grad school. Everyone there is like you, so the competition is more fierce. There are no pseudo-objective measures like grades so there's no way to compare yourself to others (which for high achievers often means that you compare yourself negatively). And above all, all those nice professors who used to encourage you have turned into scowly curmudgeons who expect more and more and more...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a wonder everyone isn't depressed. And on top of that you have a full-time job !!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommendation that I will give, and that everyone here is giving you, is to ease up on yourself and try separate out your feelings of shame and inadequacy from the reality. You should find a support network of friends, hang out in study groups, do extracurricular stuff. The friends you make in grad school will be friends for life - such is the nature of this crucible. Since you're working full time this is going to be even harder, but maybe you can find others who also work full time and are in a similar position. Also see if you can find senior grad students who are part-time: their experience will be very valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then in a year you'll be back year asking about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2219/how-should-i-deal-with-discouragement-as-a-graduate-student/2220#2220&quot;&gt;how to avoid discouragement in research&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5786/how-to-avoid-procrastination-during-the-research-phase-of-my-phd&quot;&gt;how to avoid procrastinating&lt;/a&gt;, without realizing that this is a sign you've made it through the first year successfully :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T17:23:06.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-14T20:29:44.993" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to write (and sign) this statement on almost all of my exams throughout my university career. My university had a very draconian policy with regard to cheating, as I mentioned in a comment: the default punishment for a first-time offender was expulsion, if the case came before the Honor Council. (Of course, not every case brought before the Council was determined to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; an offender, in which case there was no punishment at all. On rare occasions, the punishment was something other than expulsion, usually suspension.) As implied by the statement above, it was against the university's policy both to receive (unauthorized) help on an exam &lt;em&gt;and to give it&lt;/em&gt;: both the person passing the note and the one receiving it would get in trouble with the Honor Council, even if the former individual did all of the exam work himself. (You were not punished if someone cheated by looking over your shoulder, but they would slap you on the wrist and tell you to be more careful in the future.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The integrity of the university was very important in that micro-culture, and I think that if you asked this question of anyone there -- student or professor -- you'd get the same answer, &quot;yes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led many professors comfortable doing things like assigning take-home exams which were closed-book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, the answer to this question &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; depend on the university's culture (and the culture of the country). For example, when I told an Italian friend of mine that I had a take-home exam and I was not permitted to use my textbook or notes while doing it, he assumed that everyone in the class would be cheating. When I then told him about the quoted statement above that I had to write and sign on the exam, his view of the situation flipped: if I had to write and sign something like &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, of &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; nobody would cheat! I find the sudden shift in opinion an interesting insight into his own culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9209" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T20:29:44.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T22:59:17.843" Score="11" ViewCount="3127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am PhD student in computer engineering and visiting a foreign university. My project is near to the end and, since my colleague and I got excellent results, we are writing a scientific paper about it.&#xA;I would like to submit the paper to the top best journal in our field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent the draft to my supervisor here, that replied that he does not think that the paper is going to be accepted by the top best journal. He suggested to submit it to another journal, that we can consider the 5th best journal in the field. He said that we can still submit it to the top journal if we want it, but, in that case, we have to remove his name from the author list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should we do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should we remove his name from the author list and submit it to the top journal?&#xA;Or should we satisfy him and submit the paper to the 5th most prestigious journal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8234" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T07:38:21.293" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T15:09:23.143" Title="Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-14T23:08:31.400" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe German culture is different in this regard but I would never report someone for cheating but instead talk to the cheaters personally. However in areas were people are in danger if the students lack knowledge through cheating (pilots, medicine, ...) I would tell them to report themselves or I would do it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7324" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T23:08:31.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11881" CreationDate="2014-04-14T23:29:30.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, ScholarOne (Wiley submission) did not accept PDF upload and did not convert the latex sources. My solution was to convert the PDF to PS using pdf2ps (GhostScript). This was then properly converted back to PDF by ScholarOne. I absolutely do not understand why they are using such a stupid and confusion submission system, sorry...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14134" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T23:29:30.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19319" CreationDate="2014-04-14T23:36:53.167" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view, using authorship as a bargaining chip like this is ethically inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either the supervisor's contributions to the paper warrant including him as an author, or they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do, then he needs to be listed as a co-author no matter where you publish, and you need his agreement on where the paper is to be submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't, then he should not be listed as a co-author, no matter where you publish, and you and the remaining authors can make your own decision about where to submit (though you still might value his input).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T23:36:53.167" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19326" CreationDate="2014-04-14T23:54:06.877" Score="2" ViewCount="2465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went through &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19256/is-it-okay-to-report-classmates-cheating-on-exams&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and still can't fathom why cheating &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; black-and-white.  Nevertheless, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.csusm.edu/dos/studres/wwwc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.csusm.edu/dos/studres/wwwc.html&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A cheater receives through deception what honest students work hard for; and in classes graded on a curve, he lowers their grades to boot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, I get why people don't cheat(moral fortitude) and why people don't rat(social fortitude); and that's just me saying I'm on the &quot;I'll force all you cheaters to pay for your injustices&quot; side; but is it the grading system that makes it bad for honest students?  If honest students honestly receive high marks, but are &quot;curved down&quot; in rank because cheaters get near perfect marks, then grading based on a curve must be one of the only things that makes it unfair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--- clarification:&#xA;Grading on a Curve: means to statistically conform grades of all those measured to a curve that measures performance based on a norm-referenced assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would cheating still be considered unfair if we drop the concept of grading according to a curve?  (which we should)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14076" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T10:11:13.227" Title="Does grading based on a curve make cheating unfair?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19319" CreationDate="2014-04-15T00:50:43.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; people are talking a lot about the requirements for being an author in this thread.  That's not the question, the question is what should the student do.  And giving the advisor some benefit of the doubt - since he is included for authorship in one condition - I'm assuming he meets the standard requirements for the field. Making this a choice about which journal and the relationship with the advisor, and not authorship.  &lt;em&gt;It's a weird choice, but the one the student has none the less.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with what Nate Eldredge said.  It is bizarre.  Does the &quot;top journal&quot; in question use blind review?  If it's not blind the absence of his name could hurt you if he is well known.  If it's blind, it won't affect the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If time is an issue - definitely do it his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If time is not an issue - Call his bluff and try at the top tier journal and hopefully get lucky, or at least get good reviews that you can roll into the next submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your relationship with your advisor?  Sadly this is an apprenticeship not a democracy.  The biggest mistake you can make as a PhD student is to not be on the same page as your advisor. If you are on rocky footing with him already don't start problems do it his way.  number 5 vs. number 1, eh? what are their different impact factors?  It might not matter that much and save you pain.  If you are on great standing, and this wasn't an ultimatum from him and you think you have the time and want to try...  Just remember you are there to learn from him and he is the more experienced one / possibly better judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you compared your work to other things that have been published in either of these journals?  Is it more like one than the other?  Is it &quot;big enough&quot; for the top one? Have you seen similar papers there in terms of scope and number and size of experiments etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a highly political thing.  Get advice from your peers.  Especially about dealing with your advisor.  As we don't know the specifics this is tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;summary: top is better, but #5 is good - I'd honestly probably lean the safer route (and assume his experience is guiding his decision)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13847" LastEditorUserId="13847" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T22:43:29.457" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T22:43:29.457" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19323" CreationDate="2014-04-15T01:15:54.317" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would cheating still be considered unfair if we drop the concept of grading according to a curve? (which we should)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that without cheating 10% of students get As. Therefore, students who earned As are a small group. Having an A might help getting funding, or finding an internship or a job. Now let's say that with cheating, 50% (no normalizing) of students get As, now an A is no longer that valuable because a lot of people have them. Therefore, the value of As that honest students earned has diminished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastEditorUserId="13088" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T01:33:43.567" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T01:33:43.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19323" CreationDate="2014-04-15T01:32:50.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cheating is unfair regardless of how you handle grading, but &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; unfair it is depends on the grading scheme.  Let's assume that the cheater's efforts earn him among the highest raw scores in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how you adjust the grades (unless you flip high and low grades!) the cheater will have a higher grade that they deserve, and anything which is grade dependent and competitive (e.g. getting a job, getting into grad school, etc.) will be unfairly easier for the cheater and unfairly harder for everyone else.  So there's a baseline unfairness to cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, additionally, you keep the percentage of A's fixed (grading on a curve), the cheater will bump someone out of an A, which will likely impact them negatively (career, grad school, etc.).  Someone else may be bumped out of a B, etc, down to where the cheater would have been if they hadn't cheated.  So there is direct and noticeable harm to the cheater's fellow classmates.  It's a pretty rotten thing to do.  (This is also related to why students fight so ardently for every grade or grade step.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep the requirements fixed, then everyone will get the same grades they would have, save the cheater, but the average fraction of A's will go up.  The net impact is the same--a 3.2 average now looks worse than it did before because the averages have gone up--but the negative effects are not felt by individual classmates but rather averaged over everyone from the university with cheaters.  By spreading the harm among more people, in some ways the effects are less acute; aside from the cheater, everyone else is still going to have the same relative standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, especially if cheating is rare, it's even more unfair if you're grading on a curve* since those people who have the bad luck to be stuck with a cheater will be unfairly punished in addition to the cheater being unfairly rewarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* There is an argument for grading on a curve, however: there is also unfairness due to differences in grading schemes between universities.  Grading on a curve helps to combat this, as instead of measuring various different expectations of mastery (e.g. if Harvard expects you to do more to get an A than does Yale, then your GPA will be lower if you go to Harvard than Yale), it just measures students against each other, and there are enough of those for statistical sampling help even out the other differences (e.g. if the incoming classes to Harvard and Yale are of similar quality, and both grade on similar curves, regardless of which one you'll know who was in the top 10%, and those top 10% will be similar regardless of where they went).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T01:32:50.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19235" CreationDate="2014-04-15T01:54:14.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD is an apprenticeship - you need to be on the same page as your advisor always.  If he was making comments like that you need to know if it was his poor attempt at motivating, or if you don't get along.  If you don't get along you need to find someone whom you can get along with.  This is a long process.  You should have no &quot;shame&quot; with your former professors either.  And you should definitely go back and talk to them, as well as current students, especially the more senior ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Suresh points out, everything is about to change.  Classes in a PhD program are more to complete any breadth you are missing at the foundation from your earlier program.  Then they are to start filling in a stronger foundation for your specialty.  And then they are supposed to give you a taste of the depth in even more specific subfields. Also to help you understand what professors are available, what they study, and how they work, so that you can find an advisor and a committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that you start doing research - and it becomes a much more self-motivated and often self-directed endeavor that builds on these foundations.  A PhD is about vetting you as a researcher from start-to-finish.  And putting you on an initial research trajectory.  No one will ever ask your GPA from graduate school once you have your degree.  Although it's expected you get good grades by your program (many require A/B's - C's are often failing in grad school - but you're only taking &quot;in major&quot; classes now so C's weren't really great for &quot;in major&quot; classes in your earlier degree programs).  Again though the grade isn't what's important.  But how hard you have to work for them is a potential indication of how hare you'll have to push yourself later in the less directed portions of the program.  But you'll have much more freedom as to what to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found your problem is not unique.  Many (/Most?/All?) students struggle with what exactly is grad school, and why are they there, and time management.  It sounds like time management is something you will have to work on too.  Not necessarily because you are bad at it, but because you have a lot of constraints on your time.  Holding a job at the same time means you will be a little more removed from your fellow students.  You will want to talk to them and get to know them if you can.  It will help to know that you aren't in it alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to your peers, a good book to help you know that this isn't your own personal hell is: &lt;em&gt;Getting What You Came For&lt;/em&gt;.  Very affordable survey of grad school.  Honestly most school &quot;handbooks&quot; should be thrown away and replaced with this.  Another good book is &lt;em&gt;A PhD is Not Enough&lt;/em&gt; it's a shorter version of the first, but also talks about how your goals and &quot;the systems&quot; goals are not 100% in line with each other and you need to be aware of that and how to navigate that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13847" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T01:54:14.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T03:40:46.277" Score="4" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard model for the number of citations an article will receive over time? If not, is there a good source for data on citation counts for articles divided up over time? Furthermore, does this vary by field&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems plausible to me that the number of citations decays approximately exponentially, with the rate of decay depending on the article, but I have empirical evidence for this conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a model would be useful because a few years after an article was published, one could use the MLE method to estimate the number of citations the article would receive over any time period. This would allow us to count citations in a way that does not bias older articles, one of the chief problems with straight citation counts. Additionally, it would give us a better idea of the inaccuracies of metrics like impact factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T06:59:33.400" Title="Model for the number of citations an article receives over time" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19329" CreationDate="2014-04-15T04:30:08.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imagine you'd have an initial publication lag where citations might be lower for example in year 1 than in year 2 and that then aggregate citation counts over time would have to be monotonically decelerating. You'd also have substantial variability in terms of individual articles. For example, I've heard of articles which accelerate in their citation count over time as they become the standard citation for a particular topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent of overall number of citations received, journals and fields  differ dramatically in the rate at which citations accumulate. A good starting point is to look at &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Other_measures_of_impact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citation half life&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (i.e., the median time it takes a journal or field to acquire half of its total citations). If you can access ISI you can examine how different fields and journals differ in citation half life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I just had a quick look at a few fields from ISI 2012 which yielded the following data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Field                       Citation Half-Life (in years)&#xA;PSYCHIATRY                  7.6&#xA;ASTRONOMY &amp;amp; ASTROPHYSICS    6.9&#xA;MATHEMATICS                 &amp;gt;10.0&#xA;PSYCHOLOGY                  &amp;gt;10.0&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So clearly psychiatry and astronomy tend to cite more recent articles, whereas mathematics and psychology often cite older articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication is that impact factors (which are based on the last 2 or possibly 5 years post publication) should be higher in psychiatry/astronomy than in mathematics/psychology. It also means that early career researchers in psychiatry/astronomy should accumulate a better h-index more quickly than researchers in mathematics/psychology, all else being equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T06:59:33.400" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T06:59:33.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19329" CreationDate="2014-04-15T04:55:43.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; will plot the number of citations over time for papers.  I don't know whether it will do so for arbitrary papers, but it will for any paper listed on an author's page (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TFx_gLQAAAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Terry Tao&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't studied the data systematically, but some things are clear from browsing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Citation statistics for individual papers can be incredibly noisy.  For example, a paper may have 5 citations one year, 15 the next, then 7, 2, 12, etc., with no obvious pattern or explanation.  Furthermore, different papers written by the same person on similar topics and with similar citation rates sometimes show visibly different levels of noise, and I don't know why.  For papers with particularly high citation counts (e.g., 50+ citations per year), noise is not as big a factor, but such papers are uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different papers can take radically different trajectories.  For example, some of my papers have a consistent growth in their yearly citation counts over ten or more years.  Others seem relatively stable, probably decreasing a little over time but with yearly fluctuations that are substantially larger than the decrease.  Some have fallen completely off the map and only get cited occasionally (perhaps a Poisson process).  These different scenarios are correlated with how good I consider the paper, but only loosely, and I think the trajectory would be tough to predict from the first few years of citation counts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T04:55:43.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19834" CreationDate="2014-04-15T04:57:04.793" Score="13" ViewCount="940" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to find the dissertation of someone who advertises that they hold a &quot;doctorate of management&quot; from the &quot;University of Phoenix&quot;. The degree requires a dissertation, but the school does not require the dissertation to be published, apparently, because neither is the work listed on ProQuest, nor does the University's own library hold it. My liaison indicated that the author may have deliberately chosen not to distribute the work. I have not yet been able to obtain a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this obscurantist practice rare at good universities &amp;amp; common at for-profit universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other factors at play in the unavailability of a graduate dissertation in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14140" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T17:15:00.430" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T08:14:43.683" Title="Is it common for doctoral dissertations from for-profit schools to be unavailable?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32107" CreationDate="2014-04-15T05:51:52.323" Score="48" ViewCount="21546" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much do &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.springer.com/authors/&quot;&gt;Springer-Verlag authors&lt;/a&gt; make per book sold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastActivityDate="2021-05-21T08:42:10.180" Title="How much do Springer-Verlag authors make per book sold?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19333" CreationDate="2014-04-15T06:37:52.120" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies substantially, depending on the sort of book, how well the author negotiated (each book involves an individually negotiated contract), the price of the book, etc.  Based on one Springer contract I'm familiar with, here's a first approximation.  I can't say for sure how representative it is, but it's at least one data point, and I'd guess it's typical for Springer and competing publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular sales, the author may get 9-12% of &quot;net cash receipts&quot;, defined as what the publisher made on the sale (excluding taxes), with the percentage depending on things like how well the book has sold.  Note that &quot;regular sales&quot; excludes some special cases, for which there may be lower royalty rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the question is how much Springer charged the bookseller for the book.  You can download a 6 megabyte zip file of &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.springer.com/sgw/documents/1446721/application/zip/Springer_PriceChanges2014.zip&quot;&gt;Springer wholesale prices&lt;/a&gt;.  I glanced at a few math books, and the prices look like they are about 60% of what bookstores are charging.  That's certainly the right ballpark, but I haven't computed any real statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a first approximation is that the author's royalty is probably 5-7% of the price you pay in a bookstore.  Considering that academic books are expensive, that's not bad, but nobody's going to grow rich off it.  For advanced books, selling 1000 copies in total is very good and selling 10,000 is amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T06:37:52.120" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19329" CreationDate="2014-04-15T06:43:36.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; model for all kinds of papers is very unlikely to exist. Certainly, the trajectory will be different for very strong and fundamental contributions vs. small incremental improvements, that often become more or less irrelevant in a few years. Further, looking through Google Scholar data (already mentioned by Anonymous Mathematician), I would hypothesize that there is also a difference between fields. In my rather hype-driven research field (services / software engineering), citations often seem to roughly follow a bell curve:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;user=wZ9f8CAAAAAJ&amp;amp;citation_for_view=wZ9f8CAAAAAJ%3aqjMakFHDy7sC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;user=wZ9f8CAAAAAJ&amp;amp;citation_for_view=wZ9f8CAAAAAJ%3aUeHWp8X0CEIC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;user=0n5S6uUAAAAJ&amp;amp;citation_for_view=0n5S6uUAAAAJ%3ad1gkVwhDpl0C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These papers, if they are timely, generally need one or two years to pick up steam, then there are a few years with lots of citations, after which interest in the presented ideas dies down again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More fundamental work often seems to have a less clear trajectory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;user=2T3H4ekAAAAJ&amp;amp;citation_for_view=2T3H4ekAAAAJ%3aAde32sEp0pkC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then of course you have publications which are just &quot;weird&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;user=KK2le2UAAAAJ&amp;amp;citation_for_view=KK2le2UAAAAJ:9yKSN-GCB0IC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that all examples I have provide have a not-too-small number of citations on them. I would say for publications &amp;lt; 50 citations on Google Scholar (i.e., most of them), all bets go out through the window anyway. Fluctuations are too large for any sort of statement over the shape of their trajectory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T06:43:36.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-15T06:52:01.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All this is a life style preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you have the attention span for? There is no &quot;right way&quot;.&#xA;How do you want things to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering inconsiderate questions leads to only one thing, more inconsiderate questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to significantly reduce the number of inconsiderate questions being asked is to get a reputation for low tolerance to them. Many people fail to consider what information is useful or required to supply an answer when asking. Why bother thinking when you can use someone else's brain at the price of only moving your mouth a little?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people take the rude approach when they get bored of this, which is just as useless. I use the sarcastic. Last time someone walked to me and asked me what I was doing when I was making a salad in front of their eyes I said, &quot;Building a vegetable based space ship, what did you think I was doing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the persistently annoying people you can add a sour note: &quot;Here's the salad, want some extra cyanide to go with your lazy question?&quot; (and you put a bit of salt when you say it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have the attention span for it, I say &quot;try to answer your own question from my perspective...&quot;  They then ask it again and realise that they need extra information to go with it. When they've made this extra effort you can then choose to answer their question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shortest way of doing this is using one word &quot;Define?&quot;, &quot;How?&quot; , &quot;Why?&quot; ... mostly people understand they need to rephrase or add detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case there is no polite way of doing it. You will always find people unhappy about YOU not going out of YOUR way to solve THEIR problems. Makes no difference if they could solve them by applying a brain cell to the task for 30 seconds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You no doubt have co workers who get asked way less broken questions. Observe their behavior and emulate or integrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards Helen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14147" LastEditorUserId="13778" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T08:11:08.953" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T08:11:08.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-15T06:55:51.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academically, it is in your best interest to report it. If the class is curved, the cheaters are not only unfairly outshining you, but they are unfairly &lt;em&gt;lowering your grade&lt;/em&gt;. Even if it's not curved, unless it's an enormous class, the professor's perceptions of who did well may still be influenced by who did how well. If a student that the professor expects to score low (based on their in-class participation) instead cheats and scores high, the professor may decide that the exam was easier than he originally thought, and value your honestly earned mark less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long term, if cheating is rampant in your school, this will soon become known. The value of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; degree will drop even if you didn't cheat, because how can I know &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; didn't get your degree by being one of the infamous cheaters, and managing to avoid getting caught?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a class where all exams are multiple choice and grading is completely objective and not curved, cheaters have no effect on you (except for the long term consequences stated above). Only then you could say that pragmatically, neither reporting nor not reporting helps or hurts you appreciably, so you might as well not bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there is also the ethical aspect. Cheating is bad, you are expected to not cheat and report cheaters by the instructor and school administration, and you probably even signed agreements and made honor pledges to this effect. So, it would be dishonest for you not to report it - not reporting isn't even a valid choice, it would be a dereliction of your contractual and ethical obligations. In practice, you will never &quot;get caught&quot; and be punished for failing to report cheating - but whether you get caught is immaterial to ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, speaking in terms of your credentials in school and beyond, there is absolutely no reason not to report it, and strong reasons against not reporting (eg. you promised in writing that you would report when you enrolled). It would be extremely unusual for a professor to somehow punish you for reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not the whole story: Like it or not, the people who you reported will hate you for it. They will tell their friends to hate you for it. If they are popular, you will quickly become very unpopular. Not all your classmates may have the same concept of integrity, and some may hate you for &quot;siding with the establishment and betraying your comrades&quot; (as they see it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your classmates may one day end up being your colleagues. If you get a reputation as a &quot;rat&quot; who has dubious allegiances, and cannot be relied on to have his friends' back (even though the cheaters are probably not your friends, they are only united with you in their struggle to get good grades) against a perceivedly antagonistic and unfair institution, it may become difficult for you to be seen as trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider how in history there have been oppressive, unjust regimes which employed &quot;informants&quot; to report on people who try to circumvent or oppose the oppression. Clearly, this is not the same as reporting cheating: For one, academic cheating policies are clearly just, ethical and reasonable (unlike oppressive regimes). But the point is that following a rule is not automatically a just action. It is hard to definitively say what is just and what is unjust, so a lack of skepticism towards even apparently just rules is taken by some as evidence of inability to reject rules even when they are unjust, and generally lack of critical thinking ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, you must ask yourself: Are you an idealist, or a pragmatist? If an idealist, there is no question that you should report the cheating. But if a pragmatist, unfortunately, it depends. You must further ask, which do you value more: Your reputation among your peers, or your formal academic credentials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T08:20:33.497" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T08:20:33.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19340" CreationDate="2014-04-15T07:22:39.137" Score="8" ViewCount="3201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to implement an algorithm given in a paper. I have some questions which I would like to clear out since implementation requires complete clarity on all the concepts/algorithms/arguments introduced the paper. I have contacted the authors of the paper multiple times(5-6 times) through mail but I do not receive any response and it's been close to a month now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is any forum/website in which a reader of a research paper can submit questions that he/she faces while reading it, which is also subscribed by the authors of the paper and authors of papers citing that in their reference section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: This question may seem to be duplicate of: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7875/whom-to-discuss-research-papers-with&quot;&gt;Whom to discuss research papers with?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in my case, I am not from academia and do not have any advisor/mentor sort of person to discuss paper with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13789" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:52:31.327" Title="Forum for discussing research paper" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19339" CreationDate="2014-04-15T07:32:31.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, such a forum does not exist (even though it actually sounds like a reasonable idea in theory). The closest I can think of is the Questions &amp;amp; Answers section at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt;, though to be honest I have stopped checking in there because most questions in my fields are simply not very interesting. Depending on your topic, you may also be well served posting in a topically appropriate Stack Exchange site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T07:32:31.157" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T08:25:40.393" Score="9" ViewCount="4671" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was inspired by this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19256/is-it-okay-to-report-classmates-cheating-on-exams/19300&quot;&gt;fascinating discussion about cheating&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If grades, degrees, test scores are important for getting a job/internship/assistantship, even more so than the actual knowledge that they measure, I can see how cheating on a test can be considered unethical. Is it ethically better to hire an expensive tutor to prepare, say, for the SAT or for the GMAT, or for some test at school, than to attempt to cheat on the exam? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some context: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/01/nyregion/01tutor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times: Tutors Hold Key to Higher Test Scores, for a High Fee &lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assume that the tutor has no secret/insider knowledge about the test&lt;/strong&gt;. Assume that the tutor is essentially teaching you only some tricks for beating this particular test, no real knowledge. Assume also that many people in class do not have the money to hire a tutor of the same qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, is it okay to cheat for those less financially fortunate, if they cannot afford a tutor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As further context, Princeton Review explicitly states that their SAT prep program does only one thing: raises scores. Princeton Review argues that test prep is right and ethical, because (paraphrasing) SAT is a stupid, almost meaningless thing, and those without quality test preparation are put at a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:17:56.590" Title="Is it more ethical to hire a tutor to prepare or to cheat on a test?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;tutoring&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-15T16:06:38.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-04-15T08:39:07.173" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Measuring the ability to learn tricks (including financial ability) is actually of use to most employers etc., while measuring the ability to cheat is if anything a measure of what employers etc. want to avoid (since typically the risk/reward scheme for them is very different from individuals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, while having a tutor is not completely fair to those who cannot afford it, it is still a reasonable proxy for desirability.  Cheating is (usually) not.  So it's ethically better than cheating inasmuch as the right people for the positions will tend to be selected for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="669" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T09:43:55.663" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T09:43:55.663" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-04-15T08:46:59.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are dubious. But cheating is a problem with your personal ethics, and you risk being caught. If the exams are based on some secret knowledge, which is not available to wider public, the whole system is corrupt. If you adapt, you support that system, but you don't risk getting 'caught', since you know something that is accepted by the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is quite abstract since you won't have either-or situation in real life. If the system enforces bribing the examinators or buying secret knowledge, the system would enforce no-cheating policy on the exam very well (because it's in the financial interest of the examinator). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's like the pickpocketing vs. corruption dilemma. &lt;strong&gt;Both are bad&lt;/strong&gt;. But cheating is easier to fix (more control on exams etc.). In case of paid tutoring the whole system needs fixing, which is hard to fix because the system will oppose and you need some external force to change that (like revolution etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5657" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T08:46:59.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19230" CreationDate="2014-04-15T09:06:22.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming we are talking about the U.S., at this point you just need to defend your thesis. This should be your main concern. Then publish your results in various journals/conference proceedings, as appropriate, including those results already included in the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is irrelevant if you will merge all of your work or not, as chances are, almost nobody is going to read your thesis anyway. You will need a journal/conference publication of the same results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14102" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T09:06:22.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2014-04-15T09:15:51.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different advisers have different styles. Choose the one that works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tough Love.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: Will push you to get results. By virtue of being pushy, may also have grant money. May also push other people to have your thesis defense go smoothly and/or find you internships or a job afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: Can take advantage of you by, effectively, asking you to do &quot;menial&quot; work for him such as preparing Powerpoint presentations, coauthoring papers with you where you did all the research, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nice Guy.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: Won't waste your time. Also, a nice to be around a nice person ;-) You may end up becoming good friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: If you are not sufficiently organized or self-motivated, you may end up with nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14102" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T09:15:51.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-04-15T09:27:13.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very theoretical, but let’s think this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you cheat, you are doing sth. very unethical, as you are not following the rules that every one must obey, thus, you're obtaining an unfair advantage. Rules are for everyone and you’re breaking them – that’s bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you pay someone (who doesn’t have any real knowledge about the questions in the exam) to help you with the exam, you’re following the rules. So, you aren’t doing anything bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people may complain saying: “But it’s unfair for those poor little guys who have no money to afford a tutor. They’re in disadvantage; it’s not ethical; it’s unfair.” And I respond: “Yes, it’s unbalanced. People with money will have advantage. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; people who don’t have to spend X hours in work will have more time to study, having an advantage too over the workers. And people who can study in silence will have advantage over those who live in noisy places, …”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we must put some rules to try to give the same starting position to everyone. But there will be always disadvantages. The better the rules, the less the disadvantages. So, the student can’t do anything unethical if he/she follows the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question should be: Is it fair/ethical that exams are made in a way that someone with knowledge of tricks not related with the subject can obtain a huge advantage enough to overtake those who don’t know the tricks? Why are those “tricks” not published by the “teachers” or the exam providers?&#xA;The problem is in the way the exams are, not wether people can pay a tutor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, cheating is explainable, but &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; justifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to include my own comment:&#xA;Are you doing something that breaks the rules? No. You are pursuing a finish line, with all your effort and possibilities. If you have the money and the will, pay for it. If you have the time and the will, study more than others. If you have skills, use them to learn better than others. If there are rules and you follow them, nobody can say you’re doing something incorrect. You’re just doing as best as possible – through effort, money, skills … If you stick to the rules, you’re ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14150" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T12:27:16.447" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T12:27:16.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T11:56:19.880" Score="2" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted a paper to a math journal with standard latex formatting, but they sent an email back saying that the contact details for the corresponding author should be in the document itself. Where exactly does this mean? On the title page next to my name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now it looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First name Last name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;April 14, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the paper then follows&#xA;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] reference...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where exactly should I include my email address?&#xA;I am the only author of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T19:38:42.897" Title="Where to include contact details in math paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19937" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:13:04.033" Score="19" ViewCount="4958" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is policy are you following about publishing data analysis code on GitHub? Do you do it after publishing or as a work-in-progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I developed a number of Python algorithms to analyse a large dataset, and I would like to make my work visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14155" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T01:56:18.380" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:22:42.910" Title="When should you publish code on GitHub? Work-in-progress or after publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-06-14T22:48:43.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9747" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:31:38.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a procrastinator too, in fact I'm procrastinating right now! I'm also a 3rd yr PhD student with a Prof. Nice Guy style supervisor. If you think your supervisor wont be able to 'force' you to do the work then that's not really a problem. You just have to know how to work with it. Here's a tip:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell you supervisor at the end of each meeting where you expect to be by next meeting. If you're anything like me you don't plan on procrastinating, it just happens. You'll be motivated to say you'll do the work in the meeting because you have the best intentions. You'll then have to stick to it out of the meeting because Prof. Nice Guy will be expecting you to have completed what you said you'd complete. It's a hack to force you to act like Prof Nice Guy is Prof Tough Love!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, I should probably get back to work now. Oooo youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11359" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T12:31:38.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19356" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:42:13.813" Score="25" ViewCount="4951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that many professors seem to impose extremely tight time limits on their exams, even though the subject in question would never have such extreme time constraints in real life. For example, I cannot imagine a situation where I have to write 50 lines of code on a piece of paper in less than 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable for me to complain about such constraints or is it normal to expect fast exam performance from students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not talking about the actual exam difficulty, just the time constraint built around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14156" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T05:01:47.080" Title="Is it wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on exams?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19319" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:45:22.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree slightly with @DrLivingston (so I provide a different answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I agree with what Nate Eldredge said. It is bizarre. Does the &quot;top journal&quot; in question use blind review? If it's not blind the absence of his name could hurt you if he is well known. If it's blind, it won't affect the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matter-of-fact, that's certainly true to some extent, but it's not something you should exploit. For instance, adding some important coauthor to the paper often helps your chances even if he contributes nothing, but doing that is unethical, because it advances careers without merit. Furthermore, all authors are individually responsible for the accuracy of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Actually collaborating with an important scientist is an entirely different thing, but you should do it to improve the content).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd be more careful: reviewers should not judge the paper merit based on who authors it, especially not consciously (with a few exceptions, say if the author intentionally defrauded the system in the past); unfortunately, this does happens even to people who try to avoid it, and that happens more in some communities than in others, so papers by famous scientists have sometimes unfair advantages in acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, your supervisor should only be in the author list if he contributes something to the paper. Since you already have a draft, I can imagine his contribution would be help in revising this draft before submission — which can certainly be useful and deserve coauthorship (though I think there could be some debate about this, which hinges on how much creativity is left in writing the paper after doing the work. Some computer scientists argue that writing the paper is 50% of the job, because most of our papers are mostly not reports on experiments, but argumentative texts which use experiments to support some of their claims).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think the correct question would be the following. Is your supervisor potential contribution to the paper useful enough to involve him in the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the supervisor will not provide any contribution except his name, then he should not be there. If he forces you to have his name, that's clearly unethical behavior, and you should think about calling him on it; unfortunately that's typically hard as long as he is your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T12:45:22.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:55:02.893" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not really an answer but some educated guess. Most instructors do not plan to impose a challenging time constraint for exams. Usually we &lt;em&gt;tend to overestimate&lt;/em&gt; how easy is the exam. The younger is the instructor, the more optimistic he/she is about students and more eager to write interesting questions. For subjects that require lots of drilling, tight time constraints are helpful in the sense one can immediately screen out the students who did lots of homework/problem solving from those who have to think from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6556" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T12:55:02.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-04-15T13:30:30.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thing One: The exams are generally &lt;em&gt;intended&lt;/em&gt; to measure how good you are at performing certain tasks (working out or knowing the correct answers to questions). On a given day, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing Two: the exams are &lt;em&gt;actually used&lt;/em&gt; to estimate how good you might be at other tasks (studying for a degree, doing a job, being &quot;smart&quot;). Of course SATs and the like are not great at estimating those things. For that matter intelligence doesn't easily admit being measured at all. But it's one piece of evidence and people seem to care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, get one consideration out of the way. Is it unethical to train for the test at all? Maybe, because that makes it a less good proxy for general ability. But you can train for the test with or without a tutor (perhaps more effectively with). Just practicing questions makes a significant difference. A good (but not off the charts) SAT score from someone who has never seen a SAT-style test before is impressive. A good (but not off the charts) SAT score from someone who has seen them before just means they're capable of studying. I think in this question we're not interested in whether receiving tuition is unethical. We'll assume it isn't and then we're interested in whether &lt;em&gt;paying&lt;/em&gt; for it is unethical, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheating on the test subverts both Things. The first because what ends up getting measured is not anything you can work out for yourself (aside from avoiding getting caught), but something someone else can do for you and pass you the answers to fill in. The second because you won't always be able to cheat at your job and you won't be able to cheat at being &quot;smart&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paying for a tutor doesn't subvert the first thing at all. You really can work out the questions on the day. The &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; you have that ability is in part because you have money to spend on the problem of learning it, but the test doesn't set out to measure how the ability was acquired, only that you have it. So &lt;em&gt;from the point of view of standard testing&lt;/em&gt;, cheating is unethical and tutoring is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paid tutoring may well subvert the second Thing, since you won't always be able to hire a tutor to teach you how to do any task you need to complete in life. SATs are quite predictable (intentionally so), challenging tasks in real life aren't. You can reasonably argue that if someone uses SATs (or GMAT, or IQ, whatever) as a proxy for some other activity then it's &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problem to figure out what correlation there is (if any) between what ability you need to pass the test and what ability they really want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I hold to some socialist principles, so I think it's regrettable that opportunity and power in the country I live in is distributed primarily according to wealth. Which in turn is primarily inherited, at least when talking about people's early education, where any benefits like this coaching are typically paid for by parents. It's possible that this question is inspired by similar principles, in which case I sympathise, but the only way to apply those principles is to consider what it is and is not ethical to acquire through wealth. Different people will have different answers. Education? The ability to pass silly standard tests? A house to live in while you're educated? You can acquire free time through wealth, does that make it unethical after all to practice for SATs? If you think it's unethical to acquire advantage through wealth, sure it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a perfect free market, people for whom a SATs tutor is a worthwhile investment would be able to borrow money to do so regardless of their economic background, and get the same benefit. In a perfect socialist state, access to education and jobs would not be based on wealth at all (indeed, 'wealth' could be meaningless or at least would not significantly vary across the population). Each system has its own idea of what equal opportunity means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual world is neither of those things: some people can get an educational advantage by paying for a better education and others cannot, purely by the wealth of their parents. Society is not fair. Tutors are part of that privilege. As such I think they are part of the broader question of whether it is ethical to be rich, but there's nothing special about tuition in particular that makes it less ethical than spending money on anything that gives you an advantage of those who can't afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably &lt;em&gt;less reputable&lt;/em&gt; to pay for coaching to a syllabus like the SATs that (for the purpose of this question) we assume to contain no real knowledge, than it is to pay for tutors to teach you something more educationally worthwhile. The more people train directly to a test, the less valuable the test becomes under Thing Two. But I don't think either is held to be actually unethical except by those who want the student's wealth taken out of education more generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T13:54:24.413" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T13:54:24.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19370" CreationDate="2014-04-15T13:34:34.780" Score="8" ViewCount="2854" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand why it would be a bad idea to allow math students access to paper materials as it  is necessary for students to know the basic math formulas by heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about advanced practical courses where it is important to &quot;understand&quot; rather than &quot;know&quot;? For example, knowing statistical formulas won't help if you haven't understood how to apply them. Knowing STL commands by heart is also useless for programming, unless you're actually good at programming. Intel's x86 developer manual won't help a complete newbie in Assembly programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the question is whether it is reasonable to believe that good courses should be focused on &quot;understanding&quot; the subject rather than &quot;memorizing&quot; it, meaning that the instructor should have no problems with his students using paper materials on the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14156" LastEditorDisplayName="user14156" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T14:22:43.097" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:11:46.473" Title="Are open-book exams generally a superior way to test understanding on practical courses?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:00:04.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable to bring up the issue of exam difficulty, although I would try to bring it up in a way that is not accusing the professor of being unfair, perhaps bringing it up as part of a question of how to study next time, or asking if this is going to be typical of his exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that the professor sees value in the tight time constraint that you aren’t aware of.  For example, they might be asking something very challenging, knowing that very few students will succeed completely. It is very common to have test questions ranging from fairly easy to very difficult, with the expectation that most students will miss the most difficult questions. Partially correct answers show partial understanding. In this case, a coding question with a time limit will show up problems that might be harder to see in an assignment where a student has unlimited time. One sort of issue that will show up is that there's big difference between the uncompleted code of somebody who starts writing random code in the hopes it will sort itself out as it comes, vs somebody who takes 3 minutes to plan an approach, and the rest of the time implementing that approach. But if all you are looking at is the final result is a problem set, the difference is less obvious, even if the first person takes twice as long to reach the same result. There could be other possible benefits to this type of question as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s also possible that the professor isn’t aware of just how difficult the test is, and your question will bring that to his attention. Although if nobody finishes that question, that alone will give most instructors a clue that their estimated difficulty was off. But generally, exams have very little to do with career prep, and more to do with assessing student ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14039" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T14:00:04.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:00:31.720" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The objective of an assessment can vary from one lecture to another. Quite often, the point is simply to validate whether the expected learning outcomes of the lecture have been met. For instance, if an expected outcome is to know almost by heart how to write an array sorting program, then it's quite reasonable to ask to write a small amount of lines of code in a fixed amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the expected outcome is at a higher level of understanding (in the sense of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy&quot;&gt;Bloom's taxonomy&lt;/a&gt;), for instance by asking to design and assess a new data structure to handle a new problem, then it could be more reasonable to expect more time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you are referring to by &quot;&lt;em&gt;would never have such extreme time constraints in real life&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is addressed with the notion of &lt;em&gt;authentic learning&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/35263/editorial_rule.pdf?sequence=1&amp;amp;isAllowed=y&quot;&gt;(Rule, 2006)&lt;/a&gt;, which identifies the four following themes for a learning to be authentic:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) the activity involves real-world problems that mimic the work of professionals in the discipline with presentation of findings to audiences beyond the classroom; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) open-ended inquiry, thinking skills, and metacognition are addressed; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) students engage in discourse and social learning in a community of learners; and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) students are empowered through choice to direct their own learning in relevant project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authentic learning comes with its upsides and downsides (the reference linked acts as a survey paper, if you are interested), so it's not necessarily the best approach. In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://engage.wisc.edu/dma/research/docs/Lombardi-AuthenticLearning.pdf&quot;&gt;(Lombardi, 2007)&lt;/a&gt; note that &lt;em&gt;the reliance on traditional instruction is not simply a choice made by individual faculty—students often prefer it.&lt;/em&gt; For instance, not everybody wants to be tested on writing code in a highly complex environment, using bugged code written by other people, implementing specifications that are sub-optimal, but the client want them in this way, which could be a typical real world situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I don't think you should complain about time constraints&lt;/strong&gt;, but if you believe that authentic learning would be more beneficial to you and your fellow students, &lt;strong&gt;you should probably discuss with the professor about the objective of the assessment&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lombardi, M. M. (2007). Authentic learning for the 21st century: An overview. Educause learning initiative, 1(2007), 1-12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule, Audrey C. (2006). The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 3, Number 1, Pages 1-10, August 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T14:00:31.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:11:00.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some professors seem to be using this paradigm of testing; instead of giving ample time so that it's reasonable to finish the test, they'll intentionally make it so even the best-prepared testee will only have time to finish 75% of the test. Of course it will be curved based on this. It separates those who know the material really well from the people who only know a little, and apparently creates a pretty good bell curve, which seems to be what everyone is after these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14068" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T14:11:00.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19354" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:17:35.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there are two main counterarguments to this line of thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Examinations in which students are given unlimited access to material tends to lead to more challenging exams, since everyone in principle has access to all of the available material they can get their hands on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If unlimited resources are allowed, this potentially gives students who can access more materials an advantage over those who don't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is the more serious, in my opinion, but both are major challenges that must be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I &quot;split the difference&quot;: I allow students to bring in a limited amount of notes to help them. They can decide what they need to include or not, but it's their choice. Also, by placing the restriction, no one is inherently advantaged&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T14:17:35.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19476" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:44:59.600" Score="2" ViewCount="2918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17483/unable-to-attend-conferences-in-cv&quot;&gt;Unable-to-attend conferences in CV&lt;/a&gt;), but the situation is a bit different. In my field, we don't usually submit papers for conferences. Rather, the organizers directly invite a number of persons whom they think interesting to give talks (sometimes participants can contribute talks or posters, but that is not the case here). I received such an invitation, but for a number of reasons am not sure yet whether I will attend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I still add the invitation to my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could of course argue that it is strange to get credit for something (a talk) I might not do. But one could also think that the invitation itself is a distinction and therefore worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T03:25:17.223" Title="Can I include in my CV the invitation to a conference I'm not sure to attend?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:50:44.253" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends where they are cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are cheating on a simple test or exam that is just one of many, don't report them. Such tests do not show the general skill of a student, just what he/she knows at a specific point in time. A good student can fail on a test and a bad one can succeed dependent on way too many factors. It is however a good thing to tell the student afterwards that if he/she wants to succeed, they cannot just base it on luck and cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are cheating on an important exam, a final or similar to an extend that is beyond negligible, then do report them. If they are caught at a later point, it is possible that their degree is later revoked, which might not only cause them to loose a complete year, they can even loose a job or worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can cheat during a test, but you cannot cheat when people later depend on your expected skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T14:50:44.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:58:21.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not so much a self-contained answer, as a longer comment in response to a number of the answers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheating seems to be categorized here into a single huge category, but it seems relevant to split it up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheating by &lt;em&gt;copying information&lt;/em&gt; from other students: Absolutely unethical &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; requires no useful skills from the student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheating by &lt;em&gt;using cheatsheets&lt;/em&gt;: Absolutely unethical (as the playing field isn't equal), however it still requires the student to comprehend the material and even more so requires the student to behave more similarly to real life where, unlike in exams, forced memorization isn't all that relevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, getting to your question, is it more ethical to hire a tutor? Definitely, as there are academic rules and expectations a student has to play by. Which one will teach a student more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning self made cheat sheets by hard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning by hard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheating by using self made cheat sheets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a tutor learning only tricks as defined in OP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheating by copying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is what follows from the presented argument. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly I would like to point out that in real life cheating by copying isn't called cheating but called collaboration (in the context of colleagues working for the same institution as is the case with students). In a lot of positions it's more important to know when to 'cheat' then having all the knowledge at hand by hard. This does not however in any way justify cheating, nor is the current system designed in a way that would allow correct measurements in spite of such cheating, but it is worth noting in the context of this question, especially as there is a slow paradigm shift from individual examinations to more heavily graded group work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11353" LastEditorUserId="11353" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T15:17:56.590" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:17:56.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19396" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:02:18.680" Score="78" ViewCount="10546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a field (Philosophy) where co-authorship is uncommon and advisors and grad students very seldomly co-author a paper. I've seen a lot of posts on Academia.se though about the ethics of co-authoring papers with mentors, such &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19319/is-it-better-to-submit-a-paper-to-an-important-journal-without-the-supervisor-na&quot;&gt;as this question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My sense is that it must be somewhat common in the natural sciences for the head of the lab/dissertation advisor to be automatically added as a co-author to every paper that his or her graduate students produce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this really common, and if so, in which fields?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this really ethical? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view is that adding your name to something that you had no part in creating is just plagiarism: it's taking credit for the work of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposite argument, that the work wouldn't have been possible without the PI's grant funding also cuts no ice. I wouldn't have been able to write my dissertation if my parents hadn't had sex, but that doesn't mean they should get credit as coauthoring my work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the way it seems to me, but maybe somebody from these fields can give us a better rationale for (what seems to be) the widespread practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Another argument against the practice. Suppose I'm a billionaire who knows nothing about science, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous scientist. Suppose I just spend billions of dollars to fund other people to do research. But, I ask each of those people to come and report to me for fifteen minutes ever week about what they've worked on, or discovered that week. Then, every time one of them finds a result, I demand that my name be added to the paper as a co-author, since we have &quot;discussed&quot; the work in progress and it is, after all, by my grace that the funds for the work have been provided. Suppose I just have hundreds of these postdocs, producing thousands of papers a year, all of which I am a coauthor for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now ask yourself if I really deserve to be regarded as a famous scientist at all? It seems to me that I don't, because I haven't done any of the science--I haven't suggested any research methods, I haven't designed any experiments, I haven't collected any data, I haven't even helped junior researchers know the shape of the existing literature. You might regard my existence as good for science in some sense--you might think of me as a beneficial patron of the sciences. But you wouldn't think of me as a scientist, right? And you wouldn't think I deserved to be considered for a Nobel Prize, or membership in the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, or whatever. If I demanded that I be given those awards because of the thousands and thousands of papers that I have coauthored, which have been cited tens of thousands of times, you would call me an idiot, right? We give those prizes for discovery, not for being rich. The same thing is true of tenure too. You shouldn't be able to buy your role as a tenured professor. You should have to prove that you, personally, are capable of making a serious contribution to your field. And of course you demonstrate that capability by publishing papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when a prof is automatically added as a coauthor to a paper that he or she did not contribute to in any way except financially, then she is trying to &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; a reputation as a scholar, or the other perks like tenure or membership in the AAAS that come with that reputation in just the same kind of way that the absurd billionaire is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T12:53:15.547" Title="Is it ethical for advisors to automatically coauthor papers?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19367" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:05:30.737" Score="22" ViewCount="1336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an American professor in a branch of theoretical science at a US institution. There is a Japanese postdoc in our group who has nearly finished writing a paper with one of the American postdocs. We're having a bit of a conflict over authorship: the Japanese postdoc wants my name to be on the publication, and I don't think it's appropriate. I chatted about the project with them while it was in progress and made a few suggestions, but fundamentally all the ideas and computations originated with the two postdocs. I think that they should take full credit for the work and I that I should take none, and this seems consistent with US authorship norms to me. However, the postdoc from Japan seems very unhappy that I don't want to sign my name on the paper. He said that if I don't, then he won't feel like he can discuss his future work-in-progress with me because he will think I am disavowing the work or that I have no time for him. I've insisted that I'm happy to discuss his work, I just think that he deserves his share of credit for it and that if my name is attached it might be perceived by others as more my work than his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never encountered this situation before. At times I've been in the opposite situation, when I was a postdoc, feeling that professors were claiming undue credit for my work, so actively wanting a professor who did none of the actual work to claim authorship is difficult for me to understand. But I assume this is a difference in cultural norms; I know professors from certain countries in our field who have such a large number of publications that it's clear they're claiming authorship over this sort of project that they had very little involvement in. (I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism of them; I think that within their local academic culture, this is expected and ethical behavior.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I negotiate this cultural clash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, to forestall one possible set of comments, I'm in a field where alphabetical author order is conventional, so that isn't an issue here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14166" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:24:38.593" Title="Culture clashes in authorship norms" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:07:28.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I risk the actual course goal (delivering content to the students) in favor of a general educational goal (teaching them how to ask questions)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, and you don't really have to.  (Though the goal definitely is lofty.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly frustrating when people offer no context or &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to make no effort in the question, because that makes it more difficult and costly for you to help them.  You also seem to be in a position where it is expected of you to help them to the best of your ability, so ignoring people may not be an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When helping people in general, I find two strategies especially helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assume ignorance over malice/laziness.  For all we know, the students are computer-illiterate.  It takes experience and knowledge to know what context is relevant and what isn't.  Computers are magic!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frame any questions as you asking them for help, rather than telling them that they failed to provide information you need.  Avoid sarcasm or jokes at their expense.  (&quot;Sure, I'll just scroll through a couple of days of network traffic to look for failed login attempts.  Not too many of those, right?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way to train students to ask better questions without making them feel like I'm not helping them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent it from feeling like a brush-off, show that you care about solving their problem by leaving the door open and offering an inviting hand.  &lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; refer them to standard texts that you or your institution have provided, perhaps even quote a relevant part if possible, but do not end the reply there, because it will appear as final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it your best guess, even if your best guess is a sort of standard response, and solicit extra information from them if it doesn't resolve their issue.  Ask specific questions that you may need, like user name, estimated time of the problem, and let them know that this sort of information helps you find and diagnose the issue for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some (most?) people won't write back to you.  That's okay.  Perhaps the problem was temporary and resolved itself.  Perhaps they solved it.  Perhaps a fellow student helped them.  Or perhaps they really have given up, and you've done what can be reasonably expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't log in to the website, please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need your XYZ user name and password to log in to the website.  If it's been a while and you've forgotten your password, our FAQ (link) gives instructions on how to get a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have an idea about when you tried logging in?  Did you get an error message?  This will help me find anything in the logs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I run the experiment, it gives me an error. Can somebody help me???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can find out what experiment and what error! :)  Some of the more common issues are listed at our FAQ (link); did you take a look there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the FAQ doesn't address your issue, could you let me know what experiment you are having issues with, and what the error message is?  That will help me narrow down the search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14161" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:07:28.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:10:39.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a bit of real world, non academia experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We sell a software package to school districts - funny that.  When a problem occurs, I'd say maybe half of new clients tell us about it in an actionable way.  We get emails with nothing more than &quot;it doesn't work&quot; all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is a hosted service and we maintain some fairly detailed logs.  So we can usually reconstruct exactly what was going on at the time of the &quot;problem&quot;.  However, that takes time and we typically don't go that route unless we are talking about either an irate client or an issue in which the client couldn't possibly give us the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead our support people reply with a message such as &quot;What were you doing? What was your expectation?  Approximately when did it occur? Here's how to send a screen shot...&quot;  It takes maybe a couple times of that before that client sends us the needed info the first time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, they are busy so their first instinct is to fire off a general query hoping someone will just take care of it for them.  However once they realize that we aren't going to do anything without details then they learn that the fastest way to a resolution is to gather those details to begin with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to simply be polite.  I'd think the same thing applies to students.  They are busy with several classes.  As soon as a roadblock occurs in one they are going to raise a flag for help and move onto the next thing.  If you consistently require them to provide details up front then they will learn that the fastest way to resolution is to get those to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tldr;&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;It's not a problem specific to academia.  Rather, it's a more generalized problem based on how much work everyone has to do combined with the hope that someone else will just take care of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, some people just won't learn.  For those, especially in academia, I wouldn't put forth any more effort than they are willing to as they need to be responsible for their own education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11585" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:10:39.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:20:45.330" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your view is in line with international norms as expressed by guidelines for authorship (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3355&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors&lt;/a&gt;, [BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal)] and ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has written up guidelines for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html&quot;&gt;authorship and contributorship&lt;/a&gt; based on the Vancouver Protocol.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is international agreements in place you can simply point at these and say that it is what your adhere to. I can see that the student wants to be affiliated with your name and having a recognized name on a paper may be of use both for personal and review reasons. Nevertheless, it seems clear that with the ethical rules in place, the student should realize that the request is not correct. You could of course also suggest that your name appear in the acknowledgements. that seems appropriate to me and could be a golden middle way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:20:45.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:24:38.593" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like the right answer must be to continue the conversation with the Japanese postdoc and ultimately give him the responsibility to understand and accept your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that &lt;em&gt;at first&lt;/em&gt; he interpreted your lack of desire for coauthorship in a certain way.  And then you explained your position, as you have written here.  How did he react to that?  If someone insists on interpreting your behavior in a way different from how you are explicitly identifying it as being meant to be interpreted, what can you really do other than ensure that your future actions are consistent with the interpretation of your present behavior that you have conveyed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any insurmountable &quot;cultural differences&quot; here.  In my field (mathematics, which sounds like it is equal or close to yours) there are plenty of singly authored papers by Japanese people, so obviously the practice of supervisory coauthorship is not a fundamental tenet of Japanese culture or anything like that.  Even if it were: if the postdoc is in the US working in your group, then he has volunteered in a very strong sense to participate in your local brand of Western academic culture.  If he cannot understand that actions can have different meanings in your neck of the woods than what he was used to earlier in his career (whether by virtue of his being Japanese or for some other reason), then he's headed for big trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say: clearly explain the situation as best you can, in several sittings if necessary.  Don't put your name on a paper that you don't feel you contributed to just because that makes the postdoc uncomfortable.  In the near future, try to go a little out of your way to show that you still want to do business with the postdoc (assuming you still do, which sounds reasonable).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:24:38.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:38:23.697" Score="19" ViewCount="2738" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading the various questions about open-book and closed-book examinations got me wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any sound &lt;strong&gt;pedagogical&lt;/strong&gt; reason for a time-limited examination (closed  or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that there are many good logistical reasons, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;classroom management in a big group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a desire to prevent cheating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and at (say) the elementary school level, I understand that timed tests (say of multiplication tables) create a certain level of felicity with manipulating numbers that helps with more complex tasks later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the UG/advanced UG level, it seems to me that deep understanding is usually more important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19350/is-it-wrong-to-impose-a-challenging-time-constraint-on-exams&quot;&gt;This question on the unreasonableness of the prescribed time limits&lt;/a&gt; is related, but not exactly the same (i.e it takes as given the &lt;strong&gt;existence&lt;/strong&gt; of time limits and merely questions the actual time span set)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T17:36:14.900" Title="Pedagogical reasons for time-limited exams" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19235" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:49:17.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD can be extremely tough, for many reasons. I finished the comprehensive exam prep (1st year), at 6 am in the morning, to start my presentation at 9:00. Needless to say it was less than stellar. So, most, if not all PhD candidates went through what you are going through right now. To put salt on the wound, your first article is a pregnancy that seems to last forever. And I'm not even talking about writing the thesis.&#xA;There will be a point, in this journey, where you're not sure of why you started all this in the first place, where you are on the map, and most painfully where the hell this boat is going. Don't worry, that's normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few important points from what I see in your narrative. You're feeling bad because you think your performances are suboptimal, and because you don't want to look bad in front of your advisor, you won't bring up the topic with him/them. He's not really helping either. You're then left with little advice as to how to improve. Then you feel worse, and the situation worsens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations, you are now in tail spin. How do you get out of it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beast AKA the PhD topic:&#xA;It is very much up to you, that's the point of the first year, you can actually decide and then explain why it would benefit from a re-focus. It is the hardest part of the whole stuff. There's no magic recipe, you need to understand, and to accept that what you managed to explore during the first year, is the only material you have to start digging on the right spot. Discussions with your advisor, and with your peers are very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first Year:&#xA;It's the toughest one. You have graduate courses AND the comprehensive exam. Basically, the only bright spot are the two weeks vacations coming after that. Keep it in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health (mental and body)&#xA;It's draining. So you have to take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, practice sports, and above all you MUST hang out at least once a week.  A patient girl/boy friend is a great asset to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kill the father:&#xA;A much unexplored aspect of the PhD is the relationship student/advisor. The sooner he doesn't act as a father any more, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you:&#xA;PhD is by nature unstructured. That's what it is, that's what it is for. It's your job to keep the bearings aligned, and to foster great discussions with your peers. If you made it here, it's because your brain functions are what it takes to get through it. So, if you are in trouble at the moment, it's not because you have become dumb overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;brain candy, in case you didn't see it : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXgprKgSE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXgprKgSE&lt;/a&gt; A. Wiles journey through  Fermat's last theorem. 7 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great advice from a peer at the time. &quot;Always start the day with something you can achieve&quot;. So it comes down to your ability to set yourself meaningful targets, which results will accumulate over time.&#xA;Good Luck !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12946" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:49:17.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19354" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:49:44.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find this article on a computer science class valuable (1). The tl;dr is that sections allowed student-prep notes showed no overall improvement, but mostly because many students didn't bother to create good student-prep notes. Good notes = good grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick browse of a review/ meta-analysis article on the topic (2), indicates that open-note exams can decrease student anxiety, and that student-prepared notes tend to produce larger improvements than open-book exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an instructor, I've found students often spend energy only where they feel it is needed. I would recommend providing sample exam questions (as a group activity in class?) that gives students a good idea of what will be required and what sorts of notes would be helpful. This will help them expend the energy in preparation instead of frantic in-exam page-flipping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for wanting to trigger deep learning in students!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duncan, D.G. (2007). Student performance shows slight improvement when open notes are used during information system exams. Journal of Information Technology Education, 6, 361–370.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larwin, Karen H., Jennifer Gorman, and David A. Larwin. &quot;Assessing the Impact of Testing Aids on Post-Secondary Student Performance: A Meta-Analytic Investigation.&quot; Educational Psychology Review 25.3 (2013): 429-443.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:49:44.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19354" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:11:46.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I don't want students spending a lot of time memorizing things, I simply provide supplemental information on the exam itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine a course textbook lists 12 reasons why something might happen. Rather than expecting them to memorize all 12, I might list all 12 on the exam, with an application question such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The book lists these 12 causes; which of the 12 is most likely to lead to a catastrophic failure? Explain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a statistics class where &quot;it is important to understand rather than know,&quot; and, &quot;knowing statistical formulas won't help if you haven't understood how to apply them,&quot; you could simply compile a list of formulae from the course textbook and put them on the last page of the exam.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I agree with Moriarty's comment: &quot;The act of carefully constructing this summary sheet is usually much more useful than the notes on it.&quot; My approach doesn't have this benefit, but it does have a few advantages of its own. For one, a student is less likely to get a better score simply because of a better-prepared cheat sheet. For another, the student might focus on understanding the material at a higher level instead of transcribing lower-level details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general rule is: If something is hard for me to remember without looking it up, then I don't expect students to memorize it for an exam. I will supply it instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another idea to consider. (I haven't used this one, but I had a professor who did, and I admit I liked his reasoning.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One professor of mine had a custom of administering open book, closed notes exams. (In other words, you could use your book, but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a cheat sheet.) Why this way, instead of the other way around? Because, he said, &quot;Most students won't keep their cheat sheets, but a lot of them will keep their textbooks.&quot; There were no restrictions on writing inside the margins or the back cover (in fact, that practice was encouraged). Sure enough, I still have a book from his course, and I just opened the front cover, and found my cheat sheet still intact, with plenty of complex equations and hyroglyphics in my own handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As more and more campus bookstores offer e-readers, this approach might become outdated. But I still think it's worth sharing; I always appreciated how this particlar professor was always looking years down the road, as opposed to just the end of the term.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:11:46.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:13:02.917" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on many factors, and there is no general answer. In a field like experimental particle physics, you can have a paper with 500 authors. These experiments are huge collaborations. For people doing theoretical work in the sciences, it's more common to have only one or two authors; the question is then whether the adviser made a significant contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does happen sometimes that people get added as coauthors when they shouldn't. At a lab where I once worked, the director of the lab got his name on every paper done by anybody at the lab, even if he had made no contribution. (His c.v. proudly listed his vast number of scientific publications.) I once had a coauthor who refused to read and comment on the paper before it was submitted, but who also wanted his name on it. He was backed by our PI, because he had done work on the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the natural sciences, the norm is basically that if you made a significant contribution to the work, your name goes on the paper. Typically a grad student's adviser &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; make a significant contribution to any work the student carries out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:13:02.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19368" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:18:52.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oooo. What an intriguing question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &quot;answer&quot; is that there is no pedagogical reason, merely practical ones. This is based on the attached study (1) that shows the difficulty with assuming only learning disabled students benefit from more time for exams. Apparently the &quot;time doesn't matter&quot; idea is called the Maximum Potential Thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly am guilty of writing questions that push student time limits to the max... essentially creating a reading exam in addition to a biology one. Student recall of vocabulary and definitions should be quick. But my main learning goal is thoughtful, connected thinking rather than fast thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zuriff, G. E. (2000). Extra examination time for students with learning disabilities: An examination of the maximum potential thesis. Applied Measurement in Education, 13(1), 99-117.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:18:52.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19368" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:45:01.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if in the field of Pedagogy there is any study on the topic, but in the field i studied (Electronic Engineering), doing things fast is very important. Not only you need to be able to understand a topic, but you need to be able to solve problems in a restricted time period, as is the case in the real life profession. When you are working on a project and you need to design something, or are presented with a problem in a system, the engineer in this case needs to be able to identify and solve the problem in the shortest time possible. It is basic competition, &quot;The fast drives out the slow, even if the fast is wrong&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11469" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:45:01.670" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:50:22.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll teach them a valuable lesson if they learn that &lt;em&gt;when you start writing, nobody knows what you're asking about. You have to communicate that&lt;/em&gt;. As you've observed on StackExchange and we've probably all seen at work from time to time, a lot of people struggle when it comes to asking detailed questions or just describing what they see vs. what they wanted. They can get better at &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; by improving this skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They'll only think you're being deliberately unhelpful if they realise that you can solve the problem without any further information. And if they know that, then you can't conclude from what they write that they're bad at asking questions. If I know that you know which experiment I'm working on and what I typed, then it's pretty reasonable for me to write, &quot;why didn't my experiment work?&quot;, and I don't think you can really &quot;teach me a lesson&quot; by &quot;making me do it properly&quot; and not seem obstructive. If I don't know that you know that, then I should know better than to ask such a vague question. If I know you can find it out but it's time-consuming for you to do so, then there's a lesson in there somewhere about being respectful of other people's time, but I can't say whether this is the place to fight that battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from this, the process of asking a good question often solves the problem because you spot your own mistake. They might benefit from learning that too, and solving their own problems might reduce their frustration with the system since it turns it from &quot;something that never works and ff524 has to sort out&quot; into &quot;something that's difficult to use but I can make work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T16:55:37.713" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:55:37.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T17:20:46.843" Score="37" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this really common, and if so, in which fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it is reasonably common in many fields. As a rule of thumb, it seems to me that the more applied a field is, the more likely you are to see groups where the lab head co-authors every or almost every paper in the lab. In my field (software engineering), I would say at least 50% - 75% of all groups operate like this. Academia.SE tells me that this is not the case e.g., in Theoretical CS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this does not &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; mean that the lab head is added to each paper without contribution (although there are certainly groups where it means exactly that). In some cases, it is just that all research in a lab directly runs through the lab head (i.e., nobody works on research without the direct involvement of the lab head). In such cases, co-authorship on all papers may be academically warranted (but this might actually be the worse practice in reality, as it allows for no growth to independence at all for the PhD students and postdocs in the lab).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this really ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that things are more complicated than you seem to think, mostly because the funding argument that you claim &quot;holds no ice&quot; is in fact not so bad. Your comparison with your parents having sex is pretty silly. Big research labs depend on senior researchers acquiring grant money. This takes &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of time - time, that said researchers cannot use to write actual papers. Researchers on any level are mostly evaluated via papers. Under these circumstances, if senior researchers don't get a &quot;kickback&quot; on some level from the money they acquire, what would motivate them to write grant proposals in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the added difficulty that in many STEM fields it is just darn difficult to decide whether somebody has &lt;em&gt;made a contribution&lt;/em&gt; (see also here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12030/what-are-the-minimum-contributions-required-for-co-authorship?lq=1&quot;&gt;What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship&lt;/a&gt;). Is discussing ideas enough? What if all the important ideas and suggestions came from the advisor? Oftentimes, the research work of a PhD student is basically an implementation of a high-level plan laid out by the advisor in the funding proposal. In that case, has the advisor not by default &quot;contributed&quot; to all papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T17:20:46.843" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19213" CreationDate="2014-04-15T17:23:54.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me first point some differences that may help you making your mind, between the PhD programs in USA and Canada on one hand, and in Europe on the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;US &amp;amp; Canada&lt;/strong&gt; you go through a structured PhD program, so it'll be pretty much like your current masters in Switzerland. You'll need to take some classes, then you'll have a semester or two to work on your PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Europe&lt;/strong&gt; you start right off with your PhD thesis! so you're basically a research assistant, working on your PhD as part of your job as a PhD student, in that case you'll be doing other work as well for your institute. As a scholarship holder you'll be able to work full-time on your PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your question: Having the same course names doesn't mean that the content will be same. It could be that more and/or advanced topics will be covered in the PhD programs you came across. If this wasn't the case, you can try to contact the university to see the possibility of equating the courses you already took, this might involve a test by the department to make sure you'll be as qualified in that area as the ones who took their course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that a PhD in USA will give you more knowledge through the coursework, you'll get to learn more stuff that you might or might not need. In Europe, since you're jumping directly into your thesis, you'll get more of the academic life and you'll have to learn, on your own, whatever's going to help you with your thesis, which can be difficult at the beginning if you're not self-driven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="703" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T16:01:09.197" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T16:01:09.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19388" CreationDate="2014-04-15T18:16:01.503" Score="5" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;[To clarify I am in an European university, have &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; published anything]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of my Masters curriculum in Electrical Engineering I had to do a research project during the semester along with the lectures. This is intended as a hands on methodology in investigation and research in general.&#xA;The project turned out to be pretty great (got the highest grade possible), and my supervisor (a PostDoc student at my university) and I were very happy with the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not consider it at the moment (or get it proposed by my supervisor), but with some formatting I think it should be at least good enough to be sent to some journals/publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are were my questions, considering I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; considering to get for a PhD after my Masters is done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Since the project finished my supervisor ended his PostDoc and left the university. I don't have any contact info from him, and haven't found any from a quick Google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; should I contact my supervisor to publish along with him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideas and theoretical proposal came from him. He did assist and help me during the project, but I did all the implementation and writing of the projects paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Not knowing what I am doing after graduation, I think there is little chance I pursue a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; should I be trying to get it published altogether or ditch the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that even if I do not continue in academia, it is helpful for later on applying to certain industry jobs. I also would like to share the ideas and findings, since I think the work was well-structured and investigated interesting ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) As mentioned, I never published before, so I don't know the procedure, the jounals where I should aim, etc.&#xA;The field was &lt;strong&gt;Systems Biology&lt;/strong&gt;, which is not technically my area, but the project dealt mostly with modelling, simulation (MATLAB), etc. (I followed a Control / Robotics heavy program)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; if 2) applies, where should I try to send my work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help, ideas or similar experiencies would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13099" LastEditorUserId="13099" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T19:39:59.750" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T19:52:11.357" Title="Independent publishing of paper resulting from a project" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19368" CreationDate="2014-04-15T18:21:27.390" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any sound &lt;strong&gt;pedagogical&lt;/strong&gt; reason for a time-limited examination (closed or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many subjects, yes. For others, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had an exam for a subject in school called &quot;technical graphics&quot;. It involved drawing parabolas and projections and so forth on a big sheet of A3 paper with pencils and protractors and compasses. It was widely-regarded to be a subject of skill more than knowledge: the exam was timed and you had to accurately and quickly and carefully draw up four or five questions. A small inaccuracy becomes compounded through the rest of the drawing. Given unlimited time and some basic knowledge, nearly anyone could ace the exam since acquiring the necessary knowledge was easy; but acquiring the skill to do the timed exam was hard. And it was the skill we practised in class. Was this skill useful? Was it a learning outcome to draw quickly? I would say yes, of course; if I were to become a draughtsman (leaving aside CAD et al. for the purposes of the analogy), learning to draw quickly and accurately would be important to my livelihood. And it was the tightly-timed test that put emphasis on this learning outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise if I were doing a cookery lesson, cooking quickly would be important. If I were doing a programming lesson, programming quickly would not be as important, but it would still be important. And so we get into the usual varying shades of grey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generalising, we can define different types of learning based on the two main types of memory targeted: procedural memory (residing below the level of conscious awareness) and declarative memory (facts and/or knowledge that can be consciously recalled or inferred from other such facts/knowledge). Some subjects – like technical graphics or cookery or programming – put a strong focus on development of procedural memory alongside declarative memory. Other subjects – like biology or history – emphasise declarative memory far far more than procedural memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I would say that the importance of a time-limited exam for a subject is correlated with the emphasis on procedural learning for that subject. A teacher may then wish to consider whether or not procedural learning is important for their subject or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T18:21:27.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T18:36:43.687" Score="4" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to request an academic who works in an entirely different department and is an expert in the field, but he is in the same university and we have yet to co-author a paper together. Do you know if PNAS allows that? Is it too ethically ambiguous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14174" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T06:44:56.260" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T06:44:56.260" Title="Does PNAS allow authors to request referees who have not co-authored with them but work at the same university?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19347" CreationDate="2014-04-15T19:02:38.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends entirely on the journal's style. They should provide a LaTeX class or template that explicitly identifies how to include the corresponding author's contact info, or if not that, a web page with instructions on how to include contact information. Without knowing which journal you're talking about, I don't think I can say anything more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T19:02:38.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T19:12:22.817" Score="2" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any policy on the matter through their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14174" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T11:15:55.490" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T18:01:42.657" Title="Do you know if Science/Nature/PNAS accept review articles that are not invited and do not contain original research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T19:36:40.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, challenging time constraints are a hindrance because they induce panic, which inhibits the ability to reason through a problem and make a thoughtful answer to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently tutoring two students on grammar for a business English class. Their teacher sets 100 questions for each 50 minute exam. That comes down to 30 seconds for each question. This tactic makes a mockery of all my attempts to teach them the logic and reason behind grammar. The students barely have enough time to figure out what's being asked of them, let alone apply any rules or reasoning principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students feel this is unfair; they learned the rules, did the homework (which average 300 questions per set), and now they're failing the tests because they can't go through the whole process of reading a problem, conjuring up the correct rule, and finding the correct answer in 30 seconds. This causes bitterness and low morale. It makes them feel that all the work they put in to the homework was a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not feasible in the standard method of testing to give students unlimited time, and most schools don't have the resources to set aside computer labs for exams so CS students can write code on them. But there's no reason to make the time constraints more of a problem than they need to be. Make the questions easier; put fewer questions; and split long questions into multiple parts, which are graded independently. I've found all of these reduce the pressure, and the second two options let you still put challenging problems on the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, yes, I do think it's wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on an exam. Not only because it's unrealistic, but also because it puts artificial limits on the students' performance, which the students will recognize as artificial and react badly to. Unless you're trying to teach people to program on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise during a Red Alert while an anomaly is sucking the ship in, lighten up the time limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12904" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T19:36:40.233" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T19:42:28.890" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fundamental mathematics, at least in France, the custom is for advisors never to co-author (important) papers with their students. If an advisor does coauthor a paper with a PhD student, then it is assumed that he or she had to help the student more than should be expected, and this can prevent the student from getting a job afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes to the point of being arguably unethical in the opposite way than asked in the question, as most of the time advisors do have a role (if only of suggesting the question and the angle of attack) in PhD student papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="68109" LastEditDate="2021-02-12T12:53:15.547" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T12:53:15.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19380" CreationDate="2014-04-15T19:52:11.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; contact your former supervisor. If you do not have his contact information yourself, then you could try asking colleagues at your institution - such as a professor in the same research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While authorship norms do vary by field, the supervisor's contribution (having the original idea, defining the project, helping you in general) is surely enough that he should at least be &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt;. My impression is that even in those fields where supervisors might not be authors, it would still be very bad to try to publish a paper without talking to the supervisor about it. For all you know, he is planning to publish, and would be justifiably angry if you pre-emptively submitted your own version - and even had it accepted. Even if did not expect to be a co-author, he may still be upset if he does not have the chance to help make the paper the best it could be.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the supervisor would like to be a co-author, then he should certainly be able to help with venue selection, and adapting the document from a thesis to a paper. Generally, it's not just a matter of changing the formatting - each kind of document has its own requirements, which aren't exactly the same. For example, in a dissertation you will probably spend more time on general background material than in a paper. The work you have done might not be substantive or original enough for all journals. Receiving advice at an early stage may well make a huge difference in the quality of the submitted paper. (You can still seek advice from others, if the original supervisor can't help.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as whether you should submit a paper at all: I think you are thinking along the correct lines. It may help your career - it certainly shouldn't harm it - and you will be contributing to the general advancement of human knowledge. On the other hand, it will take some amount of work. Again, someone who is more familiar with your research area can take a look at your thesis and give advice about just how much work that might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. Example: A colleague of mine is a mathematician. His student submitted a paper, based on the student's own work. The professor did not expect to be an author, especially since he didn't contribute to the mathematical content. But he was upset that the student hadn't asked him for advice about preparing and submitting the paper. He was also embarrassed that he found out about the paper's existence from a third party.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T19:52:11.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T20:02:55.100" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt I have anything too original to say here, but I couldn't resist a chance to add my 2c. This might be the most fraught question in academia, as least if you are a student or a post-doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it ethical for advisors to automatically coauthor papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that by advisor you are also including a postdocs PI, for example. So let us consider the question as this more general one. The basic answer in my opinion, is... No, of course, not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen various positions/justifications on/for this. They include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's just the way it is. The advisor provides the funding. Without&#xA;him, you would have no funding, no job, and no paper. So be&#xA;grateful. This might be described as the &quot;capitalist justification&quot;&#xA;for this practice. Similar viewpoints are expressed to justify why&#xA;capitalism and capitalists are good things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Well, the advisor is providing value even if you don't think or know&#xA;it. It is easy for a junior researcher to underestimate the value of&#xA;an overarching research plan, and the value in discussion and the&#xA;perspective of a senior researcher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Well, the senior faculty need a payoff, or else why is it worth&#xA;their while? This was expressed by @xLeitix for example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be some value/validity in all these viewpoints, but I personally don't think that any of these is a justification for such practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as 1 goes, you can basically use the same justification for a sweatshop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as 2, I think that the help provided by one individual spreading himself as thin as the kinds of people we are talking about do, is likely to be realistically very low, unless the person in question is very energetic and very talented. Such people are rare. Plus senior people don't usually have that kind of energy anyway. Also, research questions are just too hard, complicated, and non-obvious. You need to dig in. But you can't dig in 20 holes at the same time.&#xA;Additionally, in the kind of complex multi-disciplinary areas that are getting more common these days, it is increasingly difficult to have a sufficiently broad skill-set to be able to keep up with more than a fraction of what is going on in a typical research lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience of mentors/advisors contributions is that their contributions tended to be useless/rubbish because they did not really understand the issues, either because they didn't have or didn't want to take the time, or their training had simply not equipped them to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 is really the hardest to respond to; I'm not sure I have a good response. However, it is not really a justification so much as a pragmatic observation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to the subquestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this really common, and if so, in which fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really hard to know this. You can't pass out a survey which includes a box to tick saying &quot;yes, I'm a crook and fraud&quot;. However... @xLeitix writes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I guess it is reasonably common in many fields. As a rule of thumb, it&#xA;  seems to me that the more applied a field is, the more likely you are&#xA;  to see groups where the lab head co-authors every or almost every&#xA;  paper in the lab. In my field (software engineering), I would say at&#xA;  least 50% - 75% of all groups operate like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, I think this sounds pretty accurate, though I would not venture any percentages. I've worked in more theoretical fields, notably Math and Statistics, and in Biomed type fields; this kind of thing is much less common in the theoretical fields, and practically the norm in Biomed. In fact, I didn't see &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of this in Math. I don't think this is because mathematicians are inherently any more virtuous than anyone else. I think it is because &#xA;applied work just inherently has more overhead in practical terms than theoretical work, at least in the implementation end of the work. If a mathematician has an idea, he has to prove it, which may not be so easy, but once he has done that, he is basically done. In an applied area, if you have an idea, you are just getting started. You have to collect data and/or perform experiments, probably write some code, write the paper, make figures, etc. etc. So there is just more room for monkey work which a junior person can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am an applied researcher, I'm probably under immense pressure to perform, to get tenure, or maybe just keep my job. I could try to be good, and contribute to every paper that I am putting my name on, but given the immense overhead of applied work as described above, and also, given that your colleagues are probably happily abusing the system, there is immense temptation, I imagine, to abuse the system as well. Just to keep up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, in my experience, most people who do this seems to have completely internalized this behavior, and seem to take it for granted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this really ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, of course not. Ultimately, my objections are really that of straight morality. I think it is just &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;. These practices are a form of fraud and a form of reputation/credit theft. Granted, in the grand scheme of things they are fairly minor offenses, but regardless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Shane (the poster) makes a good point with his billionaire hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T20:12:52.833" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T20:12:52.833" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T20:04:54.590" Score="7" ViewCount="1801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a published research paper from the research arm of a company. I would like to use what is presented in the research paper commercially. The materials presented in the research paper do not seem to be patented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legal? Does the originating company own the intellectual property, or is it now &quot;public domain&quot; due to the research paper being published without a patent? Does this happen quite often? What is the proper etiquette in this situation, should I just leave an attribution to the researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14182" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T01:49:58.667" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T01:49:58.667" Title="Can I use someone else's research commercially?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19368" CreationDate="2014-04-15T21:35:01.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Open book exams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particular reason for time limits is the open book exam. Such an exam without any time limits would allow the student to simply study all the relevant topics on the spot, and be useless for evaluation; however, an open book exam with an appropriate time limit will separate students based on their knowledge and obtained skill, while allowing the benefits of open-book exams for subjects where people aren't expected to memorize everything but use reference material as needed, and in those disciplines where you should teach students a habit to always doublecheck and verify in case of doubt, instead of guessing, e.g. medicine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, the time limit is a tool to check if you need to look up 5% of issues or 95%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T16:15:04.987" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T16:15:04.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T21:53:57.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in pure mathematics, where advisors are not co-authors unless they have significant input. My perception is that the convention the question speaks of occurs primarily in the laboratory sciences, so my point of view is that of an outsider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I do not consider the practice unethical. First of all, there is no deception, because in those fields it is well-established convention that the last name on the paper is the lab PI, and other scientists reading the paper will recognize that she didn't contribute to the paper in the same way the first author did, but that the research was performed in her lab with her grant money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the lab PI doesn't just bring in the money, she also decides which direction the lab's research should focus on, and she often has to organize a large team of people- something that an advisor never has to do in say, mathematics. This is where the billionaire analogy breaks down. If your hypothetical benefactor also has to make decisions what equipment to buy, which skills to recruit in postdocs and grad students, and which (and how much) resources are worth pouring into which scientific questions, then yes, she deserves last author credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly (and I may be a little unfair in this point) my perception is that the standards of co-authorship are lower in the lab sciences compared to math and philosophy, e.g. people who perform tedious monkeying with equipment, or perform statistical analyses in data get their names on papers  despite not contributing to the &quot;thinking part&quot; of the project. So if Joe who did nothing but mess with a spectrometer for a couple of days has his name as third author, then Susie who manages the lab should get her name on it too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11047" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T21:53:57.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:23:58.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon to have challenging time constraints. Some American tests like the ACT and SAT have a tight limit built in to reward students for being fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many of these tests are scaled, in that no matter how well or how badly the students do, the grades are normally distributed..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14187" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T22:23:58.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19417" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:24:50.763" Score="27" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if reviewing papers for established journals was a way to increase ones credibility as a researcher? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is related to the fact that the journal editors, that are (frequently) known scientists in your domain, will read the review you made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if we can therefore assume that they will, to some degree, evaluate your reviewing work, and therefore yourself as a scientist, based on your review? Lets imagine I know the editor, and I might want to have a position in his/her lab, then my reviewing work might weight in my evaluation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="6495" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T20:20:45.427" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T07:34:53.743" Title="Can reviewing papers help increase your credibility as a researcher?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:36:03.313" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, automatic co-authorship is not ethical – irrespectively of the discipline!&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg_im_profil/reden_stellungnahmen/download/empfehlung_wiss_praxis_1310.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;DFG Proposals for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (pp.82f, emphasis added), which, for instance, strictly forbids &quot;automatic&quot; co-authorships and gives a couple of common negative examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors of an original scientific publication shall be all those, and only those, who have made &lt;strong&gt;significant contributions&lt;/strong&gt; to the conception of studies or experiments, to the generation, analysis and interpretation of the data, and to preparing the manuscript, and who have consented to its publication, thereby assuming responsibility for it. [...]&#xA;  Therefore, the following contributions on their own &lt;strong&gt;are not sufficient to justify authorship&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;merely &lt;strong&gt;organisational responsibility for&lt;/strong&gt; obtaining the funds for the research,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;providing standard investigation material,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the training of staff in standard methods,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;merely technical work on data collection,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;merely technical support, such as only providing equipment or experimental animals,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;regularly providing datasets only,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;only reading the manuscript&lt;/strong&gt; without substantial contributions to its content,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;directing an institution&lt;/strong&gt; or working unit in which the publication originates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Help of this kind can be acknowledged in footnotes or in the foreword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, DFG (the German Research Council) requires you to sign strict adherence to this ethical code on each and every grant proposal. Other funding agencies have similar regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11808" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T17:16:12.040" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T17:16:12.040" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:42:38.437" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it helps in more than one way.  &lt;em&gt;Community service&lt;/em&gt; is a relevant part on an academic CV.  Although reviewers for individual papers are normally secret, it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; need to be secret that you have reviewed articles for journal &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;.  You can write that you have done so on your CV, and if needed (but I don't think it should be), a journal editor can confirm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works the other way around too: being asked to review a paper is an independent confirmation of your credibility as a researcher.  The first times it happened to me, it was really an ego boost.  Wow, someone else than my supervisor thinks I know something about something!  Great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T22:42:38.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-04-15T23:57:10.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly, although many peer-reviewed journals use a double-blind review system, so identities of reviewers can get buried -- and your &quot;reputation&quot; as such won't get enhanced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think reviewing papers -- and books, and other items of scholarship -- is a really valuable activity for a number of reasons. First, it gives you exposure to what active scholarship looks like and to other people's research and writing styles. Second, it's a way of contributing to the community of researchers in your field, a way of giving back to the system we all want to work well. Third, if you're in a tenure-track position this is an example of service to the profession that most TT profs are expected to contribute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T23:57:10.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19401" CreationDate="2014-04-16T00:53:18.753" Score="17" ViewCount="2458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ever a good idea to apply (and interview) to a faculty position at an institute if you know for certain (or with very high probability) that you are not going to accept a position there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible advantages are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Networking and letting people hear about your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice for later interviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leverage: If a top institute offers you a position, that could be used to improve negotiating position with other institutes that you are interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something which is frowned upon? On one hand, I am guessing that departments wouldn't want to waste their time and money on a candidate that will not accept a position. But on the other hand it might be acceptable if the faculty are interested in hearing/talking with the candidate anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is acceptable (or if it is not but someone still recommends it from the candidate's perspective), should the candidate give the impression that they are enthusiastic about the institution? (of course I realize the interests of the candidate might be different than those of the institution)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T19:51:25.393" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T03:47:07.307" Title="Applying and interviewing for a faculty position without intent of accepting position" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19399" CreationDate="2014-04-16T02:09:08.413" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please don't do this- you'll only be wasting the time of the search committee members.  Furthermore, you'll be doing something that is dishonest, and you do should not get into the habit of lying to people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it becomes apparent early in the search process that you aren't truly interested in the position then the committee will probably not invite you for an on-campus interview.  If you actually are invited for an on-campus interview, then there's a good chance that it will become apparent during the interview that you really aren't interested in the position.  If you feign interest and do get an on-campus interview and then get an offer but reject that offer, then you'll have left a bad impression with the faculty in that department which will effect your relations with them in the future.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ways in which this can hurt the candidate are fairly limited, so the reality is that people can get away with this if they want to.  However, that doesn't make it right.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T02:09:08.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19399" CreationDate="2014-04-16T02:09:17.140" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a little inconsiderate to me; the department will waste their time considering your application, and the further along in the interview process you get, the more of their time (and yours) you will waste.  But I don't think it's necessarily unacceptable.  You could argue that an interview might convince you that you would be interested in working there after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure it's actually very helpful to you, though.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your point 1 doesn't make sense to me.  If you want to tell someone about your work, just send them an email and tell them.  Sending an application seems ineffective; yours will probably be one of hundreds of applications read on that day, which won't help your chances of having them remember you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 2, &quot;practice application&quot; seems a little silly to me.  But if you really think it would help, you'll get just as much practice by writing the application and then &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; submitting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 3 has some justification.  But for it to be effective, you have to go all the way through the interview process and get an offer.  Consider the amount of time you'll spend writing a compelling application and traveling to an on-campus interview.  And you'll have to spend that day-long on-campus interview insincerely convincing them how much you want to work there; not a very pleasant task for most people.  (If you don't do that, you almost certainly won't get an offer and it will truly be a waste of your time as well as theirs.)  Even if you do get an offer, it may still be lower than the offer you actually want, and thus useless as leverage.  Is it worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T02:09:17.140" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19390" CreationDate="2014-04-16T02:28:49.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; the subject material in the research paper is a patentable invention, it &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; also be the subject material of a patent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inventors of an invention may be the first applicants of a patent application. However, if they were employees, employed to invent as part of their normal duties for their employer, the employer is usually considered the first applicant for a patent application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rights in a patent or a patent application may be assigned to another person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: if there is a patent for an invention relating to the subject material of the research paper, it might be owned by someone other than the company from where the research paper originated. How did you check whether a patent or patent application exists for this subject matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that patent applications are made publicly accessible a certain time after the application for a patent is made. So, an applicant may have filed a patent application for the subject material of the research paper, and then published the research paper. The patent application - if extant - &lt;strong&gt;may not be publicly available yet&lt;/strong&gt;. What this means is, if you put into practice the subject material of an unpublished patent application, you may in future receive notification of the patent application, and be advised to cease your operations. If the patent is granted, and you haven't ceased your working of the subject material, you might be liable for damages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind again, that there might be other patents - or patent applications - which relate to the subject material of the research paper. For some degree of certainty, you will need to do a patent search. You can do this yourself, but you have to bear in mind the warnings I gave above in relation to unpublished applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are patent search firms who will do this service for you for a fee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a professional legal opinion, ask a patent attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If there are intellectual property rights to the subject material of the research paper, you can ask the proprietor of the rights for a licence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="1424" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T03:36:48.563" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T03:36:48.563" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19405" CreationDate="2014-04-16T02:55:46.973" Score="-1" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you tell me whether COSN (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cosn.acm.org/2014/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cosn.acm.org/2014/index.html&lt;/a&gt;) is a good conference? Its a new conference introduced by ACM with a strong PC committee. Last year, the acceptance rate was around 16%. I have recently finished a manuscript that I would like to try in either COSN, or WISE (&lt;a href=&quot;http://delab.csd.auth.gr/wise2014/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://delab.csd.auth.gr/wise2014/&lt;/a&gt;) which is an established rank A conference. Can you tell me which one will be a better venue in terms of exposure/visibility? My manuscript is on social network mining which is within the scope of both conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14193" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T03:56:58.597" Title="Computer Science (Database/ Data Mining) Conference Evaluation" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-04-16T08:23:30.353" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19404" CreationDate="2014-04-16T03:56:58.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the names I recognize on the program committee, yes, it's probably a good conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for which conference will given you better visiblity: Neither!  The two conferences attract slightly different audiences.  Which audience do you want to impress more? Which audience (extrapolating from PC members and last year's accetd authors) are you more likely to draw recommendation letters and future colleagues from? Which conference looks like more like your &quot;tribe&quot;? Send it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then put a copy on your web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: Ask your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T03:56:58.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-04-16T05:22:38.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once asked to referee a paper for a well-known journal and accepted because I was flattered that someone took a chance on me. I must have done a pretty good job because I ended up doing more than a dozen for this particular editor. I don't think my service, which I did willingly and took seriously, increased my reputation as a researcher. I do think it enhanced my reputation as far as knowledge of the field and professional judgement in it. It was a good feeling to have someone value my opinion, and it felt good to give something back to the discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T05:22:38.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T05:49:13.997" Score="6" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my second semester of sophomore year, I was moderately sick for most of the semester. It was not life-threatening, but I often could not attend class because I didn't feel well. As a result, I was behind and had to work a lot to keep up. My research output was significantly lowered during this period also, for the same reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not like my semester was &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; - my GPA was lower than usual, but from a 4.0 to a 3.9. My research was lessened, but I still did some productive work. It's just that it turned a perhaps stellar semester (at least, a semester in line with the rest) to a perhaps good one. One slightly less great semester might not matter much for some grad schools, but I'm aiming for top ones as well. Is this something I could ask my advisors to note in their letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14196" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T07:17:34.063" Title="Illness affected performance - but not that much?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19350" CreationDate="2014-04-16T05:56:14.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tests with tight time constraints are probably created by instructors who are not familiar with personality profiles like those revealed in Meyers-Briggs personality tests. People with some personality types tend to test slowly but deliberately, while others will test quickly but haphazardly. Of course, I'm also sure that there are those that test quickly and deliberately, as well as slowly and haphazardly. But, in the end, if instructors thought about it, they would find that they most likely prefer students go slowly but deliberately, thereby raising their percentage of correct answers. I imagine that most employers prefer slow production in order to achieve a high rate of perfection, thereby limiting wasted time and material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14195" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T09:36:47.043" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T09:36:47.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19407" CreationDate="2014-04-16T07:17:34.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd leave it out. This certainly doesn't sound like a bad semester that needs to be explained away. Being able to do well under adverse health conditions isn't really something you want to use as a selling point. Stick to what you did, not what you think you could have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mention it, there's a risk that someone on the admission committee will wonder if your illness is going to come back, maybe worse this time, and affect your work in grad school. They should not consider that, but people are human, so they might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations, and glad you're feeling better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T07:17:34.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19319" CreationDate="2014-04-16T08:20:47.377" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, my interpretation of the situation is (yet again) somewhat different. So I'll try to put in my two cents. &lt;br&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I am not a supervisor, but I did often discuss the different quality journals/conferences with my supervisor, as well as what he considers are good reasons to submit to a top-quality track and what are good reasons to submit to a good-quality track).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description, to me, does not sound like anybody is trying to do anything unethical, or use the authorship as a bargaining chip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would propose that the &lt;em&gt;supervisors own interpretation of the results&lt;/em&gt; (i.e. the draft) is such that &lt;strong&gt;he does not deem it quality enough&lt;/strong&gt; to publish in a &lt;strong&gt;top-quality track&lt;/strong&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;does believe it is good work&lt;/strong&gt;. (An average paper in a top-journal is probably expected to have a stronger contribution when compared to the fifth-top journal, even though works published in both will be valid and strong contributions in the field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not exactly unethical, it is a wide-spread opinion that &lt;em&gt;vastly over-reaching&lt;/em&gt;, and submitting &lt;em&gt;when you strongly believe the contribution is too weak for the conference/journal where you submit&lt;/em&gt; is disrespectful towards the reviewers' time and bad form (several excellent explanations on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9392/4249&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;). I, for one, agree with my supervisor on the fact that &lt;strong&gt;is it wrong to submit something even &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; deem to low-quality for a certain track&lt;/strong&gt;, with the sole purpose of e.g. getting useful reviews, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That way we would only spend the reviewers time, which should be respected especially since they are giving it for free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, probably more valid for small communities but possibly also in bigger ones, if the review process is not double-blind, just the reviewers seeing your name on the paper with valid but too small contribution might damage your reputation slightly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;two options&amp;quot; offered by your supervisor are both valid&lt;/strong&gt;, and these are the &lt;strong&gt;possible reasons&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case you decide to go against his advice, and submit to a top-journal, he can not stop you since the &lt;em&gt;work is rightfully yours&lt;/em&gt; and you can do what you deem fit with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He will thus &lt;em&gt;not give you any input on your writing&lt;/em&gt;, or help you prepare the paper or present the results, and of course &lt;em&gt;does not expect an authorship&lt;/em&gt;. You are, however, free to submit your work wherever you see fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, he would help you with &lt;em&gt;supervisor-y, author-y&lt;/em&gt; stuff if you decided to &lt;em&gt;submit somewhere he deems more appropriate for the quality of the work&lt;/em&gt; (as he perceives it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He would then (hopefully) help you writing the paper, polishing the presentation, and offer other suggestions and advice he can offer as a senior scientist. Since he would be &lt;em&gt;investing his time and expertise&lt;/em&gt;, he would naturally want to be &lt;em&gt;included in the author list&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; I do not want to get in to the discussion of what deserves authorship in this question... but I'll just shortly state my opinion on which my answer is based: In Computer Science, the supervisor contributes mostly by leading your research, and then by advising you on how to write well, present the results, put them in the right context. The supervisor does not need to substantially contribute to methods presented in the paper, but his contribution can still be very valuable and substantial in other ways. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T15:09:23.143" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19415" CreationDate="2014-04-16T10:50:00.370" Score="8" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who returned (part-time) to academic pursuit in a different area a number of years ago, in which time I have completed my BA and now am in my first year of a MLitt, I am wondering is it a good idea to start to compile an academic CV? I am unsure as to if their would be any benefit of it for me, as a part time student, and at what point I should start to compile it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment in my own head the advantages are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be of use in applying for funding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may need it if I wish to go on to future study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be good for myself to keep track of what I have achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read a number of question on the site about what to put in a CV and realise that at the moment mine would be pretty sparse, as I have no publications, but my advisor has mentioned about me presenting at a conference and I have just applied for my first funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general is it a case of everyone should keep an academic CV or do you just compile and tailor one when and if it is needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T15:28:00.470" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T15:28:00.470" Title="Is it a good idea for a part-time post-grad to start an Academic CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T11:09:38.993" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any mechanism to prevent authors from sending a manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously ?  Is there any internal private mechanism between journals? Is it totally an ethical obligation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T11:25:41.517" Title="Is there any mechanism to prevent an author from cross-sending a manuscript?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19385" CreationDate="2014-04-16T11:16:30.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nature Review articles do not need to be invited. And review articles are often not &quot;original research&quot;. Nature Reviews &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/reviews/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/reviews/index.html&lt;/a&gt; accepts these. So the answers to your questions are &quot;yes&quot; and &quot;yes&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T11:16:30.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19412" CreationDate="2014-04-16T11:25:41.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only mechanism is that being found out is typically both rather embarrassing and, in case of pre-tenure researchers, can also be very detrimental to career development of the researchers in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, note that being found out is in many fields not as unlikely as you might think. For many more narrow topics, there are only so many researchers out there that are &quot;natural candidates&quot; for reviewing a given paper. Despite not being very senior yet, it has already happened to me that I received basically the same paper twice for review from different (in that case) conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T11:25:41.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19411" CreationDate="2014-04-16T13:31:33.777" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering is it a good idea to start to compile an academic CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start as you mean to continue: it is certainly a good time to start keeping track of all of your academic achievements in a structured way. Later down the line, this will prove invaluable as you will have a record of all your presentations (with dates, slides, venue, etc.), all your publications (with venue, full-text pre-prints, maybe a .bib item), all your reviewing activity, all your visits, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the cost of trying to recall all these details later might be prohibitive and you might forget things. At the moment, you may be able to remember everything you've done, but trust me when I say that what you were doing four years ago can become hazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could keep your record as a CV in LaTeX format or a database or an Excel file or a HTML homepage. Even a journal notebook would be preferable to nothing. Keep one format canonical so that you don't have to synchronise multiple versions. And keep back-ups!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these options, I would recommend a homepage. It helps your impact to have a public personal homepage where you list all the pertinent details of your research (and to link to it where you can, short of spamming). Also consider getting a personal domain: hosting homepages on work spaces is convenient, but there's a chance you might lose that space (and the associated links/ranking) if/when you move institute. If you get a personal domain, some soft advice is to get a &lt;code&gt;.org&lt;/code&gt; ... they're more trendy in academia (otherwise &lt;code&gt;.edu&lt;/code&gt;, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, whatever version you keep canonical, get in the habit of keeping it up-to-date in a consistent style. Mapping the records to a CV format for specific purposes further down the line then becomes trivial enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T13:31:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-04-16T13:40:44.383" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to the other answers with some other points to think about in terms of profile: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers for conferences are often made explicit as Programme Committee members. People who do good work in the PC eventually become Senior Programme Committee members, then Track Chairs, then Programme Chairs, then General Chairs, etc. Even PC membership for good conferences helps your academic profile, where higher-up positions help even more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journals work a little differently since reviews are solicited directly and are typically not noted anywhere public (with the exception of some journals employing a transparent peer-review model). But in my case, I was invited to the Editorial Board of a new journal in my area on the basis of my reviewing work for them. If you do &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; reviews, editors &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; notice. (Of course, this might not always result in an EB membership, but ...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conferences and journals (at least in CS) sometimes award &quot;Best Reviewer&quot; awards. I've picked up a couple of these and they look good in CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, reviewing in a community is an excellent way of keeping your finger on the pulse of not only what are the hot topics, but how papers in the area are evaluated (this is esp. true for serving in committees of conferences where seeing how the sausages are made is an enlightening experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And on a more philosophical note: I always saw reviewing a bit like seeding in Bittorrent. Submitting lots of papers for review but never doing reviews is plain greedy. Complaining about the quality of the reviews you get and then doing crappy reviews is hypocritical. ... not so related to the question, but it's good to vent now and again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T14:40:02.113" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T14:40:02.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19419" CreationDate="2014-04-16T14:55:18.253" Score="10" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite often one comes across a really succinct and precise explanation of a concept. I'm wondering if it is permissible to use this explanation verbatim, if the source work is cited in your paper (next to the explanation)? What's in question here is at most 3 sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13596" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T10:18:07.050" Title="Is it permissible to use somebody else's words (without quotations) to describe a concept once their work is cited?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19418" CreationDate="2014-04-16T16:07:26.730" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not permissible.  Some minor overlap in wording can occur naturally (e.g., you couldn't possibly avoid all two-word phrases anyone has ever used before), but deliberately copying text is different.  If the copied text is special or remarkable and says something better than you could have said it, then you should attribute it to its source and not seem to be presenting it as your own words.  Citing the source nearby is not considered enough to indicate a verbatim quote.  On the other hand, if there's nothing special about the copied text, then there's no reason to copy it.  (I suppose it could save you a few minutes of work in writing your own explanation to replace these sentences, but that's not considered a good excuse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T16:07:26.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19418" CreationDate="2014-04-16T17:45:52.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This looks like a textbook example of when you should use a block quote, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research of Bart and Homer [1] determined the root cause of the phenomenon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bart and Homer's explanation, indented one to the right and left of the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T17:45:52.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19411" CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:12:42.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are doing some great work now, right? You already have experiences, degree(s), awards, presentations, perhaps even publications. Create an academic CV now, and update at least every six months (I've been told I should update every quarter, but that usually doesn't happen.) As time goes on and you add new and better content, you will want to drop some of the items you now have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage students to create an academic CV as undergrads, because having an updated CV or resume is often necessary (or at least very handy) when applying for scholarships, conferences, or transfer institutions. Certainly it is not too early for you to begin your academic CV. Although you may not use it right now, you will find it a great advantage to have the framework in place when you need one, instead of having to begin from scratch. Also, you will be able to craft a stronger portrait of yourself as a scholar if the work is created over time. You will be able to refine and strengthen the original draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T18:12:42.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19425" CreationDate="2014-04-16T20:00:39.547" Score="13" ViewCount="7043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read on stack overflow that getting two PhDs just shows that you're unfocused and you don't know what you want to do. However, I'm at a small school with a 5 year Computer Engineering bachelors/masters program I feel like I should take advantage of, but I'd also like to go on to do another part time grad degree in the same field or Computer Science at a larger, better established school, while I work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I went to a larger school like University of Illnois or MIT or similar, will having a masters and going back for another be frowned upon, or is this a non-issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12255" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:05:02.920" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T02:05:02.920" Title="Is getting a second masters frowned upon?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19424" CreationDate="2014-04-16T20:50:22.130" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is going to help your career much, so I would only recommend to do it if you enjoy the classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen a job asking for two Masters. If any employer would be impressed by two Masters, it would be because they are in different disciplines. (e.g., a Masters in CS and a Masters in Finance might look good if you are trying to get a particular position at a financial company)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two CS Masters is redundant. The only time I have seen this is when a PhD program gives a MS &lt;em&gt;en route&lt;/em&gt; to a PhD and the student already had a MS.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Industry is going to value experience over multiple Masters&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do just enjoy the classes, you might think about a different field that still interests you and is relevant to your day job (e.g., HCI or math). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you may just want to look into a PhD program :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; According to the responses to this very similar qeustion, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11617/746&quot;&gt;Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at another university?&lt;/a&gt;, it appears that a lot of schools may not even accept a Masters student that already has a Masters in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T21:01:55.027" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T20:58:27.800" Score="49" ViewCount="4729" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have ADHD (real, diagnosed ADHD, not just &quot;I-say-I-have-ADHD-because-it's-trendy&quot; ADHD). I have never taken the extended time exams that are offered for ADHD students, because I have never needed to, and it was diagnosed just a year ago. However, exams do stress me out and I am certain I would do better on them with some more time - but this is true for almost anyone, not just ADHD students. Thus, would it be unethical to make use of the ADHD services offered to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: You might ask - why would you want to / feel it is justified? Well, hypothetically say ADHD students only achieve 75% of their &quot;non-ADHD&quot; potential in a standard-time setting. Maybe, even though I am doing well, I would be doing even better if I did have the extended time or didn't have ADHD, i.e. due to my exhaustive preparation, even with the disadvantage of my ADHD I am still managing to get a high score. But, with a &quot;level playing field&quot; [extended time for me], I would be at the top of the class. However, I still don't know if this is logical / ethical.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14218" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T23:02:06.553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:10:10.793" Title="Is it unethical to accept extra time on exams when I still do well?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19429" CreationDate="2014-04-16T21:59:11.613" Score="6" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently seen several positions titled something like &quot;Senior Lecturer in [insert field]&quot; at top notch universities such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. The job description usually includes curriculum development for the department and advising undergraduates and early career adjuncts. The position is always full time with full benefits and usually has a fixed multi year contract with a high course load. Are such positions looked highly upon when seeking future employment? Ideally please answer the question for people with the following potential career goals (as I believe the answer would be different for each one, as I want this question to be valuable for as wide an audience as possible)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the career goal is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tenured Professor at tier one research university &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tenured Professor at school that highly values research (but not a T1 research University) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tenured Professor at a Liberal Arts college or state university (Wants some research but main focus is on teaching) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tenured Professor at a purely teaching focussed Liberal Arts College or community college&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the position would be looked highly upon for career (4) and lowly upon (assuming you don't publish much) if career (1) is the ultimate goal. It is, however, unclear to me how these positions would be seen in an application corresponding to the middle two careers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T02:35:43.413" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T06:16:19.693" Title="How does accepting a full time lectureship position at a top 15 University affect one's chances of future employment?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19426" CreationDate="2014-04-16T23:06:45.570" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. If you meet the full requirements set up by your University, it is perfectly ethical to use all of the resources made available to you. ADHD is a real medical condition and medical experts and policy makers have decided that special test accommodations are the fairest solution. Accommodations like this are based on medical decisions, not whether you are doing well in the course. Take the extra time if you want it. There is no need to feel guilty about doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T23:06:45.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19427" CreationDate="2014-04-17T00:28:00.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lecturer positions tend to overwork you in courses such that research time is little to none.  If you really want a tenure track position at a university with a research focus or semi-focus, you need to continue publishing in quality journals.  If such is the case (in your scenarios 1-2), you may consider a postdoc research position instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If scenario 3 or 4 is your ultimate goal, get good teaching marks and recommendations is paramount and a lecturer position is ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T01:06:27.310" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T01:06:27.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18696" CreationDate="2014-04-17T00:28:36.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had courses like this (undergrad courses taught like grad classes but with undergrad-style exams). The best advice I can really give you is - talk to the professor! If no practice exams are posted, you can still ask the professor &quot;What will be the focus of the exam?&quot; / &quot;What will be the style of the exam?&quot; / &quot;How best to prepare for the exam?&quot; Sometimes they will have a skewed view of their own exam, but generally this will still be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know people who have taken the course, you can also ask them the type of exam the professor tends to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in this situation, it's a good idea to just study more, since you have no clue what will be on the exam. Study the &quot;easy&quot; stuff as well as the &quot;hard&quot; stuff - since clearly it was not really &quot;easy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T00:28:36.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T00:30:40.807" Score="11" ViewCount="2129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to graduate schools this year, and at the tail end of February, my first pick school sent me an email that to me, sounded like they had filled all the available TA positions. So naturally I chose my second pick school (that did offer me a TAship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today (April 16th), I receive an email from my first choice school saying they would like to offer me a TAship (apparently somebody declined their offer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graduate adviser at my second choice school had told me before that sometime she made offers to candidates in the summer, so I am thinking if I were to contact her and ask to be released from my agreement, she might be OK with that. (I realize there are formal rules that apply)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be such a bad thing to ask my second choice school to release me (if they say no it will be somewhat awkward for me and if I just walk out on them, I am not sure what they can do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TIA,&#xA;GB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9176" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T00:04:33.890" Title="Opinion on accepting a grad school offer after having already accepted another offer" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T01:39:09.537" Score="6" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I had a talk about the topic of my master thesis with the professor I currently work for (he wasn't involved in the thesis). I mentioned that there are interesting results and that I would like to present them, if he'd agree. He proposed to not only give a presentation but a seminar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just graduated from my Master's and never given any lecture, course or seminar before. I would be happy to take this opportunity as I enjoy teaching and I expect a good experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm willing to do it the professor expects a scheme of the seminar and that's the point where I am stuck. For how long of a seminar time should I aim for? Introductory or deep into the matter? What exactly is the difference between a seminar and merely presenting my thesis again? In my understanding seminars include practical approaches. Should I focus more on practical issues or my own work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject is quite technical in detail but this is not very obvious from the topic alone. I expect students to may have heard of the methodology but never employed it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm quite lost on how to tackle this task though excited to have this opportunity. I realise that my question isn't really well fleshed out but I'm happy to hear opinions nevertheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T14:30:00.590" Title="First time opportunity to give a seminar" Tags="&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19437" CreationDate="2014-04-17T01:50:48.833" Score="9" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common for PhD students in Computer Science to assist their advisors with reviewing conference papers, known as subreviewing. The students' reviews may or may not get turned in with the actual reviews but it is a great form of practice for the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen some students list the conferences they have subreviewed for in the Service section of their CV. I thought this was a little strange since it isn't &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a grad student list this on their CV? It would help add some content to a short CV and show that they have at least some experience reviewing. It may also help a student associate with a conference that they haven't had the opportunity to publish at, yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T07:27:12.427" Title="Worthwhile to put subreviewing on CV as a grad student?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T05:06:07.167" Score="9" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department, an assistant professor was denied tenure. However, he remains in the faculty as a lecturer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the typical protocol of departments.  If a professor is denied tenure, do their departments typically offer them some sort of position of lower stature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T05:25:08.473" Title="Consolation position after tenure is denied" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19434" CreationDate="2014-04-17T05:25:08.473" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this is not common.  Someone denied tenure is generally allowed to stay in their current position for another year, to give some time to find a new job.  However, it's not standard to offer them a non-tenure-track job as a replacement.  Theoretically there's no reason they couldn't apply for such a job, but it sounds really awkward.  I imagine most people wouldn't want to stay in the same department in a lower status position, and the department wouldn't want them to either; I've never seen it actually happen.  When it does happen, I'd bet there's some compelling reason behind the scenes.  (For example, perhaps the lecturer in your department has a strong personal reason to want to stay in the area, and there are no other suitable jobs available.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T05:25:08.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19433" CreationDate="2014-04-17T07:27:12.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The status of subreviewers, and even the designation as reviewer or subreviewer, varies a lot from venue to venue. In some places, reviewers are official and are listed in the proceedings. In others, it's as you say: informal assistance provided to the actual reviewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student should definitely list instances of official reviews (i.e where there's documentation of their effort) in their CV. But if the subreview is less formal (or there's no record of it maintained by the conference), then I'd be inclined to leave it off the CV, mainly because it's difficult to verify. I understand the desire to indicate some degree of competence with research critiques, but the danger is that without documentation the process is ripe for abuse or at least inflated claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T07:27:12.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-04-17T07:34:53.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that it indeed &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; an impact. Although reviewers are often anonymous, they are not for the editor and the editorial boards. There are important, influential and well connected people on editorial boards and if you provide useful reviews they will notice you. First, this news may spread by gossip and this will for sure be helpful. Second, people on editorial boards are often the same people that will be asked for reports and evaluation (e.g. in Germany, one collects expert opinions to fill positions) and if they know you through your referee reports this may be of great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no data how large of an effect these two points really make but there is some anecdotal evidence: I remember that I once heard a conference chair introducing the next speaker by saying that he always asks her with the toughest papers he gets submitted as an editor. At least to me that made some impression…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T07:34:53.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19426" CreationDate="2014-04-17T09:48:17.847" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it is definitely not unethical. Those are the rules, there is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am dyslexic and would never think of not taking my extra time (fortunately no more exams for me!). There have been some cases where I didn't need it (school level maths mainly) I either asked if I could leave with everyone else or sat for 15 mins and reread my answers/twiddled by thumbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember most exams aim to test your understanding not reading/writing speed (or why ever else people need extra time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree giving people extra time is a pretty blunt tool and not ideal in that pretty much everyone gets the same amount extra irrespective of their particular needs but I think that is a more logistical issue with how the system is setup and would be quite hard to fix and assess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T09:48:17.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19418" CreationDate="2014-04-17T10:49:08.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. It is never acceptable to use another person's exact words without quotes and a citation that includes the page number. What you are suggesting is plagiarism. If extensive quoting is not common in your field, and most people paraphrase, then I suggest you paraphrase, even if it seems that you cannot write this in any way better or even equal to what was already written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14235" LastEditorUserId="14235" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T10:18:07.050" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T10:18:07.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19449" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:00:08.933" Score="13" ViewCount="2072" Body="&lt;p&gt;When being accepted individually in a PhD program, one needs a certain amount of publication work to come up with along with their dissertaition. Are there any rules regarding the number of publications, papers or books created collectively by a research group? If some want-to-be researchers team up, how can they pursue their PhDs together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6414" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T07:14:16.200" Title="Collective PhD by a research group" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18696" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:22:08.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Addressing this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there other/better ways to find correlations between teaching and&#xA;  testing styles? How can I know I am prepared for an exam given a&#xA;  professor's teaching style (rote memorization vs. emphasis on&#xA;  derivations, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have additional exams to come in this course, then I would recommend you meet with the professor and ask &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; questions, not &quot;how should I study?&quot; or &quot;what will the test be like?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bring in your notes, homework sets and your first midterm, and demonstrate that you are thinking about how to organize your learning by asking questions like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This question (point to specific question) surprised me because it asks me to quickly solve X, but my homework here (pointing to specific question) asked me about the theory of X. Should I track down some sample problems for the topic covered in this &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; homework (point to new example) so I can both discuss theory AND quickly answer simple questions on the next test?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This question (point to specific question) surprised me because I didn't recognize the material. Can you show me how to better apply what we've learned to new situations so I can answer these questions better?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often thought students got a question wrong because they didn't understand a concept, but when someone comes and talks to me I realize that they did understand it well but my question confused them, or I didn't make it clear enough that this kind of question would be asked. Instructors can improve their exams if they get helpful feedback. Brave instructors ask for feedback. Wise students try to offer it in the guise of going over the old exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T14:22:08.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19432" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:30:00.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have presented your thesis before, the seminar could be something similar to it. However, a seminar is usually given to a wider range of audience, and thus you need to make it more accessible for someone in the audience who may not be familiar with the subject. Aim for an accessible introduction, and save the technical details to the second half of the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how long the seminar should be, you need to ask the professor how much time you have to talk, and how much time you have for questions and answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T14:30:00.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19126" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:46:46.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is good to ask permission from the publisher before submitting, even if the figure is from your own paper that was published in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T22:16:32.623" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T22:16:32.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19444" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:53:01.473" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If some want-to-be researchers team up, how can they pursue their PhDs together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not generally how it works. One does not &quot;team up&quot; and work on a PhD together in that sense. By definition, a PhD is a proof of an individual's capability to do research. Of course, many PhD students can collaborate a lot, and work on a joint project - but even in that case, each student &lt;strong&gt;needs&lt;/strong&gt; his own research questions, his own papers, and, ultimately, his own thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; just to clarify a bit more. Collaboration is entirely ok, but when PhD students work together, every research contribution (not necessarily each piece of e.g., code or data) needs to be mappable to &lt;strong&gt;exactly one&lt;/strong&gt; student, and each student needs to have a few of those contributions that clearly were his part in the project. I have seen very bad collaborations, where, essentially, person A was churning out ideas and papers, and person B was writing all the code (because he liked programming). In a company, this model is perfectly fine, in a research context this is highly abusive towards person B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T14:53:01.473" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:03:11.850" Score="12" ViewCount="2439" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a full professor apply for an associate professor position if it's the only way s/he might be able to continue his or her career? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation in question involves a person recently promoted to full professor (after 5 years as associate prof. and 5 years as assistant before that, all at the same institution). At the time of application for the assistant/associate level position, the person will have held the rank of full professor for 1 year. The person's current position entails living 2500 miles apart from spouse and elderly parents for 8-9 months each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14247" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:46:13.483" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:46:13.483" Title="Should one apply for tenure track positions below current rank?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19450" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:13:01.033" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the department/institution. If a department is hiring an &quot;Assistant Professor&quot;, they have been granted a tenure-track slot (by the Dean or Provost depending on institution). In some cases they may be willing to hire at a higher rank than advertised if the applicant already has tenure elsewhere. Some advertisements are explicit in this offer, but the possibility may be there even if it is not explicitly mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the person needs to do what makes them happier. If moving closer to family is more important, then the person should apply. If the option to be hired at higher rank is not possible, then the person should probably indicate that he or she is willing to be hired at a lower rank/salary for personal reasons (however, it is unethical for the potential employer to ask what these might be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="924" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:13:01.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19450" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:27:12.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe I have seen this multiple times. For instance, I know one assistant professor at my old university who was already a full professor at a different (granted, much lower ranked) university. I can only speculate over the reasons for this career move, but it certainly happens at least on occasion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for one &quot;should&quot; apply to a lower-ranked position - likely not for career reasons alone. However, oftentimes private reasons are at least as important as career development, and most people understand that. So if a person thinks that moving &quot;down&quot; one or two ranks for private reasons is the right move, he should do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:27:12.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19450" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:48:45.727" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course the answer to whether you should do this depends on what &quot;should&quot; means, and only you can judge whether it makes sense in your own circumstances.  I see two potential difficulties with getting hired into a lower rank:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The department may not believe you'll be OK with the demotion.  For example, you might try to negotiate for a full professorship after they make a lower offer, which could slow things down and cause them to lose other candidates, or you might accept the associate professorship but feel bitter about it and keep fussing until they promote you.  So you've got a tricky balancing act: you need to make it clear that a demotion is acceptable to you, without seeming desperate or inferior.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nobody wants to feel like they're exploiting someone by giving them less than they deserve.  In practice, the way people rationalize exploitation is by convincing themselves that it's actually justified (for example, that all people in low-paid adjunct positions are inferior scholars who don't deserve tenure-track jobs), and this rationalization doesn't necessarily have anything to do with actual facts.  If you are hired from a full professorship into an associate professorship, some of your new colleagues will probably tell themselves that your promotion at your previous school was premature or based on low standards, and that now you're at the rank you should have had all along.  It can be painful to go down in rank and be told it's what you deserve rather than a sacrifice you are making for personal reasons.  You may decide you're OK with this reaction, but you should be prepared for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:48:45.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:12:30.477" Score="35" ViewCount="6321" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was raised in discussion of answers on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19319/is-it-better-to-submit-a-paper-to-an-important-journal-without-the-supervisor-na/19322?noredirect=1#comment40219_19322&quot;&gt;Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name?&lt;/a&gt;  There seemed to be a significant difference of opinion, so I'm asking it here as its own question.  I'll phrase it as a hypothetical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose that researchers X, Y and Z have collaborated on a project.  Each has made major contributions which were essential to its success, and would ordinarily be entitled to co-authorship on the resulting paper.  However, X decides, for some reason, that she does not wish her name to appear on the paper, but she is willing for Y and Z to publish it under their names alone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May Y and Z ethically do so?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it seems clear that X must consent to have a paper published with her name on it, and she has the right to withhold that consent.  It's less clear whether Y and Z may publish anyway, effectively claiming credit for X's work, even though she consents to them doing so.  It could be argued in this case that Y and Z may not publish the paper at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible concern is that, if X has the right to decline credit for her work, she could be pressured or coerced or bribed into doing so, effectively reducing her to a ghost writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T20:28:31.603" Title="If an author declines authorship, may her co-authors publish without her?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18832" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:36:17.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the supervisor got the grant, he is ultimately responsible to the funding agency for the research that was funded and for any results. So the postdoc should definitely talk to the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, this would be a great opportunity for the supervisor to help the postdoc grow academically, since postdocs are of course expected to take on more responsibilities than Ph.D. students, and start making their own reputation in a field, not stay in the supervisor's shadow. So the supervisor should certainly understand that the postdoc will start flexing his wings and be interested in other topics - it just needs to be commensurate with the goals that the supervisor got the money for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, conversely, the postdoc got his own grant, he should first of all look through the paperwork he presumably got, signed and returned before the money started rolling in. It is quite possible that an expectation of the funding agency as to the amount of work the postdoc should be spending on this particular project is already somewhere in the paperwork. Of course, even in this case, it makes a lot of sense to discuss this with the supervisor, who presumably has a lot of experience in this field, and possibly with this particular funding agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T16:36:17.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:53:58.810" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you need to distinguish between the case when everyone agrees that X's work requires acknowledgement as a co-author, but X is being difficult, and the case where X is uncertain or dismissive of the level of their contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was recently added, at the invitation of the primary authors, to the author list of an article in preparation based on my very last-minute contributions. I felt obliged to have a discussion with the primary authors as to whether I really should be added or should simply be acknowledged. In the end, I deferred to their judgment about the importance of my contribution and accepted their invitation. This is a perfectly natural and appropriate conversation to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if X thinks that the paper is bad as written and &lt;em&gt;refuses&lt;/em&gt; to have their name associated with the work, then the remaining authors have some harder choices. They should first consider the objections or criticisms of X and see if the article can be improved. If it cannot for time or space reasons, then they should consider either offering X an acknowledgement credit at the end of the paper or whether or not they can remove X's contribution and their name from the work entirely. It's entirely possible that this may scuttle the paper submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the remaining authors should submit X's work as their own if X refuses to be associated with the article in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T16:53:58.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:06:27.417" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that if authors B and C write in the acknowledgment section that the contribution of person A was sufficiently important that they think A should be listed as an author but that A declined and especially if authors B and C provide a description of the reasons leading to A's refusal which is satisfying to A, in other words if B and C report accurately what has been happening, then no one is behaving unethically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a real life example, one can look at the acknowledgment section of S.Bloch and K.Kato's work on p-adic étale cohomology, the third author being in that case O.Gabber and the reason invoked (if I recall correctly) being that Gabber did not think the work was ready for publication (I'm unable to track the precise reference at the moment, it is not Bloch and Kato's article at the IHES in 1986).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Because I haven't been able to track the reference of Bloch-Kato, let me point out Beilinson-Bernstein-Deligne which starts with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Il avait d'abord été prévu que O.Gabber soit coauteur du présent article. Il a préféré s'en abstenir, pour ne pas être coresponsable des erreurs ou imprécisions qui s'y trouvent. Il n'en est pas moins responsable de bien des idées que nous exploitons et le lecteur lui est redevable de nombreuses critiques qui, nous l'espérons, ont permis d'améliorer le manuscrit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which roughly translates as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was first planned that O.Gabber would be coauthor of the present article. He chose to abstain, so as not to share the responsibility of the mistakes or imprecisions to be found in it. He is nonetheless responsible of many an idea we exploit here and the reader owes him numerous criticisms which, we hope, allowed for improvements of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14210" LastEditorUserId="14210" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T20:28:31.603" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T20:28:31.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:12:32.083" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Declining coauthorship is actually quite common behavior in my field (mathematics).  It is so common that not lightly do I question its ethics.  In most instances I have seen it appears rather borderline, or the ethical questions that it raises are accounted for in other ways by the profession.  However, &lt;em&gt;taken to the extreme&lt;/em&gt; I think it would certainly result in unethical behavior.  Thus my comment questioning another comment made on Nate Eldredge's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An author &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this statement is clearly too strong.  If you systematically pass off your work to others, you are participating in a form of plagiarism and giving (assuming that your work is good, which I will since this is the version of the practice I am familiar with) an unfair advantage to your should-be coauthors in what is now an extremely competitive academic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stage 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Let's start at the extreme point: if you do all the work on a paper (or project, or thesis) and then pass it off to someone else who puts their name on the paper, I hope we can all agree that not just they but also &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have done something deeply unethical.  As I have before, I will point to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&amp;amp;story_id=118&amp;amp;part=all&quot;&gt;this excellent short story&lt;/a&gt; which describes an especially interesting case of this.  The story describes realistically how the discovery that the main character has written the PhD thesis of his ex-girlfriend would get not just her but also him in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this extreme case there is another ethical violation occurring: someone's name is being put on something which they did not have intellectual involvement with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stage 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Let's imagine that a more senior author really did the work of the paper and explained it to someone more junior: possibly their own student, but it happens in another cases as well.  And let's say the junior person writes up the work in the formal sense but not without a lot of help from the senior person, to the extent to which that without substantial guidance from the senior person the junior person probably would not have been able to write up the work in an acceptable way.  The junior person has in some superficial sense &quot;contributed to the work&quot;, but I would argue that really he has not.  And to focus ideas let's imagine that this in a field like mathematics (or TCS, theoretical physics...) in which the idea of &quot;valuable routine work&quot; is largely or completely absent: e.g. the junior person did not do any interesting or independent calculations, coding and so forth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; still feel that this is a serious ethical violation.  If it results in the junior person getting a PhD thesis, then I feel bad about that.  If this is a larger pattern of behavior and results in the junior person getting several publications which advance his career, then I feel terrible about this: I think the senior person is doing something really reprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stage 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Now imagine that the senior person had the idea for the project, had some of it worked out in advance (but not shown to the junior person), had ideas about how the implementation was to take place, but left at least some substantial part of the implementation to the junior person.  Let's say the junior person did at least a substantial part of the work independently, and let's say that he did some things in a way different from what the senior person would have thought to do which is not obviously worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stage is an accurate description of the relation between many thesis advisors and their students in mathematics.  In mathematics this type of interaction probably most commonly results in a solo paper by the student, and the likelihood that this will occur is positively correlated with the research strength of the advisor and the department.  I grew up watching this practice and therefore got used to it.  Once I saw how differently other fields operate I started to wonder whether this was really ethical behavior.  I think in practice it is not such a serious problem because in mathematics &lt;strong&gt;who your advisor is&lt;/strong&gt; is known to everyone who knows you: when you meet someone new or talk about them with a colleague, &quot;Who was his advisor?&quot; is one of the first questions that gets asked.  It is quite common for someone who got their PhD at a top mathematics department to have their first publication in a truly excellent journal on the topic of their thesis -- deep, cutting edge stuff in their advisor's field -- then a short gap, followed by other papers which are minor variants of previous work or are interesting and valuable but in a different, lower-to-the-ground field.  When potential employers see this type of CV, we largely tend to think &quot;I get it: the advisor really did much of their thesis work, and without her the candidate cannot continue doing work of the same quality.&quot;  Unfortunately this might be unfair in the other direction: for instance some advisors &lt;em&gt;really don't give much direct help&lt;/em&gt; to their students.  That was the case for me, and luckily various people told me that my advisor has a reputation in the community for &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; doing his students' theses for them, with the result that some of his students have written much better theses than others (mine was somewhere in the middle).  So it's not clear how to arrive at a &quot;standard advisor discount&quot;.  Taken the other way, sometimes you do see an eminent advisor writing a paper jointly with their student on the topic of their thesis work, and all of a sudden it becomes less clear what this means: there needs to be an explanation of this in the letter of recommendation (but the explanation is not always absolutely clear or convincing either: every student everywhere always did &quot;at least half of the work&quot; according to recommendation letters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most eminent thesis advisors regard the help that they give their student to write an excellent thesis as a one time gift, at which point they leave their former student largely alone to sink or swim.  However in a small number of cases there are eminent advisors who just have that many good ideas and that generous a nature.  Maybe they feel that the way to function as a leader in their field is to feed their former students the ideas they need to do first-rate work.  I cannot imagine trying to tell these eminent people not to do this, but nevertheless the practice seems unfair in a competitive job market.  It contributes to feelings that the top departments form a kind of elite club that, if admission is not granted by the age of 24 or so, will be almost impossible to join later in life.  This is not good for the profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are further stages. To be clear, starting with Stage 4 I would myself be a participant in the process (and sometimes I think I would be a better advisor if I were more onboard with Stage 3).  If you're a senior person and you feel like you made what was really only an offhand remark to someone, then even if that offhand remark was crucial in the writing of their paper you are relatively unlikely to want to be a coauthor.  I respect that very well and I have to: that kind of expertise and generosity is part of being a senior academic (in my field at least; I assume it's not so different elsewhere).  At my relatively middling career stage I have already made plenty of remarks to others that have resulted in acknowledgments in their paper, and I have already turned down at least one offer of coauthorship.  And there was one relatively recent case where I offered coauthorship to a very senior person: he declined, roughly because he had almost forgotten the remarks he had made to me about five years (!!) before.  I hadn't, and they were crucial to writing what for me is a very good paper.  So there is a continuum here and many judgment calls to make; I want to be clear about that.  But I also think that we should draw the line somewhere before &quot;An author &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T19:18:11.170" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T19:18:11.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19463" CreationDate="2014-04-17T20:19:53.473" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not what happens to me, just something I think about and wonder if it ever happens in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose that there is a funded project which is planned to have 3 people working in it for a certain amount of time. At one point of time, a new member, who can be a PhD student or a post-doc, is added into a project. I can think of few reasons to add a new member to a project: to help her gain some experience, or just because there is some additional work to be done but is not initially planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as it is initially planned that there are only 3 people working in it, which means the funding only covers salary paid to 3, does it mean a new member has to work without being paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T20:36:56.080" Title="Adding additional member to a funded project" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19462" CreationDate="2014-04-17T20:36:56.080" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, as it is initially planned that there are only 3 people working in it, which means the funding only covers salary paid to 3, does it mean a new member has to work without being paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In good labs, PhD students are not supposed to work for free (although it may happen on occasion). Usually, people added to such a project fall into three categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are funded by the faculty. For instance, the added person could be another professor, for which the faculty pays the salary. Additionally, and maybe more commonly, there are also PhD students which are not paid by external grants. For instance, in Austria / Germany, professors generally have a limited number of &quot;assistants&quot; (not to be confused with Assistant Professors), which are basically PhD students paid y the faculty to assist the professor in teaching, administration and research. Those can be assigned to projects freely. Another possibility of PhD students independent of grants are PhD student positions that a professor has negotiated as part of her/his startup package.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are funded by another grant, but simply have free resources (time). Clearly, while there are projects that need more resources, there are also projects that are actually overstaffed. In such cases, students will often help out with troubled projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are funded by &quot;soft&quot; money that is not bound to a concrete project. For instance, in my country, many large labs have significant funds saved up from the overheads of previous projects. Occasionally, a strong candidate wants to start a PhD, but no suitable grant is currently open. In that case, the professor will (at least temporarily) pay the student from this saved-up funds. Clearly, this candidate is then not bound to a specific project, and can join whatever project needs her/him most, or whatever project suits her/his interests most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I use the term &quot;assigned&quot; very freely above - in reality, students and postdocs are in most labs not so much assigned as asked whether they would be interested to help out in project XY and get a paper or two out of it)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T20:36:56.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T22:51:59.740" Score="47" ViewCount="4785" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a research problem in an area of Mathematics. There is mathematician whose domain of expertise is very near to the subject of my problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read frequently his works, he probably doesn't know me. But it is possible that he has seen some of my works. He is a senior mathematician. I am junior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway we don't know each other and because of geographical and other considerations, I don't think we have the occasion to meet each other in a conference or workshop in new future. I am scientifically isolated in my country as nobody works in my area, finding funds for participating in conferences and workshops is also very difficult. So the only possibility of a collaboration that I envisage is doing by email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very optimistic that my problem interests him and if we collaborate, the result would be very fruitful. I have had some experiences to do scientific collaboration with some people that I knew by email. But the story with this mathematician is different because we don't know each other personally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that sending an email saying that  my name is X and I am interested in the question Y, I would be glad if you are interested to work on this problem  is not perhaps the best approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best strategy to maximize the chance of starting a scientific collaboration with him?  How I can formulate my request of doing a scientific collaboration with him? Is it wise to 'reveal' my problem while I don't know if there is a chance of collaboration?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14260" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T20:31:28.043" Title="Unsolicited request for a scientific collaboration" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19466" CreationDate="2014-04-17T23:05:11.983" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be specific and brief, with a clear action item.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;bad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is X and I'm interested in Y, and I'm hoping you'd be interested in working with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;slightly better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is X, and I'm interested in Y. I read your recent papers on Foo1, foo2, and foo3, and I was wondering whether you thought Theorem eleventy-seven in your paper on foo2 could apply to the problem of Y''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;much better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is X, and I'm interested in Y. I read your recent papers on Foo1, foo2, and foo3. I had an idea about how to apply theorem eleventy-seven in your foo2 paper to Y'', by inserting the well known lemma Bar1, and Bar2. I was wondering if you were aware of approaches that have tried this? I looked at refs 1–157 and didn't see anything relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to chat more about this if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, your mileage may vary. There are cultural variations, personal variations and so on. But I’ve had success with emails of this kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T20:31:28.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T23:06:22.393" Score="15" ViewCount="1968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Math PhD student at a US university. I have made a decision on who I want to work with for my PhD, but I was made aware that the professor in question is going on a sabbatical next year, to be spent in a different university (not in close proximity). What is the best way to approach a potential advisor in such a situation? I have not yet asked the &quot;question&quot;, but have met with the professor in question multiple times on research related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14261" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T05:08:12.670" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T05:08:12.670" Title="How to approach potential advisor who's going on sabbatical?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19468" CreationDate="2014-04-17T23:35:19.587" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the situation is volatile, depending on the communication skills/inclinations of the faculty person. I.e., do they do email often-and-effectively? If so, there's scant obstacle. But, on the opposite hand, if the only way they communicate effectively is face-to-face, then this would be a bad situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it depends of course equally on your own capacity to communicate effectively by a medium where there're no facial expressions, no body language, and... many people seem to be slow to see this... committing questions or comments to email disallows remarks like &quot;Oh, I don' get it&quot; that seem ok in conversation. Thus, one must exert more effort to compose an email than to make a vague verbal remark in person. This is not at all a bad thing... unless the net effect is significant inhibition of communication, in which case one should re-consider one's mode of operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, some risk here, but, if both parties' communications chops are good, it could be as productive as any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T23:35:19.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19685" CreationDate="2014-04-18T01:58:14.830" Score="13" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking because I work for a &lt;strong&gt;non-for-profit academic hospital&lt;/strong&gt; where the vast majority of the funding comes, one way or another, from the taxpayer. It is certainly possible, actually encouraged, for us to file for patents should we find some new way to diagnose or predict disease progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I will mention this again, we are funded by the taxpayer so we are already getting a salary and resources to do our work from them. Is it filing a patent and consequently delaying the publication of our research in order to find out a way to commercialise the work something that could be considered ethical? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7913" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2019-01-11T13:15:33.580" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T02:08:00.647" Title="Are patents appropriate in taxpayer funded academic settings?" Tags="&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-18T02:27:29.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of publishing a paper should be the dissemination of knowledge and not merely the attribution of credit to the right persons for its discovery. If the authors Y and Z believe that the work is of any importance whatsoever to the scientific community, it would be unethical for them to NOT find a way to publish it. Such considerations could override some of the considerations of fairness of attribution that many here seem to be concerned about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9195" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T02:27:29.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T02:26:12.043" Score="22" ViewCount="13878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate mathematics student finishing my degree.  I plan to go to grad school, and ultimately aspire to become a professor.  I really like tattoos, but I'm hesitant to get one because it could affect my future job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if I did get one, it would be discrete and innocent.  What I really want is the axioms from ZFC wrapped around my upper arm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very interested in hearing people's thoughts on tattoos in the workplace, particularly from people who work in mathematics.  Do you think it is acceptable?  How would you judge someone based on their tattoos?  Do any of you have tattoos?  What are your experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Persey" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T08:44:56.523" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T11:22:30.760" Title="Tattoos in the Workplace" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19450" CreationDate="2014-04-18T04:31:22.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the title of the question is general, I will mention some other cases in which people apply to academic positions below their current rank:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, universities hire individuals with only a Masters degree as lecturers (they may even be called professors).  Those individuals may later apply to be doctoral students at a research university (often in another country with a stronger scientific background).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At some universities, assistant professors (who hold a Ph.D.) are given essentially no time to research, due to heavy teaching loads.  It is not unusual for them to apply for postdoctoral positions at research universities, in order to have the opportunity to do more research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, I think there is usually some prejudice against the candidate (if you're a good researcher, why didn't you get a research position already?)  But I have hired one extremely good postdoc this way.  In the first case, there is sometimes some prejudice, especially if it has been a long time since you got your MS degree.  But I've seen many excellent students who went this route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T04:31:22.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-18T05:38:43.673" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any tattoos, and I work in CS, which may be a little more relaxed than mathematics. I would have no negative reaction to seeing someone with a tattoo, and would merely be somewhat envious :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had colleagues who wandered barefoot in the hallways, and others who rarely showed up in anything other t-shirts and shorts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T05:38:43.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19359" CreationDate="2014-04-18T06:18:42.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often turn down invitations that could be considered a distinction, i.e. an indication that &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt; thinks I am reasonably competent at this research thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you speak on this panel at this research open house?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you willing to review this paper for this journal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you want to do a research internship with us this summer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to submit an invited paper to this workshop?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you mentor this undergrad who is doing research in the lab?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these things would go on my CV if I actually do them, but not if I turn down the invitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An invitation to speak at a conference is no different, in my opinion. It's certainly a nice validation of your work that the conference organizers recognized your ability to contribute. But if you don't actually give the talk, it doesn't go on the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T06:18:42.027" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T06:40:48.793" Score="17" ViewCount="3887" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you can find the past exams for the past 15 years or so at my school. However I had one prof in Calculus III who chose to withhold his exams. This was the only instance in which a prof has chosen to do so in my two years at university studying engineering. His justification was that he didn't want students studying exams rather than the actual course material which I find to be interesting. &#xA;As a student, I notice that solving past exams from the same instructor as practice can be helpful for a couple of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it helps you get accustomed to the instructor's style of exam so you're less nervous when you're writing the actual exam. I find that even seeing the familiar cover page helps in calming me down just before an exam starts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it  helps you figure out what type of questions the instructor likes to put the focus on (i.e instructor A prefers to put conceptual questions, instructor B hasn't put a question on the laplace transform in 5 years so maybe I'll study that later if I have time, instructor C always has a 2nd-order circuit as question 1, etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the 2nd point is exacly why my calculus instructor chose to withhold his exams. But at the same time, some students may benefit if they use them responsibly as challenging practice problems without jeopardizing their learning experience (i.e someone with the mentality of &quot;I know instructor B hasn't put a question on the laplace transform in 5 years, but I need to study it anyway because it's important&quot;). Most of my other instructors release their past final exams, but do not post full solutions (or full solutions to just last year's exam). A few have chosen to release just the final answers to the questions without the full solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it better for the students if the instructors released the past final exams? What about full solutions (or just final answers) to the finals exams? Are there studies that show if one strategy is better than another?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the answers and arguments may vary depending on the field so I should add that I am particularly interested in an answer for the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11589" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T13:00:27.077" Title="Should previous final exams be released to students?" Tags="&lt;evaluation&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19426" CreationDate="2014-04-18T06:53:32.107" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of an exam is to measure how well you understand the material. Giving you extra time should make this measurement more precise, so you should take it. Keep in mind that if you really didn't know the material, more time wouldn't help, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this as someone who got extra time throughout school because of a physical disability and now does curriculum development at the college level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastEditorUserId="12861" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T08:04:51.787" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T08:04:51.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19359" CreationDate="2014-04-18T06:59:49.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your CV is short, say less than 2 pages, then I think you should  mention this invitation to fill up the spaces. However, you need to be ready to answer the question, why did you not attend the conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have a long enough CV, I don't see the point to include the invitation in your CV unless it is from an extremely reputable conference. In that case, the invitation itslef is a high honor that others may want to know. Again, people would wonder why you did not attend the conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T06:59:49.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19532" CreationDate="2014-04-18T08:07:07.180" Score="3" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting to several schools for PhD position in CS. I am following the advices about how to contact professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One professor I sent to suggesting some idea about her previous research and asking that I want to indicate my desire to work under her supervision. She replied &quot;This is very interesting as a project. Please apply for the next deadline&quot;. It is very encouraging response. However, the admission decision is at the department level. So I will have to apply and there are several other requirements which I am not completely sure if I entirely meet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I must focus on this positive side in order to increase my chances, but I do not know how. Should I keep in touch with the professor although she can do nothing now until the decision is made? Should I send more details about the suggested idea in order to show how motivated I am (I am not sure if she's part of the admission committee). What is the second step to increase my chances to get admission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think sending more emails to the professor is annoying or does show my enthusiasm? Any thing I can do to support more application at this time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update for who may concern&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The application has not been accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T09:41:05.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T09:41:05.023" Title="&quot;This is very interesting as a project&quot; What is the next step to obtain PhD position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-18T08:21:38.940" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tattoos that can be easily concealed in sensitive times (during interviewing, etc.) should never be a problem. Further, academia is in general a pretty tolerant place when it comes to looks. As Suresh says, we are used to much weirder things in terms of look than a small tattoo. You'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T08:21:38.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2014-04-18T08:30:31.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Availability of worked answers/past papers etc should ideally be consistent across all sections of all courses within a given degree program, be it a pure STEM subject or a dual award/tripos structure. Anything else risks the level playing field that supposedly exists. In practice the only way to ensure fairness is to let all the information be freely available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. I went to a collegiate university, and found that the availability of past papers, worked solutions, already completed lecture notes (my courses typically had handouts that had gaps to be filled in at the lecture) varied between the colleges. The variation was most prominent in engineering, where some colleges had access to past students notes and solutions to problems as well as past papers, all of which had been scanned and uploaded to the intranet, some had access only to past papers, and some had no such access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this creates quite a disparity in the amount of material one has to look over to understand a concept or problem and furthermore, with access to such material crucially one learns how to best layout an answer for maximum marks, something that wasn't otherwise shown. If papers/worked solutions are formally withheld, you can almost guarantee that some will be available informally to some small part of the student group through connections to higher years (in this case collegiate). This results in an advantage unrelated to your actual ability in comprehension and implementation which is the supposed testing target of university exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastEditorUserId="13778" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T16:13:21.297" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:13:21.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-18T10:36:47.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot live your life according to other people's illogical rules, as to what you are going to do with your body, hair, clothes, skin. Standing out from the rest of the crowd, either being prettier, cooler, having long-hair, tattoos, working-out is always a double edged sword for all work environments. Some people will like you more and respond to you positively, other will hate your guts. As other answers have stated, Academia is one of the most tolerant workspace you may encounter. So, you probably will not have a problem either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Raising a flag&quot; by showing hints of your real personality (besides your academic achievements) may also make other (academic or not) people approach you easier. In this way, it might also help in some cases. As for the others who respond negatively, who would really want to collaborate with someone, who judges people strictly by their looks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T10:36:47.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19359" CreationDate="2014-04-18T12:11:39.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you put other conferences you plan to attend on your CV, then I think it's fine to include this one (from an ethical viewpoint, which is how I view &quot;can&quot;).  You can just remove it if you don't go.  In general though, I would be pretty cautious about looking like you're trying too hard to pad your CV.  It depends a bit on what you're using it for, but in general having a few more entries on the list of places you've spoken (this is for fields where conferences are not peer-reviewed) isn't going to look especially impressive and could just distract from the good things on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T12:11:39.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20219" CreationDate="2014-04-18T12:49:56.147" Score="19" ViewCount="1594" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some continuing misunderstandings with my advisor. For some time I am actually doing my research as a one man show, but due to my faults and a lot of work I still did not finish my PhD. I am paid by him, so I still need to have good relations with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he often gets some real and spam &quot;invitations&quot; to journals and conferences and he always tends to send my work there (he doesn't have more or less anything else). The problems is these journals are often fake journals like from the SCIRP publishing. I managed once persuade him not to send the payment a year ago, but now they wrote him again and he sent them the money and came to me to say that they accepted our article. I do not particularly like to have my name in these &quot;journals&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar problems is with conferences. Maybe this one is not that bad– I am even not able to google this random conference about everything in Gdansk now, but they promise publications indexed by ISI or SCOPUS –  but I already submitted the paper to two conferences (two disjunct parts of it) I chose and I want to publish it in a good journal from one of them or some other one. I don't know if the extended paper from that conference my boss wants to visit might spoil the better publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also forgot to say he puts himself as a first author. But actually, he writes the complete article himself, but he doesn't have full access to my data, just a couple of graphs and images, so the quality of the articles is not that good, and I prefer not to waste my time to edit articles to these strange places, so it is probably better I am not the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I persuade my advisor NOT to publish my work in these 'fake' conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T18:26:38.817" LastActivityDate="2020-12-16T06:00:37.840" Title="How to explain to my boss where not to publish?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19466" CreationDate="2014-04-18T13:05:23.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could I suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; and I am a\the junior mathematician at the &lt;em&gt;University&#xA;  of Somewhere&lt;/em&gt;.  My credentials available at&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;www.some-academic-site.ac.xz&lt;/em&gt;.  I am researching &lt;em&gt;numbers&lt;/em&gt; and have some of your papers, &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;baz&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that your work on &lt;em&gt;special numbers&lt;/em&gt; would greatly helpful and&#xA;  hoped you would be willing to correspond with my on how this relates&#xA;  to my own work on &lt;em&gt;some different numbers&lt;/em&gt;.  I have enclosed a brief&#xA;  summary of my work, and how it relates to your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yours Faithfully&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;my name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unsolicited mail needs to be interesting to the participant, and it's integrity verifiable, hence the inclusion of your academic credentials, work you have done and proof that it does indeed correlate\support etc your own work.  (You also show that you have actually done work, and this isn't some attempt to get someone else to do work for you)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14274" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T13:05:23.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19490" CreationDate="2014-04-18T13:09:44.223" Score="3" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;While most European doctoral courses require its applicants to hold master's degree, many doctoral courses in US often do not.  In these graduate schools, by satisfying conditions set by the schools, students advance to candidacy, when the school may or may not grant them master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose the school does not.  Then, can a Ph.D. candidate at the school be admitted to a European doctoral course, which usually require its applicants to have master's degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11000" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:07:27.930" Title="Can a Ph.D. candidate at a US-style Ph.D.-only graduate school be admitted to a European doctoral course?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19489" CreationDate="2014-04-18T14:28:19.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the term &quot;PhD candidate&quot; is used in both continents, a Ph.D program in the USA comprises of: Master (2 years) + Doctorate (3 years), meaning it takes at least 5 years, whereas in Europe comprises of just the latter: Doctorate (3 years). This means that yes, a Master's degree &lt;em&gt;or something deemed equivalent or superior&lt;/em&gt; is required to enter the doctoral course in Europe. The fact that it's &quot;not required&quot; in the US is an illusion, it's just because the Master's is (sort of) included IN the Ph. D program. In the end you will get your Ph. D degree at around the same age than students in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your University in the USA does not deliver a Master's degree per se, you will have to check with the prospective university in Europe to see whether they will count your research experience (preferably 1-2 years of lab research after your 4-year Bachelor's, which you could sum up in something that looks like a Master's thesis) as being &lt;em&gt;equivalent or superior&lt;/em&gt; to a Master's degree. I believe it is case by case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, please keep in mind that some countries like France require you to have a scholarship or to secure some kind of funding prior to admission to cover your living expenses for the entirety of the Doctorate (3 years) since Ph.D candidates have a status similar to paid staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK is probably one of the only countries in the world where it's OK to do just a Doctorate (3 years) right after your Bachelor's (=if you compare to other countries, you could say it means skipping the 2 years of Master's), however, I don't think this is highly valued on the international market, unless you managed to end up with the same amount of work and publications than the people who did Master (2 years) + Doctorate (3 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;//Speaking for science majors//&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastEditorUserId="12049" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T02:19:17.797" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T02:19:17.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19470" CreationDate="2014-04-18T14:54:52.023" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent will typically be owned by the institute and it will get most of the revenues (this is why they encourage it). The inventors usually get some form of compensation. Revenues from commercialization is partially how your salaries can be payed and could in fact &lt;em&gt;save&lt;/em&gt; tax-payers money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, developing a new diagnostic or therapy will in the end improve the lives of the general public (and even save lives in many cases). Currently, due to the immense costs involved, the only way to get a new therapy to the public is in a commercial setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T17:20:00.687" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T17:20:00.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19470" CreationDate="2014-04-18T15:57:27.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand the answer above, but a follow on question I'd ask is: is it ethical to keep this 'good idea' away from other scientists, who indeed might be able to make better progress on it than only the idea generator themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the end goal of all of this should be patient care, and to best benefit this, my opinion is that publication in an open access forum is the first, and most important way forward. I understand that without the protection of a patent, businesses can't be built, and indeed, that our whole society is based on this concept of capitalism. But, it doesn't jive with my sensibilities as a physician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14277" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T15:57:27.950" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15531" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:17:49.383" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This issue actually got some press recently with the case of uBiome, a citizen science startup that raised over $350,000 in crowdfunding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This startup received a lot of negative attention for not getting IRB approval &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; raising the money. You can read some of this criticism &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/ethicsandscience/2013/02/19/a-passing-thought-about-a-certain-flavor-of-citizen-science-project/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://freethoughtblogs.com/physioprof/2013/02/21/ubiome-has-made-a-public-statement-about-irb-compliance-of-their-human-subjects-research/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2013/02/20/a-little-reminder-of-why-we-have-irbs-did-i-mention-it-is-still-black-history-month/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/22/crowdfunding-and-irbs-the-case-of-ubiome/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; from the founders of uBiome says they were advised that they don't &lt;em&gt;legally&lt;/em&gt; require IRB approval if they aren't receiving federal funding, don't plan to publish, and don't plan to apply for FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before we started our crowdfunding campaign, we consulted with our advisors at QB3, the startup incubator at UCSF, and the lawyers they provided us. We were informed (correctly) that IRBs are only required for federally funded projects, clinical trials, and those who seek publication in peer-reviewed journals. That’s right — projects that don’t want federal money, FDA approval, or to publish in traditional journals require no ethical review at all as far as we know. (No, that doesn’t sound like a great system to us either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, they went through a private IRB firm (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBiome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eandireview.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;) and got their protocols approved. The founders &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/22/crowdfunding-and-irbs-the-case-of-ubiome/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the same institution that works with academic IRBs that need to coordinate multi-site studies, as well as private firms such as 23andme and pharmaceutical companies doing clinical trials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This incident raises the question of what you plan to do with your independent research (assuming the kind of research you are doing is generally subject to IRB oversight):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you plan to publish your research in a traditional peer-reviewed journal, you will usually need an IRB review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you plan to develop pharmaceuticals that will require FDA approval, you will need IRB review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you plan to get federal funding for your work, you will need IRB review. If you plan to get other funding for your work, it'll be hard to get without IRB review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you plan to create a startup around your research, you may not &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; IRB review, but not having it can engender quite a bit of criticism (as per uBiome's story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T16:46:09.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:46:09.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19496" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:48:10.320" Score="30" ViewCount="39007" Body="&lt;p&gt;This year I have decided to take a Computer Science course on FLVS, an online learning institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the whole year, I worked well, and I had a lot of fun with the course. I was close to finishing the second semester of it, and I randomly lost access to the course. I was surprised to find out that they took a some of my assignments (about 6~7), and they flagged me for academic integrity, claiming that I used the answers from an online answer source. Another problem is that because it's so many assignments, they have kicked me out of the course, without me even communicating with them the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teacher had no idea about this, and she can't do anything about it. She told me to talk to academic integrity themselves. I now have a 0 for the course, and I'm very angry, and I have no idea what to do. I can show them I didn't cheat by answering on the phone any questions they have, and I've already studied for the exam and I plan on taking it, and I'm very confident I can get a good grade. I've also used the knowledge I've learned from the course, and I've created iPhone applications as well as games and other software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've left the academic integrity team a message stating that I need to speak with them ASAP, but how can I communicate to them that I didn't plagiarize the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I have done some research as to how I present my case, and I found a couple things regarding appeals. FLVS claims that it's so called &quot;academic integrity&quot; team is fair and not biased and they utilize a lot of technology to ensure that their claims are as factual as possible, such as www.turnitin.com. I have found a Customer Support number that I can voice my concerns to, so I'm going to present my case to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE #2:&lt;/strong&gt; After speaking with customer support (see update above), the person on the other line wrote down my grievance in an email, and she sent it to the academic integrity people. I also received a copy of the email. She told me she's sorry for my problem and taht I should expect a call in the next 48-72 business hours. Hopefully I will fix this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE #3:&lt;/strong&gt; We had a long talk with the academic integrity team yesterday, and apparently (I had no knowledge of this) they claim I have copied work from my twin brother Varun from about 20 assignments. Going through these assignments, there seems to be evidence of similar code, but that's because certain instance variables and functions had to be created as per the assignment's instructions, but the overall design of the program is different. They also say that we had the same typesetting (meaning me had him the same spacing and tabs and white space), although we're both very experienced programmers, and we follow the conventional format of tabbing and spacing. I'm most likely going to court :D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE #4:&lt;/strong&gt; This is the best part. After talking we academic integrity before (see above update), we decided to check all of the assignments she flagged and come up with legitimate reasons as to why I didn't cheat on them. After coming up with a long list, we sent an email to the academic integrity people and told them that we came up with a lot of reasons as to why we didn't copy, so she said that she would call us in a couple of days. After 2 days, she sends another email stating that her reasons are legitimate, according to her &quot;boss&quot;, and that she won't discuss the issue any further. I am now super angry about this, and I have legitimate reasons as to how I didn't cheat. She won't tell me anything, and my teachers haven't returned any of my calls. I really hate FLVS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14278" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T16:13:58.143" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T16:13:58.143" Title="How can I prove that I didn't plagiarize?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19495" CreationDate="2014-04-18T17:27:22.170" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few steps you can take, but the specifics depend on the individual institution and its procedures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out what evidence is behind this accusation.&lt;/strong&gt; Presumably when you talk to this &quot;academic integrity team,&quot; they will tell you more specifically why they think you cheated. Once you have a chance to find out what their evidence for this accusation is, you will be in a position to show them how they made a mistake. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out what the institution's official policy is for appealing accusations of academic integrity.&lt;/strong&gt; This depends on the individual institution's policies. When you speak to the &quot;academic integrity team,&quot; you can ask them directly what the appeal procedure is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out what the general grievance procedure is.&lt;/strong&gt; If you don't have a good experience with the &quot;academic integrity team&quot; (e.g. they did not give you a fair chance to appeal the accusation), you should find out what procedures your institution has in place for voicing grievances in general, and you can pursue these if necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T17:27:22.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19385" CreationDate="2014-04-18T18:01:42.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @mankoff's answer, be aware that it is possible, and indeed common in some fields, to email an editor with an idea, or draft, of a review paper and ask if they'd like to &quot;invite&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T18:01:42.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-18T18:17:26.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this day and age in America, I think most people are so accustomed to seeing tattoos in different settings - including academia and the workplace - that it's not an issue at all. In your case, especially something that shows your passion for math, I don't see it being a problem. I got my undergrad in Math. My career is a Unix sysadmin. I work in Silicon Valley at a large internet company, and quite a number of engineers and programmers here have tattoos. I personally have tattoos but they are mostly on my upper arms and get hidden by my shirts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14023" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T18:17:26.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19502" CreationDate="2014-04-18T19:23:03.567" Score="15" ViewCount="982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have very little formal training, but I believe I have some ideas to share. I have surveyed the terrain of ideas I need and have the complete picture in some haphazard form in my head. It is seeming quite impossible for me to write anything that looks good, complete and coherent. In attempting to do this I have read my previous draft and it seems hopeless... I am not sure what I can do, at this point. I'm not in a hurry, I can spend a month on the text to get the technique right. More specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a text that trains you on how to write a mathematical physics paper?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to acquire such skills informally? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11187" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T14:48:05.273" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T13:05:39.647" Title="Are there resources for learning how to write a scientific paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T19:38:37.167" Score="2" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed master's thesis with an advisor in Industrial Engineering and I am pursuing PhD with another professor in same department. My PhD involves statistics heavily and I am not at all good with statistics. In fact I have C in two mandatory statistics courses I took in the masters program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually this lab works with a Chinese statistics professor. I find it very difficult to understand her. I find her to be very knowledgeable but are just not good at explaining things. Would it be acceptable if I asked my advisor to bring my master's advisor on board the PhD committee so that she can help me with the statistics material? He taught entry level statistics courses in masters program and helped me substantially with the statistics material of my master's thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will I have any leeway to do something like this especially when he is funding me for PhD, and what will be the best way to bring this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14285" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T17:12:10.253" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T22:19:30.270" Title="How much leeway will i have in suggesting a co-adviser or committee member when i am funded by a professor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19500" CreationDate="2014-04-18T19:53:23.127" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be acceptable if I asked my advisor to bring my master's advisor on board the PhD committee so that she can help me with the statistics material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can definitely ask your advisor. Describe why you think this professor would be helpful on your committee, then see what your advisor has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will I have any leeway to do something like this especially when he is funding me for PhD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting funding from someone doesn't mean they get to dictate everything about your PhD career without any input from you. It's your PhD and ultimately your responsibility to make sure you succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, depending on your department rules, the decision as to who goes on your committee may very well be yours, not your advisor's. Of course, you should consult with your advisor on something like this, because part of his job is to help you make these decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should understand that this is &lt;em&gt;your research career&lt;/em&gt; regardless of who funds it. And even if your advisor is a great scientist and advisor and you respect his advice, you should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; feel that you have &quot;leeway&quot; to make &lt;strong&gt;suggestions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and what will be the best way to bring this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just set up a meeting with your advisor and say &quot;I wanted to talk about my PhD committee. Here is why I think Professor X would be a valuable person to have on my committee...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not commenting on whether or not your MS advisor is &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; a valuable person to have on your committee - just that it's always OK to make a suggestion like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T22:19:30.270" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T22:19:30.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19499" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:25:28.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some resources on writing mathematics, which I assume will be useful in mathematical physics, are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald E. Knuth, Tracy L. Larrabee, and Paul M. Roberts, &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Writing&lt;/em&gt;, (Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1989), ii+115pp. ISBN 0-88385-063-X. [You can download this (minus illustrations) from Knuth's website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/klr.html&quot;&gt;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/klr.html&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.R. Halmos, &quot;How to write mathematics&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Enseignement Math.&lt;/em&gt; (2) 16 1970 123–152. [There are copies of this floating around online; I'm not linking because I'm not sure of their copyright status.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my own experience, guides like these are useful because they point out (1) a lot of things to avoid, and (2) a relatively small number of useful tips and tricks. Developing a good writing style is best accomplished by reading as much good writing as you can (including both scientific and other scholarly writing), writing as best you can, and seeking as much good feedback on your work as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also Jean-Pierre Serre's lecture &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZpdXWm4Gg&quot;&gt;How to write mathematics badly&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which is informative, funny, and (since his examples are taken from experience) tragic. Look out for the instance he highlights of &quot;without&quot; being abbreviated to &quot;with.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastEditorUserId="13547" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T20:57:33.750" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T20:57:33.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:45:25.963" Score="9" ViewCount="14328" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the differences in responsibilities among them? Can anybody give me an example to elucidate that. Also why are non-tenured faculty more interested in a co-adviser role than a committee member role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14285" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T20:49:49.927" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T02:44:21.943" Title="What's the difference in responsibilities between a committee member, a co-advisor and an advisor in an PhD committee?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19244" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:47:31.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postdoc salaries as high as 60K are not unheard of, especially if the cost of living is high and/or you have children. I believe some very competitive &quot;independent postdoc&quot; positions can even reach as high as 70K. However, these salaries may not increase annually, while typically lower salaries do increase annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW I believe the average 1st year postdoc salary is under 40K (and so is the NIH postdoc salary guideline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T20:47:31.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19503" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:49:12.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advisor is the person who is formally recognized as the person most responsible for supervising the student's thesis research. A co-advisor is a person who also works with the doctoral candidate, but often in a secondary role (perhaps providing scientific but not financial support, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own case, for instance, I had two advisors who were fully equal in both supervising the research and supporting it financially. However, formally one of them had to be in charge of the thesis research—I believe they decided it by a coin flip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis committee is a body that convenes only sporadically (although sometimes on a regular schedule) to ensure that a doctoral candidate is progressing according to expectations. The committee—which usually includes the advisor and several other faculty members (or other advisors)—is also usually responsible for deciding when a candidate is ready to schedule a defense of the thesis and graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this is a very different role than a co-advisor, who takes on a much more active role in supervising and guiding the doctoral candidate's work. While a thesis committee member rarely is a co-author on a paper with the candidate, a co-advisor often will be. Consequently, it's much more useful for a faculty member to be a co-advisor than simply a committee member. (The latter role will not carry anywhere near as much &quot;credit&quot; toward a tenure case as being an advisor or a co-advisor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T20:49:12.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T21:09:00.137" Score="0" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take my courses in a very specific sequence which I believe maximizes my learning potential and enjoyment. Unfortunately, that means that some key 'checkbox' courses I am to take might be put off until senior year. Will grad schools assume that I'm just not taking them at all? Or will it be OK to take them even as I'm applying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14286" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:02:22.227" Title="Order of taking courses" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2014-04-18T22:53:54.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a very good options for you is to apply to very competitive (private) US institutions for undergraduate (i.e. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention these specifically for a few reasons. They all have very well regarded graduate programs where you will have the flexibility to take very advanced courses. They have extraordinary peers with similar advanced backgrounds (my brother, who was an undergraduate at MIT, took many years of graduate math coursework in high school). Finally they have very good financial aid opportunities. I will say from my own experience (at Yale), that strongly prepared undergraduates are known to jump straight into graduate coursework and research freshman and sophomore year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to do if you are interested in mathematics (or physics) professionally is to interact with great professors and go to a great graduate program. I am extremely skeptical that the top notch of graduate math programs (the past list + Berkeley + University of Michigan + Cambridge + etc.) would take you right now. People apply from undergraduate with graduate coursework, research experience, and letters of recommendation from very well known people in the field. The last point is especially important for these top notch programs (math is a fairly small community). By going through undergraduate, you will make these connections early on, find a subfield, position yourself for the very best program in your interested subfield, and get into an excellent program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to note is that assuming your &quot;local university&quot; isn't a large, well-regarded state-school (or international equivalent), these courses are simply not up to the level of those you would take at top-tier university. Generally, in my experience taking courses at my local university in high school, theses course are very computational and those that are proof-based aren't nearly as challenging as those I found at Yale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14289" LastEditorUserId="14289" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T06:40:08.467" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T06:40:08.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T23:21:52.150" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this kind of question is appropriate here, but if not here, probably nowhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to know if there is a) any mailing list for jobs in neuroscience or anatomy (apart from the computer vision and machine learning mailing lists), specially of computational nature. Also, b) is there any agency in Europe/US that supports and grants postdoctoral fellowships in these areas? (like Marie Curie actions or Humboldt Fellowships). I'm a mathematician who is willing to switch to these areas, and with a research team, I'm planning to apply fr this kind of fellowships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example I found is European Respiratory Society offering some Marie Curie postdoc fellowships, just to give you an idea what I'm talking about in b).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ersnet.org/ers-funding/fellowships/post-doc/eu-co-funded-respire-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ersnet.org/ers-funding/fellowships/post-doc/eu-co-funded-respire-2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T08:47:44.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T08:47:44.997" Title="European fellowships for neuroscience or anatomy?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19495" CreationDate="2014-04-18T23:37:41.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One main aspect of the law is &quot;innocent until proven otherwise&quot;. That said it is them who need to proof that you plagiarized. First thing I would do would be to speak to them, explain that you strongly disagree with their decision, and that you want to see their proof to analyze it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have that proof try to figure out how good it is. If it only contains partial similarities, point out to them that given the amount of articles on the Internet, it is actually very likely that parts of your work look similar to the work of someone else, even though you never read it. That would not be a proof that you copied something, only a hint at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If large passages of your text are similar or identical to what someone else wrote, you have a problem. At this point you can only hope that they believe you or you have to take a lawyer and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T23:37:41.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19510" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T00:35:21.793" Score="16" ViewCount="1614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in the computer science academic community for at least five years, and I noticed that there are several so called &lt;em&gt;summer schools&lt;/em&gt; organized every year everywhere.&#xA;I have been knowing just few people attend them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These summer schools are addressed mainy to MS and PhD students, last around 3-7 days, and may include a final exam. They often include important international speakers coming from overseas.&#xA;I have been thinking about them, and there are two issues that concerns them, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem I notice is that is very very hard to make students learn something important in just 3-7 days. They should have more time to re-process all the things that they learned, do some practice, and think about. They include a hipe of subjects that is sometimes very large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is that, since the students are studying their own courses, why should they spend their time and money to go to a summer school instead of attending a course at their own university? It's not clear to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, &lt;strong&gt;why do some people organize summer school?&#xA;Is it just teaching passion?&#xA;Or is it a way to advertise the organizers and their university?&#xA;Or is an occasion for networking?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or, is it something that I am missing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T18:31:16.007" Title="Why do people organize summer schools?" Tags="&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19548" CreationDate="2014-04-19T01:07:49.293" Score="0" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I knew a foreigner in the astronomy department at the university here who was a &quot;post-postdoc&quot; independent researcher. How could she have her own office in the astronomy department as an independent researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T20:45:48.253" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T09:27:57.847" Title="&quot;Post-Postdoc&quot; Independent Researcher with Office in University?" Tags="&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2014-04-19T02:21:33.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked this question on the place, where most of the people are actually professors or want to become one. There is no surprise that mostly you will here one answer &amp;quot;Yes, this is ok, encouraged and should be so&amp;quot;. But this is life, and there is no easy answers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also some of the people here compare cheating on the exam as mugging and may be some other crime things, but in my opinion it is not even close. Just to compare, I am really curious how many from professors here have never cheated in any form during their academic life? And how many of them have never stolen anything? I think the number will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is up to you to decide. What what you can gain, what you can lose and come up with your decision. Yes, I agree, that teachers want to know who cheated/abused them, but students want to have trust in their peers and the same way as teacher can assume that cheaters violate the trust in them, your fellow students can assume that you violated a trust in them. Also more and more students lose their trust in education, because it does not really represent the knowledge and sometimes &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; on the exam only shows that you was able to get &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; on the exam (nothing regarding you knowledge). So why would you memorize &lt;code&gt;when Napoleon raised to power&lt;/code&gt; if any monkey with Wikipedia can give you this result and half of his biography in one minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So think it in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29227-it-s-just-business-nothing-personal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is just business, nothing personal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weigh pros and cons in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros can be&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you will score higher on the exam on average&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teacher will like you more and you can get advantage later&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teacher comes to think that you are not a cheater&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you restore equality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons can be&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your classmates will hate/not trust you (not only one that cheated). Maybe you will never get help from them neither in your school life or even after it. Being outcast is hard, being outcast who needs help even harder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teacher might think that you are a cheater too and want to hide yourself this way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I would be in a situation when I and 30 people, whom I do not know, fighting for 2 Harvard (or whatever you people value) sits. Then there is no way I would be quite. But if these are people with whom I play basketball taking math/history/language exam, than good luck to you guys, and if you need help I will try to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So life is not back and white. Most of the time it is in grayish. To put this even further: &lt;code&gt;One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You also might have a strong belief that cheating is terrible, or something similar&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you, fighter for justice in entire world, helped to restore justice. (Some people do believe in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;just world&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you genuinely think that this is wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you do not like people who do this (or they do not like you)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you like the teacher and want to help him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to change how cheating is viewed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case, think have you ever cheated yourself. I have seen a lot of people who can not stand cheating, but cheat by themselves. With one of them I even had discussion about it, when the person came to me asking for a solutions to programming homework. Funny enough, this person was rising her concern how sharing is bad and had all the discussion with instructor how should he prevent it. So when I asked what changed in her views about the world, to my surprise, she was not looking at it as a cheating. In her eyes it was just minor help for the person in need. No matter how hard I tried to show that this is exactly what she was fighting against, she did not want to hear about this as cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7096" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2020-11-18T13:25:45.710" LastActivityDate="2020-11-18T13:25:45.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19556" CreationDate="2014-04-19T02:38:23.933" Score="4" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to apply for PhD programs of biology or biomedical science. I understand that I need certain semesters of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and mathematics. Because I'm going to graduate in four years while double-majoring in math and biology, I can't afford to take courses of various subjects, as I can take, except for subjects belonging to math and science, only one semester of social study and humanities, two semesters of foreign language, and four semesters of PE. Since my college has quasi-open curriculum, there's no problem with the credit requirement of my school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But should I take courses of various subjects for my PhD admission? Does variety of courses taken in undergrad matter in PhD admission?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10189" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:12:40.663" Title="Does taking courses of various subjects matter in PhD admission?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19503" CreationDate="2014-04-19T02:44:21.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gradresearch.unimelb.edu.au/handbooks/phd/supervision.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This breakdown&lt;/a&gt; of the different roles comes from the University of Melbourne:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Principal supervisor&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. advisor)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;An appropriately qualified person who takes primary responsibility for the academic supervision of a candidate’s research and candidature&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Co-supervisor&lt;/strong&gt; (co-advisor)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;An appropriately qualified person designated to assist in the academic supervision of a candidate's research and candidature&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advisory committee chair&lt;/strong&gt; (committee member)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A registered principal supervisor in the administrative department of the candidate who is neither a supervisor of the candidate nor associated with the research project and who is appointed to oversee the advisory committee&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In committee meetings (12 month confirmation, 2 year review, etc.) the chair organises the paperwork, basically. They are also there if the candidate needs to confide about their supervisors and potentially make a complaint if one of the supervisors' actions is unethical, or if there is some kind of professional or personal issue between them and the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your second question, I would suggest that non-tenured staff/faculty would push to be a co-adviser rather than committee member, because it raises their supervisory profile whereas being a committee member is really just a bureaucratic position. When applying for tenure-track positions, employers will look at the theses that the person has supervised or co-supervised, in addition to a range of other things, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T02:44:21.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T03:36:47.603" Score="4" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a job application, I received electronic version of diploma and transcript (not scanned copy, but the official electronic file that the university prepared to be printed on official diploma and transcript papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common in the US universities to give the electronic version of diploma and transcript to graduates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that the only version which will be released is that printed on the university official papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an electronic version of diploma and transcript as valid as a scanned copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:31:32.927" Title="Electronic version of diploma in the US universities?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-19T04:11:17.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, unfortunately: It Depends. There are indeed people who will judge you on a tat or piercing or other body mod, just as there are people who will judge you if you come to work in ripped jeans and a T-shirt with three different colors of housepaint and a layer of cat fur. This tends to be less of an issue in places where you either aren't dealing with customers who might react badly, or are expected to be a bit eccentric; academia and &quot;research&quot; types can get away with more than folks in the main line of business can, and sales personnel are generally expected to be well-turned-out but otherwise non-distracting so the customer can concentrate on the transaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't something that's displayed during the interview or at work, it's unlikely to ever be an issue. If you want it more visible, you are gambling. It's not a major risk, but don't assume it's 100% harmless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course a tat which implies you're involved with anything resembling a violent or hateful group is likely to get you invited to interview elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically: Don't be stupid. If you do it, get something tasteful, don't shove it in people's faces and force them to react when they'd really rather not deal with it, and for gods' sake don't get a tat until you've wanted the same design for at least a full year. (If in any doubt, friends who do skin art tell me, consider a temporary and see if you keep buying and re-applying it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastEditorUserId="10225" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T21:51:31.467" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T21:51:31.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T04:53:21.890" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are some journal articles so expensive, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asp/jne/2014/00000006/00000001/art00004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that costs more than $12.55 per page to purchase? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T14:17:08.747" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T21:30:52.253" Title="Why are some journal articles so expensive?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-04-23T10:53:15.770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19468" CreationDate="2014-04-19T05:05:55.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for professors on sabbatical leave to bring their graduate advisees who are at the thesis writing stage with them for the sabbatical leave.  I've seen this particularly at some of the NSF funded research centers that I've visited.  However, if you haven't yet started working with this professor, and especially if you have significant course work left to complete, then it probably makes more sense for you to stay where you are, take course work and perhaps get started working with your advisor via email, internet teleconferences, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should meet with your prospective advisor and ask him/her whether they would like to take you on as an advisee or not.  If they're willing to take you as an advisee, then they'll probably have some plan for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't discussed your funding situation.  If you're currently working as a TA, then you obviously couldn't expect this funding to continue at another university.  If your advisor will fund you as an RA, then it may well be possible to take this funding with you to the other university.  Another possibility is that your advisor might be able to arrange for you to get funding from the other institution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T05:05:55.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19510" CreationDate="2014-04-19T05:45:25.163" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;A summer school is usually a way to have a focused series of lectures on a specific topic. The best analogy I can think of is that of a master class for musicians. The audience are students who are usually sufficiently adept that they can handle the intensity and focus of a short program taught at a high level. For example, if you're just starting out in grad school in computer science, a summer school in specialized aspects of (say) deep learning might not be very useful. This at least partially answers your first question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summer schools are useful because they can bring a set of experts on a topic together in one location, at a venue where this expertise might not otherwise exist. In computer science, this might also be part of the explanation of why there are so many summer schools in Europe: since many topics in the field are dominated by the US, it makes sense to have summer schools in Europe for the reason above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speakers of course get the opportunity to travel and teach a focused group. It's a prestigious thing to be invited to such an event. The organizers make their mark (and benefit their institution) by organizing such an event. The students learn about a topic that they might not otherwise get exposure to, from the experts in the field. And that is an answer to your second question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T05:45:25.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19530" CreationDate="2014-04-19T06:07:34.533" Score="5" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have looked around on Google, only to find zero answers. So, I hope someone could help me out with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for someone aiming to get a PhD in Computer Science (AI), would it be possible to obtain one with a BA in Computer Science? If the degree type doesn't matter, what are the positives/negatives of getting a PhD with an BA/BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you,&#xA;Ash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14296" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T15:25:20.533" Title="What is the difference of a BA/BS in Computer Science for obtaining a Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-19T07:58:15.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the reason why care must be taken when inviting some other researcher into team for collaboration. If he has once been written as a co-author, he has a certain right to block the publication of the shared work. This may or may not be fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, it is better to invite additional researchers only if they can contribute some substantial new results or perhaps some type of analysis that is difficult to do without they help (writing and evaluating some complex mathematical model about results, for instance). In such cases, the contributed part can be identified and removed, publishing without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Differently, if the invited researcher contributed in general discussions and planning over all project, there is no clear way to get rid of such contribution easily. Then all that remains is to negotiate, if all sides agree to publish with the fewer authors, maybe that is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T07:58:15.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19528" CreationDate="2014-04-19T11:11:42.040" Score="4" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm producing documentation for an A-Level Computing project. Throughout my project I've been numbering my tables and figures relative to the chapter and section they're contained in. So for example, instead of doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;2. Design&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;    &lt;h2&gt;2.3. Object analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;    &lt;strong&gt;Figure 4 - diagram of objects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;2. Design&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;    &lt;h2&gt;2.3. Object analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;    &lt;strong&gt;Figure 2.3.1. - diagram of objects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if the latter style of numbering is considered bad practice. Should my figures instead always be absolutely numbered? Or should I use absolute numbering and restart the number for each section? I'm not required to conform to an academic style, so this is more for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14302" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T12:29:17.540" Title="Using relative numbering for tables and figures" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2014-04-19T12:03:16.313" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an opinion on releasing solutions, but the exams should definitely be released.  Some students will have access to them through previous students, one way or another. Making them officially available makes sure everyone has the same access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T12:03:16.313" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19526" CreationDate="2014-04-19T12:29:17.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your school does not have a specific scheme in place for such reports, then you are free to use whatever scheme you feel most logically identifies things. Personally, I prefer the longer style of numbering, because it helps me to orient myself through a large document. It's certainly not bad practice, although it's somewhat unusual to &quot;drill down&quot; all the way to the subsection level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T12:29:17.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2014-04-19T15:16:29.300" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly say &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am very unconvinced by this argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His justification was that he didn't want students studying exams rather than the actual course material which I find to be interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is there a mismatch between the course material and the exams? This angers students and doesn't accomplish anything. Well-designed exams don't admit shortcuts, but rather force the students to learn the material which the instructor wants to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is human nature to respond to carrots and sticks --- ask anyone employed as a personal trainer. These carrots and sticks can be lined up with whatever intrinsic goals the instructor wants to promote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T15:16:29.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19520" CreationDate="2014-04-19T15:25:20.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no difference.&lt;/strong&gt; There is no global standard for what qualifies as a BS and what qualifies as a BA; it's entirely up to the university.  There is no way to tell from the letters on your diploma how broad or rigorous your degree program is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer science programs in the US, at least in engineering colleges, are accredited by ABET. Those accredited programs tend to give Bachelor of Science degrees. But CS accreditation is relatively new, and neither graduate scihools nor employers really care whether your degree is accredited (except for some government jobs which require accredited degrees by law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; matter is which classes you took, and how rigorous those classes are (or appear to be, based on publicly available course descriptions/materials).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the degree type doesn't matter, what are the positives/negatives of getting a PhD with an BA/BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only advantage of getting a PhD with a BS instead of a BA is that you have one more S in your CV and one less A. This is also the only disadvantqge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T15:25:20.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19510" CreationDate="2014-04-19T15:32:33.673" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are similar summer schools in mathematics, though there are some differences from what you describe.  I've helped organize a summer school so I'll try to answer some of these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math summer schools I know about are somewhat longer, usually 2-4 weeks.  They don't provide formal academic credit and there are no exams.  They are aimed at PhD students who are at least a couple of years in, though often postdocs and junior faculty are also welcome.  Usually there are several lecturers, each of whom is a well-known expert on a particular topic, and their lectures are tightly focused on that topic.  The lecturers may come from all over the world; they are not just faculty at the institution hosting the summer school.  Sometimes there is also time set aside for students to give short talks on their own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your first question, it is true that this is a short amount of time; it's an intensive learning experience.  (I'd agree that 3-7 days would seem too short; that's more like what mathematicians call a &quot;short course&quot;, which is usually organized in conjunction with a conference rather than as a standalone event.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I don't think it's expected that the students will absorb all the material right away.  Rather, they will gain exposure to the topic and its main ideas.  For an in-depth understanding, they'd be expected to study related books and papers on their own over months or years, but the summer school will give them a place to start and some preparation for the task.  There would certainly be advantages to a longer program, but the logistics would become prohibitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question, you must realize that a summer school course fulfills a very different purpose than a regular graduate course.  Regular courses typically give you a broad view of a subject (e.g. probability theory) and focus mainly on its basic techniques and classical results.  They provide a foundation for research on any topic in the subject.  A summer school course covers only a specific topic (say, random walk in random environment), which is usually the focus of active research, and tries to acquaint the student with the state of the art.  Very few universities would offer a regular course like that.  (At best, if they happened to have an expert on that topic on their faculty, they might occasionally give a one-time &quot;topics course&quot;.)  At the summer schools I knew, students were expected to &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; have taken 2-3 semesters of standard graduate probability theory, which is all that most universities would offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to money, summer schools often have their own funding.  Students do not pay tuition and usually receive free housing, and may also have some of their travel expenses reimbursed by the summer school (and hopefully their home institution provides some travel funding as well).  So students usually pay little or nothing out of their own pockets.  And regarding &quot;time&quot;, these are &lt;em&gt;summer&lt;/em&gt; schools. At least in the US, most graduate programs don't offer regular courses in the summer, so the student isn't sacrificing regular coursework to attend.  They may be sacrificing research time, but the hope is that the summer school provides new ideas that will ultimately make them more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Networking is a consideration as well.  A summer school gives students the opportunity to meet renowned experts who they might otherwise never come in contact with.  Just as importantly, they get to make connections with other students with similar interests from around the world, with whom they may someday form collaborations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, they are fun!  You get to travel to a new part of the world and meet interesting people.  There are usually social events, outings, hikes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main motivation for summer school organizers is to create a program that will ultimately benefit and build the research community in a discipline.  Exposure for the institution, networking opportunities for the organizers, funding, etc, are also nice, but secondary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T15:32:33.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19481" CreationDate="2014-04-19T15:48:33.797" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second step is to submit a strong application: Good grades from a good department, a compelling statement of purpose (which reiterates your interest in your target advisor), and strong letters of recommendation that address your research potential in personal, specific, technical, and credible detail. And then write the professor to tell her you've applied and reiterate your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're building a strong application, you should send it to several other schools as well (minus your interest in that particular advisor, of course).&#xA;There is absolutely nothing you can do to &lt;em&gt;guarantee&lt;/em&gt; admission to  your first-choice program, so you need to cultivate other options as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T15:48:33.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19534" CreationDate="2014-04-19T15:49:12.170" Score="13" ViewCount="7963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that some universities give postdoctoral fellows an official certificate (similar to the PhD diploma) after finishing their postdoctoral job. On the other hand, some of postdoctoral positions are just simple research (or even academic) jobs. I have even seen that some professors pay the postdoctoral fellows without contract (from their grants).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How common is a &lt;strong&gt;certificate of postdoctoral studies&lt;/strong&gt;? Do future employers expect applicants to give them certificate of postdoctoral studies as well as PhD diploma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T12:19:49.870" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T11:37:06.197" Title="Do postdoctoral studies have official certificate?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19533" CreationDate="2014-04-19T16:25:41.983" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly not in the US.  I never got any kind of certificate for the postdoc I did, and in fact I'd never heard of such a thing until your question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current employer never asked for any formal verification of my postdoc.  They received letters of recommendation from my postdoc supervisor and other colleagues at that institution, and I think most US academic employers would consider that sufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, they never asked for my PhD diploma either.  In the US, we don't use the diploma for official purposes; it's just a decorative piece of paper.  The official document of choice is a transcript sent directly from the university (and my employer did ask for one of those).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T16:25:41.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19533" CreationDate="2014-04-19T16:43:44.330" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are expected to have publications while working as a post doc. These publications document your institution, topic and success while working as a post doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also ask for recommendation. I do not think it is a separate &quot;diploma&quot; because unlike PhD, post doc is already more work than studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T16:43:44.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19540" CreationDate="2014-04-19T16:46:41.823" Score="21" ViewCount="3140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my undergrad Bachelor's thesis in computational physics where I do C++ programming. In some C++ books, I read some things that were quite useful during programming, but they do not have a direct connection to the physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I was proficient with LaTeX before I started the thesis, I do not see a point in adding anything about that in the references. That is rather a skill than specific facts, and I did not really read about it during my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing are resources that I consult for an introduction into a topic when I do not understand something in a paper. After reading that introduction material, I often understand the paper to a sufficient extent. When I then write the text, I think I could get by by only referencing the paper since it contains virtually everything needed. But it also seems wrong to omit that I read introduction material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I cite sources like the C++ book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I cite introduction material like Wikipedia, websites or easy books?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13232" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T15:49:35.817" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T15:49:35.817" Title="Do I cite introductory material in a subject that helped me indirectly?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19450" CreationDate="2014-04-19T16:54:17.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, this just does not work in Europe, while I am not sure if they have unwritten rules or maybe even written rules. I know several people who tried to stay in science as post docs because they time-limited position of the &quot;senior researcher&quot; has expired, and I know post docs that were desperate enough to apply for a PhD second time - would be kind of a &quot;dream PhD student&quot;, but such applications seem never accepted, same as applications for laboratory technicians where no degree is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European scientific system is one way only. Student, PhD student, post doc, researcher, professor (head of laboratory/department). Each level is progressively more difficult to achieve with many people dropping out to industry rather than making the second step up. It may be exceptions, but I have never seen anybody making a successful step down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T16:54:17.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19499" CreationDate="2014-04-19T16:58:56.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most journals have the &quot;instructions to contributors&quot; section somewhere near the end, and it may be the link on their website. Such sections often contain many useful hints that are more general than just formatting the paper for the particular journal, and you can read instructions of several journals even if you do not plan to submit a paper to them now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T01:01:30.740" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T01:01:30.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19499" CreationDate="2014-04-19T17:15:19.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal favourite is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ee.ucr.edu/~rlake/Whitesides_writing_res_paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; by George Whitesides, one of the most significant contributors from the organic chemistry field. Some of his main points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The importance of outlining, i.e. having a good plan for the structure of the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start writing early! Your thoughts on how to prepare the final paper could provide useful direction on how to efficiently gather key bits of data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tables, equations and figures are key - someone skim-reading your paper later on may just end up reading the intro, conclusion and the captions on your data, so make sure you can get your point across without blocks of texts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The word &quot;this&quot; requires an explicit reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stick to past tense when describing your experimental work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay attention to the formatting requirements of your chosen journal to avoid delays upon submission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the points made in the guide are field-specific. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7051" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T17:15:19.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19536" CreationDate="2014-04-19T18:04:03.237" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't typically cite material that helps you understand a topic. You cite material that you explicitly use in a paper. So source books like a C++ book don't need to be cited unless you're using an unusual and explicit construction mentioned in one of those books. For example, there's a technique to draw a geometric object using GPUs that was first mentioned in an graphics programming textbook: people using the technique will cite that textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is not supposed to be a repository of original material, so if you found something on wikipedia then there's likely to be an original source that Wikipedia should cite and that you should as well (once you verify it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a website it's a similar principle. If the website contains code that you're using, then cite it (or better yet, cite the associated material that the code authors might suggest you cite instead). But if the website merely contains expository material that helps understanding, then you don't cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T18:04:03.237" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19536" CreationDate="2014-04-19T18:42:30.990" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Suresh's answer, I agree that it is not &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; to cite books, etc, that gave you background information but weren't directly used in your work.  There's no general rule that &quot;you must cite everything you read&quot;.  However, if you found a source particularly helpful, it might be nice to give a citation to share it with the reader.  This is often phrased like &quot;A useful introduction to this topic can be found in [3].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T18:42:30.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T19:14:20.910" Score="7" ViewCount="5480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interviewing over Skype, for a research position at German university. So far my interviewer and I communicated via email, and he sounded formal but pleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no clue how interviews are conducted at German universities. Is it subject-based or do they just want to know the student's skills and motivations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since i am interviewing for a position in machine learning, should i expect questions about the current trends and research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14309" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T21:51:25.747" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T13:07:22.700" Title="Interview for a PhD position at a German university" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19546" CreationDate="2014-04-19T19:34:53.343" Score="20" ViewCount="3317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an MSc Student of Computer Science at a department that is considered to be in the top ten CS departments in the world (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2014/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=&quot;&gt;QS Rankings here&lt;/a&gt;). I am telling this, just to let you know, that I have some good enough (I guess) general background in Computer Science. However, I am just an MSc student, not somebody who is a specialist, knows a lot of things including the current research conducted in a specific field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asked today, from an editor of a journal, to review a paper. I would loved to do that, but I will probably respond negatively, as I can understand the danger of saying yes to a paper that does not actually show a good amount of research just because I am unaware of the current research and/or expertise on that field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; most of the papers in Computer Science and I found mistakes some times that were reported to their authors, who admitted that their papers had some mistakes. Therefore, I may be able to find some errors, but I am afraid that I may be unable to say whether a paper fully justifies and in a correct way what the authors want to show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What should I respond to the editor provided the above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11492" LastEditorUserId="11492" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T19:46:49.447" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T13:23:21.013" Title="Is it OK for an MSc Student to Review a Scientific Paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19545" CreationDate="2014-04-19T19:54:59.780" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question: at what point in one's academic career should one begin refereeing papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first order of business is to make sure that the editor knows you are an MSc student.  In fact, inquiring into why you were chosen to referee the paper seems reasonable to me: the answer may help you determine whether you are qualified.  Perhaps for instance your thesis advisor got the request and passed it along to you.  That's a good situation for you: you can read the paper for correctness (in my experience, assuming the requisite base level of competence and understanding, the younger the referee, the more likely she is to conscientiously read and check a paper for correctness) and then solicit your advisor's help in determining the appropriateness for the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, no matter what this is a good opportunity to talk to your advisor: she will be the best person (aside from you) to help you determine whether or not you are &quot;ready&quot; to competently referee the paper.  If she says no, you should probably turn down the request.  If she says yes, see if you can get her help on the higher level issues that you are rightly concerned about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say that you have to start refereeing papers sometime (or you become someone who never referees papers even into the later stages of their career: I know such people, and although so far as I know they landed in that situation through no fault of their own, it is clearly an undesirable state of affairs for the community at large), and no matter what age or rank you start, you will still have to wrestle with the issues of knowing what standards to impose.  (For that matter, sometimes I get a referee request from a journal that I have never read or even heard of before.  I try to ask the editor for more information but have sometimes just been told things which amount to &quot;Use your best judgment.&quot;  So I did.) There is a lot of subjectivity in the refereeing process, and though you may feel less confident about your opinion as a very junior academic, in reality it is far from clear that what you do will be worse than what some more experienced person would do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shorter Version&lt;/strong&gt;: You need to get a sense of whether this is a job that you can handle competently in a reasonable amount of time.  Don't be afraid to ask for guidance in determining the answer to this.   Being a master's student does not disqualify you in any obvious way.  If you can do it -- without interfering too much with your other responsibilities, of course -- then you probably should.  It will be a valuable learning experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T19:54:59.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19533" CreationDate="2014-04-19T20:45:05.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the UK. I've never heard of a &quot;certificate of postdoctoral studies&quot;, not least because postdocs aren't studying towards a qualification: they're working. I've also never heard of a postdoc not having a formal contract of employment. In fact, I suspect it would be illegal to do so in the UK (and probably most western countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T20:45:05.167" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19511" CreationDate="2014-04-19T21:29:56.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities offer positions with titles such as &quot;research professor&quot; or &quot;staff scientist&quot; or other similar titles. These all indicate the same basic phenomenon: a researcher who is generally supported by &quot;soft money&quot; (In other words, a position subject to sufficient funding), but who is otherwise more or less &quot;permanent&quot; staff. Such scientists may or may not have their own dedicated office space, depending upon overall space constraints within the department and within their boss's research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T21:29:56.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19544" CreationDate="2014-04-19T21:34:43.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work in Germany, and have exactly the situation xLeitix mentions in his comments: I have positions which I am able to choose directly who I want to hire, independent of any admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such interviews, I want to have a sense of the student's technical prowess, as well as a sense of their motivation and interest in the position itself. Since such positions are usually directly associated with particular projects, I want to make sure that the candidate is reasonably qualified to tackle the specific project (rather than just being generally competent in the field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T21:34:43.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19454" CreationDate="2014-04-19T21:46:45.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment on the earlier thread, I claimed that a co-author always has the right not to receive credit for work done with respect to a particular paper. I believe this is because there are certain rights and responsibilities that researchers have with respect to publications. Particularly relevant here is the right to receive appropriate credit for their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, associated with any right is also the option &lt;strong&gt;not to exercise&lt;/strong&gt; said right. For instance, author X may believe that co-worker Y has contributed enough to merit co-authorship. If Y chooses to decline co-authorship, this does not prevent author X from publishing the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, by exercising the right to co-authorship comes additional responsibilities. Among those is the responsibility to participate actively and constructively in the preparation of the manuscript. It is unethical to insist on  co-authorship for the purposes of scuttling a manuscript through inaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, none of the above places the restriction on authors &lt;em&gt;voluntarily&lt;/em&gt; relinquishing intellectual property rights to the paper (that is, not have their names appear as co-authors, but still allowing the manuscript to proceed). They also have the right to &quot;take their marbles and go home&quot;—essentially withdraw from the complete process, which can of course be much more difficult in collaborative projects involving multiple groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: authors have the right to accept credit, and the right &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to accept credit, but must accept the consequences of that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T21:46:45.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19545" CreationDate="2014-04-19T21:53:24.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it directly matters what point you are in your education or what university you are studying at. It is more important that you have written and published some papers yourself in the field. You need to have had the experience of having your own papers reviewed before you can review someone else's, just so that you know first hand what is expected of you. It is not common for someone at MSc level to have that experience but if you have then that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T21:53:24.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19533" CreationDate="2014-04-19T21:54:19.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the only &quot;certificates&quot; of post-doctoral research that I am familiar with would better be classified as &lt;em&gt;certifications&lt;/em&gt;: that is, they indicate the dates for which the postdoctoral associate worked at the given university, and the kinds of duties performed. I know that some universities also give certifications for particular courses taken, but otherwise, I am not actively familiar with &quot;certificates&quot; in the style of a diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T21:54:19.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19506" CreationDate="2014-04-19T22:02:22.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to graduate schools while you are still enrolled as a student, you will normally be asked to provide the most up-to-date transcript you have at the time of the admissions process—and may have to provide a mid-year report if a quarter or semester has elapsed between the time of submission and the decision date. So, the only courses the school may not see may be the ones in which you enroll after such a mid-year report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in general, if you're not leaving too many classes until the very end (in other words, the &quot;standard&quot; load for someone in the field), there won't really be any questions asked—people know that different departments have different ordering and sequences for classes. However, if you are leaving &quot;standard&quot; courses normally taken earlier in the program for the end, you may need to explain why. However, your &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; academic advisor should be able to guide you on whether this will actually be necessary for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:02:22.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19489" CreationDate="2014-04-19T22:07:27.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should note that the reason why there's such a big difference between the US and the European systems is the way master's degrees are handled. In the US, the master's degree is viewed as a &quot;graduate&quot; degree, to be completed after the bachelor's study, which is effectively independent. In Europe, however, the bachelor's degree is largely considered a precursor to the master's degree, which is normally done in succession after the bachelor's degree is complete. Doctoral candidates (post-master's) in Europe do not normally have significant coursework requirements associated with the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, for most PhD positions in Europe, a master's degree is considered a prerequisite. The exception to this are programs that are more or less patterned after the US model, in which a master's degree is acquired as part of a larger PhD program. However, even in these programs, the acquisition of the master's degree is not merely &quot;an option,&quot; as it is in many US programs. Instead, it is a necessary component of what amounts to a dual-degree program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:07:27.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19513" CreationDate="2014-04-19T22:12:40.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are attending universities outside of the US, you normally wouldn't have much in the way of diversity—almost all of your courses are directed toward the general area of your major. So it's not that big a deal not to have too many outside courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, I also think that admissions committees do not place as much weight on courses outside the major as courses in the major. If you are a physics major, for instance, a C in a US History course is not going to be as problematic as a C in electricity and magnetism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:12:40.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19499" CreationDate="2014-04-19T23:14:28.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yep, it may take a while until you are producing texts that you're happy with. Writing is hard! I'll let others advise on mathematical physics, but will recommend two general texts on scientific writing which might be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful book for writing articles in scientific fields is Hilary Glasman-Deal's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5a6Y9G0FsxQC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Research Writing for Non-native Speakers of English&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Although it focuses on scientific writing for non-native speakers, there is also a wealth of information on how to structure an article and make the argument clear. I found it to be full of useful gems, such as, starting on page 1, tackling the introduction after having drafted the report sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fantastic general book on writing is Howard S. Becker's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Social-Scientists-Chicago-Publishing/dp/0226041085/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1397948859&amp;amp;sr=1-2&amp;amp;keywords=writing%20for%20social%20scientists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing for Social Scientists: How to start and finish your thesis, book or article&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Although it's targeted at the social science community, much of the book is relevant for any scholar wishing to write well. Becker emphasizes how perfect prose does not flow from the pen of the genius scientist; rather, prose that looks effortless is (always?) the result of lengthy and repeated redrafting. He also explains how effective the act of writing can be for helping to clarify thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at some related questions here on Academia StackExchange too: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/how-to-write-a-strong-introduction-into-a-research-paper&quot;&gt;How to write a strong introduction to a research paper?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18079/any-place-for-people-with-fear-of-writing&quot;&gt;Any place for people with fear of writing?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/731/how-to-improve-technical-writing&quot;&gt;How to improve technical writing?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T23:14:28.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19560" CreationDate="2014-04-19T23:37:42.360" Score="5" ViewCount="1309" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the USA, many universities enroll PhD students with BSc degree. I think this is the classical scheme, which remained in the US universities. In many countries, it is almost impossible to enroll in a PhD program without MSc degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious how is the trend for MSc programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the USA, do more universities allow PhD enrollment with BSc degree or those allowing are shifting to MSc requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="1165" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T01:39:26.713" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T13:39:12.790" Title="Are Master's becoming required for USA PhD programs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19559" CreationDate="2014-04-20T00:38:13.063" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in my field (mathematics), every US PhD program I know of accepts students with a bachelor's degree.  I see no sign of this changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T00:38:13.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2014-04-20T03:48:37.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question seems to assume that all professors write completely new exams every semester and never reuse an exam question. That's not the case for me, and I don't know of any colleague who does so. In fact, many people at my school use the same stack of photocopied exams over and over, because they don't want to be bothered with the extra work of making fresh copies. I usually write some new questions every time, but I also recycle a lot of questions -- the recycled questions usually constitute the majority of the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from laziness, there are positive educational advantages to reusing questions. Sometimes it is difficult to predict how students will do on a particular question, and most teachers find that they systematically underestimate difficulty. If I've used a question before, I have some idea of how students will do on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any questions are being reused, then it doesn't make sense to release 100% of old exams. Some students will acquire third-party solutions to the problems. (There are sophisticated for-profit web sites that do this sort of thing worldwide.) The students who do this will have an unfair advantage over those who don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a STEM subject that focuses on problem-solving, such as physics or math, it's not necessary to make old exams available so that students can see what kind of questions are likely to be asked. They can tell this from the problem sets that were assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T03:48:37.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-20T08:17:37.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe Tattoos are a great way for self expression and shouldn't be restricted,having said a person with visible tattoos are frowned upon in the academia/ business circles. I am a PhD Student in the US and my professor has a small tattoo on his hand. I guess small tattoos are ok, but bigger graphic ones maynot be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14324" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T08:17:37.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19495" CreationDate="2014-04-20T08:35:21.850" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;People seem confused between criminal law and rules and regulations of an institution.The universities can do whatever the hell they want because they make their own rules, and the law allows them to do that. So &lt;strong&gt;learn the rules&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to get the assessment regulations and all the related policies you find and then read them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See if your uni has an advice place and see what they have to tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Country of your Uni have any Freedom of Information laws. Request everything related to this problem formally and in writing that is, meeting minutes, emails related regulations and rules etc. Your brother may wish to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn the appeals process and be prepared to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may wish to counter with something offensive like a complaint - Get a copy of the complaint policy from your uni...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out what happens when the internal process is exhausted - that is, when you either hand over your case to an advocate or go to court if your issue still has not been resolved and the two parties (you and the uni) still disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think they have a leg to stand on if it's white space or coding style, but if I were you I would get a &lt;code&gt;git diff&lt;/code&gt; of the related assignments of yours and your brother's to see for yourself what you are up against. Moreover, if the &lt;code&gt;git diff&lt;/code&gt; does support your story by suggesting the content of the assignments are different in every regard but style as suggested, then that is evidence right there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: the uni should not really be reusing assignments used in previous years for assessed work, so many people cheat when that happens by getting the answers off someone else who has already taken that class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T14:59:58.720" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T14:59:58.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19544" CreationDate="2014-04-20T08:57:54.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say there is no general rule. You should ask the interviewer if you can prepare something - so you will get more information in which direction the interview will go. You can also directly ask about the length of the talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically I would except a talk about your past projects, i.e. your Master's thesis. Since this is a research PhD position in Germany it is very likely that it is part of a externally funded project. So questions about the project can be expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason for the interview is that the interviewer wants to get a picture of you - on a scientific but also on a personal level. Typically there wont be a hiring committee, but you have to convince the professor that you are the right person for this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T08:57:54.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19511" CreationDate="2014-04-20T09:21:34.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such possibilities depend a lot on recommendations and past achievements of such a researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is a real scientist with good publications and good, interesting project, not only office space, but also laboratory access and resources like access to the supercomputing facility may be provided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most obvious, a researcher may be supported by his home institution (industrial or educational) and would not require also salary for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The similar situation may also result from various funding schemes that allow to obtain the initial grant for a position easily, but make progressively difficult to &lt;em&gt;extend&lt;/em&gt; it over time, regardless of achievements like publications. In such cases some researchers actually work for free for a limited time in institutions that are no longer able to employ them, to finish everything properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T09:27:57.847" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T09:27:57.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19559" CreationDate="2014-04-20T10:29:40.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the field of biology they don't require a Master's. When I interviewed with top Universities, it was pretty uncommon for the candidates to have a Master's degree. Everyone did have a Bachelor's though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14327" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T10:29:40.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19559" CreationDate="2014-04-20T13:39:12.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In physics, doctoral programs typically admit students with bachelor's degrees.  Some programs will award a master's degree partway through, usually upon completion of coursework and successful defense of a research proposal.  A master's degree is also a graceful way for a student who wants to leave a PhD program early to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14332" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T13:39:12.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19544" CreationDate="2014-04-20T14:13:45.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to other ansers, an interview in Germany is often only a opptortunity for the applicant for becoming asked to finally visit the group a half/full day and for the employer to filter out interesting students, when too much good ones apply. In my field, physics, &gt;100 applicants for good PhD positions will be normal. Maybe 3-4 will be invited to visit the group actually and then the professor or a committee makes the decision. If you're living in Germany, they will often simply invite you to make a presentation at the face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fast and important opportunity to check if you can fluently speak the language (at least English) or rule out eventual contradictions/gaps in your CV or ask some informal questions (scientific/engineering family, hobbies,...). But, from my experience phone interviews are not very common in Germany for STEM PhD positions, also not in non-academia job world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have so much experience how overseas applicants are treated here as we don't have many and master degree is often necessary (you didn't say how far away you're from this group), if interesting candidates are even invited to visit groups and traveling costs are paid (at least partly). But traveling within Europe via train to visit the group is common and costs paid. Mostly after 1-2 mails without a pre-phone-interview, because a well written CV is often enough to invite then 3-4 good applicants and fill the position. If you are applying for a very specialized topic from overseas where it's unlikely that there are many good candidates, then I would take this much more seriously and prepare really some text to present your master work in a short and pregnant way. Some interviewer will expect this or tell you explicitly, &lt;strong&gt;but in any case it is your fault to be not prepared&lt;/strong&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would check and was checked myself language proficiency, short descprition of master's work, relation/motivation to/for this PhD work and country, other applications I filed and what I plan to do after finishing PhD. You will maybe also face some hidden questions. There was one position I was interested in where it became known to me after interview and visiting the group (but finally not offered) that the professor searched somebody spending also some post-doc years at this group (a small young group that was just build up) and not ruling this out completely. Such questions some professors will ask you explicitly, some indirect, as it is hard nowadays to forecast your life 5-10 years. But showing the professor that I just wanted to do PhD in his group and city and then move on finally cost me this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally it's an interview of you, nonetheless you should also ask some questions at the end of the interview that are not mentioned in the job description (salary, teaching duties (language demands, master students), advisor, overall time frame, attending conferences, vacation...). It's not a good strategy to bombard employer in mails with such questions before it is not clear that they are really interested in you. Show that you're are thinking determined self-confident curious guy, a bit like a good flirt ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T14:13:45.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11696" CreationDate="2014-04-20T15:23:50.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw it more as &quot;a notification that we're working on kicking you out&quot;. In my first term of college, I failed a calculus 1 class (passed 3 others, but that F pulled my gpa down to a 1.6). and was therefore placed on academic probation. My advisor then forced me to register in the second semester into 2 classes for which my failed calculus 1 class was a prereq (calculus 2 and physics), virtually ensuring that I would fail. I signed an agreement to enroll in the class, added the class, dropped it 15 minutes, and then enrolled in several easy classes in order to boost my gpa. I actually got over a 3.0 my second semester because the classes were so much easier, but I no doubt would have received F's in both the calc 2 class and the physics class had I taken them. After my second semester, I transferred out in good standing, went to the local community college for a year, and transferred to another university. Had I followed my advisor's advice, I almost certainly would have experienced academic dismissal. My take is that they were trying to get people to flunk out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14334" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T15:23:50.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19579" CreationDate="2014-04-20T17:33:34.360" Score="2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to looking for information in graduating level. Is there any collection or library which provide students' theses or dissertations of many universities? Googling just find library for each university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T22:10:44.177" Title="Some collection of students' theses or dissertations" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-11T11:36:03.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-20T20:34:38.513" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year I got accepted in a full time informatics MSc. During that period I also had a fulltime job as a software developer in a startup and I was trying to make some publications with my thesis supervisor from my BSc. However all these simultaneous activities had a very negative impact on me, since I had no free time and I slept very little time every day for an extended period of time. Things became worse when a close relative of mine died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result I decided to quit my job and although we managed to publish some papers with my supervisor I decided to end my collaboration with him as well &lt;strong&gt;(although it was very fruitful) .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned situations also had a great negative impact in my studies and as a result I passed only 2 out of 5 courses in the first semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My studies are really important to me as I want to pursue a PhD. Therefore i decided to fully focus on the MSc and improve my grades. So, during last summer I managed to pass almost every course I had failed before, with high grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently my BSc thesis supervisor called me offering a job in a research program.&#xA;This job interests me a lot since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would really like to work with him again since we had a great&#xA;collaboration...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a high chance of publishing again...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would also earn some money...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&#xA;I am afraid that this may impact negatively once again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my studies (&lt;strong&gt;despite being close to the completion of the MSc&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my grades (and as a result this could possibly affect getting accepted in a PhD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that if I refuse the offer, he may deny future collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your advice about this ?&#xA;Should I accept the job or would that possibly be a bad idea ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12109" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user12109" LastEditDate="2021-03-10T10:41:36.767" LastActivityDate="2021-03-10T10:41:36.767" Title="Decision about getting a job while completing MSc Studies" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19536" CreationDate="2014-04-20T21:07:50.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university gives students a document of guidelines for planning, organising and formatting their dissertation. It addresses this question, and I think their answer is pretty good. This is basically what it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;references and citations&lt;/strong&gt; should contain anything you've quoted directly, anything you've used a figure or diagram from, and anything you've referred in the text to for a fact, assertion, statistic, etc. Any time you state something that's not blindingly  obvious from first principles or the product of your own work, cite where you got it from. (I had a lecturer tell us to imagine we're being followed around by one of those Wikipedia users who goes around sticking [citation needed] on everything.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are other sources that you haven't used &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; but still feel would be valuable to anyone attempting to understand or replicate your work, anything you made significant use of while doing the work that didn't make it into your citations for some reason, or anything you read to help your understanding of the topic in order to carry out the work, you can add a separate &lt;strong&gt;bibliography&lt;/strong&gt; section, which lists those works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm aware, the distinction between &quot;references&quot; and &quot;bibliography&quot; is well-understood in the academic community, but you could always drop in a line or two at the top of each to explain if you feel it would help your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7901" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T21:07:50.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19576" CreationDate="2014-04-20T21:21:44.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's clear that you are reluctant to take on full-time employment after your recent experiences, and understandably so. However, this does not mean that you can't take on part-time work to help pay the bills. This is a fairly common phenomenon for master's students, particularly in countries where the master's degree is considered an &quot;undergraduate&quot; degree (such as in Europe). Exactly how much is up to you—you probably know how much time you could spend on external work without compromising your desired work-life balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your bachelor's advisor is understanding and supportive of you, then he would likely be willing to let you work part-time on his project while you finish your studies. If he isn't willing to do so, then that might be a sign that he's not someone you should have as a long-term advisor. (A good research advisor and mentor will want what is best for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; of you, not just what is best for the advisor!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T21:21:44.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19575" CreationDate="2014-04-20T22:10:44.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For British doctoral theses, check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Library archive&lt;/a&gt;. Many full texts are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12609/ri49&quot;&gt;Ri49&lt;/a&gt; says, you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/index.php?halsid=9m4ba5s67sv374hmcmvbbr7e34&amp;amp;action_todo=home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TEL&lt;/a&gt; for theses from France...they claim 42000 full texts so far....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T22:10:44.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-20T23:02:50.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that many here have made great points, but having worked in academia (administrative)  for many years, currently it would be ill advised for you to get a tattoo (small or big, classy or otherwise, provocative or mundane) that is visible or has the potential to be visible. Most search committee are still old fashioned today; I hope that once you are on one, you'll work to change this bias, but in my opinion, as for now, it still stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T23:02:50.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19583" CreationDate="2014-04-20T23:36:23.513" Score="16" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a paper on analysing miRNA targeting in animals. It's principally a statistical analysis involving many graphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to explain the creation of one of the graphs, I've resorted to using set theory notation, as this, to me, seemed the most efficient way of explaining how the graph was produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this may potentially have some issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Will the use of terminology that is outside the theme of papers in this field detract from the description? Such that few people who read this paper will understand set theory and therefore many will not understand the mathematical notation? The description, I hasten to add, will be a tenth of the length when using set theory notation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Evidently, concepts should always be written as clearly as possible, but where is the line formed between explaining concepts in words, as opposed to mathematical notation? Why would one choose one way over another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Should you make assumption of the mathematical understanding of a person reading the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9778" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T15:26:13.290" Title="Does using complex mathematical notation detract the reader from a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T00:54:02.520" Score="3" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Phd option with two professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor A is tenured and is doing  very good in research .But many people have complained against him that they cannot understand his class. He has 2 Phd Students -one has been working on Phd for 5 years but still hasn't given his candidature. The other student joined his lab in 2012 as Masters Student and is planning to graduate from Phd in 2016. He closely works with corporate and is very well funded and pays his students very high stipends (like 3k+).These students regularly go for internships in these companies. But i see these students working very long hours on weekdays and weekends to complete their class and research projects.He was recently made an distinguished professor of research in my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor B has been in university for 3 years and has just graduated a PhD student(after 3 years). He is looking for tenure and is very prolific publisher. However he also published to some questionable open access journals  (one's included in Beall's List) to achieve his tenure requirements. There are  3 students in his lab -2 Master's and one 20 hr working CS student to help them out with programming. He has few projects to work on but not as big as tenured professor's. But people have high hopes on this professor as he worked in industry for 6 years prior to becoming an assistant professor.He is also very a good teacher .His Phd student could not get a job in his research field and is now working as a full time research software developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which professor should i choose for an Phd and what should i look out for in each of them like pitfalls and advantages .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14285" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T21:39:48.057" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T21:39:48.057" Title="Should I choose an tenured advisor good at research but bad at teaching or an untenured professor good at teaching?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-22T10:20:31.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2014-04-21T01:40:39.973" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author should always be careful when using mathematical notation that is &quot;outside the theme of papers in this field,&quot; especially if the papers typically have little math notation. I have personally found that running into a cryptic (at first glance) equation makes me put the brakes on and engage some deeper thought to decipher what's trying to be said. Oftentimes, the notation is required, or at least useful, but when I end up thinking, &quot;Couldn't they have just said 'such-and-such' in plain English'&quot;, I get a bit cranky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, though, you do need the space savings to stay within page limits, so if you really will shave off 90% of the space, and you need that space to fit in something else that is key to the paper, AND in your best judgement that the audience won't be derailed by the notation, you might be OK. Otherwise, because you have stated that you can describe it clearly in words, you should consider perhaps rewriting that description to be more concise and precise, rather than potentially obfuscating the details of your graph production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12208" LastEditorUserId="12208" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T03:16:14.600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T03:16:14.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T02:13:54.507" Score="-4" ViewCount="1914" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are linguistics and law considered as part of the &quot;sciences&quot; rather than &quot;non-science&quot; academic disciplines like say philosophy, history or engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing how both linguistics and law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with, or how there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models, it would seem, to me, that both of these fields fail to meet the criteria for being a &quot;science&quot;, which is enlarging humanity's pool of verified/easily-testable knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to perhaps phrase the question in a less abstract way, how do the linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from the methods of historians, which basically is &quot;just&quot; some majority of people agreeing on something based, ultimately, on their intuition. (In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs, or sociology where one can run experiments and tests that meet certain criteria for validity and significance). Similarly, isn't law &quot;merely&quot; applying the knowledge provided by sociology (and others) and thus more of an engineering discipline rather than a science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it perhaps like with computer science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons, but actually fails to formally meet the criteria upon closer examination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope no one is be offended by this. It is a serious question and I'm genuinely interested in objective answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14345" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T07:58:45.583" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T07:34:36.327" Title="Why are linguistics and law &quot;sciences&quot;?" Tags="&lt;science&gt;&lt;law&gt;&lt;linguistics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T03:53:22.093" Score="2" ViewCount="2123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently getting ready to finish my first semester of a graduate program (was on track for Ph.D but that does not matter anymore). I made the decision to quit half way through the semester due to some family issues that came up. Anyway, ever since that, I pretty much lost all motivation to study with the persistence that I had before - up to the point where on a subconscious level my brain refuses to absorb any more information. I will likely be receiving at least 1 F for the semester. My question is this - after I leave the program I will be looking for job in industry - I am a Civil Engineer as an undergraduate. How will having an F on a 1 semester transcript in graduate school affect my job prospects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14349" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T20:11:23.680" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T20:26:53.357" Title="Dropping out of grad school with F's: how will this affect job prospects?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T04:43:30.230" Score="8" ViewCount="2416" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you have two libraries that use the same classification system and have not merged their respective databases. Could it be possible that the exact same book could be assigned different call numbers if taken from one library and added to the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question because I am drawing up a home-library database application, and the client would like the ability to assign call numbers (even multiple ones). I have not been able to find an answer online, and I hope that I do not have to travel to the next state over to find a library not connected to the ones around I live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine the book would most likely be assigned to the same top-tier category and most likely the same second subcategory in the respective system, but, for example, the Library of Congress system incorporates the author's name and a quasi-decimal number which fine-tunes the book's location. And it seems without any external reference the assignment of this part of the call number is made on the fly for any particular library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I have a couple questions. First, the title's sake. Second, is the way I'm thinking about this correct? And if I'm wrong, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14351" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:01:09.127" Title="Can call numbers differ between libraries?" Tags="&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19582" CreationDate="2014-04-21T04:50:58.950" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why a professor's capabilities as a lecturer should have anything to do when considering her competencies as a mentor and research advisor. The two skill sets are almost completely separate from one another. Moreover, if part of your concern is that you want to become a teaching faculty member some day, then there's probably a chance to be a teaching assistant for another faculty member who is more qualified as a teacher (such as your Professor B). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T04:50:58.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T05:09:43.820" Score="13" ViewCount="2629" Body="&lt;p&gt;i am undergraduate in computer science looking for admission to MS/Phd in computer science at U.S universities. I know there is no subject test for computer science anymore. In that case, will taking the math GRE subject test be a plus point to my profile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14350" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T06:43:29.890" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T18:34:53.803" Title="Will taking the math GRE subject test be a plus point for admission in MS/PhD in computer science?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19586" CreationDate="2014-04-21T05:23:55.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you try seeing if you could formally withdraw, rather than do so &quot;de facto&quot;? A withdrawal means that you normally don't receive grades for courses (although some schools note a withdrawal while having a failing grade in a course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The likelihood that a future employer will overlook this depends largely on who's doing the applicant screening. If your &quot;direct boss&quot; is handling the process, you have a chance of convincing them that the grades aren't reflective of your true abilities. On the other hand, if a human resources &quot;specialist&quot; is handling the screening process, a grade of F will unfortunately mean your application will probably end up in the &quot;circular file.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T05:23:55.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19588" CreationDate="2014-04-21T05:42:09.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, when already available, Library of Congress classifications are usually found after the title page, and should thus be constant across different libraries. For publishers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this should be a fairly easy hypothesis to test (at least to a certain degree). Most university library catalogues are on-line and freely available. You could sample a cross-section of titles from different subjects and see what happens: my suspicion after a few cursory checks of my own is that call numbers &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; vary somewhat, but primarily at the &quot;secondary level&quot; (in identifying the author, rather than the subject). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T05:42:09.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19584" CreationDate="2014-04-21T06:03:23.763" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with several of the assertions in your question regarding linguistics specifically, as well as more generally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there is no universally agreed upon criteria for something to be classified as a science. The division between science and non-science is a false dichotomy whose only purpose is to elevate some fields and denigrate others as less 'worthy'. This is a cultural distinction. Source: degree in history and philosophy of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, linguistics does in fact display the classic hallmarks that many would say are indicative of science-hood. When you document an otherwise undescribed language, you have to demonstrate correspondences that are repeatable, e.g., a noun phrase in language X consists of a determiner phrase followed by an adjectival phrase, followed by a noun, and this generalisation should hold across the phrase structure of the language. If you find a counterexample, you need to account for it by modifying your theory or disregarding it as an aberrant case. Moreover, your results are repeatable in that if someone goes back and asks for the same sentences, they should get the same, or comparable, responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you start deriving hypotheses about things like the structure of the language, on the basis of empirical data; a corpus of collected examples. These are subject to peer review and criticism, and if you survive something that this language does that others do not, or that current theory does not predict then you have to back up your claims with extensive empirical data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a short description of the workflow of just one field of linguistics, and does not even encroach upon phonetics, which even has numbers and graphs! Source: a bachelors and a masters in linguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I would disagree that something is not a 'science' (or is less sciency) if it studies something that is a human invention. Language, yes, is a human invention, but each language is a system, and has its own rules that can be teased out by induction and deduction from the data. People don't just decide 'let's start using plural inflection'; its part of the independently testable system. Just like a game of pool is similarly invented by humans, but is analysable as a system. In fact game theory is a perfect analogue to language sciences in this respect; invented by humans, but analysable as a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't speak about law, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T06:03:23.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19586" CreationDate="2014-04-21T06:21:08.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will be looking for a job in industry. I don't think your job prospects are completely determined by the F's on the transcript of your first semester of the graduate program. Of course, those F's hurt your chances. Your resume could be filtered out by the human resources when they see the F's on your graduate school transcript if they ask to see that transcript. But, they usually pay attention to your undergraduate transcript and your skills set. If your undergrad transcript is fine and you have the skills/experience they are looking for, you still have reasonably good job prospects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if it is not too late to withdraw from the class, do it to avoid the permanent bad record. If it's too late, try your best to not to fail the class. I know it's hard after you have gone through the personal issues. But, you don't want to ask yourself the question &quot;What if I tried?&quot; years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wish you good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T12:53:27.393" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T12:53:27.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2014-04-21T08:00:49.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;By and large, I would say &lt;strong&gt;avoid using non-standard presentation techniques in your paper&lt;/strong&gt;. This includes using non-trivial mathematical notation in a field that generally does not use maths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that simply by choosing your way of presenting your techniques / results you (a) already lose most &lt;em&gt;casual&lt;/em&gt; readers of your paper (i.e., those that don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to study your paper for some reason, but were just interested in its content), and (b) presumably significantly increase the chance of your paper being falsely rejected by a reviewer who was inexperienced in the used notation, and hence misunderstood some details. Of course, this is not supposed to happen in an ideal world, but we don't necessarily live in such a world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I should add that (especially for lower-ranked venues), the opposite of (b) may also happen - you may get a reviewer who does not fully understand your notation, but decides that it looks &quot;sciency&quot; enough and hence accepts the paper (even though, maybe, the content was actually weak). I have certainly seen paper submissions that tried to ride the train of camouflaging weak content with complex notation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T08:00:49.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2014-04-21T09:03:44.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like this one (not mine)? I guess it won't make you any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rc9Ec.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most places in academia people do not care that much how you look (&lt;s&gt;as long as you dress decently&lt;/s&gt;). But it may depend on the culture of a particular place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the aesthetics, size and content of the tattoo may matter.&#xA;You referred to a geeky tattoo, but if the tattoo associates you with a group that is (even subconsciously) looked down in academia (e.g. that is which is, or is perceived as, expressing unpopular views, being less or anti-intellectual, etc) - it might be a different story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T11:22:30.760" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T11:22:30.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2014-04-21T13:44:35.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, I'm missing the option of giving the 110% version of set notation plus explanation in plain English. That way, readers familiar with the set notation can skip the written explanation, and others can either skip the formula or learn what it means from your explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As you think whether you should give the long explanation, I assume that there are no particular length restrictions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may add that I (chemist/chemometrician) was actually taught that a formula should preferrably be accompanied by a plain text explanation of the idea behind this formula. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T15:26:13.290" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T15:26:13.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19602" CreationDate="2014-04-21T14:28:32.363" Score="21" ViewCount="8109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do universities offer relocation assistance to a newly employed postdoc who comes from another country? Is it appropriate for the postdoc to ask for relocation assistance if it is not already offered? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="23602" LastEditDate="2015-07-25T18:39:48.583" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T19:09:48.633" Title="Is relocation assistance offered to postdocs?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19600" CreationDate="2014-04-21T14:42:39.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In disciplines that I'm familiar with, postdoc money comes from a grant obtained by a PI. So the university has little-to-no role in the hiring and compensation process. I imagine the postdoc would have to discuss this issue with the PI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T14:42:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19600" CreationDate="2014-04-21T14:55:27.407" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies. In my experience some of the more prestigious postdoctoral fellowships sponsored by universities might have some amount of moving expenses built into the budget, and more typical postdoc positions funded out of grants probably won't. But it might be possible to get a professor to help you out, perhaps out of startup or some other funds that aren't earmarked for a particular purpose. You should try to negotiate it with the person who offers you the job &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you accept the offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T14:55:27.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19468" CreationDate="2014-04-21T15:21:31.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to what has already been said about communication and funding, from experience, it will strongly depend on at what stage your PhD project is. In my case, my advisor was away during the last 12 months preceding my graduation and it made the collaboration a lot harder resulting in some frustration and delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this situation happens at the beginning of your work, it might be less of an issue. Unless your work includes laboratory experiments for which it's usually critical to have close supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the points you could discuss when you bring up the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the supervisor willing and capable of using a videoconference software, securing a decent connection and decent hardware to run the thing (don't laugh, you'd be surprised how many highly educated people are clueless when it comes to this)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is she/he ready to schedule regular calls (eg. once every two weeks)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are plans to visit an option? if yes, can funding be secured for that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I did was to send updates in the form of screencasts, or videos with slides and audio describing the work, or videos of me in front of a white board. That seemed to be appreciated by my supervisor and triggered the most fruitful feedbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T17:41:02.817" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T17:41:02.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T15:41:22.383" Score="55" ViewCount="8034" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the impression that obtaining written permission before including someone in acknowledgements was required. Therefore, I just wrote to someone asking for written permission to include him in the acknowledgements of a paper, and he said he didn't think it was necessary. I don't recall where I got this notion from - perhaps the rules of a specific journal? So, I was wondering if there are any general rules about this or not, or are they perhaps journal specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T15:51:00.777" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T13:22:57.317" Title="Is it necessary to ask permission before including someone in the acknowledgements of a research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19604" CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:24:05.283" Score="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you list someone in the acknowledgments, you're just thanking them, as opposed to speaking on their behalf or assigning them responsibility (the way authorship does), so I don't see why permission should be required.  I've never asked for permission or been asked myself, so it's certainly not standard in mathematics.  I haven't heard of it in other fields, but of course I can't say from personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it depends on what you say.  &quot;I am grateful to Alice for her steadfast support of my research&quot; suggests Alice endorses your research, and you should certainly ask for permission before saying something like that.  &quot;The determinant calculation in Section 2 was supplied by Bob&quot; suggests Bob is responsible if it's wrong or clumsy, so you should make sure he is OK with being thanked (but in this case you presumably already discussed with him your plans to include his calculation in your paper and attribute it to him without making him a coauthor).  And of course if your topic is really controversial, then you should be extra careful about everything.  However, if you had helpful background discussions with Carl and write &quot;We thank Carl for helpful discussions about functional analysis&quot;, I don't think you need to ask his permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:24:05.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19588" CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:25:05.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A call number is meant to be a unique identifier for a particular book (or other work); that is, a particular &lt;em&gt;physical object&lt;/em&gt;, typically found on a shelf somewhere. These identifiers are often structured, containing encoded information about the subject, author, publication date, etc. If a library has multiple copies of the same text, then they will typically have different call numbers - say, via a suffix &quot;(copy 1)&quot;, &quot;(copy 2)&quot;, etc. They are different physical objects. They are tracked separately: one copy was purchased, and another was donated; one is on loan and another is having its spine repaired; and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;devoutly to be wished&lt;/em&gt; that different libraries, following the same standard, will assign their identifiers in the same way. Reality being what it is, we can't guarantee that this will always happen, even if it is the common case. However, your question is about something different: when a book is moved from one library to another, what happens to the call number? There are two things going on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assigning a new number.&lt;/strong&gt; Since you have a new physical object, it needs an identifying number. The multiple copy example above shows one instance where the least-significant part of the call number would have to change. Ideally, other changes would not be needed in order to make the number conform to the new library's system. So the question is: how much do you trust the old library to get it right? If the answer is anything less than 100% then there should be some way to assign a new number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keeping track of the old number.&lt;/strong&gt; Even after renumbering, it might be useful to record the book's former call number. Provenance information is generally felt to be a Good Thing to have - certainly, in the case of items with any value, or which are externally indexed. (For example, bibliographies of the works contained in a particular library will often include the shelfmarks.) This may not be a concern for your database, or it might not have to be part of the main database system - perhaps &quot;how I obtained this book&quot; information could be retained elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are dealing with MARC, then you can look up how it handles coding of former locations, multiple call numbers, and so on, as there are standard ways of recording this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:25:05.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19614" CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:35:16.490" Score="23" ViewCount="1894" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I have noted come up a few times in presentations in the US in the last few years has been that some speakers—usually graduate students and postdocs, rather than more established career professionals—have included religious invocations at the end of presentations in entirely secular venues. One presenter went so far as to have an entire slide devoted to it, complete with quotations to spiritual texts and illustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any sort of protocol about when such sorts of invocations are considered appropriate? (For instance, at a student's doctoral defense, but not at a public seminar?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T08:47:27.900" Title="Are religious invocations in academic presentations appropriate?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12706" CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:50:31.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally seen a situation where, in a conference session divided into short talks (say 20 minutes), two co-authors will speak back-to-back on the same paper (though each focuses on different aspects).  This obviously needs the consent and cooperation of the organizers to get consecutive time slots.  The talks normally have titles like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Integrability in quantum category theory I: Applications to the derivation of isometries&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Integrability in quantum category theory II: Connections to an example of Banach&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to make it clear that they are closely related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:50:31.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19590" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:40:08.120" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be easy enough to ask any department to which you are considering applying whether they would give consideration to math subject exam GRE scores.  They shouldn't penalize you for asking (and at any rate it would be worse to send the scores without asking first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am inclined to agree with @aeismail: the fact that they formerly had GRE subject exams in CS and no longer do must say something about what at least many of the departments are looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should mention that I was involved in making the math subject GRE exam a required part of the application to the PhD program in my department...but my department is a mathematics department.  Still, after four years of doing graduate admissions I have some experience that seems relevant: in doing admissions one really wants to &quot;compare apples to apples&quot; whenever possible.  For instance this meant getting everyone's understanding that after making the math subject exam a requirement we really would seriously downgrade any application that didn't include it.  The reason for this is that when the exam is optional, a lot of students take it but don't send the scores if they are not strong enough.  This is obviously unfair to the student who turns in a lower percentile score: they are being penalized for their honesty and for following the rules.  I think similar considerations apply in the other direction: presumably very few or no other applicants to CS PhD programs are submitting this score.  So if you turn in a pretty good math subject exam score, what is the committee supposed to make of it?  How do they compare it with everyone else's application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considerations like the above make me think it is unlikely that you will be told that your scores will be considered as part of the application.  But there is no need to take my word for it: ask them, see what they say, and if you can, come back and tell us about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T18:34:53.803" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T18:34:53.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19468" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:52:49.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a possibility to consider: ask for a coadvisor, or ask for someone on your thesis committee to take a slightly more active role in mentoring your research while your advisor is on sabbatical.  Even if the coadvisor is not strong in your area, they should be able to read the signs of what progress you are making and advise you generally on what to change, even if they cannot make technical comments.  Further, it will prepare them for giving a better critical evaluation of your thesis as you will have spent some time talking to them about it.  (If you do follow this route, it is incumbent on you to make things transparent and as easy as possible for all involved.  In particular let both advisors know what meetings you had, what you discussed, etc.  Having a semi-private blog to record this may be useful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is very situation dependent, and may not be the best answer for you.  The point is that the doctorate is your responsibility, and if you can't or don't follow your advisor physically, you need to do what you need to do to finish the degree, which can involve a lot of creative thinking and work on your part (and hopefully not much extra on the part of the system:  you can't expect the world to change for you as much as you should expect to change the world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T17:52:49.073" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-04-21T17:52:49.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:54:54.907" Score="0" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took the GRE about a year ago (for an MA program). I did very well on Verbal, but only so-so on Quantitative. I'd like to retake the GRE for applying to PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue with the Quantitative section was simply time management. I understood all of the questions, but I guess I just didn't have an effective strategy for how to tackle them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any specific recommendations for time management strategies on the Quantitative section? I'd be interested in books, online tutorials, and even tutors in the New York City area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14370" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T01:52:06.337" Title="Specific Weakness in GRE Quantitative Section - Looking for Advice" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2014-04-21T18:32:12.430" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me propose some guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) A religious invocation should occur at the beginning of the talk or the end of the talk, but not in the middle of the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often begin talks with material that is unrelated to the topic of the talk itself, e.g. thanks to various organizers; comments about the weather, the venue or the town; jokes; and so forth.  It seems to be clearly asking too much for someone to speak only about their scientific field during the entirety of their talk.  However, at a certain point you get down to business and the &quot;talk itself&quot; in the narrower sense begins.  One should not (of course this is an opinion, but a strongly held and easily defensible one) mix religion with the material of the talk itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) A scientific talk is not an occasion for proselytization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me whether religious material is appropriate depends a lot on the purpose one has in bringing it up.  If you include religious material as an attempt to convert audience members to your religion, I think that is really problematic and unethical.  If you include religious material for other promotional reasons, then I still have a problem with it, just as I would be with someone promoting their not wholly scientific company or product.  (Even wholly scientific promotion might not be so great, but that's a different answer.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is a totally standard thing to have the last slide of a talk give thanks to various people and institutions.  If you feel deeply grateful or thankful in the religious sense, then it seems natural to want to express those feelings, given that other speakers are thanking people and things (e.g. the US government) that, in your sincere opinion, have not helped you out as deeply or fundamentally.  At any rate, it does not bother me if someone ends a talk by thanking some theological entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) One should not express religious sentiments in a scientific talk in a way that encroaches on anyone else's religious sentiments or lack thereof, nor which implicitly or explicitly invites or requires participation or complicity from the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus &quot;Alhamdulillah&quot; is probably okay; &quot;Now Thank We All Our God&quot; is probably not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, in (e.g.!) an academic context, one should be respectful of others' beliefs and views, and one should not be controversial or exclusionary in anything without a specific intellectual purpose for doing so.  One should also be respectful of others' time and realize that speaking in front of a group is a privilege.  On the other hand, academics are human beings and can choose to say things which are not strictly necessary.  In my calculus class last week, I had students identify a quote about mathematics being someone's worst subject followed by a careful and insightful consideration of the reasons for this.  The quote turned out to be from Malcolm X.  What &lt;em&gt;calculus reason&lt;/em&gt; could I possibly have to quote Malcolm X?  None.  But I thought it was interesting and perhaps important in its own way.  I enjoy my freedom to do that, so it is not a hard sell for me to give leeway to those who want to make some kinds of religious statements, so long as they are in line with the above guidelines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T19:51:26.497" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T19:51:26.497" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19628" CreationDate="2014-04-21T19:37:21.697" Score="8" ViewCount="2022" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should one disclose his/her family information (i.e. whether he/she is married and have children) in an academic job interview, including postdoc interviews and interviews for PhD, if any? In what situations would disclosing family information in such interviews be considered advantageous or necessary for the candidate? If not appropriate during interviews, then when would be the best time for one to disclose his/her family information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T01:26:52.673" Title="Should one disclose his/her family information in an academic job interview?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19622" CreationDate="2014-04-21T19:40:05.030" Score="3" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of a freshman Computer Science course, I've been assigned the task of writing an MLA-format essay on a relatively fundamental subject within the field. The instructor stated that &quot;This essay may require additional research outside of the text.&quot; However, I'm able to completely describe the topic entirely from my own knowledge and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sort of situation, is it implied that I &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; cite at least a few external sources, or is it acceptable to write an essay entirely from my own personal knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if so, do I omit the Works Cited page entirely or just put &quot;None&quot; under the Works Cited heading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14371" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:39:10.317" Title="Is there an implied requirement to include citations?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:00:14.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably best not to bring up family information at all during an interview. The committee wants to focus on your professional qualifications. They've probably been given strict instructions from HR &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to take into account things like the applicant's sex or age, which are not professional qualifications. Different people may have different expectations about how formal a job interview should be, but in general it's not a casual get-together where we get to know each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often a committee will want to understand why you are leaving your current position. Basically they want to make sure you didn't leave your current position because you did a bad job there and got fired. This becomes particularly relevant if the job you're applying for is at a professional level less than or equal to the level of the job you're leaving. In this context, it may be OK to mention your family if they're the reason you wanted to change jobs. E.g., you needed to move from Indiana back home to California in order to care for your father, who is old and unable to live independently anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common situation would be the &quot;two-body problem,&quot; where you and your partner are trying to find jobs in the same city. I would not bring this up at the interview stage. It's not relevant at that stage, because they haven't even offered you the job yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have young children, I wouldn't mention that at all. Many people in academia have very old-fashioned expectations about the academic lifestyle, e.g., that a high-powered academic must not be distracted by child-rearing, or must have a &quot;faculty wife.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:00:14.480" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:08:32.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As evidence that it's not appropriate, note the comment by xLeitix stating that s/he has never seen such a thing, and several upvotes agreeing. The reason we don't see it happen is because it's inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not inappropriate behavior of the greatest magnitude. It's probably comparable to wearing shorts and sandals, or to lighting up an e-cigarette during the talk. Most people are going to care more about the content of the talk than about about such minor issues, but some people will choose to be annoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:08:32.747" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19584" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:18:33.993" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or is it perhaps like with Computer Science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons, but actually fails to formally meet the criteria upon closer examination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer science is a science by any reasonable definition. Academic computer science is not about learning how to program. It is the theoretical study of computation as a mathematical subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs,[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal proofs are extremely common in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seeing how both Linguistics and Law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sciences are generally divided into the natural sciences and the social sciences. The latter includes fields like sociology and economics. Just because societies and economies are human-created, that doesn't mean that these fields aren't sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, although languages are created by humans, many of the phenomena of language are naturally occurring. For example, certain combinations of sounds are easier to articulate than others, which is a physiological fact. Certain aspects of grammar are hard-wired into the human brain; for example, it is possible to construct artificial grammars that a linguist can tell could never have occurred naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely untrue for both computer science and linguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Law is completely different. I have never heard of law being referred to as a science. However, the academic study of law may draw upon evidence from the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:18:33.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19588" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:24:54.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took @aeismail suggestion literally and tried to find an older geodesy textbook. C.F. Baeschlin's Lehrbuch der Geodäsie that was published in 1948. I checked &lt;a href=&quot;http://melvyl.worldcat.org/title/lehrbuch-der-geodasie/oclc/8104772&amp;amp;referer=brief_results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MELVYL&lt;/a&gt;, the University of California's system, which is now connected with WorldCat. They listed all copies as QB283.B2 for the Libary of Congress (LC) system, but had other identifiers including an OCLC number. I then checked Ohio State's library catalog which listed their copies as &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b4437046~S7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QB283.B33&lt;/a&gt;. Both systems do have the same OCLC number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:24:54.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19616" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:39:10.317" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(this might strictly speaking be out of scope of this site, but I'll answer anyway as I think the question in general comes up quite often)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, when one is asked to write a scientific paper of some sort in university, there is an explicit or implicit expectation that you will use references. Often, students think this is unnecessary because they feel they know already &quot;everything&quot;, or at least enough, about the subject without searching through the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually a fallacy for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oftentimes, students check web pages like this one and learn that in a published research paper, a certain level of common ground can be expected and does usually not need to be referenced. However, what &quot;can be expected&quot; is clearly dependent on the type of paper you are writing, and a published research paper works differently than a term paper in a freshman course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Further, there is an underlying misunderstanding of what one needs to reference. References are not only required for what you are learning from literature &quot;right now&quot;, i.e., in the current class. The things you already know you probably did not research on your own, entirely independently. You learned them in a previous course, and (maybe long before that), there was a paper or textbook that introduced these concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep in mind that any paper writing assignment in a course is foremost a learning experience. One of the goals is that you should learn to research additional material (hence the &quot;This essay may require additional research outside of the text.&quot;), and to cite it correctly. Circumventing this learning goal by basically just writing down what you feel does not require citation usually does not make instructors happy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, writing (only) about your &quot;own experience&quot; is a bit of a fallacy in itself. You should understand that you are in that case basically generalizing from a sample size of &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; (you / your experience). Let's look at an example. Maybe you have, for instance, worked a bit as software engineer, and hence believe that you do not need to read the literature in order to write a paper about software engineering processes (I am making examples up here). However, in that case, you know exactly your own company processes, and know little about how everybody else is building software. This is where you would look over published papers for more rigorous studies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, in the end Dave Clarke's comment is accurate: It would be worth asking your instructor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:39:10.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2014-04-21T21:18:43.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard the following advice from several people; I have not been involved enough in hiring to know if it is right, but it sounded right to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you would not accept a job offer unless the university can find a&#xA;  position for your spouse, then you might as well disclose that&#xA;  information early. The universities who do not make offers to you because of your    disclosure would not have made offers to your spouse had you kept it silent and revealed later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to follow this advice, you will have to bring it up, since HR should have told interviewers not to raise the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T21:18:43.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19604" CreationDate="2014-04-21T21:45:03.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never come across any rules about this. But I do often write to people to let them know I'd like to include them in the acknowledgements, particularly if I know them less well, and enclose a copy of the draft paper. It's a way of thanking them, especially as they might never come across the published paper, and it gives them a chance to escape if, for whatever reason, they wish to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T21:45:03.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T01:01:41.777" Score="26" ViewCount="1370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've finished a mathematics paper with two co-authors, and I need to decide on a journal to submit it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More so than my other papers, I don't have much of a sense for how &quot;good&quot; it is. It is a substantial generalization of one of the main results proved in a very top journal, although not the most significant of these results, and not the one that got the most attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, (and after discussing the results with a few colleagues), the paper does not pass the &quot;gut test&quot; to be published in this same top journal. But it is not out of the question that it would be accepted. I would (very roughly) guess a 15% chance of acceptance, a 50% chance of positive reviews that are not quite positive enough, and a 35% chance of vaguely negative reviews that say &quot;This is a nice paper, but it certainly isn't good enough to be published here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be advisable to submit to this top journal? Or would a little bit more modesty be wise? (And of course I will ask my co-authors, but I wouldn't be surprised if they defer to my judgment.) Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T10:10:01.773" Title="How ambitious should one be in picking a journal to submit to?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2014-04-22T01:16:18.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been part of several hiring committees in a New Zealand university and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are instructed to never ask about a candidate's family situation, religion, sexual orientation, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personally, I do not want to know about your family situation to avoid any perceived bias in the hiring process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any mention of the situation on your part (like 'we are a bundle') could be perceived as making the hiring more complicated. Unless your application is miles ahead of the rest (unlikely) why would a committee want the extra complication?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only situation where I could see an advantage is when you family situation would suggest higher chances of success. For example, you are applying to a job in the middle of nowhere (and potentially candidates would feel isolated) and your family happens to be from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would wait to say 'we are a bundle' (if that's what you have in mind) to when you are offered the position. Ideally, you would never have to disclose your family situation until the university is willing to pay for your moving costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T01:16:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2014-04-22T01:26:52.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One situation in which I have seen this work to a candidate's advantage is where the candidate has an extraordinarily strong record. Schools knew going in that solving the two-body problem was important for this candidate, and the university that was fortunate enough to make the hire did precisely that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T01:26:52.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T01:31:02.097" Score="10" ViewCount="1769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in computer science, and am wondering what is the right balance between PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in a lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the previous research group I was, there were one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), &lt;strong&gt;zero post-doctoral fellows&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;nine PhD students&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;In my current research group, there is one principal investigator professor, &lt;strong&gt;one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students&lt;/strong&gt;, and no researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, &lt;strong&gt;ten post-doctoral fellows&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;two PhD students&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think is the &lt;strong&gt;best ratio&lt;/strong&gt; between the &lt;strong&gt;number of PhD students&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;number of post-docs&lt;/strong&gt; in a research group? &lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you prefer to &lt;strong&gt;spend your funding&lt;/strong&gt; for having &lt;strong&gt;more PhD students&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;more post-docs? Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T00:19:47.393" Title="In a research group, is it better to have few post-docs and many PhD students, or viceversa?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;lab-management&gt;&lt;research-group&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-24T07:09:15.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19627" CreationDate="2014-04-22T01:43:19.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, why don't you give it a try? Sometimes your luck might favor you. Last year, I submitted a research paper in a Journal called APEX(Applied Physics Express)- Impact factor 2.71. After considering for nearly 2 months they said me that the paper needs modification and be published elsewhere. I thought for a while and worked on my paper modifying it. I decided to apply for APL(Applied Physics Letters), impact factor 3.79 and guess what the paper got accepted. However, people at APL took nearly 6 months and also made me hire a native English speaker to make some structural changes to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should directly go for the top level paper. If they deny you, you can always find a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14383" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T01:43:19.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19600" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:24:12.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the early 90's, when I did a postdoc for a U.S. National Laboratory, full relocation expenses were included, which involved moving my household clear across the country, and staying in a hotel for a bit at the other end while I looked for a new home. I doubt such generous deals are readily available today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1275" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T02:24:12.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T05:55:35.470" Score="60" ViewCount="10585" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give some background, I am a TA at UCLA for a lab class. They submit their assignments to TurnItIn, which you may know highlights any text pulled from another place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made it clear that they are not to work together and that no text in their reports should be found &quot;anywhere else in the universe.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the first week I caught a group of two plagiarizing. I repeated the &quot;your text should not be found anywhere else in the universe&quot; talk. I gave a long speech about academic honesty and such. One of the plagiarizing students dropped the class herself. I didn't take action on the other, besides a stern talking-to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This week, two more students blatantly copied chunks of the other's paper. Whole paragraphs. I couldn't believe it -- I had just explained to them the week prior how easy it was to spot plagiarism. I brought them outside class one at a time and asked them what happened. I showed them the highlighted TurnItIn gradereport and their reports side-by-side. They each said they worked together, but didn't copy (slim chance. And still against the rules.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor that oversees my class doesn't have time to talk to me; hence I am here. He has given me two options: do nothing, or report them to the Dean of Students. If I do the latter, the punishment will extend beyond their grade -- they will probably fail the class, or even be suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to punish them. But I don't want to ruin their undergraduate lives. Is my professor right -- I only have two options? (I cannot find any school-specific information about this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there a better, less obvious way to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked around. It turns out that this kind of violation is serious, but it's not going to destroy their life. The Dean of Students people tend to be pretty reasonable when it comes to sanctions from what I hear. So I'm reporting it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14388" LastEditorUserId="14388" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T05:45:34.020" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T17:43:37.940" Title="Handling plagiarism as a TA" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="28" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19627" CreationDate="2014-04-22T06:08:54.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If time is not so much of a consideration then picking the top journal is the natural choice. Sometimes it requires some luck to land in a prestigious journals. As they say, &quot;beauty is in the eye of the beholder&quot;. Different referees may have different assessments of your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why not try your luck? Nothing to be ashamed of since your paper has value to begin with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T06:08:54.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T06:12:18.957" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like &quot;I want to punish them but not really&quot;. Fact is that these students have cheated even after &lt;em&gt;multiple&lt;/em&gt; warnings. You are not teaching little children. Responsibility and accountability are important and adult students should have both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are sure they plagiarized&lt;/strong&gt; the only correct course of action here is to report them. It is then up to whoever handles such issues to assess the severity and appropriate punishment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students knew the risks of plagiarizing and decided to do it anyway. Giving them a milder treatment now will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: are you sure the students copied from each other or is it possible that they are using the same source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T07:14:53.173" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T07:14:53.173" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T06:18:37.893" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I think it is not OK for professor to present you with options. He/she should have decided what to be done and it is actually funny that he gave an option that clearly conflicts with honor code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the cheating is provable, then you are paid to carry out the rules so you should report them. No person should be above the rules of the university, and I am sure the rules are clear. Your responsiblity is to grade homeworks and report them if they cheated. Anything else leads to corruption in any organisation, which is also misuse of power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T06:18:37.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:12:12.043" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a very good online tool: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arohatgi.info/WebPlotDigitizer/app/&quot;&gt;http://arohatgi.info/WebPlotDigitizer/app/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14369" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T07:12:12.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19630" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:16:04.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's an interesting question. In all of the following, I am assuming computer science here, other fields may have completely different dynamics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you think is the best ratio between the number of PhD students and the number of post-docs in a research group? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD students and postdocs fill fundamentally different roles in an university. PhD students are the heart and most important part of a research group. They are where the actual science happens (everybody else is just too busy most of the time). The role of postdocs can vary between &quot;more senior PhD student&quot; to &quot;assistant professor with bad job title&quot;, though in most larger research groups it tends to be more the latter than the former. As such, the most common task of postdocs seems to be to take over the day-to-day advising of PhD students from a busy professor. I would say the optimal &quot;formula&quot; for such postdocs is roughly &lt;strong&gt;(number of PhD students / 3) - number of professors&lt;/strong&gt;. The idea being that, as long as the research group is still small, no postdocs are actually needed. In a larger group, you need roughly one postdoc to help about 3 PhD students, minus the few people that the faculty can / wants to actually supervise themselves. In reality, though, the real ratio fluctuates widely based on available funding, people finishing, postdocs moving on, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's go over your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), zero post-doctoral fellows, and nine PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems a bit borderline in terms of PhD students per advisor / senior person, but probably still ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one principal investigator professor, one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students, and no researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 PhD students per senior person seems already tough to provide good guidance, especially as the professor certainly will have lots of other things to do as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, ten post-doctoral fellows and two PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a group where the postdocs are more in the &quot;glorified PhD student&quot; mode. I am not a fan of this model. If the responsible person thinks that 10 postdocs are more productive than 10 PhD students, I think they are sadly mistaken. Or paraphrased from Jorge Cham &quot;as a postdoc you can finally spend all your time on what your PhD training has prepared you to do - applying for faculty positions&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T07:16:04.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:34:58.577" Score="0" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the Corresponding author about in the list of authors of a Journal or Conference paper? As fas as I read, it is the person who confirms results or whom actually is the intellectual mind of the idea behind the published work. Can it be more than 1 author in some cases then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14389" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T07:46:38.293" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T08:51:35.633" Title="What does &quot;corresponding author&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-04-22T08:52:55.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:43:04.433" Score="2" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;i found many papers and thesis written in different languages than English, mainly Portuguese and Chinese. is there an efficient way to benefit from these papers and thesis instead of translating them using Google translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14065" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T09:00:44.490" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T18:29:21.703" Title="How to translate foreign-language theses into English?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:55:52.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The corresponding author is the author designated to be the first point of contact by readers of the paper. In theory, authors could use any rule they like to decide which author is the corresponding author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my experience, the corresponding author is often the author who has made the largest contribution or an author who has made one of the larger contributions to the paper. The corresponding author is also often chosen as someone who is likely to have a stable contact address and is likely to remain in academia for some time to come. In that case, supervisors are sometimes corresponding authors rather than students (even where the student has done most of the work). A similar pattern can hold in the case of industry collaborations where the academic may be the corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importantly, in most models of ethical publishing, all authors are meant to take responsibility for the claims in the published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T07:55:52.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T09:33:48.700" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just give them no credit at all for that assignment. Since even copied homework takes time, and it's very likely that they will be caught, it's not going to be worthwhile to copy and not get any credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your professor asks, you can say that you chose to do nothing, but that of course they could not receive credit for that work, which you assumed was what he implied in his advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the students complain that they want to be able to make up the credit or feel they should get a grade, tell them categorically no. If they insist, refer them to the professor. This puts the ball in their court - they are unlikely to want to make the effort to complain about you, when they will be drawing attention to their cheating, and probably end up in a position where they have to openly lie to a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this does happen (because the students are spiteful or lack all sense of proportion) don't worry about it. Students sometimes think that an incident like this can be made to reflect badly on a TA. Even if they do pursue a complaint, even if it is upheld, and even if it is shown that you did the wrong thing, it is not going to be held against you. It will be accepted by faculty and anyone else involved (all of whom probably realize what PITAs some of your students are) that it is a the very worst a minor misjudgement of the type that everyone makes in their first few teaching experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that you are consistent (so that you can't be accused of discrimination) and clear (so that no-one can say they didn't understand the rules). If you get bounced into making an exception, immediately make it clear what the rules of exceptions are ('Everyone gets one chance', 'one chance only on the first homework' or 'one person got one chance, but now you have all been warned' etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, don't take it personally. It is disappointing to try and treat people like adults, and then find that they treat you like you are an idiot. Ultimately it is a reflection on their immaturity not your teaching skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="5824" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T10:47:15.263" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T10:47:15.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19627" CreationDate="2014-04-22T10:05:38.987" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer should certainly depend on many different elements, each of which should be judged with respect to your particular situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the time issue. You should have a look at the AMS survey on journal backlogs, which also indicates the median time to get an answer (for accepted papers only, but we can assume it gives an idea of what happens to all not-rejected-upfront papers). This survey is published regularly in the Notices, and you should be able to find it on line. Then, ask yourself if waiting that time is worth a likely negative answer. Some journals have a pre-refereeing procedure, and reject a fair amount of papers very quickly. This mitigates the risk (either you get rejected quickly, or you have a much-higher-than-average probability to get your paper accepted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the impression you give to editors. I guess that an editor could remember slightly abusive submissions, and that they would not help you future cases with her; however I have no data or evidence to back up this guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, your own feelings. Receiving bad reviews is not something to underestimate: it could diminish your enthusiasm toward your own work, alter your willingness to pursue in this direction. This is probably only a small parameter, but if you have had a few difficult cases recently, you might want to take a break from rejections. &lt;strong&gt;Added in edit after a few more years of experience:&lt;/strong&gt; you should also think your possible chain of resubmission. What could happen is that after waiting two years and getting rejected by a top journal, you are a bit down and then submit much lower. Aiming at an intermediate level first might give you a better outcome. This applies even more at resubmission: how much do you try high? How high? This of course depends on the feedback from referees and editors, but some long-term planning might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, you should ask yourself if the journal you consider to submit to is an appropriate venue if your paper do get published there. I would not fear too much people telling that your paper is clearly below the journal's level, as we often judge papers by journal's name anyway. But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal. This is not a very common situation, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, but far from least, what you expect to get from getting published in the top journal? Is it so much of a career boost compared to very-good-but-not-top journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that some editors have the habit of suggesting another venue to papers that have good but not good enough reviews in a very selective journal. It is not easy to know this beforehand, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2017-04-10T10:10:01.773" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T10:10:01.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T10:57:35.287" Score="8" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student and planning to pursue a PhD. For one year, in search for a research idea, I have been reading random research articles and papers in many dimensions of Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly, I have been blasting my advisor with various ideas. The ideas as per my advisor are possibly a new paradigm but do have great potential. Also, he says the complete idea may or may not be doable by a single PhD student. I also see those ideas converting into good startup ideas as well. (I was an entrepreneur before pursuing research in search of some challenging work).Most of the ideas are not very much related to each other but still concentrated to my specific field of study (Computer Vision). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that pondering of so many ideas may prolong my research without results. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage so many wavy ideas in a streamlined way ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How feasible is it to focus the research so that the outcome may be a startup (since making it commercially viable would require some amount of research in other areas of Computer Science such as Data Mining, Large Scale Search etc. ) ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T16:02:19.143" Title="How to manage lot of random yet potential ideas for research and startup?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T11:21:22.513" Score="55" ViewCount="12067" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years back, while still an undergraduate student, I wrote and submitted a paper to a (low-tier) journal. It was accepted and published. None of the professors in my college were familiar with the subfield in question, so I did it all on my own, without their supervision or assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was only later on that I realised that I was guilty of plagiarism. I did write the paper all on my own, and always provide appropriate citations, but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has now been several years but I keep feeling guilty about it, and worry that one day someone will notice it and call me out on it. Or at least notice it while reading the paper and think worse of me. But since it has been several years since the paper was published, I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded), but maybe I’m overthinking it and nobody would actually care. In that case it would feel like a bad idea to needlessly draw attention to something that nobody would have noticed otherwise. But the paper has been cited some times, and I have reason to expect that there will be people reading it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I do something about it or just let it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14397" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T14:15:09.077" Title="Realised afterwards that I committed mild plagiarism in a paper I wrote as an undergraduate, what should I do?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19650" CreationDate="2014-04-22T12:20:54.083" Score="61" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;You didn't use quotation marks where you should have in a paper you wrote as an undergrad? My god, you are despicable human being.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody reading your question here will think this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather they will think something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Wow, you wrote a journal paper on your own as an undergrad and it's still being cited?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would imagine that the vast majority of readers of your paper, even if they notice, would think likewise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though it's technically plagarism, I think it would be quite obvious to a reasonable reader that if your &lt;em&gt;intent&lt;/em&gt; was to plagarise, you would not immediately cite the plagarised document you stole the quote from. Omitting quotation marks sounds like a minor transgression to me, particularly if your area is STEM where the (natural) language of the text is a means not an end. (If you did not have the citation(s) at all, I think it would be a different matter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistakes happen and this was clearly just a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would also add that I think it's pretty common for researchers to be somewhat embarrassed by earlier papers that they wrote when they were more junior. At least I am. But that's just a sign of improving.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the preprint on your homepage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a list of errata on your homepage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my area (CS) people mostly read the preprints (found through Google or Google Scholar). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;public admission and apology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a need to &lt;em&gt;apologise&lt;/em&gt;. I think you just need to admit your mistake and move on. Again, mistakes happen!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T14:15:58.600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T14:15:58.600" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2014-04-22T12:57:11.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have access to the digital copies, then dump the entire thing into Google translate so you can skim read it. Having done that, it would be a good idea to find a native speaker and get them to check the translation of specific sections that seem relevant on the basis of the automated translations. I wouldn't suggest asking a native speaker to translate the whole thing, or even read the automatically generated translation of the entire thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you could do is see if you can find other papers that cite the papers that you're looking at. One of them may contain a summary that'll tell you if you need to bother pursuing that particular paper. This will be pot luck though, and it will be a lot easier to just use Google translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, don't use Google's translations in your work; get a native speaker to help you when it comes to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T12:57:11.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19650" CreationDate="2014-04-22T13:10:50.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I honestly don't think this counts as plagiarism. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. All you did was use the same phrasing as the article you cite. Since you're giving credit where credit is due by citing the papers, I don't think anyone would object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had done this with one of my papers, if anything I would be flattered. Had you failed to cite me, I would be very annoyed but if you cite my work and then use one of my phrases, I would simply be pleased with myself since you clearly thought that my turn of phrase was so good that you couldn't say it better. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, personally, I would do absolutely nothing. I really doubt anyone will be bothered by what is at worst &quot;bad form&quot;. Of course it's better to place direct quotes within quotation marks but as long as the relevant paper is cited, you are very unlikely to anger anyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11523" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T13:10:50.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T13:31:21.800" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Report them. It is precisely the job of those working in the office of the Dean of Students to make judgment calls of the sort you describe. They, also, do not want to ruin students' undergraduate lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T13:31:21.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-22T14:32:39.273" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct analogy to draw in fields where grant-writing is a critical aspect of the research is architecture: the act of preparing the grant is akin to doing the conceptual design of a new building; the work of the graduate students and postdocs (or other researchers) is the research equivalent of fleshing out the design into a practical design, and converting it into a real building. The master architect (the one overseeing the vision) is going to get a substantial amount of credit, regardless of not being the one to plan everything out to the finest detail. But the important thing is that the end product (the building in one case, the research in the other) would not result without the initial rough sketches for the specific project (the conceptual design or the grant proposal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very different from the billionaire example provided above, because writing a grant requires the construction of a specific framework in which the research will be carried out, not just handing over money to others to do work within some grandiose but completely unspecific vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as a further practical matter, very few advisors are &quot;absentee landlords&quot; who merely acquire the grant, and then do nothing else. They almost certainly don't run the code or perform the experiments, but they are active in helping to interpreting the data, design future experiments, and evaluating and editing the manuscripts that are produced. In part, this is a matter of safeguarding one's reputation: if you let people publish bad work under your name, your reputation will suffer as a result in the long run. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T14:57:09.120" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T14:57:09.120" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2014-04-22T14:42:09.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have some knowledge of the source language, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linguee.com/?chooseDomain=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linguee.com&lt;/a&gt; to find the best translation of a word out of documents which have been translated (EU commission's texts for instance).&#xA;Thus, you'll have the word in all its possible contexts.&#xA;This is very useful for legal or technical vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14405" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T14:42:09.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19668" CreationDate="2014-04-22T15:48:01.337" Score="6" ViewCount="1235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am speaking of project scope here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So suppose my advisor is working with an industry .And you are asked to build a prediction model for small section of that industry? Does that qualify as a Phd Project or a Master's thesis project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does a Phd project has to be generic model , in the sense all companies in that niche can use that model as basis for their analytics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the differences in scope for a PhD and MS Thesis project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:59:25.810" Title="How do you know the project you are working on is worthy of a PhD dissertation. How does it differ from MS dissertation" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19667" CreationDate="2014-04-22T16:06:53.907" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had this discussion recently—the major differences are in the scope and independence of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy, absolute method to say &quot;X is a master's thesis&quot; and &quot;Y is a PhD project&quot; without knowing the amount of work involved in each approach, and how independent the student needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, a master's thesis represents a body of effort designed to show that you have successfully completed the project to the satisfaction of your supervisor. A PhD thesis indicates that you have produced a sufficient intellectual contribution to your field, and that you have the capability to be an independent scientist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T16:06:53.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T16:52:04.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also at UCLA, and have worked for profs that weren't willing to escalate when cheaters were caught. Many of them just assume that cheaters will  drop or eventually fail the final or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice is to remember: you're primarily here to do research and get a degree; TAing just pays the bills. Cheaters are upsetting, but choose your battles wisely and without getting emotional. In the long run, it probably isn't worth pissing off your advisor by going over their head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14412" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T21:01:58.990" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T21:01:58.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19694" CreationDate="2014-04-22T17:19:59.417" Score="8" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the editor receives a manuscript, he/she has to find a couple of suitable reviewers. I was wondering if the they were choosing the reviewers in order to match the expected manuscript quality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is the following: if the editor receives a manuscript that seems to describe a major breakthrough, will he/she choose preferentially well known scientists to review it? On the other hand, if the manuscript does not seems good, will he/she prefer younger, less experienced researchers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:03:59.173" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:03:59.173" Title="Do editors choose reviewers based on the quality of manuscripts?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:00:29.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to everything else that's been said here, you SHOULD talk to your professor about this.  If for no other reason than to make sure that all sections of the class are following the same rules.  If there is no clear policy then you can't be expected to enforce the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also remember that a lot of students won't understand why it's cheating and you have to create that understanding.  Putting something in the student's hands that explains the policy is key.  Refer to the student handbook as appropriate.  My handout usually says something like &quot;This is your one and only 'warning.' After this if you plagiarize you will have crossed a line you cannot uncross.&quot;  After I started handing that out and going over it very clearly on the first day of class I never again had a plagiarism problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T18:00:29.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:29:21.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good working knowledge of languages is important for many fields of research. Google translate is good, but no substitute for actually being able to just read the article in the original. You don't need to know that many languages for most fields. I recommend that you pick up at least one research language other than English. Which one will be most useful will depend on your field and perhaps your specific topic. (My topic requires Latin, for instance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T18:29:21.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19667" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:56:23.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standards vary a lot: for example, I've seen MS theses in theoretical computer science from Israel that are mini-Ph.D dissertations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more typically as aeismail says an MS thesis is a demonstration of mastery of a particular topic, and may or may not include original research as a part of this demonstration. In this respect, an MS thesis is closer in form to a bachelor's thesis, but the material will be more complex, and less structured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T18:56:23.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-22T19:04:03.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the rules of your institution are told to you by this professor, and you choose not to follow them, then where does that put you relative to how you think of the students' behaviour with respect to the clear rules on copying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either you have discretion to decide the punishment or you don't, and it sounds to me like you're being told that you don't. Your professor may be incorrect in this, but if you can't find it written down either way then the only way to determine that is to contact another authority in your institution for another opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that by &quot;do nothing&quot; your prof actually meant do the thing you want to do -- fail the assignment and nothing else. If so then you're home free, and I think you could probably establish that by asking the prof, &quot;If I do nothing how should I grade the substantially-copied assignments? Give them both 0?&quot; This doesn't require a long conversation, anything that can be handled by a 1-minute email is probably good for the prof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you're in the position of a cop who has been told by the captain, &quot;If you think they've broken the law this goes to the DA. If you think they haven't then forget about it and cut them loose&quot;. You're saying, &quot;well can't I just issue them an on-the-spot fine or something?&quot;. No, you can't, not if the person in authority says you can't. You can acknowledge the offence and follow procedure, or you can knowingly overlook the offence because you think the procedure is unjustified. And, I might add, good luck with that as a long-term strategy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, perhaps you could contact the Dean of Students (or their representative), and ask whether &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are prepared to ratify failing the assignment but not the class. Of course if you do this you pretty much have to report them if the Dean says &quot;no, they must be expelled, this is a zero-tolerance issue for us&quot; or whatever. What you can't do is decide on behalf of your institution that copying just one assignment isn't sufficiently bad to justify failing the class. The Dean of Students has clearly impressed on you that their opinion is otherwise or you wouldn't be able to predict their response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speculating wildly, I would guess that the reason the Dean's response is so stern is that many TAs before you have been through the process you're currently in. The class is told the rules against copying. Someone copies. The class is told the rules against copying again. Someone copies. Now what? The Dean of Students can probably list more things than you can that have been observed not to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T19:37:22.150" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T19:37:22.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19681" CreationDate="2014-04-22T19:36:10.080" Score="15" ViewCount="3455" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like the traditional exam model (two midterms at 30% and one final at 40% of the grade, closed book) is flawed. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students get only a few minutes per questions, whereas in reality they would get days &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they&#xA;would&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they&#xA;learned after the course is over&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material&#xA;and understanding real-world applications &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to claim&#xA;that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in&#xA;contexts other than an exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor? Is there any system of evaluating student performance in an undergraduate course which is an improvement over a traditional exam approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2017-12-16T01:09:55.987" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T01:09:55.987" Title="Is there an alternative to traditional exams?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19650" CreationDate="2014-04-22T19:53:18.553" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you already included in your question the most reasonable answer: upload a corrected copy of the paper to your webpage, and indicate on your webpage what the nature of the corrections was.  I don't think you need to be specifically apologetic about it: rather &lt;strong&gt;honesty&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;fixing the paper&lt;/strong&gt; seem to be called for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only consider doing more than this if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(i)&lt;/strong&gt; The standards for quoting text without attribution in your field are more stringent than the academic norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and/or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(ii)&lt;/strong&gt; You have some reason to believe that the unattributed quotes played a role in the acceptance of your paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the academic circles that I run in (mathematics, and more generally STEM) neither of these apply and the second one is especially dubious: math papers are -- &lt;em&gt;alas!&lt;/em&gt; -- not accepted for their dexterous phrase-turning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (i) and (ii) do apply, then I would next consider whether this paper is playing any significant role in your current academic profile.  (You say it was published in a low-tier journal; on the other hand you say it is still being cited.)  If all these conditions are met -- i.e., you have reason to believe that the paper might not have been accepted if the quotes were attributed properly &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you feel that you have profited in some non-negligible way from publishing the paper, then I think you are ethically obligated to contact an editor of the journal.  I would begin by sending them a copy of your &quot;corrected&quot; paper and take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is very unlikely that this &lt;em&gt;almost harmless&lt;/em&gt; kind of plagiarism (and I think we should agree that it is plagiarism: there are just more and less egregious versions of that bad practice; this is very unegregious, if I can make up a word) will get you in any kind of academic difficulties in your current job or even your future career.  However, I think that academics should hold themselves to a higher standard than avoiding what could get them in trouble.  From your post it is clear that you have high ethical standards and this has been bothering you for a while.  If you do what I advised, I hope that you will sleep a little more soundly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T14:15:09.077" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T14:15:09.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19676" CreationDate="2014-04-22T20:13:56.180" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although exams have the flaws you described, there are also many positive aspects you have not discussed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exams are actually an objective way to test performance, in a &quot;hard to copy&quot; environment. Although one may disagree with what is actually being tested, objectivity is usually not questioned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are fast. It takes 3-4 hours to test hundreds of students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are universally used and most of the students are accustomed to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is an excellent way to prepare students to perform under stress, a skill which is extremely useful in any work environment. All works / skills have some sort-of-testing (e.g. presentations, interviews). Even getting your driver's license requires testing. So, learning to do well in exams is a crucial real-life skill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only complementary (but not good enough for actually completely replacing exams) tool I can think of, is project assignments. Especially in CS, projects are a very effective tool to prepare students for real-work assignments. But they are not a good enough method on their own without some sort of personal written examination. They allow too much collaboration, copying and usually when done in teams, the good students do most of the work while others slack. While a professor might take measures to minimize this, it is impossible to avoid it 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I do not think there is a universally better way to test students' performance than written exams. One may complement it with projects, assignments, oral examinations but in most of the cases, completely abandoning it is probably a mistake.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T20:13:56.180" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19676" CreationDate="2014-04-22T22:23:22.217" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not necessarily so. Instructors can allow &quot;cheat sheets,&quot; or allow open book exams. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students get only a few minutes per question, whereas in reality they would get days &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not necessarily true. My boss often asks me questions and expects me to give prompt answers. I don't always have the luxury of asking for a few days to research something. If we are in a high-stakes meeting with customers from out of town, my organization's effectiveness might well hinge on my ability to ask or answer intelligent questions on the fly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they would &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;True, but exams are designed to measure individual ability and performance, not someone's ability to contribute within a group, or accomplish some objective as a group. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they learned after the course is over; students also focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material and understanding real-world applications &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps so, but that's what we get when we test on the minutiae and the trivial, as opposed to testing on the synthesis of high-level concepts (more on that later). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is difficult to claim that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in contexts other than an exam &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe so, but it's not difficult to claim that, as a general rule, if students are given identical exams, students who score above the median probably understand course concepts better than those who scored below the median (with some possible exceptions, due to factors such as test anxiety, and perhaps even a little luck). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you bring up some possible shortcomings with what you call &quot;the traditional exam model,&quot; but you can address some of these simply by redefining your parameters. Instead of two closed-book exams that count toward 70% of the student's grade, give three open-book exams that count toward 50% of the student's grade. Make one of them a take-home exam, and you at least put a dent in the &quot;few minutes per question&quot; problem. By reducing the exam percentage from 70% to 50%, you have an extra 20% to play with, so assign a group project worth 20% of the grade, thereby addressing the collaboration problem you mention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for cramming and concentrating on the wrong things, that's what students will do if you structure an exam that requires them to commit a lot of petty knowledge to short-term memory. I try very hard to make my exam questions address higher-level concepts, rather than nitnoid facts. I ask them to explain these concepts, often by weighing in on hypothetical debates. (Sometimes these debates aren't even hypothetical; I'll find a online discussion thread where a debate is raging, then paste it into my exam and ask them to chime in). In other words, insofar as I can, I test on what I want them to remember five years from now. If I want them to solve a problem, but don't care if they've memorized a requisite formula (because they'll be able to look it up anyway), then I'll just include the formula in the exam. I often tell my students, &quot;Anythihg you would need to memorize will be put in the exam itself. If it's something I have trouble remembering off the top of my head, I don't expect you to memorize it for the exam.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, now, there's the rub. If you followed my suggestions here, look what I've done! There are three exams to grade, not two. These exams don't have a lot of multiple choice questions, and then there's that new group project I mentioned (which needs to be drafted up, assigned, and graded). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to get something for nothing; most meaningful improvements are going to come with some cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T22:23:22.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19676" CreationDate="2014-04-22T23:10:50.187" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;One alternative that's been gaining momentum in actual classroom use is standards-based grading (SBG): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fwps.org/teaching/sbe/grading-system/&quot;&gt;http://www.fwps.org/teaching/sbe/grading-system/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In SBG, the instructor establishes a list of milestones that students are expected to attain throughout the course. The students then can provide evidence of any sort -- within parameters set by the instructor -- that prove they have met the standard. Student evidence of attainment of a standard is marked on a scale usually from 0 to 4 (unacceptable, novice, progressing, acceptable, and mastery -- or something like this) and grades are assigned at the end of the semester based on how many of the milestones have been met at &quot;Acceptable&quot; level or above.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in calculus, one standard might be &quot;Take the derivative of a second-degree polynomial using the limit definition&quot;. A student might show that they know this by doing a problem on a standard timed test. But maybe they don't have it down as well as they should, and on the test their work is marked as a 2 out of 4 (progressing; maybe they got the definition right but did some of the resulting algebra wrong). This isn't the end of the story. Later in the course, the student can show evidence again that they've learned what they need to learn -- for example, they can schedule time in office hours to come work a problem or two to show you they've met the standard. Or maybe take a short quiz in class, or work a problem during unstructured group work time in class meetings, or whatever avenue the instructor allows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of SBG is that we want to assess students based on what they know, and give them multiple ways to show that they know it. SBG can therefore be a superset of traditional timed testing -- students that do well in timed situations will do fine in SBG, but students who struggle with timed testing can have multiple chances to get their act together, and as long as they can prove they've mastered the material by the end of the course, that is what matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't personally practice SBG but I would like to. I'd suggest this blog post by my colleague Jon Hasenbank who is a big SBG proponent: &lt;a href=&quot;http://profjonh.blogspot.com/2014/02/sbg-mia14.html&quot;&gt;http://profjonh.blogspot.com/2014/02/sbg-mia14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastEditorUserId="14188" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T10:49:01.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T10:49:01.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-22T23:56:52.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answers to your question of the ethics of co-authorship need to consider what is the role of (or signal conveyed by) authorship in a publication. This role may 1) differ among disciplines  and 2) be evolving all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of large research groups or collaborative projects—as some seen in genetics or physics—the roles of a head researcher involve managing the direction of the research and to create an environment where that research can thrive. The latter may involve obtaining funding, hiring post-docs &amp;amp; PhD students, managing people so research happens in a productive way. Whatever output from that group would probably not happen if it wasn't for the head researcher; in that sense, he/she has a very strong involvement in the creation of a research output. Good research heads will know very well where the different pieces/outputs fit in the overall research project, although they may not be familiar with the details of a calculation in a publication. They will guide provide post-docs and students so their publications fit within the overall project. In my book, this merits co-authorship in a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there is co-authorship as a signal of group productivity, which is then used to improve the standing of the head researcher when it comes to funding application. This is a game played by many labs in the world; one may not agree with the 'corruption' of traditional authorship, but it is certainly used that way. Thus, I do not think we can discuss the ethics of co-authorship in a vacuum, without understanding its role in modern research practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I do work in a small group, where there is no assumption of automatic co-authorship. I am, however, evaluated on the 'creation and support of research environment' when applying for academic promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T23:56:52.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19630" CreationDate="2014-04-23T00:19:47.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some financial considerations that may have a strong influence on the composition of the research group: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The costs for post-docs and PhD students are different; it is not uncommon to get 2 PhD students for the cost of a post-doc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different funding sources may pay for one or the other. For example, I recently got funding that was restricted to PhD students only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On terms of productivity, I would expect a postdoc to start producing something after 6 months, while PhD students can easily take a couple of years to get something publishable. I would trust a post-doc to co-supervise 1-2 PhD students, but never to be a senior supervisor. You may get a postdoc to be involved in more projects, but then they would not have enough time to progress in their own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T00:19:47.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-23T00:22:10.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic honesty cases are very serious for two reasons. First, academic dishonesty strikes at the very foundation of what makes education work in the first place -- namely the idea of mutual trust. Second, academic honesty cases all too frequently degenerate into legal battles that cost the university time and money. For this reason of seriousness, it's paramount that the professor of record take responsibility for this situation and not leave it up to you as a TA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go find your university's academic dishonesty policy and read it very carefully. In all likelihood you will find two things that are relevant here: (1) only the professor of record has the authority to act on an academic dishonesty case in her/his class, and (2) more to the point, if academic dishonesty occurs, the professor is contractually obligated to report it. This is how most university's policies work. You might find yourself in a situation of having to remind the professor of this fact -- the prof might have freedom to handle punishments however s/he wishes, but the prof must make a report anyway, for the student's record. (If the student is a repeat offender, the student may be expelled.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the prof has this responsibility and still won't listen, go to the department chair with it. This sort of thing really can't be ignored. But I repeat -- this is probably not your responsibility. The thing to do at this point is to find the person who &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; responsible for investigating it and make sure they move on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T00:22:10.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19470" CreationDate="2014-04-23T01:39:31.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thinking more on this, I have come to agree that patenting things - devices, or drugs - is necessary. However, I wonder if this question would be answered differently if the thing being patented is, instead, a model? For example, would it have been appropriate for Krebs to patent the eponymously named Krebs cycle as a way to think about energy metabolism in a cell?  Or the cell cycle? Or, could the inventor of the SIR model of infectious disease spread have ethically patented that method of tracking infectious diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14277" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T01:39:31.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19670" CreationDate="2014-04-23T01:57:03.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My impression from working with one is that good editors seek reviews and reviewers necessary and sufficient to justify their decisions. If the paper is obviously good and obviously right, the reviews may only need to be light. If it's a major breakthrough that requires careful checking, then reviewers of the highest quality will be sought. On the other hand, if the paper has major flaws but comes from a well-known, well-regarded author, the editor will seek out someone known to produce the high-quality review but negative review they need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More speculatively, borderline papers probably require a lot of work from the editor. If they are unsure whether they want to accept a paper or not, they need high quality reviews to make the decisions on whether to offer revisions or not. They also need reviewers willing to do the work of multiple review rounds in a timely fashion. This latter thought is entirely speculative, but it is commensurate with my experience from conference program committees and the borderline papers we reviewed there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T01:57:03.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19688" CreationDate="2014-04-23T03:07:45.290" Score="9" ViewCount="868" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the department share the departmental problems (financial, officials, political, etc) with the students? or it is official matter and none of their business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more specific example. Imagine that students are complaining about the lack of teachers in specific topics. The department head tries to secure fund for faculty recruitment, but Dean refuses. &lt;em&gt;Should the department head consider this as an internal matter between officials or should inform the students why he is not hiring teacher?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I do not mean organizational secrets. Most of these news spread among students through rumors and gossip. My question is: should a department head directly inform the students about problems? Or according to the common business models, an organization should not reveal its failures and problems to customers unless it is a must?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the appropriate scheme for treating students? (1) customers who get service from the university employees in return to tuition fee, or (2) part of the organization? Obviously, these are not solid categories, and I just want to express the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T04:23:35.793" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T07:38:46.417" Title="Should university administrators share official matters with students?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19687" CreationDate="2014-04-23T04:33:15.047" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a department should share information with students that can affect them. A non-hire of faculty doesn't affect students directly unless the students were recruited to the department with the promise of expanding in a certain area, and then this fell through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know of a single department that would make such a promise to incoming students (and certainly not undergraduates). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the department experiences a shortfall in funding that means that they have to change how they fund students, then these students must be informed as soon as possible since this materially affects them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from these cases, one can certainly make the argument that sharing &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt; information with students helps foster an atmosphere of collegiality and gives the students a sense of belonging. Within reason...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T04:33:15.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19687" CreationDate="2014-04-23T04:57:14.147" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;it depends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the specific problem is,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The department/university/student/faculty culture,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can be gained by telling students about the specific problem,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What reasons there are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to tell students about the specific problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons to tell students about problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can often be beneficial to share information with students so that they feel more invested in their department (as Suresh suggests).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another reason to tell students about a problem is if there is some action students can take to help the problem.  (For example: &quot;We have been having trouble attracting the top students this year, and we really need to recruit some great new PhD students to keep this department going strong. Please make some extra effort at the event for admitted students to show them what great research we are doing here and encourage them to accept their offer!&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A third (more cynical) reason: if it's a major problem that students will find out about anyways, it's often better for them to hear about it directly from the department/university, so that administrators can add their &quot;spin&quot; to the news. (For example: &quot;Our recent accreditation review didn't go well, as you may read about in the newspaper tomorrow, but here our concrete plan to fix this issue.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are good reasons &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to tell students about some problems. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be beneficial to shield students (to some degree) from department politics and financial issues that don't directly affect them, and that they can't do anything about. (For example: I don't need to know which faculty member is mad this week because they feel slighted over not having been asked to come to lunch with a certain job candidate.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having partial information can be worse than having no information at all, i.e., students can misinterpret the information they are given because they lack certain context (which &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be shared with them for whatever reason).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department/university guidelines may require information to be withheld in some cases. For example, there may be a policy that things said in certain meetings are to be held confidential among the participants unless explicitly approved for outside release. This may allow certain things to be said that wouldn't be said otherwise, but limits the sharing of information with students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T04:57:14.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19670" CreationDate="2014-04-23T08:55:51.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an element of logical necessity in the question you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us start with the case of a really major breakthrough, think epoch-making result. In that case, editors will of course try to select someone who is able to understand and verify the work, so someone who presumably has notoriously an outstanding command of the topic, who is known for extreme precision and for the ability to easily incorporate new insights. Such a person has highly desirable qualities in order to produce outstanding research and is &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; for having them. The odds are that that person has produced top-quality research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider the fact that such persons are by definition rare, so as they are busy reviewing outstanding submissions, other people have to review less outstanding submissions. So in general, yes, submission credibly claiming a breakthrough are much more likely to be reviewed by well-known scientists or (logically equivalently) submissions claiming much more modest progress or claiming breakthroughs but rather dubiously are more likely to be reviewed by less well-known scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as always, there are exceptions. I know at least one relatively junior, relatively unknown scientist who has displayed such excellence and thoroughness in reviewing top manuscripts in his field that he is regularly asked to evaluate submissions whose quality and importance are way beyond his own published work; a statement which should not be considered a slight on the quality of his research: one of the submission earned its author a Fields medal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14210" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T08:55:51.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19693" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:05:21.723" Score="5" ViewCount="6017" Body="&lt;p&gt;In research papers, should Introduction and Conclusion sections be numbered or non-numbered? What does the scientific paper etiquette suggest? Furthermore, in either case, should they appear in the Table of Contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer depends on the research field, please elaborate. I'm in electrical engineering, but do occasionally write mathematical papers as well, so those two fields are personally of highest interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, in case someone confuses it with the Introduction section, I am quite sure that the Abstract section should be non-numbered either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14435" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T16:43:39.540" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T16:43:39.540" Title="Numbering Introduction and Conclusion?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19692" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:10:39.343" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not field-dependent, it's a journal-dependent issue. Some use a format where everything is numbered, some use a format where nothing is numbered, and still others leave it up to the authors to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when sections are numbered, everything in the main text should be numbered, including the introduction and conclusions. You don't skip numbering those sections but add numbers for the rest. That doesn't make any sense. (End matter such as acknowledgments and supporting information may be handled separately.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice is &lt;strong&gt;check the style guide for your journal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T16:00:55.843" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T16:00:55.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19670" CreationDate="2014-04-23T10:25:17.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editors try to maintain a good status of papers published in &quot;their&quot; journal. There is no obvious point in using different standards for different papers and I am sure that such differences are not concious decisions if they appear. If an editor receives a paper that is outside of their comfort zone, it is of course possible they are not aware of possible good reviewers and may make seemingly odd choices. How common this is will be difficult to assess but that it occurs is certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the specific of receiving something of breakthrough character, the procedure should normally be the same. However, an editor always has the choice of adding as many reviewers as they see fit. If a controversial paper appears, it will likely receive quite varying reviews and adding additional reviewers may be useful to get a sense of the quality of the work. This does not necessarily mean an editor will go for specific names but I can see that it may be the case that one would go for prominent names for such a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience as editor and author (and reviewer) I often get the sense that good science receives far harsher reviews than poorer. I do not think this is because the good stuff are assigned to &quot;better&quot; scientists, I actually think it is because a good paper is easier to fault be cause it is more transparent than poor papers which are muddled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, there are many aspects to how papers are run through a review process. Choice of reviewers is not generally done after quality of the paper although it can happen. In the end a journal, through its editors, want to retain its status and letting poor papers through, does not serve such a purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T10:25:17.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T12:39:24.107" Score="5" ViewCount="2320" Body="&lt;p&gt;The faculty in which I am currently working is planning to subscribe to the ACM Digital Library and to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. I am not pretty sure how much are the real costs of the subscription because for example in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://librarians.acm.org/sites/default/files/ACM_DL_PricingGuides2014_NoTabs_V19_Academic.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://librarians.acm.org/sites/default/files/ACM_DL_PricingGuides2014_NoTabs_V19_Academic.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it appears something about tiers; I suppose that for a small access to this material oriented only to students that are doing their bachelor's final year projects, we will be in tier 1. About IEEE I still do not have information about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I would like if there are another alternatives to those two digital libraries, excluding Arxiv because a lot of their articles have not been peer reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD. Update information:&#xA;We would like to access to articles about all the fields of Computer Science, the access would be for around 20 students maximum each month (that is the number of students enrolled in their last bachelor project). We need only the articles to be reviewed for their research as supporting literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T16:51:19.877" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T00:35:40.077" Title="Are there cheaper alternatives to ACM and to IEEE Xplore digital libraries?" Tags="&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19676" CreationDate="2014-04-23T12:41:30.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In courses that focus more on real world practical ability, assignments (like creating a project, software, etc) are a suitable alternative. It can be done during more time, using literature and, if preferred, in a small group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A student still needs to defend an assignment (demonstrate it working and answer enough questions to be sure the work has not been copied from somewhere). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T12:41:30.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19699" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:19:27.953" Score="28" ViewCount="4538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the first time I had to write an (academic) CV, I seem to be getting two conflicting opinions on the subject of &lt;em&gt;including non-academic&lt;/em&gt; interests on an academic CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Some examples of such interests would be sports, cooking, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;sources&quot; of my advice include professional people in and outside of academia, (not that many) PhD students, a lot of internet searches and observing the CVs of other academics/researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One one hand, I heard that &lt;strong&gt;including a section about such interests is important&lt;/strong&gt;, as it is supposed to demonstrate that you are a &quot;diverse, complete person&quot; and not a solitary scientist/workaholic. This is also one of the more common &lt;em&gt;&quot;don't forget&quot;&lt;/em&gt; advice I found on not-academia-specific guides to writing a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a lot of examples of CVs of senior scientist &lt;strong&gt;didn't include anything of the sort&lt;/strong&gt;, which mostly makes sense to me: since I am writing a CV to apply for a position / grant in an academic concept, I should be judged based on my academia-related activities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to know &lt;strong&gt;what is actually the convention&lt;/strong&gt; in academia? I can imagine the answer might depend on several factors such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;culture of the country&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;culture of the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;seniority of the scientist (e.g. PhD student vs permanent Professor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, then, I am really not sure. Is it a matter of convention depending on some or all of the above, or, if not, what is the global convention for including non-academia related interests in an academic CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T02:03:52.103" Title="Is listing non-academic interests on academic CVs important?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19698" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:41:11.357" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;convention&lt;/em&gt; in an academic CV is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to include information on non-academic hobbies or interests that are not relevant to your professional skills and qualifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find this view confirmed on sites that give specific advice on the &lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt; CV. (e.g.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/applications/cvs/content/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say there's never a good reason to include this information; there may be, in some cases. (For example, you might mention your time abroad doing unrelated humanitarian work to explain a chronological gap.) But in academic CVs it's not standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T14:42:54.033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T14:42:54.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19698" CreationDate="2014-04-23T14:38:14.550" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When considering applicants for an academic job, should employers be taking interests in things like sports or cooking into account?  In all academic circles I am aware of, the answer is a clear &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.  If I were a candidate for an academic job and somehow found out that another candidate got additional consideration for these kind of interests, I would be quite upset, and if there were (this seems unlikely) some kind of written record of it, I might have a real grievance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is that, about as certainly as any one academic can be about the entire world of academia, I believe that putting such things on an academic CV will not get you additional formal consideration.  Some people do put them on their CVs anyway: I have looked at thousands of CVs over (not-even-that-)many years, and I would say that maybe 5% include information like this.  I don't take it into account in my deliberations.  I might happen to be personally interested, but I might also semi-consciously think &quot;Boy do I not care that Mr. X enjoys cooking and running.  Let me take another look as Ms. Y, who listed only impressive, relevant things on her CV.&quot;  When there are several hundred applications, you do want to err in the direction of not annoying your readers, however mildly.  Now you might well argue that your application could just as well find someone who semi-consciously admires you for cooking and running.  That's your decision.  But my feeling (which of course is very much based on &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;) is that you will in the aggregate lose rather than gain a small number of points with this practice....and in the current academic job market, losing a small number of points is liable to have the same effect as losing a large number of points!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two followup remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a place for you to put benign personal information: your webpage.  Nowadays I think that every academic job candidate should have a webpage (I didn't until after I started a tenure track job, despite the fact that one of the key people who eventually hired me hinted several times to my postdoctoral supervisor that that would be a good idea.  On the one hand: oh, well; do what I say, not what I do.  On the other hand: that was almost ten years ago, and since then my webpage has become a major part of my professional profile.  I really think that a young academic without a webpage in 2014 looks like a Luddite.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You write &quot;academic CV&quot;.  I wonder whether this hints at your geography.  In the US, the term CV is &lt;em&gt;only used&lt;/em&gt; in academia (and also in the medical industry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae&quot;&gt;according to wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: these are overlapping circles).  To my American ear, the term &quot;academic CV&quot; sounds almost redundant.  But the same wikipedia article helpfully informed me: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In some countries, a CV is typically the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview, when seeking employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should know that in the US we call that a &quot;resume&quot;, not a CV.  I think this is a helpful distinction to keep in mind when trying to decide whether information about CVs is applicable: a &quot;business resume&quot; is very different from an &quot;academic CV&quot;.  Anyone who tells you that a CV should be 1-2 pages is talking about a resume instead: although you sometimes see &quot;brief CVs&quot; which are that length, an academic CV is rather supposed to be a &lt;em&gt;comprehensive document&lt;/em&gt; detailing your academic record, so it grows roughly linearly with the length of your academic career.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T14:38:14.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-23T14:38:55.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly it depends on the assignment; I had to do labs in my computer Sci degree with a partner, each person then had to produce a write up on our own.    We created one document with all the results in that we shared, and then wrote up the rest ourselves.   There was no point in both of us writing down the same numbers and then typing the same numbers into ms-word.  So text like the headings on a results table would be the same between the two of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe give the students the option of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being reported with all the risks that takes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or withdrawing their assignment and getting no marks for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or putting in a formal complaint themselves, so reporting themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T14:38:55.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19746" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:03:08.110" Score="2" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a teacher in a Vocational Education school in Spain. In our Vocational Education system, we have two different levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vocational High School (post compulsory secondary school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Community College (this is considered Higher Education)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard for me to establish equivalence with the US System, but I guess you might have similar levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Spain, students with a Vocational High School diploma can't enroll directly in Community College, they need to sit a test first (a sort of SAT test, but not so hard as SAT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how it goes in the US. Is there also some kind of test for entering a Community College if you come from Vocational High School? In that case, could you tell me how this test is called, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14444" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:51:22.010" Title="Access to Community Colleges in US" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19692" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:08:56.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; numbered in mathematics and related fields. Why? Because often you state theorems and formulas in Introduction or Conclusions: How would you label these to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(With my Copy Editor hat on)&lt;/em&gt; I allow only three unnumbered sections: List of notation, Acknowledgements, References. They come in this order (if present) and they are at the very end of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, as &lt;strong&gt;aeismail&lt;/strong&gt; pointed out, it's field- and journal-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T15:08:56.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19705" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:25:23.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is apparently pretty complicated, since US education has a tradition of decentralization. Originally, community colleges were pure local-government entities, although there is now a lot more state involvement. There is not a single nationwide set of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vocational high schools are not very common in the US. For the most part we simply have high schools. Vocational education tends to be unpopular, because parents don't want it for their children for reasons of prestige.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my area in Southern California, any student who has graduated from high school can enroll at a community college, and there is no admissions test. California's master plan for higher education states that the mission of community colleges is to admit any student who is capable of benefiting from instruction. Even students who don't have a high school diploma can attend a community college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the comments below show that the facts described above do not hold nationwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to funding cuts in 2012, students who don't have a high school diploma or a GED (a diploma based on taking a test that is supposed to be equivalent to a high school diploma) no longer qualify for federal financial aid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T01:12:10.780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T01:12:10.780" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19721" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:46:47.590" Score="13" ViewCount="19916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to send an email to a professor to inform him that I want to accept the offer of PhD admission and Research assistantship. But I do not know how to start email. Is the following good? if not, would you please recommend better phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope you are keeping well ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11259" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T19:56:27.363" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T11:17:03.150" Title="How to start an official email to a professor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-11T22:18:18.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19763" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:12:02.670" Score="13" ViewCount="4894" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent job posting at a British university has specified available openings at multiple levels: lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, and professor. However, it's not clear how to map these titles to American equivalents. For instance, where would someone who has finished up several years of an assistant professorship and is interested in moving into such a position be classified? Would it be as a senior lecturer or reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:56:47.203" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T21:02:54.047" Title="Translating British faculty titles into American equivalents" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19725" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:26:52.863" Score="33" ViewCount="14771" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently my paper is reviewed (by a professor from independent third party) and accepted by a journal. But, my employer allows me to publish this paper only without its name there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing house is expecting affiliation for each author, i.e. I can not leave affiliation as blank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I write as the affiliation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14448" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T19:53:09.160" LastActivityDate="2020-07-31T19:01:54.723" Title="What to put in &quot;affiliation&quot; field when submitting paper without affiliation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:47:32.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it might be appropriate to put this on your CV is you are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; early in your career, and facing the &quot;There's nothing but coursework on my CV&quot; problem. If that's the case, it might be worth doing just to show that you're in the early stages of your research career, but that you are engaging in collaborative research work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the moment you have something more substantial to put on your CV, I'd expect it to drop away in favor of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:47:32.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:54:28.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any question involving the words &quot;Automatic&quot; and &quot;Authorship&quot; raises red flags for me, and my inclination is always to say &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which is the group that sets authorship guidelines not only for medical journals, but also many journals in closely related fields like public health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for published work. The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors, but also that contributors credited as authors understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for what is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automatic authorship doesn't confer either this responsibility, or imply that they've made substantive intellectual contributions to the papers. Their four suggested criteria is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND&#xA;  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND&#xA;  Final approval of the version to be published; AND&#xA;  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that in &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; cases an advisor should have met the first criteria, and &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have met all the subsequent ones for papers with their name on it done by one of their students (otherwise, what exactly is the advisor doing besides signing the occasional form?), but it's entirely possible they haven't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my dissertation, I have two papers that do not have my advisors name on them - one because it was a side musing born out of trying to graph a set of results, and pretty much the product of my own brain over the course of a week, and another because they felt they hadn't met those criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:54:28.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19667" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:59:25.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standards will vary quite a bit from field to field, committee to committee, etc. But having gone through this fairly recently, and having been in the position to advise some others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masters projects: Good Masters projects can be tied up in a single paper - and should be amenable to being published. But they are generally a single, coherent research question. Secondary analysis of existing data, a theoretical paper to support an empirical study, a meta-analysis, etc. are all good examples. There may be lingering questions (there are always lingering questions...) but by and large the student should be able to &quot;walk away&quot; at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD projects, on the other hand, should lend themselves to &lt;em&gt;multiple&lt;/em&gt; papers, at least the number of papers required for graduation, and preferably several more to accommodate changes in funding, research interests, dead ends, or the paper that seems to draw the ire of reviewers everywhere. It should be new, asking fundamentally unknown questions, or at least trying to get at known questions in a different way, and should be substantial enough that, at the end, the student should be able to consider that area to be their area of expertise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:59:25.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19627" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:07:06.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thoughts, admittedly from a non-mathematician giving a general answer. Below are some things I consider when deciding where a paper goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you coauthors have suggestions? Especially senior colleagues, they may have a good feeling for where a paper belongs, or where it absolutely doesn't belong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a timeline. As mentioned, journals have backlogs, and some journals are notoriously slow. If you need something &lt;em&gt;in press&lt;/em&gt; soon, it might be best to pass on those, even if they are prestigious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do those journals publish papers that &quot;feel&quot; like yours? If they've never published something like your paper, what are the odds yours will be the first? If its extremely rare that one is published, does the journal actually have the readership you want and again, you might want to adjust your probability of success down a bit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say, despite all of this, I once submitted a paper to a journal thinking &quot;Why not, worst thing that happens is they reject it.&quot; It got into one of the best journals in my field, and is still, 6 years later, arguably my most visible publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:07:06.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:16:03.037" Score="18" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is as follows: I spent my undergraduate time at one university and recently entered grad school at another university (both of them in Germany, my field is theoretical computer science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my Bachelor's thesis, I worked (for about two months or so) on a topic that had not been considered at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My former supervisor, although he proposed the topic, is not (at least not for the last 30 years) actively doing research in that specific area, which resulted in me ending up quite on my own. However, I could get some new results. They were, of course, not groundbreaking, but sufficient for the undergraduate level and the amount of time spent working on the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we submitted the results to a (medium-to-low-ranked) conference in the subfield.&#xA;The reviews were quite mixed. Two were rather superficial: One positively and recommending acceptance, one negatively and recommending rejection (actually, the latter one was quite rude).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third one, however, although recommending for rejection, was quite encouraging. The reviewer liked the idea of the paper, while the results we obtained did not suffice for publication at conference level but (his words) were rather suited for venues for work in progress, e.g. workshops in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually agree with the third reviewer, for it would have been quite a surprise for me if a second-year undergraduate would have been able to produce publishable work on his own just like that, so I am not that disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I do not plan on pursuing that specific subarea of research in the future and neither does my former supervisor. However, given that I ultimately aim for an academic career, I think it might be worth some efforts to get something published. Additionally, at my new university, nobody really cares about the area of the thesis, so chances to get some expert here to work with in order to improve the results are rather bad. This means that if I want something to happen, I would have to invest a vast amount of time and thoughts into a topic I don't want to pursue in the future, instead of entering new areas of research as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Should I improve the results and finally get them published or should I invest the time for acquiring knowledge in a different area (and start publishing later) and abandon the work that has been done (giving away a possible publication) (w.r.t. the impact of the outcome on my academic career)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14450" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T19:21:36.177" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T20:46:28.163" Title="Abandoning vs. further pursuing a rejected paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19627" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:29:38.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add three small points that haven't been mentioned in the other responses so far. It is possible that this advice is localized to my specific discipline (Philosophy), so take it with a grain of salt. (I'd be interested if commentators think it works the same way or differently in their fields.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many hiring committees for junior tenure-track researchers in philosophy care much more about the &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; of one's publications rather than the &lt;em&gt;quantity&lt;/em&gt;. Having more good papers is better than fewer good papers, but 1 good paper is worth much much more than 4 bad ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The primary metric by which a committee judges the quality of one's work is the prestige of the journals one's work is published in.  The committee  might have several hundred applications to read through and they realistically won't actually read everyone's writing sample. Therefore, the prestige of being published in a famous, peer-reviewed journal acts as a proxy for quality that signals that you have already been vetted by a 3rd party and found competent. If you make the shortlist, they'll actually read your work and come to their own assessment of it. But if you make it to the shortlist you're probably one of 15-25 candidates, rather than 1 out of 500.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These committees assume that the first work published right after the PhD is complete is probably the best work the candidate is going to do as a junior researcher. The idea here is that this is the work you've been working on the longest, and at the most depth, and you've had your advisor's help, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given 1-3, I think it's much better advice for graduate students in philosophy to spend a lot of time and get one thing published somewhere really really good rather than simply trying to dash something off to get &quot;points on the board&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good is &quot;really, really good&quot;? I'd say a top 20 general journal in your field. The difficulty of placing an article in such a journal gives hiring committees an immediate yardstick to know how good your work must be. Everyone in philosophy has had a paper rejected from &lt;em&gt;Philosophical Quarterly&lt;/em&gt;, so people know how impressed to be when they see that you have something forthcoming there on your cv. &lt;em&gt;The Croatian Journal of Formal Logic&lt;/em&gt;, might be great, but if nobody knows about it, then publishing there doesn't have the immediate cash-value of showing that you have been vetted by an independent third party. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:29:38.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19716" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:32:57.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no clear answer to this question because it depends on several factors. First, it has to be said that it is a shame if good research is not published. If you get encouraging comments and know what to do to meet certain criteria you can probably assess how much work will be involved and then if you are willing to put in that effort. having something published is never wrong, even if it is not in the field you want to pursue. If you are not interested or do not want to spend the time then it will be harder to generate the necessary improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to pursue a career in research, having something tangible published is always a plus. It is a question if you want to take a chance to &quot;waste&quot; your time; if you think it is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:32:57.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19709" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:34:52.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My impression is that: Lecturer and Senior Lecturer are roughly equivalent to an untenured, but tenure track Assistant Professorship in the US because both Lecturer and Senior Lecturer positions are full time, open ended positions. Reader is equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor and Professor is equivalent to full Professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They aren't exactly equivalent however. Most places in the UK don't actually have what americans would think of as tenure, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people that would be called &quot;instructors&quot; or &quot;lecturers&quot; in the US are non-tenure-track, contingent labor hired for one term or one year at a time and often not even full-time, although this varies. I don't know what the name of such a position would be in a UK university, or whether such positions are as common in the UK as they have sadly become in the States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:34:52.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19716" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:40:08.770" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, given that I ultimately aim for an academic career, I think it might be worth some efforts to get something published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This alone makes me thing that it may be worth the effort - attempting to enter an academic career becomes &lt;em&gt;vastly&lt;/em&gt; easier with some publications under your belt. Don't be discouraged by negative reviews - more than one of my papers has gotten reviews back that are essentially &quot;This paper is bad, and the authors should feel bad&quot; that end up seeing publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would continue to pursue your paper for at least another round or two of submissions, but given it's not strictly speaking what you're interested in, if it becomes a burden either in your classwork or in publishing something you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; interested in doing (I had a paper become just such a problem) return it to the shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:40:08.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19708" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:55:25.227" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on finding a PhD position :) When sending an acceptance e-mail to a professor, I would say the &quot;general&quot; rules of communicating with professors via e-mail apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be polite, and extend thanks when appropriate, but don't overdo the social pleasantries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;The polite part basically holds for any e-mail and live correspondence.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that &quot;I hope you are keeping well&quot; would be a bit unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be short and to the point. Respect the professors time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors receive many e-mails a day, and are usually very busy. Saying what you want to say clearly not only shows respect for their time, but also makes it more likely that everything written will be carefully read.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do at least a basic &lt;strong&gt;spellcheck&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in the beginning of a communication. It doesn't cost much time and effort, but could leave a bad impression.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not attach big files unless explicitly asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything larger than a few MB should not be sent unless asked for (e.g. sending all your credentials / application papers when first contacting somebody is bad), and especially not to somebody who you are not collaborating with at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, there is not much else. I already feel like it's hard to call any of these &lt;em&gt;rules&lt;/em&gt;, they're just guides based on common sense. Just say what you need to say. I put and extended the comment by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192/user11192&quot;&gt;@user11259&lt;/a&gt; here as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Please let me know about the next steps in the admission process I need to take.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;user11259&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T20:05:00.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19716" CreationDate="2014-04-23T20:41:03.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So we submitted the results to a (medium-to-low-ranked) conference in the subfield. The reviews were quite mixed. Two were rather superficial: One positively and recommending acceptance, one negatively and recommending rejection (actually, the latter one was quite rude).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think having a positive review suggests it might be worth factoring in the comments and trying another submission elsewhere, assuming you're confident that the paper is technically sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to build on the other answers, I can see three options (with decreasing awards):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work hard on the paper (if possible) and submit it to &lt;strong&gt;a conference with a similar level of competition&lt;/strong&gt; (or perhaps even greater).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work a little on the paper and submit it to &lt;strong&gt;a good/relevant workshop&lt;/strong&gt; or as &lt;strong&gt;a short paper to a conference&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submit the paper &quot;as is&quot; to &lt;strong&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot;&gt;arXiV&lt;/a&gt; e-print server&lt;/strong&gt; (which won't be peer-reviewed, but it will be publicised and the ideas will be marked as yours).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At your stage of career, taking any of these options would help open doors for you later on. Higher options open more doors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which strategy is best really depends on the depth of contribution in the paper (ideally you could discuss this in person with a more senior academic in roughly the same area). Note also that the options are not mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most generic advice would be to take option 3 now and submit the preprint (since it doesn't preclude submitting to a workshop/conference), work as hard as you can and try submit to another conference; if the reviews are similar, submit to a workshop or as a short paper. This strategy might involve more work but tries to maximise your profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth option (which may or may not be feasible) is to take option 3 and then try find somebody else to collaborate with: someone to advise/guide you and share some of the workload in extending the paper towards an improved conference submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T20:46:28.163" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T20:46:28.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19710" CreationDate="2014-04-23T20:45:41.947" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers#comment17608_3010&quot;&gt;@mankoff in a comment&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers&quot;&gt;Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?&lt;/a&gt;, you can use &quot;Independent Scholar&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here is a recent paper published by someone affiliated as &quot;Independent Scholar&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00171.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00171.1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T19:31:06.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T22:19:53.310" Score="16" ViewCount="11337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received a rejection letter from a relatively high-impact journal based on the feedback from three reviewers. After I reviewed their comments, I feared that their comments were biased and am not sure if I should appeal. The comments from all three reviewers are all negative, but one is more bias than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first reviewer say that I need to carry out a lot more experiments that will involve a lot of cost, which is not practical. However, in the comment, s/he only suggests one additional experiment that need to be done. The second reviewer complains about the quality of the figures, but I think they are fixable. The third reviewer complains about the novelty of the paper but I think s/he did not carefully read and understand the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it still possible to write an appeal if all three reviewers were negative about the paper since their reason to support rejection wasn't strong? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10694" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T13:55:26.367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T05:06:38.957" Title="Paper rejected. Should I appeal against biased reviews?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T22:46:14.000" Score="23" ViewCount="6646" Body="&lt;p&gt;With apologies for the attention-grabbing title: of course I am not actually asking you to tell me when I, specifically, should schedule my defense. But I have heard very plausible-sounding rumors that the time of day at which a PhD candidate holds their thesis defense can have an impact on the difficulty and even the candidate's chance of passing. For example, scheduling a defense just before lunch may mean the committee will ask fewer and less involved questions, because they will be anxious to finish so they can go eat. Similarly defending in the mid afternoon may lead to less complex questions because everyone is tired - or alternatively it could cause a &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; difficult defense because the committee members are in no hurry to get back to work. And so on; the rumors abound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to know: is there is any research backing up the idea that there are better or worse times of day for a candidate to schedule their thesis defense? Any anecdotal experience from people who have sat on multiple PhD committees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I'm not claiming this should be a major influence on when one schedules their defense, but people do talk about it, so (as a scientist!) I can't help but wonder if there's any truth behind the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T04:43:10.023" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T15:04:08.480" Title="What time of day should I schedule my thesis defense?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-23T23:43:38.743" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be conflating &quot;Bias&quot; and &quot;Negativity&quot;. Bias would imply that your paper was being reviewed unfairly, either because of its content, or its authors - if they were known or divined by the reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's entirely possible, and fairly standard, to get negative reviews you disagree with. When it comes down to it, your paper was rejected, and the only time I've ever seen appeals to the editor work is for things that are flagrantly egregious and wrong, rather than just &quot;This is weak and I disagree with it&quot;. And even then, it's usually a long shot &quot;What's the worst that could happen, they say no again?&quot; play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect your time would be much better spent addressing the comments of the reviewers within the paper and revising it, rather than appealing to the editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T23:43:38.743" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-24T01:20:18.500" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Fomite's answer is spot on. I would like to expand further on the differences between a &lt;strong&gt;biased&lt;/strong&gt; review, a &lt;strong&gt;lazy&lt;/strong&gt; review, a &lt;strong&gt;significantly erroneous&lt;/strong&gt; review, and a &lt;strong&gt;negative&lt;/strong&gt; review, and which do/don't warrant an appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples given in this post come from a contest held by the always-excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-vote.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FemaleScienceProfessor&lt;/a&gt;. Quite a few are real reviews, or based on real reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Biased Review&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does&lt;/em&gt; warrant an appeal, if it's the reason your paper was rejected. Often editors are smart enough to identify a biased review on their own, and will simply discount its advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-entries-13-16.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example #1&lt;/a&gt; (here, the reviewer clearly lets his personal goals get in the way of a fair review):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid I cannot support the publication of this paper. The authors present an idea that I myself have had for some time and just haven’t gotten around to writing it up yet. I think that when I write my paper, it will be better than this one. These authors would be well advised to wait until my paper is published, and then they can cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entires-5-8.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example #2&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the author is a woman, I had lowered my expectations accordingly, but the author did not even meet those. Even though I have never done experiments in my life and have never used any of these techniques, the experimental results presented were completely misinterpreted in my distinguished opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Lazy Review&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; warrant an appeal. If all of your reviewers give you a lazy review, you need to do a better job exciting the reader (thereby motivating the reviewer to carefully read the whole paper in detail because it's such compelling reading.) (&lt;em&gt;Very&lt;/em&gt; rarely, this can be an indication of a bad journal/conference and you should find a better place to submit your work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-entries-19-22.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example #1&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic of this paper is not of critical importance to furthering knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sent from my iPhone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entries-1-4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example #2&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper Title: Linear and Nonlinear Methods to solve XXX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review: &amp;quot;Why is the approach limited to linear methods, and the author does not propose nonlinear methods?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Significantly Erroneous Review&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(per JeffE's suggestion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a distinct case from the Lazy Review. It does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include the case where the reviewer &amp;quot;erroneously&amp;quot; concludes that your work is not interesting or useful, just because you disagree with this conclusion.  It does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include the case where the reviewer says &amp;quot;I am concerned about X&amp;quot; and you believe you've adequately addressed X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; include cases where a review is affected by a significant factual, logical, or mathematical error.  This &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; grounds for appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entires-5-8.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt; (the reviewer is mistaken as to the meaning of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28disambiguation%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;graph&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; here):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper title: Graph analysis of System ABC shows differences in A-B connections during Condition X vs. Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review: This paper uses a novel method to study ABC system dynamics. However, I don't know anything about graph analysis so I'm going to interpret the paper through the lens of a different analysis method I do know something about. Thus the only constructive feedback I can give is that this paper is a poorly written explanation of a structural equation model of XYZ - the conclusions drawn make little sense given the data, i.e. they frequently refer to &amp;quot;graphs&amp;quot; but all I see are these pictures of circles and arrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A minor error is highly unlikely to be the reason for a rejection. Therefore, for a minor error, an appeal is not likely to be successful - an appeal will be useful only if the point of appeal was the reason for the rejection. In the case of a minor error, I would advise to use the reviewer's mistake as an opportunity: to clarify in the text points that might lead people to mistakenly discount your results, or even to decide to ignore the criticism because it's not a common enough misconception to be worth addressing in the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Negative Review&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review that does not fit into the above categories, but still criticizes your paper, is just a negative review. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; grounds for an appeal. It should be taken as constructive criticism, and you can use it to make your paper better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T08:01:21.853" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19708" CreationDate="2014-04-24T01:41:33.600" Score="-10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone who interviews attempts to present themselves, their accomplishments, and their personal objectives politely and submissively to the interviewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor,&#xA;I hope you are keeping well ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,&#xA;I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write &quot;I hope you are keeping well&quot; or &quot;I gratefully accept,&quot; you are subordinating yourself to your &quot;superior.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This attitude is not &quot;academic,&quot; it is playing power politics or submitting to colonialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you must do is read everything you can get your hands on your professor has published. Then select any aspect of the professor's writing that jumps up at you. Find something Professor Brain has written, and ask her one or more questions about her assertions. SHE MUST RESPOND--SHE CANNOT HELP BUT RESPOND BECAUSE YOU ARE ACTIVATING THE KEYS TO HER PSYCHE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Professor Brain responds, find a term or concept she mentions; and ask Professor Brain to elaborate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have had a continuing conversation with Professor Brain for several e-mail messages back and forth, you can discuss any procedural issues you like. But at that point in the discussion, you will have established where you stand, who you are, and how much you care. Do it properly, and YOU WILL BECOME THE SUPERIOR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14459" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T01:41:33.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19743" CreationDate="2014-04-24T01:42:51.640" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an assignment for preparing the first draft of curriculum for a new program in my university. To include international experiences, I tried to get the curriculum of other universities, but I was unable to find a university website sharing the full curriculum. Department websites just put the title of courses, and professors post syllabus for their courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each department should have its curriculum (description of the program, courses and credit details, course descriptions, etc), and this should be a public document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I searched general or visited top university websites, I expected to find such documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any idea where I can find documented curriculum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:03:35.330" Title="Where to find curriculum for a specific program?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19748" CreationDate="2014-04-24T01:52:11.953" Score="14" ViewCount="26516" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities have a &lt;em&gt;School of Something&lt;/em&gt; and some a &lt;em&gt;Department of Something.&lt;/em&gt; Are they identical and just two common terms for the same thing, or they are different in the university structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that a &lt;em&gt;School&lt;/em&gt; is generally larger than a &lt;em&gt;Department.&lt;/em&gt; Probably, &lt;em&gt;school&lt;/em&gt; is an academic unit between &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;faculty.&lt;/em&gt; Maybe, a faculty has a few schools, and each school hosts some departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T17:33:50.600" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T17:33:50.600" Title="What is the difference between a school and a department?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T02:49:36.047" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take the course code PHYS 3054 or PHYS 354. The physics department doesn't offer 54 courses at the 300 or 3000 level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine some universities subscribe to a set of common best practices for course numbering. So I suspect that there might be an answer that applies to the numbering systems of a number of institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T04:23:23.020" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T04:23:23.020" Title="What do the middle digits of course codes represent?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19737" CreationDate="2014-04-24T02:54:37.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect it really depends on the university. But in my university, it represents the subfield in the department within which the course is offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (I'm in electrical engineering), EE X1X might be courses on power systems engineering, EE X2X on communication networks, EE X3X on  signal processing, EE X4X on electronics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in my department at least, there are enough misnumbered courses (for &quot;historical reasons&quot;) to confound anyone who doesn't know it and is looking for a pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T03:11:42.677" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T03:11:42.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-24T03:47:35.723" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short version. &lt;strong&gt;Do not do it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long version: You have to understand there is something wrong with the paper. One negative review might be unlucky / unjust. But three negative reviews?  That means that the paper needs some serious fixing before re-submitting again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other possible problem with your paper might be that you are aiming too high. Maybe your paper is actually good but not good enough for a high impact journal. That would also explain why the third reviewer just &quot;brushed off&quot;  your paper without really reading it. Your paper simply might not be interesting enough for such a journal. This is a phase that many researchers have in the beginning of their research. Living in our research &quot;bubble&quot;, we believe our research and results are amazing, when simply they are not. It takes some research maturity to actually understand the real &quot;size&quot; of our results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also based on your previous questions on this forum and your problems with your advisor it is obvious that you lack guidance. You are simply not objective enough to judge the merits of your research and you need someone &quot;wiser&quot; to judge your work hard but in a fair way. But please humble down. Do not start a war with the world. Your advisor was &quot;bad&quot; and you had to fight back. Now the reviewers are bad? This is really not happening. Just improve your work, your presentation of the work and if your work is good enough it will be published accordingly. If it is not published, it is nobody's fault but yours. You should at least start considering the possibility that you might actually be wrong and the reviewers are right. After all, they are more experienced than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T03:47:35.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19734" CreationDate="2014-04-24T04:12:13.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many universities School is used for units that confer a professional accreditation (e.g. School of Law). In contrast, Departments are units that refer to specific areas of knowledge that do not end up as a professional qualification (e.f. Department of Philosophy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T04:12:13.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19737" CreationDate="2014-04-24T04:14:05.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;ff524 mentions two of the major factors---subfield identification and historical reasons.  Even without a rigorous system of subfield identification, there's typically a lot of spacing in course numbers so that unrelated courses don't typically have adjacent numbers (and indeed, there's plenty of space between unrelated courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes along with numbering sequences sequentially---520 and 521 might form a two course sequence, in which case you don't use 522 or 523 because someone might get confused and think they're part of the sequence.  And then later, when you retire 520 and 521 and combine them into a single one semester course, you might call it 522, to remind people it's similar, but you don't use the same number so people can easily tell which course someone took.  This leaves a lot of historical detritus (you want to wait a long time before ever using 520 for something new), which leads to lots of widely spaced numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T04:14:05.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-24T04:58:59.797" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second reviewer complains about the quality of the figures, but I think they are fixable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You fix the figures and then re-submit. Not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The third reviewer complains about the novelty of the paper but I think s/he did not carefully read and understand the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write to explain why you think your paper is novel. You might still have a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first reviewer say that I need to carry out a lot more experiments that will involve a lot of cost, which is not practical. However, in the comment, s/he only suggests one additional experiment that need to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a &lt;strong&gt;strong reason for rejection&lt;/strong&gt;. I think the reviewer has doubts about the results you have in the paper. You truly need to do more experiments to convince the reviewer and &lt;strong&gt;other readers&lt;/strong&gt; the results in your paper are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to &lt;strong&gt;do more experiments before you consider the appeal&lt;/strong&gt;. Not only you want to convince the reviewer but also yourself that your paper is good. You don't want to publish a bad paper, do you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T05:06:25.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:06:25.477" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19732" CreationDate="2014-04-24T05:03:35.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At many US institutions I believe what you are looking for is often called a &quot;course catalog&quot;. This generally lists degree programs, what courses are required for each major/minor, as well as a description of each course and their associated credit load. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this phrase in mind a quick Googling returned a variety of listings for top Universities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coursecatalog.web.cmu.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carnegie Mellon Undergraduate Catalog&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/referencepubs/catalog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT Course catalog&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisc.edu/academics/catalogs.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Undergraduate and Graduate catalogs for University of Wisconsin-Madison&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's what you were looking for, just the magic phrase &quot;course catalog&quot; will help in the US. But in other countries? Well, a search for a course catalog for University of Cape Town in South Africa produced a link to the student &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uct.ac.za/students/undergraduates/handbooks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;handbooks&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which appear to be the same thing as the US course catalog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears each country has their own preferred term for what to call this, so finding the magic words for each country might be a bit of a trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:03:35.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19727" CreationDate="2014-04-24T05:42:41.673" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I have never heard of any research backing up the idea that defenses will be more less successful based on the time of day the defense is held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the best time to defend is &lt;em&gt;whenever your committee can actually make it&lt;/em&gt;. When I defended, my goal was to get get at least three of our four committee members in same physical room (one non-chair member could attend via video). Within a six-week window, I felt lucky to find &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; two hour-window to schedule the defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;em&gt;you are overthinking things&lt;/em&gt;. Pour your energy and concern into the content and remember that if your committee is encouraging you to defend, it's because they think you are ready. Surprises are unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you are in the enviable position of having to choose a time of day, I personally like defenses at the end of the work day so that you can head out with others — e.g., students, family members, maybe even committee members — for a celebratory post-defense drink or meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:42:41.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19705" CreationDate="2014-04-24T05:43:47.530" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US there is first a federal (country-wide) rule: there are high-school diplomas, roughly equivalent almost-like-a-high-school-diplomas called a GED or a variety of other names, and then there are accredited higher education institutions providing certificates, 2-year degrees (called an associate's degree), 4-year degrees (called a bachelor's degree), 5-7 yearish degrees (master's degree), and of course the PhD...in addition to a slew of other special professional degrees for high ed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it gets particularly hard to generalize is we have 50 states that determine all the details of the rest, especially the high-schools. I'll try to provide a broad overview. While this is true across states for the most part, the exact mix, nature of funding, and multi-track availability varies tremendously across the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional high schools are the most common, which simply teach a variety of subjects and offer some sports, music, and arts programs (where possible), and don't especially differentiate between students who are planning to go to college from students who don't. Some special programming exists tailored to certain professions or college prep, but this is usually minimal. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magnet schools exist at the elementary through high school level, and are focused on a specific area of excellence that permeates their whole school design; some schools specialize in science and technology, math, media/broadcasting, dance and/or fine arts, etc. This isn't necessarily about college or professional prep, but there is often a particular bent to some schools and they generally encourage higher education. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vocational schools are high schools that are much like magnet schools, only their focus is on certain professional preparation. There are schools that offer  programs in all sorts of vocations from culinary arts, electrician, building/construction jobs, auto repair, and many others. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;College preparatory schools (prep schools for short) are, at least in theory, designed with college seeking students in mind. Everything is geared towards being ready for college and getting into a good college. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some &quot;alternative&quot; institutions that seek to provide a high school education to people who didn't fit in well with other institutions for various reasons (ranging from disability, family situation, pregnancy, legal problems, different learning style, etc), as well as religious institutions. All offer plain high school diplomas, generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, anyone with a high school diploma and usually even a GED (basically a special program or test that allows one to get a diploma - or something like it - without having to go back to high school or through high school at all) can apply to any higher education institution they like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most higher ed sets it's own standards for admittance, though, which is usually based upon grades while in high school (GPA), ACT/SAT test scores, essay, etc. Some places have preferences or relationships with certain high schools (the high schools often being referred to as &quot;feeder schools&quot;), but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, higher ed is yet another ball of wax, and varies tremendously by state - even more than high schools!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most states have community, technical, or junior colleges, which generally offer the 2 and 4 year degrees. As these places are often smaller in size, they offer limited and differing selections of degree programs (some may have no fine arts programs, others might have no engineering...etc). Florida calls these smaller places junior colleges, Wisconsin has state technical colleges, Arizona has community colleges...etc. They are similar, but funding and &quot;prestige&quot; varies heavily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms differ, but the general rule is the same: smaller, less degree programs, often focused on certificates and 2-year degrees and very limited 4-year offerings (if any at all). It is not uncommon for the smaller schools to focus on providing a lower-cost, student-centered program with the expectation of transferring to another institution to complete their bachelor's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are the bigger universities, which are sometimes called &quot;4-year institutions&quot;, and focus on a larger campus, more degree programs, and are centered on the bachelor's degree. Some offer limited master's programs, and even fewer have select PhD options in specific areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have &quot;polytechnic&quot; colleges, which vary in size but are often focused on certain aspects of the sciences such as engineering. It is not uncommon for other institutions to omit engineering and related programs entirely, and thus specialized colleges fill in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are just big &quot;universities&quot;, which offer a wide selection of everything, really. Most states have at least one, and sometimes 2 or more, of these. They often cost more, have more options, are located in big cities, and are just massive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, no matter what institution, the same rule generally applies: some are &quot;selective&quot;, which means you take tests, and some have open access and anyone who can pay the fee can enroll. The tests are most commonly the ACT/SAT if you are coming from high school, but some schools - especially junior/technical/community colleges - will instead offer their own &quot;placement test&quot; mainly in math and reading to determine if you need to take any remedial classes first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selective schools limit enrollment, and usually use a multiple factor process: personal essay, maybe reference letters from educators, transcript of grades from wherever you went to high school, ACT/SAT scores, etc. Each school sets their own rules, and this ranges from your MIT schools who are proud of their tiny admittance rates, to most schools who just don't want to admit students they think will not thrive in their programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students who can't get into selective schools but want to are often encouraged to attend the junior/technical/community colleges for a year or two, and then re-apply. When applying then the high school grades and tests are at times ignored completely or at least heavily discounted, and strong preference is given to those with good grades at whatever college they have been attending. This process is very common with mid-to-large state-funded schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary: high school diploma is just a diploma in the US, higher education institutions set their own individual admittance standards (ranging from strict to none, varying by place and state), most selective institutions require ACT/SAT scores and high school transcripts at a minimum regardless of where you went to high school or what you did there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this provides you with more than you actually wanted to know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T05:51:22.010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T05:51:22.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19751" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:04:44.507" Score="27" ViewCount="1313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student at an engineering department in Europe. At my department, and at most others in my university, research papers are the main benchmark of a scientist’s productivity. It seems like this is also true in other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, last year the faculty considered the number of journal papers for each department a key performance indicator, and when a PhD student is at the end of his/her studies, he/she is often judged by colleagues based on how many papers they have published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no threshold of a number of papers required in order to obtain a PhD or a senior position, and conference papers are also relevant and encouraged, but counting journal papers is the key point. In the end, a PhD thesis is just the sum of published papers during the PhD studies, and itself is not that relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, I feel pressured to publish and to have lots of papers to support my upcoming degree. It seems to make sense - if you have a result, why wouldn't you publish it in a journal? Why wait for the thesis, when it's not really published and nobody will read it? And after all, submitting research to journals and conferences is also beneficial for getting a review of the research from someone who is outside one's department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recently I realized that a friend of mine, also an engineer in a related field, received a PhD from another university with 0 journal papers, and just 1 conference paper where she was a second author. Her university is well regarded, and on almost all world rankings in the top 100. She was accepted for a post-doc position at another top university. I have seen a few other similar cases, and other people just not caring about papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot judge the work presented in her thesis, but I found this shocking, and it made me reconsider. How can one be well regarded with hardly any publications? Why would anyone choose not to publish (not counting the thesis as the bare minimum)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hence my questions:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; How relevant are (journal) papers in terms of valuation of a fresh PhD, and for their future career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to thank everyone for their reply, especially @Superbest for the edit (sorry, I am not a native English speaker), I didn't expect that my question would generate such a discussion.&#xA;I'd like to clarify some things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my field conference papers are less relevant than journal papers, and are used to present research in progress in order to get comments and advices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The graduate didn't publish a revolutionary paper which is worth like 10 other average papers. We are talking about a zero. I see no reason why would anyone choose NOT to publish at least one paper about a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the graduate had very good recommendations, why would anyone in academia, which depends on publications, hire someone without any publication record? Why would a professor think that the graduate would suddenly start to be productive?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13332" LastEditorUserId="13332" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T12:51:07.373" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T12:51:07.373" Title="How relevant are (journal) papers for the valuation of one’s work and results?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19734" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:05:38.627" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &lt;em&gt;school&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; are going to mean different things at different institutions. Generally speaking, the term &lt;em&gt;school&lt;/em&gt; refers to a larger unit within a university than &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; and many schools will contain multiple departments. For example, &lt;em&gt;Harvard University&lt;/em&gt; contains a &lt;em&gt;School of Public Health&lt;/em&gt; (and other schools) which contains a &lt;em&gt;Department of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt; (and other departments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, names are often not even used uniformly or consistently &lt;em&gt;within universities&lt;/em&gt;. For example, at the same organizational level as the &lt;em&gt;School of Public Health&lt;/em&gt; at Harvard is the &lt;em&gt;Faculty of Arts and Sciences&lt;/em&gt; which runs both &lt;em&gt;Harvard College&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Graduate School of Arts and Sciences&lt;/em&gt;. My current university uses the concept of an academic &quot;unit&quot;. Many units are &quot;schools&quot; (e.g., the &lt;em&gt;School of Public Health&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;Information School&lt;/em&gt;) but others are not (e.g., the &lt;em&gt;College of Arts of Sciences&lt;/em&gt;). There is also an organization within the university called the &lt;em&gt;Graduate School&lt;/em&gt; which cuts across and oversees  work in different units and schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, smaller &quot;schools&quot; will not contain separate departments. Sometimes, a large department in a large school might be larger than entire schools elsewhere in the university! Sometimes, the terms might be used interchangeably. In many other cases, they won't. In some cases, one or both terms might not even be used at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T06:05:38.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2014-04-24T07:34:28.833" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Published papers (either as journal or conference papers, depending on your field) are an important metric in measuring a candidate's output. However, one important thing to note is that many graduate students publish a substantial fraction of their papers close to the end of their degree programs, so that their publication record may look quite sparse. More importantly, the publications may not be published in time for them to actually graduate, but may be finished up in the period immediately afterward. For instance, I wrote six papers as a graduate student, but only two were published while I was a student—the other four appeared the year after my degree was awarded. This is an entirely normal state of affairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing worth noting is that, at least in engineering (and particularly engineering in Europe), a substantial fraction of projects are financed by industrial contracts. In such cases, the primary &quot;fruits&quot; of the project represent proprietary information which cannot easily be published. Under such circumstances, publications become quite difficult, and the quality of the work becomes much more significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, while publications are important, at the level of a postdoctoral position, they are equally as important as the interview and letters of recommendations from colleagues. Somebody who comes to me highly recommended from people I know well and trust are much more likely to get the position than someone with the same credentials and quality of recommendations from people I don't know as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T07:34:28.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:05:33.497" Score="30" ViewCount="3199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I let a student associated with me (but who is not really my PhD student) submit a paper to a fairly-local meeting (some people do come from abroad). Because I'd been tasked with supporting the student, I let him put my name on the paper and also helped with the presentation, but I found the content unconvincing.  However, he was exploring an area that I knew little about and had little interest in, so I'd hoped he'd get reviews &amp;amp; (if accepted) discussion that would give him more guidance than I have been able to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, no one seemed as sceptical as I was of the work, and it got into the meeting and was presented both in our department and at the meeting with if anything positive comments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, yesterday I got an email from a postdoc who was cited in the paper (the student compared himself to the postdoc's work, the meeting's papers are on a website, Google Scholar alerted the postdoc) and was incensed at &lt;strong&gt;the paper's low quality and inaccuracies&lt;/strong&gt;.  I think the postdoc is being a bit paranoid, but is broadly right on the technical issues. I have also previously noticed that one of my more-successful colleagues I've been collaborating with recently had a less tolerant attitude towards student publication than I do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if I should put more effort on quality control.  The cost would be possibly stifling a student unnecessarily if I'm wrong, and allowing fewer students to have fewer presentation experiences since I'm already working flat out keeping up with giving feedback on their journal articles &amp;amp; dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T11:46:54.177" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T11:46:54.177" Title="Should academics allow student to submit a possibly flawed paper?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:11:23.747" Score="27" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much people rely on your publication record to judge you depends on how much they understand your research&lt;/strong&gt;.  The further they are removed from your area of study, the more they will depend on &quot;the numbers&quot;.  People who work in your subfield will base their opinion on the actual quality of your work and on your reputation in the community.  Fortunately, the most important evaluations (i.e., reference letters) usually come from people in your subfield.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not all publications are created equal&lt;/strong&gt;.  Let's say I'm hiring a postdoc.  Candidate A has 10 publications with almost identical titles all in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidketcheson.info/2012/10/16/low_quality_journal.html&quot;&gt;low-quality journals&lt;/a&gt;.  Candidate B has one publication that describes a significant breakthrough and is published in a good journal (I don't mean Nature or Science, just a journal that is widely read by people in the field; e.g. (in my field) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.siam.org/journals/sinum.php&quot;&gt;SINUM&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.siam.org/journals/sisc.php&quot;&gt;SISC&lt;/a&gt;).  Who would I hire?  Almost certainly candidate B.  Indeed, Candidate A's publication record may actually be a negative factor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publications matter most in academia.&lt;/strong&gt;  A mathematician friend of mine took a job at Google after graduation.  They didn't really care about his publication record; they hired him because he had created the Cython language, which was purely incidental to his research.  If you go the academic route, your publications will be a critical factor in your evaluation for getting a post-doc, a tenure-track job, and tenure.  If you go to industry, they may not matter so much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publishing norms vary by field.&lt;/strong&gt;  In mathematics, for instance, people may sit on a result for years while they refine it or try to develop it further.  Senior people may just put their papers on the arXiv.  In other fields, it seems like new developments &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be published within a week, and you're expected to write vast numbers of papers each year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T18:19:46.907" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T18:19:46.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19750" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:20:37.050" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we can distinguish two situations here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The work is not convincing because it is still &lt;strong&gt;preliminary&lt;/strong&gt;. In this situation, even if the results might prove wrong latter, I would see no objection to send the student to present a talk or a poster about it, as long as the preliminary nature of the work is clearly stated. I might give him the opportunity to meet other researchers, find new ideas or even build collaboration based on these first results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The work is not convincing because the &lt;strong&gt;results are flawed&lt;/strong&gt;, the protocol is not robust or the techniques might not be adequate. In such situation, as @ff524 said, I would advise not to let the student present the work in public meetings. It will be unproductive both for the student and the advisor (as you experienced).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="481" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T07:29:10.197" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T07:29:10.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19750" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:22:19.090" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, since you aren't the supervisor, it's not your role to stop the student from publishing.  If you are an expert in the subject of the publication and you don't think it's strong, you should advise them not to publish and explain why, but that's as far as you should go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you &quot;let him put [your] name on the paper&quot; -- a paper which, by your own admission, you don't know much about!  Regardless of whether the co-author is a student, and regardless of the quality of the paper, the behavior you're describing is &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt;.  In my field, it's actually &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics&quot;&gt;forbidden by at least one of our professional societies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the authors listed for a paper . . . must have made a significant contribution to its content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is generally construed as meaning you should have done a significant part of the research &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; a significant part of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, violating this rule for a paper that you don't even have a high opinion of seems not only unethical but foolish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a harsh-sounding answer, but you have posted the question anonymously so I hope you don't mind me being frank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T09:22:19.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:42:08.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with the other answers so far. I will just add that as a PhD student myself my supervisor put it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not strictly necessary to publish many papers as a student but it makes writing and defending your thesis much easier. Your thesis must show some novel work. If you have some peer reviewed papers then this work has clearly already been accepted as novel, which basically ticks that box. Secondly you base your thesis on your papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed I know some people whose thesis is basically 3-5 papers stapled together with an introduction and conclusion and maybe a bit of editing to make it flow better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T09:42:08.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19708" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:52:59.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very culture and person specific. My acceptance email was (translated from Dutch):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sure. When?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- Maarten&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; reccommend that as a general style, but it was the right response in my specific case, as in the Netherlands (academic) titles are less important than in other countries and I knew that Harry (my advisor) was even more extreme in his insistence on informal and brief/terse communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14471" LastEditorUserId="14471" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T11:17:03.150" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T11:17:03.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T13:16:00.410" Score="43" ViewCount="2271" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question may be too wide or in some perspective perceived as unclear but covers a key issue (for me) in academia, namely, &lt;em&gt;academic writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students start their academic career with varying skills in writing. Often, and this the case in my department, there is no thought through progression to go from beginner through novice and proficient to expert level (the latter perhaps in graduate school) or some such scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is therefore how to get students to progress in appropriate steps through an education. In other words what is a reasonable progression of writing skills through an education. I am looking for suggestions of appropriate expectations for, say, an annual or semester wise increase in difficulty or complexity of exercises with the aim of learning academic writing skills through an education including graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T13:30:45.297" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T09:00:18.893" Title="How can we promote better writing skills in academic education?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19709" CreationDate="2014-04-24T14:27:41.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got my PhD in the UK and have been working in the US for the last 5 years. My understanding is that an Assistant Proffessor is basically a lecturer and a Full Professor corresponds to a Professor in the UK. Things get somewhat trickier in the middle though. A US Associate Professor could be translated as either Senior Lecturer or Reader but I would go for the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7913" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T14:27:41.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19734" CreationDate="2014-04-24T14:30:46.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In line with Benjamin Mako Hill's answer there may be no uniformity between different institutions. In general the following hierarchical structure is applied to universities in Ireland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;College Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;School Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my case in my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuigalway.ie/colleges-and-schools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;university&lt;/a&gt; as a History Student it would be the Department of History in the School of Humanities at the College of Arts, Social Science at my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario the School is made up of a number of Departments of specialised study and the college is made up of the schools that would fall under its remit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T14:30:46.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:03:42.303" Score="10" ViewCount="3686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering doing a PhD however I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study. Finally, there are some PhDs that are purely research and then there are some that are based on essay writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there &lt;em&gt;outside of academia&lt;/em&gt;, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14478" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T15:30:31.213" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T14:06:08.880" Title="Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:13:30.497" Score="39" ViewCount="6481" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm teaching an advanced graduate class where the source material is drawn primarily from current research papers, there isn't a canonical text per se, and a typical lecture, while loosely structured, also involves discussion that might help clarify the papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a setting, asking students to scribe lectures serves a useful purpose. Students hopefully remember the material better after writing it down, and are forced to be more precise. And classroom discussion can be captured for posterity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think I've found a way to implement this effectively. My current mechanics include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students are assigned as scribes between a week in advance, and on the day of the lecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I provide a latex style file, and also an example or two of prior scribe notes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students are expected to produce a first draft within a few days of the lecture (lectures are once a week), and the hope is that a good version of the notes is on the website a week after the lecture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;these are &quot;seminar&quot; classes: they are 1-credit, and the only work the student needs to do to earn a grade is one or more scribes and (sometimes) one lecture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens is that the initial draft is usually abysmal, and it either takes me a really long time to wrestle the document into shape with the student, or I give up and do it myself, which also takes a lot of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there useful practices that can improve this workflow ? Is my timeline unrealistic ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;p.s To avoid confusion, when I say &lt;strong&gt;scribe&lt;/strong&gt; (which is common&#xA;  parlance in my area) I don't mean a literal recording of minutes but a&#xA;  synthesis of material that if well done becomes something resembling&#xA;  lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T12:50:36.650" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T13:05:23.733" Title="Having students scribe lectures" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19709" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:28:18.513" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, lecturer is the lowest open-ended position (although there are exceptions), and professor is the highest one, everything in between can be quite specific. For instance, Swansea University is considering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/informationforstaff/academiccareerpathways/&quot;&gt;four different grades from 2013&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lecturer (replacing Lecturer Grade 8 and Tutor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Lecturer (replacing Lecturer Grade 9, Senior Professional Tutor and Research Fellow)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Associate Professor (replacing Senior Lecturer and Reader) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor (that one at least is unchanged!). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each title comes with a set of expected criteria. In addition, a concept I've seen several times in the UK is the notion of &lt;strong&gt;academic pathway&lt;/strong&gt;, which can characterise further the criteria for the positions. For instance, at Newcastle University, where I'm currently working, we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hr/assets/documents/academic_career_pathways_rjcb_290513.pdf&quot;&gt;three main academic pathways, with the corresponding positions&lt;/a&gt;. In order to illustrate the different expectations based on the pathways, I included the expectations w.r.t. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ukpsf&quot;&gt;the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)&lt;/a&gt;. I also include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hr/assets/documents/collated_with_starting_salaries_august_2013.pdf&quot;&gt;grade&lt;/a&gt; (positions above G are usually open-ended, although there are exceptions).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching &amp;amp; Scholarship Pathway (the &quot;standard&quot; pathway): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade E: Teaching Assistant (encouraged to become recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade F: Teaching Fellow (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade G: Lecturer (likely to be working commensurate with the achievement of Descriptor 3 and are encouraged to work towards it) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade H: Senior Lecturer (expected to be recognised at or be working towards UK PSF Descriptor 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade H: Reader (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3 or 4) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade I: Professor (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3 or 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching &amp;amp; Research Pathway: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade F: Lecturer (should be recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1 and be working towards Descriptor 2) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade G: Lecturer (should be recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1 and be working towards Descriptor 2) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade H: Senior Lecturer (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 2 or 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade H: Reader (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade I: Professor (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research &amp;amp; Innovation Pathway (since there is no teaching expected, UKPSF is not relevant):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade E: Research Assistant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade F: Research Associate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade G: Senior Research Associate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade H: Principal Research Associate &amp;amp; Reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade I: Professor.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you should not try to translate the title, but instead understand where do you fit within the academic pathways of the university offering the positions. When it comes to teaching, it can be particularly useful to understand where one fits within the UKPSF, in order to match the corresponding title with the scheme used at the university. For instance, showing that you are working towards obtaining Descriptor 4 could be helpful to get a Reader position instead of a Senior Lecturer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T15:28:18.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:30:25.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;students are expected to produce a first draft within a few days of the lecture (lectures are once a week), and the hope is that a good version of the notes is on the website a week after the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing seems a bit strict. If the students have a lot of projects going on they may not (want to/be able to) make time for this. Maybe this is one of the reasons you are getting abysmal first drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T15:30:25.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19761" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:42:27.350" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly standards for awarding PhD degrees. I think you mean to ask why are there no grades? It's a subtle distinction perhaps but an essential one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somone holds a PhD, what does that tell you? It tells you that the university awarding that PhD feels that that person is capable of pursuing independent research in the area of the thesis. Different universities may have different ideas on how to measure that, but typically a PhD will have to have published at least one peer-reviewed contribution (often more, sometimes many more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your degree does not mention anything special (e.g., a grade). If you work harder than your peers, you may end up with the same degree on paper, but your head will contain lots of special information useful for lots of jobs, and your publication record will show lots of papers with lots of citations useful for lots of jobs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;your grade is your demonstrable research output&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How else would you propose to grade or differentiate or categorise different PhDs? How could those grades be compared across different supervisors, different examination boards, different universities or different areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is a requirement of many jobs in academia, and some research positions in industry. Typically PhDs are competing with other PhDs for positions, hence holding a PhD in-and-of-itself, is just the entry point. After that, candidates will be judged on what they did during their PhD and afterwards. If you spent &quot;&lt;em&gt;endless sleepless nights of analysing data and&lt;/em&gt; [pulled] &lt;em&gt;off amazing statistics&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, you'll have lots to talk to the hiring committee about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T18:16:11.580" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:16:11.580" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19761" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:44:19.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever someone acts impressed by a PhD, I tell them tongue-in-cheek that a PhD is nothing more than a testament to that persons patience... they were willing to remain a graduate student long enough to earn the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More accurately, though, a PhD is simply an indicator that someone is able to &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt;. You're completely right; research topics will vary tremendously from field to field, and one person's degree and/or experience in grad school is likely completely different from the next's. However, both of them demonstrated their ability to reason through a problem, their willingness to put their nose to the grindstone and get the research done, and their ability to communicate their results to a third party (their thesis committee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding fields asking about your PhD, I joke with people that (the following is all true) my undergrad is in psyschology, my undergrad specialization pre-med, my graduate lab electrical engineering, my research topic neuroscience, my actual PhD degree biomedical engineering, my postdoc in biology, the stuff I actually enjoy statistics, and with all that my two industry jobs have been in banking and health insurance operations. How you sell yourself is a function of your salesmanship more than your actual credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T15:44:19.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19756" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:30:32.283" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a grad-student I really appreciate this question. As a Humanities student most of our writing is text. I found even at under-graduate level a substantial amount of time could be taken up going over the same writing issues (usually after assignment hand-backs) over a number of course modules. It amazed me that there was not a module to at least give the basics in academic writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed though in Ireland(my home country) that there is a number of Academic Writing Centres starting to set up in Universities. At the moment they are voluntarily drop in centres where you can get advice on your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/awc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;university&lt;/a&gt; I attend &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The AWC offers free one-on-one tutorials on essay writing for NUIG students. Last year, AWC tutors helped over 500 students to overcome recurrent problems with grammar, punctuation, spelling, and essay structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also run group workshops at certain times of the year for different levels within the University, so some are aimed at under-graduate and some at post-graduate. Normally at these workshops you bring some of your writing and as a group you give each other advice on improving our writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally they run an online course which works in the following way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Online students are assigned weekly writing tasks and editing tasks. Editing tasks consist of specific questions which assist students in providing constructive feedback rather than criticism. Guided editing tasks help students to re-evaluate and improve their own writing. Students then rate the usefulness of the critique they received.  In this way, points are awarded for effort rather than existing ability or experience. The entire process is strictly anonymous. The AWC takes on a supportive role for the duration of the course. Students receive weekly readings and emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of other universities also have a academic writing centre in place. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ucd.ie/library/supporting_you/support_learning/librarylink/writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ctl.nuim.ie/student-learning/academic-advisory-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is by no means a perfect model because it requires the student to want to participate it is a step in the right direction for improving a persons writing skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T15:41:03.743" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T15:41:03.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:57:18.900" Score="-1" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I publish a 187 pages article extracted from a 244 (yet unpublished) page book, do I have the future right to publish this book without consent from the article copyright holder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the book would become much longer than the 244 pages mentioned above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T17:56:42.410" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:07:05.317" Title="What copyright issues could arise if I write a book based on one of my articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19756" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:58:54.790" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my lab, we were required to produce three-to-four page white papers, including figures, every time we presented at a lab meeting (approx. every 6 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This had two significant effects. Firstly, it forced the student to write down their progress, which was invariably ridiculously useful when the student actually started writing their thesis. Staple together a few of these sections and the methods, and often a good part of the background, was written for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it gave everyone a chance to practice their professional writing in a casual lab setting. No one felt threatened and everyone improved. We would even review the articles being written by the lab professor, as there were always improvements we could suggest to him as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T16:58:54.790" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19756" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:18:27.077" Score="17" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;HAVE them write.  A lot of times students don't write because they simply aren't asked to.  (Keep in mind the corollary to this is you're going to have to do some reading!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have them research!  Many times students don't make the leap on their own between reading, writing, and then (hopefully) thinking that's incredibly obvious to those of us who have devoted our lives to teaching.  I've seen a lot of lightbulbs go on when I've been able to help a student make the connection between research, writing, and work output.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As gman started to say above, if your school has an academic writing center go there and ask lots and lots of questions.  Usually people who work in these departments have thought far more deeply about your question than you might ever be able to.  They might even be able to give you exercises or assign a tutor to monitor your class.  At the very least, make sure the students know the writing center is there and that you expect them to use it!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastEditorUserId="13535" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T21:43:08.393" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T21:43:08.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19781" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:24:25.293" Score="7" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering where I can find any information on the postdoctoral fellowships/calls to work in Europe which are similar to Marie Curie? I'm doing my&#xA;basic internet search on this, but don't seem to succeed that much. I'm especially talking about the fellowships that are offered in the areas of pure or applied sciences or engineering areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any information, site or blog that you know of, I'd greatly appreciate if you could please pass it onto me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T20:12:59.950" Title="Postdoctoral fellowships/calls to work in Europe for scientists/mathematicians/engineers that are similar to Marie curie?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19750" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:42:35.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is, to what end? What purpose are you serving by allowing such work to be published? The community does not benefit, as the work is subpar and (apparently) flawed. The student does not benefit, as (a) the experience is different from actual publishing with more rigorous review processes and (b) their reputation is tarnished. You receive no benefit for the same reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible benefit I see is that the student gains experience in informal writing and presenting, which they can already gain through group lab meetings without the possible repercussions relating to their reputation. In short, this appears on all fronts to be a pretty bad practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T17:42:35.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:42:44.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay a student who's not taking the class, and preferably has already taken it, to capture the lecture and discussion. That person will be able to focus objectively on what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively videotape or do an audio recording that the scribe can use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask everyone in the class to provide their notes to the scribe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scribe will be focused on trying to capture questions, answers, comments, etc. which means he or she may find it difficult to acquire a deep understanding of the material. The scribe also may find it difficult to participate in class because they're too busy writing down/typing everyone else's questions and comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've performed as a 'scribe' as a graduate student--I was a TA and sat in the class to help deepen my understanding of the material and to know what the students were being taught. I was then able to expand on (and correct some equations) the material during lab sessions. I had to pay close attention, but having previously studied the material made it a lot easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also taken minutes for a subcommittee that I'm on occasionally. I find it tremendously difficult to switch focus between trying to capture everything important and actually participating through providing information or asking questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T17:42:44.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:48:55.630" Score="1" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider the hypothetical situation of a postdoctoral candidate C, who get funded simultaneously as follows, starting at the same or different times, with overlap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Funding agencies F_1, F_2 (for example, Marie Curie, FWO, Danish Research Council...), where for each F_i, he wrote a proposal with a research team or host H_i, who did not have any funding on their own, but agreed to supervise C.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department D (for example, University of Pennsylvania), who offered candidate C a postdoc from their own funding directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can C earn from both the fundings in case of 1. and 2.? or; it depends on the funding agencies rules? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went though the rules of some Marie Curie postdoc fellowships, I don't think I noticed any rules that states anything against having two fundings together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T18:06:07.307" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:37:12.950" Title="Can one have two different sources for postdoc fundings together in Europe?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19774" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:50:27.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listing what I know, but it won't be a complete answer for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Germany has several opportunities for foreigners, including &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.daad.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DAAD&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/start.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Humboldt fellowships&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italy has launched this year for the first time a call with name &lt;a href=&quot;http://sir.miur.it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIR&lt;/a&gt;; it is now closed, but maybe it will be renewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of them are generalist calls, not aimed at a particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T18:21:21.970" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:21:21.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19771" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:09:12.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You always need consent from the copyright holder.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have published in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sparc.arl.org/resource/gratis-and-libre-open-access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;libre open access&lt;/a&gt; journal (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CC BY&lt;/a&gt; licensed), you probably have it. Very often, copyright agreements people sign with journals (at least in the social sciences) allow authors to republish article content in books and dissertations. If this is what your agreements say, you already have that consent. Sometimes, you will need to ask for consent but, in my field at least, it is usually given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, book publisher are also OK publishing books that contain work previously published in articles. That said, I think your example of trying to turn a 187 page article into a 244 page book is unlikely to fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one, acquisition editors at scholarly publishers are fundamentally interested in selling books. One thing they think about is whether or not there is a market for the book. If a book proposal describes work that is already published in journals, editors will want to see what the book adds on top of the existing published work. It's going to be hard to show that in the example above where 77% of the book is available verbatim elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book editors (like judges in copyright cases) are not robots. Intention and acting in good faith matters. If it looks like you are trying to game the system to score extra publications or extra book income without much extra work, people will notice and do what they can to stop you. Since, editors have a lot of power, that will often be quite a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T19:07:05.317" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:07:05.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19761" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:16:44.680" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing on just a small part of this question, my answer is this: Because 'academia' is a wide and diverse place, with many different skill sets, questions and challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also focusing too much on the &quot;letters&quot; in a PhD. You don't get a PhD - you get a PhD &lt;em&gt;in something&lt;/em&gt;. You'd no more expect a PhD in Epidemiology and a PhD in Theoretical Physics to have done the same work than you would expect a BA in Math and a BA in German to have done the same coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study of the biomarkers associated with an extremely rare neurodegenerative illness that effects mostly children, doing full genome sequencing on the small number of prevalent cases of the disease (10), extensive personal histories and environmental sampling, etc. to identify potential drug targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study of the risk factors, survival times, etc. for ventilator-associated pneumonias in a large group of community and academic hospitals, pulling all incident cases within the hospital for the past year (500), sorting through the medical records for each, and applying some cutting edge statistical techniques to deal with some of the messiness of the data - interval censoring, competing risks, and non-independence of patients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study of exactly 227 animals to understand the pharmacokinetics of a new tetravalent vaccine, specifically looking for markers of immune response and nephrotoxicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development of a complex, agent-based model of the human gut, applied to both inflammatory disease, and the post-antibiotic exposure proliferation of certain bacterial species that impact the lining of the intestinal wall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these doesn't deserve a PhD based on their sample size, or whether or not they were a retrospective or prospective study (also, a largish 'Citatation Needed' around retrospective studies being easier - they're &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt; but not necessarily easier)? And these are just examples I can think of off the top of my head that fit in the somewhat wide field of &quot;Biomedicine&quot;. Heaven forbid we throw in Mathematics or Physics or Religious Studies. One of them doesn't even have patients, and is entirely separate from the &quot;Prospective/Retrospective&quot; distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?&quot; (which is, incidentally, not true. There may be no &lt;em&gt;universal&lt;/em&gt; standards, but universities often have them on the school or departmental level) has the same answer as &quot;Why don't we publish everything in the same journal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because academia is wide and diverse, and only describes a certain aspect of the pursuit of knowledge, not a specific set of methods, study populations, or even study questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:16:44.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19774" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:18:48.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For life sciences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hfsp.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HFSP&lt;/a&gt; Long Term Fellowships and Cross Disciplinary Fellowships. CDF is aimed at people from other disciplines that want to enter biology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.embo.org/funding-awards/fellowships/long-term-fellowships&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EMBO&lt;/a&gt; Long Term Fellowships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lsrf.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LSRF&lt;/a&gt; fellowships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:18:48.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:24:40.263" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience with transcription:&#xA;Our university uses a lecture capture system (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-relay-website.html&quot;&gt;Camtasia Relay&lt;/a&gt;) that creates a video file with the instructor's screen plus the audio of the instructor's lecturing. We recently hired students to take the software's &quot;best guess&quot; captioning for a single course and create good closed captions. &#xA;To our amazement, every 50 minutes of lecture took roughly &lt;strong&gt;EIGHT HOURS&lt;/strong&gt; to transcribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my main answer is yes, your timeline is likely too tight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to look into some sort of lecture capture system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My socratic teacher self also thinks that students creating their own summary of the discussion is likely more helpful to deep learning than receiving a transcript. &#xA;Or have students create a wiki or google doc for each seminar with the main figures (codes? equations?) provided for them to discuss. A different student could be in charge of each day's wiki setup and upload the appropriate discussion points and edit the final product and report to you on class participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:24:40.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19784" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:36:18.527" Score="8" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended graduate school in Switzerland, where for engineering, it is not uncommon to have research projects that are funded, in part, by commercial companies. I'm not talking about consulting, but scientific research projects, more on the translational side, for which there is full academic freedom and that have scientific publications as primary output. I also received a conference travel grant from a company during my PhD (although my paper was critical of the performance of one of that company's products).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now a post-doc fellow in a reputable american* university and realized my mentioning of funding from companies stirs unease and awkwardness among my colleagues (I should mention that my field is somewhat related to medicine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would private funding look like on my CV when applying to an american academic position? Is it considered more prestigious to have received government/foundation funding? I'm looking for answers that are general or specific to health-related research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I use this term to describe the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T14:51:29.127" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:51:29.127" Title="Funding of research by commercial companies, what is the sentiment in the USA?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19783" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:45:12.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from epidemiology as a field, with some dabbling in clinical and translational research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commercially funded research should absolutely show up on your CV (it does on mine), and it probably won't hurt you, especially in the early stages of your career. There is however definitely more prestige behind having NIH/NSF etc. funding, or foundation funding - several departments I've talked to have all said they prefer to see that. NIH funding especially is something of the &quot;brass ring&quot;. Commercial funding isn't &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; per se, but a notably dependence on it might have people wondering what is it about your work that isn't passing muster in the traditionally peer-reviewed federal funding system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also some uncomfortableness around conflict of interest - industry-funded science doesn't have the best track record in terms of creating unbiased medical research, but they're also the only people who fund some research, so it will depend very heavily on what specific area you're in. I've worked in some areas where it gives people an uncomfortableness, and in others where nearly everyone has industry funding of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:45:12.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19824" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:14:00.520" Score="16" ViewCount="3004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an international graduate student studying theoretical physics in a US university, and I'm in my 4th year of PhD study and plan to graduate at the end of the 5th year. Yesterday, I heard something from my advisor really hurts me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yesterday afternoon, I was working in my office while my professor was having a meeting with a prostdoc in our group in the small meeting room just outside my office. We are in a suit-like office so that there is a very small common meeting room outside our offices. The meeting room is very small and very close to my office, so that I can hear what they said rather clearly. Usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside, but yesterday I left my door opened because my professor planed to have a meeting with me after they finished the meeting with the postdoc, and there was only a short period of time between they started the meeting with the postdoc till the time we scheduled to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then in the middle of their talk, I heard my professor talking about she was very happy about a new graduate student is about to join the group, so that the new student can help the postdoc to run part of the numerical calculations, because &quot;XX is not productive as before&quot;, where &quot;XX&quot; is my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a background, before the new postdoc joined our group about 3 months ago, I had a great time working together with our former postdoc, who is also international with the same nationality as I'm. We worked very closely together with many of the projects, and published several papers together in about two years. Just before the end of last year, my professor assigned me to work independently onto a new project which is in a new area that no one in our group has any experience before. It went smoothly until early this year when I plan to take my general exam. I originally plan to take my general exam at late February, but until the very end of approaching the exam data, the exam was rescheduled one month later and moved into March, due to misunderstanding of emails between our department and the graduate school. So in that two months period, I almost stopped updating the new project and totally devoted into the preparation of my general exam. After I passed my general exam at the end of March, I thought I could pick up my research, then I was caught by another unfinished project we started last summer. This project is a collaboration between our group and an experimental group, and we did have some disagreement of the results between the experimental data and the theoretical simulations from the beginning. Then this project get stop-and-go until just after my general exam, we get pushes from the experimental side that they want to finish the project and submit a paper soon. Since the former postdoc is already left, I was placed to in charge of it. I have to deal with all the conflicts between the experiment and theory results and exchange drafts of the paper with the experimental side, and almost have no time to deal with the new project I was doing. The last important update of my project is about 7 weeks ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I'm a hard working student, at least in the standards of my friends in my department. I work almost 10 hours a day and almost 7 days a week. After I hear about her criticism yesterday, I almost started to rethink whether it still worth my devotion into this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should I take from my professor's criticism of my performance, in her talking with others, under the obvious condition that I can hear it? She never criticized me before as far as I know. And what suggestions do you have to deal with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T21:56:25.383" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T21:56:25.383" Title="Why did my professor criticize my performance indirectly?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19777" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:37:12.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main issue I can think of would be time allotment. Most grants require you to specify how what percentage of your time you will spend on the grant. As you cannot overcommit yourself (i.e., total time allotment cannot exceed 100%), you'll have to specify that in the proposal. Many professors have funding from multiple grants at any given time, so this situation is not too unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note, though, that it is highly likely that once &quot;Department D&quot; catches on that you have an external source of funding, they may decide to withdraw their offer and provide the funding to someone who has none. Not sure how that would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:37:12.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:38:43.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find a &quot;delta-scribing&quot; process more effective.  To prepare, provide (enough copies of) a rough outline of the material to be covered in that lecture, ideally in the order to be covered, with a blank box next to each bullet point, and space somewhere (perhaps on a different sheet of paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the goal of the transcription team is to record the actual order of points presented. The order presented is recorded in the blank box, usually by a number.  The space is used to record as much of the additional words needed for the lecture, including particularly cogent phrases describing the material, as well as subpoints of discussion.  This may save just enough work on the part of the team that all the additional (&quot;delta&quot;) salient points brought up in lecture can be covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lecture is actually more of a free-flowing discussion with many people introducing new points, it might be good to have each two-person team operate so that one transcribes the points the other person presents.  Perhaps a brief discussion as how to best transcribe the point might be in order, so that there is a &quot;secretarial consensus&quot; of sorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:38:43.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:42:20.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have taught a similarly structured graduate course, and seen a similar wide variation in quality of the notes. I did assign scribes at the beginning of the class, and allowed them to swap as long as everyone ended up scribing at some point. I feel like this helped in matching students to topics they were particularly keen on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future, I've considered having all the notes be in a wiki. There would still be a &quot;main&quot; scribe for each topic, but everybody (including me) could contribute to any page. They would be assessed on their overall contribution, which is trackable from the wiki history. The assessment structure is pretty much pass/fail anyway, so I'm not sure it makes much of a difference, but I like the idea of rewarding students for helping each other. Also, it means it's OK for each wiki page to start out as &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; rough notes, potentially from many hands: it can be progressively rewritten. This avoids the problem where the original scribe gets stuck at an early stage - if they missed something, or misunderstood something, then they can get help on it, but still be able to make a meaningful contribution to the end product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not be suitable for you if you have a lot of mathematics or diagrams (depending on choice of wiki software), or if you would prefer things to be in LaTeX for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:42:20.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T20:21:49.217" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I would send out a Google Doc to each member of my class. We would all collaboratively take notes together. This was, of course, chaotic and messy but it worked very well.  The anxiety about 'missing something while writing down something else' was alleviated with more eyes and ears on the subject. When the lecture already had or could have followed a written structure, (say a review sheet or an agenda for the day) we would base the document off this, which worked even better as people would focus on one topic or bullet point and make sure that was finished and fleshed out as the rest of the class raced on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this does mean giving your students an additional task. Sometimes, as has been noted, active note taking and learning don't go well together. However, student lead, collaborative note taking is another option, if maybe not the best one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14498" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T20:21:49.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19761" CreationDate="2014-04-24T20:23:38.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does make a difference. It's very unlikely that there will be a job where they ask you if you have a PhD, and when you say yes, tick that checkbox, move on and never mention it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is the single biggest unit of research experience for most young researchers (for older ones, usually their recent publications are much more relevant than their PhD). Therefore, if you apply to any job (academic or industry) where the PhD is a relevant qualification, you will be expected to discuss your thesis work at length. The employer will then judge the quality of your work, and based on that they will decide whether they will hire you over all the other PhDs. Of course, some employers are incompetent, and are influenced by the &quot;brand&quot; (whether you got your PhD from a famous place/advisor), but that's another matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, if you slack off and get an &quot;easy&quot; PhD, it will not impress anyone who matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because such standards are unnecessary. Advisors are senior scientists who know well that if they let a student they supervise graduate with a garbage PhD, it will hurt their reputation when one day someone says &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wow, what a horrible thesis! Who supervised this?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. So advisors will naturally try to make theses as good as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there are many careers where they would ask all sorts of details about your PhD (as I've also remarked above), both in the industry and academia, assuming it's relevant - Wall Street, for instance, has a habit of sometimes hiring people based on the fact that they have a PhD (in a quantitative field) alone without caring much about what the thesis is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that usually, hiring a PhD is pretty expensive - even postdocs make about $50k annual, and in the industry it goes to $60k-120k. Why would anyone pay that much money for a PhD holder, and not even bother to ask the details of their PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T02:26:06.573" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T02:26:06.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-24T20:42:58.517" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have the following goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I) Every student will transcribe at least one lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(II) The transcribed lecture notes will be of a sufficient quality to be useful to the other students, and ideally to be posted somewhere for others to access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(III) You don't want to spend an unreasonable time writing or correcting the notes yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion these are three worthy goals and any one of them is attainable, but as a set they are probably incompatible with each other.  So you may want to choose (not necessarily once and for all, but depending on the course) which of these worthy goals is the worthiest and prepare to sacrifice one or both of the others.  In more detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prioritize (I), then the emphasis is placed on creating a learning experience for the students.  If you do this you will find that the variation in the quality of the note-taking will be amazing.  I have seen this in students' written notes over the years.  Yesterday a student left his notebook in my office.  I flipped through it today to try to figure out who it was.  It is one step above chicken scratch: for instance, he is writing on lined paper but his mathematical expressions and equations only stay within the lines about half the time: he can have a &quot;written slope&quot; which is only slightly larger than -1.  (This helped me identify the student, who does not have his name written down anywhere.  I noticed his characteristic negative slope when he was writing on the board in my office yesterday.)  On the other hand, in my graduate course I have glanced at several students' handwritten notes at the end of the lecture and marvelled at how much better they look than my own handwritten pre-lecture notes and what is on the blackboard at the end of the leecture.  At one point years ago I gave in a borderline undergrad/graduate level class what I thought was one of my best lectures of all time and at the end realized that I hadn't prepared any lecture notes and sadly reflected on the fact that it would be lost forever.  Then I remembered that I had one student in the course who took great lecture notes, and I asked her for her lecture notes for this purpose.  I think that what she gave me was an improvement on my delivered lecture, and using her notes I got my favorite part of what amounts to a textbook on number theory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.uga.edu/~pete/4400pnt.pdf&quot;&gt;you can see the lecture notes here&lt;/a&gt;.  (Yes, I touched it up a bit afterwards, but not by that much.)  You can also see that I thanked this student at the end of my notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the students mentioned above are &quot;A students&quot;.  I personally do feel that the gender difference between the students is playing a role here.  This is not a scientific observation and I certainly mean no offense to anyone, but in my experience the difference in note-taking care between male and female students is, on average, dramatic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you prioritize (I) and (III) you're going to get such uneven samples as to make it a pretty jarring experience for anyone to try to follow the entire course by reading the notes.  Having the notes be texed adds other levels and brings other skills into play.  Some people will naturally go back and spend time prettying up their tex files; others won't.  (I started out as the latter and very slowly over the course of thousands of pages of notes am heading towards the former.  But for someone who has thousands of pages of texed mathematics on his webpage, my texing skills are distressingly middling.)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus if you prioritize (II), then I think you need to seek out the students who will do the best job.  This works against (I), and you need to look for extra compensation.  I agree with the other answers that providing good latexed notes is something that may be worth paying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; prioritize (II) then at a certain point you will decide to type the lecture notes yourself.  This is what I do in most classes I teach.  At this point I have a bit of a reputation as a guy who has lots of typed lecture notes.  When I begin a graduate course now, I often tell students explicitly that I will not be typing lecture notes as the course progresses, because that is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; time-consuming.  But then, at some point in the semester I usually break down and reveal to the students where my heretofore secret lecture notes can be found.  I actually just did that yesterday in my graduate class this semester....with less than one week of class left.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typing your own notes totally destroys (III): to get something that looks good you have to work significantly harder during the semester than you otherwise would need to do in order to deliver exactly the same lecture &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you need to put more time into it after the semester is over.  On the other hand, I have found this practice to be extremely valuable to both my learning and my career: I have gotten a lot of wonderful professional interactions out of it.  Thus I would say that the real drawback is that it defeats (I).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize a very long answer: I think you need to decide whether the point of this is the process or the end result.  You either provide a learning experience for all the students or you provide decent-to-high quality lecture notes, or you provide both but don't get it done until after the end of the course.  I don't see how to do everything at once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T20:52:22.493" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T20:52:22.493" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19802" CreationDate="2014-04-24T22:04:39.133" Score="17" ViewCount="4666" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience in biology (by experience I mean reading other papers), it seems that there is an unspoken rule that itemized lists do not belong in the body text of a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have almost never seen a paper have a bullet point list or a numbered list which is formatted as a separate entity in the body text (although I have seen them in eg. the sidebar, or figures which essentially are a numbered list). The closest I've seen is an &quot;in-line&quot; numbered list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our paper raises three points: (1) yada yada, (2) blah blah and (3) bip bap boop. Point (2) is particularly important, because yakkity yakkity...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are bullet point or numbered lists, formatted similar to how StackOverflow formats them for example, discouraged in scientific publication? If so is there a reason why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T16:12:53.623" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T16:34:26.277" Title="Are itemized lists discouraged in scientific papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2014-04-24T22:12:59.527" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;strong&gt;extremely&lt;/strong&gt; common in my areas of computer science (TCS and machine learning) to see a paper itemize a list of contributions as a bulleted or numbered list. I use it regularly as a technique to highlight and emphasize contributions and key ideas in a way that stands out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while any such answer is area specific, I'd say that in the areas of CS that I'm familiar with it is definitely not discouraged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T22:12:59.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19750" CreationDate="2014-04-24T23:27:15.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a mathematician, I had the same first reaction to this question as several other answerers and commenters: It's wrong to be a co-author of a paper that is just someone else's work.  But I need to temper that reaction with the fact that other fields have rather different standards. In particular, in some (maybe even all?) of the experimental sciences, it is standard practice for the head of the lab to be a co-author of everything that comes out of that lab, whether or not the head actually did any of the research or even understood the research. As far as I can tell, the rationale for this is that the head of the lab gets the grants that make everybody else's work possible. The question here suggests that this sort of thing might be involved here (&quot;I'd been tasked with supporting the student&quot;), so co-authorship might not be quite as crazy or as unethical as it looks to a mathematician. Even in the experimental sciences, though, the head of the lab is (as far as I know) expected to make sure the work is good (and is held responsible if it is not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T23:27:15.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19800" CreationDate="2014-04-25T01:40:34.923" Score="8" ViewCount="2753" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any requirements for writing a textbook that is accepted by (reputable) colleges?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I got the odd idea in my head that it would be fun to write a compilation of the techniques and theorems I had learned relating to discrete mathematics.  As I find it fun to let my imagination run wild with these sorts of ideas, this compilation transformed into a tutorial, and from there transformed into a textbook.  I quickly decided I wasn't anywhere near qualified to write a textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fun daydreams aside, that made me wonder: What are the qualifications typically found in textbook authors?  Is a Ph.D. in the field a &quot;must,&quot; or do some people write textbooks who hold Masters degrees (yet not a Ph.D.)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9934" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T01:28:35.007" Title="Qualifications for textbook authorship" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;credentials&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T01:45:08.240" Score="14" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, why do some universities have a defined &quot;graduate school&quot; and associated &quot;graduate faculty,&quot; with separate appointment process, and some do not, even when they offer many graduate programs?  What is the organizational and administrative thinking behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="396" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:01:47.960" Title="What is a &quot;graduate school&quot;?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19798" CreationDate="2014-04-25T03:12:38.910" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the qualifications typically found in textbook authors? Is a Ph.D. in the field a &quot;must,&quot; or do some people write textbooks who hold Masters degrees (yet not a Ph.D.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no rules for this in terms of minimal qualification. Why would there be? Readers want good books. Publishers want to sell books. Who cares if the author has a PhD or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, trying to get deeper, it's often difficult to define precisely even what is &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; by a &quot;textbook&quot; in the intuitive sense you probably mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, would books in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oreilly.com/&quot;&gt;O'Reilly Media series be considered textbooks&lt;/a&gt;? Would instructional e-books? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such the answer depends widely on the publisher or the book series (if any) you wish to contribute to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For book series, there is typically an editor in charge who will make a judgement call on whether or not you are qualified and whether or not you can contribute something good to the series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If dealing directly with a traditional academic publisher (I'm thinking of the likes of Springer), you (and your book proposal) will again be evaluated by their editorial staff before they agree to a contract. Likewise, they will only publish the book pending review by a number of experts that you propose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, it varies widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: I think if you have enough genuine material for a textbook -- material that people want to read -- you could find a reasonable publisher even without a Masters/PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T03:12:38.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T05:39:48.827" Score="4" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently applied to a university for a PhD program.They asked me to submit all of my documents.When I submitted my documents they asked for my Bachelors thesis. There is no Bachelors thesis or undergraduate research in our university.You can do it but its not a requirement and nobody does it given the time constraint of 6 months for Bachelors Final project. I have my Masters thesis but there was no bachelors thesis. There was a final project in bachelors but it was not research based. The hr said that &quot;in case the thesis is not available,you can send an extended abstract&quot;. How do I properly address this situation ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T08:04:16.977" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T11:35:05.203" Title="What should I do if an admissions office asks me for a bachelor's thesis, when my program didn't require it?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:23:56.397" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that itemized list are not very common in the biology literature. However, I do not think it is a requirement of the publisher (I check in PLoS Biology, Cell and Plant Physiology), but more a choice of the authors. I personally tend to include itemized list when it is necessary and I never had any comment from the publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible reason to choose inline list over an itemized one is that is take less space. Since some journal have a pay-per-page policy, it might be an incentive. The same goes for grant application in which the number of pages is usually limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An other reason, but I am speculating here, is that itemized list might be seen as an &lt;em&gt;ugly&lt;/em&gt; (the term is not mine, but from a reviewer of one of my paper) or cheap writing style. I personally disagree with this view, since the importance is the &lt;em&gt;message&lt;/em&gt;, not the &lt;em&gt;writing style&lt;/em&gt;, but I think it is out there anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T06:23:56.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19806" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:50:35.997" Score="6" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently am working on a MS in pure maths, but am interested in options for pursuing a PhD in a more applied field. Specifically I am interested in going on to graduate work in something like statistics. How hard would it be for me to go straight from an MS in pure math with only a very few courses in statistics to a PhD program in statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some experience in probability with my research (random walks on finite groups). But outside of that, I am pretty inexperienced with applied math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14518" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T15:28:05.583" Title="MS in Pure Maths to PhD in Statistics" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19756" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:58:21.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We start by getting all students evaluated by our Teaching &amp;amp; Learning Centre. TLC staff will recommend an action plan for students that are struggling with their writing skills. Additionally, in most courses we ask students to write essays and summaries of any lab work, which is returned with specific comments on the quality of writing. After all this, most students will &lt;em&gt;somewhat&lt;/em&gt; improve their writing; however, many will never be great at it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T06:58:21.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19750" CreationDate="2014-04-25T07:05:04.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry to break the &quot;don't answer your own question&quot; norm here, but I want to float an answer.  First, I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; contribute to the paper (suggested direction of research) and the system presented &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; work.  My issue was whether this new system was a real academic contribution, which I left up to the academic process to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overnight, the postdoc who initially complained a) admitted that the idea was great if not entirely well executed and b) told me he's found a new prestigious collaboration writing a better paper.  In my mind, this is how academia is supposed to work.  So my proposed answer is &quot;yes&quot;.  I leave it to you folks to vote up or down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T07:05:04.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19803" CreationDate="2014-04-25T08:07:10.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main hurdle will not be the knowledge about statistics you'll bring. (As a trained mathematician you should be able to pick up new math quick enough.) The main hurdle could be to embrace a new kind of doing science and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more applied math people sometimes think differently about problems than in pure math. Roughly speaking, one is much more open to adapt assumptions and requirements for some problems such that they become more simple theoretically, more suited computationally or otherwise more convenient. Since one usually works with things that are related to the real world and hence, somehow uncertain and noisy, it is often not useful to stick to every assumption but use some freedom in modeling. I heard the saying &quot;All models are wrong.&quot; Well, true but this should not make you hesitate to work with models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen people changing from pure math to applied math who never could adopt to these principles (but also cases where there were no problems). If you think that you won't have problems with issues like I described, then things will turn out fine, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T15:28:05.583" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T15:28:05.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19803" CreationDate="2014-04-25T08:28:29.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps another big difference is that being able to interact with other disciplines is very important to be good at statistics. If you are open minded and curious about learning other topics (e.g. genetics, computation, etc), together with a solid mathematical background you can be a very good asset in statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14382" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T08:28:29.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19756" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:48:13.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To build on eykanal's answer, if you run a lab then have a &lt;strong&gt;lab blog&lt;/strong&gt; and encourage or require your students to contribute to it. It is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2013/04/12/why-grad-schools-should-require-students-to-blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;great way to &lt;strong&gt;structure writing&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;improves research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4754/66&quot;&gt;learn how to &lt;strong&gt;communiate&lt;/strong&gt; research&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/a/678854/13668&quot;&gt;encourage &lt;strong&gt;active learning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and even &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/738/66&quot;&gt;improve technical writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The public nature of a blog, puts a bit of pressure on the student, and you (or a senior student) should help them edit their first couple of posts, but afterwards give them freedom to roam. This is especially useful during thesis writing, since a student can package partial progress into posts. Finally, by requiring students to blog, you let them &lt;strong&gt;build a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/616/66&quot;&gt;web presence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and let them make connections in the field that don't depend exclusively on your klout or their papers (which usually are few and concentrated toward the end of the PhD for many students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, I chose to &lt;a href=&quot;http://egtheory.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; on my own and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience. It has allowed me (along with other parts of my online activity like G+ and SE Q&amp;amp;As) to develop papers faster, feel part of a bigger community, and make &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerconnector.blogspot.ca/2013/07/a-visitor-resulting-hackathon-and-nice.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;new contacts that lead to new independent collaborations&lt;/a&gt;. I can't recommend it enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T09:48:13.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-25T10:36:21.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say it is an advanced course, so you may have met some of the students before in beginners courses, projects, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick one or two competent and reliable students and pay them to write lecture notes¹. Repeat in subsequent iterations with the purpose of incremental refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can sell the idea to them by noting that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they'd get paid for work they'd have to do in some form, anyway,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they'd learn more because they'd have to do it a bit more precisely than for&#xA;their own jot paper and would get feedback from other students (and you),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they'd have external motivation to do said work (counter-procrastination) and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they'd have the chance to make a good impression with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think lecture notes should be different from transcripts, but ymmv.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T10:36:21.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19801" CreationDate="2014-04-25T11:35:05.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As suggested in the comments above, I would send both the final project writeup and your masters thesis with a letter explaining the situation (no bachelors thesis required at your university), and contact the department and ask them how they wish you to proceed. At the end of the day, it's their requirement, so it's their call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T11:35:05.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:35:59.807" Score="3" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;(When I finished my computer Sci degree, I decided not do as PhD as I believed that in order to get a programmer position, most employers valued 3 years more experience as a programmer greater then a PhD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading this site, it seems normal for a PhD to take 5 years, however in the UK most people expect a PhD to take not much more 3 years unless the student is being lazy.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I saw the CV of someone applying for a  computer programmer job unrelated to their PhD and they spend 5 years on a PhD, I would questions if they were worth interviewing just on that bases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T12:47:42.110" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T07:19:29.253" Title="Why do PhD take so long in the USA?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-05-08T07:28:01.323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-04-25T13:28:43.283" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally wrote this answer back in 2014. I'm updating it for 2018, since I now have a bunch more experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had students scribe for me in graduate classes many times. You can read their work on the course webpages: (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/631/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/665/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/632/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/631_2014/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/665_2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/632Old/632.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;). I have also twice taught honors classes where I assigned students to prove a lot of results in class and assigned them to write up notes on the day's work. You can read the more recent version here (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/395/IBL.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/396/IBL/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;); I also did this a previous time but no longer have a digital copy of those notes. Some advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep the assignment manageable. For a graduate student, I think writing up one 50 minute lecture is a reasonable task. If I were doing longer lectures, I'd probably break the responsibility in half. For undergrads, a group of 2 or 3 working together to cover 50-80 minutes of classwork is reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make the assignment more manageable and the notes more uniform for my grad students, I made a big LaTeX template with all the macros I thought they might want. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For my undergrads, at first I required them to use LaTeX, working together on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.overleaf.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Overleaf&lt;/a&gt;, but I found I was spending a lot of time answering LaTeX questions, so I switched to telling them they could use any medium they wanted. You should probably decide whether it is worth spending your time teaching undergrads to use LaTeX. A downside of letting them use any medium is that there wasn't a good way for me to edit those notes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Impose a tight deadline. My deadline now is to have the notes done 24 hours after the class, before people forget what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make the tight deadline fair, let students choose what date they want to work on several weeks in advance. Ideally, warn about dates which will be unusually diagram heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I scribe the first lecture myself, to illustrate to the students what I was looking for. I post the TeX source of the notes along with the PDF, so that students could copy techniques from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For my grad classes, I edit the notes, both to remove typos and to add additional comments on material which I had not covered well. This was probably 30 or 60 minutes of work per lecture, but when the turn-around cycle was tight, I felt that the time doubled as helpful preparation for the next lecture by reminding me what I said rather than what I meant to say. It would be better if I edited the undergrad notes as well, although I currently am not because so many of them are handwritten or in Word.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I frequently say things in lecture like &quot;I don't know the precise answer to your question, but it is something like ... and I'll put the details in the course notes&quot;, and I in other ways encourage people to treat the notes as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things I haven't figured out a good way to do yet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Incorporate this into the course grade. For grad students, I just don't; I instead praise good work informally, in public and private. For undergrads, I had a small portion of the grade which was my feeling about how well they did on class participation and note taking, but I will freely admit it was very subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teach students to use LaTeX better, or to write better. It is pretty easy to fix their work, but I never feel that I have time or energy to tell them how to improve it next time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastEditorUserId="1244" LastEditDate="2020-01-07T13:05:23.733" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T13:05:23.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19761" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:06:08.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Enjoy your studies! don't worry about paper certificates or PhD. The endless sleepless nights will be amazing, because you have spent them without sleeping, as you were more involved in it (research) than in your relaxed sleep.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are more concentrated towards what those certificates mean, that implies you are studying for marks not for joy that you get by studying. I hope you will not be the one who studies for marks, but indeed who studies to enjoy, to know the world better. What more do you want? Go ahead, enjoy your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10403" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T14:06:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:44:48.513" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK system (or similar systems, like Australia) students enter their Ph.D. program with a stronger background due to earlier specialization, and they typically leave their Ph.D. program at a less advanced level than a Ph.D. from a comparable American school.  The difference is not in how fast people learn, but rather differences in what a bachelor's degree means and what a Ph.D. degree means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that on specialization for undergraduates the US is the outlier, but in terms of Ph.D. outcome it's the UK that is unusual.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/435/1/RedefiningTheDoctorate.pdf&quot;&gt;Chris Parks writes&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Across Europe the view prevails that the three-year UK doctorate is too short and thus of inadequate quality compared with the more common four-year doctorate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:35:00.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:35:00.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19818" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:55:36.833" Score="12" ViewCount="3024" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's something I am not able to understand. I'm a CS master student in Germany. Now I'm doing my master thesis. Before starting my thesis I had an image about PhD students which turned out to be wrong. Always thought that PhD student work much much harder than us and have too much stress. Or that they wake up at 5 am and keep working all day and night! But then when I started working on my thesis, my supervisor was so nice that he gave me a place in his office. Since then I always see the PhD student coming to their offices at 9 or 10 am and leave at 5 pm. I also see them waste a lot of time by hanging around or going for smoking every 45 minutes or so. They even spend almost one complete hour having lunch and then having coffee and desert!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the normal life for PhDs or is there something wrong here?!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T22:20:52.150" Title="Life as a master student vs PhD student" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19821" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:57:11.250" Score="6" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder how many manuscripts are submitted daily to the top scientific journals, such as Nature or Science. Each of those journals has multiple editors, specialising in narrower fields. The question that follows is how many submittions does one editor handle daily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14544" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T15:14:04.717" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T08:28:37.410" Title="How many manuscripts per day are sent to leading journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19816" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:05:31.537" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no single &quot;correct&quot; answer in the life of a graduate student—the culture varies from university to university, department to department, and even group to group. It's also a function of the PhD student as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is that, as a CS student, you're working in a field where it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; easy for students to do their work in environments outside of the laboratory. (Compare that to, say, experimental biology or chemistry, and the freedom in work environment is pretty stark.) Consequently, you don't really have a good feel for how many hours the students are working in aggregate—they may be spending a lot of time working from home, or in the evenings or on weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other end of the scale, I have known advisors who expected their students to put in &lt;strong&gt;a minimum&lt;/strong&gt; of 70 to 80 hours per week in the laboratory. (Of course, since this is lab work, there's no way to do much of it &quot;from home&quot;—other than reading and writing.) And in my own experience, there are weeks where I barely worked 40 hours, and others where I put in close to 90 (usually right before conferences and when I was racing to finish my thesis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, there are very few absolutes when it comes to the career of a graduate student, and you really do need to find your own &quot;path.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T15:05:31.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19830" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:05:52.670" Score="17" ViewCount="1354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper aimed at a physics journal which extends an old paper (not by me), which introduced a mathematical formalism for a physical problem in a rather handwaving way and without addressing most of its mathematical background.&#xA;In addition to exentding this formalism, my paper elaborates on this mathematical background and relatedly introduces the formalism in a ”more rigorous” way.&#xA;I consider the latter one of my paper’s key features for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One might consider the formalism and the methods derived from it not to be properly substantiated in the old paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Though the mathematical background has no other application so far, it is interesting for its own sake and perhaps from a philosophical point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My approach to the formalism might be more accessible to some people and make them give a better understanding of what they are doing when applying the formalism and related methods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these points are rather opinion-based, I do not intend to elaborate on them in the paper – at most I might shortly mention the didactical aspects in the conclusion.&#xA;(I mainly mentioned them here to give you some idea what I am talking about.)&#xA;However, I do want to briefly mention in the abstract or the introduction that I “rigorified” the formalism, where &lt;em&gt;briefly&lt;/em&gt; can be anything between one word and two sentences.&#xA;For example, my abstract could look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Old paper] introduced [old concept], which is useful for [application].&#xA;  We extend this concept to [new concept] and also &lt;em&gt;rigorify its mathematical background.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that &lt;em&gt;rigorify its mathematical background&lt;/em&gt; is far from what I actually want to say.&#xA;I am therefore looking for &lt;strong&gt;a way to say this without seeming arrogant or condescending on the old paper and in particular without implying that the old paper “did not do its mathematics properly”.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intentionally do not give my best solutions for now, as I do not want to induce any bias on them, in case I may underestimate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I am also torn between &lt;em&gt;Academia&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English Language &amp;amp; Usage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; for posting this question.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:11.743" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:29:28.200" Title="How to state that you “rigorified” an existing paper without sounding arrogant or condescending?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:13:32.180" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WeakMath et al [foo] introduced a formalism for the problem we study. Their framework conveys valuable intuition* about [the problem] but is not precise enough for further development of the mathematical structures introduced. In this work, we elaborate on their ideas, placing them in a formal mathematical [something] that allows us to [do awesome things]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* if it does&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the general idea: give them credit for intuiting the right ideas which will lessen the blow when you drop the hammer on them :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T18:09:56.210" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T18:09:56.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19817" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:13:41.920" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;'s website&lt;/a&gt;, they received 10,952 submissions last year, which works out to an average of almost exactly 30 papers per calendar day. Given that there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/index.html&quot;&gt;26 subject area editors&lt;/a&gt; according to their editorial masthead, it would appear that the average editor gets about 8 papers per week, or one or two per day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, their caseload is probably much bigger, since they also have to deal with all of their other &quot;open&quot; papers as well—so an editor might have something like 60-100 active papers to deal with at any one time (ballpark estimate, assuming a two- to three-month life cycle—although I suspect it's actually much longer than that if multiple rounds of reviews are required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T15:13:41.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:19:21.210" Score="12" ViewCount="3356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a CS master student working on my thesis. I'm 25 years old and still until now when I wake up in the morning to start studying I wake up stressed and my stomach hurts. I also feel a very bad headache. When I had courses I used to wake up in this situation everyday because I had to. Now I started my thesis and I don't have a deadline for it. So now when I try to wake up very early in the morning (7am) I end up surrendering to stay in bed because I don't want to have that ugly feeling in the morning. I noticed that now I wake up at 9 or 10 am. This is making me waste a lot of time. I'm not working as hard as I used to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;does everyone has this feeling in the morning? and how to overcome this feeling?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;how do you motivate yourself to work?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T12:57:14.327" Title="Motivating myself to study?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:44:51.703" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This (lack of motivation) is common in graduate school.  Without delving into the way you personally like to work (whether you are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, whether your advisor is involved or uninvolved, whether you are motivated by reward or punishment, etc.), it's difficult to give specific advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some general motivational strategies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get up and start something small.  Doesn't matter what it is.  As long as you are working on your project (even formatting your thesis), you are okay.  This is not to say you should be working on it all the time, just that even the small things are helpful.  Small tasks get you into the groove and ready to tackle larger problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave things unfinished from the day before.  If you reach the end of the day and are in the middle of a task, leave it, don't stay up to finish it.  This way you have to get up in the morning to keep doing what you were doing, rather than waking up and saying &quot;I don't know where to start.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you think you may be depressed (if you are constantly saying &quot;I have no reason to get out of bed&quot;), please talk to someone or see a doctor.  It gets better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14548" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T15:44:51.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19785" CreationDate="2014-04-25T17:08:38.030" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your advisor said, in the context of a conversation on a new student picking up some of the workload in the lab,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;xslittlegrass is not productive as before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you seem to have interpreted this as a personal criticism, i.e.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;xslittlegrass is not working hard enough. I'm disappointed with xslittlegrass's performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I question this interpretation. Your advisor is eager for the new student to arrive because she recognizes that there is a lot of work to be done on the current projects in the lab, and that your attention is on other things right now - hence your low productivity. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You simply can't &quot;produce&quot; a lot on &quot;your&quot; project right now.  You have been splitting your time and efforts between multiple things: your exam, the collaborative project, and &quot;your&quot; project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next year you'll be even less &quot;productive&quot; - you'll be writing your thesis, devoting time and effort to your job search, making sure ongoing projects transition smoothly when you graduate. That's a good thing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also question your characterization of the situation as &quot;under the obvious condition that I can hear it&quot; - your advisor probably did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; expect you to hear this conversation. As you said &quot;usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside&quot; - so usually you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; hear meetings going on outside. I don't think your advisor noticed your door was open, thought &quot;xslittlegrass can hear this meeting,&quot; and decided to use it as an opportunity to give you some indirect criticism in middle of an unrelated conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really concerned about this comment, it's often helpful to have a &quot;checkup&quot; with your advisor. You can ask her directly: &quot;Are you satisfied with my current work? Do you think I am allocating my time and efforts in a useful way?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T17:08:38.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13457" CreationDate="2014-04-25T17:50:08.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is yes, it is so easy to salvage the situation that over half my friends can say ‘been there, done that’.  A book I found helpful at the time is ‘What Color Is Your Parachute’, by Richard Bolles, which is about and figuring out what you want to do, and finding work you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that I or friends have done while straight out of school and clueless: SAT/GRE tutoring, boring clerical work, low paying internships, living with parents while looking for work, or networking with friends, family, and random strangers and finding good paying jobs within a month or two. I’d strongly recommend the last one, although you can get by on the others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just need to find a starting point. Ask around your family and friends to shadow people at the office and get an idea of what goes on in different departments and industries. Once you have a clue what you want beyond ‘earn money’, it will be easier to focus your job search efforts. It sounds like so far you’ve just thrown your resume into the air, and gotten a copy to recruiters who have a few hundred more just like it. Instead, figure out something you’d like to try doing, and make an effort to meet people in that field, and ask them for work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that you have no skills, and then you mention you’ve taught, so you can do public speaking. You’re a graduate student, so you’re an above average writer, and probably know how to think. If you’ve worked with kids, you’ve probably done customer service type work with their parents. You say you’ll have an inexplicable time gap. Just say ‘I was in graduate school studying X, but decided that field wasn’t for me, so I left.’  I used to explain a one year gap as ‘A bunch of unrelated short term jobs that wouldn’t fit on a resume.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about things you enjoy. Do you like writing? Solving puzzles? Thinking about problems, and coming up with solutions? Helping people solve their problems? Organizing and carrying through on your commitments? People skills?  Marketing involves a lot of writing and strategizing, computer programming is all about solving puzzles (why I love it), or customer service lets you help people while puzzling out what their problems really are. People skills will help you out in any field you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven’t ruined your life, or even your entire 20’s. Quit beating yourself up, and start actively looking for something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14039" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T17:50:08.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19841" CreationDate="2014-04-25T17:59:03.860" Score="57" ViewCount="2231" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while back I reached the stage where my ideas for research topics/papers exceeded my capacity to personally work on them. As a PostDoc, I tried to head-hunt students or more junior researchers in my area (or at conferences, etc.) to talk with them about the ideas and see if they would be interested in collaborating or co-authoring a paper. This worked well for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now (more recently) I find that I again have a back-log of promising topics that have exceeded my capacity to even advise/delegate. I have no students to work on them. The ideas are mixed in quality, concreteness, promise, etc. and I'm saving some of the ones I am most interested in for myself or for students. But I know that there are others I will have to neglect (and I often choose the &quot;safer&quot; topics since being in tenure-track, I have a constant hunger for publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have a text file on my hard-drive with a list of sketches of ideas so that I remember them. But a lot of the details are left unexpressed in my head; most of the ideas in the text file would be pretty meaningless in their current form without some explanation, further development, context and/or motivation from me. At the same time, I have sufficient experience to know that there are interesting paper/thesis topics in there that I could help develop and/or advise if I had the time/money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some of the topics, I have been saying &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/274079-sure-baby-ma-ana-it-was-always-ma-ana-for-the-next&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some day&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I cannot imagine I am alone in this. I am sure that various researchers see many potentially promising research topics fall &quot;by the wayside&quot; due to more urgent, day-to-day matters. I sometimes wonder if other professors similarly have lists of research topics that just rot away in a text file somewhere. It would seem like such a waste if this were the case: think about the union of all these text files sitting on local hard-drives! It would seem to be a major flaw in the academic research system if this were prevalent: that the sharing of raw (or perhaps lightly pasteurised) ideas is not properly incentivised by &quot;the system&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assuming I have a surplus of (good) ideas for research topics in my area – that I cannot work on myself and cannot delegate or even find time to actively advise – what should I do with them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid a loss of generality, a good answer should assume that I'm not  nice: &lt;strong&gt;what personal incentive would I have for sharing my ideas in this manner?&lt;/strong&gt; I don't want to give away my ideas for free. These ideas require development and expression before they can be shared (which is difficult to do &quot;up front&quot;). If I am not incentivised to develop the ideas into a shareable form, the reality is that I will use my precious time to do something else I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; incentivised to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-14T22:07:18.780" LastActivityDate="2019-12-19T08:38:11.433" Title="What to do with spare research topics?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2014-04-25T18:29:28.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are taking a problem from another paper and providing additional perspective which will allow future research to solve or add to solving the problem.  This does not make the original paper any less worthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get into the mindset for writing in a non-dismissive fashion, you might adopt the following scenario: &quot;Their paper is the greatest thing since sliced bread!  My model and formalization will allow others to handle this and similar problems with a more formal perspective. How can it possibly be any more win-win?&quot; .  This may exaggerate the current situation, but it is not a lie when framed properly.  With such an attitude, you can write glowingly about the inspiration provided by their paper, and the anticipated benefits your perspective and formalization will give.  I don't see any need to &quot;drop a hammer&quot; on anyone.&#xA;Putting myself in such a mindset, and making things general, I come up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We take inspiration from Their paper [1], and provide additional mathematical perspective.&#xA;Our model of the problem reflects the intuition in Their paper, and has among its benefits a framework which we feel can be carried to other situations.  In particular, we believe it furthers formal and rigorous treatment of the problem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take reasonable precautions: whatever you write, have your mentor or colleagues review it.  If someone in your department who is politically adept approves, you can try sending an advance copy to the authors of the inspiring article, to see what suggestions they may provide.  DO NOT send them a copy without such outside wisdom and approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastEditorUserId="10390" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T18:37:43.103" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T18:37:43.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19826" CreationDate="2014-04-25T18:49:51.880" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;An incentive you should recognize is time: worrying about these problems takes time away from what you do want to prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the following experiment, and will assume for sake of discussion that the ideas lie within mathematics.  Take one or two of the ideas that you consider expendable, and spend 30 minutes writing a MathOverflow post about them.  Post that on MathOverflow, and then sit back and wait.  If you do it with proper attribution, people may solve them and give you credit for your contribution, or otherwise make progress that you might deem satisfactory.  Or they might be ignored for a while.  The basic idea has been put out there, and you can decide to reprioritize it and then later post what progress you have made as a partial answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the experiment is to see how you feel about letting something go.  If it works well for you, you can repeat it with other things.  If it doesn't, you can stop at the second or third expendable idea this way.  I have the hope that sharing some of your low priority expendable ideas will bring more satisfaction than waiting for the right time to reveal it to someone.  As my background is mathematics, I suggested the MathOverflow forum.  You will have to find or create an appropriate forum to share these ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T18:49:51.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:04:57.070" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you are viewing the older paper through the lens of the type of paper you would have written in the first place and are finding it wanting.  It also sounds like you are viewing your own work as &quot;fixing the flaws&quot; of the older paper, almost as if you want to replace the older paper in your mind with your paper and pretend it had been written that way all along.  More quantitatively you have your eye on the mark that the older paper should have hit, you are filling in the gap between the actual old paper and your eyeballed mark, and since you are measuring from the eyeballed mark you are giving the difference a minus sign.  This framing seems to be behind most of your problems.  Try recasting the entire thing more positively in your own mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Someone else published an inspirational paper way back when.  This paper introduced some formalism and concentrated on its application to a physical problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your paper gives much deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism, while also extending the formalism.  Since 1) showed that the formalism is interesting and useful, your work has evident value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no &quot;minus signs&quot; in the above description: 1) + 2) = your eyeball mark.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there are actual mathematical errors in the older paper, you don't need to say that you are fixing or &quot;rigorifying&quot; (not really a word, by the way) the older paper.  By the way, I don't know whether you've heard my rant about this use of the word &quot;rigor&quot; in mathematics and its applications.  As an adult mathematician I have become increasingly skeptical of mathematical &quot;rigor&quot;: the other paper either made mistakes (which you will need to correct), made claims which were unjustified or insufficiently justified (in which case you make clear that what you are contributing is the justification and not the claims themselves) or they weren't doing mathematics at all (which is fine: that's what you're adding).  Adding rigor must mean one of the things above, right?  It is not some generic ingredient that you can sprinkle more or less liberally over a piece of &quot;unrigorous mathematics&quot; and make it rigorous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: unless there are some clear mistakes, you don't need to bill your work as fixing their mathematics.  You can bill it either as adding the math or adding more math.  Both of these are good things added to other good things: no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T19:12:40.300" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:12:40.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19803" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:22:12.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Math graduates is what most of the body of grad students in statistics is made up of (I've been both a stat student and a stat faculty, so have seen a fair number of these folks). In terms of getting into a program based on your credentials, you wouldn't have any issues (unless, of course, your US-style GPA is like 2.2, in which case you would have some explaining to do in any application to any program, no matter what the discipline is). If anything, you'd be better prepared to tackle the theoretical courses. For instance, the Central Limit Theorem should be proven using characteristic functions rather than moment generating functions, since the latter are not defined for all the distributions to which CLT applies; as a good math major, you probably have had a course in complex analysis. What's more, it might be easier for you to get to a top program, as lower ranked ones may consider you to be overqualified. On the other hand, as other answers strongly suggest, you need to have a more practical mindset than what is typically found among pure mathematicians to get through the applied courses. (The most difficult ones for me were the courses on psychological aspects of response in survey data collection: there was about 5 papers ~ 100 pages worth of reading every week, and the concepts were entirely foreign to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;CrossValidated&lt;/a&gt; site in the SE system to see what this could be about. (Note that it is heavily biased towards computational/machine learning side of statistics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:22:12.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:22:47.927" Score="2" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone at the biology stack exchange website referred me to this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In studying for biology courses I feel as though I have to take things at face value. Is there a way to get around this and study from a more logical standpoint? I can memorize things but don't want to because I know from experience that I will forget about them later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in studying disorders that are genetic in origin. However, I am having difficulty in understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms regarding processes such as meiosis, mitosis, and recombination. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to study these processes from a physical standpoint. When I took a class that discussed these principles, I felt that it was more memorization rather than a deep understanding of concepts such as these. Again to ask my question, does anyone know about a physical (i.e., classical mechanical/electrodynamical(magnetic) or quantum mechanical/statistical mechanical/quantum electrodynamical and thermodynamic/kinetic) way of viewing these interactions and the logic behind why certain things happen in the manner that they do. I know that this is vague. I wish that I had taken cell biology first, then molecular biology and then genetics and developmental biology rather than the way that I was advised to. It makes a lot more sense that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14557" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:12:32.010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:44:34.200" Title="Pedagogy for biology (genetics)" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19774" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:35:16.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the open academic positions, including postdoc positions, in Switzerland are listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eth-gethired.ch/search/sector/0/academic/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ETH-get-hired&lt;/a&gt; website. Although somewhat more popular in German-speaking Switzerland and for Science/Engineering it is fairly general in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that these are typically fully funded job offers, not grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:35:16.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19332" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:37:00.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about for-profit universities, but the practice at &quot;good&quot; US universities is generally as follows.  Before being eligible to graduate, the student must submit a copy of the dissertation to the library and to ProQuest.  By default, after being processed, it is then immediately available to the public from both sources.  (In some cases it might not necessarily be available online, or might require a fee, a visit to the university's library, or an inter-library loan request.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student may be able to request an &quot;embargo&quot;, in which case access to the dissertation's text is restricted for a period of time.  For example, this could be used if the student intended to commercially publish the dissertation or related material.  At my PhD institution, this period can be up to 2 years; any longer embargo requires the special approval of the graduate dean.  Even in such cases, I would expect that the library and ProQuest would still show the dissertation in their catalogs; they just wouldn't allow access to the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, &quot;embargo&quot; sounds like the only possibly legitimate explanation. But if the student graduated several years ago, or if the university library and/or granting department cannot confirm the dissertation's existence, I would &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/150844/south-park-calls-shenanigans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;declare shenanigans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  (Maybe NSFW).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:37:00.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19832" CreationDate="2014-04-25T19:59:08.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me say that I share your feelings about the way biology is typically taught (i.e. as a collection of facts). I believe this will change in the not-so-far future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some historical perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biology was, for a long time, a field of science which was mostly concerned with making observations and collecting data. Even though people were interested in the underlying mechanisms, they were often very difficult to understand in a principled way. This is mostly because biological systems are complex systems, in the sense that very complicated system-level behavior (often referred to as &lt;em&gt;phenotype&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. mitosis) emerges from interactions between many (e.g. tens of thousands) different types of elements. This makes these systems very difficult to understand by only looking at a handful of elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As our ability to collect and analyze data has improved due to technological advances (computing power and high-throughput biological experiments), along with a better ability to perform genetic perturbations (e.g. genetic engineering), biology is becoming more and more quantitative. This has given rise to new fields such as &lt;em&gt;computational biology&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;systems biology&lt;/em&gt;. Still, this approach to biology is very new, and so most biology courses (and books) are taught in the &quot;classic&quot; way. In many cases, we simply do not understand yet the logic or mechanisms underlying certain phenomena in a quantitative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since courses that teach biology from the systems biology / physics / mathematical perspective at an introductory level are still quite rare, I suggest starting with a book (for example, &quot;Physical Biology of the Cell&quot; by Phillips et al. is one such example of teaching biology from a physics perspective; SPOILER: statistical thermodynamics are very useful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:44:34.200" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:44:34.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19838" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:32:20.303" Score="5" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that typically, unpublished references (i.e. references not published in some journal, especially online resources) are highly discouraged. I'm working on a paper regarding Bluetooth LE implementations, and most of the materials relevant to my paper are either online (i.e. on mailing lists discussing implementation of Bluetooth LE on Linux, or manufacturers documenting limitations of their Bluetooth LE chips) or in the Bluetooth 4.0 standard itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to use these online references? They're pretty much my only source of information, as my paper is mostly on real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14558" LastEditorUserId="14558" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:53:41.483" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T21:16:45.743" Title="Can I use informal sources (particularly online sources)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19836" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:41:45.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to refer to these online references? They're pretty much my only source of information, as my paper is mostly on real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referencing web-pages whose content can change (and that are not explicitly versioned) is far from ideal. What you are citing the web-page for may disappear today, tomorrow, the next day: you don't know. Furthermore, you may not know who authored the content, or how reliable the claims made in the content are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, particularly in applied areas of Computer Science, it can often be necessary to reference online material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal rules for this are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the web-page refers to a versioned standard of some sort (e.g., a W3C or ISO standard), with a clear author and/or editor list, use a bibliographic citation. (You can always use Google Scholar to check for precedent of the page in question having been previously cited; &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bluetooth%204.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bluetooth 4.0 has been cited 20 times&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For other web-pages (whose authorship is not clear or that may not be versioned), reference it with a footnote and the date you accessed it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen papers use the bibliography for URLs without explicit authors, but for me, it's poor style (as well as being incompatible with a lot of citation systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option should be used sparingly in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:41:45.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19836" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:59:40.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your paper is on &quot;real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE&quot; then mailing lists on implementations of Bluetooth LE and manufacturers' documentation of Bluetooth LE products are your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;primary sources&lt;/a&gt;.  This is akin to e.g., a historian using Napoleon's informal personal correspondence as a source for information on &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should consider where these sources come from in &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you use them. If you read on a mailing list or forum, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bluetooth LE is the worst thing ever. Mine never works!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you would not use it as a factual source to conclude that Bluetooth LE is terrible. You certainly &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use it as a source to indicate that some users have experienced frustration with early implementations of Bluetooth LE. (I cite bug tickets often in my own papers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bad use of informal source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bluetooth LE is not a good technology [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &quot;Let's all complain about Bluetooth LE here,&quot; Bluetooth User Forum, posted April 1 2104, http:/bluetoothforum/lets-complain, retrieved April 25 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good use of informal source as a primary source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bluetooth LE users have expressed frustration with the technology [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &quot;Let's all complain about Bluetooth LE here,&quot; Bluetooth User Forum, posted April 1 2104, http:/bluetoothforum/lets-complain, retrieved April 25 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T21:16:45.743" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T21:16:45.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2014-04-25T21:53:37.950" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems long answered but here are two things I've done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  I've given out an impossible syllabus, requiring students to be fluent in at least two languages, adding deliberately indecipherable requirements, etc., etc.  When invariably someone protests &quot;This is not at all what we were expecting!&quot; I say &quot;Well then what were you expecting?&quot;  When they answer I say, &quot;Oh!  Well then I guess I'll just teach that instead!&quot; and then tear up the syllabus with a flourish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  I started teaching at graduate level when I was 28 (can't really get away with it any more) and I would sit in the back of the class on the first day.  Students would come in and do their usual first day things.  I'd wait until I was maybe five or ten minutes late and let some comments drop along the line of &quot;Where IS this teacher?!&quot; rolling my eyes.  Finally I would jump and say &quot;Screw this, I'll teach the class myself!&quot; before launching into the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases the goal was to let the students know that I'm on their side, one of them, approachable, and not to take things &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; seriously.  Got pretty good results every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T21:53:37.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19803" CreationDate="2014-04-25T22:38:54.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Modern statistics is pretty computational, which you might not have been exposed to in pure math. I switched from CS to stats and had to play catch up on theory; you might be the opposite, and need to learn how to code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14412" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T22:38:54.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19826" CreationDate="2014-04-25T23:14:04.620" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the most 'formal' way to share these would be to write a survey of the area that your open problems relate to, highlighting each problem. This adds a publication, and anyone who solves one of the problems is likely to cite it. Moreover, if the survey is sufficiently in-depth, it can generate a large number of citations as an introduction to the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T23:14:04.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2014-04-26T00:46:11.393" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Memes are funny, and popular, and students these days tend to identify with them. You can easily create course-related memes and stick them in your lecture slides, or on a handout or the syllabus, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgflip.com/memegenerator&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a good place to go make a meme and then download it&lt;/a&gt;. Like this: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYG2l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T00:46:11.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2014-04-26T01:28:57.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may need to pace yourself with your studies. Which may include taking breaks. Have you given your body and mind enough rest to recuperate from the previous day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation comes from self-will and is a mental state. When you wake up in the morning, what do you plan to accomplish? It's a good idea to break down what your goals are. If you have a paper to write, what are the first steps that should be taken? Complete those steps first then move onto the next ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some material on motivation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1601632444&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/100-Ways-Motivate-Yourself-Third/dp/1601632444/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1398475489&amp;amp;sr=1-2&amp;amp;keywords=Motivate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a CS student close to your age it's quiet understandable. Try talking to those who are in support of you as well too. A word of encouragement never hurts. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14567" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T01:28:57.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-26T02:54:04.627" Score="10" ViewCount="1882" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my college, teachers generally allow any student who earned a D or lower on an exam, to retake the exam. While I do not need to follow this policy in my courses, many students expect their instructors to offer retakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to offer retakes, but see two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting a fixed cut off at a &quot;D&quot; seems unfair to students. If a student earns a single percentage point more than this, they cannot retake it, but the student who retakes it stands a chance to earn a full A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allowing all students to retake would create too much extra work for me. Some students who earned a 95% would still try to retake it to get 100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there a fair method of allowing exam retakes that discourages every student from taking them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T14:42:35.580" Title="How to offer fair exam retakes?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20784" CreationDate="2014-04-26T03:42:13.430" Score="1" ViewCount="5844" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a lecture I watched,&#xA;I found a very good diagram that explains a concept I am trying to explain.&#xA;I couldn't get hold of the original image, so I recreated it in Tikz -- with a few changes to make it perfect for what I am doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lecture is not a primary source for the concept explained in the diagram -- it uses ideas from other papers I am citing. Though I do cite it a few times, where the ideas it explained were clearer than the base texts (as well as citing the base texts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the caption should I put:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... , then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...  then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN. This diagram based on one found in [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even -- since the caption is also drawing heavily on the lecture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...  then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN[1]. This diagram based on one found in [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where [1] is the index in my bibliography for the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16571/creating-a-schematic-figure-based-on-an-existing-one&quot;&gt;Creating a schematic figure based on an existing one&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:07:31.147" Title="Using IEEE Citation style, how should I Cite a Figure, that was based on one in a text?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19893" CreationDate="2014-04-26T05:01:38.267" Score="0" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do students at liberal arts universities have 'harder' courses than students at research universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer Science curricula at large research universities have 5 to 6 courses per semester. The Liberal Arts model dictates roughly 4 courses per semester. If the load on the student is considered to be equivalent, there must be something special to the teaching in the Liberal Arts model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is it that a 4 course Liberal Arts semester is as intensive as a 6 course research university semester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Many of the comments below say the course load I mention above is inaccurate. I have obtained the figures as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lacs.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS)&lt;/a&gt; has released 3 LACS curricula in response to ACM/IEEE CS curriculum recommendations. The first &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=5666.5667&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in 1986&lt;/a&gt; in response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=359080.359083&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 1978 recommendation&lt;/a&gt;, next &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=240483.240502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in 1996&lt;/a&gt; in response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=103701.103710&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 1991 recommendation&lt;/a&gt; and the most recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1240200.1240202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in 2007&lt;/a&gt; in response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=359080.359083&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 2001 recommendation&lt;/a&gt;. The 4 year course breakdown in all the LACS recommendations is roughly the same:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 courses per semester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;30-35% CS courses, 10% math, 5% science, and the rest, i.e. 50% or more courses on arts, humanities and social sciences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A typical graduation requirement at a research university is at least 120 credits, which comes to 5 3-credit courses per semester. Many require more than 120 so 6 course semesters are not uncommon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T18:54:39.857" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T18:58:01.067" Title="Differences in student load at liberal arts colleges vs. research universities" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19844" CreationDate="2014-04-26T05:17:43.240" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way to handle this is to allow anyone to take the exam again. However, the caveat is that the retake &lt;strong&gt;replaces&lt;/strong&gt; the previous grade, whether or not it's a better grade. A student who got a very high grade (such as 95%) on the first exam is unlikely to retake an exam to gain five points, when there's every chance the grade could go down by taking the exam a second time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What one other professor did in a similar situation was to make us choose between keeping the grade on the exam or taking the repeat exam &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; we saw the grade on the first exam. That is, you could either get your exam back and take that grade, or leave it sight unseen and take the second exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T05:17:43.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19846" CreationDate="2014-04-26T07:15:42.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching at a Liberal Arts school (in the United States), there is a lot more &quot;teaching&quot; expected. Largely, you do not have TAs for your classes, meaning you not only do all the lecturing, but also the grading and lab work associated with the course. Furthermore, Teachers at Liberal Arts Schools are expected to take a serious interest in the undergraduate body since there usually are no graduate students (hence few TAs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if they are equivalent, and certainly my advisor my research university only teaches 4 classes a year as well. I'd say his teaching load is far less than my professors at the Small Liberal Arts school I attended for undergraduate. That being said, he also has 4 graduate students he advises, which I think end up being a lot more work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from a class prospective, teachers at Liberal Arts schools tend to spend more time teaching. But from an advisement perspective, research universities tend to be more intensive. It probably evens out, though I have no first hand experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T07:15:42.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11744" CreationDate="2014-04-26T07:19:29.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those interested in why the U.S. is an outlier compared to Europe in terms of PhD length, it's important to keep in mind that European countries used to have not only widely varying standards for doctorates but also widely varying degrees (i.e., many countries had degrees that did not even map onto the BA-MA-PhD system). European countries are now increasingly standardized around a 3-4 year doctorate because all degree programs in (most) European countries are expected to follow the standards set by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process#Qualifications_Framework_of_the_European_Higher_Education_Area&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Bologna Process&lt;/a&gt;, which fix the ECTS credit hours for particular degree programs. As a result 47 European countries (as of 2014) now have relatively standardized and transferable degree requirements, which differ quite dramatically from those in the U.S. higher education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T07:19:29.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19826" CreationDate="2014-04-26T09:44:21.497" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also have a long list of problems that I think &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;need to be solved and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where I at least have an idea in which direction a solution may be found&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to ask around at conferences or whenever I meet someone who may know something very much. Though we don't have &quot;unsolved issues&quot; sessions per se, it is not weird that a presentation points out an identified problem without solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What personal incentive would I have for sharing my ideas in this manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also came to the conclusion that I'll probably never run out of problems or ideas to think about. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My research ideas are usually not ideas out of the blue, but problems where I could need a (better) solution. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So one incentive is: &lt;strong&gt;I need the solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A second incentive is: I've made the experience that while I can describe the problem in my field's jargon, this may not lead to search terms that find a solution which is already known in some other field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharing the problem may save me from reinventing the wheel.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience typically is along the lines &quot;yeah, you're pointing out a valid problem. Though I have no idea how to solve it or whether someone else has a solution&quot;. (Ongoing situation for some &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt;, until I had thought long enough to arrive at a solution myself). It then was my solution that enabled me to find similar approaches in different fields - so not that successful at reusing already invented wheels. SX sites may be better than conferences in that aspect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that experience it looks as if I'm hunting for a rare chance that someone will step in who's interested in solving the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T09:44:21.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19826" CreationDate="2014-04-26T10:09:53.943" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The long term solution is: 1) &lt;em&gt;obtain funding&lt;/em&gt;, 2) &lt;em&gt;build a research group&lt;/em&gt;, and 3) &lt;em&gt;delegate&lt;/em&gt;. Goto 1. (Somewhere along the line, &lt;em&gt;get tenure&lt;/em&gt; to ensure that this loop will continue indefinitely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These task  will require coherence across your research ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly to have a convincing enough thrust for funding agencies to invest in you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You to have a narrow enough focus for your research group to work cooperatively (or at least, to be able to read and comment on each other's work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you'll need ideas to come in big enough chunks for PhD students to write dissertations on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T14:18:16.843" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T14:18:16.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-26T10:18:29.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the reviewers are responding to an unconvincing paper. A paper that does not convince them. While you have not reported evidence of their bias (or explained the reason that you suspect that they are biased), I find myself somewhat biased by the quality of the English used in your posts.&#xA;If the language in your paper, matches that in the posts, then it is unlikely to convey a convincing presentation of your research - however good the research might be. If you think this is a contributing factor to the rejection (or is responsible for the bias), then the best approach may be to enlist the assitance of a Technical Author or Technical Translator, to help you turn your paper into a convincing one for an English Language publication.&#xA;Alternatively you might find it easier to publish your research in a different langauge journal.&#xA;Please understand that I'm observing, not criticising. Your English is much better than my own efforts in any language other than English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14577" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T10:18:29.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19726" CreationDate="2014-04-26T10:28:10.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I haven't seen commented on in the other answers or comments is that if you appeal claiming that their review was biased, you're poisoning the well -- you'll have accused three known and (presumably) respected reviewers of unprofessional conduct. If they didn't dislike you before this, they'll certainly have cause now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you're saying, this seems to be your first submission and you yourself admit that at least some of the objections they have to your paper are fixable. Try fixing those and resubmitting. &lt;strong&gt;Don't start throwing around accusations of bias until you have a clear pattern, or you'll quickly develop an unwelcome reputation of your own.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4550" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T10:28:10.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2014-04-26T10:31:17.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now I started my thesis and &lt;em&gt;I don't have a deadline for it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stands out in the description of your problem. I perform best when on a deadline. As counter intuitive as it sounds, it has been shown true as much for coursework assignments/papers as for research. When I did my MSc thesis, the university regulation allowed a maximum of 24 weeks. That's key, it said &lt;em&gt;weeks&lt;/em&gt;, not ~ 6 months. And late submissions would not be accepted. That seemed strange given the research aspect of the task but the key learning was the iterative process of &lt;strong&gt;getting to the point and refining later&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then experienced open-ended research during my doctoral studies at another university and found that the apparent upside of not being under time pressure was actually very, very counterproductive. Not only was that a trap for perfectionists who'd find themselves stuck in &lt;em&gt;eternal beta&lt;/em&gt;, it would also give the illusion that you have time to think about other considerations. Many of which would be destructive thoughts like &lt;em&gt;Do I really like what I'm doing?&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Where's all this headed?&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;This is junk, and will never work!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My take is&lt;/strong&gt;: Look beyond your thesis and set some nonnegotiable milestones/deadlines. And stick to them like your a religious fanatic. Your &lt;em&gt;post-thesis&lt;/em&gt; self will be most grateful to you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14410" LastEditorUserId="14410" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T10:46:14.967" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T10:46:14.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19941" CreationDate="2014-04-26T10:44:04.967" Score="43" ViewCount="4495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been fairly active in the open-source software community with a few projects that have gotten some attention. However, my reputation in the academic/publications world is a little bit low and I'd like to improve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen papers written for all kinds of things ranging from simple summaries of a given project, up to discovering new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/&quot;&gt;http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/&lt;/a&gt; - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T14:33:54.237" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T06:16:35.063" Title="Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2014-04-26T12:24:10.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules for or against lists, and as has been indicated by other answers, their use may vary between disciplines. That said, there are some points you need to consider. Lists can be useful if used correctly and detrimental if used too often. Lists disrupt the reading or flow of the text. One should thus consider if a list is useful or really necessary before making one. Does it help the reader to understand the text? Lists have a tendency to express issues in brief statements. This can be good but can also mean the text loses important logical steps. Having too many lists may actually make things confusing, because you lose track of them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, use lists as a tool in your writing toolbox but be aware of overusing them in a text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T16:34:26.277" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T16:34:26.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-26T12:31:53.520" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had faced this exact situations a few years ago. I had developed an open source project, which went pretty popular and started being used by many corporations across the globe. Since, I was looking for strengthening my presence in academia, I planned to write a paper on it and sent to a decent journal. The result was rejection with a plethora of useful comments and suggestions. It took me almost an year to publish that paper in a reputable conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the lessons learnt were (and possibly applicable to you as well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expectations of research tracks is not only that your thing just works, but you need to justify how and why it works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There should be results (mostly analytical), to demonstrate that your technique works and hence can be used by other people referring/reading it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to answer why your work is important and what it contributes to the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moreover, most conferences have or accept papers from industrial or application tracks, where you can describe your work in an implementation centric way (possibly giving you some leverage from nuances of research papers as mentioned above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T12:31:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-26T13:22:06.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the area, some journals and conferences accept &quot;application notes&quot;, a specific kind of paper that puts much more weight on that significant open source software has been written. Researchers that use such software must normally cite this publication so may also be high impact journals and articles. Search for the journal with this profile. You still must show in the introduction why your work is important and better than some known, older alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative &quot;classic&quot; approach is to look if some scientifically new results and conclusions have been obtained, or maybe some new algorithm have been proposed and evaluated, with less care if the newly written code is popular or even usable in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T19:28:52.347" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T19:28:52.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17755" CreationDate="2014-04-26T14:00:14.847" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an applicant to a scientific PhD program, if you &lt;em&gt;weren't&lt;/em&gt; doing a lot of scientific reading, that would just be weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking it's something special to be reading scientific literature every day, is a small warning sign in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the interests section is there to indicate some kind of balanced personality and the existence of a life away from narrow study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T14:00:14.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-26T14:30:59.873" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should. But on the other hand, do not necessarily assume it will be accepted easily. Some advices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your best bet is a demo track in a CS conference (as Peter suggested). For CS demo apps maximum number of pages is usually four, so use them wisely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check all major CS conferences (VLDB, SIGMOD, EDBT and those focusing on Linked Data - RDF). Check their demo track. Read the papers from years past. How is your tool compared to these efforts? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must understand that academic criteria is different than industry criteria for what is good or not. The easier way to reject a paper (even a demo paper) is the &quot;infamous&quot; question: &quot;What is the scientific contribution of the paper?&quot; To be published and accepted, you must prove that your work has multiple scientific test-cases and usages. It is not about what is the most excellent work of CS engineering. Otherwise, excellent apps like Photoshop, Worpdpress would get best paper awards.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another main question you need to answer on your paper is: Why is your tool better than every one's else (you must provide such a comparison =&gt; you must be familiar with what similar tools are available). There are multiple RDF tools or graph tools that may handle thousands / million of nodes. Can your tool support such sizes? (I have worked with SVG many - many years ago and at that time, SVG was not scalable for those sizes. So, also keep that in mind). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must describe your tool completely: Tool Architecture (frameworks used, server architecture), what it can do (screenshots, mini-tutorial), where the tool may be downloaded / demoed, what calculations may be done with your tool etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is not an exhaustive list. They are just hints to show you what you should aim for. Note, there are many CS researchers who would like to work with proficient open-source engineers (like yourself) on various ideas, so if you want to expand yourself into academic publishing, you will find your way. Good luck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T14:30:59.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19864" CreationDate="2014-04-26T17:31:46.737" Score="3" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will get an information science under graduate degree this July in an Italian university. I want to apply for a computer science degree at an American university. Here in Italy the high school lasts five years instead of four, and the undergraduate degree (&lt;em&gt;laurea triennale&lt;/em&gt;) lasts three years instead of four.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my concerns are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way to get a list of all American universities that accept an Italian &lt;em&gt;laurea triennale&lt;/em&gt; as an undergraduate degreee?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since I will graduate in July and in most universities the next semester begins in September, I think that I should start applying from now. So the question is: do they allow students to apply even before they got the graduate degree and TOEFL?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14586" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T22:14:21.663" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T13:21:38.120" Title="Applying for a post-graduate degree with an Italian three-year bachelor's degree" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19863" CreationDate="2014-04-26T17:49:50.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is standard practice in the US for students to apply for graduate programs before they have received a degree, and the TOEFL exam is normally taken as part of the admissions process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should also be aware of the fact that you have largely missed the admissions &quot;window&quot; for this coming fall: at most American graduate schools, you need to apply during the &lt;strong&gt;previous&lt;/strong&gt; fall. So, for instance, to apply for admission in September 2014, you should have applied during the period (roughly) September 2013 to January 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely you will be able to secure admission to any American graduate school starting this September. At best you will be able to apply for admission in the fall of 2015. The only exception will be schools with &quot;rolling admissions,&quot; which accept applications at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the acceptance of the &quot;triennale&quot; degree, you will need to ask the individual schools you're interested in; I'm not aware of any such master list (because the number of recipients of such degrees who enroll in any particular program probably isn't big enough to support such a list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T17:49:50.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19846" CreationDate="2014-04-27T00:10:17.887" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with other commenters, I think the premise here is flawed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I teach at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umw.edu&quot;&gt;public liberal arts college&lt;/a&gt; which is typical of many. (Certainly our curriculum and requirements are in line with other schools in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coplac.org/&quot;&gt;COPLAC&lt;/a&gt; Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our students are required to complete 120 credits to graduate, which over four years averages to 15 credits a semester, or five 3-credit courses. I don't believe there is any serious difference in student course load when compared to large research universities (but maybe someone will prove me wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main distinction about teaching at a liberal arts college is that the overall curriculum is broader, and students do not focus on specialization as much as integration of diverse subject areas. Instead of taking 70 or 80 credits of (say) computer science, our students take only 40-45, with the other two-thirds of their degree consisting of courses in other areas. In this way, students build a broad, integrated perspective which incorporates their major into a study of the world at large. The focus at liberal arts colleges is to help students become better critical thinkers, decision makers, and problem solvers, rather than becoming subject matter experts in a narrow discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14596" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T00:10:17.887" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T03:20:06.153" Score="6" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This question is set up under the EECS context, but any generic answer is much welcomed)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that publications during one's undergraduate time will be an advantage in his/her PhD application. Usually, an undergraduate only starts publishing papers in his/her junior (3rd) year, and the application deadline usually comes at the end of his/her junior year. Hence, it is very likely that although the paper has been accepted by or even already presented in a certain conference, yet it has not been included into IEEE Xplore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student has not uploaded the paper to some preprint database, such as arXiv or ResearchGate, then the admission committee will have no access to the paper. Of course, they may still be able to find some information about the paper, e.g., a tittle and an abstract appearing in the conference schedule, but after all they cannot go deeper into the paper content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the admission committee even bother to go through the paper to assess the work quality? (Sometimes, you can have a rough quality assessment by looking at which journal/conference the paper is accepted by)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer is positive, is it a good idea for the applicant to upload the papers to arXiv and provide the committee with the links so that the committee can read the papers as they wish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T21:55:34.097" Title="Will the admission committee actually read a student's paper mentioned in resume?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19863" CreationDate="2014-04-27T06:52:10.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was admitted to a graduate program at UCSD based, in part, on a 3-year bachelor's degree from London University. There did not seem to be any issue at all with the duration or number of course units. I don't know whether it would have been different if that had been my only qualification - I also had a master's degree and very substantial work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of my fellow students had bachelor's degrees earned outside the US, and the admissions process seemed to be designed to handle that smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think you have left applying far too late for starting in Fall 2014. You probably need to reset to Fall 2015, plan what to do for the next year, and collect the critical dates for applying to each university you would like to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10220" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T06:52:10.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19867" CreationDate="2014-04-27T07:01:38.400" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's a single N experience from my graduate school application process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the admission committee even bother to go through the paper to&#xA;  assess the work quality? (Sometimes, you can have a rough quality&#xA;  assessment by looking at which journal/conference the paper is&#xA;  accepted by)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;em&gt;Several&lt;/em&gt; interviews I had mentioned content within the paper, at at least one of them had a good 10 or 15 minute discussion about the research that didn't start with the phrase &quot;So, tell me what your paper was about...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the answer is positive, is it a good idea for the applicant to&#xA;  upload the papers to arXiv and provide the committee with the links so&#xA;  that the committee can read the papers as they wish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. If your field is arXiv friendly, put it there. If your field isn't particularly arXiv friendly (like mine) and your paper is in press, consider providing the PDF as a supplement to your admissions packet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T07:01:38.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5354" CreationDate="2014-04-27T10:27:15.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Two tricks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago I attended the PhD defense of a fellow student. That was in the overly stern math department of a fairly stern university. Therefore, any venture into making jokes had to be carefully pondered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although his defense talk was projected as attendees were entering the room, the PDF viewer’s window &lt;em&gt;wasn’t maximized&lt;/em&gt; so that one could openly see other elements from his desktop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought to myself: “Weird, why would he go through the trouble of plugging his computer and beaming his screen but not having his talk fill the screen?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I and many others had arrived early to get a good spot, I started exploring his screen that he had skillfully filled with many small &lt;strong&gt;Easter eggs&lt;/strong&gt;, key among which was the PDF file name that you could read in the window title bar. It read something like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rocky_VI_the_Return_of_the_golden_Uppercut.pdf&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When time came for him to get started, he just maximized the window and gave his talk. I hardly remember any other talk I attended but this one struck me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one, which I did myself when giving a seminar talk, was the introduction a blue slide in the middle of my talk. I just knew that my talk would be boring as hell to those uninitiated attendees (&gt; 99 %) and I hated it when, as a speaker, you see the audience’s attention drifting away. So I carefully reproduced the blue image shown when the projector has no input signal. When I hit the slide, I could see everyone happy at the idea that the talk would be shortened. Yet the next slide said (still on a blue background):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the projector speaking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your talk is easily the most boring one I’ve ever projected, please wrap it up soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course everyone laughed and bore with me until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14410" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-03-07T17:09:06.683" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T17:09:06.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19875" CreationDate="2014-04-27T10:49:11.707" Score="10" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software engineer with several years of industry experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I got involved part-time in a research team and collaborate with them to publish several papers. Practically speaking what's the difference between that and actually receiving Masters/PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly, What is the difference between somebody who got a PhD by publishing several papers and somebody who published several papers without even pursuing PhD ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( Excuse my ignorance about these matters )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14606" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T12:47:32.980" Title="publishing papers vs. receiving Masters/PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19874" CreationDate="2014-04-27T11:42:36.113" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the point of any qualification? Well, ideally, it's a standard: a quick, easy and reliable way to assess a candidate's ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is, ideally, a standard that indicates a student is capable of independent research that results in a novel contribution to knowledge, at significant depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publishing of papers can also indicate that someone is capable of independent research that results in a novel contribution to knowledge, at significant depth. Though - at least in the sciences - sole-author papers are relatively rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all papers are of equal standard: the quality can vary hugely. Not all PhDs are of equal standard, but once we exclude degrees-for-cash and other disreputable institutions, there is broadly (but not perfectly reliably) a certain standard required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for most people, the work and talent required to do the research to produce several quality papers, is broadly about the same as that required to attain a PhD. So the PhD provides a better route for many, because it will be more portable, and more easily recognised as a qualification of ability. The PhD course also (typically) comes with institutional support to learn the required research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, some research grants require a PhD or equivalent degree, in order to be eligible to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academic posts that I've seen typically require a PhD &lt;em&gt;or equivalent research background&lt;/em&gt;: but it's harder to make the case through the latter route. Nevertheless, there are many researchers, quite a few professors, and some heads of department without doctorates, at heavyweight institutions. And there's one department head that I know of who doesn't have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; degree - and he really is exceptional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T12:47:32.980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T12:47:32.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2014-04-27T12:57:14.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postgraduate study is a long term commitment, and part of the key to success is a healthy and sustainable attitude. Spending 90% of your waking hours either studying, trying to study, or feeling guilty for not studying is neither fun nor productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're mentally tired, you need a break to keep on working. So take a well deserved break. &lt;em&gt;But don't feel guilty about it&lt;/em&gt;. If you feel like you're procrastinating, that just compounds itself into a cycle of guilt and low productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, give yourself at least one day a week where you &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; work. Catch up with friends, do your housework, and only study if you genuinely want to. And don't feel guilty about this either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T12:57:14.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19863" CreationDate="2014-04-27T13:21:38.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The italian laurea triennale should be the equivalent of an US bachelor degree.  I think that professor from your Italian university can help you to understand better the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not encounter any problems.  As long you respect the   deadline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14608" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T13:21:38.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19844" CreationDate="2014-04-27T14:42:35.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common strategy is to let students split the difference: if they got a 60% on the first exam and an 80% on the second then the final grade would be 70. This can be combined with aeismail's advice, if you are so inclined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to cap improvement: the scores that can be obtained on the second exam are bounded. This could be a maximum improvement (e.g. 10%), half the distance to 100%, or a course-wide threshold (say 80%). All of these options discourage people who already did well from taking the exam again, in some cases prohibiting them from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T14:42:35.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T14:58:31.293" Score="53" ViewCount="6042" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep coming across general wisdom of the type, &quot;A teacher has to be a clown&quot;. This attitude is gaining traction, e.g. as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic&quot;&gt;this TED talk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves me quite baffled. Thinking back to my own teachers, the ones I admire most and feel I learnt the most from were all serious and single-mindedly focused. Maybe it is for that reason that I have become a similar teacher, though not by a conscious decision on my part. My students find me a tough teacher but I receive emails several semesters later thanking me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed this with colleagues around me and while they agree with me, they argue that the current iPhone generation has so many resources available to them, working hard to grab their attention should also be the teacher's task. Afterall, the argument goes, they may just receive better instruction online through a world leader in the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just wondering what others feel about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T02:04:46.930" Title="Should teachers be entertainers?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-27T15:10:20.700" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teachers and professors don't need to be clowns. However, they do need to &lt;strong&gt;engage&lt;/strong&gt; their students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old mode of a teacher standing at the front of the lecture hall talking &quot;at&quot; students for an hour or ninety minutes at a time is a cultural relic, rather than necessarily the best way to educate students, as learning in a lecture is usually at best passive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to get around this problem—including engaging in class discussions, demonstrations, group learning, and, yes, sometimes humor can be used to make the point. But just as teaching should not be a stale recitation of facts, neither is it open mic night at your local comedy club. Learning is serious business, but it doesn't have to be boring, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T15:10:20.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19888" CreationDate="2014-04-27T16:22:51.733" Score="23" ViewCount="4346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from college 5 years ago, and I was very fortunate to graduate with no debt. For the 3 years after graduating I worked hard, had solid employment, and saved very carefully. This afforded me the opportunity to use a portion of those savings to buy a used car that people comment on while I am driving down the street which I have owned for 2 years. It looks a lot nicer than the cost because I bought it after a large portion of the value depreciated. I love the car, it is very reliable, and I very much want to keep it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I am supposed to be a &quot;poor graduate student&quot;, and my offer included funding plus a stipend, so I consider myself very fortunate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very adamantly told by someone that owning such a car would make me look bad, and that if funding became tight I would get the short end of the stick because my car was too nice. He said the exact same thing happened to a fellow graduate student when he was in a PhD program at the same school 30 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it really would reflect poorly on me to have a certain car I'm willing to take a step down, but I wanted to hear from others. Is this perception accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14613" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T19:25:26.160" Title="Will people think negatively of owning a nice car in grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-27T16:55:44.137" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give me reasons to listen to your lesson, and I will be entertained. There is a reason for what I signed up for the class, anyway. Also note that, if I want a clown, I can go in the evening to a performance; way easier than getting up 7 am to go to a lesson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Moriarty said, you need passionate, engaging educators. You raise an interesting point with the online courses: why would I follow a local lesson, when I could be listening to a top-class eminence? Again, you need to give me a reason: interactivity, quick doubt solving, a syllabus tailored to what I specifically need in my field... or plainly better explanations (world geniuses can still be improved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T16:55:44.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2014-04-27T17:13:57.067" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This answer is based on my experiences in the U.S., specifically in math grad school but I think many fields would be similar.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your fellow graduate students will initially take your car as evidence that you're rich.  They'll probably wonder whether you'll be a snob, but personal interaction should allay those fears.  Once they get to know you, there will still be comments and jokes about your car for the entire time you're in grad school, but I don't think it will be a real problem.  In the program I was in, most grad students didn't have cars, and the ones who did gained a little popularity if they took their fellow students on road trips (or even trips to get groceries or see movies), so your reputation may even benefit from having a fancy car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faculty don't necessarily know whether a student even has a car, let alone what sort of car, but this sounds like a car that will lead to rumors going around the department.  You may get similar reactions from faculty as from students, but they are less likely to care about social interaction with you (for example, whether you're a snob).  Your apparent wealth could theoretically play a role behind the scenes in allocation of funding, but I don't think this is likely, and it would be inappropriate for it to be a factor in most decisions.  The most plausible scenario might be if money were tight and you requested extended funding beyond the years you were promised.  If the department head is deciding which requests to approve, there's not enough money to approve everyone, and your car leads to a reputation of being rich, then the car could work against you.  However, I don't think this is likely enough to be worth worrying about, and you can always address any rumors about your wealth with your advisor early on in grad school if you think they might be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main disadvantage I see is that your fancy car might be your most salient, defining characteristic, forcing you to work a little harder to establish yourself in people's minds for your research rather than your car.  Once again, I don't think this is a big deal, but it might make you feel a little uncomfortable knowing that half the department thinks of you primarily as a person with a car.  (On the other hand, this is far from the worst thing you could end up being known for.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T17:30:24.993" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T17:30:24.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T17:14:47.013" Score="1" ViewCount="8496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing a dilemma regarding whether or not to apply for Spring for PhD programs at some universities in US. What are the pros and cons of applying for PhD or MS programs in Spring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14615" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T20:21:43.090" Title="PhD opportunities in Spring in US universities" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19889" CreationDate="2014-04-27T17:23:09.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most PhD programs, and many master's programs, in the US only offer one admissions cycle per year, with programs starting in the fall. This is in part because of the PhD program encompassing classwork as well as research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue that speaks against spring admissions is that in most programs, the coursework begins in the fall semester, and any &quot;sequences&quot; (where course Y depends on course X) will often begin in the fall semester. Thus, starting in the spring semester may mean that your coursework phase will need to extend longer, so there's no real advantage between starting in the spring and waiting until the following fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there might be an advantage is if you are able to use some of the time for finding a research group (if that is necessary for a research thesis for the master's degree); in some cases, you could even get a head start on the thesis work, which could allow you to finish somewhat faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T17:23:09.640" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-27T18:00:44.233" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's really easy to underestimate a student's ability to sense passion and dedication and respond to it. While cheap gimmicks might work, passion always shows if it exists, and students respect that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passion is a form of authenticity that can't be easily faked. Similarly, a natural comic can teach well with jokes, but someone who's forcing humor to be &quot;entertaining&quot; and comes off as inauthentic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I don't know where you got this idea that &quot;a teacher should be a clown&quot;, it is nevertheless true that a teacher should show that they care about their subject, their students and teaching, and this can be done in many ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T18:00:44.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19846" CreationDate="2014-04-27T18:58:01.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are making several unfounded assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That courses are always 3 credits, so that &quot;4 courses per semester&quot; means 12 credits. I have taken courses that were worth 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 credits. Many of the science courses I've taken, including math and computer science courses, have been worth 4 credits. Basic sciences that involve a lecture, lab, and recitation have sometimes been 5 credits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That most liberal arts colleges follow the LACS recommendations to the letter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the LACS recommendations somehow suggest that less than 120 credits are required for graduation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nemo.sandiego.edu/koo/publications/tale12.pdf&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example of a liberal arts college following the LACS recommendations for CS and requiring 120 credits. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did half of my undergraduate degree at a liberal arts college and then transferred to a large research university for the other half. There was virtually no difference in my courseload between the two - I took exactly one credit more in my two years in the research university. I just pulled up my transcripts, and this is what I took each semester:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I transferred in 30 credits in humanities, etc. from college courses taken while in high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 1 - Liberal Arts College&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 4, 5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13 credits, 3 classes (4, 4, 5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Summer) 3 credits, 1 class (3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;19 credits, 5 classes (3, 4, 5, 4, 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;12 credits, 4 classes (3, 3, 4, 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 2 - Research University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16 credits, 4 classes (4, 4, 4, 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;19 credits, 5 classes (4, 3, 4, 4, 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16 credits, 6 classes (3, 4, 1, 3, 3, 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 3, 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Computer Science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T18:58:01.067" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2014-04-27T19:34:31.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends; TA stipends seem to be roughly the same across the country, but $1700/month goes a lot further in Manhattan, KS than it does in Manhattan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the car. Here in LA, it takes a lot more than a BMW or Mercedes to draw attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14412" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T19:34:31.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-27T19:35:57.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's largely a question of balance. In a single-teacher, tens/hundreds-of-students classroom, &quot;one size fits all&quot; is a necessary evil&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; to some extent. Practicing versatility of style and introducing variety (e.g., by having some serious, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nose_to_the_grindstone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nose-to-the-grindstone&lt;/a&gt; days mixed with some days of light edutainment – and telling students which it's going to be at the start of class) can help ensure that your &quot;size&quot; fits most students at some point. If you don't mix things up haphazardly, you can at least create the impression that you're a balanced educator and not stuck in any one style. Sometimes all it takes to get students on-board with your education plan is to cater to their expectations just enough to get through to them once. Afterward, they may follow you out of their comfort zones more willingly, even if it doesn't come as naturally as they'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;opportunity cost&lt;/a&gt; every time you serve one kind of student preferences that others don't share. The &quot;evil&quot; of a one-size-fits-all educational system is that by failing to present curricula in modes that suit several major learning styles, some nontrivial subpopulation is always served poorly. In certain manners, one can try to suit several styles all at once (e.g., by mixing audiovisual presentation with individual and group exercises), but this makes it difficult to focus attention on any one element, and costs time both in preparation and in class. You can't  &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; attend to all elements at once – &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/3708/4086&quot;&gt;multitasking is somewhat misconceived&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humor and entertainment value in education are similar issues. As is the case with humor and entertainment outside of an academic context, you can't please every audience without considerable talent, and you can't please every audience &lt;em&gt;member&lt;/em&gt; no matter how funny you are. Within an academic context, you face an even greater challenge as a comedian: contextual expectation violation. Some students may expect clowning, but probably just as many won't, and will consider you unprofessional if you cater too much to those who do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it's a question of balance and how you want to strike it in your classes. As I see it, it's a question of whether to try to (dis)please the same people throughout the academic term, or whether to give every student a more equal mixture of (dis)service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to choose a particular (set of) style(s) and stick to it (or them)?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is somewhat necessary, because no one can cover the full range of teaching styles in any one class. It is also wise to play to your strengths and not force unnatural styles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A somewhat necessary consequence is that certain students will not approve of your chosen approach, and their educational outcomes may suffer. However, those whose preferences you do serve will approve of you and thrive more for every additional moment in which your approach matches their preferences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to try to mix up your delivery and serve every preference some of the time?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some amount of variety is inevitable, as you're human and bring a slightly different energy to every day's class. Certain topics may deserve different styles of presentation, and coverage of most will benefit from taking multiple perspectives. Arguably the fair approach is to try to give equal time to all students' preferred modalities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This can be a strain, both for you and the students who recognize that you could teach the class their way more often than you do. Most people will have some weaknesses, and class time might not be the best time to work on those as a teacher. Part of the necessary evil of a one-teacher-per-class system is that students have less choice over whether a teacher suits their preferences.  You can only do so much about it by playing the part of several different teachers over the course of the course. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, someone will be pleased and someone else will be displeased with any given element of your class. Clowning around is no more universally acceptable than any other style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;A fairer way of describing the one-size-fits-all approach would be as a conventional compromise with efficiency concerns regarding budgetary and labor limitations. It might not be necessary to teach individual students in a several-students-per-teacher environment – home-schooling and one-on-one tutoring are counterexamples – but as a society with scarce resources for serving boundless educational demand, this status quo is at least necessary &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe this is for lack of a better idea, but I haven't got one myself, and most would be difficult to implement at best.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:18.230" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T19:35:57.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-27T20:11:16.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes - for example, in my field, there is one fairly good journal that allows a type of short journal article on new &quot;tools&quot;, and I've read more than one PLOS paper on an open-source application. As others have mentioned, there still needs to be some research content - likely a worked motivating example comparing your package to other means of analyzing the same information, preferably an example whose scientific importance is pretty clear to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should absolutely consider it - it's easier to give you credit for using your software if it's linked to a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T20:11:16.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10727" CreationDate="2014-04-27T20:23:33.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends strongly on what you want to do after pursing a PhD degree. More precisely, if you want to work as a technical staff then yes. It affects your career chances because it doesn't help a company that you are an expert, and therefore they have to pay you more than the average, in a different area and you don't have a &lt;em&gt;proven&lt;/em&gt; solid background in the area where they want to be hired.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you decided for working as a manager, sale, marketing or administration (e.g. signing applications) then it doesn't matter in which field do you have your PhD. In some positions, it is required to have a PhD title, no more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T20:23:33.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19867" CreationDate="2014-04-27T21:55:34.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Committee members will absolutely want to see it.  The best way to ensure that they can easily do so is to submit a copy of the paper with the application (either on hard copy if the application is hard copy, or more commonly electronically).  My own experience has been that most schools &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; submission of a writing sample as part of the application (although I'm not in engineering).  Even if you've already published something, it's not enough to just give the reference; they want you to provide the actual paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T21:55:34.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19889" CreationDate="2014-04-27T23:00:13.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started grad school in the spring of 1998, immediately after I finished my undergrad the previous fall. I happened to be continuing at the same university with an advisor that I had worked with some during undergrad. Aeismail is probably right, but it can be done. I spent the time starting to do a little research and taking a few interesting classes that were outside the standard new-graduate student sequence. You probably won't shorten your time in grad school with a spring start, but you might enjoy it more with a warm-up semester. If you can make $50k+ by waiting til the fall, that might be worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T23:00:13.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-28T00:26:15.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reiterating a part of other good answers: the &quot;real&quot; version of the question is about &quot;added value&quot;. Is there any reason to come to class as opposed to just reading the book/notes, or looking at things on-line? If the instructor does not, or cannot, add value beyond reading the book... etc... why in the world would a student want to show up? This is not at all about the misguided over-specific &quot;will it be on the final?&quot; information, but about the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had the good fortune to attend lectures from some very good mathematicians, and/but a certain number gave amazingly bad talks. Painstakingly copied onto a blackboard their notes... often without saying a word. Even with wonderful notes, there was no evident reason for a group of people to show up at a particular time, sit quietly in a cramped space, and copy (presumably fallibly) into their own notes what could have been photocopied...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, such scenarios are a slightly extreme failure, but do highlight the issue of &quot;adding value&quot;. The model of your copying notes (which may have been copied from some other source) onto the board, to be copied by students, ... is just silly, all the more so in modern times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to &quot;be a clown&quot;? Depends. By itself, probably this is dumb. To be &lt;em&gt;witty&lt;/em&gt; about the narrative, to be &lt;em&gt;facile&lt;/em&gt;, to be &lt;em&gt;aware&lt;/em&gt;, surely helps keep the class alive, and these affect-oriented things are not replicated in text. Next: how to be better than videos? First, make it clear, by function, that you are reading the facial expressions and body language of the students, whether or not they overtly ask questions. Make it clear that you are _paying_attention_to_them_. Videos don't do that (quite yet...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just joking around can have a nice ice-breaking effect, but is just killing time unless highly integrated into the programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a good general criterion is &quot;added value&quot;... some of which could be &quot;entertainment&quot;, but then there's the question of movement toward your goals for the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T00:26:15.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2014-04-28T01:17:22.803" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My honest feeling is that this is a trick question: it's not anybody else's business what kind of car you drive.  If you didn't already have the car then there would be the question of whether buying an unusually nice car is a wise allocation of your (perhaps scarce) financial resources.  Since you already have the car: great, you like it; keep it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will some people judge you differently because you drive a nice car?  Sure; people will judge you differently depending upon how much hair you have and how you style it, depending upon how often you go to the gym, depending upon your regional accent....You are who you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that driving a nice car could make you less competitive for academic funding seems almost offensive to me.  Most graduate academic funding is not &quot;need-based&quot;.  If it is, then presumably you need to submit more comprehensive financial information than just the car you drive, and presumably you're not willing to give away or hide substantial amounts of income in order to qualify for more need-based funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F&quot;&gt;What do you care what other people think?&lt;/a&gt;  The fact that something bad allegedly happened to someone else 30 years ago is not nearly a good enough reason for you to stop doing something that gives you pleasure and that in no way interferes with your professional life.  (FYI: most academic programs have changed significantly in the last 30 years.  Stories from 30 years ago are still interesting; it is much less clear whether they are still relevant.)  Live your life for yourself and the others that you care about; do not optimize for the perceptions of others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T02:30:36.120" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T02:30:36.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2014-04-28T01:45:02.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't change your life just so you can conform to the expectations of people who know nothing about you and will judge you for such superficial and idiotic things. It really shouldn't even matter whether you worked hard and bought a used car that looks nice, or just won the lottery and bought a brand-new Ferrari. It's your life and it has absolutely nothing to do with how good of a graduate student you will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T01:45:02.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2014-04-28T02:14:40.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My graduate experience on a social level seemed to have a lot to do with appearances and judgments thereof.  It took a lot of time to bust some barriers that people unfairly made about my certain identities. That being said, no one that interacted with me for any amount of time judged me unfairly for long. That being said, driving a nice car is nowhere near the type of difficulty that  other people may have due to their gender identity, sexual identity, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I had an issue close to yours where I wanted to be a TA trainer in my department. A year after I was passed over for this opportunity, I came to find out that the reason was because I had an external stipend and they wanted to &quot;spread the funding&quot; around instead of give the opportunity to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit troubling and there was some pushback on the deciding committee, but in the end they did not give me that opportunity because I &quot;did not need the extra money.&quot;  I believe this had to do with my current funding package instead of how much money it looked like I had, but this is something to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year later, the university itself had no problem giving me the university-wide equivalent job analogous to the department one which was a better experience and paid better, so in the end it worked out for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T02:14:40.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-28T04:03:15.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me a teacher shouldn't need to be a entertainers. A better teacher should understand and know how to make his topic more interesting and friendly to it's listener. To make a lesson to be more interesting is to show the relevance and its application. To make a lesson to be lively is to use some visual aids to be easily understood and to help picture the purpose of the topic in that way listeners are not bored and help there imagination guided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14629" LastEditorUserId="14629" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T02:04:46.930" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T02:04:46.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19909" CreationDate="2014-04-28T07:34:35.693" Score="12" ViewCount="2020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I observe media uses health studies or research and come up with conclusions to influence the consumers today with headlines suitable for few corporations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-study-says-caffeine-can-help-strengthen-memory-function/2014/01/13/bff02b5a-7c7c-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html&quot;&gt;New study says caffeine can help strengthen memory function&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=9015796&quot;&gt;Research shows beer can be good for you&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that some research today are manipulated to suit corporate agenda particularly private funded?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to identify commercial research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14634" LastEditorUserId="7609" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T17:38:06.660" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T09:48:09.760" Title="Is it true that corporations influence the conclusions of research studies or papers?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-04-28T07:38:14.883" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even being a professional software developer, could you develop that you call a good software when requirements vary in unpredictable ways on a weekly basis? This is the world where researchers live an survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing scientific research means going into unexplored areas. Researchers do not know which features they may need from the monster tomorrow morning. This depends on the results they obtain today midnight. A scientific program accumulates too many iterations, adding features that nobody though would ever be needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any attempts to leave room for new features, add modularity, often even make the things worse when these &quot;generic approaches&quot; must be later hacked around to make further alterations much more drastic than it was expected (and supported) by the &quot;generic framework&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, a program that evolves during research process directly is often only usable as a prototype and must be rewritten before releasing it as commercial or also FOSS software. Professional programmer, if hired, could probably do somewhat better but instability of requirements most likely prevent &quot;arrival&quot; to the really great final design anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T04:43:54.663" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T04:43:54.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19907" CreationDate="2014-04-28T07:58:00.973" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always a possibility that an Industry funded project (meaning a company is funding it vs. the government) is influenced.  However, in academia, the idea is that peer reviewed work looks at the methodology and results to decide if it makes sense.  There are also different types of 'research'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the media 'A new study...' does not necessarily mean academic publication  (in the case of your link, it was).  Anything is possible, and if an upcoming researcher who needs funding tries to find meaning that benefits a company to get more funding later, than yes, it is possible for research to be 'manipulated'.  In the case that it was a company producing the research themselves, such as a coffee company posting its own research, most likely it is biased.  An example is the bing challenge, which says that research shows people choose bing over google, but that was Microsoft's research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A company can fund academic research that leads to a publication.  In this situation, there is an acknowledgement of who funded the research.  There are often conflict of interest statements that are included in the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T09:17:18.437" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T09:17:18.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19907" CreationDate="2014-04-28T09:25:01.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry funded research is a common phenomenon, and honestly I don't see much problem with it, as long as it's clearly stated that the project is designed, funded and/or carried out by a profit-driven company, held privately or publicly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals I follow, mostly within medical and biomedical research) specifically ask for the &lt;em&gt;funding information&lt;/em&gt;, as well as declaration of any &lt;em&gt;conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt;. While the use of these sections are not limited to corporate funding cases, it is also a good place to denote involvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the important part of your question is how corporate funded research is framed/presented towards general public. That is more of a discussion on media ethics and protocol than academia, I would say. Practically all respectable journals have peer-review (often blind), obvious cases of undeclared conflict of interest are relatively easy to pick up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T09:25:01.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T11:38:23.853" Score="5" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing an objection to a decision to reject my Master application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is made by Admission office, not by Admission Board or Committee. All members of the Admission office are not members of the academic staff, so there is no at least one professor from the programme who participated in making this decision to reject my application. I checked this because in the email I received, there are the names of the members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they use the word &quot;reject&quot; it might lead someone to think that my application was not complete, but this was not true. According to this decision, my application was carefully examined and, in addition,  I was not informed that there is some document missing as it is stated in the FAQ on there website, i.e. they will inform me in the case of missing document or delay caused by more time they need to check my educational background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the email that I received there is no a reason why my application is rejected. Now I have to state clearly the grounds on which I object there decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied with not only BSc that meets the requirements but also with two year Master degree in the same field, successfully finished without redoubling the year, high marks. Before applying I informed the admission office for this and I did not have any remarks for my previous educational beckground as I saw that all requirements are referring to previous Bsc. I was even waved out from GRE/GMAT requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need the help especially from those who have expericence in the European (EU) Education Law or Dutch Higer Education and Research Act (WHW) to clearly state the Articles that are violated concerning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The composition of the Admission office (I know that it is a practice everywhere in the world to have at least one professor, but I need an official document, I cannot only refer to the ethics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The right of a student to have at least some information to know why the application was rejected as it has to state clearly the grounds of his objection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any convention or document that clearly defines what is non-selected and rejected document (this document must be official)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding the level of my previous education which fully satisfies the requirement, is there any ground for discrimination based on the fact that maybe I'm overqualified or overeducated, taking into considereation also the fact they told me previously that I can apply?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your understanding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14642" LastEditorUserId="8185" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T21:18:26.220" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T21:18:26.220" Title="Lodging an objection to a decision to reject my Master application" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:09:57.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teachers are teachers and clowns are clowns, should not be confused. Even so, humour, multimedia, vivid talks, are important elements to facilitate communication. Everybody loves to be taken seriously and students are not exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14644" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T12:09:57.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:16:22.093" Score="3" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;From talking to colleagues in a variety of fields and different institutions, there seems to be a huge variability in the ways committees handle their responsibilities of reviewing dissertation chapters. I would like to know two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you consider the best practices for advisors, other committee members, and candidates in order to move the dissertation writing along efficiently? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the &lt;em&gt;Journal Review&lt;/em&gt; policy (specified below) seem reasonable to you? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Journal Review Method&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this model, the dissertation advisor treats his or her role as the&#xA;  chair of the candidate's committee as if he or she were the editor of&#xA;  a journal and the dissertation chapters articles submitted for review.&#xA;  The student submits a chapter to the advisor who decides whether it is&#xA;  ready to send for review. If it is, then the advisor sends the chapter&#xA;  to committee members for review. The committee members make a brief&#xA;  (2-4 page) report to the advisor that either: accepts the chapter as&#xA;  is, accepts it pending minor revisions, rejects it pending major&#xA;  revisions, or rejects the chapter entirely. The advisor then makes the&#xA;  final determination as to the status of the chapter. It will be the&#xA;  advisor's responsibility to make sure other committee members submit&#xA;  their reports in a timely fashion. The defense is held when the&#xA;  advisor judges all of the chapters to be &quot;accepted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary benefits of this policy are that it creates a clear&#xA;  organizational structure which allows candidates to receive prompt,&#xA;  actionable feedback on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T21:37:54.050" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:37:54.050" Title="Best practices for dissertation committees to review chapters?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19914" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:29:52.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The policy is straight forward but an open question is what use a complete reject means if the advisor has deemed the chapter as passable. As I see it the advisor has (should have) both the insight into the details of the problem and research as well as general knowledge of academic expectations to deem when a manuscript is in shape for passing on. If a committee member does not think this is right then the question still remains who may be right and who may be wrong? Is the decision by vote in the end since there will likely be three or five persons involved in reading the chapters? In my system it is possible for a student to defend even if the advisor or committee member advise against it. Only fools do but it is possible. It is however, still possible for committee members to disagree but usually when issues arise it is because the student-advisor communication has failed for one or the other reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my view the &quot;journal review method&quot; is a good start but you also need to consider what will happen if there is disagreement and how to possibly weigh the input. Do all committee members have equal weight in all aspects or are they experts in some parts and therefore carry more weight in those chapters than in others. I think the system requires some tweaking in order to accommodate the clear differences that exist between a journal publications and a thesis (&lt;em&gt;sensu&lt;/em&gt; monograph) where a thesis typically contains larger quantities of more detailed information than would be possible in a published paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side point, in my system where paper based theses are the norm, it is hard to &quot;reject&quot; a published paper; one can disagree but something that has passed peer review (albeit a poor one) has still passed. The key pint is thus the overall quality of the work and of the emerging scientist behind it. This i snot necessarily covered by the &quot;journal review method&quot; alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T12:29:52.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:39:15.540" Score="0" ViewCount="1593" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm a high school student, who is passionate about the High Energy Physics areas, especially Phenomenology, String Theory, QFT and so on. I would like to pursue a B.Sc. degree in Mathematical Physics in the future in my country (central European country with a lot of famous string theorists ;) ). After that I would like to move to the USA to get a PhD in the one of the areas show above, but I heard that getting a post-doc and then a permanent job is quite hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Would I have better success if I wouldn't limit myself only to the US, but include here, Europe, Asia, and Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14645" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T13:34:49.310" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:02:26.300" Title="How hard is to get a post-doc in the area of HEP-Theory?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2014-04-28T13:13:11.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the topic.  Teachers should first and foremost be a great teacher.  That person has to be ready, present material in an understandable manner, answer questions, all that fun stuff. &#xA;Some more dry topics require extra showmanship on teacher's behalf. That is the only time when you have to go out of your way to &quot;entertain&quot; students. Other times, communicate with students like you always would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that professors that talk to students like equals get more of my attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11694" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T13:13:11.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19916" CreationDate="2014-04-28T13:34:15.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many respects any career in academia will be quite hard. Positions are very dependent on funding so there is often little choice in location and wages are often quite low compared to similarly skilled people in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't let these things put you off. If its what you enjoy and you are half decent there will be jobs out there. Also I wouldn't worry too much about post-docs at your stage. After 7-10 years of undergrad and PhD you might conclude you don't really enjoy HEP so much, you enjoy something else more, or even that you just aren't good enough - theory type subjects at high school/undergraduate/research level are all very different (my view is slightly biased here, I did a masters level QFT module and then realised it definitely wasn't for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on doing well at your undergrad studies and preferably getting some research experience, for example via summer placements. Work out want you enjoy. If you find something try and do a PhD in that. Then you can worry about post-docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T13:34:15.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19914" CreationDate="2014-04-28T14:19:44.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I think from the point of view of mathematics in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For us the usual system is that the advisor is expected to read the thesis carefully, judging its correctness, significance, and novelty, at a level of depth comparable to or higher than would be expected of a journal review (which in mathematics is already pretty deep).  The other committee members are expected only to give a more cursory reading, basically to satisfy themselves that the contents of the thesis appear to be mathematics research at an appropriate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I think your system would face the following problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Expertise.  Mathematics as a field is highly specialized, and most of the members of the committee will not be experts in the same area as the candidate.  They will not have the necessary background or expertise to carefully read and evaluate the dissertation at the level you propose.  For a journal submission, referees can be chosen from anyone in the world, and even so there may only be a few dozen people whom an editor would consider well qualified for that particular topic.  The intersection of that pool with the candidate's university is typically just the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Workload.  Even supposing the committee members to have the necessary expertise, what you propose would require a very significant time commitment from them.  An average dissertation chapter in mathematics might be 20 or 30 pages of dense computation and logical argument.  To read a paper of that length, evaluate its correctness and significance, and produce a 2-4 page referee report, a mathematician might easily spend at least 10-15 hours.  Multiply that by 4-6 chapters and that is a lot of work, especially considering that a single person may be on several committees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T16:21:36.660" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T16:21:36.660" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2014-04-28T14:21:54.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US teaching load is assigned in terms of courses or credit hours per year and varies heavily between &quot;teaching schools&quot; and research schools.  For example, I currently teach undergraduates at a teaching school (i.e., it does virtually no research, but has the name university attached like most institutions) that has a load of 30 credit hours per year, and am moving to another teaching school that has a load of 33 credit hours per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a research school nearby I know lecturers (no research) teach 3-3 (3  courses in the fall semester, 3 courses in the spring semester, and mostly 4 credit courses).  Professors (researcher and teaching load) at the same school taught 2-2 (2 courses in fall, and 2 in spring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A credit hour is approximately 15 lecture hours over the course of a semester, so these loads vary from 33*15=&lt;strong&gt;495 teaching hours per year&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;9.5 hours / week on a 52-week year&lt;/strong&gt;), to 6*4*15 = &lt;strong&gt;360 hours per year&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;6.9 hours / week on a 52-week year&lt;/strong&gt;). For this spring semester I am currently teaching 11 hours of lecture per week and an additional 4 hours of lab sessions per week.  My load is usually lighter in the summers, but not by that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12503" LastEditorUserId="12503" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T14:33:16.120" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T14:33:16.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19907" CreationDate="2014-04-28T14:25:53.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The existing answers address the fact that industries do sponsor research. However, you should note that the wording of a given headline is entirely chosen by either the marketing department in a company, or by some journalist aiming to maximize click-through to his article. It's very common for a fairly mundane paper to generate sensationalist headlines, through no fault of the researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T14:25:53.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19907" CreationDate="2014-04-28T15:36:18.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to point out here is that you are referring to media directed at the general public, not scientific publications. &quot;Science&quot; article in newspapers and magazines are rarely objective and most of the time fail to convey the actual conclusion of the paper they cite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be harmful to the public's perception of research results in many ways and I get upset by it quite often. Scientists themselves almost never write to the newspaper to correct false conclusions made from their work, not even when their own words are misinterpreted, taken out of context, or simply made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that some research today are manipulated to suit corporate&#xA;  agenda particularly private funded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7400/1167&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It has been shown&lt;/a&gt; that, even with rigorous methodology, researchers will have a tendency to make companies that pays them happy. Note that &lt;strong&gt;this is not restricted to privately-funded research.&lt;/strong&gt; Government agencies that fund research obviously &lt;strong&gt;also have agendas&lt;/strong&gt; and are generally far more powerful than the average commercial company (the US Department of Defense comes to mind). There is also a 'scientifically correct' among public funding agencies and scientist throughout history have struggled when their findings conflicted with popular political opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, what diminishes this effect is when a lot of people from various places and with competing or opposite interests are researching on the same topic. One can expect the biases to level themselves out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way to identify commercial research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. First, read actual scientific literature and not lay articles in men's health or gossip magazines. Second, &lt;em&gt;reputable journals&lt;/em&gt; always ask authors to state every source of funding, and possible conflicts of interest. Third, switch your brain on when you read and use your judgment. If one lone article by Smith J. et al. states that products manufactured by Smith J. LLC are the next big thing, use extra scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T17:31:07.770" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T17:31:07.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21452" CreationDate="2014-04-28T15:38:52.570" Score="10" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider this situation,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get accepted for a second masters degree at the University of Toronto, and just before that I graduate with a masters degree in a much less established university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both degrees are in the same field, &lt;strong&gt;Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, UoT knows that I am completing my masters degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan would be: to use this opportunity to get into the PhD program at the University of Toronto, because this is what I applied for in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you pursue this second masters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14652" LastEditorUserId="14652" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T16:39:16.330" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:38:27.920" Title="Pursuing a second masters in a more established school" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19649" CreationDate="2014-04-28T16:02:19.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your &lt;strong&gt;first question&lt;/strong&gt;, here is the workflow I follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write them down (as @JeffE mentioned)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize them in order of viability/ease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the most viable idea and do a (very) quick prototype&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If prototype is successful, develop it. If not, iterate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the prototype you probably have a better idea of how much work it would take to fully develop the research idea. If it seems like you won't be able to handle it in the amount of time you have, or if the outcome is not worth the effort, I usually archive that idea for later. For a  prototype I usually try to do the bare minimum to produce the simplest result possible. A common trap is to start from the complex before you've mastered the simple.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;second question&lt;/strong&gt; depends a lot on your personality, so don't take the following advice much too serious. Personally, I have a very hard time focusing on two things at the same time. What I would do is focus on my PhD. You'll surely get many more ideas as your work progresses. For every problem you solve, you'll generate 10 new ones. Be sure to write things down so that you don't forget them later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very personal question and you have to see what works for &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="460" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T16:02:19.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T16:27:48.743" Score="9" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found the paper by &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2357756&quot;&gt;Halford and Hsu&lt;/a&gt;, that describes the effect that the appearance of companies' CEOs have on the stock value of said company after public appearances of the CEO. They were able to confirm the correlation and gave sufficient evidence to suggest causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the scientific community tends to think it soars above the normal, human things that people do or concern themselves with, being human beings comes with its set of deficiencies. I have tried to find articles that try to analyse the impact of conference talks with respect to the appearance of the person giving the talk, but my searches came up empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot believe that we are able to fully dissociate content and appearance (this goes for written communication as well) from each other to come to a neutral, unbiased judgement about the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested if there are known cases of bias of the scientific community in general, and possibly your discipline in particular, which value the contributions by their peers differently, depending on how they look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, since the question in the title is rather broad, it boils down to this: &lt;strong&gt;Is there correlation between beauty and citation count?&lt;/strong&gt; If someone can dig up a paper that describes and checks this, I would be grateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:39:24.843" Title="How large is the effect of one's appearance on the recognition among scientific peers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2014-04-28T16:34:56.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the answers that suggest you should report them to the dean, and come what may. But I would like to raise a consideration in case you decide not to.&#xA;It is very likely, per university regulations, that you personally do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have the right to punish students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a situation like this in my department, when the chair wanted the students punished but without involving the disciplinary board (for irrelevant administrative reasons).&#xA;We had to be extremely careful in letting the concerned students know that their project had been graded 0, not as a punishment, but simply because they hadn't followed the instructions which stated to work in 2-person teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you decide to &quot;punish&quot; them yourself without reporting them to the dean, you should study the applicable regulations to make sure what exactly your rights are. You wouldn't want to get into trouble to protect undeserving students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7788" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T16:34:56.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T16:52:53.753" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question branching off of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19914/best-practices-for-dissertation-committees-to-review-chapters/19919?noredirect=1#comment41452_19919&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. I would like to judge how common it is for universities to give course reductions for service on dissertation committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How generous is the reduction? (1/3 of a course, 1/4 of a course, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please include your discipline and location in the reply so we can get a more robust picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance: USA, Philosophy, 1/2 course for the dissertation advisor, 1/3 course for the readers, 0 for the examiners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:40:06.657" Title="What is your university's policy on course reductions for service on dissertation committees?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-04-29T02:13:01.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19933" CreationDate="2014-04-28T17:43:31.457" Score="1" ViewCount="1502" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is pretty easy and fit in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: can I use instagram pictures for an academic work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I have to ask people who posted them if they agree but I'm not sure. I don't want any trouble with plagiarism and copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14659" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T17:58:16.290" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:37:30.447" Title="can I use instagram pictures for an academic work" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19929" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:25:08.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics in Minnesota, the advisor gets a half-course reduction, and committee members no reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, some years ago, when I taught a crypto class and a coding class that were popular with some engineering dept grad students, and I found myself being asked to be on about 250 Master's and PhD committees within a few years, it was a task that was not literally directly compensated-for, despite consuming significant time. But I figured it was part of my service duty. I allocated an hour or two prior to the actual presentation to review the document, and the presentation itself would take an hour or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My chief benefit was amusement with some of my &quot;colleagues&quot; who apparently thought I was grossly exaggerating, since &quot;obviously no one would agree to being on so many committees&quot;...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:25:08.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19930" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:26:35.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a a word no, users of Instagram retain copyright of their own images, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://instagram.com/legal/terms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grant Instagram a licence&lt;/a&gt; to reproduce them on Instagram's website. No licence is granted to other users of the website, so you would need to approach each user individually to gain permission, unless your usage comes under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fair-use right&lt;/a&gt;. This differs between countries, so it depends on where the user is located that posted the image, and where you are located as to what rights you may have under this. These fair-use rights are very restricted, and have no relationship to academic work in particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13815" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:26:35.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:29:28.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper, we re-examine the results of [OriginalReference], extending its ideas to [X and Y and Z], providing a new approach via [method] to the original which may better illuminate [aspect W].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, &quot;okay, the original work was pretty cool but we can do more with it, so we're going to run with that to get to this new stuff, specifically by doing this thing here because it makes a point or points more accessible and obvious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14661" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:29:28.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19930" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:37:30.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contra Chris Thompson, I'd say, in a word, 'maybe'. E.g., in the US, if the purpose of the work is to criticize or critique the picture, then you probably have a fair-use right to reproduce the image in your academic work. Whether or not the journal or conference you intend to publish in will accept your paper without an explicit license is another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:37:30.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19929" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:39:44.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden, main advisors may get symbolic compensation, in my department 3% time, co-advisors receive 1%. If you serve on an examination committee you do not receive any compensation by either your own department or the department where the defending PhD student resides. At a public defence there is an official examiner, referred to as &quot;opponent&quot;. this person typically receives about USD 1000 for the task which includes a 1 + hour public discussion of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, none of very little compensation is given to anyone involved with the study and defence of a PhD student. For the PhD defence, all costs involved for travel and housing is of course covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:39:44.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19348" CreationDate="2014-04-28T19:25:10.207" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a movement gathering strength lately to encourage publishing the code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467753a.html&quot;&gt;Nature-Publish your computer code: it is good enough&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, more vehement:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://simplystatistics.org/2013/01/23/statisticians-and-computer-scientists-if-there-is-no-code-there-is-no-paper/&quot;&gt;If there is no code, there is no paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons outlied on the article are very reasonable. If you are expected to publish detailed derivations, experimental methods, and proofs of theorems, why would you be allowed to keep the code? No one will accept a theorem if you claim: &quot;the proof is too messy to show, but hey, here are three cases where it works&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way is to publish the code used as supplementary material, and include a link to the repository, so people can get the improved versions. If you are concerned about people using too bleeding edge versions, make releases, but leave the development public. This will also help you get bugfixes and contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for wanting to release your code. I really believe this attitude will help make research better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time, I have something to add. Most of the code in an application is there for &quot;administrative purposes&quot;: load and write data, massage, check conditions... For publishing, that part can be as hackish as one needs it to be. The real &quot;research&quot; is usually in a small part. That is where one should dedicate one or two hours of adding a few comments and clearing the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest, a docstring in the functions or a paragraph explaining the aim, should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T10:22:42.910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:22:42.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19912" CreationDate="2014-04-28T20:02:36.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my (central European) university, candidates for admission to a master's program who are coming from an outside university go through either an &quot;admissions committee&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Zulassungsausschuss&lt;/em&gt;) or an &quot;examination committee&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Prüfungsausschuss&lt;/em&gt;). Although the decisions are in fact made by those committees, the decisions are usually reported through assistants to those committees, who would constitute the &quot;admissions office.&quot; It would represent a huge time commitment for the chair of the committee to individually respond to the different applications, and therefore that work is passed on to the intermediaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I wouldn't read too much into the fact the letter came from the &quot;admissions office&quot; instead of the &quot;admissions committee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you were in fact rejected on the basis of having an &quot;incomplete&quot; application, even though you were explicitly told that you would be notified of missing documents, that would give you the right to request a review, since they didn't follow their explicit policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T20:02:36.347" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-28T20:54:40.213" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/&lt;/a&gt; - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can help with specific suggestions for suitable venues in your area (that accept system papers) in order of decreasing impact for improving your research rep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/tools_and_systems&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Semantic Web Journal accepts Tools and Systems papers&lt;/a&gt;. You need to be able to demonstrate real-world impact of the tool/system. Effectively, this track is for paving the cow-paths: publishing about tools/systems that are already well-known in the community but don't have sufficient scientific contribution for a research track (and incentivising the developement of tools/systems that are useful for the community). First step is to get your tool/system to be well-known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WWW Demo Track: Write a short 2-page paper on your idea, pack it with as much academically-restrained ehthusiasm and technical detail as you can and hopefully you'll get to present it at the WWW conference. These 2-page papers will be published in the supplementary proceedings and will be indexed in DBLP. The criteria for demo papers as WWW is (in my opinion) often fickle ... a lot of demo papers are borderline/rejected full papers. Otherwise reviewers follow their own whims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ISWC|ESWC Demo/Poster/Challenge tracks: Probably you want to aim for a demo track. Submit a four or five page (LNCS) paper to ISWC or ESWC describing your demo. Main emphasis for reviewing is on the novelty of the system itself, technical soundness, and how nice a conversation-piece it will make at the poster/demo session. Demo papers are sometimes (not always) published as a CEUR proceedings, which will sometimes end up in DBLP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first option is essentially free (money wise) for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter two options will incur the cost of attending the conference to present a demo. If you are an independent researcher, that might not be an option: it might be a high cost for little reputation gain. But it depends on your long term goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to find your inner scientific contribution and go for a research track submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect is that an expert in the area will &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; something about the area that they didn't already know and couldn't find out about elsewhere (without doing the research themselves). As a reviewer in a research track, after reading a paper I will always ask myself: did I learn something? What did I learn? What is its nature (theoretical, experimental, analytical, synthesis, etc.)? Where else could I have learned that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, I apply the same principle in reverse: what is the reader going to learn from this paper and how can I highlight it and frame it in the proper &amp;quot;research-speak&amp;quot;? (This may appear cynical, and perhaps it is a little, but being able to identify, highlight and sell your core contributions is a delicate art that does lead to better papers ... as well as higher success in peer review.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, with experience on your side, it sometimes doesn't require much effort to find an angle from which something can be turned into a scientific contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take encouragement from the fact that many of the most highly cited papers/references in the Semantic Area refer to software projects or systems of various types (Google Scholar citations): Jena (856), Sesame (1346), Protege (1060), DBpedia (1344), OWL API (265), and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being system papers, all of these papers were (arguably) arguable in terms of scientific contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, many authors in the area have made their names through works that are inherently practical while being based in industry (e.g., HP Labs, Talis, Bell Labs). Looking through the author list of some of the papers above will throw up some such names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T20:54:40.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19348" CreationDate="2014-04-28T20:55:03.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Styles and technologies come and go. Git and Github are the flavor of the moment. Tomorrow it will be something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more fundamental is that scientific results are normally expected to be reproducible. If the code has secret details in it that are crucial for producing the result, then the result is not reproducible. If the code is simply the embodiment of the methods described in the paper, then there is no problem with not publishing the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, there is a device called the Bodybugg that people buy and strap onto their arms in order to measure (or attempt to measure) how many calories they're burning each day. There is publicly available information on what sensors the device has built into it, but the algorithms used for putting the sensor readings together to get an estimate of energy consumption are proprietary. That means that any scientific research that uses a Bodybugg is basically worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there can be perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to release one's code. For example, there could be a concern that people who lack the relevant expertise will play with it and use it to publish their own half-baked &quot;gee-whiz&quot; papers that turn out to be wrong. That then harms the reputation of the original author. The author may also not want to be in the business of answering questions from lots of people using their code, or they may want the freedom to make major changes that would upset users who were counting on the code to remain stable and backward-compatible. Science is not software development. Scientists want to focus on doing science, not on software distribution, licensing, making regular releases, and supporting a user community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not even be legally possible to release a working version of the code. E.g., it may have some old FORTRAN routines in it that calculate Clebsch–Gordan coefficients, and if the author of those routines is dead, then it may not be legally possible to publish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also skeptical about the long-term value of releasing code in most cases. Github will be gone in five or ten years, and the vast majority of the software it hosts will then cease to exist, since the vast majority of coders will not bother to migrate their code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T21:09:09.860" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T21:09:09.860" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19912" CreationDate="2014-04-28T20:55:10.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the bachelor-master subdivision in the Netherlands is fairly recent, most master's programs are so-called &quot;Connecting Master's&quot;. These are designed for students graduating from one specific bachelor's program at that same university. All students who graduated from that bachelor's program (and sometimes hand-picked similar programs at other Dutch universities) are accepted into the Masters automatically. If by a &lt;em&gt;&quot;BSc that meets the requirements&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, you mean that you completed one of these bachelor's program that should qualify you for automatic admission, you should be able to build a much stronger case than worrying about who was on the committe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, students who did not graduate from one of these selected bachelor's programs have to apply to the university for a certificate of admission &lt;em&gt;(bewijs van toelating)&lt;/em&gt;. The application procedure is left up to the individual universities to define and implement. The conditions for acceptance will depend on the specific program you applied for. This means that (assuming you fall into this category) you should base your appeal on the university policies for the application procedure, and the program's requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admission requirements should be detailed in the &lt;em&gt;&quot;onderwijs- en examenregeling&quot;&lt;/em&gt; of the program you're applying for, and should match the education goals of the preceding bachelor's program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005682/Hoofdstuk7/Titel2/Paragraaf2/Artikel730a/geldigheidsdatum_28-04-2014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wet op het hoger onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek, Artikel 7.30a&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastEditorUserId="8185" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T21:04:15.213" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T21:04:15.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T21:20:26.117" Score="6" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am re-designing an introductory biology course for an online summer session - five weeks of hard work for the students. They are mostly lower-division students who are re-taking the class or are adding bio as a minor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can transmit content no problem with videos and outlines. What I'm hoping to do is also present students with problems to solve and encourage them to work together through these difficult, new presentations of the material and help each other. I'm using Moodle, so this will likely happen in the discussion fora -- though I'm open to using a third-party tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, students are not motivated by the joy of discovery, particularly in a double-time online environment. But they are willing to do work if it is clearly related to how well they will do on exams. I'm looking for data - has anyone taken (or taught) an online &lt;strong&gt;SCIENCE&lt;/strong&gt; class that had group and application work they felt really improved their understanding of the material? If so, please describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T19:32:01.623" Title="Can you describe a required online science course that used discussion well?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19916" CreationDate="2014-04-28T21:33:20.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, yes, it is quite hard. Assuming you go on to get your PhD in some field of HEP theory, you'll graduate with a very specific skill set that qualifies you for maybe about 10 available postdoc positions in the entire world, of which perhaps 3 or 4 will be in the US. (Obviously these numbers vary by perhaps a factor of 2 year to year and from one specific subfield to another; take them only as rough estimates.) But there are typically hundreds of people applying to each of these positions, so in the absence of other information your chances of getting one are not good. If you do get a postdoc, then your chances of getting a tenure-track faculty job are lower by perhaps another order of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, high school is &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; too early to be planning your future based on the chances of getting a postdoc. In particular, the difficulty of getting a postdoc should not dissuade you from getting a PhD in high energy physics, if you decide that's what you want to do when you finish college. There are plenty of other things you can do with a PhD in physics, especially if you have supplementary skills like computer programming. And by the time you approach the end of graduate school, you'll have a better idea of whether you are more qualified for a postdoc than the average applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T22:02:26.300" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:02:26.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:23:50.447" Score="4" ViewCount="1133" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the recent death of 61 year old Spanish teacher Anne Maguire in Leeds today, what is the best way to deal with violence in schools in the UK as it happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most schools in the UK do not have a lockdown / violence procedure as it is very rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However can we deal with this as it happens effectively in the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14669" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T03:14:01.157" Title="How to deal with violence in the classroom (UK)?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19946" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:39:55.270" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, a college student's risks of being robbed, assaulted, or raped on campus are each roughly 3x10&lt;sup&gt;-3&lt;/sup&gt; per year. This is higher than we'd like it to be -- well, we'd like the rate to be zero. One's chances of being victimized can probably be reduced by taking commonsense precautions such as calling Campus Safety to ask for an officer to walk along if one has to cross a college campus in the dark. I don't know how much of this violent crime is alcohol-related, but certainly alcohol is involved in many off-campus incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a teacher, there are some common-sense things you can do if there is a violent incident, such as a shoving match or scuffle. Identify yourself as a teacher to the student who has been violent. If the person is your student, tell him/her to leave class until the next meeting. Call 911 and report the incident to Campus Safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most schools in the UK do not have a lockdown / violence procedure as it is very rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we do have lockdown procedures and lockdown drills here in the US is not because school shootings are common in the US. In the US, a college student's annual risk of dying in a school shooting is something like 3x10&lt;sup&gt;-6&lt;/sup&gt; per year. Since the risk of being raped is roughly 1000 times higher than the risk of being a victim of a school shooting, this idea of a lockdown drill is clearly disproportionate. It's based on cultural and&#xA;emotional responses, not a realistic assessment of risks. Although&#xA;events like the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and the Newtown shooting&#xA;are culturally powerful, they should not be allowed to take over our&#xA;lives or evoke a dysfunctional response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no intellectually rigorous evidence for any particular lockdown procedure, drill, training, etc. For example, my school wanted us to show our students a video advocating a &quot;run, hide or fight&quot; strategy, but there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/14/us/colorado-school-shooting-response/?hpt=hp_c2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;no clear evidence&lt;/a&gt; to support this strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, drills detract from instruction and may violate students' rights by locking them up in a classroom and telling them that they can't leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="14676" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T03:14:01.157" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T03:14:01.157" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19929" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:40:06.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt; Advising students and serving on dissertation committees is a normal and expected duty of all faculty members at my university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:40:06.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:52:43.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both ACM and IEEE accept LaTeX publication format, which represents computer engineering to a large extent.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/clmt/latex4ling/journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this list which categorizes publications in various fields by their 'friendliness' to LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; (primarily linguistics-related), many linguistics publications accept LaTeX (especially those related to computational linguistics / natural language processing).&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://acm.org/publications/latex_style/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://acm.org/publications/latex_style/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; The list was last updated in January 2010.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14668" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T23:29:07.550" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T23:29:07.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:54:57.183" Score="12" ViewCount="1894" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not disregarding that the Ivies are fine colleges in many aspects, how to deal with high-school students fixated on the idea that they need an Ivy league education, or otherwise their education would be second class. Or to deal with equally fixated people who think that academics in the Ivy league is the only golden rule (and the others are second class). Talking about this makes me sound a tad envious, but I like to make people see that many other colleges are fine too (although maybe not that famous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T18:58:15.883" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T01:22:00.837" Title="How to neutralize an Ivy League obsession?" Tags="&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19955" CreationDate="2014-04-28T23:08:34.413" Score="51" ViewCount="14443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project with a partner that involves developing a mobile app and corresponding server. I won't bother with the specifics, but both involve a fair amount of work (both require some custom algorithms as well as thousands of lines of code). This project will serve as a final for one of our classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, we agreed that I would write the server and he would write the mobile application. I stayed up for a couple nights straight and got together a working server in no time. He told me he was bogged down with papers/family life/etc., but he'd handle the client side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About two weeks went by and still no progress had been made. I had some free time so I figured out how the app needs to be written (i.e. writing out the pseudocode and sketching wireframes). When another week went by and still no work had been done, I went ahead and wrote a good deal of the client code. My partner is also my friend and I trusted him when he told me he would do his part and he was just totally bogged down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the project is due on Friday and I'm still the only one who's actually done anything. I find out today that he &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; has yet to write a single line of code because he's so busy (but not so busy that he couldn't go to a baseball game, a concert, and spend all of Friday night getting drunk). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how I want to approach the situation. Even if my partner finished the project on his own, I've still done 80%. I don't think its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do the work of two people. At the same time, if I tell the professor how little he's done, the professor will fail him (rightly so) and I will lose a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get the credit I deserve for my work without losing my friend? I feel like I have the Hobson's choice between getting credit for my work and keeping a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I did choose a specific answer as my accepted answer, but all of these answers are of really good quality. If you're having a problem similar to mine, I highly suggest reading through all of the answers here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14671" LastEditorUserId="14671" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T02:57:05.103" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T13:39:53.713" Title="How to handle a colleague who hasn't pulled their weight" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T00:16:30.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For convenience, let us refer to your friend as &quot;John.&quot;&#xA;As a friend of John, you should be gracious&#xA;in accepting his personal failings, mistakes and idiosyncrasies.&#xA;At the same time, that does not preclude that you should deal justly with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, here are your two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are lenient with John on this occasion,&#xA;perhaps in the future John may do something similar in his workplace,&#xA;where the consequences are more severe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, if you do what is right&#xA;by telling your professor what has happened,&#xA;then John may fail the class.&#xA;However, he could always take it again, and learn it properly the second time.&#xA;If John is a man of good character,&#xA;he would respect you more as a friend than before;&#xA;but if he is not,&#xA;such a friend is not worth having, in my opinion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things for a young man/woman to learn&#xA;is that &quot;for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.&quot;&#xA;In other words, &quot;for every action there is a consequence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_Club&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Emperor's Club&lt;/a&gt; may be relevant.&#xA;Very briefly, Kevin Kline plays a teacher&#xA;who decides to change grades to favor a student, but later regrets his decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T00:40:18.293" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T00:40:18.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T00:47:57.173" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;When students come to me with problems like these, I very rarely just take the side of the active student against the &quot;lazy&quot; one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work in a group, you're both responsible when the dynamic doesn't work. And keeping the group dynamic healthy is something every student should learn. I know how difficult it is, I've been both the lazy student and the active one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may feel to you like there's nothing you possibly could've done. But that's never true. You started the project by immediately splitting the work load, and reducing the level of necessary communication to a bare minimum. He took the easy half, because he was busy. When his work started to lag behind, you began to write specifications for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this combined probably sapped his motivation. Every step along the way took the challenge out of his part, while he still had those thousands of lines of code to get through. Meanwhile you felt like you were doing more than your share, but you were getting things done, and things that you designed, problems you solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a healthy project, you communicate and you meet often. You don't divide the workload to minimize communication, you use your shared expertise and you design together. That way, you both stay motivated, because you both feel like it's still &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're doing now is focusing on everything that &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; could be doing differently. That may be the fair option (cause you're doing all the work), but it's not a productive option, cause that's not a dimension you control. You should be asking yourself what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; could've done differently. It may feel unfair, but it's something you can actually implement, so you'll feel a lot less powerless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that's a lesson for the next project. For this one, I'd say remain detached. It's not your responsibility to make sure John learns something, and you'll get the same grade either way. Talk to him, tell him you're unhappy with the way the project's gone and ask if you could've done anything differently to get him more motivated. Let him know you don't expect to be working with him on future project and you're better off as friends than as collaborators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you don't get angry with him. Anger might've been productive halfway down the project, but you're too late now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastEditorUserId="6936" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T13:39:53.713" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T13:39:53.713" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T00:55:07.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar experience in a programming course. My partner started to claim to have some problems doing it, so when I finished my part, he decided I should take part of his task. After a few iterations, he was left with a quite trivial piece of code, plus the documentation (easy, but boring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, I ended up doing it all by myself. For orthogonal reasons, the relationship with my friend was quite delicate, so a frontal confrontation would have been messy. Instead, I submitted it without making comments, but every file had the auto-generated header including &lt;code&gt;author:@David&lt;/code&gt;. A few days later, the lecturer asked me why was this, and I just explained what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospect, my handling was not so good, as I didn't try hard enough to solve the problem before the deadline was biting. But it is too late now. If he is your friend, and you want to keep it, you should talk to him first, &lt;strong&gt;don't let the problem rot&lt;/strong&gt;. Now you have to decide if he has enough time to make it up to you, or if you should inform the grader (together) and reach an agreement (for example, split the grade).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T00:55:07.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T01:18:01.500" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not attempt to talk to the prof about it, as in my comment above. There are too many ways that that could go wrong for all of you, and surely not giving &quot;satisfaction&quot;, such as it would be, to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of not having someone get credit for a thing they didn't earn is dubious for fairly obvious reasons, and even though it's more understandable that you'd not want someone else to &quot;get credit&quot; for something &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; did, in overtime, ... the situation of collaboration with a partner chosen by you tends to put you in a situation of having little ground to stand on. And the rest of your life will provide you with very many more examples of people aiming for, and receiving, more credit than they earn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lesson: good friends are not necessarily good collaborators. Indeed, in the future, consider that a botched collaboration might ruin a friendship, thus, do not hastily choose collaborators from among friends. (Pity, I know...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possibility that you get &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; credit than you earned is also just a presagement of many events. Although one should generally avoid such situations, especially if one has bills to pay and such, it is unavoidable... So keep your internally-generated stress level as low as possible, even while recognizing the failings of many people... e.g., one's friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T01:18:01.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18778" CreationDate="2014-04-29T01:38:01.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the university. Some Ph.D. programs have extra requirements for students who did not complete a thesis (or they will not accept these students). Others are fine with a 'capstone/directed project' which has elements of a thesis. Others may simply ask that students who did not complete a thesis take the GRE for admission into the Ph.D. program while not requiring this for students who did complete a thesis (I attend an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_I_university&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R1 university in the US&lt;/a&gt; and this is the case here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is yes, but it depends on the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14668" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T01:38:01.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19951" CreationDate="2014-04-29T01:40:18.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it means a lot to you, you could start by sharing with skeptics specific examples of academics/researchers/graduates who attended non-Ivy League schools, and how they &quot;made the world a better place,&quot; or some such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that fails, as an alternative, you could simply let the people who believe that Ivy League schools are the &quot;be all, end all&quot; go on believing that. For some people, image is everything, and there is no convincing them otherwise. I don't doubt that there are pros to attending Ivy League schools, but some people perceive the quality of an Ivy League education through an illogical/emotional lens that is very hard to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T01:40:18.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19946" CreationDate="2014-04-29T02:26:51.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best solution to violence is, generally speaking, prevention.  As have been pointed out, school shootings are rather rare occurrences.  I will herein detail a number of steps for an educational institution to work to lower crime rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Educate your students and teachers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inclusion of this point may seem trivial, but there are simple steps individuals can take that will protect them from crime.  Most noticeably is the importance of not being alone - a single person is a much easier target for crime than someone in a group.  Sticking to brightly lit, well-traveled areas will also decrease the likelihood of being targeted.  There are many more tips on a number of websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Invest in infrastructure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A clean, open, well-lit space is much less likely to be the site of crime.  Janitorial and groundskeeping staff are especially important to this effort.  Paving common walking paths will encourage more people to use them, benefiting them of safety in numbers.  Trim trees and install outdoor lights.  If a casual observer can notice something is wrong, it's less likely for a crime to be committed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Invest in direct security.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have security cameras installed so as to cover major public spaces.  Make their presence visible, but not obtrusively so.  The presence of cameras both act as a deterrent and can help after a crime.  Note on visibility: A potential criminal will look for cameras, so simple visibility is all that is necessary; Obtrusive cameras will make users feel their privacy is violated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get either local police or a security service to routinely make circuits of campus.  &quot;Complete&quot; coverage should mean that anyone standing in a public space should see police/security once every 15-30 minutes, even if they just drive slowly by.  If an effort is made by officers to be helpful and not oppressive, this can even become an attractive feature to potential students and teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Purely reactive measures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the steps above are either preventative or act as a deterrent, there are a few more measures that can be taken with a focus to respond to crimes after they happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Security call boxes can help a victim alert police or security to a crime and secure emergency services if necessary.  Even in the age of cell phones, it is probable that a victim does not have other means to alert security.  Dialing on a cell phone might be difficult, or their phone may have been stolen or lost in a scuffle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a therapist on staff and give security training to facilitate an air of reassurance - this is especially important when dealing with victims of rape or sexual assault.  There is much more information on this in security circles.  Having this training will also make others more comfortable with the idea of going to security with their problems by assuaging their fears of a security investigation disturbing their life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there must be an effort to both make the campus physically safer and to make the local culture more resistant to crime.  These measures are not only focused on making crime harder but also making crime less accepted as &quot;a reality of the community&quot;.  Criminals ultimately pick on the lowest hanging fruit, and we have the possibility to move it out of reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14675" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T02:26:51.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19951" CreationDate="2014-04-29T02:27:59.867" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to find Ivy League alumni who will readily admit - even adamantly defend - the statement that there are other colleges in the US which are just as good academically, and that you do not have to go to an Ivy League school to get a first-class education. Of course this is purely anecdotal, not any sort of logical argument, but then again people who feel like the Ivy League is the only way to get a top-quality education in the US are also not drawing their conclusions from logic, so perhaps an emotional appeal is just what they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking to someone who might be open to an evidence-based approach, try asking them to name what they consider to be the top universities in the US. Or better yet, look up a few college rankings and find out which names consistently appear near the top. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/info/blogs/press-room/2013/09/10/us-news-announces-the-2014-best-colleges&quot;&gt;US News and World Report rankings&lt;/a&gt; for universities are headed by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Dartmouth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and for liberal arts colleges, by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona, Carleton, Wellesley, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Haverford&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/&quot;&gt;Forbes' top 10&lt;/a&gt; are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanford, Pomona, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Swarthmore, West Point, Harvard, Williams, MIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond those I'm not sure of other ranking systems' reputation, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php&quot;&gt;Parchment rankings&lt;/a&gt; give as their top 10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Yale, Caltech, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Brown&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shanghairanking.com/&quot;&gt;Academic Ranking of World Universities&lt;/a&gt; gives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, U Chicago, Yale, UCLA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on (you get the picture). Anyway, whether this person you're talking to comes up with their own idea of the top colleges or uses one or more of these lists, it's rather unlikely that their list will match the list of Ivy League universities: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Clearly, while a university's membership in the Ivy League is somewhat &lt;em&gt;correlated&lt;/em&gt; with having a high ranking, it is not the only way to get one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also mention that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League&quot;&gt;Ivy League&lt;/a&gt; is actually just an athletic conference, like the Big 10. The member schools generally happen to be academically high-achieving, but membership in the Ivy League is in no way meant to be a certification of strong academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T02:27:59.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19946" CreationDate="2014-04-29T02:33:26.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Emergency notification systems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to have systems in place which enable timely (read: not help up in red tape) warnings of immediate and pressing danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the 2007 incident in which more than 30 people were killed by a student gunman at Virginia Tech, officials at VT were criticized for a perceived failure to warn students in a timely manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an emergency occurs at Virginia Tech, its emergency plan dictates that a Policy Group consisting of senior administrators (at that time not including the chief of campus police) be convened by the president to oversee the university’s response. On the morning of April 16, the Policy Group, anxious to avoid a panicked reaction, acted slowly to alert the campus to a dangerous situation. In the emergency message it sent out almost two hours after the first shootings at West Ambler Johnston Hall, the group said there had been a shooting but did not state explicitly that two people had been killed and that the killer had not been apprehended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/January-February%202008/full-connecting-the-dots.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the aftermath of this incident, many universities &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED502232.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;indicated&lt;/a&gt; that they were taking steps to improve their emergency notification systems, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementing a system with the ability to broadcast notifications to students by text message or personal email address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a written protocol for determining when to issue a broadcast emergency alert&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these systems are far more likely to be used for non-violent but immediate, pressing dangers such as a fire, earthquake affecting structural integrity, etc.  Regardless of the nature of the emergency, it's important to have these systems in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T02:33:26.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2014-04-29T03:29:43.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a user of open source software, I would appreciate the authors of said software producing a paper about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then  when I use the software I can cite the paper.&#xA;Sure I can cite the software itself, or its manual, or a book about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But citing a academic paper looks better, and assuming there is free/easy access to the paper, anyone who doesn't know what the software is, or doesn't feel it is suitable for academical use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing  a project proposal presently, I cited papers for SciPy, IPython, and several others. &#xA;However I had nothing good to cite for Subversion. &#xA;I may end up citing the software itself, as I did for Python.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T06:16:35.063" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T06:16:35.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2014-04-29T03:33:06.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose you want to know the general acceptance of LaTeX to decide whether to invest effort in learning LaTeX. I feel LaTeX is the safe choice as, especially in Computer Engineering, LaTeX is widely used - ACM and IEEE have their own LaTeX submission templates. If, in the unlikely case that your publication venue requires Word only, there are LaTeX to Word converters available, e.g. &lt;code&gt;latex2rtf&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;pandoc&lt;/code&gt;. The Tex Users Group (TUG) also maintains a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.org/utilities/texconv/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of converters&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14565/what-to-do-when-manuscript-is-in-latex-but-journal-requires-submission-in-ms-wor&quot;&gt;This thread&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/50/how-can-i-convert-math-less-latex-documents-into-microsoft-word/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; discuss conversion from LaTeX to Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T07:00:51.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19968" CreationDate="2014-04-29T05:56:37.260" Score="16" ViewCount="9702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started as a PhD student, but had previous publications in forms of conference papers and various talks, so I consider myself very experienced with my particular field of research. One of my supervisors had once assigned me for a review task for a journal because she did not have time to complete it. This was fine with the editor of the journal, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting from that date, I began receiving invitations to review manuscripts every few months. Of course, I took that opportunity and completed the reviews – which naturally takes a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I cannot really invest the time anymore. I've previously rejected two review invitations with &quot;I do not have the time to complete this review&quot; (or similar), but I keep receiving invitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could I do to politely ask the editor not to consider me for review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I'm about to do that could be considered inappropriate? I understand that reviewing activities are positive contributions to my academic career, but I don't think I can take it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13907" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T06:21:47.983" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:20:22.547" Title="What can I do if I am constantly invited as a reviewer, but don't have the time?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19966" CreationDate="2014-04-29T06:17:36.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can suggest names of potential reviewers to the journal editor, if you have not done so. He/she might not know who else are specialists in the area; hence you keep being invited. It also helps to be more precise in specifying the period window you won't be available for reviewing, because the editor does not know if you will be available the next time he/she invites you to do a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T07:50:13.327" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T07:50:13.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19966" CreationDate="2014-04-29T06:52:33.737" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; please-do-not-bother-me-ever-again button that removes you from the reviewer list in a journal's submission system. That being said, I assume just writing the editor a polite email should do the trick. Other than that, you can always continue to refuse reviewer invitations, and I am pretty sure editors will relatively quickly stop sending you invites (they hate wasting their time, too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I would personally urge you to reconsider your stance on this. Reviews are an important community service that are essential to the functioning of science, and one review every few months really is not an over-the-top amount. For instance, I review at the very least one journal submission every month, plus proceedings papers for conferences and workshops where I am in the Technical Program Committee. That you recently started your PhD studies should actually only be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; of a motivation to keep reviewing, as this is actually a pretty good way to stay on top of your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T06:52:33.737" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2014-04-29T06:56:25.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous journals and conferences that only accept manuscripts in MS Word format. On the one hand, the journals and conferences that only accept LaTeX are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I don't remember any journal or conference that require LaTeX format exclusively.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9761" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T12:50:05.063" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T12:50:05.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T07:24:32.080" Score="1" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in areas of theoretical physics/mathematics which simply don't exist in my institute. I tried 2 or 3 different groups here which were not in my interest (but I felt I had some transferable skills) and it didn't work out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" OwnerDisplayName="user6818" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T07:55:01.970" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T07:55:01.970" Title="At the age of 27 is it worth changing graduate schools and starting again?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20000" CreationDate="2014-04-29T08:14:01.467" Score="2" ViewCount="2040" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already obtained a master in chemical engineering and my thesis is about drug delivery. I would like to continue my graduate study for a PhD, but as time goes by, I find myself begin interested in the field of drug discovery especially drug design. Since my high school I am actually more interested in chemistry and I think I should do something to try to engage in drug design in my PhD before it is too late. I have thought of some options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to approach some research groups to see if they allow me to work as a research assistant first, then after a year or so with some drug design experiences, apply PhD about drug design.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purse another master program for drug design, work crazily hard to get good grades and apply PhD about drug design. (But some of them is quite expensive, this may be a financial issue but just want to make sure it is worth)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Directly apply some PhD about drug design. I am not sure anybody will accept someone with no background.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something more about me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My grade average in UG is really bad. Quite rebellious in my UG.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do have some publications and patents but they are totally not related to drug design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I actually did not take any course in my UG and PG related to drug, or pharmaceutical science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My current professional connection is limited to my master supervisor. Here I mean really close communication and will support me. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure I have the determination to start my research in drug design. It is not an impulse. Is there any advice on my situation? Any comment is welcome particular harsh comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T14:22:26.230" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T14:22:26.230" Title="How can I move from chemical engineering into drug discovery?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T09:15:33.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not enough information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which year are you in, and how much grade does this count for, and how important is the class?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;would failing be a minor issue, or cause major GPA damage, or to lose a summer internship, recommendation for grad school, or what are the $$$ consequences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are you honestly telling us you didn't know anything about your friend's work ethic until now?  What was his track record on previous projects? Did you ask?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't pick a friend as a project partner, unless you personally know them to be reliable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;different colleges, courses and professors have different mechanisms for handling the team dynamic, giving credit, handling denunciations and members flaking out. Some professors do handle this situation, others don't want the headache of intervening, or they figure this acts as an early first real-world lesson. Usually the TAs (or admin staff) know the deal. You should have found out what the general procedure is - at the start, when you're choosing team-members, not at the 11th hour. (Expect the best, plan for the worst)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, my reactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sounds like you could have completed this all as an individual project. (Once you realized you could, why on earth didn't you? And don't email or give him the code or wireframes, dammit. Unless you're using SCM, in which case make sure your 'Author:' name appears on all your checkins)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you agreed milestones and your friend started not delivering, you should have warned him you would remove his name from the team by (date) if he did not deliver (milestone). And actually meant it. Early on, would have been more credible. Constantly kicking your teammate's ass to do basic work is no fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;anyway now you're at this late stage. Find out how the professor/course/college handles such situations. But let's assume they don't get involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this is important: you also learned something about your own judgment, and specifically, when taking teammates, be more skeptical and discerning, ask questions, sit back and observe whether they take responsibility, schedule stuff, manage communication, deliver it. Or just go and get drunk. Be ready to fire a team-member. Have a fallback. Learn what would happen in the extreme case you couldn't find a suitable teammate, or had to submit as an individual project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you had fired the guy in week two and submitted the entire working thing as an individual project, I really can't see why you wouldn't get an A/A+. You're not obligated to carry him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how I want to approach the situation. Even if my partner&#xA;  finished the project on his own, I've still done 80%. I don't think&#xA;  its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do the work of two&#xA;  people. At the same time, if I tell the professor how little he's&#xA;  done, the professor will fail him (rightly so) and I will lose a&#xA;  friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I get the credit I deserve for my work without losing my&#xA;  friend? I feel like I have the Hobson's choice between getting credit&#xA;  for my work and keeping a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;well yes, but you got yourself into this situation, and learned a crucial life lesson. You do have to make that choice. It will depend in part on how significant this grade is. Unless he's a tool, I don't see that he'd stop being your friend, but if he did, he's evidently not that good a friend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes you do have to make that decision now. Decision time. So: decide which is more important to you? Fill in the blanks for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;going forward, a more pragmatic expectation of human behavior on teams is that a large fraction of people will be lazy, bad communicators, well-intentioned but not very good, or just suck up your productivity for a variety of reasons etc. So: think ahead, plan accordingly, communicate clearly, document who did what, anticipate dependencies, deal with unacceptable behavior. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12050" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T09:15:33.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T09:31:17.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people are just lazy, there is nothing we can do. Good friends do not always make the best study mates. And in cases like yours, you really can see how a friend can be irresponsible and leecher. My advice to you is, let this be a lesson to you. Do not talk about this to your professor and you get your deserved grade while he gets his undeserved grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this nice lesson will result in the fact that you will always choose the people that you are going to do a project with much more carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T09:31:17.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19907" CreationDate="2014-04-29T09:48:09.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many &quot;studies&quot; funded by interest groups with agendas where the &quot;researchers&quot; know what the outcome is supposed to be based on that agenda.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Most such however are not funded by private industry (at least directly) but by political pressure groups, government agencies, and yes, sometimes industry groups (like a group set up to promote the drinking of beer might fund a &quot;study&quot; to show that beer is healthy).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;This has been going on for centuries, possibly thousands of years, it's nothing new. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&quot;Peer review&quot; can help undermine such things, but sadly that too is all too easily corrupted. Just fund a &quot;scientific journal&quot; and have the review staff filled with more &quot;scientists&quot; who know where their paycheck is coming from and what they're supposed to agree with if they want funding for their own next &quot;study&quot;.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Science is expensive, people need to eat, and as long as there's people with an agenda to push and enough money to push it through shady (pseudo)scientific &quot;studies&quot; there's going to be &quot;scientists&quot; eager to take that money.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11647" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T09:48:09.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19966" CreationDate="2014-04-29T09:53:09.223" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that you get a review request every few months? As in, three or four a year? Seriously, dude, get over it. Writing a polite &quot;Sorry, I'm too busy &amp;ndash; why don't you ask Dr&amp;nbsp;X and Prof&amp;nbsp;Y?&quot; a few times a year is hardly a significant drain on your time so just keep doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that the issue is that you don't have time to do reviews &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; (your emphasis). This is a temporary situation so trying to set up a permanent &quot;don't call me&quot; isn't a good solution. It's also not a practical solution. If you're only getting a few requests per year, what's the probability that you'll ever, in your whole life, see two requests from the same journal editor or conference programme committee member. (OK, the events aren't independent but you see my point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should try to do some reviews; as has been pointed out in the other answers, reviewing as many papers as you submit is a reasonable rule of thumb. And if a paper comes along for which you're the &quot;perfect&quot; reviewer (for example, it extends your own work and makes detailed use of your technical material), you ought to at least try to make the time to review that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T09:53:09.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:01:14.333" Score="4" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write something that contains formulas, I only number the ones that I refer to myself. However, I found that some books or papers just number ever single formula. And that makes it really easy to cite individual formulas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some general rule to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13232" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:09:15.387" Title="Should I number all formulas in published documents for citations?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19976" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:09:15.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guideline for this is to use whatever method the journal to which you are submitting asks you to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you indicate, many journals do this automatically, for exactly the reasons you suggest—to make it easier for others to cite and follow along your work. However, not all journals do this, and as a result, it's better to follow their guidelines instead of improvising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:09:15.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19970" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:14:06.473" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no age limit for graduate studies. People are free to apply at whatever stage of life they choose, if they feel it's the right move for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of this, a very good friend of mine was a social sciences major as an undergraduate, and worked in Washington, D.C., for a number of years before leaving politics and starting a PhD program in medical physics—and he did this in his mid-thirties. I've worked in the same department as other postdocs who made the career choice even later—they were in their early fifties!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would not look at your case as hopeless at all. If you find something else that inspires you, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:14:06.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19966" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:20:22.547" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer already given all have very good points; I will just add my editors perspective. The system of peer review relies on everyone doing a share (I refrain from saying &quot;their share&quot;). People who agree to make reviews are often remembered by editors as &quot;nice&quot; and will receive additional offers. It is difficult to say how many no answers there is to a yes answer in general when it comes to agreeing to review but it sure is not balanced. Therefore, a no is not a great surprise. If the no is accompanied by a nice explanation and suggestions of other potential good reviewers then the no and the request is productive in the view of an editor. Many electronic systems usually have links to agree or decline reviews so it is only a matter of clicking once. With the decline you may receive a request for suggesting additional reviewers but even that can just be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you are requested too often by a journal for which you do not want to do reviews or as you state, you do not have the time, a short note to the fact to the editor may be sufficient. But, remember that an editor handled quite a few papers and even more review requests so even that request may not be entirely heard. In addition, many automatic systems have data bases over reviewers so that one editor may find your name and use it although another editor was the one asking you earlier on. In ScholarOne Manuscripts, which is used by &quot;my&quot; journal, you as a reviewer can yourself assign periods for which you are unavailable. So depending on your situation, you may be able to at least partially fix the problem yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, declining a review is not a dramatic issue and should not take very long. If you are inclined to continue in academia, you will be asked to review again. How often will usually depend on the usefulness of your reviews so the fact that you are being asked repeatedly probably says your reviews were useful or your expertise is in demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:20:22.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19970" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:54:24.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As your question stands, the only honest answer is &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt; but probably &lt;em&gt;yes, it does.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is lacking in essential information for a definite answer. Are you currently doing a masters or a phd? What is your background? Do you want to make a career in academia, ie. research oriented, or in the industry? Are you self-motivated? etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not rule out changing grad schools based on your age alone as there's no age limit to right a wrong. However, use common sense: be &lt;em&gt;pragmatic&lt;/em&gt; and take time to analyze your options. Perhaps your advisor would allow you to collaborate with groups from other universities? Or maybe you could even do an exchange program? Is wrapping up what you have and moving on to something you're more interested in an option? If your project has been given a grant, ponder carefully the implications of leaving your current grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that changing grad schools is your only option, then unless what is hidden behind &lt;em&gt;starting again&lt;/em&gt; is that 400 lb gorilla, I see no obvious reason why you should not live a more fulfilling academic life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final note: if I were to review your application to a new grad school, I'd like to understand the reasons that brought you to your current grad school if no group was seemingly doing something that you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14410" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T10:54:24.517" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T11:13:12.857" Score="6" ViewCount="1472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper for my first conference which is actually about my MSc dissertation. In my dissertation I designed a system and tested it with a number of users however, I don't want to include the testing/results in the conference paper because I believe it needs more testing (on a larger number of users).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure though if I can submit the paper without results or will it be rejected because of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14688" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T13:51:18.573" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T15:00:46.327" Title="Is it possible to submit a conference paper without results?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:09:15.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different people have different activity curves. Some plan to distribute the load evenly over the time remaining, others prefer to sprint doing everything in the last 24 hours without sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students with very different activity curves may both study with success, but they are not well suitable for working in a single group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;sprinter&quot; also gets into nasty situation, staying without the necessary communication and cooperation during these last hot hours, because the &quot;careful planner&quot; is not ready (or even not capable of) the enormous burst of activity very close to the deadline. This is likely to happen, have your coffee maker ready then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempts to do part of the partner task almost never work in the intended way. Trust. Wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try, this time, to adapt to your friend. For a single time, everything is a good experience. If this is something really not for you, simply avoid the shared projects later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T13:24:41.690" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T13:24:41.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19995" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:21:43.863" Score="4" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to cite a series of three papers (condensed-matter physics, if it matters) where the first author is a different person in each case, say authors A, B and C, but all the papers come from the same group led by author D. That is, the list of authors in each paper is &quot;A, ..., and D&quot;, &quot;B, ..., and D&quot;, and &quot;C, ..., and D&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cited independently, I would refer to these papers as &quot;A et al.&quot;, &quot;B et al.&quot; and &quot;C et al.&quot;. However, I want to cite them as the most correct variant of &quot;a series of papers by D's group&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether this is acceptable as above or it would undermine the work done by A, B and C, considering boss D was paying them but probably was too busy to work out the details of the paper, and most of the work was presumably done by A, B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard styling for these cases I can rely on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally just opted by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;... as pointed out by the same group of authors on a series of papers [1-3], ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I think strengthens the idea that A, B, and C did not reach their conclusions separately but as part of a wider collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastEditorUserId="14695" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T07:50:14.743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T08:07:23.953" Title="Standard style when citing different authors from the same group" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19985" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:36:28.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on what you are doing. I think it is fine to do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D and colleagues have written about X (A et al., XXXX; B et al., XXYY; C et al., XXZZ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;buy you need to ask yourself what, beyond avoiding the passive voice, it adds over&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X has been written about (A et al., XXXX; B et al., XXYY; C et al., XXZZ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One case where it might be useful is if you are pointing out a potential bias or criticizing a technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T13:36:28.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T14:47:49.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from anything else you should check your institution's code on plagiarism. If you submit the work jointly when you literally did every single part of it, then &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; might be guilty of a serious infraction (helping your friend to cheat the assignment) for which you would be held responsible if caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best outcome is probably if you can persuade your friend to do one of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contribute significant work to the project right now, even if it's inevitably less than half, so that it is at least a joint project as required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take his name off the project and accept the fail. Maybe that means you've done a project solo when it was supposed to be a group assignment, which might mean you fail too so check the rules on that. If collaboration was supposed to be an important part of the assignment, then whoever is to blame you have in point of fact not completed that part (and for that matter arguably you wouldn't have seriously collaborated even if he'd done his end, since the first thing the pair of you did was split the project in two).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't think its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do&#xA;  the work of two people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect, you created that situation when you went significantly past 50% of the work. It's not fair, but it's how group assignments work. It also wouldn't be fair if you did 50%, he did 20% and you got a bad grade because the project was incomplete. I think (although I'm not sure) that the purpose of group assignments in part is to teach you a lesson along the lines of how important it is to develop the ability to persuade others to get some freaking work done. A lesson that you have hopefully learned and therefore deserve the grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T17:50:47.470" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:50:47.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19982" CreationDate="2014-04-29T15:00:46.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(as you are talking about a &lt;em&gt;system&lt;/em&gt; that needs to be evaluated on a number of &lt;em&gt;users&lt;/em&gt;, I have the impression that you may be in a field related to software engineering, so that's what I am working with in the rest of the answer - but other fields will likely not be much different, just the examples I provide below may be of less relevance)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question largely depends on &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; conference you plan to submit to, and &lt;strong&gt;how preliminary&lt;/strong&gt; your results are. Different conferences value different things, and differently ranked conferences need results on different levels of maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples from the wider field of systems and software engineering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://2014.icse-conferences.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICSE&lt;/a&gt; is the major conference in software engineering. You will need a solid idea and a strong, convincing evaluation. Testing on a significant number of real users will be required (what this means exactly depends a bit on the type of system, of course). Generally, reviewers at ICSE are not so interested in the concrete software you built, more in the processes, concepts and methodologies underlying your system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://2014.middleware-conference.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USENIX Middleware&lt;/a&gt; is another major conference, but with a completely separate focus. Here, the actual system implementation is what counts. Few Middleware papers have user studies etc., but all of them provide detailed performance analysis and comparisons with existing tools and systems. Providing your system in a useable (!) way for download is almost mandatory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2014.kr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World Wide Web Conference&lt;/a&gt; is the premier conference for Web engineering. What really counts here is the data you have. Access to real-life data (e.g., usage data, search logs, social network data sets, etc.) is really important, more so than testing with real users. Papers that provide a new publicly available set of real-life data with some interesting characteristics are often valued highly. Implementation generally counts less than algorithms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icsoc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICSOC&lt;/a&gt; is an example of a smaller, more subfield-oriented conference. Here, you need a good idea and some preliminary or intermediary results, but most papers are not evaluated very strictly. Most papers submitted here are still, at least to some extend, work-in-progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically all sub-fields have their own smaller conferences similar to ICSOC (last example). While they are usually at least one tier below the more general conferences, they are usually a good first outlet for publication, as they are often less competitive and do not require a fully evaluated and finished research project. However, do not think that smaller conferences accept &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;. ICSOC still sports an acceptance rate between 15% and 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am trying to say is that different conferences work completely differently, and submitting the same paper to two (even equally good) conferences can easily end in a Strong Reject followed by Strong Accept. It is important to know how papers in a given conference typically look like, how they are presented, and how they are evaluated. Going against the &lt;em&gt;mainstream&lt;/em&gt; in a conference is usually not the best idea, especially not in the beginning. This is were you need the advise of a senior person, who should have experience in writing papers for the relevant conferences in your field. If that is not available, you can also try to carefully survey previous proceedings, and see if you can find patterns and overall styles yourself. However, be prepared that you may miss nuances if you do this yourself. For instance, if your target conference typically does not have many applied papers, it is difficult to tell without knowing an experienced insider whether this is because applied papers are not often submitted there, or because the TPC always rejects almost all applied papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that I rambled on without ever really answering your questions ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure though if I can submit the paper without results or will it be rejected because of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without any results may be difficult, although you can still try to submit to a workshop or work-in-progress track. However, if you already have some preliminary results, it sounds like a smaller, more specialized conference may be a good choice for you. Of course the validity of this depends a bit on how small your evaluation was...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T15:00:46.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10902" CreationDate="2014-04-29T15:28:16.370" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the prestige issue for a moment, I get a lot more out of poster sessions than talks, both as a presenter and viewer. For the viewer, they can take in the information presented at their own pace, and ask for clarification if needed. If your audience gets lost during a talk, there is little chance anyone will interrupt as the talks run to a strict schedule. Good luck trying to regain your train of thought from the question session at the end. Talks are far too linear in my opinion. The discussions you have with poster presenters lead to a much better level of understanding I find, and there is a lot less inhibition in discussing the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All research should always be at a point for discussion. There is no scientific theory or research that should not need further discussion, at the level you get in a poster session. I have seen posters that present quite mature and significant research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regret to say that I have to agree that most researchers will see talks as the 'prestige' option, with posters a poor second. But this does not mean talks are necessarily better for advertising your research or networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14700" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T15:28:16.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T15:35:00.193" Score="10" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the thought that I should run a computation on my document to see things like: How many times I cite each source, how many times I cite each author etc.&#xA;Then I thought that isn't enough.&#xA;What if I cite A_foo, B_foo and C_foo, but both A_foo and B_foo cite C_foo.&#xA;That is worth knowing.&#xA;A graph of citations between the texts that I am citing will revel interesting information. &#xA;For example nodes with out any parent, will generally indicate new and original ideas. While they may draw on other things, those things are distant enough from  my work that I am not citing them.&#xA;Nodes that have no links to any others, show that I am bringing in an idea from another subfield, perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This graph should be computable, I know google scholar maintains a list of almost everything I've cited, and for each thing lists who has cited them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been experimented with? Are there existing tools for the job?&#xA;If there isn't I might mess around with some python and put something together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My references are all in bibtex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to construct a graph of the citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T16:14:17.673" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T10:38:58.137" Title="Construct a network of citations" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19990" CreationDate="2014-04-29T16:42:00.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strangely enough, this question was &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14573741/citation-graph-tool&quot;&gt;asked on SO a while back&lt;/a&gt; with no real good answers. There was a link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/190772/visualizing-document-citations-in-a-graph&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, which links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://paperscope.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PaperScope&lt;/a&gt;, which looks promising, although there hasn't been activity on the project since April 2013. I've never used it that tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft's &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/VisualExplorer#1112639&amp;amp;citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual Explorer&lt;/a&gt;isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's related. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hubmed.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hubmed&lt;/a&gt; used to have a graph view but I can't find it now, maybe you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem will be that even going just two nodes out - your citations, and your citations' citations - will include thousands of papers from hundreds of authors. As discussed in the aforelinked SO and SU questions, simply choosing an appropriate way to display the data will be a non-trivial challenge, and making useful inferences from the results will probably be even more difficult. Still, it may be interesting. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T16:42:00.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2014-04-29T16:46:17.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this question is old and has been answered, but I would like to add that the accepted answer by Alexander is really just an opinion, and in my opinion, there can be disadvantages for publishing in open access journals. I'm not arguing against open access, but the disadvantages should be mentioned and taken into consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage, in my opinion, is that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people consider open access journals to be a dumping ground for mediocre or crap science. These may or may not be the same people who are reviewing your CV or tenure. This may or may not be more true at older, more prestigious institutions, and/or older, stuck-in-their-ways scientists/academics. Some people even consider publishing in open access as &lt;a href=&quot;http://earlycareerecologists.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/why-i-published-in-plos-one-and-why-i-probably-wont-again-for-awhile/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;career suicide&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that being said, I am a fan of open access, and think science should be accessible to everyone. &lt;strong&gt;&quot;What if one has majority of his publications on open access journals?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; I plan to publish my next manuscript in open access, but I will limit it to just one for awhile. Having the majority of publications in open access may throw up a red flag to some people. Of course, others may appreciate more open access publications. I am PhD student, and need more 1st author publications, but I don't want too many open access journals on my CV (for now).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things you might want to consider when choosing a journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost is a major concern, and is one of the biggest reasons why I will go open access with the next paper. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impact factor is another reason. Many open access journals have a large readership and high impact factor, which is good. However, impact factor should not be your main goal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations should be your biggest concern. It's not enough for people to read your papers, you need them to cite you. And for that to happen, you need to have quality science and writing. Although a high impact factor may help with that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T20:51:19.503" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T20:51:19.503" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19985" CreationDate="2014-04-29T16:49:50.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where are you sending the work? It might be such that the citation style is numeric, and then you can write whatever words you like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D and colleagues A, B, and C developed the state of the art in this area over the last several years [1-3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T16:49:50.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19985" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:20:59.927" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is most likely a field-culture thing, but I find it very odd that you would treat the three papers as anything but independent pieces of work. If you want to indicate that the three papers are part of a series, you could always say something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a series of papers [1,2,3] presented blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, you want to give the &quot;group leader&quot; prominence, and on the other hand you clearly recognize the potential unfairness. I can imagine some of my students being rightly upset if their dissertation work was referred to as &quot;work from the lab of Prof. Venkat&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that many lab-driven disciplines are top-down in this way, but since there's a perfectly reasonable way to cite the work, I'd avoid highlighting the &quot;lab leader&quot; any more than merely by their presence on the author list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:20:59.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:24:46.720" Score="11" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a recurring pattern I see in conferences organized by several professional associations. Two different conference fees are offered, X for members and Y for non-members, with Y&gt;X. Often, the annual membership fee for said professional associations is less than Y-X, so becoming member is cheaper than paying the non-member fee. For example, for different reasons today I have stumbled upon the pages of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ima.org.uk/conferences/conferences_calendar/4th_ima_conference_on_numerical_linear_algebra_and_optimisation.cfm.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehu.es/en/web/fjim2014/registration&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfenetwork.org/CFE2014/registration.php&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only see two possible reasons for this practice, both ethically dubious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to force people to become members, increasing artificially the dimension of the professional association.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to &quot;move&quot; funds from the conference treasure to the association treasure, leaving them available for a larger number of activities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often conference fees are paid by research funds, while membership fees are paid personally by the researchers, so this practice also has unpleasant side-effects on their personal finances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I overlooking more plausible justifications for this practice? Do you agree with my analysis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How ethical do you find this practice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I raise the issue with the professional societies I am a member* of?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: You can probably guess the reason why I am a member. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T19:10:56.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T01:08:13.593" Title="Is it unethical for professional societies to offer conference discounts to members?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;fees&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20001" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:38:53.300" Score="25" ViewCount="7243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an student and in one of my college courses, the professor seems stressed or frazzled. He is always running late and unprepared, which seems odd because the Powerpoint slides are already done and he uses previous tests and quizzes. The tests, homework, and most of the quizzes are computerized and graded automatically. So, He can't be overwhelmed with grading. Which leads me to believe that he is having problems at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: would it be appropriate to ask him if he is okay, either by email or face-to-face? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to invade his privacy but I don't like seeing anyone in distress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14706" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T21:37:53.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:26:28.413" Title="Is it appropriate to show concern for a professor's well-being?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19996" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:41:47.210" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically the organizations that do this are professional societies. And, as you mentioned, they have many more activities than just running the conference, so having membership fees separate from conference attendance fees allow them greater flexibility to manage their accounts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some places allow membership fees to be paid out of institute funds (this depends on the country and the situation, of course). However, many countries also make such professional expenses tax-deductible (after a certain threshold). Obviously it doesn't recoup the full cost of the membership, but it's better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one additional point to consider is that most such conferences require that at least one of the authors of a presentation to be a member of the society. (Sometimes, this requirement falls on the presenter herself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:41:47.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:45:07.893" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors are human beings, just like everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a concern about a professor's health or emotional well-being, then there is absolutely &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; reason not to ask in private. I would recommend doing it face-to-face, as anything said should be an off-the-record issue, an I don't think a faculty member who is having issues will want to &quot;publicize&quot; that in an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are a student of the professor in question (or a subordinate), the professor may not want to reveal any personal issues, again because she might view such sharing as inappropriate. On the other hand, so long as the professor is not a sociopath, she will appreciate the concern you're showing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:45:07.893" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19971" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:52:41.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned above, drug design is not really a &quot;major&quot; field, in the sense that it's rare to be able to get a diploma which lists &quot;drug design&quot; as the field of study. It's a dissertation topic or a focus area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relative advantage of this is that very few people come in with experience in the field, because it's so specialized. That means it's harder to be &quot;picky&quot; in selecting students—if everybody has to have lots of experience, you may not end up with enough qualified candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your past experience with drug delivery, you probably have a fairly good idea of some of what is involved in drug design, so it's not as if you're coming from a completely unrelated discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I don't think you have much to lose by applying to PhD positions &lt;strong&gt;while&lt;/strong&gt; you look for alternate opportunities to work in the field. (Sometimes you need to apply more than once before you get accepted!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:52:41.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-04-29T18:10:54.707" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;He either has personal issues, or he doesn't focus on teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is having personal problems, it is wrong to approach him like a friend and expect him to give details. You are the student and he is the professor, and his personal issues are private and he will share them with someone close if he wants to. As an adult, he probably knows how the process works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the only thing that matters is whether he is doing his job properly. If you think he is not doing so, then you should give constructive criticizm, such as when you are in class and you don't understand, you can say that for the last classes you are having difficulties understanding and putting it all together and suggest a method so that you can benefit better from his course. Or, you can send an e-mail about how certain things can be improved without sounding very negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T18:10:54.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-04-29T20:29:41.470" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an incredibly bad idea.  While I'm all for developing friendships between faculty and students, this does not seem to be what you're discussing.  It's not clear from your question, but you make it sound as though you've never had a conversation with this professor (and if you've had some short ones about the class, that doesn't change my point).  &lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;  I see from comments that you have had some more conversations with him.  I don't think this changes my underlying point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should move very slowly in developing a personal relationship of this sort with a professor.  I might have been OK with asking such a question of my advisor by my last year of graduate school (but probably not), but I can't imagine doing it with any other professor earlier in my career.  Asking someone you barely know a deeply personal question that could easily be read as an implicit indictment of their teaching (which ultimately, it seems it is) will lead nowhere good.  I think the best case scenario is that they laugh it off as eccentric, but the worst case is they're hurt or insulted; you don't want that coming into their mind when they're grading or writing a recommendation later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T21:30:14.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T21:30:14.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20011" CreationDate="2014-04-29T21:38:02.430" Score="16" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is considered a reasonable rate for faculty turnover in a &quot;healthy&quot; department? How much turnover is too much/little? Presumably the rates might depend on seniority. Does departmental turnover tell you anything about your colleagues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T02:48:39.407" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:33:53.047" Title="What rate of faculty turnover is healthy?" Tags="&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-04-29T22:19:33.933" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people are just naturally frazzled. They could be having the greatest and most relaxing day ever, and show up to class 4 minutes late, hair all wild and uncombed, wearing odd socks and having forgotten to bring you your marked assignments. They may be remarkably easy to frazzle or they may not even feel frazzled, they may just look it! Asking if everything is ok, especially if you say why you are worried and point out you see a pattern, will probably offend this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps something really is bothering your prof. I use &quot;the same slides&quot; every year (except that I read them over, tweak them, add some, rearrange others etc) and reuse some aspects of the tests and quizzes. You may not know this, but that's not the hardest part of teaching. Nor is marking. And the only profs who teach a single course are adjuncts like me who have a whole 'nother life off campus, or super distinguished researchers who've had their load lowered. So you are not the only dance this prof is dancing, and you may not be the most important one, either. Your belief that the workload for this class is easy doesn't mean that the prof's overall workload is easy, by any means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But hey, perhaps you're a very perceptive person (I'm not, but I know some) and you've nailed it: this prof is going through hell with something personal. I have had to show up and teach while going through hell (a dying parent, for example) and about the worst thing that could have happened is some kid (everyone under 30 is a kid to me) asking me if I'm ok and if there's anything they can do to help. Some kid who doesn't even know me! I'd be so humiliated that my distress had shown through. I get my support from a variety of people, and I choose who I want support from. I would have trouble even stammering through a sentence like &quot;I'm sorry if my performance isn't up to your standard this week, I have a lot on my plate that I would rather not discuss.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just can't see this question leading to a good place if it was asked of me, &lt;strong&gt;even if&lt;/strong&gt; (and it's a big if) your assumption of a personal problem is in fact accurate. And if it's inaccurate, that's even worse. There's really no upside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the furthest I think it's ok to go. You're having the usual conversation that you do after class, with questions about your field etc, and the prof either flat out says &quot;I don't have time to discuss this now, I have to go and deal with something&quot; or you get that perception. You could carefully say something like &quot;Sorry, I didn't realize you had less time than usual this week. Hope things let up for you soon.&quot; Most likely the prof will just grimace, say something noncommittal, and head out. But there is a chance you'll get a reply like &quot;I hope so, I can't take much more&quot; or &quot;no, I'm afraid it's going to be like this for months and then it will get worse&quot; and those are openings for you to say something pleasantly supportive like &quot;oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that. How can I help?&quot; But without that opening, even if it's obvious to you what's happening, maintain the fiction that it isn't. That can actually be a form of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T22:19:33.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20036" CreationDate="2014-04-29T23:45:50.443" Score="12" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student in a biological sciences lab. About 6 months ago I started an after-hours (does such a thing exist?) project with a fellow graduate student in a different lab doing computational physics. We principally work on the weekends and late at night, and I like to think that the time we use would otherwise have been spent playing video games, drinking, etc (not doing lab work), but who really knows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our collaboration has been extraordinarily fruitful and we have one paper ~90% written, and a follow up ~50% written. Both are highly theoretical, and have no direct relation to our respective theses work. Also, both our PIs know and are supportive of us pursuing this project, and neither has so much as even hinted at wanting authorship. And neither is an expert (or even an amateur..) in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Should we include our PIs? They could potentially contribute to editing and big picture, but are not able to even assess the validity of what we've accomplished. As an &quot;experienced&quot; graduate student I know they shouldn't be authors, but they are also making it possible for us spend our time thinking, and they've supported our endeavor at least in spirit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Suppose our PIs are not included. We're just two graduate students. Is it even possible to get a fair review with neither of us having the requisite degrees? How do we pay for publication ($1000-5000)? I'm interested in the &quot;meta&quot; discussion as much, or more, than the ethical discussion. For example, there is a third faculty member in this area who we've had some discussion of the science with, and who is a computational physicist. Should we include him on the manuscript as a signature of credibility? Should he be last author or a middle author, if so? If there are any physicists perusing, I'd be particularly interested in your thoughts, as my experience in publishing has been solely in the biomedical journals so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for considering my dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:27:00.703" Title="Authorship of PI and/or other advisor on independent work?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20008" CreationDate="2014-04-30T00:34:03.897" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of discussions on this site about authorship, and looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; tag will reveal them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the conclusion of all those discussions has been that conventions on authorship are field-dependent and define &quot;contribution&quot; in different ways for different areas. In your case, it sounds like your advisors have both encouraged you to work together and have not requested authorship. Since the usual response to questions like yours would be 'ask your advisor', it sounds like they've answered, by saying that you &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; need to include them. But I'd check with them anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining part of your question deals with purely tactical considerations: to whit, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can augmenting the author list increase chances of the paper being accepted for publication ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the consensus on this site, and in general, is that misrepresenting or exaggerating contributions for any reason would be considered &lt;strong&gt;quite unethical&lt;/strong&gt; (where again contributions must be evaluated in a field-specific manner). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work must stand or fall on its own merit, and be reviewed accordingly. It might be rare in your community for graduate students to author papers without PIs, but there's always a first time (and in my community it's quite common). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the more mundane issue of paying for publication (I assume you're thinking of one of the open access journals that charge such an amount), that's a discussion for you to have with your advisor(s) before submission. They might suggest alternate journals, or even be willing to pay the fees (again, the equivalent would be a PI in my field paying for a student to attend a conference and present a paper not co-authored by the PI: this is also quite common)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T00:34:03.897" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20015" CreationDate="2014-04-30T01:46:24.603" Score="17" ViewCount="4237" Body="&lt;p&gt;When rereading my copies of letters of recommendation I wrote when a student of mine applied to multiple graduate schools, I was appalled to see mistakes I made where the wrong graduate program was mentioned in the letter.  For example, in a letter to CMU, I recommended the student to Georgia Tech.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do mistakes like this hurt a grad student applicant, perhaps by showing they are applying to other programs, or do they only reflect poorly on the letter writer?  In this case, the schools were all in the same (top) tier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T03:15:43.717" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T23:48:36.887" Title="Do goofs in a recommendation letter hurt a student applying for grad school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20005" CreationDate="2014-04-30T02:00:08.260" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reasons for faculty turnover are more important than numbers.  For example, in the late 90s, CS professors were leaving their positions to start companies.  I also know of professors who left otherwise ideal positions to solve a two-body problem (move near their spouse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important component of faculty turnover is tenure denials.  If you are a serious candidate, you should ask why your opening exists and the outcome of recent tenure cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another component is faculty taking advantage of early retirement offers.  If a school is offering sweet deals for retirement, it may not be at its most financially secure.  (On the other hand, if they're doing a tenure-track search, that's a positive sign.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can contact faculty who have left through your social network (e.g., if one of your committee members knew them socially), you might be able to get the dirt on the department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also doesn't hurt to look at the student newspaper, now usually available online.  At one school at which I interviewed, my host stopped me from picking up a copy.  I did so later and read about major problems between the faculty and administration that involved a lawsuit, the AAUP, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T02:00:08.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20005" CreationDate="2014-04-30T03:04:19.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was actively in the job market, I noticed a small number of schools that seemed to have multiple openings every year. It made me wonder what was going on at these places, but I had no way of knowing. At my current school, we have several retirements coming over the next two to three years. Multiple hires for several years in a row. Now, I know the reason behind the situation, but will prospective hires? Is this a healthy situation? There are various scenarios that could be playing out. Espertus has given you several good ones. My example is another. Try your best to find out what the cause is, but it is likely to be difficult to get a definitive answer. The best advice is to keep your eyes and ears open (which you seem to be doing) and try to read between the lines in conversations. Use what sources you can to get information that will help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T03:04:19.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20038" CreationDate="2014-04-30T03:07:20.127" Score="3" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/031092605X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a NIV Arcaeological Study Bible&lt;/a&gt; and am taking an Old Testament studies course.  This bible has a lot of articles about archaeology and history alongside scripture.  None of the articles have the author listed.  There is a list of contributors, but there is no way to determine which author wrote which article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I wanted to cite a specific article in this bible using MLA how would I do it?  Would it be like citing an encyclopedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article is titled &quot;The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature&quot;, is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature.&quot; &lt;em&gt;NIV Archaeological Study Bible&lt;/em&gt;. 2006. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would it be done like a collection with the editors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kaiser, Walter and Duane Garrett, eds. &quot;The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature.&quot; &lt;em&gt;NIV Archaeological Study Bible&lt;/em&gt;. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. 2041. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or some other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking here for help: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T20:40:30.357" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T20:40:30.357" Title="How to cite an aside article in a bible MLA format" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20010" CreationDate="2014-04-30T03:11:05.107" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally seen letters with incorrect graduate program names, and it's not something I'd worry about.  It's never bothered me, and while I've seen other committee members point it out, I've never gotten the impression that they particularly cared.  (They've pointed it out in the spirit of &quot;Oops, someone messed up&quot; rather than &quot;Here's a negative factor we should keep in mind.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two cases in which it could be harmful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you name a substantially lower-ranked program, then the reader might wonder whether this low ranking influenced your recommendation.  (Maybe you have several variants of the letter, and send more enthusiastic variants to lower-ranked programs.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you include any comments about how suitable this specific program is for the applicant, then of course these comments will become worthless if you name the wrong school.  However, most letters for applicants to graduate school don't include such comments, and even when they do it's rarely a crucial part of the letter.  (It's particularly awkward if you send Harvard a letter talking about what a perfect fit Yale would be and how you have encouraged the applicant to go there if accepted.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention the possibility of hurting the applicant by revealing where else they have applied.  Theoretically, this could look weird or problematic if they've made eccentric choices about where to apply.  (If a top program knows they're also applying to a much lower-ranked program, then the committee might take it as an admission of weakness or an indication that the applicant has a strong personal reason to go elsewhere.)  However, I wouldn't worry about it in practice.  It's expected that everyone will apply to a range of schools, and I don't recall ever having seen a case I thought would really worry admissions committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T03:11:05.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T03:37:56.593" Score="10" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted a paper to a conference and was just blown away by the quality of the reviews (double-blind). Not only were they very detailed, but they were also very informative and insightful. They really helped me move the work forward. I wanted to thank the reviewers (which I got a chance to do in the rebuttal stage) but also to perhaps even contact them for a follow up on their comments. I thought that I could perhaps add them as co-authors or even offer collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if people thought whether or not it would be appropriate for journal editors or program committees to allow reviewers to connect with the author following the end of the review cycle should it be requested by either side. What would the down-side of such a follow-up system be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14725" LastEditorUserId="14725" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T03:43:35.927" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:28:32.703" Title="Contact reviewers/authors after the end of the review cycle for follow up" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T07:08:50.507" Score="5" ViewCount="1870" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I find information about upcoming special issues related to a special field of study? There are good websites for upcoming conferences but I could not find any place to search for special issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T12:07:18.670" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T00:41:26.540" Title="Where can I find information about upcoming special issues in a field of study?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19996" CreationDate="2014-04-30T07:31:28.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this practice 100% ethical.  I don't see any argument to the contrary in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is forcing you to do anything.  You don't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to attend any conferences.  But conferences cost money, so if you attend then you do &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to pay something.  Even then, you don't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to become a member.  The non-member registration fee is generally not so high as to be prohibitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no less ethical than your local supermarket distributing coupons.  You don't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to shop there and you don't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to use the coupons even if you do.  In fact, in the US many supermarket chains offer memberships that give you discounts -- that's not unethical!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your second bullet point, in my professional society I know that conferences actually &lt;strong&gt;lose&lt;/strong&gt; money and are subsidized by other sources of society income (mainly journals).  I don't know if that is typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T15:05:50.790" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T15:05:50.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20031" CreationDate="2014-04-30T07:42:26.733" Score="4" ViewCount="753" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether this is the appropriate place to ask my question but since there is no harm in asking, let me ask. My nephew, who is an undergraduate student, has sent a paper to the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nntdm.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; about one month ago. Since it has been 1 month, he has tried to know the status of the paper by mailing the required person twice, but due to some unknown reason the person seems silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know anything about the journal except the information that has been given to its website? What should my nephew do now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14733" LastEditorUserId="28380" LastEditDate="2016-08-17T18:51:40.100" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T18:50:11.387" Title="What is known about the journal Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20024" CreationDate="2014-04-30T08:24:33.367" Score="5" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen several math papers which end with a statement like &quot;After completing the research in this paper, we learned that all the results are already known.&quot;  I wonder what are the situations in which such a comment is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such statements usually sound lazy to me, as though the author opted not to do a literature search at the outset, and after learning of previous work the author opted not to edit the paper (or withdraw it from submission for publication) beyond adding one sentence.  Putting the comment at the end of the paper seems especially questionable, in that the beginning of the paper gives the reader the impression that the results are new.  But I realize that mine is an extreme perspective which does not apply to all situations, and I would be interested to hear other perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:08:07.203" Title="Saying &quot;After doing this work we learned...&quot; in a paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-04-30T09:41:26.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this has been said yet but.. if I was a teacher knowing that one of the student did all the job, I would fail both, because we are in university and what is evaluated is not only the capacity to solve the submitted problem, but also the team cohesion and capacity to collaborate efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, studies about group dynamics show it is not so simple to have every team member do his share, and the more members they are in the group, the higher is the probability that some of them will hardly do a tiny part of the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another point of view, I would suggest you to reconsider the problem, because you are in the perspective &quot;It is unfair that we get the same grade when I am the only one who actually did something&quot;, and you are too focused on the grade and work acknowledgment... But you did not come to university only to get good grades and being acknowledged, right? Your main goal is to learn. If possible learn things that will be useful in your professional life. Be happy, you just learned a lot about group dynamics, and that friends are not always the best colleagues, and since you did all the work for two people, you probably also learned a lot on what you are currently studying and will probably get a better grade than your friend in final exams because you practiced a lot more than him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now getting back to the point, when I was in junior high, I had to make a presentation with 3 colleagues. I did my part, but they just printed some encyclopedia extracts. Then the teacher said that my work was worth a 20 while theirs were worth a 0, and that since it was a supposed to be a teamwork, he would take the average. As a result we all got a 5. This is the reason why I don't think anything good will happen if the teacher figures out that you actually did all the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus it is always better to keep an ace up one's sleeve, so I'd say nothing, submit the work as is if had been done by both, and wait for the result. If the teacher figures out by himself or you get a low grade, you can still explain things afterward. If you both get a good grade, don't feel like it is unfair, because you got more than the grade you deserved (since you got the job done without actually managing to work as a team), and as for your friend, try to be happy for him, managing to get credit for something he did not do, but keep the whole story in mind, you don't know what life will bring, maybe there will be an occasion for him to repay you later in another domain, taking you to the airport or helping you when moving from your former house to a new one.. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14738" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T09:41:26.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20022" CreationDate="2014-04-30T09:51:20.400" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In part, I agree with you: if one finds out the result one has proven is in fact &quot;trivial&quot; (for various definitions of trivial), the &quot;right&quot; thing to do is to not bother submitting it for publication. (Though leaving it up on arXiv, for example, may be useful.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, here are some possible defenses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In mathematics it is not always the result that matters: the journey getting you there is a big part of it. This sentiment is very well-expressed by Thurston in his essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236&quot;&gt;&quot;On Proof and Progress&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Just because one has re-proven a well-known result doesn't necessarily mean that the paper is trivial! If the approach is new this can lead to better understanding. But in this case I, at least, would advertise this fact in the introduction beyond a single sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As indicated in the comments, most of the time when I saw such a sentence it refers to fairly recent (perhaps even simultaneous) publications. Given that sometimes mathematics research takes time to complete, it is not entirely impossible that the authors genuinely started working on an open problem only to have the result solved in the mean time. And if the problem is somewhat obscure, I think the authors can be forgiven for only doing a detailed literature search &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they start their research and not repeatedly doing it once every few months. In this case the language you quoted seems rather appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It could honestly be a case of ignorance! Suppose the same essential problem manifests in two distinct field of mathematics which have their own lingo. Then it is quite possible that even most experts in either field would not have recognized easily that the two results are the same. (The &quot;two-way&quot; relation above can also be a &quot;one-way&quot; relation, where researchers in field A generally don't know about result B in field C, while for researchers in field C the applicability of result B to problem D seems obvious.) In this case having the duplicate paper published will (a) help raise awareness that the problem has been solved and (b) perhaps even help the two fields become aware of each others' results. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, one may have discovered a simplified proof for a special case of a very powerful general result. While the result may be well-known, having this simplified proof in the special case maybe worthwhile, if only for pedagogy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the modern day of electronic communications this should happen less, but one should remember that in the history of mathematics there are many results which have been discovered, forgotten, and then rediscovered. And even with the advent of MathSciNet, sometimes very technical results are hard to search for: you have to know exactly the right string of keywords to discover it in the literature. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T09:51:20.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:42:19.287" Score="13" ViewCount="4967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a few months into my PhD and my supervisor and co-supervisor are close friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I find that my co-supervisor is not useful – he doesn’t provide any help or input into my project. Additionally, he has given me a hard time on more than one occasion, e.g. making a derogatory comment about the source of my PhD funding, not including me in discussions with his other PhD candidates (although I was physically present), and asking me to buy items for another PhD candidate using my budget.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to stop being supervised by my co-supervisor, but I have not yet built a relationship with another academic that I could ask to take the role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need a co-supervisor? Can anyone recommend ways I deal with this situation?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14735" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T12:01:46.337" LastActivityDate="2018-05-12T04:00:12.640" Title="Does a PhD student need a co-supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:48:36.257" Score="16" ViewCount="1831" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started a PhD along with another candidate. We are each looking at different aspects of the same subject. His data provide context for mine, while my data simply add value to his. As I will be asking him for some of his data, he has decided that he wants some of my data.  However, he is interested in using a particular part of my data which I think will be the most fruitful part of my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His data are quicker to prepare than mine, and he will undoubtedly write up his chapters/ publications before I get a chance.  I am worried that this will have a negative impact on my ability to publish my papers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have to give him my most promising data?  Is there any way around doing this? I would prefer to rely on older data from Honours students looking at this subject and not ask for his data, if this allows me to keep my own data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14735" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:02:17.667" Title="Am I obliged to share my most promising data?" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20018" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:40:19.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no website referencing special issues from different journals. However, I see two potential ways to stay informed :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of the good journals in your field, then browse their website for information (might take some time, especially to stay up to date).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use social networks. Many journals have twitter accounts and/or blogs and they are likely to advertise their special issues through these media.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T11:40:19.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:42:48.060" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does your supervisor say about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen situations where someone not sharing data not only prevented papers being written, but completely obliterated the collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is handing the data over, but helping with its analysis and the subsequent writing of the paper (with co-authorship). You could offer the same to the other candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, as you have only just started, I wouldn't worry about the negative impact. There's plenty of time to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T11:42:48.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16996" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:52:09.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a response such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for repeated offer to participate in a frontiers research&#xA;  topic. I decline your offer on grounds of not agreeing with this model&#xA;  wherein researchers are invited to produce articles seemingly with the&#xA;  sole purpose of publishing and get them to invite their peers to&#xA;  contribute as well. I am a vehement supporter of open acces&#xA;  publishing, but I do not support publishing ‘for the sake of&#xA;  publishing’, whereas I also feel that structures to stimulate&#xA;  collaboration between researchers should not be run primarily by&#xA;  commercial partners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frankly, the practice of actively recruiting researchers to provide&#xA;  articles is tempering my initial enthusiasm for Frontiers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14743" LastEditorUserId="258" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T20:13:15.497" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T20:13:15.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20020" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:57:17.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of this journal, but from the website it seems legitimate based on its publication history (extending back to 1995) and its institution of origin. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What your nephew should do now is just settle in and wait, and don't bother emailing the editors. As a commenter said, one month is not nearly enough time for a journal to process and review an article. It's usually more like 3-4 months and could possibly go longer than that. And the editors of these journals probably get so many emails from authors requesting status updates that usually those emails are simply ignored -- or if you have a nice editor there'll be an automated reply that says, in so many words, &quot;Please stop emailing me.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequent emailing could even backfire. Recently I submitted an article to a journal, with a student co-author, and was told they'd get back with me in 9-12 weeks. Six months passed and I had heard nothing. I emailed the editor and asked to make sure she had everything she needed (= polite way of bugging her for an update). The editor said she would check with the reviewer. &lt;em&gt;One day later&lt;/em&gt; I received the review -- a three-line rejection letter that indicated clearly that the reviewer had not even read the article. To me, there is a strong likelihood that the article was rejected directly because the reviewer was annoyed at being bugged. This is clear malpractice, but what are you going to do about it? Welcome to our wonderful academic publishing culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, tell your nephew to move on to his next project and let this simmer on the back burner until the end of the summer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastEditorUserId="14188" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T12:02:38.313" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:02:38.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20026" CreationDate="2014-04-30T12:01:04.727" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direct answer is not a PhD students does not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a co-advisor. The problem here is to think about the role of co-advisors. I am sure the view on this varies so my view is coloured by situations with which I am familiar, which is the US and Sweden. Co-advisors may be involved because they have specific expertise that may be relevant to part of the work, for example specific investigations, lab work ec. Co-advisors may also be there to provide overall scientific expertise and provide feedback on written articles or the final thesis or both. Hence a co-advisor may not be very active when you start your PhD. At the same time by signing up as a co-advisor, I would expect the co-advisor to be open for discussion during your time as a student but it may fall on you to initiate such contacts when you need it. The main advisor is, after all, the one responsible for the direction of your work within your thesis topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while one does not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a co-advisor, there are many instances where such support is necessary or at least very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:01:04.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20018" CreationDate="2014-04-30T12:06:45.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the two sources mentioned by William, I can add &lt;em&gt;professional societies&lt;/em&gt; or their equivalent. It is usually these that organize meetings that result in special issues. It is rare (may differ between disciplines) that journals themselves, unless they somehow specialize, provide open special issues around a theme. Usually, it is then by invitation, or papers emanating from a workshop or symposia etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, looking for especial issues may be a dead end and you should be looking for activities that lead to such issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, the term special issue signals an unregular issue in a scientific journal open for submission of manuscripts. Many conferences issue proceedings but then the prerequisite is usually attendance at the meeting and presentation of the paper there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:06:45.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20026" CreationDate="2014-04-30T12:34:24.150" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, a co-supervisor is not needed. However, there are some circumstances where it can be extremely useful. One such instance (with which I have some experience) is related to supervising students between departments. At some institutes, candidates admitted to department X can work with a primary advisor in department Y (and vice versa) if they have a co-advisor in department X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, though, there aren't many places I know where a co-supervisor is required. If you have concerns with how your co-advisor is treating you, the first thing to do is to speak to both of your advisors. If the behavior continues, then you may also want to consider talking to the faculty member in charge of graduate affairs within your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:34:24.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20022" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:08:07.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In life sciences this is quite common, although the cause may be different. Authors will typically use this sentence if after their paper was reviewed/accepted but before publication, a relevant paper was published. This can happen because many groups often work on similar subjects (&quot;competing&quot;). A lot of times it can be something that the reviewer/editor asks the authors to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario I think it is more justified, because the authors really could not have known about the other paper since it was not published yet. Also, revising the whole paper after it has gone through review may be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:08:07.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20008" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:27:00.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although these questions have been discussed before on this site, I think this is a slightly different case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you indeed work on this project outside of work hours and do not use university resources in any way, than this project is essentially a &quot;hobby&quot;. In this case I would make an effort actually NOT to involve your advisors in any way, the same way you would not involve them in a manuscript you prepared about antique toys in your spare time. I think it would be good to keep a clear separation between work and non-work. Even in terms of technicalities like intellectual property this makes a big difference - if this research is associated with work, the university will usually own it, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you need actual relevant advice on the paper from an expert, I would ask an actual relevant expert rather than your advisors. Then, depending on his contribution and on the field, he may be added as an author or acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding publication fees, you could first try to look for a journal where the fee is not that high. Also, many journals are able to give a seriously discount or even waive charges for a good reason. You can ask prior to submission and explain the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:27:00.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20016" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:28:32.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been stated in the comments to your question, contact between author and reviewer once the review process is complete is no issue. In a double-blind system this hinges on establishing the contact and in that case, as stated by Nate Eldridge, it will have to be a contact from the reviewer. In other cases where authors are known to the reviewers it depends on the willingness of reviewers to reveal their name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editors obviously sits on the information that could connect the two under any circumstance and you can of course always ask an editor to forward a request to an anonymous reviewer. As an editor myself, I am not sure I would be altogether happy with such a development since it would mean a lot of communication back and forth concerning matters with which I have nothing to do. I will add that many if not most editors do this on their spare time or time they take from their own research and are not salaried to do the work. This is why I would think twice about making the request and make sure the reason is very good and of such interest that an editor will see benefits to science to make the effort. As you probably realize, doing this once is no big deal but if it becomes routine it will occupy much time for an editor. I would then clearly opt for changing the review system to not be anonymous and try to convince the community that such changes has benefits worth considering. Another option is to keep the review process double blind but then provide all information to both parties once a decision (accept or reject) has been reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:28:32.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20014" CreationDate="2014-04-30T14:11:00.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible that your department at your university could provide some further guidance on this as they would possibly have a stylesheet developed that would deal with this type of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, after reviewing the book at the link you provided and as per your question said it is impossible to cite the individual contributors to the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of these circumstances I believe the most appropriate way of citing this work would be as follows. Citation below is for International edition so you may need to amend based on what edition you are using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kaiser, Walter C. Jr., and Duane Garrett. NIV archaeological study Bible: an illustrated walk through biblical history and culture: New International Version.. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to your second suggestion but drops the article title. This should be appropriate as the articles in this book appear to be half page further information pop-outs rather than full scale academic articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful site as well as the one you linked to in your question for creating citations is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citationmachine.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citation Machine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T14:11:00.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2014-04-30T14:34:18.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Am I obliged to share my most promising data?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience, it depends on the way your advisor runs the group. For example, if you are in a group where co-authorship with other students is encouraged, then opening up your data vault to other students (and them doing likewise) can benefit everyone involved. I've seen other groups at my university (and other schools I've attended) run this way and it seems to work well for all parties involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your group is not such as that described above, you need to be very clear (to your advisor and collaborators) what you expect to gain out of the collaboration/data sharing. In this case, &lt;em&gt;don't assume&lt;/em&gt; that someone will look out for you and give you the credit you feel you deserve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encountered a situation early on in my studies where I shared data with a fellow student. Everything they did with my data was kept secret from me, i.e. it was obvious to everyone that this student had no intention to include me in any of their scholarly works (yes, I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; deserve co-authorship). It was only due to the fact that they couldn't get anything to work that their chances of getting anything published fell to zero, and I wasn't screwed over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T14:34:18.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20042" CreationDate="2014-04-30T14:59:32.303" Score="16" ViewCount="3915" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen several questions on this forum that have similar things and some of them have been quite satisfying for my quest. But I want to mention my specific case and want to have some useful suggestions, so I am writing this, which maybe or may not be a redundant question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my work as a research associate, I always have this problem which irritates me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time at the start I have to study something, of course related to my area but a somewhat new for me (painful, but this is what anybody has to take it to get the job done), learn it and apply it (I would say the apply part is the sweet/joyful pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly the next demand comes as &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Write down&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and it is where the pain concern ends and I start feeling as if my hands are cut and my mind is blank and &lt;strong&gt;&quot;ME&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; can never do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the demand is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, the torture is, for God sake I do not have even a few words to write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem as I feel it:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after doing everything by myself, I feel that I can not describe it in writing. While if it is about describing it orally I am confident that I am much better than many. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing, I never know what to include and what not, especially when the demand is about &lt;strong&gt;as long as you can&lt;/strong&gt;. I have had read tens of writings and have had done the things practically by myself but no idea what makes my mind blank about writing technical things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel myself really good at doing technical things and love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think I am missing some steps involved in that writing and I never miss the steps of doing things practically making me successful in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these are steps, what are these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these are not the steps, what else are these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times I have got my office reputation damaged because of going blank even after many days/weeks given to me for writing. I want to get rid-off this problem and want it never happen again. I would love to be the researcher who satisfies the demand of &lt;strong&gt;as long as you can&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A foot note: In general I do not feel myself bad at writing, though my answers to most emails and my own emails are mostly brief but satisfy the receivers. One more thing to mention that might be useful to assess/suggest me is that it took me around an hour to complete this question completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14747" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-13T10:43:31.937" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T10:43:31.937" Title="My problem about writing a technical/research report/paper" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T16:51:15.987" Score="5" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;My coauthors and I have just had a paper accepted by a journal.  The journal in question is published by a nonprofit professional society and offers two options in their copyright agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We transfer copyright to the publisher, as is traditional.  The journal has exclusive publication rights but we retain the rights to post the paper on our web pages or arXiv (post peer-review), distribute to colleagues, etc.  We also have the right to release our paper to the public domain after 28 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We retain the copyright for ourselves, but grant exclusive publication rights to the publisher.  We still have the rights to post and distribute the paper privately as before.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to determine the pros and cons of each option.  From a practical standpoint there doesn't seem to be much difference: in each case, both we authors and the journal have the rights to do the things that we respectively care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, it would seem better for us to retain the copyright rather than transfer it, just on the grounds that it is better to keep as many rights as possible.  I could only think of one possible drawback: suppose that a number of years from now, some person X wants to republish our paper, or use it in some other way that requires the permission of the copyright holder.  If we transfer it, X can work it out directly with the journal, who should remain easy to contact.  If we don't, X has to track down all three of us authors (or our heirs) to get permission, and then we have to decide what to do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking for legal advice, and I know you're not a lawyer, etc, etc.  But I would be interested to hear about any experiences with this, or other issues I haven't thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher is the American Mathematical Society and their copyright agreement form can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/authors/ctp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ams.org/authors/ctp.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T17:12:49.803" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:12:49.803" Title="I have the option to retain copyright on my published paper. Should I?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-04-30T17:28:13.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:01:39.347" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect you are finding this difficult because you are trying to write in an academic style, and are judging yourself as you are writing. &lt;em&gt;I think the secret to easier writing is to spend as little time as possible &quot;writing&quot;. Instead, spend your time jotting quick emails and editing stuff.&lt;/em&gt; Let me explain what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get together with someone who knows nothing about your research, and explain it to them. Record yourself, or at least take notes on the main points that you address.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now write your explanation down, but informally, as if you were writing an email to a friend. Better yet, make it a real email -- that will help you keep it informal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also gather any other emails you've written to your supervisor, or colleagues and friends. (If you're not already doing so, get into the habit of writing those emails regularly, while ideas are fresh in your mind.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take those emails, and paste them into an empty document. This will be the starting point of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now rearrange the information as needed, to make it coherent. Everywhere there's a gap, stick in a message like NEED TO EXPLAIN X HERE.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At this point, you're beginning to have an idea of the structure of the paper. This would be a good time to write an outline, to see if you've left anything out. This outline goes into the document along with everything else. (You can delete it before submitting the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now fill in the gaps. But write informally, as if you were writing an email to a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now go through your document, and make the sentences more formal. Don't overdo it, though. You don't want your writing to be stilted; you want it to sound natural.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations. You have the first draft of your paper, and you barely did any real &quot;writing&quot;; it was mostly just writing emails and editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's much easier to make informal, but clear, writing more formal, than it is to make formal writing more clear!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:01:39.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:02:45.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is probably one of the best advices you are going to get in your entire life in terms of technical writing. As you progress, writing large text is always the easy part. Writing a self-contained text with the required theorems, proofs, results to fit within a conference / journal paper page limits is the real hard part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you do not know what to write. &lt;strong&gt;Then you must write everything&lt;/strong&gt;. What is your input data? High level description and in detail stats. What is your output data? Again high level description and in detail stats. What do you want to do with your methods? What are your methods actually doing? And how are they doing it? Again top-to-bottom. A high level description first and then move into extensive details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also compare with previous methods. What do previous methods do? What are their strength and weaknesses? What are YOUR strength and weaknesses? For what datasets your method performs best etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go into exhaustive detail. E.g., in a CS reports you may say &quot;we use Java and Hibernate on a Intel i5 workstation running CentOS with 6Gb of DDR3 RAM.&quot;...  Initially do not omit anything. Write anything relevant to fill the pages. As you become more proficient in writing, you will see that you may distinguish what is really important to say and what to skip. Do not overthink. Start writing, even it initially seems not good enough. There is no need to be perfect initially. Once you have some pages written, come back and edit. Repeat the cycle with every couple of pages added. Soon, you will find that filling the pages will not be a problem. Trimming unimportant things from these pages will be the real challenge. Good luck!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:02:45.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:06:39.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just some thoughts that occur to me while reading your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write well is to make every word count: to not waste a reader's time. Length should never be the goal. Say what &lt;em&gt;you have to say&lt;/em&gt; as concisely and clearly as you can. Do not get into the habit of writing &quot;filler&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even after doing every thing by myself, I feel that I can not describe it in writing. While if it is about describing it orally I am confident that I am much better than many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing well means keeping the reader in mind: what will capture their attention at the start of the paper, what they will need to understand before the next section starts, what are their expectations for what is going to come next. As such, a good starting point for writing is to consider that you are discussing the paper orally with an imaginary reader you meet over coffee. How do you get them interested in the topic you want to discuss? How do you convince them of the novelty of your idea? How do summarise your unique contribution? If you had a pen and paper to sketch some ideas down, what would you sketch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If these are steps, what are these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you need an idea of the scope of what you want to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second you need a frame for the paper, typically the section headings, a rough idea of the goal of each section, how they will fit together, what the reader will learn from each part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third you may need a detailed frame for the paper. For example, I have given students headings (as comments in the file) for each paragraph. In the introduction: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What is the setting/area?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What is the specific problem?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Why is it interesting?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What has been done about it before (on a high-level)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What is our unique perspective for solving the problem?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How will that be achieved concretely?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What are our contributions / How is the paper structured?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some paragraphs can later be joined together, as necessary. Having this framework for (at least) an introduction in mind, I find, helps inexperienced writers get over the &quot;cold start&quot; problem. (More experienced writers may not need to follow this structure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you start ... at the start (well skip the abstract ... do that last). Take it piece by piece. If you feel you don't have enough information yet to write a part, skip to a part you can write and come back later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your abstract and conclusion last. Make your conclusion reflect what was promised in the introduction (but now providing concrete details, such as a summary of results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many times I have got my office reputation destroyed because of going blank even after many days/weeks given to me for writing. I want to get rid-off this problem and want it never happen again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting there frustrated isn't going to help. But even though I would consider myself fairly experienced at writing, I often have the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each paper is different so if you're not sure about creating the outline, you have to talk with someone else to help you plan out the paper/report or even just to get your own thoughts straight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not sure what to write, &lt;em&gt;just write something&lt;/em&gt;. Most papers will go through several drafts so the first draft doesn't need to be perfect ... each draft just needs to be an improvement. And a first draft can help you get feedback from others to point you in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:06:39.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:10:13.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought of leaving this as a comment but ran out of space so moved it to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As user11192 says start with smaller chunks. What I have found to work for me (engineering) is to start with the plots or the results that I want to talk about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I decide &lt;em&gt;what results I want to present&lt;/em&gt; and the conclusion I want the reader to draw from them. Then &lt;em&gt;write a few (2-3) sentences&lt;/em&gt; for each of them (usually a presentation file works better for this) stating the observation and conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next it try to &lt;em&gt;decide how to arrange the results&lt;/em&gt; and how to group them. This is subject to change if I later realize that some other grouping or arrangement works better. Here I am thinking of &quot;what is the better way to convince the reader of my conclusion&quot;. At this step I also decide on a rough outline for the whole report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I describe the setup. I try put in details to make sure that if I were to do it from scratch I would have all the details required. This will end up being long and needs lot of trimming depending on what kind of report I am writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards I go back to the results and expand on the sentences. Think of it like telling a story you want to guide the reader to your way of thinking. Tell whatever comes to your mind (imagine you are talking to someone if that helps) and decide what to cut out later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next to make the report complete I add in some motivation. Here again it helps to start with few key sentences and then join them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This forms the rough draft. I sleep on it for a day or two and the come back and edit it so that it makes sense. If I feel overwhelmed or satisfied I send a draft to someone else for a cursory review. I can then use the feedback to improve the draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times I am lost as to what to talk about. In that case I just make a list of all things that seem relevant to me. Try writing down short incomplete sentences. If you can talk about you can write it (just write down the dialogue that you thought of while talking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to realize writing a report is not one time thing. I usually go through 2-3 reviews (except for online posting ;) before I am satisfied. So get the first draft out (even if it is list of disconnected sentences), afterwards it is easier to make edits because you now have a better idea of what the report should look like. Most of the time it is the lack of idea of what the final product will look like that makes one avoid doing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastEditorUserId="847" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T17:15:55.470" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:15:55.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:58:49.400" Score="7" ViewCount="2098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize writing in active vs passive voice is a heated debate in academia, with arguments being made for and against both styles. My adviser prefers passive voice.. But is it acceptable to switch from passive to active voice in the same paragraph? What about different sections? For example, the intro and literature review in passive voice, but switching to active voice for materials and methods section. Is this a big no no? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2018-01-26T06:23:13.420" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T09:18:21.050" Title="Switching between active and passive voice" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:59:04.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the comments and thinking, the conclusion that I have came up with is that everyone is humans and deals with personal or professional issues and that some people are just more compassionate/sympathetic then others. I think that if someone shows genuine concern without being obtrusive to a subordinate or supervisor shouldn't be a problem with the proper approach, timing, and relationship. If a person, does act poorly to a genuine concern then it just shows that the person doesn't know how properly deal with the problems and probably should be a concern to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14706" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:59:04.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2014-04-30T18:06:23.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If both of you are working in similar fields, you should likely co-author papers (and share results).  Very rarely have I run into profs that didn't encourage (or almost mandate) cross collaboration among their students, and the profs I did run into like this were nearly impossible to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of tips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Be sure to make it clear you want co-authored papers - you did some of the work, you deserve some of the credit.  Also figure out who will be first author BEFORE you go any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) With the other student, discuss your paper ideas, and see if you can carve out a piece of research that will be mainly yours, and another piece that is mainly his.  Make him a co-author if appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Try to work out an understanding without involving your prof first.  Go to him/her after you've made a good effort come to a mutual agreement and failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Remember that your graduate program is a small group of people who all know each other.  This situation sounds like it could blow back on you (for not sharing all the data), or the other guy (for not giving credit where its due) in a big way.  If you've promised him data, give it to him.  If he decides to be a jerk and bogart his research, then don't work with him again.  You have other great research projects you can keep for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastEditorUserId="14754" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T21:02:17.667" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:02:17.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T19:34:54.923" Score="14" ViewCount="1191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach at a community college in California, where students can drop a course with a grade of &quot;W&quot; up until the 12th week of the semester. Within the last year or so, I seem to be seeing an increase in the number of students who find themselves passing the course at the 12th week, but who decide to drop because they want a better grade and are willing to take the course again later. However, I'm not sure that this increase is real, since my sample size is small. And if it is real, I don't know how widespread the phenomenon is or how to probe for possible causes for the change, since a number of different variables have changed in this time frame (including changes in state law and school policy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any source of hard data or method for getting data on this? I think there's a pretty big literature on student success and persistence, but the impression I get is that a lot of the literature takes it as a matter of definition that if the student doesn't pass the course with a C, it's because the student didn't &quot;succeed,&quot; i.e., the student's academic performance wasn't passing. It seems like it would be difficult to gather statistically robust data to measure the phenomenon of drops due to grade dissatisfaction, since instructors aren't systematically asked to submit or retain the grade records of students who are no longer enrolled at the end of the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T15:50:55.477" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T18:53:09.750" Title="Hard data on students using W's to enhance their GPAs?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20010" CreationDate="2014-04-30T19:44:16.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot estimate how much, but I think this could harm the student's case: such mistakes make one think that the letter writer made them in a hurry, not caring too much. This can in principle mitigate the positive effect of the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T19:44:16.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:14:25.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write your paper in a consistent form. I personally prefer the active voice as well, but if your supervisor prefers passive... well then you will have to make the best of it or argument with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to be specific within paragraphs or connected sentences. If you have an example that you were doubting about, perhaps you can post it here and we will have a look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general: no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:14:25.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:20:08.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why this urge of researchers to keep things secret... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you talk to your college about this and see if he is open to having you as a coauthor (you write the section on the data for instance) = double win. Or could you publish your draft as a report from your university that he could cite? Or another option... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will depend on your supervisor in the end, but you can subtly make him aware of the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:20:08.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20020" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:24:10.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can easily take 6 months for a review to come back. However, a acknoledgement of receipt should be given. Remember to allow enough time to pass between your emails and don't mail too frequent, it normally takes a few months. It could backfire and make you seem rude if you are too pushy. But 1-2 emails asking if the paper is received seems ok, if you don't get that, perhaps give them a call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:24:10.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19487" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:28:59.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can easily argument that you opt to publish in A1 journal papers and P1 indexed proceedings and thus only the connected conferences. If your work is good enough though, or if you are willing to invest the time to make the effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the impact factor of the journal and see if they (as well as proceedings btw) are in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webofknowledge.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISI web of knowledge/science list&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use this tool: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;publish or perish&lt;/a&gt; to check the impact of journals/proceedings (it works in win, osx and with wine in linux).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:28:59.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:37:03.557" Score="9" ViewCount="836" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background: I'm near 40, I have a PhD, I work as a computer scientist at a Very Large Company's R&amp;amp;D Lab, and I have about 35 reasonably non-embarassing publications to my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing papers is &quot;encouraged&quot; by my company, but it's not core to my job. My main job duties are managing projects and transferring R&amp;amp;D ideas into products, and I get paid a very nice 6-figure salary for this. Frankly, I'm one of only a few people here who care about writing papers, and recently I've only had enough time to submit to workshops and mid-tier conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point should I just stop caring? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep saying to myself that once I reach 40 papers, I can stop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14759" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T03:49:00.957" Title="At what point should I stop caring about writing papers after leaving academia?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-05-20T16:10:48.490" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:39:24.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt how a scientific study could measure &quot;beauty&quot;, in order to conduct the study. Perhaps human labelled? A study that would like body mass index to citations perhaps is a research waiting to be done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, unlike CEOs, you don't see the authors when reading a paper. Altough, being popular at conferences might help them get initial citation count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:39:24.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19431" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:42:28.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to know what you want to do. If you want to go to your 1st choice school, perhaps you can come to an agreement to have the 2nd professor as your copromotor? Or didn't you pin down your supervisor and your topic yet. In that case, just go for the first school definately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at your contract or contact the administration. They will be able to help you with the more technical details of resigning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do what you feel you want to spend the next 4 years doing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:42:28.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19799" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:47:54.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about the US, but in Belgium, Universities are only allowed to give a &quot;real&quot; PhD when they have a doctoral school (equivalent to grad school) attached to them. In some cases this institute can be more silent (background function), and the university is the public face of the PhD, but it HAS TO exist and it has to be recognised. Concerning faculty appointed solely to the doctoral school... well, in my university, the normal faculty where the profs are working has a internal contract with the doctoral school and appoints normal staff to it for a given number of hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short. It should exist. But it might not be publicly advertised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:47:54.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11659" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:10:45.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;passive voice&quot; started to become common in US journals in the 1920's. The reason for this is that science and the conclusions you draw from your analyses should be objective, which comes across more easily in the passive voice. This is actually a heated debate in many academic circles. Most journals encourage the use of passive voice, and some reviewers may give you a hard time if you use active voice in a paper you're trying to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best to target your audience and write for them. For example, if you are writing an article for a science magazine, the active voice might be more suitable. It certainly comes across as more exciting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some good reading on this matter can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://cgi.duke.edu/web/sciwriting/index.php?action=passive_voice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/writing/passive-letters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T23:20:22.860" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T23:20:22.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:13:37.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that, out of top 20 schools, at least Stanford, Columbia, and Cornell give &quot;bonus&quot; credit for A+ (4.3). I'm sure many other schools do as well, though it is not really the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:13:37.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20066" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:29:33.480" Score="15" ViewCount="2667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a small application which would hypothetically allow instructors to perform a variety of grade transformation techniques on a given distribution. (I don't intend for the application to actually be used)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some of the more commonly used transformation techniques assuming a distribution is ~normally distributed? Online resources on the topic are somewhat sparse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14764" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2015-03-14T01:55:33.633" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T09:29:14.587" Title="Common grade curving or scaling techniques" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20005" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:33:53.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a complete answer, but a possibly instructive example (at least ground for discussion). The math department at Ecole Normale Supérieure has a somewhat radical approach to this question. Two rules for the teachers and researchers there: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No one stays longer than ten years&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No one teaches the same class more than three years in a row. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of course is to keep the department members &quot;fresh&quot;, on the cutting edge of research and to vary the topics that are represented. Such a strict rule is clearly not practical in any but this very specific environment, but I think the idea that there should be a minimal turnover is a sensible one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:33:53.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:54:33.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't want to write?  Make a video instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is actually more to it, but I am guessing that your &quot;blank mind&quot;&#xA;phenomenon occurs when you are making notes to yourself as well for any&#xA;project.  So as a first step, use a camera phone or tape recorder or&#xA;videocam to record your notes and impressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's back up a bit.  You are asked to write up stuff at some point,&#xA;and the horrible blankness descends upon you, and this is what you&#xA;want to avoid.  I recommend talking to the asker and find out what is&#xA;wanted.  Will a journal of notes suffice?  Is this for internal&#xA;distribution to be polished later, or are you expected to produce&#xA;publishable material?  Just how is what you write going to be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When that is clear, you will have a better idea of the expectations,&#xA;which my gut tells me is part of what causes the anxiety.  You might&#xA;even talk to the asker about the process, and if they are willing to&#xA;review/revise alongside you as you produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you will need to collect material to put into your&#xA;product.  Let me assume that you like the video idea.  Here are &#xA;some concrete suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a collection of short videos rather than one long video.&#xA;That way reviewing and transcribing will be less of a hassle, and&#xA;may help in the organizing process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each video, start by saying &quot;This clip is going to be about ...&quot;,&#xA;so that you (sort of) embed the title into the clip.  This helps in&#xA;organizing.  Use &quot;Take 2&quot; or &quot;part 3&quot; if that helps you break a&#xA;long subject up.  Don't worry about mistakes, you can always make&#xA;a corrective clip.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each video, end by saying &quot;This clip was actually about ...&quot;&#xA;so that you can record major discrepancies between content and&#xA;the embedded title at the beginning.  That way you can go to near the&#xA;end for additional and possibly more accurate metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each video, rename the file containing the clip so that it&#xA;reflects the content title, or whatever else you need for your&#xA;organizing system.  At this stage, THIS IS THE ONLY WRITING YOU&#xA;NEED TO DO.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you don't have your product, but you have a bunch of material.&#xA;How do you organize it?  Make another video!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can videotape your process of rearranging the material, making&#xA;a priority list from a directory listing, making an outline verbally&#xA;or typographically as you wish.  You can also make verbal notes as&#xA;to which stills from the video you deem worthy of inclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest this because you seem more comfortable at telling your&#xA;story with your voice than writing it with your hands.  This idea&#xA;does not circumvent the writing part, but relegates it to transcription,&#xA;which I hope does not trigger a mental block.  (There may even be&#xA;software to aid in transcription, but I do not feel qualified to make&#xA;recommendations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this idea may not work for you, but you might give it a try and&#xA;(wait for it) videotape the process and your conclusions.  I wish you&#xA;every success, even if video is not the answer for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T21:54:33.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20063" CreationDate="2014-04-30T22:01:57.170" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not perfect, but I often use a piecewise linear transformation.  Specifically, I fix some cutoffs (typically the cutoff between a B+ and an A-, between C+ and B-, between D+ and C-, and between F and D) and then scale all the A's linearly with their range, the B's linearly in their range, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T22:01:57.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2014-04-30T23:21:21.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I realize...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;arguments being made...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is that it's normal to switch.  It's probably a good idea to favour one or the other, but I imagine you would have a lot of difficulty using &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the active voice or &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the passive voice throughout a paper.  Don't worry about it too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T23:21:21.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11659" CreationDate="2014-05-01T00:21:57.347" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saying &quot;a method was used . . . &quot; doesn't make the method, or your use of it objective. Nobody who is stupid enough to be fooled into thinking that will be reading your journal article. Besides, what you want is to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; objective, not just &lt;em&gt;sound&lt;/em&gt; objective. If you have a firm grasp on your method, your data and your conclusion, then the objectivity of the results will be obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My hypothesis is h. Since h implies p, I used method m, since m will tell us whether p or not because m works by . . . . And when I used m, it clearly reported that not-p. So, my hypothesis turned out to be false.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentences like this create a narrative with helpful guideposts, showing how you arrived at your conclusion and bringing the reader along with you. Narratives help you attract readers outside the immediate small circle of people already familiar with the problems, methods and principle results of your sub-discipline.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a humanities guy who occasionally really wants to find out what's going on in relevant empirical literature, I find it really difficult to discover the information that I want because I simply cannot discern &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; we are using certain experimental or statistical methods, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; those methods imply the conclusions the authors claim, or &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the ultimate significance of the results of the individual experiments are for the overall conclusion that the paper is ostensibly about. Tell a good story that includes how the experimental work and mathematical analysis all fit together, and you'll attract a broader audience, I promise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T00:21:57.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19799" CreationDate="2014-05-01T00:32:04.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In US universities, a 'graduate school' is usually an administrative entity that manages all aspects of graduate life. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradschool.utah.edu/&quot;&gt;At the University of Utah&lt;/a&gt;, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Graduate School fosters excellence by providing administrative&#xA;  structure and leadership to maintain and enhance graduate education at&#xA;  the University of Utah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our programs offer financial assistance, rigorous academic&#xA;  opportunities, and professional development to students, staff, and&#xA;  faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are guided by the principles of quality, diversity, and integrity&#xA;  as we help students to prepare themselves for successful, relevant&#xA;  careers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link posted in the comments suggests that faculty are required to be associated with the grad school in order to function as advisors etc. I think this is also an administrative action, designed to demarcate faculty that can advise students from all the other people who are designated as faculty (for example, adjuncts, research faculty, teaching faculty, and so on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no &lt;strong&gt;academic&lt;/strong&gt; function associated with the graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can think of the graduate school as the university-wide entity that manages the individual chairs of graduate studies at departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T00:32:04.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20063" CreationDate="2014-05-01T00:37:02.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One I have not used although I've heard of being used before is to &lt;em&gt;rank&lt;/em&gt; the final numerical score, and then use that to assign the final grade. Typically these ranks are then used to bin the results into corresponding letter grades of arbitrary proportions. E.g. the top 5% get and A, (5 - 10%] get a B etc. (I have no idea how (un)common this is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted the end result to be as close to normal as possible (frequently not possible if you have ties - or pretty much meaningless if you have small class sizes), you could convert the ranks to quantiles and then take the inverse CDF of your specified normal distribution (mean and variance) you desired. I don't know of anyone who goes quite that far in curving grades though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually how all civil service exams (exams that state agencies use to hire individuals here in the US) are curved that I know of. After the minimum score cut off, people are ranked into specific bins, and then cohorts of interviews are arranged for the people in the first bin (and if they don't work out they go further down the list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would speculate the most &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; form of curving is simply bumping grades above a particular cut-off. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2011/07/07/another-case-of-teacher-cheating-or-is-it-just-altruism/comment-page-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freakonomics blog&lt;/a&gt; for one example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YcDO6.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YcDO6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Polish-graph.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;freakonomics.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T09:29:14.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20079" CreationDate="2014-05-01T01:53:13.420" Score="5" ViewCount="1716" Body="&lt;p&gt;My case is the following; I was doing independent research while I was working in a university, which, by the way I did not use any resource from that place of work at all. During the time I was at this university, a conference came up where I saw the possibility to submit my research, and because they asked for an academic affiliation to be put in the paper; I put the one of my then current work-place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was waiting for a decision from the conference on whether my paper would be accepted, I got a part time job in another university. The good thing about this new place is that they have offered me that they would pay any expenses related to research publication. I know that they have not said that straightforward, but I suppose that they want me to put them as my academic affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the paper has got accepted, and I have to make the final version of it, so I was wondering if it would be possible that I can change my academic affiliation to the new place which has offered to pay the expenses for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T11:36:06.000" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T11:36:06.000" Title="Can I change my academic affiliation after a conference paper is accepted but before submitting the camera ready version?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11659" CreationDate="2014-05-01T01:55:33.870" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; is used in a few subtly different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To mean &lt;em&gt;the author(s)&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;We are not aware of any previous work on reticulated splines.&quot;  (But maybe we just didn't look hard enough.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To mean &lt;em&gt;the author(s) and the reader&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;We see from Theorem 5 that every snark is a boojum.&quot;  (You are supposed to be able to see it too.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To mean &lt;em&gt;the mathematical community&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;We lack a complete classification of cromulent blobs.&quot;  (No such classification exists, but it sure would be nice if it did.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it is clear from context which meaning is intended.  But occasionally third-person phrasing like &lt;em&gt;the authors&lt;/em&gt; will be used to emphasize or clarify that the sentence is only referring to the authors, and not anyone else.  &quot;We cannot prove Conjecture 6 using these techniques&quot; could be ambiguous: is it an  absolute claim that it is impossible to do so, or merely an admission of failure by the authors?  &quot;The authors cannot prove Conjecture 6 using these techniques&quot; resolves it in one direction.  To make an absolute claim, you might use the passive voice: &quot;Conjecture 6 cannot be proved using these techniques.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T01:55:33.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20078" CreationDate="2014-05-01T02:03:33.677" Score="6" ViewCount="2325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in a Master's program for mathematics and I want to apply for a PhD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of dropping one of my classes because it requires a final project which will be very time consuming. (I would have very little time to complete obligations for my other classes.) If I drop it, this class will appear with a grade of 'W' on my transcript which stands for &quot;withdrawn&quot;. I'm worried how much this will blemish my transcript in the eyes of PhD programs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking this won't matter so much because this is the only class out of 11 classes that will have been dropped. Also, this is a physics class, not a mathematics class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25111" LastEditorUserId="25111" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T03:25:59.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T04:01:58.640" Title="Will a dropped class hurt PhD application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T02:51:27.683" Score="7" ViewCount="4896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was dismissed from my Masters program due to bad grades. I also have a mention in my records that say that I might have used last years homework. I did not copy and they had no proof that I copied per se. I couldn't care less about my grades at the time and I deeply regret doing what I did. Is there hope for me in applying to grad schools in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I am an international student. Can someone tell me if all this will affect my getting a VISA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14771" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T11:47:16.097" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T13:21:17.617" Title="Will dismissal from one graduate school affect me applying to another?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20081" CreationDate="2014-05-01T03:15:22.713" Score="17" ViewCount="2040" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor obligate me to put her name first author name in my publication. What are the possible pros and cons of this order? What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions? My field is IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T06:00:38.190" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T11:11:26.643" Title="What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20056" CreationDate="2014-05-01T03:49:00.957" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't feel any obligation to write papers if you don't want to and you aren't required to for your job.  At this point, you've written 35 papers, which more than repays any investment the research community put into training and mentoring you.  (This shouldn't be a concern in any case, but with so many papers you're extra safe on this count.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be a loss for the community if you decide not to continue, but you shouldn't decide on that basis unless you anticipate world-changing outcomes from your future papers.  Think of it from the perspective of someone reading one of those papers.  How would they feel if they knew you had forced yourself to write it at the cost of personal unhappiness?  If the paper leads to a cure for cancer, then they'd think you made the right decision, but for most papers they would probably feel sorry and wish you had chosen otherwise.  If the potential audience for your papers would feel sympathetic, then you shouldn't hold yourself to a stricter standard of community service than they would.  (I wouldn't assert the converse: you can legitimately quit even if the potential audience wouldn't feel sympathetic.  However, they probably would, and that may make your decision feel easier.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, quitting research may close off future opportunities.  If you'd like to move to a research university someday, or a more publication-focused industrial lab, then you'll need to maintain an active research program.  (Having done compelling research in the past doesn't count for much if you haven't published recently, since potential employers will assume that your knowledge and skills are rusty and that your not publishing recently reflects a lack of ideas or enthusiasm.)  Maybe research would be more fun in a supportive environment with coworkers who are also actively engaged in research.  If that's the path you'd like to take, then you should keep doing research while you figure out what sorts of jobs might be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't want to write papers now and you don't anticipate wanting to do so in the future, then it's perfectly fine to stop.  You can quit with a clear conscience and be proud of the work you've done, without feeling any need to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T03:49:00.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20074" CreationDate="2014-05-01T04:01:58.640" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an otherwise excellent application, then withdrawing from a single course is unlikely to make much of a difference, especially a course in another field.  For example, if you get A's in four graduate math classes and drop a physics class in the same semester, I doubt any math graduate school will care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could look a little strange if the dropped course were on your proposed specialty (so people would think you'd be particularly enthusiastic about it), but even that wouldn't be a disaster.  If you aren't taking many courses and are getting worrisome grades in the others, then a W may look like you're narrowly avoiding an even worse grade, but in that case your application already has problems aside from the W.  Overall, the way I'd look at it is that the W might intensify other weaknesses in your application, but isn't likely to be a big obstacle in isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T04:01:58.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20072" CreationDate="2014-05-01T04:09:06.773" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to your comment, you are asking whether the conference will allow you to change your listed affiliation between acceptance and submission of the camera-ready version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. I have done this several times without issue. If there's no way to do this by yourself in the paper submission site, you can email the chair and ask him/her to update your information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; use your new institution as your affiliation just to get them  to pay for your expenses is another issue entirely, which you have already asked about in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/academic-affiliation-which-to-choose&quot;&gt;another question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T04:09:06.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16996" CreationDate="2014-05-01T05:39:13.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic has received some discussion recently: at least some of these invitations appear to be revenue driven, with no specific reason related to the advancement of science per se.  Read reports here of followup emails that received answers indicating an indiscriminate approach that would, in my book, qualify as SPAM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think frontiers should be taken to task about these practices, and their wikipedia page edited accordingly. &#xA;I opened a Talk on this here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3aFrontiers_%28publisher%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Frontiers_(publisher)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14776" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T05:39:13.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20076" CreationDate="2014-05-01T05:45:20.180" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have unfortunately seen these kinds of shenanigans before, so: know you are not alone, whatever cold comfort that may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation has no &quot;pro,&quot; and has the following significant &quot;con:&quot; you are not getting the credit you deserve for your work. In fields where author lists are not ordered alphabetically, order is used to signify the author's contributions to the paper, and first-author papers are much more important for things like hiring and promotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest the following steps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Talk to your advisor&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is just a misunderstanding, or there are other variables in play you're not aware of (unlikely, but possible - see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10059/mentor-trying-to-be-first-author&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;).  Have a conversation with your advisor to see if you can clear this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's your opener:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought that in IT, usually the student who did most of the work is the first author and the advisor is the last - this is the case in all the papers I have read. Why do you propose a different order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Run, don't walk&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This behavior is typically an indication that either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your advisor is completely unaware of conventions in your field (charitable interpretation), or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your advisor is aware of the authorship conventions and is deliberately violating them to your disadvantage, which is extremely unethical behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, this means that your advisor is simply unsuitable to be an advisor, to anyone, and you should find another one as soon as humanly possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. If all else fails&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are stuck with this advisor for some reason&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, be prepared for a very bumpy ride. This is not likely to be the last stunt he/she pulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can at least try to argue your case: there is some advice on the subject &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12264/how-should-a-student-defend-his-1st-authorship-in-front-of-his-advisor-politely&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, although that question does not specifically address the case where the advisor is demanding first authorship for him/herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;This site is full of students who insist on staying with a completely unsuitable advisor, for one reason or another. I suspect &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stockholm syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T06:01:19.500" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20083" CreationDate="2014-05-01T06:21:13.057" Score="3" ViewCount="6628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to start preparing for GRE. I have great enthusiasm for reading novels rather than memorizing words. Will words learnt from novels be helpful for GRE vocabulary? Which novels/writers books should be read for GRE vocabulary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14777" LastEditorUserId="14777" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T06:15:41.860" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T06:15:41.860" Title="Is reading novels helpful for GRE Preparation?" Tags="&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20082" CreationDate="2014-05-01T06:25:51.850" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;No doubt you can encounter useful words in novels, but you will encounter them at a much slower rate than with targeted study.  If your goal is to learn GRE words quickly, a simple GRE study book would be more efficient.  At the least, you should take a practice GRE test and see how you do on the vocab sections.  If your vocab needs major improvement, reading novels is probably too slow to be of use for passing the GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long term, I think reading novels and other texts is a better (and more fun) way of learning how to actually understand and use a wide range of vocabulary, but for the short-term goal of improving your GRE score it may not deliver as much benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T06:25:51.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20092" CreationDate="2014-05-01T09:34:59.660" Score="52" ViewCount="18661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For brevity for trivial deductions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looks like the writer could not be bothered to write an extensive explanation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of what is trivial to which reader and what not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14780" LastEditorUserId="14780" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T20:44:10.077" LastActivityDate="2020-08-30T01:46:58.403" Title="Is using the phrase &quot;... is left as an exercise for the reader&quot; considered good style in academic papers/theses?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-01T09:58:22.420" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't agree with any of these assessments. Often the omitted deductions are rudimentary, but not necessarily trivial. The reason they are omitted is generally due to lack of space, or the fact that the omitted proofs do not add anything to the exposition, not laziness. The final point doesn't even apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, stating that something &quot;is left to the reader&quot; is a little cheeky. You often find the equivalent, &quot;an astute reader will be able fill in the details&quot;, which may come across as a little pretentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a paper, it is okay to use such a statement, assuming that the author has actually done the proofs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a thesis, it is expected that the author does the work, not the reader, so I don't think it is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T09:58:22.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-01T10:52:52.193" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will have to advise against it, and &lt;strong&gt;very strongly so&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did applied mathematics in the uni, and some of our teachers were &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; keen on using phrases like that. Well, I can definitely see the point in leaving exercises to the student, however we did have separate exercise sessions where everything was &lt;em&gt;left as an exercise for the reader.&lt;/em&gt; So I have always found it odd (at times frustrating) that the course book, or lectures, by which I was supposed to get the tools to be able to solve the exercises, left some of the necessary bits as an exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major problems with the phrasing, in my humble opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It might not be as obvious or straight-forward as you (the author) might think. In some cases the &lt;em&gt;exercise&lt;/em&gt; is practically calculations that have already been performed in the previous page or so, in that case it's understandable to omit the same calculations/derivations, but a reference to the last place these calculations, would do just as well: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... the rest of the derivations are analogous to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... as we have seen in Theorem/Lemma X ... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That particular phrasing has a condescending/patronizing resonance in the eyes of the reader. This has been something practically all of my old classmates commented on. As a matter of fact, we &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; joke about the phrase &lt;em&gt;&quot;... is left an exercise to the (ambitious) reader&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I am not sure what you have to gain from &lt;strong&gt;alienating your audience&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, regarding the use of the phrase in articles, I have to admit I don't do any work in maths anymore, but in the fields I work with (computational biology, biomedicine, bioinformatics, ...) I have never seen something like this, and I am pretty sure it would not fly well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;exercise&quot; in question is important, you include it in the paper. If you lack the space to include it, you put in supplementary and refer to it. If it is not important you do not mention it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T10:52:52.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2014-05-01T11:17:34.660" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised at this controversy and answers. When someone applies for a status, this person is called a candidate. If you apply for job, you may be called a job candidate. When you apply for the studentship for any PhD program, you can be called PhD candidate. Candidacy means intention of getting selected. We can have Presidency candidate, job candidate and so on. If a person applies for admission for post graduate program, the person will be called PG candidate. Any program PG or UG or PhD will have so many candidates, but all are not selected. Once selected the status becomes Student. Many universities still force PhD students to learn many aspects of PhD. After a program finishes and the student successfully passes the requirements or exams, the student gets a degree of PhD/PG/Graduation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the three stages for a PhD aspirant would be;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to get selected as a PhD candidate (some do not qualify this stage also as they do not meet the requirements of candidature, then &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to get selected as a PhD student and, lastly, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to pass the requirements, stages and exam (viva) and be come PhD degree holder so that you can write PhD as a title in your name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14784" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T11:56:35.260" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T11:56:35.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20075" CreationDate="2014-05-01T11:52:09.533" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, your transcripts are likely going to be required at time of application to any other program, and you can assume that you will be asked about your poor grades during the application process. That said, you're not the first person to have made bad decisions in the past, so I would definitely still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I would strongly advise &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; doing is attempting to hide the fact you have poor grades by simply not sending the transcript, and pretending it didn't happen. Doing so will almost guarantee career-threatening problems later on when someone finds out what you did (and it won't be hard, there will be a gap of a few years you won't be able to explain, and all the officials at the other university still know that you were there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea about the visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T11:52:09.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20090" CreationDate="2014-05-01T12:27:15.657" Score="10" ViewCount="4735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done some work and I thought of publishing it. This is my first attempt to publish. After searching a lot, I found out that SCI indexed journals are good. But I am seeing publishing price at about $1500-$3100 which is absolutely impossible for me. (Just out of question). My work is on improvement in image processing, being specific, matrix encoding algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am putting my question here after searching too much, so any hint would help. I am almost about $100-$150 budget. I don't understand how sharing info could be so costly. Is it not done as a service by scientists/Phd students collectively at some reasonable price ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a baffling experience to me, specially this listed price on journal websites. In my country this amount means fortune. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14432" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T14:55:36.560" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T16:17:29.060" Title="SCI/other credible journals for low budget authors" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20089" CreationDate="2014-05-01T13:03:29.450" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals do not charge any publication fees at all.  For example, subscription journals often fall into this category, and in most fields there are plenty of subscription journals.  If all the journals you are finding charge fees, then I'd imagine you aren't searching broadly enough (although maybe publication fees are particularly common in your field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, journals that charge publication fees ought to give fee waivers to authors from developing countries.  Their web sites often explain the details, and if they don't you can write to them to ask before submission.  They might in principle say no, but it can't hurt to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T15:39:45.990" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T15:39:45.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20075" CreationDate="2014-05-01T13:21:17.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there hope for me in applying to grad schools in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but you will need a convincing argument for why graduate school will go better next time than it did the first time you tried it.  It's easy to say &quot;I didn't care about grades and didn't work very hard, but I'll work harder this time,&quot; while actually working harder is much more difficult, so vague excuses may be discounted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could get lucky and find a school that is happy to give you another chance (perhaps a less prestigious department, which sees potential in you beyond what's typical for their students).  You might also be able to give a more concrete excuse for your past grades (for example, if there were external factors in your life that troubled you last time but won't apply this time).  Otherwise, the best way to demonstrate that things have changed is probably to succeed at something else.  Finding a job and doing well at it can show that you are now more mature and responsible than when you were a student, and successfully taking a few classes part-time can also look good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd suggest following a two-part strategy.  Try applying again with the best explanations/excuses you can offer, and see whether it works.  If it doesn't, then you should start thinking about longer-term methods to demonstrate that you've changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T13:21:17.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-01T13:33:48.253" Score="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's only appropriate in the type of writing where you are in a position to give the reader excercises. That is, in course books or other learning material. There, I think it's fine, assuming you've already given enough information for them to be able to perform such an excercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In papers or theses, you're actually trying to convince the reader that you're right - the reader is in the position of power, not you, as you want something from them (to accept your ideas) and not vice versa. Therefore, I'd never write such a phrase in a paper or thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's of course a viable requirement to leave out some parts of the work, either because of space constraints or because they're trivial, long but straightforward, would derail the course of the text, or something similar. If possible, such parts can be delegated to an appendix, or left out entirely. But I would accompany this with different phrasing, something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The formula (7) can be obtained from (6) using straightforward application of [insert appropriate math branch here]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A detailed proof of statement (4) unfortunately exceeds the scope of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The derivation of (3) from (1) is too long to present here, but it can be worked out using a symbolic computation system such as Mathematica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Equation (7) follows from a straightforward application of &lt;em&gt;this-or-that theorem&lt;/em&gt; to equation (5); we refer the reader to existing literature on the topic for details of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13027" LastEditorUserId="13027" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T13:49:25.860" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T13:49:25.860" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17265" CreationDate="2014-05-01T13:47:32.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question is whether you even have the option of working on both degrees at once.  I'd assume you don't, since positions with full funding are generally based on an assumption that you will be devoting full effort to them.  They may formally rule out other employment/studies, and even if they don't the department may become upset or feel tricked if they discover you are also doing something else at the same time.  (And departments can sometimes react similarly even if the position has no funding: even if you are paying your own living expenses, they probably consider themselves to be at least partially subsidizing the costs of your education.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you shouldn't try to do both degrees at once unless both departments officially agree to it.  Even in that case, I think it's a bad idea.  Success in graduate school is based on quality, not quantity, and this approach can't be good for quality.  You'll be writing your thesis remotely, with far less contact and advising than you would have had in person.  That alone will make it harder to do your best work, but at the same time you'll also be participating in a different full-time program.  You might not be able to do good work for both at once; if you can, then you ought to be able to do great work if you focus on just one (and doing great work at one program is much better than doing good work at two).  The same reasoning applies no matter how talented and hard-working you are: if you can do great work in both programs at once, then you ought to be able to do amazing work by focusing on one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having two MSc degrees might be a small negative, by making you look unfocused, but it probably won't make much of a difference either way.  Ultimately, you'll be evaluated by your academic achievements (papers, thesis, outstanding performance in courses), judged primarily by quality rather than quantity, so you should try to maximize these achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T13:47:32.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2014-05-01T14:28:02.313" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my institution (in the U.S.A.), you are  considered a PhD student until you pass your qualifying exams. After passing, you are considered a PhD candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The qualifying exam is usually taken around 2 years in the program, or after you have completed any required or recommended coursework. It consists of a written exam, which can be one or more questions from each of your committee members. The written exam at my institution is left up to the committee members discretion (the major adviser in reality), it can be open or closed book, very detailed, or more theoretical, 24 hour time period or maybe 1 month, even proctored by the committee member. The oral examination can also be anything. Committee members can ask very detailed questions or more theoretical questions. Preparing for the oral exam can be difficult, especially if you have members from other departments and backgrounds. For example, I have a Soil Scientist, Biologist, Fire Ecologist, Landscape Modeler, and Remote Sensing Specialist on my committee. They all asked very different question specific to their fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three of my written exams consisted of about 8 questions and I was given 8 hours to complete. It was open book and not proctored. I took the exam from home. One exam was 12 questions and I was given a month (yes I sweated for a month!). They all asked very broad questions for the written exam to figure out which areas I had a solid understanding in, and which areas I needed improvement. The oral exam was basically 4 PhD's questioning (read interrogating!) me. They started with a few easy questions, but then asked more difficult questions from the areas I was not as knowledgeable in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T14:56:06.387" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T14:56:06.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20026" CreationDate="2014-05-01T15:41:42.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A co-supervisor must be useful. It is not fair to take a role of &quot;useless supervisor&quot; who can later be added as a co-author with relatively little input to the published works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course depends somewhat on the status of the co-supervisor. Some professors already do not spend much time on experimental research, focusing on lectures or department-level supervision instead. In such case the department may have several intermediate supervisors, each having small own research group. In such case, without co-supervisor, you stay alone and may not even be able to get equipment and reagents you need for work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However situation when some freshly baked post-doc starts &quot;teaching&quot; a good PhD student without use is also common. The goals may be to get into co-authors or even to take over the promising research topic. Sometimes such co-supervisor may be even obviously less competent than his student, so why to piggy-back him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case a co-supervisor is not useful, talk to professor and ask to remove co-supervisor out of your head. Simply say you do not think you benefit from additional supervision, explaining that the problems you are supposed to solve with ones help you can solve no worse or maybe even better yourself. Some cases / examples would be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T06:33:59.927" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T06:33:59.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20099" CreationDate="2014-05-01T15:44:07.473" Score="59" ViewCount="5626" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted the paper to a respectable journal about five months ago. My field is mathematics, and I'm at the postdoc stage of my career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proof of one of my theorems is more or less completely wrong. It's not just full of small errors; the approach I use doesn't and can't work. The theorem is actually true, and I have a correct proof now. (I've checked the new proof with senior colleagues--yes, I should have done this before submitting the previous version of the paper, but that's neither here nor there.) For context, this is one of three main results of the paper, but its proof only takes up about two manuscript pages (out of 18 total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I send a corrected version of the paper to the editor, or should I wait for the referee report? For those with experience serving as editors: would an incorrect but correctable proof of a main theorem cause you to reject outright a paper you would otherwise accept, or is this more likely to lead to a recommendation of major revisions? I say correctable because neither the theorem nor the (correct) proof is particularly surprising in the context of the problem, and there's a good chance a referee with experience in the subfield would, upon discovering the mistake, have a rough idea of the correct approach to take. (Which, of course, makes the mistake all the more embarrassing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T01:21:57.937" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T01:21:57.937" Title="I found a nontrivial mistake in my currently-under-review paper. Should I send a correction to the editor?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20098" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:03:05.220" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the mistake is important, you should send a correction now, rather than waiting for the referee report.  (If it's not important in the context of the overall paper, then the right course of action is more debatable, but in your case it sounds like an important enough mistake to require notifying the referee.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you wait, you are wasting the referee's time figuring out something you already know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think it looks better to catch your own mistake than to have it pointed out by the referee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the referee doesn't notice the mistake and suggests accepting the paper, I imagine the editor will rescind the acceptance after you point out the mistake, or at least suggest further refereeing (since not noticing a completely wrong proof calls into question the reliability of the referee report).  On the other hand, if you point it out, the referee may still recommend accepting the revised manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For context, this is one of three main results of the paper, but its proof only takes up about two manuscript pages (out of 18 total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an ideal case for pointing out the mistake: it has real importance, but I'd bet the chances of acceptance remain reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T16:03:05.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20089" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:17:29.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to take a look at PLOS ONE. See their description of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/static/information&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Publication Charges&lt;/a&gt;. The journal has a good reputation, publishes research in all discliplines, has a reduced or waived fee for authors from low income countries, and a separate fee waiver program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T16:17:29.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:40:43.610" Score="4" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;My case is the following, I have already got a MSc in Computer Science, but my field of specialization was Theoretical Computer Science. Actually I am really interested in the field of Machine Learning, but unfortunately I did not follow any course about that topic in my previous master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first sight, I was thinking to follow a PhD that has some relation to Machine Learning; so in that case I should really follow some Machine Learning courses by my own. I have just put this thought for a while, mainly because I have not been so lucky in my last PhD applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I was wondering if I should follow another Master's degree in Machine Learning; and maybe because I have already got my other MSc, the time for completing this new MSc would be only one year instead of the two years that is the common duration of these studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I was thinking that maybe I could take some single courses, for example some online courses, even though I am not really a fan of MOOC courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it would be the best course of action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow another MSc degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow some online courses in this topic? if that is so, which university offers them that the certification is recognized?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updated info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About my goals are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need of learn machine learning topics for academic purposes: teaching undergraduates and independent research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some good PhD positions in which I am interested require that knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T18:40:34.947" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T16:20:09.340" Title="another master's degree or just single courses?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20122" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:51:41.083" Score="7" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received a Call for Presentations for a conference and I have a topic that could be interesting to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Call for Presentations describe the various forms of presentations that one can submit, and then links to a form asking for a title, presenter name(s) and an abstract. This has a deadline around two months before the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to my questions: As I mentioned, I have a topic in mind, but unless my presentation is accepted, I would prefer not spending a lot of time preparing a good presentation of this (technical) subject. Will the decision about whether to accept the presentation be done solely on the grounds of the submitted abstract or will they be in touch before accepting the presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a computer science conference, in case that's germane.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T12:12:16.707" Title="How to submit a talk to a conference – Starting with replying to a Call for Presentations" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20102" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:22:38.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how close you research topic/presentation is to the conference topic. I've never had an abstract turned down, but I present in sessions with topics relevant to my research. Most conferences wan't people to come and present, in general. Worst case scenario, it get's turned down. You will have a head start on the next abstract submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T17:28:00.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T17:28:00.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20102" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:25:34.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually decisions on accepting a presentation are made solely on the basis of content. This is actually somewhat unfortunate, because there's no way to eliminate researchers who give horrible talks :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T17:25:34.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T08:14:57.367" Score="17" ViewCount="1512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a first year PhD student at a respectable but not top-ranked math program. I'm also confident that I am among the top three first year students in my program. As an undergrad I went to a somewhat prestigious liberal arts school and was valedictorian of my graduating class. I did a little bit of research and took a fair number of upper level classes (although no grad courses) along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In hindsight I can see where the problems lay with my application. As the title of this post suggests, I got a mediocre score on the math GRE. In addition to this, I was kind of a late bloomer as a mathematics student. I didn't start taking many upper level courses until my junior year. The people who wrote my recommendations were not necessarily all that famous either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I got into all the programs that I thought I had a good chance of getting into but none of the programs that I thought would be more of a stretch. The one I'm currently attending gave me a good fellowship and I've been doing very well here so far (passing qualifying exams, taking lots of classes and doing well in them). But I honestly feel like I'm not being challenged quite enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, I screwed up on the GRE when I first took it and I want to try to transfer into a top-ranked program now. I've heard plenty of times that top programs will throw out applications with low math GRE scores. But does the same standard hold for grad students applying to transfer? Will programs throw out applications from current grad students if their GRE scores are too low? To be honest I do feel a bit silly thinking about retaking it. Of course, any advice on transferring between programs in general will be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14221" OwnerDisplayName="user14221" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T05:21:37.103" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T05:21:37.103" Title="Retake the math GRE... as a grad student, preparing to transfer?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20109" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:30:55.663" Score="13" ViewCount="943" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing my application for a master degree scholarship, would it help to put the MOOC's I took in the application, I earned five MOOC certificates and expecting another two in the near future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11754" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T13:10:11.357" Title="mentioning MOOC's I took in my scholarship application" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18446" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:32:34.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would personally choose the funded position.  Most of the grad students I knew when I entered didn't graduate with the prof that initially funded them.  Once you enter the program, you'll be able to find an adviser that fits your research interest more closely.  Without any debt, you'll also have more choices at graduation time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T17:32:34.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:38:32.210" Score="7" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having difficulty isolating tenure track positions in applied mathematics at institutions with more emphasis on teaching than research.  I've heard that 'liberal arts colleges' and 'four-year colleges' are the way to go, but it seems difficult to find ones with openings for applied mathematics professors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried mathjobs.org, but there seem to be an overwhelming bias toward research-oriented institutions and I can't seem to isolate the ones with less research focus.  How do I find applied math tenure track positions at four-year / liberal arts colleges with little to no focus on research?  Do they even exist?  Or these institutions prefer pure / unspecific mathematicians for general classes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record: I'm starting a job search for fall 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T07:57:42.723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T07:57:42.723" Title="How do I find applied math tenure track positions at at liberal arts / four-year colleges?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20106" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:41:54.417" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes! Why not? It shows that you go beyond what is required of you, and you have a genuine interest in learning. I always list certificates from MOOCs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T18:41:14.283" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T18:41:14.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20106" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:00:58.540" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I put the MOOCs I've completed in my tenure portfolio as a professor and it actually went over really well. So yeah, go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T18:00:58.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20124" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:02:10.420" Score="5" ViewCount="3499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy. I will take the undergraduate degree this July, and I need to decide whether to continue my studies in Italy or to move to the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2014/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; reports the world ranking for computer science &amp;amp; information systems, and Politecnico di Milano is ranked 48th.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll not be able to afford an university with high tuitions like MIT (let's say 15,000 $ per year maximum), also since I may have not the prerequisites to join high selective universities, if I move to the USA I'd choose a university that is ranked below or almost as Politecnico di Milano. So the indecision: it is still worth to move to the USA? Do you think that the rankings are reliable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14586" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T10:51:20.163" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T07:18:03.403" Title="How reliable are QS Top Universities rankings?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20111" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:10:10.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The linked QS world university rankings are a well respected international ranking. That said, using a university's rank is a really terrible way to chose a grad school. Some of the factors which drive the rankings are important for choosing a grad school, but don't just rely on the rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T18:10:10.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:10:48.540" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I'm a professor at a mid-sized regional university, non-research oriented, but taught for 14 years at small liberal arts colleges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounded in the question like you have only just begun the job search process. I'll assume this is the case in my answer. With that assumption there could be a few things in play here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much all small colleges have closed their searches for Fall 2014 by this point. There may be a few exceptions, but for the most part small colleges tend to adhere to the usual ebb and flow of the hiring process -- advertise in mid- to late summer, initial screening and phone interviews in the fall, initial interviews at the Joint Meetings in January, on-campus interviews in February, hiring decision in March. Unlike research universities where sudden influxes of grant money or sudden faculty turnover is more common, smaller schools deviate less from the basic pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you are looking for a position for Fall 2015 and are early, most of these places won't have advertised yet. Check back in July. I know for a fact that MathJobs.org does get ads from smaller schools so it's not that you're looking in the wrong place. Also look at the EIMS, the Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing a search with the term &quot;applied&quot; it, take it out and see what happens. At smaller or non-research oriented schools, you'll see only ads for mathematicians, not &quot;applied mathematicians&quot; or &quot;pure mathematicians&quot;. (There are exceptions.) In such places, like where I am, its expected that people will be generalists. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T18:10:48.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20049" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:30:56.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just done 15 minutes of moderately focused research, and found nothing.&#xA;It looks like in most exit surveys students claim to have dropped because of family or work conflicts, which may be true but is not the acute reason for the drop for your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search for &quot;drop and retake&quot; finds dozens of recommendations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1q28kq/i_have_until_midnight_to_drop_stat/&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt; for pre-med and other highly grade-motivated students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm rather intrigued, actually. If these students could be motivated to stay and get the grade, it would save the state a lot of money. And if they couldn't drop after Week 2, they might work much harder much earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense a possible research project...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T18:30:56.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2014-05-01T19:32:58.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given both of those stated goals, I would not pursue additional coursework to learn the material. Your current masters degree is likely good enough for either teaching or getting into a machine learning PhD program, and no degree is necessary for independent research. I would recommend that you use &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19187/should-i-take-every-math-course-in-order-to-do-good-research/19189#19189&quot;&gt;other resources&lt;/a&gt; to learn the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Given that the question in the above link was deleted, I'm reproducing it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many ways to learn new topics. Taking a university-level&#xA;  course is only one option. Other alternatives are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;read textbooks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;online video tutorials (Khan academy, youtube)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;online pre-recorded lectures (e.g., iTunes U, but many, many others exist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;talking to peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;reading publications (for specialized topics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking a non-required university course is usually not the most&#xA;  optimal approach, for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You will spend a lot of time learning material not relevant to your problem, simply because it's part of the syllabus and the teacher&#xA;  found it interesting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The requirement to pass will require you to spend likely (disproportionately too much) time doing homework, studying for tests,&#xA;  etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It is very expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that self-study doesn't require homework, or that&#xA;  learning topics not directly related to your research is a bad thing.&#xA;  I'm simply suggesting that by pursuing more self-directed learning&#xA;  opportunities you will be able to make better use of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T16:20:09.340" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T16:20:09.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:04:04.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting the job really comes down to &quot;what you can do&quot; (and sometimes &quot;who you know&quot;..). Degrees are nice (and necessary), but you're current degree combined with working knowledge of machine learning and a couple of certificates from MOOCs could really go a long way. You would save time and money in my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14808" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:04:04.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:04:23.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaving some of the demonstration in a paper to the reader is definitely cheeky at the very least, and I for one find it quite frustrating if, for instance, I'm reading up on something and really not in the mood to have to work through it all at that point. It may seem lazy, but how fresh are you when you've got to the seventh paper of the evening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd definitely suggest referring to other places if space is at a premium - to my mind, that would be the only reason for omitting something that would be important in the paper (as if it's not important, why would you mention it?) Citations would be my first port of call for this, even if it is to an elementary text book (&quot;... for a more complete treatment of x, see Smith &amp;amp; Jones (2009, pp. 37-41).&quot;), but if there is genuinely nowhere else and not enough space but it needs to be referred to, URLs are also an option. Ideally, there should be a relatively permanent place that you can keep the text, so that someone going to look for it in several years time would still have access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, if it is in a work to be published in a book or journal, I'd recommend speaking to the editorial staff, as they may have existing policies for assessing the necessity of extensive material and placing it accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14809" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:04:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:26:15.607" Score="1" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an HND degree holder and I want to know the chances I have to fund my tuition and my expenses if I apply for a student/working visa from Nigeria and what is the duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14812" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T21:08:55.410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T21:08:55.410" Title="Is it possible for me to apply for a student and working visa to obtain a post-graduate degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20102" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:37:38.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically you will be asked to submit a short abstract (usually 300 words or less), which will be accepted or rejected. If accepted, make your presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another note, you should get accustomed to doing time consuming activities that may or may not have any real benefit in grad school... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14808" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:37:38.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20111" CreationDate="2014-05-01T21:05:06.520" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement, in its given generality, is false. The US, like most places, has very good schools, ok schools, and a reasonable number of pretty bad schools. If you explicitly are looking for very cheap schools, I would not assume that the remaining selection is necessarily any good, just because it is a &quot;school in the states&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;POLIMI is a pretty good school in CS. To be honest, if I had the choice of going either to POLIMI or to a low-ranked US school, I would almost certainly choose POLIMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T21:05:06.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20121" CreationDate="2014-05-01T21:08:18.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_National_Diploma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;higher national diploma (HND)&lt;/a&gt; degree is recognized as the equivalent of the bachelor's degree from a regular university. Consequently, it is unlikely you would be able to use it to gain entry to a master's program in either the US or Canada. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't guarantee this is the way it works in Canada, but at least in the US, most students on visas have limited ability to work outside of the university, and certainly are unlikely to earn enough money to cover tuition as well as living expenses—the wages for typical student employment is on the order of $10/hour, and few students work more than about 20 hours per week. (That's approximately $10,000 per year.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T21:08:18.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20111" CreationDate="2014-05-01T21:12:51.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are planning to pursue PhD studies in computer science, you should in general &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; have to pay tuition yourself—this is covered by either your advisor or the department as a whole (e.g., if you're a teaching assistant). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically, it comes down to a question of whether or not you're able to gain admission to a school that you think is better than the one you are attending in Italy. Equally importantly, if you're looking to start &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; fall (2014), you will almost certainly not be able to do it in the United States, as the admissions &quot;window&quot; for fall of 2014 has already closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T14:22:50.897" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T14:22:50.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20082" CreationDate="2014-05-01T21:21:42.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general - no.  The GRE is similar to the SAT2 (is that still around).  Studying for the GRE isn't fun, but the best way to do it is either to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) purchase several study programs, books and set aside time each day to study them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) pay (usually a few grand) for a GRE prep class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying for the GRE was one of the low points of my life.  Just focus on getting into the school you want&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T21:21:42.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T19:19:13.550" Score="13" ViewCount="30324" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good friend of mine had an interview for a psychology Masters degree. The interviewer asked my friend: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Tell me about yourself&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should one approach such a question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the admission committee expect to hear? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14815" OwnerDisplayName="Ilan" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T10:10:16.890" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T02:05:53.667" Title="How to answer the question &quot;tell me about yourself&quot; in a Masters degree interview?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20679" CreationDate="2014-05-01T22:08:13.337" Score="16" ViewCount="1440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in mathematical physics. Typically, papers in my field are either published either in general math journals (Annals of Math, Transactions of AMS, Proceedings of AMS) or in specialized math physics journals (Communications in Math Physics, Reviews in Mathematical Physics, Annales Henri Poincaré, etc.) Personally, I have had papers published in both types of journals. Yet I don't have a good sense whether a particular preprint should go to a general journal or a specialized journal, so I usually just pick at random. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the factors one thinks about when making a decision between submitting to a specialized journal and a general journal of similar quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11047" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:29:08.140" Title="How to decide between sending paper to a specialized journal or to a journal with broader audience?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20105" CreationDate="2014-05-01T22:18:38.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among elite and maybe even top-20-or-so math grad schools, many use the math subject test GRE as an easy, automated filter... even while recognizing to some degree that it doesn't really test what we'd like... because even after applying that slightly unreasonable filter, there are still enough good candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, if you have a really-mediocre score, there would be advantages in re-taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But/and, as in comments, letters of recommendation are far more important once you've gotten past some initial filtering. The letters should be from people who can be believed to understand what a serious grad program in math is about, e.g., by having gone through one themselves, and they should say that you'll excel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, in contrast to undergrad institutions, there really is no notion of &quot;transferring&quot; to another grad program in math. Nothing gets easier. You will be expected to have excelled in the year you've spent already, which it seems you have. You'd not get to really compete directly with people with fresh B.S. degrees, since, in effect, &quot;performance/showing-potential&quot; is prorated on what chances you've had, how much time you've had, to demonstrate it. This is reasonable, in many regards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: yes, re-take the GRE, to overcome initial filters. After that, it's about letters of recommendation, and (for me) your personal statement. That is, explaining that you got a late start (which can easily happen to sensible people) can account for some things. True, some admissions committee people might be looking for people who've &quot;always known&quot; that they wanted to do mathematics, but that can't be helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T22:18:38.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T23:21:15.043" Score="27" ViewCount="1495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was speaking with several professors in my department about submission to high-profile conferences like CHI in human-computer interaction. Most of the professors were of the opinion that acceptance in most of these high-profile conferences (typical acceptance rate of less than 20%) is heavily influenced by politics: even though you may have comparatively good research, the editors will most likely be more favored toward accepting papers published by Microsoft Research or Google Research or from other high-profile universities where they have close relationship with the faculty and researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professors advised me against spending time and resources on publishing to these conferences and instead concentrate on second-tier journals (like those published by Springer) for better return on investment for my efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume in good faith that most of the editors may not reject papers without reading them, but does anybody concur with the opinion of professors at my department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T14:00:37.037" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T12:59:39.827" Title="How much is submission acceptance to high-profile conferences influenced by internal politics?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2014-05-02T00:00:38.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would pick the journal with the largest audience that you feel is likely to actually read your work. That is probably the generalist journal, but not necessarily. If you have a specialist journal that all of the people in your field read, your work might get more attention that way. But generally, more general journals have larger audiences, therefore, more people who might be interested in your work, and hence also a higher selectivity rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T00:00:38.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-02T03:28:32.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this is not the popular opinion, but I have to agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20085/56207&quot;&gt;Dave Clarke&lt;/a&gt; in that I do not find the phrase in the least offensive. Even in the absence of such a phrase, many papers in mathematics have terse proofs in which a lot of detail is missing, providing ample exercise in filling in the details. I don't think this is a bad thing as it forces the reader to actively engage the material (still the best way to learn it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a story, doubtless embellished over the years, about G. H. Hardy saying in the middle of a lecture &amp;quot;It is clear that ... ,&amp;quot; and then pausing. He went over to a corner of the board, worked for a time, and then continued with &amp;quot;Yes, it is clear ... .&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I would still prefer to see something such as &amp;quot;The proof is a routine computation,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;The proof is straightforward.&amp;quot; Nonetheless, we should not be too quick to protest an author's choice of language in these situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastEditorUserId="56207" LastEditDate="2020-08-30T01:46:58.403" LastActivityDate="2020-08-30T01:46:58.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20133" CreationDate="2014-05-02T06:37:39.203" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is an often-heard prejudice in CS that many of the top conferences are relatively closed &quot;boys clubs&quot;. Indeed, if one just looks over accepted papers for multiple years, one typically ends up seeing the same affiliations over and over again, strengthening this impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this could be due to a number of (good or bad) reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers from professors / labs that are well-known in the field may simply be of much higher technical quality, making it quite natural that they also get accepted much more often.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professors / labs that are well-known in the field generally know &lt;em&gt;how to write papers for this specific conference&lt;/em&gt;. They know what the TPC values, and how to present their results in a way that is appreciated in the field. As these professors are typically in the TPC themselves, they know what kind of papers usually get accepted and which are rejected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professors / labs that are well-known in the field often have a better grasp on the existing state of the art in the field, making it easier for them to identify what is good and novel. In my experience, &quot;outsiders&quot; have a tendency to overestimate the novelty of their contributions significantly. Further, well-known labs know what problems are currently en vogue in the community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is of course also perceivable that papers from well-known professors / labs are just not judged as critically. For instance, a reader may very well think that a paper is not applying a given technique correctly, but as the paper comes from the group that &lt;em&gt;invented&lt;/em&gt; this technique, he gives them the benefit of doubt and assumes that they will know the technique better than him. He would probably not extend the same favorable thinking to an outsider.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, for some topics, it is just easier for some labs to do good research than others. A common example are the web search tracks at the WWW conference. These tracks typically require the validation of new algorithms on real data, to which mostly only industry labs from Yahoo! etc. and their close collaborators have access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that none of these reasons is really &lt;em&gt;politics&lt;/em&gt;. Indeed, I would argue that all of the reasons above are significantly more likely than a paper getting rejected for the reasons you cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I assume in good faith that most of the editors may not reject papers without reading them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, at a top conference such as CHI, you can rely on your paper at least getting reviewed thoroughly, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but does anybody concur with opinion of professors at my department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, given all the reasons above, it is indeed quite likely that your paper will be rejected. By definition, if a conference has a &amp;lt;20% acceptance rate, rejection is always a real possibility (clearly, it happens to most submissions). However, I am wondering why it would be better to not even try if you think your work is good enough for CHI. If the paper gets rejected there, you can still re-submit to a lower-tier venue, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you receive a number of hopefully helpful reviews. The only disadvantage I see is that it prolongs the publication process by half a year, but if you see &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; chance of the paper begin accepted at the top-tier venue, I think this should be worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T13:53:17.467" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:53:17.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2014-05-02T06:44:16.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities like ETH in Zurich (Switzerland) offer the &quot;Master of Advanced Studies&quot; degree for the undergraduates that have finished a given minimal number of additional courses with success, only one or two of them mandatory (assigned by a mentor). This would give the wanted additional expertise over shorter time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the whole master degree second time is a huge effort that may not be worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T06:44:16.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20140" CreationDate="2014-05-02T07:03:58.363" Score="31" ViewCount="9752" Body="&lt;p&gt;By this, I do not mean I did not obtain significant research results. My supervisor has told me to finish up a draft of paper for submission, I wrote it, then after few months, he told me to correct some parts and did more experiments on certain area, I followed all his instructions and wrote a second draft to him. And until now, it is already one year after sending my draft to him, and still I have no idea when he will publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, this not only happens to me, it happens to all the members in my research group. The average time my supervisor publishes our results is about 2-3 years after we have finished all the required experiments. The results just become idle. I would like to ask, if this is a common phenomenon (and the possible reasons behind it), if not, what I (and my colleagues) can do about it? You know as a research student, having publication is very important, it is really frustrating.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastActivityDate="2018-09-30T12:48:57.823" Title="What can I do if my supervisor does not publish my research results?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2014-05-02T07:23:28.367" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a strange situation, since it is very counterproductive for both you &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your supervisor. If this is indeed common in your group, I am sure several ideas have been scooped by the time they finally get submitted. Unfortunately, I really don't have any decent idea why your supervisor would act this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to do is to &lt;strong&gt;talk to your supervisor and don't let him/her dismiss the issue&lt;/strong&gt;. This may seem like an aggressive approach, but you can disguise it as a learning experience, e.g. &quot;&lt;em&gt;Please tell me what is wrong with the current manuscript because I believe it is ready for submission, oh wise one&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Whatever you do, remain polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few approaches you can try (all of which are reasonable, so don't be shy):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send reminders and send them often. Ask what you can do to improve the manuscript. If your supervisor has no further suggestions to change the manuscript, ask where you can submit it to directly. Don't wait for him/her to wake up. This approach may lead to your supervisor turning it into a ping-pong match, asking you to make trivial but time-consuming extensions again and again. In this case, confront your supervisor and explain your perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can find an appropriate call for papers, ask permission to send the manuscript there. Calls typically have deadlines and are not necessarily a downgrade in terms of venue quality. This includes conferences and journal special issues. Having a hard deadline might help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T07:23:28.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2014-05-02T09:11:22.557" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish writing the paper yourself. Send your supervisor a final draft, inviting him to submit his comments on the paper and suggest some changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisor does not wish to collaborate on the submission, it's  possible he will be OK with you finishing and submitting the paper yourself, perhaps as the sole author. Make sure to acknowledge his capacity as your supervisor at the end of the paper, if he is not included as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it's your data, and you wrote the paper, you have every right to&#xA;  publish it by yourself as long as you offer your supervisor the chance to collaborate or object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best-case scenario? Your own paper gets published, or your supervisor gets jolted back to reality and collaborates with you on finishing the paper together. Worst case scenario? Your paper gets rejected (don't fret, that can happen often!), so you have to head back to your supervisor or Academia.SE for advice on re-submitting it or choosing another journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T11:43:43.363" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:43:43.363" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20145" CreationDate="2014-05-02T11:10:56.390" Score="23" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read many questions on this site that relate to Journal impact factors, for example, in relation to how that may affect where to publish etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering is there an independent oversight body that regulates the area of impact factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking along the lines of something like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Organization for Standardization&lt;/a&gt; that regulates the ISO standards across the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically is there an independent body (either commercial or not for profit) that sets the standards for impact factors and audits them so as that one impact factor can be compared with another with the knowledge that they are calculated in the same way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T14:15:30.177" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T14:15:30.177" Title="Is there an independent oversight body of Journal Impact Factors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20144" CreationDate="2014-05-02T11:14:55.997" Score="35" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic publishing is not regulated by any oversight body.  There is not even a universal standard for what constitutes a &lt;em&gt;publication&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:14:55.997" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20160" CreationDate="2014-05-02T11:57:27.460" Score="4" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to use/find the correct term for the &lt;em&gt;practice of publishing research results in academia&lt;/em&gt;, mainly a reference to the practice of publishing research findings in a formal journal or conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term has to have a clear contrast to the practice of &lt;em&gt;publishing full data-sets of research results (ex: in a repository)&lt;/em&gt;, but which is also a sub-form of &quot;publishing of research results&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started my work by using the term &quot;Scholarly Communication&quot; which was somehow influenced by one of my mentors. Although I was happy on the initial suggestion, I am finding myself not so keen on the use of it, as it seems cheaper in contrast to for example: &lt;em&gt;Academic Publishing&lt;/em&gt; which seems broader to include more research ventures (done also by non-scholars, but still viable for academic recognition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems with the term &lt;em&gt;Academic Publishing&lt;/em&gt; are two for my perspective. 1) I have not been able to find a strong definition of it, and 2) it is so broad that can include the &quot;publishing of research data-sets&quot; which I need to reference separately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would appreciate a discussion for a creative term which coins the academic publishing as it has been referenced traditionally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 1: Considering also &lt;em&gt;Academic Literature&lt;/em&gt; referenced in a comment below by darthbith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T21:29:39.400" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T01:16:51.773" Title="Correct term to address the &quot;academic publications&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:49:13.520" Score="8" ViewCount="1287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using some online proofreader tools for checking for grammar issues in my writing, but I have found that the solutions they give are not so good at all.&#xA;For that reason I would like to know any human-proofreader service that somebody could recommend me. Some of the characteristics of the service that I am requiring are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not so expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confidentiality, I do not want my article to end up published by somebody else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reliable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody has experience with those services and could recommend me one? I need to review an article asap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T11:22:42.673" Title="recommended and reliable proofreading services" Tags="&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20153" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:56:10.727" Score="30" ViewCount="9575" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals bundle relevant papers on a currently hot topic into special issues. As far as I know, potential manuscripts must be specifically submitted for inclusion in special issues rather than the journal itself (or get selected from conference proceedings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field, special issues tend to have shorter review periods which makes them interesting venues. I have heard that special issues tend to have lower impact than regular journal issues, though I am not sure if this is factual. Do special issues usually meet the same standards as regular issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any difference in prestige in publishing in special issues vis-à-vis publishing in regular issues? Do hiring committees make meaningful distinctions between both types?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:57:48.063" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T11:25:15.637" Title="Prestige of publishing in special vs regular journal issue" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20133" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:59:48.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with almost everything xLeitix wrote, except the conclusion.  One thing that was not addressed is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your professors told you not to submit to CHI.  It's possible that they're giving their honest opinions, or that they themselves had a bad record submitting there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's also possible that they are telling you that your work is not good enough for CHI, but in a gentle manner.  Also, they are familiar with where you are in your career track and may believe that losing time and effort on a failed CHI attempt is not good for you.  Both of these require perspective that you cannot have on yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, I would suggest that you take the advice you were given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T13:59:48.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20155" CreationDate="2014-05-02T14:49:58.637" Score="12" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a professor goes on unpaid leave from her university, can she normally continue to use her grants to fund graduate students and postdocs?  Or, do all grants &quot;freeze&quot; until the professor returns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T01:24:25.040" Title="Using grants while on unpaid leave" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20148" CreationDate="2014-05-02T15:23:41.727" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not been a journal editor.  But I have dealt with many journal editors, and in my experience the kind of thing they are &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; concerned about is maintaining and elevating their journal's standards at all times.  So I have to imagine that when they put together a special issue, they take pains to ensure that this does not result in any measurable lowering of their journal's standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my branch of mathematics, special issues are not that common but not unheard of either.  I have never noticed any difference in the quality of the papers published in these special issues.  Also in my experience people may not even list on their CV that the publication has appeared in a &quot;special issue&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have on the other hand been on many hiring committees, and I have not heard a thing about this.  Again though in my field this sort of publication is relatively uncommon and it may even escape our notice.  I suppose that if a candidate had ten publications and they were &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; in &quot;special issues&quot; that might be curious.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, in my neck of the woods there is nothing to worry about here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T17:01:30.967" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T17:01:30.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20148" CreationDate="2014-05-02T15:30:06.633" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my part of CS, where like other fields of CS the conference publication is the primary delivery mechanism, a journal special issue is viewed as prestigious and is highlighted in CVs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically a set of papers is accepted for publication and presentation at a conference. This conference is usually associated with a specific journal. Editors from that journal prowl the conference checking out the papers and presentations, After the conference is done they will then send out invites to selected authors inviting their paper for publication in a special issue of the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is considered prestigious because it's viewed as a 'cream of the crop' selection. It's also easy for authors because special issues normally have expedited refereeing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T15:30:06.633" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2014-05-02T15:42:35.137" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason that a professor wouldn't be able to continue to use grants while on leave.  In fact, I'm on unpaid leave from my home institution right now, and have been able to use my grants (for travel support for myself), so that's one data point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T15:42:35.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2014-05-02T15:51:14.893" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;yes&quot;.  For instance, I was on unpaid leave this academic year, and used my grant to support a graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T15:51:14.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20133" CreationDate="2014-05-02T16:26:17.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politic is everywhere, of course, especially in situations where the resource giving out to people is limited. Bear in mind, taking a look at the program committee before submitting! And please don't stick to one conference! Even some well-known professors get rejection at some conferences, let alone others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T16:26:17.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20148" CreationDate="2014-05-02T16:43:45.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own experience of special issues in Computer Science journals is that they are typically considered the same as regular issues. There are two types of special issues: one is (as Suresh notes) invited extended versions of the best papers from a conference. Another is just based on open calls for guest editors to propose special issues. Indexing services do not typically note that the paper was part of a special issue. I have not highlighted special issues in my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the review process is expedited depends on the guest editors. From my own sample set of journal papers, the fastest turnaround for reviews was on a special issue (three months for acceptance after one minor revision, six months to publication). However the slowest was likewise a special issue (eighteen months for acceptance after one major revision, over two years until publication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk with a special issue (timewise) is that all the papers of the special issue have to be accepted so as to be published on slices of the same dead tree. So one paper that lags behind will slow down the rest of the papers from being finally published and indexed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of acceptance rates, again it can be risky. If your paper is on topic for a special issue that does not receive many other submissions, your chances of acceptance may be slightly higher since the guest editors will be anxious to fill out the special issue. Likewise if your paper was solicited (e.g., from a conference) it would stand to reason that you would have better chances since the editors have already expressed interest in publishing the paper. On the other hand, the space for a special issue is more rigidly bounded than the more elastic regular call (which spans multiple issues). Hence if you submit an unsolicited paper to a special issue that receives lots of other submissions, the special issue could be a lot more competitive than the regular issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T16:43:45.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20163" CreationDate="2014-05-02T16:51:55.877" Score="6" ViewCount="2498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to apply for a Master program in U.S. as I am about to graduate in Bachelor of Engineering. Though I heard that all my grades during all my academic life is taken into consideration (GPA). Here in Brazil is very common to have a huge gap between universities both in teaching level and avaliation process. So, holding a degree from a weak college may be much easier and thus helping you to get a higher GPA while a well-known college will be much more difficult and probably your grades will be lower. Even though you have a degree from the very best college and you do have a good knowledge of most subjects, the GPA from the person who came from the weak college may be higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also extends to the outside world (comparison between GPA's from different countries). So, how is it really done in practice? Do I still hold a reasonable chance of getting into a nice college with not a so high GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14731" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T16:47:27.803" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T18:40:39.293" Title="How are GPAs from different universities evaluated for admissions to MS programs in the USA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20146" CreationDate="2014-05-02T16:52:02.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest &quot;(modifier) dissemination&quot; with (modifier) used to make things more specific.  Usually I find the phrase &quot;dissemination of (noun)&quot;, and it often refers to a formal release of information, where some semblance of validation of (noun) has occurred.  You might find &quot;result dissemination&quot;, &quot;data dissemination&quot;, &quot;report dissemination&quot; useful.  Of course, I'm already getting tired of seeing the word &quot;dissemination&quot; used many times in the same paragraph.  I also suggest some synonyms to alleviate developing madness in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T16:52:02.407" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-02T16:52:02.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20144" CreationDate="2014-05-02T17:09:50.140" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's multiple questions contained within your question that have different answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there independent oversight of Journal Impact Factors?&#xA;  ...&#xA;  Now I am wondering is there a oversight body that regulates the area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on what you mean by &quot;independent&quot;.&#xA;If you mean an official unbiased centralised not-for-profit professional organisation, then the best answer is probably &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically is there a body that sets the standards for impact factors and audits them so as that one impact factor can be compared with another with the knowledge that they are calculated in the same way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this part is definitively &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. The notion of an impact factor (&amp;lt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor&quot;&gt;a recognised term of art&lt;/a&gt;) was invented by the founder of the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Scientific_Information&quot;&gt;Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, Eugene Garfield. The impact factor of journals has been computed by ISI since 1975 using a prescribed methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of comparability, the impact factor is specifically the average number of citations per publication in the journal, over a fixed time span (the two years previous, or five years for 5 year impact). Citations are collected from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so if you are a journal editor and you wish to have an impact factor, you need to apply to ISI (now owned by Thompson Reuters). They oversee the computation of the official Impact Factor metrics in common use today, as publicised on various journal websites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Thompson Reuters (through ISI) &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the concept of Impact Factor for journals and copyright said metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for sure there is a body &quot;&lt;em&gt;that sets the standards for impact factors and audits them so as that one impact factor can be compared with another with the knowledge that they are calculated in the same way&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. But I would hesitate to call Thompson ISI an &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is not intended to promote the idea of an Impact Factor, but merely to indicate its oversight, regulation and history as per the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T17:09:50.140" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20147" CreationDate="2014-05-02T17:31:30.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried getting the proofreading done within your own university?  This is not made explicit in your question, but my guess is that you are not a native speaker of English and you are writing in English.  If you are attending an anglophone university there will probably be places where you can just show up and get help on proofreading your paper (the humanities version of drop-in tutoring).  So I'm assuming that you are not attending an anglophone university.  But at (almost?) any university there should be faculty and students who are working on English writing specifically. Can you find a student who is willing to help you?  Perhaps you may even be able to offer some other academic service to the student in exchange.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T17:31:30.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20159" CreationDate="2014-05-02T17:32:14.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have the same phenomenon in America, of course. All other things being equal, a 3.5 GPA from Princeton is much more impressive than a 4.0 from some random state university. The whole idea of GRE scores is to provide a metric that isn't confounded by the difficulty of different programs at different colleges in these ways. An additional difficulty you face is that  your American evaluators won't know how good or bad your university is. This makes your GRE score doubly important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorDisplayName="user10636" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T16:44:51.260" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T16:44:51.260" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20147" CreationDate="2014-05-02T17:55:27.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally not worth to use a paid commercial proofreading service, as a typical translator (unless clearly specialized in this area) does not know the necessary scientific style and terminology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once my laboratory relied on fully translating the article into English by the paid translations service, assuming, professionals do better. The received comment from the editor sounded &quot;do not write English text yourself, ask somebody to do this for you&quot;. Wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to grammar when reading articles and try follow the style. Most likely, nothing can do much better than you yourself. Also, the idea to ask the English department of your university seems very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T17:55:27.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21848" CreationDate="2014-05-02T17:58:35.373" Score="1" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it ever occur, historically, that a PhD student could not obtain his degree from a university due to the high costs of publishing his thesis, such that he would have to publish it at another university and get his degree there instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T02:14:23.933" Title="Publishing PhD thesis at another university due to not being able to afford high publishing costs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5358" CreationDate="2014-05-02T18:01:03.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not talk, turn around and start working on computer or the like. Respond immediately if the supervisor changes the topic. This is normally enough. Never start a talk of this kind yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:01:03.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19997" CreationDate="2014-05-02T18:26:28.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we forget that professors also experience a range feelings such as happiness, anxiety, sadness, frustration, etc. The fact that he runs late and is unprepared is not acceptable behavior for a professor. However, I/you can't judge him because we don't know what is happening to him personally or professionally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors are under a great deal from their supervisors, the school, and even the students. There is a possibility his job is in jeopardy &amp;amp; so he may be spending the time searching, rather than preparing. He may be up for a promotion, award or maybe he needs to submit the last chapter of his book that he's struggling to write. Obviously, these are all speculations but my point is it may not be &quot;problems at home&quot; that are stressing him out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your relationship with this professor is close, then asking if he is ok, face-to-face only, would be acceptable. The key is express your concern and not make him feel like you're judging him. Let him share what he wants to. If you feel you can, you may offer to help him. It will be his decision whether or not he accepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From my personal experience:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a very good professor my freshman year, who felt comfortable confiding in me about his professional, &amp;amp; when I graduated his personal challenges. During this time, we have built a friendship of 15+ years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7198" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:26:28.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-02T20:36:49.360" Score="3" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there anything like a directory or list of notable leading living figures based on subject area or research concentration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9429" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T10:47:57.557" Title="Notable academics or departments ranking list?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20180" CreationDate="2014-05-02T20:44:29.547" Score="12" ViewCount="3889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that new arXiv papers usually appear in Google Scholar within a few days or weeks. My question is: if someone submits a replacement of his/her arXiv paper, does the new version of the paper also appear in Google Scholar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13744" LastEditorUserId="13744" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T23:31:30.200" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T23:33:16.557" Title="Do all versions of an arXiv paper appear in Google Scholar?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;databases&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-02T20:58:09.210" Score="3" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I modify my CV to emphasize certain traits before including it in my application for a master's degree or just include my usual professional CV? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11754" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T17:56:02.063" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:00:01.240" Title="Should I emphasize certain traits in my CV for master's application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20174" CreationDate="2014-05-02T21:00:31.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An academic CV typically contains items you wouldn't want to list in a professional resume, such as a complete publishing history. Your resume may list as a bullet point that you are published, but they don't want 20 pages listing each publication, for instance. So, yes, your academic CV should be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T21:00:31.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2014-05-02T21:23:54.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment, OP added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course we have talked to our supervisor, he just said 'ok, I will look and see if anything to add', after few weeks we asked again, and he again said 'I will look into it'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to understand why your supervisor behaves likes this. Some hypotheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor prefers to spent time on some other work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor has to focus on some other work for external reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor prefers to spent time working with someone else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor finds the paper boring and avoids working on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor is a perfectionist and wants to avoid publishing a non-perfect paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor has bad time-management skills and forgets to look at your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your supervisor doesn't really want to publish this for some reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... many more possibilities ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to understand why your supervisor is behaving like this, in order to react appropriately. For example, if your supervisor has very bad time-management skills and keeps forgetting your paper, it is probably better to ask about this much more often than every few weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options for understanding your supervisor better include just asking him or her about it, or asking someone who successfully collaborated with your supervisor in the past. Maybe some former grad students of your supervisor figured out how to effectively interact with your supervisor and you can learn the trick from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7946" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T21:23:54.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23275" CreationDate="2014-05-02T22:03:55.333" Score="8" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely unrelated to my field (I do not work in languages) but I have written a small piece of software that proof reads my work for grammar and syntax. I'm interested in finding a few documents (ideally from a range of academic disciplines) that I can use to check my proof reading software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11359" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T01:06:10.037" Title="Where might I find a collection of before and after proofread articles?" Tags="&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20171" CreationDate="2014-05-02T22:34:43.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the American Academy of Arts and Sciences might be a good place to start, at least if your focus is primarily on academics in the U.S. Two criticisms of the academy: it tends to be clique-y. Harvard is always going to have the most new fellows every year because they've already got the most fellows. Second, not everybody who deserves to be a member is one. They're really good about not giving memberships to people who &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; deserve them (at least in my field, Philosophy), but there are some people who clearly should be members but aren't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T22:34:43.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2014-05-02T23:33:16.557" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that the way the arxiv works, the default paper identifier goes to the most recent version that's been uploaded. So even if Google Scholar caches an older version, it's using the same URL. Now if you make changes like changing the title and/or material parts of the abstract, then it might take a while for the new title to percolate through the search indices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T23:33:16.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2014-05-03T01:24:25.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the breakdown of the grant. If there are students or staff who were hired to do the proposed work then I don't see any reason why they wouldn't continue being paid if they are continuing to work. The same goes for research related services and products. Sometimes sabbaticals are unpaid, but that doesn't mean that the work stops. Most grants are on a schedule, so PIs need to be making some form of progress on the project (whether or not they are getting paid from it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12532" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T01:24:25.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20183" CreationDate="2014-05-03T02:02:55.757" Score="19" ViewCount="6064" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you have a homework assignment and you're struggling with it. You ask a question about some portion of it on a site like physics.stackexchange or math.SE or stackoverflow.com, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then cite the help you received in your homework, as well as including a link to the post which helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are removing the &quot;dishonesty&quot; part of the equation, is this still considered cheating? Or would a professor just not give you credit for the part which they feel you didn't do on your own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14559" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T03:03:52.803" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T16:54:36.637" Title="Would it be considered cheating to ask for homework help on the internet, if I openly acknowledge the help received?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-03T03:02:44.783" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a great deal on the professor and course in question.  Better to ask first if you plan to do this.  Also, check the syllabus if there is a stated policy regarding help on homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T03:02:44.783" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2014-05-03T05:45:27.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that sometimes simplifying a complex problem requires a complex system - think about the automatic transmission in  a car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a combination of OmniFocus for task and project management, and Evernote for saving resources. There is some overlap between the two, in that OmniFocus tasks can have attachments, but if the usefulness of a resource extends beyond one task, it definitely goes into Evernote. Premium users of Evernote can search within images of documents, which comes in handy when looking for a gas receipt, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love OmniFocus' location-based contexts, so when I drive up to my apartment, a list of tasks I can do there appears on my phone. Other contexts are more mental shifts, say from 'studying' to 'phone'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these tools has given me a trusted system in which to dump all the minutiae that was clogging my brain - one of the tenets of Getting Things Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T05:45:27.170" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-03T06:17:34.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As vadim123 says, it depends on the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have done in the past (when outside help was not expressly forbidden) was write that I obtained help from someone on the internet or the tutoring center because I was stuck. Then I would go to great lengths to explain the concept in such a way that the professor could see that I had gained mastery of the concept, and I put some work into the problem. Sometimes I would do additional problems too. Other times I would turn in problems I had worked several times, never arriving at a reasonable answer, and ask the professor for help. As I recall, I was always given credit for doing the work. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between asking for help and cheating, and I think it comes down to ones motivation. By doing the additional work, it should show that your goal was not to just get an answer to turn in, but to gain understanding of the concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T06:17:34.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20187" CreationDate="2014-05-03T06:50:16.213" Score="32" ViewCount="8179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently completed a manuscript and I want it to submit to the arXiv. But there I find that there is an endorsement requirement. But since I am quite new in this field (and this is my first time wanting to submit to arXiv), I don't know how to find an endorser myself. I have mailed the &lt;em&gt;admin&lt;/em&gt; also but in reply they also told me that &lt;em&gt;searching for an endorser is a responsibility of the author himself&lt;/em&gt;. So, can anyone help me regarding the process as to how to find an endorser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14733" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-03-18T13:33:50.773" LastActivityDate="2018-09-30T01:32:24.497" Title="How to find an arXiv endorser" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20186" CreationDate="2014-05-03T08:05:22.163" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you go to a paper on the arXiv (for example, this one of mine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7357&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7357&lt;/a&gt;), at the bottom, there is a link that reads &quot;Which authors of this paper are endorsers?&quot;  If you click through, you'll see something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ben Webster: Is registered as an author of this paper.&#xA;  Can endorse for math.AG, math.AT, math.CO, math.CT, math.GR, math.GT, math.QA, math.RA, math.RT, math.SG.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which means I can endorse submitters in algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, combinatorics, category theory, group theory, geometric topology, quantum algebra, rings &amp;amp; algebras, representation theory and symplectic geometry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably you know of some papers on the arXiv related to yours, so look at their authors.  If you don't know of any, then maybe you should rethink whether the site is a good fit for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T08:05:22.163" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20190" CreationDate="2014-05-03T09:48:57.313" Score="28" ViewCount="2297" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a paper published recently in a math journal, the main result is presented as being new, but in fact it is not new, and I'm sure that the authors knew this before submitting the paper.  I have informed the journal editor who handled this paper, who told me he would forward my message to the managing editor.  I have not heard anything since then.  What else can (or should) I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I am a tenured professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more detail, there was a previous paper [A] which proved a certain result (1).  The proof given in [A] actually proves a stronger result (2) which has a messy statement, and notes that (2) implies (1) (where (1) has a simple statement).  The main result (3) of the recent paper [B] implies (1), but is implied by (2).  Moreover, the proof in [B] is identical to the proof in [A] (and the authors of [B] say this in their paper), except that the proof in [B] uses a stronger auxiliary result at one step.  So the authors of [B] must have been aware of the stronger result (2) proved in [A], but they do not mention (2) in their paper, and certainly do not mention that their main result follows immediately from (2).  To me, this shows that the authors of [B] published their paper under false pretenses, by intentionally misrepresenting prior work.  In addition, the auxiliary result mentioned above is presented as a new result in [B], even though it has been published several times and also the authors of [B] were fully aware of this fact, since they had written previous papers citing an essentially identical result from a paper [C].  Even beyond this, the paper [C] contains a result which is stronger than (1), (2), or (3), although the authors of [B] do not mention this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people think I am overreacting, I would be happy to hear this.  It's possible that my views of proper academic behavior are not standard ones.  I don't have a fully articulated philosophy about these things, I just feel like the authors did something wrong and should not benefit from doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added later:&lt;/strong&gt; The situation has been resolved.  The journal's editor informed me that, after inspecting the documentation I sent him, he has decided to require the authors to withdraw their paper from the journal.  I don't know the logistics of this, but to me it seems like the appropriate outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14857" LastEditorUserId="14857" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T18:45:13.137" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T18:45:13.137" Title="What to do when I think a published paper displays academic misconduct?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20171" CreationDate="2014-05-03T10:47:57.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another online resource (although last updated in 2008) is the list of ISI highly cited researchers at &lt;a href=&quot;http://highlycited.com/browse/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://highlycited.com/browse/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search returns also this &quot;preliminary&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/InCites-Customer-Forum/Preliminary-publication-of-new-lists-of-Highly-Cited-Researchers/td-p/36685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; from December 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T10:47:57.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20188" CreationDate="2014-05-03T11:12:00.123" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me congratulate you for seeing a publication practice that you suspect is fishy and taking the trouble to inquire about it.  This is something that contemporary academia really needs: we are self-policing, so when we let these things slide it is as though we are sitting back and watching a robbery take place from the comfort of our squad car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my reactions to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You make a very compelling argument that the authors of [B] should have known better than to try to publish their paper.  The details you provided do not yet compel me to believe that the authors did so deliberately or with malicious intent.  Math papers are hard to read: just because you cite one theorem from a paper does not necessarily mean that you are aware of the other theorems in the paper (you &quot;should be&quot;, whatever that means, but that's not the same thing at all) and just because you come across an equivalent version of a theorem does not necessarily mean that you see that it's equivalent.  Rather recently I got sent a draft of a paper that contained three theorems.  They looked interesting, so I read more deeply.  It turned out that two of the three theorems were not new.  How did I find that out?  By reading the papers cited in the bibliography!  But one of the papers was written in a manner where it was a little puzzle to decode every single result (and the author did not shy away from stating more general theorems with more complicated statements; I can't argue with that, but it certainly does make the paper harder to read).  The point of the story is that the people who sent me this paper were not bozos: the third result was very nice, and I have just written a paper with them that builds on it.  Or here is an even more personal example: in my PhD thesis I combined work of Ogg with more recent work (of Ribet and others) in order to determine whether certain Shimura curves had points over Q_p.  I didn't write these results up right away, and when I looked back at them a couple of years later I had to reread the paper of Ogg to refresh myself on what he had done.  I was surprised to see that one of the theorems from my thesis was already proven in Ogg's paper!  My proof was not the same as Ogg's, but neither was it &quot;better&quot; in any clear way.  This may not be that different from what you're describing.  These things do happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Divining the authors' true motivations does not seem to be your job as a self-deputized academic policeman (if it is, you have an awfully hard job).  What matters is that a paper got published that doesn't do anything new and that in fact cites the paper that majorizes it.  That's bad no matter what the authors were thinking...but when you look at it that way, doesn't a lot of the blame rest with the journal's handling of the paper?  It seems like a referee who was a true expert in the literature &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; honest and conscientious enough to track down the citation should certainly have caught this issue and prevented the publication of the paper.  The journal looks bad just as the authors do.  If they are really not being responsive to this, they look even worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems more likely that the journal &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; looking into this but doing so slowly (this involves a lot of delicate conversations, including with the authors of the paper), and in the meantime they are not doing a good job of assuring you that they are actually doing something.  You say that the matter got referred to the managing editor.  If you have waited what you think is a reasonable amount of time and not gotten any further response, by all means take it up directly with the managing editor.  It would be pretty surprising if you didn't get at least an acknowledgment of the issue from him/her within a few days.  If you really hear nothing back, then waiting a week or so and sending a followup email conveying the fact that a total lack of response is only going to make you have to do more yourself to deal with the situation seems in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That &quot;more&quot; would involve talking publicly about the situation: e.g. bringing it up to other mathematicians you know and, depending upon the importance, raising the issue on a site like MathOverflow, putting something about this on your own webpage, writing a letter to the editor to some other journal, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let me say that proper police work here may require giving up your anonymity.  I think you should be willing to do so if it comes to that.  In your comment you say that you are &quot;[s]eriously&quot; worried about getting a mailbomb from the authors.  &lt;strong&gt;Seriously&lt;/strong&gt; seriously?  You think that some ethically questionable mathematicians are likely to commit a violent felony??  I find that hard to believe, but if it's really true you need to contact the actual police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T14:44:40.137" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:44:40.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-03T14:01:13.250" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is acceptable, but you might considering asking your professor first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have cited help from cross validated and stack overflow before with help on modeling in R. I tested my data for heteroskedasticity using a test (Breusch–Pagan)that the professor did not mention in class.I provided a link to the discussion in my assignment. I did not receive negative marks, in fact, he actually &lt;strong&gt;complemented my work&lt;/strong&gt; in front of the class for &quot;going the extra mile&quot; and using alternate resources and finding a test he did not mention in lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most professors want you to learn, it shouldn't matter how. Now if you post you data and someone does all the work for you, that is a different animal.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T14:01:13.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20128" CreationDate="2014-05-03T14:35:33.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should one approach such a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By telling them about yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do the admission committee expect to hear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something about yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relax.  It's not a trick question.  (Or if it is a trick question, you don't want to go there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T14:35:33.937" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-03T14:36:30.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it also depends on how you asked your question online. You should demonstrate in your homework that you have understood the procedure you're outlining as your answer, and then acknowledge that you received help online by providing the link where you asked your question. If I were the professor, I would click the link to see the question. If it were a question along the lines of &quot;Here's a problem. What's the answer?&quot;, then I would give you no credit. If your question clearly showed some effort and understanding, and that you made sure you properly understood the answer(s), I would say it's ok. But most importantly of all (I think), you should admit in your question that you're working on a homework problem. That way people will try to &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you rather than just give you the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T14:36:30.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8140" CreationDate="2014-05-03T14:52:37.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a tracking/ticketing tool, like eg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; to help you organize your tasks and track their progress. This is definitely more involved than a simple to-do list but it's worth the effort many times over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this especially useful when shared with other people (coworkers, students, etc...) and it's seamlessly integrating with subversion systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T14:52:37.307" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-24T16:57:32.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20128" CreationDate="2014-05-03T15:47:58.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this occasion, the interviewers want to know your background and your motivation of further study in this particular subject. They want to give the opportunity to the right person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was once involved in the admission interview (although I didn't have the final say in the decision making). Based on my observation, those who had strong motivation but average GPA won over those with weak motivation and high GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T22:07:06.000" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T22:07:06.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20200" CreationDate="2014-05-03T16:26:30.887" Score="16" ViewCount="2878" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I tried to search in the previous Q/As, but I do not think my case falls in any of the previous entries.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While looking for a certain topic in my field, I found two papers. &#xA;The first paper was authored by authors A, B, C, and D and published in some conference proceedings. The second paper was published in a journal in a year after by authors A, E, D, and C. That is, the second paper lost one author and gained a new author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two papers report the same research hypotheses, the same data collected, the same data analysis, the same results. That is, the &quot;numbers&quot; in the papers are the same (even the table contents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The texts differ in a subtle way. The first paper is entitled &quot;Studying topic T in the domain D&quot;. The second paper is entitled &quot;Using Measurement Instrument M to measure T in the domain D&quot;. The second paper somehow avoids copy/pasting of the paragraphs from the first paper-they rewrote the sentences. It is a little bit longer than the first one. The authors actually spent some more words talking about measurement instrument M, which is taken from another discipline and it takes 3 minutes of Google Scholar searching for learning more about it. There is even a Wikipedia page about the instrument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think&lt;/em&gt; that this is a case of self-plagiarism. The second paper does not add anything useful to the first one. Additionally, &lt;em&gt;the second paper does not cite the first one&lt;/em&gt;. This ringed a bell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that in my field, conferences are archived and are often considered more important than journals. Regardless of which venues are more important, both papers are formally considered publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, am I morally obliged to contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published? This is not precisely a double publication, nor are the authors damaging me nor anybody else. Still, &lt;em&gt;I feel&lt;/em&gt; they did something wrong. Should I instead live and let die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T20:28:25.167" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T20:28:25.167" Title="Am I morally obliged to report what I judge as self-plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2014-05-03T17:29:37.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a grey area in my opinion. Findings were published in proceedings, and then a journal. Technically, they should have cited themselves. If this had been two journal publications of the same work, I would argue you should bring it the editors attention. However, in this case, I'm not so sure..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T18:33:29.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T18:33:29.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2014-05-03T17:32:45.593" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting case that you cite. I think it falls somewhere between 'standard behavior' and 'clear misconduct' (though I am sure others will disagree). Some thoughts and facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Computer Science, even though both journals and conf proceedings count as papers, it is common accepted practice to submit extended versions of proceedings papers to journals. Typically, journals expect between 30% and 50% new content for such papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realistically, many journals (especially ones that are not exactly top quality) are not super-strict with what they consider &quot;additional content&quot;. Describing only their methodology in more detail, without providing new insights or results, is certainly very little new contribution, but I am not sure if that already qualifies as misconduct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That one of the original authors was missing in the journal version is curious, but there &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be reasons for that. Presumably, something a little shady has happened along the lines, but it is impossible to tell from the outside. One realistic possibility is that first author A has submitted the conf paper while at institution (1), with help from B and C. D was the supervisor and contributed little to nothing at all, but was added due to lab policy. Now, before submitting the journal version, A moved to institution (2), and has replaced lab head D with lab head E.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What strikes me as &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; odd is that the journal paper does not make clear that it is an extension of an earlier conference paper by citing it (and saying so explicitly in the introduction). &lt;strong&gt;This is the one thing that I certainly agree has a very bad smell to it&lt;/strong&gt;. If I receive such a &quot;hidden&quot; journal extension for review, it is an auto-reject for me. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, am I morally obliged to contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published? This is not precisely a double publication, nor are the authors damaging me nor anybody else. Still, I feel they did something wrong. Should I instead live and let die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I would say the entire case certainly does not look good. That being said, I do not think that the case is blatant enough that you need to feel required to report to the journal editor. To be honest, even if you did, I think not much would happen. Likely, it is not a paper that the journal feels overly proud of, but I do not think that the case is bad enough to warrant formally retracting the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T17:32:45.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20174" CreationDate="2014-05-03T17:36:53.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good idea to tailor your CV and/or resume to each position you apply for. Keep two copies of your CV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comprehensive (academic) version that has everything you've accomplished in academia and your profession, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;short version that only contains pertinent information. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some applications require you to submit a short (2 page or less CV). You might consider submitting both a long and short CV to your program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:00:01.240" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:00:01.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20203" CreationDate="2014-05-03T21:00:41.927" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to add a photo with some additional data drawn over it to my thesis in computer science. But the photo is large and I want to crop bottom half of it. But then it could be misleading, that there is a part of the image missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will write it to the image description, but I want it to be obvious at first sight without reading the description. Is there some standard way to display that part of the figure is cropped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14871" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T03:58:27.187" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T03:58:27.187" Title="How to symbolize that figure is cropped?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20202" CreationDate="2014-05-03T21:50:47.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually this is shown in biology/biochemistry journals by a solid border around the cropped image. This is fine to do only if, like you say, you are not removing meaningful data or hiding potential confounding results. If in doubt, ask your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T21:50:47.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20210" CreationDate="2014-05-03T21:57:03.507" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether there's any way to enter the academic world, do research at a university for a living, without an undergraduate degree, but instead with several years of experience in industry (the same field of the research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually my situation. After 8 years of software development in several professional environments, I want to enter the academic world. But I'm frustrated about having to go back to the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:52:12.283" Title="Enter academia with no undergraduate degree (only professional experience)" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-04T11:23:44.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20128" CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:21:00.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing this question on interview preparation articles or most asked question lists, and I must say this question makes no sense. The question seems so simple yet very hard to answer. I don't recommend replying with &quot;Could you be more specific?&quot; because it may seem like you are incapable of answering a simple! question. This is more likely to be the first question if you ever face it, sort of to break the ice, and you can simply introduce yourself and mention your professional interests and your purpose, very briefly. After this question, they will move to the specific questions that actually make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T22:21:00.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:23:55.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academia is a circle. Normally you need an outstanding work during your PhD and Post-PhD to get a university position. Without these, the possibility of getting an entry-level long-term (not tenure) position in the university is near to 0, let alone without an undergraduate degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your situation won't prevent you from doing some serious research work yourself, in an UNUSUAL way. I'd suggest you give up seeking any normal recognition in the academia circle (like a long-term position or a title) until you've achieved something obviously awesome.You have to understand it's hard for people to view you as an exception unless they are surprised by what you've achieved. People would doubt, if this guy is awesome enough, then an undergraduate and PhD degree are like a snap for him, why he didn't just get the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on not pursuing a degree and go for an usual way, that would be very hard. But maybe you are indeed an exception. Wish you good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T23:47:04.837" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T23:47:04.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15162" CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:32:45.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do that. It's no harm and most professors would be happy to sign it for you. But if you could go with his most representative book as well, that would be perfect. After all, signing a published book is quite normal and formal activity than signing on a self-printed paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T18:37:50.977" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:37:50.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:32:50.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase about an exercise for the reader is very passé, and can only &#xA;be used in textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normal phrase in research articles is ''we omit the details''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14872" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T22:32:50.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20128" CreationDate="2014-05-03T23:11:40.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend approaching it as your opportunity to guide the interview in the direction you want it to go. As a professional psychologist, you would often have to introduce yourself and your work to others. What any given committee expects to hear is anyone's guess, but maybe the average committee would at least be happy to see you present a clear, succinct, professional summary of your interests and experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to some implications that are starting to appear between the lines of responses here, psychologists are not necessarily more conscious of or trained in interviewing than others. Some of us specialize in interviewing, self-report, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_test&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;projective assessment methodology&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychoanalysis&lt;/a&gt;, and other forms of open-ended, qualitative research, but many (maybe most) of us do not. In defense of the extremely general, almost meaningless prompt, &quot;Tell me about yourself,&quot; it is useful as a way of forcing the interviewee to initiate conversation on the topics of personal relevance, and may elicit those topics that an interviewee identifies with most strongly in a more direct way than other questions. Even if one were to ask questions based on prominent items from an applicant's CV, one could not be certain that those items weren't placed there after strategic deliberation or in capitulation to hiring committees' expectations. Asking a question like this that might easily be answered by glancing at an applicant's CV may catch an interviewee off-guard, forcing some on-the-spot self-reassessment in the underprepared, or giving hints of a person's true identity and interests without all the dressing and polish people usually apply to their CV entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, psychologists aren't necessarily more aware of these uses of the question than hirers of different backgrounds, and expecting these tactics to be deliberate may give too much credit to some interviewers who engage in them unwittingly. In some cases, it may just be a way of forcing the interviewee to guide the interview for lack of personal will to do so, or for lack of having had the time or desire to review an applicant's credentials directly beforehand. Either way, consider it a challenge, and come prepared to rise to the occasion on any open-ended question. Can you introduce yourself in a way that's impressive, professional, interesting, and not overwrought or revealing of personal weaknesses? Can you handle ill-formulated questions and vague statements of interest in a constructive manner when put on the spot and given an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise? The answer to these questions had better be &quot;&lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, because you'd certainly have to perform these functions as a psychologist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10518" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T23:11:40.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2014-05-03T23:13:54.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure it varies by country, but in the US you would not have a good chance of getting an academic position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might find a position at an academic institution as an OPS (other personnel service), which is considered equivalent to a &quot;contractor&quot; position with no benefits and hourly wages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm by no means a degree snob, but getting a degree is akin to getting a ticket to an event. If you don't have one, though shall not pass..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T17:52:12.283" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:52:12.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20165" CreationDate="2014-05-03T23:19:58.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not that I'm aware of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obtaining a PhD consists of more than publishing a thesis/dissertation. How exactly could you do your work at one institution, and then graduate from another by simply publishing at another university? –  SoilSciGuy just now   edit   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T23:19:58.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20202" CreationDate="2014-05-04T00:46:11.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of a figure is that? If it is a plot, and you want to zoom in to a particular range of it, then you may want to include full plot, then a zoomed in one. For the latter, you may mention that &quot;plot of y from x{a to b}&quot; in the caption. Plus, it would be much better if you say a few lines about why this particular range is important to be emphasized this way, in between your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a symbolization, but an effective one to crop something out of a drawing. Thus, I'd prefer this if I were to read your thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14874" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T00:46:11.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20240" CreationDate="2014-05-04T00:56:29.150" Score="15" ViewCount="959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been teaching a humanities course at a higher education institution for about more than three years now. I am expected to get full tenure this year. Perhaps it is the only chair dedicated to my field in my country; it is certainly the only one in the subfield I teach. In other words, yes, I am the only professor who teaches that subject in the whole country, and the only professor totally dedicated to teaching and researching in the broader field of study. However, before I took the position, I was not specialized in the subfield I teach now. At the moment, my research and publications in field A are split between subfields A1 (in which I pursued research for my MA and PhD) and A2 (my new teaching position). To complicate things, I am in a multidisciplinary department in &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no available teaching position in my whole field (A) in the whole country in the foreseeable future (say, 10-15 years, unless a miracle happens). I could teach in related fields, and that is what I am doing (and plan to do in better conditions in the not-so-distant future). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conditions under which I work might be described as both appalling and depressive. I know there are worse conditions in my country; and I know that I earn just as much as anyone else, but that is not the issue. The issue is having no perspective of future research; virtually no intellectual life; almost no contact with other faculty. There is only one room for more than 18 professors in the department; in it there are some 5 computers, 3 of which do not function. The library does not have the books I need for my basic, mandatory course -- in fact, it only has &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; textbook I use in class! I have to make do with articles and books from the Internet, when and if available. Grants and funding are virtually non-existent. I am in debt because of a conference in which a paper of mine was accepted. After that, I could not attend 3 international conferences because there was no funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, my question is this: is there any way (attitudes, habits) to make academic life more bearable under these circumstances? Should I give up research and focus on teaching basic subjects, at the risk of fading into oblivion for not publishing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note:&#xA;I cannot just &quot;run away&quot;, because, as I said before, there is no way I can find a similar job anywhere. I have been trying to busy my mind with other part-time activities, so as not to worry or stress too much, but that also leaves the feeling that my &quot;real&quot; job is useless, or worse: a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12512" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T08:00:35.807" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T08:00:35.807" Title="How to make academic life bearable under stressing circumstances?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20202" CreationDate="2014-05-04T01:53:00.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can show it is cropped by having a lined/&lt;strong&gt;dashed border&lt;/strong&gt; around the edges this will show that it is cropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14875" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T01:53:00.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2014-05-04T03:49:18.620" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schools are not really focused on teaching, per se: universities want to be recognized for research. Research faculty do not want to teach undergrads, they want to work with doctoral students (&amp;amp; get more publications!) But a doctoral program is costly, it eats the revenues produced by undergrads.  Schools need big undergrad programs that can be run relatively cheaply to pay the big salaries of research faculty who really don't want to teach at all.   This system probably exists because school administrators essentially worked their way up the ranks via research, not by teaching &amp;amp; not with their management/administrative skills (administrators who are good managers and/or good motivators are a bonus..not essential to the position).  Once you understand that Universities are really about self-promotion of research and the status that comes from research publications (even if only within the academic community itself) you'll understand that the adjunct (low paid) faculty are absolutely essential.   Providing that someone will accept the low wages, there is no reason to pay more.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14879" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T03:49:18.620" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-04T04:08:58.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Asking&lt;/em&gt; for help on the internet may be considered cheating, depending on how much help you got versus how much of your own research you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not crediting&lt;/em&gt; help received on the internet may be considered even more unethical, verging on plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to incorporate other folks' answers in your own, it's polite to acknowledge their contributions. At the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T04:08:58.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19487" CreationDate="2014-05-04T04:19:24.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard similar tales.  The realistic side: you can fret, tell your advisor he should try for a better journal, change advisors, or bring it up as an ethics violation.&#xA;Yet none of those will get your thesis finished.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to concentrate on finishing your thesis. &amp;amp; if that means you need to stop all other projects, then that's what you do.  Apparently, you're sidetracking...writing other papers, in addition to your thesis?    Or, is it that your advisor has a lot of paper ideas (or you get enthusiastic about new ideas and present the ideas to your advisor?) and you've been very willing to work on more projects?  (This can be a double-edged sword...tempting to get involved in several papers/studies, but it keeps you away from your thesis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have a list of journals that are acceptable to you (starting from the best, elite journals to good solid B journals), why are you waiting for your advisor to send YOUR work to a conference or a publication ?   Based on your description of the issue, these papers are actually coauthored (with your advisor)-  your advisor did the writing, with some of your data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that creates a slightly different problem, &#xA;-- and it is one you will have to resolve (maybe repeatedly) for your entire career. Some coauthors will send a paper anywhere..because some schools don't care where the paper is presented or published (oh, those schools will prefer elite journals, but at many schools, quantity is more important than quality).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: finish the thesis.  Don't show any other work to your advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14879" LastEditorUserId="14879" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T04:25:00.907" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T04:25:00.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T04:59:22.767" Score="11" ViewCount="2377" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have ported a package in another programming environment, and I want to write a paper of my ported package. Would it be considered cheating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have implemented a package in Python, that is modeled after an R package, which means my package has the design and APIs similar to original's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of original R package has published an official paper about the package on Journal of Statistical Software. And now I want to write a paper about my python package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, since the design and APIs are similar, the structure and content of the my paper would be similar to that of the original package's paper. For example, in the original paper, the authors explained what &lt;code&gt;Corpus&lt;/code&gt; class is, and in my paper, I would explain that my python-version &lt;code&gt;Corpus&lt;/code&gt; has similar attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest differences are brought by the environments and dependence, and some language-specific details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would it be considered cheating if I write the paper of ported software? Of course, &lt;strong&gt;the relative sections of my paper would include the comparisons between two packages and I would cite the original paper as appropriate as I can.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14139" LastEditorUserId="14139" LastEditDate="2014-12-19T11:44:29.163" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T00:34:36.453" Title="Is it ethical to publish a paper about porting an existing software package to another programming language?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20220" CreationDate="2014-05-04T05:31:49.830" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your paper must clearly delineate what is your original contribution and what is the same as, or based on, the previous package. So if you write about your Corpus class, for example, you must say that it is modeled after the R package's Corpus class. Otherwise it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; &quot;cheating,&quot; as you put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's also not clear to me that a straightforward port of an existing package would be considered a novel research contribution by most venues for publication. But that's an entirely different question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T05:38:05.170" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T05:38:05.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20222" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T06:00:57.423" Score="1" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to apply for a scholarship, but my TOEFL score is 81 and I think it is not good enough. Sending language proficiency scores is not compulsory for scholarship application but it is encouraged. I am indecisive to send it. What is your idea?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T09:05:37.330" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:04:09.177" Title="Should I send my mediocre test scores if it's not compulsory to do so?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20222" CreationDate="2014-05-04T08:20:29.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are not satisfied, take the test again to improve your score. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, a score of 81 is good enough to get you into many schools. However, some schools require higher scores. Is there a minimum TOEFL score for the school you're applying to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T08:20:29.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2014-05-04T09:18:28.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you consider &lt;em&gt;academia&lt;/em&gt;. It is very unlikely that you will be able to become a professor. However, working in an industry research lab is always an option for computer scientists, for instance at Microsoft, IBM, Intel, or SAP. I do have collaborators at these places that are working in research in reasonably high positions, and which at least do not have a PhD. Whether there are people that do not have an undergrad degree either I am less sure, but it is not entirely inconceivable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, not having any degree will be a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; disadvantage during your entire career. I presume the number of doors you will find closed due to your background will significantly outnumber the opportunities where people do not care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T09:18:28.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T19:38:22.460" Score="8" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend an open source system for students to submit programming assignments? Ideally it would be something that would run on the web, do some level of testing on the server side, and provide feedback to the students based on testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17657" OwnerDisplayName="Theodore Norvell" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T10:25:41.620" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T16:44:59.440" Title="Software for submitting and testing programming assignments" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15162" CreationDate="2014-05-04T12:01:39.887" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I knew a friend who approached Dr. X, the author of a notoriously challenging math book with a huge number of difficult exercises. He asked Dr. X to sign his copy of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. X took and inspected the copy. The spine was undamaged, the pages were pristine, the book was in like new condition. Dr. X smiled and returned the book. &quot;Read it first, then come ask me again!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T12:01:39.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2857" CreationDate="2014-05-04T12:06:38.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple additions to Ben Norris's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand that, unfortunately, lots of people will regard your invitation as spam and ignore it. You can't help this, try not to worry about this too much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can't fund the speakers' travel, say so. In my field, it is customary to pay the travel expenses of invited speakers, but if you can't then it is fine to simply say &quot;Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide funding for your travel expenses&quot; in your message.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T12:06:38.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20220" CreationDate="2014-05-04T12:34:50.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every scientific work is normally always based on some previous works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These previous works must be cited. Cite paper, conference thesis or in the worst case website or &quot;personal communication&quot; of the original software saying that this is the initial version that you have ported. If you do this, it is completely honest to write the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if just porting to another language brings enough scientific novelty but say porting the old forgotten 1965s piece of code in FORTRAN into C++ using object oriented design and some new advanced algorithms probably is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T12:34:50.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20220" CreationDate="2014-05-04T12:36:18.690" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to ff524's answer, the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Statistical Software&lt;/em&gt; (JSS) does have precedence for publishing articles that are simply &quot;ports&quot; of other current software. For one example see &lt;em&gt;An SPSS R-Menu for Ordinal Factor Analysis&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/v46/i04&quot;&gt;Mário Basto &amp;amp; Pereira, 2012&lt;/a&gt;). This article doesn't rewrite the package in a new environment, but simply creates a set of GUI menu's in SPSS to call the R package - which is considerably less work. (This would be equivalent if you simply used &lt;a href=&quot;http://rpy.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;RPy&lt;/a&gt; to call the R libraries directly from Python.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to say whether you could get such a paper published in the JSS or somewhere else. As a positive, I would imagine there is a large user base (not necessarily statisticians) that are using Python for text processing that could use such a library. On the downside as others have mentioned its original scientific contribution is questionable in light of its redundancies with the R package. (I personally would rather do such things in Python, but you need to remember the editors of JSS are statisticians who may not hold the same views.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you write the paper anyway and post it publicly online, as in a paper form it tends to be a gentler vignette to using the software than the doc's typically afford. Even if you can't get it published it still provides positive exposure for your work - and will still be cited if someone uses your library for academic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T12:36:18.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20174" CreationDate="2014-05-04T13:47:36.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A CV is very different from a professional resume. Your CV should emphasize those elements that pertain to the Master's program that you are applying to. For example, if you've been working in a biotech lab and are applying to a bio MS, then filter that up to the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic publications should also rank very highly -- but deprecate most non-academic publications such as novels, unless you are applying to an arts or literature related MA&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T13:47:36.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2014-05-04T13:54:55.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most journals solicit half a dozen referees hoping that two or three will respond. (I'd be worried about a journal that only uses one referee.) In any case, referees do not usually know how many or who the other referees are, so the person in your case may assume that the vote was 2:1 against them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the editor has absolute discretion. They've been known to override even majority negative reports and go with the .... (drumroll please).... minority report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T13:54:55.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17461" CreationDate="2014-05-04T13:59:10.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the size and staffing needs of their lab. For example, theoretical computer science and mathematics professors may need no lab support at all.  Thus, they are under no pressure to take grad students or post-docs and can choose just the ones that they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are doing work on stem cells, you may need a great deal of lab support. You would want a team of doctoral students and a couple of post-docs at any one time. In order to maintain continuity, you would want to accept at least one doctoral student each year. So if you had a 20 year career, you would have at least 20 students (or 20 - 7 = 13 given that it takes students 7 years to graduate and you don't want to leave students hanging at the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to narrow down what you mean by a &quot;STEM&quot; field in order to get a more precise answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T13:59:10.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19004" CreationDate="2014-05-04T14:03:08.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our school, we never keep written reasons for acceptance or rejection. These are made in a final faculty meeting with voice votes of yays and nays for each candidate that made it to the semi-finalist list.  Only the finalist list is recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to materials, they were shredded sometime after admissions season is over. It's a moot point now that everything is electronic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T14:03:08.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20222" CreationDate="2014-05-04T14:07:17.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, test scores are only used as the minimum requirement for the scholarship. High scores don't help but a score much below median would likely hurt you. If your application statement was well-written and your other materials (letters, grades) were good, I wouldn't worry. If the accompanying materials were weak, then you have much bigger things to worry about than your TOEFL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T17:04:09.177" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:04:09.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20159" CreationDate="2014-05-04T14:13:58.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add a note in your statement or supplemental materials that &quot;At my university, &lt;strong&gt;____&lt;/strong&gt;, the mean GPA was 3.5 with an sd of &lt;strong&gt;_ and in my department, the mean was xyz with an sd of __&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; so that it's clear that you are two sigmas above average, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That assumes that you are above average. You should be able to get this info from the university registrar or office of institutional research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should know that GPAs as a whole are deprecated in the application process. Individual grades (how well did you do in computer science, for example), some test scores in some disciplines, and your statement is much more important. As well as your letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T14:13:58.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20214" CreationDate="2014-05-04T14:26:40.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is very specific to your circumstances so it is hard to respond with solid advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is not unique. By the time most faculty get tenure, they are extremely specialized in a single field or have huge sunk costs that make it very hard to move geographically or topically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the issue of post-tenure blues (or in your case, pre-post-tenure blues) which you should explore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should remember that your university is just one part of your intellectual and personal life. If you don't find your university stimulating, then you could be more active in your academic association's activities -- or be more active in your local community, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting tenure is a perfect time to withdraw a little bit and discover new things. People generally expect the post-tenure blues so they won't be surprised to see  less of you for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T14:26:40.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20214" CreationDate="2014-05-04T15:36:19.317" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you seem to have decided that you must accept the situation where you work, let me make some suggestions to make it less depressive. Some of these might not be good ones for you, so pick and choose those that appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the room. One room for 18 people? They don't seriously expect you to use it. What can you use instead?  Do you meet students there, or write conference papers, or prepare coursework? Can you do those things somewhere more pleasant? Your own living room, a coffee shop, a park bench, a table in the library, a classroom that's empty more often than not? Do you have to sit in a crowded place jammed with broken things, or can you go somewhere nicer and get more done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no funding for conferences. Good for you managing to get a paper accepted and managing to get yourself there. That's probably one more conference than many of your peers. If there is someone who goes to more conferences than you, go and ask them how they do it. They will probably be happy to show you the tricks. In the same spirit, if you can get your own computer you won't care that the department can't provide decent ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intellectual connection. The people in the depressing room are half of your peer set - the other half is the A1 and A2 people around the world. Find them! Follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, download their conference sessions and papers, email them with questions about something they published. Use the internet to forge ties with these people - you aren't a moonstruck teenager, you're their peer and they will be happy to hear from you. Who knows, this activity might even lead you out of your current situation some day, but more importantly it will help you grow and solve a pain point for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the rest of your life. It's common to push everything else aside while chasing tenure. Do you have any hobbies or habits? Even just following a sports team? Try to ramp up that side of your existence, make some friends who don't work at the university, spend some time cooking or hiking or reading the latest celebrity gossip or watching that tv show everyone watches. Do some fun stuff, whatever fun is for you. Meet some people who can bring you joy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find a way to be more connected to the university as a whole, not just your department. Join a club or team that has profs from all faculties, or even better has faculty, staff and students from all faculties. Attend (if appropriate) religious activities that happen on campus. Go to the &quot;our university day at X&quot; events. Help with fundraising or political activities that will let you meet people from all over the campus. You're going to be here a long time right? Get to know the place and the people and weave it into your life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the tenure you're expecting comes with a raise, start working out now what the consequences of that are. Will you be able to move to a nicer place? Get specific about looking for that place now. Imagine being able to have a lovely view, or a spare bedroom you can use as an office, or quieter, safer nights. The hard work you have put in will be bringing you benefits soon, start to think about those now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your department would be amazing if they handed you a bright sunny office, a delightful collection of peers who you enjoy talking to, plenty of important work, a steady stream of bright students, a fully-equipped working environment and a library that's the envy of everyone in your field. But very few places are really like that. So roll up your sleeves and get yourself what you need to excel, and fill your days with work and not-work that make you happy. Your department is never going to do that for you, but you can do it for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T15:36:19.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20220" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:00:51.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is considered cheating or not depends on the field of work. In my opinion the fact that you implemented their algorithms in a new language confirms that the algorithms work. Regarding originality, what you should do is offer more than a simple explanation of why you did this in the first place: for example, Python is a faster language than R, or the way it is implemented in Python offers significant speed improvements due to the fact that certain data structures are faster, and come up with some numbers, tables, and charts that prove this assertion. Even if the code is basically the same in pseudo-code, therefore no novel contribution, the additional information about why you did this porting and the data that confirms it is faster (at least in some cases), should be enough to warrant an original contribution. This original contribution is typically required in Computer Science papers (maybe not in Statistics papers), even though it's not required in Physics (you can publish papers that reproduce certain experiments and confirm them or not, or just add small twists to them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After looking at your library, I see some things that are lacking in order to make it a good proposal: a good documentation, examples. It just says you can implement term-document-matrices with it. Please have a look at numpy or scipy or pandas packages how they present themselves to the pubic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14887" LastEditorUserId="14887" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T16:07:56.157" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T16:07:56.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20244" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:09:21.490" Score="9" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty firmly convinced that I have proven the non-existence of odd perfect numbers and now I am wanting to write it up (Qi: What is the best way or writing maths on a computers?). I also desire to know the general standards of publishing small results such as this so being pointed in the direction of any of the literature to give me idea what I need to write up would be much appreciated. Finally, I need to know where I can submit the result for review and (hopefully) publication. thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14888" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:23:25.577" Title="I am a secondary school student and I think I have proven an open result, how do I get it out?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20243" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:42:48.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as I always say, the academia is a circle with its own established convention to follow. In terms of paper publication, you have to learn how to describe things using the terminology and way of expression accepted by the academia. Normally you need several years of regular university education to master these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in your particular case, I think it would be easier if you could find a mentor in the university (e.g. a professor or a research) who really understands and recognize your research result and has your trust. He could teach you what is a logic and sound research and how to speak in the language used in the academic community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution is just publish your result on your personal blog (I mean a well-known blog system like google+ or wordpress, so that the timestamp of your post will tell the world you're the original holder of the idea) and try to make your result get noticed by the academic people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to challenge people's stereotype about academic paper author, you could also try to publish paper yourself. But it is definitely extremely hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T18:23:25.577" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:23:25.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20249" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:45:16.573" Score="15" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;After working on a project some times, some results are obtained and we decide to publish it. I know publishing a paper and applying a patent can actually happen in the same time, but is there any difference for their priority? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I obtain a patent first for my results, will it make it more difficult to publish the same results in academic paper, or vice versa? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do it together, will there be any conflict between them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T19:40:35.860" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T19:40:35.860" Title="Does applying for a patent first make it more difficult to publish (or vice versa)?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20248" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:50:28.317" Score="3" ViewCount="1675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a PhD program few years ago. My first PhD supervisor decided he wanted to quit university and stopped supervising PhDs (he was 70 years old). I lost about a year trying to convince this supervisor to continue, and another year trying to find another supervisor when he quit (he pretty much left all his PhD students in the air). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I transferred to another university, but nobody counts the missing years and I should finish in few months. The condition put by my new supervisor in order to be allowed to present my thesis was to come up with at least 2 new contributions in addition to my previous contributions (I have published some papers with some contributions, but many of them were group research and this supervisor said that only 2 or 3 of them really count as mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem is that during the last year I have worked a lot both at the university and at the PhD, but only during last weeks I started to have some ideas about what these new potential contributions could be. Considering the lack of time, there is a high chance that I won't finish on time (due to the regulations from this country you have to finish in 5 years, nobody takes into account the fact that you lost several years with other problems like replacing your PhD supervisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lazy person, but first time I really had no luck, and with the second supervisor it took me a lot of time to play in the league he wanted ... Basically all articles discussed with him about Machine Learning were from MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. Essentially I had to spend about a year and a half to get my knowledge to the level where I can design new algorithms or create new things that would get accepted to top journals reviewed by people from these institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I can register again for the PhD, take the exams again, and present my contributions in a new thesis. The problem is when I will add all these years it will result a large interval for Europe: 7-8 years, instead of 4-5 years. My question is this: how will a potential future employer from both Academia or Private Company look at this time interval? Is it ok to try 2-3 times to finish your PhD? Will the fact that it took to long finish the PhD affect my career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14887" LastEditorUserId="14887" LastEditDate="2014-10-27T12:15:42.740" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T12:15:42.740" Title="How many times is OK to register for a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20222" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:54:39.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably winning the scholarship requires evidence of your fluency in English. If your test scores do not provide that evidence, you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; send them.  (But then the rest of your application still has to provide that evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T16:54:39.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20246" CreationDate="2014-05-04T17:02:31.017" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fundamental issue here is that your first advisor left academia altogether—by retiring before his students were done. This is an awful thing to do to the people one is supervising—leaving them completely in the lurch in such a manner is &lt;strong&gt;unacceptable behavior.&lt;/strong&gt; The advisor should not have taken on new students if he was planning on retiring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of this, it is obvious that some allowances for this will need to be made. The way to signal this is through your CV: list &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; advisors, including the dates for which you worked with them. If your first advisor is well-known enough, then this will automatically clue in others about what happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, though, so long as the time required isn't too unreasonable for your discipline, an extended stay in graduate school isn't problematic. However, if you have mitigating circumstances such as these, it makes such problems a lot easier to overlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T19:06:59.107" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T19:06:59.107" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20245" CreationDate="2014-05-04T17:39:04.980" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., you may file a patent application up to one year after the invention is described in a publication, in public use, or on sale. So if you publish something on your invention and also wish to patent it, you only have one year from the date of publication to apply for the patent. Similar rules may apply in other countries; it's a good idea to consult a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no conflict the other way around; you can publish after the patent application (or at the same time) without issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:39:04.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T17:50:03.017" Score="-1" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;as you can guess I'm a non-native english.&#xA;When I write an scientific paper, my major trouble is the language and I'm worried about the review of my english.&#xA;There are any website or community, where I can post my full paper or part of it, and receive a peer review for my english?&#xA;Thanks a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14892" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:26:48.627" Title="There are any website to review my non native english?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-04T19:13:53.023" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20246" CreationDate="2014-05-04T18:02:29.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least twice is absolutely for sure normal, but probably also more is normal, even if there are no any obvious reasons. And in your case the reasons are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T19:05:18.897" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T19:05:18.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20250" CreationDate="2014-05-04T18:26:48.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking people to do difficult, specialized work for free. So, generally... no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your university may have a graduate writing center where they can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask a peer in your program to help you, in exchange for cooking lessons, baby sitting, or help with their &lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could hire a professional editor. These can be cheaper than you expect, given the economy, but you also get what you pay for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:26:48.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20246" CreationDate="2014-05-04T18:33:08.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What country are you in? I'm also from Europe (France) and with a letter of motivation, special circumstances, and proof that you will be funded, it's possible to do more years, although I'm not sure what the limit is (may depend on the institution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in Japan right now, and here it's possible to present your thesis at a later time, even though officially you may be on leave from the University (this allows you to skip paying tuition for many more years, which can be helpful, as tuition is several times more expensive than in Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may depend not only on the country but also on the specific University you are enrolled at. I don't recommend asking the administration yourself, as they may or may not be very receptive to your specific case. I suggest your advisor inquires for you, and if that's not possible, you can try asking for an appointment with the head of your department or doctoral school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] To answer the OP's final question, I think you can list both advisors on your resume, with the word &quot;retired&quot; next to the first one. I know quite a few people with successful careers in academia who took 5+ years to complete their PhD, and being 30+ years old upon graduation is not unheard of, even in the hard sciences. The race starts after you complete your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS/ saying that your first advisor unexpectedly retired in the middle of your degree would be enough to get the message through, even during an interview. You could even try throwing in some positive comments, something like, sure it took you longer but how it was actually an opportunity to gain high-level working knowledge of algorithms. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12049" LastEditorUserId="12049" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T18:56:52.500" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T18:56:52.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20246" CreationDate="2014-05-04T19:09:34.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am from Europe. Here 5-7 years for finishing a PhD is quite normal if you are working under a full-time work contract with your professor. I don't think it's a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T21:57:03.920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T21:57:03.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20289" CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:32:15.880" Score="11" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody I have met in academia uses recently-published journals entirely through electronic means. They may print out articles for their own use, but they will not receive printed subscriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; receive modern journals in printed form nowadays? If so, who and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T13:10:22.480" Title="Does anybody receive printed copies of new journal issues nowadays?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20257" CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:35:11.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very few individuals receive printed copies of journals anymore, but many institutions pay for print copies as well as online access. In part, I suspect this is because many publishers make this part of the sold &quot;package.&quot; However, an additional motivation for keeping a print copy is that most publishers do not allow for &quot;archival&quot; downloading—libraries cannot maintain their own copy of the publishers' website. Thus, if anything happens to the website, the institute would temporarily or permanently lose all access to the information if only an online subscription existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T20:35:11.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19816" CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:39:47.007" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what others have said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not assume that &quot;hours looking productive in the office&quot; == &quot;hours working&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not assume that &quot;hours working&quot; is proportional to &quot;amount achieved&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T20:39:47.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20263" CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:40:01.037" Score="36" ViewCount="67605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what I should do in this situation as an undergraduate student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a month ago, I applied for and did not get into a program that allows first-year students to work on research projects that professors put forward, with the intention of introducing students to research, which included a research stipend, housing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very interested in the professors topic of research, and was wondering if it would be okay for me to ask the professor for the opportunity to work with him essentially as an unpaid intern, as I would really like the opportunity to learn more about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would he view this attempt to do research under him as desperate? Or would he appreciate the opportunity to have an extra research assistant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the answer would depend on the professor himself, and on my relationship with him, but how do professors in general feel about students coming up to them and asking to be a part of their research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13561" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-24T06:51:44.840" LastActivityDate="2020-06-04T12:51:29.157" Title="As an undergrad student, how should I ask a professor for an opportunity to do research with them?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2014-05-04T21:11:14.763" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; happy to talk about possibilities for working in my  research group with a student who's interested in the group. The challenge is that most first-year students might not have the background to understand what's going on in the research, so they end up being more &quot;technicians&quot; than researchers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't think it's a problem for you to discuss the possibility of doing the &quot;internship&quot;; your university may even offer an opportunity to get course credit for it as an &quot;independent study.&quot; However, you should be prepared for the possibility that the professor feels you're not quite ready for the work—but he may definitely suggest ways to overcome that deficit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T21:11:14.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2014-05-04T21:40:24.193" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, with no qualifications, approach the researcher and ask what it would take to do research in his/her lab. As a first-year undergraduate student, it's very likely that you don't have the knowledge to contribute to the projects. So approach humbly, asking what you can do to prepare yourself. Ask for suggestions for a review paper or a few research reports that would bring you up to speed. Ask if you can attend lab meetings as a fly-on-the-wall to absorb the controversies and decisions being made day-by-day. The very worst possible case is that you're told, &quot;no.&quot; If so, you're already there. Next worst is that you invest your time and get only an education out of it. That's not so bad. You'll be positioned very very well for next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14899" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T21:40:24.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2014-05-04T22:04:10.757" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically two strategies to get a research opportunity in university. By &#xA;excellence or by motivation. For both situations, you have to find a way to show your excellence or your motivation to the professor. Working as an intern for him is a good idea. It gives the professor an opportunity to know more about you. If you are excellent enough, the professor will ask you about your plan in the future (to see if you're going to pursuit a PhD, probably with him), show his interest in you or even offer you research position in this team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T07:12:04.227" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T07:12:04.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19816" CreationDate="2014-05-04T22:15:51.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, master and PhD are two different kinds of life. For PhD time is usually flexible and they would like to work this way because progress in their work to some extent relies on inspiration. So it's understandable that they need enough sleep hours. Unlike master students, who just attend courses and learn things written in the textbook, PhD students have to invent things that has been written no where. For master students, hardworking (hours in your opinion) is enough. However, for PhD students, inspiration, insight are the key. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it's also a matter of personal habit difference and labs management difference. Some people would like to sleep from 1am to 8am, some like 11pm to 6am. It's different from people to people. And some professor pushes more, while some pushes less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, many PhD has to work at home in the night and doesn't have the summer/winter vacation. But as master students, you don't have any study tasks during the same period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastEditorUserId="14804" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T22:20:52.150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T22:20:52.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17513" CreationDate="2014-05-04T23:15:54.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I greatly admire your interest in contributing to an area of medicine, and I'm sorry to hear that so many of your friends and relatives have succumbed to this disease. You're absolutely right that the treatments are barbaric. The subject of personalized medicine with application to cancer treatment is a hot scientific topic right now, and we're probably on the verge of a revolution in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two specific groups come to mind as leaders in this though I'm sure there are more. &lt;a href=&quot;http://garrawaylab.dfci.harvard.edu/?q=node/2&quot;&gt;Levi Garraway's lab&lt;/a&gt; at Harvard is developing &quot;PHIAL&quot;, which stands for &quot;Precision Heuristics for Interpreting the Alteration Landscape&quot; [in cancer genomes]. The name alludes to Galadriel's phial, although it remains to be seen whether this sort of computational analysis will live up to being 'a light to in dark places, when all other lights go out.' It is exactly what you imagined in your post, that is, given DNA sequence, predicting candidate causal mutations. There's also &lt;a href=&quot;https://together.wustl.edu/Pages/News/Tim-Ley.aspx&quot;&gt;Tim Ley's group at Washington University in St. Louis&lt;/a&gt; which was one of the first to sequence a patient (one of their own oncologists!), identify the specific mutation and treat his cancer. The story is pretty compelling, but it's worth noting that this was a fortuitous situation where the underlying mechanism just happened to be one treatable by a drug already on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laboratories are always underfunded -- your services would be a gift. It's just a matter of finding the right one. If you live in a major city, consider contacting some people in cancer to identify someone in computational biology or bioinformatics. If you post what city you're in, I (or others, I'm sure) could help you find a lab doing this sort of work already. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="14719" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T00:43:32.717" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T00:43:32.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20291" CreationDate="2014-05-05T02:54:50.753" Score="8" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the expectations, primarily in terms of length but also along other relevant dimensions, for a review of a book proposal? The book itself will be as long as 5-10 papers but the proposal itself usually only includes a sample chapter and some overview material. What will editors at academic presses expect back from proposal reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:22:22.197" Title="How long should a book proposal review be?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T03:13:09.887" Score="21" ViewCount="56410" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it plagiarism if I copy several paragraphs from another's source (let's say a CS paper) into my work and then footnote &lt;code&gt;Source: ...&lt;/code&gt;, for example, as background information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14910" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditorDisplayName="user479" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T04:07:57.357" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T04:20:54.180" Title="Is verbatim copying several paragraphs of text with citation considered plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20270" CreationDate="2014-05-05T03:32:47.417" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you copy something verbatim, you are required to put quotations mark around it, and also cite where the quotation came from. Anything less could be construed as plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10433" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T03:32:47.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20270" CreationDate="2014-05-05T06:59:48.250" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;So long as it is &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt; that it is another's work then it is not plagarism. However, depending on the amount copied and a lot of other factors, it may be a copyright violation, and it may break other rules of your school/journal/whatever. Or simply be marked down by your examiners/reviewers, unless there's a good reason for such extensive quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastEditorUserId="8394" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T07:09:15.643" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T07:09:15.643" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20277" CreationDate="2014-05-05T07:40:59.143" Score="19" ViewCount="3526" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I apply to a PhD program, may I ask a postdoc who closely supervised me to write a recommendation letter? My supervisor also has written one for me, but I believe the postdoc can comment on my research skills in a more detailed and precise way. Does a postdoc have enough authority to convince admission committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T05:40:03.410" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T05:40:03.410" Title="Can I ask a postdoc who has closely supervised my research to write me a letter of recommendation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20283" CreationDate="2014-05-05T07:56:36.207" Score="5" ViewCount="2288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning on applying to a Master's degree program (in Canada, if it matters) and I've noticed that there seems to be quite a few grade cut-offs for applications. I've &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Graduate-School-Admissions/If-I-contact-a-professor-for-research-graduate-school-and-he-asks-for-my-resume-transcript-what-should-I-do-if-my-transcript-is-embarrassing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Graduate-School-Admissions/If-I-have-good-research-projects-and-publications-but-a-low-GPA-will-top-grad-schools-accept-me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/03/re_phd_with_low.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt; these are not set in stone, however, how important are they compared to other criteria such as references and research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, which I have no proof for, it seems almost absurd to put an emphasis on grades without knowing a class average or having a detailed knowledge of the course when examining a grade. However, this is my personal biased opinion, so I would like to see the rationale behind the opposite view. One argument I have heard is that school build up a database of GPAs from a certain school and classes (from the comments to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/802/how-to-assess-the-chance-to-get-accepted-to-a-masters-program-in-the-united-sta&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;), so I can see how this might be considered mildly accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10314/phd-admissions-importance-research-vs-grades&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, consequently if the response is similar, I will not be surprised. I'm applying to a researched focused engineering program, but a developed answer with respect to multiple faculties and multiple types of programs would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14831" LastEditorUserId="14831" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T14:33:26.067" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T15:33:01.807" Title="Importance of grades when applying to Master's degree program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20278" CreationDate="2014-05-05T08:10:54.037" Score="9" ViewCount="4890" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I contacted a professor at another university and, after some discussions, he agreed to supervise me and told me to make a formal application to the department. Unfortunately, the admission committee rejected my application. I asked that professor why, and he said he had no idea and I don't know if he tried to follow my application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure I meet the program's minimum requirements, submitted all necessary documents and even indicated that professor as a supervisor in a dedicated field. I would like to ask if I can do something, like making an appeal (although the department has no such thing), or keeping on sending email to the professor? Is this situation common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T14:01:55.153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T13:22:52.563" Title="Is there anything I can do if a professor agreed to supervise me but I was rejected by the admission committee?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20274" CreationDate="2014-05-05T08:15:07.290" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's possible that a postdoc letter (in the absence of further context) might carry less weight, there are good reasons to ask them anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the letter is a testimonial about your ability to do research. A postdoc who's worked with you is in a much better position to say something nontrivial about this. Lines like &quot;I closely worked with so and so&quot; carry weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the postdoc might know faculty at the university you're applying to. In that case the letter carries even more weight (I'm likely to pay more attention to letters from people that I know)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T08:15:07.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2014-05-05T08:32:08.963" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;No PhD program that I am aware of guarantees admission to every candidate who meets the minimum requirements for admission. Moreover, an agreement to supervise you is not a guarantee of admission, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely what happened is the usual in such circumstances—there were enough other qualified candidates that the admissions committee did not choose to extend you an offer. I'm afraid that there's not really much you can do here. Writing the professor will be a waste of your time, and filing an appeal isn't likely to get you anywhere, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T08:32:08.963" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T09:26:58.150" Score="5" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one go about trying to teach students to &quot;unlearn&quot; a previous skill/principle they believe is correct but is actually wrong? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypothetically speaking as a really basic situation, if your student was adamant that the formula for the area of a rectangle is 2*l + 2*w, even though you tried to explain that is instead the formula for the perimeter, and explained to them the definition of area vs. perimeter, but they are overly confident that they are right, how can you gently guide them to the right direction? What is best practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T09:42:45.133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T20:47:55.513" Title="Technique for teaching &quot;unlearning&quot;?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2014-05-05T11:42:53.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the possibility is that the professor is not that keen on having you on board. Otherwise, as far as I know, professors have some influence on the selection process if he really needs you to carry out his project and you meet the minimal requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it makes no difference you send an SOS to the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14804" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T11:42:53.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20275" CreationDate="2014-05-05T12:12:12.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, admissions to master's degree programs are quite different than PhD admissions. Doctoral programs are research programs, and therefore promise as a researcher is perhaps the most important criterion of all to satisfy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the master's level, this may or may not be the case—many master's programs feature no research (purely coursework), or only a small amount of research (for instance, a one-semester research project, or a lab course, or something similar). In such cases, research is not emphasized nearly as much, and undergraduate track record takes on greater significance. Similarly, &quot;terminal master's&quot; programs—ones that represent &quot;end degrees&quot; in their own right—will likely have less of a research background focus than degrees that are intended to prepare a student for doctoral studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is the style of admissions: for &quot;US-style&quot; admissions, research will likely be more important than it is in &quot;European-style&quot; admissions, where research plays essentially no role at all in admissions to master's programs (although research is a prerequisite for PhD studies!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T12:12:12.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20275" CreationDate="2014-05-05T12:55:27.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grades are important, but not the only thing taken into consideration. It varies from school to school and field to field. Three things to take into consideration (IMO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In engineering, grades might have more weight or importance. In other&#xA;fields, they may not be as important, but still taken into&#xA;consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competitiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may depend more on how competitive the school or department is. If the school/department is hurting for students, then they may take anyone. If they have a surplus of applications, they may be very selective.&#xA;I think it's fair to say that if you have a D average you will not be as competitive as someone with an A average in a highly competitive program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supporting material:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, you will need to write a SOP (statement of purpose), have 3 letters of support from undergraduate supervisors/mentors/instructors, and include a resume or CV. In my opinion, having a strong letter of support from 3 professors and a solid resume and/or CV is more important than grades, at least in my field. Now if you have crap grades, that won't look good and you will likely have a hard time finding professors to vouch for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're grades are in doubt, I suggest you write a really strong SOP (have someone (career resource center or a professor) look it over, and create a really nice looking resume. Find advisers who will write strong letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T15:33:01.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20279" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:04:42.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I these cases the direct approach is seldom constructive. It's tempting to start constructing logical examples that show they must be wrong, but this is much more a matter of psychology than of logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the stronger you argue, the harder they will dig their heels in. With your example you may actually force a situation where they have no other way out than to admit that they're wrong, but in most scenarios they'll find a way to stick to their guns, and the more you push the issue, the harder it becomes to admit they were wrong all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trick here is &lt;strong&gt;small commitments&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't ask them to accept the whole thing in one go, but get them to accept a small part of it, something they can agree on without admitting defeat. Then just stand back and let them come round on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite example of this principle is trying to convince a rabid anti-Apple consumer to buy an apple laptop instead of a regular PC. If you argue on quality of hardware, or value for money, or user experience, it won't do you any good (regardless of whether those are valid arguments). What you should do is buy them something very cheap and tiny, like an iPod nano, for their birthday. Once they commit to that, the anti-Apple stance is no longer a point of principle, but they're somewhere in the grey area, free to move around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about breaking down the principled stance and the ties to their pride. Only once you've got rid of that should you come in with the logical arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:04:42.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:06:42.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Selection can sometimes be very political. I sat in on a board meeting recently while selection was being discussed. I was really surprised at the &quot;selection process&quot;. The selection committee is not allowed to use a quantitative assessment, it has to be qualitative, which seemed absurd to me, especially considering grades and GRE scores are quantitative measures. Additionally, although my department is comprised of a majority of international students, none of them count as minorities, because they're not US citizens. Taking that into consideration, we have a very low minority student body (in this case, minority is anyone that is not a white male). Therefore, our department has received less funding from the college (which also seemed absurd, if not discrimination)... to increase funding from the college, we need more minority students. So I was not surprised when the minority students were accepted into the program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe you have many options. I would at least follow up with the professor, he may know of other opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T13:22:52.563" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T13:22:52.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20270" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:30:10.200" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original author owns two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the ideas in their work, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the language they used to convey those ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism occurs when you use either without proper attribution.  If you paraphrase another author's ideas in your own words (i.e., use #1 only) then you need a citation.  If you copy verbatim another author's words (i.e., use #1 and #2) then you need to put the copied text in quotes and include a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally if you are quoting the original author's language then the &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; that the author communicated their ideas is part of the argument you are making in your article.  If this is not the case then it is better to paraphrase, since your reader will be expecting some discussion of the original author's language and changes in tone can be distracting to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, it sounds like paraphrasing would be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="248" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:30:10.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:32:06.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try again next time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, you can try various things right now. In practice, most of those things will simply harm your chances of admission in the next session, so IMHO you shouldn't do anything about this particular rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, work on making sure that your application is more attractive next time, keep in touch with that professor, work on research in your spare time, look for relevant seminars/workshops/etc there that are open to general public and not only to students, perhaps study some relevant topics in MOOCs like Coursera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:32:06.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20257" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:50:38.740" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have print subscriptions to three major journals in my field, all through optional add-ons to society memberships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do so for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It forces me to read and interact with the literature. Online tables of contents, journal RSS feeds etc. can be ignored because another staff meeting is coming up, I really should submit an abstract, etc. The arrival of a printed journal gives me an excuse once a month/quarter/every two weeks etc. to sit down and engage with my field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I read articles I would not otherwise read. General society journals have papers in areas that are not strictly my field. Sometimes, I read these, because I know the authors, liked a particular plot while I was flipping through, or because it pings my curiousity. I &lt;em&gt;rarely&lt;/em&gt; read PDF papers outside my field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journals are more durable than print-and-staple publications. They live in my bag. I read them at lunch. I read them in the bathroom. I read them at the gym. I do things to them that I wouldn't dare do to either an iPad or other electronic reader or a few flimsy pieces of copier paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:50:38.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20257" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:18:18.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish all questions here were yes/no questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of my colleagues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presumably for the same reason that most people prefer physical books to e-books when they read. It's also much quicker and easier to browse through the volumes of a journal on your bookshelf than to do so online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:18:18.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20269" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:22:22.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editor of the press should have given you guidelines -- or even a response form to fill out. If they didn't, it'd be simple enough to e-mail the editor back and ask him/her how detailed of a response is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally vary the response length depending on how promising the book proposal is. If the proposal has a lot of merit but is undercooked in some areas, I may spend a considerable amount of time discussing what needs to be done. If the book is stellar and ready to leap onto the presses, then not much needs to be said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is terrible because of severe methodological or analytical flaws, my review might be less than a page. If the ms is in severe need of proofreading or editing, I may respond with a just a paragraph noting this and suggesting that I'll re-read when the ms is actually ready to be reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:22:22.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15162" CreationDate="2014-05-05T15:10:36.200" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should you go and ask, you probably don't run a big risk of anything really unpleasant happening, as other answers point out (except in the context of @Anonymous' answer!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would feel uncomfortable asking such a thing and here is why. By asking for an autograph, you are in effect behaving as a fanboy/fangirl &lt;em&gt;rather than a peer (a colleague and possible coworker)&lt;/em&gt;. I don't see that this is the way you want to bring your existence to light to an admired professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, sure, if your goal is to get a professor to sign her name on a paper, go ahead and ask. But if you considered this mostly as an opportunity to establish contact with the said professor, I'm sure there are other ways which do not involve humbling yourself before someone you would likely rather impress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T15:10:36.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T15:59:29.237" Score="3" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether existed some software that would take as input a text file bibliography (for instance a bib file if you use bibtex), and that run it through google scholar (or any other database), so that it can return a uniformized bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, suppose you have two items from the same conference&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@inproceedings{mpi,&#xA;   author       = {Surname1 Name1 and Surname2 Name2},&#xA;   title        = {Some nice work},&#xA;   booktitle    = {Editor of the Name of Conference},&#xA;   year         = {2004},&#xA; }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@inproceedings{RRnrj,&#xA;  author        = {Name3 S. and Name4 S.},&#xA;  title         = {Some nice work},&#xA;  booktitle     = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},&#xA;  year          = {2020},&#xA;  publisher     = {Editor},&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you would want it to return:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@inproceedings{mpi,&#xA;   author       = {Surname1 Name1 and Surname2 Name2},&#xA;   title        = {Some nice work},&#xA;   booktitle    = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},&#xA;   year         = {2004},&#xA;   publisher    = {Editor},&#xA; }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@inproceedings{RRnrj,&#xA;  author        = {Surname3 Name3 and Surname4 Name4},&#xA;  title         = {Some nice work},&#xA;  booktitle     = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},&#xA;  year          = {2020},&#xA;  publisher     = {Editor},&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(or whatever is the norm on the database).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T16:21:32.393" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:02:38.980" Title="Cleaning up/Uniformize bibliography for long document" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;latex&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:38:05.857" Score="5" ViewCount="3924" Body="&lt;p&gt;I failed to complete my research project (undergraduate) in the time I said I would, because of overconfidence. It seemed like a quite simple project to both me and my advisor initially considering that it was very similar to a project another student of his had worked on, however for some reason (much of the blame is my own) I ran into countless difficulties and now I will not finish in time. How do I get past something like this? I do not know how to continue after such disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an addendum: How does one develop an &quot;aptitude&quot; for research? I would like to go to graduate school, but a lot of the advice hinges on whether one not only enjoys but has an &quot;aptitude&quot; for research. Based on my minimal accomplishments this year, it seems clear that I do not currently have an aptitude for research. Can I ever develop such an aptitude?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I do not feel that this question is a duplicate. This is about UNDERGRADUATE research. Undergraduates have a very different situation - I cannot simply take another week and work on it as the semester will end soon, after which I will undertake an internship, and I have commitments to my courses and other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this is not a case of me getting data that don't support my hypothesis - I do not have any data. Or rather, I have data, but it is meaningless until I finish my current project. Which I was supposed to do today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12655" LastEditorUserId="12655" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T02:04:43.917" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T02:04:43.917" Title="failure in research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-05-05T20:25:57.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15162" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:50:29.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I think @Ri49 mostly hit the nail on the head, I just wanted to add: I think I would find it a little discomfiting to be on the receiving end of such a request.  Maybe the prof in question has gotten used to being a celebrity, but if you don't know him or her, then it will be hard to judge how such a request will seem to them.  When you set up an interaction in this way, not only are you not engaging with them as a professional, you're making it harder for them to engage with you as a professional.  I think it would be much better to tell them that you've learned a lot from their work, and ask an intelligent followup question, or say something about how your work has followed up on theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T16:50:29.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20295" CreationDate="2014-05-05T17:22:09.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” &#xA;― Winston Churchill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not let one failure hold you back. I would also like to add that there is a difference between having a general interest or liking in something (i.e. research) and being passionate about it. In grad school (especially at the PhD level) you need to be passionate about your work to be successful. You have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you truly enjoy doing research. If the answer is yes, then pursue it with vigor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let this set back be a learning experience, and grow from it. Just remember, &quot;if you're not failing, you're not trying.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T18:32:04.317" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T18:32:04.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20295" CreationDate="2014-05-05T17:41:29.237" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the most important things you learn as a PhD student (or Master's) is to deal with research that doesn't quite pan out as you'd expected. Because guess what, that's not the exception. That almost always happens. If research always conformed to our expectations, we wouldn't need to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to learn to look at it with fresh eyes. &lt;strong&gt;The main problem is not that the research did not conclude as you had hoped, the main problem is that you're letting it affect your confidence&lt;/strong&gt;. Find a new perspective. It may not have yielded what you thought it did, but you did the work and you found stuff out. Now figure out how to present it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forget about the original expectations. Those tend to make for bad science. Look at your research so far, and pick out what's interesting, and why it's interesting. Let go of the original story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that it was more difficult than it looked is a good indicator that you may have found out interesting things. Don't think of them as difficulties you created for yourself, think of them as results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you tell someone starting this research tomorrow? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the shortest route to a publishable result? You may have learned many interesting things, but you need to find a single compelling result that you can explain in an abstract. Once you have that, you can fit all the stuff you learned into the story of that result. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T17:41:29.237" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20295" CreationDate="2014-05-05T18:00:21.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your first question: undergraduate research projects are a great way to experience some aspects of doing research, but deadlines are one way in which they differ from research in graduate school or beyond.  So you shouldn't worry about the mere fact of not meeting your deadline.  I can tell you that I set deadlines for myself all the time, and they always seem easily achievable, but then I often don't actually achieve them.  Also I often think I should be able to prove some result in a certain amount of time, but then for whatever reason I'm not able to.  So I turn that around and decide that my intuition must have been wrong, and in fact the result is more difficult than I expected; and I see this as progress since I've advanced my understanding, and I further try to identify what was the specific reason why my intuition was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one great feature of the long-term research that is done in graduate school or beyond is that there is lots of flexibility to change the direction of a project mid-stream, or to pause the work on a project and finish a side project, or to split a large project into several papers, or to decide at a certain moment that the work has reached a stage where it's natural to publish what you've done so far, even though you'll keep working on it further.  This type of flexibility is missing in a short-term project like one typically does in undergraduate research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your second question about developing an aptitude for research: keep in mind that there are many different types of research projects, which rely on different types of talents.  For instance, some people are great at big-picture thinking, some people are great at clever solutions to tricky questions, some people have the patience to do enormous amounts of seemingly routine things which put together can yield great results, and so on.  The main thing you should strive for is to find some area of your subject, and some way of working on that area, which you love to do and which matches your particular talents.  Don't get discouraged about not having great success in one particular project -- maybe that project just wasn't the right fit for your particular skills.  I can tell you that one of the keys to &quot;aptitude for research&quot; is to have a kind of psychological toughness that enables you to keep working on a problem for a long time, despite setbacks.  If you love what you do, and you have that type of resolve, then good things will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastEditorUserId="14724" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T18:32:28.450" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T18:32:28.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20294" CreationDate="2014-05-05T18:03:19.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are looking for would be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference manager&lt;/a&gt;. There are a number of commercial and free software available, many of which also support BibTeX files. I'm not sure what you mean precisely by &quot;uniformized,&quot; but I take that to mean that some style guide was applied to them (since only the &quot;Publisher&quot; field was added to reference &quot;mpi&quot; in your desired output). Many of those software programs will also allow you to choose a particular style of citation, and export the references to a BibTex file again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T18:03:19.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20303" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2014-05-05T18:40:18.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    On Stack Exchange, we believe the core moderators should come &lt;i&gt;from&lt;/i&gt; the community, and be elected by the community itself through popular vote. We hold regular elections to determine who these community moderators will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Community moderators are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&quot;&gt;accorded the highest level of privilege on our community&lt;/a&gt;, and should themselves be exemplars of positive behavior and leaders within the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Our general criteria for moderators is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;patient and fair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;leads by example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;shows respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Every election has three phases:&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Nomination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Primary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Election&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Please participate in the moderator elections by voting, and perhaps even by nominating yourself to be a community moderator!&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/98748/2019-academia-moderator-election-chat&quot;&gt;Election chat room&lt;/a&gt; - discuss the election, candidates, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For questions about the election process itself, visit &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/election&quot;&gt;Meta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4561/32458&quot;&gt;The candidates answer your questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="32458" LastEditDate="2019-09-16T19:59:43.083" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T19:59:43.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20279" CreationDate="2014-05-05T18:50:00.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tracked down a research paper on this very mathematical issue, which apparently has been stumping people since Plato: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;De Bock, D., Van Dooren, W., Janssens, D., &amp;amp; Verschaffel, L. (2002). Improper use of linear reasoning: An in-depth study of the nature and the irresistibility of secondary school students' errors. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 50(3), 311-334.&#xA;and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno%27s_slave&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno%27s_slave&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To generalize, it is advantageous to try the following in order to create &quot;cognitive conflict&quot; in the student's own mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recognize that students' &quot;fast thinking&quot; (in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kahneman&lt;/a&gt; sense) will be their first response. Requiring them to slow down and justify their answer will be frustrating and painful for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create an environment where the student is comfortable changing their answer. No attacks in front of an audience of their peers, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give examples of &quot;what other students answered,&quot; perhaps in the form of a table that shows many people chose the linear response, while others recognized area increases as the cube of length. This reduces shame at their own answer and may increase interest about why another answer was so often chosen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give examples of the reasoning of correct students, and ask the incorrect student to justify their disagreement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would recommend giving the student time to think, and then asking them to discuss it again another day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastEditorUserId="13729" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T20:47:55.513" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T20:47:55.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T19:26:50.500" Score="5" ViewCount="2060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pursuing a PhD (computer science) from one of the reputed Indian universities. I have prepared some white papers for publication in coming journals. I prepared these papers by myself. I referred various links and study guides, books etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After getting these papers published, I received one notice from the editorial staff of publication that I have violated the contents/copyright law. They provided me some contents and images (they said violated areas).&#xA;I am surprised because I prepared all the things by myself. I have already mentioned the referred links, books etc. in the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I avoid content violation in my own written material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T19:22:55.793" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T20:21:55.917" Title="Is it a violation of copyright if I draw and publish a figure very similar to another person's published figure?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20305" CreationDate="2014-05-05T19:43:21.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what I read in one comment you draw also the images, but still if the figures appears somewhere else you should reference them. For example put something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 1: Description... (based/largely based in Professor X)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to make those changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T19:43:21.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20270" CreationDate="2014-05-05T20:14:00.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider, even if you correctly quote and cite the source, it may still be considered a form of plagiarism if&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) A signification portion of the paper is made up of quotes (especially 1 quote).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There is no original research presented in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If the quote itself provides significant argument towards your point, and you fail to add your own supporting arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T20:14:00.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20308" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-05T20:31:33.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a participant on this site since the earliest part of the beta phase, I have watched this site grow from nascence to full-fledged &quot;adulthood.&quot; As part of the moderator team during this transition, I have tried to leave things to community decisions as much as possible, although I, just like every other aspiring academic, can be strongly opinionated. However, I believe that my experience thus far as a moderator and as a member of this site has provided the background needed to continue to be a moderator in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T20:41:48.917" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T20:41:48.917" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-05T20:31:33.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20311" CreationDate="2014-05-05T20:46:39.440" Score="23" ViewCount="2086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am posing this question here because of a mini-controversy that arose on another list on which I participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One poster suggested that the poster's &quot;rights were trampled on,&quot; because a journal spent two months trying (but failing) to find reviewers for a particular paper. However, the journal did not notify the poster during that time that anything was amiss with the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the two months, the journal sent back a rejection notice, because they could not find peer reviewers. While I believe that the journal could have done a better job in notifying the author that the review was experiencing delays, I didn't find the length of time spent in the review process at all unreasonable—particularly if the journal submission process allows potential reviewers to see the manuscript before electing to accept or decline the invitation to review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poster believed that it the journal should have sent the rejection much earlier—but I figured it might take six weeks or more in some cases to find reviewers (particularly given that the paper was somewhat outside the &quot;core&quot; themes of the journal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is a reasonable amount of time for a journal to spend before returning the paper because of the inability to find peer reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T21:22:28.143" Title="How long is too long to wait for a rejection because of a lack of reviewers?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-05T21:19:37.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the other answers do not quite answer the question that was asked.  My answer is no, it is not cheating to turn in a homework assignment that cites a website like Math.SE.  (This is assuming that you put quotation marks around any text that you copy; otherwise it could still be plagiarism.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it would be a good idea to ask the professor beforehand whether this is allowed, but failure to do so would not constitute cheating any more than attempting to turn in a homework assignment late without first determining whether this was allowed would constitute cheating.  As long as the student makes it clear that the homework uses outside sources (or was turned in late,) the professor has the choice to accept the homework or not according to his or her policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that if citing outside sources in your homework is a violation of the professor's policy, then the penalty could be significant (just as for failing to turn in the homework on time.)  However, it is still not something that the professor could reasonably report to the university administration as cheating, nor is it something that a reasonable university would consider to be cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the relevant definitions of &amp;quot;cheating&amp;quot; are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1a: to practice fraud or trickery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2b: to violate rules dishonestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both definitions, dishonesty is a crucial element (and one which the OP has explicitly ruled out.)  In fact cheating, plagiarism, falsification of data, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;, are often collectively termed &amp;quot;academic dishonesty,&amp;quot; making this condition explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8937" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T21:19:37.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20309" CreationDate="2014-05-05T21:22:28.143" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If anything, my reaction is that two months is too soon to absolutely give up on trying to find an appropriate referee.  Generally (at least in my discipline) people are given a week or two to accept or decline a referee request, so two months probably means that not more than ten or so people were asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of what it means to be an editor is that they should in principle be working harder to find a suitable referee.  However, if the editor is having an especially bad time of it, it may be worth letting the author know: maybe they will &lt;em&gt;choose&lt;/em&gt; to resubmit to a different journal or to switch to a different editor at the same journal.  The latter happened to me years ago: the editor that I submitted to asked one person to referee, got referred to a second, and so forth.  He reported failure to me after the loop closed up.  But the failure was conditional failure, and he gave me the option of switching to a different editor at the same journal, which I did.  (Unfortunately after that the paper still was not treated well, but that's not part of the present story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia is specialized, but it's not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; specialized: probably most journal submissions have at least 100 suitable referees in the world, right?  If so, then two months is way too soon to say definitively that a suitable referee could not be found.  In my experience, editors often &quot;sugarcoat&quot; the things that they tell authors -- probably because they didn't like the hate mail they got from their earlier, more forthright approach -- to the extent that if you take literally the reasons given for objection, they often sound rather silly.  In this case I might suspect that &quot;I spent two months and I couldn't find a suitable referee&quot; is meant to be code for &quot;I asked enough people whose opinions I trusted, and while they were not willing to formally referee the paper, they told me that it did not interest them and thus probably did not merit publication.&quot;  If the editor is himself making a judgment call about the suitability of the submission, in my opinion that's fine but they should be upfront about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the current culture of academic journals makes extracting &quot;the real story&quot; from the editor almost prohibitively difficult.  In practice it is probably in your poster's best interest just to try again at a different journal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T21:22:28.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20312" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-05T21:57:49.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember being excited about this site when it was first released into beta, and I've watched it grow rather proudly. I've been active in trying to maintain the site's quality and content since I unlocked the moderator tools (and then, to my chagrin, lost them when we exited beta).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to think I'm a productive member of the community, and especially try to provide answers for areas that aren't as well represented by the CS/Math/etc. fields that understandably provide a lot of StackExchange's user base. I'd like to continue to do this as a moderator to help this site reach its potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address some comments: I visit Academia as a user ~ once/day. During that time, I always check my review panel, and before we left beta, the moderator tools. Often, there'd be two or three things to address, and then I'd be off. When I encounter questions when reading the site as a user that need closing/flagging I do so, but generally it's in support of people who previously flagged the post. As a mod, I'd expect I'd be on a great deal more. And generally speaking, no, I don't downvote often - I much prefer to comment to see if a question can be improved before I pass judgement on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:56:50.617" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:56:50.617" CommentCount="7" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-05T21:57:49.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20174" CreationDate="2014-05-05T22:18:44.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should always modify your CV to emphasize certain traits.  If a decision maker is sorting CVs, you want yours to be noticed. Citing specific and credible experience directly related to the program (or company for a general CV) to which you are applying, gives you a much better chance of getting noticed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally re-work my CV for each opportunity I ever applying for. It takes 15 minutes, and can make a huge difference between where you will spend the next few years of your life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the 15 minutes to rework your CV and make it specific to the desired opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14498" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T22:18:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T04:17:56.633" Score="6" ViewCount="1428" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What is or should be the purpose of a &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;grade&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to be entering into TAing and grading students and this is a concept that I still can't wrap my head around. It still amazes me that this concept seems to be taken for granted, considering how many questions there are about grades, and yet the purpose is not clearly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a huge amount of arbitrariness in how grades are currently evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To evaluate the overall performance of a student in the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be how most teachers grade courses. I don't know that this is necessarily the best way.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a student who completely understands the material, but refuses to or does not value doing homework. Should this student receive a lower &amp;quot;grade&amp;quot; in the course simply because she or he did not desire to put the time/value into your course, even though they already knew all the material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To evaluate the final performance of the student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teachers will treate courses this way, but it rarely seems to be explicitely stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a student who fails every midterm, but she or he gets the highest grade on the final exam. You, the teacher, feel that the final accurately assesses someone's complete understanding of the material. Should this student not receive an &amp;quot;A&amp;quot; even though they seem to be able to complete your final exam better than any of the other students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say what the student is dedicated to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many teachers seem to put this as a value into grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a student who attends every lecture, and office hours, but can't seem to completely grasp the material. He or she continually scores lower than other students (getting B's or B+'s on exams, while other students achieve A's). Should this person be bumped up to an A because he or she seems to care and be dedicated to the material, while someone else might have the same grade? You, the teacher, probably wouldn't have consider bumping up the less dedicated student without having heard from the other less dedicated student, and felt a sense of &amp;quot;fairness&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality the way I look at this situation, is that there is no way the more dedicated student should be bumped up. Consider that they spent so much more time and still aren't capable of grasping the material, while someone else was able to spend less time and grasp it to a better extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show what the student will be capable of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that many students take very difficult conceptual courses and quickly forget the material. They would receive an &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;, and then quickly forget most of the importance of the course if they don't use it on a regular basis. On the other hand, some math courses are taught such that the student just has to be able to do the material, and they will be expected to understand the material later only if it is needed. This person would not receive an &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; in the prior, but would receive an &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; in the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people would look at this question and say to just evaluate the course itself and leave the remembering to the student. Then the question is, what's the purpose of the &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;, if you don't care that the student actually be able to retain the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have stated that a clear objective leads to better grading. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;By giving a rubric of what material will be graded on, you fix the issue of what's expected to be known.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, this doesn't fix the issues of:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should there be homework? If so, how should it be weighted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should someone be able to completely change their grade with the final?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should a student's dedication be taken into consideration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the students be graded on pragmatic knowledge, or knowledge they may quickly forget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the course be difficult so the grade the student receives feels earned, simply to keep the student humble?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should students be allowed to retake exams if they understand the material after reviewing their mistakes on the midterm? These students would understand the material better now and should be able to receive a higher grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And many other important questions that don't come to mind at this present point in time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Please tell my I'm just crazy, and everyone sees something I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14930" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2019-11-07T07:16:33.873" Title="What is or should be the meaning of a &quot;grade&quot;?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2019-11-09T01:42:22.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20317" CreationDate="2014-05-06T05:31:17.340" Score="2" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will finish my master study soon, and my master supervisor is happy about my work and would like to give me an offer of PhD. I am also happy on this, but I really want to try other opportunities. Should I give up the current opportunity, and try to apply other universities? By doing this, I have a risk I will have nothing if all my application fail. Is it ethical or appropriate to accept the current offer first, then keep on applying other universities? Is there any way I can balance the risk? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T06:25:14.183" Title="Trying other PhD opportunities while accepting an offer from my master supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20314" CreationDate="2014-05-06T06:19:48.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate the overall performance of a student in the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  This is how people reading a transcript will interpret the grade.  When there is a single letter next to the name of a course, clearly it is meant to represent overall performance in this course.  However, this doesn't really answer the question, because &quot;overall performance&quot; is not a precise term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single right answer to the question &quot;what should be the meaning of a grade,&quot; but neither does it follow that your grades should incorporate every single feature that anyone has ever proposed.  I think you are making the question too hard for yourself.  However, I will share my thoughts on some of the points that you raise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate the final performance of the student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, this is what the final exam (or final project) is for.  It is possible to make the final exam be worth 100% of the grade, but the problems with this are (1) it makes it harder to motivate the students to do other work earlier in the term, (2) it may be more stressful for the student to have so much riding on a single exam, and (3) the effect of a grading mistake on the final exam would be magnified.  Ideas like &quot;let the final exam grade replace a lower midterm exam grade&quot; are similar (to a first-order approximation) to making the final exam grade count for a larger percentage of the course, so they share these disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To say what the student is dedicated to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  While dedication and hard work are admirable, they should only be reflected indirectly in the course grade (all else being equal, a hard-working student would tend to write a better paper, turn in more of the homework, and be better-prepared for an exam.)  Attempting to short-circuit this process by measuring dedication directly is probably a bad idea.  One reason is that it is a very difficult thing to measure objectively.  Another is that it would be unfair to penalize a student who can do well without working hard; if the course wasn't hard enough, that's not the student's fault.  So I agree with your assessment on this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To show what the student will be capable of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can predict this.  It would be silly even to try.  Moreover, how could you defend such grades?  You may be able to imagine saying &quot;I gave you a relatively good grade, even though you scored poorly on the coursework, because I know that you will be capable of great things,&quot;  can you really imagine saying &quot;I gave you a relatively bad grade, even though you scored well on the coursework, because I predict that you will never amount to much of anything&quot;?  The ultimate worth of a grade is relative, so you can't say one without the other.  (On second thought, maybe I am misunderstanding the meaning of this question; it is unclear to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to some of your other questions will depend on the course.  But I think I can answer the following ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the course be difficult so the grade the student receives feels earned, simply to keep the student humble?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the course should be difficult only because the material is difficult to learn.  Humility may be a desired side-effect of learning, but it's not what you should aim to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should students be allowed to retake exams if they understand the material after reviewing their mistakes on the midterm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not the same exam; this would simply reward memorization.  Learning from mistakes on the midterm exam will be rewarded on the final exam, assuming that it is cumulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8937" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T06:19:48.480" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20315" CreationDate="2014-05-06T06:25:14.183" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I give up the current opportunity, and try to apply other universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you have to give up this opportunity to apply to other universities? Find out when your advisor needs your decision by; apply to other universities in the meantime; and when the time comes to give your advisor your decision, evaluate that offer as well as any other offers you have in hand at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it ethical or appropriate to accept the current offer first, then keep on applying other universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not unless you tell your advisor that's what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another worry is that will he writes a good reference for me if he wants to keep me in his group? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor is a reasonably competent advisor, then he will want what's best for you. If that means looking into other opportunities, then he should be supportive. If he isn't supportive, then either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he will make a terrible advisor. Consider yourself lucky that you found out now, and get away fast. Or,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he thinks you'll do best staying where you are. If this is the case, ask him why he thinks so. Consider his answer carefully, then make your own decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The selection results of other universities span across a large time range, if I wait until all selection results are available, it would be too late to accept my current offer. Is there any way I can balance the risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you'll have to commit to a choice at some point. But this is highly situation-dependent. The best person to advise you on this matter is your advisor. He can tell you when he needs your decision by, estimate your chances of getting into the programs you're interested in, and weigh the risks of each approach with your &lt;strong&gt;specific&lt;/strong&gt; goals in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T06:25:14.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20319" CreationDate="2014-05-06T07:04:20.623" Score="39" ViewCount="6984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate writing a paper for a philosophy course in logic. My paper is exploring a relationship between Leibniz' logic and graph theory. In writing the paper, I've found some material in Leibniz' work on combinatorics that (to me) strongly resembles graph theory. However, I can't find anything that seriously discusses Leibniz in relation to the history of graph theory --- everything seems to start with Euler. (Most read &quot;Leibniz made early contributions to topology. Later on, Euler developed graph theory&quot; and continue onward from there)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to be able to say &quot;I looked around on Google scholar, etc, and I couldn't find anything about this topic&quot; by way of suggesting &quot;It's possible that the midterm paper that you're reading is bumping up against an original area of research.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of evidence is appropriate in this situation? Would providing something like the number of results of a search on Google scholar be worthwhile? In general, is there a technique to demonstrate the absence of literature about a certain topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12063" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T06:33:08.280" Title="How can I express &quot;I can't find any papers written about this&quot;?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-05-06T07:22:50.083" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(disclaimer - I come from computer science, and the little I know about conventions in philosophy is from hearsay)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like to be able to say &quot;I looked around on Google scholar, etc, and I couldn't find anything about this topic&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual expression for this kind of thing in my field is &quot;to the best of our knowledge, this topic/idea has so far not been considered in literature&quot;. It tells the reader that you think that nobody has published this idea yet, but clearly the &lt;em&gt;absence&lt;/em&gt; of existing literature is something very difficult to be sure about. Hence the rather defensive formulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, is there a technique to demonstrate the absence of literature about a certain topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. How would you do that? It's a bit like proving a hypothesis - you can only find counterexamples (papers that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; cover the topic), but you cannot prove that in some weird journal nobody reads somebody has expressed your thoughts already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of evidence is appropriate in this situation? Would providing something like the number of results of a search on Google scholar be worthwhile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accepted convention in my field is to explain the methodology of how you searched for literature (you had a defined methodology, right?), and then explain / list / discuss what you found. Be specific - which keywords did you use and why? Why Google Scholar and not something else? Can you be sure that all papers that you would expect to be relevant are indexed by Scholar (some of those should be pretty old, long before the Internet was a thing)? Did you also check your library for dead-tree literature?  Number of results and or similar metrics seem pretty much useless to me and would likely not improve your paper in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T07:22:50.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T07:53:21.753" Score="2" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to assign numbers to courses in an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. Are there any formal guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;3 vs. 4 numbers&quot; debate has been institutionally settled - we are using 3. I know the convention of numbering the absolute beginner courses as 101.&#xA;And that the left-most number indicates the relative difficulty of the course. I would like the other 2 numbers to be meaningful as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, we have courses as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100 level - 3 courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;200 level - 1 group of 3 courses and 2 groups of 2 courses each&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;300 level - 5 courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;400 level - 4 courses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the higher level courses, the decision is somewhat easy as the courses belong to distinct areas (parallel computing, artificial intelligence etc.) and can be numbered accordingly. But the lower level courses intentionally span multiple areas and cannot be numbered so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what guides or suggestions can I follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T11:32:38.977" Title="How to number courses in an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20182" CreationDate="2014-05-06T08:12:53.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there are two dimensions to this question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- 1) Would it be considered cheating by your professor?&#xA;- 2) Should it be considered cheating?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to 1) depends on your professor, university, curriculum, etc. If you are unsure, it's probably best to ask your professor. My personal experience is that lecturers actually like it when a student stuck with some homework exercise approaches them (as long as you show them that you actually thought about the problem and tried different things and don't just ask them for a solution). At my university most professors state at the beginning of the course how they expect the students to do the assignment - e.g., discussing it with colleagues is allowed (but you have to be able to explain your submitted solution in detail); using other sources than the course material is allowed (but you have to cite it properly), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to 2) very much depends on the personal code of ethics. I strongly think that it should not be considered cheating, as long as (i) the student can explain the solution in detail (ii) other material is cited correctly, and (iii) the student didn't use the solutions of other students from previous semesters. After all, the job of a student is to understand things - being able to ask the right questions at the right places is actually a very important skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13427" LastEditorUserId="13427" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T12:32:09.910" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T12:32:09.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20329" CreationDate="2014-05-06T08:37:54.487" Score="5" ViewCount="2055" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are essentially two ways for plotting three-dimensional data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colour maps (or heat maps)¹:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rwVSw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surface plots:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TMsB7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While surface plots are quite nice to visualise data if you can interactively move the perspective, they often obfuscate aspects of the data if you only have one perspective at hand – as it is mostly the case in papers or presentations. And even if the data is benign for surface plots, I have not yet met an example where it adds anything to the colour map, at least in my opinion. This holds for the case where the two are combined, i.e., the surface is coloured (as in the above example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As surface plots are still used, even by people who are otherwise making very good plots, I wonder whether I am missing something here. Thus my question is: Given that I have evenly sampled, three-dimensional data and that I can only show one image to visualise it², &lt;strong&gt;is there any argument or situation due to which I should use a surface plot instead of a colour map?&lt;/strong&gt; In both cases, assume optimally chosen plotting parameters, such as the colour scheme or the viewing angle. Also, you can assume that the plot is being used in an academic context, e.g., a paper, presentation or poster. In particular, the audience can be expected to be able to read such a plot and things like fanciness should not be an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;¹ This example is just to illustrate the types of plot. I am not asking about how they specifically should be presented.&#xA;² And thus, showing a video or multiple perspectives is not an option.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T23:17:06.463" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:42:15.903" Title="Surface plots vs. colour maps" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;data&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20439" CreationDate="2014-05-06T09:25:08.550" Score="22" ViewCount="76358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you should build a good network with your professors as early as possible, not only it will help your study, but also you can get great recommendation letter from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not all students aim at graduate school when they start their undergraduate, for example, I only became interest in research and decide on going to graduate school after my third year of undergraduate. At that time, I have done a research project with a professor and certainly I can ask him for one. However, most schools require 2-3 recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a good recommendation letter should speak about the candidate research potential instead of 'did well in my class', but in my case, only my undergraduate adviser can speak about that. What should I do besides asking recommendation letter from professors I get A grade in their classes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T18:52:46.380" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T05:58:17.917" Title="If I cannot get sufficient recommendation letters, what can I do?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20326" CreationDate="2014-05-06T10:53:47.763" Score="5" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD candidate in Computer Science and I'm working on my first paper that should be published in a peer-reviewed journal (until now, I published only papers in conferences).&#xA;My project is a FPGA memory module, which uses a specific approach (the main idea) to obtain better performance in terms of access philosophy and capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the mentioned idea is naturally the bulk of the paper, with the math, proofs, algorithms, etc. behind it. But, since the module was synthesized and tested, I feel obliged to address its obtained &quot;measures&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process generated quite a lot data which become even more after the simulations were done. So, I'm not sure what charts/tables are appropriate to analyze and publish in a paper? (e.g. input-&gt;output delay for a range of inputs; parameters like max clock, number of logic elements; perhaps even (parts) of the schema; etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this seems a bit specific, I would like to broaden the scope of the question. Namely, the general issue here is how to filter data which does not directly contribute to the understanding of the main idea, but is the result of a finished project and can be used to reinforce the researched concept with practical measurements and simulations. This obtained data is large, so I'm asking for guidelines what could be considered concise enough to put into a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastEditorUserId="14133" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T13:27:32.837" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T14:31:58.037" Title="How to filter data obtained with practical measurements and simulations to be concisely put into a paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20327" CreationDate="2014-05-06T11:01:57.677" Score="10" ViewCount="18923" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am analysing data from a commercial instrument. I need to set a threshold that has to do with the precision of the instrument, so I looked up the value from the manufacturer's online specifications. How do I cite it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The university does not have any official policy, and other papers in the field either don't mention it explicitly, or give the value without citation, but I believe this is actually a quite relevant number, and thus should be specified and quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T22:49:54.977" Title="Citing an instrument manual" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20324" CreationDate="2014-05-06T11:07:26.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a couple of dozen papers that are similar in nature (that is, in terms of the method and how the research question is addresssed) to yours and are in your target journal. Look at how they've supplied the sort of detailed information you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule-of-thumb, put it all into supplementary information. And then follow the advice of your edit and peer-reviewers, if they advise moving things. If there are particular numbers that contribute to your main narrative, put those numbers in the body of the paper, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T11:07:26.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20325" CreationDate="2014-05-06T11:29:00.127" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can cite this user's manual just as you would any book-like publication. The only difference is that you don't cite the name of an author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;User's Manual for Foo Instrument, Model Bar&lt;/em&gt;. Random City: XYZ Corporation (Year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or whatever is the appropriate reference style for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T11:29:00.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20320" CreationDate="2014-05-06T11:32:38.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rules that I've seen (but have not been written down) typically work as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sequences of related courses should have, as much as possible, consecutive course numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Courses that are prerequisites of other courses should have &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; numbers than the courses that depend upon them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Courses that are closely related to one another should have closely spaced numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Within a century, introductory, general, and required courses should have lower numbers than the elective courses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have a three digit number to work with, you can use the middle digit to relate courses according to thematic areas (x0y and x1y numbers could correspond to basic or interdisciplinary subjects; x2y could be algorithms, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T11:32:38.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20322" CreationDate="2014-05-06T11:51:08.303" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everything, it depends. Here is a 3d plot of a mass-spectroscopic peak in time and mass to charge:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZIjf.png&quot; alt=&quot;zoomin&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a pretty good idea of its shape and how important noise is. Also, as it is a wireframe, you can see what is behind. If you want to see several of them I can show you too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lm0l8.png&quot; alt=&quot;zoomout&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the thickness is not so obvious, but still, you get a nice idea of the whole thing. You can immediately see the relative intensities, and patterns like the uppermost corner, where there are several peaks parallel to each other (which is an important feature of my data), with falling intensities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the show off, I generated a bigger slice with Blender, that gives a nice feeling of how the data looks like, including the long &quot;ridges&quot;, parallel peaks, noise, and profiles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vlDl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;blender&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I don't care some peaks are covering each other because the exact positioning is quite random. If I do a heatmap I get this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kd57O.png&quot; alt=&quot;heatmap&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can overlay more information, like the red lines on top, but now we have lost track of the relative intensities, actual shapes, and level of noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, the 3D works because the position of the peaks is quite random, and the exact shape varies from experiment to experiment. Also, intensities and noise are important, and one needs to keep them in mind. But if you want to plot a function (say, a kernel density), where the exact shape is important, and relative values are not so much, a heatmap or a contour plot are usually a better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T11:51:08.303" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20322" CreationDate="2014-05-06T12:04:21.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are four questions, in the order as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what you want to show or put the emphasis on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which visualization makes the data as clear as possible to read and interpret?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is typical way of showing data in your field (to reduce confusion)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(optional) does it make sense in black and white? (some people print papers; sometimes displays have poor color display)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case you have shown, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;heat map&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; looks much more clear; &lt;strong&gt;surface plot&lt;/strong&gt; may have some visual appeal (arguably), but obfuscates the data (some places are hidden, it is harder to read numerical values and see symmetries). Also, it may be good to consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;contour plot&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; with values on contours as it is printable in black and white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T11:42:15.903" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:42:15.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-05-06T12:20:52.620" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The most relevant works we found are&lt;/em&gt; (cite the publication where the water first have been mentioned when your publication is about the invention of the submarine) &lt;em&gt;however they&lt;/em&gt; (and say why actually not &lt;strong&gt;too&lt;/strong&gt; relevant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will not protect from the deserved criticism if the relevant publications do exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T15:39:14.483" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T15:39:14.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:31:08.787" Score="3" ViewCount="1268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am seeking some help to find research papers (preferably in the area of Markov chains) for my undergraduate research for reference. Any guidance on how to find research papers in general for undergraduate level research will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11185" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T16:29:05.280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T16:29:05.280" Title="Finding research papers for undergraduate research" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-06T17:31:03.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20332" CreationDate="2014-05-06T14:29:14.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most useful advice I've ever gotten about finding research papers: Book an appointment with a research librarian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get in touch with your university's library and see if you can make an hour or so appointment, or if they offer workshops or classes on searching the literature. There job is, quite literally, to know how to find information, and generally they're more than happy to share their expertise. Even as an experienced graduate student, I got things out of my visits with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T14:29:14.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20324" CreationDate="2014-05-06T14:31:58.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use the Internet&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the raw dataset in an easily accessible format (and it's description) on a public online repository, preferably in one actively maintained by your institution - most of them seem to have such resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it &quot;does not directly contribute to the understanding of the main idea&quot;, then simply refer to the relevant URL in your paper - the data is still useful in verification, replication, and further analysis by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do make sure that the repository and URL is one that would stick around for decades, not only a couple of years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T14:31:58.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20322" CreationDate="2014-05-06T14:51:41.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the choice here is mainly a question of taste. Personally, I always prefer the the colour map type plots but I know some people who strongly prefer surface plots. The brief arguments for each are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colour map:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Less possibility of hiding or misleading data by obstruction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More accurate representation of the data (no perspective effects).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be hard to plot selected areas and similar things (although not impossible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surface plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look nicer (I strongly disagree)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can be useful if you want to show multiple things on one plot, e.g. height with one area selected (you colour the selected area but put the height surface)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Very easy to hide some data behind something or make it unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find it sometimes difficult to &quot;unwrap&quot; the image to get back to the height.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T14:51:41.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20332" CreationDate="2014-05-06T15:38:52.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic knowledge is connected through a web of citations and references. Once you have a piece of that web, you can follow the threads towards other papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Page&lt;/a&gt;, specifically the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#Notes&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#References&quot;&gt;References&lt;/a&gt; sections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if any of the links there take you to a PDF... look for DOI numbers, or PDF in the link. If not, use Google to try to find a paper. Start reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for a word or phrase you recognize, and want to know more about, or something seems about the direction you want to go. Likely, this will be cited... look in the references section of that paper, then google that paper (or follow the kindly provided &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001870870900344&quot;&gt;links&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're traversing a web of references, so you'll come back to the same papers sometimes. If I were you, I'd keep notes about each of the papers I look into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Link to PDF&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Single sentence summary. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've been doing this for a day or so, you'll notice that there are some authors who have a good connection to the topic you're interested in. Look up their university web page; Often they'll have a list of their papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you are crawling the web of references yourself. Keep following the links, keep track of where you've been, where you want to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, one other thing: Google Scholar is a decent choice for getting an overview of a topic because it will sort papers by reference count: Highly cited papers often contain important information; Be it an excellent summary or a novel insight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T15:38:52.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20325" CreationDate="2014-05-06T16:01:09.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to the existing answer, in some cases citing documents that are not accessible to the research community is discouraged (e.g. a manual that is delivered with the equipment). In this case you could also say: 'We used the Foo Instrument (Manufacturer, City, Country) and set the threshold to 0.86 according to the manufacturer's manual'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manual is accessible online, which seems to be the case here, you should cite the url with the date and time you accessed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T22:49:54.977" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T22:49:54.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T16:01:13.720" Score="9" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;My graduate program is a non-research based. However, I am interested in writing and presenting a conference paper. Is it possible for me to do this even as I am not into research work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14947" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T01:27:47.553" Title="Can I present a conference paper if I am not a researcher?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20340" CreationDate="2014-05-06T16:10:19.473" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can submit any paper you want. There are a lot of people, for example in the industry field, that submit papers to conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as they have stated in one comment, as soon as you start preparing a paper, that per se converts you into a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T16:10:19.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:12:38.433" Score="3" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;British societies (and commonwealth countries) offer the title of &lt;code&gt;chartered scientist/engineer&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it based on my education only or work experiences (and research outcome such as publications)? How do they judge an application?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they need a final degree for the process: do they just contact my university to verify the degree or must I have obtained the degree from specific universities (e.g., accredited programs)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this British professional qualification useful outside the commonwealth countries? For instance if applying for a job in US or Germany?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T18:37:44.953" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T18:37:44.953" Title="What is a Chartered Scientist/Engineer &amp; how do you become one?" Tags="&lt;titles&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20344" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:14:04.410" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:14:04.410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:14:04.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20345" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:14:04.410" Score="0" Body="About citing published or unpublished sources of information, crediting the work of others on which the present work is based." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:24:56.037" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:24:56.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20346" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:15:38.010" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:15:38.010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:15:38.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20347" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:15:38.010" Score="0" Body="Questions related to taking courses over the internet or other electronic distance-based coursework." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:24:47.483" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:24:47.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20348" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:16:18.660" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:16:18.660" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:16:18.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20349" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:16:18.660" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding the legal ownership of information and intellectual output." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:24:40.913" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:24:40.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20350" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:17:17.683" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:17:17.683" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:17:17.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20351" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:17:17.683" Score="0" Body="Questions about test-based evaluation of student progress and achievement." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:28:02.633" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:28:02.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20352" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:17:55.310" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:17:55.310" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:17:55.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20353" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:17:55.310" Score="0" Body="Questions about evaluating the current state of research on a topic by searching published material." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:27:09.297" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:27:09.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20354" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:20:04.847" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:20:04.847" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:20:04.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20355" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:20:04.847" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding making manuscripts available prior to their publication in a peer-reviewed source." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:27:52.227" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:27:52.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20356" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:21:10.150" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:21:10.150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:21:10.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20357" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:21:10.150" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding the use of systems that can track the changes over time in code or documents." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:27:40.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:27:40.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20360" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:05:24.563" Score="40" ViewCount="19050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper describing some of the research I have done. As part of my work I have developed an open-source library and made it available on Github. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I link to it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I cite it in the bibliography or make a footnote with the link to the software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14953" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:13:07.283" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:24:40.773" Title="How should I reference my Github repository with materials for my paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20340" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:06:05.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes - I've attended several research presentations by people who are not &quot;academic&quot; researchers, and who just wanted to present the results of an interesting project.  Several companies encourage workers to submit papers as this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Increases the prestige of the company&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Even if you do not patent, by publishing you have made your idea un-patentable by creating prior art.  So you've also protected your IP.  (NOTE: I'm not a lawyer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T18:06:05.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:11:54.607" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such resources, especially if they are a supplementary to the paper, i.e. in some sense a part of it, should be referenced in a footnote and not in bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do include not only the URL but also a short description; and do try to keep that URL valid - once you publish that link, it's frozen forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps to include the opposite citation. In the readme file of that library, include full citation information of your paper. This will allow others to gain extra information about the methods, and also give you citations if/when others build upon your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishers also support binary attachments for supplementary information. If they do, you should use it - prepare a package of the current stable version and upload it there. It allows for reproducability, as a specific version is referenced which relates to the actual paper, and not some improvements done in 2020 that change everything; and it also attaches all relevant information together with the paper at the publisher's site, which will stay valid even if that github repository goes away for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T18:11:54.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:15:07.020" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In previous papers, I've used something like (source code available at github.com/fomite/brilliantwork) when describing the software methods used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; now allows you to directly import a repo from GitHub, which will give you a DOI you can reference as a citation. This also provides a benefit for having a &quot;snapshot&quot; of the repo at the time of publication, for repositories that will continue to be worked on. That, plus the ability for me and other people to cite the repo directly (and thus be able to get some traditional citation metrics to show the impact of the software), is what I'll be doing in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T18:15:07.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20343" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:15:50.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm basing my answer on Ireland, where my Brother became a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineersireland.ie/Membership/Registered-Titles/Chartered.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chartered Engineer&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In relation to the points of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normally in Ireland you obtain a Bachelors (Hon) degree (up to 2012 now a masters degree) and can become an Associate member of the Engineer Institute. After a period of time, or either further study or in the workplace you may apply to become a Chartered Engineer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineersireland.ie/Membership/Registered-Titles/Chartered/how-to-apply.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Regulations here&lt;/a&gt;. I know in my brothers case for his application he had to write up any course he took after becoming a member and also any details of any project that he worked on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears a masters degree is needed now but a Bachelors (Hon) degree awarded up to 2012 will be accepted up to 2020. Page 7 of the regulations linked above have details of progression routes available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieagreements.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;accords&lt;/a&gt; that ensure cross-border recognition of the qualification. Again as an example, my Brother was able to secure a Engineering Job with a European multinational Engineering firm in the UAE within about 6-8 weeks of moving there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the Irish and British systems are similar due to the historical link between the two countries. Unfortunately as per your question I have no information on the term Chartered Scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T18:15:50.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20323" CreationDate="2014-05-06T18:25:48.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I decided I wanted to attend grad-school at the end of my junior year - here is what I did&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I had done research with one prof, so I had one good reference in the bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) My senior year I was voted president of the ACM, and had a faculty advisory (2nd reference).  Knowing I wanted to attend grad-school made the extra time I put into this make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Third reference came from a prof I had taken several classes with and who worked with the other 2 references on several research projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Due to an incompetent class adviser (not academic) incorrectly signing me up for the wrong class, I had to wait an extra year to graduate.  This gave me extra time to strengthen my application.  Look around for a summer research opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I'm not suggesting delaying graduation for a year to get into grad-school.  There were several downsides to having that happen to me.  Just start looking at everything more strategically, and if a situation presents itself to allow you to strengthen your application take it - even it it means sacrificing in the short term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T18:25:48.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20323" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:15:13.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some thoughts. Figure out what classes you took that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are most similar to the type of graduate school you're applying for, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you did well in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then set up a meeting with your former professor(s) of those classes to tell them a little about yourself, why you're planning on going to graduate school, and the situation you're in. I think any professor, and especially those in your future area of study are going to be very understanding of your situation and happy to help you out. It might help to talk with them a little about your research experiences and/or furnish them with a CV/resume detailing those and other experiences so that they may write a nice letter for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think short of taking off some more time, doing research in a second lab, etc,  you don't have much choice in this matter! But never fear, I think the letter from your advisor is going to be the one that carries the most weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT. Just wanted to add, in the process of deciding which professors to talk to, take a gander at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9341/how-do-i-make-sure-i-get-strong-recommendation-letters-for-faculty-positions&quot;&gt;this post about getting a 'strong' recommendation&lt;/a&gt;. Lots of good advice there. One idea that might be particularly applicable to you is asking whichever professor you talk to about where they think you should apply, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T19:20:42.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20365" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:52:03.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A field spanning biology, mathematics, computer science and statistics, focusing on the acquisition and analysis of biological data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular bioinformatics questions, visit our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Bioinformatics Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33097" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-18T19:52:21.200" LastActivityDate="2020-10-18T19:52:21.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20366" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:52:03.043" Score="0" Body="A field spanning biology, mathematics, computer science and statistics, focusing on the acquisition and analysis of biological data. For regular bioinformatics questions, visit our sister site Bioinformatics Stack Exchange." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-18T17:51:31.797" LastActivityDate="2020-10-18T17:51:31.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20367" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:54:40.380" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T19:54:40.380" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T19:54:40.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20368" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:54:40.380" Score="0" Body="An academic position largely (or entirely) supported with external grant funding." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:21:17.480" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:21:17.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20369" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:55:29.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;Switzerland&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, Oceania, or the rest of Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. It is situated in Western and Central Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:28:32.717" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:28:32.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20370" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:55:29.613" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to Switzerland's higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or other countries in Europe." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T03:48:14.040" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T03:48:14.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20371" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:57:08.363" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T19:57:08.363" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T19:57:08.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20372" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:57:08.363" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning adjunct faculty, those with non-permanent, often part time, contractual positions with a university." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:00:59.007" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:00:59.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20373" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:02:29.440" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:02:29.440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:02:29.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20374" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:02:29.440" Score="0" Body="Questions about finding specific papers, books, etc. pertaining to a topic. This includes the use of online databases such as Google Scholar or PubMed to find relevant articles." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:20:41.283" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:20:41.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20375" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:03:54.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in the &lt;strong&gt;United Kingdom&lt;/strong&gt; (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, Oceania, or the rest of Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:22:43.620" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:22:43.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20376" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:03:54.700" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the higher education system in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or elsewhere in Europe." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:11:19.223" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:11:19.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20377" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:05:04.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that statistics specific questions may be more appropriate on &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;CrossValidated&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T21:04:29.390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T21:04:29.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20378" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:05:04.980" Score="0" Body="On the use of statistics in academic research. Statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing and drawing inference from data. Do not use this tag for questions about 'statistics' as a subdiscipline of mathematics or field of study; use 'mathematics' instead." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T08:12:46.747" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T08:12:46.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20379" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:07:05.303" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:07:05.303" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:07:05.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20380" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:07:05.303" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding the role of a more senior or experienced individual (a mentor) providing guidance and advice to a more junior colleague or student. This relationship does not have to involve a formal supervisory position." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:31:39.113" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:31:39.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20381" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:09:42.257" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:09:42.257" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:09:42.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20382" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:09:42.257" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning medical school, clinical research, and other academic pursuits specific to the diagnosis and treatment of human disease. Use 'health-issues', not 'medicine', for questions about health-related issues facing academics." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T07:10:41.600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T07:10:41.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20383" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:11:06.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:11:06.703" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:11:06.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20384" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:11:06.703" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning the individuals asked to review a paper, conference submission, etc. as part of the peer-review process, including their obligations and responsibilities, and how to interact with them during the review process." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:30:55.843" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:30:55.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20385" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:12:35.080" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:12:35.080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:12:35.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20386" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:12:35.080" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning &quot;Open Science&quot;, or research done in full view of the public eye, with a focus on accessibly and reproducibility, including tools to enable such access." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T20:31:10.147" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:31:10.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:55:57.550" Score="2" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember of some article that was published in which the author showed a world map with circles that represented the number of articles published by country and their frequency in which a groundbreaking academic work was released in each country(One of them was represented by the size of the circle, the other by the color of the circle). But I can't find it now, could someone help me find it? I've googled some things but was unable to find it - my native languange is not english, so I ran out of permutations of words to find the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T12:43:18.760" Title="World map with academic works graded by relevance?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:04:26.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can picture the image you are talking about, but I'm having trouble finding it as well. There is however an interactive world map here, which is broken down by institution, rather than country: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap?TopDomainId=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap?TopDomainId=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T21:04:26.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:56:11.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually wrote something similar in a recent paper. I wrote &quot;The author is not aware of any work that is directly comparable to the current paper.&quot; I'm not suggesting this is the best phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some further details, I then added some specific publications. &quot;Of the many publications relating to x, two representative papers with roughly similar aims to this paper are x1 and x2.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T21:56:11.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:06:39.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I phrased a similar idea in a published paper (in a computer science conference) like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although it is well known that space-filling curves can be applied to the problem of approximate nearest neighbor searching, we are not aware of any extension of space-filling curves to approximate range reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3998" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T22:06:39.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20399" CreationDate="2014-05-07T00:47:38.857" Score="20" ViewCount="3205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working with my advisor on a research topic for six months and we had some results. The important idea was his, but the initial idea was mine and we worked on it together. Now my advisor has published the results without my name in the authors. The paper is in an important conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do ? Is this normal ? Should I talk to my advisor about how I get my name in a paper ? How do I approach that topic ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm his only PhD student and he has joined the department recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit : The paper was written by my advisor but we derived the results together, although his contribution was more important. He included my name in acknowledgements. Should I risk upsetting my relationship with my advisor over this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14965" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T04:18:27.830" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:23:30.447" Title="what do you do if your PhD advisor publishes a solo paper on your topic?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20395" CreationDate="2014-05-07T02:39:08.630" Score="14" ViewCount="3841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just finishing my PhD and I have now been on the job market and started to speak at many universities. I have realized it is a time commitment for a person to host a seminar speaker and am really grateful for the experiences that many of my hosts have given me at these universities. For this reason, I have made a policy of sending thank you notes to those that host me when I visit another university's seminar.  These notes that I write typically just say thank you for taking time to host me and funding my visit (if they funded it). It also thanks them for their input and questions about my work if they gave me a useful idea. One of my colleagues has told me this is odd, so I wanted to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is writing thank you notes to someone for inviting me to speak and hosting me at their university overkill? Is there any negative outcome that can happen from doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastEditorUserId="12656" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T05:07:24.187" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T08:42:11.193" Title="&quot;Thank you&quot; notes after giving a seminar talk" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20394" CreationDate="2014-05-07T02:51:32.257" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that sending a &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt; thank-you note is a little unusual.  There's nothing wrong with it, of course.  You may come across as slightly eccentric, but academia has plenty of people like that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thank-you &lt;em&gt;email&lt;/em&gt;, on the other hand, is perfectly usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T02:51:32.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2014-05-07T03:00:19.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you're thinking of the map below?  It's Figure 1 of the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130130/srep01167/full/srep01167.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Multi-Level Analysis of the `Scientific Food Web'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kRzm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kRzm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;World map of knowledge production and consumption in 6 major geographic areas of the world (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa).&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130130/srep01167/images/srep01167-f1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nature.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption is &quot;Figure 1: World map of knowledge production and consumption in 6 major geographic areas of the world (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa).&quot;  An additional note: &quot;Circle size reflects the number of papers $P_i$ produced by the corresponding entities $i$. The inner circle is for 2000–2002, the outer one for 2007–2009. The size of the pies represents (A) the relative proportion of citations $C_i$ that the entities earned in the 6 geographic areas, (B) similar for references $R_i$ recorded in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. The number of papers and citations have increased over time in all geographic areas, but their shares of references and citations have changed. For example, Asia reaches higher shares recently, characterizing it as an emergent scientific power, which has become almost comparable to North America or Europe. Note that, in the three leading knowledge producing areas, the majority of references cites papers published in the same geographic area, i.e., proximity matters.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T12:43:18.760" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T12:43:18.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20398" CreationDate="2014-05-07T03:23:28.793" Score="4" ViewCount="9244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to go to a summer school in biomathematics for undergraduate level, and they ask to give some sort of explanatory of why do I want to attend. I've never done this before, so I have no idea what to write, first I wanted to write that the relationship between biology and mathematics is very interesting, and that stimulates my curiosity, however I feel this sounds extremely immature. How do you write this things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've seen that in general for other events that usually involve (short) courses, they ask the applicant to write their reasons to attend, why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8379" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T04:24:15.670" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T04:24:15.670" Title="How to explain why I want to go to a summer school?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;summer-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20397" CreationDate="2014-05-07T03:57:04.313" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer both questions of &quot;what to write&quot; and &quot;why they ask for this,&quot; I will quote an &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15298/11365&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; from @badroit to a related question (which deals with writing a research statement):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You're trying to demonstrate why you and your background are a good fit for a summer school and that you will benefit greatly from that school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general idea is the same for writing a &quot;why I want to attend&quot; statement: you want to show the organizers of the summer school that they won't be wasting their time and other resources on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the two things you'll want to make sure your answer conveys are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That you are genuinely enthusiastic about the topic. Explaining (as you suggest) that the relationship between biology and mathematics is something you are very curious about/interested in is a perfectly reasonable thing to write. You could also mention related coursework or projects you have undertaken, to further demonstrate your interest in this area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That you will benefit from the summer school. Discuss relevant goals that you think this school will help you achieve; for example, your intent to take graduate-level courses in the subject as a senior, to pursue independent study/research in this area, to go on to graduate studies in biomathematics, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if there is a professor in a related area with whom you have some relationship (e.g., you took his/her class), you can ask them to review your summer school application before you send it in. This has the double benefit of (1) getting expert help with your application, and (2) cultivating a relationship with faculty in your field of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T03:57:04.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20391" CreationDate="2014-05-07T04:18:11.387" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;no, it's not normal&lt;/strong&gt;. If two people work on some research together, the &quot;normal&quot; thing is for them to write the paper on it together, and for both to be authors on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that you seriously overestimated your contribution to the work and don't actually deserve authorship. Even in this case, it's clear you were involved in the research and it's &lt;strong&gt;not normal&lt;/strong&gt; for your advisor to go ahead and publish it without discussing it with you first.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(When I publish work that involves students whose small contributions do not warrant authorship, I always discuss it with them first. I explain why I don't think they can be an author, give them a chance to state any disagreement, and also tell them what additional work they could do in order to merit authorship.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the latter (your contributions did not merit authorship, and your advisor failed to discuss this with you) is somewhat more forgivable than the former (your contributions did merit authorship and your advisor published without you anyways). (You do say your advisor is new, and probably inexperienced in advising.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor&lt;/strong&gt;. This is the only way to really understand which case you are dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can bring this up in a non-combative way without upsetting your advisor; for example, you can ask &quot;What do I need to do in order to deserve authorship on future papers?&quot; This gives your advisor an opening to discuss why he thinks you didn't deserve authorship on the conference paper, and for you to respectfully state your perception of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may still be a chance for you to get some credit for this work, if you come to agree with his point of view that you didn't do enough to deserve authorship on the conference paper. For example, once you and your advisor have come to an agreement on what it takes to get authorship, you can propose that the two of you work together on an extended version of his conference paper for a journal - on which you will be an author :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it's also possible that after this conversation you believe you &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; deserve authorship, and that your advisor published your joint work without you for no valid reason (i.e., committed misconduct). In this case, the best advice I can give you is to start looking for another advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the lesson for the future is: &lt;strong&gt;talk to your collaborators about authorship early and often.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T23:23:30.447" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:23:30.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-05-07T04:45:15.867" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a direct answer to your actual question.  Such has been well provided above.  Rather, I humbly suggest, as someone who majored in philosophy and has been burned repeatedly by the notion of originality, that when you are tempted to think &quot;it's possible that the midterm paper that you're [writing] is bumping up against an original area of research,&quot; refresh yourself with a jaunt to your school's library.  There you might find such gems as Benoit B. Mandelbrot's &lt;em&gt;The Fractal Geometry of Nature&lt;/em&gt; (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1982) and &lt;em&gt;The Philosophy of Leibniz:  Metaphysics and Language&lt;/em&gt; by Benson Mates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), both of which treat, at least briefly, Leibniz' historical contribution to the development of graph theory.  Your library may also have less widely distributed journals and &quot;unpublished&quot; works which are not yet well cataloged on them interwebs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also find that some good scholarly work is done in introductions to collections of original writings. Leroy E Loemker's intro to &lt;em&gt;Philosophical Papers and Letters:  A Selection&lt;/em&gt;, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Dordrecht, Holland; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1976, 1969) is one such which just so happens to mention your topic.  You might also find inspiration in proximal works on such topics as Turing, computational logic, machine theory, and linguistics, to say nothing of the huge body of literature dealing with the interrelationship of analysis situs, graph theory, topology, and calculus.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, the ability to reference prior works that broach your subject will lend legitimacy to what you might build upon them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really interested in this subject, though, your best bet is probably to check your syllabus for your professor's office hours, and then drop by for a few minutes to briefly explain your topic, along with your difficulty finding references, and ask her if she has any suggestions as to where you might turn.  But I wouldn't mention google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14969" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T06:33:08.280" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T06:33:08.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20424" CreationDate="2014-05-07T06:07:54.287" Score="19" ViewCount="9336" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has two parts. First, a comparative question. Second, a broad  question about why PhD students get so stressed and complain so much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my limited and biased experience, yes. More generally, there are so many websites about how hard life as a PhD student is. So many memes. These are clearly all composed by current or former PhD students. My cohort's facebook feeds read like journals written in prison. Party conversation demonstrates &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/25-deeply-painful-phd-student-problems-besides-your-thesis&quot;&gt;a general obsession with complaining about life in a PhD program&lt;/a&gt;. People often half-joke about how starting the PhD program was &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/post/84928585186/my-advice-to-prospective-students&quot;&gt;a horrible mistake&lt;/a&gt;.  PhD students have even been &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXvv5sTqNa4&quot;&gt;roasted on &lt;em&gt;30 Rock&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. And they're often &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1047&quot;&gt;weirdly nervous about trivial stuff&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, these are online comedy bits, but they are funny because they capture something &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many jobs are stressful and I believe that people in other fields handle their stress better &lt;em&gt;or, at the very least, feel compelled to maintain that appearance&lt;/em&gt;. I started my PhD a bit later than average. Before doing so I worked in a few other fields, some of them more stressful than academia by reasonable standards (higher consequences of mistakes for oneself and/or for others, faster pace work environment, higher likelihood of being insulted/embarrassed by supervisors, what have you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do PhD students complain so much?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a few reasons why PhD students have such a hard time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, there is a lot of work. But there are lots of jobs where you need to work very hard for long hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many disciplines, there is no clear management structure where someone can tell you &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to do when and &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; you are done. Of course, this can be stressful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the nature of theoretical innovation and research, one is never &quot;done&quot; with work. There is only a choice of when one is going to &lt;em&gt;stop&lt;/em&gt; for the day or &lt;em&gt;stop&lt;/em&gt; on a particular project (e.g., by submitting for publication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many PhD students have spent little time outside of school and academia. Most of their schooling until the PhD program was very structured with short-term goals. In a PhD and now they are responsible for defining their own projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD programs may attract uniquely stressful, driven people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the idea of being a &quot;student&quot; fosters immature attitudes about the work environment, even though PhD students must deal with real adult workloads. People in many other lines of work have no illusions about their obligation to handle their workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastEditorUserId="7934" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T10:35:13.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T13:48:37.353" Title="Why do PhD students complain so much?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-05-07T18:35:31.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T20:30:28.997" Score="0" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I sign my name with the degree of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Information_Technology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doctor of Information Technology&lt;/a&gt;&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this all correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr. Full Name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Full Name D.I.T&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr Full Name&#xA;(Doctor of Information Technology)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr. Last Name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I use these kind of signatures in my emails and/or letters? Is there a standard way of doing this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question was also asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/168282/signature-for-doctor-of-information-technology-prefix-and-suffix&quot;&gt;on English Language &amp;amp; usage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17262" OwnerDisplayName="HaBo" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:11.743" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:10:31.717" Title="Signature for Doctor of Information Technology prefix and suffix" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:22:17.867" Score="45" ViewCount="3013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student halfway through my journey. After I published a few papers, I am getting review requests from some medium rank conference and journal editors. While certainly it is an honour for me, doing good review takes some time since I am not an expert of my broad field with everything at my finger tip. Does review experience add something to my CV particularly if I want an academic career? I am really sorry if the question sounds too shallow or cynical but I want to know whether I can cite the review experience to prove my worth as a researcher to a prospective hiring committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7437" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:05:57.460" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T19:42:14.420" Title="As a Ph.D. student, should I spend time reviewing papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:25:36.460" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important part of an academic career/CV is &lt;em&gt;service&lt;/em&gt;. Reviewing, editing, hosting conferences, ... falls under this category. So yes, it is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to consider it to be a potential waste of your precious time. This is false. Depending on your field, reviewers have earlier access to new work than others which is always beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T07:25:36.460" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:55:26.790" Score="3" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;My primary interest is in Data Mining. Secondary interests are Intrusion Detection and Energy Efficient Buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done projects in data mining approaches for intrusion detection. I have also done research in data analysis on energy consumption patterns in smart-buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be applying for graduate school (MS) shortly. Now, how do I proceed writing my statement? Should I lay more emphasis on Data Mining? Which professors should I mention I want to work with? Ones doing data mining research, or the ones doing network security/sustainable energy research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main concern is finding potential advisers. I believe if I can find some before the application, I can find out their requirements and write a statement accordingly. This in-turn might help me get admission in the desired school as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question here is whether I should look for researchers in data mining (which I have applied in my works) or intrusion detection/sustainable energy (the domain where data mining technique was applied)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that chances of me finding advisers that share interest in both data mining and (intrusion detection/sustainable energy) is very less. So which advisers should I target?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14974" LastEditorUserId="14974" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T15:23:31.037" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T01:18:30.783" Title="How do I write a compelling statement about my interest in diverse domains?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:55:40.893" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Marc Claesen says, it does give you earliest access to new work, and it is a chance to give back to the academic community, and boost your CV at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the usual caveats apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This would be a significant chunk of time, so discuss it with your supervisors / advisors before agreeing to take it on, and listen to their advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you do it, do it in moderation: don't let it displace your core work, which is getting the PhD finished.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do it only if and while it contributes to your PhD: it can do this by honing your research skills, and/or by increasing the body of relevant literature that you're familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T08:15:25.853" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T08:15:25.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2014-05-07T08:38:25.180" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing reviews is both a necessary contribution to the publication system and a merit carrying with it several positive aspects. As a scientist you are expected to contribute and, thus, you have to start at some point. To start reviewing lower profile publications is a good thing and you should of course think about whether you can contribute good insights or not. There is nothing wrong with declining a review stating you feel it is outside your expertise. That said you may provide a different angle on a problem and your name has hopefully been chosen because you have become known for good work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning reviews probably take a very long time to complete as with everything new. But, as you read other peoples work you have an opportunity to look at how others write and express science (not necessarily in a good way). This can help you develop your own skills. I also find that reviewing papers give me an opportunity to read about new science and think more deeply about a specific problem than what I usually have time to do with a published paper. Thus, I would stress the learning opportunities in the review task as important. That it takes time is a given, a review that does not take time is either sloppy review work or because of a really terrible paper to review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T08:38:25.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20394" CreationDate="2014-05-07T08:42:11.193" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had the pleasure of taking a few courses with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Danvy&quot;&gt;the most thanked man in computer science&lt;/a&gt;. I think part of the reason so many people have thanked him in their papers is that he consistently teaches his students to show appreciation for people's help and to be helpful themselves. The students he advices also tend to do well in their careers. I think there is a causal relationship (although he also picks good students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, keep showing appreciation for people's help. Even if paper thank-you notes are unusual in your field, just send them anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14864" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T08:42:11.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T09:43:11.150" Score="1" ViewCount="1205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently pursuing my post-graduation in Physics. I would like to do my project work on chaos theory and non-linear dynamics. The problem is that I am not entirely sure how to go about it and what area I should choose within that subject due to its complexity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I am utterly confused as to what my project must require and above all what it should look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, my guide has been held up with a few personal commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14980" LastEditorUserId="14980" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T14:14:32.640" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T14:32:05.213" Title="What should a good theoretical Physics project for an MSc. Physics student look like?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:02:12.197" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two factors that I think are the most relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD student is one of the lowest salary/education ratio. The best students, with highest grades, doing the highest level coursework get fairly crappy salaries (when any). In Spain, where I am from, getting the best grant the Ministery offers barely allows you to rent a shared flat and eat cheap. Sweden, where I am now, is one of the best countries to be a PhD student regarding salary and conditions. One salary is enough to provide a living and housing for two people. Still, a first job for a STEM graduate usually means three times more salary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uncertainity. A junior in a company is assigned a clear task with a goal, where the manager, seniors, etc. are sure are achievable goals. In research, no one can know this. You don't really know what you are doing is even possible until you get it. Sure, you have advisors, but they can only guess what is going to be. In short: nobody really knows what they are doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I think there is a sense of unifying community. People that make land surveys and mapping (for example) may be subject to similar conditions, but they will feel no sense of familiarity with the perks of the life and work of a librarian. Grad students, no mater what is their field, have something in common, and thus a sociologist can very well relate to a mathematician as well as an slavic philology expert. So, a map maker can whine as much as a grad student, but they will not see the same echo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, anyone who has gone to university knows a bunch of grad students. That is much more reach than aeronautic engineers, that are mostly related with other engineers. Grad students in a general term are much more common that many other particular professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T10:02:12.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:13:03.643" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(one important comment - this all relates to PhD students in Europe, where you usually get an actual salary while doing your PhD. I have no experience about grad student life on a stipend, as in the US)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think so. Sure, PhD students complain about their job. So do all other professionals. I have been in software engineering for two years before my PhD, and people have certainly complained a lot there as well. My non-research friends just as often bitch about their jobs, bosses, work conditions, salary, etc. as my fellow researchers. Just a peek at workplace.SE already gives you a confirmation that being dissatisfied with your work conditions is not a thing specific to PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that people in other fields handle their stress better or, at the very least, feel compelled to maintain that appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not agree at all. I have seen so many people act unprofessionally inside and outside of academia (due to stress or personal issues), it is not even funny. Your perception is entirely opposite to mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite story in relation to that is that of a very senior full professor storming out of a meeting with tears of anger in her eyes, because she felt than another professor in the meeting was not valuing her experience in a topic sufficiently). She has later excused herself and stated that she was going through a personally hard time. Unprofessional behaviour is not inherently a grad student thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My cohort's facebook feeds read like journals written in prison. Party conversation demonstrates a general obsession with complaining about life in a PhD program. People often half-joke about how starting the PhD program was a horrible mistake. PhD students have even been roasted on 30 Rock. And they're often weirdly nervous about trivial stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the complaining PhD student is a meme by now. That does not mean it has to be true, although such memes tend to have a bit a self-fulfilling nature. The question is, when you look at the prison-like FB posts of your cohort, how many complaints are tongue-in-cheek, and how many are serious &quot;this is all so f*cked up&quot; statements. I should also add that looking at only your cohort may give you a false impression of generality, as you all attend the same school, maybe are even advised by the same professors. Basically, if something is &quot;off&quot; in your environment, it would explain why your cohort complains, but says very little about other universities (like the ones I have experience with).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T11:12:39.613" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:12:39.613" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20413" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:29:38.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will throw &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/strongbad&quot;&gt;myself&lt;/a&gt; into the moderator ring. I am a top 25 user in terms of reputation, number of votes cast and number of edits. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/16617/academia&quot;&gt;Area 51&lt;/a&gt; I was one of the top ten beta users. I have both up voted and down voted questions and cast 115 helpful flags (and a few unhelpful ones to). In addition to asking, answering, and commenting on questions, I try and use the review queues and participate in meta and chat on a regular basis. During beta as a regular user I often expressed strong opinions which I think are useful for forming a site. As a moderator, moderation is key. I am currently also active on TeX.SE and am a moderator at the new Expats.SE beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of academic experience I am an American who did my undergraduate and graduate studies and a post doc in the US before moving to the UK to be a lecturer in a Russell Group University (i.e., research active). I was trained as an Engineer but work in a Psychology department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T15:48:25.507" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T15:48:25.507" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-07T10:29:38.447" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20415" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:38:30.370" Score="12" ViewCount="14547" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic has already been described to some extent, e.g. here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20270/is-verbatim-copying-text-with-citation-considered-plagiarism&quot;&gt;Is verbatim copying several paragraphs of text with citation considered plagiarism?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I do no think that it has been completely discussed, especially in the context of related work and abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am writing the section about related work in my papers, I tend to describe the work of each other related researcher in a few sentences with my own words and referencing their papers. However, in a current paper that I am writing I have realised that the abstracts of more than a few papers that I want to mention are so well written and are so concise that I cannot do any better. Writing my description would be just a waste of time, and result in a less concise text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper. And possibly adding, removing, or changing a word or two that may not be relevant in the context of the paper that I am writing, so it's not really a plain copy paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I get in trouble for this? I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you might have a different view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11306" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2020-06-14T09:38:52.067" Title="Copy pasting sentences from abstracts of other papers for describing related work" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20414" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:50:20.717" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems absolutely appropriate, as long as you quote them correctly. Which brings us to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not only a &lt;em&gt;good idea&lt;/em&gt; to do that, it is required. You &lt;em&gt;need to&lt;/em&gt; make explicit that those are verbatim copies. The semantics of copying text from a paper and summarizing the key points yourself are different for a reader, and you need to make this difference explicit by demarking which parts you have taken in verbatim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I get in trouble for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work. Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you may have a different view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reminds me a bit of a few high-profile cases of plagiarisms that were going around lately in the german-speaking areas. Often, the excuses presented by the accused authors were similar (&quot;hey, the text I copied wasn't really that important - it was just the introduction after all!&quot;, &quot;I cited it anyway, I just did not make clear that the text is actually copied from there&quot;, etc.). These excuses never fly. Be rigorous with your handling of sources. Everything else is just playing with fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T10:50:20.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20414" CreationDate="2014-05-07T11:20:48.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can quote of course, but if you copy-paste without making clear this is a citation, then not appropriate. The smallest copyright unit is normally a sentence that must be rephrased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T11:20:48.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20420" CreationDate="2014-05-07T12:25:00.713" Score="9" ViewCount="2575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to write a paper. Reading the introduction part I am getting different behaviours from different papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some papers cover themselves more than 50% with introduction content as if they are the only source of information present anywhere while some give it very briefly expecting user to be well aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader I never expected to learn the concept from paper intro part itself but from books and then read papers. I rather think that introduction section shall be used to provide very brief intro and references for further understanding. Repeating an algorithm that's present in 500 books makes no sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need some tips on writing introduction part that its just about enough or is it mandatory to repeat info to make it somewhat complete in itself ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14432" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T14:39:03.980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:43:22.883" Title="How much background detail should go in the introduction section in a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20402" CreationDate="2014-05-07T12:31:23.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/styleguide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;University of Calgary&quot;&gt;University of Calgary Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://communications.med.nyu.edu/advertising-branding/editorial-style-guide/academic-degrees-licenses-credentials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NYU Langone Office of Communications and Marketing&lt;/a&gt; as two examples, your signature would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John M. Doe, DIT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Doctor of Information Technology&quot; degree is offered by a very limited number of Universities. I could not find any style guides referring to DIT directly, but given the choices as the OP lists, the two style guides to which I refer state that one should not use periods within the acronym, so it would not be number 2, but would be John M. Doe, DIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to state that one should not use the honorific Dr. at the same time as listing the degrees. So Dr. John M. Doe, DIT would not be recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14290" LastEditorUserId="14290" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:10:31.717" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:10:31.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2014-05-07T13:07:53.350" Score="55" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote Drew Carey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? You know there's a support group for that. It's called &lt;strong&gt;everybody&lt;/strong&gt;. They meet at the bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T13:07:53.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20417" CreationDate="2014-05-07T13:31:33.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much detail to provide in the introduction depends on the circumstances.  The minimum requirement is to give enough context and references that a diligent reader could fill in any missing background, at the cost of some extra work.  However, that's a pretty undemanding requirement; a few papers fail to do this, but they generally fail by not even trying.  It's often valuable to do more to make life easier for the reader.  How much more depends on who you expect will read the paper, and on what you believe they want or need from the introduction.  (Some papers are read only by impatient experts, while others attract a broad audience.)  What's considered appropriate may vary between fields or even subfields, but here are a few general principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Targeting an audience for your papers can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you aim at a very specialized audience, it becomes much less likely that anyone else will read your papers.  Attracting a broader audience is on the whole a good thing, both for scientific progress and for your own career, so it's best not to limit your audience unnecessarily.  If modest changes will make your writing much more accessible, then they are probably a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to overestimate how much readers really know.  In an ideal world, every researcher would remember all the details of everything they ever studied, but life doesn't work that way.  Of course you can't re-teach things from scratch (and shouldn't even try), but sometimes a brief reminder can be really helpful.  This is particularly true when the details matter: if the reader really needs to know exactly how a certain algorithm works to understand your paper, then restating the algorithm can be worthwhile even if you suspect most readers will already be somewhat familiar with it.  Those who already know the details can easily skim just enough to convince themselves that their version is the same as yours, while those who don't can read more carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The introduction plays a crucial role in describing the context and explaining why you did these things and what the consequences are.  It may not be the part of the paper that most excites you, but it will almost certainly be the most-read section (not counting the abstract).  The purpose of your paper is to communicate your discoveries, and making the introduction more accessible is sometimes the best way to achieve this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T13:31:33.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20417" CreationDate="2014-05-07T13:40:16.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general guideline is &quot;just enough.&quot; However, the &quot;enough&quot; differs audience to audience, even the article is on the same topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing who are going to read it would decide how broad and deep the introduction should be. Say we are writing about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Olestra&lt;/a&gt;. In a more general publication like a magazine or a blog the introduction may need to include what it is, how it is being used, its chemical properties, its impacts on health, and perhaps some controversies surrounding the compound. In public health or nutrition journals, it may just merit a parenthetical explanation. However, in a food industry journal, the name itself is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, err on telling more. A well-structured but slightly longer introduction is far less offensive than a cluster of very well selected but illogically laid out arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point worth mentioning is that length is perhaps a proxy of the breadth and depth of the introduction, but I think the overall structure of the arguments surpasses length. Generally, I'd focus on an engaging &lt;em&gt;opening&lt;/em&gt; that summarizes what is known. Use proper languages here to hint the level of the article. Then, discuss the &lt;em&gt;problems or challenges&lt;/em&gt;. Afterwards, how would your work &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt; to address the aforementioned problems and challenges. And lastly, how would your work &lt;em&gt;resolve&lt;/em&gt; the suggested problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer, I'd look for the interconnections between all these components rather than focusing on the length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T13:40:16.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20417" CreationDate="2014-05-07T13:59:01.957" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Grace Fleming wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://homeworktips.about.com/od/paperassignments/a/introsentence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on about.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introductory paragraph of any paper, long or short, should start with a sentence that piques the interest of your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...that first sentence will lead into three or four sentences that provide details about the subject or your process you will address in the body of your essay. These sentences should also set the stage for your thesis statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis statement is the subject of much instruction and training. The entirety of your paper hangs on that sentence, which is generally the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, your introductory paragraph should contain the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an attention-grabbing first sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;informative sentences that build to your thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the thesis statement, which makes a claim or states a view that you will support or build upon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check this link for more about each section of the paper.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abacus.bates.edu/%7Eganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14954" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:43:22.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:03:57.467" Score="2" ViewCount="2485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate in Computer Science who's has just completed his 2nd year. However I could not get an internship for the summer leaving me extremely tense about the future since there would be only one summer left (i.e., the summer of 2015 since I graduate in 2016).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to apply to graduate schools in North America and Europe after my UG. However since I will have only one internship under my belt (assuming I bag one in summer 2015) will it put a damper on my prospects? Or is it the place of and quality of work done in my internship (coupled with good recommendation letters—which I doubt I will get) that would be far better than the number of internships under my belt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of building a portfolio of real-life projects to demonstrate my skills and capabilities. I am also contributing code to open-source organisations in the next two months à la Google Summer of Code (however without the formal recognition) on a totally voluntary basis. Will that help in overcoming lack of an internship between my second and third year? What else can I do that can help me build a better application for graduate school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14637" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T03:47:51.073" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T03:09:14.693" Title="Is it the number or quality of internships that is more important for Graduate School admission into Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:12:27.677" Score="38" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much doubt it. See JeffE's summary. There are dozens of memes about complaining - law students, med students, engineering undergrads, administrative staff, IT people...seriously, just about every profession has its memes about how much their jobs are terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're not being paid very much, and for many of them, their friends - who had similar educational backgrounds - who didn't go to grad school are now making money, and the opportunity cost is pretty vivid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PhD is a problem that requires unbounded effort. Until the day you defend, there's always something you should be doing. At the same time, there's rarely something you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be doing &lt;em&gt;that day&lt;/em&gt;. Handing someone a years long, unstructured time management problem is going to cause some stress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's not necessarily a way out. For CS, Physics, Math etc. there may be escape hatches into industry, but for many STEM PhDs, and almost all humanities PhDs, there's really no net-benefit for your degree outside of academia. You've got an expensive (in opportunity cost and time), specialized set of knowledge that no one cares about. You can see this reflected in some surveys - Physics PhDs tend to be somewhat more happy than their Biology counterparts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I handle this socially and professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to avoid it, although do realize that &quot;shared suffering&quot; is a social bonding experience, and these people will be your colleagues. You will be missing some of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some bad news for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T14:12:27.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:19:13.597" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons, as a PhD student, that you should consider spending time reviewing papers, even if you view it as an unrelated demand on your time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps you know, and shape, your field. When you graduate, you will supposedly be an expert in your field. Being able to critically engage with the research being done in it, not only as a reader but as a reviewer, is an aspect of that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gives you a glimpse into the other side of peer review. It's easier to engage with reviewer comments, in my experience, if you've been on the other side of the process as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As some people have mentioned, service is an important aspect of your CV, and having done reviews not only checks that box, but adds a list of journals who consider your expertise important enough to have you act as a reviewer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing papers won't be the reason someone hires you, but it is a component of your professional development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T14:19:13.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20410" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:32:05.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good way to pick a specific project within a broader area of interest is to find some potential supervisors whose groups are within your desired field, look through their recent publications in the area and their group homepages and see what takes your fancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say I am interested in doing an MSc in inorganic catalysis, but don't really know what specifically there is that I could study in that area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I go onto my alma mater's homepage (or another desired destination) and see if there are any groups in the Chemistry Department who are interested in inorganic catalysts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I see specifically what particular aspect of the catalysts they are involved in, be it synthesis, computational design, toxicity, etc. I look at their recent publications, if one title catches my eye, or particular paper is really cool, I add that group to my 'possible projects' list. Do this until you have 2-4 possible supervisors/projects. You might even get an idea for a project on reading one of these papers, which you can say you wish to discuss when you contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I contact the heads of the groups directly, detailing briefly who I am, something along the lines of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I am writing to you to ask if you are currently accepting graduate students because I wish to pursue my interest in inorganic catalysis by applying to the University of blah to undertake a MSc in your group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a recent graduate of blah with a 1st/2.1/2.2/rubber duck/etc. I attach my CV but briefly --short list of most notable and relevant achievements if any-- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read your group's paper on blahblah --something that indicates you actually read the paper and thought about it-- and have some ideas for a project I would be interested in discussing with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grateful for the opportunity to explore further possibility of working in your group --propose contact options, indicate if possible that you would be willing to visit, this being the best way to sell yourself and find out a bit more about the group to see if you think it would be a good fit: interviews are a two-way process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours Sincerely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yaddayadda'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to what your project will look like, that doesn't need to be much more than a rough proposal until you actually have a place, after which you will need to write (possibly with your supervisor's help) what essentially amounts to a mission statement for what you are setting out to do, why you want to do it/what you think could be gained. More specific guidelines will probably be available on the Department or University homepages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T14:32:05.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:39:04.110" Score="6" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen plenty of job talks, but whenever the speaker talks about a list of topics that they are &quot;not going to talk about today&quot;, I often get distracted and even a little bit annoyed. It dilutes the main talk contents, and I hardly ever remember what those items were. I understand that they want to show their breath, but it usually doesn't convey very well. Now that I am in that position, I am wondering if there is a good way to deliver the message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be a good approach to briefly mentioning other projects that you are excited about?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I talk about them at the beginning or at the end? Is it a good idea to put all of the other projects under a single theme and not talk about the details at all, or should I try to explain each project's objective and approach? Should I talk about only a couple of projects or is 4 a better number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="32906" LastEditDate="2017-08-26T22:29:52.943" LastActivityDate="2017-08-26T22:29:52.943" Title="Talking about other projects in a job talk" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20428" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:52:58.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;em&gt;tremendously&lt;/em&gt; grateful to all of the mentors I have had so far in my academic career, and I am always looking for ways to pay this debt forward. For this reason, I am interested in volunteering my time as a mod on Academia.SE. This site is an unprecedented resource for academics that don't have mentors, or need information and advice outside their mentors' areas of expertise, and I would love to help it keep growing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the other nominees (so far!), I have only been a part of this site for a few months. However, in that time, I think I have contributed some high-quality questions and answers. I also do my part towards improving the quality of other questions and answers on this site: flagging spam and not-an-answer posts, commenting on answers when I think they can be improved, downvoting answers that I think give misleading information, retagging, fixing unclear question titles, and casting close votes &lt;em&gt;with comments&lt;/em&gt;. I think this history speaks towards my ability and willingness to engage with this site as a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T14:52:58.400" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T14:52:58.400" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-07T14:52:58.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2014-05-07T15:18:16.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(As suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20482/13852&quot;&gt;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20482/13852&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't think the question is worded constructively, this is a relevant and prominent issue in academic life. First, the question whether PhD students complain more than other professional groups is not really helpful, so I will ignore it (others have given enough counterexamples) and instead focus on the other part, namely &quot;why do they complain?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been noted, doing a PhD is a time of uncertainty and huge external and/or internal pressures, on a scale -- both in time and magnitude -- usually unprecedented for the student. Complaining about it is a coping mechanism (one of a range of possible mechanisms, whose efficacy will vary from person to person). It is also a valuable bonding activity. This is a crucial point, since your research as a PhD student is often so specialized that you can't profitably talk about it to anyone outside a small circle of fellow specialists. On the other hand, the external circumstances of doing a PhD (deadlines, interactions with your advisor or lack thereof, run-ins with the administration) will be instantly familiar to any graduate student, no matter what the field (witness the popularity of PhD Comics, which is not limited to mechanical engineering). Add to that the fact that many graduate students are pursuing their PhD away from home and thus their social circle mostly consists of fellow students, and it's not surprising that most interactions outside possibly a small circle of close personal friends are dominated by this topic. (In fact, complaining around your personal friends as you would among peers is the fastest way of losing them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your comment &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friends who are in PhD programs complain much more (or at least&#xA;  more publicly) than my friends who aren't in PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They probably complain much more &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt; about their professional life, since you're a professional peer of the former but not of the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T13:48:37.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20427" CreationDate="2014-05-07T15:19:19.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer you need depends very much on how closely related your collection of interests are. What I did for my job talks was the following. I chose one of my topics that I knew would provide lots of pointers to my other ones. This way I did not just give a laundry list of &quot;things I do&quot; but rather at a nice point in the talk I could say something like &quot;this raises two questions, the one I am going to talk about today is the first but I am happy to go into the second one privately later.&quot; The idea here was the other project came up when it made sense, indicated breadth (at least for my collection of topics), and did not feel overbearing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mileage may vary but remember that you can choose which topic to give your job talk on and choosing the one that will give you the most connections to the others is as good a tactic as any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T15:19:19.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20453" CreationDate="2014-05-07T15:33:56.687" Score="11" ViewCount="1950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am from engineering, and I would like to know if I am able to find a job in industrial research lab after finishing my master, will there be any advantage or disadvantage compared with entering the same lab after finishing PhD? Possible advantage may be that I have more industrial experience as I enter the lab earlier, and possible disadvantage may be that without a PhD position I cannot be promoted to certain senior positions or lead a project. Are these true? Are there more advantages or disadvantages for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:26:04.433" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:26:36.793" Title="Pros and cons on working in an industrial research lab without a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20432" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:03:15.277" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:03:15.277" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:03:15.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20433" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:03:15.277" Score="0" Body="Questions related to academic culture, academic communities, and the coexistence of &quot;life&quot; and &quot;academia.&quot;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:15:15.087" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:15:15.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:08:12.830" Score="3" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;a) There seems to be a fellowship for 'experienced' researchers (link below), which seems different than IIF, IEF or IOF, it's called 'IF' (Individual Fellowship). The recent call link is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/calls/h2020-msca-if-2014.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/calls/h2020-msca-if-2014.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above a postdoctoral fellowship by any chance? Is it different than IIF, IEF or IOF? (it seems to me it is different!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) What confuses me is that the Marie Curie action page calls this 'Research and Innovation stuff exchange' (if you go back one page from the above, you get the link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/apply-now/open-calls/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/apply-now/open-calls/index_en.htm&lt;/a&gt;), which should be named IRSE, not IF, which the following informative website suggests and informs that it is not something of interest for postdoc applicants, and I believe it (Link to the site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caroline-angelard.com/marie-curie-fellowship.php#Marie3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.caroline-angelard.com/marie-curie-fellowship.php#Marie3&lt;/a&gt;), but when I click on the link on Marie Curie Webpage, it becomes 'Individual Fellowship'. Am I missing something in here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T17:51:10.287" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T17:22:22.957" Title="Two questions on Marie Curie Actions and current open calls" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;eu&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20440" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:18:11.633" Score="29" ViewCount="4982" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research group has regular group meeting but I usually think it is not effective. In particular the research area of the group is very diverse, every time I just listen on something I cannot understand and have totally no interest on it, and I believe other members think the same way as I do when I am presenting. While it is a good way to expose to something new, and know other group members what they are doing, &lt;strong&gt;this is not effective for my own research&lt;/strong&gt;. I know group meeting has its point (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2785/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-weekly-research-meetings-that-advisers-often-have-wit&quot;&gt;What is the purpose of the weekly research meetings that advisers often have with their research group?&lt;/a&gt;), but how can it be conducted in a more effective way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a supervisor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How frequent should a regular group meeting be? It depends on the field, and I hear something like daily to three months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When should a regular group meeting be? I know some groups insist on Monday morning, some groups choose Friday evening which is terrible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long should a group meeting be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What level of detail should a supervisor comment to one's work? From every experimental concepts, to a vague conceptual suggestion?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should a student prepare before a group meeting to have an effective meeting? To present every problem he/she faces, or just some significant results (if there is)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should a student question other's member work? Sometimes it may be constructive, but it can also be an interruption.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a faculty, how do you conduct your group meeting? As a research student, what can you suggest for an effective group meeting? An effective group meeting can greatly help on one's research work, otherwise it is just a drain of energy, time and motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T06:07:58.623" Title="How to conduct an effective regular group meeting?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;&lt;lab-meeting&gt;&lt;group-dynamics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20414" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:19:34.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see that there is any exception to using quotes and providing the full, correct citation. It is honest and correct, anything less just doesn't cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14992" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:19:34.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20438" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:26:51.297" Score="5" ViewCount="2146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could my institution get into legal hot water if we were to make copies of blank Scantron sheets? If so, are there good free alternatives for machine readable bubble sheets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14538" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:53:40.910" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T23:56:40.430" Title="Are Scantron Sheets under Copyright? Or are there non-proprietary alternatives?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20437" CreationDate="2014-05-07T16:51:17.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mark_recognition#Open_source&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;open source alternatives&lt;/a&gt;. Scantron's software and hardware is proprietary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:51:17.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20323" CreationDate="2014-05-07T17:16:06.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, the best solution to this problem is not to have it in the first place. Being proactive and thinking about the future is sometimes a rare talent, especially in 18 year olds fresh out of high school, but then again grad school is supposed to select the exceptional individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a world of difference between a recommendation from someone you worked with, and from a mere acquaintance. The latter kind rarely benefits your application in a meaningful way, and can sometimes even hurt it. No matter how enthusiastic your instructor is, unless the course is at least a project-centric course (eg. grade is based entirely on your individual term project), they will not be able to make a good, in depth argument for your abilities, and the recommendation will therefore be weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the recommendation is that the admissions committee will read it, and decide whether you have potential to be a good researcher. How can they, if the recommendation does not talk about your research at all? And how much better if instead of hinting at your potential indirectly by citing course performance, the recommender can just say &quot;this person has potential to be a great researcher because I have personally seen that they are good at research&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why there is a qualitative difference. This can be a big problem when applying to a very selective program. What if you apply to a program where the committee has a philosophy that &quot;an application is only as strong as its weakest link&quot;? Even if you are quite exceptional otherwise, you can get eliminated early on because there are many other applicants who are also exceptional, but don't have a recommendation problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, similar to how a lukewarm recommendation can mean &quot;I think this person is a bad candidate, but I am not being negative out of politeness&quot;, a recommendation from someone who only taught a course can mean &quot;this person is a slacker who never bothered to do real work, so they can't find any supervisors to recommend them&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to remedy is really to obtain more &quot;good&quot; recommenders. Because you want people who supervised you, the solution is obvious: You haven't been supervised by enough people who will vouch for you; you must undertake more projects and be supervised by other people whose recommendation will carry weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If still in school, look for faculty whose lab you can work in. If that is difficult, try approaching a former (or current) instructor with an idea for a theoretical or computational project (this requires less commitment from them, so they may be easier to convince). It doesn't necessarily have to be original research, so long as you can come up with a relatively long term (at least half a year) project where you are the primary contributor. It could also be (more) valuable to spend a summer working in a lab at a different university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If out of school, delay your application by 1-3 years, and look for work as a lab tech at a university, institute or private company. Make sure not to displease your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related problem is working for a long time with the same person, for instance an undergrad who spends 3 years in the same lab. This is actually better, because you can accomplish much more in 3 years, and you can have a very impressive project to sell yourself with. The issue is that you will have only one supervisor - but hopefully after 3 years, you will have networked with collaborators and other scientists and will not have a problem there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T05:58:17.917" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T05:58:17.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20435" CreationDate="2014-05-07T17:19:57.137" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a lot of questions interspersed within your question, but it sounds like the main issue is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the research area of the group is very diverse, every time I just listen on something I cannot understand and have totally no interest on it, and I believe other members think the same way as I do when I am presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had the same problem in the past.  I'm a professor who works in a variety of related subfields, some very theoretical and some fairly applied.  Most of my students and postdocs have been focused exclusively on either something theoretical or something applied, and their backgrounds range from computer science to mathematics to electrical engineering, so there is often a disconnect when they try to communicate what they are doing.  Here is my advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For students:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to broaden your focus and interests.&lt;/strong&gt;  It is natural that you have a very narrow research focus as a grad student, but if you want to get and keep a job afterward you'll almost certainly need to broaden your focus.  I find that in general the best researchers almost always have broad interests (though they are able to focus their energy narrowly when needed).  Group meetings are an opportunity to become acquainted with topics that are on the horizon of your current knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use group meetings as an opportunity to improve your communication skills.&lt;/strong&gt;  Teaching non-experts about your work is a critical skill in any research career.  Other students in the group do not know nearly as much as you about your research topic, but that doesn't mean that you cannot make it interesting and accessible to them.  Often this means leaving out the &quot;details&quot; and explaining just the essence of a problem.  Trust me, some day soon you will need to make your work interesting and intelligible to people who are much further removed from your specialty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For advisors:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Help students to present their work in a way that the others can understand.&lt;/strong&gt;  Often this means prompting the student, especially at the beginning of a presentation, to add important assumptions, motivation, or background.  The student has started to take these things for granted, but without them any non-expert is quickly lost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't let the conversation drift too far into a very specialized discussion.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you and the student are the only ones who have any idea of what is being discussed, it's probably time to say &quot;let's discuss this further after the meeting&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use meetings for skills development&lt;/strong&gt;.  This was already mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2790/81&quot;&gt;this related answer&lt;/a&gt;.  Instead of focusing exclusively on research, group meetings can also include discussions of things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to write papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to read papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to search the literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to manage a bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to give good presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to write a proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to keep a lab notebook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to keep up with newly published research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to stay organized and be productive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to referee a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software tools for all of the above, and for research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These topics are useful and interesting to anyone involved in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answers to other parts of the question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I hold group meetings once a week, and they last 1-2 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are strongly encouraged to question and comment on each other's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We meet at lunch time, and there is food.  That doesn't sound important, but I think it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I try to save very detailed comments for my one-on-one meetings with students.  Otherwise, the group meeting can devolve into a conversation between the advisor and just one student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T17:19:57.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20574" CreationDate="2014-05-07T17:32:30.860" Score="10" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;F'x has made a very informative post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7616/244&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; about staying up to date with current research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question concerns the &quot;publication alert&quot; part of it. To be clear: I am asking about setting up an online service, such NCBI PubMed, to send you a notification (for instance, email) whenever a paper matching certain search criteria is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective is to get a decent number of notifications, but not so many that you are swamped and unable to actually pay attention to them. Also, the notifications that you do get should be prioritized the most important papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I am having is coming up with effective keywords. If I try to make myself come up with general keywords (such as those that might be given in the article's own &quot;keywords&quot; section), it seems that I end up with keywords so general that I would get thousands of notifications every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I could try to come up with very specific keywords, but how do I select those? What if they are too specific, and an important paper gets published without using my particular obscure keyword?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely people are not born with a natural talent for thinking of good keywords. So how can I train this skill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, is there a systematic method to deduce good keywords given a body of &quot;gold standard&quot; relevant literature? (I mean things such as statistical analysis of the text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it can be worthwhile to focus on certain &quot;big player&quot; authors. But if in a field with thousands of authors (eg. cancer), how does a new researcher map out who is important and who is not? Furthermore, the biggest players are probably PIs of huge labs, who already publish a very large volume of papers, so we are again at odds with the &quot;not too many notifications&quot; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is looking at citation metrics to identify the most important papers, as Google Scholar does. But clearly, this is not effective for new papers - who will cite a paper published last week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T02:49:58.727" Title="How do I pick good keywords for literature alerts?" Tags="&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20435" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:16:52.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequency: depends on the size of the group. When someone has some new result that they are going to present (in a conference or any other venue) this may be useful to practice, etc. Therefore the frequency depends on how often people are producing results. This is also an opportunity for everybody starting something new to ask whether there is someone with some related expertise that could be useful (I prefer mailing lists for this specific thing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time:people have commitments. Chose some time that fits everybody. I'd suggest before lunch to have the chance to continue the meeting &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; (not instead of) having lunch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long should it be?: As long as needed, as short as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General comments: useful for everybody. E.g. in the style of the presentation. What is specific for each person or group should be commented directly to them (thus without boring anyone else).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student preparation/presentation: Whatever s/he has to present according to point 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions: Yes, everybody should participate. &lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; questions and interruptions should be at the end of the presentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T21:27:41.130" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T21:27:41.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:48:02.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The specifics depend on your field, and I think most areas have very loose guidelines as to what to do in these situations. The only hard-and-fast rule is that you need to get it past your reviewers and your editors, who will tell you if the style is inappropriate. Other than that, the most important thing is that you yourself are happy that the citation is getting your GitHub repo the most visibility possible. Finally, you should consider your paper from the perspective of readers that may want to use and cite your code, and who will naturally look to your writing for how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would recommend citing the code in the bibliography, as one more reference. The advantage of this is that your article's references will be listed and indexed separately, and (with luck) this will register as links pointing towards your repo, which will become more of an advantage if more people cite it. Such a citation should have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the name of the programme,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the URL of the repository, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a clear indication of the version cited and its date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example citation is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;G. A. Worth, M. H. Beck, A. Jackle, and H.-D. Meyer. The MCTDH Package, Version 8.2, (2000), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. H.-D. Meyer, Version 8.3 (2002), Version 8.4 (2007). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://mctdh.uni-hd.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mctdh.uni-hd.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also describe the code within the text when you first cite the code, and provide a complete enough description within the paper that readers do not need to go read any additional information to continue reading your paper, because it needs to read like a single, coherent piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can cite it in a footnote, indicating the name of the code and its location. This would be a good place to include the description if it is brief. Another choice is to do this in the acknowledgements, as giordano &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20358/how-should-i-reference-my-github-repository-with-materials-for-my-paper#comment42538_20358&quot;&gt;points out&lt;/a&gt;. However, I think these make your code less discoverable to both humans and search engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned before, you should mould your citation of the code in the way that you'd like others to cite it. It is also desirable that you include, within the pages describing code online, a description of how you want people to cite the code. Some examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfs.dl.ac.uk/licences/serial_licence.pdf#page=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GAMESS UK&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/mctdh/guide83.pdf#page=9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MCTDH&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://molcas.org/documentation/manual/node10.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MOLCAS&lt;/a&gt;, or the ones in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15374/should-i-cite-conference-papers-to-acknowledge-usage-of-tools&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. Having such a description will strengthen your position should referees or editors not like your preferred style. You set the terms on which your code gets cited!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as others have mentioned, you should make sure that the URL you point to is stable, as you will be unable to change the link in the published paper once it goes out. This is a separate question altogether, and there are a number of ways to do this - including supplementary information to the article itself, separate repositories for academic code, and of course GitHub itself - and you should strive for the most stable solution possible. Is it likely that the repository will someday get closed or moved? If so, you should consider alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T18:48:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20435" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:58:51.160" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Group meetings are very important, and I think it is worthwhile to organise them very well, to make sure they are focussed, to-the-point, time-effective, and that everybody participates.  I remember my time as a graduate student as having very efficient group meetings, and most of my points below are based on my experiences back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How frequent should a regular group meeting be? It depends on the field, and I hear something like daily to three months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think weekly is good.  If people want to discuss significant results, one should not wait too long.  However, too often takes away too much of peoples time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should a regular group meeting be? I know some groups insist on Monday morning, some groups choose Friday evening which is terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've experienced groups with group meetings on either Monday afternoon or Tuesday afternoon, and I think both are good.  However, I don't think it is the most important aspect.  Personally, I don't like to have meetings during lunch.  Although I understand the motivation, I believe it is important to have a break from work at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long should a group meeting be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a graduate student, we had group meetings of &lt;em&gt;at most one hour&lt;/em&gt;.  We would typically have between 5 and 10 people attending the meeting (normally everybody in the group who was not away travelling).  Each week, one person would be the moderator, and one person would be taking notes.  Those roles would be alternating, providing everybody with useful experience in managing meetings or taking notes.  We'd start with general announcements, and then everybody had the opportunity to present some plots.  Some weeks, few if any people had anything to present any new results or bring up anything for discussion, and we might be done in 20 minutes.  Other weeks, the role of the moderator was essential to keep the meeting to one hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What level of detail should a supervisor comment to one's work? From every experimental concepts, to a vague conceptual suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think is great about group meetings, is that &lt;em&gt;it is not only the supervisor commenting&lt;/em&gt;.  Naturally, it can happen that discussions lead into details.  Although beneficial for the people directly involved in the discussion, it may be a waste of time for others.  When this happens, the moderator (see above) would intervene (also in the interest of time) and suggest for a discussion to be proceeded &amp;quot;offline&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hits two birds with one stone: the meeting is limited in duration, and the meeting focusses on overall discussions of broader interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a student prepare before a group meeting to have an effective meeting? To present every problem he/she faces, or just some significant results (if there is)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is not useful to present every problem he/she faces in front of the entire group.  Some problems are best discussed one-to-one with the most expert colleague (scientist, engineer, technician).  But if you have any significant results — like a first version of a plot that may end up in a paper, or anything warranting scientific discussion — that can be good to show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a student question other's member work? Sometimes it may be constructive, but it can also be an interruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends what you mean by &lt;em&gt;questioning&lt;/em&gt;.  I think a student should certainly comment on other members work if this is helpful.  In the worst case, the comment is not relevant and the student learns something.  Communication is essential to science, and communication with all members in the group has more benefits than communication exclusively between supervisor and student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T22:11:33.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20449" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:13:04.597" Score="5" ViewCount="1973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold a BS in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics and I've been out of school for several years. I recently began applying to part time online master's programs in Statistics and Computer Science. I've been accepted to the online MSCS program through Johns Hopkins University and I'm hoping to be accepted to the online MAS (Master of Applied Statistics) through Pennsylvania State University as well. My goal is to earn both degrees, and with expertise in both disciplines become the ultimate statistical programmer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catch here is that I don't want to (and can't really afford to) leave my current job to pursue school full time, hence the part time online programs. I could do one degree after the other, but that would be another 8-10 years I'd be in school, all the while working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's useful to note that I'm already a statistical programmer. Degrees are helpful, especially if at some point I'd like to transition to being a full-fledged statistician or a more general-purpose programmer. In my mind at least, it offers a level of career flexibility not readily attainable with just a bachelor's or even a single master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my question is this: &lt;strong&gt;Is working 40 hours/week and taking two online master's level courses at a time in two different subjects from two different institutions completely insane?&lt;/strong&gt; My family sure thinks so. Does anyone have experience or input they could share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15000" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T19:57:07.797" Title="Two simultaneous part time master's degrees while working full time" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:31:10.323" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A citation is a reference to a research object.  Prior to the DOI, this reference contained the information somebody would need to physically locate the research object, whether it was a book, journal article, or dissertation.  Although the jury is still out on how to provide general references to digital research objects, a Git repository contains a canonical reference, the SHA1 hash of the commit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to refer to your Git repository in such a way that it is easy to locate in the future, you should provide not only the URL where it is now, but also the short name for the repository, the lead author[s], and the SHA1 hash of the commit that you produced your results with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example URL from GitHub that contains the commit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hashdist/hashstack/commit/4c72950a0f6eb9cc1cf63cd640f3e6b82c9ce9c0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/hashdist/hashstack/commit/4c72950a0f6eb9cc1cf63cd640f3e6b82c9ce9c0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't recommend uploading your code to Figshare until they've fixed their ability to accept code licenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 14 May 2014&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GitHub and ZENODO have partnered together to upload code for a DOI under a flexible license.  Obtaining a DOI for your code should be as simple as following the instructions on the GitHub Guide to &lt;a href=&quot;https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making Your Code Citable&lt;/a&gt;.  Here's an overview of the instructions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose your repository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Login to ZENODO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick the repository you want to archive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check repository settings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check everything has worked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mint a DOI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really that easy.  There's no current reason not to use this as a default approach for citing your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="404" LastEditorUserId="404" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T19:24:40.773" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:24:40.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20488" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:40:39.357" Score="4" ViewCount="1868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my graduation project to become a Software Engineer. The project aims to study the behavior of freelance developers to subsequently design a process that allows more quality and efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To know the freelancer behavior I have made a survey, but I don't know what is the best way to publish the survey and get responses; after which I'll post an article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have published the survey in at least 7 forums, but in most of them my post has been closed for spamming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one tell me some advice for doing the survey? (on internet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15006" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-11-23T19:59:03.437" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T04:17:38.583" Title="What is the best way to publicise an on-line survey for research?" Tags="&lt;survey-research&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20445" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:51:09.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better to do one or the other. What you don't want to do is to fail out of either program. Pick the better/more prestigious one and do it. Also, I don't see how stacking up masters's degrees really helps you. I can see how one masters would help, but I don't see what value the second would add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T19:51:09.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20445" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:57:07.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my first semester as an undergraduate, I tried to take a double load of courses, and was dissuaded by the adviser assigned to me.  I tried it anyway and failed one of the courses I had registered.  (They let me do a big load in a later semester, with some success.)  If I had stayed focused on my registered courses and let the courses I audited slip instead, I would not have that on my record.  Also, I might have developed a different attitude toward that university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning when not overachieve, or when not to make the attempt, is a hard lesson for many.  Many years later, I am finding that I could have restructured my life, changed certain behaviours, and perhaps led a more efficient or satisfying or productive life.  Fortunately, I still have some time to make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the comment above about the proposed course likely being insane, and to seek help in real life (off the Internet) to pull it off anyway, I recommend a values inventory.  The current program (one job, two degree programs) may seem feasible and cool and might nurture some internal aspect of pride; that doesn't mean it is good for you, or in line with how you will want to live your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't know what you want to be when/if you grow up, checking in with yourself on what is important, and what you value, is a beneficial exercise you should repeat throughout your life.  If you can (rationally and not maniacally) convince yourself that this use of time is in line with your current and possible future values, then go for it!  It doesn't matter if you are crazy if you are enjoying yourself and not hurting yourself or others, but you may have to explain it to a judge or police officer; be prepared.  If you aren't sure, ask for guidance, and avail yourself of the options that work and school might offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T19:57:07.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20431" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:01:26.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some experiences I've seen with people with similar dilemmas.&#xA;In my area, computer science, many people used to go to Yahoo after their Masters or BS, and for a time it was well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Yahoo huge layoff, I met many people who were being denied high level positions because they did not have a PhD, we are not talking entry level position, but people with many years of experience in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think a PhD is essential to move ahead in the company, but it sure is a huge help if you have one. Also, I'm not sure the research experience you will have in an industrial research lab will be comparable to the research experience you will have as a PhD student. Not that one is better than the other, but Grad school has certain liberties that industry does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:01:26.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20405" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:12:10.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some insight here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some advantages and pitfalls in the advisers you have described and I have experience with both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researcher in Data Mining: Here most of your research will be focused in the way you can modify the algorithm to attack the task you have at hand, your adviser will want to see some insight from you on how things are actually working and why are you getting the results you are getting. He will be potentially interested in the application, but he has had so much experience with many different applications, that he will want you to use a generic dataset so you can compare it with other works and prove your approach works better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have insightful conversations about your algorithm, and what can you do to modify it, but any insight from the data itself will probably have to come from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researcher in Area X where Data Mining is going to be used: He will probably not care much about the algorithm you use, as long as it is useful in the particular problem he is working with. He will most likely have a problem for you to work with, and he will expect results, good results. You will have good conversations about the nature of the data, and will learn a lot about the field, but you might feel a bit isolated in the Data Mining part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question is, what do you want to do afterwards, if you want to do a PhD, in which kind of conferences do you want to be? Data Mining Conferences, or that area conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to the industry, having much expertise in a particular area can be both good or bad, depending on he job you are applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I did my PhD on Machine Learning applied to Molecular Biology, and even though I had all the theoretical framework to apply it to Natural Language Processing (NLP), most places would not look at me unless I had some NLP experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="2806" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T22:27:19.200" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T22:27:19.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20423" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:16:23.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a PhD, that portfolio of real life projects might not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Graduate programs, they are very interested in proof that the student is capable of pursuing research, which is usually proven via a BS Thesis or a couple of Publications. Here in the US, many take a year off to work in some lab to get both a letter of recommendation and at least a publication in some conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm evaluating having a Grad student right now, and I would certainly would be more interested in him/her having proof that they know what grad school is all about rather than showing that they are good programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="12481" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T03:09:14.693" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T03:09:14.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20431" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:26:36.793" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; positions in industry, a PhD is a requirement to apply for the job. With just an M.S., you simply cannot be considered for these positions. Some research jobs I have seen in industrial labs &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; available to candidates with either a PhD or an M.S. with several years of industry experience, but I don't see as many of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Industrial research labs often also have non-research positions (e.g., staff programmer) that do not require a PhD. However, these positions tend to not be on the research &quot;track&quot;: you cannot easily be promoted from &quot;staff programmer&quot; to &quot;junior member of technical staff&quot; in many companies. If you are interested in doing creative research, staff programmer jobs are not a direct path to research scientist jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller companies tend to be more flexible, so that it may be easier to get a research job without a PhD in a tiny company than a large global one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this can vary by industry and geographic region. (My experience is in the field of telecommunications and computer networks, in the United States.)&#xA;You can find out more about your particular field of interest by going to the &quot;Careers&quot; page of the labs you are considering, and looking up the requirements for the jobs that you would like to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a rule, if you are interested in doing creative research (and not just working in a support position in a research lab), you will have more opportunities available to you with a PhD than without one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:26:36.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20454" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:40:33.197" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T20:40:33.197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T20:40:33.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20455" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-07T20:40:33.197" Score="0" Body="Questions requesting an answer supported by reliable evidence and including citations to said evidence. This is in contrast to questions requesting answers based mainly on personal experience." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:10:26.573" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:10:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20463" CreationDate="2014-05-07T21:15:47.490" Score="0" ViewCount="2786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please, how should I write an MLA in-text citation of a UNESCO document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document in question is the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. I am using the PDF version.&#xA;The Document has no author.&#xA;The MLA recommends using a shortened version of the title of references with no authors but I don't know if this applies also to UNESCO documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T03:51:34.853" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T03:51:34.853" Title="MLA in-text citation of documents written by an organization, like UNESCO?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20391" CreationDate="2014-05-07T23:06:57.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A previous answer here (now deleted) states an unfortunate truth of the matter—what your advisor did was wrong, but rectifying the situation could be very complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary issue is whether or not the paper has been formally published in the conference proceedings. Once that has happened, it's too late to change the authorship credits. Basically, any such move would lead to retraction—which, as has been established on this site and many others, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;Retraction Watch&lt;/a&gt;, is a huge black mark in the career of any academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have all the information here, so it's impossible to say for certain if you've done enough work to merit co-author credit, but let us assume for the sake of argument here that you do. The challenge here is that, unlike ff524, I do not believe that there's likely to be any sort of positive resolution here. Not including you as a co-author on a publication (conference paper) is either incompetence or unscrupulous. In either case, the relationship between you and your advisor is probably not going to be a fruitful one in the future. (If your advisor is incompetent, you shouldn't be working for him; the same applies double if your advisor is unscrupulous.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's possible, I would suggest finding yourself a new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:06:57.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2014-05-07T23:43:29.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an international applicant, I would recommend against getting a masters from anywhere except one of the top (1-3) schools in your country. A master's from university in the top 30 in the US or one of the top schools in UK/Canada are also options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not yet competitive for a top master's program, I would suggest trying to get a job as an economics research assistant, ideally with a well known professor. This has the advantage also of giving you a better look at what economics research looks like first hand, which is closer to what you'd be doing as a PhD student and professor than your classes in a masters program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately to be competitive for a top 10 school, you absolutely need a high GPA and GRE, and then on top of that you need letters of recommendation from at least 1 or 2 professors that are respected in the field, ideally who have a track record of placing students at top PhD programs. Even then there seems to be a lot of noise in the system about who gets accepted where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted it in a comment above, but to reiterate, I think this is very good advice. &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/athey/gradadvising.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/athey/gradadvising.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9701" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:43:29.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20405" CreationDate="2014-05-07T23:46:37.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, the process of searching for and applying to graduate programs occurs simultaneously with the searching for graduate research labs. Successfully interviewing at one can significantly impact your chances for being accepted to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, start your search with a very specific goal in mind, and only after that fails you can branch out. A simple &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=sustainable+energy+research+lab+statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google search&lt;/a&gt; shows at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kdnuggets.com/jobs/12/02-13-nrel-postdoc-researcher-data-scientist.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;promising possibility&lt;/a&gt;, I'm sure that if you actually spend some time researching positions you'll find a lot more. Once you've run out of leads there then you can start looking at labs specifically focusing on one or the other. In your case specifically, it just so happens that data mining is a very broad and extremely in-demand skill in virtually all fields, so you should have no problem finding positions in almost any field that would benefit from having data mining expertise as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your letter, I would express your interest in data mining (the general skill) first, and then your interest in sustainable energy or whatever (the specific skill); this way, they'll see that you have an informed set of research interests, but are interested in working in other fields as well if your specific subfield interests don't work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T01:18:30.783" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T01:18:30.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T01:31:22.390" Score="32" ViewCount="18469" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a PhD in chemical engineering, and my advisor mentioned to me today that I'm on track to finish in about half a year.  I only have one class left to fulfill the course requirements and I have a few papers published, with a couple more almost finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm in no hurry.  I love grad school and working on research.  However, from the perspective of a getting a good job, would a PhD at 23-24 years of age or additional research publications in high quality journals look better?  Once I graduate I plan on either doing research in industry or working at a startup.  I don't plan on going into academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5958" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:19:01.870" Title="Which is more impressive -- finishing a PhD in 2.5 years or getting more research done?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2014-05-08T03:09:47.627" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (computer science, broadly), my impression is as follows.  It is of course an over-generalization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go into academia or industrial research, then what you&#xA;do during your Ph.D. matters much much more than how long you took,&#xA;though if you take more than 6 years to finish it starts to look bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to go into non-academic industry, you&#xA;might impress people with a fast Ph.D. because you'd show yourself to be the sort of person who can finish big things fast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're only 2.5 years in, unless you have an offer from someplace and need to finish ASAP, and especially if you're enjoying your Ph.D., I wouldn't rush to graduate that quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T03:09:47.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20456" CreationDate="2014-05-08T03:50:46.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The document you refer to is written by an organization or a corporate author (UNESCO).  The general rule in such cases is, you treat this as an ordinary source written by an author named UNESCO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt;, on listing work written by an organization in your works cited list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A corporate author may include a commission, a committee, or a group that does not identify individual members on the title page. List the names of corporate authors in the place where an author’s name typically appears at the beginning of the entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same general idea applies to &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in-text citations&lt;/a&gt; of sources written by an organization or corporate author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example, courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rdc.libguides.com/content.php?pid=51106&amp;amp;sid=375207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Deer College Library&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Parenthetical Citation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Natl. Research Council 55)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Works Cited&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Research Council. &lt;em&gt;Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World's             Population&lt;/em&gt;. Washington: Natl. Acad., 2000. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T03:50:46.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T04:29:32.637" Score="9" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked on a proposal together with a coworker. The idea for the proposals came from industry and we all discussed this. There were 2 project and we all have inputs.  My project was accepted and his was not.  We all contributed ideas back and forth with the 2 projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did put his name on the first draft proposal but left his name off the final version and put myself as sole PI.  I did ask him for further corrections but his reply was that there was none.  I simply forgot and left his name off without asking his permission.  It was an oversight.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now he saw this proposal and wants to report me for misconduct.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he right that he can report me for academic misconduct?  Is this an ethical issue and not academic misconduct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15021" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T04:21:14.660" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T04:21:14.660" Title="Is excluding a co-author from a proposal considered academic misconduct or just an ethical issue?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2014-05-08T05:40:49.380" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My overall impression is that prodigies and &lt;em&gt;Wunderkinder&lt;/em&gt; are not all that eagerly sought after in industry—particularly in fields associated with chemical engineering (my discipline). Twenty-three or twenty-four, however, is not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; young, but it's probably right on the cusp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your work has reached the point of maturity, and you and your advisor feel that there isn't much for you to gain by remaining in graduate school longer, then it's time to move on and find a job. Of course, in the current economic climate, job searches can last many months, so even if you were ready to defend in six months, you might not have anywhere to go to afterward! (Unless, of course, you start your job search now, which may delay the time it takes you to finish, and so on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final possibility that does cross my mind is the possibility that the funding being used to support your work is running out, and there isn't a follow-up source available—hence the notion of being able to finish soon being introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T05:40:49.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T05:53:55.000" Score="4" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior in high school and will be starting at the University of Washington in the fall.  My goal is to become a successful research mathematician (in academia), and, from what I can gather, my chances at this goal are increased if I am admitted into a &quot;top&quot; math graduate school for my PhD studies.  Hence I am trying to be as proactive as possible in preparing for graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the deal: I have had a very different educational experience; namely two years of basically no math in 9th and 10th grade, and then math at community college in 11th, and finally an honors sequence at the University of Washington this year, in 12th grade. The class covers single variable calculus, some multivariate, ODEs, and linear algebra, all with rigor.  Going in to college in the fall I will have over 100 quarter credits completed (so I will be at the level of a junior).  Moreover, I will be in the senior level algebra sequence and in another honors sequence that covers some real analysis and complex analysis.  After my freshman year I will only have a few undergrad classes left to take (namely one year long sequence).  Lastly, I am currently self-studying (baby) Rudin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So considering my background and current level, it seems I will be taking a large number of graduate courses in my college career if I stay for four years. (Indeed, theoretically at least, I could largely complete the coursework for a PhD by taking two sequences per year). I am worried that if I do stay for four years I will be looked upon negatively by graduate schools, since they might think I am being lazy.  Moreover, what will they think when they see 6 years of college transcripts? Should I plan to finish my degree two years from now to avoid this situation?  Or perhaps in 3 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Perhaps lazy wasn't the appropriate word.  I get the intuition that if an applicant had taken 6 years to complete his/her degree, whilst taking graduate courses even, the admissions committee would think them strange.  What I am wondering is, would my situation be any different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15025" LastEditorUserId="15025" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T06:41:36.260" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:34:36.590" Title="College in high school and math graduate school admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2014-05-08T06:09:10.183" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question as I understand it is: is it considered &lt;em&gt;misconduct&lt;/em&gt; to exclude a co-author from a proposal, or is it some other &lt;em&gt;ethical issue&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly &quot;research misconduct&quot; can broadly be defined as &quot;ethically problematic behaviors in research&quot; - in which case there is no difference. However, let us assume a narrower definition of &quot;misconduct.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific definition of &quot;misconduct&quot; may depend on where you are. In the United States, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ori.hhs.gov/definition-misconduct&quot;&gt;research misconduct&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &quot;plagiarism&quot; is further defined as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Individual institutions may, and often do, extend this definition as a matter of internal policy. However, the ORI policy represents the &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; inclusive definition of misconduct in the United States.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this definition, it seems that using your coworker's ideas, processes, results, or words in your research proposal without giving him credit &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; academic misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the ORI also says this &lt;a href=&quot;http://ori.hhs.gov/ori-policy-plagiarism&quot;&gt;on plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many allegations of plagiarism involve disputes among former collaborators who participated jointly in the development or conduct of a research project, but who subsequently went their separate ways and made independent use of the jointly developed concepts, methods, descriptive language, or other product of the joint effort. The ownership of the intellectual property in many such situations is seldom clear, and the collaborative history among the scientists often supports a presumption of implied consent to use the products of the collaboration by any of the former collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For this reason, ORI considers many such disputes to be authorship or credit disputes rather than plagiarism. Such disputes are referred to PHS agencies and extramural institutions for resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description, however, it seems that this is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the case in your scenario - you and your coworker did not &quot;go separate ways.&quot; There is no &quot;implied consent&quot; to use his ideas. He fully expected to be a co-author, and you yourself admit that he should have been a co-author, except that you somehow left him off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Even if this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; considered an &quot;authorship dispute&quot; and not &quot;plagiarism,&quot; it's not up to you to make that determination - it's up to the investigative body, who will look into the matter if your coworker chooses to report this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &quot;honest error&quot; is not considered misconduct according to the ORI. However, your coworker is not required to take your word for it that your exclusion of him from the proposal was an honest error. This is a determination that a third-party investigative body will typically make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary&lt;/strong&gt;: Your coworker is well within his rights to report you for misconduct. If he does so, you are free to try and persuade the investigators that this was an honest mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T06:09:10.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2014-05-08T07:08:31.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another (similar) opinion from the computer science field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to continue with research, then it doesn't matter whether you have done your PhD in 2 or in 5 years. If you have still interesting things to do on your topic, why not doing them? However, think about your motivation. Now you have the goal to finish your PhD. After an year you will no longer have a goal and continue researching. Will it still be interesting for you? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to go in the industry (especially in startup), then you really don't need to do more research. In some cases it is even seen bad when you have done research, as this is quite different from the kind of (simple, imperfect, fast) work that is mostly needed in industry. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take my decision depending on my interests and not depending on what looks good. Both alternatives look fine, it is much more important whether continuing research on the topic is interesting enough for you or you want to have it behind you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15026" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T07:08:31.953" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T09:07:25.493" Score="14" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a beginner researcher, several years ago, I sent some (2-3) papers to a quality journal (with ISI IF). The papers were rejected.&#xA;Now I am preparing a manuscript, which is in my opinion much more mature.&#xA;In the meantime I had some papers published in other journals.&#xA;Now I am considering the same journal again, because of the topic.&#xA;Is it a good idea ? Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?&#xA;Just to clarify: this is a completely new manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14164" LastEditorUserId="14164" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T10:56:55.397" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T10:56:55.397" Title="Sending manuscript to a journal that rejected an earlier paper" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20473" CreationDate="2014-05-08T09:48:46.923" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is perfectly legit. You are not forbidden to submit ever again to a journal that has rejected one of your earlier manuscripts. Indeed, rejections happen for everyone. It is best not to take them too badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it would be a different story if you resubmitted the same paper that was previously rejected, or a version with only minor updates. Sending an entirely new manuscript, or a much more mature version, is unproblematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important journals get &lt;strong&gt;many&lt;/strong&gt; submissions, the majority of which they have to reject. I think it is very unlikely that the responsible editor even remembers that you already had a paper rejected a few years back. And even if (s)he does, it is unlikely that (s)he holds it against you. As I said, rejection is something that happens to every researcher, at least now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T09:48:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20473" CreationDate="2014-05-08T09:57:20.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to xLeitix's answer, which hits on most of the main points, I would add one further suggestion, if the manuscript is a revised version of a previously rejected manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of the cover letter to the editor, you should indicate that this is a resubmission of the previous paper. You should also outline &lt;strong&gt;clearly&lt;/strong&gt; what has changed from the previous manuscript to the current one: what have you added or removed, and how the present manuscript is an improvement over the previous version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T21:29:32.200" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T21:29:32.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20482" CreationDate="2014-05-08T10:24:49.343" Score="21" ViewCount="4766" Body="&lt;p&gt;People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these people are my friends and some are no more than peers. In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints. Generally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/post/39774996944/my-advice-to-first-years-worrying-about-exam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;much of this advice&lt;/a&gt; does not help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, I try to avoid social gatherings with a high concentration of people from my program. When they get together, the complaints take over conversation. At the department, I can spot someone (or a group) having a stress crisis from a distance, and I keep my distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Migrated from other question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much-and-how-to-best-handle-it&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. There were some useful pieces of advice, so I hope that respondents will move their points]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T19:55:26.370" Title="Social etiquette for interacting with PhD peers who complain *a lot*" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20435" CreationDate="2014-05-08T11:13:09.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a participant, and this applies to all kinds of meetings inside and outside of academia, it depends on whether it is a structured or unstructured meeting. It also depends on whether it is instructor led or student led. In both cases, having an agenda for the meeting will make it more effective; more on this below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose of the group meetings is to brain storm in a collaborative environment, examine each others work, offer insights from unbiased but informed perspectives, and generate discussion, then an unstructured format is generally preferred. This gives participants the freedom for expressing ideas that may have a limited time value and impact. But this is also only valuable if there is a moderator to step in and control the discussion, allocate time to the points to be discussed, and everyone is a participant. If no one is, then there is little value to holding the meetings.&#xA;The most effective way to create the agenda for this, as well as determine the length of the meeting, is for the moderator to poll the participants on what points they wish to discuss. This can be during the last meeting, prior to the meeting through a communications medium, or at the beginning of the meeting. In all cases there should be common agreement that the agenda, once decided, is fixed and that all other discussion points will carry over to the next meeting if they are important enough.&#xA;Time wise, it should be reasonable; only an hour or two at most. More than that and you start to suffer attention span attrition. Frequency is based on need; if there is no need, then there should be less frequent meetings.&#xA;But I will not say that there should be no meetings; because that would signify that all of you have no interest in socializing with your peers, and do not consider peer and instructor review valuable. Which would not be beneficial from a professional standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose of the meeting is for everyone to present current findings and receive pointed guidance, then a structured meeting is preferred. The agenda is based on who has something to present; which all of you should, even if it is only current actions undertaken in your research. The danger of structured meetings where everyone is a participant, regardless of inclination or material, is that they can be extremely long if there are a lot of presenters; and also tedious if there really isn't anything to report and they are filling white-space.&#xA;The easiest way to create the agenda is to have a roster of the group and to have them brief their findings in the order that they are on that roster. They each have a set time to give out their information. The instructor then gives his guidance and possibly polls the group for opinions. Then the groups moves on to the next presenter.&#xA;Structured meetings with definite presentations require some legwork in the background. The most efficient way to get through multiple presenters is to have all of the presentations consolidated to one computer, either merged into one slide deck, or organized by briefer in the same folder. Who does that is something I'm sure the instructor will notify all of you about.&#xA;Time should be based on how many are in the group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are pros and cons to both approaches. The effectiveness of either depends on the participants and the instructor. If your meetings are not effective for any of the participants, then maybe you need to suggest to the group (off-line, during, or private session with the instructor I leave to your discretion) that the point of discussion for one of those meetings should be the effectiveness of those meetings. And then determine what each of you individually needs to take away from it, as well as what ways you are all collectively going to improve the quality of those meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15034" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:13:09.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-08T11:21:11.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much/20412?noredirect=1#comment42706_20412&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to this question)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experienced that &quot;dissatisfaction&quot; can also be very infectious. Dissatisfied people often and strongly complain to their co-workers and co-students, which, over time, gives those people the same sense of dissatisfaction. For instance, in my old lab, we had one office room of people that were constantly dissatisfied about our work environment (all the other students in other rooms felt differently). Any new student that would be seated in this office would, within weeks, also start to complain a lot. As such, I think your goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is very good. Try not to let other people convince you that life is terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether entirely avoiding social outings is the right strategy, though. This will make you an outsider of your cohort, and you will have to spend &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of time with these people in the next years. At parties, a usual strategy to avoid any topic that you do not want to talk about (politics, sports, or whether your life is terrible) is to avoid the groups that are currently talking about the annoying topics and focus your attention to people that are discussing something more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, people will come directly to you to complain one-on-one about their problems. In such cases, one strategy is to acknowledge that they are feeling bad, but provide a more positive light on their case. When you do that regularly, two things may happen. In the best case, the complainer actually takes your words to heart and starts seeing things a bit brighter. If that does not happen, he will at least stop complaining to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; specifically, because he is actually looking for somebody who echoes his feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:21:11.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20466" CreationDate="2014-05-08T11:34:36.590" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are getting worried about nothing.  You will not be judged negatively for having taken college classes before starting your BA, even a lot of them.  Graduate committees want to have students coming into their program who are going to be successful, and they don't care much whether it took 6 years or 2 years to get that preparation.  They are going to look at what you did with your time, not how long you took.  As long as you're happy and it's not too much of a financial hardship, there's no reason to graduate in 2 or 3 years.  Instead, take the time to concentrate on things that will strengthen your application:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the hardest courses available which you can perform well in.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build relationships with faculty.  Taking graduate courses can help with this, but you can also seek out research opportunities or get involve with things like math club.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performing well in challenging classes and having stellar letters of recommendation are the basis of a strong application to graduate school.  Issues of timing make absolutely no difference in comparison to them.  Other considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could do a second major, if there's something else you really want to try.  I think this has probably taken on a totemic significance with students beyond its real import (math grad schools are mostly concerned with how you've done in math; being well-rounded is something like a tertiary consideration), but it sounds like you have the room in your schedule, and certainly no one will think you're lazy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find good ways to occupy yourself over the summers. REUs are one good possibility. It sounds like you'll have a decent shot of getting into one after your freshman year. Another is if you can find a counselor position at summer program like PROMYS.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider spending a year or semester somewhere else. There are highly regarded study abroad programs specific to mathematics in Budapest and Moscow, and also programs like Penn State's MASS.  There's also Part III in Cambridge, which perhaps you could do after graduating in 3 years (or in 4).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:34:36.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-08T11:59:35.253" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20429/13852&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to this question)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kvetching is a perfectly normal part of mental and social hygiene, but to what extent depends on the person. It is also a self-affirming activity: If complaining leads to positive social experiences (people you talk to relate to your experiences and opinions and share them), you will do this more often. If unchecked, this vicious circle can easily cross your tolerance threshold for complaining (which is different for each person). So, first of all you should keep in mind that &quot;too much complaining&quot; is your subjective view, not an objective truth (absent a concrete case of someone spending the day complaining instead of working and then failing to meet a deadline). Of course, if you'd rather have less complaining around you, it's perfectly legitimate to try to break that circle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best strategy (outside of avoiding complaining peers, which you apparently now follow) is often to lead by example: Do not respond to complaining with your own complaints (especially not with ones about their complaining), but try to steer the conversation to happier grounds by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting them to relate positive experiences about their PhD;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mentioning ones you might have had (without showing off -- this one can be tricky);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking an interest in their lives outside of academia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, show them that they can have positive social interactions without complaining. If enough people around you feel the same way as you do, this usually works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your final remark: This is by no means limited to PhD students (or even academia) -- you get similar &quot;hot spots&quot; among early-career faculty simultaneously applying for permanent positions (in Europe) or trying to get tenure (in the US), or among tenured faculty of any seniority any time a major evaluation (of a grant or institute) or reaccreditation is imminent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:59:35.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20102" CreationDate="2014-05-08T12:12:16.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure it is not one of 1000s SPAM mails from not-known-to-anyone or thinking-only-about-how-to-get-your-money societies or fake conference organizers. Vast majority of conference in Computer Science review full papers, not abstracts, and review of presentations is not common at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T12:12:16.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20484" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:02:32.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been part of this site since it was proposed, and was one of the most active users during the private and public beta. As a pro tempore mod, I've been handling moderation duties for a few months now, and I've helped out with many different kinds of issues that can come up. I'm active on chat and meta, as well as answering questions as best I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a mod, I've learned that this community strongly values light-handed moderation, but also appreciates quick and decisive action when necessary. We also feel deeply that we should set our own community standards—differing from the rest of the Stack Exchange network, if necessary—and I've participated in many discussions on meta helping define who we are. I believe that, thus far, I've moderated towards these standards, and I would love to continue into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T13:02:32.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T13:02:32.427" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-08T13:02:32.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20537" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:42:42.110" Score="0" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abet.org/cac-criteria-2014-2015/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABET accreditation criteria document for Computer Science&lt;/a&gt; lists some course requirements as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One year of Science and Mathematics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least one half year of Mathematics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One and one-third years of Computer Science &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least one year of up-to-date coverage of fundamental and advanced topics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many courses is one year equivalent to? It may mean 10, going by 5 courses per semester. &quot;One year of X&quot; may mean a year where there is at least one course on X every semester. In either case, &quot;one and one-third years&quot; of courses does not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T20:45:08.693" Title="In ABET accreditation criteria, what is the meaning of &quot;one year of X&quot;?" Tags="&lt;accreditation&gt;&lt;abet&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20492" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:48:54.193" Score="11" ViewCount="2621" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my undergraduate, I have a publication, however I am listed as the second author. I know it is not as ideal as being listed as first author, but for graduate admission, will it still play a role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:45:21.177" Title="The use of second authorship paper for graduate admission" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:53:40.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using forums, don't just make a thread and then write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Class project, please fill out this survey. Link: www.xxxxxx984asdfac. Thx!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time these annoying threads can trigger shutting down or be simply ignored as spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend picking a few major forums and actually start a communication with the administrators. In no more than a few hundred words explain who you are, what questions you're trying to answer, and how your results may help both parties. If the outcome is positive, here are a bunch of wishes you can usually ask for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pin your thread at the top for a fixed amount of time to enhance visibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tap into their membership e-mail or online messaging network for an announcement and about 2 waves of weekly reminders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide you with important statistics including open rate, click rate, bounce rate, initiation rate, and completion rate. These are all necessary if you are to publish your results in an academic journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to enhance your credibility by, in the mail to the administrator and the message to the users:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailing the motive of your survey, what kind of questions respondents should anticipate, and how long would it take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting an institutional review board approval, and report so in the announcement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly mentioning the measures to ensure respondents' confidentiality and/or anonymity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining how the results will be used, and even be fed back to the communities that have helped you filling in the survey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being real and present by providing your official contact information (names and school e-mail are sufficient). Invite respondents to contact you if they have questions about the study. Check with your supervisor and department for policy of using the school's name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly stating the opening period of the survey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try contacting companies that hire freelancers, or talk to websites that organize freelance jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest to make duplicates of your survey so that each forum will have their own referral link. You can pool the data later and compare the differences between forum. If you just make one survey you may not be able to figure that out at the end. Putting a &quot;where do you learn about this survey?&quot; question may also help, though probably not as objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you don't care about knowing all those rates, and just want a quick turn around of data, you may use your network to contact some high profile people in the field and see if they are willing to broadcast that for you. Most of the time, a tweet from them would be quite effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also agree with the comments asking you to pay a visit to some social science faculty. At the very least, make sure your questions are examined by some professional for validity. Most researchers also do not mind share with you some templates of the survey introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other technical strayed thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do make a copy of online survey for each major source. Aka forum A will have its own link, and forum B will have its own link, etc. That way later you can stratify them in the analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invest in a good online survey service. Make sure not to enroll in those with limited responses. It'd be very annoying for the 501st respondent to get a &quot;quota full&quot; warning if your free service account only allows 500 responses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write good questions and include only relevant questions. Again, talking to some researchers will help a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550605/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES)&lt;/a&gt; provides a good list of components you should include in manuscript. Read them before you start data collection and make sure you have thought about all these factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, check if someone has already invented the wheel for you. Secondary data sets may have already covered information you wish to collect. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/nls/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Longitudinal Surveys&lt;/a&gt; maintained by the US Department of Labor (I just went ahead and assume that you're interested in the US market) does ask question about freelancing. They even once released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/History/nlsyth_12202001.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T14:29:31.940" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:29:31.940" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:57:49.507" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;No-one would expect an undergraduate to publish papers so the fact that you have been involved in publishable research is a merit. One of the goals of a Phd education is to learn to write good research papers so, again, no-one would expect that from your from the start. I would suggest that you try to describe your contribution to the paper so that your authorship can be valued from the perspective of that contribution. Being able to understand the skills and experience of a student, provided it is good, is of value in a selection process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T13:57:49.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-08T13:57:49.820" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student who like to complain (partly as a PhD student, partly as a Slav) and work/live in such environment: it's not much about etiquette (at worst, they will &lt;em&gt;complain&lt;/em&gt; about your behavior), but about social contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to avoid complaints (especially non-productive ones):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DO steer away from sensitive topics (especially if it is not a new topic, e.g. &quot;We already had a discussion about the odds of getting tenure; if we have nothing more to add, let's talk about X...&quot;); some people have their weak points you don't want to touch,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DO try to focus on something positive (sometimes non academia-related topics can be the best/safest),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DON'T try to persuade that they don't have a problem (it's like persuading someone that (s)he is not feeling pain),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DON'T start complaining by yourself (it is a positive feedback mechanism),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DON'T start conversations with &quot;how is your thesis?&quot;, or in tougher cases, not even &quot;how are you?&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DON'T talk that other have worse (not many people are happy when hearing about others being unemployed or anything),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DO focus on their opportunities (in academia, science, non-academic job market, seeing an cool city while on a conference, etc),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DO try to focus on facts and actions rather than pointless complaints (see below). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people complain no matter what and no matter what is the topic - then you can't help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to complaints, PhD students are often smart and analytical. Saying that complaints never solve anything but one should focus on cold diagnosis and action often helps (or at least - halts some complaints). See (a bit different context, but somewhat related):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] People who struggle against the system (in this case, national education, but you can insert here any academic or political institution you don't like), or try to reform the system from the inside, often end up bitter and frustrated. Large institutions evolve at glacial speed, so whatever aspects one might want to reform, instead of fighting the resistance of matter it seems more fruitful to find a niche and expand from there. [...] &lt;strong&gt;We’d have got nowhere if we simply complained about the Polish education system and stopped at that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from my text &lt;a href=&quot;http://warsztatywww.wikidot.com/en%3aindie-camp-for-hs-geeks&quot;&gt;An independent camp for high school geeks&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T17:57:26.567" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T17:57:26.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2014-05-08T14:00:23.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing basically this in the UK. I can definitely say it is a viable option, although there are definitely some drawbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage is that you lack lots of the support the being based at a academic institution has. There is no student union or similar structures to support you. While you will have access to these facilities via your academic institution they are generally much harder to access due to your physical separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the social life at non-academic institutions is very different. Most of your colleges will not be students and probably have a very different outlook on life, e.g. many more older people with families. Similarly there is no union, clubs or other formalised ways to meet people socially. Although this probably depends more your personality and the specific place your at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also correct that travel to/from your academic institution can be very annoying. For meeting with your supervisor I strongly recommend trying to do as much by skype as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally non-academic institutions, even government labs/NMIs tend to be less research focused and more focused on providing a service/developing a product, which might involve significant research. This isn't necessarily a problem as long as your project is well defined and your not at risk of doing several small unrelated projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the plus side, you will probably be more exposed to industry and get a wider understanding of what is viewed as important by end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the researchers at these labs are world-leading in there own right and some labs are very highly regarded which can't hurt your future prospects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, they are presumably providing funding for the project. Which is always import to have :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:00:23.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2014-05-08T14:45:21.177" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will absolutely still play a role. What graduate schools are looking for in terms of publications, undergraduate research conferences, etc. is not that you already have an established body of first author publications (that's the point of grad school) but that you have some experience and aptitude for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second-author publication establishes that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially true in some fields like medicine, public health, etc. where the results of a large study might have many authors, and no matter how much you contributed as an undergrad, the odds of you meriting first or last authorship is slim. However, regardless of your field, there are some things you should also consider doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As @PeterJansson suggested, make sure you can describe what it is you contributed to the paper. You might not have room for this on your CV, but in application essays and in interviews, this will be important. If it's the only paper on your CV (which is likely), you're &lt;em&gt;going&lt;/em&gt; to have to talk about it. It won't be held against you if you're the 2nd author, but it likely won't look good if you can't communicate what the paper was about or how you helped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider seeing if there are ancillary questions in the research (how sensitive our our results to X? What about Y?) that might make good projects you could take the lead on and get a conference presentation or short paper out of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, look out for opportunities to present undergraduate work at your institution, and apply to those. Even if you're not the first author on the publication, it's often possible to present on your part of the work in the context of the larger whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:45:21.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20434" CreationDate="2014-05-08T14:45:38.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;FP7&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under &lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FP7&lt;/a&gt;, which was the EU funding programme running from 2007 to 2013, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/people/home_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;People Programme&lt;/a&gt; was offering the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about-mca/quick-guide/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marie Curie Actions&lt;/a&gt;. This programme considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about-mca/faq/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;two types of researchers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Early-stage researchers&lt;/strong&gt; are defined as those in the first four years (full-time equivalent) of their research careers, starting at the date of obtaining the degree which would formally entitle them to embark on a doctorate, either in the country in which the degree was obtained or in the country in which the research training is provided, irrespective of whether or not a doctorate is envisaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experienced researchers&lt;/strong&gt; must, at the time of recruitment (i) be in possession of a doctoral degree, independently of the time taken to acquire it, or (ii) have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience, including the period of research training, after obtaining the degree which formally allowed them to embark on a doctorate in the country in which the degree/diploma was obtained or in the host country (irrespective of whether or not a doctorate was envisaged).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;you are correct to say that fellowships for experienced researchers can correspond to postdoctoral fellowships&lt;/strong&gt; (although strictly speaking, someone without a doctoral degree might still be able to apply).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In FP7, experienced researchers could apply to four types of fellowships (together with an organisation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowships (IOF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marie Curie Career Integration Grants (CIG)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calls for these fellowships are now over, and as far as I know, these terms should no longer be used (apart to designate existing fellow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;H2020&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are now under &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Horizon 2020&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/excellent-science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Excellent Science pillar&lt;/a&gt; offers the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/marie-sklodowska-curie-actions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experienced researcher can now apply to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/calls/h2020-msca-if-2014.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Individual Fellowship (IF)&lt;/a&gt;, which can be either European (replacing IEF) or Global (replacing both IIF and IOF). The next deadline for this call is on the 11/09/2014, September 11 of this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programme is also providing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/calls/h2020-msca-rise-2014.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research and Innovation Staff Exchange call &lt;/a&gt;, which corresponds to the previous IRSES, but it closed on the 24/04/14 (another one should open next year). So &lt;strong&gt;the link you mention with Staff Exchange is a typo, and it should read Individual Fellowship&lt;/strong&gt; (and as a matter of fact, if you click on the link, you'll reach the IF page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in applying for an MSCA, I'll recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/doc/call/h2020/h2020-msca-if-2014/1600147-guide_for_applicants_if_2014_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official Guide for Applicants&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T17:22:22.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20473" CreationDate="2014-05-08T14:51:48.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is this a good idea, but its relatively common, and a decent publication strategy overall. Given a particular topic is likely to have more than one journal, a way to decide where to submit is to submit it to the &quot;top&quot; journal that you think you have a shot at getting into (you shouldn't submit work that has no chance - its a waste of your time and theirs), and then letting the paper &quot;slide&quot; down the rankings as it gets rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rejection doesn't even imply that you submitted to the wrong journal, or that the work wasn't worth trying to get in there - the vagaries of editorial discretion, publishing cycles, and reviewers mean something might have had a legitimate shot at getting in but just missed this time. The next paper? Start the process over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your submission is egregious enough to be &lt;em&gt;memorably bad&lt;/em&gt;, the odds of the editors holding rejections against you, or even remembering you specifically, are pretty low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T14:51:48.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:10:44.200" Score="1" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to apply for a PhD through a government or a military research laboratory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so what would be the process? Is the qualifying exam required? How is that scheduled? How about course work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15041" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-10-02T20:08:37.900" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T16:41:38.560" Title="Is it possible to get a PhD through government/industry/military lab, and if it is, what is the process?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;government-institutes&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:14:15.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I said in the other question, you can avoid some of this, but shared suffering is a bonding experience - you and your cohorts will have the experience of having been &quot;in the trenches&quot; together, and this can be a fairly powerful bond with people who will be your colleagues in the future. Especially for those who are &quot;just&quot; your peers, those kinds of links can be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's also a reason people complain in social settings in academia - some amount of stress and suffering is universal, but success is largely personal. Everyone can commiserate about quals, or NIH pay lines, or how brutal a particular class was, but at any given moment far fewer people are riding the high of getting a paper accepted, going to a conference they're looking forward to, landing that prestigious postdoc, etc. Focusing on that also highlights those people who &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; experiencing that. When I was in graduate school, the complaining was about things that happened to you &lt;em&gt;because you were a graduate student&lt;/em&gt; not because they were your fault - everyone was stressed, everyone was poor, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts of mine on dealing with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't dismiss the complaints. A lot of people want to know they're not alone, and just writing off their problems - however trivial or annoying you might find them - isn't going to make the social situation better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refocus the conversation on shared experiences that are funny or odd or some how enjoyable, rather than just complaints. The professor with the oddball anecdotes, the antics of the students you are supervising, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know things about your cohort's lives outside of school. It's a lot easier to not complain about school if you have something else to talk about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As @PiotrMigdal said, put the brakes on a little harder when things turn to sensitive topics - that doesn't go good places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:14:15.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20497" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:17:20.440" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:17:20.440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:17:20.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20498" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:17:20.440" Score="0" Body="Questions pertaining to those being taught at the post-secondary level." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="269" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T10:58:15.370" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T10:58:15.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20499" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:18:34.643" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:18:34.643" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:18:34.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20500" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:18:34.643" Score="0" Body="Questions about institutional recognition of academic progress, such as master’s or doctoral degrees." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T22:02:56.500" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T22:02:56.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20501" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:19:22.593" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:19:22.593" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:19:22.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20502" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:19:22.593" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning the language (e.g., English, French, German, Chinese) of academic publications, presentations, transcripts, or other documents. For questions on style, use 'writing-style' instead." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T02:42:02.297" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T02:42:02.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20503" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:20:21.197" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:20:21.197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:20:21.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20504" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:20:21.197" Score="0" Body="Questions about the roles and responsibilities of editors, who decide what papers are accepted into peer reviewed journals." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:35:32.573" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:35:32.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20505" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:21:24.093" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:21:24.093" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:21:24.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20506" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:21:24.093" Score="0" Body="Questions about hiring in the academic market, including postdoctoral, staff and faculty positions." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:35:12.897" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:35:12.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20507" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:22:19.457" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:22:19.457" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:22:19.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20508" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:22:19.457" Score="0" Body="Questions about the tones, turns of phrase and other writing patterns that are appropriate for writing in an academic context." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:35:44.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:35:44.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20509" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:24:12.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that questions on the &lt;em&gt;analysis&lt;/em&gt; of data are often more appropriate at &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;CrossValidated&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:35:18.103" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:35:18.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20510" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:24:12.973" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning acquisition, handling, presentation, publication, and other practices related to use of data in academic research." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T03:42:41.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T03:42:41.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:27:57.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To borrow from Willie Sutton:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do I rob banks? Because that's where the money is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to put your surveys where the people are. I've seen a few studies that used &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/simple.surveys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;, which lets you specify exactly which demographic should see your survey. &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/What-will-my-Audience-results-look-like&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SurveyMonkey&lt;/a&gt; can also help put your survey in front of the people you'd like to see. I know that I had a lot of success putting up advertisements across campus offering to pay for participation, but that was for a study that involved more than just a single survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest what was said in the comments... talk to the local economics, psychology, and sociology departments to see if they can give you any assistance with this. Researchers in all those areas will face this problem all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:27:57.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20524" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:29:03.690" Score="1" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone one know whether the Journal of Data Science is still working or not? I have noticed that the journal's website (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jds-online.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jds-online.com/&lt;/a&gt;) has not been updated since last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:47:30.513" Title="Is the Journal of Data Science still alive?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20513" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:31:05.313" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:31:05.313" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:31:05.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20514" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:31:05.313" Score="0" Body="Scholarships are a means to fund higher education that do not entail a job or other hours-worked obligations. They are often obtained through a competitive process, and may involve non-work obligations or work after graduation." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:39:48.557" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:39:48.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20495" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:31:44.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the UK so in other countries things may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some government research institutes fund PhDs, where you are based at the institute for your research. However the PhD itself must be awarded by an academic institution (i.e. a university). You will generally have a supervisor at this university and its name will be on the certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics are going to vary for place to place including: what, if any, taught courses you must do, how often you must visit your university etc. In my experience these factors are often a compromise between the two institutions, particularly the university often has various requirements for the PhD while the research institute just wants you to do research for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for applying, you should expect the same/similar requirements to a standard PhD. when looking for positions the host university or the industrial lab are the best places to start. Although it is not always clear whether the position is just funded by the lab, but based at the university, or actually based at the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related option, not sure how location dependent it is, is doing an EngD. These tend to be more industry focused, often in a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:31:44.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20516" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:32:01.350" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:32:01.350" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:32:01.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20517" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:32:01.350" Score="0" Body="Concerning the use of available working time to accomplish the greatest possible amount of work by improving efficiency, minimizing wasted time or procrastination, etc." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:39:51.480" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:39:51.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20518" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:33:05.150" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:33:05.150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:33:05.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20519" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:33:05.150" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning the academic work environment. Do not use this for employment questions or questions relating to an industry career." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T21:13:07.483" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T21:13:07.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20520" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:33:45.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:33:45.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:33:45.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20521" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:33:45.697" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning the use of graduate students as course instructors, usually under the supervision of a faculty member." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:39:54.553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:39:54.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20522" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:35:43.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The digital publication of materials online, also referred to as 'electronic publishing'. Includes peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed journal articles, e-books, online academic magazines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47906" LastEditorUserId="47906" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T16:55:17.613" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T16:55:17.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20523" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:35:43.507" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning publication over the internet, including online preprint services, electronic journals, white papers, etc." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:39:45.317" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:39:45.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20512" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:40:25.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that a definitive answer would be available unless the site happens to host a member of the journal's editorial board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, their publication follows a January - April - July - October pattern. It's now May, and their last published edition was in January, which means they have missed at least one issue. However, the January 2014 issue also announces a new editor, so they may simply have a disrupted schedule without being &quot;dead&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say &quot;Not healthy, but possibly still alive&quot;. Another missed issue in July would be a pretty negative sign. Alternately, you could try contacting the journal to find out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:40:25.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20525" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:42:14.813" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:42:14.813" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:42:14.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20526" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:42:14.813" Score="0" Body="Concerning the establishment of repeatable patterns of academic and research related activity." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T16:01:10.680" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:01:10.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20527" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:43:23.037" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T15:43:23.037" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:43:23.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20528" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:43:23.037" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning giving and attending small but organized presentations of scientific material, often given to an audience within a single academic department." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T16:01:17.887" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:01:17.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17513" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:59:02.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider keeping an eye on Solvers.io - it's a new site that's trying to link up coders with scientists in need of help for bite-sized software development tasks. I haven't looked to see if there are any cancer-specific calls for help, but it may be a place to find people who would value your time and expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T15:59:02.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20535" CreationDate="2014-05-08T16:09:11.207" Score="41" ViewCount="3663" Body="&lt;p&gt;The graduate students at my university (a relatively large state school in the US) are considering joining a union. To help decide whether to sign a union card in support of joining the union, I'm interested in more information about how unions have helped graduate students at other universities. What are some improvements to graduate life gained by graduate students at other universities upon joining a union?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in information about how unions have hurt graduate students at other universities. What are some detriments to graduate life caused by graduate students joining a union?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm primarily interested in student-body-wide benefits/detriments, instead of student-specific or faculty/administrator-specific claims (e.g. &quot;my advisor treated me better with the union behind me&quot; or &quot;my students have stopped working since they joined a union&quot; is not what I'm looking for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7346" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T15:51:34.763" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T02:24:44.823" Title="What are the benefits/detriments to graduate students joining unions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;labor-union&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20533" CreationDate="2014-05-08T16:25:28.357" Score="26" ViewCount="919" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not famous enough of a scientist to be frequently solicited by the media* (plus my field has little political/social controversy around it), but I had a few encounters with local newspapers and one with a public national television. The results were not entirely bad, but the general sentiment given was significantly different than what I would have wanted it to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like I'm not alone, I just got back from a conference in my field where more senior scientists discussed their relationship with the general media. It came out that more often than they would like, the relationship was bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems stated, among others†:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misquotation, or words taken out of their context significantly changing their meaning (this is the most frequent). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A general difficulty for the media to understand, and convey, uncertainty ('we think, it might be so..' or 'we are rather confident that ...' becomes 'it is so')&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difficulty to apprehend results, applications, consequences that may or may not appear 10-20 years down the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exaggeration of the conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not without consequences, at the personal level, as it can give the impression that you don't know what you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought was to ignore the media attention and advocate that scientists should do the communication themselves to bypass the regular media (having a blog, entertaining a profile on social media, etc.), but it is extremely time consuming and would distract from the actual research work. I think there must be something to do, on our side, to help with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it is due to how media works, and I don't believe it will change by a lot. But the question is then: &lt;strong&gt;are there any strategies that would help reducing this effect&lt;/strong&gt;, at least to protect oneself against the consequences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*newspapers, television, magazines, etc. i.e. not scientific journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;†anyone who has items to add to this list is welcome to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T19:13:04.943" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T19:13:04.943" Title="How should academics handle communication with the media?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20532" CreationDate="2014-05-08T16:42:02.190" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had one paper I wrote garner significant media attention, so while I'm not a practiced hand at it, some things I learned along the way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to convey the idea behind your paper simply. A brief, non-technically &quot;What happened&quot;, and why this matters. Don't oversell, but if you provide good information, you have some more control over how it gets conveyed, instead of forcing a non-expert journalist to translate your work into words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep it short. It's harder to misquote or provide out-of-context soundbites if you keep things short and to the point. Don't pontificate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the caveats of your work clear, but don't over-hedge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's clear they're trying to get you to say something in particular, decide if you're okay with saying it. If you are, just do it. If you aren't &lt;em&gt;don't go anywhere near it&lt;/em&gt;. Don't dance around, or try to add qualifiers - just don't approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared for rage-inducing discussion of your work online after it hits the air. Learn to have a thick skin, or purposefully ignore it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that, in the grand scheme of things, even a fair amount of media attention is a flash in the pan, and the odd story that makes you wince is just that - a single story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think you can &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; mitigate some of the problems around media coverage of your work with an active social media presence and a blog, it's only by engaging the audience. It's not going to let you &quot;stand aside&quot; from the media - no website or news paper is going to go &quot;Oh, Dr. X has a blog. On second thought, lets not bother with the story...&quot; If anything, an active social media presence will probably raise your profile among science communication types, and increase the odds of getting a bit of media attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:42:02.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-08T16:49:12.483" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have first-hand knowledge of specific details, but I am aware that at my university the graduate student union has successfully negotiated items like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic health care coverage for GAs, RAs and TAs, with full coverage provided to 0.5 FTE assistants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tuition payment deferment so that earned stipends can pay tuition fees not covered by tuition waivers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paycheck deductions in installments for parking permits for graduate assistants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been told that they negotiate assistantship salaries and minimum and maximum working loads for assistants, and that the union will represent assistants should a grievance arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never discussed the graduate student union with anyone in my department – professors and other students alike – and am aware of no negative impacts of my membership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7444" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:49:12.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-08T16:53:28.847" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to graduate school in mathematics at a university with a TA union. I think the main effect was to level off graduate student compensation across disciplines -- so, the union was apparently a great boon to those in the humanities, but I heard that compensation for math TA's would likely be higher if not for the union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another benefit to the union was that it instilled (for many) a sense of camaraderie and common cause. Union events were fun, and they served beer. It was a good way to get to know your fellow graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main disadvantage was that dues had to be paid, around $200 a year (most of which went straight to the AFT). This is not a lot, but on our salary it did mean something. Dues were mandatory, even if you opted out of the union -- although state politicians have since seen to it that this is no longer true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another potential disadvantage is that union dues went (in part) to political contributions to union-friendly politicians. I didn't mind, but this tended to alienate graduate students who were more politically conservative than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was occasional heated rhetoric when I was there, and even more after I left, but overall the union didn't seem to do much good or harm. Mostly, I remember the beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:53:28.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-08T18:50:10.977" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a postdoc at an institution with unionized graduate students.  One specific consequence was that graduate students weren't allowed to ever lecture in place of a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an annoyance to the professor, but more relevantly, it's a mixed deal for graduate students.  When I was a graduate student, getting the chance to lecture was an opportunity---at some schools it's one of the few chances to get that experience while still in grad school.  On the other hand I have heard stories (in other fields) of professors abusing this and passing a large part of their teaching load off to their grad students.  (This, I assume, is why the rule was negotiated in the first place.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T18:50:10.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20486" CreationDate="2014-05-08T18:56:45.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;year&quot; of a subject almost certainly means one course per term for a year's worth of terms.  That is, &quot;one year of science&quot; at a semester school would mean two courses in science.  (At least, this is how I've seen similar terminology used in discussing mathematics requirements---when people say something requires &quot;2 years of math&quot; they mean taking in total at least four semester long courses, not necessarily consecutively.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;one and one-third&quot; years is presumably for schools which use trimesters, where that means 4 courses.  (I assume that at a semester school that means three courses---a year and a half---since these are minimal requirements, though I wonder if they really expect schools which use trimesters to include two courses on discrete math.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T18:56:45.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-08T19:40:45.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a huge over simplification, but it is worth noting that Universities, unlike companies, are closed systems that generally do not make a profit. Giving additional benefits from someone means taking them from someone else. For a company it is usually the share holder that loses out. For academic departments added benefits to graduate students hurts professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no question in my mind that while graduate student unions may provide a short term benefit to graduate students, those students who wish to continue on in academia are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. Those increased benefits come directly from departmental budgets. This means heavier teaching loads and less discretionary money for academic staff. To offset this you need either high grant overheads which will make getting a grant even more competitive or higher tuition. Basically if you support graduate student unions, you lose your right as a faculty member to complain about high teaching loads, not having a grant, and high tuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student in response to &quot;threats&quot; about unionization my university increased the PhD student stipend. The stipend was above the NIH recommendation. This means that any student funded by an NIH grant needed to find an additional source of non governmental funding. This essentially boils down to PIs using their overhead accounts to supplement the stipend, but PIs did not get a bigger slice of the overhead pie to cover this new cost. At the same time the University got a site license for Matlab. To cover the cost the PI slice of the overhead pie was reduced. Universities take, but rarely give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-08T20:34:16.310" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T20:34:16.310" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20486" CreationDate="2014-05-08T20:45:08.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;ABET formally defines a &quot;year&quot; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lesser of 32 semester-hours (or equivalent) or one-fourth of the credits required for graduation [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wiggle room in the definition is almost certainly because of the wide variety of credit systems used by various schools. &quot;One and a third years&quot; would then equate either to 42 semester hours, or four full trimesters or quarters of study for those on alternate study schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T20:45:08.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20495" CreationDate="2014-05-08T21:05:40.597" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, you cannot have your PhD degree &lt;em&gt;awarded by&lt;/em&gt; a government or military  laboratory, and similarly industrial labs generally cannot award degrees, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having worked at several government labs, I can confirm that it is possible to be a grad student and do your thesis research at a government lab. Usually this is done under a co-advising arrangement within an existing collaboration (Prof. X at university A works with Dr. Y at lab B), or under a cross-affiliation (Prof. X has a joint appointment at both university A and lab B).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific details differ too much depending on the university and department's regulations, as well as those of the lab in which you're interested in working, so you'd need to ask them specifically. However, it is also worth noting that many graduate departments still have a &quot;residency requirement&quot; on the books—which states that you must spend some number of semesters actually registered as a student at the university before receiving a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T21:05:40.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T21:17:57.147" Score="5" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a reference management program to do three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(1) Manage references.&lt;/strong&gt; There are plenty of solutions for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(2) Manage quotations.&lt;/strong&gt; Similar to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5246/searching-for-a-quotation-manager&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, whose suggestions were surprisingly lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(3) Map relationships among references.&lt;/strong&gt; Somewhat similar to the problem posed by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13329/map-tree-of-citations-references&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. When doing research, I often (naturally) find new sources via reference from a current source. It would be extremely useful if my reference manager could look at all sources referenced by all of my current sources to reveal data gold mines like which sources in my library are referenced by other sources in my library, or (even better) what sources are referenced most frequently by all of the sources in my library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if my library/collection contains sources A, B, C, D, E, then I want to see that A references B &amp;amp; E, B references D &amp;amp; E, and C references E. This information would also lend itself to useful descriptive statistics like &quot;E is referenced by 3 sources in your library {A,B,C}&quot; and even visual mapping of references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the vast array of reference management software available, I am amazed that I haven't found anything even close to this. Does anything like this currently exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15053" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T08:02:27.567" Title="Relational Reference Management Software?" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T03:39:25.123" Score="15" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;It just came to my mind, currently if one wants to obtain an&#xA;academic degree one must to do a thesis. This is a widely accepted&#xA;method to prove the knowledge of certain academic level, sort to say.&#xA;But my questions are, where this method was originated? Which historical&#xA;or social circumstances originated it? Is there any philosophical background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15061" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T05:27:00.113" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T07:19:04.583" Title="Origin of the thesis-degree procedure" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2014-05-09T04:31:11.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself what your PhD will mean in your career. For some people, it's simply a &quot;certificate of competence&quot; - it shows they are a good researcher, they can think independently, create original thought, test hypotheses, write coherently...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For others, it is a sign that they have mastered a specific field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fall in the first category, then by all means finish and move on. I work &quot;in industry&quot; and have hired a number of people like this. The first thing I tell them is &quot;your PhD is a license to learn&quot;. Once that message sinks in, they realize that our particular field has so much more to learn, and they can become quite effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fall in the second category, then ask yourself if your current environment is the place to continue honing your specific skills. If it is, and you are enjoying yourself - stick around. Finish your PhD and stay on as a post-doc, maybe. It's not wrong to finish fast; it depends on who you are, and who you want to become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way - you are in the enviable position of having choices. Make sure you realize how lucky you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T04:31:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20545" CreationDate="2014-05-09T04:55:44.477" Score="2" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to cite a hard copy of a musical score, using Microsoft Word's References feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word gives me several options. I have narrowed it down to a few but none of them explicitly say &quot;Musical score&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Book Section&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal Article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Art&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sound Recording&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Film&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a &quot;miscellaneous&quot;, but I'm not sure if I should categorize musical score under that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T05:16:04.457" Title="How to cite musical score in Turabian given the following options?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20544" CreationDate="2014-05-09T05:16:04.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A musical score is cited like a &lt;strong&gt;book&lt;/strong&gt; in this style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.depauw.edu/content.php?pid=16848&amp;amp;sid=113582&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Depauw University Libraries&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The footnote is in the form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Composer First Name Last, &lt;em&gt;Name of Musical Work&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;  (City, State: Publisher, Year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, &lt;em&gt;Eine kleine Nachthmusik&lt;/em&gt;, K. 525&#xA;  (Bryn Mawr, PA:  Theodore Presser, 1960).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bibliography is in the form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Composer Last Name, First.  &lt;em&gt;Name of Musical Work&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;                  City, State (if city isn't well known): Publisher, Year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus.  &lt;em&gt;Eine kleine Nachtmusik&lt;/em&gt;, K. 525.&#xA;                  Bryn Mawr, PA:  Theodore Presser, 1960.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.depauw.edu/content.php?pid=16848&amp;amp;sid=113582&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Depauw site&lt;/a&gt; has additional information on various special cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T05:16:04.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-09T05:38:28.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask about student-body-wide benefits, I think you need to ask this question across schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unions at some schools have more bargaining power than others, and at some schools the field is already more level than others.  But when you look at things like tuition waivers and health benefits, I don't see how they would be as common as they are now without TA unions pushing the fight for the last 40 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-union schools are under pressure to match the compensation at union schools.  Now other battles loom at many schools regarding international student issues and mandatory fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was involved in my TA union as an elected leader for three years, and I heard lots of complaints about how the department wants to give us this, but the union won't let us, the school wants to pay us more, but the union won't let us, etc. I personally investigated every case and the most common explanation is that the school administrators -- starting these rumors -- did not understand labor law or the union contract.  In no case did the union prevent a TA from being paid better, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I heard complaints about union dues going to liberal politicians, this is also not true, and is against the law.  Unions do help some politicians, this is true -- but it isn't with dues money.  The reason unions do help is because unions have painfully found out that what is gained at the bargaining table can be taken away at the state capitals very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15064" LastEditorUserId="31419" LastEditDate="2018-05-06T02:24:44.823" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T02:24:44.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20531" CreationDate="2014-05-09T06:13:10.450" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good thing in unions is that you get to interact with others, specially your seniors, who can guide you in your academic life because they are one step ahead of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A drawback is that you will have to be a part of parties, meetings, and gatherings etc. which could be disturbing for some people who are not into much socializing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15065" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T12:02:46.040" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T12:02:46.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20541" CreationDate="2014-05-09T08:02:27.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is nothing pre-canned for point (3). If you want to do it yourself, you'll need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a way to retrieve automatically the references cited in each paper of your collection -- see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15596/retrieving-the-references-in-a-publication-automatically/15887#15887&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for some solutions. Note that an important part of this is giving each paper a unique identifier, something that is dealt with in literature databases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a graph visualization/analysis tool. See for instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/93/graph-visualization-analysis-tool&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing code -- sorry, there is no way around this. :(&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: just noticed that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16092/958&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; suggests a program called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madhavajay.com/kalki/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Citation Visualisation Tool&lt;/a&gt; -- give it a try! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T08:02:27.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20556" CreationDate="2014-05-09T08:31:32.187" Score="4" ViewCount="16237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked for an university for one year after my master's degree. Now I'm searching another job. For the moment I've tried to ask to several professors via email if there is any internship opportunities but only a couple of them answered me. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or this is not the praxis or the formal manner for this type of requests. This is a general template I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor &lt;code&gt;Surname&lt;/code&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a young chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage.  In my career I've studied mainly non-invasive techniques for art diagnostics and authentication, such as reflectography and Raman spectroscopy. I've also learned, on my own, to use GIS software for organizing data for Cultural Heritage management. I've seen that one of &lt;code&gt;name of a Project I'm interested&lt;/code&gt; tasks is the maintenance of cultural heritage. Therefore, I would like to ask you if there are any internship opportunities in which my expertise could be useful to your current research? Thank you for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I propose myself for an internship? Which is the most accepted praxis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10333" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T23:27:56.517" Title="Is it rude to ask via email to a professor if there are any internship opportunities?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2014-05-09T09:12:44.640" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;(note: I have no references for the below, nor am I qualified in the topic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the premise of your question isn't quite accurate: certainly in the UK it's very common for undergraduate degrees to have no thesis requirement. But putting that aside:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are parallels with other mediaeval professions, which required proof of skill in order to become a member of a guild (the professional organisation). To be a 'master' of the guild one had to produce a 'masterpiece' (the origin of that word); this has obvious parallels with the idea of a thesis proving that an individual should be admitted to a degree (remember that historically a degree is more like a rank than an award, honour or qualification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MA at Oxford and Cambridge is still awarded automatically to those with a BA seven years after the start of the degree, which I believe matches the time someone in a professional guild would take to become a master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that the modern doctorate is a much more recent invention than the MA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6899" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T09:12:44.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T09:33:07.390" Score="4" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;When teaching undergraduate students, I find freshmen students to be mostly unaware with the idea of including evidence to support the author's opinion. That is, they write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leaders should be friendly and support those in lower positions in the organization. Being friendly makes others like you and that makes them work harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it should be more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goleman (2000) wrote about affiliative leadership in which the leader focuses on the emotional connection with the followers. In the ABC case, the leader is likely to be well served by using affiliative leadership due to the fact that workers who feel a strong emotional connection with their manager are known to push themselves harder in order to gain the approval of the manager (Jones, 2008). This implies that the leader should not only be affiliative but should also withhold compliments from the subordinates in order to maximize output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember my teachers telling me the guidelines was 80/20. 80% of the writing should be from the student and 20% should be from external sources, which support the student's opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I have read quite a few papers from students where they basically have a citation for every sentence. This makes me wonder if they actually know much. After all, if 80% of the writing is from academic sources, it shows that the authors of &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; papers understand, not that the student understands. However, I also consider that the fact that the student knew which text to include should count for something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I start thinking about plagiarism. If the student has simply quoted their way through a paper (with proper citations) then someone else could submit the same paper and it would not count as plagiarism because everything is cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any generally accepted guideline on the percentage of writing in a student's written assignment which should be from the student and what percentage should be from other (hopefully academic) sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this might vary by field. My field is business management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T09:45:13.937" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:23:36.907" Title="What guidelines exist for volume of evidence in an undergraduate business assignment?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20587" CreationDate="2014-05-09T09:37:45.010" Score="10" ViewCount="2159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to prepare some exercise sheets for a course. I am wondering whether or not it is OK to take some exercises directly from the textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15032" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T10:29:01.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:25:43.327" Title="Is it acceptable to take some exercises directly from the text book when preparing exercise sheets?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20552" CreationDate="2014-05-09T10:47:28.253" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this practice is rude, but if these are not people with whom you have any connection, and who have not advertised a position, then I don't think you should be especially surprised that you aren't getting many responses.  In all likelihood, the answer is &quot;no&quot; and they don't feel like anything will be achieved by telling you that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things which might be hurting you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The email above really reads like a mass form email.  You aren't making any argument about how your expertise is relevant to their specific work, and you're putting the burden on them to think about how your skills might fit with what they're doing rather than thinking about it yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe this is different in other fields, but it's not clear to me what &quot;internship&quot; is supposed to mean here.  A paid position?  Unpaid?  You may be being deliberately vague, but if you're not responding to an ad for a specific position, you have have some clarity about what you're looking for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think that the slightly awkward English doesn't really help.  &quot;Chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage&quot; sounds very strange to me.  I think &quot;Chemist specializing in/interested in/working on the conservation of Cultural Heritage&quot; is much better.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T10:47:28.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20552" CreationDate="2014-05-09T10:58:35.967" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Ben's answer, professors usually get these emails by the dozens and for various reasons, most of them are auto-tuned to ignore them. The maximum notice such emails may get is a mention in a lunchtime comment to colleagues. Like Ben said, if you are not getting a reply, the answer is probably &quot;no&quot;. If there are open positions, they would already be advertised on the prof's or the department's page. Some departments do not take interns as a policy and say so on their webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to contact professors whom you personally know, or have your own professor recommend you to colleagues. Go to places where you can meet more professors, e.g. conferences. Look for professors who have published in your area and start a discussion on some paper of theirs you find interesting. Those emails do get noticed! Bring up your need for an internship in said discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T10:58:35.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2014-05-09T11:19:01.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to stay in academia and want to further your career as much as possible, get the PhD as fast as possible and start working. No one will care about how many years you spent in grad school and they also won't care very much about your number of publications. They will care about work experience which is what you would be building over the next few years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really enjoy grad school, don't mind missing about on money and want to spend a lot more time learning, then you may want to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15074" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:19:01.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2014-05-09T11:32:40.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit if history. The history of thesis is intertwined with the history of universities in the 12th and 13th century.. The early history of universities is not clear but with time systems develop on how information/knowledge is taught and discussed. The end (so far) result is what we have today. The written thesis is based on the fact that ideas need to be made more permanent than oral traditions. the advent of printing made wider distribution of copies possible. The first degrees were the baccaulerate and magister artium which corresponded to doctor in certain disciplines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis was originally what the word describes a thought or thinking that needed defending, which goes backs to Aristotle and Plato. As soon as writing was possible, the idea was to put the ideas down in writing and hence a written thesis was born. One has to remember that teaching early on did not necessarily occur as lectures, it could be mentioning and learned discussions. At the same time knowledge was not as structured and defined as now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;early on the teacher actually wrote the thesis and t was the students job to defend it. So the focus was less on developing knowledge but to defend a thesis with arguments and logic. During the renaissance the thesis in a form we can recognise was developed. These texts were called dissertatio (lat. development, presentation) where as the defence was named disputatio (lat. c. learned argument). From these relatively common beginnings different &quot;cultures&quot; developed which now are reflected in differences between countries in how a thesis is defined and defended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more details can probably be added to this but the core is covered. There is no necessary connection between a degree and a thesis. Certainly not at a bachelor's leverl and it is also possible at a master's level. Differences also exist between disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:32:40.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T11:42:42.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big concern is copyright. How important it is depends on how complicated the problem statements are. For instance, if the question is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using Rolle's Theorem and the Intermediate Value Theorem, prove the Mean Value Theorem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then there's no worries about &quot;reusing&quot; a question like this, because the formulation of the question is not really &quot;original.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the problem involves a half-page of explanations and formulations, you can't simply copy it in your problem sheet verbatim without reference. You may or may not be able to make a photocopy of the relevant page and distribute it under fair use guidelines; you should probably consult your university librarians about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution, though, would be to list the source of the problem, and identify the problem from the source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deen, &lt;em&gt;Analysis of Transport Phenomena&lt;/em&gt;, 1st ed., Problem 1.6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then allow the students to look it up. (Of course, you should make sure that a copy of the text is available to them in the library via &quot;reserve&quot; policies, if at all possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:42:42.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20257" CreationDate="2014-05-09T13:10:22.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My library receives print copies of about 300 journals; I do browse new issues almost daily, and it has happened more than once that I found papers that did not reached me through other means (arXiv, bibliographical searches, toc alerts, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my department (pure maths) we seem to be little more than two people doing this. The other one is retired. I might be a romantic when it comes to scientific journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T13:10:22.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T14:42:40.060" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a practical point of view, taking a few exercises for internal classroom use will probably not cause copyright problems, depending on the local laws. Teaching is one of the fair use possibilities in the US, but I am no expert in law, and I don't know how far it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming US law applies, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/fair-use-faq&quot;&gt;here are&lt;/a&gt; a few rules for fair use, and I believe you fulfil them all: non profit, for educational purposes, on content more factual than artistic, extracting small parts, and no net effect on the market. &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2009/10/fairusechecklist.pdf&quot;&gt;Some other sources&lt;/a&gt; also add restricted access to the student as a point in favour. It is always safer and more ethical to add a reference to the original book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T14:42:40.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20575" CreationDate="2014-05-09T14:53:55.380" Score="6" ViewCount="1510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper that I want to cite in my own work, in the form&#xA;&quot;J. Wayne&quot; (for John Wayne) in the bibliography part of the paper and &lt;code&gt;Wayne&lt;/code&gt; in the body of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full name of the author appears on the paper as &lt;code&gt;Aaaa Bbbb Cccc&lt;/code&gt;, and is typically a non-western name.&#xA;Say, consider something like &lt;code&gt;John Fitzgerald Kennedy&lt;/code&gt;, but let's assume you never heard of them, and they obviously are from a different culture, and you don't know if their last-name is &lt;code&gt;Kennedy&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Fitzgerald Kennedy&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I note it in my Bibtex file as &lt;code&gt;Kennedy, John Fitzgerald&lt;/code&gt; or&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Fitzgerald Kennedy, John&lt;/code&gt; ? This will change things when printed with last-name only, it will appear either as &lt;code&gt;Kennedy&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Fitzgerald Kennedy&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, more generally, is there an academic naming convention for this kind of situation ?&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To be more precise, what I want to know is if there is a standardized way for an author with such a name to sign his paper, for example &lt;code&gt;Aaaa Bbbb-Cccc&lt;/code&gt;, so no ambiguity is left for the reader. Or for the reader, if one has a guaranteed way to know this (seems not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must add that I have seen the considered author cited as &lt;code&gt;Bbbb&lt;/code&gt; or as &lt;code&gt;Cccc&lt;/code&gt;, one of these being obviously incorrect (even both could be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15079" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T16:42:41.727" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T16:42:41.727" Title="In citations, how to find out if it's a compound name?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20567" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:09:38.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could google the person and see how they refer to themself in their publications on their group's page. This would probably be the easiest general way to solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T15:09:38.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20567" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:31:47.283" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The convention, inasmuch as one exists, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write the name the way the individual wants it to be written.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one of my co-authors has four names: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(First Name) (Middle Name) (Adopted Married Name) (Given Last Name) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but chooses to use &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(First Initial). (Middle Name) (Adopted Initial). (Last Name)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as his &quot;formal&quot; academic name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a more concrete example of this phenomenon, this is a significant issue with a lot of British folks, who eschew the hyphen in a &quot;double-barreled&quot; last name. For instance, you'd cite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vaughan Williams, Ralph. &lt;em&gt;The Lark Ascending&lt;/em&gt;. London: Oxford University Press (2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and not &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Williams, Ralph V. &lt;em&gt;The Lark Ascending&lt;/em&gt;. London: Oxford University Press (2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, you just need to look up exactly how the author writes his or her name, and follow that trend. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; can be a good source of such information; &lt;a href=&quot;http://isiknowledge.com&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; and other citation-tracking sites are often better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most useful method of all would be to find &quot;self-citations&quot;: works where the author cites his or her own work. How the name is written under those circumstances should be the most unambiguous statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T16:00:22.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:00:22.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:32:19.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Textbook publishers and instructors have an agreement (in my experience, an unwritten one): if the instructor tells students the textbook is &quot;required,&quot; then the instructor is allowed to use all the images, test bank questions, and animations as desired in the course. If you or the main instructor has therefore indicated that the book is &quot;required,&quot; then I would say you can use examples from the text (with proper attribution) all you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a text that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; required, I would say you are venturing into fair use territory, nicely summarized by Davidmh and commenters. An email to the publishers asking to use X number of questions with attribution over the length of the course would be the most legal way to use the resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, saying a text is required does not mean students will purchase it. But that's a separate discussion, and publishers do not expect the instructor to enforce the requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T15:32:19.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20573" CreationDate="2014-05-09T16:07:17.563" Score="15" ViewCount="10512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to look for a PhD position by contacting potential supervisors through email. I have made a list of professors who I found interesting through searching some papers and their department websites. Now I decide to write to them for asking opportunity and in order to show my sincerity, I would like to attach a research proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it seems not necessary to do this if my credentials are good enough, but in order to stay out of the crowd, I don't know if this is actually a good idea to attach a research proposal. Anyway, I want to have some advice on writing a research proposal in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should the appropriate length be? 2 pages, 20 pages? with cited reference?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much deviation is allowed with the professor's research interest? Because if everything are the same with the current papers, it seems I am just copying its content into the proposal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include all necessary experimental steps? (I am from engineering)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other suggestion on writing research proposal in this situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it is worth the time to do this, I would like to know if you have also some suggestions in impressing potential supervisors solely through email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T07:31:34.070" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T07:31:34.070" Title="How to send a research proposal to find potential PhD supervisor?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20572" CreationDate="2014-05-09T16:17:32.450" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In most branches of engineering&lt;/em&gt;, sending a research proposal to a prospective PhD advisor is not particularly helpful, &lt;strong&gt;unless you are providing your own funding.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that most PhD students are funded through grants obtained by the professor, either from traditional research funding agencies (NSF/DOE/DOD/NIH and their counterparts in other countries), or through industrial contracts. In such cases, the projects that are to be worked on are well-defined, so the possibility of deviating from those projects and using the money to fund other projects—such as the one you propose—are remote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you can provide your own funding, things change significantly. Under such circumstances, you could propose a project of your own design, so long as it fits within the general scheme of the professor's existing research (or moves slightly outside of it). However, proposing a project that lies too far outside of the mainstream typically is unlikely to be well-received, since the professor won't be able to provide much useful support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even under such circumstances, the initial proposal should be more like a &quot;white paper&quot;—a faculty member, if he or she reads such a document at all, is not going to spend more than a few minutes reading it. So the initial idea will need to be compellingly presented in a short amount of space—two or three paragraphs at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to show your interest in a professor's group is to explain how you could contribute to ongoing research in the group—that is, do you homework before writing to the faculty member. Your email should make it clear that you are writing the &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; faculty member, and addressing the concerns and interests of their group. Anything that has the whiff of being a form letter will likely be ignored, unless your CV looks like a perfect fit for the research group!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:17:32.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20441" CreationDate="2014-05-09T16:30:41.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest problems is that there are, in fact, &lt;em&gt;waaay&lt;/em&gt; to many relevant papers coming out; that's because there are lots of articles published each month in many different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach I found most useful was threefold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up &lt;strong&gt;author-specific alerts&lt;/strong&gt; for the big names in your field. Read both those articles &lt;em&gt;and the citations&lt;/em&gt;. They know the literature and will cite stuff you should be familiar with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up alerts to see &lt;strong&gt;when someone cites a seminal paper&lt;/strong&gt;. In my research, there were certain seminal papers that everyone participating in my tiny subfield would always quote. Find those and set up alerts when someone cites that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the &lt;strong&gt;most popular article(s) of the month&lt;/strong&gt; (most downloaded/shared/read in your journal of choice) to stay on top of interesting stuff that's going on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:30:41.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20567" CreationDate="2014-05-09T17:39:30.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(aeismail has already addressed nicely how to deal with this, but what follows is too long for a comment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there's no standard way (i.e., the same for every name no matter the culture) of indicating which components of a name are considered to be the last name. In fact, even the concept of last name is different from culture to culture and may even be absent -- see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3aNames_by_culture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Names_by_culture&lt;/a&gt;. Even in Europe, you can get &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quite complicated naming systems&lt;/a&gt;. So you are really trying to identify the &quot;main professional name&quot;, whatever that may map to in a given culture. To identify it from the list of names &lt;em&gt;as written within that culture&lt;/em&gt;, you have be familiar with the specific naming conventions (maybe the Wikipedia page helps, or if you know someone from that culture, you can ask them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth keeping in mind that getting it right serves two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Making sure everybody knows the person you refer to, even if they don't know the full name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Showing courtesy towards that person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the second point is the only one of importance when addressing the person directly (&quot;Dear Professor/Dr. X&quot;), in your case the first point is actually more important: If (say) a referee wants to check the bibliography whether you cited a relevant author's works, they would expect to find them in a certain form. If everybody uses the same (wrong) way of parsing the name, it would arguably be the right thing to do to follow that choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Finally, you could also chicken out and just list &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; authors in full, native name order; in Bibtex, you can do this by wrapping the full name in curly braces.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T23:00:01.717" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:00:01.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T17:40:16.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond the issue of legality, you have to put in some effort in order to make it appropriate &lt;em&gt;for students&lt;/em&gt; and TAs (if you have some) -- plain copying can be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cross-check definitions and results necessary to solve the exercise. Even small differences between the book and your lecture can render an exercise completely infeasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Skim the related chapter and prior exercises in the book. Sometimes problem 8 builds on the thought process or solution developed in problem 5, or uses a theorem you don't have in your lecture. If you skip 5 but copy 8, or don't give the theorem as hint, you are posing a harder (infeasible?) problem to your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; the exercise works as you expect, i.e. solve it in detail (!) yourself. Not only are there many flawed exercise problems in books, but the level may also off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your solution accessible to the TAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want your students to have an easy out, make sure to take the exercise from a textbook not on the syllabus and/or without solutions and reformulate a bit so they can't google solutions (easily).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are lessons I've learned from painful experiences which were unanimously caused by me being short on motivation, time or both and just copy-pasting exercises onto sheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding work ethics, provided what you do is legal (in your country) I'd say copying exercises is &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; acceptable. Developing good exercise problems is hard &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; time-consuming. It helps nobody if you do half a job, or overextend yourself on this. It's somewhat similar to using an existing texbook vs writing your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T17:40:16.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20572" CreationDate="2014-05-09T17:44:21.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly suggest not using email for your pitch until you know the professor. Use email to setup a short (make the 'short' clear in the email) meeting with the professor. Attach your CV to the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of this from the professor's viewpoint. If they give you funding and a place in their research group, they are committing to you for 3-7 years. That is a long time. Meeting in person will give them a chance to see that you can work together well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors are strict about the topic of their projects and some will go for anything. You need to ask around to see how this is for each professor. For professors with narrow topic spectrum, you'd need to show them how you could benefit what is already going on in that field and in his/her group. For professors with wide topic spectrum, come up with some topics that you'd like to work on and that are relative to that professor's area of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, show the professor that you can do good research. That is really what they care about. Professors are generally good topic generators, they just need some expert researchers to do their dirty work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15085" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T17:44:21.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20583" CreationDate="2014-05-09T18:25:27.103" Score="13" ViewCount="3421" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This is a reworking of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/20226/13852&quot;&gt;Software for submitting and testing programming assignments&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a bit of background. Many courses in applied mathematics have a programming component, where students are asked to implement algorithms (say, in Matlab) and possibly test them using a given set of interesting data. Although they are a valuable part of the education, these usually receive little love from the students (who, moreover, have rarely received a rigorous  training in programming). The result is -- with rare exceptions -- lazy hacks at best and &quot;at least it looks like code&quot; (often followed by my favorite, &quot;it worked on my machine&quot;) at worst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am thinking about having students submit their programming assignments via an automated assessment software. The idea is to give them instant feedback on their (repeated) submission with the goal of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;saving the TAs from having to check every submission and (if they are generous) inserting all the missing semicola to make the code run, and &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;trying to increase the student's motivation to do more than the bare minimum by introducing some gamification elements (giving points for the fastest/most accurate code, for example, or a current ranking to encourage resubmitting improved solutions).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence my question (which is hopefully relevant to other disciplines as well): Has anybody tried such a thing? Did it actually lead to less work and/or more student involvement? Any hints on what to do, and what to avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://vpl.dis.ulpgc.es/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VPL&lt;/a&gt; module for Moodle, and we have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.s3.uni-duisburg-essen.de/research/jack.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in-house system&lt;/a&gt; that can provide the necessary functionality, so I'm not asking for software recommendations here. That said, if some software provides a specific feature you've used successfully, by all means mention it -- bonus points if it's open source.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T22:38:03.807" Title="Use of automated assessment of programming assignments" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-09T18:39:46.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good answers so far. I would add that I have found that different complainers have different goals for their complaining. Compare and contrast these two conversations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you tried talking to the professor about it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, but prof just says &quot;I'm busy!&quot; and I should come back later. It's awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you tried asking the admin to schedule a short meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, but the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surely the admin will do their job even if they dislike you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, but by the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AAARGH YOU ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's terrible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The prof just says &quot;I'm busy!&quot; and I should come back later. It's awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How irritating that must be for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How vexing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boy, that must be frustrating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first conversation the joy of complaining is secondary to the actual goal of the conversation, which is to infuriate the person trying in vain to solve their friend's problem. This is a Why-don't-you-Yes-but conversation and the first person to get frustrated loses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second conversation seems exactly the same, but the friend this time is commiserating rather than playing Why-don't-you-Yes-but. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is: if the complainer is looking for people to have a game of why-don't-you-yes-but, and you play that game, they'll keep on coming back to you if you play. If that's what they're looking for and you just nod and say &quot;You're right, everything is awful&quot; over and over again, they'll get bored and look for someone else to frustrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the person is genuinely just looking for someone to say &quot;yes, that's awful&quot;, then you deal with that by &lt;em&gt;not saying that more than once&lt;/em&gt;. Let them get in one complaint and then change the subject until they get the hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10893" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T18:39:46.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T19:12:17.817" Score="3" ViewCount="1930" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to use WolframAlpha on a take-home exam for a math class? A couple qualifiers: this is a make-up exam where the original exam allowed for a scientific calculator but not a graphing/symbol-solving calculator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor has made no other stipulations about the exam yet (no word on if it's the same rules as for regular exams or otherwise). He has simply just announced one will be given out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15089" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T19:17:25.293" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T23:07:37.557" Title="Using WolframAlpha for a take-home exam" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20580" CreationDate="2014-05-09T19:16:30.020" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, if a particular set of tools was permitted - in your case a scientific calculator but not a graphing calculator, I would assume those would be the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; tools permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially true for tools, like Wolfram Alpha, that duplicate functionality of things that have been disallowed, like graphing calculators and calculators that can deal with symbolic notation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T19:16:30.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2014-05-09T19:55:26.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;May not apply, but: There are regional variations in how complaining is used socially. New Yorkers, for example, tend to see it as an opportunity for bonding (sharing complaints about something else implies you don't have complaints about the person you're sharing them with), whereas midwesterners tend to hear that kind of complaint as general annoyance which could be directed against them in the next breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding the subtext may help with finding ways to either deal with the complainers or explain to them why they're making you uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Recommended reading: Deborah Tannen's books analyzing variations in conversational styles, specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Not_What_I_Meant!&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;That's Not What I Meant!&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T19:55:26.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20578" CreationDate="2014-05-09T20:02:56.217" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did something along this lines for Java-based programming assignments. Students and TAs generally like it. It was &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of work for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Very) Long Version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to teach software engineering at a large public university in Austria. We implemented a similar approach for two courses back there, for a &lt;strong&gt;400+ students bachelor-level&lt;/strong&gt; distributed systems course, and &lt;strong&gt;for a 150 students master-level&lt;/strong&gt; course on middleware and enterprise application engineering. Both courses included large, time-consuming Java-based programming assignments, which students needed to solve individually three times per semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, students would submit their solutions for both courses as &lt;a href=&quot;http://maven.apache.org&quot;&gt;Maven&lt;/a&gt; projects via our university-wide Moodle system. After the deadline, TAs would download and execute the submissions, and grade manually based on extensive check lists that we provided. There was usually a bit of huffing and puffing among students about this grading. Sometimes, TAs would not understand correct solutions (after looking at dozens of similar programs, your mind tends to get sloppy). Sometimes, different TAs would grade similar programs differently (the sheer size required some parallelization of grading and the tasks were complex, hence it was impossible to do check lists that covered all possible cases). Sometimes, the assignments were actually under-specified or unclear, and students lost points for simple misunderstandings. Sometimes, applications that actually worked on the student's machine failed on the TA's machine. Generally, it was hard for students to estimate in advance how many points their submissions would be worth. Given that those two courses are amongst the most difficult / most time-consuming courses in the entire SE curriculum, this was all but optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, we decided to move to a &lt;strong&gt;more automated solution&lt;/strong&gt;. Basically, we codified our various check lists into a set of hundreds of &lt;a href=&quot;http://junit.org&quot;&gt;JUnit&lt;/a&gt; test cases, which we gave to our students in source code. Additionally, we kept back a smaller set of tests, which were similar but used different test data. The tests would also serve as reference implementation - if the assignment text did not specify how e.g., a given component should behave in a given borderline case, what the tests expected was the expected behavior. Our promise to the students was that, if all the tests for a given task pass, and the student did not &lt;em&gt;game&lt;/em&gt; our test system (more on this below), not much can go wrong anymore with the grading (it was possible to get minor point losses anyway for things impossible to test automatically, but those things could not amount for more than a small percentage of all points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT after comments&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Note that I was saying &lt;em&gt;more automated&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;fully automated&lt;/em&gt;. Human TAs still look at the code. There is no &lt;em&gt;grading Web service&lt;/em&gt; or something like that (this usually does not work, as keshlam correctly notes). On a high level, what we did is that we provided the requirements for students not only in written text anymore, but also in form of formal executable unit tests. The new process is roughly like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TA downloads submission from Moodle and starts tests (takes about 10 minutes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While tests are running, TA browses over the code, does some spot checking of code, and checks a few things not covered by the tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the tests are done, the TA notes down the results of the tests and his own observations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If something severe happens (e.g., compile error), the TA sighs, takes a deep breath, and falls back to manually grading (and, likely, complaining a bit in our mailing list).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students now have a good feeling about &lt;strong&gt;how many points&lt;/strong&gt; they will get in the end. No nasty surprises anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The TA &lt;strong&gt;effort for grading&lt;/strong&gt; is now much, much lower, maybe 1/3 of the previous time. Hence, they have more time to look at problematic solutions and help students actually produce assignments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tests, good or bad (more on this later), are &lt;strong&gt;the same for everybody&lt;/strong&gt;. Lenient and strict TAs are much less of a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working solutions now &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; no matter if the grading TA understands the solution or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students get &lt;strong&gt;rapid feedback&lt;/strong&gt; on the quality of their solution, but not &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; rapid that it makes sense to just program against the tests without thinking. One good side effect of the way we built our tests is that simply executing the tests for many tasks takes  10+ minutes (starting an application server, deploying code, ...). Students need to think before starting tests, just like they would if they would test against, e.g., a real staging server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students do not need to waste time writing test applications / test data. Before, one problem that made the student effort in these courses skyrocket was that students did not only have to program the assignments themselves, but also needed to write various demo programs / test data sets to test and showcase their solutions. This has become entirely obsolete with the automated test framework, significantly reducing the amount of &lt;strong&gt;boilerplate code&lt;/strong&gt; that students need to write. In the end, we can now focus more on the actual content of the labs, and not on writing stupid test code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All in all, our personal impression as well as student evaluations have shown that the majority of students &lt;strong&gt;appreciates&lt;/strong&gt; the automated test system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;initial effort&lt;/strong&gt; for us was certainly non-trivial. Coming up with the first version of the tests required a concerted effort of 6 or more TAs and 2 junior faculty over multiple months during the summer (not full-time of course, but still). Note that this was even though we utilize a widely used, standard testing framework - the effort was just in codifying our grading rules, finding and defining all corner cases, and writing everything down in useful tests. Further, as the assignments are complex distributed systems, so were the tests - we had to start application servers in-memory, hot-deploy and undeploy code, and make sure that all of this works out of the box on all major OS versions. All in all, writing the tests was an actual project, that required a lot of leadership and time commitment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While, overall, our total time spent arguing about grading has decreased, it is not zero. Most importantly, as students can now see the grading guidelines clearly written down in source code, they seem to feel more compelled to question requirements and grading decisions than before. Hence, we now get a lot of &lt;em&gt;But why should I do it like that? Doing it in X-Y-Other-Way would be much better!&lt;/em&gt; questions and complaints (incidentally, in practically all cases, the &quot;much better&quot; way is also much less work / much easier for the student). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While we were able to cover most of our original assignments, some things are &lt;strong&gt;impossible to cover&lt;/strong&gt; in tests. In these cases, TAs still need to grade manually. In addition, in order to make our test framework technically work, students are now a bit more restricted in how they can solve the assignments than before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some students feel compelled to try to &lt;strong&gt;game&lt;/strong&gt; our grading system. They spend significant efforts into finding solutions that do not actually solve the assignments but still get full points. In general, these efforts fail (as we actually have pretty sophisticated backend tests that do not only check whether the behavior is correct on interface level, but also look &quot;under the hood&quot;). Occasionally, they succeed, leading us to improve our tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initially, we received some flack from a few students for a small number of &lt;strong&gt;bugs in our tests&lt;/strong&gt;. The bugs were easy to fix and mostly not particularly severe, and most students understand that if you roll out a couple thousand lines of Java code for the first time, bugs will happen. However, some will take the opportunity to complain. A lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We had the impression that the number of copied solutions &lt;strong&gt;(plagiarism) was up&lt;/strong&gt; the first time we rolled out the automated tests. Note that we had automated plagiarism checks long before, and nothing had changed in this regard, but apparently students assumed that cheating would go unnoticed with the automated testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T20:29:10.943" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T20:29:10.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T20:55:09.993" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of these answers seem to be focused on the legality of using textbook but I would like to argue from a student's viewpoint that it is not acceptable.(And don't have enough reputation to simply leave a comment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions are from a textbook they should already have. Normally the questions are extremely similar to examples in the text and are most useful in the context of understanding the concepts. It is my opinion those questions should be reserved for students to reference while going through the book, as well as references while working on your slightly different or harder exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the point of taking a class when you could have just got the book instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: It is your responsibility as the instructor to add value to the course, giving students new (possibly tailored to skill level) problems is a great way to do that in addition to your in class explanation of concepts. Taking exercises from the textbook adds no value since they already have those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15091" LastEditorUserId="15091" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T23:25:43.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:25:43.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T21:22:59.673" Score="13" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often in charge of researching new sub-topics in my discipline for short papers. I find my default technique is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search Google Scholar for best-guess keywords&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open relevant-looking resulting paper, skim&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find new references in that paper, open new tabs for those papers while reading first paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at new papers, find new references and key words. Open new tab for new Scholar searches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide those key words aren't useful after all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make valiant attempt to figure out which of the 20 open tabs are still worth keeping open, which papers are worth adding to Zotero, which papers are worth downloading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, I am not of a methodical mindset. I'm beginning to wonder if I took 5 sec to add each paper author-year-keyword to a small notepad app on the side of the screen before I opened the article, that might help me keep track of the mess. Or something. Does anyone have a simple workflow for this &quot;brainstorming&quot; phase that would work well for the non-methodically minded? I'm a Chrome/Google type rather than an Apple type, if that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T09:01:52.530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T09:01:52.530" Title="How do you keep track of papers during a brainstorming literature review?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T21:32:30.010" Score="3" ViewCount="1223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an application for a dissertation fellowship, which according to the application is &quot;to a truly outstanding doctoral degree candidate in the last semester of residence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to write a 'personal statement' which is only described as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a statement of how the fellowship will facilitate the completion of&#xA;  the doctoral degree by May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.  No other guidelines are given to describe how to write this personal statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research is theoretical, and does not require the purchase of any special equipment other than pencil and eraser.  Thus, my naïve, simplistic answer this question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I need the money so I can pay for tuition long enough and buy enough food to keep my brain cells alive long enough to graduate&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I know this is the worst possible way to answer this question.  In all honesty, the way this fellowship describes how to write the personal statement is rather limited.  Other than writing a more eloquent phrasing of &quot;give me money so I can eat&quot;, I can't think of anything else to write in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do personal statements generally contain for fellowships like this?  Are they usually as limited as this?  What other points can I bring out in this statement other than &quot;I need to buy food and pay for school&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:17:13.660" Title="How to write a personal statement for a dissertation fellowship?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20555" CreationDate="2014-05-09T22:47:10.230" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to prepare some exercise sheets for a course. I am wondering whether or not it is OK to take some exercises directly from the textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the &lt;em&gt;legality&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;scholastic integrity&lt;/em&gt; of copying exercises from required textbooks, recommended textbooks, non-required textbooks, other books in your personal or institutional library, course web pages, random pieces of paper found in classrooms, and the like, it is common and accepted practice to do so, typically &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; attribution of any kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're teaching a popular MOOC (which attract lawyers like certain substances attract flies) or writing a popular textbook (likewise), nobody is going to come after you for copyright violation.  But if it'll keep you awake at night otherwise, rewrite the problem in your own words before you distribute it to your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; include your own original problems.  (Just don't be surprised to see another instructor use them later.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T22:47:10.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20586" CreationDate="2014-05-09T23:08:10.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about those students who don't receive that fellowship? Do they drop out or do they work as Teaching Assistants in the department? If it's the latter, then just point out how you would like to spend your time doing research instead of preparing courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:08:10.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20586" CreationDate="2014-05-09T23:17:13.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your answer is over-simplistic.  In reality, having money allows you to devote time to research as opposed to getting a job to earn the money so that you can eat and do (less) research.  If you already have such support, then I do not see the point of applying.  If it turns out that finishing this dissertation quickly and with fewer distractions advances science as well as your personal and professional goals, then applying seems reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write something along the lines of how the time to prepare and establish the results is precious, and that having such a fellowship will grant you that time.  Also, while your expenses may be minimal, you may find that using some of the money to attend a conference or to facilitate discussions with colleagues will allow you to add more to your dissertation than you could otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just off the top of my head, and I've been outside the ivory tower for more than a decade.  Certainly some of your colleagues off the Internet can also suggest some themes to use for this aspect of your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:17:13.660" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-09T23:17:13.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20580" CreationDate="2014-05-10T00:10:37.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not ethical to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the &quot;spirit of the law&quot; argument made by Fomite, you should consider that the computer running the WolframAlpha software &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;graphing/symbol-solving&quot; calculator, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calculator&quot;&gt;definition of calculator&lt;/a&gt; as &quot;a usually electronic device for performing mathematical calculations,&quot; so not even the exam rules as written (the &quot;letter of the law&quot;) would permit you to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm assuming that the make-up exam has the same rules regarding calculators as the regular exam did, which seems like a reasonable assumption until we see the make-up exam.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8937" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T00:10:37.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20592" CreationDate="2014-05-10T00:49:39.600" Score="0" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have an invention that I have already disclosed. I am now trying to seek a form of Intellectual Property for it. Am I still able to seek trade secrecy since I've already disclosed about the invention? If I can't file for trade secrecy, am I still able to file for a patent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15095" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T15:13:05.127" Title="If you disclose an invention, are you still able to file for trade secrecy?" Tags="&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20591" CreationDate="2014-05-10T01:41:41.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Trade secrets are not registered. Voluntary disclosure pretty much destroys trade secret status. If you want to have a trade secret, don't tell anyone without a non-disclosure agreement in place. A patent may be available to you depending on your jurisdiction. Consult an attorney in the location where you want to protect your invention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T01:41:41.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20613" CreationDate="2014-05-10T02:07:24.207" Score="26" ViewCount="8125" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school has a recommendation, but not a requirement, not to let students eat during class. I am wondering if I should make this a rule or not for the classes I teach. I am concerned about my undergraduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, the noise from rustling bags and crunching chips and bottles falling on the floor can be distracting. On the other hand, hungry students are distracted by hunger. This is a particular problem for my classes which start before 8 AM as students often skip breakfast and want to eat it during class (because they do not want to wake up early enough to eat before coming to school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since my main concern is on the learning, I would like to know how the issue of allowing eating during class actually impacts student learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T01:00:29.390" Title="What are the impacts on learning of allowing students to eat in class?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15335" CreationDate="2014-05-10T02:50:02.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If 100% of your students mastered the material completely, then you don't want some of them to get very low scores and others very high scores. In this situation, if there is a big spread in scores, it means that your exam is bad, not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really want a whole bunch of simultaneous criteria to be satisfied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your exam questions have what's known as &quot;face validity.&quot; That means that an expert, reading them, agrees that they are written so that they correctly test knowledge of the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want scores on your questions to correlate with one another and/or with external measures of your students' knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want the test to be reliable, in the sense that for a student with a given level of knowledge, the standard deviation of the test result is small. (E.g., you want a decent number of questions.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If student A and student B have different levels of knowledge, then you want your test to distinguish between them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a test has low entropy, it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; mean that you have a problem with #4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T02:50:02.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20598" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T03:14:54.510" Score="7" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate studentcurrently in my 3rd year. I have worked on a project for the last year. I was thinking of writing a review paper about the topic. It was a graded project in my curriculum and I had a mentor to guide me(for one semester, after that I have worked on it independently), except that my mentor was not interested at all in my work. (I got similar opinions about the said mentor from my classmates who were working with her) Should I go to her and ask for guidance related to writing the paper or should I go ahead and try to publish it independently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T07:57:45.480" Title="Do I publish a paper independently or ask a professor to mentor me?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20647" CreationDate="2014-05-10T05:25:40.377" Score="3" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now applying for lecturer jobs after my masters. And so have made a decent CV. Now I have a confusion on giving the research interests in my CV. I wanted to make 2 sections in CV indicating my basic subject areas and future research interests. What are the suitable titles for these sections in the CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastEditorUserId="8284" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T14:30:05.533" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T14:54:03.357" Title="Choosing title for a section in the curriculum vitae" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20598" CreationDate="2014-05-10T07:57:45.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should assure yourself, and then again, that the work is correct by the standards of your field. It is this point that requires insight into your topic. You know best by yourself whether you need a mentor or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need to 'sell' your work. This point does not require expertise in your particular niche, but it can benefit from knowledge of people in your discipline. This includes aspects such as Academic English, Writing an Abstract, Writing an Introduction, and so on. Maybe there are some trustworthy (!) persons in your discipline that could proofread it for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T07:57:45.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T08:10:31.047" Score="6" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been offered two positions, in two different countries, and I am trying to determine which one is a better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POSITION 1:&lt;/strong&gt; The first position is as &lt;em&gt;Instructor&lt;/em&gt; - a teaching only position - which is offered in one year contracts for the first three years, then in three year contracts, until certain conditions of excellence have been satisfied in which case I may qualify for the status of &quot;senior instructor.&quot; This position comes with the summer's free to pursue research or any other opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POSITION 2:&lt;/strong&gt; The second is an &lt;em&gt;Assistant Professor&lt;/em&gt; (equivalent) position in my home country, where the pay is less than half, and this position comes with the same teaching load, but also the expectation of research. This type of position is known to be strenuous and I have rarely met individuals holding this position that seemed happy (it comes with the usual tiresome academic hassles). The only silver-lining - and at this point I am not sure I consider it a silver-lining - is that this position comes with lifelong job security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both positions are in top 10 universities in their respective countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I have two questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First: I am being told by the recruiting committee of position 1, that people recruited in this position have found it easy to continue working on research part time. Yet this could be to convince me to take the job. And it could also be a case of the &quot;Most say that they would do research, but instead discover that teaching fulfills all their needs&quot; (which might be the case, or rather might be that most people are susceptible to inertia). I do not have the perspective to judge how likely this is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second: I cannot either determine if this type of position - by contract - is meant to be long term or not. Even though it is something favorable to me, I am intellectually opposed to tenure, even if I understand how it is important for research where month to month (or yearly) productivity is not guaranteed - but it seems less pertinent for a position evaluated on the basis of teaching alone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet if this position is only going to last me a year or two, it seems suicidal to turn down another more permanent position - however weak it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any opinion on this would be truly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Finally, for full disclosure, I should mention, to be fair, that position 2 is in a city that has a significant richer cultural life.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15104" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T08:47:24.550" Title="Is an instructor position a possibility to pursue research (semi-)seriously?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;non-tenure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20595" CreationDate="2014-05-10T08:15:38.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any data on this, just an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could mention the rule (and justification), ask students to please come fed, and say that if you're really hungry you would still prefer that they attend class and be discreet: sit near the back, don't make undue noise, etc..  That would hopefully minimize the disruption to student learning without making you seem unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If I were the university administration, I would probably do away with 8 am classes; younger people (especially teenagers) have circadian rhythms that run a bit later than older or younger folk.  I do not think it speaks that ill of students that they don't want to wake up early enough; it's probably quite difficult for quite a lot of them.  High schools are beginning to adjust.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T08:15:38.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20603" CreationDate="2014-05-10T08:47:24.550" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will not be able to provide a full answer, but here are some assorted thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First: I am being told by the recruiting committee of position 1, that people recruited in this position have found it easy to continue working on research part time. Yet this could be to convince me to take the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure this depends, but I would certainly not take the committee's word on that. Instead, I would talk to &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; instructors informally. To be honest, if the summer is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; time where you could do research (as in, during the term you have no time at all), I would assume that you will be out of the research game entirely before long. Further, if you are not evaluated by your research outcomes, it may be hard to keep up the motivation to do any research and not focus solely on teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second: I cannot either determine if this type of position - by contract - is meant to be long term or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like it's supposed to be long-term by default, but keeping the window open to get rid of you should you (a) underperform or (b) your expertise not be needed anymore short-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this position [the assistant professorship] comes with the same teaching load but also the expectation of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something seems off here. If the first post allows for research only during the summer, and the second post requires research &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; teaching, with teaching load being as high as in the other post, when would you do the research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to estimate in advance what teaching load one really will have at a new place. &lt;em&gt;Number of courses&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;number of students&lt;/em&gt;, etc. are all relative coarse-grained instruments, as it is entirely unclear how much work teaching &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; courses per year will actually be. I tend to look at what the committee expects you to do &lt;em&gt;in addition&lt;/em&gt; to teaching, as this will be based on what other people in your post manage to do. If they expect you to do teaching &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; research in the second post, I would assume that the actual teaching load will be measurably less than in the first post, where they seem to assume that you have time to research &quot;during summer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This type of position is known to be strenuous and I have rarely met individuals holding this position that seemed happy (it comes with the usual tiresome academic hassles). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, assistant professorships tend to be hasslesome, because you have to juggle a lot of balls. However, if you plan to take the instructor position and do serious research on the side, you will have the same problem (maybe worse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only silver-lining - and at this point I am not sure I consider it a silver-lining - is that this position comes with lifelong job security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a silver lining. Lifelong job security does not mean you are chained there and can never leave. Even if it is not your dream job (which it clearly isn't), you can stay there until you are able to secure a better position, and then move on. Having an unbounded contract can almost by definition not be a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the pay is less than half&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly an important argument, but do take costs of living into account. Typically, the places that pay very well are also very costly to live in (I work in Switzerland, I know what I am talking about here - I would not have deemed possible &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt; more expensive living here is than in my home country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both positions are in top 10 universities in their respective countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how are they in relation? Being Top 10 in Austria says next to nothing (we have less than 10 actual research universities in total). Being Top 10 in the US is pretty cool...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, for full disclosure, I should mention, to be fair, that position 2 is in a city that has a significant richer cultural life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider this a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important factor, but judging whether the same is true for you is an entirely personal thing, which we cannot help you with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T08:47:24.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20595" CreationDate="2014-05-10T09:00:38.480" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED:&lt;/strong&gt; As you mention, there are two competing issues here: Running low on carbohydrates and especially hydration leads to decreased cognitive ability; but eating is a distraction from attending the lectures. I have found mostly opinions and little hard data on this, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ludlowcub.com/opinion/2012/05/01/allowing-students-to-eat-in-class-helps-with-learning-ability/&quot;&gt;http://www.ludlowcub.com/opinion/2012/05/01/allowing-students-to-eat-in-class-helps-with-learning-ability/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakfastintheclassroom.org/pdf/BIC-Fact%20Sheet_FINAL_1-07-11.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.breakfastintheclassroom.org/pdf/BIC-Fact%20Sheet_FINAL_1-07-11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://policy.federation.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/ub_tec/classrooms/ch01.php&quot;&gt;http://policy.federation.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/ub_tec/classrooms/ch01.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus seems to be that water (in sealable bottles) should definitely be allowed, and that students should not go longer than three hours without a chance to snack. This would suggest treating the classroom like a study place in a library: Water (or anything that doesn't leave a mess when spilled) yes, snacks only during breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind that diabetic students will have more strict requirements on when (and what) to snack, which should be accommodated, see&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/6/2/180.full.pdf&quot;&gt;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/6/2/180.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Not allowing other students the same opportunity to refuel might be seen as unfair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T10:52:39.833" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T10:52:39.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20595" CreationDate="2014-05-10T09:45:53.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if there is any hard data on this but reflecting back on the undergrad years I think we can all provide some perspective on the effects of food consumption in class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a clear cut school policy (not your case, as you indicated) then there is little you can, and should, do. Otherwise as the teacher you should make the rules of the game clear for the students from the first day. If you intend to allow eating, then ask first for any allergies that might be relevant. At our university, we had some students who had severe allergies to peanuts. Thus there was a campus-wide ban on peanuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the classes are longer than 45 mins it might be tricky with the morning lectures. As the OP mentions, many students skip breakfast on occasion, willingly or otherwise. I believe you can get away with banning eating, would probably be better off actually... Food that speaks to one or more of the senses besides visual (smell, sounds etc..) might be distracting to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be vary of drinking; both coffee (in the morning) and water (all day) might be vital for students to be able to keep focus, and extend their attention span. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T09:45:53.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T11:38:56.873" Score="6" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have gotten a job in a sort of university of Applied Sciences; this work place wants to start a small research group, but one issue that I started to notice is the orientation they want to give it. I mean, they want that all research to give a profit. For that reason, I was wondering how to convince the persons in charge of the Faculty, that not all research will give immediate profitable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The faculty is information technology oriented, which has a big influence on Computer Science topics. For what I saw in other institutions, not all research is profit-oriented, but oriented to expand the knowledge about some fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T11:52:24.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T19:56:51.343" Title="How do I convince my department that not all research needs to be profit-oriented?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20609" CreationDate="2014-05-10T11:51:17.687" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have gotten a job in a sort of university of Applied Sciences; this work place wants to start a small research group, but one issue that I started to notice is the orientation they want to give it. I mean, they want that all research to give a profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's a direction that &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; research centres around the world go. Fundamentally, IBM does not maintain IBM Research to contribute to human knowledge, but so that IBM Proper can get an innovation advantage (and patents - lots and lots of patents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A University of Applied Sciences is usually not a research university in the traditional sense. They are not funded to do research, and, by and large, it is not their job. It seems perfectly reasonable that they expect their upcoming research group to fund itself or even be a cash cow. There is no obligation that a research centre needs to also do unprofitable things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this perfectly clear: building up a for-profit research centre is a perfectly valid strategy. Clearly, it is not the kind of research you want to be doing (which is perfectly fine, even very understandable for me), but you cannot expect them to change their global strategy to fit your idea of research, especially if you just joined them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should all research be profit oriented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T19:56:51.343" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T19:56:51.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20609" CreationDate="2014-05-10T12:00:03.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statement &quot;If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be Science&quot; provides some insights. New knowledge builds on earlier knowledge but the groundbreaking new insights come from unplanned events, even mistakes. It is of course possible to research new products in a planned way, where a focus is to arrive at a sellable product. Where the difference between research and engineering goes in this case is not clear. But, it is not so likely a goal oriented approach will lead to revolutionary developments, particularly if experiments are deemed from a commercial point of view. This is because risk is involved and if commercial products is a goal it will be the organization's willingness to &quot;waste&quot; money on risky but potentially lucrative ideas, or, just stay within the safer zone of incremental development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So trying to figure out what strategies they see driving the research will also allow you to assess the picture. It may also allow you to influence the direction of the institute depending on how the process is working in forming the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T12:00:03.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20595" CreationDate="2014-05-10T13:15:20.567" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers here suggest limiting or prohibiting eating in the classroom, but I have to disagree.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, students generally do not control their own schedules.  Personally, I often had five or six hours of class back-to-back as an undergrad, and I was not unusual in that regard.  Yes, there are breaks between classes, but students need that time to get to the next classroom.  In addition, many professors let their class go overtime, reducing the length of the break.  If you prohibit eating, hungry students will simply choose to arrive late after getting a snack, which defeats the idea of minimizing disruptions by prohibiting eating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you don't know what medical issues a particular student has: they may be diabetic or need to eat at regular intervals for other reasons.  While a student can tell you about this at the start of the term, I don't like the idea of forcing students to discuss their medical issues with every professor, every term.  After all, students who get special classroon accommodations due to a disability are not obliged to tell their professors what the specific disability is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons, if the university does not have a specific policy, I would tend to be lenient at first.  Most students are reasonable people who won't show up to class with a five course dinner.  If a specific concern arises during the term, such as very noisy food or garbage being left behind, you can address it either with the individual student or the class as a whole, as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T13:15:20.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20617" CreationDate="2014-05-10T15:28:58.577" Score="6" ViewCount="939" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing wet lab chemistry since my undergraduate and master, and my master is going to be finished soon. As time goes by, I find myself more interested in computational research. I have no prior simulation or modelling experience. I can write simple programs in Python but not fluently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask, based on this situation, is that sufficient to convince people to give me a computational research project (PhD, or maybe as a research assistant first)? If it is not sufficient, what should I do to move from experimental to computational research? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T00:58:26.640" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T00:58:26.640" Title="How to move from experimental to computational research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20616" CreationDate="2014-05-10T16:11:19.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a very similar transition, moving from wet lab biology late in my undergraduate career to computational biology, which is what I work in now. It's certainly doable - I made the switch with no programming experience whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't necessarily know that the desire and knowing some Python is out and out enough to make someone confident of letting you dive head first into their project, but it certainly is enough that I'd ask around. You should be aware that a switch like this will probably cost you some time, but if you're okay with that, see if its possible to do a rotation in someone's computational lab - a semester or two for you to get the feel for what it's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; like, pick up some skills, and hopefully either they'll pick you up, or &quot;I did a rotation in Dr. So-and-So's lab...&quot; being enough to make someone take a chance on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other things you can do as well - follow your interest in computational work by replicating some classic papers in the field. Doing some side projects - computational representations of your current work, or implementing a commonly used algorithm on your own (say, the Gillespie Direct Method and it's many approximate methods). Things that will build your skills and suggest that you're worth taking a stab at. The other suggestion, if you can't effect a full transition, is to potentially propose one Chapter/Specific Aim/etc. of your dissertation as a computational project, and put someone appropriate on your committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T16:11:19.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20816" CreationDate="2014-05-10T16:20:01.523" Score="12" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some common methods for assessing how well a exam works, once you have the results back? This is something of a generalization of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15335/how-to-measure-entropy-of-exam-results&quot;&gt;How to measure entropy of exam results&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen professors regress scores against some potentially interesting covariates (majors vs. non-majors, gender, etc.) and look at which questions were predictive of your overall grade, but I'd be interested to see if there's a particular battery of tests one should look at to see if an exam is &quot;well written&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T15:19:01.720" Title="Methods for Assessing The Performance of an Exam" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2014-05-10T16:42:31.203" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit: I though I would update this answer with a tool I recently discovered--&lt;a href=&quot;http://trends.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;trends.google.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not specific to peer-reviewed publications, but allows one to search keywords by country, category (e.g., science), and web/image/news/. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/25llk.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/25llk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google's Ngram viewer&lt;/a&gt; is also useful. It's quick and easy for seeing trends as far back as the 1800's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4o72Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2017-12-11T22:57:23.167" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T22:57:23.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21206" CreationDate="2014-05-10T17:25:26.963" Score="4" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General question&lt;/strong&gt;: When working in an area of social science where &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; matters just as much as &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., theory, question), how does one choose which should be the starting point for a dissertation? In other words, should one (option 1) choose a question that is of great theoretical interest/relevance and then try to find compelling methods or (option 2) choose a question that can be answered using cutting-edge methods and then frame it in the literature as well as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question matters because, although a project will need some of both &lt;em&gt;in the end&lt;/em&gt;, the starting point of a dissertation will determine which one of the two goals above is more feasible. I recognize that it takes years of hard work to achieve just one of those two goals. Also, the answer cannot simply be &quot;both,&quot; since that just means waiting to find a methodologically great project that has theoretical relevance. As I can see it, that's just a very successful execution of option 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal specifics&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm a PhD student in political science in the US exploring potential dissertation topics. (I applied with a research topic but, because I'm in the US, I'm free to change it in the first few years of the program.) I work in a niche of political science that places a lot of value on &quot;causal identification&quot; using a certain set of statistical strategies. This means that most books and articles celebrated by my advisors use some statistical strategy to estimate the effect of an intervention on an outcome. This usually requires that the researcher find some intervention that was randomly assigned (e.g., by nature, or a government, or an NGO, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the general emphasis on method, my advisors say that I should pick a question/puzzle/topic first. Also, I have spoken with the authors of some of the aforementioned books, some of which grew from dissertations. The authors mostly state that they picked the question first and later luckily happened across their identification strategies. Part of me wonders if they are just saying that because it is the way that one &quot;should&quot; start a research project. (Unfortunately, I'm not friends with these authors so I cannot have a totally frank conversation them.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it seems more &lt;em&gt;intellectually honest&lt;/em&gt; to select a question or topic first and then find good methods for studying it. But it generally seems more &lt;em&gt;feasible&lt;/em&gt; to select a question that I expect I can answer with a cutting-edge technique first, and figure out how to frame the question later. How does one manage this tension at the beginning of a dissertation project or (I suppose) any long-term research project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7934" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:57:27.023" Title="Method and content in selecting a social science dissertation project" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;&lt;political-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20585" CreationDate="2014-05-10T17:25:35.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My workflow/suggestion would be to keep this all in Zotero. I'm a big believer in keeping the number of tools one uses relatively small and becoming very proficient at using ones favorite tools.&#xA;I use a collection  (&quot;Inbox&quot;) dedicated to items I may or may not keep and don't have time to read right away. I will then go through those items periodically and either throw them out (remember you need to &quot;Move to trash&quot; or &lt;code&gt;shift+delete&lt;/code&gt; - just pressing delete will just delete them from the collection.) or file them in the right collection and delete them from &quot;Inbox&quot;. &#xA;To quickly remind you of why you saved the items, you could either attach Zotero notes or you could use tags, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://zotero-manual.github.io/zotero-manual/tags#colored_tags&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;colored tags&lt;/a&gt; if you can make do with only a couple of short keywords. &#xA;Finally, since you will always save items into Zotero right away, you can sort the collection by &quot;date added,&quot; which should give you a good idea of the context in which you saved an item.&#xA;Since you're using Zotero Standalone, you'll want to use &lt;code&gt;alt+tab&lt;/code&gt; to quickly move back and forth between Zotero and your browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15113" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T17:25:35.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20585" CreationDate="2014-05-10T18:46:26.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.papersapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; for this, because not only does it let you organize your citations, but it lets you search and import documents directly from the program, rather than having to bring them into a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I create a new folder for this particular brainstorming session, everything I find that's worth skimming gets imported, and then the ones that don't pan out get deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T18:46:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20609" CreationDate="2014-05-10T19:24:11.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing things that will immediately generate a profit (product development; low risk, mostly applying known technologies, possibly combining them for the first time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing things that you &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; may lead to profit (sometimes called &quot;line of sight&quot; - you have some unknowns, but if the risks pan out you expect to move into category 1 and will be able to make a profit). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing things that are &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; but you're not quite sure how they will be used (there was a time when nanotechnology fell into that category. &quot;I bet something interesting will happen - I just don't know what&quot;; and now it is everywhere)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing things that you can confidently predict will not affect &quot;profitability&quot; for your employer over your career (think - searching for exoplanets in solar systems that are 30 light years away).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle there is nothing wrong with any of these approaches - and a healthy research department will have a blend of the first three, with maybe a smattering of 4 thrown in for the odd chance at a Nobel prize etc. The mix (proportion of each type) that an institution can afford depends on their source of funding - not only for the current year, but going forward. A department that keeps says &quot;just fund me one more year - NEXT year will be the breakthrough&quot; eventually loses credibility. By spinning off a few short term hits you earn the right to work on longer scope / higher risk higher reward stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other things than money that can and should motivate research - but unfortunately, unless you make sure that there is bread on the table, your high ideals will only carry you so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final thought&lt;/strong&gt; Having a diverse, motivated, and highly skilled workforce should be at the top of the list for any research organization. This is an excellent argument for keeping a mix of projects with different time scales going in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T19:24:11.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20628" CreationDate="2014-05-10T20:34:16.263" Score="1" ViewCount="1470" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do departments look at MOOC's certificates favorably during the graduate admissions process? Will it give me any advantage over students who don't have them if I am trying to enter a PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15117" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T21:19:47.533" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T04:58:47.240" Title="MOOC's certificates on graduate admissions" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-11T16:25:10.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20629" CreationDate="2014-05-10T20:47:35.203" Score="14" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a repeat Teaching Assistant in a fairly large (100-200 students/semester) core, required CS course at a large, private US research university.  I'm very interested in researching what factors influence success in the course, possibly with an eye toward &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigcse.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SIGCSE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned about how to ethically conduct research on students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know a little about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IRB&lt;/a&gt;, and I assume at some point I'd need to get IRB approval. However I'm so unsure about this, I'm not even sure what to ask the IRB yet. I'm hoping y'all can provide me some guidance and advice as I begin to plan for next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume I have to ask for explicit, opt-in consent? Obviously, participation or non-participation couldn't affect their grade. However, if only a very biased subset bother to opt in, the research might not be worth conducting. Can I compel students to choose to opt in, or opt out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the course is very similar year to year, so the extent that it would be very useful to be able to include previous semesters. I imagine this is even trickier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the full encouragement and cooperation of the faculty member, but working with human subjects, much less students, if totally outside their expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18657/can-we-use-students-class-homework-solution-for-research-purpose&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but slightly different and, I think, more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T22:15:13.797" Title="Ethics of conducting research on a class" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20626" CreationDate="2014-05-10T21:05:13.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're free to mention the certificate in your application.  How much weight to give to it is presumably up to individual committee members.  I think unless the certificate pertains to a specific skill that's in demand for the program, you shouldn't expect to get much of a boost from having one.  At the moment, people don't have much experience with such certificates, and will be more inclined to look at indicators they know better, like grades and GREs.  It's possible this will change a bit in the future, but it will likely move pretty slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T21:05:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20627" CreationDate="2014-05-10T21:52:54.157" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I conduct biology education research at my large, state research university, so I have experience with this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An IRB is necessary if you plan to make the results public. Educational research is considered &quot;exempt&quot; research under IRB regulations, but this really just means you have fewer flaming hoops, not NO flaming hoops. You will likely be able to convince your IRB that students do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; need to sign consent forms, since you will post a study information sheet and they have the opportunity to opt out to someone else without it affecting their grade. You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; also be able to get student data from previous years with a retroactive IRB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional hurdle is that you will probably need the approval of your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/reg/ferpa/index.html?exp=8&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt; specialist in addition to IRB approval, as FERPA is very concerned with the sharing of private student information. Our FERPA guy is in our registrar's office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I'm being a bit vague. Every institution interprets the human subjects regulations a bit differently, and sometimes schools are relaxed... and sometimes they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's doable, but not at all trivial. If you still want to move ahead, I recommend you call your institution's IRB office and say you are considering education research and would like to meet with an analyst. And the first question to ask the analyst is, &quot;who else on this campus has ever done education research?&quot; and get the real skinny from &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; research group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the basic steps will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design the experiment, do a lit review, write up the IRB proposal and study information sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send the proposal and SIS to the IRB analyst, and they will help you make changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send the proposal and SIS to the FERPA specialist and they will send an approval letter to IRB (in a month?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait for the IRB subcommittee to approve the proposal (another month?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post the study information sheet on the class website, and get another grad student or postdoc to be the &quot;safe&quot; researcher that students can contact to opt out. This researcher will make a short announcement on the first day of class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach using your fabulous new technique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the registrar for grades for previous years (if you've worked this out)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do analysis, write it up, present it. Fair warning - most of the time we find that the first try is the beta test, and the SECOND try generates better results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastEditorUserId="13729" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T22:15:13.797" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T22:15:13.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20626" CreationDate="2014-05-10T22:01:56.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the MOOC certificate is in a closely related field, it will help. If it is in something like &quot;Underwater Basket Weaving&quot;, it may not give you an advantage over anyone else, unless of course you are entering a program in Underwater Basket Weaving. Or something similar, such as Underwater Knitting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T22:01:56.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20631" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-11T00:09:28.610" Score="15" ViewCount="2332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working on a problem in the field engineering. I have used one approach and it turned out that it does not work well. After that I got into conflict with my supervisor, and realized that it will be hard to publish the original paper with him. So, I have redone everything with another approach, wrote a paper, submitted it and at as soon as my paper have been almost accepted, my supervisor wrote to the editor claiming that he also should be an author of the paper. He haven't even seen the new paper nor haven't analysed or interpreted the new results. What should I do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15122" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T14:43:28.310" Title="Should I put my supervisor as coauthor of a paper?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20753" CreationDate="2014-05-11T00:50:33.347" Score="6" ViewCount="2898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've majored in computer science (BSc: close to MIS, MSc: advanced software engineering), I've worked on dissertations on totally different topics in every stage at college, now I'm planning to do a PhD and I've been looking at different topics from various sub-fields but I frankly can't pin one to use as a starting point. I would say that I like X topic or Y and when I look closer at the papers being published in the field they seem too obscure to me and I can barely comprehend their abstracts. For example, I was searching for starting point in solving concurrency problems in software or even advance such technique since I felt it's what I want to do and what I know that would keep me motivated but I frankly couldn't find anything, I've looked at publications that reference famous papers/book (things I've researched very briefly) like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ucf.edu/courses/cop4020/sum2009/CSP-hoare.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;communicating sequential processes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd01xx/EWD123.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cooperating sequential processes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; but there was nothing that could give me a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions here, am I looking in the wrong sub-field? I know I'm highly motivated by the previously mentioned area but do I understand enough to enter such area? I've seen people jump from psychology to computer science at PhD level and I wonder how someone could do such thing. Also am I even a PhD material if I can't pass this stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; the topics of my past dissertations were on AI and online social communities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11307" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T11:23:57.563" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T11:23:57.563" Title="Why is it so difficult to find a topic for my thesis research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20631" CreationDate="2014-05-11T01:03:39.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should review the supervisor agreement that you signed at the beginning of your studies. In some institutions it is stated that you MUST put your supervisor as a coauthor of any research paper; which is the result of your working at that research group. In this cases it does not matter even if your supervisor has only told you to adjust the font size (being sarcastic by the way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottomline, all depends on the supervisor-supervised agreement signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! and try to settle differences with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T01:03:39.667" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20634" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2014-05-11T01:16:34.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello all! Having been a part of this site right from the initial stages, I thought I should throw my hat into the ring. Some points about me, in no particular order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come &lt;strong&gt;second&lt;/strong&gt; in the list of users who have asked the &lt;strong&gt;most number of questions&lt;/strong&gt;, and most of my questions came during the early beta phase. I helped new users understand what's kosher to ask and how to frame questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I voted a lot during the initial days in the beta, thus building the critical mass of reputation necessary for a healthy stack exchange site. As of today, I stand &lt;strong&gt;11th among voters&lt;/strong&gt; with 1517 votes, 97% of which are upvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also stand &lt;strong&gt;fifth&lt;/strong&gt; in the list of editors with a total of 176 edits. Besides, being an Indian, I have used my specific knowledge to help the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a second-year doctorate student and I feel student representation in moderator-ship could offer a fresh perspective to potential issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favourite quotes on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_%28Thoreau%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;governance&lt;/a&gt; is this one by Thoreau: &quot;That government is best which governs least&quot;. I'd love the community to be largely self-governing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="411" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T01:16:34.033" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T01:16:34.033" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-11T01:16:34.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20632" CreationDate="2014-05-11T02:42:04.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any time you have difficulty understanding something written, you must consider that it is you or that it is the writer who cannot communicate clearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I skimmed the second paper you listed and it is certainly understandable (and I teach business but have a background in software development). However, I'm a native English speaker so my vocabulary is quite large. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer seems to be Dutch and from my experience, the Dutch have an excellent command of English. The English this author is using is a bit advanced so if your English is not as strong, you might not understand simply due to less vocabulary. Those who write with simpler English will be much easier for you to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first article you listed is written in simpler English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say if you feel you cannot clearly understand the first article then you might want to consider another field of study or you should spend more time to develop your English reading skills (from your question, your English writing skills seem fine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are considering a PhD, you might want to see if you could meet with an adviser for a few minutes and discuss this issue with them. They could more easily evaluate what would be reasonable for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T02:42:04.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20626" CreationDate="2014-05-11T04:58:47.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What sort of advantage do you have in mind?  MOOCs could help a little in addressing weaknesses in your application: if there's a standard course you were unable to take, then it could be helpful to be able to say you learned the material by other means, and a MOOC certificate might carry a little more weight than completely independent reading.  However, on a scale from saying you read a book to getting a strong letter of recommendation, a MOOC certificate is much closer to saying you read a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, it can't hurt to list MOOC certificates on your CV, but I doubt they'll make any difference.  If you're going to graduate school, you should have spent time on many different sorts of learning: lots of formal classes, extensive discussions with peers, independent reading, and ideally working with a faculty member on something (a senior thesis, undergraduate research, etc.).  Adding a few online classes is just not a big deal, especially if people are unsure of what the standards are.  Compared with things like letters of recommendation or research experience, MOOCs disappear in the noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T04:58:47.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20631" CreationDate="2014-05-11T06:17:12.110" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This entire situation is an ethical quagmire that &lt;strong&gt;both you and your advisor are responsible for.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I say that you share in the creation of this situation is the following. Let's replace your advisor with an external collaborator. The sequence of events, as you have outlined here, runs as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The two of you collaborated on an initial version of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You had a conflict on some issue (seemingly related to this paper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You then proceeded to go behind the collaborator's back, redo the analysis, rewrite the paper, and submit it without informing her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under such circumstances, it is clear that you would bear a large percentage of the blame for the situation. The fact that it's your advisor instead of an external collaborator doesn't change the ethical considerations here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor probably feels that because you were previously working on the problem together, you have cut him out of the loop without his consent. You should have showed him the preliminary results of your new analysis and let him decide if he wanted to collaborate further. If he was to be an author on the original paper, he was entitled to at least that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, at this stage, it's hard to say what to do—your advisor has also complicated the situation by asserting his author rights on a paper he allegedly has never seen, which is also wrong. I would follow JeffE's advice here and take the path of least resistance. Getting out of this mess of a relationship is the critical step right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T06:17:12.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20640" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20652" CreationDate="2014-05-11T10:09:09.607" Score="19" ViewCount="2574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a useful advice if I cannot reproduce computational published results in (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7900/what-should-you-do-if-you-cannot-reproduce-published-results&quot;&gt;What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?&lt;/a&gt;). However I would like to ask the same situation with experimental results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am from chemistry, and it often involves synthesis of compounds. I know every lab in the world cannot be identical even if all equipment are the same, because many external factors such as climate, humidity, lab temperature, etc. may possibly interfere with the experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have followed all the steps described in the literature, from the source and purity of chemicals to every single step described, but still I cannot reproduce the results (evidence from some characterization techniques), what can I do? Should I contact the author to give me all 'hidden' steps like the size of beaker, etc.? Or the journal reviewers think that the authors have already disclosed enough information for others to reproduce it, so the remaining job to investigate how to reproduce the results is on me? However sometimes the description is really vague, like 'drying in a vacuum oven at 50oC for 10 minutes', but what is the degree of vacuum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sometimes the size of beaker may play a role, as evaporation way affects its crystal size, also the position of drying compounds in oven, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T19:53:04.220" Title="What should I do if I cannot reproduce experimental published results" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-11T11:58:58.370" Score="16" ViewCount="1185" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it the usual practice in your discipline for the postdoc in the group to be placed as co-author as well as a corresponding author on all publications that are written by the PhD students in the group? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some publications, the postdoc provides input and advice, and for others none whatsoever. The reasoning behind this practice is that the postdoc needs publications for his academic career. However, the PhD students that do 95% of the work in some cases, are the only ones &lt;em&gt;able&lt;/em&gt; to answer scientific questions. As a consequence, emails are prepared for the postdoc by the PhD students, and sent out under the name of the postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a standard practice in your field of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15128" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T12:27:50.973" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T12:27:50.973" Title="Is it ethical for the postdoc to be listed as a co-author and the corresponding author on all group publications?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20643" CreationDate="2014-05-11T12:26:20.017" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come from a field that is rather (let's call it) &lt;em&gt;pragmatic&lt;/em&gt; about co-authorship, and I have never heard of a postdoc automatically being a co-author of papers. Sure, sometimes the input of the postdoc is not extremely large, but having a postdoc as a default co-author of each paper irrespective of contribution seems very uncommon to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reasoning behind this practice is that the postdoc needs publications for his academic career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who cares? The same is true for you. If he cannot write papers himself or actually advise students that write good papers (not the same as just being on a paper without contribution), he &lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt; be able to progress his career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a consequence, emails are prepared for the postdoc by the PhD students, and sent out under the name of the postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's ridiculous. Don't do that (either for a postdoc or a professor). If they are not able to answer questions about a paper, they need to at least be honest enough to defer to the person that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;. Pretending like the postdoc is the real brain behind a paper is certainly not ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a standard practice in your field of research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. Never heard of that, and Applied CS is certainly not a field that is well-known for its die-hard adherence to ethical guidelines re: co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T12:26:20.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20650" CreationDate="2014-05-11T13:05:57.167" Score="3" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your field of research, what is the significance of the corresponding author? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the title &quot;corresponding&quot; imply that the person is the expert out of the list of all authors, or that the person is responsible for communicating with the journal / reviewers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should the PhD student, if she/he is set as the first author, also be the corresponding author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15132" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T13:28:52.153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T15:07:31.717" Title="What is the significance of the corresponding author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-11T16:25:38.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20599" CreationDate="2014-05-11T13:54:43.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A possible heading for your subject areas could be Areas of Specialization or Areas of Expertise. You could use Research Interests for the other part. However, the two are usually combined under one heading. Unless you have the necessary expertise to carry out research in the areas listed under your Research interests, there is no point of listing those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally you would use a separate document called Research Statement to outline your proposal for your upcoming research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T14:54:03.357" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T14:54:03.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20649" CreationDate="2014-05-11T14:14:55.200" Score="41" ViewCount="10185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my final year of undergraduate.&#xA;Mostly I am working on my Honours project &#xA;but I have a few units from earlier years that I am still doing&#xA; as I did some out of order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another student, call him John, sent me a message on Facebook (via the message people who are not your friends feature.), saying basically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you send me the solutions to the Assignment from unit X, that you&#xA;  took last year. In exchange, I will tell you what the future minitest&#xA;  questions are for unit Y that we are both doing this year.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempted Collusion is not explicitly mentioned in the Universities Academic misconduct guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit Y has weekly minitests, that are worth in total something like 15% of our final grade.&#xA;The minitests happen during tutorials. &#xA;There are 3 tutorials each week, on different days, with roughly a third of the class in each.&#xA;Each minitest is the same, across all streams.&#xA;They are mostly a way to check up and see that you understand the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have at the top of each page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO TAKE THIS PAPER AWAY FROM THE TUTORIAL SESSION OR TO DIVULGE ITS CONTENT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John is in the first tutorial of the week.&#xA;So he would find out the questions first,&#xA;then could tell me them so I could study for them, for when my tutorial is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he apparently doesn't realize is that I too am in the first tutorial group (with him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess Unit X is using the same assignment as last year. Or a similar one.&#xA;Or that John thinks it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A complicating factor is that I really dislike John. He doesn't seem to have realised this. &#xA;I find him personally annoying, and consider him a poor student.&#xA;I don't understand how he has managed to pass enough units to have not been suspended for poor performance.&#xA;It may be he is very good at exams, or it may be that he has been cheating all along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a number of options, and could do one or more of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore it, and block him on Facebook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell him no, and refer him to the universities plagiarism/cheating policy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to the Professor of Unit Y about it (that we are both studying).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to the Professor of Unit X about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to the Head of School (sub-department), who is above both units&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to the University Dean. Who is in charge of enforcing the Academic Misconduct policy. (Will probably mean going though channels)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, by coincidence, Unit X is being taught by the Head of School (who I have never studied under). But in the General Case both options exist, and I can approach him, either as the Head of School or as the Professor of the unit, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that ignoring is probably a bad option, if someone sees that I have been asked about this, and left it without response, they might think this is normal behaviour for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I go to faculty, he may be suspended.&#xA;I worry that I am a bit too willing for that possibility as I don't like him.&#xA;On the other hand it isn't my job to decide the consequences of his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I have spoken to the coordinator of Unit Y.&#xA;Who said if I wanted he would take it to the Dean&#xA;but that it would involve me having to do stuff.&#xA;He also said to contact the coordinator of Unit X (who happens to he head of school).&#xA;He is out of the country for a week so I sent him an email (CCed to the coordinator of Unit Y).&#xA;I also responded to John, saying No, and referring him to the Academic Misconduct policy.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update2&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;I got a response from the Coordinator of Unit X, saying he would look into it.&#xA;Unit X coordinator is on long-service leave (Not sure how that is going with him still coordinating the unit. He may be doing only light administrative tasks. Or it may be he forwarded it to the new coordinator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T11:06:36.580" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T11:06:36.580" Title="How to handle someone propositioning me to collude/cheat with them on an assignment?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-11T14:27:24.027" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting such a request in a written, verifiable manner as this student has done is incredibly &lt;em&gt;dumb&lt;/em&gt;, and frankly merits whatever punishment is associated with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although in principle you could simply ignore the request, I think this is one of those cases where you're better off reporting it. Otherwise, there's still the possibility that &quot;John&quot; could bring you down with him (he wrote you a note, after all!). So I would write to him declining the offer, and then report it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T14:27:24.027" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20646" CreationDate="2014-05-11T15:07:31.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Faheem pointed out there are other questions that deal with what a corresponding author is. You second question is not covered by those questions though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding author should be an author that will be easy to find again after a few years. Ph.D students are not great choices since they are almost by definition not going to have the same contact information by the time most people read the article. In mathematics this is a serious concern because the backlog in articles can be multiple years and the student can already have graduated and moved across the world by the time the article is officially published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other questions point out in some fields corresponding author is used to indicate contribution to some degree. But the old fashioned use of &quot;the author you can find an address for&quot; is still a worthwhile thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T15:07:31.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-11T16:55:52.547" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with aeismail - the profound stupidity of putting a request like this in a way that provides evidence is &lt;em&gt;staggering&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; report them for cheating may not be a decision you have to make - I would strongly suggest you check your institution's student handbook or honor code. I've been in more than one university where if you suspect or have evidence of someone cheating, you're obligated to report it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T16:55:52.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2014-05-11T17:47:33.697" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;@posdef's comment is already very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely suggest contacting the authors and trying to get &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; agreement also on the details that they didn't describe in the original paper. The original authors should be quite interested in an independent replication, so they should have an incentive to collaborate. Depending on how much they contribute, they could also hope for co-authorship on your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cooperative, that is another piece of information that should be included tactfully (!) in the paper you are putting together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are lucky in your analyses, you may be able to identify the exact circumstance or unreported detail that makes the difference between reproducibility and non-reproducibility, and there you have the nucleus of an original paper all by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you cannot reproduce the results even with help from the original authors, this should be worth at least a correspondence. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/&quot;&gt;Reproductions are &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/04/the-need-for-reproducibility-in-academic-research/&quot;&gt;there are far too few of them&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I part ways with @posdef's comment in that I would definitely not send a letter to the editor voicing concerns about reports and reproductions not matching. This already points towards a suspicion of scientific wrongdoing on the part of the original authors. And unless you have a lot more to go by, a simple inability to reproduce a finding should not be taken as the result of foul play. There are so many potential reasons for non-reproducibility, from the ones you mention to simple random error (aka, uncontrolled conditions), that there is really no need to even imply dishonesty. Such an implication can mess up either the original authors' or your own reputation in the field for decades, so it should not be made lightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T17:47:33.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2014-05-11T17:50:13.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong or rude about contacting the author and asking for some help in this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should identify not only who you are, but what your institutional affiliation is (and as I guess you are a student or postdoc who you are working with/for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should explain what you are up to (simple replication, or are you trying to use this work as a step in a larger process), an outline of what you have tried, what choices you made on any steps that were not completely specified, and how your outcome has been unsatisfactory (it is possible that the author needed multiple tries to get this to work and has seen the same failure mode before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T17:50:13.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20657" CreationDate="2014-05-11T18:57:29.687" Score="7" ViewCount="2312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished freshman year of college and I am transferring from a liberal arts college to a university to study a more rigorous math curriculum. I got accepted at UC berkeley (but as a junior transfer, so I can only be in college for 2 more years). I'm going to hear back from stanford, cornell, and colubmia next week. I would choose stanford over berkeley if I got in, but I'm not sure about the other schools since berkeley is a top ranked math school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-My question is, if I get into columbia or cornell, should I go and be in college for 3 years, or go to berkeley for only 2 years? Is it better to stay in college for 3 years to be more competitive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I took  real analysis, topology, complex analysis, algebra 2, linear programming, cryptography. I'm self studying algebraic topology and homological algebra, but recently I'm studying probabilistic methods and graph theory to prepare for an REU this summer. I'm interested in anything algebra related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why I am worried: I looked over mathematicsgre.com, a forum where grad school applicants post their stats and results. People who get into top math schools usually have taken 10+ grad level classes and did research, REUs, and (probably) have  great letters of rec. If I go to berkeley, I only have 2 years, actually less since I would apply to grad school as a senior so I only have full 1 year and a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7310" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T19:15:54.790" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T20:02:43.443" Title="Better chances for math grad school: graduate in three years or four?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2014-05-11T19:53:04.220" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easiest solution is to invite them over and let them do the experiment. You will find what they are doing different and then you can decide together how to proceed with publishing the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15145" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T19:53:04.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20655" CreationDate="2014-05-11T20:02:43.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;What jumps out at me in your question is the assumption that because of your advanced standing you can only stay at Berkeley for two years and thus only spend three years in college altogether.  Though I do not have any direct experience with this (i.e., financial aid at state universities in California), I find that quite surprising.  Berkeley is an elite institution, and presumably they don't let just anyone transfer in.  The fact that you have two years' worth of university credit after one year in college is to your credit and probably factored into their decision to accept you.  So they turn around and penalize you by only offering you two years of financial aid?  That doesn't make much sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would at least make a phone call and, if necessary, schedule an in-person appointment with a financial aid officer.  My first guess, honestly, is that you may not be understanding the situation correctly.  If you are, you need to explain why the junior standing could stop you from making best use of the amazing resources that UC Berkeley has to offer and could make you less competitive in your later academic plans.  I would expect them to be sympathetic to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I find your discussion of what it takes to get into a top mathematics program (here and in the other question you asked) a bit reductive.  It is not simply a matter of taking the most graduate courses, doing multiple REUs (in my opinion as someone who was involved in graduate admissions in my math department, one REU has the same effect as multiple REUs unless you do some truly notable research in one of the REUs, which is unusual; also, doing multiple REUs makes it natural for you to get more than one recommendation letter from an REU director, and this is a mistake: most REU letters sound the same no matter who is writing them or is being written about), and so forth: the goal that you rather want to pursue is to show mastery of mathematics and show the potential and the interest in doing mathematical research.  You can show this by taking 5 graduate courses rather than 10.  (Ten courses sounds almost ridiculously high, by the way: I took 9 trimester graduate courses -- so the equivalent of 6 semester courses -- over the last two years of my undergraduate program.  I got into all the top mathematics departments.  If I had taken a few courses fewer I don't think the outcome would have changed.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the list of math courses that you've already taken compares well with what very strong undergraduates take up through the end of their second year in top mathematics programs in the US.  If you did really well with them, then I think you would be ready to take graduate courses (what other undergraduate courses would you take?) in your next year and thus as far as I can see you could graduate in three years and still be competitive for a top program.  But do you really have to?  If you are serious about studying mathematics, then you have the entire rest of your life to do that.  I would recommend a more balanced undergraduate experience that is not 100% calculated to optimize the graduate program you can get into and which lasts for the traditional four years: there are other interesting courses to take as an undergraduate which you will never take again, and there are other things to do with one's undergraduate life aside from coursework.  Don't get shortchanged on your undergraduate experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T20:02:43.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20618" CreationDate="2014-05-11T21:05:02.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For multiple-choice exams, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.sau.edu/WaterStreetMaryA/NEW%20intro%20to%20tests%20&amp;amp;%20measures%20website_files/reliability.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;split-halves reliability&lt;/a&gt; is (for better or worse) a common measure of internal consistency. The basic idea is to divide the questions into halves (e.g., odd vs. even) and look correlate students' scores on the two halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common measure is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msu.edu/dept/soweb/indexdis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;discrimination index&lt;/a&gt;. These indices giveyou information about how well an exam item &quot;discriminates&quot; between high performing and low performing students. This I find most useful when I've mis-coded the key. Students who otherwise do well, do particularly poorly on a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these methods are most easily applied to exams with lots of questions (e.g., multiple choice), but they could probably be adapted for essay or short answer exams as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="75" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T21:05:02.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20666" CreationDate="2014-05-11T21:29:24.403" Score="18" ViewCount="3239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people try to complete their PhD asap, others try to make major breakthroughs. I think these aims are mutually incompatible, one is going against the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are pros/cons of each for somebody whose intended career is research in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers should be general, but I myself am interested in pure mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:28:18.137" Title="Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20659" CreationDate="2014-05-11T22:03:26.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;somebody whose intended career is research in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe any PhD student who can&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify interesting research problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop solutions to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publish in good conferences/journals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; graduate and enjoy the freedom of research. PhD is not a lifetime career. It is just the beginning. Longer or shorter PhD does not matter; what does matter is that you are an independent researcher when you defend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T22:21:49.540" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T22:21:49.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-11T23:36:39.627" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my evaluation of the options that you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignore it, and block him on facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This option is fine, but in my opinion is a bit lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell him no, and refer him to the universities plagiarism/cheating policy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This couldn't hurt, but probably he will just ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to the Professor of Unit Y about it (that we are both studying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good option.  Another related option that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is telling the professor about the request but not mentioning John's name.  Most professors would (or should) appreciate hearing in general terms about ways that students are cheating in their classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to the Professor of Unit X about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably better to speak to the professor in charge of you and John at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to the Head of School (sub-department), who is above both units&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to the University Dean who is in charge of enforcing the Academic Misconduct policy. (Will probably mean going though channels)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is a good idea to go over the professor's head unless you think that he or she is not taking the matter seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8937" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T23:36:39.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20659" CreationDate="2014-05-11T23:41:00.943" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several considerations regarding whether to graduate now.&#xA;I'll go through them from most to least important (in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thesis readiness:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can't graduate unless&#xA;your advisor and your committee feel your thesis is good-enough.&#xA;For some departments, you need to have 2 or 3 separate projects&#xA;which are in advanced enough state or even published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research readiness:&lt;/strong&gt; As @seteropere noted,&#xA;if you feel that you are able to do research independently,&#xA;and your advisor agrees, then you are ready to graduate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Future job situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can get a tenure-track job or post-doc in September 2015,&#xA;then go ahead and graduate in June 2015.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't get any academic jobs in September 2015,&#xA;then maybe you should stay one more year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job prospects this year vs next year:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For some fields, getting a good job requires a student&#xA;to have papers in advanced stages of the publishing pipeline,&#xA;i.e. submitted is good, under second or third round of review is better,&#xA;and accepted is best.&#xA;If you have a great paper but it is not yet ready,&#xA;waiting until the next year before you apply for jobs&#xA;may allow you to have that great paper&#xA;in a more advanced stage of the publishing pipeline&#xA;which can't hurt your job prospects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funding from advisor:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Is your advisor willing/able to support you for an additional year?&#xA;Some advisors limit their support to 4 or 5 years,&#xA;and students who wish or need to stay longer may have to carry heavy teaching loads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research environment:&lt;/strong&gt; Are you learning from your advisor,&#xA;and doing good work with the other students/professors in your current institution?&#xA;If so, leaving for another position becomes more risky&#xA;because the situation may be worse than your current situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Financial situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Usually, a PhD salary is less than a post-doc salary,&#xA;which is less than a tenure-track job salary.&#xA;For some students who may be supporting a family,&#xA;earning more money as soon as possible is an important consideration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T00:52:11.233" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T00:52:11.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20659" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:12:57.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;others try to make major breakthroughs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be a trap because not everybody is able to make major breakthroughs. Besides not being smart enough, a major factor is the group of people you are surrounded by. It could easily take years for your cohort to catch up with the leaders in the field. If your project involves a major leap, consider the alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluating what is do-able and the time involved is understanding your field, and an important part of a PhD. In fact, big companies have 'domain specialist' positions where your job is to review the value and effort involved in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a category of people with a fast PhD who are successful because they understand what is relevant to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4240" LastEditorUserId="4240" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T01:18:55.680" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T01:18:55.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20668" CreationDate="2014-05-12T03:36:34.200" Score="13" ViewCount="2426" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the following situation: I made research about some topic X in the field of Computer Engineering, submitted a paper and it got accepted. Actually it was an independent research that I have done while working as an information technology lecturer. Now the institution in which I am working does not want to give any financial support for the publishing of this research, what it would be the most ethical thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put into my academic affiliation the place that I am working as a lecturer? that will count as a publication for their Faculty, but I believe that is not fair that they do not even try to pay for any expenses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put in my academic affiliation that I am an independent researcher, would that be advisable? maybe some academics would believe that I am not serious enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that once I read some cases of people submitting papers as independent researchers, there were not so many, but those cases were real. For me I believe there is not so much difference, because what it matters is what is inside the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T06:17:01.783" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:48:14.587" Title="Should I give my affiliation as &quot;independent&quot; to protest my institution's funding policies?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20659" CreationDate="2014-05-12T03:57:53.023" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are aiming for a career in mathematics at a research university, then trying to complete your Ph.D. as quickly as possible is a bad idea.  In the U.S., you should plan on spending four or five years in graduate school.  You should not graduate in three or fewer years unless you write an absolutely extraordinary thesis (or personal concerns force you to leave graduate school).  Graduating in four years is reasonable, but most people are better off taking five.  Even if you've reached a natural break point in your work, it can be valuable to stick around and work on something else for a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem counterintuitive, but it's based on three principles that describe how junior candidates are evaluated in mathematics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The job market is brutally competitive, and you need the strongest application you can put together.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No extra credit is given for graduating quickly.  People who graduate in three or four years compete on the same footing as those who spend five.  [However, there can be a penalty for taking six or more.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you graduate, the clock starts ticking.  If you take longer than average to find a tenure-track job, it will be held against you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net result is irrational: the job market judges it better to spend five years in grad school and then do a three-year postdoc than to spend three years in grad school and then five years as a postdoc.  The former looks normal, while the latter looks like you graduated too quickly and then were unable to find a tenure-track job after your first postdoc (so what might be considered a compensating plus/minus pair turns into two negatives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five years in graduate school is something of a cut-off, for two reasons.  Most grad schools discourage staying longer, because of limitations on space and funding, and spending six or more years starts to look like you were unable to complete your dissertation.  However, up to five years, longer is usually better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of thinking about this is to consider the question title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What constitutes a &quot;sufficient result&quot;?  Sufficient to graduate is a weak condition, since getting a good postdoc is much more difficult than merely completing a dissertation.  However, a good postdoc won't get your career off to nearly as strong a start as a great postdoc would.  If another year in graduate school could make the difference between a good and a great postdoc, it may well be worth it.  But what if your work is so wonderful that you're obviously going to get a great postdoc?  At that point you should raise your ambitions and aim to get a Clay research fellowship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an enormously high ceiling, and you never reach the point of being able to say &quot;OK, I've done enough.&quot;  Graduate school is not a matter of doing enough and seeing how long it takes you.  Instead, it's a matter of taking the standard amount of time and seeing how much you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T03:57:53.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T04:08:54.047" Score="21" ViewCount="6650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student starting my second year. Last semester, I took part in a research project and earned co-authorship of their paper, which got recently published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when adding names from our anonymous submission to the camera-ready version, the primary author misspelled my first name(Garret instead of Garrett). Because this was a fairly minor edit, I didn't notice it until a few weeks after it had been fully published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already asked the advising professor about it and he said that it wasn't anything to worry about, and that I should create an account on Google scholar and manually add the paper to my account. I've done this, but is there anything else I should do? How bad is this, or is it actually fairly minor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15157" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T22:15:50.277" LastActivityDate="2019-09-09T18:38:45.930" Title="Name misspelled in first publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20665" CreationDate="2014-05-12T04:09:23.480" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that I see an &lt;em&gt;ethical&lt;/em&gt; issue here.  Ethically, I think you are free to omit your affiliation if you so choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't see any benefit to you by doing so.  It may be a symbolic jab at your institution for not funding you, but it's not going to directly hurt them in any way: nobody is going to notice except you and them. On the other hand, it certainly can directly hurt &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; and your relationship with your institution.  As just one example, they might decline to consider that publication as part of your research record when they evaluate you (e.g. for tenure).  Or, more seriously, they might decide that if you don't want to be associated with them, they don't want to be associated with you; and therefore stop employing you (if your contract permits it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly you have some issues with your employer, and I hope you are able to improve matters somehow.  But what you suggest seems at best ineffective and at worst self-destructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T04:09:23.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20672" CreationDate="2014-05-12T04:50:41.517" Score="32" ViewCount="3710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that my university has a glass blowing service in the same building as the chemistry precinct, supposedly to make the glassware for the chemistry labs. At first I thought this was kind of quirky and I chortled to myself, &quot;man, the chemistry students must break a lot of beakers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later I toured a campus overseas and noticed that they too had a glass blower. A quick &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=university+glass+blowing&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; showed that &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; institutions have similar facilities. Most of them sell their services too. It seems to be more academically-focused than I first thought; it would be incorrect to equate it with the janitorial service or the on-campus bakery, presumably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why glass blowing and not another craft? I'm curious as to what separates glass blowing from other crafts and manual arts that warrants it a dedicated department in an academic facility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13420" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T02:39:51.280" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:39:51.280" Title="Why do university campuses have glass blowing services?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;facilities-services&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20669" CreationDate="2014-05-12T06:09:27.200" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you make enough use of them, it's cheaper and more efficient to use in-house services. That's why most universities will also have a mechanical workshop, to make one-off items mostly for the physics and engineering departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything is streamlined: the glassblower is an employee, not a business owner. He can spend more of his time on his products, thus his services are cheaper. The University will also make some profit from selling their services.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes things easier for the academic staff, and there's less bother with accounts or purchase orders. For routine jobs (if these things aren't outsourced), just visit the workshop and ask for another 1L boiling flask.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The academic staff know that he will always do a good job: a low turn-over rate means the glassblower(s) develop a strong rapport with their frequent customers, and have a good understanding of their needs. If more jobs are outsourced, this personal touch can be easily lost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/01/local/la-me-glassblower-20131202&quot;&gt;seems these days&lt;/a&gt; that ordinary items are usually outsourced -- a big factory is more cost effective. It's for the one-off custom items that it still makes a lot of sense to keep things in-house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T06:34:51.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T06:34:51.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20669" CreationDate="2014-05-12T06:46:01.113" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a chemist, I'll expand on Moriarty's answer, and confirm that he's in the right. Buying beakers is definitely cheaper through a commercial supplier, but for research in synthetic chemistry, every now and then you'll need glassware that doesn't fit standard specifications. For these one-off pieces, if the university is large enough it's better to have an in-house scientific glassblower. In particular, what my colleagues appreciate most with having access to in-house glassblowing services, is that it makes communication very easy and helps improve the products (&lt;em&gt;“you sure you want the top part to be so thin? I looks to me as it won't help condensation and might be a failure point later”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the design and production of the most complex glass instruments is an art as much as a craft. In France, there even is a yearly competition of scientific glassblowers: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.polytechnique.edu/home/current-events/jean-michel-wierniezky-2011-best-craftsman-of-france-89810.kjsp?RH=1250265754206&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.souffleur-de-verre-de-la-recherche-scientifique.org/les-m-o-f.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2700" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T06:46:01.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20766" CreationDate="2014-05-12T07:02:51.023" Score="60" ViewCount="7481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been receiving mails from (most probably amateurs), who claims to have proved famous mathematical problems, like the ABC Conjecture or Goldbach Conjecture. But invariably, they all contained mistakes. I decided not to waste my time on such unsolicited documents. But recently something interesting happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 14 days earlier, I have received a mail from an Indian undergraduate student who claimed to have proved the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester%E2%80%93Gallai_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sylvester-Gallai Theorem&lt;/a&gt; in an elementary way. What is more amusing is that he claimed to have proved it using Mathematical Induction and a basic Euclidean Axiom. I decided to ignore it as usual. But yesterday I got his mail, telling me that-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you haven't considered my document worthy of your time and so you haven't gone through it at all, or it may be that you are so busy that you haven't found time to check your email account. If that's the case then just ignore this mail. But if it's the first case then I would like to tell you something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you have heard about the Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also sent his mathematical works to renowned mathematicians like Baker and Hobson but they didn't reply. Later he sent his manuscript to Hardy and his genius was recognized. But just suppose that Hardy also considered his work to be the work of a crank, without even going through it. Consider this be the case even if he would sent it to other mathematicians. How long could he continue sending his unsolicited formulas and theorems (which were without proof!) to other mathematicians and be rejected? Of course, finitely many times. After that, he perhaps wouldn't write to any mathematician even if he had, suppose for example proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Why would he? He was likely to be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggest you at least to go through my document thoroughly and tell me precisely about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't behave like Baker or Hobson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do now? Should I remain silent or go through the document? Any suggestion will be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T16:41:31.240" Title="Handling unsolicited proofs of famous mathematical problems" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="25" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T07:11:26.410" Score="9" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there journals that may consider articles of the type &quot;new proof of old results&quot; but the paper is exceedingly short(1-3 pages)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T12:29:28.413" Title="What journals that may consider &quot;new proof of old results&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T07:27:34.133" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continue to treat it as spam, and ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every Ramanujan, there are many many thousands of time-wasters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reward:cost ratio, weighted by the ratio of misunderstood geniuses to time-wasters, is very very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone has any ability, they should be able to demonstrate it quickly. And if they've got any sense, they'll realise they need to demonstrate it up front to get taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if someone hasn't put a pre-print up somewhere (much easier to do now than in Ramanujan's day), and has no pre-published material, ignoring them is now an even safer bet than it ever was before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, your &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/users/48849/william-hilbert&quot;&gt;correspondant&lt;/a&gt; may have already tried posting on Math Overflow, although it may be someone else with the same name. Either way, if you're feeling generous with your time, you could prepare a canned response which went to all such neglected geniuses / timewasters that pointed them to Math Overflow, as a good place to engage with the Maths Research community and demonstrate that they are actually able.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:58:24.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-12T08:20:08.337" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I'm old school. You don't lie, cheat or steal.  Additionally you don't tolerate anyone who lies, cheats or steals, particularly in an academic environment. I believe all students have a duty, an obligation, to report someone breaking those rules, period.  That's part of being a responsible adult. Accepting that poor behavior among your peers erodes the quality of your education. Yes, when the peer group doesn't always support it, it does take a lot of character, strength and personal courage to do the right thing. Oh.. and just imagine for a moment.. what if this person was your best friend?  That decision takes lots of courage and is very difficult.  Good luck with your dilemma.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and whom to speak to first? I would start with either of the two teachers involved.  I'd hope you'd get the same response from either of them.  They have been trained for this situation, and will direct you as to possible next steps. Note: is there a university policy on this with a specific process to follow? If so follow it.  If not talk to either teacher.. probably the one who knows your integrity and credibility better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastEditorUserId="15165" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:36:08.270" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T21:36:08.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2014-05-12T08:30:40.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think that in most cases, the specialized/broad dichotomy is not very relevant. The most important point is to send it to an interested editor; if the most relevant editor for a paper happens to be at a general journal, you will often be better of sending your paper there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider two exceptions to this principle. First, top specialized journals are usually less reputed than top generalist journals, so if you get a truly impressive result, you may want to get the best of it by sending it to a top generalized journal. Second, some generalist journals will turn back papers that seems much more specialized than the average math paper (e.g. when the basic objects you study are unheard of by most mathematicians).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T08:30:40.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T08:43:28.880" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that he compares himself to Ramanujan just gives you all the more reason to ignore his mails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If his work had any merit, his follow-up email would have been focused on that merit and how it might have been hard to see at first glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12592" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T08:43:28.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:11:28.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reasoning developed in the second e-mail (&quot;please do not ignore the hidden genius&quot;) was true when you first started receiving this type of e-mail, which is why you read these first theorems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after a few try, you figured that the genius/spam ratio (as @EnergyNumbers pointed out) was not worth considering all these e-mail (maybe unconsciously...). In short, I think nothing changed with this e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to consider all these emails without spending toot much time, as @bingung said, and if you are giving lectures, you can assign them to students. It would be indeed a great exercice to try to demonstrate the theorems are not valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option, to give you a good conscience, and since the genius/spam ratio is probably really low, you can review 1/10th of the theorems you receive. It will not dramatically decrease the change to discover a math genius...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T09:11:28.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20675" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:19:22.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the field and the nature of your derivation. If it gives new insights and uses completely new techniques that might in themselves be of interest, then you might pursue a regular journal. If the derivation is a clever application of an established concept, then you might consider something like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Journal of Physics&lt;/a&gt;, or others with a similar, pedagogic, agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:05:54.963" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T21:05:54.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:23:15.977" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you can contact the journal publication and ask them change your name in the online version. Printed book is probably already published. But the online is very easy to change. I never tried this, but I guess this would not be a problem. Just give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see one problem here. In case you want to use that publication in future, lets say in your thesis, your misspelled name may induce some problems, because you present the verified list of articles you published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T09:23:15.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20684" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:46:19.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipeadia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft PowerPoint is a slide show presentation program developed by&#xA;  Microsoft. It was officially launched on May 22, 1990, as a part of&#xA;  the Microsoft Office suite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The benefits of PowerPoint are continuously debated. The term&#xA;  &quot;PowerPoint hell&quot; has been coined for long, tedious PowerPoint&#xA;  presentations that bore the audience. As of 2012, various versions of PowerPoint claim ~95% of the presentation software market share, with installations on at least 1 billion computers. Among presenters world-wide, this program is used at an estimated frequency of 350 times per second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T11:26:29.417" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:26:29.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20685" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:46:19.060" Score="0" Body="PowerPoint is a slide show presentation program developed by Microsoft. Can be used in academia for lectures, conference talks etc. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:53:28.803" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:53:28.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20686" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:47:40.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;New Zealand&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:32:11.557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:32:11.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20687" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:47:40.887" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to New Zealand's higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or Europe.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:08:37.490" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:08:37.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20688" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:50:38.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to its &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from the official website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content in your web browser, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you're searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zotero collects all your research in a single, searchable interface. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages, and really anything else. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library, enabling you to find exactly what you're looking for with just a few keystrokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T20:37:36.600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:37:36.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20689" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:50:38.350" Score="0" Body="Zotero is a free reference management software to manage bibliographic data. Notable features include web browser integration, on-line syncing, generation of in-text citations, and footnotes and bibliographies." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:50:10.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:50:10.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20690" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:52:53.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Modern biology is a vast and eclectic field, composed of many branches and subdisciplines. However, despite the broad scope of biology, there are certain general and unifying concepts within it that govern all study and research, consolidating it into single, coherent fields. In general, biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the synthesis and creation of new species. It is also understood today that all organisms survive by consuming and transforming energy and by regulating their internal environment to maintain a stable and vital condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T11:10:20.487" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:10:20.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20691" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T09:52:53.533" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to biology as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:03:56.897" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:03:56.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:01:44.370" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if that is the case in BITS Pilani. Its true that we get a 10 point evaluation, but we are also given grades and from the same WES scheme the gpa must be calculated like this-&#xA;A  4.00&#xA;A- 3.67&#xA;B+ 3.33&#xA;B  3.00&#xA;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15168" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:01:44.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20693" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:10:53.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Official EU website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are primarily located in Europe. The EU operates through a system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmental negotiated decisions by the member states. Institutions of the EU include the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors, and the European Parliament. The European Parliament is elected every five years by EU citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T17:10:58.233" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T17:10:58.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20694" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:10:53.337" Score="0" Body="The EU or European Union is an economic and political union of 28 European member states." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:35:06.307" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:35:06.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20695" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:13:13.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scopus is described by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;elsevier&lt;/a&gt; as follows;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scopus, [is] the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus delivers an overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative, you can make sure that critical research from around the world is not missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T10:09:43.137" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T10:09:43.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20696" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:13:13.707" Score="0" Body="Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature run by elsevier." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:53:42.593" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:53:42.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20697" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:26:13.663" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:26:13.663" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:26:13.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20698" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:26:13.663" Score="0" Body="Elsevier is an academic publishing company which publishes in the area of science, health, and technology." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:53:19.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:53:19.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20699" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:27:15.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;India&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Europe, Oceania, or the rest of Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9604/how-do-you-judge-an-indian-cgpa-score&quot;&gt;How do you judge an Indian CGPA score?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16976/mathematics-research-status-in-india&quot;&gt;Mathematics research status in India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:23:30.567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:23:30.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20700" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:27:15.950" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the Indian higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Europe, Oceania, or elsewhere in Asia." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:23:30.567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:23:30.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:29:08.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't care how important the journal is or who the editors are.  The question is do I read it, or do the papers of relevance turn up in it, or do the most relevant/sympathetic authors publish in it, which means there will be relevant/sympathetic reviewers.  Publish in the journals where you see the most similar papers to what you are proposing, in approach, scope, length, depth, etc.  It is appropriate to publish short papers on new results quickly in the more specialised transactions, and longer papers that draw together work and provide introductions to a broader audience in the more general journals. If the work is interdisciplinary it is appropriate to present it for different audiences by retargeting to a new journal.  The more ground breaking the research the more important it is rather to see what journals publish novel research as opposed to bandwagon research. If none of the reviewers understand it, a reputable venue will not publish it (although often they won't admit the problem is theirs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general the story goes like this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;research --&gt; journals that publish that research --&gt; most appropriate journal for your research --&gt; target that specific journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words I think you have it backwards - you choose the venue and then target the paper to it.  I develop repositories of knowledge for my own use (somewhere between a collection of notes and thesis-like treatise).  Sometimes I publish these as a Tech.Report. but the idea is not to publish on the growing body of work, but to draw on it as it grows to target papers to particular venues (workshops, conferences, transactions and journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regard general journals as the least useful kind of publication, and workshops as the most useful kind of publication, with a funnel type progression to a proper journal paper (which I my field are typically 50-100 page papers whereas the other three typically have 6-12 page papers).  In the internet age, the most important thing is to publish in places that provide or allow open access, and most readers will come from a search process rather than by subscription to the journal.  Subscription journals are dead - they just don't know it yet, although the publishers are scrambling to get you, your employer or oterh sponsors to continue to pay them in a paid open access model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:29:08.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20665" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:48:14.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ethically you should put ALL the affiliations that contributed to the work. This included contributing to ANY of your expenses, living costs, research costs, travel costs, laboratory infrastructure, computer equipment, etc. used for the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not paid by ANYONE to do (teaching and) research in the area of your paper, did not make use of ANY facilities or equipment not owned by you, did not do ANY work or thinking on an employer's time (think intellectual property) then you can say it is independent research, otherwise the affiliation of the supporter must be acknowledged.  The primary source of support should be the primary affiliation.  Depending on the publication venue you can provide additional affiliations or acknowledge other support in footnotes or acknowledgements.  Funding for publication (from you or an organisation) can be mentioned in the acknowledgements like any other funding, and all funding really should be acknowledge unless the funder wishes otherwise.  If you are affiliated with the funder (e.g. for self-funding through your consultancy) then this can go as an additional affiliation.  This sharing of affiliation also makes clear that your university did not pay for everything needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never put &quot;independent researcher&quot; but have always put a relevant business/company name in some cases where support was officially declined for the project and/or I was between jobs or consulting.  Putting &quot;independent researcher&quot; conveys the impression that this work is so unimportant that nobody would pay for it. As a consultant or employee, anything not actually covered by your contract and payment can be regarded as your intellectual property and independent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an &quot;independent researcher&quot; then you have obtain your funding yourself, you support yourself, and are not receiving a salary to undertake research in the area of the paper, and you should thus regard yourself as a business and set things up as a business.  You can register a business name or a partnership (e.g. with your wife) or incorporate a company, and use this name.  Depending on where you are (legal residence/place of business) partnerships relating to your actual names may not need to be formally registered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am frequently in a position where I am a visiting professor somewhere and put both my substantive position and my visiting affiliation in an order that relates to where the bulk of the research and/or writing was done.  But you really need to be able to justify this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a closely related point based on the same ethical principals (often enshrined in a code of ethics by university, funding bodies, professional associations and/or journals): If you did any work on the paper or the underlying research at a university, you need to list the affiliation. If anyone else contributed in any way to the intellectual content or written form, this needs to be acknowledged, and if they contributed to both then they need to be an author, unless they specifically request otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally just providing funding (cash) or services (reviewing, technical assistance) doesn't require an affiliation or authorship byline, but should be included in the acknowledgements.  On the other hand, provision of technical services or reviewing assistance that went beyond the call of duty and actually changed the direction of the project or lead to new conclusions (i.e. provided intellectual input and created intellectual property) does require the authorship and affiliation byline rather than just acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:48:14.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20706" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:50:09.430" Score="5" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/signal/index.html&quot;&gt;R package&lt;/a&gt; f.x. states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kurt Hornik [ctb]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume this abbreviation is coming from academic publishing - hence why I ask it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15171" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2019-11-21T08:21:45.360" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T08:21:45.360" Title="What does [ctb] stand for?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20704" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:52:45.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC; /muːk/) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent development in distance education which began to emerge in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although early MOOCs often emphasized open access features, such as connectivism and open licensing of content, structure, and learning goals, to promote the reuse and remixing of resources, some notable newer MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials, while maintaining free access for students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T11:27:05.150" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:27:05.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20705" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:52:45.650" Score="0" Body="MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. MOOC are online courses aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:58:41.013" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:58:41.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20703" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:59:02.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;ctb = Contributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not so much about academic publishing, but (academic/open source) software. One has authors and contributors. Contributors added a bit of code, but presumably did not contribute to the overall design efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:59:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20707" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:03:40.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:03:40.703" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:03:40.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20708" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:03:40.703" Score="0" Body="A group of words taken from a text or speech and repeated by someone other than the original author or speaker. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:10:33.803" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:10:33.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:04:56.163" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished a good university which helped me find a wonderful job. Cheating in the university is not the best thing to be done, but sometimes people have to do it in order to win - if you don't understand me I doubt you understand life - watch Arnold Schwarzenegger six rules of success. And I would like to tell you that reporting your colleague is very stupid in my opinion - why you need to do such a bad thing to him? Did he do something bad to you - no... Maybe it's best that you ignore it, but for sure you don't need to report him - you will make him unhappy, and if you ignore it nobody'll be unhappy, right? If you obey all the rules (I'm talking about the rules, not the law) you won't go far in your life... If you don't believe me check the most successful guys in the planet - what do you think, they obeyed all the rules and never cheated on anything??? Think out of the box. I know intelligent guys with great academic experience and at the same time guys who only graduated school and are 100 more successful than the first. Be cool, don't take things so seriously - it's not a robbery or a rape, as I said - take action when somebody's been made unhappy, this is not the case. And now you're about to make someone unhappy, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15172" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:04:56.163" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20710" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:05:21.430" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:05:21.430" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:05:21.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20711" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:05:21.430" Score="0" Body="Graduation relates to the receiving or conferring of an academic degree or diploma as well as the ceremony at which degrees are conferred." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:10:16.330" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:10:16.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9611" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:06:31.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two obstacles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The funding body - sometimes their rules specifies you must work for a university or research organisation or worse a registered research organisation (if it doesn't say registered, then invent a business name or found a consultancy/company; if it does say registered, then try to get your research organisation registered). Sometimes the rules will also specify a proportion of the &quot;marks&quot; for rating the researcher/team and the institution/infrastructure. If you register a commercial entity, you however now have access to commercialisation funds and programs which often have more money that is easier to obtain (government funding programs, angels and VCs).  About half my funds comes from non-traditional funding sources, often with matching private and public funding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The referees - the referees will in general know nothing about your work, will know a little about the general area but will have specialist expertise in some other area, they will not understand every point of the grant application, they will have some part of their rating based on who you are which will be judged from CV-type information, including your publications, grants and affiliations.  They will take into account your lack of a research record one way or another, often negatively when there is no evidence to support you can do the work, often positively when you have done well with the little you have for the stage in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some funding programs (or referees/committees) will explicitly make allowance for early career researchers, or even actively encourage and support them, which mitigates against the disadvantage.  The idea is that the success rate of ECRs should be commensurate with the overall success rate (where other things being equal it could be less due to the lack of runs on the board).  Many grant processes (and referees/committees) specifically operate on the basis that assessment of the research team should be on the basis of &quot;opportunity&quot; - and so no special ECR category is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:06:31.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20713" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:10:09.113" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:10:09.113" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:10:09.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20714" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:10:09.113" Score="0" Body="A first degree from a university or other academic institution for example 'bachelor of arts'" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:50:39.157" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:50:39.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11937" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:15:32.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the situation described applies increasingly in most countries.  My university doesn't fund me for research (in fact some years back our government said - you do 30% research do you? and took 30% from the university budgets and made it grant funding).  My standard working week goes quite easily on teaching, supervision and administration.  You have to make time for research, you have to do research in your own time as well, and often the writing (papers and grant applications) will mostly be done in your own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is, just do it.  Read in the areas of your interest.  When you see a problem or an opportunity, jump on it.  There are many areas of research where you can work totally on paper/computer (it seems you have access to both paper and a computer).  Start with what you can manage yourself, then propose projects that students can work on, then leverage these to get small grants (or just buy small bits of equipment yourself - I do). Then publish, starting at workshops and conferences (where you can meet people and get feedback) and working up to transactions (short papers) and major journals (long paper). These runs on the board will allow you to get increasingly better publications, increasingly bigger grants, better support fro your university, and more chance of getting a job elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:15:32.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20716" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:15:59.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An internship is a method of on-the-job training for white-collar and professional careers. Internships for professional careers are similar in some ways to apprenticeships for trade and vocational jobs, but the lack of standardization and oversight leaves the term open to broad interpretation. Interns may be college or university students, high school students, or post-graduate adults. These positions may be paid or unpaid and are usually temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, an internship consists of an exchange of services for experience between the student and an organization. Students can also use an internship to determine if they have an interest in a particular career, create a network of contacts or gain school credit. Some interns find permanent, paid employment with the organizations for which they worked. This can be a significant benefit to the employer as experienced interns often need little or no training when they begin regular employment. Unlike a trainee program, employment at the completion of an internship is not guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T11:27:16.570" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:27:16.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20717" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:15:59.577" Score="0" Body="A student or trainee who works, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:36:19.547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:36:19.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20718" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:17:59.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study, or the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge. It, typically, encompasses concepts such as paradigm, theoretical model, phases and quantitative or qualitative techniques.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A methodology does not set out to provide solutions but offers the theoretical underpinning for understanding which method, set of methods or so called “best practices” can be applied to a specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T11:38:00.697" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:38:00.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20719" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:17:59.700" Score="0" Body="A system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity so as to achieve results." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:36:35.540" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:36:35.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20720" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:19:56.680" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:19:56.680" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:19:56.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20721" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:19:56.680" Score="0" Body="Question about academic salary. A salary is a fixed regular payment made by an employer to an employee." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:34:55.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:34:55.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20722" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:24:03.753" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:24:03.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:24:03.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20723" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:24:03.753" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to websites. A website is a location connected to the Internet that maintains one or more web pages." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:34:32.533" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:34:32.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20724" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:26:11.953" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:26:11.953" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:26:11.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20725" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:26:11.953" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic admission. Admission is the process of entering or being allowed to enter into studies at an academic organization." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:35:24.387" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:35:24.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20659" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:28:18.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My supervisor used to tell me regularly that there is no such thing as a &quot;PhD with bar&quot; (that is some extra merit/credit/marker to say it was really good - it is just yes/no).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand several of my students have one university or professional association prizes for their theses, and there are opportunities for publishing a good thesis.  A good thesis is something you will want to cite for the rest of your life.  You don't want something that you will be ashamed of in a decade - whether or not you &quot;pass&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get students to decide on three innovations that if they succeed with any one of them would be sufficient for the PhD.  Some may be dead ends, but most students do manage to hit two or three bulls eyes.  But one is enough.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions really are: will your thesis get up? are you employable? could you get a research job?  The way to be confident of this is to have multiple publications (my students tend to have 5 from their PhD, mostly conference, with a couple of journals - those who did a Masters will have some from them as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that if you have a scholarship or a TA contract or other support, make the most of it, use all of it - don't submit early.  It is far easier to publish during your PhD than once you are in a full time academic position preparing teaching notes for half a dozen different courses.  So aim for publications first, building up your thesis as you go (either a resource from which you pull out publications, or a compilation made by putting together your papers).  The papers related to a chapter should be identified in the opening and/or closing pages (e.g. with footnotes), and in some universities you can do a thesis by publication or include verbatim papers with a bit of glue text.  But examiners don't really like this (they tend to read the same intro material over and over again), and I encourage a coherent readable monograph approach (which is then publishable which a collection of already published papers isn't).  But one way or another if referees from a stack of reputable conference and journals think your work is publishable, how can they turn down the thesis that spawned them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:28:18.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20728" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:28:53.530" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:28:53.530" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:28:53.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20729" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:28:53.530" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to academia across international borders or in different regions globally." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:35:32.597" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:35:32.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20730" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:30:23.607" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:30:23.607" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:30:23.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20731" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:30:23.607" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to travel for academic travel. This can include travel to conferences or visiting of academic institutions of which you may not be affiliated with." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:36:09.617" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:36:09.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20732" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:33:28.870" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:33:28.870" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:33:28.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20733" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:33:28.870" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to students who are non-national to the country or location of academic institution they may be studying in." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:50:30.630" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:50:30.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20734" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:36:18.767" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:36:18.767" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:36:18.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20735" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:36:18.767" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to note-taking. Note-taking is the practice of recording information usually during lectures of from books to assist you to identify the important ideas from that source." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:38:21.970" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:38:21.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20736" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:37:36.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this tag for questions that ask about the meaning, usage, history, or similar of academic terminology, i.e., terminology that are tightly connected to academia due to their meaning or words that have a specific meaning in an academic setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site is not the right place to ask about the terminology of a specific field – ask such questions on the sites pertaining to the respective disciplines. Also do not ask about general properties of the English language – ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English Language &amp;amp; Usage&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://ell.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English Language Learners&lt;/a&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2016-12-04T16:45:11.093" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T16:45:11.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20737" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:37:36.463" Score="0" Body="On words that have a meaning, usage, or similar specific to academia." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2016-12-04T16:36:35.493" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T16:36:35.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:44:06.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's pretty hard to change a name after publication. Many journals with print editions treat that as a permanent record of sorts. I'm not sure if that information can be changed in the DOI record though. It would be best to do as was suggested, and link that pub to your name in citation managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:44:06.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20739" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:45:23.253" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:45:23.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:45:23.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20740" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:45:23.253" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to economics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:29:02.310" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:29:02.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20741" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:48:27.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Physics is a branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. Some of the subject matters cover by physics include mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular physics questions, visit our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Physics Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33097" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-09T21:15:23.887" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T21:15:23.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20742" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:48:27.543" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to physics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular physics questions, visit our sister site Physics Stack Exchange." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-09T20:53:55.273" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T20:53:55.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20632" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:59:25.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor or potential supervisors should be able to help - and I don't necessarily mean by talking to them.  First of all identify potential supervisors whose (recent) work you like and (mostly) understand. In the first instance look at their recent papers, and particularly concentrate on any points they raise in discussion or future work.  In particular do a SWOT analysis and note what are the best and worst features of the approaches, and whether you can see opportunities for different, even interdisciplinary, work to be brought to bear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent you don't understand anything, don't keep reading and rereading and struggling with it, go back to the earlier work and the citations.  Try go be back to the originators of the concepts you are lacking or find difficult, and the commentators who clarify the insights behind the formalisms.  Look for conference and workshop papers for these early developmental versions of work, rather than the erudite and impenetrable journal versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="6390" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:04:34.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:04:34.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20744" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:00:21.420" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:00:21.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:00:21.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20745" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:00:21.420" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to Psychology. Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:40:29.827" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:40:29.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:03:09.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a reply, suggest a journal to send it to. Then if it gets accepted for review, the reviewer may have an easy task in front of them. (Either that or genius will be recognised.) Everyone will be happy either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14516" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:03:09.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20747" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:03:19.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Engineering tag is specifically for questions related to engineering as an academic discipline. Engineering is the application of math and cience for human benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag should be applied to questions where the answers must be highly specific to engineering, and will not generalize to other fields. Examples of such questions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17819/is-there-a-difference-in-academic-writing-styles-between-engineering-and-womens&quot;&gt;Is there a difference in academic writing styles between engineering and women&amp;#39;s studies?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8214/graduate-math-student-migrating-to-engineering&quot;&gt;Graduate math student migrating to engineering?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4/in-u-s-why-do-many-engineering-departments-care-about-professional-engineer-re&quot;&gt;In U.S., why do many engineering departments care about professional engineer registration?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47985" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T03:05:34.340" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T03:05:34.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20748" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:03:19.457" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to engineering as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:03:07.413" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:03:07.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20749" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:07:30.527" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:07:30.527" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:07:30.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20750" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:07:30.527" Score="0" Body="On the administration or running of an academic department or organization, or the people associated with this role. [administration] is mainly concerned with overseeing regular operations, while [governance] involves strategic tasks of setting goals and direction." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T03:44:03.957" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T03:44:03.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20751" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:14:17.040" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:14:17.040" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:14:17.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20752" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:14:17.040" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to student exchange. Student exchange programs is where students from a university study (mostly) abroad at another institution usually for a semester or academic year." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T12:43:38.157" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:43:38.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20632" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:34:05.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to ask yourself, what do you want? This is the question you should answer by yourself and which is crucial in all the following steps. So you want to do a Ph.D. Where do you want to do your Ph.D? What country? You want applied research or theoretical? After a few questions I assume the filed of research would become narrower and narrower. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a vague imagination about what you want, just do a simple search about the areas. If you don't know what is this sub-field about, don't start reading scientific articles but rather start from the scratch, basic information. Don't get depressed if you don't understand the article stuff. It is a very narrow research and you have to work diligently in that narrow filed to start understanding it. Read the recent scientific news. For instance, I always read MIT news. Quite interesting researches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you already know the country and the subject (not exact), you start searching the university groups which are engages in a similar research. You check the articles and pay attention to the impact factors and number of articles. You check that your future supervisor has good recent articles. It means that he is working actively now. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may contact the group supervisors to arrange a meeting or just to have a correspondence. It is always better to go and meet the team members and then they will provide some rudimentary information about all the studies they carry out. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you narrowed down the number of choices to let's say to 5 groups, then start reading their articles. Always try to stay in touch with the groups. Ask questions, show your interest, because although you have funding, you still have to be accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of course, if you have some background in the field, it is always a bonus, but, if you don't, it is not detrimental. Everything depends on your diligence and intentions. If you are motivated, if you don't give up, after a few months of your Ph.D you would feel much progress.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:34:05.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:08:36.053" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I would like to answer this, apparently everyone has a different perspective here, but mainly 2 sides. Students vs Professors :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He asked you for last year's answers. What is wrong with this? I sometimes ask my friends for previous years' answers as well. This does not mean I am going to copy them. I can go through their work, understand the concepts better and do my homework. The reason is, not every question type is covered in classes or books and guidance might be required to solve them. First you learn how to solve something, then you apply your knowledge to questions. And questions with solutions are the perfect way to master the knowledge. When I use my friends' past homeworks, it really helps me learn the material and all the time I spot their mistakes and prepare my own homework with no mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, his intentions might be directly copying your homework. In such a case, a proper department should keep old homework solutions and it is the TA's responsiblity to detect them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if someone who you think has intentions to learn from your homework is asking for it, it is very normal to give. But if you think his intention is to directly copy, then you can simply decline his request. You can say you don't have them anymore or you do not wish to share them. No person is guilty unless they commit the wrong and again, you shouldn't worry about them. The university pays graduate students for these matters, it is their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T13:08:36.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20758" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:21:48.483" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T13:21:48.483" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T13:21:48.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20759" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:21:48.483" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to an academic article. Articles normally appear in an academic journal." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T13:26:22.060" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T13:26:22.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20776" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:38:24.320" Score="4" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Program Committee (PC), can PC members non assigned to a paper still have a look at it and make comments influencing the decision, assuming that the reviewing system allow them to access the papers and the reviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they only make a comment, should this comment be sent to the authors (EasyChair, for instance, does not forward the comments to authors)? For instance, consider the case where a PC member thinks that an important reference is missing, regardless of the overall quality of the paper, what should she/he do? Add a comment? Ask to be assigned as a reviewer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T14:17:13.913" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:27:35.310" Title="Can non-reviewers influence the decision about a paper in a program committee?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20761" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:47:00.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many universities in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland, the academic job rank of &quot;lecturer&quot; is roughly equivalent to the North American &quot;Professor of the Practice&quot; though these may not be tenurable positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, Canada, and other countries influenced by their educational systems, a &quot;lecturer&quot; is generally an academic without tenure who teaches full or part-time and has minimal or no research responsibilities. An &quot;assistant professor&quot; has duties beyond teaching - especially serious research - and is a candidate for tenure who has not yet attained it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2019-08-26T00:16:32.343" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T00:16:32.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20762" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:47:00.483" Score="0" Body="On the academic rank of lecturer. In the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and other countries, lecturer is a tenured faculty position roughly equivalent to a Professor of the Practice in the North American system. Do not use this tag for questions about lecturing as a teaching method." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2019-08-26T00:16:32.343" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T00:16:32.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4938" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:59:23.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another concept of &quot;next step after PhD&quot;, at least in some countries, is the notion of an 'academic', i.e., a member of the relevant national Academy of Sciences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That membership is in essence an awarded/elected degree for continued contributions to science and demonstrated expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T13:59:23.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:07:51.590" Score="3" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergrad engineering student working on some project with my colleagues , and we are asked to submit a report by the end of it.&#xA;So is it a good thing to write the report in the IEEE standard paper format.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/MSW_A4_format.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ieee.org/documents/MSW_A4_format.doc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what are some other standards forms that we may use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not be the most suitable place for this question but I figured out that there could be a lot of professors and instructors here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15180" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:15:53.200" Title="Is it acceptable to write reports in the IEEE standard paper format?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:09:56.540" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I think there's little or nothing you can realistically do for most amateurs sending unsolicited manuscripts.  What they don't seem to realize is how common this is and what a bad state most of the manuscripts are in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I average several amateur e-mails per week (and I shudder to think of how many Andrew Wiles or Terry Tao must get).  If I carefully read each paper and sent comments, that alone would occupy a substantial fraction of my professional activities, so I have to prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I at least flip through the papers, and most of them are obviously crackpot work.  Occasionally I see one that doesn't look ridiculous, and I try to be encouraging when appropriate, but I have yet to receive a publishable paper from an amateur.  The best I can do is generally to offer encouraging advice, and even that's uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people seem beyond hope (for example, the ones who send word salad), but some could presumably become solid researchers given the right education and mentoring.  However, this is not something I have a lot of time to provide.  I've got plenty of in-person students, some of whom would probably like more interaction, and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling them &quot;Sorry, I'm busy trying to explain to some guy on the internet why his fuzzy understanding of quantum mechanics doesn't actually yield a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.&quot;  Even if the amateur seems promising, they aren't likely to be dramatically more promising than my students, and mentoring over the internet is less effective, so it's still an awkward trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some amateurs react very poorly to feedback.  If you suggest their results are known (while complimenting them on their rediscovery), they angrily suggest that you must not have understood what they meant or are trying to deny them credit for their work.  If you don't believe their results, they accuse you of incompetence or laziness.  If you encourage them to apply to graduate school, they scoff at what academia would have to teach them.  This is of course only a minority of amateurs, but it's just common enough to discourage giving honest feedback: there's too much of a risk of feeling like you wasted time offering feedback to someone who only wanted validation and responded with insults.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is grandiose visions.  When people spend too much time daydreaming about being the next Ramanujan or finding the proof that didn't fit in Fermat's margin, it's really unsatisfying to learn that their story isn't actually as remarkable as they hoped.  It's much easier psychologically to move to the parallel story of the genius oppressed by academia, rather than starting an academic career from scratch.  (And even people who show no sign of grandiosity in their original e-mail sometimes have it hiding below the surface: I imagine that anyone who sends unsolicited accounts of their discoveries to experts is hoping for some degree of acclaim.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what to do about this?  In an ideal world, I'd give lots of time and attention to everyone who wrote, but these are scarce resources.  In practice, I handle it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the paper genuinely engages with my work and shows no signs of craziness (e.g., drawing religious conclusions from mathematics), I give at least a brief reply.  Same thing if I have some other good reason to believe it was sent specifically to me, and not just as one of many recipients.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the paper looks relatively promising but has nothing specific to do with me, I'll reply if I have time and feel that the reply would be well received.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is on a topic I particularly know and care about but doesn't involve my work and doesn't seem especially promising, I might reply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I probably won't reply, and almost certainly not if the paper deals with famous unsolved problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:09:56.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20532" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:14:07.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(At the request of the OP, I'm expanding my brief comment into an answer.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I've heard most often is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare your own sound bites&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e., minimal media-style statements). If you don't boil it down, they will, and they are certain to get it wrong. If they already made cuts you don't agree with, don't hesitate to send them a counter-proposal: something similarly short but more correct. (Reputable journalists usually are more concerned with meeting word-count restrictions than with increasing sensationalism.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be rigorous in demanding the last word on any change and in exercising that right.&lt;/strong&gt; If they don't grant you that, do not agree to speak to them (it's a sign they are not up to professional standards). This especially applies to the uncertainties or caveats you mention; make it clear that they get either a quote with qualifications or no quote at all. Getting wrong exposure is worse than getting no exposure. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Repeating Fomite's excellent point: If you are worried they will distort something, &lt;strong&gt;do not mention it at all&lt;/strong&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if they seem to insist on it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For appearance on radio or television, &lt;strong&gt;rehearse&lt;/strong&gt; (a lot). (Even for interviews in connection with a written piece, it pays off to spend some time beforehand to formulate and polish the key statements you want to make.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If live appearances happen often enough, &lt;strong&gt;get professional coaching&lt;/strong&gt; (universities usually offer such things, since it's in their own interest that you look good). They are probably also happy to look at any written communication you want to send to the media and to point out possible pitfalls or help boiling it down to make it media-ready.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:14:07.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:15:03.403" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewer A asks colleague B who's not a reviewer to give his opinion on a paragraph because B has more knowledge about the specifics of that paragraph, then incorporates that feedback in his review.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Just one example of how it could happen.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Or Reviewer A knowing full well that his boss, manager B, won't like a review being critical of the work of prominent person C, so he decides to recommend strongly such criticism be deleted in order to keep his boss happy and his job secure.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Could happen too.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Are both going to show up on a review of the review process? Highly unlikely. Are both plausible scenarios based on human nature, even if not part of the review process? Highly likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11647" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:15:03.403" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20765" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:15:53.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an EE student, I used to submit reports in IEEE format (if none was specified by the instructor). So yes, it's perfectly acceptable in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some professors prefer more whitespace so they can write comments while grading student reports. I therefore switched to the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science format, which has much larger margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:15:53.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20771" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:18:59.793" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T14:18:59.793" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:18:59.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20772" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:18:59.793" Score="0" Body="Questions about patents. Patents are government licenses conferring a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention without compensation." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T14:32:26.670" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:32:26.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20773" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:22:57.937" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T14:22:57.937" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:22:57.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20774" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:22:57.937" Score="0" Body="Questions about conference poster presentations. Poster presentations usually consist of affixing the research poster to a portable wall with the researcher in attendance to answer any questions." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T14:30:59.173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:30:59.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20780" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:25:30.757" Score="23" ViewCount="4136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finding myself in an uncomfortable position these past couple of days. Our IT/lab manager has been working on a new website to store data that is to be shared with about 11 other institutions, all part of the same project. Our lab is heading the data management and modeling. My adviser is not happy with his progress and has sent him a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;tone-y&quot; email, but has included me and other colleagues in the email as well. At first I thought the conversation was limited to our lab. Now I see the project director and a couple other people are included as well. I came close to replying with something along the lines &quot;Please do not include me in these types of emails&quot; (It's a work in progress!!). The emails have gotten to down right bickering, even childish, and have gone back and forth several times. I'm very surprised at the tone and childish nature of the emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a lowly PhD student such as myself to do in this sort of situation? Should I just ignore the messages? Or should I request to be excluded from the conversation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. These emails are of some significance to me because of the data. But I don't believe I should be in this conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:25:44.570" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T21:25:44.570" Title="How to react to an angry email / argument as a third party" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:27:35.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science conferences (which often use EasyChair), I have seen the following practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once all reviews are in, PC chairs often &lt;em&gt;encourage&lt;/em&gt; all PC members to comment on all papers on which they have something useful to say.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the comments are just discussion that may influence the final decision in borderline cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the assigned reviewers modify their reviews based on the comments (e.g., they realised that they overlooked some important point).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the PC chairs ask some of the assigned reviewers to incorporate the comments in their reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the PC chairs ask non-reviewers to convert their comments to (short) reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:27:35.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20777" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:29:18.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages (spam), especially advertising, indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch in which Spam is included in every dish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T13:17:36.080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T13:17:36.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20778" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:29:18.477" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding dealing with unwanted electronic messages specific to an academic environment" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T19:49:04.547" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T19:49:04.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20675" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:46:45.797" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is certainly &quot;yes&quot;, but to identify the best fit for your paper you'll have to decide how different your proof is from previous proofs.  It often happens that two proofs look completely different when viewed line-by-line, but still the main intermediate steps in the proofs are essentially the same -- in other words, proofs can use the same strategy but different tactics. If your main contribution is in finding an efficient or elegant way to present some of the same ideas that were used in previous proofs, then you might consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expositiones-mathematicae/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Expositiones Mathematicae&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  On the other hand, if your proofs use entirely new ideas, then you have done original research and you should submit your paper to a standard journal.  In between these two extremes is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;L'Enseignement Mathématique&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which often publishes papers which combine new research with improved exposition of known results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T16:23:21.720" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:23:21.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20775" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:00:55.467" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the proper etiquette here is similar as to how you should behave if you were to witness two people arguing in public. You may listen—the argument is, after all, public—but you probably shouldn't interject unless you are directly addressed. As stated in the comments, this is a very common tactic for raising the stakes in any discussion. This currently isn't your fight... don't get involved unless you want it to become your fight (pro tip: you don't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T15:00:55.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:19:50.623" Score="6" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a second year industrial PhD student in Europe with a PhD contract of 3yrs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to certain reasons, our strategic partners have left the project. As a consequence, we are not able to smoothly continue with the current prototype tests and validation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been discussing this with my supervisor and her suggestion is to build a new prototype. That would be OK if I was offered a contract extension (just to compensate for the fact that the partners have abandoned us). To make the new prototype will take approx 1 year. Basically, I'm not able to perform any research before such prototype is in place.&#xA;For this reason I'm thinking of abandoning the program and applying to another PhD position. It is hard to give 100% if thing look gray and mentor is not flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not afraid to start from scratch. However, I'm wonder if new prospective groups will understand my situation and give me a new chance or will my application be rejected? What kind of perception might I expect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T16:15:16.953" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:25:50.107" Title="How will my second PhD application be perceived, after abandoning the first?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20578" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:52:16.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used CourseMarker in combination with BlueJ for teaching first year students Java. There are three main criteria for marking: typographic correctness (layout, indentation, comments, etc.), semantic correctness (does the program run and do what it is supposed to do), and programming language features (whether specified programming constructs are present in the code). It is possible to supply a supporting code (a skeleton of the program, where students fill the gaps) or let the students start from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CourseMarker administrator (in our case the module leader) can set up a marking scheme as a combination of the three main criteria and their sub-criteria. It is possible to configure CourseMarker to accept multiple submissions. Students can submit initial version of their program, receive immediate feedback, make necessary corrections and submit again. The feedback for the students can pinpoint the exact problem and its location, and provide suggestions for improvement. The feedback for the lecturers is statistical data about students’ performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We set optional training tasks for the student to self-study (no limit over the number of submissions) and a coursework, which was assessed (3 to 5 submissions for each part depending on its complexity). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also embedded methods for plagiarism detection, which compare student’s work for similarity. The comparison is not just semantic, it accounts for changes in the code that actually do not change the logic of the program. The suspect students’ work is reported to the lecturers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exam (also on CourseMarker) combined multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks questions, and constructing flow charts and programming code. All the students answer the same set of questions but they are ordered in random manner for each student. The order of the answers for multiple choice questions and the layout of elements for constructing flow charts or programming code are randomised, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits - instant feedback to the students, especially useful for unsupervised work (remember the students are beginners in programming). Actually most of the students installed the client package on their computers at home and correspond with the university server via Internet. From lecturers’ point of view, it saves vast amount of time - we didn’t have to check and mark students’ work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main drawback of CourseMarker is its rigidity. Normally a programmer can write a piece of code in various ways. CourseMarker can be set to understand and assess only a pre-determined pattern, which should be specified in the task description. Any deviations from the pattern would trigger reducing the marks. So I made a point to explain that there are certain limitations working in this particular programming environment but in other circumstances, there are other options to be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T15:52:16.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19845" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:07:31.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common way folks in my neck of the woods handle this would be to say &quot;... A DNN initialized using the DBN (adapted from [1]).&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:07:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20781" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:12:21.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although such a decision depends usually on personal factors, here are some points on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it depends of what you want to do afterwards. PhD inside companies are usually intended for people who have an interest in finding a job in the R&amp;amp;D department of that company or a competing one. (It's also a great way for companies to hire highly educated people for a fraction of the usual salary, but that is out of the topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, I would recommend trying to salvage the project, maybe by negotiating a contract extension, adding another aspect (analysis of the data, modeling?) while you wait for the new prototype, etc. As a PhD student it is normally &lt;em&gt;not your job&lt;/em&gt; to secure funding, your advisor should be the one concerned about that now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to work in academic research I would recommend switching to another PhD program (preferably in a university). It wouldn't necessary mean starting from scratch, it might be that the work you already did can be used for another application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;new prospective groups will understand my situation and give me new&#xA;  chance or my application is going to be rejected&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that your previous experience will be an advantage when applying to a new position, especially as it is clear that its interruption had nothing to do with your performance. I think the perception is going to be fine, experience is always appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T17:25:50.107" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:25:50.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20786" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:24:19.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typography (from the Greek words τύπος typos &quot;form&quot; and γράφειν graphein &quot;to write&quot;) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make the language it forms most appealing to transparent learning and recognition. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning[2]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T10:42:38.900" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T10:42:38.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20787" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:24:19.360" Score="0" Body="On the arrangement and choice of type (e.g. font, size, weight, style) in academic writing." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-12-30T10:54:26.527" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T10:54:26.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:28:44.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. The journal can fix your name on the &quot;linking page&quot; for the article—which is the one most search engines will point to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, in terms of the search engines themselves, the misspelling is not as catastrophic as if it were the last name that were affected. This is because most search engines only use initials for first and middle names, instead of the complete name. For instance, &quot;John Q. Public&quot; would be searched for in &lt;a href=&quot;http://isiknowledge.com&quot;&gt;Web of Science&lt;/a&gt; as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Public JQ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Public, John Q&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which makes finding your papers not so difficult, in spite of the spelling error. (Of course, if there's a problem with the citation databases, you can alert them to the error.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:28:44.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20789" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:34:29.000" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T16:34:29.000" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:34:29.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20790" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T16:34:29.000" Score="0" Body="Distance learning is a method of educational instruction to students who are not physically present in a traditional setting such as the classroom." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T16:38:09.110" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T16:38:09.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:21:05.643" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, my university used to send letters that explained they received so many proof they didn't have the time to check them all, so each sender received a copy of the previous proof the university had received and asked them to check that one to help the university with their workload. That worked very well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it was my professor in analysis, who received one letter where someone had worked out an excellent approximation of pi as a fraction of rational numbers (I think it was the next approximation better than 355/113). And he found that the result this man found was actually absolutely correct, not quite as mind-blowing as the sender probably hoped, but nevertheless correct, and he replied with a long letter acknowledging the correct results and a list of sources that would help an interested amateur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That man was a single and outstanding exception. And the OP starter complaining about mistakes: Most of the time things are so bad, there are not even things that could be called &quot;mistakes&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11873" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:21:05.643" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20792" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:54:29.327" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T17:54:29.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:54:29.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20793" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:54:29.327" Score="0" Body="Questions specifically concerning applying for faculty-level job announcements." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:36:42.323" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:36:42.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20794" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:56:35.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that this site is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; meant to provide help for programming problems in academia - specific coding questions are better handled at StackOverflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:21:25.617" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:21:25.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20795" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:56:35.360" Score="0" Body="The development and use of computer code for academic research." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T19:51:18.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T19:51:18.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20796" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:57:24.040" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T17:57:24.040" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:57:24.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20797" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:57:24.040" Score="0" Body="Concerning how to format content in academic writing." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T02:52:15.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T02:52:15.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20798" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:59:41.967" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T17:59:41.967" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:59:41.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20799" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:59:41.967" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning special recognition for particular achievements, usually assessed competitively, within academia." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:36:32.373" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:36:32.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20800" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:00:37.770" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:00:37.770" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:00:37.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20801" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:00:37.770" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning work meant to be solved outside classroom time by a student, including questions about writing suitable homework assignments, grading, etc." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:37:04.870" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:37:04.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20802" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:02:48.707" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:02:48.707" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:02:48.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20803" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:02:48.707" Score="0" Body="Questions about academic workshops, which are often smaller, more collaborative forms of an academic conference, or which take place as a session of a larger conference." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:21:34.410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:21:34.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20804" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:03:48.260" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:03:48.260" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:03:48.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20805" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:03:48.260" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning systems where the identity of those involved is intended to be unknown, such as in double- or single-bind peer-review." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T00:52:47.027" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T00:52:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20806" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:04:37.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A repository is a place to which one can upload code, manuscripts, data, or other materials for storage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of respositories include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GitHub, for source code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arxiv, for preprints and other manuscripts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figshare, for any kind of research output, including figures, datasets, images, and videos&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University-hosted repositories, for technical reports and/or theses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T19:32:28.810" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T19:32:28.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20807" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:04:37.097" Score="0" Body="A place to which one can upload code, manuscripts, data, or other materials for storage. Examples of respositories include GitHub (for code), Arxiv (for manuscripts), and Figshare (for any kind of research output, including figures, datasets, images, and videos)." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T19:32:28.810" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T19:32:28.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20808" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:05:38.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions tagged with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tenure-track&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tenure-track&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tenure-track&lt;/a&gt; may ask about things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting hired into a tenure-track position. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17694/is-it-more-difficult-to-score-a-tenure-track-position-in-the-us-when-applying-fr&quot;&gt;Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The application and interview process for tenure-track jobs. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18697/interviewing-for-tenure-track-jobs-when-will-the-committee-contact-your-referen&quot;&gt;Interviewing for tenure track jobs: When will the committee contact your references?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The process of promotion on the tenure track. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7962/should-non-tenured-non-tenure-track-faculty-be-permitted-to-vote-on-tenure-track&quot;&gt;Should non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty be permitted to vote on tenure-track hires?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Systematic differences related to tenure and tenure-track in different fields or countries. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11785/do-australian-academic-jobs-have-similar-tenure-track-policies-as-usa&quot;&gt;Do Australian academic jobs have similar tenure track policies as USA?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T06:45:49.457" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T06:45:49.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20809" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:05:38.980" Score="0" Body="A job classification for faculty jobs, indicating that someone is eligible for a permanent position (&quot;tenure&quot;) should he or she meet certain expectations by the time of the evaluation (&quot;tenure review&quot;)." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T06:28:31.623" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T06:28:31.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20810" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:06:38.290" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:06:38.290" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:06:38.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20811" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:06:38.290" Score="0" Body="A summer school is a short course organized around a specific topic that is offered in the summer, and may be attended by students from multiple institutions." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T16:11:12.130" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T16:11:12.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20812" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:07:30.900" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:07:30.900" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:07:30.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20813" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:07:30.900" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning monetary costs associated with higher education, publishing, or other academic activities, specifically those not formally considered [tuition] or not related to standard research [funding] mechanisms." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T10:11:50.237" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T10:11:50.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20814" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:08:49.280" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:08:49.280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:08:49.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20815" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:08:49.280" Score="0" Body="Concerning the external evaluation of an institution of higher learning by an accreditation authority." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2018-10-08T00:03:51.977" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T00:03:51.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20618" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:08:56.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common analyses I've seen are generated automatically by scantron grading software, and are thus only used for multiple choice questions. But a motivated person could perform the analyses themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a few articles on test analysis over the years, and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washington.edu/oea/services/scanning_scoring/scoring/item_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summary of a particular scantron software&lt;/a&gt;'s results seems like a good overview of test analysis in general. A quick summary to improve searchability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Item difficulty&lt;/strong&gt; - percentage of students answering correctly. Desirable = above chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Item discrimination&lt;/strong&gt; - how much item correlates with test as a whole (students who did well on the exam get this right more than low-level students). Uses stat like Pearson Product Moment correlation. A &quot;good&quot; question has a score over 0.2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reliability coefficient&lt;/strong&gt; - A general measure of test length, breadth and its intercorrelations. Scores above 0.8 are considered excellent for a classroom test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other interesting measurements are used more in standardized testing, rather than classroom testing. These definitions are taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni.edu/chfasoa/reliabilityandvalidity.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this overview&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Construct validity&lt;/strong&gt; - does the exam actually measure the subject, or some other variable like reading skill. Generally uses a panel of &quot;experts&quot; or feedback by students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split-half reliability&lt;/strong&gt; - measures whether different test items that purport to test the same concept produce similar results within a single exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criterion-related validity&lt;/strong&gt; - measures how well the new test correlates with a known exam, like an ETS field test or GRE subject test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't get a basic output from scantron software, is there a department on your campus that will analyze your exam for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:08:56.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20817" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:10:25.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/code&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;code&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;code&lt;/a&gt; tag is for questions concerning computer code written or used in the context of a research project or other academic endeavour (including questions on licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of academic source code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, questions related to academic aspects of using the software rather then developing it (like e.g. on finding appropriate tool to organise bibliography or create a poster) should be asked under the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, highly technical aspects should be posted to other sites in the network, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18124" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-11T17:22:36.193" LastActivityDate="2020-10-11T17:22:36.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20818" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:10:25.853" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning computer code written or used in the context of a research project or other academic endeavour (including questions on licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of academic source code). For other questions on software (related to academic aspects of using the software rather then developing it), use the `software` tag instead. Generic code questions, e.g. help with debugging, are off-topic and will be closed." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-10-11T17:22:27.883" LastActivityDate="2020-10-11T17:22:27.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20819" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:11:41.960" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:11:41.960" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:11:41.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20820" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:11:41.960" Score="0" Body="Concerning the frequent, routine meeting of all members of a particular research group to discuss work, common problems, etc., including how to organize and participate in these meetings." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T19:51:45.177" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T19:51:45.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20821" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:12:41.110" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T18:12:41.110" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:12:41.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20822" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:12:41.110" Score="0" Body="Concerning the freedom to research topics, publish papers and discuss findings free of external censorship or other pressure." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T20:16:04.140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T20:16:04.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20578" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:28:31.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used fully automated testing for programming assignments in a second-year course. We directly showed students their grade and allowed them to re-submit as often as they liked. Students loved it, and it freed up time for the TAs to hold far more office hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We developed our own in-house solution for a second-year Data Structures course. The exercises came with compiling skeleton code and interfaces for the test software to hook into. Students would submit to a web server running a Perl script, which would then compile the code alongside the testing framework, run a number of tests and display the grade. We did not provide the students with the tests, but did display the outcome of each test, usually in a way that made clear where the problem was, without revealing the exact test data. In addition, students were allowed to submit as many times as they liked. We explicitly encouraged them to submit early and often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allowed us to &lt;strong&gt;harshly punish code that doesn't work&lt;/strong&gt;, or gives compile errors (we gave 0 marks for both).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complete uniformity in grading&lt;/strong&gt;. Fully automating the grading meant that solutions that implemented the same functionality would always get the same mark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By being very clear about the requirements, and at the same time being fair by allowing them to re-submit, we significantly &lt;strong&gt;reduced complaints about grading&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We had one TA (myself) who was mainly responsible for developing tests, and one who maintained the submission server. This freed up the other TAs to &lt;strong&gt;hold many more office hours&lt;/strong&gt;. We had TAs available 4 hours per day, every day of the week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Students can correct (and learn from!) their mistakes&lt;/strong&gt; before the grade is final. The good students in particular did not rest before they had a perfect grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can promote plagiarism&lt;/strong&gt;. We did not bother with any plagiarism checks, but this could become a significant problem, especially if assignments are reused from previous years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-functional requirements are hard to test&lt;/strong&gt;. While it is possible to test certain coding style requirements automatically, this is much harder than having a TA look it over. It is also much easier to game these automatic tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can promote 'coding against the tests'&lt;/strong&gt;. Some students did not bother to implement even the most basic correctness tests themself, instead relying purely on the server. For the next iteration of the course, we are considering basing part of the mark on whether student-written tests can succesfully detect our incorrect solutions. This will hopefully force them to think about testing their code as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can shift focus from high-level understanding of the material to implementation details&lt;/strong&gt;. Automated testing relies on the students being able to produce valid code. If the students are struggling with syntax, it can get in the way of higher-level objectives like the algorithms and data structures involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, both the students and the professor and TAs really appreciated this form of grading. The students received instant, unambiguous feedback about their work and the chance to learn from their mistakes while it still counted. At the same time, it allowed the majority of TAs to focus on helping the students understand the material, instead of tedious evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Java testing framework is available on &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/Mangara/checker&quot;&gt;Bitbucket&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, it lacks documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T18:28:31.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20825" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:24:53.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;Sweden&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, Oceania, or the rest of Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:31:28.427" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:31:28.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20826" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:24:53.380" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the Swedish higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or elsewhere in Europe." OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:08:12.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:08:12.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:39:02.470" Score="7" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certain journals (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/home.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Optics Express&lt;/a&gt;) place the references of papers in between the abstract and the article text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.22.012087&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qLyx9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How common is this practice? Is there some specific design reason for this? As a casual reader, I find it disconcerting and annoying, and tend to see it as another barrier between googling the paper and actually getting at the text. However, I understand there may be other workflows for which this is useful. Can anyone point out possible justifications for this practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="820" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T19:52:35.463" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T20:24:15.883" Title="What is the rationale for having references before the article text?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20675" CreationDate="2014-05-12T20:09:51.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, I would go to any journal that fits the subject (i.e., with an editor that should be interested, and know who to sent the paper to). For example I have had recent success with a 2 to 4 pages (depending on formatting) paper in Israel Journal of Math, which is not especially inclined toward short papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T20:09:51.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2014-05-12T20:24:15.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the article consists of three or four parts. Introduction, main text which is your original research and conclusion. There may also be an appendix. &#xA;So, usually most of the citations are from the introduction because you mainly talk about the prevosly done researches there. So, when I read the introduction I have to constantly go back and forth to check the citations, but if the citations are located nearby the introduction, it is more convenient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read sceintific articles a lot and I can say that this is not a common practice in physics. I can't talk about the articles in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T20:24:15.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-12T20:53:08.533" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered offering your professional services for a nominal fee?  I would think $250-500 that a starting price for detailed analysis, and potential support of a mathematical proof would be a fair price.  Of course for one that will require considerably more effort, that fee could be increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are loathe to take the money you could always either donate the fees, or return them to the author.  The primary purpose of the fee is to filter out the random amatuer submissions that have not been well thought or checked out.  I assume that you would not mind doing a few serious reviews a year, if you could avoid the spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="436" LastEditorUserId="436" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T21:27:56.703" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T21:27:56.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20836" CreationDate="2014-05-12T21:06:56.330" Score="38" ViewCount="5242" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of my PhD, I have already published a paper and am working to expand it further. Recently, a PhD student (who I didn't know) from another university contacted me regarding my paper. He showed interest in the paper and the direction that I'm working on, wanted me to explain it further and, if possible, share the framework that I developed and used for experiment so that he could use it for his own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I like to help him as it will be nice if we can come up with some collaboration, I'm afraid that it might turn into an competition instead if he decides to pursue the same direction as mine alone. Since I'm still working on it without any concrete result, it is possible for him to solve it first and publish papers. I'm not saying that he might steal my ideas/tools since he can put my name in an acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:38:23.677" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T00:03:58.290" Title="How much of my ongoing unpublished research should I disclose to others?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20875" CreationDate="2014-05-12T21:34:00.690" Score="11" ViewCount="14927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that after submitting a paper through Elsevier Editorial System, the corresponding author can check the status of the submitted paper online. But how about co-authors? Can the corresponding author give a permission to the co-authors to enable them to check the status of the paper as well? If yes, how that can be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15201" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T10:51:06.630" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T07:38:20.263" Title="How can co-authors check the status of a submitted manuscript in Elsevier Editorial System?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-05-12T21:49:12.703" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly have no &lt;em&gt;obligation&lt;/em&gt; to share your work before you've published it. So you can feel completely free to say &quot;Sorry, this work is still in 'stealth' mode, I'll let you know when I can share more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's helpful to collaborate with someone you know and trust, if you know the collaborative direction will not conflict with your independent work. (For example, I sometimes collaborate with members of my same research group, and share with them ongoing findings on related work that I wouldn't share with outsiders.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But otherwise, you can keep your findings to yourself until you are ready to publish, or until you feel confident that you have enough of a head start that you won't risk getting scooped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T21:54:23.193" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T21:54:23.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-05-12T21:50:22.987" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question! I found myself in similar situations as a student and likewise as a mentor for other students when talking with people working on similar topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A favourite quote of mine is from George Bernard Shaw:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is an ideal philosophy for research in a sense that ideally, everyone should gain from the free exchange of ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you gain experience, you realize that it can be just an ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first experience concerning the cost of openly sharing results was when I was a PhD student. Early on, I had the basics of what seemed like an important result for the community and had some initial results. My supervisor urged me to try and publish but the paper was borderline rejected from the conference with comments like &quot;nice idea but still too early&quot;. I thus published it as a poster in the informal proceedings. In the meanwhile, my supervisor and I had been in conversation about how to progress further, get more results and mature the work. He presented the poster, spoke with various people and told me that he had had lots of interesting conversations: lengthy conversations with two senior researchers in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I continued working on the problem. My supervisor and I had some difference of opinion on the direction the work should go in (theoretical vs. applied CS basically). We got bogged down in some theoretical questions where I felt the impact could be on simplifying the problem and working on the applied side. I missed the next deadline for the conference in our area but lo and behold, two papers were published that pretty much had developed the applied side of the idea. I read the two papers and realized that both had, in parallel, at the same venue, developed the ideas I had been working on ... with one or two interesting side observations. Both works were from groups of the two senior researchers my supervisor had talked to. One cited my informal/preliminary results as an inspiration, the other didn't cite it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four years later, the first paper now has 175 citations in Google Scholar, the second paper has 100, my paper has 41. I published a later paper on the topic that's doing a little better, but for sure, the early birds had taken the worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In part I'm happy that the idea was developed and they did add new ideas, and I've worked on various things since, but I honestly still regret not having formally marked the idea further before my supervisor exposed it. I also regret not being more urgent in getting the full work published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to suggest that you should stay tight-lipped at conferences or turn down all collaborations, but if you're worried about someone entering into competition with you, you might want to listen to that concern. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not share every idea you have when you attend a conference. There are plenty of anecdotes of tight-lipped researchers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles%27_proof_of_Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem&quot;&gt;for example, nobody knew what Andrew Wiles was working on for several years while he was working towards a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the person is someone you can trust and someone who could help in a collaboration, listen to your gut. Test the water and see how knowledgeable they are or how they could contribute. Be careful if you have co-authors, not to talk about their ideas. If you want to collaborate, perhaps publish a technical report or a pre-print to mark your ideas first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, you don't have to tell them about your ideas straight away. Maybe stay quiet for the conference and email them later if you think you want to work together or to tell them about your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T11:55:12.477" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T11:55:12.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20838" CreationDate="2014-05-13T01:08:43.597" Score="7" ViewCount="1970" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a situation where for a particular algorithm, it first shows up in a paper [1]. &#xA;This makes [1] a primary source.&#xA;I found [1] a bit hard reading when it came to describing the implementation and fine details of the algorithm. But it was good at describing why the algorithm was needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found another work, which was a masters thesis [2].&#xA;It included a step by step mathematical working from what was in [1] (and [2] cited [1] appropriately).&#xA;It helped me a lot. I could have done the mathematical working myself, but didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am writing a brief summery of the Algorithm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;{{Foo}}&lt;/em&gt; algorithm allows the &lt;em&gt;{{Bar}}&lt;/em&gt; problem to be solved [1]. It&#xA;  is based on the fact that &lt;em&gt;{{Equation}}&lt;/em&gt; holds under &lt;em&gt;{{Conditions}}&lt;/em&gt; [2].&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;{{My own explanation of {{Foo}} here}}&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2015-01-09T01:17:45.843" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T01:17:45.843" Title="How to cite the original source of an algorithm and a secondary source that provides a clearer description of the algorithm?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20837" CreationDate="2014-05-13T01:16:11.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is correct only if the source of the first sentence is exclusively [1] and the source of your second sentence is exclusively [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if you learn &quot;The {{Foo}} algorithm allows the {{Bar}} problem to be solved&quot; from [1] without having read [2], and &quot;It is based on the fact that {{Equation}} holds under {{Conditions}}&quot; is an original contribution of [2] that is not in [1], then your citation is correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you may have to cite [1,2] for the first and/or second sentence as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T01:16:11.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20840" CreationDate="2014-05-13T01:17:42.810" Score="8" ViewCount="1416" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I should assure you this is a question about life in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently studying for a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university. I also have a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence from another top university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get a lot of pleasure when I study and understand new ideas. I won't say studying mathematics is easy but in general I do not encounter significant difficulties to understand theorems and proofs when I sit down and go through them. I have also done a fair amount of research. I am preparing for publication my previous Master's dissertation and my current supervisor wants to take me on for a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can handle research and I know I can understand thoroughly a subject.  However, I feel extremely superficial. I almost always do the bare minimum. For example, the way I study for an exam involves reading all of the lecture notes to get a feel for the general ideas. Then I understand how these ideas fit together. I go through some of the details and I ensure that in principle I could understand them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I get in a conflicting state. I feel complacent because I have determined that in principle it is just a matter of time to work out the details and this just feels tedious. When I do try to work out the details I feel extreme repugnance. Forcing myself to do it leads to breakdowns but I've learned to manage that. This struggle continues with the result that I usually get an A or a B or the bare minimum to satisfy my supervisor if I'm working on a research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot overcome this dreadful feeling and this issue often stands in the way when I try to develop my own ideas. The first glimpse of understanding the principles of a concept leads to inability to invest any more effort in developing my ideas. Then, I find myself reading some easily digestible article on the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to continue doing research and stay in academia. But I often feel helpless. I have tried a lot of schemes to motivate myself, including trying to talk myself into persisting, reading self-help books, and devising an axiomatic system to explain to myself what it means to be interested in something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is of course incremental improvement but far from efficiency. I cannot imagine myself doing anything else but research. However, I feel that once I get into pure research and there is no more explicit structure I would get completely lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I motivate myself to persist in such a situation? How can I overcome such complacency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T01:46:47.700" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T01:47:34.843" Title="How to motivate myself to do more than the bare minimum that is required of me?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20839" CreationDate="2014-05-13T01:47:34.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was reading your question, I was thinking &quot;did I just wrote that myself and erased it from my memory&quot;? I just started my PhD in Mathematics, having obtained my Master's Degree last semester..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You pointed several problems we face as students of Mathematics who are trying to become researchers. One of them, which has drawn most of my attention, is this 'repugnance' from the details of something you already been through. I usually deal with this situation as follows: some of those details (in a proof, in a exercise, etc) are either too boring or too hard. If they're too boring, I usually make sure myself that I can remember them should I need them (in a exam, for example). If they're too hard, I usually try to convince myself that it won't be in the exam of the subject I'm studying for (this does not mean that I study only for exams!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I am done with some subject, I choose another one to keep studying. As a PhD student I usually feel that there are a lot os subjects I should have mastered and a lot other which I should have some knowledge of. I usually use those 'confliting states' to switch to another subject which I have chosen by myself (not related to the lectures I'm attending). For example, I'm now having Several Variables Holomorphic Functions and Riemannian Geometry courses, but also reading a textbook of Theory of Foliations since I'm sure I'll need it next semester. It's not my priority though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, keep in mind that you're not striving for the minimum at all times. Reaching a PhD course after obtaining your Master's degree is a really big deal. Are you really sure that A's and B's are the minimum that keeps your advisor satisfied? My advisor complimented me on my grades from Master's Degree Courses once, and it was full of B's, two A's and one ugly C!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6087" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T01:47:34.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20851" CreationDate="2014-05-13T03:26:35.857" Score="124" ViewCount="39017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at the moment dealing with an academic dishonesty incident in a class I'm teaching (a few groups of students submitting identical code, when the class policy forbids getting help from another person on a graded assignment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I noticed indications of plagiarism, I emailed each affected student something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The code you submitted is nearly identical to another student's work. Can you comment on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their reactions mainly fall into three categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I made a mistake and I take full responsibility for it, I hope you will let me make it up but I understand if you can't.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I talked about the assignment with another student, but I didn't copy anyone's code.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; But then when I inform them they're getting a zero grade for the assignment, they don't argue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I didn't do it! You can't give me a zero grade for the assignment when I didn't cheat, I refuse to accept a zero grade.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, I appreciate honesty, and doubling down on a lie seems like something that should be punished. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone adjusting penalties like this, so I'm wondering if there's some reason I shouldn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not clear to me what the relative difference in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would very much appreciate answers based on research and/or experience with policies like this, rather than just opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My school has no official policy on the matter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="15241" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T18:36:11.430" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T21:03:20.393" Title="Is it ethical/acceptable to give a lighter penalty to students who admit to cheating?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="27" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T06:32:25.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems tricky to answer but I'll try put some thoughts out there ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective part of the equation boils down to you incentivising honesty and deincentivising dishonesty. You will set a precedent that &quot;owning up&quot; lightens the punishment so folks are more likely to &quot;own up&quot;. If students owning up increases the effectiveness of your teaching/course administration, then that's a win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's also not clear to me what the relative different in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you have to balance leniency with punishment: if a student just needs to &quot;own up&quot; after a crime to mitigate any punishment, then you are not deincentivising the original cheating enough any more. The punishment should fit the crime: thus you need to decide the severity of the original crime versus the claims of the different groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would very much appreciate answers based on research and/or experience with policies like this, rather than just opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principle is identical to why people plead &quot;Guilty&quot; in court. They get some leniency in return for simplifying the courtroom process. So maybe there's something in the legal literature that could give you an idea (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1340292?uid=3737784&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21104011697567&quot;&gt;random search result&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways that was the abstract answer. To give a more concrete suggestion ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... you could tell the students that you have proof that they cheated and tell them that they will get 0 marks for every assignment until they own up. This seems like a nice way of matching the crime for the punishment: the longer they continue to lie and cheat, the more they are punished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T06:32:25.430" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20837" CreationDate="2014-05-13T06:40:24.927" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something like this should be OK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Bar&lt;/em&gt; problem can be solved using the &lt;em&gt;Foo&lt;/em&gt; algorithm [1], which is based on&#xA;  the fact that &lt;em&gt;Equation&lt;/em&gt; holds under &lt;em&gt;Conditions&lt;/em&gt;. A useful and detailed exposition of the &lt;em&gt;Foo&lt;/em&gt; algorithm and how to implement it in practice can be found in [2]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9305" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T06:40:24.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T06:45:25.873" Score="28" ViewCount="3280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 29 years old and am about to finish my PhD thesis in the field of remote sensing (i.e. somewhere between computer sciences and geosciences in a broad sense or applied signal and image processing in a more narrow sense) at a university in central Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the fact that there are only few tenure positions available in science and I would rather stay in my (economically strong) home region, I want to find a position in industry in the long term. However, I have received an interesting offer for a post-doc / scientist position in a new-to-be-founded research group with great funding and cutting edge research in the applied signal processing field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question now is: Will some additional years in academia harm my chances concerning a job in industry? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in the post-doc position, I would be the deputy of the group leader (who is soon to receive a full professor/tenure position)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd be responsible for staff management and some budget issues (about 20% of time)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd have the chance to travel to international conferences&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the application the signal processing research is carried out for is not directly industry-relevant&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have received an invitation to an interview for an R&amp;amp;D job at an automotive company, but it is scheduled only in 3 weeks, while I have to decide for the post-doc offer sooner rather than later&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15216" LastEditorUserId="31917" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T15:03:45.920" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T15:03:45.920" Title="Will taking a post-doc position harm my future chances in industry?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20846" CreationDate="2014-05-13T07:09:33.680" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not talk directly about remote sensing, but in computer science, a postdoc does not &lt;em&gt;harm&lt;/em&gt; your chances to go into industry directly ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... but unfortunately it will also likely not &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you much when applying for an industry job. That is, I would expect that your CV for an industrial job is about as strong after the postdoc than before. Given that there are opportunity costs for working in a postdoc for (presumably) multiple years (lower salary, lost opportunity to build up experience that is more directly helpful in industry jobs, etc.), you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; certainly pay for doing this postdoc if you look at the grander picture (lifetime earnings, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would be the deputy of the group leader (who is soon to receive a full professor / tenure position) - I'd be responsible for staff management and some budget issues (about 20% of time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like you will have actual management experience after your postdoc. If you find the right company, these are certainly points that will help your case afterwards. However, some of my colleagues have made the experience that there are a surprisingly large number of companies in central europe that summarily dismiss everything you do at a university as &quot;not really management&quot; (mostly due to a lack of understanding that university labs also have to deal with budgets, hiring, people issues, etc.). Not sure how representative these word-of-mouth tales are, but it is something to keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T07:09:33.680" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T07:24:58.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a really good question, that I generally often wonder about myself when dealing with plagiarism. As such, I don't have a fully fledged answer, just some thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, most courts are supposed to lower the punishment if you plead guilty of a crime, so there is certainly precedence for this. That being said, looking at court practice also gives a feeling of the downside of this. In general, people accused of a crime tend to plead Not Guilty as long as they see a reasonable chance of getting away, and plead Guilty if it is clear that they will be sentenced anyway. Pretty much the same thing also tends to happen for plagiarising students - they will deny until presented with sufficient evidence, at which point they own up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the one hand, I appreciate honesty, and doubling down on a lie seems like something that should be punished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know. The honesty thing basically flew out the window when they were trying to cheat the first time, right? I don't see a huge difference in &lt;em&gt;honesty levels&lt;/em&gt; between either of the three cases. As discussed above, I don't consider somebody smart enough to recognise a lost case as significantly &lt;em&gt;more honest&lt;/em&gt; than somebody who has a strategy of denial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's also not clear to me what the relative different in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the same groups of students in my cases of plagiarism, and for now I generally treat them the same. I am open to good counter-arguments, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T07:24:58.360" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T08:00:54.517" Score="1" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there are workshops offered to people who want to prepare application to Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowships (now part of the Individual Fellowships offered by them). I am trying to find out when the next workshop is or the general schedule of such workshops over the year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to find online information on them, without much success, I noticed some heavily charged workshops that happened before. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where can I find information and schedule of such workshops? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are they always held by the authority/organization offering Marie Curie fellowships? Or, there could be other universities wanting to get Marie Curie postdocs and hence could offer a workshop?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &quot;local&quot; workshop for a region, for example, people from Spain might not want to travel to Germany etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there free ones, or is a fee always required?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:56:43.977" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T23:14:47.393" Title="Workshop(s) for application to Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellowships (formerly IIF, IEF and IOF, now just IF)" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;&lt;eu&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T08:26:55.917" Score="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL; DR:&lt;/strong&gt; We adjust the penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sit on my department's Academic Misconduct Committee so unfortunately I see a lot of these cases. The University policy has created two similarly sounding, but different terms: academic misconduct and poor academic practice, with academic misconduct being much more severe than poor academic practice. Every student suspected of having engaged in poor academic practice is called into a meeting with the Academic Misconduct Committee. This committee looks at the evidence supporting academic misconduct/poor practice and hears the student's case which generally includes what training they have had about good academic practice, how the incident happened, and any evidence of extenuating circumstances (e.g., death in the family). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this process we can come to one of 3 decisions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not poor academic practice, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;poor academic practice, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic misconduct. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we decide that they did not engage in poor academic practice, the incident is essentially purged from the system. If the student is called in again in the future, we do not nominally know that they had been called in before. If we decide that it was poor academic practice, the students are warned and it is documented. We are not allowed to apply formal penalties in the case of poor academic practice. If they are called in again we know from the documentation and are unlikely to give them the benefit of the doubt a second time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we decide that academic misconduct has occurred we can apply one of a number of different penalties to the work: no reduction of the mark, remark the work with the offending material removed or reduce the mark commensurate with the misconduct (anywhere from a 5% penalty to a 0 for the piece of work). A second incident of academic misconduct results in the penalty being decided on by a university panel and starts with a zero for the class and can go as high as a zero for the year. In this way there is a big difference between poor academic practice and academic misconduct with no reduction in the mark since poor academic practice does not count as a first offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within this framework the committee is faced with how to handle the students who admit the issue and the ones who deny the issue. Those who argue they didn't cheat and have no explanation as to how their assignment matches another's work are almost always found guilty of academic misconduct since they are not willing to help us create a case for poor academic practice. More often than not they receive a 0 since we have no evidence that mitigates the penalty. For students who admit what they did, we often consider poor academic practice as an outcome since they describe what they did and realize it was wrong. Sometimes the offense is too blatant to let off without a reduction, but generally saying what you did wrong and how you will not let it happen again reduces the penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T17:23:19.047" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T17:23:19.047" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:00:41.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it naive to propose a solution along these lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone denies cheating i.e. situations 2/3 you outlined (which may all be lies, or one guy/gal having their work copied by the others, with/without their permission) 0% for everyone. They get the opportunity to submit a new assignment but with a cap on the maximum mark say 70%, or a mark rescaling e.g. they get 60% but their mark is rescaled from out of 100 to out of 70, so their grade reads 42%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an involved party owns up i.e, situation 1 you outlined, the involved parties get 0% but the opportunity to submit another similar assignment with no mark cap/rescaling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure of the relative workload for you the assessor of having a few 'extra' possible assignments available for this kind of circumstance, but as I see it, a solution along these lines accomplishes several things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Cheating/collusion when inappropriate is punished heavily, either resulting in 0% or a lot of extra work to try and make the marks back. This will act as a strong dissuasive influence for cheating both on individual and group levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The genuinely penitent (perhaps those who had something else on their plate and are otherwise diligent, one-time offender types) will have an opportunity to 'right their wrongs' and achieve a maximum mark (in theory, in practice they won't have as much time to do the assignment as it will overlap with other work, so their mark will likely be lower, again acting to dissuade a repeat offence as they struggle with the time cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative, harsher implementation of such a solution would be to allow no resubmission if no one owns up, and submission for a lower cap/down scaled grade for honesty. This results in lower workload for you as the assessor, while still clearly rewarding honesty, strongly punishing cheating and being more balanced than just awarding 0%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:00:41.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20857" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:06:02.857" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:06:02.857" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:06:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20858" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:06:02.857" Score="0" Body="A business school is a university-level institution or faculties, colleges, or departments within the university, that teach predominantly business courses that confers degrees in business administration or management." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:16:50.107" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:16:50.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20859" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:10:12.173" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:10:12.173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:10:12.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20860" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:10:12.173" Score="0" Body="A fellowship can relate merit-based scholarship, or form of academic financial aid. It can also be a title used to denote an academic research position at a university." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:16:57.357" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:16:57.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20861" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:15:23.503" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:15:23.503" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:15:23.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20862" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:15:23.503" Score="0" Body="A database is a systematized collection of data that can be accessed immediately and manipulated by a data-processing system for a specific purpose. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:16:54.027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:16:54.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20864" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:18:49.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this tag for questions about the use of modern technology in academic life, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use of cell phones, laptops, tablets, or other electronic devices for teaching, learning, or cheating&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;course material distributed via the Internet&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;presentation technologies (also use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/presentation&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;presentation&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;presentation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that there is a separate tag for &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/audio-video-recording&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;audio-video-recording&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;audio-video-recording&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; intended for technology as a subject of research or means of research. The tags &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/code&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;code&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;code&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/engineering&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;engineering&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;engineering&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/computer-science&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;computer-science&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;computer-science&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/physics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;physics&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;physics&lt;/a&gt; may be appropriate here, but keep in mind that questions about the content of your research are off-topic on this site anyway. Something similar applies to questions about teaching &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32436" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T11:30:30.987" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T11:30:30.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20865" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:18:49.380" Score="0" Body="Questions about the interplay of modern technology (e.g., electronic devices) with academic life. Do not use this for technology used as a subject or means of research." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T01:45:09.270" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T01:45:09.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20866" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:27:24.230" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:27:24.230" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:27:24.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20867" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:27:24.230" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to correspondence which is normally communication by way exchange of letters/emails etc." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:36:09.553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:36:09.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20868" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:52:45.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Public Domain is explained as such in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public domain wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property&#xA;  rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable.&#xA;  Examples include the works of Shakespeare and Beethoven, most of the&#xA;  early silent films, the formulae of Newtonian physics, and powered&#xA;  flight. The term is not normally applied to situations where the&#xA;  creator of a work retains residual rights, in which case use of the&#xA;  work is referred to as &quot;under license&quot; or &quot;with permission&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As rights are country-based and vary, a work may be subject to rights&#xA;  in one country and not in another. Some rights depend on registrations&#xA;  with a country-by-country basis, and the absence of registration in a&#xA;  particular country, if required, implies public domain status in that&#xA;  country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T14:12:49.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T14:12:49.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20869" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T10:52:45.007" Score="0" Body="Public-domain related to the status of a literary work or an invention whose copyright or patent has expired or that never had such protection. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T12:03:58.870" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T12:03:58.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-13T11:17:03.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has been asked more in the mathematical sciences than anywhere else. An interesting text on the topic (with advice) is &lt;strong&gt;A Budget of Trisections&lt;/strong&gt; by Underwood Dudley. It is probably available somewhere cheaper than on amazon &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0387965688&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dudley&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(I found some related work on scribd.com.)&lt;/em&gt; If you are dealing with an intelligent and younger person, it might be useful to point out that your time is limited and that they might benefit from reading that text. The lesson I learned there is that practically no older amateur will take your advice when it is pointed out that they tried to prove something extremely hard or know-to-be-unprovable. Today this all happens online, and you should also look at John Baez's crackpot index at &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&lt;/a&gt; , I assume there must be a mathematical version. (translate Einstein to Ramanujan, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15221" LastEditorUserId="15221" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T04:27:24.237" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T04:27:24.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T11:21:57.763" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the response, you could punish subsequent lies. If someone cheats, gets a punishment. When confronted about that, if they recognize it, you don't take further action. But, if they give you a blatantly false explanation, they may get punished for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A (sadly) real case example: one student submitted exactly the same report than a previous one. When confronted about it, he claimed that he had done it, but when generating the PDF, it was somehow transformed in the other student's report, with only the name changed. This is being caught in a lie and try to avoid it treating the instructor as stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding some research: Wikipedia links &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol103/iss1/1/&quot;&gt;a paper&lt;/a&gt; where some subjects were falsely accused of academic cheating and offer a lenient punishment if they recognised the fact. 56% of them plead guilty to avoid the risk of bigger punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T11:21:57.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20872" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T11:45:18.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;Japan&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Europe, Oceania, or the rest of Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:31:47.760" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:31:47.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20873" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T11:45:18.790" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to the Japanese higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Europe, or elsewhere in Asia." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:07:45.030" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:07:45.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13566" CreationDate="2014-05-13T12:16:04.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't let one setback keep you from pursuing your goals or dreams. Yes, it's bad that you failed your quals, but that doesn't mean you should just give up. Having supportive committee members will help a lot when applying to other schools or programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T12:16:04.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20834" CreationDate="2014-05-13T12:46:10.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is No, he/she cannot cannot give any permission to the co-authors after submission to EES and before acceptance, as mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/279/p/7923/related/1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a co-author on the paper, I would like to be able to see the&#xA;  status of the manuscript. I have the manuscript number and I am&#xA;  registered on the journal website.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;After submission, you can only see the status of a submitted paper via&#xA;  the corresponding author's EES homepage. You will not be able to&#xA;  search for this submission via your own author's EES homepage.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just the corresponding author can check the status before acceptance. But after acceptance, co-author can track the status as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;After acceptance, the article is recorded in our tracking system, you&#xA;  can use the production reference number along with the Corresponding&#xA;  Author's name to track your paper status and add your paper to your&#xA;  personal homepage on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle&quot;&gt;http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15201" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T11:11:59.333" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T11:11:59.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13566" CreationDate="2014-05-13T12:59:19.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do whatever is up to you to achieve your goals. Don't focus on the previous events but rather try to get some lessons from them not to repeat them in the future. &#xA;Try to focus on your advantages. It seems that you are not in a bad situation. You have a supportive supervisor, not bad scores. Besides, if there is a procedure of reapplying, it means that they also know that someone may need a second chance. &#xA;So, answering your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certainly. At the end you may say, at least I tried everything. Just keep moving and you will see the directions. If you are staying in the same place, you will never know whether your path is right or not. Give it a try.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have to justify anything. If they ask, then slightly explain the situation. They are not monsters. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can apply to a few places simultaneously. Of course it is worth trying. If you have time to manage that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it was mentioned, you can also try to apply to another programs in your or other universities (if you want)/&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastEditorUserId="15166" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:06:38.947" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:06:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20877" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:01:18.933" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:01:18.933" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:01:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20878" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:01:18.933" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to syllabus which is an outline or summary of the subjects of a course of lectures or the contents of a curriculum." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:06:12.983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:06:12.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:02:30.863" Score="12" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, a student was arrested for downloading ~4 million articles from an on-line database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a &quot;collection&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out warnings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T17:57:57.810" Title="How much can one download from databases before it is too much?" Tags="&lt;databases&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20883" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:04:27.390" Score="11" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing writing a manuscript in collaboration with a dozen of colleagues. The paper is mainly theoretical, does not involved experimentation of any kind and is born from numerous discussions between all the collaborators (it is actually hard to tell when the project started). No one really took the lead in the project, at least not during the whole time (for meeting setup and so someone had to take the lead, but only temporary). In addition, the ten collaborators are coming from 6-7 different research groups and universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case, when everyone as more or less the exact same contribution, what is the best way to determine the author order on the paper, without making any diplomacy misstep? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: in my field , alphabetical order is really not common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS2: we do not have time for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scieastereggs.tumblr.com/post/59024356366/croquet-yeah-thats-the-way-we-all-do-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;25 games croquet tournament&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T03:51:55.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:32:14.130" Title="How to define author order of a collaborative paper where all authors have contributed equally?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20881" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:06:09.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A glossary a list of terms in a special subject, field, or area of usage, with accompanying definitions. Examples would include a list at the back of a book, explaining or defining difficult or unusual words and expressions used in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Glossary page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:09:29.517" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:09:29.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20882" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:06:09.293" Score="0" Body="A glossary is a list of terms in a special subject, field, or area of usage, with accompanying definitions. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T02:02:52.280" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T02:02:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20880" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:10:42.980" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your field does not normally do standard alphabetical ordering, then its use here might signify that something unusual is going on. So you could in principle list everybody in alphabetical order, identify the corresponding author, and then insert a note in the acknowledgments that everyone contributed more or less equally to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, in some fields, papers can be authored by &quot;teams&quot; instead of individuals—although all the individuals participating in the team are cited somewhere. This is more typical when the collaborations run to the hundreds of authors rather than a few to a dozen. If the journal you submit to allows this, it would probably be the fairest option of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:10:42.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20879" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:39:36.250" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to this article, a student was arrested for downloading ~4&#xA;  million articles from an on-line database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was an extreme case. He had history of downloading and releasing large amount of information. In this JSTOR case, I don't think he had actually released the articles, although the indication was strong. He was charged with &quot;unlawfully breaking in a protected computer,&quot; which I guess he probably downloaded the paper with unusual means, perhaps using codes or hacks. Overall, the whole case was very politically charged and I will not use that as a benchmark in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before&#xA;  writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several&#xA;  thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's&#xA;  database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a&#xA;  &quot;collection&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there are several thousands of articles that are pertinent to your research interest in ONE paper, I would suggest you to refine your research interest. And no, you don't need to review &lt;em&gt;all existing articles&lt;/em&gt;, just pick the important seminal works, and then trace the major works along a very well define research interest. You can also use a few prominent modern works as seeds and use their reference list to snow ball your library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases&#xA;  start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out&#xA;  warnings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to download as much as you want as long as you follow the instructions and rules. For large download volume, I'd check with the librarian to clarify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What the institutional limit is. There may be a download limit and if you'd get a warning letter it's likely from your school because your thousands of download could have cost them a lot more than usual. Some school libraries may ban accounts associated with a large download volume as well; it's better to give the librarian a heads up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your student account payment scheme. Some schools may have limit and beyond which the students may have to pay. I know that this is certainly possible for inter-library loan (which you may have to do if a few thousands paper is your goal.) A peer of mine got billed for more than US$500 because she ordered about a hundred papers through inter-library loan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T16:14:41.627" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:14:41.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:48:55.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a law major, but from an ethical standpoint I say &lt;em&gt;same crime same penalty&lt;/em&gt;, anything else would be unethical. The motivations for the offense, likewise the reactions after being caught is irrelevant in the eye of the fact that the student in question &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; cheat and s/he &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; know that it was unethical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;, and IMHO &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;, adjust is how to handle these students afterwards. The students who were sorry for having cheated or had some understandable reason for &lt;em&gt;having to cheat&lt;/em&gt; might be given a chance to prove themselves. You can, for instance, have an extra session where the material at hand is reviewed lightly, focusing on the questions which baffled the students the most. In that way, they still get a chance to learn the material (that is the main motivation in giving assignment in the first place, right?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end we are dealing with adults who should have a sense of reasoning, and consequences of their actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:48:55.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T14:58:37.287" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my uni, almost every assignment has to be orally defended in front of the T.A. after it was submitted. This defense proves that the student understood the assignment and has acquired the necessary knowledge from it.&#xA;When students cheat, this can be found out before the defense (by reviewing the assignment) or at the defense, due to insufficient knowledge demonstrated. In one case or the other, the T.A. decides on the actions taken. In most cases, the offer is standard &quot;If we continue/begin with the examination, and I arrive to the conclusion that there was &quot;cheating&quot; involved, I'll take it up with the Academic Committee. However, if you admit and explain now, I'll fail you the assignment this term and you can redo it yourself for the next.&quot; Of course, the exact circumstance wary based upon the conduct, manners and attitude of the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping this in mind, my friends roommate, took the homework from some student which took it from some other, ... etc the result being that for that term ca. 5 identical versions of the same assignment were handed. When the defense came, he had additionally the bad luck that the professor himself was examining. The course of the initial conversation went something like this:&#xA;&quot;Did you do this by yourself?&quot;&#xA;&quot;Yes, of course.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Did you borrow your code or granted insight to other students.&quot;&#xA;&quot;No.&quot;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;the professor takes 3 identical copies under different names from under his desk and lays them on the table&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&quot;Would you care to explain this?&quot;&#xA;&quot;I have no explanation, my assignment is my own and has nothing to do with these&quot;&#xA;&quot;So it's just a coincidence then?&quot;&#xA;&quot;I guess so&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the professor proceeded to examine him, which lasted for more than 40 minutes (instead of the usual 5-10), but did not fail the guy in the end, because he took effort to learn what was going on in the assignment and what was required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the professor seemingly valued more his knowledge and confidence than the fact that he took someone's assignment and blatantly and shamelessly lied his way through the examination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story also points to the obvious pitfall in the above approach, i.e. to prove from which of the students the assignment originated, as he requires special treatment in any case and can't be punished ad hoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T14:58:37.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20891" CreationDate="2014-05-13T15:03:04.593" Score="19" ViewCount="1636" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I previously asked this question in the physics forum (tag soft-question), but was convinced that it better suits in the academia forum. So I deleted it and posted it here.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was recently asked to review a paper for a well-established physical journal, but as I have a lot to do in the moment, I'm tempted to refuse it. This is even more the case since I quit my scientific carreer roughly a year ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my question: &lt;strong&gt;particularly outside physics, what are the benefits of being a referee?&lt;/strong&gt; [beside the idealistic attitude of &quot;bringing on physics&quot; -- this is a valuable point in principle, but in reality, I've been long enough in the business to know that this is hardly the case for most papers. In contrast, most papers originate due to the need to continuously publish, a thing which I consider to be wrong].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people in science, I see a clear opportunity in being a referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, it gives you a connection to the journal editors and contributes to your authority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, by concentrating on the paper, you are forced to learn something on your topic which might help you later. Further, you might be able to add citations to your own work and thus increase your influence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Third, from a global point of view, you have to do it since you also expect your own papers to be reviewed (although this point is somewhat of a social dilemma, since [neglecting the previous points] it would be better to review as few as possible and concentrate on your own research).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15231" LastEditorUserId="15231" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T15:25:49.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:13:54.737" Title="Personal advantages of being a referee once you quit science?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20888" CreationDate="2014-05-13T15:59:48.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how universal is this but in my country there is a proverbial saying &quot;learn a craft and leave it, and when you're hungry squeeze it&quot;. Since here the &quot;craft&quot; is personal networks, and personal networks do not let you &quot;squeeze&quot; them easily once you have &quot;left&quot; them, then reviewing papers every now and then should not be too heavy an investment in an &lt;em&gt;uncertain&lt;/em&gt; prospect -which could be returning back in science, but also it could be something else you cannot imagine right now. Ask any freelancer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the editors &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that you have left your scientific career? If yes, their invitation may say something about their opinion of you. But if they don't know it, I would suggest to make it clear right now: if they are happy to keep their invitation standing, then everybody knows you are doing them a favor. If they want to recall their invitation in light of this information, you will avoid possible later embarrassments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8575" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T16:13:54.737" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:13:54.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20888" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:00:02.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have quit the scientific community altogether and are working as say, a fisherman, then there will obviously be no professional gain from continuing to review papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to (maybe) return to the scientific community  at some stage, having reviewed some papers might help you make the case in an interview that you've been keeping up to date with the literature, but it's still not a strong advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's not much to be had in terms of professional benefit in this scenario. The question then is whether or not you feel there's a personal benefit for you: maybe you find the paper(s) interesting to read and learn about, maybe the editor is a friend of yours and you'd like to keep their favour, maybe you like that warm feeling you get when you help progress science a little ... answering these questions are entirely up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(All I know is that if I wasn't in an academic career, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I would be reviewing the papers in my area for the &quot;fun of it&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:00:02.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20888" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:01:43.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, refereeing papers in subject X is a non-negligible part of being a professional academic in subject X.  So the premise that you want to referee a physics paper having &quot;quit science&quot; seems moderately self-contradictory: using your expert level qualifications to evaluate a scientific work is being a scientist, isn't it?  I'm almost sure it is. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess you haven't &quot;quit science&quot; completely, or -- and this may come to the same thing -- the physics community is not fully aware of this fact.  One thing I might do if I were you is to make sure that the editor who asked you to review the paper knows that you are no longer employed as a physicist.  If I were an editor, that would be useful information, and unless I knew you rather well and knew that you retained a special expertise in this particular area, I would probably select someone else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's clear that you no longer have any kind of ethical obligation or professional expectation of reviewing papers.  I also suspect that once the community understands that you really are doing something else now your referee requests will come rarely or cease altogether.  So this is probably a decision that you need to make more for any particular paper than as a general life decision.  I would say: if you feel just as qualified to referee the paper as before and if you want to referee the paper, then do it.  For instance, if you see something valuable in the paper that you think that some other qualified person might miss, then it might be a nice parting gift &quot;to science&quot; to speak out for the worth of this research.  On the other hand, if it's just business as usual (or worse, motivated by &quot;the need to continuously publish&quot;): well, you don't have to clean the bathrooms in the apartment that you're not renting anymore, do you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have thoughts of breaking back into science later on, then I think you need to think seriously about how to keep your connections and your intellectual life, um, alive.  There are many aspects to this, and making sure that you continue to referee papers is not, so far as I can see, especially close to the top of the list.  If I'm looking at the CV of someone who left academia for a while and is trying to come back (and it does happen), I will look to the work they have done recently and their plans for work in the near future.  I don't really care whether they've refereed some papers in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:01:43.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20894" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:08:29.020" Score="2" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project for undergraduate thesis. Then, I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/nui055/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter VBI-6.   Hand and Finger Detection&lt;/a&gt;. In the Downloads section, there's code that we can download and launched. I want to use it and have to modify or tweak it to suit my project. The problem is that, I don't know whether it's allowed or not to make a modification to the code presented. Inside, I found this sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you use this code, please mention my name, and include a link&#xA;  to the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;use&quot;, may I tweak the code as long as I refer to the coder? I'm confused because I found nothing about its license inside the code, like, GNU-GPL or MIT...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm so sorry if my question is wrong. If so, please tell why and maybe where I can ask it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15236" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:48:23.233" Title="May I modify the code/program for my undergraduate thesis project?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:39:01.503" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a criminal justice perspective (I have not had to deal with such egregious situations in the classroom.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation for &lt;em&gt;punishment&lt;/em&gt; generally falls under the philosophies of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation &amp;amp; restoration. The US's penal law system is based on retribution; that is you've committed a wrong against society, and it is societies duty to exact a punishment somehow equivalent to that wrong. My experience is people tend to frame the motivation for punishment &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; in retributive terms, even if it is not really appropriate for the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All institutions I have been associated with have official committees that evaluate student misconduct - and cheating is their main calling. Assuming such a committee exists in your school, you should report the students behavior &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; it should be clear in your syllabus that is the consequence of cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely the said committee will cover any retributive actions necessary to fulfill any harms to society, so the question then becomes &lt;em&gt;what do you do to the students&lt;/em&gt; in response to the behavior? This depends on your goals of the punishment to begin with. I strongly feel your role should not be to exact further retribution beyond what the schools official academic policy calls for - so that leaves deterrence, rehabilitation &amp;amp; restoration. (If you even have discretion at this point beyond your schools official policy for cheating.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies in criminal justice tend to find that the severity of punishment is only weakly linked to deterrence - the probability of being caught is a much stronger influence on whether the student will commit the behavior. Pretty much &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; sort of note to the individual student that you caught them cheating will likely &lt;em&gt;prevent&lt;/em&gt; future cheating. Even absent of punishment, this is a strong signal that their probability of being caught is high. My limited experience just letting students know &quot;Your homework looks an awfully lot like the student who sits next to you.&quot; - effectively ended that behavior (although your situation is clearly beyond that point.) So you need not be worried about &quot;letting them off the hook&quot; (especially if they have been referred to the student misconduct panel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming letting the student know they have been caught is common-place, that then just leaves rehabilitation and/or restoration. Punishments oriented towards these perspectives often go hand in hand. One immediate example that comes to mind is to have the offending students lead a classroom discussion on the material they cheated on (this would be better for only one or two students though). Others may be extra-curricular activities, especially those that give back to the rest of the class (e.g. make them host a study session). Public shaming is an incredibly strong deterrent, e.g. just making them stand up in front of the class and admit their wrong-doing, but I am not sure if this violates other privacy mandates about grades and such things. (Restorative justice on its face may seem awkward since it is a victimless crime, but that doesn't make the potential punishments I suggest here any less reasonable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway it is preferable that in the future to be &lt;em&gt;very specific&lt;/em&gt; in your syllabus about what will happen. Otherwise it appears ad-hoc and can be construed as prejudiced toward any particular student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of relation to &quot;admitting a wrong&quot; - this philosophically should not have any bearing on the punishment that the offender receives. It is unfortunate a few conflations are being presented here in terms of &lt;em&gt;plea bargaining&lt;/em&gt; - which is really a negative externality of the criminal justice system and the need to triage. When you plea bargain you concede to receiving a punishment for a lesser crime - you don't even have to admit you did anything wrong (e.g. you can plead &quot;no contest&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The significance of admitting a wrong though is often placed on the other end of the system. It is often a requirement of parole that the offender admit their wrongdoing in front of the board before they are granted parole. In terms of restorative justice a key event is often just placing the offender in front of the victim and having the offender admit their wrong-doing. (Cooperation tends to be higher for offenders than you might expect - typically victims have a lower rate of cooperation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T16:52:17.317" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:52:17.317" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:48:23.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is an ambiguous enough statement from the author about licensing, that I would simply send them an email and ask what they would allow. You can make your decision on whether to use it after you know whether you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also ask your advisor if this kind of work is acceptable for your project. If the project requires more self-work, you need to know that before you use too much of this code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you do use it, don't forget to cite it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:48:23.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:03:20.897" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be absolutely sure who the parties are and exactly what their involvement is.  Having two (or more) identical papers is often not enough to know who cheated.  Further, sometimes the shame involved is not enough for someone to confess in order to try again.  Finally, as we've learned from other areas, sometimes people will confess to things they never did just to try and get past the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach in the situation where I suspect cheating is to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Call each student in for a review.  This should be back to back, but behind closed doors.  Preferably where each student didn't know the others were also there; although that may be difficult.  I'd recommend having two people present during the review in order to try and be unbiased in the analysis.  Take notes and discuss after you have heard everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have them discuss the work with a focus on how they arrived at their paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For anyone that was successful in defending the work, I'd give them normal marks.  For anyone that was unsuccessful I'd give them a zero and a warning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't ask any of them if they cheated.  However, if during the course of the review someone confessed then I'd ask for the full details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they attempted to blame others, it would still be a zero.  If they took full responsibility for their actions then I'd give them 24 hours to complete the assignment themselves with an 80% being the max possible grade.  If it ever occurred again then I'd escalate it per university guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11585" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T17:03:20.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20846" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:05:48.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the life sciences areas related to medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, it's possible to gain a benefit from doing a postdoc with a PI who him/herself has great industry contacts. Off the top of my head, I think some factors to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to get into a subspeciality within your field where the PI has a strong reputation in the industry, and you are looking to strengthen your credentials within that subspecialty with your publication record and networking, I think a postdoc is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want to focus on a more basic research area in your future career, then a strong postdoc where you guide much of your own research is a good idea. If you're not interested in self-directed basic research, maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your postdoc efforts will be diluted substantially by administrative tasks as you imply, I'd be a little concerned and try to get this clarified. You would be taking this job to improve your academic and research credentials, and few people will give you much credit for doing even a superior job in the administrative role of your job. If this will restrict your ability to effectively do your &quot;real&quot; work, I'd be inclined to reject this offer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You say that this is a new group, implying that it's with a new young PI. This could go either way, but you should definitely be selfish and trying to honestly estimate the productivity that you would achieve in a new group with a new PI in this field. If you don't see yourself with a good likelihood of excelling in the field, I would consider declining. An &quot;average&quot; postdoc will not distinguish you in any way in your future job search, but an excellent postdoc might.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some postdoc positions are created basically as a way to pay less while also not really offering the upside of outstanding research and publication opportunities that you'd really seek out in a good postdoc fit. Your administrative requirements sound like a red flag to me that this position really isn't suited for a postdoc, but that of course is for you to decide. If you're considering a postdoc, you should consider how you could distinguish yourself to future employers who might be interested in your outstanding research ideas and implementation, and they'll see that through high profile publications and conference presentations that you make. If you're unlikely able to do this, then I'd argue that you're not likely to benefit from a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15240" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T19:13:07.373" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T19:13:07.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20913" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:07:47.637" Score="4" ViewCount="1101" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were a PhD student, should I be concerned if my supervisor always requires their permission before I can publish a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under what conditions should I find it acceptable or unacceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T17:40:43.810" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T22:41:19.613" Title="Is it okay for a supervisor to require students to seek permission before publishing?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:17:29.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic freedom of speech would dictate that anyone can publish whatever they want. So as a base line, I would go with that. The question then becomes what could be argued against that? Well, if the advisor has funding for a project and the information the student wants to publish draws on that funding it would be appropriate to discuss the publication before sending it off. The publication might damage the project and hurt everyone involved in the long run. This is not realy an infringement on the basic freedom but limitations under which we live and should abide. Hence, conflicts about publications are often originating in poor or absent communication or total lack of openness or trust or all the above and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important in any collaboration (which how I see a PhD project) to be clear of expectations in both directions. Under most circumstances problems can be sorted out quite easily but as with anything human, odd personality treats will throw spanners in the works. This is why it is usually difficult to resolve issues that lead to conflicts and the &quot;Run don't walk&quot; away can be suggested. More sensibly, anyone in a conflict should try to understand where the problems lie and act to resolve the problem but typically one party is usually oblivious to personal shortcomings in which case there is usually not much that can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see a simple answer to this but having an understanding of conflicts and conflict solutions or perhaps seeking such advice is necessary if the reasons for supervisory control is not based on reasonable scientific or administrative grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T17:17:29.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:23:37.787" Score="35" ViewCount="3120" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first advisor wants me to include my second advisor's name in a paper that I worked on before she (2nd advisor) came along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include her name even though she didn't do anything in that paper? I don't think she even read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14688" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T19:27:02.803" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T09:09:38.353" Title="My advisor wants me to include a name of someone who has no contribution to the paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20899" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:34:44.933" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;The behaviour of adding non-contributing authors is not considered good practise; quite the opposite. The Vancouver protocol specifies what is needed to be included as (co-)author. See descriptions at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-submission/authorship-contributorship&quot;&gt;BMJ&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic points are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Final approval of the version to be published; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the &quot;AND&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also several posts on the tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; here on Academia that can be of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For someone to stand up against one's advisers is of course difficult and it is easy to state that one must do so. It is necessary to assess the situation and read up on the recommendations provided by learned societies such as BMJ and use that as part of your case. I strongly recommend this paper for students from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/students/authorship-paper.pdf&quot;&gt;APA Science Student Council&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="12012" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T20:27:02.120" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T20:27:02.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:49:18.820" Score="13" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the hot-button issues on this site is standards for coauthorship, especially variants of the question &quot;Must I &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; include my thesis advisor as a coauthor on all my papers?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these questions (sensibly) come up again and again, I thought it would be useful to have a collection of links to various ethical standards for coauthorship.  To the best of my knowledge, these standards will apply only to one particular academic field and/or to one geographic region.  For instance, most of my colleagues would point to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics&quot;&gt;this statement by the American Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt;.  It applies (explicitly) to mathematics and (implicitly, I think) to mathematics done in the US and by Americans.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of a community-wiki question where each answer posts a link to ethical standards in some academic field(s) and geographic region(s).  To make the answers better, I would ask that respondents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quote in their answer the passages most relevant to coauthorship.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please avoid &quot;alphabet soup&quot;.  Above I wrote &quot;American Mathematical Society&quot; rather than &quot;AMS&quot;: mathematicians will know what AMS means, but most other academics presumably won't.  Some other answers here refer to things like &quot;BMJ&quot;: I certainly didn't know what that was.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Ideally) Give commentary as to whether/how the standards in their answer differ from those posted in other answers.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more comprehensive the list we can compile, the more authoritatively we can point future questioners to this list and tell them what is or is not an ethical practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T18:51:36.993" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T11:38:14.557" Title="Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-13T18:42:10.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20904" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:51:16.210" Score="45" ViewCount="24121" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there are cases in a e-mail correspondence with academia staff (professors and bureaucrats) in which I don't know which is the best practice. I wonder if there is any best practice for the following cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reply to a reply:&lt;/strong&gt; when I ask for information via e-mail, and the reply gives me all the information I want, should I send an email just to thank them, or is this considered a bad, time-consuming practice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a professor react to this kind of reply? And what about a bureaucrat (who maybe receives more e-mail)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I asked for an internship and he gave me a negative response, is not replying to him considered rude or normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10333" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T19:15:38.173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:15:38.173" Title="Etiquette on sending a thank you e-mail to respondents who gave me helpful information" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20879" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:57:57.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to contact the database team, tell them about the project, explain that are you doing, so they would have chance to say is it ok for them or not. You are much less likely to face restrictions if the project is known and approved by your scientific supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The database website should contain the terms of use page where these acceptable limits should be listed. If nothing is listed, usually a good rule is to wait three times the duration it took a server to serve the previous query but no less than one second, and stop immediately if the server returned the unexpected error message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be much more important not to violate other terms of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T17:57:57.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20902" CreationDate="2014-05-13T18:05:16.457" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;To send a short mail saying thanks for a service provided is never wrong; in fact, it is good etiquette. Sending such a mail also serves as a receipt acknowledging you received the information. I recommend a very short mail; do not overdo it, the show of gratitude is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T18:05:16.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20901" CreationDate="2014-05-13T18:25:58.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is excerpted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ethical Guidelines of the American Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I. MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH AND ITS PRESENTATION&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The public reputation for honesty and integrity of the mathematical&#xA;  community and of the Society is its collective treasure and its&#xA;  publication record is its legacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The knowing presentation of another person's mathematical discovery as&#xA;  one's own constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of&#xA;  professional ethics. Plagiarism may occur for any type of work,&#xA;  whether written or oral and whether published or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both&#xA;  because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose&#xA;  career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it&#xA;  informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas&#xA;  entered into the chain of mathematical thought. To that end,&#xA;  mathematicians have certain responsibilities, which include the&#xA;  following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To endeavor to be knowledgeable in their field, especially about work&#xA;  related to their research;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To give appropriate credit, even to unpublished materials and&#xA;  announced results (because the knowledge that something is true or&#xA;  false is valuable, however it is obtained);&#xA;        To publish full details of results that are announced without unreasonable delay, because claiming a result in advance of its having&#xA;  been achieved with reasonable certainty injures the community by&#xA;  restraining those working toward the same goal;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To use no language that suppresses or improperly detracts from the&#xA;  work of others;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To correct in a timely way or to withdraw work that is erroneous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A claim of independence may not be based on ignorance of widely&#xA;  disseminated results. On appropriate occasions, it may be desirable to&#xA;  offer or accept joint authorship when independent researchers find&#xA;  that they have produced identical results. &lt;strong&gt;All the authors listed&#xA;  for a paper, however, must have made a significant contribution to its&#xA;  content, and all who have made such a contribution must be offered the&#xA;  opportunity to be listed as an author.&lt;/strong&gt; Because the free exchange of&#xA;  ideas necessary to promote research is possible only when every&#xA;  individual's contribution is properly recognized, the Society will not&#xA;  knowingly publish anything that violates this principle, and it will&#xA;  seek to expose egregious violations anywhere in the mathematical&#xA;  community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis added.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T18:51:12.900" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T18:51:12.900" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-13T18:25:58.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20901" CreationDate="2014-05-13T18:30:13.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which governs most medical journal submissions, as well as those in most allied health fields, like public health. The full text is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4&#xA;criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or&#xA;the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual&#xA;content; AND&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final approval of the version to be published; AND&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring&#xA;that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the&#xA;work are appropriately investigated and resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to being&#xA;accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author&#xA;should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for&#xA;specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have&#xA;confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for&#xA;authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as&#xA;authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be&#xA;acknowledged—see Section II.A.3 below. These authorship criteria are&#xA;intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve&#xA;credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not&#xA;intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship&#xA;who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity&#xA;to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the&#xA;first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the&#xA;review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T18:30:13.030" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-13T18:42:10.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20910" CreationDate="2014-05-13T18:56:25.657" Score="11" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about starting a research to publish in a peer reviewed journal. However, I wonder if a literature review is a research paper. For instance, if I wrote a paper about EU-Russia affairs in a form of literature review, would it have a chance to be published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15244" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-01-06T23:17:31.497" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T23:17:31.497" Title="Can literature review be a research paper on its own?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20909" CreationDate="2014-05-13T19:04:00.940" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literature reviews, often referred to by journals as just &quot;Reviews&quot; can and are their own form of research paper. My very first publication was a review like this, so it's clearly possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How viable a paper like that is will probably depend on the conventions of your field. For example, mine generally requires that these &quot;expert reviews&quot; (in contrast to a meta-analysis or systematic review) be solicited by the editor, not cold submitted. That involves shopping your manuscript around a little to see if anyone is willing to &quot;invite&quot; it, having a senior person backing you who can prompt a colleague to invite it, or finding a journal who accepts cold submitted reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T19:04:00.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20901" CreationDate="2014-05-13T20:05:12.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A big publisher has a brief (and somewhat vague) rule for all its journals, although to the best of my knowledge it doesn't do anything to enforce it. Note the 'or' as opposed to the 'and' given in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20906/10643&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship of the paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship should be limited to those who have made &lt;strong&gt;a significant&#xA;  contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation&#xA;  of the reported study&lt;/strong&gt;. All those who have made significant&#xA;  contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others&#xA;  who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research&#xA;  project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics#authorship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is very similar to the guidelines of the American Physical Society:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship should be limited to those who have made &lt;strong&gt;a significant&#xA;  contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of&#xA;  the research study&lt;/strong&gt;. All those who have made significant contributions&#xA;  should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other&#xA;  individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged,&#xA;  but not identified as authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T11:38:14.557" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-13T20:05:12.957" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-05-13T20:50:00.083" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me offer another perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent you would like our society to improve, or the body of human knowledge to grow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having other people interested in our ideas means that our ideas are confirmed by others to be promising. Among these people, there could be those who are more capable, more intellectually gifted, more persistent, more enthusiastic than we are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that the more people are involved in attacking a particular problem or working on a solution, the higher the chance or the faster it would take to solve that problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we think of the big picture, I believe we should share as much as possible our ideas. True, other people would probably get greater recognition than we do, but that is all right. Others' gain might be our loss, but in the end, the society benefits. And that is exactly why academic community exists---to serve our society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T19:25:01.190" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:25:01.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2014-05-13T21:10:34.890" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are including your supervisors name, or anyone else's name, you should notify them first and allow them to review the paper before sending it to the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just wanting to publish under your name alone, it depends. Are you publishing findings from data that belongs to your advisor (or anyone else's data)? Typically any data collected by you that was paid for by your funding agency belongs to the principal investigator, which is usually your advisor. You should ask for their permission before you publish findings from his or her data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies to abstract submissions as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T22:41:19.613" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T22:41:19.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20902" CreationDate="2014-05-13T21:17:00.330" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always write a short thank email as an act of acknowledgement. If I spend my time answering someone's questions and don't get any response I would be very unhappy (luckily, it never happened).  Don't worry about spamming the professors. They all know how to deal with mass amount of emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14741" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T21:17:00.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20435" CreationDate="2014-05-13T21:30:40.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my group we use some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile methods&lt;/a&gt; from software development industry. Among others, we have short stand-up meetings and longer sprint sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastEditorUserId="38709" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T06:07:58.623" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T06:07:58.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20849" CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:14:47.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, universities organise these workshops (training events) for their own faculty, possibly in collaboration with commercial companies that provide this kind of training. This is the case not only for Marie Curie fellowships, but for all kinds of EU Horizon 2020 funding opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the research support people from your own university and ask if they are planning to organise such workshops. Most likely, it would be free for you. Your university would cover the expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T23:14:47.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20925" CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:36:22.970" Score="7" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider an assistant professor who does fairly interdisciplinary work, regularly publishing in journals for more than one field, or where you can make a case that, depending on how you spin it, they could clearly be an X or a Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, they have a single academic appointment in X, but are potentially interested in a joint appointment, perhaps to advise students, or to combat the perception that they're &quot;really not a Y&quot; within the field, or another reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to raise this desire? What practical objections might be raised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T04:02:51.023" Title="Appropriate ways to propose moving from a single to a joint appointment" Tags="&lt;administration&gt;&lt;joint-appointment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20921" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:56:34.593" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T00:56:34.593" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T00:56:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20922" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:56:34.593" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning faculty positions spanning more than one department or university." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T19:21:01.843" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T19:21:01.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2014-05-14T03:27:32.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it's unethical to submit a jointly authored paper without the consent of every coauthor, or to use unpublished data or ideas without permission from their source.  However, these principles apply equally to everyone, regardless of rank or status, and they have nothing to do with the student/advisor relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid these issues, let's posit a paper that's entirely the student's work, with no ideas or data generated or owned by anyone else, and let's assume that no funding is required for conference travel or publication fees.  Then could the advisor forbid the student to publish?  I would consider this unethical: if the student is determined to submit this paper for publication, then it would be wrong for the advisor to try to block the submission or to threaten or impose punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean the advisor can't put some pressure on the student.  It's reasonable to try to slow down an inexperienced, headstrong student for their own good.  For example, to discuss ethics (avoiding plagiarism, making sure all contributors are credited appropriately, etc.) or to check for major mistakes.  I think it would be reasonable for an advisor to have a policy that students should discuss all submissions in advance.  (This policy might well be waived for senior students.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if a student refuses to discuss a submission or disagrees with the advisor's recommendation regarding publication, then I see no ethical grounds for intervening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T03:27:32.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20920" CreationDate="2014-05-14T04:02:51.023" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Nate Eldredge points out in the comments, there are two types of joint appointments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a courtesy appointment, you get the public recognition of having both titles (Professor of X and Professor of Y) and you can advise and teach in both departments.  However, administratively you have a primary department that pays your salary and sets your teaching/service duties.  The main drawback is that if you want to split your teaching between the departments, it may take some arranging.  [In my experience this can often be done, but it's not guaranteed by a courtesy appointment.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a fully joint appointment, the two departments split your salary and duties in some set fraction (usually, but not necessarily, 50-50).  This makes it easy to do substantial amounts of teaching in both departments, but it can mean a slightly higher service load, since a 50% appointment often doesn't really cut the number of meetings in half.  The biggest drawback of a joint appointment is having to keep both departments happy, especially if they disagree on how you should be spending your time.  [This is a real danger for tenure cases.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like a courtesy appointment in another field, you need someone in that department to serve as a champion for your case.  You can sound out friends or mentors privately to try to convince someone to advocate for offering you such a position.  Once someone brings it up at a department meeting, you then need a good enough reputation that the department is happy to have you associated with it.  Ideally, you should be someone they would have loved to hire if you hadn't already joined another department; in practice, you can sometimes get away with a slightly weaker case than that, but you still need to look strong enough that there's no fear you'll hurt the department's reputation.  Once the department is behind you, there may also be some administrative hurdles (perhaps including letters of recommendation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switching to a genuine joint appointment is much trickier, since you need to convince the other department to start paying for you.  Why should they do that when they could offer you a courtesy appointment for free?  There are various possible answers, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're so famous that they'll cheerfully do whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They really value you, and offering you this appointment will keep you from leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll fill a role in the new department that they would have had to hire someone else for anyway (e.g., teaching certain classes).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are deals being made behind the scenes.  If department Y takes over half your position, what might department X offer them in return?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to bring this about, you'll need to spend some time crafting a compelling argument.  There are many directions you could go in, but ultimately it will depend on the department's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned above, tenure cases can be really tricky for joint appointments.  Both departments end up with a de facto veto, since if one turns you down the other isn't likely to be enthusiastic about coming up with the extra money to save your job (taking the other department's reject doesn't feel good).  Before tenure, I'd consider a courtesy appointment to be a much better idea.  Once you get tenure, you can then reevaluate and see what your options are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T04:02:51.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T06:10:00.347" Score="12" ViewCount="2064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know in most of the cases, PhD seekers do not have many options and we must stick to what is offered. However, it happened that I initiated connection with two advisors from different institutes which almost have the same reputation. However, one of them is a lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor in north America) and the other is full professor. Nothing is guaranteed yet, so I won't give up on any of them. Yet, before I delve deeper, I would like to know is it better to work with advisor who is still at the beginning of his academic career but with less experience and maybe more demanding. Or it is better to work with full professor who has long experience but might be too busy for you or not really pushing you to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer that I am looking for is from two parts, during PhD study and the future career:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PhD period:&lt;/strong&gt; I know PhD student is independent researcher and should not rely much on his advisor in many aspects. However, I have this fear due to what I faced during my Master, whereby my supervisor was just looking for the quantity of papers not the quality. I assumed from my conversations with him that the number of publications was main criterion to become full professor in that institute. One the other hand, other colleagues complained about their advisors (full professors) that they really do not allocate enough time for them and even do not encourage them to publish saying that you are master student and this number of publications is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Future career:&lt;/strong&gt; I assume recommendation letter from full professor outweigh the one from assistant professor. Do you agree? why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T06:29:42.060" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T17:45:36.400" Title="What are the advantages/disadvantages of a PhD advisor who is experienced vs. one at the beginning of his career?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-14T18:01:39.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2014-05-14T06:10:40.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current answers are good, but for my field they seem to miss the single most important factor that makes prior permission &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; necessary before submitting a paper: &lt;strong&gt;funding for conference trips or page charges&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, most papers in my field are conference papers. Conferences require physical presence of the student, and are &lt;em&gt;expensive&lt;/em&gt;. A single conference trip (to the US or Asia for us europeans) can cost 2000 EUR, in rare cases even more. Often, these costs can be covered from the project a PhD student is also paid from, but some funding agencies do not pay for travel. In such cases, the professor needs to find other funds to finance the trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is obvious and in no way unethical that one needs to consult the manager of these funds before deciding whether to spend the money.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, essentially, an advisor may not be ethically allowed to forbid a student to submit a paper, but he sure can reject paying for it from his funds (which ends up as the same thing for practical purposes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T06:10:40.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:10:48.373" Score="7" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I m in the fourth year of my PhD in veterinary sciences in North America. My Research project involves a lot of farm/team work. I have to work with technicians, farm staff, research associates and other students in the team as well as my advisory committee. I attended in many leadership workshops but still find it hard to deal with negativity, anger and control issues from one of my superiors. She in managing students as a research associate and has quite an influence on my advisor. She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions. What should I do? How can I keep myself safe from anger, control issues and related stress? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15258" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T23:05:20.520" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T23:30:44.423" Title="How to deal with a difficult team supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20932" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:12:11.113" Score="38" ViewCount="12505" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a young researcher myself I received a comment from my colleague that some of the journals are paying reviewers for the reviewing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I gave it a thought, it started to make more sense.&#xA;In case of high quality, respected journal, an institution may consider itself privileged to have a reviewer of such journal and allow the reviewer to dedicate small proportion of his/her daily activities just on the reviewing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that hold true for some journals or is it just a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15259" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T07:17:43.467" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T07:54:38.007" Title="Are there any journals that pay reviewers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:46:41.670" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a myth. There are/have been some journals that pay peer reviewers. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://a-c-elitzur.co.il/uploads/articlesdocs/PeerReview1.pdf&quot;&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/a&gt; used to pay $5 per review, until some reviewers complained that &quot;if that was the price that this eminent journal placed on their opinion, the New England Journal of Medicine should seek referees elsewhere&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalology.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-reviewers-decline-and-paying-for.html&quot;&gt;Lancet&lt;/a&gt; reportedly pays for peer review &quot;sometimes&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers for journals published by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeaweb.org/aea_journals.php&quot;&gt;American Economic Association&lt;/a&gt; earn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/reviewers.php&quot;&gt;$100&lt;/a&gt; for each &quot;timely&quot; review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zbmath.org/reviewer-service/en/benefits/&quot;&gt;Zentralblatt MATH&lt;/a&gt; (zbMATH) pays 2.56 EUR per review, although this is for post-publication reviews that are then published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jmir.org/cms/view/Instructions_for_Authors%3aInstructions_for_Authors_of_JMIR#Fast-track&quot;&gt;Journal of Medical Internet Research&lt;/a&gt; offers &quot;a review model in which selected peer reviewers may be paid to deliver high-quality and speedy peer-review reports&quot; (if authors pay an extra fee for the fast-track option)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.firat.edu.tr/dhanbay/h3.htm&quot;&gt;Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering&lt;/a&gt; has offered an honorarium of $100 for each &quot;timely&quot; review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drugsincontext.com/authors&quot;&gt;Drugs in Context&lt;/a&gt; pays its peer reviewers an honorarium of unspecified amount, supposedly &quot;to motivate rigorous peer review&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iiste.org/career.html&quot;&gt;International Institute for Science, Technology and Education&lt;/a&gt; (which is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; of allegedly predatory open-access journals and publishers) pays reviewers for its journals $60-$100 per review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether &lt;em&gt;the reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review&lt;/em&gt; is true or not is entirely uncertain, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T08:41:12.760" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T08:41:12.760" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2014-05-14T08:12:20.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be close to completing your PhD so the usual answer here of &quot;Run don't walk&quot; don't seem to be the way out. Instead you need to find a way to go through the final time. I would strongly suggest seeking professional help. Hopefully your school has access to psychologists or the equivalent who can not only help out with personal problems but in your case, more importantly, how to manage difficult personalities. I have no doubts that it is and will be a burden at times but for you the question is finishing or not, what the effects on yourself will be and in the short of it, is it worth it if you add all factors together. Only you can answer that question. It does not seem as if you have come far down that path so trying to find the support and guidance from professionals on how to deal with difficult personalities is the best way forward. You will bump into these later in life as well so gaining understanding and acquiring strategies is never a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T08:12:20.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20926" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:41:57.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you stated it pretty well, the young one having less influence, but more eager to collaborate vs. the more experienced one, with more influence, but who doesn't really need to prove himself any longer and probably regards you as just another daily task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider how cooperative and ambitious the younger one is. If you can see that you can benefit from (i.e. be interested in that particular area of research) and collaborate on something that would further both your careers, in my opinion, you should opt for him. In addition, you could gain a long-term collaborator, even after your PhD, being one of his first PhD students. Also, more demanding + relatively common goals, would drill you to become a better scientist, than you would become if you were in a more &quot;lecture-like&quot; and comfortable environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I would choose the more experienced professor only if is influence and respect in the academic community is extremely high or in the case I would want to &quot;just get over&quot; my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T11:41:57.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:45:56.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being mean and humiliating anyone, let alone subordinates, in the workplace (academia or otherwise) is inappropriate and should not be tolerated. I would suggest you informally talk to whomever is in charge of harassment claims at your university to let them know what is up. Depending on how bad the situation is, you could either file a formal complaint or go talk to the person directly. By having the informal talk with HR you will be protected if your one-on-one discussion blows up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems you have talked to her, but did you tell her that her attitude and behavior is making it difficult to do your job? Maybe you can work something out where she is less abusive to you or that your work environment is more structured to prevent the harassment. Hopefully that will resolve the issues, if not, file the complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University's do not kid around with complaints about harassment. These types of formal complaints make promotion much more difficult and will often be reported in any reference written by the department head. They often will require the individual to receive training and monitoring. Once the possibility of a formal complain is on the table it is in the best interested for the colleague to do everything possible to prevent the complaint. Once a formal complaint is raised any escalation by the colleague will likely be dealt with swiftly and harshly by the University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T11:58:39.077" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T11:58:39.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-14T12:37:50.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After getting rid of spam in your email box by the spam filter, pass every unrequested mail through the crackpot index:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will give points for, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;mentioning Einstein, Feynman or Hawkins. (I suppose mentioning Ramanujan would be the same but in the mathematical field instead of physical field).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;complaining about the establishment&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;vacuous statements&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read everything about it in: &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe you'll need more then 2-3 minutes for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, also don't forget to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians&lt;/a&gt;, since there is mathematics outside academical mathematics too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T12:37:50.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T13:29:05.417" Score="24" ViewCount="2144" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well known that in mathematics the process of reviewing submitted papers is quite long. There are good reasons for that; intrinsically, reviewing a math paper involves checking and understanding thouroughly the proposed proof, which typically requires a significant time investment. Also, a lot of academics are always very busy and reviewing may not be the most urgent thing they have to do, so it tends to be pushed back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems that there are other, maybe not so commendable reasons. Apparently, the common wisdom around me is that you should be careful not to turn in your reviews too soon, or you will be flooded with requests by editors (who are all too happy to find someone gullible enough to hurry doing their reviews) and reviews will take up all your time. This is an advice I've often heard given to young researchers, including by people who can honestly not be accused of neglecting the community service aspects of their work. A lot of people I have talked to have a policy of &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; doing the review before the deadline or the k-th reminder from the editor. I even heard of a person who would do the review almost immediately after accepting it (when time allowed), but only send it after the deadline or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an imperfect world where doing your task sooner than anyone else will mark you as candidate for exploitation, I understand the need for such strategies. But I wanted to check: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the risk so big? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this practice really generalized (also in other fields than mathematics)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have alternative strategies to avoid having too many review &lt;em&gt;requests&lt;/em&gt; (of course, one can always refuse reviews, but since it can be delicate to do so too often, one may try and avoid requests themselves)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T03:50:37.840" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T11:57:27.423" Title="Is providing a slow response to journal reviews a common/good strategy for minimizing the number of review requests?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:00:26.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ramanujan is actually a difficult case because he was in fact an amateur crackpot, and his contribution to real math is not clear to me. But yes, he was a genius. He did not reveal the methods by which he derived his magic formula, even though I am convinced he could explain it if he wanted to. He did not want to reveal his secret craft, he only wanted the fame. I say dunk it in the wastebasket in this case, and if you ever come across work which sounds scientific tell the author to submit it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15270" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T16:41:31.240" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T16:41:31.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29390" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:12:41.917" Score="4" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been building a search tool for colleges and universities in US. I could find most of the data from the IPEDS database. Now I am trying to relate the colleges with US News ranking. I'm trying to find any source of data which could give me ranking of colleges with their UNITID/college name .&#xA;Any clues on how to get the rankings data along with UNITID ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10075" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T11:09:27.757" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T00:28:13.037" Title="Where can I find correlation between US News ranking and IPEDS database?" Tags="&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:20:35.313" Score="27" ViewCount="3492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper and it is currently under review (submitted on 10th March and conference is on 15th October, I'll be notified on 15th July). However, now, in May, I see a paper has just published dealing with the same problem as mine. They indicate that their solution is better than mine. If my paper is accepted, do I have to withdraw it, as it seems to be out of date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15271" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T08:03:26.527" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T08:03:26.527" Title="Should I withdraw my paper if I find another paper published with the same idea?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:33:46.620" Score="39" ViewCount="2474" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a junior member on a research project. We have written a paper. I feel the work is not ready for publication and have issues. We have discussed the issues, and other members of the group including the lead author agree with me that there are issues. But the lead author who is more senior is too eager to get the results published to the extent that he is ready to mislead the reviewers/readers by exaggerating and misrepresenting the partial inconclusive results to get the paper accepted. I don't think I can convince him to allow more time for the project to reach a more satisfactory stage before publication. I am rather junior and have limited say on the project. I am new to the field of the project, and the senior author is established in the field and publishes several papers in top venues each year. Other members of the project are his students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have conclusive evidence for one of the central claims in the paper. It might turn out to be false under more experiments. The lead author, however, believes it is correct even though he agrees the evidence we have is not sufficient. He wants to publish the results and the idea as soon as possible, but accurately stating what we have and what we don't have will make the acceptance unlikely at this point. He is fine with getting the flawed results published and then continuing to work to fix the issues for the later publications.&#xA;I am not comfortable with my name appearing on the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to ask for the removal of my name as an author and to be mentioned in the acknowledgments. However, I have worked on the project for a considerable time and would like to get credit for my contributions, and I don't feel just being mentioned in the acknowledgments is good enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do if you were in this situation?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How do you deal with major disagreements in writing a joint paper?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Would it be helpful if I post a different edited draft copy of the paper online where the claims are more accurate in my view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15272" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T03:43:12.823" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T03:43:12.823" Title="What to do when co-authors want to submit manuscript for publication and you think it still has problems?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20942" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:44:30.983" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a few possible options for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are talking with other co-authors of the paper then you all together talk to this lead author that what he does is going to affect not only his, but also your future in a very bad way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are making a rough estimation how quick you (and other authors) can fill all those gaps in this project. If it is let's say 15 days, you meet and make your exact suggestion. This concreteness will make the main author think twice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Although you have done a lot of research, you should remove your name from this suspicious study (if you strongly believe that this study has serious drawbacks), because sooner or later it will become worthless. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastEditorUserId="15166" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T14:51:32.777" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:51:32.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20941" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:51:41.437" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a slightly grey area but assuming the journal paper in question was not publicly available before the submission date of your conference, I think you are fully entitled to publish the paper if accepted. It's a parallel result, which means there was (verifiably) no wrong-doing on your part. If accepted, in the &quot;camera-ready&quot; submission, you can add reference to the journal paper with a note that their results were developed in parallel (with mentions of the dates involved in a footnote, for example). You get your publication, the authors of the work get their citation, and the conference themselves know that there was no wrong-doing involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, you don't &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; withdraw, but you can if you want (e.g., if you don't want to be associated with a weaker form of the result, or if you are a really nice person and feel that the slot at the conference might be better used elsewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:51:41.437" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20938" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:56:31.547" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can imagine someone purposefully delaying reviews, but in my experience it's not a widespread or standard part of mathematical practice, and I haven't heard it offered as common advice.  I don't think referees have an obligation to inconvenience themselves to finish a review as quickly as they can, but it seems bizarre to deliberately delay when it would have been convenient to complete the review earlier (or, worse yet, when it was already done but not yet sent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a real risk here, or a need to avoid review requests.  There's nothing wrong with turning them down, and you can use a vague excuse like that you are already busy with other refereeing and don't want to cause unnecessary delays for this submission.  In fact, a prompt reply will be appreciated; it already puts you ahead of the people who require reminders to reply to referee requests.  (When a referee declines quickly, there's almost no cost, while it's annoying if I send several e-mails over a period of weeks but never hear back.)  From my perspective as an editor, I'm not looking for people who will complete a review as quickly as possible.  Instead, my ideal referee is someone who is responsive and reliable, who promptly lets me know what they can reasonably do and then does it within the timeframe they estimated.  If they do that, they can turn down as many requests as they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:56:31.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:02:43.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not quite what you asked, but book publishers often pay reviewers to evaluate a manuscript and give their opinion on whether to publish it. I recently received $125 US for just such a review. It was less work than reviewing a typical journal article (since I wasn't asked to check technical details) but had a short deadline of just a couple of weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:02:43.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20942" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:08:24.573" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to add a fourth possibility to @artalexan's nice answer that might be more diplomatic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the paper technically correct with the results you have (even if preliminary) and submit to the current venue. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The major problem with submitting the paper is that it is dishonest, not that it is preliminary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper can be made technically correct and honest -- even if the results are preliminary -- it would be fine to at least submit it and let the reviewers judge if it is mature enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a co-author, you should have the power to edit the misleading text. If the main author is stopping your efforts to do that, then ask to be removed from the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if the results themselves are incorrect (rather than preliminary) there may be no saving the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, the attitude of the senior researcher in question towards publishing may be productive in the short term (getting some initial papers published quickly by misleading reviewers), but it is &lt;strong&gt;utterly counter-productive&lt;/strong&gt; in the long run. Having a reputation for sloppy results/writing will seriously harm the trust that reviews/readers have in your paper ... and reputation is &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; important in research! I don't know your situation, but if the researcher shows no inclination to change their attitude, try to put distance between yourself and them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T15:24:11.273" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:24:11.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:23:33.307" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did he offer you something interesting about his research? Just wait until you have finished and published. Then you can send him a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15275" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:23:33.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:50:29.313" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good policy would be to redirect those people to &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/&quot;&gt;Math Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. Let them open a new topic to ask what's wrong with their proof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's trivial to find errors then someone one Math Overflow will point out those errors. If their proof actually works I would expect someone at Math Overflow to recognise working proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only need to write a email to redirect people to MathOverflow once and afterwards you can send everyone who sends you unsolicited proofs the same canned email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:55.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:50:29.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T16:09:09.053" Score="8" ViewCount="3413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed my MBA and have worked in the IT field for the last 7 years. I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and have completed 3 physics graduate courses (mechanics, E&amp;amp;M, QM) as an open university student. Is it realistic for me to self study for the physics GRE, get a great score, and then have a chance to be admitted to a physics PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physics graduate courses I took were from a master’s school, but I had to pay for these out of my pocket. I though about continuing in that masters program but it is just too expensive given my situation (I have a family and a mortgage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if I have a shot at a PhD program without going for the masters and only with a great physics GRE score and a mathematics undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15277" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T13:52:40.020" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T13:52:40.020" Title="Can I get into PhD in Physics with a high GRE score and an unrelated masters degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-14T16:32:24.700" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like this practice for two reasons. These concerns are based on my experience serving on an academic honesty committee; for reasons of confidentiality, I will not go into further detail about this experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are creating an incentive for an innocent student to falsely confess, if they believe that they will be found guilty in any event.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_confession&quot;&gt;False confessions&lt;/a&gt; are much more common than most people believe, and a student in an academic investigation is under pressures similar to a suspect being interrogated by police.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You raise the question of whether you are taking the confession into account in a fair way. If students contest your actions, the issue of whether all cheaters were treated equally will arise; each factor you consider in making your decision will make this more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T16:32:24.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20941" CreationDate="2014-05-14T17:27:46.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you did not know about the other paper and it was not available at the time you were doing the research for your paper, your paper is considered as an independent research. Moreover, if your approach to the problem is different, it will partially justify the importance of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is important to send an email to the editor and explain the situation to him/her. It may cause the rejection of your paper, but it is your obligation to let the editor and the referee of the paper know about the parallel recent works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar situation has happened for one of my papers recently. After explaining the situation to the editor, he considered the paper to be an original research work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorDisplayName="user4511" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T19:26:07.847" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:26:07.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20926" CreationDate="2014-05-14T17:45:36.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is sometimes assumed that less experienced / competent supervisor will try harder instead, spending more working time and will be somewhat a friend to you, not just a teacher. However this depends. A younger supervisor may also choose to give you only the minimum required amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good PhD student, it may be most important to get a good project and ideas that, as a rule, work. This does not require lots of time but does require a lot of competence. I would normally select the more experienced supervisor even if one may have less time for me. Only if the studies require some complex, difficult to learn methods, a younger supervisor who still uses these methods directly and personally at work may teach them more efficiently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T17:45:36.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20942" CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:27:39.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some misleading papers written by popular names during my MSc studies. Yet, their popularity did not vanish in an observable amount of time. In research, we have many issues like this; and I believe it is not necessarily a bad thing. Sound articles would be cited by many, and they would definitely be helpful for new researchers and young students alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have the following questions for you. Please consider them objectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you witness cherry-picking? Or any alteration/manipulation to the research results?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How inconclusive do you find the results? Please forget&#xA;    about the lead author, and give a number from 1 to 10 on your best&#xA;    knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you convince the lead to add a future studies section or&#xA;    a paragraph/sentence to your paper, to mention the issues you come up with&#xA;    about the experiment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can't you ask the leads approval to do more experiment? So that you&#xA;will have a fighting chance to make things right. If you are proven right, you may give the accurate results in the earliest revision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14874" LastEditorUserId="14874" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T21:43:16.913" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:43:16.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20957" CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:27:41.127" Score="14" ViewCount="4936" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the second author of a paper published by IEEE am I allowed to provide a download link to a copy of that paper on my own website? The &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; paper can only be found at the IEEE CS Digital Library behind a paywall. I'd like to provide free access to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make a difference if free download links of the paper can already be found with Google Scholar? Should I prefer to link to the download on the university's publication directory instead of providing my own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15284" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T04:13:38.247" LastActivityDate="2021-01-07T14:01:37.300" Title="Is it legal to provide a copy of published IEEE paper on my personal website?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20955" CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:52:50.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/documents/top10faq.pdf&quot;&gt;https://www.ieee.org/documents/top10faq.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can an author post his IEEE copyrighted paper on his personal or&#xA;  institutions’ servers?&lt;/strong&gt;  Yes. An author is permitted to post his IEEE&#xA;  copyrighted paper on his personal site and his  institution’s server,&#xA;  but only the accepted version of his paper, not the published version&#xA;  as  might be downloaded from IEEE Xplore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directly from their more recently updated paper policy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/paperversionpolicy.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/paperversionpolicy.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post the&#xA;  accepted version of their article on their personal Web sites or those&#xA;  of their employers. Posting of the final, published PDF continues to&#xA;  be prohibited, except for open access articles, whose authors may&#xA;  freely post the final version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:52:50.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2014-05-14T20:40:02.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to summarise some of the points (and add some more) as to why a supervisor might make it a requirement for students to seek permission before publishing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check assignment of funds for travel (e.g., for conferences) or for publishing (per xLeitix's answer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check use of data or resources belonging to the project (per SoilSciGuy's answer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check proper attribution of people involved in the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that the proper affiliation and funding acknowledgements are in place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that there are no IP issues (particularly in the context of industry collaborations or industry-funded projects, but also with respect to university IP guidelines)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that the venue is not of low quality or, e.g., a predatory journal ... check that the results are not undersold&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that the paper is not of low quality, besmirching the good name of the affiliation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the reasons I can see why a supervisor may require permission before publishing. Once you understand some of these motives, I guess it's up to you to decide if that's a problem or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in some fields, supervisors (almost) &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/644/when-should-a-supervisor-be-an-author&quot;&gt;require &lt;em&gt;co-authorship&lt;/em&gt; by default of anything you publish&lt;/a&gt;; in this case, requiring their permission is a corollary. Likewise, relative to that, requiring only permission (maybe) doesn't seem all so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:40:02.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20959" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-14T20:56:40.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An examination is intended to measure a students knowledge of a specific topic (e.g., physics or history). An examination may be administered orally, on paper, on a computer, or in a confined area that requires a student to physically perform a set of skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T21:01:20.750" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:01:20.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20960" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-14T20:56:40.407" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to examination in an academic context." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T21:01:07.713" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:01:07.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20423" CreationDate="2014-05-14T21:19:50.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is a lack of internships is not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long answer has two cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MSCS programs in the United States are profit makers for&#xA;universities.  It is much easier to get into an MSCS program at a&#xA;top university than the PhD program at the same university. &#xA;Research experience is a plus, but I don't think industry experience&#xA;matters.  Grades and recommendations from professors are most&#xA;important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;CS PhD programs in the United States almost exclusively admit&#xA;students that they are willing to fund, so they are much harder to&#xA;get into.  In addition to strong grades and letters of&#xA;recommendation, schools want to see that you are capable of working&#xA;independently at research.  The best way to do this, as Leon palafox&#xA;answered, is to have research experience, including a thesis and/or&#xA;publications.  Next best is to have completed projects not required&#xA;for any class.  That shows you are capable of doing a project&#xA;without its being broken down into lots of steps with intermediate&#xA;deadlines.  I'd say Summer of Code-like experience is at least as&#xA;valuable as an industry internship.  It shows passion and the&#xA;ability to work independently.  Incorporate that into your essay,&#xA;and get a letter of recommendation from someone on the project (or&#xA;from a professor at your institute if one is nominally supervising&#xA;your work for internship or independent study credit).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not knowledgeable about admission into programs outside of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:19:50.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18580" CreationDate="2014-05-14T21:22:11.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing as nobody else has answered and this is judged not to be a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/15408&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I'll quote my answer from there (except with &amp;quot;math&amp;quot; changed to &amp;quot;physics&amp;quot;), which also applies here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking about graduate school in the US, probably the single most significant thing you can do is to take the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/about/content/physics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GRE subject test for physics&lt;/a&gt; and score well on it. This test covers a broad spectrum of material that is taught in a typical undergraduate physics curriculum, and so if you get a good score, it strongly supports your claim that you have the level of physics knowledge required to enter grad school. Without that key piece of evidence (i.e. a good GRE subject score), graduate admissions committees are likely to look at your statement that you have the knowledge to take graduate courses, contrast it with your lack of an undergraduate degree, and conclude that you're full of hot air, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course there is more that has to be done to actually get yourself admitted. You can't get into grad school based on even a 990 (the top score) on the GRE &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt;; you'll probably have to present some other sort of evidence of accomplishment that could be viewed as equivalent to an undergraduate transcript. You'll also need recommendation letters and various sorts of essays and forms. But a lot of that can vary from school to school, and is more likely to be negotiable if you talk to someone in the department. The GRE subject score is the one thing you really need to get your foot in the door, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the GRE, probably the best thing you can do to increase your chances of getting into physics grad school is to have some physics research experience, with a good recommendation letter from your supervisor(s), although strictly speaking this is not &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt;. However this might be somewhat difficult to get given that you're not currently an undergraduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's much to be gained by using a masters program as a stepping stone, at least not among US graduate schools; in fact, there are not really many masters programs in physics at all. People who go to grad school in physics typically go straight from their undergraduate career into a PhD program, without a separate masters program in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:22:11.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T21:31:25.640" Score="44" ViewCount="13961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was suspended for 1 year from my university for copying an assignment from an online source. There were several extenuating circumstances but I won't go into them as they are irrelevant, I did cheat and I do deserve the punishment I was given - that is not the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I found out my sentence, I found it very hard to attend classes relating to that department, or to look professors or my deans and advisors in the face and carry out conversations with them. The professor who's class I cheated in is one I was hoping to talk to as she is in the same area that I hope to go into one day and I really enjoyed her class, teaching methods, and enthusiasm for the subject. I also am extremely saddened by the fact that since I'm a fourth year, this means all my peers will be graduating and will have left by the time I come back and I'm finding it hard to cope with the thought of being without them for the rest of my undergraduate career.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how do I cope with the stress and shame I am feeling and how do I get over that so that I can return to the academic environment in 1 year? Can I ever approach that professor again, or should I avoid her? I'm asking this here because I'd like the opinions of those who are on the other side of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15289" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T23:34:42.647" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T09:02:59.590" Title="Going back to university after suspension, how do I move past the shame?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-14T21:52:29.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the professor is aware of and condones whatever extenuating circumstances led you to cheat in her course, I think that your misconduct has &quot;cut off&quot; that bridge for you. Someone whose class you've cheated in is likely not going to be willing to help you out in any meaningful way—at least not without a sincere attempt at contrition. (Even then, it may be a case of &quot;forgive, but never forget.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:52:29.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2014-05-14T21:53:30.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m sorry to hear this; such situations can be unbelievably stressful and upsetting. As you’re in your fourth year, you’re nearly there and have your own network, which are very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such situations are tricky because they can degenerate suddenly and unexpectedly. The ideal (not always possible) is to avoid conflict at almost all costs. Conflictual people tend to be better at managing disputes that break out...they often have had a lot of experience of this and you might discover that they are uncomfortably well acquainted with university harassment procedures etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hesitate to make a formal complaint unless if the situation becomes unbearable, as things may escalate and affect your relationships with others in your department, which might cause delays to your PhD. Hopefully, you are known in your department and group as a positive team member who isn’t associated with conflict. Maintain that reputation as long as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also hesitate about approaching this supervisor one-on-one in order to directly address the behaviour. Any such discussion would need to be handled with &lt;em&gt;extreme&lt;/em&gt; care so that your supervisor doesn't feel threatened. I would venture to suggest that avoiding any suggestion of threat could easily be impossible to achieve during such a discussion. It may be better to remain in the background as much as possible and minimize unnecessary interaction with your supervisor instead. Try to keep things very cool and professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you somebody more senior in the department you can confide in? A mentor would be perfect for this role, as long as they are discreet. Now would be a good time to request a mentor if you don’t have one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it’s not nice to do, keep a diary of every incident, even if reasonably minor. Any unpleasant emails etc, keep them safe. This is because if things become more difficult, you might need every scrap of evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d recommend pre-emptively reading the book by Bill Eddy “&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0981509037&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It’s all your fault: 12 tips for managing people who blame others for everything&lt;/a&gt;” as he gives a lot of good advice for avoiding being dragged into disputes and minimizing their fallout when they do occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things become absolutely impossible (hopefully not), it may be possible to remove this supervisor from your committee. This is where having an impeccable interpersonal record, the diary and an established relationship with a senior member of your department comes in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To end on a positive note, I think a lot of academics at all levels have had experience of these sorts of situations and we’ve all survived! But I wish you and others who come to this page good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T21:53:30.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:26:34.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To err is human. There is no need to condemn yourself. I am glad you understood your mistake and I am sure that you learnt the lesson. &#xA;I think that you can just directly talk to the professor(and the advisor) explaining that you regret and you understood your mistake (of course this method strongly depends on your professor's personality). Just make the situation clear and leave it behind because what hapened, happened. Act. Concentrate on the future and direct all your energy to prove that you are strong and wise. I am sure the professor will understand and encourage you (they are all wise and mature people and they understand that bad things happen and people might need another chance).&#xA;Concerning the peers,  if you have some friends in your class, this is a good test for them because friends should support you in hardships. If they are just classmates, then don't warry, you will have good classmates again. &#xA;p.s. Just look at this as a life test you have to overcome. Don't cheat, deal with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T23:26:34.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:29:11.590" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;The university &lt;em&gt;suspended&lt;/em&gt; you, which is a signal that it is still willing to have you as a student after serving your suspension.  (If it wasn't, you'd have been expelled.)  Therefore, upon your return, this professor (and every other professor) has the same professional obligations towards you that she would to any other student: to accept you in her classes, to treat you with courtesy and respect, to help you learn the material, to grade you fairly based on your work and the standards of the course.  It is possible that your assignments may face extra scrutiny for plagiarism, but hopefully that is irrelevant as you're not going to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that relations may be strained between you, but I think this may be more on your side than hers.  Speaking for myself, I certainly find it disappointing when a student cheats, but it's not as if I'm going to declare a personal vendetta against them and seethe with fury every time I pass them in the hall.  That would be unprofessional, and not worth the emotional energy anyway.  We go through the disciplinary process, I hope that they learn their lesson, and it's back to business as usual.  If they are able to turn things around and show genuine interest in and dedication to their studies, for me that's ultimately uplifting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to take her class at a later date, by all means do so.  You might find it helpful to talk with her first: express your regret over the incident, as well as your continued interest in your subject and in completing your degree.  I think it's very likely this will help clear the air for both of you.  It would be wise for you to be extra diligent about quotations, citing sources, etc, and to consult your professor if you have the slightest question about any such issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe she won't invite you to dinner, and she probably won't be the best person to write you a letter of recommendation.  (Even if you get to be on better terms, which I hope you will, she might still feel it's her duty to mention the cheating incident in any letter she writes, which is probably not good for you.)  But I don't see any reason you can't have the same basic educational experience as any other student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T23:29:11.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:33:05.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that you've been sent down this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand a bit on Paul Garrett's comment to aeismail's answer, you should write a letter to the professor. This letter should be contrite, apologetic, and demonstrate that you've learned your lesson. You might discuss how you plan to remedy what caused the problem and how you would handle it differently during your year off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This contradicts the previous sentence but: Do NOT even refer to the 'extenuating' circumstances. Whatever it was, you should have raised that with the professor or the department before the cheating took place. But you've learned that now, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should write similar letters to the chairman/head of the department (don't send the same letter) and your advisor with the same information. Discuss how you want to start fresh next year and have a stellar year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how they've been affected as well. They had to deal with a distasteful situation, punish a (hopefully!) promising student, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a non-Academia example that might be enlightening, if you read science fiction at all, check out Miles Vorkosigan's apology (via a letter) in Lois McMaster Bujold's &lt;em&gt;A Civil Campaign&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T23:33:05.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:39:55.913" Score="8" ViewCount="1477" Body="&lt;p&gt;How wise and legal is it to attach my published but copyrighted papers with my job application or even put up on the personal (academic) website? I see a lot of people posting their papers that I guess are copyrighted. Also many academic job applications ask for reprints of the papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be I am not fully clear with the rules. I would like to be educated on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_legal_to_upload_Publishers_pdf_version_of_scientific_articles_from_non-open-access_journals_on_ResearchGate&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_we_upload_our_published_paper_here&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; say something regarding posting the manuscript on the website. I may not post my manuscript pdf but assign a link to the publisher's webpage for the paper.&#xA;What if my new job application is asking for my papers to be attached?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="453" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T14:46:45.353" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T14:46:45.353" Title="Attaching reprints of published but copyrighted papers with job application" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20971" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:45:24.020" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like almost all such questions, the ultimate answer is &quot;look at the copyright agreement you signed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in almost all cases, it is fine to distribute copies of your papers privately to individual people, so I can't imagine there would be a problem with you sending your papers along with your application.  In the past, publishers would give authors a certain number of paper &quot;offprints&quot; for exactly this purpose.  Nowadays, you more often get an official PDF (with the journal's logo) that you can send to your friends and colleagues, and that would be just the thing to send with your application as it also proves that the paper was in fact published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting on your web site is likely to be specifically addressed by the copyright agreement.  Some publishers allow it, some do not, some allow the posting of only certain versions (e.g. before revisions based on peer review).  So read what you signed.  (And next time you publish a paper, read the agreement &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you sign it!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T23:45:24.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-14T23:53:48.573" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago I took a final exam for a student who I was tutoring (we became friends during our tutoring sessions.). I hid in the bathroom; he snuck the exam out to me; I completed it and he turned it in. It was a Calculus test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was caught and suspended for a semester. I personally went in to the university to explain our actions, explain why I did it and to lend my support for him and to ask them for lenient punishment on him. The school administrators were appreciative of this and I think it was reflected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, he was out for the semester. Then, he went back again, finished school, and went on to grad school and his career. All said and done, very little if any harm done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life goes on. Sometimes people cheat, sometimes they plagiarize, we all do it to some extent in our lives, not a huge deal as far as I'm concerned if you don't do it often and you learn something about yourself in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T23:53:48.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-15T00:19:17.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me defend the middle ground here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, we're hearing only one side of the story here. Although, the case may seem straightforward, I do find the proposition of John strange. If he had simply asked for the solutions from last year's course without offering anything in return, this wouldn't have been an issue at all. It's like asking a girl out but also offering her money to improve your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, everyone seems to be taking for granted that his suggestion of cheating necessarily means that he has cheated before or even that he will cheat again. In fact, this person, who is a student, and whose case is relayed to us by someone who admits to disliking him, has already been labeled a serial cheater and is even considered to be very likely to use cheating as his primary means in obtaining a job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who has given a little thought to the problem would realize that there is a limit to cheating. Cheaters do not pass all exams with 100%. You can't cheat your way through answering interview questions unless you actually understand what you're being asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the suggestions given here, which I think is the most appropriate, was to ask the instructors in general terms about the exact form of cheating and its consequences. Then you will be better positioned to decide whether or not to report someone directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T00:19:17.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20976" CreationDate="2014-05-15T02:04:04.020" Score="1" ViewCount="23706" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears in thesis, e.g. &quot;A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction&#xA;of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean the thesis is OK for a Ph.D, just some reviewers have comments? or does it mean that it's not good enough for Ph.D, and although the one summits it will not continue to work on the thesis, but still decide to submit it for, i don't know, archiving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15300" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T02:09:25.903" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T02:09:25.903" Title="What does it mean &quot;a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction&quot;?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-15T03:35:40.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2014-05-15T02:08:35.910" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a standard bit of text that means that the dissertation is submitted towards &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; of the requirements for the PhD degree. There are other requirements (e.g. coursework, oral defense), so the dissertation alone is not enough to earn the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says nothing about the quality of the dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T02:08:35.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T08:23:24.903" Score="1" ViewCount="1928" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in my mid-30s' and have recently found myself in a dilemma. Around 4 years ago I completed a MSc. (Geology) and two professional courses (in other fields) in Northern America as an international student. After concluding them I had to leave Northern America for personal reasons (I came back to Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applied for 1000s and 1000s of job worldwide (related and unrelated to my background) and consulted several career counselors to introduce myself to the industry at best, asking for help or suggestions to all the people within and outside my network. Unfortunately, I didn't find any job. I had even a lot of complications due to VISA issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Possible solution?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there seems to be the opportunity to take a PhD in my field. The fact is that I never really wanted to take a doctoral program, as I have always felt uncomfortable in academia and I am not very interested in research itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question(s):&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it too late to do a PhD at my age?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you know PhD is a good fit for yourself?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What job prospects are there for a PhD in Geology (in this challenging economy)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are my job prospects better or worse with a PhD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15308" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T11:46:34.543" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:46:34.543" Title="Job prospects after completing graduate studies in Geology" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20880" CreationDate="2014-05-15T08:32:14.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I have seen a paper draft that had a footnote at the author list (which contained more than the two persons named below) stating that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Uthor and C. Ollaborator contributed to the present work in equal parts and share first authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this would be an option in your case as well? By this you have made clear which persons did the main part of the work and give the first position in the name list to the one who managed all the submission process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:32:14.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20979" CreationDate="2014-05-15T08:43:30.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question has several parts and may be considered too wide for this forum. From what I can see you have a question about your own motivation, which only you can answer. Doing a PhD is a hard job and you need to be motivated to do it successfully. Motivation does not have to be to love your task but also to do it for a goal further on. A PhD is furthermore not just an academic path-breaker. In a PhD are a number of useful skills that are sought after, which include critical thinking, writing, presentation, analysis, synthesis etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second part of your question deals with the job market. To my knowledge geology PhDs do not seem to have problems finding jobs. There is demand for PhD level candidates within both exploration and environmental sectors of industry and government. Being from Sweden, it seems a very high percentage of our students do very well. I do not have any statistics for geology but have numbers for Physical Geography and in that field about 7% had &quot;unknown&quot; jobs whereas the rest had employment in academia, public sector, private sector, NGO, and a small proportion in other fields but all relevant to their education (y-scale is in number of PhDs, QG = Quaternary Geology; PG = Physical Geography):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ZJYP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics from the University of Minnesota Geology department shows similar numbers (now, two data points is not much but I think this provides an indication of the value of a PhD in the field of Earth Sciences):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7fdjH.png&quot; alt=&quot;University of Minnesota Geology graduate careers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding to my second point is a point of social skills. With a higher ranking job, come skills beyond the factual content of an education. I already touched upon the skills but if I look at graduates who really have succeeded, in the sense they left academia and got high-paying and interesting, challenging jobs, most have been able to present themselves very well and this part is not to be understated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the possibility of success in job searching after doing a PhD is definitely there but it will without doubt also depend on your own interest in pushing and present yourself and the quality of your work/skills and work ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T08:53:54.153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:53:54.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T09:09:16.327" Score="4" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I do not have any prior research experience, therefore I had a few questions while I was studying papers on cluster analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a researcher legally and with permission use the benchmark values of the pre-existing algorithm to compare with theirs? This question came to me after I noticed identical results reported in multiple papers for some population based cluster analysis algorithms. The different papers propose a new algorithm and then compare the performance of it with some other algorithms over some common dataset. I have noticed that, for some algorithms the values reported are an exact match. The nature of these algorithm is stochastic, and also the different authors claim to have run the algorithms different number of iterations and then use the mean. Therefore no two sets of run will result with the same mean, min, max and standard deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion is either it is permissible to reuse the benchmark results with permission. Or a common benchmarking framework exists (still, how can two papers reporting using different number of iterations land into the same identical result?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have reproduced the work of the papers using Octave and benchmark is similar to what is reported in the papers, but is definitely not identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how generally these are done? If a researcher has to implement 5 algorithms to compare, then do they implement their own and then verify and compare or request the version the author has used and then benchmark with respect to that specific piece of code to maintain unbiased experimentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="922" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T10:07:58.920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:47:13.523" Title="Do researchers reuse benchmark results for existing algorithm when comparing with their algorithm?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20982" CreationDate="2014-05-15T09:51:49.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are definitely allowed to quote the results from another paper, with citation. You can also email the author and ask for the code (or grab it from their webpage). In this case, citation is also the right thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the benchmarks in question, the results may yield the same results to the accuracy presented on the paper (if I get a value of 0.98547856842, I will probably round it to 0.985). If you repeat the same benchmark on the same dataset enough times, you can converge to the same numbers to the accuracy printed. It is even easier if the dataset is small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to enforce replicability is to use the same random seed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, I would be suspicious if they both report the exact same results. If you have the mean, standard deviation, and population size, you can do a statistical test to check the probability of them being reported equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they just copied the results from the other paper without citing it, it would be a bad practice, but it does not invalidate the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T09:51:49.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:16:57.503" Score="8" ViewCount="5058" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pondering on how much time I should plan to finalize a paper that has received a 'revise and resubmit' letter from the journal editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I should return it as soon as possible. However, given that I have other work to do I would like to know if there's an unwritten rule on how long should I take to resubmit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15312" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T11:20:50.033" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:20:50.033" Title="What is a reasonable time to resubmit revised papers after they have been peer reviewed?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20985" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:24:01.330" Score="11" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today there has been significant news coverage (at least in the UK) that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ&lt;/a&gt; are withdrawing statements from two papers on the possible harmful side effects of statins. Here are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/15/statins-bmj-statement-professor-collins-side-effects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27420100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; articles on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led me to wonder how common such issues are in academia in general. In this case it appears the authors made an incorrect conclusion from a study which was not picked up in peer review. I can think of lots of similar possible situations where proofs may turn out to be incorrect or other data may be wrong/not properly dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular I'm thinking about less popular/controversial subjects where such things are unlikely to make the general news. Is it standard practice to issue a retraction if things are incorrect? If anyone has any numerical data on this that would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T20:49:43.480" LastActivityDate="2017-10-01T07:12:38.797" Title="How common is it that publishers withdraw a paper due to incorrect conclusions?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20984" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:27:45.020" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many editors report the deadline in their decision letter. However, I have seen some decision letters without a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that most submission systems provide a Due On date. See this screenshot from Manuscript Central:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4ctvT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Manuscript Central&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no indication regarding a deadline either in the letter, or in the submission system (or the journal website), the best for you would be to &lt;em&gt;contact the handling editor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:27:45.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20984" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:28:02.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Times vary. In my field three weeks for minor and six weeks for major revisions seems common. If the journal does not provide any general guidelines on this one would hope that the editor would do so. From your question, I take it neither has occurred. You can then approach the problem by trying to assess how much time you need (given other chores etc.) and then contact the editor asking if your estimated time plus a week or some smaller buffer would be acceptable. That way you gain a deadline against which to work and remove possibly annoying reminders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I will not attempt to provide a fixed time for your specific case since what is customary varies both between disciplines and between journals but trying to  get a reasonable time frame to which you can commit should be a good step to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:28:02.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20982" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:47:13.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would wager it is &lt;em&gt;not done enough&lt;/em&gt;. It is certainly ok, even required, to compare your results to earlier work, and the more fair and unbiased you can do this, the better. It is perfectly acceptable to say &quot;on the right-hand side of Table XY, we report the results for this problem previously achieved in [1]&quot; (and then list them exactly as reported).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing to make sure, though, is that when you want to say that you are better than a previous work, the comparison is actually fair. For instance, one sometimes sees papers where the authors use a long-running deterministic algorithm (which you need a map/reduce cluster to execute on) and claim that their work is better than an earlier heuristic approach, which was built for speed and on-line execution. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:47:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20994" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:54:02.597" Score="2" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work mainly with &lt;em&gt;in silico&lt;/em&gt; method development and data analysis within biomedical research. For an upcoming conference I intend to go with a tutorial-type of submission instead of a &quot;regular&quot; conference submission, which in our field would be a teaser of upcoming papers or application of something that is already published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what I read here on Academia.SE, in other fields (e.g. CS) conference papers are more prestigious (and thus more desirable) than conventional journal papers, but in our field it's the other way around, people prefer getting a &quot;real&quot; publication rather than a &quot;conference paper&quot; and thus typically don't want to give away much at a conference. This is simply because &lt;em&gt;a)&lt;/em&gt; the same set of results would not be novel if submitted later to a journal, and &lt;em&gt;b)&lt;/em&gt; if the results are still preliminary there is always the risk of being scooped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, given the background, I consider preparing a tutorial type contribution where I present the practical _do_s and _dont_s of this one particular type of data analysis. I have noticed that many scientists in the field are not very comfortable with this type of analysis and it would also be a nice way to promote my methods. I am mostly considering this as a poster presentation, but of course an oral presentation would work as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Does a tutorial type submission differ significantly than a regular submission (for instance with respect to how the abstract should look like)? Is there anything in particular I should be careful about?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T12:19:27.913" Title="Does a tutorial type conference submission differ significantly from a regular submission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20985" CreationDate="2014-05-15T10:54:26.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot;&gt;COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)&lt;/a&gt; have recommendations for what circumstances should lead to retraction of papers. Retraction is considered a very severe action and is not generally done lightly. In a document from COPE on &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines.pdf&quot;&gt;retraction guidelines&lt;/a&gt; you can see what they recommend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly that does not answer your question but the problem about being general in academia is that the effects of problems in written articles differ between fields. What is wrong is obviously wrong, but if the effects are risking lives  or is harmful in some other direct way will be more likely in some fields than in others. Hence retraction is probably far more likely in life sciences than in, say history or philosophy (feel free to disagree or add other better examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:54:26.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20992" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T11:26:48.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In common law legal systems, a contract (or informally known as an agreement in some jurisdictions) is an agreement having a lawful object entered into voluntarily by two or more parties, each of whom intends to create one or more legal obligations between them. The elements of a contract are &quot;offer&quot; and &quot;acceptance&quot; by &quot;competent persons&quot; having legal capacity who exchange &quot;consideration&quot; to create &quot;mutuality of obligation.&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T11:45:08.480" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:45:08.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20993" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T11:26:48.167" Score="0" Body="Questions about academic contracts." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T11:45:05.417" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:45:05.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20989" CreationDate="2014-05-15T12:19:27.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tutorials at conferences in my field (supercomputing/HPC) are half-day or full-day sessions where you and your co-authors get up and teach lectures on your proposed and (maybe) have hands-on sessions where the students can try what they learn. These sessions are usually on a special day either right before or right after the regular paper talks and cost extra for attendees. There are often honoraria for the presenters due to the level of work required to organize the sessions. The submissions tend to be much shorter than the papers, but they also include CVs for the teachers and sample lecture slides from related or prior tutorials or lectures. A tutorial would never be given as a poster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, perhaps you mean to present a paper or poster that would be more of a  &quot;How To&quot; guide. Which is to say that you don't intend to give a half-day or full-day lecture on your topic. Perhaps you don't intend to give any new results, but simply show how certain methods are applied to you field. This might be acceptable to your conference's program committee depending on what is asked for in the call for papers/participation, but I suspect some sort of novel result will be required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T12:19:27.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T13:05:05.427" Score="8" ViewCount="1204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an industrial PhD student (Europe) and recently I'm finding myself reflecting over some events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As industrial student I'm working for a Company. It is important to note that the Company (superiors/supervisors) have decided what subject (and its scope) I'll be working on. Basically, it was their idea for a new product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that my boss is also my main supervisor (she is doing 20% at university and 80% at the Company). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this in mind, I'm finding some things odd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that &quot;she still does not have vision about the project&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to make sanity check and establish how often this happens and is it normal thing or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:48:06.997" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:15:28.663" Title="PhD sanity check on project description and advisor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19545" CreationDate="2014-05-15T13:23:21.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Just to add a point that’s not yet been mentioned.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you can do is to explicitly mention you your own level of knowledge in the review.  I recently began one review something like &quot;This work is correct and interesting, and as far as I know it's new, but I don't know the literature on the topic thoroughly enough to be certain of that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in my field, most reviews come with a field on the score-sheet to give your own level of confidence, usually on a scale of 0 (null) to 4 (expert).  I would be uncomfortable reviewing anything where I’d rate myself 0 or 1, and for a 2, I would want to check with the editor before accepting the review, and see if they would prefer to ask another reviewer.  But from an editor's point of view, a well-thought out review from someone inexperienced but conscientious — especially when that inexperience is known, and can be allowed for — may well be better than a hurried review from an expert, and is certainly better than no review at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1277" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T13:23:21.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2014-05-15T13:28:14.860" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now they become somehow citable by providing DOI references. That was on their 14th of May news:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science&quot;&gt;https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T13:28:14.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20996" CreationDate="2014-05-15T13:42:58.423" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't sound unusual to me. Writing project plans and drafting milestones is a part of graduate studies, but your supervisor should definitely be involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that &quot;she still&#xA;  does not have vision about the project&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly unsettling for you, but sadly not that uncommon*. The unusual part is the supervisor actually saying it. Nevertheless, I think it's a serious issue and your supervisor is apparently not taking his/her responsibilities seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having a too loose mentoring/supervision during a PhD is a very good way of finding oneself in hell after 3-4 years of wandering.&lt;/strong&gt; Your concerns are by all means valid and you shouldn't let this slip. I would suggest to politely tell your advisor that you need a more precise direction to follow, otherwise you risk loosing precious time (and money) for you, him/her and, off course, the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard frequent bad reports of peoples pursuing a PhD with a commercial company. But as stated by @nivag in the comments, people in industry tend not to have much experience supervising students. Try to be proactive: if you feel you need more support say so, very clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I'm assuming that, being in Europe, you have a Master's degree and the PhD project is intended to last 3-4 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T15:27:48.637" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T15:27:48.637" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16575" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:01:57.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't take the ERA rankings too seriously.  Ranking ten of thousands of journals was an enormous job, and they did amazingly well given the size of the task.  However, in the process they made a few questionable judgment calls and every once in a while an &lt;a href=&quot;http://symomega.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/the-arc-the-era-and-the-ejc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;outright mistake&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my field of mathematics, the list of A-rated journals looks rather good overall, but there are a few surprises and at least one journal I am convinced doesn't remotely deserve an A (Fuzzy Sets and Systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend asking your advisor or other faculty members for their opinion about the IASTED biomedical engineering conference (rather than relying on opinions from random people on the internet).  If they are familiar with it, then they should have an opinion about whether the ERA A rating is well deserved.  If they aren't familiar with it, then that is itself a bad sign.  Not being familiar with a C journal in your specialty is understandable, but not being familiar with a genuine A journal would be more surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also investigate it yourself.  Have they published any papers you've read or seen cited?  Can you find any papers in their proceedings that impress or excite you?  If so, then at least your paper would be in good company.  If not, then that's another bad sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T14:01:57.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:28:24.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I seem to agree with JeffE. It does sound like a scam. The open universities I know: a) They have permanent administrative personnel organizing the university tasks  b) Despite the fact they are online they have buildings (not necessarily a campus) but at least offices where the administrative people work. c) They have deans, professors and lecturers. Some of them are part-time but certainly not all of them. All faculty is paid accordingly d) Before hiring professors they have courses, syllabus etc. Based on that they hire their faculty. g) For hiring faculty they make public announcements. Public announcements are put in scientific societies (i.e., ACM), on the university site, on press etc. As a result they cost money. Emailing professors sound a poor-guy's scam working from his basement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have all those prerequisites, you will be taken seriously. If not, you should probably look to well-established open universities for inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T15:02:47.883" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T15:02:47.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14010" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:44:32.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Figshare provides a way to import a GitHub release and assigns a doi to it. I haven't tried this yet but it seems to be a good middle path between a software paper and citing just the repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T14:44:32.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20938" CreationDate="2014-05-15T16:46:47.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm honestly puzzled by this tactics. No one will make you write more reviews than you want to. I write my reviews very promptly (at least the editors of the journals I have reviewed for tend to point that out to me when I submit my reviews), but I have a self-imposed threshold for how many reviews I will do within a given amount of time. If I get requests that exceed that threshold, I politely decline and explain why. I don't understand what's so &quot;delicate&quot; about that. It's surely better to be a diligent reviewer who occasionally declines invitations than to be a notoriously late reviewer (on purpose!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T16:46:47.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T17:29:14.917" Score="12" ViewCount="7648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a few academic homepages with tag clouds indicating their topics near the top of the page. I quite like the idea... it gives a nice simple/quick overview of the topics the person is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus I was looking for a tool to (help) generate a tag cloud of my own topics. I'm not looking for a generic tag cloud generator. Rather the tool should take a list of PDFs of papers, extract the topical keywords and then generate the tag cloud. Ideally the tool should be clever enough to rule out noise or common stop-words like &quot;related work&quot;, &quot;funded by&quot;, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, multiple tools could be used: e.g., one to do the extraction of weighted topics from the papers and another one to generate the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to pull a nice looking example from some random topic searches on Google images (&quot;&lt;code&gt;tag cloud logic programming&lt;/code&gt;&quot; in this case):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e4lOj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uv.es/grimo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Why can I not use a generic tag cloud generator like Wordle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use Wordle or generic tag cloud generators, I get &quot;et&quot;, &quot;al&quot;, &quot;logic&quot;, &quot;programming&quot;, &quot;figure&quot;, &quot;table&quot;. I can filter stop-words manually but I still get single words with no n-gram detection (&quot;logic&quot; and &quot;programming&quot; do not convey &quot;logic programming&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are tools for topic extraction that will intelligently extract n-gram topics from PDFs (using k-means, gazateers, tf-idf, that sort of stuff ... I'm not an expert). However, these are typically not weighted for sizing in tag clouds. Hence it seems you need a tool that connects/does both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-03-24T15:41:49.713" LastActivityDate="2018-03-24T15:41:49.713" Title="Topical tag cloud generator for researchers/academics" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-03-26T06:48:34.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21008" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:21:20.190" Score="18" ViewCount="5550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been co-supervised by my primary supervisor's wife. Suffice to say that this has been problematic where both have different research interests. Each asks me to do different jobs and they often bring their home fights to work. My primary supervisor is always submissive to her will whenever she is around. Though he supports me in every decision I do and my research behind her back. It is been a nightmare and was wondering if there are some written rules that such scenario is a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15328" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T18:25:20.293" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T18:07:39.847" Title="Is there a conflict of interest when the supervisor and co-supervisor are husband and wife?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21006" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:43:05.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any written rules regarding this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our department (and other affiliated departments), there are quite a few professors who are married to each other. In most cases, I have seen that such situations tend to turn out exceedingly well. However, there are, as your situation goes, many times when this can go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice under these circumstances is to treat their home fights as none of your business. Stay out of it, develop your own research agenda and pursue it independent of such pettiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, &lt;strong&gt;Don't walk ! Run !&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T18:43:05.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21006" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:45:04.540" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your supervisors are problematic in several ways, from what you describe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pushing their own research interests over what's most beneficial to you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposing you to unpleasant interpersonal issues between themselves that affect your working environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not coordinating and communicating effectively with each other to co-supervise you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, none of these things are necessarily the result of them being married. The same issues can arise (and I have seen them) with unrelated co-supervisors who do not get along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, co-supervision by a married couple is not universally disallowed.  (In my university it is allowed, and there is a husband-wife pair in my department that successfully co-supervises PhD students on occasion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; universities do recognize this as a conflict of interest. This from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/supervisors/policies/supervisor-appointment&quot;&gt;University of Western Australia&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supervision must be free of actual or perceived conflicts of interest.  Supervision by, or &lt;strong&gt;co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships&lt;/strong&gt; is generally not appropriate.  All such cases must be declared at the time that supervisors are nominated.  In cases where approval is given on academic grounds for supervision by, or co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships, additional supervisors who are free of an actual or perceived conflict of interest must be appointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T18:45:04.540" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21009" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:49:01.337" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T18:49:01.337" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T18:49:01.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21010" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:49:01.337" Score="0" Body="Getting the word out about your research to the (general) public through methods other than publications. Questions may refer to topics such as media, public relations, out-reach, open days, use of social networks for research, content of academic homepages, etc." OwnerUserId="7746" LastEditorUserId="7746" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:48:52.040" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:48:52.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20226" CreationDate="2014-05-15T19:25:33.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never done this myself, but I think the following system could work using &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://travis-ci.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Travis CI&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a repository for the homework where students can submit pull requests to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make scripts to run and test the solution and put them on the repo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students would then fork the repo, add their submission, and make a pull request.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.travis-ci.com/user/getting-started/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Setup Travis CI&lt;/a&gt; to run the test scripts on the solutions. This will require some form of standardization for the commands to compile and run the solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about this system is that the pull request page on GitHub reports the status of the Travis CI run. You can then leave comments for the students and they can iterate until Travis gives them the green light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="460" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T19:25:33.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21013" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:50:37.920" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:50:37.920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:50:37.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21014" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:50:37.920" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning how to critically read and evaluate scholarly material." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T18:18:15.077" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T18:18:15.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21015" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:52:01.413" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:52:01.413" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:52:01.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21016" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:52:01.413" Score="0" Body="Concerning the development of the skills necessary for a career in academia." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T22:01:04.893" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T22:01:04.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21017" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:53:37.763" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:53:37.763" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:53:37.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21018" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:53:37.763" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning relationships and dealing with problems between people." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:57:06.947" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:57:06.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21019" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:54:51.400" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:54:51.400" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:54:51.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21020" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:54:51.400" Score="0" Body="Questions about the roles, duties and obligations of the committee that determines the content and schedule of a conference." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T22:03:36.910" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T22:03:36.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21021" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:56:15.580" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:56:15.580" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:56:15.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21022" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:56:15.580" Score="0" Body="Concerning the use of Google's search system for searching scholarly research, including maintaining individual profiles." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T22:01:07.777" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T22:01:07.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21023" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:58:02.577" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T21:58:02.577" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T21:58:02.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21024" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:58:02.577" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning NCBI's repository of citations for biomedial literature, as well as Pubmed Central, a repository of open access publications, and Pubmed Open for post-publication peer review." OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T22:03:44.023" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T22:03:44.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T22:48:49.727" Score="8" ViewCount="2448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been shortlisted for a lectureship position. The committee has asked me to present a 10 minutes (!) lecture on teaching game development topics to undergrads. My teaching experience amounts to TA roles during my post-doc and PhD. I am familiar with the topic however at this career stage I have not yet had the opportunity to manage a university course on my onw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the time constraints, what would you (search committee) want to see in one such presentation? The overall course structure? Assessment/project ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11338" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T13:09:25.453" Title="Which topics to include in a teaching presentation?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21025" CreationDate="2014-05-16T00:03:37.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My content area is biology, and our major biology education research journal recently published a nice overview on this (open-source reference at end). Hopefully the results are relevant for your field as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure content is correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow instructions (keep to time limit and topic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the topic relevant (bring in a hot topic from research or news)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve the audience (have an activity or &quot;clicker question&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have teaching slides or use the board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend trying to &lt;strong&gt;find a course&lt;/strong&gt; (at the interviewing school or at a similar institution) that has an online syllabus so you can see how much is normally covered in a lecture. Then your first slide can be one that shows how you would cover the day's content, but places your 10 min talk in context. This is helpful if the &quot;fun&quot; part you want to do is in the middle of the imaginary lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, pick something from the course that you think you can &lt;strong&gt;create an activity&lt;/strong&gt; about. Can the audience develop something? Vote on an aspect of the code? Work in groups to find three common errors in a short piece of code? (I'm flailing around here, as game design is a mystery).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build your lecture around that activity. Have the activity near the beginning. &lt;strong&gt;Plan on everything taking at least twice as long&lt;/strong&gt; as you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be &lt;strong&gt;enthusiastic&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on the invite, and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith, M. K., Wenderoth, M. P., &amp;amp; Tyler, M. (2013). The Teaching Demonstration: What Faculty Expect and How to Prepare for This Aspect of the Job Interview. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(1), 12-18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T00:03:37.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-05-16T00:03:58.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, the free sharing of ideas is the epitome of what the academic community is all about. However, as was also noted, we soon learn that this is only an ideal; reality often isn't quite like that, for many reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without getting into the many reasons--mostly involving fear of getting scooped-- for not sharing much (if at all) about your ongoing research, there are several ways to manage this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, if you truly don't want to share your ideas and/or pursue possible collaboration, figure out how to (preferably nicely!) turn someone down. Try something along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry, that's still classified information. Would you like me to let you know when I can tell you more?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in those cases in which you do want to exchange ideas, perhaps with the goal of assessing the potential for future collaboration, you obviously need a slightly different approach. One approach is to share one interesting 'nugget' of what you have found/are working on, and then turn the conversation to their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How do you think that might fit in with what you are doing? Do you see any other ways in which x might apply to y?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for their input on a small piece of the current puzzle;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What could you tell me about z, in the light of what I've told you about x?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your milage may vary, of course, but this approach can get you many fruitful ideas (Be sure to attribute them to the proper source!), interesting responses, and even valuable collaborations. You can often get a gut feeling for whether or not you are  or should be comfortable with responding frankly or whether you want to be more circumspect. In general, the value of sharing with others outweighs the potential risk, though again, YMMV!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T00:03:58.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2014-05-16T00:34:08.907" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is horribly unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need to play some kind of morality police that to commit an offence and admit to it is better than committing an offense and no. Like some kind of parent.  Stressing them out with an interrogation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wonderful response is a professor at my uni did. He said &quot;You have the same program as this guy, you just changed XYZ to bluff me. I will give you each half so you share the mark between you!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's enough of a disincentive to copy if you only get half the marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What had happened really was the whole class had copied off each other.. There were only about 2 proper ones going round. But two copying students posted theres in a little bit late together, one copied off the other, not making many changes, and after he had already collected the bulk of them and not picked out any plagiarism, it was easy to spot the copying in those two.  He was very good natured about it and didn't stress the two students out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in those days, the grades in the first year didn't count. (eventually one guy intentionally failed all the exams in the first year, because he said there's no point. And they changed the rules the next year and made the first year count!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13803" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T00:34:08.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-16T02:47:29.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize for sounding a bit non-academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to forgive yourself, and realize you have become a different person because of this incident. Until you do this for yourself, you cannot expect anyone else to do it for you. People make mistakes. Learn, and move on. You can still make a difference tomorrow - unless you dwell on yesterday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Catholic church recognizes that people can turn away from past mistakes and start afresh in what they call &quot;the sacrament of reconciliation&quot;. This requires that you a) be sorry (contrition), b) say you are sorry (confession), and c) make up for it (satisfaction). There is simplicity and wisdom in that. Even if you are not religious, it's worth contemplating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make peace with yourself. Until you do, you cannot return, even if the University lets you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside - a year away from your friends is a really big punishment; it can also provide an opportunity. Do make the most of it. If you can't find a job, do some volunteering; maybe join an international aid organization, and go abroad to help people less fortunate than you. Turn this episode into something constructive - so that when you look back on the year, you realize you turned something bad into something good. That will help with the healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T22:54:46.410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T22:54:46.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T03:02:14.550" Score="7" ViewCount="1448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took the GRE in April and recently received my score. I placed in the 88th percentile, which is respectable but far from impressive. I am hoping to get into a top 25 math grad school for a PhD in pure math. I don't think my score is representative of my mastery of the undergraduate curriculum as I barely prepared for the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't prepare as much as I should have and now am worried about whether I should study over the summer and take it again next year. I have an REU this summer which will eat up eight weeks and would like to get a start on my senior thesis afterwards. As such, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As far as graduate school admissions are concerned, is it worth it to take the time out of more interesting pursuits to prepare for retaking the GRE next year?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15343" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T03:32:40.433" Title="GRE Score Advice: Should I retake?" Tags="&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21031" CreationDate="2014-05-16T03:32:40.433" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different admissions committees may handle things somewhat differently, as might different members of the same committee.  However, I wouldn't worry about an 88th percentile score.  As you say, it's respectable but not impressive, but that's OK.  At top five universities, no score is high enough to be genuinely impressive by itself, and I don't think anyone gets that worked up about modest differences.  (It's understood that some people are quick enough to score in the 99th percentile without breaking a sweat, while someone else might only reach the 90th percentile, and this difference is at best mild evidence for who has greater research potential.)  At lower-ranked universities, there might be a little more scope for standing out via a high score, but it's certainly not necessary.  I'm not aware of any university that would rule someone out for being in the 88th percentile (although of course I'm not familiar with every university's policies).  By contrast, there are universities at which a 50th percentile score would cause consternation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you'll have to have an impressive application in other ways, particularly letters of recommendation.  However, you'd need that anyway: the extra margin of safety you would get in your application from having a higher GRE score would be small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel worried, it couldn't hurt to try taking the exam again.  However, doing well in your REU and writing a great senior thesis are far more crucial than improving your GRE score, so you should definitely not compromise on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T03:32:40.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21036" CreationDate="2014-05-16T04:53:24.877" Score="9" ViewCount="1881" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, my fiancee are both currently pursuing our PhD's in bioengineering and materials science and engineering, respectively, at the same university. She wants to eventually have an industrial research position and I want to do a post-doc with the intention becoming a professor. We are ~3 years away from needing to have the serious version of this conversation, but which route of the two would be the bottleneck in our eventual decision? Are there more industrial jobs available than post-doc positions? Are there any other dual-academic-career couples out there with advice for us? I hope the content of this question is appropriate for this stackexchange. Thanks so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15345" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T17:00:38.617" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:22:10.997" Title="After a PhD in biotechnology/engineering - more opportunities in industry or a postdoc positions?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;biotechnology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T05:08:07.240" Score="16" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do research in an engineering subject and my journal reviewer has asked me to push every mathematical proof to the appendix to improve the readability. While I feel this is true, I also think that some of the proofs can be retained, as they are short and not so much mathematical. What is your opinion regarding this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I have written this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We thank you for your helpful comment. We have moved all the proofs&#xA;  and the lemmas, which even if removed do not directly affect the&#xA;  continuity of reading  and is long, to the appendices. Proofs which&#xA;  are not much mathematical in nature and are short are still kept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow I feel my language is a bit rude. Do you have a better way of putting it? Or should I just move every proof to the appendix? (The journal is almost accepted with only few minor revisions like this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13193" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T13:29:26.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T07:29:00.327" Title="Reviewer asked to move every mathematical proof to appendices for an engineering journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21034" CreationDate="2014-05-16T06:08:44.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on this is this: The content should be organized in a way to make it most accessible for the readers. While readers are all different, you have chosen an engineering journal and I would presume that the &quot;journal style&quot; of having proofs in the appendix is a good choice for this audience. So my general answer is: Just follow the suggestion in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T06:08:44.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21033" CreationDate="2014-05-16T06:22:03.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about bioengineering and materials sciences. In my area (CS) there are many more industrial positions available than academic positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, industrial positions often tend be clustered in regions, and there might not be too many academic jobs in those regions (or they might be very highly competitive). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly though, I suspect that basing your decisions on where you might do a postdoc is a problem, because a postdoc itself is a temporary position, and so you're really only deferring the real problem. One argument would be that if postdocs in your area take a while (say 3-4 years vs 1-2), then you might as well operate as if that were the permanent job, and then reevaluate after your time is done and you're on the academic job market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck: two-body problems are tricky, and when one partner is on the academic track it gets even trickier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T06:22:03.337" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21034" CreationDate="2014-05-16T12:52:01.150" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all cases I have been involved, together with the revised manuscript a response letter to the editor is submitted, re-iterating the specific comments/issues of the reviewers and explaining the changes made in the manuscript to address these issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is typically one of those things that can be explained in the response letter. You can formulate a nice response where you can explain to the editor (who essentially has the last word on whether or not the manuscript will be accepted) that ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;while we believe that moving some of the mathematical formulas and derivations to the supplementary will improve the readability and flow article, some are indeed essential in order to give the reader a fair chance to understand the assumptions/model/results/...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major benefits of addressing the situation in this way: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You show that you &lt;strong&gt;do not disagree with the reviewer(s)&lt;/strong&gt;. People tend not to complain much when you agree with them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You show the editor that you &lt;strong&gt;take the matter seriously&lt;/strong&gt;, have put effort into amending the manuscript in order to &lt;strong&gt;improve the situation&lt;/strong&gt; and also put thought into making the paper easier for the reader, while not losing the important bits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;discourage&lt;/strong&gt; you to use formulations where &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; decide what does and does not count as long, or what does and does not impair readability. I say this mainly because you are not in an &lt;em&gt;objective position&lt;/em&gt; to judge these things. You have written the manuscript and to you, at the time of submission, the manuscript (hopefully) is informative and has a good flow. You have been working on the project for months, maybe even years. At the time you pick it up, you have all the necessary background to understand the paper. The reader is &lt;strong&gt;far away&lt;/strong&gt; from that position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead consider picking out things that you feel are absolutely critical, in order to understand the essential bits of the work; that is the motivation, the goals, and the conclusions. Everything else could go into the supplementary...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, does the journal not have any information on how to handle mathematical calculations/proofs etc, on their guidelines for authors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you have co-authors what do they think? Your supervisor has some opinions on the matter surely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T07:29:00.327" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T07:29:00.327" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21025" CreationDate="2014-05-16T13:09:25.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Adrienne's answer is quite good but I will add a few comments after recently being on the interviewing panel watching about 20 such sample lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The goal is for them to see how well you can teach.&lt;/strong&gt; Domain knowledge is important but if you cannot deliver it well then you will be a bad teacher...so they want to see how is your delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is unlikely they care about assessment at this stage (though that question could come up after your sample lecture). I believe it is really about seeing how well you can teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adrienne's idea about activities supports the idea of active learning which general results in improved learning than the &quot;stand and deliver&quot; method. So, definitely do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one breaking point I've seen in the past which can push you over the edge (in the good or bad way) is the panel asking themselves &quot;Will our students understand this teacher?&quot; It would help if you knew the level of the undergrads who would take this (first year? fourth year? overall quality of this school's students?) so you can target that level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watching other teachers is great but make sure you are watching the teacher which are actually getting the students to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many colleagues (on the panels) make deciding comments like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think she teaches at too high a level, not a good fit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He used examples which were very easy to understand, our students would get that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She adapted very well when the projector failed and could jump to the board and continue the lesson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that those observing you might or might not have a background in the topic. Assuming you will be teaching first year students, pick a concept which would normally be taught, ideally one which is not so easy for all students to understand, and &lt;strong&gt;show that you can make it very easy to understand&lt;/strong&gt;. Activities are a great way to test for understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T13:09:25.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21005" CreationDate="2014-05-16T13:15:32.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand the main issues are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to extract text from publications,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to extract disciplines/subjects from the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, following @ff524's comment, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://skipperkongen.dk/2011/09/07/creating-a-word-cloud-from-pdf-documents/&quot;&gt;Creating a word cloud from PDF documents&lt;/a&gt;. In general, you can try to search for &lt;code&gt;pdf to text conversion&lt;/code&gt; (as PDF is a graphical format, sometimes it is tricky to get all content in the exact order, but for this application it should work fine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to topic extraction, and elimination of common words, you need to compare your n-grams (i.e. sequences of n words) to some other dataset (&lt;a href=&quot;http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2.html&quot;&gt;for the one by Google&lt;/a&gt;). But maybe you need to compare it to n-grams created from scientific words (to eliminate &lt;code&gt;see Fig&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;et al.&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;previous works&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even carefully looking at frequencies is not enough to eliminate all &quot;common words&quot;. For example, if you paper discipline-specific words or expressions, it may be hard to distinguish them from discipline names. And, depending on your taste, you may or may not want to include them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To extract disciplines you need to have some list of it, so you can compare with it. Some time ago I was collecting one (&lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/stared/363b31da4fb517ef0ae3&quot;&gt;see this gist&lt;/a&gt;). One trick to make one is to look at Wikipedia for articles related to your branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are more in natural language processing, you can look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P. Buitelaar, T. Eigner, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-403/paper5.pdf&quot;&gt;Topic Extraction from Scientific Literature for Competency Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or search for similar publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud&quot;&gt;tag cloud&lt;/a&gt; visualization you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordle.net/&quot;&gt;http://www.wordle.net/&lt;/a&gt; or something similar. But beware, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/10/word-clouds-considered-harmful/&quot;&gt;some people are highly opinionated against tag clouds&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIDE REMARK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that graphs are a better tool to convey information, as similar concepts are clustered together (in opposition to having a soup of concepts). See things in line of e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://stared.github.io/tagoverflow/&quot;&gt;TagOverflow&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/stared/tag-graph-map-of-stackexchange/wiki&quot;&gt;maps of SE&lt;/a&gt; (disclaimer: these are my projects).&#xA;Once you get tags and some quantity relating them, it is easy to make a nice graph with &lt;a href=&quot;https://gephi.org/&quot;&gt;Gephi&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T13:23:45.720" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T13:23:45.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21034" CreationDate="2014-05-16T14:03:01.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it not suffice to have just the statements of the results in the paper? The question is whether the audience will be interested in the proofs of the results. For a less mathematical audience, I think moving proofs and calculations into an appendix is Ok, because most of the time they are not so interested in the details. That is what I generally try to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is not so mathematically inclined, then it can be intimidating to be confronted with lots of mathematical details, and they can interrupt the flow. I suppose that if the proofs are short they don't matter so much, but even then, the question you should ask yourself is how interested your audience would be in reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a mathematics and statistics paper, I think retaining important calculations and proofs in the body of the paper is standard practice, but even there there is room for moving less important stuff into an appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T14:03:01.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-16T14:07:12.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would probably help to reduce your shame if you made a simple apology to those who you feel you owe one. Just say that you are sorry for what happened that year and that you are eager to continue your studies and finish for real this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5592" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T14:07:12.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-16T15:24:35.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adjunct faculty/instructor point of view here. My recommendation to you: &lt;strong&gt;replace your &quot;shame&quot; with work and achievement you can be proud of!&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put that time you aren't spending with your already-graduated friends to academic use. Attend all your classes (unless you're contagious). Be on time with your attendance and assignments. Pay attention and ask questions. Go to your professors'/instructors' office hours even if you are sure you know what's going on in class -- especially those professors aware of the suspension. Maybe bring along an assignment you're working on to confirm you're on the right track -- and conveniently prove that it's really you who is doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're a fourth-year student, you should occasionally (or often) be able to exceed the requirements for an assignment. Just don't make it harder to grade your work... an extra citation or three (that you actually understand and use) in a research paper; really good comments in your computer code should be fine. Even just emailed questions can go a long way to demonstrate your engagement and effort. (There are bad questions: &quot;What is the answer to #7&quot; is probably an example of a bad question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with other posters (especially Nate) who say that the professors/instructors will mostly forgive your mistake. Expect that your work will be looked at more carefully, at least for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are few things I find more annoying than students &quot;sharing&quot; work. I can't let it slide morally and it wastes a lot of my time making sure my suspicion is correct before I more forward with it. So, I don't want to read your letter about the past; that's just more wasted time. Until I see different behavior, it's just more B.S. (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; meaning Bachelor's of Science) that was quite possibly written by a helicopter parent and shows more effort that was put into the assignment that caused the problem anyway. Actions speak louder than words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I don't remember who cheated; I do remember students who excelled in their work. (Edit: Or at least, I try to; I'm actually pretty bad with names and faces :-( )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15353" LastEditorUserId="15353" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T15:32:23.950" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T15:32:23.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T15:47:20.313" Score="6" ViewCount="1244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing up my 3rd year engineering project (The equivalent of a dissertation in other subjects), and I'm struggling to write the chapter in which my method failed I couldn't get any results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My project is on Neural Networks, and when I started my project I tried to program my own Neural Network from scratch, however this did not work properly (The feed forward part worked, but because of the convoluted way I had programmed it I couldn't implement the back propagation part). After I realized this I used an off-the-shelf program to create my neural network, which worked much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I must have spent about a quarter of the year programming my own Neural Network from scratch, so I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project, and that I understand the inner working of Neural Networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I write this chapter? So far I have started the chapter as if it is going to work, then I wrote about exactly what I have done and how it works, and then at the end where the results should be I want to explain that the custom implementation of the neural network meant that I couldn't implement back propagation, and therefore couldn't get results. But I can't do this without it looking like I have lazily given up on that chapter, and abruptly given an excuse to move on to the next chapter (The working version of the neural network).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15352" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T14:10:36.563" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T14:10:36.563" Title="How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20996" CreationDate="2014-05-16T16:15:28.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having thought about this a bit more I feel I should probably expand my comments on Jigg's answer into a full answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On point 1. I agree with Jigg that this is fairly normal. In fact these requirements normally come from the university. My university requires me to write a project description and plan of work to be updated each year. You should definitely discuss what goes in this with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that these documents tend to be bureaucratic pieces of rubbish that no one reads and only vaguely stick to. However, I suspect that is beside the point. The process of thinking about it is what is important as this should help you get an idea of 'the vision of the project' as you put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 2. while the statement itself is obviously concerning I would be slightly reassured that your supervisor has told you this. I suspect there are some supervisors who wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you respond partly depends on whether you agree with the statement or not. If you agree that you don't have vision that should be your priority, it is hard to do research if you don't know what you're doing. Discuss with your supervisor what your plans for the project are and how you should go forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you disagree with your supervisor there are several possible explanations. They may not know what you are thinking, especially if you do not talk to them that frequently. They may have a different idea of where the project should go than you. They may think your plan for the project is insufficient either to achieve what they want from the project or to get you a PhD. In any case you should meet your supervisor and discuss what your vision is for the project and what issues they have with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a good starting point to understand the vision of your project I would look to answer these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your project going to do/show/make?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are you going to do/show/make it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is it important to do/show/make it? (Why does anyone give a f***?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final point is to not get too downhearted. One of the biggest drawbacks of doing a PhD in industry is that you have much less contact with other students.  I think many PhD students go through a stage where they have serious issues with their research or supervisors or things. But as you probably don't deal with many other students on a daily basis you end up feeling that it is just you that has problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:15:28.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21045" CreationDate="2014-05-16T16:57:23.343" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nooooooooo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do that. This is a postgraduate degree, and you're expected to take the research seriously. It's not a 9-5 grunt job or prison sentence where you turn up, serve your time, and get the reward at the end of your allotted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show what you've learnt. That's what the markers are interested in. You say that you've learnt the inner workings of neural networks. That's great. So demonstrate and document what you've learnt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't document the tortuous process you used. Don't describe how you went from A to B via C,D,E,...X,Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just report that you started at A, ended at B, you've found that the shortest route between those points is {whatever it is}, and briefly document the dead ends and traps that future researchers should avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:57:23.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21033" CreationDate="2014-05-16T16:58:08.463" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main advice that I have on this topic is that it can be difficult to return to academia after a stint in commercial enterprise (i.e. &quot;industry&quot;). There are exceptions -- some people do publish from commercial positions, or otherwise develop some exceptional expertise that gives them opportunities as academic researchers. My impression is that returning to academia is easier for engineers than for basic science researchers (such as biologists, like myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flip side is that if you want to go into industry, you might as well get started ASAP, unless you think your post-doc project will make you an attractive candidate for companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least for biology, my understanding is that if you shouldn't leave academia until you are sure that you want to. This is especially important for biologists, since there aren't very many &quot;biology&quot; jobs outside of academia, so leaving academia often means leaving biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:58:08.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2014-05-16T17:00:00.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show genuine remorse over your mistake, sure, but rather than feeling ashamed of being suspended for a year, be &lt;em&gt;proud of yourself&lt;/em&gt; for going back after said year and not giving up. A lot of people would use this situation as an excuse (not a reason, it's an excuse) to not return. The fact that you're asking how to deal with the future shame means that you're not even considering the alternative; you're going back. That takes strength, and you should be proud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15359" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T17:00:00.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21006" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:18:35.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation is certainly very bad, but a &lt;em&gt;conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt; in the context of academic research is when personal interests are at stake when reporting research results (e.g. wife owns the company that manufactures the products that husband's paper say are superior to the competition). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this definition of a CoI on various universities websites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A conflict of interest is a situation in which financial or other&#xA;  personal considerations have the potential to compromise or bias&#xA;  professional judgment and objectivity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is better described as lousy management, little respect from both supervisors towards you, and a blatant lack of professionalism from their part. However, it affects you, it certainly affects their productivity, but it's not &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; a CoI. It's not like if one was reviewing the papers of the other, or was in the board that attributes funding to the wife/husband's project, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be, whatever action you intend to take to get yourself out of this nightmare, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to refer to the problem as a conflict of interest. CoIs are a lot more serious than poor management and you will risk triggering the wrong type of investigation, ultimately deserving your cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T19:13:46.647" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T19:13:46.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21171" CreationDate="2014-05-16T19:24:33.597" Score="2" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate majoring in chemistry. But I'm very much interested in the field of biology too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will an internship in biology benefit me, say when I apply for graduate school? I don't yet know what I'll be specialising in later on. If I decide to specialise in biology, then all's good. But what if I stick with something primarily chemistry? Then will it look like I don't have enough experience in chemistry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, can I ask my department's HOD or any other chemistry professor for a recommendation letter while applying for the internship in biology? Since he's a chemistry professor, even if I did ask and he did write me one, will that count for much? After all, it's going to talk about my skills, etc. in chemistry, and not biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I didn't ask him for a recommendation letter and I asked only some of the Life Sciences professors for it, will it be unethical, or would he take offence? ( I have no idea about etiquette regarding these things)&#xA;I don't want to do something that's going to get me in his bad books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10240" LastEditorUserId="10240" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T06:11:09.073" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T06:11:09.073" Title="Will an internship in biology benefit me when my major is not biology?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2014-05-16T20:37:34.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on the school. I don't remember seeing this as a requirement for any of the US schools I looked at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my school in the US, our Master's thesis must be published by the university and presented at a graduate forum held twice a year. We are also encouraged to present at conferences or submit to technical journals, but that is optional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15364" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T20:37:34.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T21:04:04.933" Score="13" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student and as the title says, I have an autism spectrum disorder. My advisor is a very nice person, at least, that is the impression I have gotten. The last few months however, I worry that I have made myself misunderstood many times because of my failure of communicating or not following certain social codes. I have not done anything that is inappropriate at all, I just might have come off at times a tiny, tiny bit rude, which I did not mean to be! In social situations I often get nervous and I think it might have shown in some situations. I am considering whether I should tell him about my autism spectrum disorder or not - I don't want to have it as an excuse for any behaviour, just more of an explanation and maybe better understanding in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any general guidelines on what to do in cases like these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T04:30:11.793" Title="Should I tell my advisor that I have an autism spectrum disorder?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-05-17T08:07:09.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21056" CreationDate="2014-05-16T21:20:59.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no reason not to tell him, or anyone else you work closely with.  telling your co-workers about this condition will eliminate these concerns about coming off as rude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T21:20:59.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2014-05-16T22:24:24.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it varies by discipline and institution.  I know of some MS programs where a student might graduate without publishing, but this would be viewed as a very poor performance.  I know of others where publishing or even presenting at a conference would set you apart as a very successful student.  If you want to go on for a PhD, then I would encourage you to make publishing at the MS level a goal.  It will help in moving on to a HD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T22:24:24.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21056" CreationDate="2014-05-16T22:25:00.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you propose, this has an obvious helpful component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a possible down-side? Well, medical/personal issues are protected information (thinking about the U.S., at least), and in most situations anyone else in whom you've confided is not allowed to disclose anything about it to anyone else. We can see the sense in this. However, it does sometimes create a burden and/or awkwardness, insofar as the people in whom you've confided are prohibited from using what they know to explain any questionable actions on your part to anyone &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The operational point, then, is to pay attention to any close interactions with people outside your immediate group, in whom you've confided, that might generate a need for explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T22:25:00.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21034" CreationDate="2014-05-16T22:36:56.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the reviewer's suggestions, unless it's caused by his/her misunderstanding, is the way I would go. The reviewer would most probably know better than you regarding to the culture (style) of that particular journal. But if you are definitely certain about things you can not push; then explain kindly as a response. I would write, &quot;we definitely agree with the reviewer, and per the reviewer comments, we have moved most of the proofs to the appendices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14874" LastEditorUserId="14874" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T22:52:58.203" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T22:52:58.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17697" CreationDate="2014-05-16T22:57:35.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, it will depend on the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my university they rely heavily on testing for foreign students, because the course on algorithms that is accepted as standard in your country may or may not be comparable to the algorithms course here. This is bad news if you pay a lot of money for a course that doesn't give you the preparation to pass the exam, but great news if you learned the material on your own (or through Coursera, for example) and were able to pass the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15364" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T22:57:35.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T23:19:08.053" Score="2" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Accountancy senior level student. My issue is due to lots of information in the books I tend to forget about every specific topic and heading even if I compile notes and memory aids. Reason being that in these professional studies anything can be asked in exams from anywhere. So how do I remember small details at this stage? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15369" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T05:38:40.727" Title="Cannot reproduce what I have learned or memorised" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21045" CreationDate="2014-05-17T00:19:28.313" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what? It's a thesis, not prison time. Your task in your thesis (or project) is to solve a given problem, not serve a given amount of time. To be brutally honest, the time that you spent on what was presumably a rather bad idea in the first place (re-implementing something for which apparently suitable standard software exists) does not make your thesis better in any way. Detailing your failed labouring will not make your project seem better. Rather the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your title question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't, unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The methodology mistakes are somehow common in your field, i.e., you would assume if another researcher would start the same project, he would likely make the same mistake (in that case there is a lesson learned to take away from the failed attempt, i.e., that the standard approach does not work in this case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The methodology mistakes have, inadvertently, led to a different interesting result / observation that you did not expect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguably, both is not true in your case. As such, I would consider this quarter of a year as sunk costs in terms of thesis time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T00:19:28.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T02:42:42.257" Score="10" ViewCount="4913" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do math journals consider a paper in which most of the content referred to another accepted but not yet published paper? In a case in which this is allowed, do one need to give a copy of the accepted paper to the editor of the target journal?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T03:59:29.403" Title="Citing an accepted but not yet published paper" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21066" CreationDate="2014-05-17T03:39:27.107" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can cite anything you want, regardless of whether it has been accepted for publication or even submitted.  Of course citing preprints can make life more difficult for the referee, but there's no issue with accepted papers.  They are considered just as reliable as published papers, since they've already gone through the refereeing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you rely on a paper that is not yet publicly available, then you should provide a copy for the referee.  However, if it's your own paper, then it's much better to post it online, for example through the arXiv.  (If you supply a copy for the referee without posting it online, then it gives the impression that you are deliberately restricting access to the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T03:39:27.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21063" CreationDate="2014-05-17T03:48:32.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question reminds me of the old joke &quot;How do I get to Carnegie Hall?&quot; To which the response is the same, &quot;Practice, man, practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be expected to know this stuff when you graduate. When studying any subject, there will be a wide variety of rules and formulae you must learn. Normally, when a teacher is trying to get the students to learn them, the students are given exercises to practice them, or scenarios to apply them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning best works in groups, so if you can find someone with whom to study that should help. You can practice with each other reading your answers to see if you understood correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have an exercises or scenarios to use, ask your teacher. But in the end, &lt;strong&gt;it is all about practice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T03:48:32.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21056" CreationDate="2014-05-17T04:14:54.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A disability is something you can take pride in overcoming.  The Deaf people in my office certainly do.  Others, such as amputees and the learning disabled, can choose to conceal their disability or they can freely admit to it.  You get different benefits either way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've chosen to trust that people will regard my dyslexia and ADD the way I do: as just two of thousands of challenges I deal with every day.  You should watch me try to finger spell.  It's pathetic.  :) Still I try.  If you worked with me I'd rather know what your deal is then wonder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15375" LastEditorUserId="15375" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T04:30:11.793" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T04:30:11.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T07:45:30.700" Score="15" ViewCount="2091" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor suggested that I should sign up for a conference, which I did - I now have to give a 15 minute talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the conference is taking place very far from me (+20 hour flight), and I am having second thoughts on whether I should go or not. Here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pro&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet new people/socialize&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present my work at a talk, instead of merely a poster session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference is only 4 days, two ~20 hours flights are &lt;strong&gt;very exhausting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The audience are not completely aligned with my field, so I have to make my presentation simpler than what the work actually is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will not learn things that I directly need for my research because of the audience (they are in geology and engineering, I'm in math)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I don't feel like going because of the above list. But I am worried that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My advisor will think I'm being annoying by &quot;backing&quot; out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very happy to hear your opinions on this matter. Maybe I am putting too much thought into this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T03:40:15.143" Title="Signed up for conference, having second thoughts" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-17T08:32:30.087" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add several items to your list of pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dissemination.&lt;/strong&gt; You will make your work known to a whole new field of possibly interested people. If you're going there, I presume there is an interesting application in sight. Possible follow-ups. Lots of opportunities. Interdisciplinary collaboration. To be avid and down-to-earth, lots of &lt;em&gt;citations&lt;/em&gt; might await. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presenting experience.&lt;/strong&gt; The best way to improve your presentation skills is giving talks. This is a good opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Connections&lt;/strong&gt; It's always good to get to know people in academia. You might need to send them a quick e-mail with a question on their area of expertise. You might one day be looking for a post-doc job and they might be offering one (even if it's a position for an applied mathematician in a geology department). You might find a good idea for an interdisciplinary research project and apply for a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning new things&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, you will learn new things listening to the other talks, even if it's a different field. You might find a new related problem that you can solve. You might learn more about the applicative background of the problem that you are studying. You might find an example that looks great in the introduction of your next paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tourism.&lt;/strong&gt; When will you be able to visit again that far-away country? True, you won't see much if you are stuck in a university or a conference center, but that's still a great life experience in my view. One of the parts I enjoy the most of the academic career is being able to travel and see the world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Money availability&lt;/strong&gt;. Your advisor says that there is money for the trip, this time. My advice is &lt;strong&gt;go for it&lt;/strong&gt;. More troubled times might come in future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust your advisor&lt;/strong&gt;. (S)he suggested you to sign up, so he thinks it's a good idea for you to go. You should trust him, it's the person who best knows the conference, your work and your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been doing some interdisciplinary research lately. It's hard at first, but fascinating and productive once you enter it. There is a big entry barrier in getting to know each other's field and learning to use the same language, but there are lots of interesting results to gather just by putting together the ideas and methods of two different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: added &quot;trust your advisor&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T10:37:06.393" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T10:37:06.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-17T08:40:12.680" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;My advisor will think I'm being annoying by &quot;backing&quot; out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This. You should have stated your objections before. Now, it is probably too late. Perhaps your airline tickets, conference registration, hotel reservation are already paid and usually these costs are not refundable. It is not right for your institution to lose money, because you simply changed your mind. If you back out now, it will be very hard for your advisor to provide money for another trip later, when you will WANT or need to go. It also makes you look bad if you back out from a conference and (possibly) your supervisor as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, look at the bright side. Although I understand your thoughts about the 20-hour flights and possibly jet-lag, understand that similar trips are some times necessary for conferences. Minimize the ugly effects by taking yourself with you (on the trip) your favourite headache medication (Tylenol, paracetamol), some pillow for the shoulder during flight etc.. Also, keep in mind that AFTER the trip you will not have to go your work directly (this is normal after such long trips), so the effects of the flight back home will be easier to handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, think that it is hard to pay those airline tickets yourself. So, you will get to see a new place (you would not see otherwise) for only 15 minutes of work (and 40 hours of flight). It is a wonderful experience and you should probably not miss it. For additional benefits see Federico's answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom Line: You should probably do the trip now. You might actually enjoy it. And next time, be extra careful on what you sign up for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T08:40:12.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T08:45:02.083" Score="1" ViewCount="1339" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Main problem is university registration as the process is vital to enroll as a PhD student, so that I can submit my thesis and defend it. Administrative issues here in Germany have prevented me from completing the registration process because I am an overseas student and some issues to do with deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some good news are have published three papers as first author in leading journals and written the thesis work as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to dump this registration process and take another PhD or should I apply for industry jobs? Note that I am not committed to staying in academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15380" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T13:47:44.557" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T15:35:47.353" Title="After 3 Years of PhD - problems with University registration - Fight or apply for another PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21045" CreationDate="2014-05-17T08:46:26.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I disagree with the comments above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a 3rd-year project is not simply to solve a problem - it is to train the student. Learning from doing and learning from making mistakes is an integral element of this. For exactly this reason, the report is not just a scientific report of results, but also a report on the process, and I would say that there is no problem in reflecting some of the 'tortuous path' in the report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it would be wise not to dwell &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; long on the mistakes. I would briefly describe how the 'wrong' path started, how you found out that it was wrong, and - especially - describe how you now understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is wrong, and why the later method is better. If this is done briefly and honestly, I would very much appreciate reading it, and it would score points with me as a reviewer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T09:57:49.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T09:57:49.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21073" CreationDate="2014-05-17T11:58:51.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible try to stick with finishing the PhD. You are almost there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to find some legal advisor to help you with the issues. Some universities may even offer free legal help and have persons acting as ombudsman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding good job opportunities will not be an issue in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T11:58:51.883" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-17T12:37:32.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things haven't been addressed in your question, and I think both of them would influence how I might advise you to proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Why this conference?&lt;/strong&gt; Surely there are other venues closer to home. If your advisor selected this conference because it is a prestigious international conference well-attended by the top names in your field, then I would urge you to go. However, if it's a relatively unrecognized conference that your advisor selected mostly because of its exotic location, then you might want to listen to your second thoughts, and pick somewhere more practical to share your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;How far along into this are you?&lt;/strong&gt; If the conference is next month, and the conference organizers are already under the impression that you are attending and presenting, then you should probably bite the bullet and go. It's not fair to them if you drop out simply because of a last-minute change of heart, and you won't come out of it looking good. 11th-hour cancellations should be reserved for true emergencies, not cold feet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if it's not a prestigious conference, and you just got an acceptance notification, then I'd recommend a heart-to-heart with your advisor, asking if there isn't a conference in your hemisphere that might accomplish the same research objectives. If either of those conditions aren't the case, though, then remember to pack a good book for the long flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T12:37:32.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T13:04:24.587" Score="4" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to an editor of well-known journal via email. It has been almost a month I did not hear anything, even not an acknowledgement from the editor, though I sent them 2 follow up emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15385" LastEditorUserId="3905" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T14:12:29.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T14:12:29.420" Title="No answer from Editor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-17T18:06:19.247" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21079" CreationDate="2014-05-17T13:43:01.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before doing anything else, I would recommend doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check that the answers haven't accidentally made their way into your spam folder (if your email client has one).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check that you sent the emails to the correct address. (If you get the domain name wrong, you might not get a response back at all!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of these are the cause of the problem, then I would recommend that you contact the publisher, rather than the editor—something has clearly gone amiss. At the very least, you should have received an email acknowledging that the submission is complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you are waiting for the reviews to be returned, that can certainly take much longer than a month, and a little patience is in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T13:43:01.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21073" CreationDate="2014-05-17T13:55:00.260" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the benefit of the wider audience, a little background into the German PhD system is in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Researchers after the master's level are hired as &lt;em&gt;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt; (researchers, literally &quot;academic personnel&quot;), and work for the individual research groups as half- or full-time employees, with the commensurate salary and benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In parallel, students are expected to register as doctoral students (&lt;em&gt;Zulassung&lt;/em&gt;). Such a process will typically involve some classwork for international students, particularly those studying in engineering fields (and those with degrees other than the area they're now studying). One of the forms to be filled out in this process is the &lt;em&gt;Betreuungsbestätigung&lt;/em&gt;, which is a commitment by the signer to be the candidate's advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, deadlines are deadlines; however, if there are mitigating circumstances, many departments will allow the advisor to petition for exceptions to be made. Given that you've made good research progress, it would seem reasonable that your advisor would want to ensure that you get your PhD. So, before doing anything else, &lt;strong&gt;talk to your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T06:47:04.787" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T06:47:04.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8564" CreationDate="2014-05-17T14:31:27.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the other answers here are really good and speak directly to the question, but I want to add one other relevant comment. &lt;em&gt;If you want to have an academic career in the USA, then do your PhD in the USA.&lt;/em&gt; For an explanation why, see my comments &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16899/canada-vs-australia-for-the-academic-career/16930#16930&quot;&gt;on this previous question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my surprise, there's a lot of objections being raised against my view here. I'm surprised because I've expressed similar view at least two other times on different questions here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17879/what-are-the-major-informal-obstacles-students-face-when-they-go-abroad-for-a-re/18284#18284&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17405/how-would-a-small-liberal-arts-college-view-a-phd-from-germany-or-the-uk-factor/17406#17406&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; and both answers currently (1:30 EST, 18 May 2014) have positive votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation for the discrepancy seems to be this. When the remark is something more like: &quot;If you want a job in the USA, do the PhD in America,&quot; then it gets up voted. On the other hand, if it's the generalization: &quot;Do the PhD where you want to get a job&quot; (the original, unedited formulation I originally gave above) it tends to get down voted/mixed reception, and most of the negative comments seem to come from folks in continental europe. This suggests that I am inappropriately generalizing from my experience (I'm American), and the advice may be different in (among others) Australia and Continental Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I've amended the advice above and suggest you take it with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T17:35:03.537" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-17T17:52:08.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I speak at conferences a lot and sometimes, after I say yes, I have a little &quot;buyers remorse&quot; and I feel nervous about it and I just want to back out of the whole thing. I never have backed out though, and I have rarely regretted going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the pros listed in other answers, being able to list a conference where you gave a talk has value on your CV even if you gained nothing from the conference itself. And your con (my supervisor will be upset if I cancel) is also a pro: I will please my supervisor by going. That said, you can and will get a LOT from a conference, any conference, if you decide to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grasp firmly onto a positive attitude. You have three weeks. In that time, don't just prepare your 15 minute talk, prepare your plan for the conference. This includes your plan for the travel and minimizing your jetlag. (You might be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/jetlag&quot;&gt;a sister site&lt;/a&gt; for tips on sleeping on the plane and avoiding jetlag.) This also includes a list of goals. Say I was going to a conference of geologists in Paris and speaking on how the name of your cat affects your income. I might make a list like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;go up the Eiffel Tower&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meet a geologist who lives and works near me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visit the Louvre&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find 3 other cat-related or income-related sessions at the conference, attend them, and introduce myself to the speaker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;achieve an attendance of at least 50 people at my session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;record my &quot;speaker rating&quot; and ranking and report it back to my sponsors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;buy two bottles of wine to bring home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discover at least one aspect of geology that is relevant to my cat-naming research and learn enough about it to summarize it to my colleagues when I return&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eat warm croissants in a park&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write up a one page summary of who I met, what I learned, who now knows about us and our research, and some opportunities I will pursue when I get back, and give this summary to my sponsors within a week of my return&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would keep this list of goals handy and push myself to make the necessary plans in advance and take the necessary actions during the week to meet the goals. This includes looking over the session lists as soon as they're available, planning what talks to attend (and when you are likely to have a free morning or afternoon for sightseeing and croissant eating), emailing other people who are attending to arrange to meet them there, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the best of a conference trip is a lot of work, but the rewards can be substantial. So many people have to beg and plead to even attend, and here you're being flown 20 hours away in exchange for only 15 minutes of talking! You must be doing something darn interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:14.947" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T17:52:08.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2014-05-17T21:57:30.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things to think about (from the point of view of a mathematician, but I hope some of this might be relevant in other fields too): Does your main result have a special case or two that would be easier for your audience to understand than the general result (without being trivial)? If so, you might just present that (or those) special case(s), and add at the end one sentence to the effect that your full result is more general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your result require terminology that people might not know? If so, does it really &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; that terminology, or could you perhaps get by without it? If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need the terminology, budget enough time to explain it and, if possible, relate it to something your audience already knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background information (previous results, open questions) that motivate your work is likely to be too much to present in full in the limited time available.  Select just enough of that information to be understandable and to provide &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; (not necessarily all) motivation for your work. Having presented some motivation, you can add one sentence saying that there is additional motivation, which you don't have time to explain in the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In two places, I've suggested adding a single sentence saying &quot;there's more&quot;; you should indicate your willingness (or even eagerness) to discuss the &quot;more&quot; later with anyone who is interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T21:57:30.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20178" CreationDate="2014-05-17T22:10:33.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unclear how this would differ from the grammar and spell check in a word processing software such as Microsoft Word; but presume it must differ or you wouldn't have created it!  Perhaps as an initial trial for proof of concept, you could compare how yours competes with Word or other similar programs. This would provide some preliminary data with something most researchers are familiar with so can relate to it. If it compares well, it would also allow you to begin telling the story of your tool in that context, which is valuable in gathering support, and even funding if there are grants out there for this you may want to seek.  Next, (possibly the beta stage for the new grant!) you could design a study using professional human (teachers, scientists, etc.) reviewers to compare against. The student papers suggested in another post may provide material for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T22:10:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-18T00:33:09.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with your concerns. Conferences take time. Not only the journey, as you have noted, but also the preparation for the talk itself. It is nice to visit new places, but this should only be a bonus. If you intend to pursue an academic career, there will surely be plenty of opportunities to visit these places in the future. Visiting new places should not be the primary motivation to attend conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is whether the conference suits you. From my personal experience, conferences that benefit me most are those that are within my subject area and are small in scope and attendance, especially those attended by well-known experts in the field. Then the chances are higher that the audience is interested in what you present, as they are familiar with it. They also tend to ask relevant and useful questions, whereas in the bigger conferences or those that are not closely related to your subject area, people tend to ask questions which are not helpful to your study because they are not familiar with what you are presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the tickets have been booked, the conference registration fee has been paid, and the conference program has been finalized, it should be safe to withdraw. In speaking to your adviser, you could suggest alternative venues to present your research, or you could instead publish your work in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T00:33:09.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:32:33.797" Score="0" ViewCount="3336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the end of my first year in a food science master's program, with full funding at a good university and I'm seriously considering dropping out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completed my undergrad in biochemistry and my research project is more focused in yet another field, which I have no experience in. When I applied for grad school, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do within the field, but figured I could build interests along the way. I only received the one offer from a new professor that would be starting at the same time as me. I didn't want to let the opportunity slip by and I genuinely thought the project was something I could get interested in. So I packed up my life and left behind most of my support group. This was extremely difficult, as I have a very close relationship with my family and my mother has recently been very ill. Not long after beginning school, I began seeing a therapist as my anxiety (which has always been manageable) started worsening. The majority of my coursework has been undergraduate classes that I find completely uninteresting. We are only required to take 4 graduate credits and I wasn't thrilled with my choices (there are only 2 classes available). The department itself is small, obviously favors the undergraduate population, is extremely unorganized, and most of the lab groups are cliquish (seem nice enough, but not entirely welcoming). Since my lab is new, I'm the only student and the only other researcher is a recent PhD graduate from another lab. I was unable to start much work on my project the first semester because I didn't have what I needed. Now, I've experienced numerous setbacks with contamination and other problems. Not to mention, since the beginning of the new semester, my anxiety has become borderline debilitating and accompanied by moderate depression. In a recent conversation, my advisor expressed concern about my lack of work (which I take to mean, lack of results, because it's not like I've been lazy and unproductive), even though he is aware of the problems I've faced. As far as advisors go, he is just out of his post-doc and is relatively nice, but is extremely forgetful (never remember anything he tells me/I tell him), unfamiliar with the program requirements even after a year in (meaning, I have to get help from anyone but him when it comes to courses), and occasionally makes backhanded comments to me that I find insulting. Overall, I just find myself extremely unhappy. And the prospect of moving on and getting a job just seems freeing to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure how I would go about doing this. There is no formal policy on a leave of absence, so if I wanted to make the leave less permanent in case I change my mind, I don't know how this would work. I'm also not sure when would be the best time to drop out. Regarding withdrawals, the grad school website says that any students receiving tuition remission (which I do) are &quot;responsible for their entire tuition assessment.&quot; I'm not sure who, if anyone, I can talk to in the department. I have yet to begin my thesis, 2 courses left to take, and likely have 2 years left because of setbacks. Does anyone who has left grad school or considered doing so have any advice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15405" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T22:31:24.313" Title="Thinking about leaving a master's program" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1095" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:36:05.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the mix, there are online diagramming tools available as well, namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gliffy.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gliffy&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidchart.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LucidChart&lt;/a&gt;. Both have free subscriptions that allow limited use which is usually sufficient for simple diagrams. With these tools, you draw the diagram in your browser and can download it as PNG, PDF or JPEG. LucidChart allows a free upgrade if you register using a &lt;code&gt;*.edu.*&lt;/code&gt; email address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good offline tool is &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Visio&lt;/a&gt; which works on Windows only. It is great for drawing flow charts and other simple diagrams. There are many Visio clones but none of them live up to the original. In fact, I stumbled upon the above online tools looking for Visio alternatives for Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T03:36:05.213" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-18T03:36:05.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:40:15.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To weary researcher/student,&#xA;I think you have to look at the plus side and try to calm your fear of a 20 hour trip. The up side is that you don't have to feel intimidated by the audience because, after all, they probably have no prior knowledge of what you are talking about. Anything you say will be interesting to them. Once your 15 minute presentation is over you will be grateful that you chose to go. Even if your presentation isn't great you will probably never see these people in your life again. Everyone has butterflies before a presentation. Just be well prepared and try to tie your specialty in with the current events of the day. Good Luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15406" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T03:40:15.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21066" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:59:29.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely allowed in Computer Science. One way to cite the soon-to-be-published paper is, &quot;To appear in &quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~amenta/pubs/crust.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;. The authors develop a technique, write two papers, one on its theory and the other on the application, and submit the papers to suitable venues. The linked paper is the application paper. It often cites the theory paper which is the first entry in the bibliography at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14572" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T03:59:29.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T07:13:50.053" Score="5" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a 4th year PhD student and have no publication so far. I switched project after 1.5 years after realizing I don't want to have a PhD in that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new project is really interesting for me. I feel much more motivated and believe I have the analytical skills to solve it. The project is composed of two parts: image analysis (A) and machine learning (B). Eventhough my advisor is very knowledgable about the first part, he is not familiar with the other part, which is actually the most important cue to solve the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That results in lacking of general research guidance from him. He would points me to unfruitful direction, and when I present literature's approaches he is not interested in. A metaphor is that like doing programming big project without the knowledge of data structures. Would a co-advisor be the best solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6233" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T18:30:37.360" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T18:30:37.360" Title="Is a co-advisor a good solution if my advisor is not very familiar with part of my research area?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T07:32:58.070" Score="21" ViewCount="3945" Body="&lt;p&gt;My AP Computer Science teacher has somewhat of a creative way to deal with students submitting apparently identical code. Instead of handing out lots of zeros, he divides the points by the number of cheaters, phrasing his system as &quot;if you have the same answer, you deserve to split the credit.&quot; For example, a 5-person cheating ring on a 10-point project would yield 2 points per person (it rounds down to the best precision on odd splits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this is ethical? Is this a wise way to deal with cheating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, it is a lot softer than most policies. On the other, it is somewhat logical, and seems maybe fairer than the standard penalty system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T20:31:38.457" Title="&quot;Dividing Points&quot; among cheating students" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21094" CreationDate="2014-05-18T07:34:54.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there are two related issues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;convincing your advisor about the directions you want to take&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding someone to talk to about your research directions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first one, I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;he's not interested&quot;. Does that mean that your advisor doesn't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; you to pursue directions even though he's not familiar with them, or that he's not giving you rousing encouragement ? If you have a direction you think might bear fruit for your problem based on your literature scan, why not try it out and show him the results ? Since you imply that your advisor is an expert in the application domain (image analysis), you should be able to demonstrate the quality of the results even if he doesn't fully understand the methods being used. Or is it that he is requiring you to follow certain directions and does not want you to follow other directions ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second, a co-advisor is one possible outcome, but even a colleague in the relevant area (another professor who could be on your committee, or even a fellow student you can brainstorm with) might suffice. You didn't indicate whether your advisor is aware of his shortcomings in the techniques area (ML): if he is, then he might even be able to introduce you to the right people, thus opening doors that might be difficult for you to open yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as always, talking to the advisor would help. You can approach it as &quot;I'm looking for some extra help in topic XYZ: do you know who I could talk with ?&quot;. Of course, how you approach this precisely depends hugely on the interactions you currently have with your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T07:34:54.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T07:54:30.097" Score="10" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;For someone used to reading the typical single-spaced double-column ACM-styled papers, this format seems odd.&#xA;At first, I thought it's maybe because some people read better with it. However, I haven't found any evidence that suggests so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, afaict, the benefits in doing otherwise are;&#xA;less paper to print, thus saving trees.&#xA;less paper to shuffle around.&#xA;less time spent flipping pages to and fro to see math definitions because, for instance, some linear program took half a page.&#xA;faster identification of paragraphs (since double-spaces would be used only to demarcate paragraphs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might say that it promotes consistency. Even though I would disagree to that notion, I still don't get why they would even choose such an unwieldy format in the first place. Is this just one of those rules people don't question because &quot;it's the way it's always been done&quot; or am I missing something here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15408" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T09:13:36.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T09:13:36.690" Title="Why does the APA/MLA format suggest the use of double-spacing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21097" CreationDate="2014-05-18T09:13:00.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to separate authoring the manuscript from the finished type-set layout of the journal. For manuscripts more loosely spaced single column format has been the norm. This is because before the digital age, manuscripts were handed in written on a type writer. There was no means for an author to produce sophisticated layouts. In addition, one would add comments manually in the manuscript which is why some journals also specify fiarly wide margins. The marked-up manuscript would then be sent by regular post to the editor and passed on to the author. The one column loosely spaced format has stayed although it is not necessary. That said, reading a loosely spaced single column manuscript is easier than a densely set double column format. The latter is of course more cost effective to print. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals use (or at least allow) LaTeX templates for their submission. These commonly include settings for a &quot;manuscript mode&quot; which end up as single column, loosely spaced text but also a &quot;layout mode&quot; where the author can try the final format of the journal to assess the length of the finished paper. This also allows the journal to more or less automatically type set the final paper once it is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the recommendation for manuscripts to be typed loosely spaced and single column, is partly tradition but also because that format is easier to read for the reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T09:13:00.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-05-18T09:54:45.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is fair. Say you work very hard on your program, to get a 9. While you go to the toilet, I steal your code and submit it. I get a 4 for doing nothing, you get a 4 after a lot of successful work. If this happens the day before the deadline and I had nothing, I would have handed in nothing, and thus get a 0. So there is a clear benefit in cheating: I get more marks than even if I pull an all nighter and put together a crappy code that barely holds together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the reason to punish everybody equally is multiple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discourage from people lending code to classmates. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is much easier than to try to figure out what happened and who is the original author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the way I see it, there are a few objections&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are still situations where a cheater may benefit from this scheme (half good is better than nothing); a cheater is being awarded points for doing exactly nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The original author may be innocent. The code could have been stolen. It is unfair to blindly punish without, at least, inquiring in the matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serial cheaters may get away with it and still get enough points to pass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the homework is given voluntarely? Consider the case where there are weekly assignments, with a high work load. Part of the point is for students to work and get efficient in problem solving. But, if instead of solving all of them, we share the work, change it here and there, perhaps they will not notice, I still work half of it, and maybe I get full recognition; maybe only half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, say a given week you only had time to do half of them. Gambling is beneficial: if you go the ethical way, you get half the marks. If you cheat, you can either get half the marks, or get away with it if you are skilled or the grader is low on coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T18:57:00.130" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T18:57:00.130" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-05-18T11:56:28.587" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll only give a legal point of view on this issue for French higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In French universities, even if the kind of rule you describe is enforced by some teachers, it is in theory forbidden to alter notation for cheating: one should only grade according to content, without any penalty. If cheating is suspected by the teacher, she should fill a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proc%C3%A8s-verbal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;procès-verbal&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; form describing what she suspects happened, and giving all relevant info. This is then passed to a commission that will interview her and the suspected students, and will decide what happens next. This commission has a scale of possible action, going from nothing to five years' suspension from &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; French higher education institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process is seldom used for projects and evaluations among small groups (&lt;em&gt;contrôle continu&lt;/em&gt;). However it should be strictly enforced for terminal exams, as otherwise student can easily go to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T20:31:38.457" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T20:31:38.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20938" CreationDate="2014-05-18T11:57:27.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a response to the answer by Anonymous Mathematician and the comment to that answer by Nate Eldredge.  I just want to point out that there are ways in which the community benefits from there being some lag built into the refereeing process.  If there were no such lag then an author would have every incentive to submit every paper to the very best journal in the field, expecting a quick rejection, after which the author can submit to the second-best journal, and so on.  In this way, an author could expect his/her papers to wind up in better journals than they otherwise would, since once there are enough low-probability events then there's a good chance that one of them will occur.  So it is to the author's benefit to do this, but on the flip side this would cause lots of extra work by the editors and referees of various journals.  The main thing I see which discourages authors from doing this is that they don't expect an immediate response from the referees.  So that is one reason why it isn't necessarily a bad thing for a reviewer to wait a couple months (say) before sending in his/her review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T11:57:27.423" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-05-18T12:04:12.433" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the existing arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The punishment for cheating should always be higher than the direct advantage gained from it. For example, if somebody cheats at one task in an exam, the penalty should not only be failing that task but at least the whole exam, if not much higher. The reason for this is simply that you cannot possibly detect all attempts at cheating and thus the punishment should aim at being sufficciently high to make the average outcome of cheating negative if the detection rate is taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is quite difficult to even estimate the detection rates for cheating and thus to adjust the punishment accordingly, but the punishment you are describing is certainly too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This aspect is not only important for discouraging cheating, but also from an ethical point of view, as cheating should not yield an advantage over the honest student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T12:04:12.433" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-05-18T13:02:23.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a bad policy.  With this type of policy it leaves the teacher having to figure out who copied from whom and how many people were in each &quot;group&quot;. Usually if Alice's work is copied by Bob, and Bob's &quot;work&quot; is copied by Carol, then Bob and Carol are penalised the same. In your policy, you would have to figure out how much to penalise Bob and Carol. It seems like it would be better to allow group work with the stipulation that the points get divided in a manner either specified by the students or the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T13:02:23.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T14:09:03.480" Score="26" ViewCount="3300" Body="&lt;p&gt;When skimming through a long mathematical paper (in pdf format), I often find a mathematical symbol (often in greek and with subscripts/superscripts) that was defined previously somewhere else within the paper.  Of course, it's not always easy to find where the parameter was defined, so I resort to using the FIND tool.  However, simply copy and pasting the symbol to the FIND tool doesn't seem to work well, since the symbol cannot be copied exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to perform an automated search a PDF document for a particular mathematical symbol if I don't have the original latex file?  Especially ones with subscripts and superscripts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T16:37:43.510" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T00:22:04.530" Title="Searching a pdf journal paper for mathematical symbols" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T15:03:44.573" Score="8" ViewCount="1664" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have about 400 ~ 500 lines of what I would call average open source code contribution. Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions? I am interested in applying to a MS in computer science and am interested in machine learning. I have a great plan for an awesome feature for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/libsvm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Libsvm&lt;/a&gt; (and open-source implementation of the popular support vector machine technique for machine learning). Will implementing it help my application ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15418" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T19:50:00.143" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T22:02:02.070" Title="Are contributions to a open source project helpful for graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21108" CreationDate="2014-05-18T15:21:30.797" Score="17" ViewCount="20618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mentioned an important idea in a section without developing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it formal to inform readers that the point will be discussed later in the chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &#xA;This idea will be discussed in detail in a subsequent section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, should it be presented just like any sentence, maybe next to the idea? Or Does it require special treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T18:32:09.397" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T14:38:03.953" Title="Is it formal to inform readers that a point will be discussed later in the chapter?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21107" CreationDate="2014-05-18T15:27:08.630" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with doing so. if you would not, the reader might start wondering. In cases where no other alternatives apply then signalling to the reader that more details will follow allows the reader to continue concentrating on the details at hand. If you end up with a situation like this, you should of course make sure that following such a structure is the best way forward. If it is not then restructuring the text is necessary. After all the goal of writing is to provide the reader with the easiest way to understand your writing (the way you want them to). If you find yourself using this form of signalling often, you should probably take a critical look at your writing and ask yourself why this happens. It might be that you are not structuring the text in a good way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T15:27:08.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21104" CreationDate="2014-05-18T16:33:23.630" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be a tricky one, and you can sometimes have similar issues with accented and greek letters. If you cannot find words that have been hyphenated to break a line, in my experience this is reader-dependent and Adobe Reader has never given me problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some PDFs just were not generated with the proper character mappings, so they will never be searchable with the affected characters. With regards to the format of superscripts and subscripts, the PDF will be searchable with them in the same format that they appear when you copy-paste out of the document. With other special characters, if you cannot copy-paste them, you cannot search for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you urge everyone using LaTeX to do &lt;code&gt;\usepackage{cmap}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}&lt;/code&gt;,  those packages should solve most problems. Notably, &lt;code&gt;cmap&lt;/code&gt; makes math characters (such as the integral sign) searchable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way to &quot;repair&quot; a PDF that is not properly searchable, unless you re-create a fixed version from the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T16:33:23.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21111" CreationDate="2014-05-18T16:46:50.173" Score="6" ViewCount="1354" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is perhaps a particular case of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9924/is-it-ethical-for-an-author-to-cite-their-own-work-with-themselves-as-first-auth&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. I still feel it deserves to live standalone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that a published paper with 4 authors--A, B, C, and X--was almost entirely produced by X. X designed the study, gathered the data, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. A helped X a little bit (sort of supervised X). B and C are listed there because of typical dishonest authorship mafia. At that time, X was a student. X could do very little to oppose adding  those authors in her/his very first paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am writing a paper that references this one. While A et al. paper is correctly displayed in the References, I was thinking to purposely cite the paper as &lt;em&gt;X et al. (year)&lt;/em&gt; in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be a subtle way to entail that I know what was going on there. I would cite the paper in the way that was supposed to be. Maybe B and C will also get it. That's a sort of nerdish academic subversive behavior, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that be meaningless? In particular, would that damage X citation counts? I do not think so, because the paper is correctly listed in the References. However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1459/what-to-do-if-my-paper-is-incorrectly-cited-in-a-journal&quot;&gt;I am not sure because of this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T09:04:44.900" Title="Is it worthless to cite a paper as X et al. when X is not first author but performed the work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21110" CreationDate="2014-05-18T16:55:42.633" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;References have one major purpose: to be able to trace the information provided in that source. This is why the first (named) author is always given in &quot;et al.&quot; references. The problem you encounter is that references are also used to cast merit in the academic system but that is actually a secondary task. So if you decide to use another authors name, you make it more difficult for others to locate the paper n question. So I would strongly advise against the action your propose since it violates the purpose of the referencing system. So even though one can trace papers with for example, doi-numbers breaking the systematic representation of cited sources is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways to state the source of the work in the text by stating that &quot;the work by X (A et al. yyyy)...&quot; or something similar. But, I would not recommend doing this for just reasons that are beyond anyone's means to control and the risk is that you will not be perceived positively or at least a bit odd. I am sure that the circumstances, if based on unethical behaviour or the like, will become common knowledge in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T16:55:42.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21106" CreationDate="2014-05-18T17:04:18.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of questions in one here. I'll answer the one that seems central:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a great plan for an awesome feature for Libsvm, will implementing it help my application ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I would consider that contributing to a well-known machine learning (ML) toolkit will significantly strengthen your case for an application in ML. It shows that you know the fundamentals of support vector machines already, and that you are genuinely interested in the field. Plus, it is presumably something that distinguishes you from all other candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T17:04:18.233" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21120" CreationDate="2014-05-18T19:45:23.840" Score="0" ViewCount="3868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computer science engineer and I am starting to write my SOP's for grad school admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in machine learning but most of the schools I apply to offer ML as a track like something to major in. Can I write my whole SOP about ML ? I have few achievements in CSE and few in ML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15418" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T03:53:54.063" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T03:53:54.063" Title="Can I write my whole SOP about machine learning for graduate school admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21119" CreationDate="2014-05-18T20:28:50.533" Score="44" ViewCount="4026" Body="&lt;p&gt;My institute is creating an annual list of invited speakers and solicited suggestions from staff. It was at pains to point out that although only &quot;n&quot; 18% of suggestions received were female, they made up &quot;n+1&quot; 31% of the speakers selected to talk. As a female student, this makes me feel uncomfortable that women seem to be getting preferential treatment - is this normal practice in academia, in the UK or elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I didn't mean my question to sound insulting, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Everyone invited is perfectly qualified and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. It just seemed a little strange all the women on the shortlist made it through whilst quite a few men didn't. And that the email took on an apologetic tone and emphasized this so heavily. I was just interested in whether this is common as it makes me feel a little uneasy that gender plays such a prominent role in the organizers' thinking. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15422" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T04:29:54.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:16:55.777" Title="Is it normal to preferentially invite female speakers when there would otherwise be few female speakers?" Tags="&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21117" CreationDate="2014-05-18T20:50:57.650" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though suggestions were solicited, that by no means binds the department to selecting only  women who were suggested—the organizers who choose the speakers are free to augment that list however they choose, or completely ignore it, if they feel the choices are inappropriate or inadequate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question to ask is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the speakers who were chosen qualified?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as the speakers merit inclusion in the seminar series, it shouldn't really matter what the gender balance is (particularly in the small sample size of a single year!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; way you could argue that women were getting a &quot;free pass&quot; to speak is if &lt;em&gt;unqualified&lt;/em&gt; women were being given an opportunity to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T20:50:57.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21117" CreationDate="2014-05-18T20:51:50.090" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: if the women who were invited to speak are in fact highly qualified for this invitation, they are not getting a &quot;free pass&quot;. A &quot;free pass&quot; implies that they are invited only because they are women, and are not otherwise qualified. Qualified women are at best getting a &quot;priority pass&quot; to make up for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/2013/06/28/research-blogging-fewer-invited-talks-by-women-in-evolutionary-biology-symposia/&quot;&gt;being often overlooked&lt;/a&gt; (especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/1/e00846-13.full&quot;&gt;when the organizing committee is all male&lt;/a&gt;), and possibly not getting any kind of special pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://femalecomputerscientist.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-only-got-in-because-you-are-woman.html&quot;&gt;a bit insulting&lt;/a&gt; (although I am sure this is not your intent) to suggest that these women were invited to speak because they are women, and not because they are doing quality, competitive work. I can see why you were uneasy when the organizers sent an email emphasizing the gender of the speakers, instead of their contributions to research; I would also be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: depending on the sample size, it may not be entirely significant that 31% of invited speakers were women when they made up 18% of the list of suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this normal practice in academia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sometimes a conference or workshop organizer will look at the list of invited speakers, see that women are heavily underrepresented, and think carefully about whether there is a qualified female researcher doing excellent work who could be added to the roster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is done as a deliberate response to counter a known bias. We know that we (as humans) &lt;a href=&quot;http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/gender-bias-102-for-mathematicians-merit/&quot;&gt;are very bad at evaluating people based on merit alone&lt;/a&gt;; we tend to let our cognitive biases get in the way. (See, for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109&quot;&gt;Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students&lt;/a&gt;.) Deliberate attempts to increase the representation of women in underrepresented fields exist to counter this known bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T13:49:55.040" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T13:49:55.040" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21116" CreationDate="2014-05-18T20:59:54.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing statements of purpose (SOP's) can be challenging. If you make the statement too general, it may come across like you don't have a solid reason for attending a graduate program. On the other hand, if your SOP is too specific, you may unnecessarily restrict your chances of admission—for instance, if you only talk about working with one or two professors, and they're not taking new students, you may not be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you are free to write your statement of purpose however you choose. Just keep in mind that in formal application processes, you are generally writing to an entire &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt;, not just one or two professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T20:59:54.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21117" CreationDate="2014-05-18T21:50:15.800" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sort of positive discrimination is fairly common, in a number of areas, not just academia. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-women_shortlists&quot;&gt;All-women shortlists&lt;/a&gt; and for a less severe but more academic example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scholarshipsforwomen.net/science/&quot;&gt;women only scholarships&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ethics of positive discrimination is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://riaus.org.au/articles/positive-discrimination-is-it-an-oxymoron/&quot;&gt;complex issue&lt;/a&gt;. Personally I agree with you that I find it a bit distasteful, mainly as it encourages the incorrect stereotype of women being less valuable researchers. Although, in this particular case I suspect if it hadn't been explicitly pointed out no one would have noticed or cared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T21:50:15.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T21:57:49.377" Score="25" ViewCount="10851" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seen a thing, until recently, like someone not marking a cross on a multiple choice test just because he didn't know the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether this is a East Asian right-thing-to-do mentality, or just a quirk of some student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should maybe we ask all students to do this? Indeed, on a multiple choice with 5 choices per question, the expectancy of a student employing pure guessing would be  a 20% score. But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer? At least, you are getting sometimes some point for nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T19:28:07.473" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T19:28:07.473" Title="Is it dishonest to guess on multiple choice exams?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21106" CreationDate="2014-05-18T22:02:02.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admission to graduate school is based primarily on your potential for research.  Independent, creative, intellectual work of any kind strongly correlates with potential for research, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if that work is directly related to the interests described in your research statement.  Contributing to open-source software projects is independent, creative, intellectual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your contribution would matter more if it were merged into the main branch of the project, but something is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T22:02:02.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-18T22:06:51.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the university I've studied, the expected value of choosing randomly is almost ever 0, by decreasing your result if you make a wrong choice. If for some reason there's no penalty for missing, I'd assume it is intended to give you value for &quot;guesses&quot; or the test itself is not that important. I don't know what should be the emotional approach, but I'm pretty sure the logical approach is that you should mark every question if the expected value is above 0, unless you know you already have enough points and don't want to risk overall failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T01:27:04.450" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T01:27:04.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-18T22:08:03.247" Score="72" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should maybe we ask all students to do this [&lt;em&gt;refrain from guessing on multiple choice exams&lt;/em&gt;]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some multiple-choice exams use negative scoring, where points are deducted for wrong answers. This discourages guessing, but introduces other problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is that students who know the material &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/159581.article&quot;&gt;vary a great deal&lt;/a&gt; in their &lt;em&gt;confidence&lt;/em&gt; in that knowledge. If students are actively discouraged from answering questions unless they are sure they know the answer, students who lack confidence in their knowledge will be at a disadvantage. (I'm assuming you want the exam to measure student's knowledge, and not their confidence in that knowledge.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not unless you're told &quot;Don't mark something if you don't know the answer.&quot; Cheating implies deceit - there is nothing dishonest about guessing, unless it's forbidden and you do it anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T22:19:41.607" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T22:19:41.607" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21089" CreationDate="2014-05-18T22:23:20.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't find the field you're in all that interesting. That may be because it's not the right field for you. However, depression can make everything seem uninteresting, even activities you used to love. Maybe you just need a break. Your therapist is probably the person to help you figure out what's best for you at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to take a break, I'm sure your university has some sort of student ombudsman or student services office that can guide you through the process of getting a leave of absence. Look on your university's website, or ask the registrar's office, student health, or the student union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setbacks you've experienced in your research don't sound that bad. A few false starts in research are quite normal. One year into my own master's, nothing was working and I was sure I wouldn't have any useful results. My advisor helped to calm me down, and all turned out well. It sounds like you and your advisor just don't &quot;gel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T22:23:20.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T00:32:59.877" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some sense, I do not understand the context. Many kids, myself included, have the dubious capacity to infer from the wording of the question and the answers what a reasonable answer would be, thus quite successfully gaming the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, a rational person would exclude implausible answers, and look at the plausible, and if those can easily be distinguished, we're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, a multiple-choice test cannot possibly compel the examinees to really &quot;work the problems out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've done some experiments in which by-me-designed multiple-choice quizzes on sophisticated material were better done by smart English major friends of the (smart-enough, for sure) math grad students, due to reading nuances of questions and answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That convinced me ... not so much to not do multiple-choice, but that the constraints of the multiple-choice &quot;pipe&quot; are too narrow, and do not address what we want. The same is surely true at more elementary levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The pseudo-economy of machine-grading and so on is somewhat of a false economy if one wants to avoid rewarding clever-gaming-of-system... duh.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T00:32:59.877" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T06:33:03.197" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;My (european) students would probably be either very perplexed or laughing at me when I told them that they are not allowed to &quot;guess&quot; if they do not know the answer. This is not only impossible to enforce, but also much less well-defined than you seem to think (as ff524 already indicates). If I have a good idea what the answer is but I am not sure, am I &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to answer? If I have in principle no clue, but from the way the question is phrased I can guess that the answer will be (c), am I &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, if there is such an obvious flaw in your testing system (guessing being generally +EV, positive expected value, in multiple choice tests with no point subtractions for wrong answers), it seems lazy to shift the burden of not exploiting this hole to the student versus designing your test in a smarter way (or living with the fact that even a random selector will get X% of all points on your test, which may be ok for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer? At least, you are getting sometimes some point for nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any exam a student can get points for getting lucky. Assume a student has learned only 30% of a given chapter, and the question deals with the part that he learned. Is it cheating to answer in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, and maybe more controversially, I think you'll need a rather wide definition of cheating so that guessing a random answer falls into it, &lt;em&gt;even if you told them before not to do it&lt;/em&gt;. Sure, if the rules are that you cannot do it, and you do it anyway, you are breaking the rules. However, if you know there is a pretty big hole in your system and you do not take even easy steps to fix it, I feel you can hardly fault a student for exploiting the hole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T06:33:03.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T06:35:26.923" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it dishonest to guess on multiple choice exams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; The next step of logic might be to not write an answer to &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; unless it is not falsifiable, for fear of being proven wrong. Which defeats the purpose of science. In most every multiple choice question, there are some answers that are clearly more probable than others - most guesses will still be educated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not dishonest to be wrong. It's only dishonest to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; you're wrong but tell people that you're right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T06:35:26.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21135" CreationDate="2014-05-19T07:09:42.003" Score="17" ViewCount="7113" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research, my adviser only gives minimal advice that is limited to the direction of the research and defining the problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can say I do most of the thinking, the actual solutions of the problems. &#xA;Even at one time I needed to explain to my adviser how my algorithms work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only &quot;effort&quot; my adviser does is writing the actual paper, since I'm still a master's student and lack experience of writing. Moreover, I'm not a native speaker so I'm still trying to improve my English writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's the intro of my background. FYI, I'm a CS student and I'm aiming to publish a paper in a conference in ACM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The actual problem is my adviser demands to be joint first author.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the reason and the reply was it was needed to progress to associate professor, with my help, and eventually gain tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the supervisor feels  under risk to be kicked from the university. With 3-4 years as an Assistant Professor but doesn't really have good research output (only 1-2 small papers every year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reluctantly agreed to assist under these considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. We can be joint first author but my name should be written first.&lt;/strong&gt; Initially wanted their name to be written first because alphabetically the last name comes first compared to my last name.&#xA;Then I did a &quot;bargaining&quot; by saying that I want to be researcher in the future and I need my name to be put first.&#xA;The discussion ended and I was allowed my name to be written first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. I need to graduate&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In my university, advisers have total control to let students graduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this post I want to ask you for more suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Right now I want to play &quot;safely&quot; rather than being kicked out, but I feel I'm being treated a bit toady. Usually the adviser likes to scold other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The advisor does indeed write the most part of the paper, but it doesn't mean that I didn't take any part in the writing. I tried to write an initial paper, from the introduction to technical part, writing equations, making figures, producing results, etc. &#xA;The advisor helped me to polish the grammar and made the sentences neater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I forget to say one thing, I have another adviser. Let's say A2. The one I'm having dispute with is A1. A1's most significant  contribution is writing the paper. A2 helps me with the &quot;big picture&quot;. Because A2 is more junior than A1, A2 only becomes co-author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also thanks for everyone who wrote answers and comments. All of you gave me a lot of new perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15432" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T19:28:14.970" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:28:14.970" Title="Adviser wants to be joint first author, even though I did most of the research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="23" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T07:13:02.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, on a multiple choice with 5 choices per question, it is a&#xA;  given that any student, no matter whether he is as thick as brick,&#xA;  would at least get a 20% grade&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not, he will get not, except when very lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get 20% points on 5-choices per question test by guessing (on average) on &lt;strong&gt;single-choice test&lt;/strong&gt; (one answer correct). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the correct answer on multiple choice is only then, when you have selected &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; correct answers, guessing is an extremally ineffective strategy on such tests. Multiple choice tests &lt;strong&gt;are already designed&lt;/strong&gt; to prevent guessing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even 20% is &lt;strong&gt;much below&lt;/strong&gt; typical exam passing range. In my country it's typical to set the threshold to 50%. Everything below that means a failed exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your exam criteria allow passing on 20% of correct answers, you have a problem in completely other place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5657" LastEditorDisplayName="user5657" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T08:21:26.130" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T08:21:26.130" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21132" CreationDate="2014-05-19T07:29:27.743" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remote doctoring issues between students and advisors is always difficult, but I'll have a stab at it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my research, My adviser only gives minimal advice that limited to the direction of the research and defining the problems. I can say I do most of the thinking, the actual solutions of the problems. Even at one time I needed to explain to my adviser how my algorithms work. The only &quot;effort&quot; my adviser does is writing the actual paper, since I'm still a master student with lack experience of writing. Moreover, I'm not a native speaker so I'm still trying to improve my English writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your advisor may not be the most contributing person to this research, calling this &quot;no significant contribution&quot; may be too much. It sounds like he is doing standard advising plus helping you write the paper, which is certainly in line with what you expect from an &lt;em&gt;advisor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual problem is my adviser demands him as joint first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that is a problem. It's good that you push back here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He told me that He wants tenure position and He needs my help so he can be an associate professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't quite understand that. For all universities I know, advising students is what is expected from assistant professors. So from a tenure point of view, advising a student to write an excellent paper is not much different than writing one yourself. Maybe he is overestimating the additional value he would get from being first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Oh man, did he beg to me or what?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to stay focused on the facts, and don't let it get personal. Nothing to gain from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He can be the joint first author but my name should be written first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still confused about the notion of joint first authors (I always assumed there can really be only one, but apparently &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17239/should-co-first-authors-be-listed-in-alphabetical-order/17356#17356&quot;&gt;I was wrong)&lt;/a&gt;. Anyway, I would say it sounds like an ok compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need to graduate In my uni, professors have total control to let students graduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is indeed a practical problem in many universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few concluding statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authorship really isn't something that should be &lt;em&gt;negotiated&lt;/em&gt; after the project is almost done. As many members here never get tired of saying, details of authorship are best discussed at the beginning of the project, so that everybody knows where everybody else stands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From your short description, it seems to me like you are somewhat underselling the contributions of your advisor, even delivering some underhand blows in a few places. You are likely a rational individual - try to not be emotional about it, and then re-check what your advisor actually does for your project. Further, keep in mind that students tend to over-value the technical &quot;doing&quot; of the project and undervalue the &quot;big picture&quot; (deciding on a research project, defining research issues so that the outcome is both achievable and novel, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somewhat related: your advisor is not supposed to be an all-knowning, all-understanding supreme being. It is completely ok that you occasionally need to explain the details of an algorithm to him. That does not make him incompetent. You will for sure have to do the same thing with your new advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T07:29:27.743" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21132" CreationDate="2014-05-19T07:46:04.313" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;You write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only &quot;effort&quot; my adviser does is writing the actual paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in many fields, that would make them sole author. It certainly gives them a very strong claim to be first author, in fields where authorship is determined by contribution to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be first author, then write the paper yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you can't, then don't expect first authorship, and be grateful for co-authorship (rather than an acknowledgement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've now added that you have done a bit of the writing, but your adviser has done most of it. So yes, they would, in many fields, still get first authorship, and you would get a co-authorship on that basis, assuming what you've written is a non-trivial proportion of the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T07:54:56.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T07:54:56.473" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T09:00:41.627" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my university on some exams it is solved by giving negative points for the wrong answer, but only after giving some number of wrong answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, every wrong answer is -0.5 points, but you won't get negative points before you give 3 wrong answers, after third wrong answer, you will get -1.5 points, and for every next wrong answer additional -0.5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, students are discouraged from total random answers, but also students who aren't too confident in their knowledge have some &quot;space&quot; for wrong answers, so they don't have to fear negative points so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15434" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T09:00:41.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-05-19T10:46:35.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of a policy on cheating isn't being &quot;fair&quot;, it's to discourage cheating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia we don't want to have academic papers who bend the truth a little bit, but we want to have academics who tell the whole truth and for whom cheating is not an option. As a result you don't want to do anything that encourages cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10073" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T10:46:35.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21139" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:13:26.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make useful products, or &quot;any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use&quot; (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Art. 2).&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Depending on the tools and applications, it often overlaps with the (related) fields of bioengineering and biomedical engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:15:54.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:15:54.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21140" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:13:26.213" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to biotechnology in academia" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:16:01.180" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:16:01.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21132" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:14:56.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emotions aside, I believe that the intent of a paper is to present &lt;strong&gt;results&lt;/strong&gt;. There are people who are better than others in English but a technical writer is not the one who does the research. Should he/she be the first author because he did the logistics work (writing the paper)? I do not think so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO of a company will not have drawn her/himself the fantastic ad you see on the street. But (s)he is still the one who is the face of the company. Not the graphics professional who did the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So writing the paper, even if this requires experience, is logistics. Which grants you, at best, co-authoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15446" LastEditorUserId="15446" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T15:28:22.007" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T15:28:22.007" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21142" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:15:58.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Social science is an academic discipline concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It includes anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology. In a wider sense, it may often include some fields in the humanities&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; such as archaeology, history, law, and linguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:18:42.523" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:18:42.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21143" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:15:58.183" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to social science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:04:56.737" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:04:56.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21117" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:16:36.673" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing that matters is qualification based off of merit. Unfortunately, in school and infesting its way into corporate culture, it's more about filling quotas than worrying about who is most qualified or who deserves it the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Free pass&quot; may not be the correct term for all 31% of those women, but it's more than likely the case for at least some of them. The organizer is sexist, plain and simple. People can bat words around and pretend that any particular group of people &quot;have it harder,&quot; but in the end, it's just sexism and discrimination. Who's to say whose upbringing was worse and why that entire group of people should have more rights than another group? You don't see any of those same groups of people complaining about the lack of males in nursing or the lack of females in hard manual labor jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel uneasy about it, that's good. It means you have a fair mind and don't like one group having preferential treatment over another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15445" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:16:36.673" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21145" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:19:48.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ACM, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:58:13.887" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:58:13.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21146" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:19:48.833" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to (ACM) The Association for Computing Machinery." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T12:58:19.907" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:58:19.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21104" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:56:43.367" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your paper has been posted to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arXiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;, go to the paper's page (here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.5409&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of mine&lt;/a&gt;), click on &quot;Other formats&quot; and &quot;download source&quot;. Assuming the authors submitted the LaTeX Source to the arXiv, you'll get a tarball with the LaTeX source, which should be a lot more searchable. (Yes, I do this for large enough papers where I expect to do a lot of searching.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T12:56:43.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-19T13:29:28.427" Score="20" ViewCount="3965" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, it is typical for each state to have one or more flagship state universities. All of them are reasonably good institutions, but some are absolutely top-notch, such as in Michigan, California, Virginia, and Wisconsin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, tuition at these universities is extremely expensive for out-of-state students and much cheaper for in-state students. So, at least in principle, these universities principally serve the best students from their respective states who choose to study at public schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is it then that some schools became absolutely top-notch and others less so? To my mind there is no obvious factor explaining which of the state schools became top-notch; for example, Wisconsin is not, and never has been, an unusually populous or wealthy state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T04:17:39.653" Title="Why do US flagship state universities vary so much in quality?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2014-05-19T14:20:57.753" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different states have very different political attitudes towards their flagship schools as well. This makes a difference with funding levels of course. It also makes a difference in terms of how money is to be used. A governor/executive, combined with a university president, that wants to grow a flagship institution can help earmark funds to attract top-notch researchers, link business activity and academic areas to grow in, and so on. It takes planning and vision as well as money, and that varies a lot from state to state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T14:20:57.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2014-05-19T14:55:41.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one thing that has to be remembered is that classes at Universities are run by humans... and they aren't all of the same caliber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a University has decided to focus on a particular school, Civil Engineering for example, then they will expend the funds necessary to attract highly competent and well known professors &lt;em&gt;in that area&lt;/em&gt;.  This might mean that funds aren't available to attract similar talent in another college at that University, such as English Literature.  However it also means that the university will get a reputation for turning out better candidates in those areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, Universities are funded through a variety of ways.  Only one is the actual cost of tuition.  Private funding, such as provided by various businesses or alumni, is a big part of this.  If a particular college within the University graduates a large number of high dollar workers then those private donations are likely to be largely earmarked for that same college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point is: Quality is determined by your professors and tools available and these are generally determined by the Money a University has or is willing to spend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11585" LastEditorUserId="11585" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T19:30:35.703" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T19:30:35.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T14:56:36.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose on some level if you were purely guessing at an answer, then it would be a form of cheating in that you would get credit for something you did not legitimately know.  However, if you are able to work out an educated guess, then you certainly deserve credit because it demonstrates an ability to deduce an answer that you did not know upon reading the question.  That demonstrates critical thinking and logic skills above simply knowing the right formula off hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15453" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T14:56:36.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T15:26:49.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a bit of a different situation during my Uni education than any mentioned here... I'm not sure if it is the best solution to evaluating the students, but it is definitely &lt;em&gt;implemented&lt;/em&gt; and has been used for several generations (in Croatia, Computer Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The utterly strange this is, we had multiple choice exams for &lt;em&gt;mathematical&lt;/em&gt; problems and in general, other types of subjects that require you to solve &lt;em&gt;exercises&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;problems&lt;/em&gt; and get a &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main points of how it worked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for each question, you had N different answers (where N would be the same for the whole exam). (N ~ 4 or 5, typically)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the answers offered were usually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 correct answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 correct answer * 10^x (e.g. if the right answer was 23.5 you might have 2.35 offered)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2 answers you could get by making a low-level calculus mistake in the typical solution-process (1 direct and 1 with a *10^x shift, as with the correct answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. if there's a standardized procedure for solving the problem, it is the answer you would get if you flip a sign somewhere by accident)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 completely wrong answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the marks were distributed as:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1 for the correct answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 for unanswered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a bit more than -1/N for wrong answer (e.g. if N = 5, then the wrong answer might be -0.25 instead of -0.20)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;additionally, for the &lt;strong&gt;correct answer to be accepted&lt;/strong&gt;, you had to enclose a paper with your full solution to that question (where you did your calculations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They weren't checking this very diligently for every answer, but you were always aware that they &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tried to encourage the &lt;em&gt;educated&lt;/em&gt; guesses (as you have your calculations, and maybe you're unsure between two answers because you're unsure if you used the right procedure). On the other hand, the penalty also discouraged complete guesses, as the potential negative marks were higher than the potential gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, such a system still has plenty shortcomings. A typical problem situation was the student would having the right solution in his calculation, but &lt;em&gt;transferred the wrong answer&lt;/em&gt; to the multiple choice answer sheet. The policies varied with different courses, although commonly, such an answer was not accepted, to prevent students for &lt;em&gt;purposefully&lt;/em&gt; offering two answers and having a better chance of scoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just realized I haven't actually offered my direct answer to the question. Here it goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the system I describe, I would say &lt;strong&gt;it is unethical to try and guess&lt;/strong&gt; in multiple choice exams. But, unlike all the other multiple choice setups, the one described here has a &lt;strong&gt;way to verify weather you guessed or not&lt;/strong&gt; (if you have not submitted the full procedure for your answer, you must have guessed) and because of that, it stops depending solely on the students &quot;honor&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T17:51:07.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T17:51:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21132" CreationDate="2014-05-19T15:28:44.340" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Azer89,&#xA;Sorry this is stressful for you, most of us have had some sort of grad drama. I suggest you relax a bit about it. If your adviser demands &quot;co-first authorship&quot; I'd let him have it, for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) He is your primary job reference and entree into the academic world, keeping him happy is important. Your career will be better served with a good reference than any one paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It sounds like he has in fact met the standard for co-authorship, I wish my MS adviser would have anything to do with the manuscript!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Finally, and most important, is what kind of collaborator you want to be. Academia (and industry) is full of territorial, jealous types who are concerned only with their own academic &quot;reputation&quot;. Don't be one of them. In the long run nobody cares if you are sole or joint first author on some paper. They care if you are a good collaborator they can work with. Take the moral high ground and get the paper out. If he's a real jerk you'll never work with him again, but you'll be the guy people can get along with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15456" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T15:28:44.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2014-05-19T17:09:09.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I referee papers if one of the following conditions holds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's something I know well and can quickly evaluate the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's something I want to know more about, and will learn something by doing the review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I owe the editor or author a favor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good experience for graduate students to do this, but it should not distract you from your own scholarship and coursework.  So yes, by the time you complete your degree, it would be good to have done this a couple of times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T17:09:09.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-19T17:26:41.467" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a tough one: German driving license theory test &lt;a href=&quot;http://fahrschule.freenet.de&quot;&gt;http://fahrschule.freenet.de&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules: It's multiple choice. You are not given the number of correct answers (there can be multiple correct ones, or no correct ones, or one correct answer). You get points for each incorrect choice. Checking one wrong answer instead of the correct one is two incorrect answers. Checking only one of two correct answers is one incorrect choice. So there is no guessing &quot;what's the best answer&quot;. And you are allowed two or three incorrect answers out of forty questions. They don't bother counting correct answers because you must have almost all correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if you haven't learned your questions and know at least 95% of the answers, there's no chance. On the positive side, you can &lt;em&gt;officially&lt;/em&gt; buy all the possible questions and answers and practice as much as you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11873" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T17:26:41.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21162" CreationDate="2014-05-19T18:49:58.520" Score="3" ViewCount="2179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some papers from google which I don't know to what type they belong: a working paper or a discussion paper or something else? I need this for my bibliography&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are some examples of such cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one has an abbreviation JEL Classifications, but is this enough to refer this to Journal of Economic Literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one has nothing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone give me a hint? Any help would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4e82s.png&quot; alt=&quot;This one has an abbreviation JEL Classifications, but is this enough to refer this to Journal of Economic Literature?&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lRkTo.png&quot; alt=&quot;This one has nothing at all&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15295" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T19:11:30.960" Title="A working paper or a discussion paper or something else?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21161" CreationDate="2014-05-19T19:04:41.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;JEL classifications are just that: classifications. Anyone can put such a classification on his paper, and it doesn't have anything to do with publishing in the JEL - it's more like a keyword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question: I don't think there really is such a big difference between a working paper (which is work in progress, typically distributed to be discussed) and a discussion paper (which is work in progress, typically distributed to be discussed). All of these are essentially manuscripts under preparation for submission to a refereed journal (in CS, a conference). So I would file all of these under &quot;non-reviewed papers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T19:04:41.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21161" CreationDate="2014-05-19T19:11:30.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very rarely you will find the full reference in the paper.  To retrieve complete references use google scholar  (which provides even different versions of the same paper) and double check in doubt. You can also try indexer services provided by your university such as worldcat or summon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15468" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T19:11:30.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:10:13.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;State population, and proximity to a large city likely also plays a role.  Its not a perfect correlation, but UCB, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UT-Austin, and several other &quot;big name&quot; state schools are either in or near major citys in high population states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing states like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota#Population&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dakotas&lt;/a&gt; don't have enough students to build larger campuses, and hire as many profs.  Looks like neither Dakota has even 1 million people.  I'm guessing there just isn't very much real demand for education in these states, since fewer students are getting degrees the universities have less money for big ticket items like stadiums, rec facilities and &quot;star&quot; faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T20:10:13.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21167" CreationDate="2014-05-19T21:22:11.093" Score="4" ViewCount="3850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computer science, master student. As I am nearing the end of my studies, I am starting to weight my options for the final &quot;thing&quot;, the Master thesis. I already had 2-3 meetings with some Professors offering master topics. The more I think on this topic, the more I get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the topics is not really within the area of my interests, or close to something that I would like to work in the future, but the Professor is really nice and quality, I have had good cooperation with him earlier before. And I think that I can further learn from him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the other options, is much interesting, however I feel as if I am afraid of it. I don't have much experience in the exact field which the master thesis covers. The professor just arrived in out university and I have not taken any of his lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final option, is one that I feel more comfortable. It might be from a topic that I have worked on for the last 12 months, so I can get into it really fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering these information and the fact that in the future I want to have the possibility of continuing Phd studies, maybe not directly after the master studies, but sometimes eventually, which one of the thesis should I choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go for the most worldly-renown professor, or for one of the others. Which parameters should I bear in mind when making the decision? I have thought about the quality of the professor, the effort that the topic requires, the potential of having a good adviser (on whom I can rely) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure, here are people much experienced than me who can tell what are the important things to consider when making such a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems seems that deep inside, I am being influenced by the grading as well. Is the grade of a thesis more important than the topic itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the question might feel as offtopic, but I really need help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Just wanted to add a couple of questions in here; To what extent the grades influence future job &amp;amp; Phd applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T22:25:29.367" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T22:25:29.367" Title="What are the important factors to consider when choosing a Master topic?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21166" CreationDate="2014-05-19T22:12:23.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep uppermost in your mind - the topic of your Master's thesis is not necessarily the one that you have to pursue in later research, such as part of a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of a Master's thesis is to demonstrate your ability to do research. Opinions might vary on whether it is a reasonable expectation that the research that you do for a Master's thesis has to be world-class and leads to one or more publications. In my view, it would be nice, but it isn't a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to get out of your Master's thesis is a strong demonstration that you are capable of academic research. You decision on which supervisor and topic to choose should be guided by this driver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pursuing a research topic merely because the professor is world-renown may be misguided. What happens if you don't strike up a good working relationship and your research falters because of it? Will your professor's reputation outweigh a mediocre research effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your drive and interest in a research topic are strong factors of whether you will succeed. The motivation should come from you - most of the time - to address your research topic. Again, if you aren't particularly interested in the topic, you are going to find it hard to keep going at it when - and it is a matter of when - the going gets tough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reiterate that at the end of your Master's thesis, you want to demonstrate your research ability. You are still learning the skills and craft of research, and for that reason, you want to seek teachers who are skilled at teaching how to research. Is it necessarily true that the best practitioners of science research are the best teachers of how to do research? Sometimes true, sometimes not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T22:12:23.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-19T23:42:37.027" Score="41" ViewCount="9679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a 2nd year PhD student from a computational field. I'm going to submit my first paper about a new optimization algorithm. I've been working intensively on the problem for the last 2 years and finally managed to get the results I've been longing for so badly. Besides the professor, I'm also supervised by another postdoc whom I respect a lot. Although the two didn't contribute to the ideas I present in the paper, they helped me a lot to understand the field and prepare the paper. So, they obviously deserve to be coauthors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is one man in my lab who is really ruining my mood and indirectly prevent me from concentrating on writing my paper. He is a postdoc, 15 years my senior, and has been with the lab for ages (he has a permanent position). Just for the record, he hasn't published any first or last author paper since 7 years. We are assigned by the professor to the same subgroup meeting. We use the subgroup meeting to report our individual scientific progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a year ago, he came to my desk I said that I should include his name in the work I was working on because A (the professor) said so. I was quite surprised to hear that because he had nothing to do with my project besides sitting in the same meeting. Nevertheless, I agreed because I just simply didn't care about who should be on the coauthor list. I didn't submit the paper that year because the results were still very unsatisfactory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, the postdoc constantly asked me to do many things for the project, which I thought didn't make any sense. I simply told him that he should brought up his request during the meeting when the professor is there. And every single time the response of my professor was something like &quot;Why would you want to do that?&quot; and his answer was &quot;Because I'm interested in&quot;. I wish my professor whould have said &quot;Then do it yourself&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor goes abroad quite often. So, most of the time the subgroup meetings took place without him. About 6 months ago I came up with an idea which I thought very promising and I presented it in the meeting, without the professor. The postdoc basically told me that I need to stop wasting time on my ideas and listen to his suggestions instead if I want to finish my PhD. I felt very offended and spent days and nights coding my idea. 2 months later, I got the best results that I could ever ask for. I presented the results in front of my professor and others. Everyone was happy except one man. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, when I was trying to finish the paper then he came in. He asked me to do yet another ridiculous analysis. I told him that I cannot see why this analysis could make the paper better. Besides, this is already the final stage and everything has been discussed thorougly with the &quot;real&quot; coauthors. He answered me &quot;This might not go into the paper but I'm interested in knowing it. I'm the author and I'm allowed to make request&quot;. My reaction was something like a silent WTF and he immediately corrected the word &quot;author&quot; to coauthor. I tried my best to not ask him the question &quot;What did you contribute to the paper?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor is currently away for 3 weeks. I want to submit the paper as soon as possible but this man made me crazy. He would talk to me all day long until I do want he wants. I don't want to write to my professor to complain about him. But I'm afraid that he will use his coauthorship to keep bothering me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Thanks for reading the long story! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------------------- UPDATE ABOUT THE SITUATION ---------------------------------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, THANK YOU ALL FOR THE COMMENTS AND ANSWERS!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, the man came to me again! After 1 hour of &quot;discussing&quot;, I just gave up and spent the whole day explaining to him how he could do the analysis he wanted himself. It would be much faster if I do it myself because I wrote all the code but he just insisted on doing it himself to &quot;not bother&quot; me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I gave up, I told him that the professor knew about what he wanted to do (he mentioned it during our lab meeting 4 weeks ago). My professor has read the draft version of my manuscript and made comments. And I haven't  heard any word from him that I should do the analysis the postdoc suggested. We already have all the experimental results we need and the manuscript is now almost finished. I told the postdoc that if he want to do the analysis then let discuss it together when the professor is back or if he think that it is urgent he can write to the professor. He refused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that he probably wants to contribute something. He told me that I need to explain why I designed my algorithm that way, using experimental data. In the manuscript, I did explain the rationale behind it and in the result part I compared my method with others (including the current best one) using 120 real datasets of all kind. We already reach the page limit of the journal. The rationale behind the design of my algorithm is quite obvious and he totally agrees on that. But still, he said that I need to show it with the data. He told me to change the way my algorithm works and compare the modified version with the original one. I don't understand why he want to put everything in the paper, not to mention that it is so obvious and doesn't make the paper better at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lesson learned for the next project! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14741" LastEditorUserId="14741" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T18:39:09.627" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T18:39:09.627" Title="How to get rid of unwanted and annoying co-author?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19431" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:04:33.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to consider is that certain academic disciplines are quite small. Pulling out after the April 15 deadline may burn bridges, which might impact future collaborations with individuals at your 2nd choice school. Or, it's possible you could still collaborate with individuals from your 1st choice school while attending your 2nd choice school, and resigning may not be necessary. It's something to keep in mind, in order to be as professional as possible while navigating your potential resignation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T00:04:33.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19065" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:10:46.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some organizations require applicants to list alternate sources of potential funding in order to determine whether the applicant has sufficiently explored funding options and is expending effort to obtain funding. If other options are less likely to be funded (due to poorer fit) or are unavailable, you can highlight that to emphasize the importance of applying for this particular grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T00:10:46.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21054" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:35:15.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed undergraduate summer internships in biology although I ultimately wound up applying (and attending) graduate school in psychology. Although the internship did not directly align with my current career path, at the time it helped me narrow down my professional interests. In applying for jobs and graduate school, my internships, regardless of discipline, were seen as evidence that I was motivated, organized, and had some experience in professional settings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the undergraduate level many skills (including solid record keeping, attention to detail, and proper lab technique) are transferable across scientific disciplines. Further, completing one internship outside your discipline shouldn't significantly stunt your ability to prepare for graduate school in chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a letter of support from any professor should be acceptable, provided it is a strong letter. In all likelihood, your advisor will know you the best and be able to write the most supportive letter. However, if a life sciences professor knows you well, a second letter or co-written letter might be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T00:35:15.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17010" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:43:05.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many faculty senates agree to be governed by Robert's Rules of Order. Buried in it is this clause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No member should vote on a question in which he has a direct personal&#xA;or pecuniary interest not common to other members of the organization.&#xA;For example, if a motion proposes that the organization enter into a&#xA;contract with a commercial firm of which a member of the organization&#xA;is an officer and from which contract he would derive personal&#xA;pecuniary profit, the members should abstain from voting on the&#xA;motion.  However, no member can be compelled to refrain from voting in&#xA;such circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cityethics.org/content/roberts-rules-has-conflict-interest-rule-local-governments-no-conflict-provisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cityethics.org/content/roberts-rules-has-conflict-interest-rule-local-governments-no-conflict-provisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it says that members &lt;strong&gt;cannot be compelled to abstain&lt;/strong&gt; and so there was no violation per se. So in your case, I think the best thing to do would either to work within the Senate to all for an inquiry possibly leading to an impeachment or vote of no-confidence in the leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid direct confrontation, you could leak this to the administration which would be happy to do the inquiry for you, but this would be seen as highly uncollegial and quickly make you unpopular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about asking the Chronicle of Higher Ed to look into this as a third alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edits: Clarifications and obfuscations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:43:13.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21168" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:47:01.030" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he has not contributed to the paper or the ideas, I would tell him very bluntly that you have decided not to include him as a co-author and explain your reasoning. You don't need to yell or be rude, just deliberate. As far as him constantly bothering you, just tell him he is interfering with your work and you can make time for him during your &quot;office hours&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common for postdocs to abuse their &quot;power&quot;. You don't owe him anything just because he is a postdoc in your lab. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, it's very unlikely your advisor will. He is, after-all, both of your bosses, and you are both adults. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;I was under the impression the advisor was indifferent. It would be best to sit down with your advisor first and explain your case. Be adamant. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-bloggers.com/author-inflation-in-academic-literature/&quot;&gt;Co-author inflation&lt;/a&gt; is real. Your advisor is likely trying to look out for the interest of everyone, but if the postdoc has not made any contribution, it would be &quot;unethical&quot; for him to be listed as a co-author. I wonder if the postdoc helped write the grant that you are funded by?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T18:25:09.197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T18:25:09.197" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21168" CreationDate="2014-05-20T00:54:59.717" Score="30" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to get rid of unwanted and annoying co-author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking to your advisor about your problem will probably help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how that goes, you may still feel like you need to keep this &quot;annoying&quot; postdoc on as a co-author. Even so, you don't need to do any more grunt work for this person. Just finish up your paper. If this postdoc keeps bothering you and impeding your progress, you may need to go into stealth mode for a week or so (work from home while your advisor is out of town, etc.). Finishing your paper quickly (but correctly) will at least (hopefully!) prevent this annoying person from delaying your progress further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T00:54:59.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19613" CreationDate="2014-05-20T01:52:06.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggled with the GRE Quantitative section several years ago; my first attempt was over 100 points less than the required score for my graduate program. I found the GRE test-prep books (Kaplan, Princeton Review, Barrons, GRE for Dummies) to be very helpful. I picked up a handful at second-hand bookstores, and then spent a few weeks drilling math problems, which helped me answer questions more quickly. Even though I knew how to do the problems before, they became more automatic with practice, which did make things easier and faster the second time around. Those books also offered time management strategies for taking the test, though you may need to purchase (or rent from the library) newer books which will describe the revised test (books prior to 2012 won't have guides for the new GRE). It was very boring working math problems 1-2 hours a night for a few weeks, but on my second attempt I achieved the score I needed. Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T01:52:06.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21187" CreationDate="2014-05-20T02:00:24.907" Score="4" ViewCount="1494" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Phd application in Europe, we often directly apply to the interested group, a little bit like application to a job. I would like to know in general, will they send you a email if they reject you? or only the successful candidate will receive email? (Just like job application) How long does it take for their consideration? I would like to hear some of the experience or general cases because I cannot find enough information on this. (No reply from HR etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T16:01:40.550" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:06:17.590" Title="Phd application procedure in European universities, specifically in Scandinavia and the Netherlands" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18525" CreationDate="2014-05-20T02:02:45.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have indicated, style guidelines have to be followed, regardless of whether the reasoning behind the rules is clear. However, this particular example often varies by geographic region. American English grammar always places periods and commas inside quotation marks, while British English grammar is &quot;conditional&quot; - that is, they include periods and commas inside quotes only if it is part of the quotation, not the larger sentence. This site has an example and a more detailed explanation.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/quotation-marks-with-periods-and-commas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/quotation-marks-with-periods-and-commas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it's possible that the style guide is based on American English grammar, while you have a different frame of reference and convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:02:45.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18369" CreationDate="2014-05-20T02:53:05.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic jobs are a nightmare from the HR perspective. While the posting might be on the jobs portal, the files themselves initially go to the hiring department which comes up with a long and then medium list that they then do some preliminary screening before ending up with a short list for on-site interviews.  This can take several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search committee then comes up with a ranked list with some candidates &quot;above the line&quot; and some &quot;below the line&quot; that the department votes on. This list -- which may have one, two, or three people that the department thinks are hireable (or in some cases, none, if the search fails).  This list then goes to the provost, equal opportunity, and numerous other sundry university committees before getting approved (or not) and sent back down the line. This can take several more months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we are now 4-6 (or 6-8) months into the search. The search can have several results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single finalist who is contacted. Maybe they&#xA;dawdle for a couple of weeks in giving a reply. If they decide not&#xA;to take the job, then the search is failed. The department may or&#xA;may not be authorized to search again next year and if they are, the&#xA;search remains open.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two finalists. The first accepts (or not). If the first doesn't, the second is given a chance. If both decline, then it's a failed&#xA;search.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No finalists. Failed search and the slot goes back to the provost's office. It may or may not be returned to the department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The provost hates all of the finalists and either cancels the slot or forces the department to re-run the search. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there are many reasons why a job posting might still remain open even one or two years after the initial posting. Departments are hesitant to finally close files unless they are absolutely positive that they are never, ever getting that slot back again -- or that the person who accepted the offer really is going to show up on August 1st.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:53:05.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13661" CreationDate="2014-05-20T02:56:58.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One solution to this would be to ask the instructor of the course to write one of your letters of recommendation. If you were indeed performing at a graduate-level while still an undergrad, then he or she should note this in his/her letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T02:56:58.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2014-05-20T04:26:24.513" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use scapple from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php&quot;&gt;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does exactly what you want. You can put notes anywhere on a canvas.&#xA;You can connect them if you want. And you can search them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It costs about $15 and there is a trial for 1 month so you can see if you like it before you buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works very well if you use the Crawford slip method of brainstorming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's one of the best piece of software I use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15481" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T04:26:24.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T04:39:31.910" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to teach a quick lesson on e-journal searching, e.g. to search for one item, excluding certain terms, or another item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most common query language that students will most likely encounter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T03:02:47.830" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T03:02:47.830" Title="What query language is most common for e-journal searches?" Tags="&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2014-05-20T05:26:29.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are asking here, I assume note taking for paper is important.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docear.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Docear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a mind mapping for paper tool which based on Freeplane and Jabref, which might fit academia needs perfectly. And it supports windows, linux and mac. And it' s GPL licensed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uXHSn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7237" LastEditorUserId="7237" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T05:32:18.270" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T05:32:18.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2014-05-20T06:01:15.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of factors, and the sample is too diverse to come up with a simple answer. For starters, here's a list of all the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_universities_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;State-run universities in the USA&lt;/a&gt;. This answer is basically an outline, based on my impressions, and I invite others to elaborate on these points with historical documents (this answer is a wiki) or maybe even a statistical analysis if we're lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The need for a state school. Some regions already had several private universities that could serve their population. Others (California?) did not, so the state set one up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The political commitment to the University system. Some state schools (CA) are written into the state's constitution. Other's are not (PA). Some were established with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;land-grants&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) In a less formal sense, some states have a strong public commitment to public  education, while others value it less. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/2014/04/21/how-states-compare-in-the-2014-best-high-schools-rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rankings of high schools&lt;/a&gt; has some correlation to my perception of flagship university quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) As implied in the question, the total resources available to the state is an issue, though not the only one. Still, overall, larger and wealthier (and more urban) states tend to have more prestigious flagship universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) And then there's randomness (as described by Chris Lively) -- all the stuff that is not a characteristic of the state per se. AKA, historical contingencies, personnel decisions, strategic decisions, and the general legacy of the University's infrastructure..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to see how all these factors contribute to predicting the prestige of the flagship university (a PCA or logistic regression, perhaps)-- but that analysis is outside of my expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T06:01:15.313" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-20T06:01:15.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T07:24:58.113" Score="3" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed the first year of my grad school program, but did very poorly during my second semester. I received low grades in two of my courses and failed the third due to health issues and an accompanying bout with depression. The problem is I no longer want to continue this MS program; I chose to enroll at this university because of the opportunity (it is #1 for my field of study), reduced tuition etc. Instead I want to apply for a five year Doctor in Psychology program elsewhere. What are my chances of getting into a competitive program if I dropped out of my masters? Should I complete my degree in order to avoid having the blemish of dropping out of grad school on my record? It seems like a waste of time and counteractive to pursuing my passions. I'm also concerned about the low GPA. What is my best course of action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15484" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:29:10.420" Title="Can I be admitted into a grad school program at a different university if I quit my current program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2014-05-20T08:05:37.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some issues with the formulation of this question; first of there is a contradiction between the question title and the first sentence. The OP first asks for the application procedure in the question title, then goes on to describe it in the first sentence as if to answer his/her own question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the issue of seeing Europe as one big consistent body. Anyone who has dealt with academic bureaucracy in Europe would likely laugh at the notion. I would personally give the ECTS system as a beautiful example of how little collaboration and consistency there is in higher education system in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Swedish &amp;quot;Law of Higher Education&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.notisum.se/rnp/sls/lag/19930100.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Högskoleförordningen&lt;/a&gt;) Ch. 12 par 2 employment on a PhD position can not be appealed by other applicants. Text in &amp;quot;[]&amp;quot; is a attempt to translate the Swedish text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;12 kap. Överklagande [Appeal]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 § Till Överklagandenämnden för högskolan får följande beslut av en högskola överklagas: [The following decisions made at a University/College may be appealed to the appeals board]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beslut om anställning vid en högskola, med undantag av anställning som doktorand, [Decisions on employment ata university/college, with the exception of PhD positions]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is the law that dictates higher education in Sweden it matters not whether the University(/College) is state or private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of additions and clarifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are two schools that are not state-owned, Chalmers University and Jönköping Business School. These schools have their own regulations which I suspect is very similar to all the other universities but slight differences might exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the statement that you apply directly to research groups (i.e. group leaders) is simply not true. It is praxis (and actually good manners) to get in contact with the group leader prior to application but it is in no way compulsory, neither does it have any formal meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like all other state-owned organisations, the universities in Sweden have to have a transparent recruitment process that is open for general public. Universities have HR departments and centralised recruitment applications (typically on the university homepage) where positions (for instance PhD or post-doc positions) are posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At Lund University (and I am pretty confident this applies to other major universities in Sweden) applications are then collected and directed to the person responsible for recruitment of that particular position in question (often the group leader) who then does an assessment of the applicants based on the job description and qualifications. If necessary one or more steps of filtering is done, and top &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; candidates are typically invited to some sort of interview (in person or via skype).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once a single candidate is chosen out of all applicants the group leader then needs to write a formal letter where the decision is motivated; i.e. why was the chosen applicant better than the other ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The applicants are then informed whether they are accepted or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I cannot swear for all Danish universities, but I know that DTU has a similar procedure to the one described possibly differing in, if anything, being even more formal and controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:06:17.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21168" CreationDate="2014-05-20T08:57:45.220" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to handle the situation is to brief your advisor, and then, whenever you get such a request, parry with something like, &quot;I'm really trying to prioritize getting the paper ready for submission. Since this won't go into the paper, maybe you can start working on it, and we can see what kind of results you come up with&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he still tries to push back, then (and only if you've already briefed your advisor) tell him &quot;Our advisor has asked me to prioritize certain tasks: if you want me to change the priority you'll have to talk to him&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's definitely the advisor's job to play umpire/referee in these situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T08:57:45.220" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T09:07:38.193" Score="37" ViewCount="4493" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the major differences between Europe (here I am mainly referring to Scandinavia) and Northern America, from an academic viewpoint, is the perspective towards higher education. In Scandinavia there it is generally accepted that anyone despite their financial status should be able to pursue higher education. Elsewhere in Europe I know of systems were the state subsidises a majority of the cost and only a minor portion of education costs are reflected on to the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of education and research, and all the top &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; ratings aside, I personally never really understood the &quot;American&quot; way of looking at education, namely that it is a practically a business. I have noticed this other question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1329/factors-leading-to-rising-tuition-costs&quot;&gt;reasons for increasing tuition fees&lt;/a&gt; but little to no information behind why they exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img849/8858/slihouettemanwonderswtf.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this comic&lt;/a&gt; recently, which seems to be gaining some popularity on the web, where the artist takes up some of the aspects and consequences of the north american perspective towards higher education; subjects that are mentioned are student loan debt, tuition fees and federal spending on education vs military or prisons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I the language s/he chooses might be offensive to some and it is &lt;strong&gt;not at all&lt;/strong&gt; my intention to insult anyone or incite a subjective discussion. Based on the culture and traditions in Scandinavia, many find it really hard to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it would be useful to have tuition fees, and thus put practically everyone who studies in serious debt by the time they are done with education. Thus, I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any reasonable ground (thorough studies on cost to society, overall well-being of people etc) or any indisputable historical origins behind why tuition fees were introduced for higher education?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I realise that the question is on the gray zone on being on-topic or not here on Ac.SE but given good, constructive and factual answers, it would be a good resource to people outside North American system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T17:56:28.140" Title="What is the socio-economic argument or historical basis for university tuition fees?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T09:36:23.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect that is not touched upon in the comic you link to is that the student is the one who captures most of the benefit of higher education, starting at better job prospects and a higher expected salary, but also covering exposure to new ideas, the possibility of a better life in the ancient philosophical sense, and four years of partying for the less philosophically inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who, for lack of interest, lack of ability or anything else, do not partake of higher education will only profit from higher ed by having better-educated neighbors (and the rather nebulous promise of &quot;a strong, stable state, ready for the future&quot;), which seems like a lot less than what those neighbors themselves get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it seems like the burden of proof for why the community at large should pay for the benefit of those that actually do go to college through higher taxes should be on those that argue for a socialization of these costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, this seems like a rather obvious point, whether you agree with it or not. That the comic you link to does not even make a token effort to address it is... disappointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T19:54:42.747" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:54:42.747" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:17:57.057" Score="38" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What do you mean, &quot;introduced&quot;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone has to pay for the teaching in any case. Students paying for their education has been the default option since at least Bologna in 1088, when the studies happened because enough people wanted to pay for such an education. It has continued to be the case throughout history, except for some prestigious universities that got sponsored by wealthy rulers or religious studies that got sponsored by the church estates. It must be noted that this sponsorship shouldn't be considered &quot;public education&quot; but is rather analogous to various current stipends/grants/etc, since these were meant for a very small number of individuals, not as education for masses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that USA has &quot;introduced tuition fees&quot; - instead, some countries, like the Scandinavian countries mentioned, have comparably recently (historically speaking) introduced free higher education for everyone, but USA hasn't (yet?) introduced that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who are the actors here?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for most questions about society, you can't really talk about &quot;&lt;em&gt;THE&lt;/em&gt; motivation for X&quot; without being explicit about &lt;em&gt;WHO&lt;/em&gt; has that motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core actor here is the people who actually decide on exact amounts of tuition, i.e., the people who &lt;strong&gt;manage&lt;/strong&gt; the (often private) universities, not their students, faculty, parents or politicians. &lt;strong&gt;For them,&lt;/strong&gt; there are at least four valid reasons for having tuition fees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's income that they can use for whatever needs, so tuition is better than no tuition in that sense; even if they have other funding as well, most education institutions would prefer a larger budget; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It filters out people based on their motivation - in any university setting, you don't want students who are &quot;just visiting&quot;, as they disrupt the motivation and learning of others. Recent data from MOOCs with no barriers of entry show that this creates a large class of people who join just to try it out, since no real commitment of resources is required; that's okay for a MOOC, but disruptive in the 'classic' university environment, where you need to limit the number of students to whatever number you can afford do service properly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It filters out people based on their ability to pay - that's generally considered an inappropriate/illegal/evil goal nowadays, but back when the system was implemented, maintaining the separation of classes was an intentional goal (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;Numerus Clausus policies&lt;/a&gt; even in 20th century), not just a random byproduct of policies; your school and degree would have a better reputation if low-class &quot;undesirables&quot; would be kept out of the classrooms. A currently relevant argument is that diplomas are in some sense a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good&quot;&gt;Veblen good&lt;/a&gt;, where being affordable means less demand as you're believed to be cheap, thus automagically worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can't handle any sudden drops in income. Much of university expenses are fixed - building maintenance and tenured faculty won't become cheaper if you suddenly lose 20% of your income; so any cost reductions must be accompanied by a large influx of money (from whom?) or be a slow process of reducing volume - either teaching much less students, or doing much less to teach them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There's no market pressure to reduce tuition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a reasonable market there are downward pressures on price and demand - customer ability to pay and customer price sensitivity.&#xA;Recent changes in USA and some other education markets have greatly reduced those pressures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wide availability of student loans has resulted in a situation where people are buying education that they can't really afford - paying large amount of money (that they're borrowing) for even those education programs that won't actually have a &quot;return on investment&quot;, while not having the spare resources to pay for it as a &quot;hobby expense&quot; for improving themselves. The impact of this is yet into the future, as student loans are maturing and the related bankruptcy cases are (and will be) rising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, more relevant to this question, student loans remove the visible difference between cheap and expensive university programs. &lt;strong&gt;Universities don't compete on price, since people don't choose them based on price.&lt;/strong&gt; Some people do, but the majority of students don't think in a manner &quot;oh, I can't afford a $40k tuition in a better university, so I'll apply only to $20k ones&quot; in the same way as they would when purchasing, say, cars for the same amount; since the loans mask the direct impact on their daily budget. This means that universities have little motivation to lower their prices, as being cheaper won't gain them much, and being expensive doesn't restrict them from getting the good students they want, since the good students will get loans/stipends anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T17:18:07.237" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:18:07.237" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21194" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:28:32.893" Score="12" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one obtains results in one area of a field (say during an MSc thesis) before deciding that one is not interested in making a career in that area, should one take the time (as a PhD student) to get make those results publishable, or is it better to focus on the new area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T10:41:05.527" Title="Publishing work in areas you're no longer interested in" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21193" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:33:30.597" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions might help guide you to an answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;how important is the work you've done ? If it's not yet publishable does this mean it's not complete yet ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you're not in the area, do you even know if the topic/solutions are still relevant ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you proud of this work, to the point where you'd be annoyed if someone else came up with the same ideas and published them ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much effort will it take to make the work publishable, and how does this interfere with current work that you're doing ? I.e are you in the initial stages of a Ph.D and can spend time on this, or are you deep into your own research where the context switching might prove distracting ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T10:33:30.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21193" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:35:00.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, during a PhD it is equally important to stay focused on the main track as it is to prove, you as a student can be multidisciplinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being multidisciplinary will make you sometimes more attractive on job markets.&#xA;That is not always true, though, as some employers will look for more goal oriented individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however you your major is biology and your interesting findings are in physics, maybe you should let it go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15259" LastEditorUserId="15259" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T10:41:05.527" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T10:41:05.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21193" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:35:18.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about marginal utility, in other words cost/utility ratio. How much time/money/effort/coffee/.. will it take to get the stuff published vs how much you think it will benefit you? It's generally hard to estimate how much different investments will pay off in the future, but it can't really hurt you to have published articles in multiple fields. On the contrary it's generally good to show diversity in intellectual capacity and output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that said, you should also consider whether or not you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work on something else during your phD. I mean maybe your supervisor is not OK with you &quot;wasting time&quot; on something that will not be a part of your thesis. It is actually very likely that s/he will not be very positive towards the idea. After all you are burning his/her grant money ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T10:35:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T11:42:28.233" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that in the US, universities evolved in a very different manner than in Europe. The first universities were not sponsored by the state—inasmuch as there was no formal government (Harvard was established in 1636. well before much of the formal mechanisms of government were imported from Great Britain). As a result of this, most of the early colleges in the US were &lt;strong&gt;private&lt;/strong&gt; schools, which needed to support themselves based primarily on external financing, as no government funding was readily available (or, in some cases, even possible). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, given that private schools were charging tuition fees, it was of course reasonable for public schools to also charge some sort of tuition fee when &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; opened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T11:42:28.233" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T11:49:20.850" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The history of tuition fees in the UK is well documented. Up until 1998 there were no tuition fees. The Teaching and Higher Education Act in 1998 instituted a £1000 tuition fee based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/&quot;&gt;Dearing Report&lt;/a&gt;. The Higher Education Act in 2004 introduced a variable tuition fees up to £3000. This was largely panned as politically motivated and I don't know if the decision was based on any type of formal review. In 2010, in response to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf&quot;&gt;Browne REport&lt;/a&gt; the government allowed universities to increased tuition fees up to a maximum of £9000 in exceptional circumstances. Most universities chose to set their tuition fees at £9000. In all cases there has been both substantial criticism and support for the changes to the tuition fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T11:49:20.850" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21202" CreationDate="2014-05-20T12:26:39.373" Score="6" ViewCount="1488" Body="&lt;p&gt;My institution ranks scientific achievement according to some criteria when evaluating promotions, positions, etc. for its subjects (students, grad students, personnel, etc.) This is done by a rule book that is specified in the form of a bylaw and is administered by the ministry of science, therefore it is not local to my institution, but applied nationwide.&#xA;The passage about SCI journal publications states that journals are divided into three groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eminent international journals - a journal that in its subject ranks in the top 30% journals in ISI list publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outstanding international journals - the same but for &amp;lt;30% and &gt;50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;international journals - the same for &amp;lt;50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference in &quot;points&quot; awarded for publications in each of the categories is rather large. I was wondering how I could determine which journals fall into a criterium from above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked to the administrative service, but got no satisfying answer, i.e. there is no list of journals (which is understandable, as there are far too many subjects). They told me something along the lines: &quot;These things will be evaluated when the time comes&quot;, which is, of course, not at least satisfactory to me.&#xA;I talked also briefly with the head of the department and he told me that he never really gave it much thought, I should publish in journals that suit me, the higher the impact factor and prestige the better of course, but in the end it isn't that much of an imperative, and that I should let the &quot;politicians&quot; and administrators worry about those tiny matters. I would, however, still like to know which journals I should favorite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the rule book naturally specifies similar criteria for various scientific publications (conferences, patents, books, etc.), but since I'm working on my first article to be submitted to a journal and I still haven't decided which journal, I would like to take things like this into account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T00:52:06.107" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T00:52:06.107" Title="How to obtain a percentile ranking for a journal? (i.e., top 30%; 30% to 50%)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T12:32:37.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully we can all agree that higher education must be funded somehow. There are two main ways of doing this. Government spending (taxes) or tuition fees (students pay). There are many possible reasons to prefer one system over the other and I suspect the decision is largely political/ideological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main reason the US system has high tuition fees is a social/political one. The US is generally more politically conservative than Europe and favours small government and low taxes. If you accept this approach it necessarily prevents spending large amounts on higher education. In this respect you could equally ask why the US does not have free healthcare and lower levels of social security than many places in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main criticism of tuition fees is that they are unfair as they disadvantage poorer students and place people under a heavy burden of debt. However systems can be setup where this is not necessary the case, at least to a significant extent. For example in the UK student loans are only repaid after earning £XXXX (~£20,000) per year and are written off if not paid after 30 years. In this case the debt could be view more like a tax. This system is not perfect as it puts lots of the burden (for written off debt) back onto government and the current UK system is possibly unsustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument for tuition fees is that the state paying is not really fair either. Many people do not go to higher education, either due to academic grades or more vocational interests. Is it really fair that their taxes pay for higher education they will never use. I realise this is the case for many things taxes pay for but in most other cases such as healthcare or unemployment benefits the main beneficiaries are the less well off. For higher education the beneficiaries are likely to have higher than average earnings over their lifetime and so should pay for that out of their pockets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T12:32:37.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21200" CreationDate="2014-05-20T12:56:56.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Likely this is not the answer you want to hear, but I assume the administrative service you talked to is correct. If nobody really knows which journals fall under which of these (rather subjective) categories, it will not be feasible to in advance establish for sure way how much any paper you write will &lt;em&gt;count&lt;/em&gt; in the end, when you are evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not nearly as strange as it sounds. Formal rules for promotion and the evaluation of research tend to live in the ugly grey area between bureaucrats who like things orderly, well-defined and, most importantly, &lt;em&gt;written down&lt;/em&gt;, and the reality of science, where basically no two scientists will ever be able to agree on an absolutely consistent quality ranking of publication outlets. What usually happens is that some sort of nebulous rankings are defined &lt;em&gt;without specifically ranking concrete venues&lt;/em&gt;,and then leave it to a commission of academics to decide ad hoc which publications fall into which category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my current university, we have similar nebulous requirements for PhD graduation. Essentially, it is required that students need at least one &lt;em&gt;A-ranked&lt;/em&gt; publication. However, what is considered A-ranked varies considerably between different faculty, and is basically negotiated when graduation time is near. I assume requirements for tenure etc. are handled similarly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; some initiatives that are trying to rank publication venues more formally, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au&quot;&gt;CORE&lt;/a&gt; for computer science. However, these rankings are also far from perfect (or, for some fields, they are apparently downright terrible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T12:56:56.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21200" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:01:07.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned the first factor is the impact factor, so, it would be better to be published in high impact factor peer reviewed journals. &#xA;As I am into optics, I may say that, for physics, Science, all Nature journals (Nature Photonics, Nature Communication, etc), Physics Review Letters, Advanced Materials, etc. may be included in the first category. The second category may include Applied Physics Letters, Optics Express, Optics Letters. etc. The third category are probably not well known international journals with low impact factors and maybe conference proceedings. If you are really into your field, I guess you know all important journals there. If you don't just do a simple search of the list of impact factors.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The second factor(which is more important for me) is the quality and novelty of the research, i.e. number of citations. Sometimes it is really hard for grad students, post docs or researchers to be published in the articles of the first category, because it is complicated and sometimes 'politicized'. So, don't think much about that but rather put an emphasize on the quality of the research without forgetting to try to publish in a journal with an impact factor as high as possible. If your publication has a lot of citations it means that it is a state-of-the-art research and you really have something to say in that area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15166" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:01:07.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21117" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:16:55.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 10 years ago, I was on the organizing committee of a fairly large conference in the US. At one point, a society that was providing us with some funding told us that we didn't have enough women among the keynote speakers, and that we ought to go get some more. The society is a well-known one with a good reputation -- it's not ACM or IEEE, but some group like that. We told them to go pound sand. Several prominent members said they would resign from the organising committee if we had to follow this decree. The society eventually backed down, but not without a bit of a fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in this case we did not give preferential treatment to women, but we were certainly encouraged to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11940" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:16:55.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:44:22.167" Score="2" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student from Bangladesh. Two of my posters have been accepted at Sigmod undergraduate research poster competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am looking forward to attend Sigmod. I will be receiving some travel grant from Sigmod to attend the event. However, the fund seems insufficient as the airfare from my country to US is very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any external source where I can apply for travel grants or support of similar kind?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am determined about attending Sigmod and I will be paying the rest of the costs by myself. So it would be really helpful for me if I get some support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. : I have already seen the post &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9729/travel-grant-for-undergraduate-researcher-for-attending-conference&quot;&gt;Travel grant for undergraduate researcher for attending conference&lt;/a&gt;. However, I believe I need some more concrete answers. Thank you for understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already asked the chairs for student volunteering and others. In this case, SIG and conference funding is basically the same. So I do not have the option to apply for SIGs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14193" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:57:46.497" Title="Conference Travel Grant" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-20T19:41:19.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20620" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:57:27.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question, it sounds like you would prefer to identify a topic or research question of interest, but feel pressure to ensure that question fits with a specific statistical technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your dissertation project is about showing that you are capable of conducting research, but it is still under the guidance of your adviser. If they want you to use a certain technique, then that's part of the training process. Once you're an independent researcher you may decide to approach the issue differently, but I'm not sure there's anything inherently dishonest in this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to identify the key components needed to use that technique (x number of variables, access to a large population database, etc.), pick a broad topic or research question you want to answer, and then look for datasets that will allow you to address some aspect of that question. This way, you can identify the topic and theoretical justification for why it is worth studying, while leaving room to narrow your eventual research question based on the available data which matches this technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that as a student you are still learning these techniques and how to integrate them with your research questions. Also, the authors you mentioned  likely have years of experience in their field. It's possible they've reached a point where they think of/tailor their research questions to fit within a specific statistical framework, even if they aren't aware of it. (Imagine if the statistical technique you used for every study was regression; eventually, you would probably begin thinking of research questions in terms of regression). Perhaps by working with these methods and then identifying the specific question, you'll gain the flexibility to &quot;reverse-engineer&quot; the process when you have more experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:57:27.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21132" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:06:21.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Azer89, I don't know what advice to give you in this situation. But I'm very surprised by the number of people thinking your adviser can be the first author or even the sole author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to ACM this is their most downloaded paper ever. I wrote it, but everyone else did all (I mean: ALL) of the technical&#xA;  work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wrote the paper alone, and he put himself as the last author since other people did all the technical work. This is what great professors do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15501" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T14:57:40.227" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T14:57:40.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:33:23.323" Score="5" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to graduate in Electrical Engineering and I wanted to pursue graduate studies in a field such as coding theory or software defined and cognitive radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure where to find the information needed to decide which school to choose. University rankings won't be specific enough to point out the quality of the research groups of my interest. I was looking for something that would point out volume and relevance of papers and articles published by the Universities' research groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need answers on which school is best, but tools to figure this out by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15502" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T15:39:22.853" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:45:17.750" Title="Methods for figuring out the best schools for a particular field of study" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-group&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21208" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:44:21.667" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research groups that are active in a particular field will publish often in those fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, identify conferences* in your field of interest. Look at the technical programs for the last couple of years, and check out the groups that seem to be contributing a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, ask professors at your undergrad university who work in related fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Also workshops, large conferences with a few on-topic sessions, journals, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T14:54:08.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T14:54:08.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:47:38.733" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with some of the other people answering this question that there isn't a single, definitive reason for this approach, but here are some factors that play a role.  Note that I'm not defending or endorsing these factors, just describing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People in the U.S. are very attached to private universities, in a way that is not true in many countries, and these universities differ from each other dramatically.  For example, you can attend universities with all sorts of non-mainstream religious affiliations, as well other philosophical or practical approaches.  (You can decide you'd like to study alongside hippies, or that you'd like to attend a 24-student college in which all-male students run a farm in addition to studying.)  There's a widespread belief in the U.S. that this diversity provides benefits that would be difficult to achieve through public universities.  If you want lots of universities not run by the government or even primarily dependent on government funding, then that biases things towards a tuition-based model.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's sometimes felt that heavily subsidized higher education is not in fact egalitarian, since the students being subsidized are already relatively well off on average.  Instead, the model used by some wealthy universities like Harvard is to charge the rich a fortune, charge the middle class a moderate amount, and let the poor attend for free.  That model has some serious drawbacks (for example, there's a lot of haggling over personal circumstances and what people can really be expected to pay), but it's not crazy.  Of course public universities can follow a similar policy, or the government could handle it more abstractly via progressive taxes.  However, this often doesn't fly in a U.S. context, since there's widespread opposition to taxes or redistribution, while private institutions are allowed to do whatever they like (nobody is required to attend Harvard).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Public universities in the U.S. are organized at the state level, rather than by the federal government (with just a handful of exceptions, such as the military academies).  This works pretty well in terms of local control over educational policy and spending: if Michigan wants an amazing public university and New Hampshire is only willing to pay for an average one, then New Hampshire can't vote against the University of Michigan's budget.  However, there's a major problem, namely that it is very easy to move between U.S. states (since there are no language barriers and few cultural barriers).  This leads to two fears: that people will live in low-tax states but move to states with cheap but excellent universities for college, and that students will move to other states after college (taking the economic benefits of their subsidized education with them).  These fears can be addressed in various ways, such as residency requirements, but there's no absolute solution that's not draconian.  The fear of being taken advantage of plays a depressingly large role in some discussions of funding public education.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T16:27:17.313" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:27:17.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21215" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:52:25.557" Score="40" ViewCount="2497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have developed a method to process images I use for my research. It's nothing revolutionary but I think it might be useful to others than me, and why not, be worthy of being published somewhere (at least for me to cite when I use it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is outside my primary field of research, nobody in my direct lab vicinity can help evaluating its scientific value or novelty (I did a bit of literature research and didn't find any obvious precedent). Normally I would just put it as an appendix in the first article where I use it, but this one is quite long to describe and completely out of my field. It would thus be off-topic in the journals in which I usually publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I though of seeking collaboration from someone in my university who works in signal/image processing, I don't know anyone personally and I foresee possible political issues, authorship quarrels, etc. I would nonetheless like to get some sort of evaluation before submitting to a journal. As an outsider, I wouldn't like to waste an editor's time and make a fool of myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have zero experience submitting to the arXiv, by looking at the website it's not clear how/if there is an active system of feedback, even informal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it advisable to submit my methods paper there and expect a feedback?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T23:40:39.413" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T22:34:04.810" Title="Is the arXiv a good way to get feedback on one's work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21182" CreationDate="2014-05-20T16:16:29.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Academic databases are built for people who have no idea what a 'query language' is.&lt;/strong&gt; I agree that the world would be a much better place if everyone knew a little bit of SQL, but it's not like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception that I know is &lt;a href=&quot;https://zbmath.org/&quot;&gt;Zentralblatt&lt;/a&gt;, an academic database specialized to mathematics which includes a sort of text-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zentralblatt-math.org/MIRROR/zmath/en/search/&quot;&gt;query language&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every other academic database that I have worked with uses &lt;strong&gt;custom-made input masks&lt;/strong&gt; where you can select manually fields to search on and logical operators; they look like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zentralblatt-math.org/MIRROR/zmath/en/advanced/&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt;, again from Zentralblatt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:16:29.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21211" CreationDate="2014-05-20T16:59:54.863" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not much of a &quot;formal feedback&quot; system associated with the arxiv.  I say &quot;not much&quot; instead of &quot;none&quot; because the arxiv apparently does do some degree of automatic tracking of citations to its papers.  For instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0977&quot;&gt;this arxiv submission&lt;/a&gt; contains a link to a MO post in which my paper is (briefly) mentioned.  I had not seen that post before, so that was somewhat interesting.  However, I don't know how this system works and it seems to be much less systematic than, say, what google scholar does.  In particular, I have 25 arxiv preprints and the arxiv itself lists this kind of citation for very few of them, whereas google scholar lists much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of an informal feedback system: yes, the arxiv works very well for that, in the following organic way: for many academic fields and subfields it is by far the one place to put your preprint in order to get the most (and the most interested) people to read it.  This includes publication in most journals and the implications this has had on some academic fields are immense.  E.g. I hear that in theoretical physics -- a fast-moving field in which it is apparently rare to look up a paper written much more than ten years ago -- pretty much everyone who is anyone uploads their preprints to the arxiv, and as a result theoretical physicists almost never go to the library anymore or look through actual journal papers: they don't need to.  My field -- mathematics -- seems to be converging to this kind of phenomenon rather more slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, to &lt;strong&gt;expect feedback&lt;/strong&gt; may be putting it a bit strongly.  The volume of papers uploaded to the arxiv is fast and rapidly increasing.  I just looked at the math.NT arxiv submissions, and last night 15 papers were uploaded.  I am a number theorist with broad interests, and if these papers came at a rate of one a day or less, I would probably peruse about half of them.  But the current volume forces me to be much more selective.  The arxiv is great advertising, but all the advertising in the world doesn't guarantee that people will engage with your product rather than the sea of competing products (competing &lt;em&gt;for their attention&lt;/em&gt;, anyway; they need not be competing with you in the academic sense).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I most definitely get enough feedback from my arxiv submissions in order to justify uploading them (although there are arguments to be made for doing so even if you never hear directly from anyone about them).  It happens that in the last three weeks or so I have uploaded four arxiv submissions.  (Since I have 25 altogether, this is obviously a spike in the upload rate.  Some other people do this too.  Now that I think about it, from an advertising perspective it would probably be better &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do this.)  Since then I have received comments on two of the four papers.  The two papers that I haven't heard from yet are I think perfectly solid and interesting -- in fact, one of the two concerns the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz so probably has broader appeal than most papers I have written, and the other is a really substantial project that I did jointly with my PhD student -- so the fact that I've gotten no feedback about them seems to be mostly random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: yes, posting your papers on the arxiv is a great way to get feedback.  Will it &lt;em&gt;guarantee&lt;/em&gt; feedback?  No, guaranteed feedback is exactly what you're buying (so to speak) when you submit to a journal.  Other than that it seems impossible to guarantee. I would definitely submit to the arxiv and see what happens.  If you hear nothing, then you might try sending a few emails to suspected experts which just point to your arxiv preprint.  Having an arxiv preprint versus just enclosing a file adds a certain veneer of legitimacy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:59:54.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21217" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:11:44.623" Score="2" ViewCount="20498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of Arabic friends applying to graduate school and due to their situation, they tell me they intend to apply and then get a deferment for the next year. I am curious how common it is for grad schools to allow this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because I am considering applying to PhD program in statistics and I'm starting a Master's program this fall. My GRE scores will expire at the end of the year and so I am considering applying to PhD programs this fall (with the expectation of deferring acceptance for the following year, which will be right after I get my Masters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the schools I look at seem to discourage deferment, and the only reason why I can think maybe the Arabic students don't run into difficulties is b/c they don't require any funding (they tend to be on the KSA scholarships).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just curious if anyone can give me a realistic idea of how grad schools generally deal with deferments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TIA,&#xA;Matt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastEditorUserId="10491" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T17:18:08.250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:31:15.967" Title="How common is it for graduate schools to allow admission to be deferred for a year" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21216" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:31:15.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the general trend for deferrals is to make them available, but not automatic—usually, you have to explain exactly &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want the deferral, and what you plan to do in the intervening time. For example, doing a volunteer year (for example, for a Peace Corps-like organization) or accepting a prestigious international fellowship are usually acceptable reasons for a deferral. On the other hand, accepting a job offer for a year would normally not be considered grounds for a deferral.  However, I think this is a policy that differs from department to department and institution to institution, so definitely check with them first!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that deferrals impact &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; admission classes: the current one, as well as the following one. You can't admit extra students, because you have the deferring students from the present year, plus you're now &quot;short&quot; a student for the new incoming class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:31:15.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17010" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:37:16.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: no. However, there is one rule that most higher education I've encountered seems to stick to: they really like constitutions and written rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google of my own university found a faculty senate constitution of over 30 pages with a great degree of detail and rules, and absolutely no mention of conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From further review, I might propose an idea of why: interest is assumed. Rather than being an organization who seeks impartiality, there is actually a deeply vested interest assumed that all senators - and the senate as a whole - try to forward the goals of the university and the interests of the faculty itself. Using my own reference constitution, early on this line states the purpose of the Senate: &quot;The Senate shall be the representative body of the faculty.&quot; In other words, they are out for what is best for the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, in the situation you briefly outline, there isn't a conflict of interest, but it sounds like a case instead of &quot;vested interest&quot; - the faculty, and thus the senate, want pay raises and oppose administration that seeks to oppose or refuse it, and so they do what they can to help achieve this mission. In short, this isn't unethical - it's the definition of politics and the reason why the senate exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of this is determined, at least in the US, by state law and mandate for public universities. In Wisconsin: The faculty derives its authority from 36.09(4) Wisconsin Statutes, which reads as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FACULTY. The faculty of each institution, subject to the&#xA;  responsibilities and powers of the board, the president, and the&#xA;  chancellor of such institution, shall be vested with responsibility&#xA;  for the immediate governance of such institution and shall actively&#xA;  participate in institutional policy development. As such, the faculty&#xA;  shall have the primary responsibility for academic and educational&#xA;  activities and faculty personnel matters. The faculty of each&#xA;  institution shall have the right to determine their (sic) own faculty&#xA;  organizational structure and to select representatives to participate&#xA;  in institutional governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all good representative systems, it is assumed that there are checks and balances. There are usually student government wings, faculty senates, administrative positions, committees, etc - all designed to, hopefully, ensure an outcome that is the best for the whole community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the case of a faculty senate being in favor of pay raises and also being pro-union? Yes, yes I would imagine they are. Whether or not they get a raise is usually not solely determined by a faculty senate, though, or that would be a pretty naive system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:37:16.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1363" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:39:07.843" Score="-13" Body="&lt;p&gt;What advice would you give men wanting to do the same things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That advice that you would give them, you give to women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be quite foolish to give women different advice and expect them to have realistic expectations and not set them up to fail, unless you feel that women aren't as competent and need to have their hands held, which would be wildly sexist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are high that if you direct them to a source that's &quot;for women,&quot; it will more than likely ensure a negative outlook about their future coworkers and employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineering is engineering. Gender need not apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15445" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:39:07.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21208" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:45:17.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a direct answer to your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are targeting a specific field of research, it might be better if you go with a well-known supervisor than a high-ranked school. I know that the name of the school and hence its ranking is important when you graduate from there, but the importance of the supervisor is something you should not overlook at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my two cents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:45:17.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21231" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:48:53.877" Score="3" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a statistician working as an applied analyst on a paper. As I went through a set of analyses, I decided upon a detailed and thorough data analysis method using a regression model. Traditionally, that regression model is presented alongside a set of assumptions that one should check in the model approach. I had a gut feeling those assumptions didn't matter in a broad sense. I performed some simulation studies to show that that was the case. The results are interesting and we will attempt to publish a paper about those as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, turning to the present analysis, should I present without proof the results of the &quot;robust&quot; interpretation where assumption checking is eschewed. Does it make sense to await a reviewer to raise a flag about this issue? There is a lot of pressure to publish this quickly... which is not unusual or surprising. Would it make more sense to include a sentence saying, &quot;The authors will show in later work that the assumptions of the modeling approach can be relaxed when (blah blah blah)&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13073" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T01:51:28.043" Title="Putting the cart before the horse: to state a claim without proof then prove it later or use a worse method?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21122" CreationDate="2014-05-20T17:54:43.437" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My innovative solution: allow students to &quot;bet&quot; on their answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add two options to each question. &quot;I am very sure this is the right answer.&quot; and &quot;I am very unsure this is the right answer.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students can mark either value or none at all for any question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double the value of all questions marked extremely sure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Halve the value of all questions marked unsure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then curve accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provides a lot of great feedback about what your students are learning and not learning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows students to self-assess for follow up work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduces the value of guessing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the ultimate goal of all this testing is to see what your students are learning, and guessing muddies the water, so to speak, you might as well let the students tell you when they're guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9299" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T17:54:43.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21234" CreationDate="2014-05-20T18:27:08.343" Score="21" ViewCount="2739" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an upcoming conference in Germany, all the talks will be in English, however all the listed participants are also German. Only speaking English I'm wondering if it would be inadvisable to go, as everyone will speak German during non-talk times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true or am I being too paranoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T09:14:02.853" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T09:14:02.853" Title="Is it advisable to attend a conference in Germany with talks by German presenters in English if you don't speak German?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T18:35:11.487" Score="8" ViewCount="1729" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been asked to share some source code I have written&#xA;with another PhD student. I have developed and used the methods in&#xA;that source code for the purposes of my own research. The code will&#xA;save her approximately 2 months of development/testing. I'm prepared&#xA;also to offer additional help with data pre/post-processing &amp;amp; writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above, am I entitled to ask for co-authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T00:57:54.260" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:49:10.983" Title="Can I ask for co-authorship if I share code and am willing to help applying code to the problem?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T18:43:58.543" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a CS master student. Now I'm doing my masters thesis and the contribution of my thesis is to compare different approaches/methods of one topic (e.g. clustering of text documents). What I have done so far is look at the state of the art on the topic and read the papers. However, now I need to think of what to compare. Of course there is the obvious comparison question: which method gives the best results? But that is so obvious. My supervisor once suggested to see how those methods compare their results and see if maybe there is a better way to compare the results of the methods. It was helpful to me to think about questions like this. But still I'm so stuck and I can only think of obvious stuff. This is the first time I am doing something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure some of you went through something like this, so I was wondering if you can even tell me some /basic/ stuff and questions that people address when they compare methods in computer science. My main questions to you are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- When I read the papers of the methods to compare, in which way I should read it? Critically? Questionable? What exactly to look for in them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Is there a general scheme for comparing methods in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- As for a masters thesis, what stuff is a must-do for comparisons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Any great references/papers related to comparisons that could help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T21:04:18.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T21:04:18.753" Title="How to think while comparing approaches" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20049" CreationDate="2014-05-20T18:53:09.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as method goes, it surely could make for an interesting study! In my recent literature review of factors predicting student success I didn't find anything about this phenomenon - but I wasn't looking for it directly, so that doesn't prove there aren't good studies about it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a data point, I've regularly had professors explicitly tell students before a withdraw deadline to review their grade and if you aren't doing well or just unhappy with your performance so far, they strongly suggest you consider withdrawing from the class! I myself did it for a comm class where I unavoidably missed a few early days that guaranteed I couldn't do better than a B+ even with perfect performance, so I retook it later once I had a more stable schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as for systematic gaining of data, you are quite right that it is difficult. A number of factors make this hard, even if we assume that the withdraw deadline is half-way through the course:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the first-half of material, and performance on it, an accurate reflection of the rest of the material?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do later projects/papers/tests disproportionally skew one's final grade for a class, such as having the final project be worth more than the entire first half of the semester?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are &quot;worst-grade drop&quot; provisions available in the course, as when some professors give five exames but only count your four highest? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the class cumulative or &quot;increasingly difficult&quot; in nature, where if you can not master early material you are sure to do even worse on later material? (Math classes are often this way, in my experience)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since students are dropping the class, by definition you don't know how they would have done had they stayed in the course!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can missed/failed early work be made up for, without major penalty?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most studies I've seen simply consider those who drop or withdraw as experiment mortality and ignore it completely. On drop and/or withdraw forms at institutions I've attended they also generally don't even ask you why you are dropping, so this data might not yet be retained in any way and would have to be done as part of the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could certainly conduct studies where simply drop/add forms are given options to indicate reason for dropping, and then use that data to try to determine if the problem is reported widely enough to merit further research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T18:53:09.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21225" CreationDate="2014-05-20T18:54:11.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not knowing the details of your project, I'll offer some general suggestions.&#xA;In a sense, it seems to me you're asking two problems:one question is how to read papers, the other question is how to compare methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as comparing methodologies, the key concept in my mind is that of a &quot;metric&quot; or some means of judging/ranking methods. In CS, for example there are many such metrics: computational complexity, run time, stability, theoretical results regarding convergence, etc. Metrics often are often context dependent, meaning that different classes of users may have different ways to rate/rank a method. An algorithm may give an exact answer, which to a theoretician may be great, but if the algorithm can't function in real-time, another use may prefer another method that gives an approximate answer but quickly. So know who is going to use the methodology often helps you understand what metrics are really significant. So two thoughts to keep in mind are the methods you learned in class for judging how good an algorithm was and also who is going to use the algorithm (what are their concerns/needs and which methods best addresses &#xA;them).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;A suggestion in this regard that will also help you with your paper reading is to look at what the authors of each paper say are the advantages of their method. In the introduction every author will give a reason why their method is &quot;better&quot; than the other (existing) methods.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastEditorUserId="10491" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T19:52:58.870" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:52:58.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21225" CreationDate="2014-05-20T19:33:39.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to approach the problem is to ask: what can method A do better than method B?  What can B do better than A?  Can we devise a test to measure it quantitatively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you may find that A beats B at everything all the time, or that A only beats B in cases that seem relatively unimportant.  In any case, you'll then have something interesting to say regarding A vs. B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider C.  Does it do anything better than A and B?  Maybe you can use an existing test, or maybe you need a new one.  And so on for C and D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, very often you have standard metrics that you should use instead (e.g. look at a ROC curve or % errors or execution time or whatever).  But when you're unsure how to form a comparison, inventing one that demonstrates a difference in some aspect of behavior (correctness, speed, memory usage, etc.) is often a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:33:39.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21224" CreationDate="2014-05-20T19:42:06.007" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;em&gt;discuss&lt;/em&gt; with her and her advisor whether your help warrants authorship, but it would be rather unhelpful to refuse her even if she or her advisor declines.  I would say, if this is true, (1) Sure!  I'd love for more good research to come from my work! and (2) Since my project isn't published yet, we'll need to include a good description in the methods and it probably makes sense for me to be a coauthor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the target journal particularly advocates open-data and open-access, you might have to release your work in order for them to get it published.  It's important to talk through first to make sure everyone's okay with that.  In general it's a fantastic idea since it means that work is not so difficult to replicate, and if you have a valuable tool maybe others will benefit from it.  But when you're laboring to finish your own work in time and worried about its perceived novelty, it can seem a little less appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just have the discussion (in a friendly manner) now so there aren't any unpleasant surprises later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:42:06.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21221" CreationDate="2014-05-20T19:45:41.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't claim that you're going to do anything.  If you think the assumptions are really problematic for the result and want to indicate that they can be relaxed, you could say something like &quot;preliminary investigations of alternate models which do not assume such-and-so are consistent with these results (data not shown)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reviewers insist, you can then decide whether it's worth it to put a minimal amount of that analysis in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:45:41.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21221" CreationDate="2014-05-20T19:47:05.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I have turned my comments into an answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not to discuss statistical assumptions depends largely on the nature of your work. Many authors of statistical textbooks and manuals discuss assumptions in great depth. They also highlight the importance of reporting the results of assumptions testing in your manuscripts. In my experience, this is very rarely done for several reasons. For example, results are often the same regardless of assumptions (this is not always the case), if you are reporting statistically significant results and effect sizes then perhaps the need to discuss assumptions is less important, word limits often restrict the ability to discussion assumptions, and it is often very rare these days to find discussion of statistical assumptions. Note that these points relate to applied journals and papers. If the paper is statistical in nature, or you have non-significant results and need to highlight that your statistics were appropriate, then perhaps discussion of assumptions is warranted. I very rarely run across discussion of assumptions for statistics ranging from t-tests to survival analyses and latent growth modelling etc. In statistics papers though its often important to highlight what assumptions are needed and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have published in the pre-eminent journals on pain and you certainly do not need to discuss assumptions in them most of the time. If you review recent papers you will see that these assumptions are very rarely discussed. A simple &quot;we did regression&quot; and &quot;here are results of regression&quot; will suffice (with more elaboration, of course!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15261" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T19:47:05.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21224" CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:27:25.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, you are giving your colleague some of your research code to use on her own problem. If she ends up using, or trying to use it, then I predict two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) You will end up having to help her understand the code well enough to use it. This is very likely, amounting to practically a certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) You will have to adapt the code to work on her problem. This is still very likely, but not quite as certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say (b) definitely entitles you to co-authorship. (a) is not quite so clear. If you just give her the code and don't do anything else (in which case she is unlikely to be able to use the code) then you definitely aren't entitled to co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, you could still be denied co-authorship. However, bear in mind that you cannot (in my opinion) reasonably withhold the code (that seems to me contrary to what research is about) but you are not &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to work with your colleague on her problem for nothing. Therefore, if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; end up spending significant amounts of time working with your colleague on her problem, then bring up the issue of co-authorship early. If your colleague or her mentors don't want to give you co-authorship, then ask yourself why you would spend time working on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm prepared also to offer additional help with data pre/post-processing &amp;amp; writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a separate issue which I'm not addressing here. I have just focused on the involvement which will naturally stem from you providing your source code. If I understand your quote above correctly, this refers to optional assistance you are prepared to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T21:39:35.190" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T21:39:35.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2014-05-20T22:14:44.450" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some claims that I think you will agree are true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone who attends a conference where all the talks are in English can understand spoken English reasonably well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't live in Germany and are considering attending. You are probably not the only person considering it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone willing to give a technical presentation in English can probably both understand and produce spoken English reasonably well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe these add up to you being able to find people for &quot;hallway conversations&quot; in English pretty easily. You might have some lonely lunches if you find yourself at a table with people who all speak German and exclude you. I have this problem with people who all discuss (in English) something I don't understand at all and don't want to learn (eg how to install Exchange on a server.) I generally try to prevent this by striking up a conversation with a fellow attendee at the end of the session that is right before lunch, and suggesting we go to the lunch line together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T22:14:44.450" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21221" CreationDate="2014-05-21T01:51:28.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one issue with publishing the proof in a subsequent: if the proof is too simple, you will probably have difficulties to publish it. In addition, if experts of your field find the proof is obvious (without reading your &quot;later work&quot;), your current paper may lose some credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would wait a bit (say 2 weeks) before publishing in order to have time to work seriously on the proof and check it is really an interesting work. Alternatively, I would send the paper to the journal after organizing it in such a way that I can add the proof without changing the structure (adding the proof in the appendix plus a quick comment in the main body - it is suitable for a non-math paper). Reorganizing the paper after submission is inappropriate since it does not respect the work the referee already did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T01:51:28.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21290" CreationDate="2014-05-21T03:07:01.883" Score="8" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to embark on the publication of pre-prints or post-prints of about a dozen papers that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. I plan to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SHERPA/RoMEO&lt;/a&gt; database to decide whether to publish a pre-print or post-print, and when it is appropriate. I have backed up the published papers at both the pre-peer review and post-peer review stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These documents will be lodged primarily with my institutions repository, but also on a personal website and perhaps academia.edu. Due to my field of research, arvix is not appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that I may need to make some modifications to the manuscripts before lodging them as a pre-post print. For example, it seems appropriate to link to the canonical, published version of the paper on the cover sheet. But I am unaware of what other changes I may need to make to the manuscript. A checklist of modifications to make would ease this process and help me to avoid missing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What steps should I go through to prepare a manuscript for publication as a pre-print or post-print?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: I've made an example post-print &lt;a href=&quot;http://criticalgamblingresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014-Post-print-Markham-Doran-and-Young-Estimating-gambling-venue-catchments-for-impact-assessment-using-a-calibrated-gravity-model.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Are there any concrete improvements I could make on this, or important things I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="178" LastEditorUserId="178" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T02:59:43.657" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:53:23.550" Title="How should I prepare e-prints (pre-prints and post-prints) of already published papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21238" CreationDate="2014-05-21T03:40:09.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I suggest is &lt;strong&gt;do not put up the paper in submitted-manuscript form&lt;/strong&gt;. You are free to change from double-spaced (if that is the case) back to single spaced (or as appropriate); you can put figures and tables where they belong; you can use a nice typeface; you can even change the referencing style to a one you like better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the version that incorporates changes suggested by the referee &lt;em&gt;if at all possible&lt;/em&gt;. My guess is you didn't sign away rights until after you made said changes and sent it back to the journal -- or this may have happened, and it may be that the original submission came with agreeing to terms that include all rights in various versions of the paper in the case of acceptance - I hate these types of journals. In any case, knowing your field would help regarding advice here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website can help you find out if you are allowed the post-referee-comments version: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rchive.it/&quot;&gt;http://rchive.it/&lt;/a&gt; (it uses Sherpa/Romeo data), but the ultimate answer will come from the journal website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make your paper more pleasant to read, and help dispel the myth that preprints are ugly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8881" LastEditorUserId="8881" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T03:47:37.660" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T03:47:37.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2014-05-21T04:22:54.550" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry, Germans are usually polite. Being polite is to include all people in a conversation. So if the common language of a group is English, they'll switch to English to accommodate you. Furthermore, Germans attending the conference will expect to have attendants not speaking German and that conversations in the hallways will be in English too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15531" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T04:22:54.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21224" CreationDate="2014-05-21T06:05:15.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Code is (hopefully) now considered as part of the regular research work. Thus, it can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be requested by reviewers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;providing it will raise the chances of the paper to get accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more important, it can be &lt;strong&gt;cited&lt;/strong&gt;, especially when the authors of a paper relied on someone else's code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does it mean for you?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you have several options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should make your code publicly available. This way, it can be cited (at least under the form of an URL in the paper). If you make it available through Github, it can even by &lt;a href=&quot;https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cited&lt;/a&gt; like any research work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a nice complement to the first item would be to have a publication, even a short one, that presents the results of your code, or the way it was designed if it is very specific and worth sharing. That way, you can ask the users of your code to cite this paper when they use your code;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eventually, your co-authorship status will depend on your contribution to your paper. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put a friend of mine (whose code saved me a few days, I would say around 1 week) in the acknowledgements section of a paper of mine. He told me it was already too much, but I didn't want him to go unnoticed/uncited. It was just a matter of being &lt;em&gt;polite&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;thankful&lt;/em&gt; for me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastEditorUserId="11141" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T08:49:10.983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:49:10.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21283" CreationDate="2014-05-21T07:06:15.320" Score="46" ViewCount="11189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked one of my professors whom I've known for 2 years to write a recommendation for me now that I'm planning for graduate school— about 3 years later after he left to another university. He asked for my full name, and just copied a letter from the web and sent it to me via email. I expected to get an accurate letter that highlights my strong points and improve my chances of getting to a good school; instead, I got a banal letter that doesn't set me apart from your average student, and which its copy can easily be found online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm  reluctant to add his name on the list of Referees in my application now, but I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would his letter hurt my chances of getting accepted to a good school? Even if one of the other 2 letters was relatively stronger(slightly better) compared to this one?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I get a letter from a professor who didn't teach me? Or a professor from another university(a family friend)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10756" LastEditorUserId="10756" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T11:03:53.667" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T05:27:43.347" Title="Copied Letter of Recommendation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21243" CreationDate="2014-05-21T08:16:33.517" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at it from his point of view: He most likely gets dozens of requests for recommendation letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest making his life easier for him by saving him writing time.  If he's the kind of guy that would copy &amp;amp; paste a letter from the internet, he's the kind of guy that would let you write your own recommendation and sign it for you.  You don't have to write the entire letter for him (although this is possible).  It's not immoral or &quot;wrong&quot; as the professor has to sign off on it and if the letter contains something he doesn't agree with he can just refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tactful way to approach this would be to reply to him and say that you appreciate his letter but wanted to make a strong case for your strengths in &lt;em&gt;XYZ&lt;/em&gt;, and therefore would it be possible to add these paragraphs to the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, yes, you can get recommendations from family/friends but I would suggest that you disclose your relationship.  I know someone that got into grad school with a recommendation written by a former classmate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15541" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:16:33.517" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-21T10:32:57.997" Score="5" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a chemistry major. However, I am more interested in the life science and want to be a molecular biologist in the future. However it is too late to change my degree to biology so I am wondering how to cross over into biology with my chemistry degree and whether is it possible for me to be a molecular biologist in the future? Will my chemistry degree be useful in helping me to become a biologist? Is there any relations between chemistry and biology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T12:57:31.697" LastActivityDate="2017-07-11T10:49:09.007" Title="Is it possible to cross over from chemistry to biology?" Tags="&lt;chemistry&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21246" CreationDate="2014-05-21T10:58:46.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical physicist reconverted to biology (bioinformatics) in his masters. I am sitting next to computer scientists, mathematicians, chemists... all working on life sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biology is a very complex subject. Most of the concepts are &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt;, but there are many devils in the details. Ergo, it is very suitable for multidisciplinary work, where people from different branches can contribute with solutions from their own field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on your question, depending on your set of skills, you have several options: biochemistry, wet lab, computational chemistry oriented to biomolecules... You can probably swing by the molecular biology department and ask what kind of problems they would need a chemist for; and perhaps ask if they are willing to take you on board for an undergaduate project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T10:58:46.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2014-05-21T11:35:27.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are women overrepresented in the field of child development studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. They have more than 50% representation, yes, but that doesn't equate to overrepresentation in the sense that it should be 50%. Men and women are different. Women are drawn naturally towards certain things that interest them, just as men are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think it may encourage some people to think that female scientists&#xA;  just pick up certain research topics and don't want to touch others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do, just as men do. Why are you so concerned about what other adults willfully choose to do with their lives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15445" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T11:35:27.520" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21252" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:15:10.433" Score="10" ViewCount="2134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, a (Springer) journal invited me to extend a (Springer) conference paper. The conference paper was published in April. After the extensions, I can submit the journal article as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.kmitl.ac.th/aciids2014/PostConferencePub.html&quot;&gt;post-conference publication&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding my question, should / must I keep the name of the conference article (when writing the journal article)? Or should I modify the name of the journal article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T01:57:50.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T01:57:50.923" Title="Should the title be changed when converting a conference article into a journal article?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21265" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:23:04.097" Score="34" ViewCount="6872" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research group, there is a researcher who usually approaches other PhD students who are about to write papers in order to offer his help. Normally, he does not actually do any research related to the paper. Instead, he reads our papers, makes comments about the writing style and sometime re-writes some sections in order to make them more readable. At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper. I can see it is very helpful for new PhD students who don't have much experience in writing papers or articles. However, it is sometime uncomfortable for me to see someone who doesn't do actual research but still manages to get an authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I want to ask if it is a common practice for someone to help writing a paper without doing any actual research relating to it, and claim the co-authorship. If it is not, how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T22:09:33.093" LastActivityDate="2018-04-21T22:09:33.093" Title="Is it common to claim co-authorship by helping writing a paper without doing any research" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21250" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:24:11.733" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.kmitl.ac.th/aciids2014/CallForPapers.html&quot;&gt;the conference website&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The conference proceedings are to be published in the Springer's LNAI (indexed by DBLP, EI, Scopus, and Thomson ISI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your conference paper is already published. The journal paper will therefore be a new publication, and as such, you could use a different title, to avoid any confusion (and it will be a different paper, since you have to expand it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;However, there are precedents, for at least one previous edition of the conference you're mentioning, of authors having the same title in the conference and in a journal edition (taken from DBLP): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Peerasak Intarapaiboon, Ekawit Nantajeewarawat, Thanaruk Theeramunkong: Extracting Chemical Reactions from Thai Text for Semantics-Based Information Retrieval. IEICE Transactions 94-D(3): 479-486 (2011)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Peerasak Intarapaiboon, Ekawit Nantajeewarawat, Thanaruk Theeramunkong: Extracting Chemical Reactions from Thai Text for Semantics-Based Information Retrieval. ACIIDS (1) 2010: 271-281&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yongli Wang, Dongxiao Niu, Ling Ji: Power load forecasting using data mining and knowledge discovery technology. IJIIDS 5(5): 452-467 (2011)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yongli Wang, Dongxiao Niu, Yakun Wang: Power Load Forecasting Using Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Technology. ACIIDS (1) 2010: 319-328&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moamin Ahmed, Mohd Sharifuddin Ahmad, Mohd Zaliman M. Yusoff: A Collaborative Framework for Multiagent Systems. IJATS 3(4): 1-18 (2011)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moamin Ahmed, Mohd Sharifuddin Ahmad, Mohd Zaliman M. Yusoff: A Collaborative Framework for Multiagent Systems. ACIIDS (1) 2010: 329-338&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at random references from the journals in question, it seems quite frequent to have the same name for a journal paper and a conference publication the previous year. In other words, I stand corrected, and &lt;strong&gt;you might want to keep the same name for the journal version&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by DavidRicherby and Mangara, it's likely to be field dependent. Hence, the best approach is probably to &lt;strong&gt;look at previous editions of the journals in question, and check if there are matching conference papers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T15:03:23.323" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T15:03:23.323" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21308" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:37:14.353" Score="9" ViewCount="5983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my thesis in 2013 but passed my viva (the oral defense/examination) in 2014. Should the date (month+year) which I put in, on and around my thesis be,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I submitted my soft-bound copy to the examiners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I passed my viva (the oral defense/examination).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I submitted my hard-bound copy to the university.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth option is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on your university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that I am at a British Uni, so I presume that this is governed by something the British Library said...but what they said, I cannot find...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be ridiculously hard to search for, but I apologise if it has been asked before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1057" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2019-10-08T07:40:16.523" LastActivityDate="2019-10-08T07:40:16.523" Title="What date goes on your hardbound PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:40:33.963" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens quite often in industrial PhDs, at least based on my experience. Every paper I've written so far had around 5 authors, although myself and a research fellow were the only ones doing the work. I completely understand your frustration because there are two guys who have technical backgrounds but doing management work  (thus no technical input to my papers whatsoever) who have their names on my papers (that applies to other PhD Students here too). I am not sure about pure academic research (i.e. funding from university) tough, things are likely to be different in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9019" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T12:40:33.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:48:03.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My intuition would be that it would depend on the university’s regulations, but I’d guess 2014, since your examiners could have asked you to make changes, which would mean that the version you submit wouldn’t be the same as what you submitted to them. I assume you’re actually being admitted to the degree this year, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quickest authoritative answer would presumably be obtained by emailing the relevant library (note that only some universities’ theses go to the British Library).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6899" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T15:14:41.757" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T15:14:41.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21250" CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:59:46.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the content of the paper is not drastically different from the conference version (same main results, but more details / data), it is perfectly acceptable to use the same title. This is the usual approach in theoretical computer science. Of course, you are free to change the title if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oswin Aichholzer, Greg Aloupis, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Sándor P. Fekete, Michael Hoffmann, Anna Lubiw, Jack Snoeyink, and Andrew Winslow, “&lt;strong&gt;Covering Folded Shapes&lt;/strong&gt;”, in &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the 25th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry (CCCG 2013)&lt;/em&gt;, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 8–10, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oswin Aichholzer, Greg Aloupis, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Sándor P. Fekete, Michael Hoffmann, Anna Lubiw, Jack Snoeyink, and Andrew Winslow, “&lt;strong&gt;Covering Folded Shapes&lt;/strong&gt;”, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Computational Geometry&lt;/em&gt;, volume 5, number 1, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Erickson, and Amir Nayyeri. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Tracing compressed curves in triangulated surfaces&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of the 2012 Symposium on Computational Geometry&lt;/em&gt;. ACM, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Erickson, and Amir Nayyeri. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Tracing compressed curves in triangulated surfaces&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Discrete &amp;amp; Computational Geometry&lt;/em&gt; 49.4 (2013): 823-863.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T12:59:46.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21260" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:50:57.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Academia, community can refer to the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research. This community may further be classified based on discipline etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:18:56.850" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:18:56.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21261" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:50:57.803" Score="0" Body="Question that relate to the idea of an academic community." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:18:51.600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:18:51.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:52:58.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with dbmag9 that your university's regulations are definitive. If they do not give any guidance - and if you have nothing helpful from your supervisor, department, etc. - then I would suggest the following: &lt;em&gt;The date on the thesis should be the date when the text was most recently submitted for examination.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, a thesis undergoes minor or major corrections before being accepted. However, the approval of corrections is done without repeating the full examination process. More significant changes require &quot;revise and resubmit&quot; and in my mind this justifies bumping the date. But for small changes, the text is essentially the same version. That said, I don't think it's at all wrong to use the final hardbound submission date. I wouldn't pick the viva date, even if you had no corrections: the text was produced &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; the viva, not &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; the viva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I had to include the text &quot;Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy&quot; on the title page of the hardbound version, and I had to include a statement affirming that the text was the same as the original submitted thesis, aside from changes required by the examiners. This made me think that the accompanying date ought to be the date of the submission, not the date of the approval. (In fact, there were many different possible approval dates - examiners, the department, the central university authorities, the actual graduation ceremony. None of these seemed like the obvious correct choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T13:52:58.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21263" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:55:20.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleagues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Colleagues are those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose. A colleague is an associate in a profession or in a civil or ecclesiastical office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:19:10.813" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:19:10.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21264" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:55:20.830" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to colleagues in an academic setting." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T13:59:52.910" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T13:59:52.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:56:33.410" Score="53" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;people who help write papers may help fulfill one of the pillars of scientific discovery... communication of the science.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an appropriate place to credit people who read your paper and offer useful comments on it: the &lt;strong&gt;acknowledgement section&lt;/strong&gt;. It is very common to see acknowledgements &quot;for providing valuable feedback&quot;, &quot;for suggesting a cleaner presentation&quot;, &quot;for pointing out important related work&quot; and so on. Even &quot;for providing a simpler proof of Lemma X.y&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this rises to the level of co-authorship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's worse in this case is that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'd find the idea of co-authorship for such contributions odd, I would not think too much about it if it were negotiated in advance (as is the theme of many of the answers on this site). But to offer what appears to be unconditional help first and then (when the student really has no choice in the matter)  to demand co-authorship is plain wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question on what to do, the answer, as is always the answer, is to negotiate things up front. It's a little awkward, but a little pre-collaboration awkwardness is MUCH better than a lot of post-collaboration recrimination and hostility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T13:56:33.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2014-05-21T13:59:48.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers have pointed out a number of important factors, but an additional one is lack of competition. Most of the best state universities are in states and even regions with few large private universities of similar caliber (and especially, where there weren't many when the universities developed). It's notable that the northeast, which is wealthy, populous, and tends to have politics that support higher education still doesn't have any public schools in that caliber---in large part because it has the highest concentration of private schools which fill that niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a belief that having research institutions brings benefits to a state by creating jobs indirectly. That benefit is a lot of the reason a state would want to put the extra resources into a school to make it a top tier research institution rather that a good school primarily for educating its own students. Private institutions can provide the same benefit, and so reduce the motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Compare Texas, which has openly discussed that it has too few top research universities relative to its population and wealth and is running a competition among its lower tier research universities to become the states third public R1.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T13:59:48.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21267" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:07:27.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In relation to US academia the following is stated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistant_professor#Assistant_Professor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rank of assistant professor generally is held for a probationary period of three to seven years, after which the individual will either be promoted to associate professor and granted tenure (i.e., can not be fired without cause and a formal hearing process) or will be terminated from employment. As of 2007, 23.1% of academics held the rank of assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other countries that use the rank can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:28:39.520" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:28:39.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21268" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:07:27.277" Score="0" Body="Questions that relate to the academic rank of assistant professor." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T14:28:42.680" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:28:42.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:28:27.057" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The so called &lt;em&gt;Vancouver protocol&lt;/em&gt; (developed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/&quot;&gt;ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)&lt;/a&gt; and its definition of authorship has been mentioned in many questions of this kind here on Academia but I think they deserve being repeated. The protocol describes authorship through three components which every author must fulfil:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Final approval of the version to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key point here is the &quot;AND&quot;. To read and comment on the text is clearly not enough for authorship by these standards. In fact a reviewer of the manuscript would at least fulfil point 2 whereas a person helping out as you describe would not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to fend off this behaviour from more senior colleagues as a PhD student. It may, however, be good to bring up an open discussion about authorship standards in the group without necessarily directly connecting it to the draft of a paper. In some research groups systems for determining both order and authorship as such have been developed by splitting the paper up into tasks. See for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorder.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=18&amp;amp;Itemid=45&quot;&gt;AuthorOrder.com&lt;/a&gt; for an example. Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; tag here on Ac.sx and a search on Google will provide much background. But, I particularly recommend the recommendations report from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt;; ICMJE developed the protocol and their recommendations constitutes their continually updated version of the protocol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T09:26:28.967" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T09:26:28.967" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:50:02.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;European and American university fee structures arose out of two different sets of historical circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medieval Europe&lt;/a&gt;, university graduates generally went into the service of either the &quot;State,&quot; (government) or Church, both of which were major sponsors of universities. In essence, the State and Church subsidized the education of people who would end up working for one or the other (plus a few that wouldn't). Because of this &quot;tradition,&quot; university education in Europe is largely state-subsidized even though people often don't go to work for the state nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In America, university education was more of a private transaction, and people would either put themselves, or more likely, their children through college, without obligations to potential employers such as the state of church mentioned above. In time, the Federal government saw the value of an educated populace and made available loan programs for students. A few branches of the government (e.g. the armed forces) will pay for the education of students who would serve several years with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T17:32:12.950" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T17:32:12.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-21T15:14:06.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the date that will be on your diploma, most presumably your viva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should your viva be the correct date? Because PhD thesis are supposed to be contributions to a field acknowledged by your peers. Thus, a PhD thesis &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be publicly disclosed (i.e., published or presented at an oral exam) so that you can be questioned about your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oral exam rules will vary depending on the country. For example, in France only PhD degree holders (but any PhD degree owner, not just the jury) are allowed to ask questions at the oral exam. Some Swiss institutions (at least EPFL) keep the oral exam with the jury private, but the PhD degree gets awarded only after a public presentation, and the public presentation date will be the date on the diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T15:14:06.537" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2014-05-21T15:27:42.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that the conference attendees will be at a higher educational level,&#xA;which probably means they can not only listen to talks in English, but probably are also able to communicate in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, I thank it's safe to go to the conference and you will be able to talk to people in English with no big problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess from  your reservations that you are aware that it is not always easy to get along with English in Germany. Don't expect sales agents or bus/taxi drivers to talk English. And even if people speak English, they might not be very fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I must admit that all other participants being German is strange - whatever reason there is that talks are in English, it is surprising that participants do not come from outside Germany. I'd propose to call the organizers just to make sure that talks are in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you're paranoid here. E.g. Universities will have lectures announced in English, but hold them in German (as long as nobody objects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if there are so many German speaking people, groups often will talk in German. Then you shouldn't be shy - just throw in a remark and make clear you only speak English. I'm pretty sure they will switch language then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm saying this as a German living in Germany, with some experience with conferences at different national levels, sometimes visiting conferences where most participants are locals not speaking German.  In the last case, it's really important to not be too shy - when you try to join a discussion, make clear you do not understand what they say as soon as you get the chance - maybe a simple &quot;hello, how are you&quot; is already enough to achieve awareness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you will get to know some nice colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11139" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T15:27:42.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-21T16:13:01.063" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously his service and helps do not count as co-authorship. I have seen various versions of this tactic before, for example in the form of showing interest, or giving some general and mostly useless advices, comments and discussions. None of these are co-authorship either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer you question on &lt;strong&gt;&quot;how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, I recommend you restrict your research communications to a small list of people who have the following qualities:&#xA;1. they are experts in the subject your are working on,&#xA;2. you have some kind of agreement about how to perform the research and who should do what,&#xA;3. they have scientific integrity and are not looking to get credit for something they have not done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is not recommended that you show or discuss your work to someone who is not a trusted expert before submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T16:13:01.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-21T16:30:05.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter whether it is common or not: it is inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is &quot;editing&quot; and not &quot;authoring&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let it get to you. Even if you were to stop this guy, there has been, are, and will be many others doing the same thing. Just hope that karma will take care of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T16:30:05.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-21T16:48:56.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's yet another option you don't mention (and the one I chose for my dissertation): The date you submitted your manuscript to the press. This date signifies when it left your hand for good - you could not make any changes after this date whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T16:48:56.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-21T18:08:42.213" Score="135" ViewCount="12348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a professional software developer for a number of years, I'm also an academic researcher - and my research has involved lots of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes feel as though my industrial experience has been a hindrance in my research, as the goals of writing software in a research context feel contradictory to the goals in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In industry, code needs to be (ideally): maintainable, bug-free, refactored,  well-documented, rigorously tested - good quality - best practice says that these things are worth the time (I agree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, the goal is to write as many quality research papers in the shortest possible time. In this context, code is written to run the experiment, and might never be looked at again (we are judged on our papers - not our code). There seems to be no motivation to write tested, maintainable, documented code - I just need to run it and get the result in my paper or whatever ASAP. Consequently, the &quot;academic&quot; code I've written is poor quality - from a software engineering perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I either spend too long making (unnecessarily) getting my &quot;research&quot; code to industry-quality, or I publish work based on &quot;bad quality&quot; code, and I feel like a fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My career progression is dependent on me writing &quot;bad&quot; code!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;craft&quot; of software development is a huge subject - but where is the best practice for academic research? Nobody writes unit tests for conference paper code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone find them in a similar situation?&#xA;Does anyone know of formal methodologies for &quot;research&quot; code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15565" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-13T01:10:31.010" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T15:38:38.190" Title="Best-practice models for &quot;research&quot; code?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="25" FavoriteCount="56" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-21T18:26:48.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main characteristic of research code (more so than typical programs) is that it is harder to plan. Research by definition reaches into the unknown, and this also translates in program structures. As a researcher you often don't have the time to refactor when your research slithers into a different direction that should translate into a different software structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In typical software engineering you (should) have a fairly good idea of the final functionality before writing a single line of code. In research, this is often not the case. Programming for research purposes is mainly about rapid prototyping, which is typically done differently than programming for long term use (e.g. little to no unit tests, use of different languages, ...). The main mantra is to get results fast, not optimal from a software engineering perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, proper software engineering is a fine art that is very hard to master. Even in industry settings, ugly software is abundant (when written by professionals!). The average researcher has no formal training in software writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My career progression is dependent on me writing &quot;bad&quot; code!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a researcher, you are not paid to develop software (unfortunately). As an idealist I like to believe that this will change over time, but for now funding sources only care about papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;craft&quot; of software development is a huge subject - but where is the best practice for academic research? Nobody writes unit tests for conference paper code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests serve two main purposes: (i) assert that code is working correctly  and (ii) find and debug problems fast, particularly after structural changes and refactoring (long term benefit for large infrastructures). As research software is typically fairly small, the first advantage is the only one that is really relevant. It seems that this advantage is either too small or is being underestimated (again, recall that most researchers are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; software engineers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone find them in a similar situation? Does anyone know of formal methodologies for &quot;research&quot; code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to change the world, start with yourself. I personally make a point of providing software along with a manuscript whenever it is reasonable. I also consistently ask for code as a reviewer, though this seems uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T18:31:52.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T18:31:52.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-21T18:42:26.497" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I either spend too long making (unnecessarily) getting my &quot;research&quot;&#xA;  code to industry-quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't. Make it as good as possible within the suggested timeframe. Aiming for 100% perfection that will require double the time is not worth it. In this sense, research is exactly like industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consequently, the &quot;academic&quot; code I've written is poor quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean all academic code is of low quality. If you check papers on algorithms conferences or parallel processing systems, you will see that the developers have thought even excruciating details, like reordering of data for fewer cache misses, SIMD, GPU programming, SSD storage etc. Usually advanced CS algorithms research is some years ahead in adopting new methods, hardware techniques before any of those techniques actually hit the industry. On the other hand, in more theoretical CS conferences code is mainly a tool and as such, it does not have to be cutting edge. So, the quality is related to the audience of your product code (exactly like industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of formal methodologies for &quot;research&quot; code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard on any methods especially tailored for research code. Still, you can use the practices from your industry background (when they actually accelerate your process of writing the software). For example a versioning system accelerates development and minimizes errors / losses of data. On the other hand UNIT tests take a lot of time, which you might not have. A informal wiki for bugs, documentation, features might worth the extra time, since it also accelerates writing the actual research paper. Contrarily, a full blown bug database (bugzilla) might not worth the extra time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, stick to those industry methods, techniques you know will save you time on the long run and will improve your software but without taking all of your time. Finding a middle ground is always the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T18:42:26.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-21T19:16:22.510" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; Some parts of industry &amp;quot;best practices&amp;quot; fit in well, and other parts are inefficient in a research environment. Keep what works well in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a experimental particle physicist and we write a lot of code and much of it is big projects written by many, dispersed programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some part of the usual industry tool kit we use enthusiastically&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated build and test systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other part are either slower to catch on or not as highly prized, including&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A formal Process (with a capital 'P') with regular planning meetings and release checklist and so on. These appear as projects get bigger (usually in response to a total break-down in quality control or long release lags). That is, we use them when we &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Documentation generation systems are pretty common but only lightly used until the project gets big when people who are forced to decode some bits often contribute a little more documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unit testing is sparse and usually concentrated on the lower layers of the systems, but regression testing is more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most projects have coding standards, but they are generally loosely specified and weakly enforced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other things simple don't show up much.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feature planning is pretty hard when you don't know what clever ideas a grad student will have &lt;em&gt;next week&lt;/em&gt; to solve a problem that you haven't even noticed yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It used to be true that strict check-in control got in the way of spreading experimental code segments around, and we'd simply freeze new development check-ins occasionally to get out a blessed release (a situation that rendered HEAD/trunk/whatever a &amp;quot;use at your own risk&amp;quot; proposition). With the rise of &lt;em&gt;distributed&lt;/em&gt; version control there is starting to be a stronger commitment to check-in controls for the official trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Refactoring usually only happens when both a new person starts working with some old code and they feel they need changes or extensions. That which is not broken is left well enough alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question I suspect that you are doing your coding either single-handed or in a small group. In that setting the details change, but the tone remains the same. Simply keep the parts of your industry practice that work, and dispense with or delay the parts that have the worst cost/benefit ratio in terms of time/results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave off the heavy refactoring until you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; from evidence that a particular part of your code will be reused. Similarly, be content with rough documentation unless and until the code is shown to have a on-going life. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T20:18:30.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-21T19:39:03.077" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key to understanding research code for industrial software engineers is to accept that &lt;strong&gt;you are typically not building a product&lt;/strong&gt;. You do not have customers as such. You are building software to prove a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, the majority of code that you write as a researcher is more akin to the throw-away prototypes and mockups that you (in industry) often write in the early phases of a project. As you are certainly aware, even in industry these mockups have quite different properties than the final software. They primarily need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have exactly the features that you want to show to the customer. Not more, not less. Typically, all the boring standard features for the domain are omitted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need to get done &lt;em&gt;quickly&lt;/em&gt;. Both you and the customer know that the prototype will be thrown away anyway, so it does not matter whether the code is maintainable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need to be easy to extend and adapt, optimally live during the demo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially the same properties are also useful for most throwaway research code. You &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; want to build features that you do not need. You &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; want to waste time writing e.g., maintainable code if you know that it will not be maintained. You &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to use an environment that reduces the amount of boilerplate code and setup, and which maybe auto-generates a lot of code for you that is &quot;good enough&quot; for your demonstrator (Ruby on Rails and its scaffolding features come to mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My career progression is dependent on me writing &quot;bad&quot; code!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it depends on you writing code fit for purpose. Just like in industry. In industry and academia nobody applauds you for software qualities that are not needed. Try to reconsider what the &lt;strong&gt;point&lt;/strong&gt; of the code is that you are writing. If you plan to release your code as open source software and you expect it to be picked up by other people across the world, then go nuts - use all the engineering techniques you have also used in industry to build the best product you can. If your goal is to evaluate this one algorithm or principle for your conference, and then throw away the code, then you can also live happily without writing a single unit test without feeling like a fraud at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; of course this does not mean that it is acceptable to write code where you are unsure whether you have &lt;em&gt;implemented said algorithm correctly&lt;/em&gt;. Ensuring that what you have indeed shown what you claim to have shown is &lt;strong&gt;mandatory&lt;/strong&gt;, especially in research code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="6785" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T09:48:10.883" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T09:48:10.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21243" CreationDate="2014-05-21T21:34:59.460" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor whose idea of a good or even appropriate letter of recommendation is to copy a letter off of the internet and send it to you is a knucklehead.  (That is a technical term: I am after all an academic professional.  I could have used stronger language...)  At least, he is in this respect: in the comments the OP mentions that he got a job at Waterloo, which is a university with a high international reputation.  So he must have some other good things going for him.  In the fullness of time, I have to believe that he will learn how to write a reasonable recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not your problem.  I would advise you to look at the fact that the professor gave the letter directly to you -- which is itself irregular and, in certain circles, inappropriate -- as a real blessing.  He could have just sent this miserable excuse for a letter quietly to all the places you're applying to, and you would be the one (in the short term, at least) to suffer the consequences.  I strongly disagree that you should work further with this guy to write a better letter.  (In particular, I vehemently disagree that you should write the letter yourself.  As I have said before on this site, I find that &quot;immoral and wrong&quot; -- a recommendation letter is a commissioned expert opinion.  Looking over the opinion desired by the person you have been commissioned to evaluate and deciding whether or not it requires any modification is not how expert opinions work.  But I've made my feelings on this moral issue clear enough already.  Here let me push the practical side of this: as a student, you cannot write for yourself a good recommendation letter.  There are components of such a letter that require expertise and personal experience that you necessarily lack.)  It is time to start fresh and get a letter from a new person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part of your response that jumps out at me is &quot;I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me.&quot;  That's the real issue here, and I hope it will serve as a warning to other students in your position.  All undergraduates should be thinking -- from their first year -- about building good relationships with their instructors that will lead to multiple people being able to write them strong recommendation letters.  It is all too easy to go through an undergraduate program -- even, perhaps especially, to excel at it -- while having very little contact with the faculty outside of the classroom and regular coursework.  That is certainly a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, though: what do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; do?  You ask whether someone who has not taught you in a course can write you a letter.  The answer is certainly &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.  You want the letter writer to (i) have stature in the academic community and in the particular area you're applying to, and (ii) have something meaningful to say about your academic background, skills, work ethic, and prospects for success in graduate school.  Someone that you have done research with can speak to aspects of that as well or better as people who have taught you in a course in which you quietly got an A.  In a pinch -- as you seem to be -- I would advise you to try to make contacts with people who satisfy condition (i) and try to rapidly achieve (ii) with them.  Thus for instance if you've done any research at all in the field you're intending to study, you could send a paper (or code, or interesting data, or whatever) to an expert in that field and mention that you'd like a recommendation letter.  This is a bit irregular, but if your work is solid, why not?  I would do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend that you work harder to find the right person to write you a strong letter than to have further dealings with someone who has already proven to be hopelessly inept at the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T01:45:59.527" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T01:45:59.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-21T21:47:09.410" Score="36" ViewCount="14610" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago, a professor agreed to write me a recommendation letter.  So I applied to many grad schools indicating him as one of my referees.  However, I didn't find out until later that he didn't write the letter.  Thus, none of my applications were completed, and there were also substantial financial losses due to application fees. I was poor, so it was a big loss for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do in this case?  Could I find any justice anywhere?  I just felt hopeless when a tenured professor does something unethical (not criminal conduct); there is nothing a student can do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[added the following on June 24, 2014]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He recently became a faculty at the university where I am a student (He was at a different university before). I want to forget about what happened, but the damage was too much for me to ignore. And I feel anger whenever I think about what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One remedy would be he takes me on as a PhD student, or provides funding so another professor can supervise me. However, my application was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I raised my concerns with the dean of faculty of graduate studies, and will meet one of the assistant deans soon. How should I approach this with him/her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15574" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T03:46:14.477" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T09:39:57.647" Title="Years ago, a professor agreed to write a LOR, but never sent it. Therefore, I'm not accepted in any school. What can I do?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21284" CreationDate="2014-05-21T22:46:19.593" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds like a frustrating and discouraging situation.  Whether you have any recourse may depend on the system.  For U.S. universities, there's not much you can do, since applicants are generally considered responsible for monitoring whether their applications are complete and reminding letter writers.  However, these cultural issues might vary internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One puzzling aspect of your question is that you describe the professor as deceiving you and acting unethically.  Without some specific evidence, I'd assume it was forgetfulness rather than deliberate sabotage.  Forgetting to submit letters is still irresponsible, but not as bad as intentionally not submitting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have compelling evidence of sabotage, it would be worth bringing to the attention of the university administration.  However, it's not clear to me what sort of evidence you might plausibly have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a matter of forgetfulness, things are murkier.  If there's a pattern of irresponsibility, then the department head might want to know.  On the other hand, a single incident would probably be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes this tricky is that professors get asked for recommendations in all sorts of suboptimal ways, such as a brief hallway conversation while both people are rushing to get to class.  It's easy to forget under these circumstances.  That doesn't make it right, and responsible letter writers will try hard not to overlook requests.  However, some circumstances make it more understandable than others.  If you do file a complaint with the administration, you should make the circumstances clear.  (But without evidence of dramatic or recurring irresponsibility, I'm not sure it would be worth the effort.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried asking the professor about it?  It's too late to fix your applications, but you deserve an apology.  Furthermore, he may have forgotten about it so completely that he doesn't even realize this happened, in which case you'd be giving him a valuable warning that he needs to be more careful (and you might save future students from this problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T22:46:19.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-22T01:37:50.277" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a researcher and self-taught developer. I have done substantial projects which were primarily software based. Although my work is far from the most &quot;hardcore&quot; stuff that's out there in terms of complexity and scale, the projects were big enough that naive mistakes (eg. not using version control or poorly documenting code) were very painful. I ended up learning quite a few &quot;best practices&quot; through trial and error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been on the receiving end of &quot;unmaintanable code passed down to fellow researcher&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o5fy9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my industrial experience has been a hindrance in my research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you have basically come from a civilized environment that solved these problems decades ago into one that is stuck in the stone age in terms of software development hygiene. Scientists still code like it's the 60s. Of course you feel a conflict, but the fault is not with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In industry, code needs to be (ideally): maintainable, bug-free, refactored, well-documented, rigorously tested&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the speaker at a scientific conference, while describing the computational part of his research, said one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;The code I wrote for this research is, admittedly...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...unmaintainable (and good luck building on my research!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...full of bugs (and I have no idea if the output is even correct!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...unreadable spagetti (and I don't even know how it works, let alone if it does so correctly!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...undocumented (and all the mistakes are obfuscated from reviewers!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...not tested (so god knows if it does what I say/think it does!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you expect the audience to react with anything but scorn and outrage? If I heard such a thing, I would not believe anything this person published ever again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In academia, the goal is (...) in the shortest possible time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but &quot;&lt;em&gt;no shorter&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. You don't skip vital control experiments because &quot;controls take time&quot;. You can't skimp on code quality for very similar reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There seems to be no motivation to write [good code]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this is an endemic problem of academia. Although computers have been used in science for decades, it seems that algorithms have only become an important part of research in the last decade or so (perhaps because of &quot;big data&quot;). When you base your research on code, that code must be good quality. It is not enough to simply crank out some buggy write-only script and call it a day. The software development community has figured all of this out long ago, but academia has not yet caught on - I think the reason is that most scientists do not have a formal background in software development, and there have not been enough huge scandals in research caused by bad programming practice (eg. key results of a high-profile paper turn out to be artifacts caused by bugs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider how, in many disciplines, reviewers will not even ask about the source code of your computation-heavy paper. How can they evaluate, then, the validity of your results? They cannot, and this is a failure of the peer review model as it currently exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to go on a rant, but basically, it's like this: As you know, there are very good reasons for writing quality code, even if no one is watching over your shoulder. In science, currently it so happens that nobody cares if your code is good or not. But this should not be a reason for you to not write good code anyway - the reasons for writing good code in the industry still largely apply to science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you may not be rewarded for your extra work. You may even be punished, because as you say, good code takes longer, and others may not see beyond that. Your PI or colleagues may not understand why you are so much slower. The best you can do is explain to them the need for good practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there are exceptions. For instance, you may not need to worry about portability or backwards compatibility with old versions of the OS for code that is meant to run on a dedicated lab computer (although it is undesirable to write your code such that it only runs in a very exotic environment that other scientists will not be able to easily reconstruct). But by and large, I find that industry practices still apply, and the exceptions can be easily detected by applying a modicum of critical thought. That said, there is also a helpful publication called &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001745&quot;&gt;Best Practices for Scientific Computing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot; which examines this matter in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it is an ethical decision you must make. Do you care about doing good science above all else? Follow best practices. Do you want to cut corners that you shouldn't (in an ethical sense), to save time or avoid friction with co-workers? I couldn't recommend you to do this, on principle. But obviously many people do, and perhaps in practice, some scientists are forced to do it - although then again, does being unable to do good science by circumstance excuse bad science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, like I said, I think part of the problem is that there haven't been any big scandals. If you do skimp on code quality, there's a chance it will catch up with you. You might even end up being one those big scandals. Admittedly, the risk is probably small... But, I think you can see my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T17:47:16.647" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T17:47:16.647" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-22T05:56:13.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your problem is in seeing &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as binary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether in industry or academia we need to make choices as to particular quality goals. An ‘industrial’ piece of software might be safety critical and demand the highest achievable level of quality, or it might be an internally used development tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality goals might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uptime&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably not a concern for you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robustness&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you need to run with a lot of different data sets, or is it a one off?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-usability &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the processing be incorporated into the next problem you work on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to verify &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it work the way is it is supposed to? What would it mean if you published and this was not true?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to validate&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it produce the right answer? [ Hopefully, this does matter. ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another way of checking the correctness of the answer might mean it does not matter if the logic getting there is wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Needs to be maintainable by&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other expert &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some random undergraduate  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or definitely is throw away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suitable to be made public for use by others to check or re-use your work &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having articulated your quality goals, your development and build system should be sufficient to meet those goals and no more. Note that this might vary from project to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15586" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T22:21:06.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T22:21:06.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2014-05-22T06:52:10.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author should be involved in the research, otherwise it is only a clerical role.  However, it is not unusual for a collaborator whose contribution to the research is below the average to compensate by doing more work on the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15589" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T06:52:10.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21238" CreationDate="2014-05-22T07:46:30.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, this is my checklist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the relevant journal entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rchive.it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rchive.it&lt;/a&gt;). I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; read of the publisher's copyright transfer agreement, as well. You never know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide whether I can self-archive only the &lt;em&gt;preprint&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;postprint&lt;/em&gt; or both. The second one is usually defined as the one after peer-review but before the publisher's typesetting and proofreading (if any is performed). Of course, self-archiving the postprint is more desirable, as its content is &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; the same one as the published paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the appropriate version of the paper from my files. That is, I take the .doc, .tex or whatever the source file is. I either create a cover page or a footnote after the title/last author name. In the footnote, I put the following text:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an author generated preprint (or postprint) of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;//full citation here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright XXXX The Publisher (if required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final publication is available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/DOI-HERE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/DOI-HERE&lt;/a&gt; (or the publisher's digital library entry)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never had any problem doing like that. Just make sure to clearly state what the publisher asks you to state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example looks fine to me. I would rewrite the &amp;quot;This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published&amp;quot; to clearly state either preprint (before peer-review) or postprint (after peer review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated in another answer, never self-archive the publisher's PDF anywhere (unless it is an open access journal, but you do not really need to self-archive then). I am re-writing it because authors typically do not understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7112" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:53:23.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21284" CreationDate="2014-05-22T08:02:24.910" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to pick up something that eykanal has mentioned in a comment, because I think it's crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brace yourself, you're not going to like this. But it's better you know the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ask someone for a letter of reference, and they agree, it's &lt;strong&gt;up to you to do what you can to ensure that they write it and submit it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, that's not what you wanted to hear, is it? But it's what you needed to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what can you do if you didn't succeed in ensuring it got written and submitted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's exactly one thing you can do: learn from the experience. Now you know, that if you don't put the effort in to ensuring the recommendation letter gets written and sent, that may not happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to take it further, here's what you need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to broaden the lesson to be taken from this unhappy experience. The broader lessons are (and these apply both within and beyond academia): you often need to manage your manager; and if you need something doing, and you delegate it, you're still responsible for ensuring it gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T08:02:24.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21033" CreationDate="2014-05-22T09:15:34.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I would like to mention that I am a PhD student in a Bio-Engineering department and this answer contains information about the issue from that perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have started to my PhD I was thinking of pursuing an academic career in my field and would like to conduct research on tissue engineering. Then I saw that there is no straight way to this career. The first thing that disappointed me was that the field that I would like to improve myself was a the field of expertise of anyone in my institution. Due to lack of experts on that field in the institution I couldn't study on that field. If you ask why I didn't try to find an another institution, I can only tell that there are not many institutions in the country that have that sub-field of Bio-Engineering. I then choose to studied a very different field than my original intent and now I am close to the graduation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking to industrial jobs and also to the post-doc positions and I can tell that there are more post-doc positions for our field than industrial jobs. The problem is that those post-doc positions almost always require publications in Nature, Science etc. so it is very competitive. I wish you and your fiancee could find the place that you can fit. Me and my fiancee are not successful at finding it yet, but I have not lost hope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15592" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:22:10.997" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:22:10.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-22T09:32:17.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree that you should check your institution's regulations, I will give some pointers based on experience at UK institutions. Everything I write should have the proviso &quot;This may vary between institutions&quot; attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis you submit will have the date of submission on the title page. After the viva, the examiners at a UK institution can make one of several decisions. The following is a rough guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept the thesis without requiring corrections. In this case, the hardbound thesis will be the same as the submitted version except possibly for fixing typos etc. In this case, the date on the hardbound version should be the same as the date on the submitted version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept the thesis subject to minor corrections. In this case, you will have a certain period (often three months) to make the corrections, which the internal examiner will check before formally accepting the thesis. (There is usually no second viva on the corrected thesis.) In this case, the date on the hardbound thesis should be the date that the corrected version is completed and given to the internal examiner to check.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reject the thesis but offer the candidate the option of making major corrections and re-submitting within a certain period (often a year). In this case, the submission process starts over and the dates will all reflect the new submission process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reject the thesis for a Ph.D. but accept it for an M.Phil. In this case, there are no changes (except possibly for changing &quot;Ph.D.&quot; to &quot;M.Phil.&quot; on the title page) and so the initial submission date remains on the hardbound thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reject the thesis entirely. In this case, the question is moot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T09:32:17.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-05-22T09:57:18.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than talking about differences with industry software development (which I have no experience with), I'd like to talk about things you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do in academia. I will be assuming that your code is not there for its own sake but attaches to some scientific statement such as &quot;E. coli shares the foo-genome with humans&quot; or &quot;Algorithm A outperforms algorithm B in scenario Z&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Best Effort&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your goal is not productive use with revenue attached to it, you should have a reasonable amount of certainty that your code does what you claim and can be understood (peer reviewed!) by interested parties. That is, write clear code, comment and document. And (unit-)test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, remember that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; may have to revisit your own code some time later. You build a protoype but your next one may reuse parts of it. Or you want students to extend upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accessibility&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to support scientific evalutation of your work (falsifiability, reproducability) other researchers &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to have to be able to compile and execute your programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, you should provide sources, build files/instructions and whatever input data you used in your work. Keep in mind that someone may want to build your program years after initial publishing, so make sure that the sources are still around then and the build process/instructions are reasonably robust against time (mention library versions). UI is not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; important but &quot;best effort&quot; applies here, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider putting your code on Github or a similar platform (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gitlab.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;your own&lt;/a&gt;). That way, you can publish updates and collect bugs easily. See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19348/when-should-you-publish-code-on-github-work-in-progress-or-after-publication&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16785/how-to-share-computer-code&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Licensing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should say &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about what others (in particular fellow researchers) may or may not do with your code. You can use any license (I'd argue it should allow at least the liberties of GPL). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CRAPL&lt;/a&gt; might be worth a look.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fair Evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your algorithm/code is the artifact you propose (as superior) you have to compare it to existing solutions. Make sure to use comparable input, rerun the experiment for the alternatives and follow basic experimental best practice (check out McGeoch's work, for instance). Make sure your comparison includes the accepted standard(s) of your field if there are any; if your approach yields different results, you have to explain why (that's okay/correct/better).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accessibility is probably the most crucial item. Research code needs to be shared. I think this can't be stressed enough, and it's one of the major problems in all of computational science. Other than, say, physics, we have to opportunity to easily share and reproduce (most) experimental setup -- we have to make use of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't see why any article that founds its claims on computations that reviewers (and other parties) can not reproduce has any right to be published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reminder for all theory types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Donald E. Knuth&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T09:57:18.387" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21298" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:07:11.140" Score="6" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it common in academia to include the number of results a Google search on a keyword yields as an evidence for the prevalence of something online? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not intending to base my research paper on this evidence; it is just a supporting point in a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm writing a research paper on Stack Exchange; one of the paragraphs is about how popular Stack Exchange is in the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of the paragraph, I would mention that a Google search on the keyword 'Stack Exchange' yielded about 49,600,000 results, which shows how popular it is among netizens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T13:38:02.100" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T11:15:59.403" Title="Is it common to cite the numbers of results a search engine yields as evidence for the prevalence of something online?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:40:28.880" Score="7" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a position where I am writing both more professional articles, and&#xA;supplementary articles to undergraduates. The supplementary works is meant to prepare the students for the graduate courses. This is in mathematics, and analysis in particular. I want the notes to be self contained, and therefore I cite, or refer to proofs and further discussions on the lemmas and corollaries that are used. This should also be used for further references, &quot;if you want to know more about metric spaces, please look at Kreyszig [4]&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a wide variety of books I can cite, I can pick any of the big books used in Calculus. Calculus by Adams etc Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart. On the other hand I could refer to the more classical works by Apostol or Rudin (Principles of mathematical analysis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing the more classical works is good for preping the stundents, but for a first touch these can be a bit terse. Also the proofs in for an example Rudin are a bit on the short side, whilst Adams is very wordy &#xA;Would citing both, for every lemma and theorem, make the citations too daunting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Long story short:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When should one cite the terse material, and when to choose the lengthier comprehensible works. How does one choose the appropriate level to cite from when writing an article, paper or notes ?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15597" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T14:43:21.283" Title="Citing terse works, or wordy comprehensible works?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:45:27.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I honestly haven't seen something like this in any publication. But I guess you could use it as some by-point, I would in that case provide the number of result of other popular search engines, something like: &quot;xyz is highly sought after in the world wide webs, a simple key search 'xyz' using the most popular search engines yields impressive number of results (google: 49,600,000, bing: ..., yahoo: ..., etc.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, however, that the search results also include ambiguous results for the provided key word(s). In your example, it is likely that that result of about 49,600,000 will include hits that contain &quot;Stack&quot; and &quot;Overflow&quot;, but not the semantics that bind them into your intention. Please bear in mind that I'm aware that you are able to narrow your search down to a particular key word by using google tools, tweaks and skill, I'm merely providing an example, as depending on the &quot;commonness&quot; of the key word(s), the explicit narrowing down can be complex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T10:45:27.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:47:40.530" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do this. The &quot;approximate&quot; number of hits Google reports is &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; worthless. To see why, look at this number on both the first and the tenth page of Google hits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=%22Stack+Exchange%22&quot;&gt;First results page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Stack+Exchange%22&amp;amp;start=90&quot;&gt;Tenth results page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I just did this, I got &quot;approximately 9,010,000 hits&quot; reported on the first results page... but only &quot;approximately 48 hits&quot; on the tenth page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your results will probably vary, depending on your &lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search%20engine%20bubble&quot;&gt;search engine bubble&lt;/a&gt; (another reason why this number is useless).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T10:54:07.223" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T10:54:07.223" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21309" CreationDate="2014-05-22T11:38:17.973" Score="61" ViewCount="7503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six years ago while I was working in a company outside academia, I had been involved in improving a process which was hot in academia. I have developed a new method which, among other notable advantages, improved all previous methods by deriving better results. Although some time passed, today it can still be considered as state of the art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite I was not in academia, because of the quality of the results, I have managed to publish a paper about it in a top journal in that field. I hoped that the paper would get popular, and it would get cited many times, but today, after 4-5 years of being available, to my surprise, the work is still not cited. I see that new papers that come out and that are related, still refer to (lesser) methods, as though mine doesn't exist at all. As I am following the papers in that field, and despite a large number of related papers, I still don't see much improvement over my work, so it's pretty much current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper uses proper keywords and wording (so it's easy to find), the journal is a good one (so people must have seen it), and it cites all other related papers (so I guess that relevant people in the field who have Google Scholar would be aware of it existence if they get notified of new citations). And still the paper didn't take off. The only reason I could think of is networking. Since at that time I was not in academia, I did not go to conferences to get the work (and my name) &quot;advertised&quot;. But I refuse to believe that this was the critical factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are: How to get cited and how to boost the impact of one's work? And did I do anything wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now in my PhD, and I would like to learn how to boost the popularity of my upcoming papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13332" LastEditorUserId="13332" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T11:03:48.163" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T01:02:33.043" Title="How to get cited and how to boost the impact of one's work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21307" CreationDate="2014-05-22T11:42:26.747" Score="12" ViewCount="4534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student wanting to transfer to another institution for undergraduate studies. I am a research assistant for a professor at an institution that I do not attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the university which I which to transfer to, accept the recommendation letter from this professor? Again, I have not taken any courses with this professor, nor go to the institution where he teaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related (except for Graduate Admissions): &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21243/copied-letter-of-recommendation&quot;&gt;Copied Letter of Recommendation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T17:02:42.183" Title="Can I get a letter of recommendation from a professor who didn't teach me BUT I did research with?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21211" CreationDate="2014-05-22T11:46:28.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to find a way to advertise your work so that people find it on arXiv, use it, then eventually cite it and criticize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main advantages of arXiv are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the publication timing. When you submit to some closed review journal or conference, you are months before an official decision. During this time (that can get long), you need a way to disclose properly your work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting a larger audience. Everybody is not on her university's network, or some universities won't have access to all the journals. If your work is on the editor's site only, then more people than you might think will be blocked by the paywall. Furthermore, some people (I know some in Image Processing) will make monthly explorations of arXiv and publish some reading lists on-line, tghus giving you a larger audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11141" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T11:46:28.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2014-05-22T11:49:17.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think such numbers would be accurate at all, altough they could probably be used as a rough, theoretical estimate.&#xA;2 reasons I can think of for why this would not be accurate at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Typos. Have you ever tried googling for 2 different spellings in order to figure out which is most likely the correct spelling? Unfortunately, the most used(popular) spelling is not always the correct one.&#xA;What this means is that the number of google hits is not a picture of reality, but a picture of what is in people's thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A phenomenon\activity\product being written about on the web is not equivalent to actually being used alot. What's being written on the web is primarily a picture of what's going on in people's heads, rather than what's actually around them. A new invention could be ground-breaking and get mentioned alot, even though only scientists would use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T11:49:17.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21296" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:05:19.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd give both, explaining briefly what is to be expected of which reference, something along the lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A brief introduction can be found in [1] while [2] gives a terse summary and [3] develops proof 42 in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(substitute whatever citation style you use for [1] etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T14:43:21.283" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T14:43:21.283" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21301" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:07:50.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general answer is: &quot;It depends on their rules regarding the admission process&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they accept (or require) letters of recommendation, and they don't explicitely relate it to teaching relationships, they will take such recommendation letters into acount (and I personally would rate them even higher than a standard &quot;this guy has great grades&quot;-letter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:07:50.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21301" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:15:26.000" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general. the criterion for a letter of recommendation is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;someone whose course you've taken.__ In general, the letter of recommendation is supposed to be written by someone who knows you well, and can testify to your strengths and weaknesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there's a specific demand for a letter from someone who has taught you, you should not worry about the fact that your research advisor hasn't taught you. In principle, because a research advisor has worked more closely with you than a typical instructor would, your should expect to get a more useful letter from the research advisor, as OBu indicates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:15:26.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21301" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:16:56.370" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of a letter of recommendation is for the receiving party to obtain third-party verification that you are, indeed, awesome. Generally speaking, people like to receive letters from individuals who know you well professionally. In most cases, teachers cannot write good letters, as they only know you as a face in the class, and never really got to know your work ethic, personality, and capabilities. A research advisor would be able to comment on all those things, and would be able to write a much stronger letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:16:56.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:20:03.407" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the kind of question which is best answered with actual evidence. Many American universities have their thesis formatting rules online, and you can find them with relatively little effort. British Universities (Oxford and Cambridge, in particular) often seem not to give as detailed rules. From these examples, it is clear that the rules for which date is used &lt;em&gt;depends on the university&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harvard University&lt;/strong&gt;:  &quot;[Month and year of the submission of the completed dissertation to the department, division, or committee and Dissertation Acceptance Certificate was signed]&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MIT&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;the date the degree(s) will be conferred (June, September, or February only)&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stanford University&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;(Date should reflect month and year of submission to the Office of the University Registrar.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Michigan&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;year of degree conferral not year that dissertation was finished&quot; (they don't want a month).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University College London&lt;/strong&gt;: no date seems to be required on the thesis (none is mentioned in the guidelines, and there are theses without dates in their archive). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Edinburgh&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;Year of presentation.&#xA;In the case of a thesis which is resubmitted, the year in which the&#xA;thesis is resubmitted should be shown as the year of presentation.&quot; What do they mean by &quot;year of presentation&quot;? From their website: &quot;At some point between submission of your thesis and the viva, you are encouraged to give a final presentation of your work to the School, often via a research group seminar series.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Leeds&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;the year of submission&#xA;for examination (Or resubmission where the thesis is submitted following re-examination after referral).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5912" LastEditorUserId="5912" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T17:27:00.197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T17:27:00.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:22:20.463" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see a few reasons why your paper was not cited as much as you hoped it to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Networking indeed &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; go a long way towards being cited. In my experience this is especially true for areas where many competing approaches are being published (which, by the sound of it, is true in your case). Even if your paper is published in a good venue, this alone does not guarantee that you will find a critical mass of readers to kickstart the process. Citations are in my experience somewhat viral. Google Scholar, which for better or for worse, is used by &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; researchers for searching for literature, returns results ordered more or less by citation count. Hence, papers with a few citations on them are &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; easier to find on Google Scholar than those with 0 citations. Hence, you need to &quot;bootstrap&quot; a bit before citations start coming in more or less by themselves. The best (ethical) way to do this is to network - tell other researchers that might be interested in your paper about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should not per se exclude the possibility that you overestimate the value of your contribution. Maybe the things your approach was good at are not valued as highly by the other researchers. Maybe you underestimate the qualities of some papers that are cited over yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if your paper &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; really good, maybe this was to hard to see at first glance. In an ideal world, every researcher would strive to fully grok each related paper. However, in the real world (especially in busy fields), you have to assume that a reader will at first only casually browse over your paper (and only really read it if it seems very strong to him at first glance). If your paper does not seem strong at first glance, people will not cite it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe you are overestimating the value of the venue you published in. In many busy fields, papers published in a &quot;good&quot; venue (as opposed to &quot;the best there is&quot;) already have a hard time getting cited. Further, check whether your paper is available with the standard subscriptions that most universities have (e.g., for CS that would be IEEE, Springer, ACM, ... depending on your field of course). There are some non-predatory publishers out there that are simply not available in the subscriptions of many libraries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:22:20.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:23:31.980" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields, the literature moves faster than most people can follow. A journal article can easily be missed. The chance of it being seen now that 5 years have passed is virtually none. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get your work known in many fields is to get out there and personally evangelize it. Give talks at conferences, talk it up to colleagues, etc. Getting someone else to start using your method is key. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:23:31.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-22T12:28:12.883" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first person who should cite your work is actually YOU. If you simply abandoned your work and you expected others to pick up on it, it mostly does not work this way, unless your work is really ground-breaking. When I search for something on a area I am interested in, it is easy to pick up papers with more citations (which you do not yet have) or authors who are more prolific in this area (which you are now not, since you only published this one paper). Also, people tend to be suspicious when they see &quot;amazing&quot; results, when they are not followed by further work on this area, since that might be some indication that those results were a bit &quot;fishy&quot; to begin with. In this sense, you are the one (at least initially) who should pick up your previous work, improve on it, compare with the newest methods and promote it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you asked some years ago, I would not believe in networking either. But the fact is that it works. If you go to some conferences and talk to some of your 'favorite' authors (who are also your main competitors) ask about their published work, talk about your published work (but DO NOT reveal unpublished work), perhaps ask to share methods, do a polite follow-up email soon, you will see that most people respond positively, not because you are sucking up to them but because they see that their work has actual impact. In most of the cases, they also want to improve their methods and see &quot;the polite competition of today as the possible cooperator of tomorrow&quot;. So, understand that networking is not just PR but as appreciation to what others and you can offer to the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T12:28:12.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-22T13:25:21.760" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd just like to add, even if your methods and results were real game-changers, you don't necessarily have a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; paper. Writing skills are critical for increasing your citation count. You might consider looking closely at highly cited papers, and see what the authors did differently. As others have noted, networking has a big role too.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded&lt;/em&gt; is a good resource.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2017-10-13T14:21:35.383" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T14:21:35.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19065" CreationDate="2014-05-22T13:59:58.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say there are two aspects in this question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have a personal contingency plan?&lt;/strong&gt; A funder might like to see that you have thought about the possible problems that can arise in your project, including not getting it funded. Showing that you have explored different options shows that you take into account the global context of this project, which is a mindset very useful to be successful in leading a project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How specific is your proposal to the call?&lt;/strong&gt; In general, a proposal might not be eligible as is to many funding agencies. For instance, your initial proposal could include only partners from the UK, which makes it ineligible for most EU calls. Answering that you believe the proposed consortium is the best possible one for that particular project, and as such, is not eligible for other agencies, shows that, again, you've thought about the global context of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the actual answer might depend on your project, whether it is tailored for that specific call or not , whether there are other places it can be eligible or not, whether you would include feedback or not, etc. Answering properly this question demonstrates that you have a vision for your project in a global context, rather than simply answering to the current call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T13:59:58.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T14:46:55.920" Score="9" ViewCount="5148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to attend a college that requires students to live on campus, in a coed setting. As an observant Muslim, I cannot do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The college asked me to write a letter explaining why I cannot live on campus. I also have to explain why I can't eat the cafeteria food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking how I should start the letter, and what I should say in the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15604" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T03:11:10.600" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T21:50:17.063" Title="How to explain to college that religious observance precludes me from living on campus, as required?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;religious-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2014-05-22T15:41:05.687" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The popularity of a web site is only very loosely related to the number of search engine results. A better approach is to use traffic statistics, such as the web site's Alexa ranking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This places StackOverflow at rank 53, which means that only 52 sites are visited more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, StackOverflow is so ubiquitous within the programming community that you probably don't need to qualify your claims of its popularity unless your paper is intended for non-programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11124" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T15:41:05.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21317" CreationDate="2014-05-22T15:46:11.683" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of letter should typically be brief and straightforward. Unless they have told you specifically what should be in the letter, you can write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom it may concern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be advised that, as a Muslim, my religious observance precludes me from living on a coeducational campus. As per the advice of [&lt;em&gt;person or office who told you to write the letter&lt;/em&gt;], I am writing this letter to request an exemption from the on-campus living policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your consideration,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nimbra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you can also include contact information for a member of the clergy (i.e., a religious leader) who knows you and can vouch that you do, in fact, have such a requirement. (Sometimes this is required as a matter of policy; for example, those who cannot take the SAT on Saturday due to religious observance must provide a letter from clergy attesting to this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T15:46:11.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21321" CreationDate="2014-05-22T16:52:48.853" Score="25" ViewCount="10047" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19362/is-it-ethical-for-advisors-to-automatically-coauthor-papers?rq=1&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15005/publishing-paper-as-a-phd-student-without-advisors-name&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; I haven't find my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor hasn't contributed to my work and I know that my work isn't significant and it won't publish in top journals. But I want to publish it without my advisor's name in a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is not about &lt;em&gt;automatically coauthor my advisor&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;having high hopes on my individual work&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Problem arise from here. We have to enroll in some seminar classes before starting to work on our thesis.&#xA;In one of those classes our teacher said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;No matter what you do, you have to enlist your advisor's name in your papers because unless it would considered as a work with no supervisor and it can not be trusted.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;In interview we have for PhD students, if the person who is applying hasn't written the name of his suprevisor we doubt him. Either he is a genius or he is hiding something or he is &lt;strong&gt;too&lt;/strong&gt; active in his field.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;In some companies and research labs everyone add the name of their fundraiser to show him their gratitude, so should we.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So based on what I heard I'm going to face serious problems if I publish my work individually as a student. The question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apart from being unethical including a name of person who didn't contribute to work as a coauthor, does it have any academic weight? I mean, does it &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt; my work if I say I did it alone or it does not have any different until coauthor isn't a student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that I am going to be accused as a not genuine person if I don't add my advisor's name? Because our teacher told us that he and his colleagues don't consider these kind of submitted papers trustworthy and genuine, so don't look at them carefully and mostly reject them on sight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: Thank you all. I think my vision is more clear now. The right way is not the opposite of the wrong way. It means despite &quot;spoon-fed&quot; &quot;a very distorted view&quot;, the right thing to do is not doing the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to do my best to play as a team, because of its mentioned benefits, especially for my first paper. But if working as a team doesn't go well, there is no harm in solo publishing or getting some new advisers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13131" LastEditorUserId="13131" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T20:38:47.887" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T22:14:53.753" Title="Aftermath of rightfully submitting a solo paper without my advisor's name" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2014-05-22T17:31:44.387" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think your problem is with your advisor. Your real problem is with teachers in classes who say things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you do, you have to enlist your advisor's name in your&#xA;  papers because unless it would considered as a work with no supervisor&#xA;  and it can not be trusted.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In interview we have for PhD students, if the person who is applying&#xA;  hasn't written the name of his suprevisor we doubt him. Either he is a&#xA;  genius or he is hiding something or he is too active in his field.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In some companies and research labs everyone add the name of their&#xA;  fundraiser to show him their gratitude, so should we.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of all the recent debate about whether we are too idealized and rosy in our views of academia, let me at least say this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this is common practice in the areas you work in, the problem here is the rationale being used to justify author inclusion. In no way is the decision being made based on some notion of contribution by the advisor (either financial or moral, or in any form). It's being based purely on a notion of patronage or bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person making these claims has either a very distorted view of how authorship works, or is misleading new students in a terrible way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T17:31:44.387" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21327" CreationDate="2014-05-22T17:38:05.407" Score="4" ViewCount="1025" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a B.Tech student in my final year, and am interested in publishing a paper. I have read a few articles in IEEE transactions and ACM transactions on my topic of interest, Software Engineering, and thought I can also produce such an idea. This semester I worked on a project under a professor in my institute, and I have written a paper based on my findings. My question is how can I judge the quality of the paper I have written? I want to find the perfect place to publish it, but don't want get demoralized by sending it to a top publisher and getting rejected. I should add that I don't think that my professor will be much help in determining the quality of the paper because I fear the professor knowledge is very  old and outdated and doesn't have any idea of current research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15609" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-25T18:55:42.410" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T10:45:16.003" Title="How to judge the quality of my own paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2014-05-22T18:39:18.367" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apart from being unethical including a name of person who didn't&#xA;  contribute to work as a coauthor, does it have any academic weight? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You use very strong words, but things are not black and white. You are a student and most likely you do not know how to write a good paper. Why not involve your supervisor in the writing process? You can write the original manuscript and he will make the final version, since he is more experienced than you. In that setting you are still first author, he does contribute and he is co-author, your paper has more chances to be published and everyone is happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that I am going to be accused as a not genuine person if I&#xA;  don't add my advisor's name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are exaggerating again. If your paper will be rejected it will most likely be because it is not good enough and not because of your name. There is always the possibility that someone with no previous experience is easier to get his paper rejected (I believe many reviewers do a Google search on the person they are reviewing) but that mostly applies to big conferences. For smaller conferences or workshops criteria are not that strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you have not thought the most critical factor. What if your paper gets accepted? Who will then pay for your conference registration and trip? Usually it is the advisor that provides such funding. If you submit it solo, you must do the entire process with the university bureaucracy alone and without support from some faculty member it will be much harder for the university to actually cover your expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although I disagree with some of the comments your seminar tried to spoon-feed you, in the long run it will be better to play as a team member. So, involve your supervisor, make him actually contribute on the notion that you will still be first author. This cooperation might even vastly improve your paper and then it might get accepted even in a top conference or journal. In this setting, you will have more to win than to lose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T18:39:18.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21317" CreationDate="2014-05-22T19:01:18.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because it is implied that the college you plan to attend doesn't have an existing form or requirements for exemptions, I suggest that you include more information rather than less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an exemption from the on-campus housing requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Briefly discuss the religious observations that are in conflict with living in a co-educational dormitory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Detail where you are going to live (parents, other family member), give the name, address, and contact information. If living by yourself, a letter from your parents or legal guardian about the situation. Do you have the money to do this? How do you plan to travel to the college? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the exemption from a meal plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, briefly discuss the religious requirements that preclude&#xA;eating in the cafeteria. (The food service may be able to provide halal meals. If that's so, are there other reasons to ask for an exemption?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Detail what you will do instead (relative will provide food, cook for&#xA;self, bring lunch, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The residential and meal plan requirements are to foster relationships in the incoming class. Having the majority of incoming (at least) students on-campus also helps to ensure that they have safe places to live and food to eat. Give them reasons why they won't need to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also either offer to get a letter from a religious leader or just provide it outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T19:01:18.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T19:16:37.653" Score="9" ViewCount="888" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by &lt;a href=&quot;http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/&quot;&gt;altmetrics&lt;/a&gt;, “Peer-review has served scholarship well, but is beginning to show its age. It is slow, encourages conventionality, and fails to hold reviewers accountable.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all publications are created equal. Neither are the statuses of their authors. However, senior authors in life sciences rarely publish in isolation, so some junior researcher’s neck is always on the line (one of the many catch 22’s in academic publishing, and one I hadn’t really thought about much before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this makes the question somewhat subjective, and I hope that a variety of answers can be supplied - but if your answer is similar to an existing one, perhaps a comment will serve - thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some more background on my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2814%2900288-8?utm_content=buffer40653&amp;amp;utm_medium=social&amp;amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;amp;utm_campaign=buffer&quot;&gt;excellent article&lt;/a&gt; by Zen Faulkes, which doesn’t mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://f1000research.com/&quot;&gt;F1000Research&lt;/a&gt; but does mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peerageofscience.org/proceedings/#banner&quot;&gt;Proceedings of Peerage of Science&lt;/a&gt; , suggests that the post-publication peer-review is unstandardized. It seems that F1000Research is trying to standardize the process within their journal, rather than relying on altmetrics. I think this is a reasonable approach: as a scientist whose job is partly to network with others, you can very likely get interested parties to review your paper (if not, then try one of the many journals supporting the traditional review method). Additionally, this publisher-centric peer review will probably attract more serious reviews; who wants to post a review on some random social networking site that few people will likely read? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone has strong negative feelings about your paper, then they can say so. Of course, there is a lack of anonymity on F1000Research. Oh dear, now we need to be polite (Faulkes also discusses this). I know it is a very difficult thing to be polite sometimes after multiple grants or papers have been rejected, but perhaps this is a step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more importantly, the reviewers may have to defend their assertions without the editor making a summary decision about whether or not the authors can reasonably address the reviewers concerns. I think this form of review removes much more bias than it introduces by keeping the conversation open. And I don’t think this means the review process will go on indefinitely; the authors no longer need satisfy every whim of the reviewers, but only those they deem important enough so that their colleagues will respect the merit and credibility of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning to other forms of review: I also think it is unlikely that any single review model with always be best for all people and all publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, one type of review process that would necessarily need to be pre-publication peer review is the double blind scheme, where neither reviewers nor authors are given any direct evidence of the other party’s identity. It seems that this would not only make things more fair, but also open up the reviewer pool to highly cited authors whose input is no doubt frequently valued but difficult to obtain in the traditional peer review process. Unfortunately &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Different_styles_of_review&quot;&gt;it does not seem to be at all prevalent in the sciences&lt;/a&gt;, and I know of no journals supporting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T19:56:56.843" Title="How would you decide to publish (or not) in F1000Research or other journals with alternative peer-review methods?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21322" CreationDate="2014-05-22T19:50:17.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your adviser is a coauthor, he has to agree with whether the paper is suitable for submission to a particular journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you could judge the quality of your paper by comparing it with published papers in the journal you intend to submit your paper to. However, I recommend asking for other people's opinion about the paper; this would be people you know, who have had some publication experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an upcoming conference which you can submit your paper to? It is a good idea to submit the paper to a conference first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T19:50:17.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21326" CreationDate="2014-05-22T19:56:49.283" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would I decide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding, Readership and Tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the journal cost money to submit to, and if so, do I have any funding for said submission? Is there a means of waiving that fee if I don't have funding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the journal read by the people I want to read my paper? This I'd gauge by talking to my colleagues - for example, if no one in (hypothetically) infection control reads F1000Research, then I'm not publishing there, because the point of my paper is to be read and advance the field, and it can't do that if it isn't where relevant eyes will see it, whether or not the journal gets an ideological checkmark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similar to readership, when this journal is looked at by a promotion committee etc., will it matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter two are, in my mind, not yet settled, and that makes me a little hesitant - bold ideological stands are for people who aren't on the job market. Beyond that, I think the primary problem with post-pub peer review is that I'm not convinced it will be at all uniformly distributed. My suspicion is that a few prominent papers will be heavily reviewed, and then the rest will have either middling, or no reviews beyond what is mandated by the journal. I'm also not convinced it's a terribly fair system - it's relatively easy to attack a post-doc or doctoral student's work, while you might hesitate to do so for Important Person In Your Field, and similarly, said Important Person may be able to be fairly rude with impunity, especially if the journals aren't terribly well known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, several major journals in my field are double-blinded. I have no idea who the authors are, there are actually instructions to remove clearly identifiable information (change &quot;Brigham-Women's Hospital&quot; to &quot;A major regional hospital in the Northeast United States&quot;, etc.) in the manuscript, and the reviews are anonymous unless signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T19:56:49.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21326" CreationDate="2014-05-22T19:56:56.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subjectively, I'd say that there are two main criteria on deciding where (and if) to publish some piece of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Does that publication &quot;count&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There tend to be specific criteria set by funding agencies, promotion committees or other organizations that separate 'proper' publications from worthless ones. Clearly, there must be some criteria, as the world is full of places that would publish anything, and counting everything equally is a worse option than most completely arbitrary criteria. For some areas the split might be journals vs conferences/etc; for some places the criteria might be [lack of] peer review; for my purposes the criteria is indexing in Web of science or SCOPUS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Would that publication be read by the people I want?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When academic goals involve 'advertising' a particular approach and influencing the subfield, it doesn't matter how if it's reviewed (if at all), but it matters on how well it reaches the target audience. For that purposes the best option might be, say, a short talk at some seminar which is well attended by the relevant group; which could have more impact than an article at a prestigious journal, and has the benefit of being quicker than the traditional review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on ones particular goals, either of those goals may strongly dominate the other; however, if none of them are well met, it makes no sense to publish (at that venue) at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it seems that any new or alternative approach is very unlikely to be useful for publishing. Alternative approaches by definition don't match the classic, estabilished ways of publishing (goal #1); and any new publication, unless estabilished by scientists in my particular narrow research area for their own needs, is unlikely to reach them (goal #2) better as any other venue , even the trivial option on simply putting it up on your own or organization webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T19:56:56.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2014-05-22T20:49:44.183" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific publications, at least, &quot;author contribution&quot; statements are becoming more and more common. These statements list the exact contributions that each author on the paper made. A number of excellent examples are provided on this Nature blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/11/post_12.html&quot;&gt;http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/11/post_12.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you included your supervisor as an author on the paper, providing such a statement would allow you to clarify the nature of your roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15616" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T20:49:44.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15911" CreationDate="2014-05-22T21:32:34.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to start a project &lt;strong&gt;that will get funded&lt;/strong&gt; is to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/description.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;funding announcements&lt;/a&gt; (FOA, PA, RFA, RFP, etc.) in your areas of expertise and/or areas that really interest you. Funding announcements are availible directly from the funding agency, or through online database such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://pivot.cos.com/funding_main&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Community of Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grants.gov&lt;/a&gt;. Reading funding announcements is an easy way to see the current state of knowledge as well as the gaps that exist (and available funding!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with some of the other comments, collaborating with your PhD supervisor is very common (in my field). Furthermore, cross institutional collaboration is encouraged as pointed out by Luke M. I see no downside to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastEditorUserId="14547" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T14:46:21.970" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:46:21.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T21:51:34.087" Score="4" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a soon-to-graduate PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I received an e-mail from an academic society,&#xA;which was a call for research chapters.&#xA;I have quoted the contents of the e-mail below,&#xA;stripping out the unimportant details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are editing a new volume titled {THE TITLE}&#xA;  for Springer International Series in {THE FIELD OF RESEARCH}.&#xA;  We are inviting high quality research chapters&#xA;  that would open new research stream in {THE SUBFIELD OF RESEARCH}.&#xA;  Interested scholars are requested to send us&#xA;  their chapter proposals in the form of an abstract (500-1000 words) by {THE DATE}.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does publishing a research chapter in a book&#xA;advance my academic career&#xA;compared to publishing a journal article?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does submitting work to a journal article&#xA;preclude submitting the same work as a research chapter in a book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T21:51:34.087" Title="Does publishing a research chapter in a book advance my academic career?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-22T22:15:40.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2014-05-22T22:41:40.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the university I attended in the UK, one was considered to be on provisional status until passing the viva, which was not only an oral &quot;interview&quot; but also included a thorough review of all research completed at that point, a 20,000 word critical paper, and a detailed thesis plan.  After that point, the successful student was advanced to candidacy, while the unsuccessful student was awarded an M.Phil.and dismissed from the program. This procedure was standardized throughout the university graduate school regardless of department. For candidates, the only obstacle left was the defense of the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15621" LastEditorUserId="15621" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T23:50:00.423" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T23:50:00.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21211" CreationDate="2014-05-23T00:24:40.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The arXiv is a tool for establishing a presence, but it does not market or disseminate your results.  It merely places them in a certain category and presents title, author, and sometimes abstract in a summary fashion, depending on how one uses it.  Some researchers get RSS and email updates in their favorite areas about new arXiv submissions, but that should be considered small in number, and not likely to generate interest in your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want feedback, you need to advertise your own work, on your webpage, at conferences, at society meetings, and other appropriate venues.  You can prepare a short version (abstract or highlight only) and include the URL of the arXiv abstract.  Use of arXiv does not indicate peer review, but as there is some endorsement system involved in arXiv submissions, there is also some cachet associated with having the URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have gotten some people interested in your work, they too can refer to the URL, and this can lead to more publicizing and hopefully direct feedback on your work.  It can also lead to others posting their opinions on their blogs or elsewhere, which can be harder to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T00:24:40.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21424" CreationDate="2014-05-23T02:36:19.620" Score="4" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a senior in high school, and will be attending Hamilton College in Clinton, New York next year. Though Hamilton does not have 'core curriculum' requirements and is a small liberal arts college, I want to prepare myself so that I have a competitive advantage in applying to top graduate schools. Among the programs I might be interested in are Stanford or Harvard law school -- I'm particularly interested in their respective centers for internet and society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a different note, I might be interested in MIT school of architecture + planning. Obviously this early in my career my interests and goals will certainly change, but my question now is how to best leverage the resources offered at my small undergrad school to get into these sort of graduate programs. A general answer for a broad question is suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15581" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:13:36.027" Title="How to best leverage resources offered at small undergraduate school to be a competitive applicant to top law or architecture + planning schools" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T05:12:44.797" Score="18" ViewCount="18868" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statements of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Applicants who are invited to campus for interviews must be able to show proof that they will be eligible and qualified to work in the United States by the time of hire.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is almost associated with every open academic positions in US and I am wondering what does this statement clearly mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, academic positions in US are opened to the scientifically eligible candidates worldwide, but receiving US work permit requires a sponsor (employer) inside US who should initiate visa application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My 1st question:&lt;/strong&gt; Does this sentence show unwillingness of the employer (university in this case) to support applicants' visa application? Does this position only open to those residing in US? or work permit holders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the immigration website, I learnt that there are some costs for the employer who is offering job to an outsider. But, universities are exempted from paying the biggest chunk ($1500).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My 2nd question:&lt;/strong&gt; Considering low visa petition cost, what else is the problem that US-based universities are hesitant to hire such candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My 3rd question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is faculty selection in US-based universities based on candidate's merit or there are other parameters when selecting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I think the email received from UW can be of help to get better idea of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear XYZ,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When completing your application for employment at the University of Washington you were asked to complete the US Work Authorization Assessment. The second question asked was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To legally work in the United States, will you require University of Washington sponsorship for an H1-B, other UW sponsored visa, or UW sponsored green card now or in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You responded yes, that you would need sponsorship, either now or in the future. &lt;strong&gt;As a result you are not eligible for employment in staff positions at the University&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emailed to HR of UW for clarification with this note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does UW consider only those foreigners for staff position who are currently having work permit in US? Those who are willing to obtain work permit based on the UW job offer are ineligible to work in UW?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UW Reply&lt;/strong&gt; (Though I think the reply is by a robot):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the UW does not provide sponsorship for Green Cards( or HB-1 visas, or any other type of work authorization requiring sponsorship.) for staff positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Though my question is about academic staff position, about university of washington, I applied for research scientist. Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://escience.washington.edu/what-we-do/data-science-research-positions-university-washington&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to the job opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T23:52:21.400" Title="H-1B Visa Sponsorship by Universities" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2014-05-23T07:44:26.083" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suspicion is that this phrase is primarily to cover the university legally in case the person hired in fact does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; have the eligibility to work in the US. In such a case, without this clause, the person could make the argument that the university is in breach of contract for not hiring them and doing whatever is necessary in order to make them eligible. &lt;strong&gt;But IANAL&lt;/strong&gt; !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I'd imagine only very small universities or places with limited resources would have trouble sponsoring a candidate for an H1-B. Certainly not a university like UW. Most universities are quite willing and able to sponsor new applicants for H1Bs and green cards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct interpretation here is I think as is mentioned in the comments: the candidate should be &lt;strong&gt;eligible&lt;/strong&gt; to work in that they &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; get an H1B visa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T07:44:26.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21342" CreationDate="2014-05-23T10:05:05.143" Score="12" ViewCount="2634" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of a recent lengthy meeting with my supervisor, in preparation for my end of year GRC (Graduate Research Committee) meeting, I asked about if I would be able to contact them during the summer holiday period in relation to my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background is that I am a History Masters research student and as I'm completing it part-time I'll be doing as much work during the summer months (maybe even more as one of my major visits to archives is during this period) as during the academic year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor was open to me emailing him during the summer and submitting any written work I may have completed. As it was we were finishing the meeting we did not elaborate on exact details. In my own case this will suffice as I am working on my project on my own with my supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I just asked if I could keep in contact with my supervisor and that's probably the best thing to do in most cases, I am interested is it reasonable to request that you can have access to an advisor/supervisor during summer time (either by email or face to face)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T15:02:42.707" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T19:02:00.770" Title="Is it reasonable to ask for access to an advisor/supervisor during summer time?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21341" CreationDate="2014-05-23T10:32:34.567" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supervisors are employees just like everyone else. They have duties (to supervise you), and they have vacations and business trips. Both vacations and business trips (conferences, field trips, probably archive work in your line) will be more common during summer. Specifically for academia, many people will use summer to spend more time working from home while they don't have to give lectures, but they may designate certain days when they are in the office, specifically to meet with everyone on a single day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I see no reason whatsoever why email contact should decrease during summer, of course except for known vacation or trip periods, where everyone can agree that emails may take a little longer to be answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Face-to-face contact is also important, but given that many people will spend more time at home, there is a case to be made that you may not meet &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; as frequently with your advisor during summer, even after accounting for vacations/trips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I see no reason why a request for email contact and (possibly somewhat less frequent) face-to-face meetings should be unreasonable. It would of course be optimal to work out a schedule before summer, taking vacations etc. into account. &quot;I'll check in every day with a short email, and I understand if you reply later to email questions. Could we set up at least some face-to-face meetings, perhaps not every week as during the semester, but every other week, except for the week you are at a conference?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, your supervisor will be just as interested in hearing from you and knowing that you don't spend all of summer at the beach...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T10:32:34.567" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21341" CreationDate="2014-05-23T11:28:31.527" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is perhaps not whether to contact or not. You can send mails as much as you want and you may expect variations in the timing of a response. What, IS important is to communicate and organize work so that you optimize the time. There is no point in arranging your own work so that you definitely would need help when you simply cannot get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what you can expect, some of the answer lies in the employment conditions which will vary between universities and certainly between countries. In some cases university employees are not salaried during summer. In cases they cover this by applying for research money. It is clear that the focus will then be on other things. In other cases payment also cover summer and instead vacation is planned for some of that time. So, you need to know what the system is like in your part of Academia and expectations made up based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I see it mostly as a communication issue. To just expect without actually finding out is not a good strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T11:28:31.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T11:46:10.870" Score="54" ViewCount="5210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need some advice. After several months of interviews and work, I secured a faculty position at a good business school, which was a relief since jobs are so hard to get around here. Everyone tells me I'm lucky to get such a good job since I'm coming right out of grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been about two months since I took the job, and I've started to receive teaching allocations etc for the coming semester. I should be really excited and happy about all of this, but instead, every time I think about starting this new job, instead of excitement I just feel awful: afraid, nervous, like I'm making a huge mistake and I want to cry. I can't figure out why. I feel like I'm supposed to want this and I just don't feel positive about it. I worked so so hard to earn it but now it doesn't feel like a prize. I just have this overwhelming sense that I'm going to be absolutely miserable. I don't know if it's just about the B-school thing, or academia in general, or just because I'm nervous about being a real adult for the first time, or because I know people who have had a hard time with teaching etc, but I'm confused that I can't tell these apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I naive for thinking that I should be excited and overjoyed about this job? Does it mean I'm a normal academic that I feel dread, or a terrible academic that I don't see it as an opportunity (besides the great salary)? Does it just make me a privileged a-hole that I'm expecting to feel joy but I don't? I would appreciate any words of advice, your experience with before job jitters/dread and whether it gets better or whether I may be making a huge mistake? So confused!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12347" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T22:18:39.217" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T02:39:48.717" Title="Is it normal to feel dread before starting a faculty position?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21341" CreationDate="2014-05-23T12:28:56.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is our job to be available to our students!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be gone for half the summer, and the half I'm in town I will be working from home. My students shouldn't expect to just look for me in my office and find me, but I will be very receptive to coming in and meeting as long as I am in town, and corresponding by e-mail otherwise. I suspect this scenario is reasonably typical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Expect&quot; is a little bit of a dangerous word; I advise you to replace it with &quot;ask for&quot;. Take the initiative in requesting meetings, asking questions, and the like. Don't overdo it --- but other people aren't shy about asking for your advisor's attention, I urge you not to be either :) Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T12:28:56.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2014-05-23T12:52:18.100" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly normal to feel the way you do. Part of it is likely fear of the unknown; part is fear of a new job with &quot;adult&quot; responsibilities; part of it might even be fear about whether you can do the job (the infamous Imposter Syndrome). Transitions are always a stressful time, and I don't think we give ourselves enough time to adjust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also reminds me of a survey that discovered that people who just got tenure are the unhappiest of all faculty. The similarity is in the striving for a prize that's difficult to get, and then getting it ! In both cases, there's an element of letdown, and &quot;I did all this work for THIS ?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technique that I've found useful when dealing with these kinds of feelings is to try and focus on the concrete rather than the bigger picture: in your case, maybe focusing on logistics issues related to the transition rather than the bigger picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also found as a rule of thumb (both personally and with others) that it can take upto 6 months to feel some level of comfort in a new position. That's a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T12:52:18.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21450" CreationDate="2014-05-23T12:52:50.657" Score="7" ViewCount="4526" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prospective supervisor is interested in me, and has asked me for programming interview. As I have been told, his research group does a lot of system programming, and he is seeking a good programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no industry experience in programming, though I have programmed for assignments, projects, and a Master's thesis. I know that, as a computer scientist, it is essential to have good programming skills. I tried to search for some tips about programming interviews for prospective PhDs, but could not find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it differ from industrial interview? Did anyone have similar experience? Any references or tips? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T12:21:32.190" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T05:54:54.093" Title="Programming Interview for PhD Admission in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21356" CreationDate="2014-05-23T13:09:01.653" Score="9" ViewCount="1950" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is a senior research fellow different from a lecturer and a professor? I suppose it has small teaching responsibilities? Would it then be a suitable academic career option for someone who chooses research over teaching? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have a specific interest in a particular country, since I am not sure if the practice would differ between countries, but let us say it is UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T13:36:09.830" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T07:17:52.107" Title="What is a senior research fellow?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21362" CreationDate="2014-05-23T13:32:28.877" Score="6" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received a request to contribute a book chapter about a month ago, which I turned down. This was from a university in another country, and from someone I have personally met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, my own supervisor asked me to contribute a similar chapter to a book which she has been asked to be an editor of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the two requests happened in a relatively short time, and the reason I gave for declining the former request might still stand, would there be a problem if I accept the latter request, when I have declined the former? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T20:23:39.150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T20:59:59.833" Title="Responding to different requests to contribute a book chapter" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T14:49:50.020" Score="13" ViewCount="4013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to download automatically tons of papers listed on .bib file so I'm trying to find a way to facilitate the process by, e.g. I import or input to a tool a certain .bib file which contains a list of literature, the output is the literature's .pdf file. Any idea to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15096" LastActivityDate="2020-01-20T08:21:56.677" Title="Are there any tools to automatically search and download literature in a given .bib file?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2014-05-23T15:31:18.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, pretty much all the justifications your teacher gave to you are lies. This person is trying to encourage you to put your supervisors' names on your papers, but avoiding telling you that you have to do so because it is the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there are roughly three ways a paper can be written as a grad student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student does some work and publishes it, but the supervisor is responsible for lots of guidance, planning, editing, making sure the work gets done, suggesting the original question, helping to place the paper, etc. This is how almost everyone's first paper gets written. The supervisor will almost always be an author, and everyone accepts that this is fair. (However, I have known some generous supervisors who decline an author credit in such cases, since they regard what they did as part of supervising, and not a specific contribution to authoring the paper).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student and supervisor collaborate, similarly to how to colleagues would collaborate (but perhaps with the student doing more of the 'grunt work' and the supervisor making more of the decisions). Both are authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The student does work independently, perhaps asking for some limited advice or proofreading. The supervisor should not be an author, but often is in practice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people except the very gifted start off with the first type, and everyone except those who don't progress very far should have some of the latter two types by the end of a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if someone has only publications with their supervisor, it could be taken as meaning that they didn't do much independent work, but it could also be that they had to 'give credit' to their supervisor, or that they work in an area where most papers are collaborative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone has only publications without their supervisor, it might be seen as positive, but it could also be assumed that their supervisor was generous in not taking credit, therefore neutral. If you are known to be a genius, the fact that your early publications were on your own will be mentioned, but it won't prove that you are a genius if this isn't already accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implied lack of credibility 'that your supervisor didn't approve of your work' would be a very strange reaction. It's only something you should worry about if there's some other reason you might come across as a maverick - for example all your papers are serious work about some topic beloved of conspiracy theorists, or you went straight into grad school from high school, etc. In these cases, you might want to make sure that some form of reflected legitimacy is evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some has a combination of supervisor-included and -not-included work, it would be seem as normal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, no case is really a strong indicator of your strength. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last problem is what you should do. Your teachers are behaving unethically, but your best option is probably to go along with it. Just make sure that you can justify your authorship of the papers you consider yours, if asked in an interview. If so, anyone who takes the time to do so will probably figure out what your supervisor's contribution was, and won't assume that you were playing the same game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="5824" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T22:14:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T22:14:53.753" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21349" CreationDate="2014-05-23T15:48:43.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the university. At most of the universities in the UK I know, a position is usually called research fellow if it either is a temporary position or a position with less teaching obligations.&#xA;However, there is no general rule about what one calls a research fellow. It may even be different from department to department (Oxford is an interesting example, there it can mean pretty much everything).&#xA;If it is a suitable academic career option depends therefore more on the university itself and the conditions of the position (how much teaching, is it a permanent position?), than on the name of the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the difference between the countries: There are large differences between countries, not only in the names (which differ of course, due to different languages). For example in Germany most positions are only temporary positions without tenure track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15646" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T21:04:18.810" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T21:04:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2014-05-23T18:50:59.300" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in grad school, I worked as a resident advisor in the grad student dorms, and a big chunk of my job was to be there for other graduate students when they needed help or someone to talk to. My supervisor taught me to ask &quot;What are your concerns?&quot; when people came to me to express that they were afraid or nervous about something. I was quite amazed to see how often that calmed them down, because it turned out that they rarely actually had any specific concerns. It's not that they actually believed that certain specific bad things would happen to them, they were just nervous about being in situations they were not familiar or comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm saying this because I note that you don't mention any specific concern in your post. Instead I read the familiar vague feeling of being &quot;afraid, nervous, like I'm making a huge mistake and I want to cry&quot;. So I want you to think about this question: &quot;What are your concerns?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T18:50:59.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2014-05-23T19:30:12.363" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth pointing out the existence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.mq.edu.au/about/research_@_macquarie/policies,_procedures_and_conduct/documents/Vancouver.pdf&quot;&gt;Vancouver Protocol&lt;/a&gt; (first described by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, this is becoming more widely accepted). This protocol states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;1) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and&#xA;  to &lt;br&gt;2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important&#xA;  intellectual content; and on &lt;br&gt;3) final approval of the version to be&#xA;  published. &lt;br&gt;Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Participation&#xA;  solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does&#xA;  not justify authorship. &lt;strong&gt;General supervision of the research group is&#xA;  not sufficient for authorship.&lt;/strong&gt; Any part of an article critical to its&#xA;  main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite restrictive, and clearly discourages some of the attributions that your teachers appear to encourage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is important for a scientist at the start of his/her career to be very aware of the value of collaboration - working closely with your advisor (to the point where their contribution warrants co-authorship) is &lt;em&gt;quite likely&lt;/em&gt; to improve the quality of your paper. If you believe it would not, then maybe you need to question your choice of advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is no doubt true that a person with a good publications record carries more weight in their chosen field, and that their papers will be read more carefully and cited more frequently. Because of this it is often considered a good idea to start out in this mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal note: in the 80s when I did my PhD, email wasn't yet a thing. My advisor was abroad for almost an entire year, and I did in fact independently write and publish a paper. The work in this paper was very good (I can say so in retrospect after more than 20 years), but I was a complete unknown - and it had incredibly narrow applicability. To this date, it has received just one citation. I still believe I was correct (given the circumstance) not to include my advisor's name on the paper, but it did nothing for my career (or the field). It would have been better if I had waited until he returned, discussed and improved the paper, and published jointly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot that an experienced person can do merit co-authorship - but you have to create the opportunity for them to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T19:30:12.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21350" CreationDate="2014-05-23T20:01:09.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an ethical issue at all. You are free to contribute to whatever book / project you like. There is no obligation that you can't join a different book project just because you turned somebody else down before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T20:01:09.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21350" CreationDate="2014-05-23T20:59:59.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As xLeitix said, you are free to contribute to whichever project(s) you choose. Declining once does not obligate you to decline twice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You commented that you have chosen to decline the first offer because of not having enough time. This second offer is coming from your supervisor, who presumably knows your work better, and should have a sense of what you may already have written which will need relatively little revising to become a book chapter. If this is the case, then even if the issue should somehow come up with the individuals involved in the first offer, it will easily be understood that the situation is  different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T20:59:59.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2014-05-23T22:17:41.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Green Card is a different matter, but for an H-1B: It is indeed easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a cap for the number of H-1Bs awarded every year. The cap for 2013 was 85,000, and 124,000 people applied. When too many applications are eligible, assignment is made by lottery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, non-profits are not subject to caps, and universities count as non-profits. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/h-1b_faqs#10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/h-1b_faqs#10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably not easier in the sense that the employer follows the same procedure and pays the same fees. However, there is no risk of not receiving an H-1B that you are perfectly well qualified for due to the cap. Also, universities are more likely to have access to people who know the process, unlike small companies which may be overwhelmed by the paperwork and byzantine regulations (especially if you are their first international employee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T22:19:35.693" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:19:35.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21847" CreationDate="2014-05-24T00:44:22.417" Score="9" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;My MSc thesis work in Computer Science involves developing a software solution for a particular problem for which already exist several solutions, in particular commercial software. I know I can't ignore them in my work and have to cite them, but I have no access to them, so I can't perform any comparisons to prove that my work will actually contribute to research in this field, rather than simply being another software program trying to deal with the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best approach in this case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15666" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T16:36:17.223" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:48:13.977" Title="How do I compare my thesis research work to commercial products that I can't obtain?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21372" CreationDate="2014-05-24T02:24:54.237" Score="14" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of my work as a graduate student in maths I currently teach a basic second semester calculus course. It seems like every semester I teach, one or two students want some sort of special privilege to turn in homework late for a month or take a test a week after they are supposed to. Many times they have somewhat legitimate reasons (documented depression, getting a divorce, wife having surgery.....). How should I handle these cases? I am not big into putting up with lots of late homework or late tests, but then again I would want someone to be lenient with me if things such as the parenthetical reasons above arose in my life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle students with such situations? Should I write them off and just feed them to the dogs or should I allow them to catch up at their own pace? My honest opinion is that school is a sort of competitive game (Bad, yes, I know) and if they lose they lose. We do not shorten the football pitch because some club's striker is not a good runner. However, I think students should be allowed to have a chance to make things right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14518" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T01:34:34.000" Title="Being the right kind of demanding as a college instructor" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21374" CreationDate="2014-05-24T03:10:48.223" Score="28" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;We submitted a paper to a journal published by Cambridge Press. The paper was submitted last year (2013). After five months we got the decision yesterday. We don't mind the decision, however, we are shocked by the editorial comments that although they have the reports they don't relay the reports to the author/s for papers which are not proceeding further. Is this approach common in journals? We feel this is very unethical from any author's point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15667" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T11:21:28.487" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:21:29.907" Title="Can a journal withhold referee reports from the authors of a rejected paper?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2014-05-24T03:49:54.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Preamble: What they are trying to do here is protect themselves from a lawsuit later on. In the application for an H1B, the employer must prove that there was no American citizen who was qualified for the position that is being sponsored (c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immihelp.com/gc/employment/labor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.immihelp.com/gc/employment/labor/&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps. Most employers will sponsor the H1B at the very least -- and the larger universities and colleges will even pay for the legal and application fees if they want you. But they have to advertise the positions for Americans (and legal residents first) and if the search results in only one person (YOU!) who is able to fill the position, then (gee shucks) they will sponsor you for the H1B.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The law. See preamble. The cost including the lawyer can go up to around $10,000. If it's just a short-term position why spend the money and do the paperwork (an H1B filing can easily be hundreds of pages of filings)? Also H1Bs are tricky. &lt;strike&gt;If you apply late when the pool runs out, you may not get one regardless of how qualified the candidate is.&lt;/strike&gt; H1B applications have been known to get held up for all sorts of reasons by the State Department or the DoL.  So it's often safer to go with a legal candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depends on the location. While it would be nice to think that merit is the only factor, we all know (or at least suspect) that there are other factors including the all amorphous &quot;collegiality&quot;.  If there are two candidates of equal worth but one candidate will require literally 3 inches of paperwork filed to the Department of Labor and there's uncertainty as to whether he/she can start work in August if the process gets delayed, then what would be the rational choice? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: H1Bs are not subject to caps (&lt;a href=&quot;http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/h-1b_faqs#10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/h-1b_faqs#10&lt;/a&gt;). I'm not sure if this is a new thing as I can vaguely remember caps in the distant past... but at least there aren't any now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T06:03:51.860" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T06:03:51.860" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21366" CreationDate="2014-05-24T03:57:18.693" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reports are the property of the editor of the journal as they are the commissioning body.  They do have the ability to share parts of the reports to the ms authors but they are under no &lt;strong&gt;legal&lt;/strong&gt; obligation to. In some cases (especially with negative reports), the referees may ask that the editor to not share the comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are really no &lt;strike&gt;grounds for&lt;/strike&gt; effective mechanism to appeal this type of policy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best suggestion would be to go to another journal -- perhaps one with a faster turnaround time. And ask some of your colleagues to read your ms and see why it might not be getting the positive results you had hoped for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Followup: The journal has no legal obligation to tell you why they denied your paper. They might have a moral one (such as the disciplinary association urging them to), but no legal one. If they have it written in their bylaws that they will, then of course they will, but there is no legal requirement to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to universities not having a &lt;strong&gt;legal&lt;/strong&gt; (as opposed to moral) requirement to tell you why they didn't hire you or private granting agencies not having a legal requirement to tell you why they didn't give you funding. Again, if their policies (or if there is a federal/state/local requirement, etc. then they will) dictate they they must, then they will but this is rare to non-existent for private institutions (including non-profits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: I've sat on the editorial board of the flagship journal of my discipline (in the social sciences).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T18:21:29.907" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:21:29.907" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21365" CreationDate="2014-05-24T04:24:57.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really up to you. You can be very strict and demanding or a total pushover. It's best to calibrate yourself against others in your department (or college) as there is usually some sort of rough standard / aka departmental culture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have better things to do than to police students but other colleagues seem to relish this task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you shouldn't do is ever view your own &quot;Rate My Professor&quot; webpage [as you will despair for the minds and souls of your students].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T05:50:33.443" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T05:50:33.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21365" CreationDate="2014-05-24T07:44:47.260" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If people have a legitimate reason for wanting an extension of the deadline, I would simply give them the extension. If they cannot provide a good reason, i.e. they simply procrastinated too much, they have to take responsibility for their behavior, and they do not get the extension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with being a hard-ass, but being fair. Other people have done the work, and giving people that procrastinated an extension is not fair to them. In addition, getting work done that you where assigned (even if it is hard or boring) is a valuable lesson to teach a student. Their future boss will also not be sensitive to a missed deadline because of procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T07:44:47.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21366" CreationDate="2014-05-24T09:43:59.040" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider that not giving authors the ground on which the decision was taken to be both unethical and bad for science. How should the authors improve the paper if they don't even know why they have been rejected? How can they get a sense of what the community expects from them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not alone in this: the International Mathematical Union issued ethical guidelines for journals, including that the default policy should be that referee's reports are forwarded to author. However many journals give the referees the opportunity to give comments solely for the editors, and some editors prefer not to forward some reports to avoid pissing off the authors. I never heard of a journal with a policy of never forwarding reports of rejected papers before; this sounds absurd or really cowardly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T09:43:59.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2014-05-24T09:55:18.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help you to know that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Women are much more prone to this sort of feeling than men &lt;em&gt;for no competence related reason at all.&lt;/em&gt; It's just that society had conditioned you more to doubt yourself, to try to be perfect, and generally to introvert more - which is often a good thing, but not in this particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competent people are much more likely to worry about their competence than incompetent ones: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these things are irrational! Accept that you feel this way and then say: &lt;em&gt;&quot;So what? Frak it, I'm going to get up there and teach. I may not be perfect, but I'm going to make a solid plan and follow it, so rationally, nothing can go too far wrong. The students aren't idiots: if I miss something important, one of them will ask, and that will cue me to tell the others. This isn't landing a 747 or performing neurosurgery - there are plenty of opportunities to recover from my mistakes. Voices in my head, shut up already!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15677" LastEditorUserId="14220" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T20:18:40.070" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T20:18:40.070" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T11:47:12.970" Score="8" ViewCount="1157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate studying Mathematics &amp;amp; Philosophy in the UK, about to sit my third-year exams. My course is structured as a three-year self-contained BA and a fourth year 'integrated masters' with its own exams, which I automatically progress to as long as I get a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification&quot;&gt;2.i classification&lt;/a&gt; from my combined second- and third-year results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not been a good student. My tutors consistently report that I'm clever and engaged but I've suffered real motivation and work ethic problems. My results in second year were poor, and while I'm reasonably confident I can get a 2.i in these exams I'm unlikely to achieve stellar results this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to have a shot at going on to further study. Obviously I would need to do well in my fourth year, and as well as is possible this year; that's a given. I'd like to know if anyone has any advice on other things I could do to 'rehabilitate' a potential application, both from the perspective of being a better candidate and with a view to getting reasonable references from tutors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'd welcome general answers as well, for specificity the most likely further study I'd be applying to would be a masters programme (combination taught/research) in philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6899" LastEditorUserId="6899" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T12:19:52.293" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T01:18:21.933" Title="Academic 'rehabilitation' after poor undergraduate results" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21376" CreationDate="2014-05-24T12:33:26.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak to Philosophy programs so this may not be terribly useful to you, but in general, if your grades/marks are not stellar, and you exams are not either, then you should probably rely more on the power of recommendations from people who know your good traits well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably several ways to do this, and though I'm not sure about philosophy, in the sciences for example, a couple of years of volunteering in laboratory with one or two different researchers and making yourself invaluable to them can garner you major points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't do wonderfully in my studies either, and my exams were not fabulous, but I spent three years after graduating my undergraduate university volunteering in two different labs, and enrolling in evening courses to (a) try and do better in essential courses pertinent to my area and (b) demonstrate that I was serious about graduate studies because of my initiative in taking all these courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ended up with three great letters and job opportunities, and later grad school (PhD) through working with these professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a word of caution: If your weaknesses really include motivation and work ethic, then post graduate study is not going to be fun for you. It's completely different than undergrad as there is way less structure, and you have to be very self-motivated, make your own deadlines, work all the time without people asking you to, and complete projects on your own. It's really hard. If you do decide that you can do it though, I suggest finding an advisor who will be more hands on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps a little!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12347" LastEditorUserId="12347" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T12:39:42.070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T12:39:42.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21379" CreationDate="2014-05-24T13:18:06.653" Score="8" ViewCount="1526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am possibly quitting my PhD. I am 2 years into my PhD and now I am writing a cover letter for an opening at a company. My question is, do I mention in the cover letter why I am quitting ? In my CV I just mention what I've done for the past two years and write that the PhD is not complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I need to mention it, because it feels like an elephant in the room. Also to avoid confusion I think I need to mention it. (e.g. They can think I tend to continue working on the PhD while I want to work there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9236" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T03:21:07.733" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T04:51:43.943" Title="Should I mention not completing a Phd in a cover letter?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21378" CreationDate="2014-05-24T13:26:55.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. They are going to see it in your CV anyway and if you say nothing, it just looks like you are trying to hide something and they are going to assume the worst. I would tell them the reasons why I quit (e.g. what to do something applied, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15646" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T13:26:55.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21384" CreationDate="2014-05-24T14:30:42.333" Score="11" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering applying for postdoctoral positions in the US.&#xA;However, I would like to find more information about&#xA;how it is like to be a postdoctoral scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Is a postdoctoral position a full-year position (12 months)&#xA;or an academic-year position (9 months)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;How should I interpret postdoctoral salaries?&#xA;For example, an MIT postdoctoral information page (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/mitpostdocs/vpr_update.html&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;lists the minimum postdoctoral salary&#xA;for a person with 0 years of experience at $42,000.&#xA;Is this salary for 12 months, or for 9 months?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T19:12:27.047" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T12:46:53.360" Title="Is a postdoctoral scholar expected to work during the summer?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21376" CreationDate="2014-05-24T14:45:33.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the details about Phylosophy (the large majority of the population of this site seems to be STEM, unfortunately), so I will speak from my experience (first and second hand) in Physics and related fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities in the UK thrive to be fair and objective. Admissions are regulated by committees that put high weight in objective measurements: that is, your transcript mostly. Even if you had a brilliant last year in your master's, your bachelor record may hinder you to get a position, at least in the better universities. Spain is a more extreme case, where a score function of your academic record and, to a lesser degree, proven research experience (ie, publications, that very few undegrads ever get) is the sole parameter considered for a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other countries the system allows for a more flexible and subjective evaluation. Good memory and analytic skills may get you high undergraduate marks, but if you lack creativity and good thinking you will not be good at research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sweden, the PhD student is normally chosen by the PI based on whatever criteria he decides. I believe the majority of them put high weight in the projects you have done as an undergrad or master, and how well they think you will be able to work together. Grades are not so important for many because until some time ago, most universities only have &quot;pass&quot; or &quot;fail&quot; marks. I know of cases of PhD students that were hired without their supervisors even looking at the transcripts, but had a very good masters project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: &lt;em&gt;if you were in STEM&lt;/em&gt; (as I cannot know if this is extrapolable to you), if you apply yourself in the last year, you could have options in a lower tier (but perfectly reputable) university in the UK; but you would probably have better chances in other academic cultures. Improving your grades will always help (don't let them fall); but the best you can do now to make you show apart from the other candidates is to excel at your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T14:45:33.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21388" CreationDate="2014-05-24T14:49:37.107" Score="5" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;To provide a background, I am currently a Physics major and along the way I ended up getting really interested in Mathematics, so much that I'm now planning to do pure math in graduate school. Now, the problem is that, we are required to do a senior's thesis before we graduate, and I still don't have a topic in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually worked a little bit with a professor in Theoretical Physics, I did bits of grunt work under him. I got exposed in Asymptotic methods when I was in his lab, and I got the idea that maybe I could do an undergraduate thesis about/using asymptotics. During the time I was working there, I was under the impression that he'll eventually talk about my thesis topic but he never even mentioned it (to be fair though, I never talked about it to him either), so now I'm kinda panicking that I might end up going solo in my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the case that he'll not accept to advice me on this , my question is, is it naive to even think about doing an undergraduate research that mainly involves Asymptotic Analysis/Methods when I've never even taken a formal course in it? To make the odds worse, it seems it's a graduate level topic, I am willing self study it though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know just how far I can go with doing research in a topic I haven't formally studied in a classroom setting, it doesn't really need to be Asymptotics or anything, I just wanted to do  something that's theoretical, and that's borderline math, just so I'd be forced to learn as much math as I can during my last year in undergrad. I figured doing research in applied math is the best area to do work on since I'm still a Physics major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15681" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T16:14:17.073" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:42:12.803" Title="Can I do a thesis project in an area if I haven't taken a course on it?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2014-05-24T15:12:26.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this step on the critical path towards your long-term goals? It's good to think 20 years ahead. If you stay on this track, in 20 years' time you will be senior faculty, have N students, M publications, P dollars, H ideas for publications, non-quantifiable collaborations and disagreements with most international colleagues working in your sub-sub-field. Is this enough? Imagine this is now. Is this the best possible outcome for you? Most likely yes, because it is so for the majority. Then focus on the fact that you are on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your dream is different or more specific, but it's necessary to have a faculty position for it, then keep working hard! Working hard is the only way to enjoy living to 100%!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, revise your plan. Do you want two incompatible things? Then one has to give way. Don't let the path of least resistance dictate where you go. You are in control of your life, and this aspect was hard-earned by many generations of people who weren't, so don't throw it away too easily. Also, nobody really deeply cares about what steps you take to reach your goals, except you, so don't let the perceived 'opinion of others' dictate what path you take. However, the bigger the decision, the longer the cooling-off period before committing to it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best guess is that it is the reluctance people get when they are just about to spend a lot of energy on something. That should wear off over a few weeks after you dive in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14516" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T15:12:26.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21380" CreationDate="2014-05-24T15:38:49.877" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, postdoctoral positions—unlike faculty positions (in the US)—are considered to be 12-month positions, with the salaries determined accordingly. You are not normally expected to provide your own funding for the summer months, nor are you expected to find outside employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the case, then it should be &lt;strong&gt;explicitly&lt;/strong&gt; mentioned in the advertisement for the position. However, this is so rarely encountered that it would be very much outside the norm for postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T12:46:53.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T12:46:53.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:23:42.347" Score="11" ViewCount="5813" Body="&lt;p&gt;The faculty, of course, will not first hear from me over email - we have maintained semi-regular research-related meetings over the semester. I have not yet asked her to be my advisor, but now since the academic year has ended, I want to make this an &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; advisor-advisee relationship. I'm wondering if it would be bad form to just ask the question directly over email, as she doesn't seem to be around the department anymore. I should add that I am already a PHD student in the department, and funding is provided by the department, so I am not really asking for money either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15688" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T10:28:53.687" Title="Is it bad form to ask someone to be my advisor over email?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21386" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:33:37.653" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would first send her an email asking when she might next be around campus and able to meet.  If she responds that she's traveling (which is entirely possible now that the academic year is over), I think you can send a polite follow up asking her to be your official advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:33:37.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21382" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:37:10.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: it depends on the department and if you can find a supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It being a graduate level course or topic just means it may involve more work and the same is true for not having taken a formal course in it. If you do not mind the extra work (you shouldn't imho) it is no problem at all.&#xA;However, there are two questions left: Is someone willing and able to be the advisor for that topic? Is the research question suitable for your undergrad thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, talk to your (potential) supervisor about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15646" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:37:10.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21382" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:42:12.803" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course you can!&lt;/strong&gt; (I did. My advisor did. Most of my students did.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone will have to agree to supervise your research, but that's true even if you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; taken a course in your proposed research area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:42:12.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21386" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:54:38.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it can be construed as bad form to contact a potential advisor by email. This is the way that I approached my advisor. I had completed a undergraduate course with him but he would not have remembered me due to class size and time lapsed. I drafted an email explaining the course I had taken under him, gave a very brief outline of my research topic (about 5 lines) and had another couple sentences as to why I thought he would be a good match as an advisor for that particular topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not expect (as in my case) a yes or no reply but if they are interested it would be assumed that they would email you back either looking for some more detail or to set up a meeting to discuss the proposal with you. You may have to wait some time for a reply but you could leave it a couple of weeks before following up. It may also be good to check with the department in case the person is on leave etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:54:38.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21376" CreationDate="2014-05-24T18:33:42.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can say something about philosophy Postgraduate study in the UK. If you have a 2.1 By, you ought to be welcome onto a whole load of decent MA courses, though to be prepared for a major step up in expectations. Bristol and Edinburgh both have MAs in Philosophy and Mathematics, for instance. If this is where you want to go I'd email their PG contact in Philosophy, say you're on an exit velocity for a 2.1, though nothing spectacular, and would anything stop you applying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T18:33:42.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2014-05-24T19:42:50.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skunkness, I hope you found the other answers helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do be honest, I do not find it normal that you feel like this at this point of time. And I think that one reason that you ask the question here is that you do not find it normal yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In change management theory, I have learned that the first phase of a new challenge is normally excitement, even euphoria. The down phase comes some time after you started the new job, the moment when you find that - even if it was a really good  choice you made -  there are drawbacks, there's routine that you don't like and that there's a lot of work you still need to do before you really become excellent at the new job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it happens like this most of the time - I speak from personal experience, as well as watching other people on new assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't mean it must be like this. Still people are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if maybe women are different from men here, but I must admit that I immediately thought that you were female. And again sorry to say for all those who claimed gender has nothing to do with this problem: men and women are quite different in job behavior. I have supervised a lot of males and females, and there is a clear pattern: while men tend to overestimate their achievements, women underestimate them - cliche yes, but statistically true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe user15677 is quite correct with comment 1, and (s)he has made quite a point that it has nothing to do with your achievements and qualifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If user15677 is right, then you should not worry too much. This phase will pass. Look to cheer you up with something, pamper yourself a bit. Develop some routine you like - simple things like seeing where to get the best coffee at your new job, or maybe there's a nice place to take a stroll after lunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your current state could point to the fact that you are unhappy for some reason with your decision. I think you should ask yourself the following: are your feelings mostly connected with yourself? Then see this as a passing phase. You've done well, you have the job you wanted, and you are just a little exhausted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that these feelings are connected to certain details of the new job, then find out how you can improve these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important: you have a hard time behind you. You need some rest. Take your time now. Even if you find out that you made a bad choice - now is the time to collect energy. If you need to change your decision, give yourself some time first,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11139" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T19:42:50.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T20:36:52.513" Score="4" ViewCount="7399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write an official letter to a professor to explain my research interests and my research plan to him, so that he could evaluate my eligibility for support through a research assistantship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would you please say which of the following sentences is better in order to finish my letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helps. If you need further information, Please feel free to contact me at: My email&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helps you evaluate my eligibility for financial aid better.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helps, please let me know if you need more information.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11259" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T07:56:46.520" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T07:56:46.520" Title="How should I write the last sentence in my email to a professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T21:33:39.407" Score="6" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some findings (new but nothing ground-breaking) from my master thesis in the field of A which I could publish if I spent more time on the topic. However, my PhD and future specialization is going to be in B. So spending time in A and particularly trying to publish in the field may be a distraction from the B. When applying for postdocs and tenured positions, is any researcher/application assessor going to appreciate my publications from a different field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know one mathematician from Princeton. He comes to workshops and always solves some problem. He would never publish it (even if nobody else did) because it is a distraction from what he is doing. Then other participants write his ideas and publish it with his name as coauthors. On the other hand, my personal tutor told me that any publications are good as they demonstrate the researcher's independence and capability. Hence it seems, that unless a person is a top researcher in the field, publishing in other fields is not a distraction, but a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T21:28:10.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T21:28:10.493" Title="Should I publish findings not from my field?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-25T23:51:21.740" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T21:53:38.120" Score="1" ViewCount="1622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't believe I can't find an answer in Google for this. I need to insert a secondary citation like this &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AuthorX 2013 (as quoted in AuthorY, 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest answer I could find was editing the field and referencing the secondary author by tag with an '\m' switch but that cuts the whole thing too short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15696" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T16:02:18.680" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T16:02:18.680" Title="Secondary citation MS Word 2013 (APA Style)" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21380" CreationDate="2014-05-24T22:54:47.843" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Post-docs come under staff category not faculty, so it's always 12 months. More than 50% places expect you even too work in weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15698" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T22:54:47.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21376" CreationDate="2014-05-25T01:18:21.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going straight from undergraduate work to graduate is not the only path (not sure what the alternative paths would be in philosophy exactly - but I can imagine they are many and varied). The years between undergrad and grad can certainly be used for reform. Recommendations can weigh very strongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T01:18:21.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21472" CreationDate="2014-05-25T02:36:39.150" Score="9" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to phrase the question exactly in the title, but the issue is essentially this. I gave some feedback for a subject I did, which I was told was confidential. The lecturer found out I gave the feedback and approached me about it. From what she said, they were able to piece together who I was from the examples I gave of my concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realised from their statements that the feedback was given directly to them, but with no names attached (I assume). I don't feel that this was adequately stated in the survey. Now while I no doubt they will be a professional moving forward in this situation, I cannot know for certain that they now hold a vendetta against me. Conversely, they could also inflate my marks to appease me as well. Either circumstance I think we can agree is not favourable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already emailed the university about this some time ago, but never received a reply. The thing I am most concerned about is the lack of clarity about the feedback, I would not have included &quot;incriminating&quot; evidence had I known this was given to the lecturer's directly - though I am unsure if that was an incorrect assumption on my part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;should I chase this up or should I let it go?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15702" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:41:52.113" Title="Should I chase up confidential feedback not being &quot;sanitised&quot;" Tags="&lt;anonymity&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-25T02:53:26.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is software related and there are no available source codes (or even executables at times!), or the code is very poor in ease of use, I will usually not cite it given an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to put this in more general terms: to what extent have you made it easy to reproduce your research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastEditorUserId="14626" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T21:12:37.400" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T21:12:37.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21406" CreationDate="2014-05-25T03:06:26.407" Score="5" ViewCount="1123" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I accept an offer to a professional program from one school (e.g., law, medicine, pharmacy, etc.) and then later get an offer to a better program from a different school, can I retroactively turn down the first offer to accept the second?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both schools are in Canada, but answers relevant for US schools may also be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm actually asking for my brother. The problem in his situation is that the acceptance deadline for one school is after the offer date for another (&quot;better&quot;) school. The first school has refused to extend the deadline and the second school has refused to give early notification that an offer is pending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hesitant to say the exact type of program because I don't want to expose his identity to anyone making a decision regarding his admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following question is about grad school, not professional programs, so I'm unsure if the answers apply.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18859/is-it-legal-to-withdraw-a-signed-offer-letter-from-grad-school&quot;&gt;Is it legal to withdraw a signed offer letter from grad school?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T03:27:07.807" Title="Retroactively turning down an accepted offer to a professional program from one school in favour of an offer from another school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;law&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21393" CreationDate="2014-05-25T03:11:43.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As user11192 says, the closing sentence does not matter much.  I'd advise you to focus on proofreading your entire letter.  Not to be unkind, but there are typographical mistakes in two of your three closings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. If you need further information, Please feel free&#xA;  to contact me at: My email&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first letter in &quot;Please&quot; should not be capitalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you evaluate my eligibility for financial aid better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine, except, as aeismail points out, financial aid is need-based, while you are applying for a job, which is presumably merit-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope this helps, please let me know if you need more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/34/&quot;&gt;comma splice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a closing, I would also thank the professor for his/her time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if any further information would be helpful.  Thank you for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T03:11:43.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21353" CreationDate="2014-05-25T03:12:59.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mendeley can do this, though for non open access articles, you will get at most the abstract. Also, there's no guarantee on automatically getting pdfs, as this depends on user uploads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T03:12:59.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21403" CreationDate="2014-05-25T03:27:07.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first school won't like it, but there would be nothing to stop your brother from backing out of the first offer and accepting the second offer, unless the schools work closely together to prevent this from occurring, which seems highly unlikely, especially because their notification dates differ so greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your brother is accepted to the second program, the most courteous way to inform the first program would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as quickly as possible, so they can accept someone from their waiting list or otherwise make use of the information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;without insulting the first program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, he might write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I realize that, as grateful as I am for admission into your program, pursuing it would not be the right thing for me to do at this time and that I should not have accepted your offer.  I am very sorry that I have to withdraw my acceptance.  I hope it is not too late for you to offer the place to a student who is a better fit for your program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T03:27:07.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21421" CreationDate="2014-05-25T03:58:16.313" Score="9" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a previous book I wrote, I submitted the entire manuscript along with a couple page proposal to a few different publishers. Both editors never responded to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current book, I sent the entire manuscript with a short description to an editor at Springer, and it has been two weeks, and I have heard nothing, not even an acknowledgement of receipt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I doing something against proper procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I emailed the editor again asking her if she received the manuscript, and she said she did. She was just on vacation. (I guess Europeans take longer ones than those in the U.S. are used to…)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T21:27:55.987" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T21:27:55.987" Title="Is it bad practice to submit the entire manuscript for an initial book proposal to a publisher?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T05:01:42.967" Score="21" ViewCount="6053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to give up my current PhD program, which I started 5 months ago, because I really do not like my current advisor's personality and working style. He lives a relaxed life and has no enthusiasm for science after getting tenure.  He does not  have funding and never releases decent papers because he does not work hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I like my current direction. So I want to give up my PhD and switch to the master's program - as I have nearly finished all the coursework, and I do not want a gap in my CV - and then apply to a new school, as there is no other professor in my school doing work in my direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how can I tell him that I want to leave the PhD program? I do not want to tell him the true reason, because I want him to write a recommendation for me, and I think he likes me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9983" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T23:22:08.670" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T23:44:29.670" Title="How to tell my advisor I am leaving the PhD program, when he is the reason I'm leaving?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21393" CreationDate="2014-05-25T05:25:34.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is not important as long as he think you are eligible for his RA. The important thing is to show him that you have the ability to do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T05:25:34.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21413" CreationDate="2014-05-25T05:56:29.633" Score="3" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working on an assignment (e.g. essay, report), is it allowable or ethical to reference (as in both &quot;read&quot; and &quot;cite&quot;) previous students' submissions for that assignment? For example, the student may have a friend or relative that sat the subject previously and is happy to share their assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, unless the teaching institution has an explicit policy, this should be allowable assuming the referencing is done correctly. So saying, it may not be the best educational experience, as the student may not undertake the critical thinking and research the assignment expects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am not talking about referencing assignments of students currently studying that subject. That is clearly collusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also assume the student attained previous submissions with consent from all the authors. However, I do not assume that all students currently working on the assignment have access to all past submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15706" LastEditorUserId="15706" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T07:23:28.957" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T09:05:38.597" Title="Referencing assignments from past students" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21412" CreationDate="2014-05-25T09:46:27.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is both ethical and within the rules (or at least it is within the rules at my university) as long as the reference is clearly cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it should also be fine with current students as long as the work is cited too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example for undergraduate experimental lab course I took during my 3rd year, I worked on an experiment with 2 other students working on the same experiment independently. We each had to write a project report on the results we obtained during the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one of us managed to get a particular dataset for a part of the experiment that was sensitive to conditions and difficult to get results on. In that situation we were able to used that student's data so we could discuss their result in our report (as long as we cited the person who actually obtained the dataset, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a seperate experiment I let someone use a java code I wrote for the analysis. This was also fine, because the person cited me when they used my code in their report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if the handin were supposed to be completely independently written (e.g. a math problem sheet) it would be collusion to reference older (or current) work but that is generally acceptable to cite anything (past student work or otherwise) in work which you would normally expect to see citation (e.g. essay or report).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have assessment regulations, there is probably a clear indication of what your university expect in there. That would not be able to tell you the answer to ethics part of this question but otherwise might be able to tell you the rule at your College or University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="1248" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T11:50:34.337" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T11:50:34.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2014-05-25T10:13:15.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've written so far, here is my interpretation of the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at some point, the university sets a blanket ban on sponsoring visas for &quot;staff positions&quot; (this is standard terminology for &quot;not faculty positions&quot;).  This is not so unreasonable; you can understand why it would seem like a waste of money to sponsor a secretary or a janitor for a visa.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at some later point, the position you're applying for is created.  There are a lot of complicated negotiations that go into creating such a position. This particular one involves 3 universities and 2 private foundations, so I'm sure it was very tricky to set them up.  For some reason, the position is classified as &quot;staff.&quot;   The line between &quot;staff&quot; and &quot;faculty&quot; is not 100% clean-cut (for example, librarians can be on one side or another, depending on the institution). I can only guess at what advantage this had (it seems likely there was one, though you should never completely count out the possibility of a straight-up mistake). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, voilà!  I would bet a reasonable sum of money that the people &quot;on the ground&quot; running this program are unhappy with the situation, and would like nothing more than to make decisions without considering immigration status, but these things can be pretty complicated.  Universities are big institutions, and it can often be very hard to change these sorts of things.  The money they would spend on lawyers for visas has to come from somewhere, and it's possible it's just not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T10:13:15.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26788" CreationDate="2014-05-25T10:25:23.353" Score="5" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reaching out because I'd like to take a Master's Degree in Spain (which starts in October), but my current job will end in December, and I'm trying to find an effective way to organize classes with the course's professors to study from home for the first few months, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The course is a programming one, and a big part of it is interaction between students and with teachers. What I thought would be an acceptable solution is a mix between &lt;a href=&quot;https://realtimeboard.com/&quot;&gt;Realtime Board&lt;/a&gt; and Skype, but it would require someone to watch over my assigned &quot;station&quot;, and would in my opinion disrupt the flow of the class. Are there any alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I need two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A tool like RB, but specifically for code (although RB itself could be used if no alternative is found); basically an online, self-refreshing collaborative space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A communication tool. Skype is sometimes unreliable with my current connection, but maybe there are other ways other than recording each lesson to do this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone needs more information to answer properly feel free to ask, and if the question is not appropriate for Academia, do suggest a better site, I'm all ears!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15678" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T16:46:15.323" Title="Effective way to organize a course so that it can be followed from abroad" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;student-employee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2014-05-25T11:57:45.100" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a good reference the only thing you can really try is to tell him the subject does not suit you at all and fit your new found plan to become an x, y or z. Your supervisor may wonder why you are asking for a reference to go do some similar course if you do that after telling him you hate the subject, though...Your supervisor may try to persuade you to stay, in which case you could negotiate he stop doing whatever is annoying you or just keep firm with your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must not do is fake family death or personal illness. You will in all likelihood, need to prove those have happened, especially if you want a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think not liking your supervisor is a terrible reason to quit your PhD. You will always have to suffer fools in life, that is just part of being an adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1248" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T13:26:04.663" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T13:26:04.663" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2014-05-25T13:31:07.483" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell him why you're even more excited about the places to which you're applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At University X, Dr. Y is doing groundbreaking work in Z, and has published three papers in Prestigious Journal With A Latin Title in the last two years alone. Her students are also proving amazing results and speaking all over the world about them, and one of them just got a job at Top-Class University W. Every week they have a seminar where they discuss blah-blah-blah... [etc., etc.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm grateful for all the opportunities you've afforded me here, and I think that X,Y, and Z would be an even better fit for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T13:31:07.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21420" CreationDate="2014-05-25T14:08:25.953" Score="5" ViewCount="1270" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an application to a Master programme, I am asked to send:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a description of my study motivation on 2 pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an informal application letter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;informal application letter&quot; mean? Is it something commonly asked for an application? I really don't understand what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15712" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T16:26:15.707" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T16:26:15.707" Title="What does &quot;informal application letter&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21419" CreationDate="2014-05-25T14:28:38.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would interpret that as asking for a short letter that briefly states what you are applying for, your educational background, interests and goals, why you are interested in their   program specifically, and mentions anything else you'd like them to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T14:28:38.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21407" CreationDate="2014-05-25T14:33:17.090" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerpub.com/resources/Authors/Book-Proposals#.U4H9xMKx7cs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book proposal guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for Springer? It does not include sending the entire manuscript but does include items like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other contributors (include CVs)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who's the audience including undergraduate or graduate &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What book do you see as the main competitor? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-4 paragraphs describing the contents of the book &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unique Selling Points (why should someone buy this book)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not sure that I've linked to the book proposal guidelines for your area, but they surely exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second Note: Geremia provided a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.springer.com/series/5710#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book series webpage&lt;/a&gt;. Poking around on the page and tracing links, I did find a general &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/book-authors-editors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manuscript preparation page&lt;/a&gt;, but nothing on what the proposal should look like. I maintain that unless they tell you explicitly to send the entire manuscript, you should send a brief proposal or even a query (&quot;are there guidelines I should follow?&quot;) to the editor first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on blogs and articles that I've read by fiction editors and agents, not following published guidelines for a submission is one of the top pet peeves and a quick way for your submission to get deleted or tossed in the recycle bin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastEditorUserId="5711" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T18:33:10.930" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T18:33:10.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21428" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:12:08.563" Score="3" ViewCount="18724" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should citations be used in introductions and conclusions if they just introduce and summarize the body of the essay where all others' ideas are referenced in details? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas that are not discussed in the body of the essay but belongs to others are excluded from this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T17:19:52.413" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T19:04:07.757" Title="Referencing others' ideas in introductions and conclusions?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21425" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:23:11.457" Score="6" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it academic to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, after some introductory ideas, you tell the the reader this essay or section discusses so and so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should the writer end the introduction with the thesis statement that indirectly tells the reader what the essay is about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T06:05:35.670" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T06:17:02.303" Title="Is it a good academic practice to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21337" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:24:40.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, your career interests may change, and at the moment seem to be rather varied. However, there are a few things you can do to prepare for a graduate career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Research the programs you are interested in (Harvard, Stanford, MIT) as well as similar programs that you would be willing to apply to. You will likely need to split this into two groups: architecture and law. Once you've identified approximately a 6-12 of each type of program, look at their admissions criteria, recommended coursework, and suggested extracurricular or work experience. Most graduate programs will indicate the grade point averages, standardized test scores, and subject matter experience they desire in applicants. Generate lists of the most frequently mentioned criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Examine the offerings at Hamilton College in relation to those lists. If the law schools all request you take Intro to PolySci, be sure to work that, or an equivalent course, into your schedule. If the architecture schools all require you to submit a drawing sample, plan on taking at least one art class so that you can develop a portfolio (and possibly a letter from the professor). If certain specialty courses are unavailable at Hamilton, see if you are able to take the class at a nearby university, or complete it as an independent study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) As you narrow your career interests, use the summers (or possibly the school year) to engage in internships or jobs in those fields. Entry level work in a specific field and internships are often seen as markers that students are driven, organized, and mature. You may also consider joining undergraduate student organizations in these areas, such as the American Institute of Architecture Students (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aias.org/website/article.asp?id=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.aias.org/website/article.asp?id=8&lt;/a&gt;), which can engage you in the field at a national level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Regardless of where you apply, you will eventually need letters of recommendation. Be conscious of this while in school and develop strong relationships with your professors. Speak up in class, volunteer for projects, and seek their advice on your career.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attended a small, private liberal arts college and used similar steps to prepare myself for possible graduate careers in biology and psychology, and found them to be effective. Although the school may not have been a tier 1 research institution or offer classes in every subject, the flexibility to complete independent projects and faculty support were invaluable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T18:13:36.027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:13:36.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21423" CreationDate="2014-05-25T16:06:25.303" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;essay&quot;, but for an academic paper in general, the reader should be told a minimum of four times what the paper is about and what your contribution is. This should be stated in (1) the title, (2) the abstract, (3) the introduction, and (4) the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a typical North American style. In some academic cultures, such as Northern Europe where I'm sitting, it's common to not do any of that. In a typical paper here, you can read all of the four parts mentioned above and still have no idea what the author is bringing to the table. You're guaranteed to annoy many readers that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer to your question is: Tell the reader as soon as possible what the point and punchline of your paper is. The reader doesn't want a mystery novel, he wants to know as soon as possible whether your paper is worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T16:06:25.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21407" CreationDate="2014-05-25T16:10:02.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure the author meant different Springer:) if there is no reply, try calling the editor you find via contacts listed for each discipline at springer.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, do always mention that the proposal was also sent to xxx, so as to avoid more editors arranging reviews for the same proposal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T16:10:02.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21422" CreationDate="2014-05-25T19:04:07.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question, you're asking whether statements in an introduction or conclusion which summarise fully-referenced, more detailed statements in the body of your writing should be referenced too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is the same as for anything, regardless of where it's found in something you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a statement is &lt;em&gt;your own conclusion&lt;/em&gt; based on information you have drawn from outside sources, then as long as you note what information you got from which sources by referencing correctly within the body of the document where you explain how you came to your conclusion, you don't need to reference this conclusive or interpretive statement; it's the result of your own mental process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the statement &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; information from another source, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; reference it. Whether or not it's heavily summarised or you intend to expand on the statement, with references, later, the simple rule of referencing everything that did not originate with your own work still applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, though, I'd advise you to check with your teacher, tutor, student advisor, TA, lecturer, or whomever else applies. What I explained above is technically the right way to do it, but it wouldn't surprise me if some institutions at least aren't quite that strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15664" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T19:04:07.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21412" CreationDate="2014-05-25T19:19:21.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Magpie's answer as far as it goes; I don't think it's &lt;em&gt;unethical&lt;/em&gt; to reference work done by past students in your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my worry would be that, except perhaps in certain specific environments, &quot;work done by past students&quot; is hardly authoritative. Courses for my degree, at least, only accept certain types of sources, mostly published books, certifiably authoritative websites, and of course journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I don't see a problem with reading past work, and of course mentioning that you have read it, but I personally wouldn't be comfortable with &lt;em&gt;citing&lt;/em&gt; that work as a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this becomes less applicable the further up the education system you go; if you're writing a dissertation, you'll almost certainly be referencing past dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the important question here, on a practical level, is whether or not &lt;em&gt;your instructor&lt;/em&gt; thinks that reading or citing past students' work is ethical, not whether it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd advise caution; an email to whoever assigned the work, or a trip to their office, is more than worth the effort, considering the possible consequences if they eventually do decide that this is collusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15664" LastEditorUserId="15664" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T09:05:38.597" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T09:05:38.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2014-05-25T21:21:39.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to conferences, give talks on your work, highlight unexplored questions, extensions and applications.  Work gets cited when you convince other people there's something interesting to do, and they then write follow up papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T21:21:39.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T22:54:46.683" Score="12" ViewCount="1552" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or just city in some formats? I mean, I could maybe guess why it was marginally helpful a century ago, but why now? What use is it for my reader to know that a book I'm citing was published in Berlin, Boston, and Fresno, or more to the point, that the nearest city to me where a certain book was printed years ago happens to be Fresno? If the point is to look up the book, wouldn't the ISBN be far more useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15725" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T23:36:11.983" Title="Why do we cite books with publisher and city?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-26T05:32:44.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21432" CreationDate="2014-05-25T23:36:11.983" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Versions published in different countries can differ - it's not uncommon for books to be published in one version in the US/Canada, and slightly differently elsewhere. Even a minor difference like binding could conceivably affect page references, so it's important to be clear in that sense. There's also a wider principle of redundancy; if the author does get some part of the citation wrong (say, misspells the author's surname) the more information included in the rest of the citation the better the reader has a chance of recovering the actual item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to why we use human-meaningful information rather than details like an ISBN, I would venture that dense information like an ISBN is actually quite difficult to read for a human; it's easy for the author to mistype the number when producing the bibliography, and then easy for the reader to mistype it when looking up the reference. It's comparatively harder to get details like publisher name and city wrong. If I'm looking through a bibliography or list of references I much prefer to see information I understand than a collection of opaque numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said the above, I'm sure to a large extent it's an historical tradition that has persisted. Certainly before the development of international reference standards like the ISBN system the above arguments held even more weight, and in the days of much less extreme globalisation the various global offices of major publishing houses were much more autonomous. It might conceivably have been quite a different undertaking to be published by, say, Oxford University Press in Oxford rather than Oxford University Press in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6899" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T23:36:11.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21365" CreationDate="2014-05-26T01:08:02.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually create a few safeguards like telling everyone from the beginning that only the best 10 out of the 13 quizzes will count towards the grade (so you can just miss 3 and still get the full score), that I will average 2 other midterms if one midterm exam was missed for a good reason, and that everybody who aces the final (&gt;95%) gets a decent grade even if he has performed poorly during the semester (this can be implemented in many ways). After that I allow no make-ups except for the time conflict on the final exam (this is out of my hands anyway and is governed by the general university policies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that I allow the students to take some time off without any effect on the grade, so if they encounter some temporary problem during the semester, they can easily compensate for it by doing well the rest of the time without any special arrangements or (sometimes awkward) explanations. On the other hand, if somebody tells me that his grandmother died on the date of the first midterm, his girlfriend left him on the date of the second, and he was hit by a car when coming to take the third, then I just suggest that he sort out his personal life before enrolling into the course.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T01:08:02.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21365" CreationDate="2014-05-26T01:34:34.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I penalize late work &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; strongly: 2 marks out of 10 for each day late. This is to prevent a cascade of lateness from assignment to assignment. However that is for folks with no reason who just didn't get it done on time. When someone wants an extension, to write the midterm or final on a different day, or to have the marking scheme changed, and proffers me some reason for it like the ones you mentioned, &lt;strong&gt;I send them to Special Needs&lt;/strong&gt; aka Student Services aka Disability Services etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? They are trained on this stuff. They know when to ask for a doctor's note and how to evaluate one. They can think of more creative solutions than just having more time. They know when someone is &quot;playing you&quot; and when they need help. That's their job and they're way better at it than I am. &lt;strong&gt;When they direct me to accommodate, I do&lt;/strong&gt; with no qualms at all. I have been so directed for both physical and mental or emotional reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a fair number of students ask to write a final early to accommodate a plane ticket they bought long in advance. I defer these to the departmental secretary, who knows all the students and their history. If she's willing to supervise you writing it, I'll compose a special one for you. If not, too bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps me, as an adjunct, because I don't know the students super well. I believe it also results in decisions that are fairer both to the student with a problem and the rest of the class. I have never had a complaint about this approach in the 12 years or so I've been doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T01:34:34.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21438" CreationDate="2014-05-26T02:04:52.313" Score="29" ViewCount="11292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been updating my academic CV. I realise that some items are not as internationally recognised as to that every reader will be aware of their importance without googling them. Hence, I am thinking about inserting hyperlinks to those items lest the reader wish to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, many items on my CV are clickable, and a reader particularly interested in one item may now just click on it to see a webpage with more details to pop up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I rarely see a CV with many hyperlinks behind those words/phrases. Is this a taboo, or I am OK to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="23602" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T00:28:00.097" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T01:31:43.307" Title="Is it advisable to have many clickable hyperlinks in an academic CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21436" CreationDate="2014-05-26T04:06:28.397" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as it does not reduce readability, I don't see any reason for not including hyperlinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readability is of course about format. As a personal preference, I would not like to read a document where all words are in blue and underlined, or equation numbers in a red square. So you have to find a way to make the links discreet (but still easily noticeable by the reader). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readability is also, and mainly, about the content. Be sure your content is still clear when your CV is printed (or in case links are broken). Also, try to keep links meaningful. In particular, keep all your links high-quality: if links to your publications or to the diploma system of your home country will help for your evaluation, you would ruin all your effect if these links are &quot;drowned&quot; in a sea of meaningless links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you consider about tool-tips instead of some links? It will still provide some information, but with the drawback of having to load a new page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T05:12:37.053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T05:12:37.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21436" CreationDate="2014-05-26T05:11:24.917" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree: most academic CVs do not have a festival of hyperlinks.  I don't see a problem with it, unless -- as @Taladris says -- the large amount of hyperlinking creates clutter in the document.  For something like a CV, where the spacing on the page is highly adjustable, I would think that you could probably have even a highly hyperlinked CV and take a little care to make sure that it does not look too busy to the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you though why I don't feel the need to hyperlink my CV (and I imagine the reason holds more generally).  It's simple: I also have a webpage, and anything which appears on my CV which could get linked to also appears on my webpage.  Further, the translation between the two is straightforward: I have a section of my CV listing papers, and I also have an immediately visible link to a subpage containing papers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/&quot;&gt;my main webpage&lt;/a&gt; (which, as you can see, is no frills to say the least, but it seems to get the job done).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I am certainly no expert on the visual display of information, webpage design (you'll know that immediately if you clicked on the above link) or anything like that, it is my opinion that a webpage is a more natural medium to have clickable content than a CV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think every young academic should have a professional webpage.  If they do have one, I'm not sure that a heavily hyperlinked CV is necessary, although again I see no harm in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T05:11:24.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21423" CreationDate="2014-05-26T06:17:02.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to structure an introduction. However, in the context of psychology I am familiar with the two broad approaches you mention to writing an introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In psychology, students are often taught to write lab reports using an &lt;strong&gt;hour glass structure&lt;/strong&gt; where they start broad and then narrow in gradually into stating aims and hypotheses at the end of the introduction. This structure can really annoying to read, because the purpose of the paper is not immediately clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer the &lt;strong&gt;opening-body-currentstudy&lt;/strong&gt; structure for an introduction.&#xA;Specifically, the opening section of the introduction contains around three paragraphs that cover the importance of the work, a little context, a little bit of the gap, and importantly &lt;strong&gt;the aims of the paper&lt;/strong&gt;. The introduction then reviews relevant literature, and culminates in a statement of a brief description of the current study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/how-to-write-introduction-section-in.html&quot;&gt;see here for a little more discussion&lt;/a&gt;). Thus, in the opening few paragraphs, you might have a paragraph that begins: &quot;The purpose of this paper is...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general principle is: Make it easy for the reviewer/reader to see what is the novel contribution of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T06:17:02.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T06:57:09.090" Score="66" ViewCount="11003" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a published research paper I would like to read. The website it is published in, charges what I think is quite a lot of money, considering that I won't use this for research or work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to read this paper because its about a subject I am really interested in, but has nothing to do with what I study. I am a software engineering student and had never participated on any kind of research and I do not quite understand how all this things work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is: is it right to ask for a copy of this paper to its author? If it is, how should I do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15729" LastEditorUserId="12050" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T07:44:05.780" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T15:49:14.867" Title="Is it right and polite to ask for a free copy of a published paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2014-05-26T07:36:44.580" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that it could be a problem to ask politely for a copy of this paper. It is understood, however, that you are polite and say thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are interested, you should show it that way. It doesn't hurt to ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T07:36:44.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2014-05-26T08:00:11.753" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an issue with this question in that one request &quot;is no request&quot; but if this becomes systematic, each author starts to become a &quot;server&quot; for their papers. I am sure no-one would want to end up in that situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally do not mind if someone asks for a particular paper as long as they also engage in some scientific discussion on why they want it. There is of course no rule that says you must do that other than common courtesy. Fortunately, I am not in a position to get many requests but back in the day of paper reprints, it was known that some persons (still scientists) were simply collectors who wrote and asked for every paper that was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, if you really have use for a specific paper and you have a hard time finding it, don't hesitate to ask. Saying a few words about why you are interested in the paper may start up a positive conversation on the topic and your interest. The main point is: make it a positive event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T08:00:11.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19923" CreationDate="2014-05-26T08:07:42.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can't get into the PhD program without it, I would ask them if it is a requirement or an opportunity to prove one's ability. I think that it is important to get a guarantee, or at least a good chance to get into the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has certain advantages to work there before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better contacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Already acclimated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know the software and equipment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would pursue the second master but I think it would make more sense to apply directly to PhD programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:38:27.920" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:38:27.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21436" CreationDate="2014-05-26T08:10:50.293" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;General advise would be, yes, include links but do not rely on them for key information. You do not necessarily know if the recipients read the electronic version or a printout. If it is a printout, it is very unlikely that people will key in URLs to look up information, unless &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are interested. In for, example a job application, your application may be one of a large number and there may not be time to spend on looking up information that should have been included directly in the first place. Remember it is you responsibility to yourself to provide everything the reader of the CV may want, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although, there is no problem with including links, think twice about what information you link to and what you actually put in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T08:10:50.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2014-05-26T08:55:44.633" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a search engine to see if there's a free copy online &amp;ndash; many authors put their papers on their own websites and, in some fields, on ArXiv or other repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your university's library if they already have access to a free copy online or have it on paper &amp;ndash; libraries subscribe to as many journals as they can afford to and may also be able to obtain a copy from another library at less cost than from the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of those options work, politely email the corresponding author (if there is one, or any author, if there isn't) and ask for a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T14:20:11.147" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T14:20:11.147" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21447" CreationDate="2014-05-26T10:38:12.467" Score="13" ViewCount="1791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm immensely grateful for the online courses on theoretical physics provided by the Perimeter Institute for free. A particular professor stands out for me, as the lectures were excellent, and the course was structured very well. Would it be appropriate or acceptable to send a small token of appreciation to the professor via (physical) mail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T10:28:42.230" Title="Is it appropriate to send a gift to a professor for an online course?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21446" CreationDate="2014-05-26T11:03:14.470" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I deliver a significant number of online courses, though not for university credit. I appreciate emails, tweets, and other expressions of gratitude from those who enjoyed them. I am not sure how I would feel if a gift basket or a box of chocolates arrived at my office. Sure, everyone likes gifts, but it might feel a little creepy to be honest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I provide my courses to the organizations, and they're the ones who decide to make them free (Channel9 or MVA) or very cheap (Pluralsight), not me. So they are the ones who probably should be the target of the gratitude. Since PI &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/support-pi/how-give&quot;&gt;wants donations&lt;/a&gt;, why not make one, then email the lecturer saying thank you and letting them know you've made a donation because of how helpful they were. (You could also repeat the statement in public such as tweeting it or writing it on the institute's wall, so that PI are aware of the lecturer's contribution to their coffers.) I would appreciate that more than chocolate, myself - and I like chocolate a lot :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastEditorUserId="12693" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T13:47:26.480" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T13:47:26.480" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21348" CreationDate="2014-05-26T12:28:07.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the interview yesterday. I would like to share the experience as it might be useful for anybody who might go through similar kind of interviews in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interview was via Skype with an outsourced software engineer &lt;strong&gt;(not the prospective supervisor)&lt;/strong&gt;, and we used shared .doc file to solve two programming problems about &lt;em&gt;strings&lt;/em&gt;. By the way, most of programming interviews I had (mostly industrial and this academic one) pretty much involve strings manipulation and sometimes data structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interview lasted for an hour whereby I was given 20 minutes to solve each problem and 10 minutes to discuss. The general impression was positive. The concept was always known, yet I needed some practicing to make my code works.&#xA;I was given the choice to choose the programming language I like to write in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, bachelor level of programming is enough. You will just need to revise and practice a little bit your information. You might need to focus on the logic you follow more than the small details that differ from language to another.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2016-06-08T05:54:54.093" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T05:54:54.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21436" CreationDate="2014-05-26T13:21:15.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option is to keep most (if not all) hyper-links the same font and colour as the rest of the text. Most PDF readers change the cursor icon when hovering over a hyperlink, so if the reader expects something to be a hyper-link (such as an email address or DOI), they should easily discover that it is indeed a link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will not be so obvious that some less crucial links exist, but for the eagle-eyed viewer &lt;em&gt;they are there&lt;/em&gt;. For those who are just quickly scanning the document, the links won't introduce distracting clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T13:21:15.517" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19923" CreationDate="2014-05-26T14:21:00.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the department and ask them directly &quot;How many students who applied to the PhD program and were only accepted into the masters program end up graduating with a PhD?&quot; If this number is very low, I'd advise against this. Some professors will discriminate against masters students when looking for students to do research with, and if this is the culture at UoT, you should know about it going in. The worst outcome is you end up paying for a second masters and leave with two masters degrees in computer science, which will look unusual in job interviews. I know of at least one interviewer at a company who said he automatically views two masters degrees in the same subject (or even a highly related subject) as a big red flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be better to enter a PhD program at a different university or get a job. You can always apply to PhD programs next year. I know of several students with less than stellar academic performance who enter good PhD programs with work experience. As someone who has read a fair amount of personal statements before, those who have been in industry for a few years tend to write better ones. They tend to know what they want and are not going into academia just because it is the &quot;next step&quot; without thinking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer science has the advantage that often you don't need a university to do your own research. Start doing research in your spare time. If you find a question you are really interested in and have made some progress, contact professors who work in that area at various PhD programs. You have a much better shot of getting into a good PhD program if a professor has notified the admissions committee that they want to work with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T14:37:53.393" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T14:37:53.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T14:22:24.187" Score="6" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently took courses from several different schools, with different semesters in different parts of the US. When visiting the schools' library Web sites, I noticed that each offered a similar &quot;search all resources link&quot; with a login, eventually leading to EBSCO. I expected the significantly larger and more expensive university to offer more &quot;premium&quot; access. I could not find any difference in the available results and down-loadable articles from one institution or the other. Do nearly all schools pay for nearly the same access? Can I expect nearly all schools to use EBSCO and the search results for electronic resources to be identical at each institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:03:29.697" Title="Do all US schools provide the same access to e-journal resources?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;library&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2014-05-26T14:38:42.483" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although EBSCO appears to be ubiquitous, the level of access you can find across ALL schools definitely varies. As undergrads at a community college, my classmates and I would occasionally visit nearby university libraries just to access their larger online databases. Not only did they subscribe to more databases, they also had greater levels of access than my home institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Community colleges may be somewhat of an outlier in this respect because of their typically limited funding/resources. Across other institutions-of-higher-learning, you can expect greater similarity in the databases provided at the general level. However, many institutions, or colleges within them, will have a specialty focus and will provide access to journals specific to that specialty. Those specialty journals are not available across all institutions, especially those with limited funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T15:03:29.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:03:29.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T14:52:09.327" Score="0" ViewCount="10685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to these forums, but I thought I'd take a stab at asking about my situation. I have two BS degrees, one in electrical engineering and the other in physics. I'm wanting to go to grad school in either physics, engineering, or something in between. My problem is that I have a 2.3 cumulative gpa, however I do have a slew of other things going for me that I was wanting to get opinions on how much they would help with admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done research in plasma physics for over 2 years. It was due to that project that I was place into the McNair Scholars program and was given the opportunity to travel overseas to perform research at a European fusion energy lab last year. I've graduated, but was hired by the same research group to perform data analysis work for the project. I learned alot about experimental physics: solid state particle detectors, vacuum chambers, spectrum analysis, linux operation systems, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my engineering major I become involved with a team that built, tested, programmed and will be launching an amateur radio satellite. I worked on the power systems of the craft, and learned alot about surface mount soldering, solar cells and battery charging power circuits, etc. I'm also planning the building and programming of a rotating machinery for our ground antennas. Out of this might come the chance to work with a mechanical engineering group launching their own satellite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also work in the power industry, currently as an intern, where I've done a few projects related to internet monitoring of devices attached to power lines, learned pcb design skills here. My job also had me write a paper (so I'd be first author there) related to cyber security that will be going to a conference later this year. Not sure if this will help specifically since that work isn't necessarily what I want to do graduate research in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently taking a year off to work, pay off debts, and study for good scores on the general and subject GRE's. I was also plannig on taking 1 or 2 grad courses and planning to ace them. My bad grades came from my first year courses, not from my junior and senior in-major courses. Come application time I can get plenty of good recommendation letters from various sources (not just in my university). I know my gpa is going to hurt me, but I was wondering if anyone has any experience about how much things I've done outside the classroom would offset that. Thanks for any opinions that might be helpful. Sorry for the wall of text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15747" LastEditorUserId="15747" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T15:10:27.280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:12:25.377" Title="Getting into grad school with a low gpa" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-05-26T15:20:18.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21456" CreationDate="2014-05-26T14:57:33.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me as if you definitely have a chance, though the GPA is somewhat low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you became better over time with regard to GPA is a very good sign. You may want to calculate your GPA by year so you can cite some figures if asked. Be prepared to explain why your GPA was low, or at least what you did to improve it. While interviewing, do not be late for an interview with faculty - study the campus maps and be sure to let any prior meetings to end soon enough to give you ample time to get to your next meeting! Being late may give professors time to look at your transcript and possibly ask some awkward questions that you otherwise likely need not worry much about if you have already gotten to this stage in the application process. Not to mention being late is not a good thing in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you can secure some good letters of recommendation from your research projects. This is absolutely critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, the job you get over the next year is also somewhat research related. If it is not too late, I would try to find such a job. Also, I don't know if it will suit you, but if you can find such a job, then you may even want to keep it longer than a year depending on how things go. If you can finish a good project, that will boost your chances even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think your plan for the subject GREs may be alright, if it does not interfere too much with my suggestions above. Taking tests is not a big part of most PhD programs, and even those where it is, only a few of the most selective programs require the subject GREs last I checked (which was a while ago). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastEditorUserId="14626" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T15:12:25.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:12:25.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21396" CreationDate="2014-05-26T15:25:41.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;googled switch codes and used the '\s' suffix tag. Problem solved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15696" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:25:41.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21461" CreationDate="2014-05-26T15:39:36.720" Score="7" ViewCount="2830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a Thesis and there are sections that require me to add fragments of code or a complete code. Should this be classified as a figure, table,listing or snippet ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12313" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:58:13.893" Title="How can code be classified in a Thesis(Figure, Table, Listing, etc)" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21460" CreationDate="2014-05-26T15:48:47.107" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insert it as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listing_%28computer%29&quot;&gt;listing&lt;/a&gt;. The convention is to print code verbatim in monospace font. If you're writing in LaTeX, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Source_Code_Listings&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;listings&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; package exists for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T15:48:47.107" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2014-05-26T16:51:15.930" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am always thrilled when someone asks for a copy of one of my journal papers, because I have adopted the pessimistic view that this stuff never gets read.  So yes, feel free to ask, so long as you are polite.  And as someone else pointed out, it wouldn't hurt to indicate why you want to read the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T16:51:15.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21707" CreationDate="2014-05-26T19:26:41.400" Score="6" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am roughly in the following situation (field: physics/mathematics, location: Europe):&#xA;I have enough credits to finish my undergraduate degree this year if I want to. I can also choose to stay as an undergrad for another year.&#xA;I have done almost all undergraduate courses at my university that interest me, so I would be doing graduate courses 90% of the time.&#xA;With some extra work, I could obtain a master's degree at my university. However, I could also apply for a PhD program immediately after finishing undergrad next year, without getting a master's degree first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not counting research experience, is it advantageous to 'formalize' one's graduate courses by getting a master's degree, from the viewpoint of career opportunities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about this because on the one hand, a master's degree may give other people a better indication of one's ability, but on the other hand admissions committees and such may be more demanding from students with a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15755" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T19:33:35.417" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T17:33:27.837" Title="Graduate courses as undergrad vs master's degree" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T20:38:18.570" Score="-1" ViewCount="6553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have missed my makeup exam this semester. We are given 3 chances at my university to pass a course, 1 regular, a retake and a third exam for those who failed the previous 2 ones. I missed the third exam because of work, and because I almost never able to keep up any schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote an email to my professor to let me retake it, but because I wrote my email at the same time as the exam was, my professor deems it unfair to give me another chance in this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was not a problem student I would agree with his decision, but I spent half a year in a psychiatric ward because I was unable to visit any kind of community, and in this very semester with the help of tranquilizers I almost attended all of my lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15758" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T14:54:12.220" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:54:12.220" Title="How do I convince my professor to let me retake an exam?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21468" CreationDate="2014-05-26T20:53:13.370" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask Disabled Students Services at your university for help. They can help with even recalcitrant faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T20:53:13.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2014-05-27T01:24:13.983" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've asked authors for copies of papers several times, always with a note about what in my own research led me to take an interest in that particular paper. The authors have always said yes. One even dug up an old paper copy and scanned it for me. I got the impression each time that they were delighted to hear that their work was relevant and interesting for new scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the authors' agreements with their publishers allow them to make single copies on request, so legalities are not normally a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15768" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T01:24:13.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21401" CreationDate="2014-05-27T02:54:55.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At most institutions in the United States, instructors are given their course evaluations in toto, only stripped of names. It's up to students to not write anything which would lead to deductive disclosure. But there's plausible deniability, so you could have feigned ignorance when she approached you (which was an entirely unprofessional thing to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about retribution then speak to your chair or at the very least send an email note so that you have a paper record of your concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T03:10:10.207" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T03:10:10.207" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-27T03:09:05.090" Score="1" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to complete an MRes or PhD, but do not live in an area with any schools. I would rather not relocate. I see that many schools offer paid MRes or PhD programs entirely via distance. Do schools sometimes also offer teaching or research assistantships via distance as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T03:14:16.357" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T23:20:00.287" Title="Do any schools offer teaching or research assistantships via distance education?" Tags="&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21378" CreationDate="2014-05-27T03:15:46.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't put your reason for leaving on your resume, this is instead an issue to be addressed in a cover letter and/or the interview itself. Your resume is a positive document, describing your strengths and qualifications and is designed for the sole purpose of landing an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the appropriate place to explain your current situation and reasons for applying is in the cover letter. Here you summarize your key qualification and why you are applying for the job. Mentioning your ambitions to develop a career taking precedent over your PhD program should explain your resume plenty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15772" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T03:20:33.133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T03:20:33.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21393" CreationDate="2014-05-27T04:57:11.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just say&quot;Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. Should you need additional information, do not hesitate to contact me at ... (phone, e-mail, whatever). Yours, (your name)&quot;. &quot;I hope this helps&quot; sounds like it is you, who are doing him a favor by sending him all that stuff to read, which is hardly the case. On the other hand, I'm not a native English speaker, so take all I said with a grain of salt. And yeah, the outcome depends much more on what is in your explanation than on how the ending passage is constructed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T04:57:11.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-27T05:39:03.797" Score="3" ViewCount="2445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Indian undergraduate student completing my BTech in Industrial Engineering in one of top three universities in India. I am planning to move on to physics for graduate school and I have a proper profile for it with research projects and internships in physics. I am confident I would get accepted to a good graduate program for physics, probably in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After browsing through the forums I found, it appears that a masters or PhD in physics is not a very lucrative option in terms of career. I in fact read that people are still in search of jobs after their PhD for three or four years. I also heard engineers have significantly greater career security after their graduation. So I am considering a double major in Physics as well as in Engineering to increase my future job prospects. I am determined focus on Physics in my masters program so it seems I should either to major in Physics and minor in Engineering or major in both. My primary job preference would be in the field of Physics academia, but wouldn't mind shifting to other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is the best choice of undergraduate major/minors to provide me the best career prospects?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15173" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:51:09.593" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:51:09.593" Title="Double major in Physics and engineering for career safety" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21479" CreationDate="2014-05-27T05:50:13.577" Score="16" ViewCount="2398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found an interesting paper which is very relevant to my research. After reading the abstract in English, I would like to continue to read through the methodology and its discussions. However, only the abstract is available in English, and the content is in another language which I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really want to read through the content as some of the figures are very interesting to me. I have tried to translate it using Google Translate, but it is very difficult to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it appropriate to send a polite email to the author, asking for a translation of your paper in English? Does the author have the obligation to do so?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T06:00:49.050" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T12:56:08.417" Title="Is it appropriate to ask an author for an English translation of a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21478" CreationDate="2014-05-27T06:15:17.080" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm aware there is no obligation to provide a translation of a published paper from one language to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be rude &lt;strong&gt;to ask&lt;/strong&gt; for a translation of a paper. However, it would generally be fine to &lt;strong&gt;enquire&lt;/strong&gt; as to whether such a translation exists, or whether similar work has been published in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More broadly, it may be in the author's interests to provide an English translation in order to increase the impact of his or her work. &#xA;If the work is really important to you, you could always pay for a translation. At the extreme end, perhaps where there are a large number of important works in a particular language, you may even want to learn the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T06:21:47.457" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T06:21:47.457" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21482" CreationDate="2014-05-27T07:14:54.173" Score="10" ViewCount="1535" Body="&lt;p&gt;A mathematical result is presented in a set of lecture notes by a professor, and I have not been able to locate any journal papers which include the result. Would it be appropriate to ask the professor, via e-mail, for a citation to a journal paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am not a student of the lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T07:28:16.400" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T07:28:16.400" Title="Can I ask a professor (via e-mail) for a citation for a result presented in lecture notes?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21481" CreationDate="2014-05-27T07:27:45.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, it can't hurt to send a brief, polite email. Just make &lt;strong&gt;sure&lt;/strong&gt; that the reference isn't already given somewhere in the notes, or the professor's course website, or his/her list of suggested reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should prepare for the possibility that your email will go unanswered. Professors tend to be busy. There is little-to-no benefit to them (other than the pleasure of helping out another human being, that is) in tracking down a reference for someone who isn't a colleague, student, or potential collaborator. There's also the possibility that this professor didn't prepare his/her own lecture notes, and the grad student who &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; is long gone, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T07:27:45.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21478" CreationDate="2014-05-27T08:07:35.823" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to send a polite email to the author, asking for a translation of your paper in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to almost any question that starts with &quot;Is it appropriate to send a polite email&quot; is yes. You are of course allowed to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if there is no English translation of the paper already available, to which the author can just point you, I am pretty certain that the answer will be &quot;no&quot;. It seems very unlikely that the author translates an entire paper on your request into your language, basically so that you don't have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the author have the obligation to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course not&lt;/strong&gt; (and I strongly suggest not indicating anything along that line in the polite mail you are writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume for a second the paper is actually written in English, but you are a native speaker of a not very common language (Swedish, for instance). Assume further that your English is not very good and you cannot understand the paper well. You wouldn't feel entitled to having the author produce a Swedish version of the paper for you, would you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:52:06.763" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:52:06.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21484" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:29:00.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is a sample definition of the academic supervision from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicine.usask.ca/che/programs/msc/academic-supervision-msc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Saskatchewan&lt;/a&gt;. This definition may vary by university and discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Upon admission into the Department, each student will be assigned an academic advisor, whom he/she should contact for advice regarding courses, possible thesis topics, etc. Once the student identifies a thesis topic, he/she may, with the advice of the academic advisor, arrange to have another faculty member serve as research supervisor. The research supervisor is usually a member  of the Department. An Advisory Committee will be established for each student as early in the program as possible. The Committee consists of at least three members, including the Department Head or designate and the research supervisor. Faculty from other departments may be included if appropriate. Each student is responsible for ensuring an annual review of progress towards a degree is conducted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:48:50.060" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:48:50.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21485" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:29:00.777" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic supervision, which is broadly defined as the supervisory relationship between advisors and their students. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:48:40.323" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:48:40.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21486" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-27T10:21:12.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colorado State University&lt;/a&gt; definition of academic evaluation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate is to assess or appraise. Evaluation is the process of examining a subject and rating it based on its important features. We determine how much or how little we value something, arriving at our judgment on the basis of criteria that we can define.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:46:56.960" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:46:56.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21487" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-27T10:21:12.927" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic evaluation and the process of evaluation." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:47:05.517" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:47:05.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-27T10:30:33.613" Score="1" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone has a PhD contract in France and wants to work during summer for instance, is it fine if that person receives any external support during that time, outside the PhD contract support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6617" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T23:51:21.447" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T23:51:21.447" Title="Can you do paid external work under a PhD contract in France?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;france&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21436" CreationDate="2014-05-27T10:51:46.953" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise against including &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; hyperlinks in your CV. There is very good chance that your CV will be printed out for consideration and it is at this point that you need to have your CV shine so you should design your CV to be read on paper rather than on screen. Hyperlinks, by necessity, will want to be formatted differently from the surrounding text but this will look odd in a printout where the links are non-functional and add no benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:51:46.953" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21644" CreationDate="2014-05-27T11:00:30.460" Score="11" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;My supervisor has asked me to stay in a lab in a foreign country for a few months. That lab has some collaboration with us but their research is actually not related to mine. I don't know why my supervisor asked me to go, but I think it would be a great chance to broaden my experience so I did not complaint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides travelling around the city and knowing new friends, what should I prepare and what should I do there to utilize this opportunity to help my PhD? I hope this opportunity can both benefit me academically and personally.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T14:16:08.980" Title="How to maximize the benefit of an exchange opportunity during PhD" Tags="&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21488" CreationDate="2014-05-27T11:07:27.240" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with the French law, but if you are an employee and don't have an exclusivity contract, it should be fine. If you are funded by grants, they may require the student to not have other sources of income, in which case it will be stated on the conditions. I don't see any reasonable reason for this to be limited, but law works in mysterious ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person in this situation is already employed, the safest option is to contact the legal services of the university. If they are not easily available, a careful reading of the contract should do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person is thinking about applying for this, the eligibility conditions should state if the successful candidate cannot be working at the time of hiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T11:07:27.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21493" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-27T11:24:58.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pma.caltech.edu/GSR/thesisdefense.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;caltech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main purpose of the [...] Thesis Defense is to have a committee of faculty examine the doctoral candidate on the scope of the thesis and its significance in relation to the major subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further detail from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/viva.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The University of New South Wales&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The thesis defence or viva is like an oral examination in some ways. It is different in many ways, however. The chief difference is that the candidate usually knows more about the syllabus than do the examiners. Consequently, some questions will be sincere questions: the asker asks because s/he doesn't know and expects that the candidate will be able to rectify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T12:19:18.133" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T12:19:18.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21494" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-27T11:24:58.890" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to the defense of a thesis and the process surrounding it, such as the grading system of a thesis, who may come to a thesis defense, the duration of a thesis defense session, etc." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T20:50:30.887" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T20:50:30.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21478" CreationDate="2014-05-27T12:56:08.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is in an author's interest for his/her work to be read and cited; this is the reason most authors will be happy to hear from someone who is interested in their work (it is, after all, a potential citation-in-waiting…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a bit of luck, one of two things happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She already has a translation of the work (or something close to it) which she happily shares&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She is willing to work with you on coming up with a good translation. This will involve some work on your part - she provides a &quot;poor English&quot; version which is sufficient for you (who are an expert in this field) to grasp; and in return for her help, you edit the document into a &quot;good English&quot; paper which you send her to say thanks for the help (so the next person gets option 1). You might even collaborate on improving the work and turn it into a joint publication in an English language journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An outcome such as the above would be a win-win. The only way to find out is to send a polite email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is NO OBLIGATION on the part of the author to respond or provide a translation - but assuming that she takes her role as an academic seriously, she ought to be happy to help you come to an understanding of her work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T12:56:08.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21488" CreationDate="2014-05-27T13:10:47.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You most likely signed a contract for your research grant and/or a teaching assistant position. The conditions for a job during vacations should be listed in the part of the contract about vacations. Since there are many possible grants with their own conditions, it is difficult to be more precise. For example, as state workers, elementary schools teachers can have another work during their vacations, but with a lot of restrictions; I guess that state-funded grant have similar restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the first thing to do is to ask your PhD advisor, your doctoral school or the person in charge of contracts in your university administration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T13:10:47.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21501" CreationDate="2014-05-27T13:27:06.810" Score="3" ViewCount="8235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking through the APA handbook and I can't seem to find a binding advise on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of web pages in my reference list by the same author (a company), all without a date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Nederbooms. (n.d.). *CGN core corpus | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,&#xA;     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/cgntb&#xA;Nederbooms. (n.d.). *Lassy small | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,&#xA;     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/lassytb&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is referring to these sources inline. How would I go about doing so? Let's say I refer to the first source. This is how I would do it - but I can't be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most bananas are yellow, but some are green and some are even brown&#xA;  (Nederbooms, n.d., &quot;CGN core corpus&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="7121" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T13:54:12.483" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T02:40:05.330" Title="Citing different web pages by the same author in APA" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21499" CreationDate="2014-05-27T14:25:56.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is that in APA style the author and year are used in the in text citation keys and these keys need to be unambiguous. When you have the same authors, in the same order, and the same date of publication, you add a letter to the publication date. You do the same thing even when the publication date is unknown. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/01/alphabetizing-in-press-and-no-date-references.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also remember that if you have two or more “in press” or “no date”&#xA;  references with the same authors in the same order, you should use&#xA;  lowercase letters—a, b, c, and so forth ... The only difference between these types of references and references with publication years is that “in press” and “no date” references contain a hyphen before the a, b, and so forth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-a). The knowledge ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-b). A strategy to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schafer, G., &amp;amp; Plunkett, K. (2011a). The power ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schafer, G., &amp;amp; Plunkett, K. (2011b). Task complexity ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schafer, G., &amp;amp; Plunkett, K. (in press-a). The rapid learning ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schafer, G., &amp;amp; Plunkett, K. (in press-b). Sometimes a child ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:25:56.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21401" CreationDate="2014-05-27T14:41:52.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it appears that the lecturer is not being impartial when it comes to assessing your work, you should follow that up. As for &quot;following up&quot; how the feedback was obtained and provided to the lecturer, there really is nothing to follow up. In many cases the policies are set by the university. You could attempt to rally a student movement to institute a different policy, but you would really have to demonstrate that the new policy provides better learning outcomes or really upsets your fellow students. It is not uncommon for universities to solicit open comment feedback from students and then distribute those comments unfiltered to the lecturers. Many universities only provide the feedback after the exams, put it is equally common to provide the feedback to the lecturer immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:41:52.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21468" CreationDate="2014-05-27T14:50:12.180" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I can gather from the question and comments is that you missed the first exam, the resit, and the resit-resit due to some serious psychological issues and you have asked the Professor for a 4th shot and he said no. At this point there is no reason for you to try and convince the Professor to change his mind. Your university likely has a clear policy on missed exams (especially when you miss all three standard opportunities). You will either qualify for a 4th shot or not under the policy. You &quot;student services&quot; office will be able to help you file the proper paperwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:50:12.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21698" CreationDate="2014-05-27T15:16:29.910" Score="7" ViewCount="48216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to apply for a master in computer science, and I need to choose between a computer science MS - master of science, and a computer science MCS - master of computer science.&#xA;I haven't really understood the difference. Is is true that MCS is more &quot;professional&quot; in the sense that it doesn't prepare students for a PhD but it is for who wants to directly work after graduating? Do they both last 2 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I've also found MSCS: master of science in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: So for example MSCS has the thesis. Does the thesis help you getting hired?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14586" LastEditorUserId="14586" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T20:20:27.290" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T14:10:35.403" Title="Difference between computer science MS and MCS" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16350" CreationDate="2014-05-27T15:21:30.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of bioinformatics programs that do not require you to have experience in both programming and biology. For example, the program at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/bioinformatics/admissions/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I don’t have experience in both computational and experimental fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applicants are not required to be well versed in both fields. Even if you do not have the academic background in both the computational and experimental fields, we are looking for highly motivated students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So only having a programming background should not be too much of a problem. You will probably want to have picked up and had a look at some undergraduate biology texts so that you are not completely clueless about the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for approaching professors, it really is no different from other fields. Applicants to graduate school, whether for a PhD or a Masters, don't have all the skills to carry our independent research in the field. To get a research assistantship you need to find professors who are doing research that is interesting to you and send them your CV along with a well written email expressing why you want to work with them, what skills you bring with you, and what you want to learn. There are a number of related question on AC.SE that can help you in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T15:21:30.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21506" CreationDate="2014-05-27T15:44:51.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many Master's degrees exist that could reasonably be considered &quot;computer science&quot; degrees, and the distinctions between them differ from one university to another.  Thus, you should probably ask someone familiar with the programs that you're considering about the particulars for that scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best general answer to your question, if there is a general answer to it, is that many of the degrees named simply &quot;Master of Science&quot; require writing a thesis.  For example, compare North Carolina State's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/academics/graduate/degrees/ms.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Science&lt;/a&gt; program with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/academics/graduate/degrees/mcs.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Computer Science&lt;/a&gt; program.  Often the thesis degree is awarded to PhD students who have completed their qualifying exam and coursework, but this also varies from one university to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing a thesis is an important distinction for Master's degrees, you may wonder what a thesis is and how it might be viewed by potential employers.  A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt; is a document produced as the result of academic research.  While you will learn more about analyzing academic research, formal writing, and how academia works in your field of study, you will not typically learn more skills that are directly applicable to the profession.  For this reason, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; think of the thesis master's as an &quot;academic&quot; degree and the non-thesis master's as a terminal &quot;professional&quot; degree, but that's also a bit of a simplification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking at degrees that start with &quot;Master of Science in&quot; and end with something like &quot;Computer Science,&quot; &quot;Computer Networking,&quot; or &quot;Software Engineering,&quot; then you probably won't have to write a thesis.  These &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Science&lt;/a&gt; names differentiate a degree in science, engineering, or medicine from a degree in English, history, or philosophy, which are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_%28postgraduate%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Arts&lt;/a&gt; degrees.  Often, these are both shortened to just &quot;Master's&quot; degrees.  So instead of a Master of Arts in History, you might simply say that you have a Master's in History.  For example, NCSU has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://networking.ncsu.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Science in Computer Networking&lt;/a&gt;, which is regularly shortened to Master's in Computer Networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11268" LastEditorUserId="11268" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T15:55:44.120" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T15:55:44.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21506" CreationDate="2014-05-27T15:46:13.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is unfortunately no one general answer that applies across the board.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For specific degree requirements (so you know what you're going to be learning), you should look up the individual programs.  The only specifically non-professional masters degrees are ones you may get en-route to a Ph.D. (often called an M.A. or an M.Phil.), but even there, there are differences in naming conventions.  Moreover, terminal masters degrees often have the same names but have a &quot;thesis option&quot; or &quot;course option&quot; depending on your career goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, where you go, how you do, and what you learn will matter a lot more than the name of your degree.  At least in the US, nobody will care whether you have a M.S. or M.C.S. or whatever else -- they'll just think of you as having a &quot;master's.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T14:10:08.510" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T14:10:08.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2014-05-27T15:49:57.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that it is challenging to find academia jobs in physics in the US. However, industry may be very different. Financial firms, scientific modeling, consulting, and tech companies are very open to hiring physics grads. Having the degree shows that you're intelligent and can think critically, though you wouldn't necessarily be working on physics projects. Having another degree in engineering or cs would only help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9700" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T15:49:57.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15911" CreationDate="2014-05-27T19:18:50.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want to achieve by doing research &quot;on the side&quot;? Is it purely for intellectual stimulation? Do you want to maintain/raise your profile in the field? Are you hoping to create something that leads directly to your next job (through a research grant or similar)? Thinking about these questions may help you work out where to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to consider whether your current (KTP) employer is likely to raise any conflict of interest issues, and ensure you steer clear of any potential difficulties. Then, think about your PhD work: are there any outstanding issues that you could investigate? Projects that never got written up? In your situation, anything where you have a head start on the research is valuable. I'd definitely get back in contact with your original supervisor - they may have ideas, or contacts, or simply advice. Whilst it's true that in an ideal world, you'd expand your pool of collaborators, anything is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any research groups active in your field in the local universities? Make contact, find an excuse to visit - it can't hurt. Even better, are there any researchers from other fields attempting to apply AI to their own problems, or trying to solve problems that are suited to AI? (Almost certainly!) By bringing your knowledge to another field, you may be able to achieve much greater impact for a given amount of effort! And if you offer something that most people in that field don't have, you'll find people are much more keen to collaborate. If you make yourself sufficiently useful to a large and well-funded research group, you may find a job offer down the line. So, spend some time investigating what your local universities are good at, find something that interests you and you think you can contribute to, and make contact. They might not be interested, but it doesn't hurt to try (and you may find postdocs/junior faculty more receptive to developing a side-project than senior professors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the bottom line is: be pragmatic. Unless you're only interested in the intellectual stimulation, in your present situation, you need to focus on maximising the cost:benefit ratio. This might mean not working on the things that most interest you, for the time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T19:18:50.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21524" CreationDate="2014-05-27T19:31:06.020" Score="14" ViewCount="5595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted an abstract for a conference using some preliminary results. I read all the advice about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7428/how-to-write-abstract-for-conference-when-you-have-no-results-yet&quot;&gt;how to write an abstract with no results&lt;/a&gt; and I didn't lie in my abstract—I just presented the results I had in hand and discussed the value of the data that I would acquire in the future without making any specific claims about the conclusions I would draw. The abstract deadline was about 6 months before the paper deadline, so I had anticipated acquiring more data that I could write about in the paper and make it a strong contribution. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (lab caught on fire, experiment exploded, computer with all my data was wiped by an EMP and velociraptors ate my backups, or some other more mundane reason) the data that I anticipated having is not available and I won't be able to write the full paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many conferences have a &quot;No paper, no podium&quot; and &quot;No podium, no paper&quot; policy, so in those cases one of the consequences of not submitting the paper is that it will not be published in the conference's proceedings and I won't get to present it at the conference. For other conferences, this may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what are the other consequences (to my career, to future publication of the paper) of withdrawing the paper at this stage, either by not submitting anything or by contacting the program chair and withdrawing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T07:45:35.100" Title="What are the consequences of withdrawing an abstract from a conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21522" CreationDate="2014-05-27T19:45:36.107" Score="43" ViewCount="41645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you write a paper and you use Wolfram Mathematica to do calculations. In the article, should the program be mentioned with the registered-trademark symbol immediately following the name and in superscript style, i.e., as follows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wolfram &lt;em&gt;Mathematica&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;®&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13744" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T15:44:09.170" LastActivityDate="2021-01-22T10:37:14.123" Title="Is it mandatory to include the registered trademark symbol ® next to the name of a computer program?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21521" CreationDate="2014-05-27T19:54:57.960" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formally, yes, registered names should have the appropriate symbol listed (usually a superscript &quot;R&quot; or &quot;TM&quot;). However, in common usage, such trademarks are often neglected. In most cases, it's easiest just to follow the journal's recommended guidelines for how to handle such cases. You may just need to indicate the trademark symbol, and the journal will do the work of supplying the correct formatting for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T19:54:57.960" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21519" CreationDate="2014-05-27T20:00:52.353" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I should mention that the &quot;no paper, no podium&quot; (and vice versa) only applies to conferences where proceedings are published. For many conferences, this is not the case—including many conferences in physics, chemistry, engineering, and applied mathematics that I regularly attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you have to withdraw a paper because of whatever reason—visa issues, experiments not working, or kidnapped by aliens (etc.)—it will not have &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much impact on your career. The effect will increase, however, the more papers you withdraw, and the more trouble that you cause the conference organizers as a result. If you let them know well in advance that you're not going to be there, they can try to organize some sort of replacement for you, which, although suboptimal, is better than having a &quot;hole&quot; in the schedule. On the other hand, if you wait until the morning of your talk to withdraw your talk, you will &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; tick off the organizers, which may have an effect on your ability to present in the future (at least at that conference, or others the organizers work on later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T20:00:52.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21525" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-27T20:41:12.530" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of you would probably know  the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working on some  papers and I was wondering if I can publish a draft of them on airxiv in order to receive some feedback and then submit a final version to a journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be useful also to publish draft of paper that I am not sure to have the time to finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know some advices on how to use or how don't use this site.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I was also wondering how much does a publication on airxiv matter from a career point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14608" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T01:20:12.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T01:20:12.473" Title="Tips for publishing draft manuscripts on arxiv" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-05-28T01:21:23.020" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21566" CreationDate="2014-05-27T21:21:49.457" Score="34" ViewCount="47076" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took up an introductory course to forensic science in Coursera, because it was actually the only forensics course I could find that was accessible, however I do wonder if it is worth anything in my CV, as a student it is obviously better than nothing, but is this something good enough to show? &lt;br&gt;&#xA;How does it compare to courses completed directly through MIT open courses, or those from another famous university? And if these are assets to a CV, if I go ahead to complete enough for a degree, how does it fare in comparison to the proper degree from the corresponding institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T20:59:22.323" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T14:31:22.190" Title="What is the value of a Coursera certificate?" Tags="&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21615" CreationDate="2014-05-27T21:29:15.500" Score="43" ViewCount="3567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my PhD in Mathematics and am in between my PhD and postdoc positions.  I was very fortunate to have the ability to present my research to seminars and conferences over the last couple of years. My complete results all reduce to a standard storyline and I feel like I have spoken about it to various audiences a lot, especially the specialists in my field. I have a conference coming up with the specialists again and I am a bit concerned about giving a talk that is just a minor mutation from the talks before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is therefore: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How long can one talk about the same material in the conference loop until the talk becomes stale?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is a repertoire of multiple research talks expected of a recent PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T01:42:33.960" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T17:54:22.203" Title="How many times can you present the same material at different conferences before it becomes stale?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-05-27T21:35:02.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the university and professor are promoted by showing their work, people can watch their courses and see how good they are, and spread the word, this will increase the prestige of the university. Another thought is that this shows the university cares about the lessons and gets into this trouble, thus the faculty seem more invovled. A more benevolent thought is that it might help students from other universities. &lt;br&gt; I, personally, have gained a better opinion about MIT for example, or a different one anyway, having used it's online courses repeatedly to cover the gaps left by my professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T21:35:02.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21521" CreationDate="2014-05-27T21:37:07.400" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Python, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/&quot;&gt;PSF Trademark Usage Policy&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use of the word &quot;Python&quot; in email and informally -- Allowed without the circle-R symbol.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use of the word &quot;Python&quot; in academic papers, theses, and books -- Allowed without the circle-R symbol. Books should include the symbol.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how it is in general. Wikipedia pages on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_trademark_symbol&quot;&gt;registered trademark symbols&lt;/a&gt; mentions that it indicates trademark status, but does not mention that it needs to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I see software in papers being mentioned without &quot;TM&quot;/&quot;R&quot;, though often in emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T11:45:07.667" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:45:07.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21564" CreationDate="2014-05-27T22:18:49.810" Score="1" ViewCount="3834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure this question has been posted somewhere in SE forums before. If not here is my contribution, otherwise please show me the pointers to similar well-voted questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the actual question: In case someone is interested to apply for a Phd degree, what would be the parameters that head of the research group (i.e. professor) will consider when comparing different candidates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the factors that come to my mind are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades,&#xA;Reference letters,&#xA;Publications,&#xA;Closeness of previous studies to the actual research taking place in that research group, Quality of final thesis (Master/Bachelor), Thesis adviser etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would a professor prioritize these factors. I am sure here in the forums we have some experienced members who might have participated in acceptance committees, which can provide useful insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T06:43:32.583" Title="What are the most important factors evaluated when applying for Phd position?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-28T06:38:03.723" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21488" CreationDate="2014-05-27T22:52:01.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the work you plan to do (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/Doctorants/23/7/circulaire_24_juin_2009_doctorants_contractuels_117237.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, paragraph IX). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are NOT allowed to do extra activities of the kind that could be part of your PhD contract (teaching, diffusing scientific information, expertise...). If you want to do this kind of work, it needs to be under your PhD contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the other cases, you need to obtain an authorization from your employer. If your employer is the university, they will ask your advisor's opinion and evaluate whether the extra work risks compromizing your PhD before making a decision. I don't know if such authorizations are commonplace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12609" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T22:52:01.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21243" CreationDate="2014-05-27T23:35:32.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your resume, statement of purpose, and any work you submit in your application package are your part. Writing your own LoR would be redundant.&#xA;Letters of recommendation are other's contribution in support of your bid. They should be written by those who have confidence in your work. If you can't come up with another professor to support you, I recommend taking post-bacc classes, doing research, and doing your best work in the coming year. In your applications next year, hopefully you will have three professors to support you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, when submitting your application, you should elect not to review your letters of recommendation. This shows that you have confidence in your abilities, work, and reputation among your professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T23:35:32.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21603" CreationDate="2014-05-28T00:27:18.423" Score="11" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several companies (google, IBM etc.) are known to hire mathematicians with advanced degrees (Ph.D. and so) to work in different sectors. Many such jobs are also research jobs, if not all. But I almost never find any such job advertisements in the standard mathjob sites I know of, including mathjobs.org, euro-math-soc.eu/jobs, nordic math jobs etc. Where can I find these type of job advertisements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="6259" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T01:29:09.713" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T22:14:28.720" Title="Where can one find jobs where companies hire mathematicians where they can do (not necessarily mainstream) research?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21535" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:19:24.190" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:19:24.190" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:19:24.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21536" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:19:24.190" Score="0" Body="Questions pertaining to number of hours worked, work schedules, vacation time, sabbaticals, etc. in relation to training and careers in academia" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:22.613" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:22.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21537" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:22:14.747" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:22:14.747" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:22:14.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21538" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:22:14.747" Score="0" Body="Questions pertaining to job offers, or descriptions of titles or specific academic positions in relation to employment in academia" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:09.547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:09.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21539" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:25:16.533" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:25:16.533" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:25:16.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21540" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:25:16.533" Score="0" Body="Questions pertaining to ranking of academic institutions, titles, or positions. Also, questions about ranking student grades (i.e. class rank)" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:03:43.250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:03:43.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21541" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:27:00.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication can be with professors, students, potential employers, or others. Questions of when to communicate or not are covered as well as how to raise issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the site is not appropriate for asking people to approve or judge your specific communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2019-12-05T20:27:35.403" LastActivityDate="2019-12-05T20:27:35.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21542" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:27:00.373" Score="0" Body="Questions about how to communicate with others appropriately and professionally; communication etiquette." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2019-12-05T20:27:35.403" LastActivityDate="2019-12-05T20:27:35.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21543" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:29:08.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about proper use of grammar specific to academic writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;General questions about grammarn conventions that are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; specific to academia are off-topic at Academia.SE, and will be closed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5500/use-of-first-person-in-a-phd-thesis&quot;&gt;Use of first person in a PhD Thesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15216/where-should-a-question-mark-be-placed-in-a-short-citation&quot;&gt;Where should a question mark be placed in a short citation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T19:42:25.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T19:42:25.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21544" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:29:08.793" Score="0" Body="Questions about proper use of grammar specific to academic writing. General questions about grammar not specific to academia are off-topic, and will be close." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T19:42:25.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T19:42:25.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21545" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:31:48.080" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:31:48.080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:31:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21546" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:31:48.080" Score="0" Body="Questions about navigating logistics, opportunities, and etiquette when visiting an academic institution or colleague." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:06.953" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:06.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21547" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:33:25.500" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:33:25.500" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:33:25.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21548" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:33:25.500" Score="0" Body="Questions about lifestyle, quality of life, and work-life balance" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:03:38.930" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:03:38.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21549" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:35:56.173" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:35:56.173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:35:56.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21550" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:35:56.173" Score="0" Body="Questions about social skills, emotional intelligence, networking, communication, productive habits, and interpersonal skills " OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:03:59.630" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:03:59.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21551" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:37:24.693" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:37:24.693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:37:24.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21552" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:37:24.693" Score="0" Body="Questions about professional or academic (degree) certifications" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:26.173" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:26.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21553" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:38:12.733" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:38:12.733" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:38:12.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21554" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:38:12.733" Score="0" Body="Prerequisites and process of preparing to enter an academic program." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T17:49:23.757" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T17:49:23.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21555" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:39:56.987" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:39:56.987" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:39:56.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21556" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:39:56.987" Score="0" Body="Questions about navigating submission or application deadlines" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:20.033" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:20.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21557" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:42:15.397" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:42:15.397" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:42:15.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21558" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:42:15.397" Score="0" Body="Questions about designing websites, courses, exams, or other academic materials" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:04:16.843" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:04:16.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21559" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:44:42.743" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T02:44:42.743" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:44:42.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21560" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T02:44:42.743" Score="0" Body="Duties and obligations related to academic relationships, positions, scientific ethics; also, the role of contracts in defining duties and obligations" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T03:03:49.547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:03:49.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21563" CreationDate="2014-05-28T03:58:39.580" Score="7" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of research is that it's a way to find solutions/answers to questions/problems in a certain subfield of a bigger discipline, which in my case would be Computer Science (honestly, it'd be more like Computer Engineering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I know, however, that if these problems and solutions are too simple or banal, the whole process of doing research is irrelevant because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;surely somebody else has already worked in that, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's no sense in working in something that won't contribute a significant amount of knowledge to the discipline. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that in order to get &lt;em&gt;worthy&lt;/em&gt; (or at least relevant) problems to research, you must be at the cutting edge of the field so that you have an idea of what's not yet known and you can start working on it. Am I right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am, that sounds kind of &lt;em&gt;complicated&lt;/em&gt;. I have heard that I should read lots of papers in an area of my interest and work from there, but I'm sincerely not sure about how to start doing even this. I have access to the ACM Digital Library, for example, but I don't know what to search for, what to read, or in what order to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am alone in this, for my university is weak in research and no professors seem to be interested in it. Do you have any tips, or any specific set of steps that you followed to get into research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13158" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T11:03:08.970" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:06:08.327" Title="What steps should I follow in order to be able to start conducting research if there's no sign of support within my department?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T04:30:17.577" Score="9" ViewCount="1930" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a conference that my advisor suggested that I attend and present at, but unfortunately as this was just suggested today, I missed the abstract submission deadline by about a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is my fault, but I am just wondering how lenient conferences are wrt late registration. I emailed the organizer politely explaining the situation and asking if it would still be possible to register. If anyone is curious, this is for the SIAM annual meeting in Chicago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never attended any sort of conference at this level before (but do have some experience with poster presentations), so I'm wondering should I even expect a reply, let alone a positive one? I think this would be a really great opportunity for me to present my research to people in the field, and I will most likely attend the conference even if I'm not able to present at the poster session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit and update:&lt;/strong&gt; The organizing committee has agreed to give consideration to my abstract, and said they'd let me know by the end of next week re: acceptance/rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T07:34:05.043" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T09:42:20.370" Title="How lenient are conferences in accepting and reviewing lately submitted poster presentation abstracts?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;&lt;poster&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2014-05-28T04:50:58.930" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It'll certainly be easier if you can find a professor willing to supervise you, so I strongly suggest that you keep trying on that front. But even if you can't, all is not lost! Here are the steps I recommend. Note that this may not be the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; way to get started, but it's a way that works for many of my students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Step 1: Start by identifying an area of interest&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to start is to identify a topic in class that interests you. Approach the professor for that class and ask him/her to suggest some related papers for further reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Step 2: Get a better view of this area&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoroughly reading those papers may take a while, since this is new to you. Don't be discouraged by this! After you have a reasonable understanding of the papers suggested by your professor, start to branch out: look up the papers cited by/citing those papers to get a broader view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Step 3: Reproduce some existing results&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere in all this reading, you'll come across something that &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; interests you: a proof, a design of a system, a software implementation of an idea. See if you can reproduce this result (by going through the steps of the proof, writing your own software, running a simulation, etc.) Again, this may be more difficult than you expect; don't get discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Step 4: Do something new&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you've reproduced someone else's results, can you extend them? Is there a small variation on the system design that could improve the results, an interesting application in another domain, a stronger result you can prove? Get to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Step 5: Communicate your results&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congrats, you are now &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; a bona fide researcher! Go show the professor who recommended the papers what you've been working on. A big part of doing research is communicating the results, once you have something to show. (And to get into a good grad school, you'll need to impress some potential letter writers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also consider writing a draft of a paper and soliciting feedback on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T04:57:45.850" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T04:57:45.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21530" CreationDate="2014-05-28T06:27:10.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, as usual, &quot;it depends&quot;. JeffE provides a perspective for a top US research university (&lt;em&gt;Research, research, research, recommendation letters, research, baked beans, and research.&lt;/em&gt;). In my lab (small-but-good swiss university) PhD admission certainly works a bit differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First a bit of context: our lab usually consists of less than ten members, 2 of which are professors and one to two more being postdocs. We select our PhD students ourselves (there is no department or faculty-level hiring). Hence, PhD student selection is not something we do all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the single most important factor for hiring for us is whether we already know the candidate. Broadly, potential students come in four tiers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 1: students that we personally know to be good&lt;/strong&gt;, for instance because they have done courses or their thesis with us. This means that we &lt;em&gt;mostly hire from our own university&lt;/em&gt;, but as I only moved recently from a different university, we currently also like to hire from my old institution. Generally, if you know &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt; in the lab (even other PhD students) and the other person vouches for your qualities, you are almost certainly in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 2: students that people that we know know&lt;/strong&gt;. If we need a position filled but don't have a strong internal candidate at the ready, we reach out to our personal networks. Usually, we don't cast the net particularly wide -- the recommendation of a professor that I met once at a conference likely isn't enough. We mostly contact personal friends and close collaborators here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 3: students that applied because of a job announcement we put out&lt;/strong&gt;. We generally only do that (putting out job announcements) if we &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;  need a position filled and we could not find somebody in our network. In most cases, my lab head is more ready to leave a position unfilled than hire somebody that does not come with a strong recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 4: students that applied with a cold email&lt;/strong&gt;. As far as I know, we have literally never hired somebody that applied &lt;em&gt;cold&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of those &quot;tiers&quot; you fall in is the single most important factor that leads to whether you will be hired or not. In the rare case that we have multiple students that come with strong personal recommendations, and we cannot hire all, we usually select roughly following these criteria (roughly in order of importance):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research experience.&lt;/strong&gt; A master is a prerequisite for PhD studies in my current country. However, most master students don't publish. If you did, it is certainly perceived very positively &lt;em&gt;as long as the paper is at least ok&lt;/em&gt;. (publishing in predatory journals or other &lt;em&gt;really bad&lt;/em&gt; venues might be perceived negatively actually)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant industrial experience.&lt;/strong&gt; We do research on software engineering, so if you worked &lt;em&gt;as a software engineer&lt;/em&gt; before, this will be perceived positively. However, note the &quot;relevant&quot; here. Standard internships or jobs may not help much (most have done those at some point) -- it needs to be something that we think will clearly give you better insight into our area of research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical skills.&lt;/strong&gt; We don't expect future students to know how to do research yet, but we expect a strong programming background and fluency in standard tooling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perceived compatibility with the team.&lt;/strong&gt; Finally, we also typically consider whether a student is a good fit for our lab culture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last two bullets are typically assessed in interviews. We generally interview candidates via Skype beforehand, and (when we are almost certain we are going to hire a student), we also fly her/him in to give a talk in our group and spend some time with us beforehand. &lt;em&gt;(both things we only do for Tier 2 - 4 candidates)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't ask for letters of recommendation (of people we do not know), research statements, statements of motivation, or anything like that. Neither do we look at previous grades (except maybe in a corner case, but to the best of my knowledge it has not happened yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T06:43:32.583" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T06:43:32.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21562" CreationDate="2014-05-28T06:53:25.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences usually/always extend. Others don't. I suggest writing to the organisers and asking - the worst that can happen is that they say no, and they might say yes, even if an extension hasn't been formally announced!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T06:53:25.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21526" CreationDate="2014-05-28T07:09:01.727" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Value in an academic environment&lt;/em&gt;: zero. Everything you learn at Coursera you'd simply learn from a textbook in a few days if you needed it for your academic research or teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Value to a non-academic employer&lt;/em&gt;: marginal, mainly as a signaling device (this person will sacrifice his spare time over a non-trivial amount of time to improve himself), but certainly lower than a certification in a field or skill directly related to your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Value to a prospective spouse&lt;/em&gt; (as suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692/earthling&quot;&gt;earthling&lt;/a&gt;): depends. I'd certainly look favorably on someone who took a Coursera course instead of watching TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Value to yourself&lt;/em&gt;: again depends, but could be highest of all. I certainly know that those courses I took were mainly for my own pleasure and benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="82771" LastEditDate="2018-01-28T14:31:22.190" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T14:31:22.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21521" CreationDate="2014-05-28T07:21:37.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, use of a trademark symbol by the owner (in your example, Wolfram) is an &lt;strong&gt;assertion of their rights&lt;/strong&gt; – “Hey, we own this name! It refers to our product and you cannot use it to mislead folks into thinking it is your product, or your use of our product, or that we endorse your product’s integration with our product...” and so on.  So, it is critical for the &lt;strong&gt;owner&lt;/strong&gt; of the trademark to use it often and consistently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, on the other hand, do not need to use it to protect their rights, but need to use it in order to &lt;strong&gt;not to infringe on their rights&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, use the mark it if you are talking about your product or service in relation to their trademarked product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more formal the mode of publication, the more you should consider using their mark, e.g., you should use it in a book, but probably not in an email. Like an abbreviation, use it once at the first occurrence only.  Nobody wants to read something littered with ®s. The first use signifies that you recognize their rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15815" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T12:43:32.193" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T12:43:32.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2014-05-28T07:22:00.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the main goal here is to learn to &quot;think like a researcher&quot;, then you only need to work on a problem that's new to you; it doesn't necessarily need to be at the cutting edge of the field. Indeed, there may be pedagogical value in having the ability to compare your solutions with those found by more experienced researchers. Of course, your results may not be publishable, unless you find something interesting - but at your career stage, that doesn't necessarily matter. You still will have something to discuss/write about in applications for grad school, and you will have learnt a lot! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T07:22:00.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2014-05-28T07:40:13.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in Europe, and probably in the US too, physicists are highly considered in industry, the unemployment rate is almost a technical zero. Doing research is another different beast: there are not so many positions, and you have to fight for them. Also, Academia not a very lucrative career path: a first job for a physicist or an engineer in industry may grant them 3-4 times more than in grad school (depending on the conditions), and it continues onwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see you are eager to study both degrees, which is commendable, knowledge never hurts. What you need to consider is the costs, both economical (can you afford the university?) and in effort (can you really do both degrees at the same time?). Both degrees are difficult, and will take a great emotional toll. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities offer double degrees, where you end having both titles, and the subjects are (hopefully) sorted and arranged in the most convenient way for the student. For example, in Physics and Maths you need linear algebra; in a double degree you would only take the courses from Maths, as the ones in Physics are a subset. If the university does not have this arrangement, you may find yourself doing the same subjects twice, that may lead to added frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another cost are the grades: doing two things means you cannot do them both so well. Some admission put hard thresholds on the grades, and they may or may not consider your second degree as a sufficient merit to lower it. On the other hand, and provided the grades are not very damaged, almost any employer will see it as a great CV boost and will make it easier to get an industrial job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last advice: if you go for it, be aware of your limits and ready to drop one of them if things get difficult before it brings you down. A degree and a half is a merit, two three-quarter degrees are two failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T07:40:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2014-05-28T09:13:50.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, for software engineering (in the UK), it will not help a lot in my experience - PhDs,PDEngs and EngDs will add to your initial salary over a masters. But probably no more than the extra experience that working in industry would get you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main exception is start-ups - if your tech guy(s) have post-graduate degrees then it can help with the early sales (proves you are smarter). Plus there is a valid argument that when you are limited in the number of heads you can get, it is worth getting the smartest ones you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other exception is if it is for a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; specific field and you want to go into that, it may help you beat out candidates with more experience in nearby fields (or satisfy a requirement of having experience in that field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15818" LastEditorUserId="15818" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T13:20:38.610" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:20:38.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2014-05-28T10:00:47.907" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recently minted PhD would not typically be expected to have multiple seminar-length talks at her disposal, because in general the PhD work &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be presentable as an integrated whole. However, once one starts getting substantially into the postdoc phase and beyond, one should have more than one research talk available, as there is greater diversity in one's portfolio of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to &quot;staleness,&quot; this is also somewhat of a concern, but only partially. Research progresses in time, but that doesn't mean the older work is made irrelevant (or unimportant for audiences to know about). However, you should revisit your talks periodically (before you give them, of course) to determine what is still &quot;fresh,&quot; and what is already well-known enough to gloss over in less detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for assigning a &quot;shelf life,&quot; that really depends a lot on your field. Some fields progress much faster than others, so a blanket statement such as &quot;never talk about results that are more than a year old&quot; is unlikely to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T10:00:47.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T10:16:23.297" Score="141" ViewCount="14800" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper in question is based on research my collaborator X and I did together some months ago. Our respective contributions to the research were around 2/3 for X and 1/3 for me. In terms of the actual text of the paper, X wrote about 1/3 and I wrote about 2/3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the writing of the actual paper, X decided to leave academia. I can no longer contact X: emails to the old address go undelivered and there is no forwarding address for physical mail. Attempts to find X through web searches and contact X through mutual acquaintances have been unsuccessful. X has thus not seen a complete draft of the paper, only the sections that were actually written by X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these circumstances, is it ethical for me to submit a paper with X's name on it, without a complete version having been checked by X and without X's approval?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do submit it, should it contain a note of the fact that X was unable to check the completed paper? I am considering the hypothetical possibility that I could have inadvertently introduced an error while writing the complete paper (and such an error might survive through peer-review and into publication); responsibility for such an error should be mine alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no possibility of separating out my contribution into a separate paper. Either the work has to be published as a whole or not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a field where alphabetical listing of authors is standard, so there is no question of the order of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastEditorUserId="13547" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T10:57:29.170" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T16:04:17.167" Title="Is it ethical to submit a paper with the name of a co-author who cannot be contacted?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2014-05-28T10:30:46.913" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important also to look at your audience. If you're likely to be giving the same talk to two audiences that overlap significantly, then the time between talks is less important than the fact that the audiences will perceive the talk as 'stale'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might give a talk at a general interest conference, and then a slightly modified version of it at a workshop with specialists, many of whom may not have attended the general interest conference. That would be fine. You might then go on the colloquium circuit and give the talk at venues with only small overlap with the specialist group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you gave the same (or similar) talk to the same (or similar) audience more than once, that would be a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T10:30:46.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:04:06.523" Score="2" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not sure this is the right place to ask the question, but since it is directly related to academic work, I though I'll give it a try. If it is not, please feel free to redirect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together with colleagues from different institutions (all academic), we have been developing a new information language (more precisely a format), based on XML, to store a specific type of information. This format is primarily directed to the academic world and will be open source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: do we need to &lt;strong&gt;attach a licence&lt;/strong&gt; to this new format and, if yes, what &lt;strong&gt;type of licence&lt;/strong&gt; is suitable for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:58:33.167" Title="Which licence choose for a new academic computing language?" Tags="&lt;open-science&gt;&lt;license&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21578" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:09:01.367" Score="20" ViewCount="1463" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I saw an online presentation by a researcher and professor regarding a series of recently published papers. At the end, she mentioned she was working on a follow-up paper, regarding such and such... I have checked for it, and it has still not been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it was a dead-end, and abandoned. Would it be appropriate to ask the professor about the progess made, and whether it has been abandoned, or when it will be published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:42:11.740" Title="Is it appropriate to e-mail a researcher asking about progress on a follow-up paper?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21577" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:22:03.863" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly this is appropriate, especially if you indicate who you are and why you are interested. Researchers are interested in spreading their results far and wide to get citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst that can happen is that the research is not yet quite publication-ready, and the author prefers not to share it yet, to avoid academic claim-jumping. If so, you may get exactly this explanation, or no answer at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best, conversely, would be that this could actually lead to a fruitful discussion and/or even collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:22:03.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:24:59.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by seeing if your university has an undergraduate research program or runs summer projects with researchers in any formalised way. If they do this is an excellent way to get started in research as you have an experienced researcher to help guide you and it helps create useful contacts if you are interested in a future in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university has no formal program you can email professors in a field you are interested in to see if they any projects you could do over the summer. Keep preserving if the first people you contact have nothing, they are probably busy and if they do not expect a summer student they are unlikely to have a project prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably helpful if you have a vague idea of what you want to research into. Not necessarily a specific project but at least a field or sub-topic. This not only helps you identify academics with similar interests but shows you are keen and helps them formulate a project for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your university is very weak at research one option may be to look at doing a summer project at another university which is more research focused. This is not ideal as knowing how to contact will be harder and there may be extra costs such as accommodation, but it is a possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:24:59.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:25:58.947" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might get different answers for different countries. This answer is for the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a person who has hired many programmers (both for my own company and for other companies) I feel quite confident that having &lt;strong&gt;a doctorate of any kind will not help you land a job as a programmer&lt;/strong&gt;. The simple fact is, people care about what you can produce. What frameworks, models, patterns, languages, etc. are you effective in? This is what people generally care about from a technical perspective. They will care about other things like how committed you are, how many hours you can work, etc. but what you would gain from a doctorate will not be of value to people who hire in industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it can be useful for career mobility. For example, I have see people chose one person over another for an IT management position because one had a doctorate. That turned out to be a terrible choice for the company, but I don't think the problems were connected to his doctorate (he simply had no experience managing people). Some people might see the value in the doctorate but only at a higher level (not entry level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:25:58.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21576" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:58:33.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, no, &lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/927/&quot;&gt;yet another format!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now seriously, you can legally &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format&quot;&gt;register a format&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't see a big benefit from doing it.  For what &lt;a href=&quot;http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html&quot;&gt;I see,&lt;/a&gt; licensing is essentially a copyright of the actual text. In most practical purposes, having a public, freely available document explaining it, should suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support my feeling, I have been digging in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15317041&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; academic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psidev.info/mzidentml#mzIdentML1_1_0&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; I am familiar with and they don't specify any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be sure, you could see what other people have done, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument&quot;&gt;OpenDocument&lt;/a&gt; format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:58:33.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21562" CreationDate="2014-05-28T12:31:14.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences (I don't know if it applies for the one you have in mind as well) give the opportunity for the submission of so-called &quot;late breaking posters&quot; even after the official submission deadline until shortly before the conference date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this one can present very recent results that did not get ready before the deadline. As a drawback it should be noted that the contribution will normally not be listed in the conference proceedings as they will already go into preparation/production soon after the deadline. Also the reviewers might have a special eye on the originality and the currency of the contribution, so submitting some rather well hung stuff just to get a poster presentation and a reason to attend the conference might not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastEditorUserId="10039" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T09:42:20.370" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T09:42:20.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:06:08.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to get to know what to research, possible approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find supervisors that do things you consider interesting, ask them&#xA;what could you do for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find research groups that do things you consider interesting, ask&#xA;    them what could you do for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a research project that is interesting, work in that project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a problem that is interesting and not solved yet, work on that&#xA;    problem. Generally problems are either new or hard, sometimes both.&#xA;    Sometimes (often? always?) solving an easy problem in a proper way&#xA;    turns to be very hard. Proving it's the right way to solve that&#xA;    problem is very often much harder.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find what is interesting for you, then find problems in that area&#xA;    and find funding to solve those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a business model, if you are not certain about what is interesting for you, then consider what is interesting for everybody else, so interesting that they would be willing to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find what are you good at and it &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.readability.com/articles/ecdm2zpc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;may&lt;/a&gt; become your passion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find current trends in research, hot topics, there should be problems, money and success there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it doesn't really matter what you find first, you have to find everything else (a supervisor, funding, etc.) however the order in which you find some things will probably determine what you find later, i.e. the information you get and the decisions you make direct your search throughout the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to find things? Searching. It's hard and tedious, there are no shortcuts, AFAIK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only advice I can give is: &quot;Don't make the problem, find it&quot;, problems should not be &quot;created&quot; or &quot;invented&quot; to do research, some situation may not have been perceived as a problem before, that's fine, you check that situation and change it, hopefully for the better. Research in computer engineering consists in using (sometimes making) computers and/or software to go from point A to point B (as a very naïve description), hopefully point B will be better under some perspective than point A, but what I would like to stress is that point A should be real. It may not be common (that's fine) but it has to be real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point A is in the world, not in any book, there may be books (papers, etc.) that describe point A, that reach to point A (from a previous one), etc. but point A is in the real world and this should be never forgotten. The most theoretical part of computer science doesn't care whether A is real or not, that work is important by setting the foundations of things that will be used in the future, when we reach to a point A where that is relevant (if that ever happens), it's a very hard and uncertain type of research, that I don't personally like (for me) and that you don't seem to pursue. Therefore, for us, point A is in the real world, out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important because that means that we can access point A from the world and from the way it relates with other things. There may be people interested on that, research groups, research projects, papers describing it, business to do in solving it, skills that are relevant for it, trends that involve it, etc. Those are paths to find it, to get to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is your first research topic, you are in ignorance, point A, you want to find a research topic, point B (that will later become A). How do you do it? I offer you this &quot;relational approach&quot;, try to find a better one. After all, we are only talking about information, searching, maybe it's too soon to make a search engine for this, but maybe someone can make a search methodology that will probably involve using conventional search engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:06:08.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21521" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:06:49.363" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could not find anything on any &lt;strong&gt;legal&lt;/strong&gt; requirements to use trademark symbols if you are not the trademark holder (or are required to use them by a contract). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/required-or-not-to-put-the-r-trademark-symbol-977692.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, several attorneys state that you do not have to use them even in the “stronger” case that you are reselling the product. Briefly, it’s the trademark owner who is responsible for using it and there is nothing that requires you to use these symbols, unless you have signed a contract to do so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the trademark registrant/manufacturer who is responsible for putting the indication on the product, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are merely resoling [sic] the product, you have no obligation to put any symbol (R or TM) anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves the question of &lt;strong&gt;style&lt;/strong&gt;, on which I share the opinion of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theslot.com/webnames.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;But FUNKY!!!web!!!DUDES.com is their trademark!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (written by a professional copy editor), which is mainly on capitalisation and punctuation, but can also be applied to trademark symbols to some extent:&#xA;One should rather adhere to general spelling and language rules and to what benefits the reader than to what a company wants its product to be called:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The companies and their trademark lawyers want you to duplicate their capitalization. They also want you to use the trademark symbol. They also want you to use the word &amp;quot;brand&amp;quot; and a generic identifier to guard against the loss of their trademarks (journalists eat Big Macs; McDonald's lawyers might want us to eat BIG MAC® brand sandwich products). Are you going to give in to all of those demands? Do you want your stories to look like press releases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following this, I would call Mathematica just “Mathematica”, maybe in italics or small-caps in accordance with the journal’s or your own style and accompanied by an appropriate citation.&#xA;I would not use a copyright symbol as it does not benefit the reader or anybody else¹ – &lt;strong&gt;it just diverts from the content of the text and slightly looks like you are paid by the software company to advertise their product&lt;/strong&gt;. (I also would not use “Wolfram Mathematica“ unless I have to expect that some reader confuses it with something else which is also called “Mathematica”.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some situations &lt;strong&gt;specific to Mathematica&lt;/strong&gt;, where one has to expect some readers to be confused, as, e.g., they do not directly identify it as a software due to its name being not obviously a name. However, in those cases you can refer to it as “the Mathematica computer algebra system” or provide a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;¹ except, perhaps, the marketing people of the software company – who are not going to read your publication&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T12:35:56.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:13:51.017" Score="5" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I submit an article, conference paper or other written document, I get tons of useful feedback from my supervisors and other PhD students. So far, I've made sure to adjust my submissions according to their good comments, and then just throw the feedback away. But I feel like I could use that feedback much more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to categorise/condense the feedback in some way that makes it easy to identify my weaknesses and common themes, and also to see whether I'm actually improving in all areas or there are some recurring comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does there exist a good framework for this task? If not, how should I approach it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15824" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T12:34:28.907" Title="How to use feedback on written publications efficiently?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:31:10.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, yes, it would be unethical. You should always allow co-authors the chance to review a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this case of &lt;em&gt;missing co-author&lt;/em&gt; is a different situation.. I'm sure if you try harder, you could find X. If you have exhausted all resources and absolutely cannot find X, you might consider bending the &quot;rules&quot; a bit and publish the paper with X's name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider contacting the journal editor for their feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14547" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:31:10.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:43:06.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also say, yes, it is not totally ethical to have X as a co-author if he did not approve the final version. If all attempts to contact X fail, and also you are sure that X left academia for good, it would suggest to mention X's contribution in the acknowledgement in a honest way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:43:06.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21586" CreationDate="2014-05-28T13:48:08.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing skills usually improve gradually over time. It seems like a very natural approach to obtain feedback and improve papers accordingly,thereby learning important skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be more efficient/structured I suggest that you not try to collect and categorize all feedback you get but try to build up a collection of &quot;Tips and tricks&quot;. What I mean is, that you could skim the feedback for general advice and useful tricks that seems to be applicable in more general form (such as &quot;write the introduction from general to specific and write the conclusion from specific to general&quot;) and collect only these bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:48:08.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21591" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-28T14:03:58.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentation_slide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A slide is a single page of a presentation. Collectively, a group of&#xA;  slides may be known as a slide deck, hi slider or slide show.&#xA;  Historically, a slide was created on a transparency and viewed with an&#xA;  overhead projector. In today's digital age, a slide most commonly&#xA;  refers to a single page developed using a presentation program such as&#xA;  Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. It is also possible to create&#xA;  them with a document markup language, for instance with the LaTeX&#xA;  class Beamer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lecture notes in slide format are referred to as lecture slides,&#xA;  frequently downloadable by students in .ppt or .pdf format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T14:21:56.893" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T14:21:56.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21592" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-28T14:03:58.983" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to slides in a presentation." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T14:22:00.277" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T14:22:00.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T14:08:31.083" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can &lt;em&gt;document&lt;/em&gt; that you have made a good faith effort to find X, and have been unsuccessful, I would think you would be covered on both the legal and ethical fronts. There's no reason for all &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work to go to waste just because your associate has gone into hiding. If the publisher/journal won't accept them as an author without their signed release, publish it under your name and very prominently acknowledge their contribution (as a special note in the introduction). Make sure the journal is aware of this special case, so neither you nor the journal are blind-sided if X shows up. Note that you have been unable to contact them and would appreciate hearing from anyone who can reach them (and, needless to say, readers will likely have a hard time contacting them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to publish &quot;jointly&quot;, explain in an introductory note that X did not review the final work, any errors are solely yours, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know for sure that they simply left academia, and didn't in fact die? Have you checked &quot;white pages&quot; phone listings? Have you checked online death records?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T14:08:31.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T14:56:24.067" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story makes me a bit concerned about the safety and well-being of X.  I might try to vocalize that concern to X's former department head and see whether she has anything to say to allay it.  If really not, then perhaps you might try:  &quot;I am concerned that X might be a missing person.  Would you be willing to help me contact the authorities about this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow though the vibe I am getting from you is that X really just definitely left his own career and does not care or want to be contacted by his former colleagues.  Academics are famous for being a little distant, but truly making oneself unable to be reached is quite unprofessional and even irresponsible behavior.  How much can you worry about the future academic career of someone who is willing to sever all contact with his former coworkers for the indefinite future?  It is very strange and by the way disrespectful to you: did he say anything to you about your project or did he just completely leave you in the lurch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's hope that X is still alive and well, but he certainly sounds like he had a dramatic &quot;death&quot; in the sense that Paul Erdos used the word: i.e., he has brusquely left the academic community.  So I think that dealing with this as you would if he were actually deceased sounds strange at first but is a reasonable way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this circumstance I would do as @Dirk suggested: don't put X's name on the paper.  &lt;s&gt;Dead men don't write papers.&lt;/s&gt;  Less preciously, there is an inherent dishonesty in listing someone as a coauthor in this situation.  Rather you should carefully explain the part of the work that was due to X and that you unfortunately lost all contact with X and are forced to write and submit the paper on your own.  Should you expect to have to explain yourself -- and in particular, explain that you did try the things that everyone (including me) thinks should have worked to reach X -- to a journal editor?  Yes, absolutely.  Is this going to create additional hardship for you in trying to publish the paper?  Yes, it certainly might.  It's kind of a crappy situation for you, honestly.  But I don't see what else to do.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T13:36:40.973" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T13:36:40.973" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2014-05-28T14:57:02.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR:&lt;/strong&gt; It trains you in both technical and soft skills (technical writing, meeting management, etc.), and lets you gain experience with small and large industry projects, using different technologies. It essentially compresses multiple years of industry experience into two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the program actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;. The Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programs offered at Dutch universities have more in common with industry traineeships than with a traditional academic doctorate. As such, most of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13191/can-a-ph-d-have-a-negative-impact-on-your-career-in-the-software-industry&quot;&gt;negative effects&lt;/a&gt; of a PhD on job propspects (&lt;em&gt;trouble actually writing code&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;far less job experience&lt;/em&gt;, etc.) simply do not apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Eindhoven University of Technology describes their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tue.nl/en/education/tue-graduate-school/designers-programs/software-technology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Technology PDEng program&lt;/a&gt; as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Software Technology program is designed to prepare you for an industrial career as a technological designer, and later on as a software or system architect. It starts with 15 months of advanced training and education, including 4 small, industry driven training projects, followed by a major design project of nine months in a company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program is specifically designed to teach MSc students with a good grasp of the theory how to efficiently apply that theory to practical applications. It is presented as a way to &quot;fast-track&quot; your career by gaining a lot of cross-disciplinary experience in only two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They write the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tue.nl/en/education/tue-graduate-school/designers-programs/software-technology/information-for-industry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about their graduates&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Software Technology program has been around for more than 25 years and to date trained more than 370 technological designers. Most designers have joined the companies where they carried out their design assignments and many now fulfill a management position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their alumni association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xootic.nl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XOOTIC&lt;/a&gt; released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xootic.org/images/magazines/201203/mar-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;detailed survey&lt;/a&gt; (pages 25-28), stating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having a job as an XOOTIC is still easy: only&#xA;  1% of the XOOTIC’s is unemployed. [...]&#xA;  By far the most XOOTIC’s have an indefinite contract&#xA;  (82.6%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The OOTI program is known in the industry according&#xA;  to 80% of the answers and is rewarded&#xA;  according to 44% of the respondents.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  XOOTIC’s, considering what they know now,&#xA;  would still do the OOTI program (96.7%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T15:05:17.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T15:09:07.703" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually the subject of a blog post over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2010/02/14/what-to-do-when-your-coauthor/&quot;&gt;Adventures in Ethics and Science&lt;/a&gt;. In general, it seems that several possible actions are defensible. However, whatever action you take, you should make sure to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document your efforts to reach your co-author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the journal editor know at submission time what's going on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-reason-for-retraction/forged-authorship/&quot;&gt;RetractionWatch&lt;/a&gt; is full of stories papers that were retracted for having been submitted without a co-author's knowledge. These steps can help you avoid that fate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given you've done 1 and 2, your choices are then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include the co-author, despite the radio silence, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge the co-author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the first choice is that authorship signals endorsement of the paper's contents. If the missing co-author has not read and endorsed the final contents, having his name as an author is misleading. However, you can resolve this to some degree by including an explicit statement (e.g., in a footnote) that Author X could not be reached to review the final version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The applicability of this choice also depends very much on &lt;strong&gt;the journal’s official policy&lt;/strong&gt; and what responsibilities each of the persons listed as authors have met. I'm sure we can all agree that it would be out of bounds to forge the missing co-author's signature on a form that needs to be submitted with the manuscript! However, even if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have to sign a form stating that all the authors have reviewed the manuscript, you shouldn't do that either - tell the editor you can't, and explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the second choice (acknowledgement instead of authorship) is that the missing co-author has presumably done enough to warrant authorship of the paper. However, you could argue that an essential part of authorship is to see the paper through to publication - and that if the missing co-author has not done that, he does not deserve authorship. Again, if you do this, you must clearly document the author's contribution in the acknowledgements and alert the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which action you choose will probably depend on authorship standards in your field and the outcome of your conversation with the editor. Whatever the result, make sure you clearly and honestly communicate the contributions (and lack thereof) of the missing co-author to both your readers and the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T15:09:07.703" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:00:17.277" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This was mentioned as a comment to the question, but since a couple of people thought it useful, I'm promoting it to an answer.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your colleague X was a foreigner, try contacting the people at his university (usually a separate office or division) who handle paperwork for foreigners. The US govt tends to require a lot of information about foreigners when granting visas. They might have a forwarding address or phone numbers or something, maybe in his home country. You might have to go through X's ex-department if the people performing these services refuse to give information, citing confidentiality issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as whether to include X's name as a co-author, add him to acknowledgements, or omit him entirely, I would lean towards not including him as a co-author, but including him in the acknowledgements, and adding a note that you would like to have him as a co-author, but don't feel you can reasonably do so; and including a brief description of the circumstances. It is unclear whether acknowledgements require permission, in fact I &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19604/285&quot;&gt;asked a question about exactly that&lt;/a&gt; some time ago. Generally, I play it safe and ask for permission, but under the circumstances, I don't think anyone will blame you if you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T16:24:53.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:11:47.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised that a certain issue has not been raised here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Copyright&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the country the copyright of his work may either lay with him or the university. If the &lt;strong&gt;university&lt;/strong&gt; owns the copyright for his work than indeed with proper permissions from the publisher and proper acknowledgments it would be quite ethical to publish such a work. If however the &lt;strong&gt;author&lt;/strong&gt; still owns the copyright it would be absolutely illegal to publish his works without his consent. Now, as far as I know most universities handle this quite well and it tends to be a standard clause in any contract, but it is &lt;strong&gt;absolutely something you should check&lt;/strong&gt; as I have heard about universities where this was quite explicitly not the case on an ideological basis (just check your own contract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Associating X's name without his consent&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue that has not been raised is whether it would be ethical to publish X's name in the first place. Personally I am inclined to argue that in case that the copyright lies with the institution and author X has disappeared in such a way that you were not able to find him, it might not be in his best interest to publish his name, nor add any value for you. Now, don't misunderstand, I am not arguing for not mentioning him at all, rather I would refer to an anonymous author in the author list and in the acknowledgements describe the situation without mentioning his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11353" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T16:11:47.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21606" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:24:35.773" Score="-1" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a career evaluation for applying to a U.S. university graduate program in computer science. I have an official transcript of all my exams in Italian.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found this site spantran that evaluates the career, converts the votes to GPA and translates them in English. But it costs 400$, and it asks 65$ for every page translated. I'm here to get to know some cheaper alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14586" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T19:04:55.110" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T19:10:59.150" Title="How to find an alternative international transcript evaluation service?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21601" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:39:36.773" Score="1" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a scientist I am interested in contacting with expertise in peptidomics. I would like to email them to ask if they had ever explored findings from a related area of research. How do I politely contact them for their input? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T19:02:43.157" Title="How to go about contacting an author regarding questions on their research?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21600" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:48:14.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, check their personal website and any other content they have published which you have access to which may already offer the input you require. It would certainly be in order to personally e-mail the researcher, but be specific as to the type of input or information you require. The scientist is probably very busy, and a broad question is more likely to go unanswered in that case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to refer to certain findings from a related field, ensure you provide all the necessary information to answer your question, or at the very least provide links to the related papers or websites for the convenience of the researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T16:48:14.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21600" CreationDate="2014-05-28T16:57:40.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Virtually every publication will list a corresponding author along with contact information, usually an email address and/or phone number. All authors are listed with their university and department.  You can and should use any or all of this information to find these people and get in touch with the authors of any papers about which you have questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T16:57:40.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21534" CreationDate="2014-05-28T17:00:02.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industrial jobs are announced on different basis than academic ones. Typically, there is no a position to be filled. Rather (larger companies) are hiring on semi-continuous basis, and assign people to groups internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there are more research-oriented openings, for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=engineering&amp;amp;req=a0IA000000CzAdDMAV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook: Data Scientist, Product Science&lt;/a&gt;. Just bear in mind it is mostly very applied science, and in fields like Machine Learning, Statistics, maybe some Graph Theory or Cryptography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So look at big companies (smaller companies may not have such specialized positions or money to invest in long-term development) in technology (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, ...) and their openings. When it comes to direct positions, usually you can choose only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; interviews (you rarely see research positions being on the front page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is nice research, or building webpages in a disguise, the only way is to ask people working at the company. Or look at CVs of your colleagues in your field who did internships in these companies (especially ones that you know are pure mathematicians or computer scientists). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T10:08:44.977" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T10:08:44.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2014-05-28T18:57:18.457" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's no criticism to rebut, then waive the right to rebut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've already received top marks with no criticisms, then you can only spoil things by saying something at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just shut up. And enjoy the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T18:57:18.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21600" CreationDate="2014-05-28T19:02:43.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send them a brief, polite email. Brief because nobody has time to read huge walls of text from strangers; polite because you want them to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T19:02:43.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21599" CreationDate="2014-05-28T19:05:12.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The National Association of Credential Evaluation Services is an association of credentials evaluation services in the United States. Of universities that require an evaluation of foreign transcripts, many will also require that this evaluation be done by an NACES member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of NAECS member services is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naces.org/members.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;; there are currently 19 services on this list. Now it is up to you to find out which offer the kind of evaluation you need, and what is the cost of each service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that you need only submit an evaluation if the university you are applying to explicitly requires it; most do not. If they do, they may also require that you use a specific service; check with the university about their requirements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T19:10:59.150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T19:10:59.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2014-05-28T19:22:01.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it sounds that there would be no need to rebut against anything (I suggest to read the reports &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; carefully once again - some criticism can be hidden and is sometimes difficult to spot between positive comments) there may be another reason to formulate a response. It may well be that the reports contain valuable suggestions or remarks on specific points of your proposal. You can take the opportunity to pick up these suggestions and present new views or deeper explanations. However, I think that this really only makes sense if you have something new to say in view of the comments of the reviewer. I would suggest to not repeat what is already written in the proposal…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T19:56:12.763" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T19:56:12.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-28T20:47:54.660" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your university/department probably has a protocol for investigating research malpractice (ie the people who would be responsible for any disciplinary investigation if the &quot;missing author&quot; made a complaint about the route you eventually choose). I suggest you approach them for advice now. And definitely approach the journal editor for advice - they may have seen this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethically, there is no perfect solution. One thing to weigh up when considering whether the missing author should be an author: are your results controversial in any way? Do you have any reason to think that the missing author might disagree to any significant extent with what you've written? If so, this should weigh heavily in your ethical analysis of the various options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T20:47:54.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T21:06:46.640" Score="5" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergrad at a top 5 research institution for context, and this is pertaining to math Ph.D. admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know looking at grades in isolation w.r.t. admissions is a questionable thing to do in the first place, but from an admissions perspective, are difficult classes valued over perfect grades? I guess the example in mind would be, is it better to have a couple of difficult courses + mostly undergrad courses with all As, or a lot of difficult classes but some Bs sprinkled in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15849" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T07:14:45.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:32:55.473" Title="For graduate admissions, are difficult classes valued over perfect grades?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21620" CreationDate="2014-05-28T21:17:29.860" Score="2" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a sort of follow up to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19803/ms-in-pure-maths-to-phd-in-statistics&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, what is advice you would give for telling my MSci advisor I am switching disciplines (pure maths to statistics) for doctoral work? I will presumably ask him for a letter of recommendation. I do not want to come across as ungrateful for his work with me, but the direction of my current research with him has come to bore me. How do I tell him that is a major reason I am switching disciplines? Do I even need to disclose such? I am closing in on completing my work with him, so anything dealing with changing advisors right now is not an option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:08:02.627" Title="Informing your advisor that you are changing disciplines" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21614" CreationDate="2014-05-28T21:33:51.650" Score="18" ViewCount="44255" Body="&lt;p&gt;By what title should I greet assistant and associate professors in emails and letters? I study in the UK and for post-doctorands up to senior lectures one uses &quot;Dear Dr. X&quot;, but for professors one uses &quot;Dear Professor. X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T21:55:55.867" LastActivityDate="2021-04-26T11:43:55.560" Title="By what title should I greet assistant and associate professors in emails and letters?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21613" CreationDate="2014-05-28T21:36:44.793" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assistant and Associate Professors in the US can be formally addressed by &quot;Professor&quot; or &quot;Doctor/Dr.&quot;. There should be no offense given with either salutation, and either is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T21:36:44.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2014-05-28T22:26:18.193" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How long can one talk about the same material in the conference loop until the talk becomes stale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other answers have pointed out, certainly the answer is not going to be &quot;N months&quot; for any value of N.  Here are some things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You say that &quot;my complete results all reduce to a standard storyline&quot;.  Yes, but that's true for entire subfields of mathematics.  I like to tell the story about how I heard a close friend in grad school give a talk about his thesis work just as he graduated.  I heard him speak again when he came back to visit almost a year later.  As we were catching up afterwards, I somehow let on my surprise that he gave essentially the same talk both times.  He looked at me in disbelief and told me &quot;There was hardly a single result in common between those two talks&quot;.  It turned out that -- not withstanding that we were both arithmetic geometers -- I simply didn't have enough knowledge in his subfield of speciality to penetrate far enough beyond the standard storyline -- Galois representations, big rings, some filtered semilinear algebra, perhaps an R = T theorem... -- to see what was new about the second talk, despite the fact that an expert would say that it was &lt;em&gt;all new&lt;/em&gt;.  I have found this to be one of the more profound experiences of my professional life and I tell it often in a variety of contexts: e.g. I mentioned it to a linear algebra student who said that she was largely following the lectures but sometimes was having trouble understanding the differences between what we were doing from week to week.  When you tell an undergraduate a parable, it's probably safest to spill the beans and tell them the moral: I recognized her perception as an indication that she was farther away from engaging with the material than she herself realized.  In your case the moral is admittedly a little less clear, but I think that part of it is that we can build a highly successful academic career by hewing largely to a &quot;standard storyline&quot;: the devil, and thus also the glory, is in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) So I have a question: is your concern about giving &lt;em&gt;cognate talks&lt;/em&gt; or literally giving essentially the same talk over and over again?  Let me assume the latter.  It's harder to know how often you should simply repeat yourself, and I am wary of giving advice because I know myself to be close to one end of the spectrum: I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; usually travel around and gave the same talk multiple times.  The one time I really remember the feeling of repeating a talk more than once was when I was on the tenure track job market, when I did it four times in a couple of months.  The last time I gave that talk, it indeed did feel stale and I remember not getting much in the way of feedback from the audience...and then I got offered the job.  I am much more likely to want to take every given talk as an opportunity to speak about what's on my mind that month or that week: this is not necessarily a good thing, but I try to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think though that you are rightly concerned about giving the same talk to largely the same audience of specialists.  When that starts happening, might you not simply be speaking too much?  One thing to do is look around: if you're in the same group of specialists, they are also speaking frequently, I guess.  Do you observe others around you -- at a similar career stage and also those who are more senior -- largely &quot;repeating themselves&quot; in the talks they give?  (Sometimes a really good talk is worth repeating.  I remember fondly having heard Manjul Bhargava talk about the &quot;15 Theorem&quot; at least twice, probably three times.  Each time I grasped the picture more fully and thus liked it even more.  Obviously Manjul could have talked about other work; he &lt;em&gt;chose&lt;/em&gt; to revisit this amazingly beautiful well, and his insistence on promoting his own good taste has had such a positive role in influencing later mathematical work, including some of mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a piece of advice: when someone invites you to give a talk, before you accept or decline, ask them what they have in mind for you to speak of (be ready to follow up immediately with a list of options).  If you think that the person who is inviting you to speak has heard you speak about the same topic before, or if a lot of the audience feels the same way, ask them explicitly about that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to do is to consciously update your &quot;standard talk&quot; to reflect recent changes in your thinking about your research.  You're right that a talk is a story, and the story can change even if the core results remain the same.  Reinterpreting your past successes in terms of what you're doing presently and are trying to do in the very near future is a big part of research.  I have heard James Maynard speak about bounded gaps between primes; I would gladly hear him speak again, even if I were a seamless expert on his paper on the topic (note the subjunctive!) &lt;em&gt;just to hear at the end of his talk what he is thinking about now&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a repertoire of multiple research talks expected of a recent PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple &lt;em&gt;disjoint&lt;/em&gt; talks?  No, probably not.  It is not too soon to start working on a &quot;non-research talk&quot;, i.e., a much friendlier broader talk that you could give to undergraduates, but I think that's not what you're speaking about.  I do think that having multiple projects is a good thing even for a young mathematician nowadays, but one does not want to sacrifice breadth at the expense of depth.  If you have basically one research talk that you've given half a dozen times or more over a period of a couple of years, by now that one talk is probably really good.  I would concentrate on further refining and updating that one great talk rather than just feeling you should start from scratch in order to show &quot;multiplicity&quot;.  (Again, I am conscious of being unusually lured by the siren song of multiplicity.  Oh, well: we all need to identify the good career advice which is not good &lt;em&gt;for us&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T11:18:48.870" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T11:18:48.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21636" CreationDate="2014-05-28T23:33:48.797" Score="11" ViewCount="1817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a PhD program in a top US institution but my SO,family,friends are somewhere else. I am considering a thesis that would require minimal/no field or lab work. This would be a big compromise as I was hoping to do intensive field work but there is no funding for field work. I thought that a compromise would be that I can work on it remotely. I haven't mentioned yet to my advisor that I am home sick as we don't really connect on a personal level, but we have a good connection on a research level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I approach my advisor saying that I would like to work remotely for 6 months out of the year? I have worked remotely before and it has always worked but I don't know how this type of setup is seen at a top tier US institution.&#xA;How do I approach my advisor about this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T11:36:10.140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T11:36:10.140" Title="How to ask PhD advisor to work remotely on thesis for extensive periods?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2014-05-28T23:44:29.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that you have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14760/choose-a-professor-to-work-with&quot;&gt;wondering whether you had chosen the right advisor&lt;/a&gt;, ever since you started your PhD 5 months ago. You didn't even like your subject then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier I commented that I was not sure if what you described would be a valid reason to leave your PhD program. Given that you have struggled with this decision for the last 5 months and you have not seen any improvements except that now you like your subject, it could well be the right decision to leave. I must quickly add, though, that many PhD students have had minimum guidance from their advisor, yet they persisted. This is something you need to decide yourself, and it seems that you are determined to leave, and that is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must not do, as others have commented, is to lie to your advisor. Do not think about getting a recommendation from him. First, I don't think it is necessary, and second, it will help you be more objective in conveying to him your reason for leaving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T23:44:29.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T00:29:51.783" Score="4" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;When checking the grants.gov I found that individuals can directly apply for available grants. Since it was not mentioned that individuals should be US citizen, I thought that everyone can apply, and judgement is based on the proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can international people apply?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should the project conducted in the US territory? Or they care about the results no matter where it has been done?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If yes to 1 &amp;amp; 2; can an international person apply, and upon success coming to the US to conduct the project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T06:51:33.370" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T06:58:58.140" Title="Can individual international scholars apply for US federal funds?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21618" CreationDate="2014-05-29T00:51:31.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know for many of the grants, at least for DARPA, NSF, NIH, NASA, you need a PI located in a US institution, you may be located somewhere else, but the main PI should be from a US institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the look of it grants.gov is more like a splash age from where you can search grants in diverse institutions. I can only talk of those(DARPA, NIH, etc..), since are the one I'm familiarized with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the PI applying for the grant usually needs to hold at least an associate professorship, there might be other grants that do not have this requirement but again, those are the ones I'm familiarized with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T00:51:31.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21612" CreationDate="2014-05-29T00:52:00.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Directly.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I've decided to pursue a PhD in statistics.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then after the inevitable discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you write me a strong letter of recommendation?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T00:52:00.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21616" CreationDate="2014-05-29T01:23:02.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should aim for a shorter period at first, to show that it doesn't affect your productivity.  My wife and I aim to both work remotely 25% of our time, to address the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2633/1033&quot;&gt;two-body problem&lt;/a&gt;.  If each of us works remotely for two weeks every two months, that aim is fulfilled.  A colleague of mine just returned from a 10-week remote work trip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six months, however, is very long to work remotely in one go.  It is of course more expensive to work remotely in shorter segments, but if your advisor doesn't know yet whether it will work out, six months is too long.  Explain that you are ultimately interested in working remotely up to half of the time.  Propose to work remotely for 3-4 weeks first.  Be available at any normal local time for your supervisor, even if that might mean inconvenient times on your end.  After the remote work trip, return and evaluate how it went.  Then propose to plan a longer remote-work trip, perhaps 10 weeks, and return again.  If all goes well after a couple of 10-week blocks, you could bring up the idea for an extended six-month period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst that can happen is that they say no, and you may have to find a different way.  Perhaps they don't agree with 6 months in one block, but are fine with 3 2-month blocks spread over a year.  It will cost more money, but it is safer in many ways too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T01:23:02.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T03:10:45.387" Score="2" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I there an international society/association for building a community of academic managers (such as department heads, deans, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aua.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association of University Administrators&lt;/a&gt;, but it is for administrators (e.g., directors of offices) rather than academic managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T10:54:47.373" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T04:33:44.457" Title="Is there an association for academic managers?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-29T03:31:00.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, the possibility that the foreign-born author fears problems or retaliation at home if they published.  Not knowing the topic, I can't say, but the persecution of Salman Rushdie's &quot;The Satanic Verses&quot; with a &lt;strong&gt;fatwa&lt;/strong&gt; and death threats springs to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15858" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T03:31:00.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21613" CreationDate="2014-05-29T03:52:28.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's quite important to consider what your position is in this relationship, and you don't specify. In almost any situation, it is probably best to address your &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; email using the &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Prof.&quot; title, to be polite, and to continue to do so until it seems that the tone of the responses are less formal. Of course, that is a subjective thing to judge. But I can't give you much advice about that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to read from the tone of the responses at what point (possibly after only one email) the Prof. is OK with a less formal form of address. If you are an undergrad student in their class, it might not hurt to stay with the more formal title, even if you are of a similar age to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trained in the UK and now work in the US system, and I feel like there is a lot of similarity. Basically, it's fairly informal, within limits. As an assistant professor myself, I do prefer undergrads to address me as &quot;Dr.&quot; or &quot;Prof.&quot; (as a US class instructor, not the same as the UK Professor) in more formal correspondence, and I think that's usual in the US and UK. Graduate students and above can normally expect to be safe to be on first name terms provided their emails remain fairly professional and carefully written, i.e. they don't rapidly degenerate into txtspeak or very casual, potentially rude, references or phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are a graduate student or post-doc, and you are at the same department, or even institution, I encourage you to consider using their first name once that initial correspondence has been exchanged and if they sign with their first name. It's never &quot;wrong&quot; to continue to use a more formal term of address, but it can sometimes become awkwardly too formal for relaxed academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, take into account the personality of your correspondent. If he or she is very senior in age or accomplishment, or maybe has given an impression of great self-importance (i.e., ego!) then you may be better off staying slightly more formal in case you are perceived to be disrespecting them before you know them more personally. Honestly, though, I think that is an increasingly rare (but not unheard of) phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T03:52:28.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21490" CreationDate="2014-05-29T04:12:28.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few months is a fairly long time, and that could either be good or bad. There's no easy answer. You must quickly do some research and find out what other benefits you might get from spending time there. It could be very boring and take away valuable time from your schedule, but frankly it can be whatever you choose to make of it. Being prepared and having a &quot;can do&quot; attitude, then, is crucial. Alternatively, you can always recluse there and get a lot of private thinking and writing done! Also, some of the travel benefits are obviously personal enrichment and growth, but we're talking here more about academic benefits. (These may intersect!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly in my mind, foreign academic experience provides a different context to the research that you are already doing. Universities are usually multi-cultural places, and you may meet a lot of international students who will give you useful perspectives in addition to the host lab members. Email and join in activities with the international student society that they will no doubt have! We are global citizens, and to be a prominent and respected scientist in the future you will be expected to have a global presence. So, understanding global perspectives on your work is valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you will be visiting a tiny country with little academic infrastructure or funding, this may not be a particularly relevant point. But if it's a well known university, or in a &quot;bigger&quot; country, then you should get some valuable perspective from it in this way, which will also improve the value of putting this experience on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participating in nearby conferences, or at asking to give a research presentation at the host institution (e.g. just a regular department seminar), all looks very good on your CV. It's usually a &quot;given&quot; that you will at least be able to give a departmental seminar if you visit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as a PhD student, it's sometimes hard to get adequate breadth of experience about your research area while working in one lab with one mentor. Look for the connections with your collaborator, not the differences. Realize that this is an opportunity to get &quot;free&quot; input on your work and advice about the broader field from people who care about similar things. You will probably learn some insightful, useful (maybe even surprising) things about your mentor's personality or scientific approach that will help you become more independently minded and mature as a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the perspectives of your host lab will help you broaden your appreciation for what you should aim for in your scientific career. There are a lot of bigger, inter-related questions beyond what your current lab cares about, which you might not yet be able to appreciate with your prior background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, as an extra incentive, remember that your hosts might be your future peer reviewers or writers or recommendation letters! Personal networks are very important in academia, even if sometimes there is some scientific disconnect between the everyday work that you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T04:12:28.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17135" CreationDate="2014-05-29T04:28:07.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does depend on the type and reputation of the conference, but in my experience most conferences that are not publishing their proceedings will accept all abstracts that are clearly written and have no overt language, logic, factual, or similar critical problems. Looking at the question you linked to, I think exactly the same advice that is posted there is relevant to conferences with no published proceedings. I say this because the goal of your abstract here is primarily to attract attention and get people to attend your talk. (But, does this conference publish its abstracts? Some do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the advice given in the answers to the linked question will achieve this goal without putting you in an ethical challenge or leading you to claim things that turn out to be untrue or,  worse, so misguided or ambitious that it's embarrassing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to convince the reader of your abstract that you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have compelling numerical results by that time. This comes from explaining your methodology and approach in a way that will seem reasonable and so can be reasonably expected to lead to exciting, specific results. If you don't expect to, then maybe your project isn't well designed or well suited to this audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It never hurts to have a short abstract regardless of the conference rules on length. KISS! (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is appropriate here. If you are severely lacking anything interesting to say right now, it could be as straightforward as a paragraph version of: &quot;We will present numerical results from a novel form of mathematical analysis of problem X, which will impact Y.&quot; If the audience is interested in topics X or Y then they might well show up regardless of their confidence in what new results you'll have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T04:28:07.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18227" CreationDate="2014-05-29T04:48:46.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, as @JeffE attests, there is at least a balance to be struck in the diversification of your skills and perspectives versus having a clear focus that will mark out your niche. You can overdo either one. My perspective, as someone who has been involved in inter-disciplinary research for 15 years, and who has had a lot of advice from much more senior folk about this, does err somewhat on the side of Carroll. In particular, your goal &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; to mark out a well defined territory that is not too diffuse. &quot;Trajectory&quot; in your career (mainly your pub record) is a primary consideration for hiring and promotion, and it's difficult to build up a body of work if you dabble in many areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own perspective resonates with Carroll's here: continual, long-term dabbling is &lt;strong&gt;Bad&lt;/strong&gt; for getting tenure. It will dilute what others will be able to confidently perceive/predict about your current and future impact in a specific field. But being a &quot;drone&quot; who just followed faithfully in the footsteps of his/her PhD mentor, using the same perspective that might already be &quot;old-fashioned&quot; and not future-proof to the growing inter-disciplinary pressures (you should be able to insert your own field-specific examples here!), is also &lt;strong&gt;Bad&lt;/strong&gt;. Either because you find eventually yourself bored or devalued as a &quot;mere follower&quot; rather than innovator, or because your micro-focused view dries up in terms of peer interest or funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that institutions &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; pay lip service to inter-disciplinary work. Some actually really support it in a meaningful way, and look for fresh, innovative thinkers to join them. As a junior academic, now is a good time to explore what's not too far from your area and learn more about how to position yourself with a unique and/or highly desirable set of skills and body of knowledge. So, this can be exactly how you end up being successful in contributing in a clear direction in exactly the way I interpret from Carroll's blog post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, ask your mentors and colleagues how they see the current and future combination of the two disciplines you are talking about, and what the interesting questions are. Then try to see how you could fit into that and do something innovative while remaining feasible and concrete. It's tricky, but finding that sweet spot should get you a long way, and it could be much more rewarding. Just be careful who you work for. Some places or people talk the talk but don't walk the walk. When it comes to decisions involving money, if your institution's administration or your peers don't know how to properly evaluate your highly innovative inter-disciplinary work then you might &quot;fall between the cracks&quot; and be passed over for a more traditional candidate whose work they can, at least, easily understand! Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T04:48:46.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21618" CreationDate="2014-05-29T05:08:52.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, you can follow links or do a google search to find the original text of the Call for Proposals. The full text of those &lt;em&gt;almost always&lt;/em&gt; provides clear criteria for who is eligible. Almost always (probably unless otherwise stated), the PI has to be from a US institution, but contrary to the other answer here, I am not familiar with the PI needing to have any particular academic status (especially not &lt;em&gt;tenured&lt;/em&gt; already as an associate prof, and certainly all the kinds of non-TT research scientist positions), provided they have a position which their institution officially lists as being eligible to be sponsored as a PI. Sometimes, a post-doc, lecturer, or adjunct prof might be eligible. Remember, the grants go to the institution primarily, and the PI merely executes them on their behalf. The granting agencies defer the responsibility for administering who is legally OK to conduct the research to the accredited institution. Policies can vary between institution, so you'll need to ask your local administrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain kinds of award from private agencies or those who work with sensitive information, e.g. DARPA, DOD, or DOE, might require you to be a US Citizen (not even just a LPR), but that should be clearly listed. I am pretty sure that &quot;unrestricted,&quot; in this context, means that there is no such restriction on immigration status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are always free to shoot an email or call to the cognizant program officer for a particular grant, to ask for clarification. They will expect you to have read the full, original CfP, unless you want to put them in a bad mood that might bias the review of your prospective application!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastEditorUserId="859" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T05:52:54.463" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T05:52:54.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T05:26:26.597" Score="8" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a physical scientist, having completed both my Ph.D. and postdoc at top 5 U.S. universities. After working in industry for more than 10 years, I decided it was time for a career switch to academia, not due to economic reasons, however due to a strong passion for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I taught for 5 years in graduate school, and established my own private tutoring service years ago. In total, I've been tutoring for more than 12 years. Recently I spent one (1) year teaching at a top 10 public university, and am now teaching at a community college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During spring 2014, I sent out ~32 assistant professor applications, and heard back only from one school. I interviewed there, however did not get the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION: Is there a possibility that, once discovering my tutoring service (simply a matter of a Google search), colleges and universities might not want to hire me?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interested only in science education research, my passion is exclusively in teaching at the undergraduate level, and I've used the tutoring to hone my skills over the years. Understanding exactly where students experience the pitfalls of my branch of physical science has provided me with a unique insight into teaching, however I'm not certain everyone perceives it this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much appreciate anyone who indicate whether or not the image of a tutor might take a toll in terms of applications and interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&#xA;Pensive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15860" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:31:41.197" Title="Might colleges and universities not consider me for an assistant professor position because I'm a professional tutor in addition to being a teacher?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-29T05:28:03.813" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can't you just rewrite the article? That is, keep all the ideas, techniques, etc., but produce an entirely new text? That would at least deal completely with the issue of copyright. In that case, you would be the sole author (though you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; include a very generous acknowledgment note, for sure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your article contains experimental data/lengthy calculations, you can reuse that data as long as you remake tables, graphs, etc. as your own work. Again, conspicuous attribution is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And speaking as someone who has herself gone away abruptly from a doctoral research position, you should consider that the troubles you are going through right now may very well have been fully foreseen and intended by your MIA colleague. So that if you manage to finally track him down, he may simply refuse to publish or even flat out refuse to talk to you. And he's fully entitled to do so. (Not trying to imply that you mistreated your colleague in any way; I certainly felt mistreated before I left, and if someone ever came looking for me, for whatever reason, I'd tell them to shove it. But in my case I rather doubt anyone will.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the gist of it, as I see it, is that you are fully entitled to use the ideas, data, that is, the &lt;em&gt;substance&lt;/em&gt; of the work itself (with very explicit attribution and acknowledgment); but you cannot in any way list him as a coauthor without his formally expressed consent (that would be misrepresentation on your part); and you certainly cannot publish anything he actually wrote while omitting him as an author (which would be plagiarising).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a final note: Keep in mind that, though he may appear to be missing, it is very possible he is still keeping an eye on whatever your lab/department is doing. If someone from my previous workplace did anything like that to me, I would be sure to be back to give them as much grief as I possibly could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15862" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T05:28:03.813" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19508" CreationDate="2014-05-29T05:48:57.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A primary mailing list for computational neuroscience, which includes jobs all around the world (many in Europe) is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would also be a better place to ask your more specific question about fellowships, etc. There are many such opportunities in Europe, but your question is not specific enough right now. If you ask on the comp-neuro mailing list, you should say more about your current position, location, and experience. Have you published anything? What research topics have you been studying? At what institution? This will help people focus their answers to help you more. You can also start by looking up the major European institutions that are strong in comp neuro (of which there are many, and there are lists all over the internet) and see if they sponsor any programs directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, as a mathematical neuroscientist myself, I think you will find the neuroscience area much more intellectually stimulating than anatomy. Computational anatomy is, in many ways, a more limited set of topics. A lot of it involves image processing and 3D reconstruction, which are already included as possible sub-areas within neuroscience. So you could always get into that sub-area of anatomy later anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T05:48:57.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21618" CreationDate="2014-05-29T06:51:20.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You wrote, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found that individuals can directly apply for available grants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true only in a few rare cases - generally, grants are awarded to PIs with an organizational affiliation. As per grants.gov's section on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants/grant-eligibility.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grant Eligibility&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there are many funding opportunities on Grants.gov, few of them are available to individuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless specified for &lt;em&gt;Individual Eligibility&lt;/em&gt;, funding opportunities on grants.gov are open only to those affiliated with an eligible organization, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants/individual-registration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;further stated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individual applicants may only apply for grant opportunities, on Grants.gov, that indicate individual eligibility within the Synopsis and Full Announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants/organization-registration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only time it is appropriate to register as an individual with Grants.gov is when you are submitting an application that specifies it is open only to individuals, such as for an individual fellowship or traineeship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you click &quot;Browse Eligibilities&quot; on the grants.gov homepage, you can click through directly to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/search-grants.html?eligibilities=21%7CIndividuals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the grants for which individuals may apply&lt;/a&gt;. (These are basically a handful of fellowships or extremely specialized grants - currently there are ~20 open opportunities. You will have to read the extended details for these to determine if they have any additional eligibility requirements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T06:58:58.140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T06:58:58.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21616" CreationDate="2014-05-29T11:26:41.797" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would break this down into two parts. First, discuss your circumstances with your advisor and explain that you want to spend more time &quot;at home&quot;, and ask how he feels about you working remotely. Go into the discussion with a concrete proposal for how the practicalities might work: how will you do your work? Do you have access to the resources you'll need? How will you stay in touch with your advisor/colleagues/the research community? Take on board any reservations your advisor might have; don't go into the discussion with too fixed an idea of what the &quot;right&quot; outcome is. Agree to review the arrangements once they've been tested for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have agreement in principle, then you can hash out the dates. I would try and start with relatively short stretches of remote working - a couple of weeks - to allow any teething problems/concerns (on either side) to be resolved. I suspect everyone will be happier if you can spend your six months away in short chunks, rather than in one big block. Also, recognise that your advisor may have reasons to want you present for certain occasions/portions of the year - involve him in your planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T11:26:41.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21639" CreationDate="2014-05-29T11:51:58.783" Score="4" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Norway, it is mandatory to do a course in philosophy named &lt;em&gt;Examen Philosophicum&lt;/em&gt;. I got a B in this subject, and as such, it hurts my GPA. Do graduate schools (in mathematics) care the least bit about such subjects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12164" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:00:11.407" Title="Do graduate schools consider courses that are exclusive for one country?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21637" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:00:11.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the nature of the subject and the program to which you are applying. Anything that's &quot;on-topic&quot; for your field would of course be considered—so if you're doing a graduate program in something like philosophy, theology, history, or something in that part of the &quot;spectrum,&quot; such a course probably would be considered. However, if you're studying something in, for instance, the sciences or engineering, or something in the humanities far removed from this—such as music—such a course would probably receive much less consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, a grade of B in such a course is almost certainly not going to make a significant enough difference in your GPA that you would have been admitted if you had gotten an &quot;A,&quot; but will be rejected because you got a &quot;B.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:00:11.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21630" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:07:45.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I could see that might be a negative about having this service would be the possibility of creating a conflict of interest—you should not be a university professor while simultaneously offering &lt;em&gt;paid&lt;/em&gt; tutoring services in disciplines you would be teaching. In that sense, you'd be &quot;double dipping,&quot; and it would be a serious ethical issue—are you somehow &quot;rewarding&quot; students who sign up for such a service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could address these concerns directly in your statement, if you feel it's appropriate enough. More likely than not, however, it's just a numbers game. With hundreds of applications for any open position, and only a handful of candidates to be interviewed, you probably &quot;met expectations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:07:45.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21630" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:20:02.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I decided it was time for a career switch to academia,[...], due to a strong passion for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have already mentioned, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sending out 32 apps and getting one interview might actually be a good success rate in physics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your absence from academic research for 10 years (if indeed you've been absent in the publications game) is a much bigger issue than your private tutoring service. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I wonder also where you're applying. If you're focused on teaching, but are applying to R1 schools where research is the main focus, then you're less likely to get any traction (especially if you indicate this love for teaching in your applications). I realize that this sounds awfully cynical, but the fact is that at research-focused universities you're competing with people with heavy research profiles and an unbroken sequence of postdocs and publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a more teaching-focused school, it's possible that your tutoring experience will be viewed as a positive, because it demonstrates a track record and commitment to teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T12:31:41.197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:31:41.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21574" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:54:37.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a co-author had died while a paper was being prepared, I would normally expect to see them continue to be listed, along with a footnote mentioning that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation here is slightly more woolly because it requires more explanation and in the case of a death there's no risk that the co-author will reappear and repudiate the work. Nonetheless they seem close enough and a footnote along the lines of &quot;X did A work but was unavailable to contribute to the final draft of this paper&quot; would be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, flagging the situation with the editors and any local ethics committee would certainly be prudent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7257" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:54:37.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21490" CreationDate="2014-05-29T14:16:08.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is standard practice in Denmark (where I'm currently located). All PhD students are essentially required to spend 3-6 months at a foreign institution. Similarly we host a large number of PhD students in our department for stays of about this length. So, this is a question that's pretty relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take advantage of this opportunity you have to think about what you personally hope to get out of it. I'd say there are several possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discussing your research with people outside of your lab and narrow subfield. This can be a great opportunity to get novel feedback and insights. But, you need to make sure you actually have the chance to do this. Does the lab you're going to have regular meetings? Do you have a chance to present your work? Will you be able to go to local workshops/meetings/conferences at the host institution? We sometimes have students who end up not getting a lot of face time with members of their host institutions, which is unfortunate and you want to avoid that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learning whether there are other areas of your discipline that are interesting besides what you're currently working. Presumably after you're done with your PhD you'll have to move somewhere else. This may require you &quot;branch out&quot; slightly from your current research work into related areas. This might be a good opportunity to learn about somewhat related work and get some knowledge that might help you start a new project, or land a postdoc or assistant professorship in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting a feel for another department. All departments and labs are different. They have different culture, different norms, different levels of social interaction, etc. This is a great time to see how another lab/department/university works and via that experience get some insight into aspects of that environment (and your home institution) that you do and do not like. This can be valuable for deciding what kind of environments you'd like to be part of in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Networking. Going to another institution is a great way to broaden your network. But, you need to make sure you'll actually get a chance to meet people. You don't want to end up going somewhere and just sitting in your office the whole time alone. Make sure there's a network of PhD students you can meet while you there and that you make a concerted effort to meet with faculty. And, outside of work, try to make some friends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to prepare, figure out what you want to get out of the experience and then make sure the institution can satisfy those things (and, as part of that, try to setup the desired opportunities in advanced by scheduling meetings, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T14:16:08.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T14:57:29.650" Score="3" ViewCount="1634" Body="&lt;p&gt;What criteria (in light of the best practices or teaching experience) should one consider when deciding the passing percentage of the course?  (By the passing percentage I mean the grade threshold below which the student will receive an F)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the threshold below which students get a failing grade depend qualitatively on these criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T15:59:05.540" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T00:01:12.967" Title="How to set the threshold below which students get a failing grade in a university-level course?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T15:48:39.497" Score="0" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have to write a book, how can I decide which citation style choose? I know that the most used are APA, MLA, ISO 690 but I don't understand what is the difference and which one is most used for what...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10333" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T15:54:16.910" Title="Which are the criteria I have to follow to choose a citation style for my book?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21646" CreationDate="2014-05-29T15:54:16.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are asking about an academic book, in which case the following applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher's style guidelines specify what citation style to use (many do), then use that one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, use the citation style that is commonly used in your field. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gsrc.ucla.edu/gwc/resources/citation-styles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of the commonly used citation styles&lt;/a&gt; for many fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if several styles are commonly used in your field and the publisher has no requirements, choose the one that you think will be most useful to the reader. (For example, depending on the content and style of your book, you may find footnote citations more useful than in-text citations, or vice versa.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T15:54:16.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21611" CreationDate="2014-05-29T17:32:55.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a pretty easy one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know looking at grades in isolation w.r.t. admissions is a questionable thing to do in the first place, but from an admissions perspective, are difficult classes valued over perfect grades?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I guess the example in mind would be, is it better to have a couple of difficult courses + mostly undergrad courses with all As, or a lot of difficult classes but some Bs sprinkled in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is distinctly better.  I got a B in the first graduate course I took as an undergraduate.  (I then took 8 more graduate courses and got A's.)  This did not stop me from getting into all the math PhD programs to which I applied, including the top three in the US.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:32:55.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18778" CreationDate="2014-05-29T17:41:44.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, in the US for example I do not think they acknowledge Masters from other countries, a couple of friends had master degrees themselves before doing their PhDs and both had to get an additional masters (more like it just happened somewhere in the middle)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in Japan, you cannot get into a PhD if you do not have a Masters degree and a title to show for it. That is for all the Universities, not some of them. The only case when this is not the norm is in natural sciences. But in Japan, is like in the UK, PhD programs are 3 years long (usually) you have no classes (well, few, like 4), and you are expected to do research most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:41:44.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21645" CreationDate="2014-05-29T17:49:38.747" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've honestly never understood the letter system for scoring. Is not intuitive and is open to so many interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I had to use letters, and at least for the case of failing the student it was quite straight forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests, homework, and every piece of work was graded in a scale from 1 to 10, at the end I just did a weighted average for the different elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ended up with a number between 1 and 10, I consider someone who has passed the class as someone who has at least more of half of the knowledge imparted in the class, so that would be having more than a round 5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the threshold was set at 5.1, I would fail those that got less than 5.1 and just prorate the rest of the letter upwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:49:38.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17135" CreationDate="2014-05-29T17:56:10.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing as a mathematical modeler in Epidemiology, and a regular submitter to conferences with these types of requirements, which are dominated by empirical research findings, this is something that's hard, if you approach it from the direction you have - with the numerical results coming at the &quot;end&quot; of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be good to have &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; numerical result, because as has been mentioned, while you might not view these as the crux of your research, it may very well be the crux of why someone is &lt;em&gt;interested&lt;/em&gt; in your research. Even as someone who does appreciate the theory side of things, I'm often rather more interested in the numerical results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, these conferences are mostly looking to avoid &quot;Will be discussed&quot; results, where there's no means to evaluate if you've done anything, or if it will be interesting. The latter is especially hard for deciding whether a presentation becomes an oral or poster presentation, because giving one of the precious oral slots to someone whose going to largely be discussing a slew of null results is (often) irksome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do however &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; results, and that should be enough to make it past the bar. If X and Y are both possible within the parameter space, and that &lt;em&gt;means something for the field&lt;/em&gt;, then that is a specific result, and you should expand on why that's interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:56:10.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:03:00.937" Score="13" ViewCount="1175" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see faculty positions in Europe and North America is always based on applications. Is it common that a department head suggest a faculty position to a possible candidate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not mean based on personal connection. Job websites (consider those devoted to academic jobs) encourage job seekers to upload their CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common that a department head search CVs uploaded on academic job websites and suggest a faculty possible to a job seeker?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any success story? Does this system work in practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T07:47:16.147" Title="Can one get a faculty position by posting CV on job websites?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:07:04.590" Score="4" ViewCount="1312" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of short papers at computer science conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m a first year PhD student. I spent a few months working with my supervisor on a long paper that we submitted to a conference. I then spent two weeks working on a short paper for the same conference. My supervisor said that it is fine to submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it have been better working on four or five short papers instead of one long paper? Or are short papers not well regarded at all—should I not consider working on them in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14861" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T20:37:11.987" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T21:01:52.767" Title="Short papers at computer science conferences" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21612" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:08:02.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many countries in Europe (France for example), statistics is a part of the Maths department. Theoritical statistics uses a lot of sophisticated mathematics, like measure theory, or functional analysis. A PhD in applied statistics would probably require a serious theoritical research, together with modelisation and programming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should not be ashamed to switch to statistics. Tell your advisor this is not because of him, but due to your personal interest. Excellent scientist are driven by passion! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may start the conversation by telling your advisor you're switching to physics. If he survives the shock, tell him you were joking and you are &quot;just&quot; going to statistics ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:08:02.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21654" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:20:38.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value of short papers at CS conferences (I guess this holds true for other subjects, as well) is that they provide you a way to discuss early results of a study in a venue of people who have similar interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You receive feedback before the &quot;real thing&quot;. Some conferences in CS do also publish short papers in their proceedings but many of them do not. Under the &lt;em&gt;publish or perish&lt;/em&gt; viewpoint regular papers carry more value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a short paper is ideally followed by a regular paper, after some time. After all, you would make use of all the feedback received to produce the regular paper at another venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask &quot;&lt;em&gt;Would it of been better working on 4-5 short papers instead of 1 long paper?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you need to achieve. Five publications are likely better than one publication. But short papers often are not published. Even if they were: how much time would it take to have 5 papers peer-reviewed and accepted at X conferences, instead of a single 1 in a single conference? With a regular paper only, you have more time to move to the next thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:20:38.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21185" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:29:10.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With poor grades, it will be very difficult to get accepted at another program unless they are in in different fields (i.e., you could argue that during the course of the MS in psych, that you discovered that you have no talent for psych and that you want to go into a PhD for architecture or astrophysics). But that isn't the case for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should know that you do not have to withdraw from your MS in order to apply to PhD programs. You can stay in your MS and apply to PhDs. You should note this in your application and state your intention to withdraw from the MS if you get into the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help your application TREMENDOUSLY if you can get a faculty member at your current institution to speak to why your performance was poor but that you have a latent talent that isn't reflected in your grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that the likelihood that PhD programs will accept you given the poor grades will be pretty slight so I would not get your hopes up too much (or spend too much time and money applying to other programs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most &quot;transfer&quot; type students that we accept at the PhD level tend to want to transfer because of: 1) their original program is dissolving; 2) their adviser has left (either physically or mentally); 3) other issues about the original program that was not apparent when they applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:29:10.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21653" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:35:08.827" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;For entry-level junior faculty, the likelihood is almost none unless you are already a superstar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People get invited to apply based on their prominence/brilliance in the field or through personal connections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it doesn't hurt to have your CV uploaded to a job website, the likelihood that a hiring department will use it to pick you up is not very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that for most job postings in this economic / intellectual climate is that any single job posting will get over a hundred applicants, if not more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even small schools can get over 200+ applicants for junior faculty postings.  They have no need to solicit additional applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note this is the case for the humanities / social sciences in the United States based on my experience. Your mileage may vary.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:35:08.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21645" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:40:00.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually set 50%. However, I think the value is not of particular importance whatsoever - the main points are: Communicate the rule to the students and ask appropriate questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually tell the students that I have a 50%-pass policy and that this is basically arbitrary (I could easily devise questions such that nobody can pass...). I think, the question on percentages and grades can only be discussed in view of the questions on the exam and of the stuff covered in the  course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:40:00.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42927" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:57:27.097" Score="3" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether this is the best place to field this question but I assume Academia is a reasonable fit. If someone is interested, initially as a hobby, in the collecting, cataloguing, rebinding, and conservation of old books and manuscripts what would be the best path to pursuing those activities in a more professional venue? How do people specialize in book handling and conservation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a hobbyist perspective say someone collects old Scandinavian Literature over 100-200 years old and engages in the study, preservation, and cataloguing of such books for posterity (these days one may do this individually with such digital online archiving projects as Project Gutenberg and Archive.org - sometimes accompanied with OCR for easy indexing of the text online). If such a person was interested in doing that more often in some formal capacity how would they pursue that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does one have to study &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_science_%28cultural_heritage%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conservation Science&lt;/a&gt; and obtain a degree to handle documents for institutions that have rare and antique book collections, or say for museums that need periodic restoration of books from page yellowing and foxing? Could one alternately volunteer for a library that has a rare books department and enter in from that avenue? How does anyone end up being a manuscript conservation specialist? Surely the U.S. Library of Congress has people who do such things. And what title would they typically hold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15884" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T18:10:06.490" Title="Paths to specialize in antique book and manuscript conservation and handling" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;library&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21645" CreationDate="2014-05-29T19:05:32.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My classes are typically curved to the median.  To grade, I first set what I think should be the median grade, based on my assessment of the class as a whole.  Then one half of a standard deviation away from the median is one half-letter grade (e.g. if the standard deviation is 10 raw points out of 100, then 5 points would move an A- to a B+).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this scale, an F is simply someone who is a certain number of standard deviations below the median.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Several points:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I explain my general scheme to students on the first day of class,&#xA;    so that expectations are clear up front. There is some wriggle room&#xA;    at the letter grade borders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I typically look for clean breaks&#xA;    between student performers (i.e. if one cluster is 2 points above&#xA;    another cluster, then it makes sense to separate their grades).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T19:05:32.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21653" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:06:07.233" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any such websites, but I would still wager that the success rate will be pretty much 0. There are three main reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As RoboKaren already states, the academic job market is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; competitive. Even for not particularly attractive positions it is no uncommon to receive more than 100 applications. There simply is no need for a head of a search committee to go scouring websites with academic CVs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; happen that search committees actively approach candidates that they think will be very promising and invite them to apply (this is more common for more senior positions, but I have heard it happens for junior faculty positions as well, at least occasionally). However, this will only happen to you if you are eminent enough that your name comes up on its own. Search committees will not go looking for people to invite to apply, on a website or elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Uploading a CV&quot; in principle sounds like a colossal waste of time. Every academic has a website (at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers&quot;&gt;they really should have&lt;/a&gt;) that people can use to find out everything they want about a job seeker. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to stay away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T20:06:07.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:07:24.070" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I include a bibliographical entry in the Works Cited pages for works I just mention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I mention the work of an author by title just as an example without quoting from it, should I include an entry for it in the Works Cited page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T04:49:17.350" Title="Should I include a bibliographical entry in the Works Cited pages for works I just mention?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-06-06T08:54:26.443" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:11:37.877" Score="5" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reaching the final stage of my dissertation which means editing, rewriting, and more editing. I am looking for a tool which can help me in this process by checking for similarities within a single text of 150-200 pages. I will probably detect similar phrasings of key points manually, but I could use some automated help to make sure I don't repeat things in the same words. I know Word and other software can compare documents to look for similarities between two documents, but is there a way to look for similarities within a single document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15886" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T23:27:17.763" Title="Is there a way to check for similarities within a single text?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:49:40.960" Score="6" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has any college in the US managed to unite being prestigious and being open access, at undergrad or grad level. I mean open enrolment in the European sense, where they have kind of minimal requirements (language cert, high-school and not much more). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, given that they could charge thousands $/year, what's the problem with admitting mass-wise new students (and provide them with decent teachers, materials and the like). Why limit the number of clients you get?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T18:22:42.433" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T18:22:42.433" Title="Prestigious institutions with open admissions policies" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21668" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:49:56.657" Score="10" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academic writing, is it proper to cite something to provide it as an example of something else? For instance, we have lines like this in a number of our papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many research endeavors, including environmental and coastal hazard prediction [1], climate modeling [2], high-energy physics simulations [3,4], and genome mapping [5] generate large data volumes on a yearly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each citation is merely providing an example of a research project that generates large volumes of data (more often than not, it's not even a paper, just a URL), and content from the cited source is not otherwise used anywhere in the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose I tend to think of citations as references to work whose content contributes to a significant portion of content in the paper. A citation then indicates some kind of &quot;weighty&quot; relation between the paper and the thing being cited. In the example I provided, it seems to me that invoking the &quot;weighty&quot; power of citation simply to say &quot;yes, such a data producing project of this type does in fact exist, in case you were wondering&quot;--and doing so five times--is somewhat excessive and that it might serve better as a footmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems these should either be footnotes or just be left out. In any case, it seems they should not go in the bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15888" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T22:46:20.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T22:46:20.197" Title="Is it proper to cite something when using it just as an example?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2014-05-29T21:04:45.250" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about other disciplines, but this is certainly neither uncommon nor in any way frowned upon in my field (Computer Science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T21:15:14.630" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T21:15:14.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21665" CreationDate="2014-05-29T21:13:30.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two fundamentally opposing ideas here. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could afford, and be admitted to, a top-tier university. But that's simply not how prestige works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you admit lower quality students, the number of truly excellent graduates is diluted and your university will lose prestige.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The loss of prestige may mean a gradual decrease in the quality of faculty, as the very best are hired by other prestigious universities. You'll certainly need to hire more professors to teach the extra students, and can you be sure that all the new hires will be just as good as those you've already got? There are only so many researchers in the world worthy of Nobel prizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An everyman's university will never have the prestige of a university such as Oxford, Caltech, or MIT. The key to the success of these top universities is &lt;em&gt;consistency&lt;/em&gt;. Damn near every one of their graduates is a top performer, which is very desirable to employers (and also quite attractive for prospective faculty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you lower the barrier to entry, their perceived quality will head downwards, and the flow-on effects will snowball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many very excellent (and open) universities that are not as &lt;em&gt;prestigious&lt;/em&gt; as they perhaps deserve, for example ETH Zurich is a truly excellent university that is open to all Swiss citizens who have passed their high school exams. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014/reputation-ranking&quot;&gt;This Times Higher Education ranking page&lt;/a&gt; shows somewhat quantitatively the elitism that is at play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T21:49:19.867" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T21:49:19.867" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21665" CreationDate="2014-05-29T21:59:31.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best example, that I can think of, of a mainstream US university that is respected at both the national and international levels with a policy that is something like open access is Arizona State University. They have a fixed bar admissions policy: &lt;a href=&quot;https://students.asu.edu/freshman/requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://students.asu.edu/freshman/requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applicants must also meet at least one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top 25% in high school graduating class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.0 GPA in competency courses (4.0 = A)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ACT 22 (24 nonresidents)*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAT Reasoning 1040 (1110 nonresidents)*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prestigious is a difficult concept to quantify. To some if it is not Harvard, then it is not prestigious. That said, ASU ranks in the top 150 in both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/arizona-state-university-1081&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US news&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking/institution/arizona-state-university&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE&lt;/a&gt; rankings. Which I think puts them well within a reasonable definition of prestigious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think they are probably on the border of both &amp;quot;open access&amp;quot; and prestigious. That said, Arizona is not a particularly affluent state, so I think there is the potential for the model to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T21:59:31.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T22:39:44.880" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;When requesting the diploma/transcript for a new job, the transcript is signed by the current registrar, as transcript has issuance date. However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded). Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean is it possible to check when a diploma has been issued from its signature or the signatures are always the same as the original print on the date awarded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T02:45:54.243" Title="Is a diploma updated in new request?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T22:55:56.230" Score="15" ViewCount="1856" Body="&lt;p&gt;In another question about distance PhDs (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21473/do-any-schools-offer-teaching-or-research-assistantships-via-distance-education&quot;&gt;Do any schools offer teaching or research assistantships via distance education?&lt;/a&gt;), I received several comments noting that PhDs on-line are of inferior quality to on-campus PhDs. If what is seen of PhD work from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PHD Comics&lt;/a&gt; is accurate, PhD students seem to spend much time working independently. So, what aspect of a PhD cannot translate to the on-line format? What aspect of the process cannot be effectively conducted via E-mail or any of the other various forms of on-line communication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T14:40:32.470" Title="Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21672" CreationDate="2014-05-29T23:20:29.923" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;A general answer is that a lot of PhD training is informal: it involves things that are taught by example, by osmosis, by noticing someone doing something wrong and correcting them (or right, and praising them). This kind of informal training is much more difficult in online interactions. Some examples are given below...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One specific aspect that does not translate well to online learning is the cross-pollination of ideas via proximity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big part of training PhD students involves putting a bunch of smart, talented, hardworking people together and letting them learn from, motivate, support, and bounce ideas off one another. A prerequisite for this is proximity; you just can't have the same kind of interactions over email. Some research centers are explicitly designed to encourage this. At the Bell Labs facility in Murray Hill, NJ,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the hallways in the building were designed to be so long that to look down their length was to see the end disappear at a vanishing point. Traveling the hall’s length without encountering a number of acquaintances, problems, diversions and ideas was almost impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research center I currently work in was built with a long hallway with this in mind, specifically to foster collaboration between students in different groups!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that does not translate well is learning scientific communication and mentoring skills. As a PhD student, I have many chances to practice speaking about my work to other graduate students, professors, and undergraduates. I also get to mentor M.S., B.S., and high school students in my lab. These skills are much more difficult to learn over distance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third thing that does not work well over email and Skype is learning the etiquette and standards of the field. This is something that isn't explicitly taught (usually) but that students are expected to pick up by osmosis from spending time with other academics and others in their field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T23:20:29.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21664" CreationDate="2014-05-29T23:27:17.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be the best solution, but there are lots of string alignment software packages readily available. Specifically, biological sequence alignment software is highly abundant. I actually did this &lt;a href=&quot;http://brandonbarker.blogspot.com/2012/03/biological-alignment-software-used-for.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;once before using EMBOSS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many of these you'll need to convert your text to FASTA format, which I've written a script for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#!/usr/bin/python2.7&#xA;import string&#xA;from sys import *&#xA;from Bio import SeqIO&#xA;from Bio.Seq import Seq&#xA;from Bio.SeqRecord import SeqRecord&#xA;&#xA;def stripPunct(astr):&#xA;    #For now, only output letters to satisfy EMBOSS&#xA;    tmpstr = astr.translate(None, string.digits + string.punctuation + string.whitespace)&#xA;    #tmpstr = astr.translate(None, string.whitespace)&#xA;    return tmpstr&#xA;&#xA;def main():&#xA;    txtfile1 = open(argv[1],&quot;r&quot;)&#xA;    txtfile2 = open(argv[2],&quot;r&quot;)&#xA;    txt1 = txtfile1.read()&#xA;    txt2 = txtfile2.read()&#xA;    txtfile1.close()&#xA;    txtfile2.close()&#xA;&#xA;    txtstrip1 = stripPunct(txt1)&#xA;    txtstrip2 = stripPunct(txt2)&#xA;    seq1 = Seq(txtstrip1)&#xA;    seq2 = Seq(txtstrip2)&#xA;    rec1 = SeqRecord(seq1,id=&quot;FILE_ONE&quot;)&#xA;    rec2 = SeqRecord(seq2,id=&quot;FILE_TWO&quot;)&#xA;    out1 = open(&quot;.tmp1.fasta&quot;, &quot;w&quot;)&#xA;    out2 = open(&quot;.tmp2.fasta&quot;, &quot;w&quot;)&#xA;    SeqIO.write(rec1, out1, &quot;fasta&quot;)&#xA;    SeqIO.write(rec2, out2, &quot;fasta&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;if __name__ == &quot;__main__&quot;:&#xA;    main()&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what a matching alignment looks like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8koRH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My use case was slightly different, and I was comparing between two different but related manuscripts we'd written. For your purpose, you'll want to find a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sequence_alignment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;multiple sequence alignment&lt;/a&gt; package, since you'll want to find matches other than the best match (which would just be the entire document since you are comparing a document to itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14626" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T23:27:17.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21672" CreationDate="2014-05-29T23:32:24.607" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;ff524 provides an excellent answer—although I think there are several other important points that are not discussed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experimental work cannot easily be done via long-distance arrangements, unless one happens to be near another research institution with the necessary equipment and support staff to enable the research to take place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that online interactions are still not ideal for rapid development of &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; ideas and discussions. For instance, suppose during a conversation with your advisor, you want to make a quick sketch and show it to her. If you're meeting in person, you can easily develop the figure on paper or on a whiteboard (or similar), and adjust and make various comments. Such an exchange is extremely tedious online—to the point of being almost counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T23:32:24.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21678" CreationDate="2014-05-29T23:58:57.540" Score="17" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just a simple question. I would like to know if one can use graphics generated by Mathematica (for example, plots) in one's paper and then upload that paper anywhere on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to know if one can freely use and upload the graphics alone (for example, in PDF or JPG format) anywhere on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13744" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T03:34:48.513" Title="Can graphics created with Wolfram Mathematica be freely used and distributed?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21680" CreationDate="2014-05-30T02:09:57.713" Score="5" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have developed a routine in R for longitudinal analysis of networks. I was wondering whether it can be published on an academic journal as a dedicated article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15894" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T00:01:35.007" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T00:01:35.007" Title="Can a routine in R be published in academic journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishability&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21676" CreationDate="2014-05-30T02:14:16.603" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with making public an image created with Mathematica; that's the whole point of the software. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolfram.com/legal/agreements/wolfram-mathematica.html&quot;&gt;license&lt;/a&gt; restricts your rights regarding what you can do with the software package itself (no copying, reverse-engineering, selling, etc), but not the content you produce using the software. If that was the case, no one could use the software to do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may, however, be restricted by the journal to which you submitted your article. The publication holds all rights to your article, including the figures. You may retain some rights to using the images in your own work (e.g., presentations); you'd have to check with your specific journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T12:42:55.053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T12:42:55.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21671" CreationDate="2014-05-30T02:45:54.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The policy depends on the university.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/registration-enrollment-degrees/graduation-diplomas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;replacement diplomas from Harvard&lt;/a&gt; include the names of the officials who were in office at the time the original diploma was issued, but without signatures, while &lt;a href=&quot;https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/replace-diploma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;those from Stanford&lt;/a&gt; include the names and signatures of the current officials.  Some casual web searching suggests that Stanford's policy is more common, but it's certainly not universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reissued diplomas are typically marked as such.  For example, this is part of both Harvard and Stanford's policies, and web searching suggests it's very widespread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T02:45:54.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21677" CreationDate="2014-05-30T04:35:25.423" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the extent of your work, you may be able to get a paper describing your package and methods in PLoS One or a similar journal, or the Journal of Statistical Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, The R Journal is a peer-reviewed journal covering R software, which may be an appropriate venue if you don't have enough methodological material to build out a full paper for another journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; journals accept code supplements for papers describing the &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; of your method, so you may be able to publish your routine's in a paper about the actual work you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T04:35:25.423" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2014-05-30T05:07:13.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers. It is better to provide citations to good articles that back up or give examples of your statements.  In the example you have shown, the use of the citation is allowing the reader to see for themselves what you mean without you having to provide painstaking details that may detract from the main point of your writing.  I, myself, have written some articles that have been very heavy on citations, and were not criticized for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T05:07:13.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21586" CreationDate="2014-05-30T05:33:52.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you ever have the opportunity to peer-review other peoples' work?  This may not seem related to the question of improving your own writing, but it really is.  By reviewing the work of others, you generally tend to see where weaknesses can creep into a manuscript -- it is easier to see errors or different ways of wording things when the work is not your own.  In doing so, you can often become more conscious if similar &quot;things&quot; occur in your own writing (and of course, you learn a ton from reviewing the content).  Peer-review and copy-editing manuscripts for co-authors has helped me a lot in my writing over the last 15 years or so.  Of course, I also took a 2 day course on scientific writing, which pretty much opened my eyes up to the reality that you are writing for the reader and must do everything you can to make sure the reader can understand from start (big picture) to finish (graphic details) the story you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T05:33:52.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21526" CreationDate="2014-05-30T05:56:16.597" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;MOOCs like those taught on Coursera are a matter of differing opinions.  I think they are great for the students since they provide a great free tool for helping learn content that may be difficult to learn, interpret or even access alone.  Unfortunately, they have problems with verification: students do not have to do very much to confirm their identity, and there is much speculation of plagiarism within the classes (even The Guardian wrote a small piece on that recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/14/students-cheating-plagiarism-online&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/14/students-cheating-plagiarism-online&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I taken classes on Coursera? Yes. Do I put this on my CV?  Yes...for internal purposes anyway, under a &quot;continuing education&quot; or &quot;professional development&quot; section to show my employer that I am continuing to improve myself and stay up-to-date where necessary.  I'm a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My husband (a software engineer) tells me that, while MOOCs or similar training is good on a personal level, it is considered a negative thing for people in his profession, and usually only added to CV to make up for a lack of real technical training or experience.  So, unfortunately, I guess the area of your work will make a difference to how others perceive your good intentions.  But, yes, Coursera is better than TV!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T05:56:16.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T06:02:45.230" Score="1" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was another question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1232/2692&quot;&gt;In universities, how to team up with your colleagues?&lt;/a&gt; which talked about building relationships but what I am really curious about is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any universities which actually have teams of teachers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not referring to simply two teachers sharing the same module. I am also not referring to teachers being friendly with each other. I'm referring to teachers actually being developed into a formal team. In a team not everyone has the same skills and those differences make the team stronger, not weaker. In teams there is a genuine interdependence. In a team, there are common objectives which you know have been met or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of increased effectiveness of teams (and certainly plenty of books and articles written about them) but since teaching is such a solitary activity (meaning you do not interact with your colleagues while teaching) perhaps it is natural to ignore the idea of actually building teams of teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; When studying team dynamics, we can see that &quot;real&quot; teams do include some risks but my point is not about the weaknesses (which are typically overcome by the strengths). Teams normally operate an a higher level of efficiency than non-team-groups-of-people working together. A key element of real teams is that objectives are team objectives and individual accomplishments are not highlighted. For example, if 3 teams are all competing to get to the top of the mountain and we give a reward to the first person to summit the mountain, then we are really focusing on individual efforts (so each member would naturally think of themselves before the group as a whole). However, if you simply reward the team which first plants its flag at the top, then individual accomplishments are minimized and one member of the team is more likely to sacrifice for the greater good of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indicators of real teams (as opposed to groups of people who work together but are not a team) include: Interdependence, shared accountability (each answers to the boss but also to every other member), common goals, and members having skills which compliment each other in order to affect the common goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we ever see these qualities in groups of teachers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T03:53:39.280" Title="Examples of teams of teachers?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T07:03:30.247" Score="3" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked on a paper which utilizes concepts from signal processing and machine learning, and then implements them in a low-cost embedded system. Since the work was more on the implementation side, it required less mathematics and more engineering. Furthermore, since I was using hardware from a particular company which suited my application the most, among other contenders in peripherals and price, the implementation is really hardware-dependent. Finally, I cannot seem to find similar work. In that way, it is a bit novel. Is this something which will be acceptable for say, &lt;em&gt;IEEE Transactions in Industrial Electronics&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15899" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T11:42:00.827" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T15:38:24.083" Title="Is an algorithm that stitches together various algorithms &quot;good enough&quot; material for IEEE Trans?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21685" CreationDate="2014-05-30T07:28:23.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Stitching together&quot; some existing algorithms is not necessarily bad, if the combination is both valuable and non-trivial. It can be argued that &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of today's research in computer science is mostly stitching together ideas that have existed for a long time. Further, I am a huge opponent of the notion that it is somehow better / scientifically more valuable to come up with your own (almost always inferior) algorithms for well-known standard problems just so that one can claim to have a higher &quot;novelty&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is of course hard to answer your question without knowing the concrete work. As a rule of thumb, read through a number of back issues of your selected journal. If all of them seem to have a much broader contribution than what you have in mind, your idea may be &lt;em&gt;too small&lt;/em&gt; (but don't let the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot;&gt;impostor effect&lt;/a&gt; get you, either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T07:28:23.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21689" CreationDate="2014-05-29T11:03:26.483" Score="3" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing my thesis and I use several papers that are available als single PDFs &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~wvdaalst/publications/p308.pdf&amp;amp;ei=nhKHU--RDMXEPIywgKAK&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF8HwyZK0wzZpRF0n3JX4c3L5-5aw&amp;amp;bvm=bv.67720277,d.ZWU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not want to write the bibtex on my own, so I searched online and found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@inproceedings{Rozinat:2005:CTM:2179586.2179604,&#xA; author = {Rozinat, A. and van der Aalst, W. M. P.},&#xA; title = {Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models},&#xA; booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Business Process Management},&#xA; series = {BPM'05},&#xA; year = {2006},&#xA; isbn = {3-540-32595-6, 978-3-540-32595-6},&#xA; location = {Nancy, France},&#xA; pages = {163--176},&#xA; numpages = {14},&#xA; url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15},&#xA; doi = {10.1007/11678564_15},&#xA; acmid = {2179604},&#xA; publisher = {Springer-Verlag},&#xA; address = {Berlin, Heidelberg},&#xA;} &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem:&lt;/strong&gt; When citing a particular page of this paper, I use the page number of the single article PDF because I don't have access to the proceedings book as cited in my bibtex file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a valid practice or should the page number equal the page number in the proceedings book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, how would a correct bibtex look for this single PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15906" OwnerDisplayName="cgross" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T09:31:00.563" Title="Cite page of paper vs page of proceedings" Tags="&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21687" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:38:32.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Bibtex reference that you have cited here is from the ACM library. It gives &lt;code&gt;pages = {163--176},&lt;/code&gt;, which are the pages from where the paper entitled &lt;code&gt;Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models&lt;/code&gt; starts and ends in the proceedings. I also write papers, and I am writing my thesis. I only use the page numbers as they are given in the ACM library Bibtex because these are the page numbers where the paper spans in the proceedings. This is a valid practice, and I have published in some top venues by following this rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="puser" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T12:38:32.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21687" CreationDate="2014-05-30T00:28:33.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@cgross My papers also tend to have many Mathematical equations. Sometimes, I only cite the paper without giving any reference to a Equation number from the other paper because I assume that the reader would read that paper before understanding mine. If there are some Math equations from the other paper that I want to use in my paper, I simply write &quot;Please refer to Equation 6 in [RA06]&quot;. You are right about the page numbers as they don't match, so generally I refer by Equation numbers rather than the page numbers. What you wrote (&quot;XY is defined as follows [RA06]: &quot; and &quot;XY is defined as follows [RA06, p. 163-176]: &quot;) can also be adopted slightly differently. That is simply copy that Equation from the other paper in your thesis by matching with the mathematical notations that you have used in your thesis, and simply say in one line that this equation has been taken from [RA06]. This is what I generally see in many papers. I have rarely seen anyone &quot;citing&quot; specific page number unless the content is copied from a book. I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="puser" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T00:28:33.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21691" CreationDate="2014-05-30T08:14:33.620" Score="22" ViewCount="1215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper accepted to a conference and my adviser is willing to fully fund the trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am also eligible to apply for a &quot;Student Travel Grant&quot; (being a student author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros of getting the travel grant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;saves adviser grant money&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;goes on my resume&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;i would have to volunteer and possibly spend half of each day with tasks at hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether it's worth applying for the travel grant and helping at the conference, as opposed to just going there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you who have been in this or similar situations before, what would you advise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I learned that the grant covers almost half of my total trip cost, and that the volunteering time is around 1/4 of the total conference duration, which is good; Hence, I have applied for it. Thanks everyone for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15902" LastEditorUserId="15902" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T23:04:21.497" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T23:04:21.497" Title="Student Travel Grant = Volunteering; is it worth it?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21690" CreationDate="2014-05-30T08:46:05.910" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my own experience, I would definitely recommend applying for the travel grant!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros you have mentioned are fairly substantial. Regarding the con: I have never found any conference volunteer job to be at all onerous*, and usually they have been fun and/or valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are some volunteer jobs I have had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Volunteering at the registration desk&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have this job, I get to meet all the attendees as they come in. Usually, when I first sit down at the registration table, I flip through the badges to see who is registered, and make a plan for who I want to meet. Then, if those people come in while I am &quot;on duty&quot; and they are not in a rush, I can strike up a conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, I've been able to have some really &quot;spontaneous&quot; talks with important people in my field who I wouldn't have had much of an opening to meet otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never been asked to do this job for more than a couple of hours at any given conference, so I didn't feel like I was missing out. If this is my volunteer job, I can usually arrange with the other volunteers so I am &quot;on duty&quot; during a time when there are no sessions I'm interested in anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Taking minutes in meetings&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another time, I was a student volunteer at a conference that also hosts its sponsoring &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/sigs&quot;&gt;SIG&lt;/a&gt;'s annual business meeting, and my job was to take minutes in this meeting. I got to listen in while all the big shots in the SIG talked about what they &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; think of the state of the subfield, the quality of the conference, the direction they'd like to see things go in, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the meeting was in the evening and there were no conference sessions going on, so I didn't miss anything while doing this (except maybe a nap).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mic shuttler, running the 1-minute madness session&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some volunteer jobs take place inside the conference sessions themselves, so you don't miss out on anything while doing these jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've been assigned to be the person that carries the mic around to people who have questions during the Q&amp;amp;A after each talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also been part of keeping the 1-minute madness session (where poster/demo presenters get up one after another and speak for one minute about their poster) on time. The student volunteer coordinator described this job as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 person in charge of lining up presenters in the correct order, 1 person in charge of advancing the presentations, and about 5 are responsible for throwing the presenter with crumpled paper balls at the 56th second to get her/him off the stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I didn't have to throw any paper balls.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* YMMV. At a large, well-organized conference there will be lots of volunteers, you can choose which task you prefer, and no one student has to do too much work. At a smaller conference, things may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T08:52:25.140" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T08:52:25.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21687" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:31:00.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Page numbers are largely irrelevant. There are not so many dead tree copies around, and a digital copy may be modified. In that case, searching for the title on it is trivial. You are providing the DOI, that is a permanent identificator, so you don't have to worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a practical thing, I just use DOI's API to get the citations, and leave them worry about the details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[david@LCARS david]$ curl -LH &quot;Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex&quot; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@article{Rozinat_2006, title={Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models}, ISBN={&lt;a href=&quot;http://id.crossref.org/isbn/978-3-540-32596-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://id.crossref.org/isbn/978-3-540-32596-3&lt;/a&gt;}, ISSN={1611-3349}, url={&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15&lt;/a&gt;}, DOI={10.1007/11678564_15}, journal={Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, publisher={Springer Science + Business Media}, author={Rozinat, A. and der Aalst, W. M. P.}, year={2006}, pages={163–176}}&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy, fast to generate if you have the DOI, and minimises the risk of typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T09:31:00.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21684" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:42:18.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the more advanced levels, I have had subjects taught by several lecturers. Each one was teaching the part of the subject closer to their area of research and expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more general level, there was a department of Astronomy and Atmospheric physics (climate and weather). Astrophysics subjects were taught by astrophysicists, and climate subjects by atmospheric scientists (do they have a cool specific name?). Inside Astrophysics, stellar evolution was taught by a different subset of professors than extragalatic astronomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also common for the senior professors to lecture, and the grad students to do problem solving. This is usually explained because a clear explanation of the theory requires experience and care; whereas solving exercises is a less critical task, ideal to build teaching experience. &lt;em&gt;(Bad people that hate professors may say that teaching theory requires less work, and once it is done they can repeat the same for years, but solving exercises requires more work)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is the curriculum. Each subject is built upon the subjects taught before, with more or less coordination among the lecturers. Differential equations requires the knowledge obtained in Calculus, and it will in turn be used for Quantum Mechanics. If the Calculus lecturer fails miserably (for example, not covering the necessary material), the students will struggle through the following ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T14:38:11.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T14:38:11.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21672" CreationDate="2014-05-30T11:12:39.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is meant to be in addition to your other answers, so will refer to them  a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let's take your clarifying comment: &quot;For non-STEM fields&quot; I work in a STEM field, but have spent time discussing related issues with postgrads working across the university.  Many of those in non-STEM fields seem or feel rather isolated anyway compared to those of use in a research group which works closely together.  This is partly due to the organisational structure and funding situation leading to fewer PhD positions in some fields, as I understand it, both of which will vary between universities and countries. This could go either way - it could mean that remote working takes away the last vestiges of academic human contact, or it could mean that your tucked away in a corner of your own home alone, rather than a corner of the office. This relates to ff524's answer as well, though I'm coming at it more from the important aspect of getting through a rather strange life for a few years rather than learning academic or transferrable skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much &lt;em&gt;library research&lt;/em&gt; (wrt aeismail's answer) is necessary offline will vary hugely with subject - in my case very little, though access to textbooks at all but especially the early stages must not be neglected.  They may not be realistically available for you to buy.  Access to a more local university library as a visiting reader may be possible, but it would be unwise to rely on  this and you may not be able to borrow the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a supervisor who's not just willing, but enthusiastic about the idea.  I wouldn't want to be a supervisor's first remote student - let someone else iron out the difficulties first.  You need to be on the same wavelength when it comes to collaboration tools, which means in practice you need to be happy to work with the tools your supervisor wants to use.  This is a minor issue when you work in the same building, but becomes critical when you're widely separated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T11:12:39.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21677" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:32:46.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publication of an article about R code (in package form) is definitely a possibility. Whether your particular code is publishable is something for the reviewers to judge. There is always &lt;a href=&quot;http://journal.r-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The R Journal&lt;/a&gt;, which is peer-reviewed and read by most serious R programmers. Journal of Statistical Software is a more general outlet that is not R-specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of projects where a substantive article is published in a disciplinary journal (perhaps describing the algorithm or using software in a particular application) and then an accompanying piece describing the software specifically is published in JSS or The R Journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastEditorUserId="6984" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T13:13:26.527" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T13:13:26.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21586" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:34:28.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach is simply to be alert to &lt;em&gt;patterns&lt;/em&gt; that recur in the feedback I get (or as you call them, themes), so that I can improve in those areas. For example, I have learned that I still have a natural tendency to write too short of an introduction (not providing enough context for my work), and to assume that my audience has knowledge that they may not have. Those are the faults that I'm trying to &quot;cure&quot; myself of at the moment, so these are the areas that I try to pay the most attention to as I write a paper or prepare a presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a checklist of things to watch out for, although that's not a bad idea. I find that by focusing on a couple of my worst flaws, eventually I internalise what I've learned so that I don't need to think about it. For example, when I first started writing papers, my supervisors had to tell me to show a logical connection from one idea to the next, so that the reader could follow my train of thought. I tend to do that automatically now, which leaves me to focus on other flaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that I do best if I focus on improving one or two areas at a time, rather than trying to improve everything at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T12:34:28.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21506" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:38:12.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries MCS (2 years) is offered as a 16-years graduation degree, which is equivalent to BS(CS). It is offered specifically for those who have earned a 14-years bachelor degree or sometimes for people coming from other backgrounds, to provide them a fair enough base in computer science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A computer science MS or MSCS are both similar terms (2 years long), which is an 18-years graduation degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is true that MCS is more &quot;professional&quot; in the sense that it doesn't prepare students for a PhD but it is for who wants to directly work after graduating? Do they both last 2 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: Yes, MCS is like any other professional degree out there. In addition, after having an MCS degree, an MS degree (2 years) is still pursued to get prepared for a PhD degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS degree mostly has a thesis, while MCS, if it has the one that is definitely, we can say the lighter one, since the candidate has not been trained at this level to produce a thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the thesis help you getting hired?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This simple most answer is: &quot;It totally depends upon the employer and her demands for a specific position offered&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said:&quot;MS degree mostly has a thesis&quot;. Well I know people and the universities were they have MS degrees (18 years) but without a thesis. So how do they do this? Mostly they compensate the research credits with additional course work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know places/individuals (internationally) where people with 'MS degrees without a thesis' have also been haired for an explicit research positions (e.g., Research associates, PhD students with RA ships, etc.) in academic institutes for academic research. Where, mostly thesis is a requirement OR in other words a thesis is inevitable to provide a candidate with the required skill set for such positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, while considering the above description about the acronyms valid, I would say that a thesis with an MCS degree has an importance similar to to any other professional degree with thesis (i.e., the case when a thesis is also prepared at end of a professional degree in order to fulfill the requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. Some universities also name MCS to a computer science MS degree.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14747" LastEditorUserId="14747" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T12:52:40.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T12:52:40.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21701" CreationDate="2014-05-30T13:22:56.537" Score="18" ViewCount="2984" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one find relevant and new open research topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working on my PhD thesis, I find it hard to find open questions in my very specific research area. Which approach do you take to find new and relevant topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15912" LastEditorUserId="15912" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T14:29:44.927" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T01:23:42.853" Title="How to find relevant and new open research topics?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21700" CreationDate="2014-05-30T13:25:22.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to find papers giving a state of the art review on your field. They'll be easy to find, they generally have a lot of citations and written by the experts in the field. Some of those review papers (ones I've read at least) provide suggestions to researchers as to what needs improvement in the field. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9019" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T13:25:22.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18675" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:36:09.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a form of branching (I guess &quot;conditional branching&quot; based on a screening question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good model for this is the Bureau of Justic Statistics' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&amp;amp;iid=245&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Crime Victimization Survey&lt;/a&gt;. In that survey, respondents are asked screening questions that identify incidents of crime victimization (e.g., respondent was attacked). Respondents are then asked to complete an &quot;incident report&quot;, which asks an extensive number of questions about the episode of victimization. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs2_2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an example of such an incident report for the 2012 survey&lt;/a&gt;. Respondents may complete zero of these incident reports or they complete up to ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, simpler, model is the U.S. Census (or most household surveys) that ask for basic details about household members. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/schools/pdf/2010form_info.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 2010 Census Form&lt;/a&gt; asked for details of up to 12 household members. In a telephone or online context, of course, respondents would not see the questions relating to household members beyond the number they initially list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T14:36:09.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21665" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:43:45.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In partial disagreement with Moriarty's answer, I think that ETH in Zurich is an excellent example of a university that is both prestigious and open-access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told by people there that the university is very sink or swim, and that each year they routinely fail a majority of the students taking, say, freshman calculus. (And that &quot;freshman calculus&quot; there is more like real analysis in the US.) A bit harsh, but I think necessary if you want to maintain extremely high standards but be open to all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any US university that does this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T14:43:45.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21713" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:03:04.097" Score="4" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is related to my &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17717/is-there-a-financial-benefit-for-phd-student-to-join-a-funded-research-project&quot;&gt;previous one&lt;/a&gt;. Basically, I'm working in the research project as the only PhD student, other members are post-doc and lecturers. After discussing with my supervisor and other investigators, it is clear that there is no funding left for me even though they want to. My supervisor wants me to continue working but lets me decide if it is what I want or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I want to continue working because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's nice to mention about working in the funded project in my CV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have an opportunity to work with many senior researchers and lecturers who can write reference letters for me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since I'm only in charge of performing experiments to test/evaluate ideas of others, there is no chance for me to be the first author of any papers produced by the project. For all the papers that I help writing, I only write the experiment section, while other sections are written by more senior members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I want to ask if it helps for my career path in academia if I work in a project with no chance to be the first author of any papers produced by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My field is computer science in which the order of authors matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project will take more than a year to finish, so I wonder if it's better&#xA;if I focus all my time on my PhD and private life instead. Because at&#xA;the moment, working in it is like doing a part time job without&#xA;salary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T17:56:51.730" Title="Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21467" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:41:27.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not counting research experience, is it advantageous to 'formalize' one's graduate courses by getting a master's degree, from the viewpoint of career opportunities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For industry, yes, it is advantageous to get the Master's degree if you're doing basically the same work.  The Master's degree is generally considered a terminal professional degree for many industries, so there's some value in getting that rather than just a Bachelor's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For academia, no, it's typically not advantageous.  Most US-based PhD programs will require you to do core coursework roughly equivalent to a Master's degree regardless of whether or not you already have one.  (I do not know enough about European programs to comment on them.)  They will also typically present you with an opportunity to earn a Master's on the way to your PhD.  Thus, getting one before you start a PhD program at another university is, perhaps, redundant.  The only exception is if you are planning to switch your focus a bit.  For example, you might get a Master's in Public Health and then start a PhD program in Computer Science focusing on applying computer science research to public health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mentioned that you were interested in a PhD, but wanted solid letters of recommendation so that you could have a reasonable chance at a top university.  The best way to do this may not be through coursework.  Obviously, coursework is important, but you may find that working with a research group as an undergrad allows you to more closely interact with a faculty member and get a more personal letter of recommendation.  Professors write letters of recommendation for students based on coursework all the time, but it's more rare for them to write one for an undergraduate with whom they have worked on research projects.  Also, this would allow you to determine whether or not you enjoy research and learn a bit more about what you would like from a graduate school.  Research is quite different from coursework.  It's more of a career than a school experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11268" LastEditorUserId="11268" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T22:02:00.153" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T22:02:00.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:46:55.533" Score="3" ViewCount="1259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been accepted to UCL and Oxford for a PhD in anthropology, however I have not been offered funding for either position. I am considering reapplying next year and I would like to know how I can improve my chances of securing funding. I already have experience as a research assistant for my MSc supervisor, and she has acknowledged me in a recent paper. I have also presented at a conference, though I have not published the paper. Would publications improve my chances, even if not in top tier journals? What other things could I do to make my application stand out to funding committees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that this is my second attempt - I was in the same situation last year when I applied only to Oxford for a PhD, gaining acceptance without funding. I received my MSc from Oxford, with an overall grade of 67 and a distinction in my thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15920" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T12:18:52.020" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T07:40:28.333" Title="How can I improve my chances of receiving PhD funding (UK, Anthropology)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;&lt;anthropology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:47:42.040" Score="20" ViewCount="7893" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my story. I moved from my home country to the UK in October to start a PhD in the UK with lots of excitement and positive expectations. However, what I discovered once I started was that the division I am in had never funded an Academic PhD project before (they focus on professional doctorates), the environment is not a research one (I share the office with lecturers and tutors, apart from another PhD student who won my same scholarship). My main supervisor, although supportive, is only at the university for for 3 days per week, has never supervised a PhD and has not an Academic PhD (but has the professional doctorate). My second supervisor does have a PhD, but follows me very occasionally, since only taking care of the 20% of the supervision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, since the beginning the experience has been very isolating and not really stimulating. In addition, for various reasons, I have changed the theme of my original project and since then I have the sensation that my main supervisor is not really interested in this, even though saying otherwise. Also,  has no particular expertise in the specific subject I am doing research on, but has to supervise many people from the professional doctorate as well and is generally very busy (and yet doesn't even check emails during the whole weekend).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I am doing clinical research and I have to face many logistical difficulties, such as the fact that the hospital in which I should work in is quite distant from the university (at least hours roundtrip), the collaboration from the staff and patients is hard to get and basically my PhD depends on lots of people whose sudden disappearance may lead to very big problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, I am now approaching the 10th month and I haven't done anything yet, apart from having started the literature review the draft for a survey. I feel as this project is going nowhere and even if I managed to fix some of the logistical issues, the isolation, the lack of expertise of my supervisor and the lack of a research environment really bother me. My supervisor actually said my PhD is a &quot;pilot&quot; for the division to see if they should fund any other PhD in the future, but the problem is that the pilot is not going well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself thinking about quitting quite often in this period, but I am terribly concerned about the possible consequences: even if I quit I still would like to pursue a PhD somewhere else, but what are the odds of getting any other scholarship after having quit one? Also, I obviously can't apply somewhere else without quitting here, because I need updated cover letters, so this means that I would have to move back to my home country just to restart submitting applications. And without any money, of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't spoken about it  because I think that once I disclose my reservations  with my supervisor would definitely lose interest in the project, so I am taking some time to think before doing anything. The problem is that I really don't know what to do. I moved to the UK because I thought I could have better opportunities compared to my home country, but I think I ended up in a quite peculiar and difficult doctoral experience; I am afraid that the fact of having already obtained funding is going to prevent me from having any other opportunity if I quit. Also quitting would have a very big impact on my psychological well-being, since I do not see myself as a quitter and I would totally feel it as a personal failure, despite all the variables that I have told you.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15921" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T19:05:52.457" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:05:52.457" Title="PhD: what happens if I quit?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:51:37.497" Score="8" ViewCount="1661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working on a problem in the field engineering. I have used one approach and it turned out that it does not work well. After that I got into conflict with my supervisor, and realized that it will be hard to publish the original paper with him. So, I have redone everything with another approach, wrote a paper, submitted it and at as soon as my paper have been almost accepted, my supervisor wrote to the editor claiming that he also should be an author of the paper. He haven't even seen the new paper nor haven't analysed or interpreted the new results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my supervisor has started a university investigation against me, with following allegation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Dr.X submitted a manuscript on [some topic] to the journal Y. Theory and simulations of [some topic] are part of his responsibilities in [grant] for which Prof. #1 and Prof. #2 are co-PIs. The manuscript was submitted as a sole author without the prior knowledge of either coPI. Dr. X refused to provide a copy of the manuscript. The work described in the manuscript is unlikely to be Dr. X's independent work given his background prior to joining the university and given his current work under [grant].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I respond to the allegations of Prof. #1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15122" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T03:00:00.353" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T03:00:00.353" Title="How to respond to allegations of misconduct in authorship dispute?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21710" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:56:54.193" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should gather all your materials related to this project into one place (emails, codes, lab notebooks, etc) and talk to an attorney immediately. Presumably you can be dismissed from your job for research misconduct if they find against you. Only an attorney can help you navigate the related employment laws of your country, state, or region, your university's regulations and rules, and whatever granting agency's rules and regulations that you are operating under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not respond until you've had an attorney competent in this area at least evaluate your case and your options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T15:56:54.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21709" CreationDate="2014-05-30T16:22:38.343" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originally written as a comment, converting to an answer at ff524's suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing the spirit of your problem, if not the exact question asked: quitting should be the last-case scenario. Clearly you're not happy, and you need to talk to your advisor(s) about that. But do think about whether there are changes that could be made that would improve your situation. Could you spend time at another institution? Should the focus of the project change? Pilot studies don't necessarily work &quot;straight out of the box&quot;, so everyone ought to be open to discussion. It may be that no solution can be found - but unless you raise the issue, people may not realise there's a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do note that many, many PhD students worry that &quot;they've not done much&quot; in their first year. But often they've actually learnt a lot, about their subject and about the world of research. So don't be too disheartened!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: I have known at least one case where someone started a PhD, it didn't go well, and after a year they quit and started a new PhD in a different department at the same institution. However, I'm not sure what the details of their funding were - it's possible that they simply transferred their existing money to the new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="15798" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T16:36:33.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T16:36:33.253" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21705" CreationDate="2014-05-30T17:56:51.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it helps, but first-author publications help more. Find a way to leverage your work on this project towards a first-author publication, talk to your advisor about switching projects, or find a new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T17:56:51.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21690" CreationDate="2014-05-30T18:05:45.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhat echoing ff524's response, I have volunteered several times as a student in order to make conference registrations cheaper, and have had a decent experience doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pro&lt;/strong&gt;: Having worked at both a conference registration desk and as essentially an assigned &quot;person&quot; who knows who to go to if the podium computer locks up, something is wrong in the room, etc. I've had a chance to strike up conversations and introduce myself to important folks in my field in a way that wasn't just &quot;Hi, I'm Fomite, your work is awesome...&quot; There's often time to chat, especially during lulls in registration, the 15 minutes before presentations start when you're the only one there besides the speakers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For smaller organizations and conferences, there's also probably a fairly large overlap between staff (in my case, nearly complete overlap). This means you've had some time to chat with society staff members, and it never hurts to be on a first name basis with them and having been remembered as being helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For limited attendance events, like &quot;Meet the Faculty&quot;, etc. you might get first dibs on tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;: You do have a schedule, and that means you might miss something you are interested in. However, keep in mind the society isn't looking for cheap conference labor alone - they want students to come to the conference and benefit. I've never had my duties be so onerous that I missed out on a huge part of the conference. The only time there was a serious risk of there being something that I really wanted to go to that I would miss, I managed to swap with another student so I was then the room monitor for the session I wanted to attend - and could then go meet the people I was so interested in hearing speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T18:05:45.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19944" CreationDate="2014-05-30T19:32:01.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best experiences I have had in working in group, in terms of exogenous motivation, were encouraging competition: define a problem, divide your students into groups, set a time limit and give a reward to the first/best/any-criteria-you-consider group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Live discussions/meetings can be more helpful that a forum in this sense: the probabilities of engaging in a fruitful dialog increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to take a look to gamification techniques: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification_of_learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification_of_learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If students are not motivated by themselves, the internal pulse of &quot;trying to win&quot; at something may do it, gaining knowledge along the way, without having the feeling of &quot;doing homework&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15925" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T19:32:01.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21672" CreationDate="2014-05-30T20:07:56.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to stress a bit more the role of &quot;motivation&quot; as in the answers of ff524 and Chris H., specially in the emotional aspect of it. I would say that doing a PhD has an implicit feeling of isolation: in general, you become an expert at a really narrow field compared to the whole human knowledge (I love how Matt Might explains it in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illustrated guide to a Ph.D.&lt;/a&gt;) and that makes sharing your experiences/thoughts harder (how would you share your troubles and toils with your girlfriend?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there is no one in your research group doing anything related, the fact of sharing a space (not even talking!) with other people going through the same processes is comforting somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively, adding a layer of physical isolation on top of the experience would make it less stimulant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15925" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T20:07:56.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21720" CreationDate="2014-05-30T20:45:48.633" Score="13" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of submitting a manuscript to a journal.  During this process my manuscript has come back for revision, and the journal has asked for an updated manuscript with revisions annotated.  What level of changes should be annotated?  Similarly is it acceptable to provide a generic comment when changes are for flow and not for content (e.g. &quot;sentence rephrased for clarity&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example (in my perceived order of required-ness):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding or removing significant content (figures, paragraphs, sentences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rephrasing a sentence changing the meaning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rephrasing a sentence changing the grammar, but not the meaning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding/removing words that are superfluous (or change the meaning in an insignificant way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alteration of comma's, periods, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15881" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T21:52:36.870" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:52:36.870" Title="What changes should be notated in a journal resubmission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21709" CreationDate="2014-05-30T20:49:16.690" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the program is really a pilot, then there are likely some people somewhere in the department who would like it to succeed. I would definitely recommend finding those people and seeing whether they can assist with any of your issues, both logistical and advisor-related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past that, though, I would definitely also seek other options. For many PhD graduates, their advisor plays an important individual at the start of their career, and not having that resource can make things very difficult for you. Given that you are already in an academic vacuum, you probably don't want to have that kind of handicap. Take care to make sure you're giving yourself the highest likelihood of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T20:49:16.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21717" CreationDate="2014-05-30T21:03:57.137" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;An editor once &quot;requested&quot; that I submit a &quot;tracked changes&quot; or latexdiff version of my resubmission if I wanted him to deal with it in a timely fashion. Since then, my strategy has been to submit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;revised manuscript (no annotation);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;latexdiff of revisions against version submitted last time, to highlight every last comma changed;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cover letter, describing all scientific changes plus any major textual changes (&quot;we substantially rewrote the methods section in an attempt to improve its clarity&quot;). I refer the editor to the diff for minor textual corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No editor has complained yet... ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:03:57.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21717" CreationDate="2014-05-30T21:51:19.440" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;What editors (and their journals) expect may vary. In the journal I edit, and also journals with which I am familiar as author and reviewer, expectations cover the two first points in your list. It is very common to request a point by point account for how reviewers' (and editor's) comments have been dealt with. This, to me is the important part of the revisions. Some editors want files highlighting changes, while other definitely do not. The important changes deal with the science and not the grammar or spelling. If the language has been a focal point for revisions, an editor will not likely check all changes you have made but rather read the manuscript to see if the language has been sufficiently improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some (unclear what percentage) will not care about tracked changes, it is not wrong to supply them. Doing so allows the editor to chose which version (showing revisions or not) to use. But, always provide a clean version of the revised manuscript. I sometimes receive manuscripts with all changes visible in the manuscript and I feel uncomfortable accepting all on behalf of the author. The revised version is the responsibility of the author so the sharp new version should be included in the submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:51:19.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2014-05-30T23:49:22.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I post under my real name, mostly because I started out by doing so on MathOverflow (where this is encouraged, and which I see as an extension of my public mathematical career).  I have a general sense that this adds to the professional atmosphere of this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not too worried about damaging my career by posting a question or an answer that looks stupid or &quot;reveals my lack of knowledge&quot;.  I have no doubt I've already done that a few times, but I have enough trust in the academic community to believe that a reader will understand that I write in good faith and my goal is to learn and/or help.  I also trust that any reader will remember that they've had &quot;stupid&quot; questions or opinions of their own, and avoid judging me too harshly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do take care to keep my posts &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt;, remembering that I'm speaking publicly.  Among other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I try to maintain a calm, courteous and measured tone in my writing.  I take extra time to make sure that what I post is reasonably well written, and hopefully not subject to misinterpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will share my own experiences where they relate generally to academic life.  I won't share details that implicate other people who could be identified, reveal confidential or non-public information, or expose details about my institution's internal politics.  I won't post rumors or hearsay, or incidents that happened to other people (unless they're already public knowledge).  I won't share experiences that are overly personal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'll share my &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; opinions or advice on academic matters, particular where I think my views are likely to be representative of the academic community as a whole, or a significant segment thereof.  If I have unusual personal opinions on a particular issue, especially if I think they're likely to be controversial, I'll probably keep them to myself; partly out of self protection, but mostly because I don't think people who ask questions here are looking for answers from the lunatic fringe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to ElCid's answer, I have no expectation of impressing anyone or building my academic reputation with my posts here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have a question or answer of a sensitive nature, I would post it anonymously (using Tor or something similar to hide my IP address if I were particularly concerned).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that other participants may prefer, for their own reasons, to participate under pseudonyms.  I fully respect their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T23:49:22.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20133" CreationDate="2014-05-31T00:05:52.580" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having served on the CHI program committee, many other program committees, and having been program chair of a couple of other HCI conferences, I think your professors are overly cynical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as JeffE pointed out, CHI (and many other conferences) use blind or semi-blind reviewing, so at least the reviewers do not know whose paper they are reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I have never been in a PC meeting where the identities of the authors was a point of discussion. Of course that doesn't mean that the associate chair (AC) for the paper was not influenced by who the authors were, but it would certainly imply that there is no &lt;em&gt;institutionalized&lt;/em&gt; bias for or against particular authors or institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely not worry about your papers being rejected without being reviewed; in fact, when you submit you will get the reviews so you know why your paper was or was not accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15931" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T00:05:52.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19228" CreationDate="2014-05-31T00:55:37.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the rules on how long since graduating NIH grants begin to be restricted, but there is a general rule that the NIH will only fund postdocs for 5 years total--so if you have already received 5 years funding as a postdoc trainee, you are likely to be excluded from more.  I think it depends on the particular grant though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T00:55:37.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21737" CreationDate="2014-05-31T03:15:13.687" Score="4" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in high school in the USA, and it is relatively common for students to work with various researchers in the summer. The majority of the work done is the medical/biology fields, and I would like to know whether this is a common practice (or a possible practice) in areas outside of biology and medicine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biology and medicine fields make sense for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My area (a large US city) has a large biology and medicine faculty (especially because it is considered a &quot;hub&quot; for medicine) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biology and (to a lesser extent medicine) seems to be more accessible to a high school student with a background in the AP curriculum and the medical programs available to students at the local districts. Subjects like mathematics are hardly accessible to undergraduates, much less high school students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biology and Medicine are largely laboratory sciences, while the same can not be said about things like mathematics. Furthermore, the social sciences and the humanities (less present in my area, but still significant) seem to be nearly absent in summer research type work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes sense, therefore that with a large population of students wanting to be in the medical field, and a large research faculty, that the practice of either formal (through a program), or more informal (E-mail a researcher for a spot in lab rotation), research happens in these fields. &lt;strong&gt;So, is there a similar practice in mathematics, physics, the social sciences, or any other area of science?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; In response to amlrg's post I have some further questions: how can I tell if a researcher in physics or math is studding a computational area? How should I go about approaching such a researcher&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is interesting to note that the fact that a similar thing does not happen in the non medical/academic disciplines popular around here. For example, as an Engineering hub, you might expect that it would be common for students to shadow or intern with engineers, but this is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; less common than high school research in academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10283" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T11:53:39.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T11:53:39.583" Title="High school summer research in fields other than biology/medicine" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21526" CreationDate="2014-05-31T05:57:38.813" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the commentators mentioned that MOOCs might be seen in a negative light in some fields, such as software engineering. Especially for this particular field, I would not at all be surprised: Many of the current professionals got their hands-on training through working on projects on the internet in their youth, and such projects would obviously go well beyond a simple introductory course. As such, MOOCs provide only introductory material to the field, and this material has been available in an easy to access format on the internet for a long time, anyway (YouTube tutorial videos predate contemporary MOOCs by years, and simple websites even more so). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should point out that for other fields, often more specialized in scope, the sort of lectures offered by MOOCs have not been available unless you went to university to study the stuff. Sure, books have existed, but there is a difference in learning from books and listening to lectures (the latter being much more passive, and therefore often more enjoyable, while perhaps not as deep or efficient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I strongly feel that taking MOOCs on your spare time shows that you have motivation to deepen your knowledge, be it in your own profession or just enlarging your horizons and understanding other fields. While reviewing the basics of a field that you are supposed to be an expert in could be viewed in a negative light, a basic understanding of project management and economics would probably help your application even if you were a software engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard some recruiters say that they appreciate an internet presence, and joining in on all the new fun would certainly show that you are technologically capable and follow what is happening in the world. In the software engineering world, one could well put their StackOverflow alias on their CVs. I am sure that some recruiters disagree, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to address your point about how online courses compare with real live universities. Traditional courses usually have a higher workload, and more stringent control on passing a course. MOOCs being very new, it is nigh impossible to know just how difficult it is to pass a particular course or whether you even know the stuff now that you have. Granted, a traditional university degree does not guarantee these things either, but prospective employers better understand how much one can expect one to remember from the courses taken at a real institution. I think MOOCs will play a slightly bigger role in the future than they do now, but we are not quite there yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T05:57:38.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17463" CreationDate="2014-05-31T06:32:27.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just import the reference as Pubmed outputs it and then change the output style within Endnote to match your preferred format. If it's a standard format for a well known journal, you should be able to directly select that output style, otherwise, you can make a custom format using the formatting code for the style you want. There are several online guides out there that give details how to do that.  Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.usd.edu/content.php?pid=63203&amp;amp;sid=755800&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://libguides.usd.edu/content.php?pid=63203&amp;amp;sid=755800&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbq-naXl8r4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbq-naXl8r4&lt;/a&gt;  (see ~8mins in)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T06:32:27.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-31T09:58:45.967" Score="1" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any open database(s) that offer access to Bachelor or Masters level final papers? Especially interested in top universities and computer science related papers.&#xA;The thing is that other day I browsed through BA level papers defended in my university and many of them seemed to be a little too trivial. I'd like to see what is quality of papers produced by those who attend top universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15938" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T21:44:51.917" Title="Database of final BA/MA papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2014-05-31T10:09:58.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Increasingly, individual universities are requiring students to submit digital versions of theses (particularly at masters level and above). However, as far as I know this is generally organised by each university individually, often under the auspices of the university library. I am not aware of any large centralised databases, though these might exist for particular subjects. A Google search for &quot;student thesis database&quot; or &quot;student thesis &amp;lt; institution&gt;&quot; seems your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do bear in mind that different institutions may have different requirements, particularly in the amount of time students are expected to spend on their thesis project: quality may not be directly comparable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="15798" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T20:48:02.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T20:48:02.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21709" CreationDate="2014-05-31T11:07:09.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me give you a very practical advice: Every big project is accomplished in many small steps. In order to get a better picture of what is going on, make sure that you have a good protocol of all the small steps you're taking. If possible, establish a weekly routine with your supervisor. Everybody has some kind of daily habit, try to figure out when your supervisor is, e.g., arriving to office, going for lunch, going for coffee, etc. Since, as you're reporting, it's difficult for you to get hold of him, try to catch him at some of these points, repetedly. This way you can build up a habitual relationship. You can't fix all of your problems in one discussion. You have to partition down your project related problems/difficulties into smaller, prioritized portions and then start discussing those independently. Giving your supervisor a brief update on what you plan as your next, small step can be done while walking to the coffee machine. All he has to do is to say &quot;yes&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, &quot;maybe&quot;- and this &lt;em&gt;DECISION&lt;/em&gt; is what you have to document. So, also as a way to protect yourself, you have a proof of how you decided in agreement on how to proceed. Trust me, at one point all these small steps will add up to your larger project and you will feel back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T11:07:09.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21838" CreationDate="2014-05-31T12:26:22.373" Score="3" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, I would retain the for me important points, but omit the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the question in the title, I would like to add: If it is, how would it be best to point to that paper?&#xA;Should I reference this as a &quot;regular&quot; citation or is it better to include some explanation, like &quot;From [5] it is clear that ...&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T21:44:31.207" Title="Is it good practice/advisable to sum up passages from a reference into a few sentences in my own paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23100" CreationDate="2014-05-31T14:16:05.400" Score="2" ViewCount="7425" Body="&lt;p&gt;My supervisor told me that I should write paragraph in which I introduce the problem that will be addressed by this chapter (research methodology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some of the key aspects I should focus on? I understand that it cannot be a too detailed description, as my supervisor recommends only a single paragraph but I also do not want to write too little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15946" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T02:55:05.567" Title="What to mention in your introduction to your research methodology chapter" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2014-05-31T16:48:19.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not really a proper answer, but rather more like a stretched out comment. In the field of biology, lab hands can be relatively quickly trained. Now, they probably won't understand much of the science that is going on behind the scenes, but doing some of the routine tasks of &quot;pressing buttons&quot;, they can free the more senior researchers to do the more challenging parts of the research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics, on the other hand, often requires several years of training before you can start contributing in any way and there is no good way to avoid this. A beginning university student might have heard of the concepts that are being researched in some lab, but it is unlikely that a typical high school student can do much. This is all something that you already mentioned in your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, many things in the field of computational science (be it physics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, sociology, or whatever) are rather mundane and could easily be done by someone with a limited knowledge of the field (and I remember there being a recent example in astronomy where a high school student coded up an algorithm to find some shapes of galaxies/starts/something, and it worked so remarkably well that it ended up being published, but I could not find the reference right now). If you truly are motivated enough to contact and seek advisers in your area yourself, I am sure that many would be happy to show you the ropes. Don't be too discouraged, though, if some refuse (or do not even respond), as they might be too busy doing their own research to train new people who will shortly be leaving the lab, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; to reflect the revised question: I want to point out that earlier I suggested computational science, but there are also experimental physics (for example) labs, which might also have something to do for an interested high school student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no separate department for computational science, because it is not really a study of its own; rather you can use computers in any field (for the sake of completeness, there sometimes might be a department called computational science, but its scope is usually more limited than my definition here). Suppose you were interested in physics at institute X. Go to the website of the department of physics of X and see what the groups are working on. Find the homepages of the individual groups (professors) and see if they seem to be using computers (it will usually be more or less obvious from the types of figures on the website, or they might just explicitly mention it) and if their research appears to be of interest to you. See their publications, and while you some of the papers might be behind a paywall, try Googling the titles and you might find them on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/a&gt; or similar free to access preprint servers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the publications themselves are often quite technical, don't get disappointed if you don't understand much, but the introduction section should often be more or less understandable. One of the things you might want to look for is to see whether the group is using some software package (they should cite it if they do), or if everything seems custom made. In the former case, a considerable amount of the work might be in preparing files for the software and with some training could easily be done by a high school student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for approaching a professor, and I am hoping that other users on SE might comment more on this topic, the best way, I think, is to have read a paper or two by the group and to point out in your email that you have a rudimentary understanding of the science and the scope of the work. I, and I am not even the group leader, get emails from students (often from other countries) looking for a position (bachelor's thesis or something similar) at our lab because they are 'engineers'. Being an 'engineer' hardly qualifies them for the rather specific work we do and shows that they have not done any research as to who to send the email to, nor to what the group is working on (as they never, ever, specify what they want to do or why they want to join our group, in particular). These types of emails probably never get a reply from anyone (although a high school student just might, for their lack of knowledge as to the specifics would be more understandable). Essentially the more specific you can get in showing your knowledge and asking some questions, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of what I write about is a lot to ask from a high school student, and might not even fully pay off in the end (i.e. you might get rejected). I hope that in any case this gets you interested in reading academic papers and gives you a better understanding of what it is that scientists do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastEditorUserId="15151" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T00:54:02.900" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T00:54:02.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-31T16:59:42.827" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in theoretical physics and would like to do research in the same field. I have completed my high school and have decided to take a BSc in physics. My question is about the type of BSc course that I should get into. There are courses in which the syllabus includes a lot of other sciences like chemistry,biology etc and other type in which most of the course deals with physics(along with small credit courses on other sciences). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which one should I opt? &#xA;Will the second type help me more during my MSc and PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15947" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T18:39:13.607" Title="Which kind of undergraduate course is better for a student wishing to do research in physics?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21745" CreationDate="2014-05-31T17:12:40.827" Score="3" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a statement of purpose for a computer science graduate program. In high school I was in a different field of study (aeronautics), then I switched to computer science for my undergraduate course after attending a computer science course which I liked.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I can't lie about this, also because this university also asked me about which high school I attended. But is this a negative thing to write on a statement of purpose? Maybe I should just write it on the fly without giving it much attention. Or instead I should say it clearly and justify my choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because I see that many people on the statement of purpose say that they always liked their field of study, from when they were children. So I don't know if the admission examiners would consider it negatively or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14586" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T03:36:38.510" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:41:29.967" Title="Statement of purpose for applying to graduate school in a different field of study than high school" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21738" CreationDate="2014-05-31T18:13:17.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to follow a course where you'll be stimulated, have access to good people and good resources, and be happy (personally, not just academically). If satisfying these conditions also determines which style of course you follow, then that's the best answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise... there's probably no definitive answer. Personally, I'm in favour of a broad scientific education. A lot of interesting developments these days are at the interface between two or more of the &quot;traditional&quot; sciences, and being able to bring in ideas from multiple fields is often useful in research. There's also the fact that you may find your interests don't (only) lie where you thought. My career has ended up being in a branch of science I never even considered when I was at school (I, too, wanted to do theoretical physics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose a course that will give you a strong grounding in mathematics: it is probably the only part of a course that's guaranteed to be useful wherever your career goes. (I took advanced courses in particle physics... but I haven't used that knowledge since leaving the exam. Introductory linear algebra? Almost every day...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In support of my position: note that some of the world's leading universities (eg CalTech, Cambridge) insist their students study multiple traditional sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="15798" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T18:39:13.607" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T18:39:13.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21791" CreationDate="2014-05-31T19:09:12.997" Score="44" ViewCount="14891" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title asks the question, but once again in more words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you submit a paper to a journal and it is accepted by the journal.  By this I mean that the journal tells you that they have decided to publish your paper but you have not submitted or examined final proofs and -- especially -- not signed any paperwork allowing the journal to publish the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how people feel about the ethics of deciding not to go through with the publication because you now feel that the paper could be published in a better journal?  This could happen either because of outside feedback you received in the meantime or because of feedback from the referees/editors of the journal itself.  (&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: In case this was not clear, I am assuming that upon submission one was seeking to publish in that journal conditional on not learning that one has &quot;shot way too low&quot;.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, it is absolutely legal to do this, so I am not interested in the legality of it, but rather its ethics and ramifications as an academic practice.  I also think I will get better answers if I do not telegraph my own feelings about this; I will be happy to document them later on.  Let me just say (i) this is a hypothetical question, but (ii) based on my own experience it is not ridiculous that it might be in the interest of the author to engage in this practice, if it happened to be kosher to all parties involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Note&lt;/b&gt;: I had previously asked a related question, at the time wondering whether it would be better asked separately.  Based on the way things have gone thus far, I now think it is better to post this followup question separately (not necessarily right away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T06:51:57.660" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T14:48:34.147" Title="Is it ethical to withdraw a paper after acceptance in order to resubmit to a better journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2014-05-31T19:32:47.867" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not ethical to withdraw a paper that has been accepted. Journals, editors, and reviewers invest time in the publication process. To withdraw a paper after it has entered this process is a waste of their time. While the legal ramifications of is behaviour are probably limited, it will result in bad feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for not having the money to publish. Assuming the journal fees are available prior to submission, and reputable journals make their fees known, then if you don't have the money, then you don't get to submit. If they have a paid expedited service and you are worried about the back log, then ask up front. The only case that it might be acceptable is if he review process drags on for so long that your funding ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T19:32:47.867" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21739" CreationDate="2014-05-31T20:26:02.900" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;It doesn't matter at all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly in the US, high school degrees don't have &quot;concentrations&quot;; you simply get a high school diploma. In certain circumstances, your school may have a special focus, but accreditation rules for high school diplomas typically specify some distribution of courses which all students have to meet to receive the diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the statement of purpose tells us what you want to do in graduate school, why you want to do it, and why you're qualified to do it. That's pretty much it—most people on admissions committees aren't interested in knowing what early pearl of wisdom some random relative imparted, or other &quot;humanizing&quot; anecdote that too many applicants include. In fact, many of them actively hate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statements of purpose are not your life story, they're a summary of your past and future career. Tell us about your relevant experiences, and why you should be admitted to &lt;strong&gt;our&lt;/strong&gt; graduate program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T07:41:29.967" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:41:29.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21747" CreationDate="2014-05-31T20:44:47.787" Score="2" ViewCount="17624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about how to write my ranking in a class in my CV. I mean, after graduation from the university for my BSc degree, my ranking due to overall GPA among the class of 30 students was 2. The class and the students in which we started our BSc degree education and graduated after 8 or 9 semesters. I want to high light this ranking in my CV in the section of honors and awards. How should I mention this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T22:10:40.530" Title="Ranking in class + Resume" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21746" CreationDate="2014-05-31T20:52:11.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is usually done in the section where you list your degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2008-2012 University of Big City - BSc (Hons.) Difficult Subject (Class rank: 2 of 30)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T20:52:11.173" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2014-05-31T21:44:51.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The database I am most familiar with is the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database/UMI, which advertises having nearly 3 million items in it's collection (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/products-services/pqdt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.proquest.com/products-services/pqdt.html&lt;/a&gt;). The University of Texas website reports Proquest receives 90+% of all dissertations completed in the US each year (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.utexas.edu/indexes/titles.php?id=114&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lib.utexas.edu/indexes/titles.php?id=114&lt;/a&gt;). It allows you to search by a range of criteria, including targeting either Master's or Doctoral papers, or searching by academic subject area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universities include Proquest in their electronic database offerings. My university requires we format our theses and dissertations to be compatible with Proquest, and these are deposited immediately upon graduation, unless embargoed due to pending patents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of a database for Bachelor's level papers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T21:44:51.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21760" CreationDate="2014-05-31T21:55:46.970" Score="8" ViewCount="3398" Body="&lt;p&gt;While applying to a PhD program in computer science, which one is more important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing 4 or 5 medium/low-quality journal or conference papers or publishing only one paper in a top journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review process of top-quality journals are usually 1-2 years. Which means, one has to begin his/her research during the bachelor's and submit the paper in the beginning of master's degree. But as far as I know, this is extraordinary (especially in my country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extra question would be: Regardless of the quality of the paper, is publishing papers in distinct areas or publishing papres in a specific area more important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to move to Northern Europe (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helsinki.fi/university/&quot;&gt;UH&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tut.fi/en/home&quot;&gt;TUT&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kth.se/en&quot;&gt;KTH&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ku.dk/english&quot;&gt;KU&lt;/a&gt;). So, answers from the professors/students of those universities will be highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="269" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T04:59:35.873" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:55:53.363" Title="Which is more important for PhD applicants — Quality or quantity of research papers?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21746" CreationDate="2014-05-31T22:10:40.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to avid's answer; you may write a &lt;strong&gt;Degrees and Awards&lt;/strong&gt; section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Degrees and Awards&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2009 September, ABC Corp. Project Competition, &quot;Saving the Earth from Pollution&quot;, &lt;em&gt;1st place&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2010 March, Very Good Conference, &quot;Research About Humanity&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Best paper award&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2010-2011, fall semester, University of the Worls, GPA: 4.00/4.00, &lt;em&gt;Outstanding student&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012 June, High honor student, graduated with GPA: 3.97/4.00, Degree: 2 of 30&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, you should put &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the highlights of your educational life. If you don't want to highlight something, don't write it in your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T22:10:40.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21736" CreationDate="2014-05-31T22:27:01.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer this question in less than one minute, assuming that I have the basic knowledge of your area:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;What is your research about?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Than add these in less than two minutes:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Why did you do your research in that specific topic? What is your innovation?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;How did you do it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, write your answers on a paper. And that would be the intro.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Commentors are right. Only the last part would be an intro for methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T20:12:37.377" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T20:12:37.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-31T22:52:26.300" Score="-2" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave a manuscript to my advisor while ago but he doesn't read it, what is the best action to do cause I need to publish it fast?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15952" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T09:09:21.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:00:33.680" Title="Making my advisor publish manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21739" CreationDate="2014-06-01T01:10:25.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most graduate programs will ask which high school you attended but this is can be a roundabout way to ascertain where you grew up (and perhaps to some degree your socioeconomic status -- i.e., did you go to a public school or attend an elite private boarding school,etc.). However, to be honest, most admin committees do not weight this information heavily. What you wanted to do when you were 17 has really little to do with who you are when you are in your twenties or thirties and going into PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is critical for applications is why you want to go to graduate school in computer science. What are the problems that intrigue you, what sub-specialty are you interested in, who do you want to work with, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T01:10:25.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18979" CreationDate="2014-06-01T01:18:44.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They do not &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt;, but they will usually &lt;em&gt;prefer&lt;/em&gt; someone who is familiar with the academic system that they use. For example, small liberal arts colleges will usually prefer people with experience with small liberal arts colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not &quot;not competitive&quot; but certainly &quot;less competitive&quot; unless you are in a Tier 1 school in a nation that is known to have competitive tertiary education.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have already noted in comments that there are two types of deans at American academic institutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academic deans who are heads of units (the Dean of the Graduate School, for example).  These are usually promoted from within the current faculty body but on rare occasions are brought in from outside.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Non-academic deans or deans of student services (the Dean of Career Services, for example). These can be promoted (or laterally transferred) from the faculty body but are more often hired for that particular role and specialty. Non-academic deans are much more mobile -- for better or for worse. They move from institution to institution, hopefully moving up the ranks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that in your case the possibility of moving into an academic dean slot are very small.  You do have much more hope for a position as a non-academic dean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that one option that is open to you is to apply for a senior faculty position in a university with the intent of becoming Chair, then a Dean within that institution. There are often job postings listed for departments that explicitly want senior faculty -- including senior faculty who are willing to immediate Chair the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T04:55:28.363" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T04:55:28.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21753" CreationDate="2014-06-01T01:24:19.353" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Original Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; If you are submitting to a journal, you do not have to have your advisor's approval (unless you are using his dataset or it is coming out of his lab). If it is based on your own research findings, publish it as single-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Editorial Note&lt;/strong&gt;: You did not indicate your discipline. As state in the original response, this answer is only applicable for disciplines where your research is independent of your advisor's research, lab, or research grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T12:00:33.680" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:00:33.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2014-06-01T01:31:13.107" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this sort of behavior is not unheard of in the social sciences, it is certainly frowned upon. It could also lead to you being blacklisted by the original journal, if not more serious negative sanctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to remember that in many fields that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal editors know each other and socialize together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of referees for any random obscure topic is low&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did this, you would get caught either 1) when the 2nd journal accepts the paper and publishes it; 2) before this when the journal editor #1 has drinks with journal editor #2; or 3) by random luck, journal editor #2 sends it to the same referee who green lighted it for journal #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't mess with journals. It's much better to have a first article in a journal with a low citation index than it is to create bad blood with journal editors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're smart enough, you can write a second essay on a following topic that you can send to journal #2 once you've established yourself with your initial essay in the original journal #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edited for clarity]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T04:48:07.703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T04:48:07.703" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21753" CreationDate="2014-06-01T02:18:13.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If talking to your advisor doesn't work, I would suggest emailing your advisor with the draft, saying that you plan to submit it to XXX on such-and-such a date and that you would be grateful for any feedback he or she can provide you before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by amirg, you might also run it by the head of your lab, if that's the standard in your field.  (It's not in mine: computer science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T02:18:13.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2014-06-01T02:32:33.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the assumption that top journals with slow turnaround times are more highly regarded than top conferences with quicker turnaround times.  In most (all?) areas of computer science, the most competitive conferences are at least as highly regarded as the top journals.  It is also not unusual for longer versions of conference papers to later be submitted to journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David Patterson (UC Berkeley), Larry Snyder (University of Washington), and Jeffrey Ullman wrote in &lt;a href=&quot;http://cra.org/resources/bp-view/evaluating_computer_scientists_and_engineers_for_promotion_and_tenure/&quot;&gt;Evaluating Computer Scientists and Engineers For Promotion and Tenure&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evaluation of computer science and engineering faculty for&#xA;  promotion and tenure has generally followed the dictate &quot;publish or&#xA;  perish,&quot; where &quot;publish&quot; has had its standard academic meaning of&#xA;  &quot;publish in archival journals&quot; [Academic Careers, 94]. Relying on&#xA;  journal publications as the sole demonstration of scholarly&#xA;  achievement, especially counting such publications to determine&#xA;  whether they exceed a prescribed threshold, ignores significant&#xA;  evidence of accomplishment in computer science and engineering. For&#xA;  example, conference publication is preferred in the field, and&#xA;  computational artifacts —software, chips, etc. —are a tangible means&#xA;  of conveying ideas and insight. Obligating faculty to be evaluated by&#xA;  this traditional standard handicaps their careers, and indirectly&#xA;  harms the field. This document describes appropriate evidence of&#xA;  academic achievement in computer science and engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your research advisor should be able to provide you advice more specific to your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with amirg that having any publications when applying to a PhD program (especially based on undergraduate research) makes you exceptional.  Your advisor's recommendation also counts a lot, especially if he or she is well known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T02:32:33.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18367" CreationDate="2014-06-01T03:46:01.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Masters degrees are often funded not by the university but by an employer.  Generally with the requirement that you continue working during your program, which constrains choice of school geographically (has to be close to the employer), the rate at which you complete a program (part-time, not full load), and only works for the degree most closely associated with the job you do -- companies don't fund you to move on to bigger and better things elsewhere, they invest in making their employees provide more value back to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job history shouldn't have a lot of impact other than whether it enables you to be employer-funded, and in the case described of working in your field but outside your desired specialization, it pretty much rules out receiving that benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, most Masters (MS, MSE, or MEng) in Engineering programs even at highly ranked schools don't have extremely competitive admissions.  So you might focus on trying to find employment (and the necessary visas) compatible with the program you want to enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastEditorUserId="8705" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T22:34:06.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:34:06.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18543" CreationDate="2014-06-01T05:06:00.230" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel your paper is strong, then I would send one last e-mail in a week or so stating that if there is no response, you will be compelled to withdraw from that journal and resubmit at their leading competitor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that sometimes the e-mail queues at journals are broken. If you can find an alternate way to contact the editor, you may want to try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T05:06:00.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18543" CreationDate="2014-06-01T06:23:35.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. Since then it has been 4 months and the paper is still 'awaiting reviewer invitation'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find &quot;awaiting reviewer invitation&quot; to be a slightly strange phrase, but taken at face value it seems to mean that they still have not even asked anyone to referee the paper, let alone found a referee, let alone gotten the report back from a referee!  &lt;strong&gt;If true&lt;/strong&gt; that is indeed problematic: six months is waaaaaay too long to wait for this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two plausible guesses as to what has happened to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) They are having a lot of trouble finding a suitable referee.  They tried on their own, failed, then asked you for help after two months (kind of a long time, but not &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; unreasonable).  The people that you suggested somehow didn't pan out, and they reacted badly to that, putting your work on some sort of long-term queue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Whatever electronic system is conveying to you the message &quot;awaiting reviewer invitation&quot; is simply malfunctioning.  Possibly (as @RoboKaren suggests) the journal's email system is on the fritz as well.  If that's the case, who knows what's actually happening: maybe your paper has gotten lost entirely. (Almost anything can happen.  Once, almost ten years ago, when I inquired after a few months on the status of my paper, the answer was &quot;We're having trouble finding any record of your submission.  Are you sure you submitted to our journal?&quot;  This may be hard to believe, but...eventually we sorted it out -- in particular, they found the record of my submission! -- and the paper was published by that journal.)  Or maybe the referee report is actually in and it is just the part of the system where they tell you this that is malfunctioning.  (That also happened to me, much more recently, and again the paper was eventually published, although this time I am less thrilled with the journal and will probably not submit there again.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you need to actually get in contact with an editor of the journal and find out what happened.  Not responding to your emails at all within two weeks is certainly unacceptable behavior: every professional deserves to be treated better than this.  In my opinion this total lack of response empowers you to take more vigorous steps to contact the editors of the journal.  Such things include, in roughly increasing order of vigorousness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;. Emailing the editors at their university accounts rather than the journal account.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(This is definitely the least intrusive: try this first.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt;. Sending multiple emails at the rate of one a day.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt;. Calling the editors at any phone number they list on a professional webpage.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt;. Enlisting a more famous / senior / powerful ally to try to contact the editor on your behalf.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt;. Contacting other professionals to tell them that you must get in touch with Editor X and can't, e.g. the secretary of Editor X's home department, or the head of Editor X's home department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;: contact an editor on a social media site like facebook, try to look up their home phone number or address, or anything like that.  I think that's too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do hear from an editor, find out how far off the rails your train actually is.  After losing contact with you completely and advertising your paper as &quot;awaiting reviewer invitation&quot; after six months, in my view the editors should be apologizing and telling you what they're going to do to fix the situation.  If you get the sense that they don't see it that way, it's definitely time to try again with a different journal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T06:23:35.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21767" CreationDate="2014-06-01T06:34:37.247" Score="4" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a mentor from an industrial research lab. I use the tool he has developed in my PhD research, and we have been working together for several months. We have some results that he likes very much, since my work is a new application of his tool. However, unfortunately our paper has been rejected two times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a month ago, I saw an ads of internship positions at his group, so I asked him about the position. He hadn't replied anything until some days ago, he replied that this year he is busy organizing a (top-tier) conference, so he was reluctant to get students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ads is still there, and I still want to apply. Should I ask his colleagues if they are accepting students? More specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I ask my mentor which his colleagues are accepting students?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I ask my mentor's colleagues, there are 4 of them, without notifying him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I contact my mentor's colleagues, should I mention his name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My worries are about the reference that my mentor can give to me. My impression is that he likes my work, but since the paper is rejected two times, I don't know that if it is good. I also don't know if it is rude asking to work with others while working with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mentor is an established researcher with great personality, he treats unknown students like me just like his friends or colleagues. I'm very happy working with him, and I don't want anything that may damage our collaboration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15501" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:26:24.300" Title="Should I ask colleagues of my mentor for internship opportunity?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21839" CreationDate="2014-06-01T07:16:59.647" Score="6" ViewCount="19300" Body="&lt;p&gt;While looking for information on how to perform a particular basic lab technique, I found the lab manual from another university's undergraduate lab course. This lab manual illustrates the technique very well, with concise description, useful tips on fine points of the procedure and nice, helpful pictures of how the procedure should be performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my research notes, I try to cite relevant material in a format resembling usual citation styles of well-known journals, both to build a habit and because it happens to be a good way to keep track of precisely what information I based my decisions on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this lab manual does not have a DOI or ISBN and the PDF itself does not provide enough information to uniquely identify it in a traditional fashion. By looking at the URL it was posted under, I can deduce a fair bit regarding exactly what course this document pertains to (in my particular case, it seems to be the 2013/2014 version of the lab manual of the Bi204 course at Boston University, hosted &lt;a href=&quot;http://capricorn.bc.edu/bi204/?page_id=13&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). What is the best way to cite it, to ensure that future readers of my notebook will be able to follow the citation without being hopelessly confused about which document I am talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In theory, I can keep searching for other, more &quot;formal&quot; texts such as journal publications, then cite those. However, I don't want to do this. Firstly, I would be doing extra work to find what I already have discovered. Second, the manual is exceptionally well written and it will be hard to find other sources which provide the same information just as clearly. Third, I would like to give credit to the person who was actually the most helpful to me in my own reasoning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could just cite the reference given by the lab manual, but many of the issues I raise for the previous point apply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could cite the URL, but what if a year later the web page changes drastically, and the version of the notebook I used disappears?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to, to the extent that is reasonably possible, provide the means for locating this lab manual to anyone reading my notes in the far future, even if the original author removes the manual from the web page I found it at. And I would like to provide this information in a style that conforms to established citation practices of scientific writing. How can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:46:33.940" Title="How to cite a lab manual?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21765" CreationDate="2014-06-01T07:26:24.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be perfectly reasonable for you to a) ask your mentor which of his colleagues might be accepting students and b) mention his name when contacting his colleagues, AFTER you've first made sure he's ok with this plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need to be worried about a conflict: he's opened the door by saying that he's too busy to take on students this summer. As to whether he'd give you a good reference, that's quite hard to say, which is why it's best to ask him. Paper rejection in and of itself doesn't mean he doesn't like your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:26:24.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21772" CreationDate="2014-06-01T07:51:16.933" Score="5" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working my way through an Masters and as assignments are completed and results have come back, I would like to put them online as a way of contributing back to the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However generally I do not see people doing this. Is there an etiquette or other implications that I am not considering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15958" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T09:09:11.720" Title="Should I put my marked assignments online?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21753" CreationDate="2014-06-01T07:55:33.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since, you are near your graduation, that means not only you know whether your research results are publishable or not but where to publish those results as well. Consequently, similar to what Suresh suggests, one of your problems is not only to publish those results but publishing them on a suitable venue which is a) close to your area of interest b) it is a high-profile journal of conference c) your paper has a lot of chances to be actually accepted. So, it is part of your job to actually find such a venue to stress the urgency of your publishing those results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, have you checked the nearby CFPs (call for proposals) for related conferences or journals? Perhaps your advisor plans to submit your paper to an event which is 2-3 months from now and is already confident enough for your draft, so there is no immediate hurry to do the final changes now. Many advisors are very busy and allocation for their various tasks is done according to their deadlines, so perhaps this is the reason he has postponed providing feedback. If you have found an alternative venue for publishing those results with a closer deadline, it will be easier for you to convince him to check your manuscript ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, we are just random Internet strangers and the most proper solution is (as others have suggested) to TALK TO YOUR ADVISOR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T08:03:14.783" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T08:03:14.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2014-06-01T07:55:53.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will not focus on the conferences vs. journals angle here, as this has been answered by other people and I really think this is not the core of your question. I will assume you meant to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Publishing 4 or 5 medium/low-quality venues or publishing only one paper in a top venue. What is better for PhD admission?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I am not entirely sure in which timespan you plan to produce all these materials. In my subfield of Computer Science, writing 4-5 B-level conference papers takes most PhD students at least 2 years. Writing 1 top paper requires a very good idea, solid research skills, and typically at least one half-year of full-time research (often significantly more). Doing all of that as a (presumably) inexperienced undergrad or master student besides course work seems very ambitious. From my personal experience, a &lt;strong&gt;very good&lt;/strong&gt; master student will publish 1 or 2 good papers during his master's. That's about the best I have personally seen among my students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the simple answer to your (implied) above question is that both are likely ok.  Both, one top paper or 4-5 reasonable papers, are likely to get you into any of the northern european school in principle. However, note that admission to european schools is often not like in the US (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10626/10094&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), meaning that it is well possible that you &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; need to find a professor to take you on, which may depend more on her/his available fundings than your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you said &quot;4 or 5 medium/low-quality&quot; papers, make sure that they are not &lt;strong&gt;too&lt;/strong&gt; low-quality. There is a threshold from which a badly conceived paper can actually &lt;em&gt;hurt&lt;/em&gt; your chances in some groups. It is hard to give a hard-and-fast rule here, but in the dark I would avoid any &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17379/what-are-fake-shady-and-or-predatory-journals&quot;&gt;predatory journals&lt;/a&gt; as well as any conference that does not appear on any of the international rankings (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au/index.php/categories/conference%20rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CORE&lt;/a&gt;). If you have an advisor or mentor from the field, he will be able to help you with selecting reasonable venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T07:55:53.363" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21768" CreationDate="2014-06-01T08:40:11.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my alma mater, this is indeed common. The student representatives actually maintain a repository of exam answers and assignment solutions for all large classes. Contributing to such a repository seems better than putting it online on your own web page or GitHub, because you need to think about how the students coming after you actually find your material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other implications: the only thing that I can think of is that lecturers are sometimes not all that happy about this practice, as it makes re-using assignments from previous years more difficult. However, that's not actually that big of a deal, as most lecturers will assume that the solutions to re-used assignments are somewhere out there anyway, and adapt grading respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T08:40:11.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17649" CreationDate="2014-06-01T08:43:57.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, citing papers is not about giving credit to first authors, it is about making literature traceable to readers. This is a key part of scientific writing, providing sources. The format for citations is of course focussing on first authors who may, or may not, be the main contributor (remember that author order varies between disciplines). A secondary aspect is the fact that many evaluations of academic status is based on authorship and as such authors may not be credited as much as they should. This is, however, not the reason for why we reference the way we do. So, from this perspective, I do not see why you necessarily need to emphasize the name of someone other than the first or second author (I am now thinking Harvard-style references where two-author papers have both names listed in the in-text reference). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a scientifically based reason for highlighting the originator, one could write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concepts One and Two (reference to B) were first developed by A [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is &lt;em&gt;scientifically&lt;/em&gt; important should follow or be included]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A originated the concept one and two (Reference to B) [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is &lt;em&gt;scientifically&lt;/em&gt; important should follow or be included]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this would seemingly take away the importance of B, which in many reference systems would look strange and implicate something may not be right with the articles. I therefore think it is wise to clarify why you feel the work of A is such that it requires highlighting. Clearly, I cannot judge the case since all details are unavailable. As a side point, reviewers will likely pick up on any inconsistencies and ask for clarification in a case such as this, unless the reasons for the formatting is either clear from your writing or well known in the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T08:43:57.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21768" CreationDate="2014-06-01T09:09:11.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point to be considered is that the task might be recycled in the future and putting your solution online might be regarded as helping unknown future asignees cheating. Whether and to which extent this is an issue depends very much on the nature of the task and, of course, whether you have to expect the task to be recycled at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only comparable case from my own studies were reports from the advanced physics lab course, where every student has been given the same tasks for years. Nontheless, there were quite a few past reports to be found online (mine among them) but stupid copying from them was quite risky as the tutors also were aware of this (and sometimes even were the authors of said old reports). Rather, old reports were often a much better preparation for the course than the actual manuals as the latter were usually didactically awful and at times even incorrect. I even “cited” an old report once or twice because it was the only available source for some crucial information. And even if the manual was good, having a different explanation of the same thing is beneficial to understanding it as it also depends on the reader what is a god explanation for him or her. All in all, I would say that the existence of old reports had a huge positive pedagogical effect on me and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T09:09:11.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2014-06-01T09:59:26.993" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I submit a paper to Journal A. Under what circumstances can I then ethically withdraw it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Upon receipt of the reviews. The review process can be thought of rather like the (English) law on contracts. I offer Journal A a paper in a certain form. They think about it for a while, and then (typically) reject my initial proposal, but offer to publish a related paper (&quot;If you add X and Y we'll take it&quot;). Typically, I then make revisions and submit them, forming a new &quot;offer&quot;. Eventually, we reach a stage where the proposal is acceptable to both parties, and the paper is accepted. However, I'm under no obligation to continue to negotiate with the journal if at some point I decide that I don't like the terms they're offering (e.g. the reviewers ask for changes that I don't want to make). Does it make a difference if the reviews are largely positive, instead of largely negative? Intuitively, I'd say it does, but I'm struggling to come up with a sound justification for this. [Edited to add:] I suppose the difference is that withdrawing after &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; reviews would seem to indicate that I'm acting &quot;in bad faith&quot;; see below. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I discover a serious flaw in the paper. Clearly, I have a responsibility to withdraw it as soon as the flaw is recognised, to avoid wasting everyone's time. Once the flaw has been fixed, the paper may well look quite different (in content); thus, it seems implausible that I am &lt;em&gt;bound&lt;/em&gt; to choose the same journal upon resubmission.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I realise the paper could be significantly improved. This is a trickier one. You might well argue that it was unethical of me to submit it in the first place, as it wasn't &quot;complete&quot;. On the other hand, this could easily arise without me being at fault: perhaps someone else has just published a new statistical test which provides additional insights into my results; perhaps I'm working in a field where data is sparse, and an additional set of data points have just been obtained. It seems weird to suggest that it's wholly unethical to withdraw the paper and improve it. (Indeed, it seems arguable that it's &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; ethical than allowing the incomplete paper to be published, and then immediately writing a follow-up.) Again, when it comes to resubmission, it makes sense to decide the venue based on a fresh assessment of the merits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I don't see that these latter two points &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; cease to apply once the paper is &quot;accepted&quot; (rather than &quot;in review&quot;). Certainly, I'm still responsible for fixing any flaws. On the other hand, in the &quot;legal&quot; analysis, acceptance constitutes the making of a contract, which cannot then be broken without consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to go back to the original question: if I (a) originally submitted in good faith, and (b) would need to do some nontrivial amount of work to adapt the paper for the more prestigious journal, it seems that it's not unethical for me to withdraw with the intention of &quot;moving upmarket&quot;, at least provided I do it &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; acceptance. After acceptance, it is probably unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a lot of interesting grey areas. Do I have a responsibility to my funding providers to get maximum exposure for the research they support? What if my paper will directly help, say, a cure for cancer - so that getting it widely known in the relevant community has positive implications for humanity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main argument &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; permitting withdrawal would appear to be the fact that it wastes people's time. Again, a legal comparison is instructive: if you walk away from contract negotiations, you are not in any way breaching the contract: it hasn't yet been made. However, if the other side think they can argue you weren't acting in good faith, you may well find yourself being sued for their costs. However, I would class that as a business matter, not an ethical one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to address a point made in the comments: does an editor have a responsibility to inform an author that they're underselling their work? I'm not sure that they do (just as, provided I have not made any misrepresentations, I'm not obliged to tell a prospective buyer that he's offering me too much money for my house). If editors start second-guessing authors' choices in submitting to this or that journal, the system would quickly descend into chaos. However, reviewers (who act like the legal advisors on the house-sale analogy) may well be obliged to make the significance of the work clear (though, perhaps, not to go as far as recommending the author take one course of action over another).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="15798" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T10:12:14.870" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T10:12:14.870" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2014-06-01T11:52:15.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can look for organizations for gifted high school students. For example in Poland there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://fundusz.org/english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Polish Children's Fund&lt;/a&gt; providing possibility of research work in institutes. In US I am not much aware of possibilities, but there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cee.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Center of Excellence in Education&lt;/a&gt; organizing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cee.org/research-science-institute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Science Institute&lt;/a&gt; each summer. Such programs are highly competitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another route would be asking participants of &lt;a href=&quot;https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Intel ISEF&lt;/a&gt; with topics related to your research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I know a number of people who went into some collaborations through informal routes. But more than often they were onsite, visiting some institute and talking with professors a lot long before starting collaboration (rather than meeting / mailing with the main goal of summer internship). In any case, there are many random variables, but if you are really motivated it might be worth trying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T11:52:15.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T11:55:57.740" Score="4" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I submitted my manuscript for publication in a journal, the editor rejected it with the comment &quot;not enough archival contribution&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me by saying what he meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15964" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T12:22:01.890" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:23:10.943" Title="What does archival contribution in journals mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T11:56:30.670" Score="12" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an American who came to Europe last fall to do an MS which would complement my BA, since the field of study for my BA was different than my current one. My original plan was to apply to PhD programs in the US this fall, but recently I was offered a PhD position by my current adviser. I have until this summer to decide, which means I can either stay where I am now or decline the offer and cast the dice in the US application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In itself, my current department is not particularly well known in the US, where I would ultimately like to work. However, my field is small and my adviser is somewhat influential. Moreover, the advising is high quality. My adviser and I generally meet for one to three hours a week to discuss my work. I genuinely like my adviser, her insight, and the work I am doing. If I stay here I would also have connections to a lab in the US which is among the best in the world for my field. I would spend some time there as needed/desired, and the other members of my dissertation committee would likely be from this lab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several US departments where I originally planned to apply. They have good faculty, have a large number of students in the same subfield, are close to other institutions doing related research, etc. In short, if I were accepted to one of these schools, I might sleep sounder knowing that others have tread my path, and at least some have had a good outcome (solid reputation, decent job, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My situation can be problematized as follows. The offer from my adviser is obviously an opportunistic move on her part. As a friend of mine put it, “she sees a talented young scientist and wants to snatch him up before someone else does.” Regardless of whether the characterization is accurate, that's a way of looking at the situation. My task is to decide whether the move is the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had a similar experience or just care to share some insight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15962" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T14:05:29.173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T16:40:01.463" Title="Stay put or enter the US application process" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21708" CreationDate="2014-06-01T12:04:25.493" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funding is extremely scarce, especially in Britain. Since you have been accepted, I would write to the person who you suspect would be your adviser if you matriculated and ask them for advice. The program clearly has an interest in bringing you in. They may be able to find fellowships or paying jobs within the university that can help you financially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:04:25.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T12:13:06.790" Score="5" ViewCount="14187" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way of referencing an equation, figure of table inline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would currently say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can be seen from Equation (11) that . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inspection of Figure (3) shows . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this method—capital letter for Equation/Figure/Table and the actual reference in round brackets—acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15332" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T13:17:28.417" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:43:12.710" Title="Correct way of referencing equations, figures and tables inline?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21778" CreationDate="2014-06-01T12:13:45.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've argued a whole bunch of times that if you want to get an academic job in the USA, you should do the Ph.D. in the USA as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I give an analysis &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17405/how-would-a-small-liberal-arts-college-view-a-phd-from-germany-or-the-uk-factor/17406#17406&quot;&gt;in this thread&lt;/a&gt; of the thought process behind a hiring committee's decision of whom to interview and show ways that holding a foreign degree might hurt your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also had a more extended interchange with some folks here &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8564/unhappy-with-my-phd-program-thinking-about-applying-to-another-university/21082#21082&quot;&gt;in this thread&lt;/a&gt; who seemed initially resistant to my claim. However, see JeffE's comment towards the end of that comment chain in which he says &quot;All else being equal, US PhDs have an advantage in the US academic market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck to you in your search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:13:45.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21777" CreationDate="2014-06-01T12:23:10.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably, he simply meant that your paper does not have enough long-lasting contribution to your field of study. That is, there either is too little contribution at all, or the editor assumed that your paper only has a very temporary contribution which will be outdated soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:23:10.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21778" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:09:54.490" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While shane's argument has some merit, there is another important factor to take into consideration: time to degree, which is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; much inequal here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you accept your professor's offer of a PhD position, you would in principle be able to start your PhD research as soon as this fall. If you were to decline the offer, you'd definitely have to wait a full year to start the PhD program, and then at least an extra semester or two, depending on the course requirements in your field. So there could be up to a two-year delay before you do substantial work in your PhD field, depending on whether or not the department will waive your master's coursework. This may or may not be enough to sway your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you should look at all of the &quot;peripherals,&quot; including things like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much teaching duty would be combined as part of the PhD position (this can be substantial, depending on your advisor's or department's teaching load!); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what the benefits and support associated with the position are relative to the US programs you're considering; and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the chances someone with your record will have to get into a comparable US program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:09:54.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21780" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:19:24.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;generic&lt;/em&gt; style, your method is probably the most frequently encountered. However, just about every publisher has its style guide, which usually includes instructions for exactly this sort of reference. Those guidelines should be followed when available; if not, then you are free to use whatever format you wish, so long as you use it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:19:24.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21766" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:22:44.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, this should be cited as if it were a book. Remember that ISBN's and URL's aren't a normal part of bibliographic references, so the fact that it did not go through a &quot;standard&quot; publishing process doesn't really matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, T. &lt;em&gt;Laboratory Manual for Course X&lt;/em&gt;. City: University, Year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or whatever the comparable formatting for your style guide is. (Note, write the name of the university, rather than indicating a &quot;university press.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:22:44.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:25:26.070" Score="20" ViewCount="3242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background info: I'm a graduating Masters Students teaching a Web Development Class. This is my first teaching gig and this is a required course for CS students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one star student who is already VERY good at web development. He overhauled three of the university's sites, making them more accessible, beautiful, and more performant. He is also pretty known among the faculty because of this. Let's just say that he knows the whole scope of what is being taught in my class, probably more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is if there is something that I can do to help this student? What I'm teaching him is probably just tickling his capability, and he is also very driven enough to create sites for our university. Can I talk about my department (CS Department) to let him skip my class/have him create sites for the uni instead? This student is very smart and I really feel he is much more engaged with doing real world sites (our sites) that I want to give him my time to support this instead of simple workload. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also talked to him about this and he really does think that developing real sites is fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would it be unusual if I approach my department about this request? If not, how should I phrase this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Also, he closely works with me and a few other faculty for the site creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15966" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T13:39:11.347" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:07:37.333" Title="What should I do if a student has already done all the work for my course elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21710" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:34:44.680" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, your situation has gone from bad to pretty much impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your challenge here is that without &lt;strong&gt;incontrovertible&lt;/strong&gt; proof that you've submitted the accepted manuscript to your advisor (and the co-PI), you will almost certainly lose the process that your advisor has started against you. Moreover, even if you win, it will be at best a Pyrrhic victory; all you will have managed to achieve is avoid having another black mark added to your academic record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Bill Barth's advice above, you should also start looking for alternate employment immediately, regardless of what happens in the proceedings with the university. Start over and regroup, and learn from your experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:34:44.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21786" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:38:33.447" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to the person in your department who is responsible for overseeing the undergraduate education program (the title is usually a variant on &quot;undergraduate advisor&quot; or &quot;director of undergraduate studies&quot;). Such individuals usually have the authority to waive and approve courses that are not part of the &quot;official&quot; study plan when exceptional circumstances arise. This individual should be able to tell you what is necessary to obtain a waiver, and what could be used to substitute for it within the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T13:38:33.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21778" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:58:51.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this venue you will see how important good advisors are. Indeed, having a PhD position in Caltech/MIT/Harvard is mostly useless if you don't get proper advising. If she is good researcher, you have a good working relationship, and you get the advising time you need; you have a good reason to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When getting a position, committees will look at your PhD more than where it was awarded. The more resources you have, and the better the faculty, the better your thesis can be; but it is definitely not the sole factor. If your professor is reputable in the field with good connections, she may be able to help you get a good postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, nothing guarantees you that you will get in the US. No matter how good you are, there are people out there that may look better in an application form. Furthermore, if you have to take the GRE, you are conditioned to what happens to you on that day. And, as others have mentioned, you would have to wait a full year before being able to start. Applying in the US is not free, but I don't know how much a US citizen would have to actually pay; can you afford it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the working conditions. In many countries in Europe they are much better than in the US: right to vacations, higher salary, sick days... Weight here the requirements to get the degree in your current university (coursework needed, teaching and administrative duties...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main concern is that you want to work in the US after your PhD. It is probably the best place for research, but maybe in three or four years you will decide that you don't want to go there so much, or maybe you will be counting the days to go back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this are pretty general comments that may or may not fully apply in your case, that you will have to weight according to your situation. But if &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; was in your case, as you have presented it, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would say &lt;strong&gt;&quot;don't walk. Don't run either.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T15:16:51.657" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T15:16:51.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2014-06-01T14:07:33.077" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can imagine some cases where withdrawing an accepted paper would be ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some where already given by Avid's answer, e.g. when the author realize that the paper is flawed. Another one would be if the author realize after acceptance that the journal editorial policy is far below what is expected (e.g. the author realizes that the journal is predatory). More specific cases could be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author receives a very quick positive report, where the reviewer makes it pretty clear he or she did not read the paper,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author is asked pages charges, or article processing charges while the journal did not made it clear that they are charging the author,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editor accepts the paper but (kindly) asks the author to add some references to the journal so as to increase their impact factor (sadly, this is not a fictional case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that most of the time, withdrawing after acceptance is on the unethical side of the border line (for the reason given by StrongBad: it wastes other's time), but that some specific circumstances make it ethical or even the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T14:07:33.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2014-06-01T16:18:19.697" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certainly cases in which withdrawing a paper after acceptance is reasonable, for example if the author feels misled or mistreated by the journal (as Benoît Kloeckner points out in his answer).  However, when the journal and referees have behaved blamelessly, it's hard to justify unilaterally withdrawing the paper after acceptance.  When you submitted the paper, you implicitly agreed to publish it there if accepted.  This is part of the research community's norms: a submitted paper is a request for publication, not a request for the option to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's not a legally binding promise, or even a particularly grave moral promise, but it's still not something you can reasonably violate without a compelling reason beyond self interest.  I don't think this is even worth considering except in extraordinary circumstances, such as a paper that was submitted in good faith but turned out to be far more important than the author could have foreseen.  Fortunately, there's a simple solution in these cases, namely asking the editor for permission.  It's a little awkward, but certainly less so than just going ahead and withdrawing the paper without asking, and an apologetic explanation can help.  If there's a truly compelling reason to withdraw the paper and resubmit elsewhere, then there's a good chance of getting the editor's blessing, which would resolve the ethical issues.  If, on the other hand, the editor disagrees with the reasoning, then the author is stuck.  But it's better to be stuck publishing in a low-prestige journal than to do something inappropriate or unethical, and being unable to convince the editor is a bad sign regarding the ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a special case of a broader principle: if you believe unusual circumstances justify behavior that might otherwise be considered unethical, and there's someone who could in principle grant permission, then it's generally better to ask for permission than to take action unilaterally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T16:18:19.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21795" CreationDate="2014-06-01T16:40:59.567" Score="15" ViewCount="2787" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that in your sub-field there are half a dozen research groups on your continent that are acknowledged to be &quot;world class&quot;. You have had the good fortune to do your MSc research in one, and your PhD in another. You are now a postdoc in a third. Your current group is large and well-funded, and your position there is secure for the foreseeable future. You realistically hope to get a faculty position in a good research university within the next 3-5 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, you are offered a postdoc position in a second-tier research group. Should you consider taking it, in order to broaden your academic horizons? Does the answer change depending on how long you've spent in your current postdoc? Are there other relevant considerations? Assume that you cannot expect to get a better offer within the next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus discussion points:&#xA;What if you're instead offered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a faculty position at the second-tier institution?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a postdoc position at one of the first-tier institutions you've already had an association with?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a postdoc position at a first-tier institution that you &lt;em&gt;haven't&lt;/em&gt; already had an association with?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some views on these questions that I'm happy to share, but I'd like to see what other people think first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T00:23:16.977" Title="When should you move on from a postdoc position?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21780" CreationDate="2014-06-01T17:45:57.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the standard in &lt;strong&gt;mathematics&lt;/strong&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put parentheses around equation numbers; don't use the word &quot;Equation&quot; unless after a period.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Figure/Table/Algorithm X&quot;, with no parentheses. Parentheses are reserved for equations, and square brackets for citations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This follows from (11). Equation (12) does not hold in this case. See Figure 13 for further information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your LaTeX source, use &lt;code&gt;from~\eqref{someref}&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Figure~\ref{someother}&lt;/code&gt;, with nonbreaking spaces and &lt;code&gt;\eqref&lt;/code&gt; for the equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The standard in mathematics is LaTeX; Word is often frowned upon.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as already stated in aeismail's answer, every journal has its own house style, which may override the standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: see also the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15559/&quot;&gt;Referencing non-equations&lt;/a&gt; as to why adding &quot;Equation&quot; is not a good idea: not all numbered formulas are equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:43:12.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21735" CreationDate="2014-06-01T17:50:44.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no problem to sum up informations if they have been investigated already. You should reference this as a normal citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;From [5] it is clear that ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to write the title or the author's name (or research group) instead of reference number. If you take informations from a book or the like, you can use something like 'It is well known that... '&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T17:50:44.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21792" CreationDate="2014-06-01T18:14:55.523" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Discussion&quot; isn't really how SE is supposed to work. However, I think the answer to your questions are relatively clear-cut (at least to me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you are offered a postdoc position in a second-tier research group. Should you consider taking it, in order to broaden your academic horizons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a broad horizon, you have seen three top institutions before even becoming a faculty member. Go if the new position offers you something you are currently missing (such as a nicer place to live), but I would certainly not move just for the sake of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[you are offered a ] a faculty position at the second-tier institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I like the place, I'll take this offer without a second thought. Expecting to become faculty directly at one of the five top institutions seems too much to ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a postdoc position at one of the first-tier institutions you've already had an association with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you like it there better than in your current job? If yes, take the offer. If no, stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a postdoc position at a first-tier institution that you haven't already had an association with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More or less same answer as for the first bullet. You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; seen a lot of places already, you do not need to change jobs just for the sake of it. If there is something you think the new institution will do better, then go for it. If not, stay. There is no life achievement for visiting each top institution in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T18:14:55.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21786" CreationDate="2014-06-01T19:30:33.977" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered a similar situation in the past. The student explained the situation to the lecturer and the lecturer agreed to give the student all the exercises in advance so that he could finish them in one go if he liked (instead of waiting and submitting a new exercise each week). The student did not need to attend class but had to do the final exam. That way the student didn't really get unfair special treatment (he got graded like the rest of the students) but could minimize the time wasted on something that he already knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T19:30:33.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21798" CreationDate="2014-06-01T21:16:13.847" Score="56" ViewCount="3627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once reviewed a manuscript whose authors cited many of their own published papers, which were not relevant to the subject of the manuscript. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3643/will-self-citation-be-viewed-as-self-promotion-in-academia&quot;&gt;This kind of practice is evidently frowned upon by the academic community&lt;/a&gt;. In my comments, I advised the authors to remove those references, which they did afterwards to some extent. The manuscript eventually got published, after two rounds of review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With hindsight, did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation, or is there anything else that I should have done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:28:08.763" Title="How to discourage irrelevant self-citation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21797" CreationDate="2014-06-01T21:20:59.117" Score="64" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. In fact, as a reviewer, you should point out irrelevant citations of any kind (self- or otherwise), and suggest that these be removed. Conversely, you should not complain about relevant and appropriate self-citations. The issue is the lack of relevance, not the self-citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything else that I should have done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly what &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; happen: reviewers should call out this kind of thing, so the authors will have to remove the irrelevant citations before the paper is published. This anecdote is a triumph of diligent reviewing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T21:20:59.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21805" CreationDate="2014-06-01T22:09:50.093" Score="5" ViewCount="1719" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow on from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21742/is-it-ethical-to-withdraw-a-paper-after-acceptance-in-order-to-resubmit-to-a-bet&quot;&gt;Is it ethical to withdraw a paper after acceptance in order to resubmit to a better journal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a journal is willing to publish your submitted manuscript &quot;as is&quot;, can you prevent them? Clearly if they want you to make changes you have the right to say no, but once the manuscript is accepted can you really withdraw it against the publisher's wish? Further, who has the final say on copy edits and type setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field we electronically sign a copyright transfer when the manuscript is submitted that comes into affect if it is accepted for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T10:47:23.053" Title="Can a publisher publish a manuscript without the authors permission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21804" CreationDate="2014-06-01T22:43:14.787" Score="20" ViewCount="4707" Body="&lt;p&gt;You submit a manuscript to journal A. The paper is rejected, either with a short dismissal (&quot;not good enough for this journal&quot;) or with a longer rebuttal from the referees. You wish to resubmit it to a different journal B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should you inform the editor at B of the previous rejection?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is ethically correct? What do people do in the real world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible arguments in favor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is important information regarding the manuscript, you shouldn't withhold it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this way the editor at B can contact the editor at journal A to solicit an opinion from the same referees, who already know the paper and are in a better position to give a report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not honest to submit and resubmit the same paper at different venues until you are lucky enough to get better-inclined reviewers; mentioning all previous history is needed to expose this practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible arguments against:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor at B will perceive what has happened as an indication that you consider journal B to be lower-tier than A, and possibly get offended (and biased against publication).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the information gets to the referees, they might be negatively influenced, too. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, is it fair that the previous referees are brought into the picture again, or should you start with a clean slate and new reviewers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It feels silly to write &quot;we got a negative report with no suggestions for changes, so we are sending the exact same manuscript at you with minor modifications&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arguments against look weaker in my view, because they all imply a bias that &quot;perfect&quot; editors and reviewers should not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2020-05-04T07:47:25.143" LastActivityDate="2020-05-04T07:47:25.143" Title="Should you mention previous rejections when resubmitting a paper? What is common practice?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21801" CreationDate="2014-06-01T23:04:40.550" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mention previous rejections.  You &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; definitely revise and take into consideration the comments from the reviewers in Journal A.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be silly to simply resubmit the identical article at a different journal (unless it is the case mentioned below by @user11192 that you received a rejection with NO feedback), and if you are submitting a revised article then the critiques of the previous reviewer are no longer relevant!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you are resubmitting, then you believe that your work is an original contribution.  If the journal A reviewer simply didn't like your writing style or you didn't effectively communicate your work, then resubmitting is quite common.  If the journal A reviewer pointed out that your work was unoriginal and had been published previously by someone else, then it is simply unethical to attempt to re-submit.  In the more subtle case that the first reviewer felt that your contribution was not &quot;substantial&quot; enough, then you still want to revise, and may just end up changing your introduction/motivation more than your core work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15570" LastEditorUserId="15570" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T05:57:55.497" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T05:57:55.497" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21786" CreationDate="2014-06-01T23:34:03.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having the student do free labor for the department in return for a course credit is somewhat evil. Paid work should be paid work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my school, if a student can prove they already have the skills that we teach in core chooses, we have the option of waiving those applicable requirements and letting them take higher level courses instead. The core course requirement is waived, but the number and distribution of courses required are usually not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, talk to your chair or DUS/DGS as appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T14:03:41.797" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T14:03:41.797" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21801" CreationDate="2014-06-01T23:45:40.583" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your arguments for: 1. and 3. seem to be more like &quot;axioms&quot; than arguments.  1. in particular seems almost to be begging the question.  As for 3., journals have (increasingly!) long lists of requirements for authors, some of them serious but also others that those &quot;in the know&quot; know that they may safely ignore: e.g. many journals ask that you submit papers &lt;em&gt;in their own template&lt;/em&gt;, but there's no good reason for that, most papers that I've written or refereed do not do that, and no one cares.  So the negation of 3. seems more reasonable to me: if journals wanted you to provide this information, they would ask for it.  (Maybe you are trying to argue that they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; ask for it.  Interesting, but a different question, I think.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Argument 2. is much more pertinent: if the referee's careful opinion is that your paper is valuable and deserves to be published in a research journal but just not in the journal that you have submitted to, one can indeed save a lot of people's time by carrying over the same referee to a different journal.  If you want to do this, it seems best to ask the editor of journal A to get in touch with journal B.  I've done this both as an author and as the carry-over referee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is an option that the author gets to choose to exercise or not.  In terms of the current practices, this is certainly true and I don't think anyone expects otherwise.  Again, it is interesting to argue about whether it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be true....and yes, I think it should.  The refereeing system is not strong on incorporating &quot;responses to referees&quot;: when authors write back to the editors pointing out factual mistakes in a referee report, they are often told something like &quot;I am inclined to believe you and that is most regrettable.  You should definitely resubmit your paper to another journal of similar stature.  Best of luck.&quot;  Very often the referee acts not only as the jury but also the judge and the executioner in the current system.  But for a paper whose work is agreed to be correct and novel -- or for which this evaluation was not even made -- then fundamentally, &quot;not good enough for a journal like X&quot; is nothing but an &lt;strong&gt;informed opinion&lt;/strong&gt;.  If that opinion is a sound one, a different referee will probably come to it independently.  If it isn't, then I think the author has every right to start out fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say that as a frequent referee, I do not feel the desire to know the provenance of the paper, and I don't think that would help me with my decision.  I already have what I think is probably too much information at my disposal: namely the author's identity and thus their professional reputation, my personal view of them, and so forth.  Being a good referee doesn't mean taking all possible information into account; it means taking exactly the right information into account to evaluate the paper on its own merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the course of arguing against the &quot;arguments for&quot;, it seems that I have espoused some of the arguments against: 2. and 3.  I hope these arguments have been shown to be more convincing.  (Arguments against 1. and 4. do not seem very compelling to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T23:51:11.177" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T23:51:11.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21799" CreationDate="2014-06-02T00:22:01.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course I'm not a lawyer, but I'd distinguish between two thresholds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before the paper can be published, you need to grant legal permission via a license or copyright transfer.  If you haven't done that yet, then the publisher can't force you to let them publish the paper.  That gives a narrow window in which you could still block publication after the paper is accepted (but whether you could ethically do so depends on your reason for objecting).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once the published version has appeared (even just on the publisher's website), there's nothing you can do without a powerful reason.  At that point, you would be retracting a published paper, which is a far more serious act.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between these thresholds, I don't know what would happen.  I'd guess that if you asked the publisher not to publish a paper you had already signed a copyright transfer for, then they would probably agree.  After all, publishing a paper against the author's wishes could look bad, even if they were legally entitled to do so.  However, if you didn't have a very good reason (such as a major error in the paper), then the publisher would be rather unhappy.  I wouldn't be surprised if they asked you to cover any copyediting or typesetting costs, and this sort of unprofessional behavior would be terrible for your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further, who has the final say on copy edits and type setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle this depends on the publishing agreement.  In practice, the ones I've seen usually give the publisher final say, but the publisher usually defers to the author about anything intellectually substantive during the proofreading stage.  (On the other hand, the author gets more or less no input into matters of style such as font choice, British vs. American spelling, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T00:22:01.263" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21799" CreationDate="2014-06-02T01:05:46.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further, who has the final say on copy edits and type setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;everyone&lt;/strong&gt;. In more detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance of a paper means that the editorial board approves it for publication. Once the editorial board signs off on the paper, some combination of the author(s), the editors and the publishers must arrive at a mutually agreeable final draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the role that the editors play here is highly variable: sometimes they work directly with the authors on the copyediting: e.g. the &lt;em&gt;American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt; is incredibly picky (relative to other math journals, anyway) about copyediting issues, and they surprised me by &lt;strong&gt;withholding final acceptance of a recent paper of mine&lt;/strong&gt; until I had (myself, under their very specific instructions) completed all the copyediting and formatting.  And they seemed serious about this: a change to the bibliography would be solicited and uploaded as a separate revision.  It ought to be evident that I was not completely happy that the acceptance of the paper was held over my head during a discussion of the copyediting, but that's a way to play it and I'm sure they have their reasons.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The MONTHLY has, I believe, by far the highest circulation of any mathematics journal.  It is published by the Mathematical Association of America, which is the more teaching-oriented of the two professional societies for mathematics in the US.  On the other hand, there are three selective MAA journals, and of these the MONTHLY is by far the most &quot;serious&quot;.  Long story short: many roads lead to them, and they are forced to be very selective indeed in what they publish, although they select for different things than a top research journal.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had another experience in which the final editorial acceptance in a prestigious journal was made conditional on the submission of a new draft containing less &quot;pompous language&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More typically the copyediting and formatting is either left to the authors themselves or done by an employee of the publishing company (who in many cases does this for papers in multiple academic disciplines and thus cannot have high-level subject area knowledge most of the time).  In the end &lt;strong&gt;both the authors and the publisher have the final say&lt;/strong&gt;: both parties must approve the final draft in order for it to published, and the documentation of this mutual approval is the publication contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course in practice this mutual approval is done in an asymmetric way between the parties: the publisher sends you a form in which everything has been spelled out in advance, in the pushy manner of big corporations everywhere.  But if there are clauses in the contract that the authors have a problem with, they are certainly entitled to ask, and in my experience some minor &quot;concessions&quot; (i.e., changes to the boilerplate agreement) are often made by the publisher.  A big part of the asymmetry is that the authors generally have a much larger stake in the publication of the paper than the publisher does, so insisting that one be able to refer to a paper in the bibliography by [Cl14] rather than [3] or one will take one's wares elsewhere looks like a strange arrangement of priorities, but if you really do feel strongly about it you are entitled to ask and who knows -- maybe you'll get your way.  Asking them to mess with aspects of the typesetting that are part of the journal's standard style seems less kosher to me: one would reasonably expect the journal to want to keep its standard style, and if this was really important to you, you should probably have brought it up earlier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making sure that one really does send in the copyright form last of all is a good tip.  I stumbled on this point recently when dealing with one of the world's largest scientific publishing companies.  They kept doing something weird in the proofs, I kept pointing out their mistakes and though I took pains to indicate in every correspondence that I was not giving my final approval, after a few go-rounds they didn't get back to me, and eventually I noticed that the paper was published online...still with one strange typesetting mistake that was not in the version I sent to them.  Next time I'll save the copyright form until the end.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T01:05:46.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21797" CreationDate="2014-06-02T01:45:25.120" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rule that was told to me in my youth and I have always obeyed and agreed with: never include a paper in your bibliography unless you cite it in the text itself.  Like most rules, it admits some exceptions: for instance if a primary purpose of your paper is to gather references -- e.g. if you are writing a retrospective on the work of one specific person, or you are the first to compile what you intend to be an all-inclusive guide to the literature of an entire sub(sub...)field -- then this would not apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course one should in most cases try to go farther than the above rule: as a reader I am not thrilled when multiple references get dropped in a single phrase, e.g. &quot;For more work on this problem see [73], [152], [49], [16].&quot;  In an age of increasingly sophisticated electronic bibliographic catalogues, this sort of &quot;buckshot citation&quot; seems to have little value.  Just a couple of days ago I read a famous paper (why not? it was Alon-Friedland-Kalai, &lt;em&gt;Regular subgraphs of almost regular graphs&lt;/em&gt;, 1984) and noticed that they were not phrasing their results as explicitly in terms of a certain concept as it seemed to me that they should: that would simplify the proofs and result in some mild strengthenings.  Well, it's no big deal but I got curious as to whether anyone had later made this connection more explicit.  An appropriate google led me to a survey paper in which the AFK paper was mentioned...but in the above buckshot approach: nothing is specifically said about the paper in the text, not even the names of any of the authors.  As a result I am left to wonder whether the connection has actually been made.  Which is no big deal -- I have corresponded with an author of the (nice) survey paper before, and this is a good opportunity to do so again -- but the point stands: citing that paper and not doing any more than that doesn't seem to accomplish much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I think the kind of vigilance in calling out weak citations that @ff524 lauds could be taken too far.  In some fields -- like mathematics -- we are pretty rampant under-citers, to the extent that it makes it harder for a non-veteran to find their way through the literature, which can result in duplication of work.  Citing too little is a crime which has real victims.  Citing too much is a crime only&lt;b&gt;*&lt;/b&gt; because of the current academic fad that one's research profile can be accurately estimated in terms of citations indices.  I would encourage every academic to maintain a healthy skepticism about that: again and again I have found important, deep papers with few or no citations, and I have often found that what is most cited is what is easiest to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really believe in the science of citation indices, I think you need to at least approach it with some sophistication.  The issue that the OP specifically asks about can be dealt with by keeping track of self-citations, which is certainly trivial to do with current technology.  Creating and implementing algorithms that detect and counteract various kinds of &quot;inappropriate citations&quot; sounds like a fun research problem: for instance, we should probably be searching for small cliques in the citation digraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;*&lt;/b&gt;I just remembered that in Gian-Carlo Rota's in/famous &lt;em&gt;Indiscrete Thoughts&lt;/em&gt;, he mentions and endorses the practice of sprinkling in some absolutely irrelevant citations to your work as an easy way of making friends.  This is definitely a book for which always taking the author literally at his word would be a mistake, but I read his attitude here as one of whimsical mischief rather than real academic skullduggery.  The times they are a-changin'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added&lt;/strong&gt;: I will admit to being surprised by the downvote: I don't see that I've said anything remotely controversial.  In particular, I don't disagree at all with @ff524's answer (which I upvoted): I said only that vigilance in pruning citations could be taken too far.  This is not the first time that I've encountered on this site the phenomenon of cultural differences in citation practices between my field (mathematics) and certain other academic fields.  As I've said before and again in this answer: mathematicians are rampant underciters, &lt;em&gt;to the point in which people end up spending significant amounts of time and effort replicating others' work&lt;/em&gt;.  That's a problem which in my mind safely outweighs the damage one does to the readability of one's own paper by too much buckshot citation or the games that apparently some people play to try to increase their citation index.  Does anyone disagree with this?  I would be interested to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that I could have been more explicit about in my answer: in general, there is a spectrum of relevance in citations, with &quot;so obviously irrelevant that you are perpetuating some kind of academic dishonesty by including it&quot; on one end and &quot;so obviously crucial that you are perpetuating another kind of academic dishonesty by omitting it&quot; at the other end.  Clearcut cases should be clearly addressed, absolutely.  There are also less clearcut cases, and in such cases I would recommend giving some latitude to the authors (especially if the &quot;crime&quot; is reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of their paper: a helpful referee might point that out, but ultimately that's the authors' own feet to shoot if they choose).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did mention citations in a recent referee report.  I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Self effacing remark along the lines of &quot;I could be wrong, but...&quot;], Result X of the paper doesn't look so similar to Result Y of a paper they cite [and which was only cited by way of comparison and not used in any way].  I don't find this citation irrelevant &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but it makes me wonder why they didn't cite Z1,Z2,Z3 which seem MORE relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors specifically responded to this point in their revision.  They said, essentially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The citation to Y was not in our first draft.  We added it based on feedback.  We agree that Z1,Z2,Z3 are also relevant, and we added them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was quite satisfied with that.  Final citation density of the paper after adding the citations I suggested: about .5 distinct citations per page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find this comment of ff524 interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider yourself lucky that you rarely have to review papers that indiscriminately cite all the authors' previous work, an assortment of unrelated papers from the journal it's submitted to, and the first ten papers that appear in Google scholar for a related keyword. (I exaggerate only slightly) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just rare; I have never refereed or even seen a mathematics paper that has anything like that level of citation.  I have refereed at least 30 papers, so if I'm &quot;lucky&quot;, it may be that I'm lucky to be a mathematician rather than an academic in some other field.  While I certainly do feel lucky to be a mathematician, in this case once I again I suspect that this lack of a problem is a symptom of the opposite, more serious problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this phenomenon really common in other academic disciplines?  I find that surprising: to me it sounds like the sort of &quot;rookie mistake&quot; that some young person might try once and their advisor would correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T08:39:05.977" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T08:39:05.977" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T08:23:25.733" Score="3" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD Student &amp;amp; started my research few months ago. My research involves creating a predictive model for protein-drug interaction using soft computing techniques .The topic was given to me by my supervisor and was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; my choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, I am a computer science student and have no idea about drugs or proteins or their interaction. My knowledge about the topic is completely zero. While I have read literature, I find the concept very difficult to understand. I find it difficult to search for technical papers of my interest. I would also like to mention that I have absolutely NO help from my supervisor, who also has no idea about the topic, despite being the one who told me to work on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need to start with my coursework and it includes topics like drug-protein interaction and soft computing techniques. And, I have seriously no clue to how to go about my coursework. I don't know what topics should be included in the course work. My supervisor has just left me with the names of the coursework that's it. I do not know from where to start, exactly what to start and how to start. The days are just passing by and I have time constraints to present the same at the institute level. I am just going crazy thinking about it day by day and don't know where will I land up at the end. I don't want to leave PhD to whatever happens. My sincere request to you is to suggest something and help me out with it or anybody please suggest to me how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9864" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T22:33:24.667" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T22:33:24.667" Title="How and what do I present at my PhD coursework" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21820" CreationDate="2014-06-02T10:05:31.767" Score="2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, if I have three paragraphs, inspired and even having copied sections from the same source, do I add citation at the end of each paragraph or at the end of the third or where else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15987" LastEditorUserId="15987" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T11:29:14.467" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:12:12.267" Title="Where to add citation when having several paragraphs from the same source(s)?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21813" CreationDate="2014-06-02T10:40:44.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is reasonable that your coursework follows your research. As I see it, the issue is that you are not interested in your present topic, to that I would suggest to talk to your advisor, especially if he seems so uninterested as you claim. In the extreme case you could try and switch advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe that you are &quot;forced&quot; to research a specific topic, i.e. there are very few situations I can think of that possibility (e.g. a industry pays your PhD to research something of their interest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal opinion, and off-topic to this site, I find that protein modeling is a very broad and useful topic in CS with a great future. So, if you could manage to beat the learning curve, I imagine that your career would benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T10:40:44.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21799" CreationDate="2014-06-02T10:47:23.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a journal is willing to publish your submitted manuscript &quot;as is&quot;, can you prevent them? Clearly if they want you to make changes you have the right to say no, but once the manuscript is accepted can you really withdraw it against the publisher's wish? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can withdraw a manuscript at any time unless it is officially published (usually on-line). I cannot see that any journal could stop you from doing so and signing copyright forms should not cause problems since those forms usually concern the work done by the publisher to get the manuscript into publishable form. By this I mean copy-editing and type-setting and not generally the review process. Exactly what is covered by the agreement must be checked in each individual case (journal/publisher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you can withdraw a manuscript does not mean it is necessarily a frictionless process. A case such as this falls outside of legal terms and into the ethical realm where you can do whatever you legally can or want but it may not reflect very positively on yourself. To withdraw a manuscript from a journal that has put in a lot of efforts, including, most likely, non-paid reviewers and scientific editors, with the excuse that you want to go for a higher ranking journal seems at least morally wrong. You should have thought about that much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further, who has the final say on copy edits and type setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal will likely have rules for how things should look and be expressed. You have the opportunity to agree or disagree with any changes the journal makes, through its copy-editing and type-setting. However, when it comes to journal style, it supersedes your own views and an editor also has the right to remove material that can be considered offensive, rude or unethical in some way. The latter is to protect the journal reputation. Hence, you cannot expect your view to be final in such extreme cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite what I have just said, there are of course overzealous editors who do not know where to draw the lines. So because human interaction is involved also in publishing, all may not happen as you expect it but usually such circumstances in the extreme are exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T10:47:23.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21801" CreationDate="2014-06-02T11:06:09.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals ask for information on previous submissions their electronic submission systems along with asking if the manuscript &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; under consideration elsewhere. The fact that some journals have rejection rates way in excess of 50% means that rejections are not necessarily terrible and down-grading your work. Part of rejections are also because the material may not be suitable for the journal in question, which involves no judgement of the quality of your science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your paper has been rejected as not suitable for the intended journal or some other technical reason, I see no reason to mention this at a resubmission. You made a mistake, full stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper has been rejected for some scientific reason, particularly if it has been through review I think mentioning the history is worthwhile. There is of course no law that states you must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The importance of mentioning the history of a paper is not so much to convey its rejection but to provide the editor with information on why it was rejected and what you took away from this to improve your manuscript. I very much doubt editors will contact other editors to check on previous submissions, none of the parties typically have the time to spare. Instead it is your description of why you think the manuscript should be published, the value of your science, and how you have improved it which is of use to an editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found out by accidentally assigning the same reviewers to manuscripts, submitted as new, that they have been considered elsewhere. As an editor, this raises a warning flag for me: &quot;is the manuscript so poor/controversial/other that the author wants to hide its past&quot;? The fact that people prefer to send material to certain journals before others is known to most of us. Editors are usually scientists that make the same choices, except perhaps to send it to their own journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefore think that being open about the problems can help. Of course,if your manuscript is poor, it just is; but if it can and has been improved, rejection by another journal should not stand in your way to get it published elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding reviewers, there are two form of replies I usually get when accidentally assigning the same reviewer as for a previous submission: (1) don't want to touch it again, or (2) want to see how it has been improved. The fact that a manuscript was rejected does not mean reviewers were dead against its content. Or, perhaps, some where but for reasons disguised as scientific. I therefore think it is also useful to know something about the previous process when a paper is resubmitted. the place for this is in the accompanying submission letter. Just make it brief but clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T11:06:09.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21813" CreationDate="2014-06-02T11:07:47.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is completely normal to be floundering early on in your research, and to feel panicked. You wouldn't have chosen this topic, but ask yourself this: If I woke up tomorrow knowing what I needed to know to do this research, would the topic interest me? If not, perhaps you should change topics. For what it's worth, I think it sounds like a very interesting topic. You don't need to become a biochemist; you only need to learn enough to write a simulation of some aspect of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I need to learn the basics of a completely unfamiliar topic, I don't &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; with journal articles. I search the web for educational materials, something targeted toward undergraduates.  At this point I'm trying to learn the basic terminology and concepts. I also look for online discussion forums where I might ask questions. I then read Wikipedia (which will have links to useful journal articles) and Scholarpedia. Once I start to understand some basic concepts, then I try to read journal articles. I'll probably discover more gaps in my knowledge; I go back to the web for basic info in those areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your supervisor isn't helping you. That's something to be concerned about. Could it be that he or she is leaving you alone temporarily to see what you can accomplish on your own, pushing you to become more self-reliant? Or do you think your supervisor tends to ignore her PhD students? Talk to her other students, especially those who are a little further along in their research, to get an idea of her style. If you don't think you are compatible, a change of advisors is probably best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T11:07:47.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21822" CreationDate="2014-06-02T11:58:19.260" Score="15" ViewCount="4736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I study computer science. When I started my master's degree, I had good research ideas and I wanted to publish them immideately (I now realize being in a hurry is the worst thing I did myself in my educational life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thesis advisor is a perfectionist. His philosophy is &lt;em&gt;all or nothing&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, he ignored my immature works and told me to get ready for my thesis only. He said that my thesis topic is one of the hottest topics in area and possible contributions to that topic would be huge improvement in my academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, I was dissatisfied. So, with the ratification of my advisor, I published two conference papers with another professor. One is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iccae.org/&quot;&gt;ICCAE '12&lt;/a&gt; and the other one is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ickd.org/&quot;&gt;ICKD '13&lt;/a&gt;. Those are not so good conferences, but still they are not in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;Beall's List&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, me and my advisor are writing a paper to submit a top conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my question: Those publications are not a bit of scientific publications. They are barely at a level of senior project. When I'm applying to PhD, should I put those two publications in my CV or not? The acceptance notification of the conference is due to July. Until then, is it better to have no publications or two bad publications in my CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:46:44.310" Title="Is hiding publications in CV a good idea?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21814" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:12:12.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have such a substantial chunk of information attributable to one source it can be useful to start the text by simply declaring the source. This can be done in the following way (exact formulation can of course be changed; I chose Harvard style referencing as an example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following [x] paragraphs follow Name (yyyy) unless stated otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formulation can be changed to better blend in with the text by adding details about what the information is about  or why this source is good or should be repeated, or both. The &quot;unless stated otherwise&quot; can be omitted if you have no need to add other references in these paragraphs; I added it for completeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:12:12.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21786" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:24:33.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;He signed up for the course didn't he?  I'd give him the same exams but different assignments. Sounds like you are teaching at a Tech School. Give him a University course. You have a Masters. Make him learn something. Let him work on something more scientific such as how to take the Opera source and replace the crippled WebView of Android with an Opera browser as well as make a one-size-fits-all by letting Opera be embedded in place of the UIWebView in iOS. I know, that's a bit extreme; but, you get the idea. Give him a challenge. I'm sure there is something in the Web Dev space which takes scientific level of understanding. At least he can catalog the various and nefarious async and two-way-data-binding frameworks and compare and contrast. Open the &quot;Challenge&quot; assignment to all of the class. You might have a few sleepers in there. make it worth an &quot;A&quot;; so, then legitimately everyone has the same opportunity. Just some ideas. (Teaching professional courses is even more extreme: almost always there's one person in the class who knows everything and several who know nothing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:24:33.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21819" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:27:36.997" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most fields, expectations of publications are very small when applying for a PhD position. What the committee will be looking at is your writing. In most cases, they will have only the thesis to study but in your case, you will also have a few publications, including the one for the &quot;good&quot; conference. The benefit of all of these is that they show you have been active and pursued publishing your results. That the first publications may not be strong will not surprise most, after all one of the main goals of a PhD is to provide the background to be an independent researcher and &lt;em&gt;publish&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be in a dilemma if your papers are of disputable quality since avoiding to list them may, if found out, look like you are trying to hide them; regardless of your original intent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take this a step further: I think that adding comments on papers you think can reflect negatively on yourself can turn a negative to a positive. The reason is that you can show that you have progressed in your thinking to a point where you can be self-critical. This means that the comments you make have to be insightful and not just a list of excuses, in fact avoid excuses at all costs and provide good arguments showing your new insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, think about how you can use your experiences (good or bad) in a positive way to show your capacity as a budding scientist. We all make mistakes, but not all learn from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:27:36.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21797" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:28:08.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this should be followed by all reviewers. There are certain facts to be remembered. Apart from scenarios where the author of the manuscript citing his own publications, I would like to add few other too. First, an author from a lab citing  publications of his own laboratory. Second, an author from an institution citing articles that were from his own institution. Third, an author submitting an article to a journal with more citations that are publications of the journal to which he is submitting. All this scenarios exists and mostly these all were done intentionally. In addition, most of the times the author was instructed to do so, either by his guide or by the journal itself. Hence, I think there should be specific regulations to be followed by journals and reviewers in order to reduce such unnecessary irrelevant citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15993" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:28:08.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21819" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:28:52.620" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unheard of for undergraduate and MSc students to publish in &quot;predatory&quot; journals and conferences. I have a related question from the other side of the table: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7908/value-of-light-to-none-peer-reviewed-pay-to-publish-articles&quot;&gt;Value of light-to-none peer reviewed pay-to-publish articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that is asking about how to evaluate students with these types of publications. I think the answers are pretty clear that there really isn't a problem with students who have previously published in low quality places or low quality work. It is possible that multiple low quality publications might cause a potential adviser to have concerns about future goals and your understanding of the system, but these can likely be easily addressed in your cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of whether undergrads should publish weak research has also been addressed: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9181/for-undergraduates-is-publishing-weak-research-better-than-not-publishing?lq=1&quot;&gt;For undergraduates, is publishing &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; research better than not publishing?&lt;/a&gt; and the general consensus seems to be that between having no publications or a low quality publication, having a low quality publication is generally no worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To then get to the heart of your question given someone has some low quality publications should he attempt to deceive a potential supervisor by &quot;hiding&quot; the publications, the answer seems to be pretty clear: NO. There is little downside and potential upside of including the low quality publications on your CV. A potential supervisor thinking that an applicant is attempting to deceive the supervisor has a clear and huge downside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T12:46:44.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21828" CreationDate="2014-06-02T13:01:41.433" Score="22" ViewCount="2401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student enrolled in an university in Italy. I'm currently taking a course on probability theory, but the way is it taught is, whilst very good, not very thorough; I mean that in class some of the most difficult part are skipped. As such, I'm studying those part on the book by myself. Since this is a completely new topic for me, I often wonder if I'm understanding the proofs correctly, and if I'm able to correctly apply the theorems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason I sent an email to my professor, kindly asking to review a short proof (that I've written in latex, so it was pretty and all) specifying that I wasn't sure if all the operations and the theorems employed were indeed well used. The professor did not answer my mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, was I wrong with sending the email in the first place? Is it bad etiquette to do so? I especially don't want to appear like some sort of &quot;smart aleck&quot; or anything, I am honestly trying to understand the topic. Of course I don't mind that the professor didn't reply, I know he must be pretty busy. On the other hand, I also have the feeling that if I can't get any feedback I may as well study the books by myself. What is even the point of being enrolled in the university then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope someone with experience (maybe a professor!) can share their thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15995" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T16:12:29.327" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T10:14:12.797" Title="Requesting review of short proof by professor" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21813" CreationDate="2014-06-02T13:01:47.923" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be a bit more harsh than the current answers, and ask whether you knew what you were getting yourself into when you signed up for a multidisciplinary graduate program. What you describe is very common in such programs; you enter with significant knowledge in one field (e.g., comp sci), almost no knowledge in another (e.g., biology), and your task is to familiarize yourself with both to the extent that you can perform academic-level research that straddles both fields. Anecdotally, I went through a biomedical engineering PhD program, and &lt;em&gt;every single student&lt;/em&gt; who went through the program experienced some degree of what you are describing. Without knowing specifics, your advisor is likely not responding because they take it for granted that you will learn to cope the same way that all his other students do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is simply to start at the beginning and take it from there. Clearly, you won't find help from your advisor, but there are many other resources. Find other students in a similar situation and create a study group. Talk to the TA. Use online materials and forums. If the course is simply too advanced, drop it for now and take (audit?) a lower-level (undergraduate?) course first. I know many students who did this. They ended up fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely encounter a similar situation many times, where you need to familiarize yourself with a brand-new field, and this is a fine time to figure out how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T13:01:47.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21825" CreationDate="2014-06-02T13:32:54.860" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a mathematician in the U.S., from my perspective it is entirely reasonable to send (nicely typeset) questions to one's professor. I always respond to my students' email questions. In fact, I respond to polite emails from people I've not met, if the email seems to be addressed to me specifically (as opposed to a mass emailing) and not machine-generated (spam...) and concerning mathematics that I'd be assumed to have an expert opinion about. After all, wouldn't this be a natural way for the scholarly community to operate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, yes, it is true that if one is trying to absolutely optimize &lt;em&gt;status&lt;/em&gt;, engaging in any not-status-enhancing activity would be pointless at best. It's not surprising when people thinking that way ignore anyone who can't add to their status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, email questions as you describe are entirely reasonable, and not at all impolite. At the same time, depending on the recipient, it is also entirely unsurprising that they'd ignore you, unfortunately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T13:32:54.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21825" CreationDate="2014-06-02T13:57:15.273" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @paulgarrett has said, there's nothing wrong with sending this sort of email, and (one hopes) many professors will be pleased that a student is showing more initiative than the average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from the professor's perspective: unless the answer is &quot;Yes, that's exactly correct&quot;, or &quot;No, you clearly haven't understood the first thing about this course&quot;, providing a helpful answer can be quite time-consuming. Explaining why your proof is not &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; right may require material that's outside the scope of your current course; it may also require the professor to sit down and produce a lengthy response. Sometimes, there are also nuances of &quot;it's not exactly &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;, but it's not entirely &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; either&quot; that are difficult to translate into written form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it's all too easy to put this sort of question to one side, with good intentions of replying later that never quite come to fruition. I suggest the best strategy, assuming you've given the professor a reasonable amount of time to respond, is to go see the professor in person (perhaps during his office hours, or after a lecture), and (politely) ask if he's had a chance to look at the proof you sent. Take a print-out with you. You will at least get a better sense of whether &lt;b&gt;this&lt;/b&gt; professor welcomes your questions or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T20:56:47.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T20:56:47.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21833" CreationDate="2014-06-02T16:56:36.370" Score="5" ViewCount="1614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be receiving my Masters Degree in MIS this summer. I have a bachelors in Computer Science.  I also have 3 years professional working experience. I am interested in teaching as an adjunct at community colleges. I have no training in teaching. I had an interview recently. One of the questions that came up was what is my teaching philosophy. I had no answer being that it was the first time had heard of the topic. My question is what can I do to prepare myself to be a better candidate for these positions. Do I need to take teaching courses or is there some reading that I can do to prepare myself. Are there any certifications for teaching at this level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastEditorUserId="15999" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T17:52:08.093" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:03:11.223" Title="Advice: How to prepare myself for Adjunct Teaching" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;&lt;adjunct-faculty&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21832" CreationDate="2014-06-02T19:03:11.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a biology education researcher at a large public university, which means I spend a lot of time reading about teaching techniques and analyzing student outcomes. I teach college biology courses regularly. I say all this to emphasize that teaching well is a difficult skill set in itself. Being an expert in a &lt;strong&gt;field&lt;/strong&gt; is only tangentially related to being an expert &lt;strong&gt;teacher&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am assuming that you not only want to get hired, but want to become a good teacher. I'll suggest three ways to become an effective (and hireable) adjunct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a book on university teaching. Most are geared toward new faculty. Some examples are: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/0470401044&quot;&gt;Teaching at Its Best&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/0470484101&quot;&gt;How Learning Works&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google for the journal on education research in your specialty. For computer science, it looks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jocse.org/currentIssue/&quot;&gt;Journal of Computational Science Education&lt;/a&gt;. Read through several articles to get an idea of what the current issues in teaching in your field are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get &lt;strong&gt;practice&lt;/strong&gt; teaching. If there is a community college, liberal arts college, or university near you, email some of the faculty and ask if you can assist for free during recitations/labs and help grade exams. Effective teaching requires understanding how confused students think and lots of practice helping guide them over hurdles. There may be legal issues to overcome here, but hopefully someone will appreciate free support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to Google &quot;how to write a teaching philosophy statement,&quot; but a good statement requires you to have some teaching experience to use as examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize -- read up, get practice, appreciate that this is a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:03:11.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21786" CreationDate="2014-06-02T19:07:37.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university we have a system set up so a student can challenge a class and if they can pass the final exam then they get the credit for the class on a pass/fail system. The other choice in most colleges is having the student adviser for the program waive the class. I am a Computer Science Major and I have had entry level computer courses waived by my adviser because I knew the material well enough to advance to higher courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16002" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T19:07:37.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2014-06-02T20:52:39.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing no one has said: Being good at your job does not necessarily make you a good teacher.  I have been the lead tech faculty for two good sized schools and have watched a lot of top-notch professionals flame out very quickly (almost including me!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you look into the practice of teaching and have a plan so that when you go in for an interview you've got something to say about how you plan to approach your courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for actually finding a job, universities ALWAYS need technical teachers.  Don't listen to the pooh=poohers who say you can't do it without a Ph. D.  In a lot of ways not having one but having boatloads of industry can work in your favor.  You also seem to be thinking &quot;IT,&quot; but lots of schools have programs in subjects like web design and they're hard pressed to find teachers!  Take a good look at all of the curriculum offered and see where else you might be a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T20:52:39.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T20:54:55.293" Score="8" ViewCount="6843" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never given any sort of presentation at a conference before, but I was under the impression that poster presentations are less prestigious and also much easier to get accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted a late abstract in the second round call for &quot;late breaking&quot; posters. I will hear back supposedly by the end of the week whether the abstract has been accepted or rejected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract is definitely on-topic for the conference (it's a very large, general applied math conference with multiple sessions in various subfields, but the poster session is for all applied math fields). My PI/advisor is very well-known within my field. We worked on the project together, although I would be the one presenting the poster if it gets accepted. She read over the abstract and helped make corrections/suggestions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just wondering generally how often a poster presentation would be rejected in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T05:54:09.783" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T04:08:42.517" Title="How often are poster presentations rejected from conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21735" CreationDate="2014-06-02T21:44:31.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know people who restate whole &lt;em&gt;proofs&lt;/em&gt; of mathematical theorems, either because the proof itself is interesting, or simply because the original presentation of the proof is poor in their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is completely fine to summarize works of other people in your work, you just have to make it completely clear that it is not your work. But you can quote even whole paragraphs IMHO, without much problem (surely in math/natural science, I'm not sure how's it in philosophy and such).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T21:44:31.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21766" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:01:04.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;BibTeX knows how to deal with this, using the entry type &lt;code&gt;@manual&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@manual{abc,&#xA;    organization = {University of Neverland},&#xA;    author = {John Doe},&#xA;    title = {Manual for ABC123},&#xA;    year = {2012},&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know the author because it is not listed in the document, you can omit the field. The name of the university will be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:01:04.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:15:08.813" Score="6" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just thinking, universities (as a public institution) are one of the most long-lived institutions in a human society. The may survive changes of government&#xA;and they evolutionate with the community they belong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any serious study that somehow correlates the duration of a university and a style of education with the society it belongs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most ancient universities that are still active?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15061" LastEditorUserId="17514" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T21:32:05.690" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T02:54:57.330" Title="Mean life of Universities" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21792" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:23:45.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As promised, I'll attempt to answer my own question. I'm pleasantly surprised that to date, comments and answers amount to &quot;why would you move (unless you want to)?&quot;. This is clearly a &lt;b&gt;very&lt;/b&gt; sensible answer, yet it doesn't accord with my own experience of academic career advice (hence the original question). It would be interesting to know whether other people have also gained the impression that &quot;it's important to move around as a postdoc&quot; - perhaps this is field- or region-dependent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems (@PeteL.Clark) that the implied meaning of &quot;postdoc&quot; is also not necessarily uniform across all fields. I'm focussing here on postdocs who are supported by funds secured by their PI, and who are therefore expected to work (predominantly) on a given research project. To my knowledge, this is the most common form of &quot;postdoc&quot; in (at least) the sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @suresh observed, &quot;the whole point of a postdoc is to transition into some kind of permanent job&quot;. So, why would you quit one postdoc for another? For completeness, let's start with the most obvious reasons, which I deliberately tried to exclude when constructing this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The funding for your current position has been exhausted;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are offered a position that is clearly a 'step up', academically, from your current position;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are offered a position that offers something that is sufficiently attractive to you personally to justify the move (e.g. closer to family, nicer living environment, better pay, etc etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the other potential benefits associated with moving? Possibilities include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposure to new people, new ideas, new ways of doing things - not everyone approaches research in the same way, and not every department is organised along the same lines: it's good to see some different perspectives;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience of different research questions - the research focus of the new postdoc is unlikely to be identical to that of your current position;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A change is as good as a rest&quot; - a move can provide practical and intellectual stimulation, and may lead to a boost in productivity (particularly if it allows you to shake off additional responsibilities for a time);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It raises your profile in the wider academic community - humans are conditioned to pay more attention to changes than to continuity;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get to remind a range of influential people (your referees; research groups that you apply to) that you exist, have attractive qualities, and are in the job market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential downsides might include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lost time - the process of winding down your research in one place, transporting your entire life to a different city/country, and getting set up for research in the new place will probably severely reduce your output over several months;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dealing with all the hassles (and, potentially, the expense) of relocation;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You effectively remove yourself from the job market for a time - realistically, you are not going to be able to move again for a while, even if a better position comes along;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Signalling of limited ambition - people may question why you are taking another postdoc and not concentrating on obtaining a personal research grant/a faculty position;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced opportunity to benefit from the work you've already done - if, say, your research group has spent the last decade getting to the point of sending a rover to Mars, it is probably not a sensible career move to leave a month before it lands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also various factors which may be either positive or negative, depending upon the precise circumstances in which you find yourself: the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two research groups in question; the personalities involved; and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the single biggest factor &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; moving is the time cost, it seems plausible to argue that there is a &quot;minimum length&quot; for a postdoc to be truly profitable. I suggest this is of the order of 2-3 years. Thus, all else being equal, there is limited benefit to moving until you've spent at least 3 years in your present position. There is also little benefit to moving if you can reasonably expect to secure a clear &quot;promotion&quot; (e.g. a personal research grant or faculty position) within the next 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this analysis, there is perhaps a short window in the middle of one's &quot;postdoc years&quot; where a sideways move can make sense. This is where the different classes of institution come into play. If, during this window, you can move to an entirely new first-class institution, then you should do so: the benefits are likely to outweigh the losses. However, moving to an institution you have already had an association with is less valuable, as you have already gained most of the &quot;new experiences&quot; that such a move might otherwise provide. A move from a first-tier to a second-tier institution is unlikely to be sensible, unless you can identify specific exceptional circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:23:45.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:35:05.407" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canadian universities have &lt;code&gt;Faculty of Graduate Studies&lt;/code&gt; for supporting graduate programs and students. However, I do not under stand how it can operates without conflicting overlap with the technical departments/faculties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, someone is a student in Department of X, Faculty of Y. His academic and official matters are normally within the Department/Faculty. Now with the presence of Faculty of Graduate Studies, how is dealing with other different academic units?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How is the role of Faculty of Graduate Studies in parallel with the technical Department/Faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there an equivalent system in the US or UK (an other European) universities too?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:44:47.440" Title="How does Faculty of Graduate Studies work?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-03T04:44:18.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21842" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:44:47.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment on the specifics of the Canadian system, but in general the university wishes to ensure that standards and requirements for (say) a PhD in theoretical physics are equivalent to those for a PhD in German Literature. Thus, the faculty of graduate studies will be responsible for establishing the basic structure and standards to which the various graduate programs must conform. They then delegate the detailed implementation of any given program to the department concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, this may indeed generate all sorts of &quot;interesting&quot; internal politics, as the faculty of graduate studies attempts to justify its existence, and the departments try to assert their independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T22:44:47.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:09:10.227" Score="4" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;In countries with central governmental control over higher educations, universities normally should be accredited by a governmental body to establish a university and enroll students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the United States (name if other countries have similar system), establishment of a university is different from accreditation. Therefore, a university officially starts to enroll students (correct me if I am wrong), then apply for accreditation by local accrediting agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this period (establishment and accreditation), will students enroll in a university which has not been accredited yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T19:09:48.483" Title="Do American students enroll in unaccredited universities?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:19:16.850" Score="6" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what it really matters for a university to climb in the university rankings, for example in Science fields such as Mathematics, Physics or Computer Science?&#xA;I found that there are the following different services to let people know about lecturer's research in a Faculty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Scholar, I believe that one can put here even articles not peer-reviewed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scopus, the service indexed by Elsevier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WebofScience, I have not used directly, but I believe is somewhat like Scopus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I believe that services like Google Scholar are like arXiv, in the way that one can put a link to any research paper that one has made irrelevant if it was a good conference or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not better to aim to conferences that would be indexed in Scopus, DBLP, or that will use Scimago to raise the score of an institucion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the recommendation in these cases, to try that the papers are indexed in well known sites or a new faculty should only aim to have web presence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T05:01:50.123" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T14:08:38.093" Title="recommendations for increasing the visibility and ranking of a faculty?" Tags="&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21364" CreationDate="2014-06-03T01:20:16.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's my experience that software companies attempt to secure intellectual property rights for their codes in the form of patents. This is especially true in the United States. You could attempt to find information about the subject matter that you are interested in using the publicly available US Patent and Trademark Office portal, PAIR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search on a company name - as applicant, or keywords in the title or abstract might get you somewhere. If you are successful, you will not - necessarily - find code. What you might get is an outline of how the patent's subject matter fits into the existing state-of-the-art. In this way, you can map out what these commercial vendors' software does and if your work will extend the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T01:20:16.040" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20165" CreationDate="2014-06-03T02:14:23.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emphatically, I don't see how this could happen in any subject in the U.S., nor, to my knowledge, in Europe, though I understand that there, in some cases, the actual work can be viewed as somewhat disconnected from a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point is that, in most subjects in the U.S., for example, one is not required to &quot;publish&quot; one's thesis in any fashion that would incur great expense. A handful of required copies, often printed nearly-for-free, and everything else is optional. &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;page costs&quot; to journals, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, in the U.S., it would be essentially impossible to &quot;change universities&quot; for any reason whatsoever, without re-doing many required activities, time-in-residency, and such. So whatever other advantages, there'd be something like a two-year delay, tuition, other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really think that the question's hypotheses are iffy, possibly due to a misunderstanding of how things work. Certainly in the U.S., most likely in Europe, and I'd be surprised to hear that the questions implicit assumptions made sense anywhere in the world (though I'd certainly be interested to hear about such a thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T02:14:23.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21845" CreationDate="2014-06-03T03:00:55.917" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two very different cases that should be distinguished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have a brand-new university that is seeking to become accredited, but needs to be operating (with students) for a few years before accreditation is awarded.  An example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olin.edu/about/history/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Olin College&lt;/a&gt; which enrolled its first class in 2002, and received accreditation in 2006-2007.  The first few classes of students do have to consider the risk that the institution might never receive accreditation, or might not establish a good reputation, or might shut down completely before they graduate.  So the school has to do a good job of building a reputation fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prospective employers of the first students could conceivably be bothered by the fact that the institution is not accredited; however, reputation typically counts for much more than accreditation &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.  Also, in the case of Olin, note that accreditation came through just shortly after the first class graduated, and after that, nobody is really going to check whether they got their degree before or after accreditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other case is universities that are not accredited and do not want to be.  There is nothing illegal about this; in the US, accreditation is a purely voluntary procedure.  However, most such institutions have a poor reputation or none at all.  A few have genuine educational programs but prefer to remain independent of the accrediting process for philosophical or religious reasons.  Others are mere &quot;diploma mills&quot; with no real educational product whatsoever.  Students should be very cautious about choosing such non-accredited institutions, but they are free to do so if they want.  Employers are likely to view such degrees with skepticism; however, this would be based more on the institution's lack of reputation than its lack of accreditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T03:35:07.480" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T03:35:07.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T03:50:22.653" Score="1" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied Bioinformatics at the undergraduate level but since I was short of one of the degree requirements and I had already been accepted to a graduate program, my university decided to re-name my degree to General Studies. The transcript obviously shows work done towards a Bioinformatics degree as does my research experience but the degree certificate would say Bachelor of General Studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a graduate school take issue with this even though I have been admitted? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16013" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T13:22:18.150" Title="Degree program changed before attending graduate school" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21846" CreationDate="2014-06-03T07:43:05.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As ff254 correctly mentions, you are asking two different questions. &quot;Climbing the rankings&quot; is sort of a science of its own, and making your research be more visible to the outside is only a very minor part of it. I am not an expert on ranking optimization (I am happy to say that university rankings are not particularly relevant where I work), but if you really want to noticeably improve the ranking of your faculty, serious money and management commitment will be required (and better consulting than is available in an Internet forum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, assuming that you are really more interested in making your faculty internationally more well-known. I sort of disagree with Simmy that ResearchGate is a good vehicle to achieve this goal. At least in my community, ResearchGate is not considered a &quot;serious&quot; source at all. Nobody goes to ResearchGate to discover new researchers (and the technical Q&amp;amp;A forum there is a joke). People go to &lt;em&gt;conferences&lt;/em&gt; to meet up and coming as well as established researchers. That is, if you as a new faculty want to improve your international visibility, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce excellent research. This should be obvious, but having a bunch of mediocre papers listed in Scopus or DBLP will not make you stand out. One top paper will.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to as many reasonable conferences as you can. Skip on the spam ones (no interesting people will be there and publishing there will not help you in any way), but even smaller conferences usually have a lot of interesting professors in attendance. Definitely go to whatever the big conference in your field is, even if you do not have a paper to present.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Socialise. Don't be the person that just works all day in a silent corner of the conference room. Your task at the conference is not to write the next paper, but to get in touch with other researchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a nice-looking web page. Publish all your papers as preprints there. Plus points if you do  nice write-ups of your published or ongoing research in a recurring blog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(In some communities) have a Twitter account, and follow the big wigs and engage in discussions if appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T07:43:05.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21859" CreationDate="2014-06-03T07:47:09.180" Score="0" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my Master thesis, I used this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\begin{itemize}[label=\ding{167}]&#xA;\item Access Windows XM from Ubuntu Server&#xA;\item List the directories contents of Windows XP&#xA;\end{itemize}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The output is:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KFD0q.png&quot; alt=&quot;Sample&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;My question: must I avoid the use of  such beautiful things when writing my thesis or is it a normal thing to do ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16019" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T07:55:13.867" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T10:03:56.000" Title="LaTeX itemize options: are they allowed to use in a master thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-06-03T17:21:59.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21825" CreationDate="2014-06-03T07:55:49.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the answers posted so far, but yet wanted to add another view of sight. It is neither bad etiquette nor wrong to ask these questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience while being a student and later working on a PhD I can tell, that professors tend to be very busy throughout the whole year. E-Mails sometimes remain unread for quite some time. The best way to approach your teacher is probably after class, so he can put a face to the name. He might then tell you, that it is inconvenient at the moment, refer to a tutor or teaching assistant or maybe schedule a separate meeting. Some of my teachers also took this kind of response as a means to discuss it later in class, if there is enough time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a PhD student my supervisor referred some students to me in order to help them unpuzzle their questions, since he has had no time to efficiently take care about them. I do also consider this a nice practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have met quite a number of lecturers and almost all of them were very happy if they receive any kind of feedback. Most of them came also to the conclusion, that a personal talk is more fruitful, since this would answer some of their questions, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, your teacher might not have read your e-mail and I think it is appropriate if you try to meet him after class and ask him about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13372" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T07:55:49.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21857" CreationDate="2014-06-03T09:45:14.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are they allowed to use in a master thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think it improbable that such things are specifically &lt;em&gt;disallowed&lt;/em&gt;, because it's just not something that people typically try to do. Overall, the effect is unattractive and does not follow good typographical practice. If your university policy does not object, your supervisor probably would (and should).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One or two unobtrusive ornamental flourishes &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be appropriate on the title page, but certainly not in the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are struggling for ideas on the typographical style of your thesis, I would highly recommend looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miede.de/index.php?page=classicthesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;classicthesis&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/memoir&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;memoir&lt;/a&gt; packages. Of course you still must obey any official policy on the formatting, but these styles can at least provide a good start that's a little less sterile looking than vanilla LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T10:03:56.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T10:03:56.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21863" CreationDate="2014-06-03T10:05:27.983" Score="17" ViewCount="2809" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the de facto standard book for typography, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0881791326&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Elements of Typographic Style&lt;/a&gt;, when we write abbreviations with 2 or more letters like SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), small cap should be used and in LaTeX this would be &lt;code&gt;\textsc{sem}&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another case are old style numerals. When we write Arabic numerals in the passage, according to the book, old style numerals should be used and in LaTeX this would be &lt;code&gt;\oldstylenums{1234567890}&lt;/code&gt;. I know mathematical equations or numerals in a table should not use old style numerals as they are considered standalone and do not disturb the flow of passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I have never seen any publications with small cap abbreviations and old style numerals, and this seems to go against the typographic style suggested. The author of &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0881791326&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Elements of Typographic Style&lt;/a&gt; said actually there is no rigid rule for typography when we aware we are breaking it. &lt;strong&gt;So my question is why are small cap abbreviations and old style numerals not used in technical writing when they appear on the passage? Why are these rules are broken in technical writing?&lt;/strong&gt;     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The papers I usually read are from natural science like physics, chemistry and biology without computational nature. It seems to me the use of small cap and old style numerals is very rare in these fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="42498" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T07:41:17.647" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T07:41:17.647" Title="Why are small cap and old style numerals not used in technical writing?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T10:32:14.770" Score="1" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I asked a question on stack exchange, to check if something I am working on was already done. I myself could not find this specific thing, so I asked the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, a discussion about my problem followed, and some people provided (possibly inaccurate) proofs. Independently, I figured out a proof by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to publish the proof of my result. Is this ok? Can I post this on Stack Exchange and then still publish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="865" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T10:32:14.770" Title="Publishing results posted Stack Exchange" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-03T10:44:40.090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21860" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:18:18.297" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer lies in a combination of technology and efficiency. In the old days when all was typeset &quot;by hand&quot; and not electronically, switching between Roman numerals and old style ones was not difficult. When electronic publishing became available, typography as a whole was ruined because everyone thought they now could make professional looking typography on their own personal computer and laserwriter. For a long time the digital typefaces did not include old style numbers because the character sets were too small to include those (E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts&quot;&gt;PostScript Type 1&lt;/a&gt;) but now with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode&quot;&gt;unicode&lt;/a&gt; standard, much more is included in a single type face. Thus, for a long time one had to switch from one type face to another to include these effects. In LaTeX, this was a little easier as you point out than in, say, Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of old style numerals was thus partly lost through the &quot;digital revolution&quot; but I also think it was lost because they simply went out of fashion. As with everything else typography and ideas within typography changes over time. I am not sure that the loss is entirely due to the introduction of digital tools but this introduction was a sort of final &quot;stab in the back&quot; from which it is hard to recover. In fact we are still seeing the effects of the PC in many publications since everyone is now the typographer without knowing much about the trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to cap off, in the scientific publishing world, where speed is a key ingredient, attention to these details have simply not been considered as worth the time. One therefore must look at publications with more aesthetic goals to find fine typography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:18:18.297" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21860" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:19:28.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without any evidence to back it up, my guess is that people don't know it, so they don't use it. As a consequence, it becomes a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; standard of the field not to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One would expect editors to at least be aware of this rules, but if they are not experts in typesetting, or don't personally like some of the rules, they may not be interested in enforcing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:19:28.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21364" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:48:13.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to shoot high, read their advertisement. If they want people to buy their stuff, they probably say something like &lt;code&gt;Recovered 78% of the data after feeding the hard drive to a white shark&lt;/code&gt;. Note that this benchmark will be done in the best possible conditions for their specific algorithms, but will give you a nice high target. If you get anywhere close, awesome! If you beat them, tell them to hire you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not available, you may email the company and ask them for a benchmark or some sort of quality assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, to state the obvious: have you tried to search for &quot;[name of the program] benchmark&quot;? Maybe someone with a licence has done it and posted it online or on a research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:48:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21860" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:57:21.927" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are actually good reasons to break the general typographical rules and use uppercase numerals in technical writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In usual texts, uppercase numerals are considered ugly or negatively affecting the readability as they form one block without ascenders or decenders and as they stand out from the text and are more difficult to read (for the same reasons that all-caps are more difficult to read). However, the properties of uppercase numbers are often desirable in technical writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may actually want numbers to stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a formula, you usually want a number consisting of more than one numeral to be perceived as one element at first. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; = 1234 + 5678&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the first thing you want the reader to see is that &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; is the sum of two numbers and not the exact values of these numbers (which would be more emphasised with lowercase numerals). Also, from a readability’s point of view, most formulas are a chaotic mess – using lowercase numerals would only add to this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are several mathematical notations that do not mix well with lowercase numerals, such as indicating repeating digits in a decimal fraction with a bar above the number.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You usually would not want to use lowercase numerals for super- and subscripts, as it makes it more difficult to recognise whether something is a super- or supscript or not. (Note that this is not the same as for lowercase letters, as they are easier to distinguish from their uppercase counterparts and exceptions, such as the letter &lt;em&gt;o,&lt;/em&gt; are usually not used as variables for that very reason.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using lowercase numerals for axis tics would make them optically less regular and thus be more emphasised, which is usually not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In tables, uppercase numerals help outlining the rows, while lowercase numerals obfuscate the structure. (On the other hand, lowercase numerals may make some aspects of the data easier to recognise.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you could use uppercase numerals for tables and figure legends specifically, there is a gray zone between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formulas in which lowercase numerals do not work well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formulas in which lowercase numerals are no problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;just numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore using lowercase numbers not at all or only in a few special cases like page numbers or affiliations is arguably the only way to achieve consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar thing applies to super- and subscripts: While in normal writing no consistency issues arise, as a super- and subscripted numbers is always super- or subscripted, the semantically same number often appears in normal size as well as super- or subcripted in technical writing. Therefore using uppercase numerals only has a larger impact on consistency than in normal writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T23:09:17.697" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T23:09:17.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21870" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:04:18.987" Score="25" ViewCount="2254" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing the literature review for my paper, I found another paper which is closely related to my research. Unfortunately, the paper’s publisher is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;Beall’s List&lt;/a&gt;. Hence, I wonder if citing the paper will have any negative impact on my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6064" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T11:46:46.073" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T11:46:46.073" Title="Is it a good idea to cite paper from publisher listed in Beall’s list" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21868" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:20:20.417" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said in the comments: Read the paper and decide on the ground of the content of the paper and not by the reputation of the journal. Don't get me wrong - I do not support predatory or fake journals in any way. But it happens frequently that &quot;quality of the paper&quot; and &quot;quality of the journal&quot; (both understood in a vague sense) do not match. Good journals sometimes publish not-so-good papers and also it may be that the authors of the journal you mention simply were not aware of the listing in Beall's list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T12:20:20.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21868" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:21:57.087" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not think about the journal where the paper comes from. Just forget about it for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, read the paper. Even better, be a reviewer for that paper. Evaluate it. Is it a good related work for you? Is it a not-so-good related work, so that you can criticize it? Does it help you to build some hypotheses, etc.? Then, just cite it. Otherwise, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what you are supposed to do as a researcher. Build on top of other's work.&#xA;Bad papers are in every kind of journal. Good papers are, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beall's list is useful up to a certain point but it has got limitations. One of which, it is a one-man's work. I do not want to criticize the list here because it does not even matter how good that list is. Be your own judge for the work you cite. Where the paper comes from is, in my opinion, the least of the issues you could ever encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T12:21:57.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21868" CreationDate="2014-06-03T13:00:18.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals get listed there for various reasons, and there is off course a subjectivity factor. One of Beall's pet peeve is aggressive marketing strategy, which is indeed annoying and suspicious, but has also been frequently used by established publishing groups. Check whether there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/02/24/world-science-publisher-a-serials-crisis/&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; that describes &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this particular journal/publisher is on his list (in this case the post is outdated and does not point out major misconduct). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the presence of a journal on Beall's list does not in itself mean that the work you read is of bad quality, a lot of the 'journals' listed there have &lt;strong&gt;no peer review&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;no editorial process whatsoever&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of these 'journals' will publish &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that the burden of judging quality is on the reader only, as the other answers pointed out, but also that there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/category/plagiarism-2/&quot;&gt;frequent cases of plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;. Chance are that the original content has been published somewhere else before, on a preprint server, or a university website as part of a dissertation, or even in a legitimate academic journal. Therefore, if I where you, I would google chunks of the text and make sure that you cite the original version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, from an ethical point of view, a majority of the journals listed by Beall have as business model to pray on the necessity for researchers to have long lists of publications to raise their chances of getting funded or awarded tenure. Citing these, in a way, encourages that sort of behavior, which I personally find harmful to science, dishonest towards funding agencies and taxpayers, and unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T16:41:09.230" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T16:41:09.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T13:06:23.013" Score="17" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/21868/73&quot;&gt;This question on citing from publications on Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; got me thinking...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list itself details predatory &lt;em&gt;publishers&lt;/em&gt;, who follow bad practices or bad business models. However, is there any evidence that the papers themselves that are contained within those journals are any &quot;worse&quot; than articles in non-predatory, low impact factor journals? I'm not comparing to Science or Nature here, just any other run-of-the-mill journal. By worse, I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor research practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of citation of previous relevant research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Higher incidence of fraud&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-academic writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a study that looked at this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:38:30.337" Title="Comparative quality of articles in questionable journals" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21853" CreationDate="2014-06-03T13:22:18.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible that a grad school would have an issue with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, admission to a graduate program is always contingent on successful completion of the undergraduate degree.  The grad program will require a final undergraduate transcript and reserves the right to rescind admission if they're not satisfied with it.  Presumably your application stated that you were working on a bioinformatics degree, and your admission was based on the assumption that you would complete it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would be a good idea to contact the grad program and explain the situation.  You probably don't want them to first learn about it when they get your transcript, and have them trying to guess what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What was the requirement in question?  Is it some critical course that they might reasonably have expected every bioinformatics student to have?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why didn't you complete it?  Was a course not offered at a time when you could take it?  Or did you fail a required course?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If (as your question seems to say) this was a new requirement, imposed after you started your degree, how recently was it imposed?  Could you reasonably have fulfilled it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does your undergraduate advisor say about all this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T13:22:18.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21846" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:08:38.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of trying to increase ranking, there are ways to do it, but they're somewhat tangental to research visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, from talking to the people who worry about things like that, the easiest way to increase your ranking, like the easiest way to increase your journal's impact factor, is to realize that all rankings are algorithms that can be gamed. Pick &lt;em&gt;an aspect&lt;/em&gt; of the ranking and maximize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For rankings based on peer surveys, this is somewhat more difficult, and is going to be a rather long slog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T14:08:38.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:35:34.897" Score="25" ViewCount="2831" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach all of the writing courses for one of my college's STEM department. Occasionally, students bring me questions related to their field, e.g. they are doing some project for another course and they want to know what tools I used for a similar real-world project I did before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I help the students (which would amount to suggesting some books, tools, Web sites), perhaps the department will feel I am interfering in matters where I should not, as this is not my teaching area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I turn away the students, perhaps the department or (students themselves) will feel I am not committed to serving the students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the accepted procedure for such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T01:32:16.520" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T01:32:16.520" Title="What to do when students bring me questions related to other courses and subjects?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:41:07.093" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no shame in saying you're not an expert in their domain specific knowledge.  It's more important to know your limitations than to give advice you're not directly qualified to give.  Direct them to a professor in that specific field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel you have sufficient experience to give (at least) a starting point, by all means share it with them.  Just always make sure that you are clear about the limitations of your expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="931" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T15:32:02.907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T15:32:02.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:51:16.290" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergrad, in my first year I had a great professor that was very good at explaining almost everything. For many students, he became another resource to solve doubts and get help, specially for those subjects where the lecturer was not so clear. If you asked him politely, he would gladly help if he knew the answer. I will always remember him as one of the best contributors to my education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some of his comments, I imagine he may have had problems with some other member of faculty. So he changed his policy: whenever he explained anything from another subject, he would close the door. Being realistic, anyone complaining because you are sharing knowledge of their domain, will probably have a bad attitude to many things. Whatever you do, something will upset them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only drawback of free help is that takes time from you. If this becomes a problem, you can just ask the students to come at another time because you are busy at the moment. You are doing them a favour, and they will not have any problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T14:51:16.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21879" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:54:12.037" Score="5" ViewCount="2081" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teacher and a teacher manager, I noticed that the students frequently ask teachers for their facebook names or send them friend requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that students having their teachers' personal lifes on the facebook feed leads to situations inside the classroom that compromises the way students see the teacher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I respond to a situation where teachers actually accept the friend requests? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @JoBedard statement about the &quot;age factor&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It depends on the age class of people your teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We considered useful to specify that the students are age 13 to 20 years old. I would like to add that they are 90% women and from the south-american society, which has different behaviors and educational principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15916" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2018-06-29T06:58:11.920" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T06:58:11.920" Title="What is the best way to respond to students adding teachers to facebook?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-03T17:21:39.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21878" CreationDate="2014-06-03T15:06:18.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do as with any other person you don't want to have on Facebook: ignore the request or cast a silent no (pro tip: if you configure Facebook in pirate language, it becomes &lt;em&gt;&quot;begone, ye scurvy dog!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people will get the idea: you don't want them there, and will not think further. If someone insists beyond reason, use Facebook's tools to report harassment (chances are you are not the first nor the last one). For anything in between (a message saying &quot;would you like to be friends with me?&quot;), a polite answer saying you don't feel it is appropriate should work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asked in real life about it you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be direct and say &quot;I prefer not to disclose it&quot; or &quot;that is personal&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want a more diplomatic indirect way, claim you don't use it much and change topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T15:06:18.013" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21891" CreationDate="2014-06-03T16:37:44.833" Score="5" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a master's student in computer science, I would really like to go for a PhD at a good CS department. However until now, I have no publications and really have no idea how to start research. I'm interested in many subjects but I have not yet been able to narrow down the choice to a specific one. For someone like me who just began his or her master's studies and wants to plan for a PhD, what is the real number one priority besides a good GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16034" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T17:23:11.120" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T13:32:02.247" Title="How important is publication for PhD admission?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-03T16:40:28.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there should be &lt;strong&gt;no problem&lt;/strong&gt; as long as the &lt;strong&gt;question can be framed &lt;em&gt;so that it is in the scope of your subject&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (even if the project that &amp;quot;produced&amp;quot; the question is not directly related).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should ideally be done by the student, while asking the question, but if there is an obvious part of the question related to your subject, it would be okay to gently push your answer in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you do a writing class, so for me, these would be good examples of viable questions (independent of the concrete project related to those questions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about writing tools (like LaTeX). If the student wants to know pros and cons of learning a new tool &lt;em&gt;in context&lt;/em&gt; of a specific project, that is a valid question (as long as it was not explicitly covered in class). Even if it was covered during the lessons, a discussion based on a concrete example can be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about best presentation of data: given a great amount of raw data, what would be the best way to present it? (graph, table, raw format, just description) If the student comes with the concrete data, he probably has either some ideas or some doubts about what representation to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tools for analyzing or representing data. Again, no matter where the data came from, if there are some commonly used analysis tools (in the wide area), or representation tools, the question is related to the writing up the idea / project results, more than the project itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about general structure of the piece of writing. Sometimes the content of the work makes the most common practice not applicable, or some other structure simply better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one of my articles has the &lt;em&gt;Related work&lt;/em&gt; as a second-to-last section, because it simply didn't fit in naturally at it's &amp;quot;usual&amp;quot; second paragraph place. The discussion with my supervisors help clarify that and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it was okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, any questions where you are the best suited to answer, independent of where the question comes from, is not misplaced. Those kinds of questions show that the students are applying and synthesizing their knowledge, and &lt;em&gt;looking at it from a different (not-required) perspective&lt;/em&gt;, which is a good thing. (If I ever was in that kind of situation,) those questions would make me proud of my teaching since it meant the students are applying what I taught them &amp;quot;outside the box&amp;quot; I gave them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if it is not that kind of question, there is nothing wrong in turning the student away, perhaps pointing him to the right person to talk to. Simply saying that there are people who are better suited to answer their questions, while making it clear that you would be more than happy to help within your area of expertise, should be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students that you are directly responsible for (i.e. your supervisees) might be a different story, but that might be out of the scope of this question :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T16:40:28.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T17:53:47.203" Score="22" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you were to find what you think are serious flaws in a preprint (arXiv or something similar). What should you do? Now, after the obvious first step of contacting the authors and letting them know, what should you do if you were basically told off (&quot;thanks for your interest&quot; without addressing any of the technical concerns)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were this a regular journal, one might write a letter to the editor, or a comment (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12774/publishing-a-comment-or-contacting-the-authors-privately&quot;&gt;one might go this route even without contacting the authors in the first place&lt;/a&gt;), but how should you deal with preprints, whose contents is in a way still evolving? Would a &quot;comment&quot; paper uploaded to the preprint server not be considered rather aggressive (I don't remember seeing anyone doing this)? &lt;strong&gt;Is there anything one can, or should, do &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the (eventual) publication of the paper in some peer-reviewed venue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stretching this well into the hypothetical, suppose that one did write a &quot;comment&quot; paper and uploaded it onto the preprint server. Would the authors of the original preprint be ethically obliged to cite this and address the concerns raised therein when submitting to peer-reviewed journals (assuming that they were to submit after being let known of the existence of the comment)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T00:31:03.697" Title="How to react to flawed preprints?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21006" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:07:39.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If any conflict between a student and one of the supervisors comes up, married supervisors have a strong incentive to support each other, rather than looking out for the best interests of the students. For example, they may pressure the student to include both supervisors as authors on all publications. It's even tougher for a student to stand up to two people in positions of authority than one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16039" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T18:07:39.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21884" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:12:42.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of papers on arxiv.org titled &quot;Comment on... &quot;&#xA;e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3876&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3876&lt;/a&gt; (and also some titled &quot;Response to ...&quot;) some addressing paper not yet published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the last part of your question:pointing errors in a preprint is not rudeness. Ignoring such concerns is rude. A real life story is that of the flaws in two papers of Daniel Biss found by Nikolay Mnev (it seems that at first his private communications were ignored) and that forced Mnev to put a paper on the arxiv.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastEditorUserId="981" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T19:27:04.377" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T19:27:04.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21872" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:34:20.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe what I'm about to write was obvious to all.  But just in case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, a &quot;predatory journal&quot; is a journal that will accept anything that is submitted to it so as to financially profit from the authors (and the buyers of the journal, perhaps).  Moreover, they are not forthcoming about this practice because that would drastically lower their submissions (not to mention sales!).  I would guess that most predatory journals would not want to accept papers of the sort created by Nate Eldredge's wonderful &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/&quot;&gt;mathgen package&lt;/a&gt;: although &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102&quot;&gt;it did happen at least once&lt;/a&gt;, I'll bet that incident was embarrassing (or rather, recognized as working against the game they are trying to play) for the Advances in Pure Mathematics.  If that journal published a full issue of gibberish papers, then I think it would seriously jeopardize their profit line and possibly cause them to fold (and yes, get replaced by the next journal, but evidently people like Beall are paying attention not just to the journals themselves but the publishing companies behind them and even the people behind the publishing companies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes predatory journals will still publish your paper if you tell them that at the end that you can't or won't pay.  I found this strange at first, but I think I understand it better now: these journals want some papers that are actually for real in order in order to acquire a penumbra of plausible legitimacy for all of their papers.  At the higher end you get journals most of whose papers are written by real researchers who need their work published somewhere and for various reasons they have chosen not to go through the time and effort of a selective journal.  (I don't mean to imply that this practice is not still shady: of course pretending there is contentful, critical peer review when in fact there isn't is highly, highly academically inappropriate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's my point?  I don't think there is going to be any uniform sense in which papers submitted to predatory journals are worse than papers published in &quot;real&quot; journals.  Demonstrably, some of these papers &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; real papers.  However, if you agree that part of the definition of a predatory journal is that they accept virtually 100% of all submitted papers that are not too clearly gibberish (as well as some that are!), then it would be an amazingly strong indictment of the peer review process not to believe that the papers which have gone through a selection process and are among the X% of accepted papers for some number X bounded away from 100 are going to be, &lt;strong&gt;on average&lt;/strong&gt;, better in every way than papers published by predatory journals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of this?  I sure think so.  Any kind of statistical study is either going to concentrate on a very limited range of journals which need not be of direct interest to any given reader or going to take a massive amount of work.  I would rather suggest: select a predatory journal in your field and a legitimate, though run-of-the-mill journal in your field.  Page through, say, the articles published by each one in 2010 (or some reasonable subset thereof).  First evaluate the articles yourself: can you see the difference?  Then look at official reviews of the article (in mathematics there are two internationally recognized services that write reviews of every single math article published -- except that certain journals they drop as not being worth their attention; I believe that similar things exist in many other academic fields).  Then track citation statistics of the articles.  Is there a difference?  Is the difference subtle enough to warrant statistical analysis, or does it just stare you right in the face?  I have done a little bit of this practice myself.  I am getting inspired to try it more systematically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T18:34:20.090" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21925" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:44:10.227" Score="16" ViewCount="3142" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student in the PhD program (I will be graduating in about 2 months), my research has covered a wide range of topics rather than nailing down one specific topic (super-specialized). In fact, my thesis is broad enough that my current working title is something along the lines of &quot;Toward the Application of Electronic Structure Theory to Solve Relevant Chemical Problems.&quot; (Can it get any more general?) There is nothing informative from that title as it completely leaves out details. The problem is, each paper I've published is its own research focus without any connection to the next outside of the fact that computational chemistry was used for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read in other places that a thesis topic is critical because it is the basis on which you launch your career. Is it bad to look like a 'jack-of-all-trades' person? There must be a better way to handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9569" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T12:34:21.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T12:34:21.213" Title="Is it bad for one's future career prospects if the PhD thesis topic is broad?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21890" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:59:10.733" Score="2" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I've been confused ever since I started my undergraduate research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My research related to User Interfaces. Based on some of the previous years undergraduate research or from some research in the same year as me, as far as I see, have these steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suppose we wants to design new interface for a system-X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do the survey about the interface of system-like-X (but not X) to the users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the survey, we get the data: what the users don't like from the present system interface, which part should be improved, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, we propose the new design based on that data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We then, again, test that new design with users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now, my steps, according to my advisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You design the new interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm so confused, because, based on what would I design the interface? What standard or principle I should used? Also, in my case, I have to implement or develop the testing tools myself, which means that I got more work to do compared to my friend's workload. Could that be why step 1-3 skipped? But this is academic, I can't say the reason I choose that design is because &quot;well, because that feels good/looks nice!&quot;. But my advisor never told me by what should I based my design on, she just &quot;Yes, you design it first&quot;. But that's not my question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&#xA;In this case, where if I do not base  my research on data, by what should I based it on? Should I use a principle to back it on or what? Is there a research method like this? What is the name of this research method? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case I ask in wrong place or there's lack of information, please tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15236" LastEditorUserId="15236" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T08:05:43.463" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T08:05:43.463" Title="What Kind of Research Method is this?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2014-06-03T19:20:23.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can base it on the data collected by other people already. There are many facts about user behaviors available in various research papers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/03/14/30-top-ux-conferences-of-2014/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This list&lt;/a&gt; has a seemingly good compilation of conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you base your design on facts and observations and user preferences that someone has published. Then your contribution can be using those principles to create a user interface for a domain, device, or a situation that no one else has explored yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a usability person, but since the question was on research method, I thought I would provide my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6946" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:49:41.370" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:49:41.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21880" CreationDate="2014-06-03T19:26:08.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say publications dont matter to start with a PhD, in general. Having them might help in reducing length of your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good thing to have is liking for one area in CS, and good knowledge in that area atleast. e.g. systems or security or algorithms or formal verification or databases or distributed systems etc. Later when you join for the PhD program, you will do courses and talk with people to get an understanding on what is a good research problem etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6946" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T19:26:08.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-03T19:36:30.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, if you are not time constrained and have the expertise, by all means, help the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a math tutor in a local high school, and often a student will walk in with a science book to ask a question. If it's something I can answer, I'm happy to help. No science teacher would be offended, although they might be surprised as human nature is to pass the buck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it's great that a student looks up to you and values your advice. I'd just accept that and be glad to help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6708" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T19:36:30.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T19:57:57.367" Score="6" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in an accelerated Master's program in Engineering, we are taking a Probability course. At this time the class is review for me (I have a B.S. in Mathematics), we are moving very fast though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the other students asked if I would be willing to tutor them, and offered to pay me for the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main worries are that 1. I will get to a point where I am trying to summarize information I have just learned, 2. That I will have a good mathematical explanation but miss the point in plain English, and 3. that tutoring will cause me to not have enough time to study myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those misgivings in mind, would it be more ethical/reasonable to just give some advice for free or to set up payment plan? I am not just going to say &quot;No, I won't help&quot; but if I was charging I would want to be able to give their money's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastEditorUserId="10637" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T12:39:22.957" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T12:39:22.957" Title="Asked to tutor in a class I am currently taking" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;tutoring&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21884" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:10:44.943" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no need to do anything. By contacting the author, you pointed out what you believe to be a flaw. It could be you are incorrect, it could be that they deal with this in a future version, it could be that they simply don't care. To me, this situation is akin to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/386/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;xkcd comic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TGMck.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People perform research, good and bad, every day. Once it's published you can feel free to write an article refuting their conclusions, but until then it's just informal academic discussion, and there's nothing you can really do about someone else being wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: Some disciplines may treat preprints as actual publications, and if so, the preceding does not apply. I do not know of any fields for which this is the case, but then again, there's a lot of things I do not know.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T21:17:44.303" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T21:17:44.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:13:58.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overly broad topics usually make for unsatisfactory thesis subjects, because it becomes substantially harder to make a significant intellectual contribution in a larger field than in a narrower one. More importantly, it can take much longer to build a &quot;does-it-all&quot; solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that doesn't mean that your research can't &lt;em&gt;evolve&lt;/em&gt; in such a direction—some topics broaden significantly once means of &quot;generalizing&quot; it are discovered and applications to different systems and cases can be developed. But it's not normally a good idea to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; with such a broad topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T20:13:58.960" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21893" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:23:07.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most things in life, being open and honest is a good policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you (presumably) are not close friends with this individual, and he is asking for assistance it is reasonable to request compensation as a tutor.  Every person on this planet has finite time and resources.  Having a near stranger request time should result in some kind of compensation, mutual friendship, or you should decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can tell him that you're happy to catch him up to where you are while tutoring him, but if the topic advances faster than your learning, either work through the problems with him at a reduced rate (or free if you feel like it's equal contribution) or simply suggest finding another tutor at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16042" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T20:23:07.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:29:45.077" Score="6" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This looks like something that might have been asked already, but I have not found a question like this on this site.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently had a paper rejected with resubmission from a top Bayesian Statistics journal. This was not a surprise. My main reason for submitting to the journal was to obtain feedback, which I did obtain. I received two reasonably detailed reviews, one more detailed than the other (the longer a bit over 3 pages), as well as a very short and somewhat cryptic (one short para) comment from the Associate (Area?) Editor. Also, these reviews were delivered very fast, which was good. I submitted the manuscript on 27th of April, and it was rejected on the 3rd of June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general tone of the reviews is captured by the EIC's one line summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your paper has been read by an AE and two referees. They have all found the topic interesting but with several major flaws in the methodology and implementation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some points in these reviews are unclear. Would it be reasonable to write to the editor asking for feedback on those points from the referees? Perhaps something along the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this what you meant? If so, the answer is this. If not, can you clarify, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or maybe just&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't understand what you mean here, can you elaborate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the message is forwarded and the referee replies, I suppose there could conceivably end up being a bit of a back and forth with the reviewers via the editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On previous occasions I have not tried doing this, but I have come to believe there is no sense in being too shy in such matters. If you want information, ask for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wonder if this is considered unorthodox, improper or inappropriate procedure. It is relevant to note that I am not an expert in Bayesian methods. However, the editors and referees apparently thought my paper worth the trouble of reviewing in detail. Regardless, my lack of experience/expertise may hamper me in understanding the finer points of what is expected in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will of course do my due diligence in trying to understand the content/purport of the comments, but I don't see the point of my spending hours trying to guess what is meant when the referees could (hopefully) clarify the point in a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize, the upsides are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I get a response, my eventual fixes will be better and more targeted&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't waste a lot of time trying to guess what someone meant. Maybe it was even based on a miunderstanding&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downsides are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reviewers/editors will not want to be bothered with responding to me. This will be especially true if this is not considered normal procedure&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They might be annoyed by my (possible) cluelessness in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't ask for any clarifications, then I will just end up making my best guess as to what the referee means. I don't think that the results would be as good as if I was to get clarifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T20:44:51.503" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:38:29.240" Title="Obtaining followup clarification/feedback from referees via the editor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21919" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:47:11.253" Score="8" ViewCount="2044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been hired as an assistant professor and will be starting this fall.  As I'm beginning to be included on departmental e-mail and in certain decisions, I'm starting to interact (at least via e-mail) with my colleagues.  How should I address them?  As a graduate student and postdoc, I've always addressed faculty as Prof. X unless I was already very familiar with them or unless they've told me to do otherwise.  Is it strange to continue to do this as a professor?  I don't want to be disrespectful, but at the same time it feels a little stuffy to continually refer to everyone as Prof. X until they suggest I do otherwise.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12886" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T07:24:41.913" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:44:53.613" Title="How should you address academic colleagues in the United States? Is the &quot;Prof&quot; title necessary?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;colleagues&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-06-04T11:05:11.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T21:31:05.413" Score="39" ViewCount="5520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm frequently put in an awkward position by my advisor: he communicates pretty badly (vague, doesn't give enough information, isn't clear with what he wants, references things that could mean many things), and then I have to interpret what he means. If I interpret it incorrectly, I often get chastised because from his point of view, he gave me directions and I didn't follow them correctly. If I ask for clarification, I often get chastised because he sees nothing wrong with the bad directions he gave me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm of course open to the possibility, but I don't think it's just me -- I've been in meetings with him and several other people, showing information that everyone clearly understands but he's very confused. Inversely, I've also seen other people be confused by what he's trying to say. To try and find a positive example, the people who seem to work best with him are people who mostly do their work independently (postdocs, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very frustrating to me because I'm genuinely trying to work hard and please him, and I do think he has good ideas -- he just acts like the things in his head that are clear to him are thus clear to everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know he tries to stress independence as well, which I understand is a valuable trait -- I know too many grad students who are basically passive &quot;gophers&quot; who just go down the list of what their advisor tells them to do and never end up thinking for themselves. And I appreciate that, but it can go just as badly in the opposite direction, when I'm pulling out my hair because I just have so little information about what he wants, but he thinks I have a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I can really do? I'm usually all for it, but I don't think talking to him directly and specifically would really accomplish anything here: he's successful and seemingly pretty set in his ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:55:51.067" Title="How to handle an advisor who communicates badly and puts me in a bad position as a result?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-03T21:41:42.450" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD thesis is all about focus and depth, more than any other degree I know of. It is the antithesis of the jack-of-all-trades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that you are two months from completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you do not have a specific research question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor do you have a very focused thesis, just unrelated papers in the same field: your words were: &lt;em&gt;&quot;each paper I've published is its own research focus without any connection to the next outside of the fact that computational chemistry was used for each&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will depend on the institution, but at the institution I work, you would not be two months from completion. You'd be two years from completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your supervisors are happy with your work as it is, then they've either completely screwed up, or your institution is happy to offer PhDs for theses which do not meet the standard that I and others expect: that they study a very specific question, deeper than anyone else has. I think you need to work out which of those two is the case, before you submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that there's anything wrong with being a jack-of-all-trades. But that really is the polar opposite to a PhD, which should be providing novelty, rigour and depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does look bad for your future career, because it looks like you've spent several years being a jack-of-all-trades across a field, when you should have been very focused on a specific research question: at many institutions, that would mean that you simply would not be getting your doctorate; and having spent the time, and coming away at best with an MPhil, will look like a fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T20:46:55.877" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:46:55.877" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2014-06-03T22:20:55.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now I can't be certain that what I'm about to say applies to your advisor, but it does apply to many interactions. I've learned that with any advisor (given that you have adequately prepared yourself for your meetings) always err or the side of &quot;appearing stupid&quot; to trying to &quot;interpret vague directions&quot;. Science is all about clarifying confusion, and asking &quot;dumb questions&quot;. In fact, some of the best research has it's origin from scientist questioning something that &quot;didn't quite make sense&quot; to them. Most likely the questions you ask aren't dumb, and even if they are, hiding the misunderstanding will only lead it to be revealed at a later time. Even worse, something might seem vague or confusing because the advisor is wrong or hadn't thought out all the details. Never set out do something your advisor told you, when you don't understand, that usually leads to problems down the road. Instead ask for clarification, even if you think it will tarnish your reputation a bit. If he appears fussy now, oh well, you still need to learn. If you think he is the one who is wrong or vague, asking (politely) specific questions is the best non confrontational way of approaching the situation, so you two can discuss the issue and mutually come to a consensus (which might be a consensus to disagree - for now - and come back to it later). If he is a good advisor he will respect someone asking him questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you said &quot;If I ask for clarification, I often get chastised because he sees nothing wrong with the bad directions he gave me.&quot; What exactly does he say? I can often think I am being chastised by someone who doesn't intend on that being the case. Without more detail than this, I'd like to give your advisor the benefit of the doubt. It's possible that he really is frustrated, but that may not be the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that many advisors can appear agitated when they aren't in the slightest bit upset or annoyed. This can occur for a bunch of reasons, but two common ones are (1) the advisee is projecting his own feelings of inadequacy onto the advisor and assuming the advisor thinks bad things of the advisee, when he actually doesn't, (2) he makes scowling or upsetting facial expressions when he is confused or thinking hard (this may have nothing to do with you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect (1) is especially at play here. Graduate students (and sometimes even professors!) frequently suffer from an impostor syndrome (me included), and the description of your advisor relationship could go along these lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor focusses on fostering independence, his students are going to fail a bunch of times; he (hopefully) knows this and views it as a good thing (and I agree independence is a very good thing to foster!). Your advisor most likely knows that asking a &quot;good research question&quot; and coming up with procedures and algorithms on your own, with only vague tips, is very difficult. He has likely had many students fumble around for years with nothing to show for it until one day, with their hard work it eventually pays off. You will come to your advisor with &quot;strange&quot; ideas; that comes with the territory of being this kind of advisor. The key for you is to not let your frustration lead into thoughts about what your advisor thinks of you. I often spin stories in my head about how my advisor thinks about things I do. These thoughts are unhelpful, and while it's easier said than done you should try your hardest from going down this path. Beyond working hard, what your advisor thinks of you is out of your control. Ask him the stupid questions, the people who ask stupid questions are often the people who get ahead in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in undergrad I asked professors, grad students, and peers all types of questions. I thought, what do I have to lose, I'm just an undergrad. When I got to graduate school, I all of a sudden shut the &quot;question asking off&quot; out of intimidation and now realize that this was a major mistake which hindered my success during my earlier years of graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T22:43:22.977" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T22:43:22.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2014-06-03T22:35:03.357" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an advisor who often thinks I'm giving clear instructions when I'm not :), here's one thing that will require a certain amount of pain, but might help long term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have tried this already, but when you're given somewhat vague instructions by your advisor, try to spell them out as precisely as you're able to and repeat them back to him on the spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your advisor says, &quot;maybe you should try (vague idea) X, Y, Z&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You  say, &quot;so you mean that for (vague idea) X I should try A, B, ??&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor might say, &quot;no no, I really meant D&quot; while frowning fiercely at you. But at least then you've managed to get something precise out of him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or (and this has happened to me), your advisor says &quot;Hmm. you're right: X doesn't make any sense: ignore that&quot;. In which case you've successfully eliminated one unclear option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;pain&quot; here is that your first few meetings might go quite badly while you both struggle to learn to communicate with each other. But I suspect that if your advisor is merely not thinking carefully enough about the ideas he's suggesting, this will force him to think more clearly about them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T22:35:03.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-03T23:10:41.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is field specific. You should show some specialization in your PhD and in many fields (probably the vast majority) this will be delving deep into one very specialized topic. However, this does not mean other types of dissertations are necessarily bad for your career. I have heard anecdotally the following: If you are a theoretician in an experimental field, often a diverse set of interests is a good thing. Why? In some fields, especially particular branches of biology, the vast majority of people on the hiring committee will know very little math/theory, so there often isn't that one person fighting for you. However, if you applied your methods/theory to solve a wide variety of questions, you might peak the interests of many people on the hiring committee as a future collaborator. Sometimes the set of methods or theory is the unifying/specialized aspect of the dissertation even if the applications are seemingly unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, this is the type of question that is best answered by your advisor, and ideally in your first year of a PhD program. If your advisor is good, as you say he is, and he knows your goals, he wouldn't allow you to go down the wrong path with your thesis subject, so hopefully, you specifically are fine. However, you should spend some considerable time thinking about how your thesis chapters are related, as such deep thought will greatly help you write a research statement, and perform well in job interviews, regardless of your field's general view on the structure of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T03:31:58.900" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T03:31:58.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2014-06-03T23:49:05.757" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every graduate student I have ever met or been spends more time than is ideal wondering exactly what their advisor wants them to do.  Similarly, all advisors used to be graduate students, so they are familiar with the phenomenon, whether they presently have it in mind or not.  As MHH says, graduate students tend to err on the side of &quot;not wanting to look stupid&quot;.  Again I speak from personal experience: my advisor was (and is) one of the quickest and deepest thinking mathematicians on the planet, and -- despite the fact that he is one of the warmest people I know -- I was powerfully intimidated in our meetings for several years.  At one point I decided that he thought that I was a little bit quicker and lazier than I actually was...and I decided to nurture the &quot;quickness&quot; and reveal my very solid work ethic at a later, more appropriate time.  In retrospect I am amused by the fact that I had such a psychologically astute approach -- indeed, I still believe that opinions about people's abilities are earlier formed and less mutable than opinions about people's practices -- which was nevertheless distinctly -- obviously, really -- counterproductive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because many students approach meetings with their advisors with a lot of trepidation, they also want to err on the side of having the meetings go as smoothly as possible, again in a distinctively unproductive sense.  If your advisor says something that you think is not a good idea or outright false, it's so tempting to swallow it in the moment, go back and spend a week or two making sure that it's problematic, and then spending another week trying to figure out how best to break the news.  But again, though psychologically understandable, that's exactly wrong: why are you spending weeks exploring an idea that you immediately perceive is bad?!?  Instead if you have a thought like this, you should share it with your advisor right away.  It might make him frown or momentarily dampen his enthusiasm: but that's all obviously worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That advice is slightly off-center for your question, but let me return to center in repeat it in a context which makes it even harder to follow: if your advisor tells you something and you don't understand it, should you really go away for a day, a week or a month trying to implement the thing you didn't understand?  Of course not.  You should ask for clarification.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular situation you seem fixated on the fact that it's not your fault that you're not understanding your advisor.  In my view if you really see it that way, you're more than halfway to the decision of choosing a new advisor, which may in fact be the right one for you.  Sometimes two intelligent, competent, friendly people who want to work together in practice can't interlock professionally.  That's really a bummer when it happens -- I've been there -- but a certain point you have to acknowledge it and move on to a better relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case though it sounds like you're not there &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;.  I think you included in your question what in some sense you know you should do and then brushed it off: you need to talk to your advisor about the the lack of precision in your communication.  (You say that he &lt;em&gt;seems set in his ways&lt;/em&gt;.  Okay, but who cares?  What matters is -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehamletseems.html&quot;&gt;hat tip to the Prince of Denmark&lt;/a&gt; --  whether he &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; set in his ways.)  It's either that or finding a new advisor, and since the latter is a larger undertaking in every way, definitely try the former first.   In preparing for this critical meeting, you should practice conveying the problematic lack of precision without making either party &quot;to blame&quot; or individually being accused of being &quot;unclear&quot;.  This is actually true: in any communication, the onus of understanding lies on both parties.  Rather, bring it up in a very positive way: you have perceived something that you feel will make things work much better.  In the conversation, listen carefully to how your advisor feels and especially how he feels about you.  If he is not open to this conversation or explicitly enunciates frustration with you for needing too much hand-holding: okay, you gave it a try.  But if you phrase it in the terms that I did above -- you're serious, he's serious, but it's got to be better to spend a few more minutes to make sure you understand each other properly before you go off and spend all kinds of time and energy implementing those partially understood suggestions -- I really think your advisor should be receptive.  In fact, as others have pointed out, I would go into that meeting with at least the hope that he's not actually at all unwilling to be more explicit and your perception of that is part of the miscommunication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T00:33:18.810" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T00:33:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21884" CreationDate="2014-06-04T00:31:03.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the point of distributing (including posting, as on the arxiv) preprints is that one wants to both speed up and enhance the publicity of their paper and the feedback they get on it.  A very common practice is to post preprints on the arxiv, see what kind of reaction you get, and then submit them for publication anywhere from a week to a few months afterwards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that it is fair to assume that if someone posts a preprint on an electronic server, they are interested in feedback from any interested party.  Thus you were being helpful in contacting the authors about what you perceive to be a problem in their work.  I think that in most cases, what the authors do with your feedback is their business, up until the point where it becomes submitted -- and you are an editor or a referee -- or published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, there is no &quot;standard temporal scale&quot; for modifying arxiv preprints: there are some famous examples of papers on the arxiv that have been known to be flawed for years but have not been &quot;withdrawn&quot;.  I would advise against that, but that's the authors' choice.  At what point to make what you regard as less essential changes is really nebulous.  To give one brief example, I found a lapse in the exposition of a paper I submitted to the arxiv last month just a few days after submitting it.  I really wanted the paper to be understandable to everyone, so I did upload a new copy.  More recently I discovered that a result that we attribute to mathematician X was also earlier done by mathematician Y (the two works were independent and use different methods).  I certainly want to straighten this out before publication.  But I have not yet uploaded a new version of the preprint: it's a judgment call.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the authors &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; addressing your comments.  Maybe they happen to know that they're right and you're wrong.  Or maybe neither of you is wrong and you're just not understanding the language in the same way.  (I have seen this happen again and again.)  It's hard for you to know what the authors are doing, and I wouldn't assume that your criticism hasn't gotten through: a bland acknowledgment of receipt is a pretty good first response to an email like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you upload a critical arxiv preprint yourself?  Probably not, most of the time.  Exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The mistake in the author's preprint is specifically detrimental to your own research.  For instance if the information that the author's preprint is critically flawed is important to the refereeing of one of your papers, that's a reasonable call to action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the paper does something extremely important and is getting widespread &quot;public&quot; attention.  For instance, if the preprint purports to solve the Riemann Hypothesis, everyone else believes it, but you have identified the flaw, then you'll be doing the community a great service by getting this information out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These exceptions are fairly exceptional.  Even in those cases I would counsel repeated contact with the authors rather than uploading the preprint straight away.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I fear that my advice may be somewhat field specific.  In mathematics, we really don't place a premium on openly critiquing each other: all other things being equal, that's a distinct negative.  There are some academic fields where pointing out the flaw (or arguable flaw) in someone else's work is a really good paper of yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you ask if the authors would be ethically obliged to cite your hypothetical preprint.  I think this is easy: you are ethically obliged to cite any source that you have specifically and substantively used in the course of doing your work or (especially) that has made you modify your work.  So the authors would have to cite your preprint if they respond to it in any way.  If their perspective is that your criticism is without merit, they do not need to cite it in their submission and it may in fact be inappropriate to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T00:31:03.697" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21961" CreationDate="2014-06-04T01:28:01.957" Score="19" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a manuscript to an established ecology journal and received reasonable reviews. The reviewing editor requested a revision. However, the comments from the reviewing editor were abysmal. First, the literacy and analysis were, in my judgment, poor by high-school standards. Second, based on the comments, I seriously doubt the reviewing editor read the manuscript. I have published 10 papers (mostly in higher impact journals than this one) and this reviewing editor stands out. I think I would rather withdraw the paper than deal with this person. Is it possible to request a different editor? I have never heard of that, but I have no desire to work with this person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The email from the journal contains 3 sets of comments. They are labeled &quot;Reviewer #1&quot;, &quot;Reviewer #2&quot;, and &quot;Associate Editor.&quot; I am referring to the comments from the Associate Editor, who is not named. The comments from the AE synthesize the comments from the reviewers, which is his/her job, of course. However, it reads like the AE was busy and let his 12 year old son write it for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: Thank you for the input. I asked this question because A) the comments from the AE were unusually bad and B) it will require more finesse to deal with a bad editor than a bad reviewer. However, I have decided to proceed as normal anyway. I have already invested the time to get reviews and I need to deal with reviewer comments regardless. Once you are halfway into the forest, forging ahead is the quickest way out. So I will play the journal-review roulette even though I think it will be more random and aggravating than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16048" LastEditorUserId="16048" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T13:33:49.543" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:44:49.107" Title="Is it permissible to request a new reviewing editor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21968" CreationDate="2014-06-04T01:44:03.780" Score="4" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question that I've been pondering for a long time and badly needs advice and different perspectives. Background: I'm an international student attending a modestly reputable college in the US. I'm a rising junior majoring in math and minoring in chemistry and psychology, with a GPA of 4.0/4.0 and pending publications in computational chemistry and psychology. I'm interested in Ph.D. programs in computational neuroscience (since this is a inter-disciplinary field, mostly I will apply to math or neuroscience programs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is the problem: I really want to graduate early in three years, but should I? There are four reasons supporting this decision. First, due to some poor financial choices of my parents, it is risky if I stay in college for the total four years (getting a degree in three years is surely better than no degree at all!) Secondly, there is no professor here who works in the field of computational neuroscience, and the lack of relevant research opportunity is disappointing to say the least. Third, I find myself under-challenged by the curriculum. I'm taking the maximum course load with a lot of &quot;hard&quot; classes, but I find myself getting nothing out of the classes besides more facts and techniques. Finally, from the limited internship opportunities and readings I've done in computational neuroscience, I know that I will enjoy immersing myself in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I can see how graduating in three years can put me in a huge disadvantage for Ph.D. application, and this is why I'm hesitant to make the final decision. One more year means more higher-level classes to take, more time to do better research, more time to prepare for GRE general and subject tests, and more time to grow as a person in general. I feel like even though I'm one of the best student in my college, but I'm certainly far from being one of the best in the country (which means diminished probability of being accepted by one of the better programs). I just want some more time to further challenge myself before I leave the college for good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate some different opinion on this matter, and I thank you for reading through this long question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16049" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T01:39:27.400" Title="Graduate in three years and then apply for Ph.D. programs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21911" CreationDate="2014-06-04T02:29:42.493" Score="12" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;The topic of Wikipedia contribution has come up before, but I am interested in the community's opinion on peer-reviewed wiki publishing (e.g., Scholarpedia). I would like to know if there is any advantage for a PhD student to publish in such an online venue versus the traditional journal publication for review content. The advantages I see to the wiki approach is free of charge publication, open access for all, not necessarily being limited by character limits. However, the disadvantages I see could be the citation being completely ignored by the intended audience and therefore missing out on the benefits of scientific communication and the possible loss of accompanying reputation for the publication. I would also worry these publications would be ignored or minimized by future supervisors and review committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastEditorUserId="26682" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:42:36.180" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T08:14:04.033" Title="Publishing a review in a peer-reviewed Wiki vs a traditional journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-04T02:50:38.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is completely dependent on what the next step of your career is. If you a seeking a post-doc position, then what matters is if people with money are hiring researchers with your skill set. If so, you are set for now and you can build more expertise as a postdoc. If you are seeking a faculty position at a research university, then your research needs to have a direction that excites people -- are you able to address important problems that other people cannot (or have not)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since other people are commenting on whether your research constitutes a &quot;real PhD&quot;, I'll give my two cents: what matters is that you have applied your creativity to solve a difficult problem. If you have simply learned techniques that others have developed and applied them in a mindless manner, then you are a technician, not a scientist. If your thesis has demonstrated creative problem solving, then you should be fine (see first paragraph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastEditorUserId="9669" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T03:12:37.407" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T03:12:37.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2014-06-04T02:57:22.317" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scholarpedia has adapted many of the &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt; of a peer-reviewed journal.  However, it is still a &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;encyclopedia&lt;/strong&gt; and not a research journal at all.  Note that I'm not making any kind of judgment or evaluation in the previous sentence: the main page of the site reads &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia,&#xA;  where knowledge is curated by communities of experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you seem to be asking: &quot;Should I publish my paper in an encyclopedia rather than a research journal?&quot;  I think that's a kind of strange question: have you really written something which lies ambiguously between a research paper and an encyclopedia article?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is not a rhetorical question: please let us know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible that I have fixated too much on &quot;scholarpedia&quot; and it is not the type wiki publication that you really intended.  If so, please let us know.  It would be helpful to give at least one specific example of the kind of &quot;peer-reviewed wiki&quot; you have in mind as a plausible alternative to a research journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: @MHH has helpfully clarified that the OP is probably talking about a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10467/what-is-the-difference-between-review-paper-and-research-paper&quot;&gt;review paper&lt;/a&gt;, or what in my field would be called a &quot;survey paper&quot;.  (The word &quot;review&quot; was also used at least twice in a different sense in the OP's question, and that was enough to confuse me.)  I must begin by admitting that review/survey papers are rare in my field (mathematics), and that they would be written by PhD students is almost unprecedented.  So I am almost at the point of wanting to delete my answer for lack of understanding and relevant expertise.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, let me first try this: &#xA;it seems to me that a review paper should be published in a research journal if it contains &lt;em&gt;original research&lt;/em&gt;: i.e., some kind of synthesis, analysis, new perspectives, helpful simplifications, and so forth are being added.  Of course &quot;original research&quot; is exactly what is not wanted in an encyclopedia article, although I don't see why this would necessarily be the case for all peer-reviewed wikis.  So going more from general academic common sense than specific insight (i.e., &lt;em&gt;caveat emptor&lt;/em&gt;), I would say that this should be the deciding factor between publishing a survey paper in a research journal or in a wiki.  Let me further say that most or all of the advantages cited by publication in a wiki can be achieved by publishing in &lt;em&gt;certain kinds&lt;/em&gt; of research journals: &quot;free of charge publication, open access for all&quot; certainly.  Many electronic journals do not advertise hard &quot;character limits&quot;, but of course there must be some kind of upper bound must exist, right?  No one wants a 5000 page survey of the literature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T04:05:08.283" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-04T03:03:44.157" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The working title &quot;Toward the Application of Electronic Structure Theory to Solve Relevant Chemical Problems&quot; produces a bit of yawn factor for me.  Regarding your career, a bad thesis and an unread thesis might have similar outcomes on reputation.  &quot;Electronic Structure Theory relevant to chemical problems which exhibit at least property P, but seemingly not when Q is present&quot; would be better, even if you've only managed to notice and characterise the matter, and have yet to account for why it is so despite ruling out the obvious questions by systematic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Towards the application of' (vague) and 'solve relevant' (hedge) are signals that I am not likely to find anything interesting to read in the thesis.  I will most likely find a summary of some research that was done.  Probably I already read the papers documenting such research when they were published, and I'm not really wanting to read about the same research again.  Rather, I want to hear a definitive statement that hasn't been heard before, which has the potential to shed light on my own pursuits for the truth.  If the title doesn't come right out and make some concrete statement, it seems unlikely that the rest of the text is going to get any better.  At the very least, I want the title to hint at &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; chemical problems are relevant and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your peers require of you is some (falsifiable, useful, bold) statement which hasn't been made before in your field, and your best effort to put that statement above reproach.  Most likely, you'll reference your own research as part of trying to make your case - but really, aside from the fact that your head has necessarily been places the research has forced it to be, it would be stupid to assume that the thesis must therefore rely mainly or exclusively on that research which you were personally involved in.  The thesis-statement comes as a consequence of research (by you and countless others), but the mere result of your research (already documented in other papers) is not itself the thesis-statement that you will be making.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got multiple statements to make which are not related in an interesting way, write multiple theses.  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In well-established fields, all the existing ground has been staked out, and your role is maybe to just do some (entirely necessary) chipping away at the edges - adding some qualifications to previous statements made in your field, or (more interestingly) attempting to account for why previous statements with good pedigrees yet still differ.  In this case, your thesis statement will &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; be quite specific (not merely to conform to expectations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if application of Electronic Structure Theory has not previously been applied to chemical problems before (which would seem odd, but I'm outside that field), and your thesis is proposing the terms on which this may in fact be done (thus birthing a whole new sub-field) then your 'apply(x,relevant-y)' title might fly.  I'd not expect it from you on your first serious paper though. In this case, I'd still want some clue as to how it's done, which problems are relevant, and a little more ... enthusiasm .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're not quite at the point where you have a candidate thesis-like statement to make, or unfortunately, still have some systematic research to do, because your research to date, while good and useful in its own right, isn't useful as a systematic exploration supporting &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; thesis statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10353" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T03:03:44.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2014-06-04T06:41:09.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no definite answer at the moment since one can not judge now how scholarpedia will develop. At the present stage I think that the impact will  be low and many colleagues may not know about scholarpedia. However, this may change in the future and the outcome will depend a lot on the quality of contributions. If you think that scholarpedia is a valuable resource, a good project and that you can contribute something, I'd say: Go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also remember a quote by Gian-Carlo Rota: &quot;You'll be better known for your expository work.&quot; I am not sure if this applies to everybody equally but it is a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T06:41:09.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2014-06-04T06:47:48.133" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As chief editor of a journal, I can say that I would see such a request as reasonable under certain circumstances (and it has happened). However, in the case you describe I do not see what it is that the editor has really done. The reviewers comments form the basis for your revisions and the editor should judge if any comments are more important than others and summarize what the editor sees as important revisions you should make. It is then up to you to do these as you see fit and if you disagree argue against those that need such action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change of editor requests come when an author feel a paper has been unfairly judged (usually rejected) and I know of one case where an editor rejected a paper after using a set of reviewers that were marked as &quot;non-preferred&quot; due to a conflict of interest. I also know of cases where a zealous copy-editor has modified the language to a degree that the science was almost completely lost. In your case, it is not clear what has happened to the manuscript, has it been rejected? have you written a rebuttal and argued against changes imposed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you make the revisions you think are reasonable and provide a rebuttal on the &lt;em&gt;suggested&lt;/em&gt; changes to your paper. If you encounter more unreasonable resistance from the editor, I think it is only fair to write to the Editor-in-Chief and state that you think you have been unfairly treated and wish to get a second opinion on the handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T13:44:49.107" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:44:49.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T07:07:47.760" Score="3" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities are normally non-profit. For public universities, it is understandable that governments invest the taxpayers' money for education purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, investors of a private university should invest a huge amount of money (campus, buildings, facilities, staff, etc.) without ambitious hope for financial gain. At best (after a few years), a new university can earn enough money (tuition fee and donations) to operate without financial benefits for its original investors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who invests in private universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cannot be financial investment, and not all cases are charity. Then, how does this system work? as it is rapidly growing in many countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who makes the huge initial investment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T07:33:49.443" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:41:31.047" Title="Who launches a private non-profit university?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21897" CreationDate="2014-06-04T07:38:12.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is: there's no harm in sending the editor a polite email to ask. Provided your questions are broadly sensible, they're unlikely to hold a grudge against you for doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I imagine that an editor is going to be wary of encouraging a discussion that might irritate his reviewers (who he wants to be able to use again in the future), or which appears to risk developing into a challenge to the review process itself. I suspect that you are unlikely to get a positive response unless your question is very limited in scope: for example, &quot;Reviewer 1 comments that my results would appear to generalise the Jenkins-Smith theorem; however, I cannot find a statement of this. Would the reviewer be prepared to give me an appropriate reference?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you asked a colleague to look over your reviews? Sometimes, counterintuitively, things are clearer to a reader with a shallower understanding of the intricacies of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T07:38:12.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21897" CreationDate="2014-06-04T08:38:29.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, as an editor, I am not happy to see that you send manuscript to journals to get feedback. It is a terrible waste of time for reviewers and editors who work for you for free on their spare (or research) time. So, I suggest not using this as a strategy in the future but at least try to locate journals where you think you stand a chance to be published and also prepare the manuscript accordingly before submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question. There is no harm writing a letter asking for clarification. A service minded editor will at least reply. But, I doubt that you can expect much interaction with the reviewers, with or without the editor as a middle person since, as mentioned above, these persons are working to serve the community on their spare time and for free. If reviewers are known by name to you, you are of course free to contact the reviewer directly. Again, the degree of response depends on the willingness of the referee to indulge to such communication and, perhaps, their interest in the details of your work. But if your aim is simply to squeeze out information from an &quot;easy&quot; source, I think you need to think again because such behaviour could soon turn out a label. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question you specifically ask about requesting references, and I will add that it is not very helpful when referees just allude to references in their reviews without giving them, but then people tend to have different standards. This obviously goes for all sides of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:38:29.240" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21899" CreationDate="2014-06-04T08:44:53.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, you generally address colleagues of a similar status by their first names—so your fellow faculty members would definitely be addressed informally. This would of course extend to collaborators and acquaintances in other departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only exception to this would be in the case of &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt; communications—an official memorandum or letter from a faculty member to someone in the university administration, for instance. But otherwise, in any oral or informal written correspondence, I'd stick to first names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In other countries, follow the appropriate local traditions, as they may be very different from US standards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:44:53.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21920" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:09:18.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Digital Library is described on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipeda&lt;/a&gt; as;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An electronic library (also referred to as digital library or digital repository) is a focused collection of digital objects that can include text, visual material, audio material, video material, stored as electronic media formats (as opposed to print, micro form, or other media), along with means for organizing, storing, and retrieving the files and media contained in the library collection. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals, organizations, or affiliated with established physical library buildings or institutions, or with academic institutions. The electronic content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. An electronic library is a type of information retrieval system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T10:15:17.103" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:15:17.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21921" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:09:18.347" Score="0" Body="A focused collection of digital materials (often, published manuscripts). Typical questions with this tag ask about gaining access to digital libraries or benefits of ensuring publications are indexed in a major digital library." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T19:36:59.027" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T19:36:59.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:12:48.067" Score="34" ViewCount="3190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a research paper in my native language, Serbian, on a specific electrical engineering and applied mathematics topic. Moreover, there are two published papers in English that hold much of the information I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the topic itself is quite new and is unknown in Serbia, and consequently at my university. My plan is to sum up the results of the two papers, further expand on the theory behind it (which is only arbitrarily mentioned in the English papers), and finally encapsulate the whole idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, strictly speaking, I won't be doing any original research, in terms of experiments or mathematical breakthroughs, but rather synopsize and provide a desired perspective on a modern topic that is novel to my national academic environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; If I reference the two English papers and their authors at the end of the paper, do I commit plagiarism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I see a nice sentence in one of the papers, and I translate it into my paper, are the references at the end enough for crediting the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, is using the pictures from the two papers (with referencing them naturally) accepted practice? Or do I need to get the authors' permission to use them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, does my paper still hold some kind of value, even though it doesn't provide original results? At the very least, it introduces a new, and very interesting topic to my faculty, and is generally a field I'm interested in researching, and eventually achieving some real and relevant results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14435" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T20:11:20.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:11:20.070" Title="Research paper - translated plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21930" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:20:45.397" Score="2" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a research paper in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and me and my professor have slightly different views on how to present and order the different elements that are necessary in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two parties that are interested in my research, my professor (and school) and the company I do the research for. The company has &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; experience with scientific reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor comes from an psychology background and wants me to write in an hour glass structure. I however believe that I should be writing it for the public that is going to profit from the research, which is in this case the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a search I came across this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21423/is-it-a-good-academic-practice-to-tell-the-reader-in-the-introduction-what-the-e/21439#21439&quot;&gt;Is it a good academic practice to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?&lt;/a&gt; In which I found the answer by Jeromy Anglim that I completely agree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This however only goes in to the introduction and says nothing about the discussion/conclusion section of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I have a conclusion section right after my results where I answer my research questions. After this I have a discussion section on what these results mean with the theory and all that belongs there. This was very appreciated by the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not so much by my professor. He says the conclusion &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; comes after the discussion, &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; is part of the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good way to present the introduction and discussion/conclusion in a paper which has to be easily read and understood by non-academics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I do not use the hour-glass structure, what section of my paper would be the best place to justify this decision?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16062" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:39:22.753" Title="Positioning of elements in research paper" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:21:03.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding something is harder when you search for something specific than when you simply search for &quot;something&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it bad to look like a 'jack-of-all-trades' person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends, for all trades individually, yes, it's bad. If you research on topics A to Z and people focus on only one of them, then for any job related with one single trade you will be at a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several good things, though. First one is diversification. It is much more likely that there will be some position in any topic from A to Z than in one particular topic from A to Z. It is also more likely that one of those positions is hard to cover because there are no good candidates, or for what matters you, there are no better candidates than you. So you get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Are those topics with fewer candidates the not-hot boring and bad topics?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A: They are to the standards when people started their PhDs, but things may be different now. Starting a PhD is an act of speculation (to some extent) you have diversified your time investment, this has pros and cons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second good thing is the broadness of your knowledge. Who would you pick to be the head of the department in computational chemistry? Someone who knows a lot about one particular topic in computational chemistry or someone who has a reasonably vast knowledge in the whole area? Probably someone with management and political skills, but assuming no differences wrt in the candidates, then the second one with a broader knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a broad or a deep knowledge about something is not a good or a bad thing, both have pros and cons. The objective is setting some goals that make the best use of the pros of your assets and in which the cons don't really matter so much. This last statement is so broad that it can be applied to almost everything (e.g. on Saturday night in a club) but that doesn't make it worse, that makes it better, maybe not an universal law, but I'd like to think it's somewhat close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:21:03.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:22:04.010" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;short answer: &lt;strong&gt;I think the title is not suitable as it is&lt;/strong&gt;, and thus may harm your career: currently it doesn't look like a jack-of-all-trades, but the title looks like jack-of-no-trade.&#xA;However, it may not be a problem if you are already comparably well known for your work (i.e. people know jack has his trade(s)). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it would be good to put in some effort to &lt;strong&gt;make it more precise about your contribution to the field.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;long answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm chemist. Not theoretical chemist, but chemometrician which means that I also do calculations (though of a different kind) in order to solve application problems.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I believe my situation is similar to the OPs in that we both work at problems where in order to solve application questions some method needs to be developed further. I call these 2 aspects of my work the &quot;theory&quot; and &quot;application parts of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience you can easily end up with the title of all or most papers emphasizing the application, and thus looking very diverse while the common topic (the theory) is de-emphasized. Several reasons can cause/contribute to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the application problem may be understandable and important to a much wider audience than the small field of experts on the theory you use and advance to solve the application question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;therefore, the pubications are targeted to journals the application audience reads&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and you do not want to frighten them away by heavy theory terms in the title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, in my field it is much easier to get funding for working towards the solution of &lt;em&gt;some medical application&lt;/em&gt; (and doing the necessary data analysis theory development under that hood) than to get funding for &lt;em&gt;developing data analysis theory&lt;/em&gt; (and demonstrating this with the medical application).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And this of course may bleed through to the paper and thesis titles. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the theory development - thus the common topic of the papers - is mainly to be seen inside the papers. Of course in this situation it would be good to have also a theory paper out that brings together the theory developments and just touches the applications as examples. However, this may look like one more disjoint topic on the first glance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my publication list has a whole lot of medical application (though I always try to sneak in the theory developments also into the title of the application papers), and a few papers which focus on data analysis methodology - while the common points of all these papers exists: chemometric data analysis and vibrational spectroscopy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two more points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The very general title you give sounds like a typical working title to be  put into the forms at the beginning of the PhD before the specific line of the thesis is known. I don't see anything unusual in a situation where at the end of the work this working title is updated by a specific title.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To me, this seems to be the underlying question here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a theory group or are &lt;em&gt;the one&lt;/em&gt; in your group who does theory development, the fact that you actually do theory development may be so obvious that you didn't think of stating it. But the fact and preferrably also the specific type of theory development should be in the title. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions to the OP are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this description of application vs. theory aspects reflect your publication situation?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In particular: by unrelated topics, do you mean something like the application question/chemical problems you solve are unrelated? Or do you mean that neither the chemical problems nor the methods you used to solve them are related?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation without knowing more specifics is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain to your non-chemist grandma what you've been doing. Make a list of the points.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fill in the sentence: My papers tackle application problems about ...., but what I've really been doing is ....  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid of a long title. My guess is that the working title you posted is shortened too much: as you say it is not informative any more as the specifics have been cut out. Put them in. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T16:09:50.947" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T16:09:50.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21927" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:33:27.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As described on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A single survey is made of at least a sample (or full population in the case of a census), a method of data collection (e.g., a questionnaire) and individual questions or items that become data that can be analyzed statistically. A single survey may focus on different types of topics such as preferences (e.g., for a presidential candidate), opinions (e.g., should abortion be legal?), behavior (smoking and alcohol use), or factual information (e.g., income), depending on its purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13496/resources-for-students-designing-surveys&quot;&gt;Resources for students designing surveys?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18675/creating-a-research-questionnaire-with-repeating-sections&quot;&gt;Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14072/data-collection-in-academia-insights&quot;&gt;Data collection in academia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20447/what-is-the-best-way-to-publicise-an-on-line-survey-for-research&quot;&gt;What is the best way to publicise an on-line survey for research?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17534/can-i-use-facts-from-surveys-which-are-done-by-others-and-are-available-on-inter&quot;&gt;Can I use facts from surveys which are done by others and are available on internet?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:31:58.873" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:31:58.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21928" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:33:27.740" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to use of a survey as a research instrument. For questions on survey (review) articles that give an overview of a field or topic, use 'review-articles' instead." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:31:45.593" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:31:45.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:36:52.533" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your paper lies somewhere between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a true translation, much like how a book in one language might be translated into another. In such a case, the article is usually credited to the original authors, with a note mentioning who did the translation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a review article that surveys some fragment of the literature, possibly adding a larger perspective to the material being presented. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, your work is closer to the latter than the former, especially if what you're trying to transmit in Serbian are the ideas in the papers, and not the literal words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might therefore be your best option is to convey the ideas in the works, clearly marked (for example a section header, or even some introductory text saying what you're doing), but without any need to cite specific translations (unless the occasional turn of phrase is so useful that you might as well put it in quotes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you're clearly not plagiarizing, since credit is being given clearly and copiously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the copyright issues involved in reproducing pictures. Fair use should cover use of a few pictures (but &lt;strong&gt;IANAL&lt;/strong&gt;). In any case, it's the copyright holder who needs to be asked (and this might be the authors, or the publisher: the paper should have a note about this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a document have value ? Well based on the context you describe, sure ! If it helps an audience gain access to material they'd otherwise be unfamiliar with or unable to read, definitely. This is no different from other review articles in other disciplines, and has the added bonus of language translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:36:52.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21923" CreationDate="2014-06-04T10:39:22.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that a term paper for university is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as a company white paper. You cannot expect to write a nice white paper (&quot;What is a good way to present the introduction and discussion/conclusion in a paper which has to be easily read and understood by non-academics.&quot;) and expect your professor to grade it as such. The conventions for white papers and academic reports are significantly different (and I would honestly be surprised of the positioning of the conclusions are really the only required change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like Suresh's suggestion - produce two versions of the report, one for the company, which focuses on the results and implications for the company, and one for the university, which is written for an academic reader outside the company. The style may well differ, even if the vast majority of the content will be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:39:22.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-04T11:01:20.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole purpose of having students at a university is for them to learn things. Your university cannot reasonably object to you teaching the students things solely on the grounds that it was somebody else's job to teach them those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They could object on other grounds, such as you giving bad advice or spending so much time on this that you're not doing your own job properly but, as long as you guard against that, what real problem could there be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:01:20.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21937" CreationDate="2014-06-04T11:16:31.090" Score="7" ViewCount="2408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I refer to the thesis itself? &quot;This thesis&quot;, &quot;this text&quot; or maybe &quot;this work&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the fact that the text is currently used for my graduation (which makes it my thesis) is no inherent property of the text itself.&#xA;I am therefore hesitant to refer to it as &quot;this thesis&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70225" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T13:17:14.350" Title="Referring to the thesis itself" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2014-06-04T11:23:50.970" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referencing the papers at the end is not sufficient.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the litmus test whether or not something is plagariasm is whether the reader is given an adequate impression of how much of the text is other peoples work. Readers don't always read entire papers, and in particular may not make it to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would suggest to state at the beginning what your two main sources are, and give some indication of how heavily you are drawing from them. Then, throughout the paper reference each bit you've taken from elsewhere by where it is coming from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:23:50.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21875" CreationDate="2014-06-04T12:10:42.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways for a university professor to aid a student's learning is to point them where they themselves could discover such tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you could point them in the direction of your SME colleagues, experts in topics outside of the scope of your expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, to maximize your likely full schedule, helping students identify resources could be something you provide to them as a group during advisor hours.  Schedule a group resources time during your office hours so that you don't get overtaxed time wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16067" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T12:10:42.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2014-06-04T12:22:28.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to bkd.online's answer, from your limited description I would call the extra steps in the first list &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;pilot testing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the user-design. Pilot tests are typically constructed to have a low time and cost data collection to get immediate feedback to improve the design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of research, the pilot study is typically not considered research in and of itself, but basically the same strategy can be used later on down the line to conduct actual research. For instance, you may have a question about the location of a widget in your design, and whether the location impacts users behavior. You can then set up a proper experiment where you randomly expose different uses to the different widget locations and then measure users behavior under these different conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T12:22:28.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21932" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:17:14.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I may be missing something, but in general, I think something such as &quot;In this work&quot; or &quot;This text&quot; would suffice. The thesis itself will be a form of publication, and you are writing it from that perspective, so it is perfectly acceptable to make reference to specific areas within the thesis, especially since you are likely to have results or new content that may not be found in other publications of yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, what exactly about your thesis are you trying to reference? Is it a result that can be found on a specific page, in a chapter or a particular figure? If so, then I would make specific reference to where exactly the reader can find the information. Maybe when describing results collectively, you could say &quot;the results presented in this chapter&quot; so that it's more clear to what you are trying to refer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you citing some exposited logic or text that was previously introduced or will be further explained later on? Then the common ways of referring to this would be &quot;see above/below&quot;, &quot;in the previous/next section&quot;, &quot;in the section entitled X&quot;, or the Latin equivalents &lt;em&gt;vid supra&lt;/em&gt; (v.s.) and &lt;em&gt;vid infra&lt;/em&gt; (v.i.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T13:17:14.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:23:37.267" Score="5" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a foreign (non-EU) student enrolled at the CS master's program in a European university. &#xA;I would like to take 2-3 courses that my university doesn't offer, and the first idea that came to mind was to take them at another university (preferably also European) in another country. &#xA;Obviously I want these courses to be counted in my diploma (assuming that they fit my program).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you would do if you were in my place? Is there any &quot;general&quot; approach to my problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've found there are a few ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go as a free mover and enrol to the courses individually (seems that not all universities offer this option)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go as an Erasmus student (not sure if I qualify being non-EU citizen)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go by direct exchange program to the university that have bilateral agreement with my university (in my case, I'm not satisfied with offered transfer destinations, so it's not really an option)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPD: &#xA;I assume there are 2 general cases: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My university and the university I wish to go are &quot;partner&#xA;universities&quot;, i.e. they have some sort of mutual agreement &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not &quot;partners universities&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14563" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T15:36:50.527" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T19:15:22.700" Title="Take a few courses in another university" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:44:29.907" Score="25" ViewCount="3451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our paper was due submission for second revision at a BMC journal. The communicating author, as I understand is responsible for handling all the communications between all authors and the journal, while also making suitable arrangement to cover any open access charges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the communicating author in our case, without informing any author, removed 4 out of the total 6 authors while submitting the second revision. How should we deal with this? isn't it a academic fraud by the communicating author? Can't we, as students do anything to stop this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16074" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T15:05:08.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:43:10.403" Title="Can the communicating author remove some of the authors (4 out of 6) when submitting the second revision of a paper describing a database?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21939" CreationDate="2014-06-04T14:40:17.353" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an unpleasant situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happened to me, I think my starting point would be to ensure I had copies of anything that might be useful as evidence. Then, I would write (formally) to the person concerned, asking for an explanation of why they thought it appropriate to remove you all from the author list. I think this has to be the first step: it is always possible that there is a rational explanation (although it's difficult to imagine what it might be). You might choose to copy the letter to the head of the relevant university department, and perhaps to the editor of the journal - particularly if the paper has not yet been published, and so can be put 'on hold' pending resolution of the authorship dispute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you will have to weigh up the benefits of asserting your rights to authorship against any potential cost arising from 'causing trouble'. You are &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; within your rights to create a major fuss here, and your department &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be entirely supportive. I think you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do something. However, there is a risk that some of the people involved will seek revenge, if they have any power over you (e.g. if you are still a student at the university). I am &lt;em&gt;absolutely not&lt;/em&gt; condoning such behaviour - it is quite clearly bullying, and an abuse of power. However, it would be irresponsible to advocate taking action without encouraging you to also consider whether there are any potential adverse consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T14:40:17.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21939" CreationDate="2014-06-04T14:44:28.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say yes, this is academic fraud. I suggest to contact the corresponding author and inform him/her that your are going to inform the editor of the journal about the issue. Depending on the answer from the corresponding author you should indeed write to the editor and explain the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not sure what will happen then. Presumably things will get difficult and it would be much better if you could sort this out directly. Also you should communicate your strategy with the other authors and act open for all involved people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T14:44:28.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21938" CreationDate="2014-06-04T14:47:11.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask your dean of student affairs (or whatever this is called at your institution), if your university will accept these courses. Usually they should (if these courses fit in the curriculum) but this, of course, depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T14:47:11.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:00:19.293" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a somewhat different field (mathematics), I have seen some theses that were essentially bundles of not-strongly-related papers, each good enough to get published, and considered (by the advisor and the department) good enough to earn a PhD. Ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is indeed different from &quot;getting a job&quot;. From what I have seen, job applicants don't succeed so much with &quot;broad appeal&quot; alone, but also must have &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; appeal to a particular research group/interest. Thus, a too-diffuse body of work, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if &lt;em&gt;described&lt;/em&gt; in a fashion that makes it appear diffuse _and_unfocused_, will not get up to the thresh-hold of having a good chance at job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, the point is how one &lt;em&gt;portrays&lt;/em&gt; such work. If (in contrast to the situation of the question) the papers really are completely disjoint and unrelated, it is not easy to describe them as fitting together into a coherent research program. If, indeed, as apparently is the case in the questioner's situation, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a coherence to the body of work, it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important to re-describe things to emphasized that. &quot;Novel computational methods whose potential is illustrated by making progress in several important problems&quot;? That sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, presumably/often the author of several papers &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have some underlying theme/principle/concept/whatever that is merely &lt;em&gt;manifest&lt;/em&gt; in various way ... that may superficially appear very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, the &lt;em&gt;description&lt;/em&gt; of the body of work would best emphasize the common thread(s) underlying the several instances. Although often labels are simplistic, hiring committees do use them, so figuring out how to position oneself among those labels is probably smart. (In effect denying the relevance of admittedly simplistic labels and categorizations is most likely just self-sabotage.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One's advisor's approval of the body of work as meriting the PhD is a different issue from getting the advisor's recommendations about an appealing coherent description of the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:00:19.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21950" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:15:06.653" Score="21" ViewCount="4008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm choosing reference writers for my math PhD application this year, and need to decide between the 2 following professors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor X is a young professor with whom I took measure theory and&#xA;did a research project in my freshman year. The project went pretty&#xA;well - we obtained some results earlier than he expected, and&#xA;published a paper. He moved to another university and no longer&#xA;worked with me, but we still keep in touch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor Y is a fairly well-known professor whom I met at a 1-month&#xA;summer workshop. I didn't interact much with her outside of the&#xA;classroom, but she seemed to like me: after the workshop, she said she&#xA;was really impressed by me and voluntarily asked if I want a&#xA;recommendation letter from her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither professor works in the field that I plan to study in grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often hear that &quot;good at research&quot; letters are way better than &quot;do well in class&quot; ones. However, in my sophomore year, I applied to some REU programs with professor X's letter (and another not so strong &quot;do well in class&quot; letter), and was rejected by all of them. Of course the recommendation is just one factor, but I think my course work was not bad - probably better than many of my junior friends who were admitted. My Putnam score was pretty good too, although I don't think it mattered. The following year I reapplied with both professor X's and Y's letters, and got first round offers from most of the programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this indicates that professor Y's letter substantially strengthened my application, or actually REU programs looked at some other factors I wasn't aware of? Do grad schools and REU programs look at recommendations the same way? Which letter would you recommend me to use? I can't use both because I have 2 other letters already, and many grad schools say they may not read more than 3 letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About the 2 other reference writers that I've already chosen: both did research with me, one of them also taught me several courses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The other letter I used in my sophomore year (along with professor X's) was probably not that bad. The reference writer said he was pretty impressed that my course grade was 95% or something, while everyone else got less than 60%. It's just that I didn't do research with him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16066" LastEditorUserId="16066" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T21:07:01.867" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T04:27:38.447" Title="Should I use recommendation letter from young professor I worked with or well-known professor I met in class?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21947" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:15:47.400" Score="6" ViewCount="3775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am directly quoting a sentence from an ebook. Thus, I want to add the page numbering to its citation. However, different to the print version, which I do not have, this ebook (Amazon Kindle version) does not have page numberings but rather &quot;positions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I just pretend it's a page numbering and note in the bibliography that it is a Kindle version? Or is there another way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case this is of interest, I am using Latex with Bibtex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12560" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T22:22:20.120" Title="How do I cite ebooks without page numbers?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-04T22:36:24.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21916" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:41:31.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm only familiar with the US, but my understanding is that most (if not all) private non-profit universities were started with a single large gift from a wealthy individual, family, small group of individual, or a charitable foundation (usually started by one of the above).  In many cases the institution is named after that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure in which countries the number of private non-profit universities is &quot;rapidly growing&quot;.  I only know of a few recently started institutions in the US.  One with which I'm somewhat familiar is Olin College.  According to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olin.edu/about/history/&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt;, the college was started with a $460 million gift from the F. W. Olin Foundation, which in turn was founded in 1938 by Franklin W. Olin and funded by his personal wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such gifts &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; considered &quot;charity&quot; in that their main purpose is to benefit the community, and the donor doesn't receive a financial benefit.  Of course, any given donor could certainly have personal motivations other than a genuine desire to do good (attention, guilt, fun, taxes, etc.), but there is really no way to guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:41:31.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21945" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:44:42.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not providing page numbers with citations for their own sake, but to help readers to locate the cited passage, e.g., if they want to verify it or see it in context. (Therefore page numbers are already diminished in their usefulness for regular books as soon as there are two editions with significantly different paging.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arguably easiest way to locate a verbatim quote in an e-book is to just feed a few words into a full-text search. Thus giving page numbers or similar information has no purpose anymore. However, you could ease finding the location of the quote in a classical book by giving edition-independent location information, such as chapter and section numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is a “utilitaristic” approach to citations. A relevant reader of your publication (e.g., a supervisor or reviewer) might have a “dogmatic” view on such things and thus require page numbers or similar for their own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:44:42.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2014-06-04T16:38:43.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't unique to academic circles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One person telling another exactly what they actually want without confusion on either side is one of the hardest problems in the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So perhaps stick up an grad-student version of this old chestnut with &quot;what the supervisor asked for&quot; and &quot;what the grad student heard&quot; substituted for some of the silly ones to remind everyone that it's a common problem that's nothing to be embarrassed about but does have to be handled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.secondlife.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/37541i926E3612BA3F8DFA/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&amp;amp;px=-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://community.secondlife.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/37541i926E3612BA3F8DFA/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&amp;amp;px=-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(it's been floating round the net in various forms for a long time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was lucky enough to be doing my postgrad in a different area to my undergrad so wasn't so embarrassed to keep digging detail out of my supervisor but you have to both invest the time in making absolutely sure you know what's wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16078" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T16:38:43.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21944" CreationDate="2014-06-04T17:14:01.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard wisdom about getting letters from people you worked with rather than those who merely had you in a class is only approximate, of course, and it doesn't mean that every recommendation you get from someone you worked with will be better than every recommendation from someone who you took a class with. To me, the fact that professor Y voluntarily asked if you wanted her recommendation is more important in your case. She wouldn't offer to do that unless she was confident that she could write you a good recommendation. So I think there's a decent chance that her recommendation letter actually helped you more than the one you got from professor X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T17:14:01.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21944" CreationDate="2014-06-04T17:39:30.630" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your REU evidence that X wrote you a weak letter is not very strong.  I run an REU, and we accept less than 3% of our applicants.  Our target participants are either legendary at small colleges (best in a decade), or excellent at top universities (top 25% this year at Harvard).  Plenty of excellent people get turned away for essentially random reasons.  Maybe one of your letters was submitted late.  Maybe you forgot to list a course on your application that was considered essential that year.  Maybe I had a bad burrito for lunch and hated your essay when I read it.  Maybe there were just lots of really good applicants that year.  And yes, maybe professor X (or professor Z, the other letter-writer) said or implied something negative about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, Professor Y offering to write on your behalf after a one month course says more about her than it does about you.  This does not guarantee that she will write a strong letter, and if she does she may write strong letters for a lot of people, which might be known by the people reading her letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my advice.  Go to Professor Y and tell her that you did research with Professor X and published a paper together.  Then, ask her whether you should ask for X's recommendation or hers.  If she really feels that you are spectacular, she will insist on writing the letter herself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T17:39:30.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22016" CreationDate="2014-06-04T18:25:08.437" Score="27" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished a PhD in Math and I am starting my postdoc in September. I am currently just working on a few collaborations--working on projects that are follow-ups from my dissertation that are mainly strengthening my results or applying my results to interests of my collaborators. I hear a lot about the difficulty and stress in transitioning from PhD to postdoc and how the &quot;clock starts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few questions about these statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are some concrete changes that you experienced when you transitioned from PhD to postdoc? Bonus points for math-related experiences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How real is this &quot;clock starts&quot; claim and what does it really mean? Math-related answers are more useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any adjustments I can actively start to make now to make the transition better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T20:17:46.407" Title="Transitioning: PhD to Postdoc and Productivity" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21945" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:22:48.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, in this case, it may be a good idea to cite your reference regarding the section and part from which you are directly quoting a sentence. I mean, you may cite the ebook the same as you used to do before, but, when you want the reader to be informed about the exact part in which your quotation exists; you may refer to the section and part instead of page numbers which do not exist. Another good idea may be mentioning the phrase: &quot;PDF file position: Page ???&quot; in the same place of citation in which the page number is mentioned and the reader will easily find the part of the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:22:48.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:31:36.237" Score="0" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;How liberal are institutions with regard to doing research in a different (unrelated) field than the person's diploma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a person with a diploma in pure mathematics wants also to do research and programming in IT (specifically in XML), can he do it in his work time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it makes sense to obtain a second diploma (Is Bachelor enough?) in order to be able to refresh the brain by switching between two different jobs during work time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T22:55:40.173" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T22:55:40.173" Title="Can you do research in same field as your diploma and another field at the same time?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21953" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:42:54.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing my diploma as an electrical engineer and I will start a phd in operations research. So that's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a lot about what skills you bring. At first, which skills can be useful for the institution where you gonna start. Also the question is, if your skills are enough for your special phd topic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a pure mathematican with no skills whatsoever in XML that would be hard. But if you attained some skills in XML on your &quot;pure mathematics&quot; path, it may be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15690" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:42:54.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:55:51.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For situations like this, I think its important to rely upon other members of your committee for clarification.  You probably aren't going to change the way your adviser communicates, but you might be more successful overall if you consistently communicate with your other committee members... or make sure one of them are present when you meet with your adviser.  I was quite intimidated by my adviser in my PhD program, but my other committee members helped to keep things in perspective and clarify goals in ways that my adviser never could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16083" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:55:51.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20294" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:02:38.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the DOI codes, the best thing is to use the API and get the references yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;curl -LH &quot;Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex&quot; http://dx.doi.org/[DOI code]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have them (and you should, for any modern article), parsing the bib to get them and getting the data can be done in a very simple script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:02:38.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21939" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:29:22.530" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently had an extensive discussion of how to deal with such an issue, should it arise, in a postdoctoral seminar I attended. A number of senior faculty contributed their ideas regarding how to deal with such an incident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a more gradual escalation than others have suggested. For example, I would not copy the editor of the journal or the head of the department on your initial communication requesting more information. I would start with communication just within your author group: for example, an email to the corresponding author asking for an explanation of why they removed your (and others) authorship without notification, CCing all other authors of the paper. This gives you a paper trail but also allows you to first address the issue without airing everyone's dirty laundry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the corresponding author's response is not to the removed authors' satisfaction, you should then, together, think about escalating your complaint (for example, by contacting the editor). I agree with avid that while you would be in your rights to do so, there is a very real possibility of a negative backlash. I think as a consequence the other dropped authors should be on board with such a decision, and you should have excellent documentation of your complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this type of incident is a very good example of why every paper should start with an authorship meeting where everyone sits down, agrees on authorship and order, and what constitutes the responsibilities of authorship at each level (e.g., &quot;first author will be so-and-so, and that means her responsibilities are to do x,y,z...and if she finds herself unable to meet all of those responsibilities, then authorship decisions will need to be revisited&quot;, etc.) Concretizing expectations prior to the work tends to lead to better working relationships and can prevent some very bitter arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15616" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:29:22.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21958" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:30:16.520" Score="16" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose two papers were published by fledgling researchers, perhaps PhD students, who are yet unknown in their field. One is Asian, has a surname which is long and difficult to pronounce, and perhaps also comes from a relatively unknown university. The other has an English name, and comes from a well-known university. But otherwise, the two papers are similar in content and on par in terms of quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, there should not be any preference with regards to citing either of the two papers. That means, in the long run, the expected citation counts of the two papers should be about the same. However, I am interested to know whether this is the case in reality. From my limited experience, I seem to have seen papers that referenced only other papers whose authors are European. Has there been any study that suggests whether the name and/or affiliation of an author affect the visibility and hence the citation count of his/her paper? I am aware that the answer might be different for different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ask the question in another way, is our perception of a paper influenced by the authors' names and/or affiliations? Do we not tend to infer the quality of a paper by these factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T21:38:00.670" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:38:00.670" Title="Do the author's name and/or affiliation affect the visibility of a paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21951" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:52:36.903" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of the &quot;clock&quot; comment is that math postdocs are almost all time limited, and, if you're staying in academia, the quality of the next job you get depends heavily (not exclusively, of course) on the work you do as a postdoc.  The extreme way to look at it is that you have about two and a half years to conceive, write, and get accepted the work that will justify your next job.  This is a big contrast to most PhD programs in math which take &quot;5 or so&quot; years; if you're making decent progress but not done after year 5 (or, depending on the program, 6, or 7, or 8...) you can scrape things together to keep going.  As a postdoc, on the other hand, the time limit is fixed---at the end of it you're back on the job market with whatever you've done, whether you're ready or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:52:36.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21971" CreationDate="2014-06-04T21:35:01.127" Score="0" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am MSc student of civil engineering and I am so much interested in sciences, mostly applied mathematics. My MSc thesis research is also focused on some analytical and numerical solutions to governing equations in field of the civil engineering. It is too difficult to start a BA in Mathematics, because I have to whether continue my education in civil engineering and apply for a PHD or seek for a job. I am so much interested in analytical solutions which exist in mathematics and applied mathematics; differential equations and PDEs. How should I satisfy my interest in mathematics, besides my future job or in my future academic life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T07:25:12.973" Title="A question about continuing education in an Engineering major or Sciences" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2014-06-04T21:35:56.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You clearly have a very low opinion of the competence of the anonymous Associate Editor (AAE).  It might be worth looking through some issues of the journal and asking around about the quality of the journal: does it really have the stature that you previously thought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then I would draw a distinction between the impression that the AAE has made on you and the effect this will have on your manuscript and your own revision process.  The relevant question is: is it going to be more trouble to push this paper through to publication -- is it even headed in that direction? that wasn't completely clear to me from your description -- than to start fresh with a different journal?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you think that the &lt;em&gt;referees&lt;/em&gt; made reasonable comments, comments that you would have to address anyway before resubmitting.  So what is the downside in preparing a revised version that addresses the &lt;em&gt;referees' comments&lt;/em&gt;, together with a brief, unconfrontational reply explaining that the AAE's suggestions were considered but ultimately not followed?  To me it seems strategically best to try this first and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point: let me address the question: How do you communicate to the journal your professional opinion that the AAE is truly incompetent?  I would say that criticizing an unknown editor of a journal is difficult or impossible to pull off in a way which is likely to be productive: the risk seems too high that you would simply be writing to the person you are complaining about and informing them that their work is &quot;poor by high-school standards&quot;.  I tried to imagine a person who might respond well to that...and I did not succeed.  In my experience, the current journal system makes the process of complaint / appeal / seeking of restitution so awkward as to rarely be worthwhile for anything other than a cathartic (Festivus-style?) airing of grievances: too much of the process happens out of your sight.  The point at which you feel like you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to complain is probably the point to resubmit somewhere else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T23:21:46.887" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T23:21:46.887" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21945" CreationDate="2014-06-04T22:22:20.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your quote is direct, I would not bother myself so much about it. Just cite the book and give a note that it's an &lt;code&gt;e-book&lt;/code&gt;. You can add a chapter or section number if it exists. Anyways, it's a direct quote: people should trust you that it is there. And if they needed, then can use full-text search if they needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, it is necessary to provide as precise version information of the file as possible!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T22:22:20.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21958" CreationDate="2014-06-04T22:32:15.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has there been any study that suggests whether the name and/or affiliation of an author affect the visibility and hence the citation count of his/her paper? I am aware that the answer might be different for different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no study at the ready, but I have often wondered the same and can provide some speculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You bring up the following factors that might play into whether a work may be higher cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status of the researcher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status of university&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For computer science, the first point is usually not all that important, as the vast majority of papers have both PhD students &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; professor(s) as authors. I also don't believe that the status of the university very much plays into the decision whether a paper will be cited. At least for me, I never even remember which institution(s) an interesting paper comes from, unless I know the authors personally. I just don't consider that particularly relevant information. Interestingly, I remember universities more for papers from asian authors (see also next paragraph), as &quot;National University of XY&quot; is much better discriminator for me than most asian names. However, it's not that better universities stick more in my mind than smaller ones. To be honest, I can hardly judge the quality of asian universities outside of Singapore (where I stayed for a research visit once) anyway, except for absolute top institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether the &quot;memorability&quot; of the name is relevant is an interesting question. For me it is certainly easier to remember US / european names than asian or indian ones. Critically speaking, I also have the strong impression that I cite more European or US authors than asian ones. However, I am 100% convinced that this also works the other way. Whenever I browse over papers by asian authors, they also seem to cite almost exclusively other asian authors, presumably for similar reasons. Whether this all evens out in the end I don't know, but I also don't really know whether there is anything that can really be done about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T22:32:15.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21958" CreationDate="2014-06-04T22:36:02.787" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer (from the view of an economist) is: Probably not. At least not in the way you suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for most (i.e., not the most influential papers/journals) papers most of the citations (especially for PhD students) are &quot;generated&quot; by feedback from conferences, referees, supervisors, ... .&#xA;Therefore, someone from Europe is more likely to encounter someone who knows the European paper and therefore only cites the paper from Europe. In addition, researchers from well-known universities have more visibility and are more likely to know the topic of papers from PhD students at their department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if there is is no discrimination with regards to the name and the affiliation we could observe the effect you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know of any study covering your question, and I do not think there is a way to do such a study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To ask the question in another way, is our perception of a paper&#xA;  influenced by the authors' names and/or affiliations? Do we not tend&#xA;  to infer the quality of a paper by these factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess that depends on the person. I (and most people I know) are heavily influenced by the journal it is published in, not at all by the authors' name (to clarify: We are influenced by the fact if we know the person or not, but not by how the origin of the name / how the name looks like.) and maybe a little bit by the affiliation of the author if it is a top 5 or top 10 institution in the specific field of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T13:53:33.340" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:53:33.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T23:22:36.373" Score="40" ViewCount="4408" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the end of the term, I always end up with quite a number of D and F students who want to improve their grades. Meanwhile, I usually have lots of menial tasks on hand during the summer, e.g. data entry, translations, proofreading, photo tagging, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of these tasks is work I am assigned or paid to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the tasks relate to my courses in some way and the resulting efforts would benefit the next group of students who attend my courses in the subsequent terms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My school has no official &quot;dead week&quot;, but naturally these tasks would occupy time that presumably the students would otherwise use for final exam preparations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any ethical or professional reason deeming it inappropriate to assign such tasks as optional extra credit, allowing students to move their 50 to a 60 or 60 to a 70 after ~10-15 hours of repetitive work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T23:39:12.723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T19:02:26.517" Title="Is it appropriate to assign Mechanical Turk-type tasks as extra credit?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21958" CreationDate="2014-06-04T23:30:14.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For multi author papers coming from well know labs I would be surprised if the surname of the junior author had much impact on citations since the popularity of the paper is going to be driven by the PI. For single author papers or unknown labs there could be a noticeable effect, but again I doubt it. I think most people search for literature based on key words wether it is an electronic search or a skimming of table of contents. If the authors or university Is know that clearly will increase the chance of citation. For unknown authors and universities, there is enough bias in this world, both justified and unjustified, that my guess is that there would be a correlation between citations and names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T23:30:14.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21965" CreationDate="2014-06-04T23:56:48.670" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that it's sort of a sliding scale based on the amount of time they have to put in, the amount of credit they get, and the relevance of the task to understanding course material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for professors to allow (or even require) students to act as participants in a study (e.g., fill out a survey, be part of an experiment) for credit, on the theory that such participation helps them to &quot;understand the research process&quot;.  If the tasks they're doing have some relevance of that sort, I think you have an easier case.  If it's totally mindless work with no connection to the class, it's more dubious.&#xA;Also, at least at my school, every such opportunity &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; (by human-subjects rules) have an alternative credit opportunity that takes roughly equal time but doesn't require such participation (e.g., write a paper).  This kind of alternative is designed to ensure that students aren't forced to work for the professor's benefit in order to improve their grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, assuming by &quot;50&quot;, &quot;60&quot;, &quot;70&quot;, you're referring to their overall course percentages, that seems like a massive amount of credit to me.  When I've given or received extra credit, it's usually been much less than that -- equivalent to maybe 2% or at most 5% of the overall grade.  The intent is not to allow students with a flat D to move to a C, but to allow students who have a &lt;em&gt;high&lt;/em&gt; D to move to a C.  I think offering extra credit that allows students to raise their grade by an entire letter sets some dangerous precedents, especially when combined with the mindless-task aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, extra credit assignments usually were the work-time equivalent of say, one homework problem, or at most one homework assignment, expected to take the students maybe 3-5 hours tops, and often an hour or less.  10-15 hours of mindless work sounds like a pretty awful prospect to me.  I think it's a bad idea to misuse the extra-credit leverage to have students slaving away for hours and hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, I think it is possibly defensible, but more so if the tasks are not truly mindless but have some reasonable connection to the class.  Also, I think the amounts of time and credit you suggest are a bit high, and especially so if the task is just grunt work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, as an example, I once was a TA for a class where the professor assigned homework in which the students had to take a spreadsheet and perform certain category-coding tasks on the data.  I suspect (but do not know for sure) that the professor was using the coded data for his own research.  However, the data was relevant to the class topic, and the coding task, although not exactly an intellectual challenge, was a realistic encounter with this sort of data, in that if students were to later write a paper using such data, they might well have to perform such a task as part of the project.  Also, the amount of data coded was rather small (about 50 spreadsheet rows per student, as I recall).  My own opinion was that, although such an assignment was perhaps not the best way to get students interested in the class, or enhance their understanding of the material, it wasn't unethical, because it was small in scale and legitimately (if uninspiringly) relevant to the topic of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastEditorUserId="9041" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T06:36:53.820" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T06:36:53.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21908" CreationDate="2014-06-05T01:39:27.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it really is a risk that you might not graduate at all if you stay on another year, then maybe you could consider graduating early and hedging your bets. There are other ways to catch up and make yourself both more prepared and more desirable to PhD programs of your choice. For example, you could try and apply for a research position if you see any openings in labs, and either take courses simultaneously or or as someone else suggested, apply to a non PhD program first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if there is an academic you know you would want to work with, it doesn't hurt to write them an email and ask them if they would be willing to take someone with only three years of college and if not, what would kind of skills and strengths they might be looking for. I did this when I switched fields right after college, and I was told that though I did not have quite enough qualifications, if I managed to do x, y, z I would be considered. That's what I ended up doing while working part time and two years later I got into the program (of course if you need a visa to work that's a different story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can manage it financially, I would probably advise staying in college the extra year, and prepping for the GRE, taking courses relevant to your field, and getting those very important recommendation letters by making an impression on your professors. Also, most colleges have the option of doing a senior thesis, and if you want to go into a research career, while not a deal breaker, writing one can be very beneficial, no matter what area you write it in. Showing that you have the ability to do independent work is always a good thing when applying for doctoral programs. And it gives you a chance to work one-on-one with your advisors and can be as challenging and fulfilling as you make it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is different, so you will have to decide on your own, but I'm always in favor of a little bit more rather than less time between college and grad school to be both psychologically and academically prepared. But that's just me. Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12347" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T01:39:27.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21965" CreationDate="2014-06-05T02:05:58.000" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the grade in the class is supposed to measure a student's mastery of the material. Letting students improve their grade via unrelated menial work is not consistent with this standard and seems dangerously close to letting the students wash your car for extra credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9464" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T02:05:58.000" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21960" CreationDate="2014-06-05T06:57:04.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very possible to go to a PhD program in applied math with a masters or even bachelors degree in engineering. I am in an applied math PhD program and many of my colleagues only took a couple of upper level math classes in college. Applied math is very broad and people with all sorts of backgrounds can get into these sorts of programs. But the question is what can you do now to explore your mathematical interests (an perhaps get into an applied math PhD program too)? The key is to do a few of the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;take a few junior/senior level undergraduate math classes (or if you can handle it, graduate level math courses). You likely have the requisite background to take a class in undergraduate Real Analysis or differential equations. Basically you need to convince an admissions committee that you are capable of writing proofs. You don't need a math degree to do this; you don't even need a math minor to do this. If you do well in a single semester of real analysis some great applied math programs are more than willing to take a gamble on you if you have interesting engineering research and a good personal statement that really explains how you got a passion for math while working in engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;incorporate math into your research. You say you do numerics, so prove your method converges, develop analytical error bounds, prove the existence or uniqueness of a solution. If your method is too complex to do the above, or you lack the knowledge to make progress in such an endeavor, create a &quot;toy&quot; problem which is similar but vastly simplified and prove something related to it. Toy problems often lead to stand alone publications, they are interesting to us applied mathematicians in and of themselves, and they have the added benefit of giving insight into your engineering research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read math. Get yourself a book and work your way through it in your spare time. Just 1-2 hrs a day, of intense mathematical focus will surprisingly allow you to learn a lot more math than you would think. Start at the right level, for some this will be advanced and for others this will be not so advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;think about math a lot. Just ask yourself questions a lot. Math is a mindset. Get away from the computer and coding and work with pen and paper (or a whiteboard) for a couple hours each day. Do problems -- putnum exams, course websites, math.stackexchange. They are all great resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="8101" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T07:25:12.973" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T07:25:12.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21973" CreationDate="2014-06-05T07:23:45.053" Score="38" ViewCount="5695" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told by our head of department, a veteran academic with &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of publications behind his name, that I am not allowed to write my masters dissertation with TeX/LaTeX, as many journals do not accept TeX/LaTeX documents, and now I have to use Word. I work in thermoflow research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can almost not believe that journals would prefer Word over TeX/LaTeX, or is this in actual fact true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate answers from people actually working in academic publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15332" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2020-07-31T13:22:33.497" LastActivityDate="2020-07-31T13:22:33.497" Title="Are there many journals that do not accept TeX/LaTeX?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;latex&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="20" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-05T07:33:34.930" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is that in some fields (La)TeX dominate whereas in other fields (La)TeX is largely unknown. Obviously any field where equations are required is more likely to be using (La)TeX for writing and publishing. However, it is not uncommon that journals, or rather, type-setters of journals, use LaTeX for final production regardless of submitted format. The same applies to book publishers. But, the fact is that the use varies and one needs to check with the journal to which you wish to submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are not &quot;allowed&quot; to write your thesis with (la)TeX is perhaps because your advisor does not use it. I am an avid LaTeX user and am struggling to convince both colleagues and students in my department to at least try using it so I know how difficult it can be. In the end, I need to use both to be able to communicate with my colleagues and peers. So although I do not see why you should not set the thesis in (La)TeX in the end, you probably need to use word for the manuscript so that your advisor can provide input on files you supply. But, check how many journals actually use LaTeX in your field and strike up a discussion with your fellow students and your advisor. I think it is worthwhile to be fairly fluent in using many tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I will just add that I was convinced by a friend to use TeX (not LaTeX, it was a long time ago) when I wrote my thesis (a monograph at a US university) while almost no-one in the department used TeX; but then my advisor always provided feedback from double-spaced printouts which were platform independent. Those were the days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="15870" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T09:13:31.420" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T09:13:31.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20082" CreationDate="2014-06-05T07:48:29.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth considering semantics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in the sense that if you spend 5 hours every day reading novels, you will do better on the GRE than if you spent those 5 hours staring at a wall, then I suppose that is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But compared to actual methods of study, I don't think so. Hour for hour, just getting cracking with a deck of flashcards will improve your score much more. It is obviously hard to spend as much time on flashcards because it is boring - but even if you spend much less time than on reading, I would predict that the benefit to your score will still be higher with flashcards (and you can still read in all the time you aren't practicing with flashcards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For learning words, the problems with the &quot;reading novels&quot; technique are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a question of what novels you actually read - if all you read is Twilight and Harry Potter, I doubt it would help much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the words in a novel won't be new, so most of your time is not spent learning or practicing words. It is very inefficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no guarantee that the novels you read will focus on common GRE words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my opinion, GRE words tend to be deliberately obscure: Besides a core set of &quot;basic&quot; words, ETS includes many words which are hardly ever used and have probably went out of style, for the sake of having words that most people will be unlikely to know (unless they practice specifically for the GRE).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike flashcards or similar methods, it is difficult to gauge your progress (eg. how many common GRE words you have learned) with novels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easy to infer the meaning of a word in context (and also easy to end up with an incorrect belief about what a word means). GRE often gives words with absolutely no context, and probably sometimes in misleading context. Recalling the &quot;official&quot; definition of an isolated word, and having a feel for how its usually used in prose, are quite different skills - novels will train one, but the exam depends on the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For improving reading comprehension, books are possibly more helpful. Still, there is again a set of caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books are often long, while GRE tests comprehension of relatively short articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books usually do not ask you explicit multiple-choice questions, where the incorrect choices are subtly different from the correct ones, and deliberately designed to be confusing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is hard to gauge your progress - for instance, how fast you are able to read a given GRE-level paragraph, what sort of questions are you able to answer correctly often, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For training reading comprehension, there isn't as clear cut a method as &quot;flashcards&quot; (flashcards are very, very effective for memorizing words). However, I would argue that simply doing hundreds of practice questions over and over is a far more productive use of your time, if the primary goal is to have a high GRE score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really wanted to read something, I would say it's better to read a high-brow &quot;culture&quot; magazine like the Atlantic or the New York Times. Even with books, it is probably much more effective to read collected essays rather than novels - since all you will ever have to read on the GRE will be essays. Although still, the crucial feedback element is missing - it's hard to tell if you've &quot;really&quot; understood an essay (in the way that the GRE wants you to) when there is no set of questions with correct answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last bit you could ask about is the writing prompts. Here, &quot;just reading&quot; (although again I would suggest essays versus novels) would probably be more helpful, at least relative to the alternatives - unfortunately, it's hard to train GRE writing skills because one cannot mass produce question banks as with other sections. Moreover, what constitutes a good essay to GRE is arguably very different from more generally accepted criteria. Ultimately, the best option is to somehow obtain a personal essay coach who is familiar with the GRE grading rubric, and write dozens of practice essays for him to grade, rather than reading novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T07:48:29.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-05T07:59:00.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working in the field of computational chemistry, it is not unusual, that one focusses on many different topics. The field itself is as broad as chemistry itself as it may be applied to any experimentally raised question. It may be considered as one of the most advanced tools up to date in chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its applications may range from simple things as the elucidation of the molecular structure, developing accurate bonding models, or deriving physical and chemical properties. It may also be used to derive complicated reaction mechanisms, characteristic reactions of compounds, classification of novel compound classes and prediction of yet unobserved molecules. Taking this as a basis it may be used in the development of more effective catalysts, it is used in drug design, deriving kinetics and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above is connected via electronic structure theory or more general the approximate solution of Schrödinger's equation. The field of computational chemistry focusses on applying approximations derived by theoretical and/or quantum chemistry to real life questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working in many of these fields is neither uncommon nor unwelcome. Sometimes one particular subject of the starting hypotheses evolves into a huge complex, that may be carried on for years to come, while some other projects are helping in a shorter timescale. Both of them are equally important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is, each paper I've published is its own research focus without any connection to the next outside of the fact that computational chemistry was used for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this you state, that you already published papers about your subjects. I am guessing these publications were peer reviewed, so they are already proven to be valuable to the scientific community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying quantum chemical calculations to various problems proves, that you are fit in the field. You know how to tackle different questions, you are versatile  and your knowledge about the field you are working in is as broad as necessary. It may also show that you are not narrow minded and thinking out-of-the-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the content of your thesis is already published in peer reviewed journals, you will have quite a good chance, that your thesis will remain unread by your peers. Scientific articles tend to be of much higher importance, than the actual thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your career options include doing a postdoc, than you will still have enough time to specialise yourself. If you want to become a professor yourself you should use that time to develop a specialised, yet versatile and broad research field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan on working in the chemical industry, the employers are probably more interested in you as a person, your ability to adjust to certain problems, and working according to their standards. Having a broad thesis should not be a hindrance in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the title you are currently using may not be very well chosen, since &quot;Relevant Chemical Problems&quot; is a very fuzzy term. On the contrary to some other opinions offered in this thread, I would be very scared of using a long title. Make it as short as possible, while keeping it as precise as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I do not expect that the title of your thesis will harm your career in any way once you have published in peer reviewed journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know LordStryker from chem.se and therefore I know at least one publication he suggested I read, upon a request of mine. (I will not disclose this source here, because this is up to him.) I am certainly no expert in this particular field of computational chemistry and my understanding might be incomplete. However, I do see the significance of this particular work not only to our community but also to tangenting fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found two other publications, one appeared in a top level journal of our field, the other I cannot judge. From what I understood the presented work is thoroughly, concise and well prepared. I could also see that connecting all these samples is very difficult from a concise topical point of view. However, these all are applications of quantum chemistry, so they all emerged from the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not receiving a degree for this work is absolutely out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I would like to state, that it was my own personal decision to get involved in this &quot;discussion&quot; - I was never approached by LordStryker, nor do I have any affiliations with him. Our communication is solely through the se network. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13372" LastEditorUserId="13372" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T11:31:17.523" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T11:31:17.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21965" CreationDate="2014-06-05T09:45:19.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not ethical, you are &lt;strong&gt;misleading&lt;/strong&gt; future possible employers about how capable the student is.    A degree is a measure of how well someone can learn and how well they know their subject, not how well they can tag photos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also devaluing the degree, so making it harder for other students at your university to get a job.    A course that few people fail is of little value to the people that pass.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Proofreading may be OK in a English degree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T09:45:19.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:00:01.753" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, journals that do not accept LaTeX do exist. If LaTeX is not widely used in your field you might have surprises even with those journals that claim to accept it, since they in fact almost never have to. I recently submitted a manuscript in LaTeX to a Taylor &amp;amp; Francis journal which stated it did accept LaTeX submissions, only to find my piece &quot;unsubmitted&quot; the next day with a request to re-submit in Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:00:01.753" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:01:49.750" Score="42" ViewCount="10362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are students allowed to complete a large portion of their research independently, then enroll in a PhD program, apply for a defense panel within the first semester, and quickly finish the thesis? Has this been done before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Question trimmed. I'm looking for an answer whether students can be admitted with much prior work on the thesis already complete, to finish in a short time (perhaps one year fix and improve the work), and whether there are real examples of people who did this. I not asking whether I myself am personally capable of completing this prior work to sufficient quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T02:24:17.390" LastActivityDate="2019-11-27T20:25:06.283" Title="Can students finish much of their PhD thesis before applying to a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:04:32.890" Score="2" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a pretty big collection of papers (as bibtex records) for which I'd like to add citation relations, i.e. a collection of cites(a,b) where a and b are two keys identifying the citing and cited paper respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to avoid doing this annotation manually.&#xA;Is there some web service to extract this information automatically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16098" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:04:32.890" Title="Get citation relations from a given collection of papers" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-05T14:46:10.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:11:44.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, this &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be possible at some universities, but not in all. My current employer, for instance, requires students to be inscribed as PhD students for a certain minimum number of semesters before handing in their thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would assume it an almost impossible task to find an advisor that would roll with this model. Doing a doctoral study is as much about the process as it is about the end result, and finding an advisor that would just accept your final thesis without having &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; you doing the research (and without being able to provide input on the general direction) will be difficult. From a practical point of view, I would honestly also be surprised if you would be able to actually produce an acceptable dissertation from scratch without &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; input from senior researchers, or at least other PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and I am aware that this is field-dependent, but in many fields, doing your literature survey is really only the very first step to doing research (and really not the hard part). Hence, I would reckon that you are still far away from the 90% completed dissertation that you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; to answer your concrete question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure &lt;em&gt;somebody somewhere&lt;/em&gt; has already done this, but I am not aware of anybody, and, as I said, it would formally be entirely impossible in my current university. I would also assume that it would be very much frowned upon by the rest of the faculty should a professor agree to this model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T19:34:51.907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T19:34:51.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:16:31.857" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak to whether this is possible, but I can advise as to why I think it's a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, PhD Comics is a largely satirical and humourous representation of life in academia. Some of those comics can be scarily true, but you can probably find a comic that parodies any job you care to imagine. It doesn't mean they all suck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you could do this, for most people and disciplines it's not a good way to get a PhD. You really should find an advisor to help you guide your research. Colleagues are great to bounce ideas off of. Having an office to work in and access to a good library is a huge advantage. You will have access to high-performance computing and lab facilities, if needed. If you're lucky, you'll find someone to &lt;em&gt;pay you&lt;/em&gt; to do your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, you will graduate being well-absorbed into academic life. You'll have networking skills, have been to and presented at conferences, your research will be of a higher quality, and you will overall be a much more well-rounded and knowledgeable researcher than had you stuck at it alone. The skills you learn as a PhD student are &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; if you wish to have a career in academia. If you wish to go on into an industry job, they're still pretty darn useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T10:21:57.817" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:21:57.817" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9827" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:55:03.357" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish what you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dropped out of a prestigious program 6 years ago, with much of the same reasoning: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The degree is just a piece of paper anyway&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;If I want to learn things I can just learn them on my own&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What's the point?  To spend that many years just to get a qualification to impress other people.  I don't care about money, and if I want a job I can get a job now.&quot;  (I was making $80/hour on contract work at the time.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I'm planning on starting my own business&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here I am, 6 years later, applying for grad school to give it another go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my reasons for going back:  (I welcome people to correct me if I'm wrong about any of these!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most full time employment is mindblowingly dull.  As a student you don't fully appreciate this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A PhD is not very different from a job in the sense that you have to show up and do some work, most of which you don't necessarily want to do.  The difference is, with a PhD you get something at the end, but with a job there is just endless tedium.  Also with a graduate degree you get to use your brain a bit more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your job prospects will be severely diminished, and your salary will be lower.  It is fairly difficult to get a good research job without a graduate degree, and most opportunities outside of grunt work will be closed to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In academia, you're used to working with smart people and having intelligent discussions, etc.  If you leave and enter typical workforce, that goes away.  There will always be a significant gap in academic potential between you and your colleagues and this will bother you because it means you are not hitting your potential and are effectively being under-utilized and under-paid.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feeling underutilized and unchallenged is very very bad.  You will hate your job and therefore hate your life, and it all goes downhill from there..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody wants money.  Most people that want money really badly, have at some point in their lives said &quot;Nah, I don't care about money, money doesn't make you happy.&quot;  Being broke doesn't make you happy either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that you quit will forever haunt you.  No amount of &quot;Bill gates dropped out too&quot; or &quot;I'm too independent to need this&quot; will make you feel better when you see your former classmates graduate with PhDs while you have to live with the fact that you started but gave up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the workforce it doesn't always matter how smart you are.  Most places I've interviewed have trouble hiding how impressed they were, and several have told me directly that I'm the best candidate they've ever seen.  I always breezed through the most difficult interview questions and I've gotten offers from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, etc.  BUT at the end of the day all of the jobs they offered were boring menial tasks.  You could argue that it's possible to start with a menial job and then work your way up, but as I mentioned before, a PhD is also a job, why not just finish that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, regarding your note on quantitative finance, please be very aware that the world of quantitative finance is very competitive and most places won't consider you if you don't have a PhD.  I know because I tried several times to get a job doing quant work, but every firm I spoke with only offered back-end jobs doing menial SQL work.  Your mileage may vary, but be warned that most people don't care about how good you think your quantitative skills are.  (One fairly famous hedge fund manager told me very directly &quot;everyone thinks they're going to be great at a new skill, so why would anyone risk their money on an unknown, unproven entity?&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15541" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:55:03.357" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21990" CreationDate="2014-06-05T11:54:06.880" Score="8" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of writing my bachelor's thesis. Another student is working on largely the same subject as I am, with a slightly different focus. Is it acceptable for me to reference his thesis in mine? If so, wat would be the proper form for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10939" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:25:21.750" Title="Citing a 'co-student's Bachelor's thesis" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T12:26:29.807" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no interest in becoming a PhD student just because you read some comics? It so, it just indicates that you didn’t do your research (about what being a PhD Student means) properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing independent research because you find it interesting, it might be beneficial for a PhD project. Find an academic who works in that area, contact them, present your research and see if they are willing to become your supervisor. They can advise you what the rules of their university are regarding the minimal period between enrolling in a PhD programme and submitting a thesis. This period might be different for full time and part time students. In one of the UK universities I used to work, part-time students (university employees) were required to be enrolled for at least 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do as much work as possible before enrolling into the programme, I would advise against writing the literature review (or at least against writing its full version), as it might turn out to be waste of time. Read “everything” in the topic, do some experiments or develop a prototype (or do whatever practical work can be done in your area), come with an idea about your research and speak with a potential supervisor. If you manage to persuade them that the idea is good, this is great, but the discussion might give you a different direction, you might want to modify the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider – some universities (in UK) have 2-stagies process – the students are supposed to submit a transfer report after an year/an year and a half and have a viva, which usually leads to a MPhil degree, if it is successful they can proceed further to the final thesis. A transfer report typically consists of description of the problem, short literature and an overview of your ideas about the research/experiments/methodology, etc. with a schedule for conducting it. You can write in advance the bigger part of it but don’t do it before speaking with a potential supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going for a full-time PhD, you might need funding. Check first what funding is available, the specific requirements of the funding bodies might mean that your idea has to me modified to fit them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least – chose your supervisor carefully. The importance of having a good work relationship with them can’t be overestimated. Your overall experience as a PhD students hugely depends on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T12:26:29.807" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:05:08.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most US and Canadian universities require four semesters worth of coursework, and passing candidacy and/or comprehensive exams before you can propose a thesis. Some of this is different in other places, e.g., in the UK, where you would typically come in with a MSc degree.  Doing a PhD while working elsewhere is much more common there.  One university there (&quot;The Open University&quot;) specializes in distance learning.  What you suggest is also more common at German universities, where you can find top-notch professors, and won't have to pay much in the way of tuition.  But, be warned, it often takes a very long time, and you would first enroll and then work with your advisor on developing your thesis work.  Plenty of people never graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone has pointed out - doing a literature review is not research.  It's the beginning of it, particularly in the sciences and engineering.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience (I am tenure-track faculty at a US institution), people outside of academia call a lot of work &quot;research&quot;,  and beginning graduate students confuse programming, prototyping, reading with the &lt;em&gt;contribution&lt;/em&gt; that is inherent in successful and publishable research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, keep in mind that doing a PhD is about so much more than handing in a thesis. It is about laying the foundation for a career in research.  A PhD involves going to conferences, meeting people, publishing, hearing guest speakers at your institution, critiquing your lab mates' work in lab meetings, writing a proposal or two with your supervisor, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16105" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:05:08.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21986" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:12:33.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it is acceptable as long as you know what you are referencing.&#xA;So as long as you have read her thesis (or the part you are referring to) and you think it belongs in the literature review of your thesis: Do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to use a result derived by her, I would advice against it, as you can not be sure if it really is correct. If it is not possible to avoid using it you should talk to your supervisor about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the proper form:&#xA;&lt;code&gt;@masterthesis&lt;/code&gt; (as @Wrzlprmft already pointed out), &lt;code&gt;@thesis&lt;/code&gt; (with &lt;code&gt;type = {Bachelor's thesis}&lt;/code&gt;  or &lt;code&gt;@unpublished&lt;/code&gt; could be an option for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T13:25:21.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:25:21.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:39:48.463" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: life is short, reduce the risks of wasting your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are free to do as much as you please before starting a PhD. There are usually requirements about some minimums, but the good thing is that you are likely to stay close to those minimums and not get to the maximums (sometimes infinite) if you start your PhD from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also enjoy some spare time if all you have to do during your PhD is waiting for the minimum time to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should be aware that if you do independent research this may be neglected by your supervisor or simply everyone in the world. That is potentially possible and for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad quality, e.g. being unscientific or ignoring an important part of the state of the art.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's on an irrelevant topic about which nobody cares about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's not aligned with their interests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's independent and they don't like people trying to bypass them (oligopolistic practices, they have the key to research, if you don't go through them, you are not doing research)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the fragment of your thesis that you do at the university is on a different topic and becomes a whole thesis on its own&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's already done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whatever&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, all the time that you invest before starting the PhD may be wasted, actually a large chunk of the time that you invest during the PhD (at some university) will most probably be wasted as well. This is what happens with investments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:39:48.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21993" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:34:31.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meta is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T14:44:04.907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T14:44:04.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21994" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:34:31.827" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to meta." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T14:44:23.443" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T14:44:23.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:43:46.790" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many journals that do not accept, or actively discourage LaTeX-based submissions. I've always found the assumption in LaTeX heavy fields that it's ubiquitous to be an interesting quirk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, two journals that will accept LaTeX based submissions, but would rather you not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;American Journal of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prepare your manuscript, including tables, using a word processing&#xA;  program and save it as a .doc, .rtf or .ps file. All files in these&#xA;  formats will be converted to .pdf format upon submission. Please note:&#xA;  This journal does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents at this&#xA;  time. Please use Word's &quot;Save As&quot; option to save your document as an&#xA;  older (.doc) file type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On LaTeX:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prepare any other files that are to be submitted for review, including&#xA;  any supplementary material. The permitted formats for these files are&#xA;  the same as for manuscripts and figures. Other file types, such as&#xA;  Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations may be&#xA;  uploaded and will be converted to .pdf format. It is also possible to&#xA;  upload LaTeX files but these will not be automatically converted to&#xA;  .pdf format (and are therefore discouraged). The journal staff,&#xA;  editors and reviewers will only be able to view these unconverted&#xA;  files if they have the appropriate software, which cannot be&#xA;  guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manuscripts should be in a standard word processing format. We prefer Microsoft Word but we can also use RTF, TXT, LaTeX2e, and AMSTex. Application software programs released before 2001 are not supported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/em&gt; actively doesn't accept them, at least not unless converted to a PDF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All text, references, figure legends, and tables should be in one&#xA;  double-spaced electronic document (preferably a Word Doc). You may&#xA;  either insert figures in the text file or upload your figures&#xA;  separately. We prefer the former, but this may not work well for&#xA;  complicated graphics, which should be sent separately. It is&#xA;  permissible to send low-resolution images for peer review, although we&#xA;  may ask for high-resolution files at a later stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Legends for all figures should be included in the file with the text&#xA;  and should not appear on the figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our preferred file type for new manuscript submissions is a Word or&#xA;  text document with all figures in the same document. We will also&#xA;  accept Adobe Acrobat portable document format (.pdf) , WordPerfect&#xA;  (.wpd), text (.txt) documents, or .rtf file format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Clinical Infectious Diseases&lt;/em&gt; doesn't even want your PDFs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The preferred format for submitting manuscripts online is Microsoft&#xA;  Word (.doc files). PDF files are not acceptable for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all very good journals in my field - a happy, healty, high-impact, tenure friendly career could very easily be had never touching LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T14:43:46.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21939" CreationDate="2014-06-05T15:04:35.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The initial reaction to your problem is that it is wrong. There are, too many unknowns to say why this has happened, if you are deadling with negligence, absent mindedness, some more serious personality issue or whatever. I would suggest the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss with the other authors how you all became co-authors in the first place and compare your contributions to see if they fulfil some basic critteria such as those of the Vancouver Protocol (given by for example ICMJE and reproduced at &lt;a href=&quot;http://research-ethics.net/topics/authorship/#regulations-and-guidelines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Resources for Research Ethics Education&lt;/a&gt;. This will help you gain leverage for your authorship/contributorship. Of course, if you had some form of agreement to start with, then that should suffice. The important thing is that it is unethical to publish someone else's intellectual property without consent so establishing such claims can be important. This is why authorship or contributorship agreements should follow the Vancouver Protocol to begin with (I know they rarely do).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approach the first author and ask him/her to explain the reduction in authors without prior discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If 2 fails to yield results, write to the chief editor of the journal and describe the problem and that you wish to see the paper stopped. If the paper contains materials that can be attributed to the authors who have been dropped, that should be grounds for halting the process and starting an investigation, perhaps through &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COPE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:04:35.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8855" CreationDate="2014-06-05T15:10:18.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered a similar situation with some groups, but now only find the problem among the minority of students. When working with students who are not self-motivated, you must make them fear for their grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, assigned students a short reading task to fit each assigned reading. One potential task might be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KWL_table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KWL&lt;/a&gt;. These are quite simple, but cannot really be completed if the students do not at least actually think about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, set the deadline to shortly before the class (or the night before), asking students to submit their short answers via E-mail. This lets you verify that they read the passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deal with the pass-fail grading system, which I assume is for the total course grade and not for individual assignments, consider telling students that you will count how many times they miss these assignments, and if they miss 3, they have failed the course. Make sure the students see you keeping the record early on and let them see the tally for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T23:32:53.763" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T23:32:53.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21939" CreationDate="2014-06-05T15:43:10.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that by BMC you mean a BioMed journal?  You should read the BioMed Editorial Policies page( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/editorialpolicies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/editorialpolicies&lt;/a&gt; )&#xA;which lists 4 requirements for qualifying as an author: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to qualify as an author one should have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(4) agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not usually justify authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you can satisfy these criteria (especially the first two), you should be an author.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same page also addresses authorship changes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In line with COPE guidelines, BioMed Central requires written confirmation from all authors that they agree with any proposed changes in authorship of submitted manuscripts or published articles. This confirmation must be via direct email from each author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors confirm that they agree with the proposed changes. If there is disagreement amongst the authors concerning authorship and a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached, the authors must contact their institution(s) for a resolution. It is not the Editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disputes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to deal with this in your institution; pointing out that is contrary to journal policy for authorship to change without consultation is a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16126" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:43:10.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-05T15:56:17.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a minor miscommunication. Your mentor is correct in that many publications do not accept TeX documents, but you do not (usually) submit the latex version of your document in the first place. You compile it to produce a PDF which is what you submit. The publications that want to edit your PDF will normally have the tools to convert from PDF to word or whatever other format they work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16116" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:56:17.320" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:07:09.007" Score="4" ViewCount="647" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a ex-PhD student publishes a paper from his thesis without his ex-supervisor's consent, the paper gets retracted upon his ex-adviser's request to the editor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Could there be any exceptions from this rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16117" LastEditorUserId="16117" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T18:50:13.850" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:50:13.850" Title="When is a supervisor unable to request paper retraction if a paper gets published without her consent?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22017" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:22:19.123" Score="8" ViewCount="1172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many Postdoctoral advertisements where they mention that an informal inquiry can be made to a PI. What are the kind of questions that can be asked?&#xA;Should we attach our CV and mention our research interests while writing to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen advertisements where they tell  to send applications to HR. While writing a covering letter should we address to them or to the PI of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T20:44:56.327" Title="Postdoctoral applications - informal enquires" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22022" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:46:07.160" Score="9" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can program, write papers and research. I'm better at research, but due to the lack of programmers I've been assigned programming tasks in my current institution. Additionally, I have little evidence to support that claim in my CV, I am &quot;good&quot; now (and I have strong personal evidence), but I don't have a long track of publications to prove it (because, to be honest, I wasn't good before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I prosper in research if my CV and the interests of my superiors point me in the opposite direction? Is there any escape?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: I was a PhD student in another institution, I'm close to finishing my PhD but I don't get any spare time from my current programming obligations in the new institution, where I am a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T16:56:14.447" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:43:29.037" Title="I have been pigeonholed, how can I solve it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22024" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:56:50.983" Score="12" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student who lost a year in school due to factors beyond my control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, several non-school related issues made it difficult for me to focus on school. Then, a little later, I was harassed and threatened by someone in my program. The harassment continued for a couple of months before I ceased leaving my house altogether. Eventually I talked to the graduate supervisor about the situation. They agreed that it might be best for me to leave for a while. But, I am left with two problems: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most deadlines for schools have past. The ones that haven't, don't seem like a good bet by way of funding. Should I try to find a program to apply to anyway? If not, what can I do to get my year back? I was kind of on a roll before, but now my thought processes feel stagnant and slow — Any recommendations for getting back up to speed? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My grades from this year are poor. I do not think they accurately reflect my academic potential or my understanding of the material. Should I be explaining any of the extenuating circumstances to prospective schools when I do apply? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16115" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T22:11:15.943" Title="PhD student leaving current program for reasons of safety. Recommendations for what to do next in terms of schools and catching up?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;harassment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22008" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:03:18.833" Score="10" ViewCount="1291" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is somewhat inspired by the question in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/22001/supervisor-request-paper-retraction&quot;&gt;When is a supervisor unable to request paper retraction if a paper gets published without her consent?&lt;/a&gt;, although I've no reason to suppose that the following situation describes the one prompting that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose Alice and Bob do some research together, with Alice providing ~75% of the intellectual contribution (perhaps Alice is Bob's PhD student). Alice writes a draft of the paper, and lists both of them as authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob does not agree with part of what Alice has written, and says he does not agree to the paper being published in this form. Alice, however, is not willing to remove the offending section. (For the sake of argument, let's assume that neither Alice nor Bob can be said to be objectively 'in the right'.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any route out of this impasse? Can Alice treat Bob as refusing authorship of the paper, and publish the manuscript without his name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T17:16:20.873" Title="Co-author blocking publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:07:50.730" Score="8" ViewCount="2652" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the concept of opportunity cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two possible situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I program everything, do the evaluation with a benchmark, tell nobody, write everything and publish alone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I program everything, do the evaluation with a benchmark, write something and publish with four other authors, that mostly write the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your possible questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not going to program, no matter what, so that doesn't help to save any time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing without telling them anything may be perceived in a suspicious way, specially by external reviewers and considering there may be past papers in which I wasn't alone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may also be perceived as if I'm not a good team player, which worries me, as finding a new job may be harder due to this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The order of the authors is alphabetical, and I'm not lucky in that sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are more reputed than me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: the original idea for the paper either comes from me or it comes from someone else. The implementation is always my task. At this very moment I could refine one of those ideas and improve it (the previous version is submitted but not reviewed). I'm very confused about how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PD: I am a postdoc now but I am a PhD in a different institution (I haven't defended my thesis, it's nearly finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-01T11:04:39.220" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T11:04:39.220" Title="Should I publish as sole author and do everything or invite coauthors so that I mostly just do the programming and benchmarking?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22021" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:12:14.933" Score="7" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of a title for my conference paper. In the paper, I define a new term, say &lt;em&gt;Hurble Gurble&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the title shall I use itself or the definition of it, which is 8-9 words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very Good Method to Live in Hurble Gurble Streets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very Good Method to Live in in Streets Where Cats Usually Sleep on the&#xA;  Containers Rather Than Inside&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is more proper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; The term is &lt;em&gt;planarized&lt;/em&gt;, which means points in 3-D are usually grouped on the planes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T17:30:39.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:40:45.687" Title="Should I Use the New Term in the Title Which is Introduced in the Paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22005" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:16:20.873" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several options for Alice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask Bob if he is willing to give up his authorship. Then, if he says&#xA;it is OK, publish without his name (but make clear in which part he was involved). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove Bob's contribution from the paper and then publish. (Which might not be possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find some common ground (maybe with the help of someone else) with Bob and then publish. (The best way, but&#xA;may not be possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not publish the paper at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can Alice treat Bob as refusing authorship of the paper, and publish&#xA;  the manuscript without his name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T17:16:20.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22001" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:36:59.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see three main reasons why a PhD student would require permission from the supervisor to publish a paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the supervisor contributed to the paper enough to deserve authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the supervisor is listed as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because university regulation stipulate that students require permission before publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The supervisor is responsible for ensuring that external obligations are met (e.g. ethical handling of medical data; confidentiality agreements with third parties; etc etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the third reason does not really affect the journal, but only the internal relationship between student and university. If the student lists the university as affiliation, they may demand to change this, but would not really be in a position to demand a retraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the second case applies but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the first, again a correction of the misleading metainformation needs to be done, but this would probably not be grounds for a retraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first case does merit demanding a retraction, but for this it is irrelevant that the objecting co-author is the former PhD supervisor of the publishing co-author. In particular, it would not really matter how exactly the collaboration of the two broke down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fourth case, the missing permission by the supervisor itself would again be irrelevant for the journal. If the objection however is due to say lacking ethics approval for experiments required those, then the latter circumstance would be cause for retraction. Here, too, the details of the relationship between advisee and advisor are irrelevant, only the potential ethics infractions should impact the journal's decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="12047" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T18:47:52.207" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:47:52.207" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22027" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:52:54.317" Score="10" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;Student A had an examination the other day for a course that he liked very much and by a professor that he admires. There were only 4 students in the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the examination he opened his email and saw that another student B sent an email to the professor including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It was a difficult examination.  I hope you will consider this as&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;our&lt;/strong&gt; excuse for leniency. &lt;strong&gt;We all did the examination entirely on our own.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;We&lt;/strong&gt; hope you have nice afternoon and the next month brings you a pleasant surprise just like &lt;strong&gt;we&lt;/strong&gt; expect a pleasant surprise from&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; due soon!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(the bold letters were not bold in the email, I just highlighted them for focusing)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification: The email of Student B to the Professor was CCed to all the other Students, including Student A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was not any prior communication between students A &amp;amp; B about letting student B talk on behalf of student A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the examination participants were just a handful, Student A feels deprived of his right of self-expression, not to mention that having somebody telling to the professor that he wrote the examination on his own can be considered from ridiculous to seriously insulting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think is the right way for student A with respect to his typical relationship with the professor? Is just &quot;letting it go&quot; the best option? Is any kind of &quot;corrective email to the professor denying the representative mentality of Student B&quot;, even in the mildest way overreacting and drawing attention when it is not needed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16120" LastEditorUserId="16120" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T16:28:10.617" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T16:28:10.617" Title="Dealing with emails that could be interpreted as being endorsed by you" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19515" CreationDate="2014-06-05T18:11:42.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some U.S. universities do release electronic copies of transcripts. They treat these as completely official document, and the documents are supposed to contain additional security features, which the recipient can verify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ro.umich.edu/transcript/electronic.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information page&lt;/a&gt; about electronic transcripts from the University of Michigan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are concerned about the electronic copy, you could just ask for a paper copy. It is not in any way unusual in the U.S. to ask applicants to have their university send official paper transcripts by mail directly to the potential employer. The applicant will pay the university a small fee to do this, of course, so many employers only request the official transcripts at later stages of the hiring process, and accept informal copies for the initial stages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="16122" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T18:31:32.927" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:31:32.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T19:21:50.313" Score="25" ViewCount="12520" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an undergraduate, I wasted a ridiculous amount of time due to a combination of being distracted by part-time work, lack of focus, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and just plain being stupid and lazy.  Several times I tried to &quot;get it together&quot; but by then it was too late as my grades were ridiculously low (mostly around 0) and I could never have gotten into grad school anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually I dropped out as I realized I wasn't getting anywhere.  I had a lot of awards from things like programming competitions, so I used that to get some decent jobs.  My intention was that I would work for a few years, clear my head, save up some money, and go back later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, later is here.  After 5-6 years work experience doing mind-numbingly boring menial programming jobs, I applied for and got accepted into a master's program at a fairly respected university.  It's only a 1-year program, but if it goes well I'd definitely consider applying for a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it's very important to me that I do things right this time around, so my main questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a PhD program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I spent the last half a decade mostly doing tasks which required no creativity or deep thought.  Sometimes I feel like my mind is like an ex-boxer who has been sitting on a sofa eating KFC and donuts all day for 5 years.. completely out of shape!  How do I get the gears spinning smoothly again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need a plan for making the transition into &quot;research&quot; mode.  To be honest when I was at university I never paid attention to what any of my friends were doing when they were reading papers so I have no idea how the whole thing works.  e.g. Do I start by making friends with some professors?  Should I volunteer to be a TA?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At what point will I be able to apply for a PhD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Master's degree will be in Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several people have expressed doubts about the legitimacy of a degree program that gives you a 1-year master's degree with no undergraduate degree.  I just want to clarify that it's not some &quot;IT shop under the railway bridge&quot; giving the degree, it is a very respected university.  It's a 1-year degree because masters programs are generally one year in the UK.  Also, I didn't just walk in with nothing.  I demonstrated in my interview that I had knowledge in CS topics, I had a couple published papers, as well as half a dozen international awards from my time as an undergrad, and work experience from top-tier Fortune 100 companies; I just never finished my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15541" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-10-23T20:19:33.147" LastActivityDate="2017-12-09T07:23:08.130" Title="How to start an academic career after 5-6 years in industry, without an undergraduate degree?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21951" CreationDate="2014-06-05T20:17:46.407" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main difference I noticed when I began a math postdoc is that postdocs are expected to act much more independently than graduate students. Math postdocs are viewed as (young but) full members of the research community, not as apprentices. You will need to choose your own goals and set your own deadlines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important change to make quickly is to develop (additional) professional relations with established researchers from other institutions. Some of these relations may turn into research collaborations, but others may just be discussions at conferences that lead to other discussions or to invitations to speak at other conferences or departmental colloquia. Keep in mind that you will need to ask for letters of recommendation when you apply for jobs again, and that others in your field will be reviewing your grant applications when you submit them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of research, as a postdoc you should also expect to always have multiple research projects underway, whereas many grad students only work on their thesis.  You should also aim for projects that have a high chance of giving positive results quickly. Don't spend too long on famous open problems or on results that would take a decade to complete. If you apply to research positions, you will be judged on your productivity in the time since you earned a PhD, and you only have a few years in your postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The &quot;clock&quot;&lt;/em&gt;: in an important sense, your vita begins when you finish your PhD.  If possible, decide what sort of employment you want to have after your postdoc is over. Find well established colleagues you respect who took the path you are interested in, ask them for advice, and try to emulate them.   You want to leave your postdoc with a vita that will make you as competitive as possible for the type of job you plan to apply for. A generic vita is unlikely to be competitive in the current job market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T20:17:46.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22002" CreationDate="2014-06-05T20:44:56.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introduce yourself (briefly), ask for more details of the project, perhaps ask for recommendations for background reading. Other things you might enquire about include the level of support for conferences, opportunities to teach/help supervise students, and the likelihood of follow-on funding (if the advertised position is relatively short). Note that you don't have to ask everything in your first email, and save yourself some questions in case you get called for interview. Attaching a brief CV can't hurt - but don't make me open an attachment to find out where you've studied and who you're currently working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember: writing this email seems important from your perspective. However, the PI probably gets dozens of emails daily, and will barely notice the precise words you use. Don't get too hung up on the content of your message!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would always direct my letter towards the PI, even if it is to be sent to an HR contact for initial processing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T20:44:56.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2014-06-05T20:46:41.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obviously a graduate student in the beginning stages cannot/may not&#xA;  write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is news to me, given my second paper was a review that appeared in a top ranked journal in my field. At the time, I was an &lt;em&gt;undergraduate&lt;/em&gt; student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But how experienced does one need to be before attempting to write&#xA;  reviews? Does authoring a number of papers in the relevant field&#xA;  equips one for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authoring a number of papers can help you develop a reputation, but &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt; a number of papers is how you understand the field as a whole. The process for the literature review chapter of a dissertation and the process for writing a review are very, very similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there is no reason why a graduate student could not write a meta-analysis or systematic review. Indeed, in my graduate program, this was a common first or second paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a graduate student publish a review article? Do acceptance of&#xA;  review article (for publication) depends on the reputation of the&#xA;  author or co-authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, review papers have to be invited, and this can depend on the reputation of a co-author, or an advisor that makes sure it makes its way to an editor's desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T20:46:41.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19799" CreationDate="2014-06-05T21:01:47.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At many U.S. schools, faculty must &quot;apply&quot; to be &quot;graduate faculty&quot; in order to do various things related to graduate education: teach graduate courses, sit on thesis committees, serve as thesis advisors, etc.  The university's official catalog for each year will have a list of these faculty members.  The faculty don't receive anything special (like extra salary) for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is typically a very straightforward &quot;application&quot; consisting of a cover form and a vita that has to be submitted every few years.  From the perspective of faculty, this is just a small bureaucratic thing to take care of every few years. It is essentially invisible to students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone in the graduate college reviews each &quot;application&quot; to make sure that the faculty member meets the necessary criteria. But the goal is typically just to document that the graduate faculty are qualified - which already we know they are when they are hired. So the faculty who &quot;apply&quot; are rarely in doubt about the outcome. Faculty who are removed from graduate faculty status typically have stopped being active in research (e.g. on their way to retirement). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:01:47.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-05T21:09:17.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it is not a good idea to do a whole lot of work on a PhD thesis before taking the PhD program. The reason is because your earlier research/exposition will likely not be up to the PhD standards that you will learn by taking the required courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are some topics that are very data intensive, and if you do a lot of the data &lt;strong&gt;gathering&lt;/strong&gt; before taking the PhD program, and most of the data &quot;processing&quot; and interpretation after you're in the program, that's a different story. Here, the ratio might be 50-50, not the 90-10 that you hypothesized in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:09:17.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22007" CreationDate="2014-06-05T21:12:33.587" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coining a new term in the title of your paper -- while defining it there or not -- is definitely something that you are permitted to do (so it is &quot;proper&quot;, as you ask).  I have seen this thing happen: the first example that sprung (!) to my mind was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Duchin, Moon &lt;em&gt;Curvature, stretchiness, and dynamics&lt;/em&gt;. In the tradition of Ahlfors-Bers. IV, 19–30,&#xA;  Contemp. Math., 432, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[First sentence of the MathReviews description of the paper:] The author introduces stretchiness, a new and interesting notion describing a kind of curvature of a metric space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, not only is this the first use of &quot;stretchiness&quot; in all of MathReviews, it is also the last.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent paper of mine is called &quot;Quadratic reciprocity in abstract number rings&quot;, and you have to read the paper (or at least the abstract) to learn what an abstract number ring is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you should use a new term in the title of the paper is a very subjective and personal choice.  I guess it's no secret that many, many people instinctively roll their eyes a little when they encounter a new word being coined.  (In fact, I this to be an interesting socio-linguistic phenomenon.  But moving on...) Making up your own language can make you look arrogant, overly playful, simply ignorant of existing nomenclature, and so forth.  But the majority of academic terminology was coined by some prior academic within the relatively recent past rather than the mists of prehistory: as new ideas and new objects are created, we need new words for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe -- maybe -- a good rule of thumb for this is that if you don't feel acutely that something would be lost upon removing your new term from the title, then it really doesn't need to be there.  If you introduce the terminology within the paper itself, then you give the community a chance to chew on it, and then others can decide whether full promotion of the new term is a good idea.  In fact, if I apply this standard to my own paper above, I am coming around to the idea that the title could be changed.  The &lt;em&gt;concept&lt;/em&gt; of an &quot;abstract number ring&quot; is not as important to me now as it was when I first started writing the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is good or bad in your particular case seems impossible to answer without (i) seeing the title of your paper and (ii) having some real expertise and wisdom in the subject area of your paper.  I would suggest that you find someone who satisfies (ii) -- e.g. a current or former advisor or mentor -- and show them your paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T15:40:45.687" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:40:45.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22003" CreationDate="2014-06-05T21:43:29.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clear from your recent questions that you feel exploited in your lab, and it is good that you want to do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, first things first. What is your agreement with your current mentor / lab head / whoever? Essentially, what is your &quot;job&quot;? If you have been specifically hired to &quot;help out with the programming&quot;, or something like that, it will be difficult to convince whoever is paying your salary that you now actually would like to do something different. Not impossible, but maybe also not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have actually been hired to do research, but now end up being more of a scientific programmer because that's what the lab currently needs, it is time for a good one-on-one meeting with your lab head. You wrote in a comment that you do not foresee this going well, but I really see no way how you can change your situation without talking about it very explicitly to your lab head. It should be easy to see for most sane persons that not only your lab has needs, but you and your career have needs as well (and working as a scientific programmer can easily be a dead end for an academic career - no first-authored publications, no faculty job). Try to make a plan for a suitable compromise between you helping out the lab with your programming skills, will still being able to progress your own career. Should your lab head really not be willing to compromise at all, it may be time to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible compromises could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring an actual scientific programmer, perhaps with funding that you help acquiring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You training some of the junior staff to do their own programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You helping others in their programming problems, but ultimately let them do the majority of it themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You supervising some undergrad or master students that can help out with programming tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that they appreciate more (because they are their own PhD students and now postdocs, it's emotionally logical, I'd say)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not logical, that's BS. A lab where people &quot;coming from the outside&quot; are valued less than those that &quot;have always been there&quot; is a terrible, toxic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T21:43:29.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22026" CreationDate="2014-06-05T22:08:48.910" Score="32" ViewCount="1843" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I did my PhD, typically two PhD students shared an office room. In constrast, where I am working as a postdoc now, about 50 PhDs and postdocs share an open-plan office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it difficult to concentrate in the latter kind of arrangement because of the noise. Some people use head/earphones, but I guess not everyone likes to listen to music while working. I am wondering if this is a common arrangement in academia. My guess is that while it might work elsewhere, the nature of academic research precludes an open-plan type of office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, is it appropriate to ask my supervisor for a room or a smaller/quieter space to work in? I don't think I would ask, though, because everybody else seems to be fairly content, but I'm just wondering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T22:28:54.283" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T04:58:19.550" Title="Is open-plan office for academia at all?" Tags="&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22004" CreationDate="2014-06-05T22:11:15.943" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the department is 'on the hook' to do more than just vouch for you (whatever that means). Sit down with your advisor and the graduate supervisor. Work with them to identify programs which would be a good match for your research plans and with which they or other department members have strong ties. They should be working their networks to help you transfer as easily as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're only a year in, you might also want to think about whether you want to cleanly start over at the new university--retake any classes, etc. as opposed to trying to get credit for any classes you passed in your current program. Were you accepted to other programs before? See if one of those are still a good match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you want to move for various reasons, and you may not want to do anything with the person who harassed you. However, if that person is not getting punished, counseled, or something, the problem is likely to recur with someone else. Ask the department to do something, if only to require the person to undergo a psychological evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T22:11:15.943" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T22:18:45.077" Score="4" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in becoming an academic.  Rather, I'm interested in opportunities for a Computer Science (or related) major to work in research, either in industry, but also particularly in academia, and particularly in fields where CS skills/knowledge could be applied to social sciences (or cognitive science). This includes anywhere from simply being a programmer that happens to work in a research setting to doing actual dirty work with computational modeling that may even require some domain knowledge of the topic at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I don't really know what sorts of opportunities exist out there and how to get to those opportunities.  I'm not opposed to getting a graduate (master's) degree in a specific field, getting research experience, and developing broad expertise around a subject area.  In fact, that could be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I get the impression that in academia, you center your research around highly specific areas and that becomes your life.  To be honest, there is not one highly specific area of interest that I have (at least not yet) where I would be passionate enough to dedicate and invest such a huge portion of my life towards studying and researching, not to mention I don't want to tie myself down to any specific subject nor the poor job market of academia (sucks, I know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more interested in breadth and the ability to work on interesting projects.  Part of the reason I went into Computer Science was because of how applicable it was to many fields.  While I find Computer Science and programming to be incredibly engaging, my heart truly lies in the study of people, and it would be a dream to merge the two worlds together.  In some sense, you could say I would love to work in academia without becoming a full-out-academic, by leveraging my background into another field.  &lt;em&gt;But I would like to make it a viable career path.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A random list of subjects/areas/words to capture my interests: cognitive science, computational models of narratives/belief/reasoning, agent-based modeling, complex systems, social network analysis, human computer interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a field like bioinformatics or computational biology is pretty huge, and I've often read about ways to enter those fields (e.g. be a CS person who enters from the outside and picks up the biology knowledge as they go along, or someone who has done biology research their whole career and is now learning and picking up CS/programming skills to assist their research).  I'm interested in opportunities to be more of the former, for the reasons I have outlined above.  Though I would say, the more I can wet my feet into the domain area, the more preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What paths can I take?  What are some emerging fields?  What jobs exist and in what numbers?  How can I get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16131" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T12:53:36.330" LastActivityDate="2021-04-16T13:32:07.970" Title="How can I apply a Computer Science degree towards a career in a research-related position of another field?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;psychology&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2014-06-05T23:09:12.017" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although a 50 person office is larger than I have seen, open plan and shared offices are not uncommon in academia especially for graduate students and post docs. For individuals with teaching and supervisory responsibilities, open plan offices become less practical due to the need for privacy. The advantage of shared offices is that they help to foster interactions. Of course you can just leave your office door open, but many departments you can walk down the hall and all the doors are shut and you rarely get to interact with colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for asking for a different office, it cannot hurt to ask. In one group I used to work in there was a 15+ person office with two small 1 person offices for hot desking at. It might be possible to wall off an area for hot desking. The idea behind hot desking is that multiple people can share a one person office since you will not need a quite office all the time. With networked computers or laptops it doesn't really matter what desk you are sitting at. This way you can setup small offices for dedicated tasks (e.g., reading, writing, and programming). Groups that spend a lot of time in a wet lab or a clinic often benefit from hot desking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't ask, then people will not know how to make the work environment better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T23:26:09.473" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T23:26:09.473" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2014-06-05T23:40:58.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a class of only 4 students, the email could be interpreted as being sent by the entire class. Normally in this case, the names of the 4 students would be listed in the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a larger class where it is obvious that the email is form an isolated student the best thing to do is to drop it. Making an off hand comment about how crazy the student who sent the email will only put the professor in an awkward situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a small class, a simple email, ideally just to the professor, but reasonably cc'd to everyone, would be to say that student B does not speak for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T23:40:58.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-05T23:44:18.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Out of my ~12 publications (spanning statistics, and applications of statistics in economics, psychology, sociology), I vividly recall at least two being rewritten in the publishing house from LaTeX into Word, with an innumerable typos, mistakes, etc. that I had to weed out comparing their proofs to my beautiful PDFs. There may have been more than two that were retyped into something else, actually, but these two were obvious downgrades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T23:44:18.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22006" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:33:33.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had discussion with several well-known professors with experience (30+ years in research) about this sort of thing, how did they list authorship in their early papers where they were the less well known authors. I started publishing only several years ago, so I will give their opinion (which I agree with I should add). &lt;em&gt;Their response was the same across the board&lt;/em&gt;: the person who did most of the work they ought simply list themselves as first author when writing the paper and if the coauthors ask them about it, then they just discuss their concern with their coauthors honestly. If your coauthors are real scientists (regardless of whether they are more well known than you), and if your claim is true, they will agree with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your coauthors are administrators mostly, and it's convention in your field and location, that they are added to your paper and listed ahead of you, consider working elsewhere, otherwise the problem cannot be solved in that environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another option: publish with them according to whatever convention is appropriate, and if you did not get listed as first author when you did actually most of the work, then at the same time also extend the work (&gt;40% different material) on your own and publish a second paper in another journal as single author, covering both new and old material. (This is how you also find out who the major contributing author was on a particular work, where there are both team and individual papers at once.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first solution minimizes opportunity cost; the last solution requires more time and hassle for you, but you don't forgo anything academically, only some time writing a second paper and doing a bit more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15282" LastEditorDisplayName="user15282" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T00:39:52.387" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T00:39:52.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22025" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:46:05.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I merely skimmed through your post, but from the title already I find the answer to be straightforward and very interesting. As a CS student and having done plenty of research, I feel that CS is a great field but other fields are equally interesting. CS will allow you to inject yourself into more or less anything you like. The simplest example is simulation, even though physicists and other specialists are usually hired to automate all the formulas and programmers merely implement, you could easily have those specialists show you everything you apply and have them explain it to you. Then you just go on to simulate something else and pick up knowledge from another field. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even more obscure and theoretical things can use CS, a simple example is artificial speech, combine it with AI and you could get into interesting concepts. However simulation also could apply, with some more difficulty, to sociology.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I find that game programming is a field that allows one to get into anything he likes, loop up the term &lt;i&gt;serious games&lt;/i&gt;, they are games that are made for training professionals and are often used by the army or corporations. Try some out and see what skills are needed from non computer related specialists to get an idea.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As for getting masters degrees and such, you can go for many different ones that combine sciences, creating a chain between them. You do not necessarily need to specialize, if you invest serious time and effort you could prove to the world that you specialize in just applying CS to anything. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;About Job opportunities, often it is helpful to create your own, you can find people interested in a specific area that are willing to help you out and start up your own project, this will help in more than one ways, first is that you might actually get something good out of it and eventually make a living from the project, second is you get hands-on experience which goes straight to the CV and proving you are serious about this, and third is that this may well attract academics and professionals to call you in for collaboration. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;I personally have more or less the same problem, I am mostly into CS, am aiming for game development, but I am immensely fascinated by economics, forensics, chemistry, engines, history, even shipbuilding, so I have started making my own games. It has payed off very fast, I get to become a microsoft student partner in October while I have had a proposition from a professional to collaborate - even though on a small project. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Finally, you can fill in your spare time with online courses, I picked up forensic science on Coursera, from the university of Singapore, it takes little time, I've learned many things from different fields and it shows you're more into learning tons of stuff than just getting something satisfying and then lying around. A master of course is worth a thousand of these as the rest of the community here told me, but it's fast, fun, effective, and it's worth something.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hope I helped, sorry for the length of the text, felt that it was necessary to cover your questions and show as much as possible of the immense flexibility imaginative people have with CS. Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T00:46:05.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19996" CreationDate="2014-06-06T01:02:27.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the question is written from the perspective that the conference is somehow an independent entity from the sponsoring organization. But that feels somewhat ahistorical to me. To have a concrete example, consider a society I am a member of: the &lt;a href=&quot;https://aslonline.org/info-about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association for Symbolic Logic&lt;/a&gt;, founded in 1936. According to their web site, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Association for Symbolic Logic is an international organization supporting research and critical studies in logic. Its primary function is to provide an effective forum for the presentation, publication, and critical discussion of scholarly work in this area of inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are societies much older, and much younger, but presumably each was founded by a group of individuals who agreed that a common organization would help their goals in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conferences organized by these societies are &quot;meetings&quot; in the genuine (non-academic) sense: they are an arranged time and location for members of the society to gather and confer, like a family reunion. The conferences are arranged by committees from the society, rather than by independent organizers, and the general expectation (and reality) is that the majority of attendees are members of the society.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These conferences are not like a car show where the goal is to draw in a large group of otherwise unknown people.  The conferences are usually open to the public (with registration), but the general public is not the main audience - the members are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the bullet points in the question go astray, in my opinion: they assume that the main goal of the conference is to attract non-members to attend, when in reality the conferences were created to advance the purposes of the society and provide the society members an opportunity to confer and present their work. If an insufficient number of researchers thought that was worth the membership fee, the society &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; its conferences would disappear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="16122" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T01:08:13.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T01:08:13.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22033" CreationDate="2014-06-06T04:00:29.740" Score="10" ViewCount="14823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now in the middle of my master's degree and I plan to graduate in August 2015. I currently study in Germany and for most engineering students here it is common to finish the five-year program (3 or 3.5 years for the bachelor's degree and 1.5 to 2 years for the master's). I'm thinking about applying for robotics PhD programs at different US universities but I noticed that most of them have a deadline in December for programs starting 9 months later. I don't have any publications in any international journals because in Germany this is mostly done by PhD students. But I have worked a lot during my studies (1 year internship, part-time research in university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to lose one year waiting to start my PhD but in the same time I think that my master thesis will be a great asset while applying for such a program, especially when I will be willing to continue my research and PhD thesis in the same field as my master thesis. Do you think I should take the GRE and apply for next December or wait until getting my master's degree? And how this would influence the selection process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14662" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T04:28:53.167" LastActivityDate="2020-02-17T12:03:40.480" Title="Apply for PhD before finishing my Master's degree" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22032" CreationDate="2014-06-06T04:32:44.793" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a big deal for you not to have publications—remember, many of your peers also will not have published anything, either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it's important to note that in the US, most of the applicants for graduate school do so in the fall of their &lt;em&gt;fourth&lt;/em&gt; year of studies—which would, contentwise, typically line up with the &lt;em&gt;third&lt;/em&gt; year (or sometimes even second year!) of study in a German program. So, in many ways, you're already much more experienced than your counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in doing this, I would recommend that you just go ahead and apply. The worst that can possibly happen is that you're not accepted, in which case you find another means of achieving your goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T04:32:44.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21663" CreationDate="2014-06-06T04:49:17.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bibliographical entry allows readers to unambiguously identify and locate the work you mention. (Which they must be able to do if they would like to verify your claims about this work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T04:49:17.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22038" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:28:24.793" Score="11" ViewCount="1262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to a include a table which contains the basic characteristics of study participants. However, in a related previous publication that dealt with a different hypothesis, the table was published. The present submission deals with the same study population but a different study than previous one. I need to give the basic clinical characteristics of the study population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it be appropriate if I just cite the previous publication in the table title?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will that prevent me from getting accused of self-plagiarism? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15993" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T19:54:38.540" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T19:54:38.540" Title="Is it plagiarism to publish a table that was published earlier in a different journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;tables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22006" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:33:35.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is straight foward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the original idea was from somebody else and the implementation is yours, publish the paper with the people who had the original idea. Of course, you'll be one of the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both the idea and the implementation are yours, publish the paper as you are the sole author. Pure and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:33:35.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:56:39.490" Score="4" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add some description of a technology (Node.js = server-side JavaScript) in my thesis. The description is about what exactly this technology is, how it works, what it can do etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use Node.js Wikipedia page, a blog page, one of my supervisor's lectures for gathering information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I cite these sources, given the fact that they say pretty much the same things and these things are just observations, not scientific contribution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15987" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T08:00:21.297" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T08:00:21.297" Title="Should I cite sources about a technology description?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22035" CreationDate="2014-06-06T09:12:10.747" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you deal with the same study population means that you have the right to show information about the population just as much as in both studies. To cite the other study, particularly the table, is perfectly fine. But, if the table is key to the paper, for example, in the methods section, it seems more appropriate to include the information in your new paper. It is also perfectly fine to reproduce the table just as you can reproduce a figure from another paper but then the table might include or lack information that is superfluous or needed, respectively in your new study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore suggest that you create your own table and format it to suit your purpose best. You should also cite the other study and state that your new study is based on the same study participants as the previous study and then also refer to both tables to indicate the kinship. That way it is obvious that you are not trying to conceal that the tables contain the same information but that the information is key for both studies. It should be clear to the reader that there is a common basis for the two studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T09:12:10.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22037" CreationDate="2014-06-06T10:02:00.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If something can be deemed common knowledge in your field there should be no need to cite it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://integrity.mit.edu/citing-your-sources/what-common-knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIT&lt;/a&gt; define common knowledge as;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, common knowledge refers to information that the average, educated reader would accept as reliable without having to look it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is further detail on that link about Common Knowledge and it's applications. They also say that there best advice is: 'When in doubt, cite your source.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said if you are taking something verbatim from a source you should cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just on your sources; in academia you tend to shy away from citing from wikipedia etc. You can see a discussion on that issue at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7768/how-should-i-cite-something-learned-second-hand-eg-from-wikipedia-when-i-have&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T10:02:00.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T10:09:18.553" Score="14" ViewCount="68531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted my paper to a engineering journal. It underwent a major revision and then a minor revision. The minor revision was some grammatical stuff. Now it is in the &quot;Awaiting Editors Decision&quot; mode for the past one week. I am sort of tensed about it. What does this mode mean for a journal review process in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16146" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T10:30:06.337" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T07:43:15.927" Title="&quot;Awaiting Editors Decision&quot; what could it mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-02-03T13:03:50.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22040" CreationDate="2014-06-06T10:28:40.097" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you submit your revised manuscript the editor handling your manuscript will look through your revisions to assess if they are satisfactory. Since revisions were in response to a minor revisions verdict, it seems likely that the next step would be accept unless the revisions were not satisfactory, in which case additional revisions might be necessary. In any case, the editor is now assessing your manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write that the paper has been in this mode for a week. For any normal journal and thereby workload of their editors, you should not expect any change in status within such a short period. In &quot;my&quot; journal editors have three weeks to reach a decision on how the process should proceed. If the status remains for longer than, say, 3-4 weeks, you can start to consider contacting the journal and ask about its faith. But, please check if the journal has any specific time limits for their processes. Some do, some don't. The bottom line is that you are premature to worry at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As Strongbad points out in a comment the term &quot;Awaiting Editors Decision&quot; strictly indicates that the paper has passed reviewers. this is indeed the general case,  also in &quot;my&quot; journal. So in your case, the signal is, as I was, albeit not as clear as I intended, aiming at above, that no additional review is necessary and the editor is assessing the paper for submitting the final verdict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T11:43:40.060" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T11:43:40.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:33:25.457" Score="20" ViewCount="3743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a master thesis which went quite bad, due to communication problems with advisor, and my advisor said he is not willing to continue guiding me for PhD studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I was asked to prove that the elementary theory of finite field is decidable, and I had no background on model theory. I had difficulty understanding, for example, the proofs of Riemann hypothesis for curves and Chebotarev's theorem. As such, I made mistakes when I wrote the thesis. It felt like the subject is too large for one thesis so I was unable to fill some details in some proofs. When I asked for guidance for some of the proofs, he did provide assistance, but only after six months time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have studied math on my own and I know that I am able to understand math by working on my own. Is there any hope for my math career if my thesis advisor said so? I have done couple of small new proofs for some old results, but they are so small that I guess I won't get a publication to any journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="communication problems" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T14:11:35.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:33:15.703" Title="Is my career over if thesis went bad?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2014-06-06T11:13:44.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many mentioned already, yes, there are journals that would not take LaTeX submissions. Even if they take PDF submissions, they will sometimes redo the type-setting and create ugly final equations and texts (e.g. Journal of Neuroscience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that should not be the reason to not use LaTeX. You can always convert it to RTF or DOC format. &lt;code&gt;latex2rtf -M12&lt;/code&gt; usually does the trick (there are other solutions, too). It converts equations to bitmap (png) images, so they can't edit the equations, but the text is editable. If your advisor wants to give you feedback using 'Track changes' in MS word, that's great. It's usually much better than directly getting the modified TeX file, actually. So you get the best of both worlds: beautiful typesetting of the final product, and easy to track text changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: use LaTex and convert to other formats if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T11:13:44.490" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22037" CreationDate="2014-06-06T12:47:39.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Add a footnote&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supplementary information that isn't required for your thesis, but for some readers might be useful for understanding the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't realy a citation - most likely you aren't using Node.js documentation as a &lt;em&gt;direct source&lt;/em&gt; for something that you are writing there, unless you're comparing details of some API descriptions. You probably are using a part of node.js technology, and the reference is to extra information about that part, for people who don't know a prerequisite. So it's something where using a footnote would be the most appropriate way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T12:47:39.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22037" CreationDate="2014-06-06T14:07:05.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the same as citing any other software; you would follow the standard guidelines for such citations. APA guidelines follow, from &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Purdue website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Computer Software/Downloaded Software&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not cite standard office software (e.g. Word, Excel) or programming languages. Provide references only for specialized software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ludwig, T. (2002). PsychInquiry [computer software]. New York: Worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software that is downloaded from a Web site should provide the software’s version and year when available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hayes, B., Tesar, B., &amp;amp; Zuraw, K. (2003). OTSoft: Optimality Theory Software (Version 2.1) [Software]. Available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, you should check with your journal to see whether they have any specific formatting requirements/require any other specific information for such  citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:07:05.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22049" CreationDate="2014-06-06T14:08:10.097" Score="1" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, and especially for the IEEE conferences, it is easy to know whether a conference is good or not. For example, top-tier, second-tier and third-tier conferences are known and agreed upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the IEEE ICC (1st tier) conference is better than IEEE Globecom (2nd tier). My question is, how to define the tiers for the OSA meetings and conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anyone familiar with the OSA meetings and conferences who can shed the light on how to interpret the acceptance in an OSA conference? What tier does an OSA conference belong to? How to know it, etc....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly note that I am not asking if the acceptance as a poster, or even a talk is prestigious. I am strictly interested in the classification of the meeting and conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a poster acceptance is less than being accepted for a talk, and that it is merely for discussions and feedback on new or emerging research topics. However, I believe that a poster presentation in a top tier, is better than a poster presentation in a second tier, therefore, I am asking about the OSA meetings and conference classifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15936" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T03:46:45.220" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T03:46:45.220" Title="How prestigious are the meetings of the Optical Society of America (OSA)?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;professional-association&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-06T14:22:31.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a&#xA;  PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are that it will. Your situation is uncommon, you will need to convince that your industry experience and your 1-year Master program* are somehow equivalent to a full undergraduate degree. You will be in competition with younger candidates who have a more traditional background, and a good grade record. This is not at your advantage. Note that some graduate schools/universities will simply not consider your application without an undergraduate degree, even if you found a professor willing to mentor you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I spent the last half a decade mostly doing tasks which required no&#xA;  creativity or deep thought. Sometimes I feel like my mind is like an&#xA;  ex-boxer who has been sitting on a sofa eating KFC and donuts all day&#xA;  for 5 years.. completely out of shape! How do I get the gears spinning&#xA;  smoothly again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have a too critical view of your work, it's unlikely that your everyday coding routine didn't include a bit of creativity. Even if you didn't recognize it as such. Plus, you probably have been in contact with software or techniques that are original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you're gym analogy is correct, practice is important. I would suggest to read papers (start with the most cited or most downloaded ones of the reputable journals in your field). Try to theorize the algorithm you would write to address or compete with the one presented, and maybe try to code some prototypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need a plan for making the transition into &quot;research&quot; mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at these: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17781/why-do-many-talented-scientists-write-horrible-software/17788#17788&quot;&gt;Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21276/best-practice-models-for-research-code/21287#21287&quot;&gt;Best-practice models for &amp;quot;research&amp;quot; code?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;They are full of excellent information about the difference between coding a commercial product and being a computer scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I start by making friends with some professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not how you start, but it might happened along the way. More seriously, meeting professors during your Masters is an excellent idea. You will need to understand who's doing what and how you could be a part of it. If a professor knows you and is interested in your skills, it's going to be helpful, but &lt;em&gt;it might not be enough&lt;/em&gt; (see above). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I volunteer to be a TA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching and administrative work will come by themselves soon enough, should you be accepted in a graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what point will I be able to apply for a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends of many factors, but having some sort of degree is certainly the first step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &#xA;*In fact, an institution that gives Master degrees, in 1 year, to people without a bachelor would probably not be highly regarded by reputable graduate programs.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T22:16:19.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22047" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:07:03.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK for disciplines related to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osa.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Optical Society of America&lt;/a&gt; (which is a well-recognized organization), the most prestigious things are journals - either by it (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josaa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JOSA A&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josab/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JOSA B&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Optics Express&lt;/a&gt;) or not (e.g. general physics or general science journals). When it comes to conference, its importance is related only to speakers/participants (so there is no general rule).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, a poster presentation is never prestigious, be it by OSA or not (usually almost everything gets accepted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask that not every field have well-defined tiers for conferences. For example in mine, there isn't. And if you care for prestige - if you can't tell the difference - the chances are people seeing you CV won't be able to tell the difference either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually review of abstracts (especially if no feedback is given) is to decide which things are suitable for talks (the best), posters (almost all others), and which - neither (they make no sense, are on another topic, of very poor quality or are OK but there is limited space for posters for some reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T17:34:20.057" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T17:34:20.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:25:50.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit surprised that a good school accepted you into an MS program, much less a 1-year MS program, without a bachelors degree.  These days, some schools use their MS program as a cash cow, and the value of such programs is limited, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a PhD program?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily ... if you do interesting work in your MS.  This will require not only good grades but, ideally, an MS thesis or very serious project, even more ideally ending up in a publication.  The problem is that with a 1-year MS, you will have no time to do anything but take required courses, and good grades in courses plus a mediocre industry experience and no BS will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; make you a very appealing PhD candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I spent the last half a decade mostly doing tasks which required no creativity or deep thought...How do I get the gears spinning smoothly again?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do an MS thesis as part of your degree.  Write some papers and impress your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Do I start by making friends with some professors? Should I volunteer to be a TA? At what point will I be able to apply for a PhD?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should make &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; friends with some professors (taking them to a ball game will not get you far).  There are several ways to do this:  take a particularly challenging course and be the top student or even less than the top student but demonstrate some unusual positive quality; do an interesting thesis that results in publications in &lt;em&gt;respected&lt;/em&gt; venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volunteering as a TA will help you expand your knowledge and experience with course material, but it will not, in itself, do much to help you get into a PhD program.  PhD programs at good schools are extremely competitive, and to get into one you have to demonstrate skills that others do not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I would qualify your ability to survive at a mind-numbing job for 5-6 years as one of those skills.  In research, perseverance is no less important than intelligence - I've seen very bright students leave a PhD program because their research wasn't advancing and they were sick of trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:25:50.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22006" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:33:13.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can relate to your question. I've also works in projects where I'm the person doing all the programming/implementation. Actually, in some of those cases the people in question don't even want to work on the paper, so I guess you are doing better with your people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that one issue to keep in mind is that an active collaboration, assuming the other people are in there with you, is helpful, because it helps keep one focused. I don't know if you have experience working on a project alone, but it can get pretty lonely. And working on an applied research project which requires both writing a paper and an implementation is a lot of work, usually over a long period of time, and it can be hard to keep focus. If you have actual reasonable collaborators (even if they don't do programming) as opposed to people who just want to put their name on your paper, they can definitely help to keep you focused, so in theory in can be an easier, faster, more pleasant process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think that if both (a) much of the ideas come from you, and (b) you are doing the entire implementation, then you should be first/main author, so you should try to find some way to be recognized as such. Some journals now require a section where the author contributions are listed. Even if they don't require it, perhaps you could add one? Just a thought. This could help to emphasize that the bulk of the work is yours, if that is indeed the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:33:13.417" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22042" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:33:15.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to switch to a different advisor or even a comparable school when your thesis goes bad.  This is because the first question a potential advisor would ask is what happened with your old advisor ... if both you and the advisor don't have a reasonable answer to that, you will have a very hard time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could try working for a year or two and then returning to PhD studies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could try switching to a different area.  There are lots of areas where a student with good mathematics abilities could find interesting problems (economics, computer science, physics, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch to a less respectable school that might be willing to take a gamble on an unknown student with a good background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, one of the most important decisions a student can make in his/her graduate career is an advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:33:15.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T17:17:32.657" Score="19" ViewCount="1343" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mathematics department apparently gets pressured by the university to have more people take courses during the summer.  We are also encouraged to take on TA responsibilities to make extra cash during the summer which is great.... except that they have this rule that if we want to teach/grade (or do any paid work during the summer) we have to enroll  in courses.  The options are slim and so is the stipend; I'm a grad student currently trying to prepare for my final prelim exam and do some research during the summer; I'd like to make a little extra cash.... but I crunched the numbers and it looks like I'll net about $600 for an entire summer, not exactly a living wage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also add that our department (mathematics) brings more funds (in course work and its associated tuition) than any other department (I'm sure biology/chemistry pulls more in research grants), .... so it seems very tawdry of them to &quot;get money back&quot; by forcing us to enroll in classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: &lt;strong&gt;Is this normal?&lt;/strong&gt;  I've spoken with some of my professors and they said it is not; but just curious what this community has to say and if this is ethical or are there any statistics on this sort of thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8084" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T12:49:48.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T22:11:50.113" Title="Is it normal for math grad students to be required to take summer classes to work?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T17:57:58.270" Score="2" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in industry and am also attending a major U.S. university to get another master's degree, this one in Applied Math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I entered the program, the department offered a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree for Applied Math. This year, the department made a change to Master of Science (M.S.); any new students coming in Fall 2014 will be M.S. students, and any current students will be given the option of switching their degree from M.A. to M.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I make the switch from M.A. to M.S.? I already have a M.S. degree in engineering. In my opinion, all other things equal, M.S. is considered more rigorous from an employer's perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14759" LastEditorUserId="14759" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T21:00:31.937" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T21:00:31.937" Title="Should I switch from an M.A. to an M.S. program if my department allows me to choose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22055" CreationDate="2014-06-06T18:20:54.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I believe your assessment is correct—for scientific disciplines where both an MA and MS are possible, the MS degree is usually regarded as more rigorous than the corresponding MA degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, whether &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; should switch is a matter that requires some thought. Does the change require you to complete more courses? Will there be any impact on your expected graduation date, and the cost of getting the degree? If not, then I would definitely switch. (Moreover, since you already have an MS in engineering, there's no point in getting an MA afterwards. If you didn't have a master's, you'd need to figure out the relative advantage of finishing faster versus the more rigorous degree.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T18:20:54.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21965" CreationDate="2014-06-06T19:46:41.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do it, make sure the kids who have B's have the same opportunities. They probably care more about their grades, and would more ambitiously take the opportunity to do something dumb for the A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16161" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T19:46:41.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22059" CreationDate="2014-06-06T19:54:07.997" Score="6" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;How hard is it to adapt to post-graduate studies after an academic pause of 16 years working in sort of relevant industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated back in 1998 with B.Eng. in computer engineering, worked for 16 years in IT related jobs, and decided to go back to school this fall (2014).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it hard to be ready after such long academic pause? &#xA;Any particular skills I should work on while waiting for the program to start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16160" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T21:51:12.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T07:58:29.127" Title="M.Sc. after long 16 years in industry" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-06T20:04:52.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated back in 1984 with a BSc in Computer Science. Went back for a MSc by research 25 years later, in 2009. Finished that in 2011, and now I'm doing my PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will you be doing an MSc by research? If you're the sort of person who likes learning things on your own, I'm sure you'll find it easy enough to adjust. Reading scientific papers is a skill that takes a while to learn. (Writing them, even more so!) You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; to search for papers in the are you're interested in. (Many articles will be behind paywalls, so you probably can't access them until you start, but many articles will be freely available.) Expect it to be tough going at first, so don't get discouraged. Also, I hope you like (or at least don't mind) writing, because in many fields an MSc thesis involves a lot of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing an MSc by coursework, I don't have too much advice to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your experience in industry will help you a lot. You'll probably have more resiliency than your fellow students, due to your life experience. This will help you deal with stress. You'll probably find that teachers and students are asking for your real-world perspective, which is great for your self-confidence. Also, you probably have a very clear idea of why you're doing an MSc, which will help you stay focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="10529" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T20:13:27.707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T20:13:27.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-06T21:16:27.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you simply start with BSc studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know the stuff, you can do it quickly. Don't waste time with the lectures — just self-study and take exams. It does not need to take that long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you don't know it, then it will be very important to study it properly before starting your MSc &amp;amp; PhD studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T21:16:27.623" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-06T21:41:36.240" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many places (e.g., here in Finland) the following two things are largely independent from each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doctoral student status (i.e., being enrolled as a doctoral student). You have got the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; to take courses, there is a professor who is willing to &lt;strong&gt;advise&lt;/strong&gt; you, etc. There are of course high expectations but very few formal obligations — you are your own boss and you can do whatever you want, at your own pace.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A job as a doctoral student or a similar position (i.e., having a working contract with the university). You receive &lt;strong&gt;salary&lt;/strong&gt;, and you are also expected to do something in return. Formally, your advisor is your &lt;strong&gt;boss&lt;/strong&gt; and tells you what to do during your working hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course 2 usually implies 1. However, it is perfectly well possible to take 1 without 2. In that case you can get your salary from whatever source you want. Typical examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working part time elsewhere and doing your studies part time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working full time elsewhere and doing your studies part time (and having no free time or holidays)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working full time in a job that somehow also supports your PhD studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting a personal research grant and doing your studies full time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not recommend this for a typical student, but in atypical cases all of these are possible. And yes, you can certainly defend your thesis as soon as you, your advisor, your university, and the external reviewers are happy with it (whether you finished it 6 monts or 6 years after formally starting your studies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T21:41:36.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2014-06-06T22:23:17.800" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of research showing that open-plan offices are a very bad idea, not just in academia but everywhere (see below for some examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, they are also much cheaper than proper offices (mainly because you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/national/how-many-workers-can-you-fit-in-an-office-20091130-k176.html&quot;&gt;pack people much more densely&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Danielsson et al. (2014): &quot;Office design's impact on sick leave rates&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Ergonomics&lt;/em&gt; 57(2), doi:&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064&quot;&gt;10.1080/00140139.2013.871064&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cumulative evidence thus indicates that traditional open-plan offices are less good for employee health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oommen et al. (2008): &quot;Should Health Service Managers Embrace Open Plan Work Environments?: A Review&quot; &lt;em&gt;Asia Pacific Journal of Health Management&lt;/em&gt; 3(2), 37-43:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research evidence shows that employees face a multitude of problems such as the loss of privacy, loss of identity, low work productivity, various health issues, overstimulation and low job satisfaction when working in an open plan work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastEditorUserId="351" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T22:43:00.550" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T22:43:00.550" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22032" CreationDate="2014-06-07T02:12:17.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US in many fields, it is common to go directly for the PhD. So by all means hurry up! The fact you are in a master is a plus. The only potentially negative thing I can imagine is if your current supervisor or the other professors might feel afraid you will not complete the masters or will not put as much effort after being accepted into a PhD and as a result they may not write enthusiastic letters of recommendation. Side comment: Europeans tend to write lukewarm recommendation letters (probably more realistic), they don't understand that can hurt the applicant a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6556" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T02:12:17.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-07T03:01:34.810" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a current PhD student, my advice is to first ask yourself several questions before you decide that you want to apply to do a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;First, why do you want to apply for a PhD program?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some, the PhD is a stepping stone to a tenure-track job in academia.&#xA;For others, the PhD is seen as a mind-enriching experience, even though the student wants to work in industry.&#xA;For some industrial research jobs, having a PhD in a related field is a requirement before they will even consider hiring you for that job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Second, what level of PhD program are you willing to accept?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also different levels of PhD programs.&#xA;If you want to get into a good PhD program (MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc),&#xA;you could take a look at current students of those programs and look at their CVs.&#xA;Usually, these students would have graduated from a top school with a good GPA,&#xA;and have had some undergrad research experience and maybe even a publication or two.&#xA;If you want to get a job in academia, you usually would have to graduate from a good PhD program.&#xA;If you only want to do a PhD to get a job in academia,&#xA;it may not be worth your while to get a PhD from a less reputable school.&#xA;However, this is a personal decision based on what is important to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Finally, are you both competent and interested in doing research in computer science?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way that most people realize that they want to do research&#xA;is that they have some sort of undergraduate research experience,&#xA;or maybe even do a Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that you would want to get into a good PhD program in computer science,&#xA;you should first get a BSc in a good school,&#xA;and try to obtain some research experience while you are studying&#xA;in order to get a feel for what research is like and whether you are able to do it and whether you really like it.&#xA;I think that getting a BSc in a good school would probably be helpful in your career development&#xA;even if you decide not to get a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you make your own decisions and deal with the consequences.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In response to OP's edits&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You didn't mention in your original question that you had several published papers.&#xA;If you have some research experience and published papers, that definitely helps your PhD application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't have personal experience being on an admission committee.&#xA;If you were able to meet someone on the admission committee of a university PhD program which you were interested in,&#xA;you could ask him/her how they would evaluate your application.&#xA;Since it is very rare for a PhD student not to have a BSc,&#xA;I don't know how open they would be to accepting you as a student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could you go back to the university which you dropped out of and finish of your degree in a year or two, by just completing missing requirements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From what I understand, most master's degrees are based on course-work, and have no research component.&#xA;In that case, doing an MSc may not prepare you to do research as a PhD student.&#xA;On the other hand, if you were able to do a perhaps 2-year MSc which includes research with an adviser/supervisor,&#xA;this could be a great stepping stone into a good PhD program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T15:10:50.020" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22070" CreationDate="2014-06-07T03:29:38.447" Score="5" ViewCount="1195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started writing my thesis ( just yesterday:) ). My advisor asked me to submit it in one or two months. Now am wondering should I start applying for jobs at this time period. I plan to talk about this with my advisor. But I thought of other opinions as well. Please share your experience also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13193" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T09:38:53.200" Title="what is the usual time to start applying for jobs and other positions during a phd?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-07T05:40:09.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give you examples of short PhDs, there are instances for some prodigies in mathematics that they got their PhDs in about two years, e.g., Noam Elkies. Elkies also published in (one of the) top math journals in the world when he graduated, so it made sense for them to graduate him.  There are some one-year PhDs in the history of mathematics, though these are typically nominal PhDs given to Russian mathematicians that needed one to leave Russia, to come to the US, and to find a new academic position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, these are exceptions to the typical rules and these were only done at top tier universities for top tier talents. I believe the intent for these short PhDs seems a lot different from what your intent is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW: The five years I spent in grad school are the best five years of my life. You may be not allowing yourself to have the experience of a lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T05:40:09.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22069" CreationDate="2014-06-07T06:36:03.597" Score="11" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc working in a lab where we are finishing a large project with multiple measures (psychological, behavioral, etc). Some of the measures didn't turn out to have significant results (primarily for methodological reasons I believe). I suggested to the Lead Investigator that we write up some of these as &quot;we tried these measures and didn't get the results we expected for various reasons: here are some lessons we have learned&quot;. The reply was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My immediate response is not all that positive – especially if it undermined our published papers ... if you’ve published a result then further publications shouldn’t raise more limitations that should have been mentioned in the original publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe the results will undermine anything but, that aside, is his reasoning for not publishing results valid? Also, to be clear, we haven't yet published anything from this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand him to mean that he doesn't want the results published because they might go against previous work and completely object to such a thought. Have I possibly misinterpreted his words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15673" LastEditorUserId="15673" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T08:29:00.557" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T08:29:00.557" Title="Is it reasonable to not publish data from research for fear of undermining previous work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2014-06-07T07:08:00.627" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statement you quote sounds terrible. It points in a direction where things approach the unethical. Publication of negative results are less common that positive although, I suspect, negative results ARE more common than positive. Since I am in an experimental field, I have never obtained the perfect results and always end up describing what went wrong; and I am not alone. Anyway, I think your idea of writing up your experience is good. Naturally, I cannot judge the merits of the experiences in terms of publicability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think your intention is very sound and the reaction of the lead investigator suspect (or at best narrow-minded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me &quot; further publications shouldn’t raise more limitations that &lt;em&gt;should have&lt;/em&gt; been mentioned in the original publication&quot; (if verbatim from the lead investigator and with my emphasis) sounds as if limitations were not included on purpose in the original study. So, if that is true then I can understand the nervousness. It sounds almost fraudulent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T07:08:00.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22066" CreationDate="2014-06-07T07:14:49.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should start applying for jobs.  You should have started several months ago, since it can take time to find a job, and after you do it may still take some months before the job actually starts.  This depends strongly on what kind of job it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you are looking for an academic job in the US, the interviewing season is roughly November-March, so you want to time things around that.  For industry jobs and academic jobs elsewhere, there is not usually a particular season to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T07:14:49.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2014-06-07T07:15:01.327" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, what you want to publish doesn't &quot;go against&quot; the previous work.  It's fully consistent with it, but what is being added is what are often called &lt;strong&gt;negative results&lt;/strong&gt;: namely, the discovery that a certain plausible method or established theory &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be used in a certain manner to solve a certain problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In every branch of academia I know of, it is -- unfortunately -- very difficult to publish negative results.  In the abstract, most people agree that this is a shame: convincingly arguing that researchers should not go down a certain path is obviously a service to the community.  However, in a competitive publication system negative results are somehow not very, um, competitive.  So trying to publish these results may not be the best use of your time unless you package them carefully -- very crudely, you will probably need to bundle them with &quot;positive results&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is a relatively benign interpretation of your Lead Investigator's comments.  It is alas also possible that he is saying that you should not try to publish your negative results &lt;em&gt;because that information will reduce the prestige of your previously published paper&lt;/em&gt;.  I agree that this sounds ethically dubious, yes, but depending on the field it is not clear that you are ethically required to publish further work explaining the limitations of your previous results.  Here I would make a distinct between &lt;em&gt;limitations&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;errors&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;em&gt;errors&lt;/em&gt; are things that you should have known better than to include in the original version, and in many fields it is appropriate to print a retraction, erratum or corrigendum when you learn about them.  On the other hand, that a publication contains ideas that are not completely definitive and whose future value is the subject of informed speculation....well, that's how research works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the ethical issues become more acute depending upon the reaction that your published paper has received.  If your paper has been very influential to researchers and is causing them to spend a lot of time exploring what you know to be a blind alley, then formal publication or no, it seems ethical to relate this information to them.  If your publication has present nonacademic ramifications -- e.g. if you are in some kind of bio-medical field and your publication has resulted in patient protocols that you know to be suboptimal -- then you should be thinking about how to get the word out ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it sounds like you need to have a conversation with your Lead Investigator about this.  Find out what he meant and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T07:15:01.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22066" CreationDate="2014-06-07T09:38:53.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @DavidKetcheson. You should be able to get some sense of the &quot;lead time&quot; on jobs of the sort you're interested in by browsing current adverts: what is the typical &quot;start date&quot;? For competitive academic positions, this might be as much as a year ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be strategic reasons to delay, accepting the risk that you can't start working (and earning money!) as early as you wish. For example, you might feel you're likely to be able to secure a much better job if you publish a particular piece of work before going on the job market. There's also the issue that job-hunting can be a time-consuming business: plenty of people decide that they'd prefer to concentrate on completing their thesis first, and then focus on finding a job. I don't think this is an &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; unreasonable approach to take, particularly if you're in a system where there is some significant amount of &quot;dead time&quot; between submitting your thesis, and having the defence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the approach you take, you should certainly be looking at job adverts now, to get a sense of what might be available, and what people are offering/looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T09:38:53.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-07T10:15:25.190" Score="9" ViewCount="1827" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the second year of my PhD in mathematics and I have recently decided I want to go into industry after I'm finished.  I feel like a lot of what I'm learning in the program does not have direct, real-world applications, and I'd like to remedy this problem by getting some work experience while I'm still in graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some programming background (but not as much as a CS grad) and a couple years experience doing simple data analysis programming.  I also have a BS in physics.  It seems like there should be a place in industry for me somewhere, but I don't know how to go about finding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to work part-time, or as a consultant, so that the job won't greatly hinder my progress towards my degree.  (Of course, some time will be lost that could have gone to my dissertation, but this is made up for by gaining marketable skills.)  I'd like to work in science or in software.  I am aware of internships, but it seems like most are either for undergraduate students or engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a math grad student work part-time in industry during his PhD?  If so, how would one go about finding jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16174" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T16:48:04.300" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T07:58:54.063" Title="Part time industrial work during a mathematics PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-07T13:14:50.597" Score="10" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the USA, the Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide health care to employees working above 30 hours. Some employers to save on costs have either cut full-time employees hours to part-time or eliminated some full-time positions entirely.&#xA; I'm a part-time instructor at my university. My hours were cut to put them below the 30 hour cut off for next semester. This reduced my classes from three to two, with a reduction in pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies on how the ACA has affected employment of adjunct faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T13:09:53.547" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T17:28:07.767" Title="Studies on lost teaching hours due to USA Affordable Care Act?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;part-time&gt;&lt;adjunct-faculty&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-07T13:47:13.817" Score="3" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to graduate with an honours (four year) degree in philosophy and a general (three year) degree in mathematics. Are there any physics graduate programs that might accept me if I were to apply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context: My plan-A is to work in academic philosophy. A physics education might not appear on the resume of most philosophy professors, but I suspect that knowing about physics could improve a philosopher's thinking about a number of questions. Accordingly, it seems worthwhile to study physics during either, a one or two year detour, several years of concurrent distance education, or the summer terms of my philosophy education. Self-study is an option, but I'd prefer to earn a credential in order to improve my future applications to graduate schools and to employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9263" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T23:47:33.680" Title="Is there a theoretical-physics masters program that accepts mathematics graduates?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-06-09T04:35:48.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22075" CreationDate="2014-06-07T15:45:23.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be very challenging and unusual to work part-time at a job &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; be taking graduate classes or doing thesis research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's quite common for graduate students to work full-time (as interns) at government laboratories or in industry during the summer (or at another time of year) for perhaps 3 months.  Mathematics students I have known have worked at&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US Dept. of Energy labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, Argonne, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oil companies (Schlumberger, Total)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US NSA contractors (cryptography)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US Geological Survey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NOAA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and many other places that I've forgotten.  Talk to your advisor and to other faculty in the program.  Your university may also have someone who coordinates these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T15:45:23.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-07T17:26:23.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the institution that has accepted you for the MS also offers the Ph.D., then &lt;em&gt;if you do well&lt;/em&gt; in their master's program, you can almost certainly get into their Ph.D. program.  If that seems to be a likely path, ask about their Ph.D. program and about how their Ph.D. graduates have done in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Ph.D. is not available at your master's institution, then ask about their master's students who have gone onward to the Ph.D. and where they went.  Ask a couple of &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; institutions whether your lack of the B.Sc. would be an absolute barrier to acceptance into their Ph.D. program assuming you've done well in your master's program.  (Nobody is going to tell you whether they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; admit you until you have that master's degree, but they probably will tell you whether the lack of the B.Sc. is an insurmountable barrier, which is what you need to know at the moment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need a plan for making the transition into &quot;research&quot; mode&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the people who put your name on their paper about how they came to the particular research they did and the process of completing it.  Even if bioinformatics is not your field, the process is very similar for large areas of academic research.  Some professors in Ph.D. programs publish lists of potential doctoral research topics.  If you have an area of computer science in mind for your Ph.D. research, find professors who have published in that area and check their web pages.  (Google Scholar is your friend.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I start by making friends with some professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though you may be the same age as some of your professors, they're likely to want to keep a certain distance between themselves and their students.  The advice already given is extremely good; that invitation to a social event isn't likely to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, in your career as a master's student, you come upon a professor whose research rings your chimes, and you have a cordial relationship with that professor, ask whether there's anything you can do to help with the research.  If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; anything, expect it to be scut work, like programming others' algorithms, at least at first.  Do not be dismayed; do the best job you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own experience is similar to yours, but in the United States.  I made a false start at an undergraduate education, worked in industry, finally completed the BS and MS degrees, and later the Ph.D.  I have an academic job, and expect it to be the career from which I retire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether this is true in the U.K., but in the U.S. the master's degree qualifies one to teach in community colleges.  Some universities, often lower-ranked, will also hire faculty with only the master's degree.  That's how I got my start in academia.  Check the credentials of the faculty at the institution that's accepted you for people without that Ph.D.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T17:26:23.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21965" CreationDate="2014-06-07T19:02:26.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's funny to me that you mention Mechanical Turk in the question because it suggests where things might go if you were to implement something like this. You'd give students tasks. They'd post them to Mechanical Turk, offering a few cents in return. Your tasks would get done, and the students would get extra credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems better to just post the tasks to Mechanical Turk yourself instead of inviting students to buy a passing grade in your class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16186" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T19:02:26.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-07T23:48:52.560" Score="12" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a study which claims that &quot;learning by teaching&quot; has a 90% retention rate. However, the study is no longer available and it is not clear what kind of research was actually done to support that claim. The legitimacy of that particular study is the subject of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/20888&quot;&gt;related question on Skeptics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other studies that &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; available, proving or disproving that &quot;learning by teaching&quot; is more efficient than other learning methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:44.043" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T02:04:22.217" Title="Are there any available studies on the effectiveness of &quot;learning by teaching&quot;?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-08T00:20:59.280" Score="4" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a rising 2L law student who passed up an opportunity to do a joint JD/MS in Economics. I didn't think I was adequately prepared to take on the Economics degree, though. (Not enough math background.) I am considering pursuing a master's degree part time after finishing law school, though, because it seems to be more interesting and more valuable in the job market than law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What bearing will my law school grades have on admission to a master's program, and would that calculus change if I took the requisite math courses (Calculus I, II, and potentially III,), as well as a remedial stats course? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16188" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T17:19:10.363" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T17:19:10.363" Title="What relevance do law school grades have on admission to a Master's degree in economics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;economics&gt;&lt;law&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-08T02:49:10.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD student who never completed here (so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt). I would advise &lt;strong&gt;against&lt;/strong&gt; what you're describing because I do not believe it is in the spirit of the system and it raises issues for all who know what you are trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like life itself you can choose to shortcut the system but if people find out what you've done they can punish you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you completed a significant amount of your research before doing your PhD then published it as part of your PhD thesis what on earth was your supervisor doing? What would your PhD examiner(s) say if they found out - do another year of new research then submit again? What are the ethics involved of what you have done? How does that look for those who are involved in what you did? What does it look like for the University and what will academics in other departments say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further issue crops up if the University is funding you. If I give you funding for three years and you said you were done in less than two as your supervisor/funder I would simply turn round and say do additional research for another year so you have a greater body of work published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another wrinkle is that in certain Universities it is not possible to submit a final dissertation for a PhD before two years (&quot;thems the rules&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; possible for people to finish PhDs early compared to the average of that university/country (I knew a talented faculty member who did this) but I do not personally know of anyone who managed to do this in under two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you allowed to do your research before your PhD enrolment and be viva'd after one year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically you can do anything so long as you will find people who will agree to it. Practically it's very unlikely you would find a well regarded department who would want to this in anything but the most exceptional circumstances (proposed PhD student is already held in high esteem by the department and the entire field of academics in the field they wish to publish in (because your external will come from there)). If you withhold the fact that the work was done prior to the PhD you step into ethical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has this been done before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't personally know of it happening in field I was researching. You &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; finish faster than average (three and a half years where I was) without prior work and I know part time students who have done so (but...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One extra note: you had better make sure that your work is novel and hasn't been published anywhere else before before you submit it or there's another can of worms waiting for you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16190" LastEditorUserId="16190" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T07:36:34.260" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T07:36:34.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-08T07:58:29.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Former MSc by coursework student here but with a shorter gap between my BSc and MSc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How hard is it to adapt to post-graduate studies after an academic pause[...]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not easy but it's perfectly doable. It is more dependent on you as an individual and your approach to the particular course you choose to do than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it hard to be ready after such long academic pause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends entirely on you and the course you choose. Did you do well back in school? That helps. Did you do well at University? That helps far more. Can you afford to do it (you'll likely be paying and not just in terms of money)? Are you doing something that you have always did poorly in and never learned to overcome (life will be hard)? Can you adapt to the academic style (reading, writing and interacting)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Life) experience helps but it's not a complete shortcut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any particular skills I should work on while waiting for the program to start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really (perhaps know how to get along with younger people?). So long as you have the right approach you'll do fine - most Universities want to give you what you need to pass given that you're paying them money :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16190" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T07:58:29.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-08T10:32:11.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you've changed the question, my comment transforms to an answer. There are many people far more qualified than I am to talk about this, but none of them have answered in this way, so here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some UK universities (I happen to be in the UK) and also elsewhere in the world, there is an alternative route to a PhD called a &quot;PhD by publication&quot;, which you can find out about under that name in the UK and presumably other names in other countries / languages. There's also a rarer &quot;PhD by practice&quot;, which I believe is intended to cover work that isn't as such &quot;published&quot; at all, such as fine arts, architecture, theatre and whatnot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sort of doubt that a paper that &quot;should&quot; be peer-review published but that you haven't published, or in general work that you keep entirely to yourself prior to submitting for the PhD, would qualify even for &quot;by practice&quot;. But it's largely down to the regulations of the individual institution, so if you're interested then you should contact specific institutions for further information. The general theme, though, is that you don't get a PhD &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; for working in a field. Your work should have enhanced the field, in the same way that a traditional PhD is an original contribution to the progress of its field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either route requires that you have already produced work that is deemed worthy to contribute to a PhD. You will demonstrate this work as part of the application. Of course there's quite a lot of detail and judgement as to what's deemed worthy. It may also be deemed necessary to submit new written work to bring together multiple separate publications into a coherent thesis. There is no guarantee at all that work you think is good, will be considered good by the institution when you apply. That, after all, is one of the roles of a PhD supervisor, to assess the academic value of your work before you do it as well as afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the way to quickly be awarded a PhD based on past work. It is intended for a professional in some field that does research outside academia, or someone within academia but who for some reason has not been enrolled in a PhD program while publishing. It's suitable for example for research scientists in industry, or authors whose work contributes to some field even though they aren't employed as academics. It is not construed as a means to avoid the main part of a PhD program, and indeed it &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; work by enrolling you in the program and immediately examining you. It's a distinct, designed route to a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way that people might weigh the value of your PhD based on where you got it from, people might weigh the value of your PhD based on the route you got it. Which is a diplomatic way of saying that a PhD by publication is not &lt;em&gt;universally&lt;/em&gt; accepted to be as good as a conventional PhD. In particular it makes no attempt to prepare you for professional academia, and academics will know this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T10:45:19.053" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:45:19.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-08T11:21:52.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The main part of a thesis is publishable and published research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &quot;PhD by publication&quot; options that others have mentioned. If you have a number of solid peer reviewed publications, then that is an option that you can take to get a degree quicker. If you don't have such publications, then your thesis &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be mostly completed, it has all of the nontrivial work yet to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unpublishable things can't be &quot;much of a PhD thesis&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how much work you've put into 'research'-as-in-reading-and-reviewing, data gathering, etc, all of that is just preliminary background work, even if you have put it in a nicely structured 200-page document and label it a &quot;thesis&quot;. The main and time consuming part of a PhD is obtaining &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;novel&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, relevant and thus publishable results; if you don't have them, then that's not a PhD thesis, and not even a half-done thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T11:21:52.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22054" CreationDate="2014-06-08T12:39:09.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The policy of requiring you to take classes in order to work for the university is not normal, and I have not seen it anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the summer is a good opportunity for students to get outside jobs and/or internships.  As you no doubt know, there are very few jobs in pure math, and the jobs that do exist are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; competitive.  In my opinion, It is best for a student like you to establish connections with possible post-graduate employers during the summer, rather than TAing a math course, unless the course you are TAing will directly help with your immediate educational needs (e.g. it is preparatory for your prelim or can help your eventual thesis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the ethics of the university's behavior, there is very little&#xA;you can do.  Graduate students are in a very bad position of leverage&#xA;vis-a-vis the university, and this is especially true in disciplines like mathematics where many departments bring in many more students than can ever graduate (much less get a job), in part because of undergraduate teaching needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T12:39:09.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1930" CreationDate="2014-06-08T15:13:47.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;well, I read it as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can either use Dr. without anything at the end (that is &quot;translating&quot; it to German) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you use the version which is legally correct in the country of origin (where you received the PhD). This seems to be the only viable option in terms of EU law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which then leave the issue how the PhD should be used in the country of origin eg the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not really easy to answer. Because you find it in different ways: &#xA;as &quot;Dr. Xxxx&quot; or as &quot;Xxxx, PhD&quot; or as &quot;Dr Xxxx, PhD&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any legal document that provides any further guidance on this matter, the only thing I found is a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the body ruled that the Dr Xxxx, PhD in the context of web-page with a medical content would suggest that Dr means that the person would be a medical Dr.  However, as such the Advertising Standards Authority sees the usage of Dr Xxxx, PhD not as misleading. here the link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/Dr-Alyssa-Burns_Hill/SHP_ADJ_194636.aspx#.U5R6q9qKCAU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/Dr-Alyssa-Burns_Hill/SHP_ADJ_194636.aspx#.U5R6q9qKCAU&lt;/a&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is the Committee of Advertising Practice which states that :&quot;it is likely to be acceptable for advertisers who possess a relevant PhD or doctorate (of sufficient length and intensity) to call themselves “Dr” provided they use the suffix “PhD” to clarify the type of qualification they hold and that the general context does not imply they are medically qualified.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cap.org.uk/Advice-Training-on-the-rules/Advice-Online-Database/Use-of-the-term-Dr-PhD.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cap.org.uk/Advice-Training-on-the-rules/Advice-Online-Database/Use-of-the-term-Dr-PhD.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the question is whether there is any legal convention in the UK about how one should or should not use the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to be honest, I doubt that something like that exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16201" LastEditorUserId="16201" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T15:21:49.460" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T15:21:49.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-08T15:28:00.787" Score="7" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to go in to my honours year in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I intend to apply for a PhD at another university when I finish, how much does it matter who my honours supervisor is? Will this make any difference when being assessed for entry at another university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a general rule am I better choosing a pure (mathematical) or applied (programming/engineering) topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16202" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T01:05:23.093" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T01:05:23.093" Title="How much does topic and supervisor matter for honours in computer science when the aim is ultimately to do a PhD?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22098" CreationDate="2014-06-08T16:04:39.957" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;All things being equal, a well-known and respected individual in your field who can write an excellent letter of recommendation for you is better than a person who is not nearly so well known who can write a similar letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should not choose a famous name just to have that person write you a letter of recommendation if you are not actively interested in that person's research. The obvious reason for this is that hunting for a letter of a recommendation is likely not to work as well as doing a project you're truly interested in, because the motivation to work on it won't be nearly as strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for topic, if possible, I would recommend picking a topic in the &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; area you wish to pursue as a PhD student. Note that it doesn't need to be the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; topic—but if you want to do, for instance, theoretical CS, it's probably better to do a theoretical CS project than something more applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T16:04:39.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22054" CreationDate="2014-06-08T17:50:56.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is completely normal: every place I have been (albeit 3 departments) require Graduate Student Assistant (Research Assistants, Teaching Assistants, and general Graduate Assistants) to be both students and registered at the level of full time graduate students while working on those assignments. The reason being: Those jobs are student jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My masters institution requires me to be registered for 8 credits a semester while I TA/RA/GA, which I pay student fees of about 2k a year on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD institution requires me to be registered for 12 credits a quarter while I TA/RA/GA, which I will pay ~750 a year on student fees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you have to take traditional classes: About 40% of my classes have been thesis hours and independent studies. For summer classes, I usually work out some sort of independent study that is very tangential from my thesis, meaning I can use it in both my thesis defense and perhaps even publish it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, it's normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think its wrong to charge graduate students who are also employees student fees, but it is the way the books are drawn. Your student fees, I doubt, are so large that you cannot find a way to live off the summer stipend. My master's institution has the highest student fees that doesn't include healthcare I have ever seen in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T17:50:56.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22054" CreationDate="2014-06-08T20:09:58.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having observed several places in several different decades: summer funding is always weird and maybe non-existent or not-a-good-deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 9-month academic year, in the U.S., yes, indeed, people working as TAs/RAs have to be registered as students (because as other people said, these are student jobs), and this entails &lt;em&gt;fees&lt;/em&gt;. Most often, tuition is included in the &quot;benefits&quot;, but not invariably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At every university I've been, grad students registered in the 9-month academic year did not have to explicitly register, nor pay tuition, in the summer, in order to work as summer TAs/RAs. This part is quite anomalous, and looks like a way for some layer of the institution to suck money out of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience indicates that there's never enough summer support to go around, which effectively creates a labor surplus, which, predictably, leads to certain abuses. For that matter, the usual double-time rate of summer classes is pretty nasty, and not fun to see. A bit taxing to teach, but almost uniformly near-disastrous for the students, who cannot simply &quot;decide&quot; to assimilate things twice as fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the funding and flow of money for summer teaching/classes is different from the 9-month year, so it is not necessarily deliberately abusive, though possibly irresponsible or negligent, of your dept to not tell you your net pay. If it's really just 600 dollars, it's a ridiculous situation, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the net pay &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be substantial, not next-to-nothing. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; aspect strikes me as odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the situation you describe is unusual in that the net pay is so low. Having to sign up for courses and pay summer fees (or, worse, tuition) is unusual. The vagueness is less atypical, since sometimes control of summer classes is not in the hands of the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T22:11:50.113" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T22:11:50.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23104" CreationDate="2014-06-08T21:18:32.700" Score="44" ViewCount="21021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at an educational institution where exam papers are considered protected. Leaking the exam question sheet and taking photocopies or camera shots is considered illegal and is strictly prohibited. I am not here to argue about this policy but to ask about the best ways to enforce it. Students have been taking pictures of exam papers during exam time, leaking them to subsequent sessions or posting them with solutions and often selling them to students of subsequent semesters. Though we don't use the same questions between semesters, they do exhibit some similarities at times for some courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with strict invigilation and requests not to bring cell phones to the exam room, there have been some incidents. Lockers are out of the question, as is collecting all cell phones before exam time. I would welcome any suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15328" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T16:14:23.470" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:58:05.690" Title="Preventing leaking exam papers/cheating using phone cameras?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="23" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21736" CreationDate="2014-06-08T22:08:52.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's possible to describe in any detail which aspects you should focus on without knowing something about &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you're writing in the chapter, since as Sverre said, it's ultimately just the answer to one question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An introduction is ultimately just a concise summary of the contents of a piece of writing, specifically a chapter; in this case, the points to focus on would be the basic components of a description of research methodology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reminder: We are researching...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The usual methodologies used in this field are...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;X, Y and Z were considered for use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;X, while [pros], [cons], whereas Y [pros], but [cons], and Z [pros], but [cons].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due to the importance of... ...in this study, we chose to use Y.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can explain your full reasoning in the remainder of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15664" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T22:08:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-08T22:17:50.943" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make the punishment for being caught well-known. Make every effort possible to track down the perpetrators, and make the offence&#xA;  and punishment publicly known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could set up one or two cheap cameras to take high-resolution photographs at set intervals, say every 15 seconds (making sure it's all kosher legally, and warning the students). I know that Canon compact cameras &quot;hacked&quot; with the CHDK software can do this. Don't use an SLR, they have noisy shutters. If you find out an exam has been leaked, you should be able to comb the archive and catch the perpetrator. Yes, it's an extreme solution -- but also a scare tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bvsystems.com/Products/Security/PocketHound/pockethound.htm&quot;&gt;Cell phone detectors&lt;/a&gt; are another possibility to catch offenders in the act, though by no means foolproof. Turning on airplane mode would render them useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make offending harder by confiscating cell phones at the start of the exam. This won't stop pre-meditated offending, though -- you can't do pat-downs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you claim this is out of the question. But I am truly surprised that this is not an institutional policy to collect all cell phones before an exam. Put this back into the question. My undergraduate institution also had a substantial fine (NZD $70, IIRC) for the owner of a cell phone that rang during the exam. It should go without saying that phones must be turned off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Place a subtle random symbol somewhere on each exam paper, that is unique to each individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your average none-too-bright cheater might not take much notice of a &quot;⎋&quot; symbol  in the corner of a page. But, it would be a pain to implement for a large class and will only work until someone catches on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T22:17:50.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-08T23:20:08.370" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be a bit harsh and say that your cause is doomed to fail if you want to solve the problem just by policing students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happened is that some factors contributed to atmosphere where it is considered advantageous to have a copy of past exams and your students are motivated enough to risk getting a copy. The tradition of having a monetary incentive makes things even worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my previous university, I had opportunity to witness the evolution of hi-tech copying systems. At first, nobody was checking for cell-phones because they had bad cameras and weren't as popular, then cell-phone copying became popular. Then cell-phone detectors of various levels of sophistication came into use. After that, cheaters moved on to other devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, spy devices are cheap and commonly available and they are next logical step from cell-phone cameras. Are you going to start checking your student's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dx.com/s/spy+watch&quot;&gt;watches&lt;/a&gt; next? How about &lt;a href=&quot;http://spy-cam-review.toptenreviews.com/mini-spy-button-camera-review.html&quot;&gt;buttons&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spytechs.com/spy_cameras/glasses-hidden-camera.htm&quot;&gt;glasses&lt;/a&gt; or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://hidden-camera-review.toptenreviews.com/camcorder-pen-review.html&quot;&gt;pens&lt;/a&gt;? What about say &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0063PGCBW&quot;&gt;calculators&lt;/a&gt; (OK, that one in particular isn't the best example, but if there's demand, supply will come), whose use might even be allowed in some examinations? Are you going to have a spy-equipment expert on your staff to check what your students are using? What if they home-brew some equipment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if someone actually &lt;em&gt;steals&lt;/em&gt; a physical copy of questions? That actually happened at my previous school. Guy (not a student at the school) came to a lecture hall where an examination was being conducted, waited for TAs to hand out the questions and then proceeded towards the exit with a question sheet, running over anyone who tried to stop him. There was even a recording from video-surveillance of him doing the deed and a wanted poster was placed at the school entrance, but it didn't do any good. That particular problem was solved by asking for IDs before handing out questions, but it shows the trend of escalation that can happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, what if a group of students organizes with the idea of memorizing questions in detail without any technological aids? There's literally no way of preventing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you press the anti-technological/anti-cheating offensive without taking away the incentive to cheat, the greater is the risk that you'll instead form a core of semi-professional cheaters who will have connections to the sources of appropriate cheating equipment and serve as a cadre which will train future generations and make problem even worse. For example, in my hometown, a sure way to detect presence of a higher education institution is the high concentration of flyers advertising rent and sales of spy equipment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only sure way (that I at least can think of) to solve the problem is to cut it at its source and take away the incentive to have the pictures of past exams. Try to take time to analyze all factors that could lead to such behavior and see if you can actually affect any of them in a meaningful way. Although questions aren't repeated, it's obvious from the response of students that seeing past exams is beneficial in some way. It's normal for questions to be similar, since there are probably some underlying concepts that students should learn and that knowledge needs to be tested. If the students are already aware of what they're going to find at the exam, then there isn't much need to see how exactly the sheet with questions looks like. If the exams is supposed to be a surprise, then you should reconsider if you're actually preparing your students properly for the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If going in-depth when solving a problem such as this isn't real motive, then it would be best to take advice from Moriarty's answer. You'll be doing something &quot;direct&quot; and you probably won't challenge existing policies too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9653" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T15:28:30.623" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:28:30.623" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-08T23:30:19.107" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;When designing the exam paper, place fewer items per page. To reduce paper waste, this can be achieved by using A5-size exam papers, created by putting two exam papers on a single sheet, then cutting the pages in half. This will not prevent students from taking photographs, but it will mean that each photo they take will be obtaining less information about your exam. The student will need to take their camera out more often to get the whole exam, increasing the chances that your proctors, who should be watching the room carefully, will catch them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T23:30:19.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22078" CreationDate="2014-06-08T23:47:33.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People are accepted into a physics program because they prove that they can do well in physics graduate school through their past performance in courses, their personal statement, their letters of recommendation, test scores, undergraduate research experience, etc. If you have a strong mathematics background, you might be able to convince an admissions committee to accept you &lt;strong&gt;if you demonstrate an understanding of undergraduate physics&lt;/strong&gt; outside of course work (like performing well on the physics GRE). If you have not, at least self studied undergraduate physics material (at the very least at a Sophomore/Junior  level), then it is not likely that you would accepted into a physics graduate program (even a masters program). Now if you were exceptional at math (e.g. have published research in a peer reviewed math journal), perhaps its possible that a physics program would accept you, with a very good personal statement explaining why you want to study physics at the graduate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why get a degree in physics? At least part of the answer should be that you enjoy doing physics and are (at least somewhat) good at doing physics. If you aren't 100% certain that you love physics, you shouldn't go to graduate school in physics. Instead, self study physics by reading a book, doing problems and watching online lectures. Once you can determine whether you enjoy doing physics, only then should you go to graduate school in the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you haven't explained why &quot;knowing about physics could improve a philosopher's thinking about a number of questions&quot;. At least at the vaguest level, this could be said about nearly any discipline; it doesn't mean you should get a degree in those fields. You can take physics courses while studying philosophy at many universities. If you think you will derive deep satisfaction from this, you should seek out philosophy programs that allow flexibility in your course work so you can pursue an interest in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T23:47:33.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-08T23:53:55.717" Score="4" ViewCount="3767" Body="&lt;p&gt;The summer before my last year of undergrad I committed academic dishonesty in one of my summer classes. I received a sanction of a course grade of 0 and a notation on my transcript until I graduate, which would be June of 2015. I decided to take a year off in light of my transgressions (I wasn't suspended but felt that if I could do something that heinous I needed to take a step back and reevaluate  everything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a psych&amp;amp;stats major and I wanted to eventually work in research or some related field as I work as a RA at school and it's something I'm interested in. My overall goal was to find work after graduation and at some point when I have some career direction apply to a Master's program. However, in light of the academic dishonesty I'm not sure how it will affect my application, or if it's something that's redeemable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17203" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T03:14:17.140" Title="Masters Admissions and Academic Dishonesty" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-09T00:23:00.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have the option of conducting the exams centrally?  At my institution, all final exams and major mid-semester exams were conducted at the same time for all students, under the supervision of external monitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any person who was seen using a phone or unauthorised notes would be guilty of serious misconduct, and likely get zero for the exam at the very least.  Similarly, no person was permitted to leave the room until all papers had been collected, so it wasn't possible for the question sheets to go walkabout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, that will be difficult if there's not institutional support for it.  (Although I'm constantly amazed to find out that it's not the norm elsewhere.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have seen work in the past, though, is to use subtly different question sheets for different students.  On numerical exams it's easy enough to change a few numbers, but people who intend to copy answers out probably won't notice the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that won't help if there's later sessions of the same exam, but honestly that's not something that should be happening at university level anyway.  No technical solution is going to be able to stop students from talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T00:23:00.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T00:40:17.150" Score="3" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read through the forum and the opinion seems to be that doing a MOOC is equivalent of reading a book on that subject. This is largely because of that you can cheat through a MOOC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what if I join a signature track on a MOOC such as the one of Coursera ? I haven't ever tried a signature track out, but they capture your photo and recognize the way you write to ascertain if you have genuinely gone through the work or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/07/ace-deems-5-massive-open-courses-worthy-credit#sthash.cLY7jQSF.dpbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Even american council of education is acknowledging this ....&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this a duplicate of that question :|&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15418" LastEditorUserId="15418" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T02:37:29.627" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T14:39:56.180" Title="Is the signature track on coursera useful for MS admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T00:42:15.670" Score="8" ViewCount="2351" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question is in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, do emeritus professors (generally) check the emails which are listed on their university websites? I have emailed a few professors lately, asking about points in papers that they wrote, and none of the emeritus have responded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that they do not check their emails often, if at all - in this case, would it be appropriate to contact the university, requesting contact information for the professor? Or should I leave them be in their retirement? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17206" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T03:08:14.303" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T03:08:14.303" Title="How to contact an Emeritus professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;professor-emeritus&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-09T02:38:17.220" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a professor that solved this problem nicely when I was in college.  This is all based on what he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before the Final, tell the all the periods that everyone is getting the same test.  And that all the grades will be scaled across all periods.  If the second period class does better than the first period class, it will suck to be in the first period when the mean will be substantially higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat this warning on the day of the test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hand out a substantially different test to the 2nd period students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, he lied to all the students, but he had watched the 2nd period Antennas class consistently score higher than the 1st period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've met people that had that second class, they studied our test exclusively and more than one of them lost 2 letter grades in their final class grade over it.  Studying the other test exclusively wasn't a problem for this teacher after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His tests were deep in theory and derivation of where the equations come from, and Antennas is a very complicated subject.  Might not work with all classes, but when word of this kind of apocalypse gets out, it will live in the history of the folklore for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17210" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T02:38:17.220" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23107" CreationDate="2014-06-09T02:59:51.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, in light of the academic dishonesty I'm not sure how it will affect my application, or if it's something that's redeemable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a graduate admissions point of view, relatively speaking, having a note on your transcript concerning your academic dishonesty violation is not as bad as being kicked out of undergraduate studies altogether (as noted in this answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15288/is-it-possible-to-do-a-masters-degree-without-obtaining-a-bachelors-degree/15339#15339&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to the following question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15288/is-it-possible-to-do-a-masters-degree-without-obtaining-a-bachelors-degree/&quot;&gt;Is it possible to do a Master's degree without obtaining a Bachelor's degree?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your school is giving you another chance. It's up to you now to make the most of your remaining time in your undergraduate studies. In my view, here are some things you can do to improve your chances of admission at the graduate level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; well in your remaining coursework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take up a research project (or two or three). You should do this anyway if you are serious about graduate studies. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a professional network, such as professors for your courses or your research project advisor. In addition to helping you become a better student/researcher, these folks will come in handy when it comes time to submit letters of recommendation along with your graduate studies application materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already took some time off from your studies to reflect on your actions, but it bears repeating: &lt;strong&gt;Don't dwell on this indiscretion&lt;/strong&gt;. All you can do is move forward and utilize every bit of time you have left in your undergraduate studies to increase the odds in your favor of admission to a graduate program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: OP mentioned that they are an RA, but my 2nd bullet point above is added for future users in a similar situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T03:14:17.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23197" CreationDate="2014-06-09T02:59:51.880" Score="6" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently reviewing a conference paper, which I found is just extended version of a previous conference paper. I have heard that a journal paper can be a new version of a conference paper with some new stuff added, while the paper I am reviewing is something like this. Would this paper be rejected simply because of the copyright issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14280" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T11:52:08.567" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T13:30:49.347" Title="Can a conference paper be an extended version of a previous conference paper? Will it face copyright issues?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2014-06-09T03:32:41.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you get special consideration probably depends on how special you are. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lynn Conway&lt;/a&gt; joined the University of Michigan as a full professor of EE and CS in 1985 with only an MSEE.  But she had some other stuff going for her, like having co-created the Mead-Conway revolution in chip design.  She didn't have a PhD but she had already become a Fellow of the IEEE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lynn is a friend of mine and when I've asked her about her appointment, she's waived the question away, insisting that exceptions can always be made.  But I'm a lecturer today in that same UM EECS department where she held her appointment before retiring and when I recently asked our chairman if it could still be done today, he insisted it would never happen.  Not anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9553" LastEditorUserId="9553" LastEditDate="2018-06-02T18:43:54.313" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T18:43:54.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T04:19:27.407" Score="1" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a MSc degree in Computer Science from a well known university, but the problem is that my degree is, for example in Computer Graphics. Now I would like to study PhD in computer Science, but related to another topic such as Green Computing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can convince the admission committee or the Professor in charge of the research group that I can be a good student in his group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One friend told me that one important thing is the motivation letter others about the research proposal (which for me is somewhat not so clear, because for what I know one do a research proposal only when one is inside a group)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help will be valuable? I have applied to a lot of PhD positions and the frustration is getting higher with each rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T13:05:42.433" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T13:05:42.433" Title="How to increase my chance for being admitted to a PhD if my MSc is in a different topic?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-16T02:35:36.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-09T07:06:16.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exam questions can be shuffled, or reparameterized (being careful to make both versions equally difficult) to obtain at least 2 versions of the same exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; mark them version A/B.  Let the cheater try to figure that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start playing this game early.  Do it on quizzes and midterms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't eliminate cheating, but may make it not worth the trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think there might be spies within your department who are leaking the exams, give one version of the exam to the assistants to photocopy, and say nothing about an alternate version.  Photocopy the alternate exam version yourself, and substitute at time of test.  You won't be questioned about wasting trees, but if you are, say you thought there was an error in the test or that it didn't cover things with the correct weight, and you wanted to correct that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a bit of work, but it is not 2x or 3x the work and if it seems like it is, rethink what to change.  A side benefit is a larger pool of example questions is generated as time goes by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative:&lt;/strong&gt; Make the exam open book, no time limit (i.e. this should take about 3 hours but you have all weekend if you need it), and the questions impossible, like what you would expect at Caltech or MIT.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Contraindications:&lt;/strong&gt; Requires working honor system; honor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2649" LastEditorUserId="2649" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T07:22:21.557" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T07:22:21.557" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T07:47:52.807" Score="15" ViewCount="3089" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any university in the United States (or Europe) fully committed to graduate programs (master and PhD)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why this is not a common scheme? Why research universities are not interested in this model? Without huge number of undergraduate students, a university can save money on campus expenses, and heavily uses its resources for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T08:01:22.557" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:06:16.710" Title="Is there a university that has only graduate programs?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23119" CreationDate="2014-06-09T07:58:00.373" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; some universities that offer primarily postgraduate degrees; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postgraduate-only_institutions&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a list. Some notable examples on this list are Rockefeller University (US) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't necessarily save money; undergraduates in the United States typically pay tuition, after all. Other sources of income for universities in the United States (such as federal Pell grants) also apply only to undergraduate students. Furthermore, having a local population of undergraduate students allows budding academics (PhD students) to get teaching experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T08:36:09.017" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T08:36:09.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22075" CreationDate="2014-06-09T07:58:54.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can say that I am currently doing this and it works very well for me, but you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to discuss this with your supervisors.&#xA;My consulting work is in optimisation/operations research (part mathematics, part computer science) and directly relevant to my PhD. I use these experiences to motivate my research and I'm convinced it makes me a better researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for the company I worked for before starting my PhD, but part-time consultants can be valuable to smaller consulting companies if you have the flexibility to work when they have more jobs, and not work when they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will second the call to apply for internships: a couple of the interns I worked with at Google last summer were mathematicians who could code, and one or two of us were PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that I'm doing my PhD in Australia, where PhDs nominally take 3 years and teaching/research assistant work is not a condition of any scholarship, so your mileage may vary in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1233" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T07:58:54.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23119" CreationDate="2014-06-09T08:46:05.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a common scheme, but such places do exist (e.g., the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ait.ac.at&quot;&gt;Austrian Institute of Technology&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, the main reason why there are not more of these places is that it is damn hard to get public funding for them (and most universities around here are funded almost exclusively by the state). Simply put, the main incentive for the government to fund universities is &lt;strong&gt;undergraduate teaching&lt;/strong&gt;, hence getting them to pay for a university without any of those is a tough sell. We tended to half-jokingly mention that teaching undergraduates is our day job, which we do to support our breadless research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above-mentioned AIT is a special case, in the sense that it is pretty young and mostly the result of a political process. That is, it was not a &quot;scientific decision&quot; to get the AIT started, but a political reaction to divert public attention away from the ever-sinking buget for the regular universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T08:52:05.993" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T08:52:05.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23110" CreationDate="2014-06-09T08:54:36.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chances are, if they are not answering their university mail address, they are either busy or can't be bothered. They are retired, so &lt;strong&gt;both is completetly ok&lt;/strong&gt; (it is sort of the point of retirement that you do not have an obligation to react to work mail anymore). Trying to get in touch with them over different media is probably fruitless, and somewhat obnoxious. Besides, I would really hope that the university administration does not give out private addresses to the request of random people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: an almost completely unrelated side notice: emeritus profs can be &lt;strong&gt;insanely&lt;/strong&gt; busy in some cases. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Oberhummer&quot;&gt;famous austrian physics emeritus&lt;/a&gt; who is now writing popular science books, breeding alpacas (!), touring Austria with a science-based stand-up comedy show (!!), producing and starring a TV programme, and waging an ever-lasting war against the catholic church (as head of Austria's atheist movement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T10:38:04.590" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T10:38:04.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23119" CreationDate="2014-06-09T09:01:22.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Behold the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgu.edu&quot;&gt;Claremont Graduate University&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kgi.edu&quot;&gt;Keck Graduate Institute&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little of a cheat, though; both are part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.Claremont.edu&quot;&gt;Claremont Colleges consortium&lt;/a&gt; whose other five members are undergraduate-only institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T09:01:22.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23110" CreationDate="2014-06-09T10:26:05.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think that there is a good chance that this professor &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; check email, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you genuinely believe that your message is important, contact the department secretary/similar and ask if they'd be prepared to pass a message to the person. You could also ask if they know whether email is likely to be read by that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T10:26:05.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-09T10:31:36.657" Score="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not the answer you want but I have to get it out of my chest. (My background is engineering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best, most effective and easiest way to completely avoid students taking pictures of exams, selling them and making a profit out of that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publish online &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; previous exams as an exercise book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions in an exam and the exercises done before the exam should not be more different than an exam and a previous exam, actually old exams make for perfect exercises and practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that studying the courses and making a few exams/exercises to practice should be easier and lead to greater success than checking the &lt;em&gt;whole compilation&lt;/em&gt; of past exams, which should anyway lead to a good knowledge of the contents of the course (in a more tedious way than reading the theory and checking this with &lt;em&gt;a few&lt;/em&gt; exams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal story: When I was in high-school the homework would be much harder than the exams, anyone making the homework (optional) would get good qualifications and the qualifications would reflect actual good knowledge about the subject. In the university there were exercises, but they were explanatory and very basic, the questions in the exam were much harder. This made the exercises useless, students needed exams from previous years just to practice in answering the questions, and I hated that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T10:31:36.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:58:21.570" Score="37" ViewCount="21188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently applying for a Ph.D in Germany. Next week I'm sitting down with my potential Ph.D advisor to have a talk about the program.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm collecting questions about things like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teaching duties included?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working hours  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's the salary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vacation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;budget for conferences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I'm missing some important stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My real question is: &lt;strong&gt;What should I ask my potential Ph.D advisor in advance, before actually signing a contract / starting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8507/what-questions-should-one-ask-to-the-former-current-students-of-a-professor-befo&quot;&gt;What questions should one ask to the former/current students of a professor before deciding whether to do PhD under him/her?&lt;/a&gt; is related, but I feel it doesn't fit my situation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:47:05.170" Title="What should I ask my potential Ph.D advisor in advance, before actually signing a contract?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23130" CreationDate="2014-06-09T12:33:51.957" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the average time-to-PhD is, and how many percent roughly drop out (although this is a question that is much better asked to other PhD students, as you may easily hear somewhat &quot;tuned&quot; numbers here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper authorship policy (via mhwombat's comment) - however, note that theory and practice may diverge quite strongly in this topic. This is again something better asked the colleagues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grant / project duties - if you are e.g., paid by an FP7 or H2020 project, your project work may cost you &lt;em&gt;much more&lt;/em&gt; time than teaching duties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative duties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How free you will be in choosing whom to collaborate with, and what topics to collaborate on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether you will be required to work on other projects on the side (e.g., consulting work, paid research, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether you will be expected to help with writing grant proposals (time sink number one if yes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether there is a culture for working from home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What office / lab space you will get, how many other students you share it with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether it will be possible for you to do an internship, e.g., over the summer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be more. I will extend the list once I remember more important things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T12:33:51.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23130" CreationDate="2014-06-09T13:03:29.597" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to xLeitix's list, here are a few more considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With whom in the group will you be directly interacting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often can you expect to be able to meet with the institute leader, as well as your direct supervisor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the expectations for you to be able to graduate (paper output, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer two of your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vacation time is regulated by German law. You should expect to be able to take between 5 and 6 weeks of vacation per year, with the amount of time escalating with age. This should be in addition to the official holidays. How your advisor expects you to take the time, however, may be a suitable subject for discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Salary depends on your funding source and field. If you are funded as a standard &lt;em&gt;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt; (academic employee), then your salary and benefits are calculated according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/west?id=tv-l-2014&amp;amp;matrix=1&quot;&gt;Group E13 of the TV-L scheme&lt;/a&gt;. Your salary will be some percentage of this—typically 50% or 100%, depending on field. Presuming you have not been employed full-time for at least a year somewhere prior to beginning your position, you will probably start at TV-L 13/1. (Note, however, that this determination is largely made by the HR staff at the university; a professor can recommend a higher starting position with a valid reason.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T13:03:29.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23142" CreationDate="2014-06-09T13:27:04.930" Score="26" ViewCount="1880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently having a disagreement with a coauthor on a paper over the matter of significant figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He would like to specify (for example) that a certain organization has an environmental footprint of 7,622 gha.  Environmental footprinting rests on a tonne of assumptions and is not a precise methodology, so I don't think we have anything like 4 significant figures of precision in our calculations - more like 2 at most.  So I would like to publish that figure as 7,600 gha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have pointed out that doing otherwise implies a level of precision we don't have.  Currently we are publishing an executive summary prior to peer reviewed journal paper, so I also said it would be embarrassing if the precision issues were picked up at peer review stage and we thus ended up publishing two different sets of figures.  He responds that he has never had a problem with publishing more accurate figures in previous journal publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coauthor does not have a quantitative background so has limited understanding this issue, however he is more senior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So two questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does this issue even matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what would you do about it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you all agree with me that this matters.  Good, I'm not insane :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we are currently writing an executive summary/press release for the general public, there is no place for scientific notation or estimates of error - they will make it harder to read and likely put off some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone link me to a good, polite and authoritative rant on why this matters that I can show to my colleague?  The trouble with almost all material I have seen on significant figures, is that it doesn't discuss rounding off digits left of the decimal point.  i.e. it talks about turning 7.36654 into 7.4 but not 736654 into 740000.  I suspect my colleague draws an arbitrary line in his head at the decimal point, being unaware that the position of the point is just a function of the units used.  And I doubt they would be open to that sort of argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13793" LastEditorUserId="13793" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T14:32:56.503" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T18:49:39.013" Title="Dispute over precision with coauthor" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23133" CreationDate="2014-06-09T13:53:36.730" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just because you have the additional digits, doesn't mean you should report them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accuracy and precision are extremely important concepts in the reporting of scientific data. Excessive precision, as you suggest, implies too much reliability in the accuracy of scientific data. For instance, someone turned in a report to me saying that a particular parameter was known to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;E&lt;/em&gt; = 1.3405987423423 GPa&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were to be published in a paper, it could be rejected out of hand for incompetence, because the parameter &lt;em&gt;E&lt;/em&gt; is often known only to one or two decimal places, let alone four. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you need to make your reporting consistent with the assumptions and the accuracy of the measurement techniques. One way to figure this out is to note the &lt;em&gt;accuracy&lt;/em&gt; of your measurement—what is the expected error in the measurement? If the error in your measurement technique is, for instance, plus or minus 1 global hectare, then by all means report it to the nearest hectare. If it's plus or minus 1000, though, reporting to the nearest hectare will look quite silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you deal with this?&lt;/strong&gt; (I've actually had to do something like this before. Similar argument, but not exactly the same.) In this particular instance, engaging in a little hyperbole might be useful. Instead of reporting it to four significant digits, show him a version of the text that lists the data to the full precision you have available—something clearly ridiculous that reports things down to six or seven decimal places, if possible. Then, when he argues that what you're doing doesn't make sense, you can argue &quot;what's the harm in reporting extra digits?&quot; That should be enough to have your coauthor &quot;see the light.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T13:53:36.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23133" CreationDate="2014-06-09T13:59:52.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should give an indication of the uncertainty to go with your value e.g. 7600 ± 100 (or whatever) even if the uncertainty is only a rough estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that your proposed solution doesn't really give any indication of your accuracy is 7600 the true value, have you rounded to 2s.f or 3? On the other hand the other solution suggests too great an accuracy which is also wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do state an uncertainty the actual value you put matters slightly less. Ideally you should still give the answer to similar levels as that in your uncertainty, as you suggested, but my putting more your not actually creating any ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether it matters I suspect in lots of fields people don't really care about this sort of thing. But it does matter so they should care and so should you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T17:38:00.053" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T17:38:00.053" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23133" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:13:26.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will be an addition to aeismail's answer with which I agree. When reporting numbers like 7600 the trailing zeros are not significant but there is no way to know it. Therefore, writing the number as 7.6 kgha or 7.6 x 10^3 gha directly points to the significant numbers. A key point of publishing information is to provide the reader with an accurate picture for the results and providing quantitative information in its proper context is key. Using appropriate notation to present numbers is therefore important so rather than removing digits that are not deemed significant, it is better to present the data in a different notation by either using established &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SI-prefixes&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scientific notation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T14:13:26.387" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:22:55.270" Score="25" ViewCount="5492" Body="&lt;p&gt;All countries have visa waiver for certain nationals, but it is only for touristic purpose. People use this scheme for attending scientific meetings (isn't it some kind of business trip?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, academic visits, in which the guest is paid, is definitely a business trip. For example, when an academic organize a paid two-week course in the host university, or when visiting for a join project in which he is paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a German academic traveling to the United States for two weeks for working on a NSF-funded project in which he is paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it theoretically illegal to travel without Business Visa for such academic visits?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If yes, how often it happens in practice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T15:15:54.933" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T08:50:23.713" Title="Is it legal to use tourist visa waiver for academic visits?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:35:20.000" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each country might have different rules, but in the example you're considering, you can benefit from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/visit/visa-waiver-program.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Visa Waiver program for business purposes&lt;/a&gt; if you would qualify for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Purpose%20Listings%20March%202014%20flier.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Business Visitor Visa (B-1)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lecturer or speaker&lt;/strong&gt;: No salary or income from a U.S. based company/entity, other than expenses incidental to the visit. If honorarium will be received, activities can last no longer than nine days at any single institution or organization; payment must be offered by an institution or organization described in INA 212(q); honorarium is for services conducted for the benefit of the institution or entity; and visa applicant will not have accepted such payment or expenses from more than five institutions or organizations over the last six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Researcher&lt;/strong&gt;: Independent research, no salary/income from a U.S. based source, or benefit to U.S. institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers who receive US payment should apply for a  Temporary Worker (H-1B) Visa or Exchange Visitor (J) Visa.&#xA;So, to answer your first question: &lt;strong&gt;if the guest is paid&lt;/strong&gt; (other than an honorarium, and in addition to have his/her expenses covered), then &lt;strong&gt;travelling on the visa waiver program is theoretically illegal&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, if could be legal. Check with the legal team at the US institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About whether it happens in practice, I doubt you'll find plenty of people who are happy to claim they are doing something illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:49:47.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:37:32.637" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The visa waiver program of some countries allow for business trips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &lt;a href=&quot;https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/WebHelp/ESTA_Screen-Level_Online_Help_1.htm#vwp3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are eligible to apply for admission under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intend to enter the United States for 90 days or less for business, pleasure or transit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a valid passport lawfully issued to you by a Visa Waiver Program country&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For US passport holders to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/usa/work/six_months_or_less&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don’t need a visa if you’re coming to the UK for activities allowed under the following visas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a business visitor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T14:37:32.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23133" CreationDate="2014-06-09T16:42:43.563" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to the answers with some academic citations, style guides for Tables often list this point. Although they often give examples of extraneous fractional digits (as these tend to be the most egregious examples of where they are illogical), the logic behind the rounding extends wherever the significant digits are location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1198/jcgs.2011.204a&quot;&gt;Feinberg &amp;amp; Wainer (2011)&lt;/a&gt; suggest that &lt;em&gt;at maximum&lt;/em&gt; only 3 digits should be displayed in the table, as humans have a hard time making comparisons among any more digits (and they strongly suggest two or less). So here is advice extending beyond just decimals. (In Table 3 they give an example of rounding to the billions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also appeal to the trivial amount of error introduced by such rounding. In your example the error would be &lt;code&gt;22/7622 ~ 0.003&lt;/code&gt; - I think 0.3 percent is alright for a wide variety of circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To justify reporting all 4 digits from a statistical perspective the standard error of the estimate would need to be &lt;em&gt;less than&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;0.5&lt;/code&gt;. If the error is more than &lt;code&gt;50&lt;/code&gt; you really &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; report any more than the hundreds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I provide more citations in my blog post for the stats site; &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.blogoverflow.com/2012/02/some-notes-on-making-effective-tables/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some notes on making effective tables&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, although not all are applicable to this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T18:16:26.033" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T18:16:26.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-09T17:00:36.263" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To prevent questions being copied from one test period to another is relatively &quot;simple&quot;—just make sure that classes taking the same test take it at the same time. (This requires some central planning of course, but should be something the university would in principle approve of.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the use of cell phones, we take care of that by making sure that students can't access them during the exam. Because our protocols require a &quot;gap row&quot; between students taking the exam, that gives us an extra row of desks. We ask the students to put their extra materials in the gap rows. That way it's immediately obvious if students start reaching for the materials, because they have to stand up or visibly get out of their seat to access them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it is announced that cell phones are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; allowed material, and that any violation of the exam regulations results in an automatic failing grade. (Thus, any use of a cell phone gets you in trouble.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T17:00:36.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23133" CreationDate="2014-06-09T18:30:35.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're specifically interested in the case of writing for a general audience, I think this problem can be usefully resolved by thinking about your choice of units. I have very little sense of what a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_hectare&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;global hectare&lt;/a&gt; actually is, or how to visualize it. So can you express these quantities in terms of units/objects that might be more accessible to your readers? See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/06/units_measurement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2010/may/17/mind-your-language-david-marsh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion.   Presumably, once you've moved to non-scientific units the arguments for precision fall away...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastEditorUserId="15798" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T18:49:39.013" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T18:49:39.013" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9140" CreationDate="2014-06-09T19:34:38.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can offer only personal experience on this topic. However, I can say that I read the literature on course evaluations rather extensively in preparation for a  past application for promotion. What I found was that there are passionate people on both sides of this debate. Some think course evaluations are the best thing since ice cream, while others believe they are responsible for grade inflation and overall lowering of standards. Based on my own experience, I tend to side with the latter group. I have been at the same institution for almost thirty years, and early in my career enjoyed very good course evaluations. After about ten to fifteen years, I notice that my evaluation scores began to erode. So, I started making things a bit easier for the students to get good grades, but nothing I felt uncomfortable with. My evaluation scores shot up noticably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent years, the quality of our incoming students has slipped, and so have my evaluation scores once again. But this time, I do not feel I can make any more concessions to the students, at least if I want to retain the integrity of my course (and myself). At least at this point I have a good deal of job security, so I can hold my ground, even though students and administrators probably wish I wouldn't. Someone in a less secure position could face a serious moral or ethical dilemna in this situation. It is easy to see how grade inflation can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., we face the same problem with standardized testing. So much is at stake with these tests for high school students and teachers, that the whole process has devolved into teaching to the test as opposed to teaching for understanding. In my opinion, it will take a vocal effort by major public institution, and even private ones, to make any headway against teacher evaluations at the college level. That is not to say that professors and teachers are not to be held accountable for the conduct of their courses. Evaluation is necessary. The devil is in the details of finding the best way to do the evaluation. I don't think the current way is the right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some writers, peer evaluations are an even worse tool than student evaluations. StasK has written a great answer. Pay particular attention to the remark that administrators don't believe the univeersity computing system could handle the load. Administrators are quick to cite some technical limitation as to why they cannot do something. They seem to forget that they are talking to an audience that contains experts who know that their arguments don't hold water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T19:34:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23119" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:03:22.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you call is a research institute, not a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my institute &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icfo.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences&lt;/a&gt; does not have undergraduate students (except for some visitors/interns). Some Master's and mostly - PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at least in Europe such institutes are common (or at least - not uncommon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a university can save money on campus expenses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undergrads are the ones bringing money, if anything. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:03:22.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:15:04.167" Score="2" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a thesis related to the objective utility and evaluation of art.  It is based on many years of personal experience in the arts, as well as many years of study into the philosophy of aesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this thesis could be tested quantitatively by a trained social scientist, and that the results would hold both scientific and commercial interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any possibility an academic researcher (either a grad student or a professor) might take on research on a thesis he or she didn't originate?  If so, what would be the best route to connect with that person, and how would the idea need to be presented (and/or what preliminary work would need to be completed first)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12743" LastEditorUserId="12743" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T20:54:35.060" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:58:27.213" Title="How to interest a researcher in a topic (social science)?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23130" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:47:05.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interviewing for a Ph.D. position in Germany, the supervisor will probably already know what you will be working on, since he will have gotten a grant on some particular topic, and you will be the warm body to actually do the work. So, in addition to everything else already mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the specific project that will pay your salary? Can the supervisor send you a copy of the successful grant proposal? Read that proposal carefully, especially concerning any timetables and financial information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much leeway will you have in actually implementing the grant proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, the grant proposal builds on previous work by the supervisor's working group. Can you talk to current Ph.D. students working on the topic? What are the specific challenges in this topic? Would it be possible to get any additional information, like manuscripts? Will you have to take over existing stuff, like experiments that are already running, or legacy code (which pretty much nobody wants)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal would be to get a feeling for the topic you will be working on for the next couple of years. Will this be something you can get sufficiently excited about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course there are additional questions. In no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What kind of supporting infrastructure is in place? Is there a full-time sysadmin, or will you keep your IT running by yourself? Is there a statistician to help you with data analysis? Somebody technical to keep the apparatuses running? Someone to feed the lab rats? Or will all this be your responsibility?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in this kind of thing: is there a possibility for you to work in a different lab for a few months, perhaps abroad? This kind of thing can be enormously valuable for your network.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@aeismail already mentioned asking how often you will meet with your supervisor, and I think this is one of the most important questions. If your supervisor tells you that he meets with each and every Ph.D. student once a week for half an hour, great. If you only meet once a semester when you give a seminar talk... not so great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:47:05.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23153" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:55:56.190" Score="17" ViewCount="5825" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking myself the question &quot;Should I do PhD or should I leave academia and go for an industrial career?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD is surely a bite that not everyone can chew.&#xA;But I wonder &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; can chew it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never was good at tests and exams. My BSc. GPA was 2.84/4.00 but finished my MSc. with 3.50/4.00&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, currently I am working on a conference paper and I feel like even that is too much for me. It has been nearly 3 months and still, the paper draft is to be improved (not the wording but the content).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am surely a hard-worker but not always. Sometimes, I let go of my work and absorbed in other stuff (composing, amateur radio etc). If this period is too wide, I have to spend double effort to warm-up and remember where I left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how things work in PhD. It usually is 5-6 years. It is the one of two most-challenging milestones in academic career (the other is getting the title Assoc. Prof).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Should I completely be a &quot;nerd&quot; and work on my thesis systematically (something I could never make in my entire life) or working periodically but with extra effort is still sufficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here's my question: If I say &quot;I'm considering to do PhD&quot; and ask your advice, what would you ask me? What kind of skills/characteristics do you look for a potential academician?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is way too late for me to ask this kind of question, as a person who almost finished his master's degree. But better lose the saddle than the horse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T03:05:43.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T06:42:06.527" Title="Who should pursue a Ph.D degree?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23147" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:58:27.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be a fairly difficult process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you would need to convince someone that you aren't a crank and are worth listening to. Once they listen to you, you'll have to convince them that your work is of such import that they should stop working on their current projects—you can assume that everyone is at full capacity already, and that adding your project to their task will decrease their involvement elsewhere—to research on your topic. Most academics are academically motivated by the love of their field, the possibility of getting one or more respected publications, and the prospect of getting a grant, not necessarily in that order. You can only appeal to the first two, and likely only the first one. That's not a very strong argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also stated in your opening question &quot;I believe this thesis could be tested quantitatively by a &lt;strong&gt;trained social scientist&lt;/strong&gt;...&quot;. The implication here is that you are not such an individual. (I'm not speaking of degrees, I'm simply speaking in terms of experience in performing academic-level research and analytics.) In that case, are you certain your research thus far is valid? Your entire thesis could be based on faulty statistics, poor sampling, a misunderstanding of some fundamental concept, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, you have an uphill battle ahead of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:58:27.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23163" CreationDate="2014-06-09T21:30:54.943" Score="12" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know exactly what I would like to research within my field, however, the ideas are too specific and indeed one of my feedbacks for the reject of one of my PhD applications based on my personal statement was that the university did not have the staff researching my interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend told me that being too specific, I limit my opportunities. On the other hand, being more general I would risk that I would have to research what the supervisors tell me to and therefore postpone solving the question I am interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are general strategies for finding appropriate places for studying PhD for someone who has a specific research problem one would like to solve? I am afraid that I may face a similar problem later when searching for a postdoc or an academic place in some research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T21:43:43.677" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T03:01:58.493" Title="How can I find a PhD position to work on a highly specific idea of my own?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23150" CreationDate="2014-06-09T22:03:19.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, here's my question: If I say &quot;I'm considering to do PhD&quot; and ask&#xA;  your advice, what would you ask me? What kind of&#xA;  skills/characteristics do you look for a potential academician?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first questions I would ask is: are you really interested in the subject? Can you imagine spending the next 5+ years thinking about pretty much nothing else?&#xA;Why do you want to do a PhD in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, currently I am working on a conference paper and I feel like&#xA;  even that is too much for me. It has been nearly 3 months and still,&#xA;  the paper draft is to be improved (not the wording but the content).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine the same thing but replace 3 month with 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I let go of my  work and absorbed in other stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also not very helpful for pursuing a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in most fields (that might be different for some fields of science) getting a PhD is only for people who want to do research. Apart from that it is only a waste of time and money. So the question you should ask yourself is not: Am I able to get a PhD? But rather: Do I want to get a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you decided that you really want to give it a try: talk to someone from your university about it, maybe the supervisor of your thesis. Grades are not always a good indicator of the quality as a researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That answers most of the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But I don't know if I'm capable of doing a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one here can answer this question. You should try to talk to a professor at your university, the supervisor of your Master's Thesis, or someone who is doing research you are interested in. However, do not let your grades disencourage you, I know many students who had pretty bad grades but are great as PhD students and many excellent students who struggle with their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T08:08:28.957" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T08:08:28.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21953" CreationDate="2014-06-09T22:54:20.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How liberal are institutions with regard to doing research in a different (unrelated) field than the person's diploma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do research in whatever field you are qualified to do research in, regardless of what it says on your diploma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly it may be more difficult to convince someone to hire you in a field other than the one your degree is in; but it is possible, if you can show that you are qualified to do research in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, if a person with diploma in pure mathematics wants also to do research and programming in IT (specifically in XML), can he do it in his work time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not necessarily restricted to research jobs in the same department as your diploma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, research jobs are typically offered for a single area (which may be a multidisciplinary area, but won't be two completely unrelated areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could theoretically (if you are qualified to work in both areas) have a part-time research position in a mathematics department and a part-time research position in an IT department. (Though I would not necessarily advise this.) You cannot, however, have a full-time job doing mathematics research, but do mathematics research part-time and IT research part-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it makes sense to obtain a second diploma (Is Bachelor enough?) in order to be able to refresh the brain by switching between two different jobs during work time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting your time between unrelated areas means that you are spending half as much time on research as others in your field (for each field). This makes it more difficult to develop deep expertise/experience in either field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &quot;refresh the brain&quot; by switching between different kinds of tasks within one job - e.g., between creative research, writing research results, dealing with administrative stuff, reading papers, etc. - or by working on multiple projects in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are sure you want two different jobs, and you are not qualified to work in the second field without a diploma in that field, then go ahead and get one. The idea of having two unrelated research jobs makes no sense to me, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T22:54:20.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23119" CreationDate="2014-06-10T00:08:03.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insideguide.ucsf.edu/admissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of California at San Francisco&lt;/a&gt; offers only graduate degrees. From the aforelinked web page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UCSF is unique in that it only offers graduate degrees (meaning it does not have an undergraduate student population).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17242" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T01:06:16.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:06:16.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2014-06-10T01:05:48.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to make another attempt to answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question which you need to ask yourself is:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Why do I want to do a PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to do a PhD because you want to be a CS researcher,&#xA;then you should aim to be admitted to a PhD program in a good CS department&#xA;(eg top 10-15).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to do a PhD because you want to be a CS lecturer in a teaching university,&#xA;it is possible to be employed at this job with only a MSc&#xA;so getting a PhD may even be a waste of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to do a PhD because you want to get an industry job,&#xA;then it is not vital to be admitted to a PhD program in a top CS department—any reasonably reputable CS department would suffice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have decided that you want to get a PhD,&#xA;then you probably want to get in the best CS department that you are able to.&#xA;Thus, it is natural to ask the next question:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;How do I make a strong PhD application?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris Blattman &lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisblattman.com/about/contact/gradschool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, focus on getting good recommendations, experience, grades and GRE scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked the question: &lt;strong&gt;Why should I spend 4 years to do a BSc, rather than spend 1 year to get an MSc?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you just want to get into a reasonable PhD program,&#xA;and you are qualified enough to do so,&#xA;then I agree that getting a BSc is a waste of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If however you have decided that you want to get into a PhD program at a good CS department,&#xA;then it may make sense to get your BSc.&#xA;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could overload (do more courses in each semester) and get your BSc in fewer than four years.&#xA;Anecdotally, I have heard of students at MIT finishing in three years for example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even though you are confident that you know everything that there is to know in an undergraduate CS education,&#xA;unless you have the grades to back it up,&#xA;PhD admission committees would be naive to just take your word for it.&#xA;Earning a BSc is a certification that you are competent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As part of your undergrad education,&#xA;you have the opportunity to be involved in undergrad research programs.&#xA;These programs are great in giving you the chance to work with professors and/or PhD students,&#xA;for you to get a sense of whether you really like research,&#xA;and for them to get to know you so that they can write you an outstanding recommendation letter,&#xA;and if things go well for you to publish research paper(s).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I realized as I answered this question&#xA;that Chris Blattman has a very long and detailed &lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisblattman.com/about/contact/gradschool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;that is a superset of my advice.&#xA;I recommend that you take a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:05:48.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23150" CreationDate="2014-06-10T01:32:08.170" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among the people who should pursue a PhD degree are the ones who can write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the number one reason to get into grad school. However, it's not clear at this point that you have an accurate idea of what it means, on a daily basis, to work in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure there are fun times fiddling with the knobs of expensive equipment, drawing equations on napkins until late in the night, traveling to exotic conference locations like Baltimore, etc. There are also these brief moments when you feel like an undergrad actually learned something from you, and those where you share inside jokes that you can tell for sure only your advisor and yourself can understand. I recall a quote from a senior researcher in my field saying &quot;Can you believe that they pay us to do what we love?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other aspects that are less glamorous. Administrative work, data bookkeeping, &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; bookkeeping, wondering what you will do with your life, filing grant applications, etc. There is the anguish about funding, the frustration of aborted projects, the time and energy wasted in dealing with department politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is teaching which can be both a joy and a pain in the neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My BSc. GPA was 2.84/4.00 but finished my MSc. with 3.50/4.00&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what GPA is, nor how to interpret your grade, but the context tells me that you think they could be better. Passing exams and conducting research are different jobs, not being excellent at one does not mean you can't be good at the second one (a) although it often helps; b) the reverse is also true). It will make things harder for you when applying to grad school, but after that it becomes irrelevant. What matters more is &lt;em&gt;what you actually learned&lt;/em&gt;, some people have ok grades but understood a great deal of the concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I let go of my work and absorbed in other stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That you will have to work on. There is an &lt;em&gt;infinite&lt;/em&gt; number of things that you can do but work on your research. Nobody will force you to do it since pretty much the only one who will suffer from your procrastination will be you. The good news (sort of) is that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5786/10643&quot;&gt;you are not alone&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of skills/characteristics do you look for a potential&#xA;  academician?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, and most of them overlap with what it needs to achieve a successful career in the industry. But I don't know any successful researcher who is not &lt;em&gt;thorough&lt;/em&gt;. Being creative sure is necessary, but it's the easiest part. What will make you stand out is when you can discipline yourself into rigorously testing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also help if you know how to sell your ideas. Researchers hate to admit it but a significant factor in their success relates to how well they can convey a message. (Note that bad communication is an indicator of bad science, but it gives a lot of false positive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:22:34.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21766" CreationDate="2014-06-10T01:46:33.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this does not address the question of how to cite a lab manual, I did find out how to cite &lt;em&gt;this particular lab manual&lt;/em&gt;. The author has informed me that there is in fact an ISBN, &lt;code&gt;978-0-7380-6200-6&lt;/code&gt; (though I don't think it is listed in all the major databases), and the correct way to cite it would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;O'Connor, Clare M.  (2013) &lt;em&gt;Investigations in Molecular Cell Biology&lt;/em&gt;. Hayden-McNeill Publishing Co., Plymouth MI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the moral of the story is that asking the author can indeed be productive for questions about how to attribute a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:46:33.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2014-06-10T02:02:23.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To clarify the comments on the original question, there is a huge difference between attending a conference, speaking (uncompensated) at the conference, and being a headline item at the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are simply attending a conference / meeting you can typically use a visitor visa. These are short-term, no-money-to-you events that happen daily, immigration has a standard process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing something and getting paid &lt;strong&gt;by your home country / primary employer&lt;/strong&gt; for it, most places will consider it to be the same. A company in their country hired a company in your country to do something, you are the something. Technicians, trainers etc. are similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing something and getting paid &lt;strong&gt;in the other country&lt;/strong&gt; then you do not fall into the (slightly expanded) Tourist/Short term visitor category. A featured speaker would be considered &quot;working&quot; no matter how the money is handled. Another way to think about the distinction is &quot;Can another person do the job just as well?&quot; In the case of a technician, the answer is usually &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that immigration in many places (UK, AU, CA, US etc) interpret &quot;compensation&quot; rather broadly. If you received anything of value in exchange for your services, you are working. If the local contact is charging money for you specifically, you are working. Plenty of people have been bounced because their plans were building a deck in exchange for accommodation &amp;amp; entertainment (items that normally have value). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notable examples you can find on YouTube:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A puppeteer was refused by the UK because he was intending to do a weekend seminar that charged participants. No work visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chef was refused by AU because she had &quot;tools of the trade&quot; (kitchen knives) in her baggage. Knives are not a problem, but when you are a chef and also have 30 resumes in your bags......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very large (all muscle), tattooed German man was going to AU to supervise work his company in Germany had been contracted to do. Immigration had no problem with the work - it fell under the technician principle. They refused him because of several criminal convictions and a decent amount of jail time, all of which he noted on his documents. And he probably scared them (although he was actually very pleasant and polite, that could probably change very quickly). They also said that if he applies for a formal visa through the embassy he will likely be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17246" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T02:02:23.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23182" CreationDate="2014-06-10T02:29:59.763" Score="10" ViewCount="1750" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got to cite the author of a text and her full &lt;a href=&quot;http://emba.ust.hk/academics/faculty-lecturers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;title&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeanne Brett, DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of&#xA;  Dispute Resolution and Organizations; Director of the Dispute&#xA;  Resolution Research Center&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm at a loss, her name is Jeanne Brett so why is this person's name in her title? When I google  &quot;dewitt w. buchanan&quot; all I get is entries for &lt;code&gt;DeWitt W. Buchanan&lt;/code&gt; or this professor. What does it mean in academia terms, is this a prize, the name of an institute, an honorific title, is it important to cite it when talking about the professor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have posted it to ELU, but it seems something very idiomatic to academia. So...help ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15837" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T13:24:06.447" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T13:24:06.447" Title="What does &quot;DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr.&quot; in a professor's title mean?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-10T02:31:24.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am not here to argue about this policy but to ask about the best ways to enforce it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like some of the other excellent answers, I am going to argue about this policy as I do not see a good way to enforce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many other institutions (entertainment industry, telegraph ) you are clinging to an old model in the face of overwhelming technology and a client base (students) that simply don't care about your rules (copying exams is not illegal: your institution is not the government and cannot enact laws).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on cellphones will accomplish nothing. I have a high-res camera in my laptop that is smaller than a shirt button. While I personally cannot hide it under my hairline, many 20 year olds can. See other answers (or amazon.com) for more places to hide a camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your end goal seems to be to reduce cheating, meaning knowing the answer to question 17 before going into the test. You reduce cheating by making the contents of question 17 irrelevant because everyone gets a different question 17. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any decent-size institution will have a large question bank built up over the years. Digitize it if you haven't done so already, and get the IT department to make a system that prints out 200 different tests with questions drawn at random from the database. Randomize the order. If you want to be really fancy, have the system randomize values if that is appropriate. This is not a complex process, I would probably quote you delivery within a week excluding the questions themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Administration will probably whine about running costs, but there are none. Printing used to cost more than copying but today it's exactly the same machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, 200 students each getting a different set of 50 questions drawn from 1000 in a random order with random values -&gt; copying any particular test is of no value to others and the problem largely goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17246" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T02:31:24.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23160" CreationDate="2014-06-10T02:37:22.353" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like the professorship she holds was named in honor of Mr. Buchanan.  You shouldn't need to include it when you cite her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12743" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T02:37:22.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23152" CreationDate="2014-06-10T03:01:58.493" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should look for faculty working in the field that you are interested in researching, and then pitch your research idea directly to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you do a good job with a preliminary review of the literature for your idea and understand the professor's specific research interests, so that your letter does not sound like any of the hundreds of mail-merge messages that professors get every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your idea is really worthwhile and you do a good targeted job of pitching it, changes are that someone will agree to work with you on it.  However, the reality is that most students come into a PhD without a really good sense of existing literature or the feasibility of their ideas.  It is for this reason that there is great value in being open-minded about your PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many students make the mistake of thinking that the PhD should be the pinnacle of their career, solving some grand problem in human existence.  This might happen for a few figures in history, but, more typically, the PhD is the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; of a research career and not the &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt; of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T03:01:58.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23165" CreationDate="2014-06-10T03:04:22.437" Score="9" ViewCount="2037" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PI started a study and collected some data. The study was originally meant to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment. After a year or so of collecting data, the PI decided to do some analyses. When I looked at the design of the study, I informed the PI that this design will not be able to provide any meaningful evaluation of effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time later, I came across a novel method to analyse this data and tried it out. The results were quite interesting and with the PI's agreement, I decide to try and publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this:&#xA;Since the PI was not involved at all in the conceptualisation of this novel method and did not contribute in the interpretation of the results, should he be granted authorship? According to ICMJE guidelines, the answer should be no but I am unsure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:&#xA;I would like to add, while thinking about this problem, I thought of big studies like the Framingham Heart Study, the Global Burden of Disease study. The PI of these studies are not automatically authors on every paper that came out of the data they collected. Would this be any different from my situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user507" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T13:07:57.677" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T16:44:09.173" Title="Must a PI who collected data but did not contribute to its final analysis be one of the authors in the paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23164" CreationDate="2014-06-10T03:31:35.127" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem to be related much to the fact that the other person is a PI. According to the question, someone collected data, and you have analyzed it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the data was published elsewhere, you cannot cite it. So you will need to include the person who collected it as an author in order to have a source for the data. It's hard to expect otherwise, if you want to use unpublished data as the source for a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ICMJE guidelines agree; one of their criteria for authorship is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other person has met this point through acquisition of the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most gracious thing to do would be to offer the other person a co-authorship, which will then allow them to meet the other three bullet points in the ICMJE guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other person can then decide whether to accept the co-authorship, or whether to take a smaller form of acknowledgment for the data collection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T03:31:35.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23164" CreationDate="2014-06-10T03:43:59.273" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me get this straight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your PI (who is on a different institution than you) made a study and&#xA;collected some data &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He gave his data to you &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He proposed some ways to process the data which did not work out &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You made a better method and you plan to publish without him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, this is not the way collaboration works. Even the fact that he proposed some methodology to process the data (even if it did not work out) it still proves that this work is a joint work and he did not simply handed the data, in the notion that you can do what you want with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, those simple facts remain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you were in his shoes, would you ever collaborate again with a guy who takes your data and does not give you co-authorship, even if you were part of the entire process? The answer is a big NO, because there is nothing to gain from such a collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do you have to lose by sharing co-authorship? You will be first author, he takes credit and he will willingly share his data again if needed. Then he will be a reference for you which in the long run, means more papers for you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What if your paper gets rejected and he finds out? You got nothing and you just burned a bridge with this man.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the other case. Even, if the other guy was an undergraduate student and he collected the data under your supervision, would not it be unethical not to include this student as a co-author?   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not be short-sighted. Share co-authorship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T03:43:59.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T07:30:46.783" Score="10" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first-year mathematics PhD student at an American university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I applied to graduate school I thought I would be doing math like I did for the past few years in college. However, after the whole senior year doing &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; estimation for 2-d NS equation(basically frequency analysis stuff in harmonic analysis), I got nothing but fully exhausted and want to try something else where I found the machine learning course on Coursera was really interesting and decided to explore more about that in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I passed all qualifying exams before the first year started. I took a graduate statistics course and a computer science course in the first quarter to get a better understanding for machine learning, and found I was thrilled at high-dimensional statistics. Unfortunately there's no one in the department working in that field, so I started working with professors in the statistics department on several different projects which I really, for the first time in my life, found more interesting than I thought mathematics was in college. Now I don't feel like I will ever wish to work in any primary mathematics field, and I'm kind of alienated in the department which makes me feel sick and sometimes lonely (and often enough pure mathematicians tend to degrade statistics or applied math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know very clearly from the past year-long research experience with Statisticians that I am now much much more enthusiastic about high-dimensional statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be open to the idea of moving to a Statistics program? The only problem is that I may not be able to get a Master's degree due to departmental coursework requirement. Is it possible to transfer to another graduate program (either within University X or other university) without a master's degree from my current university? (I am pretty sure I can get quite good reference from my research professors, as well as several decent publications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17251" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-10T16:55:46.150" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T16:55:46.150" Title="After starting a PhD in Mathematics, I realized I am more interested in Statistics - can I transfer to a Statistics PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2014-06-10T07:56:45.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One answer is that what people commonly call “tourist visas” really aren't. The distinctions are more complex than business vs. tourism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, short-stay Schengen visas are valid for many different purposes (you do need to declare what you intend to do on the application form and if you are going to work you also need a separate authorization but they are by no means restricted to tourism). The US B1/B2 visa also covers various purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, visa waiver programs or their equivalent also cover many purposes. So if your citizenship allows you to visit the Schengen area without a visa, you can certainly do it to participate in an academic conference or meet colleagues for a joint project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, as others already wrote, working usually follows other rules and it seems your scenario would fall under this category in many countries. In the US, even a “business visa” is not enough in that case. In the Schengen area, you would use the same visa than for a conference (or no visa at all, if your citizenship allows it) but you would also need a separate authorization to get the visa. You wouldn't get the visa without either lying about the purpose of the trip or presenting that document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T08:50:23.713" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T08:50:23.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23172" CreationDate="2014-06-10T09:21:54.090" Score="11" ViewCount="1574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received a scholarship from a funding organization to do my PhD. I chose a department within a reputable research center to do my PhD at, and I did start working there 2 months ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My career ambitions are to proceed in the academic career path, eventually becoming a professor in my field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, your experience as an academic (or as a researcher) is defined based on your h-index, citations count and publications count. The more strong papers I publish during and after my PhD, the better position I can get in the future. Please correct me if I am wrong about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in the place I started working at, turned out to be more of an engineering department. They are not concerned with publishing as much as they are concerned with applications to show off to the industry. Most of the PhD students working here intend to work in the industry (factories or companies). Absolutely no PhD student here is intending to work in Academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very concerned that I might be at the wrong place. I was hoping the place where I do my PhD at would encourage publishing, and involve me in their publications. I still need to learn how to do proper evaluations in our field, I thought that's how I learn it, by getting involved in papers they submit at top venues (not necessarily being a co-author, but just to learn by observing). They are not concerned with submitting papers to top venues because they think their work is more of applications than the research such venues would expect. Moreover, from their perspective it is not worth the effort, because it won't give them better chances in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, they understand my situation and they will support me financially and by providing resources if I decide to publish at top conferences. But I just feel now there's no hope I can learn to write a high quality paper given these conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned at the beginning, my funding comes from a third-party organization. Technically I can switch to a different department, and there is a department I have in mind that belongs to another branch of that same research center, located in a nearby city, they are more research-oriented and they work in the same field. It will not be easy to do that and I will have wasted a lot of time by the time I move out, but it is still doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So.. is it worth the hassle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. These events are taking place in Europe, where in most of the cases you spend your entire period as a PhD student working on your thesis, unlike the courses-then-thesis style in USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:33:32.607" Title="My department is not concerned with publishing, is this a valid reason to move to a different one?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-10T09:25:10.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many jurisdictions student's answers are his/her intellectual property and he/she is legally entitled to copy and reproduce them. You need to consult with local lawyer ASAP, because your institution may actually be asking you to prevent students from exercising their rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I do understand that students transfers some of their rights to the institution. But depending on local laws, some rights cannot be transferred nor relinquished, like the right to make a copy for personal use. There is also a possibility that university might have no rights at all to student's work - until he/she submits it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17255" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T09:25:10.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23170" CreationDate="2014-06-10T09:29:40.137" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I did start working there 2 months ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It will not be easy to do that and I will have wasted a lot of time by the time I move out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;don't fit well together. If you're worried about the 2 months you've spent, I'd say that's insignificant. If you're worried that it might take (with application processing etc) upto a year, I'd say the same thing. Think of a 30-40 year long research career. A year (or 2 months) is not a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've done your homework and have a plan for what you want to do, and you're just worried about taking the leap. Take it ! You only get one career, and taking action to further it is always &quot;worth the hassle&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T09:29:40.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T10:21:08.800" Score="15" ViewCount="6406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am PhD student and the main author of a research-in-progress report in computer science. The paper is already published at a &lt;em&gt;workshop&lt;/em&gt; (in the proceedings, this is not a journal paper) and was presented there a few months ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While continuing to work on the topic of the paper, I discovered a mistake I did in the already published workshop paper. A value that is referred to twice in the paper is wrong; it is still unusually high but lower than reported. The value is also mentioned in the summary of the paper. First I told my coauthors who sit in the next room in the same institute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to publish an Erratum on my academic website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first idea is to publish a text file next to the download like that is labeled &quot;erratum&quot; (it is a single mistake). As an example for this &quot;text file&quot;, I looked &lt;a href=&quot;http://pauillac.inria.fr/~herbelin/articles/index-eng.html&quot;&gt;at the following webpage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second idea is to change the author version of my workshop paper that is downloadable as PDF file from my website. My current idea is to solve this via a footnote in the PDF version of the paper. So how would I handle that? Do I correct the value and add a footnote saying that the original published value was wrong and explain the mistake? The other option that I think is unsuitable is the following: to leave the wrong value in the paper and add a footnote that explains that this value was a mistake and give the correct value in the footnote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are there websites on how to handle errata for conference/workshop papers in technical fields like computer science? Please note also that in my field conference papers are quite important (e.g., the POPL conference) while in some other fields only journal papers count (sort of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T21:41:28.080" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T21:41:28.080" Title="I discovered a mistake in my own published workshop paper, how do I handle errata?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23150" CreationDate="2014-06-10T10:37:11.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You sound a lot like me when I was thinking about doing a PhD, albeit you aim to be a professor, and while I like the idea I'm not so fussed about the administrative side of being in a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a tendency to concentrate on whatever is the most interesting thing in front of you, then I would very strongly advise proceeding if and only if you find a good, hands-on supervisor. Ask their previous doctoral students how often they met with them in the first few years - some supervisors will see you once a month or so, others I have heard meet their students individually or collectively several times a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, PhDs are usually 3 years. And the rough schedule is that for the first year you look at one or more problems, trying to understand how you might make some progress. In the second year, you make some small advance on one project and try in vain to develop the project into a more concrete thesis. In the third year you accept that your small advance was all you are going to get, and write it up. The slow pace of progress in the second year commonly causes distress or apathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to complete such a project, you either need to be personally very disciplined or be part of a team (you, your supervisor, perhaps some peers) that can keep you honest - remember that rubber-ducking is a vital part of academic work; most academics in the UK will congregate in the department kitchen once or twice a day just to talk to other academics, because often just explaining yourself gets you closer to a solution. Similarly, you need people to ask you where you've got to so that you don't just disappear off for a month because you're faced with something annoying and your symphony suddenly seems fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggled with this; my supervisor was hands-off, my peers were in very different fields (I was a theorist among experimentalists for a start) and I didn't really understand my own character enough to see what was happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my peers had a supervisor who used to take students through rigorous textbooks, and expect them to grasp whole chapters to be quizzed on - the sound of it terrified me, but in retrospect the foundations are well worth laying. Instead I often disappeared down dead-ends because I was unaware of entire fields of research, and just didn't have the terminology or context to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in sum, you have some well-placed concerns, but the answer is not just whether you are capable of a PhD but whether you are in the context of your supervisor, peers and department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12183" LastEditorUserId="12183" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T06:42:06.527" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T06:42:06.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T10:54:18.173" Score="6" ViewCount="19033" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing my MA in about a month and I'm thinking of applying to a Phd program in the US (political science). My GPA is as high as it gets and my recommendation letters will be great but I'm worried about my SOP and my writing sample. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to choose a good research topic...I feel like my interests are too broad and I don't know what topics could actually work...My MA thesis was closely linked to sociology and my preferred Phd field is International Relations...should I change the direction completely and go with something more orthodox for this field? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the required writing sample...I wrote a 200-pages-long research paper on collocation of recent social movements and included an original case-study. It's written in English so theoretically it should work but my professor never corrected a single word...which is disconcerting...how do I know it's actually good? Part of the problem is that I'm studying in Italy so I can't find a professor who understands the American Phd application process or anything of the sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion would be highly appreciated since I'm navigating this application process on my own and I'm afraid I'm running in circles...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17258" LastEditorUserId="17258" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T11:17:34.107" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T01:13:07.810" Title="How to decide what writing sample to include in a phd application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23176" CreationDate="2014-06-10T10:57:55.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A published paper is a published paper so if your paper has a unique identifier (e.g. doi) and is considered an official publication, I do not think it is a good idea to make versions of the paper with differing information. That would just cause confusion since the reference would still be the same (you cannot publish the same paper twice with only a number changed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you publish with a regular journal, it would not be problematic to publish an errata in the same journal explaining the error. It is also possible to publish a correspondence where the error is discussed and hopefully convincingly shown not to alter the conclusions made in the original paper. Which way is applicable in each case can be discussed with the editor of the journal and also the best way to proceed. So contacting the journal and editor is a good first step to find out the best way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are of course entitled to provide this information on your own web site but the problem may be that it will be lost to most people reading your paper that way. Hence trying to get a published correction is the best way forward. A journal should be able to link the errata to the original article so that anyone interested in the paper will find the correction at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this relates to a conference is unclear to me and is something you need to research for your specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T10:57:55.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23170" CreationDate="2014-06-10T11:33:32.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not all choices are binary. This may be one of those situations where this applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way for you to &quot;transition over&quot; from one group to the other? If the group you're currently working with is supportive (and this seems to be the case), would they be OK with you starting a collaborative project with the new group while you complete the paperwork process? That way you can get started on research before everything is formalized, and perhaps your old group can find some new collaborators for future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:33:32.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23160" CreationDate="2014-06-10T11:44:46.840" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would list the &quot;DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations&quot; if you were, for instance, issuing a press release about Prof. Brett's accomplishments, or writing very formal correspondence. You might also mention it if you were introducing Prof. Brett in a seminar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under most normal circumstances, however, such information is not needed, and could come across as being almost pretentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what the &quot;Dewitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor&quot; represents, it's what's known as an &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/what-is-an-endowed-chair-exactly-how-does-it-compare-to-a-normal-position&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;endowed chair&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;em&gt;named chair&lt;/em&gt;. Mr. Buchanan was the person honored by the chair—either because he gave the money to establish the chair himself, or others gave the money on his behalf or in his honor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:44:46.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2014-06-10T11:59:40.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At best, MOOC's are going to be viewed just like any other course on your transcript—they're not going to make it or break it anymore than any other course that you can take. However, as many people have pointed out, MOOC's are also viewed with substantial suspicion, in part because of their low completion rate and because of the difficulties with quality assurance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would ultimately say that a MOOC probably has little or no advantage over a comparable course offered at your university. If it's something that is both highly relevant and not available at your university, that's another story—but then that should be clearly stated in your application as well! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:59:40.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23176" CreationDate="2014-06-10T12:37:08.067" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mistakes happen. I would say that since it's a conference proceedings, therefore often the presented work is short of proofs, it's work in progress and it's very quickly baked, mistakes happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably impossible to post errata to the paper. I would suggest the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you put it on arXiv, upload a new corrected version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you put it on your personal webpage, add the errata there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that once you sumbit it for journal publication, the mistake is correted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T12:37:08.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2014-06-10T13:03:47.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that listing the completion of a MOOC on your CV will have any meaningful contribution to admission into a graduate program.  The weight of this type of educational experience does not parallel that of credit-based coursework.  However, in your narrative, you can describe a MOOC experience as evidence of your motivation and independence in learning / work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:03:47.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23189" CreationDate="2014-06-10T14:01:22.270" Score="7" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some weeks ago I completed the first draft a paper. I then decided to approach one of the experts in the field, who is working at the same school as I. She seemed interested and were willing to read the draft.  However I sent her the draft ~ 5 weeks ago, and I have not heard from her since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now wondering if this is normal? Can I send her an e-mail and ask if she has looked at it yet (or is that considered inappropriate?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am getting quite stressed about this, the reason being that my advisor expects a draft of a new paper soon, and it would be valuable to have her comments before I talk to my own supervisor (who knows less about the subject I am writing my paper about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17261" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T15:09:15.967" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:14:54.453" Title="Still waiting for comments on my draft - what to do?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2014-06-10T14:02:08.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in any admissions committee, so I am more or less guessing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A MOOC shows you have interest in the subject, and that you have a basic knowledge (you are familiar with the topics and some vocabulary). This knowledge is very easy to test in an interview by a few basic questions, so having a signed track will not add much to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the skills learned during the course can be a good point if they are a good complement for your degree. For example, if you are a physicist wanting to get into experimental data analysis, knowing machine learning is very useful; but most Physics programs do not include this as subject. On the other hand, taking a programming course for a CS adds next to nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An advantage of MOOCs is that you can take them for free, and you can just sign up for several of them just to see if the topic interests you, so they have a very low cost of opportunity. If you sign up for a university class, you have to pay for it (depending on the country) and/or actually see it to completion. Even if you find the topic too hard, too easy, completely irrelevant, or poorly taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T14:02:08.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23187" CreationDate="2014-06-10T14:05:47.153" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;After 5 weeks, I think you can safely assume that she has forgotten about it. You can either accept that you will not hear back from her, or send a polite reminder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people do not mind a &lt;strong&gt;friendly&lt;/strong&gt; reminder about tasks that they have committed to but forgotten about. It is definitely not inappropriate. However, it is of course possible that she simply has no time after all, but then the right thing for her to do is to just tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T15:14:54.453" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:14:54.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23191" CreationDate="2014-06-10T14:45:07.893" Score="7" ViewCount="705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a collaboration with some other research group, where the main objective was to model some data. The project was very interesting to me, since I had obtained that data. After some months I got no news from them, I wrote them and they always told me they were very busy and had no time. I understood they were not interested anymore, so that I contacted another research group for the same collaboration objective, and this time, the collaboration progressed quickly, and we reached the stage where we are writing the paper about the modeling of the results. At this same point I got news from the other group, telling me they had obtained very interesting results with their modeling technique, and regretting the previous lack of contact. It turns out they have obtained much better modeling results than the &quot;second&quot; group. My problem is that I do not know what to do now. One option would be to publish two papers, one with each group, that would be very similar. Other option would be to decide for one of the two groups and go ahead, forgetting the other, but that would not be ethical. Perhaps a last option would be to publish both papers, bur giving them very different focus and audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:05:15.740" Title="What to do when you have obtained very similar results with two different groups and you want to publish them both" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23190" CreationDate="2014-06-10T15:05:15.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised you did not mention the option that I would probably do: combine all data into one paper. Based on your description it sounds as if both data support a similar hypothesis/line of enquiry. If that is the case, publish one much stronger paper using two independent sets of data. All authors would need to be included. You could check with both teams to see if they agree. Speaking of which, have you asked them what they want to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15261" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:05:15.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23218" CreationDate="2014-06-10T15:30:23.207" Score="18" ViewCount="7330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a PhD student who will graduate in July.&#xA;I am currently applying for academic postdocs,&#xA;with the goal of taking a tenure-track job at the end of my postdoc position.&#xA;In my field (operations research),&#xA;most of the postdoc positions are for one year&#xA;with a possibility of extension to two and sometimes three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am given the choice, should I spend one year as a postdoc, or two?&#xA;Would I be able to make a significant contribution to a research project if I were to only work as a postdoc for a year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am leaning towards a two year postdoc.&#xA;If I were to only spend one year as a postdoc,&#xA;I feel that it is a rather short period of time&#xA;in which to start and finish a research project.&#xA;If I spend two years as a postdoc,&#xA;then I would be applying for tenure-track jobs one year later,&#xA;and I am also hopeful that at that point,&#xA;I would have done some research which I could submit in my job application&#xA;in addition to my existing PhD work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advice would you have for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edited in response to question in comments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David Z mentioned, in my field, a postdoc appointment is for a fixed term  (typically one or two years, or one year with a possibility of extention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T19:43:09.920" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T16:11:35.623" Title="Postdoc position: should I stay for one year or two years?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23160" CreationDate="2014-06-10T15:34:17.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a so-called &quot;chair&quot; professorship, where the &quot;chair&quot; was endowed by a wealthy man named DeWitt W. Buchanan Jr. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that the donation given by Mr. Buchanan Jr. was large enough to pay the holder of the &quot;chair&quot; over her probable tenure, so he gets to have his name attached to the work of that one professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T15:34:17.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23192" CreationDate="2014-06-10T16:30:27.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to get a faculty position somewhere, assumably :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, at least the field I work in, you need publications and a good record of academic research.  This might be slightly different in other fields.  If you can get a few papers out and prove yourself then 1 year might be sufficient. If the PI is good then stay a second year to make yourself even better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I think it comes down to what it will take to get a faculty position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet might be to talk to some current post-docs in your research area as they might have the best advice as it will likely depend on your specific research area and conventions there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T16:30:27.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23164" CreationDate="2014-06-10T16:44:09.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing a paper or Letter to the Editor discussing the requirements to be an author on the paper.  They came up with the 5 types of contributions towards a paper, as I remember they were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initial Idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Acquisition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revising the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as someone made a significant contribution toward two of these items they should be an author on the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It completely depends on conventions in your particular area.  For example in my field the supervisor is always the last author.  I know some fields might have them as first author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, what it comes down to is what many others have said... don't burn your bridges. You need collaborations!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T16:44:09.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23269" CreationDate="2014-06-10T16:53:32.147" Score="27" ViewCount="6596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished a PhD in mathematics and am about to start a postdoc in the fall. My question is pretty straightforward (although the answer might not be), namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should one do to have a successful mathematics postdoc (apart from perhaps doing as much math as humanly possible, or more)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect this will be different depending on one's goals post-postdoc, such as staying in academia vs leaving, research vs teaching focused jobs, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possibly related questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3327/what-is-expected-of-a-postdoc&quot;&gt;What is expected of a postdoc?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21951/transitioning-phd-to-postdoc-and-productivity&quot;&gt;Transitioning: PhD to Postdoc and Productivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T22:18:02.490" Title="Keys to a successful postdoc in mathematics" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="32" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23114" CreationDate="2014-06-10T16:56:05.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would seem that you should contact the organizing committee of the conference and get their advice. To me it seems kind of low to write papers that have very similar content but it does happen.  If you are questioning it that much I would bring it up with the Organizing Committee and see what they say. You don't even have to mention names or specifics but just get their general opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T16:56:05.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23198" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:21:53.800" Score="17" ViewCount="1076" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Academia, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8557/1033&quot;&gt;sabbatical means a leave to do only research&lt;/a&gt;, as opposed to an unpaid leave to do anything you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/27097/1898&quot;&gt;recent question over on The Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt; raises the situation where  someone &lt;em&gt;has too much money and just want to have more time.&lt;/em&gt; — like working for 6-9 months per year, which would earn one enough to spend the rest of the time travelling.  Regardless of the relatively low pay in parts of Academia, the same situation may apply, in particular to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DINKY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DINK&lt;/a&gt;s.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers mostly boil down to: &lt;em&gt;be a consultant or freelancer.&lt;/em&gt;.  That may work in the software industry or other private sectors, but it doesn't translate very well to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a career which includes one or more extended unpaid leaves, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatical&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word&lt;/a&gt;, or unpaid leaves in the order of 3 months or more in a row, compatible with working in academia at all?  If yes, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification:&lt;/strong&gt; I am interested in answers considering &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; a career that contains specific gaps (such as a year to see the world, either between jobs, or interrupting a job), &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a fixed job that contains less than 12 months per year (minus holidays) of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T12:12:05.367" Title="Are extended periods of unpaid leave compatible with an academic career?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23114" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:45:55.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends entirely on the conferences involved.  Some conferences will allow an overlap of up to 30% with other works (for example), and others require entirely original products.  In either event, it is imperative that the earlier paper be referenced in the later one, ideally with an explanation of what is new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:45:55.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23196" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:51:21.457" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that your parenthetical comment (&quot;doing as much math as humanly possible&quot;) is necessarily correct.  In my opinion, you are best looking for a postdoc in an area that is as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate.  Unless you are an unassailed leader in the field (in which case, skip the postdoc and just get an academic position directly), your postdoc is a good time to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;diversify your interests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up connections between disparate fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and, in the words of the great Arnold Ross, &quot;think deeply of simple things&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, after your postdoc it will be a long time before you can actually devote a similar amount of uninterrupted thought to academic interests (possibly not until retirement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastEditorUserId="15885" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T19:18:59.890" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:18:59.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23192" CreationDate="2014-06-10T18:18:35.873" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;One year is not very long. You will lose some time at the start while you settle in and get 'set up' for doing research; you will lose more time at the end as you make preparations to move on. You also need to factor in time spent on securing your 'next job'. I would therefore strongly encourage you to take a two-year position rather than a one-year position, all else being equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, it's generally much easier to resign a position &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the money runs out than it is to secure an extension!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T18:18:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23208" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:16:38.670" Score="15" ViewCount="1563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from a reputed North American university with a master's degree in 2013. Due to severe personal problems (deaths/illness in the family, war-torn homeland, divorce, financial issues, and so on), it would be fair to say that I did not perform well. My thesis had a critical error which was duly pointed out during my defense by my examiner. My advisor had not noticed it before. I managed to pass but with major corrections to the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was waiting for the situation in my home country to settle down, we improved the results significantly. We wrote much of a paper with the agreement that we would correspond over email when I go back home to finish it and send it for publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a year and a half ago. I am back home and I have been trying to get her to finish writing her part but to no avail. Once every couple of months she responds with &quot;I need more time&quot; but that's about it. It would be a huge help in my career to have a paper published. But I am paranoid about being rude to her and keep nagging her because I need her reference if and when I decide to apply for a PhD later. Also I believe she's a genuinely a nice person! So my questions are, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is a year and a half a normal amount of time to write on a paper in&#xA;which the research is finished? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I politely convince her to hurry up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11731" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T06:45:47.333" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:03:19.390" Title="How to get an advisor to finish their part of a publication when they have not done anything on it for over a year?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;procrastination&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:16:40.447" Score="43" ViewCount="9191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to review a paper that I know to have been authored by a friend and former colleague.  Is it my responsibility to inform the editor and decline to review the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17271" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T21:27:31.780" LastActivityDate="2019-01-26T22:55:10.933" Title="Must I decline to review a former colleague's work?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:19:00.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it my responsibility to inform the editor and decline to review&#xA;  the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It should also be stated somewhere, but there is no other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:19:00.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:32:36.360" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals have rules about reviewing the work of former colleagues. For example, I've seen journals claim that papers will not be reviewed by people that have been at the same institution over the last five years. You have to check with the editorial policies of the journal to see about this but if the editor has made a mistake by sending the paper to you, they'll appreciate you pointing it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger issues are that (a) you know who the author is so the review will not be blind and (b) the author is your friend which might reasonably be seen as a conflict of interest. If you know the author because you have seen the work in the paper before, that is a third problem. I would not review papers that I know are written by my friends for all of these reasons and I think it is in the interest of the journal and of the peer review process to defer review to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:32:36.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23203" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:49:22.943" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a year and a half a normal amount of time to write on a paper in which the research is finished? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, this paper should've been finished a year ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research is done, so you are not waiting for something else to fall into place for your paper. You already tried writing your former advisor's portion of the manuscript to no avail. Your former advisor did not even catch a critical flaw in your thesis. I hate to say it, but it sounds like your former advisor is quite a bozo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I politely convince her to hurry up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've not already done so, send your former advisor your &quot;final&quot; draft of the manuscript (including the parts you wrote for her). Give her a timeline for returning suggestions/modifications to you. If that doesn't work, you might have to get on the phone and talk to her about how important it is for you to submit this paper. If this fails, you may need to move on, and hope that at some point in the next year or two that she finally matures enough to help you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:49:22.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:52:51.887" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;All other things the same, it would be better to inform the editor and decline, yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the author is not a &quot;friend&quot;, but some sort of opposite to that, ideally one would decline for the opposite reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It starts to become trickier when the author is &quot;a competitor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, with time, it can easily happen that many people in a given field are well known to you, &quot;good acquaintances&quot; (or &quot;bad&quot;...) if not &quot;friends&quot;. That is, the ideal of dispassionate opinion due to lack of personal connection becomes impossible, not matter the ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in practice, although it is harmless to inform the editor, they probably won't be surprised, and most likely would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; at all insist that you decline... although you are within your rights to do so in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:52:51.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23203" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:55:41.690" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess your advisor is not really &quot;procrastinating&quot;, just not working &lt;em&gt;on your paper&lt;/em&gt; for one reason or another. She may very well be working on other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course the interesting question is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; she is ignoring the work on your paper. Some potential reasons that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She simply is swamped with teaching or administrative matters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper is outside of her research interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper is still too much work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She thinks that the results of the paper are not very strong, and she honestly does not give the paper good chances of acceptance / impact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say she is a &quot;genuinely nice&quot; person. In my experience, all too often this also implies some avoidance of confrontation (I am certainly guilty of that), which makes the third and the fourth reason more likely. Yes, in theory she should simply tell you when she thinks that material is too weak or the current draft too bad, but for her the &quot;easier&quot; out might be to ignore the paper, especially since you are far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; the fact that your advisor apparently did not even read / check your thesis carefully (and missed a critical flaw) rather indicates the second reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what you should do I agree with user11192 - after such a long time, it is time to essentially give up on getting her to do &quot;her part&quot;. Write it for her, and send it to her only for review. Since it has become abundantly clear that the paper is not a priority for her right now (for whatever reason), you can either do it alone or not do it at all. You have no leverage over your old advisor to get her to do her part, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if you are afraid of burning any bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:55:41.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:56:55.793" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you reviewing the paper would not violate any guidelines of the journal or conference in question, the primary issue is &lt;em&gt;objectivity&lt;/em&gt;: can you review the paper on its own merits, or will your association with the author in question &quot;color&quot; your opinions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would never review a paper written by a former &lt;em&gt;co-author&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;personal friend&lt;/em&gt;. However, I may accept the review of someone whom I know professionally but have not worked with in any formal capacity, provided that I am not working on a similar project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular example, you claim that the person is &quot;a friend.&quot; If that is the case, then I would recommend leaning against accepting the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of informing the journal editor is a separate matter. You may explain that the reason is you know the author, but you are not necessarily obligated to do so. If you want, you could simply say &quot;I don't have the time right now,&quot; and that would be just as valid a reason as &quot;it's a conflict of interest.&quot; But I don't think there's anything lost by informing the editor of why you don't feel comfortable providing the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:56:55.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23214" CreationDate="2014-06-10T20:07:23.420" Score="33" ViewCount="8698" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my class, we have project groups of 4 or 5 students. This period has everything to do with game development. The project is to build a XNA game for children at primary school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is one group of students in my class, who snitched a game from the internet and are going to hand that in. I saw a Facebook post from one of the students about &quot;their&quot; game, and a fellow student found almost the exact same game on a Dutch game site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is according to you the right way of handling this -in my eyes, plagiarism? Should I inform the project teacher, to have them exposed to the exam committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17259" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T20:13:51.323" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T12:11:36.413" Title="I believe my classmates plan to hand in a plagiarized project, how should I handle this?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23198" CreationDate="2014-06-10T20:14:31.553" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequent, extended periods of unpaid leave are easily compatible with certain types of academic careers, such as teaching as an adjunct on a course-by-course basis.  However, this involves low pay and no prestige or job security, so it's far from an ideal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be a lot of obstacles to doing this with a tenure-track job.  Your collaborators will be unhappy when you put the collaboration on hold to go do something else.  You colleagues will be unhappy when you aren't available to teach courses or supervise students (thereby making the department work around what they consider to be your eccentricities).  Wanting to take substantial amounts of time off will be considered a bad sign, and everyone will worry about what you might do once you have tenure.  Your chances of getting tenure will go down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking time off can also make you a less productive researcher, even normalized by the amount of time you spend on research.  The problem is that keeping up with the field takes a certain amount of time and effort.  If you work on research for only six months per year, you still need to keep up with twelve months of progress by others, so it's as if the rest of the world were moving twice as fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not impossible that you could find a flexible academic job.  You might end up with a specially negotiated soft-money position (funded by grants under whatever terms the funding agency will agree to), you might take a job at a less prestigious university than you could have (who are so eager to hire you that they are willing to make a deal), or you might happen to find an unusually accommodating department.  Unfortunately, this isn't something most people can reasonably expect to work out.  I don't know what the chances are, but I expect they are pretty low on average.  The academic job market is tough, and adding non-standard constraints makes it even tougher.  If you can't be happy without frequent, extended leaves, and you have good non-academic employment options that fit your needs, then that might be the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another theoretical option is to take advantage of tenure: work hard, don't tell anyone your plans, and then quit doing any academic work over the summer once you get tenure.  You shouldn't do this.  Your colleagues will feel resentful, the administration will be upset, and you'll be manipulating the system in a way tenure is not intended to support (and thus weakening the case for having tenure at all).  If you're too extreme, you could run into trouble with a post-tenure review, depending on your university's policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm assuming you intend to use the leaves for something entirely unrelated to your academic career.  If it's more closely related, such as applying your scholarly expertise to government service, then you may have better luck.  However, it doesn't sound like that's what you're talking about.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T20:14:31.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-06-10T20:48:47.113" Score="53" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I inform the project teacher, to have them exposed to the exam committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Tell the teacher exactly what you know: that there is a game that seems very similar to your classmates' project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student, it's not your responsibility to decide what is and isn't plagiarism, or to decide who should be punished for dishonesty and who shouldn't, or to start a &quot;movement&quot; to let the cheaters know you're onto them. If you believe you have evidence of misconduct, report it and let the administration handle it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T20:48:47.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23198" CreationDate="2014-06-10T21:14:47.940" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One case when this does happen in an academic setting is when faculty get on a glide path to retirement. In such cases, it's possible to negotiate a reduced workload (and pay). The incentive here is that the department can sometimes use this (along with other funds) to support hiring a new faculty member: since faculty slots are expensive commodities, such an arrangement works for everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question doesn't indicate the level of the person who might want to do part-time academic work. I think it goes without saying that doing this before tenure is a BAD IDEA for reasons already outlined above. But if someone is tenured but far from retirement, it might be possible to pull off such an arrangement if the department sees an opportunity to cash in on it via new hiring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T21:14:47.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23192" CreationDate="2014-06-10T22:35:49.803" Score="24" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Two.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, at least in computer science, most postdocs are synchronized with the academic calendar.  A typical postdoc starts in August, and faculty application deadlines start in November.  So for purposes of applying for faculty positions, &lt;strong&gt;a one-year postdoc is really only three months long&lt;/strong&gt;.  A two-year postdoc gives you &lt;strong&gt;five times&lt;/strong&gt; as much time to strengthen your faculty application!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2018-05-26T16:11:35.623" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T16:11:35.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T22:59:52.897" Score="12" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to a conference. I wasn't quite sure if my paper was within the scope of that conference (it seemed a judgement call), but it was accepted. I went to the conference, and after attending several of the talks, I felt my paper was actually a good fit after all. My presentation of the paper went well; lots of people were interested in the topic and asked good questions. I was reasonably confident that my paper would be accepted for publication in the proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All student papers received an extra round of feedback before the formal submission for publication in the proceedings. I just received my feedback; the reviewer was very complimentary, but said that the topic was not within the scope of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm not sure what to do. Making the paper fit the scope better won't really be practical; I already did the best I could in that direction. The formal submission is due in about a month. I believe it's a good paper, so I could probably find a home for it elsewhere. I have two questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I formally submit the paper as-is. Would it be better to simply try to find a more appropriate place to publish? Or should I just consider it a lesson learned, forget about this paper, and move on to the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there something I could have done up front to establish whether the paper was in scope or not? Perhaps in future it would be better to only submit to conferences where it's very clear that the paper is a good fit. This issue is likely to arise again for me, because my research is sort of at the boundary of two fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17276" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T06:48:55.277" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T06:48:55.277" Title="What to do when paper is deemed in scope for the conference but not for the proceedings?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23219" CreationDate="2014-06-11T00:47:33.440" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I formally submit the paper as-is. Would it be better to simply&#xA;  try to find a more appropriate place to publish? Or should I just&#xA;  consider it a lesson learned, forget about this paper, and move on to&#xA;  the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, you have to fight for papers you believe.  Reviewers can vary wildly in their assessments, and their assessments can be wrong.  Ultimately, if you feel that this is an appropriate place to publish, I think it's worth submitting it anyway and rolling the dice.  I have two caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, ask a third party in your field whom you respect about their opinion of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think hard about why you think the paper belongs in the proceedings and, if possible, add a clear motivation to the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there something I could have done up front to establish whether the&#xA;  paper was in scope or not? Perhaps in future it would be better to&#xA;  only submit to conferences where it's very clear that the paper is a&#xA;  good fit. This issue is likely to arise again for me, because my&#xA;  research is sort of at the boundary of two fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you can write to people on the technical program committee of the conference (or the chair of that committee) with a brief explanation of your work and a request for an assessment of suitability.  It is important &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to get discouraged from rejections ... they are common, sometimes for good reasons and other times for utterly stupid reasons.  The key is to learn what you can from the reviews, improve the paper, and resubmit where appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T00:47:33.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-11T00:50:33.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it my responsibility to inform the editor and decline to review the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is your responsibility to inform the editor of the situation, but the two of you can decide together whether or not your should decline the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor may ask you whether you feel that you can objectively review the work (the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; answer is that none of us are truly objective, but the question here is whether you would feel comfortable rejecting the paper if you think it is bad &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; accepting the paper if you think it is good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T00:50:33.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-06-11T01:46:04.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teachers have the resources to check for plagiarism and would be able to check for such things. I would recommend checking the project through one of these resources and let them know if you could spot it, so can your teacher. Then, you protect your reputation and put the responsibility back on them. So that once your teacher spots it, you will have proof you let them know in advance how you felt about the submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17281" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T05:09:50.547" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T05:09:50.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23204" CreationDate="2014-06-11T04:06:04.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.  Is this a double-blind refereeing system?  If so, how do you know the paper was written by a close colleague?  (Technically, everyone working in your discipline is a colleague, but some colleagues are closer than others.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some disciplines, blind reviewing isn't used or single blind reviewing is used.  In that case, you know because the author's name is on the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, I would notify the associate editor who asked me to review the paper that I have a (potential) conflict and explain the situation exactly.  If I felt I could maintain a disinterested perspective on the paper I would say so and leave the decision up to the associate editor.  If I felt I could not maintain a disinterested perspective, I would say so and decline to review the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, my perspective on my duties as a referee is a little different from the norm.  I review work for technical correctness and point out any errors and limitations I might find.  I comment on whether I find the work interesting.  I will not make publication recommendations.  I see that as the editorial board's job, not mine.  That perspective reduces the potential for conflict of interest in my mind.  I basically won't tell an editor anything I would not say directly to an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17284" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T04:06:04.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23192" CreationDate="2014-06-11T08:52:23.693" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As this question may receive more attention over time - and it deserves that - I'd like to add a more wider scope to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reasons why one year is fine for a post-doc. For example, if you are going to work in a very similar area as you did your PhD in and since then it may take only little time to familiarise yourself with the research. If you are staying in the same country, settling in will be minimal. It might also be that you are working on a very concise subject and a year would completely suffice. You might also think about doing another post-doc somewhere else, then you probably want to consider a shorter period, as it allows you intensify your professional network.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You should always also keep in mind, that a post-doc might not work out as you expected it. Going for only one year is a safe bet then. In most cases however, since you are a professional, there will be workaround for this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably many more reasons to choose the longer period. Most of them were already mentioned by avid. Sometimes doing a post-doc is leaving the comfort zone, i.e. you are working much more freely than during a PhD and probably working on something completely new. Settling in is probably the biggest worry you will have. You may be wasting a lot of time in that procedure - very much depending on where you go, there might be a lot of paperwork involved. If you are planning on going abroad, this may take ages. When I started my post-doc I had about a month before I actually could start with my research. It might also take time to get yourself acquainted with the local infrastructure and/ or command structure.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When you finally started your research there might occur other problems along the line. Distractions you cannot plan, for example you might have more  responsibility in many more related fields. Most likely PhD students and undergraduates of your new research group will ask your advice often. If you are the only post-doc, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the go to guy, when your advisor is not around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point to consider is cooperations with other groups, writing manuscripts, attending conferences, developing new research proposals, maybe write a grant application, prepare for your future plans. But apart from this all, a key role in the beginning will also be socialising, become part of the group, member of the faculty/ institute. (I underestimated that a lot when I started - there was a lot of &quot;shake-hands&quot; involved.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;During a post-doc, you should be able to develop yourself, your methods, your profiles. You are already a contributing member of the science community, keeping that up is a lot of work. That all only works if you are comfortable with your surroundings and make the best time you can possibly have. One year might have flown by, without you realising that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13372" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T08:52:23.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-06-11T11:36:57.917" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mind your own business - it's not your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone working in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; group suggests or does plagiarism, or someone tries to plagiarize your work, or does something which could affect &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; mark or &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; academic record, go ahead and report them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you shouldn't get involved with this. It's not your job to police other students behaviour. It doesn't prevent you from learning, nor does it prevent you from getting the grade you deserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are laying yourself open to unpleasantness and ill-feeling between you and your classmates. Other students who are honest, might resent you or feel that you will be surveilling them in future. You might end up with your own behavior being closely watched by classmates who are trying to get you in trouble. It is also possible that the information you have is wrong or that you have misinterpreted it. For someone who is innocent of cheating or who has been co-erced to be disciplined for plagiarism is a serious thing to have on your conscience. In some (rare) situations various forms of cheating are tacitly being tolerated by the teacher, and you will be seen by them as 'rocking the boat'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you have a lot to lose and very little to gain by reporting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T11:36:57.917" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23232" CreationDate="2014-06-11T12:06:47.850" Score="28" ViewCount="4108" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm just now finishing my master's thesis. When thinking about who helped me aside from my official supervisors some of the StackExchange fora (especially Stack Overflow and TeX) came into my mind. &#xA;I asked some questions in these fora but most of the time I was just looking for information in older posts (and finding it most of the time). Now one the one hand it feels weird to me to acknowledge a site I browsed to, e.g., find out a certain programming command (like I would not really think about acknowledging Wikipedia). But on the other hand I am really grateful for some of the quick and professional answers I got from StackExchange users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do you think, should I acknowledge StackExchange in my thesis?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11487" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T14:01:26.700" Title="Is it appropriate to acknowledge StackExchange in my MSc thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23231" CreationDate="2014-06-11T12:15:21.820" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your acknowledgement is a place where you are free to thank anyone or anything (I have seen dogs being thanked) you think deserve mentioning. To acknowledge StackExchange is highly appropriate since it is a community driven open site where help can be obtained to solve problems from many different perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my PhD thesis, I, perhaps a bit over-ambitiously, thanked Donald Knuth for creating TeX. Had StackExchange been in existence back then, some of the terror of writing my thesis in plain TeX would have been eased and it would have been placed along-side Knuth in the acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T12:15:21.820" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T12:53:47.660" Score="6" ViewCount="2087" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if my PhD advisor doesn't want to give me a letter of recommendation, because he doesn't want me to leave on postdoc? No one of his young assistants have never been on any postdoc or fellowship exchange. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17298" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T12:47:43.553" Title="Postdoc without letter of recommendation" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-06-11T13:05:57.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;College is competitive enough without having to compete against cheaters lazy enough to represent an entire work that is freely available online as their own. Grading is often quite subjective, and your work should not be compared to work of those working outside your class's structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to give the information to the instructor with your name on it. You can leave an anonymous note to the professor (and give a copy to the department chair if you want to ensure they will at least investigate, because the temptation is to sweep it under the rug). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be careful not to overstate your case. Just state that you believe they &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be passing off that particular work as their own, point to the evidence, and let that stand and do not pursue the matter (&lt;sub&gt;unless you have hard evidence, the instructor and the department sweep it under the rug, and you feel the need to act further, but be careful because you may quickly become a target for political retribution yourself.&lt;/sub&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T13:05:57.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23231" CreationDate="2014-06-11T13:52:54.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of it not as acknowledging the site but of the community that contributes and curates the content. (From the way you asked the question, I think this is what you have in mind as well.) I'm sure a correspondingly worded acknowledgment would be appropriate (and appreciated -- in particular the TeX.SE community is by a wide margin one of the most helpful and welcoming I have ever seen on the internet, and they deserve the recognition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that some future student might read your thesis when preparing her own; if she reads your acknowledgment and learns of the value of StackExchange, you are doing her a service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T14:01:26.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T14:01:26.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:04:17.460" Score="1" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a 2nd year undergraduate student studying Business/Finance/Information Systems at a decent, normal university.  I have amazing grades and general interests in pursuing higher education or conducting my own research in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While my current standing in knowledge is still relatively minute, I'm extremely interested in certain fields -- such as econometrics, financial theory, etc -- that I learn on my own time.  Many of my peers find classes and course material frustrating but I get a tinge of excitement everytime I'm able to understand and articulate on a certain concept being taught.  This is especially true in Mathematics as I have a strong math background compared to my students in my degree but meagre in comparison to the material I am trying to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People currently in Academia or pursuing Academia, what are some of your recommendations in preparing for higher education or just learning more on my spare time.  Currently I am taking some online coursera courses and reading a few books I've found through the library.  What other sources should I be considering?  When is a good to start reading journal articles/papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17300" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T14:04:17.460" Title="Preparing for Higher education/Self-teaching" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-11T20:17:47.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23238" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:23:28.830" Score="160" ViewCount="22338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started reading some papers (Computer Science, specifically Computer Vision) and thought &quot;now let's look at the source code&quot; and was quite astonished that most of the papers don't have any source code implementing the described methods to look at, while claiming some performance or being better than other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do these papers get accepted in journals / conferences? Do people have to submit their source code privately to the reviewers at least, so that they can reproduce the experiment if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most journals / conferences just &quot;trust&quot; that people who submit the paper really implemented the theory and got those exact results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always had this idea that any experiment should be reproducible by others else it's not scientific justified. Been wondering about this the last few days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17302" LastEditorUserId="4249" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T10:06:52.780" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T21:03:42.140" Title="Why are papers without code but with results accepted?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="25" FavoriteCount="37" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:49:46.707" Score="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it seems that the reasons are two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the belief that code is only a tool, a particular implementation being secondary to the idea or algorithm,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the historical residue (it was unpractical to print a lot of pages; especially as no-one could copy-paste it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many scientist seems to be afraid to show their code in public, as they are aware of its poor quality (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17781/why-do-many-talented-scientists-write-horrible-software&quot;&gt;Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?&lt;/a&gt;), so they don't want to risk reputation (for both quality and catching possible errors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, things related to current incentives in academia (where publications, not code, are related to one's career possibilities):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sharing code may mean risk of being scooped (instead of milking the same code for years),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cleaning up code takes time, which can be used for writing another publications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do people have to submit their code privately to the reviewers at least, so that they can reproduce the experiment if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically - not. If the code is not made public, almost for sure no reviewer have checked its existence; much less - correctness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many scientists are starting to notice the problem (and they see how open source culture flourishes). So, there are new initiatives addressing such issue, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecodemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Code Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Software is a cornerstone of science. Without software, twenty-first century science would be impossible. Without better software, science cannot progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/articles/Reproducibility_PI_Manifesto/104539&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. Try to search for &lt;em&gt;reproducible research&lt;/em&gt; or look at things such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://yihui.name/knitr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;knitr for R&lt;/a&gt; and this intro to &lt;a href=&quot;http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/batterio/intro_ipython_notebook/blob/master/notebooks/index.ipynb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPython Notebook&lt;/a&gt;, or read about &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;using GitHub for science&lt;/a&gt;. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://statwonk.github.io/blog/2013/12/15/are-academics-adopting-github/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it seems it is taking off&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T19:06:26.333" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T15:02:45.323" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;What field are you talking about? A CS paper describing the design and performance of a computer vision algorithm is different from a sociology paper that used a spreadsheet to crunch demographic data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do most journals / conferences just &quot;trust&quot; that people who submit the paper really implemented the theory and got those exact results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. The presumption is always that there is no scientific fraud involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I always had this idea that any experiment should be reproducable by others else it's not scientific justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the algorithms are fully described in the paper, then the result is reproducible. To reproduce it, you have to reimplement the algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just started reading some papers and thought now let's look at the code and was quite astonished that most of the papers don't have any code to look at, while claiming some performance or being better than other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably the better performance is because the algorithm described in the paper is a more efficient algorithm. For example, when sorting a large amount of  data, a quicksort is a better sorting algorithm than a bubble sort. The quicksort has O(n log n) performance on the average, while the bubble sort has O(n^2), and this is true regardless of the details of the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T15:02:45.323" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23241" CreationDate="2014-06-11T15:28:52.057" Score="26" ViewCount="2528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a paper that is based on work that I won't be following up on, as I'm changing career directions. I believe that the work raises a number of questions and ideas for future work, and my program solves a number of the boring problems without getting into the interesting applications. However, I've previously been told that raising an idea in a &quot;Future Work&quot; section effectively 'reserves' that work for me, and it would be considered rude for readers to begin research on those areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I signal (without flat out saying that I don't care) that I hope others will pick up and run with the ideas I'm presenting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's of any importance, it's a Computer Science paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17307" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T22:47:58.227" Title="How can I signal that I don't intend to follow up the items in my &quot;Future Work&quot; section?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23240" CreationDate="2014-06-11T15:52:14.490" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard this about &quot;Future Work&quot;.  Items that you put in this section are simply things that you are currently considering, and someone else who does them should at least cite your original work.  However, anyone who beats you to actually doing the work should be able to publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make it absolutely clear that you do not intend to work on this material (and, you never know, you might end up going back to it later anyway!), simply call the section &quot;Further discussion&quot; or just &quot;Discussion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T15:52:14.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23242" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T15:57:55.423" Score="15" ViewCount="1804" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important? Anyone with a command of English should be able to write a Statement of Purpose, in principle, so it seems a poor way to compare applicants' research potential. If I were to judge an applicant (obviously I've never been in this position), I would much sooner at grades than at their Statement of Purpose, simply because grades cannot (in general) be 'faked'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15142" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T16:27:23.350" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T23:58:03.207" Title="Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;evaluation-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:05:30.710" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with jwg. I don't intend to be rude, but I would call this squealing. It shouldn't be your stuff as it doesn't hold you from achieving what you want to achieve. Actually after the grading took place, if you detect that your grade has been dimished because of the 'exceptional' work of the other group, well then it is another situation. In this case you could still think about reporting the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17310" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T16:05:30.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23240" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:10:10.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is just a matter of wording and rather than word it that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are going to do this &quot;Future Work&quot;, maybe word it as &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; could do this future work. That way it shows you are thinking ahead (good thing) even though you may not want to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the Future Work would show that someone is thinking and would convince me that this work you have done is beneficial to the field and opens doors to other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T16:10:10.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23242" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:25:08.570" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One excellent reason for requiring a statement of purpose is to make sure that applicants have &quot;done their homework.&quot; Have they taken into account who works in the department, and what can be done there? Can they formulate ideas for projects they'd be interested in working on? Furthermore, writing ability is a very critical factor for success as a researcher; someone who writes a very poor statement of purpose is likely to have a very difficult PhD candidacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades are somewhat objective, but they're also subject to a lot of external factors (&quot;grade inflation,&quot; &quot;scaling,&quot; sample size, and so on). But that doesn't mean they're not also considered. &lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; parts of an application are usually considered, although the weights given to the various factors may differ greatly between departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T16:25:08.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23242" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:25:21.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be simple for some to write good English but to actually write something valuable is a lot harder. There are of course no perfect single tools to evaluate applications so having a multi-pronged approach provides some improvements in the weeding process. Grades provide insights into some aspects, particularly someone's ability to perform on exams. Such ability is not necessarily equated with ability to, for example, think critically or creatively (we do of course not know of the assessment methods underpinning the grades). A Statement of Purpose provides insights into the person's own insights into a research problem or field. Hence combining these two aspects with CV, letters of recommendations or whatever else is required, forms a more complex picture of the applicant than what each and every part of the application does on its own. The Statement will perhaps be the part that most closely reflects on the persons ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T17:40:35.063" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T17:40:35.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23251" CreationDate="2014-06-11T18:19:47.193" Score="5" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I obtained the rights to reuse some figures from other journal articles on my thesis from the publishing company. Is it sill a good idea to email the authors of the figures, do I need their OK before I include it in my thesis ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:46:43.913" Title="Reusing figures from other articles in one's thesis" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23242" CreationDate="2014-06-11T18:24:58.117" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question assumes they do consider it important, but how it's actually viewed varies enormously between departments.  In mine, it's not considered particularly important for most applicants.  If your statement is pretty good, then that's good enough (nobody was ever admitted by writing a great personal statement).  However, it can matter in special cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives you a chance to address anything non-standard or potentially worrisome about your application.  It can be really valuable for you to make a case for why these things are not in fact a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives you a chance to shoot yourself in the foot.  For example, applicants occasionally sound like arrogant jerks, demonstrate that they like to talk about mathematics they don't understand at all (without admitting their lack of knowledge), or reveal that they have no idea how graduate school works.  The first two are major problems, and the third is worrisome.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be helpful to learn things like the intended specialization or advisor, but we ask for that elsewhere on the application as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply to a department that takes this approach, then you shouldn't stress out too much about the statement of purpose.  But of course other departments may do things differently, so you can't relax entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:24:58.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T18:29:36.117" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think an issue that is related to that raised by Piotr (+1) which is that research funding is not generally available to cover the costs of producing highly reliable portable code or the costs of maintaining/supporting code produced to &quot;research quality&quot;.  I have found this to be a significant issue when trying to use code released by other researchers in my field; all too often I can't get their code to work because it uses some third party library that is no longer available, or that only works on a Windows PC, or which no longer works on my version of the software because it uses some deprecated feature of the language/environment.  The only way to get around this is to re-implement the routines from the third party library so that all of the code is provided as a single monolithic program.  But who has the time to do that in an underfunded &quot;publish or perish&quot; environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If society wants high quality code to accompany every paper, then society needs to make funds available so that good software engineers can write it and maintain it.  I agree this would be a good thing, but it doesn't come at zero cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T18:34:54.757" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:34:54.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23248" CreationDate="2014-06-11T18:46:43.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, you are legally in the clear if you have permission from the copyright holder, which is likely the journal. That being said, it would be polite to ask the authors, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those being said, you probably have a fair use right in the US to reproduce the images verbatim in your thesis for the purposes of commentary, critique, criticism, or the like. However, fair use is a defense to copyright infringement, so if you don't want to run the risk of getting sued and having to defend yourself, getting written (including email) permission to use the image from the copyright holder is the best strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:46:43.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T18:48:38.333" Score="14" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published some research papers in an ISI Journal during the past years. But due to the lack of precise knowledge of the correct referencing, and particularly due to attending an “unintentional plagiarism class” in my university, perhaps in some places of my papers, referencing rules unintentionally do not meet correctly and exactly. It seems that I have to modify some parts of my papers if possible.&#xA;Also in some parts of my papers I commit an intentional plagiarism.&#xA;Now what should I do? Should I contact the editor of the journal? Do they reject or retract my papers? I am a PhD student and if my papers are rejected or retracted I could not defend my PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please guide me. I'm afraid of expulsion from the university and loss of honor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17318" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T19:59:36.050" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T16:44:27.573" Title="I found out that I have plagiarism in my published journal papers, what should I do now?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23253" CreationDate="2014-06-11T19:03:57.470" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it stands it is impossible to say what can happen. Plagiarism is a serious thing but there are places where copied text is less detrimental and there are places where it is definitely so. If your self-plagiarized parts are in, for example methods descriptions where you are describing similar or in fact the same procedure or method, the issue may not be critical, not good either. So you need to assess, or perhaps better, let someone else assess the case. Why don't you contact the person(s) running the class you mention and ask them for advise with your papers at hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for retraction, I am not sure the journal will necessarily retract your papers. Retraction is usually reserve for very serious cases of fraud. I suggest you carefully look at some of the cases written up on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)&lt;/a&gt;. COPE is for editors and publishers but their cases may give you an idea of how your cases stands &lt;em&gt;vis-à-vis&lt;/em&gt; their published cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, try to get some more experienced people to look at your material and provide feedback. This will provide you with a better perspective than what can be achieved through this site since any answer here will be speculation or hypothetical since we have not seen the publications. Once you have a better perspective from your peers, and your case seem to lean towards there being a serious issue, you can consider contacting editors to hear their view. It is of course not impossible to contact them right away but right now it is not possible to evaluate if this is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T10:31:36.787" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T10:31:36.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T19:27:45.287" Score="3" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding a researcher’s practice in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you some background about this issue. Here’s what this researcher does when writing introductions and literature reviews. He makes certain speculations first and then proceeds to making claims based on those initial speculations. It is worth noting that the claims he makes are sometimes too specific. Following that, he starts looking for evidence to support his claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried many times to convince him and have told him that this is not the right way to write a research paper. It’s more like writing a composition rather than an academic piece of writing which aims at making contributions to the world of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s part of what he recently wrote in an email in response to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I disagree that making claims and looking for evidence supporting them is &quot;not academic&quot;. Maybe I am wrong but this approach is less exploratory than the method you have in mind. For example, [Michael] Kane's framework is based on this method: Claim --&gt; evidence. Kane specifically stresses the importance of opinions/judgments etc. I personally do not prefer to tie my mind merely to the literature --I do not find it much academic in the sense it does not engage me in critical thinking. My method is: &quot;The theory I wish to develop does not exist out there; I develop and support it&quot;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to have your opinion regarding this issue. Is what the researcher claims really right? If not, can you introduce some published sources which have attacked this practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="17321" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T13:00:56.440" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:53:15.863" Title="Can we first claim and then find the evidence when we write the literature review (i.e., using confirmatory technique)?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23253" CreationDate="2014-06-11T19:31:26.527" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The journals need to be contacted, but I would not do it directly. Hopefully your university has someone, ideally a committee, who deals with academic misconduct. I would approach this panel with a detailed list of the occurrences in the papers where you now believe you have plagiarised. Explain to the committee how you were unaware of the norms of good academic research practice until your recent class on the topic. Have in place a plan that will help you continue your training and demonstrate to them that it will not happen again. While they may expel you, I think most academic misconduct panels would look favourably on a student who comes forth on there own with a plan in place. The committee should then be obliged to bring he matter forward with the presses and will negotiate a settlement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for loss of honor, it sounds like you plagiarised because you did not understand the norms. While some people will hold this against you, more will look favourably on your ability to admit a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T19:31:26.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23256" CreationDate="2014-06-11T19:48:20.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim -&gt; evidence is a perfectly valid approach. It is just that evidence is not the same as only looking for supporting information, it means critically scrutinizing all aspects that speaks for or against the claim and then drawing an educated conclusion on whether the claim is good or not. In the end the &quot;evidence&quot; is the net outcome of positive and negative support to the claim. So to me the claim that one should come up for an idea an then look for support is either poorly phrased, leading to misunderstanding, or plainly bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T19:48:20.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:05:18.443" Score="11" ViewCount="1864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a year into my PhD (electrical engineering). I loved my topic from the beginning, and the direction in which my research is going. My advisor is also a really understanding and experienced Prof.. However, I am an international student here (Netherlands) and I don't like living here. I cannot necessarily point out one particular aspect of it, but life in general doesn't &quot;feel happy&quot; and is now getting to me. The place where I live is also kinda dull. I doubt I could go on like this for 3 more years. Normally, in times of stress elsewhere, the social aspects or something outside work always brought up my motivation, without really trying. That here is seriously lacking, at least from my perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the university's attitude towards international students a bit indifferent. And, I dislike the graduate school.  Its very disorganized. I would like to point out that I have lived in many places before (in and outside my home country) and this isn't the first time I got out of my house. I even have 3 years of work experience. I enjoyed studying in the US and made good friends easily. May be it was just accidental, I don't really know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things worse, my phd is associated with a project, which is a highly disorganized, almost a bloody joke and would mostly get worse over time. I knew this earlier, but thought it would get better. It isn't. People in the project aren't thinking like engineers, sometimes ignoring physics, in short. This causes a lot of stress sometimes and could affect my research output itself.  Having said that, my output for the past few months is not great either, due to stress, but I see that as a temporary thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am contemplating quitting the PhD but continue to work on the research, from my home country, without a job/salary, to do justice to the topic. I haven't communicated this to my prof. yet, but he knows I have second thoughts. I came here only for the love of science, to improve my skills and not to escape my country (may be the general mentality in my country towards research, however, its not good here either). Having said that, I'm open to new cultures, people, etc. There are limits though. Reports of rising xenophobia in Europe also bother me at times, worrying about how it would escalate in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I feel the cons are outweighing the pros (funded phd, awesome topic, good prof.) and the cons might invoke lot more stress in the long run. I have no issues with the stress of learning and discovery itself. I understand that this is the essential stress. What I find difficult (and made me quit jobs) is the stress caused by bad policies/ attitude, peers, society, etc. And I find putting up with these things a waste of time and mental energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate your opinion or recommendation on quitting in such a situation. Thanks for reading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17323" LastEditorUserId="17323" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T21:49:07.877" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:34:58.587" Title="Advice on: Quitting your PhD because you dislike the place and the associated project?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23261" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:13:01.433" Score="4" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some specific knowledge in a software widely used in experimental condensed matter physics. Currently, different groups implement their different programs using this software. I plan to write a &quot;universal&quot; program that might be used with little to no modifications by researchers worldwide. I plan for it to be free and open source, but I would like to publish the work in a journal for the sake of getting citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: since writing such a program requires time and effort, I think it makes sense to request researchers who would use the program to cite my paper. Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I know that many people do this, but I would like to hear different viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:40:09.517" Title="Writing an open-source software and publishing it, for the sake of getting cited" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23260" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:28:21.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/&quot;&gt;FieldTrip&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/literature&quot;&gt;citation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinos.org/mne/stable/index.html&quot;&gt;MNE&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinos.org/mne/stable/cite.html&quot;&gt;citation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nitrc.org/plugins/mwiki/index.php/nutmeg%3aMainPage&quot;&gt;Nutmeg&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nitrc.org/plugins/mwiki/index.php/nutmeg%3aCiting&quot;&gt;citation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/&quot;&gt;SPM&lt;/a&gt;, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/doc/&quot;&gt;citation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preceding software are all open-source research software, each referenced by dozens, sometimes hundreds of research papers. It is &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; that an open-source package developed by a research team will have an accompanying paper or set of papers, and that the users will cite those papers when using the package. You should make this very clear on the package website. (You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have a website for the software, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on this a bit, it is assumed that any research-level software package will have &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; one accompanying paper, typically more, describing both the software, the functionality, and the algorithms. If you don't have that, people simply won't trust it. From my experience, most packages come from researchers with a good deal of experience/publications under their belt, who have decided to make their own scripts and techniques available for the general community. Given that it is quite difficult to obtain funding for this sort of thing until the software—and, by extension, you—is already very popular, you're essentially going to do most of the development on your &quot;free time&quot;, which makes this a highly thankless task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said, if software is your thing, go for it! If your software makes analysis easier, you can have an outsized impact on your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T20:40:09.517" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:40:09.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:32:49.547" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to think that we &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; request code, because without code, any crazy result, be it fraud or honest mistake, can be slipped into the journal. But this is not so. Including code is a nice-to-have feature, not a must-have feature. The other answers silently assume this and explain the (good and not-so-good) reasons which lead to the current situation of uncommonly included code. I think I can complement them by explaining why it is not a must-have feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For theoretical results, you don't need any empirical tools like code to reproduce them, as others mentioned (e.g. proving that an algorithm has a better big O behavior than another). Of course, there are also empirical results, which cannot be replicated that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your reviewers will have an expectation of what your idea will result in. If the current best performance for wugging zums is 3 zums/s, and you add a minor tweak and report 300 zums/s, your reviewers are supposed to notice that your claim is unusual, and do something (possibly demand to resubmit with the code). This is not foolproof, but with multiple reviewers per paper, it is effective, because the magnitude of most empirical results is predictable once the reviewer sees the idea and understands how it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this class of paper, both honest and dishonest mistakes have a good chance of being caught, with bad results for honest scientists (reputation loss, especially if caught after publication) and worse results for dishonest scientists (end of career if proven!). Moreover, the graver the mistake (as measured in the size of error), the higher the chance of being caught. It is less likely that you will get caught if your algorithm manages 4 zums/s and you report 5 zums/second, than if you report 300 zums/s. So, scientists are disincentivized from submitting incorrect papers, leaving less incorrect ones in the submitted pool, and the reviewers catch lots of the remainder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases where it is totally unknown why an observation is the way it is, and in these cases, it is very important to describe the exact test setup perfectly. But I have never seen this kind of paper in computer science, it is associated with natural sciences. So no code there. Even if you got such results in computer science (e.g. you observed that users are capable of reading a 12000 word EULA in less than 30 seconds, which contradicts common reading speed observations, and you have no explanation for it), it is unlikely that including the code you used to obtain the result will be pertinent to replication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it together, among a large mass of computer science papers, the theoretical ones and the natural-phenomenon-observation ones don't need code inclusion for replication, and the remaining ones will contain only a low percentage of incorrect-but-uncaught papers. Aggregated, this leads to an acceptably low level of incorrect papers being submitted. Requesting the code to go with them will increase quality for one class of paper, but it will be an increase of an already high quality level. It is not that not having this feature makes the current quality too low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:32:49.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:37:18.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think that most readers/reviewers would find a sufficiently detailed algorithm enough. You write your paper showing, oh, C++ code, and I use SPSS in my shop -- your code is useless to me. Not that most readers would &lt;em&gt;enjoy&lt;/em&gt; reimplementing the code (especially for non-CS papers), but with a specific code that runs on a specific platform, there's bound to be a lot of clutter to wade through. An algorithm reduces it to its bare essentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my paper is showing the improvement in speed of my new Quicksort method over the standard Bubble Sort, showing algorithms for the two methods would make it easier to support my claims for &lt;em&gt;O&lt;/em&gt; (n log n) vs &lt;em&gt;O&lt;/em&gt; (n^2) speedup. If my paper is on population age distributions in wealthy vs developing economies, unless there's a really neat trick I used to process the data, most readers probably wouldn't even care about the algorithm, except in very broad brushstrokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's going to depend on the subject area (general, say, Computer Science) and the specific subarea (say, sorting methods), as well as how heavy an impact the algorithm used has on the results, as to whether the algorithm is necessary. If I'm showing compiler differences in Fortran code, then it would be good to include actual code. Otherwise, code itself is rarely of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13080" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:37:18.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:42:02.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a slightly different point of view from an experimental field (chemistry/ spectroscopy/ chemometric data analysis).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here, the study starts in the lab (or maybe in the field), with an old-fashioned type of notebook. Old-fashioned typically still being paper + pen. Data analysis is often done with GUI programs in an interactive fashion. Records are kept just like in the lab: paper + pen. Maybe with some saved and/or printed figures. As already the part in the lab was recorded this way, not having a log-file or even a script of the data analysis is not seen as a problem. Anyways, asking for the code to be published is only one part of what you need to re-run the analysis: you'd also need the actual data.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Already the suggestion to type in the data analysis and at least save either a log of the matlab/R session or type it in script form is still kind of new (though people love the &lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt; generated reports I produce...). But IMHO things are moving quite fast now. I'd say that with tools like &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;knitr&lt;/code&gt; the largest practical obstacles are almost solved at least for the type of person that prefers code over clicking. However, it is not that all already works smoothly (consider large binary raw data and &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt;, and I frankly admit that I have no idea how to practically set up a &quot;real&quot; database server in an efficient way that it keeps track of changes). This is from my perspective as a scientist that just needs tools for reproducibility as a &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; - and thus I understand my non-programming colleagues who nevertheless need to analyse their data: they just do not have (or know of) the tools that would enable them to log their analyes with reasonable effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The traditional estimation of where the big difficulties lurk also focuses on the lab part. I think many researchers are just not aware of the reproducibility issues with the calculations/data analysis. To be honest, I usually share that point of view: IMHO in biospectroscopy one of the big important problems is the far too low number of individuals in the studies. &#xA;If you have only 4 mice in the study,  the precise handling of the data will cannot affect the practical conclusions too much. There is a gray zone where not doing a proper validation may affect the conclusions, but again: everyone I know who does the validation according to the best-known practice does spell this out very explicitly - so again (and accepting some risk of &lt;em&gt;falsely&lt;/em&gt; discarding few papers as &quot;probably not reproducible&quot;) I tend to think that the practical conclusions are hardly affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, looking at the requirements that e.g. the  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/guidelines/AuthorGuidelines/JournalPolicy/Journals/CC.asp&quot;&gt;Chemmical Communications&lt;/a&gt; put up if a new chemical substance is to be published I don't see why there cannot be computer science journals that require the code in a similar fashion.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Like e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/&quot;&gt;Journal of Statistical Software&lt;/a&gt; does. (I'm quite sure other such journals exist, but I don't know them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me this falls into a much larger field of reproducibility issues. Of course, if the data analysis cannot be reproduced there's big trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another point: although publications about software are still very rare in my field, I recently had such a paper for review. Unfortunately, the software is proposed to be distributed by contacting one of the authors - which, as an anonymous reviewer I obviously could not do.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thus, the actual software may be even less accessible for reviewers than for normal readers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:42:02.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23240" CreationDate="2014-06-11T21:27:47.873" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;While there is no further research planned by the author, there are several avenues that...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10371" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T21:27:47.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23240" CreationDate="2014-06-11T22:47:58.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that you should not put your best, novel idea for future research in 'Future Work', you don't give away your state-of-the-art research ideas for free right? Experience teaches me that researchers often put stuff like 'investigate in new industry/product/setting' 'investigate longitudinal' 'go out of the lab and test with secondary data' 'add obvious moderator' 'control for variable Z that we did not account for' in this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4507" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T22:47:58.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T23:34:51.137" Score="37" ViewCount="24857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how long it usually takes to read a research article. I can see that the answer depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The knowledge and intelligence of the reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The field of research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The individual paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am particularly interested in how long a PhD student or a young post-doc would take to get through a molecular or systems biology paper published in journals like &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Cell&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;PLoS&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt;. We can focus on papers of typical complexity for the journal, and ignore those that are exceptionally easy to read or exceptionally complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On multiple occasions I have been able to skim an 8 page, 5 figure paper in as little as 10-15 minutes. From this I could glean enough information to follow and even participate in a class or journal club discussion (though there would be a lot of asking question like &quot;how exactly did they do this/explain this in the paper? I didn't read very carefully&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when a paper is very important (for example I want to use a variation of their methods for my own project) I feel the need to read it much more carefully. It seems worthwhile to closely look at even very trivial things, such as description of standard procedures like cell culture in the methods, exactly how much of each chemical was used for simple, routine reactions, close examination of control experiments from the supplement, what papers the paper has referenced to justify their work, and even what commercial systems were used and from which company, and whether the paper actually followed the protocol in the manual and so on. After putting this much effort, I also feel like I should take notes. This produces a heavily highlighted and annotated paper plus about 4 pages of notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this takes a lot of time. Occasionally it could take me a few days to work my way through a very important paper (for instance, if their method is unfamiliar to me and I will be adapting it for my own research, or if I want to draw conclusions by reanalyzing their data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is this typical? How long do you usually take to read a paper? Should I start putting effort into teaching myself to read faster, or should I just accept it and make time by scheduling other activities to accomodate paper reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine an &quot;incremental&quot; strategy for reading at arbitrary depth. For instance, you could read the paper several times, each time reading more carefully, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read only the title, parts of the abstract, and look at the pictures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read abstract more carefully, look at title headingfs of results section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quickly skim the results section to look for main point of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scan introduction and discussion, read results carefully to understand obvious limitations of their conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carefully read all sections, including methodology, to make a comprehensive list of all assumptions made and all potential issues with the research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carefully go through all supplements, look at raw data if any and consult the other papers cited as justification to contextualize the research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically, I see the merit of something like this, but I haven't tried it for the &quot;dense&quot; readings I've talked about above. The reason is that I'm not sure how I can take notes effectively when I do something like the above. It may also be harder to motivate myself to re-read a paper I've already skimmed, because I've given away the punchline to myself and the novelty factor is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also written an &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/a/617995&quot;&gt;answer on Mathematics@SE&lt;/a&gt;, which I think might be relevant to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not asking how to read a paper. This has been addressed in several previous questions already. I am only asking &lt;em&gt;how long it should take&lt;/em&gt; a typical junior scientist to read one, so I can benchmark myself and see if I am slower or faster than is usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2020-02-20T15:16:54.117" Title="How long should it take to read a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;reading&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23196" CreationDate="2014-06-11T23:35:00.080" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aru,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is phrased in rather general terms.  There are different kinds of postdoctoral positions in mathematics, and two mathematical postdocs hired side-by-side in the same department may have different career goals.  So advice which is guaranteed to be applicable must be rather general.  Here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the point of a postdoc in mathematics?&lt;/strong&gt;  I think it is this: the position of &amp;quot;tenure-track assistant professor&amp;quot; at a US math department is really much different from what it used to be.  It used to be an extended apprenticeship combined with an audition for a permanent job.  Now the job market is so competitive that institutions at all levels tenure the vast majority of the assistant professors they hire: I could easily name hundreds of people who have gotten tenure over the last ten years; I'm not sure I could name ten who were denied tenure.  The &amp;quot;apprenticeship&amp;quot; that used to take place at the beginning of these positions is now somewhere between immensely abbreviated and completely absent: in my own department (UGA) we have &amp;quot;graduate faculty&amp;quot; status, which must be conferred separately, but every tenure-track hire in last eight years has been given that status immediately upon arrival.  In my department you cannot tell the assistant professors from the associate professors (and from some of the full professors) without your scorecard: the job is really identical, including supervision of PhD students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even most brilliantly talented and competent PhDs need time to perform the laundering process from student to faculty.  In particular, 99% of the time it just doesn't work for your PhD advisor to have just gotten her own PhD a couple of years ago.  This laundering process is what the postdoc is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does a postdoc work towards the goal of tenure-track readiness and marketability?&lt;/strong&gt; In what follows I will assume that the desired tenure track job has substantial research expectations (keeping in mind that &amp;quot;substantial research expectations&amp;quot; is still a continuum).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To attain your goal of a tenure-track position, you need to concentrate on two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2a) &lt;strong&gt;Research&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put out product -- accepted papers.  Both quality and quantity matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people get a PhD in mathematics before having a single accepted paper (I did), and if they have an eminent advisor who goes to bat for them, having no papers need not be much of a strike against them in the postdoctoral market.  Things change tremendously when you apply for tenure-track jobs: you need to show conversion of your research promise into research success.  With multiplicity.  Publication standards vary significantly among mathematical disciplines (topologists and algebraic geometers publish fewer papers; combinatorialists and applied mathematicians publish more) but I think that at least one publication per year is a reasonable lower bound for almost everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most math postdocs have not published all the work that appears in their thesis before graduation (my understanding is that this is almost the complete reverse of what happens in most other STEM fields).  There are good reasons for this: mathematics is such a technical, specialized field that you spend 90% of your time as a PhD student attaining mastery of one specific subfield, and the PhD is awarded within a very short time period of that attained mastery (in some cases, it is awarded when the advisor feels confident that such mastery lies in the student's near future).  So many if not most math postdocs spend the majority of their research time in their first year working on the papers that come from their PhD research.  Why does it take so long given that the thesis has already been written?  One reason is that they are usually not just transcribing the work but also significantly &lt;em&gt;improving&lt;/em&gt; it: again, this goes in hand with the observation that as soon as you know what you're doing you're out the door with a PhD.  If you compare a PhD thesis and the paper that it results in, you often see stronger results, simpler and better proofs, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending time in your postdoc working on publishing your thesis can be tricky: you are in a new environment with new distractions, and after you give a talk or two about your thesis work, many of your research conversations will be about the research interests of those around you, who will probably at least want to involve you in seminars and may in fact want to collaborate with you on further projects.  And it's good to do that...but not at the expense of getting your thesis work done.  There is even a bit of a trap here, since as a PhD student you get so much care and attention on every aspect of your work, including someone whose job it is at times to tell you to slow down and be more careful: that you haven't yet fully nailed down what you thought you had.  Most postdoctoral advisors don't work as closely with their postdocs as thesis advisors do with their students, and when they do it is probably not on the topic of their thesis (they may not even have enough expertise on that to work as closely as the thesis advisor did).  So the first priority of any postdoc is to make sure that they actually write up for publication all the work that was &amp;quot;promised&amp;quot; in their thesis, and the second priority is to figure out how to continue this thesis work in a meaningful way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire a research program -- distinct from your thesis advisor's program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is really the hardest part.  It is a well-known fact that the most common number of MathSciNet publications for any given author is one.  In some cases this just means that some bright young person passed through mathematics on the way to something else -- e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica_McKellar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one-hit wonder turned out fine&lt;/a&gt; -- but it is distressingly common to see one strong, cutting-edge publication followed by dead silence.  What this means is that the work was -- in some suitably high-level sense, at least -- really that of the advisor rather than the student.  A lot of postdocs follow the previous bullet point -- i.e., they get their thesis written up -- and then they just can't see their way to a continuing research &lt;em&gt;program&lt;/em&gt;.  In some cases this means that they still publish some papers, but they have just switched from being one person's apprentice to a different person's apprentice.  This is still not good enough for a research-intensive academic job nor, increasingly, a job at a nationally reputable liberal arts college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is here that I must disagree with another answer to this question, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you are best looking for a postdoc in an area that is as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That really doesn't sound right to me.  It is a relatively easy path to give up on what you've already done and start fresh on something unrelated, for which you can get local supervision.  As above, this is not good enough.  You want your research program to be considerably deeper at the end of your postdoc than it was when you got your PhD.  Sometimes that involves a significant course correction, yes: in my case I spent less than 1/3 of my time as a postdoc working on the subject of my PhD thesis, but the other material that I worked on was material that I had already been interested in and even started writing up for publication as a student.  Moreover the two areas were related because I was interested in both of them, and that allowed me to work towards closer relations.  Finally, by the time I gave job talks I was able to talk about Hasse principle violations for Shimura curves (my thesis was on Shimura curves) alongside Hasse principle violations for torsors under abelian varieties (which is what I spent most of my postdoc working on).  Moving to something &amp;quot;as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate&amp;quot; would have moved me several orders of magnitude farther away, just as I was experiencing a rapid improvement in my understanding of the part of arithmetic geometry in which I did my thesis work.  (Eleven years after my thesis, I am now &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; exploring parts of mathematics that are considerably farther away but I still do some work on things closely related to my thesis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research program has some breadth to it as well as depth.  But the ideal way to develop breadth is to expand outwards from your current position, not give up and move to a new position chosen for its substantial distance from your current one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is good to have done more than one thing, or at least to know more than one trick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to reaffirm that &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; establishing depth, the next thing hirers look for in a research program is indeed breadth.  If you're working on what looks to all outsiders like &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same thing now as you were three years ago, that's less than exciting, and it creates concerns about your future trajectory: mathematics does move on, and long-term colleagues grow together in their research interests and expertise.  However, if you're working in a hot, technical area and doing well with it, then you probably don't want to diversify out of that area as a postdoc, but you do want to take steps to show that the potential for diversity is there.  Often digging deeper in exactly the same spot requires learning new tools, even basic things that early career graduate students in other fields learn.  I think it's important to continue that kind of learning as a postdoc (and beyond) and show that you're doing it: for instance, in any job talk you should showcase the variety of knowledge and techniques that go into your results, especially if the results themselves look narrow and specialized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2b) &lt;strong&gt;Teaching&lt;/strong&gt; Teaching is challenging for a postdoc because for a certain range of intended careers it is less important than research...but it is still important, and in fact increasingly so.  You have to crank up a different kind of professional vibe to be a successful teacher as a postdoc: whereas for research you are trying to burn the midnight oil to make the transition from excellent to outstanding, what a disaster it would be for you to vow to be the best calculus teacher ever and devote all your time and energy to that.  (Part of the disaster is that vowing to be the best calculus teacher ever and putting three times as much time in as your office-mate will not necessarily result in teaching evaluations that are any better than hers: unfortunately they might even be worse.)  Rather you need to set a more temperate teaching mark and learn to hit it while leaving plenty of time for your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your specific teaching goals will depend upon what kind of tenure-track job you have.  On the other hand, you may be hoping for a job at an elite research institution but may have to settle for a job with higher teaching requirements.  A good all-around plan is to showcase at least competent teaching across a fairly broad range of levels, including: calculus courses / service courses for non-majors; courses for undergraduate math majors; and graduate-level courses.  If you can cover those bases by teaching fewer courses, that is probably better.  In three years of postdoctoral work I taught five semester courses: this was close to ideal, but if I magically had control of my own teaching load, I would have cut it down to four.  Because your overall teaching responsibilities are relatively limited, it is good to start thinking about where your teaching letter(s) will come from right away.  If you feel that a course is going especially well, by all means invite some faculty in to watch you teach it.  That together with good evaluations is sufficient for a strong teaching letter in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've written a lot, but actually everything you've said is fully consistent with &amp;quot;doing as much math [including math teaching] as humanly possible&amp;quot;.  So I still suspect that doing a tremendous amount of work -- of the right kind -- in a relatively short period is the key to a successful math postdoc.  Am I mistaken??&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you're quite right.  Being a math postdoc should not stop you from having a satisfying personal life, but professionally speaking it is one of the most intense, work-intensive points of a mathematical career.  There's no secret remedy for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could give a lot more advice for math postdocs, and this has been done.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youngmath.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Young Mathematicians Network&lt;/a&gt; has lots of information on this.  Google searching reveals that several mathematicians have math-specific postdoctoral advice on their webpages, including Sara Billey and Terry Tao.  I tend to think that it is better to talk to people -- lots of people -- and get advice rather than just read about very generalized advice (including this answer, of course).  A lot of times you don't even need to explicitly ask for advice: look for young, successful mathematicians (that includes most people who have recently gotten tenure-track jobs nowadays) and talk to them about their experiences.  By comparing the backgrounds of multiple role-models you can get a sense of what the &amp;quot;market wants&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T22:18:02.490" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T22:18:02.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23242" CreationDate="2014-06-11T23:58:03.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a complement to other useful answers, I'd say that it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; possible to &quot;fake&quot; a good personal statement (unless one enlists already-successful mathematicians, and, even then, it's not clear...). The issue of grammatical correctness is non-trivial, but minor. The tone, the affect (all the more subtle in written language), speaks reams. The implied/assumed context? Etc, etc, ... And, indeed, all the better that most applicants do not effectively see how to &quot;game&quot; the personal statement. That's what I look at first, for graduate admissions. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T23:58:03.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T00:01:46.240" Score="-2" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a lot of graduate programs provide assistantships to their students (e.g. teaching or research assistantships)? How common is it for graduate students to be paid while going to graduate school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14040" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T17:18:21.533" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T21:48:09.270" Title="How is it common that universities provide assistantship positions for their graduate students?" Tags="&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-10-30T01:41:14.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23333" CreationDate="2014-06-12T00:13:13.123" Score="0" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student studying in the US and I am interested in finding research-grants relevant to the research area to which I have recently switched to, viz. computational geometry problems in robotics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, I don't want to apply for a grant, but I want to get an &#xA;overview for what kinds of problems do public and private research grants get offered to researchers in my field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While googling I stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grants.gov&lt;/a&gt; on which different government agencies post funding opportunities relevant to their interests, and that this&#xA;database is searchable by keyword. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NSF website is also very useful.  However&#xA;their grant solicitations like this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13579/nsf13579.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;  seem quite open-ended&#xA;and are not more specific on what kinds of problems need to be solved, (but please correct me if I am wrong, I am still exploring this website! :-D )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there similar &quot;messaging-boards&quot; where &lt;strong&gt;private&lt;/strong&gt; companies, interested in funding university research for a relevant problem post their funding opportunities? If not, how do you efficiently find such grants ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in this because I feel private companies will be more specific on what kinds of problems they encounter and would like to be solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:37:50.613" Title="Message board for finding private grants" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23271" CreationDate="2014-06-12T00:15:44.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on many factors, including the discipline, the degree, and the institution.  Some disciplines have a lot more research dollars to support research assistants.  For example, scientifically oriented programs tend to have more money to support students than liberal arts degrees; PhD programs tend to have more money than terminal Master's programs; and, of course, educational institutions exhibit a lot variability in terms of their overall resources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T00:15:44.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2014-06-12T00:36:43.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one big reason I dislike reading on screens is the fact that I am basically shining a flashlight in my eyes for hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With software, this is less of a problem for two reasons: First off, the visual scheme is designed for a monitor (and not designed for paper but shown on a monitor like with books or articles). Second, the image is very dynamic, so paper isn't an alternative anyhow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to try is to turn down the brightness of your monitor. This may seem to make it very dark at first, but backlight is different from contrast. I find that I easily get used to the lowest brightness setting on my monitors after an hour or so. If the wall or desk space behind your computer is dark, you may also want to put a weak desk lamp so that it shines behind your monitor and reduces the contrast of the wall vs. your screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do a lot of reading, you should consider rotating your monitor (most newer mounts support this) to have it oriented in portrait instead of landscape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://justgetflux.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;F.lux&lt;/a&gt; was already mentioned, and it can be very helpful, but I think it's more to do with effects of using a computer at late hours at home. At noon, a f.lux filtered screen will look about the same as without a filter anyway. If you are lucky enough to have a fancy monitor, you might even find sophisticated software to control contrast and brightness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a much better experience reading books on a Kindle. Because the screen is not backlighted, but instead gets illuminated by ambient lighting, it is much less irritating. Unfortunately the PDF support of Kindles isn't very good, you must scroll through each page as if it was a picture, and for papers which have small type, multiple columns and frequently refer to figures on other pages, the Kindle's interface will dirve you crazy. Kindle DX has a larger screen, about 8&quot;, though still not as big as a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is, if you can find an HTML version of your article, to read that in your Kindle using the Web Browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are stuck on a computer, I would recommend reading in a software such as Foxit Reader, which have very nice tools for highlighting and annotating. You could even invest in a drawing tablet such as Wacom to help you draw on figures and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this is a lost cause and you should print articles. You have read books and papers from actual paper for decades of your life, including in childhood. Your brain and your eyes are probably accustomed to it much better, and there might be psychological cues which help you focus (not to mention distraction on the computer like email, software popups and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper consumption can be quite big, but honestly, how many &quot;more important&quot; uses for paper are there besides scientific research? In any case;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use low-grade, recycled paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can print on both sides, or reuse single-side paper as scratch paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can recycle your own papers after you read them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only print papers that you actually want to read, instead of skim for 5 minutes (this should consume a very small amount of paper compared to your other daily activities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you say, it's easy to end up with a huge mess. But that's a question of being organized. If you are a little proactive and develop a reasonable filing system (even a few manilla folders with labeled tabs can do wonders), you can keep the vast majority of the clutter under control very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T00:36:43.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20178" CreationDate="2014-06-12T01:06:10.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you perform a search for &quot;examples of bad student papers&quot; or &quot;examples of bad writing&quot; you should find many examples. As an added bonus, many of the examples are then analyzed to provide suggestions for improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7789" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T01:06:10.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23259" CreationDate="2014-06-12T03:08:57.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not international, but understand what you're going through.  In fact, when I was in undergraduate, I had an Italian friend in your exact position who left after a year to go to graduate school in Europe...so it certainly does happen.  A couple pieces of advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) have a plan for where you are going before you leave.  I'm not sure about the Netherlands, but the economy in the US is not completely back to normal and it can take time to find (good work)...even for well educated folks.  As you said, having a funded PhDs is a pro, so don't waste it!  At the very least, use this time to study all of your interests, not just your dissertation topic.  For example, if you want to become a computer programmer, master some languages, contribute to some projects and document your work on (e.g.) GitHub.  This can help out A LOT if you decide to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) having a good advisor and topic are the most important pros.  I live in a great place (nyc area) with great friends...but my advisor and I have communication issues (I chose poorly) and my topic is not so interesting.  For me, these cons (sort of) cancel out the pros as they make life miserable more often than not.  On the other hand, if you live in the middle of nowhere...I can understand why you'd want to leave...but you may not find such a great advisor and topic elsewhere! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, of course, you have to choose for yourself.  But I would say that if you are currently doing what you want to do and/or this is the kind of work you would like to do after leaving/graduating, then you should stay. At least until something comes along you know would be better for you.  Plus, things could get better for you at school within the next year or so (graduate school is long) and the you would be leaving for no good reason!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17340" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T03:08:57.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23259" CreationDate="2014-06-12T07:34:58.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with telling you in short about my analogous situation and how I cope with it, then I will suggest my ideas for you.&lt;br&gt;Situation:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my country we have a much loathed system where everyone participates in mass exams and the top x people who chose a particular school in a particular university make it in. This has placed me 200km from my home, which in a country about 1000km across is considered a little far from home. I hate the place I stay in but will not move out because it's practically outside the university, in one year of studies I only found one great professor in my field, the other decent professors are into areas indifferent to me (I am into software, they teach hardware), or teach math and physics. As for classes with other professors, they are generally ridiculous and to pass them you have to rely on open courseware and books. Also the school is disorganized and this has cost me, semester exams are incoherent, while it's hard to find out about any papers you might need for a class, changes in the schedule and so on. In short, I can't wait to get out of here.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;My approach:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What I do to compensate is work on my own on stuff, I am aiming to get Microsoft and Oracle certifications in summer, have participated in an international contest held by Microsoft (nothing achieved but they know my name at least, and gave some good comments), and am up-first in the list of new Microsoft student partners for October (the whole Microsoft thing is because it's the only company that opens doors to students in the area). I am more specifically headed for game programming and thus have started learning the systems of Unreal and Crytek, and am trying to write lots of tutorials on my webpage, which I see many others saying that is what earned them their job.&lt;br&gt;The result:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Essentially, I see this as defying the awful circumstances and trying to surpass the diploma of CS I will get in 4 years (I also have more personal reasons), because professors are indifferent, incompetent, or anything else, and I get to forget about where I am. It is also said that when one gets through something hard, the best chance he's got is getting devoted to work. Looking back at these 8-9 months, I realize that 85% or so of the progress was done in the last 4 months, and the rate with which I advance grows exponentially (though exams have brought it to a halt currently). It has been lots of fun, I now know a few people who are graduating next year and sooner or later will be in the industry, and I have stuff to write about in my CV.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Bringing it to your needs:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Talk to the professor and see if the system there will allow you to switch to another project or work on one you pick and start yourself, this way you have a clean project and make sure the team is reliable and serious about it. You can also see if you can reboot the Phd altogether. I will insist on starting your own side projects, and try to see what the world thinks of them, it is very rewarding. It will also prove your point to the professor that you are serious about your work and held back by the others. Even if you do quit, when interviewed for another PhD you can show your work and show them the exact same thing, that you are good in what you do but will require them to give you at least a neutral environment.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In any case, see if you can change the project or the team, or if you can reboot the PhD, if you decide it is insufferable and see no way out of it, make sure you have already started your own projects and work, and look for another PhD you are interested in, since you have started for a PhD, make sure you get one, whether it be there or elsewhere, otherwise you are taking a step backwards. Whatever you do though, I insist that you start a project of your own, that fascinates you, straight away, and as soon as you have something you can show, make sure one can verify that you are indeed doing it.&#xA;I hope I helped in any way, I am in a similar situation psychologically so i thought I should share my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:34:58.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2014-06-12T07:58:05.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student submits the same essay for two courses they get into &lt;strong&gt;big&lt;/strong&gt; trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore why are you allowing your staff to cheat the system and not do the work they are &lt;strong&gt;paid&lt;/strong&gt; to do by using the same exam for more than one presentation of the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The solution is to remove any member of your staff that are too lazy to do the job they are paid to do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then publish all past exams, as is done for every exam I have taken in the UK, for some reason the UK does not allow the same lazy and cheating by it’s university staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:58:05.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23268" CreationDate="2014-06-12T08:28:14.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though not an expert in reading journals, I would like to provide my point of view. Actually the answer for the question can be made from different perspectives. &#xA;We read journal articles for multiple reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present in a journal club&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend a journal club&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for a protocol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for a reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;curiosity about some novelty in the article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these situations the way you read the article would be different along with the time taken to read the article. If I am looking for a particular protocol, lets say, genotyping a polymorphism, I will scan the abstract for the polymorphism name and then I will head straight to the methods to see the genotyping procedure. So this could be as quick as a 30 second search, provided you know for what and where to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say, I am looking for data about the prevalence of a particular disease in a specific population. So again, I will scan the abstract for the disease name and the methodology, will head straight to the tables to seen the number of participants diseased out of the total cohort, which also could be a 30 second search provided I know where to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say I am attending a journal club and I have the article with me. I will read the abstract, then the conclusion, then glance the tables and figures, then will see the techniques they used just to make sure I know about the techniques before I attend the journal club. It will not be always feasible for the presenter to explain in detail about the techniques in the presentation. This should take around 10 minutes plus the time you spend on search unknown techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, If am going to present an article in journal club, surely I will be reading the article again and again till I have a thorough understanding for my presentation. Every time I read, I will find a new information in the article.  Here the time required will be based on your familiarity with the field and the complexity of the article. It could be hours or days. So according to me its the knowledge about the structure of the journal in your field of expertise matters, than the time taken to read the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The time factor depends on what is your objective is from reading the article.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15993" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T17:12:03.860" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T17:12:03.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23268" CreationDate="2014-06-12T10:12:41.743" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have alluded to, there are many ways to &quot;read&quot; a paper and the first question to straighten out is for what type of information are you reading a specific paper. A beginner's mistake is to believe you need to read from the first to the last letter of everything you find. This way you never get anywhere and it is the beginning of the learning curve for undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are surveying a field, you skim through by reading the titles first of all just to spot the ones of interest. This reading takes much less time than to actually find the title. Once you are past this you may take on the abstracts to weed out the ones that sounded right but were off topic. This will take a few minutes per paper. The next step is to read the parts that are of interest to you. Are your summarizing a field then conclusions and the discussion may be what you focus on. Maybe your summarizing methodology then those chapters are of interest. In any case, you will read parts of the paper that are mostly relevant to what you are trying to find out. This may take a on the order of hours, sometimes less per paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you need to spend time on papers to understand the nitty gritty details. I spent 4 days reading three papers to understand the details. I needed to write down equations and try to see the missing steps between the paper equations to understand the derivations etc. This type of reading is not what you normally do but it certainly happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, what you will learn through your PhD is to hone your skills to be able to focus on the details you really need from any paper. It is rare that one reads one paper at a time, usually it is a collection of papers and one often has to return to check on details that you either have forgotten, or may have missed, or, in fact, the author has missed. The need to go into the smallest detail of a paper depends on what you need to get out of the paper and with time (continuing through your professional life) you will improve on these skills through additional reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T10:12:41.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23256" CreationDate="2014-06-12T10:47:01.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You'll find some evidence for pretty much anything&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is okay to make assumptions and verify them afterwards. However, there is a problem with &quot;looking for evidence to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; his claims&quot; - verifying claims requires looking both for evidence that supports the claim, and also for evidence that would disprove the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing only one half of that will be a failure since if the claim is contested, then you'll find only what you're looking for even if the 'other side' has overwhelming support. There are many proven false things that have also some published supporting evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You don't know if the claim is contradictory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many cases when seemingly obvious things aren't actually true. If a seemingly obvious issue is a core of your argument, you should make sure that it's  true - and that includes looking also for contradictory evidence; and you know that it's not contradictory only after checking it. If it turns out false, you'd want to say &quot;There wasn't any published data about the falseness&quot;, not &quot;Well, it was on the first page of google but I didn't bother to look for it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T10:47:01.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23256" CreationDate="2014-06-12T12:43:40.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I suspect that a lot of research is done this way.  Read a &lt;em&gt;couple&lt;/em&gt; of papers, get an idea, collect data and then write the paper.  During the paper writing one has to do a reasonable literature review (at least in my field) to give context to your work and why it is better.  This isn't the best way of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this really separates researchers from great researchers. The great researchers have a strong knowledge of all the background papers and understand how they relate to their topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who has done research for 20+ years, I would really encourage any newer researcher to get a good grasp of the background papers and create an understanding of how they fit together and how your work fits into theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all build on the shoulders of the past, it is rare to create a new research topic that is not based on past research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person you mention, I think, is not creating objective work, it seems a little more subjective (though it is hard to distance yourself from your own ideas :-) ).  My feeling is that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; need to do the right thing and realize that what they are doing is not a great model (which I think you have realized already). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is a difference between assumptions and hypothesis.  Assumptions, to me, seem to be unsubstantiated ideas. Hypotheses, to me, are substantiated ideas. A hypothesis typically comes from a strong knowledge of the background literature and a few good ideas you have come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T12:43:40.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-12T12:46:44.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually &quot;performance&quot; of code relates to &quot;how well it scales with the size of the problem&quot;. This means, in my opinion, that a paper claiming &quot;algorithm A is faster than algorithm B&quot; needs to show timing for both A and B _ for different size problems_. While there may still be inefficiencies (and errors) in the implementations, this will at least demonstrate whether the underlying algorithm is more efficient (lower big-oh).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where software is they key to the paper (the product, not the tool) I would expect it to be available (github or other). So a paper that says &quot;I can sort in order 1/n by kerfugling the dargibold number&quot; needs to show how that was done; the paper that claims &quot;when I sorted these two data sets, the one from Whoville had bigger flubbits&quot; does not need to show how the code was sorted - they need to focus on explaining what is significant about the flubbits from Whoville.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T12:46:44.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23233" CreationDate="2014-06-12T12:47:43.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your comment responses, I think that you are working for a young faculty member who is trying to build his group and encouraged his first two PhD students to stay on after they graduated. It's an admirable goal to start building a research group, but in the US it would be discouraged to do so by keeping all of your own students in my experience. US academic research has a bias towards sending one's students out into the world to cross-pollinate ideas and avoid stagnation and closed-mindedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, refusing to provide a letter of recommendation to a good student for this purpose is borderline if not outright professional misconduct and wouldn't be tolerated at most US universities (though I'm constantly surprised what weak administrators let star faculty get away with sometimes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should sit down with your advisor and explain your life goals to him. Include the fact that you are eager to get out into the world and learn more in a different environment. Try to convince him to see it from your perspective without getting antagonistic. If that doesn't work, go see your department chair, but only as a last resort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in a bit of a tenuous position since your advisor could refuse to sign off on your dissertation (or let you defend, or drag his feet on revisions, etc) if he becomes scared by feelings of abandonment in your desire to leave. Bringing in higher authorities could make this worse. It would be best to convince him with the power of good arguments than to make the situation adversarial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing of this can be tricky. He's probably going to find out that you applied for postdocs with out his recommendation and blessing, and given the usual schedule for postdoc recruiting, I'm assuming you will have to apply before you defend. I think it's probably better to be open with him that you are definitely going to apply, find a postdoc, and leave than to do so behind his back. Maybe when he sees your resolve to do so, he will change his mind about writing you a good letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T12:47:43.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23294" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:02:48.877" Score="7" ViewCount="2847" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I studied in a small training center that had a &quot;cooperative arrangement&quot; with a larger university. I earned a graduate certificate bearing the name of the university along with graduate credits and a transcript from the university, but attended courses in the training center. I put these details on my CV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2005        Graduate Certificate in X        &amp;lt;location&amp;gt;, University of X&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, the training center and university ended their cooperative arrangement and the training center has a new partnership with another university. Do I need to adjust my CV to reflect the change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T22:52:04.703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T06:04:00.717" Title="Do I need to change my CV when a former school changes affiliations?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;credentials&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:13:59.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canadian context: I applied for four Master degrees in three different universities (Concordia, UdeM, UQAM) in Montreal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've contacted beforehand teachers or head of departments. I was welcomed by everybody I talked to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three out of four applications were succesful. I even found two people offering to be my thesis co-director months before the start of the first term. In this latter case I met three different professors before my official application was processed. The head of department encouraged me to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only university I did not contact beforehand –I was an undergraduate at this one– refused my application. (I did not bother talking about my application, because the people processing it knew me already, apparently they felt neglected that I did not try to suck up to them during the last term.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from my experience I would advise to do so, but, and it's a big big but, I had very good reasons to contact them. I had a three page proposal for the subject of an eventual thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asking them for advice, I wanted to know if my proposal was something I could do at their university or not. I wasn't wasting their time or trying to look good, I was talking only about what we could do together,about their expertise, asking to use their brain for something they were familiar with. Basically, asking to do the job they are paid for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I advised my wife to do the same two year ago, when she wasn't sure of her academic orientation. She did it with 3 different programs at two universities, contacting professors or department officials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was constantly brushed off or refered back to their website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They felt she was wasting their time, because she had only hard &quot;technical&quot;  questions (fees, hours, amenities, agenda...)that could be answered perusing through documentation or questions so &quot;soft&quot; (what's the atmosphere like&quot; &quot;I wonder if that program is for me&quot;) that they could not be answered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:13:59.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23287" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:20:49.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny, this just happened to me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my CV/resume I now have the title of the section as&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Masters of Science, University of XXXXX (now called XXXX University)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My degree &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; from &quot;University of XXXX&quot; and so I feel that should go first.  BUT, it would be a good idea to acknowledge the name change, as people will get confused, and so I added it as a parenthetical comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:20:49.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:22:09.930" Score="2" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am starting a MS program next fall (in statistics). At the time, I had a personal circumstance that limited the schools to which I could apply, and this was the outcome. Those circumstances however no longer exist now and I am entertaining the possibility of applying to a PhD program this fall. I am an older, returning, student so another year I didn't have to spend advancing my career is something I would rather not do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I would not finish my MS program and I am wondering how departments feel about that. I know that I am investment to them and they would have to approve renewal of my gta next year,so I am wondering if applying to a PhD program this fall would be a wise idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if anyone can give me advice based on their own experiences relevant to my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17360" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T13:37:50.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:41:22.543" Title="Transferring from MS to PhD Program" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23290" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:35:59.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In departments I've been involved with, you need a masters in order to apply for a PhD. You'd need to complete your masters first, or find an equivalent. Thus, you cannot really transfer from Masters to PhD, as they are not on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in countries like the UK and Australia,  an  undergraduate honours degree that is enough to gain entry into a PhD program, at least, in those countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T13:41:22.543" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:41:22.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:53:36.983" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an associate editor of a journal (bridging statistics and psychology), I requested the authors to submit the code when they proposed new algorithms and procedures, and then sent the code to the experts in the statistical package to check that (a) the code does what the paper describes, and (b, secondary) that it is a good code (robust to bad inputs, computationally effective, etc.). I was also asked to review some papers for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stata-journal.com&quot;&gt;Stata Journal&lt;/a&gt; whose focus &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the code, and did the same. There were times when (a) failed, so I had to return the paper and say that the authors had to align the methodology and the code. There were times when (b) would fail, and in case of Stata Journal, this would also mean returning the paper. There were times when the code wouldn't come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, I would be happy to share my code, but it is complicated enough (with internal meta-data-based checks, customized output, etc.) that a researcher less proficient with the packages I use won't be able to edit it to make it work on their computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to your main question -- reviewers are &lt;strike&gt;lazy&lt;/strike&gt; pressed for time, and have their own research to push to their journals, so few of them go into the effort of fully verifying the results. This is just how the world is. May be these full professors could request the code and give it to their graduate students to play with, break and debug, as this would be a good educational opportunity for the latter. But again this does not happen very often, as the confidentiality clauses for accepting the reviewer role usually preclude one from sharing the paper with anybody else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:53:36.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:58:26.467" Score="11" ViewCount="2814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I developed a medical device for my master's project. The general idea was initiated by my supervisor but the rest of the work is mine (Design, build up, test, measurements, results and some additional functions I added to the idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finishing the master thesis my supervisor started to write a paper about my project. The information in the paper comes from my master thesis and it merely rewrites and summarizes ideas from my thesis. Additionally, all the results and discussions were also picked from it. I was away during this because I found a job in a different city. My supervisor then started to contact me and asked me to give him feedback about what he wrote and to explain the results and said that he would name me as the co-author. I was supporting until the point that I got very busy, but soon his questions become orders and he started to ask very silly questions so I stopped responding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, he threatened to acknowledge my contribution only, that is, to only mention my name in the acknowledgement and not as a co-author, because he was not satisfied with my support / me not responding to his requests for help with the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole paper is taken from my thesis and all the results are mine on top of the added support that I gave but finally, he'll mention me in the acknowledgements only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he right in doing this / allowed to do this and if not what can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of contacting the journal and explain all of this. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17362" LastEditorUserId="78455" LastEditDate="2017-11-11T13:55:38.933" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T13:55:38.933" Title="Paper is based completely on my thesis, but I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements only, not as a co-author, what should I do?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23287" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:02:36.773" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best approach is to keep the original CV entry, as this represents the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; qualification that you received. However, you might choose to add a note explaining the history, if you think this is likely to be helpful to prospective readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that in the case described by @brechmos, where a university has changed its name, providing this information is likely to be useful. It's less clear to me that this is true in the OP's case: it seems (essentially) that the qualification he has used to be accredited by University X, and is now accredited by University Y. It's not clear to me why this would be useful information to someone reading the CV. I guess it might be relevant if the training centre has a high enough profile that people now naturally associate it with University Y, and would think that something listed with University X must be a different centre. Otherwise, I suspect noting the change is more likely to confuse people than help them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:02:36.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23287" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:03:53.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To use the example provided by brechmos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Master of Science, XXXX University (formerly University of XXXXX)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have used this alternative in my cv. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:03:53.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23296" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23297" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:14:18.893" Score="1" ViewCount="1228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a thesis in which a lot of derivations are moved to the appendix. To make these derivations readable, I sometimes write sentences like &quot;As we saw in equation X...&quot;, where equation X is present both in the main text as well as in the appendix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: should I, while writing the appendix, reference the instance of the equation in the main text, or the one in the appendix?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10939" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:25:58.840" Title="Referencing equations in/from appendix" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;cross-referencing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23296" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:16:57.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it is always easier if your cross-reference is relatively nearby—flipping between multiple parts of a text makes the whole thing harder to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd lean towards referencing the version in the appendix, all other things being equal. However, if you are referencing a whole series of equations in the main text, including one duplicated in the Appendix, then it would be OK to preserve the main-text reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:16:57.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23296" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:17:14.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would reference the appendix number in the appendix so as not to break the flow, but you might also footnote a cross-reference to the place where it appeared in the main text if it helps remind the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:17:14.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23296" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:25:58.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach is usually to write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... and we arrive at&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(A3) E=mc^2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as in equation (42) of the main text. Now, substituting for m in (A3) we obtain...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T14:25:58.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23329" CreationDate="2014-06-12T14:44:27.857" Score="13" ViewCount="1178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a PhD student in an institute for the last 4 years and now my deadline to submit my thesis is in another 40 days. When I joined the institute, official papers were signed stating that Professor X will be my first reviewer and will grade my thesis. By regulation, the first reviewer has to belong to the same faculty, but he was not from our group, and we did not have much contact with each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I am ready to submit my thesis, he decides to back out on reasons stating that I was not in touch with him (but I was never told by my supervisor or by him that I need to regularly contact him). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this happen and is this allowed since official University papers were signed 4 years ago saying he will be my first reviewer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17368" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T02:31:22.647" LastActivityDate="2021-01-13T20:04:57.287" Title="Internal PhD thesis reviewer pulled out a month before the thesis due date: Is this allowed? What to do next?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23256" CreationDate="2014-06-12T15:53:15.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to frame this matter is in the context of the &quot;confirmation bias.&quot;  This is the tendency to favor evidence to support one's stance, while ignoring contrary evidence.  The social psychology literature has produced an abundance of research to show this is a very common (and unintentional) bias.  I think it is perfectly acceptable to make a claim (or hypothesis) that is informed by good theory, and then seek out the relevant evidence that can help refine the claim (or hypothesis).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is not in the process of making the claim and then reviewing evidence -- rather, the problem occurs during the actual review of the evidence.  If your colleague isn't aware of the possibility of a confirmation bias, it is likely that she or he will look only at the evidence that aligns with the claim.  One way of minimizing the confirmation bias is to begin the search process with more of an open question that allows one to capture the full range of evidence, as opposed to just one of many possible sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend the book &quot;Thinking, Fast and Slow&quot; by Daniel Kahneman, which does an excellent job of describing many decision making processes and where people can go wrong.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:53:15.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23293" CreationDate="2014-06-12T15:58:12.760" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As described by you, the situation demonstrates completely unethical behavior by your supervisor. You should not only be an author, you should be first author. However, your options may be limited by the fact that you have no way to exert leverage on him and/or by your need to maintain a relationship with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not completely clear what you mean when you say that you &quot;stopped supporting&quot; him in writing up the paper. At a minimum, you need to read one draft of the paper and give substantive comments before it goes out with your name on it. If you are willing to do that much, then any threat by your supervisor to remove your name is a major ethical breach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that his questions were &quot;very silly&quot; and that his question became orders. Keep in mind that your supervisor wouldn't ask the questions if he believed they were silly. If you haven't told him that it's a problem that he's giving you orders, then he doesn't know that it's a problem. If &quot;stopped supporting&quot; just means that you stopped answering his emails, then his reaction becomes more understandable. If you simply stop communicating without telling him there's a problem, then he doesn't know that his style of interaction is a problem for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends somewhat on culture -- what country are you in? In US academic culture, the way I would suggest handling this is to send him an email saying something like the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe, I used to be your student, but now I've graduated, and our relationship is a relationship between colleagues. I have a problem with the language you've been using in your emails to me, because your phrasing sounds like you're giving orders. Moving forward, please use more respectful language. I am willing to provide a reasonable amount of help with any difficulties you have in interpreting my old lab notes, etc., and putting my thesis in shape as a scientific paper. But I have a new job, and the time I have for this kind of thing is limited. I would like to advise you formally at this time that it is not acceptable to me for these results to be published without my name as an author; in fact, I should be first author on any paper that comes out of this. It is also not acceptable to me to enter into discussions in which putting my name on the paper is a bargaining chip. That issue is not negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:58:12.760" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23293" CreationDate="2014-06-12T16:24:49.603" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to give my perspective, on both sides if possible. In many countries, most incentive professors have for supervising undergraduate or MSc theses, is that some of them (or all if possible) may actually lead to a publication. There is a problem though: Most of the time undergraduate or MSc students leave the university and the paper usually can only be prepared after the student graduates. Unfortunately, at that time the student has already left academia and has really no interest in publishing, since he has more important things to do (like finding a job). This is quite the setting that the OP describes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still in your case, your supervisor of the thesis has started writing the paper himself and he needs your help. Initially you provided the help needed but you became frustrated because it was more work than you wanted / expected to do, because (let's face it) the paper really does not make a huge difference to you. On the other hand, you want to stop him from publishing it solo. So, both parties are partially right to be angry at each other. You do not want to take orders from him and he does not want to be treated like an idiot (who calls his questions silly) from his former student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how can you fix this? For me, writing emails back and forth is not the way to discuss details for a paper. Why don't you use a better mean of communication such as skype, face-to-face meeting, phone call etc. You can there discuss all the details and your problem will be resolved. Of course he writes the paper and he will be the first author. But you get a publication and everyone is happy. And who knows? In the future you may collaborate further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T16:24:49.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T16:26:23.063" Score="6" ViewCount="4004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to obtain a masters degree at a certain top university (in Canada).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was kicked out of the department due to my bad performance. Repeated attempts at getting back in were unsuccessful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since then fixed my lack of discipline, achieved top grades at a &quot;lesser&quot; university, graduated with a bachelor's degree, and have worked (in a relevant field) for 7 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how, or if I should even consider applying to my original university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is purely for my self confidence and, I guess, my ego. I got into that top university with excellent grades, but I was not ready to become an independent adult; computer games dominated my life until my final semester when I finally couldn't hang on anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduating with top grades at another university showed that I picked myself up, but I want to prove to my family, the university, and mostly to myself, that I have the abilities to achieve what I could not 7 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The university is the &lt;em&gt;top&lt;/em&gt; university at the field I study, in Canada. US have a couple comparable or better ones, but I cannot afford to go to those...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can apply to another university, but I really want to find a way back in to my old university, and only apply elsewhere if no other options are available...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is fully appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Clarification - I am asking this because that university has my status listed as &quot;may not continue in Faculty&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17371" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T06:31:01.130" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T06:31:01.130" Title="Expelled from undergrad university for poor academic performance, can I go back there (years later) for Masters?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23253" CreationDate="2014-06-12T16:44:27.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;StrongBad's answer is a good one though I would also suggest that when you approach anyone about it: have completed revisions of the papers with proper references on hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to them with &quot;I just realized I made a mistake, these are the fixed versions I'd like to replace my old papers with&quot; is probably better than just &quot;I made a mistake&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistakes happen all the time in all fields but I'd be more concerned about the &quot;intentional plagiarism&quot; in their shoes, intentional dishonesty is much more serious than unintentional mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16078" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T16:44:27.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T16:56:43.847" Score="2" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to two graduate schools (both for an MS).  &quot;University A&quot; gave me an admissions decision already.  Upon reading their admissions letter, I have to make a decision within one week (it's currently mid-June).  Unfortunately, I still have not heard back from &quot;University B&quot;.  They will be making their decision by July 31st.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure what to do here.  My preference would be to go to University B, but if I don't get in there, then obviously I'd like to go to University A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be wrong to accept the offer to University A, and then withdraw later?  Or, would it reflect poorly on me if I asked for an extension to make a decision?  I find it strange that University A wants a decision so quickly, seeing as how you can apply for admission for the fall quarter up through mid-August.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17372" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T22:19:02.767" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T22:19:02.767" Title="Applied to two MS programs, but one wants a decision before the other has made a decision" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17992" CreationDate="2014-06-12T17:15:55.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that you are &quot;qualifed,&quot; that is, you have good grades from your university program, and decent marks on standardized tests such as the GRE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ought to understand that in your situation, your &quot;research&quot; potential is probably viewed differently from, say, an American's. You probably won't be evaluated for your abilities in &quot;pure&quot; research (adding to the existing body of (Western) knowledge, as for your ability in &quot;applied&quot; research; that is taking the knowledge you will be taught in the United States, and sending it back to your home country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that the U.S. admissions committee at a top university would likely see you as an &quot;average&quot; student, rather than a &quot;top&quot; student (relative to other top university students). In this case, their question will be, would we rather train another &quot;average&quot; student for e.g. Silicon valley, or a similar student for an African country. The answer is likely to be in favor of the latter, because even top U.S. universities have limited points of entry into most African countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hottest ticket in American universities right now is a degree from Kuwait, Qatar, or one of the other Gulf countries, with Africa not far behind. In this regard, your coops and internships with a national conference will be very helpful, because they suggest that you will rise high in your government's scientific hierarchy. American universities will be evaluating you as a potential Transportation Minister or head of the National Scientific Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this regard, your competition is not with &quot;western&quot; students, but similarly connected and educated African students (perhaps others from your homeland). You seem to have the advantage in this group. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T17:15:55.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23304" CreationDate="2014-06-12T17:44:38.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep trying!  I was on academic probation (at a Canadian university :-) ) after my first year of undergrad (2.88 gpa). Thankfully I did not get kicked out. I persevered and now have an MSc and PhD and have been doing medical research for many years. Don't take this as gloating, just trying to say anything is possible :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it will depend a lot on the university or department, but if you can convince a faculty member in the department that you want to do research and that you have completely changed your attitude, maybe they will have some sway (at least with the department).  In my field, it is primarily a matter of convincing a faculty member (assuming the grades in the &quot;lesser&quot; university were good).  Again, this will depend on the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, maybe you can make an appointment with the admissions department and make a case to them why you should be allowed back in to the university.  I suspect many would take your 7 years of experience as a growth experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T17:44:38.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2014-06-12T17:56:28.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect that is not covered in the responses here is that there's a considerable difference between the &quot;sticker price&quot; of private universities and what actual students pay. For example, at Harvard, families making less than $60,000 will actually pay &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; tuition. Yale and Stanford offer similar programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most private colleges offer some form of tuition reduction based on financial need so it ends up that only a select few (international students and the very rich, mostly) pay full price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of this is possible by the tremendous growth in private college endowments. At last reckoning, Harvard's endowment was $32 billion dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T17:56:28.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23304" CreationDate="2014-06-12T18:59:53.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, in Canada there's a limit for that kind of status. For example if you drop a Master program from Concordia (like I did)there's a five terms period before reapplying. Here's an extract from the regulation that &lt;a href=&quot;http://web2.concordia.ca/graduatestudies/publications/graduatecalendar/current/graduateadmission/&quot;&gt;applies&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Re-Admission of Withdrawn Students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students who have been withdrawn from a graduate program for academic&#xA;  reasons (e.g. &lt;strong&gt;low GPA, C or F grades)&lt;/strong&gt; may wish to be considered for&#xA;  re-admission into the program. Normally, students must have been&#xA;  withdrawn from the program for a minimum of five terms in order to be&#xA;  reconsidered. A request for re-admission is considered to be a new&#xA;  application. Students who wish to be considered for re-admission must&#xA;  submit an on-line application, along with the required application&#xA;  fee. Documentation (e.g. CV, transcripts) &lt;strong&gt;showing professional or&#xA;  educational accomplishments since the student was withdrawn must be&#xA;  submitted&lt;/strong&gt; along with a recommendation for re-admission by the degree&#xA;  program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At McGill (in the top 20 of univerties in North-America) it's two years for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcgill.ca/study/2012-2013/faculties/medicine/graduate/gps_gen_admission_for_grad_studies&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an individual has not registered for a period of more than two&#xA;  years, their student file will be closed. &lt;strong&gt;These individuals and&#xA;  those who have formally withdrawn&lt;/strong&gt; may be considered for admission.&#xA;  Applicants' admission applications will be considered as part of the&#xA;  current admission cycle, in competition with other people applying&#xA;  during that cycle and in accordance with current graduate admission&#xA;  procedures and policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also for Graduate studies in Canada there's a lot of exceptions made, whatever regulation says.  Try to contact the head of the department you're interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T18:59:53.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17992" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:07:40.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, good question, but let's eliminate the phrase, &quot;noting the difficulty/impossibility in doing any ground-breaking research especially as an undergraduate here?&quot;  This actually applies to almost the entirety of the undergraduate population.  Very few undergraduates work on ground-breaking research projects -- and, if they do, their role on the actual project is unlikely to be the intellectual driver.  They might have done some lower-level work under the supervision of the principal investigator (PI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your question is really about how to improve your chances of acceptance in general.  That really depends on the discipline, and it really depends on the program to which you are applying.  Every program has a unique admissions committee that will review applications and assign different levels / weights to factors they consider important in making admissions decisions.  Thus, certain programs may place a lot more emphasis on GRE than other programs.  Some programs might consider letters of recommendations to be very important, which other programs may consider letters of recommendation to be of little importance (since most letters of recommendations are cherry picked from the possible letter writers).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, your task is to tailor every application to the programs where you are submitting an application.  A general snowball approach where you submit the same application everywhere is an alternative strategy, but one that I advise against.  Learn what those programs value most in their admissions decisions, and tailor the application accordingly.  Of course, it is hard to figure out what they value, so you have to do a lot of researching -- e.g., any published data on the current and previous cohorts?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:07:40.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23320" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:43:13.547" Score="2" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my first year of my Master's program in Atmospheric Sciences, and during this time I was a teaching assistant. Now that the summer has arrived, I'm starting as a research assistant with my advisor at the university I'm enrolled at, as well as a research assistant with a government organization. I'm currently working at this government organization, but I'm still getting paid equally between my two advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting to the point, my research is a bit ambiguous at the moment. My advisor from my university doesn't have a clear project for me to work on, and my other advisor has provided some insight into what I can work on, but it isn't much better. I'm worried that the summer will be unproductive, and my chances of graduating on time (2 years total for me degree) will be put into jeopardy. Can anyone offer advice/insight into this? It would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17377" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:37:06.497" Title="Can anyone provide insight on a Master's student struggling with research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23313" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:14:31.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to press your advisors for more guidance.  Although it is appropriate (and valuable) to give a PhD student room to develop his/her own research ideas, a Masters student typically needs guidance, at least a promising direction that the advisor can see resulting in a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:14:31.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:15:13.500" Score="-2" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;On october I get a master degrees of computer science. The thesis period is very full but I love it, because I learn every day new knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my fear is to finish and get a boring job. Yes, the world is full of opportunities, but in Italy I know a lot of people that have a repetitive job. &#xA;I don't want to be offensive, and even arrogant, but I really love the university and the idea of do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the point, i want to do a Ph.d in computer science, but there is a problem: all people say me that in Italy is not required, and after Ph.D I risk to beacame a 30 years old jobless. Yes I can go in other country after Ph.D, but if I can't ? if i don't find opportunity with my Ph.D?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even my professor tell me that in Italy there is not Job opportunity for Ph.D, there is no possibility to work in university after. Should I give up? suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12537" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:33:37.870" Title="Ph.D or not Ph.D?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-17T08:45:54.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:22:11.953" Score="8" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our lab has recently developed a new webpage; we are thinking of ways to announce it's creation via social media and email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an etiquette for making such announcements? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps there are example announcements you could share? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9764" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T23:18:53.360" LastActivityDate="2016-07-30T02:13:46.260" Title="How to announce a new web-page?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;networking&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23324" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:30:36.267" Score="4" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recent B.S. recipient interested in pursuing a PhD in molecular biology in the future, are there any disadvantages to publishing outside of that field? I have a strong background in computer science and have been approached separately by a public health professor and a linguistics professor who are interested in collaborating on their respective projects and perhaps working towards a paper over the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I enjoy solving computational problems, I'm not sure whether this is a good idea professionally. Does publishing papers in other fields take away from the research I've already done?  I've so far only contributed to two papers in my &quot;field of expertise&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the downsides to collaborating on a paper outside of one's field?&lt;/strong&gt; Is this frowned upon by the academic community/graduate admission programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question -- &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/814/is-it-beneficial-to-publish-papers-not-related-to-your-primary-research-field&quot;&gt;advantages to publishing outside of primary research field&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17331" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:02:30.830" Title="Disadvantages to publishing outside field of projected study?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23306" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:33:23.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be wrong to accept the offer to University A, and then&#xA;  withdraw later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethically, I think this would be wrong unless you &lt;em&gt;expressly&lt;/em&gt; told University A of your consideration when you make the decision.  When you accept an admission offer you are taking up limited resources and potentially depriving someone else of admission to the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, would it reflect poorly on me if I asked for an&#xA;  extension to make a decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not at all - just tell them that you are very interested in A but also have other possibilities and would like to make a fully informed decision.  The worst thing that will happen is that A says &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find it strange that University A&#xA;  wants a decision so quickly, seeing as how you can apply for admission&#xA;  for the fall quarter up through mid-August.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, University A has a limited number of slots that they can fill, and, if you say &quot;no&quot;, they would like to extend the slot to someone else before decisions are made.  I'm a bit surprised that these universities are making fall MS decisions in June - these decisions are typically done by mid-April.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:33:23.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:33:37.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to give the job a chance.. I was thinking exactly like you when I finished my master in optical technologies. Maybe you are afraid of the new live (I mean as a worker). The job position has also many advantages. You will experience the feeling of deploying your knowledge it is really nice feeling. However, if you don't feel ok with job, you can apply for a Ph.D program carrying your experience in industry &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17362" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:33:37.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23313" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:37:06.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say this is your opportunity to explore and find a (hopefully small) gap in the literature that you can fill. Reading literature reviews is the best way to start. I had a similar experience a little earlier in my degree (masters), and I was able to pick a topic that I loved, and it kept me going; I am almost finished, and it has been, IMO, a successful endeavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a PhD program after, you will have experience exploring a little on your own. Your advisor will be able to say in their recommendation letter that you took initiative in your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficult part will be carving out something meaningful that you can do in 7-9 months (1 month to research and decide &amp;amp; 2-4 months for thesis writing and defense at the end). Your advisor should be able to help you to narrow the scope to something manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9139" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:37:06.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:56:17.073" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because some researchers do not like to think about the real world and reviewers do not want the hassle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(What's next is a bit of a rant)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently done a survey of a specific type of geometry related algorithms. In all the papers the program was described as working perfectly but once I requested the source code from about a dozen authors things became ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;50% of the software was missing important advertised features. For example the software would only work in 2D while the paper showed 3D examples. (Which in my case really makes things a lot more difficult). After inquiring why these features were missing they had usually never been implemented or had been implemented but proved unstable/non-working. To be clear: it was 100% impossible to generate the results shown in the paper with software that was often even improved after the paper was released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;75% of the software wouldn't work perfectly in normal cases. In my case this usually was because the algorithm was designed with 'perfect numbers' in mind but the algorithm was implemented using normal floating point numbers and thus had representation problems which resulted in large errors. Only a few papers mentioned these problems and only two tried to (partially) address them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;85% of the software wouldn't work in scenarios specifically designed to find problem cases. Let's be honest; if a 'mere' student can find a scenario in a few weeks that totally breaks your algorithm you probably already know about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not supplying code makes it possible to lie and to my disgust (I'm new to the academic world) this is done extremely often. My supervisor wasn't even surprised. However testing code is a lot of work so this behavior will probably go unchecked for a while longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16175" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2015-02-28T23:23:48.373" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T23:23:48.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23316" CreationDate="2014-06-12T23:22:36.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's a reason for someone to visit your lab's site other than it's new and should be visited, then you could write up a short announcement and post it to a relevant mailing list for your particular discipline or sub-discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the best and most persistent advertising you and your groupmates can do would be to include it as a signature block in your email. People who want to know more about your group can then click on the link. Other methods to generate traffic without purpose will likely tick off more people than inspire them to visit your page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T23:22:36.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23317" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:02:30.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I cannot speak directly to the field of computer sciences, I can say that in social sciences &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; peer reviewed publications would be viewed positively on an applicant's CV. At this stage in your career this shows you're motivated, capable of contributing to academic work, and have some familiarity with the writing process. The fact is that many undergraduates may not have access to opportunities to publish in the field they hope to enter, but instead seek to gain research experience and publication opportunities with faculty who are willing to work with and train them. Many academic skills, such as writing articles, are transferable between disciplines, and working with these professors may provide you with strong reference letters when you do apply to graduate school. So long as this opportunity is not coming at the expense of something more directly related to your major, I think it could be a very valuable experience which could positively impact (or at least will not hurt) your future applications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, be sure that you are able to explain the project and your role in the project in future application materials and interviews. If this is outside your field of study, don't be shy about asking the professors questions so that you have a solid grasp of the project's purpose. The only time I have seen undergraduate publications backfire is when the person is unable to explain the work, and it becomes clear they did nothing but data entry.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:02:30.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23325" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:09:10.520" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T00:09:10.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:09:10.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23326" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:09:10.520" Score="0" Body="Questions about professional etiquette, appropriate interpersonal behavior, or social graces/norms" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T02:36:58.617" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T02:36:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23327" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:23:12.237" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T00:23:12.237" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:23:12.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23328" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:23:12.237" Score="0" Body="How to appraise or prepare for the appraisal of/by mentors, students, grants, applications, or work performance" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T02:37:14.300" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T02:37:14.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23300" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:47:43.503" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such situations are not uncommon in academia.  I would caution you against trying to get this person back as a reviewer, even though you have signed papers from 4 years ago.  Simply respect that person's decision to back out, thank her or she for their time thus far, and invest your energies finding somebody that will serve as a reviewer so you can graduate.  Perhaps this sounds like rather odd advice.  Just put yourself in the shoes of a person who doesn't want to serve as a reviewer but is subsequently forced to do so.  You are at risk of getting a very unfavorable review, and the 40 days could become much longer.  You have plenty of time to get somebody on board, and you will certainly encounter situations in your future career that are far more egregious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:47:43.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23272" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:52:36.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you avoid the message board approach to locating funding and learn about the major funders in your particular area of study.  You can do this by looking at the CV's of leading researchers (in your area) and see where they have received their funding.  Some areas are pretty clear -- for example, most of the allied health disciplines receive funding from the National Institutes of Health.  Other areas might be supported by the National Science Foundation, whereas others might be funded by private foundation with very specific interests.  So, learn the entities that are interested in your area of study, as they all do not post to the same message boards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:52:36.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11464" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:02:40.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a good idea.  And, yes, it can backfire.  I regularly receive inquiries from individuals interested in &quot;joining my lab,&quot; laying fairly bold claims to be moved by my research.  They can be both annoying and humorous because I am very active in research but my area of study does not have any type of &quot;lab model.&quot;  In most cases, these types of inquiries are generic messages that are essentially copied to a very large number of professors, with hopes of getting a reply.  It is very easy to see through this snowball approach, and the outcome is invariably a deleted message.  The most qualified individuals do their homework and tailor the messages to demonstrate knowledge and genuine interest in the topic area.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:02:40.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:35:25.043" Score="49" ViewCount="3385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got an unsolicited email advertising a questionable-looking mathematics journal.  Upon investigation, it looks pretty shady: page charges, manuscripts to be submitted in Microsoft Word (legitimate math journals &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; use LaTeX), overbroad scope, and a promise for peer review within two months (unreasonably short for mathematics).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its three years of operation, one particular author has been published in it three times, including an “elementary” proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, and another paper that appears to be a proof of a statement for which an explicit numerical counterexample is known.  (Interestingly, it appears the same author has also published a proof of the Goldbach conjecture in a journal with a nearly identical name from another publisher indexed in MathSciNet, and has also apparently settled the Twin Primes and Collatz conjectures!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Since the preceding paragraph may not make any sense to non-mathematicians, let me say: this is roughly the equivalent of a physics journal publishing a paper that claims to have achieved time travel with household materials.  I should note that the journal has a subscription fee (which I have no intention of paying), so I can't actually read the articles in question; but their abstracts are pretty damning.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the journal’s editorial board includes some names from reputable institutions; people with many publications in high-quality journals.  (There are many other names from institutions I know nothing about.)  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it’s entirely possible that they are not paying attention to what the journal is doing, or they agreed to be editors without checking on the journal, or even that they have been listed without their knowledge (this has been known to happen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it appropriate to try to inform these editors what’s happening in their names?  If so, how can I do it tactfully?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, if someone was using my name on a shady journal, I’d want to know.  On the other hand, I don’t want to offend or embarrass them by just sending an email saying: “this journal you edit is crap”.  It’s even possible that they somehow approve of the journal (e.g. they have a philosophy that the world generally needs more journals and fewer barriers to publication), in which case, I fear no good can come of me criticizing it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-06-09T10:15:11.310" LastActivityDate="2020-08-16T07:36:47.923" Title="Should I contact accomplished researchers listed as editors of shady journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23272" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:37:50.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, students generally do not apply for grants (except for specific fellowships for graduate students - NSF, DoD, Hertz, and the like); it is the advisor's job to find funding for the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get a general sense of the funding picture in computational geometry, I suggest you look at recently funded proposals on nsf.gov (their abstracts should be publicly visible) and follow up directly (and with due preparation) with the principal investigator of the corresponding grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to attract the attention of a well-known researcher in the field, and, given the current academic pressures, they are very likely to have some funding for students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:37:50.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23304" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:41:30.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what conditions are like at a Canadian University, but I graduated from a top American university and am basing my answer on this background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most universities, graduate faculties included, will base their decisions on an applicant's more recent experience. If you have top grades from a &quot;lesser&quot; university, that should be good enough (provided of course, that your target university routinely admits students from the other university). The seven years of work experience further separate you from your unfortunate undergraduate experience. College faculties are aware of &quot;youthful indiscretions&quot; with drinking, partying, etc. and are looking for signs that you have progressed beyond that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was admitted to a graduate school, I was told, &quot;you only have to prove yourself once.&quot; That is, you will be admitted (or not), based on your &quot;high water mark;&quot; your highest level of achievement. They're not looking to disqualify you for things that happened maybe ten years ago; they're looking to see if your highest level of demonstrated aptitude meets their requirements. Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:41:30.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23332" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:50:10.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could phrase your concern in the form of a technical question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Prof. So-and-so,&#xA;  I noticed that you are on the editorial board of the Journal of Shady&#xA;  Results, which recently published the proof of a statement for which&#xA;  Other-Person provided a numerical counter-example [1].  Is the journal&#xA;  claiming [1]'s counter-example was incorrect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer a more indirect route, write your concerns to Beall to help expedite the journal's blacklisting.  Once on the list, you can send an incredulous e-mail to the well-known person asking if he is actually involved with this journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:50:10.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23116" CreationDate="2014-06-13T01:57:03.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The change of topic should not be a serious problem as long as you have a solid CS background.  What is more likely the problem is your choice of new topic, and whether the schools where you are applying have faculty working in green computing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For PhD programs, your best bet is to send a targeted &lt;em&gt;and well-informed&lt;/em&gt; letter to professors working in the field that interests you.  I cannot stress the &lt;em&gt;well-informed&lt;/em&gt; part enough - this is more than just looking at the faculty member's web page.  Read some of his/her papers, think up of suggested research directions or potential improvements of the research.  Demonstrate an ability to understand the professor's research and provide novel and meaningful ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T01:57:03.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23332" CreationDate="2014-06-13T02:38:03.407" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry too much about tact.  There's enough information in your question to identify the journal, and it looks impressively bad, even by the dismal standards of junk journals.  It's so terrible that I'd consider it unethical to be actively involved as an editor, and humiliating to be passively involved.  Bringing this to the editors' attention would be doing them a favor: if their names are being used without their knowledge, then they'll find out, if they haven't been paying close enough attention, then they'll get a valuable wake-up call, and if they are already well aware of how terrible the journal is, then at least they'll learn that someone has noticed their involvement and disapproves.  Of course it would be quite an awkward e-mail.  Perhaps the easiest solution is an anonymous e-mail: it won't make things less painful for the editors, but at least it won't affect your relationship with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T02:38:03.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23358" CreationDate="2014-06-13T03:53:24.377" Score="5" ViewCount="1340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a predicament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I majored in Computer Science as an undergraduate at a top university, and landed a job straight out of college at a web development firm. After a year of working at said company, I am itching to get back to school pursue a study of a topic in college that I found fascinating, which is East Asian Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that the only experience I have with EAS is the minor in it that I acquired during my undergraduate career. The list ends there. I fear that I won't be able to get 3 recommendation letters from the professors that used to teach me (it's been a year, my study was only a minor, the school I went to didn't have the strongest faculty supporting the focus in East Asian Studies I wanted to pursue, etc), and that there isn't a strong enough background of experience, research, or published works to make up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a graduate program still something I can think about pursuing? I am more than willing to spend a few months patching up my resume and my background to not only better my application but also actually get involved in this topic of research, but I am not sure where to start...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17389" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T00:05:14.243" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T00:05:14.243" Title="Applying to graduate school in an unrelated field after a year working in unrelated job?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T05:05:22.863" Score="6" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published paper 1 with a co-author A, who drew a very good illustrative figure in the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to submit paper 2 which addresses the same problem (but uses a completely different approach), so the introduction of the problem is pretty much the same. Do I need to ask A for permission to include the figure in paper 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15501" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T07:18:32.837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T08:29:21.347" Title="Am I allowed to use a figure drawn by co-author in another paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-13T13:26:32.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23237" CreationDate="2014-06-13T05:21:33.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a view from Computer Science/Theoretical Computer Science/Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: &lt;strong&gt;who is the target audience of an academic paper?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; end-users. It is &lt;strong&gt;reviewers&lt;/strong&gt;! &#xA;Do reviewers want code? Depends on the situation. Sometimes they do. Often they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about this: why mathematicians don't provide formal proofs but use informal arguments? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is costs vs. benefits. Providing a formally verified proof is possible but usually needs too much work, work that authors are not trained for and don't have much experience with. On the other hand, what do authors gain from it? Does it help convince the reviewers about the correctness of the results? No, usually reviewers prefer short informal explanation that allows them to understand and &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; why the result is true. A formal proof usually will not help much. There are people who don't like computer-assisted proofs which cannot be verified and understood directly by humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same costs vs. benefits thinking applies to programs. If providing code will not help convince the reviewer about the correctness of the paper, then why waste resources (time/money/pages/...) to do so? Do reviewers have time to read codes with thousands of lines to check there is no bug in them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, sometimes the software resulting from the paper is of primary interest. Having the code is helpful in verifying the claims. E.g. you claim you have a faster algorithm for SAT. Then it is helpful to provide the code. In such cases authors provide their code. This is mainly in more experimental parts. We don't care about the correctness of the code but obtaining results better than existing algorithms. In such situations there are typically standard benchmarks to compare algorithms. (See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.satcompetition.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAT competitions&lt;/a&gt;.) If there aren't established benchmarks then why publish code? If it is a theoretical result where the asymptotic benefits take place over instances which are too large to test what is the benefit of have the code? More so considering the fact that large code developed by non-professional programmers is highly likely to be buggy? Employing professional software developers to develop quality code is costly (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/10/219372252/the-most-and-least-lucrative-college-majors-in-1-graph&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the median annual income for a person with a bachelors in CS is around 100K in the US&lt;/a&gt;) (except possibly as graduate students ;) and doesn't typically have any profits afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does code need to be included in papers? Of course not! There are better ways to publish code, e.g. having a link in the paper to an online copy (on their website or a public repository like github). Why would one prefer to include a code with thousands of lines inside a document which is supposed to be read by &lt;em&gt;humans&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T05:47:43.090" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T05:47:43.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23332" CreationDate="2014-06-13T05:27:50.500" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are under no obligation to tell the editors, but if you chose to email them, it would not be out of place. The key is to not insult them or the journal. Something along the lines of &quot;I see you are the editor of X. I research topic Y. Do you think my research is in scope at the journal? It seems like some of the articles take a less rigorous approach than others. Can you tell me about the peer review process and any publication fees?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email handles a number of cases. If they didn't know they are an editor, they now do. If they thought the journal was thoroughly peer reviewing stuff, they now know it is not. If they did it to be able to say they are an editor, they now realise that they have been caught. If they did it because they support this type of publishing model, it will give them a chance to express their views and since they are willing to sign on as an editor, they probably are happy to express their views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T05:27:50.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23287" CreationDate="2014-06-13T06:04:00.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2005   Graduate Certificate in X   &amp;lt;location&amp;gt;, at that time affiliated with University of Y&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T06:04:00.717" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2014-06-13T06:48:37.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was at the &quot;receiving end&quot; of such a case once. One of my collaborators has used a figure I have drawn for another paper that I was not a co-author of without asking me first. I did not consider this intellectual dishonesty (the figure was neither particularly brilliant nor a lot of work), but I do admit that it stung a little bit to see my own work (however tiny this &quot;work&quot; was) being used without telling. If the collaborator had just dropped a brief email before, I would have certainly not minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I need to ask A for permission to include the figure in paper 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking probably not, but you really &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; tell A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T06:48:37.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2014-06-13T07:17:49.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to first check the copyright information (you have probably signed) from the journal/publisher where the figure is published. This will determine where the copyright for the typeset article lies. The figure is art and as such should be covered by an intellectual property, which then clearly belongs to your colleague. This issue seems to be overlooked by many copyright notices. As you probably know many publishers allow authors to post submitted (unedited) manuscripts to be posted on web-sites and repositories, but not the final typeset version. This is because the journal really does not own the intellectual thoughts in a paper but the right to publish and distribute the final version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me this becomes quite confused and it is not clear if all publishers have considered the true ownership of figures. It would be useful to survey the copyrights to see how these issues are dealt with and if, for example, country specific rules apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to answer your question: tell your colleague of your intention. It is good etiquette regardless of whether or not it is necessary. When it comes to copyright of a journal: better safe than sorry; get permission. You of course need to reference your other publication and any permission that is needed. You should add your colleague's name to the acknowledgement as the originator of the figure; again etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T07:17:49.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T07:44:11.407" Score="17" ViewCount="3849" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to crowdfund a PhD, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/0/26978816&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crowdfunding business&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2018-07-14T05:15:38.130" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T05:15:38.130" Title="Can a PhD be crowdfunded?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2014-06-13T08:29:21.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you published the original article the publisher may have required the copyright on the text and all figures to be transfer to them or for them to be granted exclusive rights. Presumably based on this question, you believe that the publisher does not have exclusive rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the sciences figures are often not that valuable, but in the arts, figures can be very valuable. If someone takes a valuable photograph and grants you permission to publish that photo in a single article, then you clearly do not have the right to reproduce that photo in other articles. It is not uncommon for the artist who took the photo to be a coauthor on papers involving their photos. This doesn't change the &quot;ownership&quot; of the photo. The person who produces a photo/figure the figure is generally the copyright holder unless they sign the rights away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must ask the copyright holder for permission to use the figure again. The copyright holder is likely either the person who created the figure or the publisher of the original article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T08:29:21.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2014-06-13T09:05:33.477" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'm sure its possible I haven't been able to find any examples of funding an entire PhD. However, there are quite a few examples of people crowd funding smaller individual research projects. I think there are two main reasons for this cost and accessibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really quite expensive to fund an entire PhD. If we look at the costs of a PhD (in the UK) we get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University fees: ~£4000 per year (~£15000 for non-EU students)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living expenses/stipend: ~£12000 per year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conferences/equipment/other stuff: ~£2-3000 per year +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approx £20000 per year for 3-4 years = ~£60000 (&gt;$100,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this to the average successful crowdfunding amount of &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.gogetfunding.com/crowdfunding-statistics-and-trends-infographic/&quot;&gt;$7000&lt;/a&gt; and you'll see why it'll be hard to raise that sort of money and would require a very strong marketing campaign. Which brings us nicely onto&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accessibility&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things a successful crowd funding project needs is a good sales pitch. You need to have a very clear goal that will excite lots of people to fund you. Not many PhD projects I know could possibly fall into this category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For conventional crowd funding you also need to give something back to supporters to make it worth their while. While I suspect this would be less true for crowd funded research there are many people who might like to support you but cannot/will not without the prospect of some tangible return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to be more common is to fund smaller individual projects for ~$10-20000. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.gogetfunding.com/crowdfunding-statistics-and-trends-infographic/&quot;&gt;http://blog.gogetfunding.com/crowdfunding-statistics-and-trends-infographic/&lt;/a&gt; although there are some bigger and smaller examples in this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlinephdprograms.com/dollars-for-doctors-a-guide-to-crowdfunding-academic-research/&quot;&gt;http://www.onlinephdprograms.com/dollars-for-doctors-a-guide-to-crowdfunding-academic-research/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T09:05:33.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23379" CreationDate="2014-06-13T12:24:20.507" Score="11" ViewCount="4520" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm traveling a lot this summer, and I &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/how-to-invite-yourself-to-present-at-another-university&quot;&gt;invited myself&lt;/a&gt; to visit and give talks at a couple of universities in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I list these talks on my CV? If so, under what heading? They're not exactly &quot;Invited Talks.&quot; I don't have a general &quot;Talks&quot; section on my CV because I want to exclude conference presentations (which are already represented as publications, and which nobody lists in my field). I could have a &quot;Seminars and Colloquia&quot; heading, but people might assume these were invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T23:54:24.427" Title="Should I list talks I invited myself to give on my CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23361" CreationDate="2014-06-13T12:49:04.423" Score="75" ViewCount="4125" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, last week I refereed a paper for a journal. The paper in question is a reply to a previous paper by a different author: it points out a serious problem in the original paper and then proposes a solution. The evaluation I sent back to the editors is that, while the problem is real (to the extent that a different researcher has independently identified it), there are a number of reasons why the proposed solution is not going to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the weekend, I started thinking about the paper in question again and suddenly realized that I know how to solve the problem (in a nutshell: you need to use a technique originally developed to solve a mildly related class of problems, but which nobody had yet thought of applying to this particular domain). Right now, I have a bunch of handwritten notebook pages with everything I need to write a paper, and all I have left to do is to find a couple of hours to sit in front of my computer and type it up properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how should I proceed now? On the one hand, given that I've developed my own solution, I'm not plagiarizing the paper I refereed (in fact, I intend to give it proper credit for discovering the problem). On the other hand, if I hadn't been asked to referee this paper, I wouldn't have put enough thought into it to come up with my own solution. More generally, to what extent is it acceptable to write a paper that directly builds on a paper you've been asked to referee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T16:11:12.040" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:28:09.973" Title="A manuscript I refereed gave me an idea for a paper, not sure how to proceed" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2014-06-13T13:02:57.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you list on a CV depends on the purpose of the CV. The idea that you have a single CV isn't really accurate. For example, using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/phs398/biosketch.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIH CV/biosketch&lt;/a&gt; for a job application would not be a good strategy. I believe that a &quot;long&quot; CV should have everything on it. I add things to my long CV as I do them which makes creating shorter CVs tailored for a particular purpose much easier since deleting is much easier than adding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things for which there is a benefit of listing talks that you have given at other departments/labs on the CV, the issue is really what &quot;heading&quot; they come under. The most critical thing when divining things up is that each item on your CV can only be listed once. You cannot list a conference you attended, gave a talk at, had an abstract published for, and a paper published for four times. It can only go on the CV once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try and only divide things into sections based on &quot;concrete&quot; criteria. It is clear when you are giving an invited talk at a conference, but it is not clear whether a departmental talk is invited or not. Similarly, it is not always clear whether a departmental seminar is a job talk or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant sections on my CV are (a) Conference Papers, (b) Conference Abstracts, and (c) Research Presentations. Each &quot;presentation&quot; only goes under one category. I limit the &quot;abstract&quot; category to conferences that produce archival abstract books that people have a fighting chance of finding. Talks and poster presentations at conferences that don't have archival abstract, departmental seminars, talks to research groups, and job talks, go under &quot;research presentations&quot;. I have a separate teaching presentations section for teaching based job talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I split the papers and abstracts sections into posters/talks and invited/submitted (someday hopefully I will add key note). The presentations I split into internal and external. I like to keep track of my internal presentations for annual review CV since it lets me demonstrate departmental citizenship. I tend not to split the presentations into posters/talks or invited/submitted since as I mention before, it is too difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T13:02:57.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23354" CreationDate="2014-06-13T13:08:22.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really do have three options: 1) don't write a paper (ok, not an option), 2) write it by yourself (I don't think a great option), or 3) write it with the other person as a co-author.  It depends a little on how your field assigns authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I think I would suggest.  Write the paper and when it is basically complete, email the author of the paper you reviewed and let them know you came up with a solution and have written a paper on it.  Offer them an authorship on your paper and then send them your paper with a timeline of when to get back to you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you are not burning bridges and you are collegial. Then they can decide if they want to be on the paper or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a tough position to be in but given their paper got you thinking it is probably best to ask if they would like to be an author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, if you are a student, discuss with your supervisor. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T13:08:22.307" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2014-06-13T13:19:14.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Younger faculty (with smaller vitas) tend to include less prestigious colloquium talks on their vitas. More established faculty, who have longer lists of more prestigious talks, may just have one line saying &quot;colloquia and seminar talks at many universities.&quot; (That's a real example from a senior professor.) I tend to agree: if you have done &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, you don't want your vita to suggest you've done &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I tell my students is that a vita has to pass the &quot;straight face test&quot;. If someone asks you in person whether some line &quot;truly&quot; deserves to be on your vita, you need to be able to justify it with a straight face. This is also how you know whether to include e.g. prizes that you won as an undergraduate: when you can no longer justify them with a straight face, it's time to remove them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you can do that, it's unlikely anyone will press you too hard on it. Other people in your field will understand how things work, so the main goal of the vita is to present yourself clearly to them. They can make their own judgement about the value of each activity. Unless you can't include something with a straight face, you can only hurt yourself by leaving out &quot;minor&quot; activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T13:19:14.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23339" CreationDate="2014-06-13T13:51:39.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of &quot;logistics,&quot; I would try to get one recommendation from a Computer Science professor, one from a language professor, and maybe one from an East Asian Studies professor (if not, then find the closest equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in a stronger position than you may think. Most applicants in East Asian (or similar studies), are stronger than you on the topic, but weak on &quot;tools&quot; that they need to pursue the degree. Two of those &quot;tools&quot; happen to be computer science (they call it quantitative methods) and languages, in which you are strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a person that may be weak on the topic but strong on &quot;tools,&quot; you are actually a rare commodity. Most faculties in soft sciences and social studies fear that their graduate students will be unemployable outside the field. You are the exception to the rule, and therefore represent a &quot;lower risk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father, a retired engineering professor, used to say that it was easier for a good math and computer science person to take a graduate degree in Economics than for someone with an undergraduate Economics degree (and not the others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your minor in East Asian studies is enough to demonstrate your interest in the topic. The strength of your &quot;tools&quot; probably gives you an advantage over others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T15:45:08.587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T15:45:08.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T15:03:02.630" Score="6" ViewCount="17315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my Bachelor's degree (3 years) in Mathematics and pursuing MSc(2 years). Currently I am in final year and expect to obtain MSc degree in next May. I am willing to do my PhD (in Mathematics) in USA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the information obtained from my seniors and friends, I found that most of the USA institutions ask for GRE and TOEFL score. But are there universities of USA which do not need GRE and/or TOEFL score for admission in Phd in Mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17406" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T06:27:04.710" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T16:30:04.423" Title="Are there US universities that do not need GRE and TOEFL score for admission in PhD in Mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23354" CreationDate="2014-06-13T16:01:45.840" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two questions that need to be answered first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it important to you (e.g. for career reasons) to publish solo, or would you consider publishing with the other author?  Keep in mind that publishing jointly may have extra benefits: the two of you together might come up with an even better solution, or it may lead to future collaborations on other projects.  Or do you perhaps not care about getting credit at all?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the manuscript public?  Has it been posted as a preprint on arXiv or a similar server, or on the author's website, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the answers, there are a few cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't care about getting credit.&lt;/strong&gt; Write your report on the paper: &quot;The approach to agrobaric frobotzim via PDQ analysis is unworkable because of foo, bar and baz.  However, this could be fixed by using QPM analysis instead.  [Sketch your idea here.]  Pending this fix [and any other suggested revisions], I recommend the paper for publication.&quot;  Expect that when the paper is published, there will be an acknowledgement: &quot;We thank the anonymous referee for suggesting the approach used in Section 5.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You want to publish jointly.&lt;/strong&gt; Contact the editor: &quot;The author's approach to agrobaric frobotzim via PDQ analysis is unworkable, and as such I cannot recommend the paper for publication as it stands.  However, I have some ideas about how to resolve the problem, and I would be interested in collaborating with the author to work them out.  Would you be willing to put me in touch with her?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The editor says yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Great!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The editor says no, and the manuscript is public.&lt;/strong&gt; Submit your report pointing out the flaws and recommending rejection.  After a decent interval contact the author: &quot;I saw your preprint, and had an idea to improve the results using QPM analysis.  Would you be interested in working together on this?&quot;  Opinions vary on whether you should reveal that you were the referee; it is possible the author will guess anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The editor says no, and the manuscript is not public, but you know who the author is.&lt;/strong&gt; Submit your report pointing out the flaws and recommending rejection.  The next step is a bit controversial.  Some would say you should wait until it is public, so as not to break the anonymity of the reviewing process.  Others think it is fine to reveal yourself and contact the author directly to suggest collaboration.  I am not sure what to say here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The editor says no, and the manuscript is not public, and you do not know who the author is (double-blind reviewing).&lt;/strong&gt; You have no choice but to wait until the manuscript is made public (maybe until it is published somewhere else), since that's the only way to find the author and suggest collaboration.  If you think you should give up on finding the author and publish solo instead, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You want to publish solo&lt;/strong&gt;.  Write and submit your report.  Now, is the manuscript public?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The manuscript is public.&lt;/strong&gt; You may write your paper, citing the other author's preprint and giving her due credit for noticing the problem.  This is ethical, but if you meet the author at a conference, don't expect her to buy you a beer: she was hoping to solve this problem but you beat her to it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The manuscript is not public.&lt;/strong&gt; You may not proceed.  As a reviewer, you received the manuscript in confidence, and to write a solo paper based on it would be to take unfair advantage of that access.  You must wait until the preprint appears publicly.  (This might be when it is published in another journal, or maybe never.)  It's possible that in the meantime, the author will discover your solution independently; those are the breaks.  This would be a great time to reconsider seeking joint authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 2, if your field has a notion of &quot;first authorship&quot;, that would be something you'd need to negotiate with the other author, based on your field's norms.  (Mine uses alphabetical ordering almost exclusively, so this issue wouldn't arise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T16:01:45.840" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23360" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:00:15.257" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The truth of the matter is that while you may find many schools that do not require the GRE, virtually every US school is going to require either the TOEFL or a similar test such as the IELTS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that one of the important criteria for admission to most US graduate programs is the ability to do coursework and interact with fellow graduate students and faculty in their &lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt;, which in the US is English. Consequently, schools need to ensure that the students they accept have a certain level of proficiency in English before they enroll. (A number of grad school admissions officers have mentioned that they blacklisted candidates from certain countries because of problems related to fraud—candidates would hire other people to conduct telephone interviews with universities in the US, and the actual candidate would come with hardly any English whatsoever.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for most schools, you will find it a requirement to be able to speak the dominant language of instruction—and not just in the United States. (For instance, all students at our university must show the ability to speak either German or English, depending on the program to which they apply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:00:15.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23360" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:04:59.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should change your strategy for choosing a doctoral program.  That is, determine which programs would provide you with the best training for the work you want to do.  It might (probably will) involve these standardized test scores.  You run the risk of narrowing your choices by starting with these types of requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you stated that you are &quot;willing to do my PhD.&quot;  Your decision for doing a PhD should be motivated by your ultimate career trajectory.  I think you should clarify this career trajectory (i.e., Why do you want to do a PhD?  Because it will prepare me for ...).  Then, you should find a PhD program that would be best suited to help you establish this career trajectory.  You don't want to get into a PhD program that is inappropriately matched with your trajectory, even though they don't require GRE and TOEFL scores.  If you have scores that are not competitive, then it would be a good idea to focus on improving those scores.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is you want good training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:04:59.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:17:23.650" Score="30" ViewCount="3373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/23361/103&quot;&gt;an answer to another question&lt;/a&gt;, which says on the topic of a reviewer potentially contacting an author under a special set of circumstances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some would say you should wait until it is public, so as not to break the anonymity of the reviewing process. Others think it is fine to reveal yourself and contact the author directly  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought was &quot;The anonymity is there to protect the reviewer, so of course he can give up the protection and initiate contact&quot;. But then I realized that maybe there are other people whose interests might be hurt if this happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's assume that the anonymous person (the reviewer, and in some cases also the author), always benefits from his own anonymity. Is there somebody else who is interested in the reviewer remaining anonymous? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T13:22:24.110" Title="Who benefits from the anonymity of the peer review process?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23354" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:28:09.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Co author.... all the way.&#xA;But don't ask if he wants to coauthor after you've completed the paper 100% because then you're not really asking, your telling him. Which is generous true... but in a sort of superior way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17412" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:28:09.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23364" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:29:23.800" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The readers and the editors can benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a contended issue, and there are many different views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as you've asked specifically whether there's somebody else who is interested in the reviewer remaining anonymous, let's just look at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I want the peer review to have been fair and thorough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reviewer is able to review freely, without fear of comeback, then they can be much more frank. They can shoot down a bad paper, even if one of the authors or one of their colleagues could hold some kind of power over the reviewer, whether it be funding, future job applications, peer reviews with the roles switched, whatever. Anonymity may enable reviewers to be more frank, more honest, and more direct in their reviews. And that directness can be of benefit to the editors, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying this is the way. I'm not saying this has to be the way. I'm discussing possibilities here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to have some solid evidence on the pros and cons of anonymity. At the moment, there seems to be a great deal of discussion, but I don't see much science on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:29:23.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:48:27.157" Score="33" ViewCount="3767" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have a DB or set of data, and want to grant access to it to a limited group of experts in a field (not general access), and don't want others using it for their own publications, nor seeing the information being offered for free on the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach to deposit the information somewhere to make sure, in a hypothetical future, that I can claim copyright over it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I want to protect myself upfront against &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975/my-research-work-stolen-and-published-as-his-own-by-the-co-author-without-my-con&quot;&gt;My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T19:57:28.420" Title="How can I &quot;time-stamp&quot; my data without publishing it?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23364" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:14:46.620" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I do not see benefits this answer will in essence not answer your question. It is possible to imagine benefits but reality is what counts and that tells a different story in my experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from my experience as editor, author and reviewer, I have to say, I am not impressed by anonymity in this process. Anonymity has a tendency to free some people from much of their socially acceptable behaviour and the review process is not the place for anything other than objective criticism. I should also add that in my field reviewers are more often known than anonymous and the general trend is towards more openness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I receive reviews as an author, I find that i am far more likely to take suggestions seriously if the reviewer is known than when there is an anonymous reviewer. There are probably several reasons for this. If I know the reviewer (as a peer in the subject) I can better read between the lines and understand from where the comments come from. with an anonymous review you loose that possibility. If there is a name at the other end, it becomes more of a person than otherwise so I believe anonymity makes it easier to disregard from criticism or take it less seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an editor, I can see many anonymous reviews containing quite rude remarks. As an editor, you have the right, perhaps obligation, to convey what you perceive as being constructive information to the authors for their revision. If I get a rude review, I may not convey the entire review to the author, or more commonly, I will excuse for the poor behaviour of the reviewer and highlight the parts that the author should focus upon. So an editor has a moderating role in such cases. But, most bad (in one way or another) reviews come from anonymous reviewers. In some ways reviewers may of course feel awkward for providing a very negative review that they wish to remain anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to try to look at the big picture, I would say that most reviewers do a good job but anonymity seems to bring out the worst in lots of cases and in ways that are not founded in what should be in a scientific review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T18:14:46.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:28:23.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is country dependent and more of a legal question, but basically you have to register your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the people in academia SE seem to be from USA, so you can check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-do-you-register-database.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the process for USA&lt;/a&gt;. I was not aware of this, but the site is well ranked in Google and seems properly informing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your country should provide some similar mechanism. This kind of mechanisms are the best option if you want to be sure. Otherwise, you can use other kind of mechanism as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proofofexistence.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proof of existence&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://ckan.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CKAN&lt;/a&gt; and then use that as a proof to register the copyright if needed (but you may as well register in the office up front instead of worrying about doing something else and then registering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="7571" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T18:40:13.043" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T18:40:13.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:30:37.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;a) People crowdfunding because they want something in exchange, a better world,clean some shame, a videogame and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) PhD is a personal matter where the only people that earn something is the student.   In a personal case, i want to obtain a PhD, however, i don't want others to obtain it, specially colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a) and b) are opposite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the best way to achieve b) using a) is cheating.  Like already said, for example, using marketing or being creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your question is wrong, because if you are thinking in a PhD then, if you are reached at this stage of your life then you must have enough experience to know how this World works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhDs are expensive for many reasons, one of them is to &quot;separate the wheat from the chaff&quot;, they think that if you are enough smart to accumulate such money then, you are enough smart to take the PhD (IMHO: but not enough smart to decide to not to do it and run your own business).  However, it is not always true, some PhD are not quite rich nor brilliants, they are just &quot;floating around here&quot; (yes, im recalling some teacher that i had).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: it is not a personal attack but more likely an analysis to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17414" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T21:42:03.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T21:42:03.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:46:47.900" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;See this question on StackOverflow: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6726382/is-there-a-way-to-digitally-sign-documents-to-prove-they-existed-at-a-certain-po&quot;&gt;Is there a way to digitally sign documents to prove they existed at a certain point in time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes.  Several solutions were suggested; &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/23421215/634919&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; involves an Internet time-stamping service which signs a cryptographic hash of your document.  So if you keep that version of the document, you can prove that it existed on the date in question; but otherwise, nobody ever sees the document except you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are actually expecting copyright or IP challenges, I cannot promise that this will stand up legally; you should consult a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T15:10:39.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23377" CreationDate="2014-06-13T19:34:55.540" Score="11" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my PhD program in pure math a few years ago and have been in industry since then. I would love to continue my academic career, but (long story short) I was treated badly by my program and left with the doctorate but without a postdoc or much in the way of a publication record or connections (thus making the doctorate close to pointless) I haven't had much trouble finding jobs in software engineering or government labs, but I haven't found the work there to be interesting or satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like pretty much everyone who goes into math, I love math for its own sake, and I love research. Is there anything available outside of academia where I could undertake something close to pure math research? Ideally, I'd like to beef up my publication record and make some connections, but a tech company doesn't seem to be the right place to do that. Although the jobs are certainly there, coding and engineering really aren't my things, and I'd like something more strongly related to math and more academic and research-oriented in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17411" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T08:18:55.627" Title="What are opportunities for academic math outside of academia itself?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2014-06-13T19:57:04.857" Score="46" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basically, I want to protect myself upfront against &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975/my-research-work-stolen-and-published-as-his-own-by-the-co-author-without-my-con&quot;&gt;My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is to convince the research community that this is your work, so that if anyone tries to steal it, then it will be considered professional misconduct, they won't be able to publish their theft, etc.  I'm not convinced copyright law is the right tool for this.  Sure, being able to sue someone for copyright violation could be useful in certain circumstances, but often it won't actually settle the academic issues.  For example, collaboration.  I might claim to have collaborated with you on the research contained in the database, in which case I would be entitled to be a coauthor on academic publications, and you would be considered to be acting unethically if you denied me coauthorship.  There's no way to defend against this using copyright registration, cryptographic time-stamping, etc.  You might be able to prove that you already had a copy of the database in the past, but it's much harder to prove that I didn't somehow contribute to it, except in extreme cases such as having had a copy before I first studied this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, people often deal with this difficulty by telling &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; people.  If you tell just one person about your work, then they can steal it, and it's your word against theirs.  If you tell ten people, then it's much harder for a thief to get away with it, since there are nine other witnesses.  If you tell a hundred, then it becomes really difficult to steal your work.  Unless someone immediately tries hard to steal it, it will become impossible: the community will react by saying &quot;Wait, Quora Feans told all of us about this database last year.  If it was your work, why didn't you say anything back then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether more publicity is a viable solution depends on your circumstances, but there's a fundamental trade-off here.  Ultimately, academia cares about credit for the ideas and research, not just who owns the copyright.  (If I write a paper about your work, then I own the copyright to my words, but I don't deserve credit for the ideas.)  The more you keep your work secret, the harder it is to prove anything about who deserves the intellectual credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T19:57:04.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23373" CreationDate="2014-06-13T20:17:07.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a US citizen living in the USA, you can work for &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsa.gov&quot;&gt;NSA&lt;/a&gt; (which, if I recall correctly, is known to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country) provided you pass their background check and satisfy their other requirements. However, your research will likely be classified, so you will not be able to publish it in the regular math journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you happen to be in the UK, their counterpart of NSA is GCHQ. Many other countries also have similar organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T20:17:07.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23373" CreationDate="2014-06-13T20:32:29.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is different from yours, but analogous.  I have observed a lot of academic discourse on MathOverflow, and even some on Math.stackexchange.  I have registered for conferences online and participated, even without a current academic affiliation (industry affiliation is good but not required: check with conference organizers and your employer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real key is to find a group of people who will either a) work with you remotely (say by email) or locally (if you are lucky), or b) willing to critique and perhaps mentor you in some arrangement, or c) willing to spend a few minutes of time giving their opinion of what should happen, or d) willing to tolerate occasional communication and friendly interaction, on a fairly infrequent basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MathOverflow is a good way to start at d) and work your way up the chain.  Answer a few questions, post some good (and I mean GOOD) questions, and you will more quickly find online presence to develop a relationship which may be useful in real life.  You can show your technical chops, sometimes get the fast track on research, and get a lot out of it, even some socializing.  However, follow the FAQ: MathOverflow is not for discussion, ill-formed questions, or solving homework, and they are not prone to giving hints to graduate exercises, especially if it smells like asking them to do the work for you.  There are also some reasons to prefer math.SE over MathOverflow for submitting questions, but I think doing well at the latter will be more beneficial for you.  My impression (but I could be wrong) is that your question above would not go over well at MathOverflow, since it deals more with &quot;sociology of math&quot; than with math itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be quicker to reach your goals by hanging out near a large Math department with free food, but I would bet cash money that the above is actually quicker.  Good luck at MathOverflow.  Once you get to b) or a), you will find out other opportunities outside academia to help you with research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T20:32:29.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2014-06-13T23:54:24.427" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you discover that a friend in a distant city is having a birthday party, and you ask &quot;Hey, can I come?&quot; and they say &quot;Sure!&quot;, you've been invited to the party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same thing goes for talks. When the host institution agreed to let you talk, that was your invitation, which makes it an invited talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you may want to distinguish plenary talks at conferences and formally organized departmental colloquia from random seminars run by individual faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T23:54:24.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23364" CreationDate="2014-06-14T00:02:25.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers and comments are completely reasonable, and/but, seriously, there is the obvious synthesis, which we all really know, namely, that human behavior has a certain range...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, ideally, it would even be better to have a double-blind system... or, wait, ideally, no one would behave prejudicially. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, start over. So, assuming people might react prejudicially, the typical single-blind system only protects the reviewer/referee, not the author, from subsequent complaints. No, it does not protect authors from the many different possible prejudices of referees. Yes, it does allow referees to be bitchier than they'd be if they were in a public place. This conceivably has some purpose, but, also, it might just be venting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, then, there's the point that with substantial work, the coterie of competent referees is small, and that an observant author can infer the referee by use of language and other mathematical details. &quot;We're not stupid&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in my life, I think a not-at-all-blind system would work better. In particular, referees &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be culpable for blocking competitors' work, or for gratuitously disparaging novices' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, we can ask why the traditional publishing houses control scholarly &quot;publication&quot; ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... nevermind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="67258" LastEditDate="2017-09-01T13:22:24.110" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T13:22:24.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2014-06-14T01:15:46.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am someone who dropped out of a PhD program, so I am answering on the basis of others in the program that I knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One student was pleased that his thesis was &quot;broad&quot; because he planned to carve several papers out of it. (From what I understand, he did.) Your situation reminded me of his model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another focused his thesis and research efforts around a narrow area so they would &quot;all point in the same direction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These were two of the best regarded students in a class some years ahead of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T01:15:46.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10314" CreationDate="2014-06-14T01:22:54.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your grades aren't stellar, but are good enough, alongside your strong GRE scores, to make the &quot;first cut.&quot; (One of my own graduate advisers told me that it gets worrisome below 3.3, but you've cleared that hurdle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your publication record is outstanding and ought to get you in during the later screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a case of one area being very strong and the other, &quot;not too bad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T01:40:19.110" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T01:40:19.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="206" CreationDate="2014-06-14T01:51:06.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the other way around. That's because America is a nation of &quot;doers&quot; at least compared to Europeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MANY U.S. Master's degrees are terminal degrees. Think of a Master's as a &quot;two year graduate&quot; degree, just like an associates degree is a &quot;two year college&quot; degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Americans don't like to spend more time on education than necessary. There are Master's programs that lead to PhDs. But something like 40 percent of students in &quot;non-terminal&quot; degrees are foreign, not American, born. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to fit the &quot;American&quot; mold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T01:51:06.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-14T07:15:52.000" Score="18" ViewCount="3045" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was handling submission of a paper to a journal. I was somewhat surprised that I was asked to return the corrections to galley proofs in 48 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To ensure fast publication of your paper please return your corrections within 48 hours. ...  Note that  may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How usual is it, that only a short period is left for the authors to return page proofs? Do many journals allow similar time span? Or is a longer period customary?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine situations in which I would not be able to respond in 48 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would happen if I reacted only later, not within the time period required by publisher (48 hours in this case)?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it probable that they would still incorporate the corrections if I emailed a bit later? (Or if I emailed them that I am unable to complete this in 48 hours and explained the reasons.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T10:03:29.143" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:03:29.143" Title="How much time is usually left for authors to return page proofs? What happens if I am late?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23373" CreationDate="2014-06-14T08:18:55.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Research might match your requirements. They have much going on in the way of academic math yet are outside of academia itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have many groups around the world that might match your requirements, but the Theory group in Redmond, USA seems a good start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/theory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/theory/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply directly at theoryap@microsoft.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Description: We work on fundamental problems in mathematics and&#xA;  theoretical computer science, interact extensively with the academic&#xA;  community and collaborate with other researchers at MSR on challenging&#xA;  applied problems. Among our areas of expertise are probability theory,&#xA;  combinatorics, statistical physics, metric geometry, fractals,&#xA;  algorithms and optimization. We host an amazing array of researchers&#xA;  in these areas: see a full list here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applying for Positions Applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher&#xA;  position for 2014 received by December 15, 2013 will receive full&#xA;  consideration. Apply here, and in addition, have your application&#xA;  material (including references) sent to theoryap@microsoft.com. Apply&#xA;  here for a summer internship and inform us that you have applied by&#xA;  emailing theoryap@microsoft.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T08:18:55.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23387" CreationDate="2014-06-14T09:29:23.030" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For journal articles 48 hours is not uncommon. I have never experienced less and I have never had considerably longer. If you let most journals know when you can return them, they will generally either allow you to submit them later, but this will often result in the article publication date being pushed back. In some cases the journal cannot comply (e.g., special issues) and then they may attempt to publish without you reviewing the page proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of page proofs is that you are checking to see if any copy edits they made are correct and that the proofs are an accurate representation of what you sent in. It shouldn't take very long to review the proofs (a couple of hours at most).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T09:41:08.017" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T09:41:08.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23387" CreationDate="2014-06-14T09:53:12.207" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Wiley, the journal I edit has a one-week period for returning proofs. This is set by Wiley and not by the journal. If proofs are not sent in, at some point within another week, the typesetter will typically ask for the proofs through a production editor. This is because the typesetter has the manuscript along with, I would guess, hundreds of other proofs lined up in a production line and at some point they do not want things lying around for very long. So in this case, not much happens if proofs are late and I have never seen any serious repercussions from the publisher's side affecting authors. In the worst case a paper that has been assigned to a specific issue may be moved to a later issue since the production of issues (physical printing) is not possible to adjust other than under exceptional conditions. In the end, it will the author's loss if the paper is not published as early as it could. Since for most papers, electronic publication occurs before printing, the delay just means the paper appears online later by the same amount of time or more; it can be bumped in the production line of the typesetter in favour of those that come in on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it is not possible to get corrections done after returning the proof corrections. One can always try but if the paper has been corrected and published online, there is no other option than to live with the problem or if it is in some way critical, go through the journal editors to possibly publish an errata. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T09:59:55.397" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T09:59:55.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9301" CreationDate="2014-06-14T14:14:42.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Author short story about what is in it (no matter good or bad, valuable or scrap)&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Authors statement about the findings justified by the detailed content  (findings/achievement/affirmation of a doubtful fact/negation of an established belief...etc) for a reader who has a guided-travel across by the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17437" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T14:14:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23439" CreationDate="2014-06-14T14:50:46.483" Score="18" ViewCount="24018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when I writing a paper,&#xA;I use the same phrases and sometimes the same sentences&#xA;in the abstract, introduction, and conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I compare this to non-fiction writing&#xA;(e.g. Malcolm Gladwell or Michael Pollan),&#xA;my impression is that they do not repeat themselves&#xA;in the prologue and epilogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I realize that they are writing non-fiction books/articles,&#xA;whereas we are writing scientific articles,&#xA;for a different audience and a different purpose.&#xA;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does using the same phrases and sentences&#xA;in the abstract, introduction and conclusions&#xA;make my paper boring to read?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or is it easier to read and understand a paper if it repeats itself?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T15:07:38.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T17:02:07.473" Title="Is it wrong to repeat yourself in the abstract, introduction and conclusions?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2014-06-14T15:06:51.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of papers where there is repetition in these part. While this is not wrong, it is not something one should adopt as a way of writing. It is important to write each part so that the text is adapted to be included seamlessly in that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discussion should lead up to the conclusion(s) of the paper and from this perspective it is the origin of the content that will be repeated (in context) in the other parts. The conclusion should summarize the main findings of the discussion. Since the point is to provide the important points in a brief way, one should at least try to write it with the summarizing in mind. The abstract should summarize the entire paper and lead up to the main conclusion(s) of the paper. This is most often focussing on a subset of what is summarized in the conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copy-pasting sentences from discussion to conclusions and to abstract means you build in sentence structures that may not be optimal for the different parts. I therefore suggest at least trying to rewrite the information for each part so that they become optimized in each case. If a sentence you have already written fits very well, then its use is fine but if you simply try to force sentences in the resulting text might not be as clear as it could be. So, in general, write everything as a new text based on the story you are trying to convey rather than inheriting structure from what you have written already stemming from a different context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T15:06:51.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2014-06-14T15:37:42.453" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no problem with refereeing a paper after I've commented on it to the author. I would tell the author what (if anything) I think would improve the paper, and I would tell the editor whether I think it's appropriate for the particular journal and if so then what (if anything) would improve the paper.  There have been cases where an editor asked me to referee a paper and wrote, in his cover message, that he knew (because of acknowledgements) that I'd already read the paper, so it should be easy for me to referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T15:37:42.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2014-06-14T17:19:17.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good institutional data repository should be able to handle this for you. As an example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedata.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Dataverse Network&lt;/a&gt; allows you to deposit data, gives that data a persistent DOI, and then allows you to manage permissions. So you could, for example, deposit the data to make it citable and immediately establish your authorship but then only make it available to specified users (who would need to create Dataverse accounts). In the future, you could make the data more broadly available if you so desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other institutional data repositories should be able to handle this process as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T17:19:17.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23404" CreationDate="2014-06-14T18:49:58.580" Score="6" ViewCount="3244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in pursuing a PhD in a particular humanities field and I feel that my undergraduate GPA is strong enough for me to get into such a program at a top school. However, my path to deciding this has been somewhat circuitous. Along the way, I completed a master's degree in a completely unrelated subject which I became uninterested in and disillusioned by while I was in the program. I decided to complete it anyway and as a result of my lack of passion for the field, I didn't perform very well in my master's program and just did the minimum to complete my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when I look at PhD applications, I see that every school's admission page says you must submit transcripts from &lt;em&gt;all university level courses taken&lt;/em&gt; even though only a bachelor's degree is required for admission. My question is, if by omitting transcripts from my master's program, would I be violating most admission policies and/or risk having a misleading or unethical application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17441" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T19:19:20.630" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T21:51:12.190" Title="Applying to PhD programs; do I need to include transcripts from unrelated master's degree program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23403" CreationDate="2014-06-14T19:17:33.337" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;All university level courses taken&quot;&lt;/em&gt; means &lt;em&gt;&quot;all university level courses taken&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, so yes, you should submit it too. Otherwise, if at any point they discover that you had been enrolled in that masters, you could be in trouble for lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if they don't require you to submit it, you will have to explain what were you doing during that time. And a bad master's is far better than sitting at home doing noting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you don't want it to hurt your application, so you should consider explaining in your cover letter why you did poorly. That shouldn't be too difficult, I think a good bachelor and a bad master is still better than just a good bachelor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T19:17:33.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23403" CreationDate="2014-06-14T19:18:28.773" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the requirements say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You must submit transcripts from all university level courses taken&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then yes, you must submit transcripts from your unrelated master's. To do otherwise would be a violation of the policy, which clearly states you must submit all university-level transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T19:18:28.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23406" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-14T19:23:13.200" Score="50" ViewCount="13870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have paid $1000 for PhD in mathematics. And I have sent them my book to be considered as a PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I suspect that I have lost the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as I know they are not accredited by the U.S. Department of Education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it possible that I will find a job requiring a degree, using this (fake?) PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they have told me that the U.S. Department of Education will send my diploma to US foreign affairs department and then they will make some &quot;stumps&quot; on my diploma. Do these stamps mean anything? Are these stamps just a formal thing which mean nothing and don't make my degree &quot;official&quot; (&quot;real&quot;)? Moreover, to send my diploma to the departments costs additional $1000-$1750 (dependent on whether I pay right now or later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="12050" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T07:44:07.517" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T15:13:06.977" Title="Is a university that grants me a PhD for $1000 and a copy of my unpublished book fake?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;accreditation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="29" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23406" CreationDate="2014-06-14T20:18:01.773" Score="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You have lost the money whether or not the &quot;university&quot; gives you the degree.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have given your money to what is known as a &lt;em&gt;diploma mill.&lt;/em&gt; A long time ago (nearly two decades!), I received an email offering degrees from &quot;prestigious, non-accredited universities&quot; based on life experience. This is a complete and total scam. &lt;em&gt;Even if&lt;/em&gt; you have a diploma, it will be useless for professional purposes. Anybody responsible for hiring a PhD will see that there is no work resulting from your &quot;graduate career,&quot; which will be a tipoff that the degree is worthless, and you will be unlikely to receive a job offer. Worse still, even if you were to get an offer, it could be rescinded when the truth is uncovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disengage now, before you lose any further money on this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Addendum&lt;/em&gt;: I should also mention that I am unaware of the US Department of Education doing &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; certification of diplomas and certificates on an &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T21:45:31.443" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T21:45:31.443" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23406" CreationDate="2014-06-14T20:32:11.517" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case there was any doubt, I have asked them. This is the conversation I had with them (some irrelevant parts omitted):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; Hello, I have written a book on Mathematics that I would like to turn into a PhD thesis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; what do I have to do?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Their Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; What is your highest level of education?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; I have a Masters degree in mathematics&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Their Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Ph.D degree will cost you $1100.00 (USD)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Their Guy:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 1 Original Accredited Degree&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 2 Original Transcripts&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 1 Award of Excellence&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 1 Certificate of Distinction&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 1 Certificate of Membership&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 4 Education Verification Letters&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; how long will it take to complete it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; I already have the thesis, it is a 300 pages book&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Their Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; When are you planning to enroll?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; as soon as possible&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; once the payment and the thesis are sent, how long will it take to have it accepted?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Alright you have been transferred to senior student counselor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Shipment Details :-&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; 2 set of documents we are going to send you in total in 2 separate shipments.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -First set of degree documents will be sent in just 15 - 20 working days with all 10 degree documents without attestations.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Second set of documents will be sent in only 25 - 30 working days with complete and comprehensive attestations with all above mentioned authorities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Total Fee Submission including all registrations would be $1700.00 USD ( $1100 + $600 )&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; how long will it take you to review my thesis?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Well it will take us 24 Hours&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Senior Guy:&lt;/strong&gt; Forward your resume &amp;amp; thesis on sguy@paymeuniversity.com&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Albert:&lt;/strong&gt; thank you, you have been most enlightening&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they are reviewing 300 pages in 24 h (where it should take like a year). They do no checking whatsoever on what I would be submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry, but you have lost the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found something funny. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.granttownuniversity.com/about/visiting-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The faculty&lt;/a&gt; (only visiting faculty seems visible for our university) is the same as, including pictures and order, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hilluniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another online university&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riverbanksuniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wacuniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pittsforduniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;yet another one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://headwayuniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;¡and&lt;/a&gt; even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olwauniversity.com/our-faculty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more!&lt;/a&gt; (and at least, 5 more, but you get the point); all of them looking equally suspicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="9516" LastEditDate="2015-08-23T15:13:06.977" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T15:13:06.977" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23417" CreationDate="2014-06-14T21:46:32.173" Score="4" ViewCount="12671" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend recently graduated with a bachelor degree in biology. He is thinking that he can help more people by studying a biomedical engineering Ph.D., rather than becoming a medical doctor.  He is wondering, however, about the differences between these two paths from a career perspective.  What the advantages and disadvantages of an academic career vs. a medical career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1391" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T09:40:58.693" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T09:40:58.693" Title="Comparing a career in medicine vs. medical research?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23364" CreationDate="2014-06-14T22:27:47.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only one who benefits is &lt;strong&gt;the community&lt;/strong&gt;, or, if you wish, the science itself. Blind review allows more fair reviews, the reviewers need not to fear getting revealed (in the ideal world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how I as a reviewer benefit from it. When blind review is dropped, I start to make not-really-honest reviews because I don't want to be frowned at by my colleagues, no gain nor loss for me personally, it's loss for everybody. Unfortunately, the authors often think that the reviewers are responsible for the fact that the article is a crap, which causes all this. We aren't able to accept honest opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T22:27:47.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2014-06-15T00:05:37.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that comes to mind: for doctors, the move abroad is far more difficult than for the researchers in biomed, because the job market in healthcare is usually heavily protected against international workforce by licensing barriers, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://immigrationimpact.com/2013/12/17/licensing-barriers-leave-immigrant-doctors-driving-cabs-instead-of-practicing-medicine/&quot;&gt;http://immigrationimpact.com/2013/12/17/licensing-barriers-leave-immigrant-doctors-driving-cabs-instead-of-practicing-medicine/&lt;/a&gt; for the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T00:05:37.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21700" CreationDate="2014-06-15T00:52:07.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a good article on choosing the research topic aimed specifically at the grad students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Choosing-a-Research-Topic/45641&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/Choosing-a-Research-Topic/45641&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further advice of more general nature (and partly applicable only post Ph.D.) is gathered here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aclinks.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/how-to-choose-a-research-topic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://aclinks.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/how-to-choose-a-research-topic/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-06-15T04:31:54.247" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T04:31:54.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2014-06-15T05:53:51.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For medicine: &quot;A doctor is a medical professional who examines the sick and tries to find a way to help them&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5139119_roles-doctors-nurses.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;For biomedical engineering: &quot;This field seeks to close the gap between engineering and medicine: It combines the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to advance healthcare treatment&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your friend want to help patients intimately he should be a doctor but if he wants to help the doctors and advance healthcare and thus indirectly helping the patients he should be a biomedical engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17448" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T05:53:51.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-06-15T07:14:18.140" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why didn't Roald Amundsen pave a highway to the South Pole?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why didn't Edmund Hillary build a ski lift on his way up Mount Everest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job of academics is to find solutions to problems previously thought impossible, to teach others (and despite the boilerplate in their grant proposals, this target audience is &lt;em&gt;other researchers&lt;/em&gt;) how to solve the problem, and to do the above as efficiently as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics care about the quality of their code only to the extent that it works &quot;well enough&quot; as a proof of concept of their ideas, and, possibly, that it can be reused in future projects. Refactoring code, writing documentation, carefully error checking, setting up automated builds, etc. is a waste of time &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; the time invested improving the software saves them at least as much time generating working results. For the four items I've listed, this is almost never the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be sure, when their research turns out to be practically important, many researchers will go back and write well-engineered implementations of their earlier algorithms (usually as part of a consulting agreement with professional software developers), and they had the training and talent to do so earlier -- it just wasn't worth the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T07:14:18.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2014-06-15T08:56:40.083" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a person who faced a similar dilemma a few years ago, I think there are major practical differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The working environment. Every doctor will spend his early career in a hospital, whether he plans on practising in the community later or not. A hospital environment is really different than the research one. In the former you are constantly on your feet, working long hours, nights, etc. However, you are constantly working with the people to whom you're helping. In a &quot;lucky&quot; week (depends on the POV), you might save a life every day. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking work home. While a M.D works long and hard hours at his/er practice, when she goes home - she can rest. Her patients doesn't follow her home. As a researcher I can tell you that I'm even dreaming on my research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independence. The medical environment is a very hierarchical one. Starting out as a M.D, you can't even sign off your own orders (in first world countries, at least :) ), contrary to a graduate student who might be given an independent project very early in his or her study course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goals. As a researcher, you end up working for the sake of science. You might find yourself pursuing a direction which might take decades before it translates into helping people. As a practitioner - you're working for the people in front of you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demand for your skills. In general - there are hardly any M.Ds who go unemployed. Most healthcare systems are understaffed and there is always a demand for M.Ds. I wish we could say the same about positions in the academy, and the industry is never as stable (and here it's field specific and I can't say much about the specific field in question).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17394" LastEditorUserId="17394" LastEditDate="2014-06-15T16:50:09.003" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T16:50:09.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T12:24:51.493" Score="4" ViewCount="9041" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost every theoretical physicist (string theorists) that I meet tells me that it makes no sense to try do a PhD. in these subjects since there are simply no jobs available and things are only going to get worse for those seeking faculty jobs 8-10 years from now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T15:48:32.617" Title="Isn't the job prospect in theoretical/mathematical physics too bad to justify doing a PhD in it?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-06-16T13:59:20.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23418" CreationDate="2014-06-15T12:55:55.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question assumes that the only possible job destination for theoretical and mathematical physics is in faculty positions. This is not the case. There are many additional fields (finance, consulting, computer gaming, medical imaging, and so on) where the demand for PhD's with training in mathematical analysis is growing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if your goal is a faculty position, that may be a different matter. But clearly the overall demand is still great enough that people continue to get doctorates in the discipline, which suggests that people are still finding employment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T12:55:55.973" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T13:25:52.923" Score="25" ViewCount="4248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course consisting of about 50 assignments. These include readings, many short writing assignments, and group projects. Additionally, students complete 2 large projects as the mid-term and final, entirely covering all of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed many students skipped lots of homework. Some skipped 6 weeks of work completely. I assumed the workload was too high, but I surveyed those who did the work and nobody reported spending more than 2-3 hours per week. Some students had determined that each assignment had such a low value, they did not bother to complete the work. These students all did very poorly on the final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor will not be happy to find that I am failing 25% of the students. For future terms, how can I motivate students to complete everything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:07:15.553" Title="How to motivate students to complete low-point homework?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T13:28:19.797" Score="11" ViewCount="1065" Body="&lt;p&gt;One day, I spoke with one of my professors about if it were possible for a blind person to obtain a professorship in my university. This was motivated by thinking on the Russian and blind mathematician &lt;a href=&quot;http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Semenovich_Pontryagin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lev Poyntriagin&lt;/a&gt; who made important work in topological groups and control theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question, which is hypothetical, is the following one: Suppose that we have a blind person such that is a very &quot;good&quot; researcher in his/her field in the sense that he/she has &quot;good&quot; articles in his/her field, which problems would this person have in applying for a professorship in a University due to his condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ii is important to address the problem that this person would probably need an assistant for continuing doing his/her research and for giving lectures at some extent. So, will this be something that would could count negatively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7160" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T03:00:09.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T03:00:09.013" Title="Which problems would a blind person have when applying for a professorship?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T13:34:48.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them worth more! You can do this by shifting more points onto them, or, maybe, by having less than 50 of them for what is presumably a 14 or 15 week semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T13:34:48.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:19:15.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether it's appropriate or inappropriate to fail 25% of your students depends on context. If this is a community college algebra course, then a 75% pass rate is insanely high, and would probably indicate that your standards are not high enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it's not your job to motivate your students, nor is it your job to convince them to take a less immature attitude toward their own education. The fact that you assigned the homework put them on notice that you considered it necessary for them to do it in order to learn the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T14:19:15.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:21:18.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I typically make homework 40% of the course grade and divide the remaining points among midterm, final, and class participation.  Then, on the first day, I tell students that they cannot pass the course without doing at least most of the homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not assign grades to reading assignments; instead, I make an assignment that can be assessed, but that cannot readily be completed without having done the assigned reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 16-week semester, I might have ten graded assignments, but each one will have multiple parts, so the students &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; perhaps 50 things, but they perceive that they have ten assignments, each worth perhaps four course points.  I also require students to attempt every part of an assignment in order to receive any credit.  In other words, half-done means not graded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T14:21:18.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:26:32.557" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CB8QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ams.org%2Fnotices%2F200210%2Fcomm-morin.pdf&amp;amp;ei=faGdU__oG42nyASaroBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF8Qd3lofgUJCkY14U8KJLeXAYb5w&amp;amp;sig2=H-u8lqD5yyCrG0OEwnaBSA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.68911936,d.aWw&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a very interesting 2002 article on blind mathematicians from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.  Some quick highlights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Although Lev Pontrjagin is the best known blind mathematician -- and was a wonderful mathematician; &quot;who made important work in topological groups and control theory&quot; is quite true but may be an under-sell -- there have been others.  If we count mathematicians who were blind for a substantial portion of their professional career then even Pontrjagin gets outclassed: there is, after all, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leonhard Euler&lt;/a&gt;.  And there are more contemporary examples, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Morin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bernard Morin&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://spot.colorado.edu/~baggett/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lawrence W. Baggett&lt;/a&gt;.  Both of the latter are still living but retired (on the other hand, the article is 12 years old).  It would be interesting to have even more contemporary examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Being a blind mathematician is rare but not singular.  In fact there are enough to notice that blind mathematicians tend to specialize in geometry and topology.  This is very surprising, as these fields are thought of as requiring visualization skills beyond the norm (I for instance have felt a little locked out of certain parts of geometry and topology because of my limited skills in this area....though my vision is fine).  The article really shines in the way it addresses this point: the insight it offers goes far beyond, um, sight.  At the same time there are blind mathematicians in other fields: e.g. Baggett is an analyst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Blind mathematicians must in many ways work harder than sighted mathematicians.  But of course mathematics is hard for everyone, and much of being a successful mathematician is embracing the struggle and continually pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and beyond your current range.  This is a key point of &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/continually-aim-just-beyond-your-current-range/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Terry Tao's career advice&lt;/a&gt;.  For that matter, I am suddenly struck by Andrew Wiles's famous description of mathematical research as exploring the rooms of a dark house one by one: you spend almost all of your time in the darkness; when you find the light switch you flip it and go on to the next room.  (I don't mean to trivialize the challenges of &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; living in the dark, just to indicate that the experience of dealing with and gradually surmounting challenges that to a static observer seem totally insurmountable is a somewhat familiar one.)  Reading this article made me wonder about the OP's assertion &quot;this person would probably need an assistant for continuing doing his/her research and for giving lectures at some extent.&quot;  Some might need or want a formal assistant, but some might not and might be self-reliant and of course reliant on the informal assistance of colleagues, friends and family...as we all are.  The mathematicians featured in the article are much more independent than one might have assumed possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was not specifically about blind &lt;em&gt;mathematicians&lt;/em&gt;, but that was the example given, and I am a mathematician, so I ran with that.  Off the top of my head I would suspect that blindness would be less of an issue in mathematics than most other academic fields...but as a sighted mathematician, how the heck could I possibly know that?!?  I would be very interested to hear about blind academics in other fields and what challenges they face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T16:01:22.800" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T16:01:22.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23418" CreationDate="2014-06-15T15:48:32.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think aeismail made an important point, also when you didn't ask for jobs outside of faculty. I also started to study myself physics because of astro-/particle physics as many physicists do and did. But before choosing my master thesis, the question came up, how are the job perspectives in this field or other subfields of physics. Many students don't seem to think about this important question. I saw many of my old fellow students pursuing simply the field of their love and/or even doing a PhD in it, also the topic, or, even worse, the methods they learn are barely related to other fields in and outside of physics. Normally you don't have huge problems in finding a job nowadays with a PhD in physics, if your only criterion is finding a job at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a faculty position or even professorship at a good university in Europe or US is an odyssey in this field of physics. You compete with very smart, very ambitious graduates from all over the world. If you are not very good, plan to have family life before 35, time for hobbies... I would not start a PhD in this field. Do a master thesis (in Germany you have to) in this field to see how good you are and what experts in this field think of your abilities. But after this really think about what you want to achieve/do the next 10 years in your life. If you want to work in physics research in any case, choose your PhD field and topic wisely. Average physics professor in Germany has around 20-40 PhD graduates during his professorship, so chances are 1:30 you achieve the same. I agree with Pete Clarks comment that most students pursuing a PhD and scientific career probably don't know this, but it's not so hard to find out. In US system, where many start PhD after bachelor degree, this is really a tricky decision so early in your scientific career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, this is probably your actual question, the number of faculty jobs in this field is likely to decrease the next decades. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4605&amp;amp;cpage=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Take this link&lt;/a&gt; as a start for google keywords. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my friends did their PhD in astrophysics. Most now have well paid jobs in consulting and programming. Their knowledge of physics (higher math, programming languages, analytic thinking) helps them a lot to make career in their fields outside of physics research. For some it is great, some regret that they have only their spare time to read research articles still and cure their curiosity about nature, universe... You have to be honest, you cannot keep up to date in most physics research fields this way. This was the most important point for me to consider. I want to work my whole life in physics research and was sure I don't want to spend the time to try it and would never get a faculty position in astrophysics, so I did choose some other path. Fortunately there are so many interesting subfields in physics where one will have good options for scientific career and/or physics R&amp;amp;D later in industry that I don't regret my decision much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer probably doesn't help you a lot, even if you have the will and abilities to pursue this odyssey, you need a lot of luck. But I know so many students that were talked into doing PhD in such risky and niche fields dreaming of a scientific career when the real chances are below 1:30 that I want to stress that this is a important, tricky, risky and life decision and that YOU should thoroughly think about it. Look at the CV's of some scholars with faculty position in this field and read the link above. Without a good plan B you stand behind I would not start or get talked into such an odyssey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T15:48:32.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23436" CreationDate="2014-06-15T15:57:40.237" Score="20" ViewCount="13783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is applying for teaching positions in biochemistry with no teaching experience. She has a strong research background, with several publications as a grad student and post doc, but is interested in transitioning into teaching (partially to gain employment and solve a two body problem, but also out of genuine interest). The position she is applying for asks for a &quot;Statement of teaching interest&quot;. While, I think I can give good advice for someone who has taught before, what should someone write about if they have never taught or TAed a class. She does have some background tutoring and showing faculty, grad students, and undergrads how to use various machines in the lab. But that is about it. So &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) What is a &quot;statement of teaching interest?&quot; How does it differ from a &quot;teaching philosophy&quot; or a &quot;teaching statement&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) How does one write this statement without any classroom teaching experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T12:54:56.160" Title="How to write a teaching statement without any classroom teaching experience?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2014-06-15T16:13:03.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering 2 (though perhaps this is more relevant for a &lt;em&gt;teaching philosophy&lt;/em&gt; statement): there are a number of resources you could use, but the key challenge is writing something that feels right for you. I would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Write your own version of a teaching statement. What do you feel about teaching? How would you approach it? What does it mean to you? What teaching experiences (as a student, for instance) have really influenced you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Find out what other teaching statements say. You can readily find teaching statements by googling. Lots of people looking for jobs have theirs online. Highlight phrases that appeal to you. (Avoid copying at all cost.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Look what the professionals say about teaching. For example, a book like &lt;em&gt;Teaching for Quality Learning at University&lt;/em&gt;  by John Biggs and Catherine Tang gives one very modern view on how it should be done. The approach differed significantly from how my lecturers approached teaching. &#xA;Perhaps even consult latest research. I always get surprised and get ideas when I read the teaching research literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Revisit the teaching statement you wrote in 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T16:13:03.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T17:01:05.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, it is for their own good to do it. But frankly, college students are too immature to realize it, and even the ones who do realize it have to fight with very strong procrastination motivators. You can't expect them to deliver this kind of stuff based on internal motivation only, they don't have it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is your goal to get them to pass, you have to give them external motivation here. The usual method is to make homework obligatory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind it is simple. Anybody who gets less than 80% of the possible points on homework assignments is not allowed to take the final. If you want to be mild, or the homework is very tough, set a lower target in percent. If you want to include very interesting but very hard problems in the homework, mark them as &quot;optional&quot; and don't make them count towards the required points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also has the advantage (from a grader's perspective) that students who cannot muster the dilligence to achieve 80% correctness when working in a relaxed environment with little time pressure and with the help of their friends, their textbooks and the Internet, will not be present at the real written exam where they are only going to waste your time. But it also makes them learn for the homework, spaced over the semester, so the students who have the intelligence to beat the exam but procrastinate until the last two days to learn without deadlines are actually learning well and get their grade based on solid knowledge, instead of passing on bulimia learning or plainly failing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can alternatively declare a number of homework sheets which needs to be turned in. E.g. if there are 12 homework assignments for the semester, you can say that they need to turn in at least 10 to be allowed to take the exam. But this is more problematic - what do you do with students who turn in an empty sheet? The percentage system works, I have seen it employed by many departments at two different universities. I have been exposed to it on both sides, as a student and as a teaching assistant/grader. It is well accepted by students and staff alike, it is perceived as fair, and it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably have some problems championing it, both from students and faculty, but once you get it established, everybody benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T17:01:05.630" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T17:05:57.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to motivate students in this regard is to create some form of competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post the grades of the top 5 or 10 students after each assignment. If they choose, you don't have to publish their names but only their numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update the statistics after each assignment deadline and offer bonus points for finishing in certain positions (e.g. 1st places gets a bonus 10 points etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The atmosphere in the class will change quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17466" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T17:05:57.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2014-06-15T18:03:48.150" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;About your first question, I don't really know if there is a difference, or if those are just different terms referring to the same document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In context of a training program done at my university, one of our assignments was to write a personal teaching statement. We had several inputs to help us in doing this task, and one I found particularly useful was the following list of questions (credit to the Staff Development Unit of Newcastle University): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What Higher Education is for: what are students supposed to learn or how are they supposed to develop whilst studying? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How do you think students learn in your discipline, or in aspects of it?  (You may of course be part of an inter-disciplinary area)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;So, based on (1.) and (2.) what teaching methods do you use that reflect this position (with examples)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What has informed your thinking here (experience, literature, colleagues, students)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can note that 1, 2 and 4 do not require strictly speaking to have teaching experience (although it's clearly helpful). For the point 3, you can replace the &quot;&lt;em&gt;do you use&lt;/em&gt;&quot; by &quot;&lt;em&gt;could you use&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and that should work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two aspects of this assignment that were really important for us were to use pedagogy literature (as Dave Clarke pointed out) and to be reflective. Of course, such an assignment is not necessarily evaluated as would be a teaching statement by a recruiting committee, but I think the point was that, as a young academic, you cannot really be expected to be an expert in teaching. But you are expected to learn how to become one, and to reflect on your past experiences, interactions, discussions, etc, in order to improve your practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T18:03:48.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:26:18.607" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) What is a &quot;statement of teaching interest?&quot; How does it differ from a &quot;teaching philosophy&quot; or a &quot;teaching statement&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that all three quoted phrases mean the same thing.  The &quot;teaching statement&quot; is not as formalized a genre as the sonnet: there is a range of reasonable responses, and to my ear all three things are asking for the same range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if one is especially interested in a specific teaching position it would be better not to guess but to inquire what they mean.  I don't see any reason to be shy about that: just ask politely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) How does one write this statement without any classroom teaching experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have given some advice on this.  It is certainly possible to literally &lt;em&gt;write a teaching statement&lt;/em&gt; without any teaching experience -- one talks about one's teaching philosophy, teaching goals, and so forth, while not mentioning the experiences that one hasn't had.  It's not like they're asking for the secret masonic handshake: anyone who has gotten a PhD has certainly experienced enough teaching to be able to write about it intelligibly (let me assume that someone who has gotten a PhD has learned to write intelligibly on academic matters!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, isn't there another key question here?  Namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) What are the chances that someone who has &lt;em&gt;absolutely no teaching or TAing experience whatsoever&lt;/em&gt; will be seriously considered for a faculty position with emphasis on teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can answer this question from the perspective of a math department at a research university: it is very likely that I would not seriously consider any such candidate.  Let me explain.  &quot;Even&quot; at a research university, teaching is a big part of the job -- roughly half, according to university directives -- and someone who is a truly unsatisfactory teacher is going to be an eternal liability and problem.  Well, you say, what if they are a truly outstanding researcher -- can't they learn to teach?  It doesn't really work for me.  If by &quot;truly outstanding researcher&quot; you mean that they've proven the Weil Conjectures, then they deserve to be at a truly top place which can afford to have faculty who literally never teach, or who only teach graduate seminars to their own brilliant students.  Any candidate like that is not going to come to my public research university, and if anything still less is she going to go to a teaching college.  If someone is simply a strong enough researcher that I would otherwise be very pleased to hire her, then her complete lack of teaching experience creates an insurmountable fairness issue when one compares her to other candidates with similar or moderately worse research profiles but who have devoted a substantial amount of time and energy over the years to teaching.  Even serious research mathematicians work hard to be competent teachers: it takes time and energy.  Sometimes people have less than stellar teaching, and it really can ding them a bit even at a &quot;serious research university&quot;.  Someone with &lt;em&gt;no teaching&lt;/em&gt; has to get a zero averaged in to her total grade, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I explained how it goes for mathematics at a research university.  The OP's candidate is changed twice: from mathematics to biochemistry, and from a research university to a teaching college.  From what I've heard on this site, teaching experience is valued significantly less in the non-mathematical sciences than in mathematics.  On the other hand, I happen to know that teaching experience and credentials are valued way more highly in teaching colleges than at research universities: though I think of myself as a &quot;serious teaching guy&quot;, when I visit a colleague at such a place I feel like I am hiding in a foxhole doing math all day compared to them.  Moreover smaller places are smaller, so the &quot;ethos of the college&quot; is something which is more strongly felt by all, whereas being a scientist at a research university is almost a different job from being a humanities professor at a research university.  My best guess: &lt;strong&gt;there is little chance that someone without any teaching experience will get any real consideration at a reputable teaching college&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say to the OP: if your friend wants this job, it's not about how to write the teaching statement, it's about how she can acquire some actual teaching experience.  One semester of good evaluations in any reputable post high school academic institution would make a world of difference.  If she's not willing to acquire that, is she &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; that serious about a teaching career?  Compared to the other candidates, I mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two final points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. I do not want to leave the impression that one should write a &quot;teaching statement&quot; that hides the fact that someone has no teaching experience.  Although this should come out elsewhere in the application -- e.g. on the CV -- in my view it would be dishonest not to at least remark on this in the statement itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. Others have counseled that a teaching statement should &quot;[l]ook at what the professionals say about teaching&quot; and &quot;use pedagogy literature&quot;.  This is good advice, but it can be misapplied.  Namely, you need to have real understanding and ideally mastery of anything you talk about in these job applications.  Most people know not to talk about locally ringed topoi in their research statements if they do not want to get asked what a locally ringed topos is in an interview.  However, at least in my line of work, it is something of a cliche that young people &quot;use pedagogy literature&quot; to the extent of absorbing some trendy buzzwords, which they then misuse.  If you talk about flipped classrooms, IBL and so forth and reveal that you don't fully understand what these terms mean, that is so much worse than not using them at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact at my research university (it is a bit different at teaching colleges, I happen to know) most of the faculty are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; familiar with the pedagogy literature, and if I'm honest, some people pride themselves on the conjunction of that ignorance and their superior teaching.  I don't think pedagogical literature is BS (or not all BS, anyway; every branch of academic literature has some BS), and I do believe that if you actually learn these ideas and articulate them properly and well it will be to your credit.  But be careful.  Also be aware that the trendy technique that one committee member might like might make another one roll her eyes.  So a good teaching statement succeeds independently of its use of this kind of terminology and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T19:26:18.607" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T21:05:11.800" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some students had determined that each assignment had such a low value, they did not bother to complete the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;serious, it's tempting to suggest that you assign exactly the same work for exactly the same fraction of the course credit, but packaged into a smaller number of assignments so that each assignment looks more important to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are two issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frequent feedback is often alleged to be good for student learning, and your many small assignments support that while fewer large assignments do not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm also with the others: students who can't figure out that they have to do a large fraction of these assignments to pass are unlikely to be very successful &lt;em&gt;no matter&lt;/em&gt; what you do for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, perhaps you should just check progress at some early point in the course and lets the slackers know that they are on the road to poor grades if they don't shape up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T21:05:11.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2014-06-15T21:16:17.343" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three things are doing pretty different jobs, and so should be pretty different in content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract is an &lt;em&gt;advert for your paper&lt;/em&gt;.  Someone might read a list of titles and abstracts (for example on arXiv) and decide on that basis whether it's worth their while downloading and reading the rest of the paper.  The abstract has to be attractive, but not fraudulent ('truth in advertising'!).  When you read an abstract, you're trying to find out: (i) is this paper in my area?, (ii) is it asking a question I care about? (iii) does the conclusion sound interesting?  You don't have to summarise the whole paper, but you do have to answer those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction gives your reader &lt;em&gt;a map of the paper&lt;/em&gt;.  By the end of the introduction, your reader should have a pretty good idea of what they're in for, and where they're going to end up.  They should know what sections they're probably going to skip, and which ones they look forward to disagreeing with.  A paper is not a detective novel: you don't need cliffhangers or mysteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the conclusion doesn't have a lot of work to do (at least in my experience).  It might be the last thing the reader reads of your paper (that is, unless they care enough about its contents that they'll re-read it), so this is an opportunity for you to frame their memory of it.  &quot;We have shown that ...&quot; is the sort of thing you'd find here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember the reader is a human being, just like you – talk to them, as you'd like to be talked to (far far too many people bizarrely forget this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it easy for them to read the paper, and easy to agree with you (that's why the introduction has a map of the paper, to ease the reader's way through your golden prose).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your reader is asking themself &quot;why am I reading this paper?&quot;  Make sure they have a good answer to that question by the end of the introduction. If you get a colleague to read your draft, get them to answer that question at that point.  If they don't give the answer you want them to, it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; fault; so edit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will probably be some overlap in text in the three parts.  That's OK, but it probably shouldn't be cut-and-paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10983" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T21:16:17.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22084" CreationDate="2014-06-15T21:27:18.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tenouk.com/learningretentionrate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one source&lt;/a&gt;, a man named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edgar Dale&lt;/a&gt; developed that retention rate pyramid.  Edgar Dale had been both a teacher, and a school Superintendent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; makes an interesting statement regarding this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, Dale included no numbers and did not base his cone on&#xA;  scientific research, and he also warned readers not to take the cone&#xA;  too seriously. The numbers may have originated as early as the 1940s,&#xA;  when a scholar at the University of Texas at Austin created visual&#xA;  aids for the military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia points to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/10/people_remember.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another article&lt;/a&gt; written by a Dr. Thalheimer, whose PhD was in Human Learning and Cognition, which is possibly a better resource.  He makes this statement in his introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see,&#xA;  30% of what they hear, etc. That information, and similar&#xA;  pronouncements are fraudulent. Moreover, general statements on the&#xA;  effectiveness of learning methods are not credible---learning results&#xA;  depend on too many variables to enable such precision. Unfortunately,&#xA;  this bogus information has been floating around our field for decades,&#xA;  crafted by many different authors and presented in many different&#xA;  configurations, including bastardizations of Dale's Cone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Thalheimer goes further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bogus percentages were first published by an employee of Mobil Oil&#xA;  Company in 1967, writing in the magazine Film and Audio-Visual&#xA;  Communications. D. G. Treichler didn’t cite any research, but our&#xA;  field has unfortunately accepted his/her percentages ever since. NTL&#xA;  Institute still claims that they did the research that derived the&#xA;  numbers. See my response to NTL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael Molenda, a professor at Indiana University, is currently&#xA;  working to track down the origination of the bogus numbers. His&#xA;  efforts have uncovered some evidence that the numbers may have been&#xA;  developed as early as the 1940's by Paul John Phillips who worked at&#xA;  University of Texas at Austin and who developed training classes for&#xA;  the petroleum industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's interesting... does marketing voodoo usually stick around in the public mind longer than original research?  Anyways, he re-emphasizes the importance of listing citations and the importance of understanding where research originally comes from, up to and including context.  There were two guilty parties, according Dr. Thalheimer; of course, the original people who generated the tables, but also the folks who disseminated the research without checking the citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thalheimer goes on to suggest that the information floating around in his industry can not be trusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It tells us that even our most reputable people and organizations may&#xA;  require the Wizard-of-Oz treatment---we may need to look behind the&#xA;  curtain to verify their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how does one answer your question?  Well, the US News rankings show Stanford as being the top University for psychology, at the moment.  So, I'll take that at face value; because I don't have better information to go on, and assume that there are some decent researchers on cognition in Stanford.  Out of the researchers who study cognition, which one's seems like they might be doing research on human learning?  After I find one, I might be able to identify some of the journals in the field.  They might even be some of the &quot;top&quot; journals in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason why this trick works, is that professors and fledgling professors usually keep a curriculum vitae, or CV.  And often, listed on their CV is a set of references to papers that they have written in the past.  Some are even so kind as to showcase some of the papers that they believe to be part of their best work to date.  In some cases, this can act as a kind of roadmap to show you how to become a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this procedure pulls up a list of possible resources for journals that might have articles on that topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cognition&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developmental Science&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developmental Psychology&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perspectives in Psychological Science &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two possible resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frank, M. C., Tenenbaum, J. B., &amp;amp; Gibson, E. (2013). Learning and long-term retention of large-scale artificial languages. &lt;em&gt;PLoS ONE&lt;/em&gt;, 8, e52500.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shafto, P., Goodman, N., &amp;amp; Frank, M. C. (2012). Learning from others: The consequences of psychological reasoning for human learning. &lt;em&gt;Perspectives in Psychological Science&lt;/em&gt;, 7, 341–351.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be enough of a seed to begin to answer your question.  Let's begin by trying to read Shafto et al's paper in the journal &lt;em&gt;Perspectives in Psychological Science&lt;/em&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://pps.sagepub.com/content/7/4/341.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official version&lt;/a&gt; is behind a paywall, but a version of the paper is freely available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~ngoodman/papers/shaftoperspectives.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;from Goodman's web page at Stanford&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the abstract, Shafto et al says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From early childhood, human beings learn not only from collections of facts&#xA;  about the world, but also in social contexts: from observation of other people, from communication, and from explicit teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the abstract, in the 'Learning from others: The consequences of psychological reasoning for human learning', Shafto et al states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children are often compared to scientists, but even a perfect scientist, &#xA;  using experiments alone, would struggle to rediscover all of human knowledge in  the span of one lifetime. How then are children able to acquire a good fraction  of this knowledge in just a few years? The answer must be that children do not  rediscover everything—they use their ability to reason&#xA;  intuitively about other people to learn what others already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below figure 1, Shafto et al make the statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research on human learning paints a very different picture of how datapoints are&#xA;  selected.  A wide variety of approaches have pointed to people and their intentions, as an important factor in learning, highlighting that data are&#xA;  chosen rather than random (Bruner, 1966; Vygotsky, 1978) and that observed data are&#xA;  often the consequence of goal-directed actions (Bandura, Ross, &amp;amp; Ross, 1961; Gergely &amp;amp; Csibra, 2003; Meltzoff &amp;amp; Moore, 1977) or intentional communication/teaching (Coady, 1992; Csibra &amp;amp; Gergely, 2009; Harris, 2002; Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, &amp;amp; Moll, 2005).        &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can we gather from this?  Within the field of psychology/cognition, there is discussion in the literature to support the possibility that people do, in fact, attempt to describe the process of learning by teaching.  But the focus of Shafto et al's paper is not on trying to find the learning retention rates for different types of learning.  In fact, nowhere in the paper does it even mention the term 'retention'.  The focus of their paper, as described in the abstract, is rather to develop a formal framework for how a learner might observe someone's actions and infer from those how much that person knows about the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus of this paper could potentially be useful in trying to develop a learning model for an artificial intelligence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the conclusion, the authors make an interesting statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our approach suggests that intuitive psychological reasoning potentially provides a very strong lever by which learners may capitalize on others’ knowledge to learn about the world (see also Coady, 1992; Csibra &amp;amp; Gergely, 2009; Harris, 2002; Tomasello et al., 2005). The key difference from previous formal approaches is how one views other people. If other people are viewed as random or even malicious in choosing their actions, then learning will likely be very&#xA;  difficult. However, if people are viewed as approximately rational,&#xA;  goal-directed agents, or as knowledgeable and helpful teachers, then the learning problem becomes much more tractable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement appears to mean that the ability to learn by observing an observee's actions depends on the observer's assumed framework.  If the observer assumes that the person whom they are observing is acting randomly, or perhaps that they are malicious in their actions; then it's more difficult to create a model to represent who they are observing.  It is more difficult to learn.  I'm not convinced that my interpretation of this statement is correct, given the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper also makes some references to studies done in the past.  We could follow up by reading some of these as well.  You may find this necessary, as this paper doesn't address your question directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17396" LastEditorUserId="17396" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T16:33:37.230" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T16:33:37.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-15T22:28:40.220" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some students had determined that each assignment had such a low&#xA;  value, they did not bother to complete the work. These students all&#xA;  did very poorly on the final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important way to combat this attitude is to show the actual statistics from the course you just completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Here is the distribution of homework completion across last semester's course.  And here is the distribution of final course grades.  Notice that every student who completed less than XXX% of the homework failed the course.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat this exercise after every midterm, showing similar statistics for the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; class.  &quot;See, here is the distribution of homework completion so far, and here is the distribution of midterm grades.  Notice that every student who completed less than XXX% of the homework failed the midterm, which is completely consistent with last semester.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &quot;I am not bluffing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be even more direct, you can announce in your syllabus that anyone not completing XXX% of the homework &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; fails the course, regardless of their performance on the final exam.  Be sure to read this sentence out loud in class on the first day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you also need some carrots to go with the stick.  The homework should not only be &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;, but also interesting.  The students should have access to any resources they need to master the homework material, including rapid and useful feedback.  The homework should be realistically tuned to the skill and maturity levels of the students, and you should carefully discuss your expectations with instructors of any prerequisite courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My supervisor will not be happy to find that I am failing 25% of the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you mentioned the abysmal homework completion rate to your supervisor as soon as you noticed it, which was relatively early in the semester. Right?  So how did your supervisor respond?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T22:28:40.220" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23471" CreationDate="2014-06-15T22:35:23.813" Score="8" ViewCount="6382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bit about me: I recently graduated as an undergraduate in Statistics and would like to pursue graduate school. I will be working as an actuary starting this upcoming month and will be pursuing the GRE and Mathematics GRE Subject Test this September/October.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to write a CV for graduate school. It is not a requirement that I know of currently (I haven't looked at the application requirements yet at the places I plan on applying yet), but I know that I will need to have one ready in case I need it in the future. I have plenty of experience writing resumes for actuarial positions, but none whatsoever for grad school CVs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; the questions that I would like answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I currently have so far (in chronological order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top: name, contact info&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body: Education, Academic Research, Teaching Experience, Volunteer Experience (&lt;strong&gt;if I volunteered as a TA, should I throw this experience in teaching instead if I don't have any other volunteering experience?&lt;/strong&gt;), Work Experience (consists of an actuarial position + an assessment position), Leadership and Committee Experience, Actuarial Exams, Languages, Computer Skills, Research Interests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I missing anything&lt;/strong&gt; that should be in a mathematics CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;how much detail am I expected to put in for my experiences&lt;/strong&gt;? For example, on my research experience, I have the advisor's name, what I did, how I pursued the research, and in some cases, what the research led up to (e.g., one of my projects was used to supplement an already-published mathematics and music text). &lt;strong&gt;Am I expected to talk about &quot;excellent communication skills&quot; or &quot;teamwork&quot; in any of my experiences, if applicable&lt;/strong&gt;? (For an actuarial resume, I would NEVER right anything like this, as it sounds like I'm just trying to fill up white space.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I realize that this isn't the most relevant pertaining to this website specifically, but &lt;strong&gt;are there any online forums where I can get feedback on my CV (mathematics-specific would be extremely nice)&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17476" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T23:53:28.407" Title="Constructing a Mathematics CV - what am I trying to portray to a graduate school admissions committee?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-06-15T23:16:26.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that the OP has checked and found that their university does not have any learning management system, like Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, or Sakai. All universities I am familiar with in the US &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have these systems, just in case you are visiting from Google and are not the OP. This is why there are few practical answers, and why I can only suggest likely options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an instructor without an LMS, how can you track student uploads? The equivalent I am familiar with is middle school and high school teachers who want to collect student assignments. The most common tools these teachers use are Google Drive using scripts, and Edmodo. Here is the little info I know on these tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and scripts/addons like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cloudlab.newvisions.org/add-ons/doctopus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doctopus&lt;/a&gt;, which creates folders for students on Google Drive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cloudlab.newvisions.org/add-ons/autocrat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Autocrat&lt;/a&gt;, which makes mail-merge from Sheets and Gmail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newvisions.org/blog/entry/drum-roll-please-announcing-the-new-improved-doctopus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goobric&lt;/a&gt; for automated grading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never used &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edmodo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edmodo&lt;/a&gt;, but it is free, allows you to create groups for students to join, and allows students to upload assignments. I'm guessing it has some sort of messaging function for your emailing needs as well. Here are some vaguely current posts on Edmodo's functionality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/08/15-things-you-can-do-with-edmodo-how-to.html#.U54n4PldUrU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15 things you can do&lt;/a&gt; with Edmodo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://teachbytes.com/2013/10/06/7-reasons-to-use-edmodo-in-your-classroom/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seven reasons&lt;/a&gt; to use Edmodo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T23:16:26.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-16T02:30:48.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically addressing &lt;em&gt;professorship&lt;/em&gt;, as opposed to researcher, the most immediate question that comes to my mind would be one of teaching techniques. Much college education takes advantage of blackboards or other visuals to present the formulas and techniques that students will have to learn, to supplement the lecturer's voice. That could be a challenge for a blind instructor. You should probably be prepared to explain and/or demonstrate to the school how you will address this, perhaps with citation of other instructors who have used the same solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T02:30:48.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T04:06:01.130" Score="23" ViewCount="4748" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every year, students seem to find new ways to &quot;cheat&quot; on the work. Every year, my course policies section grows longer and longer (a full page now) to match the newfound methods. I list all forms of plagiarism and exam rules and penalties. I additionally post similar rules on assignment instructions, particularly defining areas where I found students &quot;cut corners&quot; while still literally following the instructions. I teach many freshmen and foreign students who are not familiar with college expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to define all forms of cheating on the syllabus? Is there some way to apply and enforce a blanket, &quot;no other cheating permitted&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copying and pasting text from Web sites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting classmate's returned assignment as late assignment with own name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foreign students using machine translation exclusively to write essays for writing courses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using TTS for speeches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peering at other papers during exams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copying from phone during exams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting work they made in other courses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding names of extra non-contributors to group work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing work for a classmate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretending to be another student during an exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attending different sections during exams to preview the exam or try different versions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T23:53:35.180" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T23:02:07.897" Title="Do I need to define all forms of cheating in the syllabus?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23448" CreationDate="2014-06-16T08:33:56.860" Score="3" ViewCount="2457" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a reasonable number of authors a small conference paper should have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, this is an interdisciplinary research paper and several people are linked to this work in one way or another. Currently, there are 8 authors and I feel this may seem too high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any common-sense consensus regarding this limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case there is a field-specific dependence, the main field is Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: my justification for this question is the increasing buzz around the very issue: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-bloggers.com/author-inflation-in-academic-literature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;author inflation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2819" LastEditorUserId="2819" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T11:49:42.050" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T11:49:42.050" Title="Maximum/reasonable number of authors for a (conference) paper" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23447" CreationDate="2014-06-16T09:02:09.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (software engineering), having papers with 6+ authors is uncommon but not unheard-of. Most often I see papers coming out of larger international research projects having many authors, presumably simply because in a large project more hands tend to touch any given piece of research outcome. Further, in larger studies, you sometimes need more manpower to actually carry out the study. If you have a chance to do an interview study with a large group of people, just having one or two interviewers might simply be infeasible because it would take too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried that your large author list will be considered a negative during the review process, this &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; happen if it is not clear how the large author list is warranted. That is, if you were to publish work coming more less directly out of the PhD thesis of the first author with 7 co-authors, one may ask what the remaining 7 people actually added. In such cases, it is not uncommon to drop subtle hints into the paper about the role of each author. For instance, when you describe your research methodology, you could mention that the first three authors conducted the study, while the remaining three authors were mostly involved with analysis, and the last two authors provided domain feedback and validation of  the achieved results  (if interdisciplinary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T09:02:09.917" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-16T09:28:04.747" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your problem &lt;em&gt;quite literally&lt;/em&gt; is that you specify too much. If you provide a long list of things students are not allowed to do, it is natural that students assume that the list is comprehensive (that is, everything that is not on the list has to be legal). If you do what chubakueno proposes and have a single rule &lt;strong&gt;Plagiarising == fail&lt;/strong&gt;, most people would be fully aware what that means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; clearly, this does not mean that you should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; go into more detail. Of course, if one has unusual or unexpected rules which other comparable lectures in the same university do not have, then of course they need to be explained. However, most of the examples given by Village are IMHO pretty obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, many of the items on your list &lt;em&gt;cannot reasonably be assumed to be ok&lt;/em&gt;, no matter the rules. For instance, did you really have a student tell you with a straight face he thought it was ok if he pretended to be somebody else to write the other guy's exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T14:13:01.927" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T14:13:01.927" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-16T11:16:09.777" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your school not have an academic code of conduct? Usually schools have very comprehensive (but succinct) definitions of &quot;cheating&quot; and &quot;academic honesty&quot; simply so nobody has to roll their own. Every syllabus I've ever had or used in any school I've ever been to found it sufficient to say &quot;in addition to the syllabus of this course, you are also required to follow the school's code of academic honesty. Failure to abide by this code will result in immediate failure and referral to the appropriate administration.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is even easier with the advent of web resources where you can explicitly link to the academic code of conduct in the syllabus (or some mirror of it if it's not online for whatever reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, I definitely agree with xLetix. Providing a comprehensive list of &quot;bads&quot; subtly implies that everything else is valid. Certain you can say &quot;among other things...&quot;, but you should not have pages of examples. Certainly you can give one or two examples of blatant plagiarism, but otherwise give a succinct definition that's broad enough to allow you to catch all cases and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14070" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T11:16:09.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-16T12:17:55.453" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'm disappointed that you used the word &quot;fail,&quot; which is a reflexive verb, rather than &quot;flunk,&quot; which is the correct word to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't state what level (college, elementary, etc) you're teaching.  For very young kids, I would simply send notes home saying something like &quot;Your child didn't complete last nite/week's assignment.  Please make sure he completes it by XX date.&quot;  For high school and above, my view is that they can dang well sink or swim on their own. If they don't understand that the point of each assignment is to learn something (not to get a grade on it), then they're lost to the world.  It shouldn't be your job to babysit them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have concerns about your supervisor's opinion of your teaching methods, the appropriate thing to do is talk with him a month or so into the term, not after the finals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, a personal viewpoint, but bolstered with a lot of reports from teachers and observations from other parents:   groups projects are crap.  They've always been crap, and always will be crap.  They invariably end up with a few strong players whose efforts are not properly rewarded because the overall project's quality suffers from the slackers or incompetents in the group.  School is not military training camp (where it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be justifiable to grade the group on getting everyone safely thru the course).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10309" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T12:17:55.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-16T13:12:32.947" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;These basic ideas should be prominent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work must be your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your ideas must be your own - you must identify and give credit for any ideas which are not yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must be honest and ethical in all behavior related to assessment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to provide some separate information about exams. For example, you are/are not allowed to have your book/notes in the exam. Suppose someone for instance has information on their phone (and they are not allowed to have notes or the book), but they claim that phones were not excluded. You can, when discussing it with them, ask them whether they think this was honest and ethical behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the point of this is that it is their responsibility to identify if work or ideas are not their own. If someone claims, for instance, that copying from a website does not mean that their work is not their own, you can ask them where and how they acknowledged the use of the ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5824" LastEditorUserId="5824" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T13:22:08.360" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T13:22:08.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-16T13:35:08.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tell the students that two exam questions will come from the homework: one exactly as it was on the homework, and one with only small changes.  Doing all the homework is like getting one question on the midterm/final for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In class, I mention that usually the one that ends up on the exam with no changes is whichever one the fewest people turned in.  Not always, but usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added bonus: it seems to cut down on cheating, probably because if all you do is copy someone else's program, then you don't remember it well enough to reproduce it on the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17498" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T13:35:08.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-16T13:38:32.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are generic expectations that are widely understood, and you don't need to spell those out. For example, you don't need to explicitly tell your students that it's not OK to pretend to be someone else and take their exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I find that there are certain specific things that I want to make clear in my syllabus because they may differ from other teachers' expectations. For example, I teach physics labs, and my expectation is that collecting raw data is group work, but analysis, making graphs, and doing the writeup is individual work. There are other teachers at my school who have different expectations about lab work, so I need to make my own policies clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T13:38:32.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23461" CreationDate="2014-06-16T14:51:48.750" Score="8" ViewCount="2403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to complete my PhD in mathematics. I've been working with Group theory (Representations). Besides the PhD I also did a master's in theoretical physics (I took much more courses than necessary to earn the degree and all of them were in advanced level, and did really well). The thing is: I would like to work in Theoretical Physics, and I'd like to use my Math background and apply it to theoretical physics. I love both subjects and I think they are like brothers in a sense. So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Should I apply for a second PhD (In physics)? For me it would be the worst option, since I'd have to spent a lot of time in things that I already know, and I don't see the point of writing another thesis. I heard that in Europe some universities &quot;hire&quot; PhD students as Research Assistants, so maybe this wouldn't be so bad. What you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Apply for a PostDoc position in theoretical physics? This is the best option in my opnion, but I don't know if physics departments welcomes mathematicians applying for PostDocs positions, Do they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe that this question is not answered in another post, my question is specific to math/theoretical physics research. Besides I'm not thinking in getting a second PhD to &quot;learn&quot; physics, I am asking about what is more reasonable when considering to do research both in math and in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17499" LastEditorUserId="17499" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T23:38:10.763" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T23:38:10.763" Title="Second PhD vs PostDoc - Math vs Theoretical Physics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-16T17:09:09.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23465" CreationDate="2014-06-16T15:26:13.293" Score="1" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Early on the research planning process, I would like to make use of the services offered by public libraries. Including online library services, what is the best way they could help a student researcher who is currently preparing a research proposal for a specialization? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be wise to send them an email or give them a phone call, so that they could come up with a list of possibly useful and related research papers at their disposal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13534" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T10:12:30.677" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T10:12:30.677" Title="How should I ask for library services for literature review?" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;library&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-16T15:49:45.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an educator, but I have some experience on the matter of a course not engaging students enough to motivate them (I was one of those students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I shouldn't place all the blame on the course material nor the instructor, but I cannot help but feel that if I failed sooner, I wouldn't have had to &quot;suffer&quot; as long as I did, hanging on to a diminishing sense of hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my highschool, assignments were mandatory, you'd get punishment for not handing homework on time in addition to 0 marks, for disrespecting your teacher. However, the &quot;freedom&quot; I experienced immediately after entering university was too much for me to handle, and not handing in assignments was merely the first thing &quot;to do&quot; on my list of rebelliousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people handle situations differently, so I don't think having a blanket set of rules is good enough to handle all situations. I believe that each student should be treated according to their needs, but obviously that's a huge amount of resource needed, and is definitely not feasible... So I think there should at least be some sort of way to help groups of students with similar struggles, e.g. bored of class because they know it already, not knowing how to prioritise their work and ending up not finishing anything...etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly regarding OP's question, my best advice right now is for the instructor to set aside some time to talk to their student's 1-to-1, at least once in a semester, before or after midterms (I'd say before is better, so they become more motivated for midterms). Student's who want to learn, will learn, but sometimes they just want to know that someone cares... a short chat (10min?) will let them feel that you care (whether you do or not... is another matter lol) And if that person didn't need a &quot;pep talk&quot;, you can use it to learn from your students; yes, teachers should learn from their students as well, sometimes they have the brilliant ideas you could use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10897" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T15:49:45.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23458" CreationDate="2014-06-16T16:04:45.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone will hire you provided you can convince them you are better than the other candidates. You already have a PhD in Maths, you have to show them you have the skills and knowledge to complement their baggage and help solve their problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Mathematical Physics department in my undergrad university (Spain), there is at least one postdoc that is mathematician with a PhD in Economy, and two physicist readerers that works in Applied Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T16:04:45.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-16T16:21:23.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As suggested by a commenter, I am expanding my comment to that of an answer.  Many colleges and universities have an 'academic integrity' policy or standards. For example, here is one such policy at the University of Michigan:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lsa.umich.edu/academicintegrity/&quot;&gt;http://www.lsa.umich.edu/academicintegrity/&lt;/a&gt;.  You can find many other policies and standards regarding academic integrity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would include the exact language of any such policy in the syllabus.  When you review your syllabus, you should draw explicit attention to this policy and indicate that all violations will be taken seriously and referred to any judiciary committee if necessary. You can also take it one step further by having students actually sign a statement that they have read and understood the policy.  Once you have done this, students assume the burden of ensuring their academic behaviors are entirely consistent with the policy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of the process is actually following through on violations.  I don't have problems with this issue in my class because students are very much aware of exactly what will happen if violations are observed.  Of course, some students will claim that they &quot;didn't know.&quot;  Ignorance of violations of academic integrity are simply unacceptable among college / university students who should be treated like adults.  You don't want to give the impression that you are lenient on any such policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T16:21:23.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23459" CreationDate="2014-06-16T16:44:08.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that a public library would be a useful resource for an academic literature review.  You are likely to be better supported by a university librarian.  But, I am not sure why you would be relying on a librarian to assist with obtaining resources for a literature review.  My recommendation is that you develop the skills and knowledge to efficiently and effectively conduct a search for relevant resources, as opposed to relying on somebody else.  You presumably have more background and knowledge in your substantive area, and this is something you will be doing throughout your academic career.  Even if a librarian or somebody else culled sources for you, the burden is still on you to ensure the review was comprehensive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T16:44:08.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2014-06-16T17:02:07.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not bothered by the repetition of sentences if they are isolated sentences, that serve as a link. However it is inelegant, you can always put a cross reference and reword what you say in some other place, for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Style in writing, you should show some knowledge about the language and the capability of paraphrasing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fit better the contents to the context where they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing the same thing in several different ways helps people to understand what is written there. English, as most (probably all) other languages has an inherent level of ambiguity, some sentences can have several meanings. If you rewrite some sentence with some different words by doing so you can make clear that the meaning of both sentences is in the intersection of the potential meanings of both sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the third reason is the most important and other answers were missing this aspect, so I had to drop another...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, the repetition of a paragraph is unacceptable for me. If there is some paragraph in some part of the paper and you want to refer to this same piece of information you should summarize the contents of the paragraph in a sentence (sometimes in a term, e.g. when the paragraph is a definition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer isn't very constructive and I feel obliged to provide constructive answers so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the abstract as a reference. It will summarize the paper, as the introduction does and also the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the abstract you provide the shortest summary and describe what have you done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the introduction you extend that summary and describe the context of your work (some people include the motivation). It is different from the abstract because you don't say what you have done, but why it was missing, why you have done it and where in the paper you explain into more detail these aspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the conclusions you evaluate what you have done, how it serves to fill the gap that you identified in the introduction and the gaps that remain (future work).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these are similar but not equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/181080/automate-the-description-of-the-paper&quot;&gt;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/181080/automate-the-description-of-the-paper&lt;/a&gt; I should get back to that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T17:02:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23459" CreationDate="2014-06-16T17:24:22.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mean &quot;is it outrageous to ask a librarian to collect research papers for you,&quot; then no, it's not outrageous; &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; librarians do that, though rarely the librarians working in public libraries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most university students (at least in the US. You're in Indonesia so the system may vary,) they go to their school libraries because the collections are much closer to their fields of study. The librarians are also more proficient in handling academics-related questions. If you do have an affiliated university, I'll check with the librarians there first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have one, then I'll next try to contact some librarians of state-funded or nationally funded universities (especially if you are a tax payer.) Most of these public schools open their libraries or provide limited consultation to the public. It would also be valuable to ask if they have any kind of borrower program or consortium you can join: later you may need to download a lot of journal articles and having an access to their server can save you a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both of these are no goes, then you can try the public libraries. However, the librarians may not be available to fetch articles for you. Instead, you may ask them for resources (pamphlet, booklet, website) on how to perform a literature search (I'm assuming literature, but they can also show you other curated forms such as microfilm, legal archive, etc.) Most public libraries do not subscribe highly professional/specialized journals due to the high price, so realize that your scope can be limited somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of these yield no results. I'd suggest at least pay a graduate students or instructor for 2-3 hours to give you a general rundown/tutorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have said, most librarians will not be able to do the search for you. And it's better for you, as the researcher, to have the first hand experience and control of the process. At the very least, try ask the librarians about database you should search, how to select keywords, how to export and keep results, what bibliography software is available, reference books on writing literature review etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the quality of help you are going to get is proportional to the clarity of your vision about the work. The more concrete you can describe your work, the easier for them. Things you should consider are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is(are) the main question(s) you want to answer? -- in this&#xA;part, be very explicit about time, location, and other important&#xA;qualifier (think&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/5w1h.html&quot;&gt;5W1H&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How far back in time do you need to go? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of the document? E.g. For a blog, for a grant&#xA;proposal, or for an assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T17:36:18.417" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T17:36:18.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19119" CreationDate="2014-06-16T17:41:12.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An administrative head of department heads up the administration of the department, and will typically have little or no involvement in the direction or the content of the research or teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An academic department head leads the academic direction of the department. This often include somes administrative duties. Well, they nominally lead the academic direction of the department. In theory, they guide the direction of the department's researchers and teaching. In practice, that's like herding cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T17:41:12.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19119" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:00:59.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with EnergyNumbers.  As another way to think about it, the administrative head deals more with the business functions -- e.g., grant management, hiring of staff, issues with the physical environment, communications, technology, etc.  The academic head focuses on issues related to teaching, research, and service.  Indeed, the functions may overlap, but this the general division of labor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:00:59.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23420" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:07:15.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think it's important to note a difference between external motivation (carrot + stick) and intrinsic motivation (pride in the work + knowledge that it will help). External motivation can increase completion rates in your class, but has been shown to decrease intrinsic motivation so it may have negative aftereffects. Thus, I would try to avoid solutions such as competitions (which have also been shown to actually have a negative effect for girls)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a strong advocate of fostering pride in the work itself. This can be done with 1 on 1 chats as mentioned by Populous, and if there is time, then I would recommend that in addition to the below advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in dmckee's answer. Frequency of feedback can be an important factor in education, including motivation. When assignments are returned with comments and in a timely manner the students feel that the instructor or grader cares about their work. This support can foster intrinsic motivation. Conversely, when assignments are returned with no comments, returned late, or never returned at all, students can be strongly demotivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this both from personal teaching (and student) experience and literature on intrinsic motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd like to make a few comments on jeffE's answer but don't have the reputation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics may be motivating for the students that understand them in some situations. However, often the simple statistics won't show what you'd like; the highest scoring students may have low homework completion rates because they already know the material and find the homework boring. I know, I personally didn't do a single homework assignment in Geometry, Algebra II, or Pre-Calc, but was the school winner for most of the math competitions in my High School. This is especially true in classes that aren't tracked where there can be a very large variation of abilities. Looking at the test grades vs. homework completion of an inner city public school Algebra 1 class shows a negative correlation. Trying to explain the confounding variables to a class that's not proficient in statistics is a futile exercise, and if they've made it to the point where they are proficient in statistics then odds are they've already learned to be self motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17506" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:07:15.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:29:50.700" Score="9" ViewCount="1569" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authorship order in life sciences is intricate and has many problems. By convention, order is by the amount of contribution (decreasing). Also by convention, the PI/supervisor/&quot;senior author&quot; appears last. Things start getting complicated when you have many contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to focus on the end of the author list. When there are several PIs, they all appear at the end. However, if you consider the before-last author, a reader would not be able to know whether this is the author with the least contribution or alternatively a co-PI. I have seen different &quot;solutions&quot; to this problem (e.g. marking all senior authors as corresponding authors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would like to know what kind of solutions you have seen for this problem, and whether these solutions are recognized by institutions and funding agencies.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you wondering why these intricacies matter - authorship order can play an important role in getting a faculty position, awards, grants and tenure. For example, for some fellowships you may only list publications for which you are the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T11:58:47.167" Title="Indicating co-PI status on a paper" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23442" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:31:34.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a PhD in statistics, the non-math and interdisciplinary experiences are very important. Definitely the fact that you'll have an actuarial internship is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching experience: also important. Many departments will like to know if you can teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication skills are good, if you can substantiate them.&#xA;Computer literacy (beyond html/MS office) is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not directly answering your question, but when you ask for recommendation letters, make sure at least one addresses your teaching. And, if you can have one outlining your interdisciplinary prowess, that will be good, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14839" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:31:34.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23442" CreationDate="2014-06-16T20:00:50.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First let me say that I have a lot of experience with math department admissions, all of it in a department which is separate from the statistics department.  The title question is &quot;Constructing a mathematics CV&quot;: I'll answer that.  I would not assume that it's the same for statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a math admission -- either master's or PhD, it doesn't matter -- the CV is just about the least important part of the application that I can think of.  At many places, it is probably being asked for as much out of force of habit as anything else: in academia, CV's are ubiquitous.  However, most information that is provided on your CV is also provided elsewhere on the application: grades, coursework, research experiences, relevant personal experiences all have other outlets.  I can only remember reaching for a candidate's CV when something was missing from some other part of the application (possibly because of a clerical error on our part) and I wanted to quickly put my hands on it.  I &lt;strong&gt;absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; don't care how the CV looks, how it is formatted, or anything like that.  In fact I don't care about that stuff for any level of academic job.  And &lt;em&gt;in fact&lt;/em&gt; I myself have one of the more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/cvfeb14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unimpressively formatted CVs I've ever seen&lt;/a&gt;, almost to the point of being unintentionally &quot;unbusinesslike&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say the key is this: whenever you're wondering whether to put something on your CV, also ask yourself: &quot;If I do put it on my CV, how do I highlight it &lt;em&gt;elsewhere&lt;/em&gt; in my application?&quot;  Because your CV might not even be specifically read by some (or all) committee members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if I volunteered as a TA, should I throw this experience in teaching instead if I don't have any other volunteering experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should certainly include all TA experience, volunteer or otherwise.  (Whenever you do something as a volunteer that one might reasonably think you've been paid for, it is only honorable to clarify that you were a volunteer.)  I find your concern that you don't have any other kind of volunteer experience misplaced: we're not looking for volunteer experience, and volunteer experience that is not math related is not clearly relevant at all and should probably only be included if it is truly notable or substantial.  Honestly, we're not selecting for candidates who are unusually socially conscious or unusually well-rounded, so your volunteer work would have to be successful enough to show exceptional drive and/or administrative skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I missing anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think so.  Your research experience -- if you have any -- is one of the more important things to go on a CV, and you mentioned it.  But in keeping with what I said before, it is really &lt;em&gt;too important&lt;/em&gt; to just hide in a CV: if you had any research experience at all you should certainly mention it in your personal statement (and if you haven't had any at all, it would be a good idea to address that, at least by saying how excited you are and how much you welcome the opportunity).  If your research experiences resulted in actual product, then include the product itself: papers can be part of the application, and you can also include links to websites.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how much detail am I expected to put in for my experiences? Am I expected to talk about &quot;excellent communication skills&quot; or &quot;teamwork&quot; in any of my experiences, if applicable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I wonder if you're confusing the CV and the personal statement.  You don't &quot;talk about&quot; anything in a CV: it just displays information.  There is not a single complete sentence in my (eight page: yours should probably be one or two) CV.  Information about relevant experiences should go prominently in your personal statement &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you should do what you can to ensure that these experiences are also discussed in your recommendation letters (along with your coursework, these are the most important part of the application).  I have no desire to hear about excellent communication skills or teamwork from the candidate herself, no.  In fact, writing a personal statement that is literate and moderately compelling is your big chance to show your communication skills.  Openly boasting about skills is something that academia largely frowns upon.  This can get tricky when in certain contexts -- grant applications, introductions to papers -- you really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to describe your achievements, but in a way which is factual and not openly self-promotional.  In a grad school application I would strive to look competent, eager and (reasonably) humble.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are there any online forums where I can get feedback on my CV (mathematics-specific would be extremely nice)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask your recommenders for feedback on your CV.  They are natural candidates, because (i) they're reading it anyway and (ii) they have already shown an interest in your academic career.  The right way to do this is to first give them a CV and make it really clear that you want critical comments and that you've saved plenty of time for it -- more than a month! -- and then after that you would like a recommendation letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T23:53:28.407" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T23:53:28.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23469" CreationDate="2014-06-16T20:53:07.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I've never seen a paper where co-principal investigators (with respect to a grant) have been distinguished—and I was co-advised as a graduate student in exactly such a circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't think this is as big a problem as you think. If you were a co-PI, you would indicate the corresponding grant as part of your CV, as well as the resulting publications. So it shouldn't be too hard to figure out who contributed what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in my own circumstance, I am actively co-advising several students at the moment. In these collaborations, we assign the &quot;senior author&quot; position to the most &quot;relevant&quot; author for the publication. For instance, I'm in engineering and one of my collaborators is in CS. When we publish in a CS venue, he's the senior author; when we publish in an engineering venue, I'm the senior author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's really important, though, to indicate the co-PI issue, you could mention this in the acknowledgments section, since that's where you'd list the grant support in any case. You could write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;F.O.O. and B.A.R. were co-principal investigators on grant XYZ from funding agency ABC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or whatever comparable wording satisfies your needs as well as those of the funding agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T03:55:06.613" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T03:55:06.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T20:53:58.913" Score="5" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Job ads for senior executive positions in university always state &lt;em&gt;Call for Nomination and Application&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to nomination for awards, the nominator cannot actually nominate the nominee, but just a &lt;em&gt;useless&lt;/em&gt; introduction. The nominee should personally apply for the position. By the nomination, just the committee secretary asks the nominee to submit an application. Even without nomination, they normally send the call to many potential candidates to apply if they are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is &lt;em&gt;who should nominate who&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nominator is a friend of nominee. Then, why he does not encourage his friend to apply by direct contacting him instead of the search committee to ask my friend to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nominator knows nominee from distance. First, why no contacting him directly. Second, why nominating someone qualified when we do not sure if he plans to leave his current job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I am curious if this nomination system has any effect on the recruitment process? If I think someone that I know is suitable for a position, I will inform him about the vacancy and encourage him to apply. Why should I ask the search committee to ask him to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may say that people are more interested to apply when they are invited, but we know that this is not a real invitation, as they invite anyone to apply, since the applications are reviewed together. Note that these jobs are not based on &quot;nomination only&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EXAMPLES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the job advertisement has a title of &lt;em&gt;call for nominations and application&lt;/em&gt;, but in any case, there is an instruction for nomination along with application. Normally, nominations are accepted via email, while applications should be submitted online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.batten.virginia.edu/content/batten-connections/call-nominations-and-applications-dean-frank-batten-school-leadership-and&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean, University of Virginia&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umsystem.edu/muchancellor_search/nominations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chancellor, University of Missouri System&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oakland.edu/president-search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;President, Oakland University&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bot.uillinois.edu/presidentialsearch/nominations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;President, University of Illinois&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://southernillinois.edu/pressearch/nominations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;President, Southern Illinois University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T22:41:02.360" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T11:00:43.757" Title="What is &quot;call for nomination&quot; for senior positions in university?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23476" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:03:37.217" Score="38" ViewCount="7342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student, and because of the department's projects, partnerships with other institutions, and conferences, I am often out of office with the senior staff (supervisor, department head, other senior researchers and management, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the work (e.g. meetings, presentations), it is often the case to attend social events (e.g. conference dinner or reception), or simply spend the free time with my colleagues (e.g. dinner in a hotel or somewhere out). During such events, which I consider also as partially work but not that official, people drink alcoholic beverages. Since I am often the only graduate student and the youngest person in the group (and usually the difference to the next person in age is &gt;15 years), I am worried that in my case it might not be acceptable to drink and that it may project a bad image about myself. So I am wondering whether to always abstain in such occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is not about getting drunk, it is about a glass of wine or two along a meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also includes flights. When flying I always have a beer or glass of wine to fall asleep easily and to mitigate my fear of flying, but sometimes I am seated close to my supervisor or colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about the customs in academia, so I am asking: is it acceptable to drink alcoholic beverages in front of senior staff? (Again, to a limited extent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have asked in the Workplace SE, but I think that academia has a different etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13332" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-11-23T09:28:23.033" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T09:28:23.033" Title="Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in front of senior staff during semi-official occasions?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;drugs&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:10:09.917" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting ice in good whiskey is universally unacceptable, but I think the answer may depend on which country you are in. If you are 20 in the USA, then no. Otherwise, you are an adult and you decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T21:10:09.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:21:22.930" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;There will be people with strong feelings about what is acceptable regarding drinking, and it is impossible to satisfy them all. (I have heard reports of senior faculty expressing disapproval of a postdocs choice to only have two beers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to more institutional acceptance, the situation will vary. For example, when I came to Cambridge,UK, as a PhD student, there was a Wine &amp;amp; Cheese event to get to know the faculty members of the college. So drinking in front of them was not merely tolerated, but actively encouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T15:00:36.703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:00:36.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:29:02.300" Score="7" ViewCount="737" Body="&lt;p&gt;The announcement below from Japan sounds like one becomes an assistant professor at the end of the tenure process. I thought the tenure is always meant for becoming associate professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Terms of Appointment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evaluated in the final year of the term, and if satisfactory, eligible&#xA;  to become a tenured assistant professor as of April 1, 2018.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17516" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T07:11:59.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T07:11:59.127" Title="Is tenure also meant for becoming an assistant professor?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23570" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:48:42.923" Score="1" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the Computer Science GRE exam was dropped, I have to take the normal GRE exam (&lt;em&gt;sighs&lt;/em&gt;).  I've looked at a few sample questions, and it's something I'm just not good at.  I have a Bachelors in Computer Science with a 3.1 GPA (out of 4.0)  I have two core questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How well do I have to do to get accepted into most decent universities for a Masters in Computer Science?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to study and practice for GRE exams for a C.S. major?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE (02/18/2015):&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got my scores in for GRE. Verbal: 153, Quantitative: 160, Essays: 4.0. I'm not sure how &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; this is or not yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied for about 4 months. First 2 months it was little studying every week. The third month was studying every other everyday. The first 2 weeks of the 4th month studying everyday. The last 2 weeks were heavy studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17517" LastEditorUserId="17517" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T17:41:05.307" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T17:41:05.307" Title="GRE exams for those seeking a Masters in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23477" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:08:17.250" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tenure is not always associated with the traditional assistant vs. associate/full distinction, especially not outside the United States. Even in the United States Associate does not always mean tenure nor does some other title necessarily imply untenured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're applying for this specific position and it concerns you, you should probably just ask for clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T22:08:17.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:10:48.520" Score="7" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in multiple places that it is important that your recommenders be known to the admission committee. If I were to have a letter of recommendation from a professor who is quite new (Assistant Prof), would their recommendation be discounted due to their lack of reputation or stature in the field? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17518" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T12:07:52.803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:40:37.997" Title="Getting a letter of recommendation from a new professor" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:13:27.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor's principal job is conducting research. Depending on field, blindness may or may not be much of a problem at all. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheena_Iyengar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sheena Iyengar&lt;/a&gt; is an endowed full professor at Columbia Business School and is blind. Her research is fascinating and she seems to be doing pretty well for herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastEditorUserId="6984" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T20:42:02.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T20:42:02.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23478" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:15:36.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How well do you have to do on the GRE?  That depends entirely on how much weight the admissions committee gives to GRE scores.  Some universities may not really care.  Others may use GRE's as part of the screening process.  Universities have not adopted a universal policy as to how GRE scores should figure into admission decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if you are a CS major or any other major -- general principles of good study techniques for the GRE hold true for everybody.  If you are an independent learning who is self-motivated and skilled at structuring your own study, then you can probably just get some good test prep books.  If you need more structure, then you might benefit from paying for a course.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T22:15:36.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19011" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:31:02.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the biggest difference between PhD programs at med schools and those not at med schools is simply their research focus. Often they have differences in the administration and faculty associated with the program, but at least for Harvard (that's where I just finished my PhD), the difference between the med school programs and those not at the med school is probably smaller than the difference between Harvard's med school programs and Stanford's med school programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each PhD program is different, and may have different requirements in terms of admission and selectivity, but for the top tier of graduate schools, the difference is probably not hugely noticeable. There are also likely to be differences between say the Immunology program at Harvard and the BBS program, even thought they're both at the med school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak to Stanford, but at Harvard, your GPA and GRE's will have some influence, but your research experience and letters of recommendation will hold far more weight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say, apply to the programs you're most interested in, and then if you're invited to interview, make your decisions after you've visited the schools. You want to base your choice on the feeling you get from the students and faculty - different programs align more with different personalities. If you're choosing between Harvard and Stanford, you won't be choosing between different qualities of research (both institutions are phenomenal), you want to go where you'll be happiest because of culture etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Spelling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17514" LastEditorUserId="17514" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T02:02:21.143" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T02:02:21.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:54:05.897" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the senior people are drinking too, there's no question that it's appropriate for you to. If you're at an event where drinks are provided, but the senior people aren't drinking then it should be fine for you to have a little to drink, unless you believe that they disapprove of drinking. And being on a plane is an event where drinks are provided, for the context of this answer. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T22:54:05.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23633" CreationDate="2014-06-16T23:36:56.997" Score="20" ViewCount="160741" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I graduated as an undergrad three years ago, I've been planning to go back into graduate school, so I saved all my assignments and heavily kept up on studying and research. My transcript looks good and I've had a lot of time to focus on GREs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most uncertain and anxious part is getting letter of recommendations from my former professors. Due to my nature, I haven't maintained contact with the three professors I have in mind, especially given the job I have. I'm confident that they'll remember me if I send them a quick e-mail, but I'm hesitant about the timing. It seems a bit awkward to re-establish contact out of nowhere without letting them know my intention, but at the same time, I feel it's a bit too early to let them know I would like to start looking into graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of sending them e-mails stating my intention to apply to graduate schools, be able to provide documents/statements so they have something to remember and write about me, and ask if they were interested on writing the recommendation. If so, I would follow up and provide them the application details several months ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this better than asking them out of the blue when graduate application crunch time starts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for professors and those who wrote letter of recommendations, what are your experiences of writing recommendations for former students reaching back 3 - 4 years later? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Update on this below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17522" LastEditorDisplayName="user17522" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T04:25:33.693" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T05:08:44.867" Title="3 - 4 years since I graduated, how should I time asking for recommendations?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-17T00:10:23.960" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The safest rule is &quot;do what others do.&quot; (But no more, and possibly less than, what they do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone drinks, and you don't, that might be taken badly, as someone else pointed out. And if you drink and no one else does, that might be worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, my rule was to drink if others did, but to have one or two less. If any one calls you on it, you can point to your &quot;juniority.&quot; Otherwise, you're just &quot;fitting in&quot; without going overboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T00:10:23.960" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T00:12:06.893" Score="8" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many e-journals search tools contain much metadata in their database. For example, they have the &quot;location&quot; entry required for some citation formats, which at least shows the location of the journal, but the might also store the original authors' university name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any tool that can allow researchers to either (a) search a term and see a map of where the articles are coming from or (in some similar form or other) (b) see a world map showing where research in a particular area is geographically concentrated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T08:05:59.670" Title="Is there a tool for visualizing the geographic locations of research?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-17T00:25:23.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned in comments to other answers, one has to slog through things.  A similar process is accumulating a list of restaurants (food vendors, grocery stores) from which you prefer to get food.  You can stay within a comfort zone of, say, Mexican and Thai restaurants to make sure you always get something satisfying, but then you miss out on the possible delights found in fusion restaurants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go by reviews of experienced critics, but their notion of best may not be yours.  The only sense in which time is &quot;wasted&quot; is through your own judgment.  Even if you get a bad experience from reading a particular article, you need such feedback in order to develop your sense of what is best.  It is not always rewarding to copy other's idea of best and hope it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are strategies for forming a list to try, but you still have to test the list.  In particular, if you know a good starting point, search by author, subject, or title to find similar articles.  If you know a bad starting point, do the same kind of search, but ignore (filter out) the corresponding author or subject or title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a list of potential starting points, check out articles that have received awards for exposition.  They can be a guide to quality.  In mathematics, two such prizes are the Steele and Polya prizes; search to see what is available in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T00:25:23.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-17T02:02:28.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Memming's excellent answer&#xA;that you should leverage the informed opinions of your mentors and peers&#xA;to decide what articles are of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;attend talks/presentations at conferences or at your university.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attending a talk requires a relatively small time investment&#xA;(20 minutes to an hour),&#xA;so you get a quick overview of a research project&#xA;without having to spend hours reading the article.&#xA;If the speaker is any good,&#xA;you should have gotten the main points from his/her talk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During a talk, other researchers like to ask questions&#xA;or even in some cases argue with the presenter.&#xA;By hearing the types of questions that people raise in public,&#xA;and talking to people in private to see how they assess other people's work,&#xA;you understand better how other people perceive the research project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although each person has his/her own opinion about a research project,&#xA;nevertheless, people in a particular scientific community&#xA;tend to have opinions that fall within a particular spectrum.&#xA;By interacting with people and asking them what they think of a particular project,&#xA;you will learn how to calibrate your opinions&#xA;with the opinions of other researchers in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T02:02:28.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23477" CreationDate="2014-06-17T03:59:39.383" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Japan's academic system is still closer to the continental system where there is only full Professor (教授） in a department and several assistant professors (助教授）and a mixture of adjunct and full-time readers/lecturers　(講師）. The assistant professors can be tenured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools in Japan are moving to the American system where there can be several full professors in a department and there are now some colleges that are introducing the category of associate professor　(准教授）). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japanese labor laws tend to protect full-time faculty, so you can assume that you have lifetime employment if you pass the first employment review -- if and only if you haven't been hired as a part-time (非常勤) or otherwise term-contract employee (非正規雇用).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it sounds like they want to emphasize that you are NOT being hired as part-time  or other non-tenure track (such as the new &quot;jokyo&quot; 助教 which is not the same as a tenure-track assistant professor 助教授).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T04:32:13.253" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T04:32:13.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-17T04:49:04.177" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends not only on where you are, but what group you are in and what people in particular you are speaking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have met both &quot;senior staff&quot; who get so drunk that they wouldn't remember whether you were even present, and I've known those who would probably disapprove of an undergrad having a glass of wine. The majority fall somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, it is quite hard to tell. For instance, a very religious person may be against alcohol consumption. Or a person from a culture where deference from juniors is expected may consider drinking when with a senior disrespectful. On the other hand, people who grew up in a culture where drinking is a frequent pastime will have no issue with it (and may even be surprised if you don't participate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The division is not even a matter of what country the person is from, because even within a given country there is a spectrum of attitudes which varies by what social circle a person interacts with. With the diversity of backgrounds you get in academia, any specific answer you get here is likely to be incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tom Au suggests, your best bet is to do what others do. Especially convenient is if there is someone else of similar status to you, then you know whatever they do is very likely not improper for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; unsure (or if you are the only junior member, or if you are new...), you can make a mental list of all the people present who you would not wish to embarrass yourself to. Keep an eye on how much they drink, and make sure to drink slightly less than whichever of these persons drinks the least. It's quite unlikely that they will disapprove of something they themselves do. Of course, if one of them happens to not drink anything at all, that means you shouldn't also, but on the flip side, in that case it's probably safer not to drink in the first place until you have a better idea of what everyone's attitude is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what others said, I doubt anyone will take issue if you drink too little. As I said, it is common to have people from very different backgrounds and cultures in academia, some of which do not drink at all. It is generally considered impolite to make assumptions on such things, so few would risk seeming insensitive by encouraging someone they don't know well to drink. The exception is if you know the other people well, or if you both come from very similar backgrounds so you know with certainty what your attitudes would be. But in that case, you can probably decide better yourself what is appropriate and what is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T05:04:55.737" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T05:04:55.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17577" CreationDate="2014-06-17T06:18:09.720" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;making plan is essential for the exam but rather more imp is to excute daily and alway remember ur goal ...&#xA;if u able for the exam then u also able for making strategy or plan ownself...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so belive in ownself,hardwork,smartwork systematicity ,mindset,ur god  and positive think ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;never give up...&#xA;  always think about ur goal ,goal,goal...so...on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17525" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T08:44:46.307" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T08:44:46.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-17T06:18:26.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like in your case, you might just list what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine you have entered a room for the first time. You did not bring anything or anyone with you. This room has only a desk, a chair, a few blank sheets of paper, and a pencil. Anything that you would not be able to do in this room is not allowed in the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you could just point out a few non-obvious things to adequately illustrate the spirit of the rule, and then say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This list is not comprehensive. I will punish anything that gives you an unfair advantage. Use your own judgement to decide what would be acceptable, and if in doubt, ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, you are not required to have every decision you make in class to have been written in exacting detail beforehand (at least in most schools). You can just say, &quot;even though I didn't explicitly say copying from your friend is not allowed, it should have been obvious to you that I would consider it cheating&quot;. Also, some things on your list should not even be mentioned. Whatever excuse the student who tried to take an exam for someone else came up with, I guarantee that they knew full well they shouldn't have done it, and they knew you knew they knew. I don't see how &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No cooperating, no open book, no cheating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't cover everything except 7 and 8 on your list. Do your students honestly think that they're allowed to copy from a phone during an exam that isn't even open-book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T19:57:03.553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T19:57:03.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2014-06-17T08:43:15.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you said: Someone who is well-known is a good choice. If the new professor already has a good reputation in her field, it will most probably be a good decision to ask her. It's better to have a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you and who writes somethong personal, than a letter from someone just looking at your marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T08:43:15.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T09:56:42.373" Score="16" ViewCount="1858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a paper, which posed some interesting questions in a section named further research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded the section by writing, &quot;we leave all these questions for our future research&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really interested in one of the questions, is it considered inappropriate to write a paper handling one of those questions? The pronoun &quot;our&quot; indicates that the author wish to dig in to this question himself. However the paper was published in 2012, and by browsing the authors personal webpage I get no sign of a paper like that in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case I wish to write a paper on that particular topic, should I notify the author who posed the question? (Say, by asking, is question X still open?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17261" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T20:22:39.317" Title="A question in the future research section - is it considered appropriate to write a paper on it?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-17T10:57:19.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comments so far all seem to come from the perspective of the educator. Having recently made the transition from undergraduate completing exams and assessments, to postgraduate setting and marking them, I offer the following advice based on my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university requires every single student to complete an online &quot;Plagiarism and Academic Honesty&quot; course each year. This course takes the form of a few dozen slides detailing many complex rules and examples, attempting to cover every form of assessment in every academic department. No-one ever actually reads the content of this course; the old concept of &quot;TL;DR&quot; is true even when your academic or professional future is at stake. Based on this experience, &lt;em&gt;I rule out the &quot;exhaustive restrictive list&quot; approach&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have the polar opposite as a University-wide policy: a very short, to-the-point statement about always behaving with complete academic honesty and integrity. This is always qualified, however, with a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin.exeter.ac.uk/academic/tls/tqa/Part%208/8Mplag1_old_version.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the full &quot;legalese&quot; policy&lt;/a&gt;. Again, no-one reads this. There are also numerous loopholes. For example, the policy states that you must not use another student's work without attribution. Copying an entire report and then scribbling &quot;I copied all this from Dave&quot; in the margin would therefore appear to be fine. This further leads me to the conclusion that &lt;em&gt;a restrictive list is not the way forward&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do I see as the best option from both sides of the assessment process? Assume nothing of your students. They will have come from a wide variety of cultures where &quot;academic honesty&quot;, &quot;plagiarism&quot;, &quot;cheating&quot; and all related terms have very different definitions. Public exam processes used in schools also vary across the globe, so you cannot rely on &quot;it's the same as it was before university&quot;. &lt;em&gt;I would therefore advocate a &quot;permissive list&quot; as the best policy&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; permitted to take pens, calculators, and rulers into the examination room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All work &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; consist solely of the thoughts, ideas and work of the named candidate (or group, where applicable).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the thoughts, ideas or work of others is permitted &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; where it is attributed and clearly marked as not your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All work &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be original and created for the purpose of this assessment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe those four rules cover everything in the eleven points above, plus other methods of cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17538" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T10:57:19.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23496" CreationDate="2014-06-17T11:27:54.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting in touch with those authors might help you get to your answers quicker. They might have worked their questions without publishing. Estimated reason could be long term research is required to answer them. However, I am not aware of any rules that prevents you from addressing those questions (of your current interest) as long as the paper is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17539" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T19:20:28.757" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:20:28.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23469" CreationDate="2014-06-17T11:58:47.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some papers I've seen, in which there was apparently more than one PI, they  were both (last and before last authors) correspondents on the paper. I guess this is a way to signal their equal status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T11:58:47.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23496" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:13:55.930" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because an author puts forth a question doesn't mean that she or he owns that area of science.  You are free to pursue any question that was posed in or inspired by an article.  Even if the authors are actively pursuing the question, your research on the question will likely take a different form.  It is unlikely that you will have exactly the same methodology, so the results will be different.  And, even if the studies are exactly the same, the contribution you are making is important -- i.e., replication is essential to the advancement of science.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are inspired to pursue a given research question, full speed ahead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:13:55.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17577" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:30:46.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to take a different strategy than suggest you need to stay motivated and positive.  You can be super motivated and positive, but still not reach this goal.  Focus on principles of effective and efficient learning.  Create a study plan and use study strategies that maximize every bit of your study time.  Here are a few possible strategies to consider.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Establish a fixed study schedule that is realistic.  An overly ambitious plan will likely lead to early failure.  What is a realistic plan that you can reasonably adhere to for the course of a year?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Avoid binge-study periods.  Breaking your study sessions into shorter but more frequent times is more effective than marathon / binge study sessions.  You can take advantage of the 'recency' and 'primacy' effects in learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Be certain that you are monitoring your study sessions.  Make sure you are giving yourself credit only for productive studying.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Measure / monitor your progress.  This is important to ensure that you are moving forward in your study plan.  You can do this by specifying measurable objectives, perhaps on a weekly basis.  For example, &quot;By Friday, I want to have accomplished ... &quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Try to obtain practice tests that are similar in structure or content to the one you will be taking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:30:46.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23496" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:32:21.237" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; I put questions into my papers is to try to get other people to work on them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once someone publishes a question, or even mentions it in a talk, it's fair game for other people to work on it. This has a flip side for authors: it's bad practice to publish questions that you could already address with the methods of the paper, with a modest amount of additional work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a bad idea, if you are going to work on a question that was published a long time in the past, to ask the authors if it is still open. But, unless you are trying to collaborate with them, you should write the request in a fairly generic way. Don't tell them your ideas, or ask them if they have ideas, since that is how you would start a collaboration. Just ask whether they know of any progress since the paper was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:32:21.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:40:37.997" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unestablished professor that knows you well, and writes a fantastic letter, is far better as a letter writer than a famous professor that will just write a generic &quot;he was 3rd out of 38 students in my class&quot; kind of letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of letters that will really help you in general. (1) A great letter from a professor who knows you well, regardless of their stature. This is likely someone you did research with, and (2) A famous professor that will write you a decent letter, saying you did well in his her/class and you show real potential, ideally you should have done a class project for them, so they can say something beyond basic things like class rank. Letters of type (1) are the most important (if the professor is famous that is a bonus). But you need 3 letters usually, so you are not likely going to have 3 professors that know you well (if you do you are in great shape). Type (2) is another good option for filling out 3 letters. If all your letters are of type (1) and (2) that is a really good sign. Most people will have at least one lackluster letter from an unestablished professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next best bet is an unestablished professor that you did a good class project for or knows you well from a class. Generic letters really do not help your cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:40:37.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:57:55.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is bound to be country specific, but like most people here from US institutions, I refer to the University code of conduct. However, I highlight gray areas. This means I don't list obvious things like (2) or (6) on your list. I would say something like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In this class you must follow the academic code of conduct [link to code], all violations will be reported to the judiciary committee. Note, in college academic dishonesty extends a bit further than you might be used to, so read the code carefully. For example the following things are not allowed [insert a list of two or three non-obvious things - I include 1. not understanding something you write, 2. Turning in basically the same assignment as a collaborator, even when collaboration is permitted].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make it sound like you are giving an exhaustive list, but it is good to highlight some gray areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:57:55.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23512" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:35:36.963" Score="21" ViewCount="7059" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I cite papers online, especially in Wikipedia pages, it is very convenient to use their DOI. However, some papers which I would like to cite (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4892932&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combinatorics.org/ojs/index.php/eljc/article/view/v15i1r11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;) have no DOI. Or at least, I haven't been able to find their DOI in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crossref search form&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why isn't a DOI assigned to all papers? Is there something I can do to change this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I now found out that in ResearchGate, I can upload my paper and it automatically receives a DOI. So practically, my problem is solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="787" LastEditorUserId="787" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T10:46:03.200" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T10:46:03.200" Title="Why do some papers not have a DOI?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23510" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:07:39.387" Score="4" ViewCount="1385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that in the physics field, there are sometimes co-first authors, both names being followed by a footnote saying &quot;These two authors contribute equally.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though explicitly labeled as so, one name still comes before the other. Also, as far as I know, the one believed to contribute a little bit more goes first. Hence, these are actually not real co-first authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine in some journal with an author-title header on every page. The name of FirstAuthorB, the co-first author who comes after FirstAuthorA, will not be shown, as in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FirstAuthorA et al.: Paper Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there some other generally accepted ways to truly display two first authors as completely equal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T14:28:31.963" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:09:30.710" Title="Real co-first authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23509" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:28:15.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within normal procedures the best way would be to list the two first authors in alphabetical order and then make a statement in the acknowledgement that the two have contributed equally. In this we assume that the way authorship is distributed in falling order. Many journals now also ask for a specification of contributorship of all authors to distinguish who has done what. One oddity I cam across was a paper by K &amp;amp; H (last name initials) where it was listed in the acknowledgement that both had contributed equally. In this case H was the PhD student of K and so K may have wanted the primary spot to get the full impact of the prestigious publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the way to signal contributions by ordering authors is not without its problems. But, most of the problems come from the fact that first authorship is used without discretion to assign merit. So from this perspective it is a result of a flawed system. Attributing contributorship can even out the playing field to some extent but basically we will have to live with the systems. One should also remember that the most important aspect of the reference for most is the sourcing of information, not who did what. So an example of how a system built for one purpose has been adopted to solve another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T14:28:15.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:39:28.570" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A DOI is registered by a so-called &lt;em&gt;Registration Agency&lt;/em&gt; (see FAQ  1 and 2 at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/faq.html&quot;&gt;DOI&lt;/a&gt;). Since there is a cost associated with the service, it may not be feasible for all to add such identifiers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T14:39:28.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:39:50.417" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A process exists for obtaining DOI's, including the submission of meta-data and fees.  Thus, it is time and cost prohibitive for some authors / publishers to obtain DOI's for their published works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find information about DOI's here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/faq.html&quot;&gt;http://www.doi.org/faq.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T14:39:50.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:51:05.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are brilliant and highly respectable journals and articles in basically every field of study, I think the concept of &quot;best articles to read&quot; is not well defined. There are, in my opinion, three important questions to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Who&lt;/b&gt; is reading the article. This refers both to your &lt;i&gt;position&lt;/i&gt; (a MSc student, a PhD student, a senior researcher) and your current &lt;i&gt;role&lt;/i&gt;, or &lt;i&gt;task&lt;/i&gt; (to prepare an overview, to write down a solid intro for your own paper, to fill the Bibliography section in your theses, to serve as a referee, to discover new breakthrough ideas). In my opinion, one can rarely read articles just &quot;for their own fun&quot;, unless they are at a very senior level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer to the first question will help you to narrow down the search space. For example, new ideas -&gt; arXiv, classical results -&gt; textbooks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;What&lt;/b&gt; are you going to get from the article. &quot;To understand it all&quot; is probably too generic answer, and in my experience, very rarely it is really necessary to get &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; details from the paper. Do you want to understand the role of this paper in a big study? (maybe it is sufficient to read through Intro and Conclusion). Do you want to understand if their method / approach is better than yours? (maybe you should focus on Discussion or Comparison sections).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer to this question can dramatically reduce the time spent on each paper, and ultimately increase the number of papers you can explore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T14:51:05.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23509" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:56:04.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two distinct issues with &quot;first&quot; authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tenure committees and others doing a detailed review of an author's record may use the author order (in appropriate disciplines) to determine how much weight to give to each paper. In detailed review settings such as this, a published statement &quot;these authors contributed equally&quot; has value, because the tenure or  review committee can see that the order of authors did not reflect relative contributions. Of course, in other fields the authors are alphabetical by convention, so the order is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is also an &quot;accidental&quot; benefit to being the first author, which a published statement on the contributions of each author does not help. Because citations are often abbreviated, many papers are cited by the name of their first author, and thus this author gains prestige. This happens even in fields where the citations are strictly alphabetical and do not reflect the relative contribution of each author! There is published research showing that there is a bias towards researchers whose last name starts with a letter early in the alphabet (i.e. among accomplished researchers there are more with early initials than would be expected by mere chance). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a statement about the relative contributions of each author will only help in particular circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T15:09:30.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:09:30.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23518" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:58:10.393" Score="7" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if any research-related expenses can be applied toward a personal tax write-off (in the U.S.).  For example, assume I traveled to a conference or meeting to present my research, and all the expenses were paid out-of-pocket.  Or, assume that I purchase some equipment or supplies that is used for my research.  Does a provision in the tax code exist that would allow the expenses to be considered a tax write off?  If so, a link to the IRS rule would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T15:19:30.077" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T15:20:27.880" Title="Tax write-off for research-related expenses in the US?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;travel&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23523" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:08:34.430" Score="8" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a class with a professor and really liked his teaching.  Since then, we've had several conversations and I've gone to him for advice once.  While I don't work with him and I don't know if he'd necessarily consider me a friend, I do feel like we've had a number of positive interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's going on sabbatical within the next few months, and I'm (crossed fingers) on track to graduate this next May, which means that there's a fairly high probability that I will be gone before he returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels premature to be saying goodbye to him now, around a year before I'm (possibly) leaving.  If I graduate on time and he isn't back, do I just shoot him an e-mail which seems a little impersonal?  Leave a handwritten note in his mailbox?  Or is that really weird? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard way of saying goodbye when I know there's a decent chance that I won't get to do it in-person a year from now?  Or is it just normal that professors don't expect/aren't surprised when students they know are gone when they come back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T01:04:03.847" Title="Etiquette/social norms for a grad student toward a faculty going on sabbatical" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:31:43.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; (GS) extremely useful for me. For example, if I start to learn &quot;&lt;em&gt;model checking&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, GS will show me &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=model+checking&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;amp;as_sdtp=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this result&lt;/a&gt;, which shows a paper of KL McMillan with 4633 citations, and a book of EM Clark with 9438 citations. They are the first people I need to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then go to the homepages of the authors, to check which papers they published in which conference in the recent years? big names work on the main stream, and publish papers in top conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mircrosoft Academic Search (MAS) is also useful. For example, as model checking is a subfield of software engineering, I check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=4&amp;amp;last=0&amp;amp;start=1&amp;amp;end=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conference ranking in MAS&lt;/a&gt;, which tells me the top are ICSE, ITC, CAV...  This confirms my guess, as both EM Clark and KL McMillan published &gt; 20 papers in CAV. So this conference is first in the list I need to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar also recommends papers for you based on your published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15501" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:31:43.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23515" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:33:41.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer and this is not legal/tax advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you can deduct these as &lt;em&gt;unreimbursed employee expenses&lt;/em&gt;.  For 2013, this was Line 21 of Form 1040 Schedule A.  Details can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/publications/p529/index.html&quot;&gt;IRS Pub. 529&lt;/a&gt;.  It lists a number of examples of expenses that would be deductible on this line, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research expenses of a college professor&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Travel related to your work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tools and supplies used in your work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Subscriptions to professional journals&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dues to professional societies&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of major caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Roughly, you can only deduct the amount that exceeds 2% of your adjusted gross income (AGI).  More specifically, you take the amount of your &lt;em&gt;unreimbursed employee expenses&lt;/em&gt;, add the rest of your &lt;em&gt;miscellaneous itemized deductions&lt;/em&gt; if any (see Pub. 529 for the list), and subtract 2% of your AGI; you can deduct the difference.  So this may only apply if your research expenses are fairly substantial, or you have other significant &lt;em&gt;miscellaneous itemized deductions&lt;/em&gt;.  (Note that &lt;em&gt;miscellaneous itemized deductions&lt;/em&gt; do not include the big itemized deductions like charitable donations, state taxes, or mortgage interest.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to itemize deductions to do this.  If you don't have many other itemized deductions, you may be better off just taking the standard deduction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you cannot deduct expenses that were reimbursed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you might also get good answers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://money.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:33:41.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:49:58.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest I've seen to this is for Elsevier journals most (all?) have a journal insights page which among other useful information such as impact factor and review speed has the geographic location (country) of primary authors of all their articles. For example here is the page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/0263-2241&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Measurement&lt;/a&gt;. Its only on the country level and doesn't link author and location but it's a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:49:58.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23524" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:52:36.640" Score="63" ViewCount="32186" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the process of writing my PhD thesis, I was close to falling out with my adviser, the advice I received from other staff at the lab (including the director) was unhelpful at best.&#xA;I have since made up with my adviser and have successfully defended the thesis.&#xA;I now have to publish my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department says that one &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; include acknowledgements. All of the theses I have seen in my lab and in my department feature acknowledgements.&#xA;Due to this special situation,  I don't quite feel that acknowledgements are called for. Yes, my adviser helped during the first half of the project but then almost completely reverted his stance. In terms of contribution, it is my opinion that he comes out at 0%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to address any of the issues in the acknowledgements. I do not think that this is the right place. Likewise, I do not feel like thanking any of the involved people.&#xA;Therefore, I would just leave out the acknowledgements completely.&#xA;In academia, is this considered worse than lukewarm acknowledgements?&#xA;Should I actually care about the acknowledgement, because others do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17548" LastEditorUserId="17548" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T17:47:57.693" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T10:49:37.810" Title="PhD thesis without acknowledgements" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:56:53.607" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not including acknowledgements when it is generally accepted to do so is likely to reflect badly only on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T15:56:53.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23516" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:01:10.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a professor goes on sabbatical for a year they know full well that students will graduate in the meantime. They have seen this happen from both sides (they were students once and their professors took sabbaticals as well.) There is no standard way to say good-bye. A note,  either electronic or physical, delivered before you leave is appropriate. So is asking the professor in question if they will be attending any of the graduation/end of year ceremonies that you will be having. Or you can simply say good-bye the last time you are going to see them before they leave since it may be the last time you see them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General advice for keeping it from being &quot;really weird&quot; is to keep whatever you do short. Rambling will make it get uncomfortable for both of you. You have three basic things you might want to say: thank you, good-bye, best wishes for your sabbatical. You don't need a lot of words to get through those ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:01:10.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:07:21.547" Score="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;A thesis is not a place to solve grudges. It is a professional document that is eternal. As such, it should be handled professionally and gracefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I am having trouble why you do not want to have an acknowledgement section. Do you really believe you have done the entire PHD entirely yourself? Even if your advisor did not help enough, you had some funding right? And someone provided that. Should not he be included in the acknowledgement section? Someone also proofread your thesis. You probably also had co-authors in your papers. As you see, there are multiple people that contributed to your success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a more informal tone. Don't you wish to thank your family or significant other for the support? Or your PHD co-students? The people that you share your office with? You have finished a PHD and especially since it probably was a rocky one this a very good reason to celebrate. Do not spoil the moment with petty grudges. Do what you are required to do, be professional and move-on to better things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:07:21.547" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23537" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:10:05.993" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work for a well-known company that publishes study materials for a certain branch of mathematics. I have done quite a bit of work under them that has been published through their website (and is used to profit the company), however, no one's particular name is labeled on the materials (they just state the company's name). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I be able to include such work on a mathematics graduate school application CV other than mentioning it briefly in my work experience? If so, should I create a section &quot;Publications&quot; or  with some other title? (&quot;Publications&quot; seems misleading to me, as it suggests a peer-reviewed journal or other scholarly text of some sort.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17476" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T00:06:17.987" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T00:06:17.987" Title="Can I take credit for contributions to study materials on my CV?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23525" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:20:04.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you did it, you can take credit for it on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question, I think you should consider who will be reading the CV and what kind of employee they want.  If it is a company that produces a similar product, I think &quot;Publications&quot; is okay.  If you are applying for a faculty position, I might label it &quot;Teaching Experience&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  For applying to graduate school, I would label it &quot;Projects&quot;.  But there are many options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastEditorUserId="13240" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T00:00:17.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T00:00:17.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:30:36.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American higher education institutions I am familiar with have put a great deal of emphasis on improving diversity.  So I would expect a successful blind researcher to do well on the faculty job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise healthy blind adults do not need assistants.  Many sighted faculty do need assistants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably a successful blind researcher has already overcome significant barriers to access; as a faculty member I think the main barriers they would experience are a few faculty who are ignorant about disability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:30:36.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23560" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:34:09.897" Score="4" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I contacted a professor about working on research with him. I met with him in person and he let me know he wanted to work with me, that he would be my research advisor, and if I applied to the department he would get funding for me. I applied to the university, got accepted into the program then filled out a TA application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was informed by my research advisor that I was selected as a TA and that I would receive my offer letter soon in the mail. It has been several months since I was told that and he checked on the delay and said that the TA offer letters were being held up in the provost's office for some reason. Classes start in August and I still haven't received my offer letter. Is this sort of thing common, or should I start to worry? My research advisor has guaranteed me I will be funded and I have nothing to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12647" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:58:45.733" Title="When do offer letters usually arrive?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23528" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:45:25.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are in a tough position because 'offers' cannot be guaranteed until you have an official letter in hand.  And, when letters are sent is really specific to a department and university.  For example, when I was accepted to graduate school, the acceptance letter and funding were part of the same letter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastEditorUserId="17232" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T17:35:06.997" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:35:06.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="75860" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:58:20.420" Score="15" ViewCount="3580" Body="&lt;p&gt;After finishing my PhD in mathematics not long ago, I decided to move away from academia and pursue a career in the commercial sector. I'm currently not affiliated with a university. In the long run, I might return to working at a university some day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I recieved an invitation to become a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews. I'm flattered, but also hesitant as I can't fathom how much extra work this will be and if there's a benefit for me, besides learning more interesting things in my original academic field of expertise (which I've moved away from a bit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much work is it to review 1 paper per months, roughly speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would you see being a reviewer as an interesting CV item outside of academia?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doing the reviews is usually not paid, correct?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14355/should-i-agree-to-review-papers-as-a-postdoc&quot;&gt;Should I agree to review papers as a postdoc?&lt;/a&gt;, which didn't give me quite satisfactory answers since I'm not in academia anymore.  It is also similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20888/personal-advantages-of-being-a-referee-once-you-quit-science&quot;&gt;Personal advantages of being a referee once you quit science?&lt;/a&gt; but that one is not about math reviews, which are different from refereeing a paper for a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17550" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T11:50:20.120" Title="Should I become a reviewer for Math Reviews after leaving academia?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:02:36.130" Score="7" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taught courses typically do not reach research level, so there is a significant gap in knowledge that has to be bridged by a graduate student in order to make meaningful contributions to their field. What is the most efficient way to bridge this gap? I could come up with the following possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find advanced textbooks, prove all the theorems [if maths] and do all the exercises yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize seminars with other graduate students with related interests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to conferences or talks given by staff about their research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this list exhaustive or is there anything I missed? Which methods of learning are recommended in which situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For definiteness, by 'expert' I mean the level necessary to understand current research articles and (in principle) independently reproduce the calculations/proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15142" LastEditorUserId="15142" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T08:21:30.910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T23:41:41.557" Title="How can a graduate student most efficiently become an expert at his research topic?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-01T13:37:06.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:04:23.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people serve something and you turn it down, you make them feel bad. So unless your mood turns foul or you become aggressive when drinking beer or wine, you should join the fun. Also, Academic people get very buried in their work, and spare time and work hours blend together. If you can't relax and enjoy the good things in life with your fellows, you risk having a rocky road and face alienation from your fellows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17551" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:04:23.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:06:07.817" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an addendum to the above, I have yet to meet &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; PhD student who defended without at some point coming &quot;close to falling out&quot; with their advisor. As PhD programs last longer than many marriages, this is perhaps unsurprising. Odds are, with the stress of the defense behind you, your relationship with your former advisor will dramatically improve. It never pays to permanently burn bridges, and striking your advisor from your thesis acknowledgements will certainly do just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:06:07.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23530" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:11:19.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One paper per month seems like a high load, but I'm not as connected&#xA;to the journal reviewing scene as I once was. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't think much of&#xA;anyone outside of academia, national laboratories (NASA, Dept. of&#xA;Energy, etc), and some commerical R&amp;amp;D labs (Microsoft, IBM, etc.)&#xA;will care if you are a reviewer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, yes, reviewing is typically&#xA;done for no pay. Though, I would say that at least for active academics, you &quot;pay&quot; for reviews on your own submissions by doing reviews on others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:11:19.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23531" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:14:06.070" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most disciplines, advanced textbooks still provide, albeit necessary, foundations. Conferences allows you to hear what is new and is as such a good way to know where fields are going. I am not sure what you mean by seminars but discussing new papers and topics is always a good way to advance knowledge. But, the major point is to read up on published papers and to focus on the topic of your thesis. The point of research is to advance knowledge and this means you will, or at least have a chance to, be an expert on the field you are researching. So in my view none of the activities 1-3, or combinations, make you an expert, only your own sweat over publications and own work will do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:14:06.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:17:35.213" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You stated that you have &quot;made up&quot; with your adviser.  To be frank, it sounds like you are still harboring some negative thoughts and experiences.  You would be best served by putting these negative thoughts and experiences to the side and taking the high road.  Acknowledgments won't cost you any money, so give them generously in your career.  You have far more to risk by going against the culture of your department by not giving acknowledgments.  And, you did state that this adviser was helpful during the first part of your dissertation process.  Those efforts are worthy of acknowledgements, even if you had a bad experience later on.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:17:35.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23525" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:53:53.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are not academic publications that you can legitimately claim on your CV.  At best, you might be able to describe this work experience in a different part of your CV, but keep your publication section clean.  A publication is one that you claim authorship of the given product, whether it is a peer-reviewed article, book, book chapter, monograph, etc.  Once you have a stock of publications, then you can create some logical categories.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:53:53.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="60858" CreationDate="2014-06-17T18:59:47.727" Score="10" ViewCount="1724" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://thewallaceline.blogspot.com/2006/11/double-line-spacing-in-dissertations.html&quot;&gt;http://thewallaceline.blogspot.com/2006/11/double-line-spacing-in-dissertations.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is standard practice to require dissertations to be double-spaced. In the age of word processors, one wonders why this practice persists. This must surely be a legacy from the days when dissertations were typewritten and students were allowed to make corrections in situ rather than re-print. Word processors have eliminated that problem. Double-spacing might also be suitable for drafts which require annotation for editing, but final copies of dissertations are not used in this way and modern techniques such as commenting do this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did this tradition get started? The ability to make corrections on the printed thesis in the days of typewriters sounds like a pretty good guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17555" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T19:19:45.043" Title="Why are the final copies of thesis dissertations often required to be double spaced?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:32:24.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the other posters, I would agree that it is important to write acknowledgements although it isn't easy to get them right. I read them to get a feel for what a researcher might be like and am probably not alone in doing this, especially now more and more PhD theses are available online. I thought the following advice, from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/stefan/thesis-writing.pdf&quot;&gt;http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/stefan/thesis-writing.pdf&lt;/a&gt; was useful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Once written, try to read the acknowledgement with the eyes of yourself ten years down the line, with the eyes of an employer five years later and with the eyes of the examiners and colleagues now. Always check the acknowledgements for unintended messages: for example, a four-page acknowledgement section thanking everyone in the address book including the cats and dogs of the neighbour's nephew, while barely spending half a line acknowledging the role of one's advisors, may give an unintended message of a broken supervision structure.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't easy to write acknowledgements relating to somebody where there has been a conflict. Maybe mention your supervisor first, and then you can get away a little more with being less than effusive. And then keep your thanks to other people brief so it doesn't feel unbalanced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps read some acknowledgements written by others in your lab or elsewhere, find a few in a style you like and ruthlessly steal/adapt their phrasing to your case &quot;I am grateful to XX for their encouragement, wise commentaries...&quot;. There must have been something they got right, at some point, so state that. (Leave the rest for when you warn away potential PhD students who get in touch with you because they are considering joining your former group....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:32:24.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:36:54.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may add personal experience with a blind mathematican I've seen in an invited talk some time ago. He was giving two lectures about the same topic and I could only attend the second one. He worked on the blackboard an turned towards the audience to speak. He needed help in the beginning to get familiar with the size of the blackboard and also had help to clean the blackboard (he was already a senior mathematician but turned  blind gradually in the last years). He started his lecture with a crystal clear recap of the previous one, without writing on the board. Then he started the new lecture and as usual, he wrote full theorems and formula at the board. I was shocked. What he wrote was totally unreadable. In most cases one could only read the first few letters of each word while the rest was just a wiggly line. Also he did not have a good orientation on the board. It happend frequently then he wrote directly over his own writing - sometimes three or four times over the same line. The blackboard was a hell of a mess. However, I usually listen more than I read in lectures and my notes reflect more what I hear than what is written on the board. Hence, I started to use the blackboard only for crude reference for what he referred to when he pointed to places where he suspected the formulas he needed, but took notes on the basis of what I heared. It turned out the be one of the best guest lectures I heared - ever. Even the mess on the blackboard was helpful. It gave the lecture some spatial structure although I could barely read the letters. I still knew what he had said at the respective points and could follow the lecture without problems although it was only loosely related to my own area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I have been told that he still give lectures to students at his home university and the students are happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That story probably illustrates that at least lecturing should not be a great problem without eyesight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:36:54.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23545" CreationDate="2014-06-17T20:22:18.130" Score="5" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when I get the comments of the reviewers of a submitted paper (mine or some else paper), I feel like the reviewers just ignore the paper. More precisely, I feel that reviewers did not read the whole paper. Even more, I feel like they do not even complete reading the abstract (it is a conclusion from their comments of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that reviewers ignore papers? Maybe because the authors are not known or maybe they did not write the paper well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only argument is that authors believe that their paper is a breakthrough paper and it has a very good contribution. Imagine reviewers start reading a paper in a high journal rank and they found (just examples, do not take them as serious ones): &quot;This paper shows that 1+1=3&quot; or &quot;This paper demonstrates that if the determinant of a matrix is 0, the matrix still has an inverse.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, I do not think that in a high quality journals, reviewers can do some kind of ignorance. How can one be sure that their paper is well treated? How to write papers that make the reviewers do not throw the paper away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17562" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T21:07:28.600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T21:43:45.747" Title="Is it possible for reviewers to ignore papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23496" CreationDate="2014-06-17T20:22:39.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for it!  As Brian P pointed out, nobody owns a question in science, and, as you observe, not everyone pursues the future research proposed in their papers.  I usually include future research ideas in my papers, and I advise my students to also, but I can't think of a time the research has actually gotten done.  I see it as a way of putting one's name on an idea without actually implementing it.  (FWIW, my area is computer science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether to contact the authors, that's optional.  If it's a narrow problem with a straightforward solution, you might want to contact them to make sure you're not duplicating work that they've already started and are likely to complete before you can.  You can also use it as a networking opportunity.  Assuming you're not in a highly competitive field, I see no harm in writing that you were inspired by their paper to do the work they proposed and (optionally) would like to know if they are interested in collaborating.  If you're a student or post-doc, collaborating with someone at another institution might help your career even more than being a sole author.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only responsibility is to cite the authors' paper(s) if you make use of their idea.  Citations are the authors' reward.  Send them a copy of your paper and a nice note (email).  It will make them feel good, increases the chances of their citing your paper, and is good networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T20:22:39.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23542" CreationDate="2014-06-17T20:51:00.510" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that it is common for peers to disregard the content of a manuscript under review to that extent. However, it is quite usual for authors to understand more on their paper than the reviewers do. The following simple things may help: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accurate title, that really absorbs the content of a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very well written abstract, that says precisely what is done in a paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;well written introduction&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a clear cover letter, explaining what is done and why this is important and new;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recommendation of at least a couple of referees for your paper who &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; understand it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T21:43:45.747" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T21:43:45.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23542" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:04:23.480" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me expand a bit on Thomas comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By its very nature, peer review is a guaranteed item of discussion in all academic discussions. Every author has stories to tell about unfair reviews, reviewers that missed the entire point of the article, reviewers that rejected a paper only to publish something similar themselves, and so on. What is much rarer talked about is that &lt;strong&gt;the vast, vast majority of rejected papers are simply not good enough&lt;/strong&gt;! Indeed, this surely also includes a large percentage of those papers that the authors are sure were handled unfairly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important point is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My only argument is that authors believe that their paper is a breakthrough paper and it has a very good contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, all (ethical) authors believe their paper has merit. &lt;em&gt;Otherwise, one would likely not submit it&lt;/em&gt;. It has to be said that the author's own opinion is not a good indicator of the actual qualities of a paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible that reviewers ignore papers? Maybe because the authors are not known or maybe they did not write the paper well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere on this site, I have previously listed reasons why a paper can get rejected, but to be honest I think &lt;em&gt;&quot;the authors are not well-known enough&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is very low on this list. The second reason (&lt;em&gt;&quot;the paper is not well-written&quot;&lt;/em&gt;) is more common, but it should be noted that rejecting a badly-written paper is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; unfair. It is the responsibility of the authors to make sure that their paper is graspable. However, again, I suspect the majority of papers are well-understood by the reviewers, and just rejected because the reviewers were of the opinion that the contribution was not substantial enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do papers sometimes get very short, high-level reviews, even if the reviewers read and understood the papers? One possible explanation is that many reviewers follow the golden rule &lt;em&gt;&quot;spend your time on manuscripts that deserve your attention&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. In practice, a reviewer has finite time to invest into reviews. When receiving (say) 5 papers for review, two being borderline and three being clear-cut rejects, it is an understandable decision to spend more time scrutinising the papers that still have a chance, and only provide high-level feedback on the ones that the reviewer sees as clearly too weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can one be sure that their paper is well treated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The philosophy I try to communicate to my students is to &lt;em&gt;stop worrying about optimizing manuscripts for peer review and start doing the best research they can&lt;/em&gt;. I am convinced that the best way to ensure that your papers are treated well is to write good research papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to write papers that make the reviewers do not throw the paper away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that your papers (1) have a clear contribution, which is evident from the abstract and the introduction, (2) are written as clearly as you can, (3) are correct in terms of grammar and spelling (try to have a native-speaker spell-check your manuscripts), and (4) &lt;strong&gt;have a compelling and relevant contribution&lt;/strong&gt;. If Your paper is technically sound but boring as watching grass grow, you &lt;em&gt;are not entitled to complaining that the reviewers did not read the manuscript carefully&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T21:04:23.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23542" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:07:18.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is highlighting one of the major problems of the current peer-review  process.  Numerous studies have been conducted on various parts of peer review, and one of the most consistent findings across these studies is the absence of reliable reviews.  That is, reviewers often disagree with each other, and editors often disagree with reviewers.  At the same time, these findings are not at all surprising.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do believe that there are very conscientious reviewers, and those numbers will vary considerably over time and by discipline.  I believe there are many persons who are simply unqualified to review for journals.  And, I believe that some reviews are not completely objective.  Some people may be particularly critical on a given day -- perhaps their grande mocha latte arrived with no-whip when in fact they wanted whip.  Or, they just had one of their own papers rejected, which makes them think that the system of reviews is becoming increasingly tighter, so the subsequent reviews are made under a more critical lens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is there are many places where there are faults in the peer review process, and this question certainly highlights one of them.  Proposals for improving the system regularly enter the debate, but the current peer review system is not likely to change much over time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the review is particularly egregious, you can certainly talk with the editor.  But, as a submitting author, you will always have less power and influence relative to the reviewer.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T21:07:18.420" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23421" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:17:59.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really two questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problems would a blind mathematician have in doing their research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problems would a blind professor have in handling their teaching/service responsibilities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first question has been answered fairly well by others. Since I'm not a mathematician but I am a (sighted) scholar in Disability Studies, let me address the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia is on the whole much more accessible to blind people than private industry. Most internal department administrative business is conducted over e-mail or in face to face meetings. For the most part, you're mostly doing your own research or teaching. There's little printed media that isn't renderable into an accessible format. For example, I have all of my students submit papers online, so I rarely deal with paper anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are very few scholars with disabilities and there is still prejudice in the academe. It will be key to establish a good track record of publications and some experience teaching so that you can put these fears and prejudices to rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to network with other scholars with disabilities whenever possible. There's strength in numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a total aside. One of my colleagues wanted to bring in a Deaf scholar to give a talk, but the scholar would give her talk using American Sign Language. While the university will provide enrolled Deaf &lt;em&gt;STUDENTS&lt;/em&gt; with interpreters, there was no provision for providing external &lt;em&gt;SCHOLARS&lt;/em&gt; with interpreters. We had to bring this up to the provost level in order to accomplish anything. But this is an example of the differential treatment of students with disabilities vs. scholars with disabilities that you might face in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T21:17:59.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23552" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:45:01.703" Score="37" ViewCount="3953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often amazed at how neat figures in old scientific publications are. How did authors prepare those plots and diagrams, when there were no computers around? Did they draw them by hand? Were there any special methods and tools involved? Did the authors prepare the figures themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T22:48:48.443" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T12:15:48.847" Title="How did authors prepare figures in their publications before the advent of computers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23559" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:57:53.240" Score="15" ViewCount="3151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another problem I personally struggle with in peer-review publication process is the situation when review takes really, &lt;i&gt;really,&lt;/i&gt; &lt;b&gt;really&lt;/b&gt; long. The precise definition of &quot;long&quot; is probably very area-specific: for example a paper in Maths will probably took longer to review than one in Physics. Many well-established journals and major publishers, sadly, prefer not to specify the &quot;rules of the game&quot; precisely, particularly how long the review process should normally take. Fortunately, I quite often serve as a referee with the very same journals and know the amount of time I am given to write a review. Unfortunately, when I am an author, I do not observe these deadlines to be always met. For example, a notable U.S. publisher would ask a reviewer to send a review in 2 months; but in practice a first review of my paper once took as long as 8 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, I usually start writing to editors with questions about &quot;the status of my paper&quot; in X+1 months time, when X is a deadline time for a reviewer to submit a review. This strategy is not particularly successful &amp;mdash; what I usually get is a recommendation to be more patient. Since there is no &quot;official&quot; deadline time announced, there is no formal ground for complaints here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, such delays lead to a whole bunch of funny situations, particularly if a preprint is put online (e.g., on arXiv) and the results are presented in some conferences. Follow-ups with no official paper to cite, grant applications in which you can not justify by a solid publication, good research but bad bibliometrics or CV, to name just a few. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you recommend an efficient way to deal with this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2016-06-26T21:11:37.173" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T02:05:08.413" Title="How can author deal with late reviews?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23549" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:10:44.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of reasons why reviews take a long time. First you seem to forget that the time from you submitting your paper until receiving the reviews is not only taken up by the reviewers. The manuscript is probably first scrutinized by a chief editor to see if it is on topic. depending on the journal structure the manuscript might be assigned to another editor who will handle the review process. The handling editor will start to look for reviewers and it is not unheard of that one must ask quite a few in order to get two that accept. Then reviewers have their stipulated time. Once reviews are back the editor needs to look through the comments and make decision on what should happen (reject/some form of revisions/accept) and then provide the author with these comments. So if all this works smoothly it will take a bit of time. Often it is hard to find reviewers and some reviewers may take more time than they should and so the process is extended. Add to that that the editors usually have more than one paper to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can be done? Well not much except try to be quick yourself and set an example. Of course if the time really drags on and there is no response, a well formulated request for status from the editor is in place but when that should be considered is a judgement call depending on the typical time for reviews to be completed in the journal. fortunately many electronic submission systems signal where the paper is in the process which can help judging the timing better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T22:10:44.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23548" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:13:23.987" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe many of them did the drawing themselves with ink pen, for example. Graphs can be drawn using pins and a metal ruler: you put pins (or small nails) in a measured points of a graph, and then bend a ruler to pass through all nails. The ruler will eventually form a curve, known as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-spline&quot;&gt;B-spline&lt;/a&gt; interpolant of a given set of points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T22:13:23.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23548" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:13:38.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ink on vellum. Depending on the work place the author may have made their figures themselves or in some cases professionals were involved who would take a sketch and draw an ink original. the techniques were basically the same as for any technical drawing using templates for creating text. A lot of techniques went into making nice figures, sometimes including adhesive rasters to create shading effects etc. A asic technique was also to produce originals is a larger size than final so that when reduced in size, small imperfections would basically dissappear in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T22:13:38.140" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23554" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:35:59.900" Score="2" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I'm in an interdisciplinary field -- Computational Social Science -- and therefore my dissertation will be drawing on theory, empirical findings, and methods from at least four different disciplines. My dissertation topic is &quot;Institutional Innovation Based on New Knowledge&quot;.  Many terms have no settled meaning even within a single discipline, and many terms have definitions of my choosing, to suit the scope and purposes of my dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using LaTex packages for glossary and hyperlinks so that all glossary terms get highlighted hyperlinks when they first appear in each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt; should I aim for a &lt;em&gt;minimalist&lt;/em&gt; glossary where only the most technical, obscure, central, or controversial terms get defined, or a &lt;em&gt;comprehensive&lt;/em&gt; glossary that aims to define &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; important terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My aim is to make it easy for readers (mostly my committee), especially so that they won't waste time either trying to find my definitions or spend too much time reading/checking my definitions.  Most of all I don't want them assuming that I'm misusing terms or that I haven't adequately defined them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not concerned about the extra workload of completing a comprehensive glossary.  I'm good at this sort of task and it helps me as I write the body of each chapter -- I don't have to keep defining terms or reminding readers of my definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of a comprehensive glossary is page count.  I'll guess that it will add 20 or 25 pages.  I don't want to &quot;bloat&quot; the dissertation any more than necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T22:44:18.000" Title="Should the glossary in my dissertation be minimalist or comprehensive?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23553" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:44:18.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think it will improve the usefulness of the thesis, and it isn't too much trouble for you, then I'd say by all means go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry about page count. I don't think anyone cares how long the thesis is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T22:44:18.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-17T23:02:34.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers so far.  I'll suggest another approach similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_sampling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;snowball sampling&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in social science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you let really good/important articles (and journals) lead you to other really good/important articles (and journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a few articles that stand out to you (or your adviser or mentor).  They might be survey articles that assess the state of research and future directions, or they might be seminal articles that spawned new lines of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look at the editorial policies and editorial boards for the journals that published these papers.  Are there any patterns that seem to tie these particular journals to these particular articles?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look at the articles that are cited in these initial papers, especially those that are described as &quot;seminal&quot; or &quot;pioneering&quot;, etc.  Repeat the process of looking at the journal editorial policies and editorial boards for these articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, using Google Scholar, look at the articles that cite your original set.    Which journals seemed to publish the most follow-up articles, and promote debate or contrary research? Were there Special Issues of journals devote to the ideas or methods in the original set?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rinse and repeat :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through this procedure, you will usually settle on a set of 2 to 5 journals in a field (or sub-field) that are considered &quot;important&quot; for the type of research you are most interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this method is that you will home in on the journals that are important for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; interests and focus, not just what everyone else (worldwide) might think is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T23:02:34.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23588" CreationDate="2014-06-17T23:02:59.333" Score="1" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing an experiment assumed to be performed in ideal environment although it is not, e.g. resource is fully allocated from a resource pool shared between different organisations. As my experiment is affected by external factors (e.g. a shared pool may not fully allocate all requested resource) the result sometime is different from what I expect. However, since my model is proven to work in an ideal environment, I am sure that if I keep repeating the experiment, I will get a result which is consistent with my calculation, e.g. when a shared pool have enough resource to allocate to my request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably, when I run an experiment, I do it few times to get the average result. Moreover, I'm aware that an environment is not ideal and planning to address it in my future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it acceptable to keep repeating the experiment until I get the (average) result which is consistent with my calculation? Furthermore, should I mention in my paper how many times I perform my experiment to get the presented result or just mention briefly about the imperfect environment and a plan to handle it in future research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; my research aims to use shared or volunteer resources to perform computation. It is in the early state when I calculate the required resource for a job prior to its execution. In other words, during an execution, I assume that there are enough resources for me, which doesn't always happen. As I said, I'm planning to investigate dynamic calculation in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="12635" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T07:15:05.097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:06:55.187" Title="Should I repeat experiment affected by external factors until achieving consistent result" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23538" CreationDate="2014-06-17T23:14:40.893" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding was that this is for the convenience of examiners, who may wish to annotate a printed copy while reading the thesis, for reference during the defence. In the UK, at least, where candidates may be expected to make corrections to their thesis after the defence, this is quite common. Annotation is much easier if there is plenty of whitespace on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T23:14:40.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23548" CreationDate="2014-06-18T00:07:48.850" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My grandfather wrote geography books. He had some sheets of plastic with wavy lines on them, used to fill in the seas in maps. The plastic was cut to shape and glued to the paper. I assume similar things existed for other regular fills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10220" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:07:48.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23549" CreationDate="2014-06-18T00:13:53.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that a polite, terse e-mail to the associate editor with a clear history line often works in getting some response.  Occasionally, I have written the editor-in-chief if an associate editor is ignoring me.  As Peter points out, there may be legitimate reasons for a delay, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor is having a hard time finding a competent reviewer (maybe the area is too narrow).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your paper is very hard to understand (sometimes, if it's badly written but seems to have some elements of novelty, a reviewer will try to plow through to understand what is going one).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor needs an additional reviewer in order to break a strong difference of opinion between the original reviewers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When even the editor-in-chief does not answer in a timely manner (and I have had this only once in my career), your best recourse is to &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; submit future articles to that journal.  You will be doing your community (and the next submitter) a service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:13:53.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23528" CreationDate="2014-06-18T00:58:45.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important to get as much as you can in writing (in case advisors/department chairs change, or finances change), but, ultimately, even that is not really a panacea, as most written documents have weasel clauses (e.g. guaranteeing TA while you are &quot;demonstrating sufficient progress&quot; or &quot;subject to available funding&quot;.  Even many faculty offers&#xA;have an option to cancel before the first day of the semester.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it's really all about your advisor and the reputation of the department.  Any respectable department, should stand behind a reasonable interpretation of their oral guarantees no matter what happens (i.e. fund you as a TA even if there is some shift in finances or availability that was not expected).  Word spreads, especially among graduate students, and&#xA;disrespectful behavior will be known among the students of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up:&#xA; - Are you joining a respectable department?&#xA; - Talk to graduate students in the department about whether this is common.&#xA; - Have a backup plan just in case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:58:45.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-18T00:59:27.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write the acknowledgements.&#xA;Many grants contractually require you to acknowledge the funding entity, you should check the specifics of your foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, thank your supervisor. Consider this: Someone interested in working with/hiring/inviting for a lecture/etc. your supervisor is very unlikelly to read your thesis, so omitting thanks to him will have no impact on his career. On the other hand, someone interested in you will certainly read your thesis and may read the acknowledgements to get a feeling of your personality. Since you are expected to thank your supervisor, the omitted thanks may strike as arrogant, specially because it won't be justified, so it may be harmful to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it shouldn't have a major impact, but still, it won't favour you.&#xA;This doesen't apply to omitting thanks to the staff, since an external reader will not know you worked with them, but may make it harder to work with them in the future. From my experience, many lab workers pay a lot of attention to this, and will feel offended by the omision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17567" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:59:27.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23516" CreationDate="2014-06-18T01:04:03.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't say goodbye until you graduate!  Send a short note when you're done thanking the professor for the positive interactions ... that's usually more than enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T01:04:03.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13731" CreationDate="2014-06-18T01:30:00.937" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from the point of view of an editor: One of the best reviews I ever got was longer than the paper. The author, a young researcher, had proved three theorems, one of which I recognized as a known result. So I asked the original discoverer of that known result to referee the paper. In my cover letter, I mentioned that I recognized one of the theorems as his, and asked whether the other two theorems had enough novelty for a publication. It turned out that the other two theorems weren't new either. The referee could easily have just given citations for those two theorems and recommended rejection. Instead, he gave me (or, really, gave the author) a long, clear explanation of the state of the art in that subject, and he suggested some open problems that the author could try working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T01:30:00.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23565" CreationDate="2014-06-18T02:00:48.120" Score="4" ViewCount="2240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spend many years during my PhD developing a code base and decided to open-source the code when I finished. It's currently under GPL. The code is used by many different research group around the world, and that was my goal; to provide a useful tool for the research community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been contacted by a company that wants to use the software. My intention was always to charge a fee for industrial use of the code. On the website, it says something to the effect of &quot;GPL for academic use&quot;, &quot;please contact me for industrial licensing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, do you think this is reasonable approach? Personally, I don't think that industry should get a free ride from my publicly funded research code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, what are reasonable terms, pricing and software license for an &quot;industrial license&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9754" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T11:48:50.893" Title="What software license allows me to have GPL for academic use and paid use by industry for my open-source project?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23564" CreationDate="2014-06-18T02:39:10.313" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your license &lt;em&gt;is not&lt;/em&gt; the GPL if you add additional restrictions, and your restrictions may turn out to be incompatible with the GPL in subtle ways. Consult an IP attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for you, even if your code is GPL, many companies might not want to use it because they might worry about it infecting their product. So, you might be able to charge them for a proprietary licensed version. That being said, if your work came in under a US grant from the NSF or similar agency, its terms may require you to open source the work &lt;em&gt;period&lt;/em&gt;. Additionally, your university is likely to have an Office of Technology Commercialization or similar body that is responsible for software licensing to industry. At mine, the Board of Regents retains the rights to all software and commercially licenses it with the &quot;inventor&quot; getting half and the university getting half, typically, unless it is open sourced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check with your university and the grant terms that funded your work. Corporations are typically tax payers in their local jurisdictions, so it's not necessarily wrong for them to benefit much as another researcher would from your work (i.e., for free). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T02:39:10.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21840" CreationDate="2014-06-18T02:54:57.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a book chapter on this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mazza, C., Riccaboni, A., &amp;amp; Quattrone, P. (2008). Found in translation: On the persistence of the university as institution. &lt;em&gt;European universities in transition: Issues, models and cases&lt;/em&gt;. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These authors argue that the longevity of traditional universities is due to their socially legitimated role to &quot;make ideas, people, and disciplines meet and cross-fertilize&quot;.  For centuries, this role was manifested in such artifacts as great libraries (and later university presses) and degrees for the elites in government, religion, and (to a lesser extent) business.  Of course, being self-sustaining financially (endowments) and physically (buildings and infrastructure) has been an important factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, the university was the first institution in human history to systematically question itself as part of it's very constitution.  From the start, the communities of scholars engaged in systematic inquiry and critical debate on the subjects of study, and even the way those subjects were investigated and taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though far from perfect, this self-critical capability gave universities the capacity to take in and develop new knowledge and to let go of knowledge systems that no longer had intellectual support.  For most of their histories, universities shaped the educational norms of the society around them -- at the national and international elite levels, at least -- rather than being shaped by those elites.  The certainly weren't responding to the changing educational preferences or needs of the general public.  Other institutions filled in this role (gap), including public universities, land-grant colleges, community colleges, polytechnic institutes, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in_continuous_operation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;oldest universities in continuous operation&lt;/a&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Bologna - 1088 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oxford University - 1167 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cambridge University - 1209 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Salamanca (Spain) - 1218&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Padua - 1220 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Naples Federico II - 1224 (first public&#xA;university)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T02:54:57.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18930" CreationDate="2014-06-18T03:27:53.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing position papers does not require any special innate talent or disposition. You can develop these skills through the combination of systematic method and frequent practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to understand that a &quot;position paper&quot; (a.k.a. &quot;analysis paper&quot;) is very different from a &quot;survey paper&quot; or an &quot;essay&quot;.  A position paper is somewhat similar to a legal argument for each side of the question.  Your &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; goal is to communicate and evaluate the arguments for and against each alternative.  You don't have to describe the whole issue, its history, its cultural setting or social significance, or many other issues. Deconstructing the question or alternatives is not in-scope for a position paper.  Neither is your impressions, experience, or personal value judgments.  Don't go &quot;meta&quot;.  (Those &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; in-scope for an essay.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the method, boiled down to its essence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be clear about the scope of the question and alternatives. Make&#xA;assumptions if you have to fill in blanks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify an ideal advocate for each alternative or position, even if you imagine a fictionalized advocate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each alternative and idealized advocate, make an outline of the following:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their strongest argument in favor of that alternative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their strongest argument against the other alternatives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their counter-arguments to the criticisms of the advocates of the other positions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once your outline is complete, rewrite it in sentence and paragraph form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, add introduction paragraphs setting up the debate and conclusion paragraphs that evaluate the relative strengths of the various arguments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your professor's point of view, the most important paragraphs are the conclusions where you decide which of the arguments is most compelling and with the least number of unanswered flaws or voids. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learner-centered approaches should replace teacher-centered approaches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who best advocates learner-centered approaches?  Who best advocates teacher-centered approaches?  What arguments do they advance to support their positions?  What criticisms do they level at the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In examining these arguments, the following questions might come to your mind to compare and contrast the positions: Do they both agree on the criteria are for &quot;best&quot; or &quot;better&quot;? Whose values and needs are most important? Do they both agree on what the implications are for &quot;change&quot; vs &quot;status quo&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence does each advocate have to support their position?  What credibility and relevance does the evidence have?  What are the uncertainties and voids (lack of information) in each position.  (No argument is perfect or free from some uncertainty.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn this is to practice it frequently. The best way to practice it frequently is to start a blog and write a post every day or every other day on a topic area that is important to you. Aim for 'minimalist' position posts, which are probably four paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you do this for a couple of months, you will find that you are no longer seeking your professors' feedback regarding whether you are giving them what they expect to see.  Your confidence and efficiency will rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="17564" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T04:00:46.047" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:00:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18106" CreationDate="2014-06-18T03:47:04.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there's nothing like Oxford's or Cambridge's legal structure in the United States, where students and faculty are members of the University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For historical interest, the first university -- &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bologna&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Bologna - 1088&lt;/a&gt; -- was a &lt;em&gt;universitas scholarium&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. a &quot;university of scholars (students)&quot;.  It was a collective that had bargaining rights with the city and hired and paid their professors -- paying them &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; each lecture. (!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T03:47:04.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23478" CreationDate="2014-06-18T03:59:46.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very good that you realize that the types of problems featured in the GRE are weaknesses for you.  Now the challenge is how you deal with these weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many GRE prep books and even software. There are teacher-guided courses.  You should buy one or more and commit serious time over three months to prepare.  Don't buy any that promise to give you &quot;secrets to success&quot; or &quot;short cuts&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most graduate schools publish the average GRE scores of their grad students. I think I found them in directories of grad schools, though some post them on their web sites, often under &quot;FAQ&quot; or &quot;Prospective Students&quot;.  If you are much below the average GRE, especially Math, then you should reconsider grad school or maybe apply to different schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, most important, if you don't want to put the time and effort into improving your GRE, then it's probably a good sign that you aren't ready for grad school.  If you want to get into a good grad school and do well there, you can't coast through without studying or working hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T03:59:46.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21837" CreationDate="2014-06-18T04:08:52.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the conference and the field. Some conferences have limited space for posters and there is plenty of submissions for those slots, so some percentage are rejected.  Other conference have space for all submitted posters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly, you should view posters as opportunities to meet other researchers, and to practice your skills in presenting your research and answering questions.  It also often is a requirement to get school or department funding to pay for your conference expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:08:52.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19382" CreationDate="2014-06-18T04:17:34.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I have a letter published in PNAS, I don't know PNAS policy on recommending reviewers.  I suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommend this professor/researcher, making clear that he/she is at your university &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; in a different department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make clear that you've have not co-authored a paper together and have no other common interests (e.g. funding).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly tell them that this is a potential conflict of interest in the reviewer role (bias in preference of the same university), and that you trust PNAS to make a judgment in this particular case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make other recommendations for reviewers so that the PNAS editors have other choices if they aren't comfortable with the controversial recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main principle in these cases is to be open, forthcoming, and transparent.  Even if the PNAS editors do not take your recommendations, you shouldn't be hurt by making them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:17:34.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23579" CreationDate="2014-06-18T04:26:59.803" Score="6" ViewCount="13754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few days back I communicated a paper in a journal and some silly mistakes are there. While citing some other author's paper in my paper, instead of reference number it is showing a sign of question mark. I know that's a mistake while running the LaTeX code. I didn't check in hurry. Shall I inform the editor about my mistake? If yes, then how should I write a letter to convey this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13294" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T12:59:30.767" LastActivityDate="2019-09-27T15:27:05.633" Title="How to write a letter to an editor for pointing out needed corrections in my submitted journal manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19150" CreationDate="2014-06-18T04:49:17.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without more information, I would not assume that they will not ask you about your research, publications, and dissertation.  Assume that they will.  My impression is that they want to go beyond this &quot;CV stuff&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you should spend more time to understand the motivations of the organization sponsoring the post-doc and why this is funded as a training grant rather than as something else.  Do they put special emphasis on making their research relevant to the real world (i.e. to policy makers, to the social groups being studied, to the general public)?  Do they aim to develop social scientists that go into non-traditional careers or interdisciplinary work?  What has this organization done in the past that they themselves call &quot;innovative&quot;?  Do they aim to redefine the boundaries and methods of social science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to prepare, there are plenty of books on creativity that have exercises that might stimulate this part of your brain.  But I'd guess that spending time on these books won't provide a good payoff for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better strategy would be to organize a debating group with some peers.  They don't have to be at your university.  You could do it on-line via Skype or Google Hangout.  Arrange a meeting and specify an important+controversial topic in your field.  Focus the debate on how this topic could be researched in a new and different way, such that breakthrough results might be achieved.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could the problem be reframed, rescoped, or redefined?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could new methods be applied or existing methods be combined?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What new methods/approaches have already been tried but have failed? Why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What methods or approaches from other disciplines might be adapted or applied to this topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if this topic was researched at a much larger scale? much smaller scale? Over a long time period? At a single moment in time but in great detail?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can research results become more compelling, rigorous, or widely applicable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, your debating group will be exploring the space of possibilities just beyond what is being done today and assessing the prospects of improvement or innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of doing this in a group rather than solo is that you will be engaging in the same modes of thinking and communication as the interview. You can and should challenge each other to clearly explain and justify your ideas, and to properly characterize them even if they are sketchy or &quot;wacky&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find that this sort of preparation isn't for you.  If so, then maybe you might have to admit to yourself that you aren't an &quot;innovator&quot;.  That's fine. There are many other good roles in social science that emphasize other traits and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:49:17.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18405" CreationDate="2014-06-18T04:59:56.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are asking for might be possible by writing your own program (e.g. in Python) to access the Google Scholar API.  In fact it would make a good assignment for a Python programming / Text processing class. But unless you are a programmer with extra time on your hands, you shouldn't attempt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I almost never use &quot;related articles&quot; feature of Google Scholar.  The few times I did use it, there wasn't always such a close relationship, and it certainly didn't bring up the articles that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; saw as most related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any substitute for reading the papers, at least the important ones, to find the most salient related papers.  I do this both through direct citations and also by finding key terms that I use for new Google Scholar searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:59:56.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2014-06-18T05:23:36.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: my Bachelors degree was in Management and Electrical Engineering (double major).  Though it was several decades ago, I think I understand your field and setting.  My current PhD field is Computational Social Science and it includes some Organization Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your general intuitions, and the 80/20 ratio seems reasonable but I would definitely not be presenting that as a rule or even as a guideline. Instead, I would say that the nature of the paper and the arguments should dictate the use of evidence and citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papers that analyze foundational ideas might only have one or two citations -- the original seminal papers.  But there might be so many ideas in those papers that the student should devote considerable space to examining them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, papers that summarize or survey a sub-field will have a very high number of citations and quotes from the research literature.  The students task is to present the survey as a cohesive whole (if it is one) and to show how the various lines of research tie together or diverge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than focus on citations, I think its better to focus students on the principles of argumentation -- with analogies to legal arguments and formal debates.  Too often students will believe that their points are &quot;obvious&quot; and &quot;common sense&quot;, or maybe &quot;best practice&quot;, and thus requires no justification or support from evidence.  Disabuse them of those notions through Socratic questioning: &quot;How do you know that?  Why do you believe that?  How would you persuade someone who holds the opposite view?&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once their argument has a structure, they can begin assembling evidence to support it and defend it from criticisms. That evidence might come from published research or other sources.  But they shouldn't include any citations where they do not need support.  They also need to consider the credibility and relevance of the evidence.  No matter how authoritative a citation might be, it shouldn't be included if it is not highly relevant to the student's argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a test that students can apply &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; they have written their paper, in a final edit pass:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each citation or piece of evidence, ask:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would my argument be weakened if I removed this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I replace this with stronger evidence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each point in the argument or assertion, ask:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this adequately supported with evidence or citations from the literature?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the evidence and support both credible and relevant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have I, as author, fulfilled &lt;em&gt;my role&lt;/em&gt; in this paper, given the nature and goals of the assignment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:23:36.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19237" CreationDate="2014-06-18T05:32:29.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I'm not a fan of it in general, in your case the IEEE style could work very well.  In the body of the paper, references are numbered in square brackets, like this: [1] and [2,3].  In the bibliography, you'd just have one entry per web page, with the URL.  If you use LaTex, it's easy to make these all active hyper links, so that your professor can click on the &quot;[1]&quot; to go to the bibliography entry, and then click on the URL to go to the StackExchange web page.  It's also possible to make the references hyperlinked in MS Word, but it might take some manual formatting steps to link each reference to each bibliography entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:32:29.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23573" CreationDate="2014-06-18T05:40:01.593" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should inform the editor.  Simply resend the  corrected paper, and explain the error.  There is no need to write an extensive letter or to make a grand apology. Something like this in an email will do fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dear Editor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sending you a corrected copy of the paper titled '...', submitted on XX.  There were errors on pages A, B, and C in the citations.  They appeared as &quot;?&quot; instead of the correct citation, due to incorrect processing in LaTex.  This version has the correct citation and I have proof read it for other errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monalisa&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - give the file a different name than the original and a different time stamp so there is no confusion between the corrected version and the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:40:01.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10857" CreationDate="2014-06-18T05:45:30.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing is to identify the keywords/topics you are interested in. Then &quot;google scholar&quot; or &quot;web of science&quot; them. Find the top cited articles and identify which journals these articles were from. The other way to identify the top journals is checking the impact factors of these journals. Then find journals with higher impact factors. Go through the journals to identify the articles/topics you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17573" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T05:45:30.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23556" CreationDate="2014-06-18T06:09:46.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't do the experiment until you get the desired result.  This is poor science and borderline unethical.  (I'm sure you had no ill intent and that you are trying to deal with real-world complications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experiment is flawed if it is run &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; times but only the results from &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; - 1 are used and reported. (Or anything less than &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;).  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html&quot;&gt;Peter Norvig's page&lt;/a&gt; under the section &quot;Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, I believe that your experimental design is flawed.  You shouldn't run an experiment assuming an ideal environment when in fact the experimental environment is not ideal.  Only in theoretical models do you have the liberty to idealize your environment.  In laboratory experiments, you control the environment so you can idealize as much as possible. What you have is an experiment with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding&quot;&gt;confounding factors&lt;/a&gt;, which is not uncommon in real-world settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is to estimate the effects of the confounding factors through analysis of a theoretical model or a simulation.  In your case, which sounds like a queuing theory problem, a statistical simulation should be relatively easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this estimate, you should be able to restate your hypotheses, essentially reducing the expected effects by the &quot;loss&quot; associated with &quot;the shared pool not fully allocating resources when requested&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T06:09:46.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23587" CreationDate="2014-06-18T06:39:32.880" Score="28" ViewCount="13076" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm entering my senior year of college in the US and I'm starting to consider my options for graduate school next year. My field is kind of blurry, in that I have certain research areas that I'm interested in, but researchers in those areas often fall into many different fields (linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some faculty that I'm interested in working with, but I have a dilemma because some people (and schools) I'm interested in are in the US and some are in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been reading about how graduate school typically works in Europe, and it seems to be quite a different beast from the US. Many (practically all) Ph.D. programs in the US that I looked at are entered immediately after a Bachelor's degree, they're fully funded, and the two years of course work at the beginning is to earn the Master's degree. On the other hand, all of the European programs I looked at vary greatly on how their funded (I'm so confused), and require a Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this brings me to a lot of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Master's degrees in Europe funded? And what would happen if I would decided to get a Master's degree in Europe but then come back to the United States for the Ph.D.? Is it possible to go straight into a European Ph.D. without a Master's at all? (I'll be graduating with 18 credits of graduate coursework and 27 credits of independent research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any good resources so I can figure out this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1316" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T05:58:29.687" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T04:43:07.743" Title="How does one go about doing a Ph.D. in Europe as an American?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T06:53:15.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not speak for all of Europe but in Denmark the PhD programme is a job. You are hired by the university to conduct research so you will get paid. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtu.dk/english/Education/phd/Applicant/Pre_acceptance-1-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You need&lt;/a&gt; a Master's degree to apply for a PhD position, and there are probably some grade point average you would need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtu.dk/english/education/phd/rules/phdguide/english/-/media/DTUdk/Uddannelse/PhD-Udannelse/Dokumenter/engelsk-ph-d-bekendtgorelse.ashx?la=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to a .pdf document with the danish legislative framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can apply for the PhD programme even though you have taken your Master's degree in USA. If you want to take your Master's in Denmark you need to apply for it through your own university if you want it to pay the stay. There is also a possibility of getting paid while in Denmark by the governments &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.su.dk/english/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;state education support&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17448" LastEditorUserId="17448" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T17:30:58.797" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T17:30:58.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T07:03:20.270" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the bad news:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any good resources so I can figure out this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a resource does likely not exist, as the answers to your questions will vary widely between different european countries and even different universities. Europe is historically a hotchpotch  of different academic systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to give some answers that I think are true in most places. For all of the answers, you will likely find exceptions and differing systems if you look long enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are Master's degrees in Europe funded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately very rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, as aeismail points out, most european degree programs are either for free or (compared to US programmes) extremely cheap. That still leaves you with costs of living and opportunity costs, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And what would happen if I would decided to get a Master's degree in Europe but then come back to the United States for the Ph.D.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't quite understand that question. You would have a master's degree, which would allow you to either find a job or do a PhD in the US (however, you could have done both with a bachelor's degree as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to go straight into a European Ph.D. without a Master's at all? (I'll be graduating with 18 credits of graduate coursework and 27 credits of independent research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually this is not possible. I have heard here on academia.SE that there are universities that make exceptions, but the places that I am aware of do generally not allow to start a PhD at all without a master. However, not all is necessarily lost. Some places (including my current university in Zurich) have established compromise solutions for incoming research students without master's degree. Here, for instance, a professor can apply that you do a research-based &quot;fast track&quot; master, which allows you to skim on the course work and do research with the professor instead of most of the regular master curriculum. This is quite comparable to the US system, but as far as I know it is node widely publicized (I don't think this possibility even appears anywhere on the web page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T11:55:29.820" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:55:29.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T07:40:03.067" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not even sure it makes sense to speak about “graduate schools” in Europe. In the countries I know, the big divide is between the master's degree and the PhD program, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; between bachelor and master programs. A master's degree is mostly another diploma with slightly higher requirements/more focused topic but otherwise not unlike a bachelor's degree in the way it's organized. There might be some exceptions here and there but it would be highly unusual to enroll in a PhD program without a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since tuition fees are relatively low in many countries, funding is not an issue in the way it is in the US (you still need to pay for the costs of living obviously but that's already the case for a bachelor's program). In some countries (e.g. France), people coming from abroad to study are treated exactly the same (which means paying something like EUR 250 plus some money for health insurance and a few other things), in others (e.g. the Netherlands), they have to pay a much higher fee (EUR 13000 per year where I work). In Germany the situation seems to be very fluid, with the rules set at the provincial level and changing all the time but I think fees are at most EUR 1000 per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because local students don't have to pay that much and the fees don't differ much if at all from one program to the other, it's not surprising that you didn't find information about whether the master's program is “funded” or not, it's not a distinction that makes sense at this level. Furthermore, in many countries, support for students who face financial hardship is available from the government and not through the universities. Either you qualify and you can choose the university you want or you don't and you have to pay but you wouldn't specifically look for a “fully funded” program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the master's degree, the status of PhD candidates also varies a lot from country to country. In Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and increasingly Germany, you are an employee with a reasonable salary (people will tell you it's less than what professionals with similar qualifications get, which is true, but you can still live comfortably). Some form of funding (from the main university budget, a research grant, European grant, corporate sponsorship, foreign government grant, etc.) is therefore a prerequisite. In France or Italy, you are considered a student and working conditions are often poorer. In STEM fields, PhD positions are usually funded and you do get some money and resources for your research. In the humanities, it's not uncommon for PhD candidates to have no funding, sometimes not even a desk and to scrap a little money to get by through teaching or even another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here again, tuition is usually not the issue but living costs are (for at least three years, at a time where you might want to start a family, etc.) Even an unfunded humanities PhD candidate in France does not have to pay much to the university. Unlike bachelor's or master's degrees, I don't know any university where PhD candidates from abroad would have to pay more to be admitted or be categorically barred from some funding (but the situations are so diverse that it might exist somewhere I guess). The only hiring restriction of that kind I know are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Careers_at_ESA/What_you_need_to_know_about_the_Research_Fellowship&quot;&gt;research fellowship from the European Space Agency&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T09:18:05.680" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:18:05.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23556" CreationDate="2014-06-18T08:48:10.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you run an experiment that is expected to have some variability (because it is not in a perfectly controlled environment) then you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; run it a large number of times. Not &quot;until you get the results that are consistent with what you expect&quot; but &quot;until you get results that are reasonably consistent &lt;em&gt;with one another&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you describe the results, you must say something about how they were distributed (not just give the average). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The average execution time of Protocol A was 4.72 ms, with a variance of 0.4 ms. The average execution time of Protocol B was 5.78 ms, with a variance of 0.3 ms.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The measured results were clustered in two groups, with 75% of runs falling between 1.3-1.9 ms and 25% of runs falling between 10.5-13.3 ms. We speculate that this is because of X, but we cannot measure or correct for X at this stage.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. The point is that you present not just a single numerical value, but also some measure of how consistent the values were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, you must describe how many times you ran the experiment, whatever you know about the conditions under which the experiments ran, and how you calculated the summary statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T08:55:39.217" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T08:55:39.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-18T08:50:32.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is in situations like this where a shandy/rattler/spritzer comes into it's own. You're still having a drink, but it's a sociably acceptable way to water it down. It saves you from having to turn down a drink, and makes it &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unlikely you'll get too drunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly though, you seem to be feeling forced into one situation or another. I would wager that asserting your own opinion as to what is acceptable for yourself will get you more respect in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17580" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T08:50:32.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T08:59:09.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some useful information on studying in the UK may be found from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fulbright.org.uk/resources-for/students-coming-to-the-uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fullbright Commission&lt;/a&gt;. They also provide scholarships for Americans to study in the UK. I don't think there is a more general reference for all Europe as each country has their own system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your more specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe most PhDs are funded (at least in STEM subjects) but often this funding is limited to EU residents (due to the money being provided by the EU). For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findaphd.com/funding/guides/phd-funding-guide.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK research council studentships&lt;/a&gt; are only available for UK citizens or residents. Other EU citizens are eligible for fees only (no stipend)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of the PhD varies by country, although you are correct that almost all start after Masters. In the UK the PhD is generally 3 years research with no assessed courses (although a few more specialist ones may have some courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another useful reference I just found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findaphd.com/study-abroad/europe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.findaphd.com/study-abroad/europe/&lt;/a&gt; which gives an overview of the PhD structure for some European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned most PhDs require a Masters. One other option in the UK is to do a PhD at a doctoral training centre (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctoral_Training_Centre&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DTC&lt;/a&gt;) these offer four year PhDs for people with a bachelor's degree. I think the 1st year is mainly taught courses approximately equal to a Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastEditorUserId="14115" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T14:31:39.387" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:31:39.387" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23593" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:04:00.070" Score="9" ViewCount="2070" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few months back I presented a paper in conference and sent the same for possible publication in the conference proceedings. I got no response for a long time and with the consent of my supervisor sent the same paper to a journal with some modifications in the paper. I want to know is it okay to send the same paper to both? As far as I feel, its not right, still I need opinions. Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13294" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T08:04:10.693" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T08:04:10.693" Title="Is it okay to send a paper to a journal as well as for conference" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23556" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:06:55.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understood, you are developing a parallel algorithm  (or a computation strategy) that is supposed to work on a highly non-uniform computing environment (both in time and &quot;space&quot; of a CPU network). At a current stage of research, you are not yet ready to address the non-uniformness, and have to make a (significant) assumption that your computational network is in fact homogeneous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest - &lt;b&gt;do not repeat&lt;/b&gt; the experiment many time, until the (non-uniform by nature) network will suddenly become homogeneous. It would not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you could go do the computations on a proper parallel (cluster) station available in your Uni or through a shared subscription. Make sure that during the computations all used CPU's are fully allocated to your problem only, i.e. your (significant) assumption holds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the experiment &lt;b&gt;once&lt;/b&gt;, report your assumptions and results clearly, explain which adjustments for the algorithms are required to put it on a heterogeneous CPU network. Hopefully this would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:06:55.187" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23591" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:08:25.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently conference has different meanings in different disciplines. In the fields with which I am familiar, conference publications are either limited to abstracts or are published in proceedings which are just as official as a journal In the former case there is of course no problem but in the latter sending the same paper off to a conference (for proceedings publication) and to a journal would not be correct. Therefore, you need to figure out what norms apply in your field, particularly whether the conference proceedings is a real publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:08:25.570" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23591" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:13:17.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could start from reading the journal publication agreement. It usually is very explicit on whether it is permitted or not to re-publish the results which appear in conference proceedings. In my discipline  it is typically not permitted unless &lt;b&gt;significant&lt;/b&gt; changes to the text and content have been introduced. Therefore, you should decide for yourself how significant were the modifications you made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the new paper is &quot;much more&quot; than a conference one, you could keep both, but you should tell the journal editor that this work is based on a conference proceedings which are yet in review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the new paper is not significantly different from the conference, you should withdraw one of them before the reviews arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:13:17.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23597" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:26:22.867" Score="10" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editor asks for substantial revisions, and sent me two reviews. One of the referees says that I should address issue X by means of approaches A and B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my revision, I plan to take on board this comment, but I think that approach C is a better way to address issue X. Therefore, I’ll do C instead of A and B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my reply to the referee, I will explain why I did C and why I think that approach C is better than A and B, and at the same time I want to add a sentence like this one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I am open to the possibility that the referee might still prefer approaches A and B. If that is the case, I will switch to these approaches in the eventuality of a further revision, should the referee request it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? What is normally done in these situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17585" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:00:44.577" Title="Suggesting an alternative to referee/reviewer recommendation" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23596" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:33:12.717" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my reply to the referee, I will explain why I did C and why I think that approach C is better than A and B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially all you need to do. You don't need to follow reviewers' recommendations slavishly, but if you do decide to deviate from their recommendations, you should explain why. Which you plan on doing. In the end, it comes down to the editor's decision, so you should always strive to make his life easy, by explaining what you do and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am open to the possibility that the referee might still prefer approaches A and B. If that is the case, I will switch to these approaches in the eventuality of a further revision, should the referee request it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This adds a nice touch, without appearing subservient. I'll keep this in mind for the next time &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; decide not to follow a reviewer's recommendations ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: I'd say you are doing exactly the right thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Bonus points if you can and do write something along these lines in your response to the reviewer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In addition to C, which is described in the manuscript, I also did A and B, as suggested by the reviewer. The results, as measured by Y, are similar/inferior/whatever to the results of doing C, in the following way:...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I do see the point raised by @xLeitix in his comment. The &quot;open to the possibility&quot; should not come across as &quot;I'll use an inferior approach just to get published&quot;, but rather as &quot;if opinions about A/B vs. C can differ reasonably, I am open to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T12:00:44.577" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:00:44.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23598" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:38:45.687" Score="18" ViewCount="1438" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a private company provides a grant for some research to be carried out but is hoping for a particular outcome from the research in order to take certain business decisions, should this be described as a conflict of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17587" LastEditorUserId="17587" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T10:54:35.093" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T13:09:56.020" Title="Grant from private company - conflict of interest" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23573" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:58:04.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics (and I suspect in many other areas), the paper review process usually goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit your original paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The referee's report comes back some time later, suggesting some changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You make some changes and resubmit an updated version&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;items 2 and 3 repeat until the referee is satisfied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now is the time to put the paper into the format required by the journal (e.g. using the journal's style file). Also make any final changes required by the referee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The journal will prepare the paper and send you page proofs showing the exact final version of the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You verify the page proofs (usually there is a short deadline to do this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there are several opportunities in the process when you can fix small typographical problems in the paper. And I have found typographical issues in almost every paper I have refereed, so it is expected that you will need to fix some.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &quot;trick&quot; is not to put the paper into the style required by the journal (e.g. the journal's special LaTeX style) until the final revision. This guarantees that you have at least one shot to fix any typos, even if the referee miraculously does not recommend any changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; changes are something else entirely, and you should avoid them if possible once the paper is submitted. This includes things like rewriting the proof of a theorem or adding new results. But fixing a misspelled word or replacing a &quot;??&quot; with a citation number are fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:58:04.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:38:37.050" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see this as a conflict of interest, but the issue itself is deserving of careful attention from both a contracts perspective and a scientific perspective. I would advise against any such funding source that puts restrictions on the publication of findings.  In particular, you state that the business is &quot;hoping for a particular outcome.&quot;  Are you still allowed to publish results that are contrary to their expectations -- or, does the contract specifically state they have authority over what can and cannot be published. You will want your grants management officers to carefully scrutinize the contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science is really about answering questions through an open, replicable and systematic process.  It is not about providing evidence for an expected outcome.  I think this type of funding will be more problematic than helpful for a scientific career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:38:37.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:43:29.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company should not impact your choice of research methodology, interpretation of results and the dissemination avenues. If the funding agreement is clear on that, then the &quot;hopes&quot; of a company are isolated from the research stream, and I do not see any evident conflict of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:43:29.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:48:01.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to go straight into a European Ph.D. without a Master's at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It very much depends with the country. In Spain, no. On the other hand, in Sweden (at least, Stockholm's University), you need three years worth of credits and at least a certain number of credits on project work. This said, this is the administrational requirement: it is very unlikely you would get hired with only three years; but it is all up to you to show the PI how awesome you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:48:01.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18256" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:48:41.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how the figure is being used.  If it is for non-commercial purposes -- e.g., in a scientific journal to support a study -- then it will likely fall under the 'fair use' provision.  If it is for commercial purposes, such as a book that you are seeking to publish, then it is likely considered commercial purposes, and you will need to work out the permissions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://patentdocs.typepad.com/files/memo-on-use-of-npl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://patentdocs.typepad.com/files/memo-on-use-of-npl.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:48:41.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:55:47.877" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company exists to make money. They fund a research in the hope that the outcome will be beneficial for them (as a student works on a project in the hope that there will be good results out of it). There is nothing intrinsically bad there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem may be with the rest of the conditions. But it will be perfectly fine if: (a) They guarantee you are free to publish whatever you consider and (b) they don't force you to get &quot;good results&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:55:47.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8506" CreationDate="2014-06-18T12:42:00.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interdisciplinarity can help or hurt, depending on how your work is perceived by the experts in each of the two (or more) fields. If you are seen by the experts in field A as doing excellent work in A, and if you're also seen by the experts in field B as doing excellent work in B, then this situation improves your chances for tenure.  If, on the other hand, the experts in field A say something like &quot;not so great in A, but it's impressive that (s)he also does B,&quot; while the experts in field B say something like &quot;not so great in B, but it's impressive that (s)he also does A,&quot; then you're in trouble --- the people evaluating you for tenure will see &quot;not so great&quot; and ignore &quot;impressive&quot;. So, if you can do excellent work in both areas, do so, but if you can't, then it's better to do excellent work in one field than mediocre work in two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:42:00.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-06-18T12:48:08.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yours and their interests do conflict but this is not how we usually use the work &quot;conflict of interest.&quot; Say if your company actually makes cat food, and then you later got recruited as a consultant on setting up a safe cat food policy, your decisions made in the policy task force can be potentially affected by your financial involvement with the company. In that case, you will need to declare to the policy task force that you have a conflict of interest. In most cases, conflict of interest requires more than two parties, or one of the parties having two or more roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it sounds more like a threatening to academic freedom and scientific integrity. Some preventive measures should be done now before things turn ugly. Here are some things that I have been doing in various projects, you may consider following any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up a &quot;statement of understanding.&quot; It's a binding contract describing who should have the interpretive rights to the data, and how to safeguard everyone's interest. There isn't a template for that, you'll need to lay out items you cannot risk to lose (e.g. your reputation, your institute's reputation, etc.) and contrast with the company's intentions. Talk to your institute's PR or legal representatives for a consultation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Highlight your value as the neutral middle man. In that sense, express to them firmly that you would like to explore the quality of the product without any prejudice. And explain to them that if their product is substandard, it's better to know now than later when found out by consumer interest group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agree upon ALL the protocols, big or small, prior to any analysis. The turmoil I got into mostly about reanalyzing data. Some people just don't give up... and if you look at the same thing for enough iterations, good findings can come out just due to chance. Follow the protocols strictly, and meet to agree again on any modification.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep all documents, e-mails, lab books, etc. and keep copies of them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:48:08.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23531" CreationDate="2014-06-18T12:55:50.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this one is fairly easy.  You read, read, and read.  And when you're done, you read some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thesis was a study of two specific products/types of databases.  Of course, the widely-known &quot;Brewer's CAP Theorem&quot; was a core focal point, so I read Dr. Brewer's paper &quot;Harvest, Yield, and Scalable Tolerant Systems.&quot;  I then read the paper that analyzed his paper, which (of course) led me to another.  And another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to Amazon.com and looked for books about the non-relational database I was focusing on, and found five.  I bought (and read) all of them.  I looked at the sources for those works, and read more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to a conference in Chicago put on by the software company which created my non-relational database of focus.  I talked with the people who created it, as well as with others who used it.  I took lots of notes, looked through many Powerpoint projects, and followed the sources listed in those as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This went on for more than a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-forward to now, I (successfully) defended my thesis 11 months ago.  Since then, I have taken a new job (that I was recruited for) as a lead engineer, driving big data projects.  I don't really consider myself an expert, but it is apparent that I understand that material (and database theory in general) better than anyone else in our company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, read as much as you can find on your topic.  Question it.  If you have the means, run some of the experiments on your own.  And after that, keep reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1508" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T23:15:36.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T23:15:36.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-06-18T13:09:56.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a clear &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest&quot;&gt;conflict of interests&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a situation occurring when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not disqualify your research (as long you make it with full scrutiny, etc; see other answers), but for the sake of scientific honesty you need to mention it (as it can &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; alter your motivation, e.g. to get further grants from the same company or to condition probability of publishing on the outcome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw such notes, e.g. that a given scientist works for a particular drug company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T13:09:56.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:00:33.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look around you. Observe the 25%ile pace of drinking. Do that. If everybody is drinking the same thing, you as well. If there’s a mixture (some beer, some wine, some sherry, etc), drink something that isn’t conceptually far from the observed distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You fit in, are part of the team, but not in any way inappropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17598" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:00:33.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:14:45.837" Score="21" ViewCount="10467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that in India research institutes will never take a faculty candidate who is over 35. Is it so all over the world? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question from the point of view of if someone starts their PhD. at the age of 27 then its unlikely they will be faculty candidates till they are 40. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-01-01T16:16:54.357" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T00:20:55.910" Title="Are old (&gt;35) faculty candidates discriminated against all over the world?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:19:48.743" Score="0" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will the effort required to learn a completely new subject from scratch be outweighed by the better job prospects when one is looking for faculty positions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T07:56:19.340" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T07:56:19.340" Title="At the age of 27 is it worth shifting PhD. from strings to computer science?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:23:03.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tjdb.org/CFP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.tjdb.org/CFP&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it will provide all upcoming events(journals, conference, seminars, workshop, sessions). subscribe to its rss feed with particular keyword. and you can also post new academic events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17599" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:23:03.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:30:44.860" Score="0" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on the social science academic market for a couple years, and I have been invited to interview and put together presentations (&quot;job talks). I thought in both cases, the presentations were interesting and thought provoking and I wonder if i should include them in my vita.I have an &quot;invited lecture&quot; section already, so my thought is just to add them, but is that unorthodox? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T15:10:40.350" Title="Should I put job talks on my vita for positions I didn't get?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-18T15:02:53.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23548" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:31:11.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A related subject: preparation of mathematical formulas and equations. These were things that simply couldn't be done (other than very crudely) on a Linotype or similar &quot;hot type&quot; machine. To do it anywhere near &quot;right&quot;, skilled typesetters needed to build up the equations &lt;em&gt;by hand&lt;/em&gt; from tiny pieces of type and lots of pieces of spacer lead and such. Needless to say, this was very slow and very expensive and prone to error. It went &quot;offshore&quot; to lower wage countries, but even then was still too expensive. Crude typesetting programs existed but produced such poor results that Donald Knuth was driven to produce something that would typeset math to his standards: TeX. TeX (and LaTeX and various permutations) are still the gold standard for setting text, equations, and even some graphs and other figures (such as chemical diagrams) generated on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13080" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:31:11.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23616" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:38:58.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit:  From the perspective of applied social sciences (e.g., social welfare / social work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, a job talk is not the same thing as what is considered an invited presentation and should NOT be added to your CV. An invited presentation is connotes something much different -- that is, something that is akin to a keynote or a presentation at a formal conference / meeting.  Keep your CV clean and don't reach for things that don't belong.  I see lots of recently minted PhD's trying to work things into their CV to make it appear weightier than it really is.  Don't water down your CV with activities or products that don't belong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastEditorUserId="17232" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T15:10:40.350" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T15:10:40.350" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:39:15.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it helpful to keep a spreadsheet of all the relevant conferences, with columns for the next submission deadline, conference URL, organisation, and organisation URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I find out about a conference too late to submit, I still add it to my spreadsheet. I try to find out if the conference is annual, every two years, or what. I put down a rough guess for the next submission deadline based on the current deadline. That way I'm prepared for the following year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when I read a paper in my field, I always note where it was published (because the journal or conference might be suitable for my own work). If it's a conference, I add it to my spreadsheet with as much info as I can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in addition to looking for appropriate mailing lists, as the other answers have covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:39:15.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23638" CreationDate="2014-06-18T15:16:48.163" Score="7" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some faculty members are required to perform service to the community. Providing free education that improve societal value is one of the many ways to deliver the service. However, we recently are faced with a difficult situation in this channel, and I hope faculty here who had experience in teaching outside the school or social science researchers working in underprivileged groups will be able to point us to the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a small group of software developers and teachers who give free computer lessons to pretty much anyone who is interested. So far we have taught 32 students and they are all working as programmers in various places. However the dropout rate has been 8 to 1 so far. But lately the big problem is finding new students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't charge money, there are no contracts to sign and we even provide required software and books free of charge. Sometimes we even supply the computers. The classes are online last about a hour a day. Still, even with sharing success stories and having former students themselves talk to new students, we are finding it hard to find new students who would be interested in taking the classes. I personally know people who would rather complain about the unfairness of life than take a job working as a paid intern somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What can we do to make free learning more appealing to people who are not in a school environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17603" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T16:37:35.770" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T02:26:54.267" Title="How do I encourage learning to an underprivileged group" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-06-18T16:38:08.277" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look at simply setting up an FTP sever (File Transfer Protocol) with separate accounts for each student and administrator accounts for faculty, they can use FileZilla (free ftp software with server version too), which is how we upload files in my university... IT professors should have little problem in setting it up and taking care of security issues, and even less in writing a program or script that gathers up all the files with a specific format in the file name.. There probably is someone in the faculty who can take care of this. In the database with the accounts you will also have the e-mail addresses of the students, it's fairly simple to gather every single e-mail in a file, then copy paste them all to the receiver box and send them the same e-mail. I have not looked much into networks, but from my fair programming experience, it's nothing hard to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11719" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T16:38:08.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23630" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:00:15.707" Score="6" ViewCount="6228" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to do research at the university without acceptance to the university? What I mean that if I have free time and desire to help with projects, can I join some reseach group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not a legal stuff (I suppose that's legal :) ), but what are the chances that some university lab accept me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to search for work position as little afraid about strict timelines. At the end I hope to get few articles that will help me to get to grad school and nice spent time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desired field is robotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for ideas and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17607" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T20:16:57.600" Title="Can I do research at the university without acceptance to the university" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:04:00.507" Score="2" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for a teaching job. I was told by the selection committee that I didn't do coursework in my Ph.D program.&#xA;I replied that the university Ph.D program requires two years of Independent Study on the courses specified by the course Advisor and then a comprehensive Exam and then Thesis Adjuducation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do if the university has no provision for registration of formal courses ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have asked them to consider the Credits of Courses that I have in two Masters Degrees ( 42 Credit Hours from Master of Engineering + 41 Credit Hours from MS )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I had checked the qualifications of one of the Selection Committee members, he did one MS (with 24 Credits Course Work + 30 Credits Course work in Ph.D with thesis in both the programs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of Joining again Ph.D PROGRAM in a university where there is coursework, and complete 30 Credit Hours of Course Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise how can I do this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T10:32:57.257" Title="Got Ph.D Degree from India on the basis of Ph.D Comprehensive Exam + Ph.D Thesis now thinking of doing Course Work in another university" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23627" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:07:36.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not necessarily a problem that you're not enrolled in the university - it's possible for researchers to hire non-students in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would be difficult to get someone to take you on when you don't want to make any commitment (e.g. get an official job). From their point of view: why should they invest time and effort training you and working with you, when you have no formal connection to them and can disappear at any time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be legally problematic (depending on the country) for them to allow you to work for free, when it's not part of an educational program for your benefit (like a formal internship program for students, or thesis research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T17:07:36.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23627" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:18:10.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that this is usually up to the faculty member that is running the research project. A couple of my friends in grad school contributed to our research group prior to their actual grad-school application, so that the faculty would know them better when the application came around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My area of research is compilers, different specialty, but still in the Computer Science/Computer Engineering department.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When/if you do contact faculty members, try to have some concrete ideas and thoughts (and mention that you are looking for experience only for future grad-school applications, not a paid position.) Professors get bombarded with emails about grad students wanting TA/grader/RA positions every day, so you won't get a second thought if you send something generic. If you're very new to robotics, then instead of a concrete research topic, you could say something concrete about your experience and send your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contributing to a project, especially if it leads to a paper (but even if it doesn't) will definitely improve your grad-school application. It's a good strategy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T17:18:10.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23584" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:51:45.683" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postgraduate programs are, as you've discovered, structured very very differently in the USA and Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the caveat: there is doubtless lots of variation across institutions and fields, and I'm basing the below on my limited experience (PhD from UC San Diego and now a postdoc at U. Edinburgh, so I know lots of current UK PhD students). Also, I'm in exactly the same murkily defined field that you're asking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that the general rule is: in the US, PhD programs and research-oriented masters programs are treated together as being a single indivisible unit. This has obvious practical consequences -- for example (and in answer to one of your questions), in the US PhD programs I'm familiar with, if you show up with a masters in hand, this doesn't actually change your course requirements versus someone with only a BA/BS. You'll have to go through a second &quot;masters program&quot; (but probably won't officially be awarded a second masters degree). But it also affects the structure of the program itself. My program had required lab rotations and a structured &quot;2nd year project&quot; that were technically part of our masters coursework, but were explicitly designed to provide a gentle ramp into our PhD research. (Psych departments are usually even more aggressive about this, and will have you running subjects within the first 3 months, ideally in the lab you'll continue in through your PhD research.) You're working in the same environment, with the same cohort, and the same faculty throughout, and the expectation from the beginning is that you'll be going all the way through to the PhD, so there's training from the start on how to &quot;think like a researcher&quot; (which is the main thing taught in PhD programs), the programs can kind of blur into each other, and there's some flexibility about when exactly you start your PhD project proper. This potentially gives more room to try out things that don't work, etc., before you have to write your actual proposal and put your nose to the grindstone. OTOH, it's not uncommon for programs to stretch into 6 or 7 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the European system, by contrast, masters and PhD programs are treated as distinct programs. Sometimes people stay with the same supervisor for both, but it isn't the usual case, and the programs aren't structured with that in mind. The PhD programs as far as I can tell are much more tightly defined: you're expected to show up, start work on a project more-or-less immediately (possibly a specific one that your supervisor has picked out ahead of time and gotten funding for), and be done and dusted in 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the US system was definitely better, and that bias is probably reflected in the above; but, people are different, and I can imagine the European system working better for others. Also, every PhD is different -- by far the most important determinant of PhD success is the interaction between you and your supervisor. (Well, being funded is pretty important too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17605" LastEditorUserId="17605" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T02:55:23.263" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T02:55:23.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23613" CreationDate="2014-06-18T18:23:20.627" Score="26" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Absolutely not.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age discrimination is explicitly illegal in the US.  (I believe the same is true in Canada and most European countries.)  Even as the chair of my department's recruiting committee, I am forbidden to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; the age of any applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried, just don't put your date of birth on your CV.  But this really is a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T18:23:20.627" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23485" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:08:35.393" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is similar to those posted in comments. I worked for several years before applying to graduate school and did not stay in touch with my professors during that time. Approximately 4 months before I applied to graduate school, I sent each professor a brief (1 paragraph) email explaining my graduate education plans and career interests, and asking if they would be willing to write letters of recommendation, which would be due in November. I also indicated that if they were willing, I would send them my CV and a summary sheet of my college activities for their reference. I contacted them via email, as I lived in a different state than the college, and face-to-face meetings were impractical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they agreed to write the letters I sent them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A summary sheet listing each program I was applying to. For each program I listed the address and contact person (so the letter could be properly addressed), 1 line about why the program interested me, the names of faculty I was interested in, the application deadline, and specific application letter forms or links to online applications, if relevant. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A summary sheet highlighting specific grades in major-related courses; research projects and activities I engaged in during college; a 1 paragraph narrative explaining what I had done since graduating and why I was interested in pursuing another degree; and a list of courses I took with that particular professor/letter writer, along with the grade for the course and any special projects completed in those courses. Try to keep this to 1 page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this sounds like a lot of information, work to keep it as brief as possible, while ensuring the professor has the information they need to write a strong letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may choose to time this differently, but the four month window ensured that I had committed to applying and gave me time to identify alternative writers if they had declined. I'm not sure it would be useful to ask your professors a year in advance, as 1) your plans may change, and 2) they may not recall a commitment they make that far in advance. That said, I would make initial contact in the summer before you apply; if you wait until the school year kicks into full gear, your email might get lost in the shuffle. When I was applying I was advised by multiple people to provide all materials to my letter-writers a minimum of 2 months prior to the deadline. Many schools require letters to be written on specific forms, have surveys your letter writers are asked to complete, or even ask the letters be submitted online; it's unlikely the most recent application will be available more than a few months prior to the application deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few final notes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be sure to ask if they feel they can write you a &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; letter, not just a letter of recommendation. Most faculty will be honest about this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send your letter writers an email two weeks prior to the application deadline to thank them and remind them of the approaching deadline. Many online applications will indicate when your letters of recommendation have been uploaded. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be sure to thank them, both when they agree to write the letter and when the letter is submitted. Consider writing and mailing a formal thank you note, once the application is submitted. Also, contact them once you're accepted and have decided on a school; they like to know how it's worked out!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:08:35.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23627" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:38:50.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to effect this is to enroll as a &quot;special student&quot; taking one or two courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, you have not been &quot;accepted&quot; by the university for a degree. But it may allow you to &quot;qualify&quot; for an internship by being a student. Also, if you attend classes for even one or two courses, it makes it easier to make connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:38:50.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23613" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:54:57.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;short answer, no. There are 40+ year old new professors who will get tenure after starting work at a new school in the US. There are 35 year old first time science majors landing jobs because of their passion and I recently met a 55 year old who just completed an EET degree who landed a position at a decent firm with a good wage although he has a math phd as well from 30 years ago. It is mainly cultures where age discrimination is the disgusting norm and Google. India may be the worst country on earth in terms of age discrimination and bribery. There are job postings I saw (just out of curiossity from an article on this very subject) explicitly asking for no one over 26 where in the US those positions would say 10+ years of experience or a phd (experience preferred). If immigration is a possibility then it may be the best route. Some other countries have age discrimination issues as well but, generally with the exception of India, countries that were part of the British empire with its legal system tend to be more lenient. You have options. Age discrimination hurts everyone. Experienced professionals tend to demand less, are less restless, and require less training. Maybe a cultural shift is in order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17620" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:54:57.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23613" CreationDate="2014-06-18T20:12:31.563" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This started out as a comment on JeffE's answer, but became too long, and I don't want to clutter his post.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a gross simplification, but what hiring committees care about is your future research potential. In the absence of a crystal ball, they have to extrapolate from your previous achievements: The more in less time, the better. For this, your actual age is irrelevant - it is only important how long you have been an active independent researcher, which usually starts after your PhD. (This also touches on the point @user11192 made.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; It's not age, but age minus time of PhD, divided by number of publications (and grant money squared). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T20:12:31.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23621" CreationDate="2014-06-18T20:14:23.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a program that sounds almost too good to be true (e.g., free classes, free software, free books, no contract).  And your biggest challenge is that you cannot find new students, right?  Well, two things come to mind.  First, there is a &quot;catch&quot; -- that is, when it is too good to be true, it probably isn't true.  Are there any hidden costs or problems with the program that you have not shared or identified?  Second, what is the extent of the mismatch between the objectives of this program and the needs, values, and interest of your target group?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would involve careful analysis of both questions.  You are likely to find a lot of good information by following up with those who have dropped out. Ask them why they dropped out.  Barriers to attendance?  Then you need to figure out why more people aren't signing up.  Consider surveying individuals who were provided the information but chose not to sign up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastEditorUserId="17232" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T20:34:53.310" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T20:34:53.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23640" CreationDate="2014-06-18T20:15:16.590" Score="23" ViewCount="2835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some postdoc positions are formally advertised. Arguably, even more exist on a &quot;gray market&quot; - they are not advertised, and a person seeking a postdoc is supposed to contact a professor directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One ethical concern that I see here is that in some situations even when the agreement between the professor and prospective candidate is made, the position still has to be advertised (e.g. this may be a legal obligation in some countries). The advertisement will attract a number of applications, none of which has a chance to succeed, since the deal about this position has already been made behind the curtains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second concern is a bit harder to formalise. Is it true that when a candidate approaches a professor with a request like this, some serious ethical restrictions arise? Is it more difficult to turn the offer down, if you were the one asking for it? Is it more difficult to terminate the postdoc contract earlier than expected (and move to permanent position, for example), if you were the one asking for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I keep trying to apply only for a officially advertised positions, or should I give up and approach senior professors directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-03T08:24:50.450" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T08:24:50.450" Title="Is it ethical to approach a professor asking for a (unadvertised) postdoc position?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23639" CreationDate="2014-06-18T20:57:38.857" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no special experience in applying for or managing postdocs, but this is just my take on the ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards your first question, I would say it is the professor who is being unethical if he arranges backdoor deals for postdocs, while still openly soliciting applications which he has no intention of considering.  I don't see anything unethical about approaching a faculty member to ask if they have or will have postdoc positions available.  If they don't want to give you special treatment, they can easily and fairly say something like, &quot;Yes, we will be accepting applications in November, I'll forward you the job ad when it's ready.&quot;  If they tell you you are a lock and then mislead other applicants, that is their issue, not yours.  As an applicant, I can't see that you can be held ethically responsible for how other applicants are (or aren't) considered, since you have no real control over that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your second question, I think those issues shade from an ethical level down to the level of personal courtesy.  My impression is that everyone applying for every job tells the offerer that they are really interested in it, even if privately they view it as only a backup option.  I agree this is somewhat distasteful in that it's not totally honest and straightforward, but I don't see any way around it and I think everyone expects it.  Unless you were down on your knees begging for the postdoc, I don't think people would consider it a real ethical breach for you to reject it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, it's easy to avoid getting in too deep by making your inquiry diplomatically: instead of saying &quot;Hey I really really want to do a postdoc with you have you got one?&quot; you can say &quot;I'm looking into postdoc opportunities and your work looks very interesting, will there be any postdoc opportunities in your department/lab soon?&quot;  By mentioning opportunities, plural, you make it clear that this is only one of many options you're exploring, and you can avoid appearing to make a commitment at an early stage.  There may come a later stage where they ask you for a handshake agreement that you will accept the offer when it is officially made, and if you reject it after such a handshake, that could be considered unethical, but at the early stage you're describing I don't think it would be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I think the questions about rejecting the offer or leaving the position early come down to personal and professional courtesy and the desire to maintain good relationships with these people.  As a nonacademic analogy, imagine you call up your friend and say, &quot;Do you want to go to the movies?&quot; and he says &quot;Yes&quot; and then you say &quot;Okay, you can go by yourself, I don't actually want to go, I was just asking.&quot;  You may not be cited by any ethics board for that, but you will be perceived as a jerk.  Likewise, if you string people along making them think you want a postdoc offer, and then cavalierly drop it, even if it's not an actionable ethical breach, you may gain a reputation as a sneaky and underhanded negotiator, which will not help your professional career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9041" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T20:57:38.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:08:10.050" Score="7" ViewCount="1880" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose one has been hired for a three-year postdoc.  Three years give sufficient opportunity to get some work done, without moving to a new country every year.  Possibly, an opportunity might arise to move to something permanent before the three years are finished (either in academia, or in industry, or in government research labs, or somewhere on the edge of those).  However, the postdoc supervisor, who has invested time and money in a postdoc in order to get a project done, might be disappointed if the postdoc leaves a job unfinished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one extreme, I know someone who has been a postdoc at the current place for 5½ years, &lt;em&gt;and they were a postdoc somewhere else before that&lt;/em&gt;.  I suppose spending 8 years in postdocs &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14978/1033&quot;&gt;does not help&lt;/a&gt; when applying for permanent positions.  On the other hand, I know someone who has been a postdoc for only seven months or so, and is already applying for a primarily teaching position at a somewhat lesser known university, possibly a position where major post-PhD results are not essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the minimum one should spend in a postdoc, before even starting to &lt;em&gt;consider&lt;/em&gt; applying for possibly permanent positions?  I mean this question broadly; an answer may either be expressed in time (&lt;em&gt;one year&lt;/em&gt;) or in results (&lt;em&gt;one major and one minor first-author paper&lt;/em&gt;).  Of course, without any significant results, finding a faculty position at a major place will be hard if not impossible.  But the question here is related to the &lt;em&gt;moral obligation&lt;/em&gt; to complete some of the task one has been hired to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T21:19:43.297" Title="What is the minimum time one should spend in a post-doc?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23641" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:19:43.297" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postdocs are cheap labor. Furthermore, unlike grad students, they show up already fully trained and ready to do productive work. This is all a wonderful deal for the lab that the postdoc is working for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a postdoc is applies for a job after 7 months, they will probably still have been in the postdoc position for about a year before they actually leave. This is perfectly reasonable. Tenure-track jobs are so scarce and hard to get that any reasonable supervisor's reaction in this situation should be, &quot;Wow, that's wonderful that you lined up a tenure-track job so quickly!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this will presumably come up when the postdoc asks the supervisor for a recommendation for the job. If there needs to be a discussion of how long is long enough, the discussion will happen then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three years give sufficient opportunity to get some work done, without moving to a new country every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My perception is that 2 years in a single postdoc used to be standard. It may now be common to do 2 or more postdocs, each of 3 years or more, but that's an expression of market conditions, not of any moral obligation that the postdoc owes to the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T21:19:43.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23639" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:27:33.147" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are making a &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; bigger deal out of this than what it is. Ultimately, you seem to assume that this is something shady that should be avoided, as indicated by your word choices (&quot;gray market&quot;, &quot;should I give up and approach senior guys directly&quot;). &lt;strong&gt;This is not the case.&lt;/strong&gt; It is not more honorable to score a publicly announced job than to get one that has been offered to you personally and without lengthy official search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the ethical implications over other postdocs are minimal to non-existant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One ethical concern that I see here is that in some situations even when the agreement between the professor and prospective candidate is made, the position still has to be advertised (e.g. this may be a legal obligation in some countries). The advertisement will attract a number of applications, none of which has a chance to succeed, since the deal about this position has already been bade behind the curtains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may or may not be true, but it is certainly not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; ethical issue. This is a problem that the professor has to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that when a candidate approaches a professor with a request like this, some serious ethical restrictions arise? Is it more difficult to turn the offer down, if you was the one who was asking for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why this would be the case. A postdoc is a postdoc is a postdoc. You do not bind your soul to this professor for eternity because he has offered you a job directly. Generally, turning down offers may cause some -unwarranted- hard feelings (everybody involved is just a human, after all), but the same is also true for any other job search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it more difficult to terminate the postdoc contract earlier than expected (and move to permanent position, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No professor &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; fault you for terminating a postdoc early to move on to a faculty position. Of course some will, but, again, this has little to do with how you got the job in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So if you have a network: go ahead and use it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T21:27:33.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T22:35:50.823" Score="13" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing a post-doc in pure Math [teaching and research] in the US. The academic year 2014-2015 will be my last postdoc year and I am currently considering my next employment possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For several reasons, I am considering a job outside academia in Europe [I am an E.U. citizen], for my next employment. As I know about nothing else except for my research in Pure Math and teaching of Math, I could use as much advice as possible regarding this potential transition from academia to a non-academia job. I have read through the many related questions and answers. But I still could not find answers to the following questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) How early in advance do you have to apply for a job outside academia? Let me provide a bit more details: I really need employment as soon as my current one ends, b/c I need the money to support my living expenses. So I cannot really afford to spend more than one or two months without employment. I am asking this, b/c for academia jobs one typically applies one year ahead of time, things are standard and clear. But not so clear to me are applications outside academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Given that I know nothing about programming right now, what would my chances of getting a programming job be? In other words, would I get some sort of PAID training in programming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Any sort of comments/advice regarding working for a publishing house? [such as: salary?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1104" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:03:32.803" Title="transition from academia to industry" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23613" CreationDate="2014-06-19T01:09:35.250" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries academic studies will only start at an age of ~22 due to factors such as military/civil service etc. which may yield:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;22 + BSc (3 years)  + MSc (2 years)  + PhD (4-5 years) + (Postdoc 3-4 years) = 35 to 37&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case 35 would be considered a typical, or even relatively young age for a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T13:01:41.260" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T13:01:41.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23621" CreationDate="2014-06-19T02:26:54.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a biology education researcher who has created and run free online preparation courses for students entering a college introductory biology course, so I've done a good bit of reading on this subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March 2014, the Public Policy Institute of California published a report on student learning in online courses in California community colleges.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_514HJR.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_514HJR.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that students do significantly worse in online courses compared to their own performance in face-to-face courses. Students who showed the biggest negative effect of online courses were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;younger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;African American or Latino&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those with low intent to transfer to 4-year college&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those with low high school GPA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your target demographic is within this group, they will find an online course more difficult and unsupportive than a face-to-face course would be. As a researcher, I would like to see if a cohort of your students that meets together to watch videos and work on homework is more successful than a cohort that takes your online version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T02:26:54.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23650" CreationDate="2014-06-19T02:43:58.620" Score="30" ViewCount="11096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are professors paid during sabbatical? I'm mainly concerned about schools in the US. Answers about other countries are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T03:03:54.647" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T03:04:58.083" Title="Are professors paid during sabbatical?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23648" CreationDate="2014-06-19T03:16:32.870" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. When you're not paid, it's normally called a &quot;leave of absence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T03:16:32.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23648" CreationDate="2014-06-19T03:19:57.567" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sabbatical is not a vacation but is rather a leave of teaching to focus on research and publication. At many schools it is not automatic but must be applied for and is granted at the provost's discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools will only provide six months of funding, but will release a full year of teaching, making the faculty member responsible for getting grants for the remainder, or effectively working at half salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T03:19:57.567" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:38:57.803" Score="1" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am careful about placing attribution to quotes in assignments. Occasionally, in assignments, I must use quote marks for purposes other than quoting, but my instructor misinterprets this as a &quot;quote missing a citation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_marks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quotation Marks&lt;/a&gt;, one can find a list of examples of other uses of quotation marks. Suppose I need to use quotation marks to &quot;signal unusual usage&quot; (&quot;Quotation Marks&quot;, 2014) or show some &quot;distinction&quot; in &quot;usage&quot; (&quot;Quotation Marks&quot;, 2014) or even scare quotes. Is there any way in which I can indicate this, in APA style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T04:48:05.393" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:39:58.080" Title="How to indicate when quotation marks are not used to quote someone in APA?" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23644" CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:42:37.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) You should start applying for jobs about 9 months before your current job ends.  Most employers will want you to start immediately, or within a few months, and might favor candidates who can do so.  Starting 9 months ahead is basically allowing time for the job search process, application processes, the interviewing processes, and employer decision-making processes.  All of those can take much longer than you'd expect (and much longer than is necessary).  You might be very efficient in your processes, but employers can be very slow in communicating with you, starting the interview process, and (worst of all) making hiring decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say &quot;about 9 months&quot; because this is a very rough estimate.  You might do well to start a year ahead and you might succeed by starting 6 months ahead.  But don't start 3 or less months ahead.  There are many factors you can't control and you are not in a position to go many months without income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get lucky and get an interview 9 months before you are available, someone might ask why you are interviewing &quot;now&quot;.  Just tell them your job search plan and your priorities.  If they can't hold the position open for 8 months, then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I'd say that your chances of getting a programming job are &lt;em&gt;about zero&lt;/em&gt; if you have no previous experience or training in programming.  There are just too many other people who have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best chance is to apply for jobs that require PhD in Math and where you'd work in groups with programmers.  For example, you might find work in the field of cryptography as a mathematician and then get training and experience in programming along the way.  Same goes for jobs in Econo-physics (quant finance &amp;amp; trading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have one year before you change jobs, I'd recommend taking one or two introductory programming courses -- Python and R are good choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also build social network relations with as many academic-to-industry mathematicians as you can, so you can learn who is hiring and how that maps back to your particular knowledge and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I'm not familiar enough with (technical) publishing to know salaries.  I was recently a technical editor on a book, but that was a contract position and the pay was low for the hours I put in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T04:42:37.190" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:57:37.783" Score="4" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just a general question regarding UK (and I suppose Western European) masters degrees vs. US masters degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for asking is that I have heard that US masters are considered at the same academic level as UK Bachelors with Honours degrees. This seems like pure hearsay but I'd like to understand if there is any thing concrete in this assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And does equivalency tend to manifest itself in the same ways in commercial environments too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17634" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T08:58:07.587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T08:58:07.587" Title="Are masters degrees treated equivalently in academia on both sides of the Atlantic?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23685" CreationDate="2014-06-19T06:59:41.393" Score="16" ViewCount="25334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had submitted my paper in an Elsevier journal one year back. Now, status update on the submission tracking says &quot;Required reviews completed.&quot; However, for the last two weeks still there is no change in the status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I ask the editor what is going on with my submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="24064" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T00:17:27.510" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T00:17:27.510" Title="Why do I have the &quot;required reviews completed&quot; status on my submission in Elsevier?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23654" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:19:31.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen (several) hundreds of students get UK bachelour with honours degrees in 3 years. A master degree in the UK takes another 1 year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally in the US a bachelor degree takes 4+ years and a masters takes another 2 - for a total of 6. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can 6 years of education in the US be considered equivalent to 3 in the UK? If anything, you could consider a UK master degree similar to a US bachelor degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:19:31.463" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23652" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:26:59.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally referencing styles (APA, Harvard, etc.) address the issue of referencing the work of others. The &quot;example&quot; you have given is not an issue of using someone else's work and, therefore, I do not believe it would be addressed in any referencing system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your instructor should certainly understand the idea that quotes are commonly used for many reasons, including indicating a turn of phrase which might not be obvious to some. For example, I would not badmouth my boss because I &quot;know which side my bread is buttered on.&quot; Clearly this is not a quote but rather a turn of phase, a saying, or an &quot;idiom.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, I do see a lot of student who forget to cite direct quotes and, as an instructor, it is very frustrating to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using idiomatic expressions, with which your instructor is unfamiliar, you might add a footnote explaining it to &quot;lend a helping hand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:26:59.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23661" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:31:10.090" Score="2" ViewCount="1012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in computer science and have submitted a paper to a conference which details my proposed architecture. However in the month or so since this paper has been submitted my architecture has undergone changes (relatively major), how is this normally dealt with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is accepted do I present the work as it was at the time of submission or do I openly state that changes have been made and present the updated version of the architecture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17638" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2016-10-28T04:39:05.887" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T04:39:05.887" Title="If you make changes to paper after initial conference submission, should you present updated version at conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23654" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:39:13.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;UK degrees tend to focus on the main degree subject from the beginning of the degree program and thus are more professionally oriented than the US liberal arts education, which requires each student to learn a broader curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting comparison here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://colematson.com/2012/01/05/oxford-vs-us-an-undergrad-degree-comparison-chart-glossary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://colematson.com/2012/01/05/oxford-vs-us-an-undergrad-degree-comparison-chart-glossary/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;If anything, you could consider a UK master degree similar to a US bachelor degree.&quot; It tends to be the other way around due to the UK degree being a more narrow focus towards the subject area opposed to the US degree having a more broad overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17638" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:39:13.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23652" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:39:58.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;APA does not provide a distinction. It is assumed that all thinks enclosed in quotation makes are either quotes, and therefore attributed, or something &quot;special&quot;. The hope is that your text clarifies the reason for the quotation mark. In most well written papers, the reason for the quotation marks is pretty obvious. Therefore APA style does not mandate a difference in usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why your instructor is flagging them up, it is possible your instructor is using some sort of automated system to find the missing citations or that your usage of quotation marks is excessive or improper. It is probably best to talk to the instructor to figure out what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:39:58.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23658" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:49:13.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you should do what is better to the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some disciplines/communities it is strongly assumed that conference participants read the abstracts/papers before the presentation, and expect the discussion to follow precisely the material that is published. In this case, of course, you could only comment briefly on the recent changes you've made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other fields (such as mine), the abstracts are used only as a means to (roughly) describe the topic of the presentation. It is quite normal to extend the actual talk beyond the scope of the abstract, or reduce the role of some pieces of research advertised in the abstract. In this case, I'd advise you to make a talk that is simply interesting for you and the audience. It can probably include both the original design and your contribution to its recent development. Make sure people in the room understand &lt;b&gt;why&lt;/b&gt;  the changes were needed, &lt;b&gt;how&lt;/b&gt; you have worked them out, and &lt;b&gt;what&lt;/b&gt; is the benefits of your new architecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T09:49:13.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23474" CreationDate="2014-06-19T10:22:22.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Isn't part of the point of working in Academia to forward the thinking of the age and challenge predetermined constructs? Whilst the question relates to being judged by others would it not also be appropriate to question the regard for those who would judge, and thus the value of regard for their judgement? To determine your own opinion to be higher than that of another is in my mind not a good methodology starting point unless you have an evidence base to back it up, and therefore should be challenged as a premise. To not question this leads to a lack of development in the area of society most in charge of development, with a hierarchy system of regard no better than that of the private corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you can say all that without slurring any of it you've managed to avoid drinking too much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind it's a case of &quot;do what you like&quot;. If what you like is to fit in, then fit in. Just don't be surprised if some people realise that this is what you did. I would however stress against the getting very drunk, or indeed being one of the heavier/faster drinkers, unless you don't mind the labelling that comes with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T10:22:22.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23655" CreationDate="2014-06-19T11:55:15.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One year is a very long time for a paper to be under review, at least in the social sciences.  Indeed, the change of status is promising, but I think following up with the editor on when the reviews will be complete is reasonable in this case.  Indeed, as suggested in the comment (by Dirk), being polite is key.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T11:55:15.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23548" CreationDate="2014-06-19T12:15:48.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gosh, I feel ancient :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated just before the Windows became popular. We had 8-bit PCs with MS-DOS and some very basic text-processing software. All the official documents (including my master’s thesis and first research papers) were typed on mechanical (or if one was lucky – on electrical) typewriter. For corrections in the typed document we used a special white fluid (applied it with a little brush over the misspelled letters and once dry retyped the correct ones on top).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the formulas and figures had to be drawn by hand (using a special ink pen, a ruler, a compass, sometimes a special curved ruler). A piece of grid paper could be glued to the document if necessary, or if the grid was big enough to occupy a whole A4 page, we would buy a ready-made grid page from the university bookshop and insert it where it belonged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the required format for conference papers and all other materials we submitted to the print shop, where they used offset lithography and some other techniques to print conference proceedings, textbooks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There wasn’t PowerPoint, so the “slides” for presentations were drawn on a big cardboard sheets (A1 or A0), which were then hang/stack/pined to the wall/blackboard. Or, if there was an overhead projector, we did the drawings on transparent plastic sheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a technician in the department, whose job was to do technical drawings, but usually she was very busy, so I did most of the drawings myself. And, yes, I had studied technical drawing as a part of my engineering degree, it was a mandatory module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T12:15:48.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:06:48.133" Score="12" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed a PhD in a research university in U.S. and came back to my home country in South America. I have a position as a faculty member in a state college. However, the position focuses on teaching and academic administration duties. Without a lab and funding, it has been very difficult to continue the research or even to continue a reciprocal correspondence with my research collaborators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if I can ask for suggestions about how to continue pursuing my career path as scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17642" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T13:24:21.353" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:14:07.097" Title="How to stay active in research when my faculty job involves mostly teaching and administrative duties?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23665" CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:19:05.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jessica, you are certainly in a tough position, because your current incentive structure gives most weight to teaching and administration.  Thus, it will be difficult to maintain a strong program of research.  The evidence on productivity among faculty shows that smaller more frequent blocks of time leads to more output than binge- or marathon-writing sessions.  Try to make collaborations a priority, as this will help minimize your isolation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T13:19:05.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:34:16.817" Score="7" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had worked on my math PhD for 4 years before dropping out almost 2 years ago to lecture at a small college.  I basically finished almost all of my research but am having trouble finishing my dissertation.  This is in part due to the fact that my advisor turned out to be a terrible match for me and not very helpful at all.  I want to move up in my career but almost all teaching jobs require at the very least recommendation letters and unfortunately, I have not done a good job at keeping in touch with my advisor.  Does anyone have any advice for how I can try to re-establish a relationship with my advisor or maybe choose someone else to work with in order to finish?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T16:07:15.430" Title="Unfinished math PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23667" CreationDate="2014-06-19T14:02:35.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re-establishing a relationship with an adviser that you left is sort like asking your former boss for your old job.  There is certainly nothing wrong with doing that.  Just think about how you left things with the adviser, perhaps recognizing and owning where you got off track and offering a plan to move forward.  Even if you believe that the problems were that of your adviser, it is best to avoid those issues.  Show that you are interested in completing your dissertation and self-motivated -- that is, that you are really prepared to move forward and will be independent to the extent possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this doesn't work, then looking for a new adviser is certainly warranted.  However, I think the path of least resistance is probably to patch the relationship with the adviser with whom you had worked.  I guess you just want to communicate that you have the time and motivation to get it done, and that you will not be a burden on her or his time.  Because you are in a teaching position with a presumably heavy teaching load, it would be good to really take stock of the amount of time and energy you have for completing the dissertation.  You don't want to re-establish the relationship only to discover that it is way too much for you to complete.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T14:02:35.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23674" CreationDate="2014-06-19T14:49:50.287" Score="5" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a conscious decision some time back to pursue a career in academia and I got back into graduate school this year, working in an 'applied computing' area--educational technology. While I thoroughly enjoy what I am currently working on, in the near future, I intend to conduct research in more mainstream computer science areas. My question is, how long would it theoretically take for one to radically switch research areas? I know there is probably NO fixed time frame for this, but I am especially interested in hearing from individuals that did this or attempted to do this early on in their careers. I would also appreciate additional advice on how I could start working towards this at an early stage. Incidentally, I came across an interesting CACM article [1] that ascribes a 10-year 'once-in-a-career' shift, mostly as a result of evolving technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/10/168170-trends-in-computer-science-research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/10/168170-trends-in-computer-science-research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6023" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T06:38:48.197" Title="Approximate time frame to switch to different research area" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23673" CreationDate="2014-06-19T15:00:27.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done it a couple of times in my career so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the 10,000-hour rule isn't far off the mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no other commitments, and have the motivation, you can just about do that in three years, if you manage to avoid burning out. Most people will burn out attempting it: it's three years of work-eat-sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you'll only be working 35-hour weeks, and taking holidays, then reckon on six years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing it part-time on top of a full-time job, then 12 years or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T15:05:41.037" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:05:41.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23665" CreationDate="2014-06-19T15:14:07.097" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where do you expect the funding to come from? In my experience, in UK and other European countries, the research funding comes from successful proposals to the relevant funding bodies. There are research centres that were established and keep going only because the staff there constantly submits project proposals (somebody told me that the success rate is 1 out of 5 or maybe even lower).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are on your own, so your best bet is to find out what funding bodies can sponsor research in you location. Then you have to come with an idea about a project but keep in mind that most often than not the funding bodies have priorities, which change on regular basis, e.g. every year, and it is VITAL that your proposal fits their priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you personally will have time for research is another matter. If your college is not very interested in research, you might have a heavy teaching workload and would be able to spend time on research during the breaks between the academic terms. You might have enough funding for one or more PhD students, who would do the majority of the work while you supervise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another option, which might be not applicable in your research field as you mentioned you need a lab but maybe part of the research could be done this way – find undergrad students, who are enthusiastic about your research ideas and would be happy to do some work for free (or as a part of their assessment – coursework, final year project, etc.). That is how I started my research career many years ago (as a 2-nd year student) – one of our professors invited several bright students from the courses he was teaching to take part in a very innovative research. We had the first results after a couple of months, which allowed the professor to secure funding for several further projects. Then we could buy more equipment, attend conferences, there were several PhD grants as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:14:07.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23703" CreationDate="2014-06-19T15:59:46.690" Score="7" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had the suspicion that it may be for a while and apparently not all is a product of my mind. Let me quote from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/23675/7571&quot;&gt;an answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my experience, in UK and other European countries, the research&#xA;  funding comes from successful proposals to the relevant funding&#xA;  bodies. There are research centres that were established and keep&#xA;  going only because the staff there constantly submits project&#xA;  proposals (somebody told me that the success rate is 1 out of 5 or&#xA;  maybe even lower).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;two questions&lt;/strong&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can a company feasibly focus on obtaining funds in publicly funded research (as a business model) successfully enough to &quot;survive&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can such a company be started (nearly) from scratch?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the company would be exactly like a research institute (or institution) except that it would be private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons why question 1&lt;/strong&gt; may not be feasible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't see any company doing this kind of thing, i.e. there may be some, but there are not many, which means that it may be hard. It's a bad sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public funds seem to be assigned to public entities, while companies can benefit from the collaboration and synergy, but they are expected to get their funding from their work as companies (searching for customers, etc.) In this case the customers would be the partners in the projects and the society itself, but again, this seems to be an &quot;innovative&quot; (maybe naïve, or even plain stupid) idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research is a means for something, not an end on itself, that's why the business model should be on something else (point two) and that's why such a company would raise eyebrows on the mere idea of its existence. It may even be against some kind of tacit rule or even written laws.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons why question 2&lt;/strong&gt; may not be feasible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No previous history of success of the company, or products or anything means zero (or negative) trustworthiness and no projects assigned to the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No partners would like to associate with the company in a project for the reasons in point 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most similar case I can think of are spin-off companies that are created from successful research labs, not from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OMG so much communism! Go to kickstarter you hippie!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;an example&lt;/strong&gt;, a possible scenario that could be close to this: Someone writes a paper about a software system that does something not very novel in the state of the art but in a way that is very different from an architectural point of view, leading to good results in practical terms. In short: in theory nothing is new, in practice what was just a dream is now a reality. What is done remains the same in theory, but how it is done is completely different in practice (and now it works). Unfortunately only a proof of concept (PoC) can reasonably be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be feasible to request funds to continue the development of this PoC (still very far from a commercial product) as a start-up or that simply doesn't make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T19:46:49.760" Title="Is research a viable business model?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13184" CreationDate="2014-06-19T16:24:52.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &quot;math&quot; courses, a good math major should take courses in &quot;related&quot; areas; i.e. subjects that either use a lot of math, or contribute a lot of applications to math. Two of those subjects are physics and computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone studying advanced calculus will do well to learn physics concepts such as gravity, charge and flux, as used in say, Newton's or Maxwell's equations. These offer the basis of gradients, divergences Gauss and Stoke's Theorems, and others. Likewise, a good computer science course might use mathematical topics such as recursion, graph theory, or various forms of logic. You might also consider Economics (specifically econometrics) courses that cover optimization and systems of equations as well as more advanced applications using partial differential equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just avoid the kinds of courses sometimes referred to as &quot;physics for poets&quot; (algebraic applications only), or &quot;programming for data processors&quot; (elementary programming devoid of advanced mathematical concepts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:24:52.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23676" CreationDate="2014-06-19T17:02:41.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of the US, there are many research institutes that operate as a private business entity.  These research institutes can apply for some federal funding in the same capacity as a research at an educational institution.  I see it being possible to start a private company without a lot of capital, although you will need to have a very strong skill set that is in demand.  Whether this is a sustainable model really seems to depend on the specialized skills that the business would offer and the infrastructure that would allow it to efficiently prepare grants. Research-I educational institutions in the US have an incredible infrastructure to prepare and apply for grants that would be difficult to replicate in the private sector.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T17:02:41.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23676" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:03:39.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Existence proofs in the US: RTI, SRI, Battelle, Lincoln Labs.  Also, there have been many smaller firms that were funded completely from a large number of SBIR grants ($150K to $1M), though the government has cracked down on these &quot;SBIR-mills&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T18:03:39.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:32:49.680" Score="5" ViewCount="1914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergrad and I would like to publish in a research journal, specifically, ones about chemical pedagogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it hard to get an article published in a journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other venues which may be easier - i.e. do you know of any say magazines on chemical pedagogy or aimed toward chemistry educators? I'd imagine that the standards for publication in a magazine are lower than in a scientific journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice for a beginner at writing and publishing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17661" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T19:25:22.033" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:02:14.730" Title="Is it hard to get an article published in a journal as an undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:38:17.700" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very interesting article, by Ken Hyland, titled &quot;Dissertation Acknowledgements: The Anatomy of a Cinderella Genre&quot; (2003), that sheds a lot of light on how dissertation acknowledgments operate. He analyzes 240 dissertations, from six different fields, to see what patterns emerge in their acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth a read (even just a skim). Hyland does a lot to show how acknowledgments are much more than just a list of &quot;thank yous&quot; - that it's actually very important as a place for writers to promote &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; as initiate academics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of his concluding observations is that &quot;acknowledgments can play an important rhetorical role in promoting a competent, even rhetorically skilled, scholarly identity while signaling important professional connections and relationships as well as the valued disciplinary ideals of modesty, gratitude, and appropriate self-effacement&quot; (266).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ779599&quot;&gt;the Eric link to the article&lt;/a&gt;. If you're not able to access the PDF through your school, I'd be happy to post a link to the PDF (if that's allowed)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17662" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T18:38:17.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-19T19:05:41.507" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Life Rule Number One: Never burn your bridges for any reason except ethics and integrity.  Your situation doesn't pass that test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a purely selfish standpoint, you don't want to seem petty or ungrateful even if you feel that way.  You can't know what the future will be like.  Someone who might want to offer you a position based on your thesis could get puzzled by no acks, ask around, and feel that someone who can't even &quot;make nice&quot; in such a trivial way would be a poor fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17664" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T19:05:41.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23655" CreationDate="2014-06-19T19:31:02.293" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on Dirk's comment: The status you see means that the reviewers have submitted their reports to the online system, and the handling editor has received an email about this. Now she has to read the  comments (and likely look at your manuscript again to see if they comments are relevant), come to a decision, and write a corresponding letter to the author summarizing the comments and justifying the decision. This will in general not take more than an hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should keep in mind that yours is not the only manuscript (nor, in all likelihood, the only journal) the editor has to deal with. In addition, this is both the end of semester &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; conference season in many parts of the world, so it is reasonable to assume that the editor is just very busy with more urgent deadlines, or isn't even in office. (Remember, editors are unpaid, so this work is on top of the regular duties of teaching, advising and doing their own research.)&#xA;In some cases, the final decision even involves two editors (associate/managing editor and editor-in-chief/communicating editor), which doubles the chance of other things getting in the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of that, I would say two weeks is definitely too early to worry and start contacting the editor; give it at least a month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although I know how stressful the wait at this stage of the publication process is...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T19:31:02.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23929" CreationDate="2014-06-19T22:28:41.827" Score="4" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for a second Masters, does one's undergrad score hold a lot of importance or does it get discounted in favor of better score in Master's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BS in Mathematics from one of the good Indian university colleges. I spent a lot of time in my BS studying only my favorite subjects at the expense of others. I have a 66.67% in BS. Contrast this with the university topper who will be somewhere close to 90%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have an MS in Economics from one of the good (in India) Economics grad schools. My MS score is decent (3.14 / 4.00). Though my batch topper scored 3.44, the typical top score from the school is close to 3.75.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering applying for MS in Data Science (or CS with concentration in DS). I want to understand how much my bad score in BS will bring down my chances of getting a good school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I currently work as a Data Scientist for one of the leading analytics companies in India (will soon finish a year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17637" LastEditorUserId="17637" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T06:47:45.950" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T19:39:12.843" Title="Does undergrad score matter very much when applying for a second Masters?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2014-06-19T22:47:13.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conflict of interest between editor in chief and intelectual ( author ) in publish papers in self journals is evident. But, it is aggravated with share of the members of editorial board and editor in chief participate  as authors in the same journals because it may be to establish an enormous bias in the choice of the papers with impairment of the others authors. Surely, the peer review of the papers of these authors might have be difficulties in withhold the paper.Though, this behaviour isn`t considered illegal, it is ethically abominable, and detrimental for the concept of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17669" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T22:47:13.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23531" CreationDate="2014-06-19T23:41:41.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other informative comments and answers, there is a point that appears to me widely overlooked, namely, that it is hard to rush &quot;maturity&quot; or &quot;experience&quot;. Yes, one can speed up &quot;experience_s_&quot;, but only to a point, since too much so reduces comprehension of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In different words, in addition to accumulation, and assimilation, of many, many factoids and ideas, there are ... intangibles, &quot;intuition&quot;, all those vague things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, apart from having seen and remembered many facts, genuine experts have so-well assimilated them, have so-well changed themselves to adapt to a subtler viewpoint, that they have &quot;sense&quot; about otherwise-vague situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I am obviously noting that live mathematics is not formal. It is only that the contemporary writing style has various formal/logistic pretensions, not that the &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt; is that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a corollary, I think it is simply not feasible to &quot;become an expert&quot; in grad school, or soon, or... although one must be &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; that to exert sufficient energy to move in the right &lt;em&gt;direction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, as at other locales, I am not a fan of &quot;routine exercises&quot;, unless one has nothing better to do. I think &quot;memorization of proofs&quot; is not nearly as good as &quot;trying to see why the proof _has_to_be_this_, but perhaps getting the thing into one's head by &quot;memorization&quot; is better than not having it in one's head at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T23:41:41.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23686" CreationDate="2014-06-20T00:33:43.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is difficult to answer confidently because you don't provide information about the program you're interested in or your prior studies. What did you study in the past? What do you want to study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you do well in your undergraduate classes relating to your prospective masters area? Is your most recent masters in an area closely related to that of your second masters? Did you perform well in your first masters program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things easier, you should perhaps call the admissions office of the program/department you're interested in joining. Be straightforward about your situation and they'll likely be helpful in guiding you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17671" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T00:33:43.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23681" CreationDate="2014-06-20T00:37:24.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the journal. You might want to try publishing in your university's undergraduate journal if you don't have backing from a faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[For an example of a university-specific undergraduate journal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thurj.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17671" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T03:44:57.327" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T03:44:57.327" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23717" CreationDate="2014-06-20T00:54:31.940" Score="12" ViewCount="15279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a list of &quot;potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just wondering if there is a similar list of reputable open-access journals in the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T09:03:47.593" LastActivityDate="2019-12-05T13:06:50.200" Title="List of reputable open access journals" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2020-07-01T19:23:53.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23644" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:03:32.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of this is obviously highly situation-specific. I'll mention a few points that I think are likely to apply to someone in your situation, but it's quite possible that there are reasons why this or that wouldn't apply in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general note, finding a job far from where you are is difficult. Combining an international move with a career change will compound the difficulty. While a lot of companies will accept phone interviews, some will insist on an in-person interview, and the ones that don't are likely to select a candidate that they've seen personally all else being equal. Having some positive connection can often tip the balance towards you: “he comes with a recommendation from Prof. X, the last candidate who did was great” is a lot better than “he comes with a recommendation from Prof. X whom I've never heard of”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most companies have little long-term visibility. In France, most programming jobs have a 3 month latency (if I resign, I'm still supposed to work for the company for 3 months, and if I'm fired, the company still owes me 3 months (or more) of salary), so it's common to say “if you hire me I can come to work for you in 3 months plus 1 week”. Even 3 months is considered a long time: companies that are hiring usually want someone ASAP and ask if you could possibly come to work for them sooner. Anything beyond that would be unusual. Most companies have no idea who they'll want in 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advise you to research teaching jobs in your desired locale. Even if you don't intend to stick in this job, plan to spend a year teaching as a bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of programmers on the market. Programmers, per se, are not in high demand. Good programmers or programmers with specific skills are in high demand. Your lack of programming experience is a definite minus, but the PhD in math can be a plus in the right place. Most employers will start with a certain stereotype of what a PhD in math with teaching experience would be: a quick study, autonomous, good at explaining things, but untested at teamwork and unlikely to have internalized the practical aspects of shipping code now rather than when it's working to perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personal story time: I did a PhD in theoretical computer science, and then switched to a job in industry. I think I was hired for two reasons: my PhD advisor knew the person who recruited me (so his recommendation carried a lot of weight), and they basically told me “you know nothing about our business, but you have some background in the general domain, you can absorb new material quickly and write it up in terms that people can understand. We have a tech writer position.” After a few months I switched to a position that involved coding.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a PhD in math, you should look for domains where your math background will be useful, even if it's unrelated to the math you did in your PhD. Finance is a possibility; there are high-paying jobs there, and this is one of the few industries where you might start out applying your knowledge of differential equations and probability and learn coding on the job. A number of engineering jobs involve computer simulations based on mathematical models of physical phenomena. Arithmetic might lead you to cryptography, but that involves more specialist knowledge. The list of examples could go on: there are plenty of niches where a math PhD might fit in, and they tend to value their employees well because of the relatively rare skills they require; the flip side of the coin is that these are all small fields and there aren't openings every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="160" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:03:32.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23708" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:04:00.967" Score="15" ViewCount="1523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc working on a research project, which is funded by a grant that runs for 3 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After my first year working on the project, I identified a problem which could potentially lead to a new research direction, but it is not directly related to my current project. I am required to work on the problems defined in my current project proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in this case, given that I may need to wait for another 2 years before I can possibly work on the new problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T13:00:00.910" Title="What should I do if I have an idea but can't work on it immediately?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23693" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:17:47.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider starting a journal to record your ideas.  I'm guessing that your new idea is pretty good, but you will certainly have many, many more good ideas over your career.  This might be a situation when it is best to spend your time thinking, refining, and planning -- as opposed to acting.  Having ideas is certainly very good, but you can't pursue all of them.  Since you are just starting out your career, I would focus on being as productive as possible with your current project and enhance your skills.  You will find that one idea leads to another, and you will eventually have way more ideas than time and money. This is certainly much more desirable than newly minted PhD's who are struggling to come up with a project.  Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:17:47.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23673" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:32:41.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite so sure the 10,000 hour rule applies very well here.  There are a couple things that need to be considered -- i.e., substantive expertise and methodological expertise.  Although I am not in the area of computer science, the transition from educational technology to mainstream computer science doesn't seem terribly far apart.  It seems like you have the aptitude for computer science, so you should not have really significant problems acquiring the substantive expertise.  I would be concerned if you were saying that the switch was from educational technology to psychiatry or aerospace.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is the extent to which your methodological expertise generalizes to this new area.  Have you acquired research skills that are relevant to your proposed switch?  Do you have the core research skills for your new area?  How familiar are you with the research in this new area.  And what is the litmus test that you have achieved &quot;expertise&quot; in the new area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the issue really comes down to how much your knowledge and skills in your current area of work generalizes to your new area.  So, I'm not going to put a number on this issue -- I just don't think it is possible without more information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:32:41.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23691" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:35:51.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of a list of &quot;reputable&quot; open access journals in the social sciences.  But, as a safe starting point, the most reputable open access journals in the social sciences have an ISI impact factor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:35:51.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23693" CreationDate="2014-06-20T02:18:45.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your research project doesn't own you ... it merely pays the bills.  If you got an interesting idea related to your project, you have an ethical obligation to discuss this with your advisor.  If your idea has nothing to do with your project, you have every right to spend your free time developing it, as long as you maintain appropriate time and effort on your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T02:18:45.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23654" CreationDate="2014-06-20T02:30:07.733" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value of a US Masters degree is very dependent on the institution and its requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of US institutions mass-market their MS (or equivalent) degrees as a quick way to make money.  These degrees  (often marketed as 1-year degrees) are basically just a coursework requirement and can be equivalent to a bachelor's degree with some advanced courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other institutions require a serious thesis or project as part of a masters, often requiring publishable results in a significant academic venue.  This is similar in style to the &quot;old-school&quot; Masters and is a significant step above a bachelor's degree because it requires self-motivated research and often takes two years to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T02:30:07.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T04:12:47.033" Score="12" ViewCount="1794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a project underway that involves human subjects, and I got IRB (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Link&lt;/a&gt;) approval.  I'm thinking about my next project while working on this one.  I'd like to collect some exploratory data for the next one, and potentially make use of it in any resultant publications.  Nothing involves any real risks to respondents, so I feel that there are no ethical constraints binding me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a practical matter, will anyone ever check that any findings were pre-approved by an IRB to be looked-for?  What might the consequences of ignoring IRB be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is social science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17673" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T07:30:14.740" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T13:24:51.540" Title="IRB (Institutional review board) : Do journals ever check? Does anyone ever check?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23673" CreationDate="2014-06-20T06:38:48.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, it sounds like you are going to a relatively similar field... In any case, you can probably become proficient enough to be a grad student (or maybe post-doc) in your new field relatively quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know someone who made the switch from theoretical physics to biology mid-grad-school. It added a year or so. I also am in the process of switching from chemistry (my undergrad degree) to biophysics (in which I'll be getting a PhD starting next week). I'm hoping to be caught up by the fall. Loads of people switch fields at the undergrad-grad, grad-post doc transitions. After that I think it can be harder, at least until you get tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research (at least in the short term) involves being intimately familiar with a very narrow field of information. On the other hand, qualifying exams (in grad school) would require you to have broad based knowledge of the entire field. So it depends exactly what you will need to do and when. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17676" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T06:38:48.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23699" CreationDate="2014-06-20T06:44:55.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of a journal checking for IRB approval. However, as @xLeitix notes, your university may care very much, since doing studies on humans without IRB approval may get it into legal issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And&lt;/em&gt; I personally know of one case where departmental colleagues initiated a scientific audit of a professor, requiring her to dig up &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; documentation (filled-in questionnaiers, raw data, ... &lt;em&gt;and IRB approvals&lt;/em&gt;) for some studies they were concerned about. Everything checked out all right, but if the IRB approvals had not been there, the PI would have been in very deep doo-doo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: get your IRB approval, and make sure it's safe and sound, with scans and electronic backup. Keep it for the requisite number of years, even after the study has ended and been published. Inquire of your university how long that is. Given today's cost of storage, I would keep the scan around indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T06:44:55.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23676" CreationDate="2014-06-20T06:54:02.053" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe, companies exist that primarily live from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html&quot;&gt;FP7&lt;/a&gt; or, now, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en&quot;&gt;H2020&lt;/a&gt; funding. They rarely contribute much to projects in terms of research, but often handle tangential issues, such as project management, dissemination, marketing, or association with standardization bodies. Their model works because (1) they do things that none of the research partners actually wants to do, and (2) because they are often SMEs, which is generally politically helpful to get your funding proposals accepted. Further, as writing grant proposals is their core business, they usually also have grant writing experts that have the time to actually keep up with the various changes that the european commission is constantly applying to its programmes and rules (something that many researchers struggle to find the time for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally, these companies often camouflage as either consultancies or technology spinoffs. That is, you will not find it on their web page that their core business model is actually to milk grant programmes, as this is strictly against official funding rules (as a company, you can only apply for funding if you plan to commercialise the results, and you are not supposed to make a profit from the project itself). In practice, the project officers seem to tolerate these businesses - for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can such a company be started (nearly) from scratch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need a reasonable amount of seed money, as the H2020 rules require proof that an organization applying for grants has enough financial stability to likely survive over the typically 3-year project duration. I know from one startup that wanted to participate in a project (for actual technology reasons) which was in fact struggling to cross this hurdle. However, if you have the required seed funding, I see no reason why you would not be able to start such a business. Whether it is a smart business idea is a different question, given that you are basically living off of a loophole in the current funding practices, and you can never tell how long this loophole will stay open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just saw that I missed this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be feasible to request funds to continue the development of this PoC (still very far from a commercial product) as a start-up or that simply doesn't make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, at least in Europe there are funding sources for exactly this kind of case. You should inform yourself about the concept of Technology Readiness Levels (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/conferences/2013/energy_infoday/pdf/session_3_summary_of_the_calls_open_in_2014_-_philippe_schild.pdf&quot;&gt;TRLs&lt;/a&gt;, slide 4), and the different kinds of funding available for each TRL. If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earto.eu/fileadmin/content/01_Seminars___Conferences/AC_2013/2013_PRESENTATIONS/6.SeanMcCarthy_Getting_Ready_for_Horizon_2020__Hyperion__EARTO_Conference.pdf&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt; and go to slide 32, there is an overview over different funding instruments in H2020 depending on the maturity of the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T11:09:13.083" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T11:09:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23658" CreationDate="2014-06-20T07:57:00.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @dmitry-savostyanov in that you should do what's best for your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've come to hear something interesting and if your work changed, then that seems to indicate that information on why and how it changed would be very relevant to their interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In CS, conference papers have a different status from conference papers or abstracts in other fields: they're long, they are actually considered publications, they're usually not published before the event, and most people in the audience will not have read them.&#xA;So your audience probably won't be surprised to hear something that's not in the paper.&#xA;On the other hand, if you really pique their interest, they may read your paper and feel disoriented or disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say report on the best results you have while being clear about what they'll find in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10633" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T07:57:00.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23591" CreationDate="2014-06-20T08:00:58.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any field it is unacceptable to have a paper published twice. Therefore, you should look at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which kind of publication conference has. If it is a formal one, with a known (or even less known) publisher, ISBN, indexing - then it counts like a publication and you cannot publish it as it is in a journal. If those are abstracts proceedings, or sth printed just for distribution to the conference/workshop participants - it should be safe to submit it somewhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journal/Conference requirements - in most cases it will be specified that they look for novel papers, not published and not under submission somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most conference publishers (but it is more complicated in your case, as you publish proceedings of best papers in journal, not in proceedings book) would allow you to submit significantly revised/extended paper to a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it is probably best to contact the conference organizers and check if any formal publication planned and if your paper is selected for this publication (if it is not clear from the conference website and reviews). And do not submit to a journal before you clarify all those things - as you can get your paper retracted as double submission, with your department being informed about this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T08:00:58.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23699" CreationDate="2014-06-20T08:11:40.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Stephan's answer, most university IRB's have specific protocols for exploratory research which does not involve going through the full IRB panel. Such things are variously named (with various levels of fact-checking and paper work):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exemption from IRB.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expedited IRB.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irb.cornell.edu/forms/&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; relevant link to get your started. Moreover, you can always file for amendments or extensions to your existing approved IRB protocol which are usually granted pretty quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my advisers always told me to have your IRB bases covered. You never know when or if you could be scientifically audited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T08:11:40.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23654" CreationDate="2014-06-20T08:41:54.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK and US have fairly substantial differences in their underlying educational philosophies. In my field, in the US Masters degree programs are generally one or two years long and include both course work and research in equal proportions. In the UK, Masters degree programs are a year long and have little to no research requirements. As for the level that the taught components of the programs are taught at, they are pretty similar across the two countries using similar textbooks and covering similar amounts of material in terms of both breadth and depth. The US and UK institutions I worked for accepted students from both countries and while international students often have more difficulties than home students, it is not obvious to me that going UK-US or US-UK is easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the difference between a US and a UK Bachelors degree. Final year classes taught in both countries again use similar textbooks and cover similar amounts of material in terms of both breadth and depth. In my experience, there does not seem to be a substantial difference between students coming out of US and UK institutions in regards to their preparation for graduate school. That said, there are substantial differences in these students. The US system provides much more breadth of education (e.g., foreign language requirements and general education requirements) that are absent from UK universities. I have never heard an admissions committee member in the sciences argue that student X is is more likely to succeed than student Y because student X is competent in a foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T08:41:54.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23693" CreationDate="2014-06-20T09:07:24.803" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now you are a postdoc and not a graduate student anymore. As such, you will have many research ideas, that you will not have the time to implement yourself. So, it is time for you to start delegating this work to &quot;less experienced&quot; workforce than you. That means undergraduate, master or PHD students. So, you should discuss it with your advisor that you have a new idea and that you are planning to propose a new undergraduate or MSc thesis. Perhaps he might even propose, working with a graduate student who is a bit stuck at his current stage of his / her PHD, so working in your new idea might be beneficial to both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any of these cases, co-authorship issues should be discussed early and thorough. For undergraduate, MSc students usually the assumption is that they do most of the work (it is their thesis after all) but you write the paper and you get to be first author. For teaming with PHD students, things are a little bit trickier, so these issues should be discussed in detail, BEFORE the cooperation begins. Also, make sure that your PI is OK not to be included in the subsequent publication (since this is your idea after all). Of course, if you want to include your PI in your &quot;additional&quot; publication then by all means, go ahead (this will also help you bend his objections about the time you will spend on your new project). But if you do not, make sure you discuss it before doing it, so you will not get into hot water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scheme, not only you can multiply the number of your publications more easily and faster but also you help other people, who might be your future collaborators. So, you really have nothing to lose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T13:00:00.910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T13:00:00.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T09:50:32.827" Score="17" ViewCount="2976" Body="&lt;p&gt;My area is mathematics. I have just found another proof of the main theorem in my paper. It is slightly more elegant than the previous proof that I wrote, but the idea is very different. When submitting this paper, can I include two proof in the paper, or must I select only one? Personally, I don’t want to delete either of them, but I don’t know how the editor will deal with this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17682" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T14:33:43.983" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T21:37:14.693" Title="I found another proof of my theorem. Can I present two different proofs in the paper?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23710" CreationDate="2014-06-20T10:06:44.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very much understand your personal satisfaction here - it is a pleasure for a mathematician to &quot;cross-proof&quot; a result by two different methods.  But what is best for your readers? Are both of the proofs equally aesthetically pleasing and easy to comprehend? Are the ideas behind them really significantly different? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to discuss your proofs with a supervisor or senior colleagues, probably on a local seminar in your group. Collect their opinions on which proof is better and why. Then think again and maybe it will be easier to see which one is preferable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T10:06:44.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23710" CreationDate="2014-06-20T11:28:45.363" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the two proofs are sufficiently different, then it's entirely reasonable to include both of them in your paper.  You might, however, want to think first about whether the proofs might actually lead (easily) to different generalizations of your theorem.  If they do, then you get two benefits: It's then clear that the two proofs are genuinely different. And you have some more general results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T11:28:45.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23710" CreationDate="2014-06-20T11:51:50.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As another strategy, I suggest that first explain one of the proofs which has more consistency with other contents of your paper and then briefly outline your other proof (maybe in a remark after your theorem). In this way, the reader easily reads one proof and has the option to consider another proof too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T11:51:50.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23691" CreationDate="2014-06-20T12:49:44.813" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/&quot;&gt;Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)&lt;/a&gt; is an attempt to create such a list for all fields, including the social sciences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/search&quot;&gt;search function&lt;/a&gt; that lets you drill down to specific fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T12:49:44.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23691" CreationDate="2014-06-20T13:09:58.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest going about this a slightly different way. The reputation of journals derives from views of scholars in a particular discipline. There are many closed access journals that are not very reputable and many open access journals that are reputable. You can figure out the ones that are reputable by looking at three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What journals are being cited in other journals of known reputation? Journals that get citations in other journals are likely to be publishing decent research. This is not a guarantee, of course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is publishing in the journal? Reputable scholars tend to publish in reputable outlets. If a journal has prominent scholars publishing good work there, it's probably a decent journal. This is not a guarantee, of course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who sponsors and publishes the journal? Reputable journals (especially in the social sciences) tend to be published by or endorsed by scholarly associations. This is not a guarantee, of course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, rather than trying to find a list of reputable journals, think about how you would evaluate any particular journal. If you find correct answers to any of the above questions, there is a good sign it is a reputable journal since the idea of &quot;reputation&quot; is a social construction that reflect precisely the above criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T13:09:58.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16870" CreationDate="2014-06-20T13:33:30.160" Score="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to predict how this will develop in the future. As is, I have yet to hear any positive success story from my peers. &lt;strong&gt;All I've heard of ResearchGate  are complaints about their invitation spam&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you sign up (or are already signed up), make sure to &lt;strong&gt;carefully check all settings&lt;/strong&gt;. There are some &quot;hidden&quot; settings that will repeatedly send out &quot;Invitations&quot; and even &quot;Invitation reminders&quot; to your peers (make sure to disable this right at signup time, before &quot;claiming&quot; a single paper!). You can imagine that if your peer gets a dozen of them each week, he will get annoyed. And ReseachGate uses your name for the invitation, so he will &lt;strong&gt;get annoyed at you&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before &quot;requesting&quot; a paper on Researchgate, make sure they have signed up&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, use regular email (even better, just use regular email right away!)&#xA;When you request a paper from a non-user, they will be sent an &lt;em&gt;invitation letter&lt;/em&gt;, but they &lt;strong&gt;cannot answer without joining&lt;/strong&gt;: researchgate does not include contact information in your request!?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I have the impression that ResearchGate is mostly used by students, not by established researchers. Therefore, do not expect much high-quality interactions to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my peers that were on RG once, seem to have left. This is not a good sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't manage to get high-quality interactions happen soon, their name may end up remaining associated with spam. They may have been too aggressive at boosting their user numbers quickly. The &lt;strong&gt;overall idea is good&lt;/strong&gt;, but they need to find a way to get &lt;em&gt;quality contributions, not only quantity&lt;/em&gt;. As is, I see them only strong on the quantitative side so far...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, in my opinion there is one thing really important for the visibility of your research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it available. Publish with open access, or a publisher where you can put the preprint on your webpage. Make sure that &lt;strong&gt;Google Scholar indexes&lt;/strong&gt; it, because that is what &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; I know uses for searching literature. You must get Google Scholar to return a PDF link for your article.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it available. Also put data sets, detailed description, source code, etc. on your web page; offer collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make it easy for others to build upon your work, they are more likely to do so. In particular, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; make it easier to build upon your work, than on alternatives. Making a RG profile does not really help; effectively it just means your data is spread to one more site. Instead, put a lot of information on your homepage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yann.lecun.com/&quot;&gt;Here is an example.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;I'm convinced that one of the reasons why he has been very successful is that you can download data and software and tutorials right on his homepage&lt;/strong&gt;. Compare to his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yann_Lecun&quot;&gt;ResearchGate profile&lt;/a&gt; (I was even surprised he has one)  - it's a dead duck, absolutely useless. A Google Scholar Profile may be much more useful, as it will be linked from any article, making it &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt; for people to reach your other publications. Again, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WLN3QrAAAAAJ&quot;&gt;same example&lt;/a&gt;: Google Scholar does a much better job at providing an automatic publication list for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, Google Scholar is a must, &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; the profile will make it easier to get updated on your other publications. I visit Scholar profiles quite often; in particular to see the latest and the most cited work of an author of which I &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; have discovered a good article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17690" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T20:59:24.717" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:59:24.717" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26643" CreationDate="2014-06-20T13:51:46.030" Score="16" ViewCount="2118" Body="&lt;p&gt;The open access publishing world has a number of predatory publishers. Many know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/&quot;&gt;Beall's list&lt;/a&gt; which identifies publishers and journals that engage in questionable practices. The existence of these questionable publishers and journals makes choosing a quality open access journal difficult. Consortia like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/&quot;&gt;Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/&quot;&gt;Directory of Open Access Journals&lt;/a&gt; seem to promise a level of scrutiny. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/membership/members/&quot;&gt;members of OASPA&lt;/a&gt; include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://royalsocietypublishing.org/institutional-membership&quot;&gt;Royal Society&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/community/&quot;&gt;PLoS&lt;/a&gt; and while I cannot find a link confirming it, it seems like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/member/american-institute-of-physics/&quot;&gt;AIP&lt;/a&gt; is also a member. To me these are above the board legitimate and well respected publishers. There are also members, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/member/frontiers/&quot;&gt;Frontiers&lt;/a&gt;, that I am not sure how I feel about. I like that Frontiers is trying to push an innovative model of publishing, but I am not sure that I want them to have a large say in defining &quot;good&quot; open access publishing practices. Finally, there are members like &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/member/mdpi-ag/&quot;&gt;MDPI&lt;/a&gt; which Beall classifies as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/18/chinese-publishner-mdpi-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers/&quot;&gt;predatory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/member/hindawi-publishing-corporation/&quot;&gt;Hindawi&lt;/a&gt; which while it never made Beall's list, did make his &lt;a href=&quot;http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~jbeall/Beall%27s%20List%20of%20Predatory,%20Open-Access%20Publishers%202012.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;watch list&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I have two questions. First, why do these consortia affiliate themselves with questionable publishers? Second, how can the academic community pressure open access consortia to consider their members carefully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:12:16.207" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T12:25:36.080" Title="Why do open access consortia affiliate themselves with questionable publishers" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23722" CreationDate="2014-06-20T14:34:48.127" Score="4" ViewCount="5663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing a paper that I think introduces a novel concept.  There are some related factors (perhaps even foundational factors) that should be worked out in order to perfect my idea.  I plan on putting these ideas in a 'Future Work' section of the paper.  However, I have no interest in actually doing anything I put there.  After this paper, I want to move on to another topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include those ideas in 'Future Work'?  Should I state that I have no plan to work on them myself, so as not to leave anyone interested in the work 'hanging'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T14:40:42.950" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:47:00.170" Title="Should I include 'future work' in a paper, when I don't intend to do that future work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23745" CreationDate="2014-06-20T14:36:35.403" Score="7" ViewCount="5382" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you as professors would prefer to be informed in this case? That is, how to turn down a Postdoc fellowship offer that you have already signed a contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason in my case is I get an even better offer at another fellowship foundation. But the fact that I contacted the professor, we applied for the fellowship together, I got it and accepted it, make me feel quite awkward... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17695" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T10:00:23.993" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T10:00:23.993" Title="How to turn down a Postdoc scholarship offer after signing a contract" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23720" CreationDate="2014-06-20T14:39:04.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how you phrase it.  Do not write &lt;em&gt;This will be shown in a subsequent paper&lt;/em&gt;.  Do write &lt;em&gt;This and this still needs to be done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is very informative to inform the audience of the next steps that need to be taken in this research.  For example, shows you are aware of shortcomings of work done so far, and it can be useful to refer to in funding applications.  However, there can be &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; reasons why next steps are not actually carried out.  It might be your personal interest, but more often than not, project-specific funding runs out, PhD students or postdocs finish and move to new institutes, etcetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly true for PhD theses.  The final chapter may be full of future work, which, in many cases, is never carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T14:39:04.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23721" CreationDate="2014-06-20T14:49:46.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main thing is &quot;as quickly as possible.&quot;  You can either call or email, but don't wait any significant amount of time.  It will be awkward, but too bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I'll note that when I wrote this answer, I think the question didn't specify that an actual contract had been signed, so I assumed that the OP just meant an informal acceptance.  Obviously, once the contract is signed, you're bound to follow its terms, and as Pete and xLeitix say, there are certainly ethical considerations beyond that.  I would probably state things in somewhat less absolute terms; while I think Steven Jessop is missing some aspects of academic culture, I think the question of precisely where this obligation ends is a good one.  Does signing the contract create a moral obligation to do the full term of the fellowship no matter what the contract says?  I don't think that would be most people's position.  xLeitix says it's OK to quit after a year but not immediately, (which I think is mostly a convention based on the fact that in the US jobs go on an annual cycle, so a year later an employer can position themselves better).  What about after six months?  The very fact that there isn't a precise answer shows that it is a judgement call, but you do need to exercise judgement in a way the OP seems not to be.  You are, when considering a change like this, obligated to assess what kind of damage doing this switch would cause (for example, to the research of your prospective sponsor) and judge whether the benefit to you really outweighs this.  It certainly hasn't yet sounded to me like it would. &lt;strong&gt;END EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than just bluntly specifying that you're backing out, you may want to lay out the situation with the first professor, and ask if there is a way to reconcile things (maybe you can spend some time in professor 1's lab with funding from the second fellowship?).  I think it will &quot;save face&quot; if you can think of it as some kind of hybrid of the two positions rather than you simply dropping the first professor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also think carefully about just how much better the other fellowship is.  I'm not an absolutist about changing your mind after accepting a job, but it is a pretty major step and one only to be taken if the other possibility is &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; better.  You run the risk of seriously burning bridges, especially if you don't have a compelling reason (say, strong personal considerations, or a permanent job vs. a temporary one).  You don't indicate what the difference is, but if it's just a bit more money or slightly better location, then you should probably just suck it up and stick with your original commitment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T17:00:59.403" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T17:00:59.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16870" CreationDate="2014-06-20T15:32:54.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; is pretty much like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linkedin&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;. I prefer Academia.edu because it doesn't send me an email every time someone looks at my profile. At the same time, Academia.edu doesn't look as visually aesthetic as ResearchGate. On the other hand, you have Linkedin which is for professionals, not really academics. However, a lot of academics are now setting up their profiles because Linkedin is most likely the first place employers or other researchers go first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it's not bad to have an account in as many places as possible to allow as may people as possible to see your profile. You can also sign up on Google Scholar and it will assign your papers to your profile, or you can insert papers that Google does not find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it's entirely up to you and how you want your information to be spread!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17698" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T13:54:52.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T13:54:52.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23747" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:21:11.823" Score="9" ViewCount="13256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, personally, have never see any authors in IEEE transactions listed as &quot;co-first&quot; authors, as such&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;John Smith†, Bill Lee†, and Boss James&#xA;...&#xA;† These two authors contribute equally to the work.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this allowed in IEEE transactions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:36:08.730" Title="Do IEEE transactions allow for any &quot;co-first authors&quot;?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23721" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:22:36.743" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to turn down a Postdoc scholarship offer that you already signed the contract for&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am all but a hardliner when it comes to such topics, but signing a contract and then not taking the offer is a major breach of trust. This is not &quot;close&quot; to burning bridges. Unless the other side is the most understanding person in the world, this is going to go down &lt;strong&gt;really badly&lt;/strong&gt; with the other side, and mark you forever as an utterly unreliable person, whose word cannot be trusted even after the paperwork is already filed. Frankly, if it is just about location and salary, I would strongly advise against changing your mind. The only time when this &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position instead of a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Edits:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some more discussion, reading Pete's answer, and a good night's sleep, here are some additional clarifications to my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve Jossup: &lt;em&gt;&quot;I wonder whether they're working on the assumption that in a typical contract the questioner has already contracted to work for the full duration of the scholarship without notice period&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that's not my assumption at all. I think it is perfectly ok to quit a two-year scholarship after one year, because something better has come up. However, to me there is a world of a difference between quitting after a year and effectively handing in your notice before your job even started. I do remember that there is a question here somewhere about what the shortest acceptable timeframe for quitting a postdoc is, but I can't find it currently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the comparison between postdocs and professional contractors is in this context quite helpful. I have been an software engineering contractor for a short time, and I would have &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; signed all the legalese paperwork for a customer and then immediately backed out because a better-paying customer came around. As a contractor, like a postdoc, you are living off of reputation, and this kind of thing is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; good for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Isn't there a chance that the other person would be ok with the OP cancelling the deal?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is. Maybe the OP's original postdoc advisor does not care so much about this position anyway. Maybe the original postdoc advisor is really just that happy for the OP that he found a better post. However, in all the discussion so far, the OP has to the best of my knowledge never indicated that he plans on &lt;em&gt;discussing&lt;/em&gt; with the other person. This question is all about &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; the other person that he has changed his mind. There's an important difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephan Tarasov: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Why should it &quot;could be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position&quot;?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really just an amendment of the previous point. Even if you get offered a faculty position, you should not just &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the other person that you're out after all. You explain your situation to them carefully, and maybe they will understand and you will be able to renege without burning any bridges. The probability of the other person being understanding is much higher if the other post is objectively much better than the original one, which would be the case if comparing a tenure-track position and a postdoc position. A better-paying postdoc does not qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephan Tarasov: &lt;em&gt;&quot;this should not hurt anyone!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure why you would say that. The other person thought she is going to have an additional postdoc for a specified time frame, and now she isn't. How is that not very bad for her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephan Tarasov: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Are you saying you keeping all of your promises all the time?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say I try to. Anyway, a &lt;strong&gt;signed contract&lt;/strong&gt; is certainly more than just a promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I feel like I have said all there is to say on this matter. Still, I have created &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15245/getting-out-of-a-signed-contract&quot;&gt;a chat room&lt;/a&gt; for this question, and should the OP or anybody else want to discuss this issue further, I invite you to discuss it in the chat room. As the commenting escalated a bit last night (surely my fault as well), I will not be answering any comments here directly anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T07:51:24.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T07:51:24.000" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23756" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:44:05.627" Score="11" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23725/do-ieee-transactions-allow-for-any-co-first-authors&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5867/practical-implications-of-noting-equally-contributing-authors?rq=1&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I continue my ongoing quest of understanding the concept of &lt;strong&gt;co first-authorship&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In which fields does this notion even exist?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the notion exists in your field, do recruiting committees (e.g., faculty search committees) actually care about this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background of the second part of this question is that it seems to me that a little footnote in a paper should be easy to miss for a committee, and even if a committee becomes aware of the claimed dual first-authorship, I find it hard to believe that the paper will actually be counted as another &quot;first-authored&quot; paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T19:57:03.747" Title="Do evaluation / recruiting committees respect &quot;co first authors&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23739" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:59:18.877" Score="21" ViewCount="17571" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been many questions in the past about choosing an affiliation to write on your papers. This one has a nuance that is a bit different from having two jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently between two jobs (PhD student and postdoc) and currently not academically affiliated to either. I am currently writing a paper and I am trying to figure out if I put my PhD affiliation or my postdoc affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the PhD affiliation is because a lot of the work was done there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the postdoc affiliation is because then anyone could contact me for correspondence with respect to the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel there must be a hard and fast rule to this, so I was hoping someone could enlighten me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:00:48.027" Title="Academic affiliation on papers written while between jobs" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-04T18:21:03.873" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23728" CreationDate="2014-06-20T17:02:51.650" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest using the postdoc affiliation (precisely for the reason you mention and also because you will probably still be there while the paper will be reviewed) and thanking for support the university where you did your Ph.D. in the acknowledgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T17:02:51.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23676" CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:46:49.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be important to understand that grants for universities are often given to support them as teaching institutions, even if the grant itself is only about research. This means, even if grant seems focused exclusively on research, it is targeted to the educational institution of the supporting country and would not be given to the commercial company, or educational institutions of another country, event if these would be capable of delivering the comparable scientific results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, while it is not uncommon for a company to join a university on some shared grant, I have never seen a company that would make its major income on such grants. However there are many companies that make business on assisting in research (like sequencing DNA, building curated databases or the like). They major clients are other companies but some richer universities may also order such services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T19:46:49.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23564" CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:54:15.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you own the code, you can use dual licensing model, offering paid commercial version next to the GPL version. While not very respected by GPL enthusiasts, this dual licensing model is not uncommon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of companies really do not like GPL, even if the license terms would permit them to use the software as they plan to use it no problem (GPL is mostly about sharing the modified source code). This can be used to persuade them to buy a commercial license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T19:54:15.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23720" CreationDate="2014-06-20T20:48:01.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of having a 'Future work' section, you could, under the 'Conclusion' section, discuss briefly in what ways you believe the current work can be improved. You do not have to state that you have no plan to work on the ideas yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T20:48:01.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23728" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:11:27.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the affiliation should be the place where you did most of the work that leads to the paper. When I read a paper, I immediately assume that the work presented in the paper was carried out when the author was affiliated with the affiliation listed there. In your case, it would be your PhD affiliation. If you put your postdoc affiliation, it would give the wrong impression that the paper is a product of your postdoc, and your postdoc affiliation, rather than your PhD affiliation, wrongly gets the credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a paper published takes time. By the time it gets accepted, you might have started your postdoc. Then you should also include your postdoc affiliation for correspondence purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, for example, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ncomms/authors/submit.html#Submission-policies&quot;&gt;guide to authors&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Nature Communications&lt;/em&gt;, where it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journals/applied-energy/0306-2619/guide-for-authors#38000&quot;&gt;guide for authors&lt;/a&gt; from an &lt;em&gt;Elsevier&lt;/em&gt; journal, which seems to be the standard across &lt;em&gt;Elsevier&lt;/em&gt; journals, where it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T22:00:48.027" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:00:48.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23710" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:37:14.693" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three alternatives here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Include the original proof only, perhaps with a remark that you later found a different proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Include the more recent proof only, perhaps with a remark that you had earlier found a different proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Include both proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three of these are certainly acceptable, and depending upon the circumstances any one of them may be best.  There is a lot to say here about the nuances of various situations: here is an incomplete discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When might 1) be best?  Suppose you have already written the paper and that you have been planning to submit it at a certain near date (and perhaps you have received funding for this work).  Suppose that both proofs are relatively long and that including both of them would make the paper close to twice as long.  (In fact, the second proof uses material which is not yet present in the paper, including both could more than double the length of the paper.)  Suppose that the second proof, although &quot;slightly more elegant&quot;, does not have any other specific advantage to it, e.g. no further applications that you can see.  Or suppose that it suggests to you a new possible approach or avenue, but you haven't developed it much and would like to spend more time on this than you can spare in delaying the submission of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it is plausible to just submit your paper as is, possibly with the remark about the second proof.  Math papers have a temporality to them.  By that I mean that although it might be intellectually more satisfying to work out every aspect of a single problem before you submit a paper on it, in practice this is almost never possible, because (i) mathematicians, like other professionals, need to show evidence of work done and put out product in a reasonably regular manner, and (ii) mathematics is potentially infinite: there may well &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be a natural stopping point.  Andrew Wiles settled for a special case of the Taniyma-Shimura Conjecture when he must have suspected that a few more years of work could yield the whole thing.  Pierre Deligne wrote a paper solving the Weil Conjectures and then another solving them in a better way (though the first was good enough!) six years later.  What chance do the rest of us have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When might 2) be best?  Suppose you've already written up the second proof and/or you know it would be acceptably easy and fast to do so.  Suppose the second proof significantly shortens the length of the paper.  Then, in confluence with the rest of the circumstances above, it is plausible to submit the paper with the second proof only (possibly with a remark...).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, space in strong math journals is at quite a premium.  Journals like papers which have &quot;no fat&quot;, and they especially like short papers which get in, prove a strong result, and get out.  My best publication is five pages long (for the non-mathematicians: this is really short for a contemporary math paper) and it was accepted as is with absolutely no revisions requested or critical comments made.  They often don't like papers which have &quot;too much exposition&quot; or &quot;too little content for their length&quot;.  I hope you can hear my eyes rolling as I type out these sentiments, but I'm just telling it like I think it is.  If you write a paper which is &quot;twice as long with the same content&quot;, then you risk a journal liking it less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always try to publish the other proof later: one point in favor of withholding the better proof is that it will be easier to publish it later.  It will be hard to publish a &quot;less elegant proof that I found earlier&quot; in a journal of the same stature as your original publication, but there are other venues for mathematical content.  For instance you could put a longer version of the paper on your own website where you include both proofs -- or, if it seems preferable, a &quot;supplement&quot; to the paper containing the first proof.  How important is this work to you and to the community?  Maybe some day you will be teaching an advanced course and/or writing a book: that's a great place to include both proofs.  Or maybe this work is just one stop for you on the road of mathematical research, and it happens that you were perceptive enough to find two proofs and don't feel the need to publicize both of them.  (But please read the second bullet point.)  There are quite a lot of &quot;less elegant proofs&quot; that the rest of us do not see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When might 3) be best?  If both proofs are relatively short, easy and fast to write up, and do not add substantially to the length of the paper.  Especially, if the proofs really do look different from each other and/or when it seems like each may have its own applications.  Or if the difference between the two proofs is itself interesting or is something you'd like to receive feedback on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me end with two (relatively!) quick comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have recently been in a somewhat similar situation.  About six weeks ago I submitted a paper -- relatively quickly after starting work in a certain subfield, for certain reasons that I needn't go into -- for publication.  About three weeks ago I found a different proof of the main theorem, say A, of this paper, which all in all I like better: it leads relatively easily to a stronger result B.  I am not completely decided on what to do -- certainly it depends on what happens with the submitted paper -- but I am leaning towards the first option.  One reason for this is one I didn't mention above because it didn't seem to apply to the OP: there are coauthors involved, and that makes the prospect of slowing down / jeopardizing the acceptance of the paper less appealing.  Another reason is that the second proof opens up the possibility of further improvements on Y: in fact, about two weeks ago, after doing some further reading suggested by one of my coauthors, I was able to get an improvement C.  I am pretty confident that adding an extra ingredient (which I have not yet mastered) would lead to a further improvement D, and there are still &lt;em&gt;further&lt;/em&gt; improvements E that I aspire to but do not yet know whether they are possible.  Well, how many times should I rewrite one paper?  I also freely admit that researchwise I do A and then B,C, probably D and possibly E, then I am thinking in terms of multiple publications rather than just one.  And conversely: B and C are pretty good, but I would like to have the chance to see whether I can get to D and E before I publish B and C.  These are not easy decisions: perhaps I'll change my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publications aside, the experience of discovering a second proof of a theorem is a really important and positive one for a mathematician, more so than senior mathematicians seem to successfully communicate to our students and junior colleagues.  I have been thinking recently about the &quot;bipartite structure of theorems and proofs&quot;: roughly, proofs are viewed as being secondary objects to theorems, but I think that rather both are basic, and the incidence relation between them is a key one in the traversal of the mathematical landscape.  If you two different proofs of a theorem, &lt;em&gt;try to figure out whether they are actually the same&lt;/em&gt;.  If they are, then you'll have made a new (to you, at least) connection between two things you already knew: again, this may not sound so sexy but I claim that it really is.  Or if they aren't, then (well, it doesn't follow from graph theory, but I claim that's far more likely than not) you've actually proved at least one further theorem, which you should carefully write down and then look for alternate proofs of.  And so forth!  (Of course, now that you've heard my thoughts about this you know &lt;em&gt;how hard&lt;/em&gt; my eyes roll when journals say that they are interested in new results, not &quot;merely&quot; new proofs.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T21:37:14.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23728" CreationDate="2014-06-20T22:02:56.477" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be possible to list both affiliations.  While I have not worried about this myself, I do remember going to a seminar at UPenn in the summer between my PhD and my postdoc.  My introduction included both affiliations.  I was a little surprised (and pleased) by that and kept an ear out for it afterwards: it is a reasonably common thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you list affiliations at all?  Here are some reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It gives readers a chance to contact you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) Some employers require or request that you mention them.  If they are providing you with financial support, this seems reasonable.  (Especially if you signed a contract saying you will!)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) You give yourself a veneer of legitimacy/prestige that can (unfortunately) help your submission get taken more seriously.  Often by doing this you telegraph to insiders who your famous thesis advisor is, which could (unfortunately) get you more alacrity and respect in the processing of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address these: I think 1) is almost obsolete.  If you are an untenured academic, you should have a webpage.  Then anyone who reads one of your papers types &quot;T....K.... math&quot; into google, and presto, they can contact you.  By the way, if you are transitioning from one temporary job to another, then neither affiliation is going to be very useful in the long term.  I have papers which tell readers that they can reach me at &quot;Montreal&quot; and &quot;MSRI&quot;: the latter might have been true for a month or two, but no longer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) is serious of course, but if you are between affiliations you are probably not being financially supported by either one.  It may be though that you are just putting the finishing touches on work that you did at the first institution.  That's a good reason to list the first institution.  The fact that it doesn't make much sense to list an institution that you are no longer affiliated with &lt;em&gt;instead of&lt;/em&gt; an institution that you are currently affiliated with is then a good reason to try to list the second institution as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Well, what's more prestigious than any one academic institution?  The answer seems obvious...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me briefly respond to something written by @adipro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you put your postdoc affiliation, it would give the wrong impression that the paper is a product of your postdoc, and your postdoc affiliation, rather than your PhD affiliation, wrongly gets the credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP is a mathematician, and math papers are not products of their institutions.  Listing an institutional affiliation means exactly that: you have (or had, during part of the period when the work was done or the paper was written) an affiliation with that institution.  (It doesn't even &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; mean that you had financial support from them, although that is usually the case.) None of the institutions at which I was a postdoc can or do claim any ownership or credit for any of the papers I wrote while I was there.  They get to record for all time that they had the good judgment to hire someone who went on to a tenure-track job, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dms.umontreal.ca/~andrew/QVNTS/Former%20Postdocs%202011.html&quot;&gt;which one of them does&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:02:56.477" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23725" CreationDate="2014-06-20T22:19:52.220" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seen co-first authors either ... you can use alphabetic ordering to indicate more-or-less equal contributions, or you can use partial alphabetic ordering (the first group is alphabetically ordered and the last group is not), or non-alphabetic to indicate that the first author contributed the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the system only works when co-authors are honest to the public about their contribution.  If you're worried that co-authors will cheat you out of credit, you probably should not be working with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:19:52.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23727" CreationDate="2014-06-20T22:26:03.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not seen co first-authorship in engineering or computer science papers.  That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any committee can find reasons to accept or reject a candidate.  Ultimately, if you have an advocate, it will be his/her job to find out and explain your contribution to the work.  It is much more important to develop a local advocate than it is to have high numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authorship deals only with what happens &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the paper is published.  However, what you do after publication (e.g. give talks, produce extensions) is no less important in cementing your ultimate contribution to the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:26:03.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T23:15:26.363" Score="17" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first year grad student with an expunged felony in the state of Arkansas. I am looking for advice on if and how I should communicate this with my adviser. The felony is due to a drug crime and took place ~decade ago. I ask this because through out my academic career I may need to go to conferences in other countries and this may affect my ability to get through customs and enter those countries hosting the conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for other students who were in the same boat, professors who have dealt with similar situations, and in general opinions from advisers on how they would like to be approached in situations such as this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the communities knowledge in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17713" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T21:18:01.660" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:18:01.660" Title="Advice wanted concerning students who have had run ins with the law." Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23743" CreationDate="2014-06-21T02:00:18.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to explain the details.  Here is the most I would do.  If the situation comes up (e.g., your advisor suggests you attend a conference that would require international travel you are not comfortable with), tell your advisor how this will affect your professional work: e.g., you would prefer to publish in domestic conferences, you are not comfortable travelling internationally, or whatever the implication is.  Your advisor doesn't need to know the details of why (e.g., that you had a felony).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can always explain these details if you feel comfortable doing so.  That will depend upon the nature of your relationship with your advisor.  But you shouldn't feel like it is mandatory to explain this aspect of your personal history.  This is a professional relationship, and in professional relationships, you only need to provide enough information to allow you to meet your professional obligations and goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, think of it this way.  Why does your advisor need to know?  What will the implications be, in terms of how it will affect his advice to you?  Then think about how to convey the implications without the unnecessary details, and whether there is even any need or value in conveying any information at all.  That might help guide you figure out what to explain.  You might find you never need to explain anything related to this to your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T02:00:18.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23721" CreationDate="2014-06-21T03:37:07.240" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I upvoted both of the other answers, but in my heart I agree with xLeitix: academics live and die by their honor in a much more extreme way than is the norm in the contemporary Western world.  I should admit that my views on this are more absolute than those of &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of my colleagues (with whom I have had occasion to discuss issues of reneging on signed contracts).  When I hear people say that it is okay to behave absolutely unethically -- even illegally, but counting on the fact that your former employer is not going to hunt you down and pursue a surely thankless legal action -- because they have to look out for themselves first, it really worries me.  Such a person is baldly stating that ethics can be thrown out the window when the consequences are important...which is of course the time when ethical considerations matter most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What stops a person who has reneged on a job from reneging on a future job?  What stops them from engaging in unethical academic behavior in any of a hundred different ways?  Beyond the student level, academia is almost entirely self-policing.  In my field, if someone releases a preprint, and I respond by saying that I have independently proved the result but hadn't released it publicly yet, there will be some followup questions and discussion, but unless I give them an excellent reason not to, &lt;em&gt;people will believe me&lt;/em&gt;. In science, every time you write a paper describing an experiment you did, you don't submit a videotape of yourself doing the experiment, you submit a written description of the experiment...&lt;em&gt;and people believe you unless they have an excellent reason not to&lt;/em&gt;.  Whenever you submit a paper, it gets sent to a referee, whom you trust not to try to steal the work.  And so forth: only a small amount of &quot;justified unethical behavior&quot; brings this crashing down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time I was myself in the position of having accepted -- via an email correspondence, not via filling out a contract -- a postdoctoral position.  Just a few days later I got offered another postdoctoral position.  The first position was a great one, but it involved moving to Canada.  The second position was probably even better: it was at a top 10 math department in the US.  (Financially the second position was significantly better.)  But the first position was one that I hadn't even applied for originally; rather, my thesis advisor had made some phone calls and the offer came quickly: people had taken some trouble on my behalf.  What did I do?  I told the people offering me the second job that I was grateful for their offer but had to turn it down because I had already committed to another.  In retrospect, I still feel like the second offer might have been even better for me.  But a tremendously eminent mathematician went on the line and offered me a job when -- for a few days -- no one else would.  Anyone who knows me knows who this person is.  I can be a prickly person at times -- I certainly felt like the &quot;loud American&quot; during my 2.5 years in Canada -- and I imagine that this guy and most of his colleagues know me as slightly eccentric but &lt;em&gt;professionally reliable&lt;/em&gt;.  Having people know you as professionally reliable is really priceless if you plan on staying in the profession: for instance, we later arranged for someone to transfer part of his NSF postdoc from this Canadian department to my own department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do in academia if you want to back out of an agreement?  It's simple: you &lt;em&gt;immediately contact&lt;/em&gt; the party you've made the agreement with, you explain why you want to back out of the agreement, and you see what they have to say about it.  They're not going to be thrilled, but they can convey to you how much hardship they will actually incur by your backing out of the agreement.  If it is only a moderate amount, they will probably give you their blessing and the agreement can be mutually dissolved.  If however backing out of the agreement would turn out to really be a significant, tangible, medium or long-term loss for them, then you should honor it.  The OP has done something in the comments which he surely does not realize sounds absolutely obnoxious to more senior personnel: he's made all kinds of assumptions that his reneging will not be so bad for his employer.  And he's making them in the face of evidence that this employer actually did go to trouble: applying for a fellowship is certainly trouble!  If this is an externally funded position then it cannot easily be filled with someone else, and the faculty supervisor may well already have made plans and committed resources for the OP's arrival.  Or maybe not, of course.  &lt;strong&gt;Ask!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the OP doesn't seem to understand why getting a tenure-track job offer might make a difference.  The difference is that every postdoc wants to get a permanent job eventually, and every postdoctoral supervisor and institution wants that out of their postdocs.  Therefore, if you &lt;strong&gt;ask&lt;/strong&gt; to renege on a postdoctoral job because you'd like to take a tenure track job instead, it is much more likely that the response will be: &quot;Bummer for us, but congratulations for you!&quot; &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Well, can you come work here even for a very short time?  That will inconvenience us minimally, you'll get some further training and experience, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; we'll be able to say that we placed our postdoc in a tenure-track job.  It's a win-win!&quot; It is however still possible that reneging on a postdoc for a tenure-track job may be unacceptable to the employer.  If they tell you that, then you go back to the tenure-track job and say &quot;Look, I &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want this job, but I have some prior commitments.  I am the type of person who honors my prior commitments even when it conflicts with my short-term best interests.  Surely we can work something out?&quot; It is likely that the position can be held open for an extra semester or year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T03:43:55.800" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T03:43:55.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23699" CreationDate="2014-06-21T03:45:33.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submit to a biology education journal and they have just started requiring the IRB number or a letter from your IRB saying the project is exempt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible to get a backwards exemption if your institution is the forgiving type and your protocol is sensible... Getting signed consent and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T03:45:33.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23725" CreationDate="2014-06-21T08:09:25.420" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is allowed. Google scholar is your friend in such cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I employed &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&amp;amp;as_epq=contributed+equally+to+this&amp;amp;as_oq=study+paper+work+article&amp;amp;as_eq=&amp;amp;as_occt=any&amp;amp;as_sauthors=&amp;amp;as_publication=IEEE+Transactions&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_yhi=&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=it&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot;&gt;this query&lt;/a&gt;, which looks for publications with &quot;IEEE Transactions&quot; in them, the text &quot;contributed equally to&quot;, and one in (text | paper | work | article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results show several papers published in IEEE Transactions, which specify multiple equal co-authorship. &lt;em&gt;The way this is specified seems to be non standardized&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNB.2006.875054&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNB.2006.875054&lt;/a&gt; specifies that &quot;The ﬁrst two authors contributed equally to this work.&quot; in the space reserved for details such as when the manuscript was received and revised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TED.2009.2034804&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TED.2009.2034804&lt;/a&gt;, the equal contribution is specified in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT section of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both ways look good to me. The first case is likely achieved by communicating the authors' contribution in the cover letter / space for staff communication. The second case is achieved by simply writing the contribution in the text body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T08:09:25.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23699" CreationDate="2014-06-21T10:07:27.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing involves any real risks to respondents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While potential risks count against approval, no risk doesn't imply  no need for approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., if I'd want to measure native blood cells (no treatment but immediately dilute with physiological NaCl, place under the microscope, measure, and destroy). As for the amount, a drop from the finger-tip is more than enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this*, the &lt;em&gt;safest&lt;/em&gt; possible sample is my own: I cannot infect myself due to the contact with my own blood. Nevertheless, ethics approval does not distinguish &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; the human in question is, and I'm treated the same as any one else: I need approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are even ethical guidelines that just plain forbid this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gre.ac.uk/research/rec/blood-collection-policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1.5 No one should work with his or her own blood.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, for all experiments on students &amp;amp; colleagues there is always the question how to ensure that there is no pressure for them to participate. As this pressure could come from superiors, it logically has to include oneself. IMHO this alone is sufficient to require ethical approval for such experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* things would be &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; different if the sample were cultured or transformations were involved, etc.: there risks would &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; if working with own samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T10:07:27.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23725" CreationDate="2014-06-21T10:08:48.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people use alphabetic sorting of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the first author contributed &quot;most&quot; is a very fragile and questionable approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not even&lt;/em&gt; consistent within a field.&lt;br /&gt; It's largely the personal preference of the supervisor, usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17690" LastEditorUserId="17690" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T00:10:56.187" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T00:10:56.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-21T11:10:41.083" Score="3" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've looked a lot for this kind of question and couldn't find anything, &#xA;I think the answers here could be helpful to schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My collage has problems with it's homework testing system and I'd like to offer them that i'll upgrade or rebuild their testing framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My collage testing method is totally black-box. &#xA;Students write whatever they want as long as they pass the automated tests done on school server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teaching assistant then proofreads all students code commenting on faulty logic and bad practices. The problem is that it's not humanly possible to proofread all this code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think is the best homework testing method that'll encourage &#xA;(or better, &lt;strong&gt;force&lt;/strong&gt;) students to write good code, &#xA;and secondly, as a result, will reduce the teaching assistant proofreading task to a minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--We program in C++ on linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for you comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17720" LastEditorUserId="17720" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T15:15:39.527" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T15:15:39.527" Title="homework testing method for schools - how to encourage good practices and design and reduce reliance on proofreading?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23699" CreationDate="2014-06-21T12:05:42.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with all the posted answers that emphasize adherence to all IRB issues.  I disagree with anything that suggests it is not that important for social science researchers.  Indeed, there are some forms of social science research that is exempt (e.g., use of de-identified and publicly available data sets), but a lot of it must go through the review process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part of your question that has not been answered is the &lt;strong&gt;consequences&lt;/strong&gt; of ignoring IRB.  Federal regulations exist with respect to IRB, so you can be sure that your institution will take it very seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At minimum, you can fully expect an IRB to shut down your program of research if you are in violation of IRB rules and regulations.  This is a very serious issue, and you must adhere to all aspects of IRB throughout your research.  Indeed, it can be very challenging, but the challenges will be far easier to manage than the consequences if you are in violation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in doubt about any IRB issue with your research, talk to your IRB directly.  Do not assume your research is exempt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T12:05:42.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23727" CreationDate="2014-06-21T12:06:06.270" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theoretical computer science and mathematics, authors are (almost) always listed alphabetically. There is simply no such thing as a &quot;first author&quot;, except lexicographically.  Equivalently, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; authors are co-first authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, recruiting committees generally understand and respect this practice, but (at least in computer science, where order by contribution is more common) they do occasionally have to be reminded, especially for candidates whose last names start late in the alphabet.  One sentence in the CV and/or in a recommendation letter usually suffices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-theoretical CS, I have seen CVs that indicated equal contribution of co-authors. Again, one sentence in the CV (&quot;Stars indicate co-authors who contributed equally&quot;) made the notation clear, and the recruiting committee understood and respected it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Ari and gefei say, having a local advocate is &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; more important that having another (co-)first-author paper.  If nobody on the faculty is willing to pound on the table and &lt;em&gt;demand&lt;/em&gt; that you get an interview, you won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T18:24:14.570" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T18:24:14.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23750" CreationDate="2014-06-21T13:06:31.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking for a fully automated code review pipeline, also known as the Holy Grail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Faulty logic:&lt;/strong&gt; this can theoretically be caught by testing. But if it were so easy, software will be bug free. If the assignment is simple enough so that there is one and only one way to do it, you can predict the algorithms, and design corner cases to test for. If there is more than one way (and people, specially beginners &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; find another way, however convoluted), you would have to review them, see which algorithms they are using, and get mean on them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code style:&lt;/strong&gt; there are automated tools to check style and good practices, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cppcheck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cppcheck&lt;/a&gt; but they are quite stupid. Some settings are over zealous, and they are completely unable to see through the general structure, find too long functions, or enforce single responsibility. Plus, they are designed to give suggestions to the programmer, that he will evaluate if appropiate (&quot;do I really need to document this 3 lines long auxiliar function with a perfectly clear name and signature?&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in general, no, that is not possible. The only way I can think is to make it easy to expand your testing and evaluation framework. When the TA finds a mistake in a program, a test shall be added, and all of them will go through the pipeline, and that becomes one less thing to check for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To enforce good practices, the best I can think of is to make the application grow assignment after assignment. If it is poorly coded, expanding and maintaining it will be a major effort, and the benefit of good practices will become obvious. Building larger code bases is, in my opinion, the only way one can really understand and believe why patterns and conventions are useful and not just the product of some picky guys with OCD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can cheat. For example, you can manually thoroughly check the submissions with lowest style scoring that pass all the tests (supposing they would be the ones more poorly coded), and find their corner cases where they would fail and add them to your battery of tests. This is unfair, though, as you are targeting your punishment to specific submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T13:06:31.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-06-21T14:27:33.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You did not mention your field of study, but this works pretty well at least in computer science. Most institutions grant their students disk space for a personal university homepage, usually available via address like &lt;a href=&quot;http://institution.edu/~username/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://institution.edu/~username/&lt;/a&gt;. Now, all you need to do is to ask the students to provide each of their weekly/monthly/whatever answers in a zip-file at their personal homepage in a specific format, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://institution.edu/~username/course/week1.zip&#xA;http://institution.edu/~username/course/week2.zip&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the deadline for returning the answers has passed, you just run a simple shell script like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;for STUDENT in ($cat ./students.txt)&#xA;do&#xA;    mkdir $STUDENT&#xA;    wget http://institution.edu/~$STUDENT/course/week1.zip&#xA;    mv week1.zip ./$STUDENT/week1.zip&#xA;    unzip ./$STUDENT/week1.zip&#xA;    echo $STUDENT &amp;gt;&amp;gt; returned.txt&#xA;end&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the file students.txt has one username on a line, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;john_smith&#xA;mary_jones&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you will have the files neatly organized, and a text file &quot;returned.txt&quot; having the names of the students who returned an answer, which can be emailed to the course mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastEditorUserId="10421" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T14:34:22.403" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T14:34:22.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23727" CreationDate="2014-06-21T14:48:52.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen co-first authors in the social sciences, but it is not very common.  It is usually indicated in a very small footnote that the &quot;authors contributed equally&quot; or something to that extent.  Given that this practice is the exception than the rule, it is hard to imagine that committees (in the social sciences) will give much attention to this in whatever decision that is being made.  Thus, I am in complete agreement with you that a 'co first-author' paper will actually be counted as a 'first author' paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, co-first authorship doesn't really mean much to me (in the social sciences).  It is hard for me to believe that the contributions of the co-first authors were equal.  Did they really quantify the actual intellectual contribution? Did they really work equally as hard?  Did they really write equally as much?  It would be impossible to balance every aspect of the work, so every co-first authorship paper in the social sciences is based on different divisions of labor, so the title co-first authorship really doesn't mean much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW, I would be very interested in seeing a 'highly cited' paper in the social sciences that is co first-authored.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T14:48:52.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23758" CreationDate="2014-06-21T15:12:49.037" Score="27" ViewCount="7036" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished three years of work in a Ph.D. program. I've published one conference paper as sole author, and have recently sent out another paper to a prestigious conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started a project last October with a professor who does not have anything to do with my dissertation. He asked me early on to do a lot of work so I asked him who is the first author, and he said he would be. I've already written the full literature review for this journal paper, and came up with the framework by myself. He has only advised me on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have a clear idea about my dissertation, and I have to write my proposal and defend it this fall. So, the work with this professor is rather burdensome to me right now. So far, he has not worked on it at all. I've written six or seven out of the 15 pages of the journal paper. The main thing left is data analysis. He wants me to do the data analysis and write it up as well, and recently he also asked me to write introduction of the paper. At this point, I thought, he wants me to write the whole paper, which he can edit at the last moment and become first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this paper does not have anything to do with my dissertation, I do not want to work with this paper anymore. I told him I am busy with my own research, it seems like that he will wait until I finish writing the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? I do not want to cut the relationship but he is asking too much which I think is unethical. Any strategic advice will be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I talked to the professor and said there must have been misunderstanding about the responsibilities as a second author in my part and as a first author in his part. I said that I understood that writing literature review will meet the responsibility as a second author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His brief comment on the e-mail was that he wrote a conference paper already, and this journal paper (that I'm working on) is a developed version of the conference paper. So, he did the major work already for the conference paper that is why he is the first author. And he stated that I am supposed to write a literature review and to do the data analysis for this journal paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK. He has integrity in his position. I remember that he said something like this when we started this paper 10 months ago. But the problem was that his position was not re-enforced again, and the lit review I've done took off to a different terain. That means, I did a lot of creative interpretation of the framework. (Sorry, to technical folks. This is social science study using business management theories. The upfront literature review is very significant. My dissertation uses machine learning and NLP stuff. yes, this paper is unrelated with my dissertation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the reason I'm writing this update is to provide the professor's perspective that I've got to learn recently. So the major lesson I've learn through this experience is to keep reinforcing (in emails) about my understanding of my and his responsibilities on this project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T13:58:54.180" LastActivityDate="2018-03-16T04:24:55.647" Title="What should I do if the first author wants me to write the whole paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-06-21T15:29:36.020" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: Good call to talk about authorship issues at the beginning, rather than only once troubles started! Now authorship issues do occasionally have to be re-negotiated depending on the course the project takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There do seem to be potentially two separate aspects in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. What to do if I have contributed as much as I am willing as a secondary author, yet the first author keeps asking for more?&#xA;- Point out that you have done X, Y and Z, and that you are only willing to do significantly more if you are the first author (fundamental reading + commenting remain unaffected of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. I started a side-project, and I no longer want to work on this AT ALL.&#xA;- Make clear to your co-author that you have no intention to work on this project anymore, and that this pertains to the future, too. Either give them free rein to continue the project without you (either with you on the author list or not, depending on your preferences); OR make sure you are still available for basic reading/commenting, but simply nothing more extensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, if the coauthor shows a significantly stronger reaction than &quot;medium annoyance&quot;, then maintaining a positive relationship to them is futile anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T17:16:36.540" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T17:16:36.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23760" CreationDate="2014-06-21T17:12:06.647" Score="8" ViewCount="2776" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am working towards Master in Computer Science degree, hoping to be done by the end of the year.&#xA;Last month a new professor moved to our University and now there are open Phd positions in his research group. I decided to work on a Master thesis provided by this group, however before starting to work on the master thesis I want to finish my exams. Additionally, I am interested for the Phd positions as I like the area of research, but I believe that it is highly unlikely that the Phd positions will remain open until I am done with the thesis. Having in mind that I have the exams to finish first, it will be ca. 6-7 months from now until I am completely done. And I believe the positions will be filled by then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to proceed now. I think the best asset I have in hand at the moment is the fact that I am going to work my master thesis in the group of this new professor. But other than that, there are some downsides because he does not know me as a student as he just moved to our university. Also, I don't have any publications to impress him, and my grades got slightly worse lately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best thing to do now? There are multiple options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Leave the exams aside; Start working on the thesis, after starting to work on the thesis express interest in the Phd position. Ensure that the work of the thesis is high quality so the Professor is impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Express interest in the Phd position from now. Finish the exams, and then start working on the thesis. During the process improve the grades to impress the Professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dilemma here is, if I wait long to finish everything, by then the places might be gone. On the other side, if I act as soon as possible, I think as if I don't have much in hand to impress the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please consider this question having in my the context of my exact situation and then from a general view point evaluate on what could happen in the typical case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure, here we have more experienced Professors and Graduate student that could provide insightful information and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 1: Additionally, what is the typical time frame needed for a Phd position to be filled, I believe 6 months is more than enough, or?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: What if there is an application deadline? And the deadline is at least 6 months away before you get the Master degree? Is it worth applying? I believe no Professor would wait for a student to get his degree for 6 months and then give him a position? My basic instinct says &quot;go for it&quot; there is nothing you would loose at least you are not going to regret that you didn't do it, however when thinking rationally all the odds seem against&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T17:08:39.717" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T17:08:39.717" Title="Showing interest / Applying for Phd position that has just opened, before finishing Master studies" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23759" CreationDate="2014-06-21T17:54:47.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are currently working on a master's thesis in the group of the professor with whom you'd like to a do a PhD, the best thing to do is &lt;strong&gt;set up an appointment and talk to him.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an advisor, I don't need to have a published paper to see whether someone in my own group is a competent researcher or not. I can see this by interacting with the person, through reading their project updates and emails, and by talking with other the more senior members of the research group (who sometimes will work with the students more closely than I can). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the goal of an advisor is to select people they believe will become excellent researchers rather than simply the &quot;top students,&quot; someone who is an &quot;internal&quot; candidate is often a better option than taking a chance on someone whose work the faculty member hasn't been able to observe directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[That said, however, I think there is also something to be said for considering going somewhere else for a PhD than the place where you did your bachelor's and master's degrees, when it makes sense to do so.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T17:54:47.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23759" CreationDate="2014-06-21T18:25:56.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to the new professor ASAP, since he will be the one to make the decision about admitting you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone moves to a new school/job, they are &quot;unsure&quot; about how they will be accepted at the new place. The best thing you can do is to give him a &quot;welcoming gift&quot; in the form of a student who will do what it takes to get into his group. Assuming that your qualifications are halfway decent, being among the first to welcome him may be all it takes to get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor may well have preferences as to whether you should do your thesis or your exams first. If he expresses a preference, follow that preference in order to &quot;qualify.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, he may say, I'll hold a spot for you until you complete both your thesis and exams. Getting a commitment at this early stage is way different from waiting until you are ready, and applying then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like the airlines; they have a bunch of &quot;cheap seats&quot; for people who buy tickets &quot;early.&quot; If you wait until the day of the flight, you will have to pay &quot;full price.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T18:25:56.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23759" CreationDate="2014-06-21T19:20:33.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends strongly on where the money comes from. I third the advice to talk to the professor in question immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, for example, the answer will partially hinge on whether the money needs to be spent on a project that starts now or soon, say National Science Foundation grant money, or is coming from the professor's startup package and has a much longer or unlimited time horizon. If it's the latter, then they may not be too worried about when you might start, and therefore might be willing to make a commitment on you now for a position in a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T19:20:33.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23727" CreationDate="2014-06-21T19:27:41.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As already said, the notion of fist author barely makes sense in mathematics. It is a common and important notion in (at least some part) of biology, with the additional and complicated provisio that I have heard of second-named-co-first-authors which where really not-as-first-author-than-the-first-author-but-more-than-the-third, even when the names are marked as a balanced co-first-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the second question, you should keep in mind that it is one's job to write one's CV in a way that stresses the important points. So, in addition to underlining one's name in the list of authors for each publication in one's CV (which seems common in the fields where author order matters), I would advise to make it very clear, at one glance, which papers in your publication record are first-authored or co-first-authored (so that they are shown on the same level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are two easy ways to do that (to be adapted if you need to also highlight last-authored papers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you can split your publication list in two, with in the top part all first-author and co-first-author papers, and in the bottom part all other papers. If you number publications, you can use a common numbering, e.g. first-authored papers are numbered 1, 2, 3 and the other papers are numbered 4, 5, 6, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it easy for a committee to count the number of first-authored papers and the total number of papers you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second solution is to mark all first-authored and co-first-authored papers by a clear sign (e.g. bold star), with an explicit footnote explaining the meaning of the sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you certainly should not expect committees to actually open your published papers to see if by any chance a little star somewhere credits you for co-first-authorship. They can do it if they want to check your claims, but you have to claim it clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T19:33:00.963" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T19:33:00.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23727" CreationDate="2014-06-21T19:57:03.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a Psychology and order of authorship matters and co-first author papers are not unheard of. As for how search committee treat them, I think you might be missing how search committee work. There is no formula in terms of how papers are weighted in terms of authorship. We want to make sure a candidate has a strong publication record. Order of authorship doesn't really matter for this as much as being associated with strong papers. In some ways we don't care how hard you worked for the publication. The second thing we look for is wether you could continue to carry out the type of research in the papers. Co-first author papers raise more questions about this then single first author papers. Generally the rest of the publication history, CV, and research statement can clarify this. I would suggest making sure your research statement makes it clear what type of research you can do on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T19:57:03.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23770" CreationDate="2014-06-21T21:38:07.143" Score="15" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a publication (thesis, paper, other), when should I write an equation &lt;em&gt;inline&lt;/em&gt; and when should it be separated and numbered from the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen publications containing both styles, but I don't know if there is a rule to choose among them. My field is applied computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17577" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T12:00:35.467" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T17:52:55.740" Title="When to use inline versus displayed equations in a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23769" CreationDate="2014-06-21T22:04:56.997" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A numbered equation always takes a separate line, so there is no question here &amp;mdash; if you need to refer to some equation later in the text, it deserves a separate line and it needs a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your equation is as long as a line, or even longer, then again &amp;mdash; it should always be placed out-of-text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the rest of your question, we should think a little how we (e.g. your readers) read inline equations, and how we read equations on separate lines. First of all, inline equations merge into the text, and provide some smoothness (it is just like you speak and draw on a whiteboard at the same time). In contrast, equations of a separate line break the text (just like you write a long equation on a whiteboard and take a big pause to let your audience reflect on it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no pauses in the text, it is hard to comprehend. Too many pauses raise similar problems, because it becomes difficult to focus on the most important pieces then. My advice is to think about the role of each equation and put only the most important equations in a spotlight of a separate line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="17418" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T22:11:24.683" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:11:24.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-21T22:34:33.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would pay close attention to the implications in the citation above regarding a study of acknowledgements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention &quot;lab&quot; so your field is clearly both &quot;hard&quot; and empirical.  If you think that nobody helped you at all in your thesis, your recollections are most likely deluded and selective at best, or your hubris is at a dangerously high level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, acknowledgements in part have a character of dog whistles.  When you go to publish papers out of your thesis, do you think that an acknowledgement along the lines of, say, &quot;thanks to the attendees at the Widgit Workshop at MIT for their insights and suggestions&quot; carries any signal in the anonymous peer review process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarily, I was young once, so I understand where you're coming from: it was a tough, crappy, job you got through with; it remains, in any field, a rite of passage with roots in the Medieval.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you don't get beyond it, you'll just be shooting yourself in the foot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:34:33.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-06-21T23:08:00.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The professor is putting it off until you present your dissertation. What happens then? Are you still employed by your institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an position somewhere else, congratulations! Just tell him that you have other obligations, and that you will be available for comments and discussion, but your new employer would want you to work on their projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to remain at your institution, and don't have anything else that will pay your bills, you could use this project to improve your CV. I don't know in your field, but only two conference publications sounds on the weaker end (in technical fields in Sweden people usually finish with four first author journal papers after four years). If you don't have anything else (yet), you can ask him to hire you. If funding is not available, you may decide to work with him anyway, but letting him know that your main priority is finding a new job, and you will leave as soon as someone offers to pay you. You may also decide not to work for free, and you could tell him that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case that you decide to actually continue with the project, you should discuss authorship again. You have done most of the job so far, and you have the work he wants you to do as a leverage. You could appeal to his humanity (&lt;s&gt;as if professors had any!&lt;/s&gt;) and say that you are in a critical point in your career and need to strengthen your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T23:08:00.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23759" CreationDate="2014-06-21T23:29:13.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People need to eat, so they need jobs. One does not need to wait until a time limited job is finished before searching for a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with politely showing interest in doing a PhD in his research group. The fact that you are at the same institution means he can just go to your Master's advisor and informally ask if you are good for the position, and probably trust it more than a recommendation letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he wants you on board, comes the starting date that the funding requires; but this is something only he can know, and will tell you upfront if he needs to fill the position before you finish. Even in this case, showing interest may put you on his list in case he gets another grant, or could forward you offers from other groups. If he &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wants you, sometimes there are ways to get you in; for example, if the university does not require you to have a master to enrol on a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the timings, announced positions usually quote a deadline. You may want to wait to be closer to it so you have more time to build up your thesis, but on the other hand, the longer you wait, the bigger the chances your application will just join a big pile for review. In this case, probably the sooner the better, because it is unlikely your thesis will radically improve in a few of weeks (you will get progress, of course, but not a breakthrough that is not visible already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, as aeismail said, I think is very important for a researcher to move around institutions, and when possible and makes sense, even countries. I did my undergraduate in Spain and a Master's in Sweden, and I can see they are very different systems; so they sort of complement each other's deficiencies. On the other hand, I know brilliant people that studied all the way to the PhD in the same university, and plan to become lecturers there some day. As such, they don't get &quot;new input&quot;; they have the same weak points and deficiencies as the people who taught them, and they will just perpetuate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T23:29:13.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T00:24:06.200" Score="3" ViewCount="758" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are Masters degrees from German universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen) eligible for PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do a Masters in any of the German universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen), would I be able to apply for a PhD in any other Universities/research institutes in Germany? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorDisplayName="user4271" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T08:11:29.330" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T08:28:07.003" Title="Are Masters degrees from German universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen) eligible for PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23804" CreationDate="2014-06-22T05:31:15.433" Score="47" ViewCount="15989" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is somewhat similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5997/what-to-do-with-an-accepted-phd-thesis-that-extensively-presents-quotes-as-parap?&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm the plagiarizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six years ago I did my Master's degree by coursework at university X, and wrote the Master's thesis under supervision of well-known Prof. A. For many reasons that I don't want to list here, I plagiarized. The first part of my thesis was background, and the second part was the original contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the background part, I copied an entire chapter from textbook T about algorithm S. Algorithm S was invented more than 50 years ago, and is described in several books, including the very well-known T. I didn't paraphrase at all, I started by citing T, and then copied the whole chapter word by word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contribution part is actually contribution. One year after I left the school, Prof. A found another student to extend it and published the extension with me as the second author. (The paper included the algorithm and experiment in my thesis, but I didn't write a single word of the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have moved to university Y to do a PhD. I have published several papers in top conferences and have very good relationship with several well-known researchers. I want to advance in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the Master's thesis destroy any possibility of a future academic career? If someone read my Master's thesis, it is very easy to recognize, since the part from the textbook is in perfect English, and the rest is in &lt;strong&gt;extremely&lt;/strong&gt; poor English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I contact the university to submit a revised Master's thesis which re-describes the algorithm S? This is the last thing I want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17741" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T23:36:22.200" Title="How to correct plagiarism in my own Master's thesis, years later?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T05:56:20.350" Score="16" ViewCount="17836" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering a post doc in the Netherlands.  I am a bit spoiled -- currently doing a post doc in the US with a salary of about $75000.  I found a PI in the Netherlands whose project sounds very interesting and it seems like I may be able to have a bit of freedom in forming collaborations.  But the PI had quoted a salary of 2000 euros (he didn't actually know, but just took a guess when I asked him to estimate).  Though I currently have no better offers, this sounds like too big a step backwards that I am wondering if I should spend more effort searching for other jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to negotiate a better salary when I interview with the PI.  Is 2000 Euros reasonable?  I saw a post with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vsnu.nl/files/documenten/CAO/Salarisschalen_2013IenII.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;salary table&lt;/a&gt;.  But I'm not sure where on the scale I fall.  Should I be a E10-1 because this will be my first year on this particular job?  Or can I hope for a E10-4 because this will be my fourth year as a post-doc?  Is there any way I can supplement my salary by applying for external grants? (I guess there are few of those for non-EU citizens...)  I have a husband and school-age children, and since I am not sure whether my husband will be able to have income, I want to be able cover our necessary living expenses with my salary/benefits so I can concentrate on working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17743" LastEditorUserId="48413" LastEditDate="2019-10-19T13:27:14.070" LastActivityDate="2019-10-19T13:27:14.070" Title="How much salary can I expect as a physics post doc in the Netherlands?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;netherlands&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23778" CreationDate="2014-06-22T06:17:11.633" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can expect rather more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10/0 corresponds to a second year PhD student (functieschaal P). A postdoc typically goes on somewhere around 10-5, plus a point per year. So you might hope to be somewhere around 10-8.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To get your annual salary, multiply these numbers by 14: 12 months plus two bonus payments. Don't ask me why.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coming from abroad you are probably eligible to be paid under the &quot;30% rule&quot;, where you get the first 30% of your salary tax free.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; tax you can expect to get something in the region of €35-40k ($48-55k). Be aware that living costs may be higher than you're used to in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you shouldn't rely on this information: talk to the HR department. But the situation isn't as bad as you fear!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T06:17:11.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2014-06-22T06:39:42.943" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is plagiarism and your existing thesis is the one which got you your degree. Since you have received your degree, the possibility is to confess to the plagiarism resulting in, possibly retraction of the thesis and removal of the degree. There have been a few highly publicized cases of plagiarism of PhD theses by people who have come to hold high positions in society (Example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/plagiarism-detection-blog/bid/97166/Another-Month-Another-German-Plagiarism-Scandal#.U6Z6aECmW78&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dw.de/german-ex-education-minister-schavan-loses-plagiarism-appeal/a-17511623&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;). The exposure of these cases have led to them losing both their position and their degree. Having plagiarized your way to the degree could easily backfire at any time if, as you say, someone finds out. Now, we all make mistakes in life so I would think the best way to act responsibly is to contact a lawyer or the legal department of the university to discuss the matter and a way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your publication, it seems as if it would not be affected by the story since it is your original work that has been published and I doubt that the authors copied the plagiarized chapter into the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T22:45:17.083" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T22:45:17.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23786" CreationDate="2014-06-22T07:07:16.930" Score="11" ViewCount="4029" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I use full word plus its abbreviation in parenthesis in a chapter title?&#xA;here is my case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 2&#xA;Human Immune System (HIS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is it correct? Is there any differences if the the full word have appeared before in the previous chapter content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17744" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T12:02:16.433" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T12:02:16.433" Title="Is it reasonable to use full word and abbreviation in parenthesis in a chapter title?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23781" CreationDate="2014-06-22T07:16:59.493" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not say this is incorrect, but it is probably unorthodox. If there are no strong reason to put an abbreviation in the title, you may wish to introduce it in the first sentences of the chapter itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T07:16:59.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T10:32:58.683" Score="2" ViewCount="913" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a fork of my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23750/homework-testing-method-for-schools-how-to-encourage-good-practices-and-design&quot;&gt;homework-testing-method-for-schools&lt;/a&gt; but i'm taking it in another direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asking about a homework testing method that'll encourage students to write better code and reduce the TA's proofreading task to a minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of using unit testing, (or anything else you can think of), in order to turn students in the right direction (design wise), and hopefully giving them good thinking and coding habits (we're talking first programming course in collage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so my new question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think there's something wrong and not educational about unit testing    students code please explain why do you think so..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think this is a good (or just an o.k) idea please tell me if you have any ideas of how to design the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you for your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17720" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T16:27:23.307" Title="advantages and disadvantages of white-box testing of students assignments?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2014-06-22T10:43:45.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of what I said as an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20578/use-of-automated-assessment-of-programming-assignments/20823#20823&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; is probably also applicable here, so I will not repeat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you think there's something wrong and not educational about unit testing students code please explain why do you think so..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is anything particularly wrong about unit testing student code, but it will likely not do away with manual grading or direct lab sessions entirely. All things considered, the way how TAs traditionally check programming assignments (build, run, check behavior against assignment description) is pretty close to what a unit testing framework does anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you think this is a good (or just an o.k) idea please tell me if you have any ideas of how to design the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major challenge I see is that you want your tests not only to serve as a framework to check whether students implemented the right functionality, but also to check whether they did it in the right way. I think unit tests and generally automated grading will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be able to help you here, aside from limited hard-coded rule checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the problem is already encoded in your use of terminology. You say you want &quot;unit tests that do white box testing&quot;. This isn't really feasible, IMHO. Unit tests test interfaces. So, to cut it short, I do not think that unit tests will help you in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T10:43:45.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23781" CreationDate="2014-06-22T11:53:52.007" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the only abbreviations that should be used in &quot;headlines&quot; and titles are &quot;standard&quot; ones that are normally (or at least very frequently) written in their abbreviated form. So, something like &lt;em&gt;Escherichia coli&lt;/em&gt; could obviously be written as &lt;em&gt;E. coli&lt;/em&gt; in a title without problems. (Similarly, in my field, we have an algorithm entitled &quot;particle–particle particle–mesh&quot; which can be written as &quot;PPPM&quot; or &quot;P3M&quot; without detriment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, any abbreviation that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have introduced in the course of writing should probably be avoided &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; the alternative is too unwieldy. Moreover, you should not normally use both abbreviations and the expanded text unless you're using the title to define the abbreviation: for instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SAUCE&lt;/em&gt;: Simplified Abbreviations for Unwieldy Complex Expressions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T11:53:52.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23787" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:10:55.410" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T14:10:55.410" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T14:10:55.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23788" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:10:55.410" Score="0" Body="Selecting a field of study, preparing for exams or assignments, or pertaining to designing research studies" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T14:28:29.773" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T14:28:29.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23789" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:12:32.923" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T14:12:32.923" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T14:12:32.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23790" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:12:32.923" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to management as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. Do not use 'management' for questions on managing research projects, or managing situations; use other tags (such as 'lab-management' or 'workplace')." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T08:41:40.720" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T08:41:40.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23791" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:13:52.250" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T14:13:52.250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T14:13:52.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23792" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:13:52.250" Score="0" Body="(DO NOT USE: this tag has been applied very inconsistently, and probably should not be used.) Standard or recommended practices in writing, research, or professional academic conduct" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T09:06:13.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T09:06:13.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:26:35.837" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I suppose bad language is not allowed here, I'll be restrained. Suffice to say, as an academic I think that is a basic professional principle is lacking here: if you, with existing career, wage and pedagogical duties, are writing with a student, they should be first author. Always. Every time. No matter what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two reasons: first, you already have all the power and privileges. Students are not there to be consumed. Second, you don't want to be seen to be exploiting someone who is vulnerable to your power over them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: this person sounds like a dick. Put them off, finish your PhD, get a job, then tell anyone following on after you to avoid writing with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T09:22:15.303" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T09:22:15.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23799" CreationDate="2014-06-22T15:43:07.447" Score="69" ViewCount="37381" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that it is impossible to prevent cheating (as in: communicating and getting help from outside) if one allows students to use the restroom during written classroom tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excluding creative solutions involving full-body searches, Faraday cages or invigilators in the stalls, the most practical way to prevent it seems to completely forbid the students to leave the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this seems overly penalizing to students with small health problems or personal emergencies, since they would have to retake the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How is this problem dealt with in practice in universities? What is the best solution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T23:22:29.633" LastActivityDate="2019-12-12T15:17:58.227" Title="How should bathroom breaks be handled during written exams to avoid cheating?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="27" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23778" CreationDate="2014-06-22T15:47:53.527" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's isn't that much room for negotiation in general, since all these university-related things are fixed by law. You've already found the CAO tables which determine salary. Depending on how badly they want you over there, a PI might be able to get you entered in a higher 'trede' (10-x), or even a higher 'schaal' (x-1). I would say it's nearly impossible that they would put you on 10-1, but don't hold me to it. What you have going for you is your high previous salary, because new employers sometimes do take this into account as far as possible, and your being from outside the country which can have its own benefits. A few things to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the 2000 the PI mentioned would be after tax, and in my estimation quite the lower limit in terms of net monthly income&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the PI has only limited influence on salary, you really need to talk (or have the PI talk) to HR to know exactly what you're in for before you make your decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quite a lot of benefits are included and already deducted, which makes a comparison of raw numbers between the Dutch and US salaries a bit tricky. There may moreover be quite a few differences in terms of vacation time (a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of holidays, really), benefits such as bicycle plans, whatever...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would advise you to get an overview of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your exact current benefits, health care costs, pension plan, plus your current pre- and after-tax salary,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your potential future benefits, health care costs, pension plan, plus your new pre- and post-tax salary (especially if being from abroad has extra tax benefits as mentioned by someone above, I don't know about that), depending on &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the 'trede' and 'schaal' they would put you in to start with. The one thing to ask your PI is to find out which trede and schaal HR could (would) give you, then contact HR to find the answers to your other questions because - from my experience - there's a good chance the PI won't know all these details. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;75.000 dollars sounds like quite a good salary to me, but without knowing what that got you, what's included, and so on, it's hard for me to say how much (or if any) of a step backwards you'll be taking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing to note: living expenses (mainly housing) can differ quite a lot across the NL, so what you effectively save each month also depends on where the institution is. World of difference between e.g. Amsterdam or the provinces outside the 'randstad'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck on the decision and potentially the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17755" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T16:31:40.123" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T16:31:40.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23809" CreationDate="2014-06-22T15:49:06.563" Score="17" ViewCount="2782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished my master degree (TU Vienna) and I am working 20 hours per week. I have talked to several professors in my field of interest and they said that the earliest position for a PhD would be in December, because of funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think I could take the route as external researcher and do my PhD by working 20 hours per week and devoting the other 20 hours to my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By browsing some posts here I have read that a lot of you consider an external PhD as inefficient (it takes a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time, etc.). Why? What are the reasons for that? Can't such a PhD be done within 3 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UPDATE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS.:&lt;/strong&gt; What are mostly the reason that it takes so long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17751" LastEditorUserId="17751" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T08:34:04.457" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T11:29:21.690" Title="Why are external PhDs considered to take &quot;decades&quot;?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T15:57:35.867" Score="80" Body="&lt;h1&gt;How do other uni's deal with this?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've attended courses in two universities and have been an exam supervisor in another academical institution.&#xA;In all those cases only one student could go to the bathroom at a time.&#xA;A supervisor would accompany the student up to the bathroom door and wait until the student would return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, the student could hide a book, laptop, anything in the toilet stall.&#xA;If it's a good exam these methods are not going to get the student anywhere as a good academical test requires that the student can use his brain, not just reproduce knowledge from a book.&#xA;Therefore I think making a big deal of cheat prevention is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What's the best solution?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not allowing students to take bathroom breaks is inhumane. I think the solution I experienced and described above is the best you'll get without exaggerating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T15:57:35.867" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T15:59:22.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. We had similar discussions recently in our lab as well. Our conclusions after discussion were that, practically, you can either (1) let students go to the rest rooms and live with some potential for abuse, or (2) not let students go to the rest rooms (barring medical reasons, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could not come up with a solution to let students go to the rest rooms &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; prevent them from cheating, if the students are prepared and reasonably cunning. For instance, in our university some large exams have the policy that students that want to use the rest rooms are escorted by one of the TAs to the door of the rest rooms. While this prevents some avenues for cheating, it does not help if the student stashed the lecture material in the rest rooms or just calls his pal when inside. Another approach was at some point that mobile phones had been collected, but clearly there is no guarantee that every student has exactly &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; mobile phone. Essentially, we decided that collecting mobile phones is a futile effort (as also discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23099/preventing-leaking-exam-papers-cheating-using-phone-cameras&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is this problem dealt with in practice in universities? What is the best solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current university, the status quo is &quot;let students go to the rest room, and live with the avenue for cheating&quot;. In my previous university, the rule was &quot;there are no rest room breaks&quot; for every exam taking less than 2 hours. For 2 hours or more exams, see above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T15:59:22.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23769" CreationDate="2014-06-22T16:23:07.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's matter of style. But always think about the reader - what is the most convenient for her/him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of points raised by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/23770/49&quot;&gt;Dmitry&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;However, when reading publications I often see too many inline equations, which make it harder to comprehend. It often happens due to space restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal stance is that only very short and simple things should be put as inline equations (like $x \in {1,2,3}$ or $y=Ax$). That is, ones that at the same time are too technical to deserve a separate line and short and easy, so they can be read with the sentence without any pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T17:52:55.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23798" CreationDate="2014-06-22T16:26:03.797" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a PhD student is a &lt;strong&gt;full-time job&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, &quot;officially&quot; you may be assigned to 20 hours of &quot;study&quot; and 20 hours of &quot;work&quot; by the university, but this is just a way to determine your salary, and does NOT reflect the amount of time you actually spend on research studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., the nominal time for PhD is about five to six years average. This assumes the student is a full time student. While some people finish their PhD in three years or less, this is truly exceptional. The average is six. (This was the case at least in the school I attended, in the Computer Science department. Length may vary in other departments.) It also depends on what you aim for in your PhD: is graduating after publishing just one paper good enough for you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's do the math. If it takes about six years to finish a degree, assuming full time, then how much time would it take for a part-time student? Take into consideration also 20%-30% extension of time due to context-switching, but also reduce 15%-25% of the time due to being more efficient  (it's easier to waste time when working full-time, in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You arrive at 10+ years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, I know people that worked part-time and studied part-time, and were able to complete their PhD studies in four to six years. I also know people that took five to six years to finish their MSc degree (which nominally takes two years), due to having another full-time job.. It depends mostly on your abilities and aims from PHD (but also quite a bit on your luck).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T18:58:06.427" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T18:58:06.427" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24460" CreationDate="2014-06-22T18:41:02.213" Score="3" ViewCount="420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master's in mechanical engineering from a pretty decent college in my country with a GPA of 7.9/10. I'd like to know what constitutes a good application to a Master's program in CS (ML, to be precise) and how I must choose my Universities that are safe and in those I have a chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17760" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T07:59:17.540" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T07:59:17.540" Title="What are the important factors I must consider while applying to a CS program for an MS after majoring as a mechanical engineer in my undergrad?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2014-06-22T19:18:40.197" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot tell you what the university will do if you confess; I am not employed in a position which would be involved in such a decision, and besides, I think that this will depend on cultural and legal factors, plus the personality of the decision makers in your case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still think that it is better if you confess. There are several reasons for it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your own inner peace. By contemplating confession and posting here you show that you have matured and have higher integrity and a better understanding of academic rules and the seriousness of plagiarism than back when you submitted your thesis. If you don't confess, you will have to live with both 1)the guilt of not only having made the mistake once, but still actively deceiving people, &#xA;and 2) the anxiety of being discovered someday. I have been on both sides of a &quot;hidden guilt&quot; situation (although when it was on academic matters, it concerned milder cases), and I can tell you from experience that it is a bad situation, especially for the person who feels guilty and dreads discovery. It burdens you with a stress which can permeate to many unrelated areas of your life and make you miserable. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your risk of discovery rises with time. Nowadays, universities start to routinely employ plagiarism software. Who knows what funky electronic agent will snuffle in your old thesis ten years from now? Twenty? What if such software becomes so ubiquitous and cheap that employers start running it on your old theses when you apply for a job? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you confess, you will suffer negative consequences - but not nearly as bad as if you are discovered by a third party. Confession, especially if you are repentant, shows that you are capable of feeling remorse, have high integrity, also courage, and are willing to take responsibility. Being caught makes people see you as a cold-blooded fraud not deterred by social emotions like guilt and remorse. This makes you dangerous to them and reduces their empathy for you. They are much more likely to be lenient if you confess than if you are caught by others. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The later it comes out, the worse for you. If you are either caught, or confess yourself much later (e.g. because you notice the negative effects of guilt and anxiety - and yes, this happens, I have witnessed such late confessions), it will have negative effects on your career. But right now, you are at its beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have relatively little to lose yet. If you wait until later, you will have much more to restore after such a reputation blow. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The younger you are when it happens, the more time you have to build a solid career without having to start anew. At times when you advance into more leading positions, it would be better that this story is a thing of the past, forgotten by most, than that it hits you out of nowhere. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sooner you confess after the mistake, the less reputation you lose. The less time you carry the problem hidden around, the less callous you appear, and also people feel less deceived. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once it comes out, everybody who has relied on your thesis being correct will be miffed. The more your life progresses, the more this number of people grows. If you confess early, you limit this number. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your university is not interested in a public scandal. The dean doesn't want to open the morning paper and see a &quot;university duped by brazen plagiarist&quot; title. They will be unpleasantly surprised by a private confession too, but they will not feel that the situation is out of their control, or that the worst that can happen has already happened. They will have some incentive to cooperate with you, as long as you confess. If you are caught, their best strategy becomes to distance themselves from you and denounce you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time has shown that redemption is more beneficial to society than punishment-as-deterrent. This has been repeatedly shown in many situations: religious context (most of the New Testament is based on it, even though many Christian churches have historically been on the side of harsh punishment), law enforcement (prisons which are pleasant for the prisoners show better reformation rates) and parenting. So many people who have advanced to leadership positions have the wisdom not to mete out severe punishment for misconduct. Especially if you indicate that you are unlikely to repeat the mistake (and a confession is a very important part of it), they can be lenient. There is no guarantee that the leaders of your university will share this belief, but it is not exceptionally rare either. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will still have to enforce some consequences. It would be both unfair to the students who played by the rules to get their degree, and damaging to the university's reputation to just let you have your degree when you did not follow all requirements for it. But they will not be vengeful, seeking to end your career. This is something which certainly happens when academic misconduct is caught much later by a third party after the fact, see the German examples Peter Jansson cites (and notice that in some cases for the German politicians, their plagiarism was limited to a few sentences), but also cases like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Hauser&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; in which a renowned professor's academic career came to an end after academic misconduct (although not plagiarism) was proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to find support before you go straight to the people who have the most to lose from the news. The behavior of your current employer is also hard to predict (they might be legally required to terminate you if a Master's degree was required for your acceptance into the Ph.D. program), but if you think they will be on your side, you might want to talk to them first so, when you come to the university, you have somebody who can testify that your current level of work is as good as one of a person who obtained a Master's degree regularly. Especially if you have coauthored with somebody with a good standing in your community, they may be interested in helping you rather than having a publication in coauthorship with somebody whose reputation was destroyed (but gauge them as a person too, some people will prefer to just drop you and forget you). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope everything turns out to the best for you. As Nikana Reklawyks said, we are all human and make mistakes. If you are willing to repair the damage yours caused, this makes you a better, not a worse, human being. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T19:18:40.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T20:30:08.593" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forbidding use of restroom facilities is extreme and more than a little ridiculous. If a student is resourceful enough to defeat your exam's purpose &lt;em&gt;(which should be to measure a student's capability in a particular subject)&lt;/em&gt; without your certain discovery given only the use of a few minutes and a toilet, then probably your exam needs some work and/or that student deserves whatever grade he/she is awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more, forbidding the use of facilities comes with some liability. From Brian Freeman, Esq.'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brianwfreeman.com/bathroom-rights/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bathroom Rights&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The same court said, in an earlier case, &lt;em&gt;“However primitive and ordinary, the right to defecate and to urinate without awaiting the permission of government…are rights close to the core of the liberty guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. When government undertakes to eliminate or to impair either or both of these rights, it should be required to make a strong showing of necessity for the restrictive measure.”&lt;/em&gt; Indeed, we all have the “basic liberty of access to the bathroom when needed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who believe they have the authority to deny access to a bathroom, especially teachers and educators throughout the country, need to be aware that denial of a pupil’s right to use the toilet could carry significant liabilities. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a state actor can be held liable for both compensatory and punitive damages, including paying for the winner’s attorney’s fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to liability under § 1983, a defendant could also be held liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Depending on the facts of the case, other potential liabilities could arise from prohibiting a person from their bona fide need for access to a toilet. For these reasons, all people, especially young students, ought to be able to use the restroom whenever needed, without be required to first obtain permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17764" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T20:30:08.593" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T21:05:45.853" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In almost all exams which I have taken, leaving the room while taking an exam was not forbidden.  &lt;em&gt;BUT returning to complete the exam&lt;/em&gt; was expressly forbidden. The penalty for taking a break was confiscation of the exam material, with no possibility of resuming the exam. (Note that these exams were almost all less than two hours long.) Students were strongly encouraged to take a bathroom break immediately before beginning the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This avoids the problem of actually forbidding the student to use the bathroom, but does impose a significant penalty. If you have not completed the exam before your bathroom break, you must hand in the incomplete exam and are not permitted to finish if/when you return. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, students who can document a medical necessity for more frequent bathroom breaks are entitled to special accommodations, most likely including taking the exam separately, as a proctored exam in the academic testing center. This is not a perfect solution to the problem (what about students who are briefly ill or suffer from test-anxiety that causes them to need frequent bathroom breaks?), but the solution has worked well in my experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T21:05:45.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23798" CreationDate="2014-06-22T21:23:03.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And to add to what Ran G said, if you work at half the speed, it will take you longer to produce scientific results, duplicating the chances that you get scooped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, it is common for medical doctors and some nurses with a full time job to do a PhD, but that is a whole different beast (and does take many years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T21:23:03.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T22:37:19.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic solution to the problem of bathroom breaks and the possibility of cheating is to design the test in a manner that best negates the benefit of cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, avoiding multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank type questions is an obvious step. Similarly, including questions that require multiple logical steps to successfully complete makes the likelihood of useful cheating much lower. Similarly, having multiple copies of the exam with slightly different variants of the problems (for instance, using slightly different data or assumptions) will also make it harder to cheat in a meaningful matter—students may have to spend many minutes getting the answers they would need, for relatively little benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, allowing students to have some access to course materials during an exam cuts off one obvious reason for cheating—to access materials that they wouldn't otherwise have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T22:37:19.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23798" CreationDate="2014-06-22T22:40:29.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This advice is based on Computer Science mostly, and it may or may not apply directly to you. As far as I understand your area is only marginally related to Computer Science through the fact that you're interested in Algorithmic Trading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything depends on two factors: &lt;b&gt;your goals&lt;/b&gt; and &lt;b&gt;the speed with which you are able to learn and create the things that you need to do in order to achieve your goals&lt;/b&gt;. If your goal is to be a professor at TU Vienna, then you will obviously at some point need to submit a PhD thesis and later a Habilitation thesis. The PhD thesis can have 3 to 6 papers in good conferences and one - two papers in some journals, and your habilitation thesis will consist of a minimum of 5 articles in good journals (A-level journals). You will also have to submit some grant proposals and after you manage to get those grants to finish them successfully (typically the requirement is to have EU grants or ERC grants). So you will have to produce at least 15 conference articles, 8-10 journal articles, 2 thesis, and 2 grants in order to get to an Assistant Professor or Professor in Vienna. If you manage to get every paper accepted first time when you submit it (something unheard of), you will still need 6 - 15 years to get to Assistant Professorship or Professorships (counting from the first year of your PhD). Keep in mind that at TU, Assistant or Junior Professorships appear only once at two years or so (and just one position). Most of the people I know from Vienna (TU Vienna, WU, IST Austria, etc) were able to finish PhD thesis in 4-5 years (full time) or 7-8 years (part-time), so there is no reason to consider that it might take a decade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system also makes you quit really fast (after 1-2 years) if you do not want (or you are not able for some reason) to put in the effort that is required in order to create at least a decent thesis. The professor will stop talking to you if you don't make any progress for a number of months, for example, or if your papers are not accepted at top conferences. What you need to understand is that your supervisor is your guide, but you will eventually make the journey alone. The supervisor will just help you polish your articles or thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These being said, before applying for a PhD, I would check the CVs, thesis and articles written by TU Professors (Thomas Eiter, Georg Gottlob, Radu Grosu, Silvia Micksh, Stefan Woltran, etc). It helps a lot, as their expectations are that you will produce some work that is at least partially connected to their last articles (so that your work will also fit into their various research projects). Also try to talk with some of their students (you can easily detect them by looking through their CVs - they might have a PhD students entry - or through DBLP or Scholar by looking at their latest publications and identifying collaborators that only published few papers in the last 2-3 years). Try to understand what a PhD means, what are the expectations, and what is the amount of work you need to put in order to get to good results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend you to check these interesting slides from one of the professors I just mentioned: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~silvia/research-tips/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~silvia/research-tips/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to &lt;b&gt;try to estimate the expectations, the amount of work needed and the time you think you will need in order to fulfill this work&lt;/b&gt;. The actual number of papers depends a lot on the domain in which you are working, but also on the quality of the outlets where you will publish (you might end up with a smaller number of papers if all of them are only in the top outlets for your field). Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I do not directly work with any of the persons already mentioned, but I do work at a university from Vienna.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14887" LastEditorUserId="14887" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T11:29:21.690" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T11:29:21.690" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-22T23:08:00.113" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this is not often how things are done, here is a suggestion for improving exams, whilst addressing your problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exam is meant to test the ability of the student to apply what was taught in the course. If this knowledge is to mean anything &quot;after the course&quot;, then the conditions in which the course is administered need to mirror the real world closely. This, in turn, should mean that the &lt;em&gt;understanding&lt;/em&gt; needed to do well in the exam should not hinge on the ability to &lt;em&gt;memorize&lt;/em&gt; (I am a big fan of &quot;open book&quot; exams — bring in the reference material, it cuts down on cheating), but rather the ability to &lt;em&gt;synthesize&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt; — two things that are very hard to get help with during a bathroom break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other solution is to divide the exam into a series of shorter exams — say 1 hour exams followed by a 15 minute break, followed by another hour, etc. The intermediate results are handed in before each break, so there is no point in obtaining help during the breaks. Regular short breaks will refresh the exam takers, and give them a chance to go to the bathroom if they need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In line with this suggestion, the idea that &quot;people cannot concentrate on a task for more than 45 minutes&quot; seems to be widely believed — &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8560/how-long-is-it-possible-to-maintain-concentration&quot;&gt;see this  for example&lt;/a&gt;. If that is indeed true, the above makes even more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the exam is such a coherent whole that it is not possible to break it up (for example, it requires three hours of solid writing of a single essay) then good luck to the person who attempts to get help during a bathroom break …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allow the students to have reference material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;break the exam into shorter pieces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;test understanding and synthesis, not memorization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastEditorUserId="31865" LastEditDate="2019-12-12T01:31:24.860" LastActivityDate="2019-12-12T01:31:24.860" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23822" CreationDate="2014-06-23T01:06:25.960" Score="11" ViewCount="565" Body="&lt;p&gt;A junior researcher with no reputation (as we've dropped the facade of double-blind review, reputation counts) may benefit from coauthoring with a senior researcher of established reputation, and may accept such a co-authorship with no more than a nominal contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely if a senior researcher comes up with the idea, sends the junior researcher off to get his data, provides fruitful advice on where to look, critiques the data gathering methods proposed and refines it if necessary, reviews early to late drafts of the write up, indisputably that senior researcher deserves recognition of coauthorship despite never having directly given voice to the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much advice does a professor have to give before he becomes an coauthor? Isn't the below image's last author listing wrong? Isn't it academic dishonesty on the parts of all of the authors to take and give credit where it is not due? Isn't it misleading to the readers of these papers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MoLpl.gif&quot; alt=&quot;PhD Comics, Giving Credit Where Credit is Due&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, are these semantically unordered? Maybe this indicates we can drop that facade as well, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news113482761.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;order apparently does have meaning&lt;/a&gt; (unless explicitly ordered alphabetically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we really care about people rightfully getting credit, perhaps a paper should list credits in the same way that a movie does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Prestigious Journal of Import                    Vol XLVI No 2, June 1992&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;                            A Paper We Wrote &#xA;&#xA;                      Primary Author: Sap, P. S. &#xA;                     Primary Advisor: Oliveira, L.&#xA;                           Reviewers: Lee, E. F., Nichols, S. T.,&#xA;                             Figures: Michael, C. &#xA;                          Dept Chair: Smith, B. S.&#xA;&#xA;                                 Abstract&#xA;    The time has come, to talk of many things, of shoes, of ships, of sealing&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need to revamp how authorships are credited, do papers need to roll credits, a'la Hollywood? Or is all of this inferred by our list order, and it doesn't really matter who did what, all authors signed off on it, so current practice is equivalent to as if each of them contributed equally and in kind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T16:50:14.180" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:50:14.180" Title="Revamping Paper Authorship, *or* Should Papers Roll Credits" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23743" CreationDate="2014-06-23T01:41:57.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't tell them.&lt;/strong&gt; Whatever the reason you're thinking of telling them now, their primary interest in you is academic, and yours should be the same. The last thing you want to do is distract them into thinking about you in any other context than your field of study. As much as they're on your side, you would much prefer them to think about you doing research than drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to a lawyer.&lt;/strong&gt; Just to be safe, because you're venturing into legal territory, and we're not a bunch of lawyers, for the most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your motivation is probably not valid&lt;/strong&gt; I think the impetus for even suggesting this is unnecessary. I don't know your field, but the likelihood of you &lt;em&gt;needing&lt;/em&gt; to travel outside the US is probably not there. Unless your advisor has said something like: &lt;em&gt;&quot;We always go to this convention in Zurich, and you'll be expected to go next year...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; in which case, see the prior advice point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T01:41:57.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23796" CreationDate="2014-06-23T03:33:50.337" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an example from a university, but from my school's finals (A level, wich will grant you access to take a class at university) which I find is neither inhumane nor impracticable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bathrooms are checked before the tests are starting. Out-of-class&#xA;access is restricted during that time for the specific bathrooms. Not following that restriction will lead to a penalty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every test has 2 supervisors, one of each gender.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only one student at a time is allowed to use the bathroom at the same time from all courses participating in a test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time of leaving / re-entering the room will be noted on the test paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A supervisor of the matching gender will escort the student to the bathroom and &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; check it before/afterwards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While the student is in the bathroom the escorting supervisor is advised to only enter the bathroom if the average time is exceeded massively (usually 2~3 min for men, 3~4 min for women) for privacy reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time is noted in a separate file with a sign of the respective supervisor outside of the room (also to doublecheck if students from different courses are outside of the room the same time for potential comparison of the tests from those students).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17771" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T08:46:18.977" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T08:46:18.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T06:42:40.997" Score="10" ViewCount="20345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had a job interview for a tenure-track position where I interviewed with several people from the department. As far as I know, I'm supposed to send a thank you note after the interview. Should I send one to each person I've interviewed with or would this be perceived as excessive?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17779" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T22:41:54.420" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T01:40:01.473" Title="Thank you note after interview" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23817" CreationDate="2014-06-23T06:54:56.187" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel that you want to thank members of the panel for their time and consideration, go on and send them a brief note. In my experience, it is usually impossible to exclude one or two people from the list without irritating someone, so I would say &amp;mdash; write to all of them or none. It is natural to feel that a communication like this is &quot;meaningless&quot;, &quot;time-stealing&quot; and &quot;unnecessary&quot; &amp;mdash; long story short, &lt;b&gt;it is not&lt;/b&gt;.  A senior academic receives a ton of spam and unrelated correspondence, which they delete with a grunt. Make your message short and positive, and they will delete it with a smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T06:54:56.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2014-06-23T06:55:26.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edited completely, given correct comments below stating that I seemed to be advocating non-confession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the comment above both understates the case re punishment - you likely would lose your degree and your place on the PhD programme and admiration for your confession won't count for much - and overstates your likelihood of being caught. Universities archive dissertations for x years then pulp them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is strong is this: you lied, the weight of that won't make for a comfortable career and you deserve a consequence, at least on the facts as presented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, should you confess, be prepared for another career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for coming across like I don't take the ethical issues seriously. My intent, very badly put, was rather to prepare you for the worst if you come clean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastEditorUserId="12045" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T11:36:46.927" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T11:36:46.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T07:28:18.350" Score="25" ViewCount="2482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2006, when I was still in grad school, I wrote a paper that went through the usual motions: I discussed it with my advisor, I presented it at a peer-reviewed conference, and then published it as a refereed chapter in an edited volume. Right before the volume came out, I was explaining the paper to a friend from another university and he went: &quot;oh, I think Professor Bigshot said something similar in his semi-obscure 1970 dissertation!&quot;. I checked the dissertation in question and, indeed, what I wrote is essentially what Professor Bigshot wrote in 1970, give or take some minor variations in the formalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to keep in mind here is that &lt;strong&gt;this is not plagiarism&lt;/strong&gt;. I came up with the idea totally on my own, and I didn't reference Professor Bigshot's dissertation because nobody (not my supervisor, not the conference audience, not the chapter referees) told me about it in time. What worries me is that other people might think I took the relevant dissertation passage and plagiarized it. So far, nobody has happened, but I'm want to preempt plagiarism claims in the future. Obviously, nothing can be done about the published chapter, so I have modified the downloadable preprints in both my website and the go-to repository of my field, adding a note that explains the situation and giving proper credit to Professor Bigshot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this enough, or is there anything else I can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T08:11:11.967" Title="How to preempt plagiarism accusations" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23817" CreationDate="2014-06-23T07:38:39.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are planning on sending the notes because you think that it will improve your chances of being hired, don't waste your time. If two candidates were equally good in terms of their CVs, and equally collegial during the interviews, which they never are, then maybe, and only maybe, would the thank you not matter. As soon as one candidate is even a hair better than another, then the thank you note is not going to matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to send thank you notes because you appreciate the time they took out of their schedule and you enjoyed talking about their research, and would like to potentially collaborate with them, ask them for feedback in the future, etc, then send them a thank you note. Job interviews, even if you do not get the job, are a great opportunity to network. A thank you note is a way to continue the conversations that were started during the interview. They are not an effective way of increasing your chances of being hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T07:38:39.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23811" CreationDate="2014-06-23T07:44:23.237" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is movement towards contributorship as a concept to replace authorship. Journals like Science and Nature (and others) ask authors to provide a list of each contributors contribution. Add to that a definition of what constitutes contributorship (Vancouver Protocol; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot;&gt;ICMJE for the following example&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Final approval of the version to be published; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it is the publishers and editors who will have to implement the tools to provide the correct credit. As an author it is possible to volunteer the information in the acknowledgement. It is of course still possible to give false credit by faking entries for authors who have not contributed but I doubt any system will be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T07:44:23.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23743" CreationDate="2014-06-23T07:55:34.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The downside of making it known is you open yourself up to potential discrimination. I think there are 4 categories of people. Those who could care less, those who are going to discriminate no matter what, those who won't spend the time to get to know you because of the issue, but if they already knew you would be fine, and hose who would be fine from the outset, but would be upset because you tried to hide it. I don't really believe you can hide the expunged felony from everyone without hurting personal relationships with your colleagues. Therefore you need to weigh the people who will not give you a chance against those who will be upset by the apparent deceit. To me it is a no brainer. Telling people know will mean a few missed opportunities, but probably not a big deal. If your PhD supervisor or post doc supervisor finds out later and becomes so against you they stop writing letters of reference, then that is a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest mentioning it in passing to your supervisor. Then follow it up a few days later more formally asking if he/she thinks it is going to be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T07:55:34.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T09:43:30.840" Score="1" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;The instructions of the engineering journal I submitted to (IEEE transactions on wireless communications) says this regarding the final submission of figures and tables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please upload the Originals (masters) of the tables and figures (in separate files, one&#xA;  figure per file). All graphics material submitted for publication must&#xA;  be original drawn figures in .eps format, with each figure submitted&#xA;  as a separate file. Figures exported from other formats (e.g., PDF,&#xA;  PowerPoint) will not reproduce well in print. Appropriate fonts&#xA;  include: Symbol, Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do they mean by &quot;originals (masters) of the tables&quot;? Does it mean that I should submit each table also as a separate file? If so, in which format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13193" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T18:59:09.190" Title="Doubt regarding uploading Tables and Figures for the accepted manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23827" CreationDate="2014-06-23T09:51:29.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the guideline regarding tables is outdated, and one can safely ignore it. If you submit your manuscript in LaTeX, put your tables in the main text. This is a current mainstream in (STEM-related) journals, and it is good to delicately push IEEE towards it. In case if they insist on doing this the other way (which I seriously doubt), you can address the questions to their production team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T09:51:29.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23840" CreationDate="2014-06-23T09:53:23.093" Score="35" ViewCount="6597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a specific subject, and I thought that sharing my &lt;strong&gt;bibliographical and synthesis work from peer-reviewed journals&lt;/strong&gt; on Wikipedia could be a good idea. Moreover, there is no Wikipedia entry on that subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I will use that work for my PhD thesis, is this problematic because someone might think that I have plagiarised the material from Wikipedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this question could apply to any similar collaborative encyclopedia, not just to Wikipedia, and that the article I'm writing is subject to collaborative change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit : by synthesis work I &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; mean :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion&#xA;  not explicitly stated by any of the sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;reduce the information in lengthy sources to an encyclopedic length&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aWhat_SYNTH_is_not&quot;&gt;Wikipedias SYNTH policies&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aSYNTH#Synthesis_of_published_material&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the question is related to sharing my bibliographical work on a collaborative platform, regardless to the platform policy (assuming I can), and potential problems re-using it afterwards, in a PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17784" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:09:20.507" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T22:42:25.873" Title="Is it problematic to use a Wikipedia article I wrote in my PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:23:42.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard, if not impossible, to pre-empt accusations of plagiarism. The key is to be prepared to defend yourself. People rediscover stuff all the time. I would make sure that you keep all of your notes, drafts and any literature searches you may have done. I think keeping them privately would be fine, but if you really wanted to, you could make them publicly available in an archival manner to demonstrate that it is really your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T10:23:42.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23833" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:23:54.723" Score="1" ViewCount="18068" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper which applies some known method to a new problem, for completeness we may need to summarize that method, probably as a section on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper where it was first proposed, the method was described in a set of equations. In my case, I need to include some of these equations, because I need to refer to them in the subsequent part of my paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I write something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We apply the X method [citation], which we shall summarize below, to describe ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then comes the equations, interspersed with some texts, which are paraphrased from the originals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we give the proper attribution to the paper in which the method was first described, without giving the impression that some of the equations are our own? Is the above sufficient? Including [citation] before every equation seems awkward, since all of these equations are from a single paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T20:20:48.220" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T20:20:48.220" Title="How do we properly include and cite a set of equations from another paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23832" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:42:04.587" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally sufficient to say explicitly that &quot;in this section we will recall the method X from [citation]&quot;, and then simply do it. However, you may find it preferable not to quote equations and text from the original paper, but to adopt it according to the style, notation and message of your own manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T10:42:04.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:51:52.787" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of things to do is to start publicly acknowledge the previous work, mentioning that your own contribution has been merely a re-discovery of a lesser known result, or maybe a result from the other research field than yours. Such things happen from time to time, and are not necessarily considered as plagiarism, unless an author continue to act in a way that justifies such a characterisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T10:51:52.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23838" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:58:52.550" Score="26" ViewCount="8018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen couple of questions related to rejection of submissions to conferences (CS). Coming to my case, this is my third rejection, I agree that first two were fair decisions as the paper was not clear and needed more thorough experiments. However in this third submission I have put in all possible effort to make it the best considering feedback from prior submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received initial comments from 4 reviewers with no scores and based on their comments it was on borderline. Since there was a rebuttal phase, I have sent a response clarifying issues raised by them. I received my final notification today and it was a 'reject' decision. The final reviews had comments from an additional reviewer. His comments are atrocious and unfair. He pointed out that he is rejecting the paper as some issue X was &lt;em&gt;not addressed at all&lt;/em&gt;. However we have addressed X with a thorough evaluation in a subsection and results put up in a graph. I'm sure that this reviewer has not read it &lt;em&gt;properly&lt;/em&gt;. If he raised his issue may be on the way we solved X, it would have been more appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that appealing to the PC chairs would be a futile effort but at the same time I do not want an unfair review. This feeling of rejection based on unfair review is depressing me. How do I go about it. I feel the only way out is to resubmit it for another conference in near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastActivityDate="2021-03-29T08:53:56.223" Title="Paper rejection based on unfair review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:10:56.747" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The possibility to have unfair reviews is one of the reasons why you receive multiple reviews. I have received multiple reviews where the reviewers clearly didn't review the paper carefully, and it's indeed quite frustrating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, when I looked back at the papers, I realised that they were not rejected because of one unfair review, but because I didn't manage to convince the fair reviewers: if you get four accept, then it does not matter if you have an unfair reject.  Besides, it could also be the case that you've received an unfair accept review (i.e., someone who accepted the paper without really reading), so, in the end, it might balance things out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with rejection is a huge step of the academic process, and as it has been said here in the past, if you never get papers rejected, you are probably not aiming high enough. As long as you have only one unfair review, ignore it, and move on to the next conference (and if you only receive unfair reviews, well, you are probably submitting at the wrong venue). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T11:10:56.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:13:36.227" Score="56" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel the only way out is to resubmit it for another conference in near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That about sums it up. Negative reviews and rejections are hard to swallow. They are common in academia and you cannot let them get to you. The best thing to do is step away from the manuscript. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream. After a while, generally for me a week or so, try and look at the reviews again. If they still piss you off, step away from them again. Once you can read the reviews objectively, start to tackle them. This might mean agreeing with the reviewer, or seeing where the reviewer got lost, or that the reviewer is simply a fool. Once you have taken everything from the reviews that will improve the manuscript, file it away and if necessary cry and scream again. Then resubmit the manuscript to the next conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T11:13:36.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:16:45.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you said, the paper was on the borderline after 4 (fair) reviews. I would advise first to discuss the paper and the results with your supervisor / colleagues, and if you are still determined to continue, rework it significantly, taking in account the criticism of four referees, that you consider as fair. Make sure the result moves far from the borderline (and in the right direction). Then re-think the remarks of the last (&quot;unfair&quot;) referee and decide what you want to do with them. Probably, you should not trash them away completely &amp;mdash; try to find a motivated comments and suggestions apart from the &quot;unfair&quot; ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a new version of a paper is ready, you may wish to show it to your supervisor and send to several colleagues outside your group asking them for some pre-submission comments &amp;mdash; this may save you a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T11:16:45.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:25:16.337" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, but make sure you cite it &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; mention it, to avoid being accused of copying and pasting from Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it is &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; that you have contributed to Wikipedia and I wish more people considered using pieces of their introductory chapters for Wikipedia. Just make sure that people know that you copied to, not from, Wikipedia. (I mean, the order is irrelevant, i.e. whether you first wrote text for Wikipedia or your thesis, but the authorship is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="9490" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T19:52:15.293" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T19:52:15.293" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:41:31.003" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's problematic. Quoting wikipedia is, to some people, always dodgy, whatever the context. Just don't do it in an academic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can't reuse your own words, having broadcast them once in wikipedia, without explicitly stating that you're quoting wikipedia - that would be self-plagiarism, just as when if you'd quoted a previous paper you'd written, without explicitly identifying that it was a quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've written your best stuff for wikipedia, and left yourself with a dead end for your academic work, then count it as a lesson learnt.  But it's more likely that you've just put on wikipedia one first attempt at formulation. So now do a better one, completely rephrased, and use that in your thesis. Then you don't need to mention wikipedia in your thesis at all, except in the acknowledgements section if you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T13:40:51.040" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:40:51.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:24:10.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can do this safely, but you will want to take some precautions like Piotr mentioned.  However, from a practical standpoint, I don't recommend anything that might create problems with your dissertation work.  You haven't finished your PhD thesis, and your efforts on that project are far more important than writing a Wikipedia entry for a topic that isn't covered.  Even if you cover all your bases, you still have a risk of somebody raising the issue of plagiarism.  I suggest minimizing such distractions and side projects and focus exclusively on your thesis.  You can then devote your time to these projects after it is defended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:24:10.487" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23832" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:24:31.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the equations in your source are numbered, you can use the source's numbering, perhaps with a prefix. For example, if you quote equation (2.15) in the source, you could number it as (X.2.15). Then this prefix will serve to distinguish the quoted equations from your own. If you only quote a few equations, you could also follow them with something like &quot;these equations appear as (2.15) and (2.19) in [citation]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14053" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:24:31.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:28:57.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are we talking about the same paper that is rejected a total 3 times? If so, you should seriously consider if this paper (however you improve it) will ever be good enough. Perhaps the problem you solve is not interesting enough or your solution does not promote the state-of-the-art significantly enough. In that case, maybe aiming too high is your problem. Also, note that in prestigious CS conferences (I assume this is your case, due to a rebuttal phase), borderline papers never make it. At the end, there are enough papers who pass with flying colors and the rest fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should start considering submitting to a lower ranked CS conference or perhaps a workshop. You have already wasted a full year or more (that is what probably the time required for getting those 3 rejections)and wasting another 3-6 months for the next conference, might not be feasible. You should seriously start discussing this possibility with your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that rejection hurts but many of us had works that were rejected, kept improving it and got rejected again. At some time, it is time to cut your losses and move-on. I think it was @JeffE that said &quot;The universe has spoken. Move on&quot; and he is right. Submit to a lower conference / workshop to at-least patent those results and lower your sense of rejection, but without wasting too much time further improving those results. Instead focus on more interesting variations and move-on. But most-of-all discuss all these possibilities with your advisor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:28:57.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:35:49.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will not be able to pre-empt every possible accusation in academia.  If you were not aware of this earlier work when you wrote the paper, then don't worry about it -- at all.  It simply isn't plagiarism.  I would cite this earlier work in future papers, if it is relevant.  But, dissertations are really not the best sources to be citing (at least in the social sciences) -- and the best dissertations are spun off into articles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what is the purpose of &quot;giving credit to Professor Bigshot?&quot;  If the article was based on that person's work, then you give credit by citing that work accordingly.  However, if you didn't even see that work when you wrote the paper, then it isn't necessary.  Your steps to highlight this issue on your website is commendable, but I don't think it is warranted.  I suggest that you don't worry about this issue anymore.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:35:49.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23848" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:43:46.830" Score="6" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious as to whether or not any departments ever attempt to evaluate their own admissions decisions. It seems quite plausible to do for any college or graduate program, but I've never heard of it done. I have in mind some kind of data analysis comparing student success in the program or beyond with variables from the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand some might not like the idea, but as noisy as admissions are, I was wondering if schools ever reflect on their own decisions and attempt to identify strengths and weaknesses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17789" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:21:27.913" Title="Do schools/departments ever evaluate their own admissions process?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23847" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:11:49.330" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This practice is not frequent, and it is rarely systematic and rigorous.  However, from a decision-making perspective, this has been given attention by Robyn Dawes, who was a very well-known psychologist at Carnegia Mellon.  Here is one of his papers on the topic, which has been cited about 500 times (per Google Scholar). Some recent evaluations have been published, but relative to the total number of admissions committees that exist across all graduate schools, I can confidently say it is not many. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dawes, R. M. (1971). A case study of graduate admissions: Application of three principles of human decision making. American Psychologist, 26(2), 180.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:11:49.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:16:43.180" Score="-1" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a year ago, I was studying at a university. I had a subject with a tutor; since my family moved to a different city, I also moved to a different university and discontinued my studies at my former university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not use my real name at Facebook for obvious reasons that we all know. In a public group in Facebook about ancient Iran, I posted an article and the tutor I had at my former university commented that my real name is something else: he also mentioned that I discontinued my studies at the former university: he also mentioned that I did not attend his classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is not this abusing my privacy? He could sent me a private message if he wanted. To be honest, I am offended and want to make an official complaint to my former university. So I want to know if his act is indeed abusing my privacy and what is the best thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also should mention that I sent him a private message on Facebook and asked him that one should respect indivisul's privacy in the hope that he will delete his comment but he did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His Exact comments were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorry for interrupting mate. I just visited your profile which shows&#xA;  you reside in somecountry. Just would like to know if your real&#xA;  surname is somename. If so, I reckon you were my student in tutorial&#xA;  sessions in Engineering Mechanics in UTS ayear ago; However, you&#xA;  stopped attending the sessions after the first few ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17791" LastEditorDisplayName="user17797" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T15:33:53.303" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T21:01:03.210" Title="Abusing privacy" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23847" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:21:27.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me the best evaluation of an admissions process would be the success of students once through the system. I am not sure what would otherwise be evaluated? Perhaps that can be expanded upon in the question? In any case, I am sure many departments run tabs on where alumni go  and I can only share the statistics from two departments my Alma Mater and my current workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pM3RA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 1. Statistics on post-graduate careers of students from the Geology department of University of Minnesota&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bEEqJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 2. Statistics on post-graduate careers of PhD students from the Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology department at Stockholm University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this perspective the admissions system is evaluated from the perspective of employability within the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To study the process itself one would need to set up some additional criteria against which to evaluate the process but I am not sure what those criteria would necessarily be. Some aspects such as gender and ethnicity bias are of course identified but it is unclear if there is a need to try to actively change the interest of applicants other than strive to reach under-represented groups. Such outreach activities are, however, not part of the admission process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:21:27.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23854" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:34:56.780" Score="1" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my Master's thesis in Computer Science. Shortly, I am &quot;drawing&quot; a diagram, which is then serialized and from the serialization I generate some source code. So, my question is not about the code of my application, but about the code generated by it. I think we can call it the result of my app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to include an example of what output (source code, although I will also include the intermediary serialization) has my app for a certain input (a diagram). I mention that this would mean many pages, maybe a total of 7-10. Should I include this in the part related to the results or maybe in an appendix? Or is there a more suitable place? Or should I not include anything at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15987" LastEditorUserId="15987" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T13:51:30.027" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:01:34.993" Title="Including many pages of serialization code and generated source code in Master's thesis?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23832" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:53:49.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest making it clear, that you also quote the equations, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We apply the X method [citation], to describe ... The derivations and equations below are cited and summarized from [citation]:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I would also include the major equations in your paper. Not every reader may have access to your sources, and if the equations are necessary to understand your data/approach they should be provided in your text.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;em&gt;major equations&lt;/em&gt; I mean final expressions but not the steps how they are derived. As author, ask yourself which equations are necessary to understand the methodology and not common lore in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17548" LastEditorUserId="17548" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T15:33:28.447" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:33:28.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23851" CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:54:57.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are publishing the code that you wrote by hand. Then, the interested reader can just run it and get the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generated code is usually unreadable, so there is little point in going through tens of papers of near-garbage. What could be a good idea is to show some excerpts, no more than a paragraph. One option is perhaps some particularly clever parts, like the handling of a particular corner case; another would be a fairly general simple case, to see how readable it would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:54:57.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23851" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:01:34.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;b&gt;put your code in public repo, and cite the repo in your paper.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Long answer:&lt;/b&gt; Any academic document you produce is supposed to be readable and useful to your readers. Try to put yourself in a reader's shoes and imagine how you feel reading through a 7-page long autogenerated code? Is is a pleasant or useful experience that you would like to repeat one day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The modern technology allows us to use much more than just a text on the paper to present our research outputs. Although a short pieces of code may be extremely useful and appropriate in textbooks or some articles, the long code and auto-generated code really does not belong to the paper. It should be kept in a public repository, where it really belong, and used as a working example, which people can download, modify and execute, not just enjoy it aesthetically in a pdf file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:01:34.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:27:01.860" Score="3" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard situation in US research universities is for the university to pay one semester of salary for a year of sabbatical leave, and faculty typically take this sabbatical at another university or research lab, where there is a clear sense of how to fund the sabbatical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to know whether anyone has experience on how to (ethically) fund an industry sabbatical.  Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to work full time in an industry position?  If so, do you get half-pay?  Half-hours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What (ethical) obligations do you have to ongoing grants (say from the National Science Foundation) during such a sabbatical year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What (ethical) obligations do you have towards the university that is paying a semester of salary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T05:50:12.983" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T05:50:12.983" Title="Is it possible to work full time in an industry position while on sabbatical?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;sabbatical&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23849" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:37:40.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, and I am not giving you legal advice.  If you are in the US, you can view this matter from the Family Education Rights and Policy Act (FERPA):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the key issues that should be considered: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) FERPA gives parents certain rights with respect to their children's education records. These rights transfer to the student when he or she reaches the age of 18 or attends a school beyond the high school level. Students to whom the rights have transferred are &quot;eligible students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Generally, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a student's education record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this person published your name AND gave details of your educational record, then I think you have a legitimate complaint, provided that the tutoring was a service of the university.  If you hired this person privately or joined a group that was not formally affiliated with the university, then the university will not pay attention to this complaint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:37:40.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23855" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:41:18.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every university has a policy for addressing these matters, and it is best that you obtain the specific policy from your own institution -- a general survey of what goes on at other places will likely not be informative to your present situation.  Federal funding sometimes can be used to cover the other part of your salary -- but, again, it depends on the funding source and the rules of your institution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:41:18.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:44:05.380" Score="5" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;My manuscript was accepted in an ISI journal 6 months ago, but it is not published online yet. I found that the journal published online some manuscripts that were accepted after my acceptance date. Therefore, I sent several emails to the journal Editor but, I did not receive any answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I find when the journal aim to publish my manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17798" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T15:08:39.483" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:08:39.483" Title="How can I find out when an Editor intends to publish my paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:47:14.523" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers address the question of &quot;once I post this on Wikipedia, can I include it in my thesis?&quot; I would like to address another angle - I am not sure that you should be posting this on Wikipedia at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a policy banning the inclusion of original research. This means &quot;research that is not exclusively based on a summary, review or synthesis of earlier publications on the subject of research.&quot; (See English Wikipedia's policy on original research &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_research#Original_research&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)That is, basically anything that would be publishable as a thesis. This is because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - that is, a tertiary source that aggregates information from secondary (and sometimes primary) sources - it cannot accept primary-source material like original research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that you want to share your &quot;bibliographical and synthesis work&quot; on your subject. Bibliographical work may be useful for Wikipedia, but any synthesis you did to add your own ideas and/or discuss them may well be considered original research and be prohibited. The fact that no article exists on the topic leads me to think that it may be a theory or idea of your own and may be considered original research if posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as Piotr Migdal said, it's great that you are thinking of contributing to Wikipedia. Wikipedia definitely needs more academics and people who are experts in various areas to contribute their knowledge - it just has to be knowledge that's already accepted in the field, rather than original, non-yet-peer-reviewed research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12222" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:47:14.523" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:50:26.963" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel the need to record a dissenting opinion on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my understanding that acknowledgments are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a required component of a PhD thesis.  They are a tradition and a custom, and like most traditions and customs, people participate in them because they find them valuable and enjoy doing them, not because they are obligated to do so.  One answer says that many grants &quot;contractually require you to acknowledge the funding entity&quot;.  Yes, but that's a different kind of acknowledgment: for instance, in many published papers that goes on a footnote appearing on the first page, whereas there may (or may not) be a paragraph in the introduction or at the end of the paper thanking various people.  Moreover, a PhD advisor is not a &quot;funding entity&quot; in this sense, and I have never heard of anyone being contractually obligated to thank their advisor.  Let us assume that the OP is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading advice that amounts to &quot;Yes, you should absolutely write acknowledgments in a way that conveys a positive impression of your advisor.  Since you in fact feel exactly the opposite way you will have to write them very carefully indeed&quot; a few times, I got a bit worried.  I see a personal integrity issue here: really one should not record in a formal document sentiments which are diametrically opposed to those one actually holds.  Moreover, all the comments about the career risk one might incur for not including acknowledgments -- well, I must agree that omitting acknowledgments is a suboptimal career move, but such comments make me even more worried.  It seems to me that many people here are essentially viewing acknowledgments as a &lt;strong&gt;loyalty oath&lt;/strong&gt; that one must make to one's thesis advisor.  That can't be good.  People stood on principle against loyalty oaths in the past, sometimes with cost to themselves.  They were right and courageous to do so.  I'm afraid I see a similar principle here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is this: no, actually the OP certainly does have the right not to put acknowledgments in his thesis.  Is that the best career move?  No, probably not, but it is his choice and he may have good reasons for doing it.  Four final comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No acknowledgments at all seems much better to me than acknowledgments which are sarcastic or show bitterness, and probably even better than acknowledgments which are carefully written to extract exactly the level of thanks that a dissatisfied person can muster.  I do agree that it is less than plausible that the OP does not have warm feelings about &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. his family and friends), but writing acknowledgments to your thesis and not mentioning your advisor is also worse than not writing them at all.  If you really want to thank your friends and family then you don't need a page in your thesis to do so.  (I looked back at my own thesis acknowledgments just now and was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the effusiveness with which I thanked my mother and a very supportive ex-girlfriend.  But now I have a sinking feeling in my stomach: I'm not sure either of them ever read my thesis!  A facebook message may be in order here...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case people are wondering whether I personally identify with the OP's ingratitude to his advisor: hell no.  My first reaction to the post was to roll my eyes at the sentiment that his advisor was helpful for half the time and then so unhelpful so as to make the total contribution 0%.  I am struggling to imagine what someone could do to make a contribution so negative as to cancel out years of support.  My first impression of the OP was that he is -- to put it mildly -- a peevish ingrate.  My second thought?  Gosh, this guy would make a much better impression simply by not talking about his advisor at all.  Not recording for posterity your own sentiments when you know that they contain inappropriate and unseemly negativity is a sign of great professionalism, more so than just lying through your teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I recently read a PhD thesis from my own program without acknowledgments.  I must admit that I did notice this: when I saw the question I thought &quot;Wait, didn't so-and-so not have acknowledgments in their thesis?&quot; so I looked back and confirmed that it was true.  Without giving away personal details, let me say that I have every reason to believe that so-and-so had an unusually positive relationship with their thesis advisor, and that so-and-so has gone on to another academic job and, apparently, a promising career.  Why did so-and-so not include acknowledgments?  &lt;strong&gt;I simply don't know.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's not my business.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to what some other people have said: other than in the context of my own graduate program, I rarely read people's PhD theses.  When I do it is usually to get some exposition or technical detail that I wish they had put into their published work.  In particular, I almost never read the theses of job candidates.  Does this sound weird?  I think it isn't: I read lots of other accounts of the material in candidates' theses: from their recommendation letters, from their cover letters and research statements and -- when I am really interested -- from the papers and preprints resulting from their thesis work.  If other people here specifically read PhD theses in the context of academic hiring, I would be very interested to know.  Also, as a hirer -- yes, times are tough and we can be very selective, but there are certain things that one does not want to take into account.  If I was at a hiring meeting and someone brought up a lack of acknowledgments in a PhD thesis as a point against a candidate, I would say something like &quot;This person really must be great if you want to sink her and can't do any better than that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:50:26.963" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:00:21.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the real problem that may however be hard to address, is that there is a schedule to visit certain conferences well in advance and that you are supposed to come up with research results that will be good enough for those conferences. This is not what I am used to doing, but then my field is not CS. If you could simply work on your research program until you get outstanding results, then getting those results published in a decent journal won't usually be a problem. There will still be cases of bad refereeing but then you won't mind if the referee wants things that are already explained to be clarified if the report starts with the statement that the paper is excellent and should be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17479" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:00:21.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:08:27.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, a publisher uses an online system that allows authors to track the status of their paper. Double-check your inbox (particularly Spam folder) for a automatic email from such system (search the journal name for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are sure that you did not hear from the publisher and the journal editor within 6 months, I would say, it becomes worrying. The academic publishing was never a particularly fast process, but this situation probably oversteps the limits. Consider writing to the support team of your publisher and to Editor-in-Chief of your journal with inquiry. Also, consider sharing the name of the journal with your peers to prevent future misuse of anyone's precious time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:08:27.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23866" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:33:26.807" Score="7" ViewCount="5180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I initially thought this was off-topic but StrongBad told me this is not, so thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has been a victim of fraud by someone at an university. This was investigated by the police and will almost certainly lead to a conviction and probably a prison sentence. My question is do universities (automatically?) expel people for committing criminal offenses whilst a student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific University in question here is Cambridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10156" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T18:17:20.217" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T10:12:15.727" Title="Will you be expelled if you commit a crime as a student in the UK?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:44:24.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;And why not the other way around? First, obtain your PhD and finish your dissertation. Once this has been done, cite among the other bibliographical items in Wikipedia your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, there will be no problem. Since it will be the Wikipedia article based on your thesis and not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7160" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:44:24.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23864" CreationDate="2014-06-23T16:27:40.717" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of no University that automatically does anything. That said, most Universities, have policies in place to protect their reputation. At Cambridge, both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/current-students/section-14-anti-social-behaviour-and-disciplinary-procedures&quot;&gt;Christ's College&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/anti-social-behaviour-a-disciplinary-procedures&quot;&gt;Griton College&lt;/a&gt; have almost identical policies which makes me think there is an underlying university policy that I cannot easily find. To quote Griton's policy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, the University has a number of sanctions for behaviour impinging on the image of the University, while the most serious breaches, including all criminal behaviour, will be referred to the local police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, Universities should be reporting any criminal activity to the local authorities. They also have the right to follow their own policies, of which expulsion is a possibility. Universities like to protect their images (e.g., the recent sex offence scandals in the US). So what the University will do may depend on if the victim of the crime was another student and how vocal the sides are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T16:27:40.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23681" CreationDate="2014-06-23T17:40:18.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would imagine that your best bet is to talk to a faculty member about it. Find a faculty member who is also interested in the topic. They can probably give you good advice on this and may even be interested in co-authoring the paper with you (which is probably more realistic as an undergrad), and honestly going this route wouldn't be too bad for you since your name would then be associated with an expert on the subject, giving you more credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I've learned in college is that if you have an idea, talking to a faculty member about it can get you a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of opportunities. And if you talk to someone and they can't help you, they can almost always refer you to someone else who can be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T17:40:18.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17012" CreationDate="2014-06-23T17:44:13.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this would count against you. It could perhaps be beneficial to have both research and conventional internship experience, but I think the research experience could only help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have not done any research (I am a Computer Science and Business student), but I do know some people who have had both research positions and conventional internships, and they said that interviewers often focused on talking about their research experience (and these people also got extremely good jobs with companies that a lot of CS students dream of working for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T17:44:13.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23871" CreationDate="2014-06-23T18:27:19.413" Score="3" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've already graduated.  I wrote a paper related to my Master's thesis.  I am planning on sending it to my adviser to ask if I should ethically include his name as an author.  He seems to be ethical as far as I can tell, but in general is something like this dangerous to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am wondering if showing your paper to other people before it is published is dangerous, I am worried about things like theft, even though he seems to be reputable, now that I am no longer connected to him academically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T19:10:11.200" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T19:10:11.200" Title="Is it safe to show my old advisor my new paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23681" CreationDate="2014-06-23T19:05:57.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you ask questions &quot;Is it hard to get an article published in a journal?&quot;, about journals and in general &quot;Any advice for a beginner at writing and publishing?&quot;, etc. then  it is very unlikely you will publish something in a reputable journal, based only on a few lines of advice via Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try looking at student's conferences; very often there are great places to share undergraduate work, and learn how to present results (via posters, talks, sometimes - conference proceedings),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask someone from your university to look at your work, and guide you through the first publication (a lot of work, but worth it); but since it's chemistry you do it in someone's lab, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T19:05:57.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23869" CreationDate="2014-06-23T19:15:41.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you work in the US or Europe, intend to complete the paper and submit it for review somewhere soon, and have records that show the development work that you've done on the paper, there's little harm in showing it to people that you trust. If you don't trust your former supervisor, then I'd wait until you've submitted it or even have an acceptance in hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I'm wondering why you don't already know whether they should be a co-author and haven't already discussed the fact that you're writing a paper on which they might need to contribute. You should at least discuss this with them if there's any contribution of theirs in what you're writing up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T19:15:41.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T21:35:33.600" Score="24" ViewCount="1302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an individual interested in multiple academic disciplines such as neuroscience, biological engineering, computer science, history, anthropology, psychology, political theory ... to name just a few. Currently, I have a normal (40 hours/week) engineering job that leaves me enough free time to follow these topics to a moderately satisfying degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, primarily due to intellectual curiosity, I'm considering doing a PhD (in Europe) and would ideally want to move to research later (discipline: something along the lines of genetic engineering, computational biology or cognitive neuroscience - not sure yet, but my background is in computer science). Given the highly specialized nature of modern scientific research that seems to demand intense working hours, one concern that I have is the &lt;strong&gt;fear of becoming highly one dimensional&lt;/strong&gt;: completely failing to follow progress in other fields and in society as a whole, with publish or perish environment creating an inescapable feedback loop, where one cannot afford to read articles and books on topics not related to work, or follow public debates; yet alone write a blog about e.g. social issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize there are academics out there who seem to be prolific across multiple disciplines (e.g. Chomsky, Pinker ...), but the question still stands: &lt;strong&gt;in a modern research environment, can one satisfy multiple intellectual interests that transcend immediate work requirements&lt;/strong&gt;, or has the game become too competitive and focused for that? What are the main variables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17810" LastEditorUserId="17810" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T21:41:17.320" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T05:18:33.207" Title="Does becoming good at scientific research force one to become one dimensional?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T21:44:22.603" Score="13" ViewCount="2026" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic job applications usually require the submission of a research statement, which describes not only the applicant's research experience, but also future direction of their work. As such, it may contain some novel ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that a research statement is not a publication, and therefore, can't be cited, how does a selection committee ensure that nothing in an applicant's research statement (especially those of unsuccessful applicants) will be stolen by anyone in the selection committee who reads it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, since the applicant's submitted documents are probably only known to the selection committee and the applicant him/herself, isn't it easy for anyone in the committee to copy those ideas without being found out? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related question, if a member in the committee identifies an interesting and promising idea of an unsuccessful applicant, and is keen to pursue the idea, what should the committee member do? How do you give credit to the unsuccessful applicant when the research statement is the only document where the idea is described?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, my concern is more on the committee, not how I can prevent the committee from stealing my idea. One day I might be sitting as a selection committee member myself, and I'd like to know what I should do in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5727/&quot;&gt;Research statement ideas got used by interviewing committee&lt;/a&gt;, but looking from the perspective of the committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T17:05:13.363" Title="How do selection committees ensure that they won't steal an applicant's ideas as presented in his/her research statement?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;research-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23873" CreationDate="2014-06-24T01:43:35.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do it, but you might not be a professor. I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering, and I work in CFD, HPC clusters, and BigData/analytics when I do research. My primary job is running the HPC department at a large-ish computing center. If I were a professor, I doubt I could pull this off. My research output is much smaller that professors my age, but I still have a pretty satisfying career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You best chance for doing lots of different kinds of research is to find a center who appreciates you for your broad interests and to help it grow its mission while pursuing your more esoteric interests when you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T01:43:35.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23873" CreationDate="2014-06-24T03:04:53.553" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer may vary across field and institution and continent.  But based on my experience, in short, I would say:  Yes, a modern research environment permits and even benefits from broad intellectual interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But first let's draw a distinction between what I'll call your &quot;output&quot; and your &quot;input&quot;.  For most researchers, research output is highly specialized.  It can take an intense focus to make progress on the hardest, most impactful problems (&lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot;&gt;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&lt;/a&gt;).  Not only that, your progress is generally a super-linear function of the time you put into a project.  You invest in learning past work, concepts tools, developing ideas often over a period of multiple years -- and then connections happen faster, ideas mature, you know the software tools, and overall you produce much more quickly.  Good interdisciplinary work is possible and does allow you to use expertise in multiple areas or fields; but, in my experience, this work can be just as specialized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;input&quot;, however, is an inspiration for what research to tackle.  I find that my creativity in producing good research ideas is substantially better when I explicitly take time to step back and think, interact with new people, and explore new concepts.  And the best researchers have a good understanding of society and gut feeling about what will be really impactful in the next few years.  If you completely fail to follow progress in your field, in other fields, and in society as a whole, you might produce more papers in the short run but probably have less impactful research in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html&quot;&gt;Hamming said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have&#xA;  the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, &quot;The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.&quot; I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as a professor, you have a great deal of freedom to steer your own research agenda; more than in most professions.  While it's hard to make progress in wildly divergent fields concurrently, over longer timescales (5-10 years) many researchers do change their focus area quite successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17820" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T03:04:53.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17012" CreationDate="2014-06-24T04:22:16.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer this question from my undergrad experience and work ex in India. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: No, having research experience doesn't hinder your chances of getting into a technical job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Having a good research project/internship demonstrates your deep thinking abilities and capacity to do challenging work often with minimal guidance. Good companies often admire these skills. In addition to this, research internship along with good implementation part(CS specific), count heavily to your favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advise of your college senior (without any offense) is directed primarily towards service sector companies and is misleading. The reason is not that your research internship would not give you proper skills for the job, but that your research experience may give them an indication that you would leave the job for higher studies. There are many other factors such companies consider for minimizing the attrition rate and maintaining high reserve manpower, and research experience is certainly not at the top of that list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="2823" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T04:49:50.857" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T04:49:50.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2014-06-24T05:03:21.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a tester  I would suggest giving a couple lessons on testing itself, its techniques and TEST DESIGN. The latter is useful to write proper set of tests. Anyway, teaching them good habits of writing tests for their code is a huge plus.&#xA;As an advanced task for one of the latest your lessons I would suggest you to switch the roles with your students: tell them you are going to write a class with given interface and defined behaviour, and their task then would be to write unit tests that would 1. cover the described behavior and 2. find some bugs (probably, left in the code by your intention). That would teach them writing test based on the desired behavior, not the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17825" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T05:03:21.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23883" CreationDate="2014-06-24T07:02:41.943" Score="18" ViewCount="2873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I developed a system, and wrote a paper about it.  It includes formulas and pseudo-code.  During the course of development I used Roman letters in the formulas.  I eventually ran out of meaningful letters (letters that I could associate to some extent with what they represented), and started using Greek letters.  The development went on until somehow I ended up having about 8 Greek letters and 2 Roman letters used in the final formulas and pseudo-code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the paper is written, I wonder if having all of these Greek letters is unusual.  Would it be better to replace them with Roman letters?  Would it be better to use Roman letters with subscripts, such as &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; for time, and &lt;em&gt;t_scaled&lt;/em&gt; for scaled time, instead of using Greek letters for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To clear things up a little, my general question is: is it preferable to use Roman letters or Greek letters in a technical (engineering) publication, and is it acceptable or even preferable to use letters with word subscripts instead of entirely new symbols to label related variables or constants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="17694" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T13:20:42.907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:02:02.087" Title="Paper with lots of Greek letters" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2014-06-24T07:13:15.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing style is really something very individual, and may vary a lot. There is nothing wrong with Greek letters &lt;i&gt;per se&lt;/i&gt;, but it is slightly concerning that you use them because you ran out of meaningful Roman letters. That could indicate that you are using really a lot of notation in your paper, and from a point of reader it might be difficult to keep in mind what do these letters mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of semantics, i.e. notation like n_cars or t_scaled, may really help to reduce the number of &quot;independent&quot; symbols and improve readability. You may also wish to structure the use of variables, e.g. use Greeks as integers and Roman as everything else. It is very good idea to stick to some classical notation worked out in textbooks and major articles in your area of research. Ultimately, you may wish to present a table of all your letters with their meaning after the first section of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T07:13:15.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2014-06-24T07:13:38.197" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends entirely on your field, and specifically, what the norm is in your field. In mathematical fields like statistics, economics, physics, and math itself, and to a slightly lesser extent in chemistry and computer science, using Greek letters as variables is &lt;em&gt;exceedingly&lt;/em&gt; common - in fact, it's unusual to see a paper that &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; use a few, and there are many quantities for which the well-established standard notation involves a Greek letter. In other fields, perhaps that's not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still not sure after examining the norms in your field, I'd just go ahead and do it. Given that mathematicians use Greek letters all the time, it stands to reason that when you are doing math in another field, you should be able to do so as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would caution you about one thing: try to make your variable names &lt;em&gt;descriptive&lt;/em&gt;. That is, it should be easy for the reader to make the association between the variable name and what it represents. So when there is a standard notation for some quantity, use that; when there isn't, subscripted symbols like &quot;t_scaled&quot; are one good way to do it. They do take up more space on the page, though, and can make formulas look unwieldy, so you have to strike a balance between aesthetics and clarity of meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T05:02:02.087" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:02:02.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23908" CreationDate="2014-06-24T08:24:26.987" Score="36" ViewCount="46314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to accept small gifts from students? In past years I have one or two students have given me small gifts, generally a box of chocolates. I judge the size of gifts on my international beer scale, where things that cost less than 4 beers, (maybe 10 USD) are small token gifts. These have always fallen into the small token gift category. I have typically either left these in my office and shared with people or in bountiful years brought them into the lab or school office. This year I have received over a dozen boxes of chocolates from undergraduate students. Individually each box is still small, but in total the gifts are no longer small. All but two of the gifts were from graduating students. I realised I don't have a well defined personal policy about accepting gifts and I am not sure the university has a policy either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do when students offer you gifts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="33010" LastEditDate="2019-06-06T00:22:07.233" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T00:22:07.233" Title="Is it ethical to accept small gifts from students? And how small is small?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23891" CreationDate="2014-06-24T08:25:50.300" Score="13" ViewCount="1765" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am BSc student. When I was in the fourth semester (end of the second year), I did my course project and submitted it to my professor. His efforts in order to publish it really shocked me. It was just a course project and I already had a conference paper out of it. I know the article was so foolish and  basic but he is insisting on publishing it. After two rejections he is submitting it to another journal. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Does this journal count this rejections as negative points for the authors?&lt;/strong&gt; If I am going to submit any paper to this journal in the future do they count this rejections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17830" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T15:19:24.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T15:19:24.493" Title="Do journals hold rejections against authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2014-06-24T08:26:11.773" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it preferable to use Roman letters of Greek letters in a technical (engineering) publication, and is it acceptable or even preferable to use letters with word subscripts instead of entirely new symbols to label related variable or constants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent answers that have already been given, I would like to stress the fact that your original question cannot be answered in the generality that you are apparently looking for. By and large, Greek letters are OK, as are Roman letters, as are either of those with sub- or superscripts. What is &lt;em&gt;preferable&lt;/em&gt; depends entirely on context, the established conventions and notation in your field, and personal preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to notation, the 3 golden rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it intuitive. Don't use epsilon to mean &lt;em&gt;&quot;a really large value&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Don't use pi to refer to a constant value of 8.5. If you, for example, have instances and timestamps, don't use &quot;t&quot; to refer to the instances and &quot;i&quot; to refer to timestamps (real-life example I recently reviewed).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it consistent. Use the same notation in the entire paper. Use the same notation patterns throughout the paper (if you use capital Roman letters for a constant, use capital Roman letters for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; constants, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it minimal. Never introduce notation that you are not actually using.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T13:54:21.430" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:54:21.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23894" CreationDate="2014-06-24T09:01:09.323" Score="9" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a couple of papers on a certain topic in network communications.  I would like to write my next paper on a different topic, for example something geared toward the electrical engineering side of communications.  These topics are normally thought of as different fields of specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I would like to do this is to demonstrate a broad knowledge base on my resume.  I am also interested in various topics.  Is it at all harmful to write (and perhaps publish) in different tangentially related subjects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T11:14:05.707" Title="Is it necessary to specialize on a topic when writing publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-24T09:04:29.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for everyone involved, I am not a professor. I would be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; uncomfortable even with &quot;small&quot; gifts (what's small for a professor with a salary could make quite a dent in some students' budgets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a slippery slope involved here, and I personally would rather &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143122231&quot;&gt;avoid even having to think about this by laying down extremely simple rules&lt;/a&gt;. For instance, I kind of like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eclectecon.net/2013/07/open-letter-to-my-students-8th-revised-edition-august-2013.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I see you out on the town or at a sports bar, and you want to buy&#xA;  me a drink, you cannot currently be in my classes or ever take any of&#xA;  my classes again. Then probably you can buy me a drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably suggest that if anyone does want to express their appreciation of something I did, an email would be quite enough and would of course be very welcome. If someone &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; feel the compulsion to spend money, they could always donate to their favorite charity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T09:04:29.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23874" CreationDate="2014-06-24T09:52:17.040" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academics are presented with confidential material all the time. We review manuscripts and grants and we are expected to not steal those ideas. A research statement is very similar to a grant proposal. When we are given applications to review we are reminded that they are confidential and should not be circulated. This is the same as when reviewing a grant. While many funding agencies and publishers have clear statements that reviewers must agree to, departments generally do not produce such guidelines. That said, a department would likely come down very hard on an individual who did not respect the confidentiality of an applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that out of the way, it is often that a reviewer has similar ideas as an applicant. On the face of it, it may appear that the reviewer has stolen the idea from a proposal, when in fact it was an independent idea that the reviewer had already had. One question is should reviewers decline to review based on a conflict of interest when the proposed work is similar to their current/future work. In my opinion, they should not since they are in the best position to review the work and the similarity is likely the reason they have been asked to review. This then does leave the burden on the reviewers to be able to document that the research agenda is in fact their own and not stolen from the confidential proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final issue is to document anything that is unique to your proposal. Saying you want to study topic X does not make it yours. Saying you want to study topic X with method Y, isn't much better. If the proposal says I want to study topic X with novel method Y because of reason Z, then the linking of X, Y, and Z might be important. If you document this, then at least if someone studies X with Y, you can get the credit for coming up with the brilliant idea of using method Y on problem X. In some ways realising that problem X can be solved with method Y is more important than actually solving the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T09:52:17.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23885" CreationDate="2014-06-24T09:59:22.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of a journal holding rejected manuscripts against the authors. Editors likely keep track informally of problem authors such that if an author is consistently submitting low quality work they may be more likely to desk reject the work than bother reviewers with it. That said, one or two low quality submissions would not be problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK research councils have started to implement a waiting period for low quality grant submissions. Basically, if you submit two low quality grant applications in a row on sequential deadlines, you will be barred from submitting another application on the next deadline. Once the waiting period is over, the issue is forgotten. The penalty is pretty small since it is pretty hard, if not impossible, to rapidly come up with three good funding proposals. Having a mandated few month break is probably a good thing. This is relatively new and some day publishers may follow suit, but as of now, no publisher imposes such a model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, if the PI thinks there is a reasonable chance of publication, then a few rejections (less than a dozen) will not hurt your reputation or future chance of publishing other material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T14:54:50.963" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T14:54:50.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23885" CreationDate="2014-06-24T10:00:29.993" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rejections are not necessarily a negative when submitting to a new journal. Of course, it means a careful editor will take an extra careful look at the manuscript before accepting it for review. They key point is, however, that when submitting a previously rejected manuscript it is necessary to, first, be upfront with the rejection and the reasons for it, and, second, to provide clear details on how the previous reviews have been used to improve the manuscript for the current submission. So, clearly, of one simply submit the same manuscript over and over again, yes, there is a chance someone may accept it in the end, but it is very poor work ethics to do so. A manuscript that has been rejected and significantly improved from comments received and additional work done, will have a pretty good chance of being published. As an editor you can then see indications of what may be key issues with the paper. This does not mean, as some seem to think, that submitting half-baked manuscripts and have reviewers beat them into order is the way to write good papers so there are fine lines of good conduct which have to be followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for holding a rejection against you: No, not unless there are repeated sloppy submissions. But even then, every manuscript receives an independent check to see if it is of sufficient quality. A bad reputation just means you will raise flags with editors whenever you submit. And, &lt;em&gt;once&lt;/em&gt; will not create a reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T10:06:40.643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T10:06:40.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23874" CreationDate="2014-06-24T10:26:41.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best way to prevent ideas from being stolen (IMHO): write them up and make them public. You don't need to publish them in a top journal or conference, simply write them up (as the research statement is probably already written) and put them on arxiv, figshare or whatever suits you (I think we need a list for these services). Short and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told once that one difference between science and engineering is exactly that. The engineer will have an idea and protect it by not telling anybody and &lt;em&gt;patenting&lt;/em&gt; it. The scientist will protect the idea (the authorship of the idea) by &lt;em&gt;publishing&lt;/em&gt; it and telling everybody. I don't fully agree due to the characteristics of software engineering, open source and copyright, but I think it serves to illustrate the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure publishing on a journal or conference requires telling some people before that (the reviewers) and not all ideas are suitable to be published in such places (any reputed venue will reject most of the submissions, there are usually associated costs, etc.) There is the risk of reviewers stealing some ideas (not in a completely straightforward way, to abide the rules) and I think the main reason why there is arxiv is exactly that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing online is free and immediate. It won't give you much impact and it won't count for some metrics, but it will provide testimony that you had that idea at that time (even if more people could have had the same idea in an independent way, as @StrongBad pointed). Then you should find a venue that accepts what you already published in this manner, not all venues will do so and depending on your area most venues may reject such papers, but the fact that most people do something doesn't mean that thing is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the problem (IMHO) is that we are giving great value to something as intangible as ideas, because they are important and have great impact on the progress of society and the career of those who are responsible for those ideas. However, as a society, we are not really prepared to handle intangible things properly, there are attempts to improve that, but all of them are still falling short in some aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T10:26:41.783" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2014-06-24T11:01:18.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greek letters are generally fine. In fact, some things are conventionally reffered to by greek letters e.g standard deviation is sigma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;xLetix's rules are excellent advice. I would just add to please put explainations of your variables close to where you use them. There are two things people do that annoy me in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Putting a glossary at the beginning of the text and then don't explain there symbols. A glossary itself is fine but please put explainations in text as well as I don't want to have to flick back to the start to know what every symbol means. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, people often put an explaination when they first use the symbol (often in the introduction) and then use it again several pages later with no explaination. This is fine if you have a few obvious symbols but when many with unclear names are used it is difficult to keep track of them. Just writing the name in words generally suffices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T11:01:18.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23887" CreationDate="2014-06-24T11:14:05.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's by no means necessary to specialise on one topic for all your papers, and many people don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do make it harder for yourself when you don't, though. Going into a new topic requires familiarity with a new area of cutting-edge research, learning which publication(s) to target, and maybe learning new methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one of things I find most time-consuming is that you have to collect a new set of references. Once you've published within one topic, it's like you've laid down foundations in your literature review that you can build on again and again. But when you move to a new topic, you have to lay down new foundations: instead of simply updating your last literature review, you have to start rebuilding the foundations from a much smaller base. So you do find the really prolific people, who churn out maybe a dozen papers a year or more, have often stuck to a very narrow topic, and can get closer to staying on top of all the relevant literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T11:14:05.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24141" CreationDate="2014-06-24T11:21:33.957" Score="10" ViewCount="1214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be at a conference next month to present my paper.&#xA;I have a Master's degree in Computer Science and now I'm looking for a PhD with scholarship.&#xA;Well, is it right, with a common sense and in a polite way, to ask a professor at conference about a PhD position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17839" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:50:12.663" Title="Is it right to ask for a PhD position at a conference?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23864" CreationDate="2014-06-24T11:29:35.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer they definitely can expel you. Although they will generally have a process to follow. I suspect for most offences resulting in a jail sentence expulsion is highly likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the rules for Imperial College &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/secretariat/collegegovernance/provisions/ordinances/e2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/secretariat/collegegovernance/provisions/ordinances/e2&lt;/a&gt; (I suspect most institutions have similar rules written somewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;6e: Misconduct of a nature which is likely to affect the good name and standing of the College is an offence. This likely covers any criminal activity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10c: Summary punishment is available for minor offences for serious offences there are various boards/committees to deal with punishment. College Discipline Committee covers offences under 6e.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;16-24: There are various proceducures covering how the committee must hear evidence and operate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;30f: Expulsion or suspension from college is a permitted punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;33: The committee shall take note of any external prosecutions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastEditorUserId="648" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T11:39:39.147" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T11:39:39.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2014-06-24T12:07:20.270" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the recent PhD Comics, I have a link to a pretty definitive definition&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i05rT.gif&quot; alt=&quot;PhD Comics post doc definition&quot;&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NIH link is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/all_personnel_report_faq.htm#774&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/all_personnel_report_faq.htm#774&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This links to a letter to the US National Postdoctoral Association: &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/training/Reed_Letter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://grants.nih.gov/training/Reed_Letter.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T12:07:20.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23895" CreationDate="2014-06-24T12:10:35.030" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely OK. You should be more like @JeffE suggests &quot;How do I apply?&quot; rather than &quot;Would you accept me for a PhD?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conference is a great opportunity to meet and discuss with your potential supervisor. You should try to judge, as much as possible, how easy would it be to work with that person for quite a few years. On the other hand, note that high profile academics are used to get approached by random people and you shouldn't be discouraged to formally apply even if they seem way too busy to have a long chat with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10710" LastEditorUserId="10710" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T13:19:56.040" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:19:56.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-24T12:50:49.247" Score="1" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Masters in Management (MSc Mgmt/MIM) admissions, how much weight is generally given by the Adcom to the applicant's undergrad performance, especially if it's an unrelated one like engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it have any bearing if the applicant's undergrad performance is poor but his other credentials are excellent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of credentials should such an applicant aim to acquire before applying (Other than the GMAT, TOEFL, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17841" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T16:01:08.257" Title="Does engineering undergrad performance matter for masters in management admission?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23903" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:01:33.670" Score="9" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some conferences are established by IEEE and ACM, others by only one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought at first that such organizations somehow maintain a certain degree of high quality in the affiliated conferences. But I've seen beginner conferences saying they they are sponsored by IEEE, some say &quot;technically sponsored&quot;, while they accept poor quality papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should &quot;having the ACM or IEEE logo on a conference's website&quot; mean to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:40:48.160" Title="What does it mean that a conference is sponsored by ACM or IEEE?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23901" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:35:02.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In practice, it means that they publish the conference proceedings and you may get a registration discount if you are a member. Nothing more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sponsored by&quot; statements do not reflect &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quality&lt;/a&gt; at all. Some quick Google search using keywords like &quot;scam&quot; or even better &quot;random paper generator&quot; will convince you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. That doesn't mean that all conferences of those organisations are bad, quite the opposite. The best conferences of many fields are endorsed by those orgs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10710" LastEditorUserId="10710" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T13:40:48.160" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:40:48.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23901" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:39:39.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In part it means that the conference organizers have access to the conference administration tools and resources that IEEE, ACM, or the like provide. Having been around some IEEE-sponsored conferences, that can mean things like payment processing and credit card handling; access to a journal special issue for proceedings; conference organization website for registration, submissions, and reviewing; and registration discounts for members of the society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Access to these features doesn't come for free. The professional societies charge for their use and stand to make money on them. As such, while you have to propose the conference and get it approved, after that the oversight is less. The quality of a conference comes down to the Organizing Committee and it's technical/content/papers committee. If you've never heard of any of the members of these committees, or many of them appear to have low-quality papers, there's a good chance that the conference isn't all that great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:39:39.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:56:37.070" Score="12" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an editorial board member for a low impact journal, I've been approached to provide comments on whether I think a proposal for a special issue is acceptable or not. I'm quite inexperienced in this role, and it seems rather different from reviewing a paper or grant proposal. I have been provided a list of guest editors as well as a justification statement, however, the special issue is not directly in my field so I can only assume credibility from prior publications (if I can find them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any others been in this situation, and if so, by what criteria did they make a decision on acceptability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15896" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:56:32.653" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:56:32.653" Title="How should a reviewer provide comments to a journal's special issue in a field he is not familiar with?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2014-06-24T14:48:55.313" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been receiving a lot of invitations lately to review proposals for special editions -- mostly open access.  These proposals have been way outside of my area of study (and sometimes discipline).  My guess is they scrape the web for potential reviewers and use a shotgun approach -- but that is just a guess.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;ALWAYS&lt;/em&gt; decline serving as a reviewer if I am not sufficiently expert on the substantive or methodological issues.  I also try to highlight in my review where my expertise may fall short so the editor knows where to fill the gaps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you decline any invitation if you are not qualified to review the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T14:48:55.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23906" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-24T14:58:08.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The educational system in &lt;strong&gt;France&lt;/strong&gt; differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, Oceania, or the rest of Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;France, officially the French Republic (French: République française), is a sovereign country in Western Europe that includes several overseas regions and territories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Specific differences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relevant questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:31:01.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:31:01.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23907" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-24T14:58:08.053" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to France's higher education system, which differs in structure and style from the systems in North America, Asia, or elsewhere in Europe." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:10:29.267" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:10:29.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:30:16.907" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the general case, professors/lecturers/TAs should not accept gifts from students, as these things can lend themselves very easily to accusations of conflict of interest. This falls in the same general category as dating one of your students, or grading your kid's exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I can think of three situation where gifts are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) a graduating student gets you something nice &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; graduation (e.g., in the department where I did my PhD, it is normal for students and advisors to exchange gifts after a successful doctoral defense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) a current student makes a &quot;collective gift&quot;, e.g., a student brings a cake to class to celebrate his/her birthday and offers you a slice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) you go through some major life event and students pitch in to get you something, e.g., when I came back to work after having to get major surgery, the grad students in my department got me a nice coffee machine to celebrate that I hadn't died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T15:30:16.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23914" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:35:04.117" Score="7" ViewCount="2844" Body="&lt;p&gt;From reading the many questions on here that relate to CVs it seems that some items are necessary on a CV and others are more appropriate at the persons difference stages within academia. As someone at the very early stage, masters student with no publications, is conference volunteering a plus or minus on a CV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own situation I helped out at a 2 day conference that my department held. I assisted presenters with setting up their presentations and video recorded the conference for the university. As a smaller conference I was the only grad student that assisted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T13:26:10.407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T13:26:10.407" Title="Is it appropriate to put conference volunteering on a CV?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:48:24.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Whatever else they may be, postdoctorates are one of the greatest bargains in the US economy. Where else can one hire Ph.D.s, whose training and smarts put them among the best and brightest in the world, to work 60 hours a week for $30,000 to $40,000 a year, with limited benefits and little power to influence their working conditions and pay?&quot; -- Richard Freeman, &lt;em&gt;Thanks for the Great Postdoc Bargain&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_08_30/nodoi.4149859741665864757&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_08_30/nodoi.4149859741665864757&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15616" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T15:48:24.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2014-06-24T16:09:48.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to say what would be the best way to deal with this since the way journals set up editorial boards and then use them differ. As a member of a board I would expect you have been chosen to provide expertise within your field. I assume the proposal you received was sent to you from an Chief Editor or equivalent? If you feel you do not have the insights then the simple reply is that you do not have the insights to properly evaluate the proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the proposal came from the outside, the appropriate thing to do would be to pass it onto the Chief Editor for further consideration. Again, I am working under the assumption that there is one or a couple of persons in charge of the journal and that they have an editorial board associated with the journal to help the journal in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So contact the person(s) in charge and explain your standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T16:09:48.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23909" CreationDate="2014-06-24T16:16:55.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it's a bad idea to put things in your CV that look like they are there exclusively to make it look longer. It gives the impression that you haven't done enough &quot;real&quot; stuff (teaching, publications, etc) and you are just digging for menial things to pad your CV up. The problem is that, as you pointed out, what counts as &quot;menial&quot; vs. &quot;significant&quot; depends to a certain extent on your career stage. If you are a grad student and your professor asks you to give a guest lecture in one of his/her undergrad classes, it's ok to include that in your CV, but if you are in a tenure-track job, you might want to only include courses for which you have full responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case at hand, I would say that it's ok to say that you helped at this particular conference, but keeping in mind that this line will have to disappear from your CV at some point in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T16:16:55.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23909" CreationDate="2014-06-24T16:29:52.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule: anything which is clearly academically related &lt;em&gt;can go on your CV&lt;/em&gt;.  As you say, there are certain things that are required or nearly required on your CV, but even these vary by discipline and sometimes people in the same discipline have divergent ideas.  (For instance, every once in a while I find a CV which doesn't list the candidate's undergraduate institution, or lists it without indicating the years that they spent there.  I would have thought that was strictly required.  I guess I was wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to fight in adding &quot;academically related&quot; information to your CV is clear: if you put in &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; routine stuff, you'll get a bloated mess of a CV that few people will actually read.  Drawbacks of a lengthy CV can be mitigated by very careful and clear organization.  Nevertheless, you can compare CVs of two absolutely cognate people -- e.g. who attended undergrad and grad at exactly the same time and arrived at their current institution at the same time and with the same seniority -- and you'll find significant variations, including up to at least 1/3 in the total length.  It's really your choice how much detail to put on your CV, and I would be skeptical of anyone who tells you too stridently what you must and must not do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that: yes, very early career academics (especially students) really struggle to have a CV that doesn't look unhelpfully skimpy.  Conference work sounds like a great thing to put on a junior person's CV -- and in fact, even on a senior person's, although a more senior person might be more selective about the kind of conference work that goes on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tip: &quot;conference volunteering&quot; might be an undersell.  Most conference organizing is unpaid, hence is volunteer work.  &quot;Conference assistant&quot; sounds like your work was really on the level of secretarial work / technical support.  If that is an accurate description of what you did, great.  If you do such things more than once or twice, you should think about asking to be let in on some of the more content-related aspects of the work.  For instance, if you had a say -- however small -- in choosing or recruiting the speakers or attendees, then I would go for something like &quot;co-organizer&quot; rather than &quot;assistant&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T16:29:52.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23917" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23922" CreationDate="2014-06-24T17:39:57.377" Score="13" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently finished grad school.  I've written two papers since that time, and I think that I have more good ideas.  However, I find it difficult to write now for two reasons.  First of all, I don't have access to the ACM / IEEE literature databases anymore (they were gratis from my university.)  Second, I have no one to review or even proof-read my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do people who are not active in the academic community write papers?  Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T23:23:46.030" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T13:17:15.180" Title="How do people who are not active in the academic community write papers? Is it possible?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-24T18:24:32.780" Score="5" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;So i am really interested in psychology, law, film studies, and writing. (very different topics) Could i double major in psychology and say political science and minor in film studies and something like English, and then go on to get a Phd in either law or psychology? By the time i get to college i am sure my interests will change and i could go into quantum physics or something else, but i am starting college applications and for some colleges it is smart to have a good answer on your desired major instead of putting down &quot;undecided.&quot; I am just very interested to see what graduates think of doubling majors and minors and if it is even a smart decision to do so. thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17855" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T15:47:03.933" Title="I am about to be a senior in high school and I just have a question about doubling majors, minoring, and getting Phd's" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;major&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23917" CreationDate="2014-06-24T18:32:13.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible.  After years away from graduate school, I am working on several papers, covering both old and new topics.  However, it is very hard to do it completely alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the benefit of some contacts acquired through one of the forums on StackExchange.  They are willing to spend a limited amount of time (say half an hour a month, to within two orders of magnitude) in email correspondence with me, to receive drafts from me (but not necessarily referee: just skim for a few minutes and find more egregious aspects which they kindly point out), and most importantly, endorse me for posting on ArXiv.  Before the endorsement, I spent some time convincing them I wouldn't be a drain, that I could help them out, and that I might hope for a favor regarding endorsement, literature search, and so on.  Realize that from their perspective, I could be a potential crank or downside on their career, as I have given them almost no verifiable information on what little credentials I have.  I consider their involvement as a gift, and treat it with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With their minimum involvement, I now can post results on the ArXiv, and use that as a stepping stone to loftier research goals.  Since your express purpose is to produce research for others to read, you need three things: the research, the others, and a means to get the research to the others.  Getting to know one or two of the &quot;others&quot; is key.  Getting them by being helpful on this and other fora is one of the easiest routes I know for this step, but there are other methods.  There may be other repositories besides the ArXiv which may help you more, but I don't know of them; ask the &quot;others&quot; for advice, and respect their time.  The research part, that's your problem, again with which &quot;others&quot; might be able to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T18:32:13.487" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23827" CreationDate="2014-06-24T18:52:29.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guidelines aren't very precise, but this is what it means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit your tables in separate files, one table per file, but only if the tables are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_block&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;floats&lt;/a&gt; (which virtually all tables should be anyway). The placement of these tables will depend on the journal's typesetting of the text in your document. They are very unlikely to end up where you put them in your text anyway, so it makes sense for the typesetters to insist they don't appear in the text in the first place. It's typically enough to put all tables at the end of the document, with one table per page. You can do this with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/endfloat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;endfloat&lt;/a&gt; package in LaTeX. If the journal really insists that tables should be submitted in separate files, you can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/standalone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;standalone&lt;/a&gt; package. I sincerely doubt that tables need to be submitted as &lt;code&gt;.eps&lt;/code&gt; files. Tables are text, not graphics, and your guidelines only say that &quot;graphics material&quot; need to be submitted as &lt;code&gt;.eps&lt;/code&gt;. Submitting them as &lt;code&gt;.pdf&lt;/code&gt; should suffice. The typesetters will create your tables from scratch anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figures are another matter. The typesetters will not alter them at all, they will simply insert them into the document in the place deemed most appropriate. You need to create your figures as &lt;code&gt;.eps&lt;/code&gt; files and submit them as separate files. If the software you made the figures in doesn't include &lt;code&gt;.eps&lt;/code&gt; as a native format, use tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipv6.tm.uka.de/~bless/ps2eps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ps2eps&lt;/a&gt; (if your software includes &lt;code&gt;.ps&lt;/code&gt; as a format) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pdftops&lt;/a&gt; (if your software includes &lt;code&gt;.pdf&lt;/code&gt; as a format) to convert your figures to &lt;code&gt;.eps&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastEditorUserId="11053" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T18:59:09.190" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T18:59:09.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2014-06-24T18:57:51.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Savannah-Jane,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The future is always exciting, especially for someone who has promise. But I would caution you into looking too far ahead and &quot;smell the roses&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have probably one of the most important decisions you will make in your life right before you; where you will go to college as an undergraduate. That is the decision I would focus on. The questions you are asking now are important to consider when choosing a school; no one with graduate school aspirations wants to attend a college that sends very few people to the types of schools you might want to attend. But, conversely, it would be unwise to make a decision about where you study just because you want to go somewhere else afterword: make sure that you go to a place you love for your 4-5 years. If a school doesn't provide enough undergraduate research opportunities, you can always do a masters degree before your PhD. If your classes are too hard senior year and you can't study for the LSAT, you can find a way to take a year off and apply next cycle. These things are important, but they aren't the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a college, look for a place you can see yourself living. And studying. And getting drunk Friday nights if you are into that sorta thing. A place where you might fall in love. A place where you can make friends you can trust. Look for that professor that takes a special interest in his students, and work with him or her. When the time comes, bring up graduate school, what you are interested in, and these things will work out. There is always a way to study what you want if you work hard and are curious. There are certainly kids who would do better at a small liberal arts college than a large state school, but the converse is also true. Figure out the differences between those types of experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My very good friend ended up studying computer science in college, but is now getting his PhD in political science. English majors go to medical school. Physicists go to law school. There will be some &quot;general&quot; decisions you will have to make in the beginning, like if you are more science or humanities inclined. It would be very hard for an English major to go into a Physics PhD program, but that's all you really need to know. There is no rush in picking a particular major. Don't try to design your whole life. Leave some things up for chance. Curious minds always remain curious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="28864" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T15:47:03.933" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T15:47:03.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23938" CreationDate="2014-06-24T19:18:13.107" Score="-3" ViewCount="1109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning on going back to college (university for those folks across the &#xA;pond) and I was wondering what are some things that you have done to deal &#xA;with difficult professors. I had a C++ class when I was attending a couple &#xA;years ago and the professor pretty much abandoned me and (I suspect) graded &#xA;with bias against me. Sometime during the semester this professor came to the conclusion &#xA;that I wasn't proper CS major material, so  refused to answer any questions &#xA;that I had about the coursework and flunked me on all my projects, blaming me &#xA;for plagiarism (which is entirely untrue and unproven since the university &#xA;uses a fairly comprehensive program to determine if students are &#xA;plagiarizing). Needless to say, I finished the semester with under a 20% in &#xA;that class and failed all but the first program (studying my A-- off for the &#xA;whole semester). Now that I'm looking to go back, I don't want to have this &#xA;happen again because tuition is expensive as heck and it's taken me two years &#xA;just to save up for one year's tuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a side note, I am an active participant in class, polite, and &#xA;non-disruptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17808" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-23T22:12:42.690" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T22:12:42.690" Title="Tips on dealing with difficult professors?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23931" CreationDate="2014-06-24T19:25:46.203" Score="9" ViewCount="2948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper on a topic closely related to previous literature (but in a different study population). As such, the statistical analysis is very similar to a previous publication and I really like the way the previous authors (which I have cited in the literature review) have structured a particular table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would essentially copying this structure, but putting in my own results, be a form of plagiarism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T19:53:09.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T19:53:09.183" Title="Is it plagiarism to closely mimic the structure of a table in a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;tables&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23900" CreationDate="2014-06-24T19:31:29.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll speak from my own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had only a 2.9 GPA in my major, Economics. But I had a 3.5 overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may have helped me was my GMAT score (over 750). In any event, I got into several top level MBA programs, including the one of my choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps to work a year or two before applying to an MBA program. A &quot;gap year&quot; (or more) is probably more valuable for this degree than for other graduate degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T19:31:29.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23686" CreationDate="2014-06-24T19:39:12.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation, perhaps the most important thing that you have going for you is your work experience, since it is in the same field, data science, that you plan to study for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Ms grades are decidedly better than your BS grades, but may or may not be strong enough to get you into the second Master's program (even if your BS grades weren't an issue). What is beginning to set you apart from other candidates is your work experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't get in now, I'd apply again in TWO years, when you would be closing in on three years' work experience (the optimal amount). That's the time when you are most likely to be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T19:39:12.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23927" CreationDate="2014-06-24T21:26:15.573" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt anyone would consider a table format as plagiarized when used to show new data. It would be akin to saying use of Tukey's box-and-whisker type plots would be plagiarism. The question is understandable, however, since someone could arguably claim some such structure as intellectual property. I think the key here lies in what is being copied. You are copying the structure but not the content. To protect the form would be quite pointless since no-one would buy the rights and it would be simple to make sufficient variations to argue it is not the same form. I am sure this could be discussed at length by lawyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, not within the scope of your question, most author's will be happy to see something they produce becoming reused and maybe even a standard. I had a figure in a paper that was picked up by IPCC and used to show something different than my original but still unequivocally based on my design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, as suggested in comments to your question. you can pay homage to the original by acknowledging the idea of the table in your acknowledgement or by citing the paper and stating the table is based on their table. Which makes most sense, will depend on circumstances in your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T21:26:15.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20146" CreationDate="2014-06-25T01:16:51.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a thing is publicly available, it is literally published, nevermind paywalls. It would be an unhelpful abuse of language to have &quot;publication&quot; mean exclusively &quot;publication in a traditional, recognized, peer-refereed, journal&quot;. I propose (only partly facetiously) referring to the latter as &quot;gatekeeper publications&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Srsly, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an issue here. If the NSF or NIH require that we make our research public, but we can't get it through the gatekeepers, then what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to refer to publication in peer-reviewed journals, say &quot;peer-reviewed journal publication&quot;. This might be in contrast to &quot;internet publication&quot;. Adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T01:16:51.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T02:33:31.177" Score="11" ViewCount="8327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m a mechanical engineering student and I am about to apply for a PhD.  I am certain about my desire to pursue advanced studies.   However, I have serious doubts in what I want to pursue my studies on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done research on structural health monitoring and power electronics.  At some point I thought that I had interest in electrical engineering and after some research I got interested in mathematical physics and then in applied mathematics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started doing undergraduate research when I was a sophomore in the area of structural health monitoring. However my job was to write an algorithm to implement the methodology.     I realize now that what interested me was not structural health monitoring, but to study the origin and derivation of the theoretical equations.  I saw the profiles of various faculty in applied mathematics and I found some of their research interesting. &#xA;Doubts about applying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although I have a GPA above 3.60 some programs require certain number of courses in mathematics.  I only have the mathematics included in the mechanical engineering program and one course of elementary statistics.  I have taken 5 courses in mathematics.  However I don’t show strength because out of the 5 courses, in 2 of them I got B when I was a freshman.  I think that the taking the elementary statistic course last semester was not a good idea.  I should have taken a more advanced course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have not taking any advanced course in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The application to the program requires the GRE, TOEFL and subject test in math.  Some graduate programs say that the GRE math are not mandatory but not taking it puts you in disadvantage.  I am not sure I will have time to prepare for it and as a result I don't know if I will do well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have research experience, but it is not in this area.  In addition, the reference letters will be made by engineering professors and not math professors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since I am about to finish next semester, I don’t have much time to take more courses or do research in the area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at a few topics that I found interesting in applied mathematics but I haven’t done research in them.  As a result I don’t know if I will get tired or if I will change my mind once I start on the program.  If I were to apply for this program and I change my mind would it be easier to change even if it means going to other department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17866" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T20:07:17.737" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T20:07:17.737" Title="Is it easy to change your major after starting your PhD or masters, if it is necessary?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2014-06-25T03:29:16.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a Bachelors of Science, double major in Management and Electrical Engineering.  I did them sequentially, first graduating with a BS in Management in 3 years (I took courses in summers) and then back to the same school for EE (in 18 months, again via summer courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best argument in favor of double majors is that you can develop competency and strength in two fields.  I personally think it's best if the two fields are related, so that your double major creates a hybrid mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This combination was an advantage for me in the job market (industry), mostly because it opened more possibilities (companies, and jobs within companies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student now (several decades after my BS) in Computational Social Science, which is in the neighborhood of my original degrees.  This gave me a big advantage over other students who had either no background in computer science or none in social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your college applications, it may be fine to list your current ideas for a major, even if it's a double major.  But much more than just listing them, I think it would be &lt;em&gt;vital&lt;/em&gt; to explain in your essay &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; these two majors seem right for you, and therefore &lt;em&gt;what this tells them about you as a person&lt;/em&gt;.  Are you especially good at &quot;creative synthesis&quot; across diverse fields?  Have you demonstrated this in the past?  Are you intensely curious and thus you want to start with these majors as an entry point for a path of intellectual/personal discovery?  And what does the preference for these two majors say about your choice of colleges?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be good to avoid giving the impression that you want to go in all directions at the same time like an espresso-crazed humming bird.  (If you are, in fact, an espresso-crazed humming bird, then you might want to get some help and support with that prior to entering college :-)  )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T03:29:16.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-25T03:39:15.293" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have students bringing me gifts quite often. Like Stephan Kolassa, I am quite uncomfortable with it. I am made even more uncomfortable by the fact that in the local culture (not my native culture) it is common for subordinates to bring gifts to their boss, which seems to me like a continued corruption to keep ones job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As should be obvious to anyone in a position in power, people subject to that power think it is great to be able to buy preferential treatment. Some of my students get chauffered to school in very expensive cars (&gt;$100,000) so I am sure they have the money to give as expensive of a gift as they feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the one in power, I must keep this tendency in check. I, therefore, simply do not accept gifts from individual students. Period. &lt;strong&gt;I do, however, accept gifts if they are from the entire class&lt;/strong&gt; and presented by the &quot;leader of the class&quot; which all classes here have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are limits on what I would accept from the class but that has never been in question. The biggest gift I've received would set each student back $1. And to be clear, I would never accept cash or something very similar to cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T03:39:15.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23926" CreationDate="2014-06-25T03:50:19.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you need to understand is that your perspective is different from that of the teacher. You see one teacher but the teacher sees hundreds of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While you may think that your participation is class is helpful, it might not be.&lt;/strong&gt; I have had students who were very eager to participate in class but kept participating in wrong or inappropriate ways. Not extremely wrong but just enough to actually draw the class's attention away from the points I was trying to make. Yes, students should participate but make sure you are actually helping and not hindering the teacher's efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see you are having a problem with one specific teacher and not others, then &lt;strong&gt;schedule some time during office hours&lt;/strong&gt; and have a one-on-one talk with the teacher. You both have the same goal: For you to learn. So, find out what the problem is. I have not found many teachers who are simply unreasonable all the time. Talk with them and understand their reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point, which is connected to meeting the teacher, is to find out what extra material you should be studying and actually study it and discuss it with the teacher, in class or after class. &lt;strong&gt;Show that you are a serious student and the teacher will usually respect you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T03:50:19.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2014-06-25T05:58:45.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In high school and the first couple years of college you are allowed to explore different fields and it is easy to change your major. Sometime around the beginning of your junior year you will need to settle on one or two specific fields and enroll in the specific courses needed to obtain a degree in that major. Sometimes it is possible to complete a double major with an extra year of school work. As you get closer to graduation it gets harder to change majors because you already have a significant investment of time and money in the courses you have already completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is good to be a Renaissance person with many different interests, in today's world you will probably need to be a specialist in one or two narrow fields if you wish to obtain employment in that occupation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some exceptions, the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble completed a law school degree before chucking it all and starting over in astronomy, but that is not usually an option for people who graduate with a mound of student loan debt and a desire to get on with life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not unlike dating, in high school you should be meeting a lot of different people, as you grow older you will probably want to develop a more serious relationship with only one person, but you need to try out a few (or a lot of) different people while you are young before you can decide on &quot;Mr or Ms Right&quot; when you are older.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obtaining a PhD will require you to choose one extremely narrow field of study and to publish a thesis that represents a piece of original research in which you invent or discover something that nobody else has ever known before. One joke that is frequently heard in academia is that a PhD is &quot;a person who knows everything about nothing&quot;, which refers to the fact that you will be a world class expert in a subject that is infinitely narrow. It is not uncommon for different faculty members in a university department to be working and publishing papers in fields that are mostly incomprehensible even to the professor who works across the hall from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD is typically preparation for an academic career, which is nice work if you can get it, but academic positions are highly competitive and difficult to obtain. It is also the &quot;license&quot; that you need that will allow you to apply for grant money from government agencies or private foundations to fund the conduct of your research program. Notice that I said &quot;allows you to apply for&quot;, not &quot;assures that you will receive&quot; such grants. Unfortunately there are many excellent grant proposals that never receive funding. Your proven ability to obtain money from external funding agencies is the primary thing that universities will evaluate when you apply for a faculty position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, there are many PhD's working in jobs outside of academia that they could have obtained with a bachelor's degree and a few years of on-the-job experience. There is a serious overproduction of PhD's which has led some academics to talk about the need for &quot;academic birth control&quot; to avoid producing excessive numbers of PhD's. Of course they usually mean that other universities should practice such restraint, not their own institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employers outside of academia may be wary of hiring PhD's for jobs that don't require such a degree out of fear that you are planning to work for them for just a short time until you find the academic research position that you really want. Thus, you may find that a PhD actually limits your job options and the possibility of earning a middle class income in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17868" LastEditorUserId="17868" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T06:30:47.607" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T06:30:47.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23935" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:19:16.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much depends on the specific university and department arrangement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, moving departments at the PhD level is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; quite difficult because it involves changes in your financial package. Transferring from physics to mathematics, for example, would mean your funding is coming from a different source. It also means that physics is losing a student, which can be bad for the department. Things are even more complicated if your funding is tied to a lab or an individual faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many places consider transfers alongside new applicants (meaning, you are, in effect, applying to graduate school for the second time). You would have a slight advantage of knowing your professors, and perhaps of having an advocate for your candidacy, but you still have to write essays and get recommendations along with everyone else. I would not count on a transfer as a plan. You could just as well not get in, losing support from your home department in the meantime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons, I often recommend students take some time between graduation and graduate school. Get a job at a lab or with a firm, take some courses, travel. Graduate school is like marriage--a long-term commitment. It is not a good place to explore or experiment with careers. There is no rush to make the decision, but once you do, make sure you are committed to your department and to your chosen discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Master's programs are a different ballgame, since they do not normally fund students. It is probably easier to switch out of a Master's program. But once again, you would probably have to apply anew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5692" LastEditorUserId="5692" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T07:29:59.637" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T07:29:59.637" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23935" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:41:56.380" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, no, it's not so easy to change PhD programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't like changing your undergrad major, where you just have to fill out some forms and get your advisors to sign off.  At the graduate level, each department does its own admissions.  So if you are in a mechanical engineering program and want to switch to applied math, you have to submit an application to the applied math program just like anyone else.  You'll be competing for a seat against every other applicant from around the world, most of whom will have completed a full undergrad mathematics major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to improve your odds by getting to know faculty in the math program before you apply, perhaps discussing (or working on) research projects with someone there.  However, keep in mind that you will also need to stay in good standing in the engineering program, and you won't have a lot of spare time to explore math opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from your description, your math background sounds much too light for entry into a math grad program.  Applied math can be more flexible than pure math, but having no advanced courses at all doesn't sound too good.  In fact, I'd be concerned that without advanced coursework, you may not even have enough of a sense of the field to know that it's really what you want to do.  Mathematics courses have a sharp change in flavor and difficulty as you transition from lower-level computational courses (calculus, differential equations, etc) to upper-level theory courses (real analysis, abstract algebra, topology).  Entering a PhD program having only the former kind of courses would be roughly analogous to being a go-kart enthusiast racing in the Indianapolis 500.  And it won't be easy to pick up extra math courses while in an engineering program; grad program requirements rarely allow for free electives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something that might better fit your situation is a post-baccalaureate (&quot;post-bac&quot;) program.  These are one-year programs designed for students who have completed a bachelors and want to attend grad school in math, but need further preparation.  Such programs are offered by relatively few institutions, but I believe some of them are quite well-known in the community and have very good placement rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T06:41:56.380" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23935" CreationDate="2014-06-25T07:57:55.437" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD is not like an undergraduate degree where you can do a bit of this, a bit of that, add up your scores and get your final grade. It's about doing research in a fairly narrow area, leading to writing a focused thesis on a particular topic. Spending, say, a year doing electrical engineering would normally give you almost nothing that would be useful towards a PhD in mathematics, and vice-versa. As such, transfering from one department to another is, essentially, starting a new PhD and would likely be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't know much about what a PhD involves and you should definitely find out before committing several years of your life doing one! I'm also a little confused by your statement that you're certain you want to commit several years of your life to studying a fairly narrow topic but you're not even sure what broad area that topic will come from. It seems that you're much more excited by the idea of doing a PhD than about any of the areas that you might research, yet doing the PhD requires being in one of those areas that you seem to find less exciting than the PhD itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T07:57:55.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23935" CreationDate="2014-06-25T08:14:04.410" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is the same as Nate Eldredge's, but let me make a few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am certain about my desire to pursue advanced studies. However, I have serious doubts in what I want to pursue my studies on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be very honest, for me the second sentence largely nullifies the first.  Wanting to pursue a PhD in the abstract is a poor idea.  In order to get any satisfaction out of a PhD program, you need to be pursuing a PhD in X because your love for X is so strong that you want to have a career doing X.  If you think it might be X,Y or Z, I worry that you don't have a deep enough commitment to any of the three to make it worth the time, effort and career uncertainty of today's very harsh job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps by expressing &quot;serious doubts&quot; you are really explaining your desire to transition from your undergraduate field to mathematical physics / applied mathematics (henceforth I'll just say &quot;math&quot;: that's where you would apply).  I agree with Nate Eldredge that your coursework in mathematics is so minimal that you probably haven't been exposed to the flavor of graduate level mathematics....or at least, you haven't demonstrated that exposure in a way that would be convincing to an admissions committee.  Further honesty: your self-described profile would make you a very likely decline from the math PhD program at UGA (about the 50th best in the country), except perhaps if you took the math subject GRE and did well on it.  It would be a little surprising if you did well on that exam given your description of coursework...but of course it's possible, especially if you are very mathematically talented.  It could be useful information for you to know how you might do on this exam, but unfortunately this exam is notorious for having had the same crappy study materials for the last 20 years (or more?).  I don't know of any reliable way to gauge your score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot more than 50 math PhD programs in the US, and I can't speak to your admit-worthiness for all of them, but honestly I would think twice about scraping the bottom of this particular barrel.  The job market is so tight right now that degree pedigree is something to keep your eye on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I come back to agreeing with Nate Eldredge: you are not currently a good PhD candidate in math, and math faculty like us would worry about your lack of exposure.  Of course this does not mean that you are locked out of further study of mathematics: that never happens to anyone.  But if you think you are interested, find out by taking more math courses, in a non-degree program if need be.  I should say though that your stated background of five math courses required by an engineering degree -- at least two taken as a freshman -- is less than halfway to a graduate-preparatory math major.  In your case, after enrolling in a non-degree program for a semester or a year, if you really discover that this is what you want to do, you might actually want to explore a second bachelor's program.  Either that or really work hard to develop a relationship with a department so that you can essentially do this over the course of 2-3 years with a lot of faculty contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T17:36:30.120" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T17:36:30.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23927" CreationDate="2014-06-25T08:37:41.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that we - myself included - tend to think of citations primarily as a defence against accusations of plagiarism, but don't they also provide the reader with an account of how the thinking behind the paper emerged? In which case citing here seems like an opportunity for a possibly quite valuable aside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12045" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T08:37:41.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T08:58:58.580" Score="3" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended a masters program in IT and completed everything except for my capstone. Its been almost 7 years since I started and 5 years since I moved out of college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now want to apply for a Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these 5yrs I have had one really good research paper published, one patent filled, and worked for two fortune 500 companies. I am presently working as a manager in the same discipline as my masters in a top 5 tech company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my chances to get into Ph.D program? &#xA;Also can I use coursework from the masters for a Ph.D? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17876" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T09:40:54.830" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T03:27:47.267" Title="If I have dropped out of a Masters can I then go on to do a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27821" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:10:58.400" Score="13" ViewCount="2012" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since IEEE/ACM will eventually own the copyright of the papers they publish, and since they charge for access to papers, if I have a paper on arXiv is that a problem for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T09:14:56.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T14:01:31.393" Title="If I upload a draft of my paper to arXiv, will I still be able to publish in an IEEE or ACM publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-08-18T22:25:12.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:16:24.727" Score="18" ViewCount="2988" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of text here, I do apologize.  Many thanks to those who read it all and provide commentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I have worked with my adviser for ~7 years now carrying out research with him in the field for many seasons, receiving my BS under his guidance, and TAing for him for several years until I decided to begin my MS with him.  Early on, he had been having family issues and at a point near the beginning of my MS, he informed me he would be focusing less on work and more on his family due to his focus having destroyed his family.  I took this as a passing phase as he had done before, but he has proven me wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall Situation: My adviser currently has negative intentions to his students, the department, and the school.  He does the bare minimum in courses- teaching ~1 class per quarter, showing up late, leaving early, is never in his office (I'm not exaggerating, he does not use his office. He arrives to campus, teaches, and leaves); has a very negative attitude with the department and school with never submitting forms or reports on time as well as not attending some department meetings (or commencement); and constantly sends emails to faculty and students informing them of how he is being screwed by the school (receiving reimbursements months later and having to deal with overdue bills and credit card charges).  No students respect him within the department and his classes are the lowest rated to the point of being a joke.  His reputation is so bad that when his next grad class is offered this coming winter, I feel it will be canceled because absolutely none of the students intend to enroll in it.  Research-wise, he has been collecting data on a large project for ~15 years and has not published anything during that time.  Currently the data and work sits and we are again in the middle of a summer when he intends to write something (this has been stated for each of the last 4 summers straight and it never happens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Situation: My thesis has gone no where.  Meetings are constantly cancelled and put off by him, he has provided little to no literature (even then only broad background papers that he had me read for my BS), has shown no advancing interest in exploring ArcGIS with me to understand how to manipulate data.  Some lunch meetings have taken place, over the past two years, but they end up being social and minor mentioning of work is as far as the conversation gets.  The last two meetings I had with him were group meetings with 2 other students working with him (the other third already left for another project) and the meetings solely revolved around their projects and how I could help/guide them.  Being roughly 6 months prior to graduation, I am currently assembling text and running analysis on data entirely on my own.  Emails to meet and go over the process this week have gone unanswered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently: Recent statements from other faculty and students are that in recent meetings my adviser has been using me as an example to state students need to submit 'final' drafts 6 months before defense.  The department has a deadline of one month before defense for a completed 'first' draft.  I am under the impression, given the past actions of my adviser, that he may be setting me up to make a point to the other faculty that 6 months beforehand is needed because he did not have proper time to read and review it.  All of this would be fabricated from his own lack of meeting and involvement in my thesis writing.  I am absolutely appalled at how he claim such expectations when he himself has put zero effort into the project whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO, with all that background, I sit here with ~20 pages of some spotty text and images and am very close to deciding, enough is enough, I would be better off dropping this project and ceasing work with him, and in turn picking up a project with another faculty member.  I would rather spend a bit more time investing in a new project and doing that than finishing this and continuing to have to put up with his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, with what I have informed you of here, how do I do it?  Also, along those lines, if I do decide to do this, would it be entirely unprofessional to inform the other grad student who just started up her project to drop it and go to another adviser? (She has already commented I have been more of an adviser to her providing background readings, information, and 100s of Mbs worth of unprocessed data for her project...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17877" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T20:16:39.907" Title="How to inform an adviser I am ceasing work with him?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23950" CreationDate="2014-06-25T10:33:39.943" Score="19" ViewCount="2197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to get involved with a relatively good journal (yes subjective -lets assume an impact factor +2 and good editors) as an associate editor prior to getting tenure? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it have a net positive effect on one's trajectory given the time lost due to extra work (administrative and else)? Or should one stick to minimum administrative work in faculty and outside and not think about these luxuries prior to getting the tenure. I have been given broad advise as to minimise my luxurious endeavours prior to tenure. I also remember reading similar advice in regards to writing books in technical fields (only do it after tenure, just stick to good publications before and try to minimise administrative work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4467" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T09:34:03.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T09:34:03.730" Title="Is it a good idea to get involved with journals as an associate editor prior to getting tenure?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23949" CreationDate="2014-06-25T10:58:36.517" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think my first recommendation would be, do not see editorship primarily as a career move/booster (if it ever is). Become an editor if you enjoy that side of the publishing and you think you have something to contribute. I had some opportunities with editing conference proceedings and thematic issues which gave me the insight that I really enjoyed working on that side of publishing (along with my research, admin, students etc,).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signing up to be an editor is a longer term commitment. You need to check with the journal if they have a &quot;from now on&quot; or fixed periods for editors. You should probably expect to be involved for, say, three years under most circumstances. You should also check the expected work load in terms of, say, papers per year (but expect the workload to vary significantly over shorter time periods).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an editor can be very fruitful since it may give you new impulses on scientific writing and thinking and other similar aspects that can help your own development. As an editor, you will perhaps also gain some reputation, your name will be seen in amongst hopefully respectable peers (the other editors). Not that this may be of direct importance in terms of tenure or so but it may develop your network of contacts. There are many positives that follow from serving as editor, in my opinion, and it will be up to you to take the opportunity to serve as a fair and sound editor. There are no doubt tricky issues concerning ethics that will pass your desk but solving such issues together with other editors is a good and useful learning experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, become an editor because you want to, the chore will take time from your other duties and you need to be prepared to provide that time on top of everything else over a longer period. As you become seasoned, the time you need to spend on each paper diminishes somewhat so initially, you may find the time consumption larger than expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I guess my point is that the editorial work takes time and effort but is also rewarding on a personal level (how, is personal). How this spills over into your situation in terms of meriting is for you to assess. Does your workplace appreciate such efforts? If you really want to do it, will the opportunity arise again any time soon? Are you willing you sacrifice some spare time if need be, and over some longer term? Clearly it should not reduce your other activities that are meriting for your career (research, publishing, teaching supervising etc.) so you need to balance between your own interest and what you need to do. That is why assessing how much time will be required(on average) is a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal view throughout my early career was to jump at opportunities that I felt strongly about and where I could see something good coming out at the other end. By good I mean both for myself or for my career. I figured, the only thing I had to invest was my time and I needed to invest it wisely to help me get a permanent position but also to do things I really liked. So on the whole, quite egotistical, but then I have not been much for spending much effort on stuff I did not like or saw a point in. Of course one cannot jump at everything without the risk of hitting the wall. So, in the end, I think it is your interest and time keeping that decides. What you engage in can be either directly rewarding or indirectly so, and as long as it provides a positive, I think it is worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T11:42:48.020" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T11:42:48.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23948" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:00:57.147" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am agreeing with @scaaahu on both parts of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to inform an adviser I am ceasing work with him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With what you are writing it sounds like your adviser already gave you an out (&quot;he informed me he would be focusing less on work and more on his family due to his focus having destroyed his family&quot;). In addition to that, he seems to care about nothing at the university any more. Therefore, I think it actually doesn't matter at all how you tell him, just that you tell him as soon as possible and more importantly: start looking for a new adviser right now. You do not want to waste any more time on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just tell him that the project is not going as you wished, that you need more guidance, that you think he will not be able to give you that and that you are looking for a new adviser and project. If you can honestly say you are thankful for his guidance (maybe in your BS?) say so, otherwise just say nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be entirely unprofessional to inform the other grad student&#xA;  who just started up her project to drop it and go to another adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think it would be unprofessional. Tell her that you are leaving and, if you know her well enough or if she asks, why you are leaving , tell her in the most objective way you can. Then she can decide for herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T11:47:26.217" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T11:47:26.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:42:01.830" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am entering my 4th year undergraduate BS math program next month. I am certain I will want to do a PhD program eventually but I am not sure if I should do a MA before it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have decent undergraduate non-math grades(8.8~) and pretty good math grades (9.8~). I also have done quite a few graduate courses(most of them self study) in various topics: Algebraic number theory, Algebraic topology(homotopy, homology, cohomology under a professor), Lie groups, Galois theory(introductory), Model theory(under a professor), Universal Algebra(under a prof), Set theory(under a professor) and Functional Analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also expect close to full on my gre subject test(from mock tests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how much value this adds and/or how to present it properly but this is all I have to show for my undergraduate years. Under these circumstances, what would the chances of acceptance into a very good PhD program be? I would like apply to an algebraic number theory/logic oriented program(like Berkley and UCLA). Also, what is the best way to make them aware of my self study? Do I mention it in my statement or should I ask my professors to mention it for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits of doing a MA before PhD or vice versa? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: In response to one of the comments, my career goals are to eventually get a research position in math(maybe academia, maybe elsewhere but definitely pure math oriented research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17883" LastEditorUserId="17883" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T17:32:10.800" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T17:32:10.800" Title="Should I apply for a MA or a PHD(in mathematics) after undergraduate study?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-06-25T17:40:56.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2014-06-25T15:24:39.830" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If universities had difficulty finding adjuncts, they'd pay more, but they don't. Sadly, it's all about supply and demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17889" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T15:24:39.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-25T15:31:57.097" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will disagree slightly with some of the previous answers. I come from a health-care perspective. A great deal of papers discuss the ethical/moral ramifications of accepting gifts from patients and subordinates and students/trainees. I will say up-front that I believe accepting valuable gifts from students is a problem and should be avoided in the vast majority of circumstances. In contrast, I do not ALWAYS see a problem with accepting small gifts from students/patients. Offering a gift is typically a way to express some appreciation and accepting the gift is a way to express your appreciation of the appreciation. Rejecting the gift can be slightly insulting and harm student-teacher rapport. Coming off in a stand-offish way to one student can have long-lasting implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had two experiences where a student offered me a small basket of cookies and another offered a decoration with a value of 10$. I kindly told them no thank you, but they insisted. I insisted no thank you again, and they re-insisted. I know if I said no once again, she would have been insulted. It alienates the student and puts me in an awkward position of being an authoritarian person who cannot participate in typical activities (i.e., doing/accepting small favours). A teacher is not a friend, and that should be clear, but a teacher can still be warm, and approachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, the benefits of accepting a gift (e.g., increasing approachability, seeming nice/human) can often outweigh the potential costs (which are often negligible if the gift is of nominal value). This is, of course, on a case by case basis. It might be appropriate in some contexts (e.g., very small class, clinical supervision) but not others (e.g., very large class). As is often the case, judgment is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15261" LastEditorUserId="15261" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T15:44:53.633" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T15:44:53.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23956" CreationDate="2014-06-25T15:49:00.433" Score="9" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend wrote a fantastic paper in their scientific field. I believe it is truly ground-breaking but it calls a lot of existing theory into question. If he's correct it will force many accepted articles to have to be rewritten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps because this paper is controversial, then, my friend has faced a very uphill battle to get it published. It deals with quite some difficult-to-grasp mathematical models and concepts. It's in a field of science and an area of that field where experiments to prove things are simply not feasible, and instead, hypotheses rely on models to explain observations of large-scale real-world processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm deliberately avoiding mentioning what area of science this paper is in because I do not want them to know it's about them, in case they see this. Because while I feel that while their paper is great, on the other hand the writing needs some love. If the writing is improved, this paper could make this person's career. I'm a published writer and I have been paid to edit many things, but not scientific writing. I want to help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what the best approach is for preparing myself to be able to edit papers for submission to any given scientific journal in any given field. I would think one great approach would be to read lots of articles in such journals. Do you know of any good guides? Are there any online sites where people can publish papers prior to submitting them to journals in order to get public comments and feedback to hone their work? What are some novel steps that could be taken? I just want to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17890" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T18:47:55.780" Title="How can I best edit a paper to help get it published?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23955" CreationDate="2014-06-25T17:08:09.647" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've already talked about reading up journal articles in the field, so I'll skip that. On top of that, there are a few ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow the journal's format guide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your friend which journal is the next target. Go to visit the journal website and look for the &quot;instruction to authors.&quot; You can find format-related instruction there. A format compliant article is less likely to trigger an instant rejection/return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read about scientific writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few guides that I consider pretty useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0387947663&quot;&gt;The Craft of Scientific Writing&lt;/a&gt; by Alley is perhaps a classic for engineer-type of writing. It also provide a good collection of tips and gems for different sections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071345442&quot;&gt;Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Paper&lt;/a&gt; by Zeiger is a wonderful desktop reference for biochemical type of writing. It also provides a lot of good vs. bad examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0199760241&quot;&gt;Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded&lt;/a&gt; by Schimel is a bit of a black sheep. It does not teach you how to write, but it gives an excellent account on how to chain up or arrange ideas for maximal impact, done in the levels of the whole paper, to section, paragraph, sentence, and syntax. It also draws heavily from techniques used in fiction writing, which is quite intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226065669&quot;&gt;The Craft of Research&lt;/a&gt; by Booth et. al. does not purely focus on writing, but also discusses how to set up arguments, present concepts. It may be a bit more hands on for you, probably more suitable for your friend who is doing the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226816389&quot;&gt;A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Eighth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)&lt;/a&gt; by Turabian is an overall very useful desktop reference. It complements the Craft of Research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to the specialists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is really that controversial, I think you should talk to some people who have a good command in that particular field and get a gist of how to present or package the ideas with maximal chance of being considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hire a professional editor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also prudent to know your limit. If you feel this is too much, then you should ask your friend to get help from the institute's English language support or hire a professional scientific editor. Editors can come with different specialties, some are experienced in medical writing, some are in science. Check their portfolio and try to match the article type as best as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said this because there is a problem in your question, if you feel that you're not capable of editing a scientific paper, how come you feel confident to evaluate his work with certainly such as: &quot;&lt;em&gt;My friend wrote a &lt;strong&gt;fantastic&lt;/strong&gt; paper in their scientific field. I &lt;strong&gt;believe it is truly ground-breaking&lt;/strong&gt; but it calls a lot of existing theory into question. If he's correct it will force many accepted articles to have to be rewritten&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to be insulting, just wish to point out that professional works sometimes are best left to professionals, especially when we don't have time to become one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck, and I wish your friend a successful publishing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer for everyone:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading/evaluating my answer, please be mindful that in no way I am agreeing that the paper is ground-breaking or fantastic. I merely provide resources to the questioner to improve his/her ability to comprehend and edit a scientific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether someone with limited experience or capability can do ground-breaking work is not in the scope of this answer, and I have no comment either way. I just want to point out that I have not read the paper so I can't comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T18:01:20.290" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T18:01:20.290" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-25T18:14:55.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's ethical, but I work hard &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; to accept gifts from students, past or present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Present students&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason not to accept gifts from present students is multifaceted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sets up the possibility of a conflict of interest.  I want to be as objective as possible in evaluating students and structuring my courses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It might signal to other students that they should consider giving gifts as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Past students&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't accept gifts from past students as well because even past students still have professional connections with faculty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get often recommendation/reference requests about past students.  I have had at least one case where a weak student gave a gift in my name and then asked me for a recommendation letter for a job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are reasonable and more appropriate ways for students to demonstrate support for their alma maters (e.g. making a donation to the school/college/department).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It might set up the expectation among students that they should give me gifts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T18:14:55.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23955" CreationDate="2014-06-25T18:39:52.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to offer a little bit of writing advice that should be pertinent to the situation, even though it does not answer the post directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to keep the attitude of &quot;how great this is! the world really needs this!&quot; in writing: it helps you maintain the energy to carry out the effort.  However, the attitude itself should be muted or very carefully treated in scientific writing.  If anyone is going to read it, they are going to be excited by a careful summary that reveals the basic ideas and then more so by something that explains the ideas in an accessible fashion.  (I have made it a policy to ignore any Internet links advising to help me by using a &quot;weird tip&quot;; I discourage using similar promotional language which might appeal to people who, erm, &quot;think less&quot;, or maybe &quot;think differently&quot;, than science, engineering, and other professionals.)  Here is an example from Jorge Cham on Cosmic Inflation  &lt;a href=&quot;http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1691&quot;&gt;http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1691&lt;/a&gt; that manages to convey the excitement and ideas without sounding cheesy.  You may find it useful as well as inspiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any guides, but a suggestion for meta-guides: find examples of awards for good science and engineering writing and look at those.  In combination with the guides mentioned in another answer, you as writer should be able to deconstruct the examples to find which characteristics you want to use in helping your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastEditorUserId="10390" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T18:47:55.780" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T18:47:55.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-25T18:55:30.537" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the circumstances when I see no problem in accepting a gift is when the gift has no monetary value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was offered once a polystyrene toroidal earth at the end of a geometry class, whose cost was only a little time and effort. I accepted it as a token of gratitude and see no problem with that. I was sort of a TA, and I was not grading the students (not that it would have affected my grading, but still an important note). It sits in my office from then, and reminds me that teaching well can be well-appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2016-04-07T20:43:20.057" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T20:43:20.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23948" CreationDate="2014-06-25T20:16:39.907" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a faculty member and have seen similar situations in the past, both in my university and in others.  In fact, a few years ago the son of a friend told me about a similar situation in his university (though less severe than yours).  I have advised him to quit and switch to another adviser; he did that and he is just now finishing his Ph.D. and is doing extremely well.  Similarly, I will advise you to switch adviser.  And you should tell the younger student in the lab why you are leaving.  Students should count on their peers for honest opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17895" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T20:16:39.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23962" CreationDate="2014-06-25T20:18:57.097" Score="26" ViewCount="5445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper that continues and extends my previous paper (the usual situation), and I plan to submit it to a journal that conducts a double-blind review. It is a research that started recently, so I have only one paper published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The published paper represents a strong foundation of the research, which means that I would have to refer to it in the new paper at least a few times (basically the new paper extends it). While the peer-review is double-blind, the reviewers would then easily realize who is the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I can't just cite it as it's someone else's research because it's obvious that I am talking about a paper of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I refer to my previous paper completely anonymously so that&#xA;  the reviewers cannot realize who is the author of the new paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am insisting on this because I don't believe that there is such a thing as a completely unbiased peer-review process, even when double-blind. I am new in the field, and I can imagine that this is where a reviewer could have prejudices. Stupid reason, but I already have an unpleasant experience with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot cite the paper by removing the author and retaining the title, as it would take 5 seconds for a computer-literate person to find the full record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the bright side, while the previous paper is easily accessible, the reviewers probably would not be aware of it because it is from a conference that is not really in that field. But still, they would manage to find it with some effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be acceptable that I mention that this paper extends my previous research that cannot be cited in order to accomplish the anonymity of a double-blind peer-review, and that the citation will be added later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15163" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T00:15:26.420" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T00:21:12.420" Title="How to make a paper anonymous for reviewers when it heavily extends on your own previous work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23961" CreationDate="2014-06-25T21:26:47.373" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer: I work in a field in which double-blind reviewing is either completely absent or so rare that I have never encountered it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be acceptable that I mention that this paper extends my previous research that cannot be cited in order to accomplish the anonymity of a double-blind peer-review, and that the citation will be added later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't see how that's possible.  The principle that you must cite work that you use or build on -- no less so if it's yours -- seems much more basic than your desire to get genuinely double-blind refereeing.  Moreover, if a paper continues previous work, can anyone sensibly evaluate its &lt;em&gt;added value&lt;/em&gt; without having access to that previous work?  I can't see how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a new guy in the field, and I can imagine that this is where a reviewer could have prejudices. Stupid reason, but I already have an unpleasant experience with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you self-identify your reasoning as &quot;stupid&quot;, there's a clear opportunity to think it through again.  The process of journal submission and publication has a non-negligible random component: it would be unwarranted to assume that an experience that you had once or twice will necessarily recur.  Your desire to circumvent an unfair refereeing process seems premature.  If you feel like you're being treated unfairly as a new researcher, there are more productive ways to react to this: make it more clear why your work is competitive with or superior to the work done by more established researchers.  I don't know of any academic field in which journals systematically don't want to publish work by new researchers that &lt;em&gt;they believe is better than prior work&lt;/em&gt; just because those researchers are new.  It is also true, unfortunately, that new researchers can overestimate (and also underestimate!) the value of their work.  It is hard to hear that the thing you slaved over for months and years is not good enough for a second-rate journal in your field.  But it may be true nevertheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me say finally that I see a little irony in your approach: you lament your treatment as an unestablished researcher, but you are in fact more established than most people: you have published a paper that your present work builds on.  My experience is that it is much easier to publish a second paper on the same topic in a reasonable journal than a first paper, just as it is easier for an artist to sell their second painting for a reasonable price than their first.  In publishing the first paper, the journal has conferred on your work the important imprimatur of &lt;em&gt;publishable value&lt;/em&gt;.  Insisting on throwing that away will probably increase your chance of receiving &quot;anti-newbie bias&quot; in the evaluation of your followup work!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T21:26:47.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24202" CreationDate="2014-06-25T23:47:36.843" Score="4" ViewCount="8397" Body="&lt;p&gt;After applying for a number of PhD positions I ended up with a surprisingly high rejection rate, and as little as 3 acceptances. Waiting for a positive answer from other labs (which I liked a lot better), I ended up inadvertently losing these 3 offers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to have been very unwise in hindsight, but at the time I did not believe I would get so many subsequent rejections (I still find it hard to believe...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I have to apply to more labs now, and one of my referees refuses to provide further references for me because he already did it for quite a few of my applications, and is also - in his own words - &quot;more than irritated&quot; that I took the liberty to turn down any offers at all. I can't say I entirely disagree with him, since I actually did feel a bit guilty in the first place for asking him to be my referee for so many applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here I am, and I would be very curious whether you have any ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is anything I could say to maybe change his mind (currently not responding to my emails).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is any way to make people whose labs I apply to understand why I can only provide one reference without completely ruining my chances. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, I am applying for a field a bit different from what I nominally studied (cognitive neuroscience as opposed to molecular neuroscience), and there are no other referees I can choose from with whom I have worked on cognitive topics. Also, the referee in question was my MSc. supervisor, so I would immagine people will like to hear from him anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13008" LastEditorUserId="13008" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T00:38:02.663" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T11:25:12.713" Title="Apply for PhD positions with only one (or no) reference (letter of recommendation)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T00:35:52.340" Score="3" ViewCount="2015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a junior college student that goes to a top 6 CS school. I will be graduating a year early and am starting to think about whether or not I want to get my Master's degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have an egregious academic integrity violation from my first university from which I was expelled (which was a top 4 CS school, during my first semester). I have since learned from the incident and transferred to my current college, where I have been studying for 3 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do decide to get a masters degree, I would either plan on pursuing it at my current school (where I believe I will be accepted, due to my academic performance/relationships with professors/ the fact that my department head knows about my past) or at another top-6 cs school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a school of such caliber be willing to look past my academic integrity violation, or should I not even bother applying for a Master's degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17901" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T23:56:56.477" LastActivityDate="2017-08-26T14:28:42.470" Title="Applying for Masters Degree with academic integrity violation on record" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23884" CreationDate="2014-06-26T01:51:45.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I occasionally give small gifts or presents&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; to the students in my upper division classes---things like the specialized pads that are common in my field but the students are not familiar with (they cost a few dollars each and the students are unlikely to buy the without having tried them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than the beer scale, I use my donations to the class as a measure: if I could not afford to give something of similar value to &lt;em&gt;every student in the presenter's class&lt;/em&gt; then it represents a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None-the-less I am still a little uncomfortable with anything coming from a single student or small group of students. What is true for Ceasar's wife is still more true for Ceasar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Here I make a distinction between &quot;gift&quot; and &quot;present&quot; that I read somewhere. A gift is something you give because you think the recipient will get enjoyment out of it but would not buy it for themselves. A present is something you give them because you think they should have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T01:51:45.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23967" CreationDate="2014-06-26T04:01:30.077" Score="3" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching two students (X and Y) to program in python.  X is a little bit quicker than the Y in grasping the concepts.  He likes to help Y figure out what to do with his code, why it isn't working etc.  He is very well meaning, but I would like Y to do the work himself. Y is definitely capable of doing it on his own and he will gain a lot more that way.  On the other hand it is good to have some interaction between them since discussing issues makes things a lot clearer and more enjoyable.  They are both 13 years old.  Cheating is not an issue since it is at camp and is not graded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I discourage X from helping Y without making him feel like he did something wrong, and without discouraging him from participating in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17904" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T04:48:58.353" Title="Encourage student to participate without him helping too much" Tags="&lt;programming&gt;&lt;tutoring&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23966" CreationDate="2014-06-26T04:48:58.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have some tasks where they each do the same thing (as you've been doing), but also some tasks where they need to do different things.  For example, have them write different functions that are both necessary in a larger program.  If you choose the tasks carefully, X will be too busy with his own work to meddle with Y's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7222" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T04:48:58.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:12:00.593" Score="9" ViewCount="1571" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student starting preparations for a masters thesis in a &lt;strong&gt;U.S.&lt;/strong&gt; research university (on a physics/materials science topic).  I have seen digital versions of past MS theses and PhD dissertations from my university, and many use figures from textbooks and/or journal articles with a line &lt;strong&gt;&quot;reproduced from reference[##]&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and the reference given in their bibliography.  I believe that they're counting on &lt;strong&gt;&quot;fair use&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; rather than actually contacting the original copyright holders according to the ideas given from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/copyright-publishing-guide-for-students/reuse-of-figures-images-and-other-content-in-theses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIT page&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4787/is-it-necessary-to-obtain-permissions-for-copying-figures-from-published-article&quot;&gt;Ac.SE page&lt;/a&gt;.  When reproduced this way all the figures I have seen are copied exactly as from the original document (or as close to exactly as a print-screen button will get you), but pixelation issues (from enlarging raster images) as well as inconsistent plot styles can make this appear rather sloppy, hence my more specific question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would digitizing a figure rather than photocopying it still constitute &quot;fair use&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By digitizing I mean converting a raster-image plot to x,y data and then using software to make a vector-image from that data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume the data is being reproduced faithfully (i.e. data points are not being altered to sway the interpretation of the data one way or another.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume the phrase &quot;reproduced from reference[##]&quot; is still used, or even a more descriptive phrase such as &quot;reproduced from reference[##] and digitized for clarity&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this is still in the spirit of fair use, but still unsure whether the whole digitization process might change the legality beyond the scope of the &quot;four-factor test&quot; from the MIT link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17906" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:27:51.353" Title="Is it okay to digitize/modify figures &quot;reproduced from reference&quot; in a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23984" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:14:18.360" Score="-3" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making a final dissertation for my graduation. I want it to have a better design than the boring traditional. When I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9026/making-it-look-good-is-it-always-important&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7948/is-use-of-unconventional-design-elements-or-layout-something-frowned-upon-in-aca&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, I think that the downside is because it makes the thesis more clearer, any good or bad thing will be crystal clear. However, a default Word 2013 theme is easily to get and takes you not much effort. I don't want my thesis to be colorful so much, but I also don't want it to be monochrome. Elegance isn't necessary to be black and white. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university requires me to have the format in form, but I think it's boring. Should I take a risk to make my thesis have better design? If not, why? I need a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I really want to graduate? Of course I do, if not, I will happily take that risk immediate. I know that's a risk, and you may have to pay for that. My inspiration is coming from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal#t-32504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dance your PhD&lt;/a&gt;. Of course I won't dance on my defense day, I just want to say that bad representation is wasting time. You can say, &quot;it's all your choice&quot;. I just want to make my choice to be right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I losing point from this? I hope that people will think again when they do a thesis. If they do, then I'm willing to lose my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VS6Mq.png&quot; alt=&quot;Why does the font need to be Times New Roman, not Calibri?&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does the font need to be Times New Roman, not Calibri?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T10:26:49.920" Title="Why shouldn't I take a risk to make my thesis have better design?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23972" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:21:54.650" Score="2" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;In publications the wording often resembles the following: &quot;We found that our results followed what we found in our previous research.&quot;  I am now writing a publication alone, with no co-authors.  Is it bad form to use &quot;my&quot; in place of &quot;our&quot; in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:46:38.983" Title="Using &quot;my&quot; in a publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-26T09:18:13.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:33:01.783" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you interested in receiving your degree?  Then submit a thesis meeting all of the university's requirements. If you think the formatting is so terrible, feel free to post a differently-formatted version on your website or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:33:01.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23970" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:46:38.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field, it is not common to use first singular personal pronoun even when the paper has only one author. Using 'we' and 'our' in this case means that the author refers to the reader and him/herself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:46:38.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:45:09.160" Score="8" ViewCount="2058" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to add a new co-author when requested for a second revision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another co-author would help improve the quality of the manuscript, but I am not sure if this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="636" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:59:08.783" Title="Adding co-author for a revised manuscript" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:58:15.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A revision to a manuscript is a chance to correct any issues raised in the original review. If you and your co-authors feel that adding a co-author would make the manuscript better, then it is of course acceptable to do so, absent &lt;strong&gt;explicit&lt;/strong&gt; instructions to the contrary from the journal (although I am unaware of any journals with such rules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you will also need to &lt;strong&gt;clearly&lt;/strong&gt; explain in your cover letter to the editor why you added the co-author, and exactly what her contributions to the paper were.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:58:15.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:59:08.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite common. Authors take in an additional author to help sort out a specific problem and add that author to the paper. It is of course customary to provide a detailed account of this change as well as any other revisions made for the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:59:08.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11984" CreationDate="2014-06-26T08:35:22.390" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have a chance of getting into a top 20 university because you don't have enough GPA for that. Top 20 universities are for students getting  GPA of above 9.5. But in your case, excluding the GPA you have a great chance of being accepted to top 40 universities like University of Virginia but Cornell, Stanford and all ... You can't just dream of that. So please try for the university which you can afford mentally, academically and financialy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17909" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T10:13:38.327" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T10:13:38.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T08:49:18.987" Score="8" ViewCount="1337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished my master in Geophysics with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23231/is-it-appropriate-to-acknowledge-stackexchange-in-my-msc-thesis&quot;&gt;some help from here&lt;/a&gt; ;). Now I applied for several PhD positions in Natural Sciences and just got an invitation for a personal interview for one of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic of the position is described in the call but over all it seems very general to me (I really have no experience if that is common for PhD positions).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;During the interview I’m supposed to give a 10-15 min oral talk about &quot;specific research questions and methodologies&quot; I suggest to focus on and about &quot;results of a first paper&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some experience in one of the methods mentioned in the call and could probably come up with a quite elaborated idea for a paper (though I would have no idea if everything or anything would work the way I propose it, never having worked on a paper) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is hat even older scientists need time and work in a topic to figure out what exactly there paper will be about. So probably I should just kind of suggest a focus topic within the broad framework of the topics covered in the call?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my main question is: How specific should I really be?&#xA;(because I should obviously try to avoid boring my interviewer by only repeating part oft he call)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should probably also mention that I have only three days to prepare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T09:46:22.637" Title="PhD position interview: How specific should my idea of the topic be?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23977" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:24:06.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I interpret the topic you were asked to present on is that they want you to present on some work you have complete such as your first paper (or possibly a masters thesis if you have not published anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of this is probably to get an idea of how you think/do research and provide a nice introduction into finding out what your interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question it sounds like you think they are asking for something else. Now I could be entirely misunderstanding what is asked for (I just have your question), but if you are unsure I would suggest you send a polite email to clarify what the talk should cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what you should say in the talk I would try and answer these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What was the motivation for the research (why is it interesting)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What did you do?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are your results/what do they show?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why are the results significant/interesting?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:24:06.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23977" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:33:32.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it suprises me that you are asked to give a presentation covering the project you apply for without having access to a grant proposal or other detailed project description, in comparable situations I experienced (as a third party) the presenter started broad and went into detail on very specific and single points (or directions), leaving aside other possible directions (but state that you saw them!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By that, you show that you are able to immerse yourself into an unknown problem and on your own design a possible route to tackle a specific problem.&#xA;Staying unspecific and broad throughout the whole talk would probably bore them more -because they often already heard of it quite some times- than going into detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17639" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:33:32.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23917" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:34:31.770" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see a problem with either of your concerns if you have a good professional relationship with your former supervisor. Just contact them and ask if they would be interested to coauthor a research paper. Send them a draft paper or a description of your idea and a list of the ACM/IEEE publications you need for the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:34:31.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23996" CreationDate="2014-06-26T11:23:42.610" Score="13" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recently graduated researcher in the field of physics, I am in the early stages of establishing my scientific career, which involves being hired by senior researchers and professors. Much of the likelihood of being hired in a reputable group relies on my publication record and, for good or for bad, on my citation count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always played a significant role in all the papers I have written or coauthored, which justified my inclusion in the list of authors. Thus I feel that I have earned the many or few citations to my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of a competitive mindset in which your quality is often (perhaps unfairly) measured by the number of citations your work has attracted, it has always bothered me how endless author lists from large collaborations boost the citation counts of those people. It is just a matter of common sense to assume that not all of them have &lt;em&gt;significantly&lt;/em&gt; contributed to a paper. I am thinking especially about particle-physics collaborations, such as LHC at CERN. As an example, take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931200857X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this highly cited paper&lt;/a&gt; with a couple of hundred authors sharing authorship. The same or very similar author lists appear in several other highly cited articles. I am sure most of these are highly capable and competent researchers, some of which are leaders in their field. But did they all &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; contributed enough to be credited as authors? Another question: how much is enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one trust the citation count model (whether it’s fair or not) when there are these collaboration-enhanced players in the game?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much do professors and PIs rely on citation counts in order to make a decision on hiring a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T08:33:19.827" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T08:33:19.827" Title="How are citations used to fairly compare researchers: fewer publications and fewer co-authors versus more publications with many co-authors" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;mega-collaborations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2014-06-26T12:02:03.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the restrictions for thesis formats came from the years when theses were transferred to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microform&quot;&gt;microfiche storage&lt;/a&gt;. Standardizing the format made sure that the reproductions would be as legible as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar issues are still in effect, except with respect to electronic scans and the like. Choosing consistent designs and formats makes life easier for everyone. Even though it may not be your personal preference, you should follow the guidelines. The university can choose not to accept your thesis if its format strays too far from the official guidelines, which will force you to spend valuable time (and possibly money) preparing a revised version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:02:03.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2014-06-26T12:02:11.933" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to improve your Universities recommended/required thesis formatting, you should go ahead. But, &lt;strong&gt;submitting a differently formatted thesis, just to spite them is not the right way to go&lt;/strong&gt;. And it will not accomplish anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All scientific publications have a required format.&lt;/em&gt; You submitted to a conference that prescribes double column, but your paper is single column? Automatic rejection without reading the paper. You don't like the formatting of the journal best suited for your work? Tough luck. You submit a 10-page paper to a conference with 8-page limit? Reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is simply how scientific publishing works. If you want to publish your &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; content, you have to follow the &lt;em&gt;well-established guidelines&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really think that &lt;strong&gt;changing your Universities required formatting is a worthy goal&lt;/strong&gt;, and want to do it for non-selfish reasons, for all the generations to come, you should do it in a proper way. Try to use proper channels, and do it like a responsible adult with an idea, not like a child doing things out of spite because they don't like the way the world turns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some things you might try:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Make examples of a sensible new format. If there is any current templates, make some for your own formatting. If you can find some proof that your formatting is better, that's good (e.g. it is proven that some fonts are more readable and better than some others). Find the right person, in charge of that. Try meeting with them, and leading a sensible, non-heated discussion. Argument you opinion and proposition. Explain why you think the current design is outdated and why and how you think the new one will be an improvement. Offer your help in implementing the new system and offering new guides and materials. Finally, if you succeed in changing something, you can feel content you did something good for future generations. If you don't, at least you know you gave it your best try, and you tried to do it in the way with best chances of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:02:11.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23968" CreationDate="2014-06-26T12:27:51.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably, but just recall that fair use is a defense in court against being sued not a blanket permission. It's always easier to ask the publisher for permission. I don't think that tracing over a scan of the figure changes the fair use analysis at all, but you should really ask your attorney. You should always reference the source of your images whether you are tracing over it or using the scan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:27:51.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2014-06-26T12:42:22.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding serif and sans serif font, the conventional wisdom is that serif fonts are easier to read (especially on paper).  This argument is often used to justify the requirements. Of course, another related factor is just the desire to have all theses be in a uniform style--it looks neater! There seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstatement.com/blog/2013/02/which-is-easier-to-read-serif-or-sans-serif-type/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;no conclusive evidence&lt;/a&gt; that serif fonts are actully easier to read, but I must admit that I strongly prefer a serif font--Times New Roman or Cambria being among my favorites.  In a similar situation, I recently had to submit a paper in Calibri, which was a strong insult to my aesthetic sense. My personal post of the paper is in Times New Roman!--but I submitted per the guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others claim that sans serif fonts are better for reading on a screen (note that this site is entirely in sans serif!). However, there is apparently &lt;em&gt;no empirically valid data&lt;/em&gt; to support either claim. Alex Poole does a &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/#part2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nice job&lt;/a&gt; of reviewing the convoluted history of this dispute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although there seems to be no clear evidence that either type of font is actually better, you are bucking conventional wisdom, tradition, and university policy by advocating for sans serif font in your thesis. I'd say use the serif font for the official version, and then, as JeffE and Tim suggested, post a 'prettier' version everywhere else. If you are determined to try to change the status quo, follow penelope's excellent advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:42:22.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23981" CreationDate="2014-06-26T12:57:36.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In biology these papers have become extremely common. These papers are often results of high-throughput data generation projects (e.g. genome sequencing projects). Since they generate a lot of data, their data is often used thus generating many citations (this is why journals like these papers - they are impact factor boosters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think this is not such a big problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases where it is important for people to understand your contribution, there tend to be means of doing this. For example, some funding agencies may ask you to specify verbally or numerically what your contribution to each paper was. If these are the only papers you have, the relevant people will want to know what your exact role in the project was. You will almost always be able to explain or emphasize your role in a cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it is less important for people to understand your exact contribution, I find that people will usually give a very low weight to such papers. I guess this comes from an underlying assumption that without prior knowledge we can assume that the amount of contribution is the inverse of the number of authors (maximum entropy?). That said, in biology the first and last authors have special status and I think this is also the case in these papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main problem, I think, is not getting more recognition then you deserve but actually less if you are some author in the middle of the list. However, as I mentioned, you will usually have some other venue to explain your exact contribution. The only way I could see these papers being very useful for a CV is as an indicator that you can get collaborations and funding (these projects are typically well-funded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T12:57:36.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23981" CreationDate="2014-06-26T13:03:42.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I work at a academic computing center, when hiring at the postdoc and research associate (junior researcher) level, I never look at citation counts. We are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different from an academic department, and citation counts aren't all that useful to us. We are looking for a certain skill set which includes good publications, but it also includes lots of other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T13:03:42.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23917" CreationDate="2014-06-26T13:17:15.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you are, but in some countries public libraries have access to academic literature. You may have to deal with a large regional or a national library for this - for example, people in the UK can access almost anything through the British Library in London, but some journals are also available through the libraries in other cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T13:17:15.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23993" CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:16:09.467" Score="2" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;After completing a PhD in Particle Physics I left academia and have been working in industry for a few years now. However, during that time I've become more and more interested in Pure Math, to the point that I am considering trying to go back to academia and pursue my interest in full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since the topic is so different from my PhD, I realise this would involve doing another PhD, if not a MSci before that. The grades that got me into my first PhD (an MSci equivalent degree) were not bad, but perhaps not enough to get me into a top MSci/PhD program now. My PhD dissertation, on the other hand, was awarded the maximum grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is it possible to use a previous PhD as an entrance degree to a second MSci/PhD? Would this be regarded positively by a top-level admissions committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As background, my first MSci and PhD were in Spain, and I am considering studying either in the UK (my current residence) or Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9338" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T14:54:05.827" Title="Applying to a second MSci/PhD with a PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:20:44.237" Score="3" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there's a more efficient method of booking an academic supervision appointment. The method I experienced was a schedule on the professor's door, first-come-first-serve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we employ technology that is the most efficient (reduces scheduling time, permitting all students to view sign ups)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17920" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T16:30:28.680" Title="Most efficient way of booking academic supervision appointments" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23991" CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:43:47.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure what you need beyond standard calendaring software, such as Outlook or Google Calendar or whatever. Simply set up a recurring meeting and meet at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T14:43:47.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23990" CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:54:05.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you got the maximum grade on a dissertation in another PhD program, that would be viewed positively. The admissions committee would be hoping that you will do the same in their program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basis for concern is that your pre-dissertation work will &quot;average down&quot; the value of your application. It's not something to be ignored, but most admissions committees will give the greatest weight to 1) the highest level of work that you have achieved and/or 2) the most recent level you have achieved. in both cases, your PhD dissertation grade is a big help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might refrain from taking math courses until getting into a program, even at the expense of being less prepared. Because if you take those courses and do badly, that becomes the new &quot;most recent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T14:54:05.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23803" CreationDate="2014-06-26T15:06:24.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that stands out in your question is your mechanical engineering background. That suggest a leaning toward more &quot;theoretical,&quot; and less &quot;applied&quot; areas of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer science programs come in many varieties, and in your shoes, I would give the most weight to the ones &quot;heavily oriented toward theory and simulations.&quot; Those are probably the &quot;safest&quot; and &quot;best chances&quot; for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I have amended my original response based on comments below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T15:01:16.940" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T15:01:16.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22085" CreationDate="2014-06-26T15:12:18.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most critical law school grades for you are those that have a bearing on economics. Contracts, come to mind, and maybe public policy. In your shoes, I would concentrate on doing well on these, as well as &quot;corporate law&quot; courses. In an application/cv, I would set the GPA in these courses apart from the rest of the law program in say criminal or civil procedure, torts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Math courses might have a similar impact on your application as &quot;commercial&quot; law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T15:12:18.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23981" CreationDate="2014-06-26T15:28:09.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A general rule of bibliometrics is that they &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be used to compare people (or projects, or papers, or research projects) across different fields, because publication culture can vary wildly even within disciplines and between closely allied fields. To begin with, the size of the field - the number of papers published per year, for example - has a direct impact on how many citations each paper gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your quandary is an example of this. In certain fields such as high-energy physics, astronomy, or parts of biology, a lot of the science is concentrated in very large collaborations, which produce papers with many citations and many authors. It is indeed unfair to use citation counts to compare such a CV with, say, a mathematician's, since papers there tend to have few authors and, in many specialized fields, be read by very few people indeed, even for high-quality papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether such bibliometrics are used in practice by hiring committees - well, that obviously depends on the field, the institution, and the specific people involved. If all the applicants are from similar fields then this may not be a huge problem, but the numbers need to be treated with some distance to avoid the problem you point out. If a hiring or review process places a large emphasis on citation counts (or other bibliometrics) for applicants from different fields, then that is indeed a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thing you should keep in mind is that applicants with a high-citation-count, large-collaboration paper in their CV are likely to get asked at interview questions like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what was your role in this collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in any case, as part of the interview process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T15:28:09.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24020" CreationDate="2014-06-26T15:30:46.520" Score="1" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be starting graduate school next semester in mathematics and I have no idea how I am going to fare. My goal for this summer and I am slowly making progress is to go over topics in real analysis, topology and algebra. I am also doing an individual study in multivariable calculus which also covers analysis and linear algebra as well. My big question, which is very broad is, how does one prepare for the quals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7742" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T00:51:40.860" Title="Preparing for Quals in Math" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-27T02:34:49.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22085" CreationDate="2014-06-26T16:13:43.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The effect of your law grades probably depends a lot on the program you are applying to. I guess (really just a guess here) the overall GPA might in most cases serve as a signal for being a good/bad student, so they probably matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it doesn't really matter what the courses are. Most law courses have nothing in common with economics courses even if they cover the same topics. And to be honest, people are lazy and probably are not try to figure out which of your courses are useful for an econ degree. That is of course different for a law/econ master or a specialized econ master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most master programs require you to have a sufficient knowledge in math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as I already said that depends on the university/department/program.&#xA;So, my advice would be: ask the top 1-3 universities on your list what the necessary conditions are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A minor remark: I can't think of my econ MS being useful in a real job (i.e. not governmental or in academia) but maybe that is just me. Maybe don't pick a research master's degree.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T16:13:43.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23991" CreationDate="2014-06-26T16:30:28.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Doodle a lot. It is possible to tie Doodle in with Google calendar (which also means I see it in my calendar on my Android smartphone). You can set up available time slots in Doodle that can only be filled by one person. Once it is filled it becomes unavailable to others. There may be similar tools but I have only used Doodle and find it extremely efficient. The only drawback are those who insist on having access at some other time but there will always be a few of those, and, it is easier to accommodate a few exceptions this way. I use the method for the 50 grad students in our department, with who I need to meet once a year. I schedule hours at the beginning of the term and ask them to book as soon as they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using Doodle with Google calendar or some similar combination is a useful tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T16:30:28.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24173" CreationDate="2014-06-15T00:29:45.397" Score="9" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the project, many researchers have to rewrite code and reproduce datasets from previous works in order to perform experimental evaluations. Although some dataset are understood to contain private data, and thus cannot be shared, it would be very nice to have access to the source code and results produced along with the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the big data works present results from experiments run with very large databases, and the code developed, which is usually non-trivial to rewrite, is rarely available to the public. I even heard once that some conferences would start to request the source code of the project to be submitted along with the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is there any &lt;em&gt;global regulation&lt;/em&gt; that states what a conference must request while accepting a paper? And, if so, are there any proposals at all to make source code sharing a must?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17935" OwnerDisplayName="Rubens" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T15:43:36.637" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:14:32.540" Title="Are there any proposals to make sharing code and data with publications a requirement?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24000" CreationDate="2014-06-15T13:11:29.727" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know any global regulations, but scientific community understand the problem that you  described and that is why github recently made it possible to get a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier&quot;&gt;Digital Object Identifier&lt;/a&gt; (DOI) for any GitHub repository archive (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;) making the code citable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I remember any DOI should be maintained for at least 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="818" OwnerDisplayName="Stanpol" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T13:26:50.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24000" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:22:29.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a Coursera course of the Data Science Specialization track which talks about this topic. The course is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reproducible Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;website: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/repdata&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/course/repdata&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institution: Johns Hopkins University&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instructors: Roger D. Peng, Jeff Leek, Brian Caffo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note: the course can be done for free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the topics of the course are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explanation of what is the replication a research work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explanation of what makes a research reproducible (from your question, you are basically asking whether reproducible research is a standard in the scientific world)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description, tutorials and exercise on how to use Rmarkdown which is a package of the R language developed to create code that can be both: converted to a human readable format (Sweave the code) and executed to perform a data analysis of some sort (Tangle the code).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last lectures are quite interesting, because they talk about real examples that have occurred in the past where reproducible research has been useful, and cases where the lack of reproducibility has been a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: is there any global regulation that states what a conference must request while accepting a paper? And, if so, are there any proposals at all to make source code sharing a must?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think so. My personal hope is that reproducible research will tend to have more citations and that it will be more valued by peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97737" OwnerDisplayName="jespestana" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T09:52:49.870" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:52:49.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24008" CreationDate="2014-06-26T17:21:27.380" Score="4" ViewCount="2286" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it common to discuss the fact that one didn't have time to do more reading, or didn't have time to elaborate certain sections, in the &quot;limitations&quot; section of a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T18:27:29.287" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T18:57:55.123" Title="Discussing time limits in the limitations section?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24005" CreationDate="2014-06-26T18:32:21.063" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;No&quot;, for several reasons. First, even if literally true due to external constraints, it sounds too much like one really didn't care enough, or had other, more important things to do. Second, if it's a sort of excuse for not having a better paper, that's both unprofessional and will only make people mistrust you all the more. Third, although scientific and other scholarly literature has manifest limitations, to apparently concede huge limitations at the outset is pathetic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if such remarks are a (misguided) attempt at some sort of modesty, don't do it. Your thesis is not &quot;about you&quot;, but about its subject. Personal remarks should be limited to thank-yous and such in the acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T18:32:21.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24005" CreationDate="2014-06-26T18:57:55.123" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. It not common, nor should you do it! As paul garrett pointed out, this type of excuse makes it seem as though you didn't care or couldn't be bothered to do a better job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add also that no matter how much time and effort you have put into developing an idea and writing your paper, it is almost inevitable that there will  be something that you missed or could have done better had you had/taken more time. Even the magnum opus on which you have spent your entire lifetime will be superseded by better or more complete thoughts; this is an inevitable reality of academic writing, and not one you should apologize for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps especially as a student, one struggles to find the balance that represents maximum output for minimum time spent. Knowing when to 'let go' is a function of maturity and experience. When you've made that decision (or have had it made for you, due to time constraints outside your control), accept that this might be better, but don't apologize for the inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T18:57:55.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T19:15:29.790" Score="35" ViewCount="12033" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a grant proposal that I'm ready to submit, and I would like to re-use a significant amount of the text (on the order of 5-8 pages) in a paper that I intend to submit to a journal for publication.  Is this considered self-plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I suggested in the title, I am also interested in the reverse direction of this.  Is it okay to take significant amounts of text from (e.g.) my own unpublished doctoral dissertation and use it in a grant proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were an issue of paper-to-paper copying I know both of these would be clearly off-limits.  The key issue that I am wrestling with is whether the rules are different for unpublished works like dissertations and grant proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17928" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T16:06:30.530" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T01:15:57.993" Title="Re-using text from a grant proposal in a paper (or vice versa)" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2014-06-26T19:27:05.713" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copying proposals to papers:&lt;/strong&gt; I am sure many have not thought about this but many have copied material to and from proposals. Copying from a proposal to a paper should not be a problem since a proposal is normally not a publication and I have never come across a funding agency that claims copyright on proposal texts sent to them. If anyone knows of exceptions, it would be very interesting to know how they handle proposals. Taking the idea to the (silly) extreme one could argue that copying what you write in a notebook to a computer-written manuscript is self-plagiarism. The key lies in what sources are considered published and which are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copying papers to proposals&lt;/strong&gt;: Copying from a journal paper to a proposal should normally not be a problem either since the proposal is not a publication and not something that should be distributed. But, the journal text may be subject to copyright so it makes sense to see to what extent one might infringe on those rights by copying text to  a proposal. I doubt any journal would care much (or indeed find out) as long as the proposals are not made public. Since most application processes are very strict and reviewers are not allowed to disclose materials (some actually ask you to physically destroy any printouts) I doubt there is a problem but strictly speaking this may indeed be a grey zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I will add a definition for self-plagiarism: &lt;em&gt;Copying material you have previously produced and passing it off as a new production&lt;/em&gt; from the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plagiarism.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plagiarism.org&lt;/a&gt;. From this perspective the question becomes, is one trying to pass of the copied material as a new product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T01:15:57.993" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T01:15:57.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24015" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:01:07.527" Score="5" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an document extending paper &lt;strong&gt;[A &amp;amp; B, 2000]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my work, I make &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; references to &lt;strong&gt;[A &amp;amp; B, 2000]&lt;/strong&gt;, some times several times on the same paragraphs as there is some need to compare both approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make reference to &lt;strong&gt;[A &amp;amp; B, 2000]&lt;/strong&gt; without being redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Our work compares with [A &amp;amp; B, 2000] on the following:&#xA;  - The approach presented in [A &amp;amp; B, 2000] makes (x) assumption on (...)&#xA;  - The (something) differ from those of [A &amp;amp; B, 2000] on (...)&#xA;  - Performance of X was not reported by [A &amp;amp; B, 2000]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(there is quite more content in between the references on the actual document, but still look overwhelming)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17577" LastEditorUserId="17577" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T20:06:28.313" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:06:38.927" Title="Good style for frequent references to some paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24014" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:06:38.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check your target journal's style guide or advice to authors, but my approach is to use the citation format the first time I mention it and then just mention the authors by name or pronoun when I refer to them later. E.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our work compares with &lt;strong&gt;[A &amp;amp; B, 2000]&lt;/strong&gt; on the following:&#xA;    - The approach presented by A &amp;amp; B makes (x) assumption on (...)&#xA;    - The (something) differ from those of A &amp;amp; B on (...)&#xA;    - Performance of X was not reported by A &amp;amp; B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even that can get redundant. You might say say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throughout the following section, we compare our work to [A &amp;amp; B, 2000]. In their work, they make assumptions about (X) ... Additionally, (Y) differs between A &amp;amp; B's method and our because ... They also do not present performance of (Z) in their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit on your own style, but my approach is always a bit more conversational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:06:38.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:12:12.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in your comment on PeterJansson's answer: there are two different issues, namely, the literal copyright business, and then also &quot;ethics&quot;. The copyright aspect is quasi-objectively decideable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, suppose there's no copyright conflict. The &quot;ethics&quot; issue still needs clarification. First, there's the idea of accidentally or intentionally double-dipping in terms of getting two status-credit-points for just one thing. That's the main external objection to &quot;self-plagiarism&quot;, as opposed to plagiarizing from others. A grant proposal scores no status points in my world, so that element of ethical problems seems not present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that an over-the-top notion of self-plagiarism would seem to dictate that one is never allowed to re-use anything one has written, no matter what. I can't agree with this, even at the level of work done for courses, where I have very mixed feelings about declaring students cheaters because they re-use their own work to varying degrees. One objection I have is that this only really makes sense if either the university or instructor declares that it &quot;owns&quot; all the work done by students, &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt;, worse, that the only point of the enterprise is in-the-moment... no accumulated expertise is re-usable? Odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, it seems to me that too often our thinking about self-plagiarism in professional settings is exaggerated, due to thinking of things as mostly pointless except for status/money-scoring aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Srsly, we're not allowed to ever re-use bits of things &quot;of our own&quot; that have been polished a bit, etc? Start over every time? A very artificial constraint. For that matter, isn't most progress fairly &lt;em&gt;incremental&lt;/em&gt;? Obviously... so it is perverse to require that everything be retyped every time, etc. And be sure to use different words... even if one took considerable pains with the earlier wording? Old effort must be discarded? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:12:12.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T22:15:09.893" Score="17" ViewCount="6305" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just finished refreshing my high school courses in order to enter into university for engineering. Because I have a strong desire to become an engineer I have not moved past any material unless I fully understood it. That being said, the courses I took have had many mistakes in the material (online material as this is through online correspondence). I have had to fight tooth and nail to correct some of the material, even though I was a student, because I believe the material should be correct so that future students do not suffer the same frustration nor are taught improper concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An example to convey the level of quality of the course material:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example was in the Physics course, the concept of work being taught was equal to force times the distance the object traveled. This is fundamentally wrong; the real concept of work is force times the distance the force was applied over. I wrote to many people and eventually the business owner before my concerns were heard. The only reason I knew this was wrong was because it defied the law of conservation of energy. Though the fact that I, a student, was the only person who realized the mistake and sought to have it fixed reflects very poorly on the quality of the institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strictly relevant to my question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gotten into the habit of contesting test questions which are incorrect, and since every question on the final exam is worth 0.66% of my final grade, I take the time to make sure each mistake was mine. After contesting 2 questions on my last Chemistry final exam I have found that the head of the science department (whom I correspond with) does not understand a specific concept regarding a question. Now, I realize that it is only 1 question and my grade will go from a 97 to a 97.6, but I strongly dislike the idea of losing a mark for a concept which I deserve the acknowledgment of understanding (the grade). In order to explain why my answer was correct, I don't know how to do it in a way that is not condescending towards her (the head of the science department); no matter how you look at it, it will be a student explaining a concept to a teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am asking for criticism here.&lt;/strong&gt; Please criticize me and tell me if I am being too much of a perfectionist. Is it appropriate to always contest questions during an academic career or will it have a negative effect on my success in the long run? Also, is it really worth it? What are the pros and cons? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I can see my comment about the Physics concept of work is being met with a lot of skepticism; so I am including the link to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/70928/is-my-textbook-teaching-an-incorrect-concept-of-work&quot;&gt;Physics.SE question I made&lt;/a&gt; in order to verify without a doubt that the lesson was indeed incorrect. When I saw that this was a mistake I took every measure that I could to ensure it was in fact a mistake before I proceeded to contact the head of the science department and then the business owner (when my concerns were not being heard). In no way did I take this lightly and assume I was correct, I did the necessary research before raising concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17480" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:13.560" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:22:07.073" Title="Is it generally worth the time and effort to challenge incorrect exam test items?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-26T23:24:04.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors are not allowed to retaliate for students asking questions/contesting test items so you have no need to fear. That being said, human beings are human beings and there is natural variation to how people respond. Most academics I know love having students who are as committed to their education as we are and we view questions (including contesting questions) a sign of commitment. Given professors are human beings, we will make mistakes and it is important to be aware that your texts are also filled with errors! So I would encourage you to continue asking questions and contesting items throughout your education. But I caution that you do so in a respectful way. Particularly for internet classes, it is easy to lose sight that the person with whom you are communicating is highly qualified in a specialized area and is due respect. They owe you an equal amount of respect, of course. But when communicating via email, discussion boards, class-related blogs, or any other means that does not involve being face-to-face, two errors emerge entirely too often. People are sometimes disrespectful because they do not realize how difficult it is to show respect via these technologies. People may also be disrespectful because the anonymity makes it easier to be rude/condescending or to lose ones temper. Make no mistake, asking a question is not disrespectful, it is the way questions that are sometimes conveyed disrespectfully. Avoid these errors and you should experience no problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17936" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T23:24:04.810" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-27T00:43:28.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to always contest questions during an academic career or will it have a negative effect on my success in the long run? Also, is it really worth it? What are the pros and cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No ,it is &lt;strong&gt;not always appropriate&lt;/strong&gt; to contest questions during an academic career! Let me hasten to add that most of the time, under most circumstance and with the right attitude, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; probably appropriate. The key is your attitude, which seems to be appropriately focused on learning rather than on showing up the professor. However, the second part is how successful you are at conveying that attitude, particularly in an online format, which, as others have mentioned, lends itself to miscommunication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach this with an attitude of learning from the masters&lt;/strong&gt;,  as in &quot;Can you show/tell me why this answer is not what I thought it should be?&quot; rather than, &quot;This question is wrong and I want you to fix it!&quot; Professors are human too, and most of us have hard time responding kindly to a smarty-pants student who is intent on showing that s/he knows more than we do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T00:43:28.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23997" CreationDate="2014-06-27T00:51:40.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;See if your department keeps copies of past exams (most do).  If they do, then working the problems on the old exams is by far the best way to study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll begin to notice the types of problems typically asked (there are some classic ones in each area that you should definitely know how to do), the average difficulty of problems, and most importantly help identify areas you need to brush up on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T00:51:40.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-27T01:26:45.013" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though the fact that I, a student, was the only person who realized the mistake and sought to have it fixed reflects very poorly on the quality of the institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe the material should be correct so that future students do not suffer the same frustration nor are taught improper concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it should.  But ultimately, the correctness of the course material is the responsibility of the instructor, not your responsibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have had to fight tooth and nail to correct some of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That strikes me as quixotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly reasonable, and helpful to future students, to report errors that you find in the course material.  The instructor should then either fix it, or discuss with you why the course material is actually correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the instructor does not seem interested in doing so, then it's probably a waste of your time to &quot;fight tooth and nail&quot;.  Unfortunately, crappy courses and instructors exist, and it's not your job to fix them all.  Simply quit giving them your money and attention: look elsewhere for better courses.  If you like, leave negative reviews.  Future students would be helped by having the errors fixed, but if the courses are as poorly managed as you describe, they would be even better off not taking them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T01:26:45.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-27T02:56:33.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing as someone who has questioned/challenged exam questions, and even the entire teaching approach to a graduate-level course. (I'm a PhD student). I do this rarely.  I don't do this because my answer was marked wrong or because my exam grade might be improved.  In other words, when I challenged the professor I had no intent to have him change my grade.  My goal was 100% focused on improving &quot;the system&quot; that gave rise to that exam and exam question in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this as a social system.  All systems improve their performance in response to feedback, a.k.a. error signals.  Your teachers and professors operate in social systems that include their training, their experience, their discipline norms and culture, their peer influences, their incentives, their resources, and so on.  Any given exam question exists within this larger &quot;field&quot; of testing, grading systems, degree programs, academic accreditation, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider how this is similar to customer complaints in commercial settings, complaints by line workers in a manufacturing process, or whistle-blower complaints in a government department.  Regardless of the merit of any individual complaint, these are all &lt;em&gt;vital&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; signals for each of these organizations and institutions. Enlightened and mature managers (and professors) will understand this and will do their best to solicit such corrective signals, and will act on them systematically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, many (or most) managers and professors are not enlightened.  They won't learn and they will suppress the feedback, and maybe react negatively to the person or people who raise such feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this perspective, the best that you can do is provide feedback in a way that people can learn from it, and so they can change the system to benefit future students (or customers, or line workers, or citizens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[In a] Physics course, the concept of work being taught was equal to force times the distance the object traveled. This is fundamentally wrong; the real concept of work is force times the distance the force was applied over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You describe this as &quot;fundamentally wrong&quot;.  Really? It may be erroneous at a conceptual level (i.e. how &quot;resultant distance&quot; is different than &quot;applied distance&quot;) but &quot;fundamentally wrong&quot; to me would be &quot;Work = Force X Velocity&quot; or &quot;Work = Force ^2&quot; or &quot;Work = Distance X Mass&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important: how would you modify the education material related to &quot;work&quot; and how would you modify the exam question associate with &quot;work&quot;?  And what modifications are required to the System that this exam questions lives in?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the professor not using the latest research?  Is the professor taking short-cuts, where a more complete treatment is necessary?  Is &quot;teaching the formula&quot; taking precedence over &quot;teaching the concepts&quot; or &quot;teaching the theory&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion and experience, it's these latter questions that you should address in your feedback in this particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T02:56:33.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24029" CreationDate="2014-06-27T03:04:27.530" Score="28" ViewCount="12527" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my masters, I used to ask a lot of questions in class and during the lecture. Whenever I had a doubt I used to ask questions. It was my habit which my undergraduate teachers inculcated in me and inspired us to do so. However, here, in my masters, I got the impression that this is probably a bad habit as professors tend to think that I am asking my questions to test them. Ultimately, it was proven to reflect badly on me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to go to another institution going for my PHD. Since then, I have changed my habit and I haven't asked a single question in the last several lectures. Instead, I wrote my questions down in my notebook and later read books or Googled them to search for answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really the right way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I ask a question such that the professors shall not think that I am somehow mocking them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8569" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T03:07:28.043" LastActivityDate="2020-09-21T19:56:03.357" Title="When can asking a question during lecture be offensive?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24000" CreationDate="2014-06-27T03:04:28.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This problem has been recognized, but there is only slow progress on the sort of institutional innovation necessary to address it.  Many technological components of the solution are in place, but their are socio-cultural forces of resistance in nearly all academic disciplines and academic journals.  NSF and other funding agencies are looking for ways to overcome the resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a thorough analysis and prognosis, you could listen to this talk: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/deanslectures/20120201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THE CREDIBILITY CRISIS IN COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE: AN INFORMATION ISSUE&lt;/a&gt; (includes slides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Here's a recent blog post about this in the field of bio-medicine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/06/26/can-you-show-us-that-again-please/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can you show us that again please?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="17564" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T21:32:48.840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T21:32:48.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23946" CreationDate="2014-06-27T03:27:47.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are applying for a Computer Science PhD. The following answer is based on my application process (Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, George Mason) in interdisciplinary departments that included CS.  I had two interviews with Universities where I was not subsequently accepted, so I learned something about the decision criteria and process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That you have Masters-level course work is a positive. That you didn't finish your Masters is probably neutral-to-slightly-negative.  Your published paper is a positive, but your patent will be irrelevant unless it has relevance to research.  Your industry experience is probably also irrelevant to being accepted into a PhD program in CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are less important that other aspects of your application: 1) GRE scores (esp. Math), 2) your research goals and 3) recommendations (by one or more academics or researchers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I learned is that Math GRE score is a &quot;hurtle&quot; -- you have to have a score above some threshold level to be considered.  They won't tell you what the threshold is, but you should assume that it is the &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; for their accepted PhD students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important of all are your research goals (and your preparation to achieve those goals) and whether they are aligned with a &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; professor in the department. Most PhD students are funded through Graduate Research Assistantships or Graduate Teaching Assistantships.  In CS, it's mostly GRAs.  Mostly, professors admit PhD students that they believe will be good &quot;worker bees&quot; to support them in their research projects.  You may be the most wonderful, inspired, gifted, hard-working applicant in the World, but if your interests don't align with at least one professor who has research funding, then you won't get admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to this is recommendations. Admission committees respond especially positively to recommendations from people who are important and relevant to the specific area of research.  Glowing recommendations of your many personal and professional qualities will mean less than specific recommendations that substantiate your aspirations to do research in your proposed area from someone who is important and well-regarded in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, each University has it's own rules about whether they offer credit graduate-level course work.  Mostly it's related to how long ago you got it and where you got it.  Given that it's just 5-7 years ago, you should be fine.  You can position this as: &quot;My previous graduate course work will accelerate me through the PhD program, and allow me to focus time on courses that relate to my research focus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T03:27:47.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T05:35:13.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;if your question imply that maybe you hadn't learned the prerequisite classes well enough, then they could be taken as annoying to both professor and some other students.  the prof wants to make sure he/she gets through a sufficiently prescribed amount of material (indicated on the syllabus) and spending a lot of time on remedial instruction might cost too much time to move ahead at the needed rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but, if it's relevant and at the correct level (like the level of the class learning this stuff), thoughtful questions &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be appreciated by all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13651" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T05:35:13.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T06:13:12.847" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not always resort to Google. If the professor feels bad if you ask in front of the class, note down the question and either ask at the end of the class on one-on-one basis, or ask in a separate meeting during their office hours. Consider asking TAs too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the ideal solution though, as asking in the class provides others the opportunity to ponder on the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One litmus test that you might want to do before asking the question is, whats the point of the question, and whats the point of the current lecture. Are you asking a question that goes deep down some unnecessary details, or does it ask for a piece of information thats relevant and important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to test your questions is, what would I lose (or what would I be not able to do) if I don't know the answer to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more way can be that before asking the question, you verbally clarify what you understood, and then ask which bit you didnt understand. Similarly, verbally clarify what details you know, and then for which scenario, you need the additional information. That would not only justify it as a legitimate doubt, but also clear the context of question A LOT in your own mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6946" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T06:13:12.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24054" CreationDate="2014-06-27T06:48:05.990" Score="66" ViewCount="35325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background:  I was a senior at a very prestigious, high-ranking university in the US.  At the time my GPA was around a 3.9 and had never had any issues with professors (and actually socialized with a few outside of class).       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fall semester I ended up getting pinned taking two classes from a female professor that had a reputation for being an extreme feminist.  I only mention the &quot;feminist&quot; part because this reputation preceded her around campus.  My adviser who was female, basically said &quot;sorry about this&quot; but I have to put you in her classes.  I also mention it because the department head (later in story) is very quick to pull me from her class with little discussion.  I am not anti-feminist nor did I care.  If anything it made me act more cautious around her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of the classes were very basic so I figured, whatever.  Well I get my first few papers back and there is little feedback other than very minor sentence rewording.  &quot;C&quot;s.  No notes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask her about her office hours (after class) so I can talk about the issues on the papers.  She simply told me she finds me intimidating and that she would rather talk to me in class with other people around.  &lt;strong&gt;This was my first direct interaction with her, and I was standing beside a few friends.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask her what I need to do to not get a &quot;C&quot;.  She says that she doesn't feel comfortable talking to me because she feels threatened—again I have two or three female friends standing a few feet from me.  That's it.  She wouldn't talk to me because I was a big male.  (At the time I was boxing professionally but I really doubt she knew this. As a 6'3&quot; 200-pound white male, she just would not talk to me based on how I looked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next step was going to the department chair.  Basically he looked at a few of my papers and we went around in circles over the grades.  But that didn't matter.  The professor basically told him exactly what she told me.  And she told him that it was the first time I had ever talked to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He offered to grade the rest of my papers and give me grades for the classes.  I opted out of that because basically I would have started off with a 70% in each class (he could not change my grades, I was told).  So he offered pass/fail. I took that option.  Didn't go to class.  Turned in a bunch of papers and passed both classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is did I handle this correctly?  Should I have paid for those two classes?  What would be the norm in this situation from a student's perspective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11420" LastEditorUserId="6495" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T01:12:21.947" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T22:28:45.720" Title="My professor gave me a bad grade and wouldn't discuss it further, I think some prejudice may be involved. How should a student proceed?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T06:49:37.150" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking questions is a good thing, but you need to make sure that the questions you ask are appropriate. The best thing to do is judge for yourself whether or not a majority of the audience might be interested in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example might be that the lecturer has made a mistake, or has forgotten to define something in a mathematical derivation. In such cases, perhaps you could whisper to the person next to you for a quick second opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a concept has been neglected or poorly explained, then you should ask for expansion or clarification if you think that most of the class will be in the same boat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These aren't always easy judgements to make. If you're uneasy, save the question for after class. You can also simply ask the lecturer if he or she minds you asking questions, or your classmates if they thought your question was a good one. &lt;em&gt;Good&lt;/em&gt; questions enhance the learning experience for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that most good professors like to have some interaction with the class. Many students audience don't like to say anything, so it's often up to just a few students to ask any relevant questions. But more than one question every ten minutes or so can start to get tiresome for the lecturer, so unless it's a tutorial class you shouldn't turn it into a Q&amp;amp;A session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T06:59:50.770" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T06:59:50.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-27T07:34:15.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are being too much of a perfectionist.  Rather, you are being a perfectionist when it really doesn't matter.  There is no point in fighting the inaccuracies you find in the lower education system because quite often (as you pointed out) the teachers don't have a good understanding of the material.  Whether or not the errors are fixed will not matter because everyone who does not go into physics or chemistry programs in college won't care, and those who do will quickly learn the correct thing in their first semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, professors are sometimes wrong, and yes, those errors should be fixed.  But it's important to remember that the vast majority of teaching faculty you interact with have PhD's in their field and have devoted their lives to the subject.  Professors (especially in intro courses) are very rarely wrong, and when you correct them, they are more likely to say &quot;oh yeah, that's what I meant&quot; instead of giving you a hard time.  If you believe you should have received credit on a test question, (A) go to your professor's office hours and ask a question, (B) write up a formal proof of why you are correct, and (C) talk to the professor or grader who is in charge of your grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And - congratulations on asking questions.  The more you ask the better you will understand the material in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17943" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T07:34:15.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T07:49:06.857" Score="7" ViewCount="23722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve red that some universities in Japan offer a non-degree program called &lt;em&gt;research student.&lt;/em&gt; I want to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do students usually apply as a research student?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do research students work on things that haven’t been done before? Or do they work on anything that interests them (of course) but that is not necessarily new?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does a research student differ from a master student? What does a research student presents in his/her last year?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17944" LastEditorUserId="19769" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T09:25:52.680" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T09:25:52.680" Title="What is a research student?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24031" CreationDate="2014-06-27T08:33:23.903" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've only encountered the term &quot;research student&quot; in Japan (研究生), most (all ?) graduate schools in Japan offer it (see for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://is.tohoku.ac.jp/_eng/entrance/guide.html&quot;&gt;Graduate School of Information Sciences of Tohoku University&lt;/a&gt;). As I understand it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A student will apply as a research student if they wish to conduct research at the university under the supervision of a faculty member, but are not interested in taking classes or obtaining a degree. You could want to do this for example as a &quot;gap year&quot; between undergrad and Master's (or Master's and Ph.D.), this could be a way to get some research experience under your belt, and perhaps improve your application for Masters or Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anything goes, as long as it is agreed between the student and supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are not required to present anything. Since there is no degree to be obtained, there are no requirements to be fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;is subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12864" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T08:33:23.903" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2014-06-27T08:59:01.693" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the operative question is not really whether this is called &quot;plagiarism&quot; - it definitely is - but whether that's a bad thing. After all, the intended audience of any given document you prepare might be okay with copying large sections of another work; if that's the case, go ahead and plagiarize all you want, nobody will care. But if the people who will be reading a document do not want to see plagiarized material, you'd better not do it, regardless of whether the document will count as a &quot;publication.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've heard, grant review boards generally fall in the latter category. There are probably some exceptions out there, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that plagiarism in a grant application will result in instant rejection, and perhaps even punitive measures such as a temporary or permanent ban on submitting any further grant applications to that funding agency. I've seen examples of proposals which were rejected because they copied as little as one paragraph, or one figure, from decade-old papers, despite the proposals having excellent scientific merit. The copying need not even be exact, so tweaking a few words per sentence from your existing writing doesn't make it okay (as is the case for plagiarism in general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: everything in your grant application should be written exclusively for that application, not repurposed from elsewhere, just as you would do with a published paper. Grant reviewers treat plagiarism much the same as journal editors do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And also: though this answer treats plagiarism in general, as far as I'm aware the same rules apply to self-plagiarism.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T08:59:01.693" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24031" CreationDate="2014-06-27T09:28:44.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, students who go through a research program, aim for a research project or a project the output of which may be a research report or a scientific publication. As far as this program is only offered in a few number of universities or research centers; I just want to add some comment to the questions you asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In some universities, non-degree programs are offered as some students want to attend to the university not going through the official class-attending programs. I mean, in a non-degree program, the student may not have to attend all the courses offered in a degree leading program. The student has the opportunity to choose the courses he likes and the ones mostly near the field of research he likes to do. It may be noted that in a degree program, the student may have to pass a few number of courses which may be chosen by the group or department; but in a non-degree program, he has the opportunity to choose from a wide range of different courses which he likes more. I insist that that because these programs may not lead to a degree, each university may have its own regulations and the student may or may not have the opportunity to choose as many different courses as he wants. It is better to check the universities' websites.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The answer the your question about &lt;em&gt;why students apply for such programs&lt;/em&gt; varies. Some students prefer to enjoy the freedom of the program, choosing a number of courses and pass them,while they do some research activity in the research institute. Some researchers prefer to apply for this programs as they have passed some courses before and they are coming with a good research background; so they apply for a non-degree program just to expand their researches and do some publications at the end of the research period. Some other students are the ones who work in industry and do not have enough time to attend a complete degree leading program and have a research topic in mind; so they apply for such program and do research in the field of their desire.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;When we are talking about research&lt;/em&gt;, It means that we are looking for something new. When something is done before and the researchers looks for it; it is called research but the output may be a Review Paper not a Research Paper.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A non-degree program may differ as a matter of time. The research period may be three months, six month, one year or more. But as the research non-degree program student does research under supervision of a professor at the university; the output should be something like a publish paper, conference paper or a research report or book. If the person applies for a non-degree program and does not have any publication at the end of the research period, why does he attend the university?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The research student may &lt;em&gt;take most of the research period&lt;/em&gt;, by talking to the other researchers and students at the university. Go to some courses and read as much as papers and reports as he can. Develop new ideas for his future projects and gain ideas to make his work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T09:28:44.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T12:17:09.260" Score="1" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;So with the job market being as it is, I'm considering the prospect of leaving academia after my PhD. The problem that I have is that the name of one of my Areas of Specialization has been co-opted by some new age mystics and if you search &quot;X&quot; after seeing that I specialized in &quot;X&quot;, you're more likely to think I specialized in some arcane form of crystal healing than the work I actually did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other AOSs sound fine, even semi-impressive to the layman, and so don't really concern me. This one, however....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, two quick and related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I right to think that my AOSs at least would still remain when listing my PhD on a non-academic CV/resume? Or just &quot;PhD in field X&quot;? &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17347/cv-for-leaving-academia-after-phd&quot;&gt;(The question on CV for leaving academia didn't provide too much specific guidance here.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to leave one of my AOSs off of the CV, assuming I leave the others untouched? In a sense it is misrepresenting what I did during my PhD, since I really did a lot of work in all three of these areas. On the other hand, listing this troublesome AOS might misrepresent what I did even more--- crystal healing and such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4458" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T03:05:40.703" Title="Leaving an Area of Specialization (AOS) off of my CV?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T12:19:24.827" Score="6" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had the need to dig deep into the theory of architecture and in doing so I have encountered various authors who make extremely grandiose claims about themselves and their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course is not a measure for the actual value of their achievements, but sometimes it is hard to find out if an author is just very bad at expressing themselves, want to mask their ideas with jargon in order to make them seem even deeper, or if they really are just fabricating incoherent theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I by no mean want to denigrate anyone, but I don't want to learn from authors who are practicing junk science. The problem with architecture are authors who talk not just about architectural theory - but connect various disciplines to it, for example psychology, computer science, mathematics, etc... I have no required knowledge of any of those disciplines - so it is impossible for me to know if they are just using complex constructs from another discipline in a way that is just &quot;sugar coating&quot; for their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bigger problem is that there are very few people who have studied both architecture and some other discipline in detail and are able to comment both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I am baffled by two authors: Nikos A. Salingaros and Michael Leyton. Their book make incredible sounding claims, and their homepages and Amazon reviews are full of praise that rings all kinds of alarm bells, but at the same time they have permanent positions in universities which to my knowledge are quite reputable, and they have published a lot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Michael Leytons theory of perception and cognition, there is a detailed criticism by Hendrickx and Wageman, but as I said, I am no mathematician... Apparently there is something wrong with the mathematical side of his theory though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to find if I can trust these authors? They seem to gather citations from their students and other people who use their work without any kind of criticism. Do I need to go through the magazines they publish into and find out if they are peer reviewed and of good reputation? How would I go about doing that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to pollute my work with bad science, and I am very hesitant to make any claims myself if I don't have good grounds for them. With complex interdisciplinary claims like the ones these two authors do, should I just not use them at all since it seems so hard to find out if they can be taken academically seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17950" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T18:59:07.240" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T16:25:28.690" Title="How to find out if an author is practicing pseudoscience or is fraudulent?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:03:02.047" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience in college as a student who &lt;em&gt;asks&lt;/em&gt; questions (as opposed to those who stay silent even if they do not understand what they're listening to) you can divide the process into the student's part (asking) and the lecture's part (answering). The student's part is the one you have control over, and so there are at least two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question is pertinent: it adds to the discussion, is useful to the general audience and it does not disrupt the lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question is not pertinent: it is too deep (save it for later when you can meet the lecturer in a one-to-one basis), it is too shallow (you were not paying attention, or lack previous knowledge needed for the present course, etc.), or it is irrelevant (you're trying to correct or point out some insignificant mistake or make an appreciation that does not help anyone except your ego).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; pertinent then do a favor to everyone (including yourself) and don't ask it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the question &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; pertinent it is up to your appreciation and experience in that class to figure out whether that particular lecturer will welcome it or not. Some lecturers will be happy to answer anything they think adds up to the discussion and to be corrected whenever they are wrong. Others will feel that their students are being intrusive towards their work and even get defensive if they're pointing out a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I once pointed out a mistake a lecturer had made on the board and he dismissed me implying I was clearly wrong without even giving a thought about what I was saying. Right after class I talked to him privately and he was happy to acknowledge I was right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did the same with another lecturer and he immediately admitted his mistake and thanked me for pointing it out. Asking a tricky question to this same lecturer he admitted he didn't know the answer but came the next day with two sheets of paper where he had worked out the answer after class during his own time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is your responsibility before asking to make sure yours is a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  question. But it is also up to your judgement to decide whether asking&#xA;  that particular lecturer that particular question benefits you or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:03:02.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:39:50.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have studied a MEng which is accredited by the engineering Council UK for chartered status. I disagree that in a MEng you don't do research, as I recall I did two group projects and a Thesis. With varied coursework and subject matter and examinations. You can do a PhD from both a MEng and MSc, it does not matter how you start, it's how you finish is the old saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17954" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:39:50.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24038" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:41:28.033" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your definition of academic fraud or pseudoscience is &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; over the top. I am neither a mathematician nor an architect, but just doing a quick background search on both authors you mention gives me &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; indication that they are some wackjobs that use terminology from other disciplines to sound smart. If that is the case, they sure have convinced a lot of people that certainly know more about these fields than me (and, maybe, you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, a lot of people &lt;em&gt;disagree&lt;/em&gt; with their theories, but that's completely ok, quite naturally actually. Most theories that go against the mainstream in a field are critiqued strongly. Michael Leyton, for instance, is a professor of theoretical computer science at Rutgers. His theories may or may not be correct, but I would be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hesitant to call it pseudoscience in the absence of further evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:41:28.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24037" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:42:38.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like an obvious opportunity to briefly explain yourself on your CV by listing the formal names but then stating what that actually means in parentheses. As an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;PhD, Some Named Institution (2007-Present)&#xA;Areas of Concentration:&#xA; - Science thing 1&#xA; - Science thing 2&#xA; - Crystal healing sounding thing (Chemical Engineering)&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:42:38.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:51:56.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MSc, MEng and a PhD are all high level degrees, in the UK the highest you can be in industry from the engineering council Uk is a chartered engineer. Minimum qualification for this is a MEng or a Msc accedited by the engineering council. Even with a PhD the maxium in industry is a chartered engineer, unless you intend to go into high level research or goverment, or a big multinational or a Research and Development role then a Phd is usefull. Saying this you dont learn any new core subjects as such on a PhD program rather you research it and draw from you exsposure, experiance, and academic knowlege. After all what can they teach you academia after you get a master.., it say's what it is on the tin if you like .., you have mastered your trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Chartered Engineers develop appropriate solutions to engineering problems. They may develop and apply new technologies, promote advanced designs and design methods and introduce new and more efficient production techniques, or pioneer new engineering services and management methods. The title CEng is protected by civil law and is one of the most recognisable international engineering qualifications'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engc.org.uk/engcdocuments/internet/Website/CEng%20Leaflet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.engc.org.uk/engcdocuments/internet/Website/CEng%20Leaflet.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17954" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:51:56.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T17:37:11.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking Question is a good thing but ask in a right way is cumpulsory and you can  not find your answer as you need to know on google so asking your teacher is a good thing but is to be done in a right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17963" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T17:37:11.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16870" CreationDate="2014-06-27T17:39:56.790" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this answer was being downvoted because it was not originally focused on &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt;, following I try to explain why this social network is not a waste of time for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can already search for journal articles and or researchers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;, to name just a few. &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; gives a social approach to it. In&lt;a href=&quot;http://researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; you can &lt;em&gt;follow&lt;/em&gt; researchers, so that you can get notified when any of them publishes new papers, for instance. Moreover, you can set your profile and tell other researchers what you are dealing with, what topics you are interested in, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it could still be quite more useful if some functionalities were added (maybe adding the ability of creating, announcing and promoting à-la-Facebook &lt;em&gt;events&lt;/em&gt;, which means conferences, workshops, symposiums, etc., for instance), but it is actually becoming &lt;em&gt;the social network&lt;/em&gt; for scientific researchers, in my humble perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THE REST OF THE ORIGINAL ANSWER:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally recommend having your own academic profile in the following social networks/tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ReseachGate&lt;/a&gt;, It is nearly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; for researchers, so you just &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A personal website (better if it is hosted by your University) - With all your contact information, teaching and research info (the info that you consider to be interesting for those people that are looking for you at the Internet). Keep it as clean and simple as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LinkedIn - More professional than academic. One doesn't know when it can be useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optional but also interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, A simple and fast way to share short messages, interesting pieces of info, etc. with your &lt;em&gt;audience&lt;/em&gt;, whoever they are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://About.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.me&lt;/a&gt; or similar, A kind of landing page that you can configure to show all your very basic information, together with links to all your Internet profiles, etc. all with a minimalist and nice touch. You can add it to your e-mail signature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A blog, Basically a place where you can say things. It could be integrated within your website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4132" LastEditorUserId="4132" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T15:28:43.657" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T15:28:43.657" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24058" CreationDate="2014-06-27T17:51:41.787" Score="15" ViewCount="2036" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I submitted my first paper to a philosophy journal and got a rejection. This is of course nothing unusual, but as someone with a STEM background, I was surprised by the reason for the rejection: While there were no complaints regarding contents or correctness, it was felt that the paper failed to cite and engage with the recent literature on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is indeed true: I did ignore the latest papers in the field and only referenced a handful of &quot;classic&quot; papers from the last century. But I also thought this was okay, as it seemed to me that the recent literature didn't add much to what was already covered by the classic papers, and was in any case not essential to the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm not here to complain about having my paper rejected, or to argue about who's wrong or right. I just would like to know whether the requirement to cite the recent literature is a humanities-specific thing, or whether this is a common requirement in most fields. For instance, I imagine that if I had submitted a maths or computer science paper that referenced only a handful of classic and old, but relevant papers, my own paper, if correct and substantial, would have been accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: Since people seem to misunderstand me, a bit of extra clarification: I don't have a problem with citing recent literature, if that's what it takes to get a philosophy paper published. I just want to know if this is more or less the same in most fields, including maths and CS. In the latter, so I believe, it's less of a big deal to cite the latest papers as long as the submitted paper correctly solves some well-known open problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17964" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T10:32:21.480" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T16:19:46.250" Title="Is there any requirement to cite recent literature in publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;&lt;literature&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24049" CreationDate="2014-06-27T18:10:09.833" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your assumption is wrong: The requirement to cite the recent literature is a valid reason for rejection on many fields as well and is certainly not a humanities thing. Why? You give the answer yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my own paper, if correct and substantial, would have been accepted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how can the reviewer judge that (the substantial contribution at least) if you do not cite the recent papers? Perhaps what you propose, has already been done before and even in a better way that the one you propose in some recent papers. Science is not rebuilt from scratch every year and reading just a classic textbook is not enough to address the state-of-the-art in any field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, not acknowledging the recent works is not only lazy (since you have not done the necessary &quot;homework&quot; regarding your scientific area) but it can also be intentionally misleading (perhaps you hide the recent papers because you know they are much better than yours). At the very best case, it is just ungrateful on those dealing with the same problem as you, since you seem not to consider their work significant enough for citing them on your paper. If you take into account that those reviewing your papers are also moving around the same problem area as you, by ignoring their work, is a sure way to get your paper rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T21:22:20.993" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:22:20.993" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T18:28:39.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several answers have touched on asking the right type of questions. While this is important, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you ask a question can matter as well. (FWIW, these come from a US perspective.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find questions prefaced with &quot;I know you covered x earlier, but I'm still not clear on...&quot; get good results. It acknowledges that you were paying attention, that the professor covered some part of the topic, but it's asking for increased understanding. The same for questions like &quot;You just said x, but the text seems to say y. Could you talk about the difference?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; asks the question. I'm usually the top student in the class, and the professors know it. So if I ask a question that starts with &quot;I didn't understand how you went from step A to step B&quot;, they know it's because something was truly unclear -- I've already done the reading, and I've been following the lecture closely, so the professor is less likely to take offense. I often volunteer to ask this type of question for my classmates, because I know the professor will be more patient with the question if it comes from me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15364" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T18:28:39.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26193" CreationDate="2014-06-27T18:35:20.243" Score="0" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am building a web application for teachers and educators. The web application takes a new approach to looking at educational apps. I want to know if this approach is worthwhile, so I am going to survey some of the teachers who use it. In this survey there will be some open-ended questions regarding the benefits and drawbacks of the application. I would like to use these responses as data in my research project and I was wondering about the best way to use them. After doing a bit of looking around, it seems framework analysis might fit, though it is used primarily for interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can framework analysis be used in this way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a better way of using survey responses as data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T12:31:02.967" Title="Framework Analysis: Can framework analysis (Ritchie, Spencer &amp; O'Connor) be applied to open-ended survey question responses?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;survey-research&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2014-06-27T19:50:51.080" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;We (and the department) need to ignore &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; issues of appearance and ostensible political leanings.  the OP (no matter how he looks), if he pays tuition (which partially pays the professor's salary) has a right to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; explanation of the grade.  If the professor made no notes on the paper about &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt; (not just style or usage, which if not flagrantly bad, should affect the grade only a little), then the student has a right to hear from the professor &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt;, in the content, she was looking for and was missing in the paper.  Alternatively, the professor should convey what was included in the paper that was &quot;wrong&quot; in some sense, either factually incorrect or irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor should have office hours.  If they all conflict with other classes or academic commitments, the student has a right to request some time by appointment.  If the professor agrees, make the appointment.  You should not need to bring &quot;witnesses&quot;.  The professor should just do her job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor continues to stonewall (using her fear of you as an excuse), try getting either your adviser or the department head to stand with you as you ask her again for time to substantively discuss what she is expecting in the work from each student in your class, and &lt;strong&gt;specifically&lt;/strong&gt; where your work came short in her professional opinion.  Come prepared about the facts and content in the work that she's grading so poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your poor grade is appropriate and you can learn something.  Perhaps it was not appropriate and &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; can learn something.  Either way, you have a right to specific information for how your paper falls short, and what she expects of you for a better grade.  You might not like the information, but she has no right (since she is partially paid by the tuition you pay) to deny her services, as a professor and teacher, to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13651" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T14:04:19.600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T14:04:19.600" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:07:44.030" Score="29" ViewCount="15663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a university student, doing a scientific bachelor study. I plagiarised multiple exercises from multiple homework sets for three different classes, all in all about 50% of all the homework for those three classes. I passed the final exams of those three classes. Realizing what I have done, I am considering turning myself in, unless the punishment would be too severe. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I actually got caught once before for plagiarising on a single homework set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit2: I calculated that redoing the courses would cost me &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; $7000, this is also a consideration for me personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit3: I actually copied the homework of a friend who gave it to me because he trusted me. I broke this trust, and now he terminated our friendship. I asked him about it and turning myself in is the only way to earn back his respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know from more people what kind of punishment I could expect. If I turn myself in, I would find it fair to only have to redo the three classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17965" LastEditorUserId="17965" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T22:31:19.513" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T02:52:33.470" Title="I Plagiarised, what punishment can I expect?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="21" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:22:24.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you're accusing your elders of understanding the concept wrongly.  Possibly they are, but most likely they apply it perfectly, and the breakdown is in communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should try to express yourself like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe I've found a clearer way to express this law.  &quot;Work equals Force times the Distance the force was applied over.&quot;  Is it correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the others are not in fact incompetent, they will agree this is correct.  Probably they will even agree it is a clearer statement than the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just protest the original wording though, &quot;Can't you see this is wrong?&quot;, then no, you won't find agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All human communication is built on a foundation of assumptions and shared experience.  For them, that it is &quot;the distance traveled while the force is acting on the object&quot; not &quot;the distance traveled ever&quot; or even &quot;the distance traveled as a result of the impulse transmitted by the force&quot; is second-nature, and they never think to express it explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's also why no one else sought to have it &quot;fixed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T20:22:24.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:31:21.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good talk from the auditory  that professor likes (or, even if one does not, sees as &quot;ok&quot;) is the one that &lt;strong&gt;contributes to the lecture&lt;/strong&gt;, increasing its quality for all students, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An answer to the question that the lecturer has just asked for the auditory, aiming to attract attention to important topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking to comment on unmentioned yet widespread or very obviously looking alternative hypothesis, point of view or simply common misunderstanding, if still in the scope of the lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking to clarify something that was really covered too fast, leaving half of the auditory confused (a knowingly good student should ask).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A typo in a formula on the blackboard that 50 students just wrote down (but double check first as false alerts are not welcome).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to ask such questions as they may require more knowledge from the student than it would be presented in the lecture. Indeed, one of the possible replies from the professor is &quot;a good question, now please answer it for us&quot; that may not already be difficult. If you managed to ask one such question per semester, this is already great and enough. If you keep trying but the questions are not so good, you may get one or another hint to interfere less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a question does not add much to the lecture, professor may see it as a waste of the precious time that could be used more efficiently. The amount of personal attention professor is capable of giving to each student is limited even after the lecture, and during the lecture you are also using time of many other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastEditorUserId="10920" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T20:46:27.097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T20:46:27.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24049" CreationDate="2014-06-27T21:07:36.690" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems to be based on a common misconception about the role of citations (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21666/is-it-proper-to-cite-something-when-using-it-just-as-an-example&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for a related issue).  Citations aren't just there to list content your work builds on; they're also there to provide the reader with context and motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you should be citing recent work is to help the reader.  If you were familiar with various unsuccessful solutions, it's likely that some of them motivated the successful one, even if only by identifying things that couldn't work, and that merits a citation.  Even if not, many of your readers are likely to be people who've thought a lot about one or more of those unsuccessful approaches; you're in the best position to explain how your approach differs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm writing from the perspective of mathematics, by the way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:07:36.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-27T21:21:30.083" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should talk to an ombudsperson at the university or an academic dean and tell them the whole story.  They will likely punish you, but the punishment should be mitigated by the fact that you voluntarily provided the information even after &quot;getting away with it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep this to yourself, it will either haunt your conscience for the rest of your life, or you will learn to be comfortable with wrong behavior.  If that's the type of person you want to be, you don't need me to tell you otherwise.  However, the fact that you've published this question suggests that you know that this needs to be rectified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, there is clearly an endemic problem at your university that the administration should know about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:21:30.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-27T21:35:11.130" Score="36" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am considering turning myself in, unless the punishment would be too severe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are describing an &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; serious violation of most university's academic integrity policies.  The most likely punishment is that your credit for those classes would be revoked, your grades would be changed to Fs on your transcript, and you would be suspended or expelled.  (That would certainly be the most likely result at my university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I believe you should turn yourself in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ari gives a good summary of the ethical argument, but there is also a selfish practical argument.  Since you mention being caught once, there is good reason to believe that your work will face additional scrutiny.  If you get caught before turning yourself in, the result is much more likely to be &lt;em&gt;permanent&lt;/em&gt; expulsion.  If you admit your plagiarism, the punishment will be slightly less severe; in particular, even if they decide on expulsion, the university will be much more likely to readmit you after 2-3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you decide not to turn yourself in, I recommend taking a short break from university, if you can afford it.  The amount of cheating you describe indicates that something is very wrong — maybe you were overwhelmed, maybe you were scared, maybe you were lazy, maybe the homework were insultingly stupid, maybe you just didn't want to be there — but &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; was preventing you from engaging in those classes as a responsible student.  You need to figure out what that something is and address it, or you'll just fall into the same pattern again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:35:11.130" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-27T22:50:46.527" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student in the sciences, I see cheating all the time. My undergraduate institution had a strict honor code we had to sign; Many people cheated. I'm not sure how aware or unaware professors really are to the fact; I remember having one very strange conversation with one of the professors I'm closest too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is good cheating and bad cheating&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is the exact phrase he said. He wasn't advocating to cheat, but what he said was that as long as the cheating didn't hurt anyone else directly (curved grades) or undermine the point of the class ( doing poorly on tests) then one could say that you cheated not because you weren't capable of doing the material, but moreover you cheated to save time. In undergrad, I think, many people get away this this type of cheating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not turn myself in. I have never cheated, but I don't see why turning yourself in helps the university or yourself as long as you never cheat again. You obviously learned the material; make sure you try your best to be as honest with your work as possible from now on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all lessons learned need to have punishment, having to learn is sometimes consequence enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if your courses were curved, and you might have harmed someone else's grade, that is a totally different story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T22:50:46.527" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-28T00:51:30.943" Score="-12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For whatever your reasons may be, you choose to submit someone else's homework as your own and received credit for being able to do so. In the real world that is not any different than benefitting from work given to you by a volunteer or an employee. These things happen thousands of times day in the normal course of life.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The important thing here is that you passed your exams on your own demonstrating that you had a mastery of the material, which is the purpose of education, isn't it? Your exams reflect your own ability and since those were done without cheating, you should simply continue on with your life.&#xA;If you've resolved not to continue this behavior and are done with it, I see no reason to submit yourself the school or any of its representatives.  They have your money, You have the knowledge. The transaction is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Einstein was a &quot;poor student&quot; yet revolutionized physics. Henry Ford, had no college degree yet revolutionized the fledging auto industry. What matters here is not what school, &quot;a self appointed authority&quot; thinks of you, but what you think of yourself.&#xA;If you can resolve to work harder at your studies, or find something you're actually interested in and can change your behavior so as not to put yourself at risk, I suggest you are done and should quit punishing yourself for the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as they would like us to think otherwise, schools are a very poor place to learn most of the real knowledge you need to survive and prosper in real life.&#xA;Let it go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17968" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T00:51:30.943" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-28T01:03:08.780" Score="0" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hold a PhD in pure mathematics and am looking for mathematics teaching positions in the UK, preferably at University level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would be some websites where to find such ads?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the standard application procedure/requirements? When are the deadlines for applications? When are the offers typically made?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A note on question#2:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in finding out whether there are any general comments one could make regarding the application/selection process by analogy to the US postdoc application system outlined in the next sentences. In the US, in order to apply for a postdoc position [research and teaching] one typically needs to submit 3 research recommendations, 1 teaching recommendation, a research statement, a teaching statement, cv, cover letter. Most deadlines are around November, December, January and I believe most offers are made in January - early February. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1104" LastEditorUserId="1104" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T21:56:21.290" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T03:35:03.073" Title="Mathematics teaching position in the UK" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-04T13:24:05.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-28T04:01:51.113" Score="0" ViewCount="22063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to apply for a GRE subject test (Mathematics). The application process is going to start in this July.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want a suggestion regarding online filling of the application form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One item in the form is &quot;Educational status at the time you take the GRE test&quot; and the options are : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sophomore(second year),Junior(third year),Senior(fourth/final year),First-year Graduate student,Second-year Graduate student,Unenrolled(College Graduate),Unenrolled(Masters Degree),Other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Screenshot is given below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vGjS8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have completed 3 years Bachelor Degree and currently pursuing Masters(2 years). I am (and will remain at the time of taking the GRE test) in the final year of my Masters course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what option should I choose for the above item of the application form? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please somebody help me. Thnx in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17407" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T03:03:28.873" Title="Filling &quot;Educational Status&quot; in GRE subject test application form" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24066" CreationDate="2014-06-28T04:34:04.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've already completes a full year of study toward a master's degree, I'd lean towards &quot;second-year graduate student.&quot; However, frankly I don't think schools pay a whole lot of attention to what label you use. They're much more interested in the recency and the results of the test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T04:34:04.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2014-06-28T05:53:37.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'right' answer seems to be field-dependent. In my field, mathematics, it is customary for phd students to convert any unpublished parts of their thesis into papers after graduation. This is not only  accepted, it is even expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself would have no difficulty reusing any amount of a submitted grant in a paper; I don't believe this constitutes any form of Questionable Research Practice, and I believe that that would be the opinion of my peers too. (The Dutch Royal Academy recently wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/publications/correct-citation-practice?set_language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;letter&lt;/a&gt; on reuse, which doesn't explicitly mention grant proposals, but gives guidelines for published sources that support this point if view; it takes 'false impressions' and 'harm to others' as central criteria, which exonerates reuse of material from your own grant proposal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is: talk to the people around you, find out what they think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T05:53:37.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24049" CreationDate="2014-06-28T07:23:16.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In applied computer science, not citing recent literature (and in this case, &quot;recent&quot; really means &quot;the last couple of years&quot;) correlates &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; strongly with rejection. Essentially, when I review a paper where all references are old according to the standards of the field, the reason can be either that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is newer related work, and the author is not aware of it or wilfully ignores it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is indeed no recent related work; this is at least an indicator that the problem is either solved or deemed irrelevant by the community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the paper has been written a long time ago and has been rejected at multiple previous attempts at publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the paper author is just a crank, who believes he has redefined (for instance) the concept of object-oriented programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points 1 and 4 warrant rejection on their own. Point 2 and 3 are at least a strong indicator that a paper should be rejected. That being said, I cannot remember ever rejecting a paper &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; for failing to cite recent literature. In all cases that come to my mind, this was just a minor sidenote and the paper actually got rejected for much more fundamental issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T08:30:00.277" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T08:30:00.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24065" CreationDate="2014-06-28T09:59:18.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic jobs in the UK are usually advertised on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.ac.uk&quot;&gt;jobs.ac.uk&lt;/a&gt; website, but there are of course many others. Typically, you will be asked to submit your application online, including application form, cv, supporting documents and details of your references. Answers to other questions are more specific to each position. You may wish to familiarize yourself with the positions currently advertised on the website, to get a sense of the job market at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T09:59:18.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24167" CreationDate="2014-06-28T10:59:55.350" Score="2" ViewCount="5292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I pursued a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering stream and I completed the course in 2010. I was jobless for more than a year so I did a 3 months course in Java. Im Sun certified. I still wasn't able to find a job. I got a job in a Business Process Outsourcing company as a customer support associate. I had to take the job, as I didn't have any choice. I worked from Aug 2012 to Nov 2013. Now I'm interested in doing an MS. I'm afraid I don't get admitted. I'm especially interested in University of Texas at Austin. I don't know how to project my negative points in the SOP. I don't know what points to include and what to not. I have no clue. Please help me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17993" LastEditorUserId="156" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T06:14:59.850" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T13:06:40.253" Title="I have career gap after bachelors degree and irrelevant work experience. How do I write SOP for MS admission in US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24080" CreationDate="2014-06-28T12:09:14.940" Score="1" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title sums it up pretty well. I'm using MS Word to write a paper I intend to publish in a SCI journal. It will contain ~15 equations (non-trivial ones: integrals, sums, fractions, special characters, etc.). I'm fairly efficient in Word, but have absolutely no experience using LaTeX.&#xA;Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that once a paper is accepted, it is edited to conform with the journals publishing style, as opposed to some conferences, I attended, which provide a pre-formatted Word document in which I have to place my work before applying to the conference. As the journal provides no such template (but accepts .doc format), I was wondering if there could emerge any issues regarding the equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the field is computer science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastEditorUserId="14133" LastEditDate="2016-05-17T11:23:28.603" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T11:23:28.603" Title="Is it acceptable to use MS Equation 3.0 for a journal paper?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24079" CreationDate="2014-06-28T12:59:36.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they accept .doc probably they also accept MS Equation. However, the best you can do is ask them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdote: A couple of years ago I prepared the proceedings for a major CS conference. We had about 120 accepted papers and only one of those was written in MS Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T12:59:36.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24084" CreationDate="2014-06-28T13:03:09.717" Score="1" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;On average do grad schools offer more distinct courses than undergraduate schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case, then it must mean there are more professors teaching in graduate schools. And common sense tells me that there are less students in grad school than undergraduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean there a disparity in the student-teacher ratio in grad and undergrad schools? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17996" LastEditorUserId="17996" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T13:34:11.423" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:17:48.693" Title="Do graduate schools have more courses &amp; less of a student-teacher ratio than undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-28T13:07:12.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you approach a guidance counselor at the school (or a school psychologist, or equivalent).  I think they are in the best position to help you in this case.  (You might want to check first if your conversations will be treated confidentially.)  The punishment you will receive for confessing will greatly depend on what the school policy is and I think the school's guidance counselor would know how cases like yours were handled in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:07:12.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-28T13:13:10.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your university likely has rules about academic misconduct. At my university the rules and penalties about academic misconduct are pretty clear. The minimum penalty we can apply to second offenses is a zero on the piece of work and the maximum penalty is a zero for the year. For third offenses the penalty starts at a zero for the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sit on our academic misconduct committee and in general we try and be forgiving, especially to students who admit guilt. Other committee might simply expel you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For our committee, you admitting copying 50% of the course work would make it difficult to conclude anything other than that you committed an academic offense. We would then be left with trying to mitigate the damage within the rules. We would likely argue that all the copying is a single offense (i.e., nothing falls into the third offense category) and that all the pieces of work that have copying should get a zero. We might be so lenient as to only penalize the first piece of work. Then again we could be mean and argue for multiple offenses and expulsion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you turn yourself in, the penalties could range from rather light (a zero on one piece of work) to expulsion. Getting caught without turning yourself in would likely increase the minimal penalty, potentially to a zero on all pieces of affected work. It is not clear if this additional penalty would have an affect on your ability to graduate or make a substantial change to your transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would talk to a lawyer and figure out your legal responsibilities and weigh those against your moral/ethical responsibilities. It is not clear that a university would be able to retroactively amend a degree for academic misconduct related to homework, especially if, if all the affected pieces of  work were given a grade of zero and you would still pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:13:10.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24081" CreationDate="2014-06-28T13:21:39.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will limit my answer to American universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you mean more courses per semester, or more distinct courses that are listed in the course catalog and offered with some regularity?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean the former: in any given semester, most departments offer many more undergraduate courses than graduate courses.  This must be the case for the reason you suggest: the number of students taking undergraduate courses in that department is usually far in excess of the number of students taking graduate courses in that department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most departments offer largely the same undergraduate courses every year (or sometimes, on a two-year cycle).  Many undergraduate courses at a large university have multiple sections running concurrently.  The most popular courses -- e.g. freshman level courses for non-majors -- are in some departments run in ten, twenty or more sections each semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean the latter: yes, many -- perhaps most? -- departments with large graduate programs offer a larger number of distinct graduate courses over the years than undergraduate courses.  Each course is populated by a smaller number of graduate students, but graduate students stick around for at least as long as undergraduates and, unlike undergraduate students -- recall that I am talking about American universities -- take the vast majority or the entirety of their courses in a single department.  Sometimes graduate students repeat courses or stop taking courses at a certain point, but in many PhD programs -- including the one at my university -- graduate students are required to take a minimum (positive!) number of courses every semester, some of which are unrepeatable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, most departments devote much more thought to which graduate courses they are going to offer in the next year or two years, both in order to make sure to offer enough courses for their students to take, and conversely to ensure that enough of their current students will want to take any given proposed course in order for that course &quot;to make&quot;, i.e., to meet minimum enrollment requirements and be run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:21:39.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24087" CreationDate="2014-06-28T14:14:24.983" Score="22" ViewCount="2534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sit on my department's academic misconduct committee. When students are suspected of academic misconduct they are invited to a meeting with the academic misconduct committee. The university polices are pretty clear that students not only can, but should, have an advocate attend the meeting. The policy also states that the advocate cannot be a lawyer providing legal representation, but can be a friend/family member who happens to be a lawyer. The university student services provides an advocates if students request it. At our last meeting we had a case of suspect collusion by two students. Both students had been assigned the same university advocate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These collusion type meetings tend to be messy and involve bringing one student in and hearing that side of the story, sending that student out and bringing the other student in and hearing the other side of the story, and then often iterating a number of times. We attempt to keep the students isolated so they do not hear each other's side of the story. In the case of the same advocate representing both students there is obviously a confidentiality issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the evidence we had it was clear student A had copied/worked with student B and produced a &quot;joint work product&quot; and turned it as her own. This expressly prohibited and constitutes academic misconduct. We did not have evidence that student B had knowingly colluded with student A and therefore were going to let student B off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We called student B and the advocate in for a final meeting and began explaining to the student that they had not done anything wrong and no penalty would be applied, when the advocate proverbially threw student B under the bus and said that student B had colluded with student A. The end result was that both student A and student B were penalized. It is not clear if we applied a lighter penalty to student A because of admission of wrong doing by student B. I walked away from the incident feeling dirty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have not referred the case to the central university committee because of &quot;procedural irregularities&quot; because the central committee is consistently harsher than us and we are confident the central committee would have penalized both students (even without the admission of student B) harsher than we did. Should that matter or should we just report it to the central committee? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This incident has raised a number of related questions for me. Should the advocate be reported? Do we need to convince the university to change its advocacy policies for claims of joint work? Is there a fundamental conflict of interest of the university advocate and should students be encouraged to get their own independent advocate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:12:58.343" Title="University advocates for students facing academic misconduct charges" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24091" CreationDate="2014-06-28T14:37:50.810" Score="14" ViewCount="1536" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do people ever upload papers exclusively to arXiv, or do authors simply use arXiv to assist in review while they find a journal to publish in?  If people sometimes publish exclusively on arXiv, what's the point?  What do they get for their work?  A paper on their CV?  Is it at all prestigious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:06:35.397" Title="Is there prestige to be had by posting to arXiv?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24085" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:08:41.793" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be that the overall process is working well. The problem is that Student B was denied the opportunity to have an advocate truly being a proper advocate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In absence of any university regulations which require you to bump it up higher, I would recommend handling it locally if you can. There seems not benefit to engage higher ups if not needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, however, have someone examine the entire advocacy system used. The fact that two students were given the same advocate on a case where they are basically claimant and defendant comes off as wildly unfair. Of course, the advocate is not a lawyer but still, the system simply should never allow that to happen. When you saw it happened, it would have been better (if it is allowed) to stop the proceeding immediately and sort out the advocacy issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short, the problem is with the advocacy system, perhaps not with the advocate. Someone should dig into and fix that so that such problems never happen in the future.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the current two students, if Student B (not the advocate) did admit, then it seems clear that blame should be shared (it was not theft but rather collusion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:08:41.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24099" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:17:10.603" Score="21" ViewCount="14278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know some PhD students have their own business cards, but I don't know if it is a standard practice for PhD students to have their own business cards. I think a business card can be useful for networking in conference or collaborating with some industrial partners. So, is are business cards necessary for a PhD student or other graduate students attending conferences? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: in case it is field-specific, I would like to know the different practices in different fields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T01:01:04.683" LastActivityDate="2020-06-25T17:00:30.310" Title="Is a business card necessary for a graduate student?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17240" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:17:32.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the education system of the country in which you are studying; besides to the universities you are going to apply.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some countries do not allow the university students to study two majors during their higher education period. Despite the case that the student is top student or qualified as a student with outstanding academic activities. For instance, some students who are ranked first or second among similar majoring students, have the chance to study in two majors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there is no restriction, some universities do not allow their students to study two majors simultaneously because they afraid this affect their progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the things mentioned about regulations, it may be allowed but be restricted and students may only have the chance to choose their second major very similar to the first one. I mean, the engineering student may not be allowed to choose law as his second major. Or the chemical Engineering student can only apply for a BSc in chemistry sciences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities encourage masters students to study in MBA alongside their own major; specially the engineering students as they become familiar with some non-engineering topics and be prepared to accept management roles in their future careers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I have to say these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to ask the university in which you are studying in whether they allow you to study a second major simultaneously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to asses your own ability if you are prepared enough to study a second masters or not. Because an MA in economics has its difficulties and this will get worth when you start your research and thesis. Sometimes, studying a second major will not either help you improve your knowledge and do a better research; or even because of lots of courses and lack of time; you may lose your way for the first major.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may need to consult your supervisor if he allows you or encourages you to do so besides your masters research thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have to pay for MBA, you also need to think about how to pay the fees or find a good fund or scholarship.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not sure about those difficulties, I encourage you to finish your first MA, work for two or three years and then apply for a MBA. I know some good business schools that require the students some job experience before assessing their applications. This way, you may gain most of your academic studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:17:32.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24081" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:17:48.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the UK and EU universities I am familiar with, your logic is a little off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, I believe you are saying more courses require more teachers. However, graduate course and undergraduate courses are not the same at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An undergraduate course would typically include 4 to 6 hours per week for a single subject. This would continue for somewhere between 9 and 16 &lt;strong&gt;weeks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A graduate course would typically include 3-4 hours per day, for 5-10 &lt;strong&gt;days&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can see, graduate courses are more compressed as far as contact hours, mainly because the students are expected to do significantly more independent study. Because a graduate module is compressed into 5-10 days, one teacher could teach more of those in the same time as one could teach a single undergraduate module (considering only classroom hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:17:48.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:22:18.317" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose some senior people may publish exclusively on arXiv but they are a minority and I can't think of any examples right now. Publishing in mathematics takes a long time. Journal backlogs of multiple years are common enough that if you wait for your paper to appear in print it is already old. This is less of a problem in the other subjects that arXiv covers but still...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does publishing on arXiv get the author? Primarily it gives the paper a time stamp and makes it publicly available. Putting up a paper is fast, it only takes a few minutes and it gives a reference number so that you can cite it in a talk or in a paper. Normally you would have to wait until you get page numbers from a journal. And if you are giving a talk on your paper when you have just finished the work that might still be years in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interesting feature of publishing on arXiv is that you can write small notes and put those up. You can write the &quot;user's guide&quot; version of a paper. You can post a supplement to a paper that wouldn't be publishable on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately what it all boils down to is that people post documents to arXiv that they want other people to see and hopefully read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for prestige, no. There really isn't any as far as I know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:22:18.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24065" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:32:47.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such jobs are also sometimes posted on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/jobs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site of the European Mathematical Society&lt;/a&gt; and on the mathematics departments webpages of the universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16088" LastEditorUserId="16088" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T03:35:03.073" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T03:35:03.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:42:21.277" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A notable example of arXiv-only publication is Grigori Perelman's proof of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrization_conjecture&quot;&gt;geometrization conjecture&lt;/a&gt;, see arXiv:&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0211159&quot;&gt;0211159&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0303109&quot;&gt;0303109&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0307245&quot;&gt;0307245&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:42:21.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:48:06.350" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student, I had business cards and never used them. Now I don't even have cards. I consider them a relict from different times. I would say &lt;em&gt;nobody&lt;/em&gt; strictly needs a business card anymore, and I rarely see them being exchanged at conferences either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a &lt;strong&gt;homepage&lt;/strong&gt; is a different story. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers/674#674&quot;&gt;You definitely need a homepage&lt;/a&gt;, for many of the reasons you think you may need a business card. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T15:48:06.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24114" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:49:24.993" Score="4" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written papers on the topic of network security.  Now I am trying to find a place to publish one of them.  Is there a list of publications by topic, somewhere?  If I come across such a list, how can I determine the reputation of the various publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T11:29:02.780" Title="Where to find journals or other publications for my work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24121" CreationDate="2014-06-28T15:49:38.730" Score="16" ViewCount="1693" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I am in a conference presentation or seminar which there are only a handful of audiences, and after the presentation the atmosphere simply urges the audiences to ask questions or the presenter will be embarrassed. I do want to contribute to a meaningful discussion, but the problem is that I am unfamiliar with the topic, and after listening to the presentation, I can only understand the background briefly. I cannot formulate a good question after the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may wonder why I attend a presentation which the topic I am unfamiliar with, and sometimes it is driven by curiosity, and sometimes it is compulsory (like invited speakers from my supervisor etc). I know it may be possible to formulate a good question by reading the publication of the speaker beforehand, I have tried it actually but the efforts to understand an unfamiliar topic seems too much, and it may not worth it especially I cannot come up with a good question afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to be looking stupid after a presentation, but also don't want to start a discussion which is not quite meaningful just because nobody raises a question. Is there any way to help one to start a good discussion for a topic which I am unfamiliar with after a presentation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T17:34:11.853" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T08:12:10.847" Title="How to engage in discussion after a presentation on an unfamiliar topic?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2014-06-28T16:08:25.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you want to figure out where to publish something do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what journals the articles you cite are published in. Try there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If that doesn't work, look at the other outlets that the authors of those papers also publish in. Then try there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T16:08:25.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-28T16:21:55.407" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably discipline-specific, but I hand mine out all the time. That being said, I talk to lots of vendors of computer hardware that I want to get back in touch with, so exchanging cards is helpful. As a grad student, it might be worth having some small cards from someone like &lt;a href=&quot;http://moo.com&quot;&gt;Moo&lt;/a&gt; that have your name, email, affiliation, and a link to your website. It might be easier to hand those out than to carry 20 preprints of your article when you're giving a talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, it'd be pretty unusual to push your cards on people you meet at conferences. If someone asks for your information, or a copy of your publication, you might offer the card, but I wouldn't volunteer it unless you've been asked for something. It's just not part of the culture in most of the fields I have experience with for students to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T16:21:55.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24085" CreationDate="2014-06-28T16:34:19.487" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a bit over the top, but I think it's pretty unethical to have one advocate represent two students who may be in opposition to each other. US states, at the very least, have ethical rules for attorneys that are designed to prevent this sort of thing and are taken pretty seriously. The fact that your University has its own procedures for dealing with academic misconduct that attempt to mimic the legal system (a &quot;trial&quot;, &quot;advocates&quot;, etc) without some of those ethical safeguards is troubling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without discussing the case at hand, I would recommend raising the issue up through the chain of command or committees that sets the rules for these proceedings. The process clearly needs to change. If your school is a state entity in the US, it has left itself open to lawsuits claiming lack of due process. If it is a private school in the US, it may also open itself to legal claims of another nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T15:12:58.343" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:12:58.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24023" CreationDate="2014-06-28T17:36:05.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to ask questions in seemingly appropriate ways and yet completely ruin the flow of class and earn some negative points with the lecturer/teacher. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking a question about something that was just explained in great detail (but during which the student who is asking the question was busy texting or browsing on their phone or was simply not focuses). This type of question adds nothing of value, but suggests that explanation was not good enough. I even see other students roll their eyes and some just laugh out loud at one such student who seems to have that special talent for asking really bad questions. For instance, right after stating a fact such as &quot;The sky is blue&quot; they would ask &quot;Excuse me, I am just not sure - is the sky blue?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking a question that on the surface seems relevant, but in reality is about material which was not covered yet. For instance &quot;Today we learn that at noon, the sky is mostly blue&quot; and the student asks &quot;What about the sky on Mars - is it also blue?&quot;. Students who do that do it for few reasons: they want to show that they are advanced (they usually use terminology that was not even explained yet almost like &quot;name dropping&quot;), and they like the attention they are getting. This is counter-productive and I just ask them to wait until we reach that point later. But the worst ones will keep asking such questions: &quot;So, I just wanted to ask, if it is middle of the night, would the sky still be blue?&quot;... and earn a bad grade as a result (since they are focusing on stuff that is not covered yet, they are not focusing on matters at hand, and that shows in their work).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asking trivial questions, to which they could simply find answers themselves if only they remembered what was covered in the past or even just tried before asking (I teach practical stuff that is done on computers, so they have their tools right in front of them). For instance &quot;What would happen if I...?&quot; to which I would say &quot;try it, see what happens, and get back to us!&quot;. Or at other times &quot;How do I (do something simple)?&quot; - again just asking for attention. First it tells me they don't care to remember important details and cannot learn more advanced concepts which rely on previous knowledge, but more importantly, they show their laziness and disinterestedness as such simple tasks can be figured out within seconds. The question would be along lines of &quot;How do I switch my mouse to left handed?&quot; - they have not even tried to open options and see what is in there, and to make it all worse - both how to change options and how to &quot;switch to left handed&quot; was explained more than once. (and - no I don't teach such simple stuff, it is just an illustration)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if questions are relatively OK, they can be asked in such a manner as to interrupt the flow of a good class. I expect my students to raise their hand when asking a question, but some of them will do so every few minutes. Some will ask a question by raising their hand, only to switch to not raising their hand when it matters the most - like when an important &quot;A-HA&quot; moment is about to happen in students' mind. Some complex concepts and ideas need a bit of a build-up to be understood, and that moment of understanding can be ruined by a question, asked aggressively. Or some others will raise their hand at the most inappropriate moment and try and get my attention with no regard for the explanation that is taking place. All they need to do is wait about 30 seconds and they can ask all they want then, but they are too eager to ruin the flow of lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, those who do this in a class are psychotic individuals who cannot live without being the center of attention for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately, they are also very skilled at ruining a class without doing much of what is clearly prohibited so they are hard to deal with (you can't tell them &quot;Don't ask questions&quot;). I just fail them or give them a really bad grade; usually their homework is not that great either, so failing them is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18004" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:36:05.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-06-28T17:41:12.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;@BSteinhurst mentions the advantages of having a time stamp and making it publicly available; another advantage, one that I have come to value a lot, is that all those people who follow the 'new articles on (...)' announcements will see your paper &lt;em&gt;the next day&lt;/em&gt;. It gives your paper instant distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:41:12.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="257" CreationDate="2014-06-28T17:48:02.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in the same situation - having to explain the same thing over and over again, usually in interviews and such... The way I dealt with it was to explain it in a fresh way every time. So, on one occasion I may focus on the &quot;fun&quot; part of that work, while another time I may focus on the discovery part of it, while yet another time I may focus on the teamwork that was needed... The interviewer may give me a clue (body language, vernacular, etc) as to what type of answer may work best for their media/platform, so I tune into that. If it is a younger audience, I will try to make the answer more fun and attractive, while if it is for a serious, older audience, my answer will focus on serious matters more. Say a project I worked on was both famous and earned a lot of money - in a show for teens I may talk about fun part of it and perhaps someone famous I met, while in the other, serious show I may throw in figures and profits and such and perhaps even the whole industry a bit, to make it interesting for their audience.&#xA;This also gives a benefit to the listener who may have seen/heard/read more than one of my interviews and would not be bored by repetition (although some repetition is to be expected).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18004" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:48:02.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2014-06-28T18:20:23.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to feel pressured to participate in a discussion that you are not familiar with. If it is a subject that you feel strongly about and are familiar with, I am sure a question would come to you; if, OTOH, you are not familiar and were there just because you were invited, and had not time to get acquainted with the subject discussed prior to the presentation, it is best to stay quiet. Do not force it, as it will be obvious and you will end up looking not-very-smart. Leave questions to those who know what to ask, and if they ask nothing, it is not your duty to save the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to keep in mind is that it all depends on the type of presentation/discussion. If it is a less formal one, asking a personal, but interesting question will both engage the speaker and the audience. For instance &quot;What was the hardest part of the project?&quot;&#xA;Again, it helps if you inform yourself prior to the presentation - do not just walk in there without knowing nothing about the subject discussed or the presenter, if you want to participate. Asking a question unprepared can even lead to some awkward situations, e.g. asking an actor how he feels about working with some actress who just happens to be his wife whom he is divorcing right now and she is suing him for millions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18004" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T18:20:23.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24108" CreationDate="2014-06-28T19:14:36.737" Score="8" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 19 year old sophomore at a well-regarded state university.  I currently have a double major in the arts/humanities and public policy, with a minor in linguistics.  I just took the intro to PoliSci course, and I think I've done pretty well in it (practically guaranteed a 4.0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, onto the question.  So I emailed my professor (as it was an entirely online course), and sent this....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Professor ----,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[insert some stuff about grades, course]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, are you aware of any research/volunteer opportunities in the PoliSci department at ---?  I am aware of the [insert name of local policy network], but was wondering if you knew about any other interesting things going on.  I'm really interested in public policy (my additional major is in it!), but the international relations section in the course also interested me.  I'm particularly interested in humanitarian/human rights work.  I haven't taken many PoliSci courses yet, but I would be interested in getting involved in the PoliSci Department in any capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corjine&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He responded a few days later with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hi Corjine,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[stuff about courses/grade]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of research work, most professors are happy to work with students as both research assistants (i.e., you help a faculty member on their work) or as research advisors (i.e., you work on your own research project and a faculty member provides oversight). I'd recommend looking at our bios online and directly contacting anyone that who's work look interesting or related to what you're wanting to research on your own. &lt;strong&gt;If you need additional help, you can also ask me and I'll do my best to refer you to the most appropriate person (I can also send an email introduction to that faculty member to help grease the wheels).&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; [emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor ---&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't taken many PoliSci courses yet.  The meat of my courses for this upcoming year will be my arts/humanities and linguistics courses, as that is how my degree is designed.  The majority of my junior and senior level classes being PoliSci and upper level courses.  So for the next year or so, I'm not going to have much formal polisci experience.  I'll only be taking public policy analysis and a methods of analysis class (read: statistics for PoliSci students).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm worried about is how I'll go about getting research experience without much of an academic background in it.  I've had a passion/enthusiasm for politics for a long time, and the intro class was a breeze for me (barring a few theoretical concepts).  I'm just afraid about how it will pan out if I take shots in the dark without having the proper background, so to speak.  I'd love to get a jumpstart on research/volunteering/engagement if possible, but would it be more valuable for me to wait until junior year?  And would that reduce my chance of a good recommendation from the professor?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really am at a loss here.  I haven't had any formal research experience before, and I'm working my first, true job this summer.  I'm winging it the best I can, but I want to make sure I'm not totally shooting myself in the foot at the starting gate.  Any suggestions/advice would be helpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr Is enthusiasm/willing to learn a good substitute for formal academic experience, or should I just hang tight for a year and wait to do some research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if this isn't an appropriate question for SE (I'm still pretty new here), let me know and I'll post elsewhere.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18003" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T08:01:06.373" LastActivityDate="2020-04-18T23:25:12.980" Title="What is the best way to go about doing research as an undergrad (pointed question inside)?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;&lt;political-science&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18778" CreationDate="2014-06-28T19:38:57.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applying for a PhD program depends on your curriculum vitae and the research work you have done during the years before your PhD. One may have completed a MSc with research and thesis but his research topic is not that much current and that is not so much alluring for the professor who is seeking for a PhD research student. On the other hand, someone (probably like you) may have attended a MSc program which did not include any thesis or research work, but, the student was that much active and interested in doing research that his resume is full of scientific publications, research assistantships and voluntary academic work that the professor prefers to supervise him.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So, if you are aiming a PhD in future, it may be better to do as much as research work and publication as you can. Then you need to meet the minimum requirements for a PhD student who wants to apply for a PhD program. Go and search the websites of the universities you want to apply and prepare the qualifications and requirements they have mentioned.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It may be a good idea to seek the research interests of the professors of the university you are interested in attending too. If you want to work with a professor, try to review his publications and if you want to do some researches; make some researches in the areas of their interest. For example, a professor the research interest of whom is numerical methods in engineering is not probable to accept and work with a person who's resume is full of laboratory activities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Another thing is that you choose some courses (as your electives) that are of value for the research in PhD. I mean, choose some courses that prove that you are capable of understanding PhD courses. By this way, you prove that you are so interested in studying PhD courses, you are capable of understanding and analyzing PhD courses and you have chosen your elective courses by an insight to your research activity.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Not to forget that some universities and education systems have specific education regulations and it may be important for them that a student have completed a MSc by research.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By the way, I have seen some students who did not completed a thesis or research during their MSc, applied for PhD after graduation and started their PhD successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T19:45:50.010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T19:45:50.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24106" CreationDate="2014-06-28T19:41:29.603" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no harm in asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your tl;dr question, it depends.  &quot;Research&quot; is not a monolithic thing.  Some professors may be working on projects that would be accessible to someone without a strong background in the subject, or would be willing to work with you to bring you up to speed.  Other projects may need someone who already has a strong background in a particular area and can jump right in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly you would be looking for a project of the first kind, and the only way to know whether anyone has one to suggest is to ask.  If you hear of something promising, talk to the professor; try to get a sense of whether it seems like something that would be interesting and accessible to you.  Be honest with the professor about what background you do or don't have.  (Don't try to present yourself as knowing more than you do; if you end up working on a project that you aren't prepared for, the result will only be frustration for everyone.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find something that seems to be a good fit for you, great; if not, try again next year, with more courses under your belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T19:41:29.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24106" CreationDate="2014-06-28T19:44:01.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many schools have a program specifically to allow professors to list openings for undergraduate assistants. Whether any of those openings will be in your department, and whether any of them will be able to use you before you've gotten some basic grounding in the fields, is an open question... but that's where I'd start looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T19:44:01.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2014-06-28T19:49:14.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am asking for criticism here.&lt;/strong&gt; Please criticize me and tell me if I&#xA;  am being too much of a perfectionist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, what you do is not perfectionism. You're very close to being ignored by your instructors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I strongly dislike the idea of losing a mark for a concept which I&#xA;  deserve the acknowledgment of understanding (the grade).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going after what you deserve is a very natural and legitimate behavior. But there is one question: &lt;em&gt;Does %0.66 grade change anything?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If your grade were to go from A to A+, or it is a matter of passing and failing the class, not a single person will be inconsiderate. However, if you're doing this for only numbers on a piece of paper, then you're not usually welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no matter how you look at it, it will be a student explaining a&#xA;  concept to a teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human beings learn. All the time. Assistant Professor, Professor, Dean are only titles. In my opinion, if someone chose to be an academician, they chose to be a student for all their life. So, in this case, a student explaining something to another &lt;strong&gt;more experienced&lt;/strong&gt; student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides being a student, an academician also has a duty, which is to teach courses. This is a different aspect. This requires a skill to keep a group of different people up and awake for a period of time. Therefore, even though an instructor can make a mistake and have actually something to learn, &lt;strong&gt;time and place matters&lt;/strong&gt; to teach him/her where (s)he is mistaken.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Actually, this is a question of respect. I'm sure that you don't want a professor calling your idea &lt;em&gt;nonsense&lt;/em&gt; or calling you &lt;em&gt;moron&lt;/em&gt;. If you raise your hand and tell him &quot;you don't know this subject, let me teach you&quot;, two cases are equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more you learn, the more you forget&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;At least, this applies for me. In my country, we take a test to enter a university. The test is so hard, only the math section covers all the topics those are taught in the university, in 4 semesters. I once could solve really hard trigonometry questions by hand. Now, I'm dealing with computational geometry, but am astonished when I encounter a simple question about complex numbers. Similarly, your physics instructor, or the author of the book &lt;em&gt;might have&lt;/em&gt; missed some basic points. That does not mean &lt;em&gt;they are wrong&lt;/em&gt;, that means &lt;em&gt;they should be corrected&lt;/em&gt; (you can also correct something even it is right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T14:16:35.147" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T14:16:35.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24126" CreationDate="2014-06-28T20:42:46.293" Score="6" ViewCount="2735" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the word &quot;subsubsection&quot; be used in a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next subsubsection discusses so and so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not listed in English dictionaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:27:29.263" Title="Can the word &quot;subsubsection&quot; be used in a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24111" CreationDate="2014-06-28T20:49:24.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's better to avoid it if you can. Rephrase it with something like &quot;Later we will...&quot;, &quot;further in the text...&quot;, &quot;in the following we will...&quot;, etc. You can also refer to it specifically as &quot;in Sec. X.Y.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T20:49:24.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24111" CreationDate="2014-06-28T21:13:17.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, (although the word is not in the dictionary), &lt;strong&gt;subsection&lt;/strong&gt; is a division of a section, hence, does not have a meaning of its own. &lt;strong&gt;Section&lt;/strong&gt;, however, if isolated, has a meaning of its own. Each section can be read and understood without reading the other sections. If necessary, other sections can be referred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this experiment, we validate the theorem presented in Section 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a fine sentence. Whereas, a subsection might be entitled &lt;strong&gt;Experiments with Abnormal Data&lt;/strong&gt;, such that one cannot understand before reading the definition of &lt;em&gt;abnormal data&lt;/em&gt; (which is probably given at the beginning of the section).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, instead of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next subsection discusses the effects of abnormal data to our&#xA;  super-duper proposed solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We examine the effects of abnormal data to our super-duper proposed&#xA;  solution in detail, in Section 4.3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T13:47:11.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T13:47:11.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2014-06-28T21:19:31.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Metrics&lt;/a&gt;. I guess the topic you are looking for would fall under &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;vq=eng_computersecuritycryptography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer Security &amp;amp; Cryptography&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T21:19:31.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-28T22:20:40.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's any chance that you're going to be interacting with industry at conferences or other events, you need business cards. It's part of that culture. If there's any chance you'll be interacting with anybody from the far East, you need business cards (and ideally, a briefing on the etiquette of giving and receiving them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within academia (and not in the far east), it may depend on your field. Coming from a commercial background I was surprised to find that they aren't used in the same &quot;scattergun&quot; way in mine; but it can still save time with scribbling details, and a good card, offered appropriately, may make meeting you stand out in the fog of somebody's post-conference memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: it's worth having some, but try to judge what is &quot;normal&quot; before pressing them on people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T22:20:40.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24049" CreationDate="2014-06-28T22:36:18.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing papers is primarily to provide reference to the source of information gained from sources other than yourself in the study you are writing about. There are some instances where reference is made to works that provide background to the topic, in my field often review papers that summarize knowledge up to a point in time or papers that discusses methods and similar cases that can shorten your own description of some aspect of your manuscript&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question is not so much if the latest material is cited but rather if the right material has been cited. Most research builds on earlier studies and is located at the cutting edge of knowledge so it seems unlikely that references to new or the latest findings within a subject would not have its place in a paper. That said, I would add that there is often a lack of historical knowledge as well. People (again in my field at least) reference papers from within the last five years for findings that were done half a century or more ago. This lack of knowledge about the origins of ideas can sometimes be problematic since one trusts someone else's interpretation of the original work when referencing new material that builds on the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So reference the right material, old as well as new, and be aware what the papers you cite actually say and from where they in turn sourced their information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T22:36:18.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2014-06-28T22:45:32.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is common practise as has already been established by other answers. In fields where the Harvard style is used it is common to add &quot;e.g.&quot; (for example) to the references so that the example would read&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many research endeavors, including environmental and coastal hazard prediction (e.g., Smith et al., 1989), climate modelling (e.g., Doe and Smith, 2007), high-energy physics simulations (e.g., Svensson, 2005; Fischer, 2006), and genome mapping (e.g., Iglesias, 2010) generate large data volumes on a yearly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon to add more than one example although there is no &quot;law&quot; either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the Harvard style it becomes easier to see that these are just examples, one of possibly many alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T22:45:32.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-28T23:05:54.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably varies from country to country, but given that business cards can be had for the cost of running off-the-shelf preperforated stock through your computer, I think it's worth having a few. It does make handing your contact info to someone easier, plus giving you and/or them a surface upon which to scribble a note about why they should contact you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at least around here, many restaurants collect business cards as tickets for a free-lunch lottery. Trade shows may also use them as lottery entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, e-mail addresses are starting to replace business cards as e-mail becomes an acceptable replacement for postal mail and phones, and smartphones can be used to enter contact info into a website.... But it isn't a complete replacement yet, and may never be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I find I use them informally as well, when I want someone I've just met to contact me about something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation: Spend a small amount to print off a few, see how quickly you're using them, use that to guide how many more you obtain, how often, how many you should bother carrying at once, and how much effort you should put into the card's aesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:05:54.033" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24049" CreationDate="2014-06-28T23:56:46.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's dangerous not to cite works from the present. Most reviewers live in the present and have a &quot;frame of reference&quot; there. Your best shot would have been to hope for a bunch of reviewers who are now at least 45-50 years old, who remember &quot;the good old days&quot; of the past century. Apparently that didn't happen to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that there are some fields where, for whatever reason, the work done before the turn of the century was better than the work that was done after it. In that case, you might have to rely heavily on the pre-turn of the century work to critique the more recent work. But at least cite the recent work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper or idea, even if meritorious that is not &quot;modern&quot; already has one strike against it. The damage is &quot;double&quot; or more, if you haven't considered (or at least appeared to have considered) the recent ideas in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this out the hard way with my book &quot;A Modern Approach to Graham and Dodd Investing&quot; (Wiley, 2004), that preached that a &quot;modern&quot; version of the (1930s) ideas of Graham and Dodd would be more useful than the ideas that were then in vogue. But at least I couldn't be accused of &quot;ignoring&quot; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:56:46.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2014-06-29T02:17:47.720" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I agree to what @user46345 and the others said: If you do not have a good question (and no good reason to ask one anyway) it is better to be quiet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes it is important to ask a question. Two examples that come to my mind are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are the discussant of the talk (and you had no opportunity to read the paper before the talk or the speaker already answered all your questions in his talk).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a very shy audience that whats to ask questions but no one wants to be the first one to ask.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are probably others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do would be to read the paper first and think about a question related to it. If that is not possible there are still some other options to use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you haven't understood something during the talk: ask about that.&#xA;It is not your field of expertise, so no one expects you to know&#xA;everything about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In most fields a very common type of question is about applications. In economics this could be &quot;What are the policy implications&#xA;of your results?&quot;. @JeffE has the following examples for (theoretical) computer science &quot;Does your algorithm work well in practice?&quot; and for non-theoretical computer scientists &quot;Does your technique have any theoretical guarantees?&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Sensitivity analysis type questions&quot;: Is the assumption A crucial?&#xA;How would your result change if you change assumption B? They still&#xA;require some knowledge of the subject but not as much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions can be used as backup as long as you still have some knowledge about the topic of the talk and you have paid attention (asking something the speaker explained 10 minutes earlier makes you look really stupid). However, it is usually better to avoid asking questions than forcing you to ask one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T08:12:10.847" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T08:12:10.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9301" CreationDate="2014-06-29T05:02:32.957" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One basic difference: An abstract is always at the beginning of a academic paper.  A conclusion is always at the end.  A summary could be anywhere, even separate from the paper itself, so it's a bit more slippery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18011" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T05:02:32.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-06-29T09:54:06.497" Score="-12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, no one cares. I plagiarised in all 3 of my degrees and I am a doctor. Do NOT turn yourself in. Everyone does it. The lecturers did it. Your children will do it. Uni is a process to get to where you need to. Your real learning starts in your career. Not on an exam paper or essay that is double spaced, size 12 arial narrow font and referenced in Vancouver style. Seriously, it will not affect any part of your life going forward. To everyone else who is getting cut at this, move on. Assignments are there to reduce the workload of the lecturers. Our thesis was 100,000 words. I copied at least 30% from other people and made up half of the references. My lecturer (after uni and over a couple of beers) told me he reads the intro, picks 10 pages, adds comments and reads the conclusion.&#xA;Move on and enjoy your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18016" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T09:54:06.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-29T10:05:10.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may depend on the country. In some countries, PhD candidates are employees of the university just like anyone else employed there, and thus get (or can get, upon request) any number of business cards printed from their office supplies department at any time. Thus, in such places, the effort of getting one's hands on business cards is virtually non-existent and hence there, it is a standard practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As implied by other answers, handing out business cards greatly simplifies establishing contact with other researchers on conferences, which is one of the main benefits one can draw from attending a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of establishing contact, I have only ever met two kinds of people on CS conferences - those that had their business cards ready and could thus easily provide some contact info at the end of a fruitful conversation and the agreement to keep in touch or exchange some further information, and those that did not, that would instead start a cumbersome search for something to write, use the back of someone else's business card (!) or require the recipient to find some suitable virtual place in whichever electronic device they currently have nearby to store the address, and remark that they &quot;should really print some business cards for the next conference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastEditorUserId="14017" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T07:37:20.477" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T07:37:20.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2014-06-29T11:29:02.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On top of the other answers, which are valid, I can add the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, ask your colleagues/supervisor/boss. Senior people know the field better than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there are some tools to automatise the process of finding journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the plain old directory-based search offered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalseek.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journalseek&lt;/a&gt;. With that tool, you look for your discipline and see what are the journals registered there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also new fascinating tools, where you can input your paper title and/or keywords and/or abtract. The tools will look for similar papers in other journals and return the journal names for you (with a similarity index). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most famous are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalguide.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JournalGuide&lt;/a&gt; and a similar tool offered by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publicliterature.PublicLiteratureSearch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishers offer similar tools for their journals only. For example, Elsevier offers a &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journal finder&lt;/a&gt;, which works quite well. Springer offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edanzediting.com/journal_selector&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a similar service&lt;/a&gt;, although it is hidden in its editing services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am by no way saying that those tools are the definitive way to find the perfect journal for your article. However, they enable the discovery of new journals, which is always good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you find a journal that seems to be suitable for you, read some of the published articles in order to grasp the quality of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7112" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T11:29:02.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24111" CreationDate="2014-06-29T11:34:25.300" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;One very important point has yet to be touched on. Indeed, &lt;em&gt;subsubsection&lt;/em&gt; is not a dictionary word -- and even if it were, it's awfully cumbersome. Saying &lt;em&gt;&quot;section 1.2.3&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is neater and more informative, as it tells the reader exactly where to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important reason to use &lt;em&gt;numbered&lt;/em&gt; references is if the order of your text changes. For example, if you move a particular subsection to another section or chapter, any references to it in the form of &lt;em&gt;&quot;the next subsection&quot;&lt;/em&gt; will now be invalid. By using numbered references and attaching these to either the subsection header or a key sentence (as appropriate), the numbers will automatically update and your referencing will remain correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is applicable to references to anything.  It is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; dangerous to write such things as &lt;em&gt;&quot;in the following...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&quot;in the previous section we introduced...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, etc. Such phrases do not refer to an exact place, and they can easily became invalid as you add, remove, or change parts of the text. Proof-reading will also be more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T11:39:35.933" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T11:39:35.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:15:07.387" Score="61" ViewCount="12716" Body="&lt;p&gt;ResearchGate is pretty well placed on Google. But it does not have a lot of contents or active users, despite their constant invitation spam.&#xA;So they spidered a lot of publications, and provide some metadata on publications &lt;em&gt;and authors&lt;/em&gt; on their web page, &lt;strong&gt;even when you do not join&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the amount of spam I receive from them, I'm considering to file a cease-and-desist letter, disallowing them to use my name or work for advertising their service and for encouraging users to join their site, and instead display a clear statement that I am not a member and disable search indexing for these pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, ResearchGate has a pretty bad reputation, see e.g.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time&quot;&gt;ResearchGate: an asset or a waste of time?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;as well as the Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really annoyed by them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have a fake profile page with my name, affiliation, co-authors, publications, and a big &quot;sign up&quot; button; that &lt;strong&gt;does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; state that I am not a member&lt;/strong&gt;, as if they could contact me this way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They publish incomplete numbers of citations and impact, which one may consider to give me a bad reputation on their site. (I don't care, but this may be a legal point to make?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have information pages of many of my articles, &lt;strong&gt;with a big &quot;request full-text&quot; button&lt;/strong&gt;, which will not work, as I am not a member and do not get contact information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They use a proxy redirector to have their website show up first in Google search results, even when the actual contents are only available on a different website,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that it is &lt;strong&gt;detrimental for my career&lt;/strong&gt; to have such contents removed (by sending a C&amp;amp;D letter to them), or do you think they will ultimately manage to become a useful platform, and then it would be better to not have my data removed? Even with a C&amp;amp;D, I could probably retract it at some point and join. After all, the real contents are available on my homepage and Google Scholar; and these are the locations I want to show up first (fortunately, most of the time, they do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:11:55.573" Title="Should I send a &quot;cease-and-desist&quot; letter to ResearchGate?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24128" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:16:26.177" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T12:16:26.177" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:16:26.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24129" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:16:26.177" Score="0" Body="Pertaining to preventing, punishing, or handling the consequences of academic dishonesty in coursework or examinations. Also, defining what constitutes academic dishonesty. (For questions on dishonesty in the research and/or research publication process, use 'research-misconduct' instead.)" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T18:11:08.223" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T18:11:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24130" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:19:07.223" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T12:19:07.223" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:19:07.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24131" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:19:07.223" Score="0" Body="On the use of an individual's name in academia, including but not necessarily limited to publishing. Do not use this tag for questions related to academic vocabulary and phrases; use 'terminology' instead." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T03:20:44.820" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T03:20:44.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24132" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:21:23.810" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T12:21:23.810" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:21:23.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24133" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:21:23.810" Score="0" Body="Selecting, designing, delivering, or attending educational and professional development opportunities in academia." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T13:55:00.393" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T13:55:00.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24134" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:22:59.097" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T12:22:59.097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:22:59.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24135" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:22:59.097" Score="0" Body="Discussing content and approach for formal letters of application, to be written by the candidate (not letters of reference)." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T13:54:21.707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T13:54:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24136" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:24:46.710" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T12:24:46.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:24:46.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24137" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:24:46.710" Score="0" Body="Ethics and logistics of withdrawing, refuting, or amending published work. " OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T13:54:27.543" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T13:54:27.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:36:26.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, at least in doctoral psychology programs, we're often encouraged to have business cards to hand out at conferences. Conferences are often seen as a way to start building connections for internship, and a business card is a simple way to come across as polished and prepared (it's also less likely to be lost than a slip of paper, as I've seen faculty slip my card into a card holder). Further, my mentor does a great deal of field research in health clinics, and it's helpful for her students to have cards with their contact information readily available when coordinating with site staff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my department, our academic mentors typically pay for the cards, which are designed with the school's logo, just like the faculty members' cards. However, most of us wait until we have received our MS as part of our program requirements. We don't attend as many conferences pre-MS anyways, and since they're ordered in bulk (250 minimum) that way you don't have a large number of unused cards. In sum, it's not necessary to have business cards, but it can be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:36:26.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:48:16.613" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US a cease and desist letter does not do what you think it does. C&amp;amp;Ds are outside the usual legal process and serve as a warning to the recipient that you might sue them. Good ones describe in some level of detail the legal wrongs that the recipient has perpetrated against you and spell out the sender's plan to sue if the recipient does not cease and desist from the wrongful activity. They are a prelude to legal action and have no force of law in themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that everything that ResearchGate is doing is legal. They may be contributing to copyright infringement by encouraging their users to post full-text copies of articles that neither ResearchGate nor the authors have license to post. However, I don't think making a stand-in profile page for a non-member is a crime or a tort. They seem to be trying to post true facts about you and your work to the best of their knowledge, which isn't illegal. It may turn out that their citation counts are wrong, but I bet that many such services (Google Scholar, Web of Science, etc) have errors in their databases. A factual error about you is typically not something you can sue over, especially when they've given you the opportunity to help fix their database by making an account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, getting litigious about their site is likely to lead to others discovering that you threatened ResearchGate. Due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect&quot;&gt;Streisand Effect&lt;/a&gt;, sending them a C&amp;amp;D letter or suing them is likely to do your career more harm than if ResearchGate had complied with your wishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that most people who care about your citation counts and published papers understand that ResearchGate is of low quality on these metrics so far. They will compare their results to other services and use the results that make the most sense to them. I think you're probably much better off either ignoring ResearchGate or joining up. Though, I wouldn't post any articles for which you lack either the copyright directly or the license to post freely from the current copyright holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:48:16.613" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:49:43.083" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think that it is detrimental for my career to have such contents removed (by sending a C&amp;amp;D letter to them), or do you think they will ultimately manage to become a useful platform, and then it would be better to not have my data removed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, one can only speculate, but given their current track record I would not hold my breath. I think the danger of real career detriments due to not being on RG are currently so small that this factor can probably be ignored in your decision making. And, as you say, opting in later on will likely not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, for me personally just sending them a C&amp;amp;D letter and making sure it is enforced would probably not be worth the effort. They are operated out of Berlin, so I am not sure whether US law (I am assuming that you are US-based) applies. Trying to go through international law to make them remove your data seems like a lot of hassle to me. Most importantly, your point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they publish incomplete numbers of citations and impact, which one may consider to give me a bad reputation on their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is maybe too paranoid. Many, many places maintain publication and citation indices of authors, and practically none of them actually have all your citations in place. I think nobody who has any impact on your career would stumble over your machine-generated RG profile and assume that it is necessarily the complete truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:49:43.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23895" CreationDate="2014-06-29T12:50:12.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is OK but, before you attend that conference; try to identify the professors who come to the discussion panels and sessions. Their names are normally written in the conferences' websites. Then search their university homepage on the net and read some of their publications. This way you find two or three professors that their research interest is almost near yours. At the day of the conference, go to the sessions in which they present and politely after a short introduction about yourself; ask whether they accept any PhD student or plan to accept one or not.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have seen that some MSc students go to the conferences and ask any professor they see without any previous search about their academic background. This behavior is so impolite.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sometimes, in the professors' website, they have notifications about not accepting new PhD students. In this case, asking them for a PhD position is not acceptable and means that the person has never visited his website and probably he is not a good student at all. This way, they may not even listen what you are talking to about.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If in some cases, there are some positions available and notified on their website, then go to that professor, show them your curriculum vitae and ask them for a position; or talk to them about opportunities available for a PhD student.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you are interested in working with a professor but there are not any positions available; then talk about doing some volunteer research under their supervision. However, it all depends on your research background and how much they find you suitable for working on a research topic. For instance, if you have a good programming background and they need a programmer in their research group, they may accept you to work on some parts of their research project; and after a few months, if any PhD position become available, you will have a higher chance to compete for that position, because the professor knows you better as you have previously worked with him.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Conferences are so valuable for the research students to become familiar with ongoing research projects and publications. In these conferences, you may talk to other researchers or PhD students and start a research project which is interesting for both of you. So, do not miss the chance to discuss and talk to the other people at the conference; and not just focus on the professors. Besides to these, some companies may need a person like you who has done a research in the field of your interest. So talk to them. There may be some funding or grants available which you can apply for.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think that if you have your paper printed with your resume attached to it may help the professor to remember you and if any positions be available in future, he may contact you. Remember that not all the people have good memory to remember the others with detailed information about their resume and paper. People easily forget details about the past. If your resume be interesting for them and they forget you because they have no printed information about you, then you may miss a research position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T12:50:12.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24143" CreationDate="2014-06-29T15:11:33.873" Score="0" ViewCount="1889" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research I used a lot python libraries that I need to cite, I wonder if there is an accepted format for citing open-source software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I just put them together with all other references? Do I create two separate references sections: &quot;Article References&quot;, &quot;Software References&quot;? Or maybe there is another way to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I think I am good with the format of the citation itself, it is given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scipy.org/scipylib/citing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I am not sure where do I put those citations in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:15:47.437" Title="Is there a proper format to cite open source software?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-06-29T16:14:22.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24142" CreationDate="2014-06-29T15:15:47.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every journal or venue may have its own recommendations, so check their style guides. However, I have never seen an article that has separate reference sections for software and articles. Just put them in one section together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:15:47.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24111" CreationDate="2014-06-29T15:27:29.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem with &quot;subsubsection&quot; is that it leads to troublesome situations for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, if you are in a section, then you will introduce a subsection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a subsection, then you will introduce a subsubsection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a subsubsection, then you will introduce a subsubsubsection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a situation you are going to get into if you want to be consistent in your thesis, and as it is not convenient, I suggest you to avoid it early. Use labels for referencing portions of your work. Just like Dimitry says in his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18024" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T15:27:29.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T15:28:57.417" Score="6" ViewCount="3817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering applying for a degree (ideally, but not necessarily, MSc) in Computer Science and Maths, such as this one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exeter.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/computerscience/comscimathsmsci/#Programme-structure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.exeter.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/computerscience/comscimathsmsci/#Programme-structure&lt;/a&gt;, or another one from a respected university. My father has shared his concerns that this may be a 'Jack of all trades and master of none' option, when compared with single subject degrees, and I wanted to find out if this is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a degree programme of this nature (CS and Maths) make me just as skilled as somebody with a degree in either Computer Science or Maths, or would I be left with a degree that leaves less competitive than somebody who has studied a single subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would employers/universities (I am currently interested in academia and being able to enrol in a Ph.D programme is beneficial) respect this degree as much as a degree in one or the other? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true, is this true for both MSc and BSc courses, or would the integrated Masters make me competitive against single subject students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18020" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T17:04:07.930" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T10:17:07.263" Title="How does a dual degree (Computer Science/Maths) compare to a degree in a single area?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:00:04.313" Score="15" ViewCount="4615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student doing summer research and I am helping a PhD student to write a portion of her PhD thesis and with a bit of editing here and there. I am wondering how would credit be distributed since I don't think a  PhD thesis can be co-authored. Also, when I apply to graduate school afterwards, how would I show the admission committee that I have done this work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify: I had two kinds of contributions to this thesis. There are parts describing research we collaborated on, but it was mainly me in that I collected the data and performed the analysis but she gave me advice. There are also parts that describe her research, that I helped to edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17724" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T19:14:22.923" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T12:10:44.573" Title="Credit with helping to write a PhD thesis" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24146" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:22:42.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my MSc Thesis, I put the people who proof read and helped edit my thesis in the acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the admissions committee would care if you did some of the research, and if the PhD student was your primary advisor for that research, it would be good to get some form of letter of recommendation from him/her. A few people I know submitted 4 letters instead of 3, because a lot of the research they did was a PhD student and they thought a 4 letter from that student would help them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't do any research, you basically edited and made suggestions, I'm not really sure an adcomm would be interested. Great, your a friendly dude who helped his friend, now show me what you've done yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not really sure how the adcomm will look at &quot;editing&quot; someone else's PhD thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did some of the writing for the PhD thesis, I think thats weird; all of the writing should be done by the PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T16:22:42.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24146" CreationDate="2014-06-29T19:00:59.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You write that you are &quot;helping a PhD student to write a portion of her PhD thesis&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly from your question and comments this isn't a stapler thesis: this isn't a case where you and the PhD candidate have co-authored papers, where your work would be in the thesis and explicitly attributed to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your other comments, you make it clear that you have written passages that are in her thesis. That goes way beyond just doing collaborative research. If it's in the student's PhD thesis as her own writing and her own research, then she is falsely representing that she's done the research, and she's falsely representing that the thesis is all her own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any university that I knew of up til now, that would result in the thesis being failed.**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to find out the rules of your university pretty quickly, because although the PhD candidate will get the worst of the enforcement, you could get hurt by this. This is now your responsibility to put right, for your own sake. That's because if it is against the rules, then you have unwittingly been complicit with the PhD student in what, upon submission of the thesis, would be the breaking of those rules. I think ignorance of the rules is unlikely to be taken as innocence in any ensuing disciplinary proceedings. At best you could make a case of being led astray by trusted colleagues, but that's going to damage your relationship with them. It is possible, as things stand, to extricate yourself from this situation without too much damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't go to the candidate or her supervisors to ask for their interpretation of the rules yet (if at all). Find and read the relevant rule yourself. They are almost certainly on your university intranet, if not the outward-facing website; failing that, ask in the university library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, for example, is the rule for PhDs at University College London (UCL):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The work in the thesis submitted by a student must be their own work and the submission of a thesis for examination will be regarded as a declaration of that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis may include collaborative work, but this should be stated as such, and must be written up by the PhD candidate, not the collaborator(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as I suspect, co-authorship of a PhD thesis at your university is not allowed, then you need to insist to the PhD student and her supervisors that the passages you've written be removed from the thesis. Do it gently, politely, in a collegiate spirit, but do it unambiguously. As you've done genuinely new research, you'll be submitting the words you've written to a journal, so tell them that - that should be enough for them to be sure to remove it from the thesis. Keep the paper trail of all of this (including the emails or other records of when you've sent your material to the PhD candidate in the past), to protect yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;** though through the comments below, I've learnt that the University of California in San Diego does allow some co-authoring, providing advance permission from the Dean of Graduate Studies has been obtained.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T07:18:25.787" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T07:18:25.787" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24145" CreationDate="2014-06-29T19:09:32.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your choice depends on your purpose and your competitors. You should ask yourself: &lt;em&gt;who am I competing with&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to pursue a Ph.D. degree, and if the subject you want to study contains a lot of math, such that a standard syllabus of a M.Sc. is insufficient, then you should go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to work in academy, then this depends on the company's choice of employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember, it is not about taking a lot of courses. As far as I experienced, professors pick their Ph.D. students by their i) research skills ii) background knowledge about the subject. And those are listed by priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that, there are two CS students, Alice and Bob. Both are seeking a Ph.D. position in area of Game Theory.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Game Theory is closely related to Economics. But also, Multi-Agent Systems is main subject that relates Game Theory to Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice chose to enroll a double-program which is a hybrid of Economics and Computer Science. Whereas Bob enrolled a standard M.Sc. Computer Science program, and took more Computer Science related courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They both graduated at the same time, with the highest possible graduation grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scenario I&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of them wants to work at a company, and the other wants to join the research team of Professor Charlie. The result is, they are not competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scenario II&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both want to join the research team of Professor Charlie. There are two vacancies. The result is, they are not competitors (assuming that they are the only ones who want to join).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scenario III&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This time, there is only one vacancy. Now, you are Professor Charlie. Who would you pick? The right answer to this question is: &lt;em&gt;what is my research team doing?&lt;/em&gt; Yes, it is indeed a question, but a necessary one in your situation. If professor Charlie's team is working on theories from field of Economics, then he will pick Alice. However, if his team is working on pure computer science and Multi-Agents, then he will pick Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, above all these, if there is a third student, Daniel, whose grade is not so high but published two top-conference papers and submitted one of his papers to a top journal, all in the area of Game Theory, it is most likely that Professor Charlie will pick him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. -- Lewis Carroll&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2017-12-06T10:17:07.263" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T10:17:07.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24146" CreationDate="2014-06-29T19:13:04.067" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some fields, almost all work is done as a collaboration. In these fields, it is not at all unusual for this collaborative work to end up in a student's thesis. However, the thesis text should clearly state &quot;This chapter describes joint work with X&quot; (e.g. in a footnote).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to really get credit for this joint research, you should prepare a manuscript and try to get it published, or at least release a preprint you can put online (if there isn't time to get it published before you apply to grad school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the editing assistance, the most you can get is a thanks in the acknowledgements, and help with editing is not likely to impress an admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T19:13:04.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T20:17:29.077" Score="-4" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I examined seven years of financial data for a given country. However, there have been no similar studies that have the same sample as mine and cover a seven-year period (most study just one year in my area in this country). Also, I used a new measurement of one of the variables, which makes the results difficult to compare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I compare the results of my study with existing results in such circumstances?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17858" LastEditorUserId="17858" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T08:28:48.307" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:28:48.307" Title="Comparing results if there have been no similar studies" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24146" CreationDate="2014-06-29T20:25:18.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is somewhat of an amalgam of previous answers, with a little softening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the editing, there is no problem.  It is fine (and encouraged) for PhD students to ask others to proofread or edit their writing.  Out of courtesy, she should acknowledge your assistance in an appropriate part of the thesis (usually a special page near the beginning).  But you should be doing this either as a personal favor to her, or in exchange for money; other than that, there is nothing in it for you.  It isn't something that would likely interest an admissions committee (though you could certainly list that you did it, as it does give you a little extra exposure to professional writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the substantive research and writing contributions, there are possible ethical issues.  You should talk to the PhD student and make sure that she has told her advisor and her committee about your contributions, and that they are okay with it.  You should also ask about any special procedures that the university might have for including collaborative work.  (For instance, at my PhD institution, they would need a signed letter from you confirming which parts were yours.)  If you get &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; sense that she might not be following all the rules, or that she may be intending to pass off the work as her own, you should go to her advisor and explain everything.  (Ideally, you have already been talking to her advisor, since he or she presumably is the ultimate supervisor of your research work.)  The fact that some of the text was actually written by you will invite the most scrutiny, so be sure this is clear to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She should certainly describe your contributions, very specifically, in the acknowledgements.  If the thesis work is going to be published in a paper, depending on the level of your contributions, you might be entitled to coauthorship on that paper.  You should discuss these authorship issues with the student now (e.g. who will be first author, etc), but you might also want to talk with some other faculty member, since it sounds like you may not have enough experience to know what is reasonable or customary in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the short term, the way you would get &quot;credit&quot; for your work, for the purposes of graduate admissions, is to get a letter of recommendation from the student, as well as from her advisor or whichever other faculty member is supervising your research.  They can tell the admission committee in detail about what you did, and how they think it reflects on your research potential; that's likely to be even more helpful than being able to point to a part of a paper or thesis as yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T20:25:18.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T21:22:18.967" Score="23" ViewCount="8224" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has told me that his Master student (Chemistry) defended his thesis sometimes ago and everything went alright and he graduated.&#xA;He recently realized that in the acknowledgements part the student has copied practically (word by word, line by line) the acknowledgements of another thesis available on the Internet by replacing the name of my colleague with the name of the supervisor of that thesis. He added that he was hurt by the fact that the student has not tried to say his 'thank you' words by his own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first question is that can this be considered as a plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second question is that is it necessary to inform the student about this possible (if any) misconduct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18035" LastEditorUserId="36320" LastEditDate="2016-01-02T06:51:25.037" LastActivityDate="2019-11-07T00:46:51.643" Title="Is a copied acknowledgements section considered plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15279" CreationDate="2014-06-29T22:17:05.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You appear to have two sets of choices: 1) Continue a graduate program in your current school, where you are well known and liked, and 2) Start a graduate program in an &lt;em&gt;equivalent&lt;/em&gt; school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that you will prefer the second choice. Find out which schools (e.g. on the list of 200) are equivalent of yours. Find out where the better students (the ones averaging 8.0) go to after they graduate. And last, find out which graduate schools your professors have the most clout with, especially the one who gave you the top grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then apply to those schools. Use your current school as a back-up if the &quot;equivalent&quot; school plan doesn't work. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T22:17:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24156" CreationDate="2014-06-29T22:18:35.900" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formally, the copy-pasting of the Acknowledgements section is stealing the other author's language, expressions and maybe even ideas, that fits into the common understanding of plagiarism. Therefore, it might be a good idea to discuss this with the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, before you do this, you may wish to double-check your internal motivation. Do you do this to help student realize that even if they copy a small piece of text like this (not directly related to the academic content of theses), it still can be considered as a breach of ethics and negatively impact their future career? Or do you do this because you feel for your friend and have some hard feelings about the ungrateful student? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is definitely very delicate, and should be carefully dealt with. It touches the field of academic ethics in two separate points: copypasting the text, and expressing gratitude. It is crucial to separate these two in the discussion with student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T22:18:35.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-06-29T22:41:37.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 15 years in academia (theoretical computer science, UK and Greece, plus conferences and workshops in several different countries in Europe and North America), the closest I've come to a business card was when somebody I'd befriended at a conference gave me a card for his hobby photography website. I've never had business cards printed and, to the best of my knowledge, nor have any of my colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T09:40:45.617" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:40:45.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24156" CreationDate="2014-06-29T23:04:09.700" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He recently realized that in the acknowledgements part the student has copied practically (word by word, line by line) the acknowledgements of another thesis available on the Internet by replacing the name of my colleague with the name of the supervisor of that thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm slightly confused: I assume that in order to discover this, the advisor must have run the entire thesis through some plagiarism-detection software.  But the question indicates that this took place &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the student's graduation.  I don't understand that: two reasonable times to run your student's thesis through plagiarism detection software are (i) at some point before you sign off on it and (ii) never.  Would one really do this after the fact out of idle curiosity, or did the advisor have some other reason to suspect that plagiarism took place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is line-by-line copying of someone else's acknowledgments a form of plagiarism?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Well, plagiarism has a sufficiently precise definition that I don't see how the answer can be &quot;no&quot;.  The better question is whether this is viewed as unacceptable enough to do &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that part of that question depends upon the writing quality and originality of the purloined acknowledgments.  As @Andreas Blass points out, if you've seen 10 different thesis acknowledgments, you've seen 1000 more: such acknowledgements are formally part of the thesis but they are not part of the &lt;em&gt;academic / intellectual content&lt;/em&gt; of the thesis.  So they are not vetted in any way, and there is no expectation of intellectual originality.  There is more than one way to phrase &quot;Thanks so much to my parents, my friends and my thesis advisor&quot;, but the number of &lt;em&gt;standard ways to phrase that&lt;/em&gt; is so much smaller than the number of theses that the pigeonhole principle applies to show that many people are writing the same sentences in their acknowledgments.  If the purloined acknowledgments contained many clever and original turns of phrase, then it looks worse: the fact that what you stole has nothing to do with the intellectual content of the thesis cannot excuse the fact that you are taking credit for someone else's distinctive writing.  That's a really icky thing to do in acknowledgments to your own thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the purloined acknowledgments contained several paragraphs of poetry or something similarly egregious, I would not consider a formal plagiarism inquiry.  This runs the risk of getting the degree rescinded, which to me is clearly too harsh.  But there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a real problem here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He added that he was hurt by the fact that the student has not tried to say his 'thank you' words by his own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ça y est.  The student's former advisor has discovered that the student has cut corners and compromised some academic integrity &lt;em&gt;just to get out of thanking him in his own words&lt;/em&gt;.  What a slap in the face!  I think that if something like this happened to me, I would have to bring it up with the student (though it would be painfully awkward) just because I would feel like I have to be honest with them about the change in my opinion of them resulting from this discovery.  Without some kind of sincere apology / explanation of this, the future of this professional relationship is at risk.  The student, alas, may need to be informed that he should look elsewhere for future recommendation letters and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added: &lt;/b&gt;A lot of people seem to be suggesting that parts of this answer are an overreaction.  I tried to make clear that I don't find the premise of the question completely plausible or understandable, but after discussing that I did what I think is the appropriate thing on Q&amp;amp;A sites like this one: I &lt;em&gt;assumed the premise&lt;/em&gt;, in some form which made sense to me.  Yes, if the &quot;word-by-word, line-by-line&quot; copied acknowledgments constitute five lines thanking the student's family, friends and advisor, I see no problem at all -- and I  don't see it as a reason to run the text of the acknowledgment through an internet search.  Nor would such a search turn up a unique antecedent; it would turn up hundreds or thousands of cognate passages, as Andreas Blass pointed out. Thus to assume the premise I had to assume that the purloined text was much more substantial and distinctive. To be more specific, imagine the text was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel greatly honored to be able to add, in some small way, to a subject founded&#xA;  by so many [Field Xers] whose work I so deeply admire; among them are&#xA;  [My Advisor], [Person A], [Person B] and of course [Person Whose Name Appears in the Thesis Title], the richness of whose ideas seems undilutable by time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thank [Professor C] and [Professor D] for suggestions directly relevant to the material appearing in this thesis. I thank [Fellow Student E] for helping me – quite a while ago now – with some results of [Somewhat Technical Theory] that appear in the appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thank [Postdoc F] for helping me calculate a fistful of [Something] (I regret that none of these calculations appear in this thesis)&#xA;  and for generally being so free with his technical and [Field X-ical] insights.&#xA;  I am grateful to [Recent PhD G] for making his own as yet unpublished thesis&#xA;  work available to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The graduate students in the [University Y Department of X] have been without&#xA;  exception intelligent and friendly, and it has been a pleasure to learn from them and with them over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to [Old Girlfriend H] for providing comfort in the sad days of [a few years ago]. Her kindness will never be forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am indebted to my thesis advisor [My Advisor] for more things than I can list&#xA;  here, but most recently for a careful reading of an early, ugly draft of a certain lengthy [Field X-ical] document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My father would have been proud of this thesis beyond all moderation. My&#xA;  mother has long made and continues to make me proud of her strength in the&#xA;  face of all the challenges life has to offer. I thank them both with all of my&#xA;  heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that the advisor read this the first time around and was happy to be thanked along with so many other people who made a difference in the student's life.  Then later, for whatever reason, he does an internet search on or including this text and discovers that it is lifted word-by-word, line-by-line from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/thesis.pdf&quot;&gt;this 2003 PhD thesis&lt;/a&gt;.  The specificity of the stolen text would be downright creepy.  Is it really an overreaction if the advisor is upset by this??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T08:46:06.060" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T08:46:06.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24171" CreationDate="2014-06-29T23:10:46.773" Score="18" ViewCount="4690" Body="&lt;p&gt;Around 3 months ago, I submitted a paper to a Math journal for peer-review through an online submission system. The same day I received in my e-mail an acknowledgement saying that the paper had been received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the status of the paper on the online submission system is still &quot;Manuscript submitted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this means that the paper has not even been assigned to an editor yet (once this happens, the editor will probably start looking for reviewers), but as far as I know submissions are assigned to editors within a few weeks (I once submitted a paper to another journal and when an editor had been assigned, the status on the online system changed to &quot;Editor handles&quot; or something like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that publishing is a long and complicated process and I'm not trying to rush anybody, but sometimes manuscripts are lost in the system. In fact, this has once happened to me, so I just want to make sure that the paper was not lost in the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I send an e-mail asking for the status of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I think that, at the time of submitting the paper, I didn't choose any specific editor to submit the paper to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13744" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T15:46:43.477" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T06:45:36.473" Title="Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24200" CreationDate="2014-06-29T23:13:33.307" Score="-2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use the pronoun 'my' in the title of an appendix of a thesis? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appendix A: An Example of My Participation in the Community's Rituals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="13102" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T10:20:28.007" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:22:11.587" Title="Should I use the pronoun 'my' in the title of an appendix?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24153" CreationDate="2014-06-29T23:25:25.730" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only your advisor can give you advice on how to analyze your &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; data set. In general, however, when looking at a new data set I start by asking the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is known about X from past studies? Is the new data consistent with this? If not, can you find out why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; known about X from past studies, that this new data can give insight into? (You must have some idea about what this data will offer, or you wouldn't have bothered with it, right?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where X is whatever you're interested in studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T23:25:25.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15279" CreationDate="2014-06-30T02:55:34.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the US, so take that into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were one of my classmates in a similar position, I would recommend searching for an internship or entry-level position with a top company in your field. With a year or two of work history, your application to an MSc would be evaluated in a totally different light, specifically there would be less focus on why you struggled initially and more on why you are returning (to continue to learn?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this would let you gain some practical skills, perhaps save some money, and figure out whether you really enjoy working in comp sci.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T02:55:34.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24078" CreationDate="2014-06-30T04:17:02.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike employers in industry, I believe that graduate admissions committees don't care if there are gaps, irrelevant work experience, or changes of direction in your employment.  Their sole concern are your credentials and capabilities to do academic work.  You should focus all your attention on communicating your skills and capabilities to do Masters-level Computer Science work.  This includes your course grades as an undergrad, your GRE scores, your computer experience in industry, your recommendation letters, and your engagement with professional and academic communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Business schools are probably an exception to this.  Work history is probably important to getting accepted in an MBA program.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T04:17:02.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-30T04:52:32.737" Score="4" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate and I have no experience in research papers. I have come up with an idea  to write a simple research paper on &quot;Emerging fiber optic networks in Africa.&quot; To my utter astonishment, I have seen a few papers already published in IEEE forum: one titled &quot;Developing a fiber optic backbone for Africa&quot; and another one I can't remember...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I deal with such a thing? Should I go and do my own research on the topic and see what happens? Or should I come up with another idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18044" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T05:58:16.480" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T02:06:14.330" Title="Should I pursue a research area even after finding that papers have already been written on it?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24168" CreationDate="2014-06-30T06:30:23.077" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Papers have been written on nearly every topic you can possibly think of. I would be shocked if someone HADN'T written a paper on your potential research area by now. The trick to good research is to &lt;em&gt;position&lt;/em&gt; your research in the space alongside other papers. What did 'Emerging fiber optic networks in Africa' conclude? What was their methodology, sample size, literature review or most importantly their conclusion? Each one of these areas can be used as a jumping point for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; research to confirm, critique, dispute, refute or supplement theirs. It's good that others have come before you to beat down the path so that you can potentially tread a little further off the beaten trail. To answer your question, I personally think you should continue to pursue your research area, there is always scope to perform more research, especially in your field of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18052" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T06:30:23.077" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24216" CreationDate="2014-06-30T07:02:20.243" Score="11" ViewCount="5804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the last months of my MSc and I have done my thesis. I have published some conference papers but most of them were literature reviews.  My MSc thesis is about solving wave equations by means of method of potentials and boundary elements. I am interested in pursuing research in another field (differential equations) but I have no idea how to start any topic that may lead to a journal publication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By asking this question, I want to understand how a research student, whether a recently graduated MSc student or a PhD student, can start searching for a new research topic and develop some researches based on his own interests. Specially, I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent should a graduate student be dependent on faculty members? How can he be more independent and start his own research activities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a good idea that the graduate work on another topic with the faculty member or work independently on a more recent research topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the person is in a research group or at the university, is it a good idea or is it ethical that he develop his own research interests, besides to the topics which are being developed in that institute?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should a graduate student manage this and make some progress in the research fields of his own interest? (In particular, sometimes the faculty members are not interested in the topics you are interested in and the person has to start his own research activity.)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, if this research is part of his independent research, at the time of publishing what affiliation should be used in the publications. Should it be &quot;Independent Scholar&quot; as mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19710/what-to-put-in-affiliation-field-when-submitting-paper-without-affiliation&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; or something else? This is important in academic publications, because sometimes, the person is in a research group, but he is publishing a paper as part of his own researches not the things he is doing in that institute; in this case, has he mention that institute's affiliation or use his own one? So please make it clear that how the affiliation would be when the person does research independently in the cases like when he is not working in a research group or he is working with a professor or research group but his publication is output of his own research activities? It is a little unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T23:09:06.537" Title="How/when to become independent in research as a graduate student?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24162" CreationDate="2014-06-30T08:02:59.110" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should send a quick email asking for an update. In my experience, every electronic manuscript submission/tracking system seem to be different. Even different journals from the same publisher who use a unified log in system, seem to have tweaks to what you see. I think that after one month at any one stage, with the exception of &quot;under review&quot;, it is perfectly reasonable, and probably desirable, to ask for a status update. The time a manuscript spend &quot;under review&quot; is often very field, and even journal, specific and can range from days to 12+ months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When sending an email, be polite and explain that you just want to make sure that you do not need to do anything at the current stage. In all likelihood the status update will be no more informative than &quot;we are working on it&quot; (i.e., they haven't lost it), but that is informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:02:59.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24168" CreationDate="2014-06-30T09:09:18.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a subtle shift in the meaning of research as you transition from high school and lower-level undergraduate work to graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early on, a teacher may ask for you to do research, and it means: Look up everything you can find on this matter, and report what you have found. You are essentially writing a &quot;research report,&quot; summarizing what is already known about a certain topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you get into more formal academic research, however, &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; means: Come up with a problem that hasn't been satisfactorily solved, form a hypothesis on how to solve it, then test your hypothesis with a series of carefully crafted scientific experiments, and finally report your results. You are essentially expanding the scope of knowledge in a certain field, and doing so using the scientific method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that the first section of most research papers summarize the already-established knowledge in the problem area. So, in a research paper about fiber optic networks in Africa, the author(s) would probably have some novel idea about how best to, say, install or maintain such a network, and they would likely begin by summarizing what has already been done so far, before explaining why their idea would potentially improve the start-of-the-art. Therefore, it's very &lt;strong&gt;normal&lt;/strong&gt; to find other related papers when you start doing your research. In fact, that should be your first step: read and study every one of them you can find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing a &quot;research report,&quot; that's pretty much the end of the line. But if you are doing graduate-level research, that's merely the beginning. Incidentally, it can easily take a year or more to do the rest (even longer if you are doing doctoral research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:09:18.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24000" CreationDate="2014-06-30T10:20:17.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The academic 'process' is an unregulated mess of random, contradictory habits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NO&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, there aren't any global regulations on what conferences or publishers should require or how they should do anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a key point of academic independence - anybody is free to run their academic conferences or publications as they like. There is an unwritten consensus on what constitutes good practice, but it's not regulated, it's not mandatory, it varies across academic fields, and it varies across countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Change happens by convincing lots and lots of unrelated people and organizations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any proposals to change something (say, make source code sharing a must) only become real when lots of separate organizers (most of them who never ever hear about each other) in different fields agree that it's a good idea; that it benefits &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; without making it too hard for &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;; and take the initiative to implement it. It helps if some academic subfield implements the practice and it's widely seen as working well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The only force is funding&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large funding agencies have the only practical power, as if they make funding conditional on X, then people will try to get X - or at least something that on paper looks similar to X. Note that if they don't think that X benefits them, then it will be the latter option; doing the very minimum possible to tick a checkbox &quot;yes we do have X&quot;. And it's by definition not a global regulation, but a country-specific one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T10:20:17.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24177" CreationDate="2014-06-30T10:33:10.547" Score="0" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a research paper in English, but my data is in another language. &#xA;I want to include some pictures in an appendix, but they contain some writings in the foreign language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you include translation in an appendix?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a common practice to write the translation over the picture since it has the necessary space. I don't want to put the translation below the picture to avoid taking too much space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T15:41:23.643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T15:41:23.643" Title="How can I include figures with non-English text (and a translation) in the appendix of a research paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2014-06-30T10:46:57.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, the use of I-word is permitted in the Acknowledgements section. In the rest of the document it is better to use &quot;we&quot;, to include yourself and your reader. To refer to yourself, you can use something like: &quot;An example of Author's participation...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T10:46:57.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24178" CreationDate="2014-06-30T11:13:31.667" Score="0" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference among the terms &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;thesis&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;dissertation&lt;/em&gt;?  Which one should I use, for instance if I am completing a master's degree? Are they interchangeable ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18057" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T20:49:26.303" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T20:49:26.303" Title="Which term is correct for a work submitted for a master's degree: paper, thesis or dissertation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24174" CreationDate="2014-06-30T11:15:57.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comments state, if the wording is of any significance to understanding your manuscript then a translation is in order. Depending on the type of figure you have several options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your figure exists in editable digital form, you can see if actually changing the wording is possible. Even better if the format is a vctor graphics is to redraw the figure completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your figure is a bit map, you could ad labels to the figure and provide translations in the text or figure caption (preferably).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly the possibilities vary with the format of the original but it will be important to make the figure as understandable as possible for people not familiar with your native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T11:15:57.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24176" CreationDate="2014-06-30T11:21:28.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paper usually refers to a published article but can also mean a shorter written essay, for example as in term-paper. The thesis and dissertation is basically equivalent, at least in its use. Originally a thesis is more than the written work, it is the thought or thinking coupled to the problem as the original meaning of the word indicates. From this perspective the word dissertation is used for the written work that comes out of your degree work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for a master degree, you will see masters thesis and masters dissertation used interchangeably. I would suggest checking what is used in your department or university and use whatever is customary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T11:21:28.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24176" CreationDate="2014-06-30T11:22:50.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I get your question right:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A paper usually refers to an article published either in a journal or presented at a conference. It is rather small in comparison to a thesis or dissertation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A thesis generally refers to the final written work that leads to an academical degree, like a bachelor or a master thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dissertation is usually a general piece of written scientific work submitted for the requirements of a doctoral degree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the language and on the user and on the context, the last two (thesis / dissertation) are sometimes interchangable. A paper is actually something distinct, although a dissertation can consist of published papers (&quot;thesis by publication&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;name&quot; of the work for your master's degree usually is &quot;master thesis&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17639" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T20:48:15.777" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T20:48:15.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24189" CreationDate="2014-06-30T11:55:35.867" Score="18" ViewCount="1870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to conduct some research and will apply for IRB approval. But, finding money to offer incentives for respondents may be difficult. I do not mind using personal funds as the total amount is very low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any ethical issue with using personal funds for research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any IRB related regulations that address the above issue?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it matters I am at a US educational institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18059" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T13:01:32.490" Title="Can human subjects be paid using a researcher's personal funds?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24170" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:08:48.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, you are not yet expected to conduct research that is completely independent of an advisor or mentor. The fundamental goal of (doctoral) graduate education is to develop your research ability so that you have the ability work completely independently after you graduate. There is nothing wrong with being &quot;dependent&quot; on your advisor, in a certain sense, when you are still in graduate school. Of course, you will have to do your own work to earn the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should start thinking about your own research interests, but budget your time and prioritize your projects appropriately. If you have the time, energy, and ability to work on independent research while also working on your dissertation, that's fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be careful: it is easy to underestimate the amount of effort required to finish the dissertation. And, in general, you want to have an &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; dissertation if you are planning to continue in academia.  So a certain amount of focus and single-mindedness is needed to complete your degree well.  Don't spread your effort too thin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also make sure that your advisor is aware if you are making any serious progress on other research - at the least, so that they know you are also still serious about your dissertation.  It would be risky to keep your advisor in the dark, if only because they may feel you are not dedicating sufficient time to your dissertation.   And be ready to sell your project to your advisor, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10111/16122&quot;&gt;described by Yuichiro Fujiwara&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are a graduate student at a university or research group, then your affiliation is that university or research group. This is no different than for a faculty member at the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:13:38.653" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24199" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:09:15.780" Score="2" ViewCount="1198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many different research students that want to apply for a PhD or MSc program but they are so nervous about their choice. Sometimes they pay most of heir time, reviewing the websites of the universities, profiles of the professors and do their best to gather information and choose the best PhD program or university to apply for PhD but they are still nervous about their choice.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some students only think that the universities with higher rankings are best to apply for and they miss some middle-ranked universities which are so good at their majors. This way, their chance to apply for those high-ranked universities is so low and they may lose two or three years preparing and applying for those university. While in the same period of time, if they had applied for that middle-ranked universities, they had higher chance of applying and in this period of three years, they would have finished most parts of their PhD program.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My question here is about these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent a person should be realistic in choosing a university for his PhD program. A normal student may be more successful in a middle-ranked university than a higher-ranked university.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think that sometimes, normal students lose their confidence when they study at high level universities, while; if they study in good middle-ranked universities, their academic output may be much higher and they will be a more successful person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it worth that a person that has high chance to be accepted in a good second ranked university, wait for two or three years to modify his curriculum vitae and apply for a first level university?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which one is more acceptable and appreciated? A top student at a second ranked university or a poor and not so much successful student in a very good ranked well-known university?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not decide in this period of each persons' life, how he should make decisions. This also applies to other circumstances. For instance, working in good company with lower income or working in a not big company with higher level of income. Making clear how a person should make decisions like this may be so much helpful to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:12:42.863" Title="How to decide which university to study for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-30T22:00:36.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24146" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:10:44.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am helping a PhD student to write a portion of her PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this statement, I assume that the thesis is a monograph. I think it is very weird for an undergrad to write parts of a PhD thesis. Although the work in a thesis can clearly be the result of collaborative work (in the form of co-authored papers or other publications), a thesis in essence must be an individual effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... and with a bit of editing here and there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PhD student should describe in the acknowledgement section that you proof-read and/or edited parts of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, when I apply to graduate school afterwards, how would I show the admission committee that I have done this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a scientific or research value to your contribution, some or all of it could end up in a publication, of which you can ask to be a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't think a PhD thesis can be co-authored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, and again, I find it very strange that you are actively writing sections in the thesis. Furthermore, most academic institutions will ask PhD students to sign a document stating &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am the sole author of this thesis&quot;&lt;/em&gt; when submitting their thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17804" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T12:10:44.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24188" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:28:20.900" Score="3" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on my bachelor's thesis in computer science in Germany. I have created a few charts/graphs, making heavy use of icons downloaded from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenounproject.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thenounproject.com/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the icons I did use are published under a &lt;em&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/em&gt; license. I am not sure how to credit the authors of the icons. The website states the following for &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The attribution should be displayed either on the same page as the symbol, with the colophon, in the bibliography or Credits section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The license text (&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/&lt;/a&gt;) states the following for attribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it makes sense to credit the authors of the icons in the bibliography of the thesis though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is the usual procedure to give picture credit in theses? Is it considered appropriate to use these kinds of graphics for illustration in academic contexts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9659" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T15:10:41.983" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T15:10:41.983" Title="How to credit Creative Commons icons in a Bachelor's Thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24180" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:31:28.953" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are interested in additional ethical issues with paying subject out of pocket as opposed to paying subjects from a grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never listed where the subject &quot;payments&quot; (today's term is &quot;inconvenience allowance&quot;) come from on an IRB form and have never been questioned about it in either the US or UK. This is not an issue that I would bring up with the IRB and it is not even clear where you would list this in the IRB applications that I am familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some tax and liability issues associated with paying out of pocket. While I would not bring this up to the IRB, I would mention it to your research support officer. If/when I over spend on my overhead account I can make up the difference from my pay check. I think it is even possible to divert some of my salary directly into my overhead account, even if I haven't hit zero balance. This way the university is officially paying for the research, they take care of the research liability, and any potential taxes the subjects need to pay. There might even be tax savings for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T12:31:28.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24184" CreationDate="2014-06-30T12:47:17.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add the information to the figure caption. Something like &quot;The icons are courtesy of ABC.&quot; If there are a lot of figures with difficult to attribute icons, I might refer readers to a footnote or even an appendix. I am not sure that the icons being released under creative commons really matters in terms of how you attribute them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T12:47:17.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2014-06-30T13:32:42.303" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, arXiv.org is the best place to go without peer-review. Many papers that appear in arXiv are of the highest quality. Be polite with moderators, never challenge them as they have the right to reject any paper without any explanation. Try to appeal. If this does not help, address this issue to Chair. If again no result, go to vixra.org and publish your paper over there without headache. Vixra.org is the best solution when you unable to publish it in arxiv.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18063" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T13:32:42.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24184" CreationDate="2014-06-30T13:35:04.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would go for the colophon option. This will be a natural place to look for anyone who has ever read a book, and it doesn't &quot;interfere&quot; with the scholarly work you are presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captions of figures are also fine, but if you use the icons in more than one figure, I would definitely prefer to place the credit in the colophon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it is primarily an aesthetic choice, but I agree with not putting them in the bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1549" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T13:35:04.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24180" CreationDate="2014-06-30T14:08:32.037" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've sat on an IRB panel and we've never been concerned about the source of funds for participant gift-cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. Note I'm an ethnographic fieldworker and I often buy small gifts for the families and individuals who participate in my projects. It's too much of a pain to pay for these out of my research account (why do you want 15 stuffed bears and keychains?) so I buy them out of pocket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T14:08:32.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17360" CreationDate="2014-06-30T14:23:47.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is for an application for university, then you do not need to date your personal statement. That is because your application as a whole is dated and signed by you at the very end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you can initialize and date it at the end of the document, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KN&#xA;2014.06.30&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T15:40:08.507" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T15:40:08.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24192" CreationDate="2014-06-30T14:49:53.940" Score="2" ViewCount="4626" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university requires one to submit a printed copy of the dissertation. The paper has to be 100% cotton, white, and 20- to 24 lb weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have a choice in the weight of the paper, my question is if there are any advantages to one weight over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12427" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T02:38:32.833" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T02:38:32.833" Title="Should I use lighter or heavier paper for my printed dissertation?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24191" CreationDate="2014-06-30T15:18:39.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lighter paper is usually slightly cheaper. And your finished book would be also lighter (pretty much by definition); this may or may not make a difference for when you carry it to the various offices/libraries as part of the process of finishing your degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heavier paper has a better &quot;feel&quot; when you flip pages (think about the difference between a high quality hardcover book versus a cheap paper-back novel). It is a bit more resistant to wear and tear, and if you scan/photocopy pages it will be less likely to have the effect where the &quot;next&quot; page shows through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the only publicly available copy of your dissertation would be the copy you submit, I would ask you to do would-be readers a favor and use heavier paper. But if you intend to publish your thesis (take chapters and publish them as journal articles, or just put the entire thesis online for the world to see), then the lighter paper will save you a little money, and perhaps be marginally better on the environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T15:18:39.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24191" CreationDate="2014-06-30T15:24:41.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the weight of the paper is as important as the material from which it is made. So long as the paper is &quot;archival quality,&quot; meaning no acids or other components which will allow it to degrade more easily over time, the choice is somewhat arbitrary. Willie Wong raises some valid points in his answer, though—the slightly thicker paper will help future readers more than the thinner paper, and the relative change in weight is probably not so large as to make the thesis cumbersome as a printed volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T15:24:41.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24209" CreationDate="2014-06-30T16:13:15.040" Score="15" ViewCount="8505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sent an abstract of a review paper for oral presentation to a conference, and it was accepted. The presentation will be about the most important developments and contributions made in the last decade on my specific area of research. Now I am preparing the speech, but I am not sure how to give a 12-minutes speech about all the work that has been done (it's a lot). Can someone give some suggestions on how to do a nice presentation about a review paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18065" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T21:54:51.207" LastActivityDate="2017-09-17T13:54:20.143" Title="How to present a review paper at a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2014-06-30T16:17:33.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/application.TermsAndConditions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;terms and conditions&lt;/a&gt;, they state the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ARTICLE 4: NOTICE AND TAKE DOWN&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a user feels that any information provided within the Service&#xA;infringes his/her or any third party's rights, he or she shall notify&#xA;the Provider before taking any legal action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon such notification,&#xA;the Provider will expeditiously check the objectionable information&#xA;and will, where necessary, remove or disable access to this&#xA;information (&amp;quot;notice and take down&amp;quot; process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Provider will&#xA;respond to any such notification within two business days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users shall&#xA;not take any legal action before the Provider has dismissed the&#xA;notification or two business days have elapsed without response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The&#xA;Provider disclaims liability for expenditures, including court and&#xA;lawyer fees, if legal action is taken earlier, unless the Provider has&#xA;caused the infringement intentionally, recklessly or negligently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/contact&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contact form&lt;/a&gt; with an option for &amp;quot;Legal and Data Protection&amp;quot;. You could try that as a first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14745" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T16:17:33.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-06-30T16:32:15.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more way in which arXiv can be used is for distributing papers which are not publishable in their own right, but are still important for some reason. Presumably, if the people consider the paper to be interesting, then this earns the author some reputation (although probably not in any quantifiable form).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of a case of a somewhat accomplished mathematician, call him S., who came up with a brilliant idea for a new proof of an important theorem. However, carrying out the proof was a big undertaking, and in the end he did not manage produce a paper that was rigorous enough for publication. A version of the paper which was rejected from the journals was posted on arXiv, and sparked a lot of interest, also among the leading experts in the field. As far as I know S. no longer works in this area, but I am aware of others who do. If the proof strategy proves successful, this will surely be very good for S.'s reputation. More importantly, the S.'s ideas were passed on to others, which was beneficial for mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a well documented example of a similar situation, look at Mochizuki's proof of the ABC Conjecture. To put it briefly, he built a huge theory that very few people really understand (possibly only he understands it fully) which supposedly is able to prove one of the most important conjectures in number theory. However, given how much effort would be required to verify Mochizuki's work, I am in serious doubt if he would be able to publish it in the sort of journal this result deserves. I don't think he published the papers on arXiv, but if he had, I think it would make sense for the reasons mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7328" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T16:32:15.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24182" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:12:42.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choosing a place to do a PhD is a hard task, but one that needs to be completed before you start. I would call your attention to three main points that you need to consider to choose well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First point is alignment of research interests, methods, and schools of thought. Different research groups have distinct ways of thinking even when looking at the same research topics, therefore, it is important to carefully look whether you fit or not with the research they do, and how they position themselves towards that research. This you can see in the research papers that are published (or not) by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second point is the personality and ways of working of the professors and colleagues. The time you spend in a research group will shape the way you think about and approach research. In some way, you will level your conduct through the examples of the ones around you. For this reason, I would advise you to look for a group that works in an professional, collaborative, open, and ethically sound way (in your opinion). This you can discover by talking with other PhD students and with people that used to be in that institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third point is what you want to do next. If staying in academia is important for you, it would be important that the group publishes in top venues in the area. If going to industry is a path you would prefer, maybe you should look for a place that already has many connections with companies, or that enables you to do some part of your studies while working in a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These points are the most important for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that you have to be in a top-5 university to be successful during or after your phd. In the end, it is all up to you. Of course the environment helps, but you will be the one driving your papers and manuscript, so it is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top students will be top everywhere, but it is important that they have people around them that can recognize and foster their talent. Look for someone that understands what you want to do and that trusts you from the beginning to take it to another level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18067" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:12:42.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:22:11.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;I&quot;/&quot;We&quot;/&quot;They&quot; or &quot;My&quot;/&quot;Our&quot;/&quot;Theirs&quot; will be very dependent on the research philosophy that you are working on. I'll give you two opposite examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are conducting interpretivist/constructivist research, you are acknowledging your role in defining the problems (or things to look at), analyzing and drawing the conclusions. So, using I, my, mine are acceptable and even recommended if you are writing by yourself, which is the case of your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are a positivist, you will try to argue that you had no role in the experiment. You will speak on the third person and try to remove yourself the most you can from the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18067" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:22:11.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24203" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:24:48.100" Score="25" ViewCount="8336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of a thesis as sort of an immature document, by definition.  It delineates the university era from the professional era, and is bound to lack some practical elements.  Should a student refrain from publishing his or her thesis on the Internet, for this or any other reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T22:15:20.617" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T07:03:10.130" Title="Should one put their Master's thesis online?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:32:02.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The letters of reference show in some way that you can be trusted for your work. They are good to have in your application, but there are other ways to show that you are knowledgeable and competent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in your position I would try to know the interesting groups and get in touch with the professors from there. If it is physically feasible, you can visit the groups and meet the people there. Maybe even a small internship? You will understand whether you fit the groups and at the same time they will know that there is someone interested working with them, in case they have an extra position or receive funding for another project. You can also try to attend a workshop or a conference (as a student volunteer) and network with the people there in search of a position. This way you will discuss your ideas be known by those that will ultimately make a decision on your cv and recommendations. The more information you provide to them on your abilities, interest, and motivation, the easier would be for them to choose you in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18067" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:32:02.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2014-06-30T18:10:58.727" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every document is, in the way you define it, immature. With everything you write your writing improves. Your papers will not be better because you have a degree. They will be better, because you learned something (i.e. made mistakes) before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there might be reasons not to publish your thesis, but it is not so different from normal working papers. Maybe your thesis is just bad, you did not get any meaningful results, you have made significant mistakes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your university allows, publish it online if you want to (or if you think it may be worth reading / you can not think of a good reason not to); everyone knows, it is only a master's thesis and will read it in a different way than they would read a published paper (or not at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T19:24:35.387" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T19:24:35.387" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2014-06-30T18:16:53.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like you say, a thesis is not necessarily as thoroughly peer reviewed as a journal article. In my opinion, that doesn't mean the thesis should not be publicly available, just that a reader should keep in mind that the document is a thesis when reading it and (potentially) citing it. The onus then falls on the reader of a thesis, not on the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the decision of whether to make your thesis public is more about your university's policy. At the University of Waterloo, for example, all accepted theses are publicly available by default through &lt;a href=&quot;https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/&quot;&gt;the same web portal&lt;/a&gt;. Other university's have IP policies that may not allow you to publish your thesis (though these policies are rarely enforced).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the policy is ambiguous or left up to you, I would strongly recommend making it publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8619" LastEditorUserId="8619" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T22:01:32.713" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T22:01:32.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23964" CreationDate="2014-06-30T18:26:55.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it is perhaps possible that a school has a policy where they will not accept people with past issues involving academic integrity, I feel like this will mostly depend on the person or committee reviewing the applications. If you did well overall, I would think they would overlook something that happened years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it were my decision, I would apply to the school you're currently attending (since you said you know a lot of the faculty and it sounds like you're fairly confident that you would be accepted there; this would be your backup plan) and whatever other school you are thinking about applying to. Is there really any harm in applying to see if you will get in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T18:26:55.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2014-06-30T18:29:29.560" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, unless you have a clear and quantifiable rational for explaining a future PI or research associate why you were driven to use legal means rather than negotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your professional life you have to push your personal research agenda through myriads of (small) political hurdles, in the long run your reputation is a two-sided coin. It does you no good to be a stellar researcher if you cannot work smoothly with others (teamwork is the Hallmark of 21st century research) and just working with others without inventing new paradigms will not make you a stellar reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ResearchGate is free and they by and large try to help people, so I think your question is a red-hearing. I would say go back to work and make a name for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18071" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T18:29:29.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24156" CreationDate="2014-06-30T20:57:37.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should really take a step back and put this into context. This is &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; the acknowledgement section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My first question is that can this be considered as a plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acknowledgements are not really part of the academic work. In general, it's the only part of a thesis where the writer has a larger degree of freedom regarding style and content. This should certainly not be &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt; plagiarism per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the secondary question of copyright infringement, but in all likelihood, the text is too short for this to be clear cut. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect this could fall under some sort of fair use (although some form of citation would be good I guess). Nevertheless, the one who could be upset about this should be the initial author of these acknowledgements, if they care. Of course, if a court of law decided this was indeed copyright infringement, this would have an impact with respect to the plagiarism policy of the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll just assume that no one felt this issue had to go outside the scope of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this is more an issue about causing offence than about actual plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My second question is that is it necessary to inform the student about this possible (if any) misconduct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a quick word with the student, since he or she visibly caused offence, but I wouldn't call this misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting things back into context, the acknowledgement section of a thesis will be ignored by 90% of the 0.00000001% of the world's population who will have read the thesis (I might be generous there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgements are mainly a name-checking exercise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You thank your parents so they can be proud when they exhibit the precious copy you gave them to their visiting friends shortly after the graduation ceremony, before gathering dust until eternity. You can also thank a few close friends for the bond of common graduation experience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From a professional point of view, you also thank your supervisor and possible funding bodies who might have given you grants for the work. The latter are the points that really matter: the supervisor and funding bodies will be able to put the student's thesis as part of the achievements of their own careers and projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, I'm afraid to say no one really cares about the wording in general, as long as it's not offensive or outstanding in the wrong way (one should avoid things like &quot;&lt;em&gt;[...] Prof X was the catalyst that enabled this exothermic reaction inside me to produce this marvellous piece of work [...]&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, simply because it's ridiculous, not because it might be plagiarism). If someone takes interest in the work and want to find out under whom this was conducted, they'll have a quick glance at the acknowledgement section, look at the name of the supervisor, take note and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there is some cultural context at play here. You're not saying in which country you are or what your friend's cultural background and seniority are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student probably didn't mean to cause offence. Since it sounds like the text is sufficiently distinctive to be identifiable, it sounds like the student actually did make an effort to find something original to say, at least something distinct from the basic &quot;&lt;em&gt;I would like to thank Prof X for his (in)valuable advice&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. If anything, your friend should be flattered, by this attempt (sadly failed). The acknowledgements is probably one of the last sections that was written in a rush before the submission deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said earlier, it doesn't sound like a plagiarism issue, but like someone who inadvertently caused offence. It's not so much about informing the student about a possible &quot;misconduct&quot;, rather it's about defusing the situation, between the two of them. It can be tricky if your friend is seriously offended. In fact, perhaps you should have a word with your friend first to try to calm down this situation. If I was the student, I would feel really awkward having to work later (e.g. in a PhD programme for a number of years) with a supervisor who is likely to hold some sort of grudge for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="798" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T20:57:37.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24195" CreationDate="2014-06-30T21:35:14.037" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 12 minutes, the best you can do for your audience is highlight four to six broad observations or conclusions about the state of research. Here are some questions you might address with your observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the lines of research diverging and multiplying, or converging and consolidating? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has it divided into &quot;factions&quot; or &quot;schools&quot; that define problems, methods, and solutions differently?  Or is all research operating under a single paradigm?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the influence and interaction with other fields and disciplines?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where has research made progress addressing fundamental questions?  Where has research made no meaningful progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where should researchers look for the most promising research directions and under-explored areas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to make more than six observations in 12 minutes. By trying to say more, you are actually communicating less effectively.  Any one who wants the full story can read your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T21:35:14.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2014-06-30T22:40:15.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless there is a compelling reason not to, &lt;strong&gt;yes, you should put your thesis online.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesis is supposed to represent your first foray into academic research.  The whole point of academic research is to make a contribution to the body of human knowledge, and share it with the academic community.  As such, I would encourage you to make it as convenient as possible for the community to read your thesis, and posting it online is a good way to achieve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your discipline uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt; or a similar preprint or document server, I would encourage you to post it there as well; that way it will remain accessible even if your web site moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry about your thesis containing &quot;immature&quot; work.  It's a &lt;em&gt;thesis&lt;/em&gt;; everyone knows that it's your first research product, and nobody is going to judge you harshly in 20 years because your thesis wasn't a work of staggering genius.  But on the other hand, they very well might still find it useful.  You spent a lot of time writing that thing; don't you want it to be able to do some good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's a good chance that your thesis is already publicly accessible (via interlibrary loan from your university, or a commercial thesis database, or something similar).  If so, then posting it just saves (possibly a lot of) time and effort for those who want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a non-exhaustive list of compelling reasons why you might not want to post the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your university's intellectual property policies forbid it.  (If so, shame on the university.  This seems unlikely to me, but some other answers think it's plausible, so I suppose you should check.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have submitted parts of your thesis as a paper to a journal / conference / similar outlet, or plan to do so, and the journal's copyright agreement forbids you to post the thesis.  (If so, shame on the journal.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis contains collaborative work (such as jointly authored papers), and your coauthors object to you posting the thesis.  (If so, shame on your coauthors.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have published your thesis as a book, or plan to do so.  In that case, posting it might hurt sales of the book, and might also be forbidden by your agreement with your publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis contains ideas of commercial value which are not yet patented, or un-patentable ideas that you plan to exploit commercially.  (But as noted above, your thesis may be available to the public already, albeit less conveniently.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis contains a serious error that invalidates its results.  (But you might still want to post it along with an addendum that explains the error; there may be parts of the thesis that people would still find useful.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T22:40:15.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24180" CreationDate="2014-06-30T22:54:55.483" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to &lt;strong&gt;supplement&lt;/strong&gt; everyone's excellent answers by saying that sometimes, especially in social science experiments, the choice of incentive is very important. Importantly, the choice of funding source has also been explored somewhat in research methodology literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An influential paper in this regard is linked &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/22/3/355.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (paywall) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://socialmedia.northwestern.edu/files/2013/10/Social-Science-Computer-Review-2004-Birnholtz-355-62.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (free!) A brief summary of this paper is that, it takes 3 popular incentive choices (in social science for experiments) and looks at the choice of said incentive versus data collection and sampling. These incentives are cash, gift certificate via snail mail and gift certificate via email. The results indicate the cash might be the most effective incentive structure in similar experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to a comment, I would state that does exist a relationship between the funding source and incentive choice. In one of our previous projects, where the funding came from a &quot;named&quot; foundation, we had a condition to use funding for participant recruitment in a very specific way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; The first author is my previous adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T10:03:15.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T10:03:15.183" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24591" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:01:52.263" Score="2" ViewCount="4040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying to a online Bachelor of arts degree at a very well established university in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm almost through the application process and at no point did they require an actual print of my high school diploma. They simply asked me to sign (digitally through docusign.net) that I have completed high school. I've been corresponding with an agent of theirs and according to him they are just reviewing what I've sent them (which does not include a diploma) and after that I can enroll. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have a high school diploma but how come they don't require proof of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Continued story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently got accepted into a university and they had me attest to having a high school diploma, which I did. After being accepted without needing to provide any proof of having said diploma, I naturally asked why they didn't ask me to provide proof of graduation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They replied: &quot;We randomly select 1 out of every 20 students to provide further documentation. You would’ve been selected at this point so it looks like you were not chosen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal in the United States? Where I'm from (Iceland) this just sounds plain weird...That potentially 95% of students can get in without a diploma at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18078" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T04:41:05.817" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T23:44:05.013" Title="Why does a university not require me to send proof of high school degree?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:06:35.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with the otherwise excellent answers here, there is something to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It depends on what field you're talking about&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in some fields there might be some benefit to publishing primarily on arXiv, especially if you're important enough to have the reasonable belief that even your preprints will be read, there are other fields where the only response you're reasonably going to get is &quot;...where?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem like something of a self-evident point, but I've found many researchers, especially ones working in interdisciplinary research, forget that their field's conventions are not the conventions of all fields. For example, in my own field, the answer is simply &quot;No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:06:35.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24000" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:14:32.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no particular &quot;universal&quot; regulation, and attempts to do so, even for things like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2014/02/24/plos-new-data-policy-public-access-data-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLoS data sharing policy&lt;/a&gt; go somewhat pear-shaped. This is because, as @Peteris mentions, academia and research is a rather unregulated bunch. There's no guiding force, and there isn't really the backing for there to be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even things that &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; firmly enforced, like the protection of human subjects, have standards that vary from place to place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I also think that those advancing these policies often forget that different fields have different problems. For some fields, &quot;Make your data open&quot; is committing them to a rather intensive hosting and software support problem with very little money to back it. For others, &quot;make your data open&quot; may be exceeding the informed consent their patients gave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:14:32.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:28:57.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers to your questions relatively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No. He is currently very angry with you. Because probably he lost a lot of reputation. A letter of recommendation does not only mean &quot;Take this guy, he's great.&quot;, but also means &quot;I entirely trust this guy and I guarantee that he will not leave you in the lurch.&quot; By getting acceptance and not taking the offer is usually interpreted as hesitancy. Thus, people from the labs you've turned down will consider your advisor as someone who easily recommends a student. They will think that a student does this even at the beginning will easily give up on tough research duties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conspiracy theory: the subsequent rejections may be the result of &lt;em&gt;grapevine&lt;/em&gt;. In my country, top universities' professors are usually classmates or former colleagues. If a student applies with a good background and strong recommendations, they call each other and ask about that student. You know, if that they ever heard about that guy, who is considerable. And guess what if one or two of them told: &quot;I accepted him and he ended up not even starting.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, for a short period of time, you should lower your standards. Try applying a lab in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't send consecutive mails to your advisor. Talk to him face-to-face. Ask him if you can do something to make it up. At that point, you should be prepared to take &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; for an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastEditorUserId="15949" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T11:25:12.713" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T11:25:12.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24170" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:43:27.443" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I'm an older PhD student (mid-50s) and had a couple of publications before entering the PhD program. I'm in an interdisciplinary field where there are few well-established research programs. It's very common for PhD students to embark on their own research interests that are different from their advisers.  Myself, I started submitting papers after my first semester based on class projects and side projects. I even developed a paper that started as my answer to a question on our Candidacy Exam. I was a research assistant for three years with sole responsibility for a very complex Agent-based Modeling simulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To what extent should a graduate student be dependent on faculty members? How can he be more independent and start his own research activities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start as soon as possible to develop your own &lt;em&gt;intellectual curiosity&lt;/em&gt;. This involves thinking hard about the research in your field relative to the fundamental questions in the field. This is more than &quot;picking sides&quot; in intellectual debates. It involves developing &lt;em&gt;mental models&lt;/em&gt; of your field, the various research methods, research questions, and research results.  What's important?  What is not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might start with a single important paper.  Look at the section of the paper where they describe opportunities for further research, or maybe limitations. Read other papers that critique this important paper.  All the time, you should be asking yourself: &quot;What do &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; think should be done to improve/extend/solidify this research?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also start with a survey paper, which often include extensive discussions of future research directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as possible, you should put your intellectual curiosity into action.  I'm fond of class projects and papers for that but not all disciplines have courses that support project work.  Either way, &quot;directed reading&quot; courses are ideal settings to write conference or journal papers of &lt;em&gt;your choice&lt;/em&gt; under the supervision of a professor (not necessarily your adviser).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea [to do] the graduate work on another topic with the faculty member or work independently on a more recent research topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intellectual curiosity leads you to research questions/methods that can be successfully done in collaboration with a faculty member, then approach them and suggest a collaboration.  If, like me, your interests and ideas lead elsewhere, then do your research independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the person is in a research group or at the university, is it a good idea or is it ethical that he develop his own research interests, besides to the topics which are being developed in that institute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good idea to develop and invest in your own research interests if they diverge from your research group.  There is no problem with ethics if you are open and forthcoming about what you are doing and why.  This might go against the cultural norms of the university or research group, but you should make decisions you feel good about in terms of your ethics and values.  If other people aren't happy with them or push back, then my view is that is their problem. If they have power, you may suffer negative consequences.  So be it.  Don't bow before people in power just because they are in power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should a graduate student manage this and make some progress in the research fields of his own interest? (In particular, sometimes the faculty members are not interested in the topics you are interested in and the person has to start his own research activity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a work plan.  What is your output (results, papers, articles)?  Where will you submit it?  In what sequence?  How much time will it take -- daily, weekly, monthly?  If you can't make a plan that answers these questions, recruit a mentor.  It could be anyone who you respect and who knows your field, maybe faculty at your university or maybe someone far distant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the more you can weave your independent research into your other activities and projects, the better off you will be.  That's why I like class projects.  But same goes for research assistant work, industry work, or other work.  Look for as much synergy between all these activities as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] if this research is part of his independent research, [...] what affiliation should be used in the publications? Should it be &quot;Independent Scholar&quot; as mentioned in this link or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't use &quot;Independent Scholar&quot; as affiliation as long as you have an official affiliation as a graduate student, post-doc, or other. You should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; use your primary affiliation, even if it is Physics and your paper is in Art History.  The exception is if you have multiple official affiliations (e.g. Visiting Researcher) and your research was done at or was supported by these other affiliated institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:43:27.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23964" CreationDate="2014-06-30T23:43:58.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very basic principle of Economics: &lt;strong&gt;Every choice is give up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hence, if you give up on something, you are choosing another thing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Therefore, if you have nothing to give up, then those are not choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will you lose by applying a master's degree anywhere on earth? Why not &lt;em&gt;bother&lt;/em&gt;? I don't think it is a question of &lt;em&gt;bothering&lt;/em&gt; if you're really planning to do master's degree. This is an academic decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, what will master's degree give to you? Are you planning to do a PhD as well? Or do the companies you'll apply seek master's level as a requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ashlinry stated, it highly depends on the person who will evaluate your application. Moreover, you get to write a cover letter for your application. Great chance to clear it up! Write your excuses, write what you've gone through, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, did you talk to your professors about this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T23:43:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2167" CreationDate="2014-07-01T00:07:12.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/aeismail&quot;&gt;aeismail&lt;/a&gt;, but with some qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I encourage you to lay out your goals and overall plan, including both MFA and PhD. It's vital that you convey your &lt;em&gt;thought process and justification&lt;/em&gt; for this plan, not just the plan.  Is this an impulse? Or has it been many years in the making?  Why does this plan suit &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; with your unique skills, capabilities, and disposition?  Why does this plan fit the University and department that you are applying for?  What about this plan is well known and what is uncertain and unknown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you should be able to answer this critical question: Why bother with the MFA first?  Why not just enter an interdisciplinary PhD program now? What does the combination give you that neither, alone, would provide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you evaluated the many Design Schools (D-Schools) at major universities?  Stanford, MIT, and many others have these.  If a PhD from these D-Schools won't meet your needs, explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of this, what you are really communicating to the committee is what is &lt;em&gt;unique about you&lt;/em&gt; for MFA and &lt;em&gt;how you will be successful&lt;/em&gt; in the MFA program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The qualification is that admissions criteria and process is very different for Masters vs. PhD.  In Masters programs, no one cares whether you will be a valuable member of the academic research community.  What they care about is: can you succeed in the course work (and thesis or capstone project, if required), and will you be a valuable contributor as member of the community of students.  In PhD in Psychology, admissions is nearly always determined by whether you are the most attractive research assistant for one of the professors, given their interests and funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, when you write your Masters application, you need to emphasize how your preparation and previous academic work set you up for success in course work and engagement with other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T00:07:12.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24168" CreationDate="2014-07-01T00:26:22.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone else has done research on the very same theme or idea that you have, then you should rejoice.  You are part of a research community, and what counts to society is what the community produces, not just what each individual researcher produces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more significant: if someone else has published research on your idea, then it is evidence that you aren't crazy. It's a good sign, not a bad sign. I'm serious about this. Really great ideas are not the creation of solo researchers operating in isolation. They arise in a community through social interaction, engagement, and rivalry. If there is existing research then it connects you to the community of researchers who are working along similar lines. These are your most valuable allies, even if you vehemently disagree with them on specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be too attached to this one idea.  Explore it as far as it goes.  But you should pay attention to what ideas might follow, or at least how this develops your intellectual curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="17564" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T02:06:14.330" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T02:06:14.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24088" CreationDate="2014-07-01T01:04:03.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the biomedical and clinical sciences (Epidemiology in particular) and I regularly hand out 5 to 10 business cards at the average conference I've gone to, and often get just as many. I tend &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to actually engage with industry that much, but they're an excellent, quick way to give someone your contact information in a way that's about as non-disruptive as possible. They're also harder to lose than scraps of paper, and as someone else mentioned, easier to keep track of - business card holders can not only hold your business card, but the cards of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T01:04:03.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24038" CreationDate="2014-07-01T02:57:11.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I'm a PhD student in Computational Social Science, so I'm very knowledgable about Complexity Science and related fields and how they are applied to design, architecture, organization science, and economics.  Also, my adviser is a leader in the field of Design Science, particularly how Cognitive Science and AI can be applied to understand design and designers.  Finally, I have a lot of domain knowledge regarding Pattern Languages and generative models of conception and design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any way to find if I can trust these authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've encountered many authors, researchers, and consultants who I have identified as &quot;charlatans&quot; when it comes to applying Complexity Science or other models or theories to social systems.  For the most part, they apply Complexity Science only in a metaphorical sense (e.g. &quot;edge of chaos&quot; concept), but have no basis or foundation in empirical or theoretical research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to determine whether any particular author is a charlatan or not, there is &lt;em&gt;no substitute for &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; understanding the underlying theory or method&lt;/em&gt;. There is no reliable method for you to determine whether author &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; has a valid foundation in theory &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; unless you do your homework and develop a working understanding of theory &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  If, on the other hand, you stay with your position that &quot;I'm not a mathematician&quot;, then you have no basis for deciding either way.  Looking at what other people say or citations will not help you, in an academic sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to do the work to understand the mathematics, computational science, and formal methods that these author use, then just go another direction.  If you must include them in your papers, then just say that you have no opinion on their validity or significance because their methods/theories are beyond your grasp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, just because you don't understand the mathematical and computational methods these authors use their theories doesn't mean there is any &quot;junk science&quot; going on.  As Steven Covey (7 Habits) advised: &quot;Seek first to understand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Whether or not these authors have tenured positions at important Universities is not very good evidence regarding whether their &quot;science&quot; is &quot;junk&quot; or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T02:57:11.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24037" CreationDate="2014-07-01T03:05:40.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for jobs in industry or consulting, your Area of Specialization is much less important than the &lt;em&gt;skills&lt;/em&gt; you have developed and your &lt;em&gt;proven record of performance&lt;/em&gt; (producing results, completing projects, writing and publishing papers).  You could omit your Area of Specialization completely and just list your major and your skills, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD in Biochemistry. Skills: Experiment design and analysis, statistical analysis, computational modeling of protean evolution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T03:05:40.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18487" CreationDate="2014-07-01T03:15:08.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest a different strategy than that proposed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222/vadim123&quot;&gt;vadim123&lt;/a&gt;.  Don't engage with your co-developer or his institution at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, write a blog post (or posts) or a white paper telling your version of history.  If it is a white paper, post it on your web site.  Better still, arrange an interview with a web publication, with links to your white paper. You are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any job application and CV, you should link to your blog posts and white papers, or related articles.  If any search committee spends any time on this, and also sees the web pages of your co-developers, they would probably ask you to explain the difference in stories.  You will happily explain the differences, with no need to explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the co-developers wrote what they wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is that you don't need to persuade your co-developers or their employers of anything.  No legal process at all.  You only have to invest up-front time to write your story in a compelling form (hopefully, backed with substantiating evidence), and then deal with questions as they arise in the interview process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T03:15:08.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24180" CreationDate="2014-07-01T03:15:24.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a counterpoint, the last IRB application I filled out (at a US university) had a section asking where the money was coming from (grant, start-up account, departmental funds, industrial partner, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the questions, I got the impression that the IRB wanted to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid conflicts of interest, Taking money from industrial sponsors might introduce some potential biases)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be sure that the money would actually be available. It might put the university in a tight spot if you promised subjects money or reimbursement, but could not afford to pay them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number one probably isn't an issue for you, and #2 might be solvable by putting the money &quot;in escrow&quot; with the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15762" LastEditorUserId="15762" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T13:01:32.490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T13:01:32.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2014-07-01T03:32:22.963" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that you handled this difficult situation appropriately, assuming what you have described is accurate and forthcoming.  The only suggestion I could make is this:  When she said that &quot;she wouldn't talk to you because you were a big male&quot;, you might have suggested that she send you an email with the explanation.  She may or may not have done it, but at least you'd be giving her a path of communication that didn't involve you being present with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the &quot;pass&quot; result was probably as good as you could expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T03:32:22.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-01T03:37:26.850" Score="9" ViewCount="1352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I discover an “interesting topic” (at least from my perspective), and I do all sort of work necessary to formulate and tackle the problem (it is an optimization problem), nearly a month of work, and now I suddenly come to realize that the close-form analytical solution to this problem is not possible (or that the solution is too complicated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Should I continue to solve the problem using a numerical method (using computer simulation tools from Matlab), or should I give up my topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15059" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T11:09:01.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T11:09:01.307" Title="What happens when a closed form solution to a research problem is not possible?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-03T09:05:00.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24227" CreationDate="2014-07-01T04:28:01.630" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends entirely on the standards in the particular field, previous work on this topic, and the specific topic and problem domain itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A closed form solution is not always necessary in order to make a research contribution. Sometimes formulating the problem is itself significant; sometimes numerical methods offer useful insight; sometimes saying &quot;we tried applying technique X to problem Y and found that it cannot work&quot; is a contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility in some cases is to simplify or modify your problem formulation to something that lends itself more easily to a closed form solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the literature surrounding the problem is a good way to become familiar with what kinds of contributions are considered useful in this area. Then you can decide whether to proceed with numerical methods or do something else.  You should also try and find a faculty mentor (if you don't already have one) to advise you on what your next steps should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T06:43:03.727" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T06:43:03.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24227" CreationDate="2014-07-01T05:27:14.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My topic is numerical (computational) mathematics. In this area we develop algorithms and apply them to (hopefully) important problems, which typically do not have a pen and paper solution. I am doing this for more than 15 years and see no reason to give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T05:27:14.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24227" CreationDate="2014-07-01T08:06:49.183" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most real world problems don't have closed-form solutions. Somehow, we manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the close-form analytical solution to this problem is not possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the impossibility of a closed-form analytic solution is in itself a new result, then that may well be a publishable result. If you can also find an efficient method to get a numerical (approximate) solution, that's either a heavier-weight first paper (combined with the proof of the non-existence of closed-form solution), or it's a second paper in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OR the solution is too complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there may be a closed-form analytical solution, but it's just too complicated for you to find, then that's an entirely different matter. In which case, you've got nothing to publish. Just a very hard problem that you can either persevere with, or you can stop working on it for a while, and go do something more promising. There's no harm in stopping working on it for a while. Just keep the problem in the back of your mind, along with a handful of other unsolved problems: and every time you learn a new heuristic, algorithm, or solution pattern (or an enhancement to an old one), then try to apply it to the unsolved problems you've been storing up (kudos to the late Richard Feynman for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T08:06:49.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2014-07-01T09:16:31.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school, while doing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.bfh.ch/en/weiterbildung/sws/mas_it.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master of Advanced Studies (MAS)&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; a thesis to be publicly available. It only grants exclution to this for commercial reasons, when the thesis is sponsored by a company. However, still, the abstract will be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The school provides a search for all Thesis papers, for example here (search is german, but papers are sometimes english):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.bfh.ch/de/master/msc_engineering/studierende/master_thesis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ti.bfh.ch/de/master/msc_engineering/studierende/master_thesis.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of publishing my thesis, it's a work I am somewhat proud of. I even have a download link on my personal homepage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5770" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T09:16:31.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24331" CreationDate="2014-07-01T09:52:12.607" Score="5" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning on submitting a paper to a journal.  Is it acceptable and advisable to upload it to my web page for public consumption, in the mean time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T12:35:51.247" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T12:58:22.223" Title="Should I put my not-yet-submitted work on my web page?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24233" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24235" CreationDate="2014-07-01T10:05:42.897" Score="22" ViewCount="18291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting a publication to IEEE.  In the course of the process, they've asked for a cover letter.  Is this request typical of journals and other publications?  What is expected to be on such a letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:38:18.820" Title="Cover letter for a publication" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-07-01T13:36:43.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24233" CreationDate="2014-07-01T10:09:46.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's reasonably common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guidelines for authors typically describe what is expected of the cover letter, as well as of the paper itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow those guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, ask an editor at the journal; but that should be rare - established journals have had so much experience that the guidelines (in my experience) tend to be pretty clear, and to pre-emptively answer all the frequently-asked question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T10:09:46.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24233" CreationDate="2014-07-01T10:34:40.193" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practice of cover letters predates the now common online submission systems by centuries: Before online submission, papers were submitted by sending a hard copy via postal mail to the editor-in-chief (in person, not via a journal). Now it's mostly a formality, but since scholars are a traditional bunch, old habits die hard. &#xA;(&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Even so, if the journal demands a cover letter, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; provide one, or risk having your submission rejected for not following the guidelines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, any information contained in a cover letter should also be put somewhere into the submission form, so those can be of some guidance. Things usually appearing in the letter include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;title of the work&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;type of manuscript&lt;/strong&gt; (if the journal not only publishes standard papers but also short notes, literature review etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;name of the journal&lt;/strong&gt; you are submitting to (since the editor might manage several journals);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;brief summary&lt;/strong&gt; (one or two sentences) to give the editor some idea&#xA;whether the manuscript is within the scope, and which associate&#xA;editor to forward it to;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a clear &lt;strong&gt;statement that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the full &lt;strong&gt;contact details of the corresponding author&lt;/strong&gt; (presumably the one signing the cover letter);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a list of &lt;strong&gt;preferred or excluded referees and/or associate editors&lt;/strong&gt;, if applicable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I usually write (addressed to the editor-in-chief at his department address):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;please find attached our manuscript &quot;A Note on Piffles&quot;, which we&#xA;  would like to submit for publication as an original research article&#xA;  in your journal &lt;em&gt;Wuffle Review&lt;/em&gt;. Our main result is that all universal&#xA;  Piffles are strictly ascending, which proves a conjecture of Smith et&#xA;  al. This work has not been submitted elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The corresponding author is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are looking forward to hearing from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T11:16:04.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T11:16:04.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2014-07-01T12:15:46.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your thesis contains classified material, you obviously cannot put it online. otherwise do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get feedback and you will get pointed out about good or bad things. This is a standard scientific process and as well a good opportunity for you to optimize your neural network (aka &quot;learning&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it turns out that your thesis is overly bad, you can still take it offline later. And if someone later still has a copy and asks you why your thesis was so bad, then accept and explain that you know that and learned from it. There is no shame in improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:15:46.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24233" CreationDate="2014-07-01T12:38:18.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that in journals which have a high pre-review rejection rate, the cover letter is required and critical. In such journals, the editor will decide, based on the cover letter and a brief look at the work, whether to reject the paper or pass it to review. Given that their understanding of the specific field of the paper is often limited, the cover letter has the crucial role of convincing them that the paper is important and a good fit for the journal. Furthermore, it can affect their post-review decision if it is not clear-cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note: in life sciences cover letters are the norm - I don't remember hearing of someone submit a manuscript without a cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:38:18.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-01T14:23:05.667" Score="1" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is probably a very &quot;soft&quot; question, but let me try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is customary to believe, that after a certain period of postdoctoral research a person should either establish him/her-self as a (permanent or tenure track) Faculty member, or leave academia for good, seeking employment elsewhere. The maximum &quot;postdoc period&quot; is of course not specified, and very country-- and area--dependent, but arguably it is around 8 years &amp;mdash; for example, many fellowship programs invite applications from candidates with no more than 7-8 years of postdoc experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a person with almost that many years of postdoc experience given a choice: either to pursue another postdoc position in a strong internationally recognized University (say, top-20 THE rating), or go for an independent Faculty position in a less recognized place (say, top-200 THE rating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that the choice here is obvious, I would very much like to hear your pro / contra arguments. The area is computational mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="17418" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T14:28:11.817" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T14:28:11.817" Title="Career choice: another postdoc in a strong University, or Faculty in a weaker one?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-01T15:38:49.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24240" CreationDate="2014-07-01T14:46:32.307" Score="36" ViewCount="4261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several times my supervisor has asked me for my opinion on papers he is reviewing. I find this helpful as it encourages me to read things I otherwise would not, helps me understand how to review articles, and can lead to interesting discussions. Presumably my supervisor also finds it useful to have a second opinion or sometimes to act as a sanity check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I was wondering is this entirely appropriate. Not least because all the manuscripts for review have confidential for review only in bold at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is what are the legal/ethical issues with asking a student/colleague/supervisor's (depending on your position) opinion on a paper you are reviewing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note I'm not saying that they write the review just that you get them to read the manuscript and ask their opinion on certain points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T03:29:03.660" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T18:09:27.610" Title="Is it appropriate to ask colleagues opinions when reviewing a paper?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-01T15:07:30.370" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that this practice violates the usual &quot;confidentiality agreement&quot; that presents (formally, or customary) in a review process. However, I would agree that this is a common practice, and for some people it is just hard to work on their own, although technically you are supposed to give your own opinion on a paper you review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that if you really need to show the paper you review to someone else, you should check the following boxes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;make sure the person understands that they are looking on a paper under review, and agrees to maintain the confidentiality, i.e.: not to talk about the ideas from the paper with someone else, not to produce own work based on these results until they are made public, etc.&#xA;&lt;li&gt; The actual material paper, and the file, do not change hands: do not send the pdf manuscript to your colleagues, do not leave the printed paper with them for a while.&#xA;&lt;li&gt; Ask specific question(s) about the paper, for which you need second advice, not just a general opinion. Remember, that you should review the manuscript yourself. Definitely do not use the second opinion to shake some work off your shoulders and go.&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="17418" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T15:13:42.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T15:13:42.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-01T15:14:52.723" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The safest course of action would be to ask the editor: &quot;My colleague Edna Krabapple has relevant expertise that would help me understand the paper and write a better report.  May I share and discuss the manuscript with her?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the editor says no, you'd be justified in replying &quot;Since I don't have the expertise to fully understand the paper on my own, I must decline the invitation to review.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T15:14:52.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-01T16:55:31.160" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally &quot;no&quot;. The issues range from privacy to priority to... If you feel like somebody else would be able to provide some valuable opinion you cannot provide yourself, you can always recommend the editor to consult that person before making the final decision on whatever particular issue you think he can help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception I would make is when everybody already knows everything anyway (like when the copy of the same paper is on the arXiv and has been discussed in the relevant expert circles a few times already). Then it becomes a purely &quot;tricky legal issue&quot; with all common sense moral considerations removed and I usually just decide what to do on a case by case basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T16:55:31.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-01T17:41:46.563" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This varies by field. In computer science, the members of the &quot;program committee&quot; of a conference are each responsible for reviewing some number of the submissions. However, they also have the power to unilaterally select sub-reviewers (sometimes more than one per paper) to provide input. How this is actually handled varies by venue, but sometimes can be as informal as sending an email to a colleague or graduate student asking them to take a look at the paper and provide input to the committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T17:41:46.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24251" CreationDate="2014-07-01T18:21:23.343" Score="-1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should the title of the chapter or section be formatted when mentioned in the text?&#xA;I mean the titles of chapters of the same work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the chapter is entitled &quot;Chapter Four: Review of the Literature,&quot; is the following correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the studies discussed in the &quot;Review of the Literature&quot; chapter&#xA;  are Western-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T02:53:29.940" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T02:53:29.940" Title="How should the title of a chapter or section be formatted when mentioned in the text?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2014-07-01T18:36:55.467" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, humans - even professors with a bad reputation - behave the way they do in a way that is sensible in at least some context, even if that context is only in their own mind. Without knowing the situation, this behavior could be anywhere from an indefensible prejudice to a &quot;reasonable person&quot; response that one simply fails to understand or have sufficient information to interpret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's walk through a couple of reasonable interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Honest Interpretation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first interpretation, the professor responded honestly - she felt fear or discomfort in meeting with you privately. &quot;Why&quot; she felt that way cannot be determined from a simple reading of the narrative presented. She could have a disability (panic/anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress), she could have been threatened in the past, she could have believed you were affiliated with people who had threatened her or wished her ill, or she could have interpreted your tone or body language as being angry or...well, intimidating, and surely other reasons I cannot so easily imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have a right to feel safe, and to insist they not be put in a position where they are made to be in perceived or real danger. When one can un-self-consciously walk down a dark street alone without fear because of one's skin color, size, gender, or physical training, it is easy to be unaware of the fear that others who are not so fortunate must live in continually - often for all too real reasons. As I have two daughters, I can attest that this is a rather disgusting realization to have to come to - but it is an important one in understanding our place in the world and our relationships to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally and ethically, the University is almost universally required to provide reasonable accommodations to this end for both students and faculty - both you and your professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all this, this does not require that you did anything wrong, nor that you should receive adverse treatment. If the professor was hard of hearing she could require all advisement to be by email, and this would be a reasonable accommodation. To request an appointment with a chaperon might feel silly when you don't see the need, but it can be a reasonable accommodation none the less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unfair Treatment Interpretation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interpretation Two: you were singled out for unfair treatment. In this interpretation, you were treated explicitly unfairly and the professors attitude and actions culminated in adverse, unwarranted treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student and &quot;paying customer&quot;, you have the right to receive services you paid for, comparably valued substitute services, or a refund. The University makes certain guarantees of service, and they are obligated to make good on their contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University, along with applicable law, usually provides for how complaints should be handled. Generally, the head/chair of the department is involved, and at times special departments (like an Ombudsman or Student Services) can also seek to find a reasonable resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not, however, always a guarantee that a class will be offered by a professor who likes you, or whom you like, or who is even in any way helpful or beyond vaguely useful. It's hard to bar passive-aggressive behavior that's shielded by unethical but hard to disprove veils of personal boundaries or safety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your writing, it seems a member of administration offered a number of remedies. You likely had the right to complain to administration, be given an administrative (no cost/fault) withdrawal from the class with potential return of related fees, receive 3rd party grading to remove questions of improper marks, a pass/fail opportunity for credit, etc. While none of these are ideal resolutions, there are often no perfect fixes for problems like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is often what is really sought in remedy is not possible or not stated. If you felt insulted and discriminated against, you might have wanted the professor penalized or to apologize to you - which might have been objectively inappropriate or just impossible. You might have wanted your paper regraded as stated, but there may have been insufficient grounds for this is as it is simply an extraordinary request. If a 3rd party can look at your paper and say &quot;it is not beyond reason that a professor, even if they would be very harsh, would have given this paper a C&quot; then it's just a no go there, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, administration has a duty to find a way to make the best of a bad situation. From the sounds of it, they offered pretty much all the recourse they had to offer to you. You could take it or leave it, but by staying in the class and taking the pass/fail offer and receiving credit (and choosing not to attend lecture - which was certainly understandable but not strictly demanded by the situation) the University upheld their end of the bargain - albeit in a not very satisfying way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Word on Feminism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One note of issue: the problem with how this is stated in the post is that feminism isn't actually related. If someone is known to have a militant or unkind attitude, behave in a way that discriminates against certain genders or types of people, or just has a reputation for being a terrible teacher or nasty person, say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is when words are used as code words for something else entirely. If the administration was unwilling to give a refund it would be appropriate to say they were playing hard ball or being stingy or greedy - not to say they were known to be of a certain ethnicity renowned for thrift (to be time-insensitive, I am presently aware of three entirely different sets of people who have this notion assigned to them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if a professor has a reputation of being nasty or terrible or discriminatory, please just say so outright. To say &quot;feminist&quot; or &quot;extreme feminist&quot; to imply being a man-hating shrew does a dis-service to yourself, your question, to feminists, to man-hating shrews, and to society as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T00:11:04.380" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T00:11:04.380" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-01T18:50:23.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am neather a reviewer of journal nor a professor at the university who has published various papers; but I as the question seemed so interesting, I searched over the net and found some references in which your question is exactly answered. Moreover, our own logic can also judge about the ethics of such question. As it is written in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/white-paper-on-publication-ethics/2-3-reviewer-roles-and-responsibilities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this webpage&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Confidentiality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Material under review should not be shared or discussed with anyone outside the review process unless necessary and approved by the editor.&lt;/em&gt; [...] Material submitted for peer-review is a privileged communication that should be treated in confidence, taking care to guard the author’s identity and work. Reviewers should not retain copies of submitted manuscripts and should not use the knowledge of their content for any purpose unrelated to the peer review process.&#xA;  Although it is expected that the editor and reviewers will have access to the material submitted, authors have a reasonable expectation that the review process will remain strictly confidential. If a reviewer is unsure about the policies for enlisting the help of others in the review process, he or she should ask the editor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is written in the text, papers under review should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be shared or &lt;em&gt;discussed with anyone&lt;/em&gt; unless approved by the editor. When we go to the logic of this, it is obvious that the reviewer should never discuss the paper with anyone. That is because the paper, the methodology, the outputs and the review process should be confidential. This is because it may happen that when the reviewer discusses the paper with a person who is not responsible with the review process, the chance that the innovative idea of the author be stolen and even submitted to another journal. Moreover, when the reviewer has access to the author by any mean and has the chance to ask his questions or ask the author to make some vague parts more clear; there is no need to talk about the paper with anybody else. Even, if there some minor questions exist for the reviewer, he can ask the editor or discuss with him about the topic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://radonc.yale.edu/Images/Ethical_Issues_in_Peer_Review_tcm307-34211.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, the reviewer is also informed about the things he should pay attention to &lt;strong&gt;after reviewing&lt;/strong&gt; a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Because most reviewers prefer to read hard copies rather than electronic text, the reviewer will probably have a paper copy of the manuscript. &lt;strong&gt;This should be destroyed immediately in a way that ensures confidentiality.&lt;/strong&gt; The reviewer should keep a copy of the review itself until she/he is certain that the review has been received by the journal office and that the editor has no questions. &lt;strong&gt;This review should be kept safe and confidential until it can be destroyed&lt;/strong&gt; (the reviewer will not need it; if the journal sends a revised manuscript for re-review, it will also send copies of the initial review).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it goes to after review process, the text says that the reviewer even should destroy any hard copies of the manuscript after he finishes the review process and mentions that in the &lt;em&gt;re-review&lt;/em&gt; process, journal will send him copies of the initial review too.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By reading this, we understand that the reviewer has not only the right to talk about the paper to a third person who is not responsible for the review of the paper, but also he has to destroy anything that may conflict the right of the author for being the review process confidential. In the next page of that document we read:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Even after the paper is published, information on the review process should remain confidential. The reviewer should not reveal the identities of reviewers to the authors. This is especially important when there were differences of opinion between reviewers or when contentious issues &#xA;  were raised during the review process. Some authors remain angry about events that occurred during a review even after the paper is published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the reviewer is also responsible for other reviewers of the paper as the high levels of angriness may still exist because of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a reviewer anticipates being in a situation where the paper will be discussed, the reviewer should read the final published version of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point the review process should always be confidential is that much important that the reviewer even should pay attention to the discussions he has and should never talk about the content of the manuscripts. He is only allowed to talk and discuss about the &lt;strong&gt;published paper's content&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T18:50:23.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24261" CreationDate="2014-07-01T19:07:16.843" Score="0" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing the introduction of a chapter, I came up with three paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary that the the chapter introduction be made up of just one paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T02:52:39.463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T04:30:10.817" Title="Is it necessary that the the chapter introduction be made up of just one paragraph?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24246" CreationDate="2014-07-01T19:31:20.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure this question is on-topic here; this is a general question about writing style, and not specific to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is usually best to refer to chapters by number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the studies discussed in Chapter 4 are Western-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it easier for the reader to find the relevant chapter without needing to flip back to the table of contents.  It also avoids confusion in case there are several chapters with similar titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your word/text processor software should have a way to automatically maintain the cross reference, in case you rearrange chapters and the numbers change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T19:31:20.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-01T21:04:19.967" Score="12" ViewCount="5629" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does the distribution of wait times for a editor decision look like for a manuscript submitted to Science or Nature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You are not allowed to say &quot;Gamma&quot; unless you give a shape and scale parameter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17673" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:40:49.820" Title="How long do editor decisions take at Science/Nature?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2014-07-01T22:42:23.193" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once had a comparative politics professor that was a short, older Latina. She included attendance and tardiness in the course grade. I recall once a rather big fellow once tried to get her to not mark him tardy by physically intimidating her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She didn't back down and she told him to have a seat - and he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I could see someone else having a very different response, and I was watching carefully to intervene if he became belligerent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going on in her mind may or may not reflect an objective view of reality, but being a boxer, it strikes me that your gauge of your aggressiveness when you confronted her about your grade could be off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to present you with a specific principle that might help in future situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assume Positive Intent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one shows up at work telling themselves they're going to be evil today. (Except maybe Dr. Evil.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you might have been careful to cooperate with her, and credit her with innocent (if misguided) fearfulness, which would have allowed you to further test your hypothesis, and you would have either won her over (possible, but unlikely, given most professors' fondness for acknowledging a misgrade) or had more evidence for the department chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did I handle this correctly?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did the best you knew how, and a &quot;Pass&quot; beats a C (for an A student) any day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-12-30T14:32:30.920" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T14:32:30.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24262" CreationDate="2014-07-01T23:04:15.607" Score="1" ViewCount="1469" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should I handle titles of sources in foreign languages in APA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the title of the source is in Arabic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T02:51:49.173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T04:36:23.487" Title="How should I handle titles of sources in foreign languages in APA?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24250" CreationDate="2014-07-02T04:30:10.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not necessary to limit your chapter introductions to one paragraph (unless your university has some ridiculous formatting guidelines that require this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T04:30:10.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24257" CreationDate="2014-07-02T04:36:23.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google yielded &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.msvu.ca/content_mobile.php?pid=377145&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book/article titles and names written in Latin-based scripts (French, Spanish, German, etc.) can be cited with only minor adjustments.&#xA;Provide a translation of the title in square brackets. Do not translate names written in Latin-based scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles and names written in non-Latin scripts (Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc.) must be transliterated before translating and citing. If you are uncomfortable transliterating material yourself, don't guess -- get help!&#xA;Titles should be transliterated and translated into English.&#xA;Names should be transliterated (not translated) and arranged in &amp;quot;Western&amp;quot; order, e.g., ordered by surname in reference list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Follow the link to see examples)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T04:36:23.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24266" CreationDate="2014-07-02T06:32:39.613" Score="25" ViewCount="4853" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24170/how-when-to-become-independent-in-research-as-a-graduate-student&quot;&gt;How/when to become independent in research as a graduate student?&lt;/a&gt;, there were one or two professors who not only agreed with the idea of independent research, but also said that they encourage their PhD students to conduct independent research as long as this helps the students to be more mature and successful researchers in their future academic career. I decided to bring this question to the main topic that if you are a professor and allow your students to do independent research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T20:17:23.317" Title="To what extent should a professor give students freedom to do independent research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24268" CreationDate="2014-07-02T06:38:05.227" Score="20" ViewCount="9826" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper was rejected a few hours after submission with the following explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Regretfully, your manuscript is being Immediate Rejected without review since it is a short correspondence item while we do not publish correspondence. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean?  Is my manuscript too short?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T08:21:55.750" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T16:05:48.513" Title="Paper rejection due to being &quot;correspondence&quot;: what does it mean?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-02T06:38:13.137" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer, not from the perspective of a professor (I'm not one) but as a student who had advisors who were very generous in that regard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people say this, they usually mean research that is outside a clear plan of action. For example, in the biomedical sciences, it's somewhat common to turn a particular specific aim of an R01 grant into a PhD student's dissertation. That's a plan. But along the way, the student may be interested in a methodological musing, a side project, a short data analysis task on something interesting that's come up, etc. So basically, I'd take it to mean anything that's outside what you've been tasked to do, or come up with tasking yourself to do, as part of your degree program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably shouldn't &lt;em&gt;detract&lt;/em&gt; from their research topic, but I've never seen any reason why more general topics are a problem. Indeed, if the student is restricting it to their research topic, than why isn't this part of their thesis/dissertation in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good for them to inform you of what they're working on regardless. They may be able to provide support, put in a kind word to an editor, etc. And these people will be writing your letters of recommendation - they should be able to talk about the exciting stuff you do even if it's not directly their project. And they should be informed so they can tell if you're potentially overburdening yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T09:33:57.400" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T09:33:57.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24335" CreationDate="2014-07-02T06:45:52.543" Score="1" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to increase my use of formative feedback (feedback showing students whether they understand material correctly without impacting their grades) and would like to integrate it with online quizzes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if this has been found to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to make it simple and automated. While I could write one myself (school generally does not pay for things like this), I would prefer to avoid building it (or paying). What I'm really looking for is something like forms in Google docs but would also somehow automatically &lt;em&gt;and instantly&lt;/em&gt; score the answer (limiting student answers to multiple choice) and displaying the results to the student as soon as the submit button is pressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this is a compound question: &lt;strong&gt;Does using online auto-scoring quizzes help students&lt;/strong&gt; (I believe it will) through formative feedback &lt;strong&gt;and is there a way to get Google forms to give immediate results&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T07:28:15.737" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T14:19:40.783" Title="Are automated online quizzes effective for formative feedback to students" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24265" CreationDate="2014-07-02T07:00:16.143" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals publish correspondence or short reports that are brief research works, usually with a single finding, straightforward methods, and not much more than that. They are intended for quick, &quot;Hey, we've always wanted to know the value of X, and turns out it's 7&quot; studies - they belong in the literature, and may be useful, but are not a full research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are often also referred to as letters, notes, or by other names. Sometimes they're purely defined by concept, sometimes by word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider &lt;em&gt;Ecology&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Notes are short papers that present significant new observations and methodological advances. Notes may contain results that are not sufficiently elaborated or developed as to justify an Article, but which are still of considerable potential significance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...an Article tells a more complicated story with distinct components. The greater length of Articles relative to Reports must be justified by their greater complexity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;em&gt;American Journal of Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;, which uses word counts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The maximum number of words per article, exclusive of tables, figures, references, and abstract, should be as follows: Original Contribution, 3,500; ...Brief Original Contributions, 2,000 (with no more than 2 half-page tables and 40 references)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;em&gt;Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Original Articles should include a title page, a structured abstract of no more than 250 words (see below), a text of no more than 3,000 words, no more than 7 tables and figures, and no more than 40 references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concise Communications should include a title page, a narrative abstract of no more than 50 words, a text of no more than 1,200 words, no more than 2 tables or figures, and no more than 10 references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research Briefs should include a title page, a text of no more than 900 words, no more than 1 table or figure, and no more than 10 references. This category of article is intended for the presentation of short, focused, and evidence-based experimental observations: substantial preliminary and novel results of importance to the journal readership but not substantial enough in content to warrant a longer presentation. Research Briefs undergo the same peer review as longer article types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your paper is either too short, or only presents a short, focused result that the journal does not consider a &quot;full&quot; paper. It's hard to know, as they won't exactly lay out the definitions of papers they don't accept, but you may want to look at similar journals to see if there is a field-based consensus for what a sufficiently large finding &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T07:00:16.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21708" CreationDate="2014-07-02T07:19:45.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each of &lt;a href=&quot;http://dtc.socsci.ox.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/shs/esrc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCL&lt;/a&gt; has an ESRC-funded social-science Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), which would be a suitable funding route for a new anthropology PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a backup plan, consider an inter-disciplinary PhD: apply your anthropology to a subject that is well-funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both Oxford and UCL have inter-disciplinary PhD students. You'd typically have one supervisor from anthropology, and one from your applied subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully there's a subject that really interests you, for which either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtc.ox.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate/degrees/research/doctoral-training-centres&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCL&lt;/a&gt; have a CDT; in that case, they'll have funding for PhD students. But be sure to pick a subject you can be really passionate about: remember, this is going to swallow a big chunk of your life and your energy, and you're going to have to be motivated to work 12+ hours a day for weeks or months at a time on it. So don't pick something that just vaguely interests you, or you'll risk never completing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(disclosure: I supervise inter-disciplinary students in one of the CDTs linked to above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T07:40:28.333" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T07:40:28.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-02T08:21:14.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a professor neither, but a previous grad student who had very loose/inexistent supervision. Here are my thoughts on the subject. I know that loose supervision of PhD students is popular on this site (see the frequently upvoted comment &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21000/10643&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), but I think caution is necessary. PhD students start grad school with various degrees of maturity and supervision should be tailored to every individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear professors, PhD students are your Padawans. That is, they should certainly not have to live in your shadow, but they probably do not fully know how to invest their efforts appropriately. Kindly telling them that, if they wish to pursue an academic career &lt;strong&gt;focusing the efforts&lt;/strong&gt; on a subject is the way to go, is going to be valuable. Let them be free to follow your advice or not, but they'll know what to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the field I guess, but in mine (metrology/biomechanics), the chances of achieving good research worthy of publication in a good journal on your own are &lt;em&gt;practically nonexistent&lt;/em&gt;. Even if they do manage to publish, if it's in several different fields, people will wonder what is their primary field of research, see the discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21888/is-it-bad-for-ones-future-career-prospects-if-the-phd-thesis-topic-is-broad&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying students have to be babysat, they should have to show that they can conduct research independently, that is the point (in my opinion) of pursuing a PhD degree. But if they do so with guidance, they will hopefully be independent &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; attractive for hiring committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it means being able to do the following without the supervisor having to give instructions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see a gap or a boundary in the current knowledge &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;come up with a plan to try to answer/expand it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for/marshal the necessary resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do the experiments appropriately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know where and how to publish the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T12:03:23.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T09:47:56.740" Score="6" ViewCount="11537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student(south Asia) who has recently completed his 4th semester in CS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current CGPA is 3.2 (social science courses in my freshmen year messed it up)  and Major GPA of 3.6. &#xA;I am expecting my CGPA to be around 3.5 by the time I graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have any research experience and I am worried that I might not get into any good program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that How much research experience or publications are required to get into a good PhD program in US? or that How much experience does an average accepted candidate has? Phrased in a different way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of experience should I aim to get by the time I apply to grad school that I get accepted into a good program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not talking Stanford, MIT etc but may be among the top 30-40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15745" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T21:54:54.813" Title="How much research experience or publications are required to get into a good PhD program in USA" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24255" CreationDate="2014-07-02T10:14:33.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually they decide in less than a week after the initial submission. Either rejection or sending it out for review.&#xA;Sometimes they are more busy. For our last submission the decision took 25 days for which the editor apologized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18118" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T10:14:33.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24315" CreationDate="2014-07-02T10:37:52.243" Score="6" ViewCount="993" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done 5 different projects in my undergraduate course and all of them are from different areas/fields. My project work during High school is from a different area still. The reason of working in different fields is that I was trying to figure out what exactly interests me.&#xA;Having found that, I am interested in doing grad school after I finish my bachelors. &#xA;Does the fact that I have done all my research projects in different areas say that I'm not sure what interests me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;:If this is sounding vague, I'll clarify. My major is chemical engineering. I've done projects on Synthesis of nanoparticles, Bionanotechnology-Tissue Engineering, Analysis of a thermodynamic cycle, Microreactors and Reaction Engineering. &#xA;I intend to apply for a program in Bioengineering/Bioprocess Engineering&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastEditorUserId="15098" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T11:06:10.140" LastActivityDate="2020-09-28T05:13:22.670" Title="Does diversity in undergraduate research topics look bad on my graduate school application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-02T13:14:38.663" Score="22" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of a PhD a student should be able to conduct their own research.  To reach this goal it is helpful to reduce the amount of direction given during the course of a PhD.  When the student starts, some defined goals and guidance can allow the student to make rapid progress.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students should make unique contributions and understand a broad range of concepts.  For example, producing a PhD thesis just on one tiny component of an analysis is a bad idea.  Students should be allowed to make mistakes, but be prevented from loosing a large amount of time on bad choices.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Within highly competitive research environments one might have to defend a students work with additional members of staff, since students are typically slower than experienced post-docs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All students are different.  Therefore, the level of guidance needed should be balanced accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The final mark for the PhD should reflect the ability of the student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completely independent research implies that one has to define the project and direction, using knowledge of the field of study.  One needs to read journals and join workshops/conferences to determine what has not been studied and can be studied within a reasonable time frame.  Given this, one then writes software/develops an experiment to measure the chosen parameter(s). (There are many holes that a student can fall into along the way). It is a lot easier to carry out independent research as a post-doc or professor, since one builds up knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their PhD is typically on one topic e.g. particle physics. The independent research should happen within the discipline that is being assessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD theses contain a fraction of a student's work. They do not contain all of the work of a student. &lt;em&gt;For example&lt;/em&gt;, one might build a silicon detector for two years and then spend 1.5 years performing a data analysis. The silicon detector work (even if performed independently) may not end up in the thesis. It is very hard for examiners to assess work that is not in the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From ~13 yrs of supervising particle physics PhD students.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18121" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T00:16:50.567" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T00:16:50.567" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T14:51:05.203" Score="1" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate who has been doing research in a lab since my freshmen year, and I have usually just worked on projects with a PhD student. That being said, as of now I have co-authored two papers (both accepted) with said PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor has entrusted me to do my own research and he is really pushing that we publish a letter as soon as possible on the research I was doing, since no one in our (relatively new) subfield has even touched on this method. The first journal he said was Physical Review Letters (which made my eyes light up). Now though, he is leaning more to Applied Physics Letters or a much more specified journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking to go into a PhD program in physics; should I submit to whatever journal my professor says to? He is very open and I think I could convince him to let me send it to Physical Review Letters but maybe he knows something I don't (like that it would be a waste of time - autorejection). Are there any other physics-based letters for broad and novel physics research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18125" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:09:13.823" Title="How should an undergrad pick a journal to submit to?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24265" CreationDate="2014-07-02T14:52:04.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fomite already gave an excellent general answer, but I may be able to add some specific information if your submission was to one of the IEEE Transactions (rejection from which would put you in fine company). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the Transactions indeed used to publish &quot;Correspondence Items&quot;; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=05410637&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transactions on Signal Processing&lt;/em&gt; Author Guide&lt;/a&gt; dated October 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Correspondence items are short disclosures with a reduced scope or&#xA;  significance that typically describe a use for or magnify the meaning&#xA;  of a single technical point, or provide brief comments on material&#xA;  previously published in the TRANSACTIONS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/periodicals/tsp/tsp-author-info/&quot;&gt;Author Guide&lt;/a&gt;, this category is absent and replaced by the &quot;Comment Correspondence&quot;, which is a different beast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comment Correspondences provide brief comments on material previously&#xA;  published in the TRANSACTIONS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, this is due to the fact that there is now a dedicated journal, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/periodicals/letters/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;IEEE Signal Processing Letters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. However, this has a different scope:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IEEE Signal Processing Letters is a monthly, archival publication&#xA;  designed to provide rapid dissemination of original, cutting-edge&#xA;  ideas and timely, significant contributions in signal, image, speech,&#xA;  language and audio processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in contrast to a Correspondence Item, a &quot;significant contribution&quot; is still required, and that in addition (and in contrast to the Transactions) this needs to be on such a hot topic that by the time the normal reviewing process has finished, there would be significantly less interest in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you did not submit to IEEE, this may still be a useful indication how another discipline handles this type of publication, and underline the fact that there are several different categories of short communications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T16:05:48.513" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T16:05:48.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24316" CreationDate="2014-07-02T15:04:31.013" Score="19" ViewCount="106968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently joined a research group as a postdoc. I wrote the professor an email to ask quick but important questions including asking him when when he wanted me to start. It's been over a week and I haven't received get an answer. Other emails I've sent previously have also gone unanswered for long periods as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that background, my question is: do professors sometimes (intentionally or otherwise) not respond to emails in a timely manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17695" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2015-01-11T02:05:49.907" LastActivityDate="2018-03-30T04:41:00.610" Title="What does it mean if a professor does not answer your email in time?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T15:57:56.240" Score="26" ViewCount="9307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student who has developed a novel new model which according to my PI (principal investigator) will have a high impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PI assigned a grad student to supervise me. Supervision consisted of meeting once a week to update him on my progress so far. Sometimes he would provide certain helpful suggestions(none that are actual innovations just slight fixes/alterations that would improve the model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the course of the year he (the grad student) has become more and more annoying. Unhelpful suggestions/requests, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During our last meeting the grad student made some bold claims on the model developed by me claiming to be an equal author/developer. He made it clear he wanted to get a large amount of credit for the model (co-authorship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that he has done enough meaningful work to deserve credit for the model (although he would be listed in acknowledgements). Knowing his intentions I wish to distance myself from him(including not having him review the paper), as to lower his chance of becoming a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to achieve this in such a way that does not negatively impact my relationship with my PI, as grad schools require reference letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I don't think I have been very clear and for that I apologize. I acknowledge that he has contributed to the work. I also understand that having more authors doesn't reflect badly on me(I didn't even know about the score system). I just have problems with his claims of equal authorship. As we are nearing final results/submissions of paper and he has better relation with the professor he may try to take the first authorship position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional:&lt;/em&gt; By my university guideline policies about co-authorship he has not done enough to deserve even a co-author position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T18:23:38.810" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T15:02:03.757" Title="How to get rid of annoying graduate student &quot;supervisor&quot;" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T16:53:09.220" Score="6" ViewCount="16823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm filling out a form with information about my publications, and one of the fields is &quot;Type of Journal.&quot; I'm not sure what this means, except that SCI and EI are possible values. I'm guessing the former refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Citation_Index&quot;&gt;Science Citation Index&lt;/a&gt;, but I can't find what EI is. It seems this is something they are expecting me to know so I can only assume it is common knowledge among academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the possible types for a journal (if a comprehensive list exists), and most importantly, for any given journal how do I find its type?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T19:03:01.117" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T12:53:57.670" Title="How do I find a journal's type (e.g. SCI, EI)?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T17:44:56.390" Score="17" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Potentially predatory publishers and journals (as listed on Beall’s list &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/10/22/science-target-targeting-your-author-fees/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) are springing up more and more often, but they do not always stick to journals and publishing articles. Some host conferences, workshops, or other events with reputable chairs and directors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publishing agency behind a conference is fishy or believed to be predatory, but the conference it hosts is chaired by reputable names, is it still best to avoid the conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had experience going to a conference or workshop like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18130" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T08:45:29.617" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T08:45:41.090" Title="Is it best to avoid all interactions with disreputable or predatory conferences?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24283" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:09:13.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your professor is not new at advising, he would have the best opinion on the matter since it is surely something he has dealt with before. If you are really unsure about this, express your concern and ask him why he would suggest one over the other, and then make your decision from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, can you get input from the PhD student you are working with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, you may be able to talk to another professor in the same field to get a second opinion on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:09:13.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13353" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:10:19.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it's easier to get into a Master's program from a PhD than into a PhD program from a Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most admissions committees are looking at how your highest level of achievement compares with the level of their program. Unless you are applying to MIT or someplace like that, your PhD &quot;trumps&quot; most Master's programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum GPA for most PhD programs is 3.3. For Master's, usually 3.0 (or lower). You're strongly &quot;qualified.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, you should be very competitive with someone coming into a Master's program from a Bachelor's degree, again, with the possible exception of someone with a 3.8-4.0 from Harvard, Yale, or MIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T23:48:46.667" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:48:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24285" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:12:14.590" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it has been a week, I think it would be acceptable to email them again just saying that you just want to make sure that they did get your email and that you would appreciate their opinion/response/whatever regarding your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors receive &lt;em&gt;tons&lt;/em&gt; of emails daily, and it isn't uncommon for them to miss important ones that get buried in their email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:12:14.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24267" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:16:41.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your school uses any sort of online learning platform (like Moodle), they often (and I know Moodle specifically) do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:16:41.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-02T21:15:19.683" Score="54" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student who has developed a novel new model which according to my PI (principal investigator) will have a high impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My PI assigned a grad student to supervise me. Supervision consisted of meeting once a week to update him on my progress so far. Sometimes he would provide certain helpful suggestions(none that are actual innovations just slight fixes/alterations that would improve the model). (...) Knowing his intentions I wish to distance myself from him(including not having him review the paper), as to lower his chance of becoming a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less great. Much less great. Let me make something clear here: this is not &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; project alone, this is the project of you, your advisor, and the PhD student. The guy has invested a serious amount of time into this project (not as much as you, clearly, but still a significant amount), and now you have unilaterally decided that he is to be cut out when the time comes to publish your results? Likely, this is not to be going over well either with him or the advisor, and for good reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deteriorating professional relationships are never fun, but it is simply not feasible to decide midway through a project that you now would rather not have another researcher on board. If he has already made contributions to the project, and it certainly sounds like he has, it would be unethical to publish without him now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; to make it clear, I am not saying that he should get &lt;em&gt;equal&lt;/em&gt; credit to you. But it certainly sounds like he should get &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very least you need to do is follow user11192's recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is best to meet with your advisor (and possibly the grad student) to discuss an authorship plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding a &quot;sneaky&quot; way to get rid of the grad student before publication time is not particularly ethical, and has a pretty high possibility of backfiring on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T21:21:30.953" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T21:21:30.953" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24306" CreationDate="2014-07-02T21:22:41.263" Score="13" ViewCount="3422" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper is accepted with minor revisions and now is in proof stage. Unfortunately, I have found computational errors in my calculations which have led to some wrong results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18137" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T03:26:53.770" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T03:26:53.770" Title="What to do when you discover computational errors and mistakes in your accepted paper at the proof stage?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24305" CreationDate="2014-07-02T21:40:21.757" Score="4" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a series of discussions about the level of dependency of a research student on his advisor in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24170/how-when-to-become-independent-in-research-as-a-graduate-student&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24264/to-what-extent-should-a-professor-give-students-freedom-to-do-independent-resear&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, a question comes to mind that when the person is graduated and leaves the university; even he is now working independently in a company or he is a faculty member of a university; as far as most of the researches he is going to do may be based on his PhD dissertation;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Until when should this person contact his supervisor about the researches he is doing?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should he ethically acknowledge that his researches is roots of his PhD project under his advisor's supervision?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If, based on his dissertation, he works on a research project; should he talk about it to his supervisor and he should be aware on every single after-PhD project? Just because the base of the publication and research is the PhD dissertation which is done under his supervision?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To put in a nutshell, as a matter of academic ethics, what are exact rights of a supervisor in projects done based on his student's supervision (after graduation of the person)? What are the rights of the university from which the student is graduated?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T23:08:38.107" Title="Advisor's/University's rights in the PhD/MSc alumni's research projects and publications" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-02T21:54:33.723" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks to me like the coauthorship decision is being clouded by the graduate student supervisor's annoying behavior, including his claims of being &quot;an equal author/developer&quot;.  Whether this graduate student should be a coauthor is not a part of the question -- rather the question is how &quot;to get rid of&quot; him.  But based on what you've said I think this is wrong: you do need to consider the case for his coauthorship.  To my mind it rests on two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) He was assigned at the beginning by your PI, whom you say absolutely did supervise you and was crucial in the creation/implementation of the model, and whom you will be including as a coauthor.  Well, part of your PI's supervision was to assign this graduate student to you, whom you met with much more frequently than the PI.  Thus the three of you entered into a collaboration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There seems to be no doubt that the graduate student followed through with the process of supervising you.  You write: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supervision consisted of meeting once a week to update him on my progress so far. Sometimes he would provide certain helpful suggestions (none that are actual innovations just slight fixes/alterations that would improve the model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he met with you regularly -- more regularly than your busy PI.  Regular weekly meetings are amazingly helpful in keeping people on track (especially at the junior level...but also at the senior level, honestly).  He didn't just listen to you but provided helpful suggestions.  And not just suggestions that sounded helpful but some which actually &lt;em&gt;improved the model&lt;/em&gt;.  Thus he made an intellectual contribution to the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confluence of 1) and 2) makes your desire to have the graduate student supervisor not be a coauthor look unreasonable to me.  Coauthorship is a convenant that people enter into: it is an agreement that they will do certain work and as a result be part of the final product.  There is a certain base level of involvement that various professions and journals require for coauthorship: that seems to be safely met here.  Collaborators are also free to impose higher standards, but these standards should be made clear in advance.  It is very uncollegial for you to turn around after work has been done of the form that was specified and try to shut someone out of coauthorship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would say that if someone does what they were asked to do &lt;em&gt;procedurally&lt;/em&gt; for coauthorship but comes up a bit short &lt;em&gt;intellectually&lt;/em&gt; -- i.e., it turns out in retrospect that their contributions are not so valuable or essential to the final paper -- then the decision on whether to withdraw from authorship rests with them and not the other collaborators.  If you feel that someone else didn't pull their intellectual weight, then the time to bring this up is in a discussion of whether the collaboration should continue.  (I should say that most people I know have a very acute sense of &quot;not pulling their intellectual weight&quot;, and it is rather rare to see a math paper with a coauthor who could not point to a theorem or proof in a paper and say &quot;I did this part&quot;.  But other fields may differ.)  This is still a delicate conversation, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you are really trying to say is that you want to be first author.  Based on your description of the work, it sounds reasonable that you would be either first author or co-first author with the PI.  That is a discussion for the three of you to have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to achieve this in such a way that does not negatively impact my relationship with my PI, as grad schools require reference letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, be careful about this.  I am going to guess that the PI will not be pleased at an attempt to cut out his own student from the paper: that is going against the plan for the work that he set up.  Finally: &quot;...as grad schools require reference letters&quot;.  Hmm.  True gratitude is golden, but knowing which side of your bread is buttered has got to be worth something.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T21:54:33.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2014-07-02T22:09:02.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add evidence of a slightly different policy (used by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/guidelines/RefereeGuidelines/sect6.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RSC&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6.0 Suggestions of Alternative Referees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Editor welcomes suggestions of alternative referees competent to deal with particular subject areas. Such suggestions are particularly helpful in cases where referees consider themselves ill-equipped (in terms of specialist knowledge) to deal with a specific paper, and in highly specialized or new areas of research where only a limited number of experts may be available. If, in such a case, the alternative and the original referee work in the same institution, the manuscript may be passed on directly after informing the Editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there's no way around reading the policy of the journal in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, by the way, when my supervisor asks for my opinion about a manuscript (or a part of the manuscript) I assume that he did inform the editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T22:09:02.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="109" CreationDate="2014-07-02T22:18:54.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the question is old, my answer may benefit future readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently started to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://gingkoapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gingko App&lt;/a&gt;. You can hierarchically organize your notes, which are themselves written in card-like units. The possibilities are many, depending on your organizational creativity. For long-form note-taking this is better than mind maps, while providing &lt;del&gt;all&lt;/del&gt; many of the benefits of mind-mapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15953" LastEditorUserId="15953" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T21:40:24.583" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T21:40:24.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:08:29.437" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm confused on why you wouldn't want to have him as a coauthor ? Does it some how diminish the work you did? On the contrary, publishing work with coauthors is not only expected, but essential to survive in academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion? Relax. If you publish as an undergraduate you are already golden. You can get letters from both the PhD student and the PI, glowing letters as you published. It certainly seems like both the PI and the graduate student deserve credit, making them 3rd and 2nd authors respectively seems very reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you go on destroying professional relationships, at least build them up first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:08:29.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24297" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:26:51.833" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently returning now to a thread of work that I started as a PhD student many years ago, but have not had opportunity to work on since then. I will not be including my advisors as authors on the new papers that result, because the work goes beyond anything that we worked on or discussed during that project. So there's no direct overlap there, and thus they have no intellectual investment in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that you would continue to include the advisors if they are actively collaborating with you on the current work that you're publishing—or if the original work that you're publishing was done while you were under their supervision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you do need to cite the previous work that you've done on the topic as part of placing the work in its appropriate context within the larger experience. You should also be notifying your advisors of your recent work because it's the smart thing to do—you should always keep mentors apprised of your ongoing research activities!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:26:51.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24295" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:30:13.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really care about the validity of your data and that it may be used for future research by yourself and others, I would say that it is vital to send the errata to the editor and you will feel better for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will have produced and published an honest piece of empirical research, unlike many shady and incomplete papers out there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You never want to be accused of fudging your numbers by your colleagues/peers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were the editor of this journal, would you like to foster a sense of scholarly pride in your published paper's validity, re-testability etc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will probably have to be re-reviewed, but if you're up front and honest with the editor or copy-editor about the errata, it's unlikely they'll reject the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18052" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:30:13.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24295" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:39:39.443" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your findings and conclusions are unambiguously unaffected, send the results to the editor saying you found an error with the numbers and asking for it be fixed. The editor might be annoyed at the last minute change but they are used to this sort of thing. I don't know what your &quot;paper value&quot; refers to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem pretty worried about this. If this is because you think other people might assume that this difference would, in fact, have affected the findings and the way in which your paper was reviewed? If so, that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an issue. If this is a concern, you should email the academic editor and explain the situation. If things are as you think, there won't be an issue. If the editor disagrees, the paper might be need to be re-reviewed. In any case, it certainly seems best to have this all above board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes in language, like changes in numbers, can have an important impact on a paper. As an author, you have a responsibility to not make substantively important changes to either after the paper has been accepted.  It's your responsibility to not abuse the editorial system.  If you are worried that you might be, you need to talk to your editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T23:39:39.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24297" CreationDate="2014-07-03T00:27:45.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I think... as a mathematician...) such situations are very field-dependent, and context-dependent. If, on one hand, one's advisor is an eminent master in the field, and one has inherited/acquired/learned some amazing riffs from them, then it would be fair to acknowledge this, although co-authorship is essentially ridiculously not called-for. If, on another hand, one's thesis advisor has been no more than a funded drivers'-training instructor, then, no, do not acknowledge them every time you drive to work and do something worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, there are (at least) two things to be distinguished: formal/practical dependency, and genuine scientific dependency. Money and knowledge are often confused in academe, unfortunately. Yet, yes, money and staying alive by being able to buy groceries at the end of the work-day are real things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example resolution of the question: if one's advisor did no more than provide a stipend, and sign papers, then that should be appreciated, and acknowledged, but don't over-interpret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the opposite hand, one's advisor has shaped one's outlook on the whole enterprise, this, too, should be admitted whenever relevant. But that does not entail co-authorship. And one should hope that one's advisor will not be in the state of needing to pump their stats... (Not good to have an advisor who's still in that state, in the first place.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General guideline: be real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T00:27:45.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24295" CreationDate="2014-07-03T00:28:48.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes mistakes happen. Yes, it's a pain to have to deal with this mistake now after the paper was accepted for publication, but it's a good thing that you caught your mistake &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the paper was published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; If you have coauthors, before doing anything, contact your coauthors and explain to them the changes you need to make. &lt;strong&gt;Do this before doing anything else.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should I do? Should I send the errata to editor or copy editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As you mentioned that you are dealing with an IEEE journal, my response here is specific to the IEEE:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the senior editor that you are working with currently. Tell them specifically the changes you want to make and that &quot;the logic of the concluding remarks is still correct and the discrepancies only impact the affected numerical results and the specific conclusions drawn from them,&quot; and that &quot;the other numerical results are correct.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The senior editor will take it from there. Based on my past experience, you &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; need to contact the editor-in-chief about this directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will it affect my paper's value? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but I don't really follow why you think correcting a mistake will affect your paper's value. Correcting a mistake prior to publication is a &lt;em&gt;good thing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will it need to go through another review cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will depend on the steps taken by the senior editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T02:16:49.313" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T02:16:49.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-03T01:51:34.123" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the course of the year he (the grad student) has become more and more annoying. Unhelpful suggestions/requests, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I don't know you personally, I hope you won't mind a candid question.  Is it possible that the graduate student is pointing out correct suggestions based on greater experience that you are stubbornly ignoring?  I've seen this happen several times, especially with bright undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not think that he has done enough meaningful work to deserve credit for the model (although he would be listed in acknowledgements). Knowing his intentions I wish to distance myself from him(including not having him review the paper), as to lower his chance of becoming a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can read from the tone of your question, you appear to trust the PI ... why not go directly to him/her with your concern?  Let the PI decide how to handle it, or, if you're not comfortable with that, why not approach a neutral third-party professor who could understand the work and give &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; a candid assessment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to achieve this in such a way that does not negatively impact my relationship with my PI, as grad schools require reference letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it does not hurt you to have co-authors on a paper, as long as they have actually contributed to the intellectual merit of the work.  However, if, even after impartial third-party assessment, you feel that the work is rightfully yours, fight for it wholeheartedly and directly.  Tell the graduate student and the PI what you think, and insist that you should be the sole author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academia is a place where you have to fight for your ideas, or be trampled by the herd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T01:51:34.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-03T02:05:05.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of a PhD student, independent research involves formulating, researching, and suggesting preliminary solutions to a problem independently of the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect the crowning component of any PhD thesis to be this type of &quot;independent research&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expectation is only within the broadly-interpreted PhD research topic, although I think it's great if students do research outside of their area (in their free time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this work is happening while getting paid as a research assistant and during time that should be rightfully devoted to that assistantship, then I expect to know about the project.  Otherwise, I would like to know about the project or at least that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; another project (and this is the proper etiquette), insomuch as it can affect or stall the student's progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, however, it all comes down to &lt;strong&gt;progress&lt;/strong&gt;.  A student who is progressing normally towards a degree has much more latitude than a student who is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T02:05:05.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T03:49:25.747" Score="6" ViewCount="3972" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student and I am doing a literature review for my dissertation. Despite the fact that I am working on the topic, I am not an expert; but I have enough information because of my previous research during MSc and have a published paper in my CV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submitted an abstract of the review paper for oral presentation in the most important conference about the topic and it was accepted. The review is about the developments and contributions from researches in some countries. Then, I told my advisor and he suggested me not to submit the final paper because he thinks that kind of review paper must be done by experts, not by PhD students (it would seem such as teaching to experts); further he thinks I will spend a lot of time which should be spent on my PhD dissertation. I really want to present the review; however, I do not want to contradict my advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it is convenient to present the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18065" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T08:09:01.687" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T19:12:12.183" Title="Should a phd student try present a review paper in a conference?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-03T04:18:27.117" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research that leads to a publication without the advisor's name on it, following the standard rules of co-authorship in the student's field.  In other words, precisely the same kind of research they should be doing five years after their PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; researcher should limit their research to fields where they have sufficient background, experience, intuition, resources, and maturity to make a real contribution.  Students are no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research by PhD students is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; closely related to their thesis topic, if not directly part of their thesis, but I know of several successful exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, please.  My job as an advisor is to help students become mature, successful, independent researchers.  That's what a PhD &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is significantly easier to do my job when I have all the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T02:59:22.827" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T02:59:22.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24285" CreationDate="2014-07-03T07:18:28.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the problem very well and had to wait very long for an answer. It should not be understood as an impoliteness. Professors get a lot of emails and answering every email can be a lot of work. If they just do not have time and read the email, then they forget often to respond later.  This issue is not specific to academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would first of all not write email, but call him. Another email could also be overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T07:18:28.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24276" CreationDate="2014-07-03T07:29:42.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying out several projects in different areas does not necessarily say that you do not know what interests you. You have to show them that you are interested in several areas and that you wanted to get an insight in order to obtain a wider range of possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that there are few people who immediately find the right area that fully interests them. It is important that you present it that way. Working on different projects brings more extensive experience in any case.&#xA;If you have then found the right area, you can deal with it more intensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastEditorUserId="100642" LastEditDate="2020-09-28T05:13:22.670" LastActivityDate="2020-09-28T05:13:22.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24285" CreationDate="2014-07-03T07:37:53.950" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wrote him an email to ask quick but important questions, like, when do you want me to start. I didn't get an answer even after a week. And similar things happened before as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors are notoriously bad in answering emails. This does not necessarily mean anything. Don't fret about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I want to ask that as a professor, sometimes will you (on purpose) to NOT answer emails in time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a professor, but, no, this is not how I would expect an adult person (in a management position, none the less) to behave. If the professor is indeed having second thoughts about you and decided to just not answer anymore, I would say you dodged a bullet there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I really think that this is unlikely. Just send a polite reminder, or propose to have a quick chat e.g., over Skype, at a time of the professor's convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T07:37:53.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T08:37:54.450" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is a  central or an updated repository of various university publications (like ieee, but a bit more updated). I am using a university network, and I should have access to most of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18148" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T13:56:59.457" Title="Central Publication Repository" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24310" CreationDate="2014-07-03T09:00:00.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two points that can be considered on your question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You work under supervision of your advisor and he is, to some extent, responsible for your progress at this stage of your academic life. If he thinks that the review paper should not be sent by &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, it means that based on his assessments, you are not prepared enough for submitting a review paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it is normal that a PhD student think that he knows many things about his field of research; but his advisor has done many more researches and advised many more students and I think that his assessment about your knowledge is far more precise than your assessment about yourself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the PhD student is like a driver in a car and the professor is like someone in a helicopter, you have driven far distance in your car and feel like you are far away from the other drivers. But the one in the helicopter sees the way, you and other drivers better from the top and he knows that you are still in the middle of the way, not more progressed than the others.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a comment on the type of your paper, you are trying to write a review paper which I also think, as your professor had mentioned, is normal to be published  by some experts in the field. I mean the ones who have worked years in industry, or the professors who have released many publications and supervised few research students. I think that review papers should be written and presented by a more aged person than a research student.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the conference that people aging fifty and sixty are sitting in audience and a 26 or 27 years old PhD student goes and reviews the topic for those experts. I am not saying that the PhD candidate does not know anything about his field of research; but he needs some more years of research and work to become an expert in his research area. It is a little odd to see a PhD student publish a review paper, as he is not an expert in his field.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a PhD student may participate in a review paper which is going to be published in a journal or presented by a professor. But still there needs an expert or a professor to be the main presenter and contributer of the publication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the situation may be a little different from one major to another; and from a research group to another. I think that your supervisor is the best guide for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T20:18:14.283" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T20:18:14.283" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18044" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:03:04.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a student of mine asked me this I would say to write a brief introduction sentence (or paragraph) just before the table and indicate (verbally, as some say) as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following table is based on work from Smith (2012) but does&#xA;  include additional rows. Those additional rows are marked with an asterisk (*).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would simple mark the new rows with an asterisk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to make it very clear what originated with you and what originated with someone else. This does that clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:03:04.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24326" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:38:30.943" Score="5" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that IEEE journal names have prefixes, the most prominent I observed:&#xA;IEEE Transactions on...&#xA;IEEE Reviews in...&#xA;none specific (starting with IEEE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do those prefixes suggest the eminence of journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this is something trivial, but I struggle to find some reliable explanation regarding this issue. Understanding the nuances in the journal naming system would help me better categorize and search journals that suit me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:56:13.010" Title="What do IEEE journal prefixes mean" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24363" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:50:26.593" Score="7" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write a review on a published paper for Mathematical Reviews. The paper proposes a generalization of K-theory. Its main definition is fundamentally problematic. So the rest of the results are worthless. Therefore, I cannot write a brief summary of their results, because it means that I did not understand the mistake. On the other hand, the abstract of the paper is very concise and misleading, so I cannot recommend it as the review to MR either. Besides, I do not want to spend too much time to explain all the mistakes and errors in the paper (it is not my duty as a reviewer!). Therefore I was thinking to write to Mathematical Reviews and let them know about the situation and deny writing any review for this paper. But before doing that, I was wondering if there is a better solution for this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. For those who are not familiar with Mathematical Reviews, I should add that MR asks mathematicians to write brief reviews on papers (book, etc) that are already published and these reviews are available at mathscinet. So, these reviews are different than referee reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2020-06-23T22:07:23.200" LastActivityDate="2020-06-23T22:07:23.200" Title="On writing a review (i.e. summary) for a problematic (published) paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;review-databases&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24323" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:56:13.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I apologize if this is something trivial, but I struggle to find some reliable explanation regarding this issue. Understanding the nuances in the journal naming system would help me better categorize and search journals that suit me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; no reliable way to use the name to conclude about the eminence of a journal. There are some &lt;em&gt;heuristics&lt;/em&gt;, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IEEE Transactions&lt;/strong&gt; are typically supposed to be the flagship journals for a broader field. Quality between different transactions varies, but from the top of my head I cannot think of an IEEE transactions journal that is really bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IEEE magazines&lt;/strong&gt; (IEEE Software, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Computer, etc.) are also mostly very well-respected, but their scope is entirely different. They publish short papers written for a broad audience. They are heavily copy-edited (for instance, the copy editor will typically re-draw all figures in a common style across all papers in an issue), and they tend to have a large impact (because these magazines are circulated very widely). However, due to limited size, they are often scientifically more shallow than transactions papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other&lt;/strong&gt; journals, that fall into neither category, vary in quality and esteem (though they are typically weaker than the relevant transactions in the field). Their scope is typically more narrow than transactions, but the opposite can also be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:56:13.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24325" CreationDate="2014-07-03T11:08:05.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your job as a reviewer is primarily to give a summary of the results to help other researchers find the papers they are interested in; you are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; expected to evaluate the quality of the manuscript. However, there's the following passage in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mresubs/guide-reviewers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guide to reviewers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluative reviews.&lt;/strong&gt; Your review may include a positive or negative&#xA;  evaluation of the item. Critical remarks should be objective, precise,&#xA;  documented and expressed in good taste. Vague criticism offends&#xA;  authors and fails to enlighten the reader. If you conclude that the&#xA;  item duplicates earlier work, you must cite specific references. If&#xA;  you believe there is in error in the item, please describe it&#xA;  precisely in your review and provide evidence validating your claim&#xA;  (e.g., a counterexample, an exact reference which supports your&#xA;  assertion, or an indication where the error arises in the paper). You&#xA;  should bear in mind that the MR Database does not include author&#xA;  responses to critical reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that a critical review, as opposed to a summary, will likely be more work than you seem to think the manuscript is worth. In this case, there's the &quot;nuclear option&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two other treatments of items are possible, but should be used sparingly. You may recommend that the item be listed without a published review, or you may recommend that the author's summary be used as the review. If you decide to recommend one of these options, simply put your request in the Review text box (e.g., &quot;Publish without a review&quot;, or &quot;Use the summary as my review&quot;). However, in most cases, the mathematics community would prefer an insightful review to either of these two treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose &quot;Publish without review&quot;, the paper will be listed as &quot;This item will not be reviewed&quot;. For a regular paper, any seasoned user of MathSciNet will understand this as &quot;do not bother to read&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: This used to be the case; now there's no such remark anymore, but the icon next to the MR number will say &quot;Indexed&quot; instead of &quot;Reviewed&quot; -- less strong of a signal, but a signal nonetheless (especially to people who remember the old remark.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastEditorUserId="13852" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T11:16:05.670" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T11:16:05.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24232" CreationDate="2014-07-03T12:45:04.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I varies with fields and journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals do allows posting preprints on one's webpage, or on a preprint server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some not, but they don't care. (And some academicians do put their papers on their websites, even if it is against rules.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some don't allow and do care, so putting the preprint on your webpage may disqualify you from publishing this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If it fits your discipline, why not using &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/&lt;/a&gt;?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T12:45:04.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24336" CreationDate="2014-07-03T12:46:55.123" Score="1" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the interview excerpt I want to quote include &quot;haha.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it permitted to quote an interview excerpt with 'haha' in a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked because it seems like it is too informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T14:42:08.190" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T07:30:30.047" Title="Is it permitted to quote something with informal language, like an interview excerpt with 'haha', in a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24285" CreationDate="2014-07-03T13:38:57.347" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike other professionals, academic faculty have multiple competing tasks of wildly varying natures and deadlines. Broadly divided, we need to balance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching: Two to four courses a semester with dozens, scores, or hundreds of students; a handful of TFs; and occasional irate deans and parents. One or two or three independent readings with students outside of that. Letters of recommendation. Trying to find internships and grad programs for advisees. Handling postdoc requests. Working with academic review committees. Working with course of study committees. etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Service: Serving on several unrelated college or university committees. Serving on the steering committees of affiliated programs at the university. Having the provost scout you out for a pet committee. Running a search committee. Doing grad admissions. And this is just university service. If you do service work on your national association, then there is considerable committee work there. Not to mention doing peer reviews of journal articles, book manuscripts, grant proposals, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research: And if you can find time after all that, there is your own research. Trying to keep several articles in the pipeline, tracking down an editor to listen to your book proposal, getting around to writing the conference paper you promised, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way some faculty handle the multitasking is by singletasking. They only do postdoc intake work on Friday mornings, for example. Others give up and have a mailbox from hell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, things can easily get lost. While a simple questions such as yours might seem to be simple, it might require the prof to have to e-mail the department chair (who is even more busy than the average prof) for an answer, which then gets lost again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd give it a week and then politely ask again. Use the same e-mail title (or reply-all to your own e-mail) so as to bump the e-mail thread back up to the top of the prof's e-mail queue.  It's important to try to keep e-mail threads together as faculty have limited brain resources and we rely on our e-mail as our offline memory extension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T19:58:13.000" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:58:13.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24267" CreationDate="2014-07-03T14:19:40.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does online quizzing help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. Some references are listed below. Auto-graded quizzes with no points will help motivated students self-regulate their learning.&#xA;Of course, those students are the ones most likely to succeed. If you assign some small points then students who are more likely to postpone studying will develop better habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Google Forms give instant results?&#xA;Well, &lt;strong&gt;quick and easy results&lt;/strong&gt;, but not instant results, using scripts. The K12 education world is more nimble with free LMS options. Many teachers use the script &quot;Flubaroo&quot; to grade the form answers within Sheets, and then the script &quot;Autocrat&quot; to automatically send emails. I'll let you google for the latest blog posts and youtube videos on these scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As best I can tell, you may need to manually trigger the process after each quiz ends. But perhaps that's a good excuse to check student answers and see how they are doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;_&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bälter, O., Enström, E., &amp;amp; Klingenberg, B. (2013). The effect of short formative diagnostic web quizzes with minimal feedback. Computers &amp;amp; Education, 60(1), 234-242.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kenis, R. M. (2011). Effects of Scheduled, Unrecorded Quizzes on Students' Self-regulated Learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olson, B. L., &amp;amp; McDonald, J. L. (2004). Influence of online formative assessment upon student learning in biomedical science courses. Journal of Dental Education, 68(6), 656-659.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T14:19:40.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24332" CreationDate="2014-07-03T15:35:48.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consult with your advisor about conventions in your field.  I think generally, people lightly edit interviews such as these, so if the laughter isn't revelant to what the subject is saying, you can leave it out.  If it is important, you don't have to onomatopoetically transcribe it as &quot;haha.&quot;  You can write &#xA;&quot;[laughter]&quot; or &quot;[interviewee laughs].&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T15:35:48.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24371" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:17:28.227" Score="2" ViewCount="18614" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you give me some suggestion on how to write an impressive about me section in my cv?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I'm supposed to give relevant information (I'm a scientist, by the way) which is not directly covered by my academic background and career, but basically I don't have a clue about what to include (for example, should I add the description of some traits of my personality?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm particularly thinking about some sections of the second page of this one www.teemeurope.eu/documents/europeanCVformat.doc namely PERSONAL SKILLS AND COMPETENCES and OTHER SKILLS AND COMPETENCES and the linkedin profile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" OwnerDisplayName="user10024" LastEditorUserId="14115" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T09:19:00.537" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:19:00.537" Title="What to write in an impressive about me section" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-03T16:13:25.493" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to keep in mind, Academia involves politics and some things cost you little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your PI wants his grad students to do well too. &#xA;That means getting their names on research papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if he's annoying, you said yourself: he's contributed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's 2 other names following yours then that's fine. &#xA;3 or less names on your paper doesn't hurt you in any way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting published as an undergrad is already great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only concern as the person who did the majority of the work is that your name come first. That's it. First name in the list is what you want. That is your one and only goal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes your PI happy to give a little boost to the career of one of his grad students that is perfectly reasonable (also, other people you'll want him to recommend you to will want to know you're easy to work with and willing to play the game of politics because they're all doing the same). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16078" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T16:13:25.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24342" CreationDate="2014-07-03T17:42:25.767" Score="3" ViewCount="2086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to hand in the thesis to my supervisor, but I could neither find him in the faculty nor contact him, but I know his house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to hand in a thesis by visiting my supervisor's house?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:02:06.460" Title="Is it advisable to hand in a thesis by visiting my supervisor's house?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-03T17:43:39.670" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is copyright infringement, or intellectual theft then get a lawyer. At least call one, consultation is generally free. In fact, the lawyer will know more than the school as to how to proceed here anyway... Good luck.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18169" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T17:43:39.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-03T17:48:50.367" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't find it okay if someone would come to my house because of that. Work and personal life should be separate and it would be inappropriate to visit the supervisor there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does he not have an office? If nobody can tell you where to find him, then you should call him or write an email and ask for an appointment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T17:48:50.367" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24347" CreationDate="2014-07-03T20:23:41.513" Score="22" ViewCount="13489" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even after having proofread my thesis many times, I think asking another person to proofread it before submission is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it considered cheating to ask a friend or tutor to proofread your thesis before submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T23:37:27.743" Title="Is it considered cheating to ask a friend or tutor to proofread your thesis before submission?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-03T20:24:39.273" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine why it would be cheating: So long as you're producing the majority of the content, it wouldn't be cheating to have someone check for the problems that are now invisible to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1165" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T20:24:39.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24310" CreationDate="2014-07-03T20:32:00.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the contribution of your paper going to be? It's a review paper, so you're not going to be contributing any new techniques or results. You say you're not an expert so you're not likely to make any deep connections between different areas of the field or between your field and other areas of study or present any great insights about why things are the way they are, where the field has come from, how it got where it is and where it's going to go next. So what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the contribution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual deal with a conference talk is that you stand up and tell people about &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work. They want to listen because they don't know about what you did and you understand it better than they do. What you're proposing is that you stand up and tell them about &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; work. They already know what they did and you're not an expert on it, so they (at least, some of them) understand it better than you. Why do they want to listen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main motivation seems to be to score &quot;CV points&quot; by presenting at the conference. That could easily be nullified by giving yourself a reputation for not doing research and giving superficial talks with nothing much new in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T20:32:00.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-03T21:37:50.673" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely not. In fact, I wish more students in my department would do this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T21:37:50.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-03T21:39:57.463" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a faculty member, I value my privacy. Home is home and work is work. Unless I suggest this myself, I would be displeased by a student coming to my house unannounced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T21:39:57.463" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24364" CreationDate="2014-07-03T21:55:39.020" Score="1" ViewCount="2695" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a 2nd year student writing a request to volunteer as a research assistant to a professor. From what I've read, attaching a transcript to the introductory email is a good idea. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ugr.ue.ucsc.edu/email_examples&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virginia.edu/cue/urn/how-to-successfully-e-mail-professors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm considering not including it as my 1st year marks were pretty terrible. My 2nd year went well, but I suspect my 1st year might give a bad impression and disqualify me for many professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, which (if any) are a good idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include the transcript, don't mention anything in the email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include the transcript, explain reason for bad marks in the email.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't include the transcript. Mention good GPA received this semester. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't mention the transcript.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15756" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T05:45:08.870" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T05:45:08.870" Title="Applying for undergraduate research - include transcript with bad 1st year GPA?" Tags="&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-03T22:16:26.170" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. The purpose of your thesis review is not to test your ability to use a word processor or to compose text in a social vacuum. It is a test of your ability to conduct research and communicate those findings to others. Treat it like you would treat any publication, and get feedback from your peers in order to make it as good as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9669" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T22:16:26.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-03T22:17:54.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is normal practice in the UK to have your thesis read by your supervisor and, probably, others. However, you should check the rules for your own institute as they may vary on what exactly is permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T22:17:54.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-03T22:27:23.900" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, not at all!&lt;/strong&gt; Every writer needs readers, and the purpose of those readers is, as already mentioned, to find the errors, typos, and unclear sections that are now invisible to the writer who has seen the manuscript a thousand times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if your friend or tutor is actually providing content for you, and you are not acknowledging their contribution, then that &lt;strong&gt;IS&lt;/strong&gt; cheating. When you ask someone to read for you, be sure to tell them exactly why you need another set of eyes on the manuscript. I usually ask my friend (or supervisor, if willing) to simply flag all typos and mark the margin where a paragraph is less than clear to them. I can usually figure out what is wrong without having them actually give me any content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that writing--at least good writing!-- is usually not a solo effort, and I am always indebted to at least one person for taking the time to read my manuscript and flag the problem spots for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T21:13:52.980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T21:13:52.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24356" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T23:14:08.680" Score="2" ViewCount="2491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that college mathematics typically start at Calculus I (Differential Calculus) and then Calculus II (Integral Calculus). Then after Calc II, it starts to branch off a little. One option after the first two semesters of Calculus is Calculus III (Vector/Multivariable Calculus). Another option is Linear Algebra, and then the next course is Differential Equations. I know that other, more advanced math topics exist like Number Theory/Abstract Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, Partial Differential Equations, Geometry Topics and Topology. I was wondering what order the above mentioned math topics go in and what their prerequisites typically are. If anyone can provide me with a flow chart, then that would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18174" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T17:32:56.283" Title="What is the typical flow chart for college mathematics courses?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24351" CreationDate="2014-07-03T23:49:08.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say a mixture of points 2 and 3. It's always good to be honest with your colleagues and especially a potential supervisor. We've all messed up some grades along the line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you include the transcript, mention your relatively good GPA this semester and outline very briefly the reasons how you've improved dramatically compared to last semester I think you'll sound professional as well as eager. Professor's love students who surprise them with their performance and growth, so play up your adaptability, resourcefulness and hunger for results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also as a previous commenter said, send the email and then seek them out in person, put a face to the name and start a good impression from the outset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18052" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T23:49:08.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24356" CreationDate="2014-07-04T02:25:04.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heavily depends on the university. For Germany, Calculus is already covered in high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since you are probably not going to study in Germany, your mileage might vary. I would suggest looking for specific programs at universities you are interested in - there you will be able to see the exact courses offered (as well as the different concentration, e.g. pure mathematics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.utpa.edu/utpa_main/daa_home/cosm_home/math_home/math_undergraduate/under_degrees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This would be a good example.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On there, you can find road maps for the general undergraduate degree in Mathematics (for many different concentrations). Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15339" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T17:32:56.283" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T17:32:56.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-04T02:39:56.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have myself handed in a thesis by visiting a professor's house. But I had contacted him beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to answer -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it really urgent to hand in thesis now? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;code&gt;no&lt;/code&gt;, don't bother with going to house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T02:39:56.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-04T02:56:56.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you know your advisor is at home? What if he is on vacation? What if he is out of country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose to hand in your thesis is to let him read it and review it? right? If he is not home, how do you know he will get your thesis and read/review it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to find his whereabout first. Then contact him and ask him how and where to deliver your thesis. If he tells you to hand in the thesis to his house, do so. If he wants to get it at his office, do so. It's your responsibility to make sure he gets the thesis and read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T02:56:56.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24325" CreationDate="2014-07-04T05:31:27.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your review should do three things (not necessarily in this order). It should tell the reader what the topic of the paper is, perhaps including the authors' main &quot;theorem&quot;. (This presupposes that the paper is clear enough to have a topic; I've reviewed garbage that didn't have a discernible topic, but I gather from your question that this is not the case here.) It should make it clear that you think it's wrong. And it should give enough information about the error to allow people in the same area to understand why you think it's wrong. (Once you've explained the essential error, it's not necessary to list a lot of other errors, unless you think that doing so would help the reader or make it clearer that the paper is wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is especially important to indicate accurately just how bad the paper is.  For example, is it nonsense, or is it just wrong, or does it give a possibly correct theorem but with inadequate or erroneous proof?  You can save potential readers of the paper a lot of trouble by making the situation clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T05:31:27.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24351" CreationDate="2014-07-04T05:42:53.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons I want to see a transcript when I take on research assistants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to know what relevant classes they have taken, and how they did in those classes. This (hopefully) tells me something about what kind of basic knowledge I can expect them to have in my subject area, which in turn helps me evaluate whether I have a project that is well-suited for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't want to hire a student that is struggling with their coursework, because a research position is very demanding in terms of time and attention. A student who is currently barely passing classes should be focusing on that, not taking on a new major responsibilities. (My university has a minimum GPA requirement for student research assistants for this reason.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely include your transcript with your email. Don't explain the reason for the bad grades straight off - why draw attention to the negative? But ideally, you should be able to say something like &quot;I took 'Highly Relevant Course' this spring and it made me really interested in pursuing research in this area&quot;, where 'Highly Relevant Course' is something you've done well in, that is directly related to the professor's research. The idea is to show that you have basic knowledge in the relevant area, and you're also not currently struggling to pass your courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T05:42:53.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24356" CreationDate="2014-07-04T06:12:31.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends heavily on the student and his/her interests. You will need almost all of these courses, but it's a bit murky after linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and differential equations. Did you learn proofs in any of those courses? If not, then maybe a proofs course. This all depends on the department that you're in and how they arrange how they teach mathematical maturity and theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you asked for a flow chart, I can give you an example of one department's flow chart for their courses. Hopefully this can give you an idea: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uga.edu/~curr/prereqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.math.uga.edu/~curr/prereqs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the numbers all mean can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulletin.uga.edu/CoursesHome.aspx?Prefix=MATH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bulletin.uga.edu/CoursesHome.aspx?Prefix=MATH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this gives an example of what one department's &quot;flow chart&quot; looks like. You can clearly see there's a lot of choices to take and a huge 'choose-your-own-adventure' part to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T06:12:31.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-04T07:23:21.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on from a comment by the OP that this supervisor has refused to give his supervisees his personal contact details, I think it's important to say very strongly that &lt;strong&gt;no, in this case it is entirely inappropriate to go to the supervisor's house&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To even ask it is creepy and weird. If a student actually did this, after I'd refused to give out my personal contact details, I'd be talking to the university administration office; and, depending on their advice and whether or not this had happened before with this student, the police might get involved too. Based on previous experiences, when a student with this sort of serious boundary problem starts creating these sorts of issues, it's important to act decisively and quickly to close things down before they escalate into really serious problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So no, don't go round to your supervisor's house, given that they've already refused to give you their personal contact details. To do so would be creepy and weird.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the department administrator how you should hand in your thesis to your supervisor: they will either take it on their behalf, or point you at a suitable location to leave it, or provide other guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T07:38:19.780" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T07:38:19.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24332" CreationDate="2014-07-04T07:30:30.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is permitted to do whatever is necessary to get the information across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T07:30:30.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23774" CreationDate="2014-07-04T08:28:07.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic answer is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Yes, but. . . .&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A master's degree is usually the minimum prerequisite for admission to PhD programs in Germany. However, many faculties within various German universities have established &quot;qualification&quot; procedures for degrees they do not believe to be &quot;equivalent&quot; to their own. This usually includes some combination of coursework (with the associated exams), plus evaluation of the master's thesis to show equivalency to the expected degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These criteria are often applied not only to international students, but to students from German &lt;em&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/em&gt; as well. However, these policies vary widely between universities, and between different departments at the same universities, so you should contact the specific programs you're interested for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T08:28:07.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24340" CreationDate="2014-07-04T09:02:06.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned previously in comments, this answer really depends on the culture of where in the world you are. Within my country, South Africa, I am positive that none of my professors would mind in the slightest if I tracked him down at his home for any query at all. I'd say he would invite me in for coffee while we discussed the issue at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are exceptions to any rule. There are probably some professors in my institution that would indeed take offence. It could also depend to some small degree on the professor's specific attitude towards the student in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about an environment where the amount of students any single professor would supervise is small enough that he would know each student personally at least to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To recap, in my institution I would and have tracked professors down at their homes if I have any queries, even if the reason is not considered particularly urgent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4294" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:02:06.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24337" CreationDate="2014-07-04T09:08:26.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like what you are being asked for here is sort of a hybrid between an academic and conventional CV. I dislike this sort of form filling CV but if its what you've got to do...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal skills and similar sections generally are looking for your soft/transferable skills. Good communications, team-working etc. Try and not just state these but add some qualification e.g I'm good team working which I have developed/demonstrated during whatever project or competition or something. It's very easy to say you have some skill but far more convincing if you can demonstrate it. Similarly be prepared to defend anything you say in an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an academic CV you should focus more on your publications and academic work etc. and keep your personal skills section fairly short. When given silly form type CVs to complete don't feel obliged to complete all the sections. I would definitely just remove the Artistic skills section if I was doing this (I have none!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a similar template which also has some basic instructions and an example (admittedly non-scientific) &lt;a href=&quot;http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/documents/curriculum-vitae/templates-instructions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/documents/curriculum-vitae/templates-instructions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For advice on writing actual academic CVs see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Academic-CV-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Academic-CV-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:08:26.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24376" CreationDate="2014-07-04T09:23:48.110" Score="32" ViewCount="1863" Body="&lt;p&gt;After joining a research group, I discovered my colleagues are always lowly motivated. They play card games and online games, and they listen to songs with the loudspeakers on all the time. They never discuss research-related things, and the only time they open a spreadsheet is to calculate some kinds of points in online games. This all happens in office hours in the laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expected my colleagues would be happy to discuss with me about research problems, but it turns out nobody is willing to do this except my supervisor and some of the post-docs. They just focus on their entertainment. I do not know why they want to do a PhD; maybe they just want to delay their entry into the job market. However I really want to be trained as a good researcher and I am serious about my PhD. I cannot stay motivated all the time because their attitudes seem to gradually be affecting me, and the atmosphere is simply full of laziness. I can notice myself sometimes lowering my standard in research work now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor seems ok with it and does not get angry at their slow and boring progress. My research interest matches quite well with my supervisor's, and I do not want to change my supervisor just because of those lowly motivated students. How can I still be motivated in a lowly motivated environment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14682" LastEditorUserId="67896" LastEditDate="2018-11-29T11:09:52.893" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T11:09:52.893" Title="How to stay motivated in a group with low motivation?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;group-dynamics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24372" CreationDate="2014-07-04T10:03:53.747" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flee or fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flee is obvious. Fight means focusing on your goals and finding something rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've experienced low motivation, I am at this precise moment suffering high temperatures and lots of noise, the work environment is very important and it will have a toll in your productivity (and your career) if it is not the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, either you leave to a better place (if possible, that depends on several factors) or if you decide to stay then you need to compensate from that toxic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read some time ago a blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bemmu.com/hack-your-motivation&quot;&gt;hack your motivation&lt;/a&gt;, which could be useful. In general what I find most motivating is keeping track of my progress, on a daily or even hourly basis, either writing a section of a paper, running/conducting an experiment, programming some class or complex method, or anything else. Anything that gives you the feeling of making some progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's probably why your colleagues are wasting their time, games provide some fictional reward, some fictional and imaginary sense of achievement, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/trylks/blog/some-psychology-behind-achievements/42573/&quot;&gt;games are like porn&lt;/a&gt; in that sense (no real sex, only fiction and imagination). What I mean, in short is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&quot;&gt;gamify&lt;/a&gt; your research. You all will be playing games, but you will be playing the right one (assuming you do the gamification right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site is a good example of gamification. I have 2093 points already! I would feel less sick with some A/C, though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have to ponder are your chances in this flee or fight scenario. I can't tell you whether you will have more success running to a less toxic environment or reducing the toxicity for you. It depends on the opportunities that you can find to &lt;em&gt;flee&lt;/em&gt; and how strong is your motivation and gamification to &lt;em&gt;fight&lt;/em&gt; toxicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your decision and yours alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T10:03:53.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T10:23:42.927" Score="-2" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been offered a PhD position in Cultural Geography at one of University of London's Geography departments. Unfortunately, I missed out on funding for a start in 2014 so I will not be capable of kicking off. I already have a MA in the field of media studies, but this is potentially too distant to the field of my PhD intentions to receive funding. I was advised by my future supervisor to self-fund a Masters in the field of Cultural Geography, to enhance chances of ESRC funding for 2015. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my financial capacities are very limited at the moment, are there any other ways of increasing funding chances during the upcoming year instead of pursuing such MA degree? I will soon be co-publishing my first article in a highly relevant journal but am afraid this would not suffice without the relevant MA degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18185" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T21:34:31.653" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T21:34:31.653" Title="How to increase PhD funding chances when MA is in a different field?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24372" CreationDate="2014-07-04T10:35:50.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let' start with the obvious: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They play card games, computer online games&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is none of your business what they do on their PC, if they do not scream, yell or make noise. But even then, noise is also encountered on all working environments (even 2 students arguing about their research is enough to make another student not able to work). So, bring your headphones and shut them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...listen to songs with the loudspeakers on all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that bothers you, you must ask them (ask not tell) to stop. You have the right to not wanting to listen to their music. If they lower the volume, this is also a logical compromise. Again, bringing your headphones might help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not know why they want to do a PhD, maybe they just want to delay&#xA;  the time joining the job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably they do not either. Still, it is not your business nor you are their supervisor to judge their performance. You must only be interested in YOUR performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My supervisor seems ok with it and does not get angry at their slow&#xA;  and boring progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it is not your business what your supervisor does with his other students. Focus on yourself and your research problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should realize that in any job (in or outside academia), not all people show the same dedication or have the same motivation towards their work. Some are slow unintentionally, others slack and many will just do the bare minimum not to get fired. Of course there are also many other who do their best, in order to be the  best at what they do. It is always a matter of choice (and abilities) and people have different degrees of motivation and dedication. Again, you should not let others dictate what you do with your life or PHD and always imitate / get influenced by those that you look up to (hard working people) and not people you do not want to be like (like your PHD co-students). So, it is not clear why those playing games on their PC, influence how you do your work. On the other hand, if your working environment is notoriously bad, consider to:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work some days per week from home if that is possible with your research and your supervisor is OK with that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Come at office hours, where it is less crowded (e.g. earlier than other students)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there another shared office which you can use? Ask your supervisor about that but do it in a discrete way not to alienate yourself with the other co-students on a personal level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T10:35:50.173" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24380" CreationDate="2014-07-04T11:29:35.450" Score="7" ViewCount="3097" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my thesis, I have five chapters, each of which includes sections and subsections. Each of the five chapters has an introduction and conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should chapter introductions and conclusions be included in the table of contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, should they be formatted as a first heading, like that of the APA style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18186" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T11:56:21.610" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T12:38:52.570" Title="Should chapter introduction and conclusion be included in the table of contents?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24377" CreationDate="2014-07-04T11:55:56.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;em&gt;Introduction&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt; are core parts that need to be included in a ToC. Note that it is not necessary that the chapters have these titles although in the vast majority of cases they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Introduction&lt;/em&gt; sets the perspective for the chapter and the &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt; summarizes the important conclusions reached in the discussion. Hopefully the &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt; tie in with the perspective(s) set in the &lt;em&gt;Introduction&lt;/em&gt; since they constitute the head and tail of the chapter and the partial conclusions reached therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cap off, if you have a heading within the main part of the thesis it should be in the ToC and this includes &lt;em&gt;Introduction&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt;. In the case of a chapter, it may be worth providing a more meaty, descriptive title for the introduction that ties in with the theme of the chapter. This is in my opinion less so concerning conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T12:38:52.570" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T12:38:52.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24377" CreationDate="2014-07-04T11:59:07.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The overriding response here has to be &quot;consult your supervisor, or any documentation that you university says on how they want things to be formatted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if neither of those gives useful information, I would simply include them if you are including other headings at the same level. So if each chapter has multiple sections of which the introduction and conclusions are examples, I would format them the same as other sections and include all of the sections in the ToC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T11:59:07.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24386" CreationDate="2014-07-04T12:13:14.417" Score="4" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the table of contents of a thesis include beyond heading level 3?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is a rule specifying this issue either in MLA or APA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18186" LastEditorUserId="18186" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T13:58:43.720" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T22:12:12.950" Title="Should the table of contents of a thesis include beyond heading level 3?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24382" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:46:37.683" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T13:46:37.683" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T13:46:37.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24383" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:46:37.683" Score="0" Body="Technical aspects, ethics, and accepted norms or standards related to designing, conducting, or reporting research. Also, questions on teaching research design. " OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T14:28:02.040" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T14:28:02.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24375" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:52:03.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your future supervisor has almost certainly already given you the advice that is most likely to be successful: self-fund a relevant Masters. However, in your position, it sounds like that's not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other options, and you could try one or more of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue publishing good research articles in your target field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/24270/96&quot;&gt;Go inter-disciplinary into a well-funded area&lt;/a&gt;; as I wrote in an answer to another question, find a multi-disciplinary centre for doctoral training, where you can better apply the knowledge and skills you've already got.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick a funded university where the battle for funding would be less competitive. The University of London is a peculiar beast, which contains some very highly-rated, competitive universities, and some less so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a think about those, and discuss with your potential future supervisor. They'll be in a far better position than I am, and possibly in a better position than anyone else here, to assess your options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T13:52:03.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24317" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:56:59.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not Quite an Outsider has given the definitive answer in a comment. But answers belong as answers, not as comments, so I'll reproduce it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, not really.&quot; Consult your librarian for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single definitive store. There are several authoritative stores, and then a few that are broader but contain a lot of junk too, like Google Scholar. Part of being a post-graduate researcher is acquiring (if you haven't already), these skills &amp;amp; knowledge of the whens, wheres, whats, whys, and hows of search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with your supervisors and fellow students to develop your own search skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And talk to your librarians&lt;/strong&gt;. Seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T13:56:59.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24381" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:59:00.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, tables of content shouldn't span more than two pages, otherwise they lose their utility of being a quick guide to the structure of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good keyword index at the rear of the document can handle many of the issues in their stead. That is, if you want people to be able to quickly see where you described the laser engraving process, then &quot;laser engraving&quot; can have a keyword in the index. Or if you make an argument against Talcott Parson's sick role, similarly you can note both &quot;Talcott Parsons&quot; and &quot;sick role&quot; at the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note: I do encourage my grad students to CREATE extremely detailed tables of contents that lay out their entire argument. This helps them write their dissertations as it gives a roadmap and structure. But when it comes time to submit their thesis to the university, or revise for publication, they should strip their table of contents back down to a minimum of one or two levels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T13:59:00.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24588" CreationDate="2014-07-04T14:37:14.657" Score="0" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my Bachelor's degree in Business and Marketing and my Master's degree in Computer and information Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year I have applied to 3 different universities in Germany for taking another Master degree in Computer Science and have been told that my bachelor's degree does not correspond to the one I am applying and have been rejected for those 3 universities with the same reason&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next year I am planning to apply for PHD program and would like to have advise from experts, some people say there are specific PHD programs which require both Business and Computer Science degrees. I was wondering if anyone could give some resources where I could find best matching universities for my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18192" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:56:42.717" Title="What PHD program to choose if my bachelor degree is in Business and Master degree in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:02:03.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing the paper now, make a preliminary draft and send it out to all of them. In the draft, put yourself as first author, add the phd guy as second and the PI as senior author. If at one point the phd guy thinks he should be first author, you can ask why he thinks he deserves it (do that in front of the pi). Then tell him that you respectfully disagree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of things happen but as long as your, rightfully so, first author, everything is ok. I heard of people being removed from author lists even when they had done the majority of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T15:02:03.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:07:36.710" Score="20" ViewCount="1560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really enjoyed my research but it happens that whenever I tell somebody about it, I have the impression I'm making it sound boring, unimportant and not exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Americans have a way of telling a story, I know this kind of &quot;performance&quot; does not suit my habit. I'm more the continental European, a bit reserved, a bit technical. Not everything I did immediately is about curing cancer, I admit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started by adapting a kind of top-down approach, first I say &quot;Simulations&quot;, usually people feel they can relate to that. And if they wish to know more, then I can start going into some details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this approach makes sense, but still, I find others can induce interest by the other person immediately from the start of their explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: &lt;strong&gt;How can I communicate my research to a general audience in a way that is more exciting and interesting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6139" LastEditorUserId="4018" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T19:45:18.357" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T19:45:18.357" Title="How do I communicate my research with a general audience more effectively?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;projects&gt;&lt;research-dissemination&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24390" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:53:22.660" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try lots of different things. You've tried one thing, and it hasn't worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat it like any other kind of experimental research. Try new things, monitor the results, adjust your approach accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things that can work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;use specific examples&lt;/strong&gt;: identify a very specific problem that they can understand, and show how you're trying to address that problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;use analogy and metaphor&lt;/strong&gt;: find out something about what interests them, and draw parallels between that and what you're doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;be passionate&lt;/strong&gt;: talk about the aspects of your work that you really care about, and why you are passionate about them; even if they don't understand the words, they'll understand your emotions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T15:53:22.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24392" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:55:10.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A digital object identifier (DOI) is a character string (a &quot;digital identifier&quot;) used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the DOI code of a paper, in Linux environment, you can retrieve its BibTeX through the API with this command: &lt;code&gt;curl -LH &quot;Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex&quot; http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/pr100594k&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="28699" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T15:54:39.140" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T15:54:39.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24393" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:55:10.463" Score="0" Body="Questions in relation to doi (digital object identifier)." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T01:42:42.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T01:42:42.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24390" CreationDate="2014-07-04T16:15:50.703" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the real problem is that you're not describing your research &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt;, and at the &lt;em&gt;appropriate level&lt;/em&gt; for the person you're talking to. This is a skill that definitely takes practice to get good at. You'll know you're doing it right when the other person asks good questions; that's proof that they are engaged. So I suspect if you focus on being clear and getting the level of explanation right, you'll end up making the research sound more interesting without even trying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take advantage of every opportunity I can to explain it to adults and children, academics and non-academics, and so on. I've definitely improved with this practice. The number one mistake I (and probably most people) tend to make is to explain at too high a level. I always have this fear that I'm going to insult the other person's intelligence by explaining things too simply. But that doesn't happen. If the other person does want more detail, they'll ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is that you're trying to sound professional when you explain your research, and that's inhibiting your natural style. But it's perfectly OK to sound like an excited kid in this situation, if that's how you feel. A lot of well-respected academics sound like kids when they start talking about something they're interested in, because they do feel passionate about it, and that makes the audience more interested too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T16:15:50.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T16:33:50.097" Score="26" ViewCount="3746" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been mentioned before on this site &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers&quot;&gt;how important it is to have a webpage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most academics don't have a lot of experience with web development, and do not realistically have time to learn it &lt;em&gt;and keep the knowledge up to date&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good ways/tools to create and &lt;em&gt;maintain&lt;/em&gt; a professional website when the priority is &lt;em&gt;minimizing long term maintenance burden&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that it's not uncommon that people will put in the effort to build a very nice website once, but they simply won't be able to maintain it long term.  Either it's too much effort to add new content (too busy to do it), or they change institutions and it's too much effort to migrate the site (because e.g. the new institution's hosting doesn't support some of the necessary tools, such as PHP, etc.)  Even if I put in the effort to learn a bit about web development today, I won't be using this knowledge contiually, so I'll forget how to do it.  At that point it might become too much of a burden to keep a website up to date, so eventually I'll neglect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is about how to avoid this situation, and what tools or hosting methods to use to minimize maintenance burden so a home page can realistically be kept up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution seems to be to only use basic (static) hand-written HTML and maybe a simple CSS stylesheet.  Many (most) academics are doing this.  The result will probably not be very beautiful and will look like webpages 15 years ago, but it can serve the purpose.  Are there any better ways?  (Typing all that &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;pre&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;ul&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; in fact still rather tedious and error prone compared e.g. to writing MarkDown here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11907" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T11:43:08.683" Title="Academic home page with low maintenance burden" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="16" ClosedDate="2014-07-05T15:19:41.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2014-07-04T16:56:57.513" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing that needs frequent updating is your bibliography. Some people don't try to maintain a bibliography list; instead they put a link to their DBLP search results. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/h/Holland:John_H=.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/h/Holland:John_H=.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not show extremely recent publications, but it may be more accurate than one you maintain manually and forget to update!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to link to a Google Scholar search. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wfAPzPQAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wfAPzPQAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the bibliography, I don't think there are any requirements that are specific to academia. There are so many options for creating and maintaining websites. Which one is right for you depends on how computer-literate you are, among other things, and would really be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1016/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-boat-or-not&quot;&gt;boat programming question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To avoid dealing with the HTML directly, there are the usual suspects: Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;hand-built&quot; website doesn't have to look old-fashioned. If you decide  to go this route, you can find some attractive, free templates here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oswd.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.oswd.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If you have a GitHub account, you can create a website for it using &lt;a href=&quot;https://pages.github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub Pages&lt;/a&gt;. You can write your pages using markdown (there are other options as well), and you can have your own custom domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:50:17.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T23:18:25.617" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2014-07-04T17:51:39.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really not that hard to analyse the options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Self-managed page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly don't want PHP or anything server-side here, probably your university (institute or whatever) will provide you some web space that you &lt;em&gt;&quot;should&quot;&lt;/em&gt; use and it's not going to run anything as fancy as PHP (let alone Python or Java). Which means that you have either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. some HTML with Javascript, possibly parsing BibTex files, should be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. some script/program that generates the static web pages (and possibly updates them via FTP) and here you can program in whatever you want and do really cool things like updating your CV in PDF using LaTeX at the same time. But it's going to take a while to program it, unless you find it already done or you find someone else to do it (paying helps in finding, usually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is client-side, nothing on the server, no different reasonable options in this regard...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Linked page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really worried about maintenance time then you can link to another page from the static HTML page, it may be updated automatically, which is great. Options are dblp and google scholar, among others. (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/18581060/walter-c-willett&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maintenance is zero, so there isn't anything more to reduce. This option works with static HTML with no Javascript, as opposed to the previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Third party managed page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to use that webspace provided by your organization, if you don't ever want to see any of the ugly HTML code, make design decisions with CSS, etc. and you don't want to do anything that even slightly resembles to programming but still have a nice webpage with your personal information, publications, etc. then let the professionals do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several portals that can offer such a thing. Research Gate is the first one that comes to my mind, but I think LinkedIn provides a reasonably good page for academics and sure more people will be able to provide more examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And that's pretty much it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all would like to have robots that do everything for us, but the closest to that is option 2, with the robots that crawl the web and index the publications for their authors. Beware, though, that they may fail at finding some of the publications (specially when moving between institutions, and publishing with disjoint sets of authors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T17:51:39.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24405" CreationDate="2014-07-04T18:31:58.123" Score="6" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been general discussion of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/can-i-reuse-part-of-a-paper-for-my-thesis&quot;&gt;whether one can use a published work in their dissertation&lt;/a&gt;, with the consensus being 'of course'! The first two chapters of my thesis will be published works. I'm interested in the reverse now; I intend to write the third chapter of my thesis as a draft of sorts for a publication. Now I'm wondering whether including text and figures from my dissertation in a [future] manuscript constitutes 'self-plagarism'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fellow graduate student advised me that it's only 'self-plagarism' if I formally copyright my thesis, however, I'm skeptical of that being the important distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:03:29.937" Title="Can I use text from my dissertation in a manuscript?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24400" CreationDate="2014-07-04T18:55:13.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general this is OK or, in some fields, even recommended. It does not make any difference if the dissertation comes first and then the publication or vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would reference the thesis/paper(something along the line: this paper was part of my dissertation ... or this chapter was published as ...) and you should talk to someone (your supervisor? the postgrad coordinator?) in your department about that. There might be some rules regarding that practice (I never heard of anything like that but just to be on the safe side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw: Self-plagarism has nothing to do with copyright violations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T18:55:13.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T18:58:06.963" Score="8" ViewCount="1630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math major who will be a senior next year and hope to graduate a semester early for financial reasons. During my semester off, I plan to continue my (mostly trivial) research in algebra and independently work through three graduate level texts. However, I am going to apply to grad schools for pure mathematics in the fall and worry this may ultimately hurt my graduate school applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this have a negative effect on my math grad school applications? How can I best communicate that I will not slack off in the spring semester, but will continue working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18200" LastEditorUserId="18200" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T19:15:26.140" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T15:15:05.890" Title="Will graduating a semester early hurt applications to grad schools?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21938" CreationDate="2014-07-04T19:15:22.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Go by &lt;strong&gt;direct exchange program&lt;/strong&gt; to the university that have bilateral&#xA;  agreement with my university (in my case, I'm not satisfied with&#xA;  offered transfer destinations, so it's not really an option)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be the easiest way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Go as an Erasmus student (not sure if I qualify being non-EU citizen)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not qualified for &lt;strong&gt;Erasmus&lt;/strong&gt;, you are certainly qualified for &lt;strong&gt;Erasmus Mundus&lt;/strong&gt;. Just talk to the Erasmus coordinator at your university. If you are going with Erasmus they (should) have already taken care of the getting credits problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all that does not work out, you could also &lt;strong&gt;organize it yourself&lt;/strong&gt;. That is more work but sometimes worth it. Then you have to take care of most of the things yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Funding: 3 possible sources come to mind: the country you want to go&#xA;to (for Germany that would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.daad.de/deutschland/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;DAAD&quot;&gt;DAAD&lt;/a&gt;, but similar options also&#xA;exist in most EU countries, e.g. France or Belgium &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baef.be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;BAEF&quot;&gt;BAEF&lt;/a&gt;), the&#xA;country you are comming from, or your home country.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Credit: Talk to the director of your program/ the dean of student&#xA;affairs / international relations person&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enrollment in the foreign university. You also have to apply there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T19:15:22.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24400" CreationDate="2014-07-04T20:01:38.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of a university, self-plagiarism (or auto-plagiarism, as it tends to be known) generally only refers to submitting the same work for two or more different credit-bearing assignments within the institution, or submitting work which has been awarded credits at another institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's generally no restriction on using work submitted for a university degree in a publication, unless the university specifically expresses its ownership of that work (which sometimes happens if the work was involved in a commercial or collaborative project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get into trouble for publishing the same work in more than one publication, but because the contract you sign with the publishers will specifically prohibit you from doing this (or will specifically allow it) this is not plagiarism as much as it is fraud. Even then, providing they know in advance, most publishers will allow authors to include chapters in monographs that are based around previously published articles, providing the initial copyright holder gives their consent (which in academic work they usually will, as long as  the original publication is cited).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17712" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T20:01:38.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2014-07-04T20:02:34.500" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: Wordpress (installing a Markdown plugin), if you are a techie, Jekyll. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My website is in Wikidot, I created for my group with Wordpress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/02/first-post.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Now I use Jekyll; here's why&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/stared/9130888#website-tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software for Scientists: Website tools&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For personal homepages, lab notebooks and conference websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WordPress - code&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WordPress - hosting&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Examples:&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gowers.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://gowers.wordpress.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://netsci2013.net/wordpress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://netsci2013.net/wordpress/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jekyllrb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jekyll&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For writing blogs in Markdown and easily putting them on GitHub &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tutorial for using LaTeX in it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cwoebker.com/posts/latex-math-magic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cwoebker.com/posts/latex-math-magic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Examples:&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carlboettiger.info/2012/09/28/Welcome-to-my-lab-notebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Lab Notebook in Jekyll&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ivanzuzak.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A homepage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikidot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikidot&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;e.g &lt;a href=&quot;http://offtopicarium.wikidot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://offtopicarium.wikidot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikispaces.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikispaces&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Simple wikis, very easy to create and manage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Used as open science notebooks, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.site44.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Site44&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Showing small site by putting files into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; folder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub Pages&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Static websites with Git &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/wiki/instiki/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instiki&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Wiki especially for mathematical collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Examples:&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.azimuthproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.azimuthproject.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ncatlab.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ncatlab.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lalashan.mcmaster.ca/theobio/projects/index.php/WorkingWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WorkingWiki&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Wiki especially for mathematical collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sphinx-doc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sphinx&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Great for writing documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Example (in Polish): &lt;a href=&quot;http://django.carrots.pl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://django.carrots.pl/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zohooo.github.io/jekyde/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jekade&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Jekyll-like static pages with built-in LaTe support, in Node.JS &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2018-07-13T11:43:08.683" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T11:43:08.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24346" CreationDate="2014-07-04T21:14:25.950" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your thesis is in math, by all means have others proofread it.   Once it is released, it will no longer be possible to correct an error!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your proofreader finds something more substantial than a typing or simple mistake, you must not only credit him with his ideas on the acknowledgement page, but also in a footnote.  No harm in this.  It is better to get it right and give credit than to get it wrong and take the credit for that for yourself!  The quality of your work also reflects on the reputation of your project director and your committee members, you have to respect them by turning out a high quality product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have found that the probability of a totally error-free thesis is equal to or less than the smallest positive number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot advise those whose who are English majors; that is a foreign language to an engineer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18126" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T21:14:25.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24390" CreationDate="2014-07-04T22:22:42.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switch focus from the hows and whats to the whys and do a top-down break-down from there. Your peers will be able to follow your break-down for longer than laymen, but all will be more interested in what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18204" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T22:22:42.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2014-07-04T22:38:09.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Volunteer to do a research project with a professor in the department.  This will demonstrate a continued effort in the field.  Ultimately, however, what matters most is your grades and recommendations.  If they say you're good, a semester off won't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T22:38:09.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2014-07-04T22:49:17.110" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your application will be essentially complete by the end of fall term, but it should &lt;em&gt;very pointedly&lt;/em&gt; mention what &lt;em&gt;further&lt;/em&gt; work you will be doing in the spring term, whether or not you are paying tuition for the privilege of studying and thinking about mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really needn't be a formal structure imposed on your work/study/research, and it needn't have any official label &quot;research&quot; versus &quot;study&quot;. But &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; write what you plan to do, and &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; mention the guidance you hope/expect to have from more-experienced mathematicians (as opposed to just doing whatever strikes your fancy off in some closet). That is, do be sure to make the point that you will be &lt;em&gt;engaged&lt;/em&gt; with actual contemporary mathematics, arguably more intensely, and at a more serious level, than the usual homework-exam model would encourage or allow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can describe your plans for &quot;spring term&quot; in vivid and enthusiastic detail, you can make it sound far better than &quot;taking classes&quot;. I'd not worry about hype-ing &quot;research&quot; too much, although, yes, it would be intellectually dishonest to not follow one's curiosity. But, of course, one's personal discoveries, however novel to oneself, may be old news to experienced professionals, so one should not presume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just tell your plans!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T15:15:05.890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T15:15:05.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2014-07-04T22:56:46.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, I can recommend to stay away from both hand-made sites and general-purpose CMS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theopenscholar.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenScholar&lt;/a&gt; seems to be a good fit. It is open source (based on Drupal), allegedly &quot;easy to create and maintain&quot; and certainly designed exactly for your/our use-case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T20:48:00.390" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T20:48:00.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24273" CreationDate="2014-07-05T01:32:48.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should focus more on the quality and focus of your research than the amount. If you are researching a concrete topic, and have 1-2 solid works dealing with it, then you are golden. Make sure you explain the value of these works in your research statement/essay. That would be more or just as important as the resume, because it is an expression of you as an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people will tell to go down the bullshit path and sprout several pieces that milk the same research but add little to the field. Some schools will buy that, but others will not differentiate you from the rest of students. You can also try this approach, but it may be even more time-consuming than the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading your question again, it is better that you engage in research before applying. Perhaps you can contact a professor and work with him, or a PhD student at your university, or find a research institute in which you can put in some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18207" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T01:32:48.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-05T04:55:56.337" Score="5" ViewCount="1950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stayed at home after I got married, but at 25 years old I decided to study History. Now I've finished my BA, MA, PhD and postdoc. I've got several publications and I can say I have a very accomplished career, but I'm wondering if my age (now 40 years old) will affect me eventually. I'm Mexican and my husband is American-Belgian, and he asked me to decide where we should live, right now I'm looking for a job/postdoc and I do not know what is the best option. What do you think?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18209" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T07:53:36.450" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T07:53:36.450" Title="Does age matter to get a job/postdoc?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2014-07-05T10:19:04.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd discourage you from using any CMS backed by database --- keeping software stack up to date, coping with backup and migrations might be very cumbersome. Of course you can leave outdated CMS version or don't do backups... but this will bite someday, as someone break in. So really you need to keep the software up do date whether you change content or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had some success with using a tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.4.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pelican&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://sphinx-doc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sphinx&lt;/a&gt; (this documentation generator for python projects but works well for course materials, etc.). Both tools take input in &lt;a href=&quot;http://sphinx-doc.org/rest.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reStructuredText&lt;/a&gt; and produce static HTML from it. You might code something similar from scrath using for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;docutils&lt;/a&gt;, that will take care for conversion between input format and HTML. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like these tools because: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Input format is user readable, text based and easy to learn &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I backup wepbage using tools I know (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt;), or really just zip everything and store on some disk. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't need anything from website administrator --- just a plain webserwer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It specifically decreases maintenance because: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zero maintenance costs if you don't change the webpage, no need to update CMS and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very low maintenance costs when you just add some content to the webpage --- just regenerate HTML and you're done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can safely use outdated (but working) version of generator --- since there are no security bugs whatsoever. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T10:19:04.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24427" CreationDate="2014-07-05T11:01:53.457" Score="-1" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to put something that one of my participants said in the epigraph page of my thesis, but I have seen researchers mostly quoting authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common to put a quote from interviews in the epigraph page of a thesis as long as research ethics are not violated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T16:32:25.470" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T20:29:51.177" Title="Is it common to put a quote from interviews in the epigraph page of a thesis as long as research ethics are not violated?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-05T16:13:08.860" Score="35" ViewCount="4229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now working as a postdoctoral researcher in Japan. I came to work at this institute when it received a big grant from government more than 2 years ago. My research budget is paid from a small part of that grant. I am affiliated with a lab run by my current advisor, but I do my own research topics and build my own experimental setup without support from the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year I applied for my own funding and was lucky enough to get a small grant for young researchers. My advisor applied to the same grant (more senior category) but failed, and later I learned that he has not succeeded to get any grant up to now. Last week he asked me to use my budget for his projects, because &quot;in this lab, we share the budget together&quot;, as he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel awkward because I don't want to share my budget with him, but if I deny the request, our relationship will be damaged.&#xA;Has any of you experienced the same problem? Is my advisor a bad one? How should I deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18220" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T19:26:05.893" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T18:43:38.933" Title="Advisor asking me to use my grant to cover his orders" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24418" CreationDate="2014-07-05T16:19:34.330" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest looking at the terms of your grant. You could get in a lot of trouble with the granting agency if you use the money for something other than what you wrote in your grant application. There's a little slop in the exact percentages of work that you do, but most agencies have rules requiring that you certify your effort on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T16:19:34.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:15:02.147" Score="-1" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very much confused on referencing a paragraph and have tried to find an answer on YouTube but that didn't help! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lines from an article (author = aaa bbb) says: (example) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country&#xA;  (ABC, 2010), has people from a lot cultures (DEF, 2012), has nice food&#xA;  (GHI, 2011) and etc (FGH, 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now can I reference it like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BBB (2014) highlights that birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits&#xA;  in middle of the country (ABC, 2010), has people from a lot cultures&#xA;  (DEF, 2012), has nice food (GHI, 2011) and etc (FGH, 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or can I just copy paste the original text as it already contains the references? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18223" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T10:53:45.757" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:53:45.757" Title="How to quote or summarise text from a reference that includes citations in Harvard Style?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;cross-referencing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24422" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:19:54.787" Score="14" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis in computer science and I am looking to include some references. I need to include though the researchers who first wrote about a specific subject and not others who expanded the original ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Google Scholar for searches but there isn't an option to search for this criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I find the first researcher who wrote about a specific subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18224" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T18:46:40.853" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T13:02:41.523" Title="How can I find the first researcher who wrote about a specific subject" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24421" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:35:21.233" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little unclear about why you might want the very first, but at least in CS you have a limited history to work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most detailed way to find this is to start with current papers (maybe a good review article) on the subject and to track back the references until you find the first one, paper-by-paper. If you already have a few early papers, obviously looking at their references is a better place to start. You haven't given us the topic area, but you might just ask for the earliest papers on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;CS Theory Stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;. You might also try searching on Google by year if you are certain that you know the right keywords--binary searching the years back to 1900 or so will probably be most efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the right paper might be a little challenging, especially if the topic has changed names a few times since it started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: If you are at a university with a good library system, you might find a research librarian who does this kind of thing for a living and ask them for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:32.667" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T17:52:38.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24418" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:37:43.487" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is delicate issue, and I would advise you to proceed with utmost care. There are a number of ethical, legal, and practical issues to take into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the &lt;strong&gt;legal side&lt;/strong&gt; - as Bill Barth already mentioned, it is not a given that you even &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; (easily and legally) move money from your grant to somebody else in your lab. In a nutshell, only the funding agency or the respective support department from your university can help you with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, in terms of &lt;strong&gt;ethical issues&lt;/strong&gt;, the question arises whether you do in fact &quot;share budget in this lab&quot;. In other terms, did the lab head also share his budget with you when you did not yet have a grant? Do think about this critically. In my experience, young independent researchers (myself included) tend to take the support we get from senior researchers for granted sometimes, while being rather protective about our own funding. From your description, it does sound like you yourself are being funded from money acquired by the lab head. In that sense, asking you to give back a small part of your grant to support his research is not necessarily unethical. Further, has he helped you with your grant application? If he has, sharing a bit of your grant with him may be the right thing to do (if even possible, see above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, in &lt;strong&gt;practical terms&lt;/strong&gt;, the question arises whether it is worth for you to fight over this issue. This largely depends on how bad it can end for you if the lab head is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; mad at you (in Japan I would assume the answer to this is &quot;very&quot;, unfortunately) and how much funding money is concerned. This is another issue that you can really only decide for yourself, but (again), do proceed with caution. You should consider that you not only need to work with this guy day to day, but you may also need his support for your next career step. I have unfortunately seen a few young researchers taking a stand with their mentors &quot;on principle&quot; over relatively minor issues. This kind of thing tends to not go as well as people hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All things considered, you would do well to not let your successful grant application go to your head. It is certainly a very important milestone in you career, but don't get into a lone wolf mentality (&lt;em&gt;&quot;I'm so good, I don't need anybody to succeed!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T17:37:43.487" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24420" CreationDate="2014-07-05T18:12:37.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two options.  The first option is to quote the paragraph and include all it's citations.  But you must include these cited works in your own bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is to quote the paragraph and omit it's embedded citations. But you should add this note at the end of the quotation: &quot;[citations from original have been omitted]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example, option 1 looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As described by BBB (2014): &quot;Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country (ABC 2010), has people from a lot cultures (DEF 2012), has nice food (GHI 2011) and etc (FGH 2013).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BIBLIOGRAPHY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABC (2010), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BBB (2014), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DEF (2012), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GHI (2011), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FGH (2013), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2 looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As described by BBB (2014): &quot;Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country, has people from a lot cultures, has nice food and etc.&quot; [citations from original omitted]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BIBLIOGRAPHY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BBB (2014), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preferred choice depends on the purpose of your writing, including the formality, the nature of the material you are quoting, and the reader.  Generally, choose option 1 if you are writing formally (in a dissertation or journal article) and if the citations in the original are very important to your reader.  Choose option 2 of omitting the citations improves readability and none of the embedded citations are relevant or important to your reader or your purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T18:12:37.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16832" CreationDate="2014-07-05T18:21:11.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If papers were posted on the arXiv before submission then I argue it would be easier to branch out.  I also think it would increase the quality of submissions and the speed of progress.  Overall, it should benefit your community and so, albeit indirectly, yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://emanueleviola.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/only-papers-on-the-arxiv-can-be-submitted-for-publication/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; an illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current system reinforces the partition of research into&#xA;  (sub)areas, making it hard for an outsider to leave their own. Of&#xA;  course, it is good to have a domain of expertise and produce deep&#xA;  results in it. Still, I think it would be better if it was a little&#xA;  easier to work in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To illustrate the difficulty, suppose you want to start working in&#xA;  new, hot area X. To learn the background, typically you have to read&#xA;  papers. However, for every paper that you read, it is not uncommon&#xA;  that there is another one which is or was under submission. Indeed,&#xA;  the community is producing great results the majority of which is&#xA;  rejected due to capacity constraints. So unless these works are on&#xA;  electronic archives such as the arXiv, you don’t have access to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who does? The experts of area X, to whom these papers are sent so that&#xA;  they can be properly evaluated. But it may be hard for reviewers to&#xA;  ignore submissions until publication. Suppose for example you have&#xA;  been working on problem Y for months and now you are asked to review a&#xA;  paper that solves Y. Are you going to ignore this information and keep&#xA;  working on Y despite knowing that you will be beaten? Also, when the&#xA;  paper does come out you’ve had a long time to internalize its&#xA;  implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The edge currently given to an insider over an outsider is months if&#xA;  the paper is accepted right away; it may be years otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18225" LastEditorUserId="18225" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T18:53:35.350" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T18:53:35.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24417" CreationDate="2014-07-05T20:29:51.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not common to use quotes from interviews as epigraphs in theses. However, that doesn't mean that you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; do so. So long as the quote contributes materially to your purposes in terms of highlighting it as an epigraph, then it should be fine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T20:29:51.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24418" CreationDate="2014-07-05T22:00:21.367" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent answers from the other respondents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution may be that some grants allow for administrative overhead or indirect costs. At some universities, this can be over 50% and literally keeps the lights on and the trash bins emptied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to see if you, the senior scholar, the university, and the grantor agree to divert some of the indirect costs to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And yes, his behavior is inimical, at least as you describe it. Promise to yourself that you won't be that type of jerk to your own students and junior colleagues.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T22:00:21.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24418" CreationDate="2014-07-06T01:30:16.130" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the right thing and ignore/stop the recursive career considerations of the other answerers. If he helped you, now you help him. If he was not helping you, then explain you cannot. If he was miserly, then be miserly. You are ultimately beholden to your own self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18207" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T01:30:16.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T02:47:17.480" Score="2" ViewCount="10063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a Senior undergrad at a small school in the US.  I have pretty good grades and have yet to take the GRE. I am a double major in Accounting and Business Management. I love economics (all parts I have encountered) but I am not sure if economics programs are for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that PhD/Masters Economics programs are very math intense, and without the proper courses you will be lost. I am not that great at math maybe because I never was that interested in it (I do like numbers if that makes sense). I did take Econometrics this past semester and really loved it and understood it. I do like behavioral economics; I find the psychology side very interesting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not great at math. I love how economists think. I love being able to explain things with data. And I like how psychology can explain irrational acts. I want to further my education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What program(s) should I be looking into based on my interests and capabilities? &#xA;How math heavy are economics programs (PhD &amp;amp; Masters)? &#xA;Is it mostly econometric math?&#xA;Is there a similar field without the crazy math but with econometrics?&#xA;Is the US the best place for me (where I am now)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18101" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T03:43:59.643" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T06:40:01.150" Title="Undergrad seeking information about PhD/Masters in Economics math requirements" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24433" CreationDate="2014-07-06T03:29:12.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you make any decisions, ask yourself very seriously: What do I want from a PhD/Masters in Economics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to qualify for a certain type of job, then this will inform your strategy.  If you want to master certain skills, or to explore what interests you, then you may have a different strategy.  If you want an academic job in Economics, then you'll have another strategy, different from the first two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you consider three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should understand that PhD and Masters in Economics are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different.  Basically, a Masters in Economics will qualify you do to certain types of empirical data analysis.  (I've never heard of a Masters that involves theoretical economics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I believe its true that nearly all top or upper-echelon graduate programs in Economics require strong proficiency in mathematics before the will admit you.  This is true even for programs that are no explicitly quantitative (e.g. Austrian).  The math you need is Calculus, Probability and Statistics (based on Calculus), and preferably Ordinary Differential Equations.  You'll need a high GRE math score.  It's very hard to read most Econ papers with out significant math proficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, if you really want a PhD in Economics, then you'll bite the bullet and do what it takes to learn this math.  It doesn't require a &quot;gift&quot; or special aptitude. If it doesn't come easy to you, it does require dogged persistence and diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, given your interests, I'd strongly suggest that you investigate PhD programs that have a specialty in Experimental Economics.  My University, George Mason, is one of them.  There's very interesting and fruitful work going on in this area, including links to neuroscience and cognitive science, but it requires very strong skills in statistics and behavioral sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T03:29:12.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24433" CreationDate="2014-07-06T06:40:01.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a PhD program in economics is very math-intense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get into a competitive program, you essentially need to score 800 on the math portion of the GRE (not as hard as it sounds, since an 800 is only the 94% percentile or so). Typical minimum math requirements for admission are two years of calculus, a course in linear algebra, and a statistics course. Some background in reading and writing proofs is also a good idea, and many PhD students will have taken a course in real analysis. (If you want to pursue theoretical econometrics, you would want to learn some measure theory at some point, too. But you could do that in grad school.) You will make heavy use of multi-variable calculus and linear algebra in your first year of coursework, so hoping to &quot;pick it up as you go along&quot; is not a great idea. (The one piece of good news I can offer on this front is that you can safely forget all of the trig you ever learned. I have.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most competitive master's programs (e.g. LSE) will have similar requirements, but there are others where you wouldn't be expected to have as much preparation in math. A solid semester or two of calculus and some kind of exposure to linear algebra might be enough to start with, though you should still expect to do a fair bit of math once you get to grad school. (Basically, constrained optimization out the wazoo!) So, if you're not keen on math, an economics degree might not be a great match for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a good site for more info about PhD programs and admissions (though be warned that sometimes there's a bit of blind leading the blind): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I wouldn't wander into a PhD program in any subject without a clear idea of why you want to spend 5+ years of your life as a poor, overworked grad student. It's pretty much a requirement for any good academic job (and for some not-so-good ones!), but not necessarily for work in the private sector. I would advise thinking hard about what you want to do &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; grad school, then talking to someone who is doing that to figure out how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18234" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T06:40:01.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24470" CreationDate="2014-07-06T07:17:22.233" Score="8" ViewCount="2369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to apply for PhD in Finance/Statistics next semester, and hence searched for potential supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An issue I have is that many interesting candidates are above age 60, and in Germany Professors retire at 65, such that a subsequent post-doc/habilitation would most likely require a different supervisor after PhD. One Professor just started his position at age 40, but so he has not many notable publications and I am unsure whether he might change university soon (he just changed it from another 4 years position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone advise me on the importance of age for selecting a PhD supervisor in context of a long-term future academic career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time for PhD would be 4-5 years, and PostDoc/Habilitation/AssociateProf usually again 4-6 years, with goal of potentially becoming Full Professor in Finance/Statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18228" LastEditorUserId="18228" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T00:30:18.140" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T00:30:18.140" Title="How should I take a potential PhD supervisor's age into account, when planning to follow PhD with habilitation?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;&lt;age&gt;&lt;habilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24421" CreationDate="2014-07-06T10:09:27.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While your question was already anwered by Bill Barth, I want to try and answer the question that you should have asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to find the right paper to cite for well established facts / problems / theorems / etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what you actually intended, than the first paper ever published on the topic is only one possibility. Often a better option is to look for a good review paper on the topic and cite that. A reader is much more likely to gain knowledge from a good review than a (probably decades old) first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look around, how others cite this specific subject and immitate them if you want to make sure not to violate unwritten etiquette. There are basically three possibilities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No citation: The subject is assumed common knowledge and can probably be found in any standard textbook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;citing the original paper: this is what you intended. Even if the first publication on the subject will likely not include all of the knowledge on the subject that you have and the reader might thus need to look at other publications as well, this is often done to acknowledge the work that the original author put into this. Make sure that you reference any further work that is needed to understand your work, e.g. during your own summary of the subject. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;citing a recent paper or review article: a) The subject is likely already well established and almost assumed common knowledge. The citation helps the reader to either catch up on some recent developments (paper) or to get a general overview (review). b) The subject has a long and active history. The subject in the formulation that you use probably has no clear first author. Due to numerous modifications / the natural evolution of notation etc. the original publication on the topic is probably of no use to the reader. In this case either a paper with a good introduction or a review can be cited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course combinations of the above are possible as well. E.g. citing the original paper to acknowledge the first author as well as a review article such that the reader might catch up on any results that are already available prior to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are currently writing a review though, you are not required to dig through generations of publications to find the first paper on a subject. If nobody in your field cites it, you can safely stick with one of the other two options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17515" LastEditorUserId="17515" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T10:16:02.667" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T10:16:02.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24454" CreationDate="2014-07-06T10:45:29.903" Score="1" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the &lt;em&gt;Annals of Mathematics&lt;/em&gt; always to reply every submission within a few days? I submitted a few times to them before, and every time I hear back from the  editorial office very soon (within three days). But this time there has been no response to my submission for more than one week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal? Or I should inquire about the status of my paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T11:02:40.590" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T23:05:51.980" Title="Acknowledgement of submission to the Annals of Mathematics" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T11:45:49.503" Score="17" ViewCount="3368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am being considered for a job in Germany (W1 junior-professorship) and I was hoping to get some insights regarding the process as I come from the US system and am unfamiliar with how things work in Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I notice that the application packages do not require inclusion of recommendation letters. In the US, the typical requirement is that the application package includes at least 3 letters. Will the schools require recommendation letters once selected for an interview or the job? Do letters or references play any significant role at all?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Selection: I know this should vary by case, but how many people do they tend to put on their short list? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interviews: I get a feeling that the interview process is brief and a lot less tiring than the American system (for a R1: Typically a 3-day campus visit, job talk, endless meetings with professors, deans, grad students, teaching demonstration, etc, etc). What do they focus on in Germany? (I am asking this as I was invited for an interview, but I was not even asked to do a job talk or teaching demonstration) Are there typically multiple rounds of interviews? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Selection committee: That some European departments practically have a one-person decision making body came as a surprise when I first came to Europe. How is the case in Germany? How many people in the department are typically involved in the decision making process? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Final decision: How fast do they move with their final decisions? For example, the job I am considering only has about a four month gap between application deadline and position start date. This is significantly shorter than a typical US-Search where many schools begin examining applications a year before the position start date, and tells me that they should be moving fairly fast with the decision. Any inputs? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know these might be a lot of questions. As someone unfamiliar with the system, I am hoping to gain as much insight as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T00:24:10.350" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:34:47.007" Title="Academic Hiring Process and Practices for Junior Professors in Germany" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24482" CreationDate="2014-07-06T13:04:10.197" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;The APA style recommends the use of either footnotes or endnotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term 'endnotes' means notes are placed in a separate page in the back matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term 'footnotes' means notes are placed at the bottom of relevant pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have seen official sample APA papers with a page in the back matter entitled 'Footnotes.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does the APA style call it 'the footnotes page' even though the notes are not placed at the bottom of pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T13:19:40.117" Title="Why does the APA style call it 'the footnotes page' even though the notes are not placed at the bottom of pages?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24445" CreationDate="2014-07-06T13:04:26.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some hearsay knowledge about the hiring process for W1 positions. I will do my best to answer correctly, but maybe aeismail can chime in later - I think he is currently on such a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) I notice that the application packages do not require inclusion of recommendation letters. In the US, the typical requirement is that the application package includes at least 3 letters. Will the schools require recommendation letters once selected for an interview or the job? Do letters or references play any significant role at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they did not ask, they probably don't need / want them. In central Europe, letters of recommendation are not traditionally asked for. Many institutions are now starting to ask for LoRs as they adapt more of an US system, but it is certainly not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; uncommon that they did not want to see letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dirk points out in the comments: instead of letters, the committee will often ask experts in your field for &quot;comparing reports&quot;, however, this is not under your influence. You cannot select said experts, and you will never see the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Selection: I know this should vary by case, but how many people do they tend to put on their short list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, it varies by case, but traditionally at least 3. Dirk states that his experience is rather &quot;at most 3&quot;, often less. Let's agree on three-ish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Interviews: I get a feeling that the interview process is brief and a lot less tiring than the American system (for a R1: Typically a 3-day campus visit, job talk, endless meetings with professors, deans, grad students, teaching demonstration, etc, etc). What do they focus on in Germany? (I am asking this as I was invited for an interview, but I was not even asked to do a job talk or teaching demonstration) Are there typically multiple rounds of interviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This varies a lot. I have once applied for a job where they invited people for an entire week. However, a one-day campus visit with a talk, dinner, and some meetings with core faculty seems usual. Again, Dirk says: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Always a research talk, always a job interview, often a teaching demonstration, seldomly further meetings or campus tours, never a dinner.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) Selection committee: That some European departments practically have a one-person decision making body came as a surprise when I first came to Europe. How is the case in Germany? How many people in the department are typically involved in the decision making process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, varies a lot. Formally, the decision is usually a committee decision, but in reality the actual power often lies with a single person (either the dean or the head of the institute / lab that the W1 professor would be assigned to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Final decision: How fast do they move with their final decisions? For example, the job I am considering only has about a four month gap between application deadline and position start date. This is significantly shorter than a typical US-Search where many schools begin examining applications a year before the position start date, and tells me that they should be moving fairly fast with the decision. Any inputs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea. My impression was so far that the process does often not move very fast, but I am sure there are exceptions. Dirk says that one should be prepared to wait at least a few months, but I guess that is true for every committee decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, I should warn you that the actual job of a W1-Professor in Germany is not very well-defined. Some are actual independent professors with their own group, own money, and own research agenda, but some are little more than glorified postdocs with very little factual independence. My instinct is that if they do not make a lot of fuss about &quot;your&quot; job during the application phase, the position you applied to may fall into the latter category. You would be well served to ask very concretely what your actual working conditions would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T00:23:59.483" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T00:23:59.483" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24453" CreationDate="2014-07-06T14:27:17.357" Score="6" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a professor who is my research co-supervisor for a recommendation letter and he said &quot;OK I can write that you are my student and you are good, but I can't comment on your research until you complete your thesis.&quot; When I first asked him he asked me to stay and do PhD with him. Now he won't comment on my research which would really hurt my chances of being admitted. I mean when I have completed my thesis I would have missed the deadlines and would have to wait for another year (supposedly as a researcher with the same professor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I take his recommendation or ask someone else based on what he said?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T18:56:30.313" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T18:56:30.313" Title="Professor won't comment on research in his recommendation" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24452" CreationDate="2014-07-06T16:11:40.377" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for positions where you need recommendation letters, it's going to look pretty strange if you don't have one from one of your co-supervisors if it's possible to tell who they were. You don't say what degree you are currently working on, but I'm guessing it's either your undergraduate or master's degree since you appear to be applying for a PhD. I wouldn't recommend saying the following directly to this person, but refusing to write a letter of recommendation in order to try to prevent a student is highly unethical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you talk to your other co-supervisor and see if you can get them to help you talk the recalcitrant co-supervisor into writing you a letter. It is very common for students to move from group to group and institution to institution while getting their successive degrees. In fact, most institutions in the US have a preference towards moving around like this. While losing a good student is hard, it's very inappropriate for a professor to try to prevent a student from moving on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the professor is having trouble coming up with things to say about your research progress, you can help him out by writing some text about what you've done so far and the good progress that you've made. Faced with some true statements about how good your research prospects are and the progress you've made to date, they may cave easily and write you the letter you need. If you show your resolve to apply elsewhere, they should hopefully give in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T16:11:40.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24443" CreationDate="2014-07-06T16:17:34.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A week is not so different from three days, especially if that week includes the July 4th holiday in the U.S.  If several weeks pass and you still have been given no indication that the paper was received, then it would be worth asking if they got it, but in the meantime I don't think you need to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T23:05:51.980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T23:05:51.980" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24445" CreationDate="2014-07-06T18:52:40.540" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As xLeitix mentioned in his answer, I do indeed hold such a position, and have also sat in on a search committee (as a non-voting &quot;interested bystander&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) I notice that the application packages do not require inclusion of recommendation letters. In the US, the typical requirement is that the application package includes at least 3 letters. Will the schools require recommendation letters once selected for an interview or the job? Do letters or references play any significant role at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could go either way, depending on the preferences of the chair of the committee. In my process, my references &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; asked for recommendations; for the committee I observed, they asked &quot;neutral parties&quot; who could comment on all of the finalists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one thing is absolutely certain: your PhD advisor (or &lt;em&gt;Doktorvater&lt;/em&gt; in German parlance) will &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; be asked to submit a letter of reference on your behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Selection: I know this should vary by case, but how many people do they tend to put on their short list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically four to six people are put on the list of interviews, while two or three usually make the final &quot;ranked&quot; list to be asked if they are interested in the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Interviews: I get a feeling that the interview process is brief and a lot less tiring than the American system (for a R1: Typically a 3-day campus visit, job talk, endless meetings with professors, deans, grad students, teaching demonstration, etc, etc). What do they focus on in Germany? (I am asking this as I was invited for an interview, but I was not even asked to do a job talk or teaching demonstration) Are there typically multiple rounds of interviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, there is only a single interview, and it is indeed far briefer than a US-based job or faculty search interview. None of the interviews I've had have been longer than two hours in duration, including any teaching presentations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus in such junior positions is almost always on research, with very limited emphasis on teaching. You should plan to talk about what you've already done, and what proposed work you'd want to start. You'd also want to give some thought as to how you would recruit students (always a challenge for junior faculty in Germany).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) Selection committee: That some European departments practically have a one-person decision making body came as a surprise when I first came to Europe. How is the case in Germany? How many people in the department are typically involved in the decision making process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a one-person decision making process, but it's also not a very large group, either. Typically, there will be between five to nine voting members of the selection committee, including the chair, other professors, and possibly students and equal opportunity staff from the university (who can refuse to give permission for the hiring process to go forward if viable underrepresented candidates were not given due consideration). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Final decision: How fast do they move with their final decisions? For example, the job I am considering only has about a four-month gap between application deadline and position start date. This is significantly shorter than a typical US-Search where many schools begin examining applications a year before the position start date, and tells me that they should be moving fairly fast with the decision. Any inputs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took about six months after my interview to receive an &quot;offer&quot; from the university, which I found rather slow, but having had more experience with German academic bureaucracy, I no longer find that surprising. (I find the four-month timetable frankly overly aggressive, and would expect that the actual start date would be substantially later than their target date.) However, every university and faculty within a university has its own way of doing things, so what might take six months in one faculty might take two months in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T18:52:40.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24276" CreationDate="2014-07-06T18:57:24.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying to grad school in ecology, I had research experience in stream restoration, dynamical modeling of HIV infection, and a NASA internship where I worked on bioregenerative life support. I had also done a research project in cultural geography (cosmopolitan thought in Cold War America) and completed two internships in which I had done a number of different projects. While I only got into one program (out of the three I applied to), it was one of the top programs in my field and came with the best fellowship the university could award. Now, I had good GRE scores but a so-so GPA (3.2), so I'm sure the research projects (and the variety of letters of recommendation that came with them) really helped my application. The lab I got accepted into was highly integrative, so my broad background made me a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as the other commenter said, nobody really expect an undergrad to immediately know what they wanted to specialize in. I'd be concerned if they did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T18:57:24.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23803" CreationDate="2014-07-06T19:33:19.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, your MS in ME will be viewed positively when you apply for MS in CS with Machine Learning specialization.  What will matter most are how many computer science courses you have taken (and grades you received) and how many relevant math classes you have taken -- calculus, probability &amp;amp; statistics, linear algebra, numerical methods, optimization.  The project work you have done in simulations could be very relevant and helpful, too, if the software you wrote was something more than procedural programming or deterministic simulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your Statement of Purpose, it would be to your advantage to make a strong link between your ME education and work experience and your goals in CS-ML.  Are there applications or problems that arise in ME that you want to address with ML methods? Are there particular methods of optimization or classification that you've encountered in ME that you want to explore further in other settings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding what schools to which you might apply: I would suggest that you aim at CS departments that are part of an institution with a strong &quot;engineering&quot; culture or focus.  In the US there are many colleges, universities, and institutes that have an engineering focus, including the Polytechnics, Case Western Reserve, Harvey Mudd, Carnegie-Mellon, and many others.  In contrast, the CS departments at Yale, Harvard, etc. have less orientation toward engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T19:33:19.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24462" CreationDate="2014-07-06T19:45:55.163" Score="23" ViewCount="3296" Body="&lt;p&gt;A model lesson is a usual element in interviews for the faculty level positions. Normally this is not a full lesson but a 15-minute version which is performed in absence of actual students for just a few professors from a hiring committee. It is supposed to demonstrate &quot;your teaching style&quot;, but by design this is clearly a different enterprise: you should &quot;act normal&quot; doing &quot;the same&quot; things &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in a different time-frame, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for a different audience, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with completely different motivation and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;under exorbitant cost of failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I also acknowledge the model lesson as indeed a much needed element of the interview, which helps to assess a candidate's set of relevant skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how one can ideally prepare to give such a model lesson. Putting aside obvious things like &quot;structure of the talk,&quot; &quot;clear slides,&quot; &quot;projection of the voice,&quot; and &quot;body language&quot;, which normally should be already trained by experience, are there specific things that should be taken into account for the model lesson only? What about techniques like jokes, questions to the audience (e.g. &lt;em&gt;how many of you are familiar with the definition of the derivative&lt;/em&gt;), work in pairs, which you probably use in a real classroom &amp;mdash; is it a good idea to demonstrate them in a room full of senior professors? I am a little confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T00:24:23.687" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T08:48:42.623" Title="Things to focus on in a model lesson" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24461" CreationDate="2014-07-06T19:56:51.343" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having done this, I'd advise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take it really seriously. In places where candidates are judged equally on teaching and research, the model lesson could really make the difference. Strong researchers may neglect it, relying on their publication/citation record.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you prepare for the expected audience (in my case, 1st year students), not the actual audience (academics).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feel free to use techniques you would use in a classroom, but then use &quot;time jumps&quot; to indicate that the activity has taken place. The problem with this is that if you have follow up questions, there may be no answers and the lecture may fall flat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't forget &quot;learning objectives&quot; and &quot;lecture structure&quot; up front, and other guidelines for students throughout (though you probably can only show one such thing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice more than you would practice for an actual lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No corny jokes. If you cannot tell whether a joke is corny, then assume it is. In fact, beware of jokes. Relying on natural humour is probably better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T19:56:51.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24468" CreationDate="2014-07-07T03:10:16.893" Score="56" ViewCount="9641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, someone analyzed &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffhuang.com/computer_science_professors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;computer science professors at top universities&lt;/a&gt; and found that over half of the professors at the top 51 universities graduated from a top 10 university. &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/What-Are-Low-Ranked-Graduate/136823/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Others&lt;/a&gt; have also brought this up. From my personal observations, most schools do hire graduates from better ranked schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this because of the competitive job market? &lt;em&gt;We have so many good applicants, we have to narrow it down some how!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or is it simply that these schools produce the most PhDs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has this always been the case?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How rare are exceptions to this? I know of a few people who graduated from a top 75 school and got hired at a top 50 school. But what about bigger gaps? The top 10 schools seem to just swap graduates, do they ever hire from a 50+ ranked school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2018:&lt;/strong&gt; I have accepted a tenure-track position at a top 75 department at an R1 university immediately after graduating from an unranked department at an R2 university. It does happen!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This may or may not generalize to other fields and countries.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T18:36:17.387" Title="Do universities hire graduates from lesser universities" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-07T04:24:59.837" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The top ranked doctoral programs get the cream of each year's incoming graduate application pool because they can offer access to the top professors, top research libraries, and have tons of money to spend on tuition waivers, stipends, summer research money, etc.  They can effectively outbid other programs and choose the people who seem to have the most promise (or are advantaged in having Famous People write for them, etc. etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate students at top ranked programs don't have to spend as much time doing non-research activities such as teaching and waitressing to pay the bills as they're getting most of their living expenses covered. They instead can focus on their research and publications, resulting in a flush CV by the time they graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads grant agencies and hiring departments to assume that the graduating students at the top ranked programs are indeed the best of the best. They certainly have the imprimatur of the Best Programs® and Famous People® are writing them letters of support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost certainly a flawed assumption, but when faced with 200 grant or job applications, it's a shortcut many search committees make. Ideally they should just look at the candidate's qualifications without considering the school or the Famous People® who wrote for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if we redacted program names in applications, the very fact that having gone to a top-ranked place gives people a huge material difference/advantage in resources available while they are in the program, and this is evident in their CVs which are long with lots of publications and talks in the Right Places®.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a totally fair world, we'd do what google does and throw away (or at the very least redact) CVs and letters and instead interview people one by one. But try to convince a provost and a search committee to go along with that. It would take too long and cost too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, as fewer and fewer people get jobs straight out of graduate school and everyone now has to have a post-doc or visiting position, this has served as a slightly equalizing factor as hiring schools can look at performance there as a better indication of inherent ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note 1:  People can and do move from lower ranked to higher ranked schools, but usually they don't do it in their first job. Rather, from a low-ranked they get hired at a mid-ranked school, then through publishing and publishing and publishing, they get hired away into a top-ranked (perhaps going through one or two job hops along the way). &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note 2: Top ranked universities (as well as everyone else) have overproduced so many PhDs in pretty much every field that there is market saturation. Even graduates at top-ranked programs are having trouble finding jobs -- even as adjuncts and NTT faculty. In a true market economy, the suppliers would be forced to lower production in the face of oversupply, but academia is not a market economy and having doctoral students is seen as a source of prestige for both faculty and institutions alike. Unless we can increase demand (by forcing schools to hire TT faculty instead of contingents, or other means) or reduce supply, we're all screwed but the folks graduating from mid- and lower-tier schools are screwed the most.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T17:47:02.750" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T17:47:02.750" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-07T04:48:26.413" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;People are occasionally hired by far more prestigious universities than the ones they studied at.  For example, there's a tenured professor in the Princeton math department (unambiguously among the top 5 departments in the U.S.) who received his Ph.D. in 1999 from Kansas State (which wouldn't necessarily make the top 75).  Where your degree is from is a negligible factor in hiring decisions compared with how outstanding your research is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, research excellence is highly correlated with which doctoral program you attend.  The top programs tend to get the students with the most talent, determination, and preparation, and they usually provide the most support for these students to succeed.  Of course this is just a statistical assertion, not an absolute law.  However, in mathematics in the U.S., the number of students graduating each year from rank 50-75 universities whose job applications are as impressive in research as those of the average top-5 graduate is tiny.  If you're hiring based on research promise, then even the most unbiased search should lead to hiring mainly people from higher-end schools.  Of course there's presumably some prejudice as well, but I don't think it's a substantial factor at research universities.  (I have no first-hand experience with hiring at teaching-oriented schools.  In particular, I don't know how overrepresented graduates of prestigious universities are or which factors are responsible for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T04:48:26.413" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24439" CreationDate="2014-07-07T07:21:04.820" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: a few people commented that thinking about your postdoc/Habilitation before even starting your Ph.D. is premature. I disagree. I have seen too many people coast along during their Ph.D. time without ever knowing what they are going to do afterwards, and certainly not preparing for their post-Ph.D. time, whether in academia or in industry. So I would say you demonstrate good long-term thinking. Already thinking about your academic career will help you prepare to work out a research program, network (more on this below) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: there is no problem whatsoever with changing advisors between the Ph.D. and the postdoc period. To the contrary! If you stay at the same place for almost ten years, you will need to explain why you never moved, never checked out other places to work, other approaches to research. Many, many (most?) people will switch advisors at least once, or possibly even do postdocs in two different places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, this is why I think it is a good thing you are already thinking about your long-term future &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, because it is never too early to start meeting people at conferences with your future in mind. You may just meet someone at your first conference who you could collaborate with or spend your postdoc time with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would definitely recommend that you consider the older potential advisor. He sounds like he could introduce you to lots of people, and you will likely not need to pack up and move somewhere else &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; your Ph.D. period, which seems possible with the younger professor and which could somewhat mess up your personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these considerations are all not the highest priority. You should definitely keep other aspects in mind in choosing where to do your Ph.D., like the kind of project you would be doing for either of the two professors, or whether the two of you &quot;click&quot; on a personal level, or what financing there is, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23130/what-should-i-ask-my-potential-ph-d-advisor-in-advance-before-actually-signing&quot;&gt;lots of other things you should discuss with your potential advisor ahead of time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is no Habilitation in Germany any more. Nowadays, Germany has moved to a more American style in academic careers. You will do a Ph.D., then a postdoc, then usually a &lt;em&gt;Juniorprofessur&lt;/em&gt; (roughly, assistant professorship - not tenured and limited to six years), then get your &lt;em&gt;Ruf&lt;/em&gt; to a tenured position. It's quite possible to skip the &lt;em&gt;Juniorprofessur&lt;/em&gt;, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T07:21:04.820" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-07T08:16:55.180" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Val Burris addressed this issue for sociology back in 2004 in the American Sociological Review and the article has now became quite a well-known piece of scholarly work within the discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asr.sagepub.com/content/69/2/239.short&quot;&gt;http://asr.sagepub.com/content/69/2/239.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He basically argues that while departmental prestige is quite loosely correlated with the scholarly productivity of its graduates, being high-prestige school graduate gives one the necessary social and network capital to be placed within the institutionalised system of prestige sustained through the accumulated and &quot;closed&quot; interlinkages between top departments. Although the bulk of his analysis examines sociology placement records, he also provides some comparative data on the hiring of history and political science faculty, and finds that the relationship is quite robust while those latter disciplines tend to reinforce status hierarchies more so than sociology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastEditorUserId="11154" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T13:28:32.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:28:32.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24477" CreationDate="2014-07-07T08:59:59.180" Score="3" ViewCount="3023" Body="&lt;p&gt;I earned my bachelors in Computer Engineering from my home country. I am now enrolled in a Physics masters program in the same university. Next year I plan to find a different university in Europe in which to enroll in a Computer Engineering PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I doubt that I'll receive any scholarships from my homeland's government when studying abroad. Can I survive if I start to live out of my own my pocket? Is that enough to live in Europe just for a half year. Are there any available funds that can supplement my income such as a TA/RA's salary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to survive if I want to study PhD in Europe without any scholarship from my home country?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which country might provide sufficient support for a foreigner to study at graduate level?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am interested to Germany and Finland but any European country would be acceptable!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18263" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T16:10:15.263" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T16:10:15.263" Title="PhD in Europe without scholarship from non-European homeland" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;europe&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2014-07-07T09:42:12.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Ph.D. student in (continental) Europe, you are an employee of the university (or other institution), and so you earn a salary. &quot;Scholarships&quot; are only for undergraduate and Master's students. Normally, the salary will be mentioned in the job postings you apply to (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/types-announce/2014/004695.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;'s a typical one), this answers your question 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for 2, the level of funding varies between positions, depending on available funding at the insitution, etc. This is not country-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12864" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T09:42:12.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2014-07-07T10:14:43.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Norway, and I believe in other Scandinavian countries, a PhD student is considered as a university employee. The salary is more than enough for you to support yourself, and even your family if you have one. In the UK, a PhD studentship is usually restricted only to UK and EU nationals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T10:14:43.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2014-07-07T10:29:48.937" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only know the situation in Germany:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get a visa, you are required to show that you can fund your PhD study. Either by scholarship, salary, or your personal means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, at least in CS, PhD students are employees of the university. You don't sign a contract that you are going to do a PhD, instead, you sign a contract that you will work for the university, &quot;and you will be supported for doing a PhD&quot;. Your salary will be more than enough to support yourself (and thus for visa regulations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also possible to do an external PhD. In this case you will not be an employee, rather a PhD student. What you need would be to find a professor who is willing to advise your work. In this case, you might get some scholarship from institutions like DAAD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9829" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T10:29:48.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2014-07-07T11:02:36.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Spain, enrolling in the PhD programme and getting funding are two independent processes (then there might be visa issues which I do not know about). I am going to tell you about my experience a few years ago (roughly 2005-2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tuition fees for PhD are usually low, and any kind of financial support you can find will usually cover them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to receive funding, you usually need to be enrolled, or at least admitted, in a PhD program, with an advisor and a strong research proposal. The typical PhD fellowship/contract used to be around 1000 euros per month, during a maximum of 4 years. This was just enough to live in Madrid, and a decent salary in many small towns. Both salaries and flat rents have gone down in the last few years, although other costs of living have been going up, but it's a good first estimate of how much money you will need. Sadly, with the crisis, the research budgets have been slashed and it's even more difficult to find financial support than it already was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost of living can vary wildly even between Spanish cities, with Madrid and Barcelona among the most expensive, and smaller towns such as Oviedo or Granada much more affordable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, while Spain is probably not the best bet in terms of receiving financial support for research at the moment, it does have lower costs of living than other European countries. Since I don't know where you're at the moment, I can't compare how much your money will stretch in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9338" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T11:02:36.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T11:50:52.707" Score="6" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a PhD in Particle Physics with a decent publication count and citations, &#xA;I went into industry, where I've been for the last 3 years or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had several motivations for not continuing in academia at the time: some PhD burnout, being unsure of the path I wanted to follow, curiosity about the world outside academia, and other personal reasons. However, after three years in industry I feel that the intellectual freedom and challenge offered by academia is something I miss deeply, and that's ultimately worth more than the money I can make in industry. In addition, I've become more and more interested in certain topics of Pure Mathematics that I'd like to devote more time delving into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the moment I am considering several (not necessarily exclusive) alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep studying in my spare time, and spend a year doing a MSci or similar once (if) I can afford to take a year or two off. Then consider a PhD from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply for a PhD programme in Pure Math.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a researcher or group that would be sympathetic to the situation and start a collaboration with them with views to apply for a postdoc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply for a postdoc in my desired areas directly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply for a postdoc in an area that's not as removed from my previous field (say, Mathematical Physics), and take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How feasible would these options (or others I haven't considered) are? How could I maximise my chances of success in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9338" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T14:16:58.757" Title="Returning to a different field in academia after industry" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14968" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:37:53.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I think the other way around (transitioning from the humanities to the sciences) might be harder, if you can demonstrate that you are serious and prepared to undertake graduate training in the humanities, it is definitely doable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my sociology department (PhD track, we didn't have a separate MA program and most entered straight after undergraduate school), many of my colleagues did not have any sociology training. While most of them came from related fields of economics, political science, and psychology, there were people with math and physics backgrounds and these were sometimes the people who were doing the most innovative and interdisciplinary work. The selection committee was fine with accepting them as long as their proposed research area fit with the department faculty's research and they showed promise as a sociologist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a degree in the field isn't necessary, make sure you address how you have been working to fill the gap you have on your CV. A personal statement will be a good place to address this. In addition, you can take additional courses, read as many works in your proposed field, and try to have a well developed study plan to give confidence to the committee that you are as competitive as the other candidates. It might be a good idea to also build contacts with professors in schools that you are applying for and go talk to them to see if they will be interested in working with you. If you plan to specialise in a society other than where you are based in (especially in case of anthropology), make sure you demonstrate regional expertise, language skills, knowledge of the society, or maybe work and/or living experience. Also, since those departments (in case of a PhD program) will likely ask for a writing sample, start working on one well in advance so the committee can see that you can indeed to the work in the proposed field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T12:37:53.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24449" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:16:13.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The APA publication manual describes the way you should submit your manuscript, not the way the paper will ultimately be typeset. For APA journals, footnotes are grouped at the end in the manuscript but they appear at the bottom of the relevant page (actually at the bottom of the right column) in the final published version. Similarly, you would traditionally put tables and figures at the end of your manuscript, one-by-one on separate pages but once published in a journal, figures and tables will be embedded in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on a student paper, you should first and foremost follow the instructions from your instructor but there is no reason to put footnotes at the end of the document. The APA publication manual provides useful guidance regarding language or statistical reporting but it's not a typography textbook. In fact, some publishers ask authors to follow (some) APA guidelines for the submission even if the final publication will have a different layout than APA journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T13:19:40.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T13:19:40.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:38:47.173" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a numerical perspective on this.  Let's take the position that students graduating from highly-ranked schools have competitive advantage against other students (i.e. they are &quot;better&quot;, and will generally be hired when their applications are compared with students of less prestigious schools).  Now, consider how many positions are available at each level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undergraduate: Typically, a college will have hundreds if not thousands of students in each year, of varying majors.  In my major (math), let's say 5% of the class has it.  At my school there were 1000 students graduating, so let's say 50 math majors (actually, it was more like 80).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Graduate: Typically, a graduate school department will have tens of students per year.  A small number of tens; at my undergraduate institution (Chicago), the corresponding graduate school has about 100 &lt;em&gt;total&lt;/em&gt; students, for about 20 per year.  So, with similar figures at other schools, only 0.4 of math majors can go to graduate school.  Fortunately, not everyone wants to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post-doctoral: Most math departments only have a handful of postdoc positions; let's say 10 (which is actually on the high end).  So only 0.5 of graduating students can get postdocs.  Of course, there are teaching jobs available at schools that don't produce PhDs, but those are &quot;lesser universities&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tenure-track: In any year, any department might have three of these.  Or one, or none.  That means that 0.3 of postdocs will go on to a more permanent position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At each stage the number of people accepted to the next level is a small fraction of the total number of applicants, and so the schools can pick and choose whom they take; of course, they will take the &quot;best&quot; applicants, which (according to my conventions) will generally come from the highly-ranked universities.  The alumni of just the top 10 universities are sufficient to fill all positions at all universities that are at all desirable (to researchers, that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:38:47.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24480" CreationDate="2014-07-07T14:16:58.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the problems that I see is that you are going to struggle more to get subsequent postdoc positions, since some (many?) of them are limited by the number of years since you finished your -first- PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18274" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T14:16:58.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24485" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-07T15:00:20.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaanet.org/about/whatisanthropology.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Anthropological Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. To understand the full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences. A central concern of anthropologists is the application of knowledge to the solution of human problems. Historically, anthropologists in the United States have been trained in one of four areas: sociocultural anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. Anthropologists often integrate the perspectives of several of these areas into their research, teaching, and professional lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T15:11:49.147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T15:11:49.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24486" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-07T15:00:20.763" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to anthropology as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:05:16.463" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:05:16.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24488" CreationDate="2014-07-07T15:04:15.043" Score="6" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a master thesis. When must I cite a resource I used ? Most of the time, I read a definition in a given book and express it in my own words: must I mention the book in question for this particular case ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14487" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T15:49:01.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T01:02:16.513" Title="Must I reference resources for definitions I express with my own words?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24487" CreationDate="2014-07-07T15:16:36.920" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you recall a definition which may be unknown to your users, it is always a good idea to refer to a book/article from which the notion originates. Do this even (actually, especially) if you choose to rephrase the definition in your own words. Remember, references are important to navigate your readers and put your work in a context. Definitions are no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T15:16:36.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24494" CreationDate="2014-07-07T17:36:02.667" Score="7" ViewCount="4096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals have correspondence articles that vary in size and format. More importantly, they can be peer-reviewed or not (even in the same journal, like Nature Genetics for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you write these publications in the CV? If so, do you put them in a separate category or together with your regular academic publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12550" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T22:17:14.560" Title="Correspondence articles, do you put them in the CV?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T20:33:08.157" Score="13" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite too many times I have read in a research article claiming that the source code will be made available, and, when I look for it, it turns out that the source code still hasn't been released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any journals or conferences that take into account the availability of the source code when selecting the papers to publish? By availability I mean present availability, not some vague promise of code release sometime in the future somewhere on Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now code availability is one thing, clarity is another. I have seen a lot of emphasis on the papers' clarity in the paper selection criteria, do some publication venues pay attention to code clarity during the paper selection process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I have the same issue with datasets, so I am wondering the same for them, i.e. are there any journals or conferences that take into account the availability of the &lt;em&gt;dataset(s)&lt;/em&gt; when selecting the papers to publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T11:47:10.693" Title="Are there any journals or conferences that take into account the availability of the source code when selecting the papers to publish?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24490" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:16:04.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can confirm the answer given by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15151/amlrg&quot;&gt;amlrg&lt;/a&gt; in comments. I have recently published a paper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-physics-communications/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computer Physics Communications&lt;/a&gt; and the referees pay significant attention to the code. There was no requirement, however, to upload the code as Supplementary Material with the paper &amp;mdash; the referees were happy to consider our public github repository. It was probably the first time in my practice when referees have actually bother themselves to reproduce the results claimed. We had a number of comments regarding the clarity of the run files in the code (but not in the rest of it), and even a suggestion on design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:16:04.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:57:28.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities typically hire the best people they can. And sometimes they can be found as graduates of lesser universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite professors, who went from Yale to Ohio State, indicated how this could happen. His opinion was that a top 10 percent student at Ohio State was just as good as a top 10 percent student at Yale. So a top 10 percent student from Ohio State who applied to a high level university could be very competitive with a top 10 percent student from Yale, provided that research, letters of recommendation, and other aspects of the application were competitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the professor saw value in a Yale degree was that an average Yale graduate would be accepted in many places that an average Ohio State graduate would not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:57:28.777" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="132173" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:05:30.973" Score="22" ViewCount="36781" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the My Library of Google Scholar, is there a way to export all of the citations, whether to BibTex or something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14370" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T10:16:30.027" LastActivityDate="2020-07-24T09:00:04.583" Title="How can I export my Google Scholar Library as a BibTeX format?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;bibtex&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:17:14.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following assumes that you do not have to follow strict guidelines for your CV (in which case you would most probably have consulted them already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You put stuff on a CV for a reason, usually to showcase your achievements or experience. When deciding what to put on a CV, this should be your main criterion, i.e., do you think that whoever reads your CV will be positively impressed reading this – in contrast to being annoyed by having to read about every tiny thing you ever published? Whether the article in question is sufficiently noteworthy, is something that only you and people who are familiar with your work (such as a supervisor) can decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might help to ask yourself the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you at a stage where you list every publication, talk and poster on your CV or are you only listing “selected publications“?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the correspondence relevant and can you expect the reader to know or see this? Did you, e.g., find a serious flaw in a publication that was considered seminal until your correspondence? Has your correspondence been cited?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did your correspondce require a noteworthy effort and can you expect the reader to know or see this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you the main contributor to the correspondence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering where to put this correspondence, I would try to avoid creating a new category for one item only, i.e., I would put it in some fitting category or choose the categories such that it fits in one of them. Either way, I would ensure that the correspondence cannot be mistaken for a regular publication. If your correspondence does not have a title like ”Reply to …“, which makes this obvious, you can, e.g., append “(correspondence)” to the entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Disclaimer: The above is based on thought only. I have no experience in putting correspondce on a CV.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T22:17:14.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:28:31.070" Score="29" ViewCount="2789" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a paper with coauthors, what should I do if one coauthor, who I feel has contributed the most among my coauthors, declined to be listed as a coauthor and wished only to be acknowledged in the acknowledgements? The reason he gave for declining was that he did not think he has contributed significantly. The other coauthors knew this, but didn't say anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happened once in the past, and at that time I did as requested by the coauthor, i.e. I removed his name from the list of authors and acknowledged him instead. The other coauthors still had their names as authors of the paper. I felt uneasy about it because I didn't think that it was right. I mean, if my second author did not think that he had contributed enough, why should the third and fourth authors stay? Of course the reader wouldn't know this, but I knew, and my third and fourth authors knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am facing the same situation again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T23:06:16.447" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T14:20:11.347" Title="What should I do if a coauthor, who has contributed the most among my coauthors, declined to be listed as a coauthor?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24495" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:35:29.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Publish without him or not at all&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of reasons, you don't have much of a choice - you can publish it as you did the previous time, simply acknowledging him, or not publish the paper at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get his permission, then you can't sign his name under this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T22:35:29.313" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24493" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:41:01.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know Google does not offer a user interface to do that. Actually they still do not offer an API to interact with your results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can handle code a little or you know someone who does, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icir.org/christian/scholar.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they say, you: Can extract publication title, main online URL, number of citations, number of online versions, link to Google Scholar's main cluster for the work, and Google Scholar's cluster of all works referencing the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have this information you can write another script that puts what you need into BibTex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18224" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T22:41:01.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T01:04:08.537" Score="17" ViewCount="37567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to include my computational model code(s) in its entirety as an appendix in my dissertation.  I've gone through my university's formatting guidelines and haven't seen anything on the proper way to format the code in terms of size of font, text-wrapping, spacing, and so forth.  What's the best way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read code, while I'd want it to be a typical font size (12 pt), I'd also want the text-wrapping to be minimal, but given the traditional margin requirements, it can be pretty tough to accomplish this.  Having code trail off one line and onto the next is generally distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, although comments in code are prevented from execution by using a character sequence like %or // or (* many compilers color-code this text to make it more easily distinguishable from executable portions of the code.  Is there any way to easily make comments distinguishable when putting the code into the text of your thesis/dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15399" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T01:12:14.323" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T01:12:14.323" Title="Proper way to format computer code included in a thesis/dissertation" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T03:48:19.167" Score="3" ViewCount="3121" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.i-society.eu/Important%20Dates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;i-Society conference&lt;/a&gt; calls for Research Papers, Student Papers, and Case Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between a &quot;research paper&quot; and a &quot;student paper&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14688" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T05:27:43.990" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:21:35.453" Title="What is the difference between a research paper and a student paper?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2014-07-08T04:18:59.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have just extended BibBase.org to allow papers to be discussed in a fashion heavily inspired by StackExchange: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibbase.org/blog/stackoverflow-inspired-scientific-discourse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bibbase.org/blog/stackoverflow-inspired-scientific-discourse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's different about BibBase compared to several other sites is that authors integrate bibbase directly into their own homepage. It keeps links to collaborators up to date, and it links to pages on bibbase.org for keywords, and now also for discussion. We want it to be the &lt;em&gt;unobtrusive&lt;/em&gt; research network that just helps scientists show their publications online on their own pages as they normally would, but with additional features that make it more than that. We think that it is important to facilitate discussion about one's own papers, and therefore this is now a feature provided by bibbase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[This is an old question, but it seems that most listed solutions have been shutdown by now one way or another.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9763" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T04:18:59.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24499" CreationDate="2014-07-08T05:17:46.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the difference would be in the scope, length and research significance of the paper, basically significant pieces of research compared to smaller pieces of research.&#xA;Also research in progress could be submitted as a student paper in some circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18052" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T05:17:46.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24495" CreationDate="2014-07-08T06:11:41.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have previously asserted that a co-author has the right not to be recognized as a co-author, if that is her preference. If she is amenable to publication (as would appear to be the case here), then you may proceed with publication. (If not, then you would need to remove her contributions entirely, and then see if the paper is still salvageable in that form.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should make sure you have a &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; documentation of the coauthor's declining of credit. You should also make sure that you have explained &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; why you feel she should be co-author; perhaps you can include a list of the contributions of the other co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T06:11:41.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24515" CreationDate="2014-07-08T06:58:17.210" Score="0" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my bachelor thesis in computer science and use the IEEE Citation Style with LaTeX. There already exists a good BibTeX style file. However this question is not about the style rather the usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's keep this simple: I use a book for my thesis. There are two possibilities to add it to my bibliography. Either as &lt;code&gt;@book&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;@inbook&lt;/code&gt;. If I use the first I cannot add a pages reference to it and would just cite it as [1] in my thesis. The later allows me to add pages to this entry. However, I only saw entry like pp. 100-200.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine if I would use this book only for one reference, but I use the book all over. My question is: How do I cite this book / the sections of this book correctly. Should I add multiple @inbook entries for each page reference or should I add a @book entry and cite like [1, pp. 100-200]. Using the &lt;code&gt;\cite[pp. 100-200]{bookID}&lt;/code&gt; allows me to do that. But is that allowed by IEEE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18294" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T12:06:30.530" Title="How to cite multiple sections of book using IEEE Citation Style" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24439" CreationDate="2014-07-08T07:22:30.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, planning the trajectory of your academic career past your PhD is very premature at this point. (After all, one of the jobs of your PhD advisor is precisely to help you with this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that -- surprisingly -- has not been mentioned so far: &lt;em&gt;Talk to the professors&lt;/em&gt;. Taking on a PhD student is a serious commitment no advisor will make lightly, so if they have any doubts whether you can complete the thesis with them (either because they plan on retiring completely from academic life, or moving next year to a different continent), they will tell you so. We can only guess at the likelihood, but they will (hopefully) have a much clearer idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13852" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T07:22:30.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:07:55.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pierre Deville et al., &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep0477&quot;&gt;Career on the Move: Geography, Stratification, and Scientific Impact&lt;/a&gt;, Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 4770 (2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From its abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find that career movements are not only temporally and spatially localized, but also characterized by a high degree of stratification in institutional ranking. When cross-group movement occurs, we find that while going from elite to lower-rank institutions on average associates with modest decrease in scientific performance, transitioning into elite institutions does not result in subsequent performance gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inside, there are plots quantifying transition from institutions of different rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T09:07:55.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:27:51.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was directed to this question by a chap in answer to my request for clarification &quot;Why they were using a float type as a key to hash&quot;. Now to me this did not seem like a good idea. After a bit of back and forth, the questioner directed me here as their reason for doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was interesting as is the question itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you persuaded to write bad code in order to fulfill certain academic goals? Yes, even in CS courses I might add. At least bad in terms of comprehensibility. However as we are all too horribly aware, we have been 'persuaded' to write equally bad code in the commercial environment, or our lords and masters have been persuaded to have poor code written for them....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside trivial implementations of algorithms. For instance should you use i and j as loop variables in a bubble sort algorithm, or indeed should you use a bubble sort at all. My response to your question, would be another one. How do do good software engineering principles help you achieve your goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could, say good naming, SOLID principles, coherence and coupling et al get you to your goal more efficiently? My answer would be almost certainly. They are designed to do that in any non-trivial piece of software. It's what they are for, they were created in order to achieve software that could be changed at less cost. It doesn't matter that you aren't (or at least cannot foresee) a version two, the implementation isn't springing full blown from your mind, so it will be changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't sure what code you need to write, then something like TDD would also help given you have a ready made unit testing environment. Even without that &quot;luxury&quot; writing testable code is going to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a huge advantage over your fellows who don't have a software engineering background, you should be able to get that irritating binary bit of the exercise out of the way quicker, get to the meat of your goal with less effort and then be able to expend more effort on the real goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had a discussion with an academically qualified type who told me re-factoring was just software aesthetes messing about and that I should have written the software correctly in the first place. Needless to say my respect for this individual dropped a notch or two, which was unfortunate for him as he hadn't earned that much in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summation I would say the sensible option would be to use good software engineering practices in all your efforts. &#xA;Just to be  clear though it is not good software engineering practice to write good code that you do not need...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase Gandalf, &quot;Keep it simple, keep it safe&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for should you use a float as a key to hash to save time. If you know without any doubt as you choose that design compromise that the problems with doing so will not cause you an issue, then perhaps. But the amount of effort required to evade that compromise is fairly trivial and you just spent time asking how to get round an issue with using a float as a key. I rest my case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any environment commercial or academic, choosing to lower quality, is both a benefit and a cost, examine both....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18297" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T09:27:51.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T10:00:16.030" Score="1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have serious doubts about how to ask PhD info to a professor, via email.&#xA;Is there a possibility that a professor don't want to answer me?&#xA;What I have to avoid to increase the possibility to obtain a response from them?&#xA;When I see a site announcing a PhD open positions and then the form to send an email, only to ask more info, I shortly describe myself, my skills, my MSc and then I ask info.&#xA;Maybe I am wrong?&#xA;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17839" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T10:00:16.030" Title="DOs and DON'Ts about asking PhD info to a Professor via email?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-08T11:22:15.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24490" CreationDate="2014-07-08T11:47:10.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exist at least one journal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipol.im/&quot;&gt;Ipol&lt;/a&gt;, where it is mandatory to provide the source-code related to the paper. In fact, they raise the bar much higher: the authors must implement the code in a given language, so that the algorithm is available for experimentation on line. You can actually test and try the algorithms of all published papers right now, in a few clicks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a specialized journal in image processing, but it could (should) inspire other fields to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T11:47:10.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T11:58:53.313" Score="4" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reviewing a manuscript describing a new software tool, reviewers are often asked to assess its utility, quality, novelty, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if, in addition to the classic comments on the manuscript, it was appropriate to make suggestion to improve the software functionality in itself (if the code is provided with the manuscript)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be in the case of a software that is not good enough for publication (basically it does not do enough), and for which small additions will make it better. The comment on the code would therefore not be related to the coding &quot;grammar&quot; but ratter to improve the software tool usability for the final user. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="481" LastEditorUserId="481" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T13:21:17.227" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T13:21:17.227" Title="Improve software code when reviewing paper" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24505" CreationDate="2014-07-08T12:06:30.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If youe thesis is going to be published by an IEEE journal or conference, then you should look at that venue's site for instructions on such details. Otherwise, look to your institution's guidelines. If there are none, then you may do what you want. Personally, I would avoid cluttering my BibTeX files with multiple @inbook citations which only differ in the referenced page numbers and use the latter citation reference you suggest if it is supported by the IEEE style file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T12:06:30.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T12:25:55.523" Score="6" ViewCount="1051" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there something like an undergraduate research programme (given by a good institution) in mathematics/theoretical physics which provides a research opportunity in which I can collaborate online and leads to a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastEditorUserId="18167" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T12:34:05.323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T13:00:45.120" Title="Are there any undergraduate research programs available online?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-28T13:47:34.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24514" CreationDate="2014-07-08T12:46:59.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to comment on code, unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The code is broken in some way, such that it does not perform what it is supposed to do (e.g., a bug in code changes a critical algorithm)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The program itself is unstable due to deep-rooted code smell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commenting on code in a review seems to me akin to commenting on someone's mastery of a given language in a review. If their usage of the language is so poor as to make the paper unreadable, then you can suggest they use a proofreader or translator. However, in most cases, it doesn't affect the paper, it just makes it harder to understand. With code, it may not get them past a &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;insert hi-tech company here&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; interview, but if it works as advertised, it's good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T12:46:59.603" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24514" CreationDate="2014-07-08T13:00:14.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, if the authors emphasise the developed code as one of their research outputs, and make it public, the reviewers not only can, but should consider it as a material for review, and comment on it. There is a delicate balance, though, to strike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to check that the code does what is promised in a paper (&lt;i&gt;sanity check&lt;/i&gt;). More importantly, it is essential to check if a typical reader of the journal can do the same, and can benefit from the code made public. This includes basic documentation, compile instructions (if any), well-written run-files for each of the examples from the paper, and clear guidelines how to adjust them for other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, remember that not all academic researchers are necessarily as brilliant in code-dev, as the guys who read Stack Overflow. It may be not appropriate to request that the code is developed and maintained to the highest standards of the modern IT community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T13:00:14.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T13:24:45.187" Score="11" ViewCount="2552" Body="&lt;p&gt;After finishing my PhD in Computer Science (machine learning) and after several years as a university lecturer, I decided to transition from academia to industry. As a result of that, I have been working one year for a company, doing applied research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my latest performance review, my supervisor pointed out that my only negative point was that I still had an academic mindset towards research, and that I should be able to get better at what he called &quot;risk analysis&quot;. He defined risk analysis as the skill of assessing in advance the potential benefits/drawbacks for the company of a given method/technique/algorithm. The aim of that is to be able to rapidly discard methods that are supposed to not solve the company's problems without having to waste too much time on implementing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether any learning resource exists (book, online course/resources) that may help me to acquire such a skill. More generally, any recommended reading about computer science research in industry would be much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18305" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T18:41:14.883" Title="Academia research vs. industry research (computer science)" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24495" CreationDate="2014-07-08T14:20:11.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That happened with me, and my father (the retired civil engineering professor), when I published this &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0471584150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He actually did a lot of technical work and editing, but disagreed with its views. So I published &quot;solo&quot; and listed him in the acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone once said that &quot;consideration&quot; is really doing what the other person wants you to do. So if the second author declines you be listed, that's what you must do, legally and morally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that there were third and fourth authors involved in your case has &quot;nothing&quot; to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T14:20:11.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24522" CreationDate="2014-07-08T14:47:40.037" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some links for you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/12/23/academia-vs-industry-an-update/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=risk%20analysis%20-marketing%20-market&amp;amp;rh=n%3A266239%2Ck%3Arisk%20analysis%20-marketing%20-market&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books from Amazon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_n_4?rh=n%3A266239%2Cn%3A71%2Ck%3Arisk%20assessment%20-marketing%20-market%20-fire&amp;amp;keywords=risk%20assessment%20-marketing%20-market%20-fire&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1404830490&amp;amp;rnid=1025612&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more books from Amazon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not interested in risk assessment but if I was, would sort the books by customer review, would see what the people who read them think, if possible would look inside the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have to say though that I find strange you didn't do it yourself before posting the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T14:47:40.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24534" CreationDate="2014-07-08T15:15:16.613" Score="106" ViewCount="20975" Body="&lt;p&gt;My professor of Computer Science has a company (both based in Germany) that promotes an open-source software. Of course the software is free and open-source, but his company generates profits through support, training, etc. and they have a server-version of the software which is commercial and very expensive. The software is very modular, and the area of the software's specialty is growing quickly. So the company needs to implement a lot of modules for it. Each module is a separate algorithm. So what my professor is doing is basically the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Master students come to him asking for master thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He assigns them to build algorithmic modules for the open-source software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student gets well trained in the software because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor later offers the student to work in his company since he is now highly proficient in the software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the student gains substantial knowledge, so there is no problem in that aspect. &lt;em&gt;However,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;is it ethical that he is growing his commercial business using his professorship position?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I believe he is assigning the thesis topics based on what his company needs, not based on what is good for research. I personally believe that professors are given those chairs to advance research. If they are concerned about money, then there is a place called &quot;industry&quot; to make money. I'm not saying that it's wrong to get money by working in academia, rather, what I'm saying that working in academia means doing everything for the sake of improving academia and research, not for other agendas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to the argument &quot;He didn't force it, so just pick a different advisor&quot;. Well my problem is that he is the professor that does the research in the field that I like. Other professors all work on different fields. So I might be interested in working on state of the art research or so in his area, but rather he would offer me a topic suitable for his company, then he says I only have these thesis topics. If I didn't like them because I don't like the area of topics that his company needs, then I would be left without any interesting topics. That would be unfair to me, since all other professors work on different fields. So if his focus wasn't promoting the software of his company, then he might find better topics that promote research and science. This is one of my problems with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Masters students fund themselves during their studies in Germany, so we get no funding at all. The problem is that when you do your master project and master thesis in our university, there is no predefined deadline for it. This is because it is assumed that you don't know what you want to do for your thesis. You go to the professor and he gives you a topic to work on. But he never tells you what your contribution is or anything else. So basically you have to do &quot;research&quot; to find contributions, i.e. you need to contribute to the state-of-the-art in this topic somehow. Basically you spend almost 5 months just reading papers to find out finally what you want to do. Now because of this, then you can't put a deadline for the thesis, since you don't know what to do! Once you know what to do, then you go and register your thesis and you then get a 6-month deadline, which you use 2 months to write the thesis and then submit. But you never register until you know what you want to do, otherwise it is very risky because you might fail the thesis defense! I don't want to make this much longer, but because of this procedure then professors are taking advantage of the students. So suppose that you go to this professor, then he will keep you working by saying (this is not enough yet for the thesis, we want to program algorithm X and Y as well). In this case the student is working on building this professor's company modules AND &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; funding himself. Of course if the professor never says that this is enough, you will keep working... and working... and spending money on rent and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not doing my thesis at this professor's chair. Actually one of my friends did his thesis there and he finished much faster than me. I personally believe he was given a detailed plan to what to do so that is why he finished faster. He even did his master project there and I think it is the same topic/project. I spent nine months in another chair just for doing my master project, then switched to another chair for doing my thesis. It has been eleven months just working on my thesis and will soon finish the writing portion. So it took me almost two years just for working on my project and thesis and I didn't include the time for courses! Actually one of my friends because of this problem finished his masters in almost four years! I personally feel that I completed a PhD program not a masters! I actually can think about original research contributions because of the way I did my masters, but I doubt the students who do their thesis/projects at that professors will learn the same &lt;em&gt;research mentality&lt;/em&gt; that I have now. But at the same time, it is good that they finished earlier than I did, because I'm from a poor country and I have been funding myself the entire time in a very expensive city. Sometimes I regret doing this master, because it really drained me. Every time I meet people and tell them that it is taking me this long to finish my master, I get very embarrassed. I also fear that because of taking this long, my chances will be lower when trying to find a job, because they will see that it took me so much time to finish the masters program. They will never understand that the system in our university for the masters is somehow different from others! So I probably think that doing a thesis at that professor's chair is a good idea to at least escape the misery that I went through!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10497" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T19:09:30.650" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T13:34:41.413" Title="Is it ethical for a professor to get masters students to work on open source modules related to the professor's profit-making company?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="20" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-08T15:46:49.467" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the thesis is on an academic topic, and the student later agrees to work at a company, there is nothing wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the professor must not exert pressure on the student for example that the thesis grade would depend on accepting a work contract, and if some of the work is not directly related to the thesis it should be compensated like normal work. It appears that here the student works out a thesis based on an industry-topic, and later decides where to work. The fact that the professor who assigns the topic also owns a company has no direct ethical consequences as such, because the student is free to choose from any possible company or supervisor out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18228" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T15:46:49.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10881" CreationDate="2014-07-08T15:48:15.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've discovered, everyone has a slightly different suggestion. I found this really confusing when I did my MSc thesis. As I wrote more of my thesis, my supervisors kept tweaking the structure. The changes they made were definitely for the better, and I was satisfied with the end result. But I felt like I should have (somehow) known the right structure to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...when I started working on my PhD, I did a bit of research into thesis structure. I really wanted to understand &quot;the rules&quot; -- not so I would follow them slavishly -- but so that when I did deviate from them, I would do so knowingly and for good reasons. I started by reading the guidelines from lots of major universities. I found some suggested outlines, but they were all just different enough (in the terminology they used and the order they recommended) to be really confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/193023424/Introduction-to-Thesis-Writing-pdf&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which discusses different ways of structuring a thesis: &lt;em&gt;Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice Brian Paltridge. English for Specific Purposes 21(2):125 - 143 (2002)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that article, and from other sources, I finally realised that there isn't &quot;one thesis structure to rule them all&quot;. (It's not like the 5-paragraph essay that we learned to write in school!) Not only does it depend on your discipline, but &lt;em&gt;it depends on your particular research project&lt;/em&gt;. Until all the bits are written, it won't be obvious what order they should go in. Even if you were an expert thesis-writer, you would probably need someone else's help to organise it so that it tells a coherent story. You're just too close to the project. (That's one reason why book authors have editors.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is: Focus on writing, not on structure for now. You have a pretty good idea what you need to write, even if you're not sure where the bits you write will actually go. When your supervisor suggests a different order, realise that it's not because you &quot;made a mistake&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Expect&lt;/em&gt; that the structure of the thesis will evolve over time, as you write more of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="10529" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T17:31:37.813" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T17:31:37.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-08T16:27:04.283" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many countries, universities are allowed to have spin-off companies. Many of them are run by successful professors. In contrast to the universities, all companies' purpose is to make money and not work simply to promote knowledge and science. In that regard, your professor has done nothing wrong or (most importantly) illegal. He is using his unquestionable know-how to make a successful company and more money for himself. But along with him, several good students get the opportunity to be hired on a promising job, once they finish their studies. And this is not only good for the professor, but it is also good for the university, the students and the country's economy in general. In that sense, you should stop seeing the whole thing as a corporate conspiracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that science sometimes provides exceptionally good consumer products (from TVs to mobile phones and electric lamps) should not be considered evil in itself. Yes, many times companies use technological advances for evil purposes but providing support and extending open-source CS projects, is surely not one of those cases. The only questionable thing your professor might have done, is if he has used his students as free workforce (without any compensation), during the master's thesis when they were working on extending his product. But even then, this is sometimes how internships work on many companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would not worry too much. Having a spin-off is not really an ethical issue, nor does it make your professor a horrible person. Of course you have the right to disagree with this practice and avoid participating in his business endeavors. So, finish your studies, minimizing contact with this professor and do things differently the way you see ethical and fit when you enter the job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T23:13:15.343" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T23:13:15.343" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-08T18:21:12.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm with Marc. There's no issue at all here... In fact, under this arrangement, he needs not worry about securing public grant funding which means he's more free to do &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;any kind of research work he wants...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; which can certainly filter back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might even be able to strike up an arrangement where you'll do work for him and you can use his lab for whatever research topic you want... There are multiple ways to look at this, and to me, all of them are positive. The community gets source, the public doesn't have to fund his research (though he probably still has students write grants for new ideas), for-profit businesses pay for top-tier service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's not also forget, that in the non-academic world, practical experience is valued more than your education (especially in the USA). Your time working in the professor's company while at the same time getting BOTH thesis research AND &quot;real-world&quot; experience puts you in a much better position come graduation than peers who go the traditional route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be more inclined to hire someone who has dealt with source-code management + a good thesis ahead of someone who only had a superb thesis topic. (The more things you can be measured with, the better for you.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="473" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T11:14:10.090" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T11:14:10.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-08T18:24:22.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spin-offs normally are not allowed to stay inside the university forever, they move away and become independent companies. Staying permanently in a state-owned building, with free access to the laboratory equipment, Internet, library, etc, probably would not be very fair. However the &quot;spinning-off&quot; process usually lasts for several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a successful commercial product on the base of research is an important process that is usually allowed, supported and encouraged. Spin-offs receive support from the parent institution in the early stages when they are not yet capable of self-sustaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T18:24:22.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-08T18:32:26.470" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contradictory to the other posters here, I fully understand OP's ethical concerns. Although I'm all in favor of commercialization of research output, I witnessed the same behavior in my previous university and I'm not comfortable about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the difference between the study systems in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries have been discussed many times on this site, it's important to note that the Master degree in Germany is the 'undergraduate' degree, that students pay almost no tuition but are expected to fund their expenses by themselves (they rarely if ever get a stipend). Professors positions and laboratories are typically state-funded, that is with taxpayer money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What bothers me most in OP's description is the &lt;em&gt;systematic&lt;/em&gt; aspect of it. The main purpose of a Master project is for the student to develop a rather general set of skills (problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, thoroughness, etc.), and to be tested on the ability to achieve a research project, although modest in scope. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to write commercial-grade software in a state-sponsored trainee program for a Professor's spinoff company. Professors have a teaching and mentoring responsibility towards the Master students they supervise, and it's not waived by offering them a job when they graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue I see is the unsound hierarchical relationship. Master students are at the mercy of not getting their degrees if they do not perform according to the Professor's commercial requirements. This very often results in students being exploited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen professors use (state/university-funded) PhD students as free R&amp;amp;D, technical support and sales employees for their spinoff company, and I think it's dishonest towards the students, the funding agencies and the taxpayers. I even think it borderlines embezzlement of public funds, as the sole person really benefiting from the scheme is the owner of the spinoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T16:53:44.763" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T16:53:44.763" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24543" CreationDate="2014-07-08T20:01:09.863" Score="3" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Context: At UK universities at least, before progressing from the first year of your PhD  (or transferring from an MPhil to a PhD), it is required to write a fairly substantial report detailing the research done so far and the outline the research direction over the remainder of the PhD. It's usually known as the Transfer/Confirmation/Upgrade Report.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to reference these kinds of reports when writing: a) Your own Transfer Report, and b) Published research articles? I have never come across one referenced in a paper before, whereas I have seen references to PhD theses, Masters, and undergraduate dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14700" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T20:01:56.103" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T20:01:56.103" Title="Should you cite somebody's Transfer Report? (Confirmation Report)" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;grey-literature&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24537" CreationDate="2014-07-08T20:41:06.813" Score="19" ViewCount="19136" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some Dutch academics - I think probably full professors with chairs - have a rather confusing string of abbreviated titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ru.nl/~rinus/&quot;&gt;prof.dr.dr.h.c.ir. M.J. Plasmeijer&lt;/a&gt;, but many other examples can be found by searching for that string.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do these titles actually mean, individually and collectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T10:49:20.567" Title="What do the Dutch academic titles &quot;prof.dr.dr.h.c.ir.&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24536" CreationDate="2014-07-08T20:58:55.393" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here you go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;prof&lt;/em&gt; is short for professor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;dr&lt;/em&gt; is short for doctor, which signifies either MD or PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;dr. h. c.&lt;/em&gt; stands for &lt;em&gt;doctoratus honoris causa&lt;/em&gt;, which is an honorary title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;ir&lt;/em&gt; stands for engineer (&lt;em&gt;ingenieur&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it means a professor (with a PhD) with an engineering background, who got an honorary title at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T10:49:20.567" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T10:49:20.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24547" CreationDate="2014-07-08T21:29:14.823" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted a pre-print (about heating control algorithms for buildings) to arXiv.org, under General Physics, but it was rejected as being off-topic for that server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to find a pre-print server specialising in Building Physics research but couldn't find any. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint#Preprint_server_by_research_field&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia doesn't list anything.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a pre-print server that is suitable for that kind of publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17434" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T02:58:49.747" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:09:36.177" Title="Is there a pre-print server for building physics papers?" Tags="&lt;preprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7421" CreationDate="2014-07-08T22:07:33.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A defensible null result (that is being able to definitively say that something isn't there as opposed to not being able to say anything either way) &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a result and &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; advance the frontier of knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that kind of thing can't be published in your friend's discipline then there is something seriously wrong with the culture of that discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be sure, null results are generally not sexy and can't expect to get into a first rank journal unless there was a widespread expectation that this was a shoo-in, but it is still real science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T22:07:33.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24288" CreationDate="2014-07-09T02:24:54.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing in predatory journals looks bad on your resume.  It suggests that your work was not good enough to publish in a respected journal/conference, and, frankly, you're better off &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; publishing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T02:24:54.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24535" CreationDate="2014-07-09T02:55:06.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is published somewhere, then you should feel free to cite it. However, if it's not, then you have a challenge. You might cite it as, more or less, &quot;Author. Title. Transfer Report, University, Year. (unpublished personal communication)&quot; Which indicates that you friend or colleague gave you a copy in which you first found the information you are referencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think such an approach gives your colleague credit and gives readers at least some hope of being able to track down a copy if they want to verify your claims about what it says. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T02:55:06.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-09T07:49:41.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, it &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; like the students just get a programming assignment -- &quot;here, make this&quot;. That alone wouldn't make it Master level research fit for a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the student is the author of the software he writes and holds copyright over it, so he should decide under which license he wants to release it, if he wants to release it at all. Forcing him to release it under a specific license that happens to work well for the company is a clear conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11262" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T07:49:41.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T08:16:49.747" Score="4" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Performance and Automation Testing engineer who recently moved into IT Security in Singapore. I hold a BSc in software system (full-time) and MSc in IT (distance learning program). I have 9+ years experience working in Testing projects where major contribution was into Performance and Automaton testing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to get into research jobs (specifically, academic research). I am looking for opportunities any place however my preference will be Germany, Singapore and USA. However whenever I have approached universities they aren't willing to consider me, stating that I don't have any research experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help me with path to get into IT Security Research. I guess attending a part-time/full-time masters program (IT/INFOSEC) followed by PhD (INFOSEC) program should help. Is this an appropriate path? Will this suffice to give me a chance at getting hired into an academic research job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T12:35:39.347" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T19:47:40.897" Title="How to get into research jobs after working in corporate technical jobs" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:00:35.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that you need to consider is the way quitting is going to look in your CV. If I was a prospective employer and I saw that you spent 4 years in a PhD program without getting a PhD (or even publications, for the matter), that would be a huge red flag. I'd wonder if you spent those years doodling on facebook and hanging out in cafes. I could even reason that perhaps you are just not as bright as you claim to be. Either way, that's not the kind of person  I would want in my company. If you quit now, you should really find a way to preempt this kind of concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to time, I can tell you from experience that 17 months is more than enough provided that (i) you have a clearly defined dissertation topic; (ii) you work hard (and here we are talking about 60-to-70 hours/week; one of the guys in my cohort wrote his entire dissertation in 12 months and his girlfriend complained that, during those 12 months it was almost like she didn't have a boyfriend at all); and (iii) you have a good supporting network of peers and mentors to keep you going in the right direction. I'd say that, at this stage, (i) and (iii) are the most important points. If you can produce a proof-of-concept paper within the next couple of months  and a couple of more experienced people agree that it is a worthy project, then you've overcome the largest obstacle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:00:35.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24538" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:09:36.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there isn't yet a pre-print server for building physics, although some people have successfully smuggled such papers onto arxiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there aren't really any heavyweight open-access building-physics journals, and established journals in the field haven't been quick to embrace open-access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the option of producing internal working papers and circulating it without publication, to get some of the benefits of pre-print, without risking a publisher's refusal. However, it's not easy to reach a very broad audience this way, nor a new audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building-physics papers do often span multiple subjects - we often cross-over, for example into health, for example, when we look at condensation and mould, radon, or dust mites; so there might be other pre-print archives that we can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, although it's a completely different thing, there's always the possibility to air early thoughts on the building-physics tags on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/tags/building-physics&quot;&gt;Physics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/tags/building-physics&quot;&gt;Sustainability&lt;/a&gt; Stack Exchanges, which can be a way to get a bit of an airing, and reach a different audience to that reached by circulation of working papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:28.230" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:09:36.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:32:15.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to back a bit Jigg's point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is not ethical to pressure students into master thesis which is a module of some software for which the student will not be able to set license and more of that which is used for profits of the professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also should say that it fine if student signs some kind of contract if he chooses to go this way and if not he still has a choice to do masters thesis with this professor that is not anyhow connected to the professor's company or that software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was myself in the similar situation (German style education system, but not in Germany) however it wasn't a masters thesis but just a semester final thesis for one of the subjects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case professor was taking the best of the software students developed as a thesis in whole or as a part to the product of his profit making company (no attribution to student at all). I don't claim that the OP's professor does the same but I believe OP can still have the issues I had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I couldn't determine the actual theme of thesis. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The subject final mark was decided not by the standards of university thesis but rather by the commercial standards which are obviously higher. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was under pressure to agree with everything professor wishes for the product even if it was out of the thesis scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was under extreme pressure to deliver commercial quality product in restricted time having other subjects to study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this situation I ended up almost failing this and another subject and with a very bad relationship with that professor since I wasn't able to deliver what he wanted(although it was perfectly fine for the scope of the semester thesis). I could get a very bad reputation but fortunately for me quite a lot of other professors/stuff knew how he does things so the damage was not that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am trying to say is that by dealing with such people OP puts himself in the situation when he is totally dependent of them and people tend to be quite cruel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18339" LastEditorUserId="18339" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T09:39:56.250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:39:56.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:58:16.910" Score="4" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an extended abstract for a conference prize. There are few instructions and it's the first time ever that I write one so I'm a little woried about it. The only restriction regards the length, but other than that no instructions are given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: am I expected to give my full results? I'd rather not give my analytical results of my analysis since I still have to publish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18341" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T10:25:11.800" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:13:58.890" Title="Extended scientific abstract: should it include full results?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24553" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:59:37.897" Score="34" ViewCount="8331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a prospective phd student. I wish to know if it is fine to contact the phd students of my target schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If answering this question requires more information, please feel free to state that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T07:59:45.083" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T20:31:51.623" Title="Is it appropriate for a prospective PhD student to contact phd students at a target school?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:00:16.203" Score="35" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, it's ethical to have students work on your research interests&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core idea of research mentorship is that it's useful for people to collaborate, and for professors to 'split off' interesting, manageable chunks of research directions for others to handle - either as part of study projects or research grants. Pretty much always it will be related to topics that interest the professor personally, and it's okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that most researchers have a list of subproblems that they aren't going to do themselves, but for which they'd like a solution and a student research project could [attempt to] to solve it. I have such a list myself, students are happy that it exists, but most of them do have some use case where the thesis outcome (data/tool/method/etc) would be directly useful to me personally in my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student wants to work on X, and the professor says &quot;you must do topic Y&quot;, then that would be unethical unless there's funding/employment agreement for the student to do Y. However, if student &quot;needs&quot; a thesis topic and is okay with doing Y, then it's ethical to recommend topics that aren't &quot;neutral&quot;(which would that be?) but are of personal interest to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes, it's ethical for your research interests to benefit you commercially&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning academic research into commercial spinoffs isn't an unwanted exploitation - in fact, it generally is the explicit wish of the universities, funding agencies and government research policies to facilitate commercialization and implementation of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a professor has ideas on how particular research topics can be applied commercially, then it's a good thing - it estabilishes that the topic is meaningful and provides a real world context to otherwise abstract notions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the research benefit your business &lt;em&gt;as such&lt;/em&gt; is okay, given the university approval for that spinoff, but there may be ethical concerns with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; it's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is he coercing students to work in that direction?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there signs of coercion - i.e., do students feel threatened that if they choose an unrelated topic then they'd be treated differently, get different grading, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is he recommending students to work on bad / non-research topics?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the recommended projects (&quot;algorithmic modules for the open-source software&quot;) a good fit for the master thesis requirements of your university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If software engineering and algorithmic implementation are valid and recommended goals for thesis in your particular master's program (it often is), then it's ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that study program expects students to focus on academic research during the thesis, but in those projects students spend 90% time on software engineering and thus either produce poor thesis or have to spend huge work that's not beneficial to the thesis, then that would be giving misleading and hurtful advice and it's not ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is he stealing intellectual property?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If copyrighted or patentable items are created by the students (such as software) as part of their academic work, are they either (a) freely available to the public; (b) clearly owned by the student; or (c) purchased as a separate agreement or through an employment contract for the time of developing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing work results on an open source project would be ethical; a company using &lt;em&gt;public and published&lt;/em&gt; results of student's work is also clearly okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing work results on a dual-licenced project where the student's code is available, say, as GPL to the public and also the same student's code as a closed source licence for a fee from the company raises the question on how does the student licenced the code to that company.   A scenario where work is done on &quot;university time&quot;, and the company simply takes the &lt;em&gt;not-public&lt;/em&gt; work without compensating the author would be unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is he hiding his vested interest in that particular project?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he disclosing that he has a commercial interest in this open source project to the students? If he's not telling them it when offering the topics, then it would be unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T10:00:16.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:06:48.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying a university is more about how you use opportunities available to you than about how much do you learn from the baseline 'forced upon' everyone. I presume there is a free choice available to you and other students whether to take the master thesis assignment from the professor in question or from other. That means, that 'working for free for a commercial company' (this is how I understand your concern) is not the only possibility to finish your studies. Every student, you included, have the choice to do what they find right and beneficial. That means, that you can do whatever you can with the opportunity - get some hands on experience, or, for example, train your inner sense for what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; find right and what wrong. Which is equally as important!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The professor is giving you opportunity, not forcing something on you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would rather work on a demanding task from a high flying professor with a prospect of a nice job in the open-source world than do some mundane task that has been repeated over and over just because the latter may seem more fit for academia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to get a job in a commercial company (rather than staying in academic field for your PhD and further career), having done your thesis in the described setting may very well give you a noticeable advantage over competing job-seekers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The first paragraph edited to reflect on Jigg's comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17596" LastEditorUserId="17596" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T14:38:28.457" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T14:38:28.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24550" CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:14:44.730" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely fine to contact current PhD students of programs and departments that you are interested in. On an average, I get about 1 email of this sort everyday and I make my best effort to reply intelligently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind though that many PhD students will simply not reply to your email. Sometimes folks are inundated by too many emails and commitments to respond to any additional emails and sometimes people just have bad emailing tendencies in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T10:14:44.730" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24566" CreationDate="2014-07-09T11:01:44.883" Score="16" ViewCount="1485" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer - I'm neither in favor of, nor endorsing plagiarism with the following question. I'm only hitting on the fact that sometimes, the interpretation of self-plagiarism can be quite stupid&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the well-deserved emphasis on controlling the menace of plagiarism these days, various journals and even academic institutions have insisted on various cross-check measures. Mostly, this amounts to necessitating a clean chit from some anti-plagiarism software, which (I imagine) works by comparing string lengths of some x-words in the article, with its existing database. So, if some dumb guy didn't rephrase himself, there would be common sentences, which earns him disrepute and he gets tagged as a self-plagiarist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as a ''responsible'' author, I would try to minimize such overlaps, ideally to zero. But sometimes, you can't help it. Take this context for example. (&lt;em&gt;Sidenote - I'm &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/46399/new-new-newbie&quot;&gt;basically a Physics.SE user&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;) We have used one model in two different contexts, so there is no question of overlapping content between two articles. But, since it is the same model, when I describe it, in one place I write - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The free parameters of the &lt;em&gt;wawa&lt;/em&gt; model, p1, p2 and p3 are fitted to baryon masses and vacuum characteristics in the &lt;em&gt;wawa&lt;/em&gt; limit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;''wawa'' = whatever&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't see any self-plagiarism in repeating this one sentence in the second article, but if I don't, maybe I'm being the ''dumb guy'' in the previous paragraph. So, I'll try to work around this, finding synonyms, trying alternative descriptions, but even with all my maneuvering, that sentence was the best way to describe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that, even though I'm not plagiarizing anywhere in the above context, this process is turning out to be a nuisance for me. Am I supposed to sit down and waste so much time rephrasing my sentences, when I have some meaningful information to communicate to the scientific world? (Worst still, I could've been investigating some hot problem in my discipline, where urgently communicating is invaluable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as @mhwombat hit on in a comment, am I not compromising on the best way of putting it across, when I deliberately rephrase it, just because there is a ''plagiarism'' checker in place? That's surely not what the purpose of plagiarism check was?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:13.560" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T13:52:54.707" Title="Overlapping sentences in methodology descriptions in separate journal articles - plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24545" CreationDate="2014-07-09T11:37:56.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By Academic Research, I assume you mean Phd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am aware of cases where people chose to move back from industry to academia. A Phd student that I know, used to work for EA, and after 3 (or 5 years) of working as a programmer he switched to academia to the field of Computer Networks to pursue his Phd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, there is the possibility of getting to such a position directly from the industry even if you have worked on completely unrelated stuff. However, any professor from a medium - top ranked program in the academia will look at you research capabilities in order to accept you as a Phd student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do in this case, is to create a strategy to achieve the goal. First be realistic with what you really have in hand to offer. What are your pros/cons compared to any other Phd student that want to apply to a given program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define your target universities. Maybe you should do some research and look where is deficiency of Phd students. In which country people look less interested to pursue a Phd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look at the specific program that you want to apply for. If you don't have a preferred topic, I suggest that you should apply in a place where your experience will give you the upper hand in the application process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you are interested in the IT security research. Do you like the applicative side or the theoretical stuff (crypto)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are many variables that may affect your application. The fact that you hold a Masters degree from a distance program, maybe your age, and the fact that you want to switch to a completely new topic (academic-wise, assuming that your Master studies were not related to IT security) are the downsides. But, don't be discouraged, give it a try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would target the mid to low ranked programmes and send applications around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T11:37:56.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T11:42:50.930" Score="8" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new PhD student, almost one year into the program. I was in theoretical research in my Master's program and switched to experimental research for my PhD. During my studies I have used a programming language but I do not have any expertise with it. I immediately started to working with this language, but still have great difficulty working efficiently it. I don't have any positive contribution and my supervisor doesn't seem to be happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to just quit and go back to theory. I really want to continue with experimental study, but not in my current university. When I talked to my supervisor about this he just told me to quit and find something else but I don't believe this is the proper way to motivate a student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've applied for other positions which are of a different topic but also experimental. The people who I contacted were very interested in my studies I have done before. But at the end, these people will contact with my supervisor about my progress and I think he will not say good things about me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I behaved very honest for my new application. One of them knew my supervisor and he wanted me to ask about my current performance and I told him to ask if he wants, but I also explained that this talk wouldn't be a glowing recommendation since I have been unable to meet objectives in my current program. Now I think being honest didn't work for me since I didn't get any response back...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What should I say to those people to get accepted into a different program, since I really want to continue in this experimental field?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18312" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T19:10:00.387" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T19:10:00.387" Title="After an unsuccessful first PhD position in experimental research, how can I get accepted to another program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;transfer-student&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24554" CreationDate="2014-07-09T12:28:06.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because two sentences are identical does not mean that the person who wrote the sentence second plagiarized the person who wrote it first. For your example sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The free parameters of the wawa model, p1, p2 and p3 are fitted to baryon masses and vacuum characteristics in the wawa limit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you copy and paste that sentence from a previous publication (it doesn't matter who wrote it originally), that is a clear case of plagiarism. If you thought about the model and how the parameters were fitted and you happen to come up with the identical wording, it is not plagiarism. If you don't want to think about the best way of saying something and you want to use the words/ideas of someone else, then you need to provide proper credit (i.e., quote them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:28:06.153" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2014-07-09T12:42:10.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not anywhere near the point where I'll be reviewing CVs, but people I know who do so tell me that whenever a CV lists things like h-index, number of citations for each paper, journal impact factors, aso, the general feeling is that the person is either a) a show-off or b) trying to hide actual content or merit behind impressive metrics. That's also the impression I get. Remember that the people who are going to read your CV know the field: what is relevant, what the good journals are, what it means to have those citations, and whether or not you are trying to boost your achievements. Also, as others have mentioned, metrics are ever-changing, data-base dependent and very easy to find by whatever means the reviewer deems appropriate. So I think your decision is the wisest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18344" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:42:10.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24287" CreationDate="2014-07-09T13:35:19.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just wondering if those refer to ISI (and/or  other organizations) list of journals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCI: Science Citation Index (Thomson Reuters or ISI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCIE: Science Citation Index Extended (Thomson Reuters or ISI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSCI: Social Science Citation Index (Thomson Reuters or ISI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A&amp;amp;HCI: Arts &amp;amp; Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters or ISI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EI: Engineering Index or Compendex (Elsevier)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the list of those journals in their perspective sites or just by searching their search engines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T16:07:05.593" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T16:07:05.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24550" CreationDate="2014-07-09T13:49:52.290" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had great success when we extensively supported a PhD student who asked for a contact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While doing my PhD we had a last year undergraduate student, who contacted my supervisor and asked if he can meet some of the PhD students. We decided to organize some shadowing for him, so he spent several days with me in the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I told him all I could think of in relation to my PhD experience, answered all his questions, and he did some real work - helped finding research publications in a specific area. At the end we asked him to write a short report about his shadowing experience - was it useful, pros and cons from his point of view, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment was so successful that the department decided to extend it and provide similar opportunities for other prospective PhD students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, by all means, do it - contact the supervisor or the PhD student. The worst thing that could happen is that they will say 'no'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastEditorUserId="13560" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T09:27:36.080" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T09:27:36.080" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24562" CreationDate="2014-07-09T15:01:11.047" Score="0" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a master's thesis using Latex. I am attracted by pifont package that allows to use personalized lists as the ones this picture shows:&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RPPZc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt; is it a good or bad practice to use such symbols as personalized lists ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T15:20:36.777" Title="Writing a thesis: Is it a good practice to use personalized lists?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-09T15:40:06.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2014-07-09T15:20:36.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantage of using a simple round bullet is that it's such a familiar device that people don't notice the symbol itself. The brain recognises that it's a list structure, and immediately starts reading the items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you use a less-common symbol, the reader will notice it, and possibly be distracted by your icon choice. That's not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some cases where it could be useful to distinguish the items on the list in some way. For example, you might have a list of features, and use checkmarks and Xs to indicate which are supported. But even then, I would use better icons. Most of the ones you've shown look ugly and old-fashioned, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T15:20:36.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-09T15:30:44.750" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, and I guess that the question cannot be completely answered as some details are missing, but: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doing a thesis in a company or on a subject that is suggested by a company is perfectly fine. This is called &quot;Externe Abschlussarbeit&quot; (external thesis). There can also be contracts between the student and the company. But in oder to be legally valid, the contracts &lt;strong&gt;must not abuse the fact that the student has to do the exam and is therefore not an equal party to the contract but dependent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many universities actually have rules (and/or even a contact person) for related questions. Here are some examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/f4/fkIVdokumente/studium/externe_diplomarbeiten.pdf&quot;&gt;TU Berlin/ dt. Hochschulverband&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.study.ce.tu-darmstadt.de/media/study_ce/sandra/Info_externeAbschlussarbeiten-1.pdf&quot;&gt;TU Darmstadt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, the usual setup is that the supervisor from the company and the professor are two different persons, and it is the professor's task to ensure that the thesis consists of the proper amount of research.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;With this I do see a &lt;strong&gt;conflict of interest in the OP's scenario.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, a master's thesis is a &quot;Prüfungsleistung&quot; (part of the final exam). The &lt;strong&gt;Prüfungsleistung must be produced &lt;em&gt;solely&lt;/em&gt; by the candidate&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;This implies that the master's thesis (not only the written thesis, but all ideas, software etc) &lt;strong&gt;is IP of the student&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Highly relevant lecture: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/Medien-DB/datenschutz/messer-helmut-rechtsgrundsaetze-zu-diplomarbeiten-vortrag-2005-11-10.pdf&quot;&gt;Helmut Messer: Rechtsgrundsätze zu Diplomarbeiten&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;rough translation of a scenario on page 7:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor tells student that he has 2 kinds of thesis subjects: nothing-special subjects and highly interesting very innovative external thesis subjects which will practically lead to immedate job offers. For the external theses, however, the transferrable IP rights need to be tranfered in advance (either to the prof. or to the company).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text then goes on explaining that this constitutes at least Vorteilsannahme (acceptance of benefits by a public official) by the professor, and that depending on the pressure and the exact situation also blackmailing is close by. Basically, the professor &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; ask any more than the exam regulations say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;the ethic problems in question are not only of the &quot;does not behave well&quot;-kind but can actually constitute criminal offenses.&lt;/strong&gt; And IIRC, public officials already have to avoid the &lt;em&gt;appearance&lt;/em&gt; of Vorteilsannahme (and of course blackmailing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the thesis is finished (and the mark is given) the company (or university) can negotiate to buy the transferrable rights&lt;/strong&gt;, because then both parties of the contract are in an equal position, and the student can say no, or ask for compensation. Obviously, the student can decide on his own to release the product Open Source.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Somehow I doubt that &quot;we will hire you if you give us your previously written code&quot; is a legal contract, but again IANAL. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The lecture explains that the professor has a certain responsibility also concerning abusive contracts between student and company (in general, not only in the OP's scenario) because the student depends on the professor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I commented to @Steffen Winkler that software copyright is somewhat special and different from other copyrighted works. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__69b.html&quot;&gt;Urhg §69b&lt;/a&gt; the (transferrable economic) rights are automatically assigned to the employer. Court cases apply this automatism to a rather wide range of software (i.e. as soon as it is related / useful for the employer, e.g. regardless of whether the development took place in free time at home), and state that the wages are already the proper compensation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, AFAIK it is non-trivial to formulate a legal contract that has the student employed for the subject of the thesis. The linked lecture gives scenarios that work and scenarios that do not work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T15:30:44.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24554" CreationDate="2014-07-09T15:57:51.747" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the focus on self-plagiarism here is overwrought when it comes to describing a methodology that may be reused from paper to paper. You are going to cite the first place you wrote that sentence, and you shouldn't need to worry about changing the wording in the series of papers that use the same methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodology descriptions should be clear and exactly the same when the underlying methodology is exactly the same from work to work. Any editor who used software to flag your words should see your self-reference/citation and give you a pass. &quot;Self-plagiarism&quot; of this sort is a bad label and no crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: &lt;em&gt;At most,&lt;/em&gt; you may need an prefatory clause to the effect &quot;Following our prior methodology described in [1], the free parameters of the wawa model, p1, p2 and p3 are fitted to baryon masses and vacuum characteristics in the wawa limit.&quot; Or something similar. But that won't fool the detector software. You need to trust that an editor will understand this for what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T16:10:04.890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T16:10:04.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24554" CreationDate="2014-07-09T15:58:43.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What StrongBad says about it not being plagiarism if you come up with the same wording independently is technically right, I suppose, but what you really have to worry about is whether certain other people (e.g. editors) &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you've plagiarized, and those people are probably not going to be receptive to the argument that you came up with the same sentence twice. At least in theory, a sentence which is long enough to count as plagiarism is long enough that you can find a different way to phrase it. So I would say yes, you have to rephrase the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least, this is standard practise in my field, theoretical particle physics, and I've been told that expectations are the same in other branches of physics and other hard sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T17:22:00.683" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T17:22:00.683" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24569" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:02:15.357" Score="8" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my leisure time, I used to prepare some pamphlets in the topic of courses I always wanted to teach. Each, full of examples and solved problems which I designed and solved myself, not photocopying from books and papers; that are so helpful to the engineering students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one day, I have the chance to teach in a TA class, is it ethical to ask the students to read my prepared materials too? Or the teaching assistant should only solve the problems of the reference book which is told by the professor of the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T17:02:25.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T20:02:56.313" Title="Is it acceptable that a teacher assistant encourage students to read his authored materials too?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24568" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:09:32.067" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your role as a teaching assistant is to further the educational goals of the course (as determined by the instructor and/or the department). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If encouraging your students to read these materials furthers the educational goals of the course, then you should do so. If not, then you shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the instructor and/or the department determines what the educational goals of the class &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;, you should check with them first, and use your extra material only with their approval. (Besides for the issue of making sure your material is consistent with the goals of the course, it also makes sense for them to be aware of what is going on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T16:19:59.187" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T16:19:59.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:33:15.070" Score="5" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Computer Science PhD student in the US about to graduate this year and want to contact a few professors; say, A and B; in my field to know if they have a post-doc position available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I wait until A replies before sending out inquiry to B? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that if I ask A and B at the same time and end up securing a post-doc with A, and B later says yes he has an open position, will B regard me as unprofessional since the inquiry is a waste of time for both him and me? If yes, I have to send out inquiries sequentially, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the hunt process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T00:31:28.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T00:31:28.070" Title="Can post-doc inquiries be parallel?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24571" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:51:01.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should apply all at once. Everyone else will be, and professors and labs know that you will apply to multiple jobs at the same time. Once you &lt;em&gt;accept&lt;/em&gt; a postdoc somewhere, you should immediately withdraw your other applications that are still pending. You may find yourself needing to get an extension of time from one organization that has made you an offer while you wait on your pending offers. Hopefully, you will be able have several offers to consider at once in order to make the best choice, but you may have to decline an offer if better ones are probably coming down the line and an extension of time isn't available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T16:51:01.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T18:20:14.530" Score="16" ViewCount="2691" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, our group is trying to reproduce the result reported by a paper whose authors are from an Ivy league university. We are unable to reproduce the results because there are several implementation details are not mentioned in the paper. Hence, we decide to write the first author, who is now already a faculty member in another university, an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued. However, he simply ignored our email (3+ weeks, no response).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, we thought, OK, seems that he is reluctant to share the code, so let's just ask him to clarify several implementation details so that we can implement the thing ourselves and hopefully, we can reproduce the result. So, we sent a second email which very clearly asks for clarifications. Again, he ignored the email (1.5 weeks+, no response).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We now feel angry and start suspecting the authenticity of their reported results. However, we cannot accuse them of anything, since we are not able to prove that they cheated, which would be a felony if they really did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being doubted. What they chose to do - ignoring our email - is really irresponsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the answers and comments! It is interesting that many start besieging me on my &quot;bad&quot; attitude in the email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wrote perfectly polite emails to the correspondence author;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; questioned his results or whatsoever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:02:41.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:46:58.433" Title="What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="23" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T18:25:43.347" Score="93" ViewCount="33089" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really love research. I started a research project in graduate school for my M.A. in English. My research topic is a very viable and interesting topic for a dissertation. I'll be 60 on my next birthday and I know that many Ph.D programs are traditionally geared toward younger students.I was wondering are there any programs that I can continue this research in without facing the issues of ageism in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18359" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T17:50:41.653" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T17:50:41.653" Title="I want to do research but I'm too old for a PHD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2014-07-09T18:58:07.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a monospaced font, because that is the traditional method of displaying code. As a matter of putting all of your code into the appendix, I don't see why. Snippets of the relevant parts would be all you need. If you still feel the urge to include the full code, I would suggest referencing a link to the code through a Github repository instead of all of your code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, ask your advisor who the audience is. Do they have a background in programming? That would be the question to ask. If not, summarize the code, and walk the reader through the logical process of the code. Perhaps a flowchart would be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18362" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T18:58:07.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24576" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:02:58.320" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or&#xA;  at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries&#xA;  regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being&#xA;  doubted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you actually state that you do not believe in the results of the paper? If yes, this is disrespectful and plain rude. And most people ignore rude remarks from strangers in the internet. When requesting the help of any other human being, you should be polite and cautious. Also, in Academia you must be very careful when you refer to someone's work. Especially his PUBLISHED work. Because that means that the scientific community has already accepted his claims and you are the one who must prove that his results are wrong and not the other way around (if you ever get published on this subject which be hard to do without his help). So, acknowledge the fact that he has nothing to prove and he will be doing you a favor if he accepts to share his code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, think of the possibility that he does not want to share his code. It is his code after all (and not public domain) and he still has the right to keep it for his personal use. He may also plan to expand on his work and sharing the code prematurely deprives him of the 3 months - 1 year time-advantage over you, since you still have to implement it yourself before expanding on the current state-of-the-art, i.e., his work. In this case, provide him with an alternative. Say that you are willing to send him your datasets and if he agrees to  do the experiments for you and report to you his results, it should be good enough for 90% of the cases and everyone is happy. You have the necessary data to compare against your method and he did not have to share his code, which is a logical compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, academia is a place that you need to use your social skills. You need collaborators and not enemies / antagonists. In that sense, ask for help politely and expect that NO is a very possible answer on the other party. Also, if he is an established researcher and you are not (perhaps you are famous too - I do not know) there is the case that he ignored the email, because he simply does not even know who you are, what you do and how you will use his code. Usually, telling little things about yourself in the introductory email, sending a link to your personal homepage and google scholar profile, suffices not to consider you a crank and reply to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sometimes the first author is a graduate student and the student might not want to share his code because he feels threatened. So, check all the authors profiles. See who is the most senior in the paper and CC him as well in your emails. In that case, the senior professor might encourage the student to share his code despite his objections. Either way, it cannot do you any harm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, there are multiple reasons why he did not reply to your email. Also a little flattery works on most of the cases. Note that in a sense you find this work fascinating because otherwise you would not struggle to improve it. It is not bad to say so and usually this kind of politeness opens more doors and is more useful in the long term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T19:02:58.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:16:11.047" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father got his Ph.D. (from a highly respected department at a major university) in his late fifties. I brought my regalia to his graduation. There were also two grad students in their fifties in the same program I was in. One was puttering along at his own pace and on his own funds, but the other had a funded position and was working under the same time pressure as the rest of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some departments may effectively limit funded positions to younger applicants, but there is no magic number after which people won't accept you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is what you want to do, then do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T19:16:11.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:42:42.240" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there is no age limit for doing academic research. As far as it seems you have sufficient academic background, so prepare your resume and send your request to the universities. Do not prejudge your application.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By searching the admissions pages of the universities' websites, I found that the only age limit may be that some applicants under a specific age are not accepted, for instance, students younger that 16; but there also some exceptions exist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further more, in the application pages, the applicants with disabilities (because of age, accidents, born with disabilities, etc.) still have the chance to apply for their desired programs and their disability does not prevent them from doing his research. In our university, I have seen two or three blind students doing MSc research. So, you see even that these rare problems do not affect applicant chance as they have strong education and research background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examine your chance and let the admission committee decide to accept you or not. But first work a little on your research topic which you are interested to work on and prepare a proposal or something expressing the things in your mind. Then prepare your resume and gather all your work and research background in. After all, be realistic and choose the university program which suits you more. If you can provide financial support for your PhD, this may boost your chance up. Furthermore, based on your research proposal; choose the university in which the professors are working in your field. That is why I am saying be realistic. Choose the programs wisely that are not far from your research interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are good answers in this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17430/will-my-age-affect-my-chances-of-finding-a-funded-phd-position&quot;&gt;Will my age affect my chances of finding a funded PhD position?&lt;/a&gt;, but I do not think that your question is a duplicate of that one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisblattman.com/2013/06/12/when-are-you-too-old-for-a-phd/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this post&lt;/a&gt;, you see that the age may not be the first concern of the admission committee. This is part of the writer's answer to a question which is almost near your concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Frankly, though, I don’t think this is a first-order concern for an admissions committee, who are mostly concerned with your raw intellectual potential and ability to produce distinguished research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other part, the writer says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] If someone is 28 &lt;strong&gt;or older&lt;/strong&gt;, with a previous career, an admission committee will probably reflect on whether that experience is going to contribute to or detract from the person’s research potential, and what the career switch says about a person’s focus. &lt;strong&gt;So a lot will depend on your specific story and experience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the page &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradschool.about.com/cs/shouldyougo/a/now.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Should You Take Time Off Before Applying to Graduate School?&lt;/a&gt; you can find good advices on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem you may face because of the age may be the chance of applying for a fund may decrease but I have no citation for this and because of your high level of academic background, you may face no problem for fund or scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am writing this part after a while:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was searching the Academia website and found many questions in which users have talked about the similar questions to yours. I am not saying that yours is a duplicate of them, but I think that reading those questions and answers may help you to better shape an answer for your own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/902/age-and-graduate-school&quot;&gt;Age and Graduate school&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10396/am-i-too-old-for-academia-after-a-phd?lq=1&quot;&gt;Am I too old for academia after a PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3426/how-old-is-too-old-for-a-phd?lq=1&quot;&gt;How old is too old for a PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5082/how-important-is-age-in-cs-phd-admissions?lq=1&quot;&gt;How important is age in CS phd admissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17430/will-my-age-affect-my-chances-of-finding-a-funded-phd-position?lq=1&quot;&gt;Will my age affect my chances of finding a funded PhD position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T11:30:30.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:57:26.990" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;A guy at my old department had just started his PhD when I left. He retired from his old job, travelled from the USA to New Zealand with his wife, and started his PhD. He is about your age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, I don't think he intends to try an academic career. That would be difficult. But there's no such thing as &lt;em&gt;too old&lt;/em&gt; to start your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor who judges you solely on your age &lt;em&gt;is one you don't want to work for.&lt;/em&gt; If you're in the Arts, funding is always tough so don't be disheartened too quickly. If you are able to fund yourself, you'll probably have the luxury of being able to study for your PhD almost anywhere and under whichever professor you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T19:57:26.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24568" CreationDate="2014-07-09T20:02:56.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The above answer is good but I would like to add one thing. If you are a TA in one section of a larger class make sure that you are being fair. Your students should not be receiving significantly more work than students in other sections, especially when one curve is applied to all sections. That being said, optional material is also helpful (although not as much as required meterial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T20:02:56.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24549" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:13:58.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the organisers required an extended abstract to assign a prize, try to make their job easier. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would include a specific section called &lt;code&gt;Results&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Preliminary Results&lt;/code&gt; in which you gently introduce some of the most significant results you obtained so far: objective/numerical evidences that your work is reliable, has reached a mature stage to deserve a prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:13:58.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24556" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:21:50.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honesty is always the best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervisors are genuinely interested in your background and in what you did. They have lots of experience and they know well enough that the success of a PhD candidate doesn't depend exclusively on him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervisors' opinion about you won't be affected as much as you expect by the recommendation letter or by a chat with your current supervisor. Be honest with them, talk openly about what went wrong during your previous experience (don't hide it from your CV). Be confident. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:21:50.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24387" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:30:07.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing a PhD is an investment of energies, efforts and time. Choosing it on the base of national legal constraints/requirements is a big mistake, in my opinion. You should choose your PhD according to what you want to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that in UK we don't have such strict checks on your degrees. I am a PhD student in Computer Science and I work everyday with epidemiologists, biologists, statisticians, mathematicians, logicians and also people with business degrees. &lt;strong&gt;Cross-disciplinary&lt;/strong&gt; PhDs here are well considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on what you would like to study. Do you want to go deep in business (maybe using your computer science skills) or do you prefer to contribute, hopefully, to computer science? Which one do you feel suits more you? You can start filtering universities, schools and countries only after you find the answers to those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:30:07.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24387" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:56:42.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that there are different approaches when someone goes towards a Phd program. You either are fascinated about a research topic and try to find phd programs which treat this topic, and you stubbornly try to get a position there. On the other hand, you are not that much fascinated about the topic and the science behind it, instead you like the letter which will stand in front (or at the end of your name) when you obtain the Phd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First define in which group do you belong. Being in the first group is more enjoyable, but it is limits your selections when you will look for programs and professors for certain topics. Being in the second group will gives you more options when applying, but bear in mind the Phd is a marathon (different than an exam), it is something that you will have to deal with for at least 3-5 years of your life. And what's next then? Do you go to academia or industry? Have you thought about that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that you have applied only to German universities, but why not others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding you background, I could see you fitting in any program that does Business Informatics. Run a search on that topic and see if there is something useful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:56:42.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T22:30:12.210" Score="7" ViewCount="13496" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; How does one verify the academic credentials (degree earned, date of graduation) of an individual without their permission or knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to verify the academic history and degree of an individual. I'm new to verifying academic histories and achievements, so understanding the process and responses below would be very helpful to me (and likely others in the same situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The individual states he attended University Maryland University College (UMUC) form 1992 to 1995, and earned a MBA degree. Its public information and published in his Linkedin profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attempted to verify though UMUC's alumni services. The alumni service did not respond to my emails or calls. Next, I called the registrar at the University and they instructed me to go to degreeverify.org. degreeverify.org directed me to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studentclearinghouse.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Student Clearinghouse&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I placed an order for the verification with the National Student Clearinghouse. It cost me 10 or 20 dollars. I received a &quot;Thank you&quot; email from them and an email address to use in the future (degreeverify@studentclearinghouse.org).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I am getting a run-around from National Student Clearinghouse. After a few days, I sent an email to degreeverify@studentclearinghouse.org requesting the results. National Student Clearinghouse responded back &lt;em&gt;&quot;The verification results you received came directly from the school and they based their research on the information you provided in your initial request&quot;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cg9Ev.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; received results or an answer from UMUC or National Student Clearinghouse. Additionally, the National Student Clearinghouse stated I should &lt;em&gt;&quot;fax or email a copy of the students transcripts or diploma for verification [sic]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. That's what I paid National Student Clearinghouse to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used National Student Clearinghouse's website &quot;Contact Us&quot; page to request their phone number so I could speak with someone. In addition, I made the same request via email. I have not received a reply to the request for their telephone number!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm new to verifying academic histories and achievements, and I surely don't understand the run-around I am getting from UMUC and National Student Clearinghouse. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why won't UMUC provide me with a Yes/No answer to the Verify operation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why won't National Student Clearinghouse provide me with a Yes/No answer to the Verify operation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why won't National Student Clearinghouse provide me with a telephone number to speak with them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this run-around typical for folks who verify academic history and degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I have any additional options to to verify the academic history and degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm beginning to wonder if National Student Clearinghouse is a legitimate service. I know National Student Clearinghouse is not BBB accredited. I discovered that after the run-around began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18370" LastEditorDisplayName="user18370" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T03:33:32.530" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T18:08:12.497" Title="How to verify academic history and degree?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24550" CreationDate="2014-07-09T23:17:46.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never ever got this kind of email during my Ph.D. program, but when we had some prospective students visiting the campus, I was eager to answer any questions they might have. Nobody asked me, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are all in this life together. If you want to know something, just ask. If you are sincere, it is fine to ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14102" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T23:17:46.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24212" CreationDate="2014-07-09T23:34:57.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; normal in the US -- but that doesn't mean it's an illegitimate process. Private institutions can select applications using whatever criteria they deem appropriate; so while it sounds a bit questionable to me, it's perfectly within reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also perfectly valid to admit students &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; a high school degree; it happens to be uncommon, but depending on the subject matter of the BA, it may not be (at least in the university's eyes) a strict necessity, provided your other credentials are sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11993" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T23:34:57.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24598" CreationDate="2014-07-10T00:17:58.517" Score="30" ViewCount="58145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my bachelor at university A in which Prof. X supervised my graduation project. I asked him for a recommendation when I was applying to university B for masters and he wrote me a great one. That was a year and a half ago, and now I am applying for PhD at university C. I need his recommendation again but I feel bad for not emailing him for a long time. I don't know how to write my email. I don't want to jump directly for the recommendation. Could you share your suggestions on what to write ??   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:41:56.090" Title="Email to a professor after long time for recommendation" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24596" CreationDate="2014-07-10T00:28:09.667" Score="3" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a cross-language thesis. In other words, my thesis is about a foreign culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common to include foreign terms in the title of a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, should I include the translation of the term (in parentheses, for example)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T02:33:02.017" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T02:36:40.427" Title="Is it common to include foreign terms in the title of a thesis?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24576" CreationDate="2014-07-10T00:33:58.603" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you know he ignored the email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he never received it because it was filtered before he had a chance to see it. Maybe he hasn't read his email this month because he's on vacation. Maybe that email address was good when the paper is published but not good now, but it's also not bouncing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one channel of communication doesn't work, try a different one. Call his office phone or send a letter to him. Write to a different author saying you've been trying to reach the corresponding author without success and you want to check the email address. Don't assume anything when you have no information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18375" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T00:33:58.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-10T00:47:03.823" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received my PhD last year at 54 years old.  It took me eight years part time while I worked full time.  I had taken classes in the 1980s at Drexel in Philadelphia and remembered a 60 yr old PhD candidate.  So Drexel seemed 100% friendly.  I also did not want to be favored and they did that well also.  I was in engineering and the main focus was to publish.  I suspect various schools will gladly meet with you in info meetings and in person (as they did with me).&#xA;You are basically offering free hard labor for them.  There will be some who will be happy to work with you if you focus on the work and publishing (co-author). If you publish, then you are probably &quot;in&quot; and the work counts.  I know little about English and similar majors but I think this applies.  BTW: it was very hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18374" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T00:47:03.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24593" CreationDate="2014-07-10T00:59:14.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In anthropology, it's pretty common to use local terms in both the title and subtitle. Almost everyone romanizes the terms rather than using the native script. And they leave explanations and glosses to the body of the dissertation itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, when it comes time to submit to a book publisher, they're more hesitant about local terms in titles. The issue is that they are legible only to people who already know the local language or culture, so you've automatically limited the appeal of your book. But there have been some notable exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Travesti : Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the examples above, the exceptions prove the rule by either being obvious to English speakers (&quot;travesti&quot; =? transvestite?), close to English (&quot;Tom&quot; is obvious, &quot;Dee&quot; adds an element of curiousity), or already a loan word in English (&quot;anime&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T02:36:40.427" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T02:36:40.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24592" CreationDate="2014-07-10T01:46:06.017" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a decade of teaching, I get these quite often. While people use a variety of styles, the one that I am most responsive to is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initial formal e-mail asking me if I remember them (with hints such as &quot;I was the student who wrote the thesis on faster-than-light dog walking&quot;), then telling me what they've been doing for the past X years (with a recent CV or resume as an attachment), and transitioning to their desire to move on to a new career or grad school and asking me if I could write a letter of recc for them. Close with an offer to talk on the phone (or come up to campus) to help refresh their memory of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get the ok, make it as easy as possible for me to write the letter. If there are things you want me to emphasize, be blunt about saying it (&quot;Please don't mention the folly of FTL dog-walking&quot; or &quot;Please emphasize my familiarity with temporal dilation and astrophysics&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T01:46:06.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24592" CreationDate="2014-07-10T03:44:10.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone has already written you a recommendation letter in the past and you want them to write another one, the key question is: has the old letter become obsolete, or can it (in essential content, anyway) still be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to the above question is &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, I think you're golden: just thank the professor for writing the recommendation before and ask them if they are willing to write an updated copy.  They will have the same question as above, so be clear to them that you are not looking for them to say anything they haven't already said.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; -- significant updating is required -- then it becomes a &quot;bigger ask&quot;.  If the additional information is something that you feel like you can faithfully supply to them in the form of written documents -- e.g. updated CV, new papers -- then you should enclose them along with your email request.  If you really need a qualitatively different letter, then an in-person visit is probably in order, and if that seems impractical and/or doesn't go well, then perhaps you should really be looking for someone more &lt;em&gt;au courant&lt;/em&gt; to be writing your letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I suspect that the affirmative is more likely to apply: at least in my field and location (mathematics in the United States) applying for a master's program is essentially identical to applying for a PhD program.  Even assuming you did a master's degree, getting a letter from someone who only interacted with you as an undergrad and who only addresses your undergraduate career would be totally appropriate.  (You should however try to get at least one letter from your most recent program or job, if at all possible.)  In this case, the letter is likely to begin by mentioning that the professor's interactions with you were limited to the undergraduate program at his university and mention that he can't speak to your master's program but that someone else will.  After that he can really cut and paste the former letter, if he likes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know how to write my email. I don't want to jump directly for the recommendation. Could you share your suggestions on what to write ?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have learned one thing in my time on this site, it is that the world is a big place and there are relatively few universal tenets of academic culture.  But in the part of academia I am familiar with (again, mathematics in the United States), your request for an additional letter is absolutely standard.  I would not view a year and a half as a &quot;long time&quot; -- as I mentioned above, the determining factor is not the number of years that have passed but to what extent the letter needs / is desired to be updated: that's what takes up the professor's time and effort -- nor do I see lack of contact in the interim as anything to be embarrassed about in the slightest.  By not jumping directly to the recommendation request you risk taking up a busy person's valuable time by giving them more text to read.  I would begin with a short paragraph of the &quot;Hello there?  Remember me?  I hope you are well&quot; variety -- two or three sentences would be sufficient.  And then yes -- jump to the recommendation request.  Writing these letters -- and rewriting them in the intervening years -- is part of our job, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T04:42:35.967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T04:42:35.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24589" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:04:35.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are trying to do is rather unusual.  In most cases where a degree needs to be verified (admissions, jobs, etc), the person doing the checking has the subject's consent, and normally the subject would just have the university send an official transcript.  In that case the university's &quot;customer&quot; is their own alumnus and they have some interest in being responsive.  In contrast, they have no particular incentive to be responsive to you, and so I'm not too surprised that the process they have is not particularly convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I don't see what you can do except to keep following up with NSC and using their support system.  Or, you could get your lawyer involved, and see if a letter from her can speed things along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would note that, while federal privacy laws &lt;em&gt;allow&lt;/em&gt; universities to release &quot;directory information&quot; including dates of attendance and degrees, as far as I know, nothing actually &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; them to do so.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T04:04:35.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24602" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:09:00.887" Score="7" ViewCount="36565" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one address a doctoral candidate who completed all his/here requirements except the dissertation? Would they be referred to as Doctor? Or is there another title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I believe I've seen &quot;ABD&quot; added as a postnominal in a signature. For example, &quot;John Doe, ABD&quot;. But I don't believe I recall reading how to address such an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related discussions (thanks Nate (or is it Doctor?)):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9925/when-can-you-call-yourself-doctor&quot;&gt;When can you call yourself doctor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8291/proper-way-to-address-yourself&quot;&gt;Proper way to address yourself&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18370" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2020-10-15T21:27:22.847" Title="How to address a doctoral candidate who is ABD (All but Dissertation)? Is &quot;Dr&quot; appropriate?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;all-but-dissertation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24601" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:12:01.993" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Address them the same way you would address any other person without a doctorate: e.g. in many English-speaking cultures, &amp;quot;Mr. Smith&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Ms. Jones&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Mx. Brown&amp;quot;,  or if you are on friendly terms, by their first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they have &lt;em&gt;successfully defended&lt;/em&gt; their dissertation but not actually received the degree, this is a bit of a gray area (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9925/when-can-you-call-yourself-doctor&quot;&gt;When can you call yourself doctor?&lt;/a&gt;) but I think &amp;quot;Dr. Brown&amp;quot; is reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2020-10-15T21:27:22.847" LastActivityDate="2020-10-15T21:27:22.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24601" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:39:03.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10972/8705&quot;&gt;Such a person is entitled to be recognized as a &quot;PhD Candidate&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which would follow the name and probably mention the department or emphasis (&quot;PhD Candidate in Electrical Engineering&quot; in my case).  This might be used in a signature block or a biographical sketch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no special honorific to use antecedent to the name, as Nate has already told you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T04:39:03.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25604" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:52:40.390" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project of mine involves meticulously tracing the source material for a work of literature constructed from an author's unpublished notes. I have established a system for referencing the notes themselves, but to precisely trace the material that constitutes the finished work, I'm following the format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ Note # ] [ Page(s) ]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[ Headwords of first paragraph ]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[ Footwords of paragraph, either the same one or the end of the last if the passage spans multiple paragraphs ]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;...fermentum eu velit quis iaculis.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some instances where the material was taken from the middle of a paragraph, continues unbroken through several subsequent paragraphs, and stops in the middle of another paragraph. In order to proceed with my work, I've been using this format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the source begins in the middle of a paragraph, include the headwords to that paragraph then include the beginning of the actual excerpt:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Lorem ipsum dolor [...] Maecenas mattis erat in metus...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the source ends in the middle, include headwords in addition to the conclusion of the excerpt itself:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Lorem ipsum dolor [...] tincidunt dui urna nec diam.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example supposes material is taken from a single paragraph, so another example spanning multiple paragraphs might look like:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Lorem ipsum dolor [...] Maecenas mattis erat in metus...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Vivamus nec sodales neque [...] quis lobortis nibh porttitor.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I'm wondering if this system is too confusing, or if there is an existing standard already in use that I can adopt. Including the headwords serves as a way to navigate through the material using paragraphs as an easy visual reference. I've considered assigning each paragraph a section number and referencing them by section marks (§) which would serve as an alternative to including the headwords (&lt;strong&gt;&quot;§52 Lorem ipsum dolor...&quot; through &quot;§55 ...nunc sollicitudin lectus.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;), but I'd like to avoid that if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions are appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18381" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T05:40:17.567" Title="Convention for excerpting from the middle of a paragraph in another work?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12255" CreationDate="2014-07-10T05:18:58.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the CSS department at George Mason University, just starting my dissertation.  Though I'm not primarily aimed at tenure-track academic jobs after graduating, I have some insights regarding the questions you have asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should know that CSS at GMU (and most other places similar to it) are not solely focused on placing their graduates into academic jobs.  There's a wide diversity of career paths, both prior to entering and after graduating.  To me, that creates a looseness and openness among the students.  This is in contrast to discipline-focused departments where &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; is expected to prepare for and compete for top academic jobs.  In those situations, there seems to be a strong emphasis on things other than just learning and doing good research (competition, prizes/awards, getting into the 'in crowd', elitism, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, CSS would be a poor fit for many academic jobs (research or teaching) that really want depth and credentials in a single discipline -- Economics, Sociology, Business, or Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is significant growth in the number of departments and jobs (internationally and in the US) that specifically call for Computational Social Science or similar interdisciplinary degree.  This is driven in part by funding agencies who have become very enthusiastic for CSS and similar types of programs and projects.  It's also driven by market demand -- especially for social network analysis, Big Data in social science, and programmatic research (e.g. public health, international development, conflict studies, cyber security). While the number of these jobs may not be large in absolute terms,  CSS graduates could be extremely well-qualified to fill them, compared to single-discipline graduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T05:18:58.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24550" CreationDate="2014-07-10T05:37:50.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received tens of such e-mails so far in the first two years of the PhD program. 70% from India, 20% from other parts of Asia, 10% other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I hate when people ignore my emails, or even reply unnecessarily late, I was trying at first to give some customized advice. After the first dozen of e-mails, I realized that I was being asked almost the same type of questions over and over, so I now simply reply with a template e-mails pointing to the main resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I would say it is totally fine but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The more specific questions, the more likely you are to receive an interesting answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is hard to be 100% frank with people we don't know. As a result, the answers you get are likely to be biased (typically &quot;how good is the advisor?&quot; kind of questions). As Pierre Beaumarchais said, where there is no freedom of blaming, there can be no genuine praise. The only solution is to know people personally or be referred by some common friend. Talking face-to-face can help reducing the bias.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T20:31:51.623" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T20:31:51.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25600" CreationDate="2014-07-10T05:40:17.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't do this sort of research, so I can't answer if there is a 'standard approach'.  I have read analytic works on the writings people such as Charles Sanders Peirce, who was notorious for having both a vast and an unorganized body of writing, including personal letters.  Yours might be similar, though in your case it seems even more important to be very precise about what source material you are referencing and quoting.  To my eye, it resembles Biblical analysis in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; the idea of assigning paragraph numbers to all your source material, but I would suggest using them differently.  In your quotes, I suggest quoting &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the relevant words, using ellipses as appropriate to indicate omitted text, and also new lines or paragraph marks to indicate a break in paragraph. But at the end of each quote, in square brackets, you could add the paragraph numbers of the sources, plus any qualifying remarks, such as &quot;spanning both paragraphs&quot; or what ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;... Maecenas mattis erat in metus ...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; [&lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt;, starting mid-pargraph in §52 &quot;Lorem ipsum dolor...&quot; and ending mid-pargraph in §55 &quot;...nunc sollicitudin lectus.&quot;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach has two advantages. First, your quote includes &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the text relevant to your exposition and analysis.  This will make it easier to read and understand.  Second, exact and detailed context information is given in the square brackets following, including the citation if needed.  This will serve you as researcher or a reader who needs to follow along in the source documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T05:40:17.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25612" CreationDate="2014-07-10T08:11:00.390" Score="17" ViewCount="37295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it better to wear formal clothes for a PhD or MSc thesis defense or can we wear something as simple as a T-shirt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14487" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:05:51.783" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T18:56:39.263" Title="What to wear for a PhD/ MSc thesis defense?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;defense&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25609" CreationDate="2014-07-10T09:08:45.257" Score="15" ViewCount="2684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for PhD positions and I just recently came across an option in Germany. This team is working on a subject that is very really truly interesting for me. I want to write to the head of the team to express my interest and ask if there is a chance for me to do my PhD in their team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here is the issue: Should I mention the fact that what they are doing is my dream? In all honesty, I like my current field and what they are doing is where my field and my dream intersect. But should I express this fact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid if I mention that this program is my &lt;em&gt;dream PhD&lt;/em&gt; it will be interpreted as a gesture of hypocrisy, while at the same time I think it is important to emphasis on my passion for the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If adding my feelings regarding the field of research is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a bad practice, how far should go with it? It would be great if you support your answers with some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. To add to the dilemma, they have just won a very big grant and this increases the fear of wrong interpretation of my statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12666" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T12:50:54.843" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T12:50:54.843" Title="Is it a bad idea to express my personal feelings about the subject when writing email to a professor for PhD application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25608" CreationDate="2014-07-10T09:41:24.053" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;To express that you are motivated is  a good thing. The difficulty is getting the &quot;tone&quot; right. This is in part a cultural problem. If you are not German and you happen to know someone who is, then you could ask her or him to read your letter and see if you get the right message across. It would be even better if that person is also from the same discipline, as cultures also tend to differ between disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would keep this part short and to the point. If you have a specific reason why this is your dream (and it is not too personal) than it might help to mention that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14471" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T09:41:24.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25608" CreationDate="2014-07-10T10:18:35.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it short and to the point (following advice in similar questions on this site). In particular, since you want to move into a different (sub-)field, state the work you did in your current field (especially published work, if any), and point toward key courses you have taken that would be advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you did computer vision with a published paper, state that, but also state that you have taken courses in biology if you want to do a PhD in bioinformatics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't care that it is your 'dream', I suppose that every potential student is strongly motivated to do their PhD. So don't 'waste' precious space stating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The last line is my personal opinion, obviously, but at least I'm german ;-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T10:18:35.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24550" CreationDate="2014-07-10T10:19:28.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in a really small department, and the only student in my particular research group. When we have students interviewing for a PhD in my group, I always spend some time with them answering questions about what it is like in the department and group, and what it is like working with my supervisor (very important!). I always give them my email address so they can ask me any other questions they may not have thought of at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone was to email me directly before applying, I would take time to answer their questions, but only if they genuinely seem interested in the specific PhD topic on offer. If it seemed like a really generic email that had been sent out to loads of people (obvious give away is if it isn't actually addressed to me!), then I wouldn't take time out of my busy schedule to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my research group, PhDs are offered based on a specific topic that we have got funding for. I know other big departments in the UK interview for PhD students generically and then they get to choose their topic from scratch, pick one from a list, or they are matched with a specific topic after their interview depending on their skills. I don't know how it works in other countries or other fields (I am in the climate/meteorology field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12089" LastEditorUserId="12089" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:38:25.430" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:38:25.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2014-07-10T11:13:08.707" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost anything will be fine, provided you feel comfortable on them. The clothes you are wearing will influence the first impression, but you are going to be talking about your project for at least 20 min, and the confidence and clarity will wipe whatever the first idea was. Make sure they are you feel good on them, and don't use them for the first time this day in case they itch or something (specially important for underwear!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; level of formalism is very dependent on the culture and setting, but it is probably not so important. It will also depend on whether the event is public or not: if the audience are going to be the people that have been seeing you in normal clothes all year round, or if the public is going to attend and the University wants to shine.&#xA; Of course, a frock and a top hat or just a swimming suit will look ridiculous, but anywhere in the middle would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, &#xA;I have been present to two PhD defences in Sweden (where they are quite lax in formalities). In one, the doctorand was wearing plain business-like clothes, slightly more formal than a normal day; in the other, he was wearing a normal shirt, quite &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; formal than his normal attire. And, for the record, both passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Jigg is right in pointing that some universities do require a certain dress code. In this case, it will probably be clearly stated by the centre. Being rejected is possible, but extremely unlikely, as it can get the university in all sorts of legal troubles. Also, these regulations can get to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t98957.html&quot;&gt;absurd levels&lt;/a&gt; (the story seems to be a legend, but the third comment may be legit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T12:59:17.693" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T12:59:17.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25624" CreationDate="2014-07-10T12:39:30.830" Score="11" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to do a short (2-3months) visit to a different lab at a different university while doing a PhD? I would think that it would be good for setting up collaborations, but would a PhD supervisor be against this due to the time that would be lost doing so?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:11:08.850" Title="Advisable to visit other labs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25613" CreationDate="2014-07-10T12:42:10.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did several months over summer and winter breaks at a US Department of Energy national lab during my PhD. It was my advisor's idea. I worked on things of mutual interest to us and the lab. It certainly didn't slow me down. I didn't end up working for the lab, but I keep those connections to this day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T12:42:10.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25615" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:07:46.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A custom or convention can be defined as a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms, or criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:36:01.637" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:36:01.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25616" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:07:46.360" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic customs and conventions." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:36:07.623" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:36:07.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25617" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:13:53.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abet.org/about-abet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABET website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABET is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that accredits college and university programs in the disciplines of applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. ABET accredits over 3,300 programs at more than 680 colleges and universities in 24 countries. ABET provides specialized, programmatic accreditation that evaluates an individual program of study, rather than evaluating an institution as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:34:53.227" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:34:53.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25618" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:13:53.207" Score="0" Body="Questions about Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, a non-governmental accreditation organization." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="41286" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T20:00:57.743" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T20:00:57.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25620" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:17:12.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Habilitation (from Latin habilis &quot;fit, proper, skillful&quot;) is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his own pursuit in many countries in Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus[citation needed]. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires that the candidate write a professorial thesis (or habilitation thesis) based on independent scholarship, reviewed by and defended before an academic committee in a process similar to that of the doctoral dissertation. However, the level of scholarship has to be considerably higher than that required for a research doctoral (PhD) thesis in terms of quality and quantity, and must be accomplished independently, in contrast with a PhD dissertation typically directed or guided by a faculty supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:37:07.330" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:37:07.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25621" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:17:12.247" Score="0" Body="Questions about the academic qualification of habilitation, which is typically associated with academic systems in central Europe (notably German-speaking countries such as Germany, Switzerland, and Austria)." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:36:54.360" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:36:54.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25622" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:21:50.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities offer its academic employees the opportunity to qualify for paid leaves as an employee benefit, known as &lt;em&gt;sabbatical&lt;/em&gt;, since it was traditionally taken one year out of every seven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:35:53.327" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:35:53.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25623" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:21:50.887" Score="0" Body="Questions about academic sabbaticals." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:37:18.090" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:37:18.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25613" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:25:30.157" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am actually currently just preparing for such a collaboration/internship/exchange (leaving after summer). From day 1 of my PhD (both) my supervisors said that we should definitely look for such an opportunity during my second year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of my supervisor think it is not a bad idea, moreover, they both think it is something &lt;strong&gt;very important given several restrictions&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that you do it around the middle of your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important because in the beginning, you're still new to the topic and trying to get a grip on everything important. You can not &amp;quot;give&amp;quot; almost anything back to the lab you are visiting, so it is not a fair exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the project (3 months in my case), is something directly related to my PhD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not just &amp;quot;has similarities&amp;quot;, but maybe a sub-problem of the research direction I am currently on anyway due to my PhD. It is also important (mostly, for the grants), that it is something that the target laboratory is better suited for/equipped/has more experts than your own institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that it is around 3-4 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, much shorter than that, and it becomes a purely social / networking visit where you can possibly present your research in person and have other people present theirs, but not much more. On the other hand, more than 4 months will indeed be too long, as I am not expected to spend much more than that on a single idea even when I am working in my lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these were the restrictions. The &lt;strong&gt;benefits&lt;/strong&gt;, however, are much more numerous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;obviously, &lt;strong&gt;networking&lt;/strong&gt;. Especially if you plan to stay in academia, developing your own network of contacts as soon as possible is very important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;exchanging ideas&lt;/strong&gt;. In addition to papers, presenting your own (and your labs) work in person is another way to disseminate ideas. Also, being exposed to different people, different approaches and different ideas might just jog some clogs that would otherwise take much longer to click in place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;strengthening the &lt;strong&gt;collaboration (between the participating laboratories)&lt;/strong&gt;: in a sense, you became an &amp;quot;ambassador&amp;quot; from your own institution to the host institution. A successful internship will be good for you, but it can also hold a lot of benefits for both institutions (that includes your supervisors) as if it goes well, they will be more likely to collaborate (more) in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;international experience&lt;/strong&gt;. Where I am (France), people who plan to stay in academia and reach a permanent position are &lt;em&gt;more than strongly encouraged&lt;/em&gt; to have an international experience. Basically, at least a few months internship abroad is a must for a permanent position, a year-long post-doc position or two abroad are much better. It is not a requirement, but always a person with international experience will get picked over the person with none.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;both of these boil down to: &lt;strong&gt;post-doc&lt;/strong&gt;. If is not unheard of that such an internship might actually be &amp;quot;vetting&amp;quot; the place for a post-doc. And this goes both ways: your host institution/professor sees if he likes working with you, and you see if you like it there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;specific benefit of the hosting lab&lt;/strong&gt;. I have mentioned that there is many benefits of generally working in a different research environment and with different people for a while. But, specifically, there might be equipment, or test data, or an expert in the hosting lab that you just do not have in your institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;diversity experience&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have decided to stay in academia only on the basis of your PhD environment (as I have), you might not see the whole picture yet. Seeing different research labs, different environments, can only be a benefit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;publication&lt;/strong&gt; While 3 months is not always enough to make a publication, you do want to get the most of the internship. Thus, most people get a publication out of it because they put a little bit extra effort (maybe not even consciously). And, your new publication will have a name of somebody other than your supervisor on it, which speaks to your ability to be able to work with different people successfully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course, funding might be one obstacle. But other than that, if adequate funding is found, I see no reason for supervisors to object to such an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:25:30.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25625" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:52:42.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consequences of scientific misconduct can be damaging for both perpetrators and any individual who exposes it. There are also public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on dubious research findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note : This tag wiki has content adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T18:04:49.610" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T18:04:49.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25626" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:52:42.393" Score="0" Body="On distortion of the research and/or research publication process through dishonest or otherwise unethical behavior. Includes (but is not limited to) issues such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, violation of ethical standards related to human subjects research, and theft of intellectual property." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T18:04:49.610" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T18:04:49.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8291" CreationDate="2014-07-10T14:04:22.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it depends on type of email or letter you are writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are writing an official email, it is better to use your initial as &lt;code&gt;Dr.&lt;/code&gt;, but when you are writing to a friend I prefer not to use &lt;code&gt;Dr.&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Prof.&lt;/code&gt;. However, It all depends on the person. Some people prefer to be called &lt;code&gt;Professor Doctor Name Surname&lt;/code&gt; even by their close friends and some other are nicer and using their given name is sufficient for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:04:22.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25608" CreationDate="2014-07-10T14:16:32.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just having strong interest in a specific topic wouldn't justify your application in Germany. It is a norm in Germany that one's interest in a specific field is judged by his/her previous achievements in that particular field.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My sincere suggestion is that don't waste your precious space in the application letter/email, by boasting about the interest. Rather, try to sell your previous achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19399" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:16:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9388" CreationDate="2014-07-10T14:46:24.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current CS PhD student here, I can at least speak to the content of coursework.  It does depends a lot on what sort of programming experience you have, and what field you are planning to go into - e.g., if all you've done is some web dev and you want to work on compilers, you're going to have a lot of catching up to do.  But if you wanted to do HCI and you can pick up new syntax relatively fast, you'd probably be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, while I had both decent grades and a fair amount of programming experience in undergrad, I was primarily a physics major and hadn't taken any courses on topics that everyone already seemed to know about, like parallel computing or crypto or even networking - starting out with grad courses on those topics was one of the hardest things for me, not learning a new language.  Classes move a lot faster and assume a lot more background knowledge at the graduate level vs. undergrad.  For example, in my programming language course, we spent two days on an introduction to OCaml, where the undergrad level course spent about two weeks.  It's certainly possible - and schools do admit people with limited CS experience but demonstrate promise in other ways! - but it will mean you have to work a little harder to catch up.  As an example, in my &quot;advanced database manangement systems&quot; course last semester, I was in a project group with two other CS PhD students, one of whom knew only MATLAB (he was going into theory), and the other had a some experience (an intro class or two) with Java.  However, they were both either planning to or taking undergrad-level programming courses.  So that is one option, although of course it'd be more work on top of your classes.  I would say the most important factor in deciding to take time off to &quot;get up to speed&quot; would be whether or not you feel you know enough about your desired field.  If it's just &quot;wow [x] sounds so cool, I wanna work on that!&quot;, you might want to take time to get your feet wet and see if you really do like it before committing to a Ph.D. program.  But if you are sure enough, apply away, and be confident in knowing that an admission offer means they think you're ready to go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:46:24.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25645" CreationDate="2014-07-10T14:48:14.640" Score="7" ViewCount="16306" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a different schooling/grading system, I have very little feeling about what actually is considered a good grade for studies in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the passing grades are given in the range of 1.0 to 4.0 and there are non-passing (failing) grades, which basically tell how hard you failed.&#xA;Needless to say, 1.0 is the best possible and tells that the student performed perfectly, but what about the other grades. What does 2.0 mean? It is translated as &quot;good&quot; but is that average actually. How does the teacher/professor &quot;see&quot; that grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, what is the typical GPA average which gives a student a chance to be considered for a Phd position? Of course, the higher the better, but what gpa (in the german grading system) would be considered OK-ish for a phd application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="8185" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T18:19:00.637" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T23:36:19.647" Title="What is considered a good GPA for studies in Germany" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9388" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:03:24.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came into my PhD in CS (JHU) with a solid background in mathematics (12+ graduate courses, 8 undergraduate courses) but little programming experience (I had data structures and theory of computation). I worked a few hours a day just on catching up. It was difficult my first year. If you feel confident about your ability to learn and are able to work extra hard (zero other responsibilities) then I would just begin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19404" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:03:24.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13304" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:09:29.913" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn assembly thoroughly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn theory of computation thoroughly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn algorithms thoroughly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explore specializations (read papers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19404" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:09:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25635" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:39:15.817" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:39:15.817" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:39:15.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25636" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:39:15.817" Score="0" Body="On audio and/or video recordings of academic content, such as lectures or conference presentations." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T04:43:20.457" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T04:43:20.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25637" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:41:16.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ielts.org/what-is-ielts/ielts-introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IELTS website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is a test that measures the language proficiency of people who want to study or work in environments where English is used as a language of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="41286" LastEditorUserId="41286" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T21:19:09.023" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T21:19:09.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25638" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:41:16.967" Score="0" Body="Questions about International English Language Testing System, which is an international standard test of English language proficiency and is globally accepted by educational institutes, organizations and companies." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T12:23:21.103" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:23:21.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25639" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:43:21.320" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:43:21.320" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:43:21.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25640" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:43:21.320" Score="0" Body="Questions about Test of English as a Foreign Language, which is an international standard test of English language proficiency, which is globally accepted by educational institutes, organizations and companies. This test is in forms of paper based test, computer-based test and internet-based test." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T18:06:46.563" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T18:06:46.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25641" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25642" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:45:21.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2254" CreationDate="2014-07-10T16:01:43.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted a paper to IJNME. In the 'File Upload' section, it states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Author's Novelty File&quot; - All Authors are now required to supply an additional&#xA;      file. Please briefly describe, in a bullet pointed list, the new contributions&#xA;      of your paper to the field. Do not repeat for this purpose the content of your&#xA;      abstract. Instead, provide a brief itemized list of these contributions in a&#xA;      separate file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T11:03:18.023" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T11:03:18.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2014-07-10T16:30:01.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that &quot;grade inflation&quot; is often much less rampant in Germany than in other nations (it is not unusual, for instance, for the &lt;em&gt;majority&lt;/em&gt; of students to fail an exam in a core subject), the standards inside of Germany tend not to be as stringent as in other places I've seen. For instance, anything better than 2.0 (on a 5.0 scale, not a 4.0 scale!) would generally be considered &quot;competitive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there are limitations—if you get a 2.0 because you've gotten 1.0's in the general courses and 3.0 in the courses in your subdiscipline, you're not likely going to be an attractive candidate to an outside group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think much more important than the exact GPA is the quality of the master's thesis. If you have a very strong master's thesis, you will likely get some interest from the group in which you did the thesis work to continue on for a PhD, if there is an open position available. A weak grade on the thesis (anything below a 1.3) usually is a sign of substandard performance, which is likely to result in &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; being considered for a position, even if your GPA is a 1.1 or 1.2 (it's unlikely to be a 1.0 under such circumstances).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:30:01.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2014-07-10T17:00:01.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been admitted to two graduate programs (finished one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, admissions committees are generally looking for &quot;mass,&quot; rather than &quot;velocity,&quot; even though both are components of &quot;momentum.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the &quot;mass,&quot; with your test scores and course work. You seem to fear that older age implies less &quot;velocity.&quot; That may be true technically, and it could factor into a few decisions, but I haven't seen much evidence of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some level, admissions committees are looking more for evidence of &quot;likely to finish&quot; (the degree), rather than &quot;likely to be brilliant.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T17:00:01.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2014-07-10T17:02:18.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a PhD in a graduate school funded by the German Research Foundation and I was graded 2.0 in my master's thesis (mainly because it was written in English and my grammer was not 100% perfect). What I am trying to say, is, that beyond just the grade of your master's, it can be important to have some kind of experience in the respetive field of your desired PhD. In my case, I was holding several positions as a student assistant in my former university. Also first publication experience might come handy (even though I would not like to support this ongoing trend). It would likely not help you, to score very high on your GPA but having no (work/research) experience beyond studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19413" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T17:02:18.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24461" CreationDate="2014-07-10T17:56:57.513" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I participated to this kind of interviews, as an applicant as well as a committe member. For the exemple, I will assume that you are applying to a position as a maths teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Dave Clarke mentioned, prepare for the expected audience. If your are expected to teach to maths major in a very good institution, it is not a big problem to show off your skills by lecturing at a level &lt;em&gt;a little bit&lt;/em&gt; above the expected audience's level. But avoid this if your expected audience is notoriously weak or non maths majors. I got rejected once because I was &quot;too good&quot; for the position. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To prepare the lecture, you should study the curriculum of the institution you will be teaching. You usually can find it on the institution's website. It is important since it helps you to do the lecture at right level, but also helps you to connect your lecture to other topics (especially when your expected students are not maths major) studied by your future students. It will make you more comfortable for the questions that usually follow the interview.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only do things you usually do in class. An interview is definitely not the place to experiment a new teaching method. Last month, a candidate with an impressive CV failed an interview in my institution by trying to use a computer and videoprojector, thing he obviously never did before. The result was pityful.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure your connect the lecture to the lectures sequence of a real course. So, take time to tell what students should have studied in the previous lectures, and which problems (related to the current lecture) they will solve in future lectures. This is something you probably already do in a normal lecture, but it is especially important here since the committee wants to know if you can organize a complete course. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But putting your lecture in context does not mean reviewing the (expected) previous lecture, you have no time for being off-topic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would not prepare a joke, as if it was a stand-up comedy. But, if an opportunity to make a joke, I would take it in order to make a more decontracted atmosphere. Beside hiring the best teacher, the committee wants to hire someone who they feel comfortable to work with. To sum up, your goal is to appear as a reliable, professional, open-minded and with team spirit person. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if I do it in class, I would not prepare any activity where the audience participates -or only a very short one-, since it takes too much time (except for a foreign language teacher interview). But I would try to interact as much as I can with the audience through questions.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T17:56:57.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25661" CreationDate="2014-07-10T18:24:49.350" Score="13" ViewCount="13125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing up a paper for an upcoming CS conference. The problem is my paper is 1 page shorter than the conference's page limit. This conference doesn't have any workshop to accept a short paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that submitting the paper shorter than the page limit was a very bad idea as it guaranteed rejection. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:33:05.010" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T18:49:38.730" Title="Is it a good idea to submit paper which is shorter than conference's page limit" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25613" CreationDate="2014-07-10T18:25:50.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a PhD is to prepare you for doing independent research, and this will usually not be at the same place you did your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, having seen how they do things other places will better prepare you for how they might do things where ever you end up, so visiting another lab (or just another university if you are in a subject that does not use labs) will likely have a very positive effect on your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in Denmark, it is not just encouraged to visit another university as part of your PhD, it is mandatory (I am not quite sure what the minimum duration is, but 6 months is the most common).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a recent study of the quality of the PhD programs at Aarhus University (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.au.dk/fileadmin/www.au.dk/kvalitetiphd/KVALITET_I_PHD__UK_.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.au.dk/fileadmin/www.au.dk/kvalitetiphd/KVALITET_I_PHD__UK_.pdf&lt;/a&gt;), 60% answered that their stay abroad had strengthened their research project to a high degree, and 24% answered that it had to some degree. Essentially the same percentages answered that it had been worth the effort compared to their professional benefits (the part about the stay abroad starts at page 45).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I spend 6 months at UGA as part of my PhD (I do mathematics), and that stay has netted me a collaborator with whom I have recently submitted a paper, and with whom I will certainly do a lot more research in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12592" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T18:25:50.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25652" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T18:59:08.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17363/are-search-committees-biased-in-terms-of-a-candidates-looks-such-as-long-hair&quot;&gt;Are search committees biased in terms of a candidate's looks, such as long hair for men?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17739/should-professors-intervene-if-a-student-is-wearing-offensive-clothing-in-their&quot;&gt;Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25607/what-to-wear-for-a-phd-msc-thesis-defense&quot;&gt;What to wear for a PhD/ MSc thesis defense?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11618/what-do-people-usually-wear-to-conferences&quot;&gt;What do people usually wear to conferences?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T09:15:08.397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T09:15:08.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25653" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T18:59:08.057" Score="0" Body="On standards and perceptions related to outward appearance (including clothing, weight, race, tattoos, or hairstyle) in academic environments. Use [academic-dress] for ceremonial clothing." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2019-08-07T08:54:22.567" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T08:54:22.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25654" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:04:57.287" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T19:04:57.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T19:04:57.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25655" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:04:57.287" Score="0" Body="Questions about expenses regarding the academic issues such as research, laboratory, hiring specialist, etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T00:59:21.563" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T00:59:21.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25656" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:07:06.037" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T19:07:06.037" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T19:07:06.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25657" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:07:06.037" Score="0" Body="On physical and psychological health issues affecting academics and researchers, including impact of illness on research output or grades, health-related side effects of the academic lifestyle, health insurance for those employed in academia, etc. Use 'medicine', not 'health-issues', for questions on health and medicine as an academic discipline or field of study." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T07:08:51.103" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T07:08:51.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24545" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:47:40.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have longterm industry experience, you have the vision towards special issues that industry faces. Try to find the most important issues, problems and disasters that industry really needs to be solved. Then, go to the net and read the academic publications around those unsolved issues. Then, in this ways you see that some of the problems need to be discussed academically and you feel that you can write a proposal around one or two industry based problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage you can discuss those issues to the companies you have worked for or with the university professors who's research interests are near the problems you have brought in your proposal. You can try to talk to the industry to support you by funds and start an industry-based PhD project. If you do not find any industry support, do not be upset; because you still have the chance that the admission committee be interested in your point of view and a professor accept you as a research PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which is obvious, is that you should search for the minimum requirements of the universities you are aiming to apply for and prepare your academic documents during the period of time your searching for good research topics and narrowing your research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, you will be also prepared for applying the research companies; because you have the problems in mind and you can do beneficial research projects for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T19:47:40.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25695" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:06:55.657" Score="16" ViewCount="31065" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should I address a knighted academic in a letter or in an email? The person in question is a chancellor of a university, so the odds are that he has at least a PhD. He is a CEO of a multinational company, too, so it is difficult to guess whether he has been a professor at any given time (at least there's no search results for &quot;prof. [name]&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T23:39:12.317" Title="How to address a knighted academic?" Tags="&lt;titles&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25650" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:13:54.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I should mention that good conferences and journals logically do not pay much attention the the amount of pages of the papers. The &lt;strong&gt;quality&lt;/strong&gt; of the paper and subject of it besides to the discussions and how much the topic is new seems to be &lt;strong&gt;more important than the quantity&lt;/strong&gt; of the papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the conference's website to see if they policies on this issue or not. You may also ask your question from their office by email or phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is my paper is 1 page shorter than the conference's page limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear that their page limit is a maximum number of pages or is a minimum number of pages. In the first case, I have seen some conferences which had a maximum limit of eight pages but some papers were accepted which were organized in nine pages. If there is a maximum limitation, then you have no problem as you are not passing the limit on maximum number of pages, your paper is in the safe side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if they &quot;accept papers with no less than a number of pages&quot;, you should check this with the conference management. But still I think that there is no problem with shorter papers, specially your case which is inly one page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you should also talk to the co-authors of your paper as they may have suggestion on your paper and may help you to extend your academic paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T20:27:29.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:27:29.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25650" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:25:14.843" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen papers rejected because it was shorter than the maximum allowed pages. But this was not the only reason for rejection; rather it was supporting that the paper didn't have enough contribution/content. If you don't want to give the reviewers any excuses to reject, then you might want to fill up the pages, but I think that's silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer would depend on the field and the page limit. If the page limit is 4, you probably want to fill all 4 pages, because 4 pages is usually not enough. But if the page limit is 12 pages, I see no problem for accepting a &lt;strong&gt;high-quality&lt;/strong&gt; 11-page paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:25:14.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25659" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:25:42.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Britain, the usual form is &quot;Professor Sir {calling name} {family name}&quot;, e.g. &quot;Professor Sir Peter Hall&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to start a letter or email use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor Sir Peter Hall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, alternately,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor Sir Peter &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you're already acquainted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T09:10:37.633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T09:10:37.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25659" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:34:36.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, for Knighted Professors, it seems the professor title is often dropped. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/magres/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sir Peter Mansfield Centre&lt;/a&gt; drops the professor title. Both the knightly title and the professor title can be used, for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/people/sally-davies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professor Dame Sally Davies&lt;/a&gt;, but it can also be omitted (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Davies_(doctor)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Davies_(doctor)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:34:36.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25665" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:40:35.463" Score="1" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it is normal to choose teacher assistants for BSc courses from MSc or PhD students and TAs for MSc courses to be from PhD students;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case that the PhD or MSc students are not interested or are not applying for a teaching assistant position of the lower courses (lets say a BSc course); is it a good idea to choose an assistant from the interested last year BSc students (with good academic records and background) or it is better not to have TA for the course for a period of time until a PhD student applies for the TA position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:53:16.347" Title="From which level of education, is it better to choose teacher assistants?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25664" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:53:16.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some universities have rules about what kind of student may be a TA.  Assuming no such rules exist, the TA should be qualified to fill that role, whatever that means for a given course.  That is, the TA should have both the domain knowledge and pedagogical ability that the job requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter what level of education the TA is at. In my own department it is quite common for TAs to be &quot;peers&quot; of the students in the class (B.S. students hired to TA the B.S. level courses, M.S. students and PhD students hired to TA graduate courses including both M.S. and PhD students.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:53:16.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-10T22:04:50.383" Score="9" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently attending an accredited university which provides an online BSc CIS program.  Is an online degree considered lowly in compared to a traditional education, and can it affect admissions into masters programs offered abroad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19426" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T20:42:26.760" LastActivityDate="2020-01-20T13:27:06.090" Title="Can an online degree through an accredited institution affect admissions into masters programs abroad?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25670" CreationDate="2014-07-10T22:40:57.807" Score="12" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been contacted by email by another professor at a different institution, who is assessing a student for graduate school entry, for an informal opinion about the student's suitability. The student hasn't asked me directly for a recommendation or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical for me to provide that informal opinion without informing the student? Does whether the opinion would be positive or negative make a difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reasonably sure there are no legal issues involved, so I'm just interested in the ethical considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19428" LastEditorUserId="19428" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T08:42:56.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:42:56.690" Title="Should I provide an opinion on a graduate school candidate without being asked by the candidate?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-11T00:26:44.533" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my Ph.D. in computer science at UCSD in 2009, when I was 60 years old. I don't think being a few years older than that would have made any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem I had in the application process was a limited space for the statement of purpose that was also required to contain a list of every job I had held since getting my bachelor's degree - in 1970. I was able to use my industry contact network to get to talk with three of the faculty before my application went in. I don't know whether that helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt a little bit disconnected from the social life of my fellow students, not just directly because of the age difference. Many of them had recently moved to San Diego, and so only knew other students. I had been living in the area since 1975, and had an established network of friends who share my non-technical interests. Most of them were living in dorm rooms or shared apartments, on or near campus. I had a home about 10 miles from campus. I went to a few parties, but mainly continued my pre-student social life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;===============================================&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I included above most of the information about my experiences that applies to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had entirely different reasons for doing a Ph.D. I was already doing work of comparable difficulty and creativity to a doctoral dissertation project, but in an environment where the result was patents and products, rather than papers. I had had to choose between an academic and an industry career when I was about 25, and had picked industry. After selling some stock options in 2000, I realized I had the option of trying out the other path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After completing my doctorate, I took a year off to celebrate, and enjoyed it so much that I decided to retire permanently. I did not seriously consider continuing an academic career. If I had looked for work, it would have been a pure technical job. My industry employers, at least since I moved to California in 1975, had each had a technical promotion track, parallel to but separate from the management track. As far as I can tell, universities require professors to do teaching and administration, as well as research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I picked an entirely different subject for my dissertation, my long term field of interest is the logical design of multiprocessor interconnects. Critical technical work for a large server design cannot be done half-heartedly - it requires an intense commitment to spending whatever time and effort it takes to get the product working and into customers' hands. I'm enjoying luxuries like time for travel, horseback riding a couple of days a week, crafts and hobbies...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10220" LastEditorUserId="10220" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T22:14:24.687" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T22:14:24.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25668" CreationDate="2014-07-11T00:38:18.640" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not make a difference whether your review would be positive or negative, and it is your duty to keep your discussions about the student confidential. Should you choose to review their application, you should not tell the student or anyone not involved in the process that you are doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are being asked to help your university, or maybe just a professor who trusts you, to help with their admissions and hiring process. You should take it seriously and give an honest review if you can. If you don't feel like you can be objective in your review (maybe the student is a friend or colleague), then you should decline to do so. But I don't feel like there's an ethical issue in the applicant not knowing that you've been asked about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T00:38:18.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24592" CreationDate="2014-07-11T00:38:53.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about (drum roll) the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paraphrasing you:&#xA;&quot;Thanks for the recommendation letter you wrote me when I was applying to university B for masters. [Tell him how it went and what you did.]&#xA;Now I am applying for PhD at university C, and I want to ask your recommendation again, but I feel bad for not emailing you for a long time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continue from then on. He may be good people and help you out. What's the big deal? Piece of advice: stop thinking of (lowercase) professors as the aristocrats of knowledge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18207" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:41:56.090" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:41:56.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25659" CreationDate="2014-07-11T02:05:51.037" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my university, knighted professors tend to use the Professor Sir {calling name} {family name} form as given by EnergyNumbers but I think that it is down to personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add that the Sir / Dame is associated with the first name while Professor / Dr is associated with the surname. As you asked about a letter, if you would normally put 'Dear Professor {surname}' then that would still be correct. In order to use Sir / Dame you would need to also include the first name, or only use the first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19434" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:05:51.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24576" CreationDate="2014-07-11T02:46:58.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to address one minor point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter what your feelings are but rather what is the policy of the journal the article was published. Some journals require disclosure of data or source code but others do not. Also if the research was funded by the NSF there maybe mandatory disclosures policy. I suggest you to see if this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6556" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:46:58.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25674" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:03:23.997" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:03:23.997" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:03:23.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25675" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:03:23.997" Score="0" Body="Questions about the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:41:50.003" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:41:50.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25676" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:05:58.750" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:05:58.750" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:05:58.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25677" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:05:58.750" Score="0" Body="Questions about taxes which the academic members should pay. Taxes on their salaries, their project costs, money transfer, etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:30:13.050" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:30:13.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25678" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:08:19.620" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:08:19.620" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:08:19.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25679" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:08:19.620" Score="0" Body="Questions about athletics in the academic environments such as universities sports teams, group sports, individual training programs, sports facilities, etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:29:54.780" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:29:54.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25680" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:11:05.267" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:11:05.267" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:11:05.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25681" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:11:05.267" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to electrical engineering as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:01:52.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:01:52.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25682" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:13:10.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:13:10.703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:13:10.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25683" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:13:10.703" Score="0" Body="Questions about a group of faculty members, professors and people working in industry that evaluate the thesis or project report of PhD/MSc candidates." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:24:42.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:24:42.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25684" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:16:28.680" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:16:28.680" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:16:28.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25685" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:16:28.680" Score="0" Body="Questions about the words that in each paper or academic publication, are of great influence. Keywords are about five words that highlight the scope of each publication and should be chosen wisely by the authors." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:42:21.713" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:42:21.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25686" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:24:10.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic writing typically involves some introductory material to give an overall idea of the content. This can be an overall introduction to a work, or at a smaller level, such as a book chapter. Questions with this tag are about both the content and the format, and even the advisability of such material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T14:22:41.707" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T14:22:41.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25687" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:24:10.263" Score="0" Body="Questions about introduction part of each academic publication, paper or book, the format, what to write in, etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T14:22:41.707" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T14:22:41.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25688" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:25:13.383" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:25:13.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:25:13.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25689" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:25:13.383" Score="0" Body="Questions about learning process in academia, lesson plans, learning problems,  etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:00:14.470" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:00:14.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25690" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:27:14.907" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T06:27:14.907" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T06:27:14.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25691" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T06:27:14.907" Score="0" Body="Questions that each member of academia may face during his academic careers, because of personal problems, and contradictions between academic life and personal life. These may include marriage, childcare, etc." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:35:42.150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:35:42.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25613" CreationDate="2014-07-11T07:11:08.850" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are already very good. I'll add just one aspect that I haven't seen. I agree that visiting other labs for a couple of months is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; useful... &lt;em&gt;for people who plan on staying in academia&lt;/em&gt;. If you already plan on leaving academia after your Ph.D., the benefits that, e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/25624/4140&quot;&gt;Penelope lists&lt;/a&gt; are much less convincing compared to losing time - after all, what will you do with your improved academic network you will likely never use again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that doesn't mean that such an external stay can't be productive even for people who leave for industry after their Ph.D. I'd just say that they might be better advised to either finish their Ph.D. quicker, or even try to spend some time in industry instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:11:08.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25694" CreationDate="2014-07-11T07:12:47.583" Score="0" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to propose some approaches in wireless networks and I want to simulate it to prove that it is better than others; but I don't want use commonly-used simulators and I want to create new simulator according to requirements. Is there any difference in paper acceptance for international conferences to use your own simulator or famous simulators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19440" LastEditorUserId="19440" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T07:27:39.923" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:15:40.090" Title="Is acceptable for international conferences to use your own simulator in your paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25693" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:15:40.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to use the right tool for the job, and justify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existing simulators have the following advantage: a great deal of time and effort went into their development, and they have been used, debugged, and extended by many people. Therefore, they are likely to be more complete and/or more accurate than anything you could come up with on your own in a reasonable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have a compelling reason why these are not suitable for the particular bit of research you want to do, by all means write your own simulator; but you should be able to justify this in your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some objective numbers, I refer you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1096174&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this survey&lt;/a&gt; of papers published in MobiHoc from 2000-2005. 80 of the 114 papers that used simulations stated what simulator they used. From those, 22/80 said they used &quot;self-developed or custom simulators&quot; (27.3%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:15:40.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25659" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:22:09.903" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The canonical reference for this subject is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160528222528/http://www.debretts.com/forms-address/titles/knight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Debrett's&lt;/a&gt; (via the Wayback Machine). They recommend that a letter to a knight should begin &quot;Dear Sir [given name],&quot; regardless of whether they have other titles such as &quot;professor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, they advise against mixing titles granted by the sovereign (such as knighthoods and ranks in the armed forces) with titles not granted by the sovereign (such as professor) but, as others have observed, &quot;Professor Sir [Given name] [Surname]&quot; is common usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an academic context, your alternative option  for a salutation is &quot;Dear Professor [Surname]&quot;. However, as I noted in a comment to the question, it's unlikely that somebody who's the CEO of a multinational company would, in fact, be a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2019-08-29T23:39:12.317" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T23:39:12.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:44:28.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that is absurd! Age is nothing but a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is to say that you are too old? The other students? The faculty? Who are they to make that distinction? You are the only one who lives your own life and who makes it out to what you want it to be. If you want to pursue a Ph.D. at 60, that is nothing but honorable and it will only make your life better by allowing you to do what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, maybe you are at just the perfect age, and all the other kids in your program are too young?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, it just pains me very deeply when people limit themselves because of some imaginary &amp;quot;social norms&amp;quot;. Some routine self-destructive lifestyle justifications that people love to give, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I am going to stay in this terrible marriage, because divorce is frowned upon&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I hate medicine, but I am going to become a doctor anyway, because that will allow me to become a respectable member of this society as well as appease my parents&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I want to buy a dog, but am unsure how will my neighbors react&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;have no effects on peoples' lives other than wreckage, with the sole purpose of appeasing the opinions of others (with (note!) absolutely no benefit whatsoever for themselves). No one out there will live your life for you (I am sure you understand that by your age). &amp;quot;Social norms&amp;quot; were established to maintain order and create imaginary boundaries; for example, the core historical purpose of politeness (in the form of respect for a person who is of a higher social rank than you) is simply to make sure that the peasantry &amp;quot;knows their place&amp;quot;; self-deprivation measures, such as the all-glorified &amp;quot;self-control&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;moderation&amp;quot; among the wealthy, were also put in place to keep the upper classes on a pedestal (and thus prevent the possibility of them, for example, appearing drunk in public, etc., so that the lower classes would look at them as betters instead of equals). It's nothing but social engineering at its finest (perfected over millennia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, where do you fit into this whole picture? Are you really going to sacrifice your own happiness because someone out there said that you are too old to do what you want? Because you are &amp;quot;too old&amp;quot; to be happy? Who are they to have the authoritative word? Maybe you feel that they are too young to be happy... Why does their word weigh more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read a beautiful story about an 80-something-year-old woman who realized that throughout her entire life, she despised the career that she had. At 80, she decided to forget all social stereotypes, and enrolled into a university to get her bachelor's degree in something that she always wanted to do. She succeeded, and spent a few years doing something she dreamt of since her childhood (I forget what the exact field was, and I forget the name of the woman; I'd be happy to look it up if you are interested, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of fact, there are plenty of 70-year-old hippies and 50-year-old clubbers out there, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that if that is what makes them happy. Society can judge all they want... People will always judge. Because that is what people with too much time on their hands do. They sit, and judge. Because they are so unhappy with their own lives. And frankly, if everyone listened to them, no one would ever be happy and no one would ever achieve anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely never too late to do anything! Don't let some crowd's musings, let alone something as superficial as some imaginary &amp;quot;social norms&amp;quot;, dictate whether you have a right to be happy. You have a right to be happy and pursue any purpose you wish. It is your inalienable right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are only given one life. And its yours, no one else's. We all write our own book. Make yours out what you want it to be. After all, it's only the best that any of us can really do. At life's end, all social norms, material wealth, and others' opinions and judgements, will not matter. The only thing that will matter are the memories that you created and the moments of happiness that you enjoyed; that's really the only thing we can take with us to whatever is next (and if there is nothing next, than at least it is something we can cherish it and bask in on our death beds). It's the only thing in this world that is truly ours. Don't ever let anyone take that away from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19443" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T16:42:12.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25700" CreationDate="2014-07-11T09:26:37.840" Score="6" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper received a good review, but we've been implicitly asked (interpretation of my supervisor, not mine) to do two experiments to verify a method I use. We then asked the editor for some time to perform these experiments, which the editor accepted. Then two things happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experiments were messed up due to some unfortunate technical error and now I can't meet the deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After some deep digging in preliminary experiments and literature, I found data that could replace these experiments just good enough in my opinion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is now: Should I ask for more time to retry the experiments, or should I just send the literature/preliminary data to the reviewers? Which choice would be wiser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3885" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T10:54:38.093" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T10:54:38.093" Title="Asked editor for review prolongation to do further experiments, can't meet deadline. What do?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25699" CreationDate="2014-07-11T09:58:15.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the reviews and the willingness of the editor to provide an extension, your paper clearly is worth it for the journal. You should definitely contact the editor, briefly explain the problems (don't focus on excuses but on what remains to be done) you have had to meet the deadline and ask what can be done. It will be advantageous to provide a solid plan for the remaining work so that this is clear from the beginning to the editor. So assess the remaining work, make up a realistic plan for what is required and provide this to the editor. If all this requires the assistance of your advisor then plan it together. In the end, it will be up to the editor to provide an extension and a clear plan is necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience as editor, I much more appreciate realistic plans than optimistic ones that fail. In your case it seems as a case of &lt;em&gt;force majeur&lt;/em&gt; and such things happen. I am, however, always suspicious of long excusing accompanying letters since I really do not care about the reasons but need to focus on the timing of revisions for planning issues and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T09:58:15.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25701" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:39:13.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exams have different types such as multiple choice, true or false, short answers and essays and problems solving. These types of exams may be oral or in written format and the students may be allowed to have their books, pamphlets and computers with them during the exam or not; also, there are some sort of take home exams that the examiner allows students to work on the questions for a limited time and take the exam back later. Based on the kind of the course there may also be a kind of practical exam. Some tests are a combination of different exam types, for instance a written and an oral section may both be included in a testing progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:48:37.003" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:48:37.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25702" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:39:13.153" Score="0" Body="Questions about exams, tests and students assessments; which may be in different types." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:45:00.693" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:45:00.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25725" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:40:29.030" Score="17" ViewCount="39371" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some publishers like Springer appear variously with different addresses.  Sometimes (in the case of Springer) it's &quot;Berlin, Heidelberg&quot;, sometimes it's &quot;Heidelberg, New York&quot;, or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bimj.4710300514/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I, eg. in a thesis, just settle for one address per publisher and stick to it, or is there a different correct address for each publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10633" LastActivityDate="2020-06-01T18:54:50.433" Title="What address to put in bibliography for Springer (and others)?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25704" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:41:09.453" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T10:41:09.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T10:41:09.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25705" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:41:09.453" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to law as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. Use 'legal-issues', not 'law', for questions on legal issues facing academics." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T07:06:50.053" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T07:06:50.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25706" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:42:46.133" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T10:42:46.133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T10:42:46.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25707" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:42:46.133" Score="0" Body="Questions about formal rankings of universities, journals, conferences, or students (in a course or university) based on some quantitative metric(s). This is distinct from 'reputation' which may be measured informally and does not necessarily involve any quantitative metrics." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:06:13.150" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T02:06:13.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25708" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:43:29.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the WITS university &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wits.ac.za/academic/health/research/researchoffice/researchentities/13474/definition_of_an_entity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Research Group is a formally recognised grouping of established researchers with an agreed-upon Leader, who share common and complimentary research interests and who have similar needs with respect to research infrastructure. They would be able to share technical support staff and research equipment, may submit joint applications for postdoctoral fellows, share some research support staff, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:33:34.783" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:33:34.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25709" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:43:29.627" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic research groups in which a number of researchers whose level of education may vary from undergraduate students to post doctorate researchers and also professors, conduct research projects. These research groups are managed by a university professor or R and D head of a research company in industry. Research groups may be supported financially by the universities or industry companies." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:40:21.577" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:40:21.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25710" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:45:38.400" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T10:45:38.400" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T10:45:38.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25711" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:45:38.400" Score="0" Body="Related to translating written or spoken words from one language to another. For example: translation of academic publications, use of non-English terms in English publications, or translation of non-English academic terminology." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T17:11:30.497" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T17:11:30.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25712" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:47:19.410" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T10:47:19.410" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T10:47:19.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25713" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:47:19.410" Score="0" Body="Issues related to being, or interacting with, those who are male, female, or transgender in academia." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T15:15:54.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:15:54.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25715" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:49:24.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An online degree is an academic degree that can be earned primarily or entirely through the use of online tuition over the internet, rather than attending college at a physical campus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:31:51.210" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:31:51.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25716" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:49:24.737" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to university level online degrees." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:30:33.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:30:33.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25717" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:53:15.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback#Education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the majority of universities, teachers decide learning objectives and feedbacks to students. Learners have different conceptions of learning activities and preconceptions about hierarchy in education. Some may look up to instructors as experts in the field and take to heart most of the things instructors say. This is the subject of study in the field of &quot;formative feedback&quot; or &quot;formative assessment&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:34:17.657" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:34:17.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25718" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:53:15.037" Score="0" Body="On feedback given to students, instructors, or other individuals in an academic setting on their performance." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T23:41:14.817" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T23:41:14.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25719" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:56:45.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_(academic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States and Canada, an academic major or major concentration (informally, major or concentration) is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits. A student who successfully completes the courses prescribed in an academic major qualifies for an undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="41286" LastEditDate="2016-09-24T01:03:16.787" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T01:03:16.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25720" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:56:45.520" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to an academic major." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T11:31:28.323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:31:28.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24255" CreationDate="2014-07-11T11:40:49.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experiences with these journals have not been this positive. It's true that editorial rejections can be very rapid based on scope and perceived 'gee whiz' factor. I've had Nature hold up papers for months and been forced out by a singe powerful reviewer with advice to publish the paper in another highly ranked (but not glamour mag) journal. These are very political journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:40:49.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25659" CreationDate="2014-07-11T11:50:14.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would always address business communications to persons based on context. If I were writing to 'Sir Professor Richard Hall' on a personal level, I would address my email 'Dear Sir Richard'. If however, the learned gentleman was a professor at my University, I would switch to his academic title, and write 'Dear Professor Hall'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context is key here folks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19459" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:50:14.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25703" CreationDate="2014-07-11T11:52:01.963" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's better to put what is on the copyright page of the book in question. If you don't have it, then you may have to punt, but wherever you can use the full reference, you should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: The goal in a citation is to allow your reader to find the &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; work that you used, so you need to be as precise as you can. If there are different editions, etc, they may have different publication locations, so make sure you described the physical volume you have precisely. If you don't have the physical version, then be sure to give your reader 50 years from now the ability, as best you can, to track it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T12:34:05.503" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:34:05.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2014-07-11T11:57:34.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically the only reason that PhD granting institutions in the US give out a master's degree en route to the doctorate is the existence of capitation money in some states that reward them for each advanced degree they grant. You don't need a master's degree. I never got one, and I could have for $50 and two weeks spent converting a couple of journal articles to thesis format. Nobody worth talking to expects you to have an MS when you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:57:34.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18725" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:05:34.713" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A more meaningful study might ignore college grades, which as you point out depend on the type of institution, and focus on downstream accomplishments. It isn't just local and community colleges that distort the picture; several highly ranked Universities have A-no credit policies, so that everyone graduate with a 4.0. Many education schools are effectively A-no credit, with overall GPA's of ~3.9. &#xA;I'd like to know how many university professors had low grades or SAT scores, how many NAS members had low grades or SAT scores, and what the profile of CEOs, successful writers, lawyers, engineers etc. was. The purpose of college is not the production of am impressive transcript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:05:34.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23116" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:11:27.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt anyone will care about your master's degree field, because many top programs don't require a master's for admission. As long as you have a solid background and a good record you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:11:27.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21837" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:29:41.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field it is rare for a competent poster abstract to be rejected. There are only so many places for talks, so that can be selective. I sometimes prefer to present certain pieces of work as a poster because the opportunities for discussion are better, and it allows my students to talk about their work instead of having me do it. Posters are not automatically considered bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:29:41.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23614" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:42:20.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will your degree actually say 'String Theory' rather than 'Physics'? If so, this is unfortunately narrow, and given the uncertain future of string theory as a field I'd rectify it as soon as possible. How close are you to finishing? I wouldn't dump a Physics doctorate a year from completion to start over in CS. If I wanted to change fields, I'd just do a master's afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19458" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:42:20.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-11T13:38:52.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Platitudes and hope are nice, but the reality is that the outcome of your situation depends on many variables: your field, your experience, your financial situation (can you support yourself?), the institutions to which you are applying, and your current set of skills (which go to your preparedness for a PhD level program). Any one of these factors can significantly impact your chances for admission. Unfortunately, in your case, you have to add to that mix, age discrimination, which does exist. Given the glut of very qualified international students in the sciences and budget cutbacks in this arts, this is something to be aware of going into the admissions process. Because there are not that many +50 yr old adults going back for their PhD, there is not as much data to go on, just a lot of anecdotal evidence (that doesn't contain most of the people who &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; make it). But age can be an advantage if you can show that it has translated into maturity, seriousness of purpose, and a true love of your discipline. Proper preparation demonstrates this to the admissions committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, research those schools of interest to you. I'd look at whether they have older grad students and if there is a concentration of profs in your area of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, contact the professors personally and talk to them. Making a personal connection can be an important in your application process: you are not just candidate X, but that nice person from so and so who drove all the way out here to get more information and see if they were suitable for our program. Professors higher up on the food chain improve your chances. Are they currently interested in taking on students at this time? Are they still doing research in this field? Do they seem to like you and have an interest in potentially having you as a student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, prepare as much as you can. If you need to get a good GRE score, make sure you put in the time and money you need to prepare sufficiently. Take upper level courses at a local university: you can get references from those profs and this provides evidence that you can endure a PhD program. If you can squeeze in some teaching experience, consider doing so. Volunteering to help tutor or participating in English related activities (like debate team) at a local high school broadens your network,shows you enjoy helping students, and gives you experience on your resume. Even being an online tutor for 5 hrs/week may help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, be persistent.If you don't get in this year, do more to prepare yourself better and apply next year. Persistence is a key attribute of a true researcher and does not go unnoticed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I'm starting my MS at 52 and will probably go on for a PhD, but I think it takes some planning on your part to insure you will get into a decent program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9176" LastEditorUserId="9176" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T16:21:52.870" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T16:21:52.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11618" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:01:25.297" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For women and men, I would err on the conservative side for conferences - but this does not mean you should throw out your own, personal style. My first conference, I felt awkward and uncomfortable because I had decided to wear pants and a blazer instead of one of my usual dresses. I though the pants made me look more professional - but they fit poorly and made me feel insecure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips from my department: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucfhistory.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/what-to-wear-to-your-first-conference-10-tips-for-grad-students/&quot;&gt;http://ucfhistory.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/what-to-wear-to-your-first-conference-10-tips-for-grad-students/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:01:25.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25739" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:33:32.160" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:33:32.160" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:33:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25740" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:33:32.160" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to the administrative regulations of academia." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:51:02.580" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:51:02.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25741" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:38:10.820" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:38:10.820" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:38:10.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25742" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:38:10.820" Score="0" Body="Questions regarding the academic projects including either thesis projects or other projects which may be done in the universities with support of academies and in collaboration with faculty members and students." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:51:31.407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:51:31.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25743" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:39:27.300" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:39:27.300" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:39:27.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25744" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:39:27.300" Score="0" Body="Questions related to academic laboratories in which practical research projects are being done." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T18:50:28.920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T18:50:28.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25745" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:40:08.650" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:40:08.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:40:08.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25746" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:40:08.650" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the management and organization of academic laboratories." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T18:50:19.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T18:50:19.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25747" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:41:04.617" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:41:04.617" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:41:04.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25748" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:41:04.617" Score="0" Body="Questions related to search and research methods in academic projects and studies." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T18:50:40.973" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T18:50:40.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25749" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:42:20.830" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T14:42:20.830" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T14:42:20.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25750" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T14:42:20.830" Score="0" Body="Questions around how to start and organize each project. The project design may include pre-initial, initiation, middle and final phase of each project." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T18:50:56.847" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T18:50:56.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:04:39.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first impulse is crying out loud, but I see that it must be explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is the goal of academic instituitions / science / humanities ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to collect and reserve the current knowledge, give it to the&#xA;next generations and gain further knowledge. We want to find good&#xA;explanations for phenomena and refine them further und further until&#xA;ideally we can explain them fully (The explanation need not to be&#xA;identical with the &quot;real&quot; cause, it should only give the correct&#xA;predictions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we &lt;em&gt;do not want&lt;/em&gt; is to consolidate our prejudices or fall victim&#xA;to wishful thinking. The key is &lt;em&gt;honesty&lt;/em&gt;: Do not fool yourself to believe&#xA;you know something which you are not absolutely sure of. You are able&#xA;to give convincing reasons to other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are completely convinced that astrology is truthful because an astrologer&#xA;described you correctly and you pay a study which confirms your impression ?&#xA;&lt;em&gt;This is not science&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are completely convinced that astrology is baloney because it seems to&#xA;be old and it violates what you think is correct knowledge ? &lt;em&gt;This is not science either&lt;/em&gt; !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write down the logical inconsistencies of astrology, put up a study to test the conclusions and the tests repeatedly and consistently failed ? &lt;em&gt;This is science&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is the goal of businesses ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key concept of a business is to gain revenue by fulfilling a demand. Because in private&#xA;enterprise you have competitors you must also apply strategy to&#xA;keep your business and use that to increase your influence. That means&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having unique or better knowledge. If your competitors do not know how you achieved your desired results, it would be stupid to tell them. Or you protect your invention with patents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Propagate your influence by using your revenue to spread out. Gain power from important persons (friendships, franchises and working together). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Protect yourself and hold your competitors down. You can do that defensively (lawsuits, patents) or offensively (buying them off, spread bad rumors, outpace them in quality and quantity).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both goals are perfectly ok.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you leave university and begin a startup, no problem. If a firm buys your invention, no problem. It starts to be trouble if you have a &lt;em&gt;conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt; and the professor has a &lt;em&gt;severe conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not see it, &lt;em&gt;honesty&lt;/em&gt; is not a business goal.&#xA;Let's say the professor gives you a task to improve a specific software module. You are starting to analyze the module...and you find that it has a flaw. It does not work or even &lt;em&gt;causes harm&lt;/em&gt;, you can scientifically prove it. You have found out that the prospering company your professor leads has sold a defective software. Revelation of this could harm the reputation of the university, the software company and even your economy of your country. Or, on the other hand, it does nothing, but the professor wants to improve the user experience so that the customers are happy even if sold junk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you feel still perfectly ok with &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; scenario ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because for this reason research and business should have distinct areas because you cannot honestly find a scientific answer if you are under constant pressure to modify your findings in a specific direction (or to be punished if you insist on honesty). The law of reciprocity always kicks in, I have supported you, why don't you support me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, we see the problem everywhere. &quot;Think tanks&quot; are buying old academics to support &quot;research&quot; in environmental issues. Politicians and companies are buying supportive studies. Consumer products are called back and almost always the problem was known long before. Academic fraud for research grants is a known problem. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is not that the professor is a horrible person or that business is evil or science must be pure and idealistic. The problem is that many universities are dependent on private funding and try to give students the impression that it is absolutely no problem to mix business and scientific research. Guess what: It is a &lt;em&gt;lie&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13452" LastEditorUserId="13452" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:10:38.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:10:38.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5229" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:08:44.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this memorandum of understanding between Germany and Australia on academic degrees a while ago - among other things it says that Australian honours degrees &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; eligible to begin phd studies in Germany, and I did so last year after some time in an assistant like role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/ZAB/Bilaterale_Erklaerungen_KMK_HRK/austr.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/ZAB/Bilaterale_Erklaerungen_KMK_HRK/austr.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4049" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:08:44.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:11:44.757" Score="6" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the journal references in the bibliography of my thesis contain bird names. Journals use birds names in the titles of papers in at least four different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titlecase, eg Teal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titlecase plus scientific name, eg Teal Anas crecca&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowercase, eg teal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowercase plus scientific name, eg teal Anas crecca&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These different ways of using bird names makes my bibliography look untidy and inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I adjust the titles of the papers in my bibliography so all bird names are used in a consistent way? Or should I use paper titles exactly as how they are given? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:42:09.823" Title="Citing references consistently" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25755" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:35:08.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general academic principle you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; adjust the titles -- or other essential bibliographic data*, e.g. the form and ordering of the authors' names -- of papers that you reference in any way, with the possible exception of necessary typographical concessions for &quot;exotic&quot; characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For instance, in my branch of mathematics is it common to use the cyrillic letter &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha&quot;&gt;Sha&lt;/a&gt; for something named after a Russian mathematician whose name begins with this character.  If you simply don't have cyrllic characters available, you have to do something else.  But even in this case it would be better to try to take a little trouble to &quot;get cyrillic characters&quot;.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer to your question is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;: it is obviously not your fault that different papers you cite refer to teals in different ways.  So if there is any untidiness and/or inconsistency, you are simply faithfully replicating it, as you are obliged to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer comes from someone with precisely zero avian-specific academic knowledge.  So it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion from someone in your field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: I confess that I sometimes mess with &quot;inessential&quot; bibliographic data.  For instance, most journals come with a volume number followed by a number of the issue within that volume, and I usually omit the second number: you simply don't need it to access the paper.  I don't specifically endorse this practice and mention it only for &quot;professional honesty&quot;, but in my defense I just checked around and I am far from the only one who does this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover in some fields there are different formats for referencing.  In my field (mathematics), on the one hand we are not too picky about the format, and on the other hand we have standard repositories of all papers: MathReviews/MathSciNet and Zentralblatt, from which I assume that most contemporary authors simply copy the bibliographic data (and then the philistines among us delete the number of the journal within the volume).  It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a good idea to choose a consistent format throughout all your bibliographic references: e.g. put last names first always or never, and so forth.  But still: the title is not yours to monkey with, as far as I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T19:40:53.143" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:40:53.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:41:01.783" Score="6" ViewCount="1521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have submitted a paper to a conference with a scientific error in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I have a concept and I have claimed it works in two conditions. Actually it only works in one of them. Technically, my experimental results are correct, but its only a small test and when extrapolated to full scale the error can be found and also actually predicted theoretically. The overall concept is still correct however for the other condition and I am still working on it in future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I ask for the paper to be changed? The conference isn't until 25th August but the submission deadline has passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want a public document where people will repeat my experiments and find that some of what I have claimed is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19473" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T22:01:27.987" Title="I have an accepted conference paper with a major error in it, should I ask for it to be changed?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:41:51.170" Score="5" ViewCount="6186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a second-year undergrad, and I've always been on a first-name basis with anyone in academia or in a research setting. I first worked in a laboratory in high school, and since everyone was on a first-name basis with everyone else there, I sort of just applied that logic to other labs and to my college professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I was talking to a researcher (my &quot;supervisor&quot;, if that's relevant) at the lab I'm currently interning at this summer, one of my fellow interns told me afterwards she thought it was &quot;odd&quot; and &quot;unprofessional&quot; to call him by his first name. I understand where she's coming from, but if this were any other type of environment (say a business office), I think it would be awkward to call my boss anything but his first name (Mr. X seems a bit too formal for the boss-employee relationship). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, my boss doesn't seem put off by the way I address him, and I don't think my professors are, either. Maybe my perspective's a bit skewed because of how I was introduced to the scientific/academic culture. Am I out of line here? What did you call your professors/advisors/bosses as an undergrad? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19472" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T10:18:32.710" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T10:18:32.710" Title="Is it acceptable for me (an undergrad) to call professors and other research professionals by their first names?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2014-07-12T21:17:01.023" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25755" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:42:09.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never add or remove words from the title of papers you cite. The reason you add citations is so that your readers can find these papers, and the title is one of the most important pieces of information. While it might be obvious to you that &quot;Teal&quot; and &quot;Teal Anas crecca&quot; mean the same thing, this might not be the case for others, e.g. scientists outside your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of capitalization is a little less cut and dry. Different citation styles treat titles in different ways (title case, sentence case, or even all-caps), so you have more freedom here to be internally consistent. In addition, some automated reference systems mess up capitalization, so in my experience this is frequently something you have to fix by hand. If there is no semantic difference between &quot;Teal&quot; and &quot;teal&quot;, I would pick one and apply it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:42:09.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25758" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:50:45.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is very hard to answer in a general way because it heavily depends on the country, culture and specific persons involved. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During my PhD and postdoc I was on the first name basis with my professor and supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A postdoc from Austria I worked with could use his professors first name, but only when no other staff members of their institute where present.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to get a feel for the general atmosphere of your institute, do other people use first names for example. And you can simply ask your supervisor/professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:38:07.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:38:07.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25758" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:53:48.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all the years at the university, I only called the professors and lecturers by their last name and a doctor prefix. I also used to call them &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;Professor + Last Name&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But never by their first names as far as they were older than me, they were professors and more important, it was not a custom in the universities I studied to call professors by their first names only (it was somehow impolite to call a professor by his first name only, even by other professors or colleagues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It usually goes back to the custom. Sometimes the professors themselves prefer to be called by their first names. See how others call professors and see if it is polite or not. But my prefer is always &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;Doctor + Last Name&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T14:30:00.567" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T14:30:00.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25757" CreationDate="2014-07-11T20:04:15.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you have enough days, to change your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, before contacting read about the policy the conference have on erratum. If not, available, you should just write directly ask the organizing committee about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International conferences are very respected (and mostly filled with critics), this kind of error can hamper your credibility in future endeavors. It's better left unsaid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of Luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19474" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T20:04:15.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2014-07-11T21:44:31.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To get admitted into a PhD program directly without MS, requires some research experience in the field(if you want admission to a good, competitive program). A really good GRE score might help substitute this factor but not always.&#xA;An alternative to that may be, take admission in the MS program and then switch it to PhD after a semester or two. But you should join some research lab right in the beginning of your MS, in order to be successful in changing the program.&#xA;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courtesy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--MS candidate planning to switch to PhD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Even after a good GRE profile and 3.96 gpa in pharmacy school, got rejected for PhD at UCSD(not enough research experience)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastEditorUserId="19476" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T22:08:54.597" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T22:08:54.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-11T21:46:55.257" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im a graduate student in my 3rd year studying theoretical plasma physics. I'd like to stay in academia but I think I would be better in an area of experimental physics where data analysis plays a more important role (such as High Energy Experiment). I wanted to know wether or not it was possible to get a postdoc in another field than the one I write my thesis in. I'd like to hear from anyone who has done this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a possibility (a realistic one), what can I do to prepare myself in the remaining 3 years of graduate school? Thanks!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9950" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T21:55:06.647" Title="How can I put myself in the best position to get a postdoc in a different field?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25765" CreationDate="2014-07-11T21:55:06.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the same boat as you, but then for my thesis I added a few elements of the thing that I want to do later in my career, so I can use it as background. If you can incorporate something related to experimental physics in your plasma physics research, that'd help. Otherwise, you may join some research lab that works in the field of exp. physics, that'd look good on your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T21:55:06.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25757" CreationDate="2014-07-11T22:01:27.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better to get it corrected than to be questioned/rejected later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T22:01:27.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-07-11T22:12:26.010" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some statistics on Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities in 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8pP01.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/doctorates/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data presented in &lt;em&gt;Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2009&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  were collected by the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). The survey is&#xA;  sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Science Foundation&#xA;  (NSF), U.S. Department of Education (USED), National Aeronautics and&#xA;  Space Administration (NASA), National Endowment for the Humanities&#xA;  (NEH), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and U.S. Department of&#xA;  Agriculture (USDA). This year's edition of the report presents the&#xA;  summary of these survey data in new online and print formats, and the&#xA;  report title has changed slightly. Previous reports were titled in the&#xA;  series &lt;em&gt;Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: Summary Report&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf11306/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;./SED_2009/data/tab24.xls&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the NSF often blow their links, data back up as CSV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;TABLE 24.  Median age of doctorate recipients, by broad field of study, sex, citizenship, and race/ethnicity: 2009&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;Field of study and &#xA;demographic characteristics&quot;,&quot;Median age&#xA;at doctoratea (years)&quot;,,% distribution (in age),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,All,25 and under,26–30,31–35,36–40,41–45,Over 45,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;All fieldsb,32.2,  ,100.0,0.6,38.9,30.4,13.5,6.0,10.5,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Life sciencesc,31.3,  ,100.0,0.4,45.9,32.0,11.1,3.9,6.7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Physical sciencesd,30.2,  ,100.0,1.3,56.7,29.0,8.2,2.6,2.2,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Social sciencese,32.4,  ,100.0,0.4,37.5,32.6,15.1,6.0,8.4,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Engineering,30.5,  ,100.0,1.2,54.0,30.3,9.1,2.6,2.7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Education,40.5,  ,100.0,0.1,10.1,21.4,20.2,13.6,34.6,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Humanities,34.5,  ,100.0,D,21.0,37.7,19.1,9.0,13.0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Other non-S&amp;amp;E fields,36.1,  ,100.0,D,18.0,31.2,20.7,11.6,18.1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Sex,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Male,32.0,  ,100.0,0.7,40.5,31.9,13.8,5.7,7.4,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Female,32.6,  ,100.0,0.5,37.2,28.7,13.1,6.4,14.1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Citizenship,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;U.S. citizen or permanent resident,32.7,  ,100.0,0.6,38.0,26.3,13.6,7.1,14.4,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Temporary visa holder,31.7,  ,100.0,0.7,41.0,39.7,13.2,3.6,1.8,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;Race/ethnicity (U.S. citizens and &#xA;  permanent residents)&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;American Indian/Alaska Native,38.0,  ,100.0,D,23.6,20.8,17.4,8.3,29.2,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Asian,31.8,  ,100.0,1.1,40.6,32.0,14.0,5.9,6.4,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Black,36.7,  ,100.0,D,24.3,22.6,18.5,10.7,23.7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Hispanicf,34.1,  ,100.0,0.3,29.3,30.9,15.2,7.7,16.6,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;White,32.3,  ,100.0,0.5,39.7,25.6,12.9,6.8,14.3,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;Two or more races,32.3,  ,100.0,0.8,40.8,27.9,13.3,6.2,11.0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;D = suppressed to avoid disclosure of confidential information. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;a Includes only doctorate recipients with a valid year of birth.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;b Includes those of unknown citizenship, unknown race/ethnicity, and Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders not shown separately.&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;c Includes agricultural sciences/natural resources, biological/biomedical sciences, and health sciences.&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;d Includes mathematics and computer and information sciences.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;e Includes psychology.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;f Persons reporting Hispanic ethnicity, whether singly or in combination with one or more races, are included in the respondent-selected Hispanic ethnicity &#xA;category.&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;NOTE:  Due to rounding, the sum of percentages may not equal to 100. &quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&quot;SOURCE:  NSF/NIH/USED/USDA/NEH/NASA, 2009 Survey of Earned Doctorates.&quot;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T20:56:25.847" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T20:56:25.847" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26018" CreationDate="2014-07-11T22:30:59.773" Score="12" ViewCount="3554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going into the fourth year of a PhD program and my research, which is in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields&quot;&gt;STEM field&lt;/a&gt;, has clear applications in the tech industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my Master's degree, but have decided not to finish the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it important to be enrolled while applying for jobs rather than be unemployed?&lt;/strong&gt;  Will the people hiring view me differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: being enrolled brings some significant demands on my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19478" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T11:44:16.337" Title="Leaving PhD program to apply for industry job - better to apply while still officially enrolled?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-12T01:22:37.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would apply for jobs now, while you are enrolled in the PhD program. Talk to your professors and develop a network. Ask for contact information of any of the individuals they know in industry. Send an cover letter with your CV and application, and be sure to mention your research's specific application to the job in the cover letter. Through this, companies sense that you are very meticulous and detail-oriented, and see how your skill in research could carry over to its products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18362" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T01:22:37.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25774" CreationDate="2014-07-12T01:32:24.047" Score="5" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;By a &lt;em&gt;scientific work&lt;/em&gt; I mean any work of mine that either belongs to my field or belongs to some related fields of my field. A work that is not a scientific work is called &lt;em&gt;off-topic&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I occasionally (but seriously) compose poems and popular songs, I am wondering whether it is suitable to integrate these off-topic works into the collection of my scientific works that is prepared for application to phd programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My principal concern is that I am unsure about how this act would look like from the reviewers' angle? Would it be deemed an affectation? Indeed, my wish is merely to present more of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope ladies and gentlemen (preferably with experience as a reviewer for phd admission) would share me your thoughts, much appreciated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If answering this question requires more information, please feel free to state that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="18107" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T02:09:24.403" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T09:07:56.490" Title="How would it look like from reviewers' point of view if one submits off-topic works for application to phd programs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25772" CreationDate="2014-07-12T01:55:53.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a mathematician, I must address a logical loophole: I will assume that your field is a STEM field and thus poetry and songs are &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; off-topic (and not just &lt;em&gt;called&lt;/em&gt; off-topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.&#xA;  -- Abraham Lincoln&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this: no, I would not submit such creative materials as part of an application to a STEM PhD program.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that submitting such things would be deemed an &quot;affectation&quot;: however, unless you make a clear connection to your chosen field, they are simply not relevant.  Including irrelevant things is not a disaster, but it does indicate that you don't have a clear understanding of what is relevant information in the consideration of your own prospects in that program, which is not great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most such applications have a personal statement.  &lt;em&gt;Mentioning&lt;/em&gt; somewhere in the personal statement that you write poetry and songs sounds about right to me: from one human being to another, that is interesting, and personal statements are often not so interesting.  But be careful here: a &quot;personal statement&quot; is not a statement about you &lt;em&gt;as a person&lt;/em&gt;!  It is really an essay explaining why you would be a strong candidate for the program, so things which are not relevant to that should not be dwelled upon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many programs do look at the personal statement as a writing sample -- and good writing skills are very relevant in any PhD program, probably more so than any other single quality -- so if you are an unusually good writer the personal statement would be a good opportunity to show your superior skills.  However, trying to do that &lt;em&gt;in the genre of either poetry or song&lt;/em&gt; would be so risky and open to negative reactions based on personal taste that I wouldn't recommend it: after all, in most STEM programs you need to be able to write prose, not poetry, and you are not really permitted to burst into song.  This is probably a &quot;color between the lines&quot; situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: I spent four (recent) years on the committee in charge of graduate admissions in the UGA mathematics department, and I still read some PhD applications every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T02:16:45.533" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T02:16:45.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25775" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-12T02:23:49.507" Score="8" ViewCount="511" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate working on a research project that is going to be published. My research adviser wasn't completely able to help with a certain portion of the research, so I contacted another professor (in a completely different department) at my university who was more than willing to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that this other professor is going to be providing a huge amount of help. Should I offer inclusion in the paper? Should I bring this up with my main adviser and/or should I be upfront with the secondary adviser?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19483" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:38:37.553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:38:37.553" Title="When is it proper to add someone to your research paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25775" CreationDate="2014-07-12T04:28:59.903" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should discuss the issue with both faculty members.  I would bring it up with your primary advisor first...if only for linguistic reasons (i.e., the meaning of the word &quot;primary&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say that the project is &quot;going to be published&quot;, do you mean that it has already been written and accepted for publication?  (If not, how do you know?)  In general it is a good idea to discuss issues of coauthorship as early as possible.  If you are already writing the paper it is on the later side, and if you have already submitted it then it is very late (but maybe not too late).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I can think to say on general principles.  It depends a lot on the field and what kind of work has been done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: As an undergraduate, you can't know the subtle expectations regarding coauthorship in your discipline.  So err on the side of graciousness and inclusivity.  The worst that can happen is that you get a &quot;Aw, how cute: he thinks I want to publish with him&quot; type of reaction.  If so, you will definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have offended the faculty member and you'll probably engender a lesson about how publication culture works in your field: no problem there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T06:18:46.133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T06:18:46.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25775" CreationDate="2014-07-12T09:37:48.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good starting point is to consider the points set up in the Vancouver protocol and augmented by, for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal editors)&lt;/a&gt; stated as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final approval of the version to be published;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the &lt;em&gt;AND&lt;/em&gt; in this list. It is well worth noting that these points indicate how things &lt;em&gt;should be&lt;/em&gt; but some field-related traditions and, more commonly, personal opinions differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the above should make for a good basis for assessing whether or not anyone, the professor you have solicited included, should be on the paper. A gut feeling from your explanation says he should be asked. Not to discourage you, but authorship questions can be among the hardest questions you encounter in academia since authorship is such an important aspect for assessing &lt;em&gt;excellence&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;success&lt;/em&gt;, or whatever you want to call it. This is also why the list quoted above has been assembled so that inflation in authorship can be combated. Please look at other posts under the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; tag to get more aspects of this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:37:48.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25785" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:41:25.790" Score="8" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am preparing for postgraduate application. My research interest is fluid mechanics. There are several professors whose research interests are similar to mine and all of them are included in both applied math department and some non-math departments, such as geophysics department. Most of their papers are published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, which is one of the leading journals in that field. However, it seems that those papers do not involve advanced math knowledge, such as abstract algebra or analysis. Even epsilon-delta terminology seldom appears in those papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This slightly contradicts to my previous understanding. In the math department where I finished my undergraduate study, real analysis is a basic requirement for every postgraduate student. Does this mean the field of applied fluid mechanism does not require students with solid math background? What does it imply if a professor is included in applied math department? Does this indicate he/she will supervise a student with only math background? Or does this mean he/she has an intention to publish papers in math journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18259" LastEditorUserId="13017" LastEditDate="2017-10-05T12:48:47.617" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T12:48:47.617" Title="What does it indicate if a professor from other departments is included in applied math department?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25864" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:58:14.400" Score="2" ViewCount="5207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about applying for some US physics graduate programs. In the graduate admission procedure about where to send the TOEFL scores, I've often read the sentence &quot;use the institution code ****, department code is not needed.&quot; However, the ETS website forces me to choose a department code. Now there seem to be two possible choices: there's the department code 76(physics), and there's the code 99 for &quot;other subjects not in the list&quot;. The latter might at first seem ridiculous, but I found some schools explicitly demand department code to be chosen as 99. So for the schools that do not make such explicit statement, which code should I choose? Does it matter at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12323" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T15:46:26.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T15:46:26.127" Title="To which department code should I send my TOEFL score?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25783" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:59:21.260" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:59:21.260" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:59:21.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25784" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:59:21.260" Score="0" Body="The transcript is a permanent record of a student's academic history at a particular institution. It includes an inventory of the courses taken and grades earned throughout a course. It often includes details such as GPA, name of degree program, minor course of study, major disciplinary actions (e.g. suspension or expulsion), or honors earned." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T03:29:27.613" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T03:29:27.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25781" CreationDate="2014-07-12T12:18:51.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Affiliate faculty are common in many university departments. This indicates faculty who have a departmental home (faculty line, voting rights, tenure and promotion line, office space) but for a variety of reasons are given courtesy appointments (sometimes called in the USA as 0 FTE appointments) in another department. This may be because they teach a crosslisted course or occasionally sit on doctoral committees of the other department, or occasionally just for the academic lulz (ie, they requested an affiliation and there was no reason to deny it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliate faculty &lt;strike&gt;rarely&lt;/strike&gt; occasionally (depending on discipline and university) serve as chairs of doctoral committees and similarly are rarely/occasionally (depending on discipline) given students in that department to supervise. Their ability though to sit as members on committees is useful if you were to want to do a project in geophysics (in this case) but otherwise you can ignore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is different from faculty with dual appointments where their faculty line is split (0.5 FTE in one department, 0.5 in another). They have voting and advisory rights in both departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FTE = Full-Time Equivalent, the essential counting unit of faculty lines. &#xA;A department with two full-time faculty and two joint-appointments would &#xA;have 2*1 FTE + 2 * 0.5 FTE = 3 FTE&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't worry about affiliate faculty. Focus on the core faculty and their strengths when making decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T14:50:21.687" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T14:50:21.687" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25786" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:20:56.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a question on Academia Stack Exchange website; &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7833/what-does-a-phd-committee-do&quot;&gt;What does a PhD Committee do?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The committee's formal job is to assess the PhD student's dissertation proposal, determine that the work being proposed is sufficient for a dissertation, and then evaluate the final dissertation defense and decide whether to grant the student a PhD or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:44:08.783" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:44:08.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25787" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:20:56.160" Score="0" Body="Questions about the committee whose role in the PhD level is to assess the progress of each PhD student." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:36:39.887" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:36:39.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25788" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:25:16.403" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T13:25:16.403" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T13:25:16.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25789" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:25:16.403" Score="0" Body="Regarding identifying academic references on specific topics, or properly citing resources in academic work." OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15478" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T04:04:31.733" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T04:04:31.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25790" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:27:28.660" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T13:27:28.660" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T13:27:28.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25791" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:27:28.660" Score="0" Body="(DO NOT USE: has been used very inconsistently, to date. It should not be used, unless the community agrees on its scope and application on meta)" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:33:58.393" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:33:58.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25792" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:34:32.563" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T13:34:32.563" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T13:34:32.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25793" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:34:32.563" Score="0" Body="Questions about how to design a study plan which helps postgraduate and undergraduate students to be more organized and progressed to reach their academic prospects." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:45:28.420" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:45:28.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25758" CreationDate="2014-07-12T13:44:28.523" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the institution and departmental/lab culture. At my current university, most undergraduates refer to faculty as Prof. Lastname. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dislike formalities, but it had been very difficult to break the students of this habit. Furthermore, I wonder if I am doing them a disservice as most faculty are VERY adamant that undergrads use their titles, even the point of telling  TAs to use title and last name when talking to or about them in front of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctoral students are generally on a first name basis with faculty. Master students seem to be split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:45:46.793" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:45:46.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25758" CreationDate="2014-07-12T14:58:38.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is the intersection of the professor's preference and what you are comfortable with.  My dissertation advisor asked me to call him by his first name long before &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; was comfortable with that.  But he asked me to call him George, so I did.  On the other hand, when one of my former students joined our faculty a couple of years ago, she kept referring to me as &quot;Dr Clason&quot;.  I told her, &quot;I'm Dennis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm comfortable with whatever my students are comfortable with.  Like RoboKaren, I don't like to stand on formalities, and just like everyone else, I have preferences.  I'm old enough now that my undergrad students (especially) are not my peers and are not usually trying to become a peer.  I prefer that they use my surname, but I don't require it.  One thing that does grate  (on me, and I am not sure why) is students referring to me as &quot;Mr Clason&quot;.  I earned that doctorate, and in academia the title is relevant.  In academia, if you are using the surname, please use the title.  Truthfully, though, I cherish the title &quot;Professor&quot; more than &quot;Doctor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17284" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T01:44:38.040" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T01:44:38.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25608" CreationDate="2014-07-12T15:59:41.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be good to express positive personal feelings, just keep it short and do not make the main argument why would they need you in their team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to avoid negative feelings of any kind in applications (about your current position, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:59:41.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25958" CreationDate="2014-07-12T16:05:37.033" Score="6" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for some funds to set up a small makerlab-type metalshop in my department (American research university, although I should note that I'm in the social sciences). My plan is to get a CNC mill and lathe along with some 3D printers for rapid prototyping of equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether to get metric or imperial CNCs. Yes, it's easy to flip the display controllers between metric and imperial, but the gearing of the mill itself is usually based on a metric or imperial leadscrew, so that 1 turn of the handwheel turns a certain metric/imperial based distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the other metalshops at my university and they are use imperial-unit Bridgeport mills and lathes. I myself grew up in a metric country (i.e., somewhere other than the US, Liberia, and Burma) and so find this incredibly backwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any good reason to go with imperial-based lathes and mills -- except for the cost of finding a good metric one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note 1: For lathes, it is relatively easy to change the gearing for metric, so this is not as much of an issue as it is for mills where the X, Y, and Z leadscrews and indicators  would need to be swapped out. Not to mention the difficulty in sourcing metric borers and bits... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:55:31.923" Title="University metalshop / makerlab - metric or imperial?" Tags="&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;facilities-services&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25802" CreationDate="2014-07-12T16:42:36.813" Score="4" ViewCount="886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have already taken the IELTS GT examination and my score has not yet expired. If I take the IELTS academic exam, will my previous score be voided? I need to take both format of exams for different purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19500" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T08:34:24.733" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T08:34:24.733" Title="Will sitting for the IELTS Academic module void the validity of my previous General Training module score?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;&lt;ielts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2014-07-12T16:49:18.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess I don't see the big moral quandary. You're a talented person who has worked a long time to develop his skills, and you are under absolutely no obligation to give those skills and your time away for free to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet. If you &lt;em&gt;want to&lt;/em&gt; that's fine, but the fact that you feel pressured to do this is not good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person's case is really not that compelling to me: he has proved a result which has already been proved and by elementary methods also (according to a previous poster). Maybe it could be published but for this person to suggest his ability is comparable to Ramanujan's in some way based on &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; result seems absolutely ludicrous. To me, his appeal to Ramanujan, which is based solely on their circumstances and nationality, seems manipulative, and his comparison of himself to Ramanujan, shows a sort of hubris I find appalling. If Ramanujan had sent a proof of a result which had already been proved by elementary means to Hardy, do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;  think Hardy would have given it a second thought?  I seriously doubt it. Based on the information given, maybe he has some talent, but I don't see evidence of a world-class genius being lost here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9176" LastEditorUserId="9176" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T16:56:35.150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T16:56:35.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25799" CreationDate="2014-07-12T17:54:18.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the best information you could &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ielts.org/contact_us/online_enquiry.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contact IELTS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, from reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ielts.org/PDF/IELTS%20Information%20for%20Candidates%202014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information booklet&lt;/a&gt; (pages 3-5) on their website the two tests have some sections that apply to the both GT and Academic tests which are speaking and listening. They then have 2 modules that are different for each test, which are reading and writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are also used for two different purposes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IELTS Academic is for test takers wishing to study at undergraduate or postgraduate levels, and for those seeking professional registration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IELTS General Training is for test takers wishing to migrate to an English-speaking country (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK), and for those wishing to train or study at below degree level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this it would seem unusual that the results from one test would void the other when they are both different tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit based on OP comment:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;After the OP contacted IELTS thay said that 'they are both separate results and it will be your choice entirely which one you wish to present when applying to institution's.' which confirms that one test would not void the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T12:46:47.693" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T12:46:47.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-12T18:30:26.353" Score="31" ViewCount="13202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just defended my PhD in mathematics and started a postdoc. While working  on an improvement of one of the results of my thesis, I realized that there are several minor mistakes and a big bug in a proof that invalids a minor result in the thesis (about 3-4 pages out of 110). Unfortunately neither I nor my advisor or referees figured it out the mistake. Though the result is minor, it is announced in the introduction and the manuscript is on-line on an ArXiv-like server, so that I could publish a new version but not cancel the one on-line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best thing to do? Upload an errata? Upload a &quot;revised&quot; version of the thesis?  Publish a &quot;revised version&quot; of the thesis on my web-page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this damage my future career, making me look not &quot;reliable&quot; as a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19501" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T07:38:17.517" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T08:09:27.070" Title="What to do when you discover a mistake in the archived copy of your PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25805" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-12T20:10:15.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On standards or conventions specific to political science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regular political science questions, visit our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Politics Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What counts as political science? From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apsanet.org/content_9181.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Political Science Association&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Political science is the study of governments, public policies and political processes, systems, and political behavior.  Political science subfields include political theory, political philosophy, political ideology,  political economy, policy studies and analysis, comparative politics, international relations, and a host of related fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-11-15T21:48:55.983" LastActivityDate="2020-11-15T21:48:55.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25806" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T20:10:15.730" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to political science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular political science questions, visit our sister site Politics Stack Exchange." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2020-11-15T21:48:53.237" LastActivityDate="2020-11-15T21:48:53.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T01:11:55.783" Score="7" ViewCount="3718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a young academic in a scientific field and, in the process of updating my CV, I've realized I'm unsure exactly what is appropriate to list with regard to grant applications/funded grants. Specifically, a few types of ambiguities have arisen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you receive funding from a grant but were not part of the project until after the application was funded (say your role is &quot;Consultant&quot; or &quot;Statistician&quot;), can you list this on your CV? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you are listing non-funded grants that you had at least some hand in writing (say, an NIH grant that received an impact score but was not funded), but you were not the PI (say you're a co-Investigator), can you list it? Is the answer different if you had a non-investigator role such as &quot;Statistician&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Closely related to #2-- if you help with a grant that ultimately does get funded but you are not the PI or a co-I (again, suppose you're a consultant or statistician), can this be listed on your CV? Does it depend on how great of a hand you had in writing the grant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13252" LastEditorUserId="13252" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T01:17:52.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T11:10:26.067" Title="Conventions regarding listing grant applications/funded grants on a scientific CV" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2014-07-13T04:29:47.147" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question actually reminded me that I had made some (minor) addenda/errata notes on my own thesis but somehow forgot to ever post them.  I should get to that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you definitely should correct the error; it's bad for mathematics if serious errors propagate.  It's a little embarrassing, yes, but it's not at all uncommon.  It will be more embarrassing if someone else finds the error first, and extremely embarrassing (and maybe starting to be career-damaging) if you have to say &quot;Oh yeah, I knew about that, but never corrected it because I was embarrassed.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before doing anything, I would suggest you spend a few days seeing if you can fix the error.  Maybe you can find a way to work around the gap in the proof.  Maybe you can adjust the hypotheses so that you still have a theorem, though a weaker one.  (Or maybe you can find a counterexample.)  Figure out what other parts of the thesis are affected by this error, and if they need fixing as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can get confusing if there are multiple versions of your thesis floating around, so rather than trying to revise it, I would write up a short erratum note, explaining whatever you have learned about the error and its fix (if any).  You might as well also list any other typos or errata that you have found, references to relevant work that's been published (or discovered by you) since your thesis was written, and anything else you would like to add.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post the addendum on arXiv.  Then, wherever your thesis is posted (your web site, the alternative preprint server you mention, the university's official site if possible), post a note saying &quot;Addendum posted at arXiv:1234.5678&quot;.  If you can't add notes or comments on the site itself, but can upload a revised version of the thesis, just add a page at the beginning with a reference to the addendum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And I'll echo JeffE's suggestion: it would be nice to post your thesis on arXiv itself as well.  The &quot;Comments&quot; field would be a good place to reference the addendum.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T04:29:47.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25808" CreationDate="2014-07-13T07:14:30.433" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My philosophy about such issues is that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; list everything on a CV, as long as you make clear what your actual role was, i.e., you may list any project or grant that officially recognizes you in some function, but of course you cannot imply that you were the PI in all of these projects if this was not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, make sure that you list only &quot;official&quot; responsibilities on the CV - it may be true that you are doing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the work for a project, but that does not make you the official PI. Saying or implying otherwise is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that different roles in a project can be used to illustrate different things for you as a researcher. Personally, I have two different sections for projetcs on my CV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects&lt;/strong&gt;, which lists all funded projects I was ever involved with, plus my official role. This shows that I am experienced in working in different roles in different national and international research teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Successful grant proposals&lt;/strong&gt;, which lists all successful project proposals that I was officially recognized as an author, i.e., either coordinator, PI, or co-investigator. This shows that I am able to get funding for my research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T07:14:30.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25814" CreationDate="2014-07-13T07:31:56.203" Score="3" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a strong desire and determination to contribute to society by expanding the knowledge in my field of interest, but I feel that I am failing to get into a position to fulfill this dream. This is mainly due to being a high school dropout who now gets his bachelors through distance studies. How can I improve my chances to go along the path to become an academic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background: I failed high school mainly due to my learning disability, dyslexia, but depression and social anxiety also played a role.  Two years after dropping out I secured a placement for a mathematical and technical software development apprenticeship which included a vocational school with mathematics at an undergraduate level. I finished the apprenticeship as the best regional apprentice. My teachers also recognized my ability, but in the end I was unable to attend a normal university because I did not have the required high school degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to start a part time distance BSc (Honours) degree with The Open University which does not have formal requirements. When I had enough money to fund my degree I quit my job as software engineer, to study full time and do some independent research in a mix of deep learning, high performance computing and mathematical optimization applied to natural language processing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could graduate July/August next year and probably score an upper second-class degree (first-class and lower second-class are possible). My research so far did not yield any significant results. I was able to improve on algorithms that are in the literature, but the improvement was only very marginal. I gained a lot of experience through my failures though, and I might be able to publish a paper about the some new but mediocre result and also give an overview over the small niche I worked on to help researchers to not tap into the same mistakes as I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My degree does not have a bachelor thesis where I could show off my ability of doing research&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not have contacts with other academics that work in my area (The Open University does not do any research in my area of interest, and it is difficult to get people interested to work with someone who has a background like I do)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will have good to great letters of recommendation in industry, but not in academia (a letter of recommendation from a professor/tutor at the distance university will be rather weak)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My field of interest is rather narrow; Master placements or PhD programs at the universities that do work in this area are very competitive, and it is unlikely that I will succeed with my current work/background/connections to secure any such placement. I do not know if I can work on other topics in mathematics or computer science with the same motivation and determination as I do now in my current area of interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One advantage of doing distance studies is that I can work and do internships at the same time as studying. I could spend an additional year on my bachelors and do some research in the meantime to graduate with some papers. But I am 27 already and I feel that I cannot spend much more time on my bachelor’s degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is already some good general information on academia.stackexchange concerning how to improve an unfavorable background. But I feel that my situation is rather different as a distance student. I mainly feel that I failed to create a social network within academia because there is so little opportunity for me, and more specific information how to overcome this isolation from other academics would be appreciated. For example should I try to publish a paper first and then reach out for interships in research, or should I should try now without anything research related results in my hands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put the question in more general terms, what can a socially isolated student with weak background do to extend his or her chances to enter academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I continue to finish my degree next year, rather than doing an additional year, I will need to apply for a masters quite soon. What kind of masters should somebody with potential but weak background chose? How can I polish up my application for such masters? One simple thing which comes to my mind is to blog about my attempts of doing research – does this make sense to invest time into?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19503" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T08:06:49.910" Title="Entering academia as a high school dropout" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2014-07-13T08:06:49.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, before you even think of anything, you need to change your attitude towards yourself. I have a feeling that you underestimate yourself and use yourself as an excuse for not doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matters if you have a substantial research background to apply to grad school. Usually Masters programs do not even put too much weightage on that. Plus, you have great recommendations from industry professionals. May be that was what you always liked, and that is what the admission would be based on. The department would see your interests and how you have put them to good use. They pay much attention to your personal statement and letters of recommendations, along with your undergraduate transcripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To successfully get admitted, do not day dream! Research on the institutes. Decide on them based on your profile and the kind of profile those universities look for. Keep practical expectations. Show them the interest in grad school. Show them that you would be able to get something out of your grad studies and that they are not wasting their resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not get disheartened if you don't get your dream university, there are always future chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and did I mention, have atleast 4-5 universities in mind, when you plan to start applying to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a research experience, PhD might be tough to get in to, but not impossible. But masters is the safest bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T08:06:49.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21778" CreationDate="2014-07-13T08:11:09.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stay put for your good. You are happy there, so be content!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to quit something for something which does not even exist, and ruin your content merry life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be that's just me, but if I were you I'd take the PhD offer from my current advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T08:11:09.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T09:21:19.187" Score="29" ViewCount="2319" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was doing my PhD project, I got an idea to solve a different but related problem. However, my supervisor said neither the motivation nor the initial result were interesting, and so he refused to offer me help on this topic. Then, I did a paper on my own with a lot of work afterwards, and submitted it to a high standard journal, and it was accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor knew this, and he commanded me to add his name to the paper, otherwise he would write to the editor. I asked him what his contribution was. He had nothing to say, but insisted he had spent time to discuss the result with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if he writes to the editor, what would happen? Or if the paper has been published, then he has nothing to do with it? I am pretty much sure he can almost show nothing about the evidence of the contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17682" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T12:52:03.273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T03:02:11.323" Title="What might the editor do if my supervisor contacts a journal to claim authorship of a paper?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25817" CreationDate="2014-07-13T11:08:59.003" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that the editor will likely ask for more information from you and the adviser in response to a letter such as your adviser apparently plan to write. I doubt any action will be taken immediately and without some research if the editor is taking the task seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an editor, I would find this sort of case very difficult since I would (most likely) receive two conflicting pictures of the story. Editors have the power to take whatever action they find appropriate. Their decisions may of course be disputed and the story could go on. In a case that is relatively similar in parts (&lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/case/authorship-issue&quot;&gt;case link&lt;/a&gt;), an editor has turned to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/&quot;&gt;Committee on Publication ethics&lt;/a&gt; to get support in a decision. Their case portfolio can also be of help to editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, following the linked case, an editor will try to have you and your adviser fix the problem yourself, it is after all primarily your problem. Hopefully the editor will come up with a plan for further actions, perhaps, as in the case, bring in a mediator and finally, if all fails, make a decision based on the existing facts that will be final. Some similar line of action seems appropriate and was also deemed appropriate by COPE. What route an editor will take may of course differ depending on the case but the aim will be to try to resolve what is right or wrong will be the aim and if all fails a suggestion on how the journal will proceed will follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T11:08:59.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25808" CreationDate="2014-07-13T11:10:26.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like your approach, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who looks at lots of CVs in a non-academic research unit at a university, I don't really care to see grants listed on which you only worked. I want to see grants that you were a PI or co-PI on, mostly, and perhaps any that you were a significant part of the writing team on. The purpose of listing these grants is to show that you can be part of the writing and winning team for funded work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another section, I might be interested in short summaries of your participation in projects (funded or otherwise). What I don't want to have to do is spend a lot of time figuring out whether you were instrumental in thew writing of a proposal or just did the work after the money was won.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is whether your qualifications and background were considered by the funding agency when approving the proposal. If not, then it's not worth implying that you had any role in winning the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T11:10:26.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25820" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-13T12:48:05.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cross-referencing is the practice of referencing information within a document to related information elsewhere in the same document. This helps to form a network of relationships between existing data in different parts of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T19:35:07.583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T19:35:07.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25821" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-13T12:48:05.560" Score="0" Body="On the practice of referencing information within a document to related information elsewhere in the same document." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-03T01:58:06.810" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T01:58:06.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T13:20:58.687" Score="27" ViewCount="2268" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of a Ph.D. student, how much of an added value is it to have your own presentation slides layout, that is used consistently throughout your Ph.D. conference presentations and other talks (and possibly throughout your academic career afterwards)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/dgleich/presentations&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is one such example from the Computer Science community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This as as opposed to using existing Beamer templates with LaTeX, or built-in PowerPoint templates, or simply preparing each presentation on its own (without a specific layout).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of axes I can think along:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a signature layout that distinguishes one in their community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ease of preparation of presentations (especially over time), maybe overcoming constraints with existing templates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not concerned with the question of &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt;, but just &lt;strong&gt;design&lt;/strong&gt; and layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15902" LastEditorUserId="15902" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T16:01:08.963" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T09:17:37.747" Title="Is there added value in having your own presentation layout and using it consistently?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20631" CreationDate="2014-07-13T14:43:28.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The advisor is being reckless in asking to put his name on a paper he hasn't read.  The paper could be wrong, of poor quality, or even have academic misconduct issues (I'm talking in general ... I'm sure this is not the case for your work, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thereza_Imanishi-Kari&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;serious problems&lt;/a&gt; have occured in the past).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; publish with your advisor if he has not contributed &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; to the work.  Of course, the fact that you've collaborated on this problem before makes it very hard to think that this is the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a real mess ... I can think of two reasonable solutions:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;a.&lt;/em&gt; Tell the editor the current situation and rely on his/her opinion to sort out the issue. &lt;em&gt;b.&lt;/em&gt; Add an acknowledgment to your advisor saying that this work is a rework of a previous unpublished work written with him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T14:43:28.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25703" CreationDate="2014-07-13T14:49:26.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what style guide you are working with.  In MLA, for example, you use only the first city listed on the title page.  If no city is listed there, then you look at the copyright page.  Other style guides may vary, so check with a handbook for your specific style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19522" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T14:49:26.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24413" CreationDate="2014-07-13T14:51:43.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;principle&lt;/em&gt;, age discrimination is illegal in the US and various other countries in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt;, there are a lot of apparently legal ways to get around age discrimination (e.g. discriminating based on experience, work history) and I have heard of first-hand accounts of supposedly illegal discrimination at various institutions throughout the world.  There are a number of employment lawyers who go around arguing these kinds of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, at least in the US, being good and well-known is an inoculation against much of this discrimination.  Ultimately, if you are successful and active, at &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; age, you will be hirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T14:51:43.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2014-07-13T16:23:52.417" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I am not in mathematics (I'm a philosopher), I would only add that generally speaking, the PhD dissertation should be one of the worst papers you ever publish. That doesn't mean it should be terrible...it only means that it's the start of your career, and your writing--and your research--will get better with experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could still go ahead and submit a correction, but at the same time, don't stress yourself out over it. So many doctorandi today think the dissertation has to be flawless, and that they have to make some ground-breaking, Nobel-prize-worthy advancement in their field for the thesis to be any good. This is simply not true. Look--you have a postdoc, the results of which will no doubt be more influential on your future than your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I'm not saying to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; submit the errata. Rather, I just don't want you to lose sleep over the mistake. Don't be too hard on yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19526" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T16:23:52.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21778" CreationDate="2014-07-13T16:40:01.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an American living and studying in Belgium, and I've also recently been applying to PhD programs around the world. Based on what you've described in your question, I have to honestly ask: why are you even considering going to the USA for a PhD? It looks like you have it made in your current situation: a great and influential adviser, excellent resources, and the ability to get into your research immediately. You didn't mention, but I suppose funding plays some role--and if your adviser offered you a position, I'm guessing funding is included. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention you're in the sciences, but you don't indicate what kind of career you want...so I don't know if you're looking for corporate or for academia. But my speculation (and it is entirely just that) is that the academic market in the US will be turning more and more international as the years go on: professors from other parts of the world, as well as Americans with international degrees. But, I might add, that perhaps you'll find yourself as an expat for longer than you initially thought... Perhaps your career would be better if you took a job somewhere else in the world, and/or getting your foot in the door with an international corporation may do well to help get you into a state-side company as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from a fellow expat living and studying abroad (and from a fellow applicant to PhD programs who would love to have a funded position just offered to him, but who knows that won't happen)-- I say you should take the offer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19526" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T16:40:01.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-13T16:43:36.487" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any inherent value in having your own &quot;signature&quot; presentation layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you want to keep the focus on the content of your talk.  If people are noticing your layout, they are paying less attention to your science.  Would you rather stick in their minds as &quot;the speaker with the cool result&quot; or &quot;the speaker with all those weird colors on their slides&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really dislike the usual templates, or you can make your own workflow more efficient by creating your own, then go ahead and do it.  But I would suggest keeping your (visible) changes conservative; if your layout is radically different from what people are used to seeing, it may become distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T16:43:36.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T17:44:11.677" Score="4" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is related to the trend of research and focus on different disciplines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some trend assesment which shows the number of articles or conferences on a specific disciplines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone would like to see the trend of research on let's say Nano Technology or Semantic Technology is there some source of information which shows the number of conferences related to the discipline and the number of articles tagged for these disciplines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1428" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T17:53:54.200" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:02:32.040" Title="How to find size of academic literature in a given discipline?" Tags="&lt;literature&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25831" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:00:27.823" Score="0" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know which countries allow admission to a PhD program directly after finishing a Bachelor's (Life Science), without requiring an intervening Master's degree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you go directly into a PhD after the B.S., which countries support it? In India(my country), it is nearly impossible other than you join a integrated course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it same everywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19474" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T20:21:06.280" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T20:21:06.280" Title="In what countries is it possible to enter a life science PhD program directly after a Bachelor's?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-07-14T20:46:02.913" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25836" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:09:25.943" Score="27" ViewCount="2613" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my colleagues and I got offers from employees  of some reputed journal (not from journal itself), to publish our research paper for free, if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We include their name as co-author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We use 60%+ citation of their journal (Doesn't it add up to IF??)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In return:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will be published completely free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will give us discount of some sort for next publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it may be some kind of scam? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19474" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T00:37:13.737" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T00:37:13.737" Title="Journal employees offering free publication in return for co-authorship and citations: is it a scam?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25832" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:15:12.510" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this is a scam, it is &lt;strong&gt;completely unethical&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under no circumstances is someone entitled to a publication credit in exchange for &quot;free&quot; publication of a paper. Don't forget that many reputable journals do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; charge publication fees. It may be entirely possible for you to get your paper published without such an arrangement, which will be better for you, largely because any journal whose employees operate in such a manner isn't worth publishing in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T18:15:12.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25831" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:18:43.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, applying for a Ph.D. program in life sciences with just a bachelor's degree is possible in at least some of the US universities (I do not know, however, to which extent this affects your chances at acceptance).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. the Harvard medical school web site says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/programs_of_study/division_of_medical_sciences_at_harvard_medical_school_dms.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Minimal requirements include a bachelor’s degree and undergraduate preparation in the sciences.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T18:18:43.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:19:14.817" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;If you are presenting in a classroom&lt;/code&gt; it is an advantage to have same templates because students do not prefer to see a new template each session. &lt;code&gt;But in the conferences&lt;/code&gt; the audience is not aware you are always using the same template. The only thing he sees is the &lt;code&gt;content&lt;/code&gt; you are presenting. Moreover, some conferences have their own template and all the speakers have to use the conference template not their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If you have the best designed slides and you have nothing to talk about, your audience will get bored soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T18:33:11.590" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T18:33:11.590" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25832" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:22:06.560" Score="68" Body="&lt;h2&gt;This is a scam.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not the ones being scammed, however.  The editors are proposing to scam your readers, with your assistance, making you scammers as well.  Walk away before you damage your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T18:22:06.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:35:11.033" Score="27" ViewCount="2858" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recruiting &quot;bad&quot; PhD students who only become emotional, temporal, and financial drag is not good for anybody. I was listening to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2014/07/10/what-do-king-solomon-and-david-lee-roth-have-in-common-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent freakonomics podcast episode&lt;/a&gt;, and thought it would be great to use tricks for testing the candidates before hiring them. Interviewing only can tell you so much, but unlike industry, PI's have more time to test the students before committing to seriously bring them into their research program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17621/386&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;, some qualities of successful students were discussed. Specifically, I want to test for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;persistence/focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;creativity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;logical/systematic thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teamwork&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;smartness&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some basic skills (programming, computer skills, writing, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time I do not want to punish for lack of knowledge or experience. Also, I'm okay with eccentric personalities to a certain degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen PIs testing their candidates by giving them &lt;strong&gt;mini research problems&lt;/strong&gt; before hiring them (or while they are rotating in the lab). Some students will quickly finish the task and further explore the science on their own write fantastic reports/papers, while some students never finish the simplest first step. This seems to work fine (but some students might think it is not fair). I would like to learn if there are some quick tests that would reveal the quality of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tricks/procedures do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am in a computation/theory heavy science in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I am especially looking forward to King Solomon's cutting the baby in half type of creative solutions. Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes before the student says he/she thinks it is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T00:49:37.500" Title="How to test (admitted) grad students before hiring them in your lab" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25838" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:36:39.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tutoring can be defined as the act of teaching or instructing usually by a member of university staff who is responsible for the teaching and supervision of a certain number of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T08:25:07.897" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T08:25:07.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25839" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-13T18:36:39.530" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic tutoring or teaching." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T17:13:53.970" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T17:13:53.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25830" CreationDate="2014-07-13T20:08:33.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not that easy to determine the current trend. Many search engines for publications give the number of the search query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to continuously dealing with your area of ​​expertise. The best way to identify the current trend is to go to conferences and read professional journals. In addition, one also needs a lot of expertise to be able to assess as something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15731" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T20:08:33.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25842" CreationDate="2014-07-13T21:15:54.557" Score="3" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have applied to a Chair position, in response to a public advertisement from a US University (not one of the top ones, of course). This included investing some good time, sending several documents, and a formal application (the first, and probably last one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2 years, I never heard 1 word in response (apart the application reception acknowledgment). I was wondering if this kind of rudeness is the standard in the USA, and it is to be normally expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19530" LastEditorUserId="19530" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T21:26:40.713" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T22:18:58.477" Title="No response to formal Chair application. Is this normal?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25841" CreationDate="2014-07-13T21:49:51.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the typical situation normal but all fouled up (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/snafu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SNAFU&lt;/a&gt;) of job searches in the United States. Often you are lucky to get a two line e-mail or a postcard at the negative conclusion of a search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Chair searches, though, the fouled-up nature is usually much worse. I'm assuming this is Chair-as-in-Head-of-a-Department rather than a Named-Chair-as-in-Benefactor-Sponsored senior position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually universities search for external Chairs when there are problems with the existing senior faculty that make it impossible for a Chair to arise from within the department. This means that search will be similarly confused, with possible internal conflicts in the department as well as external interventions from the Provost's office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of these competing interests, external Chair searches can take even longer than the usual search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write to the Search Chair and ask what the status of the search is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postscript: The OP has clarified that this is a search for a named chair. These tend to go smoothly as the institution already has the money vested by the benefactor, who usually wants to see the position filled quickly (and is likely to give again if pleased by the results) and often puts enough parameters on the position (theoretical field, area of study) that political factions within the department can't mess it up too much. So whatever is going on in the OP's situation seems strange and rather unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-13T22:18:58.477" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T22:18:58.477" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-13T22:46:36.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I do not think that having a signature layout is any good for its own sake. In most fields, few people (apart from your workgroup) will attend more than one of your talks and even those who will, will likely not notice the consistency of your layout¹ – unless it’s particularly memorable, which is almost certainly not a good thing². And even if somebody notices, they will likely (and hopefully) value the quality of your design more, let alone the quality of your content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the required work, there are two aspects: (1) Creating (or choosing) a layout and (2) Using the layout throughout your presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspect 1 takes a few hours, if you are sufficiently apt with your presentation program (and it does not suck) and know some basics of graphic design (which I suppose you do, if you are asking such a question).&#xA;Mostly it’s selecting a colour scheme, one or two fonts and a default arrangement of your slides as well as realising them in your presentation program and in the programs you use to generate your figures.&#xA;Regarding the constraints of existing templates, remember that (unless your problems are very individual) if no templates are the way you want them, it is very likely that you should be careful what you are wishing for.&#xA;Also beware that the fact that you have to rely on (usually unknown) projectors imposes some constraints on your font and colour selections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspect 2 will usually save you some time, whether you are using a prebuilt design or your own: For example, you are very likely to reuse some material – in particular figures. And if you care about your slides being consistent (which I suppose you do), you avoid spending some time in adapting colour schemes, for example. In particular, there is usually no benefit in switching designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I have spent some time in working out a design and have not regretted it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;¹ Just think about, how few people give horribly designed presentations and thus can be assumed not even to notice the flaws in their own presentations, let alone the qualities of yours.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;² As you should not notice good design that much.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T09:17:37.747" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T09:17:37.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25817" CreationDate="2014-07-14T03:02:11.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Further to Ben's comment: I'd say that your advisor has burned bridges with you, which is unfortunate.  There is a lesson in this for doctoral students.  Choosing an advisor is a life-altering decision.  Personal compatibility and reputation are as important as professional reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The filial obligations run in both directions: whatever you do in your field will reflect in some degree on your advisor.  It's in your advisor's interest to help you along professionally.  It is unfortunate that your advisor has chosen to take this sort of action.  He (She?) apparently wants the hit in an &quot;A&quot; journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can the editor do?  Anything she wants to do, actually.  You don't say if the paper is in print yet.  The best case for you is that it is not in print yet.  Adding your advisor as co-author is still possible, and this whole mess can remain relatively closely held to you, your advisor and the editor.  If the paper has appeared already, the editor could do anything from withdrawing the paper (very bad, as that action reeks of plagiarism or other academic dishonesty) to issuing a corrigendum note (not as bad as withdrawing the paper, but bad).  In the short run, the best case for you would be for the editor to do nothing.  I'm not sure that is in your long-run best interest, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do?  Someone has to be the bigger, better person.  Your advisor has already (to the extent that your version of the story reflects the actual history) revealed him(her?)self to be a rather petty person.  I'd say to add your advisor as co-author.  The power dynamics are pretty asymmetric here and you are on the weak side.  Unless you care to go to your University's research ethics system with a complaint (and you'd better have irrefutable proof the situation is precisely as you say if you choose this route) and ruin your advisor's career, there isn't much you can do.  Whistleblowers often do not fare well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17284" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T03:02:11.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24297" CreationDate="2014-07-14T03:46:18.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until when should this person contact his supervisor about the researches he is doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until this person chooses not to collaborate with their former supervisor. (Which, if the student wants to develop an independent reputation, should be about five minutes after the thesis is signed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should he ethically acknowledge that his researches is roots of his PhD project under his advisor's supervision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course. You should cite all prior work that your research is based on. Whether that prior work is part of your thesis is immaterial; if you build on it, cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To put in a nutshell, as a matter of academic ethics, what are exact rights of a supervisor in projects done based on his student's supervision (after graduation of the person)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly the same rights as they have to work done in collaboration with any other colleague; no more and no less. They have the right to authorship on any future paper to which they have contributed (or are contributing) significant intellectual content, and other rights and responsibilities that go with authorship such as approval of the final manuscript,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these rights have nothing to do with their former position as an advisor/supervisor. In particular, funding, signatures on theses, and recommendation letters are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; intellectual contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the rights of the university from which the student is graduated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly the same rights that the university would have to the work of the former supervisor with any other colleague; no more and no less. If you are neither employed nor enrolled, the university has no special rights to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T03:52:46.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T03:52:46.730" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-14T04:44:17.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. If you're like me you'll never like everything about a standard layout, and you want your tools to disappear as quickly as possible when creating content.&#xA;Noticing something in your slides that you want to change (bullet type, or title colour, or whatever) is the easiest way to get distracted from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a standard layout for your own work means you have to spend the least amount of time worrying about the formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7754" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T04:44:17.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T06:43:34.133" Score="3" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, in the engineering field, the person who has research money and/or a project that leads to the collection of data, is put on research papers that directly use that data.  I guess the most common of this is for PHD students whose advisors funding or project is the reason they have data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious about when this ends in regards to collaboration.  If one person gets a project and funding and collaborates with a different lab/department/professor/researcher and through this, gives a portion of the funding to that person or place, what is the convention for authorship?  Does the PI of the project go on all papers that use the data, or only papers they directly do with their own staff/students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T09:34:46.973" Title="When does the co-authorship line end for a PI's data" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10244" CreationDate="2014-07-14T06:47:35.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll first discuss the advantages and disadvantages for each of your options on how to handle citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ignore them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pro&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This technique saves time and space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most often, the citations go unnoticed during talks (and I have been criticized once or twice for showing any citations on the slides in the first place).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contra&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You make way for the criticism that you neglect to give credit to other authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your slides are ever accessible outside of your talk, having the citations somewhere comes in handy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just list them at the end of the presentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pro&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The slide needs not be shown during your normal talk, but can be considered a part of your &quot;backup slides&quot; that you show only upon request. Thus, both people who do not like to see citations during a talk, as well as people who expect a certain citation information, will be happy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations that are referred to several times during the talk have to be listed just once (hence the reader does not get confused and wonder whether they have already seen that citation).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The citations can be written using a readable (in a projection!) font size rather cramped into another slide with a tiny unreadable font.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does not matter how many extra slides you fill with citations, so you can even include rather elaborate info (a full list of authors rather than just the first one and &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, the DOI, direct links, ...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contra&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readers have to switch back and forth between pages/slides while reading slides with citations (though the same is valid for a paper and it doesn't seem to bother anyone there).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List them and cite them within the presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pro&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations are immediately available while reading the slide that refers to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contra&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Space is scarce on slides, which means that the citations have to be written with a tiny font, probably too tiny to be legible during the talk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you need to save space, you will tend to using the shortest possible citation format, such as &lt;em&gt;1st author et al.&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;1st author, 2nd author, 3rd author, 4th author&lt;/em&gt;, thereby arguably &lt;em&gt;reducing&lt;/em&gt; the credit you give.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The citation clutters the slide (which should in general only contain the most important keywords/key statements rather than all details the presenter talks about) and thereby draws attention away from the contents of your slide (e.g. how a concept presented in related work works, understanding of which is required for the next slides).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The citations either disrupt the reading flow on the slide (when in between slide contents), or they gather at the very bottom as footnotes (where, depending on the room the talk is given in, they can only be seen by the first few rows of the audience, anyway).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To conclude, I vastly prefer technique 2, &lt;em&gt;Just list them at the end of the presentation&lt;/em&gt; over all others.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves the question whether or not to include citation references (&lt;em&gt;[1]&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;[2]&lt;/em&gt;, ...) within your slides. This depends mainly on the purpose of your references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If whatever information you are presenting is &lt;strong&gt;self-contained&lt;/strong&gt;, such as a concept fully explained with a single concise graphic, the reference needs to be there mainly for the sake of giving credit. In that case, you can go the way of some books by not including a citation reference on the slide (thereby reducing unnecessary clutter) and instead only relying on a backreference on the citation slide (&lt;em&gt;bottom-left image on slide 16&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the information you are presenting is a &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt; of someone else's work (for example when presenting only a conclusion or statement without presenting the proof it is based upon), or even an explicit &lt;strong&gt;pointer to more information&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; include a citation reference right next to the information, both to signify &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; there is more to be found about your statement and making finding the additional information convenient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastEditorUserId="14017" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T09:55:20.473" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T09:55:20.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T08:37:32.113" Score="1" ViewCount="1156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to pursue a PhD in Financial Economics in USA/Canada. I am a software engineer and going to Canada to pursue an MBA in Finance in September from an average public university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have studied a lot of high level math courses in Engineering (Undergrad).  I will study many Finance and Econ courses in the MBA program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in a PhD from a US university (average public university, not targeting top level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really crazy about this subject. I know that I wasted a lots of time on other things but I still have time and I am very interested in teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What opportunities can I take advantage of during the MBA to maximize my chances of PhD admission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19542" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T19:51:00.623" LastActivityDate="2017-08-19T06:55:42.580" Title="How to transition from MBA in Finance to PhD in Financial Economics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T08:52:28.193" Score="11" ViewCount="1228" Body="&lt;p&gt;When teaching undergraduates, I find myself trying to balance making them stretch to produce good work and giving them guidance. I must admit in my own undergraduate and graduate studies I rarely if ever asked for feedback (plenty of missed opportunities for me). That might color my judgment on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is somewhat related to this other one &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8460/2692&quot;&gt;Drawing Lines when Giving Ideas to Undergraduate Students&lt;/a&gt;; however, this question is more focused on when to give feedback and when not to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally do quite a few in-class activities (and am considering &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/24267/2692&quot;&gt;automated online no-penalty testing&lt;/a&gt;) and I consider those ample chances for students to gain feedback which does not affect their final grade (formative feedback). Most modules in my department are assessed by one written report. While I do have the ability to change how my modules are assessed the question still remains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does reviewing drafts and giving advice on how to improve their graded submission (prior to actual submission) maximize student learning?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in any research in this field as well as expert opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arguments for giving feedback before submission&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may genuinely not understand what is expected of them (although I do feel I cover it quite well in dedicated review sessions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may work harder when things are made crystal clear&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arguments against giving feedback before submission&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may end up looking to the teacher for too much assistance and will, therefore, become more dependent where we want to foster independence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may be lazy and &lt;strike&gt;simply wait for the teacher to tell them exactly what to write&lt;/strike&gt; seek excessive hand-holding when deciding what to write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In student surveys asking for what students would most like to see more of, students primarily choose to have more feedback of their drafts prior to submission. This is unsurprising since (almost) everyone wants a better grade. However, I'm thinking that reviewing of drafts is actually hindering student learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T06:59:59.827" Title="Where to draw the line when giving feedback?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17876" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:04:23.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on your profile. If you are expert in a specific track and the faculty realizes that you might actually be able to assist the students, you would easily get a GA/TA/RA. An alternative to that can be tutoring, I've tutored all through my grad school. It actually pays almost all of your living expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course any and all students are eligible to work on-campus for 20 hours per week during the school session and 40 hours when the school is not in session. This applies to international students too, if they are on F1 visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T09:04:23.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25837" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:15:30.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is fair to judge a person by tests. People have ups and downs. Look on their overall profile. Have they done something creative even once, in their career? Some students are exam-phobic and do not get A grades all the time, but if you look at their research and thesis in the past, those are very creative and novel. Those kind of people are the ones, that succeed, not always the ones who run after a 4.0 gpa(on a 4.0 scale).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person doesn't has any novelty to show in their past projects, ask them the reason. What was the idea behind the work they have done, what did they learn from it, and what do they intend to learn from their PhD. Why are they pursuing a PhD? Why do they want to join your lab? Tell them what are you looking for, in the candidate and ask them to do a self-evaluation. Tell them to be frank, if they do not know something that you want them to know, and that you'll be willing to work with them if you really see them as the right candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your expectations real. You might never find a student with 100% qualities matching your requirement, but if you find that right candidate who is willing to give his 100%, you can make their 70% match better than anything else you'd ever get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, a good student is the reflection of a good teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and by the way I'm also a Bioinformatics major and it is not always possible to know everything on the computer skills side. They might be excellent in one programming language but know nothing in others or they might be average good in a number of languages being the master of none. At the end, the thing that matters is, if they can get the job done, using whatever technique, whatever approach!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct me if I'm wrong. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T09:15:30.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25868" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:17:17.680" Score="-3" ViewCount="5689" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you give me advice, how can I publish easily and quickly in a number of papers? &#xA;I'm not really a scientist, I'm a web developer, but I really need to build a publication list. I need to publish at least 10 papers or maybe 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to build a publication list because if you publish (and you meet some other criteria - which I do meet) you can get an uncapped visa to the USA.  I'm currently being interviewed by top firms in the Silicon Valley, but even they are not able to guarantee the visa. The researcher visa seems to be the most flexible one and the only thing I miss is the publication list. The number 10 is because I consulted with an immigration lawyer and they have a 98% success chance with researcher visas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a thesis for my Masters last year in an interesting and not really researched topic related to Web Usability and Search Engines and I think I can put together some articles in this topic. I'm also working on a second Masters in another university to investigate the problem's business/user behaviour aspects. Both are in the top 200 according to the Times ranking and Sanghai ranking, too. I'm planning a PhD, too, hopefully on Stanford, where I work with a professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need to publish in Nature or Science, I just have to build a publication list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19546" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T09:29:20.873" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T06:55:11.437" Title="How can I publish a lot of papers quickly and easily, so that I can qualify for a researcher visa?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23628" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:30:17.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are planning to take a big step of re-doing a PhD just based on this one interview you had, then I'd recommend reconsidering the thought. Have you received similar responses in the past? If yes, then may be the university that awarded you a PhD, doesn't has a good reputation. In that case too, a second PhD is not the best option. You can think of some Post doctoral certification or Post-doc research work. That would enhance your profile and would not count as a repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T09:30:17.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25858" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:35:58.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lfhe.ac.uk/en/audiences/governance-old/about-governance/academic-governance.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leadership Foundations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most institutions a distinction exists between corporate governance which is primarily concerned with an institution's legal and financial standing, and academic governance which involves the integrity of its core activities of teaching and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Universities have governance by-laws or regulations to cover both areas of governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T09:47:16.083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T09:47:16.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25859" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:35:58.337" Score="0" Body="On the means by which universities are formally organized and managed, including questions on the role of faculty in governance, how decisions are made, etc. 'Governance' involves strategic tasks of setting goals and direction, while 'administration' is more concerned with overseeing regular operations." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T06:58:04.280" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T06:58:04.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25853" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:42:18.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A first point is to ask what is the purpose of the activity to be graded? Is it to test student's knowledge, or is it to provide a learning activity? If it is the former, then feedback before grading seems counter-productive. If it is the latter then the feedback is necessary to provide the sought effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am experiencing this problem with student theses. In the system where I work, the thesis is considered an individual work and grading it should take into consideration qualities such as originality and independence and yet the student has a supervisor who should provide input. The task is caught in the middle between examination of a task and a learning experience; and each supervisor has their own take on where the limits are. So why is this such a mess?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key lies in failing to define what is a learning experience and what is a test of knowledge or understanding. Hence it is necessary to try to define these points so that the division becomes clear to all concerned. The key lies in deciding the balance between the two. Feedback provided after grading is, in my opinion a lost cause since students have moved on to other activities and very few probably run through the comments. Better is then to, for example, build in the feedback into the grading. This can be done by setting a preliminary grade and stating that successfully working through (not just any work-through) comments to improve the task will provide additional points or step up to a higher grade. This may be incentive enough for most to do the extra work and for those who do not want to, well that will be their decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a key ingredient will be to build in the feedback--improvement into the grading of the task. exactly how to do this will of course vary depending on the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T09:42:18.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25865" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:11:10.177" Score="17" ViewCount="3110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to attend a prestigious conference in the near future, and I was wondering if a certain professor who I wish to meet and I would love to do my phd degree and research under his supervision will be attending this conference. So is it appropriate to ask him (by email) if he plans to attend or participate in this specific conference? Or are there other ways to know this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. My research interests are an exact match to his research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T11:43:47.443" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:56:47.823" Title="Is it okay to ask a professor if he is going to attend a certain conference" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25856" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:23:49.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish your Master's results, have a chat to your supervisor about writing a paper. You should not try to publish them without involving your supervisor(s)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly feasible that a Master's thesis will produce publishable results, but more than one or two papers? No way, no how. It could easily take well over a decade of research to publish 10 or 20 first-authored papers in a respected conference or a reputable peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the eyes of a scrupulous employer, writing a large volume of low-quality papers simply to bulk up your CV will reflect very poorly on you. Having one good paper published from the results of a Master's thesis is a good achievement. Having 10 or 20 poor quality papers will just raise suspicious eyebrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T11:23:49.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25861" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:26:26.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it is OK if you ask him politely; but, if I were you, I would add a little about what I am going to talk to him when I see him at the conference. I do not think it is a good idea to say that you want to talk about your PhD supervision; write to him that you are a researcher, like his research background and want to discuss mutual research interests and ask your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T11:26:26.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25782" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:40:19.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as each department or university has it's own code for English tests such as IELTS or TOEFL; it is better to visit the admissions web pages of the universities or schools you are going to apply. If you do not find the code you are looking for, directly contact the admissions department to ask for their reference code for the tests. Besides, some codes of the institutes may be published on the website of each test (but the contacting the school is more sure in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule in my academic life, the only sure source for such information is the website, help desk or contact person of the institute you are applying to. Asking these questions here or from your friends generally do not help you because they may not be sure about the piece of information they are giving and you may face difficulties for the wrong directions. So, always stick to the source of information you need to boost your progress up and avoid difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T11:40:19.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25861" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:42:36.560" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two favourite techniques for stalking potential business contacts (including professors):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Email them asking questions about their work.  Once you've built up a bit of rapport, then you can move on to asking about meeting in person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check conference programmes to see if they are giving a talk/seminar/poster, and visit them in person then.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19549" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T11:42:36.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25866" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:55:52.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally academic reviewing is the evaluation of someone written work/research in order to assess it for grading(student work) or in the case of peer review to assess its suitability for publication or further development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T17:14:11.960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T17:14:11.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25867" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-14T11:55:52.420" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic reviewing." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T13:01:57.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T13:01:57.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25856" CreationDate="2014-07-14T12:00:25.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ten or twenty papers in reputable journals is hard, and will take years.  So how do you get started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that may appeal to you as a software developer is creating or contributing to open source software and writing a paper about the software.  An example from my field is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstatsoft.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Statistical Software&lt;/a&gt;.  It's very reputable, and the many of the articles are essentially introductory guides to software that the author has created.  I'm sure there must be a web development equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also consider making friends with scientists and contributing to their research. For example, if you can help scrape some data from the internet, or help social scientists run a questionnaire (and then write what you did in the methods section of the resulting paper) then you can get your name on a paper without too much work.  You won't be first author, but that may not matter.  (As a statistician, I'm resigned to permanently being second or third author on papers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19549" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T12:00:25.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T12:22:06.093" Score="48" ViewCount="10467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a master's degree in the autumn, and I recently received an email from the university inviting me to join the Facebook page for the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't currently have an active Facebook account -- I deleted my account several years ago due to concerns about privacy as well as its overall usefulness.  (Mostly a case of &quot;so why am I spending time on this site?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any explicit advantage I would get by joining the course's Facebook page, or equivalently, is there any disadvantage of not joining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I understand there is not likely to be an explicit requirement to join the group as official communication will be via email and university websites.  I'm asking more from the point of view of networking, socializing, etc.  Would the lack of Facebook be a handicap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Clarification: By &quot;course&quot; I mean the UK definition: The course is the entire year-long degree program.  In this instance, the department has created a Facebook page for everybody who is doing the same degree program starting this year, and that's what they invited me to.  However, my question applies to other possible applications of Facebook as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15541" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T13:41:26.553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T13:41:26.553" Title="Is Facebook a necessary tool for a student?" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-14T12:32:51.387" Score="41" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any explicit advantage I would get by joining the course's Facebook page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to interact with your classmates on Facebook before starting the course, then joining the page would enable this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;or equivalently, is there any disadvantage of not joining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel a need to do the above, then no. There is no reason to expect this to be any kind of handicap. You will have plenty of chances to interact with your classmates face to face, when the course starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook is a useful marketing tool for universities, which is why they invited you to join the page. If you personally don't want to interact with others on Facebook (for very understandable reasons), then there is no need to join the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T12:55:26.027" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T12:55:26.027" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25856" CreationDate="2014-07-14T13:10:46.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules for publishing articles vary by discipline.  Many of the people on here are in scientific fields, and the rules for scientific publication is much more strict.  What you find in many of the IT fields might be considered a 'white paper' than a 'scientific article'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're in web development, I'd recommend looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/25-web-development-blogs-you-should-be-reading/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web development blogs&lt;/a&gt; that accept external contributions and cover the specific sub-topic you want to write about.  (eg, A List Apart got slammed after their first article on JavaScript, because they didn't have the expertise to peer review it properly, so they accepted some less than ideal code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work involves building websites for a specific community, you might look to see if there are journals or newsletters in that community that accept short papers describing new tools &amp;amp; software.  (there's a growing push for &lt;a href=&quot;http://software.ac.uk/so-exactly-what-software-did-you-use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software citation&lt;/a&gt;)  You might also consider if your topics cover other aspects outside of software development, such as psychology or design, and look for journals in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also consider who it is that has decided that you 'need' to publish; if it's a professor or boss telling you this, then can likely tell you where you should be publishing.  If you're just trying to bulk up for CV because of a percieved need, then try to find CVs of people with a similar background and see where they're publishing.  I've heard of people getting consideration when hiring for running blogs in their field (scientific field, even ... the blog handles outreach to the general public), or even for writing good answers on stack exchange sites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1622" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T13:10:46.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-14T13:42:19.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standardising layouts have three advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can reuse slides across presentation without changing the styling.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you create presentations, you don't need to think about styling; the templates are already set up for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creating templates and styling can be delegated to someone with design skills, and everyone else gets to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two points are applicable whether you have your own signature style, or you follow a team or corporate style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is different. In theory, having a corporate style is a really good idea because everyone gets the benefit of using templates created by the design genius in the marketing department.  In practice, corporate templates are almost universally awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if a corporate template exists, and you are lucky enough to like it, then use that.  There's no point in reinventing the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no template, or it is dreadful, then create one for yourself and stick to that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you don't want to have to keep deciding on new fonts to use for every presentation that you make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19549" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T13:42:19.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-07-14T14:04:48.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I've found that just taking the time to actually learn the style guide is MUCH faster in the long run than putting everything into a citation tool.  Using a citation tool basically adds &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; one extra step, and that equates to lost time.  You have to be able to identify the correct information either way, and you have to know what the final citations should look like either way.  But if you type them in yourself, you save yourself the extra steps of 1) opening another program/accessing another website, 2) reviewing what that tool spits out at you, 3) copying it over to your work, and 4) adjusting any formatting as needed after copy/pasting.  Knowing hotkeys for italicizing/bolding/underlining as needed is also a time-saver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19522" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T14:04:48.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25877" CreationDate="2014-07-14T14:57:35.093" Score="2" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a researcher in industry, I am interested in pursuing personal projects in my field (computer science) in order to improve my potential employability. With that objective in mind, I'd like to publish updates about the state of these personal projects (including partial results, and maybe code) on several social networks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, lets assume that this work could eventually lead to publishable results in my field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is keeping a portfolio of personal projects compatible with publishing papers about these projects? Which steps should I follow in order to avoid others to take advantage of my ideas, and in order to avoid problems during the eventual blind peer review process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18305" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T15:58:36.043" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:58:36.043" Title="Personal project vs. blind peer review" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;anonymity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:06:29.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see pros and cons; which ends up winning out depends on your skill mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - designing a good layout takes effort and expertise. Graphics designers study many years to get good at it. Just because tools are provided to make it easy doesn't mean everyone is suddenly a graphical designer. The right blend of colors, fonts, space etc is not an easy thing to achieve. 99% of &quot;I can do better&quot; layouts look horrid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I have at times come across layouts that made me go &quot;wow&quot;. This is where the layout really supported the flow of the presentation, and while I was not getting distracted by the details, I came away more impressed. This was mostly because the presentation itself was very good - the contents were impressive, the speaker was very clear, and the layout of the presentation supported the spoken words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those cases, the personal layout was the icing on the cake - not a substitute for good work. There is a lot you can do to improve your presentation without spending any time on the layout. Fiddling with layouts (like fiddling with LaTex) can become an easy distraction from the real issues with your presentation. I urge you to consider whether your interest in the &quot;look&quot; is coming at the right time: in other words, is every other aspect of your presentation skills (content, pacing, connecting with the audience) so good that layout is the only thing left to play with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &quot;yes&quot;, then my answer to your question is &quot;yes&quot;. Otherwise, I think it's a bit early to work on creating your brand through a custom layout. Many people in the scientific community - especially at the PhD level - could do with honing their presentation skills. They could learn not to confuse slides with notes. They could learn to connect with their audience. They could learn to speak at an appropriate pace, and project their voice. They could learn to focus on the essentials and not bombard the audience with details. They could learn to use slides as visual aids - not &quot;the main course&quot; of the presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't know you or your skills, I would say that I have statistics (based on 25+ years of empirical evidence) on my side when I answer &quot;probably not&quot; to your original title question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:06:29.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25875" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:15:11.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is keeping a portfolio of personal projects compatible with publishing papers about these projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's certainly compatible with publishing. It would roughly fall under the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which steps should I follow in order to avoid others to take advantage of my ideas, and in order to avoid problems during the eventual blind peer review process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use websites with some amount of academic reputation in your field to make your material accessible. Examples are preprint servers such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt; for scientific reports of (preliminary) results, or common code hosting sites such as Sourceforge or github for code, if available together with appropriate documentation on the project websites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish anything under your real name to avoid being accused of plagiarism later on. Publishing such things on potential multi-author sites such as Wikipedia or StackExchange is not a good idea at all in this case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When making something you intend for later scholarly publication online available, make sure that it get's a credible date stamp. The sites mentioned in point 1 would work fine with that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:15:11.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24499" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:21:35.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A research paper is original work and could be written by anyone with the background.  A student paper is a research paper written exclusively by student(s).  The reality is that faculty will be involved in some way, even if it is only running the research program which made the work possible.  In reality, the faculty will be more involved than that: discussing, reading and suggesting.  But that's part of the job, in my opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17284" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:21:35.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:31:35.190" Score="3" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very new to the research domain and I'm extremely confused, let me explain further. For the literature review I've done assume that I have 1 topic, that comprises of three research papers say A,B,C. Now I put these papers in chronological order, I then take paper A and summarize it. What I mean here is that I discuss what the papers purpose was, how the authors met the papers purpose and mention the results. After this I then explain what is learned from each paper and what I can take forward in the proposed research and Introduce the next paper, in this case paper B. I do the same process for paper B etc. My question is that I've been told that this approach is wrong and that a literature review is like &quot;telling a story&quot; but frankly I can't see where I'm going wrong?? Can someone please help explain where exactly I am going wrong?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15238" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:31:35.190" Title="Literature Review Confusion" Tags="&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-07-14T19:56:32.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25850" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:33:06.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The German research foundation (DFG) has some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg_im_profil/reden_stellungnahmen/download/empfehlung_wiss_praxis_1310.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt; on authorship for research publications (including an English translation towards the end) which put specific criteria for being named as an author. Among others, it says that those &quot;who have made significant contributions to the conception of studies or experiments&quot; should be listed as authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, getting funding for a project requires describing the conception of the data collection in quite some detail, so anybody who contributed to that part of the proposal should be included as an author of the resulting publication. Importantly, the criterium is not having brought in the money, but having contributed (significantly) to the conception of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception to that rule would be if the paper under discussion does not &quot;publish&quot; the data, but &quot;uses&quot; it in some other way and can include a citation to the original publication of the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:33:06.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25837" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:55:24.033" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tricks/procedures do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially looking forward to King Solomon's cutting the baby in half type of creative solutions. Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes before the student says he/she thinks it is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're contemplating starting out a long-term, intense professional relationship with this person. &amp;quot;Tricks&amp;quot; like this are dishonest. Dishonesty is not a good way to begin such a relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is similar to an ordinary job interview. In a job interview, it's not just the employer who is judging the candidate. The candidate is also judging whether the employer is someone they'd want to work for. Manipulative interview techniques are a flashing red light telling the candidate that this is not an employer who respects his employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that a job candidate is looking for is an employer who will support him in his long-term professional growth, rather than treating him as a labor commodity who needs to be productive from day one. This holds even more for a student getting started in a PhD program; the reason universities claim that grad students are not employees is that they're supposed to be focused on learning, not on acting as cheap labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the usual case where the student does a rotation in your group, that's the opportunity for each of you to see if you're a good fit for the other. It's meant to be an experience that helps the student to learn and grow, not one that produces a lot of research. Part of what the university is paying you to do is to provide these opportunities for these students to learn and grow. If, by the end of the rotation, the student has shown a lack of aptitude, then you've provided the service you're being paid to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:55:24.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-14T16:23:39.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is an advantage besides the normal socializing one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will probably be a group for your year or the years before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this group people will share experiences with courses, questions&amp;amp;answers, solutions to homework and various other stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it could be that there might even be some teachings assistants in these groups which can help during homework and/or before the exam preparations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9301" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T16:23:39.777" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-14T16:31:56.867" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing how Facebook will be used by the instructor and fellow students in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; course it is impossible to predict if you will be at a disadvantage for not signing up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My school had some basic communication tools built into its course management software that were clunky and difficult to use, not to mention completely unavailable on mobile devices. This lead to many students turning to other more accessible, more  widely used means (like Facebook groups) to manage communications within their study groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should contact the instructor directly before the class starts and ask how or if they intend the class to use the group. If they plan to rely on the group, that will be your answer. If they do not, keep hold of the reply. It may be useful to produce it at a later date if you do miss some important Facebook related communication from her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the group is not used in an official capacity, if a significant portion of your classmates use Facebook, you may miss out on a lot without the others even realizing they are excluding you. Or it may be that like yourself most of your classmates are disengaged from Facebook, and there will be no loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, unless as ff524 suggests, you want to engage in networking with your classmates before the course starts, you can put off making the decision on joining until you know more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3934" LastEditorUserId="3934" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T23:43:35.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T23:43:35.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:30:48.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually find this requirement a bit odd. Kids are leaving Facebook &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt; for other, more private forms of communication (namely, tools their parents can't join and subsequently see what they've been posting). So assuming the whole class will actively use Facebook for extracurricular communication is almost old fashioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; The moment your kids hear you say &quot;I've set up a Facebook group for this class...&quot; they will silently groan and think &quot;This is why I quit using Facebook.&quot; To them, we are the uncool crowd. Just use your school's Moodle/Blackboard/whatever forum for that. It's kludgy and they hate it, but they have to use it for all their other classes anyway. That solution is already in place for just this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7134" LastEditorUserId="7134" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T19:15:42.910" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T19:15:42.910" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25889" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:43:40.520" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T17:43:40.520" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T17:43:40.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25890" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:43:40.520" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to the use of Facebook for academic purposes (e.g. to publicize research, make academic contacts, interact with graduate students)." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T20:27:35.240" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:27:35.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25892" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:47:53.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tuition payments [...] refers to a fee charged for educational instruction during higher education. [They are] charged by educational institutions in some countries to assist with funding of staff and faculty, course offerings, lab equipment, computer systems, libraries, facility upkeep and to provide a comfortable student learning experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T20:49:11.847" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:49:11.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25893" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:47:53.757" Score="0" Body="Fees paid by students to academic institutes they attend to cover educational expenses." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T17:08:22.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T17:08:22.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25903" CreationDate="2014-07-14T18:28:06.623" Score="12" ViewCount="2519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received an unsolicited email from &lt;a href=&quot;https://facultyawards.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://facultyawards.org&lt;/a&gt;. I tried Google to get a better sense of just what this group intends, but I couldn't find much insight. My question is simply this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the origin of this group and do their awards carry any merit towards a typical promotion for faculty tenure, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T08:09:35.770" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T08:09:35.770" Title="What is facultyawards.org?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25837" CreationDate="2014-07-14T18:39:29.783" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What tricks/procedures do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with each student as a potential colleague.  I meet with them regularly, monitor their progress, offer what feedback and advice I can on what classes to take, papers to read, problems to work on, techniques to apply, people to work with, conferences to submit to, writing, presentations, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they show sufficient promise/progress after a semester or two, I offer to continue working with them in an official capacity as their advisor.  If they don't show sufficient promise/progress, I offer to help them find another advisor who better matches their interests, background, and working style.  If necessary, I help the student navigate a change in degree programs, departments, or universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if I don't have enough time to effectively evaluate and/or advise a student, I just say no at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I don't have any tricks.  I just do my job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T18:39:29.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-14T19:07:09.657" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see a big advantage to joining facebook. Not joining facebook is probably better on the longer term. Employers are looking at facebook pages of the people applying for work. So, unless you use your facebook account in a way that makes you look like a nerd who no one wants to socialize with, there are no points to be earned here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17479" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:07:09.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25861" CreationDate="2014-07-14T19:56:47.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! Go for it. Just send an email briefly introducing yourself and your research interests. Say that you're interested in doing a Ph.D. with him. If possible, ask a question or two about his work to show that you've done your homework and aren't just emailing people blindly. (How feasible this is depends on your field; in mine, ecology, it was pretty easy.) Then, mention that you're going to be at the conference and would like to meet in person if he also plans to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is nervewracking, but really, professors don't bite. The worst that can happen is he might say that he doesn't have funding or time for more grad students now. That's disappointing but not the end of the world (and there may be an opening next year). I used this approach, minus the conference part, when emailing prospective graduate advisors and it always went over well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:56:47.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25830" CreationDate="2014-07-14T20:02:32.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The typical way to do this would be to enter your topic as search keyword into a bibliographic database such as Web of Science or Scopus, and have the number of published articles using the keyword charted over the years. That's what I often see when someone wants to advertive a &quot;hot new topic&quot; in conferences or seminars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I never saw a chart where someone corrected for even simple statistical artifacts like total number of publications in the database for a given year, or a time-varying coverage of the literature by the database. Thus I am typically not valuing these pictures highly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:02:32.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25850" CreationDate="2014-07-14T20:20:59.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If one person gets a project and funding and collaborates with a different lab/department/professor/researcher and through this, gives a portion of the funding to that person or place, what is the convention for authorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you collaborate with someone, they usually get co-authorship on papers resulting from the collaboration. &lt;strong&gt;Not&lt;/strong&gt; because money changed hands, but because they were involved in the work that the paper describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two PIs on a funded proposal work independently on research described in the proposal, such that they are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; collaborators, then they won't be author on one another's papers. Again, the reason they won't merit co-authorship is because they did not collaborate on the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose I write a proposal together with a colleague to explore some problem domain both from a theoretical standpoint (his area of expertise) and through practical experimentation (mine). He develops the conception of the theoretical part, while I develop the experimental part. The proposal is funded. My colleague proceeds to develop a very nice theoretical framework, while I independently go ahead and do some experimental work. I didn't participate in his work and he didn't participate in mine. We are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; going to be co-authors on one another's papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's irrelevant whether money changed hands. It's also not relevant whether we are in the same lab/department/university or different ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:20:59.073" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2014-07-14T20:26:59.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you aren't required to do it in a particular format, I'd recommend publishing the code online and using a nice LaTeX code formatting package for the parts you want to share in the print version. My personal favorite is &lt;code&gt;minted&lt;/code&gt; . Very easy to use, beautiful formatting and coloring and no need to copy and paste anything, just use the &lt;code&gt;\inputminted&lt;/code&gt; command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6074" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:26:59.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25894" CreationDate="2014-07-14T20:31:15.097" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the origin of this group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and do their awards carry any merit towards a typical promotion for faculty tenure or promotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least, I certainly hope not.  Nobody in their right mind would trust an award of completely unknown provenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; who signs up is selected for an award and then immediately offered a high-quality leather-bound archival book listing your achievements and those of other winners, all for the absurdly low price of $500, but only if you reply in the next fifteen seconds with your credit card information.  See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who&amp;#39;s_Who_scam&quot;&gt;&quot;Who's Who&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:31:15.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2014-07-14T21:08:34.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the best way to &lt;em&gt;display&lt;/em&gt; the salient code of the key points of your algorithm is to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; good code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”&lt;/strong&gt; -&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/books/refactoring.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Martin Fowler, &lt;em&gt;Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the code itself should be readable with meaningful choice for variable names, sufficiently divided into meaningful functions or subroutines, and with a minimum of arguments passed around.  this means writing decent object-oriented or structured code and &lt;strong&gt;making&lt;/strong&gt; objects or structures and using them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i would split the code up into modules with a good comment on the top of the file describing what the callable functions do and who calls them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13651" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T21:08:34.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T21:13:47.370" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is applying to graduate schools, and his research advisor asked him to write the recommendation and he would sign it as his own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem possible for my friend to write a genuine letter about himself. I would think admissions committees would be able to spot it right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a very strong application otherwise, with a first author publication in a reputable journal (STEM field) with the very same advisor as an undergraduate! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you write the letter yourself? Would you get a recommendation from someone else? Could this be a deal breaker for his application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T21:13:47.370" Title="What to do when an advisor asks you to draft your recommendation?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-14T21:21:05.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25934" CreationDate="2014-07-14T22:37:31.860" Score="0" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent conversation with a person born in the UK, he mentioned his son had attended a US college for a year before deciding to move back to the UK to finish school. He told me that apparently if a student completes one year of school at an accredited US university, they can do a combined bachelor's/master's degree in the UK in, as I recall, only an additional three years. Apparently that was what his son was doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I unfortunately neglected to ask him for more information regarding the process or where I could find more information online, and have no way of contacting him. A friend of mine and I have been looking into moving to the UK after college anyway, and I recently remembered this conversation and wanted to look into it. We're about to be entering our first year of college in the US, and are considering doing precisely what the man said, completing this coming year and then attempting to apply there for the remaining three years. Not only would it get us to the UK sooner, but it would also be good for costs considering how much cheaper college is in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone else familiar with such a system and at least where we could go to begin researching it? I've tried looking online but have, as of yet, found little real information. Or is it just that the information I got was faulty and there is no such system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19567" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T11:19:00.327" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:33:26.317" Title="Combined degree in the UK for a US Student" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24487" CreationDate="2014-07-15T01:02:16.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This requires judgment. You do not generally need to cite things which are considered common or general knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1: If you are mentioning Brownian motion that you observed in particles on a petri dish, you might not have to cite  Brown's original 1828 paper, but if you are discussing the motion of black holes due to macro scale Brownian forces you might want to cite the relevant recent literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2: In the social sciences, there are various lineages of even basic concepts such as &quot;resistance.&quot; In these cases, it's good to note which intellectual thread you're following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: If you are writing your thesis, you generally want to err on the side of having too many citations rather than too few. It prevents faculty from scribbling &quot;where the hell did you get this from&quot; in the margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T01:02:16.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25911" CreationDate="2014-07-15T03:23:05.210" Score="17" ViewCount="10096" Body="&lt;p&gt;In US, universities often have a fixed overhead rate around 50%, or at least that's what I heard. But I don't know what it exactly means. How does this affect how much grant money goes where?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T19:30:49.760" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T19:30:49.760" Title="What does overhead rate mean?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2014-07-15T03:29:03.327" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'overhead' generally refers to the funding that doesn't go directly to research expenses (salaries of researchers, cost of experiments/consumables, etc) but to the supporting expenses (salaries of administrative/support staff; cost of facilities and utilities, equipment depreciation) of services that are neccessary but not directly related to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often is set by university administration to some fixed rate (50% sounds high to me, but it depends on country and research domain) that is taken from all grants and used to fund those 'common' expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T03:29:03.327" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25914" CreationDate="2014-07-15T04:30:12.937" Score="8" ViewCount="5518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my graduation ceremony coming soon. The graduation dress usually consists of the gown, the hood and the mortar board. however the hand sleeves of the gown are a bit short and hence a full shirt is to be worn inside the gown (gown is black in color). In most pictures I see a white shirt within. Is it necessary to have white shirt or I can go for a blue or black one too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19572" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2017-09-14T13:55:14.777" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T13:55:14.777" Title="Is it necessary to wear a white shirt inside the graduation gown for Masters degree graduation ceremony?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;&lt;academic-dress&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-15T04:52:12.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing in your question is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good branding&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Branding is a major part of marketing, as it allows companies to craft a particular image for consumers. It's important for brands to be distinguished from one another, and focus on a target audience, which is why you've probably heard of brands such as &quot;Arm &amp;amp; Hammer&quot; and &quot;Oxi Clean&quot;, but probably don't know &quot;Church &amp;amp; Dwight&quot; which owns both of those brands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establishing a brand takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult to measure. How can you objectively tell whether a sponsor chose to give you money because they liked your science or because they trusted your brand? It's always a mix, but it's important to remember that good branding will help open doors that otherwise would have been closed to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you approach your presentations as part of your brand (which they are) then any marketer will tell you how important it is to have a clear consistent message. Simply using a consistent theme for presentation material, business cards, and any and all academic communication is one way to develop your brand. That way, when someone watches your presentation it might remind them of the friendly email that you sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents of your presentations is certainly important, and I think the other answers speak to that a great deal, so I'm going to &lt;strong&gt;explicitly ignore&lt;/strong&gt; the contents of your presentation beyond a reminder that if your presentation is good, it will help your brand, and if your presentation is bad, it will harm your brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend discussing your brand with a marketer or designer and investing in yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T04:52:12.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25912" CreationDate="2014-07-15T05:15:22.210" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Faculty do not ask and students do not tell what they wearing under the robes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I find that since graduations are in May, the robes are often swelteringly hot (especially PhD robes) in many parts of North America, so the lighter the clothes and the more sweat-resistant and breathable the better. Women can get away with wearing summer dresses. From what I can ascertain (remembering the Don't Ask/Don't Tell rule above), male students tend to wear khakis and comfortable dress shirts underneath. No need to wear long-sleeves if it's going to be hot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many students often change into other clothes for the receptions after graduation -- men into longer pants and a sport jacket, women don a light jacket or change into more formal attire. They often keep a change of clothes in their parent's car or in their advisor's office if the dorms are shut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; It's your graduation. No need to be uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T00:36:39.380" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T00:36:39.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-15T05:54:36.300" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rather say there is nothing in the world which do not have disadvantages or advantages.Its up to you how are using it. Take an example of a Computer , you can use it for programming,studies and hell lot of advantageous activities \at the same time u can it to waste your time by playing games and watching movies etc(Look playing game or watching movies etc are not bad at all but if this kind activities will not appreciated if you are doing them by ignoring the priority work).If You see it in a positive way Facebook is one the best way to stay connected with society but if we don't know value of time or have self control then I thinks its  our fault.&#xA;&quot;Use the advantages and ignore the disadvantages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T05:54:36.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25918" CreationDate="2014-07-15T06:38:26.640" Score="16" ViewCount="3028" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always done my best to not publish in scam journals or fake conferences (even though I was working as a lecturer and was penalised for not having enough publications, the institution didn't care where the work is published as long as it was).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point I have submitted a paper to the internal conference of the institute, at that time I was told that there was going to be a new section at this conference which my work was suitable for. The abstract was accepted, the paper for the post conference publication submitted; but on the day of the conference I was told that my presence was not needed, and that the protocol of the conference was already being written, and my presentation was &quot;discussed&quot; and that I have answered all the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must admit, I did not raise the fuss. I was swamped with other work, so I thought that I would just build on that work and at least the publication would appear, I'd link to it, but no longer publish something in this institute internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I no longer work there. But, lo and behold, on their site, where the publication must have appeared, in that conference there's not even a section to which I have submitted. My questions about the situation are unanswered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to abandon the attempt to publish (in the true sense of the word, i.e. making it public).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I consider that particular paper published as a part of this conference? Can I reference it as published, since I was clearly told that it would be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I consider it to be unpublished, can I resubmit it somewhere else? Do I explain the whole situation during the submission?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Yes, I do feel quite stupid about the situation. I will be more careful in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9441" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-09-10T12:51:49.713" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T12:51:49.713" Title="What to do after accidentally submitting to a &quot;fake&quot; conference?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-15T07:35:46.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook pages for Courses offered by Universities are a advantageous for the University since&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This a indirect mass media publicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This helps build a connected medium of students. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opinions can come in a velocity not achievable by normal methods. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also advantageous for you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get to meet your crowd.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There will be enough people to collaborate that you don't need another medium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the privacy fear that we all have, it should be taken care if you only add people you know. Also there are options to share things only to people you specifically mention. Privacy is a great option which lesser amount of people use, but my personal advice is that since its a University just let it flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19576" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T07:35:46.030" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25916" CreationDate="2014-07-15T08:07:32.513" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it seems like a good thing you moved on. That does sound like a rather toxic research environment. Especially that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The abstract was accepted, the paper for the post conference publication submitted; but on the day of the conference I was told that my presense was not needed, and that the protocol of the conference was already being written, and my presentation was &quot;discussed&quot; and that I have answered all the questions. (...) I no longer work there. But, low and behold, on their site, where the publication must have appeared, in that conference there's not even a section to which I have submitted. My questions about the situation are unanswered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; sound quite shady. However, I am not even sure why they would do this. You do not mention having to pay something (and, honestly, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they asked for a registration payment or somesuch when submitting to an &lt;strong&gt;internal&lt;/strong&gt; conference, you really should have turned and fled immediately), and I am not sure what other gains they would have from accepting and then silently discarding a paper. &lt;em&gt;Maybe&lt;/em&gt; this was after all an ill-handled organisational issue - for instance, maybe they indeed planned to have this &quot;special section&quot; but did not receive enough submissions to hold it, so they decided to just never speak about the &quot;special section&quot; again. I am in no way saying that this is the proper way to handle such an issue, but I &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; see this happening in some places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I consider that particular paper published as a part of this conference? Can I reference it as published, since I was clearly told that it would be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, your paper did not appear anywhere. It is quite officially &lt;strong&gt;unpublished&lt;/strong&gt;. You can not reference it (at least without putting it up on a preprint server or something like that), and I would definitely not list it on my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I consider it to be unpublished, can I resubmit it somewhere else? Do I explain the whole situation during the submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can (and should) certainly submit somewhere else. I see no reason to explain the situation during submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me re-iterate my main point. Your ethical concerns seem to stem from your understanding that this paper is &quot;kind of&quot; already published, and that submitting it again would be a double submission / self-plagiarism. In my understanding, this is absolutely not the case. Your paper was under consideration at another venue, but for one reason or another (does not even really matter why) it never appeared there. Hence, the paper is unpublished and you are completely free to do whatever you see fit with it. Essentially, the situation is the same as if your paper was rejected at the earlier conference. That they sent you an acceptance is not the important part, the important part is that your paper is nowhere published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T08:07:32.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25906" CreationDate="2014-07-15T08:14:34.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, a bachelor's degree lasts three years, and the there are some undergraduate masters degrees available that last four years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you complete a year of study at a US university, some UK universities may accept this as enough experience to let you transfer into the second year of a UK degree.  This depends upon how closely aligned the two courses are, and how well you performed in the first year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option to consider is that many US degrees include a year of study in another country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19549" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T08:14:34.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2014-07-15T08:27:53.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematics has a great tradition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0821803670&quot;&gt;making mistakes and then fixing them yourself&lt;/a&gt;.  Having other people find your mistake is a little embarrassing, but fixing them yourself shows that you are dilligent, so stop worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you upload an erratum or a revised thesis doesn't really matter, as long as both the old and new versions are available.  (It's useful to see how things have been corrected, since mistakes are a good source of learning.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you upload the new content, please double check that you really got it right this time.  If it is wrong a second time (or was right and now you made it wrong), you can start to look a little foolish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19549" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T08:27:53.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:00:29.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If anyone would care, there would be a mechanism for erratas...&#xA;Even now, majority of the thesises is not available for the public. It is true for most science and most (even prestigious) universities. In short: no one reads them and no one cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the mistake is something you published, I would care more about fixing the actual paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T09:00:29.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25927" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:38:04.393" Score="4" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper due tonight, and I have done my part. I have also volunteered to compile the texts from the other authors and hand it all in (there's four of us). I have all texts except one and frankly don't expect to get it on time (our internal deadline was two days ago.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle this situation? Leave the whole section empty, with an explanatory editor's note? Just take it out? Send an explanatory email to my lecturer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19582" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T10:09:02.953" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:09:02.953" Title="How to deal with co-authors' tardiness?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25923" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:49:37.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might for example include generalized explanations of how nature works. [...] A theory is not the same as a hypothesis. A theory provides an explanatory framework for some observation, and from the assumptions of the explanation follows a number of possible hypotheses that can be tested in order to provide support for, or challenge, the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T09:55:10.140" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T09:55:10.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25924" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:49:37.640" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to theory in an academic context." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T09:55:06.603" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T09:55:06.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25925" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:51:48.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credential&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A credential is an attestation of qualification, competence, or authority issued to an individual by a third party with a relevant or de facto authority or assumed competence to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examples of credentials include academic diplomas, academic degrees, certifications, [..]. Sometimes publications, such as scientific papers or books, may be viewed as similar to credentials by some people, especially if the publication was peer reviewed or made in a well-known journal or reputable publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T10:00:51.833" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:00:51.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25926" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:51:48.800" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to academic credentials." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T10:00:42.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:00:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25922" CreationDate="2014-07-15T10:08:21.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is not to wait until two days before the deadline to check in on your co-author's progress. Presumably this is no longer an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the section is not necessary, take it out. If it is necessary, you and your non-tardy co-authors can try to get together and do it together before the final deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should certainly tell the tardy co-author what you plan to do (I mean the collective &quot;you,&quot; as in you and your other co-authors). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tardy co-author's contribution doesn't make it in before the final deadline, then his name won't go on it either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if this was a paper being submitted for publication, e.g. a conference submission, and not for school, you would likely just miss this deadline entirely and have to wait to submit to another conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:08:21.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-15T13:45:54.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are some terms which should be defined in order to understand the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; do you mean a semester-long sequence of lectures and exams in one subject? This is the US usage, while in other places &lt;em&gt;module&lt;/em&gt; is used.  In those places &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; means what in the US is called a &lt;em&gt;degree program&lt;/em&gt;: the set of courses/modules taken to complete the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you asked to &quot;like&quot; a Facebook &lt;em&gt;page&lt;/em&gt; or &quot;join&quot; a Facebook &lt;em&gt;group&lt;/em&gt;? Both have been used interchangeably in this discussion but they are not the same.  A Facebook page is used by an organization for self-promotion and broadcasting information.  It's mainly a one-way tool, though likers can comment and (sometimes, depending on settings) post.  A Facebook group can be official or unofficial but is used for multi-way communication among its members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a course-as-in-degree-program is asking you to like their Facebook page, it's probably just to open up another line of communication to you.  For instance, they might use it to broadcast that the university is closed for bad weather, and you can get that information before checking your email.  You can do this without using Facebook for anything else; you don't have to interact with the other fans of the page.  I believe fans aren't privy to who is and isn't a fellow fan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a course-as-in-degree-program is asking you to join a Facebook group, it might be more for discussion as for a group, but would still be non-academic.  Perhaps they want to collect opinions about services.  Group members are able to see the list of group members, so you would be known.  But you don't have to be (Facebook) friends with the fellow group members, so you can interact with the group and keep  the other members at arm's length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a course-as-in-module is asking you to like their Facebook page, it's going to be academic but still mainly broadcast.  I've done this in my large lecture courses to announce when slides are posted or reminders about due dates.  These are useful to get extra communication to the students, but they should not be used  to publish anything that's not also on a university website.  If you find that there is original course material published on Facebook, you might want to raise concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a course-as-in-module is asking you to join a Facebook group, it's likely that it's for academic discussion.  This can be beneficial as others have pointed out.  And the interface is familiar to most students so the content can be quite rich. But if the Facebook discussion is to be graded that's the most problematic combination.  Joining Facebook requires individuals to sacrifice a considerable amount of privacy, and I think it's not fair for university officials to explicitly require that consent to participate in instruction.  If you have a problem with joining Facebook and the instructor wants you do so for a grade, you should definitely be concerned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5701" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T13:45:54.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T13:46:47.293" Score="6" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;From observations as an author and reviewer that I made myself and that have been reported to by others, it seems that the editorial system of the American Physical Society (which in particular publishes the &lt;em&gt;Physical Review&lt;/em&gt; journals) works as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The editor selects a reviewer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The reviewer receives an invitation to review, which he can accept, decline or ignore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If the reviewer declines, inform the editor to select a new reviewer (i.e., go back to step 1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Otherwise, wait approximately one month for a review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If nothing has happened, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means in particular that if the reviewer does not react at all (for an extreme example, because he died years ago), it takes one month until another reviewer is selected. In contrast, with all other publishers, step 3 seems to be instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3. If the reviewer declines or does not accept the invitation within a few days, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which seems much more reasonable to me, as a reviewer who does not accept to review (which usually is little work) for whatever reason is very unlikely to review a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions regarding this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it really work like this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes, why is the system not switched to one, which requires the reviewers to give some positive response within a few days?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Just in case, somebody mistakes this for some disgruntled bashing: Apart from the above, my experience of publishing with APS journals has been rather positive. I am just puzzled by this seemingly nonsensical mode of operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19590" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T07:55:22.277" Title="Can someone really be assigned to review in the APS’s editorial system for over a month without reacting at all and if yes, why?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2014-07-15T14:20:03.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard is to use &lt;strong&gt;10 point courier&lt;/strong&gt; font for computer code, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Source_Code_Listings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;monospaced, single column&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not have to turn in all code used in your experiment; use your best judgement. You may want to include only relevant sections of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Usage of Courier is of my personal choice from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://engineering.cmu.edu/files/documents/graduate_students/policies/UMI_PreparingYourManuscriptGuide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of standard 10pt&lt;/a&gt; fonts usable for codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19576" LastEditorUserId="19576" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T17:37:35.647" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T17:37:35.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25906" CreationDate="2014-07-15T14:33:26.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently this is possible but it is at the universities discretion whether your credits are sufficient for entry into the 2nd year. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingston.ac.uk/international/guidance-and-advice/your-home-country/usa/transferring-credit-to-kingston/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kingston Uni&lt;/a&gt; has some vaguely useful information on their website. In particular applications should be done via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucas.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCAS&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would research some places you would be interested in applying for and contact them directly to see what their policies are. I suspect higher ranked institutions are less likely to accept your credits as sufficient (although I may be wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out in the comments other things to consider if you are not a EU citizen is visas and tuition fee's. Tuition fees for non-EU students can be significantly higher than for home students (£9000 per year). A quick look at 3 unis gives international fees of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kingston Uni: £10750-12350&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brunel Uni: £13000-16000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imperial College: £22900-25500&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice the more prestigious institutions are more expensive. When you consider the reduced amount of financial aid (loans, etc.) for foreign students the UK may not be cheaper than US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:33:26.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T14:34:03.003" Score="15" ViewCount="4015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote my first academic paper recently (it is in math). I need to put a footnote crediting the NSF for funding. I have noticed that papers almost always say &quot;Partially supported by [grant]&quot;. I got all of my funding from one grant. Should I still say partially supported? If so, what is the reason for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T19:36:16.037" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T19:36:16.037" Title="Acknowledging a single funding source: do I say &quot;partially supported&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25937" CreationDate="2014-07-15T14:54:14.813" Score="1" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using mendeley to save papers etc. which have come up during my research. However, I am often having some ideas about problems which are interesting or some links which are worth reading later. I would like to add this to mendeley easily, sth like a workable document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is sth like that possible? What are you using for a problem like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate your answer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a way to add general notes, which are not paper related?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17751" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T15:36:03.943" Title="Mendeley - add notes to research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:03:11.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mendeley does let you add notes to your papers: On the right where the bibliography data is normally displayed there is a tab label notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally you can add annotations when to a document you open in Mendeley using the buttons at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T15:03:11.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25957" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:20:11.590" Score="1" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a paper that I want to put on my webpage, but that I don't want to publish anywhere.  I think that I need a timestamp on it, in case someone decides to plagiarize it.  Is GitHub adequate for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T16:19:49.783" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:50:39.637" Title="Is GitHub adequate for purposes of giving a manuscript a timestamp to protect against plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:24:50.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monospaced with syntax coloring and an appropriate description, see e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sNrp5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from Appendix B of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.2432&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv:1407.2432&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T15:24:50.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25832" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:28:11.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this question has fully answered, just hear my point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever asked yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What obligations those people have to fulfill their promises? After all they have not committed to the basic ethic matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you going to claim the discount for your next publication?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of publication this journal hase made, that you want to cite 60%+ of them in your work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; claim anything after this, they easily ignore the whole deal. The only thing that they have in their mind is to rise up their reputation, by any means. Charging people for publishing and then offering them discounts with this method, is just a &lt;strong&gt;scam&lt;/strong&gt;. It's more like paper-cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let yourself to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13131" LastEditorUserId="13131" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T16:11:58.553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T16:11:58.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25946" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:32:58.200" Score="5" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 2nd year Math Major, and I am aiming to recieve a PhD in Mathematics. I love mathematics, but I also have a longing for African American studies. I want to be a college professor, so I was wondering is there any feasible way I would be able to teach both subjects? If so, would it involve me double majoring now or am I allowed to start two PhD tracks in different fields. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19594" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T17:35:35.223" Title="Teaching two different subjects?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25935" CreationDate="2014-07-15T16:05:50.307" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NSF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/nsf04_23/6.jsp#VIJ&quot;&gt;requires&lt;/a&gt; the following text (or its equivalent) in publications from work funded by their grants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (grantee must enter NSF grant number).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No need to quantify the level of support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T16:17:11.410" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T16:17:11.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25935" CreationDate="2014-07-15T16:12:57.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some grants come with more strict requirements than others. I am aware of at least one funding body, that requests to specifically explain which part of the work was supported by this grant (and you can not just say &quot;a part&quot;). Others are satisfied if you just mention them. Read the funding agreement and follow their guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T16:12:57.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2014-07-15T16:44:31.903" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, the overheads proposed to federal funding agencies (NSF, NIH, etc) are in my experience always calculated as an additional percentage on top of the total direct costs (salaries plus fringe benefits, travel, etc). So if your total budget for salaries, fringe benefits, and travel is $500k, and your overhead rate is 50%, then your total proposed budget is $750k. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, at my US university, the overhead rate is 54.5%, the majority of the budget is salary, and the fringe rate is calculated at 25% of the salaries, so a good rule of thumb for us is that the total budget should be twice the salaries. Now, that also means that you can work backwards from a total allowed budget by dividing by two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T16:44:31.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25942" CreationDate="2014-07-15T17:35:35.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joint appointments across different departments at a university are not that unusual, and at many schools are in fact quite common. However, such cross-appointments tend to be within &quot;branches&quot;: a scientist might be cross-appointed in multiple science and engineering departments, but not likely in both a science department and a humanities department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's unlikely that you'd get an appointment in both mathematics and African-American studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be able to teach both those subjects. You might be able to convince a university to let you offer an elective seminar course in addition to your &quot;primary&quot; teaching in mathematics. However, this is by no means guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T17:35:35.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:11:23.643" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are talking about this article;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martynemko.com/articles/overcoming-fear-rejection_id1346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Overcoming Fear of Rejection, by Marty Nemko&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it is not what you are looking for, the following article might definitely brighten up your day if you are just interested in knowing that rejection is not the end!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28819/title/Nature-rejects-Krebs-s-paper--1937/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature rejects Krebs's paper, 1937, By Brendan Borrell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T22:29:45.517" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T22:29:45.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:12:40.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mendeley is a great tool, but my personal preference while taking general notes is &lt;a href=&quot;https://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;. The best feature being that it'll sync automatically to all your devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mendeley is something that I use when I have to compile from a huge collection of papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19576" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T18:12:40.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26309" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:31:45.920" Score="-2" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;Men make up the minority of students who receive undergraduate and graduate degrees.  As a group men also tend to dropout of school at a greater rate than women.  Men are even more in minority status as students in fields like psychology and education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what books, biographies, survival guides, or other resources exist for men who say want to become educators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7158" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T21:55:00.673" Title="What books, biographies, or survival guides are helpful for men in education in academia?" Tags="&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:40:57.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/25931/739&quot;&gt;Matthew's answer&lt;/a&gt; says, you need to better define the terms. That is an important research skill, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there cannot be any official FB pages for courses-as-modules/classes. Instructors who use FB as their main communication vehicle can be easily found in violation of the university's IT security practices via exposing the educational material that the university collects the money for on a platform that is not protected well enough. Even if an instructor only runs a FB page for their convenience, they still cut you out, and you have all the grounds to file a formal complaint with them to their department chairs saying that they discriminate in access to the course information against FB non-users (although the remainder of the class will probably oust you out, and you will be considered a weirdo for the rest of your time in the program).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So having ruled a course-as-in-module/class page out, I can imagine a course-as-in-degree/program may have an FB page for intermittent announcements: news about a graduate being mentioned in NY Times, a faculty member receiving a good chunk of NSF money, a formal visit of the program by the Chancellor, may be more technical stuff like colloquia announcements. Probably nothing you cannot leave without. (Avoiding triple negations is another important practical skill that will definitely make your writing much clearer :) ). So they will give you a little nudge to join, but if FB does not fit your lifestyle, not having access to it will not be the end of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T18:40:57.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T19:27:47.700" Score="2" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a similar question posted on the website, but in my opinion this one is different enough to deserve its own space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I'm working on a self-paced online course on edX called ANUx: The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. The course seems to be a great introduction to aspiring astrophysicists, and does a great job of explaining and testing the core concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read many articles that talk about the relevance of these courses on a CV/Résumé, and most come to the conclusion that it is &quot;better than nothing&quot;, or it is simply &quot;coursework on a CV/Résumé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, would completing a sequence of online courses related to the same material be more appropriate to be included in a CV? For example, Australian National University is offering 4 core courses on Astrophysics (The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe, Exoplanets, The Violent Universe, and Cosmology). For those interested, you might find this useful:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://courses.edx.org/c4x/ANUx/ANU-ASTRO1x/asset/Combined_Syllabus.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://courses.edx.org/c4x/ANUx/ANU-ASTRO1x/asset/Combined_Syllabus.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These four courses together form a single certification in Astrophysics.&#xA;Anyone can complete a single course and list them on their CV. But, completing 4 courses in the same subject shows a dedication towards learning, and also self-motivation. Also, the one who completes these doesn't risk résumé padding because the 4 courses would form one point on a CV, not two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19605" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T19:27:47.700" Title="Is an X-Series Certificate from edx useful for graduate school?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-16T02:37:45.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-15T20:34:56.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see there are plenty of answers already, let me provide my experience with a similar situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to have a Facebook account which used to be useful at the time for interaction with friends &amp;amp; distant family. I moved abroad for studies and the Facebook became even more important in terms of interaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the priority of the studies was much higher than the interaction; It took me about 3-4 months to notice that Facebook in fact was doing more damage than help. Everyone wants to check if you are doing fine in the new environment etc but to them it is just a msg, to you that is multiple of msgs to multiple people (quadratic or exponential work?!?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I deactivated the original account, created a new one with different name/surname which I use for the course. If they are not strictly checking for the credentials do the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the more general view; keep in mind that students create groups in Facebook where they share exam, housing, event etc info. That might be handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, account with similarities in name and details, without display picture, and &lt;code&gt;NO ADDED FRIENDS&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T20:48:10.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T20:48:10.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25967" CreationDate="2014-07-15T20:46:21.687" Score="15" ViewCount="7846" Body="&lt;p&gt;University X offers course Y with Z credits. The course is mandatory, and very important. It lasts for more than one semester with heavy workload. The University awards Z credits for the course Y, but it only includes Z/2 credits in the GPA calculation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the story gets a bit personal. I assume the University includes only Z/2 credits in GPA calculation because the majority of the students do very bad in this course. But, that is not the case for me. If I have the Z amount of credits calculated for my GPA, it is increased for 0,3, which I believe can make the difference at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the officials at the examination regulation department about this situation, they said: &quot;that was the case from the day when the program you study was established&quot;. Not convinced at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Should I complain somewhere, should I ask for a specific GPA calculation for myself. In the end of the day it should be in the interest of the University to have students with good GPAs, hence I believe they do all this calculation &quot;trick&quot;. And I believe I would not be asking for something &quot;illegal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the clever thing to do when one finds such regulations in own University which can be used on one's own good?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of need GPA calculation is done as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(sum over all (number of credits for the given course &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; grade)) / number of credits used in calculation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;((course with 4 credits &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; grade) + (course with 6 credits &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; grade) + (course with 12 credits &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; grade)) / 22 (4 + 6 + 12 this case)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; From the comments it seems as my intention is to get in a battle of changing regulations at my University. That is not the case at all. I am just trying to find a nice way of using this situation on my benefit, by having some convincing discussions with the officials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional Note:&lt;/strong&gt; After digging through some documentation, I found an &lt;em&gt;examinations regulations document&lt;/em&gt; which states clearly how the GPA is calculated, but does not give a reason for this type of calculation. I am also surprised to learn that minor subjects are not included in the GPA calculation. I also learned that the Final Thesis awards M credits, but in GPA calculations is weights ~2M credits. What bugs me at the moment is, why the University officials hide this information in all the other publicly available presentations. And their answers are not convincing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T19:04:57.233" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T08:47:06.080" Title="I have noticed GPA calculation &quot;bug&quot; in our University, what should I do?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25939" CreationDate="2014-07-15T21:34:01.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poor man's copyright protection can be done by sending a copy of the work to yourself by registered mail. The timestamp is provided by the federal government and as long as the envelope remains sealed, it is proof of creation on or before that date. Of course, I would also get a notarized or authenticated document as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:34:01.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25939" CreationDate="2014-07-15T21:50:39.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's be scientists (It was fun to try out):&#xA;below is a small repository, where I first tried 'lol' to have a timestamp in the future ... doesn't work; but at least in 'history' I could backdate (bit unlikely that I authored s.th. in git 1980 ;-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at least the day that I pushed is set by github.com. In total, though, I wouldn't trust this scheme. ``I forgot to push but look at the authored date, I totally solved it years ago''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jul 15, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;history&#xA;2b5d4208aa Browse code &#xA;choener authored on Jan 1, 1980&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lol&#xA;fc2a68a571 Browse code &#xA;choener authored just now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/choener/lol/commits/master&quot;&gt;https://github.com/choener/lol/commits/master&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:50:39.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25798" CreationDate="2014-07-15T21:55:31.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The decision will be decided based on where, or in what, you think the resulting parts will be used. Since you are in the US, going for the imperial would make most sense.If you start machining metric based parts you will soon find that you may have problems adding off the shelf parts. I think the sound way forward is to figure out if you will depend on parts from elsewhere and to what extent these will likely be metric or imperial. Being able to switch will solve some issues but as you state, if there are mechanical differences in the machinery, you may end up with less accurate parts when switching to whatever system the machinery was not made for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T21:55:31.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T22:42:45.030" Score="7" ViewCount="774" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have got an article the making, and presented it to my PhD advisor one month ago. The article emerged from my master thesis at a different university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A week ago, he told me the draft is good, albeit difficult to understand, but he remarked that it contained too many new ideas to be published at once. The problem is that no journal will be able to find a reviewer. Furthermore, I am just some unknown PhD student to them, so there won't be a &quot;rubber-stamp&quot; for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The draft contributes to an active mathematical research area which leads previously unrelated topics together - in particular, very different mathematical communities. My draft contributes by another bridge between communities. I am convinced that people will find the result noteworthy and interesting, but I also agree that the combination demands (basic) knowledge from many different mathematical areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a disturbing but possibly realistic perspective that researchers keep the same old soup at low temperature on the cooker. But isn't that too pessimistic? There are so many mini results published, why should I cut down on at least trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the concerns of my advisor well-founded in practices of the mathematical community?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T23:03:50.377" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T01:22:28.863" Title="Is it more difficult to publish a paper that demands reviewers with knowledge from many different areas of mathematics?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25960" CreationDate="2014-07-15T23:32:31.227" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, in my opinion as a (midcareer verging on senior) mathematician, there is no such thing as &quot;too many new ideas to be published at once&quot;.  This is a curious reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever a student asks a &quot;My advisor said....[something strange]&quot; question here (or elsewhere), I have to wonder how deeply to engage in the possibility that the student somehow misunderstood the advisor.  Unfortunately misunderstandings between students and advisors are amazingly common...even when both parties are &quot;good people&quot; in every sense of the word.  More than a decade after graduating, I still remember spending several weeks of hard work on certain things my advisor asked me to do.  When at last I would go back explaining how hopeless it seemed, it most often turned out that there was some miscommunication: I didn't work on the problem that he had intended, or I hadn't read the right paper. [I remember wading through Katz's &lt;em&gt;Rigid Local Systems&lt;/em&gt; because of a suggestion made by my postdoctoral supervisor.  Being a postdoc I was more savvy than a PhD student, so I probably spent at most a week before I went back to say &quot;Really?  This is relevant to what I'm doing??&quot; only to learn that, no, that was not the book of Katz he was talking about.  Still, I'd like to have that week back...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to consider the comment &quot;the draft is good, albeit difficult to understand&quot;.  I'm guessing that is meant to be independent information from the remark that your paper contains &quot;too many new ideas&quot;.  Some key questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the draft &lt;em&gt;prohibitively&lt;/em&gt; difficult for your advisor to understand?  People [students, advisors, referees...] say that writing is hard to understand in two very different circumstances: they may literally be criticizing the writing style.  But it is also quite likely that they are trying to say -- in a way which saves face for them and for you, but is in fact rather unhelpful because of that -- that they gave up before they could tell whether your arguments were correct, and they would only be willing to put more time into a better-written draft.  You deserve to know whether your advisor vouches for your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your advisor have the expertise in the disparate areas you are pulling together?  If not, he is really not the right person to be asking about this.  People sometimes seem to think (or more likely, to hope) that if they have a paper on &quot;number theory&quot; then I will understand it, and that if the paper references some work or lecture notes of mine then I will &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; understand it.  No way.  I often receive papers to referee which are about several things at once, one of which is part of my expertise but one or more isn't.  I like to learn new things, so I'll stretch to a certain point, but beyond that I just decline to referee the paper on the grounds that I'm not qualified.  If I can, I direct the editor to someone who is qualified; if I can't, I apologize for not doing that, but in no case do I intimate that &lt;em&gt;no one is qualified&lt;/em&gt; to referee the paper.  How could I know that?!?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that your paper is simply too ambitious is really a poor one.  At most it means it is too ambitious for your &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; mathematical community, and if you hear that as a reaction to your work which is otherwise said to be &quot;good&quot;, it's a sign that you need to find a larger pond.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am convinced that people will find the result noteworthy and interesting, but I also agree that the combination demands (basic) knowledge from many different mathematical areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you should find people who feel that the result is noteworthy and interesting, ideally those who understand all of it, but even those who understand some of it and can be supportive could be helpful.  If you think your paper is correct and reasonably (even if not perfectly) well-written, why not submit it to the arxiv?  If your paper draws together several different things, then try showing it -- via emails, for instance -- to people wom you know to be experts in at least one of those things.  They can tell you whether they are qualified to understand the entire paper, and if not they can (perhaps) tell you who is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a disturbing but possibly realistic perspective that researchers keep the same old soup at low temperature on the cooker. But isn't that too pessimistic? There are so many mini results published, why should I cut down on at least trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that is too pessimistic.  If you've done something valuable and technically difficult, it will be publishable.  The level of technical difficulty may make the reviewing process more lengthy (it should; you are aware that &lt;em&gt;you don't want rubber stamp reviews of your math papers&lt;/em&gt;, right?).  On the other hand, in mathematics &quot;technical difficulty&quot; can be a selling point: if you have done something that is broadly valuable but that few people (or no one but you) would have had the acumen to pull off, then you have done something very impressive and valuable indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T01:22:28.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T01:22:28.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25822" CreationDate="2014-07-15T23:50:57.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always appreciate when someone cares about their presentation. There are some things that are just inexcusable (e.g., tables that are left aligned on one slide and centered on another), and make you look lazy, so to the extent a consistent template would mitigate those then it can't hurt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My presentations tend to look the same and stand out against my peers. I do all of my writing in Markdown, analyses in R, and create dynamic presentations with some available R packages. Therefore, all of my graphs tend to have a style (ggplot2), tables look the same in HTML, fonts (and related consistencies between headings and body text) work together nicely. It's not just about the style of the presentation, as I know a few people who give presentations and have a very distinctive voice in their text, and a welcomed minimalism in slide content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never thought too much about it, but I do have a &quot;style&quot; or &quot;brand&quot; in my presentations that most people who have met me and seen me present a few times recognize as clearly a presentation I crafted. However, this &quot;brand&quot; is really just me using a specific set of tools that most people don't use. What's the standard for most fields? Unfortunately Powerpoint, and some use the Mac Office Suite, while a few others use Prezi (and most use that tool poorly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a range of tools out there that you can utilize that might help develop a consistent &quot;style&quot; for you, but also will help to vastly improve your workflow, and also make your scholarship better (i.e., tools with an emphasis on reproducibility).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do just do it well and make sure it works for you and our audiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T23:50:57.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T00:04:45.450" Score="1" ViewCount="15658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student who is able to self-finance his master degree education in the US.&#xA;I looked at a relatively big number of schools that offer a master degree in software engineering and most of them require a minimum bachelor degree GPA of 2.5 to 3.0 .. I graduated with 2.3 from an accredited school in Egypt.&#xA;I have 6+ years of experience in the software development field, 2 Oracle Java programming certificates and passed the IELTS test (6.5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I find a university that doesn't require GPA or require ones that is less than or equal to 2.3 and would get me a student visa in the US? Could I find one in the usual published university guides, or should I call/write a bunch of admissions offices or take other measures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My desired fields of education are Software Engineering or Computer Science with a focus on software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19611" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T01:35:16.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:37:29.753" Title="How to find a university without min. GPA requirement for Master degree (any state/US)?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-22T18:20:46.347" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-16T00:14:01.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably will depend on where you interview in terms of how your status will be received, and what that would mean for a job offer. My fiancé works in a STEM startup that has been taking off, and I've had the luxury of chatting with many of the senior scientists about hiring whenever they are looking for people (it's a fun work culture where everyone and their SOs go out for drinks after work and chat). Anyways, in two instances a Ph.D. student working at the company on their internship was so talented that they tried to make each a job offer before they left. In one instance the conversation turned to what it would take to get that individual to leave their program and come work. In the other instance, and before the internship started, the University made the student and company sign a legal document that essentially said, &quot;whatever said student works on in the lab during internship period becomes is owned by the University&quot; (this was one of the top 5 schools in the US, you can imagine what one). Therefore, the company backed off because of patents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other instances students have applied for open positions at the company and if their resume garnered a look they then got an interview. However, if they weren't rock stars the company was not willing to lure them away from being a grad student by giving them a higher salary. Therefore, there was the perception by the company that they needed someone who could work now, and a student didn't seem to cut it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have an internship period at all? That's when I plan to explore offers to see what my skills are worth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T00:14:01.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T00:40:43.500" Score="48" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the clever thing to do when one finds such regulations in own University which can be used on one's own good?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm so glad you asked.  The &lt;em&gt;clever&lt;/em&gt; thing would be to realize that the best way to raise your GPA is to do excellent work in all your courses.  Aside from being the optimal strategy GPA-wise, this has the fringe benefit that it is the only strategy with inherent rewards beyond the GPA game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look, I don't know where you're enrolled, but your university has taken a step down a dark road by playing with weighting GPA's differently than the number of credits or course hours (which is the weighting which corresponds to the actual instructional time and, ideally, to the workload of the course).  You're contemplating a further step down this dark road by trying to play games with their game.  It is up to them how they compute the GPA.  I disapprove of their strange weighting system, but do you know what's even worse than a globally enforced strange weighting system?  A student who asks for &quot;a specific GPA calculation for myself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just rise above.  See if you can recapture the quaint idea that your goal is to learn the course material rather than attain a certain number at the end.  Or, if you feel that the world has moved on and that number that you get at the end is too important to your future to so naively dismiss, then respond by GETTING &lt;em&gt;BETTER&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;GRADES&lt;/strong&gt;.  Merciful Minerva, we live in strange days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T00:40:43.500" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25837" CreationDate="2014-07-16T00:43:37.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to sound facetious, but have you ever considered your role as the mentor in understanding why these collaborations don't work out? Relationships are bidirectional. As such, I am struck that in your initial post the issue is the deficit of the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a grad student. I've worked with many professors on different projects. In every instance you get what you give. Most normal people will do their job (i.e., the grad student meeting expectations) if you do your job, at least in the context of a collaboration across time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastEditorUserId="19610" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T00:49:37.500" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T00:49:37.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T01:13:31.877" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd hold off on your conspiracy theories as to why the GPA is computed the way it is.  You are entitled to a grade computed in an accurate and transparent manner, but if you go into this process assuming the university is out to get you, you're going to have a bad time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that from your terminology, I think that your university system may be different from the US ones I know, so take with a grain of salt.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credit for classes isn't assigned at someone's personal whim.  If the university does have a policy of computing the GPA based on Z/2 credits for this class, that's a decision that must have been made by some committee and approved by some administrators, and there will be a record of it.  Most likely, it would be published in the university's course catalog or official regulations, so my first suggestion would be to read through those carefully.  If it's mentioned there, then you are expected to have understood and agreed to it, and that's the end of it.  (If the policy was put in place after you entered the university, you may have the right to have the previous policy applied, but it doesn't sound like that is the case here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't find it, it's reasonable to ask someone if they can show you where the policy is documented.  (If you have an advisor or someone else assigned to advise you about which courses to take and your progress in the program, they may be helpful too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still don't get a good answer (probably unlikely), you could talk to more people (e.g. a department chair).  Note that if you were told about it in advance, even informally, you'll probably be considered to have understood and agreed, and the best you can hope for is to get it more clearly documented for future students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the process, I recommend keeping the tone of &quot;I'm confused by the system and am trying to understand it better&quot; rather than &quot;you've cheated me out of my rightful grade&quot;.  And always keep track of what you actually hope to gain and whether your efforts are worth it - if you lock yourself in an epic battle with the university just over &quot;the principle of the thing&quot;, it's not going to have good results for your academic career, your relationship with your professors and peers, or your own sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T01:13:31.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25970" CreationDate="2014-07-16T02:04:18.677" Score="4" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a prospective student for phd programs in STEM. In my field &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; of study I have published a paper (unique author) in a journal included in the international &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; society, a paper (with a classmate of mine) in an annual conference of the representative local &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; society, and a paper (unique author) in a centenary conference about &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt;. Besides, I have several manuscripts that are either under review or nearly done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) How would an admission committee weigh these records? More specifically, would them weigh publications higher than other records?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How would an admission committee value manuscripts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though there are ''similar'' questions here in this SE, I still feel the need to ask this question. For these questions are subtly different in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T02:38:16.407" Title="For a master-degree student, how influential a role do publications play in his phd applications?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T02:31:18.610" Score="12" ViewCount="3008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the Lecturer position is a purely teaching role (and can even be obtained with just a Master's degree). However, is the Assistant Professor role necessarily tied with research (or can it also be exclusively teaching as well)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is because I have just finished a Master's degree and want to teach at the university or community college level. I believe obtaining a PhD will open up more doors at various universities and community colleges, and was wondering if that would enable me to land higher up academic positions that are exclusively teaching roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any insight is highly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19614" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T06:25:14.817" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T00:52:55.370" Title="Is it possible to get an assistant professor position that does not require doing research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25968" CreationDate="2014-07-16T02:38:16.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I am a current doctoral candidate with 2 years of experience as the graduate student representative on the admissions committee of my department (in STEM) at a major R1 university in the USA and so, write this answer from that context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, a strong research record matters. However, this comes with several caveats. For a successful doctoral application in our department, we look at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Standardized Test Scores:&lt;/strong&gt; These (GRE/TOEFL) will not get you in but can keep you out. Mostly, they serve as preliminary filters and to fulfill certain graduate school minimum requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. GPA/Academic Record:&lt;/strong&gt; This matters significantly. Relevant grades in relevant courses matter more. A 4.3 GPA from MIT in Mathematics and Computer Science is great for a Mathematics or Computer Science application. We tend to look at overall GPA's and then at relevant courses to catch red flags. For instance, you want to develop novel machine learning algorithms but have a C+ on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Introduction to Discrete Structures&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and B- on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Statistical Data Mining&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Red flag ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Research Experience:&lt;/strong&gt; Research experience is important but more so in different sub-fields. This is the same as publications but there are important variations. For instance, in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), having a first author paper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chi2015.acm.org/&quot;&gt;CHI&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://tochi.acm.org/&quot;&gt;TOCHI&lt;/a&gt; matters more than a first author paper in a conference the admissions committee most probably haven't heard about. If you want your research to speak up, then get published in the best conferences in your field. This is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a requirement but is a very good sign of your nascent research potential. Over the past few years, I have seen increasing numbers of applications to our department come from well qualified undergraduate and masters students with such records. Its a competitive world ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Letters of Recommendations:&lt;/strong&gt; This should be correlated positively with research experience. If your letters talk about your wonderful performance in coursework, admissions committees are generally not very interested (they can already see that from your transcripts). If, on the other hand, you have detailed letters of recommendation from researchers that the admissions committee might know and which attest to your research performance with them, then that is a very good sign indeed ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, its all about signals, signs and red flags. Specifically, in response to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It varies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unpublished manuscripts are not worth much but can serve as a good writing sample in case you do not have any other publications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T02:38:16.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25969" CreationDate="2014-07-16T03:35:46.513" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US, at least, is chock full of smaller colleges and a few universities that are devoted almost entirely to teaching. The phrase you are looking for is &quot;teaching college&quot; (or occasionally &quot;teaching university&quot;). The expectations for &quot;scholarly activity&quot; from the faculty at these institutions are much lower than at major research universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downsides include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally a higher teaching load. Count on at least twelve credit-hours per term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lack of money, space, time, equipment and assistance if you do want to do a little research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No graduate students---these places generally only offer bachelor's degrees---and perhaps a less prepared or motivated undergraduate population from which to draw perspective research students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally lower pay. Sometimes quite a bit lower.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Departments are sometimes smaller in size which means a good opportunity to develop a relationship with the major students and to mentor more than a few of them. To the degree that incoming students are less prepared but just as able you'll have a chance to really help them grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some comments about the preparation of the student body: my &quot;perhaps&quot; above is a bit of a weasel word. Teaching colleges span a wide range of prestige and competitiveness, and their intake varies accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some that are highly competitive and prestigious and are able to select a very able student body.  I'll offer the opinion that the expectations at the most competitive teaching schools looks more like those of research universities than like those of a generic &quot;teaching college&quot;, though you should pay close attention to these questions on a case by case basis. The breadths of expectations described by the people I met at a recent teaching workshop was staggering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incoming student body at &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; school are an interesting bunch. The range of preparation and ability is very broad, and we do have some students with real potential but in most cases there is a reason they didn't get into a more competitive school nearby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some breezed through secondary school never learning how to work at their schooling. Many are non-traditional students with heavy family commitments. Some have never been in an environment where learning was valued and have never found out what they are capable of in that realm. A few are determined slackers. Some are just not academically gifted and won't be going on to further schooling after they get the credential they are here for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I indicated above, I'm finding this a very rewarding environment but choices in students with the ability and motivation to engage in research are limited and the institutional support is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T00:52:55.370" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T00:52:55.370" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25974" CreationDate="2014-07-16T03:53:49.707" Score="7" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a thesis involving not-quite-graduate-level research prior to graduating with my undergraduate degree. It was presented at a conference [by another researcher from our lab], and not published in a journal or peer-reviewed publication. I have cited it for several years as part of my resume - at what point is it no longer relevant to include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note for clarification: I have had only one other publication in the [approximately ten] years since completion of my undergrad work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19616" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T04:00:56.997" Title="I wrote a thesis for my undergraduate degree - it was published but not in a journal. Is it still relevant to cite?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25973" CreationDate="2014-07-16T04:00:56.997" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the research was &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;academic&lt;/em&gt;, then I would say keep it in there if it's relevant to the role that you see yourself working in. If it was a team effort, make sure you cite it as such. Since it wasn't officially published, I'd suggest linking to it online (and hosting it somewhere if it isn't already hosted by your academic institution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm not really authoritative on this type of thing, but if I were evaluating prospective employees, I'd love to be able to see relevant examples of their work even if they weren't formally published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19617" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T04:00:56.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25852" CreationDate="2014-07-16T07:15:41.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD programs exist to produce researchers, so an admissions committee would like to see that you will be able to produce original research. (In economics, that means journal articles.) So, what would help immensely would be to gain actual research experience. The best way to do that would be to work as a research assistant for someone who is actively publishing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be fantastic, of course, if you could co-author a paper and get it published in a top journal. But don't worry so much about that. What you're looking for is a chance to work with someone who can then write a letter of recommendation that says they are confident that you will go on to produce quality research of your own, and whose opinion will matter because they have a good track record of publishing their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add some statistics coursework to your programming experience and you'll be well-positioned to work as an RA. (Even without a stats background, being able to wield Perl or R or some other tool to collect and clean data is valuable.) Or find someone working with agent-based modelling who needs a code jockey. Then, of course, work hard and ask lots of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18234" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T07:15:41.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T08:34:35.610" Score="10" ViewCount="4163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bioinformatics bachelor graduate. The group I'm currently working for does not produce its own data. So I often have to search the literature for available data sets. Luckily, tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web - which is really great.&#xA;However, sometimes data is mentioned in the paper, but not published or the download links do not work anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that asking other groups for data can be really painful. I usually do not get a reply on my first email to the corresponding author. It does not seem to matter how many details I provide in that email about whom I am working for, what I am intending to do with their data, etc. Putting my supervisor in CC does not seem to help either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is very simple: After a week or so I ask my supervisor to forward my mail to the authors. The next day I usually have a very polite email with the data attached in my mailbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is annoying in many ways: Firstly, I am waiting quite some time for the data. Moreover, I have to ask my supervisor to write emails for me, which is wasting both his and my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm quite surprised that some (many?) researchers apparently tend to ignore requests from students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if this is a common problem and I'm looking for advice about how I can improve my emails to increase the chances of getting a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19623" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T11:11:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T16:46:15.027" Title="Asking for data as a student - ease the pain" Tags="&lt;data&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25978" CreationDate="2014-07-16T08:35:17.683" Score="14" ViewCount="2118" Body="&lt;p&gt;If, in a certain international journal where I have submitted, the journal webpage lists the editorial board, should I expect that the possible reviewers of my paper are selected from among the members of this board? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it possible that the Editor in Chief may choose an &quot;outsider&quot; to review my submission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't indicate any preferred reviewers in submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19624" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-06T16:20:25.737" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T16:20:25.737" Title="Are reviewers chosen from among the editorial board of a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25977" CreationDate="2014-07-16T08:56:09.943" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, when a paper is submitted to a journal it is first assigned an editor. The editor then identifies a qualified &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; reviewer for that particular manuscript, and invites him/her to review the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is: No, you should not expect that the possible reviewers of a paper are selected from among the members of the editorial board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T08:56:09.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25986" CreationDate="2014-07-16T09:26:35.683" Score="13" ViewCount="3563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished my final year of a Bachelor of Science degree in Web Development at university in the UK. As 3/8ths of the final year credit, I was required to create a Final Year Project, including ~40k word report and a software artefact, guided by a university tutor. At my graduation ceremony my tutor approached me to say he (and another advisor) are looking at getting it published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This obviously sounds like great news, but as someone with no experience of advanced academia stuff I have no idea what this actually entails. Will this look good on my CV? Is it a frequent occurrence? When they say publish, who exactly will want to read 40k words about my final year project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am proud of what I produced, I'm not entirely sure it is something I will want to brag about in the future as my skills develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19626" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T09:48:06.880" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:58:09.070" Title="My advisor wants to publish my final year project; what will this involve?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25977" CreationDate="2014-07-16T09:28:05.293" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of peer review is to obtain constructive evaluation of the submitted manuscript from peers who are experts in the field free from conflicts of interest relative to the manuscript and author(s). Hence it is essentially irrelevant if the reviewer is one of the editors. That said, it is very unlikely that an editor ends up reviewing a paper for two reasons. If the editor is an expert, it is far more likely he will be the editor for the manuscript. An editor, with, probably, much work to to do with other manuscripts, is also less inclined to take n review work unless the manuscript is of particular interest. So chances are quite small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the journal I edit, I know editors have accepted reviewing the topic. In these cases, the topic has been such that it has been given to another editor who have identified the other editor as a potentially valuable reviewer. Commenting on your comment: I would expect editors to be more punctual with reviews than &quot;normal&quot; reviewers but there is no rule without the occasional exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final comment. I do of course not know how the journal you have submitted to works. But, a normal case is for a Chief Editor to pass on the task of assigning and evaluating reviews to an Editorial Board or Associate Editors (as is the name for them in &quot;my&quot; journal). I think the case of a Chief Editor doing all that work is very unlikely because of all the work involved so it seems far more likely that it is one of the editorial board who is handling the review process. The Chief Editor may be involved in screening submissions and putting a final stamp of approval to the final manuscript as well as handling all the work &lt;em&gt;visavi&lt;/em&gt; the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T09:28:05.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25976" CreationDate="2014-07-16T09:34:57.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are similar questions on this site for students requiring source code, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24576/what-action-to-take-when-questions-regarding-a-published-paper-are-ignored-by-it&quot;&gt;What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?&lt;/a&gt;. In your case you need data but as you have already seen yourself, sharing data is hardly a volunteer action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharing data is a form of collaboration and collaboration needs equal (or almost equal parties). You benefit from taking the data but how does the other party benefit? You will probably say that the other side will increase his citations but how you guarantee that you will actually get something published if you are just a graduate student at his beginning? When your professor contacts them, two things are guaranteed: a) The confidentiality of the data b) The fair use of the data, including citation. When you contact them, none of these two conditions apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, many times graduate students just collect data without a clear understanding of what to do with it. It is easier to send a dozen emails to request all sorts of data than actually getting job done on the ones you have. You said it yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why do you need extra data, when there are already many available datasets for you to use? Have you already published something with the freely available data? Have you even compiled a similar dataset? Would you actually share your dataset if you had one? If the answer to most of these questions is NO, then these are the things you must focus on and not waiting to get another dataset for the sake of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also since collaboration requires equal partnership, you will see that these things get easier when you have established yourself, even as a junior researcher. If you have some good publications (using the freely available datasets or the ones that your professor got for you), then when you request additional data (on a polite email introducing yourself and leading to your homepage and google scholar profile), you will not get ignored, because the dataset holder will know two things: a) That you know your craft and his dataset will be used in a fair way (citation included) b) That you may collaborate in the future, so saying NO to you is not beneficial to him. Until then, I do not think there is anything much you can do than using your professor. But since this has already happened more than once (and there are many freely available datasets), I doubt you really need all these datasets you are collecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T15:06:08.773" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T12:46:17.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this depends if you are an undergraduate or graduate student. If you are a PhD student (and possible a Master's student) your reputation with your future colleagues is much more important than you final GPA and I would suggest you just go with the flow. As an undergraduate student (and possible a Master's student) your GPA is really important and assuming the recalculated GPA is noticeably better, it is worth the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my UK department calculates an unofficial GPA that is then used to determine the degree classification (first, upper second, lower second, ...). The formula we use gives zero weight to first year marks, single weight to second year marks, and double weight to final year marks (it is a 3 year program). If the resulting degree classification were to improve by using a uniform weighting (either of all 3 years or just the final 2 years) and the student filed a formal complaint with the University, it would not surprise me if the University would not cave and change the degree classification. In fact, this year the University demanded that we change our policy and look at students who are one percentage point below the degree classification cutoff boundary and see if they would have done better with a uniform weighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T12:46:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25949" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:33:35.647" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest reading survival guides (or anything that will prepare you and give you an advantage) since academia is a difficult road. I would not worry so much about finding gender specific or field specific reading, especially if you are a male. The reason I say this is, while I am sure there are some factors that make males less likely than females to succeed in academia and some of these factors may be unique to &quot;female dominated&quot; fields, by limiting yourself to those factors, you are missing the critical fact that the vast majority of people fail to succeed in academia, regardless of gender or field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of this answer, I am going to define succeeding in academia as becoming a full professor. This is not demean those who choose to aspire to different goals (e.g., making a valuable contribution, having a well balanced life, or being happy), but it is merely a byproduct of the available data. For the same reason of the availability of data, I am also going to limit the analysis to STEM fields, for which Psychology is a member, but Education is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I suggest reading survival guides is that over 99% of people fail (i.e., do not become a full professor) in academia regardless of gender or field. The Royal Society did a &lt;a href=&quot;https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294970126.pdf&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; which found that less than 0.5% of the people who enter academia do not succeed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/06n84.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge problem, and if you are not prepared, and even if you are, you are likely to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a lot of research on gender differences. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hesa.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;HESA&lt;/a&gt; has a study, which I can only find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/WinSET/documents/sean-winset-slides-3-july-2013-for-website.ppt&quot;&gt;summary data&lt;/a&gt; of, which shows a &quot;leaky pipeline&quot; for women in STEM fields. For example, in the male dominated field of Physics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KWvY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;at the GCSE level there are essentially equal numbers of men and women, but less than 6% of women are Professors. The same leaky pipeline exists in the so called female dominated field of Psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tSpkL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the undergraduate stage, the numbers are essentially the opposite of Physics with more women than men, but by the time you get to level of full Professor, the female domination is lost. The existence of this leaky pipeline means a lot of effort has gone into determining why women do not &quot;succeed&quot; in academia. The fact that both male and female dominate fields show the same trends means that most of the research into gender issues, in particular why women are less likely to succeed, are field (at least within STEM) independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, men are doing better than women in &quot;female dominated&quot; fields, but no one is doing particularly well. Therefore, limiting yourself to small effects, while ignoring huge effects, is generally not efficient and you should read in a field and gender invariant manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:33:35.647" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25979" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:49:27.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing your work means sharing your contribution or discovery with the larger community; if your advisor or tutor thinks that your work is publishable, they must have seen something in your work that they think is worth sharing.  This could be a new algorithm you've discovered, a new technique you've described particularly well, or a collection of lessons learned that might be valuable to another person.  It could also be customary for your program to publish final projects in a school journal or archive; in this case, it's less about the contribution and more the fact that you completed the program of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the journal or conference (or other publication) you wish to submit to has guidelines that you must follow: page limits, formatting, required sections, etc.  As a result, you may be required to reformat your paper in order for it to be accepted.  The flip side is it certainly doesn't look bad on a CV or resume, and can make a positive difference depending on your career goals.  It shows you can document your thoughts, processes, and results effectively, which is what employers and grad school admission officials want to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19636" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:49:27.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:56:01.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your university uses a method to calculate GPA that is transparent, publicly documented, and reproducible; you will have to live with it (or transfer to another school). If GPA calculations are opaque and at the whim of some school official, that's cause for legal action (being patently unfair). Your first task is to find out which camp your GPA calculation falls into. It may seem to be a stupid formula, but if it's evenly and fairly applied (and anyone can accurately calculate their own GPA), what's your recourse? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;that is the case, but we don't know why&quot;, that is an unacceptable answer from the &lt;strong&gt;school&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; should be able to officially tell you the reasoning behind it. It's possible that it dates back to a cheating scandal 200 years ago, or that they don't want to change it so that they can compare GPAs from year to year, but somewhere there must be a clear reason behind it. Go through the proper channels before raising a public stink about it, and don't be confrontational about it. There may be a perfectly good reason (in their minds, anyway), for calculating your GPA that way, but it should be publicly known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The school &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; owe you an explanation for exactly how (and why) your GPA is calculated. They &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; owe you a change in the calculations to match your expectations, or even to match &quot;industry standards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13080" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:56:01.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25979" CreationDate="2014-07-16T14:00:46.873" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will talk about publishing as an undergraduate in a general sense. This may change depending on your field of study, where and how the work is published(journal, conference, workshop, etc) and what your level of contribution to the end product will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the easy question. &quot;Is this good for my career?&quot; I don't know of many fields where having published work, perhaps especially as an undergraduate, is a detriment. As an undergraduate with two publications as first name (in my field the student/person who contributed the most / drove the ground level work is first name, the professor is last name and the names in the middle can range from &quot;was vital to the success of the paper&quot; to &quot;they pushed a button a couple of times&quot;) and several acknowledgements having those papers gave me a definite leg up against my peers when it came time to search for jobs. Having publications under your name can be invaluable if you choose to apply to grad school but companies are often very interested to see what high-level, field-acknowledged work you have completed. It definitely makes you stand out in a crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may seem like nothing but puppies and rainbows but there's a darker side as well. Academic publishing is a lot of work. Depending on your level of contribution this can mean weeks of brutal work rerunning experiments, tweaking inputs/outputs, editing and documenting. Most of the people I know, their first paper was a brutal experience because Academic writing is unlike any other writing you have done and there can be a steep learning curve in both the technique and the tools. So, unless you have a burning desire for a publication for publication's sake, the deciding factors for you should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is my expected contribution? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and where will I be credited?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's break these down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is my expected contribution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field a couple of professors coming up to you after the fact and saying &quot;We are looking to get this published&quot; is a bit weird. I'm assuming that these professors were in some way involved in the work as mentors or that this an extension of their work. It is unlikely that this work is fit to be published in its current state. That's not meant as a slam towards your work, rather it's a response to the specifics of publication. Academic publication is often fairly stringent in style and method. It is likely that parts of your work will need to be tweaked or polished for publication(this really depends on your field to be honest) and, in some cases, completely redone. It is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; important for you to demand, in a nice way of course, a roadmap for what needs to be done to get this work published and what you will be expected to do. At that time you should also try to find out how much of the final publication will be your work vs work from others/the group at large. If you have graduated and are starting a new job or heading off to grad school you may have other demands on your time. Writing an academic publication, especially your first academic publication, can be a serious time sink. This will play into the next part...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How and where will I be credited?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your work going to be placed, whole cloth, into a template and submitted? Then you should expect to be first author(or your field's equivalent) and be given an appropriately large share of the credit. Is your work going to be used as a subsubsection, comprising all of 2 lines in the final publication? Then the credit to you should be, appropriately, smaller. But that's simplifying things a bit - author order and credit/acknowledgements should be explicitly discussed early in the process. Get it out on the table and nail it down because differences in expectations can definitely damage professional relationships which, to be honest, is probably the most valuable thing you will get out of this. Things like original contribution level, publication writing/editing contribution level, and time/effort commitment to the project should be taken into consideration. Additionally consider your future plans - are you planning on publishing again? Are you looking at going to grad school? Depending on the answers to these questions you may find that the most valuable things you get out of publishing are the experience of publishing and the strong network connections you forge with your coauthors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the final piece of the puzzle. If your publication is a conference or workshop piece then someone will have to present at the conference/workshop. It should, ideally, be one of the primary contributors. If that person is you, will you be able to attend? Who will pay for travel and fees? Even beyond traveling for conferences/workshops - Who will pay for submission fees? Recently one of my papers was 3 pages over the limit (the conference accepted longer papers at a fee for each additional page up to 5 additional pages). This cost almost $400 (on top of the original submission fees). If this occurs who will pay? If the publication is accepted what does that mean about your ownership of the results of your work? If additional work is done on the project how will it be funded? It is likely that your professor(s) or your institutions has grants for all of this. But you need to find out before you agree to anything. Finally, the question a lot more people should ask, what happens if the publication isn't accepted? Will you be involved in making changes and attempting a different venue? How will the group handle revisions (which, with finished work, can be brutal as you're coming back to the submitted work several months after it was submitted  and making changes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this might seem like a bunch more questions to ask than answers but, really, that's the point. There are plenty who will disagree with me but, in my experience, the research was the easy part. Publishing is the hard, nasty, and occasionally obnoxious part(though it is pretty awesome too). In order to make the publishing part easier you need to have a clear plan for how you will turn this work into a publication and what everyone's expectations are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I both love and hate my publications. As an undergraduate they gave me a definite edge over my peers in both grad school applications and the job market. I ended up with some very strong connections in my academic community that I can still leverage today. I am still involved as a researcher in my lab. On the flip side my first paper was a special kind of hell. It was two straight weeks of 20 hour days as we pushed to turn finished work into a publication before the deadline. I didn't sleep at all for the last 3 days of the push. My second paper was still brutal, but overall much better as I had passed the worst of the learning curve. I actually got some sleep leading up to that one. I'm incredibly proud of my work but, to be honest, doing those publications pushed me away from graduate school. They were a valuable experience in the world of academic publishing which, it turns out, is not something I enjoy enough to make it my career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Make a list of questions, email/meet with your advisors/mentors, and flesh out the answers to those questions. If they're largely satisfactory - go for it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; Given your additional information. Unless they mean publish it on webspace they(or the university) controls OR as a book there is almost no way I can see a 40k word transcript being published as is. My rough estimates put that to be about 100 - 120 pages. I've not seen more than a handful of published papers (etc) over 20 pages long and most are under 10. This may mean they want to publish a portion of it or an heavily edited version of it. This adds a new question for you to ask, what do they mean by 'publishing'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastEditorUserId="18092" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T17:58:09.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:58:09.070" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T14:43:32.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the University understands the issue and does not want to change, one solution might involve listing both GPAs (e.g., on a CV). I think this might be OK as long as this is completely transparent and you (a) include your official GPA (b) make it clear that your recomputed GPA is not your official GPA and (c) that you explain how both are computed and why you have two. This might be hard to do concisely but you might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.9 [Official GPA] / 3.95 [Self-computed GPA: Sum(Grade * Credits)/Credits]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, doing this seems likely to be a distraction and pointing out two different GPAs is likely raise some red flags. If you're doing good work, how we choose to count really shouldn't matter. And if how we count &lt;em&gt;does matter&lt;/em&gt;, you can't be doing &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; well. The other answers make this point very well and I won't try to reiterate it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that this class is mandatory and most mandatory classes are taken early on. Is that the case here? Some graduate schools do not consider grades in the first year or two and most give much more weight to later years. StrongBad's comment makes it clear that some schools even try to incorporate this into the official GPA calculation itself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T14:59:57.303" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T14:59:57.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T15:08:10.580" Score="5" ViewCount="4653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see various universities in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.cz/configurator?cat[]=13&amp;amp;cat[]=20&amp;amp;cat[]=22&amp;amp;prog[]=2&amp;amp;prog[]=4&amp;amp;config=Configure&quot;&gt;Czech Republic&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tue.nl/en/education/tue-bachelor-college/undergraduate-programs/industrial-design/follow-up-masters/&quot;&gt;Netherlands&lt;/a&gt; offer a type of Masters degree called &quot;Follow-up Masters&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;Follow-up Masters&quot; actually mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T22:45:27.520" Title="What does it mean by &quot;Follow-up Masters&quot;?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-07-16T16:20:23.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My very limited understanding comes as that people with psychology doctorates often become school psychologists, social workers, or counselors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7158" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T16:20:23.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17253" CreationDate="2014-07-16T16:40:33.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as a grad student who has no interest in academia, I have my eye on industry positions. I should also mention that I am a social scientist. The typical route is to enter into a research or evaluation firm. I'm interested in pursing those jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've known since I started graduate school that academia was not for me, and I also acknowledge that getting a Ph.D. in social sciences doesn't necessarily mean you have developed skills that are critical for jobs outside of academia. I'm often baffled at how ignorant my peers are to the hiring environment that exists beyond the walls of academia, and the mentality is usually, &quot;well, if academia doesn't work out then industry job will be easy to nab.&quot; Anyways, as a result of being cognizant of the demands of industry jobs, and how I can foster those skills through the projects I work on in graduate school, I've taken to developing my quant skills. I'm the go-to person for quant questions within my department and in my network of friends, some of which are in industry. I've also taken to extending these quant skills outside of my field whenever I have time. I want to work as a data scientist. However, this career path requires social scientists to learn a lot outside of what you are typically exposed to in academia. Therefore it's not uncommon for me to learn about a particular analysis in my field, and then spend the next few months playing with that analytic framework with business data, sports data, stocks, etc. I've had to learn machine learning, and find outlets to practice those skills. In addition, the same can be said for learning to program better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is:&#xA;It takes considerable effort in the social sciences to develop skills that will make you not just employable outside of academia, but in demand. Fostering those skills while in graduate school, in addition to the requirements of the program, is a very important thing to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T16:40:33.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:12:26.773" Score="9" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a paper I want to cite where, on the title page of the article, the authors names appear without any middle initials (i.e., one of the authors is Mark Smith).  However, this one author frequently publishes using his middle initials (i.e., Mark E. Smith).  What is the appropriate way to cite this-with the name as it appears in the article, or the name as the author typically uses it?  For what it's worth, the source article appear in a mathematical journal, and I want to cite it in a paper that will eventually appear in a mathematical journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T18:22:43.533" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T06:51:39.190" Title="How to Cite With Inconsistent Use of Initials" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-16T23:16:36.037" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25993" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:21:47.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to cite articles the way the name is expressed in each article. The purpose of the reference if for others to be able to locate the source you have used and so making the reference accurate is essential. It may seem like nit-picking since most of the reference will be correct except for one initial but it is better to simply follow the the generic rule to follow the article in all details than to modify it. One instance where this may matter is when article references are listed in, for example, Web of Science. There an article may end up as two entries if there is a difference in the way it is referenced. I have seen and personally have articles that have multiple entries because of this and because people wrote the wrong year, volume etc. Still, the importance lies in being able to trace your sources and being correct makes that easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T18:21:47.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25955" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:47:13.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After digging through some documentation, I found an examinations regulations document which states clearly how the GPA is calculated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the GPA calculation is defined in regulation, the only way to have your GPA calculated differently from regulation is to have the regulation changed, and then applied retroactively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15623" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T18:47:13.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25993" CreationDate="2014-07-16T19:08:20.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use the exact information which is provided on the published paper, not the real or current information of the author; even if his name or affiliation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is change at the present time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the correct way of citation of each paper is provided in the webpage of its publisher and you can check how they have mentioned the author's name in the citation example (you may also download the bibtex or other outputs to be used in citation manager softwares). At least, by checking the publisher website, you will be sure how they prefer their published paper to be cited (even if other possibilities/doubts for correct citation exists).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;I know that affiliation is not mentioned in citation, but if somebody wants the affiliation of the author at the time of publishing the paper, the best source is the information written on the paper and is provided in its publisher's website.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T06:51:39.190" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T06:51:39.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25960" CreationDate="2014-07-16T19:19:38.767" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a mathematician who works squarely in between fields, there are some challenges which can make getting such papers accepted more difficult.  However, all that means is that you have to work a little harder at writing clearly and accessibly.  Think hard about who is going to read the paper and give them what they need to understand the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T19:19:38.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:41:42.520" Score="2" ViewCount="2657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been talking to one of my professors at a Master's program about enrolling in an independent study course under his supervision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(An independent study course is a course in which a student engages in guided study on some topic under the direction of a faculty member. Students formally enroll in such a course as part of a degree program, just as they would for a traditional course, and it appears in the students' transcripts, academic records, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not clear to me whether independent study courses work the same way as regular courses with respect to tuition and credit accounting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tuition&lt;/strong&gt;: Am I expected to still pay tuition for independent studies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Credits&lt;/strong&gt;: With traditional courses, there's typically some quantitative relationship between the number of credits a course is &quot;worth&quot; and the contact hours it involves. For example, a 4-credit course involves a certain amount of class time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With independent study courses, where there are no fixed contact hours, is it common for institutions to have some expectation of how much time a student is supposed to spend on the course, per credit hour? For instance, that a 1-credit course expects about N hours a week from the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19657" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T06:51:52.607" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:59:46.923" Title="How do tuition and credit accounting work in an independent study course?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T03:46:48.223" Score="2" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I figure someone on here is involved in hiring in academia, so here we go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I left university work for private industry, and have since decided I hate it. I'm looking at moving back into a university. To that end, I found a job at a local school and applied 1.5 weeks ago. The job is now off the website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just found the managing director of the program on LinkedIn, and it's very tempting to follow up with him. In private industry this would be fine, but I'm not sure how this would work for a university. Would it be acceptable, or should I just keep refreshing my application on the university website? &lt;strong&gt;What is the appropriate process for following up on a job application &lt;em&gt;in academia&lt;/em&gt; ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T21:23:42.110" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:23:42.110" Title="Appropriate process for following up on university job posting" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25960" CreationDate="2014-07-17T04:15:48.707" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an editor, I once got a submission that combined two very distant areas of mathematics.  That was no problem; I just sent it to two referees, one in each area, asked each one to referee the part in his area, and assured each one that I had another referee checking the rest of the paper.  Of course, once both referees reported that their part of the paper is good, I still had to make sure that the parts fit together properly, but that was easy enough for me to do by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T04:15:48.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26002" CreationDate="2014-07-17T04:39:01.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm assuming this is for a regular staff or research staff (lab tech/manager but not post-doc) position. I'm also going to assume you're in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We just ran a search for a staff position in my program at my large research university. The union rules for my university specify that we can must first open the search for internal candidates before allowing externals to apply. If there is an internal candidate, they get priority before any externals can be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal candidate: Someone already with a position in the university staffing pools looking to transfer jobs or someone in the university layoff pool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External candidate: Someone who does not have a job with the university and was not laid off from the university in the last 180 (or so, union rules are byzantine) days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although we had some good external candidates, we essentially could not consider them as we also had good internal candidates. Contacting the lab manager or program head (in my case) about the search via non-HR approved means would not have been productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might as well try (what are they going to do, fire you?) but be prepared to be turned down or have your e-mail ignored as university hiring tends to be done strictly by the books in most American universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T04:39:01.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26001" CreationDate="2014-07-17T04:50:02.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you ask about 1 or 2-credits, I'm assuming you're talking about doing an independent study &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; with the professor and not creating your own independent study &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;track&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent studies (also called independent readings, directed research, tutorials, etc.) are essentially micro-classes of one or two students. You come up with your own reading lists, discussion topics, or projects -- subject to the approval of the professor. Whether to list it as 1 or 2 credit hours (or in my university 3 or 4 credit hours) is up to you. In general, you should plan on spending as much (or more) time in your independent study as you would with any other class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the registrar's perspective, it's just another class that you are taking. If you pay a flat fee for up to 5 classes a semester, then it can be one of those 5 classes. If you pay a fee for each credit-hour, then it would count as one of those paid credit hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do independent readings with the undergraduate seniors, master's students, and PhD students when they come to me with topics that are of interest to me, but aren't in the regular course catalog. Since &lt;strong&gt;faculty do not get paid to teach independent study courses&lt;/strong&gt; (we don't get any more money for doing this, nor do we get course releases for it), we're essentially do them out of the good of our hearts or because the topic is particularly of interest to us and/or we'd like the interaction with advanced students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T04:50:02.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10926" CreationDate="2014-07-17T05:42:20.873" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not add an initial that was not present in the original publication or expand initials into full names if the author used initials.  One reason is the one Peter Jansson gives, namely that the bibliography should reflect what was actually published.  However, there's another reason I find even more compelling: respect for the author's choice of name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing another person's name is presumptuous.  Like many people, I have deliberately chosen the version of my name I use in papers, and I care about this aspect of my professional identity.  What my passport says or what I'm called in person are irrelevant, and I would not be happy to have citations edited to use what someone else thinks is a better (or more formal, or more complete) version of my name than the one I chose to publish under.  If my paper says Alice P. Liddell, then nobody has any business deciding I should be called Alice Pleasance Liddell instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, your desire for completeness or consistency should not outweigh the author's autonomy to choose their own professional name, and you should not overrule a deliberate choice.  Of course, some people aren't picky about what they're called, and they may publish using several random variants of their name.  It can be tempting to standardize the name for the sake of consistency, but you should avoid doing so unless you know the author wouldn't mind.  If you don't know the author personally, it's hard to distinguish between an author who doesn't care and one whose preferences have changed over time, and it's not reasonable to rely on your own guess as to how to handle this.  (For example, if someone adds an initial due to marriage, they might be displeased to see it retroactively applied as if it had always been their name.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can also be political aspects of naming.  For example, some women publish under initials to avoid drawing attention to their gender.  I'm not convinced this makes a difference, but who am I to unilaterally undo it by replacing the initials with identifiably female names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, names can be a sensitive subject.  Every paper comes with the names chosen by the authors at the time of publication.  If you're going to modify these names, you'd better have a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T05:42:20.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-17T06:49:45.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it important to be enrolled while applying for jobs rather than be unemployed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this question from different point of views: your potential employers and yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your potential employers’ point of view, it does not matter. What matters is your &lt;strong&gt;immediate availability&lt;/strong&gt;. Most companies prefer their new hires to start to work immediately. Once they make a job offer, they would like to see you in the office like today so that they can start to train you. They don't like to hear excuses like: I have some unfinished project, I am in the middle of writing a paper, I need to go to a conference next month, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to indicate on somewhere such as your resume, cover letter or during the interview that you'll be immediately available. This will increase your chances to be hired. If you cannot be immediately available for some reason, you need to provide a definite time frame when you'll be able to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your own point of view, you'd better keep enrolled. Job hunting can be a long shot. It can be only a few weeks if you are lucky. It can be a year or even longer if you are not lucky. Waiting for job interview and job offer can drive you crazy. You'll have things to do while you are waiting. You also can change your mind on finishing PhD if you still have some uncertainty about going to industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;strong&gt;absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; sure you want to go to industry, then you should take bfoste01's idea, do internship. You can get into industry faster this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck on job hunting. Academia will miss you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T06:56:25.890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T06:56:25.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-17T07:22:47.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Scaahu has given a very nice overview of the situation, but to easy your mind: job search takes time, but you have to eat every day. Thus, no company can expect you to be unemployed to be eligible for hiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason I can think of why not having a job would make you more desirable is your full availability; but if you have decided to leave, you can just do it (please, talk with your advisor well in advance, so they are ready, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, if you have a job, you have a leverage point. For a starter, you can ask for a salary that is, at least, as much as you are getting now. Another disadvantage of quitting is that you will have to live on your savings or benefits, and they are limited; thus you will have pressure to accept whatever job you can find in that time. If you keep your present job, you can wait longer until you find something you really want to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T07:22:47.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2014-07-17T08:29:13.310" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots students use facebook to communicate with classmates, academic and social groups.  Some instructors create facebook groups to have central place for students to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19665" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T08:29:13.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-17T12:45:13.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Zephyrus: This answer will be too long to comment. A lot will depend on your history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some context for you to make sure I'm not just blowing wind: My fiancés company: Biotech, fast growing, successful rounds of funding have brought a product to market, turned down offers to sell. My fiancé: Decade of experience in STEM industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I've seen matter in all my conversations with he Senior Scientist there, as well as my fiancé:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's about the match of your skills with the needs of the company. I've seen them let 4 people go in the last year who were super competent, but had very specific skill-sets that were no longer needed by the company. If there is a clear match between your skills and the company's needs then +1. However, if you have very specific skills that can be a detriment in your marketability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advanced degrees aren't always an asset. In startups a really smart person with a B.S. and years of industry experience can become a staff scientist. It's better for the company. Same can be said for and M.S. In fact, most of the senior scientist have advised junior staff who are looking at grad school to just get their M.S. and get back into industry. If you're the highest paid person at a startup you better be value added on all fronts. So, depending on your degree this could all matter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Length of unemployment matters. If you are living in an area where there is a vibrant STE community and you've been unemployed a long time people will wonder. It's always a necessity to make sure people can vouch for you within the community, and this might help. Hopefully you aren't jumping ship from grad school without contacts in industry. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were competent but not a rock-star, skills that fit, unemployed for a short period, had some people that could vouch for you then they'd contract you for 6 months. Show your worth and you'll get a salaried position and options (but stock options aren't alway what they are cracked up to be). You'd be in a good position to negotiate that offer if you have shown value added. However, point also depends on the phase of the startup. Now that this startup has grown and has a product shipping they contract everyone first. My fiancé came in after series B and had the perfect experience that fit with the job requirements, some heavies that vouched for her, and passed the interview with flying colors. She was contracted shorter than 6 months, and I think offered a full-time position after a month. So, get ready for the potential that you are working a contract, which obviously lacks security. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now if you took the same situation outlined above, were still a student but had demonstrated that you would be a real rockstar with the perfect match of skills to the job then they might make you a better offer to try and lure you out, but the offer would never be as good as what a scientist with proven industry would receive. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might all be different for a massive industry conglomerate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastEditorUserId="19610" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T13:15:08.687" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T13:15:08.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26149" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:08:20.083" Score="4" ViewCount="2430" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if a person holds not just &quot;Dr.&quot; but &quot;Priv.-Doz. Dr.&quot; or &quot;Prof. Dr.&quot; should we include the full title after &quot;&lt;em&gt;Dear ...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;July 20, 2014 UPDATE: as some repliers correctly guessed I faced the question when I was writing an email to a German person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6058" OwnerDisplayName="stan" LastEditorUserId="6058" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T10:57:32.893" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T10:57:32.893" Title="How to address a person in a letter?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:16:15.423" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/long-term-unemployed-struggle-to-find--and-keep--jobs/2014/04/18/134c48f6-c4ad-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Being unemployed can &lt;strong&gt;significantly&lt;/strong&gt; decrease your likelihood of successfully landing a job&lt;/a&gt;. The preceeding link is one of many stories covering that angle. The best graph describing how bad it is comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Atlantic article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/LongTermUnemploymentScary.png&quot; alt=&quot;unemployment sucks&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upshot of most of these is that employers have a psychological bias towards employed people. Whether this is &quot;fair&quot; or &quot;appropriate&quot; or even &quot;smart&quot; not is really not the question, the finding is pretty difficult to refute: you are far more likely to land a job if you are currently gainfully employed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To bring this back to your original question, I would strongly recommend you begin your job search before you leave the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:49.130" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T13:16:15.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:20:57.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, use the full title. Err on the side of formality, and let them correct you if they wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T13:20:57.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26020" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:56:34.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/careers/resources/academic/non-tenure.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt; website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a non-tenure track position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These types of full-time faculty positions are called by a variety of&#xA;  names at different universities so you might see them advertised as&#xA;  non-tenure track, fixed term, limited term or contract positions and&#xA;  they carry the academic rank of lecturer, instructor or, occasionally,&#xA;  visiting assistant professor. Often these positions are advertised&#xA;  with specific responsibilities included, for example, coordination of&#xA;  a multisection course such as introductory psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T15:04:01.860" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T15:04:01.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26021" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:56:34.653" Score="0" Body="Non-Tenure are full-time faculty positions that are called by a variety of names at different universities so you might see them advertised as non-tenure track, fixed term, limited term or contract positions and they carry the academic rank of lecturer, instructor or, occasionally, visiting assistant professor." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T14:32:33.800" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T14:32:33.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26022" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:01:40.767" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="12412" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T02:36:39.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:36:39.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26023" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:01:40.767" Score="0" Body="On academic facilities and support services in a university or other academic environment." OwnerUserId="12412" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T02:55:34.287" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:55:34.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26064" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:19:34.823" Score="32" ViewCount="82109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a paper of mine has definitively been accepted for publication, I typically list it on my CV and in citations as &quot;forthcoming&quot;. Other people seem to use &quot;in press&quot; for the same category, and an author once asked me to change my reference to his paper to use &quot;in press&quot; rather than &quot;forthcoming&quot;.  Do you feel that there's a literal difference in what's conveyed by these two terms, or some difference of connotation?  I suspect it simply has to do with conventions in different disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personally, I'm a little bit uncomfortable with &quot;in press&quot;, since it suggests that the publisher is at least close to the process of printing the paper.  Apart from the fact that that doesn't make sense for online-only journals, I feel funny referring to a paper that I know will appear in a journal issue dated a year and a half into the future as &quot;in press&quot;.  Actually being printed is a long way off.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On the other hand, I suppose that &quot;forthcoming&quot; might be confusing to someone who doesn't know its standard meaning in academia.  In theory, someone might interpret it as implying no more than &quot;This is something that I'm planning to write, when I get around to it, and this is the journal I expect to publish in.&quot;  Obviously, that's not what most academics take &quot;forthcoming&quot; to mean, but any thoughtful person would understand that &quot;in press&quot; implies that you can count on the paper being published.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Obviously, given some of the answers to my question, the way that I thought that nearly all academics obviously interpret &quot;forthcoming&quot; was not correct (assuming that there's not too much weirdness in the sample I've drawn by asking the question here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9370" LastEditorUserId="9370" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T17:39:08.083" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T04:48:56.693" Title="Is there a difference between &quot;forthcoming&quot; and &quot;in press&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:47:30.490" Score="10" ViewCount="4287" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will generally accepted papers appear in conferences proceeding without presentation? In particular my paper is accepted for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenorbs.org/TrustCom2014&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; conference. In the conference web site they pointed out: &quot;Accepted and presented papers will be included in the IEEE CPS Proceedings.&quot; In its registration page they have told:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please register your papers before 20 July 2014. It is strictly&#xA;  enforced. If we do not receive your registration by that date, your&#xA;  papers will be moved from the proceedings. Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean the registered papers definitively will be appeared in the proceeding? Unfortunately there is no contact info on the web site and they do not response emails. I could not attend the conference and I wonder should I pay regitration fee or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="1070" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T14:56:47.417" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T18:56:14.903" Title="Will my accepted paper appear in conference proceeding without presentation?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26024" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:54:00.193" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think many people would construe &quot;in press&quot; as meaning &quot;has been refereed, accepted, and will definitely appear sometime&quot;, while &quot;forthcoming&quot; is often more vague, and may include cases where something has not yet been approved by a referee ... or even submitted... or even written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T14:54:00.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26025" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:54:07.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, at least for the better conferences in the computing and information science research area that I find myself working in, if your paper is &lt;strong&gt;accepted&lt;/strong&gt; and at least one author has &lt;strong&gt;registered&lt;/strong&gt; for the conference, then your paper will be included in the conference proceedings and available in the usual archives (ACMDL/IEEEXplore/DBLP etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done this multiple times when I lived in different countries and could not afford to travel to a conference in a far flung location. Sometime ago, I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11428/the-fate-of-an-accepted-paper-not-being-presented&quot;&gt;another (very related) answer&lt;/a&gt; which might be of further help to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this may vary for the particular conference that you have a paper in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added:&lt;/strong&gt; (to incorporate Jeff's comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some conferences, an author may not even register. A colleague or otherwise could present your paper for you. Of course, this needs the permission of the organizers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T18:56:14.903" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T18:56:14.903" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26024" CreationDate="2014-07-17T14:54:40.297" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The major separator for manuscripts is whether or not they have been accepted for publication. This means been through peer review and revisions and accepted by the journal editors. Once a manuscript passes this step it can be assigned as &lt;em&gt;in press&lt;/em&gt;. Anything before that stage is &lt;em&gt;manuscript in preparation&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;in prep.&lt;/em&gt; for short. In a CV you can of course list manuscripts that have been submitted but not passed acceptance and &lt;em&gt;submitted&lt;/em&gt; but this is usually not a formulation accepted as a reference in a journal. In my own CV I list manuscript as either submitted or published (which then includes in press).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T14:54:40.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26034" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:02:01.167" Score="18" ViewCount="1635" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few weeks after my work was published in a conference, I received an email from a research group from another university asking me to provide my source code. The email was very polite and explained the reasons for the request, i.e. the direction of their research. There was really no reason to deny them. However, yesterday (ca. 6 weeks after the first request), I received a similar request from another group asking for the same code to conduct research in the same field as the first group. (To clarify, I'm in CS, but both groups work in statistics) I see no reason to deny them either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But should I explicitly state that the code was already asked for and provided to another research group? If so, should I also notify the first group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found myself in uncharted territory since I haven't expected anyone to be interested in that code, let alone to receive two requests. Also, this situation has potential to escalate into misunderstanding(s), if information is withheld or provided, but misinterpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I haven't talked yet to my adviser, as he is on vacation and I really don't intend to bother him with this matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T15:42:26.320" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:38:58.730" Title="when sharing source code to more than one party, should I notify them that others also were interested" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26025" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:08:39.687" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/organizers/handling_nonpresented_papers.html&quot;&gt;IEEE policy on non-presented papers&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors are expected to attend the conference in person to present their papers and share their ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To encourage attendance, IEEE recommends that conferences exclude or limit the distribution of any paper that was not presented at the conference. This policy is not mandatory and only applies to conference proceedings where IEEE is the copyright holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If authors are unable to attend the conference and present their papers, they should contact the program chair as soon as possible so that substitute arrangements can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, it is at the conference organizer's discretion. Some IEEE conferences &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; pull a paper from the published proceedings if it isn't presented at the conference: for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/about-sps/governance/policy-procedure/part-2/&quot;&gt;IEEE Signal Processing Society has the policy&lt;/a&gt; that papers not presented will not be distributed on IEEEXplore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to be sure your paper will appear in the conference proceedings is to confirm with the conference organizer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T15:48:03.547" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:48:03.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26051" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:18:02.463" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m teaching an introductory programming course using the Moodle platform and I find that the forums are not used as extensively as they could be. Especially, students ask duplicated questions, have a hard time formatting their code correctly, and don't organise their questions and answers in a very structured way (e.g., they ask a new, unrelated question using the “Reply” button while reading another question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be greatly interested in a web-based tool that would allow me to do this: divide my window vertically into two large columns. In the left column, I could post code snippets, my slides as PDFs, my exercises as PDF or HTML online, etc. In the right column, student could ask contextualised questions related to a particular line in the exercices or in the slides. The advantages would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All previously asked questions related to this same point would already be shown on the left. This would considerably lower the the probability of duplicated questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While asking a question, no need to copy and paste a code snippet to inform the reader about the context — the context is shown right there in the left column.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A voting system similar to the StackExchange system would be great.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any such tools out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19682" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T22:11:05.080" Title="Are there forum-like collaborative Q&amp;A/Annotation tools out there?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-18T06:21:34.007" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26030" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:39:39.120" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible course of action could be to make the code publicly available on your website, or some public repository system, e.g. github. That gives you no control over the distribution, but provides other important things like public appreciation and (in case of github) widely recognised timestamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is your code, you have the right to promote yourself by mentioning that it is widely used. However, it may be not a good idea to share the information about someone else's current research interests, without asking them first. Some areas can be very competitive, and it is better to be safe than sorry. You could ask your &quot;users&quot; if they agree to be mentioned as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T16:39:19.517" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T16:39:19.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26024" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:48:04.453" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;em&gt;in press&lt;/em&gt; for any accepted papers, regardless of the time-to-publication. I don't feel that indicating an article as in press implies that it will be published any time soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I specifically do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use &lt;em&gt;forthcoming&lt;/em&gt; because it is ambiguous to me. I've seen people use it for everything ranging from accepted papers to future work in a conceptual phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:48:04.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2014-07-17T16:13:07.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would address a Privatdozent simply as &quot;Dear Dr. ...&quot;; when (s)he becomes a professor, I'll write &quot;Dear Prof. ...&quot;  Even in German, I wouldn't write &quot;Lieber Priv.-Doz. Dr. ...&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T16:13:07.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T16:49:50.050" Score="23" ViewCount="3193" Body="&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I blindly grade exams when I can recognize over half of the papers by the handwriting?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm a TA for an first year physics class of approximately 50-60 students. Due to a complaint along the lines of &lt;em&gt;&quot;the grader hates me so I failed the class&quot;&lt;/em&gt; that the department got last year, there is a proposal in the department to ensure that tests be swapped to blind grading. However, as the class assigns a fairly large amount of homework, from experience I know that I can reliably recognize more than half of the class's handwriting. The proposed system goes along the lines of having students use an ID number that they get when they take the test that isn't shown to me until I'm putting grades into the computer. The problem is that I feel that this would do very little to actually reduce bias if TAs can just recognize handwriting without a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short of putting people on rotation for grading this stuff, which has its own problems, are there any better ways to implement a blind grading system to remove any handwriting bias?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19675" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T18:17:46.080" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T09:41:57.123" Title="Blind grading for exams isn't very blind" Tags="&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T16:50:43.653" Score="12" ViewCount="1591" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a simple line  of questioning which gives an up front indicator as to a    persons ability to do research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz&quot;&gt;FizzBuzz&lt;/a&gt; is an interview question which is used to determine whether an applicant knows how to program. It is a simple problem, with a simple solution which can seperate those who can, from those who can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there common equivalent questions for gauging someones ability to do research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Granted, there are a wider variety of  perspectives of what research is, especially across disciplines so it is unlikely there is as clean-cut an answer to this question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6915" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T21:18:14.570" Title="FizzBuzz for Academia, Questions to Gauge Research Understanding" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26037" CreationDate="2014-07-17T16:55:23.643" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, blind grading is a formality introduced by the University to make students' claims on the biased teachers unjustified. I would say - keep it that way and do not bother any more. You are not going to hate them and give them lower grades, are you? So, it does not really matter that you in fact can recognise the handwriting. If a student is really really bothered to keep their identity secret... well, they could try to write with the unusual hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering your question formally - to implement a real blind grading system you can swap the scripts between departments, or TAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T16:55:23.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26030" CreationDate="2014-07-17T17:11:56.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going off of what Dmitry Savostyanov said. You could publish it to github or on your website and then send an email BBCing all the parties who have expressed interest. This way you can inform everyone of the new code location and hint that multiple people have asked for it without explicitly telling anyone anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9700" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:11:56.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26030" CreationDate="2014-07-17T17:25:01.620" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason to inform anyone of anything. Any (non-collaborating) researcher contacting you should reasonably expect that other researchers could ask you the same question, including requests to share code. (This is not true of collaborating researchers, from whom you may want to request permission before sharing code.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that in some research settings you may not want to share code. I would definitely consult with your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:25:01.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26030" CreationDate="2014-07-17T17:38:58.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one choose to share code, generally one should do it with relative unselectively (ie. sharing on GitHub as others proposed, or just on your own site) or in form of collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case everyone who is looking for your code and agree with some basic rules, Terms of Use, etc essentially granted to use it, and it is not your business beyond that what they use it for. It is possible to tell groups that others using this, too, but telling about others project without their explicit consent is very unethical. In my field, I know only one professor who actively introduce groups to each other who are intent to do similar research to encourage them to collaborate, but this is a very shaky field and the default is the no see, no hear, no tell.&#xA;In the second case you are collaborating with one or the other group. If they are overlapping in research, you shouldn't collaborate with both, and I think hinting that you are already working on a similar topic with someone is the ethical way. Off course, you still can give the code both of them, but without collaborating and sharing data with one side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not in computational science, but in computational chemistry, so there can be differences in local habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:38:58.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2014-07-17T17:47:44.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very, very country dependent, so if you are not familiar with the local language, you should err on the side of politeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I am generally using full title in the address and other pompous places, but &quot;Dear Professor Smith, &quot; or other short form when addressing in the text. This is a place where you can safely err toward giving higher titles, no one ever refused to be called a professor. I would use &quot;Dear Dr. &quot; with people I am sure that they are post-docs or people with no academic affiliation (lawyers, industrial people), and use &quot;Professor&quot; to anyone with habilitation, formal teaching assignment etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T17:47:44.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26037" CreationDate="2014-07-17T19:05:38.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blind grading should never allow the name of the student to be linked with the student number. Your grade sheets should be coded only by student number until the end of the semester. All written assignments, wether marked or unmarked, should be identified by number. In this way, you will have much less of a chance to learn the handwriting. You will get the odd look when a student shows you a paper to ask a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T19:05:38.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26038" CreationDate="2014-07-17T20:58:19.603" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've said in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17700/11365&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;, the best predictor of success in research is... success in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interview question for gauging someone's ability to do research is therefore: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Tell me about your research.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T20:58:19.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26038" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:09:40.407" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no useful research analog of FizzBuzz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FizzBuzz is a rather limited test of programming ability.  An incompetent candidate may fail at it, but passing this test in no way qualifies someone to work as a programmer.  Some programming jobs attract lots of incompetent applicants, and it's worth filtering them out, but FizzBuzz is just a small step in that direction.  The only reason we've heard of it is because it makes a great story when someone applies for a job but can't pass the simplest test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For faculty hiring, there's no need for such a crude filter.  The number of highly qualified candidates is much greater than the number of openings, and filtering out the incompetent is not a big deal.  (If you spend a lot of time worrying about whether your candidates are incompetent, then something has gone catastrophically wrong with the search process.)  Instead, the hard part is deciding who the very best candidates are, and FizzBuzz-style questions won't help with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graduate student admissions, competence testing is more relevant.  However, there's a fundamental difference from hiring a programmer.  In that case, you are looking for someone who already has programming experience, and FizzBuzz helps filter out people who are bluffing about how experienced they are.  Someone who fails could still learn to be a fine programmer, but you don't care since you're looking for someone who already knows how.  On the other hand, most applicants to graduate school have only limited experience with research, and that's OK.  You're looking for potential, rather than experience, and that's trickier to evaluate.  I'm skeptical that any simple, clear-cut test can reliably predict research potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:09:40.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18540" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:49:02.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originally posted on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17873/article-that-shows-the-complete-publication-history-of-acceptances-and-rejection/25953#25953&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but it may be more useful in helping to answer this one. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.20556/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; by Juan Miguel Campanario and Erika Acedo investigates the question of paper rejection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rejecting highly cited papers: The views of scientists who encounter resistance to their discoveries from other scientists &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We studied the views of scientists who experience resistance to their&#xA;  new ideas by surveying a sample of 815 scientists who are authors of&#xA;  highly cited articles. The 132 responses (16.2%) received indicated&#xA;  that only 47 scientists (35.6%) had no problems with referees,&#xA;  editors, or other scientists. The most common causes of difficulty&#xA;  were rejection of the manuscript, and scepticism, ignorance, and&#xA;  incomprehension. The most common arguments given by referees against&#xA;  papers were that the findings were an insufficient advance to warrant&#xA;  publication, lacked practical impact, were based on a wrong&#xA;  hypothesis, or were based on a wrong concept. The strategies authors&#xA;  used to overcome resistance included obtaining help from someone to&#xA;  publish problematic papers, making changes in the text, and simple&#xA;  persistence. Despite difficulties, however, some respondents&#xA;  acknowledged the positive effect of peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrew Hayes writes about the subject, linking the above article, as well as this &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-4571%28199604%2947:4%3C302::AID-ASI6%3E3.0.CO;2-0/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;second article&lt;/a&gt; also by Juan Miguel Campanario, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statisticalhorizons.com/rejected-keep-at-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Full citations, for posterity's sake:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Campanario, J. M. and Acedo, E. (2007), Rejecting highly cited papers: The views of scientists who encounter resistance to their discoveries from other scientists. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 58: 734–743. doi: 10.1002/asi.20556&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Campanario, J. M. (1996), Have referees rejected some of the most-cited articles of all times?. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 47: 302–310. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199604)47:4&amp;lt;302::AID-ASI6&gt;3.0.CO;2-0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:49:02.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31028" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:05:47.507" Score="20" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLlA1w4OZWQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; video on YouTube (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIUhHWsqlE&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is the second part of it) and it motivated me to ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the videos:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;....that's the good aspect of peer review. It should work to sift out problems with the interpretation, problems with the results. It should work to improve a paper. The problem is ..... there is a huge volume of stuff and we are increasingly getting swamped. .... here is one of the worst examples of where peer review has entirely failed. ....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples he talks about is discussed in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/2013/08/14/some-very-suspicious-tem-images-in-nano-letters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9nvzr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you zoom in, you can clearly see that it is photo-shopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...this is one of the top ranking journals in the fields...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Now here is the really troublesome aspect... if they had done it better&#xA;  (you can see a much better photo-shopped image in the blog), how would we know.  Not only is money spent in that lab, other groups would chase this up and that's the worrying aspect and it builds and builds. Science is like that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the past if the referees didn't pick it up, that was the end of the story. We now have something called the post publication peer review. There are sites ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubpeer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubPeer&lt;/a&gt;) and there are blogs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ChemBark&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry-blog.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chemistry Blog&lt;/a&gt;) where people upload paper and say well this looks like a great paper or in many cases they go &quot;there is something I don't quite get here&quot; and that leads to lots of comments from people in the field and I think this is where we are evolving to... away from the traditional peer review system. The publication is seen to be the start of the scientific process and not the end, where you generate debate.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other such examples in physics? Can you point me towards a blog/site or something of the sort that goes through these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any blogs, articles or essays that discuss problems surrounding the peer-review process (in relation to physics). How it can improved, where alternative methods like post-publication review are discussed ? I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ChemBark&lt;/a&gt; for chemistry, I am looking for it's &quot;equivalent&quot; in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19684" OwnerDisplayName="Panda Bear" LastEditorUserId="19684" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T23:07:45.010" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T10:44:23.600" Title="References/resources on problems surrounding peer review in physics?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26050" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:52:00.640" Score="4" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I  would be happy to have a short comment by somebody on following simple situation: I submitted my paper in beginning of January. In the end or January the status changed from the administration (Editor) to &quot;under review&quot;. After that, this has not changed, it is still &quot;under review&quot;. Is this normal. My field is history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal doesn't indicate the review-times in the pages, but from the same publishing house's pages I have seen other journals of the same field and noted that the time may vary from 3-4 months up to one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have decided that I will patiently wait, but I am starting to feel insecure about if they have forgotten to push the status-button. So, it would be nice just to know, does this sounds normal? Another article a couple of years ago in another journal didn't take that long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19624" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-25T13:26:16.123" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T10:10:10.203" Title="Question of under review -situation" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26049" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:57:09.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The time frame you mention is within what can be encountered. The time frames also differ wide between disciplines but also from journal to journal so one way to check how reasonable it is will be to check the journal for how long it has taken other papers to go through to acceptance. Many journals state this for each article and hopefully your journal does so as well. If no such information is stated you can try and ask a senior colleague who may have a perspective on the journals and their turn-over times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:57:09.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26033" CreationDate="2014-07-17T22:11:05.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is likely my shortest answer ever. &#xA;Check out NB (formerly &quot;nota bene&quot;) via MIT&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://nb.mit.edu/welcome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nb.mit.edu/welcome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instructors upload pdfs and students can highlight particular sections of it and ask questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T22:11:05.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-18T00:56:05.020" Score="4" ViewCount="4882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper more than one month ago. The status of my submission is still &quot;awaiting assignment&quot;. May I ask if this is normal? How long have I to wait before formally asking the editor about the status of my submission? My field is mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11123" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2016-09-19T00:29:21.857" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T00:29:21.857" Title="Is it normal for a journal submission to show &quot;awaiting assignment&quot; for more than a month?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26053" CreationDate="2014-07-18T02:12:22.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the journal. Have you been contacted by the editor upon receipt of your paper? If not, I would contact them immediately just to check up. A month is a long time to go with no word. My paper submissions (all to the Astrophysical Journal) have all been followed up by the editor within a week of initial submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19699" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T02:12:22.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26066" CreationDate="2014-07-18T02:20:07.260" Score="-3" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am fairly certain academic papers do not use apostrophe &quot; ' &quot; for contraction, like &quot;won't&quot;, but what is the academic way (in engineering) to do this.  For example, &quot; A humans walk cycle &quot; , it is the walk cycle belonging to the human, so &quot; A humans' walk cycle &quot; seems appropriate.  However, I rarely see apostrophes used in academia, so should it be &quot; The walk cycle of a human &quot; instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a bit of an english stack exchange, however, my question is the academic convention, not what is right or wrong in grammar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T09:14:12.953" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T16:06:19.873" Title="Is there an academia-specific convention for possessive nouns?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26055" CreationDate="2014-07-18T06:56:06.663" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no academia-specific convention to avoid the use of apostrophes to form possessive nouns. Follow the usual rules of correct grammar and good style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T06:56:06.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26060" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26061" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" Score="0" Body="Generally accepted norms and customs in the academic community or a specific academic discipline e.g. for writing, formatting text, visualizing information, or addressing others." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:36:01.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26037" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:46:48.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have mentioned the issue of removing hand-writing from the equation by having homework or assignments printed as opposed hand-written. so I will simply add what we commonly do in my department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add a moderator to a random sample of scripts/exams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a moderator, even if the grader knows the student, the grader must consider that their own marking will be checked. If Gary Grader consistently mis-grades papers (due to bias or simply weak grading skills) then Mary Moderator should catch this, at least on &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt;. Those flags may indicate a need for someone to step in and talk with the grader about grading bias or other grading issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you could make the moderating blind as well so that Mary Moderator would not know which grader she was moderating. One reason to do this is that Mary might be concerned that George will be angry at her (or take revenge, etc.) so Mary might simple say that &quot;Yes, all of Gary's papers are graded correctly.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't do blind moderation but I have heard others comment that &quot;we don't change grades because we don't want to cause problems for our colleagues&quot; which disturbs me greatly (because the graders know this and it, in effect, nullifies the whole moderation process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:46:48.667" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26024" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:48:10.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't agree with most of the answers so far in one point: The answer depends on your field / area of research, so there is no universal truth about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in economics I have never seen &lt;em&gt;&quot;in press&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&quot;forthcoming in [journal]&quot;&lt;/em&gt; means that it is accepted. If the issue of the journal is already clear some people change it so that it looks like was already published (with a date in the future). (However, most people don't care after that point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing where I have seen &lt;em&gt;&quot;in press&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is when talking about a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main point (at least for me) is to clearly state by whom it is &lt;em&gt;&quot;in press&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or where it is &lt;em&gt;&quot;forthcoming&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, as this adds credibility to your claim that it will be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from your question it is clear that both are common in your area of research and therefore I would just stick with the most commonly used. If you add the journal / conference where it is going to be published it should be clear that it was accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:48:10.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-18T09:23:33.593" Score="19" ViewCount="2191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a realistic option of publishing a minor study in a 4th quartile journal, is this better than nothing? The articles of many, but not all, authors are kind of pretentious and unremarkable (not being cited nowhere), but not plagiarized, or computer generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T14:10:07.853" Title="Publishing in the lower quartile journals: better than nothing?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26055" CreationDate="2014-07-18T10:48:35.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with ff524 answer of there are &lt;em&gt;'no academia-specific convention to avoid the use of apostrophes to form possessive nouns.'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However some universities now have developed guides in relation to grammar that can be referred to. It may also be worth while checking if your college has an academic writing centre(AWC) that runs workshops on writing skills. I know in my own university there is an AWC but also when at undergraduate a number of lecturers referred us to a general guide, &lt;em&gt;The Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/writing/grammar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Canberra&lt;/a&gt; website they deal with a number of grammar points including the use of the apostrophe (see point 6). Here is a second &lt;a href=&quot;http://drhazelhall.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013_hall_rules-conventions_ac_writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; of a guide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T16:06:19.873" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T16:06:19.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26065" CreationDate="2014-07-18T11:07:09.243" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK the value of a publication is often based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ref.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;REF&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.delni.gov.uk/index/further-and-higher-education/higher-education/role-structure-he-division/he-research-policy/recurrent-research-funding/quality-related-research-funding.htm&quot;&gt;QR&lt;/a&gt; model. For the REF, only your top 4 publications in the 5 or so year return window matter. If you have less than 4 publications, low quality publications are definitely better than nothing. For the QR model, only research which is considered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is worth any weight to the university. No one really is willing to define what &quot;internationally recognized&quot; means. This means that for hiring and promotion purposes, assuming you have 4 high quality publications, multiple low quality publications are not worth anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the REF and QR model influences hiring and promotion decisions, as well as funding body decisions, I believe there is still a place for low quality publications. They can be helpful in allowing you, and other, to refer to them in later higher quality publications. It is also a way of archiving and sharing your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T11:07:09.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26072" CreationDate="2014-07-18T11:32:39.340" Score="24" ViewCount="10909" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, many PhD programs require applications to submit the results of one of the GRE subject tests. For example, almost every (serious) PhD program in mathematics that I've seen requires it. However, when looking at the admissions webpage of some programs, there sometimes seems to be some kind of grey area when it comes to the subject test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/&quot;&gt;Harvard's webpage for the mathematics PhD program&lt;/a&gt;, it is written that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Department requires all applicants to submit GRE Mathematics Subject Test scores. Applicants should check on the ETS website for test dates in their area to insure the scores will be submitted before the application deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far so good, and if they left it at that, the message would seem to be: &quot;you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to submit the GRE subject test, otherwise your application will be incomplete and rejected outright&quot;. However, it goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the admissions committee reviews all applications submitted by the deadline, missing math subject test scores are one less data point available to evaluate the application. Depending on the applicant pool and the strength of the application materials, the missing subject test scores may put the application at a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should one interpret this? Does it mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We thank you for the $105 donation, but your application lacks critical information and will almost certainly be rejected&quot;; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Your application will be considered, provided it somehow demonstrates that you have a sufficiently strong mathematics background to succeed in our program&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One one hand, it seems possible that they would want to &quot;consider&quot; applications without the GRE subject test, in that they receive the admission fee and that they can discard the application with very little time and effort (after all, they said the GRE was necessary). On the other hand, it seems silly that Harvard should reject an applicant who, by all accounts, seems to be this generation's Terence Tao, for the simple reason that he did not take the GRE subject test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10761" LastEditorDisplayName="user10761" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T12:40:58.803" LastActivityDate="2017-10-01T07:05:55.503" Title="Interpretation of &quot;GRE subject test is required, but your application will be considered anyway&quot;" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26068" CreationDate="2014-07-18T12:32:47.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a grey area. This is simply a contradiction. The first paragraph you've shared says it is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; and the second sure seems to imply that they are only &lt;em&gt;strongly recommended&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's easier to use the single word &quot;required&quot; accidentally and sloppily than it is to write that second paragraph by accident, my guess would be that they mean that the subject GREs are only strongly recommended, not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's be very clear though: The opinion of people here doesn't matter. The specific departmental admissions officers and committee are the only opinions that matter since they will make the decision. If you see contradictory information on their website, point it out to them and ask for a clarification. They will clarify the issue for you and probably even fix the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, even if something is &quot;only&quot; very strongly recommended, it's still &lt;em&gt;strongly recommended!&lt;/em&gt; Top programs are extremely competitive and it's up to you to do everything you can to strengthen your application. You might be the next generation's superstar but unless you've already done incredible, it can be extremely hard to tell this. Fantastic scores on the subject GRE can help make your case. Not doing it at all might suggest some insecurity on your part that you might not do well. Take the test unless you have an extremely good reason not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T13:06:19.627" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T13:06:19.627" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26068" CreationDate="2014-07-18T13:30:18.047" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly poorly and confusingly worded, but I think I can explain the reasoning based on similar issues I've seen with other departments.  Here's my interpretation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department expects every applicant to take the GRE subject test.  However, they know that every year a small fraction of the applicants screw up and don't manage to register in time to take it in the fall.  It's impossible to take the test at the last minute, so at that point there's no way to fix the situation.  The department doesn't want to automatically reject these applicants, for exactly the reason you mention (what if someone's the next Terry Tao?), and they are worried that if they list the GRE as an absolute requirement, then the university administration might force them to do that.  On the other hand, they also don't intend to offer applicants the discretion to decide for themselves whether taking the subject test would strengthen their applications.  They want everyone to take it, with the possibility of forgiveness for outstanding candidates who screw up.  These goals get combined into the confusing statement that it's mandatory but your application can still be considered without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how the Harvard math department evaluates applicants with no GRE scores, but I can tell you how my department does.  We're a little happier if we see an apologetic note about how the applicant intended to take the test but failed to do so in time, but of course we know such a note proves nothing.  Our default assumption is that the applicant was worried about doing poorly, so we start asking questions like &quot;How badly would we guess they might have done?&quot; and &quot;Would we have accepted them anyway, even with low GRE scores?&quot;  If the application is otherwise fantastic, then the chances of acceptance remain good.  However, these are the cases in which we would have cheerfully made excuses for low scores (maybe the applicant just isn't good at standardized tests or had a bad day), so nothing is gained by skipping the exam.  An otherwise marginal applicant with no GRE subject test score will be rejected, and a strong but not fantastic applicant will be at a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my best guess as to what the policy means in practice is something like &quot;if you don't take the exam, we'll be annoyed at your irresponsibility and we'll evaluate your application with a presumption that you wouldn't have done well on the exam, but we'll still consider admitting you.&quot;  This means you have a strong incentive to take the exam if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On one hand, it seems possible that they would want to &quot;consider&quot; applications without the GRE subject test, in that they receive the admission fee and that they can discard the application with very little time and effort &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a typical U.S. department, application requirements and graduate admissions decisions are handled pretty much entirely separately from application fees.  For example, many people on the committee won't even know offhand what the current application fee is or where the money goes within the university.  In particular, whoever wrote the policy about GRE scores probably wasn't thinking about application fees at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T13:30:18.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26065" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:08:12.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're going to have to give us a little more information to get a useful answer I think. What stage of your career are you in, where are you located, what are your career ambitions? Do you have a lot of prior publications in better places, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a general hint: try to think of what you want to communicate with your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer as if you are a grad student in the US who wants to get a tenure track job who has no prior publications. Here what you're trying to communicate with your publications is &lt;em&gt;scholarly quality&lt;/em&gt;. You're trying to show that you deserve a seat at the grown up table. A low prestige publication doesn't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say don't publish rather than publish somewhere bad. The reason for this is psychological: search committees viewing your cv are going to fixate on the data points they have and extrapolate from there. If the only data point they see is a low-profile publication, they are going to judge that this is likely the best work you are capable of doing and extrapolate that you will be unlikely to earn tenure, and therefore don't deserve further consideration. (For lots of junior researchers their first couple papers are assumed to be the strongest work they are going to do pre-tenure b/c these are papers arising from the dissertation, that have presumably been written under the guidance of a distinguished mentor. That assumption is actually true in a lot of cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your situation, then don't waste your work publishing somewhere mediocre. Take the paper, make it as good as you possibly can and then start sending it to conferences. With some conference feedback, the paper might get good enough to make it into a more prestigious journal that actually helps you build your reputation as a scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you already have a couple of strong publications, things are slightly different. People are going to fixate on the good publications and interpret the rest of the CV in light of them. That frees you up a bit. If this paper is good enough to get published somewhere, and you're not really interested in it as a research project, and you don't need the reputational capital, then maybe you can just let this go at a lower-tier journal. What you'd be trying to communicate in this case is that you're active. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a country with governmental rules about what publications &quot;count&quot; towards tenure or promotion, like the UK's REF system, then what you need to communicate is that you're capable of jumping through that system's hoops effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T14:08:12.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26065" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:10:07.853" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academics obsess about publishing in recognized journals and while this is &quot;proper&quot; form, the arena is far from its ideal landscape, which few, if any, academics have actually analyzed or questioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, Hesse's idea in Magister Ludi: a uniform platform for all human knowledge, interlinked together, stewarded in perpetuity by those with highest credibility for their respective domains -- not by publishers with profit motivations or university presses with their own interests in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work has merit, publish it to the web, on a blog, for example, where it can get many eyes, receive comment, and your work can progress.  Ultimately, it is the ability to &lt;em&gt;defend&lt;/em&gt; the work's value, not receive a blessing from some higher authority, which is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T14:10:07.853" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26055" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:29:33.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any style guide or convention that advises against using constructions that need apostrophes as a general rule, or says anything other than &quot;Use correct English grammar and spelling to the best of your ability.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Style guides may advise against using contractions such as &quot;won't&quot; or &quot;isn't&quot; but that is because they are seen as being less formal, not because they need an apostrophe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A humans walk cycle&quot; is nothing more than an error that wasn't picked up by the author or proofreader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T14:29:33.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26084" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:17:41.543" Score="26" ViewCount="5220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that for a certain project a colleague with whom I have worked on the project erroneously got a grade that is higher than he should have gotten (the administration made a mistake is my guess). He told me about this himself, but also told me that he is not planning on changing it. The course is a 12 ects course, so has quite an impact on someone's gpa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have two thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not fair to 'betray' a colleague who trusted me with this story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also worked on this project and I got the correct grade, it feels unfair. And I also simply feel that it is simply not just in a way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? And should I take action or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T08:49:38.307" Title="Colleague erroneously got a grade that is too high" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:50:51.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your university have a procedure for appealing a grade? If so, look at what it says. I would be surprised if it allowed for appealing &lt;em&gt;someone else's&lt;/em&gt; grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12864" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:50:51.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:59:58.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see three levels of possible 'formalisation' of your question: &lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt; purely personal ethics &lt;li&gt;academic ethics &lt;li&gt; code of conduct of your University&lt;/ol&gt; The first is really for you to decide; you may go for advice to someone you know well and trust their opinion. The last one is straightforward: simply read the code and see whether or not it has something related to your question. Regarding the second one: from my point of view, the situation is similar to spotting an error in a published work &amp;mdash; academic ethics assumes that you should take reasonable actions to share your concerns with the world (starting with the author and the editor). This is not an easy or popular route, however, and in some countries it contradicts &quot;normal&quot; morale of people outside academia, as you acknowledge in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:59:58.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26170" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:50:01.750" Score="12" ViewCount="9945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an adjunct instructor at a technical college in the US. I was tasked with creating a new class which I would teach in the spring. I have finished all of my course materials (.pdfs, lab sheets, power points, etc etc). When I was first hired and told to create the new course, I was informed by some of my colleagues (former adjuncts at the same institution) that I would be paid for my course content. However, in speaking with my directory I was informed that I would not be paid for my course content as it is part of running the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now whether or not that is right or wrong, I'm not too horribly concerned. However alot of my own personal time goes into creating these materials and I would like to protect my time investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would it be wise or prudent to try and protect my course materials through some sort of copyrighting process of some sort, or something to that effect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, &lt;strong&gt;what is a sufficient way of documenting my materials and ensuring that any party who obtains them sees them as &quot;copyrighted&quot; or possessing whatever protection that is applied to them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interest is in ensuring that my course materials are not gobbled up by someone else in the program, then taught by someone else without having been properly reimbursed for my development work in my personal time. Everyone else I have spoken to has said it sounds &quot;not very kosher&quot; that I am not being reimbursed for developing the course work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would simply like to protect my personal investment into these materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts? Insights? Experiences? Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went through my contract, and there are two subdivisions that outline IP and copyright goodies, etc etc. The first paragraphs in essence state &quot;The faculty member is entitled to the results of their research, IP, etc, EXCEPT when we pay for the research to be done, OR give you a break in your work load but still pay you to do the research, OR&quot; - now this is the line I'm not sure about, &quot;C. Under an assigned duty and/or work-for-hire arrangement with an external sponsor. &#xA;&quot; I was very informally asked &quot;Hey, would you be willing to put together and teach a class on subject X?&quot; Me - &quot;Sure.&quot;. (That's fairly literally, the extent of the request and my response). &lt;strong&gt;Would that fall under either of the definitions of C?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19727" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T22:17:47.143" LastActivityDate="2020-06-07T15:34:21.370" Title="What is an effective way to copyright my teaching material?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11187" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:51:52.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD programs do not just look at your GPA(well they do look at it, though!). They want to know that you will be a successful candidate. They put more weightage on your research experience and its novelty. They would look at your research interests that you have mentioned. They want to know that you can bear the stress of the PhD life. They want to see what is your career orientation, what do you intend to do with a PhD degree in hand. They want to see how you and your research would help in the progress of their program and institute as whole. They want to make sure they aren't wasting their resources in a bad investment(you) which is avoidable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show them that you are worth it. If you can prove that you will be successful in your PhD, you will get it. People have good and bad times. Good times are good, no one questions them. The question is how did you and how well did you handle the bad times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You brought your your GPA up again, which is a good sign. Make sure it doesn't gets neglected. Mention the bad times and its challenges that you overcame, in your cover letter/personal statement/essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want it, you will get it. Good Luck! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:51:52.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="47574" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:59:17.163" Score="17" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Revised.&lt;/strong&gt;  I was thinking about the way I write research papers, it involves a lot of revising to even get a &quot;first draft,&quot; and subsequently I do a lot of revising also.  Presumably this is fairly common nowadays, as computers have made revising papers easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in days of yore, before TeX/word processing, these revisions were not so easy, so I wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has TeX/word processing qualitatively changed the way we write papers?  Specifically: (i) did people do significantly less revising (or make fewer passes) before computers?  (ii) did people have different approaches to writing first drafts?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that, in the past, faculty typically had assistants/secretaries to type up hand-written notes, and sometimes special symbols/figures would be drawn in by hand (by faculty? or assistant?).  Then I presume the faculty would go through and edit by hand, and necessary parts would be retyped.  Possibly there would be another pass of this, but I can't imagine that many more revised typings were made.  Did this mean less revising was done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, did this force people to plan out their first drafts at the handwritten stages differently than now?  At least for me, I usually have a basic outline in mind and then just start writing and go back to revise earlier parts while writing later parts (apart from the intro, which is sometimes written last).  However, I guess this style is not so practical when writing by hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Originally, my question was if word processing has changed the quality of papers, but that was deemed too opinion-based.  Hopefully, this is something people can answer semi-objectively from their first or second hand experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19607" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T17:16:35.223" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T21:51:10.273" Title="Do people write research papers differently nowadays?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T17:08:27.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;It is not fair to 'betray' a colleague who trusted me with this story&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not fair that he got given a higher grade by mistake in the first place. The sooner it is fixed, the less chance there is of ugly flow-on problems popping up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the grade affects the class of honours granted to his degree, and the degree is later revoked and downgraded upon discovery of the error? That could look a little dubious on a university transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;right&quot; thing to do is for your colleague to report the error himself. But as he has made it clear that he will not, your situation is a little more ambiguous. But sometimes you have to do the right thing on behalf of others. A discreet email to the professor or lecturer who ran the course would likely lead to the grade being corrected. If you did this, you could disclose your intentions to your colleague beforehand, to give him the chance to correct the error himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T17:08:27.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26087" CreationDate="2014-07-18T17:11:40.690" Score="3" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently preparing for my graduate school application. There is one professor whose research interest in general matches mine. He has listed several potential research projects for prospective postgraduate students and I am particularly very interested in one of them, say Project A. Since Project A's scale is very broad, I planned to read some of his related publications to get familiar with the topic before I contact him via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is I can't find any article written by him about Project A on his website or through Google. He did list some selected publications but they all seem to relate to other projects, which are different from Project A. In my view, those projects are more theoretical and related with asymptotic analysis while Project A is related with probability and stochastic modeling. I have not opened all articles to confirm my statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I overlook anything? Is it possible that a professor lists a project that he has published any related works in the past 3 years? Do it mean the professor don't want to intake students with Project A recently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to send a email to the professor and ask for references because I think it's not polite. Currently I am searching the title of Project A and reading related publications by other professors. I have also browsed one of his papers , which is related to another project. What shall I do next? Is it proper to send an email to his current student and ask for reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18259" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T19:44:22.977" Title="What to do if I can't find references about a listed project of my potential supervisor" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T17:26:45.240" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering from an ethical perspective. The grade was entered in error, if the other student was unaware of a mistake they would have been morally fine, it is not their job to double check the grader's work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since they are aware of the mistake it is their obligation to inform the grader. By intentionally keeping that information from the grader they are deliberately breaking ethical rules. In addition, by telling you about it they are compounding the original wrong by making you a party to their original transgression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately your classmate has made you responsible for their behavior because now you have to choose between doing the right thing (reporting them since they will not step forward) or being silent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you the consequences of that choice, but possible consequences of turning them in are social rejection and possible consequences of staying silent include academic sanctions against you if it comes out that you knew and did nothing. Just remember, they chose to put you in this mess, and for that you &lt;em&gt;owe&lt;/em&gt; them nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T17:26:45.240" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26081" CreationDate="2014-07-18T17:31:03.360" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remark:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;The following answer was for the original version of the question (deemed too subjective) regarding the impact of word processing on quality of papers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is really impossible to answer since it is impossible to compare new and old articles due to a lack of a fixed standard over time. Now in this case I think of now and then being a span of, say fifty years. The shorter the time span the more difficult any differences will be to identify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the way articles are formulated has changed and the standards are in constant but slow change. Articles started out as letters (late 18th/early 19th century; usually directed to a person in a learned society) being publicly read to the society. These were very personal. Later, the more formalized writing started taking shape (late 19th/early 20th century). Second, the pressure to publish differs, which means articles are pushed through as quick as possible. We have gone from a situation where a paper every now and then has been replaced by &lt;em&gt;n publications&lt;/em&gt;/yr rates to be acceptable (varies between disciplines). This can reduce the amount of time to be spent on each paper, on the other hand one can argue that one becomes more experienced. Third, the research community is growing larger and larger and although this is not directly affecting quality it means competition for resources and a necessity to write more and quicker. This will also feed back into the second point. As I see it it is not clear that we are going in any particular direction and part of the reason is that our reference as to what is good is also shifting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if one considers the introduction of computers, it is difficult to assess changes because the reference with which to compare does not exist. In the same way it will be difficult to compare scientific research of the 18th or 19th century with research done today and state that modern research is somehow better by comparison. For a very good discussion on this topic I suggest reading Thomas Kuhn's &lt;em&gt;The Structure of Scientifc Revolutions&lt;/em&gt;, The University of Chicago Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="19607" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T16:29:56.050" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T16:29:56.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26083" CreationDate="2014-07-18T19:02:15.127" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; reasonable and polite to send an email to the professor, saying that you are planning to apply to his department, you were interested by the discussion of Project A on his web page, and asking if he can tell you more about it and/or suggest further reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T19:02:15.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26083" CreationDate="2014-07-18T19:44:22.977" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the current amount of information in your question it's going to be hard to state anything with certainty. But I think your issue may come in a difference between your understanding of the statement 'potential research projects for prospective postgraduate students' and the professor's intention behind that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is given with the caveat that I can only speak for my experiences and the experiences of those I know in similar fields. Nothing said here should be construed as fact or as the only option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many professors have a lot of research interests. Typically when you read something like 'potential research projects for prospective postgraduate students' that means that this is a research field the professor is interested in pursuing. Obvious right? What's not obvious is that this does not mean that the professor/lab/researcher has begun research in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a directly related personal anecdote (with some details changed to protect the wicked)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the professors in a lab I know has done a lot of research in the field of markov random fields and motion planning. This includes medical research using markov random fields, computer vision work using random forests, motion planning comparisons... etc. Hopefully you get the point; this professor has tons of work in the field of Artificial Intelligence with a pretty heavy bent towards robotics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor also has a grant to explore human robotic interaction specifically with regards to direct or hybrid human control over robots. This is not directly related to any of the professor's previous work(though other work may have brushed up against this area). Additionally none of the professor's current students are interested in this area of research(already being involved in their own projects in other research areas.) The professor is now looking for students to do research in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way you can have a professor/PI/researcher/lab that is looking for a researcher for a project that that particular individual or group has not yet published in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to be a bit more specific about your question. Is this particular research area a deal breaker for you? What I mean is - all other things being awesome, if you cannot do this research in this lab would you turn down a spot in the program? The reason this is important is that it could change how you interact with this professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the thing you should be most aware of coming into this situation is that sometimes research doesn't work out. This is especially true when a lab is entering completely new territory(an area of research it has never been involved with before). If this particular area of research is a dealbreaker for you(it is the only research in that particular lab that you are willing to work on) then you should be cautious jumping in. If somethings comes up and that research is, for whatever reason, not continued you need to ensure that you have other options or you will find it very difficult to finish your postgraduate degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is not rude or inappropriate to contact a professor asking for more information about one of their projects or interests. What is rude is not doing your homework before hand. It's the difference between &quot;I think cats are neat, tell me all about cats&quot; and &quot;I've done reading into cat psychology and I think your project on why cats put their butts in your face is very interesting. I've read  but I was hoping to get more information from you about it.&quot; Professors(most professionals and experts) are busy people and no one wants to feel like you haven't done your homework. If you approach such communication with professionalism and courtesy then asking questions is almost never a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T19:44:22.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T19:45:03.493" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really want to became successful in your field you should erase the word 'fair' from your vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing seems fair from all perspectives and the sooner you realize this the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the way you describe it, there are 2 possible scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) the professor made a mistake&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;b) the professor personally knows your friend and helped him&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By lowering your friends grade you won't improve your grade. If for example you go and get his grade lowered this guy will hate you and you will honest seem like a pretty jealous person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To sum up&lt;/strong&gt;: Let your friend do what he wants to do, it's not your grade and you should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; try to convenience him &lt;em&gt;you are not worthy of that grade.&lt;/em&gt; Even professor mistakes are part of life, be realistic and don't seek fairness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should try to improve yourself and not lower you friends grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19730" LastEditorUserId="19730" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T19:52:56.823" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T19:52:56.823" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26079" CreationDate="2014-07-18T19:48:38.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply write &quot;Copyright: Your Name.  Do not copy.&quot;  Putting your name on it leaves them a way &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; in case they want to contact you for possible re-use or collaboration.  The &quot;do not copy&quot; (or similar desired &quot;term of use&quot;) puts your explicit intentions on the document, in this case reserving all rights to yourself.  I personally put the latter part in a different font so that it stands out as a &quot;meta-item&quot; of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if you think the &quot;cat's out of the bag&quot; on your material already, the best way to protect it is to publish it to the web, where the Internet can form a historical record for your creation and the community can now help you with fair credit assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2017-10-02T01:50:39.947" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T01:50:39.947" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26079" CreationDate="2014-07-18T20:01:21.990" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am developing the materials while not teaching any courses or being paid by the school in any manner. It is currently the summer semester and I am not being paid to teach, develop course work or anything. I will have to try and find my contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shows a misunderstanding about the nature of a teaching job. When you're paid to teach a course, you're not being paid to do work only while the course runs. You're also being paid to prepare the course, and you're going to need to do that before the first meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have finished all of my course materials (.pdfs, lab sheets, power points, etc etc). When I was first hired and told to create the new course, I was informed by some of my colleagues (former adjuncts at the same institution) that I would be paid for my course content. However, in speaking with my directory I was informed that I would not be paid for my course content as it is part of running the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your colleagues were probably confused. Nobody pays instructors extra money to produce powerpoints and handouts. It goes with the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want others in your department to use your lab handouts without paying, don't give them your lab handouts. If you don't want others in your department to use your powerpoints without paying, don't give them your powerpoints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Bill Barth and JeffE have pointed out, copyright protection is automatic in most jurisdictions. It can be wise to put a copyright notice on your work, since a possible defense against a copyright-violation lawsuit is that the defendant didn't know it was copyrighted. A formal copyright registration is necessary in the US if you want to be able to recover more than actual damages, i.e., if you want punitive damages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the question shows an unrealistic set of assumptions about what teachers do; what they're paid to do; and what the normal contractual arrangements are. Furthermore, many people who write have an unrealistic belief in the quality and market value of their writing. There is no particular reason to expect that anyone else in the department will like these materials so much that they would want to use them. Most people prefer to do things their own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastEditorDisplayName="user1482" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T20:17:20.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:17:20.650" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T20:04:59.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would consider your situation from two perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From an ethical/moral standpoint: grades are by nature unfair, and mistakes in grading are common. Welcome to real life and live with it. Do you think Student X  who got an A just because he was going to every TA office hour deserves it better? Do you think Student Y who got an A just because he used homework solutions from last year to optimize his homework grades deserves it better? &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/The-College-and-University-Experience/What-percentage-of-college-students-cheat/answer/Franck-Dernoncourt?share=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What percentage of college students do you think cheat?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From a personal gain maximization standpoint, you need to consider two points: 1) Will denouncing your colleague improve your GPA, change your rank or bring your some award? 2) Will denouncing your colleague negatively impact your network and/or perturb your learning experience?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In school, there are several goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on GPA/ranking/award/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on learning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on networking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on partying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take action according to what your focus(es) is/are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:04:59.277" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25667" CreationDate="2014-07-18T20:21:33.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are seeking a BS degree from a United States accredited university through an online program, and wish to enter a Masters program with another U.S. accredited university, it should not be an issue on its own merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, research universities may take a second look at your application if the online-achieved BS degree is not from another research institution.&#xA;To ensure your acceptance to such a Masters program, you will want to achieve a higher grade point average than expected. It would also help if you publish any articles during you progress towards the BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other non-research institutions in this scenario should not have an issue accepting you with your online-achieved BS degree, so long as you clearly demonstrate in your application you meet all their requirements for admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even with that said, non-research universities may even accept you even if you have defficiency in required undergrad coursework. In this case, a little real-world job experience as little as 1 year can help assure them you can do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, don't underestimate the application letter you submit. I would make sure it communicates you have a goal in your education and career after the Masters. And it should demonstrate you are capable to meet their requirements, and to succeed in their program. That is ultimately what they are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:21:33.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-18T21:06:04.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to address the part where you want a comparison on enrolled vs. unemployed. It is always better to not to have to answer the questions about being unemployed. You don't want to look like you were doing nothing for quite some time. Interviewers usually aren't impressed enough by candidates that have a few years that weren't mentioned on the resume anywhere, be prepared to reason that effectively. And you don't know how soon you are going to find a job. If you continue your PhD and look for a job in the meantime, you have an excuse &quot;I got a good job and hence left the PhD&quot;, which brings us to yet another point to ponder upon...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you quit your PhD(which you could actually officially finish in a year or two), apply for some jobs, interview and finally land into one. You work there for some time, but your progress starts plateauing. Now you realize that for a higher position they require a PhD(which you quit, remember?). At that stage, you might wish that you hadn't quit but you did, and now it might be the bane of your professional progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of these things in the long run... no one knows what the future holds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T21:06:04.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26095" CreationDate="2014-07-18T21:11:37.957" Score="15" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just few days ago, I completed all requirements for the degree, all is set and done. I am organizing a workshop with my adviser to be held in few months. Right now, we are reviewing the submissions. My adviser insists that I am not qualified to review the papers because he designated me as a student organizer and my degree completion does not change that. But he expects me to write the reviews that were assigned to him! On top of that, he cannot cover my travel expenses for the workshop, because of the University policy not to pay expenses for the former students. So, I'm on my own to find the travel funding - I will need to ask my employer for funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What bothers me is that when convenient, I'm treated as a student (to write the reviews), but when not convenient, I am treated as a former student (funding the travel expenses). What should I do? I talked to him twice now, and I still getting emails asking when the reviews will done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice? Am I out of the line to question it? And what does this say for our future relationship working independently in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should say that I have a job and funding lined up (funding starts after the workshop). So, I don't need a letter of recommendation from my adviser, but staying on good terms would be beneficial. On the other hand, my adviser was hoping that I could fund some of his students over the next year with the funding I received.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T21:24:25.483" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T07:07:53.920" Title="What are my obligations towards my adviser after the defense, revisions, and all forms signing is done?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26094" CreationDate="2014-07-18T21:45:25.577" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other cultures may have different approaches to the ethics of this, but I think it's pretty out of line for the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend standing by your commitment to help organize the workshop, but I would not do your former advisor's reviewing for him. You've graduated, you're a fully-fledged member of the doctoral community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pete's comment is pretty spot on. Be as nice and cordial as possible, but be firm in your refusal to do his work for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T07:07:53.920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T07:07:53.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-18T23:22:12.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your friend trusted you with the truth.&#xA;I think it is only fair that you trust your friend and tell him beforehand what you plan to do.&#xA;It is better that he comes out with it than you, and you don't lose a friend.&#xA;If he doesn't want to be honest and &quot;fair&quot; at least ask him not to involve you if he gets in trouble for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that he will not trust you anymore but most likely he will still be friends with you.&#xA;Friendship has more value to me than some moral that no one really cares about (except you because you know the truth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19734" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T23:22:12.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-19T04:08:47.467" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time life is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fair, and it look like your friend just got a break. Good for him. Now, I suggest you ask yourself the question: is this likely to have a real negative impact on you? If so, then you may want to talk to your friend about the situation, hoping he will ask for the correction himself (if he refuses, you have a more solid ground for reporting it yourself). But if your friend's lucky mark is unlikely to affect you in a negative way, I'd say good for him, maybe next time it will be your turn. Be happy for your friend, live and let live. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T04:08:47.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T08:44:21.050" Score="11" ViewCount="4164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my PhD 4 years ago. I was not comfortable with my guide but I concentrated on my work, and I successfully completed the PhD. But I published a little work with his name as correspondence author. But now I am in good position in another country, so I need to publish my PhD work without his name as co-author. If I publish a paper of my PhD work without my supervisor's name, what will be happen? Are there any legal problems that will be raised? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19740" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T09:32:13.053" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T16:24:22.873" Title="PhD four years ago; can I publish a paper from PhD work without my supervisor's name?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26099" CreationDate="2014-07-19T09:06:00.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have discussed the paper with your supervisor in the past years; then your publication should meet his rights on the paper as he has previously contributed to your paper. Furthermore, if your research paper is done under financial support of your PhD university; then you have to acknowledge their rights too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the contribution of a co-author to a paper is important in acknowledging their right in project or paper, their supervision to your PhD thesis does not bring any right to your further (after graduation) academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an instance, a paper is written based on a supervisor's contribution to it and it is part of a chapter of your PhD thesis; so it is obvious that you have to contact him about your paper. But if after graduation in the recent years you have found a good idea and worked on it without help of nobody else so there is no need to talk about your paper with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, if you have never discussed your research project or paper with your supervisor, he has never contributed to your paper, you never used his resources, your PhD university does not hold any right to your paper idea and you meet the rights of financial supporter of your paper; then you may publish your paper solely. Otherwise, you have to meet their rights in your publication. Also, please note that one may build his academic relationship based on this rule to the other colleagues or students too. If and only if they have contributed to your paper, they can be a co-author of that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that you are a better researcher after a few years but I think that talking to a senior researcher and professor and asking him to read your paper will allow you to find your mistakes and publish better papers. Also, working with other researchers will add to your reputations and build connections with them. They may also contribute their papers with you and may ask you to read their papers in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has good answers to this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24297/advisors-universitys-rights-in-the-phd-msc-alumnis-research-projects-and-publ&quot;&gt;Advisor's/University's rights in the PhD/MSc alumni's research projects and publications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T13:06:23.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26099" CreationDate="2014-07-19T09:09:31.507" Score="13" Body="&lt;h3&gt;You have left at least two important things unanswered:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has your supervisor contributed to your work? (How contribution is measured depends on the field you are working in, it could be through &quot;real&quot; intellectual contribution, feedback, funding, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now I am in good position in another country so I need to publish&#xA;  my PhD work without his name as co author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do you need to publish without his name as a co-author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I publish a paper of my PhD work without my supervisor name, what&#xA;  will be happen? Is there any legal problems will raised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he has contributed to your work, there may be several legal problems such as   fraud or copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are sure that he has not contributed in any way to your thesis (which is unlikely) then you are fine to publish on your own. Otherwise you should talk to him and ask him if he thinks he has made a significant contribution and wants to be your co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T16:24:22.873" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T16:24:22.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26110" CreationDate="2014-07-19T09:46:17.560" Score="9" ViewCount="4476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting out in research and about to finish my BSc. If I stay in research I'm wondering about the economics of it: where does the money come from? I am passionate about a specific field and I want to be able to do research in that area - but I imagine to support that research I'd have to find a lab that has been specifically funded and has projects related to that field, right? And how does the funding for these labs work? Is it mostly project based with 1-2 year length after which the lab has the pressure to submit another proposal to find another project, or does it have less pressure because the lab is also funded by the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence I'm just wondering about the money flow that is keeping a research lab alive: if I want to do research in X, I'd have to find a lab that has the money to support X right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T20:05:03.503" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:52:25.973" Title="Where do research labs get their funding?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26194" CreationDate="2014-07-19T10:01:53.793" Score="12" ViewCount="921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written an informal article 9 pages long, that covers some general, lightly technical material.  I wrote it because this material is not covered elsewhere, and I am knowledgeable in the field.  The material is light in the sense that it is not highly innovative, or even highly useful, but it is &quot;good to know&quot;.  The subject matter is information security, with respect to radio systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have posted the article on my personal webpage.  Should I bother to submit it somewhere for 'proper' publication?  It is not technical or innovative enough for IEEE or ACM journals (or even letters).  Or should I just keep it on my page for people with search engine inquiries related to the subject matter to possibly stumble across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T14:49:45.060" Title="Where to publish helpful, but informal papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T11:58:00.137" Score="1" ViewCount="1703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a undergraduate student who also work as the systems administrator in the school. I also do research work under a professor. Recently, I had to work on this professor's lab to upgrade the older machines to newer machines. I literally got no help from any of the fellow lab mates. Though, I did it as part of my systems administrator work, the professor had instructed his Ph.D students to help me. However, I do not complain of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very nagging girl who always wants to get her things done and couldn't even figure out some basic stuff from the Internet. She simply blames the installation and this pretty much annoys me. She is not thankful for what I am doing, and so I do not even feel like helping this girl. I want to report it to my professor in such a way that I do not offend him in any way. I never bothered him much so far. But I want to escalate this issue. How should I go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S&lt;/strong&gt;: I am not sure if this question belongs here or on &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19742" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:12:32.457" Title="How to complain about a Ph.D student to a professor" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T12:08:29.803" Score="6" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is being a maths &quot;tutor&quot; volunteer at sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathnerds.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MATHNERDS&lt;/a&gt; useful in terms of &quot;good impression&quot; for future academic prospectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T20:15:59.430" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T20:15:59.430" Title="Is being a volunteer useful for academic prospective" Tags="&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T12:30:38.147" Score="8" ViewCount="14269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing masters in physics. I recently did internship in high energy physics for 2 months. But my institute allows me to do 6 months project only in condensed matter physics. I want to pursue PhD in high energy physics only. So, is it possible to pursue PhD in different area than master's thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19743" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T16:36:19.250" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T19:34:40.210" Title="Is it possible to pursue PhD in different area than master's thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25963" CreationDate="2014-07-19T12:31:01.683" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities usually require a work experience of 2 years if you don't meet their GPA. I see your GPA is not bad and I don't know what you're waiting for because you already overdid the experience part by going all the way to 6 years. You should apply asap and the only worry is to make sure that your application is superb &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:31:01.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26107" CreationDate="2014-07-19T12:44:54.037" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, definitely&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can! The specific subfield is mostly limited by (a) your interests; (b) availability of a suitable supervisor who knows that field, and possibly (c) availability of funding/equipment/etc for that research direction.  It may be that a particular university/department doesn't accept your chosen direction (e.g. they don't have the researchers or funding for in-depth high energy physics research) and you need to look for other universities to do the PhD, but your master thesis topic is not restricting in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be slightly useful to do a PhD that aligns with your master thesis, as it gives you some head start and possibly some publishable research already, but it's not a race and you definitely can do it in a different direction, many people do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Researchers work in multiple areas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on this - there are few general restrictions. It may be that a particular organization (or funding source) or person at some particular time nudges you do do something specific; but in general, there are no universal restrictions and people can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursue PhD in a different subfield than Master's thesis (your example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get PhD in a different subfield and topic than what you submitted at the start of your PhD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursue PhD in a different field than Masters (e.g. physics PhD after mathematics masters, computer science PhD after economics masters, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do research in a completely different area than your PhD (e.g. linguistics PhD publishing CompSci papers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do publishable research without being connected to a PhD process in any way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:44:54.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26102" CreationDate="2014-07-19T13:32:05.953" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most labs get funding from granting agencies, governments, industry agreements, or private foundations. Some universities also provide funding in other forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what they can do with the money depends on the conditions of the grant. Some, are attached to a specific project. They may also include a breakdown of the expenses: this much to hire two PhD students, this block to hire a posdoc, publications, experiments, computers... Some other grants are more open, and may give the PI more freedom to allocate the resources, or to work on sub-projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some areas of research have economical interest, and may lead to patents and industrial agreements, that could help the lab to be less dependent on grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, some students may get their own funding, that may be attached or not to a specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities do support labs, mostly by paying salaries of the staff and infrastructures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the times, most labs apply to any grant in reach: you can never know if the grant you are hoping for will be renewed; and there is never too much money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T13:32:05.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2014-07-19T14:35:44.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take smaller steps first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you are doing something that is not part of your job, stop (selectively) doing it. Politely reply that X is not on your responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following these two advice alone could change her behaviour. If the problem persists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Talk with her first. Say that you are using much of your time to help her, and tell her that you expect a more professional relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is still problems, then talk to the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also require the lab members to help you if instructed to do so. If you don't, they will see you as someone they can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10421" LastEditorUserId="10421" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T19:12:32.457" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:12:32.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2014-07-19T14:55:51.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of trajectories, depending on how you want to define yourself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can get the student to understand that her problems are due to her ignorance of computers.  But try to direct her to resources where she can remedy that rather than blame her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your supervisor and ask how they suggest you proceed with it.  This tactic puts the responsibility for failure (or success, &amp;lt;-note) on their shoulders and keeps you from receiving damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T14:55:51.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-19T15:26:28.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what you do.  You request a &quot;leave of absence&quot; from the University for personal reasons.  That way you can say you're still a student, but not obligated to take classes during that period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T15:26:28.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23667" CreationDate="2014-07-19T16:07:15.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To move on in your career you need to (1) finish the dissertation; (2) publish lots of papers in prestigious places; (3) cultivate connections with senior people in the field by going to conferences, refereeing journal articles if asked, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish your dissertation, and get a couple good papers published, and probably your old advisor will be happy to write you a good letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T16:07:15.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:54:19.357" Score="3" ViewCount="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate student of Mechanical Engineering, now closing my third year of studies. Throughout the years however, I've always went a bit off coursework to study and research the area. By now I have some material that I believe it could be publishable, and I would like to work towards that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although my entire research is a bit spread, I have something specific in mind that I would like to try and publish and that is a study on optimal beam profiles. My question is, which would be the best journal to submit? I researched some on Elsevier but they seemed too professional to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In total, what would be the best journal to try and submit work that is analytical in nature, but related to mechanical engineering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T18:54:19.357" Title="Mechanical Engineering undergrad aspiring to publish" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-19T20:12:24.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:56:30.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say he got a grade that is too high because you saw a &quot;mass&quot; email with the grade and then the student showed, presumably, the grade on the piece of work or on his transcript. You came to the conclusion that the email with the lower mark was correct and that the transcript is incorrect. There doesn't seem to be an obvious reason, apart from personal bias, that the transcript should be assumed to be wrong instead of the email. Given you do not really know what grade he should have gotten, there is no reason to say anything, especially if you do not want to. If you want to alert the Professor that you think someone else's mark is wrong you can do that, but remember you really do not have any proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T18:56:30.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T19:25:49.940" Score="4" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an amateur (not affiliated with an academy) mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a research monograph (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematics21.org/algebraic-general-topology.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my site&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current status of the book is that it is well written and is reasonably checked for errors. However there are serious errors in the last chapter. I may remove the last chapter and try to publish the rest of the book without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent my book (not yet including the last chapter) to several publishers. They all say either that my book is too original and rough for book form and should be published as articles first, or that my research is unmotivated. (I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now my book is in consideration of a publisher. After I sent my book to the aforementioned (last) publisher, I realized that before writing second volume of my book I need first create second edition of the first volume (which is in consideration now). I had two ideas how to rewrite it when it was already in publisher's review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt what to do with the last chapter (which as I've said above is currently erroneous). The simplest thing is just to remove it now, because it anyway should be rewritten in the second edition (and the rewrite is rather massive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition? (I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1637" LastEditorUserId="1637" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T19:32:53.517" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T11:58:49.263" Title="Leave out the last chapter as it anyway should be addressed in second edition?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26122" CreationDate="2014-07-19T19:27:44.207" Score="8" ViewCount="2567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for PhD, and in the application I am required to write a research proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my thesis supervisor to write a recommendation for me, and he agreed,but he told me that I need to work more on my writing and carefully write my research proposal. He told me to have people read for me before submitting it and suggested that I send it to him so he can review it for me as a favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got his email with feedback on the proposal. In the email he wrote &quot;Here is my first feedback.&quot; We discussed the review he made and I made changes and he asked me to send him the new proposal. After I sent the email, he told me that he will read it and give me another feedback that same night. That was about five days ago and now he is on a vacation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate to remind him ? I need his feedback because I am trying to submit the application. Should I just submit the application and just assume that he is too busy for me ? I don't want to be naggy and annoying. After all, he is doing me a favor.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T21:31:24.540" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T21:31:24.540" Title="Professor reviews proposal as a favor, should I send a reminder" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26121" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:01:36.820" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send an email suggesting you don't assume he will offer any more help, but leaving the door open in case he offers some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks so much for your help with my proposal. I believe your suggestions have really improved it. Attached is my current version; I will submit it tomorrow evening. Let me know if you have any last-minute suggestions before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T20:01:36.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26120" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:09:05.857" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a key point.  The issue isn't whether there exists compelling motivation, and you may be right that there is.  Rather, the issue is whether you have successfully communicated this motivation to readers who have spent far less time thinking about the topic than you have and who lack the perspective that comes from developing a subject from scratch.  You'll have to work extra hard to articulate the motivation and communicate it successfully.  If the readers still don't understand why are you doing something, then that itself amounts to a communication failure (regardless of whether you feel they ought to have understood).  You don't need to communicate successfully with everyone, but you need to do so with a large enough audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly recommend trying harder to address this before publishing the book.  You can consider the editors who have looked over your submissions as a random sample of readers.  Many of them fail to understand the motivation behind your work, which suggests that many readers would find it unmotivated even if someone agreed to publish it.  Ultimately, the goal should be not just to get the book published, but to get it read and understood.  The feedback from publishers is helping you identify what you need to work on to attract readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you proposing to publish the first edition while you are already working on a second edition, or to submit the first edition as a draft while telling the publisher that you are working on serious revisions?  The latter could make sense, while publishers are unlikely to agree to the former.  (Publishing a book takes time, effort and money, and nobody wants to commit these resources to a mathematics book that will quickly be out of date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the fact that you already have large-scale changes in mind suggests that the book might not be ready to submit for publication.  You don't need to have completed all possible revisions before approaching publishers, but your chances of acceptance go down if you aren't presenting approximately your best work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the alternative to removing it?  If you have in mind fixing the mistakes now, then I can't advise you on which approach is better (since I haven't read the book).  If you mean keeping the incorrect chapter in the manuscript and not dealing with the mistakes until later, then that sounds like a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that this is a depressing possibility, but I wouldn't worry about it now (assuming you are no likelier to die soon than other people your age).  If it makes you feel safer, you could always ask a friend or family member to try to get your work archived somewhere if you died unexpectedly.  I can't say they would necessarily succeed, but it couldn't hurt to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the publishers who suggest publishing research papers first have an important point.  The mathematics publishing system is set up to work that way, and it is not particularly well adapted to publishing large chunks of unfamiliar research in book form.  It's certainly possible to publish research monographs, but you may be making things unnecessarily hard for yourself.  Unless you have a very strong reason to prefer a book, I'd recommend trying articles instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="13560" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T03:26:14.263" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T03:26:14.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:20:29.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you apply for grants where &quot;Broader Impact&quot; (or something like it) is a criteria, then a demonstrable history of volunteer and outreach activities related to your academic field of study can be helpful. Same goes for awards that consider &quot;service&quot; as a criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The reviewers of my NSF graduate research fellowship application commented favorably on my volunteer experience, which I mentioned towards &quot;Broader Impact&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T20:20:29.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:03:45.010" Score="12" ViewCount="5406" Body="&lt;p&gt;*Edit in response to comments: I'm not asking &quot;What is the number of publications n of quality q1 such that anybody who has n many publications is guaranteed to get a job at a school like Y?&quot; There is no such value of n. What I'm asking is, &quot;Is there a number of publications n, of some quality q such that without n many publications of quality q, one will likely not get a job at a school like Y?&quot; I realize the title is misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in response to a conversation that developed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23667/unfinished-math-phd/26115?noredirect=1#comment54384_26115&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to hear from academia.SE members who have been search committee members on a junior search. How many publications, and of what quality would be required to get a job at different kinds of universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say for the purpose of this exercise that we are in the U.S. and that there are five kind of universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 year community colleges with incredibly heavy teaching expectations (4/4+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 year public or private colleges with heavy teaching expectations (3/4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elite small liberal arts colleges with moderate to light teaching expectations (2/2 - 3/3).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-elite state universities with graduate programs and light teaching loads (2/2).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elite universities with little to no teaching (1/- or 1/1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be helpful if respondents would identify which discipline they are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T03:02:01.463" Title="How much would I have to publish to get an entry-level job?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26125" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:03:45.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an answer for philosophy, based on anecdotal experience seeing my friends CVs and how they fared on the job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No expectations of research. Tenure, if it exists, is going to be on the basis of teaching and service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here you need to have published something, but it isn't terribly important that it be in a very high-profile journal. To get tenure you'll probably have to get two to four things published, but quality won't matter very much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here you'll need to have at least one very good publication under your belt in order to get considered and realistically probably more like 3-4 publications in top 20 journals for your field. these are desirable jobs and quality will definitely count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get a job that involves grad teaching you are going to have to have a number of very high profile publications that speak to your ability to become a recognized leader in your field. I'd think you'd need 3-5 publications, some of which are in top 10ish places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get the brass ring, you don't seem to need more than one or two papers, but they need to be in the very best places there are, plus you need to have a couple other papers in the works that your SC can imagine will land there too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:03:45.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:21:03.067" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer really comes down to whether or not your position as &quot;Systems Administrator&quot; is paid or not. If it is a paid position, then welcome to the professional world, where users will often complain about the resources and facilities that are provided for them. Dealing with their complaints in a professional manner is part of the job that you are being paid for, and it is not appropriate to complain to your manager about that aspect of the job, unless a user is being abusive. You should make it clear to the user concerned that you have installed the software that you were told to install, as you were told to do, and that if the software is inappropriate or does not suit her requirements then she needs to talk to her supervisor, as he/she is the one responsible for ensuring she has the equipment she needs for her research. Do not get angry, be polite and professional; &lt;em&gt;&quot;I would like to help you, but as system administrator I just install the software I am told to install. I have no powers to choose or change what you have been given, so if you need something different you will have to talk to the boss.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a particular user takes up far more time than than the rest, then you need to ask your manager how to proceed - your employment contract will state how many hours you are to work, and if your manager wants you to cater to the whims of one particular user during those hours, then that is their decision. You should also realise that, since you are the paid &quot;System Administrator&quot;, it is not the job of the PhD students to help you carry out this task. They aren't system administrators, they aren't being paid to do the job - you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, your position as &quot;System administrator&quot; is voluntary and unpaid, and the PhD students are part of a &quot;sysadmin&quot; team, then you need to ask them to take a more active role than they are, and to consider whether hours spent on tasks are being allocated in the most efficient fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15711" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:21:03.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26102" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:52:25.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ideal book for you would be &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049710&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Economics Shapes Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.  It answers your questions and many more. It provides a broad and deep analysis of a wide variety of empirical data about research funding.  It will help you make smart career choices.  Sadly, I don't think most graduate students in sciences and bio-medical fields understand the economics of research and academic careers before they enter their field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:52:25.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26141" CreationDate="2014-07-19T23:18:55.753" Score="63" ViewCount="8283" Body="&lt;p&gt;My institution provides a dedicated storage space to host our academic websites, which is reachable via the institution domain (something like &lt;code&gt;http://people.institution.org/John.Doe/&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to have a tidy website of a few pages listing my publications, research area, contact, etc. It is currently reachable through my institution domain. I try to also put some efforts in SEO when people look up for my name or particular research area on search engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in my last year of Ph.D. and I will undoubtedly move to other institutions in the next few years, so I am wondering if it wouldn't be preferable to host my academic webpage on a dedicated domain &lt;code&gt;http://www.johndoe.com&lt;/code&gt;, which would prevent the need to do the SEO all over again each time I will switch to a new institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only advantage to use my institution domain is the affiliation, but this information is present on my website anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering in France, if it matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6817" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T11:11:15.583" Title="Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?" Tags="&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-07-19T23:53:42.577" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very much doubt that this idea will work. Research mathematics already has its communities: conferences and workshops. New conferences and workshops pop up all the time but they do it because a group of mathematicians say, &quot;Hey, we keep meeting and talking about Topic X and there are lots of other people who'd be interested. Why don't we run a workshop on that?&quot;  The communities form because a group of mathematicians has a common interest, not because somebody stands up and says, &quot;Hey! I have this really interesting problem!  Everybody come work on it with me!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The venue for announcing &quot;Hey! I have this really interesting problem!&quot; is a pre-existing conference, as Joel explains in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18387/10685&quot;&gt;his answer&lt;/a&gt;. If people find it interesting, they'll start to work on it. If enough people start to work on it, they might start to organize workshops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T23:53:42.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26155" CreationDate="2014-07-19T23:59:39.587" Score="9" ViewCount="10057" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm writing a dissertation in Computational Social Science using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mackichan.com/products/shells/kluwer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kluwer&lt;/a&gt; bibliographic style.  My question isn't specific to this style and applies generally to dissertations in computer science, sociology, economics, and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Should I include URL (DOI or other) in bibliographic entries for all journal or conference articles, in addition to normal full citation information?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such requirement or guidelines from my University or Department.  I've done numerous web searches, but I've never found any general guidelines on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pro:&lt;/strong&gt; All of my committee members and most of my readers now read articles on-line rather than through printed journals or proceedings.  All the URLs will have hyperlinks, so when they are reading the PDF of my dissertation, they can click on the hyperlink that will open a browser window to the article.  In addition, my dissertation will have internal hyperlinks from citations to bibliography entries and from key terms to glossary entries.  Finally, I use the Zotero reference manager, and I can usually acquire the URL as part of the &quot;one click&quot; import process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Con:&lt;/strong&gt; Adding URLs for every journal/conference article adds visual clutter to the bibliography.  When the URLs are not DOI, they may not be valid for a long time.  It will add some work to test and correct URLs that don't meet the basic criteria of usability, consistency, and stability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:19:44.580" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:19:44.580" Title="Should I include a DOI/website URL for a publication in dissertation bibliography?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26132" CreationDate="2014-07-20T00:40:15.343" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding DOIs and URLs to your bib references is really a good idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really concerned on the visual clutter, you can &quot;hide&quot; hrefs under the author/title/journal line. In this case, the references are not visible in print version (which is probably not terribly bad, since only a few people will bother to type DOIs from paper back to a browser search line). In the pdf version, however, one can click on the bib reference  line to access the online document (which is really something people appreciate). If you hide hrefs under the titles, make sure your PDF readers do understand this (give them a clue with a footnote or so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really a good idea to use DOIs as much as possible and avoid using potentially unstable URLs. However, if the document is not easy to find (e.g. not among first 3 references in the Google scholar), I would probably go with the URL to help navigate the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T00:40:15.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-20T00:43:49.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the social and ethical issues raised by others, I might take a different, more diplomatic approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd tell the instructors about this mistake, and how I felt about it, but not give them specifics about who received the incorrect grade. There may also be a neutral party to help navigate this, such as an &lt;em&gt;ombudsman&lt;/em&gt;, if that feels more comfortable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may not care enough to find and fix the mistake, or if they do, you won't have directly betrayed your friend, and perhaps other mistakes will be corrected, to your credit. If you can earn the instructors appreciation, you may argue for some bonus points, or form a valuable relationship for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19763" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T00:43:49.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2014-07-20T00:53:28.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful about escalation.  Remember that Fort Sumter started the civil war even though there was no loss of life on either side during the battle.  The graduate students outrank you.  They also outnumber you and will fiercely counterattack. Leave them alone as you have to date. If you need help then make friends with one of them.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently you do not work for the girl. That puts you on more equal footing with her, which means that you can speak frankly with her.  Tell her how much time you have to work with her, what you can do for her, and what you cannot do for her. Set up a time to meet with her and tell her that you cannot accept walk-up requests. You and she will have to develop some personal relationship of mutual respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor may not want to hear about your problems.  If he has a problem then he will tell you. Your primary responsibility is to him.  You fix his problems; he does not fix your problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19765" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T00:53:28.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23178" CreationDate="2014-07-20T01:13:07.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most of the other advice given above is sound. Let me add two things that I've noticed in reading work by first and second year european grad students who are transitioning into the US system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper you send for a writing sample needs to have a clearly identified thesis &lt;em&gt;in the first or second paragraph&lt;/em&gt; of the paper. If you can't think of something better write, &quot;In this paper I am arguing that . . . &quot; Many of my european colleagues want the thesis to emerge slowly, reflectively, at the very end of the paper after all the scholarly qualifications and so on have been properly put forward. Don't do that for an American audience. Tell us up front what you are trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, hire a native english speaker to proofread your paper for you and really work on grammar, spelling, idiom, and style. Writing well is really hard and it's the primary job you'll have as an academic. (Your writing in the question is excellent. I'm just saying having somebody who really knows English double-check it.)  Coming from Italy, I don't think most admissions committees are going to hold language against you constantly. It is easy to create a subconscious impression of carelessness with casual mistakes in the language. For something as important as getting into a good grad school it's worth spending some money to get this part right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T01:13:07.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26125" CreationDate="2014-07-20T01:49:08.503" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the faculty search chair for a top-5 American computer science department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many publications, and of what quality would be required to get a job...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is simply the wrong question.&lt;/strong&gt; To be considered for a position, you must have an independent research record among the very best in the world in your age cohort and subfield. The &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; of publications really doesn't matter, for the same reason grades don't matter for admission to a top PhD program; there are enough applicants with enough publications that we can afford to focus on more important features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters more is the quality, visibility, impact, and reputation of your research.  You must have a coherent and compelling research vision and agenda. You must have letters from the very best people in your field—people that the search committee already know by reputation, preferably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; at your home institution. Those letters must say things like &quot;major impact on the field&quot; and &quot;strongest student on the market this year&quot;, with specific, technical, and credible details to back up their opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the search committee must agree with the assessment in the reference letters.  Without a champion on the search committee, you will not get an interview; there are simply too many strong applicants.  Yes, we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; read your statements, your papers, and other papers that cite your papers ourselves. We also call up colleagues in your field who didn't write you letters and ask them who the best people are in your field; they'd better mention you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gets you to the short list of people we are willing to interview.  Unless it's a dry year, there are more people on this list than interview slots, so the recruiting committee has long discussions comparing the merits of various candidates and arguing about departmental needs/strategy. Sometimes enough clear winners emerge; more often, we just have to vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are invited to an interview, your performance at the interview often becomes more important than your past record.  Your talk must be compelling and polished. You must impress the faculty and students you meet with your breadth of expertise, your research agenda/vision, your likely success as an advisor, as a collaborator, as an instructor, and as an intellectual leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it must be clear that you will get tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inevitably, more people will &quot;pass&quot; the interview than we have positions to offer. So there is another long and wide-ranging discussion among the faculty, comparing the merits of the various top candidates and arguing about departmental needs. Sometimes clear winners emerge; other times the faculty deadlock and the department head has to make the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen candidates with 2 or 3 groundbreaking papers get hired (and later get tenure). I have also seen fresh PhDs with 20+ papers in top venues that were not even considered for an interview, because their work was judged incremental or narrow. The number of papers is simply not the right metric to care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T01:49:08.503" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26125" CreationDate="2014-07-20T02:27:23.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer we give at our R1 is &quot;N+1&quot; both in regards to hiring and promotion/tenure. That is, there's no safe bright line. Even if you had N publications, you would have needed &quot;N+1&quot; to get hired, promoted, or tenured. It makes for a lot of anxiety in the junior faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Been a search committee member on both searches within my department in the social sciences as well as interdisciplinary programs in the humanities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T03:25:02.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T03:25:02.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26143" CreationDate="2014-07-20T03:40:24.190" Score="11" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it considered bad etiquette to ask to read a manuscript in preparation that appears in the citations of a paper? (It was cited in a paper from 2001 - I am not sure it has been published; I cannot find it - although the title may have changed...?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19767" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T08:01:10.667" Title="Asking to see a manuscript in preparation" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2014-07-20T04:12:05.060" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reasons to use your own host/tld:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't expect to be at your current (or future) institution for very long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your institution uses a painful CMS system, requires you to use ugly templates, or has content or size restrictions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't want to ask your department head or IT manager/webmistress for permission every time you want to update your page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your personal brand is more important than the university brand (see #1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are part of a multi-university project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You created your own domain website when you were a graduate student and never found a good reason to switch to your employers' sites, even a dozen plus years after graduation (my case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons to only use your university website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's the default position. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't cost you any additional hosting or domain registration fees. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many cases, the department or IT admin will help you set it up using one of their templates, meaning you do not have to learn web design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some cases, the database that populates your research publications will be pulled from your Faculty Annual Report (or vice&#xA;versa). This means that keeping the university CMS happy results in&#xA;less paperwork overall in terms of reporting your research&#xA;activities to the university.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The google-juice (SEO) of the university will likely be higher than your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some may argue it looks more professional to have an .edu/~name site rather than a private.com website. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loyalty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, one can always do both. The cons of doing both are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requires updating both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visitors may be confused about which site to go to (or you have the same info mirrored, which leads to #1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T05:40:38.670" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T05:40:38.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2014-07-20T05:50:20.897" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you just do both? By both, I mean use both URLs. I &quot;do both&quot;, so when I graduate, I'll still have my site for others to see. You can do this in many ways, but I had my university student page auto-redirect to my personal home page. The code for that is like a one-liner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This grants me the opportunity to refer people to different sites depending on the situation. I think myname.com is undoubtedly easier to remember than the nuances in my university student site URL: people.school.org/first.last ... On the other hand, if the situation is more institution-based, perhaps it's better to stick with my college's name. You've got options this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15789" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T05:50:20.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26139" CreationDate="2014-07-20T08:01:10.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not bad etiquette.  Most people will be happy to know that someone wants to read their work.  Of course, you should take the time to try to find it yourself first.  It may have been published under another title or in a hard-to-find place (like some conference proceedings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the comments, it seems that you're worried about hurting the author's feelings by reminding them of a paper rejection.  I don't think you should feel that way.  Rejected papers are part of a normal academic career, and in any case you don't know whether that paper was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me for a copy of a paper that happens to have been rejected, I'll send it to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T08:01:10.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26147" CreationDate="2014-07-20T09:42:39.520" Score="3" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open University&lt;/a&gt; (OU), which allows me to study part-time and from home (actually even from a different country). Getting my BSc will take me other several years, but I want to start gaining experience with doing research and start publishing papers. Specifically my field would be the Semantic Web and I already have lots of industry experience in this subject, just not much academic experience yet. So I found this institute at the OU called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://kmi.open.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)&lt;/a&gt; that actually does quite interesting Semantic Web work. I contacted some professors from various labs in the institute and none seem to offer remote internships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to my question: how do other OU students start publishing given that there isn't really a campus and you're most likely in another country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I know research is usually accomplished face-to-face, but this relates specifically to OU which is a highly-accredited online university. There must still be a way to do research for an undegrad at OU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="12847" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T10:00:08.767" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T15:58:33.137" Title="Publish at the Open University as an undergraduate" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26120" CreationDate="2014-07-20T09:51:59.763" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say you must keep trying and get it published, even if you end up paying for that because this is your hard work and should not be wasted or lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the best way is to go and talk to publishers and ask them what can be added or subtracted to meet their requirements and standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also convert the book into an e-book and upload it on paid libraries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19773" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T10:08:28.367" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T10:08:28.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26145" CreationDate="2014-07-20T10:08:04.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of sounding obvious let me share some advice that will not be specific to OU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, wherever you are, you can do research on your own, although it's usually a tough call while being at the undergraduate level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A somewhat more realistic option could be locating and contacting the academics in your field at a university &lt;em&gt;reasonably close to your location&lt;/em&gt; (so that you can at some point contact them in person) and get them interested in supervising your research &lt;em&gt;jointly&lt;/em&gt; with the OU people or on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the second option is how to get the people at your local university interested in working with you but perhaps you could get some letters of recommendation from your teachers at OU to help your cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T13:10:33.933" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T13:10:33.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2014-07-20T10:45:46.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important indeed to address people correctly, more important that initials, one may pay much more attention to the correctness of the name and family name which that person has written in his web pages, letters and papers. Even, if you know some people who know him (e.g. colleague, students, etc.) simply ask them how it is better to call that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best way to address a person and write his name in letters is to &lt;code&gt;copy and paste the exact thing he has written in his web page&lt;/code&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person has included his initials in his web page such as  &quot;Dr.&quot;, &quot;Priv.-Doz. Dr.&quot; or &quot;Prof. Dr.&quot; then it seems that those initials are important for him and should be included; if there is no sign of those initials; then it is better just to use Dr. or Professor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use something and he feels it should be corrected, then he will use the correct form of his name in his reply email. After that, use his preferred way to write his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T10:45:46.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2014-07-20T10:52:24.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As your question is referring to a &quot;Priv.-Doz. Dr.&quot; I guess you want to address a German person. Hence, I would like to add to the already existing answers. In general, I agree that when in doubt, simply be more formal and use the full title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at least in Germany you usually just use the highest title. Strictly speaking, only &quot;Dr.&quot; is a proper academic title in Germany (i.e. Professor or Privatdozent are job titles). However, Professor is also seens as a title if addressing someone, due to the outstanding position coming with the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if someone is a &quot;Prof. Dr. Dr. X&quot;, you just refer to him or her as &quot;Prof. X&quot;. Titles like &quot;Priv.-Doz.&quot; are usually not used, as these people normally also hold a doctoral degree, so you would address them as &quot;Dr. X&quot;.&#xA;Basically it boils down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone is a professor, you use &quot;Prof. X&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone is not a professor, but holds a doctoral degree, you use &quot;Dr. X&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If neither of the above applies, you use &quot;Mr/Mrs X&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14375" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T10:52:24.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26120" CreationDate="2014-07-20T11:58:49.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should absolutely stop trying to get the book published until it is ready. Talk to the publisher who is considering your book, explain the situation to them and ask for their advice about what to do. In my opinion, a second edition is unlikely ever to be published because, as I understand it, mathematics research monographs don't sell well enough to justify a second edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if a second edition were to be published, what is the purpose of the first edition if it is rapidly superseded by the second? From the way you write your question, it seems that that the purpose, for you, is publication. Publication is not a goal: it is a means to an end. The goal is to make other mathematicians aware of your work and that is most likely to happen if you present the work in the best way you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen to what publishers say. You know more about your field than they do; but they know more about their field than you do and their field is books. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; unusual for advances in mathematics to be published as a book, rather than in papers. That doesn't mean it's impossible to publish as a book but it does mean that you should have a good reason for rejecting the conventional method of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book you're talking about is the preprint &quot;Algebraic General Topology&quot; on your website, then I'm sorry but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; rough and unmotivated. You have a five-page introduction, of which less than two pages (the sections &quot;Our topic and rationale&quot; and &quot;Earlier works&quot;) could be considered as motivation. That is followed by what is, literally, a 250-page list of definitions, lemmas, theorems and proofs. To write that much mathematics is without doubt impressive but, to get there, you must have read at least one or two maths books: this is not what a maths book looks like. If the technical content is good (I know nothing about topology) then you have a sound basis for a book but not yet a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, make sure your family knows about your work so that, in the unfortunate event of something happening to you, they can try to get it published so it isn't lost forever. (And take your vitamins and look both ways before crossing the street! :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T11:58:49.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26037" CreationDate="2014-07-20T12:54:14.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure what you mean by rotating (and the associated problems), but we use the following scheme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graders have &quot;their&quot; questions.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exams &quot;rotate&quot; between the graders until in the end each question is corrected for each exam.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes this is done in large batches - each grader goes to the secretary when they have time, get all or maybe half of the exams, vanishes to their office, and returns exams and marks list when done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More often, all graders meet, and small batches of exams are exchanged. Here, everyone gets one question, and as soon as you are finished (or cannot easily find a new batch) you either get a new question assigned or towards the end help sort who still needs to get which question and carry those exams where they need to go.  This way, the exams are quite well shuffled, so one would expect that even if a drift in the marking over the course of going over all exams occurs, this is different for each question and cancels out in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main ideas with this scheme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if there are example solutions and a rough list of points the professor wants to be considered, usually a bunch of minor decisions has to be made. It is easier to have consistent marks for all students if the marking for a given question is done by one grader. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is faster if every grader has to go into the details only for a few questions. Getting &quot;into&quot; a question can take considerable time, and after solving the question myself and comparing that to the example solution I tentatively write up criteria for the marking. I then grab some 10 - 20 exams and go through the question marking them but without actually giving grades and check whether my tentative point list is feasible and what other typical problems I need to add to the list. Only then the actual grading starts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot recall whether we have the students pseudonymized (by student ID) or whether we have names - typically the pressure is to get the grading done, and that means I (and about all of my colleagues but the one who transfers grades to the final result list) never look at the name. I directly go to the sheet where &quot;my&quot; question is (or sometimes, particularly towards the end, people who are already finished will do that for others). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With such a scheme, the impact a single grader biased against a particular student can have is quite limited.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;BTW: some of us usually &quot;know&quot; the students from labwork practicum (others help only with the exams and have never seen any of the students) - but that are brief encounters of large numbers of students. A student has to be either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad or behaving exceptionally in some way to be remembered by name. At least for me, while I &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; remember someone when seeing them, the connection to name or handwriting is much weaker. Of course, that is different if you encounter them again and again over the duration of the course.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add some general thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While I do see distinct advantages with the system described above which can easily be carried out in a blinded fashion, the student claim &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; My grader hates me so i failed the class  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; among the good reasons. Students can look at their marked exams. They can then complain if they suspect the grading was not fair (or an error occured). &#xA;They can even ask for someone else grading their exam. If it turned out that there was a problem with the grading, this is dealt with a) for the student (or all students in the each-grader-has-their-questions scheme) and b) will have consequences for the grader. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, students thinking that TAs not only remember them but have strong enough feelings that they end up giving biased marks to a measurable extent (in a field where a large part of the grading scheme is usually formulated in &quot;hard&quot; ways like calculation correct yes/no; sign error, axis label missing, units missing: each -1/2 point and so on) greatly overestimates the importance the given student has to the typical grader (PhD students or postdocs who are assigned to help grading on top of all other work they have)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not forget that there is a distinct bias &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; letting students fail: failing students come again for examination and create lots of additional, but unsatisfactory (IMHO it is far more pleasant to correct a good exam than to sort out the mess of a bad exam) work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO there are some trade-offs involved. Obviousy, possible bias against students is bad and needs to be avoided. On the other hand, you have to be careful not to make otherwise bad decisions and end up unbiased, but overall worse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One obvious way of not having a student bias (that also removes the information-leaking of the question) is to have graders that were not otherwise involved with those students.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;OTOH, people who have been TA with these students may have a far better grasp what can be expected from the students than people who have not been involved with that course (we have a fair amount of PhD students and post-docs helping with the grading that have a related but not the same background, e.g. physicists and optical engineers helping grading physical chemistry exams). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another obvious possible bias is that seeing what the other grader gave for their questions will influence the grader*. This could be removed by having separate sheets for each question - at the cost that it is error prone and/or a whole lot of additional work to make really sure nothing gets lost, nor mixed up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Already having only student ID or other pseudonyms in practice means that some easy way of error checking is removed: it is much easier to mix up the grades between students when transfering to the grade list when the list consists of longish ID numbers instead of names.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Obviously there should not be any errors, but such errors do occur. And at some point the question should be asked whether the removed alleged bias is worth that less time can be spent on actually teaching the students because it is spent on double checking anonymized lists and correcting errors that occured.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* (But for our exams it is rather typical that students perform very differently in different subfields: one is at home with thermodynamics but doesn't get kinetics and vice versa)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T12:54:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26132" CreationDate="2014-07-20T13:08:55.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your college should have people responsible for determining if a dissertation has been formatted correctly. Even if you are completely unconcerned about running afoul of this by adding links, check with them first and save a potential headache. They can be very demanding and unyielding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And depending on what you're typesetting the bibliography with, changing formats can be as simple as changing a single word/setting. This would allow you to create one version with convenient links, and another without, and so on, as desired, with essentially no extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19768" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T13:08:55.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26158" CreationDate="2014-07-20T13:43:00.067" Score="14" ViewCount="1630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am generally interested what are the benefits of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/problems-math/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Putnam&lt;/a&gt; (from both students and Professors' point of view), apart from the fact it is fun (for some) to solve difficult maths problem. I recently read a post on here that a good Putnam score would aid PhD application. If someone would elaborate on this a little, it'd be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10156" LastEditorUserId="333" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T21:08:00.467" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T21:08:00.467" Title="Benefit of Putnam exam" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2014-07-20T13:52:49.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will likely depend on your discipline and the type of volunteer work that you engage in. It can't hurt, as at the very least it shows your're interested enough in the field that your're engaging in it informally. As for how much it will benefit your prospects, that will depend on the type and extent of volunteer work and how it fits with your prospective discipline. Establishing a consistent history of volunteering with a particular site will demonstrate more commitment than volunteering at many different sites for briefer periods of time. Assisting with moderating or engaging with the management of the site's services (if an option) also demonstrates a higher level of engagement and responsibility, beyond a casual hobby or side interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether potential academic programs or jobs will look favorably on your volunteer work will depend in part on their interests and areas of emphasis. A program which emphasizes the application of mathematics in industry may not give volunteer tutoring much weight in the applications process when compared to a student who has had &quot;volunteer&quot; internships in industry. In contrast, a graduate program or professor that emphasizes the use of web technology to enhance math education would probably view your experience more favorably because it aligns with their mission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience in behavioral sciences I completed several lab-based internships in biology and psychology, which emphasized scientific method and theory, including proper record keeping, sterile technique, and data collection. This was viewed favorably by the more research-oriented graduate programs I applied to; other applicants had mostly volunteer experience with clinical mental health populations, which those programs did not give as much weight. However, at one of the program's where I was wait-listed, a faculty member informed me that they were concerned I had no experience (even volunteer experience) working with individuals with serious mental illness, and it counted as a strike against me. My research experience wasn't seen as negative, but it didn't carry as much weight in the eyes of that particular program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, demonstrating a consistent track record with a volunteer organization will demonstrate commitment, interest in the field, and maturity. However, the amount of benefit you will get in terms of future academic prospects will likely depend on how well that particular volunteer experience matches with a given program's academic interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T13:52:49.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26132" CreationDate="2014-07-20T14:00:45.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding links is extremely useful for people who actually want to lookup the references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOI serve both as a link and as an identifier, so adding it is a good idea in general. (A similar thing holds for arXivID.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both for DOI and arXivID it should be visible as &lt;code&gt;doi:1234/56781&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;arXiv:1401.9999&lt;/code&gt;, with an underlying link so it is clickable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With other links, I consider them only if both DOI and arXivID are absent.&#xA;It may be less stable, but still it is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really concerned with the visual appeal, you can make the title (or journal reference) clickable without spelling out the complete link. But personally I think that for references usability is more important than visuals (at least, it is what I do for my PhD thesis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get you some taste, it looks more or less as (the citation style is temporary, just look at the style of links): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GN57y.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach (from a paper) would be to hide link addresses as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T64iU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3802/how-to-get-doi-links-in-bibliography&quot;&gt;How to get DOI links in bibliography - TeX.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/151628/bibtex-fields-for-doi-mr-zbl-and-arxiv&quot;&gt;BibTeX fields for DOI, MR, Zbl and arxiv? - TeX.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T14:18:32.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25963" CreationDate="2014-07-20T14:39:16.030" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; In response to the commenter, there are relatively few graduate programs in the U.S. that will have GPA requirments below 2.5. They will mostly be at &quot;community&quot; colleges in a &quot;cow&quot; (agricultural) towns that are not worth your time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that may help you is your &quot;foreign&quot; background. The hottest ticket in many American universities right now is a degree from Kuwait, Qatar, or one of the Gulf States, with Egypt probably not far behind. Try to find a university that &quot;reaches out&quot; heavily to foreign students, most likely a &quot;state&quot; or &quot;city&quot; university, not a &quot;rural&quot; school. Hopefully, you will find a dean or admissions committee who will &quot;bend the rules&quot; for you for the sake of &quot;diversity.&quot; It would be better if the school were financially strapped because you represent not only a &quot;paying&quot; student but a future wealthy alumnus (hence the preference for &quot;Gulf&quot; States candidates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your GPA is a bit &quot;shy&quot; of the 2.5-3.0 requirement, but your work experience may make up for it. In your application, write about the most difficult project you successfully completed, and why you succeeded. In any event, you will probably come across as more mature than a recent graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should understand that as a foreign student, your application will probably be viewed differently from an American's. Universities will not be looking to you to add to the store of (Western) knowledge, but rather to &quot;take back&quot; what you know to your homeland, and hopefully &quot;go far&quot; there with what you've learned. Basically, you want a school that will take you with their &quot;last&quot; slot because you could someday be their &quot;ambassador to Egypt.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Egyptian computer science student with mediocre grades that I knew at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1970s played a prominent role in &quot;Arab Spring&quot; in 2011. That's what American universities are looking for from someone like you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T14:37:29.753" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:37:29.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26153" CreationDate="2014-07-20T16:10:29.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The genuine benefits I think all fall in the category of &quot;distinguishing oneself&quot; ... from other applicants to grad school, for example... much as with the IMO (Int'l Math Olympiad). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, an otherwise merely-very-good record (out of 100s?!?) can distinguish itself from others by a pretty-darn-good Putnam score. What does it &quot;really&quot; mean? Well, maybe not so much about higher-level mathematics, but the &quot;exclusivity&quot; of &quot;having pretty darn good Putnam score&quot; is undeniable. It's a thing that can be capsulized and &quot;explained&quot; to the public in PR, whereas it's harder to popularly explain progress or work in genuine mathematics (without severe distortions...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even at beginning-undergrad levels, kids who do at-all-well on the Putnam get substantial recognition &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; their math dept, often are treated more forgivingly of other quirks or inconsistent performances in routine coursework. (Given the stodginess of much of the routine undergrad curriculum, this is a good thing, since it is completely reasonable to not quite be able to consistently comply with the apparent requirements...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flip side is that there's a hazard here, as in all contest-math, that the quick gratification (if one receives it...) may make long-term study and research look less rewarding in comparison. In happy cases, one can &quot;warm&quot; to more prolonged projects, and more-delayed gratification. But quick contest-things like Putnam can be encouraging, and are noticeable pluses on a CV or grad school application. Just should not be over-interpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T16:10:29.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26162" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:54:53.620" Score="34" ViewCount="29935" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the field of computer science. It is often the case when I am reading a paper I start to wonder, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Wow stunning results, however, I would like to prove that.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;How exactly did he get these amazing results? He/she just wrote a rough overview of the real methodology used in this paper.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. As you can see, a lot of times the small things have a huge impact on the overall performance of the underlying methodology. Often they are not part of the paper or not revealed at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea would be to contact the paper writer, to ask for his research programs to recreate them and understand them. Can/should I do that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think that there are probably not a lot of researchers, who would let somebody else &lt;em&gt;&quot;look at their cards&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. What's your experience with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17751" LastEditorUserId="28605" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T17:12:01.440" LastActivityDate="2019-07-20T10:37:39.327" Title="Can I request the code behind a research paper from the author?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:01:11.737" Score="4" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a newbie in the PhD world (just started out). I have just finished my proposal and therefore committed to a problem I want to research and solve. However, my professor does not advise me much. However, when asking him he always tries to help me as good as possible, but that`s only the case if I am directly asking him about something. We have irregular meetings and I would like to use these meetings as good as possible, because I am fearing that organisatorial issues may come up later if I do not ask him now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what are the most important questions to ask him after the proposal stage? Any organisatorial stuff that will later be important for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17751" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T20:35:59.077" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T20:35:59.077" Title="What are the most important questions to your phd professor after the proposal stage" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26159" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:12:30.303" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask for the code. Please do, however, explain why you want it and what you intend to use it for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would be quite happy if someone contacted me about my research, and would try to give all the necessary tools to recreate my data. Especially so if I am not currently working on a follow up piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've asked for parameters, codes, procedures etc. several times from the authors when the description in a paper has been vague. I've had a lot of different responses: Some have plain ignored me, others have given me everything I asked for, and yet others have only obliged when I've suggested that I might be willing to put them as co-authors if I built upon their code in a way that leads to a publication. Finally, some have refused my request. This has happened for a number of reasons, for example those discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17781/why-do-many-talented-scientists-write-horrible-software&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask for code and say that you just want to verify some of the conclusions of the authors or use it as a reference for your own implementation, you can most typically expect a refusal or no reply. This, at least, is the experience I've had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T20:49:34.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26166" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:24:25.777" Score="10" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; I am interested in two fields, mathematical biology and cryptography. Is it okay to discuss both of these interests in my statement of purpose? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a junior majoring in mathematics. I have to write a statement of purpose so that I can be able to attend a mathematics conference. During the conference there will be a time where we can submit applications to graduate schools there. I'm not sure if it is for seniors only, but I am writing one just in case. I don't know which schools are going to be there. If I did I would just choose one depending on the degrees offered by each school, but I don't know who is going to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19780" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T20:50:15.657" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:27:14.903" Title="Is it okay to discuss multiple interests when writing statement of purpose for attending a conference?" Tags="&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:37:37.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a professor will bump up a student's grade because of things like creativity, improvement, or demonstrated hard work. So neither you nor your classmate actually know that a mistake was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there's a trust issue. Your classmate trusted you with their doubts about their grade. Now, sometimes violating such trust is the right thing to do (as in the case of outright cheating), but you need to have a very good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there's the question of impact. If grading in this class was not competitive, your classmate's grade has very little effect on anybody else. The only effect it could have is in competition for internships or jobs, but in many fields, GPA is not particularly important for such things. (I don't know about engineering.) Even if the class was graded competitively (some percent A's, some percent B's, and so on), it's rather unlikely that the professor will recompute everybody's grades after changing one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; Also, what will the instructor think of you? I guarantee they will not think, &quot;Wow, this person is really honest and conscientious&quot;. More likely, they'll think you're grade-obsessed and willing to hurt somebody else to get ahead, even if that's not your motivation. At best, they'll shake their head and go, &quot;Kids and grades these days...&quot;. If you have this instructor again, or if they tell their colleagues, this could come back to bite you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting these considerations together, it seems to me that you should not report the suspected error. (If your classmate is feeling courageous, they may want to ask.) Focus on your own grades (and, more importantly, learning), not other people's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastEditorUserId="12861" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T08:49:38.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T08:49:38.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26160" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:43:26.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: If you are not happy with the way your professor advises you: tell him. It is possible that he wants to help but does not know how or that he wants you to have as much freedom as you want. &#xA;However, it is also possible that you are expecting more guidance but you should (in his opinion) be able to figure it out yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the most important questions to ask him after the proposal&#xA;  stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(in no particular order)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think that the problem I want to solve is possible to solve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think it is interesting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know related literature I should read?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Explain what you are planning to do - as short as possible] Is it clear what I am planning to do or have I left out important steps? Do you think this is the best way to approach it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any organisatorial stuff that will be later important for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends too much on your situation, but that is another question you could ask (However, it may be possible that he does not know anything about that, some postgrad coordinator/secretary or whoever is responsible might be more helpful there. And, most importantly: ask the other PhD students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T18:43:26.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26163" CreationDate="2014-07-20T19:09:29.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it short and succinct, I would say a paragraph is good, unless otherwise stated in the application. If this means that you only have enough space to talk about one of those areas, then pick one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the conference is more geared towards pure mathematics, I would suggest expanding on your interest in cryptography. Otherwise, if it is an applied mathematics conference, then talk about your studies in biological math. Chances are schools which specialize in pure mathematics will attend a pure mathematics conference, and likewise for applied math. If you want to find out the universities who are attending, just ask an event coordinator. I'm sure there isn't any secrecy surrounding who is attending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18362" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T19:09:29.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2014-07-20T20:01:21.530" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it really strange that no one has mentioned the possible reputational benefits of using the university's website.   I don't think there's any way to write this without sounding like a snob, but I'll say it anyways; people are snobbier than they like to admit, and academia is probably worse than many other fields.  If you're at an at all prestigious institution (even actually, if you're at a not so prestigious one), you want to emphasize that affiliation.  Of course, your work has to stand on its own two feet ultimately, but people will be more open to it if they see you're connected to a serious institution, rather than some dude in his basement (remember, there's always something they could be doing rather than reading your paper).  Most academics keep a mental rolodex of where people are located for different purposes, like knowing where to send students or where they might like to visit.  Why make it harder for them to figure this out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of other commenters have mentioned that you should be building your own brand, not the universities, but I don't see how you separate those.  Usually, the university has a much stronger brand than you do, so you want to steal a bit of it for yourself.  If you're in a situation where this isn't the case, it's still a virtuous cycle where improving the department's reputation should ultimately pay you back, and shouldn't stop you from moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've certainly experienced the trouble of moving my website (many times), so I see the appeal of having a stable website that doesn't have to be moved, but why not both?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T11:11:15.583" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T11:11:15.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26163" CreationDate="2014-07-20T20:20:36.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to emphasize (as far as possible) the commonality of math between the two disciplines. For instance, biology may use a lot of differential equations, or even graph theory, and perhaps cryptography can too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be awesome if you came up with an application combining the two disciplines, e.g. using fingerprinting for crytography.  Your job in writing a statement of purpose is to convince people that you're a viable candidate for such role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T14:27:14.903" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:27:14.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26132" CreationDate="2014-07-20T20:44:38.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my &lt;em&gt;copy editor&lt;/em&gt; hat on, I'm certainly for including useful things in the biblio, especially DOI and online repo (arXiv and stuff) links are very useful, since more information in bibliography prevents typos and mistakes from being significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my &lt;em&gt;thesis oponent/reader&lt;/em&gt; hat on, I have the very same opinion, since I'm very likely interested in checking some of the references, mostly because they're unknown to me and I'm curious what they are about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my &lt;em&gt;article author&lt;/em&gt; hat on, I'm for as well, since it's more likely that people actually read my paper when you cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: The more information the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T20:50:34.150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T20:50:34.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26079" CreationDate="2014-07-20T22:13:57.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a sufficient way of documenting my materials and ensuring that any party who obtains them sees them as &quot;copyrighted&quot; or possessing whatever protection that is applied to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States (I have zero knowledge of copyright law in other places) the following applies &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; you actually hold the rights to your materials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can only get copyright protection for materials that you have fixed in a &quot;tangible medium.&quot;  For example, you can copyright your presentation slides or a video recording of your lecture; you cannot copyright your unwritten, unrecorded lectures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can only copyright something you &quot;created&quot;; if you compile existing public domain material in a way that requires no creativity, it is not eligible for copyright protection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can explicitly notify others that you &lt;em&gt;reserve all rights&lt;/em&gt; (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Exclusive_rights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rights of the copyright holder&lt;/a&gt;) to the materials with a written statement to that effect. For example, you can put &quot;Copyright 2014 0xhughes, all rights reserved&quot; on the footer of each page. (Note that you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to do this to get copyright interest in the materials, but it's a standard way of warning off potential infringers.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.help.d2l.arizona.edu/content/copyright-advice-lecture-notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a reference for this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first part of your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be wise or prudent to try and protect my course materials through some sort of copyrighting process of some sort, or something to that effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this has already been addressed by another answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your specific contract, you will have to seek further clarification from the university as to who holds the rights to the materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T22:32:40.577" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T22:32:40.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26197" CreationDate="2014-07-20T22:31:40.790" Score="9" ViewCount="8735" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a PhD student is working on a research project which is neither related to his thesis topic, nor supported by the university in which he is studying or a faculty member; Does he have the right to use his academic affiliation and contact email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two points here, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the student is using the university facilities, he may acknowledge that support in the Acknowledgement section of his paper not by using the university affiliation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The university in which the student is studying in doesn't necessarily want to be associated with whatever research he does in his free hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: Does this consideration apply to the researchers who work in a research institute or company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T22:46:38.453" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T01:40:59.970" Title="Should a PhD student use his academic affiliation for his publications which are not related to his thesis?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26171" CreationDate="2014-07-20T22:42:20.093" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First step: Ask your (1) advisor or (2) the department head or (3) both. Since you are not faculty, you may have to get permission to use the departmental affiliation for something that is outside your project. As long as this involves ethical and legitimate research I am sure it is not a problem. The department or university may have guidelines for publishing ethics which you may want to check as well. So, although there may not even be a problem, it is better to be safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T22:42:20.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2014-07-20T22:59:22.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that this is a popular opinion but if I was in this position I would feel cheated. Would I try to change that? NO!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is your life going to change if you report this? Will you see any benefit? I don't think that you will. Will your colleague see any benefit? I don't think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To recap: if you do something your life won't improve, the life of your colleague will most likely be worse than it was prior to your action. Essentially any action can only cause harm. Nobody will benefit from you speaking up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR nothing good can come from you speaking up, at best nothing will happen, most likely something negative will happen to your colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19784" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T22:59:22.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26103" CreationDate="2014-07-20T23:14:11.610" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't bother with further publication.  You've pretty much nailed the issue:  search engines work quite well to &quot;winnow the chaff&quot; (to quote Rivest) when the right questioner comes along, and good security through the Petabytes of obscurity when they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T23:42:07.157" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T23:42:07.157" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2014-07-20T23:22:23.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The student should talk with their department and let a professor advise, acting on behalf of their Institution. This would be to help the Department find interesting work by students as well as helping the student with professional advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, they can list the university they are enrolled in without suggesting that it was &lt;em&gt;sponsored&lt;/em&gt; by the university. -- unless the University has explicitly set policies otherwise (for some boneheaded reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T23:22:23.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T00:46:49.523" Score="8" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in finding the ISI-indexed papers for a given institition X. This would be any ISI-indexed paper where one or more authors are affiliated with X. Is this doable and are there any guidelines for how to do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T00:17:04.343" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T07:11:12.163" Title="How to find the ISI-indexed papers for a specific institution?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26171" CreationDate="2014-07-21T01:45:47.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can just be published as &quot;unsponsored research&quot;.  If they value their relationships highly though, they should dialog with their professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T01:50:52.423" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T01:50:52.423" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T02:18:24.380" Score="10" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a colleague's CV which lists an &quot;Excellent Foreign Scholar&quot; scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China.  I am not familiar with this program, nor is google particularly helpful for me as a complete non-speaker of Chinese.  Is anyone familiar with this program, and what it would entail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19788" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T05:21:10.977" Title="&quot;Excellent foreign scholar&quot; from Chinese National Science Foundation" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;asia&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15806" CreationDate="2014-07-21T04:03:13.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be immature curriculum development or mundane matters such as staffing and building architecture.  In any case, computer engineering has to have some focus on digital electronics, while electrical engineering with analog electronics, and then computer science need not focus at the hardware level at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These will be very specific to the personality of the department, it's not really a detriment either way as long as their emphasis matches your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T04:03:13.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2014-07-21T07:00:43.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are trying to find a design solution for a technical problem that does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention SEO as your primary concern (for whatever reason¹). So when you move your professional website to another institution, (have your admin) put a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;301 (Moved Permanently)&lt;/a&gt; in your old website's &lt;code&gt;.htaccess&lt;/code&gt; and search engines will automatically update their databases accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes that you can keep your old (sub)domain/page at least for a few months; as far as I can tell, this is common. Many groups/departments maintain lists to alumni at their current position, anyway; it is as much advertisement for them as it is for you (if you're good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you can still use one domain as an alias for the other. Which direction you choose is probably irrelevant in most cases. I'd argue that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important to have &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; at an institution URL so that you have a representative address that looks official and leaves no doubt that you are, indeed, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; John Doe from the University of Illustriousness and not some dude who happend to be the first to register john-doe.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a researcher, I figure that your publications are your business cards. These are indexed in other places and your moving does not change how they can be found (and thank the powers that be for that!). Search engines pick up on your new website in a matter of days (for some you can even trigger indexing yourself) which should be enough, assuming that there is little more value but contact data besides the publications there. But ymmv.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T07:10:57.270" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T07:10:57.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26189" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-21T09:23:17.103" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T09:23:17.103" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T09:23:17.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26190" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-21T09:23:17.103" Score="0" Body="The authors, students and advisors contribution to an academic publication. Questions like how much contribution is needed to be a co-author of a paper best fits to this tag." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T16:17:36.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T16:17:36.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13192" CreationDate="2014-07-21T09:30:01.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier journal finder service website&lt;/a&gt; you can find some data about the acceptance rate, but only for journals published by Elsevier (of course). You have to fill the name of your article and add the abstract, than you will find the acceptance rates between the results (together with Impact factor, acceptance time etc.). Unfortunately, you can´t just browse among journals, you will see only the proposed journals which (maybe) suits to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T09:30:01.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26103" CreationDate="2014-07-21T10:05:30.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Submit it to a conference that publishes a proceeding.  Check the ACM SIGs.  There are at least a couple that might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T10:05:30.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24053" CreationDate="2014-07-21T11:55:25.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it can. If you need to provide justification on the method that you used it would be helpful I'm sure. However like you say this method is used for interview data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess (but obviously don't know for sure) that your survey data might be quite minimal/basic if it features at the end of a more structured questionnaire and although there are similarities with many qualitative data analysis techniques, I'd imagine you'd be looking to organise your open-ended responses into something more manageable, perhaps grouping together responses reflecting a particular view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following article may be of help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://qhr.sagepub.com/content/15/9/1277&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hsieh, H.F., Shannon, S. E.; &lt;strong&gt;Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;, Qual Health Res November 2005 vol. 15 no. 9 1277-1288. doi: 10.1177/1049732305276687&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19807" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T12:31:02.967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T12:31:02.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26103" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:08:10.440" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't know where to publish something, but nonetheless it is of an appropriate standard and you consider it worth sharing, why not posting it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;? You won't get prestige just for submitting, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people can find it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can easily point to it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is timestamped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T13:23:32.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T13:23:32.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26196" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:18:05.123" Score="1" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website of a conference that will take place soon (next month), offers social media buttons that should redirect the website visitor to the corresponding social media page or account, but when I click the Facebook button I get redirected to &quot;Sorry, this page isn't available&quot; and when I click the twitter button I get redirected to &quot;Sorry, that page doesn't exist!&quot; messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9488" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T17:31:01.290" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T17:31:01.290" Title="Malfunctioning social media buttons on a conference website" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26195" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:31:33.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say this is &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt;. That said, it need not raise a red flag or suggest that this would be a predatory conference or something you must stay away from. It doesn't inspire confidence, but it doesn't need to hurt confidence much either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a relatively minor issue and the kind of thing that is easy for the person setting up the conference website to miss in testing. Keep in mind that many prestigious conference have websites set up by academics volunteering to do so as part of service to their academic community, who are very busy, and for whom building robust websites is not their full time job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; predatory and sham conferences. If the conference is archival, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beall's List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers&lt;/a&gt; and search around the web for information on the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Email the organizers to tell them about the issue. You might even learn something about the credibility of the conference by who responds, and how. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T02:13:44.293" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T02:13:44.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26171" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:42:55.993" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The affiliation serves two purposes: acknowledgement and identification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it is not part of your thesis research, if you are receiving resources &lt;em&gt;of any kind&lt;/em&gt; from your institution, you should list them as your affiliation.  These resources include money (whether directly related to your research or not), computing equipment, internet access, printer access, electricity, phones, faculty and student colleagues (whether coauthors or not), library access (either physical or electronic), whiteboards, local coffee shops/bars, and the general intellectual atmosphere that encourages you to do research in the first place. You can afford to be generous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the affiliation helps identify you as an author, especially if you have a common name, or you publish other papers with the same affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T13:42:55.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26201" CreationDate="2014-07-21T14:42:58.030" Score="13" ViewCount="1863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided on the area I want to contribute to, and have found a basic but huge problem for my research. Now my professor told me to redefine the area, so to break the, at the moment, huge area down into subquestions to create an interesting closed problem, which is addressed by my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I have come up with several different questions I have found. However, I do not see any pattern where these questions are related to each other. My questions also seem quite loose and do not define the &lt;em&gt;closed problem&lt;/em&gt; I am aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related question on this site is &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5853/how-to-come-up-with-research-ideas&quot;&gt;how to come up with research ideas&lt;/a&gt;. My question is not about how to come up with ideas in the first place, but how to define these ideas so that they can practically become a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, any suggestions how to come up with several subproblems, which define a closed corpus for my thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17751" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T05:53:15.973" Title="How to come up with research questions that are well-defined and suitable in scope and relatedness for a thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26200" CreationDate="2014-07-21T15:47:16.550" Score="18" ViewCount="2587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a paper in which I have many topics to describe. It would not be productive to read and cite papers or even books on the topics because I just have to describe them very briefly as an introduction to some follow up topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;private&quot; use I would just use the corresponding Wikipedia articles but that is considered bad practice in academic papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do you have any tips how to get credible definitions of and/or short introductions into (in my case computer science) topics without searching through dozens of papers/books for some useful/credible parts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19813" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T20:24:20.643" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T00:39:03.223" Title="How to find credible sources for a general reference?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26199" CreationDate="2014-07-21T16:01:06.620" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to use books for this sort of thing. For example, if I need a definition of &quot;data mining&quot;, I do a Google Books search for that term. A book about &quot;data mining&quot; is going to define the term in the introduction or first chapter, so it will usually be in the pages that are part of the free preview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to look at the citations used in the Wikipedia article itself, and then look up those articles. Wikipedia tends to be pretty good at citing the key article(s) for a particular subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's helpful to know a few online cite-worthy dictionaries that you can search for common definitions. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://plato.stanford.edu/index.html&quot;&gt;The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy&lt;/a&gt; is useful for philosophical terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page&quot;&gt;Scholarpedia&lt;/a&gt;, which is a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia. It's not as extensive as Wikipedia. However, in my field at least, the articles tend to be written by well-known names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T16:01:06.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26198" CreationDate="2014-07-21T16:21:04.067" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sort of thing only evolves as the product of your exhaustive reading, and discussions with your supervisors and peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, at some point, your supervisor will say something like: &quot;before you can really get into your research, just resolve this little thing - it should be fairly trivial.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your thesis, right there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T16:21:04.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T16:22:44.623" Score="23" ViewCount="3300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my PhD thesis and have to write a monograph based on my publications. To prevent that I plagiarize myself, I came up with the idea to automatically check my thesis against my publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there already a tool for this work-flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Input:&lt;/strong&gt; PDf of thesis and a pile of PDFs;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Output:&lt;/strong&gt; annotated PDF of thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19817" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T08:12:09.103" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T08:55:21.323" Title="Plagiarism-checker to prevent self-plagiarism" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26199" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:10:52.823" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;textbooks on a given subject,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;review (rather than research) articles on a given subject,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;key papers (e.g. the one where a given subject was introduced for the first time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good places to start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;http://scholar.google.com/&lt;/a&gt; and look for general and (typically) highly cited books or papers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;em&gt;references&lt;/em&gt; sections on Wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T20:22:53.317" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T20:22:53.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:43:13.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should do both, but in a different way that has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26187/5962&quot;&gt;suggested by Raphael&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26141/5962&quot;&gt;by rch&lt;/a&gt;. Both of these other suggestions involve doing some sort of invisible &quot;redirect&quot; from one page (almost always the temporary institutional page) to the permanent page on your domain. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26140/5962&quot;&gt;RoboKaren suggested having two pages&lt;/a&gt; which is the closest to my answer. I suggest you should create a page on your institution but have it be a small &quot;soft&quot; redirect that asks people to click through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep an institutional page but keep it very simple. Have the page give the following information (at most):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short narrative biography of you and your research or teaching interests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A nice recent picture of you. [Nice, but optional.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A link to your CV on your website. [Optional]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of 2-3 recent selected papers. [Optional]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A very prominent link to your actual homepage on your domain&lt;/strong&gt;. I do this with text like, &quot;For more detail on my research and teaching, visit full academic homepage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Webster is correct in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26130/should-i-host-my-academic-website-under-my-institution-domain-or-under-a-domain&quot;&gt;citing the importance of association with your institution for status reasons&lt;/a&gt; In order to get the benefit, put the name and the logo and/or seal for your institution prominently on your personal page in a way that makes it clear that you are associated with the institution but also clear that it is your personal page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I have been doing for years. One benefit is that many institutions make updating institutional pages tricky (e.g., you need to go through a webmaster). This is a nice compromise in this situation because you only need to update the biography, picture, etc. infrequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:43:13.203" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26282" CreationDate="2014-07-21T19:43:56.630" Score="25" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read a number of guides on tips to do when proofreading as well as some questions on this website. They all refer to leaving some time between writing and proofreading. This time can vary from 5 minutes as per &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/561/01/&quot;&gt;Purdue online writing lab&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even a five-minute break is productive because it will help you get some distance from what you have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Put the paper aside for a few hours, days, or weeks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/editing-and-proofreading/&quot;&gt;The writing centre-UNC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is has there been any scientific work/papers done that gives a result on an optimum time to leave between writing and self-proofreading? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T10:44:57.347" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T10:44:57.347" Title="Is there an optimum time to leave between writing and self-proofreading?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26199" CreationDate="2014-07-21T20:07:22.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the idea of referencing books. You may not want to buy a book for each topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest using libraries. Most people writing papers have access to a university or other reference library. Many will let you go in and read books there, even if you are not affiliated with the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10220" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T20:07:22.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26199" CreationDate="2014-07-21T20:26:48.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need not discard a Wikipedia definition if it is one that you like.  Print sources can be equally sketchy as anyone can print books (cf. &quot;Fart Proudly&quot;, by Ben Franklin). It sounds like you merely want correctness, not &lt;em&gt;sources&lt;/em&gt; of definitions anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the definition is fairly accurate, just cite it as you would a print source, but (like with all internet resources) give the date and time along with your citation, since the Internet can change out from under you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it's not really academics who have a problem with Wikipedia, it's the publishers and ever since the printing press, they've spent a good while curating influence on the minds of the Establishment.  But obviously, with the Internet, it all needs re-addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T20:40:24.227" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T20:40:24.227" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T21:21:15.083" Score="5" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted an article for an IEEE congress in the field of Software Engineering, the congress was categorized as a type B congress according to the Australian ranking (I do not remember the exact name).&#xA;I went to the workshop sessions because my article was accepted for one of those, but not the main conference, and it was pretty lame. The reasons were the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people were given a presentation of topics not already finished it up, with a lot of holes in their respective research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people were introducing their doctoral research proposals, which were in a a very initial developing point; I have been also a conference review and I would rejected those works straight ahead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people attending were no caring of what has being said there, also some of the people in charge were almost sleeping during some points of the presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose that a workshop was for sharing ideas between the academic community, and not just for the sake of accepting some bad made papers to get money while other researchers want to do the things right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I forget to mention that in one session, the chair of the workshop was the lecturer in charge of one of the lame papers; I do not want to think bad, but it seems like he influence the acceptance of that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case I am really disappointed about this type of congresses, I cannot imagine how lame it could be a type C conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T14:58:51.523" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T14:58:51.523" Title="Disappointed about workshop, are all like that?" Tags="&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26210" CreationDate="2014-07-21T22:10:50.697" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your frustration, but workshops are not for seminal research. It is usually for hosting / presenting papers that cannot make it to major conferences or provide a venue for very small and specialized areas of research. This is not a bad thing. Especially in CS, papers that are technically correct and well-written sometimes get rejected in major conferences, due to the high rejection rates. In this cases, workshops provide a alternative venue to patent those results and lower the authors' sense of rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many research projects (in EU but maybe this applies to USA as well) have the obligation to organize workshops during the duration of the project. In those cases, it is normal that most of the submissions are from project partners. This explains the little &quot;inbreeding&quot; you encountered. Also, since each workshop has a minimal number of papers that should be presented, in cases of low number of submissions, it is inevitable that some less-good papers get accepted. Also, although peer review is still formal (and not blind to bad papers depending on their authors, as you imply) on those workshops, the requirements for presentation are less strict than major conferences and marginal papers might actually make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are all workshops bad? No they are not. It is actually easy to tell them apart (most of the cases). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they co-hosted with major conferences  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they take place for many years  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are the PC chairs (this year and previous years) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How good are the papers that got accepted in the previous years?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these four criteria are a strong indication of the quality of the workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A general advice. Many researchers (not excluding myself) tend to overvalue their research in comparison to others. Since your paper also got rejected for the major conference, that also implies that it was not that seminal or exceptional (which is of course OK). To someone else's eyes the comments you make about the &quot;other&quot; papers might also apply to yours as well. So, talking about lame papers and workshops (especially if you express those ideas publicly) will not make you a lot of friends and academia is really a very small world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T22:23:10.323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T22:23:10.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T23:56:06.043" Score="11" ViewCount="5813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly early on in my PhD research. A few months ago I submitted an abstract to a conference, which was accepted. The conference is coming up soon, and my research has taken a slight turn away from my accepted abstract (still same field, collaborators, etc...--just asking slightly different questions and taking a slightly different approach).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, am I obligated to put the program-accepted abstract on my poster? If I am, should I try to tie my poster content as closely to that accepted abstract as possible? Or can I present poster content that would've been more appropriate for a different abstract? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or can I use a different abstract on my poster, and thus tie the content more closely to what my current research path is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about keeping the original abstract in its entirely, but appending it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm in the field of astrobiology (probably most similar to the fields of geology or astronomy if I had to relate it to a more conventional field)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19834" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T20:04:41.450" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T21:51:14.793" Title="My paper's content is slightly changed from the abstract I have submitted to a conference, can I edit the accepted abstract on my poster?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26215" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26217" CreationDate="2014-07-22T00:07:48.927" Score="20" ViewCount="1960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in mathematics. I recently found a fundamental error in a method used in a series of papers. My adviser confirmed that. One of those wrong papers was authored by a researcher who had several works with my adviser. I found that this error can be fixed using an approach which I found in some old works. So I started to write an article about this. I am just asking if I should tell my adviser to contact him and inform him about this error. Or contact all the authors of those papers. Or just continue writing my paper and cite their works explaining how their approach is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19563" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T02:12:28.637" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T02:12:28.637" Title="How to correct a fundamental error in a series of papers made by a colleague of your adviser?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26199" CreationDate="2014-07-22T00:39:03.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read abstracts of journal articles I can find on JSTOR. &#xA;Abstracts generally serve as concise summaries of entire papers. They're also written by the author(s) of the article, so you know the emphasis will be on the core of the topic, not on side-note information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19836" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T00:39:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26215" CreationDate="2014-07-22T00:59:45.457" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to your adviser as soon as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm a bit surprised that in your previous interactions your adviser did not already tell you whether and how he planned to contact the author(s) of the fallacious papers -- especially given that at least one was your adviser's collaborator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my advice (it comes from a pure mathematician, if that is relevant to you):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend up to one work day writing up a careful description of the error.  If a result is false, give a counterexample.  If you can give one specific, easy to verify counterexample, start with that.  Then if you have a further sense of the &quot;terrain of counterexamples&quot; -- e.g. if you know the result is never true, or you know that it is true precisely under some additional hypothesis, then include that.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of this is that in many cases what we perceive to be errors in mathematical work stem from misunderstandings between the reader and the author, including different use of the same terminology.  I would say that approximately half of all the errors I think I see in my colleagues' work turn out to have such innocent explanations.  Another big percentage of suspected errors stem from misunderstandings of the part of the reader: it is one thing if you come across a result that contradicts another result you have already written up.  However, if you are just reading then the odds are fair that the cognitive dissonance in your mind is not actually caused by a mistake in the paper: for instance when I read other people's work, I try to do so with an eye towards its relationships to my own work and my own problems.  As a proud student of the &quot;Richard P. Feynman school of situational genius&quot; I heartily endorse this approach, but sometimes it turns out that what I think is an error is due to an entanglement of &quot;my situation&quot; and the author's.  Finally, when an error has actually been made, there is usually (very understandable) psychological resistance on the part of the author.  This is why it helps to arrive with individual, crisp counterexamples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the theorem is correct but the proof is faulty, the situation may be more nebulous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has different standards of what constitutes an acceptable proof.  Moreover, mathematicians are still human beings, and the percentage of inessential slipups we make in the course of our written work is non-negligible.  Most people do not appreciate their expository flaws and bone-headed but unimportant mistakes being taken as evidence that their proofs are incorrect.  In fact, where possible, when you claim that someone's proof is faulty it is an honorable thing to give them a chance to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case you speak of a &quot;fundamental error&quot;, which I guess means that it is worse than the relatively innocuous mistakes described above.  Do you mean though that the theorems are still true, and you know this because you know how to prove them?  If so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend up to two or three work days writing up as much as possible of what you feel is a correct proof.  If you can only give a sketch, so be it, but try to include all the ideas which convince you that your argument is correct.  Your target audience includes people who are deeply committed to and knowledgeable in this particular area: you can write accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would meet with your advisor as soon as you have written each document.  (If you can write both in one day, great.)  Then the question becomes obvious and unavoidable: what should you do with these documents?  If he can vouch for their accuracy, I think you will certainly want to contact the author of the flawed paper, but whether to do this yourself or through your adviser is something you should ask him about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I place time limitations on these tasks?  It is because of the following important observation, which in my understanding is somewhat peculiar to mathematics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the author's proof is wrong and yours is right, your corrected proof may or may not be publishable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many nuances here for me to go over them all, but just one quick thing: you say that you fixed the result using material from &lt;em&gt;old works&lt;/em&gt;.  Because of this, it is possible (perhaps; I don't know the situation) that the authors and/or the editors in question will still regard the mistake as a &quot;slip up&quot; (even if you do not).  A math paper which does not contain &quot;new results&quot;, &quot;new ideas&quot; or &quot;new techniques&quot; may be very hard to publish...let me readily admit that this practice is not entirely fair or wise, but it most certainly is extant.  So you don't want to spend substantial work time on what may end up being a corrigendum written by the author but identifying you as the provider of both the problem and the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T01:07:40.893" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T01:07:40.893" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26214" CreationDate="2014-07-22T01:45:02.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in astronomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of anyone in authority at a conference complain about a slight deviation from a submitted abstract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest writing your poster on your new direction, with a corresponding abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also submit your amended abstract to the LOC of the conference as soon as possible. Mention that your work has taken a slight turn but the main topic and co-authors are unchanged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is time, the LOC can include your amended abstract on any web-page or hard-copy documentation. Apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause the LOC and ask nicely that they make these amendments, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if these documents cannot be altered, I doubt that anyone is going to get upset that your new abstract is not exactly the same that you originally submitted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T01:45:02.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T02:50:25.620" Score="4" ViewCount="1866" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forgive me if this is not the right place to ask pedagogical questions, but it seemed the most appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a TA for a programming/CS course. This is my first time teaching recitation and I'm not really sure what the best approach is. What I've been doing is covering what the professor asked me to, with a mix of lecturing (which I don't really like as I feel the students get enough of that) and me solving problems on the board with their help (which is OK but it's usually the same students answering the questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of several different methods of recitation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lecturing (elucidating ideas or going over proofs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solving problems with the students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a class discussion, which sounds great, but coming up with discussion topics for this type of course is difficult, I feel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the students solve worksheets (which seems unnecessary considering they already have enough homework)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or having them work together in groups to solve more difficult problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide insight for which of these ideas are most effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further information: It's a summer course, so the pace is pretty fast. Furthermore there are three recitations a week, each an hour and a half. It's the second CS course, so it's mostly programming (data structures and safe code) with a bit of theory thrown in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T14:18:10.727" Title="What to do in recitation?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27597" CreationDate="2014-07-22T03:19:47.430" Score="16" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen one extreme of the spectrum, where a person conducts great research without even attending college. For a student to become an independent researcher, how much is on the advisor's shoulder and how much on the student? I know the answers may be all over the map. Just curious what your takes are on this question. Anecdotes and personal examples are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed some professors are more successful in supervising students to become independent researchers (approximated by the number/ratio of alumni who land research jobs) than others, even though their research portfolios and student qualities are similar (e.g., in the same department). That's one reason I bring up this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T06:59:51.253" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T14:26:46.393" Title="How important is advisor's supervision for a Ph.D. student to be an independent researcher?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26202" CreationDate="2014-07-22T03:20:16.673" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mendeley&lt;/a&gt; while doing your edit and make use of its robust functionalities which will prevent most plagiarism as it helps in annotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19576" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T03:20:16.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26223" CreationDate="2014-07-22T03:33:29.550" Score="11" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several friends, all graduate students at decent universities, who are providing &lt;strong&gt;paid&lt;/strong&gt; graduate school application guidance services, where they help the future graduate applicants stand better chances to get admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, I regarded this as a 100% OK behavior, until I realize that they are very sneaky about their services, as if the services are something underhand. Some of them even provide the services anonymously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that they may leak some information obtained from the admission committee to their clients. However, I feel that they can neither obtain any critical admission information nor make admission decisions, since after all, they are just graduate students. But why are they hiding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are such services unethical? If so, how will the school deal with such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="8079" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T04:04:27.007" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T04:04:27.007" Title="Is it ethical for a graduate student to provide juniors with paid graduate school application guidance?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26222" CreationDate="2014-07-22T04:02:34.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have largely hit the nail on the head in your own post. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with charging for valuable experiential information. In fact, this really could be an extension to charging for 'edits' or tutoring. Really if they are providing non-sensitive information regarding the procedures and what the admissions panel look for - then I don't see any major ethical quandaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, you highlight a key point. They could be leaking information explicitly obtained from the panel (that I assume they would have delivered in confidence). If this is the case, then I imagine it should be intuitive what the schools reaction would be. The reason this is unethical (from my POV) is that they are no longer sharing experiential information, but providing them with explicitly 'leaked' outcomes that would give a disproportionate advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By analogy with the edit example. It would be fine for a tutor to edit and provide feedback on a students work. To the majority of people, I think they are aware this occurs and there are no ethical problems. In fact, a tutor might go so far as to show them example assignments. In fact, my department actively encourages students and postgrads to seek and help out students, respectively. However, if the tutor provided the marking key (obtained from another postgrad running the unit) and gave this to the student - that is blatantly unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19844" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T04:02:34.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26231" CreationDate="2014-07-22T09:00:06.993" Score="8" ViewCount="1413" Body="&lt;p&gt;We received a report on our paper (it's the 2nd version already). The referee writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proofs are correct. However, I'm not completely satisfied with the style in which the paper is written and the authors have to work more on the &lt;strong&gt;essay&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what we can do with that. We are not native speakers and we did our best to use as good English as we can. I'm not sure how we should respond to that, since currently it seems to be the only thing that prevents us from finishing the referee process. We implemented the minor corrections suggested by this referee and as well the remarks by the language editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas how to proceed in such a case, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T13:56:27.930" Title="How to &quot;work on the essay&quot; as a non-native speaker" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26446" CreationDate="2014-07-22T09:47:45.663" Score="7" ViewCount="2186" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the differences between papers that are chosen for presentation vs those which are accepted for poster presentation? Is one less reputable than the other one? How does a committee select received manuscripts for these two categories?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T22:47:52.087" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T13:08:37.447" Title="How does a committee select received manuscripts for poster presentation?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2014-07-22T09:55:00.360" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The referee is obviously satisfied with the &quot;scientific&quot; part of the publication but points out the narrative itself. I don't think that your English language skills are the deciding in the factor in that matter. You could write the same paper in your native language, let it someone translate it as it is and still get the same comment. As the referee puts it, it's the style that has issues. You should try to formulate your paper in a way which not only lists the discovered facts one after the another, but attempts to guide the reader's thought process towards your idea and results. Make it more interesting and engaging. Your language should be eloquent, your narrative consistent, your thought flow constant; the paper itself serves as a way to reflect the scientist's mind and as such it does not consist only of definitions, lemmas, theorems, proofs, citations, figures, etc., because a significant part is the skill (or art) to mold them into an article that readers will enjoy reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is really only the lack of English skills, try to write it up in your native language and consult some professional to translate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not the case, don't be discouraged, good writing is a skill and can be learned and trained. Unfortunately, I've encountered many students (and some experienced scientists) who struggle with this. I personally blame it on the lack of reading of non-scientific material, like novels, articles, philosophical works, etc. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should style your paper like an adventure novel, but, as I mentioned before, writing is a skill, and it is best honed by being in contact with other well written materials. This way, you'll broaden your vocabulary, improve the ability to express your thoughts through text and, if you focus on English materials, become more proficient in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T09:55:00.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2014-07-22T11:21:20.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comment from the reviewer may mean;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Rearrange the ideas in your paper. For example, the order in which the things are explained may not make sense to the reviewer. Note that this is completely subjective thing, one order of ideas may make sense to one person but not so much to some other person. So, Just try some re-arrangement of idea and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The story may be weak. I would suggest to start the story with some ground work by highlighting the existing similar work by other researchers in your field. Then gradually move towards what you are offering in your paper. The rest of the paper will then explain the details of your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just my suggestion. You know the best what is good for you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19855" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T11:21:20.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25770" CreationDate="2014-07-22T11:44:16.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation. In my case, I wanted to have some/full break from academia. My ph.d is almost done, only public defence is pending. I had to decide whether to stay in the academia or move to the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my approach; I personally like building stuff and therefore biased towards the industry. I have enjoyed the time in academia but might not be able to keep myself motivated for long. Thus, I thought, either I move now or otherwise it will be too late. I am already 31 and its now or never kind of situation for me. So, I decided to move out as I found a job. The search still in progress for like 4 months now, had few interviews and perhaps land on a job in a month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First rule, be honest to your university and supervisor. I informed my supervisor right away that I am looking for opportunities outside the university and will leave as I get one. He was very supportive and also offered to help me in making CV etc. It is quite normal to take this path, academia to industry, for a ph.d student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask yourself, &quot;Do I like industry?&quot; if Yes then go for it, in a reasonable fashion. Stay at the university, find a job and then move out :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19855" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T11:44:16.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T12:08:15.853" Score="3" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done my masters in Computer Science, but did not receive much support in the masters program to get the final project published. I am presently working as a software developer in the industry while also trying to perform independent research on a few topics which I have in mind when out of the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently completed some research ad derived new method for data clustering based on a heuristic which is novel idea as far as I can tell. I have shown it to work better with respect to only one metric with a few other algorithms which is of the closest type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been allowed to use my employer's organization address and email for correspondence, but my organization has told that there should be a disclaimer that my organization has nothing to do with this research. If I do not use this address, I need to give my current address. I am not sure if I can give my university address at this point, as the entire research was done after I graduated. At the university I had access to journal subscriptions for which appropriate acknowledgments are given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously I have not published any peer-reviewed work anywhere and I am the only author of this manuscript. I am not sure how shall I proceed. Submitting to journal such as Elsevier will be single blind, and as I am trying to publish as a new independent author, will my submission be subject to biases based on my lack of previous publications? Or shall I go for a conference with double blind review process? Also the 7 ~ 10 page mark for conference is difficult to maintain without removing vital components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some information about the work. The work was not complex, but is unique and it is shown to work on several well known data-sets. The main topic is data clustering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I proceed with publication?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adding information in reply to @Nahkk's comment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no previous academic experience. I have shown this to one professor from a different research interest domain because none of the professors from the paper's domain were interested in this topic, surprisingly. I have also asked for suggestion from a person working in this field. One of them suggests to try for a journal and another suggests a conference first, then work and improve the algorithm do exhaustive tests and then go for a journal later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T16:47:25.153" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T16:47:25.153" Title="New author, independent research, scope of publishing" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27558" CreationDate="2014-07-22T13:32:34.323" Score="94" ViewCount="48674" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student I had free access to thousands of scholarly articles through my universities in databases/archives such as JSTOR, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar, Econlit, PubMed, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With no subscription, glancing at the full text of any 1 article costs anywhere from $20 to $60. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any one project or paper I'd use at least five to ten papers and I'd skim over the full text of many more. For a meta-analysis of the literature, I'd go over dozens and perhaps even over a hundred papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a non-student the cost is extremely prohibitive to continue reading past the free abstracts. I don't want to pirate the papers or give up reading them, but I can't find any reasonable alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any monthly subscription I could sign up for to give me student-like/institutional access to papers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27558/15723&quot;&gt;community wiki answer&lt;/a&gt; has been added to this question to provide a list of solutions to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T22:11:21.090" Title="Is there an affordable way for non-students to subscribe to multi-journals/archives?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;literature&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2014-07-22T13:42:40.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comment could mean two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a problem with the way your article is organized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a problem with your English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by looking at other recent articles in that journal, and see if the organization of your article is different from those. If that is the case, I would rewrite (probably with a lot of &quot;copy and paste&quot;) the article such that the form mimics the typical form in that journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a collegue who is a native speaker, you can ask her or him to look at your article. It is probably too much to ask for her or him to completely edit the article, but (s)he can give you an idea whether your English needs to be improved. If that is the case, then I would probably end up hiring someone. There are usually some people who do this freelance. It pays to ask around if someone has done so recently and whether or not (s)he can recommend someone. Also look around in your institution: sometimes you are lucky and there is someone in your institution whose job it is to correct English (that is the case in my current institution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14471" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T13:42:40.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-22T13:55:01.250" Score="64" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many papers are freely available on authors' websites, and preprint servers (use search engine to find those). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write to the authors, asking for copies. Majority of academics are happy when their work is read, and will send you a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your public library might subscribe to more than you suspect. Check it out. When I was a student in a community college, my local public library subscribed to JSTOR for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Become a student or an academic again :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="609" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T13:55:01.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:05:23.030" Score="22" ViewCount="1608" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I know my results are significant enough to be published? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a physicist and I have found a very common mistake that appears in every paper in my area of interest. I thought it would be nice to let the people know it should be corrected. However, it is a very simple mistake, very basic math. I thought at first I could publish that as a short letter, but then I realized that I am unsure what actions the significance of the error(s) warrant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do I know whether an error is important enough to write a letter to the publication's journal?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19863" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T16:47:32.410" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T03:03:32.743" Title="How to decide whether a mistake is sufficiently relevant to publish about it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26241" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:16:16.173" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should talk to colleagues from that area of interest to check whether it actually is a mistake or maybe a common generalization that, although not perfectly correct, is still 'good' in the systems that were discussed in the papers. Also writing a mail to the authors of said papers is a better idea before writing to the journals without any cross-check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17639" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T14:16:16.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26219" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:18:10.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I train graduate students to lead biology discussion sections, but the philosophy should transfer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your instincts are excellent - students do not need more lectures. What they often need help with is figuring out what they do not understand, and learning how to overcome being &quot;stuck.&quot; That, and practice with feedback. Some suggestions, particularly since summer courses are so fast. I'm going to assume they have homework, and that the homework can be worked on in a discussion environment (you will not be &quot;doing their homework for them&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instruct students to bring their homework problem set. Look over the problems yourself the night before, and determine the easy ones from the hard ones, and make notes to yourself where students are likely to get stuck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When students arrive, tell them to start work on a difficult problem. Plan on giving them 5-10 minutes -- whatever they need until many of them slow down. Walk around as they work and just see how they choose to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After several are stuck (it may take you practice to figure out what question to use to get this level of difficulty), have them get into groups of three and compare their techniques and what they found difficult. Walk around again and ask questions like, &quot;Tell me how far you are. Can you show me a part that is difficult? Can you get out your lecture notes and find the section relevant to this problem?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually at this point you will see a sticky point that more than one student is wrestling with. Now is a great time to pull everyone's attention back to the front of the room and you can work through that problem (or one similar) and answer questions for 5-10 minutes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have students return to the problem and complete it. Have them go back and do a simpler problem on their own to reinforce.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rinse and repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using discussion time like this makes students happy because they are getting their homework done. Smarter students help slower students, which keeps them engaged. You as an instructor learn a lot about what students don't understand, which is often a complete surprise. Plus, it's active and not boring and doesn't require a huge amount of prep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this gets really dull, you can have small-group competitions where students have a single sheet of scratch paper and have to respond to a prompt you flash on the screen. I like to split the room into the right half (five groups of 3 students) and left half (five groups of 3 students) and have competitions like this for &quot;basics&quot; material. The half of the room with the groups with the most right answers gets a point for each round of competition. Everyone participates, but the answer is the group's and so shame for wrong answers is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T14:18:10.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29693" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:28:13.900" Score="3" ViewCount="1835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most students I know in computer science are funded either by the NSF or their professor's startup package [in the US]. But it also isn't completely unheard of for a company to give a gift/grant to a professor to fund a student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seem to have a few implications, such as the student's dissertation being tied to the company's interests and the student would probably be expected to work onsite each summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students I have known to do this, go on to industry after graduating (not necessarily the company that funded them). This brings up the following questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would a hiring committee at a university consider the close ties to industry a negative?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the student continues publishing regularly, is there anything about this scenario that can hurt one's research career?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Suresh's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8036/746&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8034/746&quot;&gt;Will self funding a PhD hurt employment chances?&lt;/a&gt; is very relevant, but I think there are some different obstacles for industry funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T19:25:30.467" Title="Will an industry funded PhD hurt one's research career?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;industry&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26241" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:39:29.847" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many journals have special formats for such remarks, usually called &lt;em&gt;comments.&lt;/em&gt; Though these are usually directed at single papers, there might be journals out there which do not impose such a requirement. Also, as such requirements are not carved in stone, you might just contact the journals which published most of the papers making the mistake whether they would consider such a comment for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you should ensure that the presumed mistake is really a mistake and not just notational sloppiness or a standard approximation (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26242/7734&quot;&gt;BPND’s anwer&lt;/a&gt;), which nobody wastes words about anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might consider to not only mention the mistake but perform and report about some research and demonstrate or estimate the negative effect of that mistake and thus increase the impact of your publication. Also, to address one of your questions: The existence of such negative effects is a good criterion for the relevance of a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T14:55:09.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:42:21.407" Score="5" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;What time scale is typical for the evaluation of applications for an assistant professorship in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19864" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T02:42:37.540" Title="Recruiting process time for assistant professor position in Japan?" Tags="&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;&lt;japan&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26241" CreationDate="2014-07-22T15:10:29.037" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is where you define yourself.  There isn't a right and wrong answer to be suggested.  You're helping improve the wisdom contained within the Academic Establishment itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I'd say you don't have to know.  That's what the peer review process is for.  But it might save you some time to use this radical tool of the Internet, whereby you can be in informal dialog with peers across the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T03:03:32.743" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T03:03:32.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-22T15:40:16.610" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Boris Bukh's suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many institutions grant library privileges to alumni, which might include remote access to the university's online subscriptions.  You might get in touch with the librarian at your alma mater and ask if they offer such a thing.  (In some cases you might be required to join the alumni association and pay dues, but this would probably be on the order of US$10-$100 per year.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many universities open their libraries to the public.  If you live near any university or college that has appropriate subscriptions, you may be able to just walk into their library, sit down at a computer, and download the articles you want.  Then just put them on a USB drive, upload them to a cloud storage account, or email them to yourself.  For older articles that aren't online, the library may have them in bound volumes; they may not let you check them out, but you can photocopy or scan any article you want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Institutional access to subscriptions is usually based on IP address - all computers on the campus's network have access.  So if you still have a computer account at your alma mater, you may be able to log into it and fetch articles through there.  You may even be able to set up a proxy/tunnel/VPN or something similar to let you browse from your own computer but have requests routed through your university account.  For instance, if you have a Unix shell account, this is easily done with an ssh tunnel (but the details are beyond the scope of this site).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a friend who's still a student or faculty at your alma mater or elsewhere, you could ask them to download the occasional article for you.  (This is probably not helpful for your 100-paper meta-analysis, unless they're a really good friend.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as you've probably discovered, personal subscriptions are usually prohibitively expensive, and may have to be purchased individually for each journal, or at least each publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T18:45:19.967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T18:45:19.967" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T16:59:39.547" Score="17" ViewCount="961" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I want to reuse some substantial piece of content - say, a figure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; - from someone else's paper in my own scholarly work. If the other paper is under a traditional license, I'll have to obtain explicit permission from the copyright holder (usually the publisher), and then when I include the figure in my own work, I can say &quot;Figure from reference [x], &lt;em&gt;used with permission&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the other paper is under an open access license or is in the public domain, and my own work will be released under a compatible license, I don't need to explicitly contact the copyright holder to ask for permission to use their content. When I attribute the figure in my work, can I still say &quot;used with permission&quot;? Legally speaking, I do have permission to use it by virtue of the license under which it is released (or lack thereof, if public domain), but including that phrase makes it sound like I've received an explicit statement of permission from the copyright holder, and I wouldn't want to give a misleading impression about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I shouldn't say &quot;used with permission,&quot; what would be a suitable replacement? If it's under a Creative Commons license, for example, I could say something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure from reference [x], used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but that seems a little verbose. Is there a better alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in how to handle this when the content is in the public domain, or is under a much more permissive open access license (perhaps one whose attribution requirement is merely &quot;you must credit the author&quot;). I understand that I'm not &lt;em&gt;legally&lt;/em&gt; required to include any notice saying that I'm allowed to use content under such a license. But for this question I'm more interested in the ethical obligations that a reader might perceive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;Even though a single figure would often be considered fair use. But let's pretend for this question that whatever I want to reuse is enough that fair use doesn't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4787/is-it-necessary-to-obtain-permissions-for-copying-figures-from-published-article&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; concerns a similar situation, but is asking about &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; it is legal to reuse content at all, whereas I'm asking about how to properly &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; that it is legal to do so, after it's been established that no explicit permission is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T15:19:23.217" Title="How can/should I indicate that it's okay to use open access content in a paper?" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26254" CreationDate="2014-07-22T17:06:24.290" Score="8" ViewCount="6384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one list all the people who have written letters of recommendations for him in his reference part of his CV regardless to where those recommendations are written? Or he should specially prepare his CV for the company/university including only the reference people who have written letters of recommendation for him to that company not all of the people from whom he has recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T17:36:06.843" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:50:10.010" Title="Should references part of CV only include names of the people who wrote recommendation letter to where the CV is going to be sent?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26250" CreationDate="2014-07-22T17:51:02.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all CC licenses include an attribution clause. As of the 4.0 version, this means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clicking the &quot;appropriate credit&quot; shows some more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material. CC licenses prior to Version 4.0 also require you to provide the title of the material if supplied, and may have other slight differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the easiest way to satisfy this is, indeed, to say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure from reference [x], used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where your reference should contain the rest of the information, &lt;em&gt;including a link&lt;/em&gt;. If you're pressed for space, you can abbreviate the license (CC BY 4.0), or put the text in a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T17:51:02.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T18:10:44.737" Score="1" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applying for masters but have a previous uncompleted masters on my profile. Will that grades from that masters be factored in when the admission committee evaluates my application. What if i have very good GPA is Bachelors, but got bad grades in Masters due to some circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19862" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T20:13:05.793" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T20:17:55.267" Title="Applying for masters again, will the application be evaluated on the basis of undergraduate/Bachelors or the most recent postgraduate grades" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-22T20:56:08.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26251" CreationDate="2014-07-22T18:15:56.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edited for clarity, since the question in the title is somewhat opposite to that in the body: do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; list all your references on your CV. Only the ones who have written or will write to that particular potential employer. To list &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; might give several unfortunate impressions. First, that the potential employer can contact any one of those references directly. Second, if the prospective employer has received letters from some, but not all, they may think something's wrong... and one form of this is to consider your application &quot;incomplete&quot;, but not inform you, and you miss the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T19:10:20.617" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T19:10:20.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26234" CreationDate="2014-07-22T18:46:42.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try any of the options, and see what result occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a thought experiment, try submitting your paper to a journal of French historical literature.  It will be rejected because (I am guessing) the paper has nothing to do with French historical literature, but it may also be rejected because it doesn't have French in it, or pay enough respect to history, or be written in an appropriate style used to criticize literature in an academic fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to your case, I would be surprised if, even after reading other papers and attempting to imitate their style, you were able to get your paper accepted at first try to a creditable journal without a large amount of outside coaching, because of issues even more subtle than I mention in the thought experiment above.  The advice mentioned in the comments of working on the result to make it more robust and applicable and introducing it to many other people sounds like the right tack to me.  In this fashion you will encounter the people who may be interested in your result, and have the experience to share with you on how to best present it, and help you raise its chances for being accepted by a journal.&#xA;Since you don't have these experiences yet, you need to depend on the experiences of others or earn it on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can try submitting it to a journal first anyway, and see what feedback you get.  That is a less gentle but still valid way of gaining experience in these matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you try the longer and more laborious route of introducing it to several people, I recommend leveraging the effort by researching these people and seeing if they can help you in other ways.  With the right preparation, intent, and eye toward future goals, such as recommendation letters accompanying future grant proposals, the &quot;extra&quot; labor in taking this route may turn out to save a lot of work in the long run.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T18:46:42.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26268" CreationDate="2014-07-22T20:09:25.950" Score="2" ViewCount="4234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply to a week-long master's course offered by a university in another country. The only thing they require for the application is a CV. &#xA;Since I have no significant experience in the field of the course or any publications, I have no idea what to include in my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about including (outside basic details) the title of my diploma work, the name of my supervisor and the main subjects (relevant to the course) I've learnt as an undergraduate. But I am wondering if it is too detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also taken some MOOCs, but they are not strongly related either. I could include the titles of the conference presentation I've held and my language and computer skills and scholarships I've got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these would be appropriate to include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19856" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T21:32:36.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T03:56:43.370" Title="Writing CV's for a &quot;summer school&quot; course" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26253" CreationDate="2014-07-22T20:12:11.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The admission committee will see your entire record.  It is up to them to decide how to consider and weigh the various parts of it - different people will feel differently about this, and there is no way to know what the sense of the committee as a whole will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had special circumstances that affected your grades, you should address them in your statement of purpose or cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14498/should-i-mention-a-math-depression-i-went-through-in-my-letter-of-motivation&quot;&gt;Should I mention a &amp;quot;math depression&amp;quot; I went through in my letter of motivation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1523/applying-for-phd-after-a-poor-masters&quot;&gt;Applying for PhD after a poor master&amp;#39;s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T20:17:55.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27213" CreationDate="2014-07-22T21:03:47.657" Score="6" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;A publication I submitted to said that I need to include a biography in the paper.  I don't have many formal qualifications, aside from my degree.  I have done my research on my own, and am unaffiliated.  What can I put in the biography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T01:49:44.203" Title="What to put in a biography for a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14498" CreationDate="2014-07-22T21:28:13.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, having observed graduate education in mathematics for a long time, very many people encounter their own period(s) of extreme disheartenment _in_grad_school_, for the obvious reasons of the challenges, but also for having not thought through the level of commitment to the enterprise that's required to make it work, and how delayed the gratification may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(So to a large degree it's not &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; one has an episode, but &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;, and what happens afterward...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if portrayed well, acknowledging such an experience already weathered could be a big plus, if the net was that you have a clearer purpose and clearer interest in mathematics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this oughtn't be the first point you make, and not in the cover letter, just toward the end of the personal statement... so if anyone is interested to read that far, they may also be interested in your remarks. In fact, thinking it's worth reading statements of purpose may be well-correlated with sympathy and interest in your having worked-through a bad period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T21:28:13.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26258" CreationDate="2014-07-22T21:38:55.210" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have strong qualifications or your own research history it is best to focus on your interests and goals. Think about these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What have you done?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are you doing now?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do you want to do in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why is this publication important to you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19879" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T21:38:55.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26234" CreationDate="2014-07-22T22:21:02.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are many questions here;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Independent Publishing?&lt;/strong&gt; It is possible to publish your work as an independent researcher.  see this question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers&quot;&gt;Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. For further confirmation, I would suggest to directly contact the responsible personnel of the conference or journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forums(Journal vs Conference)?&lt;/strong&gt;  Journals are usually assumed to be of high standard. However, this might not be true always.Some conferences have equal or higher standard than journals; they only accept high quality works. However, you should be able to find many conferences with a track record of accepting publications with varying qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to find the quality of a forum?&lt;/strong&gt; If you want to find out the quality of a forum, check their previous publications and try judging their quality. You can also look for people who have published there, if they are expert in your field then it could be a high quality journal or conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What forum suits my work?&lt;/strong&gt; You know the quality of your work therefore aiming for forums inline with the quality of your work will save you a lot of time. &#xA;Otherwise, you can discuss with an expert (a professor or researcher in academia) who knows the forums and their qualities. If they can read your work that would make it easy to find the matching forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just my suggestions, rest you know what is best for you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19855" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T22:21:02.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26263" CreationDate="2014-07-23T00:15:08.620" Score="8" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student working on a research project consisting of 2 teams. My team (team A) is on the practical side, we provide the problems related to our research and evaluate the theoretical solutions provided by the other team (team B).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few months ago, I had an idea related to the work of team B and thought it would help to improve the quality of our research. I raised it during our project meeting but everyone was not interested and decided not to pursue it further. So, I decided to do it by myself. As the research was not in my supervisor's research interest as well, he did not pay much attention to it but still encouraged me to do it and publish a paper if possible. I occasionally gave him a brief progress update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My effort paid off. I manage to publish a paper (in which I am the only author) and am planning to apply it into the project. At the recent meeting, members of team B were furious and accused me of bad teamwork as I did not inform them while working on something related to the project, especially when the idea belonged to their work, not mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if they are right and I should inform them my research, even though they were not interested at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T12:05:27.497" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T12:05:27.497" Title="Should I inform other project's members about my work on an idea which they are not initially interested in" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;projects&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2014-07-23T01:15:28.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on publishing a paper in the face of a lack of initial interest from Team B and your supervisor. That shows valuable tenacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, however, that you should have informed Team B as your work progressed, and certainly before publication. It is quite likely that you would have convinced members of Team B of the value of your work over time, and perhaps been able to involve one or more of Team B in your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Team B's perspective, you have encroached on their territory, and published a paper which perhaps they feel they should have had a hand in (read: been co-authors of). Keeping all your team members informed of your work is good practice. Whether they should have been included as co-authors on your paper is a matter of your own publication policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Team A know about your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="1424" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T18:17:16.480" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T18:17:16.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T02:43:14.183" Score="12" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;A group of students including myself have developed a certain program/algorithm. I as the main coder behind this group have provided 95% of all the actual code. The other two involved parties have given 4% and 1% of the code each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code was created in an academic environment for a paper, but the actual algorithm has applications not limited to the scope of what was worked on during the duration of our work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to release the code as open-source as does the other party who contributed 4%, as it has other applications, and potential uses, and we don't want to limit its use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the 1% is adamant about not releasing any code and keeping it. He will not listen to reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we just use a majority vote to decide this? Do I as the main coder have more say than the other two? We do not want to get any external parties(ie., lawyers) involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a question about the benefits of various licenses; we know what each licence does. As Simon statrs: &quot;it's about team dynamics, within academia, where collaborators disagree about whether to release the code at all.&quot; Two of us want to release. One of us does not. How do we proceed in such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19886" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T19:50:29.830" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:50:29.830" Title="How to handle disagreement between collaborators on licensing academic code?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26265" CreationDate="2014-07-23T03:03:47.777" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If that other 1% of the code isn't anything special (which I'll assume is the case since your question would have otherwise made a point of it), tell the other coder that if he is going to be adamant about it, it will force you guys to rewrite the code, and he might not get &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; credit at all.  See how he &quot;likes them apples&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you might search for his reasons (is he hoping to commercialize it?) and find a license that he's amenable to.  There are many licenses that support a basic idea of &quot;open source&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd opine that you can't legally use his work without his consent, but you can rewrite it.  But if he made new IP (that is new thoughts/techniques that no one has coded before) encoded in that 1%, you will probably have to negotiate those rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that this opinion, is applicable within the academic community where a &quot;shared intellectual commons&quot; has been fairly active for centuries.  It may not be appropriate policy for commercial entities.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T12:56:11.837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T12:56:11.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T03:32:57.910" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a teacher in a high school for gifted students and a student (let's call him A) asks me for a recommendation letter some time ago to apply to a top-level university (say AU: Awesome University) in our country. His level is below the average but he is very motivated and worked very hard. He is also a very nice, dedicated student with a good sense of ethics. His rather low score is explained by the high standards of my school: it is highly considered at the national level and in some countries around, and senior students can validate in advance some university courses. So I am sure that A will do well at university and I really want him to enter in AU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, after I accepted writing a recommendation letter for A, a second student, B, asked me for a recommendation letter for the same university AU. B is a great student with excellent grades. She always works with passion and could be considered as a dream student. I of course would be very happy to write her a recommandation letter and I have no worries about the outcome of the application of her application to AU. But I am worried on how my recommandation letter for A will be compared to the letter for B and whether writing for B would lower A's chances to enter university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The shorter, the better, here are my questions&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any (maybe unofficial) policy about writing recommendation letters for two students for the same institution? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do my worries about one of the two recommendation letters disregarded by comparison with the other one make any sense?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If my worries are founded, how can I avoid the competition between the two letters? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15528" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T09:55:23.830" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T09:55:23.830" Title="Is it OK to write recommendation letters for two students for the same institution and how to avoid the competition?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-23T09:53:02.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26256" CreationDate="2014-07-23T03:56:43.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course I don't know anything about this particular course, but often, admission to summer school courses is not at all competitive, and there are seats (and sometimes funding) for more or less every serious student who shows interest.  (If it were competitive, I'd expect them to at least want a letter of recommendation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically your CV has to convince them of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are an actual grad student, and not some goofball trying to use them to get a visa.&lt;/strong&gt;  So be sure to include your academic history (degrees and dates, honors if any) and the details of the program in which you are currently enrolled.  Definitely give your supervisor's name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The course will be interesting and relevant to you.&lt;/strong&gt;  Mention your areas of scientific interest (they should be at least tangentially related to the topic of the course).  List any relevant research projects, past or present, even if they are fairly minor.  Definitely include any published papers or conference presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You have sufficient background to learn something from the course, and not get completely lost&lt;/strong&gt; (getting a little bit lost is normal).  Briefly mention your GPAs and scholarships.  If it seems appropriate, list classes you have taken or books you have read that would prepare you for this course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T03:56:43.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26272" CreationDate="2014-07-23T07:58:17.277" Score="14" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have discovered an error in my paper published in a journal. I am a PhD student and the original paper was published with my advisor and two other researchers from different universities. The correction of the error, which was a significant amount of work, but luckily ultimately did not change any of the conclusions, was done in collaboration with my advisor, but without almost any interaction from the two external coauthors of the original paper. They know about it, though, and agreed with the changes I made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Should the authors of a corrigendum always be the same as the ones for the original paper? If this matters, my field is numerical mathematics/scientific computing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19892" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T22:47:34.433" Title="Who should the authors of a corrigendum be?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26271" CreationDate="2014-07-23T08:11:28.373" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think about a few arguments to include all original authors as authors of the corrigendum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt; They actually work on the corrigendum by reading your manuscript and making comments;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; The corrigendum has no &quot;primary&quot; value without the original paper, it can be considered as an extra chapter. It does not really matter that you worked on this chapter more than they, since they probably contributed to other parts of the paper;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would it look if you publish corrigendum without them? A little bit like &quot;These senior guys screw it up, but luckily I able to fix it&quot;, isn't it? Do you really think this is an impression you want to make considering their contribution?&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T22:47:34.433" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T22:47:34.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26330" CreationDate="2014-07-23T09:02:52.260" Score="1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Electronics &amp;amp; Communication Engineer and I want to pursue a masters degree.  After completing the degree, I would like to work in industry with zero inclination towards a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering two institutions and two possible specializations (e.g., VLSI vs. Signal Processing). I prefer one institution over the other because of its general reputation, faculty, placements, and lab facilities. I prefer one specialization over the other because of personal preference, prior knowledge in the specialization field, type of possible jobs, and placements in the specialization field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am offered acceptance into the more-preferred specialization at my less-preferred university, and the less-preferred specialization at my more-preferred university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which option will better position me for my eventual goal, of completing the masters degree and getting a job in industry? Which criteria is more important in choosing a masters program, the institution or the specialization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12064" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T11:30:25.033" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T14:42:50.893" Title="To choose which Masters program to attend, should I favor institution or specialization?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26285" CreationDate="2014-07-23T11:40:28.597" Score="1" ViewCount="1060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a B.S. in statistics earlier this year and have been working as an actuary for the past two months. In all honesty, I'm not very happy with the job position in the little amount of time I've been working at it. I am very close to becoming a credentialed actuary (ASA for those of you who have heard of it) and anticipate making a decision on whether or not I should leave later this year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My dream is to become an actuarial science professor.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;I am really wondering whether I should pursue graduate school in statistics or just stick it out until I get a decade or so of experience (as every other actuarial professor I've seen has done)&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do realize that the Actuarial Outpost exists, but typically, actuaries tend to discourage people who want to pursue Ph.D. degrees.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17476" LastEditorUserId="17476" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T12:06:59.980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T14:07:54.053" Title="To become a professor of actuarial science, should I pursue graduate school immediately after B.S. or get some professional experience first?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26291" CreationDate="2014-07-23T11:47:39.283" Score="79" ViewCount="42498" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people, including myself, are fascinated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_%28conference%29&quot;&gt;TED&lt;/a&gt; speakers. They provide us a new perspective. For example, see the TED talk &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen&quot;&gt;The best stats you've ever seen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling&quot;&gt;Hans Rosling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I talked about this to an anthropologist, he said that the statistics in this TED talk are unverifiable. He suggested that the speaker doesn't give us his sources, so therefore the talk is no longer a scientific talk. As a result, he suggested, real scientists are clever enough to stay away from these presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do TED talks have the necessary rigor and foundation to be citable in papers and other &quot;scholarly&quot; publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="37432" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T05:25:07.597" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T18:55:29.753" Title="Are TED presentations academically credible?" Tags="&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T12:04:21.913" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/&quot;&gt;TED talks&lt;/a&gt; are for popularizing ideas in science, technology and arts, as emphasized in their tagline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideas worth spreading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often they are a nice starting point to get interested into a certain idea and they serve as a general food for thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, don't treat them as revelations, since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are not comprehensive (in 5-20 min you can't give a comprehensive introduction to anything (some things require hours to explain, others - years of studies); moreover, if a talk is for the popular audience (as in case for TED talks), many crucial details need to be simplified or dropped),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is not rare that the presented idea is not considered mainstream (they do value originality; sometimes minority ideas can turn out to be a gold seam, which needs audience, in other cases it may turn out to be incorrect or inconclusive).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to use the content of TED talks for anything beyond discussions over a beer, do consult other sources (e.g. scientific papers by the authors and check if the they are recognized in their field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, very often checking out a relevant Wikipedia page gives insight into the status of a given view (is it present at all? is it disputed? is it this year's discovery or does it date back to ancient times?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, as you did, asking experts (sure, they can be wrong too, but at least can be more objective than in a 15 min pitch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T10:06:58.527" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T10:06:58.527" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T12:06:34.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us work out the following analogy: TED as a journal, Talk as a published article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When one meets a questionable article with unverified claims, they may of course doubt the conclusions. A usual thing to do then is to write back to the Journal and raise your concerns to them. The Editor may possibly come back to author inviting them to write an erratum explaining / correcting / substantiating the conclusions of the Paper.  This process is known as &quot;scientific discussion&quot; and is a blood flood of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the Journal maintains and empowers such procedure, I would see it as a completely trustworthy source, despite occasional mistakes and errors in published articles, which are probably inevitable in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T12:06:34.053" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8959" CreationDate="2014-07-23T12:21:09.253" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I might actually be doing more harm than good (to myself, to the&#xA;  authors, and/or to scientific publishing in general) by agreeing to&#xA;  review a manuscript sent to me by a sufficiently scammy journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, exactly. Don't encourage predatory publishing. Don't encourage the authors, who almost certainly have no interest in your feedback and just want an additional publication, hoping it will help them get that cosy government job/tenure in a university that doesn't care about quality. All of this is a simulacrum of science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if nobody agreed to review manuscripts for them, how could they ever&#xA;  improve their review process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, but you shouldn't worry about it. Because &lt;strong&gt;we don't need more journals&lt;/strong&gt;, especially not pay-for-publish, low-quality journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably know very well which are the good journals in your field, and if you publish (or even submit) to these, chances are they will ask you to review eventually. And this is what the scientific community expects you to do, not to give credit to a publisher that has no interest in science whatsoever and just wants to collect as many 'article processing charges' as it can, quickly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T13:05:06.053" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T13:05:06.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T12:25:39.640" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly an answer to the question, but I'd just like to correct a factual error in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The speaker doesn't give us his sources, therefore the talk is no&#xA;  longer be a scientific talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time limit on TED talk probably prevents the speakers from disclosing all sources. I cannot speak for all of them, but at least for Hans Rosling (the one featured in your question), all the data source he uses are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gapminder.org/data/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he said that these statistics are unverifiable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I agree. Even sources are disclosed, we may not know if the sampling is well designed and executed, or if the measurement techniques are the most accurate. Some more exploration on our own in the data providers' site is perhaps necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the real scientists are clever enough to stay away these bullshit&#xA;  presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I feel that your anthropologist seems no better. It takes only a few clicks to verify the data source, and yet instead of doing that, he/she decided to call the talk &quot;bullshit.&quot; I'd recommend you to be more careful about what he/she has to say on all other &quot;scientific matters.&quot; Better to verify them yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T12:32:00.923" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T12:32:00.923" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26205" CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:26:41.773" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears a number of factors come into this, such as what point proofreading should be done, familiarity with the text and length of time away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://casebuilder.rhet.ualr.edu/wcrp/publications/wcj/wcj19.2/wcj19.2_cogie.pdf&quot;&gt;Jane Cogie, Kim Strain and Sharon Lorinskas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important also that editing [proofreading] be done at the appropriate stage of the writing process, that is, as the last step, after issues of organization, coherence, and flow have been addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01027393&quot;&gt;The generation effect in reading and proofreading&lt;/a&gt;, the authors Meredyth Daneman and Murray Stainton conducted the following experiments in which;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjects spent 30 minutes composing an essay on student life; after a 20 minute interval (Experiment 1) or a two week interval (Experiment 2) they proofread their own essay, another subject's essay after being familiarized on an error-free version of it, or another subject's essay without the benefit of a preview. Experiment 1 showed that subjects were less able to detect errors (e.g., The best part of student like is socializing.) in self-generated essays than in unfamiliar other-generated essays; on the other hand, they were better able to detect errors in familiar other-generated essays that in unfamiliar ones. Experiment 2 showed that the disadvantage for proofreading self-generated text is likely a by-product of extreme familiarity rather than any special quality of self-generated knowledge per se&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commenting on the above study, Maura Pilotti, and Martin Chodorow (doi:10.1007/s11145-007-9110-x) state that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The difficulty experienced by proofreaders with their own writing occurred even though the proofreaders were warned that errors had been added to their writing prior to proofreading. Interestingly, the impairment uncovered by Daneman and Stainton turned into an advantage after a delay of 2 weeks between writing and proofreading. The researchers argued that the ‘‘excessive’’ familiarity afforded by one’s own text, which is likely to decline over time, is detrimental to proofreading because it promotes a less thorough processing of written material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear from the above that 20 minutes is too short a period, and that something like two weeks is more optimum, but if possible leave it as long as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T20:29:39.197" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T20:29:39.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26276" CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:42:54.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The work experience would be helpful in an academic career. But it doesn't have to be one decade. More like one to two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people stay with accounting firms for 1-2 years just to get their CPA. You could benefit from the ASA. So stick around long enough to get it, then start looking to leave when you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T13:42:54.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:56:27.930" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I may add one more thought to the discussion here. I think &quot;the authors have to work more on the essay&quot; proves that this referee is not able to put his thoughts in a usable, clear, scientific way. Style problem!? If he or she does not want to invest the effort in explaining himself properly, I doubt that he is a good referee. It is his/her duty to do a proper job. Ask for specific examples of what he is - vaguely - complaining about. I am certainly questioning &lt;strong&gt;his/her&lt;/strong&gt; style. I do referee papers from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19903" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T13:56:27.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26276" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:07:54.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely stay long enough to get the accreditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And think very carefully before leaving. In particular, look at why actuarial professors stayed a decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe their employer paid for their PhD. (some will shun PhDs, others will welcome them. Guess which you want)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And maybe being in industry gave them access to data that they couldn't possibly have got if they'd been outside industry. Access to lots of data should mean lots of papers. Lots of papers means furthering your academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't just stay in industry letting your skills rot and your knowledge become outdated. Be a researcher, while in industry. Maybe do some lecturing or in-house training too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T14:07:54.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26251" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:10:15.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never included references as part of my CV and rarely seen them in CVs that I've reviewed for admissions, hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CVs are a public record of your intellectual accomplishments. They are public, they are shared. They should not be tailored for jobs. See F.N.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References should be in an addendum to the cover letter or a separate file. Including them is much more of a resume practice in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;F.N. some grant agencies, notably NSF, require abbreviated CVs with particular specifications. Also, some jobs such as at conservative religious institutions might warrant some straightening up of the CV, that is if you would want the position. Otherwise, in principle your CV is not a tailored document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T20:50:10.010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:50:10.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26340" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:43:38.997" Score="10" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the students are doing research in another language than English because they are living and studying in a non-English speaking country; they may be doing research in their mother-tongue language because they are studying in their own country or they are studying in another country in which the language is not English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these students have non-English language publications which are published or sent to a non-English conference/journal; Do these publications still have the same value in their CV when they are going to send it to an English speaking university/company? Or only publications in English are of value in those institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I think the situation is easier for the students having English publications in their CVs and want to send it to a non-English speaking university/company as they welcome and accept those publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T18:52:09.133" Title="Do non-English papers/publications have value in a CV which is going to be sent to an English company/university?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:13:44.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an academic mathematics context: it's not a question of English itself, neither of the paper itself nor of the journal, but of the reputation of the journal. At the very least, French, German, English, and Russian are languages in which there is a very well established mathematics literature. I think all the better mathematics journals accept submissions in English, French, and German, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that perhaps one's paper will have the widest readership these days if it is in English, although 40 years ago anyone learning mathematics had to learn to read French and German, perhaps more than English, because the previous 150 years' mathematics was written primarily in those languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nevertheless possible that a very provincial situation or person would have a prejudice about non-English (or non-whatever) research papers or journals, and there is little one can do to guard against this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be the case that there simply are very few high-reputation journals published in &quot;minor&quot; languages, and this may be tangled up with the difficulty of readership. I do regret that I never learned Russian well enough to read mathematics in it. Similarly, there are many important mathematical papers published in Japanese in Japan, and I cannot read them. I would not be surprised to learn that the same is true in China, but I cannot personally certify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But any reasonable scholar would certainly recognize the &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt; that a good paper can be written in a language other than English. The question of its inaccessibility if written in a language not widely used in the subject at hand is different. Perhaps one could wonder about the &lt;em&gt;wisdom&lt;/em&gt; of writing in a not-widely-read language, but, again, that's different from the science itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T15:13:44.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26292" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:33:34.733" Score="6" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a research paper's term of copyright ends, say, N years after publication, does the publication house &lt;strong&gt;have to&lt;/strong&gt; make it freely (i.e. no cost) available for use by general public?  Assume that currently it's charging some money to download papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2643" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T20:37:52.083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T20:37:52.083" Title="What are the publisher's obligations when a research paper's term of copyright ends?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:35:37.830" Score="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are asking two slightly different questions at the same time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“Are TED speakers and their ideas credible? (as in &quot;likely to be correct&quot;)” I'd say yes, since TED's process for inviting speakers is at least as strict as that of many scientific publications. Most TED speakers are invited to speak at TED because they've become renowned scientists through their peer-reviewed publications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“Are TED talks scientific (as in &quot;usable to base your own science on&quot;)?” Here the answer is definitely &quot;no&quot;, for the reasons you mentioned: they lack the information needed to be independently verifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this does not mean that their content is wrong or unscientific; it just means that the talks are incomplete from a scientific point of view, and thus not by themselves verifiable. But most TED presenters will previously have published the findings they present at TED in a regular peer-review scientific publication in a scientific format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is: you should treat TED talks like you should treat Wikipedia: use it to quickly understand new and interesting concepts. But before you actually apply one of these concepts, verify them using scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T15:52:44.497" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T15:52:44.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26290" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:44:31.350" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, why should it? Running out of copyright explicitly means a loss of a right. It does not mean the beginning of any additional obligation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running out of copyright, however, means that anybody who already owns a copy may duplicate it and make it available under any conditions he chooses (including making it available free of charge). Many university libraries do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T15:44:31.350" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26320" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:44:48.293" Score="12" ViewCount="6087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student who graduated with a Master from a German university in April this year, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;majored in materials science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, willing to further pursue a PHD degree in a European university (or possibly a university in the USA if I can not get anything in the EU). I have already applied to a certain amount of universities´ PHD studentship programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit that there hardly are positions exactly fitting the thesis work and research activity I had in my Master study program, because materials science is a very diverse and gargantuan subject. Each different university has its own research preference and inclination. Sometimes you may say you can find between 20%-40% overlap with your past experiences, including the similarity of research content, or the techniques being used. So I tried to apply to all of them, the replies were mostly like this: &quot;You can not fit the best of criteria..&quot;  It has been several months, there is still no slight improvement of my application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GPA is 3.4/4 (no publications so far), but according to the PhD advertisements I have viewed, some universities have rules about the basic grade requirement you need to have for PhD enrollment, some do not have. The universities I had finished my Master and Bachelor study have certain reputation in their own region or country. My Master degree is Master of science(M.Sc.), Master thesis is about metal-oxide nanostructures synthesis and its application (basically using different approach trying and trying again, compare the final results), on the one hand I am afraid of the simple and even boring thesis work could give people wrong impression about my research experiences that is poor and rudimentary, Professor will have some doubts about whether I am truly quantifying to do some sophisticated PhD work, on the other hand, if I stick to doing metal-oxide fabrication research or related in my PhD study, you need to have solid background in chemistry, which also is what I am lack of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I do not have too much contact with my professor (thesis advisor) except having some discusses related to my Master thesis, because our group is very big one and each PhD student is responsible for supervising master students for their thesis work, so Professor could have time and energy doing other things, I only asked my professor for recommendation letter once, maybe I also need his suggestion about my applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I have accepted some rejected letters, I started to think which kind of project could fit my profile, not only I can be accepted by them but I can also enjoy my project and stretch my muscle, doing some useful in materials science field.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I am confounded by various projects and their fancy names offered in the webpages, and do not know what to do next. but I still  have a dream about one day I could leave my fingerprints on the TEM machine and my thoughts on the scientific papers.&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you are a PHD student (have successful application experiences) majored in materials science or related area, I kindly ask for suggestion (any suggestion and any opinions will be useful to me).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19904" LastEditorUserId="19904" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T15:02:45.920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:54:32.257" Title="Have applied to, and been rejected from, a number of PhD positions; are they really so difficult to get?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2014-07-23T16:20:33.327" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for the question in your title (which originally was: &quot;Is it really that difficult finding a funded PHD position?&quot;) the answer is it depends on the field and the country. As an engineer, in countries with a well-developed industry, the job opportunities for graduates outside academia are good, thus diminishing the competition for PhD positions. This being said, a grad student is not just hired to lay bricks because there is a wall to be built. It represents a substantial investment for professors who will thus rather have no student than a not-so-good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the point, previous experience in the specific field of the PhD study is almost never a requirement, so I doubt it's the limiting factor in your case. Your grades might be though, or your written english proficiency, but these are guesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your strategy might be inefficient. From your text it sounds like you sent a large number of applications and are waiting for someone to bite the bait. A personal interaction with people in the labs you are interested in would be a better approach, for example via an internship or a visit, if you can afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would narrow it down to a few places where you really would like to work, gather the reasons why you like them, and start establishing a contact via email, say what you like about their approach or research topic and how you think you could fit in. They will then be able to let you know what is needed to be accepted in the graduate program (note that you will still have to comply to the department, university or graduate school requirements in order to be accepted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T14:54:32.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:54:32.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:11:39.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you are, you may have access through government-funded agencies (similar to public libraries).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. in Germany, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/&quot;&gt;DFG&lt;/a&gt; purchases &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nationallizenzen.de/&quot;&gt;national licenses&lt;/a&gt; for quite a number of journals, and you can register for that as individual (technically, it works via the university library of Frankfurt)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your library may be able to get the paper via inter-library loan for less than the direct purchase costs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not only universities, but also research instutes have libraries. These are often connected to library networks and may have access to quite a number of journals. In my experience, even if you cannot become member of that library, it is often possible to go there and read journals they have (including making a copy) as well as download papers they have electronic access to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:11:39.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:12:15.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they weren't interested when you brought it up initially, then they are in no place to cast judgment after you published it. This is, of course, based off of the fact that you brought it clearly to their attention from the beginning. You have no reasonable moral responsibility to keep updating them on it, especially as it starts to gain traction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should only be mentioned if you gained specific knowledge that you otherwise would not have had without them from the beginning, but this is ignoring the fact that they initially rejected the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17846" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:12:15.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26298" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:24:32.193" Score="0" ViewCount="7084" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finalising a paper that is around 85 pages long. It consists of six main sections with a bunch of subsections. Should every subsection start on a new page? What is the convention concerning this? And should a subject also start on a new page after an introductory paragraph of its parent section? For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3. Balloons are funny&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this section I will first present reasons why balloons should not be used on occasions that are depressing. For&#xA;instance, bringing balloons to a funeral will not cheer people up.&#xA;Secondly I will discuss different colours that can lead to different&#xA;reactions. As an example one should not bring red balloons to a bull&#xA;pen. Lastly I will make clear why clowns should always have balloons&#xA;with them as to not come across evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;-- PAGE BREAK? --&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.1 Balloons are not a go-to cheer up tool&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When confronted with a sad or depression situation, a first reaction might be to try and&#xA;cheer everybody up. One should be careful with the methods he uses&#xA;though. Do not tell a joke about cancer patients if someone just&#xA;deceased after months of chemo. Do not bring balloons to a funeral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this ad lib writing makes my question clear. (If it is any help, my institution uses APA as a style guide.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-05-11T09:40:03.067" LastActivityDate="2021-05-11T09:40:03.067" Title="Should all subsections of a paper start on a new page?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26297" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:50:37.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the length and complexity of the work, you choose the top level sectioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;short works&lt;/strong&gt; -- scientific paper, lecture notes &amp;lt; 80 pages, etc., you in general use only &lt;strong&gt;sections&lt;/strong&gt; and lower.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For longer works -- thesis, long lecture notes, books, etc., you in general use &lt;strong&gt;chapters&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;sections&lt;/strong&gt; and lower.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your &lt;strong&gt;long work has multiple sort-of separated parts,&lt;/strong&gt; you can add &lt;strong&gt;parts&lt;/strong&gt; -- notice, however, that usually, part numbering is independent. Therefore for instance Part I contains chapters 1, 2, 3 with some sections, and Part II contains chapers starting from 4, ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the standard way to go is to start parts and chapters on a new page, and leave sections running through the pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needed to say, most standard publications (articles, conference abstracts, theses, books by standard publishers, ...) have to comply with some guidelines provided by the publisher, and these guidelines are usually very restrictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:50:37.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:53:19.710" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with shortening a link. In a paper, you won't risk your reputation just to have a spam or contained virus link, therefore people won't need to worry about the security. Also, I don't know if other services have this feature, but you can make an customized link as long as it is unique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this was my link to my dissertation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/epHIVprotease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bit.ly/epHIVprotease&lt;/a&gt;. (Need not to follow it, I have pulled it down)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone in my field will immediately understand what it says: &lt;strong&gt;electrostatic potential&lt;/strong&gt; of a &lt;strong&gt;HIV protease&lt;/strong&gt;. So it's also looked professional, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T20:17:49.337" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T20:17:49.337" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T18:00:17.443" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;TED is Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  While speakers may use science to illustrate their topic, and may be presenting some or all of a scientific presentation, this is not a venue intended to disseminate scientific information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Wikipedia, TED might be a place to provide pointers to the people, papers, and research that is ongoing in a specific area, but you should rarely find that the talk itself is a good source of scientific information.  Generally such talks are snippets from experts, and what you really want is the expert or paper being discussed, not the discussion itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11901" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T18:00:17.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-23T18:18:07.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; which encourages users to upload papers that are then made available for free to that community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19911" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T19:25:02.573" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:25:02.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-23T18:32:58.497" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak to my area of expertise (chemistry). That being said, some of the few TED talks on chemistry are &quot;far-out,&quot; to put it politely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/lee_cronin_making_matter_come_alive&quot;&gt;talk&lt;/a&gt; (from 2011), the speaker proposes creating artificial (by that I mean inorganic-based, not the Craig Venter sort of thing) life (an idea that has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment&quot;&gt;pursued for decades&lt;/a&gt;) in two years (skip to 14:00 for the Q/A). Needless to say, we still don't have artificial life (which is probably a good thing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even optimistic experts agree we are many decades from approaching an understanding of how life emerges from a network of chemical reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, I feel that TED talks offer anything from fantasy to reproducible scientific &quot;fact&quot; (or the closest thing to it), depending largely on the speaker (what their goals are) and what's &quot;marketable&quot; to the TED audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19911" LastEditorUserId="19911" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T16:45:22.680" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T16:45:22.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T18:43:27.947" Score="-2" ViewCount="1127" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor helped me with my year-long research project. Should I list him as an author or under ”contributor” and do you have a link to a format for how I should do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19913" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T20:04:11.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T20:04:11.640" Title="How to include advisor’s name onto research paper" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-23T19:08:48.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26303" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:05:28.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several different opinions on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strict interpretation of &quot;authorship&quot;: An &quot;author&quot; of a scientific publication is somebody who contributed directly to the research as well as to the writing of the publication and can be held responsible for any mistakes in the publication. Several style guides for scientific publications require this interpretation when determining the authors list. According to that interpretation, you would not add him as an author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loose interpretation of &quot;authorship&quot;: An &quot;author&quot; is a major contributor at least to the research itself. According to this interpretation, you could add your advisor as an author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My chances of acceptance are better this way&quot;: some people ignore morality and simply put their advisor on their paper as an author because their advisor may be a repected scientist in this field of research, and the mere presence of his name on the publication may improve the chances of being accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My reputation will improve more this way&quot;: On the other hand, some people may choose to explicitly omit their advisors' names from their publications for thinking that an accepted publication with them as the only author will improve their reputation more than a shared publication where it is unclear which author did what part of the job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;He demands it&quot;: Some advisors are the bosses of their PhD students and simply require their student to list them as authors, in order to improve their own publication list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd got with the honest way, Number 1, and optionally thank your advisor in an &quot;Acknowledgement&quot; section (usually the final section of the paper, right before the bibliography). A typical acknowledgement reads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;The authors wish to express their gratitude towards [person] for [deed]&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:05:28.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26305" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26306" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" Score="0" Body="Computer code written in the context of a research project or other academic endeavor. Includes questions on licensing, ownership, sharing, and formatting of academic source code." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:30:12.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:30:55.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-English publications will have significantly lower value in terms of reputation. This is because their target audience is usually very limited (often to a single country), while the target audience for English publications is usually the whole world. Thus, the reviewers of an non-English publication are likely to not be as good as for a typical English publication (since they were chosen from a far smaller pool of experts), and thus your publication may not have been evaluated as thoroughly. It also means that the number of rivals for acceptance was far lower than for international English papers, suggesting an overall lower quality of your publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these points hold even if the audience of your CV actually speaks the language the publications were written in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If - additionally - your CV audience does not even understand the language the publication was written in, then the value of these publications is even lower, as your audience cannot directly evaluate the quality of your contributions. In this case they may opt to use numerical metrics to evaluate either you (e.g. based on the &lt;code&gt;h-index&lt;/code&gt;) or the journal/conference you published at (e.g. based on the &lt;code&gt;impact factor&lt;/code&gt;), or they may decide to ignore non-English publications entirely. In my opinion, the latter is far more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:30:55.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26251" CreationDate="2014-07-23T21:02:08.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly no reason that you should &lt;em&gt;every person who has ever written you a letter of recommendation on your CV!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen people who are on the job market list letter writers for &lt;em&gt;their in-process job search&lt;/em&gt; on their CV. This seems harmless, but also unnecessary. The people who need to know who your letter writers will outline ways for you to communicate this to you (e.g., through a web form, through a list of letter writers, in the cover letter, or simply by seeing who sends in letters). It is normal to list your letter writers in your cover letter or, as requested in many job searches, in a document which contains the list of letter writers and their contact information. It simply does not need to be in the CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters of recommendations, like other letters, are from the recommender to another person. They are &lt;em&gt;about you&lt;/em&gt;, but they are not &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt;, and their mere existence is not something that belongs on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You touch on the reason why in your question. The fact that somebody was willing to write a letter (which might have been glowing, luke-warm, or even critical!) does not mean that they would write a letter again today, or that they would write the letter same letter for a different position. If I have not talked to the student in 10 years, I would not write a letter for a start undergraduate who has since graduated with a PhD and is applying for tenure track jobs. The student may be great but my ability to sing their praises is not longer relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T13:06:30.717" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T13:06:30.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25949" CreationDate="2014-07-23T21:55:00.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that non-academic careers are off-topic here, and StrongBad has already offered an answer for academic careers, I will answer the question of &lt;em&gt;resources for men who want to pursue graduate degrees in female-majority fields&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would offer the same advice to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/what-books-biographies-or-survival-guides-are-helpful-for-women-in-engineering/21219#comment44349_21219&quot;&gt;anyone of any gender&lt;/a&gt; who wants to know what it is like to be a member of a gender minority in graduate school: Learn what it's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; like by reading about the personal experiences (both positive and negative) of others who have been in that position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, here are a few resources that I believe may be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dkPcCLTuKJU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On being a man in an MSW (social work) program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/men-nursing-school&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On being a man in nursing school&lt;/a&gt; (includes experiences from men in undergraduate through doctoral programs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/cover-men.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On being a man in a doctoral program in psychology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T21:55:00.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26313" CreationDate="2014-07-23T23:11:12.320" Score="18" ViewCount="4759" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is generally accepted to write papers using the collective we, what is a common practice for writing peer-reviews: I, this reviewer, or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reviewer has a minor concern with how pink elephants are defined in this paper. It would have been helpful if authors defined an elephant first, and then added the color pink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a minor concern with how pink elephants are described in this paper. My recommendation is to define an elephant first, and then add the color pink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-08-21T14:58:38.230" LastActivityDate="2020-08-21T16:32:02.703" Title="Should I write a peer-review in third person?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26310" CreationDate="2014-07-23T23:33:59.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a review that will be read only by the editor, you can use &quot;I&quot;, but if you want to simplify the editor's life by giving them something to cut-and-paste, or forward, to the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, in mathematics at least, the contemporary style for publicly-consumed reviews seems to be to refer to oneself, the reviewer, as &quot;this reviewer&quot;. Thus, &quot;in the opinion of this reviewer...&quot;, &quot;this reviewer cannot understand why the author is so dense...&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some observable exceptions, where a reviewer is enough of a big-shot to not merely &quot;suggest&quot; that the author has erred, but to be snarky about it, and in either first person, or an exaggerated third-person. My own opinion is that it is not nice to do this. That is, a forthright voice is best, and choice of voice not depending on status is tasteful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T23:33:59.740" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-24T00:02:19.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the UK, then you may be able to get access &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/publishers-launch-free-journal-access-for-libraries/2010999.article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;through your local public library&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T00:02:19.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26310" CreationDate="2014-07-24T00:22:14.680" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the first person.  Like most good linguistic constructions, the reader passes over it without explicitly noticing it, whereas your first construction with &amp;quot;this reviewer&amp;quot; holds up the entire mental process for a split second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26311&quot;&gt;The idea of&lt;/a&gt; using the third person to &amp;quot;soften&amp;quot; the criticism: well, Paul Garrett knows how much I esteem him, and we usually see eye-to-eye on things.  But this time I simply disagree.  The reviewer is empowered -- nay, enjoined -- to supply an opinion on the work.  If you want to shade your opinion, explain very carefully and explicitly why you are doing that.  Switching to the third person should not convey that you are less sure of yourself, and it does not convey that to my ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Imagine my answer began with &amp;quot;This academic&amp;quot;.  Wouldn't that have been more distracting?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-08-21T16:32:02.703" LastActivityDate="2020-08-21T16:32:02.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T02:18:13.493" Score="3" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've a certain postdoctoral scholarship for a year in certain area of applied science. But the scholarship is not very generous compared to the local cost of living (think of Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship as something very generous for any place), so I'm planning to apply for a scholarship which I'm okay with being relatively smaller amount (as much as € 500/month or $ 700/month is good enough, more is of course better :), which I can earn as my 'research expenses' scholarship, or some such similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any such examples of such a scholarship? If yes, could you please be kind enough to mention them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2016-01-22T11:10:51.033" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T11:10:51.033" Title="Fellowships of smaller amount to support your main postdoctoral fellowship" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2014-07-24T04:45:39.573" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Open University&lt;/a&gt;'s site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mct-research.open.ac.uk/researchdegrees/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Studying for a Research Degree&lt;/a&gt; section in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www9.open.ac.uk/mct/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology&lt;/a&gt; site I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Part-time research students pursue their projects at a distance, under individual guidance from expert supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe it is a possibility if you actually would like to earn a degree from that university, but since this institute is famous for the excellent quality online and distance education I think you should write them a message and ask for information. I guess they would have good suggestions about your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I've taken an online course from this University on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.futurelearn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FutureLearn&lt;/a&gt; site, and the material's quality was very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19856" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T08:06:29.323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T08:06:29.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T07:52:53.203" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it considered bad to copy literature survey from 1st/initial report of the dissertation to the final report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it count as self plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking one should include more recent researches, if any, related to the topic in the final report but what if there is only a 2-3 months period between two reports that happens for masters students in some countries (and in my case too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11191" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T15:11:13.250" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T15:11:13.250" Title="Same literature survey in first and final reports, Is it ok?" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2014-07-24T08:10:28.480" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised there has been no mention of your Master's thesis advisor.  Judging from my humble experience, your advisor's support can be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important for finding your next position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This support could come from their scientific network (e.g. by establishing contact to a group you want to apply to), writing letters of recommendation, or even just looking over your CV and cover letter.  They will know better what a “good” application should look like in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all that is assuming that you have a good working relationship to your advisor.  If not, maybe another professor / experienced researcher would be prepared to help you.  You say you already graduated in April, so I do not know how much contact there has been since then …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17811" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T08:10:28.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24264" CreationDate="2014-07-24T08:31:31.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a professor but I would like to offer my views since my PhD was purely research (ie no teaching) and I only attended a 2-day research methodology class during my study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you mean by independent research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my view, it refers to whether the individual has the capacity to make independent  contribution to knowledge through original research. The quality of the independent research depends on depth and width of reading and querying   relevant publications and experts on a critical level. Although there are times when knowledge is clear, there are also moments of confusion. Both moments should be given equal priority towards developing original research because they teach, unteach and re-teach us.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my view, the choice of field does not matter. &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins/ar/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amabile and Kramer (2011)&lt;/a&gt; suggest that if individuals have interest in their work, they are likely to develop the capacity to persevere. Both choice of field requires the implementation of learning and questioning effort until it makes sense. Though, I find that diving into an outside field will require more time and effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. There should be open communication on student's research load between the student and supervisor so that they can succeed in their jobs. For example, an experienced mentor is able to advise the student on how to better manage the student's research load, if he or she is informed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://hum.sagepub.com/content/44/1/55.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Louis and Sutton (1991)&lt;/a&gt; suggest that attention and cognitive thinking could suffer when individuals engage in switching activities such as in multitasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19932" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T12:40:46.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T12:40:46.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-24T08:44:14.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer is fairly simple here. The subscription that you may be looking for may not be a specialized article service, but rather the university itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just find a university that has a good network, and register to do a course there. I believe some universities allow you to sign up for a single course, evening school or for a parttime scholarship, significantly reducing the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you will need to check the legal requirements, but as long as you use your access for academic research I think you should be ok. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15990" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T08:44:14.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T10:50:24.710" Score="3" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an M.S. in Computer Science and I found it difficult to properly navigate all the available degrees. I'm interested in a particular focus (computer graphics, not modelling and that kind of stuff but how to do use algorithms in order to create graphics). I also have some constraints on language: I currently speak both Dutch and English, so no German or French master's for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other questions on this site about &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5300/methods-for-finding-graduate-programs-for-specific-areas-of-research&quot;&gt;finding graduate programs&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19732/where-to-find-curriculum-for-a-specific-program&quot;&gt;their curriculums&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm mainly looking for quick preselection (like a top 30 of options I have). I'm looking for a overview of courses as it enables quick elimination which if I have to wait for each uni to answer will take quite a long time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any website or other online resource that will allow me to filter all M.S. programs by my requirements (language or country, research focus) and then find out information (such as the list of courses that comprise the degree) about the programs that meet my criteria, all in one place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19941" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:25:36.303" Title="Are there online resources for finding information on M.S. programs that fit my criteria, without having to go through every school's website?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24466" CreationDate="2014-07-24T11:08:34.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another statistic: according to Wikipedia the 62 institutions of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association of American Universities&lt;/a&gt; (AAU) issue 52% of doctoral degrees in the U.S. So, in the U.S. system, even if we discount any effect of institutional ranking, these schools should still account for half of the hiring of doctoral recipients.  Of course, there is also an effect of university quality, so the AAU schools should account for more than half of hires. On the other hand, of course there are exceptional faculty who did not attend top-ranked schools. But the statistics suggest we shouldn't be surprised to find many faculty from a relatively small number of schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T11:08:34.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26310" CreationDate="2014-07-24T11:10:23.293" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a third take on the issue: this is not about the reviewer nor the author, is about the work and as such, I think that it should be the subject of the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper could benefit from a redefinition of pink elephants, possibly defining elephants in general at first and then by adding the color pink&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion this has the benefit of making the review less personal and make it come through as more objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9621" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T11:10:23.293" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26341" CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:04:27.760" Score="11" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to participate to a symposium (or workshop or conference) for the second time. I am a PhD student and I'm not going to present anything there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that networking is very important but I'm so bad at it! &#xA;The first time I spent my time mostly with people of my group or directly involved in my project, and occasionally speaking with people I had met before once or twice (but almost exclusively when they were talking with the people of my group/project). &#xA;In both cases the conversation was just small talk (I like this buffet, the weather is nice, there is a seminar next week at our institute) or was led by the other people, and I would intervene if directly involved or if I knew the technical topic well (e.g., I am using the same library, I had the same problem...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to try this so much praised networking, but I fear I will do just the same as before. I've seen the poster abstracts and there is only one directly related to my project, so I am afraid I will not be able to talk anything technical about other issues. I have a master in Engineering as do most of the other PhD students there, but we have different backgrounds and we have focused on different stuff in our research, so I don't feel talking about problems I have studied five years ago to people who have practiced on them until today. &#xA;Is it expected to network as a &quot;non-specialist&quot;? I feel like that if I want to talk something to a fellow PhD student (not directly in a project similar to mine), it would be small talk and maybe the daily problems of a PhD student, but this seems like a poor alternative to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1596" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T13:07:19.740" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:09:01.677" Title="Networking in a symposium as a &quot;non-specialist&quot;" Tags="&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26273" CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:28:09.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your interest is in &quot;industry,&quot; I'd choose a school based on the institution. Most employers look at that as the &quot;headline,&quot; and often &quot;gloss over&quot; the actual content of the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your interest was in research, I'd go the other way and emphasize &quot;specialization.&quot; Because that is what research is basically about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T13:28:09.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26273" CreationDate="2014-07-24T14:42:50.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i would recommend specialization primarily because better knowledge of the subject and personal preference will most likely yield better results and though the institution name is a factor for job applications, being the best at what you do will always tramp the good reputation of an institution (this is my opinion IF the job supply in both areas of expertise is pretty much the same) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19870" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T14:42:50.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8939" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:22:57.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can look into national lab jobs - see my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17253/what-post-phd-path-alternatives-are-there/17264#17264&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Especially with your computer science background. Many mathematicians at the labs work on large-scale modeling problems that require high performance computing. Some examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://oceans11.lanl.gov/drupal/Home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sea ice&lt;/a&gt; models at LANL, building &lt;a href=&quot;http://trilinos.sandia.gov/packages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;software tools&lt;/a&gt; for linear algebra at Sandia (Trillinos), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnnl.gov/computing/cm4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;computational chemistry&lt;/a&gt; at PNNL, developing &lt;a href=&quot;http://networkx.github.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;graph theory tools&lt;/a&gt; at LANL (NetworkX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just the US options that I've come across personally, there are national labs in many countries where mathematicians can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T15:22:57.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8939" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:57:25.663" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is not accurate to equate every academic job in mathematics with &quot;being a math teacher&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.  I am a professor of (applied) mathematics, and I spend &lt;strong&gt;less than a quarter of my working hours&lt;/strong&gt; on what is formally called teaching (including preparation, class time, grading, etc).  Probably much less.  Applied mathematics professors at research institutions primarily devote their time to &quot;applying math to solve real world problems.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that if you take a position at a SLAC, for instance, you may spend most of your time teaching.  And in a broad sense, part of your job will be to teach mathematics, even if you are in industry (the setting is just less formal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIAM has a host of great resources on non-academic careers in (applied) mathematics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/careers/sinews.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Careers in the Math Sciences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siam.org/careers/thinking.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thinking of a Career in Applied Mathematics?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://client.blueskybroadcast.com/siam08/hyman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mac Hyman talk (video)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whydomath.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.whydomath.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2018-11-27T04:05:31.093" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T04:05:31.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15252" CreationDate="2014-07-24T16:21:15.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only piece of official information I've been able to find regarding the status of the taxonomy is this notice at the bottom of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/about/class&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM Computing Classification System toc&lt;/a&gt; [Retrieved 2014-07-24]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tools to help authors apply the 2012 CCS categories and concepts are being built. A new set of instructions will be issued in early 2013. Until then, authors please continue using the 1998 categories, following these instructions on how to classify your work: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/about/class/how-to-use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Classify Works Using ACM's Computing Classification System&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that the tools mentioned were long overdue already a little over a half a year ago when this question was asked. Not much of an answer, but as at the time writing Google turns up this question as one of the top results when searching for the 2012 CCS taxonomy, so I'm documenting what I was able to find out here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM Digital Library&lt;/a&gt; has shows both the 1998 and 2012 terms on the Citation Pages of all indexed articles, but this seems to be the result of the old scheme being mapped to the new one. I haven't seen any of the additional categories in the new taxonomy showing up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19956" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T16:21:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26326" CreationDate="2014-07-24T16:31:23.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most useful I found (which also helped me finding one for me) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findamasters.com/search/courses.aspx?DID=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Find a masters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does let you select a country of your choice, provides a summary of program where courses list, research focus and other things important are mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also lets you filter by program type (Dip, Cert or degree), by study plan (part time, full time etc) and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it also provides a link to university website so you can go there easily for complete details if you like the description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11191" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T16:31:23.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8939" CreationDate="2014-07-24T16:37:38.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I listed a few possible options in a comment to a thread that was deleted, so here they are again. These are examples of actual jobs that people I know took as math graduates (most with a Master, some with a PhD), with the exclusion of the ones already mentioned in the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;network analyst for a railroad company (in a country with a modern, very dense and complex network).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;statistician/analyst for an online gambling/betting platform (I'm guessing casinos and slot machines manufacturers are hiring mathematicians as well).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grant evaluator, scientific advisor in a national science funding agency (especially for mathematicians with a PhD).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;statistician in an insurance company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;scientific advisor for a law enforcement agency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T02:15:10.363" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T02:15:10.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26343" CreationDate="2014-07-24T16:56:28.657" Score="6" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD Supervisor asked me to submit one of my work at an upcoming International Conference. He is amongst the program committee members. I was having a look at its committee members, the Advisory committee etc. It boasts of researchers from reputed Universities- with some of them quite well established (I know some of them personally). Further, the conference is happening for the 6th time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I found it quite strange that they are organizing the conference without any branding of IEEE/ACM etc. behind them. The proceedings of the conference will be compiled on a CD-ROM. This obviously means that if my paper gets accepted there, it is not going to be archived with IEEE-xplore or ACM digital library. Google may index it because they &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; put the PDFs on the conference's website, but that PDF exists only as long as the website for the conference exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question in my mind: Is such a publication &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; for a PhD student? If I put this work on my CV, nobody can find it on the Internet (except on my personal website or archived on arXiv). Then where is the &lt;strong&gt;credibility&lt;/strong&gt; that work was actually peer-reviewed and published at an International Conference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about &lt;strong&gt;copyright&lt;/strong&gt; issues? The website says nothing of it. These are a group of researchers from different parts of the world coming together to organize a conference. There is no organization like ACM or IEEE behind them. So I am assuming that the issue of copyright transfers may never arise. Does that mean I can submit this work to other venues as well (since exclusive copyright are never transferred)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truly speaking, the only reasons I am going for it is because (1) my Supervisor wants me to, and (2) selected high-quality papers will get the opportunity to submit extended versions to special issue of a SCI journal (which is great for me!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s.: In case it matters: until the past year, it was being organized as a 'workshop'. This is the first time they are calling it a conference and have a Journal extension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.p.s: My field is Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T14:56:47.787" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T14:56:47.787" Title="Publishing at a venue without ACM/IEEE brand?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2014-07-24T17:23:10.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that is very field-dependent. In my field there are two conferences that are not affiliated with IEEE. They are both small, highly-specialized, and very prestigious to get your papers in. One of them does publish the proceedings in a book with a highly-reputable publisher, the other one publishes the papers online only. Still, they are well-known and well-regarded in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you need to know your field. It certainly might be a red-flag, but not necessarily. The conference is as strong as its PC and its acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T17:23:10.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26339" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T18:49:32.263" Score="18" ViewCount="2246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want my thesis to be the best it possibly can be. My supervisor is away for one month right before my thesis submission. Is it inappropriate or poor etiquette to ask another professor in the field who has shown interest in the topic to read the paper and offer any suggestions? This other professor teaches at a different institution, and will not be part of the panel or defence process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19963" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T02:20:36.557" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T14:08:32.147" Title="Is it acceptable to ask a professor who is not your supervisor to provide comments on your thesis draft?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2014-07-24T18:52:09.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course they have value. If the journal or conference is not widely known in the country of the person reading the CV, then that person might find it hard to tell &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt; value to place on the publication. But you have two options: either you leave the publication off your CV and you're guaranteed to get no value from it, or you put it on your CV and get at least some value from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T18:52:09.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26329" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:09:01.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me tell you first that I can sympathise - networking also does not at all come natural to me. However, like most things, networking can be trained. The best opportunity to train is while doing it (or at least trying to), so your symposium should give you ample opportunity to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, if possible, do as JeffE says - have your advisor or some other (maybe more senior) person introduce you to people. Don't be embarrassed to talk about your ideas or your papers, or just about what you have learned during the symposium. That you come from a slightly different field may actually be an advantage here - the most interesting conversations I had at conferences often started with somebody saying &quot;I, as an XY, find many of the presentations here really interesting, but why is there so much focus on A and so little work on B?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, don't discard &quot;small talk&quot;. Networking is mostly about connecting on a personal level anyway - it really does not matter so much &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you talk about with people, as long as you talk to them. Talk to them about whatever comes naturally. It does not &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be about their research, even if this clearly is a natural conversation starter among researchers. Other standard conference convo topics (especially among PhD students) are: (1) life as a grad student, (2) difficulty with course work, (3) estimated time to graduation, (4) the ups and downs of the student's relationship with their advisor (although the last two bullets may be a bit loaded on occasion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, try to not fall into the trap of seeing networking as &quot;work&quot;, i.e., something that you'd rather avoid, but you know you need to do. This will make it automatically appear unpleasant, and you may end up just going through the motions so that you can say to yourself that you &quot;networked&quot;, without achieving much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, talk to people that you like talking to, and avoid like the plague people whose company you do not enjoy (for whatever reason). This sounds like a given, but I have seen many people classify conference participants into &quot;important&quot; and &quot;unimportant&quot;, and then make a point to always talk to the &quot;important&quot; ones despite not actually enjoying it. This is a bad idea on multiple levels, including the fact that the PhD students from today are the professors and grant co-authors from tomorrow, so there really are no unimportant people in a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, don't be too hard on yourself. You don't need to spend every minute of a conference networking. Many people, myself included, need a considerable amount of &lt;em&gt;quiet time&lt;/em&gt; to function. Give it to yourself. It is ok to spend a few hours per conference day alone in front of your work, or on your hotel room if you feel tired of networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, networking is the part of your work where the most important part is really to enjoy yourself. If you find one friend in the symposium, who you stay in touch with over the years, and who you write a grant proposal with in a few years, you networked successfully even if you talked to literally nobody else all week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:09:01.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:15:28.003" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not being affiliated with an organization such as the IEEE or ACM is not, on its own, a bad sign. For example, what is currently the &lt;a href=&quot;http://computationalcomplexity.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity&lt;/a&gt; has decided to end its affiliation with the IEEE and go solo; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://makingsocg.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/results-of-the-vote/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Symposium on Computational Geometry&lt;/a&gt; likewise just left ACM. STACS is also unaffiliated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not great if the proceedings are &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; distributed on CD. On the other hand, if you're already going to be preparing a journal version (and you should!), that will completely supersede any conference version, anyway. I would never read a conference version (&quot;extended abstract&quot;) of a paper if a full version was available: in my area (theoretical CS), the conference version generally has the proofs missing and the peer review isn't very rigorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STACS publishes proceedings through Dagstuhl, which is basically a computer science conference centre in Germany and has close links to DBLP. In this case, copyright is retained by the authors. Note that, regardless of who owns the copyright, most CS conferences won't accept papers which have either appeared at another conference with published proceedings or have been submitted to such a conference. You don't get to double-dip your papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T06:57:58.800" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T06:57:58.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17528" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:22:53.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering from an American point of view, on the supposition that is your background also. I'm not sure how applicable this advice is to a non-American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already have a bachelor's degree, so you shouldn't need to take a second full BS. There are two ways that I can see you going. Either way, you should be taking the equivalent of a major, or at least a minor in math before you pursue graduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enroll as a full time second, or third year &quot;transfers&quot; student in a math-science oriented BS program, using your BA credits surrounding your English major for your non math credits. You should be taking something like two to three math courses (and one or two courses in physics and/or computer science) a semester, until you have completed a math major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enroll as a &quot;special student&quot; somewhere part time, taking one to two math classes a semester, until you have 10-12 math courses that constitute the equivalent of a math major, or at least 6-8 courses for a math minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T19:30:40.533" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:30:40.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17913" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:56:03.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be thinking about taking the &quot;best&quot; Masters courses, not the &quot;most&quot; courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does one define &quot;best&quot; courses: 1) They are courses closest your current areas of interest. 2) They are the courses most relevant to your future (projected) areas of interest 3) they are courses in which you can get the best grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'd certainly take the &quot;crucial&quot; undergraduate course in preference to the graduate course if &quot;timing&quot; is an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take masters courses that are &quot;irrelevant&quot; just for the sake of taking master's course. Take a master's course because it fits your long term needs better than equivalent bachelor's courses. Tim's experience, from another answer, &quot;only&quot; one master's course, just because it was of interest to him, is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T19:56:03.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26339" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:04:22.240" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an existing relationship with this professor, you could ask, but be prepared to hear &quot;sorry, I don't have time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this professor is a stranger to you, this is probably an unreasonable request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:04:22.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26339" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:04:58.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask the other professor, but I would phrase it in a way that makes it clear that I'm not expecting them to proofread the entire thesis. Perhaps you could say something like &quot;You expressed an interest in my research, so I wanted to give you a draft of my thesis. Perhaps it might be of interest to you or one of your students. And of course, If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.&quot; They probably will read it and give you some comments, but they won't feel under pressure to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:04:58.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14699" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:13:24.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to your three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Working at a startup shouldn't hurt, and may help your application if it supports the part about &quot;wanting to found my own.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Sure, the more relevant your work is to your proposed course of study, the better (all other things equal). Just don't get trapped in a lot of &quot;mickey mouse&quot; work in data processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Most universities pride themselves on training &quot;leaders&quot; in the field, and &quot;tech founder&quot; (to some fundraisers) sounds like &quot;future large alumni donor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:13:24.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13872" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:18:36.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ordinarily the answer is no, because it is no longer relevant to your aptitude for college, let alone graduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you won some national (or even local) science fair award for research in your current (or a related field), that would be relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:18:36.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:52:39.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You yourself know what you are falling short of! You have specified yourself about your interests, your research work till today and expectations. You would score an accept letter if you apply to a PhD position that better suits your profile and your future expectations! It is like finding a job. You cannot be a doctor if you studied history!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, PhD admission is competitive. It depends on you whether to make it difficult or easy. The PhD programmes are looking for researchers who deserve to be in that place, not for random people asking for acceptance. Your graduate advisor might help with the selection and application. The PhD supervisors during your MS thesis, might also be good guides. Identify the weaknesses of your profile and improve them before you fall into the abyss of rejection into PhD!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wish you the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:52:39.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1034" CreationDate="2014-07-24T21:15:15.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's take inventory. To respond to your order of presentation, your grades are so-so, not bad enough to keep you &quot;out,&quot; but by themselves, not good enough to be a strong recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing is: &quot;I've done some research and got some papers accepted at good conferences.&quot; That puts you &quot;ahead of the class&quot; and probably got you into the good Canadian university. That will probably get you into many a good American university. As an American, I'd like to see you come stateside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most interesting thing you said was that you are a fully sponsored (paid) student by your government. That suggests &quot;scholarship student&quot; to me, perhaps the equivalent of America's &quot;National Merit Scholar.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your applications, to universities, talk about how their programs meet the needs of your government, and why you'd be an ideal research bridge between the two. Many American universities are looking to add geographical and cultural diversity to their mix of students.  The fact that your government chose you as an &quot;ambassador&quot; is a factor in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T13:43:47.537" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:43:47.537" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10086" CreationDate="2014-07-24T21:31:48.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, you have to compete with people that have a &quot;first class honors degree.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about the fact that you started with low grades and they (mostly) didn't. What you need to show is the fact that you are just as capable as them of making high math grades going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your two A-pluses are a good start. This may be a case of &quot;he just found himself in his sophomore yea.r&quot; That will at least get people to &quot;sit up and take notice&quot; (me, for one). The question people will ask, is something like, &quot;is this a fluke, or can he keep it up over a whole program of study in math?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is &quot;several&quot; more courses with As over the rest of your undergraduate program. You might take an extra course or two so that you get more As to replace your bad freshman grades. If you get to the point where people are thinking, he made &quot;mostly As in his last ten math courses,&quot; it will do a lot to dispel concerns about your early grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T21:39:13.087" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T21:39:13.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26319" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:28:24.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some institutions, one of the goals of the provisional report is to get the student to write something that will eventually be included in their dissertation/thesis. In this way the student feels that he or she has already made a start on the (dreaded) writing up process and therefore feels confident that - in further small, incremental steps - the rest of the document can be created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such cases, it would be unreasonable to consider the re-use of the literature review appearing in the provisional report in the final work as being plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matters may be a little different if the initial report was published in some manner, and released outside of the institution. As per one of the comments to your question so far, get your advisor's input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T23:28:24.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26363" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:48:54.637" Score="27" ViewCount="13060" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; I started my Ph.D two and half years ago in engineering/computer science field. I was pushed by my supervisor into a direction which he thought would be good (He switched directions and he knows nothing about the field, just because there were better prospects for getting grants). I never felt connected to the field and he never received any grants to study it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I switched a year ago to a subject that I feel passionate about and started reading lots of literature. I have done some work and submitted (rejected at first, resubmitted and waiting). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I have completed 2.5 years in the program and no publications at all. I even find it very hard to find new novel ideas in my field as it is been actively researched for 10 years and it seems to me as if almost everything is already done but that is a different issue.&#xA;I am afraid I won't get enough publications in time before the Ph.D time limit expires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Is it normal to be 2.5 years into Ph.D and have no publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15328" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T13:01:37.723" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:52:35.440" Title="Is it normal to have no publications after 2.5 years in a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T00:39:45.133" Score="0" ViewCount="5676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to do phd in organisational behaviour. However, I am confused about how to chose a topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117/how-to-find-a-good-topic-for-a-phd-research-proposal?rq=1&quot;&gt;general strategies for choosing a topic discussed here&lt;/a&gt; are there any specific strategies for choosing a PhD topic in organisational behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19965" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T18:12:02.153" Title="How to choose a topic for a PhD in organisational behaviour?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26355" CreationDate="2014-07-25T02:34:32.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Find a supervisor&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A supervisor will typically help you refine your PhD topic.&#xA;So the first step is to identify researchers in organisational behaviour in universities you are able to attend. It of course helps if you have an understanding of the area that you want to work in so that the supervisor can see the alignment with their research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, organisational behaviour researchers go by a range of names and appear in a range of different departments. &#xA;Look beyond organisational behaviour to also examine areas like human resource management, management, and industrial/organisational psychology. You may find such people in management departments, business schools, I/O psychology programs, as well as a range other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Get to know the literature&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read journal articles in the field to get a feel for what is current. Some of the highest impact journals related to organizational behaviour include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of Applied Psychology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personnel Psychology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academy of Management Journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academy of Management Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative Science Quarterly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of Organizational Behavior&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational Research Methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal of Vocational Behavior&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attend major conferences to network and get to know what are the current issues.&#xA;Some of the biggest conferences are SIOP and Academy of Management in the United States.&#xA;However, there are many other conferences depending on your specific interests and where you are in the world. For example, Australia has an I/O psychology conference every two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Learn about practical problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organisational behaviour is an applied field. It aims to improve the performance and well-being of workers and organisations. So, it helps to learn about the practical problems that people in organisations are experiencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can gain this experience in a range of ways. But in general its helpful to actually work or consult related to your area of interest. Talk to practitioners such as consultants, managers, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T02:41:45.963" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T02:41:45.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26355" CreationDate="2014-07-25T03:26:56.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ideas suggested in your link assumes that professors have the time, are willing and are interested to refine your topic. In my view, this assumption does not hold, 99% of the time. Even if they are willing, they will try to convince you to shew towards their area of research. Before coming to that point, you need to present your argument for your area of interest and try to convince the other person. I recommend that you  explore journal articles until you find a research gap in the literature reviews, findings and limitations sections. In my case, none of the professors I approached were in my field of interest. And  they did not have time to talk to me nor were willing take on additional students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, get to know more academics in the field by engaging with them through forums, emails, university open days, etc. They could also be useful contacts  or references during the course of your study. With dedication, you are bound to achieve a breakthrough. Although a title is important, be prepared to revise it during the study period. Its findings, publication of a similar study, etc may influence the change of title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19932" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T03:26:56.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26354" CreationDate="2014-07-25T03:43:55.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes !&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely normal. I am a doctoral student in, what is arguably a top 5 CS department/top 5 HCI program in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, I had a handful of publications &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I started my doctoral program, my first &quot;real&quot; paper (in a top flight venue) with my adviser was published more than 2.5 years after I joined the program. I had published a couple of workshop papers/posters in those years with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;other graduate students&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; but the acceptance rates for them, even in highly ranked conferences, are pretty high so that doesn't really account for much. These had nothing to do with my dissertation but were just some side projects that we did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my colleagues and friends/acquaintances in similar programs in similar universities were in similar situations in that time. It takes time to read literature, come up with a compelling and important research question, design a study/prototype/system/algorithm, write the paper and most importantly, get it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not be disheartened. The quality of papers matter, not the quantity when it comes to being evaluated by search committees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="1429" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T07:08:32.867" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T07:08:32.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26354" CreationDate="2014-07-25T04:28:11.723" Score="-13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it can be normal to have no publications until you're done with your PhD, and then your dissertation counts as your publication.  There's nothing wrong with having no publications beforehand.  These are often obsessions for university Deans and perhaps Admin, but they are not directly connected with the pursuit of knowledge or a Doctor of Philosophy.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words one can pursue knowledge without publishing anything. Further, a lessor degree does not say that you are ready to publish and contribute your own work to the corpus of the Establishment -- that SHOULD be saved until after you are rewarded the degree.  The degree then acts as a badge you've earned as a member of the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Save publications for your career.  Better to focus on making your PhD count for something, so that when you do get the award, you have something real to contribute to centuries of knowledge accumulation in Academe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit:  for those arguing that it's accepted practice to dilute the publishing industry to meet your program's requirements, why don't you solicit your University to start the &lt;em&gt;Journal for &quot;Paper's Required towards my PhD&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T01:13:06.813" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T01:13:06.813" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21254" CreationDate="2014-07-25T07:56:03.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got my PhD from Aston University.  There, its the date it was first submitted to the examiners.  If you then have to resubmit after corrections (which most people have to do) this doesn't change the date, since its the original date that is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to pay for labels to be printed to cover up the incorrect date on the spine of my thesis, as I used the resubmitted date by mistake!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15788" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T07:56:03.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26339" CreationDate="2014-07-25T09:25:47.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the other professor has expressed his interest in reading your thesis and is willing to do it, I don't see why not. It is better to have someone read your work out of interest rather than obligation. But it is also a good idea to let your supervisor know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T09:25:47.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26373" CreationDate="2014-07-25T10:46:16.657" Score="13" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a physics paper, and I have decided not to write down explicit equations I have found since they are incredibly long. Instead I just report plots showing the behaviour resulting from these equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it deprecable to say something like the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have found analytic results, but we do not report them here for sake of brevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19983" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T11:02:13.973" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T04:21:38.053" Title="Exact results found, but not reported" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26339" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:07:08.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I depends what that &quot;lack of knowledge&quot; means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it an attempt to hide the fact? Then it is fishy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or just &quot;I will not bother my supervisor with this&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been on all the sides of this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student I did not tell my supervisor that I was showing my thesis to someone else because I knew he would not care to know and would have encouraged me to do so (to get comments, ideas, ...). He was an excellent supervisor: present and active when I needed him and siding away when I was moving full speed ahead, sometimes against his recommendations. When one of these &quot;without his recommendation&quot; (&quot;against&quot; is maybe too strong a word) turned out to be a good idea he wrote himself off the paper I was publishing (he was second author) because he said he was not convinced at the time and that I should get all the praise. I am glad I met him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was also asked several times to have a look at a thesis. To be frank I never thought of asking the student whether his supervisor was OK or not with that  because I did not think about the possibility of being against (and the associated reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15446" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:07:08.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:35:24.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you add an appendix to the paper? If not, I think whether it is reasonable to add the statement you proposed depends on how central the analytical results are to the findings in your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the result isn't important, I think what you propose is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the analytical result is crucial, then you need to think very carefully about making the result available to a reader -- maybe an extended version of the manuscript on arxiv? Or on your website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:35:24.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:40:44.107" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Idealistically, a paper should aspire to contain all the information required for reproducing its empirical results and verifying its deductive results with reasonable effort. Just writing the suggested sentence, however, does not allow for this, as someone would have to redo your work on finding those equations from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may drastically reduce the usefulness of your paper, as it unnecessarliy increases the amount of work other people have to put in using your results and decreases their perceived soundness (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat&amp;#39;s_Last_Theorem&quot;&gt;Fermat’s Last Theorem&lt;/a&gt; for an extreme example). This may also be harmful from an egoistical point of view as it does not improve your popularity amongst others in your field and you may receive less citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how exactly your equations were derived and look like, the following ways to include or not include them may be appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From [equations derived in the paper] we can obtain closed solutions for [variables] using [standard technique or computer algebra system], which we use in the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From [equations derived in the paper], we obtain closed solutions for [variables] (see Appendix X).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the target journal does not allow for appendices and has a content limit (in which case it will usually be a letter journal), the following may be acceptable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From [equations derived in the paper] we derived analytical results for [variables]. For brevity’s sake, these results are not given here and will be published elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something similar may also be appropriate if you are publishing in a journal of another discipline, e.g., you are publishing in a medical journal as your equations are relevant for an imaging technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it should go without saying that publishing the results elsewhere should be a realistic endeavour and actually be intended. Also, if you are not giving too much away, it would be better in terms of soundness and acceptance to actually publish your analytical work first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, you will likely get a better answer from someone familiar with your work and field, such as your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T13:08:34.490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:08:34.490" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26354" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:56:10.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's definitely normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can take time to find the topic that's close to your heart. Once you find a topic that motivates you, the publications will flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:56:10.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26145" CreationDate="2014-07-25T12:04:07.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is usually no absolute requirement to be associated with an academic institution in order to submit a paper to a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have a serious credibility barrier to overcome if you choose that route, depending on how common independent research is in your field. My impression is that in some fields (network security, for example), publication by independent researchers is relatively common. In contrast, it would be much less common to publish an experimental neuroscience paper without an academic affiliation (I've never seen one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also have an issue regarding access to the literature without an affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should try writing a short project proposal, with some preliminary results or analysis (whatever's appropriate), and sending it to the researchers to ask if they would like to collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T12:04:07.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26377" CreationDate="2014-07-25T12:10:37.083" Score="2" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the french academic system, master's programs last for 2 years and one can start from the second year (if he/she fulfills the academic requirements, such as having already studied the first year or has already another master's degree in the same specialization). From what I saw in some german universities websites, master's degrees in germany last 2 years, but they don't precise whether one has the possibility to apply for an entry from the second year (if for example one has already a master's degree in the same field). Is it possible to join from the second year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19986" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T12:51:44.060" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T12:51:44.060" Title="Can I enroll in just the second year of a master's degree program in Germany?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26376" CreationDate="2014-07-25T12:47:56.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to answer your question is to explain that it's a two-step process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to be admitted to the master's program. If you're coming in as an international student, this can be in and of itself very difficult, particularly if you are applying to what is known as a &quot;consecutive&quot; master's degree program, for which the usual prerequisite is a bachelor's degree &lt;strong&gt;in the same field from a German university&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are coming from a different field, or from outside Germany, you need to have the university recognize and accept your credentials as substantially equivalent to the bachelor's degree in question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After you have gained admission, you can then proceed to establish that courses you have taken are equivalent to the master's courses offered in the degree program of interest. Normally this has to be approved by the instructor of &lt;strong&gt;each&lt;/strong&gt; course you're interested in getting &quot;transfer credit&quot; for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, you won't be admitted into the &quot;second year&quot; or &quot;semester &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;&quot; of a given master's program, but you can get the equivalent credit, which will thus shorten your overall time-to-degree accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T12:47:56.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T13:19:28.987" Score="1" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I got to see during my research internship, research master's students, PhD students and researchers, when they do some decent research work or project, they sometimes send a scientific article to get published (after a selection process). In the case of students, whether it be master's or PhD students, there are always mentors or advisers that direct their work and join their names to theirs in the published paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know whether it is possible for anyone (someone who is neither a student nor a research, and who is not even an employed person) who does a research or even an implementation-driven work (such as building an application in the case of computer engineering) to submit a paper for publication and get it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I bear in mind that in order to gain some recognition and to be selected for publication, the work should contribute with some knowledge to the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes, how to proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19986" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T14:00:20.593" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T14:00:20.593" Title="Publishing a scientific article without being a student or a researcher" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-25T13:42:45.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-07-25T13:45:46.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your field, the answer can also be to join a professional organization and subscribe to their digital library.  As an example from my field, members of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) can purchase an annual subscription to the digital library, with access to every paper ever published in any of their publications, for $99.  I imagine other fields may have similar deals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:45:46.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12225" CreationDate="2014-07-25T15:09:06.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm a ReadCube user who was a Mendeley user - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ReadCube does have a citation tool for Word and their apps make articles interactive - things like references, authors, figures are clickable - which is pretty neat. Their recommendations are pretty good too if you have enough in your library - otherwise the results can be pretty generic. I guess that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer it to Mendeley - though I do miss Mendeley's web access part of it. ReadCube has a &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; better interface. It's like what you'd expect for mainstream tools - intuitive, slick, streamlined. I find the other tools in comparison &quot;science functional&quot; - they work - but look cludgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19993" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T15:09:06.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T16:38:31.357" Score="10" ViewCount="18934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed my professor about two weeks ago, but there was no response to my first email. I sent a follow up, and got a reply saying they'd be happy to write one for me on the following weekend. I waited, the weekend passed, and nothing happened. I followed up  again, and again no response to my email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am thinking to call as a reminder. My professor has written many recommendations on my behalf, and my guess is that it didn't get done  due to  laziness or  forgetfulness. Now we have a long holiday coming for the next ten days and I want a recommendation as soon as possible. Is it appropriate to call  on the weekend given the fact that it was said that it could be written one a previous weekend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T13:37:27.710" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T16:53:25.883" Title="Is it appropriate to call a professor for a recommendation on the weekend?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-25T16:50:50.033" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;No -- it's totally inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously. Think about it. Unless you're at a school where profs phone grad students at their home on weekends to inquire about a late paper, it's totally inappropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Note: Many grant agencies / admissions committees know that we (the faculty) are thorough flakes and couldn't be trusted to tie our own shoelaces in the morning. They usually give a few days of extra time for faculty references to come in after the deadline.  Others, however, are very strict on deadlines and thus faculty need to be properly shepherded into getting their materials in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2015-10-25T01:12:45.193" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T01:12:45.193" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:01:08.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well based on your past experiences you know your professor better. One of mine does miss many of my emails and another responds even at night or on holidays. So it's probably more of a habitual thing (considering most professors are busy but not all respond late) than ignoring you specifically for some reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reason for delay might be that he forgot your credentials and needed some time to look at those again, to write a more accurate recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A suggestion I would like to make though, use a mode of communication that this professor likes more (mine likes skype and responds quickly on those messages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11191" LastEditorUserId="11191" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T19:49:54.503" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T19:49:54.503" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:09:27.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to call on a weekend, call his office phone and leave a message there. Then he can check the voicemail if he chooses to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When following up on these things, it is always good idea to ask if you can provide any additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, keep in mind, you can express your concern with the delay of your letter, remind them of the deadline, and offer to provide information. But you cannot require it done this weekend. This person is doing you a favor and nothing obliges them to write one for you this weekend, or ever again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:09:27.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:37:24.757" Score="11" ViewCount="1549" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI#Writing_about_yourself_and_your_work&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia rules&lt;/a&gt; about citing yourself state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, ... and is not excessive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Wikipedia rules allows self citation, is it ethical to self cite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short example: there are two good papers on the same topic, &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt;. Is it ethical for the authors of paper &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; to include a reference to A and not B in the &quot;References&quot; section at the end of the article even if it is not cited in the article. On Wikipedia, it is pretty common for things to be just listed at the end and not mentioned in the article itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At what point is it appropriate to edit references to my own papers/preprints into Wikipedia?  (Maybe even add a paragraph claiming the same breakthrough I claim in my own paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What should one do when noticing that otherwise unknown and very new preprints pop up as (uncited) references in Wikipedia articles?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19997" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T21:08:47.577" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T01:16:49.210" Title="When is it appropriate to add references to own papers on Wikipedia?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;preprint&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-25T18:03:36.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should be peer-reviewed, otherwise wikipedia would be working nearly as a primary source (anyone could write something on a blog and use it as a reference, laughable).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;once it's peer-reviewed, the references should be reasonable, they should support what is written in wikipedia and what is written should have a general interest in the article itself. Maybe many people would see my paper on topology if I put it in the Pope's article, but that's basically vandalism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;every paper has a set of references and describes the state of the art in some area, some of those references may be self-references. That is mostly the type of content that should be provided in wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it has never occurred to me that there's a high potential of the same&#xA;  kind of abuse by academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If well used&lt;/em&gt;, this should be helpful for both academics and wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T18:03:36.640" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-25T18:08:31.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  In the cultures and universities I'm familiar with, &lt;strong&gt;it is never appropriate to call your professor's personal or mobile phone&lt;/strong&gt;.  It would be very unusual even to call his/her office phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you ask in person instead of by email (in the first place) you're more likely to get what you want.  You're asking a busy person to devote a significant amount of time and attention to do you a favor, with no compensation.  In most cultures, asking in person shows that it's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T18:08:31.570" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T18:53:25.837" Score="6" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got an admission to Cambridge University and have been asked to attend an afternoon tea event at my future college, it is a matriculation event. In contrast to all other invitations there has been no reference towards the expected dress code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any implicit/explicit expectations on what to wear as a female attendant? In many pictures I saw people wearing hats to such an occasion. Is it compulsory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any answers and your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20001" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T22:16:15.113" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T23:32:00.247" Title="Cambridge Dress Code" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;outward-appearance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T19:33:05.713" Score="14" ViewCount="1494" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: My supervisor wants to quit my supervision due to reasons beyond his control. He suggested few colleagues to replace him. My only concern is that I be asked to switch my current research direction to meet that of my potential new supervisor. I have spent considerable amount of reading and review, designing simualtors and coming up with new ideas and I don't want to restart all over. I found a co-supervisor who is closely related to my field and agreed on supervision (He is not affiliated with my university anymore though), but still need a main supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Am I obliged to restart over and lose all my reserach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15328" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T14:04:28.457" Title="Can someone change PhD supervisor without changing research direction?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25988" CreationDate="2014-07-25T19:42:02.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak for the Czech system, but in the Netherlands a follow-up master is a master program specifically designed for students who completed a certain bachelor program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All students who graduated from that bachelor program (and selected similar programs at other Dutch universities) are accepted into the master automatically. If you did not graduate from one of these bachelor programs (for example, because you studied abroad), you have to apply to the university for a certificate of admission &lt;em&gt;(bewijs van toelating)&lt;/em&gt;. In that case, the university decides whether you can be admitted anyway, can be admitted after following a so-called homologation program&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, or cannot be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason these programs exist is that the introduction of the bachelor-master system in the Netherlands is quite recent (2002). Before, universities offered longer (~5-year) programs that resulted in a degree comparable to a Masters. With the introduction of the new system, many universities simply split their existing programs into a bachelor program (typically 3 years) and a &quot;follow-up&quot; master program (1-2 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The University of Twente &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utwente.nl/ee/Programme%20information/Programme%20adaptations%20for%20international%20students/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;describes homologation courses&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homologation courses (bridging courses) are advanced bachelor courses that you will have to follow if they contain essential knowledge for your master’s programme. [...] The courses depend on the chosen specialization and they have been selected by the Admission Committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T19:42:02.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T20:57:02.093" Score="3" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times while reading papers (especially engineering), many concepts, algorithms or results are taken for granted because they are already established in research. Sadly, at this point, many are not even referenced directly or some authors refer to other publications which use them. Is there a good and a fast method to find the original paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15328" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T03:07:22.373" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T20:50:39.300" Title="Efficient ways to find the original paper which introduced a novel concept/algorithm?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26401" CreationDate="2014-07-25T21:32:16.543" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is to talk with your professors.  They should be familiar with established research and the people who originated novel ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, using your skills at research at your library or asking a reference librarian to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2015-09-23T20:50:39.300" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T20:50:39.300" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26398" CreationDate="2014-07-25T21:49:51.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not obligated to start over.  Talk to your provost or ombudsman if there isn't an immediate/good replacement.  Your school has some obligation to fulfill it`s end of the bargain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By telling your situation to them, they might be able to help the existing professor stay, or at least suggest the right direction for you to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T21:49:51.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27838" CreationDate="2014-07-25T23:04:26.033" Score="12" ViewCount="16696" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a good way to obtain data on the number of publications per year on a given subject? Scholar has an option to sort search results by date, but there does not seem to be an automated way of generating a report. In the worst case I will write a script that extracts the data I need, but perhaps someone knows of another system that offers such a facility? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20011" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T06:26:49.397" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T09:49:25.540" Title="How to obtain number of publications by year on a given subject?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26396" CreationDate="2014-07-25T23:32:00.247" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a hat would be overdoing it. Men will typically wear chinos, a collared shirt and a jacket to such things. Ladies have somewhat more choice: perhaps a dress, or smart trousers and a nice jumper. Colleges vary; some are smarter than others!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the most important thing is to be comfortable - the point of the reception is to meet people and make new friends, so you want to feel as relaxed as possible! So don't feel you have to dress up unduly if that's not your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T23:32:00.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-26T03:06:48.183" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Never.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let someone else do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T03:06:48.183" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2014-07-26T03:30:14.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a somewhat similar position some time ago and decided against publishing the analytical results, since they were too long. Essentially, I was solving a linear system of equations with Mathematica, which can produce horribly long equations, which are hard to analyze any further. Also, computers might actually be faster in solving the initial linear system numerically, then evaluating long arithmetic equations. For these reasons, I did not stress that I could have written down the solution in analytical terms in the paper. I just gave the linear system and said that we produced the plot from its solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I doubt that the result is crucial, when the analytical equations are several pages long. That being said, if you can make the equations available (preferably in some electronic version, since nobody is gonna type them into a computer), that is certainly a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17974" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T03:30:14.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2014-07-26T04:21:38.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider attaching a Mathematica notebook to the arxiv submission, which is something I've been seeing relatively often lately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T04:21:38.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-26T04:26:52.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should cite your own work if it truly adds to the quality of the Wikipedia article. It's true that it's in one's self-interest to get the publicity you described from having one's work cited on Wikipedia, but it can also be constructive. After all, who is going to know the subject better than the person who wrote a peer-reviewed journal article on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it really is shameless and unethical self-promotion, people will see it and know, and so will the Wikipedia admins, who will revert it with prejudice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though Wikipedia has rules against original research, once research is peer-reviewed and accepted by the scientific community, it doesn't really matter who adds it to Wikipedia. An example of a scholar writing about his own work can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wheel_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wheel_theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20016" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T04:26:52.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-26T06:39:20.757" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question really has two parts, the &lt;strong&gt;ethical&lt;/strong&gt; question and the &lt;strong&gt;practical&lt;/strong&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of, the &lt;strong&gt;ethical&lt;/strong&gt; question. Let me say that I am surprised that you see the issue whether it is &lt;em&gt;ethical&lt;/em&gt; to self-plug your work on Wikipedia as an entirely different issue than whether this is &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; by Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia is a private web site run on private donations, and is entitled to define how they want to do things around their piece of the web (much like we do here at Stack Exchange, to the chagrin of plenty a new user). I think it is impossible to argue that it is ethical (for academics or anybody else) to (mis-)use their service in a way that violates their own rules for your personal gain. Hence, to answer your updated question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's a question about what is considered ethical in academia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not, precisely due to the reason that you say you are not interested in: &lt;em&gt;it is not allowed by Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;. It cannot be ethical to use their service, but don't consider their rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, your question also has a bit of a &lt;strong&gt;practical&lt;/strong&gt; part. You claim that it should be really easy to self-plug your work on Wikipedia, and that it will be hard to trace and prevent. (You also seem to imply that this impact on the ethical question, which I think it has not - whether something &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done is pretty much irrelevant to whether it is ethical to do it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a bit of a case study for this. A large European research project I was involved with some time ago once got asked by its reviewers to add their own papers and other outcomes to relevant articles &quot;to increase visibility&quot;. After some internal discussion, the project obliged and started with some really defendable and arguably independently useful edits (taking very stubby articles and improving them with peer-reviewed content from our own papers, and adding references). &lt;em&gt;All of those changes were rolled back within minutes&lt;/em&gt;, with the explanation that the edits looked too much like self-advertisement. We tried again, even more conservatively, and the same thing happened again. It turned out that the self-policing in Wikipedia works &lt;em&gt;much better&lt;/em&gt; than anybody in the project anticipated. We gave up on the issue quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morale here is just that Wikipedia is aware that people could try to do this (and I am sure many do), and are very vigilant. I am sure you are able to edit in your links given enough energy, but it may be much harder than you imply it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T06:39:20.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-26T07:41:47.770" Score="8" ViewCount="2073" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just found this site and did some searching around but I'm not sure anyone is as nuts as I am.  Long story short I've been living with a severe anxiety surrounding school.  I'm 29 years old now and am finally getting to the root of my issue, and it's making a lot of sense.  Everything except how to move forward.  I've always wanted to go &quot;all the way&quot; through a Masters Degree but I'm almost certain any competent admissions committee will reject me without question.  Here's my scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Community College 1: About 9 years ago I registered for my classes, didn't show up.  Dropped by the administration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Community College 2: About 7 years ago I registered for my classes, showed up for a week, dropped by administration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Community College 3: 4 years ago I registered for a fresh start.  Did one semester successfully but got a D in one class because I had anxiety surrounding showing up for that class.  I retook that same class 5 more times each resulting in either a self-initiated withdraw/drop, or a flat-out F because I stopped going and had too much anxiety to admit that i'm dropping again.  I have 1 &quot;ok&quot; semester, and 3 complete failure/dropped semesters.  Ending GPA is 1.75&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Went back to Community College 1.  Did well and have a GPA of 3.4.  Did not transfer any of the classes from any other school.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm looking to apply to a 4 year university.  I know I need to give them all transcripts from all schools, but I'm really nervous about not getting in anywhere because of my rough history working through that anxiety.  I'm mostly concerned about a future Master's program not giving me the time of day.  I have an excellent work history because I always put that first but now that I'm learning how to focus on academics I want to go all the way.  Maybe even further for a PhD., if I continue to bust my behind the way I have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm floating the idea of maybe doing a 2nd Bachelor's before a Master's if I have to do that to prove to a committee that I'm worth a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would any of you do in my shoes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20020" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-08T08:17:36.673" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T08:17:36.673" Title="Repeat dropper and failure at multiple colleges. Is a Master's ever possible?" Tags="&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-26T08:16:54.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three columns of wikipedia are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V&quot;&gt;Verifiability&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOR&quot;&gt;No Original Research&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV&quot;&gt;Neutral Point of View&lt;/a&gt;. In my opinion (and this is established in a large part of the wikipedia community, imho), you should avoid adding your own citations, since it is hard to have a neutral point of view wether your citation is really that important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do instead (and what I have seen), is that you suggest adding your citation (or some paragraph about your work) at the &lt;strong&gt;talk page&lt;/strong&gt; of the article. Have patience and see how other react to your suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you see questionable sources, you might remove it. But again if you feel unsure if this is appropriate use the talk page of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T08:16:54.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26636" CreationDate="2014-07-26T08:50:08.293" Score="6" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for Research Methodology textbooks in the field of Computer Science. Most books I came across are useful to social science, economics etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our part of the world a person who wants to do research should study a course in research methodology. But most books in research methodology are from social science, economics perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would like to know some from technology/computer science/engineering perspective. Some must read books for general reading also would be good &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="123" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T14:11:04.380" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:55:04.183" Title="Research Methodology Books for beginners in Computer Science research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-26T09:06:22.673" Score="14" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite common in almost all position opening announcements in academic institutes to demonstrate EXCELLENT teaching capabilities. For instance sentences like below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants are expected to demonstrate excellent undergraduate and graduate teaching capabilities &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the question is HOW to demonstrate that excellence? Is just listing subjects taught during last couple of years sufficient? I guess we can use teaching statement or teaching philosophy to demonstrate that ability too. But, what type of sentences show that excellence in teaching statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T01:43:46.817" Title="How to demonstrate excellent undergraduate and graduate teaching capabilities in academic position applications?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26587" CreationDate="2014-07-26T10:09:23.787" Score="7" ViewCount="2699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing the introduction to my PhD thesis and have one specific doubt about how to include or cite a review article that I have published with jointly with my supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, a review article and the thesis introduction are quite similar - they review a specific field for fellow researchers. It's very difficult to make a summary of a review, given that it is already quite densely written. What would be the best manner to include my own text from the review in my thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paste the review paper it as introduction chapter (with journal layout) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention that this introductory chapter has verbatim extracts from my review and cut and paste the most important parts ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summing up and rewording large parts of the review paper and avoid self-plagiarism?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, my university allows to include my papers that are already published in the thesis, but the guidelines do not elaborate much more as I guess everybody assumes that research papers are pasted as result chapters. I have talked with several people (including PI, secretaries). I'd just like to consult the opinion of people outside my everyday universe. I am curious on what you have to say, thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20024" LastActivityDate="2020-09-15T20:34:54.393" Title="Including own review article in Thesis?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;&lt;introduction&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26424" CreationDate="2014-07-26T10:36:58.873" Score="43" ViewCount="5229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently read the following statistics in the book &quot;The Survival of a Mathematician: From Tenure to Emeritus&quot; by Steven G. Krantz, which seems a little odd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a hard fact that more than 90% of American Ph.D. mathematicians&#xA;  never write a paper. Of those who do, most write just one paper based&#xA;  on the Ph.D. thesis and that’s it. Nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen several new PhD's (graduated in Canada, US, or Europe) with no publications, but my estimate for the rate of such fellows was way more optimistic than the above quote. So, I would like to know: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How accurate is this statistic? Is it documented anywhere?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there similar statistics about Mathematics PhD's in other countries?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T19:18:54.547" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T14:37:11.573" Title="Percentage of PhD's in mathematics with no publications" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2014-07-26T10:45:24.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;CS and WS are each concerned with a different kinds of questions, and the language their respective practitioners use simply reflects this difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is familiar to me, given that I've been on both sides of the divide (English Lit as an undergrad minor, cognitive science for my PhD). I got a glimpse of why it exists many years ago when I was in a course with a bunch of Lit Crit majors and we were discussing a certain poem by a certain contemporary poet. The Lit Crit people where pointing at a specific part of the poem and going &quot;Is this an allegory for his lost love? Is this a metaphor for the senselessness of  war?&quot;, and so on. Then, in a youthful display of naivety, I said &quot;hey, the guy who wrote this poem is still alive, why don't we try to get in contact with him and ask him what he means?&quot;. The lecturer leading the discussion looked at me very sternly and said &quot;that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the point&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was very illuminating, I think. I'm sure that the poet in question had something specific in mind when he wrote the poem (and we'll never know what it was because he's dead by now), but the Lit Crit guys don't care about that. The &lt;em&gt;intended&lt;/em&gt; meaning of the poem is irrelevant to them, what they care about is the meaning(s) that &lt;em&gt;others&lt;/em&gt; might extract from the poem. In the same way, in the passages you quoted, the author doesn't care about the android in and of itself, but rather about how others feel about the existence and characteristics of the android, and how these feelings affect other feelings and beliefs we might have about related issues. That is what allows him/her to make judgments about fashion and other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, people in the sciences care about &quot;objective truth&quot; (for lack of a better term), not about how other people feel about stuff. If I write in a paper &quot;stimulus A caused neurological response B (p &amp;lt; 0.01)&quot;, asking about the Marxist/feminist/whatever interpretation of this finding is about as pointless as trying to get to the &quot;objective truth&quot; underlying a piece of poetry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T10:45:24.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26416" CreationDate="2014-07-26T10:52:39.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a great question that I have asked myself in the last several years and I'm also looking for an informed answer. In the mean while, I have come up with an idea to demonstrate my teaching abilities to potential employers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After graduation, I taught several graduate courses mainly on mathematical analysis, such as measure theory, harmonic analysis, C*-algebra. Based on these experiences, I have written a lecture note on C*-algebras which is available in arXiv. I thought if a serious employer really wants to evaluate my teaching abilities, nothing speaks better than my lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T10:52:39.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26425" CreationDate="2014-07-26T13:24:20.950" Score="1" ViewCount="3037" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from a European University with a Bachelor of Science Degree (Engineering Degree) and I'm about to move in the United States.&#xA;My specialization/ major would be Telecommunications Engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the US equivalent of this ? I've noticed US colleges usually have EE(Electrical Engineering programs), which is the closest I've found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20029" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T03:30:03.513" Title="&quot;Electronics and Communications Engineering&quot; equivalent in the U.S.A" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;major&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26419" CreationDate="2014-07-26T15:38:52.717" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as I enjoy Krantz's work on the whole, this sentence strikes me as not really qualifying as &quot;hard fact.&quot;  On the other hand, I think part what may be throwing you off is that he says &quot;Ph.D. mathematician&quot; not &quot;new Ph.D.&quot;  So, he's including mathematicians who graduated long ago (one of the issues with &quot;hard fact&quot; status is that it's unclear how far back he's going.  To the first Ph.D. awarded to an American?), at a time when mathematicians were under much less pressure to publish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For new Ph.D.'s this number is surely false.  10% of the Ph.D. graduates of American Ph.D. programs (from 2010) is about 160.  That's half the number that are employed immediately after graduating at PhD granting institutions in the US.  I find it hard to believe that half of those people will never write any published papers, and I know for a fact that lots of PhD's who are employed at bachelor's institutions or go on to other kinds of work have at least one publication.  The numbers above come from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2010Survey-NewDoctorates-Report&quot;&gt;2010 AMS Annual survey&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T15:38:52.717" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2014-07-26T15:56:20.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electrical engineering and (when it exists) electronics engineering usually cover telecommunications, as well as many other topics. Undergraduate degrees in NA are usually broader in scope than those in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it wouldn't try to change the terminology of your own major: keep it as telecommunications engineering if that's what it is, and everyone will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8001" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T15:56:20.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="778" CreationDate="2014-07-26T16:36:25.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should stay in school if you enjoy being in an academic environment. College isn't just a path for a career. It's about engaging with others, collaborating in projects, making connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20029" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T16:36:25.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28606" CreationDate="2014-07-26T17:00:41.057" Score="11" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often seen people(postdoc, etc.) listing in their CV or webpage that they were awarded best reviewer for conference X. I have recently been invited to become a reviewer for a conference, which has made me ponder over what are the criteria for giving such awards? (My field is computer science if that makes a difference.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T03:26:56.483" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T16:37:12.923" Title="How are best reviewer awards given (in a computer science conference)?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2014-07-26T19:19:56.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest you're going to get is Computer Engineering.  Most universities will have classes on networking, but you'll have to look for those with telecom.  Otherwise, if you want to specialize in telecommunications, your best bet is probably a trade school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T19:19:56.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26753" CreationDate="2014-07-26T19:45:17.937" Score="10" ViewCount="884" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies showing that there is a direct connection (or a lack of a connection) between extending the time given for students to complete a written exam and their performance on the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that would suggest that the more relaxed time constraints are helpful, but I would like to be able to point to &quot;field studies&quot; if possible, as that would make for a more convincing position with my colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T20:28:19.097" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T18:40:36.280" Title="Are there formal studies analyzing available test time versus performance?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26431" CreationDate="2014-07-26T20:22:42.203" Score="2" ViewCount="956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking a two day workshop at a technical institute, the instructor has said that all accredited courses must have final exams. Fair enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is such a short course the exam will be on the same day that we are also being presented new material. This seems very strange to me, to be given an exam after approximately 5 hours of both lectures and labs throughout the day. That being said, I have a lack of academic experience, so I would like to hear from you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice to have lectures and labs on the same day as an exam (of the same class)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20035" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-07-26T23:07:29.220" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T17:36:32.760" Title="Lectures and labs on the same day as an exam?" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26430" CreationDate="2014-07-26T20:29:52.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The university I'm at recently had a class with lecture in the morning, lab that afternoon, exam an hour after that, then a quiz the following morning in lecture, and finally a recitation that afternoon. Summer semesters tend to be like this as they are shorter in length than a fall or spring semester. No one is happy with it, but it's what needs to happen to cover all the requisite material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would typically happen during a regular semester is that labs can't be moved or adjusted, but usually the following lecture is either shorter of cancelled if it is the next day and the lecture the day of the exam is mostly review. But I must point out it is at the discretion of the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7745" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T20:29:52.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2014-07-26T22:50:15.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would &quot;massage&quot; this problem by including a dummy statistical variable for the country. E.g. 0 for the country where grades are more important, and 1 for the country where GREs are more important. You could almost separate the applications into two piles this way, and tackle one pile at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If asked about it, I would answer that neither grades nor GREs alone are dispositive, and they both have have greater explanatory power when you introduce the third (country) variable into the equation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm concerned, it is ethical to use any combination of statistical variables that satisfactorily explain performance, and to strive for &quot;best fit&quot; (statistically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T22:50:15.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-26T23:44:32.867" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in doubt: no. But it depends on the teacher. And often fortune favors the bold and the brave. If you can get away with it, and it helps you get the recommendation, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Professionalism&quot; is still secondary to results. Besides, if you have his cell number it is already a kind of permission. I mean it, you should only have gotten it to use it. Go for it, apologize for calling on the weekend to keep connected, proceed to give nothing but a gentle reminder (of your deadline/how nervous you are about getting all the documents together), that's it. Won't hurt either of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18361" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T23:44:32.867" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T02:38:07.250" Score="13" ViewCount="4197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do many universities allow students to get a PhD in mathematics without publishing a paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19563" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T12:31:57.777" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T13:02:03.947" Title="Can we get a PhD in mathematics without publishing?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26434" CreationDate="2014-07-27T02:48:08.277" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is typical in the U.S. that mathematics Ph.D. students do not publish anything at all prior to earning a Ph.D., I think even at the elite places. Publication per se is not such a high priority, nor over-literal gauge of accomplishment, as it seems to be in some CompSci and Engineering disciplines (at least in the minds of some people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, to be clear, especially for people who've thought, or been indoctrinated to think, that the measure of the value of something is the prestige of the conference or journal or ... in which it was published, the idea in mathematics still does seem to be that the thesis advisor and thesis committee decide whether the candidate has done sufficient work to earn the degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems a sane system to me, especially given the acceleration of freneticism elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T02:48:08.277" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2014-07-27T03:23:34.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes there are differences in writing style between Women's studies and Engineering, just as there are between Engineering and Science, Science and Mathematics, Law and History, and so on. The purpose and objectives of each department are different, as well as their intended audience. It would be more surprising if there were very similar writing styles between different departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not say where the article was published but this also affects the style. More narrowly focused journals will normally restrict themselves to papers written in a certain style. So technical engineering journals would normally publish technical papers, while such papers would not be accepted for a Women's studies journal, or a general science journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20041" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T03:23:34.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2014-07-27T03:30:03.513" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electrical and Electronic Engineering usually refers to building electrical devices like computers, or cellphone networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer Science usually refers to using computers, especially programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps clarify some terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20041" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T03:30:03.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T04:30:58.490" Score="11" ViewCount="3881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 2nd-year (starting 3rd year) international PhD student at a top-10 electrical engineering program in the US. I've started this program right after BS without giving it much thought because I was very successful in my class and I though I was going to get an MS anyway (and I want to do it abroad), why don't do it as part of a PhD program? In this way, I'd be funded and if I liked it I'd go on, otherwise quit. I should also mention that I hadn't decided whether to pursue an academic career or industry back then. (Although I decided on industry during my first year seeing what kind of a life the professors have.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at the beginning I chose a well-explored research topic in mixed-signal circuit design thinking it would increase my options in the industry. Ever since I started, things got harder and harder. Last year, I was able to spend some off-time (working out regularly etc) but this year I can't even do that. I don't think I ever really loved research, I was rather okay with it. Although I've had times when I felt really down and questioned the purpose of doing a PhD (especially after having a bad meeting with my advisors), I was fairly optimistic and hard-working for my PhD until recently when one of my advisors suggested that I could leave with MS (if I wanted to). He told me that although I was hard-working, he wasn't able to see the PhD motivation in me so far and maybe quitting with an MS would be a good option. At first, I though it might have been a weird way to test my motivation or even motivate me, but a few weeks later he asked what I think about what he had said before. He said he wasn't playing any games about what he had said, and we had another talk about my options of leaving. In a way, it was just like this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1652&quot;&gt;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1652&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since then, my motivation towards PhD dropped and I started to care less. In fact, I also relieved a great deal. I feel closer to quitting than staying as quitting seems much much easier and relieving. But I fear it might be just a case of &quot;The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence&quot;. And as I have no real work experience in the industry (except for a summer internship where I wasn't given any real responsibilities), I can't make a fair comparison. Right now, I realize I focus on the bad things about PhD such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Treatment of the professors: Feel no real respect from them. They are usually condescending and mocking. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fact that virtually no collaboration or team work happens in my research. I am kind of the only one doing my stuff in my group and there is usually no one to help. When I am stuck at understanding something, the response of my advisors is usually &quot;Go, figure it out!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you can never not think about research. You can't ever turn the switch off. Constant thought of research at the back of your head, and the guilt when not working. I assume this wouldn't be the case in industry (99% of the time). I've started to value work/life balance more and more recently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As my self confidence dropped drastically since I started here (thanks to occasional statements of my advisors about their lack of confidence with me taking quals), I've started to fear the quals I need to take in the next semester. Even taking the quals started to seem like a huge barrier I need to overcome.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've talked to my friends about my situation. Some supported, some discouraged. Some suggested changing advisors or go to another university. Changing advisors do not seem like a feasible option as there are only a few other professors working in circuits at my university. So changing advisors would probably pull me back 1-2 years. Going to another university would cost even more time as I could only start in Fall 2015. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, considering all of the above, what do you recommend? Those who quit or went through similar situations, how did you decide what to do? If I'm going to work in the industry anyways, does it really worth another 4 miserable years I'd spent in PhD program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for reading and all your comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20042" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:43:25.400" Title="Quitting PhD upon advisor's suggestion" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;electrical-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T06:12:26.957" Score="3" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper is accepted for poster presentation for a conference. Is it allowed sent it again to other conferences without withdrawing it from first conference? I am looking for oral presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:18:33.997" Title="Is it generally allowed to send a published paper to another conference but in a different format?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26440" CreationDate="2014-07-27T08:07:11.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most computer science conferences do not allow this, look for the conferences' dual submission policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T12:18:33.997" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:18:33.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26440" CreationDate="2014-07-27T12:00:28.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marc Claesen's answer is correct &lt;strong&gt;for computer science&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most non-CS fields, there is much greater tolerance for &quot;cross-listing&quot; of talks, because the conferences are not the primary &quot;publication venue&quot; for papers. Therefore it is considered entirely appropriate to give a poster presentation at one conference, and an oral talk at another venue, particularly if the audiences are &quot;non-overlapping.&quot; It would be expected, though, that unless the conferences are very close to one another in time, that you would update the presentation somewhat between conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:00:28.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26434" CreationDate="2014-07-27T12:37:57.750" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is very common for students to earn a PhD in mathematics without publishing any papers before graduating. Here are a few pieces of context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have read a couple research articles that analyzed the Mathematical Review database, which is a very thorough listing of mathematics publications. One such article is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.siam.org/pdf/news/485.pdf&quot;&gt;Patterns of Collaboration in Mathematical Research&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It states that 42.7% of authors in the database have only one article (likely taken from their thesis) and another 14.6% have only two. I recommend that paper highly for more information on mathematics publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publication rates in mathematics vary significantly by subfield, because the threshold for the amount of progress needed for a new paper also varies by field. In some subfields, it is common for researchers to publish many (smaller) papers. In others, it can take years to write a single paper.  Publication rates also vary by author: some prestigious faculty rarely publish, others are prodigious writers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My general sense is that publication rates are increasing: mathematicians in general publish more than they used to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see much more emphasis on graduate student publication that I did in the past. While the majority of students publish nothing before their PhD, I think the number who do publish is going up. Similarly, there is more emphasis on undergraduate research, and this translates into more publications by undergraduates. In the 1970s, say, publications by undergraduates were much more rare. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The increase in publication is especially true at mid-level schools, e.g. non-elite state schools and some larger non-elite private colleges, which want to raise their research profile and so expect more research than in the past. Historically, say 30 years ago, one might have been able to get tenure with only one or two papers, and teaching was the most important criterion. Now, research is the primary criterion and many of these &quot;aspiring&quot; schools. On the other hand I had a job interview once with a school that explicitly emphasized they did not expect research - this trend toward more publication is not universal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is also a distinction between &lt;em&gt;top&lt;/em&gt; students (e.g. those who are competitive for prestigious postdocs and for job offers from R-1 schools) versus &lt;em&gt;typical&lt;/em&gt; students (who may be perfectly qualified for academic jobs, but are not competitive for R-1 positions). In my experience, top students often have research collaborations outside their thesis topic before graduation, and often have other publications before graduation. But these students make up a small percentage of PhD recipients overall. Even at prestigious schools, not all PhD students are on track to be competitive for R-1 positions. And publication rates again vary by research subfield.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics in particular is sometimes used for a &quot;vocational&quot; PhD, because it has always been possible for some to find work in industry (e.g. software or R&amp;amp;D) and government (e.g. the U.S. National Security Agency) with a PhD in mathematics. My colleagues and I often talk about bright researchers who we &quot;lost&quot; to non-academic jobs. For students who do not plan to continue in academia, I think there is a smaller incentive to publish extra papers beyond the PhD before graduating. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="16122" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T12:50:54.460" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:50:54.460" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26229" CreationDate="2014-07-27T12:41:58.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; This is mostly from personal experience on the sending side of the process, and a little bit of talking to professors that have actually been on selection committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the two main points for selection of poster vs. presentation are completeness and impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;strong&gt;completeness&lt;/strong&gt; I mean whether the work is actually finished or close to finished. If the selection committee cannot tell whether work is finished, or knows it isn't, this is grounds to select the work for a poster instead of presentation. The main reason is that a presentation about work that isn't finished will most likely be somewhat boring, because it lacks strong conclusions, whereas at a poster a discussion about the work that isn't finished might actually be much nicer than work that is completely done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impact&lt;/strong&gt; is a bit of a vague notion, but in this context it consists of relevance to the audience of the conference and the level of innovation in the work. If work seems to be only relevant for a few people attending the conference the work will most likely be selected for a poster, because the people that are interested can then look up the poster. In case of a presentation the room would be mostly empty, because most people are not interested which is undesired. If the work is highly innovative, instead of a small step forward in a big process, this will most likely interest a lot more people, thus making the work suitable for a presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To summarize&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finished work with high relevance to the conference audience and preferably large steps forward in the field will be selected for presentation, the opposite case will be selected for a poster or even rejected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general you could say that a presentation is more prestigious, because it is sort of a quality stamp. &#xA;However, the boundary between presentation and poster can shift substantially based on the type of conference, the number of submissions to it and the level of submissions and (I know, not fair, but they're only human) the personal preferences of the selection committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20048" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:41:58.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26439" CreationDate="2014-07-27T12:43:25.400" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, let me sum up your questions / information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are not motivated to do research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You hate doing a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor thinks you are not motivated to do research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not want to stay in academia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the question is: Should I quit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me (and Zach Gershkoff ) it looks like you are not looking for an answer but a confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here you go: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, you probably should quit (after your Master's degree).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many fields a PhD is a waste of time if you want to go into the industry after it and it is actually a good thing that you realize that now and not after your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that out of the way let me just clear some things up here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor asking if you want to stay or want to leave after your Master's degree:&#xA;I think he has done a great thing and you are probably going to be thankful for doing in some years. He sees that you are not motivated, tells you that you are qualified to do a PhD but that there is no point in doing it without motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] I've had times when I felt really down and questioned the&#xA;  purpose of doing a PhD [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] my self confidence dropped drastically since I started here [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is completely normal for a PhD student. I think about 90% have that quite often. Research is very frustrating, especially if you are not used to failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treatment of the professors: Feel no real respect from them. They are&#xA;  usually condescending and mocking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is very strange, but I have no idea about your university, your field or your perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact that you can never not think about research. You can't ever&#xA;  turn the switch off. Constant thought of research at the back of your&#xA;  head, and the guilt when not working. I assume this wouldn't be the&#xA;  case in industry (99% of the time). I've started to value work/life&#xA;  balance more and more recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I have seen, that really depends on the job in the industry, in some you have the same (or even higher) pressure as in academia, in some you have lower pressure. But even if you are taking a job with a better work/life balance there will still be times (and not only 1% of the time) when there is a problem at work and even in your &quot;free&quot; time you will think about it non stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So changing advisors would probably pull me back 1-2 years. Going to&#xA;  another university would cost even more time as I could only start in&#xA;  Fall 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stay in academia that should not stop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, have considered this option: Quit after your Master's degree, while still trying to get as good grades as possible, talk to your advisor about quitting and the reasons why you want to quit. Find a job and after a number of years in the industry reevaluate your choices. If you have left on good terms with your advisor and good grades, it should be no problem at all to find another PhD position (at another university) and if you really decide to try again, you would be motivated this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T12:43:25.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26434" CreationDate="2014-07-27T13:02:03.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer will depend on the country, so let me answer for France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I see, I would say that one is generally allowed to defend one's PhD without having published a paper, but only if the thesis contains the material for at least one international publication. This is judged by the two or three PhD referees and then confirmed by the PhD committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T13:02:03.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T15:43:25.570" Score="3" ViewCount="5242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently an Economics student in my second year (only just begun).I've come to realise that I'd like to study mathematics further (pure or applied) since I'm missing the subject ever since school ended. The maths in undergraduate Economics isn't too challenging so I'm not enjoying it too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't too much flexibility in my university (I live in India and the education system is rigid) so I do not have an option to double major in Economics and Maths. Also, I will have two allied courses of Linear Algebra and Calculus as an add-on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a fairly good student in maths so far and I've already started to take on some of the undergraduate maths courses on my own. Would a good maths GRE score be sufficient to apply to a good university in the US? Could I also apply for an M.S. in Statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20057" LastActivityDate="2021-02-27T18:49:08.053" Title="Is it possible to do a Master's in Mathematics after a Bachelor's in Economics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26277" CreationDate="2014-07-27T15:56:36.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So for a concrete case to consider, the first statistics Rosling presents are about relative child mortality rate in 5 selected pairs of countries. The second are the result of a small informal test of his own students' knowledge of the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it takes an anthropologist to analyse whether Rosling's numbers are verifiable or not. He certainly does not provide evidence in the TED talk that they are correct, in that sense they clearly are not verifiable from the talk. If that's what your friend means then fair enough. A TED talk is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an academic publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware that the field of anthropology rejects &lt;em&gt;in principle&lt;/em&gt; the notion of child mortality being a real thing. So Rosling's comparisons could be checked against other sources. It would not be appropriate to cite Rosling in a paper if you needed a source for the relative child mortality rates of those pairs of countries. You would go to WHO and/or national medical reporting, and pay close attention to their methodologies. In that sense they can be checked, and either verified or falsified. Will your friend give you long odds that Rosling has those pairs of countries in the right order according to WHO or his preferred source? Thought not ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rosling also hasn't really demonstrated anything about the state of knowledge of Swedish students, although the insinuation is that he has. He (serious-jokingly) says that there's a role for him to teach them something. His small trial is sufficient to support his small claim. His methodology is simple and obvious enough that the test is repeatable with other groups. There's no problem of fundamental science here. I don't know (and I don't think it matters) whether he's ever published on that particular result, but it's probably never appropriate to cite &lt;em&gt;because it's such a limited and specific claim of no general interest&lt;/em&gt;. And might be cherry-picked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next he shows off his visualization software. The important thing to note here is that this is not an attempt to publish academic conclusions on fertility or life expectancy. He's using UN data (about which a great deal has been written elsewhere), to motivate the use of a particular tool, to combat what he believes are out-of-date general intuitions about that data. His hurried narration makes no scientific claims beyond the fact that a large group of what would be called &quot;developing&quot; countries used to have high fertility and low life expectancy, and now don't. And that AIDS reduced life expectancy in Africa. Neither of those is really controversial enough to really warrant further justification in this context: like the comparisons between pairs of countries it just provides something for you to go away and look up if you want serious corroboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing really to verify or falsify beyond his claim that anyone holds this intuition about developing countries in the first place. That is substantial, it's presented as novel and, even worse than his informal student study, he doesn't quantify it, let alone support it. He's not properly publishing a scientific conclusion, but then I'm not persuaded that he's pretending to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. In the next comparison US vs. Vietnam, I think he says &quot;by the end of the year&quot; when he means &quot;by the end of the decade&quot;. Slip of the tongue, should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be allowed to stand in a carefully produced, copy-edited, reviewed scientific publication, but there it is. So in a sense, no, public speaking is not credible &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; since such errors are far more common. In another sense, does this mean there's something wrong with public speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One cannot cite (or even trust) the content of a TED talk as if it were the content of a peer-reviewed journal. TED doesn't do that. Neither is there AFAIK any fact-checking other than what the speaker does or arranges. You can treat the content of TED talks the same way as you'd treat the content of any public address by that speaker. So if you were writing a paper that for some reason needed to know what Rosling specifically says in public, then using his TED talk as a source might be reasonable. Otherwise, not so much, but then why would you want to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the talk is no longer a scientific talk, and the real scientists are clever enough to stay away from these presentations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's akin to saying that TV documentaries are not scientific talks and real scientists are clever enough to stay away from them. It's true that TV documentaries are not journal articles. It's true that there can be fakery and stupidity in their vicinity. However I don't think it's true that &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; real, clever scientist can get involved. They must distinguish the activities of &quot;publishing research&quot; and &quot;popular education&quot;, and avoid claiming that one is the other, or applying the standards of one to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TED talks are as credible as the individual speaker. The fact that TED has &quot;chosen&quot; them should lend no authority at all but probably, unfortunately, does. As for the credibility of TED as a forum, I don't recall what wit here in the UK observed that the country has very many people who would turn down an honour in principle, but tragically are never offered one. I suspect the same may be true of TED -- there are various reasons you might not want to do it, among them that the content of the talks tends to be over-trusted by people who enjoy TED and its speakers. These reasons are not universally applicable, and in any case apply most strongly to those who won't be invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from giving talks, experts in the field might choose to watch or not watch the presentation on the same basis they choose any popular presentation of their field. On the one hand they might be interested to know what outsiders are hearing. They might enjoy the speaker. On the other hand, what are they going to learn? Everything shown will be either commonplace in their field or else the specific and perhaps controversial views of the speaker, that an expert could better assess by reading their publications than by seeing the simplified popular version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T16:22:24.820" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T16:22:24.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2014-07-27T16:10:31.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using BibTeX to maintain your bibliography, you might want to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/bibtex/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEEtran&lt;/a&gt; bibliography style, which takes care of the &lt;em&gt;url&lt;/em&gt; field in the BibTeX entries by adding an [Online] tag in the bibliography followed by the given url. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T16:10:31.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26388" CreationDate="2014-07-27T17:27:16.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to professionalism, in the real world would you phone your boss on a weekend to remind him that he did not do something that he was supposed to do (such as email HR on your transfer)? No, you'd wait until Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T17:27:16.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26430" CreationDate="2014-07-27T17:30:27.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not met this scheme for university (or univerity-alike) courses*, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I have met it for professional training courses and other crash courses that lead to an exam (e.g. intensive courses leading up to exams you're required to take by law in order to be allowed to do/handle certain things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for those courses &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The curriculum is defined, definitive, and well-known &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exams required by law often have lists of accredited questions which are available. It is sometimes even recommended to study these catalogues as preparation for the exam.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blak-uis.server.de/servlet/is/2146/P-4a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(example)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the course materials are usually distributed well before the course. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Years ago I attended a summer school where I cannot remember whether there was an exam at the end or not. However, the certificate doesn't have grades, so if there was an exam, that would have been more a check for ourselves how good the understanding of the covered subjects was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastEditorUserId="725" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T17:36:32.760" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T17:36:32.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26456" CreationDate="2014-07-27T18:29:46.690" Score="47" ViewCount="6687" Body="&lt;p&gt;Call it stupidity or bad luck but I am guilty of submitting my research article to a journal which is listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beall's List of Predatory Publishers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my first article and I don't have much experience publishing articles. I was searching for a top impact factor journal and found this one on Google and in excitement sent my article (word and pdf files) in this journal a few days ago, only to discover later that this might be a bogus journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am worried about that what will happen to my article. What if they plagiarize my paper, or send it to another journal not giving me credit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that what should I do now? Should I send my article to a reputable journal now? What should be the process? What if it is flagged for fraud by that journal? What are my options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20062" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:11:54.760" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T20:48:47.393" Title="What should I do if I submitted an article to a predatory journal?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26455" CreationDate="2014-07-27T18:55:03.583" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the paper has not yet been accepted for publication, you are free to withdraw the paper from consideration. Depending on the policies of the journal to which you submit the article, you may need to disclose the prior submission, and explain why you withdrew the publication from consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there's little you can do to stop the publishers of the first journal from doing something unsavory with your article. You will need to exercise vigilance in monitoring the work in this area to ensure that the paper isn't mishandled or worse. Be sure to maintain records of all of the correspondence you have had with the journal—and make sure of all it is documentable—phone calls won't suffice here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if all the journal has is a PDF of your original article, it makes it a lot harder to do anything with it: it is tedious work to convert it into the template that most publishers use without significant effort. Thus, without the original graphics and text files, it will be difficult for them to &quot;transmit&quot; the paper elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T18:55:03.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26455" CreationDate="2014-07-27T19:11:28.547" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;aesmail's post is right on. In addition, I would recommend creating some &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/alerts&quot;&gt;Google Alerts&lt;/a&gt; for some unique sentences or phrases from your article as well. Use quotes around the whole text in each query. Make sure that the ones you pick are unique to your work by finding query strings that are exactly from your work and return no results on Google now. That way, if they do make use of your words, you have a chance of finding out when it happens. You might have to make several of these, but if you use some key passages, you've got a good chance of catching them if they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T19:11:28.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26461" CreationDate="2014-07-27T19:15:37.407" Score="44" ViewCount="7344" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the reviewers of my conference paper (computer science), which got a &lt;em&gt;revise &amp;amp; resubmit,&lt;/em&gt; criticized that my conclusions are not well founded in my experiment and that they don’t show my hypothesis. (In detail, there was no control variable, which he correctly remarked.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, I wanted to use this experiment to give an idea for the direction of the work following my results and to generalize my previous findings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how could I respond to this comment, as deleting my discussion would cut out a huge part of my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20063" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T00:50:13.117" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:30:39.063" Title="How to react to a reviewer’s comment when he is completely right, but you do not like the consequences?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26229" CreationDate="2014-07-27T19:51:36.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be useful to look at it from the conference organizers' perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepted full papers usually require the author to give an oral presentation at the conference. But the number of time slots for those presentations is usually limited by the size of the venue (number of conference rooms), and extending it either costs the organizers additional money or is not possible at all. So there is a strong motivation to limit the number of accepted full papers, and to choose only those that represent the largest impact/progress to the research field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepted posters on the other hand are usually presented at a short (~1-2h) poster session, where many posters are presented at the same time in a rather small area. Each conference room booked for the oral presentations can probably be used to present 50-100 posters in a single session, and scheduling a second poster session can cheaply double that. So there is no real motivation to limit the number of accepted posters, beyond making sure that they make sense and represent at least a minor step forward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These perspectives also match my experience on acceptance and gained reputation in the field of computer science: You can get pretty much anything accepted as a conference poster, while getting a paper accepted is much harder. For that reason, accepted posters are largely irrelevant scientifically, and - in my experience - are usually not even actually published in the conference proceedings (sometimes the proceedings at least contain the extended abstract that was submitted for poster acceptance, sometimes not even that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T19:51:36.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2014-07-27T21:28:19.147" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me first recapture your situation as I understood it and based my answer on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have essentially three Papers, let’s call them &lt;em&gt;Paper A, B&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;C.&lt;/em&gt; Paper A has already been published, Paper B is the one you are currently working on and Paper C is a planned future publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You drew conclusions in Paper B, which are not based on the research of Paper B alone but also require results from Papers A and C.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reviewer correctly remarked that your conclusions were not supported by your research in Paper B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, as your conclusions are not supported by published research yet, you cannot make these conclusions and there is no (ethical) way to leave them as conclusions. Rather from the situation at the end of Paper B, they are an outlook or speculations and thus should be marked as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., you could write something along the lines of the following in your conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results confirm the findings of [Paper A], which suggests [general hypothesis]. This could be confirmed by [ansatz for research of Paper C].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the reviewer’s comment you could reply along the lines of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reviewer is indeed correct that [general hypothesis] is not supported by our current findings. Rather, [general hypothesis] is something suggested by our results from our findings and [Paper A] and should be investigated in future research. We have insufficiently described this point and amended our manuscript such that this aspect is now made clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T21:28:19.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2014-07-27T21:35:55.737" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; the title of your question.  What an open, honest way of phrasing things, which makes for a question which just about every academic I know can identify with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you get a &quot;revise and resubmit&quot; referee report, the two key questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many of the revisions do you want to make?  How many can you make in a reasonable amount of time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly you will resubmit, yes, but: to the same journal or to a different journal?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take it that by &quot;completely correct&quot; you mean that you agree that all of the suggested revisions would improve the paper.  That still does not imply that you want to make all of them: if the revisions ask for significant further work, then it may well be that, yes, you are in the midst of this work / planning to do it in the future but nevertheless you are seeking to publish what you have done so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you agree with all of the suggested revisions and you feel that you can do them in a reasonable amount of time -- e.g., in time to meet the deadline for a conference -- then it seems pretty clear that's the way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take it though that in your case it is not practical to complete all the suggested revisions in the given amount of time.  Your remaining choices are then: (i) complete only some of the revisions, explain very carefully in your reply why you considered the other proposed revisions but did not make them, and hope for the best;  (ii) indeed resubmit, but elsewhere; and (iii) withdraw the paper until you can complete the suggested work.  Then resubmit (possibly to the same place, if applicable, but starting over again in the formal submission process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are tough choices, and obviously they cannot be made globally.  All I'll say is that the more (!!) &quot;completely correct&quot; you feel the reviewer's suggested changes are, the more likely it is that if you do not satisfactorily incorporate these changes then the paper will not be accepted.  This still does not mean that revising and resubmitting is a poor choice: you have to do an expected value computation (e.g. if you can respond to 2/3 of the suggested revisions within a few days, maybe give resubmission to the same conference a whirl: why not?) to decide what is your best option.  This decision also includes how important it is to you that the paper be published sooner rather than later and how important that it be published in this specific venue.  Ideally speaking, you should take the necessary time to publish a &quot;complete&quot; version of your work rather than an unsatisfactorily partial preliminary version...but in reality, many academics do not have the luxury of fully indulging this ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T21:35:55.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2014-07-27T23:31:20.760" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the solution for the problem in the title is to revise the paper so that the undesirable consequences are no longer consequences. As I understand it, the reviewer correctly pointed out that your conclusion is not adequately supported by your experiment; the undesirable consequence is that this conclusion should be removed; it's undesirable because that would mean removing a big part of the paper.  Fortunately, the undesirable consequence would no longer be a consequence at all if the conclusion were relabeled to match what you wrote in the second paragraph of your question --- for example along the lines of Wrzlprmft's suggestion. More generally, instead of saying (incorrectly) that something is a conclusion from your experiment, say what it really is, as accurately as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T23:31:20.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26416" CreationDate="2014-07-28T00:39:20.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department (biology, at a large public research university), applicants give a job talk in addition to a research talk. They also provide a statement of teaching philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An applicant demonstrates excellence by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Providing a teaching statement that discusses evidence-based teaching theory and gives an example or two of how the applicant has applied this (&quot;Even in large lectures, students should spend time discussing the concepts they have just learned. I incorporated the use of clickers to expose a common misconception before each new topic, and had students work in groups to find the best answer.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing and delivering a job talk that a) demonstrates competence with the material, b) shows you are able to ask and answer &quot;student&quot; questions from the audience, c) incorporates at least a smidge of student interaction, and d) actually fits in the time allotted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose if there is no job talk scheduled, an applicant might prepare as if there were one and be ready to discuss how they would teach topic X, with examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T00:39:20.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2014-07-28T02:16:22.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, how could I respond to this comment, as deleting my discussion would cut out a huge part of my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me. I have been there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove the questionable part, and even the whole paper if necessary. (Well, unless the reviewer is a well-known idiot :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, you will regret anything you published that is not perfectly fine and relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS.&#xA;Also, in the future, you may be involved in some competition or conflictual circumstance where a &quot;competitor&quot; or opponent may use a &quot;scientific weakness&quot; against you. And in this case you may &quot;pay&quot; a high price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19530" LastEditorUserId="19530" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T09:17:51.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T09:17:51.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26468" CreationDate="2014-07-28T03:49:22.137" Score="-1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my statistics class I have encountered some nice studies, some of them having some nice and interesting results. This brought me to this question. One example of such studies is  on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10229312&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10229312&lt;/a&gt; , but this is just a summary of the actual experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20076" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T06:48:26.253" Title="Where can I find results of various experiments and studies in fields such as medicine, biology, chemistry, psychology, and so on...?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26466" CreationDate="2014-07-28T06:43:14.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Results of scientific studies are usually published in one of many field-specific peer-reviewed journals. A list of some of these journals, sorted by the discipline can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. Access to these published data is rarely free. You may need to obtain access through your institution's library. It is also worth being aware that most papers will only include a summary or overview of entire data collection sets, and you can often find deeper analyses and more comprehensive experimental data in the published supplementary information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;open access journals&lt;/a&gt;, which, as the name implies, are open access. These may be of interest to you if you are just looking for general sets of experimental data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8969" LastEditorUserId="8969" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T06:48:26.253" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T06:48:26.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T08:38:41.147" Score="6" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to make the most of an nnfulfilling post-doc experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I pose my question, I would first like to describe the circumstances and provide as much &quot;quantitative data&quot; relevant to this as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am on a leave of absence from a US university for 1 year (2014-2015) and currently working at a lab in France as an Engineer II (let's face it, E2=fancy_way_of_saying(post_doc)). &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16862/21&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I posted a question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; about the merits and demerits of doing this a few months back and received some useful feedback (in hindsight obv.!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at an early stage of my career. I received my PhD in Mechanical engineering in 2013. From Aug 2013-May 2014, I worked as a non-tenure track instructor at my US university. I will return to my university in May 2015 to take up a non-tenure track lecturer position. I prefer teaching track to research track. The idea was to diversify my portfolio to work and hence the leave of absence to work as an E2 in France. I am in month 3 of my E2 position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gist of current position&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To introduce major modifications in a &quot;spaghetti code&quot; developed by my E2 supervisor some 6-7 years ago. The code itself is quite obfuscating and models certain thermal engineering physics problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My perceived failings as an E2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code is obfuscating! No, I am not making excuses but the previous two E2 quit to go on to purportedly greener pastures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was given tasks to modify certain aspects of the code and in my opinion (I have no yardstick for comparison), I have not done the best job at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result (for now)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor has hinted that &quot;we must hurry as there is a deadline next month we must meet&quot; (I did not know of this deadline prior to taking up this position).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am making a sincere effort to accomplish the tasks but I am not sure if it is my ineptitude or lack of scientific maturity that I constantly see myself failing at my job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last couple of weeks, my supervisor has not asked me to do any important things with this code/project and I think I have been relegated to &quot;just &lt;em&gt;check&lt;/em&gt; the code for mistakes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I find that unlike my previous department head, my current supervisor treats me like a student and is sometimes disparaging in his comments. I suppose this is normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what is normal in my current lab is that post-docs share the office space of their supervisors and the supervisors LITERALLY are looking over their shoulders at all time. Yes, I know what LITERALLY means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is a character building exercise for me and I'll treat it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Future&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I have a future or am I looking at a premature &quot;pink slip&quot;? My contract doesn't mention conditions of being fired.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I make the most of this situation? I want to have a positive impact on this project which in turn will have a positive impact on my career. Although I am in a teaching track from 2015, I feel that this research experience will only enhance my teaching capabilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References I have used to understand this better&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2012_08_24/science.opms.r1200121&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A postdoc experience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/Making-the-Most-of-Your/66265/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making the most of your post doc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would feel better if I got &quot;real time advice&quot; from the diverse membership of this forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T12:46:48.970" Title="How to make the most of a currently unfulfilling post-doc experience" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26419" CreationDate="2014-07-28T10:56:38.070" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several papers analyzing the data from the Mathematical Reviews database (MathSciNet). One of them is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.siam.org/pdf/news/485.pdf&quot;&gt;Patterns of Collaboration in Mathematical Research&lt;/a&gt;, Jerrold W. Grossman, &lt;em&gt;SIAM News&lt;/em&gt; 35, 2002. That paper gives a distribution of number of papers by author. It confirms that 42% of authors in the database have 1 paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T10:56:38.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:07:48.147" Score="7" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;My students often request letters of reference from me. Sometimes to attend graduate school in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and sometimes in countries not internationally known for their education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite often the student says the university wants them to enclose the letters of recommendation and clearly some universities do not want the student to be involved in that communication process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;strong&gt;how do I know when I am writing a letter to a specific university if they prefer the student to submit the letter or if they prefer me to communicate directly with the school?&lt;/strong&gt; I could check with each school as I write the letter but that seems like a lot of work which need not be repeated for each letter-writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T21:24:28.930" Title="Is there a list of countries (or universities) showing which prefer direct communication with referee?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26145" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:10:18.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may look into getting started with open-access journals. These are probably more likely to be amenable to independent research. Some examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://plos.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PloS&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://thewinnower.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Winnower&lt;/a&gt;. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20085" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T11:10:18.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:38:30.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly depends on your GRE score (if below 1000, try again), and your letter of intent. Add those up with some good recommendation letters and it should not that hard to get a scholarship (unless you are aiming for top 10 schools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic of your MSc is not the limiting factor, looking at your courses list, they should get an idea of your background and educational knowledge. Maybe it is good to contact the professors that you are interested in first, and afterwards let them know that you will apply. Worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20087" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T12:57:26.147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T12:57:26.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26470" CreationDate="2014-07-28T12:46:48.970" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I have a future or am I looking at a premature &quot;pink slip&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is unlikely, especially in France. The financial savings from firing a one year post doc is pretty small compared to the hassle and bad blood that will result from doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although I am in a teaching track from 2015, I feel that this research experience will only enhance my teaching capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really your goal of the post doc? It is not clear to me how a year spent disentangling spaghetti code is going to enhance your teaching capabilities. Most engineers do not take up a non-teaching post docs to enhance their teaching. I am not sure that most post docs would spend a year disentangling spaghetti code with supervisors hovering over their shoulders. Are you sure that an E2 is really the equivalent of a post doc? It is probably worth talking to your supervisor, hopefully again, to make sure you are both on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realizing that you are unhappy with the current state of affairs does not really help you to change things. I think grad students and post docs sometimes have unfulfilling experiences because they do not know what they want. You need to figure out what it is you want to get out of the post doc and then figure out a way to work towards that goal. Often once you know what you want the road to obtaining that goal becomes clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T12:46:48.970" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26412" CreationDate="2014-07-28T13:08:21.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me come at this from a different angle (and from someone who has faced something similar in the past.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want a masters?  What is your goal in getting a masters and/or a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is you goal &quot;Because I always kind of wanted one&quot;? Is it &quot;Because it will help me with my career goals&quot;? Is it &quot;Because I want to show that I can&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to be a negative nelly, though it may sound that way, but Graduate course work, especially in Computer Science(an assumption based on your current work as a web-developer), can be very challenging and stressful. Depending on the program and the instructor, it is not unusual for over half a class to have, on paper, a 'failing' grade. Some teachers are great about communicating that this is OK and expected, other's will let you hang out and stress about whether your 'failing grade' is really a failing grade. Some of these courses can involved 20+ hours a week of project or coursework. Some have no 'right' or definite answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is to say you shouldn't go for it. Recognizing and working on an anxiety issue(or any mental health issue) takes a great deal of strength and hard work. That you have persevered to complete an undergraduate degree shows that you are a hard working, intelligent, passionate individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am saying is - analyze your reasons for going to graduate school. Make sure that what you get out of graduate school will actually match those reasons and that you approach it in a doable fashion. I would recommend a multi-step process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the school / program you are interested in attending&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Register at that school(or a school with similar characteristics) to take courses &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take high level undergraduate courses. Look at the graduate degree you are interested in - often they have prereqs that you could take. Take difficult courses that are stressful to get a feel for what graduate courses will be like.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have time - get involved in a research lab that interests you. Make some connections with professors(and incidentally the admissions council).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you've got a year(ish) of courses under your belt - go for that Masters or PhD!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing the above benefits you in many ways. First and foremost it gives you a safe place to fail gracefully. If you're taking a course not for your masters but as preparation then dropping it isn't a big deal. Maybe you'll find you need another prereq, maybe you want to spend some time buffing up on the material. There is a big difference in having the pressure to 'pass right now or fail forever!!!' (well, what you brain tells you is failing forever and what is, in reality, not a big deal) and 'well I could take this later once I do ____....' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly this gives you a little bit of a buffer. This shows any admissions group that you can take challenging classes and pass them. That you can work through the rigors of Masters program. And you can point to this during your statement of purpose as 'proof' that you have improved your reaction to anxiety around school and have a support network/plan in place for the rigors of graduate work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly this gives you a chance to get the admissions committee on your side. If professors and admissions officers know your name(in a positive light) it can make a real difference in how your application is received. Additionally some schools have 'backdoors', so to speak, into Graduate programs especially for non traditional students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and I hope this goes without saying, make sure you have a support network in place. I would recommend, as someone who has been there and gotten the teeshirt, that you have a local therapist for, at least, your first few semesters. Additionally there's no shame in deciding that graduate school isn't for you(I ultimately decided that PhD papers are the bane of my existence and am not current pursuing a PhD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T13:08:21.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26512" CreationDate="2014-07-28T13:41:19.277" Score="5" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my thesis I have had to go through many different sources to find relevant literature. I want to share my reading list with others to make it easier for people who want to study the same topic to find relevant information. I have set up a little database with meta info (title / journal / author / date / abstract). My idea is to put this online so others can freely browse this. Is there any copyright issue (or otherwise important issue) to take into account? Can I put the abstracts online as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each paper links to the journal's official website and I did not put any actual paper or PDF online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20095" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T18:45:12.383" Title="Can I collect meta information on papers and put this online?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26479" CreationDate="2014-07-28T13:51:39.907" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's generally no copyright issue.  You're giving fair credit assignment.  Abstracts should be considered &quot;marketing material&quot; -- freely publishable (with proper references), as you're helping the author(s) as much as yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T13:51:39.907" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26449" CreationDate="2014-07-28T14:10:50.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were in your position, I would look at the requirements for admission to Master's programs at universities you're interested in and see if you can find a way to fit their requirements into your required curriculum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dept.math.lsa.umich.edu/graduate/admission.html#GenReq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here are the admission requirements at my university&lt;/a&gt;. I'm not sure if it's top-10, but definitely top-20. At this school a degree in math is &lt;strong&gt;not required&lt;/strong&gt; for admission to grad school. It looks like they require up to an analysis course and some abstract algebra. This is likely only a few classes beyond your required calc+linear algebra classes for your economics degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20097" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:10:50.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26484" CreationDate="2014-07-28T14:40:22.780" Score="8" ViewCount="3413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate working with an advisor, but I do not know how to pronounce his/her last name. I have talked with several different people who work in the department, and have heard the name pronounced several different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a polite way of asking an advisor how to pronounce his/her last name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19685" LastEditorUserId="19685" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T14:38:08.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:38:08.193" Title="Ask how to pronounce advisor's last name?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2014-07-28T14:48:38.043" Score="41" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the way, I have heard your last name pronounced a few different ways and I want to make sure I get it right. Can you teach me the correct way to pronounce it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:48:38.043" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26486" CreationDate="2014-07-28T15:05:15.077" Score="5" ViewCount="1184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an undergraduate submitting my Resume for a variety of internships and need advice about how (if?) I should include my contributions to a manuscript that my group intends to publish. This would be my first publication so I leave it off I feel that I would really be cutting myself short. I mention my position and the work I did, but I feel it won't carry nearly as much weight if I don't mention that it was in support of a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20099" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T16:36:03.633" Title="How include contributions to a manuscript of a paper in CV" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26485" CreationDate="2014-07-28T15:18:01.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, it is entirely appropriate for you to list manuscripts &quot;in progress.&quot; However, I would make sure that the manuscript is actually progressing before listing it on your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in preparation, you then list it as you would any other publication, except where it's published (journal, volume, page, year), you instead list where you plan to submit it (if you know that):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author List (including you). Title of manuscript. To be submitted to &lt;em&gt;Journal X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if you don't know where it's going to be submitted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author List. Title of Manuscript. In preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T16:36:03.633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T16:36:03.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T15:39:07.647" Score="26" ViewCount="5749" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a simple question but I am not sure how to find out the answer. Where in the world are the salaries of (senior) academics published and freely available? I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2012/univer12g.html&quot;&gt;amazing web page &lt;/a&gt; from Canada. Is it unique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far we have learned: (See answers and comments for more details.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many US states give full salary details for public university employees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The province of Ontario in Canada gives full salary details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switzerland  gives full salary details (although no URL given yet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Denmark you can infer the salary fairly accurately from seniority and job classification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Finland (and possibly Norway and Sweden), everyone's basic tax records are public information although you can't access it online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Germany salaries for individual professors are secret, but salaries for other researchers can be inferred from public salary tables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the UK salaries for individual professors are secret, but salaries for more junior academics can often be inferred from published salary tables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to get a fuller picture for Europe. What is the situation in France, for example?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11946" LastEditorUserId="11946" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T17:11:06.143" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T09:40:05.090" Title="In which countries are academic salaries published?" Tags="&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2014-07-28T15:46:24.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most US states have Freedom of Information Laws that allow for people to request this kind of information of public schools. You will find numerous databases usually run by some sort of local news organization that publishes this data. E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee-salaries/&quot;&gt;The Texas Tribune Goverment Salary Database&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a central resource for such things in the US. Public schools are typically run by US states, so the information is very distributed. Also, due to the nature of the laws, the information can be as much as a year old in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T15:46:24.777" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26500" CreationDate="2014-07-28T17:28:33.057" Score="9" ViewCount="2100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am informed that submitted paper supposed to be sent to the typesetters today. I am advised to check the mails. Until now there is no acknowledgement except the first mail. I am curious about the typesetters job in this process. Do they make considerable updates? Do I have much work to do, after typesetter is done with the paper? Since, I am on holiday, I wonder if the workload will ruin my holiday?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20101" LastEditorUserId="20101" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T18:57:09.940" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T18:57:09.940" Title="What typesetters do with the submitted paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26489" CreationDate="2014-07-28T17:48:29.937" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, once a manuscript has been typeset, the editor asks the author(s) to check for errors that might have been introduced by the typesetting process. The checking process does not take too long, but I suggest you to check carefully the equations (if there are any), for their meaning is unknown to the typesetter and he or she might involuntarily introduce errors in case of reformatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T17:48:29.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2014-07-28T18:32:47.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Denmark (and probably other countries with similar, highly centralized wage bargaining systems), salaries for faculty at public (i.e., in Denmark, all) universities are determined by a single contract negotiated between unions and the national government. All faculty in Denmark are paid according to the same scheme, which is based on a combination of seniority, job classification (assistant/associate/full), and some smaller fringe benefits. These contracts are public information. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.djoef.dk/~/media/documents/djoef/a/aktuel%20l%C3%B8noversigt.ashx&quot;&gt;Here's the one that applies to my current position&lt;/a&gt;. I'm sure you could find similar documents for other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T18:32:47.280" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26514" CreationDate="2014-07-28T18:50:07.950" Score="5" ViewCount="4083" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does someone know where to get the correctly formatted &lt;em&gt;ACM references&lt;/em&gt; for submissions to ACM? Google Scholar and dl.acm.org don't seem to provide the correct formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20106" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T06:52:52.053" Title="Where to get ACM references for MS Word?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;acm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T18:55:11.043" Score="9" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a non-native author and I have a revised paper that has been edited for good English before the first review. Now I made major changes, but still a large part of my essay remained as before. What is the best way to get my revised paper edited for English and flow without having to get charged for the whole (relatively long) paper again? Was someone in a similar situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20107" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T09:49:48.760" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T14:01:48.090" Title="How to reduce amount of language proofreading of my revised paper?" Tags="&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2014-07-28T19:04:26.883" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a native English speaker, this is based off my experiences proofreading papers for others in my lab who are not native speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing even a small section of a paper can have repercussions throughout the rest of the paper in unexpected ways. Also, as important as it is that the English in the changed sections is correct it is also important that those changed sections flow appropriately with the rest of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help with both of these issues it is best to have the entire paper proofread again. Even as a native-English speaker, I have others proofread my paper after revisions because of the above issues. It can be helpful to somehow mark the changed sections and request that the proofreader be aware that those areas were changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T19:04:26.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T19:54:12.260" Score="2" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am a M.S. student in Applied Mathematics division, and I will graduate in the coming Dec, 2014. &#xA;But I want to apply to a PhD. program to continue my study. But I have a complicated situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had a bachelor's degree in software engineering outside US with GPA 3.7. But I'm pursing a M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics in a US college with GPA 3.6, the reason I am doing this is because I want to improve my mathematical background, and prepare for research oriented program in the future. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My native language is non-English, and my English skills are not that strong. I didn't have a competitive GRE test. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But I had some research experiences, both in and outside US. And almost all the research is either direct with national research labs or collaborate with them. However, I have no academic publications yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for me to seek PhD in the future? I would like to go for it, but it seems more and more professors and universities focus on someone with higher scores and better publication record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16154" LastEditorUserId="19476" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T21:13:00.127" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T23:56:38.300" Title="Is it possible for me to seek a Ph.D. position in the future?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2014-07-28T20:03:58.717" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Germany. Somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain in more detail, there are four common modes for researchers in Germany:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unpaid. (Typically PhD students in social sciences. Poor sods.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scholarships. (&quot;Stipendiat&quot;; PhD students and post-docs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employee of the state. (&quot;Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter&quot;; PhD students, post docs and (rarely) non-professor senior researchers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Civil servant. (&quot;Beamter&quot;; professors and senior researchers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first needs no explanation. The second kind is -- from the perspective of how our system used to work traditionally -- a bit of an abomination with little to no regulation. The amount of the scholarship tends to be similar to the salary employees in similar circumstances get but is, ultimately, for the awarding institution to make up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for employees and &quot;Beamte&quot;, there are well-defined salary tables which &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/&quot;&gt;anybody can inspect&lt;/a&gt;. Be aware that these are &lt;em&gt;gross&lt;/em&gt; figures. Depending on your circumstances 30+% won't even see your bank account; you can use the provided calculators to get an idea of the parameters and results (if you know enough German).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PhD students usually get (some percentage of) a TVL E13 position, post-docs can get E14-15 depending on their responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senior researchers with life-long positions usually start at A13 and can move up to A16 in leading positions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professors used to get C1-4 but that was changed to W1-3; junior professors (with or without tenure) get W1, full professors W2 or W3 depending on the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, professors are eligible to negotiate for higher salaries &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during the hiring process (&quot;Berufungszulagen&quot;), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in case of above average performance (&quot;Leistungszulagen&quot;) and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when they get offers from other universities (&quot;Bleibeverhandlungen&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the real salaries of professors differ wildly (i.e. by integer factors). These figures are not public, not even in one department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T20:37:00.387" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T20:37:00.387" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26496" CreationDate="2014-07-28T20:15:56.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to apply a PhD. degree to continue my study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to assume that you are seeking a PhD in applied mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to your first point, seeking a masters prior to a PhD is a good way to improve your skill set. Does the program you are currently enrolled in offer research opportunities as a graduate assistant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My native language is non-English, and my English skill is not that strong. I didn't have a competitive GRE test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each school treats the GRE differently. Some schools will use low GRE scores and  low grades as a filtering mechanism to weed out unqualified individuals. So, a low score on one part part of the GRE is not necessarily going to prevent you from being accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know that writing is the weakest point of your application, there are a few steps you can take. Have friends/classmates/professors review your personal statement. Alternatively, you can acknowledge that your English skills are low but you are taking steps to remedy this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for publishing, I have heard differing opinions on this issue. Some people will have published when they applied and others will not. Personally, I will be trying to have at least two papers in progress when I apply for my PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is that possible for me to seek PhD degree in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes. Based on your research experience and academic background, I can see no reason (at least at the present) why you wouldn't be admitted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20110" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T20:15:56.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2014-07-28T20:21:56.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great resource containing lots of data for European countries is on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/CareerComparisons/SalaryComparisons.aspx#Information&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European university institute&lt;/a&gt;. More detailed information on the academic careers in various countries is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another page&lt;/a&gt; of the same site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T20:21:56.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26489" CreationDate="2014-07-28T21:48:43.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated by Massimo Ortolano, the typesetting is followed by a final check, proofreading, by the author. In many journals (I will not venture to say all) the movement of an article from the editor involves additional steps. The article is scrutinized to make sure it follows the journal format down to the smallest detail. this can be done by the editor, it can also be done by the type-setter but there may also be a step where a third person, the copy editor, is involved. The copy editor will make sure there are no grammatical errors as well as checking formal issues regarding style and formatting of journal specific issues including references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of the type-setting procedure is that some changes will occur but they should not be serious enough to alter the meaning of things. However, this can happen and is usually the result of an over-zealous editor, copy editor or type-setter, or a combination of the three. It is therefore quite important to review the proof very carefully. It is also vital to adhere to the journal format already when the manuscript is submitted since the risk of later editing errors is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What system &quot;your&quot; journal uses may involve all or a few of the ones mentioned above. Depending on the setup the type-setter may be more or less involved with the text but in its pure form the type-setter should only place figures and format headings, text, references etc. according to journal standards. The proof should then also only involve very minor changes (all issue should have been resolved much earlier in the review/revisions process including adhering to journal format).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most journals with which I am familiar, the time allowed for proofing is very short, perhaps, one work week. this will vary between journals somewhat and I know some may have only a few days whereas other may allow somewhat longer. In the end it is mostly you who will &quot;suffer&quot; from lateness since your article may be published later than originally planned by the journal. My recommendation is to be accessible on a regular basis once a manuscript has gone to type-setting and expect to spend a few hours proofing it within a few days upon receiving it. At least you now usually proof a digital copy (pdf) and not a paper proof that has to be sent via regular mail (although I suspect that still can be the case with some journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T21:48:43.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T23:28:10.497" Score="2" ViewCount="774" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does Google Scholar results categorize some books as [BOOK] and some as [CITATION] - what's the difference?&#xA;In addition, why are there apparently no citations to some well-known books even though Google includes these in books.google.com? I.e. they should show up in Google Scholar search results, but they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20113" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T00:07:15.130" Title="Google Scholar and books" Tags="&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26496" CreationDate="2014-07-28T23:56:38.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible for me to seek PhD in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is possible to seek a PhD at &lt;em&gt;any point&lt;/em&gt; in one's life, although at some point you will shift over into the &quot;unconventional student&quot; category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some universities/faculty &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; tend to overlook unconventional students. However, if you keep publishing articles, learning new skills (and demonstrating them), and staying up to date on the research in your field (and demonstrating that you have), then you'll be in a good position to get accepted by the more open-minded universities whenever you decide to apply.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9196" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T23:56:38.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26501" CreationDate="2014-07-29T00:07:15.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only muse about the inner workings and motivations of Google, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Books is for all kind of books, not only scholarly books. And since deciding whether a book is scholarly is something that cannot be automatised just like that, it is arguably less bad to miss some scholarly books which are in Google Books than to have all of Google Books’ books in Google Scholar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As already indicated &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17785/7734&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; (hinted at by mhwombat), being categorised as &lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt; in Google Scholar essentially means that the only trace Google Scholar has of this work (in a scholarly context) is that it is cited by some other work. In particular, Google does not even know that this piece of work is a book and not any other type of publication (e.g., if you export such a citation to BibTeX, its type defaults to &lt;em&gt;article&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google could link its databases and include all books in Google Books in Google Scholar if it manages to match them with a citation, but this might not be such a good idea either as non-scholarly publications are also cited sometimes – just look up some random, very popular pieces of fiction and see whether they got cited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T00:07:15.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26220" CreationDate="2014-07-29T00:14:11.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pairing students and advisers with complementary &lt;em&gt;goals&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;expectations&lt;/em&gt; is the key.  If a student is already self-motivated, capable, independent, and has a fully-funded, well-conceived research project, then they can be paired with an adviser who gives little oversight.  However, if a student is lacking in one or more of those areas, then they should be paired with an adviser who can support them and help them improve on their weaker skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delany, D. &quot;A Review of the Literature on Effective PhD Supervision&quot; Centre for Academic Practice and Student Learning, Trinity College (2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zhao, F. &quot;Postgraduate Research Supervision: A Process of Knowledge Management.&quot; (2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9196" LastEditorUserId="9196" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T14:26:46.393" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T14:26:46.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2014-07-29T00:17:06.757" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the direct approach in the other answer, but if you'd like an indirect approach (that can be done before a first meeting), try calling the professor's office phone number when you know he or she is not there and listening to how the name is pronounced on voice mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T00:17:06.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26530" CreationDate="2014-07-29T00:44:52.293" Score="11" ViewCount="1219" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phd area is Computer Science and the other area can be anything - if this info makes any difference...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking from the practical point of view, specially something that can be evidenced by real examples. Some career that requires/rewards the degree despite of being completely outside its scope would be a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was worried about asking something a little open, but I see it is pretty common by here, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1836/when-does-one-go-for-a-double-doctorate&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt; - the opposite of other more harsh communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15718" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T05:10:25.077" Title="Has a doctoral degree any value outside of its main area?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26506" CreationDate="2014-07-29T01:00:23.083" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though the topic of your dissertation may be extremely narrow and focused, the process of acquiring a PhD teaches you the skills to attack virtually any problem very deeply, if given sufficient time.  Ultimately, the PhD is just a piece of paper.  The real value of it is the ability to produce something of value to others (i.e. research, a product, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T01:00:23.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26506" CreationDate="2014-07-29T01:20:32.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to view it as the the PhD is a signal to employers and others of a certain capacity. This signal can in many countries open doors to other work not immediately related to one's field of inquiry. McKinsey for instance hires PhDs as consultants and hires them at a higher rank than others for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A parallel can be said about bachelor's degrees -- at least in the US. A lot of work doesn't really take a bachelor's degree in terms of skills nor does it do anything related to that, but seeing that someone could complete a four year degree signals something about the person's task-completion abilities and willingness to slog through areas they don't like (among other things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T01:20:32.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26506" CreationDate="2014-07-29T03:16:10.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are careers where PhD as a degree/piece of paper can be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Higher education. To be a teacher at a university, by rule, you have to have this piece of paper. It doesn't need to be in the same field as your teaching, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any business dealing with academics as costumers. Be in policy, salesman for a company or a patent attorney, academics will always welcome you much more warmly if you have that three letter next to your name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consulting. If you do consulting, especially as a sole entrepreneur, PhD can give a lot of credibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where they will hate it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to work in IT, many programmer seriously despise PhD people.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T03:16:10.990" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26479" CreationDate="2014-07-29T04:04:53.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the hopefully obvious caveat that I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice: at least in the US, this is probably fine. Copyright law (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;17 USC § 102&lt;/a&gt;) applies to &quot;original works of authorship,&quot; not to ideas, and I think everyone would agree the metadata of an article's publication (including journal name, author, and date) fall in the latter category, not the former. Otherwise the whole system of academic citation would be untenable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title and abstract, on the other hand, are content created by the articles' authors and are protected by copyright law, but I think it's quite likely that fair use (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;17 USC § 107&lt;/a&gt;) protects you from being held liable for using them in the manner you describe. With reference to the four conditions to be considered when determining fair use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say it's a free, noncommercial endeavor, so that works in your favor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an academic article; the whole purpose of its existence is to be widely disseminated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title and abstract are a small part of the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the title and abstract in a database like this will more likely increase the market for the original paper than decrease it (which is in fact the entire point of having an abstract)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you would hardly be the first person to do something like this. In high energy physics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://inspirehep.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INSPIRE&lt;/a&gt; already aggregates abstracts and metadata from nearly all published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="236" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T18:45:12.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T18:45:12.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26493" CreationDate="2014-07-29T06:52:52.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing references can be a tedious task, especially at the proof-reading step of a paper and the usage of software that keeps track of your paper/references library (e.g. EndNote or BiBDesk) can be strongly recommended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such software you can have all your references in your paper formated accordingly and automatically to the style that either you choose or the conference/journal wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In MS Word there is an option where you can integrate EndNote, insert references and have an automated formating and arrangement/re-arrangement. Integration is done automatically for EndNote and MS Word, just when you install both of software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ACM style quide can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/publications/word_style/word-style-toc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20121" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T06:52:52.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17649" CreationDate="2014-07-29T07:01:02.220" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the reference is at the end of the sentence and you don't have any other clue in the sentence, then the only connection is the order of appearance in the citation, e.g. [A, B], which means that the first quotation is from A and the second from B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using citations in the sentence and not only at is end. E.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From [A] the first is true because [..] and from [B] the second is [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20121" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T07:01:02.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26568" CreationDate="2014-07-29T07:12:07.517" Score="6" ViewCount="2271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently applied for two different Postdoctoral fellowships in the same host group and I got both of them. My host is very happy and suggests me to run both of them at the same time. However, there are some administration details that are not clear to me at all. For example, will the fellowship foundation be happy to known that I will be running another fellowship at the same time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is to ask one of the foundation (I) to fund a technician and I could still ask the foundation II to support my own salary. In this case, I think I will definitely need to negotiate with foundation I because the change of personnel. Question is that how should I inform foundation II? In fact nothing is changed here, I feel like I am looking for troubles if I simply inform them (foundation II) that I got another funding to support a technician. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your ideas/experiences about how to handle this situation will be greatly appreciated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17695" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T11:12:28.727" Title="How to run two Postdoctoral fellowships at the same time?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26229" CreationDate="2014-07-29T07:16:52.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In conferences where there is a poster session (or poster sessions) usually there is the option for authors to submit a poster and not a full paper. If this is the case, then there is a page limit for poster and full papers, e.g. poster 4 to 6 pages, full paper 6 to 8 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is not such a discrimination but the committee has the option to choose papers for poster session then the selection is based a) either on reviewers comments or b) from the judgment of the organising committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a), there should be a field on the reviewer 's form asking something like: &quot;This submission is for presentation or for poster?&quot; along with the other reviewer form 's fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In b), the committee takes into account the subject of conference, its scope, areas of interest and the contribution of the submission. There are two cases: a) The paper is accepted but not, qualitatively, pass the standards of the committee for presentation and is registered for poster, b) There are many good papers but not all of them fit in the time slots of sessions and thus some have to go for poster presentation and the choice is made according to the same criteria for case a). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;reputable&quot; part of the question, if the paper is peer reviewed then is the same either it is presented as poster of presentation. In ones CV the section of conferences' publications (usually) is divided in peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed/abstract reviewed papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20121" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T07:16:52.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T09:37:33.677" Score="3" ViewCount="1598" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently enrolled in a masters program and am struggling to complete my dissertation as I have no real interest in what I am doing and have lost my motivation. I have completed all my coursework to allow me to gain a PGDip and would like to know if it is possible to transfer and my complete my dissertation at another university in the United kingdom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20127" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T16:47:39.643" LastActivityDate="2021-05-24T22:58:22.593" Title="Is it possible to do a Masters dissertation at a different university?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26518" CreationDate="2014-07-29T10:20:28.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to consult your university regulations as well as your department for advice on this. My gut instinct would be that it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be possible, but you need to make sure you follow the appropriate rules. I can just about guarantee that you'll need to find someone at your home university who will be willing to act as the &quot;internal&quot; supervisor for your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the possibility of being able to do it and actually surmounting the obstacles and being able to do it are quite different. It can be very hard to get another research group outside of your &quot;home&quot; university to be willing to take you on short term as a master's student—primarily because they probably have no idea who you are, and how reliable a student you will be. Nobody really wants to take a risk on a completely unknown quantity based on a &quot;cold call&quot; email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your best bet would be to work with the faculty in your department to find somewhere else to do your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T10:20:28.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26479" CreationDate="2014-07-29T12:09:56.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: The following is not legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the copyright laws of many countries may apply, you would have to check your projects compatibility with each of them, which you might consider a disproportional amount of work. However, there is a minimum allowance any country’s copyright laws have to make to be any reasonable (e.g., without which most journalism would be illegal). Assuming these, one can make the following thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only two things, to which copyright laws will apply: The title and the abstract. Everything else would at least fail to be over the threshold of originality (and probably many other criterions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a reasonable copyright law has to have some mechanism that allows for short quotations: In the U.S. this would be covered by &lt;em&gt;fair use&lt;/em&gt; and maybe something else; Germany has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__51.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;special paragraph&lt;/a&gt; for quotations, etc. However, at least in some countries, if not all, there are no clear legal limits regarding the circumstances and length of a quotation – e.g., the U.S. fair use is “only” likely to be in your favour &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26512/7734&quot;&gt;as explained by David Z&lt;/a&gt;. While the title can be safely assumed to be legal to quote, the abstract is in this grey area (under the above assumptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence I would refrain from publishing the abstracts (even more so, as they are usually freely available on the Journal’s home page, which you can link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T12:09:56.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2014-07-29T12:38:35.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Nahkki that changing parts of the paper influences the remaining paper as well. The reason is that when reading / reviewing a paper you can easily spot different writing styles (especially if you have parts coming from native and non-native speakers). Having different styles within a single paper distorts reading and makes a bad impression. In your case, I would suggest to let proof read the whole paper again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, I suggest to write papers with co-authors who are either native speakers or know how to write. Only this way, you can actually learn how to write, which is an important skill often underrated. I cannot see how you can learn writing scientific articles without having the opportunity to talk and discuss why some sentences or paragraphs are written in &quot;native&quot; way. So, my advise is to get people working with you and learn from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20132" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T12:38:35.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2014-07-29T12:53:02.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;ESL here and this is how I usually deal with similar situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go back to the same editor for a reduced rate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will not hurt to ask. Highlight the parts that you changed, and send over with an inquiry if he/she is willing to look at it again, with heavier grammatical checks in the highlighted sections and then overall flow, at a reduced rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Form a weekly writing group&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty stressful method but it's one of the best decisions I have made. Form a writing group with 2-3 colleagues. We model after this &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/The-Rules-of-Writing-Group/126880/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;. All my partners are native speakers, and I often get English-related advices and even edits from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may feel inadequate (I did at the beginning), but don't. Being an ESL has its appeal. If I can understand their work, it's very likely that native audience will also understand their work. In a way, I am their coal mine canary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T13:08:36.860" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T13:08:36.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2014-07-29T13:54:05.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK the UCU has negotiated a single &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2210&quot;&gt;salary spine&lt;/a&gt; that ranges from £13,953 to £58,172. Only Professors exceed the top end of the scale so it is possible to make an educated guess at the salary of Lecturers and Readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each university sets their own limits where Lecturers and Readers fall on the salary spine and the exact starting point on the spine is individually negotiated. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=4291&quot;&gt;Manchester scale&lt;/a&gt; has Lecturers between spine points 37 and 44, while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/hr/guidesandsupport/rewardpayandallowances/salaryscales/documents/2013/2-57-point-scale-01-08-13.pdf&quot;&gt;Nottingham scale&lt;/a&gt; has Lecturers between 36 and 43. Readers are between 45 and 51 at both Manchester and Nottingham. I am ignoring the spine points between the standard maximum and the super maximum since progression in that region is extremely difficult (and generally results in promotion). Typically, you move one spine point a year so if you know how many years someone has been a Reader/Lecturer, then you can make a very good educated guess at the salary. For all but Lecturers who have been appointed in the past 3 years, you should be able to estimate the salary within +/-10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T13:54:05.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2014-07-29T14:24:38.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think that an article of yours would be a useful reference, you can mention it on the Talk page for the relevant article or an associated Wikiproject, and suggest to other editors that they consider adding it to the main article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:24:38.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26527" CreationDate="2014-07-29T15:10:59.077" Score="17" ViewCount="3035" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an article comparing three pieces of software. I have taken screen shots of all of them and would like to use them in a non-open access article. Given the intended journal, there is a reasonable chance of the images being on the cover. What are the copyright issues associated with screen shots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, one of the pieces of software is free and open source (GPL v2), and two are free as in beer, but closed source with unknown licenses and no EULAs. To further complicate matters one of the closed sourced pieces of software looks and functions very much like a proprietary piece of hardware produced by a massive company. Three years ago I contacted the developer of the software and asked about using a screen shot and he said it was fine. The software is still widely available, but the direct download from the developers site now has text indicating that the massive company has &quot;requested&quot; that it be taken down. I own the physical hardware and am not aware of any crazy licensing restrictions. I could use a photo of the physical hardware if that is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T11:31:10.820" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T21:09:12.047" Title="How does copyright work on screen captures?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26526" CreationDate="2014-07-29T15:21:48.440" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You need legal advice. Talk to an attorney.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your institution has one that you can take advantage of. Everything from here on out is rank speculation, and even your attorney's advice may not protect your from suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, get permission from each source you want to take a screen capture of. There may be copyright protectable elements in those screen shots. There may also be trademarked elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot get permission for whatever reason, you may have to rely on fair use. Fair use is a defense to an infringement suit not a get out of jail free card. By using a copyright or trademark protected work without a license, you run the risk of lawsuit. Your institution may not be willing to rely on a fair use defense. Also, your publisher may not be willing to rely on a fair use defense (since they will be the lawsuit target). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think your use is without question a classic and canonical example of fair use, but that doesn't mean that you will prevail in publishing without permission. Many venues require that your sign a form saying that you have the copyright or permission to use all your images, so be careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T22:16:05.743" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T22:16:05.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26479" CreationDate="2014-07-29T16:17:07.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most publishers has a set, automatic way to get permissions to republish figures, tables, parts of text etc and also a rather elaborate copyright section. To study these I think the second best thing after taking the opinion of a lawyer. Note, they can vary publisher by publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, journals are often broadcast abstracts eg in RSS feeds with a copyright tag, so I guess they consider it copyrighted but more or less sharable content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T16:17:07.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19774" CreationDate="2014-07-29T16:24:03.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are literally zillions of scholarships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the representative of EU and the embassies of countries you are interested in. They always have an S&amp;amp;T department which generally have advertisement of such scholarships, websites, or even newsletters on this very topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming  that you are in the US, you can contact the MIT European Career Fair (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.euro-career.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.euro-career.com/&lt;/a&gt;) they have several connections to national frameworks like DAAD or Humbold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T16:24:03.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26506" CreationDate="2014-07-29T17:48:21.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, the answer is &quot;No, the Ph.D. title hardly makes you worth more as you step far from your main area&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, doctorate training prepares you to do research, and by the time you graduate, you will have accumulated research experience in your narrow area. So even in academic CS, you won't be particularly welcome if you did research in compiler theory, and the department is looking to hire somebody in Big Data. Moreover, your compiler theory research experience is hopeleslly useless if you decided to work in medieval German literature or neuropsychology or plant biology. They will hire the specialized Ph.D. in that area any day over you. They will hire a linguist who said they took a CodeAcademy class in Python over you even if the project calls for text mining for unique patterns of word use in XV vs. XVI century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you slip out to the big real world outside of academia, you will find that you will have surprisingly little to offer on top of a good MA graduate while wanting a higher price tag. Microsoft or Adobe or any other MakeUpNameSoftMetrics do not develop compilers, and instead they would want you to deliver good quality production code (or, worse, to oversee a team of programmers who do that). So ask yourself again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul said &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26507/739&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that Ph.D. develops &quot;the skills to attack virtually any problem very deeply, &lt;em&gt;if given sufficient time&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I added emphasis, and I cannot stress this small print enough. My experience in industry is that the deliverable time is often yesterday, and few leaders have the patience for you to develop a perfect peer-reviewed published solution. It may not always have to be quick-and-dirty, but it is always have to be on time, so you need to have a better understanding of what the most important points and priorities in your project are which need to be addressed and accomplished first than academia can teach you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Virmaior said &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/26508/739&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that McKinsey happily hires Ph.D.s as consultants. That, of course, is true, but it does not mean that they hire any Ph.D. in any discipline out of charity. They are looking for specific communication and business skills -- essentially for people who made the wrong choice by going to a Ph.D., or had no other pathway to continue with their traning, or in other words who have the mega brains to do really smart work, but may not find themselves happy in academia. The work environment in a consulting firm is anywhere from three to five times as intense as your Ph.D. -- not necessarily in the hours, but more in terms of responsibility. You may be well paid, but you are absolutely required to deliver. McKinsey specifically has an &quot;up-or-out&quot; model: at a time for the regular review, you are either so good that they promote you, or the company will be better off with you working for their competitor. Compare that to &quot;Oh, you worked on this project for two years, and all your mice died because somebody turned the A/C off for the weekend? Ah well. Let's find you another project where I need a qualified technician but I don't want to pay the full time position benefits...&quot; (As a side comment, McKinsey's pricing structure ends up being absolutely, over-the-top ridiculously expensive, may be because they hire so many Ph.D.s that still need to be molded into industry setting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To round the picture up, in government of any kind, you will find spending 25% of your time on filling compliance paperwork, be that a job in a public school, an IT support job in state capitol, you name it. This is as far as it can get from being able to come to work in shorts and sandals at noon to work through the night. As far as what Ph.D. is worth there: if you browse some jobs on usajobs.gov, you will find a scale of GS-## (government service at a given level), and the relevant level for a Ph.D. is around 12. I found these two pieces in my area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to the Basic Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the GS-12, applicants must have either (a) one year of specialized&#xA;  experience equivalent in difficulty and responsibility to the GS-11 in&#xA;  the Federal Service or (b) a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree in&#xA;  statistics, biostatistics, computer science, mathematics, or a closely&#xA;  related field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where in turn level GS-11 means&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to qualify for  Mathematical Statistician, 1529-11/12/13, you&#xA;  must meet the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basic Qualifications&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have at least a bachelor's degree that included 24 semester hours of&#xA;  mathematics and statistics, of which at least 12 semester hours were&#xA;  in mathematics and 6 semester hours were in statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have a combination of education and experience--at least 24 semester&#xA;  hours in mathematics and statistics, including at least 12 hours in&#xA;  mathematics and 6 hours in statistics, as show in A above, plus&#xA;  appropriate experience or additional education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minimum Qualification Requirements for Mathematical Statistician,&#xA;  GS-1529-11/12/13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have one year of specialized experience, equivalent to the GS-09 grade&#xA;  level in the Federal service that includes experience performing&#xA;  statistical analyses on biological or biomedical research problems and&#xA;  conducting reviews evaluating statistical methods, procedures, and&#xA;  concepts involved with biological or biomedical applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for that line of work, Ph.D. = Bachelor + 1 year. Don't quote me on this, job requirements keep changing, and I won't even bother putting links as these jobs expire quite quickly by SE standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a silver lining, there are industry jobs where Ph.D. is required. However, these would be leadership positions in research-heavy types of work, and positions would be listed as &quot;15+ years post Ph.D.; experience overseeing 10+ direct reports&quot; or the like. By then, you will have retrained yourself into whatever the job really requires, so the Ph.D. is really just three letters after your name at that point. If leadership role is where your ambitions are, you should start taking classes in Business Administration immediately if your program covers arbitrary credits outside your major department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T05:10:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26644" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:36:07.190" Score="0" ViewCount="5179" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three semesters into a PhD program, I am still unhappy with my project. I am currently in a summer internship where I was offered a job, and as I have enjoyed it so far and they pay well, I am considering finishing a Masters degree and leaving after that.  I emailed my advisor to let him know about the offer, asking his advice about that and about the logistics of switching tracks.  He has now asked me to let him know what I decide so he can give my TA position this coming semester to a different student (only PhD students at my university are guaranteed funding).  I don't want to be misleading and take funding away from students who are committed to a PhD, but I honestly don't know what I want to do yet.  I wonder if there might still be a chance that everything gets better and I do finish a PhD.  But since I am not committed, is it better to officially switch?  I don't know if it is possible to switch back, because my grades have not been the best and my university is very selective.  (But I worry that the department does not look highly upon me at this point anyways - my first year was rough, and I ended up taking leave last fall for personal/health reasons.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possibly relevant background information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;almost 23, US, computer science.  Finishing the requirements for a masters degree will take 2-3 more semesters (five classes and a paper).  I majored in physics in undergrad but added a computer science major my junior year, and then decided to apply to graduate school for that because there were many things I hadn't gotten to learn about yet and found interesting.  So I am now in a highly ranked program doing a project related to AI / NLP, which I had very little experience with prior to grad school.  The project is old, in a language I hate and struggle with, has mostly been bug fixes and reimplementing things that have already been done before.  With the exception of last semester, when another student joined (she has left already) it was just me working on it and three professors giving out tasks.  Entering my third year, I am starting to feel pressure to figure out a topic, but I still feel as if I don't know enough to decide and have no clue what would be acceptable or even what I would want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I miss the excitement of undergrad days when I would write simple AIs or algorithms for my own amusement and edification - I thought grad school would be like that, but I haven't done anything of the sort since.  I've enjoyed my industry internships and class projects far more than any 'research' tasks because I got to build something that &lt;em&gt;actually works&lt;/em&gt;.  This is why I am considering not going through with the PhD and just getting a job, although not ruling out the possibility of going back later when I have a more clear idea of what I want to do, after narrowing my interests on my own time.  I am not interested in a job in academia at all but rather I just want to have a high-tech job where I can make something novel and useful - which in some cases might be more accessible with a PhD, but I think is also possible with just a Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5929" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:31:09.757" Title="Thinking about switching to a Masters from a PhD, advisor wants a decision now" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:37:06.830" Score="31" ViewCount="3445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a recent math PhD, working in Subject X.  I had the good luck to give a counterexample to a conjecture in Subject Y, using ideas from X.  I don't know much about Y -- in fact I learned the conjecture in a &quot;Y for dummies&quot;-type paper and immediately saw the example.  The people I met in Y seemed to be pretty happy about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've been invited to give a talk at a big conference about Y.  I would of course be delighted to do so, but by the time the conference happens my paper will be about 18 months post-arxiv.  I don't really have plans or competence to do further work in Y, and I'm concerned that my paper will be getting stale by the time the conference rolls around.  On the other hand, I could give a basic introduction to X and my example, which I think would be interesting to the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions as to how to proceed?  Should I accept and give a dated talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20139" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T06:56:21.063" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T10:12:03.220" Title="Should I accept an invitation to give a talk on dated work?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26539" CreationDate="2014-07-29T20:48:10.513" Score="11" ViewCount="3579" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earlier this year I entered into a high-profile molecular biology lab and started doing wet lab work (I am an undergraduate). Knowing that I have a computational background, my PI asked that I also help with a project that had been conducted over the last two years and was nearing its completion. I was told that if I made enough of a contribution that I could be listed as a coauthor. I wrote a program for the post-doc that is leading this project and used it to analyze the validity of part of his data. The most current (nearly final) version of the project's manuscript that is being passed around the lab unfortunately don't have my name anywhere on it, even though my code is listed in the supplementary information section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always heard that you should get an authorship on a paper if your work resulted in a figure or sizable part of the discussion. My contribution to this project only slightly altered one figure, ensured the figure's validity, and got about 2 sentences in the discussion. My relationship with my lab and my PI especially is very important to me (I would love to continue my work here for at least another 2 years), so is it worth asking for a co-authorship, or at least an acknowledgement? Would doing so be inappropriate given my relative contribution (a month vs. 2 years) and status as an undergraduate in the lab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20145" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T21:07:31.190" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T10:35:47.230" Title="Can I ask for authorship/acknowledgement for writing small data analysis program for a large study?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26538" CreationDate="2014-07-29T21:10:14.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking whether a contribution merits acknowledgement or co-authorship is &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; appropriate, as long as it is done in a professional and non-confrontational way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer may be &quot;no,&quot; but it's certainly worthwhile to ask. (And if the answer is &quot;no,&quot; at least you have learned something about standards for authorship and acknowledgement in your lab/field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T21:10:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2014-07-29T21:33:01.010" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a physics PhD student, so our culture is a little different, but I've seen people give talks that were primarily about work published multiple years ago. So if math culture is anything like physics culture (and what I've heard suggests that the time scales are even &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; for you), I don't think it's a bad idea. Especially, considering the fact that you have been &lt;em&gt;invited&lt;/em&gt; to give this talk, it seems they want you there despite knowing that your work will have been out for a long time by the time the conference happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to inject something new into it, you could consult with some colleagues in subject Y and ask them what the relevance of your counterexample is. Then you could finish your talk with an overview of what they tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T21:33:01.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26538" CreationDate="2014-07-29T22:00:13.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very least, an acknowledgment would be appropriate. However, it very much depends on the standards in your field—and within your present lab—whether or not you'll be recognized for a small analysis tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would not expect that the tool would lead to multiple authorship credits—you created the tool once, and should receive &quot;credit&quot; for it once. (Otherwise, I'd need to cite the authors of the software I use in every paper out of my lab group!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T22:00:13.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26526" CreationDate="2014-07-30T00:56:53.473" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If there's no explicit prohibition against it in a EULA&lt;/em&gt; and it is publicly-available software, just mention the source of the screenshot, either in small print on the cover or in a colophon.  Remember the law belongs to you at least as much as them and academics have been too passive in helping courts settle these issues.  And the proof of it is shown in other`s answers suggesting you should contact a lawyer.  But in the United States, the Law is explicitly reserved for the People, not lawyers.  These aren't difficult cases to think about.  Academia has been dealing with the issue of fair-use for centuries.  Just look at the issue as if it were your own special software, and you'll be able to figure out reasonable and &quot;fair use&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T21:09:12.047" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T21:09:12.047" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T01:37:56.197" Score="-1" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to work with a professor in my field as a postdoc after I complete my PhD in Computer Science later this year, who has a remarkable record of supervising PhD students to become faculty at research universities. If I get hired, is he going to oversee me to pursue my most interested project, which is in a different subfield from what he is working on currently, or to carry out his projects? If the former, Why would he hire me as a postdoc then? Just train me to be an independent research even though it may not advance his projects directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T03:59:57.770" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T06:11:00.137" Title="Do advisors allow their postdocs to pursue projects outside the advisor's core interests?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-30T10:38:55.433" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26578" CreationDate="2014-07-30T01:57:36.870" Score="7" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65/jeffe&quot;&gt;JeffE&lt;/a&gt; mentioned the existence of a faculty mentor in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11903/as-a-dissertation-advisor-how-can-i-best-help-a-typical-graduate-student#comment21937_11903&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11903/as-a-dissertation-advisor-how-can-i-best-help-a-typical-graduate-student&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, so I am wondering if there is usually a faculty mentor for every junior professor (e.g., newly hired untenured profs). If yes, what are their roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T14:52:45.407" Title="What is a faculty mentor for a junior professor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2014-07-30T02:35:09.627" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that either your job or the conference (or a mixture of both) is covering your travel + attendance cost.  If that is the case you should give your talk on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of good reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your employer likely hires PhDs to publish papers and give talks, and invited talks always looks good when you're looking for a promotion or a new position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Because Subject X provided a counter-example, it is likely much more relevant to Y than was previously though.  Likely the researchers in Y don't know much about X, and would like to know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You say you believe the conference attendees would be interested in your talk.  This is the reason people attend conferences, to hear about something they don't understand well but find interesting.  Don't worry that the paper is a few years old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T02:35:09.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T04:58:36.783" Score="0" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;The referee has asked to demonstrate ' what is the new thing done&quot; so that the paper will be accepted. I feel, though the fundamental theory is same for the work, the experiment at various machine is carried out and result is being published. So what should i write to the journal for convincing the matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20153" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T07:37:06.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T07:37:06.340" Title="Review asks me to demonstrate &quot;what is the new thing done&quot;; what should I write?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-30T10:38:39.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T05:24:10.927" Score="15" ViewCount="16066" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typical disclaimer is now just common fodder for all papers and books. Any advice on a more original take to this generic statement would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19581" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T11:48:25.547" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T11:48:25.547" Title="What's a novel way to say &quot;all errors are my own&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26553" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:09:50.523" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making the manuscript error-free is left as an exercise for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T06:09:50.523" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26549" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:11:00.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those questions that simply cannot be answered in generality. Sometimes, one hires a postdoc to do &lt;em&gt;exactly this one thing that needs to be done&lt;/em&gt;. In that case, it will be rather difficult to spend too much time on your own projects. In other cases, one hires a postdoc simply because the funding is there, without a very specific research goal in mind. In these cases, working mostly on your own things &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be fine with the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advise you to clarify with your potential employer. (however, be prepared that he or she might upsell the actual level of individual research that you will be able to do - maybe it is a good idea to also chat with other postdocs in the same group)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the former, Why would he hire me as a postdoc then? Just train me to be an independent research even though it may not advance his projects directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is actually good reasons to hire postdocs that are not exactly in your field. They open up new research directions for your lab. They allow you to publish papers that you couldn't have written on your own. They strengthen the teaching portfolio of your lab, at least if postdocs routinely teach. All in all, your lab then has expertise in an area that it did not have expertise in before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, for instance, traditionally work on topic A. Recently I moved to a research group that is very strong in the quite different topic B. The motivation of the lab head there was simple - he participated in a project on the intersection of A and B. He knows how to do B, he needed somebody that knows how to do A. Our (informal) deal is that I am to spend some amount of time (less than 50%, realistically) on the joint project, the rest of the time I am to teach and develop my own research agenda within our lab - which conveniently is also in the intersection of A and B, although a somewhat different direction than the joint project. I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; that this setup is actually quite beneficial, both to our lab and me personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; a word of caution, though - I have also seen professors who are not in favor of independent research within their lab at all. So don't assume that because it seems to work for me, it definitely will work for you as well. People differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T06:11:00.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:19:23.113" Score="8" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;So when writing a manuscript I usually go about as follows:&#xA;When reading papers on my topic I copy/paste or summarise those parts, which may be relevant for me and collect all these bits in a Word Document. It'll look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Species A grew taller than Species B (Smith et al. 2013)&#xA;&#xA;Growth rate depends on genetics (Miller et al. 2012)&#xA;&#xA;For Species A growth rate did not differ between experiments (Jones et al. 2013)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically a list of statements that I then regroup (manually) by topic. However, that last part is quite tedious (and I have to decide on how to group the bits, e.g. by &quot;Species A&quot; or by &quot;growth rate&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am looking for a tool (online or downloadable) with which it's possible to collect those text bits, assign tags to each and then select which tag to group by and get the selection of statements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you aware of such a tool?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20156" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T20:22:57.063" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T20:22:57.063" Title="Are there any tools for organising literature with tags?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;&lt;workflow&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26553" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:41:49.813" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the point? If errors are due to factors other than those under ones own control, it should be mentioned (people are usually careful to protect their own names from problems they are not responsible for). Any unreferenced errors, ambiguities, misconceptions will clearly be labelled as the fault of the author by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T06:41:49.813" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T20:43:07.247" Score="6" ViewCount="2076" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the research paper itself and having a complete understanding of the proposed system, I could implement the system on my own. If my intention is not to re-implement it myself, but rather study the original implementation(probably by the authors of the paper), I've got the following line of questions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable if I seek the original implementation of the paper?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it OK to contact the author(s), and request their implementation by giving a valid reason?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are IEEE papers intellectual properties, that such a task of seeking implementation is entirely stupid?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Joe Lewis" LastEditorUserId="1419" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T07:13:03.597" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T07:13:03.597" Title="Is it OK to contact authors of the research paper requesting an implementation?" Tags="&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-30T06:50:34.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26560" CreationDate="2014-07-29T21:23:15.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is three questions, i.e. two more than the allowed quota for a&#xA;post :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeking more information on a topic, within legal limits, is your privilege.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always OK to write to an author about any aspect of his works,&#xA;as long as it remains a civilized exchange (which is sometimes not&#xA;the case). It should be preferably clear that you have a technical level that justifies taking his time. This should show in the style of your request, not by listing degrees and achievements.  Just be very simple, clear, and direct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He may reply or not, or tell you what are the limits on what he can&#xA;tell you if some of the work is confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should first try to see what is available on the net from him&#xA;or others who may have collaborated.  People are usually friendly, but&#xA;sometimes swamped with requests, and try to save time by preparing&#xA;answers on their web site, or the web site of their organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, writing is encouraged. Asking for more papers or implementation,&#xA;or experimental results, is fine. But &lt;strong&gt;always try to spare the time of&#xA;the people you write to&lt;/strong&gt;, and avoid asking idle questions or using the&#xA;exchange of mail as free tutoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All papers, all writings are intellectual property (IP), including this&#xA;answer to you, which I happen to put under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;creatve common&lt;/a&gt; licence,&#xA;so that you do not even notice it is intellectual property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An IEEE paper is also IP, usually owned mostly by IEEE, but there are&#xA;many more detais to this (search the web for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_%28publishing%29&quot;&gt;open access&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openaccess.mpg.de/286432/Berlin-Declaration&quot;&gt;Berlin&#xA;declaration&lt;/a&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the IP concerns only the text of the papers, not the ideas you can&#xA;find in it.  So you are quite free to rewrite the content of a&#xA;scientific paper (not a novel) in your own words and distribute it ...&#xA;with due acknowledgement to the original author as the creator of the&#xA;ideas, and reference to his original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IEEE may own IP rights on a paper, but that implies in no way any&#xA;right on the implementation of the ideas, on the experimental results or other preliminary work conducted to produce the paper, or on derived work,&#xA;including the notes a teacher can write for his class on the topic of&#xA;the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this answer your questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13487" OwnerDisplayName="babou" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T21:23:15.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26552" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:47:56.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it is important to clearly arrive at a conclusion that shows how the manuscript contributes to our unerstanding of the matter at hand. The referee apparently thinks your paper is lacking in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, in most journals it is not up to the referee to decide if a papepr is published or not, the editor(s) decide based upon &lt;em&gt;recommendations&lt;/em&gt; from the referees (usually more than one). So is there a second referee? and if so what did that person say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should revise your manuscript and think about the conclusions. Make them clearer &lt;em&gt;as suggested&lt;/em&gt; if you think you can. Such comments froma referee usually mean that the manuscript is not as clear as you may think and it is necessary to critically view your work and see if you can improve it. If you cannot, you should provide a note to the editor to meet the criticism of the referee which should entail why the improvements cannot be made. That would make a decision on the faith of the manuscript easier and more clear to the editor (which I suspect is involved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T06:47:56.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26538" CreationDate="2014-07-30T07:35:35.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be acknowledged seem appropriate. When it comes to authorship, having your name on the paper implicitly means you should also fulfil several criteria such as outlined by the Vancouver Protocol (look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12030/4394&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; for details or search for posts with the tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt;). It seems unlikely that you would be eligible for co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T07:35:35.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2014-07-30T07:42:40.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with the paper being old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I once did a live experiment during a conference, with the attending people as participants in the experiment. Obviously, I couldn't evaluate and write up the data during the conference, although I had to give a talk with first results 24 hours after the experiment. I was also required to submit a paper with the complete results with the postproceedings, and these postproceedings appeared maybe 4 months after the conference and were sent to everybody who attended it that year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to give the talk on the postproceedings paper the following year, when the conference was held again. Of course, it was attended by the same crowd of known faces (it is a conference for a somewhat small community). These were the same people who had heard the first results the year before, and then received the written paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the talk was a success. The audience was very attentive during the talk, and I received both really good questions and great positive feedback afterwards, having professors come up to me, an unknown doctoral student, and express interest and praise for my work. They weren't bored at the &quot;old news&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I don't think they had read the paper from the postproceedings, and that's fine. With the sheer quantity of research produced these days, nobody can keep up with all publications in their core area, and everybody picks only the stuff which has direct implication for their own work. They are still very interested in related topics when they get the occasion to hear about them, and enjoy good work. They just don't seek this information actively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, give the talk. It is a way to promote yourself and your work, and also your area X, which can have interesting synergies with Y. I doubt that anybody will have a negative reaction just because the paper has been sitting around for months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T07:42:40.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2014-07-30T09:26:08.977" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add one aspect to the other excellent answers here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go and give that talk. Even if you don't really have plans or competence to do further work in Y, as you note, the topic seems to be interesting enough to enough people to explicitly invite you. So you never know, you might meet someone at that conference who you could collaborate with in extending your work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T09:26:08.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26538" CreationDate="2014-07-30T10:35:47.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A month's worth of work and a small analysis tool sounds like an acknowledgement, rather than an authorship. Depending on your relationship with the rest of the lab, I wouldn't press the point too hard -- a middle-author paper is worth something (but not much), and an acknowledgement is only worth the brief glow of seeing your name on a printed page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T10:35:47.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26516" CreationDate="2014-07-30T11:12:28.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally foundations &quot;request&quot; that you inform them if you receive extra funding for the same budget. They probably expect that you apply to several foundations simultaneously. However, if you negotiate with foundation I to change the scope of the funding (such that it doesn't go towards your salary, which is presumably already covered by foundation II), then I think you're in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if foundation II didn't fund your full budget, then you could accept part of the funds from foundation I to cover the remaining costs, then inform both foundations of the arrangement. That should also be uncontroversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T11:12:28.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27858" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:43:21.037" Score="3" ViewCount="1540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that students have two ways to write their thesis,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have a separate chapter to write an introduction to their thesis. This chapter usually consists of a literature review of their research topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have an introduction section at the beginning of each chapter and they write a separate introduction to each chapter and they don't have any introduction chapter for literature review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I have seen such behaviour in references part;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some prefer that each chapter having its own references part;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some other prefer all the references come at the end of the thesis report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please help me know which of these are standard and if any official guide to each exists, I will be happy to know and read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the answers to this question of mine, I read the writing guide for masters thesis at my university and consulted my question with my advisor, and looked at the previously submitted theses, I wrote the introduction and literature review of my thesis in the very first chapter exactly after printing the abstract of my thesis and brought all the references at the very end just before the final page of my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T09:59:47.157" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T09:59:47.157" Title="What is the standard way to include introduction and references parts to a masters thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:00:36.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I think there is no specific answer as if which is the &quot;best&quot; way of writing the Introduction chapter. I believe it boils down to preference. Sometimes it is possible to have both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer,having an introduction chapter which talks about the topic overall and provides the basics to the reader, and then for each chapter you provide an introduction paragraph or section which tell the reader what is going to be solved in that chapter of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in most of the universities i.e. research groups, the student gets a template which he has to respect when writing the thesis. It is rather interesting that you have the freedom to choose that what type of template you will use for your own thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case before you start wasting time on considering which template you should choose, make sure that the research group where you will be writing your thesis does not provide a thesis template of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T13:00:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26229" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:08:37.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding &quot;Is one less reputable than the other one? &quot; , in the University I studied they assign points to every contribution (and then sort us for PostDoc positions etc.) A paper chosen for presentation can give you up to 0.75 points whereas a paper chosen for poster can give you up to 0.4 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the trick here is the &quot;up to&quot; part, but normally you can count on receiving more reputation from a paper chosen for presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9924" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T13:08:37.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:30:11.230" Score="21" ViewCount="5745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting to investigate doctoral programs in education in the United States, and I'm considering how to handle the GRE requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hardline Activism:&lt;/strong&gt; submit my incomplete application with a well-researched essay justifying my refusal to take the GRE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soft Activism:&lt;/strong&gt; submit my complete application including my first-try GRE scores along with a well-researched essay debunking the significance of my GRE scores related to my value as a candidate in the Ed.D. program, AND flatly stating that I spent no more than four hours (the length of the exam. i.e. No test prep.) on the GRE, in light of my scientific conclusions about it's relevance in this situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Passive Acceptance:&lt;/strong&gt; submit my complete application with my first-try GRE score and hope for acceptance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Active Acceptance:&lt;/strong&gt; Study hard and take the GRE, then study some more and take it again. Submit my complete application and hope for acceptance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other options that I'm overlooking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My position is not &quot;the GRE has no value.&quot; My position is &quot;I'm an excellent candidate for this doctoral program, as evidenced by my application. GRE scores would not alter that conclusion.&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11812/the-gre-why-does-this-still-exist/11817#11817?newreg=eab060635122496c891515b5e196c4b7&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; very useful, especially the answer and citations by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62/jeromy-anglim&quot;&gt;Jeromy Anglim&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I admit that I enjoy testing boundaries just for fun, but this issue is more than that. As a proponent of thoughtful, responsible education reform, I'm leaning toward options 1 and 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T10:26:36.153" Title="Should I challenge the GRE requirement for a doctoral program in education (in the U.S.)?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:14:51.240" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How much do you value getting into graduate school versus how much do you value feeling like you are making a point?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you value feeling like you are making a point, by all means, pursue the Soft Activism. My guess is that it will come across to the department like a complaint that you didn't do well enough on the test and are going rogue to make your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you value getting into graduate school, then engage in &quot;begrudging acceptance&quot; that this is how you get into that particular graduate school. Like it or not, there's often a line of people willing to take your place, suffer the test, and smile. Moreover, if there's money on the line in the forms of scholarships or fellowships, consider the time/money you put into the test an investment. Study, practice, and prepare until you get a score you can submit in the hopes of getting in. You don't have to actively like the idea, you just need to accept this is the means to acceptance in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For middle ground possibilities, I actually think the &quot;hardline activism&quot; approach is softer and less whiney than your &quot;soft activism&quot;, because true or false it makes it seem like you've had a principled stand against the GRE since the beginning. Depending on the contours of the education program that might bode well for you. Some education programs might agree that the testing is bunk; my colleagues in education don't like standardized tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can of course just submit the scores you have, but if you think they are inadequate for acceptance, that seems unwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you're in, then write all the principled essays you want against it and try to change the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T14:17:45.530" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:17:45.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:27:29.247" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;These opinions are based on my discussions with faculty members involved in PhD admission committees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your crusade against the GRE will be more productive when you become the department chair or the dean of a school. Right now it just sounds like you're afraid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the options you've listed, I would recommend #3. You should know that the GRE plays a small part in what gets you accepted in a good grad school. The admission committee cares about your essay, your letters, your past productivity, and how you've done in specific hard courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GRE is correlated with IQ and simply enables the committee to focus their efforts on a smaller pool. They know that they might miss on a good candidate who inexplicably bombed the GRE but they also know that they would easily find many many equally good candidates in the pool of those who did average and above on their GREs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do exceptionally well in your GRE (98 percentile +) then you will stand out. If you do average, the committee will focus on what they really care about, which is your essay, your letters etc. If you bomb it then your application likely won't be looked at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't waste your time and money taking the GRE many many times. Your score won't change very much and what's really important is the rest of your portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:27:29.247" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:40:43.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want an exception from the GRE requirement policy, submit other materials and politely ask the head of the admission committee for an exception. In the request build carefully your case as why you think you would be successful in the school. Remember, the school admission is not about your principles, it is about the Department having confidence you would be successful. And that's what you need to show in your petition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, my GRE scores were excellent, but too old (10 years). Since taking the test I completed a Masters at one of the top schools with high GPA, and had a successful employment record at reputable (and picky) employers. The Department for my PhD program had no issues waving the requirement to retake the GRE, simply because I had other means to show that I would be successful in the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:40:43.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2014-07-30T15:05:55.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rapidly becoming the norm at least at larger research universities (R1s) for all junior faculty to have assigned mentors from the senior faculty. At smaller institutions, they may not be assigned and so junior people have to find a mentor themselves from within the college, go externally, use their thesis adviser as a continuing mentor, or choose not to get mentored altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently serving as a senior faculty mentor to a junior colleague (I was assigned this person by my Chair) and am an informal mentor to two others. As I see it, my roles are to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show an active interest in my colleague's work.  Read their published and unpublished work. Go to their internal talks and try to go to their annual conference talks. Provide feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serve as a soundingboard for my colleague -- which journal should they publish in, should they change the structure of their article, what should their publishing schedule be. Suggest, but don't direct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serve as an advocate for my colleague at senior faculty meetings and to the university at promotion and tenure time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the colleague out for lunch from time to time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, try to be a decent human being to them. Especially at the larger R1s, decent human beings are rare so this takes quite an effort. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I've seen a lot of bad mentoring by senior faculty. I'm not sure if they do this because of spite or because they are Evil People®. In my mind, bad mentoring is worse than no mentoring, so I'm not sure if mandatory mentoring programs such as at my institution are a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T22:42:20.907" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:42:20.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T15:28:22.320" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a PHD program in Europe. To my knowledge and experience,&#xA;you will get more papers published during a European program,&#xA;and the number of papers in good journals is what determines your future academic career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T15:28:22.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26417" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:22:06.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you implement Option 2, but with some modifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to the review sections of the Introduction chapter, you should include a sentence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The material in Sections X through Y of this Introduction draws heavily on the author's previously published literature review (citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you add the material from your literature review, &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; simply copy-and-paste.  Instead, you should modify or add text to relate this literature to your thesis, to your methods, to your decisions about scope and approach, and so on.  Tell the reader in every sentence and every paragraph &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this part of the literature is or is not important to your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you avoid any problems of self-plaguarism because you give full citation at the start, plus you aren't doing simple copy-and-paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T16:22:06.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26506" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:27:42.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some countries, there are some legal implications. For example, in the university I did my Master's thesis, you can only be hired for a maximum of six months, except if you are a student (master or PhD) or you hold a PhD, in which case there are no limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is easier to immigrate to the States if you have one, as it can be used as proof of &quot;extraordinary ability&quot; or be an &quot;outstanding researcher&quot; (granting you priority 1), or at least, &quot;exceptional ability&quot; and &quot;advanced degree&quot; (priority 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/types/employment.html#first&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T07:40:45.107" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T07:40:45.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26592" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:37:14.657" Score="11" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied for a tenure-track faculty position at a particular institution in the U.S. I was selected for a skype interview, but was not invited for an on-campus visit. I snooped around on the department seminar web page, but did not find any evidence that this particular department actually ever invited anybody for an on-campus interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I received an email from the department stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your interest in the faculty position within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of [redacted]. Our search to fill this position produced many impressive applicants. &lt;strong&gt;However, for a number of reasons beyond the department’s control, the position was not filled.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a couple of reasons that a department may not fill a vacancy, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the finalists all ended up taking a job somewhere else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;none of the finalists could agree to the terms offered by the department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, besides those possibilities listed above, what are the other possible causes of a faculty position going unfilled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T02:18:03.347" Title="What are the possible causes of a faculty position not being filled?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26613" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:42:51.063" Score="4" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the acknowledgement section of a thesis or paper, the authors usually thank the funding institution of their research project and people who had significant impact on their publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When acknowledging companies/institutions in a publication, should they be informed beforehand? I mean, should authors ask for permissions before acknowledging any names in a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T20:05:52.293" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T15:52:42.477" Title="Do the authors need to ask for permission from institutes/companies for including their name in acknowledgement section of their publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26417" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:42:52.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the academic community does not consider it to be self-plagiarism to use your own previously published writings as part of your thesis, provided appropriate references are given.  You can summarize or reword if you wish, but it is not necessary for ethical purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your institution, or the journal where you published your article, will allow this is a question that only they can answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T18:42:52.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:49:19.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who recently took the GRE for grad school I feel your pain. I didn't do badly but certainly not as well as I would have liked. I'm not a good standardized test taker and felt at a disadventage when taking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT, my department (no idea about yours), does not weigh the score of the GRE very heavily. Unlike the SAT or ACT, there is no minimum score that you have to meet. I actually emailed my advisor for grad school, asking him about my scores and if they would do (or if not, would I need to take it over). There is no &quot;this score is good, this one is bad&quot; scale so I really didn't know how I stood from other candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor essentially said this: they have the GRE as a requirment because they have to (or at least, it's the standard). However, they look more at GPA, letters of recom., and advise from the faculty. There are students from foreign universities who bomb it because of language barriers but that doesn't prevent them from getting in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, I would ask the school(s) you are appling to directly if you are worried about getting in to see how heavily it weighs. In my opinoin and from those that I've talked to, nobody really believes the GRE is some great test that determines sole ability for getting through grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you just want to kick up some dust and try to take down the GRE all togehter, more power to you :p It's an antiquateated and unfair test and through my previous points of most schools (well, my school at least) not really caring about it, it's just a way to make more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I would advise against option #1. Not submitting a GRE I don't think will do anything than merely have your application by incomplete. Mine was all done online so without having every box checked off, it wouldn't let you submit it anyways and as fair as I know you can not apply unless it's online.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T18:49:19.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26573" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:55:59.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One word of caution regarding options 1 and 2: In many (if not most) U.S. colleges, the office of the Graduate School has the final say over who is admitted to candidacy for a graduate degree. GRE score requirements for that candidacy are usually a matter of official university policy and cannot simply be overridden by the faculty committee reviewing applications in a particular department. Getting an exception to university policy just because you don't like the GRE requirement seems very unlikely. There might be a few schools where that would work, but I would guess it to be a small minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree with the advice of others that you play by the rules to get into the program and then work from within to change the requirements for others in the future. This doesn't require several levels of administration to approve exceptions to university policy, it doesn't make it look like you just don't want to take the test, it doesn't make it look like you're trying to hide or excuse a poor test score, it doesn't make it look like you feel entitled to special treatment that other candidates aren't getting, and it doesn't make it look like you're going to be unwilling to work with others when you can't have your way. Of course, as virmaior said, this decision also depends on how much you value getting accepted into the program. My answer is assuming you value it highly. Also, again, results at your particular school will vary and will depend strongly on the university policy of the school as well as the viewpoints of the graduate admissions committee in your department as well as any levels of administration that may be required to approve their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12999" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T18:55:59.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26417" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:56:28.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add the whole review into your thesis. Directly into the introduction, but it depends on your country or field specifics, too. You shouldn´t of course only paste it, but make for example an empty page where you will write only the bibliographical informations and than paste your review like an &quot;offprint&quot;. So anybody who will read your thesis will note that there is some &quot;special&quot; chapter, allready published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to mention it in the introduction, maybe paste the abstract into and add your review as a supplementary material at the end of your thesis. If somebody is interested in it, than he will find it at the end of your thesis and you don´t have to rewrite and rephrase it. You already done that work (I mean the introduction into your field) and the prove is that it was published!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do not forget to mention the &quot;amount&quot; of authorship, in percentage or with list of chapter of that review written by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T18:56:28.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T19:15:34.017" Score="4" ViewCount="1728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did pretty much all my important bachelor and master courses within one working group, which maybe was not that efficient, but it offers a very nice and comfortable environment and colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am about half way done with my masters thesis in a similar working group within my university, which I had not much contact with before. They work very efficiently, and I am catching up and learning quickly, yet I do not feel too comfortable around them. Both working groups basically do very similar work, but use different programs and approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to point out that there is no conflict because of me &quot;switching groups&quot; and there are no shared projects between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, I got offered a PhD position in my new working group, and my supervisor encourages me to get my master thesis done even more quickly, so I can fill his PhD position. I signalized him that I would be interested and ever since then he is very convinced that I will stay. On the other hand, I also know about possible upcoming positions in my old group as well as in other groups/places, which look very intesting to me. I fear that my masters thesis quality is suffering, which would probably make it harder for me to apply for other positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel hardly pressured to tell him that I am hesitating to accept his offer and seriously thinking about going back to my old group or somewhere else, but I don't dare to do so. He has no idea about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: what is an appropriate way to tell him, and is there a good timing for this? Am I putting his guidance for my master thesis at risk here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20171" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T02:43:29.663" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T02:43:29.663" Title="How to tell my MS advisor I've changed my mind about doing a PhD with him?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26585" CreationDate="2014-07-30T19:16:21.200" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will probably never know the full reason, because departments are not quick to air their internal issues with job candidates. But here are a few possible reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The search was halted by higher administration. One possible reason to do this so late in the process is because of funding changes (e.g. the funding for the position disappeared or was reallocated elsewhere). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The search was halted by the HR department due to some violation of hiring practices. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The search committee was unable to come to an agreement about who to bring to campus for an interview, or the dean rejected all the candidates before they were interviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although this is less likely, someone who had planned to retire might have decided not to retire, or someone from another department may have been moved into the department (e.g. for legal reasons to settle a complaint).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T19:16:21.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26586" CreationDate="2014-07-30T20:12:13.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you're not publishing their logo, you should be able to print their name in an acknowledgement section.  &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, if you are getting sponsored by them, it may be &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; (according to terms of agreement(s)  or as a courtesy) to show their logo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T02:11:46.187" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T02:11:46.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T20:16:00.670" Score="-2" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing BS Computer Science. I will be starting my final year in August and my CGPA is 3.05. I don't have any research experience yet but I am pretty sure that I want to get a PhD degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will 3-4 months of research experience be enough if I involve in a research project now (considering the 15 December deadline for PhD application)? Or should I apply next year and get more research experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20184" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T20:18:26.430" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:31:00.850" Title="Should I apply for PhD program this year after one semester of research experience, or wait another year?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26609" CreationDate="2014-07-30T20:59:05.737" Score="57" ViewCount="3313" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the lone experimentalist in my group, I end up supervising most of the students (M.S., B.S. and high school) who do experimentation-focused research in my lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am always trying to improve my mentoring and supervision skills. So I would like to ask my current students for some feedback at the end of the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I want to make sure they don't feel pressured in any way by this request, that they are assured there will be no negative or positive consequences to them, and that they understand that I really want honest answers. (I'm not fishing for compliments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, I am looking for specific feedback that I can use to improve or build on, not just general complaints or reassurances that everything was fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the goals stated above, what's the best way to ask for this kind of feedback? Should we speak face to face in an &quot;exit interview&quot; kind of thing, or should I ask them to write something in an anonymous form online, or something else entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What specific questions can I ask to get focused, helpful feedback on my supervision and mentoring abilities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody here have experience (as either supervisor or supervisee) with this kind of assessment, and have useful techniques to share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T11:59:56.963" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:59:56.963" Title="How to ask for feedback from research students on my supervision abilities?" Tags="&lt;mentoring&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;&lt;assessment&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26595" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:04:31.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD programs are for applicants who know and show, all they want to do is research! If the research project you are involved in, right now is extraordinarily productive, then you might get into a PhD program this year itself, given that the PhD would be about the research you are doing right now. You can also start writing review papers or research articles to start building your publication record. Even if it is under progress during the time of application, it still counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all (or most) of these are non-feasible for you for the time being, I'd suggest waiting till next year. That way you'd know better what research you want to pursue for PhD and would have a strong profile too. Chances of admission are higher, if you do it(apply for PhD) next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastEditorUserId="19476" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T21:13:29.850" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T21:13:29.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26608" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:07:35.453" Score="17" ViewCount="4539" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my studies I've read a number of published articles where spelling mistakes have somehow squeaked through the review process. For example, I have found a paper with a section entitled &lt;em&gt;Turbulance Model&lt;/em&gt; when the title should be &lt;em&gt;Turbulence Model&lt;/em&gt;. I would love to be able to submit an errata if I knew it was going to be a one or two line email, but I don't know of anyone else who does this. Will editors be annoyed with little corrections like this? Surely there isn't a need to bother the corresponding Author with such a matter, is there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am only thinking of cases like the example I've given; a clear spelling mistake or a missing word. I wouldn't start arguing with an author/editor over wording issues or other gray areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9139" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T06:45:14.493" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T09:43:18.110" Title="Are spelling and/or grammar mistakes a cause for submitting Errata?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:09:45.353" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do an anonymous survey. Ask them to rate you on certain criteria(that you mention in the survey, and want to get a feedback on!) Have them add additional comments too after the survey so they can add things that they feel, you should know about. This would be completely anonymous so they won't be too afraid to be honest. But on the other side they might still hesitate to open up completely as no one wants their boss to be mad at them just because they spoke the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T21:09:45.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26598" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:33:55.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the arxiv there exist &lt;em&gt;versions&lt;/em&gt; of manuscripts, which are a great way to get rid of this kind of mistakes. I hope that with the onset of online-only journals and the prevalence of internet for article reading this will become more mainstream. In the meantime, I would certainly not bother the author or the journal about such &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt; mistakes: almost everyone will understand &lt;em&gt;turbulance&lt;/em&gt; is misspelled, and although annoying to read, it certainly does not add confusion to the message. It is great to read nicely-written misspell-free papers, but my opinion is that we should not overlook the scientific quality of an article because a few words were wrong or the author was not a great writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T21:33:55.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26602" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:39:23.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various kinds of errors may occur in published documents, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spelling and grammar mistakes&lt;/strong&gt;: as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26598/are-spelling-and-or-grammar-mistakes-a-cause-for-submitting-errata&quot;&gt;Are spelling and/or grammar mistakes a cause for submitting Errata?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation errors&lt;/strong&gt;: as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12195/what-should-i-do-if-i-found-a-mistake-in-a-published-paper&quot;&gt;What should I do if I found a citation error in a published paper?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical errors&lt;/strong&gt;: as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26684/i-made-a-huge-technical-mistake-in-an-arxiv-paper-how-bad-is-it&quot;&gt;I made a huge technical mistake in an arXiv paper… How bad is it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, errors in journal papers can be addressed by publishing an erratum or correct (see, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/520/how-do-you-make-corrections-to-a-published-paper&quot;&gt;How do you make corrections to a published paper?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, dealing with an error may not be as straightforward for other kinds of publications, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thesis&lt;/strong&gt;: as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25804/what-to-do-when-you-discover-a-mistake-in-the-archived-copy-of-your-phd-thesis&quot;&gt;What to do when you discover a mistake in the archived copy of your PhD thesis?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conference or workshop proceedings&lt;/strong&gt;: as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23176/i-discovered-a-mistake-in-my-own-published-workshop-paper-how-do-i-handle-errat&quot;&gt;I discovered a mistake in my own published workshop paper, how do I handle errata?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More serious errors may warrant a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/retraction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;retraction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;retraction&lt;/a&gt;, as discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2782/when-should-an-author-retract-their-paper-as-a-result-of-misinterpreted-results&quot;&gt;When should an author retract their paper as a result of misinterpreted results?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Examples of academic papers that were retracted for errors include are available under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-reason-for-retraction/investigator-error/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;investigator error category on RetractionWatch&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:58:01.243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T02:58:01.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26603" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-30T21:39:23.617" Score="0" Body="On errors found after submission or publication in a book, paper, thesis, or other document, and erratum (written notice of errors and corrections) for them." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T05:51:01.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T05:51:01.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:14:42.810" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I (am) was in a similar situation as you are. I ended up supervising a team of BS and M.Eng/MPS students for a project. Most of the work for them involved programming and data visualization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the end of the semester/year, I took them out for coffee in a casual setting and asked them how I needed to improve my supervision skills. Since I worked with them closely throughout the semester/year, we were on friendly terms and I got some very constructive feedback. This helped shape my supervision in the next semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not ask anyone for help but this was what I had observed my previous adviser(s) doing with me so I followed their example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:14:42.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26553" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:28:56.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, such a disclaimer appears when the author of the paper/book acknowledges some contribution from other persons that do not appear as authors, especially when (for papers) the referees are acknowledged for constructive comments and suggestions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The polite way is to say &quot;all &lt;em&gt;remaining&lt;/em&gt; errors are my own&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;heavy-weight professional&quot; way is to say &quot;the usual disclaimer applies&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A natural way to create a Catch-22 (a vicious circle) would be to state &quot;to the best of my knowledge, this paper contains no further erors&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:28:56.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:36:54.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is two years too late but someone else might find my comments useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Math department would likely not care about your age. Most US University teach some baby-calc type course to most of their undergraduate students and Math departments generally are in need of bodies to teach and grade those courses. They take a lot of students in and pare them down at the comprehensive exams stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unrelated to your main question about the admission process, I would like to point a few things out though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Statistically, Pure Math is a young person's game. Most pure mathematicians do their best work in their teens, twenties, and thirties. You'll be 35 by the time you're done with coursework and nearing the end of that window. Still, if you're having fun and making a contribution then that's the only thing that matters. You'll find out during coursework and later while preparing for your Field Exams (or equivalent) where you stand when compared to others. To use a basketball analogy, you could always be the Kareem Abdul Jabbar and play at a high level well into your late thirties but most NBA players start slowing down past their early thirties. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that you're considering applying for both Pure Math and Applied Math . In general, I have seen that if you have a head for pure math, if you love topology, algebra, measure theory etc, you're generally less excited about coding, numerical methods, scientific computation type stuff and vice versa. You seem unusual in the sense that you're attracted to and have talent in very different kinds of mathematics. This is a hard process and a minimum requirement is that you should really enjoy this stuff. So I hope that your decision to apply to a pure math program stems from some real exposure to it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next 10 or so years of your life will be disproportionately devoted to your career. First to get out of school and then to publish to get tenure. Spending that type of time away from your family and kids becomes difficult for older people who usually have a different perspective on what's really important in life as compared to someone in their twenties. If you're single, you may find it harder to find the time and energy to date someone outside of grad school. If your first job is in a small town then your dating options will be even thinner, especially since you're not a native. These things may not seem important now but you may change your mind later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:36:54.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:58:35.503" Score="3" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have background in languages (BA in English Literature and Teaching in China, MA Conference Interpreting in Manchester, UK) and I am eager to do a PhD in cognitive science in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my MA studies, we were studying fundamentals of psychology and cognitive sciences related to translating/interpreting. During the course of this study, some modern research techniques such as FMRI, EEG were touched upon but the course was not very comprehensive, as the focus of the field was never really on how the interpreters’ brain works during simultaneous interpreting or other language activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found languages and cognitive sciences closely related, because it is very natural to bring up questions in one area while discussing the other. It’s close to instinct that an interest in one can seep into another, at least that was the case for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really keen to further my education in the area of Cognitive Sciences, and it's been the case for the last couple of years. But it’s a bit saddening to see that the minimum entry for these programs usually require a science degree in relevant fields, for example, CS, EE, Psychology, Neuroscience, etc. And at the moment (I'm 26), I can't really do one more undergraduate degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I understand that there are gaps to fill for a person to change their area of study. Usually in the UK, PhD programs would encourage the students to do the 1+3 program, where first years have the opportunity to fill this gap. But I fell that even for these 1+3 programs, students who have a liberal arts degree are still discouraged from applying because these PhD programs specifically require students to have background in relevant science fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should I do to be more qualified and have a better chance to be accepted as a PhD student?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan is to learn some fundamentals by finishing online courses in the following areas: Math (e.g. Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability, to be more comfortable with fundamentals), Computer Science (such as basics of algorithms and Python to be able to perform some scientific computing), and Neuroscience (as it is fundamental to Cognitive Sciences). What about MOOC courses, more specifically, how are they viewed in the academia in the context of someone who is using them to fill in the gaps when changing fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know whether or not I have underestimated the difficulty and hard work required to put myself on this track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20170" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T01:15:38.537" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T04:51:22.077" Title="Transitioning from languages to neuroscience/cognitive science for PhD, how to increase chances of success?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26598" CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:30:45.967" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let’s be utilitaristic and do a &lt;strong&gt;rough, optimistic calculation&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, how much time does correcting a spelling mistake cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First of all, it costs you some time to find a way to contact somebody from the journal. I ran an experiment with a random journal and it took me three minutes to find a way to contact the chief editor and to ensure that there is no easy way to contact somebody closer to actual typesetting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It costs you about one minute to write the mail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It costs the chief editor (in our example) at least one minute to read the mail and redirect it to typesetting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It costs the head of typesetting at least one minute to delegate the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whoever is actually doing the work, has to find the source of the paper, correct the mistake, check whether the whole paper is still neatly arranged (even if the correction did not alter the number of lines in the paragraph, the linebreaking algorithm or the font might have slightly changed) and every sentence is still on the same page (in fields, where references to pages happen). Again, I ran an experiment on one of my own papers and it took me two minutes (as the correction had no major effects) – and I operate my computer mainly via keyboard and consider myself a fast typer and well organized, not to forget that I do not have so many papers. Additionally, let’s consider one minute for uploading or similar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, all in all, mankind has spent nine minutes on correcting the mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, At the end of the day, the reason why we bother with spelling is that it speeds up reading texts, i.e., saves the reader some time. Let’s say a small spelling mistake (like &lt;em&gt;turbulance&lt;/em&gt;) costs every reader a second. Thus to break even with our nine minutes, the respective word has to be read about 500 times. I do not have any direct numbers on this, but as papers are mainly read by the same people who write papers, this would mean that I have to read (every word of) 500 papers for every paper I write – which is very far from reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thus even under the above optimistic conditions you are likely wasting more time than you are saving.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from another point of view and my own experience: The involved people do not care. I can tell a story of how much trouble it was to make a typesetter change the way one of my tables was formatted such that it was any readable even if that would make it deviate from the journal guidelines – and that was a severe issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it’s likely that you only need to read a few papers to spot a terminus technicus with confusingly wrong hyphenation. My favorite example is »generalized onset seizure«, which denotes seizures with a generalised onset and not onset seizures, which are generalised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T08:04:34.560" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T08:04:34.560" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2014-07-31T00:02:26.027" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set the Stage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of each relationship, let each student know that you value feedback, that you are adaptable/flexible in your approach to supervision, and that you will be asking for their feedback both during and at the end of the end of the supervision period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reinforce the Message and Values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the supervision period, look for opportunities to demonstrate your adaptability, your interest in feedback, and it is OK for them to offer feedback even if they might feel a bit uncomfortable.  (Some people resist giving feedback to supervisors, including for gender/age/cultural reasons. They need to &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; the process working successfully to overcome that resistance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Asking for Feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aim for a face-to-face meeting, though it's fine if some people prefer to give feedback in writing.  Before you ask for feedback, first ask what is important to them in supervision relationship. You need to understand their frame of reference and values. Then ask: &quot;What worked well for you? And what didn't?&quot;  Then you can ask the feedback question: &quot;For those things that didn't work so well for you, what would have worked better for you?&quot;  You are asking how things could be different for them, within their frame of reference.  You aren't asking them to step into your shoes and advise you on how to be a better supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T00:02:26.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2014-07-31T01:02:26.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's actually a fairly nice solution to a more relevant problem:  the right pedagogy for different kinds of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula is a good, but should be stated thusly:  &quot;Students are allowed to collaborate on homework, but your scores will be divided by the number of collaborators, so pick your team well.&quot;  This is in tune with the environment that students will likely encounter after their degree, but neither enforces any policy nor penalizes any others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the teacher should grade on the bell curve.  This gives a passing score to those who worked together, and a great score for those who were truly above average.  In some way this is superior to students who try to get an A by a hyper-competitive attitude towards the rest of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the test, they will still have to show that their personal level of mastery, without the help of their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T01:02:26.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2014-07-31T01:15:24.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bigger question behind your question is:  How can I be a more better/professional manager?  Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer that, it's probably not as simple as posing a question on SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask you:  Why do you think you need extra feedback?  Do you think your students are hiding their thoughts or fearful of voicing their feelings to you?  Because otherwise you should be fairly &quot;in sync&quot; with them while you're interacting, presuming your not managing from afar.  That is the &lt;em&gt;key&lt;/em&gt; indicator for supervisor performance, and there's no boilerplate that you'll be able to make for every situation and every type of person.  If you try, you become the another PHB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a former manager, I know that if your employees aren't voicing their true thoughts or concerns to you, there's already a problem.  And it's not necessarily them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the other key item, if I've guessed your intentions properly, is how do you develop this skill(s)?  And for that you need to listen and dialog fluidly in each situation you encounter so that you &lt;em&gt;never miss a step&lt;/em&gt; and always stay on top of things.  That takes courage (because you will fail) and time (because it takes a diversity of experience), not technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T02:51:04.480" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T02:51:04.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26586" CreationDate="2014-07-31T01:26:02.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the agency provides funding, and you are not sure about their policy, you  can always contact the person who administers your grant to find out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some private foundations do have specific requests for acknowledgement. For example, I seem to remember that the Templeton Foundation likes authors to include a statement such as &quot;The opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the John Templeton Foundation.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your grant agent can surely tell you about this. And they will almost certainly be happy to hear you are publishing something with their support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T01:26:02.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2014-07-31T02:42:32.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to have a group lessons learned session, either periodically or at the end of a project/phase. Phrasing questions in terms of the project, what worked and what didn't, sets up a stage for a frank and constructive discussion. Since it is not about you, you can participate as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T02:42:32.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T04:53:17.757" Score="27" ViewCount="6411" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I meet my advisor and interact with him, in class or otherwise, I can't help feeling intimidated. I feel scared of the fact that I may fall below his expectations, and I become tongue-tied and mind frozen even though I know stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I avoid this? Is this common at this stage? (I am an undergrad and just beginning research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20203" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T22:18:30.267" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T09:48:09.480" Title="How do I stop feeling intimidated by my advisor?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2014-07-31T04:56:24.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the best advice is to make sure that there is a clear partition between the open source parts of the software vs. the business parts and that the students are informed of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many professors get students to work on research that is (or becomes) commercial in nature (e.g. biology).  The key ethical issue is that the students are informed and are educated to make proper decisions about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T04:56:24.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26598" CreationDate="2014-07-31T06:43:46.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessary to make an errata for simple mistakes. That said, however, you need to consider whether the simple mistake may change the meaning of what is written so the key issue here is &quot;meaning&quot;. Anything that can create confusion of introduce an error in vital information necessary to understand the material should be corrected. Since it is generally not possible to change published (e.g. journal) material, an errata note should suffice. Otherwise, the misconception introduced by the mistake might propagate and your original work may be misunderstood. So check whether your found errors introduce any major consequences for correctly understanding the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T06:43:46.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2014-07-31T06:49:30.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, you should accept and give the talk&lt;/strong&gt;. Here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;You will be providing a public service&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of science is currently hyper-specialized and practitioners from different disciplines have trouble communicating their findings to each other because of the differences in jargon and mutually familiar techniques. You have managed to bridge a gap and it is very valuable to make more people in Y aware of your techniques from X. There might even be people from a related Subject Z at the conference, and they might also be looking to learn from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;There may be more low-hanging fruit in Y&lt;/strong&gt;. You state that you are not inclined to pursue subject Y any further. But perhaps there are other current topics in Y where yet another technique from X might make a contribution. Just listen to some talks on Y and talk to the speakers afterwards. Someone might offer to co-author a paper with you, where they do all the work on Y and you provide the proofs from X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;You might initiate more fundamental research on X&lt;/strong&gt;. Why was the conjecture in Y formulated in the first place? Was your counter-example so hard to construct with the tools previously used in Y? Was the counter-example not a viable practical example in Y? How would other techniques from X map to the domain of Y? Perhaps there are aspects in Y that cannot be readily modelled using X. In that case, you might need to generalize some of X or combine it with tools from subject U.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: go forth, inspire and be inspired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18027" LastEditorUserId="18027" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T10:12:03.220" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T10:12:03.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26553" CreationDate="2014-07-31T09:28:10.830" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Donald E. Knuth writes in the Preface of Volume 4A of his series &lt;em&gt;The Art of Computer Programming&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I fear that [errors] lurk among the details collected here, and I want to correct them as soon as possible. Therefore I will cheerfully award $2.56 to the first finder of each technical, typographical, or historical error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not novel but if there is a greater way to own up and ask for help, I don't know it. This assumes, of course, you want to know about errors and not just issue a blanket &quot;my faul, duh&quot; statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, Knuth cites Christos H. Papadimitriou (&lt;em&gt;Computational Complexity&lt;/em&gt;, 1994) just below; if you are in for a little snark:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naturally, I am responsible for the remaining errors---although, in my opinions, my friends could have caught a few more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it makes sense to copy such a statement (even as citation) to replace your own words. The best way is probably to be authentic and write what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T09:28:10.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26627" CreationDate="2014-07-31T09:44:20.763" Score="2" ViewCount="3694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently pursuing my masters degree in computer science from TU Munich, and I would love to pursue my PhD soon after my graduation, but I am worried about the finances at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I gather is I should be able to make a decent enough salary but what I do not understand clearly, is whether I would retain my student status during my PhD and enjoy reduced taxation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With reduced taxation and few other student benefits, it could possibly mean I have a more stable financial situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20208" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T11:02:41.780" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:43:33.587" Title="As a PhD student in Germany, would I retain student status for tax purposes?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T10:57:08.593" Score="23" ViewCount="4530" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should a teacher and student cope with a situation like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been studying spanish for about a year and enrolled in a successive course. However, the course starts really early and there is only one other student, who should probably be in a more advanced class. The other student has been studying spanish for probably twice as long as me and already knows most of the grammar to be covered during the trimester. Obviously, this puts some stress on me, as I don't feel good about interrupting each exercise asking for translations and slowing the class down. On the other hand, I would definitely be in the right if I did, but that isn't much help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I and the teacher work together to make this situation acceptable for all parties? Honestly at this point I'm thinking about dropping from this trimester and taking the financial hit from tuition fee I will not get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20212" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T15:58:47.077" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T15:58:47.077" Title="Teaching a very small class when the students have very uneven proficiency levels" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26615" CreationDate="2014-07-31T10:59:43.173" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a typical syndrome for young students, or those students who have massive respect for their Professors or Teachers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the students consider their Professors to be superior to them; In addition to this the student might have some expectations in the future from that guide, trying to impress him all the time, so he is rewarded later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to solve this is to have more communication with that person and after all realize that he is a regular human being, who sometimes in the past used to be a student, and most probably was intimidated by his guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you get to talk interact with your guide the Myth that you have in your head about him/her will start to get into the frames of normality, and the intimidation will go away after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short: he is a human being as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T20:53:58.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:53:58.103" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2014-07-31T11:15:09.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all it would be extremely helpful if you could provide some information about your homeland. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give a general case of steps that you could do, and then a more specific case for Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general there are different possibilities to get funding for studies in EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your government provides scholarships for studies in certain countries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The embassy/government of the country which you want to do your studies provides scholarships for foreign students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some 3rd party organization (European Union, European Council, NGO etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The university itself has a scholarship program for foreign students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically what you will have to do, is visit the websites of the entities which I have listed above, and try to find the scholarships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Germany that would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(This is related to your government)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;German Embassy in your country / DAAD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Erasmus plus / Erasmus mundus / programme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International office of your target univerisity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;strong&gt;do not hesitate to contact all the stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; (people etc.), that could provide you useful information; Also contact the Professor of the group that you would like to work your Phd at. They always have something in their hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last and most obvious solution is getting a job. In the case of Germany as a student you are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week. If the living costs are not very expensive you can survive easily with that money. If you assume that you will be payed at least 9,5 euros per hour (this is really low), so you have the chance to go up to 13 euros per hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you earn up to 450 euros per month, you don't have to pay taxes in Germany, anything more than that is subject to taxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in order to get the student visa in Germany you need to have 8000 eu in Bank upfront, or a documentation which confirms that you have the required funding to have at least 650 eu per month for living costs. 650 is the living cost calculated by the German government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this sites as well:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdportal.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.phdportal.eu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:15:09.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26620" CreationDate="2014-07-31T11:19:04.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. Student status does not lead to reduced taxation in Germany (that should hold for non-locals, too). Instead, low incomes and scholarships are not subject to tax, which is probably what you are referring to. The maximum amount for scholarships before they are subject to taxation is said to be higher for non-Germans, though. As a student, health insurance is also cheaper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are unlikely to get the cheaper health insurance as a PhD student as well. Depending on the state in which you do your PhD, you may or may not be allowed to enroll as a PhD student, so you may lose benefits such as cheaper food in the student canteen. Other than that, see the links provided in the comments to your question by Wolfgang Kuehne, as the taxation situation is very much dependent on how your PhD studies are funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, being subject to taxation and full-fee health insurance is not necessarily bad, as if you manage to find a 100% paid scientific employee position (which is not uncommon for CS), you will see that the net income is actually quite ok - even if you take the higher accommodation cost in Munich into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastEditorUserId="7390" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T11:27:29.540" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:27:29.540" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26620" CreationDate="2014-07-31T11:43:33.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where you get the idea that a CS grad student in the US makes more than a CS student in Germany. If you get a full TV-L position (100%), which many CS positions are, then your &lt;a href=&quot;http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/west/&quot;&gt;net pay after deductions&lt;/a&gt; starts at 25,000 € per year (roughly $34,000), and goes up from there. I know of very few US graduate students whose &lt;em&gt;net&lt;/em&gt; income is that large—most of them may get that much as a &lt;em&gt;gross&lt;/em&gt; salary, and are then responsible for paying taxes and health insurance out of that sum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't trying to raise a family, or have exceptional financial circumstances, the graduate salary (it's a salary, not a stipend—as it usually is in the US) is probably more than sufficient to live anywhere in Germany. (Also, you receive full social benefits, including retirement and health insurance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, salary considerations shouldn't be a significant part of your decision-making process—at least not in the sense of &quot;can I afford to be a graduate student?&quot; You can ask if that's a lifestyle you want to be living, compared to what's possible if you go into industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:43:33.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-07-31T12:36:06.443" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the course has a specific level e.g. A1, A2, B1, B2... It is none of your problems that a guy who most probably belongs to a higher level is sitting there. You should not feel ashamed for that, and put pressure on yourself. Usually each level has its own learning/teaching goals. Look at the learning goals of your current level. If the other guy is above the learning goals simply make yourself comfortable. Continue with your own pace, because its not you who is in the &quot;wrong place&quot; (although the term wrong place might be misused in here). On the other hand if you are below the learning goals, then simply move one level below, this way you will be in an environment where you will feel more comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were up to me, I would not mind if there is a super-duper guy in the class. I would keep my own flow. I would raise my concerns to the teacher, in addition to that, if I were paying for that course I would &quot;force&quot; the teacher to work the situation out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end of the day, it is your teachers problem to provide the best effort and ensure that she/he taught you. But for that to happen you will have to let the teacher know the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T19:01:12.273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T19:01:12.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:09:04.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hard situation to be in. I was in the same situation, different language, not all that long ago. It was a tiny class and although I had progressed through each of the preceeding levels with acceptable marks there was a student in the class who already knew 8+ other languages and whose career was based around learning and using languages. Compared to that me, who had never learned a language before in my life, and there was a huge disparity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this really depends on a couple of factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those factors is the instructor. The instructors for the course I was in were nice and sympathetic but, ultimately, unable or unwilling to reign in the advanced student. Without instructor support in such a small class situation you will have difficulty making any changes in what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leads to another factor... What are you willing to do about this? I spent an exhaustive semester trying to 'catch up' to this student so I wouldn't constantly feel like I was being left behind. This is tempting for a lot of students in this situation. &quot;I will work harder! And this will make things better!&quot; The problem is that this depends on your other time commitments(can you afford to spend an additional &lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt; hours every day on this language), your aptitude for learning languages(some people are just slower at learning certain topics than others), your other base knowledge(if you don't remember what a conjugated adverb is then you'll have another layer of learning on top of what you are currently learning), and, frankly, your own frustration level with the course and subject material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't normally say things like this but I think Wolfgang Kuehne's answer is unhelpful at best. Learning a language in a class should be a collaborative effort among students guided by their instructors. I'm iffy about the decisions to have super tiny language-learning courses (my situation became untenable once the course size dropped to 3 students) because when you run into this situation there's no buffer. Things would, I image, be very different in your situation if there was a range of other students in the course with a range of other skills. But as a student there is only so many times you can 'risk' saying something in another language to be immediately, and always, corrected by another student in the course. If there is no give and take, if there is never a time when you are correcting and the other is learning(and vice versa) then it pushes the corrected student into an unfortunate position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, and this may or may not be what you want to hear, I finished off the semester(it was needed to graduate on time) and I dropped the language(which I was planning on taking throughout my student career). Additionally I was put off both on the language itself and the process of learning languages in general. Having been in your situation, and maybe projecting a bit based on my own experiences; if your instructor is unwilling to go to bat for you and make sure things stay at an appropriate level, the other student is not dominating the learning time and you are not left feeling like the 'stupid one' in the class then, if you can, you should drop the class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have done nothing wrong. The other student, probably, has also done nothing overtly wrong(though good golly can they seem like jerks in this situation). But it's not going to be a great learning environment for you and, if that's the case, you'll get more benefit by using your time in a less frustrating environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:09:04.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26595" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:31:00.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plenty of PhD students go into their program without research experience. I would say that of the PhD students I know who went into their PhD directly from their BS in CS well over half had no previous research experience. Previous research experience can help during the application process but it's not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That answers your overt question of &quot;Do I need research experience to get into Grad School?&quot; but let's take a moment to look at some of the implied questions you bring up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending more time researching prior to applying for or attending graduate school can help you make sure that a postgraduate degree is really what you want. You should spend some time figuring out what kind of job you want after you are done with school and seeing what level of education will help you reach that goal. Or, in other words, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; do you want to go to grad school? There were be a lot more happy grads students if more of them stopped to consider this question. I found that I while I enjoy research, I hate writing research papers SO MUCH that I couldn't face 5 - 7 years of research papers. I also discovered that for the jobs I wanted a PhD wasn't very useful at this point(and that most jobs I looked at would eventually pay for me to go back and get a PhD). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending some time researching prior to applying or attending grad school would also be useful if you felt you needed to improve your application packet. You mention a 3.05 CGPA which is kinda, just 'ok' you know? It's not amazing but it's also not bad enough to prevent you from attending graduate school. It's the kind of CGPA that needs strong extracurricular activities, external projects, great letters of recommendation and strong statements of purpose in order to succeed. How are your letters of recommendation? Do you have a good relationship with any instructors that could write a personalized letter? Were you involved in good extracurriculars(not necessarily CS related, but, rather, extracurriculars where you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; something)? Have you taken the GREs? How did they go for you? What schools do you want to do your PhD at? How competitive are these schools? These are the kinds of questions that will strongly effect your chances at getting into graduate school. Time researching could help with some of these - it could get you stronger letters of recommendation, buff up missing or subpar extracurriculars, give you time to study for and retake the GRE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally when you start thinking about a PhD you should consider a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are not 100% positive(and even if you are) that you want to get a PhD and do all the stuff that comes along with that then you should apply to a program that gets you a Masters degree along the way. This way if things don't turn out the way you want them to you still end up with a very useful piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do you want to research? Just saying 'I want a PhD' is a short road to a shitty PhD experience. What are you willing to spend almost the next decade of your life researching? Who do you want to research with? If you want to study, say, Human Computer Interaction then you should be applying to schools that have those programs and have professors publishing and researching in that field. If you aren't sure what you want to study then, perhaps, more time researching before you apply would be useful - it would give you a chance to get the lay of the land and make some decisions(and possibly connections).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've already brought this up but it bears repeating. What do you want to do with a PhD? Do you want to research? Do you want to teach? Get this shit locked down before you sign up for anything. So many PhD students go into their degree program because 'I want a PhD' without thinking about the why and the what and a not insignificant amount of them end up never finishing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:31:00.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26634" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:42:10.600" Score="11" ViewCount="3489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading through a manuscript that I am co-authoring with a colleague and I noticed that it used digit separators/marks for all the numbers (i.e. 2,500 instead of 2500). Maybe it's just me but I think this style started after my colleague started doing a post-doc in the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have checked the author guidelines of a couple of journals that are likely submission targets in our field and they don't seem to include anything about decimal/digit separators. I also checked my previously published articles and noticed that numeric values were not edited (by press editors that is) to include digit separators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my question, is there a general rule-of-thumb regarding number formatting, especially considering digit separators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-05-17T13:27:40.500" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T13:27:40.500" Title="Number formatting: use of digit separators in manuscripts" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26632" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:52:39.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that, in as much as there is such a standard, it tends to breakdown between scientific and humanities fields. In general, I would argue that the modern standard in science is to use only spaces as separators (&quot;2 500&quot; instead of &quot;2,500&quot; for instance), while the reverse tends to be true in the humanities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the best guidelines for these sorts of issues, as usual, is to consult with the guidelines and recommendations of the individual publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:52:39.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26632" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:53:14.853" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Digit separators differ between countries, particularly since the decimal seprator is comma in many countries but a period in English/American. Hence in English you may use commas as digit separators while in other countries periods are used. Space is therefore the only separator that is not confusing. A general rule of thumb is to not use separators for single-thousands but start to use them for tens of thousands and up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 000 000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using spaces in writing, it is good to remember to use non-breaking spaces so that numbers are not broken over lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:53:14.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26632" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:55:49.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific literature it is common to employ a &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; space to separate groups of digits (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec07.html&quot;&gt;NIST SP811&lt;/a&gt;). If you're using LaTeX to write your articles you can obtain this spacing in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directly with the small-space command &lt;code&gt;\,&lt;/code&gt;. For example: &lt;code&gt;There were $10\,000$ people at the concert last night&lt;/code&gt; (well, not exactly a scientific example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the &lt;em&gt;siunitx&lt;/em&gt; package and the command &lt;code&gt;\num&lt;/code&gt; (or &lt;code&gt;\SI&lt;/code&gt; for quantities with units), which can take care of the spacing automatically.  For example: &lt;code&gt;There were \num{10000} people at the concert last night&lt;/code&gt; (it adds automatically a small space after the 10).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T13:59:42.960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:59:42.960" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26415" CreationDate="2014-07-31T14:31:00.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research methodologies are usually independent of your area. Often, the application of some methods and the examples used to describe them differ depending on the area. For example, empirical research is a methodology that can be applied whether you do research in CS, psychology, or physics. This methodology teaches you how to conduct experiments that are sound (by minimizing different threats to validity) and how to analyze the data in a statistical way (e.g., when to use which statistical test to accept a certain research hypothesis). &#xA;In medicine, you might conduct experiments to analyze the effects of some drugs whereas is CS, you would do some performance experiments to analyze the effects of some optimizations. The methods used in both areas are the same, the application might differ largely though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, it would not harm to study a text book from psychology / statistics, because the tools you learn there are also valuable for CS (e.g., knowing the difference between qualitative and quantitative research or descriptive and analytic). Furthermore, there is no CS-methodology (at least I am not aware of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20132" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T14:31:00.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2014-07-31T14:52:45.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will be a slightly different persepctive from RoboKaren's. I work in a small American liberal arts college in a small department. We have five tenure lines split between math and CS. My college does assign mentors to new faculty who are given funds to take the mentee out to lunch a couple of times.  What is different from an R1 setting is that the mentors are specifically and intentionally from very different departments. These assignments come from the Faculty Development Office. Mine is from history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts about what advantages having a mentor from an outside department may have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An outside mentor helps navigate the politics of a small department by knowing everyone involved but not being part of the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of what the mentor gives is insight into navigating the college's structures and politics that are independent of departmental affiliation. For example, the relative workload of the various college-wide committees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It helps get you outside of your own department to meet people from across the college. In a small town in a small college this social role is more important than you might imagine. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this model does not accomplish is any sort of discipline specific mentoring on research or teaching. Those matters are left to informally acquired mentors and friends. This system may not be the Platonic ideal of mentoring but it does accomplish some good without too much bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T14:52:45.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26586" CreationDate="2014-07-31T15:52:42.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It likely depends on what field, and what you're acknowledging them for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most medical journals, and as such most journals of &quot;allied&quot; fields like nursing or public health, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; name your funding sources, so institutes and companies take it as assumed that their names will be appearing in publications. One company that's funded projects of mine even provides the boilerplate language in their funding agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're acknowledging them for &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt;, or the reasons you'd acknowledge an individual, rather than for funding? Again, likely depends on the field - again, in medicine, many journals consider being in the acknowledgements section to be a tacit approval of the results of the paper, and require you seek permission to put them in the acknowledgements section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether or not you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to, it's probably decent practice to let them know, especially if they're funding you, because it tells them you're doing productive things with their money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T15:52:42.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T16:03:27.167" Score="2" ViewCount="724" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are already some good questions on the topic of double doctorates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path/17256&quot;&gt;Is doing two PhD&amp;#39;s a good path?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1836/when-does-one-go-for-a-double-doctorate&quot;&gt;When does one go for a double doctorate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some advice specific to my situation. I'm currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in a mathematical field (computer science) but most of my research is geared towards applying these methods in a scientific field (stellar astrophysics). Because of this, my advisor is encouraging me to take up a second Ph.D. in astro. He says I can write one dissertation to get both degrees, and he doesn't think that it will delay my time to graduation too significantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, it is attractive to me, because it might help qualify me more towards future positions in astrophysics. On the other hand, I don't necessarily see too much additional value in getting a second one; to me a Ph.D. is a license to do research, and one doesn't need two licenses. Further, I'm sure there is a real risk of it delaying my time to graduation significantly despite what I might be told. I'm also not completely convinced that it would equip me with skills that I wouldn't already be getting, although it might demonstrate to others that I have those skills. But then again, can't they just look at my publication record? Finally, while I absolutely love astrophysics, I am also attracted to other sciences, and I wouldn't want a doctorate in astro to cause people to think that I can't work in other sciences also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are all these concerns legitimate? Have I laid out the pros and cons appropriately? Are there other considerations I should contemplate? Are there some drawbacks or advantages that I haven't listed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T23:49:57.480" Title="Should I do a dual Ph.D.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26639" CreationDate="2014-07-31T16:10:02.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really see the point. I agree with a PhD being a license to do research. If you are interested in astrophysics and want to get a strong profile for future work there, make sure your publications are related. That's much more convincing than two PhDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T16:10:02.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26531" CreationDate="2014-07-31T16:21:43.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a tough decision, but do you think it's mainly the project or just the whole concept of PhD that isn't appealing? Would it help to switch projects or advisors? It sounds as though you have a good fit with your internship, so perhaps it would be a good to gain that work experience and, if you want later, return to school with a clearer idea of what you want to work with (as you mentioned). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the type of job you want in the future, have you spoken to other professionals to gauge whether or not a PhD is really necessary? That might help in your decision as well. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20226" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T16:21:43.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-07-31T16:31:46.740" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been that &quot;advanced student&quot; in a similar situation, I'd like to point out that in such a small class environment, there is really no reason that this shouldn't be an ongoing discussion between all three participants, throughout the duration of the course. Everyone has their own pace. In truth, everyone has their own pace through individual topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a little open communication you can likely resolve this in a manner that is appropriate to the particulars of your context. In my case, I had been worried about the student that I felt was falling behind. I not only didn't worry about going a bit slower in class, but I also invited him to a once-a-week study group between the two of us. I've found that teaching concepts is the best way to cement them myself. The entire experience was quite fulfilling, and I consider the course to be a complete success - even from a purely personal educational perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your situation will be different, obviously, but the I think the only real answer is consistent, open dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20229" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T16:31:46.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23719" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:09:39.340" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do these consortia affiliate themselves with questionable&#xA;  publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hindawi is a founding member of the OASPA and MDPI, whichever opinion we might have about the quality of its journals, is a major player in the OA business. The OASPA apparently conducted &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaspa.org/conclusions-from-oaspa-membership-committee-investigation-into-mdpi/&quot;&gt;an internal investigation about MDPI&lt;/a&gt; and seem to be happy about the results. The question might be more: is the OASPA questionable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how can the academic community pressure open access consortia to&#xA;  consider their members carefully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend not to consider open access consortia as relevant. Then, not submitting papers, not serving on the editorial board, and refusing reviewing tasks for sketchy journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more general level, one thing we could do is &lt;em&gt;reduce the demand&lt;/em&gt; for low-quality, pay-for-publish 'OA' journals by challenging the hiring policies based on publication volume in our local institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:09:39.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26531" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:31:09.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, you can make a lot of money and reputation in the field of CS without any graduate degree. Take the examples of the CEO's of some very big software companies. You don't need a PhD to satisfy your hunger for more and more challenging tasks when you are a computer scientist. CS people generally do a PhD if they want to stay in academia and be a professor or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the industry work makes you happy, go with it. Finish your requirements for Masters, graduate, take up a job that you really love and who knows you might be the next 'Gates' or 'Jobs'. PhD won't help if you are not loving what you are doing and it won't bring any exceptional job offer which you otherwise can't get with a MS degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you are able to make up your mind soon. I wish you good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19476" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:31:09.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26646" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:34:58.117" Score="10" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper on the Arxiv which has recently been referenced in someone else's published work. I have since used the new work (of someone else) to significantly extend my current Arxiv work. Since my previous Arxiv posting has not yet appeared anywhere, I am sending the old work along with the extensions to a journal in a single paper. So my question is this: should I update the Arxiv listing for the previous paper with the new extended version as a revision or should I add it as a new paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my worry is this: let A be my paper, B be the other paper that references A and A' be my extended paper which builds on some ideas from B to significantly extend A. If I post A' as a revision to A, then there is a weird referencing problem where B refers to my Arxiv post without knowing that A' builds on B. However, if I post A' as a new paper, then it includes essentially all of A in it (though presented in a more clear manner) and so there seems to be some duplication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20231" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:52:31.497" Title="When to update an Arxiv posting vs. creating a new post?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26645" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:48:31.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as the results of A are a subset of A', I see no problem with posting it as an update. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid confusion due to the circular references, you could mention something like &quot;Paper B builds on an earlier version of this work&quot; when you first cite B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:48:31.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T19:03:08.933" Score="9" ViewCount="867" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually asking this question on behalf of a sibling who's pursuing a PhD in Biology. While I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and am &quot;computer-savvy&quot; and experienced in learning programming languages from technical textbooks and internet forums, she is very inexperienced in programming in any form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What textbooks would you recommend for the self-teaching of MATLAB and/or Excel for the purpose of data analysis? If she wanted a technical book, I could find one in five minutes. I'm looking for a book that can explain MATLAB to an inexperienced user with no programming background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you learned MATLAB or a similar program with great success, what tips would you give for self teaching? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20098" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T12:53:51.137" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T19:17:12.820" Title="Best strategy to learn programing for graduate research data analysis in biology" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;online-learning&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26645" CreationDate="2014-07-31T19:07:30.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally the someone-else should have included the version number of the arxiv posting. In that case, there is no possibility of confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T19:07:30.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26645" CreationDate="2014-07-31T19:21:29.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Mangara that there's no problem with updating the previous paper if your new version subsumes the previous one.  It's understood that results in preprints are sometimes improved before publication, and so this won't trouble anyone.  Furthermore, there are several reasons why you should (and not just can) do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's best not to leave incomplete versions of the paper lying around, since someone may run across them and never realize there's a better version elsewhere.  For example, it's better if readers following the reference from B learn that there's a new version, rather than just seeing the old one and potentially assuming that's all there is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Posting very similar papers can look bad, like you are trying to inflate your paper count with minor variations.  That's not your intent, but someone browsing through your arXiv papers won't having any way of knowing.  You might also trigger the arXiv flag for text overlap between your papers, in which case the similarity will be explicitly pointed out to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments field in your arXiv submission can help address the potential for confusion.  Whenever you make major changes to an arXiv paper, it's a good idea to explain in the comments what has changed, so that someone who has already read a previous version knows whether it's worth another look.  Highlighting the changes in this way will also help clarify things for readers following older references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T19:21:29.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-07-31T20:21:02.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning Matlab (I prefer) or R will ultimately make you a more efficient researcher: not only do both languages allow you to do advanced mathematical data processes, but also make publication quality graphics. Excel requires much more work to get data visualization publication ready, in my experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your friend is a biologist, and field where my impression is that R is more heavily used that matlab, if she really wants to learn matlab, this book is great:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/book/978-3-642-12761-8&quot;&gt;http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/book/978-3-642-12761-8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is designed for Earth Sciences, the tools are universal. Not only does it teach you how to use matlab, but, it goes over statistics and numerical methods as well in a very easy fashion. This book was used in one of my masters classes, and most of the people in the class barely had calculus 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My real suggestion is to explore R, as I think in general the world outside the physical sciences is moving towards using that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T20:21:02.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-07-31T20:49:52.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book I used as an undergrad: &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-642-45367-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific Computing with MATLAB and Octave&lt;/a&gt; written by Alfio Quarteroni.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a beginner's tutorial, but it gives you the mathematical theory behind some of the most used functions. I found it useful because it really helps to know what the functions &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; do. It contains sample code as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that biologist often need to do with Matlab is image processing. If it is the case, the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0130085197&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Digital Image Processing Using Matlab&lt;/a&gt; can be handy (lots of practical examples). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is most likely available in the library of your/her institution, the first is a bit more confidential but should at least be available through inter-library loan. Note that a good person to ask about books and resources is your librarian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, an open-source alternative to Matlab is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Octave&lt;/a&gt;, which has a good online community around it and shares a good deal of its syntax with Matlab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T12:56:26.077" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T12:56:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:08:19.803" Score="13" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking to get people's success stories in presenting a data management case for secure data backup using remote online services, rather than the antiquated &quot;server in a locked room&quot; model of security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I have gotten the impression that most IRB's think that a server on-campus in a locked room is safer than a cloud server in a mysterious data center.  It's an argument that doesn't hold much water to me.  In the business world, vital data is stored in cloud data centers all the time. However, given that IRB boards tend to not have many data-security specialists (if any), I am not sure what kinds of guarantees are typically requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who have gone down this road, what kinds of services and guarantees were required to meet the requirements of an IRB panel (and for what level of vulnerability of subjects and disclosure risks)?  For example, for medical data, I would assume that a HIPAA-compliant data service (e.g., Carbonite's Pro version) would usually be sufficient (but possibly not always).  I am most interested in slightly lower-risk data (e.g., sociological or cognitive), but would be interested in any reports on reasonable and IRB-approved service requirements for storing, syncing, and sharing data on a project.  Is a HIPAA-compliant storage usually sufficient?  Is it sometimes sufficient to have a non-HIPAA-compliant one, but with some other types of certification or privacy guarantees?  How important are guarantees that data will be fully-stored in a same-country (e.g., US) data center or on a discrete server?  In short, I'm hoping to figure out the guidelines that are generally used for matching a remote data service to an IRB data management plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T21:30:54.300" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T21:30:54.300" Title="IRB guidelines for secure online data storage, backup, and syncing?" Tags="&lt;data&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;&lt;irb&gt;&lt;backup-archiving&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26553" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:20:55.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the increasing prevalence of this type of acknowledgement annoying. In political science, it seems like it is on almost every paper. Indeed, some authors have now switched to just writing &quot;the usual disclaimer applies&quot;. Why I would need to acknowledge that I am responsible for (errors in) something I have authored continues to allude me. A novel (yet pleasantly classical) strategy would be to say nothing of this sort at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:20:55.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32099" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:48:06.993" Score="13" ViewCount="59507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I knew that the difference between SCI (Science Citation Index) and SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded) is that SCI has a list of top quality journals, while SCIE includes more than the former. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.emu.edu.tr/grad501/Lecture%20Notes/Research%20Guides%20-%20How%20to%20search%20for%20all%20research%20articles%20and%20what%20are%20citation%20indices.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; that seems to support this previous statement. However, I can't find any official information on this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does someone has some official links to what the difference is? if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2020-07-31T13:17:53.253" Title="What is the difference between SCI and SCIE?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;indexing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26415" CreationDate="2014-07-31T22:05:33.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com.br/site/produtos/Detalhe-produto.aspx?tid=3815&amp;amp;seg=3&amp;amp;isbn=9788535235227&amp;amp;cat=8&amp;amp;origem=Busca&amp;amp;tit=METODOLOGIA%20DE%20PESQUISA%20PARA%20CI%C3%8ANCIA%20DA%20COMPUTA%C3%87%C3%83O&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This book&lt;/a&gt; is &quot;research methodology for computer science&quot;. It's a quick and easy read that clarifies many issues specific to the computer science field. The problem is that it is available only in Brazilian Portuguese, as far as I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20236" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T22:55:04.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:55:04.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2014-08-01T01:19:37.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had at least one error in my thesis (that I know of). As with yours, it was minor and affected even less of the paper. I found it when I was preparing a paper for publication. Fortunately, I was able to correct it, and the correct version was actually more interesting than the original erroneous one. I never corrected my thesis because the correct result was actually put in a journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also had errors in print, a much more embarrassing affair. The mathematician who corrected it was very kind about it. I have not yet issued a correction, but it will appear in a forthcoming article, and quite a while after the initial error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, shared by some other responders, your publication record is more important than your thesis (unless you're a stratospheric talent). So don't sweat it too much. And, don't be reluctant to ask your advisor for advice (that's one of the reasons why he's called an advisor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T01:19:37.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-08-01T01:42:18.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been the &quot;better student&quot; (an advanced beginner) in a language group (French) where the other two parties were a native speaker, and another student (a rank beginner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better student tries to teach something to the worse student, and the teacher corrects one or the other, or both, if there is a mistake made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the teacher teaches something to the better student, who passes it along (perhaps in watered down form) to the other student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have one teacher and two students, it's not really a class, but more like a tutorial, that allows for a lot more &quot;one on one&quot; or &quot;one on two&quot; work.&#xA;In a workplace, it would be like a boss acting as &quot;team leader&quot; with two subordinates, instead of as a &quot;department head&quot; with 5-10 &quot;reports.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T14:49:26.450" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:49:26.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-08-01T02:08:33.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Qualities that make for a good scientist don't always make for a good software programmer (except, as the OP pointed out, when the &quot;science&quot; happens to be computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer coding is a highly precise art. Many people, including good scientists aren't sufficiently precise to write good code easily. This is particularly true of the more &quot;intuitive&quot; types of scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scientists find computer programming &quot;boring&quot; and for this reason, don't do well at it. It's true that &quot;regular&quot; science requires detail work, but not to the degree of programming, which many (including yours truly) find &quot;mind numbing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if there is zero (or a very weak) correlation between a good scientist and a good programmer, you will get the whole gamut of programming ability, good, middling, and terrible from a population of scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T02:08:33.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2014-08-01T02:26:49.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, if I were applying for a PhD program, I might be thinking in terms of an &quot;ABD&quot; (All but dissertation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sound of it, &quot;grit not brain&quot; will get you through your PhD courses. You likely will pass the &quot;comprehensive&quot; examination. And then the fear is that you will &quot;freeze up&quot; when it comes time to write the dissertation because you are behindhand in &quot;natural&quot; (as opposed to synthetic), talent compared to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to balance these real concerns against the benefits of &quot;taking courses&quot; and getting as far as you can, before possibly running up against a brick wall with your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was basically my story (some decades ago). I was &quot;counseled out&quot; of a PhD program by a dean who observed that I had the preparation and the brains for the program, but lacked the &quot;spark,&quot; &quot;thirst,&quot; or drive that would see others through, but maybe not me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's worse, as a history undergraduate with mostly As, I had trouble finding a senior thesis topic, and spent the first part of my senior year wondering if I would be able to graduate, and thinking about writing a &quot;trivial&quot; paper that would earn a C. In the middle of the first semester, I stumbled on a viable topic that earned me departmental honors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see one of three outcomes for you. 1) A &quot;light bulb&quot; will go off in your head at some point before you approach the end of the PhD program. If this happens, you're fine. 2) You will somehow squeak through, not quite knowing how you did it, and come out of the process a bit shell-shocked. 3) Neither of the above will happen, as you feared, in which case you might &quot;bail out&quot; as an &quot;ABD.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't predict the outcome for you, but am sharing my experience. Just understand what the risks are, take into account your circumstances, and (hopefully) make the best decision for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T15:07:48.793" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T15:07:48.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-08-01T02:39:50.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you happen to have bookmarked those resources when you used them, could you please post an answer linking to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good online resource for MATLAB is found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.uh.edu/~torok/math_6298/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction to Computing Resources&lt;/a&gt; page, put together by Andrew Török of the University of Houston. I linked to the main page as there are other resources listed in the contents menu which your sibling may find useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, if you learned MATLAB or a similar program with great success, what tips would you give for self teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with the self-teaching of other subjects, there is no good substitute for getting your &quot;hands dirty&quot; and playing around with what the tool has to offer. Start by learning the basics (as discussed in the online resource linked above), and progressively increase the complexity until you reach the desired level of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit — I'm including a few more online MATLAB resources that I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.ucla.edu/~anderson/MDocs/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCLA MATLAB reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.mtu.edu/~msgocken/intro/intro.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michigan Tech MATLAB help&lt;/a&gt; (also mentioned by @rch above in the comments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.utah.edu/lab/ms/matlab/matlab.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Utah MATLAB help&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bass.gmu.edu/matlab/matlab.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GMU MATLAB page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.uits.iu.edu/visualization/analytics/math/matlab-getting-started.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Indiana MATLAB help&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T03:56:14.133" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T03:56:14.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17781" CreationDate="2014-08-01T05:24:04.987" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because programming is like riding a car:&#xA;Everyone needs it but most of us are not professionals.&#xA;How one learn programming? Generally buys/lends a book &quot;Python or whatever for beginners&quot;. It will be all about how to save a file, how to run a program and how to call a function. After this, I can do most I need urgently now or yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I will learn about design patterns, good software dev practices, agile development, how to write nice code? NOWHERE!&#xA;Just like after taking a course driving a car I believe I am OK, and I do not read 5 hours a day about how to drive on wet road faster, I don't go to bookshops and read every single CS books, that it may be related to me. Even if I go to the net, maybe Software Carpentry is the only relevant resourse! Seriously, if anyone knows anything similar, please, post is somewhere here! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will not moonlight to learn a full CS in MIT courseware to hack together my &quot;Hello word&quot; of the day. And I wouldn't be surprised if even CS guys in MIT would learn half of good programming practices outside the school, on job, and not after 4-5 years sitting in school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T05:24:04.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26669" CreationDate="2014-08-01T05:28:45.373" Score="9" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the university system as it is understood today dates at least as far back as the 13th century or perhaps even to the time of Charlemagne, Alcuin of York, et al., but how was higher education handled before universities? Was it by private tutoring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T07:26:02.370" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T15:16:48.937" Title="How was higher education done before the university system?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;&lt;tutoring&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-08-01T05:40:29.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(with full agreement with the people who says that online resources, including even youtube are nowadays better than textbooks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were her, I first would learn statistics (that is relevant to her field). Is she an ecologist? A biochemist? Doing in silico bioinfo? They are pretty different fields.&#xA;Learning MATLAB without having any clear idea about mathematics (linear algebra, statistical tests etc) she wants to use, is pretty damn difficult. This is the typical &quot;I just want to do ANOVA! just tell me where i should click?&quot; problem. On the other hand when she is already able to write down basic equations to paper, and understand what letter is what, and have at least a vague idea of the mechanics, the MATLAb/octave part become pretty straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two remarks:&#xA;- I wouldn't waste my time reading 400 pages books discussing everything from PDEs to symbolic calculations. Any 2-10 pages long tutorial from the net gives the same info, with often better pedagogical part.&#xA;- While Excel has many annoying features, it is very good to organize and save certain type of experimental data. You can put anything in it, figures, short notes, explanations for yourself, keep everything in one place and for printing one can use something else, gnuplot etc. Of course, it is subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T05:40:29.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2014-08-01T06:02:47.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Degrees are highly inflated nowadays, now practically everyone and his dog has a PhD, or at least a BSc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 years ago passing final exams in high-school practically was the terminal degree for most administrative positions. Much fewer people went on universities, mostly engineering, doctors and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go back a couple of hundred years you realize that very few profession actually needed university degree, and universities were mostly scholarly centers for philosophy and religious studies. Most engineering didn't even exist 500 years ago, and what existed was taught by professional communities through apprenticeship, not by universities. So what you call higher education is defined very much by the post-industrial area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="13427" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T07:16:34.257" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T07:16:34.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2014-08-01T07:24:07.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with many things the history of higher education is not well known since accounts may be scarce or missing altogether. Early evidence indicate that schools existed in Egypt where, primarily, boys would learn to read and write etc. One has to remember that such skills were not for the masses. Religiously connected schools also emerged where religious texts were handled and copied. Theological and medical teaching was also done but very little else. evidence of mathematics have been found so there were also schools, perhaps aiming at architecture, astronomy , etc. relevant for the culture. None of these has a degree at the end but was likely based on apprenticeship and mastery evaluated by the teachers. Similar evidence for teaching exists in all older cultures and seem to focus on maintaining order in the social and cultural basis for society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a big step when considering Greek education which was far more comprehensive than the pragmatic education earlier. In the city states of ancient Greece specialized schools emerged where teaching circled around very specific topics such as the Hippocratic school of medicine on Cos. This specialization seems to have continued with the well known Greek philosophers/scientists such as Aristotle, Plato etc. and teaching progressed in directions envisioned by these founders. In other words, there was no single systematic way for schools to teach and operate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Roman world subjects were ordered in groups that we can recognize today: I grammar rhetoric, dialectic; II geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music; III medicine, architecture. This was how the &lt;em&gt;liberal arts&lt;/em&gt; (defined as theoretical and intellectual activities by the Greeks) were seen. The subjects have of course survived to modern times although organisation has changed. So education became more organised but the education was not open and still served a purpose for maintaining government rule. Out of the post-Roman world came the first universities as stated in the question where education became even more organized and eventually including fixed degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is loosely based on the excellent book: &lt;em&gt;The first universities&lt;/em&gt; by Olaf Pedersen, Cambridge UP, 1997. I strongly recommend it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T07:24:07.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T08:20:17.043" Score="5" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a draft in the area of numerical mathematics for several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor recently discussed this draft with me. He wants to be mentioned as an author for (i) some discussions (ii) financing the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not sure about the authorship guidelines in my discipline. Numerical mathematics sits between pure mathematics, computer science, and the sciences, and it is comparatively young. So what is the appropriate norm on (i) choice and (ii) order of authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T10:13:44.327" Title="Authorship issues in numerical mathematics" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26670" CreationDate="2014-08-01T10:13:44.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Authorship&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a researcher in numerical mathematics myself, I think that just &quot;financing the research&quot; is not a sufficient argument to include your advisor as co-author. The notion of &quot;some discussion&quot; is very imprecise and may mean that&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt; the problem, the idea of the solution and the composition of the work belong to your supervisor, and your work is purely technical; or&lt;li&gt;your supervisor checked your manuscript briefly just once and made a couple of comments regarding your English.&lt;/ul&gt; Without knowing the level of involvement, it is impossible to judge whether or not you should include your supervisor as co-author.&#xA;To answer this question, you may wish to read your journal's policy regarding the authorship. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics#authorship&quot;&gt;Elsevier&lt;/a&gt;'s definition of authorship reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Order of authors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my shoes, it seems that many researchers in the numerical mathematics prefer to list the authors alphabetically, i.e. the order of authors does not reflect their contribution. However, when I personally publish together with researchers in applied areas (like Chemistry and Physics) in journals like Phys Rev B, we prefer to follow their convention, where the first author is the &quot;main&quot; author, and the last one is the one who &quot;finance&quot; the research. This leads to a certain amount of confusion, when all these papers appear together on your CV. Arguably, a good decision is to describe the contribution of all co-authors in a special section at the end of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T10:13:44.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-08-01T10:22:31.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least two major false assumptions that many instructors tend to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first false assumption: Most students of most classes are very similar, with very little difference in pre-knowledge and conception. Welcome to actual teaching: You always have a diverse body of students. The bigger your class, the more diverse. Assuming that they are all about the same, and that they just understand what you are saying, is damaging and leads many instructors to just keep talking for hours on end, based on a wrong conception of their audience, and are then satisfied because they set &quot;lecturing&quot; (i.e. talking and illustrating) equal to teaching, leaving most students untouched (unless they are good story tellers, but that's a different topic).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That brings me to false assumption number two: The idea that your teacher must be a complete expert on the topic in order to be helpful to you. It is certainly useful to know a lot about the domain, but no one is perfect. There are always &quot;gaps in knowledge&quot; and understanding. People might argue that an institution has bad quality control if they let non-experts teach students, but domain knowledge (or &quot;hard skills&quot;, which in your case is Spanish) is only part of the equation. In order to help &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; learn more efficiently you need... well... &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; skills, i.e. soft skills. You need good communication, presentation, project management skills, and you need resourcefulness. Soft skills can be just as, or even more important to your teaching efficiency as domain knowledge (given you have at least a good basic understanding of the subject at hand).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, you can help the advanced student by finding better, possibly interactive, material and maybe even letting him help you help others. There is a whole body of research showing evidence of teaching being a very efficient learner tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_by_teaching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&amp;amp;context=ajte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;. If you have the time and motivation, you can even try &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/TLE_pdf/TLE_Nov13_Article.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flipping your classroom&lt;/a&gt; entirely. Make sure though that he understands the special role he would play, so he won't feel &quot;out of place&quot;. Most of this approach requires you to be a good communicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/1180001/Moving_away_from_teaching_and_becoming_a_facilitator_of_learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article titled &quot;Moving away from teaching and becoming a facilitator of learning&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for more information on moving away from archaic models. Don't be afraid to try out something new! &quot;Trial &amp;amp; Error&quot;, a general problem solving technique, found in almost every other field, is just not very common in education yet. But if your students are aware of your shortcomings and aware of your &quot;experiments&quot;, your attempts of trying out something new, and you are in good communication with the students, you can make the entire experience more valuable than traditional &quot;you talk and they might or might not listen&quot; methods, every single time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9791" LastEditorUserId="9791" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T03:27:54.500" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T03:27:54.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-08-01T10:58:51.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best tool to learn depends on the actual job. For very basic data analysis, Excel has the lowest entry barrier, but the learning curve gets steep soon. Learning a full language will take some months, but will greatly expand the things she is capable of doing. Also, knowing programming in a field where everybody uses Excel can be a great advantage and unique feature for employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important factor deciding which language is the environment she is in. Having people used to the tools and perks of a language can be very useful when learning from scratch. On the other hand, I'd only count &quot;modern&quot; options (some old professors are very fond of FORTRAN77 and IDL, but learning these is like learning to train dinosaurs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She should consider not only her lab, but also ask at the Bioinformatics department, and take a look at other labs in the branch she is in. In my experience, for the most informatics side of the field, people use mostly Python, C++, and Java for some machine learning. I have encountered some MATLAB, but definitely not much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note: I think in learning your first language you want the cleanest and less quirky possible. MATLAB in this respect is a mess of a language, with a crappy syntax and bad scalability. My personal choice would be Python, so here are some introductory materials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://python.g-node.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Summer school&lt;/a&gt; on scientific programming and &lt;a href=&quot;https://python.g-node.org/wiki/introductory_material&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;introduction to Python.&lt;/a&gt; All materials are posted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The official tutorial&lt;/a&gt;. There is a lot of things that are not for useful for scientists, but it is very good introduction to the language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.khanacademy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Khan academy.&lt;/a&gt; They have everything. Very nice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coursera has a full assortment of courses. She will surely find something of interest there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2015-09-19T19:17:12.820" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T19:17:12.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T11:47:35.207" Score="21" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a paper from a reputable journal and found that the authors misrepresented earlier papers that they cited, by saying something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theory X was developed in [A, B, and C], but the underlying assumption was not general enough, and therefore it is insufficient to address our problem, which warrants a more general approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that A, B, and C (which are well-known papers in the field) actually presented a general theory, which is applicable also to the problem considered in their paper. The rest of the paper sounds like an argument against something that was not there in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a serious misrepresentation if they did it intentionally. Otherwise, they should have been more familiar with the papers they cited. The fact that such misrepresentation slipped past the peer-reviewing stage also suggests that the review was questionable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader of the paper, what should I do if I find such misrepresentation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, the first author of the paper is someone I personally know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T12:29:24.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T18:45:57.033" Title="What should I do as a reader if a paper misrepresented earlier papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26674" CreationDate="2014-08-01T12:07:51.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, there is not much you can do. If a misrepresentation leads to erroneous results, one way is to write a &quot;letter to the editor&quot; straightening out the error. Such an approach does not seem right in your case since the error is to state that someone has not reached conclusions they really have. I do not mean to say that this is ok but it is harder to get a comment published when the problem, for example, does not affect future research by introducing errors. One also has to bear in mind that the error apparently escaped both reviewers and editors on the way to publication. It may also well be that the author actually see it the way they write it which means the misrepresentation is not intentional (as you seem to imply). So in the way I read the particular case, I cannot see an immediate way forward. If one writes about a problem where the conclusion you refer to is cited, it is of course possible to point out who was first and thereby contribute to setting the record straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if a misrepresentation leads to errors, it can usually be pointed out in a published letter. If the misrepresentation concerns a non-critical issue, it is still just as bad, but the possibility of publishing a clarification is much smaller. Now, clearly, these issues are on a sliding scale, so it may be difficult to see where a correction may be reasonable. In such cases, the editor of the journal where the paper was published should be able to provide some feedback on how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T12:39:48.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T12:39:48.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26800" CreationDate="2014-08-01T13:24:50.250" Score="16" ViewCount="4004" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large majority of researchers in my field publish in Elsevier journals. However, a professor who is widely regarded as an authority in my field has, some years ago, signed &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com/&quot;&gt;The Cost of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt; pledge to neither publish nor review for Elsevier. I think this is sad, since someone who is highly qualified to review these papers will no longer review them and improve their quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor has published in other journals, but it does not seem that others are following suit, since these Elsevier journals seem to be highly prized. What can he do to be able to review papers that would have otherwise come to his perusal without having to recant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T22:13:09.347" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T20:25:40.183" Title="How can a professor who has signed The &quot;Cost of Knowledge&quot; pledge review papers without having to recant?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;elsevier&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26676" CreationDate="2014-08-01T13:33:38.420" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like he's sticking to his moral principles, which is the best anyone can do. Maybe he could evangelize his opinion more to increase the impact of his crusade, but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the insinuation that he may be doing his field a disservice, since moving away from the ancient publishing model is a good thing for any field in the long run. Besides, it's not like he has left the field; just a small part of its publication scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because nobody seems to be following him (yet) does not mean he failed in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T13:33:38.420" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26679" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:01:12.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Social media refers to collaborative internet websites through which users (both administrators and visitors of the website) can exchange and share ideas and information such as academic topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T14:10:06.063" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:10:06.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26680" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:01:12.667" Score="0" Body="Use of social media (e.g. Facebook, ResearchGate, blogs, etc.) by academics to engage with other academics or students and to disseminate and publicize their research." OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T14:09:48.270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:09:48.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:09:31.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said previously in the answers to the question, the textbooks do not usually work great for programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an Engineering Physics student working with Applied Mathematics and have been using and promoting MATLAB since I started. However, this summer I was out of my license and therefore turned to Anaconda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to go off on a spin and recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anaconda Scientific Python Distribution&lt;/a&gt;. Anaconda is based on Python which is a great language to start of on, if not the best. Not only is it free and open-source but can be used in so much more then MATLAB. They also explain why they give this out for free on their website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We want to ensure that Python, NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, IPython, Matplotlib, Numba, Blaze, Bokeh, and other great Python data analysis tools can be used everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We want to make it easier for Python evangelists and teachers to promote the use of Python.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We want to give back to the Python community that we love being a part of.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience so far, it has been more intutive to implement more complex tasks as well as being even a bit FASTER!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20254" LastEditorUserId="20254" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T14:25:13.367" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:25:13.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26645" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:52:31.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I at one point took the route of adding a new paper, and had it come out badly, so I'd recommend replacing. In summary, we had &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3694&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper A&lt;/a&gt;, a lengthy preprint which developed a lot of theory in a somewhat confused order. We then realized that a large fraction of the results could be proved in a more general context and in a much cleaner way, which became &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper B&lt;/a&gt;. However, there remained a number of elegant combinatorial arguments which only worked in the original context, and became &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3660&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper C&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had to tell a lot of people not to read preprint A, just B and C (which are now published). In retrospect, I think I should have made C a replacement for A. It seems that the argument for this is strongerin your case, where you are only replacing a paper by one paper, not two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1244" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:52:31.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:58:16.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some fields that involve a high degree of &quot;practical development&quot; (recognizeable prototypes etc.) rather than &quot;just&quot; theoretical concepts, it is often impractical to attempt and conceal the identity of submission authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A conference or journal may require submissions to be anonymized, which adds a certain extra burden on the authors: Anonymizing does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; end with removing the authors list, certain sections such as an &lt;em&gt;Acknowledgments&lt;/em&gt; section need to be removed, and parts of the text may need to be rewritten (when referencing earlier work by the same authors and would, in the final paper, write &quot;We have already ...&quot;). And as it is sometimes still obvious that the current submission is the direct successor of an earlier work, that reference needs to be replaced with something like &lt;em&gt;Removed for double-blind review&lt;/em&gt;, thus naturally reducing the usefulness of the references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, all of those factors may easily be in vain, as, for example, CS often involves prototypical applications that get repeatedly extended. The theoretical possibility exists that another researcher may have gotten their hands on someone else's prototype, but when the screenshots in the submission bear a striking resemblance to those in a previously published work (*), the most likely explanation is that the two works were written by the same author or at least team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as trying to reliably blind the submission is not feasible in many cases and just leads to extra work for the authors (including the discussions if the double-blind review is optional), various conferences/journals do not offer a double-blind review in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) I am not saying that the same contribution is published twice. I am referring to &quot;unimportant&quot; aspects such as the general layout of a window, or its toolbar icons, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T14:58:16.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:28:18.657" Score="19" ViewCount="3517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a huge technical mistake in a paper I published on arXiv... How bad is it in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20259" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T15:44:37.463" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T16:16:48.627" Title="I made a huge technical mistake in an arXiv paper... How bad is it?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26684" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:39:39.137" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mistakes are &quot;bad&quot; in academia if you fail to disclose them once you know about them (which constitutes unethical behavior), or if they affect something that counts towards a formal credential (like a degree; which is unlikely for an arXiv submission).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the way forward is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform your co-authors (if there were any).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upload an updated version of your paper to arXiv, in which you place a big notice at the top stating that there is a major technical error and the contents of the paper should not be considered accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/withdraw&quot;&gt;withdraw&lt;/a&gt; the submission from arXiv with an appropriate notice as to the nature of the error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you think you can correct the error and rescue the rest of the paper, get to work on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics make mistakes all the time. Acknowledge your error, disclose it, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T16:16:48.627" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T16:16:48.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26690" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:46:55.210" Score="7" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my first post didn't fare too well with this crowd.  Let me try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I did not get into any of the schools I actually wanted to attend, I lost my drive to continue getting good grades and subsequently very negatively impacted my GPA.  My current GPA does not reflect my ability.  When I was applying to schools for undergrad, I had the desire to go to graduate school since I liked solving new problems.  I now feel that since I did not get into one of the schools that would have been a better fit for me with respect to ability and the facts that I let my grades slip and that I've been out of school for effectively two years now for medical reasons, it will be much harder for me to get into a good graduate program.  I've got one year's worth of classes to finish off my undergraduate degree, but even acing those two semesters wouldn't increase my GPA to what I deem acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also come to realize that I don't like school per se (the exams, the coursework, etc.), but I do love learning and working on new problems.  Unfortunately, it's hard, if not impossible, to do things that require having learned things without going to school to get a degree that says you have learned said things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I recapture my drive to do the work so that I do not totally hose any future I may have?  I seriously doubt that attempting to transfer to one of the schools that have previously denied me would work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I secure a position in a good graduate program with a pretty terrible GPA, having no real research experience, and coming from a less-than-stellar school?  REUs rejected me, I suspect, on the grounds of my GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any path that would allow me to get into a decent research position without the bother of degrees?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can think of any other options that would lead to a research position, I'd love to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20257" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T18:59:12.920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T18:59:12.920" Title="How to improve chances of graduate admission following major, long-term burnout?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17743" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:59:04.120" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that at this stage in your career, you should set yourself the goal of reaching some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_maturity&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;mathematical maturity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... fearlessness in the face of symbols: the ability to read and&#xA;  understand notation, to introduce clear and useful notation when&#xA;  appropriate (and not otherwise!), and a general facility of expression&#xA;  in the terse—but crisp and exact—language that mathematicians use to&#xA;  communicate ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courses like abstract algebra, algebraic topology, differential geometry and e.g. combinatorics will give you a combination of breadth and depth that will make it much easier to quickly master any applied field that you will choose in grad school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience (PhD in string theory, currently applied economist), mastering the really advanced math courses should be done as soon as possible, when you have all the time and energy to immerse yourself. It's also my experience that it is rather straightforward to apply abstract patterns when you already know them, but the reverse (the emergence of abstractions from concrete applications) is much, much harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, by all means mix and match your fundamental math courses with a small selection of interesting applied courses. There's no sense in not enjoying yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18027" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T15:59:04.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26674" CreationDate="2014-08-01T16:01:58.243" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you say that you are concerned about the longer term implications of this error being included in the scientific record, you could consider applying the general theory of A, B, and C to the problem in the more recent paper yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the approach is successful, as you imply it would be, you could write up the results in a white paper or maybe a conference paper. Their journal submission will almost certainly get more exposure, but researchers seriously attempting to build on their work would more than likely find your rebuttal (for lack of a more appropriate word).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course a lot of effort to go to for something that probably doesn't directly affect you, but it could also ingratiate you to the authors of A, B, and C, if that's something you care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T16:01:58.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26687" CreationDate="2014-08-01T18:13:31.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I gotta say congrats for editing the question in a way which will make it more interesting to us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the parts of the question that you have removed: You know, bad things happen, and they will happen in the future as well, it is your reaction that matters the most. Kudos in that regards as well, since you have decided to look around for a solution for your problem. That is a nice start nevertheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refer to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; regarding you question about getting into graduate school. However, are you sure that you really like research, have you had any experience in the past? If not, how do you know you like it? Or you just like the Phd title? Bear in mind that the graduate school and later academic career is full of rejections: paper-, grant-, acceptance-. It is obvious that you will have to change the way how you react to rejection, based on how you have reacted to rejection for the colleges that you have applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have kept you motivation high and work as much as possible to show that committees that did not accept you they have done wrong. But that is past already, you say you have 1 year left to finish your undergrad studies. Try to do you best in the courses that are left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all coursework is not the main factor in showing your research capabilities. When you will apply to other institutions later on for research/phd position you will have to convince them that you are capable of doing research. That's the main thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if you could stick around some research projects taking place at your current institution. Maybe some papers come out from there, even you can impress the professors, which might want to write strong recommendation letter for you later on. Strong recommendation letters are important as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, do not be that obsessed with the colleges that you have targeted before. There are good colleges doing great stuff over there. Also, you can consider switching continents, in that case your GPA would matter less, as you will have to undergo two extra years of Master studies (in Europe) in order to get a Phd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions precisely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have clearly stated that you don't want to screw up any future you might have. So, remind this to yourself daily, try to focus on this. Try some self-motivation stuff!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The link I provided above should be helpful. Got no research experience? Then, simple... get some!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a Masters, in US or abroad before getting to Phd; Perform well in the Masters, most recent GPA matters the most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T18:19:37.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26674" CreationDate="2014-08-01T18:45:57.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the misrepresentation seems only to strengthen the motivation or novelty of the approach the authors of the paper in question present and don't, from your description, introduce technical errors which may be likely to propagate into future works, I would likely just mention to my friend (the first author) that the way I read them papers A, B, and C present a more general view than his interpretation seemed to suggest, then have that discussion with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that he has some insight into the real generality of the earlier papers than you do, or you could wind up enlightening him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T18:45:57.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26676" CreationDate="2014-08-01T18:49:24.200" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If authorities disregard a journal &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt;, that journal (or series of journals) will lose any reputation for quality publication. If poor-quality papers get through to publication due to a drop off in submissions or high-quality available reviewers, that journal will lose even more reputation for quality. This sort of issue should be self-correcting if enough researchers feel strongly about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T18:49:24.200" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:05:39.483" Score="6" ViewCount="14687" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the reviewers, the paper I have submitted is now ready for publication.&#xA;How long I should wait to know the final decision of the editor-in-chief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13324" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T19:59:04.513" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T16:27:38.170" Title="How long does it typically take for editor's final decision after reviews are completed?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26639" CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:14:00.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your research interests and ability to articulate your interests in grant proposals will be significantly weightier in your future career than precisely which department from your university's school of arts and sciences signed off on your dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your publication history (which journals, what topics, etc.) will be more convincing than a dual PhD (which, honestly, would get you more sideways glances than researching or professing outside the department of your degree issuance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T19:14:00.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26693" CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:40:31.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewers can only recommend a verdict so what they say is not necessarily the outcome, the editor has final say. Of course if two reviews agree then it is very likely the outcome will be what they suggest. In a normal review situation involving an editor, the reviewers provide their reviews to the editor who in turn will make a judgement and pass on comments and possible suggestions for improvements to you. If your manuscript is in an open review system (such as the discussion format of Copernicus Open Access journals), you  may see the reviews before final decisions are taken and in such a case, I would not trust reviewers opinions on the verdict until you also hear so from the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is pointed out in a comment, it is a bit intriguing that you seem to have the reviewers comments but not that from the editor. The time between completion of reviews and to a decision by an editor will vary depending on many factors. The editor has to read the reviews in light of the manuscript and then value the comments and provide a synthesis of the outcome for you. Obviously the editor will have other manuscripts to handle in parallel which influences the time a decision may take. To state a time that can be applied to any situation or journal is therefore pointless. I am, however, certain that any serious editor is not keen to hold on to a decision for any extended period. With the journals I have published and the one where I am Editor-in-Chief times from receipt of reviews to decision can vary from maybe days up to a month in rare cases. This seems reasonable for the field in which I work but I am sure that such times vary between both field and journals within a field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T19:40:31.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12460" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:03:54.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the forum is not a must, for static web pages &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Sites&lt;/a&gt; is another easy-to-setup option which has &lt;em&gt;inter alia&lt;/em&gt; a visual editor available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:03:54.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:36:34.200" Score="9" ViewCount="3063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished my bachelor's degree in computer engineering. I am doing an REU with the professor who will be my adviser this fall when I enter grad school. &#xA;Currently my future Adviser has me working on research that involves image processing. I was hoping to head in other directions in embedded computing and security. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From our weekly research meetings it seems like my adviser will be assigning me research topics through out my grad school career. Is this normal that an adviser would insist on determining the research topic of the PhD students under them. I have not pushed back on this yet but I am not prepared to go in depth in image processing. I am not a math major or CS major and that field gives me little interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as funding goes I am currently funded by and REU(research experience for undergraduates) and am unsure of where this funding comes from(NSF, department, professor). Here in 2 weeks though I will be funded by a Distinguished Academic Fellowship(DAF) that my university graduate school awarded me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get my DAF I had to write a research proposal. I proposed research into microprocessor, GPU, FPGA unification. As I understood it from those within my department I am not required to carry out that research as the proposal is more a way for the DAF committee to see that I can write a coherent proposal for later on in my academic career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the union of my professors research interest and mine: He focuses on embedded system design for single specific applications. It just happens that in the current path of research he is onto it involves cameras. This then introduces the field of image processing into the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that all his grad students are doing peripheral work on UAVs that will be coalesced into a UAV platform of some sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17713" LastEditorUserId="17713" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T23:46:18.247" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T00:21:13.823" Title="Is my adviser supposed to be assigning me my research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:40:30.133" Score="34" ViewCount="1919" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've searched many forums and websites and I am hoping to find a more direct answer to my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a tenured, associate professor of humanities at a SLAC (yes, I do appreciate this). My family is very unhappy where we are living. I would have gone on the job market before getting tenure but had a confluence of personal crises that went on for over a year. Anyway, I looked for a job last year but noticed that all except one or two in my field are for assistant professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it &quot;not done&quot;/completely a waste of time to apply for assistant professor positions?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year, I had one campus interview, and they said they would hire me as associate but not tenured.  Didn't get that job, obviously.  I am actually okay with moving without tenure, due to wanting to improve things for my family.  I am just a humanities prof, however -- I don't bring grants, funding, all that jazz with me.  I'm not a hotshot in publications, either.  I don't want a different job or a different university (a move up), just a different location where my family might be happier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I wasting my time?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20274" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T07:59:46.443" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T21:59:42.637" Title="Post tenure job search in the humantities: a waste of time?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;humanities&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:54:49.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the short answer should be &quot;NO&quot;, but there are a lot of stuff which have to be taken in consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it clear on what type of project you will contribute with your research, or is it a research that is not on the frames of any project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a research within the frames of a project which has got funding based on its documentation, you will have to work on what that research asks you to. And it is up to you to decide if you want to work on that topic or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, I think that the field of research and the expected outcome of your research should be defined even before the research starts. Of course along the path you might hit obstacles and look at different stuff, but not to the extend of completely switching fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your description it seems that you are working on completely off-topic stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that the Adviser might be testing you, and see your reaction. Maybe if you don't react and accept to do everything that he asks you to, then he will continue with the same later on. Also, he might be testing your patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I strongly recommend that you have a very thorough and mature discussion with your adviser &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; starting to work on the research. And make sure that this discussion will result in &quot;clearly&quot; defined research goals, at least a well defined topic to focus on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you are supposed to know the fields of interest of your adviser and expect that he will ask you to do work on those fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;image processing, security, and embedded are very broad definitions and (at least to me) look very unrelated especially when the granularity of a phd research is considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:54:49.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26704" CreationDate="2014-08-01T21:57:08.090" Score="7" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got two papers rejected with the reviewers asserting a lack of technical contribution. They contained good ideas, at least in my eyes, and used common methodologies in the experimentation. So my question related to the CS field is, what is the difference between a good idea that was tested and a technical contribution? What should an idea have to become a technical contribution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another observation I had is that other papers, that got accepted, were actually worse from the research methodologies and were previously published in similar form (so the idea was not very original) at that conference, so the “contribution” of these papers is much lower than mine would have been (again it’s just from my perspective). So I don’t understand why those papers got accepted and if the reviewer’s decisions actually make sense, what is it that makes such papers accepted? I aim at enhancing my now rejected papers because I still think they contain original ideas that should be published, I just don’t know where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20106" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T19:53:25.797" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T19:53:25.797" Title="CS paper rejected for lack of technical contribution; what does this mean, and how can I fix it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2014-08-01T21:57:47.967" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends very much on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much interests and your advisor's interests align&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where your funding comes from&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, interest alignment: Starting a grad program, you find an advisor with interests that overlap with your own, do the foundational things that need to get done, then expand on it with your own ideas.  Later, when you are pitching grants, very much the same thing but with program officers: you have a great idea, and you find a way to dovetail it with their calls for proposals.  Finding the common ground between your research and others' research is a fundamental academic skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, money: if you are funded through a grant that needs image processing research done, do you think that your advisor or the funding sponsor will give you a big thumbs up when you say, &quot;Actually, I have some great ideas for embedded security devices I would rather work on.&quot;  Nope.  If you were in their shoes, shelling out $30-60k on a student for a year, wouldn't you expect them to help get the grant completed successfully?  If you want full control over your research, become independently wealthy first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successfully doing your own research in academia, in grad school and beyond, involves a lot of meeting in the middle.  Given the huge disparity of research topics you mentioned (image processing versus security), I genuinely wonder about the overlap of interests.  If there really isn't much overlap, it might be worth looking for a different advisor.  You won't become an expert in one field by being mentored by a guy in another field, even if your advisor lets you run wild with any idea that comes into your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since more info was added about the funding and interest overlap, I can note a bit more here.  It sounds like your funding is relatively portable and not tied to a project.  In that case, you should have pretty strong control over what you want to do.  You should not be using this control to just pitch ideas and run with them.  The benefit of a PhD program (as opposed to learning how to research while living in a shack) is to apprentice with people who are experts in what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having your own &quot;batteries included&quot; funding means you should be able to match with the best advisor for your interests. It sounds like you need to discuss the issue of overlapping interests with your current advisor.  If you don't want to go in the same direction as the lab, maybe they can suggest another group who does something that is a better fit.  Alternatively, maybe they will hit topics that you find more interesting during other phases of projects. It's not uncommon to switch advisors in the first year: I knew a professor in undergrad who actually recommended avoiding even starting in a given lab, so you could just meet with professors to find the best match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastEditorUserId="7930" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T04:44:29.817" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T04:44:29.817" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8891" CreationDate="2014-08-01T23:15:02.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me that in a small field, double-blind necssarily helps promote more impartial reviews. You gain something in removing bias/prejudice based on knowledge of the author(s). However, it becomes much more difficult to control for conflicts of interest: plenty of non-obvious connections exist between researchers that an editor can't be expected to know about. With single-blind reviewing, there is at least the &lt;em&gt;opportunity&lt;/em&gt; for the reviewer to decline if they know they've influenced the author's views in some way, or if they feel they have reviewed too high a fraction of that author's output. If everything is double-blind, it seems quite likely that small review circles could form, to the ultimate detriment of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T23:15:02.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26701" CreationDate="2014-08-01T23:18:58.343" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you ask those questions, I assume you are relatively new to CS research. I do not know if you have previous research experience in any other scientific area, but let's assume you are new to research all together. Correct me if I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your paper gets rejected, the feeling of rejection sucks. It sucks a lot. But in research you have to deal with this rejection and move-on. It does not matter if other people's works that you consider worse have been accepted. Maybe they are better than yours maybe not. But that is really irrelevant. Focus on your work and how to improve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions you should be asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this problem you are trying to solve interesting? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your solution substantially better than previous state-of-the-art? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you certain that you described related and recent literature thoroughly? Are you up-to-date on related literature?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you make clear the benefits on your approach? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your paper well presented  and written? Have you explained your approach thoroughly (with pseudocode, figures) and not just with words?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were your experiments thorough? Did you use many datasets for your experiments? Have you used the datasets that the related papers use or at least similar if not bigger in size and scope? Have you compared your results with previous approaches? Have you many charts demonstrating the various aspects of your solution?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you advertised your work by finding many test-cases for your problem? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of those answer is NO, then you must turn them to YES, before resubmitting your work. You must understand that if your paper or the problem you try to solve is boring, then it gets rejected. It is as simple as that. In that cases, the most usual reason for rejection is &quot;not enough contribution&quot;. So, probably it is also your presentation that needs to be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it seems rather strange that although you are probably new to research, you have submitted two papers at the same time. Perhaps this is too ambitious and it would be better to focus on one of them, improve it and resubmit it. Perhaps, they should be sent to different venues that are more tailored for each one of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last but not least. Do not worry. It gets better with time. Both the way you handle rejection and the way you write papers. So, improve what needs to be fixed and everything will work out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T12:05:45.830" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T12:05:45.830" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26639" CreationDate="2014-08-01T23:49:57.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...my advisor is encouraging me to take up a second Ph.D. in astro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not trust random strangers on the internet more than my advisor. He has nothing to gain with proposing this and he is probably genuinely interested in your welfare. Still, he may not know well the administrative part of his proposal, so make sure you know the details well by asking the administrative people of your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there extra courses required?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need to write only one dissertation? How will your dissertation change in case of the dual PHD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the PHD awarded from the same department as the single PHD or from a combination of departments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much longer will your PHD take?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make sure you get your facts straight and then talk your objections with your advisor. Then you can decide what you want &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T23:49:57.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26698" CreationDate="2014-08-02T08:02:40.370" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Senior level hires at small, liberal arts colleges (SLACs) are uncommon in the sciences, rare in the social sciences, and very rare in the humanities. Why would a small college pay the same price for an associate or full professor when an assistant costs half as much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R1s do senior hires because we want and can pay for name-brand profs. We often have named (and well funded) professorships to entice people to switch. Big name professors also bring in big name grants and attract graduate students. These latter concerns aren't as important at SLACs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say it doesn't happen. A SLAC might hire a senior professor in the humanities for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's starting up a new program and needs an experienced hand to guide it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A senior faculty member died/left/was fired and all of the remaining members of the department are too junior to chair it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is so much infighting in the department that the provost wants an outside chair to step in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freak accident of nature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have tenure, you can afford to be patient. Keep your CV, cover letter, and job talk polished. Go to all the right conferences. Be portable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2017-03-26T21:59:42.637" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T21:59:42.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T08:17:24.987" Score="15" ViewCount="4306" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past few years, I've become very interested in staying in academia for as long as possible. I really wanted to be a professor, and I still do. Using the internet and meeting with a few professors, I've researched various aspects of life as a professor, including daily schedules, salaries, etc. While trying to get an idea of what a typical professor's salary might look like, I always stumbled upon &quot;Head of Department&quot; salaries, which were considerably greater than other professor salaries. I liked the idea of being paid more, but I always dismissed the idea of becoming a &quot;Head of Department&quot; because I thought that their work was more related to administration than teaching or talking about the field of their department. (One of the main reasons I want to be a professor is the opportunity to be directly involved in the fields I'm passionate about every single day.) However, I recently traveled to a university in my state with the company I am interning at, and I met the head of the department of mechanical engineering. Though that is not my field of interest, I was very glad to have the chance to meet with her. I learned all about her day-to-day life as head of department: I learned that she is quite actively involved in many PhD students' projects, and oversees many research projects. There is also an administrative aspect in her job, but it isn't nearly as overwhelming or burdensome as I thought. Since the visit, I've become very interested in a job like hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my perception of &quot;Head of Department&quot; skewed? What can I do to be involved in my field like she is in hers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to learn about and teach my passions for a living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side question: How involved are deans of __ in their respective fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20284" LastEditorDisplayName="user20284" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T00:35:41.337" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T14:05:37.027" Title="What is life as &quot;Head of Department ____&quot; like?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-02T11:06:05.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have exact knowledge about what the life of a Head of Department Professor is, but looking at the Professors who act as heads of departments in my university, I can tell that they are equally involved in teaching as the other Professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply if you want to deduce if a particular head of department is involved in teaching and research, look at the number of his publications after he became head of department (I know, this information can be misleading), also look at the courses they teach. I have not noticed any change in those numbers (in my University) after a given Professor became head of a department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that they are more involved in administrative/managerial tasks. But, I think that is something that comes with experience. I assume you are a young scholar and eager to do teaching, but do you think you will have the same amount of desire after 20+ years on the field? Some managerial experience might look interesting then, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T11:06:05.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T12:14:12.897" Score="12" ViewCount="2706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most research profiles I've seen focus on a set of similar topics.&#xA;Does anyone have experience in partaking in / conducting research in 2+ disparate fields? (especially if 1 of the fields is pretty different than what they studied in an institution)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pure mathematics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;biology&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. solving an open math problem and studying purring in cats)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aerospace engineering&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;psychology&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. modeling vortices and researching psychological effects of isolation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person had interest in researching a multiple, ranging topics, what advice would you give them? How do you think they should go about doing it? (if you'd recommend they do it at all)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; - I'm an undergraduate mechanical engineering student. I'm interested in eventually researching two topics, one in my chosen field, one in genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20277" LastEditorUserId="20277" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T13:07:11.650" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T12:17:06.773" Title="How to do research in two very different fields?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-02T12:31:58.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this varies a lot depending on the field, the department and it's size.  In my experience department chairs/head of departments (US/UK terminology respectively, on the whole) spend the majority of their working time on administration, but will remain involved in research and teaching, though at a reduced level.  I think the degree to which they do this depends on their preferences. Those who are ready to stop or take a break from teaching and research can and people generally don't blame them; those who are still excited about it will find a way to continue them.  It all just depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I feel like there's a fallacy underlying your question.  You seem to think (forgive me if I'm wrong; I am reading a bit between the lines) that &quot;Head of Department&quot; is a separate career track or something.  In fact, I've never heard of a department head who wasn't a &quot;normal&quot; professor for 15 to 20 years before becoming head of department.  It's not something I have a special interest in doing, but I have every reason to think I'll probably do a stint or two as department chair 20 or so years from now.  So, at this stage in your life (your profile says you are 17), there's no reason to worry about whether you want to do it.  Assuming you go into academia, become a professor, and stick with for a couple of decades, then you can think about whether it's something that makes sense for you, in the context of your department or one doing an external search at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T18:47:51.347" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T18:47:51.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2014-08-02T13:11:12.930" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more point is that tenure &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; is a huge perk which lets the universities get away with the salaries considerably lower than in the industry and keep many smart people nevertheless, at least in the fields where leaving academe for industry &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T16:52:02.943" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T16:52:02.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T13:59:16.487" Score="3" ViewCount="1577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been researching a topic in Computer Science for several years now. The topic was interesting, but while I managed to get some conclusive results, I was not completely happy about them. It was like something was missing, but I knew that I really needed to talk to somebody more specialized in the topic, but unfortunately a lot of external professors that I contacted did not have enough time to collaborate. Anyway I submitted it to two conferences, which were ranked like B according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellence_in_Research_for_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) schema&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;A* - flagship conference&#xA;A - excellent conference, determined by a mix of indicators&#xA;B - good conference, determined by a mix of indicators&#xA;C - other ranked conference venues&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final verdict at both conferences was a weak reject. So I made the corrections that the reviewers suggested and submitted it to another conference. This new conference has a rank of C, but it deals with the subject that I was making research; the final verdict was accepted as a borderline paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the question that I have is that if I should present my paper at that conference, or should I try to fix other things and resubmit to other higher-ranked venues? For me it would be more practical to leave it as is, and let another researcher pick it up if she is so interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T16:45:42.607" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T14:44:12.240" Title="To publish or not to publish a paper in an ERA &quot;type C&quot; conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-02T14:08:28.400" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is that at least at US universities there seem to be two extremes for how departments are run. At one end, the Department Head or Department Chair is strong and has considerable influence over the direction of the department as a whole. In such places, the Chair can direct the research direction of the department, make faculty hiring decisions, and steer the department as though it were their larger research group. At the other extreme, the departmental committees really have the power. There, the Chair is more of a rubber stamp for the committee decisions and represents their wishes to outside entities. In these models, the Dean or Head of School or whoever the Chair reports to also has a lot of power over the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the weak Chair model, department insiders usually take turns being Chair and then return to being regular faculty after their turn is up. In the strong Chair model, a national or international search will be done to find a top candidate to come in and lead the department to glory. Such a Chair might run the department for much of the rest of their career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above are caricatures of the way departments work, but they give you an idea of much of the range of what is possible. In either model, the Chair may be involved to a greater or lesser degree in teaching and research depending on their preference and local culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T14:08:28.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26719" CreationDate="2014-08-02T14:18:15.883" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should have asked yourself this question before you submitted to the conference. Withdrawing your paper now, after it's been accepted, means you wasted a bunch of people's time (editor, reviewers, ...). Do unto others ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, given that it was accepted as a borderline paper and was rejected at two previous conferences may be a hint that your work is not perceived as top of the line by external referees. I doubt you can shoot much higher than what you have now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T14:18:15.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26716" CreationDate="2014-08-02T14:37:12.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be possible (though I would say extremely unlikely) for someone to do two PhDs at once. The sort of mind necessary to do that would necessarily be extremely rare. (As in someone at least 3 deviations or more past the standard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead if you really want to do research in two fields, I can imagine two realistic routes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Route 1:&lt;/strong&gt; (a) build a career in one discipline by pursuing the PhD and then getting hired for it and then (b) get a second PhD in the disparate field and research in that. The example I can think of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polkinghorne&quot;&gt;John Polkinghorne&lt;/a&gt;, physicist and theologian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Route 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Do a second field as a hobby while gainfully employed in a different arena. But generally that requires strong overlap or that one be an armchair-pursuable field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be fooled into doing an interdisciplinary PhD -- that generally either means you won't be prepared for any research at all or that you will be prepared for a single overlapping field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But depending on the specific avenue in mechanical engineering, there may be topics that do overlap with genetics -- such as DNA recombinance which involve machinery that can rapidly do DNA-typing or things like biophysics with flow mechanics. This would be a much more realistic goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not uncommon in the sciences these days -- to have studied a topic in say physics and be working on biology that is heavily-dated and equation oriented later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T14:37:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26716" CreationDate="2014-08-02T14:39:37.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find a way to tie math into damn near any field or topic. Often at the graduate level you end up working with tools from &quot;outside&quot; of your discipline to solve a problem within it, or using the machinery of your field to solve otherwise-untenable problems in another. It's getting very multi-disciplinary out here, and very translational, and whatever other term you like for that kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, if the tools are applicable across fields, it's no big deal: your literature familiarity just has to have more breadth than typical. If they're legitimately unrelated and you aren't interested in trying to connect then or your solutions to the problems in the fields, it will be a very hard row to hoe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a fellow MechE, take further classes in both and see which field looks most promising and exciting to you and follow that one professionally. Keep up with the other casually and consider how your understanding of one facilitates your work in the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T14:39:37.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26730" CreationDate="2014-08-02T14:49:15.423" Score="1" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Java course which they said to me that they can arrange a Bachelor's degree from &quot;The Chamber of Chartered Java Professionals International.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a little research my own, and from what I can see, they don't really have any verifiable information to confirm their existence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there such chamber that can give people a degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they can, is it a reputable degree?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My course is covers regular software engineering, including generic languages and sometimes specific languages. I also submitted a few assignments, and projects to the institute that I'm following the course with. From what I understand, they can make them equivalent to their degree requirements. However, their reputation and existence remain mysterious and I chose not to rely on what the institute says, which of course, technically, is a business.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20293" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T16:35:42.627" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T01:23:55.137" Title="Heard of Chamber of Chartered Java Professionals International?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26729" CreationDate="2014-08-02T15:22:51.827" Score="17" ViewCount="3465" Body="&lt;p&gt;In applying to graduate program, what are some ways to prove knowledge gained from self-study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Independently conduct research / create projects that require the knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Partake in research that requires the knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contribute to a project that requires the knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the former seems like an expensive hurdle in many experiment-heavy fields, and the latter two seem like a catch 22. You must collaborate with people to prove your knowledge, but you must prove your knowledge to be considered for collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20277" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T21:17:05.040" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T21:17:05.040" Title="How can I prove my self-studied knowledge?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26726" CreationDate="2014-08-02T15:58:54.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about giving a talk on what you have learned -- e.g. at the scientific student society (or perhaps there is a separate student seminar)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reasons this is not feasible, consider finding other students interested in the subject and form a (informal) study group to study this subject deeper. If you form such a group, you can also consider asking the professor who is an expert in the subject to (informally) guide/supervise this group in some way.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T16:36:28.050" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T16:36:28.050" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26726" CreationDate="2014-08-02T16:27:01.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have your own professional site (science blog, tasteful web comic, whatever) you can produce some original content that builds on the knowledge gained during your independent study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can manage to propose some minor extensions or future applications of that knowledge, even better, as it shows that you not only learned something but you have thought of where it can be applied in future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then just tactfully reference this content in your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T16:27:01.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26726" CreationDate="2014-08-02T16:29:41.007" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One may prove their knowledge by these aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may have a certificate of the courses they have passed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may have a publication or patent registration in the field of their personal studies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may have worked in the field of their knowledge and their projects and portfolio is a proof of their knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A website designer may not have any certification of their design knowledge, but the websites they have designed are the proof of their knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may have done voluntary/paid teaching at your undergraduate university or in an educational institute, so you have the certification of your teaching activity and that may be counted as a proof of your teaching and your knowledge. (Also teaching/research assistantships to a course which you have never passed but you did assistantship in that area.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may have some publications in the area of your knowledge, for instance, a published paper or book; or a contribution to a publication which is so related to your knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may have done some jobs related to your knowledge. An engineering design, done some code-developing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may have a recommendation letter from a professor in which has written that you have sit in their class for that course, but you have never registered for the course; so it proves that you have the knowledge of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as far as you are registering for a graduate program, you must fulfill their requirements not what is generally/logically reasonable or what seems to be acceptable. So it is better to provide all your proofs in your CV or their application process website and let them ask you for more official documents. Also, you can email them and ask for your special issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. It seems that your question indicates self-study knowledge, but some people may have done some non-degree programs and certificates of those courses may also prove their knowledge in the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="23901" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T19:50:39.957" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T19:50:39.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2014-08-02T16:42:05.363" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, degrees are given by universities, technological institutes, and other similar &lt;strong&gt;accredited&lt;/strong&gt; institutes of higher learning. A degree without such an accreditation in place offers extremely limited value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this does appear to be a &quot;real&quot; organization, it does not appear to have any accreditation, which would make its degrees worthless junk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T19:53:34.960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T19:53:34.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-02T18:24:05.847" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the great (mis)fortune of being a department chair for four years. This was at a small, not prestigious, liberal arts college. We use the &quot;weak&quot; chair model as mentioned by Bill Barth (which I think compromises such things as chair evaluations of faculty: pan someone, even fairly, and they will get the chance to return the favor). I was an associate professor when I took the position, it was my turn. I did get a course reduction, from four to three courses per semester, along with a minor stipend (I could have made more, with less time commitment, teaching five courses). There were the expected administrative duties: making schedules each semester, purchase orders, budget, etc. Since the position had no real power, I was a glorified secretary to the department. All but one of my facult were former chairs, but they all came to me with every little problem as if they had no idea of what to do. Finally, I reminded them they were former chairs and if they had some request that needed my approval. then they should get the necessary forms, fill them out, and bring them to me for signature. This solved that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it always seemes there was something to take care of. As an example of how frustrating things can be, I arrived at my office one day at 8:00AM with three things I wanted to do. I left for home at 6:00PM having done none of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was just beginning to solidify a research program when I took the job. When I was done, I seriously considered leaving academia. After a few years of decompression, I revived my enthusiasm for research and am getting back to speed, but those several years off, complicated by some family issues, really hurt me from a professional standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I've related my horror story, I should point out that there are some people at my school who honestly enjoy being chair. Nonetheless, I would caution anyone to think long and hard before taking the plunge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T18:24:05.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11536" CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:49:51.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps not exactly what you look for but, as a partial answer, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advanced Search&lt;/a&gt; feature of the directory of open access journals (DOAJ) lets you filter the open access journals by subject AND by publication fee. Unfortunately, you cannot infer from the DOAJ data whether these journals are on JCR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the DOAJ search results for open access journals in Computer Science with zero publication charges are at &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/search?source=%7B%22query%22:%7B%22filtered%22:%7B%22query%22:%7B%22match_all%22:%7B%7D%7D,%22filter%22:%7B%22bool%22:%7B%22must%22:[%7B%22term%22:%7B%22_type%22:%22journal%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22index.classification.exact%22:%22Science%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22index.classification.exact%22:%22Electronic%20computers.%20Computer%20science%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22bibjson.author_pays.exact%22:%22N%22%7D%7D]%7D%7D%7D%7D%7D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this URL&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, as a next step one could compare (by hand or perhaps using some software) the list resulting from the DOAJ search with the list from JCR for (a given branch of) computer science or search in JCR (e.g. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR?RQ=TITLES_FULL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the list of full journal titles&lt;/a&gt;) for specific journal names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the DOAJ listing includes links to home pages of journals and often data about the journal impact factor (if any) or JCR listing are available at these home pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a specific example resulting from a quick attempt to compare the lists, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jair.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research&lt;/a&gt; is open access with zero publication charges and has a 2013 IF of 0.904.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="10483" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T20:32:06.427" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T20:32:06.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:51:21.937" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heard of Chamber of Chartered Java Professionals International?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. If they can [offer a degree], is it a reputable degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T19:51:21.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13122" CreationDate="2014-08-02T20:51:24.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/search?source=%7B%22query%22:%7B%22filtered%22:%7B%22query%22:%7B%22match_all%22:%7B%7D%7D,%22filter%22:%7B%22bool%22:%7B%22must%22:[%7B%22term%22:%7B%22bibjson.author_pays.exact%22:%22N%22%7D%7D]%7D%7D%7D%7D%7D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for DOAJ search listing open access journals specifically involving the no-author-charges condition, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://doaj.org/search?source=%7B%22query%22:%7B%22filtered%22:%7B%22query%22:%7B%22match_all%22:%7B%7D%7D,%22filter%22:%7B%22bool%22:%7B%22must%22:[%7B%22term%22:%7B%22_type%22:%22journal%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22index.classification.exact%22:%22Science%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22index.classification.exact%22:%22Electronic%20computers.%20Computer%20science%22%7D%7D,%7B%22term%22:%7B%22bibjson.author_pays.exact%22:%22N%22%7D%7D]%7D%7D%7D%7D%7D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another one&lt;/a&gt; restricted to the computer science (again with zero publication charges, of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I do not quite see how to restrict the results of the above searches to meet your other criteria(accepting (La)TeX submissions etc.) without checking the specific journals by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T20:51:24.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26738" CreationDate="2014-08-02T21:43:11.773" Score="25" ViewCount="3618" Body="&lt;p&gt;My colleagues (grad student + their advisor) from my department approached me, a fourth year PhD student in STEM, for comments on a manuscript written on a topic related to my research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In two iterations over email, I pointed out serious logical fallacies in their arguments, instances of misleading references and attempts to skirt crucial issues in the paper. Most of the issues in the manuscript are still unresolved but the authors have thanked me for my comments in the acknowledgement section. I'm uncomfortable with my name being included in the acknowledgement section of an incorrect and misleading paper submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be wise to politely request for my name to be removed from the acknowledgements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6800" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T21:55:06.107" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T04:41:47.860" Title="How to respond to my name being included in acknowledgements of incorrect/misleading paper whose authors ignored my recommendations?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26736" CreationDate="2014-08-02T23:37:00.813" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;How acknowledgments work is always a bit of a judgment call, but to me the following principle seems reasonable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are free to acknowledge anyone in any paper &lt;em&gt;as long as what you acknowledge them for&lt;/em&gt; is factually accurate.  If you have any reason to believe that the acknowledged party might take issue with the factual accuracy of what you write in your acknowledgments, it would be honorable to show them a draft of the paper and ask for their blessing on the wording of the acknowledgment.  If this causes them to ask to be omitted from the acknowledgments, then it seems reasonable to honor this request unless you feel that removing this acknowledgment compromises academic integrity.  (For instance, if you are including significant work of the acknowledged party, then just because they don't want you to mention that does not necessarily make it okay to do so.  This creates a sticky wicket that other questions and answers on this site have addressed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it follows from the principle that whether acknowledgments are acceptable depends more on &lt;em&gt;what they acknowledge you for&lt;/em&gt; than whether they drop your name or not.  For instance, suppose they thank you for &quot;helpful conversations&quot;.  If you did in fact speak (or write...) to them about their work, then if they say the conversation was helpful, how can you argue?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that most savvy academics understand that just dropping someone's name in the acknowledgments does not mean that the paper contains their imprimatur.  Nevertheless it is shady to acknowledge someone -- especially someone very famous and eminent -- purely for the cachet that their name may convey to less than savvy readers.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dms.umontreal.ca/~andrew/PDF/VS.pdf&quot;&gt;Here is&lt;/a&gt; a famous review of Marilyn vos Savant's book on Fermat's Last Theorem that calls out the author along these lines: she acknowledged some very famous mathematicians, who when contacted by her surely did not say anything to indicate that the material in her book was correct (not only does it contain errors, but it contains errors that any practitioner or serious student of mathematics would regard as bizarre). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case at hand: I think the OP would be within her rights to mention that she would rather not be acknowledged in the paper.  Whether she wants to indicate that this is because she still finds the work to be significantly flawed depends on all kinds of social and political factors beyond the scope of this answer.  As to that I would only say: in my opinion, simply very politely asking for your name to be removed from the paper without getting into why is probably a higher percentage strategy than indicating that the work is still problematic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Let me add that the principle above is meant to be on the minimalist side.  In practice, if you think that someone is not going to appreciate being acknowledged in your paper for whatever reason, then unless there are academic integrity issues involved in omitting the acknowledgment it seems wise to do so.  Once I acknowledged a friend of mine in a preprint in a way which was factually accurate but nevertheless embarrassing to him: he simply did not want to be associated with something that he viewed as intellectually trivial.  I took his name out of the later drafts of the paper.  This incident has made me think more carefully about how acknowledgments will be received by the acknowledged party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T04:41:47.860" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T04:41:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12792" CreationDate="2014-08-03T00:17:05.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add an international perspective: In Denmark (and some other, especially Northern, European countries), tenure is not unique to academia. Here an employer is obligated to offer you a permanent contract after three years or discontinue your employment; academia operates on this general principle. &quot;Tenured&quot; faculty here have permanent contracts just like someone working in any other field, as opposed to the fixed-term contracts held by postdocs, assistant professors, and temporary employees elsewhere in the marketplace. So, at least in some countries, tenure is a general workplace guarantee, not something special to university faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T00:17:05.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26726" CreationDate="2014-08-03T00:17:50.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way of proving your knowledge is getting a letter of recommendation from a professor, or someone who can vouch for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite professors told me, &quot;If you ever come by some knowledge where the source isn't obvious I'll vouch for your knowledge of it if you can demonstrate it to me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T00:17:50.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="508" CreationDate="2014-08-03T01:28:59.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A person is nominated for a Nobel Prize by someone familiar with his work, and the Nobel Prize committee judges it for its originality, depth, and service to mankind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's barely possible for someone to make a highly original contribution to a field outside of the usual academic circles. In the unlikely event that this occurs, the Nobel Prize committee will consider it on its own merits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the Nobel Prize was awarded to a new finance concept called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/press.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;microlending&lt;/a&gt;, developed by a banker, not a professor. Admittedly, it was the Nobel Peace prize, but it could have been awarded as the Economics prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:28:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2014-08-03T01:41:35.797" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many fields, it is common for the advisor to &quot;suggest&quot; research projects to graduate students (including PhD students). In my own area of mathematics, for example, this is the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is give and take between the student and the advisor about exactly what project the student will work on, and one can never know the outcome of a research project before it is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a well known phenomenon in math that some advisors have a vision for a long-term research program with many required intermediate results, each of which they will assign to a different PhD student as a thesis project. Depending on how many students they advise, not all the students may work on these results, but many of them will.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are some advisors who give students more flexibility to choose a thesis project. But the project will always need to be in an area where the advisor has real expertise - otherwise, the advisor is not a good choice for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth keeping in mind that the goal of graduate education is to get students to a point where, &lt;em&gt;at the end&lt;/em&gt;, they are able to select their own research projects and carry them out independently. This does not mean that the majority of students are already able to do so when they enter graduate school.  It is easy for a graduate student to take on more than they expect, if they choose a thesis project unwisely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you will find an advisor (1) who is very good at advising; (2) who  you can work with successfully; (3) who works on topics you are very interested in; and (4) whose students have a history of good jobs after graduation. But sometimes it is not possible to achieve all of (1)-(4), in which case you have to compromise. For some students I have known, giving up on (3) was easy - after all, working on something long enough often makes it interesting. For others, not having (3) would be a deal breaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:41:35.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="508" CreationDate="2014-08-03T01:42:31.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible, if you're a genius on the order of Srinivasa Ramanujan and can invent an entirely new, provable/repeatable, and productive field from first principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely for a mere mortal? You've probably got better odds of winning the Lottery, being struck by lightning, or fill-in-your-least-likely-scenario-here. Not because there's any prejudice against autodidacts, but because the odds of someone selftaught actually finding something new -- and being correct about it -- are just not that great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for it. Just don't expect recognition of that kind until you have produced work with is widely agreed to be truly revolutionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Except, as noted, for the peace prize. Which is sometimes given based on hope rather than achievement. Even then, you'll probably have to be someone who has worldwide recognition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:42:31.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-03T01:47:17.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Department heads&quot; come in different types. Some are like the kind that you say, basically faculty members with some administrative duties. Others are more &quot;political&quot; types, who are better noted for their administrative, than academic abilities. These two archtypes will fulfill the role at different times and situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing about the experience of my father, a retired civil engineering professor, who spent a year and a half as the Acting Department Head. It was an &quot;interim&quot; position, held after a &quot;political&quot; type left, in which the priority was to restore the confidence of the faculty. My father participated heavily in PhD thesis supervision (a favorite activity of his), and worked closely with the Faculty Senate (which would be his next destination). All this was made possible by the &quot;temporary&quot; nature of the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this changed when there was a new dean, who wanted a Department Head to &quot;kick the asses of the full professors.&quot; My father's successor was a tough minded man (a Holocaust survivor, for starters), who did just that. But the pressures of that role were too much, even for him, and he had to step down after several years. While he was there, he relied on my father, who had been a department head, while being a good link to the Faculty Senate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you could do well as one type of Department Head but maybe not the other. So you need to keep your eyes out on the institution to determine which is more likely to be the case. Bear in mind that is analysis could be complicated by the fact that the institution's needs may change from time to time as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:47:17.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-03T04:03:20.000" Score="19" ViewCount="1778" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an economics PhD student; I'm seeking to wrap up my PhD and do something outside of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't plan on ever being in academia, is there any value (career-wise) for me to get any of my work published in economics journals?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I'm looking for answers pertaining specifically to economics; but information on other fields is welcome too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To elaborate (following some comments):&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I do not want to stay in academic economics is that too much (though certainly not all) of it is bullshit I cannot believe in. (This of course is just my humble opinion.) If I wanted to stay in the game and do well, I feel I'd be forced to manufacture similar BS that I simply don't believe in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, doing this PhD was for me a mistake. If and when I do get my PhD, I will not even feel proud about it. But now that I'm near the finish line, I reckon I may as well cross it, if only for the credential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm looking at working for one of the MOOCs. I enjoy teaching and believe that teaching/education is important. But it is also possible that I might do something completely different; I don't quite know yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm thinking: Should I just try to graduate ASAP with the lowest quality work possible? Or should I invest a bit more time and effort to polishing my work up, so that some of it can get published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20311" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T15:11:23.927" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T02:15:49.973" Title="What is the value of journal publications outside academia?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;economics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="185" CreationDate="2014-08-03T04:26:28.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen one case that almost led to firing a tenured faculty member. The university had found him guilty of misconduct and tried to get him to resign; as far as I can tell this involved incentives more than threats. But when that approach failed, the university began proceedings to revoke his tenure and fire him. The &quot;definition&quot; of tenure at my university amounts to specifying what those procedures must include, and they make the the process so cumbersome that no one would want to invoke them except in extreme cases. In this case, the person finally reached an agreement with the university and resigned, on the day that the Board of Regents was to meet to revoke his tenure. Even so, he apparently got come concessions from the university. In particular, a short time later, the people involved in the tenure revocation hearings, even those like me who were only indirectly involved, were informed by the university's lawyers that, under the resignation agreement, we are not allowed to divulge who this person is.  As far as I know, that gag order is still in force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T04:26:28.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2014-08-03T06:51:32.593" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are planning to work outside academia as a specialist in your field, then you need to have academic knowledge. I don't see any value of having PhD papers publication while you are seeking non-research job positions; but, a wise employer will decide upon your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as most of your time as a PhD student has been spent on research, so the employer is probably seeking the out put of the years you spent in university. These are the years you did not have enough freedom to work in industry, so the question here is what this candidate did at the university.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody wants to hire a tired and depressed candidate who did not do well in his studies as a student and it may come to mind that he will be as tired as the years he was student, why to have him in company?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by having publications in your CV, you not make your CV comparative and comparable to the other candidates registering for the job; but also you will show that you are an ideal person in every situation. When you attend university, you did your best, finished your degree and have some publications; and the employer becomes more sure about choosing you. Percents bellow is my approximation of the need of publications in job market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to generally answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to be hired somewhere:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;100%&lt;/strong&gt; If it is a research job and related to your studies; then you absolutely need to show your research capabilities. So you need to prove that can do the research chores and then having paper publications is good idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;80%&lt;/strong&gt; If it is a research job and not so related to your field, then the title of your papers may have no significant value but you need to show your ability to conduct research and having publications shows that you have the ability and the knowledge to do research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt; If it is a non-research job and related to your field, it seems that having publications does not make any sense but you have to show what you did in your education years, so if you don't have work experience in your CV, show that you have published something, show that you are expert in your field, have something in your CV!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10%&lt;/strong&gt; If it is a non-research job and not so related to your fields of study; then you may not need that much publications (see my answer above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0% to 100%&lt;/strong&gt; If you are going to work on your own and do not have any plans to be hired somewhere, do some business, be an entrepreneur, etc., you are the one who wants to hire you, so having publications isn't significant. But keep in mind that having research publications gives you ideas to work with, opens your eyes as a specialist and opens many more job opportunities than a person who has not any insight to research. So having publications may give you many more opportunities than having no publications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, be firm in every step of your life, finish your PhD with most output and publications; and enter a job which is so related to your field and make use of the things you learn during your studies at the university. If you do not gain much from your education, then it seems that you have lost your time for a PhD. So what was the use to get a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I think that your question highly depends on answering to this question: What are you going to do after graduation? And, What the consequences of not having publications would be in your future careers and jobs. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are the only one who can answer these questions precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="12481" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T02:15:49.973" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T02:15:49.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26716" CreationDate="2014-08-03T08:13:58.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multidisciplinary research is currently a popular buzzword among the sciences, with a lot of (PhD) funding requiring that research students span multiple departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you will need to combine them in some way, you cannot research completely unrelated topics simultaneously (or at least find it very hard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working in Systems Biology, which spans Biology and Mathematics, applying mathematical modelling especially to experimental biological data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relatively new discipline of Synthetic Biology might be suited to you, which seeks to apply the rules of engineering to molecular biology. This is an extension of the now standard practise of genetic engineering in biology. It is attempting to deconstruct biology into distinct parts and devices which can then be combined in novel ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other pairings such as Physics and Biology are also very suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At higher research levels, the subject lines tend to get blurred, you use whatever you need to answer the question most effectively, whether or not that falls within the discipline you trained for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20313" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T08:13:58.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26716" CreationDate="2014-08-03T08:54:31.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second user20313's advice to try to combine the two fields instead of having two completely separate projects in different areas. An additional benefit is that there may be &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot;, that is, you can get some interesting results from the applying standard methods and theory of an area to another, where they are less known and standard. There are lots of researchers that can do research in one topic, but very few people that know the language, problems and methods of two different fields and can &quot;bridge the gap&quot; and act as interface between two research groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works particularly well with computer science, mathematics and statistics; everyone needs them, but often they have no idea that they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even if multidisciplinarity is a well-received 'buzzword' at the funding stage, it might count against you in some cases. In recent times people rely a lot (too much, arguably) on paper and citation counts to evaluate the output of a researcher; they may not realize that they have to normalize your impact factors and citations to the standard of a different field, or just strike you down because &quot;his/her publication history is only partially relevant to the subject&quot;. Much depend on how the hiring system is organized in your country, though. This will only matter much later in your career though, when looking for a postdoc or a tenure-track position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, my advice is &lt;strong&gt;go for it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T08:54:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26785" CreationDate="2014-08-03T15:18:08.120" Score="81" ViewCount="10945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an Asian student working with a European prof. My adviser told me several times that when he read my writings (our papers), he just wanted to rewrite it.&#xA;He told me that my English was rather OK, but &quot;the way Oriental people think is different from us&quot;. By &quot;us&quot; he meant Europeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My adviser could not tell me exactly what was the difference. So I would like to ask if anybody here has experience working with Asian co-authors, and has the same feeling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this only my problem and my adviser is trying to avoid being straightforward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I do have problem with my writing. My first conf. paper had been rejected 6 times before it was accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the answers. I just want to make clear that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking about the narrative of a paper, and how the content is represented. I'm not asking about the use of language expressions or passive/active writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Judging the comment of my adviser racist is unfair to him. He treats students like friends and 3 out of 5 of his students, including me, have been Asian (and I guess he has this feeling with all 3 of us).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15501" LastEditorUserId="13926" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T13:22:55.027" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T16:18:26.287" Title="Do Asian authors have a different style of academic writing from European authors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-03T16:17:59.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if it is fair to distinguish between &quot;Asian&quot; and &quot;European&quot; as such. Modern scientific writing is highly condensed and certainly follows a certain style. This style can perhaps clash with other traditional ways of expressing matters such as to never contradict senior scientists and other more regional etiquette based issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basis is to have good command of English and to get to a point where you can express your thoughts clearly and concisely. This is difficult for all and the way to learn it is to follow good examples. You should carefully look at articles you read and try to learn from the good examples (not everything you read will be good!). There are also many books that you can study and use as a reference although reading a book will not be enough. In the end it is only practise that makes perfect and for some of us (being a non-English native myself) it takes time and a need for good examples to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T16:17:59.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26429" CreationDate="2014-08-03T16:48:20.797" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several studies have examined the impact of extended test-taking time on performance at all academic grade levels. Many of these studies focus on individuals with learning disabilities, but generally include students without learning disabilities as a control group. I have summarized some studies here, and provided a list of additional studies which may be of interest. The studies indicate that other individual factors (academic ability and skills, perception of time, and method of test administration) may impact test performance in concert with or in addition with extended time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study of learning disabled (LD) and non-learning disabled (NLD) college students being given a reading test that assessed vocabulary and comprehension assessed outcomes for those who received an extended test period of time and a half compared to the normal period (Ofiesh, 2000). Individuals with LD saw significant improvements in the extended time period compared to NLD students. Some NLD students did show improved scores in the extended period, but the difference was not significant. Similarly, in a study assessing the performance of elementary, middle, and high school students on the Stanford 10 achievement tests who received either the recommended amount of time or extra time, the authors concluded that NLD students exhibited no benefit or detriment with extended testing time (Brooks, Case, &amp;amp; Young, 2003). This did not vary whether they received a few minutes up to double the recommended time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study of 6th grade students taking a standardized test found that NLD students did not see a significant increase in scores in an extended-time condition, but LD students did (Huesman &amp;amp; Frisbie, 2000). However, NLD scores also varied based on instructions. When NLD students were given extra time, and told to take their time, their scores improved; when given extra time but told to work “quickly” but to still do their best work, they did not significantly improve, possibly because they were placed into a mindset of being timed. Another study examined the impact of extended time (1.5) on both multiple choice and problem solving tests in three university courses, but found no improvements in performance (Armitage, 1999). However, in a study of prospective graduate students who took the GRE writing test, participants who were given 60 minutes performed better than those given only 40 minutes (Powers &amp;amp; Fowles, 1996). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study of SAT performance for nearly 2,000 LD/ADHD or NLD high school students was examined for groups allowed standard time or 1.5 or 2 times the allotted time for verbal and math sections (Mandibach, Bridgeman, Cahalan-Laitusis, &amp;amp; Trapani, 2005).  They found that NLD medium- and high-ability students performed best in the 1.5 time condition, but low-ability examinees saw no benefit. Extra time affected math more than verbal performance. Strong conclusions about LD student performance were non-significant in part due to small sample sizes. The authors note that low-ability students may not benefit from extra time because they lack needed problem-solving skills, while medium-ability students may benefit because they are able to check their work. Less benefit was seen for high ability students who may not have needed the extra time. The authors also noted that for longer tests, breaking the material into sections and setting time limits per section seemed to benefit all students, rather than asking them to pace themselves across all material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study found no direct effect of extended time on written essay quality for college students, but did find that student who were allowed to use a word processor wrote more than students who provided handwritten answers, and that typed (but not hand written) essays demonstrated a link between length and quality (Lovett, Lewandowski, Berger, &amp;amp; Gathje, 2010). The authors propose it was not time that led to these improvements, but the flexibility to edit their answers when typed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review of the evaluation of written exams cites several other studies regarding the impact of time on writing quality (Cho, 2003) and may be of interest. A report by Tindal and Fuchs (2000, pgs 26 – 35) provides a concise summary of the literature of test extensions or untimed tests from kindergarten through post-secondary education, including specific summaries of each study found in their review. This might be a good place to start in terms of additional literature.  Although most of the examples I described here found few effects for non-learning disabled students receiving extended time on tests, I’ve also listed additional literature which may provide alternative results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referenced studies:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Armitage, C. (1999). &lt;em&gt;Extended time limits on university examinations&lt;/em&gt; (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/24993/1/47990Armitage.pdf&quot;&gt;http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/24993/1/47990Armitage.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brooks, T. E., Case, B. J., and Young, M. J. Pearson assessment report. (2003). &lt;em&gt;Timed versus untimed testing conditions and student performance.&lt;/em&gt; Pearson Education, Inc. Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/tmrs_rg/TimedUntimed.pdf&quot;&gt;http://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/tmrs_rg/TimedUntimed.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cho, Y. (2003). Assessing writing: Are we bound by only one method?. &lt;em&gt;Assessing Writing, 8&lt;/em&gt;(3), 165-191. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/S1075-2935(03)00018-7&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/S1075-2935(03)00018-7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huesman, R. L., Jr., &amp;amp; Frisbie, D. A. (2000, April). &lt;em&gt;The validity of the ITBS Reading Comprehension test scores for learning disabled and non learning disabled students under extended-time conditions&lt;/em&gt; (ED 442 210). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association, New Orleans LA. Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442210.pdf&quot;&gt;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442210.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lovett, B. J., Lewandowski, L. J., Berger, C., &amp;amp; Gathje, R. A. (2010). Effects of response mode and time allotment on college students’ writing. &lt;em&gt;Journal of College Reading and Learning, 40&lt;/em&gt;(2), 64-79. Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ887306.pdf&quot;&gt;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ887306.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mandibach, E. B., Bridgeman, B., Cahalan-Laitusis, C., &amp;amp; Trapani, C. (2005). &lt;em&gt;The impact of extended time on SAT test performance.&lt;/em&gt; College Board Research Report No. 2005-8 – 35 pages. The College Board; New York. ETS RR-05-20. Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2005-8-impact-extended-time-sat-test-performance.pdf&quot;&gt;https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2005-8-impact-extended-time-sat-test-performance.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ofiesh, N. S. (2000). Using processing speed tests to predict the benefit of extended test time for university students with learning disabilities. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 14&lt;/em&gt;(1), 39-56. Retrieved from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ649045.pdf&quot;&gt;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ649045.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Powers, D. E., &amp;amp; Fowles, M. E. (1996). Effects of applying different time limits to a proposed GRE writing test. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Educational Measurement, 33&lt;/em&gt;(4), 433-452. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1996.tb00500.x&quot;&gt;doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1996.tb00500.x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tindal, G., &amp;amp;. Fuchs, L. (2000). &lt;em&gt;A summary of research on test changes: An empirical basis for defining accommodations&lt;/em&gt; (ED 442 245). Lexington, KY: Mid-South Regional Resource Center. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442245.pdf&quot;&gt;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442245.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional studies:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alster, E. H. (1997). The effects of extended time on algebra test scores for college students with and without learning disabilities. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30&lt;/em&gt;(2), 222-227. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/002221949703000210&quot;&gt;doi:10.1177/002221949703000210&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Calahan-Laitusis, C. (2004). &lt;em&gt;Accommodations on high-stakes writing tests for students with disabilities.&lt;/em&gt; Princeton, NJ: ETS. Retrieved from: &lt;code&gt;http://144.81.87.152/Media/Research/pdf/RR-04-13.pdf&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cohen, A. S., Gregg, N., &amp;amp; Deng, M. (2005). The Role of Extended Time and Item Content on a High‐Stakes Mathematics Test. &lt;em&gt;Learning Disabilities Research &amp;amp; Practice, 20&lt;/em&gt;(4), 225-233. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2005.00138.x&quot;&gt;doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2005.00138.x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Crawford, L., Helwig, R., &amp;amp; Tindal, G. (2004). Writing Performance Assessments How Important Is Extended Time?. &lt;em&gt;Journal of learning disabilities, 37&lt;/em&gt;(2), 132-142. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/00222194040370020401&quot;&gt;doi:10.1177/00222194040370020401&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knoch, U., &amp;amp; Elder, C. (2010). Validity and fairness implications of varying time conditions on a diagnostic test of academic English writing proficiency. &lt;em&gt;System,38&lt;/em&gt;(1), 63-74. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.system.2009.12.006&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/j.system.2009.12.006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lewandowski, L. J., Lovett, B. J., Parolin, R., Gordon, M., &amp;amp; Codding, R. S. (2007). Extended time accommodations and the mathematics performance of students with and without ADHD. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment,25&lt;/em&gt;(1), 17-28. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/0734282906291961&quot;&gt;doi:10.1177/0734282906291961&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lewandowski, L. J., Lovett, B. J., &amp;amp; Rogers, C. L. (2008). Extended Time as a Testing Accommodation for Students With Reading Disabilities Does a Rising Tide Lift All Ships?. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 26&lt;/em&gt;(4), 315-324. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/0734282908315757&quot;&gt;doi:10.1177/0734282908315757&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Munger, G. F., &amp;amp; Loyd, B. H. (1991). Effect of speededness on test performance of handicapped and nonhandicapped examinees. &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Educational Research, 85&lt;/em&gt;(1), 53-57. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1080/00220671.1991.10702812&quot;&gt;doi:10.1080/00220671.1991.10702812&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Runyan, M. K. (1991). The effect of extra time on reading comprehension scores for university students with and without learning disabilities. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24&lt;/em&gt;(2), 104-108. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/002221949102400207&quot;&gt;doi:10.1177/002221949102400207&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T18:40:36.280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T18:40:36.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-03T17:15:03.830" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your advisor's statement was not well-stated, but there is a kernel of truth: people speaking different languages express themselves very differently, and this carries over to writing. It is not just a matter of &quot;European&quot; versus &quot;Asian&quot;; even among European languages, there is tremendous variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider the use of passive voice. English uses the passive voice much more frequently than German, while German uses it much more frequently than French (where it is to be avoided as much as possible, with the use of reflexive and generic third-person subjects). These characteristics, along with others, show up when people attempt to write in another language, because that is &quot;what they know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Asian languages are so different from European languages in structure, syntax, grammar, and even basic organization (logograms versus phonograms, for instance), it is natural that it will take some adjustment from what can be written in an Asian language to how one would write in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would make sure to ask if your university offers training in academic writing in English, rather than just let your advisor do all the work. It will be a skill that you will need to develop in the future regardless of who fixes things now, so it's better if you learn it now rather than wait until you really need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T17:15:03.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26756" CreationDate="2014-08-03T18:34:49.453" Score="14" ViewCount="6710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a literature review for a masters thesis in the sciences, and I have a ton of sources that cover the topic.  Many specific points are covered &lt;em&gt;ad nauseam&lt;/em&gt;, and many similar ideas can be cited multiple times.  My question is how many is acceptable?  Is there a general rule for citing sources per sentence/idea?  Does more look better?  Basically, is there a limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20265" LastEditorUserId="17548" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T13:57:22.877" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T13:57:22.877" Title="Maximum number of citations per sentence?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26755" CreationDate="2014-08-03T19:04:11.227" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short and somewhat unsatisfactory answer is: &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;. There is no formal limit but obviously too many becomes impractical. If you can reference a huge number of references for a single statement (sentence) it is normal to pick one or possibly a few by using a format indicating these references are just examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g., Smith et al., 1943; Turner and Anthony, 1963)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;some statement by, for example, Smith et al. (1943) and Turner and Anthony (1963)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming Harvard style formatting in these examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly when it is reasonable to show examples and when one actually have to show al references is a matter of context. If you, for example, have a series of references that together build up some matter and where none is more important than the other and none summarize the other, it could be necessary to list them all regardless of how many there are. I suggest you try to look at a number of different papers of a similar type (literature review) to the one you are writing to see how others handle such instances. You should also look at other masters thesis if you have the possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point of this is to know when it is sufficient to list only (good) examples rather than all possible references. This is of course a matter of training and learning to assess when which format is appropriate. It is therefore necessary to assess when papers simply duplicate each other (from whatever view point you reference) or when  they each contribute something unique that merits their reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T19:09:53.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26755" CreationDate="2014-08-03T19:42:15.197" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;And to add to Peter Jansson, don't over do it. A literature review in an article is meant as a general reference, so the reader can get &quot;up to speed&quot; in the state of the art of the topic under discussion. In your thesis, you have to show that you are able to search the literature, you understand it, and are able to extract the important information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put every single article, you are not fulfilling any. On the one hand, the reader will not know what are the most relevant articles for your work. On the other front, anyone can get all the articles published in a subfield in the last couple of years and write a sentence, based on the abstract and the figures, in just a few days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, show that you have comprehended the literature by finding the most informative subset of articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T19:42:15.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26755" CreationDate="2014-08-03T19:56:07.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some more concrete thoughts (background is biological sciences):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;particular point&quot; may be covered &lt;em&gt;ad nauseum&lt;/em&gt; in backgrounds and introductions of papers in the field, but where did that idea originate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite review papers sparingly. I generally cite reviews only when pointing out that there's a tangentially related body of work well covered in someone else's review.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only time to cite MANY sources for a particular point is when the point is (or is considered) controversial. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="14719" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T18:23:54.980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T18:23:54.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-03T19:57:58.930" Score="1" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing Master's in Applied Science in Civil Engineering. In my research I work with big data analysis which has gotten a fancy new name in past few years &quot;Data Science&quot;. When I joined the master's program I didn't knew much about programming and had basic knowledge of statistical analysis. Over the period of about 2 years I learned a lot about data analysis in R language, developing data apps, creating interactive documents, etc. Although my research area had no direct relation with any of those things, I enjoyed learning them and using them in getting insights about data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this journey has been very frustrating because I could get very little useful knowledge for my research study. My 2 supervisors have been very supportive and both have asked me to continue my work and switch to PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part of me long for getting out in the 'field' and have a 9 to 5 job with set amount of tasks everyday. But at the same time I am afraid to leave academia as this is all I've ever done in my career (worked as a Lecturer previously and now have graduate assistant positions). Money is another concern as I've not yet determined how much I would be able to get in scholarships/ grants during PhD.&#xA;I don't know how to keep myself motivated continuously during research, so there are always some days when I just don't do anything. I am really confused at this stage as to what should I do, complete my master's in next 4 months and graduate or go for a PhD. What are your thoughts/ experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20319" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:35:02.247" Title="Should I switch to PhD or graduate with a Master's?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26759" CreationDate="2014-08-03T20:05:34.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't stick around for a PhD because you're afraid to do something else. A PhD is something that you should do because you're motivated to use the skills you acquire in the PhD in your later career (either as a researcher, or in a research-oriented field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not excited about being a PhD student, then it's not worth it in the long run to be miserable for several years of your life to obtain the degree. Moreover, because the PhD can limit your ability to take certain jobs—because of the perception of overqualification—if you're not motivated, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: Choose to do something because you want to be there—not because you're afraid to be somewhere else!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T20:05:34.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26472" CreationDate="2014-08-03T20:28:55.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, many good answers are already included in the comment section, but Let my try to summarize and extend this a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, there are good reasons for not involving the student (you can be more honest, the student can not pre-select). To my knowledge, ther eare at least three different submission types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Student sends in recommendation which is written openly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students has to submit letter of recommendation, but it must be enclosed in a sealed envelope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;letter of recommendation has to be sent directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chosen method might not only depend on the institution, but also on the funding scheme if the student gets financial support. The sheer number of possible combinations, combined with funding schemes which might vary from year to year makes the existence of a complete list extremely unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to  follow the advice given by Stephan Kolassa to let the student figure out how the process works. It might be good to tell the student that if there are several options, you would prefer to send in the letter directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="56633" LastEditDate="2021-02-12T18:24:37.233" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T18:24:37.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-04T00:30:28.990" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought it was just me. I have had the very same feeling. I am married to a Chinese lady and her sister stayed with us for some time while attending to her graduate studies here in Sydney, Australia. I would often review her writing and constantly had the deep urge I wanted to restructure it --- not merely fix grammar and style, but restructure bottom-up. I didn't attribute it to culture or language at the time and usually resisted the urge to rewrite and confined myself to correcting just the spelling, but having read this post, I have to say it deeply resonates! I think there was a difference in the way thoughts were connected and in the flow of reasoning that was employed. I saw connections, but constantly asked myself &quot;why&quot; as if to compensate for something she'd omitted. The mental connections were there but somehow structured differently. I've spent considerable time in Canada, the US, UK, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and China. There are differences between European cultures also, but what I've seen in difference between Asian and European styles goes well beyond this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20324" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T21:41:10.097" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T21:41:10.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T01:00:09.387" Score="6" ViewCount="3442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to apply for a PhD positions and it says to include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a cover letter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research plan – this should be a personal statement motivating why you are applying for this position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually put in the cover letter the statement of why I am applying, but in this case how should I separate both of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:25:44.760" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:25:44.760" Title="Differences between cover letter and research plan?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;application-cover-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-04T04:47:58.243" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statement, while somewhat sloopy, definitely true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different cultures has different rhetoric styles, and that definitely influence how essays are written and how arguments are built up. I have several Japanese and Chinese co-authors, but more experience with the former ones. E.g. the Japanese style of argumentation is often described as circular, and there is a whole bunch of literature on how this style is different from the Western traditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it bothers you the best thing you can do is to read papers you consider good and understand how they build up their arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps:&#xA;While you stated that your command of English is good, it is definitely a major issue with many Asian authors, too. It is very typical to see &quot;recycled&quot; sentences and phrases all over in their writing, which are often used off the context or with slightly misfitting meaning, without real connection to the text. This can destroy the flow of any argument and are pretty big turn offs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T04:47:58.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26764" CreationDate="2014-08-04T04:51:56.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the discussion of research in a cover letter is much briefer than a research plan. The former is generally one or two paragraphs, while the research plan for PhD positions is typically one to two pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good &quot;research plan&quot; (or in this case, more accurately a &quot;statement of purpose&quot;) should explain why and how your past and present experiences prepare you to undertake the topic you'd like to study as a PhD student. Note that this is not meant to be a &quot;life story&quot;—we don't care what you did when you were five years old. Instead, tell us about &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; experience: research, professional experience, service work, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T04:51:56.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2014-08-04T05:25:49.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason I do not want to stay in academic economics is that too much (though certainly not all) of it is [BS] I cannot believe in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly because you think there are so much BS there, you should publish your papers if they are not BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would review my manuscripts to see if they are good if I were you. If I believe they are of good quality, i.e. non-BS, I would submit them to the journals for peer review. If they do not match good quality standard, I would improve them so that they are not the same as those BS I saw in some journals. I then submit them to the quality journals which do not publish BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. In my opinion, your question really has nothing do with where you are going to be and I consider MOOCs is part of Academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T05:25:49.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26557" CreationDate="2014-08-04T06:16:24.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Endnote can do such a task but you have to play a little bit with the fields in a reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each reference entry in endnote has some fields, e.g. author, title etc. The aforementioned ones are typical in all references' entry. But, there are some fields entitled &quot;custom&quot;. These custom fields can have whatever title you want and can be used in order to make smart categories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., I have used 2 custom fields. One for sub-fields of my field of study and one with notes. Based on the sub-fields, I have set up smart categories which hold papers-references with specific sub-field tag. Also, I can perform a search and EndNote will search also in the Notes custom field.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20121" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T06:16:24.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2014-08-04T07:56:23.933" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is YES, sadly. If you do not like it, you got to talk to him/her, or get another advisor if no agreement can be reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20330" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T07:56:23.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29477" CreationDate="2014-08-04T08:00:28.550" Score="14" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can say, for the papers published nowadays, there is usually a possibility to get an electronic version of the paper. (Often it requires payment or institutional subscription, but many publishers offer the papers free of charge for older issues.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there still journals, which do not offer possibility to get electronic version of the paper online and use paper version as the only way of distribution of their journal? If yes, is it the case only for small publishers? Are there differences between various disciplines? (I have experience mostly with mathematics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T08:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T13:27:58.677" Title="Are there still journals who only publish their papers in the paper form?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-04T09:00:12.733" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach at a university in Japan, and I think there are severe differences between the expectations of Western academic writing and at a minimum Japanese academic writing (though I don't have the knowledge to make claims beyond those borders). This might shed some light on where this kind of conflict can be happening. There are severe stylistic and expectation differences in paper writing between Japan and Western contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me explain, in my discipline (philosophy), the standard style in America is quite simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Introduction = statement of thesis and major claims  (5-10%)&#xA;Body = arguments for the major claims necessary to defend thesis &#xA;Conclusion = restatement of major claims and thesis (~10%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then within body, there should be responses to potential objections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My sense is that writing in many other fields in English mirrors this -- at a minimum with the claim and argument centered structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Japanese academic essay in contrast follows a pattern that I  believe originally has a German origin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Introduction = explanation of why you are writing the paper (15%)&#xA;*Haikei* = extensive background of prior work in the field (maybe 80% of the paper)&#xA;Conclusion = put in things you want to say (5%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This then bleeds over into my students' attempts to write academic English papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the German one is similar but the difference is what is placed in the background section. From my experience with German articles, you must write in a way that demonstrates general mastery of the literature. In the Japanese version (at least among the many papers I've read), you respond as a reader to things you like and don't like in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:00:12.733" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26775" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T09:10:15.930" Score="7" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Electrical Engineering undergrad at one of the better engineering schools in the US. Now I have some background I want to explain, and I'll try to keep it brief. Back during high school I was taking classes at a community college, and easily completed all of the requisite courses for transferring into a STEM program. The problem at the time was that I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I left academia and went on my own route for a good couple of years. I never thought I would look back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to the future. I am married and have three children. My wife and I decided that I should look into all those credits from community college. Fortunately, there is no 'expiration date' on lower division math courses, physics, etc. So I was able to transfer, and ended up where I am now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I got here, I was already (at least) 30. Having been in the work force and bringing up a family, I was used to pushing myself and getting things done. So it seemed natural that being in college was difficult. It was not the courses, however, that caused problems. For example, my first math course in 10 years was vector calculus, and I completely aced that course, receiving near perfect scores on the exams. Rather, the university is optimized for the student who is just barely in his 20's, the &quot;traditional&quot; student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a &quot;non-traditional&quot; student, and have come up against institutional barriers. This makes sense, since there are tens of thousands of undergrads around here, but only a handful of them have dependents. But still, not fair. Without mincing words, some professors have said that when you have kids, your life is over. Obviously some of these professors never had kids. How to make people understand that when you start a family, life does not end!!! Also, the looks on the faces of those 20-year-olds when I tell them my age, and my situation. (Most people think I'm in my early 20's - I look young.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My focus in Electrical Engineering for grad school would be in communications. I love math. I am a big fan of our pure math department, and although I am up against a unit limit, I have taken some first year graduate level courses in pure (not applied) math. I am also interested in RF/microwave circuits, in particular MEMS devices. I have research experience, letters of rec, and an okay GPA (3.5). I'm in a summer research program right now, doing MMIC work. I know how to code, I can use version control systems on group projects, and do everything in latex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like some candid advice on whether or not I should apply to grad school. On the one hand, I believe that being a parent necessitates organization, focus, and communication (the latter, with the wife :-) ). These qualities, it seems, are a good fit for grad school. Having a partner can also be advantageous in that I won't have to go through it all alone, and I know that some grad students struggle with this. On the other hand, well, some might say that I should just go find a job and have my family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My children are young now, and we have lived at housing for students with family. It has been a great environment for all of us. But I also feel like if after graduation I found a job, then they might not want to come back, after having lived in &quot;the real world&quot;. I would also like to hear what other grad students have to say, whether or not you have children or a spouse/partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; I am in my mid thirties, finishing up an engineering degree, have wife and kids, want some advice on grad school yea or nay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20038" LastEditorUserId="20038" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T19:45:13.623" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T19:45:13.623" Title="Is it advisable to start graduate school with a dependent family?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;electrical-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-04T09:27:41.747" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26472" CreationDate="2014-08-04T09:19:22.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding a bit to this, for Japanese universities, almost all expect the letter to be open and included in the applications materials sent by the applicant (my experience here is for jobs -- not graduate school), then recommendation letters are submitted by the applicant in their package. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gather this is also common in China. As an American, I find it bizarre, but it is what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:19:22.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26719" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:09:20.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;ERA ranking is subjective, I am not aware of peer-reviewed evidence that it works. Personally, I know conferences ranked as A, and whose quality is below acceptable. On the other hand, EuroPLoP is the premier conference for software patterns practitioners, and is ranked B in ERA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do not dismiss a conference just because it is marked as C there. If it is not relevant to Australian community, it does not mean it is not relevant to European/Asian/US community. It is always better to see PC, authors published in the past editions, and other factors to make a decision, not relying on some subjective number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, there are more conference rankings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shine.icomp.ufam.edu.br/index.php&quot;&gt;Conference H-index calculator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=0&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search ranking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;community rankings: &lt;a href=&quot;http://perso.crans.org/~genest/conf.html&quot;&gt;http://perso.crans.org/~genest/conf.html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/assourav/crank.htm&quot;&gt;http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/assourav/crank.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T10:09:20.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26755" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:31:12.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides whether or not the citations themselves are necessary, it's also important to consider how they affect the flow of your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is actually &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; to cite all those papers (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13570/is-there-such-thing-as-too-many-references-for-one-paper&quot;&gt;Is there such thing as too many references for one paper?&lt;/a&gt;, as well as the other excellent answers to this question), it would look much cleaner to place the citations in a footnote (especially if you use the author-year rather than numbered style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use numbered citations and LaTeX, the &lt;code&gt;sort&amp;amp;compress&lt;/code&gt; option in &lt;code&gt;natbib&lt;/code&gt; can reduce clutter by citing a range (ie [7-16]) of sources rather than [7,8,9 ... ]. However its effectiveness depends on how your bibliography is ordered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must cite many papers in a single sentence, you should at least make every effort to ensure it reads fluently and that the citations do not distract you from the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T10:31:12.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26792" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:59:29.013" Score="36" ViewCount="4224" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a research student, I spend most of my time working on my research career, even when I am at home, I am awake until 3 or 4 A.M just doing my research-chores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of fact, long-term having not enough sleep, putting myself under huge amount of stress and hard work and more important, not getting enough exercise will directly put the person's health in to danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; How should a researcher balance their life to both maintain their health and do their academic job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether professionals and scientists really hardly worked this much and how their healthy and balanced academic/work life-style is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2016-12-18T09:45:26.820" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T16:24:11.663" Title="How to prevent physical/psychological health side effects of workaholism in academia and research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-04T12:12:50.030" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I put my health first by committing to healthy activities that involve other people, so I will have to stick to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a standing weekly running appointment with a faculty member at my school. I won't cancel this appointment because she will be disappointed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a standing non-academic volunteer commitment one afternoon each week (giving back to my community is essential for my mental health). I won't cancel this because there's a classroom full of 12-year-old girls waiting for me to come help them with their homework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend 25 hours each week, from Friday night to Saturday night, completely disconnected from the Internet and anything work related. (I do this as a religious observance, but it's definitely good for my physical health, too!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold meetings with students and faculty in other buildings in their offices, not mine, so that I am forced to occasionally go outside during daylight hours (if only to walk from one building to the next).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these things are non-negotiable to me. That is, no matter what how busy I am or what deadlines are coming up, I will not compromise on any of these things. They're essential to my health and well-being, I arranged them so that other people are depending on me, and so I prioritize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T06:08:45.490" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T06:08:45.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26784" CreationDate="2014-08-04T13:18:40.660" Score="9" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;In few months I will join a new research center department of an excellent university in Northern America. My field is computer science and bioinformatics.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;This new department has mainly hired young principal investigators and scientists, all 35-40 years old.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have visited the labs and clearly have seen the &lt;strong&gt;advantages&lt;/strong&gt; of this new young environment: flow of new ideas, enthusiasm, friendly relationships, opening of mind.&#xA;But I am sure there are also some flaws of this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So I am asking you all: what are the main flaws, defeats, disadvantages of being part of a department lead by young principal investigators?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T13:37:55.220" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T13:50:14.067" Title="What are the flaws of working in a research center department led by young principal investigators?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;lab-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26783" CreationDate="2014-08-04T13:50:14.067" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the disadvantages of young professors vs. more senior staff may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less established in their field&lt;/strong&gt;. One advantage of a very senior professor for a PhD student is that the senior professor often knows all or at least most of the important players in the area. Hence, he can put the student in contact with interesting collaborators, and open up doors for internships or postdocs. A younger professor may not yet have a network that broad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less experienced&lt;/strong&gt;. This one is obvious, but more senior professors are typically more experienced. They have advised many students before, and make less &quot;beginner's mistakes&quot; (e.g., expecting too much from a student, and then getting angry because the student did not live up to those expectations).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less laid-back&lt;/strong&gt;. Non-tenured professors &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; their students to perform, as their own career is very tightly coupled with their students (mis-)fortunes. Many a high-potential assistant professor will not take an unsuccessful research project lightly. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage - an ambitious student and a non-tenured professor may push each other to achieve great results, but the same &#xA;professor and a more average student may lead to some friction and bad feelings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less money&lt;/strong&gt;. Younger professors tend to have less research grants (yet). This has implications for you even if you personally have a stipend from another source, as it means there is less money for travel, less money to fund research students, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less pull in the faculty&lt;/strong&gt;. This may be more relevant in some places than in others, but I have certainly seen faculties where working with an assistant professor had the disadvantage that your group was at a disadvantage whenever any sort of global resources were distributed. The senior professors were often able to acquire resources (they did not actually need) basically by appealing to their seniority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Higher chance that your advisor moves&lt;/strong&gt;. Non-tenured professors are &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more likely to change university (voluntarily or due to not getting tenure) than ones that are already tenured. Especially take this into account if the tenure review of your professor is planned for the next years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things just came from the top of my head, I will edit the answer if I can think of anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sidenote: yes, these are all stark simplifications. No, none of those points has to be true for any given young professor.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T13:50:14.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-04T14:32:25.760" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this is absolutely not just your problem! I am also an ESL and this very comment has been given to me numerous times: &lt;em&gt;Your writing is weird, but I can't really tell how.&lt;/em&gt; After many years of working on it (including reading many books about writing, joining a writing group, publishing some papers, and writing pretty much everyday), my writing is still, well, weird. I have come to terms that I will never be able to conceal my &quot;Asian-ness,&quot; and I'm fine with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, in the process, I did learn some tricks. I hope some of them will be useful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have basic grammar all nailed down&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that you are not seeking for grammatical advice. But people don't just judge your work's structure and suspect its lack of European thinking style from the get-go. Small mistakes such as (taken from your question) &quot;By 'us' he &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; European,&quot; and &quot; I do have &lt;em&gt;problems&lt;/em&gt; with my writing,&quot;  can prompt readers to think of you as a foreign writer. And once that thought is sparked, a lot of scrutinies will follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side notes: Some friends did give me very thorough diagnoses on my writing style, which may be useful to you: Generally I suffer from: i) lack of agreement between subjects and verbs, ii) wrong use of articles, and iii) lack of conjunctions and connectives. I have been working hard on addressing those problems, and it's probably going to be a life-long project which is fine by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have him rewrite it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm an Asian student working with a European prof. My adviser told me&#xA;  several times that when he read my writings (our papers), &lt;strong&gt;he just&#xA;  wanted to rewrite it&lt;/strong&gt;. He told me that my English was rather OK, but&#xA;  &quot;the way Oriental people think is different from us&quot;. By &quot;us&quot; he&#xA;  meaned European.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not? Politely invite him to rewrite a few of your paragraphs. If he cannot name what is wrong, but he can rewrite it, then the solutions lie in the rewritten version. Schedule a meeting with him and go over the sticky parts. By that time he &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have some ideas about your problems because after rewriting the piece, he will know what he has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if he cannot give you any suggestion, with the two versions you can now easily show any writing coach what you wrote and what your instructor thought you wrote. The writing coach should be able to pinpoint the some basic stylistic differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analyze articles' structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read an article, read it a few times with different lenses. First, read for general sectioning, then read for information, and lastly read for its syntactic structure. A wonderful book that I have come across on this kind of analysis is Schimel's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0199760241&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; It provides tools and examples on dissecting an article from paragraph down to wording sequence in a sentence. There are many grammatically correct ways to put together a sentence, a paragraph, and an article; this book talks about the subtle effects of those different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not start from your mother tongue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One old habit that I have successfully gotten rid of is to mentally draft a sentence in my mother tongue and then translate that into English. The process was counter-productive at best because the revision was quite time consuming and painful. A couple tricks helped me through the struggles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start from &lt;code&gt;Subject + Verb&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Subject + Verb + Object&lt;/code&gt;, then slowly add different modifiers. A wonderful book that teaches me most of these is Williams's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226899152&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Style: Toward Clarity and Grace&lt;/a&gt;. If you get a chance, please read it. I still read it time to time as a writing therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mind-map&lt;/a&gt; to gather ideas. Mind maps, in my opinion, operate very much in the way that scientists display ideas: using categories, hierarchies, relations, and lists. By focusing on this device, I could make the structure tighter and more coherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also grown bold enough to answer some writing-related questions on this site. Here are a few that you may find helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18079/any-place-for-people-with-fear-of-writing/18098#18098&quot;&gt;Any place for people with fear of writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23955/how-can-i-best-edit-a-paper-to-help-get-it-published/23956#23956&quot;&gt;How can I best edit a paper to help get it published?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and keep working on it! Your (and my) problem is something that will not totally go away, but can definitely be lessened. Just enjoy the learning process and don't care too much about sounding 100% like a European thinker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T19:42:42.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T15:16:32.497" Score="25" ViewCount="178730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked as translator for more than seven years in the industry. I have a background in cuisine for more than ten years. Now I would like to add an graduate degree related to &lt;em&gt;Tourism, Hotel and Event Management&lt;/em&gt; to my professional experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can I enroll in such a masters program without first acquiring a Bachelors degree?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20338" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T17:12:36.080" LastActivityDate="2018-05-12T21:31:22.677" Title="Is it possible to obtain a Master's degree without Bachelor's degree?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26786" CreationDate="2014-08-04T16:26:48.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Masters degree without a Bachelor at all, or Masters degree after having a Bachelor from an unrelated field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first one is strictly impossible. So far, I have never heard of someone getting a Master before having the Bachelor first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there might be corner-cases for geniuses who do both at the same time, or get directly accepted to phd studies skipping everything. But that is highly unlikely in usual cases of regular people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have such a goal, it will be a massive administrative obstacle to overcome. And I don't see how you could convince an established university to give up their requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe in 3rd world countries you can get any type of degree by throwing some money, but it does not seem to me as if that is your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT (after @Mad Jack's comment below): Yeah there are always corner-cases which may change the story. Given that your experience is worth more than a undegrad diploma, or the fact that you might hold different certificates might give you a chance. But, then again you will have to ask the admission office to make an exception for you. Tough, but not impossible as I learned something new!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="9401" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T18:08:55.530" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T18:08:55.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21415" CreationDate="2014-08-04T16:46:15.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I suggest you consider what are the absolute requirements of this lecture. You say the attendance is not that important. Are there mandatory weekly homework assignments, or a final project which has to be handed out in the end? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good that the professor seems to be in goodwill to help you in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume this course requires a lot of interaction because it is related to programming, but honestly I have not learned much from the lectures when I have ever had programming classes. Exercises, and actually sitting down and writing the code has helped the most. Of course, the presence of an expert in the field can make things easier for understanding. But, I don't think it is absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also believe that the gain that you will have by following the lecture via skype or via Realtime Board, won't be as big as you doing the exercises alone. You might be loosing more time than gaining knowledge from attending the lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time from October to December does not seem like a long one. Even if it is (assuming that the course might be fast-paced) you still will be able to catch up for the two months when you will be back. Because the introductory parts are easier and you can grasp them faster. If we add other factors to the equation, for example, if you have previous programming experience, this will be even easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what programming language you will be learning there, but if it is one of the programming languages which is covered in one of the online programming teaching platforms (Codecademy), then you don't need to worry at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you can do, is to reach out to the professor or any other fellow student and ask them to record the lectures for you; You can listen to the lectures while studying from the textbook. But the main point will be doing the exercises. My experience so far has told that programming is something which you learn by doing, rather than learn by being taught, although some help is welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: It would be useful if you could provide the programming language, and your previous experience with programming in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T16:46:15.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:09:15.957" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that for myself, regular running has helped a lot in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The miraculous thing about regular physical exercise is that even though it takes time, you may find that it &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; like you suddenly have more time overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastEditorUserId="20342" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T16:24:11.663" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T16:24:11.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26796" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:36:48.763" Score="14" ViewCount="4002" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to a combination of factors, I ended up going for my undergraduate studies to a relatively unknown university that was close to me geographically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that I have a relatively standard background for someone trying to apply to top tier schools for graduate studies (some research experience, some low to medium quality publications, very strong grades, good recommendation letters). Then how much does the alma mater have an impact for someone like me? I obviously know that it is still possible to be accepted, but how much of a disadvantage am I looking at exactly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8001" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T20:24:27.110" LastActivityDate="2019-06-18T17:37:41.343" Title="How handicapped am I in graduate admissions if I graduated from a lower tier university?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:57:35.863" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all. Sleep. And sleep well. Increasing sleep hours increases productivity and not the other way around. Sleep early (people are not supposed to work too late at night) and wake up after good-solid 8 hours of sleep. Then when you wake up, you will realize that you have amazing clarity and excellent productivity. Also, two hours before sleep abandon work and do something relaxing, such as listening to music or spending time with your significant other. Work or stressful activities before bedtime, disrupt your sleep and its quality. So, that leaves you about 24-(8+2) = 14 hours to work which are more than enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Devote at least one hour per day on average for exercise. Any sport, workout is better than nothing. Also, try walking. One hour of walking per day does wonders for your heart, lowers stress and you can still think about research while doing it (I do not advice this though). It also alleviates headaches (stress or work related). Also, mind what you eat. Keep your weight steady and do not eat too salty or fatty foods, that inhibit body and mind performance. Use a multivitamin every two days (after consulting your doctor). Also remember that a healthy body always performs better, including mind activities. Also maintaining a good, healthy appearance increases your chances for a fruitful social life, which will prevent you from overworking and overstressing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just a reminder. You should not spend too much time on Stack Academia as well :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T17:57:35.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T18:02:10.687" Score="7" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to work in industry after finishing my Masters in Statistics and am considering some universities in the United States. How will a Masters in Statistics with thesis, no thesis or with capstone project impact my career prospects? I've read that having written a thesis that is relevant to the employer's business  would be beneficial. But how does that compare to a capstone project? It sounds to me that a capstone project and thesis mean the same thing as both involve research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20343" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:02:04.437" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T03:01:41.360" Title="Should I do a thesis, no thesis, or a capstone project in a master's in statistics?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26791" CreationDate="2014-08-04T18:08:02.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My impression after being accepted and discussing this with senior faculty was the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large, top tier graduate program receives applications. Some fraction of these (say a quarter) are entirely unqualified and will be discarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, very small group are fantastically qualified, with great research experience and superb academic credentials from the very best schools. These few will almost definitely get in, but may not accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the largest group consists of people with credentials that are no better or worse than yours (maybe they attended a better school, but their record is slightly worse, or their recommenders are more prestigious, but the letters are less personal). If you are in this group, you should do everything you possibly can to improve your application, but ultimately you're playing the odds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest obstacle you will face at the top tier schools is that they receive so many more applications that the acceptance rate might only be a few percent. This means the odds are very unfavorable that any particular top tier school will accept you as a solid, but not extraordinary applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it was explained to me anyway. So, I don't think your school is a serious handicap, but it probably does exclude you from the &quot;Oh my gosh, must accept and give all the money!&quot; pile. You might consider applying to more programs to compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As Ben Webster pointed out, &quot;Apply to more programs&quot; is incomplete. You might consider applying to more high quality programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastEditorUserId="12703" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:46:14.143" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:46:14.143" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26791" CreationDate="2014-08-04T18:21:34.917" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't mention what field you're in. At least in the social sciences at my R1, we look at various factors. The admissions committee knows that people have to choose the college that they went to for various reasons other than just academic excellence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the factors that I look at is trajectory. Someone who went to a public high school, then a community college, and then transferred to a public university, with perhaps middling grades the first year but then quickly ramps up to stellar grades by the time they graduate is very interesting to me -- much more than someone who got all As at a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; school but doesn't seem like they pushed themselves very hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the portfolio that you describe for yourself, I'd say you wouldn't be eliminated in the first round, but you'd struggle in the second and third rounds to stand out. How you stand out is up to you. I'd work on a stellar statement of purpose -- one that strongly articulates why you want to go to graduate school to study what you want to study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is in the social sciences at my school (a large private R1), your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is because brilliance by itself isn't enough for grad school in the social sciences. Perseverance and autonomy and the ability to get knocked down and get back up are also critical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T18:33:11.477" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T18:33:11.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26804" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:01:39.070" Score="20" ViewCount="52859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received an acceptance letter from a honor society (I am leaving off the name for now but can include a link to the website). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The offer said I qualified because of my grades or a nomination. I read a little into it and it a lot more like a sales pitch. Offering discounts, exclusive scholarships, and career services in exchange for a biannual fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website does look very professional. I am not sure if it is a scam, a profit driven real honor society, or what else. Aside from intuition is there any ways to tell what an invitation entails without all the hype?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, even if they are a profit driven business is it likely worth time to invest in a short term membership?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastEditorUserId="4140" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T10:53:54.370" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T10:53:54.370" Title="How can I tell if an honor society is legitimate?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;honor-societies&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:21:22.357" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three metrics I use to see if a 'exclusive' society is a scam or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they are imprecise when it comes to why I was invited. &quot;Because of your grades or a nomination&quot; is pretty weak honestly. Who nominated me? What was the grade cutoff? Are they associated with group in my university such that they could even have access to my grades? If your invitation comes from a nomination, a legitimate honors society should be willing to name the nomination. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they want me to pay money? It's true a lot of honor societies may have a entrance or membership fee. This should be minimal and obvious and you should have a direct idea of what this is going towards. A 'honor society' which is vague the criteria upon which you were invited and who wants to charge you money is pretty sketchy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you heard of them before? Has anyone you respect heard of them before? When you google them - do they have conferences? Meetings? Journals? Are they cited anywhere? Or is there nothing but advertisements for them when you google the name? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that any of the above criteria, alone, is enough to make a 'honor society' sketchy. And I'm sure there are, in some fields, societies that hit all three of the above and are totally legit. But, to be honest, a blind email to you that has a &quot;You may have won!&quot; feel to it is probably a scam on some level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T20:21:22.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26676" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:25:40.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This answer is adapted from my comment below Marc Cleason's answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the spirit of the pledge, this professor could put a banner saying in substance &quot;I do not review for Elsevier journal, so if you are an author hoping for me to review your paper, submit to other publisher's journals&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important thing about such a pledge is that it is useless if it is silent; this is an initial observation by Tim Gowers that lead to the pledge. Now that 14000 people have signed it, each one of them is somewhat hidden in the crowd, so making this kind of statements on one's web page is a way to make one's pledge more public, and to give the movement some momentum. Here, a prominent professor has also the possibility to influence the submissions of his or her colleagues, which is a good bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T20:25:40.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:38:34.080" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah yes, the always exciting &quot;you are so awesome, here join my honor society!&quot;. My method is to simply google &quot;name of honor soceity&quot; scam. You would be amazed at how much info is out there already answering your questions for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, most &quot;honor society's&quot; are mostly just scams. Perhaps not as overtly as, say, a Nigerian prince being captured scam, but honestly, how many people sign up to be a member but never actually use any of their resources, even if they are legit? It's like a gym membership, only effective if you actually use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyhoo, I only joined ones that were directly related to my school/ had specific branches on my school and only joined two, a very well known one and the society for my direct major. And those were more to do with resume fillers than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truth is, as far as I've ever seen, no one cares about the honor societies. If it's for an awesome gpa, well, your gpa on your resume covers that. If you do volunteer work, again, stating what you do is much better than just naming off an honor society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T20:38:34.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:57:49.913" Score="32" ViewCount="13302" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Name is among tens of authors of a paper on global health.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of my CV update, I need to show my name without showing the names of all authors of the paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferred style is JAMA, which shows the names of the first 3 authors followed by 'et al'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the following format be appropriate, at least for my CV, when My Name is published in the middle of a long authors' list ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First Author, Co-Author, My Name, et al &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, will this (customized) format ever cause any confusion for any group of audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20349" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T02:31:34.643" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T02:31:34.643" Title="How to display your own name in publications list when you are a middle-author on a publication with a large number of authors?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26802" CreationDate="2014-08-04T21:06:27.843" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly you suggest adding your name as third regardless of where it occurs (later than third). I would not recommend such a solution since it may be thought of as inflating your own importance (assuming author order reflects that). Even if such a solution would be acceptable within a specific community, one has to consider how it can be construed by others. In my CV I have set my name in bold face and I list all author names in a reference. This way my &quot;contribution&quot; becomes reasonably clear even at a glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T21:06:27.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2014-08-04T21:42:41.633" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all of my experience: &lt;strong&gt;no one within academia cares about honor societies whatsoever&lt;/strong&gt;.  To expand on that: in academia we routinely (closer to constantly) evaluate people based on their academic qualifications, in a very serious way: i.e., the &quot;winners&quot; get offered substantial scholarships and/or jobs.  Not once have I ever heard anyone mention membership in an honor society in any of these decisions.  Not for faculty hiring, not for graduate admissions, not for picking TA's...never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was an undergraduate I did join Phi Beta Kappa (junior year: whoop de frickin' doo) and Sigma Xi.  The way I recall it, I was moderately encouraged to do so by my undergraduate program.  And I must say that the amount of money that I gave to these people -- if any; maybe my school paid it themselves? -- was truly negligible: at most $40, or something like that.  Based on this money, for many years afterwards I got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regular newsletters from the organizations that made what looked like reasonable attempts at giving me some kind of scientific / academic contacts.  (Not that I read them...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Semi-regular very strange calls offering to sell me gold-laminated books and other such frippery.  Often these were done with enough of a &quot;hard-sell&quot; solicitation to get me a little steamed: one caller spoke breathlessly about the gold-laminated books and at the end asked me how many additional copies I wanted to order at a discounted price.  I mentioned that she skipped an important step, and she asked what that was.  I revealed that at no point in the conversation had she asked me whether I was even the slightest bit interested in buying anything from her.  The rest of the conversation was brief but tense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these experiences, whenever any student asks me whether they should join an honor society -- the ones which are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; supposed to be scams, like Phi Beta Kappa -- I say &quot;I do not advise you to do it if you have to pay more than the most negligible amount of money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have occasionally talked to other faculty and university personnel about this issue, and their experiences are not always as negative as mine.  What I suspect may be true (but I have unfortunately never had the occasion to find out!) is that: &lt;strong&gt;academic honors societies may be useful for people who are leaving academia, by providing some kind of modest continuing contact with the academic world&lt;/strong&gt;.  I mean, the idea that I need to open up a bi-annual newsletter and read about what other academics are doing makes no sense for me: I learn about what other academics are doing by &lt;em&gt;going to work&lt;/em&gt;.  But for people who go off into industry -- or something else -- maybe it is valuable.  On the other hand, I have to imagine that, as with so many things, the internet makes this kind of thing largely obsolete: the amount of access that any citizen of the world with an internet connection has to current academic activity is greater now than what any professor had twenty years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final question: does &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; care if your CV says you are a Phi Beta Kappa (junior year!)?  I suspect not -- as someone else mentioned, these awards are given for your GPA, and you put your GPA on your CV anyway.  But I would, as ever, be interested to hear other perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T21:42:41.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T22:43:18.447" Score="2" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I heard from a senior student that the celebrated adaBoost &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.32.8918&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; was originally rejected by a conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other instances of seminal papers (in any field) which initially could not warrant a publication? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9705" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T05:12:21.160" Title="Awesome papers that were initially rejected?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-05T08:47:19.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26802" CreationDate="2014-08-04T23:56:23.493" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bolding trick suggested by others is fine up to a point, but eventually it will get to be silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm coming from a nuclear and particle physics background and have papers with hundreds of coauthors. So I &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; take care that my name showed up. I just built my publication list using bibtex in the standard format for my discipline and assumed that readers who wanted to check that I was on those papers know how to use InSpire (the go-to publication database for these disciplines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that my name appears on my publication list only a few times, but it is also there in big letters at the top of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T03:28:37.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T03:28:37.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-05T00:09:19.157" Score="13" ViewCount="9927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is any kind of &quot;reliable&quot; CS conferences ranking available on the web. I have searched on SCImago, but I believe it only ranks journals, and there is no mention about conferences. Actually I am curious about it because in the faculty that I am currently working we want to know which papers are presented to good conferences, and which ones are presented to bogus conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to know that for the field of Computer Science? I know there are some tools like Google Scholar, but I believe it is not so trustable after all. Should we rely on Scopus maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="19685" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T15:32:09.023" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T07:48:23.207" Title="Rankings of Computer Science conferences and journals" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26805" CreationDate="2014-08-05T01:11:26.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this counts, but Edward Jenner's original paper on smallpox vaccination was rejected by the Royal Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1797, Jenner sent a short communication to the Royal Society describing his experiment and observations. However, the paper was rejected. Then in 1798, having added a few more cases to his initial experiment, Jenner privately published a small booklet entitled An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire and Known by the Name of Cow Pox (18, 10). The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia; Jenner decided to call this new procedure vaccination. The 1798 publication had three parts. In the first part Jenner presented his view regarding the origin of cowpox as a disease of horses transmitted to cows. The theory was discredited during Jenner's lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8001" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T01:11:26.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26786" CreationDate="2014-08-05T01:32:41.660" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know people who have attended and graduated from master programs in Australia and the UK and I've seen people considering such programs in the US (though I don't remember the school in the US and it was about 10 years ago but I thought it was Carnegie Mellon). These schools were all reasonable, fully accredited schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students in question all were missing their bachelor degree. One had no university at all while others had most of their undergraduate credits yet had not finished. They key is that, like you, they all had significant real-world experience which was seen as offsetting their lack of credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the short version is, there are schools who will accept master-level students without an undergraduate degree and there are schools who will not accept them. You just need to do the leg work and see which schools will make that exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T01:32:41.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26836" CreationDate="2014-08-05T04:21:41.223" Score="7" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are similar questions addressed on this site, but the answers are geared to a different skill set to what (I suspect) most astronomers/astrophysicist will have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently halfway through a PhD in radio astrophysics (in India) and I'm not too sure that I want to stay in academics, so I'd like to explore what options I have outside of academics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my PhD is geared more toward data analysis, so I have a fair knowledge of C &amp;amp; Python for numerical processing but not for more general purpose computing (but I am trying to teach myself some of that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that this is a vague question, but what options do I have if I choose to leave? I understand that data analysis skills are quite valuable, and it would be nice to continue in a research-like climate because I really do enjoy research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20355" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T00:02:18.327" Title="Career options for an astronomer outside of academia?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26805" CreationDate="2014-08-05T05:12:21.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should also mention Fermi's famous 'Beta decay' paper, which was rejected by Nature and appeared in Z. Physik 88, 161(1934). English translation of the paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://microboone-docdb.fnal.gov/cgi-bin/RetrieveFile?docid=953;filename=FermiBetaDecay1934.pdf;version=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://microboone-docdb.fnal.gov/cgi-bin/RetrieveFile?docid=953;filename=FermiBetaDecay1934.pdf;version=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20039" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T05:12:21.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2014-08-05T05:37:12.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://core.edu.au&quot;&gt;CORE&lt;/a&gt;, an initiative by universities from Australia and New Zealand. On their website, you can find both journal and conference rankings. Most of the rankings are ok, but (of course) there are individual entries that seem too high or too low to me. As far as I know, many research organisations and faculties in the APAC area use this ranking to assign &quot;credit&quot; for papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if your goal is to distinguish good and bogus conferences, I am not sure CORE will actually help you. The main problem is that CORE is only updated every few years, and only with entries which got submitted by somebody during a nomination phase. Hence it is never really complete. Actual bogus conferences (such as the infamous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp14/ws&quot;&gt;Worldcomp&lt;/a&gt; series - see also for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldcomp-fake-bogus.blogspot.ch&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) are not listed at all, but so are smaller legit venues as well as any new conference or journal (of any quality). Hence, you can use the &lt;em&gt;presence&lt;/em&gt; of a ranking in CORE as a signal that the venue is probably not bogus (it may still subjectively be better or worse than its ranking indicates, but it is very unlikely to be an actual scam), but you &lt;strong&gt;cannot&lt;/strong&gt; use the &lt;em&gt;absence&lt;/em&gt; of a ranking to indicate a bogus venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem that you may run into is that a few bogus venues have taken up the practice of using a name that is &quot;coincidentally&quot; very similar to existing high-ranked venues (cp. the top-quality &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.www2015.it&quot;&gt;WWW conference&lt;/a&gt; and the very low-quality &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internet-conf.org&quot;&gt;WWW/Internet&lt;/a&gt; conference). To complicate matters further, in some emerging fields, even more or less established publishers sometimes churn out journals with basically identical names at more or less the same time (e.g., Springer's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofcloudcomputing.com&quot;&gt;Journal of Cloud Computing&lt;/a&gt; vs Inderscience's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijcc&quot;&gt;Journal of Cloud Computing&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, established conferences occasionally change their name, sometimes as part of a merger with other conferences, and hence &quot;fall of&quot; the ranking if you do not know what the conference used to be called in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that is to say that CORE is a tool that can help you get a feel for the value of a publication, but it will not relief you from the task of actually looking at the publications themselves to assess their value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T05:37:12.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26815" CreationDate="2014-08-05T05:41:24.183" Score="3" ViewCount="9116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a senior year undergrad student from a prestigious institute in India. I intend to pursue a PhD after graduating. While researching universities, I stumbled upon the fact that many of the top schools have a minimum GPA requirement. For example UCSD has 3.4/4 as its minimum requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GPA is 7.2 on a scale of 10. It is quite above average in my school, but it translates to a 2.9 on a scale of 4 which looks pretty bad. DOes this mean that my application is likely to be rejected outright? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I heard that most universities don't consider converted scores (by WES, for example) in a good light. I have research experience in my undergraduate years to offset the GPA. I really hope that the universities have a look at that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I not apply to schools with such a requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:37:20.080" Title="Is the minimum GPA required for Graduate school a cut-off criteria or a general guideline?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26813" CreationDate="2014-08-05T07:37:40.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no absolute here—it really depends on the program in question. Some departments are stricter about cutoffs than others. It depends a lot on the number of applications they receive, and how selective they need to be. However, I know that many good departments don't screen on GPA alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even if you're GPA is not &quot;elite,&quot; that's not the end of the world, so long as you have the research experience and the letters of recommendation to support you. (A student from our department was recently admitted to a top-10 engineering program in the US on the basis of his research experience—his GPA was pedestrian at best.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T07:37:40.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26821" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:21:12.427" Score="29" ViewCount="2127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose one works in field X, and has say two or three manuscripts ready for journal submission. Journal A is a good fit for all the manuscripts, but journals B and C would be appropriate as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All else being equal, is there any benefit in having papers in different journals? Does it hurt to have all of your papers, or say a substantial amount of them, in the same journal A? For example, would it be a good idea to submit one to journal A, and the other one to journal B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could think of someone saying &quot;I read journals B and C, but not A&quot;, so in this sense spreading your research in different journals would make sense. But maybe this is not so typical to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6318" LastActivityDate="2021-02-27T09:00:12.677" Title="Is there a reason to spread your research into multiple journals instead of just one?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:31:12.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add my data point: From my experience with different co-authors I can not underpin the claim that Asian authors have a different writing style than European authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the case of the OP seems to resonate with several people I am not really sure if this is really an &quot;Asian/European&quot; thing or even a cultural thing. It may well be a personal thing, i.e. a clash of two different styles of writing and thinking. As far as I see, different writing styles also exist for people with similar cultural background and, vice versa, people with different cultural background may still think and write in similar style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is this: I have written papers with two people from Asia and with both I never felt a desire to &quot;just want to rewrite the paper&quot;. I noticed different use of articles and also a little different language but still, I was totally fine with that and the collaborative writing went smoothly. On the other hand, I have written papers with other Europeans (other Germans, like me, to be precise) and sometimes felt the urge &quot;to rewrite anything&quot;, also without being able to nail down what precisely was wrong. With some other authors from Germany or other non-Asian countries the writing also went smoothly. So my data is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two cases of Asian co-authors with no problems in collaborative writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three cases of non-Asian (in fact European) co-authors where I thought about &quot;rewriting anything&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, this question and its answers may end up and give some hint how the bigger picture of the issue looks like. So please consider upvoting the answer which reflects your experience or contribute another answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T10:22:51.757" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T10:22:51.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26823" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:49:56.933" Score="17" ViewCount="3613" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arxiv is permanent.  So if I publish something now, that I feel is not quite high enough quality for traditional publication, and people leave a bunch of feedback showing issues with my assumptions or methods, am I hurt for life?  As I understand it, you can't remove something from arxiv, and people can comment on your work.  So, when someone 20 years from now googles my name or domain, they will find the paper and the comments and other undesirables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least with traditional publication you have peer review as a filter, which can in part shield you.  Is arxiv really this dangerous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17694" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T11:36:47.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:20:00.160" Title="Can posting to arXiv ruin your reputation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26818" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:05:11.063" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is obviously no right or wrong here, one should try to publish in the best suited journal. That said, in fields where there are several options, sticking to a single journal may look a little strange. If you publish in different (but suitable) journals, it may be looked upon as that your research is accepted by a wider set of peers. Some may perhaps also think you have a special connection to the journal etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the need to publish in different journals should primarily be the focus of the journal. Some people I know enjoy the fact that they are published in widely different journals and some people may see that as your research being more widely accepted (right or wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:05:11.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:15:37.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are only as busy as you want to be. How many hours you can put into work activities without affecting your mental well-being depends on how much you enjoy your work. Given that you describe your work as chores, you should be trying to adjust the cause, not mitigate the symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way that you can realistically handle the kind of workload you describe long-term. Putting in that many hours to the point that you're basically pulling all-nighters &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be justified at crunch time: when a project is due and external factors or bad planning prevented you from finishing in time. The first step to improving your situation is to give yourself a realistic workload, likely something between 40 and 60 hours a week. Then set up a plan for your research that takes into account the hours you have available and set your goals accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try this for a week to see if it helps with your mental fatigue and what the impact is on your research. There are any number of studies that prove the importance of work-life balance for productivity so while you might feel like you're working much less than you should, you should be accomplishing much more with your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: Work smarter, not harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15370" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T11:15:37.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26820" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:31:38.490" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your comment has very important information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper is just that. It presents helpful information but doesn't develop any ideas or utilize the scientific method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is not crappy, they are not unbacked claims; it is just nothing new. As long as you are aware of it, and it is clear you are not trying to make it look different, it cannot hurt you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can think of this paper as a small review or class notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that may hurt your reputation is if it had very serious mistakes, and you don't address them. To be safe, just ask some of your colleagues to review it, even if it is not a thorough one. They should be able to tell you if it is correct, informative, and clear. And by all means, if it is informative, go ahead and publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, ArXiv is not only for preprints of papers. For example, I have seen philosophical dissertations on QM very non technical (a second year Physics undergrad should be able to follow), or another about the story of protein folding research in a certain institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but are arxiv posts considered publications for what you're talking about? i could put my grocery list there if I wanted to, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ArXiv is not peer reviewed, so the quality threshold is not so high. You can publish not so technical pieces, or sneak a bad article that looks just fine, they don't count as official publications. But, on the other hand, they are better than nothing. Specially if you are at the beginning of your PhD, when you are not expected to have publications yet, your ArXive papers are an example of your capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one will use the sheer number of submitted papers, but if you have some fine pieces (for example, a good, brief review of your field, previous research and terminology), can show you have a promising career for, for example, applying for summer schools or extra funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your field, this kind of papers can be extremely useful. For example, in Bioinformatics, most people come from a CS background (programming experts and good Mathematics, but knowing nothing about Biology and Chemistry), Biology (lacking in Algorithmics, Machine Learning, and Statistics), Physics (lots of Maths, but basic knowledge of mostly everything else)... For me, having a quick reference of the basic terminology of other disciplines would save me a lot of time, as I have to look up many simple concepts that would be obvious for, for example, a Chemist undergrad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:20:00.160" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:20:00.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26818" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:43:22.300" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer only in the prospect of making one's CV look good; note that I am a mathematician and that this certainly affects my answer, notably because in mathematics (at least from what I see in France) the impact factor is rarely considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way a journal is seen can vary a lot from one person to another (for example, some journals cover several subfields but are important and selective in some subfields, less so in others). So, if you publish all your papers in the same journal, in addition to the effect described by Peter Jansson you will reduce the probability that any given person looking at you CV would think &quot;wao, he or she published in that excellent journal  Y&quot; where Y will be A for some people, B for some else, and C for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T13:43:22.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26791" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:45:48.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/education/edlife/why-you-cant-catch-up.html?_r=0&amp;amp;referrer=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why You Can’t Catch Up, by Nancy Hass; The New York Times, (August 1, 2014)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The takeaway is that anything is possible, but you're much less likely to get into top tier grad schools with a low-tier undergraduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20270" LastEditorUserId="20270" LastEditDate="2019-06-18T17:37:41.343" LastActivityDate="2019-06-18T17:37:41.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2014-08-05T14:43:11.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check the last answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26719/to-publish-or-not-to-publish-a-paper-in-an-era-type-c-conference/26777#26777&quot;&gt;To publish or not to publish a paper in an ERA &amp;quot;type C&amp;quot; conference?&lt;/a&gt; - I put there several community rankings, highlighting some problems with CORE ranking. But CORE is a good start, I agree with the previous answer.&#xA;P.S. Google Scholar does index conferences, but not correctly identifies all of them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T14:43:11.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26813" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:37:20.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, graduate schools are looking for evidence that you can successfully complete the program and graduate. So to get in, you have to make a convincing argument that this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your GPA is unimpressive, but there are a few things that can make up for it. Two of them are test scores and faculty recommendations. What you need to do in both cases to rank much higher on these metrics than the typical &quot;2.9&quot; student. Then the fact that &quot;my GPA ... is quite above average in my school,&quot; will start to count for something. Specifically, it may get your graduate school thinking, &quot;This &quot;2.9&quot; GPA is at least a 3.2 or 3.3 on our scale, maybe more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're still not home free, but this is where your research comes into play. If you can convince the school that you have exceptional research potential, they may think, well, this guy is a &quot;doer&quot; who will &quot;ace&quot; the thesis, and get 3.2-3.3 in his courses, just enough to get the 3.4 average. Or it could be that the required 3.4 represents &quot;insurance&quot; against a graduating requirement of 3.2 or 3.3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably want to get more and better advice from a faculty adviser. But if you do apply to the school of your choice, the above represent things to keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:37:20.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2014-08-05T16:36:12.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many publication in peer review journals and I would share my experience with manuscript submission. When the manuscript is within the scope and of high quality, one should not always expect that an Editor would be willing to pass it to review. There are many reasons. It is most likely that an Editor would not challenge other recognized authors and, in order to avoid complications, he/she would not take a responsibility to publish it. So, if you receive later something like &quot;the topic is too broad or too narrow and the Editorial Board has decided to reject your submission&quot;, - do not be surprised. The most of Editors are fair enough, but sometimes strange thins may happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20372" LastEditorUserId="20372" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T17:00:15.020" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:00:15.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26419" CreationDate="2014-08-05T17:02:37.013" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sent an email to Professor Krantz mentioning the present discussion and asking him whether his numbers are &quot;supported by published or rigorously gathered data, or your own observations, or are simply meant rhetorically&quot;.  Here is his response, posted here with his permission.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: he does not appear to have data at hand to support those numbers, but he believes they are accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Nate,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your question is a good one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Certainly my statement is well supported by my own personal&#xA;  observation---after forty years in the business.  But I have seen&#xA;  sources even recently that say pretty much the same thing.  I'm sorry&#xA;  that I can't say what those sources are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can think about the matter this way.  The vast majority of&#xA;  academic jobs in this country are at what we call comprehensive&#xA;  schools.  And those are places where teaching is the thing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Generally speaking, people don't do much research there.  They have to&#xA;  publish a paper or two to get tenure, and those papers tend to be&#xA;  fairly close to the thesis.  But then that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lot of other people get jobs at the National Security Agency, or Los&#xA;  Alamos, or another government think tank.  Generally speaking,&#xA;  publishing is not the thing there either.  Sometimes people publish in&#xA;  special classfied government journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other people get jobs at Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard or what have&#xA;  you.  And publishing is not the thing there either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those of us who are lucky enough to be in math departments at true&#xA;  research universities are definitely in the small minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that, at the time I wrote those words, I consulted some&#xA;  people at the American Mathematical Society and they had data to&#xA;  support what I was saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feel free to quote me to others if you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steve Krantz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:02:37.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2014-08-05T17:51:16.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I know nothing about the research in economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publications are useful when applying to a job closely related to their field of study, but are almost never a requirement outside academia. This being said, if you want to 'work for one of the MOOCS' you might want to reconsider, because they very often &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; made in universities. I never applied to a teaching position, but I suspect it's not irrelevant to have at least one publication (although again, not a strict requirement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, regardless of what your plans are, if you think your papers are not worthy of being published (what you qualify as BS), &lt;em&gt;don't submit them&lt;/em&gt;, you will only lose readers' time. People apparently forget that the point of publishing is to show your work to others thus contributing to the field. The CV part is a by-product (at least it should be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, publishing something you don't 'believe in' is going to be a long-lasting pain in the neck (that is, in reputable, peer-reviewed journals). It could take you month of struggling with a paper that you do not want to read again, but have to. If you made your decision never to work in academia again, then it's pretty much pointless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:51:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26832" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-05T20:43:51.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions about publishers that are reputed to engage in unethical and/or dishonest practices, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claiming a rigorous peer review process, but actually publishing virtually anything that's paid for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preying on people who are under a lot of pressure to publish, by charging high author fees for promises of quick publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretending to be affiliated with a reputable professional society.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claiming an &quot;impact factor&quot; when they do not have one, or when they have an &quot;impact factor&quot; from some entity other than Thomson Reuters ISI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listing important academics on their editorial board, when these people never agreed to serve in this capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not stating author fees upfront, and sending a bill to authors only after a paper is accepted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing content that is plagiarized or has copyright issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T18:12:10.187" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:12:10.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26833" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-05T20:43:51.653" Score="0" Body="For questions about publishers that are reputed to engage in unethical and/or dishonest practices." OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T18:08:35.330" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:08:35.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-05T22:05:07.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;General advice for clarity (US style):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re-frame your thoughts into facts.  No circular arguments nor implications.  State them as simply as you can.  Write them in bullets points and then add conjunctions.  Don't pad them with fluff.  Think about how to shorten/simplify for someone who has only 10 years of English.  (Sad, but it works)  Think about how your words might be interpreted in different ways and re-write it such that they have only one meaning, as simple as you can!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use first-person AND active voice.  Not &quot;we might&quot;, not &quot;one found that&quot;, but rather, &quot;I did this!&quot;  I personally don't like to claim individual credit for group work, nor state &quot;fact&quot; for uncertain things, but this style of writing is less ambiguous for the reader to comprehend &lt;em&gt;sigh&lt;/em&gt;.  Put your caveats &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; your claims.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Structure:&#xA;3a. 20~30% lit review.&#xA;3b. 40% your experiment reason, methodology, findings.&#xA;3c. 10~20% discussion of findings, future research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submissions to conferences: don't write it like a publication, ffs.  The reviewers usually have a rubric: does it fit the track theme? does it add value to the attendees? what do you plan to do in the session?  how &lt;em&gt;little&lt;/em&gt; do I have to freaking scan before I get the answers.  I've had to review 20 submissions in 4 hours, so please just get to the point and don't brag about your achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20383" LastEditorUserId="20383" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T22:16:33.187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T22:16:33.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26818" CreationDate="2014-08-05T22:39:59.670" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In additions to the existing answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CV beautifying, part 1: Publications in journals with different focus topics make you look more like an interdisciplinary person (which is usually preferred), while publishing in identically themed journals or even only one journal makes you look rather single-minded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CV beautifying, part 2: Excessive publishing in one journal may make you look like somebody who never tries new things and sticks to whatever is working.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing in different journals will give you a broader experience, though mostly with how publishing can be handled. There is one important exception to the latter, though: You may learn about advantages and disadvantages of the individual journals, e.g., if you only publish with journal A, you might never learn that journal B is better at organising and speeding up the review process, has a better style file, has better copy editors, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T22:39:59.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26810" CreationDate="2014-08-06T00:02:18.327" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I moved from a PhD in Astrophysics to an industry job some years ago, so I can share my experience, as well as the experience that a number of my fellow grad students had.  This was in the United States, so things may be different in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic idea is that as far as most industry is concerned, a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics is the same as physics, so any job looking for a physics background will do.  Jobs looking for a mathematics/statistics background are probably close enough as well, and worth applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your most marketable skills are your ability to code and do math/statistics while working with data.  This is EXTREMELY valuable in industry.  Your knowledge of astronomy and physics is likely not very valuable except in some very specific jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specific fields that aggressively hire people with PhDs in astronomy in large amounts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Quantitative Finance&lt;/strong&gt; - The financial world hires a lot of people with PhDs in math/physics/stats to be quants.  There are a lot of pros/cons to this field, but it pays well at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Defense Contractors&lt;/strong&gt; - This is very much a research type environment.  However, this almost always requires that the applicant have US citizenship in the United States in order to obtain security clearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Software Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; - A background in coding, data analysis, and mathematics is very desirable. You will likely want to brush up on your programming since scientific programming is not usually software engineering, as well as your statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try for more specialized fields like medical imaging, but it is often difficult to compete with the physicists with specialized backgrounds in that specific niche in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T00:02:18.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26557" CreationDate="2014-08-06T00:29:55.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Qiqqa to manage my PDFs when writing research papers. It allows you to highlight text or add notes to the PDFs. You can then tag the notes, and run &quot;reports&quot; which essentially will pull all of the tagged sections from all of the PDFs in your library into a single paper (similar to the Word document you mentioned) so you don't have to do that manually. It will show the original snippet from the paper, any notes you've made regarding that snippet, and the citation for the paper. There's also a neat brainstorm function that will let you visualize papers, tags, or notes and move them around/link them together; I use that to organize papers sometimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a free version which will let you try out some features, and an affordable pay version that has more enhanced options. There are some helpful how to videos on Youtube that provide a nice sense of functionality and may help you decide if it's the tool you're looking for. I've been using it since I started grad school and it's been tremendously helpful in organizing my academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/67642&quot;&gt;http://www.qiqqa.com/67642&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T00:29:55.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2014-08-06T04:29:19.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drop out now!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just about to submit after 5 years of PhD - and I have hated every minute of it.  I also thought about quitting after the first year, but talked myself out of it.  I am a mature age student and had worked for many years before I started the PhD.  My reasons for starting the PhD in the first place were that I was a bit bored with my job and wanted to extend myself - not good reasons!  Also my expectations of what a PhD was and the reality of a PhD did not match up very well.  I thought I should have been discussing big ideas with my supervisors, but our meetings were generally about my style of writing - should I use bullet points or not, how should the tables be formatted, I hadn't led the reader enough (read repeated myself often enough).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of this year I was lucky enough to get a tenure track job at a good university.  I know I'm really lucky to be here, but I absolutely hate it.  I thought I should at least apply for an academic job to see if I could get a job, and then I thought, well... I should at least try it out for a year.  Even now in my head I'm telling myself - it will be better next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I've just drifting along waiting to see if things improve for the past 5 years. I really regret leaving my last job. If I had my time again, I would have quit after the first year and I would probably be doing something I really enjoy now! I feel stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20392" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T04:29:19.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T07:56:38.407" Score="8" ViewCount="2706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attending conferences is considered one of the perks of working in academia, for a variety of very good reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;networking, meeting new people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cutting edge research results and new directions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advertise your own research (while networking)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(often) nice venues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some domains, such as computer science, conferences are (becoming) the main exchange site of top work. In some other domains, conferences are considered entertainment. Next to this quality ambiguity, there are some downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;travel costs can weigh on budgets of smaller research groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;conference papers more likely to be dismissed by hiring committees than journal papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence of the first downside is that many groups only allow researchers to attend conferences if they have accepted talks/papers, which is difficult in top venues. A consequence of the second downside is that some researchers prefer to submit top work to top journals rather than top conferences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I do consider the second con relevant to the question, as this is one of the reasons for ending up wanting to attend conferences without having any accepted papers.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the ups and downs, I would like to assess the importance of attending top conferences (even without accepted talks/papers) for both individual researchers as well as their research groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;My field is machine learning, but answers concerning other fields are more than welcome.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastEditorUserId="7173" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T10:45:13.923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T13:31:08.443" Title="Should I attend a conference even if I don't have a paper accepted there" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26840" CreationDate="2014-08-06T08:22:47.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in computational condensed matter and have attended both computational (or theoretical) and experimental-oriented conferences. When you submit an abstract for a conference in this field it usually does not imply that you are committing to publish that work in the conference proceedings or that you thereby refrain from publishing that work in a journal. Top conferences (in this field) will encourage and give you the &lt;em&gt;chance&lt;/em&gt; of publishing in their proceedings, but will not require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What usually happens, is that if you can get the paper published in a reputable research journal you do that, and either 1) choose not to submit a proceedings paper or, the option that I find most interesting, 2) submit related technical work that, while still sound and rigorous, might not get published in a journal but will get accepted as a conference proceedings paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T08:22:47.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T09:32:48.720" Score="86" ViewCount="18818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a young teacher at college. I have to go way too long, I know but I have the following problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my classes, I have this guy who pecks at me for everything I say. He is surely conceited, but it hurts like hell when he makes fun of me in front of the whole class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I take no note of it in class, but later I feel very sad. This makes me frightened to go to that class at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is overconfident and imposing and seems to have got a big gang behind him. He is a threat and he disturbs me. Please help me tackle this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20399" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T13:57:39.547" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T01:22:00.963" Title="How to deal with a student who harasses the (inexperienced) teacher during class?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T09:54:35.137" Score="6" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Computer Science graduate, who is passionate about Computer Science and various topics and want to explore them in and out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in research but I cannot refine my interests to a particular topic. It is possibly because I did not get a chance to play with various stuffs and do various projects. So how should I refine my interests to a particular topic?Is it too early to think about it,that is should I wait for getting a Masters or am I right to think about it currently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9985" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T05:29:34.290" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T09:39:40.290" Title="How and when should I identify my specific research interests?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T10:49:37.827" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a first step you could ask one of your more experienced colleagues to observe your teaching. Let the students know the colleague is there to evaluate your teaching. While it is obviously not a formal evaluation, it is an evaluation of how you handle a difficult teaching situation. You want to tell the students that you are being evaluated so that the trouble makers feel like they can sabotage you. If they do not know why they are being observed, the trouble makers may behave better. The goal is not to &quot;catch&quot; the student behaving badly, it is to have an example of bad behaviour so you and the evaluator can work through possible responses after the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the trouble makers will try and &quot;undermine&quot; you and act out. With first hand knowledge the colleague may have specific suggestions of how to deal with the student. If the student does not act out you can then discuss the types of behaviour the student shows with the colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the observer would be from your department, but if it is difficult to find someone, the observer does not need to be from your department nor understand the material you are teaching. They do not need to commit to the entire lecture, 15-30 minutes is often enough. The key thing is they need to be experienced enough to be able to provide suggestions and someone you respect enough to take the suggestions on board. If they understand the material even better, but you want someone that you respect with the needed experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T16:24:49.623" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T16:24:49.623" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T11:35:32.837" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you have been out of luck and got the 'bad' class (my teacher friends always have one from time to time) but if this problem is recurring, there is probably something you can do to improve yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think @StrongBad answer is a good way to find help to solve your problem with this guy in particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As student, I have observed some attitudes were much more prone to gain the respect of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confidence (really the most important): Of course it was more present with older teachers who commend their course content and have a lot of teaching hours behind. This is cruel, but this is played in the first 30second you meet your new class. The way you speak and hold yourself in this period can go a long way... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask questions: when you know the teacher might ask a tough question at any time, you follow much more and it usually avoid too much discussion. As student, often you don't want the teacher to see you and ask you to answer a hard question in front of every one. If really one guy is bothering you why not call him in front of the class and ask him to do a tough demonstration?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is sad to say, but the harder/more important courses will always be more quiet than the easy one even if the teacher is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it interesting: if the content is interested and well presented most student listen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this is only my observation from the bench point of view...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T12:21:58.603" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T12:21:58.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T11:39:01.000" Score="1" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a sophomore in masters in chemical engineering and I wanted to apply to grad schools in USA and Canada for PhD. The thing is, my program here for masters is not time bound. It may take me between 1 to 2 years more to complete and this can't be predicted as it all depends on various factors like how fast the research project goes and how good is the funding this year etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know if universities provide you right to defer the admission (if they accept the application in the first place) for a semester or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20402" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T11:39:01.000" Title="Is there any option to defer the admission if accepted at a grad school?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-08-06T11:52:59.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T13:28:14.840" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is one of basic psychology. In a classroom environment, an effective teacher needs to be respected as the leader - either respect for the authority of the position itself, or respect for the knowledge, or just basic good manners. By being disrespectful and undermining you and your authority, the student is implicitly challenging you in an attempt to elevate his social standing within the group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it hurts like hell when he makes fun of me in front of the whole&#xA;  class. However, I take no note of it in class, but later I feel very sad.&#xA;  This makes me frightened to go that class at all. He is overconfident&#xA;  and imposing and seems to have got a big gang behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main problem is that you are under-confident, and your authority has been challenged by someone who is more confident, more imposing, and better able to &quot;work the crowd&quot;. You need to regain the respect of the  students. How you do this is up to you, but I would note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be confident. Act confident. Act like you are actually in control. When you begin to act like you are in control, you will begin to appear like you are in control, and, eventually, you will be in control. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop being scared. This person can not physically hurt you. If he can mentally hurt you, then that is because you allow that hurt to happen. You need to find a technique to reduce your fear. Some people do this through contemplation, some through repetition of phrases like &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am a tiger&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, some through more physical techniques like study of martial arts. Do whatever works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Play to your strengths. You are the one who is an expert in the subject that you teach. The student is not. In this domain, you are the more powerful one. If you choose to engage him, do not engage in bickering, because that is his domain. Engage him in the domain where you will win - in the exercise of academic and technical excellence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to ask him if he knows the answer to a particular question, and ask him to explain it to the rest of the class on the board. This does not require singling him out - you can ask other students to also answer questions - but what it does is put him on the defensive. Either he admits that he does not know the answer, or he has to get up in front of the class and explain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, then you have turned the focus of attention towards his knowledge and his teaching ability. It might help him to realise that he does not really want to be the leader in the domain where the leader has to stand and teach everyone else. He will probably get parts of the answer wrong, or have an incomplete answer, and afterwards you can probe this, and ask the other students to explain where he went wrong. This re-establishes you as being in control, and turns the focus of the class to subject knowledge and academic ability. You do not need to undermine him, just encourage him to demonstrate his lack of knowledge, and then let the other students demonstrate their own  ability. This is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be interesting. Boredom is a driver of problematic behaviour. The fact that other students are following your problem student indicates that they perhaps are not being challenged by the lessons. If you see the eyes of your students glazing over as you begin to speak, then change direction, and structure your lessons to directly engage the students. One technique is to have them work on problems in pairs, and then randomly choose one of them to present the solution to the rest of the class. This forces them to work, and forces them to come up with an answer that they not only understand, but understand in a way that they can explain to everyone else. Nobody wants to stand up in front of the class and look like an idiot. It takes the focus off you and your teaching and knowledge, and puts it back on the class, which helps to make the lessons more social and interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take control. Changing the structure of the class and engaging the students in a way that allows you to demonstrate your leadership may encourage your problem student to back off. He is a part of the class, and if you have control of the class, it is likely that he will defer to that. But if he does not, you may consider a more direct approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The warning. Confront the student outside (or at the end) of class. Tell the student that his constant undermining is disruptive to the class and you are not going to stand for it any more. Tell him that if he can not be respectful, and does not value your teaching, then you do not want to see him in your class. Do not be angry or scared or emotional - just be straight - you are done, this is not a negotiation, this is the way it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The appeal to authority. Tell the student that you are not going to stand for his behaviour any more, and if it continues you will report him to the disciplinary authorities. All institutions have formal mechanisms for dealing with discipline. The threat of this may help him to temper his behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove the student from your class. Not always possible, but, either officially or unofficially, get rid of him. Officially, you can request a formal transfer. Unofficially, you can tell him that you will keep his name on the register but you do not want to see him in your class again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15711" LastEditorUserId="15711" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T10:14:56.103" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T10:14:56.103" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26840" CreationDate="2014-08-06T13:31:08.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once again, there's no definitive right or wrong answer here. There are times where it makes sense to go to a conference where you're not presenting (if you're a beginning graduate student, or it's relatively inexpensive, or you're just getting started in a new research area and want to get an overview). There are also times when it doesn't make sense (you're already attending a lot of conferences, or budgets are tight, or there are institutional policies against funding such travel). A conference that might not be worth attending one year might be worth attending in a different year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is to talk to your supervisor (if you have one), and ask for her opinion about what the best course of action is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T13:31:08.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T14:51:00.450" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, sometimes you just get a dick. However, I have seen more often that the students merely thrive on the attention and have little regard to how you perceive it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without examples of what this student does it's hard to give great advice but here are some of my suggestions based off of observing both confident and in control teachers and those who are timid and meek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming this student asks questions designed to throw you off or tries to contradict you/ correct you at every turn. To this I ask &quot;does it throw you off and is what he says accurate and you were wrong?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's trying to throw you off just tell him that his question isn't applicable to the lesson. If he wants to talk about it later on in more depth, then invite him to discuss it further after class or during office hours (they 99% of the time never do). This can keep you on task and not battling the everlasting &quot;but what if&quot; questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's correcting you, is he right or wrong? If he's wrong then don't be afraid to tell him so (or that both answers are correct). If he's right, well, to be honest, that hurts your credibility a lot. No teacher that I've ever seen who is consistently wrong has the respect of their students. You really need to evaluate how/ why you're teaching and perhaps need to brush up more on concepts you don't know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he simply disrupts class, then you need to take charge and be the leader of the room. When you have someone interrupt you and let it continue happening without saying anything, obviously that sets a precedent. The teachers that I've seen where this happens are quiet and meek and usually try to laugh it off while feebly getting the class back under control. Does this sound like you? Once this precedent is set, it is very hard to go back. I would advise working on that for the next term (assuming you are closer to being done and can just wait it out until this class is gone). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, it's your job to be in charge. Some students will walk all over you if you let them. Don't give them that chance. You can be respected and in charge without being a jerk or overly strict. The best teachers are the ones who are confident in their subject and respect their students, which, in turn, reciprocate with respect for the teacher. It's like the old saying goes &quot;Those who have to say they're in charge are clearly not&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastEditorUserId="8705" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T19:00:01.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T19:00:01.103" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:01:11.220" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly, do not attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I definitely &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; recommend to do it. First, an Editor, of course, will say no as he must follow the review policy. Secondly, if your paper is indeed of high quality, there is always a risk that your idea could be leaked (it is normal that people communicate with each other about topic in your paper). If you decide to submit to arXiv, you should follow the rule “don’t ask, don’t tell”. So, you should never ask Editor anything about arXiv, and the Editor, who understands this problem, would not say you anything about arXiv. It is a normal practise now when the paper goes to journal and to arXiv at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20412" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T16:48:57.363" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T16:48:57.363" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:16:36.093" Score="7" ViewCount="1986" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two years ago, I completed my bachelor degree with highest honor ranking 1st of my class in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department in my university in Egypt. Since then I have been working as a teaching assistant in the same department. I was seeking to pursue my Msc degree at a high ranking university and hence I applied for a Msc in 12 universities. I was able to gain admission(without funding) in four of them(among them was Carnegie Mellon and University of Michigan ann arbor). Meanwhile, a friend of mine helped me to get a research as position in a low ranking university in the US (No. 160 according to Us news ranking).&#xA; In the low ranking university, I am supposed to work intensively (the lab director requires the students to work on Sundays!) on a field that is not my primary field of interest. Also, he , this adviser, expects me to continue my Phd with him and my friends in this lab informed me that he will not give a recommendation letter if I want to leave his lab later. However, I am shooting for a higher ranking university for the Phd.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you advice me to go to the low ranking university with this adviser and then shoot for a higher one for the Phd? Or to wait and apply again for other universities for my Msc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is it OK to change my field of interest after finishing the Msc? will this limit my opportunists for a Phd in my primary field of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, how important is the Msc adviser's recommendation letter while applying for a Phd?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20417" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T20:11:39.637" Title="Low ranking university with fund VS Unsure opportunity at a higher ranking one" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26853" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:27:33.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is clear, and has nothing to do with ranking: if you want to go onto a PhD, your application will mostly depend on the letter of your research advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are terrible warning signs, and I would not take that position. Requiring you to work on sundays (and saturdays I presume) does not make a healthy student. Even students need down times. Sure, when I was writing my thesis I worked for a month straight; but thats crunch time. During normal students life it should be fairly balanced (40-60 hours a week working, with some play). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to pay (another topic) go to the higher ranking schools, or wait a year and reapply to see if you can get funding at a better school. The advisor at the lower ranking school seems unethical, and I would not work for him even if he was at a school like MIT or Caltech. The fact that he wouldn't write you a letter of recommendation if you decided to leave is truly an indication that he does not have your best interests in mind: writing letters his his job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As so many put it here, &lt;strong&gt;run don't walk&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T17:27:33.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-06T18:29:43.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which field are you working in? This makes a big difference. If you are writing in, say, medicine or hard sciences, the differences from region to region would be minor. In other fields, such as history or other humanities, there could be substantial differences in expectations of both reader and writer in organization, rhetoric, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your professor mentions &quot;thinking,&quot; which would lead me to think he is referring to &quot;big picture&quot; issues. But I have seen professors react to the &quot;accent&quot; of second language writers with misleading comments, when, in fact, they were simply not reading through the &quot;accent.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask your professor to guide you through a revision of a single page of the paper--a reasonable request--and less vague, more constructive feedback may come through.At that point, I would follow the excellent advice from &quot;Penguin Knight&quot; above, &quot;Analyze article's structure.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20419" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T18:29:43.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26859" CreationDate="2014-08-06T18:31:16.437" Score="4" ViewCount="2151" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is related to the question asked here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24162/is-it-okay-to-inquire-about-the-status-of-a-paper-when-the-online-submission-sys&quot;&gt;Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around 4 months ago, I submitted a paper to a Math journal for peer-review through an online submission system. The same day I received in my e-mail an acknowledgement message saying that the paper had been received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The status of the paper on the online submission system is still &quot;Manuscript submitted&quot;, and the paper has not been assigned to an editor yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One month ago, I sent a polite email asking for the status of the paper, but I got no response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I send a second email in the regular way (that is to say, not using the journal's online system)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that things go slower during this time of the year (due to holidays or something)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13744" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T19:53:04.090" Title="Is it okay to resend an email to a journal asking for the status of a submitted manuscript?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-08-07T13:13:16.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2014-08-06T19:29:11.940" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many publications in peer review journals. Let me share my experience. If you have a high quality manuscript, I recommend you to submit the manuscript to a journal and also to upload it to arxiv. Do not ask Editor anything about arxiv as it is completely counterproductive. If due to some reasons your manuscript is rejected from the journal, you will save your idea in arxiv at least. Further you can refer to your arxiv paper for future peer review journal publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20412" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T19:29:11.940" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26857" CreationDate="2014-08-06T19:53:04.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should definitely send another polite email. You could also write directly to the editor, since your situation sounds fairly unreasonable. You deserve some sort of response to your submission. I would consider withdrawing the paper and submitting it elsewhere if you don't get a response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T19:53:04.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26853" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:11:39.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, going for your MS and PhD at the same school is the preferred approach in engineering.  The MS is seen as a golden parachute if you can't pass the qualifying exams for the PhD.  Some schools even see having an MS as a disadvantage when applying for a PhD for this reason.  If you think you might continue on for a PhD, then choose the school and adviser that you would want to continue on with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of funding vs. prestige is a tricky one.  Do you want to work after school or do you want to stay in academia?  Funding will leave you less in debt after school, but for a career in academia, the prestige of your program and adviser is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular situation, there are terrible warning signs for the low ranked school so I would avoid that situation regardless of what your longer term goals are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20424" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T20:11:39.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:57:41.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way you can react is not to take personally his &quot;attacks&quot;. Act like the guy does absolutely not touch you, that his questioning comments and remarks are useless and uninteresting. But for that, you should trust yourself and abilities. Don't let him spread doubt in you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20426" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T20:57:41.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26995" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:16:03.237" Score="3" ViewCount="1335" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can we find who owns an old book's copyright today, especially if the publishing company who printed said book no longer exists? This would also apply for other (non-book) publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T09:59:13.623" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T09:59:13.623" Title="How can we find who owns an old book's copyright?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:23:57.633" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have a potential ally in the rest of the students, if you treat them correctly. You are in a university, not in a troubled high school from a bad film: most of the students are mature persons, that are there because they want to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was an undergrad, I had a few friends in class, but most of the people were from completely strangers to no more than acquaintances towards the end of the degree. This means that I don't have any kind of loyalty or tolerance towards them: if you are annoying me, I am not going to like you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think would happen if an outsider interrupted the class saying that the Apocalypse was going to happen in four months and you are all going to be abducted by UFOs? And what if this happened every week? Do you think your students would like it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that you don't turn them against him, but instead give them the chance to do it. Put them on your side by engaging in a good interesting lesson. If you are teaching one of these subjects that nobody likes, try to make it more appealing by doing an experimental demonstration every now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to actively turn them against this annoying subject, he will get angry, and things will get worse. And the students may misinterpret what you are trying, not like it, and things got even worse. Instead, you have to bring them in your boat because they want to learn and you are there to teach them. That guy is the enemy just because he is getting in the way, but you are a magnificent god, and he is welcome if he stops acting the way he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mindset has to be that you are there to teach the class, and you have to take whatever means are necessary for it. If someone comes in late, making a lot of noise, and disturbing everybody, you have to show them you don't accept it and even tell them off. If someone consistently asks &lt;strong&gt;stupid&lt;/strong&gt; questions, you can tell him to shut up. If someone is derailing off topic, you should kindly invite them to discuss after class. If someone starts to make political interpretations of Matrix Algebra, tell them that is not the place or the moment to discuss it. If someone is willingly hurting you, you may consider telling them that it is not nice and they should stop it. If you firmly invite an offending person to leave the room, they would either do it, or chicken out and apologise. If he just refuses, or decides not to acknowledge your request, or attack you verbally, his peers will see it as childish behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any confrontation you have with a student, is it not you, Name Surname; it is the lecturer of Your Subject. Once you step out of the building, you don't personally hold any grudge against them. This is where your power comes from, and also your shield: it is not you, it is the lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need confidence before getting in that class, and the best you can get is with passion for your subject and teaching. Prepare and rehearse your class beforehand, make sure you know everything you want to say, prepare the questions they may have; and when the day comes, go into that room knowing that you are going to nail the lesson, no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T21:30:19.593" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:30:19.593" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26818" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:29:24.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unlikely that two or three equally good journals exist to serve a single audience. That is: while your work may be a &quot;good fit&quot; to all three, it is likely to reach a somewhat different audience in each case. In my field, for example, one journal has a more &quot;theoretical&quot; outlook than another. Plenty of papers could easily fit in either, but theoreticians may be more likely to read them if they are in one journal rather than the other. This may be a consideration, depending on the content of your paper and what you hope to achieve with it. Equally, you may bring your work to the attention of a wider audience by publishing in multiple journals: even if people do not read your paper, they may come to recognise your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:29:24.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26843" CreationDate="2014-08-06T22:01:24.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are an undergrad now, so that means you have neither experience nor plenty of free time. But this doesn't mean you can't give it a shot: read up about research, and find interesting projects to do. Aim for something small, that you can, for example, accomplish in one year. The next year, try something different. I'd probably focus on topics that are not exactly covered in your curriculum, as those you are going to learn anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied Physics, but on the side I experimented with computer simulations, to later go to image and video processing, analysis of experimental spectra, and complex networks (graph theory). All this taught me tools and ideas that I am now using, in a completely different field (Bioinformatics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, before I started looking for a PhD, I didn't even considered Bioinformatics as an option, but I saw one offer, looked appealing, and decided it was exactly what I wanted to do. How is everything I did helping me? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to compare some pieces of data. Comparing them pairwise is simple, so I remembered networks, and designed a robust way of combining the comparison into a global measurement. As a plus, I knew already of a good library, and how to use it so I could start coding my ideas right away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I have a matrix, and I have to dig out some patterns (with lots of gaps). From my time doing image processing I remember reading about the Hough transform, and it turns out it looks a promising start point. But I also remembered when I was analysing spectra that the output is quite complex, so I will keep in mind the caveats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you don't have to start now in what you want to do. In fact, you will be a more efficient researcher if you know many different things, as you never know where you are going to end up. All this, of course, keeping an eye on your official studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T22:06:26.993" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T22:06:26.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-06T23:17:47.913" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Giving authority to problematic students often helps as delegating responsibility will put him under pressure and divert his mind from generating devilish ideas towards escaping / fulfilling the responsibility that you have just burdened onto him. Example: Make him a Class Representative or a leader of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reverse Psychology - Applaud his comments, Use sarcasm, intelligent phrases or sheer innocence to mess up his &quot;efforts&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will not only eliminate the problem but also set an example for other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20431" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T23:17:47.913" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T00:22:47.243" Score="15" ViewCount="3237" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated in the title, I'm wondering if someone could shed some light on whether it is possible to land a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D. By way of background, I double majored in philosophy and psychology, and I am heading into my 3rd year of law school. A life as an academic sounds more appealing than it did a few years ago when I chose law school over a Phd., and I'm curious if a J.D. could suffice. Any helpful insight on this topic would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20433" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T23:27:37.397" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T01:50:47.110" Title="Can you get a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26883" CreationDate="2014-08-07T00:22:53.923" Score="9" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want a good relationship with my advisor. But he is very busy with his projects and I am very busy with my master thesis as well. It is very clear to me where my project is going, I just need time to get it done. So basically, for now I don't need to meet my advisor and he doesn't have time anyways. For technical questions I can always ask some PhD students from him and I work usually at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess emailing once a month with updates would only overload his email address. Do you have any other ideas how to keep a good relationship with my advisor although there is no direct need for it? No matter how good of an advising this is, what can &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; do to make a good relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20106" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T07:42:00.260" Title="How to maintain a good relationship with advisor when there is no need for it but I want it?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2014-08-07T00:47:13.397" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keeping your advisor up to date with how your work is going is important. You might think that your work is going along the correct path, but it is quite possible in research to start heading off down a path which - while possibly interesting - may not be the route your supervisor wants you to go down (at least, not without discussing it first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of damaging a good working student-advisor relationship is to end up in a situation where your advisor is demanding to know why you have taken the research in a new direction, without consulting your advisor for his/her advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that a monthly update is going to overload your advisor's email account - unless he or she is an internet hermit. If you are worried about annoying your advisor with information overload, you could always end your initial email reports with words indicating that you are more than happy to talk face-to-face about your progress, or say that you are happy to make the email updates less frequent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No advisor wants to be left in the dark about what their students are doing. A good advisor will not consider a regular email update from their student a negative prospect - so long as you don't try your advisor's patience with multi-page long emails. For an MSc thesis project - where time is tight - I think that reporting on a monthly basis is about right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T00:47:13.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26905" CreationDate="2014-08-07T02:02:13.867" Score="6" ViewCount="3313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I got a rejection of my paper from a reputed journal. There were two reviewers who reviewed my paper.However reviewer1 accepted it while reviewer 2 rejected with some suggestions that can be well implemented. The strong reason for the rejection mentioned by the reviewer 2 was the some similarity with my earlier paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Query&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;One of the associate editor of this journal is the well known author working in my field and he has also received the mail notification regarding rejection of my paper. Perhaps he has reviewed this work as well. Shall I contact him to discuss about this rejection and ask for help to further improve our work as per his suggestions. I am fully confused and depressed with this rejection. As I was expecting this paper to be published in that journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need help and suggestions. It would be of great help if someone could help me &#xA;in such case how to write mail. As English is not my first language I find it hard to write a convincing mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="897" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T07:30:53.403" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:30:40.127" Title="Should I contact an editor at the journal that rejected my paper, to ask for feedback?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26896" CreationDate="2014-08-07T02:14:51.963" Score="36" ViewCount="29396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enrolled at my current MSc in computer science program last year having never completed a single computer science course in college. I decided to apply because 10 years after college I had a fairly successful career as a front-end web developer and figured it would be great to have a degree so as to look like a more legitimate programmer than what my anthropology B.A. degree might imply. I had taken several math and physics courses in college and did well, so I figured a computer science degree could be manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's been over a year since my program started (I attend part-time). I dropped a core class in basic algorithms in my first semester because I couldn't understand algorithms and decided to enroll in the same course offered this summer. I'd hoped to do well this summer, but it looks like if I pass I'd be just barely scraping by. It feels like everyone is doing much better than me and can solve problems faster and more accurately. If you were me would you quit the program? I'm not sure if it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lack of a background in undergraduate computer science  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the fact that I am an older student who is nearly 40&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lack of aptitude for this subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts from others in computer science, engineering, and mathematical sciences would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It's been 7 months since I posted this and I've realized the problem. Front-end web development quite frankly is &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; like computer science. Many concepts in my basic algorithms course requires a good grasp of recursion, which I didn't have before entering the program. All the programming I had done in the past was iterative. Once I was able to understand and (more importantly) correctly apply recursion to everything from Towers of Hanoi to dynamic programming the algorithms course got much easier. To anyone starting graduate school in computer science--never underestimate the importance of recursion! Even if you think you understand it, test yourself with other students to make sure your understanding is solid! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, my advice to anyone starting out in computer science is to figure out what it is you are weak at and work to get stronger in it. That can be hard to do initially if you are overwhelmed by the material and everything just appears really difficult, but talk to your professor and ask him or her to help identify your areas of weakness, never give up, and you will be able to master the material soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, I did take a one year Intro to CS course for students without engineering/math backgrounds, but it mostly focused on object-oriented  programming and glossed over recursion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20436" LastEditorUserId="20436" LastEditDate="2015-03-21T01:36:18.037" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T01:36:18.037" Title="What makes a MSc in Computer Science difficult for someone who has no specific background but 10 years of experience as a programmer?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="33" FavoriteCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2014-08-07T02:24:02.543" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible but you'll be competing against people with doctorates in Philosophy and dissertations and publications in philosophical journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the requirement for faculty at colleges and university is the &quot;terminal degree in the field.&quot; For law professors, this is the JD. For studio artists, the MFA. And most other faculty, the PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the Provost would raise any issues with your hiring in terms of credentials, but the more difficult thing will be to convince the hiring committee (consisting of mostly philosophy profs with some other humanists) that you're the right person for the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared to articulate why you'll be capable of not only teaching PHIL101, but PHIL2xx, 3xx, and 4xx. If you're at a university, would you be capable of mentoring PhD students?  The assumption will be that you don't have that experience, so the burden of proof will be on you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many JDs figure it's just as easy to get the PhD with a few more years of school and emerge with a JD-PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[Editorial Aside: That all being said, I think you're a bit nutso. Have you seen the starting salaries for law professors? They are earning $150,000+ in the few few years and often have tenure by their 4th year. If I were you, I'd go into the teaching of law and teach very philosophical law classes.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T03:45:24.123" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T03:45:24.123" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T02:42:09.290" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, talk to your advisor. He/She would know your situation much better than us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not quit right now if I were you. I think quitting now is a premature decision. I think it is understandable that you cannot catch up very fast especially you attend only part time. You probably should take lower level courses (probably undergrad level) to refresh the knowledge you acquired 10 years ago. If you still cannot do them very well, then consider to quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T02:42:09.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26872" CreationDate="2014-08-07T03:05:02.223" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, I don't think you should contact the editor. Journal editors are very busy people, and they don't have time to offer individual comments on every paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that your paper did not get a fair review, for example if you have reason to believe &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5865/what-to-do-if-reviewers-reject-a-paper-without-understanding-the-content&quot;&gt;the reviewer did not read or understand the paper&lt;/a&gt;, then that is worth contacting the editor about. But if you simply want to discuss the paper, the editor will likely view your request as not worth their time. They have already given you their comments on the paper, in the form of a rejection decision: in other words, the editor does not consider your paper appropriate for publication in the journal, and a discussion is not going to change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think asking for suggestions on how to improve the paper would be inappropriate, because you have already been given suggestions, in referee #2's report. My advice: make the improvements suggested by referee #2 and try submitting the paper to a different journal where it might be a better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T03:05:02.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2014-08-07T03:28:11.700" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Realistically, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more philosophy PhDs looking for jobs than jobs available in philosophy, and your undergraduate experience while helpful probably won't make you stand out as an expert in philosophy. Or to put it another way, while you've been earning your J.D. which prepares you for law, philosophy PhD earners have been studying the very subject material they will teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; you might be eligible for positions where they are looking for someone in philosophy of law. Specifically, if they want someone with practical experience (but then they wouldn't want you straight out of your J.D.). Probably a good way to ask this question would be to e-mail Brian Leiter (or someone else) who works in law and philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T03:28:11.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2014-08-07T03:29:58.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once rewrote a Ph.D. thesis for a Chinese student on the request of her thesis adviser, who said it was basically unsubmittable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything the student wrote was in 'Yoda' - backwards every sentence wrote she did. Most peculiar it was really. Just wanted to rewrite it after a few sentences you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never found out if she had the degree conferred. The thesis adviser said her work was marginal at best, notwithstanding the bizarre English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T03:29:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T04:24:27.310" Score="4" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated from my undergrad program last December.  My grades and GRE scores are good but my school is relatively unknown.  I don't really have research in the sense that I haven't published anything, and I don't believe anything I've done to be particularly novel.  The school I went to was a teaching college, there wasn't a strong emphasis on research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I have been known (as my recommendation-writing professors will surely vouch) to do projects wherein I pick a topic, read a bunch about it, and then implement what I've read about.  At present, I'm writing a ray-tracing renderer, and I plan to implement a lot of advanced features by the time I actually apply to grad school, such as photon mapping and an BVH data structure.  I also plan to implement a few more shiny bells and whistles based on techniques I've read from different SIGGRAPH papers, but I don't believe I will be doing anything that no one else has done before, especially in the 4 months left until my application is submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, however, this project is 100% my own.  I never took a graphics class while in college.  I work 40 or more hours a week a software developer, and I do most of my work by waking up at 5:30AM and working until I start work at 9.  I do most of my research (into papers and topics) when I get home, and during the work day when I have a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how valuable is the information I just listed?  Does the attitude demonstrated above make up for the fact that I don't really have terribly original research?  What about the fact that my professors probably aren't that well known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies mostly to the top tier of schools.  I will be applying to several non-elite schools as well, but it is with the top schools that I am most worried about my lack of research.  Do I have even a small chance to get into a top school, or am I simply noncompetitive as a candidate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- As for work experience, I have 8 months of experience as an intern at a fairly high profile research institute, but the truth is the work they had me do while there really wasn't research.  My current job is developing mobile applications and websites.  I find it very underwhelming, and I imagine graduate schools will as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastEditorUserId="19655" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T01:36:03.353" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T01:36:03.353" Title="Can personal projects that required reading other's research make up for lack of my own?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T06:27:50.370" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you fell into a couple of common traps at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trap 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am good at front-end web development, I am surely good at computer science as well&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you likely learned by now, it is possible (quite common, actually) to be a terrific &lt;em&gt;programmer&lt;/em&gt; and still struggle with fundamental CS topics, such as algorithms. There may have been a time when programming was really applied algorithms, but today the skills required to write your average web application is relatively disjoint from what you learn in CS 101.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trap 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I did decent in (undergrad) maths and physics courses, surely those (master) CS courses will be ok.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a combination of multiple fallacies I have seen. Firstly, you may have not taken into account that master-level CS courses are, well, for students on master-level. They assume a strong command of the basics, which, by the sound of it, you lack. Further, doing ok in maths and physics is a good indicator that you'll do well in maths and physics, it by no means qualifies you directly for a CS master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trap 3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I know what I need to know, I just applied to the master because I need a better degree.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I] figured it would be great to have a degree so as to look like a more legitimate programmer than what my anthropology B.A. degree might imply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this statement very concerning, as it seems you are more interested in getting a degree than in learning CS. If that is the case, you should seriously reconsider whether the degree is actually worth the trouble. Frankly, for most programming houses I am in contact with, 10 years of experience count for more than a master's degree anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now to answer your concrete question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you were me would you quit the program? I'm not sure if it is a lack of a background in undergraduate computer science, the fact that I am an older student who is nearly 40, or a lack of aptitude for this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not assume that you are just &quot;not good enough&quot;, and the age shouldn't really be an issue either. It definitely sounds like you are lacking background, and the fact that you are doing the master part-time surely isn't helping either. All in all, that does not make for very favorable conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody but you can tell whether you should quit, but given the information, I would re-evaluate whether (a) a master is achievable for you, and (b) whether getting a master's degree is actually worth it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T06:27:50.370" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26879" CreationDate="2014-08-07T07:40:56.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How valuable is the information I just listed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very, since it shows that you are capable of reading and understanding the literature, and capable of implementing what you read (the true test of understanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the attitude demonstrated above make up for the fact that I don't really have terribly original research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that any faculty, anywhere, expects undergrad students to have published research. I think the attitude you describe is very valuable for grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about the fact that my professors probably aren't that well known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, having a famous professor vouch for you certainly counts for a lot. But not having that network at an undergraduate level shouldn't preclude you from getting into a good graduate course, especially if you have some nicely implemented projects up your sleeve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T07:40:56.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2014-08-07T07:42:00.260" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of, you are absolutely asking the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; question (&quot;what can I do to make a good relationship?&quot;). The answer depends a bit on the preferences of your advisor - what works for some may not work for others. Here are a few things you could think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You say you work from home. This automatically decouples you from the lab and your advisor. Have you thought whether it would be possible to work in the lab (if they have room for you) for, for instance, two days a week? This would also help make sure that you stay on the track your advisor wants your research to go, see also Nicholas' answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You say you work mainly with some of his PhD students. Try to bond and network with the PhD students you like, and impress them with your technical aptitude and  motivation. Thinking back on my PhD advisor, the only master students he really remembered were the ones that his PhD students were constantly praising in &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; meetings with him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if there is a chance to publish something (with your advisor) in the context of your master's thesis. This not only shows motivation, but also has an immediate benefit for your advisor. During paper writing, you will also automatically have a number of meetings with your advisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are interested in doing a PhD, indicate this to your advisor and ask for feedback. I have the impression that many professors take significantly more interest in master students that want to stay on the academic path than in those that are about to leave to industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T07:42:00.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26879" CreationDate="2014-08-07T08:15:16.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am coming from a very similar background (high performing student in an average CS program, with no formal lab experience). As far as your chances at a top program, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26791/how-handicapped-am-i-in-graduate-admissions-if-i-graduated-from-a-lower-tier-uni&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; was recently discussed. I don't think anyone can say for sure except the committee members, but it's definitely possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was accepted with a few independent research projects, none of which had any real &quot;results&quot;. What I did (YMMV) was review the literature and come up with incremental modifications or advancements, or in one case an experiment for which the outcome was pretty obvious but which had never actually been performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my interviews, the emphasis was not even the details of these projects, but how I could relate the skills I had gained to the topics my potential advisers were interested in. As Dylan mentioned, even top programs don't require that incoming students are already accomplished researchers (what would be the point of attending?) but that you show initiative and capacity for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice then, would be to use the 4 (+- 1) months you have until you submit to  spin your implementations into independent research projects. Try to push just past the limits of the research you reviewed. If possible, you should document these projects by submitting technical reports somewhere (e.g. your undergrad dept. might be able to assign a technical report number and host the document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you can't do that, try to clarify in your own mind how the experience of independent study might have prepared you for research, so that you can communicate that effectively. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh I almost forgot, everything I have ever read about non-research work experience indicates it's basically unimportant... however, if you happen to apply to non-CS programs that need programmers and you have work history showing your ability to build non-trivial programs it could be a significant advantage. This might backfire if your adviser wants you more as a programmer than a researcher, but nevertheless it could help you get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T08:15:16.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-07T08:24:26.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553263900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;When I Say No, I feel Guilty&lt;/a&gt; by Manuel J. Smith. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this book sounds like it has nothing to do with your situation, but before you dismiss it out of hand, I implore you to read some of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553263900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;its customer reviews&lt;/a&gt; on Amazon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it's a book that is best read backwards, from the back of the book, where the examples begin, to the front of the book, where the theory is actually discussed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, someone else mentioned using sarcasm, but the book and I would advise against that. It's important that you do not throw verbal stones back at him and it's important that you do not scold him and make him lose face in front of his classmates. If or when that student crosses the line, ask to speak to him privately. Once alone with him, assuming you feel safe enough to meet him privately of course, he won't have an audience to play for, so he's much less likely to act out if you can be assertive about what you want from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I'd suggest that you take up some kind of combative sport, like martial arts, or boxing, or even a sport like rugby. This is not to encourage you to fight, please do not misrepresent my intent, this is just to teach you how to carry yourself with confidence and to mitigate some of the fear of a physical confrontation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I'd suggest that you practice public speaking in a safe environment. The best place for that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toastmasters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.toastmasters.org/&lt;/a&gt; (it's a non-profit club, so it's a cheap way to practice public speaking and to bring up some of the problems you've been having in class and discuss possible ways to address them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one warning thought. Not all Toastmasters clubs are equal. If you don't like the vibe in one, try another one, and if you don't like that second one, try a third one. They're basically everywhere and there are many to choose from. The key is to keep on going, and to participate, even if you don't feel comfortable at first. If you go frequently enough, you'll feel comfortable enough and it can become like a second home to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, and this is the most difficult challenge I can give you, so I don't really expect that you'll do it. But once that you've done all those three things I've suggested, I'd encourage you to take it up a notch higher, and that's to join a comics class sponsored by a night club, or to participate in poetry slams, or even to sing at Karaoke clubs, all the while staying completely sober. I'm not saying any of these things are going to be easy, especially not for the type of personality I envision you to have, but if you can do any of these things (without the help of alcohol), handling a single heckler in your class will seem like a real walk in the park after that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that these things are worth doing, even if that guy ends up dropping your class. Our society tends to reward confident and extroverted people. And aside from the book I've suggested, which is one in a million, nothing beats practicing frequently and sharpening yourself against the brunt force of a real live audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11434" LastEditorUserId="11434" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T09:55:36.907" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T09:55:36.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T08:52:46.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the lack of background is a huge factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;already have&lt;/em&gt; a master's in mathematics, graduated 14 years ago. I'm certain I couldn't do a master's in mathematics now without going back over undergraduate material first. I'm fairly sure that revisiting that material would take rather more than just the spare time that I have left over after doing a master's in the spare time from my job. Of course mathematics isn't the same as CS, but I think the same consideration would apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing OK in maths and physics at undergraduate level &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; have prepared you somewhat for a CS master's (although like everyone says, it's by no means guaranteed to be enough). But 10 years is long enough to forget even what you had, quite aside from the fact that what you had was a few courses rather than the syllabus of a mathematics major. It's not just the content of the course (most of mathematics is irrelevant to CS), it's the mindset of &quot;being a mathematician&quot; and &quot;doing mathematics formally&quot; that's similar to the formality required in your course, but is mostly absent from everyday apps programming. If you're anything like me, you have to some extent forgotten how to operate in the necessary mode, it no longer comes naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a test, take a look now at the harder mathematics and physics problems from the courses you took. Can you site down and do them now with anything like the ease you did then? Even with an &quot;open book&quot; to look up definitions you don't recall? If not, then you're less prepared for CS now than you were then, and like everyone says you weren't fully prepared then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best source of information is whoever decided you were qualified for the course. They must have thought you could get up to speed. Check with your professors whether you've done the sorts of things they think you would have to do to prepare, and whether that preparation is feasible on your schedule. Until you deal with the lack of background I don't think there's any way to tell whether you lack aptitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age shouldn't inherently be a problem, since people take degrees in all subjects at all ages. However, your life being full of other stuff &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an obstacle to some extent. Part of the reason I was much better at mathematics 15 years ago than I am now, is that 15 years ago I did it every day, usually for several hours. So I was simply in a better position to accept information delivered in a &quot;mathsy&quot; way, which I think CS courses basically are. No doubt there's material out there specifically intended for part-time students, that could help you attain and maintain &quot;the zone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't understand recursive equations like how you construct&#xA;  T(n)=log(n)+O(1) from an algorithm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If explanations that work for your colleagues don't work for you then you might consider one-to-one tutoring. Naturally that's extremely expensive, but if the class hears &quot;and then throw the Master theorem at it&quot; and knows what that means and how to fill in the details, and you don't, then clearly they have background you don't and so you need things filled in that they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you were me would you quit the program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I would probably be asking the university (a) whether there's anything else I can work towards with the course credits I have, (b) whether there's an approved means to take the program more slowly, giving more time to fill in any missing background as I go. I have no idea what the answers would be, but I'd want to know my options before seriously thinking about quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's just this one course (admittedly an important one, presumably other courses later require it) then it's entirely possible that you'll crack it eventually. There was one undergraduate course that I repeated (informally: my problems weren't being graded the second time) even after completing it the first time to what would have been a passing standard if my university worked that way (not in the US). It was &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; easier after that. You've seen some of this course twice, but some of it not at all (since you dropped it the first time and haven't reached the end this time). Personally I wouldn't do anything hasty until I'd at least reached the end of the course once. And if you scrape a pass that doesn't mean you can't visit the tougher material at the end a second time, and the early material a third. Although presumably if you wanted to be re-graded you'd have to formally enroll in the class yet again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="11440" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T09:24:00.153" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T09:24:00.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26890" CreationDate="2014-08-07T10:04:21.087" Score="25" ViewCount="142786" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked around but did not find that anyone has asked this before, but what are the fonts that are standard/recommended while writing academic reports/papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10158" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T10:39:16.417" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T07:30:59.457" Title="What is the standard/recommended font to use in papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2014-08-07T10:24:53.340" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's no template, then the choice is yours. However, you should make sure to pick a font that's easy to read. The usual standards in academia tend to be the Times, Helvetica/Arial, and Computer Modern families. This doesn't restrict you from using fonts like Book Antiqua, Myriad Pro, Goudy Old Style, or Garamond, but they're definitely not standard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T10:24:53.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2014-08-07T10:25:47.657" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an academic paper each publisher journal have their standards. These do not affect or are affected by the manuscripts sent in to the journal. Some journals specify fonts, commonly standard Times Roman, for their manuscripts. If the journal specifies something, follow that specification. Otherwise use a font that is easy to read. There is no need to use anything but a standard font for whatever typesetting/word processor system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T10:25:47.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26904" CreationDate="2014-08-07T10:25:48.163" Score="8" ViewCount="1826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently an undergraduate, and I will finish my bachelors this coming spring. I've been looking at graduate programs, including one physical chemistry masters program in the Amsterdam. I found out that I'm visiting Amsterdam in less than a week, and I am now wondering if it would be appropriate for me to ask the program contact person if I can visit the campus and maybe talk to a professor or two about their research and the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned because it is short notice, and I haven't started any application with the school. But, I would like to know if the school is a good fit. I don't live in Europe so this is my only opportunity to visit the campus in the foreseeable future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate for me to ask if I could visit the college/institute? Also, should I mention a few projects that caught my eye and ask to meet the professors in charge? If so, how would be the best way for me to phrase it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20445" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T14:02:45.820" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:13:55.257" Title="Asking for a site visit as a master's applicant" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2014-08-07T11:17:56.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I never worked in the industry, so I have no first-hand information and everything I write is what I picked up from old colleagues, ... .&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think in economics outside Academia a publication is worth barely the space in the CV. When applying to positions in consulting you may have luck and someone recognizes the journal you are publishing in, but in large companies you rarely meet someone who even knows what AER or Econometrica are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So publications might look nice  on the CV but (if you are not applying to a university or maybe a consulting firm) no one cares if you published at Econometrica or the working paper series of the university of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your case is a little bit different: MOOCs (and most teaching jobs) are at a university, so I would consider them as part of Academia and there publications might be worth something. Maybe not much but something at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put that in (pretty random) numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;100% For a research job (normalized)&#xA;50% For a teaching job at an university&#xA;10% - 20% If you are &quot;lucky&quot; and someone with a PhD in Economics makes the decision&#xA;0% Otherwise&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing takes a lot of time and effort, so, if you are sure that you do not want to stay in Academia (or work at MOOCs) graduate faster without polishing your papers too much (if you are getting some kind of grade: that usually does matter, so some polishing is probably needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T11:17:56.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T12:13:38.393" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Survival guide from someone who's been in your situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're getting many discouraging comments here which doesn't help you a lot. You already know you don't have the best possible qualifications, you don't need people reminding you. The question is, &lt;em&gt;what can you do about it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a CS major, but I started out as a physics undergrad. I had the kind of courses you're talking about, multivariate calculus etc. This means that when I had my algorithms course (following the same book as your course), I hadn't had any discrete math at all. &#xA;The discrete math helps you understand the data structures. The data structures are used when implementing the algorithms.&#xA;Proof techniques from discrete math helps you understand the correctness and runtime complexity of an algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though having a vast knowledge of (discrete) math would aid your understanding of algorithms, it is a great overstatement to imply that you can't get by without it. I picked up all these things during my algorithms course. If I, like you, had asked people whether I should quit because I had zero knowledge of graphs and trees prior to taking the course, I would probably have received discouraging comments as you do now. As it happens, I got a perfect score for the course because I studied hard at exactly what the exam demanded. I rehearsed every single proof in the syllabus (mine was an oral exam).&#xA;I don't know what type of exam you're up against, but I suggest you narrow down the syllabus as much as possible, and concentrate only on what you're supposed to know that will &lt;em&gt;get you to pass&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Introduction to algorithms' is a very comprehensive book and there's a lot of stuff in there you don't need. A lot of people here are perfectionists and think you ought to know everything, I've even seen someone here suggesting you should know Lagrangian mechanics, I really don't see the relevance of that at all. This is not a physics course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I'd like to add a comment about recurrences T(n). This can be hard to understand because the book doesn't give you an exact recipe for this.&#xA;It's helpful to think of the recurrence relation T(n) as the behavior of the problem. The problem is the input to the algorithm and is expressed in terms of n - the size of the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I assume you're familiar with Mergesort. With the algorithm Mergesort you take the problem n and divide it into two equally large problems (you can tell from looking at the algorithm). These problems are half the size of the original problem, so you get a recurrence that says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T(n) = 2T(n/2) + O(n)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recurrence basically says that the problem starts out as n and then becomes two problems of half size, which the algorithm is then applied to (hence the T). (You might notice then, that the recurrence relations are only applied to recursive algorithms). The O(n) expresses the linear cost it takes to merge the two problems together once they have been solved (because we know this is performed by the subroutine Merge). This step is not recursive, as it is performed after the problem has &quot;come back&quot; from being recursively solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see, the recurrence relation is gleaned from looking at the algorithm. The relation is then solved by either the master theorem or the substitution method or gleaned from drawing a graph of the recursions (recursion tree) and then proved rigorously with the substitution method.&#xA;The solution will tell you the nature of the runtime, i.e.: If you increase the size n of the problem, how much do you increase the runtime? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Mergesort the answer is Theta(n log n) which means that the increase in runtime will be a function of the type f(n) = n log n. You compare runtimes by looking at the steepness of the slopes of these functions. If the runtime is Theta(2^n) then the slope will be extremely steep, and the time it takes to run the algorithm will increase very fast, so the algorithm is said to be very slow.&#xA;This is the answer you're looking for when you construct the recurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally: don't despair, it might seem very difficult at times, but you'll probably be closer to understanding than you think.&#xA;A very good tool for me was to watch the lectures on algorithms and datastructures from the MIT opencourseware.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/lecture-videos/&quot;&gt;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/lecture-videos/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/&quot;&gt;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20447" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T12:13:38.393" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-07T13:43:28.200" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following are slightly generic remarks. They may not help much in this particular case (first impressions being so persistent, you may have lost this particular charmer), but might be helpful in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember we all of us are apes, and have ape-like notions of territory.  He is acting as if the classroom is his territory, whereas it is in fact &lt;em&gt;your territory&lt;/em&gt;.  But how do you establish that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often inexperienced teachers stand right up at the blackboard, apparently as far away from the students as they can possibly get.  Move forwards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can get into the class before them, welcome them in – nothing fancy, just generic &quot;good, good, come in, hurry up... hello...&quot;  You're giving them permission to be in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look into their faces as you talk; you're the authority figure, and you get to choose who you look at.  Apes really react to being seen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I generally start a lecture by deliberately and obviously moving to the front of a class, just in front of the front-most rows, and just stand waiting expectantly but alertly.  The students I'm looming over shut up promptly, and a wave of silence spreads outwards.  If people are still talking, look right at them; others will follow your gaze, and there's nothing apes notice more quickly than people looking at them. If they keep talking, keep on looking, in a &quot;you're wasting all these people's time&quot; way. It takes real aggression for someone to blatantly keep talking in those circumstances. If you just keep standing, impassive, repeating in your head &quot;you are a stupid little dick, boy; you are a stupid little dick, ...&quot; you'll freak out the class and they will probably suppress misbehaviour themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move into the class&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is your territory and not theirs, remember, and so &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can walk into the middle of it and they can't. If the layout permits, teach from the &lt;em&gt;centre&lt;/em&gt; of the class occasionally. If you're explaining something on the board/screen, perhaps do so from half-way up the side of the class, facing in the same direction as them (apart from anything else, this provides variety and stops them or you getting bored!).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't have to be some massive mind-game, and it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be some sort of contest (which is the sort of game where social aggression wins). And I'm not suggesting you spray on the walls! But teachers often forget that physical presence and movement, and where you choose to stand, can send very powerful signals to creatures of all shapes and forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building confidence is hard; moving a couple of metres forward is less so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;An exercise&lt;/em&gt;: assemble four or five friends in a row of chairs in front of you, looking straight at you. Stand in front of them, looking back into their faces in turn, in a nice friendly way but saying nothing.  It's weird how difficult it is to keep this up for even one minute. Part of what's initially challenging about teaching is the discomfort of having a room-ful of people looking straight at you, and if you can get used to this (in this context, without the distraction of having to teach at the same time), and if you remember the feeling of being looked &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt;, you'll become more able to deploy the gaze in your territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10983" LastEditorUserId="10983" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T14:46:13.467" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:46:13.467" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24288" CreationDate="2014-08-07T13:57:22.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would you spend your time and money to attend one when there is no shortage of good, legitimate conferences?  Your time is valuable.  Stay away from anything that you even suspect might not be first-rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T08:45:41.090" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T08:45:41.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26892" CreationDate="2014-08-07T14:02:30.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to be visiting the city anyways, there's nothing wrong with asking if you can visit the department. The worst-case scenario is that they will simply tell you, &quot;no, it's not possible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, visiting the department and talking with staff and students there is often a good way to show your enthusiasm for applying to a particular program, and can help to set you apart from other applicants. I know that a student I supervised in research did something similar and ended up being admitted to the program (one of the few he was accepted to, in fact).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:02:30.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26892" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:13:55.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is totally appropriate and a great idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply send an email to the contact person (who may have a title like &quot;graduate coordinator&quot; or &quot;graduate chair&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is Edna Farblefester and I'm a junior at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.  I am interested in applying to your program next year.  I will be in Amsterdam next week and was wondering if I might be able to meet with you or some of your colleagues to learn more about the program and some of the faculty's research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should certainly say yes unless there are some extenuating circumstances.  Graduate programs are always eager to recruit students, especially in a case like this where it costs them nothing.  They probably do these sort of meetings all the time, so it should not be much of an inconvenience for them, even on short notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may also offer to set up a campus tour, arrange a meeting with one or more current grad students (very useful), and provide some information about living in Amsterdam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are one or two professors whose research particularly interests you, you could send similar emails to them directly.  (Mention that you are already getting in touch with the contact person, otherwise they will probably suggest that you do so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final note: your phrasing &quot;asking for a site visit&quot; suggested at first that you were going to ask them to pay for the costs of your trip, which would be sort of an unreasonable request (it would be for them to offer if they wanted).  Of course, that isn't what you meant, but you might just want to check your phrasing when you write your email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:13:55.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26872" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:30:40.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you should probably not contact the Associate Editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, referees do not generally make decisions about accepting or rejecting a paper.  Referees make recommendations to associate editors and editors, and they, in turn, make decisions.  Thus, the associate editor who was cc'ed on the email to you is probably the decision-maker who read the reports from the referees and decided to turn down the paper.  This person also knows who the referees were, and is in a situation where this input can be appropriately scaled by the referees review history, level of experience, etc.  For what its worth, I consider it bad form when refereeing to make my recommendation known to the author.  I give an honest assessment, describe my issues, and then make my recs to the editors in the appropriate fields.  (I also make it my personal policy for manuscripts, at least, to never say anything that I wouldn't say to the authors face)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be check boxes in the reviews that you aren't privy to.  Even your reviewer who seemed to recommend acceptance may not have been all that enthusiastic about it, or may not have thought the paper to be very important.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should make use of the feedback you got, which suggested that there was too much similarity with another paper of yours.  You should make the paper clearer as to what the new findings are.  Take a step back and determine if, given the magnitude of this extension, is this worthy of a full paper, or perhaps the field would be better served by some sort of short report.  Then pick the appropriate venue for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some legitimate cases where you might drop the editor a note.  Certainly, if something &quot;very wrong&quot; happened during the review process, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.  My experience is that this is rare, and most reviews are fine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your most productive action at this point would be to discuss the reviews with a mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20457" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:30:40.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:34:33.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, the standard font varies, but is usually a serif font such as Times New Roman, although sans serif fonts such as Arial and Helvetica seem to be gaining traction as well. Their is major disagreement over which is easier to read--serif or sans serif fonts, with no clear consensus on the outcome. For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5701275453838264877&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,39&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Font &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; is typically twelve point. Follow the guidelines on this one, and make sure to keep your font consistent. Nothing is more likely to get you minus points than some obvious monkeying with the font size, whether to lengthen your manuscript (most commonly seen in undergrad papers) or to fit your text into the page limit (the rest of us!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:34:33.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26911" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:12:49.010" Score="4" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that Jones and Smith publish a mathematical paper containing a result (Theorem 3.1, say,) which is said in that paper to be due to Smith alone but appears for the first time in her joint paper with Jones.  How should I cite this result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples of ways I might cite the result if Jones were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a co-author of the paper (for definiteness let's say the paper is number 7 in my bibliography):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;By a theorem of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Our argument is based on that of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...implies the hypothesis of Smith's theorem [7, Theorem 3.1]...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How might I adapt these phrasings to the situation described above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8937" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T10:29:40.950" Title="Citing a result due to a single author that appears in a paper with multiple authors" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26907" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:49:07.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an unusual situation in mathematics: I'm not sure if I've ever seen a singly claimed theorem in a multiply authored mathematics paper except when the theorem has its provenance in explicitly mentioned earlier work of the single author.  (I would be interested to see an example.)  I'm pretty sure there is no &quot;standard&quot; answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea would be to bail out of listing either author's name: you could just say &quot;Our argument is based on [7, Theorem 3.1]....&quot; This is not ideal: I think that when you cite someone's work in a critical way then their name should appear in the text itself rather than be pointed to / abbreviated in the bibliographic citation.  But this is not a hard and fast rule, so far as I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose that if the paper itself says the theorem is due to Smith alone and not Jones-Smith, then you should attribute it that way in your writing.  Thus all of your suggested phrasings seem appropriate to me.  Readers who see &quot;theorem of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]&quot; and then flip to the end to find a paper of Jones-Smith may be a bit surprised...but then they'll read the paper and see that you've reported the attribution as Jones and Smith themselves did.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a really famous theorem then the community at large -- or even different portions of the community -- may have its own feelings about how to refer to it.  (A vaguely similar instance in contemporary mathematics is that some people speak of Maynard's Theorem and others speak of Maynard-Tao...) In this case, by saying one thing rather than another you may be signalling some kind of political allegiance / personal fealty....Such issues are beyond the scope of this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T17:59:56.930" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T17:59:56.930" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:12:42.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am mildly confused about where you started with your Masters? But here's my experience as someone in similar shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an undergrad degree in Political Science but wanted to pursue a Master's in CS. In order to do this I had to start from the ground up and delayed my undergrad graduation to take the prereq classes for the Masters. Now here's the thing for anyone: getting into CS late in the game is hard. You have had no experience whereas others have had ample (as so many are coming from either being self taught or seeing it in high school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning CS can be daunting and I would guess from what you said your job is that you don't realize a fundamental thing about programming, and that's to make it easier for other programmers. From what I've seen of many web based programming is that there's a lot of backdoor programming going on. That's not a bad thing but as others have pointed out, programming is different than CS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, this sounds like a personal choice and not really heavy on pros and cons that aren't personal. You aren't getting it because you're out of options, because you've always wanted to learn it or because your job demands it. You're going because you think it might help you on paper. i'm not saying that's a bad reason, but it certainlt isn't helpful in the motivation category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known a lot of people getting their BS in CS and they suck at it. They fail at almost every class (or just barely scrap by). But man are they still sticking with it (for better or worse, who really knows). So what I'm saying is, your not alone in finding a CS topic hard or confusing. It's more, is it really worth the effort for you at the end of the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, one last thing, are you afraid to ask questions being a more senior member of the class? Do you just sit there hopelessly but afraid that everyone knows more than you? If so, stop that. They don't know more than you and quite possibly don't get it even worse. Go back to 20 year old you in undergrad, what would you do then? You would talk to your classmates and teacher to get a better understanding. If you do this already then good for you, but if not, you might just be surprised about where you actually stand in the class. (I've had classes where just scrapping by is considered an achievment as there is a tramendious failure rate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:12:42.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26907" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:16:02.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just cite it as &quot;Jones and Smith&quot; and not worry about it.  The standard in math is to cite papers by their authors.  If Smith wanted to be cited alone, she should have published the result herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this situation has some precedent in other fields.  I might be wrong, but think some journals such as Nature (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/#a5.5&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/#a5.5&lt;/a&gt; &quot;author contributions&quot;) make the authors disclose who did what.  It does not mean that the paper needs to be cited differently depending on what part of it is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:16:02.010" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26920" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:35:29.267" Score="12" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my UK university all new teaching staff, as part of the requirements to fulfil the requirements for a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE), have their teaching observed by a member of their department, a member of another department, and a member of the Education Department (who run the PGCHE course). I don't understand the advantages of being observed by the three different people. What should I strive to get out of each observation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T18:58:42.383" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T01:49:14.940" Title="What is the purpose of peer evaluation of teaching?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:40:21.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think first you need to start taking the subject seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I had heard that CS is mostly math, so was under the (mistaken) impression that doing well in math means doing well in CS.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's like &amp;quot;I had heard that basketball is mostly running, so was under the (mistaken) impression that doing well in running means doing well in basketball&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you'll need your running.  No, it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; at all save you from training like the others.  Because everyone &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; it to be a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;I had a fairly successful career as a front-end web developer and figured it would be great to have a degree so as to look like a more legitimate programmer than what my anthropology B.A. degree might imply.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A front-end web developer qualifies you for a computer science degree like typing 100 words per minute qualifies you for a typewriter mechanic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;If you were me would you quit the program? &#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before quitting, it might be worth checking what it would take to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; for real.  Only &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; are you in a situation to judge whether the effort is feasible/possible for you and worth it.  For a programming job, a CS degree is of somewhat marginal value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a programming job in Scheme, I'd probably look and interview carefully before making a decision between someone with a degree in ancient Greek and Arabic or in Computer Science.  Chances are that the former is so much better at thinking analytically and out of the box and not being scared of challenges that coming from an entirely different discipline is causing him less trouble than being schooled in a different programming language paradigm does the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously.  So if you are going to try doing a CS degree, don not make it about getting a degree.  It is a completely different and new skill set.  If you want to work in your current profession, you might not even be able to put it to much use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20464" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:40:21.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:49:52.750" Score="0" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a little bit confused regarding the best way to attribute a research paper in my thesis.&#xA;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot; The work in [1] proposed a new method for ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot; John et al.[1] proposed a new method for ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when I have the following context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot; our method results outperforms the results in [1] ... &quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot; our method results outperforms the results provided by John et al.&#xA;[1]&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, due to space limitation, I can not mention the names of the authors every time which pushes me to use the paper only (like examples 1 and 3). Also, I think it is unnecessary redundancy to mention the authors every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is that OK? should I mention the authors of the work every time?&#xA;Are examples 1 and 3 accepted or weak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15032" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T02:24:01.373" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:24:01.373" Title="Whether to use the author name with numeric references when describing a particular study" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T19:56:50.257" Score="64" ViewCount="10326" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;impostor syndrome&lt;/a&gt; seems to be common in academia and there are quite a few questions about it. I wonder if there is something like the inverse impostor syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not referring to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dunning–Kruger effect&lt;/a&gt;, I don't feel particularly superior to anyone. That's not it. Metaphorically: I don't feel like I have a greater slice of cake because I don't see any cake, even though everybody speaks about how big, moist and delicious their slices are and how knowledgeable they are about cakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, &lt;strong&gt;everybody feels like an impostor&lt;/strong&gt;. (And everything feels like a lie)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this feeling? I deeply and seriously wonder about how accurate and shared it may be, if it has a name then most likely I'm not alone in this and therefore maybe I would not be completely mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of the question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt; (in case you need them, I work in computer science):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Head of the department speaking about &quot;big data&quot; for an excel file of several megabytes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning setting the deadlines looking exclusively at the calendar (and not the work).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gantt where activity A ends before activity B starts. A requires B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Becoming an expert on a topic overnight because it's trendy and a buzzword.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correcting English grammar and paper structure, for the worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper reporting evaluation results before any code has been written.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper reporting evaluation results when the code does a different thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coauthoring a paper, without even laying their eyes on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directing a thesis, not checking the formulas, only the &quot;easy&quot; parts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A researcher makes the GUI, gets all the credit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constant meetings with no agendas or minutes (or effects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Micromanaging without actual managing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Powerpoint before actual research or Powerpoint instead any research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-selling old ideas with new labels and minor cosmetic changes that are for the worse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the tweets with the tag #overlyhonestmethods. However that's being sloppy, I mean being an impostor, focusing solely on how things look because:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing some research formally (writing proofs) and empirically (developing a system and testing it with a benchmark, creating a benchmark!) and writing about it on a paper takes much longer than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing some fiction on a paper, which anyway takes much longer than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subliminally collaborating on a paper and putting your name in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: one of the problems why there are so many impostors (as I see it) is that open source code is not requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T20:25:35.523" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T20:25:35.523" Title="Is there a name for the inverse of the impostor syndrome?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="31" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2014-08-07T20:04:36.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attending a similar program at my university (also UK based), and I was observed by a senior member of my faculty, and by another attendee of the same program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point was to initiate a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice&quot;&gt;reflective process&lt;/a&gt; of our teaching. Hence, the observation was not an evaluation, but simply the collection of some pieces of evidence, that described our lecture. Our actual assignment was not the observation in itself, but how we reflect upon the evidence, by describing how we feel about it, how we analyse it, what conclusions do we make about it, and what are the next steps we decide to engage on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, I've collected different types of evidence from my two observers: the senior member of my faculty made some observations in particular related to the content of my lecture, while the observer who was on the same program made some observations related to some of the techniques taught in the program that I used during the lecture. In both cases, all observations were really useful to start the reflective process. I can only assume this is the rationale for you to have three different observers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user102" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T20:11:42.480" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T20:11:42.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26557" CreationDate="2014-08-07T20:36:36.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prepare a tex file for note taking (I learnt this by reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10616/15723&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10578/how-to-read-and-take-notes-on-research-papers&quot;&gt;How to read and take notes on research papers&lt;/a&gt;) and I think that this method will help you. If you don't know how to work with LaTeX, it is very easy to learn; but you can make such file by means of any other typesetting software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can organize your notes by having each chapter or section for any of the papers you read. For instance, section 1 is for the first paper you read. Then you can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/makeidx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makeidx package&lt;/a&gt; to tag the content and prepare an index for your notes. And after all, you can add references to your notes. Every sentence you write from a reference, you can cite it by putting a simple citation code in front of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, by using three easy codes for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Indexing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;indexing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Bibliography_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;referencing&lt;/a&gt; and preparing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Document_Structure#Table_of_contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tables of contents&lt;/a&gt;; you will have a PDF file which is searchable, you have the references available and a table of contents which helps you to find your notes of papers. Also, you can categorize your notes of your papers by chaptering your file. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Table of Contents&#xA;&#xA;  Chapter 1: Topic 1&#xA;     Section 1: Paper 1&#xA;     Section 2: Paper 2&#xA;&#xA;  Chapter 2: Topic 2&#xA;     Section 1: Paper 3&#xA;     Section 2: Paper 4&#xA;&#xA;References&#xA;&#xA;Index&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can easily find your notes of your papers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have a references list of all the papers you have read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have an index, so can find the keywords you are looking for easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the papers you read categorized in each chapter, so you can easily manage your literature review and form the text you are writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can copy and paste the content of your tex file to your report or paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can print your file, or share it with a colleague or advisor for review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T20:42:49.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-07T20:38:53.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents: Academia is a very competitive field. Many smart people have to compete for a small number of opportunities, such as (but not limited to) funding, grants, positions, publications on prestigious journals etc. In such a highly competitive environment it is partially necessary to oversell yourself (and your team's) abilities and the importance of your research, otherwise better &quot;salesmen&quot; might easily steal your &quot;spotlight&quot;, even when their research might be less significant (according to who is another question) than yours. Of course the more important your research is and the more prestigious your position is and the more weight you carry in the scientific community, allows you not always having to oversell yourself and your abilities. But for the most of us who do not belong to those chosen few, networking, connections and advertising our work is certainly necessary in most of the cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, how much each one of us oversells himself is a question of personal ethics, upbringing and aspirations. Many go overboard and might fit the negative scenarios you describe. But this type of behavior is not Academia specific and the world is full of such people in any profession. This is a fact of life and you have to &quot;deal with it&quot;. In some cases, it is useful that such people actually exist for you to realize what not to become and who you really want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a friendly advice, you also need to to calm and vent down. Focus on the positive aspects of life and your work and make your own rules on how you play the game. If your working environment is toxic, minimize its effects by living a full, meaningful life outside Academia. Our work is only a part of who we are and in the long run and there are many more important things in life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T20:38:53.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-07T20:56:03.707" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have on occasion felt the same myself (sometimes still do), and know of many disillusioned PhD students who felt exactly like that. There are dark moments in the night, when you are wondering whether funding for CS will be cut down entirely eventually, when funding agencies also get to the conclusion that CS is one big science of imposters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what you need to realize is that this &lt;strong&gt;is in fact impostor syndrome&lt;/strong&gt; - only that you are not comparing yourself to your peers, but rather you &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your peers to e.g., other sciences. However, the reason why it happens are the same: you have unrealistically high expectations of the research community, which it cannot possibly live up to in reality. You know the shortcomings of your community all too well, but do not have enough insight to see that other research communities or professions are also far from perfect. Yes, all the crap you mention happens on occasion, but guess what? We are all human, so it is simply unrealistic to assume that every professor will always be a good manager (or even a decent human being), that every dean will always still be an active and good researcher, or that every paper is always published with the most noble intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also mention that your conclusion that, if you are not alone in this feeling, you surely need to be right, is fundamentally flawed. History has shown all over again that &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; people can be wrong in the same way at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I think your question title is wrong. The opposite of the impostor syndrome is, as you say, more or less the Dunning–Kruger effect. What you are referring to is not the opposite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T03:28:31.030" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T03:28:31.030" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2014-08-07T21:00:07.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in part you're mixing up (or at least not clearly distinguishing) two separate questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a J.D., could you become a philosophy professor without getting any additional formal qualifications?  (Yes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a typical resume for someone just finishing their J.D., would anyone hire you to be a philosophy professor? (Almost certainly not.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go to an analogy that might be more familiar, your question is a bit like asking &quot;Can you go to Harvard if you get a GED?&quot;  The answer is yes in a certain formal sense; I'm sure there are people whose highest qualification is a GED who have gone to Harvard.  Probably, somebody, somewhere, with a JD has gone on to being a philosophy professor without getting an additional degree, but that doesn't mean it's something a reasonable person should expect to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point here is that having a degree (even a very specific kind of degree) is not the primary qualification for becoming a professor.  It's publishing in your field, convincing important people in the field that you are smart and good at what you do, and being able to teach undergraduate and graduate students in your field.  A PhD helps you become a professor because it gives you a chance to do those things in a conducive environment, not because you get a sheepskin at the end.  If you are able to do those things, maybe you can be successful in philosophy.  It doesn't sound from your question like you've had much of a chance to do them yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T21:00:07.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:39:41.317" Score="-12" Body="&lt;p&gt;That can be brutal.  Two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have just stumbled upon a &quot;worthy opponent&quot; which offers you &lt;em&gt;the best&lt;/em&gt; opportunity for your academic life:  a chance to &lt;strong&gt;master&lt;/strong&gt; the skill of &lt;em&gt;dialectic&lt;/em&gt; in a war for nothing less than your intellectual integrity.  This requires building the skills of ruthlessness and patience.  Take care not to let ruthlessness devolve into cruelty.  And you'll have to master timing for it not to blow up in your face.  Forewarning:  this could take months.  Time it for the end of the semester.  :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't fight him in the slightest, but humor him.  But do talk to the Chair.  Try to engage him/her on the problem since they are responsible for assisting you in exactly these issues by position of their office.  If they can't help you, you can be sure that they don't deserve the office, because this is one of the most important issues for building the integrity of a university program and it is their job to help their faculty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastEditorUserId="19703" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T02:53:54.837" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T02:53:54.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:47:50.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A literal answer to a literal form of the question (&quot;is there a name for this?&quot;) is &quot;jumping on a bandwagon&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CompSci obviously has the blessing/burden of the internet. Probably the only other things equally over-hyped (!?!) are gambling, porn, and various fraud possibilities. The only &quot;completely legal&quot; one of these four is CompSci... but the pressures to fudge are amazingly great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comparable bandwagon-corruption (at least in the U.S.) was/is &quot;basic science&quot;, esp. math and physics, after WWII, where the &quot;bandwagon&quot; was that this would &quot;save us from the commies&quot; (because building The Bomb had ended WWII... crypto was still secret). So then we had the NSF (National Science Foundation) throwing money at people in math and physics for a while... so NSF funding became a test of credibility, and often at R1 universities nowadays it's impossible to get tenure if y're not vetted by the NSF. But there's not enough money to go around, etc. Unsurprisingly, the NSF has evolved into (pardon my saying-so...) an intensely bureaucratic entity, decisions made in ever-deteriorating fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, not everyone can successfully author a video-game or internet-app or ... &quot;Market saturation&quot; is another very-relevant descriptor in such situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;People tend to jump on(to) band-wagons.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T22:47:50.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:52:21.110" Score="55" ViewCount="7696" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bookstore at my American university is an outpost of Barnes and Noble, charges much higher prices than can be found on Amazon, and in my opinion offers very poor service. Among other things that upset me, they prohibit students from browsing the stacks of textbooks -- instead you are supposed to tell the staff what you want, so they can retrieve it for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to mass e-mail my students in advance of the course and urge them to buy their books for my class at Amazon, used if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything unethical, or that could possibly get me into trouble, about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T14:08:41.070" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T03:16:00.853" Title="Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="24" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:59:46.153" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, facetiously, if you consider yourself beholden to your university, so that you must shill for all their money-making activities, then, yes, you are not doing what they'd want. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, many universities' bookstores have become financially-independent, in effect for-profit, entities, taking advantage whenever possible of convenience and misunderstandings... Their being for-profit already corrupts their function, and their selection of available (=profitable) books, not to mention their pricing structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, for-profit textbook-writing is a huge industry, with the pursuant corruptions (wherever there's a dollar to be made...). New editions with pointless changes, ... In my opinion, given that the internet exists, we, collectively, can do better, in many ways. Information is not entirely free, but it's not as expensive as all these scalpers (!) would like us to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T22:59:46.153" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-07T23:36:05.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing an email to your students advising them to obtain their textbook from somewhere other than your University's preferred supplier - B&amp;amp;N - might well earn you a telling off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helpfully informing your students - in a lecture, not in writing - that your preferred textbook is available at the University bookshop - &lt;strong&gt;as well as from other sources&lt;/strong&gt; - is less likely to cause you trouble. It is, after all, a completely true statement, and in the best interests of your students. Everyone knows about Amazon and I would expect any thrifty student to refer to Amazon's website for competitive prices for the textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T23:36:05.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2014-08-08T00:42:34.897" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are a freshly graduated JD, and not a PhD cries out loud that you don't have any substantial research in the chosen field (neither other academic field). I don't think it is a good sign...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T00:42:34.897" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T00:54:55.393" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politically?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, but there is always a chance that you will step on someone's toes if you do anything. I fully agree with Nicholas that you have subtle ways to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethically?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the given situation the bookstore is a for-profit entity that gives below-average service to your students on an above-average price. Whatever approach you use to define the main mission of a university, it should include a good and fair service to your students for their 10-20-30 k$/year they pay. So I would say &lt;strong&gt;it is unethical to not tell them&lt;/strong&gt; that they are not obligated to use a sub-par money-sucker service, and they are free to buy from internet, e.g. Amazon. If anyone is unethical in this situation, it is the person who is supervising the B&amp;amp;N shop's license to run at your university. But it is again a politically sensitive issue.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T03:16:00.853" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T03:16:00.853" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:02:05.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is called realistic worldview or healthy criticism. Once one has a sufficient impressive publication list and good political sense, academia can be a very nurturing place for laud incompetence. A friend of mine called it &quot;Stephen Hawking syndrome&quot; referring said authors competence in philosophy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is the hero worship: &quot;If someone is smart / talented than she/he is competent in anything&quot;. At a (or more like beyond) career point most people in academia really believe this and applies to themselves as well as other people judged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T01:02:05.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26943" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:08:37.283" Score="13" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an engineer, sometimes in my research I come across a mathematical problem that either is beyond my mathematical skills, or I know that someone, somewhere must have seen something like it before and can point me in the right direction, hence saving me time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking on &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;math.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt; often does the trick, but I wonder what the ethics involved are. For instance, if someone provides a complete answer, and the result turns out to be integral to the paper, should I offer them authorship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm not talking about a result that is novel in itself - i.e. it would not be considered as a contribution to mathematics. The result will be an application of standard mathematics to a particular engineering problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T05:28:15.493" Title="What are the ethics of getting help from online forums?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26916" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:18:42.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be slight differences between fields (I am in the chem-phys-mat. sci triangle), but the short answer is no, you do not need to explicitly name the authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stylistically, the &quot;the work in [1] proposed&quot; sounds rather forced and exactly as long as &quot;Smith et al.[1] proposed&quot;. Note I am not a native speaker, so I have no clue what I am talking about. On the other hand I would definitely would leave the name out if I am talking about the same work over and over. Also, if you structure your statements like &quot;This problem has been approached using this [1] and this methods [2]&quot;, giving the name is actually more awkward than leaving out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it also improves readability. Compare &quot;our method outperforms the &lt;em&gt;name-of-the-method&lt;/em&gt; method [1]&quot; with your examples (&lt;em&gt;name-of-the-method&lt;/em&gt;: you explicitly name what is the main difference). Assuming that the reader do not know the reference list by heart, this kind of reference is more explicit and more informative than the other two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T01:18:42.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:49:14.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the goal of having three people in such different positions is to give you different perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone from your department may well see things very similar to you. After all, you likely have the same boss, attend the same training courses, etc. So, this teacher is there to help you see if you are following the game plan that they think you should be following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person from the other department still has the perspective of delivering &quot;content&quot; courses as opposed to teaching teachers how to teach. They should understand things quite similar to you but in a different way because they likely have a different boss (though somewhere up the chain I suspect the bosses merge) and they might receive different ongoing training. So this teacher is to see if your department is on the right path. There is less loyalty between this monitor and you because you might not even know each other but at the very least, you do not work together every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The education specialist should understand the theories of teaching better than any of the three, and perhaps better than you. After all, this is their area of expertise. Part of the reason they are there might be to continue their research but the main reason is to see if you have been taught properly. Perhaps even to assess you as we assess each of our students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know MANY teachers do not like being observed. I never felt that way. Actually, I always want to hear how I can do better. Honestly, I would prefer to be observed (with meaningful feedback) more regularly - perhaps even once or twice per month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, just like you are there to help your students genuinely improve, so these observers are there to help you genuinely improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T01:49:14.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:51:31.920" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt; per se, but as others have mentioned, you may well be stepping on some toes. If you don't feel like dealing with the owners of said toes (whether in the bookstore, or the relevant person in the university), then there are ways to do so without blatantly stating that the bookstore is ripping off students. (Note that I'm not implying that you are &lt;em&gt;blatantly&lt;/em&gt; saying any such thing!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One option&lt;/strong&gt; is to tell the students on the first day of class. The obvious downside to that is that many students will already have purchased the needlessly expensive bookstore texts by then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A better option&lt;/strong&gt; is your practice of mass-email prior to the start of the course. Instead of urging the students to buy from Amazon (which may imnply that you are affiliated), why not just provide information on prices from the bookstore as well as the prices --for new and used-- from several vendors (Amazon is just a starting place, Abebooks, Ebay, Textbooks.com, etc, come to mind as well). Also, as others have mentioned in the comments, students will appreciate if you mention whether the latest edition is required, or if the previous (much cheaper!) edition will also work. The savvy student will know what you are implying for the alternate vendors, and the rest... well, perhaps they deserve to pay the bookstore prices!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additionally&lt;/strong&gt;, if your institution has a formal or informal student exchange, students may be able to buy used textbooks from a student who took the course last semester. You might be able to put your incoming students in touch with this network, as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T10:43:01.223" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T10:43:01.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26326" CreationDate="2014-08-08T02:25:36.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this site &lt;a href=&quot;http://studyn.us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study in us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are still in early stages but have most of the information you need.&#xA;You can filter the colleges based on your requirements and find more details about each college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10075" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:25:36.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T02:44:16.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing wrong about it is that you should be telling them to look not just on Amazon, but everywhere on the internet. A convenient aggregator is dealoz.com (there are many other similar sites). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon is perhaps more reliable than many other sellers, but it is usually more expensive too. And: If you just say Amazon, it might sound like you're getting a commission from Amazon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, especially for many of the more popular textbooks, it is not difficult to find free PDF copies somewhere. This may or may not be legal, but considering how evil the US textbook industry is (and the university bookstores as well), it is arguably the morally correct thing to do. You can phrase it in an ironic fashion in your email, e.g. &quot;You may or may not know, but there are many free and illegal PDF copies of this book online. I strongly discourage you from downloading these.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDED TIP: Use older editions of the textbook and tell them it's OK to get an older edition (indeed, try to design your class so that it's no big deal even if they use an older edition). For the most popular textbooks, the evil textbook companies pump out a new edition every 2 or 3 years (even for things like Calculus or Spanish 101 where probably no radical advances either in research or pedagogy are made even once a decade!) As a student I was always annoyed when the professors would by default just ask you to get the newest edition, because it's just the simplest/easiest thing for the professor to do, but of course it could cost me easily $50 more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10885" LastEditorDisplayName="user10885" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T07:43:10.793" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T07:43:10.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T02:57:53.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the student's best interests at heart, you can mail them that you'd be following the (n-1)th edition of the textbook, where n is the most recent version. That way, they can get the textbook at less than the price of a cup of coffee(or even free!), and there's almost always the exact same content!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:57:53.430" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2014-08-08T02:59:20.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First remember: it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; class as well as the other student's (assuming that you have enrolled in the class with due regard to any prerequisites or other conditions that were specified).  Therefore you have just as much right to be instructed at an appropriate level as he/she does.  It's easy to feel stupid when you ask a question that may be obvious to the other, but try not to be overwhelmed by this feeling: as I always impress upon my (mathematics) students, the only stupid question is the one you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible suggestion: ask the teacher if he/she would permit the other student to teach you some of the material during class, with the teacher observing.  This could be of real benefit to the other student too: attempting to teach a subject is possibly the best way to find out whether or not one really understands it, and in such a situation the teacher may very well notice some things that the student doesn't completely understand, and by explaining them improve his/her learning too.  Moreover, if the other student is learning the language with the intent of teaching it in the future, the sooner they start practising, the better for them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20473" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:59:20.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2014-08-08T04:24:55.823" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a theoretical level, it's certainly possible.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kripke&quot;&gt;Saul Kripke&lt;/a&gt; never went to graduate school at all, but that didn't stop Princeton from giving him tenure in philosophy.  If you're the next Kripke, then nobody will care what sort of degree you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a practical level, you can't get hired in philosophy with just a J.D., assuming you aren't talking specifically about philosophy of law (which might draw on your legal background on an equal footing with philosophy).  If you are, then that's worth a more detailed and specific question regarding the necessary background and experience.  For a start, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/lawsch.asp&quot;&gt;these comments&lt;/a&gt; by Brian Leiter.  If you want to do philosophy of law with a primarily legal background, it sounds like the chances are higher if you look for a law faculty position rather than a job in a philosophy department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have in mind a philosophical career that does not make heavy use of your legal background, then the J.D. will be essentially useless.  It's a terminal degree, but not one that certifies any level of background or experience in philosophy, so it will be irrelevant.  The only way to get a job in a philosophy department at a four-year college or university is to convince them that you have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy (including not just basic knowledge, but also advanced seminars, carrying out research, and writing a dissertation - even if you won't be doing further research or teaching graduate courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This level of experience would be rare among law students, and even if you genuinely have the equivalent of a philosophy Ph.D. you should expect to have a difficult time making a convincing case for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen your particular case (applying for philosophy jobs with a J.D.) in practice, but I've seen similar sorts of job searches in other fields (arguably with closer degrees, since Ph.D. degrees in related fields are more similar to each other than either is to a J.D.).  In order to pull this off, you must have credible and compelling recommendations from mainstream faculty in the field you're applying to.  So one key question is what the philosophy faculty at your current university think of you.  Are they willing to write letters making a case that you are as qualified as their own Ph.D. students?  If so, then you may have a shot at this, and you should talk with them for advice based on your personal situation.  If you don't know any philosophers who are willing to write that sort of letter for you, then that will be a major barrier to getting a job in a philosophy department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T04:24:55.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26934" CreationDate="2014-08-08T05:40:16.327" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asking on math.stackexchange often does the trick, but I wonder what the ethics involved are. For instance, if someone provides a complete answer, and the result turns out to be integral to the paper, should I offer them authorship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone else made an &lt;em&gt;integral contribution&lt;/em&gt; to your work, it seems appropriate to offer them coauthorship, yes.  You go on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about a result that is novel in itself - i.e. it would not be considered as a contribution to mathematics. The result will be an application of standard mathematics to a particular engineering problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see what you're getting at, but still: if you did not have the knowledge to write the paper, then asked someone for help, then based on their help you can write the paper, then it seems that they deserve to be offered coauthorship even if what they provided was from the perspective of their discipline completely routine and well-known.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that springs to mind is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_principle&quot;&gt;Hardy-Weinberg Principle&lt;/a&gt;: this is a famous (and, in my understanding, rather important) law of genetics whose mathematical content really does seem to amount to: if p+q = 1, then p^2+2pq + q^2 = 1.  The history of this is not what I had assumed it to be: it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a collaboration between Hardy and Weinberg (Weinberg was a German physician who had independently discovered the law at about the same time).  Rather Reginald Punnett was having trouble defending Mendelian genetics against an argument of Udny Yule that dominant alleles would weed out recessive ones and thus genotypic frequencies would not remain stable in the population.  Punnett brought this up to (the great analytic number theorist) G.H. Hardy who happened to be his cricket partner, who duly submitted a letter to the journal &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;.  As the wikipedia article points out, Hardy makes his take on his &quot;contribution&quot; pretty clear, e.g. in the phrasing &quot;a little mathematics of the multiplication-table type is enough to show....&quot;  It is interesting that this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; called the &quot;Hardy-Punnett Law&quot; (though there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square&quot;&gt;Punnett squares&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to my inexpert eye to be pretty much the same thing).  One striking thing about this example is that the mathematics here is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; trivial: it is hard to imagine any mathematician (or engineer, etc.) who would not have been able to answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, just because you offer someone coauthorship does not mean that they will take it.  Most mathematicians I know are not interested in being coauthors of papers in other disciplines for which their contribution was purely mathematical and is regarded by them as &quot;trivial&quot;, &quot;well-known&quot; or both.  If someone declines coauthorship then it seems largely agreed upon that you can go on to write the paper by yourself and include a clear acknowledgement of their contribution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T05:28:15.493" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T05:28:15.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-08T07:12:06.737" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @bain said, do not engage in bickering.  I would like to pick up on this and amplify it a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is: whatever the student says, &lt;em&gt;take it seriously&lt;/em&gt; - even if he clearly does not mean it seriously.  Do not take it as an attack on you - even if he clearly means it as such.  (Or, if you can't help taking it as an attack on you, at least try not to show that in front of the class.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say &quot;take it seriously&quot;, I mean something like this: if you express an opinion and he says &quot;that's a really stupid comment&quot; - don't retaliate, but ask him politely, &quot;Why do you think it's stupid?  What is your opinion on the question?&quot;  If he replies with evasion or further abuse, quietly but firmly repeat the question.  If he tries to get out of it by saying &quot;well the whole question is a waste of time&quot; you can ask &quot;What do you think are the important questions, and why do you believe they are important?&quot;  Make him commit himself: let the whole class see that he is the one being unreasonable, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important, however hard it may be, to stay calm and polite.  You may at present feel that the situation is you against him, but I can assure you that many students in your class will want to learn the subject and will be on your side, even if this guy and his gang have scared them into not admitting it.  If he is abusive and you are polite, the class will be even more on your side - nobody &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; likes this kind of behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes (I don't know how it is in your subject) the line between robust discussion and personal attacks can be fuzzy.  If, however, he engages in definite personal abuse (of your race, gender, appearance, manner of speech and so on) then he has clearly crossed the line and has forfeited his right to be in your class.  Get the authorities to remove him.  And if it results in his being tossed out of his course, don't even think of being sorry for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: if the situation is seriously making you sad and frightened to go into class, then this could be turning into an occupational health and safety issue.  Those who are in charge of such things in your institution may be able to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I would like to support what others have said - if you could give more specific examples of what this student is doing, then you will probably get some more useful advice.  I am sure that many people on this site have been in the position you describe and would &lt;strong&gt;love&lt;/strong&gt; to be able to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20473" LastEditorUserId="20473" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T14:21:17.187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:21:17.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-08T08:42:40.370" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this feeling? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was a name for this feeling, that would imply that this interpretation was just a feeling and wasn't real (and that impostors are not the norm in your field). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't believe that your feeling is wrong? Do you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual term you're looking for is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult&quot;&gt;cargo cult&lt;/a&gt; worshipers and that's not the feeling you have, but the label you'd use to describe the impostors in your field. Richard Feynman even coined the term &quot;cargo cult science&quot;, which would imply that he found the majority in such a science to be negligent and most of them potential impostors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this entry in Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult&quot;&gt;cargo cult&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The metaphorical use of &quot;cargo cult&quot; was popularized by physicist&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman&quot;&gt;Richard Feynman&lt;/a&gt; at a 1974 Caltech commencement speech, which later&#xA;  became a chapter in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!&quot;&gt;Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!&lt;/a&gt;, where&#xA;  he coined the phrase &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science&quot;&gt;&quot;cargo cult science&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to describe activity that&#xA;  had some of the trappings of real science (such as publication in&#xA;  scientific journals) but lacked a basis in honest experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See his explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following is an excerpt from speech (taken from the book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they&#xA;  saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same&#xA;  thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like&#xA;  runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden&#xA;  hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like&#xA;  headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the&#xA;  controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing&#xA;  everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it&#xA;  looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these&#xA;  things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent&#xA;  precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing&#xA;  something essential, because the planes don't land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose that term &quot;cargo cult&quot; could be used as a qualifier for many different areas. For instance, if one was so inclined, one could say &quot;cargo cult academia&quot;, or &quot;cargo cult business&quot;, and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11434" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T08:42:40.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T09:10:15.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Urging&lt;/strong&gt; student to buy from a supplier rather than another can be seen as advertisement and it's not something a professor should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggesting to look for alternatives or simply mentioning the book title and letting them do the math is probably the best way to go. You may imply that the most recent version has very small (or no) changes so clever people can go and buy the previous version from other students or used-book stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final comment I noticed that no-one mentioned to push (in this case urging is allowed) the students to use the University (or the City) Library: books are free to peruse and to borrow, what better option is there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20481" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T09:10:15.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T09:41:47.743" Score="21" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every day I receive the latest arXiv abstracts via email, with subject lines such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;physics daily Subj-class mailing a4 1&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;physics daily Subj-class mailing 124 1&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;physics daily Subj-class mailing 490 1&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With new email clients that create &quot;conversations&quot; from an email chain based on the subject line, the disorderly nature of the subject lines makes it a pain to sift through the last week's abstracts if I haven't kept myself up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do &lt;code&gt;a4&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;124&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;490&lt;/code&gt; mean? These identifiers are not unique to each day's listings, but I cannot spot a correlation between them and the date of the email. Is there some hidden way to either include the date in the subject header, or remove these seemingly random strings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T17:06:58.933" Title="What do these mysterious numbers in the subject line of arXiv mailing list emails mean?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26842" CreationDate="2014-08-08T10:13:33.193" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good tips in the existing answers, but I would give the following advice as a crucial first step: be very careful with your iterpretation of the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already branded this guy as &quot;out to get you&quot;. That means you've made it personal, which is a bad place to get to. Not only because it leads to nasty behaviours and escalations on both sides, but also because that's what allows him to get at you confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in front of a classroom enhances certain signals and dulls others and can make you very paranoid. I've had situations where I couldn't figure out what was going on and why people were laughing and as soon as the class was over I suddenly realized that someone was making a simple joke. Not at my expense, nothing to do with me, just a normal joke. And of course, to make it worse, the students have no idea how blind you are to social cues up there (at least when you're starting out) so they think you're a total dork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of things that feel like heckling can actually stem from other reasons. It may be that he's just a little socially awkward, and asking real questions. It may be that he's actually nervous and it's coming out in a strange way, and it may well be that he disagrees with something, but doesn't yet have the academic skill to show it in a civil manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even if he is just out to bully you, and you see no point in trying to understand where he's coming from, it's best to hold on to your detachment. Don't let him him drag you down to his level. If he is heckling, he's basically brought high-school level behaviour to a university. I would prefer to act with almost astonishment. Let him explain himself, and really act like you'd never expect anyone to behave this way. Don't be indignant, or in any way affected, just act as if he's just sat the wrong way around in his chair or drawn on the table with crayons. Convey in your attitude and body language, as much as you can, that he's behaving very out of place and very childish. Ask him to explain (in a gentle tone, like you genuinely don't understand and want to find out) and don't be afraid to leave long pauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T10:13:33.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26957" CreationDate="2014-08-08T10:15:33.797" Score="9" ViewCount="10955" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finish my BSc in physics. I want to work in a interdiscipline like biophysics or econophysics. Because these are mainly physics, one can study higher with spending little effort to understand biology or economy concept. However, I think that having a stable knowledge in other discipline would also help you better in researching. Since I have studied physics, mathematics isn't a problem, therefore I can skip it to shorten the study time, which means the amount of time I spend will approximate to the master degree duration (I hope so). Another point is I can be more flexible than one who only know his/her specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage is I don't have a master degree, of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="14341" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T10:29:09.210" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T11:17:54.597" Title="Are two undergraduate degrees better than one master degree?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;multidisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26907" CreationDate="2014-08-08T10:29:40.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The examples you suggested are fine even when Jones is a coauthor of paper 7. In fact, I see it as the best way of conveying the information. I have seen such citation being adopted, e.g., in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1959/246&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;. If you have access to it, see page 258, where the authors wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... in Budal’s original derivation [12, eqn (5.2)],&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although the cited paper 12 is a two-author paper, as you may find in the references. In this example, one of the authors who cited paper 12 was a coauthor of that paper, so he knew that the derivation was due to Budal alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T10:29:40.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T10:56:14.700" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; mention Amazon. It's just one vendor. Just let them know that they don't need a new copy and are probably able to order cheaper used versions of the book &quot;online&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think they'll have any sort of trouble understanding what you're trying to say, and it sounds a lot more reasonable and less rebellious to the rest of the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1201" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T10:56:14.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26954" CreationDate="2014-08-08T11:03:52.940" Score="15" ViewCount="27151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, I have not found a similar question to mine - all I found was a question about the maximum number of citations per sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am more interested in the total number of citations that is considered normal for a paper (to be more specific, a Master Thesis, which in my case will be around 60 pages of content.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that about 1 - 1.5 multiplied with page count would be a good number of sources cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking because I am a little worried that I might have cited too many sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15339" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T08:51:20.747" LastActivityDate="2021-05-06T04:13:52.537" Title="How many references should be included in the bibliography of a Master thesis?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26953" CreationDate="2014-08-08T11:20:31.673" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no definite answer. It really depends on how much previous literature exists, how much of it you have reviewed and cited appropriately, and (loosely) what the word count of the document is. Page count can misleading, as some theses have many more figures and tables than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is going to skip to the bibliography, think negative thoughts, and say &quot;you have too many references!&quot; without reading the document. If no individual part of the thesis could be considered as having too many citations, then the thesis as a whole has an appropriate number of citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These related questions have answers as to how you can decide if a particular part of the thesis has too many citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26755/maximum-number-of-citations-per-sentence&quot;&gt;Maximum number of citations per sentence?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13570/is-there-such-thing-as-too-many-references-for-one-paper&quot;&gt;Is there such thing as too many references for one paper?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T11:20:31.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-08T11:41:58.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you want to do next, and where you want to do it. In Switzerland, you are supposed to have a Masters degree to start doctoral studies, however with you bachelors degrees you can probably convince them to accept you (depending on the fields). In Australia, most people &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; have Masters degrees before starting a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1 for flexibility and broader knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T11:41:58.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-08T12:29:08.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; the following is my practical experience on research. I have no idea about the opinions of admissions committees and the like, but it probably depends greatly on the country and the relative quality of master's and undergrad education.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical physicist by formation (5 years degree). Then I did my master's thesis (I had taken enough courses) in Bioinformatics, and I am doing a PhD in Biophysics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I start a new project (or tackle the next sub-project), there are a bunch of things about Biology and Chemistry that I don't know, but most of them are actually quite easy. I am sometimes lacking &quot;the bigger picture&quot;, being able to my questions into a broader meaning, but that is not so important. For example, my master's project was to improve the number of identified peptides in an experiment using computational techniques, and that is a very clear goal. What to do with this improved results? Obviously, we can improve the things we already do. But, are there biological questions it can help answer? I am not sure, but there are experts on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &lt;em&gt;middle picture&lt;/em&gt; range, I rely on my advisors. They are also physicists, but they have learned along the way pretty much what they need. And after just a few months, I was surprised of how much I was able to help the new members of the lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I believe taking another undergrad degree would not help so much. Of course, I would be faster at the beginning, because I would know what things like &quot;the $C_\alpha$ residuals&quot; mean, but the actual meat of the project, where we spend months, is probably not covered (or not covered in enough detail) in most undergrad degrees. And the main reason is that these details are known only to those who have actually worked hands on with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example: in Physics we talk about spectra all the time, and all the information you can extract from it, with perhaps, the only limitation is the noise of your instrument. The truth is, unless you have a VERY expensive camera, you are going to find very funny stuff, like two spectra taken right after the other, with exactly the same experimental set up, will not have, on camera, the same intensity; and even the profile of the line. To compensate for this you need to get clever, and it very much depends on the details, so it is very difficult to teach unless your lecturer is an expert in spectra analysis and can tell you how they do it. And still, most people can just rely on the spectra pre-processed by the experts, so they don't need to know this. Unless, of course, you want to work with raw spectra yourself (been there).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, a master's or a PhD has some courses. They are usually quite specialised, targeted for your level and background, and can bring you up to speed in the things you need to know about your field quite nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to add some peace of mind, my former lab hired a postdoc coming from computer vision. His biological knowledge had quite big holes, but nevertheless, in a couple of weeks he was already doing amazing stuff with very good ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottomline, go for the advanced studies. You can always take Biology or Economy on the side (for example Open University or unofficially at Coursera).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T12:37:17.707" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T12:37:17.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T12:52:59.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no need to specify a particular source lest it border on advertisement, but recommending alternative sources for materials has been fairly common in my experience. In fact, our campus bookstore's website even lists a price comparison tool for all the major online retailers. Taking that as a baseline I think it is only honest to provide information to the students if you find it particularly informative. It isn't uncommon for professors to email the class in the weeks leading up to the start about alternative versions and how compatible they would be with the class &quot;just in case&quot; they are having trouble acquiring the book. Even so far as &quot;I have heard some sources are even 'selling' an electronic copy&quot; has appeared as a subtle nod to the fact that there is a pdf that can be downloaded out there somewhere. Some universities will be happier than others in this regard, but as long as you avoid dropping specific names of retailers in any mass correspondence then I don't see anything outside of standard practice here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20489" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T12:52:59.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-08T13:50:31.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly disagree with a 2nd BSc degree. First, even if you manage to somehow avoid officially some courses because of your first degree, all BSc degrees have a minimum duration which is typically longer than a MS. So, it is not going to be faster or easier. Second, even if you get the 2nd degree you will know less than the ones who have a MSc in the second area. Also, a MS is a nice way to connect with potential advisors if you want to continue for a PHD and work on a specialized thesis similar to your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story short: If you can get to MSc program of your area of interest with your (partially irrelevant) BSc degree, go for it. Then cover the knowledge you are missing on your free time. It is not going to be easy, but if you pull it off, it will work better for you in the long term. &lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; That is what I did and it worked for me. Hope it works for you too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T13:50:31.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-08T14:34:34.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the undergraduate level, &quot;Data Structures and Algorithms&quot; is typically the weed out course for our department.  Students take it in their second year after having had intro to programming.  The sorts of problems you encounter in that course will help you reason about coding, however it's very possible to work in front end web development without encountering them.  Typically, the place where this sort of logic is most useful is in the backend not the display layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graduate version of that course is likely to be the hardest course you have to deal with and the most unfamiliar to your skill set.  It's also one of the few places where a firm understanding of discrete math is going to be very helpful.  It's very common for Graduate students arriving from other disciplines or universities that did not cover this well to have trouble with this course.  Frequently the solution is to have them audit the undergraduate course first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether you should continue, If you find that after some experience you are interested in &quot;data structures and algorithms&quot; and &quot;formal languages and automata&quot;, then a theory focused computer science degree may be interesting to you.  If you don't, then focusing on management relevant courses like software engineering may be interesting to you.  If you're in this program because you want to learn more for your own sake, that's great you will get out of it what you put into it.  If you're in this program for career advancement, this degree might help you land management level positions but will have little or no effect on your ability to find developer level positions for frontend work.  It may open up some new opportunities for back-end work, however if that's your interest the certificate route might be a lot cheaper and faster for you.  As a developer, your 10 years experience is far more valuable than a masters in cs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not already, I recommend taking the undergraduate discrete math, undergraduate data structures and algorithms, and undergraduate formal languages courses before continuing with the hard subjects in computer science.  If you need to take some graduate level courses at the same time, take some soft subjects like software engineering which will likely be much more familiar to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while the coursework for algorithms is fairly well defined, not all books are equal.  I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20495" LastEditorUserId="20495" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T18:52:12.400" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:52:12.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26953" CreationDate="2014-08-08T14:54:18.540" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answer, this question is based on some slightly questionable premises, as seen in the sentence &quot;the total number of citations that is considered normal for a paper (to be more specific, a Master Thesis, which in my case will be around 60 pages of content.)&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the communities of CS that I am familiar with, a &lt;em&gt;Master Thesis&lt;/em&gt; of some 60 pages is not a &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;. A &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt; is usually a document that concisely describes something on typically 5 to 15 pages (depending both on the paper type (short, full, journal, poster abstract, ...) and the layout. Hence, a &lt;em&gt;Master Thesis&lt;/em&gt; is not comparable to a &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Papers&lt;/em&gt; published in conferences (and maybe to a somewhat lesser extent, in journals) are usually bound to a very strict upper page count limit. When you have lots of interesting stuff to tell, there is only so much space left for references and you often have to skip citing some sources that you would have liked to include. Such a restriction usually doesn't exist in graduation theses such as Bachelor or Master theses. There may be a rough guideline for the expected number of pages, but exceeding that by a moderate amount (in the case you presented, I'd frankly say 80 pages instead of 60 is ok) &lt;em&gt;if the content is worth it&lt;/em&gt; is not necessarily a problem - least of all if the extra length is caused by &quot;additional info&quot; such as the appendix or references rather than the core document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly, there is no &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; number of references because each topic is different. For some Master Thesis tasks, there may be a number of default works that should always be listed in the initial exposition of the general topic, which in itself already fill a page of references, whereas other Master Thesis tasks might not have such a &quot;default list&quot;; the general exposition is done with very few or without any references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastEditorUserId="14017" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T21:59:51.423" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T21:59:51.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:32:10.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as Amazon is really the best place to buy them it couldn't be unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels wrong for me because Amazon competes unfairly due to it's size. It may also feel wrong because you're telling students not to follow the norm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line? You're helping your students. That's what you should be doing! Keep it up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18361" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:32:10.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:48:35.897" Score="15" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a faculty member in a research-oriented university. I teach and I do research in social sciences. Similarly to most academics, a big part of my job involves reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A portion of my &quot;reading list&quot; requires accuracy. When I review papers, grade exams, or work on my own research, my attention needs to be 100% focused on the task at hand. The main reason is that reading these documents usually leads to an output (e.g. a grade, a review, a paragraph in a paper, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a large portion of my &quot;reading list&quot; requires digesting fast large amounts of textual data. I monitor several journals to stay up to date, I investigate new literatures, I read books in my field, I read every year the papers assigned to students in my syllabi, etc. This does not require accuracy. The main goal is to have a big picture vision, a broad idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main trick I found to digest large amounts of textual data pretty fast is to use a text-to-speech software that I use on my phone. I found it makes me more productive than sitting at my desk and helps me claim additional reading hours (e.g. gym, errands, commute, cleaning, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques would you recommend to &quot;digest&quot; large amounts of text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I asked a related question this morning but was told that it was too &quot;tech&quot; oriented. I deleted the former question and posted this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20491" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:12:41.057" Title="Techniques to &quot;digest&quot; large amounts of textual data (academic papers, books, etc)" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;reading&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:57:13.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Had to leave a separate answer because I don't have enough rep to put it as a comment on @Lacoppidan's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I salute you on your attempts to become a &lt;em&gt;proper&lt;/em&gt; programmer ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I want to scotch some of the BS that other's have written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; an undergrad degree in CS, &lt;strong&gt;unless the course says that you do&lt;/strong&gt;. Many Masters courses are &lt;strong&gt;designed&lt;/strong&gt; to accept cross-discipline students, which yours &lt;strong&gt;clearly&lt;/strong&gt; is, as it wouldn't even &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a DS&amp;amp;A module if it weren't!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age probably isn't a major factor. Yes, neuroplasticity drops as you get older, but all that means is that you need to work harder &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; that you can't do it. Certainly, I've found that there are things that I can understand intuitively now that I couldn't when I was younger. Also, if you have a settled/stable home life and job, that's going to put you at a massive advantage compared to many, as anxiety is the biggest blocker to learning you can get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It smells to me like you've got two separate things working against you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're doing part-time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're &lt;em&gt;worrying&lt;/em&gt; about passing; about whether you can do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part-time is ++hard (see what I did there? ;) ) - &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; most valuable resource you have at university are your peers. I found that just having other people to talk about stuff with helped me enormously both in improving my understanding and consolidating my knowledge as well as building my confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my #1 tip to &lt;strong&gt;anyone&lt;/strong&gt; undertaking a university-level course is: find people on your course(s) that you get along with and build relationships with them around the work. Don't worry about 'the age thing', worry about if those people help you understand what's going on or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't worry about asking someone 'super clever' for help - you'll actually be doing them a &lt;em&gt;favour&lt;/em&gt; by getting them to explain it to you in a way that you can understand. Sounds strange, I know, but having to explain something to someone (who may or may not be as clever as you), &lt;strong&gt;forces&lt;/strong&gt; you to understand your subject better; to organise your own thoughts. I'm sure you know from your real-world experience, that being 'good' and 'clever' isn't enough - you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be able to communicate your ideas to others and work collaboratively, because interesting software is non-trivial and non-trivial software is too big &amp;amp; complex for one person to do on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worrying about succeeding or not will always hold you back. It's something that I've struggled with many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One strategy I found works for me, is to just focus on learning &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt;; just learn &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; that's related to the course. Read for the sheer hell of it! Focus on the stuff that you find interesting. And write lots of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By focusing on &lt;em&gt;just learning&lt;/em&gt; you'll get much more out of the time you put in and you'll be more satisfied with what you've learnt. True, it may not help you pass your course, but chances are, it will, because when you've got back into the habit of just learning stuff, you'll find it easier to learn the stuff you need to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another strategy is to &lt;em&gt;write more code&lt;/em&gt;. One thing I definitely didn't do enough of as an undergrad, was write enough code. This is particularly important for stuff like DS&amp;amp;A - the only way to get really familiar with an algorithm or with things like pointer manipulation, is to do it. Lots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can do it and can explain how it works, then you understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be where your broader experience comes in; you've got 10 years experience of writing code, so you've no doubt picked up lots of techniques and skills that will help you. Use them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use things like dry-running (something that I don't think is taught much these days, but it's still a fantastic tool, particularly for learning DS&amp;amp;A) and/or interactive debugging to step through your execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third technique I found really helpful is mind-mapping. I used it as a way to fill the gaps in my knowledge, by breaking a topic into its constituent parts, exploring the things I didn't understand and then return to the parent topic while this new knowledge was fresh in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (sorry, no pictures), the subject of 'linked lists' might decompose into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pointers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;head&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dynamic memory allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd then look at each of these and ask myself &quot;do I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what each of these is?&quot; If the answer is 'yes', then I move on, if 'maybe', I check my knowledge against Google, if 'no', then I create a separate sheet and work on it until I do (decomposing further as necessary). That way, the next time I'm coming to a subject I and I see &quot;linked list&quot;, I will either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know what a linked list is and how it works; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a good set of notes that I can quickly use to refresh my memory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, practice, practice, practice. The more code you write and have to debug, the better you'll get to understanding what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This turned into a much longer answer than I'd intended, but I do hope you find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20496" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:57:13.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-08T17:36:53.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from my own personal experience and less about ethics: my teachers tell me all the time to not waste money at the bookstore. And actually, unless you're a freshmen or a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; lazy college student, no one buys from them anyways. I haven't bought a textbook from the university store in years unless (and boy do I hate this) it's a &quot;university specific&quot; text book that you literally can't get anywehere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I never, ever buy books until at least the first week of class to better gauge if I actually need them. I'll get them if a teacher makes a point of saying I'll need to (and even then it usually is a 50/50 shot of if they use it or not -_-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend is to just verbally tell your students in class to buy the book from somewhere else (this allows no direct trail from you saying to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; buy from the bookstore). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion some of my teachers have done is to list the book and then, as others have said, give the bookstore price and an amazon/ ebay price as well and let the students figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, I would say, just tell them in class. Your students should really already know to never buy from the bookstore and it creates less liability (if there were ever to be one) on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T17:36:53.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-08T18:07:10.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who was in a situation similar to yours I always would recomment the advanced degree. The key difference (at least in most U.S scholls) is that with a B.S/ B.A you have a lot of &quot;fluff&quot; classes to make you more well rounded. Going for a M.A/M.S cuts away a lot of that and focuses much more on just the relivent classes. This makes getting the advanced degree much more time efficent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point I'd like to make is that &lt;em&gt;rarely&lt;/em&gt; does two degrees do anything. When getting a job for example, you get more money with an advanced degree. There isn't anything (to my knowledge) that gives you more for two degrees. So you've just wasted years of your life for not much reward (knowledge? Maybe, but certainly not any more than with a Master's in a specific field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final anecdote: I had a teacher who had two Master's in something or other in a field where PhD's reign supreme. Because of this, he wasn't allowed to be a full fledges professor but only an instructor (much less stable and much less pay). I say this because, yes he had two &quot;advanced&quot; degress, but two doesn't equal the higher degree. In this case, I believe you would just be limiting your options with the second B.S. In any case, good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:07:10.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17673" CreationDate="2014-08-08T18:10:51.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are using the term &quot;community college&quot; different than I am use to for in Canada and the US, then &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean a local state or government funded &lt;strong&gt;degree&lt;/strong&gt; (4-year) granting universities then perhaps. Another possibility, if they exist anymore are one or two-year &lt;em&gt;junior college&lt;/em&gt; which acts like a feeder, or extension campus to a 4-year university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the 9-months to 3 year &lt;strong&gt;diploma&lt;/strong&gt; granting colleges which tend be vocational oriented. (Similar to a bit lower academic standard than Polytechnical post-secondary schools in Europe)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to find introductory classes (years 1 and 2) via distance education through out the world easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interests of cost and legitimacy, I recommend avoiding privately owned/run distance education programs including online universities. This does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean government owned or run distance education like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open University&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.athabascau.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Athabasca University&lt;/a&gt;, those are great and affordable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At an university you should be able to register as a &quot;non-degree program&quot; (or similar) student, either part-time or full-time. This is commonly used for preparing towards a degree program in the future for not-fresh-from-high-school student enrollment cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a couple of &lt;em&gt;graduate degrees&lt;/em&gt; in the area of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis added) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes &lt;em&gt;no sense&lt;/em&gt; when you previously said &quot;I'm interested in getting a Ph.D in Statistical Learning.&quot; If you have a M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Computer Science (I don't know off-hand of any place that grants &lt;em&gt;degrees&lt;/em&gt; in AI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you mean you previously have taken graduate level &lt;em&gt;courses&lt;/em&gt; in CS and AI?&#xA;If so, I would expect you to start your search from that university unless geographic reasons prevent it, at least speaking to them as a starting point for recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20501" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:10:51.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-08T18:31:26.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There actually specific terms/descriptions for what you are experiencing. A few of them are &quot;becoming jaded&quot;, &quot;cynical&quot;, or - depending on what connotation you'd prefer - &quot;being a realist&quot;. This isn't rare, and in general is a side effect of increasing knowledge and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impostor syndrome and Dunning-Kruger effect is all about a false, biased impression of reality. If you have simply become a cynic, this can become a bias where you come to just assume - and automatically perceive - everyone to be full of it, regardless of whether or not they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found as I get older and learn more about the world I have to actively fight this bias and assumption that everyone else is full of it, for a simple and all too common reason: people are in fact very often full of it. But let's look at why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) As humans we usually do not know what we do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Being wrong actually feels exactly like being right, all the way to the very instant we realize our wrongness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) There is so much to know about the world that even the most brilliant of us can know only a tiny fraction of what there is to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The world is complicated and difficult to predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) We have very limited knowledge and ability to predict things, yet we must try to be the masters of our fate and make decisions anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Our very physical bodily makeup causes us to be drawn to confidence, and it is often easier to be confident when one knows little. In the words of Bertrand Russel, &quot;The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7) Bluffing can be a highly effective real-world strategy (&quot;faking it&quot; is often a highly profitable strategy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the &quot;treatments&quot; for this bias, if you will, is to remind yourself that while all the above is true, it is just as true of ourselves as it is of others. Most material in the world might very well be chaff, but sometimes you find something of great value, and it isn't good to just plug one's ears and believe nothing or to believe everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, work towards a healthy skepticism instead of biased cynicism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue, dealing with #3 above, is as one learns one quickly develops knowledge that is greater in that specific area then the vast majority of living people. As a simple example, a basic undergraduate course in statistics can give you greater understanding of stats and probability than over 95%+ of all people in the entire world (if you pay attention and think about the material, anyway). With such training you almost immediately notice that nearly every use of statistics in mass media (to say nothing of politics) is wrong, biased, an outright lie, and is at least fundamentally unreliable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies to all of your bullet examples. If we assume most human skills and traits are normally distributed, it suddenly becomes no surprise that most people (managers or otherwise) aren't very good leaders, aren't remarkably honest, tend to exaggerate or make stuff up, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is all very much the reason why we have science in the first place: to err is human, and oh how oft we err. If we weren't so prone to such errors, we wouldn't need specially developed methods refined over many, many years to help us move towards correctness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that much of the reason for doing science is precisely this realization that most of what we know and believe is probably wrong - and if we are right about anything, it's mostly an accident. And anyone who pretends otherwise is full of it, whether they know it or not - and that includes me, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:31:26.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T18:35:15.737" Score="34" ViewCount="5865" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title says, do student reviews of teachers actually ever matter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the U.S most universities I know of have their students evaluate their teachers at the end of each term. I do know that things like tenure, if they do research, or if they are just an instructor plays a role in how weighted these evals are but even so, does anyone know if anyone actually cares or does anything with the reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had many teachers of all types and some were notoriously horrible. Every year hordes of students would write lengthy reasons why the teacher was bad, give them very low marks, etc... And yet the teacher has remained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know some teachers who do actually care (the teachers get them a semester  later) and they can look at what the students liked/ disliked, etc... Which seems like the only way these evals are used. At least the way it feels to me, the administration (the ones who require these reviews), simply collect them, put them in a file, and never speak of them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20178" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T03:56:43.020" Title="Do student reviews of teachers matter?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-08T18:56:49.403" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes the reviews matter in a number of ways. They are generally considered by tenure and promotion committees and consistently awful reviews can prevent tenure/promotion even for someone with excellent research and service. Committees look both at the average/median and the spread/extremes of any numerical scaled questions as well as the open comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evaluations are also used by some people to actually improve their teaching. This is obviously much harder to enforce, but in my experience no one sets out to be a consistently bad teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very rarely would a teacher be fired based on student evaluations since they have a number of inherent flaws. First the scores and comments tend to be much better in electives than required classes. Scores also tend to be better in small group teaching versus large lectures. Some topics also tend to score higher than other topics regardless of who is teaching. There is also the issue of bias. Student comments can reveal a shocking degree of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Finally, the timing is really wrong to evaluate how much the students learned and how important it was. Asking for an evaluation before the student can see how the class fits into the entire education, and future job, misses so much about what a teacher is trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T19:18:23.297" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T19:18:23.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23403" CreationDate="2014-08-08T20:00:50.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact completing a Masters degree is a positive aspect in your application, regardless of not being in the same (or similar) field of studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the topic of why you believe yourself to be a suitable candidate for the Ph.D. program will be part of your application at some point in the process, you should present the experience as a positive one, where you both demonstrated your ability to do graduate level work successfully, and that it lead (wholly or in part) to your realization that you were not as interested in that subject as you expected to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be followed up with some justification why you expect to remain focused and interested in the longer and more detailed Ph.D. program, but I view that as an essential requite to anyone's success in a graduate program &#xA;anyhow, so you will need to figure how to make a strong and convincing argument. For own state of mind, as well as your admissions application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20501" LastEditorUserId="20501" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T21:51:12.190" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T21:51:12.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-09T01:58:59.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my department, teaching evaluation numbers are available to the executive committee for use in recommending raises (or non-raises) in faculty salaries. At the college level, these numbers are a required part of the file recommending people for promotion, and the file must also include the numbers for other recent instructors of the same course or similar courses (because it's known that some types of courses generally get better evaluations than others). One of the associate deans is expected to call the committee's attention to any serious problems with a candidate's teaching.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, extremely high or extremely low teaching evaluations, if consistent over a number of semesters, have a real effect. Near the middle of the range, they don't matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T01:58:59.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-09T04:47:26.803" Score="46" ViewCount="7159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Increasingly, my school has been recruiting students from Central Asia, so I see 1-3 Muslim students in each section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the end of the last term, one student asked for leave for some religious activity. He was surprised when I said he could go, then he told me he had missed many Friday afternoon religious activities, but his advisor (or perhaps some other school administrators) said he couldn't leave. I heard a similar story from another student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that many of the other Muslim students may have similar problems, but they are too nervous to speak out and let me know. Since they remain quiet, I'm not sure how to accommodate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some typical things a teacher can do to accommodate Muslim students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T03:10:41.663" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T18:14:01.413" Title="What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;religious-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-09T05:20:01.923" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of places you could go to learn about Islam, starting with wikipedia.  It could be interesting to do so: I recently read the &lt;em&gt;Autobiography of Malcolm X&lt;/em&gt; and found his description of his pilgrimage to Mecca fascinating and moving.  Last semester when I talked about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Horn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gabriel's Horn&lt;/a&gt; in my calculus course I wanted to be more balanced in my allusions, so I mentioned that in Islam the horn is blown not by Gabriel but by Israfil, and I was strangely pleased to figure out for myself that Israfil is the Islamic counterpart to Raphael (whereas Jibrail's role is expanded from that of his Christian counterpart).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of that preamble was: I do not doubt that learning more about Islam would be a worthy endeavor.  Nevertheless I am skeptical that such knowledge would directly help you to accommodate Muslim students. Like most major world religions, there is considerable variation in the way it is practiced.  I recommend rather that you familiarize yourself with the policies of your university on religious accommodations.  Just yesterday I received the yearly memo on &lt;em&gt;Sensitivity to Religious Practices&lt;/em&gt; from my upper university administration.  It reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of our faculty, staff, and students commemorate various events of importance to their particular religions. Our institutional practice is to make every reasonable effort to allow members of the University community to observe their religious holidays without academic penalty. Absence for religious reasons does not relieve students from responsibility for any part of the course work required during the period of absence. Students who miss classes, examinations, or other assignments as a consequence of their religious observance should be provided with a fair alternative opportunity to complete such academic responsibilities. Students must provide instructors with reasonable notice of the dates of religious holidays on which they plan to be absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you plan your syllabus and begin communicating with students, please keep in mind that some religious holidays affect a significant number of University of Georgia students and might require a student to abstain from secular activities or attend a house of worship. Different groups within a particular religion may also observe holidays on different dates, making it difficult to provide a comprehensive list of all potential religious observances. You may wish to search online for a religious calendar resource to serve as a guide for the dates of common observances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your cooperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least if you are in the US (as I seem to recall is the case?) it seems very likely that your institution has some equivalent version.  You could keep copies on hand and give them to a student like the one you described above.  You can direct them to appropriate university administration if they feel that they are not being accommodated within the stated rules of the university.  If you really feel strongly, you could try to speak to the relevant administrators yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T15:16:23.343" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-09T05:46:28.250" Score="8" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in social science who got interested in programming via data analysis in R and various utility tools in Python, SQL, Java (for web scraping, data querying, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering whether I should take several undergrad CS classes at my university, including 1) Data Structure &amp;amp; Algorithm, 2) Software Development (both in Java), and 3) Database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that I've seen various posters on this site claiming that what's taught in CS program has very little to do with the craft of programming itself. My main goal is to better my data analysis skills (for a data science career) and perhaps learn some machine learning and agent-based modeling. Given that goal, should I those classes? If not, what's the best way to learn programming the applied way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A common answer to &quot;how to learn programming by yourself&quot; is to do a project. However, engaging in a project without guidance and quick feedback is a very easy way to get sidetracked, especially since I'm in social science where programming skill is nothing but a tool and not valuable in and of itself. So, if your answer is &quot;to do a project&quot;, please provide more details on how to get guidance, e.g. data analysis books)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11636" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T00:47:05.290" Title="Should I take undergraduate CS classes if all I do is applied software dev and data science?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;social-science&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-09T06:10:47.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, for the most part these surveys don't matter. They were marginally relevant 40 years ago, when they first appeared, and have become even less relevant now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're generally not useful to the teacher in improving his/her teaching, because they're just numerical ratings. If students give me 3.7 out of 5 on &quot;grades were fair,&quot; that doesn't tell me anything useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the teacher already has tenure, they don't affect the teacher professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the community college where I teach, they don't matter for getting tenure, because tenure is a rubber stamp. At fancy schools, they don't matter for getting tenure, because tenure is based on research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also don't matter because they've been overtaken by technology. Students check web sites like whototake and ratemyprofessor; they never see the surveys, whose results are usually not made public. For public schools in the US, myedu.com will tell them grade distributions for various professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T06:10:47.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2014-08-09T07:45:01.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't take undergraduate courses just because the subject interests you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are doing a PhD in Social Sciences. That means that all of your academic effort goes into your PhD. A PhD is a full-time occupation. Not in some weak, 35-hours-a-week sense of &quot;full-time&quot;, but in the sense of consuming as much brain work as you are able to put in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programming and statistics are merely some of the means to an end for you: to provide you with the tools you need to complete your PhD. So focus. Focus on that. Every time you feel the urge, when feel distracted by machine learning or whatever, ask yourself: how does this &lt;strong&gt;directly&lt;/strong&gt; contribute to me finishing my PhD? Catch yourself as soon as the siren call of &quot;it will help me better understand the bigger picture of machine learning&quot; or whatever starts weaseling its way into your mind. Those are nasty little tricks the mind plays on itself, that will drag you off your true course, and onto the rocks of endless distraction. And then you'll never finish your PhD. Just keep looking at the post-it-note you've attached to the side of your monitor that contains a terse expression of your PhD's research question. That is your beacon: aim at it relentlessly, and don't steer away from your true course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T07:45:01.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-09T07:48:20.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the university/college and the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is sometimes joked that a good teaching award is nicknamed the &quot;Kiss of Death&quot;. But by my anecdotal experience, this joke is not so far from the truth at some places. So presumably at such places, the weight placed on student evaluations (when deciding tenure say) is zero. Or perhaps even negative (!) - i.e., literally the worse your students think of you, the better for your tenure decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, at good liberal arts colleges, they are more heavily weighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how much the particular department cares about teaching. It is difficult to generalize, even restricting attention to the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10885" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T07:48:20.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2014-08-09T08:04:50.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are considering such classes, then go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that basics of computer science have little to do with direct application (its unlikely that you will need to invent a new sorting algorithm). But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;algorithmic thinking is invaluable,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting it at level of computer science students (rather than &quot;computer science for liberal arts majors&quot;) may be a challenge worth it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting contacts and interaction with CS students is invaluable (you may learn a lot about applied programming by immersion),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learning advances CS will pay off (regardless if you stay in academia or not).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dedicating a year or whole studies to something is a commitment people sometimes regret. Taking a one or two courses someone is interested it is rarely regretted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@EnergyNumbers warns you against lack of focus. But hey, you are not taking a random subject! It is a thing that will boost skills you need for the things you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: I did take one such class (while majoring in phys/math) and it was great (my only regret is I didn't take more). Now I am doing data science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I do like to side-track and I have little respect towards entrenching oneself in one, arbitrarily defined field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T22:35:02.293" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T22:35:02.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26989" CreationDate="2014-08-09T08:28:05.623" Score="14" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26971/do-student-reviews-of-teachers-matter&quot;&gt;Do student reviews of teachers matter?&lt;/a&gt;, there are a couple of comments which suggest that being labeled a &quot;good teacher&quot; is a bad thing at a research intensive university. I have heard this in the past, but have always thought it was based on the fact that you wanted to be known for your research as opposed to your teaching. In other words that you want to be known as a &quot;good researcher&quot; as opposed to a good teacher. The way the comments are used in that question it sounds like you should in fact strive to be known as a &quot;bad teacher&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it bad to be known as a good teacher? Is it good to be known as a bad teacher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T04:58:33.740" Title="Is being a good teacher a bad thing at a research intensive university?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26988" CreationDate="2014-08-09T08:44:40.447" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work at a university that focuses almost exclusively on research (we have only graduate students, most of whom are Ph.D. students, and the number of postdocs, research staff, etc. is approximately equal to the number of students).  A few faculty members are well known as excellent teachers, and a few are commonly known to be poor teachers.  In general, I don't think the distinction has very much influence on the respect accorded to each within the university (and even less in the larger academic community).  But I think the good teachers are better liked, both by their peers and the administration.  I certainly appreciate it when I find that students are well prepared thanks to having taken a course with a &quot;good&quot; teacher.  And bad teachers are occasionally so bad that they cause administrative problems, which makes everyone unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of each faculty member's annual review is an evaluation of his/her teaching (by the dean).  A positive review is definitely a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T08:44:40.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-09T11:09:24.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the students who move abroad to study in countries which are much different in the religious aspect of they own, do not expect the same religious accommodation as it would be at home, my experience so far has shown that it is a pleasant surprise to them that someone shows interest in accommodating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that they appreciate a lot is remembering the Eids (the main holidays) as well as observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan. These days are celebrated together with the family in their respective countries so being far away is hard. In that case receiving some &quot;good wishes&quot; message is very welcomed. Whereas, the best would be if the University of someone organizes the &quot;fast-breaking&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Iftar&lt;/em&gt;) dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to that, the Friday prayer is important, if they are allowed not to attend classes during the Friday prayer time, it is very helpful. Last year we received an email from University administration which described their plan of building praying rooms for Muslim students. I have also read that the Katholik University of Leuven has a praying room. That email was very welcomed by the Muslim students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I think just acknowledging that you know something about the religion and the important days is heart-warming as they do not expect more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T21:16:42.250" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:16:42.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:13:18.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a couple of places where CS classes would help towards data analysis in the social sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;thinking about issues like complexity can help when you're writing scripts to analyze large amounts of data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &quot;craft of programming&quot; is also useful to learn, because you realize the risks of your code being wrong or faulty in some way (and techniques to guard against that), which in a social science study can simply lead you to draw completely wrong conclusions. Such skills are likely to be taught rather in  computer/software engineering than CS, if that distinction exists wherever you are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my friends, a glaciologist, lost an enormous amount of time during his phd because of limited programming skills and the inability to verify his code, which led him to doubts about his experimental results. The programmer they hired just didn't understand the science and was useless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally about machine learning and agent-based modeling, you won't learn much (if any) of that in undergrad courses. Those are usually graduate courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps an interesting avenue would be to collaborate with a computer scientist on a research project related to your studies, rather than embarking solo on a toy programming project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20525" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T14:13:18.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:34:40.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;False humility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;deprecating one's own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments&#xA;  for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from others - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Humility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;impostor&quot; doesn't realize how awesome they are, and downplays themselves. When you see that you are smarter and more aware than those around you, but choose to not see this, that is exactly what impostor syndrome is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The impostor syndrome (also spelled imposter syndrome), sometimes&#xA;  called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a psychological&#xA;  phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their&#xA;  accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those&#xA;  with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not&#xA;  deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed&#xA;  as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they&#xA;  are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to&#xA;  be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you go on to consider that the others around you should know better. And because you don't accept and represent your true nature that is &quot;smarter&quot;/&quot;more aware&quot; than those around you, you become an impostor like them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect, it is two sides of the same coin. You're looking at those around you as being on one side of the coin, and you on another. The truth is that you're both the same coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are brought up to believe that it is &quot;good&quot; or &quot;right&quot; to be humble. And to an extent, this is truth. I'm not arguing that. However, it seems that you've taken this point to the extreme where you're now falsely humble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is false humility that is the impostor you are looking for.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20526" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T14:34:40.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21353" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:41:47.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;BibTeX is usually a very heterogeneous source of bibliographic references. URLs can be stored in several fields like 'url', 'howpublished', or 'citeulike-linkout-0',  'citeulike-linkout-1'... 'citeulike-linkout-n'. Moreover, some entries have a DOI, arXiv ID, PubMed ID or PMC ID and some don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer of Paperpile I had the pleasure to dig into this over the last years, and there is no easy solution to a problem like this, but I think Paperpile comes close to a 'least effort' solution for the user. Let me explain&#xA;how you can handle such a task with Paperpile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply upload the BibTeX file to Paperpile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paperpile will automatically match the uploaded references against databases like PubMed or Google Scholar to get better bibliographic information. The key point here is that it will retrieve DOIs which point to the website of the article at the publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can then trigger automatic download of the PDF of these articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice side effect is that you will have an updated bibliography with many of the articles being up to date and having the abstract. Of course, you can also export your references then again as BibTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastEditorUserId="20529" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T22:23:32.487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:23:32.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16057" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:49:16.270" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working and academia for many years, and recently as a developer of Paperpile I came across this problem several times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All modern citation/reference managers rely on CSL, the citation style language. For more information on this, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://citationstyles.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://citationstyles.org/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among these 7,000+ styles, it is, however, difficult to find the citation format you want to have. For this purpose, I would suggest to use the CSL editor search by example (&lt;a href=&quot;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can type in the inline citation and how the formatted citation should look like, and it will find the citation style that matches most closely. Once, you know the name of the citation style you want to use, you can actually use Paperpile to get the formatted citation (including bold and italic formatting).&#xA;You select the reference you want to create the citation for and simply hit Control+C. You will find it in your clipboard and can copy it to Word, Google Docs, and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastEditorUserId="20529" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T22:10:14.697" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:10:14.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26862" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:52:02.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Columbia University Libraries has a helpful document that provides guidance on determining the copyright status of books published in the United States. The guide provides links to online resources to allow you to determine the copyright holder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2010/08/researching-the-copyright-status-of-books.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researching the Copyright Status of a Book: Protected or Public&#xA;  Domain?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project of the Copyright Advisory Office Columbia University Libraries&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Kenneth D. Crews, Director&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;www.copyright.columbia.edu&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T19:32:44.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T19:32:44.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:52:05.520" Score="22" ViewCount="2207" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the last term, I recorded at least 50 cases of student plagiarism. The most common cases were students copying and pasting paragraphs verbatim from various Web sites, assembling them together, and calling it their essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took what I thought were sufficient steps to inform students of what was not allowed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I posted the rules in the syllabus, on the course Web site, and listed relevant rules in the instructions for larger projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I issued spoken warnings in class regularly, occasionally showed some examples of such submissions, and also showed students some of the steps I took to catch the plagiarism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also set what I thought were strict enough consequences so that students know it is better to do nothing at all than to cheat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% grade loss (from their entire grade) per infraction, no matter the value of the assignment (most assignments were only worth ~5%).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, these are policies I established from the very first day of the class, and carried through the whole term. Yet, even in the final weeks, I continued to catch copied work and failed a lot of students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What further steps can I take to reduce this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T15:09:22.510" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T19:27:42.913" Title="How to reduce student plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2071" CreationDate="2014-08-09T15:05:23.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a mixed group of wet lab and dry lab (bioinformatics) people, and preferences are very different (Word vs. LaTeX), but the last three papers we have written in Google Docs. It has quite some benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of Google Docs is free, you just need an G+ account&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every one has immediate access to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can write the manuscript collaboratively in realtime. You see the cursor positions of the other blinking. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since June 2014 Google Docs has &quot;track changes&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also easily exchange files (even huge files with Google Drive)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No need to send multiple MS Word files around the globe and merge them afterwards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inserting references and formatting the bibliography works perfectly with Paperpile. Also collaborators that do not have Paperpile installed see all the references and citations properly formatted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Docs has excellent MS Word and PDF export. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of writing the current free storage in Google Drive is 15 GB for regular users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastEditorUserId="20529" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T22:30:27.000" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:30:27.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-09T15:40:22.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All good answers here. Ramadan expect your students to fast during the day. As a Jewish Man I understood that fasting is a serious tenet of faith. Also, if you are a Jew or Christian the Muslim considers you a person of the book. Extend the same courtesy. Not saying anything bad... They avoid pork, alcohol and games of chance. If you ever speak of Muhammad... After you say his name say may peace be upon him.  Five times a day the call to prayer will go out. Facing Mecca prayers will be said on a prayer rug. Most Muslim countries have a system set up to where the faithful can hear said call... I.E. Iraq which I spent time in or in Istanbul which I loved. You will not see pictures of religious figures or icons as you would in Eastern Orthodox churches, Catholicism or Protestant churches. Meat is eaten and prepared in a similar manner to our kosher standards. They just call it Halal. Anyway, it would take forever to list everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20532" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T21:10:45.637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:10:45.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-09T16:55:13.723" Score="11" ViewCount="1595" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to search for conferences all over world? I need to participate in one in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20534" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T21:11:21.913" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T07:56:38.533" Title="How to search for upcoming conferences that will be held in a specific subject" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2014-08-09T17:11:56.940" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be helpful if you can tell us what field you are in, or more specifically what kinds of class you are teaching. What is the subject, and is it a big lecture class or a small section, etc? Catching 50 plagiarists makes me think you are teaching big lecture sections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two things I do: First, I have a very harsh plagiarism policy. I automatically fail anybody I catch plagiarizing. This raises the stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I consciously try to design assignments that are hard to plagiarize. There are a variety of ways to do this. For instance, you can give fairly specific assignments. Don't say: &quot;Write a paper about Shakespeare&quot; but instead &quot;Write me a paper on the role of ghosts in King Lear and MacBeth.&quot; This doesn't make cheating impossible, but it makes it harder to google and get a prefabbed paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T17:11:56.940" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-09T17:22:28.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my institution my professor told me that non tenure track profs are suspended if they have an unsatisfactory overall rating, which surprised me. For tenured profs it doesn't seem to matter so much. Tenure track profs might be hindered by consistently low ratings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15789" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T17:22:28.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2014-08-09T19:32:21.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speed reading techniques can, for some people, greatly increase the amount of text that you can cover in a given amount of time.  If I am reading for a big picture vision in a not-extremely-technical subject, I can routinely read at 500-1000 words per minute, far faster than speaking.  It is, however, very important to know when you're reading something that requires time for reflection; you have only the most immediate reactions to work with at such rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a variety of speed-reading books out there--I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/speed-reading-tony-buzan/1113182667&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one by Tony Buzan that seems decent&lt;/a&gt; as long as you don't believe too fervently that he always knows what he's talking about.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/break-through-rapid-reading-peter-kump/1100554073&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Kump's book&lt;/a&gt; is better with exercises.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a speed-reading app by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spritzinc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spritz&lt;/a&gt;, which I have not tried.  Other fast readers I've talked to have given mixed reports: it's definitely fast (it forces you to be!) but since going back is difficult it tends to limit comprehension in those spots where you need a little extra focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you don't necessarily even need to read everything you're supposed to read.  Various sorts of skimming can let you pick off the key ideas and decide whether you need to go into more detail: look at chapter headings, read the first couple and last couple sentences in each chapter, glance through for any graphs or tables or sidebars.  You might take an extra 10% time doing this sort of thing, but more than 1/6th of the time you'll find that you don't need to do any more at all, saving you time overall.  And if you do have to read the whole thing, it's easier to remember when you've already had an overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="669" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T21:12:41.057" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:12:41.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-09T21:25:58.833" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, my qualifying exam actually ended up taking place during Ramadan. As I was observing, I asked my graduate department to take that into account in scheduling the oral exams, which required two days for everybody to complete. They obliged in giving me an early morning slot, which was helpful compared to a late afternoon slot (when hunger would have affected my mental sharpness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also note that Ramadan could conflict with evening labs, depending on how late they run. In such cases, it would be helpful to offer alternatives, where practical (perhaps the students could be allowed to start earlier or later, so that the meal break does not interfere too much with the lab schedule). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I should also mention that the observance of the Friday prayers, as well as the dates of the main observances, fluctuate: the former because they're tied to the solar schedule and thus shift during daylight savings time, as well as geographically according to both latitude and longitude, and the latter because they're tied to the lunar calendar but, unlike the Jewish calendar, are not intercalated. (Rough rule of thumb: the Islamic calendar &quot;gains&quot; one month every three Gregorian years.) Eid ul-Fitr this year was about July 28 in 2014; by 2017, it will be approximately June 26.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T22:27:21.170" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T22:27:21.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-09T21:28:39.667" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I can contribute here as a muslim. Although some of us avoid it due to laziness, a muslim is required to pray 5 times a day, at certain hours. It is like a ritual that requires a clean and quiet place. But if the person has to do something at that time, he can pray later. So a student doesn't need to leave class to pray. He can pray all day's prayings when he goes home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also friday praying which requires a community to pray with. Unlike the other prays (5 times a day) you cannot do this later or by yourself so it can be good if student is allowed not to attend class friday afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Ramadan (which is now during summers but in few years will be during school time again) muslims do not eat or drink anything till sunset but people can eat or drink in front of them. If there are evening classes during sunset, it is best if these students who choose to be thirsty and hungry are allowed not to come so they can do their iftar as they require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7773" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:28:39.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2014-08-09T21:46:39.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend learning about those topics.  While EnergyNumbers is correct that programming is a means to an end for you, I strongly disagree with the implication that becoming a better programmer is a waste of time.  Knowing more about computer science will let you complete your analyses faster and more easily and, more importantly, will give you more confidence in your code and the results you produce.  A real life example of social science programming gone wrong: the coding errors in the Reinhart-Rogoff spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also feel this way because I'm in the opposite of your situation.  I'm a software engineer, but I'm interested how developers work with their tools and each other, so there's a social science flavour to my research.  I've found it extremely helpful to dip into social science textbooks and courses to learn more about doing this kind of research.  If I hadn't taken the time to learn more about grounded theory, conducting interviews, designing surveys, and so on, I'm sure my work would have serious methodological problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I don't think you necessarily have to take a course to learn the material, or at least not an on-campus course.  I took Coursera courses on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/algo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;algorithms&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;machine learning&lt;/a&gt; for my own interest and can strongly recommend both of them.  EdX and Udacity are two other MOOC providers with good offerings.  Doing online work is more flexible than attending undergraduate lectures, and you can pick and choose the material that's most relevant to you.  Reading textbooks on your own time is an even more flexible approach.  On the other hand, if the structure of an on-campus course helps you learn, then by all means, take the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6782" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T21:46:39.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2014-08-09T23:00:55.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To reduce plagiarism I would increase the penalty to &quot;failure&quot; for any instance of plagiarism.  This policy might make students react emotionally and therefore might seem difficult to do.  Therefore, I would add to your &quot;let them know in advance&quot; policies a few statements (eg in the syllabus) to show the problem context, as &quot;Last semester 50 students failed the class due to plagiarism,&quot; and &quot;the purpose of the policy is to protect the value of the university's degree. If the school gets a reputation as a cheaters' school, the value of our degree may drop to that of a low tier school.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20549" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T23:00:55.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27019" CreationDate="2014-08-10T00:30:54.190" Score="4" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every grad school requires to submit transcripts from all undergrad and grad instatutions applicant attended including studying abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I am confused with one case. I entered first University just after the high school, but a year after I dropped it and entered another University (a branch of a well-known University that had been opened that very year). The main reason was that the latter University had a program with more advanced and fundamental courses in math and CS and with a researh component as a part of curriculum, and it generally better fit my interests and desires (another reasons were e.g. better professors, better ranking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this episode of my life is worth mentioning in my SoP (I preferred to waste a year because I wanted to dedicate my life to science and therefore get better training for this goal). However I'm not sure if I had to get transcripts from that first University even if I just studied there for a year and wasn't satisfied with it's level of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone answer if I am obligated to get and submit this document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="552" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T08:24:48.663" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T08:24:48.663" Title="Do I have to submit transcripts from school I transferred out of for grad application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2014-08-10T00:47:22.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While both of the existing answers have the same basic answers as me, I will add mine simply because I don't have time to make it short enough to fit into a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Shane wrote, design assignments that are hard to plagiarize and fail all students who plagiarize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do both of theses but still have a problem with students plagiarizing. I fail all who plagiarize but they have a chance to resubmit one time (school policy). If it were up to me, I would fail then without a chance to resubmit, but it is not up to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, some students do not take the issue of plagiarism seriously. &lt;strong&gt;These are the students whom you need to awaken and finally seeing that they will not graduate until they write their own assignments will eventually awaken them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had students (more than one) who end up taking one of my modules three years in a row (because they keep failing for plagiarizing). Eventually, they all get it and do their own work (or they change schools). The students who get caught and open up to me usually have the same reason: They waited until the last minute and did not have time to complete the work, so they took a shortcut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have even had students who clearly spend hours modifying the work of someone else just to avoid detection. I constantly wonder why they would not simply spend those hours doing the actual work. I don't always get a response when I ask the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First semester students are usually worse than more senior ones but it does seem that some students think that even though one teacher is tough, they still try it (and sometimes succeed) with other teachers. A more coordinated school-wide effort would seem to help with this, although I have been unsuccessful in making my colleagues as concerned as I am on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T00:47:22.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T00:57:40.730" Score="3" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying a Honours level Reading Unit.&#xA;A Reading Unit is quiet unlike the traditional be lectured to type units.&#xA;It is based on the principle that everyone in the unit has mastered how to do research, and that teaching is the best way to learn.&#xA;Over the unit there are a number of areas to be examined.&#xA;For the first half of the unit the class is broken up into groups one group for each area, and ask to research and present on the topic.&#xA;(The second half is a project, and ensuring you know all the areas covered for the exam)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unit has 5 hours of content lectures, in which it described the basics of all the topics, so that everyone has some context to start there research in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one particular topic area, the free lecturer admitted that he was less informed about it, than the other areas covered by the unit. Which is fair enough -- he was asked to teach this class with short notice after the normal lecturer went away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am well informed on this particular topic -- at least to the extent it will be covered in this unit. It forms basic knowledge that underlies my honours thesis, and I have studied a unit though a online university purely about it. I have made the lecturer is aware of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the lecture on the basics of this area, I felt that there were some improvements that could be made to what/how it was covered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few times the lecturer hedged his statements. Saying things like &quot;I think that...&quot;, &quot;It is my understanding that&quot;, &quot;I don't believe anyone does ...&quot;. Indicating his own uncertainty. I could confirm that he was right, or clarify this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few times he used a term that no one with in the field would use to describe the technique; because that term is used in-field to describe a different technique. It was a very apt way to describe it, but if anyone tries to research the term, they will get this other technique. As well, if anyone every tried to discuss it with a researcher in the field, that researcher would probably say: &quot;no it isn't &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt;, it is &lt;code&gt;Y&lt;/code&gt;&quot;. (Infact &lt;code&gt;Y&lt;/code&gt; uses lowercase &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A statement in one of the slides was slightly misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I resisted the urge to clarify him during the lecture, because I felt that would be disrespectful and would interrupt the flow of the class -- which was already on a tight scheduled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am considering what I should do. Options I see are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do nothing, hope that the students covering this section in more detail will make it clear for everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pass this information on the students covering the area, possibly also with some other useful recommended reading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post my clarifications on the the units online discussion forum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Email the lecturer saying: &quot;I feel I can clarify a few things&quot;, shall I post to the discussion forum? But not include full details in my email to him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Email the lecturer saying: &quot;Here are some clarifications of the area for your edification.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way to go about making something more clear,&#xA; that was not wrong, but might be missing or misleading from lecture content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8513" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T07:22:09.237" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T07:25:08.253" Title="Filling in gaps in lecturer's instruction" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;lecturer&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-10T02:18:19.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I make zero accommodations for Muslim students. I also make zero accommodations for Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Hindu etc. Your religion is your personal business and it should stay your &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; business. If my lecture / lab / test runs through your observance time you have two choices: take 10 minutes and keep quiet about it, or leave the room. If it's a test you don't get back in. If it's a lab you may miss something important, like how to handle dangerous chemicals. It would be very ironic if your prayers to your God resulted in meeting Him an hour later because you missed something important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolerance and accommodation work both ways. I simply ask that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; observant students show equal accommodation for the rest of the class who are quite happy with a 2:30 start time and don't want to rearrange their day because one person prefers 3:30. My reading of the afternoon prayer schedule, for example, says the time is not fixed: &amp;quot;... till the sun is still bright and enough daylight remains for a person to travel 6 miles&amp;quot;. The sun is up until at least 5 in the winter, and 6 miles takes 20 minutes (10 on the highway that runs past campus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember on the application form, when the school pointedly did NOT ask any questions about race, gender, color, religion, disabilities, heritage etc.? There's a reason: because the answers are irrelevant to the programs (and schedules) we offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one student asked for leave for some religious activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one student asked for leave for some sports activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one student asked for leave for some social activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one student asked for leave for some political activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are these questions any different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17246" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T13:18:57.707" CommentCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27015" CreationDate="2014-08-10T02:26:28.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a graduate school requires transcripts from all your undergraduate institutions, then I would understand that to include the university you attended for just a year.  Under the circumstances you describe, the content of that transcript should not have much effect on the admission decision (or on fellowship offers), but omitting it seems risky because it could get your application rejected (or ignored) on a technicality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T02:26:28.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21353" CreationDate="2014-08-10T02:56:09.970" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; can import many formats, including *.bib.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T02:56:09.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-10T06:16:53.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The student must take their own decision, what is more important at the moment: to sit in the class or to make religious activities. The school should not prevent such, but if the one comes then later and means, he wouldn't take part at examine, cause instead to learn he done his religious activities, so he must get his bad note - religious activities aren't an excuse for non-completion of school duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20557" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T06:16:53.950" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21353" CreationDate="2014-08-10T06:20:41.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may don't like this answer but automatic download is explicitly forbidden by many publishers and can result in the ban of labs/campus access to the journals of the publisher. Such automatic download can made by e.g. EndNote (actually, it does it automatically in some settings), and done by some students in our lab - as a result,  a bunch of IP addresses get blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="14755" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T18:32:12.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T18:32:12.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27017" CreationDate="2014-08-10T07:02:38.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that this is a postgraduate degree. The lecturers aren't there to serve it to you on a plate. You are a grown-up now, you're doing a higher degree. That means you should be expecting to do most of the work for yourselves, and to think for yourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there's an online course discussion forum, that seems like the perfect place to work with other students to fill out the richer tapestry of knowledge that the lecture was on; post something there about useful key terms to find relevant literature, along the lines of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found these papers (give linked DOI or other robust form of link) on the Dunning-Kruger effect. My search terms to find them were: &quot;cognitive bias&quot;, &quot;self-assessment&quot;. I looked in these databases / used these search engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fill in gaps. Don't try to look smarter than the lecturer. It's not at all likeable, and you're only risking looking foolish later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the lecturer talked about solving a particular problem by applying X, and you've found examples of people doing it by applying Y, say just that. If you can link to a paper that compares X and Y, even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do bear in mind that the presence or absence of expressions of uncertainty (&quot;I think that ...&quot;, &quot;I don't believe that&quot;) do indeed often mark the difference between expertise and weak knowledge. But in the opposite way round to the direction you might think. &lt;em&gt;Presence&lt;/em&gt; of expressions of uncertainty often indicate &lt;em&gt;deeper&lt;/em&gt; knowledge and expertise. The person who says to fellow academics &quot;I am sure that ...&quot;, &quot;I know for a fact that ...&quot;, &quot;No one in the world tries to tackle it this way ...&quot; is often, in doing so, flagging up their own &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, all lecturers are mortal, and not every statement they make will be accurate. And that's alright. A degree is an exercise in learning to think, at least as much as in acquiring knowledge. Develop your critical thinking on all materials provided to you, whether they are written, spoken or however they're delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T07:25:08.253" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T07:25:08.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27028" CreationDate="2014-08-10T07:06:55.617" Score="5" ViewCount="2207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am supposed to present the famous Gregor Mendel's 1865 genetics paper. &#xA;So what tense I am supposed to present it in? Whether I must use present tense or past tense? A general advise regarding presentation viewpoint would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T07:57:53.980" Title="Present tense or past tense for presenting someone else's paper?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27026" CreationDate="2014-08-10T07:57:53.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your sentence construction. Use the past tense when talking about what Mendel did, since he did it 150 years ago; use the present tense when talking about what the paper says, since the paper still says that now.  For example, &quot;Mendel did experiments on pea plants. His paper describes the results.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T07:57:53.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27041" CreationDate="2014-08-10T08:31:45.277" Score="5" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research institute, there is a fair amount of discussion around wanting to collaborate or create exchanges with other labs, especially outside of the country (we are in Asia).  From myself and a few other researchers, we have connections to labs in the US from graduate school and previous research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my own initiative, I exchanged interns and research assistants between my lab and one in the states.  It was specific on the people we had, such that a student interning in my lab would benefit from going to the lab in the states and vice versa, as we worked on a common project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher-ups want to make some &quot;official&quot; exchange, which may be some asian culture at play.  From this, the conversations are always around signing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;memorandum of understanding&lt;/a&gt; (MoU).  For the exchange I worked on, we had specific people and specific goal, so a general Lab to Lab MoU did not seem as relevant as a mutual agreement of what the purpose of the exchange was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how important or useful is an MoU, are there pros and cons to this?  I don't think it has any legal weight, so does anyone have experience with this type of collaboration and see why it is necessary in an overall scale?  Is signing an MoU the only way for an institute to call an exchange 'official'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T16:00:24.143" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T16:00:24.143" Title="Necessity of MoU for researcher exchange or collaboration" Tags="&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T09:21:55.363" Score="3" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was an international student and graduated 3 years ago. Now I want to continue my research career instead of working in the industry. I worked for free for a professor for one month last year. It was a good experience and we had a good impression to each other. I approach her again and asked to get back to her lab, she said that she could consider to work together on a project for 1 year, but she has no money. On one side, I was always excited about to be back to a lab to do more researches, and expecting to extend it to a PhD study; on the other side, I couldn't be glad and work well without enough money. I am going to meet this professor soon, I was wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why did she asked me to work for free?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to negotiate or should I just give it up?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20563" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T02:56:57.117" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T02:56:57.117" Title="Received offer to work for free, how to negotiate for a salary?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27030" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:12:47.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question you have to answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you go for one year without eating and living under a bridge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I assume the answer is no, you simply tell her you cannot work without getting paid. She shouldn't be offended by this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if she has no money, she may know other labs that have, and can recommend you My master's advisor came one day with a friend of his and said &quot;this is Prof. Smith, and he is looking for a PhD student in a project I think will interest you&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, depending on the country, working for free may be illegal. In Spain it is common to do PhDs unfunded, in Sweden it is considered slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:12:47.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:14:16.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience as an University Lecturer is that academia have an entrenched bias verbalised as: &quot;Those who can,do and those who can't, teach&quot;. &#xA; Student feedback of a negative nature should be used to alert faculty that the staff who are teaching may need some professional development in ped/andr-agogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20518" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:14:16.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:17:35.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sit on my departments academic misconduct committee and see a huge number of cases and have looked at a number of statistics. We use TurnItIn at my university and allow students top precheck there work to obtain both a similarity score and a detailed report of which parts of their paper are likely copied. About half our students use this precheck feature, but they seem to ignore the output since the similarity index on the precheck are generally not that different from the similarity score on the final copy. In other words telling students exactly what is copied does not decrease plagiarism. We have a pretty light penalty for a first offence of plagiarism, but the penalty for a second offence is much more severe. Having previous offences does not reduce the probability of committing plagiarism on future assignments, so we do not think that the severity of the penalty matters. We have concluded that the students who plagiarise just do not care and that there is nothing that can be done to discourage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the sources students copy from, we do not think the specificity of the assignment would reduce the number of incidents. What we notice is that some types of assignments (e.g, take home essays) are much more likely to contain plagiarism than others (e.g., exam essays) and that plagiarism is much more likely to occur during the first year. We therefore limit the number of assignments with high rates of plagiarism during the first year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:17:35.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13496" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:42:27.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know an answer has already been accepted but I will add this for future searchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coursera has a module called &lt;a href=&quot;https://class.coursera.org/questionnairedesign-001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys&lt;/a&gt;. Since it's free and you can pick and choose which video lectures to watch, your students might find it quite helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of the lectures included is &quot;Measurement Error: Bias and Variance&quot; but there are also plenty of others to not just measure bias but also reduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:42:27.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27030" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:51:51.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two questions here, one is what Davidmh clearly mentioned. The other is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it is a common practice to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To this second question, I will say it depends on the student's aims and advisor's funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know one of my friend doing the same in KTH, Sweden. Another friend of mine did a research for 2 months in a UK university after her masters for free. The value you get is recognition for working in a good lab and may be some research papers if you can manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume your professor recommended so thinking you are enthusiastic about research and may do so even if she could not provide you with some money. If this is not the case, you can tell her politely, it is not considered offensive at all. &lt;em&gt;I also guess here that you have not told her about your intentions to extend this research to a PhD later&lt;/em&gt;. If you do so, she may tell you later if she gets funds or may direct you to another lab if you discuss with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11191" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:51:51.770" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27030" CreationDate="2014-08-10T11:06:17.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be clear what you wish to achieve. Working &quot;for free&quot; is never great, but it might be tolerable if it helps you to get somewhere you want to be. Once you've decided what you want to get from this, then discuss this with the professor and ask how she can help you get there. For example, it might be possible to write a grant application to fund you for a PhD, if that is what you want. Be prepared to walk away if the prospects don't seem worth the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also ask whether there is scope for earning money from other sources - say, from teaching. Be cautious about vague promises that don't ever materialise into anything concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, decide what this is worth to you, and what your exit strategy is going to be if things don't work out according to plan. Once you've worked for free for several months, it's easy to think &quot;well, just another month... perhaps something will come along&quot;. This is unlikely to be a good situation to be in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T11:06:17.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-10T11:34:11.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen teaching evaluations being used to deny promotion to full professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, they are not always that useful. When I get my evaluations every semester I read them and sometimes they help me improve. But often they are so clearly biased that I get nothing from them: as an example I remember one that said &quot;midterms are nothing like the assignments&quot;, and this was a week after a midterm where 3 out of the 5 questions were taken verbatim from the assignments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been in position to observe that beautiful and/or funny people get above average evaluations, as do easy markers. These facts don't help committees to take the evaluations too seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for ratemyprofessors, in my own case the comments there are not representative of what you see in the full sample of the in-class evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T11:34:11.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7774" CreationDate="2014-08-10T13:10:03.820" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle in every day life, at conferences, in hallway conversations this paradox of collaborating and competing at the same time in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult indeed. Motivation for pursuing a career in academia vary significantly, and accordingly, what is considered as ethically acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From experience, it is often the issue of the &lt;em&gt;man in the middle&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;which in practice is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; major source of frustration. Individual A talks to Individual B about his ongoing (unpublished) research. Individual B then more or less forget about where he got this information, and speaks to Individual C, who implements it, unsuspectingly.  Everyone behaves ethically at his level,&#xA;but globally, Individual C effectively can be perceived to &lt;em&gt;compete&lt;/em&gt; aggressively with Individual A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solution that some people seem to adopt in conferences in my field is to only present/discuss &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; material, which makes attending conference less interesting, as it only involves outdated research. Another sub-optimal approach is merchandizing, i.e. present one's research at a superficial, advertising level, so that the actual real issues/breakpoints are effectively not discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, research thrives in confronting honestly different perspective on a given typically complex problem, so there is a lot to be gained in  collaborative behaviour.&#xA;Modern research is also fairly specialized, and conferences are the one place where you are likely to meet experts in your field who have given some thoughts to the problems you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, everyone has to balance these things out.&#xA;My advice would be to behave on the cautious side, but then again I tend not to follow my own advice. Another approach is to make sure you are so much on top of things that it does not matter :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you avoid colleagues who are known to 'tell only the minimum' at congresses and then surprise later with an accepted grant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, life is short, so interact preferentially with colleagues whose motivation for doing research seem to overlap most with your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Striking a balance between collaboration versus (unrestrained) competition is not specific to research/academia in fact. It is the basis of civilization! What is a bit specific to academia is that it is (poorly IMHO) self-regulated. There is no such thing as academic police/justice. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I found this RSA Animate to be instructive&lt;/a&gt; to get a measure on how a small amount of policing in enough to get the system working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point worth mentioning is that predatory behaviour is in fact not that common, if only because people are too busy with their own train of thoughts, and also because it takes time for new ideas to percolate. To understand why  given idea is novel, typically requires having spent some time thinking along similar lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4275" LastEditorUserId="4275" LastEditDate="2021-01-07T12:41:45.990" LastActivityDate="2021-01-07T12:41:45.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27029" CreationDate="2014-08-10T14:20:03.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;MOUs serve several purposes in my experience. First, they put down in writing what the two labs have agreed to do together. This formalizes the relationship a little and allows the participants to refer back to their commitments. Sometimes people get busy and forget to do some parts of the agreement. The MOU allows the other side to gently remind their partners that everyone committed to something and ask them when they will start on their part. People don't generally intend to shirk their responsibilities, but academics and researchers get busy, so informal and unpaid promises are first to slip. MOUs which formalize the relationship are often enough to make sure each side holds up its end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, they allow others inside and outside the respective organizations to recognize that the relationship exists. Labs have directors, their directors have bosses (often department chairs, deans, or research vice presidents), and their bosses have bosses on up the chain. Having an MOU between labs establishes a formal relationship that can be recognized by these people. In fact, depending on the organization, the boss of the lab director may have to sign off on the MOU (not just the lab director themselves), which gives the agreement some level of officialness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This official recognition generally doesn't get used for much more than promotion of the relationship between the labs. Though, it may also serve as the first step in a deepening relationship between larger parts of the overall organizations (departments, colleges/schools, and even whole universities or government entities). These formal relationships can also be helpful in pursuing government funding in some countries to help support the collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never used an MOU to formalize a simple summer student exchange. Those, in my experience, were always done with a verbal or email agreement. However, everything longer than a summer or more complicated than a student exchange that I've been involved in has had a written MOU. They lay out the expectations and give the signers cover with their higher-ups when the questions come about what two groups are doing together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not generally seen as a contract, but does up the seriousness of the relationship to have an MOU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T14:20:03.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-10T15:52:17.757" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general suggestions, for adjusting your course schedule to accommodate the religious &lt;em&gt;and any other&lt;/em&gt; needs of your students, would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't make attendance compulsory&lt;/strong&gt; if you can reasonably avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, sometimes &amp;mdash; e.g. for exams &amp;mdash; requiring physical attendance may be unavoidable, but if there's any chance that a student &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; successfully complete the course without being present on a particular occasion, I'd suggest allowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may require some extra effort on your part, such as making lecture notes available for self-study, or scheduling supplementary lab sessions to make up for missed labs.  It's up to you (and your department policy) how far you want to go with this, but at the very least, I'd suggest that, if a student tells you in advance that it would be inconvenient or impossible for them to attend a particular session, you should try to accommodate them if it's possible with reasonable effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, IMO there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11353/what-is-the-best-way-to-keep-your-students-from-getting-out-of-control/11371#11371&quot;&gt;other reasons&lt;/a&gt; to avoid compulsory lectures, anyway.  Just make it clear to your students that being absent does not excuse them from learning the material that the lecture was supposed to teach them (but that you're willing to help them do so, as far as practically possible).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish your course schedule well in advance&lt;/strong&gt;.  This goes especially for exams and other things that are compulsory and/or cannot be easily rescheduled, as it allows students to plan their schedules in advance and to make an informed decision on whether they'll be able to properly attend your course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also wish to ask prospective students to contact you if they'd like to attend your course but find the schedule problematic.  At the very least, even if you find yourself unable to accommodate them this time, the feedback will be valuable for planning the next year's / semester's schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your students to tell you if a particular time is inconvenient for them&lt;/strong&gt;, and make it clear that you're willing to make allowances where possible, especially if multiple students find the time problematic.  If you do find that you have several students who'd prefer not to come to class at a particular time, bring it up in class (or e.g. on the course mailing list, if you have one) and see if there might be a way to reschedule the class without unduly inconveniencing anyone else, or even if it would simply make sense to skip it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should go for &lt;strong&gt;any reason&lt;/strong&gt;, not just for religious ones, although those obviously do qualify.  All the same, if a significant fraction of your students would really like to, say, watch a football match during a particular lecture, rescheduling that lecture could also be a perfectly reasonable request to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part here is to make your students aware that you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; them to tell you if your schedule is inconvenient for them &lt;em&gt;for any reason&lt;/em&gt;, that no reason is too insignificant to ask, and that, even if you may not necessarily be able to arrange a perfect accommodation, you'll at least consider all requests.  Do remind your students that you're not omniscient, and that if, say, an important lecture happens to overlap a religious event (or a football match), that might just be because you weren't aware of the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to anticipate potential sources of scheduling conflicts&lt;/strong&gt;, such as major religious events, popular celebrations and, yes, even big concerts or sports events.  That seems to be the specific thing you're asking about here, but I'm putting it last on the list because I feel that it's of secondary importance compared to the other suggestions above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, it's a good idea to be aware that, say, having a class on Friday afternoon could be problematic for Muslims, and that you probably shouldn't schedule anything important on major religious holidays like Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha (or, for that matter, on Christmas or Easter, either).  But, ultimately, it's IMO &lt;em&gt;even more important&lt;/em&gt; to get your students to tell you if your schedule doesn't work for them, and to be willing to adjust the schedule or to find alternative solutions to accommodate the students' needs, whatever they may be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T15:52:17.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:41:23.440" Score="11" ViewCount="1562" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for a tenure-track academic position in the US right after my PhD (in the US too), is it a good idea to ask for a letter of recommendation from a professor in my graduate school with whom I took a class where I got good grades while showing a strong interest (genuine interest), then later on served as a TA for that class? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done any research project with him though, but we get along well: he is one of the professors I appreciate the most both intellectually and personally, I would have chosen him without any doubt as advisor if I was in his area. He is well-respected in his field (say in the top 20, if you want some ranking). His area of research is a bit different from mine but useful for my research: he works on database management systems while I do machine learning, so there are some very interesting connections such as large-scale machine learning / data analysis (~aka. &quot;big data&quot;), query optimization, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20581" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T18:14:21.267" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T02:20:39.687" Title="In a tenure-track position application; Is it appropriate to ask for recommendation letter from a professor for whom I only served as a TA?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:43:07.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a D.Phil. (PhD) student at a Doctoral Training Centres at Oxford and my experience is that a Master's degree in interdisciplinary bio-science would do you much better than a second BSc. I was one of 11 &quot;mathematical sciences&quot; students in my year with a couple of mathematicians and a bunch of physicists. None of us needed to relearn the skills from a BSc because we all had them, what we needed was direction on what is important to learn for working between disciplines. If I were you I wouldn't go for the second Bsc, I would go for a Master's or alternatively as I was recommended skip the Master's and go directly into a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20578" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T23:33:09.627" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T23:33:09.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-10T19:56:04.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should work less and take breaks, for the sake of the success of your research! Out of experience, most, if not all insights/breakthroughs came while taking breaks/ holidays etc… &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These breaks allow you to take some distance and give you perspective w.r.t. to your current work. On top of all the good reasons given by the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4275" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T19:56:04.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T20:28:36.020" Score="8" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to completing my PhD degree, I used to hear, rather very often, that working in finance is the most non-academic viable career option for newly-minted PhDs in theoretical physics. But, now that I am actively searching for such jobs (any job, to be precise), it appears that employers in finance expect qualifications that practically all newly graduates like me lack. I might be wrong on this, but I don't know of anyone using SAS or R in their PhD research in theoretical physics. So, I was wondering what else is out there available to a newly graduated PhD with mostly a pen-and-paper background in theoretical condensed matter physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16184" LastActivityDate="2021-02-01T14:21:35.363" Title="What are the available non-academic careers to a newly-minted PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-10T21:44:13.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my college student evaluations were consolidated by prof, course and year. Data included percent of student returning evaluation. One could easily see which teachers had consistently good, or poor, reviews. A very useful guide to selecting this or that professor.   A friend decided to ignore numerous reports of &quot;boring, arbitrary and worst professor I have hard here (major university). She was all of those things.  Tenured and married to a tenured professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20588" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T21:44:13.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-11T00:39:10.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Student reviews may or may not matter depending on the institution, department, and professor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a research-active professor at a research institution they will most likely not matter at all in any respect unless they are really outliers...like worse than anyone has ever seen in the department.  Even then, I think the result would be the department chair asking them to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, at a teaching school or for a teaching professor (say, a clinical or adjunct) they can be extremely important and could result in termination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the extremes, and anything in between is also possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20591" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T00:39:10.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2014-08-11T01:01:03.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, in practical programming you can get away knowing the craft without really needing the science, except for a few details (why is it faster to iterate the matrix by rows than by columns? why can I not run this in parallel?). But a stronger background on the science can help you expand your limits. For example, imagine you have a &quot;weird&quot; dataset, where the standard algorithms don't work, but maybe you can think of your own!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you will be able to understand papers from other disciplines. I personally have &quot;leeched&quot; knowledge from papers in Sociology, Electrical Engineering, Medicine, Mathematics... all of them oriented at the processing of their data, that was by chance, somehow similar to mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another reason for it is that it can boost your academic value. I don't think there are many people with a CS background in Social Sciences, and probably even less with a strong knowledge of the science behind your research, which means it can help you stick out and be a valuable asset for your lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was not enough, never underestimate the value of networking. At some point, you may hit a problem that is too hard for your programming skills. Having connections in CS, you can propose a collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T01:01:03.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27056" CreationDate="2014-08-11T01:13:50.120" Score="12" ViewCount="3416" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend, a doctoral student, is being accused of harassment/stalking by the dean, yet law enforcement has not contacted my friend, and the dean refuses to substantiate his accusation, for fear of retaliation. My friend has not been given a trial, yet the dean is preventing him from completing his PhD, suspending him from the university. The dean kept my friend's adviser completely in the dark regarding the accusations. It seems the dean is harassing him, pure and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should he do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T04:15:14.053" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T04:54:12.047" Title="Can a dean expel a doctoral student without a trial?" Tags="&lt;harassment&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T02:11:25.360" Score="-1" ViewCount="2352" Body="&lt;p&gt;How reputable is the online journal &quot;Scientific.Net: Materials Science and Engineering&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientific.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scientific.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20594" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T03:38:30.930" Title="How reputable is the online journal scientific.net: Materials Science and Engineering" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-11T07:42:02.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27054" CreationDate="2014-08-11T02:17:56.800" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities do not in my experience hold &quot;trials&quot; in order to reach their decisions, however weighty.  So the answer to the literal question asked is probably &quot;yes&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what you mean to ask is whether the dean has the unilateral power to do this.  I'm not entirely clear on what &quot;this&quot; is: what does &quot;preventing him from completing his PhD&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt; expelling&quot; mean, precisely?  But even if I did, I would have to know the rules of your friend's university rather intimately in order to answer.  (&lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; in your university has the power to do this.  As @Paul comments, probably more than one person was involved in the decision.  Just because the action looks single-handed to your friend does not mean that other university officials were not involved.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tip: if your friend's adviser doesn't know, get your friend to tell her!! (i) Could it make things any worse?  (ii) Won't she find or sooner or later?  Sooner may be soon enough to at least try to do something about it; later, maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt; &quot;It seems the dean is harassing him, pure and simple.&quot; Well then he should report it to....oh.  Seriously, if by this you mean that you think the dean has some kind of vendetta against your friend which caused him to simply fabricate these charges: though obviously I don't and can't know the situation, I find that very unlikely.  Though there may be no &quot;trial&quot; system in the university, there will be some kind of clear guidelines and procedures for expelling students.  If the harassment is simply made up then the expelling couldn't possibly have followed these procedures, which would open the university up to a trial, possibly an embarrassing and costly one.  I think I understand this clearly, but a dean understands it like I can't even imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T02:28:00.850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T02:28:00.850" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27043" CreationDate="2014-08-11T02:38:29.477" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the school. At a SLAC (small liberal arts college), the hiring committee members will pay more attention to teaching experience and may be more willing to be impressed by a Big Name®.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a R1, faculty are not only inoculated against Big Names®, but they have enough experience with individual Big Names® to read between the lines of otherwise blandly positive letters with hermeneutic vigor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been repeatedly surprised by my senior colleagues discussing letters from other Big Names® with &quot;he only wrote two pages of song and praise? He must not have liked that person&quot; or of a fairly damning letter with, &quot;she's a grouch. The fact that she wrote at all means that this person is brilliant.&quot; Context is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A letter that spoke only of your teaching and not of your research would be seen as faint praise in this milieu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm in the humanistic social sciences at an R1. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: save the references from this person for SLACs where the praise for your teaching ability will be seen as a strong positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Also note that at larger R1s, we are familiar with the difference in writing styles between American (where everything is excessively effusive) and European/Asian letters (where a strong letter of recommendation reads: &quot;Jon Smith was a member of my lab from 2005/10/1 to 2012/5/1. His work was perfectively adequate with no complaints. Sincerely, XX&quot;). Smaller institutions may not have that experience and in those circumstances, you may ask one of your American letter writers to include a short paragraph noting that European counterparts thought highly of you but that might not show up in the letters in the hyperbolic form we are used to in the United States.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T02:20:39.687" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T02:20:39.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27054" CreationDate="2014-08-11T03:30:28.603" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an ombudsman at the university? That would be the obvious person to go to after trying your advisor, director of graduate studies, and department chair (in that order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the proliferation of the administrative ranks at universities often means that there are usually multiple Deans and associate provosts that you can talk to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with Pete Clark, I highly doubt that a Dean would try to expel someone with no cause. While the Peter° Principle operates at the administrative ranks, Deans and Provosts have no job security (they only have tenure if they are also faculty, which many are not) and are thus unlikely to do deliberate grievous harm. [They are more than capable of grievous harm through incompetence, indecision, or an adherence to rigid bureaucracy, but that doesn't appear to the case here.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;° n.b.: Pete Clark != Peter of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Principle&lt;/a&gt; as far as I can ascertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to inquire with faculty to ascertain if there is more to the story (if it's your business, which it may or may not be; there are many things which regardless of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FERPA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FERPA&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HIPAA&lt;/a&gt; should not be discussed about fellow students). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T04:54:12.047" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T04:54:12.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27055" CreationDate="2014-08-11T03:38:30.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't.  Scientific.Net: Materials Science and Engineering is a journal publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It publishes, for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientific.net/MSF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scientific.net/MSF&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Materials Science Forum&lt;/em&gt; ISSN 1662-9752&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T03:38:30.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2014-08-11T03:56:43.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends on the teacher. If the teacher hopes to cover the subject well and is friendly with everyone, the rating should be average and the objective is achieved. But if the teacher wishes to engage the students either to get feedback on the subject taught or to better understand the various needs of the students to further tweak their understanding, then all feedback especially the negative ones, are useful. Alternatively, you can see that some teachers use &quot;kiss the ass&quot; approach in their teaching otherwise negative feedback would affect the renewable of their contracts. In reality, not everyone can claim to understand their students especially those who does not say much during and after classes. I think the feedback is a good outlet for such students and teachers alike. But not all teachers are willing to take risk in teaching. Hence, it is not surprising that teachers are increasing more difficult to to be taught especially those who spend 100% teaching compared to those who have certain % for research and teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19932" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T03:56:43.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26988" CreationDate="2014-08-11T04:33:42.167" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made that comment so here's my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many great senior researchers at my r1 university that are renowned teachers as well. That is, they can easily hold four hundred undergraduates enthralled for hours on end. They are no doubt Great Teachers in the truest sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are also a great many junior faculty who did not get tenure at my university (our tenure rate was less than 1:4 for past several decades, although it has gone up recently). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common reason given for their negative tenure decisions is that they spent too much time on students and not enough time on their research. That is where the faint praise, &quot;at least they are good teachers,&quot; comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: for senior faculty, good teacher is high praise as it presumes excellent research scholarship. For junior faculty, it is dangerous faint praise as it assumes misplaced energies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: You should post a separate question about the &quot;Curse of the Teaching Award&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T04:58:33.740" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T04:58:33.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27069" CreationDate="2014-08-11T06:02:18.980" Score="13" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing an (external) bachelor's degree in the field of computing and am in the second of my three years. The final requirement of this degree is a project, complete with development and a dissertation that has to be submitted to the institute and defended at a Viva. I've taken the liberty of researching well into a lot of parts of my potential project, and have given a lot of thought into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My long research has prompted my few family/friends in the industry to ridicule me (which I don't mind), and have warned me that creating a &quot;good&quot; project would run the risk of &quot;questionable&quot; practices enacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I've been told that the panel might fail my project and transfer all it's content to a favoured student of their own if they find mine interesting enough. I do not know if this is a fact or just a rumor. But, I don't want this to happen (with me or anyone else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What measures can I take to make sure that they can't do things like this to both the dissertation I submit and the code I develop? I've already thought of private repositories on online version control systems to keep the code, but what about the dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we are required to include a declaration signed by my advisor and myself that allows the dissertation to be used by the institute for loans and publishing, as well as to outside organizations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm intending to release the software as open-source after I graduate, so this may be a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is stolen, I doubt that complaining to the institute will help, and may result on the ganging up on me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: I hope I don't sound like a whiner or moron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20601" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T17:44:14.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T15:13:55.593" Title="Protecting my project from theft by panel I am submitting it to" Tags="&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2014-08-11T08:31:01.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My long research has prompted my few family/friends in the industry to ridicule me (which I don't mind), and have warned me that creating a &quot;good&quot; project would run the risk of &quot;questionable&quot; practices enacted. In short, I've been told that the panel might fail my project and transfer all it's content to a favoured student of their own if they find mine interesting enough. I do not know if this is a fact or just a rumor. But, I don't want this to happen (with me or anyone else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;hope&lt;/strong&gt; that this is just a paranoid rumor. It would not be founded in any university I am aware of, but of course not knowing your institution, one can't say anything for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question is what you can do to minimize the risk, if you feel this is an actual possibility that you need to insure yourself against. Usually, the best bet against having your work stolen is to make sure that as many people as possible know of this work as yours. For instance, you can show it to other faculty members that you trust (if you need an excuse, you can always ask them for feedback), or upload it to a (timestamped) preprint service. For code, the best is probably to just upload everything as open source to GitHub or a similar service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T08:31:01.103" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-11T08:34:52.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description of Salat&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslims are commanded to perform prayers five times a day. These prayers are obligatory on every Muslim who has reached the age of puberty, with the exception being those who are mentally ill, too physically ill for it to be possible, menstruating, or experiencing postnatal bleeding. Those who are ill or otherwise physically unable to offer their prayers in the traditional form are permitted to offer their prayers while sitting or lying, as they are able. The five prayers are each assigned to certain prescribed times (al waqt) at which they must be performed, unless there is a compelling reason for not being able to perform them on time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the above quote, I would expect the school has to provide time for Muslim students to perform prayer. This could be about 20 to 30 minutes every prayer time, except for Jumu'ah that could be carried out for half an hour to two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20605" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T18:12:02.353" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T18:12:02.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T09:12:09.473" Score="10" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be spending 2 weeks in China later this year, to visit a university and talk to the various research groups. The host university will be paying all my expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My contact person at the host university has asked me if I would like for him to make hotel reservations for me or if I would like to do it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I would like for him to make reservations, as he knows his own city. But am I &quot;allowed&quot; to ask to see the hotel first, before he makes reservations for me? Or is that considered impolite and rude as they are paying for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T10:17:11.977" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T13:45:38.763" Title="Is it OK to ask my host for an externally organized stay which hotel is being booked?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-11T09:26:44.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as you've selected the textbook for an upcoming class, post the information, including the ISBN, on your web page.  Books available in electronic form have different ISBNs; list the electronic version, too.  If you require a particular edition, say so.  If an earlier edition will do, &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; say that.  I try to include a link to the publisher's site for the book, which will have the publisher's list price, information about electronic versions, and sometimes even free resources for students.  Here is one of my textbook listings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Required Textbook: Stallings, William and Lawrie Brown [_*Computer&#xA;Security Principles and Practice, Second Edition.*_][1] Pearson / Prentice Hall,&#xA;2012; ISBN-13: 9780132775069. The second edition has been revised &#xA;substantially. Only the second edition will do for this course. (Note: This &#xA;book is available for rental as an e-book on Google Play. Kindle editions&#xA;and rentals are available on Amazon as well as in the university bookstore.&#xA;Other options may also be available.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't told the students where to buy the book, but I've given them everything they need to make informed purchase decisions.  The &quot;other options&quot; note is &lt;em&gt;surely&lt;/em&gt; enough of a clue to set people to searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T22:54:19.850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T22:54:19.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27065" CreationDate="2014-08-11T10:12:32.203" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have specific requirements regarding the hotel (accessibility, star level, kitchen availability, etc) you may want to send them to your host. The chain of command in academia is rather long. I would suggest that in your case it is something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you -&gt; your host professor -&gt; their secretary -&gt; their travel agent -&gt; hotel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each time you want to change your request, it has to pass through the whole chain, which makes the process particularly time-demanding and reduces the efficiency. It is a good idea to keep the number of such iterations as small as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T10:12:32.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27065" CreationDate="2014-08-11T10:16:17.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all you want to do is get information about what hotel is being booked, you can always ask them to provide it so that you can share the information with your family and friends as well as the people in your office so that they know how to get in touch with you in case of an emergency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T10:16:17.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2014-08-11T10:53:23.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we are required to include a declaration signed by my advisor and myself that allows the dissertation to be used by the institute for loans and publishing, as well as to outside organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be either a transfer of copyright (your work belong to them now), or a broad authorisation to publish it however they want. They are two different situations, and you would have to read it carefully, but it will most probably only cover your report, not your code. So you can just upload your code to a public repository and link the implementation from your report. Given your concerns, a viral licence like GPL sounds appropriate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, authorship is, under some jurisdictions, one of the unrenunciable rights. No one can pay you, convince you, or otherwise force you to claim authorship on your work. They can buy it, but they cannot change who did it. What they can do (and many universities do) is own the outcome of your research, like patents. The rationale is that they have been providing you with resources and advise. Check the legal conditions of your degree. This may include final undergraduate projects, where the student is also paying for the education, and not receiving any money from the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don't think a reputable institution will lightly steal from its students. Authorship can be easily proven in some situations, taken to court, and the damage to their reputation can be enormous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T08:23:24.563" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T08:23:24.563" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2014-08-11T12:50:37.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My informed guess is that students know anyway, and there's no need to tell them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;FWIW, I don't believe that publisher-direct is a much better option, and I also believe some of the electronic &quot;rent-for-a-semester&quot; deals from the publisher are not that hot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, the publishers are going to track purchases from your campus bookstore.  My own experience with one publisher is that they gave me tons of problems about providing me with access to electronic teaching resources associated with my text because they didn't feel the bookstore was selling enough copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going into too much detail, there are some real interesting (let's just call them) &quot;issues&quot; with modern academic publishing.  In some ways, there are problems in that area that are somewhat analogous to what record labels have been dealing with during their recent history.  There are just better ways to distribute information these days, and if publishers don't tweak their business models, they'll become dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is ONE THING you should be sharing with your students, it's that finding  and using illegal electronic copies is THEFT.  I'm certainly no hero for the publishers, who I don't have much sympathy for, but I'd love to see textbook theft by electronic or other means specifically listed in our academic honesty language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20457" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T12:50:37.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27065" CreationDate="2014-08-11T13:07:38.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to have the final decision on which hotel to book, then ask your host for a recommendation of local hotels and how much he's prepared to support your housing expenses. With this information you can book the hotel yourself, and if it exceeds your host's housing support you can pay the difference. Remember that your host is not your travel agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think you have a much better chance of getting a superior hotel for the same money if your host makes the housing arrangements. As a local, he likely gets better rates than you are as foreigner. Also the hotel proprietor will be eager to get the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; guest your host invites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20617" LastEditorUserId="28830" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T13:45:38.763" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T13:45:38.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2014-08-11T13:19:31.000" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send your full project documentation as a &lt;strong&gt;registered&lt;/strong&gt; letter to your own address and , if you know any, friendly attorney-at law. Such letter &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; stay not opened, not from you, not from attorney. The idea behind it is, that the whole project documentation is registered as yours at defined date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done such more then once to protect my start-up ideas from plagiarism, if i was going to discuss ideas with venture capitalists. According to at least German law, such protection fully works, if it discussed at any court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit (13.08)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have even found an online notary, notatus.de (sadly only in german), which offers legally proofed document depositation / escrow, specially for the purpose of authorship protecting. They offer even depositation and letters of deposit for computer files, so one isn't forced to send paper documents. BTW, this service is free!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20557" LastEditorUserId="20557" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T14:48:54.847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:48:54.847" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2014-08-11T13:34:15.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is violation of administrative policy enforceable by a forfeit of benefits. Students are all adults and should know about plagiarism from their former schooling prior to attending the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First case: Warning and educational session explaining intellectual dishonesty &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second case: Exmatriculation/expulsion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We as society need such specialists and often we pay our taxes for their education. Tolerating plagiarism allows students to graduate from the university with an art of criminal thinking. Exmatriculation is in this case just a prophylaxis of more substantial and society-harmful crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20557" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T14:37:36.297" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:37:36.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20082" CreationDate="2014-08-11T13:35:21.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read a lot of adult fiction then you will have a broader base vocabulary of useful words. With that in mind this is more of a 'long game' strategy than a 'I'm taking the GRE in 6 months and need words!!!' strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said if you want something a bit less onerous than flash cards and contextless memorization I would suggest looking for novels that specifically use GRE words. When I was studying for the GRE I found several short story collections and novels that focused on telling a story using the top 350 or 500 GRE words. They weren't great stories but learning the words in a context really helped me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said I'm pretty sure you could just guess 'frustrated' or 'stubborn' for every word on the GRE and get rough 75% of them right. /s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T13:35:21.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27118" CreationDate="2014-08-11T14:11:59.113" Score="41" ViewCount="10531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often the publisher requests to get the proof within 24 hours when it's ready. What are the reasons for making this so short? Do they want the authors to not make too many changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;The email I received said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please ensure you check the entire article carefully, and answer all&#xA;  queries. Return corrected proofs and any related material by uploading&#xA;  to the site within 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: @StrongBad pointed out &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23387/how-much-time-is-usually-left-for-authors-to-return-page-proofs-what-happens-if&quot;&gt;a related question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T03:58:46.293" Title="Why are (galley) proof requests given such a short deadline?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17103" CreationDate="2014-08-11T14:16:00.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attached the guideline of S1M system, saying that &quot;&#xA;MANUSCRIPTS ACCEPTED FOR FIRST LOOK&#xA; If your paper is accepted but minor updates are required before the final files can be sent to production you will be notified of this and will find the paper listed under &quot;Manuscripts Accepted for First Look&quot;. Click the link and then click &quot;submit updated manuscript&quot;. Further instructions on how to upload your final files can be found on the screen that follows. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means the MS is accepted with minor revision without peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20619" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T14:16:00.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27100" CreationDate="2014-08-11T14:41:04.297" Score="1" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an application email to a professor for a PhD program. One dilemma that I have is whether I should add hyperlinks and if there are any problems in doing that. Consider the imaginary paragraph below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;and I currently work under supervision of professor&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27078/are-there-any-drawbacks-in-adding-hyperlinks-to-phd-application-email&quot;&gt;Foobar&lt;/a&gt; in laboratory of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27078/are-there-any-drawbacks-in-adding-hyperlinks-to-phd-application-email&quot;&gt;blabla&lt;/a&gt; at&#xA;  University of&lt;/em&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bad practice? Is there any chance that they neglect the convenience of a single click because of a the visual incoherency of the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Are still any email client that shows the actual url instead of hyperlink text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12666" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T03:12:12.010" Title="Are there any drawbacks in adding hyperlinks in PhD application email?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-11T14:45:53.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason is simply that nobody is expected to make any changes to the galley proofs. The content and the basic wording of the paper is fixed after acceptance. No rewriting or reformulating is allowed at this stage. The authors should &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; check if the typesetting and copy editing did not introduce any errors. Often you are also given a list of changes that the copy editor made and you can also work through this list. In other words, the author is only expected to read the galley proofs once and only with the &quot;correctness lens&quot;. This could be done in less then 24 hours in almost all circumstances. In exceptional cases you may well ask for deadline extension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T07:23:05.150" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T07:23:05.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-11T14:46:31.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your paper ought to be in pretty good shape after you get to the point of galley proofs. At that point, you are really just checking to be sure that their typesetters didn't &lt;em&gt;introduce&lt;/em&gt; errors. All of your own typos and requests from reviewers should have been fixed by the time you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T14:46:31.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:11:20.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the fact that in most cases you can easily check the proofs within a day, I would assume that it’s also more efficient for the typesetters and in particular the copy editors in the case that you actually want to correct something as they are still familiar with your paper and are thus faster at applying your corrections. For example, after one day a copy editor usually remembers the reason and context of a particular change and can thus faster work your corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T15:11:20.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9259" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:12:28.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm completing an online Masters in Software Engineering from Penn State. I have 17 years professional experience and started the program when I had 15 years experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the benefit of past experiences I would recommend spending a few years (&amp;lt;5) doing hard core software development and moving up the technical ranks to Senior Engineer before pursuing a masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason why is you'll have the practical real-world knowledge that will help anchor the theory they will thrust at you in the Master's program. If you decide to pursue your Master's right after your undergrade, be forwarned that much of what they teach you in academia is theory which means it won't make much sense to you until you start to use it. Even then, you'll have a conflict since the real-world != academia and it's the real-world that is the truth and academia is just a nice cozy padded room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One con to waiting to take on your Master's is the double workload you'll be carrying. It was extremely difficult for me to handle both a full work load (50-60hours a week since no engineer worth their salt only works 40hours a week.) and be full time student. Another con is the fact that companies typically advertise educational benefits, but they can be very hard to obtain. It took me three companies before I finally landed at one that would pony up the cash. The other three companies said they would, but never did so after a few years I told them to suck it and moved on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, looking down the long road and if I had it all to do over again, I'd of pusued my Master's ~5 years after completing my undergrad. After 15 years (17 when I finished my Masters) of experience, much of what I learned earning my Masters was nothing new. I think you'll get the best mental and career boost if you follow the timeline I mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all being said, I am happy I pursued my Masters and obtained it. The company paid for all of it (minus books) which was just south of $36k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20620" LastEditorUserId="20620" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T15:21:29.567" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T15:21:29.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:53:34.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I said in my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23387/how-much-time-is-usually-left-for-authors-to-return-page-proofs-what-happens-if&quot;&gt;How much time is usually left for authors to return page proofs? What happens if I am late?&lt;/a&gt;, I have never seen a 24 hour turn around time requirement, but 48-72 hours seems quite common. I think there are two reasons for the turn around time to be on the order of days. From my experience, publishers are working on a tight schedule; there might only be a month or two between when the proofs are finished and the issue is delivered to subscribers. If an article needs to be re-typeset or delayed to a later issue, the publisher will need to rework the the entire issue which is going to take some time. It seems that with their time scale the longest they could wait for proofs would be two weeks. This leads to the second issue. Academics do not handle deadlines well and publishers need to handle the articles from the worst procrastinators amongst us. If you give a bunch of academics a deadline in 2 weeks a non-insignificant portion will take over a month. Quick, cheap, paper based publications with flexible deadlines for authors and reviewers just isn't practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T15:53:34.097" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:59:55.087" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_proof&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Galley proofs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; are part of the production process where a book or journal issue is actually printed, as opposed to the 'softer' process of deciding what pieces will go into it and in what form. As such, the deadlines for their revision are associated with the physical production process rather than the editorial process for the piece and can be quite different from deadlines for e.g. minor revisions or revise-and-resubmit requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These proofs are only meant to be used to check that the typesetting correctly represents the author's intent, and not that the content is scientifically correct (which should have been done at an earlier stage). Occasionally a one- or two-sentence 'note added in proof' may be appended to a paper but that's about it; for an example see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/pubservs/style/4thed/AIP_Style_4thed.pdf#page=14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AIP style guide, p.11&lt;/a&gt;. Checking the typesetting is assumed to be a straightforward matter that does not require more than one day (though assuming that an academic can spare the time at the publisher's decision with no prior notice is another matter), so such deadlines are usually OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that such deadlines can be negotiable if properly handled. If such a requests lands on you and you will not be able to complete it in time, it is usually acceptable to notify the editor, as soon as possible, that this is the case. A polite note along the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Editor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have successfully received the proofs of our article. Unfortunately, today is my thesis defence, my coauthor is getting married and my advisor is away due to travel, so we will be unable to complete your request to review the proofs within 24h. We will get them to you as soon as possible, which will likely be the day after tomorrow. Is this acceptable, or will it lead to a delay in publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can work wonders in stretching such a deadline. From personal experience, I have seen a 24-hour request be stretched to a full week without a publication delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T15:59:55.087" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27078" CreationDate="2014-08-11T18:12:38.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few holdouts who only read emails once they have been printed. With the advent of smart phones and the decline of lab or research area secretaries this number has gone down but there are still a few. I know of at least 2 in my area of research at my alma mater that still worked with only printouts and both were, if a bit stodgy when it came to fancy technologies like emails, were brilliant researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that somewhat silly reason I would definitely find a way to put URLs inline in any emails to professors you aren't familiar with. Something as simple as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;... and I currently work under supervision of professor &#xA;    Foobar([www.school.edu/~foobar][1]) in laboratory of &#xA;    blabla([www.school.edu/~blabla][1]) at University of ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T18:12:38.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T18:45:36.217" Score="5" ViewCount="987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was offered an opportunity to prepare a 2-page research proposal for a postgraduate research program in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am searching for a systematic and step by step technique to select/find a workable research topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any systematic procedure/strategy/approach/method that researchers generally use to select/find and narrow down a research topic from an ocean of topics that pops in one's mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/how-to-select-a-masters-thesis-topic-if-your-advisor-wont-suggest-one&quot;&gt;Is this technique an standard in the academia?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:53:34.470" Title="Is there any systematic approach to select/find a research topic?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T22:06:26.857" Score="15" ViewCount="1369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen many, many examples of scientific presentations from the National Laboratories in which virtually every slide is oversaturated with information.  If this were an isolated event, I wouldn't have given it any thought.  But I've noticed this pattern in presentations over many years from among presenters hailing from US national laboratories.  Though my field is computational science, I've seen talks from national laboratory scientists in other fields and their presentations also have this same characteristic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, I've been taught to keep slides as simple as possible, with as little info per slide as necessary.  My understanding is a presentation should be though of as an &quot;advertisement&quot; for the paper to be published.  Thus, presentation slides should be designed to preserve the audience's interest.  One method of keeping the audience interest is to not overwhelm them with too much information all at once (e.g., not too much text and not too many pictures in a single slide).  I presume this is universally true, regardless of discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the overwhelming majority of national laboratory presentations that I've seen seem to fill up virtually every available space with as much information as possible.  Why do presentations from national laboratories tend to contain so much information per slide?  How does this meet the needs of their target audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T22:29:23.767" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:03:23.867" Title="Why do national laboratory presentations contain so much info per slide?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27087" CreationDate="2014-08-11T22:31:47.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that it's a cousin of the same problem &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.com/news/pentagon-cracks-down-on-powerpoint/96099&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the armed forces&lt;/a&gt;, which has been a problem &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.com/news/pentagon-cracks-down-on-powerpoint/96099&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for two decades&lt;/a&gt;. (Note one link is from 2000, the other from 2010.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another level, the culture of the national laboratories has been trending in a more corporate direction, and many of the presentations that they need to give have limits on the number of slides to be presented. Managers want the whole &quot;story&quot; told in a handful of slides, which leads to over-compression of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T22:31:47.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T22:38:17.647" Score="2" ViewCount="2562" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an upcoming publication, the corresponding author has forwarded me the copyright release and conflict of interest disclosure form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this form is a table to be completed regarding &quot;Did you or your institution at any time receive payment or support in kind for any aspect of the submitted work&quot;, with rows for grants, consulting, support for travel, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the columns is a multiple-choice question &quot;Is the relationship&#xA;current (C), ongoing(O), or past (P)?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty clear what it means for a relationship to be 'past', but what is the difference between 'current' and 'ongoing'?  Is 'current' a relationship that existed at the time of the work, and 'ongoing' a relationship that exists at the time of submission for publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The additional guidance in the instructions for this table is quite unhelpful, as it gives external instructions to consult for &lt;em&gt;every other column but this one&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: Items 1, 2, and 3 listed below come from the ICMJE Uniform Disclosure&#xA;  Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/update.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.icmje.org/update.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  (dated July 2010), except for the columns in numbers 1 and 2 that ask&#xA;  whether the relationship is current, ongoing, or past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T06:50:57.650" Title="On a Conflict of Interest disclosure, what's the difference between 'ongoing' and 'current'?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27086" CreationDate="2014-08-11T23:27:12.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether it is standard. there may be some standards, but probably not worldwide. I personally had to write a 2-page research proposal on a topic I didn't choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, it's a great opportunity to choose a topic that you can like, if the topic was imposed (or changed after a few years by your supervisor) you would probably hate that, since you have this opportunity, I'd try to make the best use of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Systematic approach to select/find a research topic (by trylks):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a list of the  areas that interest you &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a systematic literature review (so the approach is systematic) for those areas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find research problems in the literature review and at least one that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has not been researched yet (it's &quot;open&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;should be done next. It's in the frontier of the state of the art&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Without many previous requirements or they will become your thesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) it's interesting from a research perspective&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not too many people are working on it (best is zero, but that could be for some reason...). The problem if there are too many people (and you are not a part of their team(s)) is that the frontier of the state of the art may keep moving before you are able to reach it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have the necessary knowledge and skills to advance the state of the art in that problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have the necessary resources to advance the state of the art in that problem (e.g. don't choose something that requires access to the data from LHC if you won't have access to that data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is some economic interest in the problem and the results of your thesis (you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; this for the thesis, but it will make everything much easier, specially after the thesis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WRT the frontier of the state of the art, it usually looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Some limitation in current systems/techniques that has not been addressed (specially in engineering)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Some question that remains open (specially in science)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Some question that has not been addressed (in some particular way) (specially in philosophy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But well, research in those areas is more than that and it will be done in different ways depending on the topic. Computer science is sometimes considered an engineering (software engineering), sometimes a science (and can be empirical with benchmarks or formal with proofs) and it can be as well philosophical (specially in AI, IMHO). The kind of problem should arise from the review of the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: don't try to rush, this is systematic, but it will definitively take very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T23:27:12.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15316" CreationDate="2014-08-12T00:47:09.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to establish a working relationship with of &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; kind with &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; department. Once you have that you can start working on your &quot;deficiencies&quot; (i.e. the courses you either have no record of taking or have a record of not finishing successfully).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have that relationship you can talk to the department hear. You're probably going to have to tell him or her &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about this mysterious personal emergency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here is the thing, (at least in the US) the requirement to have a Bachelor's degree to start advanced work is a gate-keeping tool: the department uses it to avoid having to filter out at lot of self-deluded know-nothings. Once they &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that you know something the odds of them letting you simply start graduate studies go way up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you get started? Apply as non-degree or apply as an undergrad with a lot of transfer credit (they are likely going to ask you to take at least a year's worth of course-work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important step is to get a foot in the door and establish a working relationship with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is something to be said for choosing a a small-to-medium sized department for the campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T00:47:09.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27087" CreationDate="2014-08-12T00:52:42.200" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me try to answer for the tendency in my own discipline (particle physics) where we have this problem across the board (i.e. universities too). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much like questions and answers on a Stack Exchange site, those slides are expected to form a resource for future investigators. We &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; there is too much there for anyone to absorb in the meeting, but we also know that more people will dig these slides out of the archive over the next year and &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt; them then actually attended the meeting in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, in an ideal world there would be a technical report &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a deck of slides, but in fact there are only the slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I try pretty hard not to do this, and the result is a lot of backup slides and a lot of little URLs hanging around the bottom of the slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I think that PowerPoint and similar polished slideware makes stuffing them (over-)full way too easy. I use a LaTeX base for mine (just the old slides class with my own library of macros for a long time, but I've started using Beamer) and these tools encourage a better style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, I know all the tricks to squeeze on just one more thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T00:52:42.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27078" CreationDate="2014-08-12T01:22:16.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I'd write it &quot;straight,&quot; and give the links in a closing paragraph at the end.  That way, links don't distract from the point you're trying to make&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt;, but you've still provided the information that may be wanted. I'd surely put the full URL, instead of a blind link.  So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;You can find Professor Foobar's page at www.school.edu/~foobar  The Blabla&#xA;laboratory maintains a page here: blabla.school.edu&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; For an example if distracting links, see any Wikipedia page.  (It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; getting better, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T01:22:16.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2014-08-12T01:40:10.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://dropitto.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dropitto.me&lt;/a&gt; is a beautiful app to you with Dropbox account (free 2G). There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://submitittome.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://submitittome.com&lt;/a&gt; with many features that you can config as file name, file type allow, deadline of submission, and limit students that can submit for each task. You can try both and choose one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20634" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T01:40:10.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T02:06:18.410" Score="5" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there examples of one person holding more than one endowed chair at the same university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T22:53:45.177" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T22:53:45.177" Title="Can one professor hold more than one endowed chair?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27054" CreationDate="2014-08-12T02:40:10.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deans are human: there are good ones and bad ones.  The bad ones are capable of this sort of behavior, although in my experience Deans of this ilk tend to focus more on faculty than on graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; university, the keys to these things lie in the University's policies.  &lt;em&gt;In the United States of America&lt;/em&gt; Deans are typically granted a fair amount of latitude, but even so they must stay within policy guidelines.  Again, at American universities there is usually some sort of appeal mechanism for this sort of suspension.  That is the place for your friend to start: what internal University mechanisms exist on his campus?  If there are none, there is informal appeal through the campus's Chief Academic Officer (usually called the Provost).  He also needs to confer with his dissertation advisor about the next steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been noted, you have only one side of the story and that from an interested party.  It's said that God helps those who help themselves.  It was also said that we get by with a little help from our friends.  Your friend needs to take some actions to help himself.  If the facts of the case really are on his side, he will likely get some help from his friends along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17284" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T02:40:10.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27087" CreationDate="2014-08-12T03:00:19.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is just presentation style. We have the same in our universities: hey, let's put 3 topics and 5 figures on this slide, so everyone will be impressed! I don't say that everyone should talk like Steve Jobs or the TED presenters, but I believe that presentations should comply some basic rhetoric and design principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T03:00:19.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27078" CreationDate="2014-08-12T03:12:12.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal remark:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am not particularly fan of clicking all around links in an email I just got from a stranger, however natural and official looking it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From reader engagement point of view:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Links directly included to the text actually invite the reader to interrupt their reading and click and go to the website of another university, reading this and that there, &lt;strong&gt;instead of reading your mail&lt;/strong&gt;! It is exactly you don't want, becasue you want her/him to stay and read your mail from start to end. If you really want to link, I would make a separate short paragraph at the end or in P.S., something like &quot;for your convenience, here are links to blablabla&quot;. That way the reader easily can reach those websites, IF she/he chooses and AFTER she/he read your message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T03:12:12.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-12T03:28:33.470" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The proof is an actually typesetted version of your paper, ready to production. In other words, everything is ready that someone pushes a button and the press can print the issue. This is the very last &quot;lets check it one more time&quot; thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a correction, it is actually cost money to them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is 50 paper in the journal, and 10 out of the 50 start rewriting the paper in the last minute, then the production line waits till everything is fixed, reformatted, again cost money. A lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before anyone starts to complain about the 24 hr (which is common in my field, too), let us be a little professional.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Your paper should anyway be free of errors and well written at the point of submission. Then several referees check it back and force, as well as you are free to check your manuscript if you are not sure. When you are at the proof stage, your paper has already read and checked by several people, several times for months. You don't have a good reason to re-write anything, except if there is an error due to typesetting. In other worlds, if you done your job decently, you don't have more than 5 min job with that proof in 99% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T03:28:33.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2014-08-12T04:27:44.473" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize that I may be late in seeing this and answering this, but I believe confessing is the way to go. I am a university administrator who has handled cases of plagiarism. In some cases, the plagiarism was discovered years after the student had received the degree. On discovery of plagiarism, the matter generally goes to a disciplinary committee. For academic misconduct, disciplinary committees look for remorse on the part of the student in considering penalties. In instances where sufficient remorse is shown, students are given the chance to revise their thesis instead of depriving them of their degree. In your situation, the revision is not difficult because it is in the &quot;review of literature&quot; part rather than the &quot;innovation&quot; part. There is no issue of whether the revised work will be degree-worthy, which makes it easier on the examiners who will have to review and approve the revised thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20638" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T04:27:44.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27108" CreationDate="2014-08-12T04:38:54.090" Score="4" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about studying in Germany next year at a university. I am a US citizen. I have completed a 2 year Associate's degree program at a trade school and also finished my general education requirements, at about 45 units as a combination of AP tests and classes at a community college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying, they the schools ask for an official copy &quot;school-leaving certificate&quot; - I'm guessing this means diploma. Do I need an official copy of my high school transcript and/or diploma? Does my Associate and other college credit infer that I have already successfully completed high school? As I haven't quite mentioned any specific schools, I think this answer is probably the same regardless of the country of the institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20637" LastEditorUserId="20637" LastEditDate="2017-12-11T23:51:03.597" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T00:22:35.907" Title="Studying Abroad - do they need my high school transcript/diploma?" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;abroad&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T05:21:12.183" Score="6" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;When planning my courses, I usually try to establish a variety of objectives, beyond the primary objective described in the course description, and layer many minor objectives into the lessons. Courses for freshmen tend to have more objectives, as they are often learning about the requirements of being a student at college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, in a course called &quot;History of New Orleans&quot;, I would focus on these objectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;content (e.g. know major events in New Orleans' history)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cultural understanding (e.g. develop affinity/understanding of the perspective of different peoples in New Orleans)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vocabulary (e.g. academic meta-vocabulary, terms specific to the content)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research skills (e.g. assessing bias in sources, writing a works cited)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;practice with technological tools to assist (e.g. software for accessing historical records)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;group work skills (e.g. effectively combining work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic behavior (e.g. learn that plagiarism is not welcome in college)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://teaching.uncc.edu/learning-resources/articles-books/best-practice/goals-objectives/blooms-educational-objectives&quot;&gt;Bloom's Taxonomy&lt;/a&gt;, however, that seems too narrowly focused on the course topic and does not seem to broadly cover many of the skills I've listed above. I want to find some table/system/taxonomy to help me to identify and organize the objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a system to assist course instructors in selecting course objectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T06:31:46.463" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:35:38.913" Title="Is there a comprehensive system for identifying course objectives?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27097" CreationDate="2014-08-12T05:31:48.637" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had personally never heard of anyone occupying two endowed chairs at the same time at the same university. Even if a person had two appointments in separate departments at the same university (for example, History of Science and Psychology), they were usually listed as the:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dunning-Kruger Professor of Psychology and History of Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or alternately, if the endowed line (the DK-Professorship) had been bequeathed specifically to Psychology for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dunning-Kruger Professor of Psychology, Professor of History of Science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So the short answer is: no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But that being said, there are always exceptions. A little digging around at universities that have separate sub-units revealed that, at Harvard there is a person in History who holds two endowed chairs and one regular position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/annette-gordon-reed&quot;&gt;Annette Gordon-Reed&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Harvard U. FAS] Professor of History&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think that this exception proves the rule since the three professorships are at nominally separate entities (HLS, Radcliffe I, and Harvard U FAS) that are under the singular Harvard conglomerate umbrella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T19:05:15.363" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T19:05:15.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27065" CreationDate="2014-08-12T05:45:19.243" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that it's in China (and I'm assuming you're not Chinese), I would let the host do it for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's important to be gracious to the host. This is a general rule in most cultures, but particularly in East Asian ones. Letting your host be a good host is part of this. Trust your host's judgement here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My experience with Chinese hotels from Shanghai to Xinjiang is that there is minimal to negative correlation of the quality of the hotel to the website or the official star rating.  It is highly doubtful that you could ascertain anything superior from afar than what the local person would know. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logistics. The host may want to put all of the people in a particular hotel (or spread them between a particular few) because of logistical reasons: geography and   they have only one van to pick everyone up, etc. etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would let your Chinese hosts handle everything. If you have particular needs (room must face towards the south; hotel restaurant must have halal food; etc.) then let them know. Otherwise, let your host be your host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T05:45:19.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T07:06:52.350" Score="9" ViewCount="3298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pursuing a specific research question. I have thoroughly surveyed existing research on the topic, and found dozens of researchers working on the problem, but was disappointed by their work. Their research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not consider the full magnitude of the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly tests old, insufficient methods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overlooks significant details, so the test results are meaningless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lacks innovation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found lots of interesting ideas posted around the Internet. In blogs, forums, and USENET, I found people with some clever new ideas to approach the problem. These people had a genuine stake in the problem, so I found their ideas actually brought the problem somewhere meaningful. These informally-posted ideas need testing and considerable refinement. They are far from perfect, but many times better than what the academics are dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas. It is only fair that I give credit to the authors of those ideas. Essentially, I need to give credit to lots of anonymous people who posted their ideas informally.  I have never read an academic paper containing highly informal references. Can I include references like this in my paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;MutantTurtle17. “My Amazing DIY Tin-can Refugee Shelter.” MyBlog. 2014.&#xA;    Retrieved from http://...&#xA;&#xA;SimCityFan2012. “RE: RE: Look at this!” Shelter Designs Forum. 2013.&#xA;    Retrieved from http://...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T08:12:31.930" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T18:56:57.463" Title="Is it acceptable to heavily reference blogs, forums, and other informal media?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27103" CreationDate="2014-08-12T07:34:50.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, German universities oftten require an official copy of your high school certification, even if you already have a university diploma which implies the completion of a high school. The same happened to me when I was starting my PhD in Germany - I also was required to present my high school certificate, although I also had two university diplomas (bachelor and master). In a similar manner, both of my university diplomas were required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T07:34:50.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2014-08-12T07:52:00.563" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an actual problem that I also struggle with in some aspects of my research. There are problems in which the blogging and industrial world is, sadly, miles ahead of the scientific state of the art. &lt;strong&gt;However, citing an abundance of blogs and other non-reviewed resources is rarely a good idea.&lt;/strong&gt; A few citations of web resources are usually ok, though. Hence, my (imperfect) solution to the problem currently is to cite the 2, 3 web resources that are best suited for my paper, and try to find academic resources that cover the rest of the ground as good as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, this situation is certainly a possibility for you. If you can take the ideas from these forums and blogs, and bring them on a sound scientific basis (e.g., through user studies or formal analysis, whatever is appropriate for your research) and publish it &lt;em&gt;both scientifically and informally&lt;/em&gt; (e.g., in your own blog), there is a good chance that you make a strong impact on both the scientific side and the blogging community. At the end of the day, people tend to remember not only who originally threw a revolutionary idea or concept out there, but also (sometimes even more so) the person that made the revolutionary idea &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; (or, at least, clearly showed that it works).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T07:52:00.563" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27110" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-12T10:07:55.933" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T10:07:55.933" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T10:07:55.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27111" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-12T10:07:55.933" Score="0" Body="Gifts are sometimes given in an academic environment, for example, a grad student may give a gift to their advisor/supervisor." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T16:35:05.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:35:05.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27114" CreationDate="2014-08-12T11:09:25.810" Score="5" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of citations seems to be a good unit of measurement for someone's success in a specific field, however, shouldn't the h-index also include the popularity of a given field? For example, I've seen papers in computer science being cited thousand of times while other papers relating astronomy only a couple-hundred times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When taking into account the actual quality of the paper and the amount of work that was put into releasing the evidence, the astronomy paper would probably be measured higher (for example). However &lt;strong&gt;publications within less popular fields are cited less simply because they're not as &lt;em&gt;popular&lt;/em&gt; as other fields&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I choose a field that is not particularly popular, I risk at perhaps not achieving the same amount of success that I would if I had chosen a more popular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are standard measures of academic output skewed by the relative popularity of the field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T21:00:13.380" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T18:58:01.577" Title="Are standard metrics of academic output skewed by the relative popularity of a field?" Tags="&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2014-08-12T11:36:38.887" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Does your paper really test &amp;amp; verify &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of ideas?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You state that &quot;I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas.&quot;  How many of those ideas do you expect to actually implement per a single paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you implement, evaluate and contrast three novel ideas from blogs&amp;amp;forums, preferably including a solid comparison against a baseline published method; then that's just three informal items that you need to cite, in addition to the current academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There are references and references&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your paper assumes something, or claims non-obvious things, then you need 'proof' of it outside of your paper that should come from references. Those references need to be trustworthy - preferably respectable peer reviewed publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your paper uses references for giving credit to ideas or pointing to original sources, then that's an entirely different class of reference, where blogs and forums are just as acceptable as, say, referencing archives of private informal letters that are used in studies of literature or history.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have never read an academic paper with a lot of informal references, then it is because it is very dependent on the field you're studying - for example, a thesis about racial stereotypes in online media would reference many informal sources as examples; while a thesis about particle physics wouldn't have any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T12:51:12.843" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T12:51:12.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27112" CreationDate="2014-08-12T12:10:18.070" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comments are already spot on, but let me elaborate a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparing h-indices (or any other &quot;hard&quot; metric) is already dangerous in narrow fields and downright foolish if used for comparisons among different fields.&lt;/strong&gt; This is not only because some fields are larger than others, but also because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differences in publication standards. In applied CS we write &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of papers, in many natural sciences, much fewer papers get written per researcher and time period. Arguably, this is because many empirical fields require the setup and analysis of lengthy experiments, something that is not typically (but not never) done in CS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difference in co-author ethics. Just check around here on this stack exchange, and you will see that standards for co-authorship are &lt;em&gt;not at all&lt;/em&gt; uniform in all fields. Clearly, fields with more loose co-authorship standards also expect researchers to be part of more paper projects, hence leading to higher h-indices on average.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differences in citation standards. In some fields, papers traditionally have 10 or less citations. In others, multiple dozen references are considered an informal minimum, again leading to higher average h-indices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and this is even without going into how easy h-indices are to manipulate if you are willing to - keyword &quot;citation rings&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T12:10:18.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2014-08-12T12:55:25.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe one way of dealing with having lots of informal references would be to divide the bibliography into sections, so that the reader can easily see the different types of reference (acknowledgement versus justification). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or alternatively maybe put them all in an extended acknowledgements section (since databases won't be able to do much with blog citations anyway, perhaps it wouldn't matter so much if they don't appear in the official bibliography, provided the reader is sufficiently informed of who came up with what).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T12:55:25.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T12:59:57.397" Score="2" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most of my Masters studies, I worked in the area of Quantum computation and wrote my thesis on that. But following that, I lost my interest and switched to Computer Vision and worked as an intern for a few months. Now I plan to pursue a PhD in the field of Computer Vision even though my Masters thesis was on a different topic. How should I convince the admission committee about this switch ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had published 2 papers while working on Quantum computations (one from my Thesis and another one as a student job) and 1 in Computer Vision from my internship. But I was not interested in Quantum computations because it consisted mostly coding and there was no hardware to work on (at least in my university). Whereas computer vision is a branch I am very comfortable with since I directly get to see the impact of the changes in algorithm visually. I also have very good grades in the area related to computer vision. But I cannot really frame a convincing story as &quot;visual feedback&quot; is not enough concrete to convince a potential guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give me your inputs. Thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8231" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T13:10:36.200" Title="Explaining switch of research interests in Statement of Purpose" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27116" CreationDate="2014-08-12T13:10:36.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to convince the admission committee about the switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to convince the admission committee that you are able to complete a PhD in Computer Vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out what skills will be needed, and present your evidence that you have those skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out what knowledge will be needed as a prerequisite, and present your evidence that you have that knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out what the other pre-requisities are (funding, contributing to the internal life of the department, whatever), and present the evidence for that too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T13:10:36.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2014-08-12T13:35:57.637" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to explain the problem from both perspectives: author and a journal typesetter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typesetting process goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We pre-plan the issue contents 2 months in advance, in order to balance the issues in size. This is necessary for small journals with 4 or 6 issues per year, not quite for large journals with a long publishing queue. At this moment, we take articles that are accepted. If there's not enough of them, we go through the queue and try to find articles that can be accepted quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now the authors provide the final version. This takes some time, so I receive the articles usually 4-6 weeks before the issue date. That's not a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most articles are typeset within 1-2 weeks after I receive them. With these, there's no problem at all. However, then you have articles that take more time, since the quality of the figures is being discussed, as well as semantics (when the formatting from the authors is poor and the semantics are not clear) etc. This takes some time. So it can happen that the article is typeset like 2 weeks before the issue date, or even less.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So now the article is typeset and is with the authors for proofs. Any correction they make has to be incorporated. Sometimes it's not easy (requests for replacing a figure with a better one, for moving figures to other pages etc. are not uncommon). Sometimes I strongly disagree with the authors on these. In such cases, we need to have yet another couple mails exchanged or the chief editor involved, and that takes time again. At this moment you see that 24 or 48 hours can be the maximum we can give.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once all articles get back, the issue has to be made ready, articles published online, CrossRef+Scopus metadata prepared, DOI registered etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the perspective of the journal I typeset. I hope that it is clear that the publication comprises a lot of steps. When the authors are cooperative and reasonable, everything goes fluently and the final version is ready 4 weeks before deadline. And then you have cases when things don't go quite well, and you get very close to the deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, to make things easier (and reduce the amount of work just before the issue date), you leave authors quite a short time for response. In most cases, there is plenty of time left, but if 80% of people misuse this time, we work 16 hours a day the last 3 days before the issue date to sort everything out, and we simply want to avoid this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of the author, 48 hours is not much for proofreading an article, especially since this has to be done very carefully. However, in most cases, if you ask for extension (a 5-line mail with a very short request is enough), it will be granted without any problem. Just please don't misuse the possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T21:46:42.093" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T21:46:42.093" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27002" CreationDate="2014-08-12T13:59:30.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For computer science conferences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiCFP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eventseer.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EventSeer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Springer &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/LNCS_Forthcoming_Proceedings.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LNCS forthcoming proceedings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ACM &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/calendar-of-events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;calendar of events&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IEEE &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of events&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject-specific mailing lists, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://research.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBWorld&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aisnet.org/AIS_Lists/publiclists.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AISWorld&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigir.org/sigirlist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM SIG-IR list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.satd.uma.es/mailman/listinfo/ecoop-info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ECOOP info list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T19:31:19.107" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T19:31:19.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27002" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:11:14.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very good experience with national and similar subject mailing lists, for instance French &quot;Groupes de Recherche&quot; such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gdr-im.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gdr-im.fr/&lt;/a&gt; intended for Theoretical Computer Science. There're dozens of them in France for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are a member of such group, you recieve quite a lot of mail (subject prefixed by &lt;code&gt;[gdr-im]&lt;/code&gt;), most of it are information on interesteing seminars, job offers and conference CfP (for both local and international meetings). I have found being a member of this mailing list very valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:11:14.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26779" CreationDate="2014-08-12T16:17:58.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prioritize you're health, happiness and relationships first. Nowhere is it written that a graduate student needs to work insane hours, answer every email the minute it comes in, etc. Frankly, if I worked for someone that had that expectation I'd leave. In fact, I did work for an advisor who was like that and I switched after a year. Life's too short. The stress, fatigue, unhealthy eating, lack of connection with other people outside of academia... it wears on your health. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't fall into the rat race. I don't know your field, but in mine it's common for grad students to work insane hours because they just work inefficiently, so just work smarter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, under-promise over-deliver... always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:17:58.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27030" CreationDate="2014-08-12T16:22:44.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you demonstrate value you should be compensated for value-added that you bring to her project. If she really wanted to pay you then she'd find a way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:22:44.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26759" CreationDate="2014-08-12T16:35:02.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;FYI: Big Data analysis and Data Science are two different things, that can certainly involve one another, but one does not have to involve the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Data Scientists don't fully know how to define data-science (i.e., is it a singular person with specific multiple overlapping skills, or is it a team of people with multiple overlapping skills? How is it different from a statistician? How is it different from a programmer?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I'd take a job then come back and get a Ph.D. if you still want to go that route. It will be clear to you a few years into your job if your heart was really in academia or not, and if your heart isn't fully in academia you'll at least have a clear rationale for what the value added of a Ph.D. would be for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T16:35:02.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T18:14:54.750" Score="4" ViewCount="1357" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my undergraduate career I was found guilty of academic dishonesty and suspended for 1 semester. Because of this, I was obviously distressed and reevaluated my position as a student. After much thinking, I enrolled abroad in a non-US medical university (using my high school and pre-medicine credentials) and graduated with the US equivalent of a 3.4 GPA and a medical degree. I then returned to my undergraduate university and finished my Bachelor's (BSc) degree with a 3.6 GPA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have extensive research experience throughout both my undergraduate career and medical school career abroad without publications. This research experience during my undergrad includes being accepted into a competitive summer research fellowship (before the institutional action took place). I also have worked in 2 different countries (including 1 developing country) as a physician for around a year before finishing off my Bachelor's in the US as mentioned above. The short practice time is only due to my aspirations of pursuing a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always wanted to pursue an MD/PhD before the institutional action took place. I enjoy research and aspire to combine my research interests with my practice on a global scale through an organization I helped found during my undergrad career. It was only due to the ridiculous choice I made that ended in my suspension that caused me to deviate from this dream and pursue only PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I score above average on the GRE with excellent LoRs, what are my chances of being accepted into any sort of PhD or graduate program? At this point, I am not being selective of any university I wish to attend. I also understand this may be an extraordinary case and would require much thought with respect to my chances of being admitted. This is an especially tough and stressful time for me and I am thankful for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I am interested in biological science or biomedical science as possible routes for my PhD (specifically, cancer biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20655" LastEditorUserId="20655" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T18:42:43.023" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T17:11:25.550" Title="Chances of Acceptance after Institutional Action" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2014-08-12T19:56:54.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a different policy field, but share the same sentiments as you about academia. Consequently, I'm in the same situation of wondering how much I should care about publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some of my observations to date: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to show that you did something with your time while in a Ph.D. program. Publishing shows that I worked productively with my boss (advisor) on something &quot;important&quot; while I was a graduate student. However, this has diminishing returns. Namely, I'm perfectly content pumping my work out to a mid-tier journal, where I'm confident most of what I do would be published with just some simple edits that come about from the peer-review process at that level. My advisor, on the other hand, has a &quot;go big or go home&quot; mentality to publishing, which suits this person well given his/her career, but doesn't particularly help me get through the program rapidly to get a job outside of academia. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best part about being in graduate school, but also being certain that I'm not going into academia, is that I have all sorts of time to build skills on my resume that will help me land the kinds of jobs that I want outside of academia, but are skills I wouldn't otherwise gain through the formal experience of a Ph.D. program. For me, this is computer programming. I'm great at statistics, understand research designs very well, and plan on leaning on these skills on the job market. However, a perfect complement to those skills, for the positions I'm interested in, is to be able to hack my way around several programming languages. Now, I can build something tangible with the analyses that I was already quite fluent with. Aside from the basic work that I need to do for my lab, and the program requirements I need to fulfill to get out the door, I really focus on these tertiary skills while I have the time to focus on such things. This means I usually am less concerned about the conference deadlines that seem to loom over the other graduate students, or revising that paper for the 100th time to try and impress my advisor. However, I should say that I also get a lot of shit done for my lab, more than other grad students, and work in ways that are much more smart/efficient than other students in my department. So, I find it easy to find the time to focus on other skills that might be beneficial to me on the job market. So, I hope given your disposition about academia, and your career goals, that you are using the extra time that comes from letting go of engaging with the rat race in order to do something cool for your resume. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is getting your advisor on board with your goals, which are reflected in a lack of concern about publication. First, it's harder to get them to pay attention to you if you aren't publishing things that are going to help them and their career. Two, if you're dealt an unlucky hand in being advised by someone who's never done anything other than academia (which is my case), it's hard to get them to understand your position. He/she might support your longterm goal, but will not be able to provide a vision of the intermediary steps one needs to take to reach that goal. I'm in the midst of negotiating my publication path with my advisor (i.e., &quot;this is a perfectly fine article that would get published in a range of mid-tier journals.&quot; Advisor: &quot;I just think if you redo this, that and the other thing, and then do this other thing, and think about this stuff then you could get it in one of the top journals...&quot;), you might find yourself in the same position. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really could go into so much more about being in the position you are in, and the difficulties that come from it, but that would get away from the question at hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T19:56:54.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17866" CreationDate="2014-08-12T20:03:40.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google has brought a whole new experience how we tend to manage stuff. Searching is so fast and efficient, that in some use cases it has become obsolete to maintain a rigorously structured, personal library. The drawback, however, is that you have to complete the tedious task of retrieving the full text PDF again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a scientist myself, and I am also one of the developers of &lt;a href=&quot;https://paperpile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paperpile&lt;/a&gt;, where we exactly tried to make this use cases as simple as possible. Paperpile runs in the background and &lt;strong&gt;you do not have to leave Google Scholar or Pubmed to quickly get the full text PDF&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next to each item in the Google Scholar search result you will find the little Paperpile toolbar. Just click on the Paperpile logo and it will find the full text PDF for you and will add it to the library. That's &lt;strong&gt;all done in background&lt;/strong&gt;, and you do not have to open any user interface or go to another window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paperpile automatically screens all the items on the Google Scholar results page, and shows a link to the PDF for those that are in your library. Since Paperpile is totally web based, this &lt;strong&gt;will also work if you login on another machine&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also attached a screenshot to get an impression how it works. Articles that I already have in my library are marked by the green logo.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/enNcC.png&quot; alt=&quot;Google Scholar results page&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastEditorUserId="20529" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T05:30:04.127" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T05:30:04.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2014-08-12T20:14:50.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often there are journals that clearly have bio-medical content, and are not found in PubMed. That's because registering a journal in PubMed is a non-trivial task. &#xA;Even for big players like Cell Press it took almost a year to put &quot;Cell Reports&quot;&#xA;in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher can apply to be included in PubMed, but that usually takes some time. The meeting where it is discussed if a journal is included is only held twice per year. One requirement is that the journal is also available in print. That's why many journals start with a print issue and then after inclusion in PubMed drop it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T20:14:50.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27140" CreationDate="2014-08-13T00:21:13.577" Score="3" ViewCount="35092" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a college senior and I'm working on updating my resume.  My GPA is a 3.46.  Is it acceptable/ethical to put on my resume that my GPA is a 3.5?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20664" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T21:45:59.763" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T06:44:26.660" Title="Is it acceptable to round up my GPA on my resume?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T05:40:06.987" Score="2" ViewCount="2239" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a few questions relating to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGCHE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PGCHE&lt;/a&gt; certificates, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5312/2692&quot;&gt;How is PGCHE by distance learning viewed relative to in-class?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/26913/2692&quot;&gt;What is the purpose of peer evaluation of teaching?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10547/2692&quot;&gt;University Teaching Certifications for Different Countries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand, the PGCHE is more specific to higher education (hence the HE). However, there is another more general &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgraduate_Certificate_in_Education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PGCE&lt;/a&gt; which deals with education overall (not limited to higher education).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given that the PCGHE is more specific, do faculty selection committees value the PGCHE as a 'better qualification' when hiring a lecturer or do they simply consider that someone has specific training in teaching and there is no significant difference?&lt;/strong&gt; Does this vary by country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T09:55:37.657" Title="Is PGCHE more valuable that PGCE?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26979" CreationDate="2014-08-13T07:01:48.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plus to other recommendations (such as advanced scheduling , ...) some tips on cases, when talking about things some how related to Islam (as a course material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stereotypes are usually misleading, each individual reflects&#xA;his/her specific set of beliefs &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider existence of variance or some times extreme variance in groups which all are identified with Islam label&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider that many of them are not&#xA;observant (usually different nationalities show different proportions in this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider that many political orientations and religious&#xA;beliefs have found blurred boundaries specially in recent decades&#xA;and for younger generations. So one talking about some political&#xA;topic might actually considers it a religious topic or vice versa.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastEditorUserId="10773" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T08:43:02.457" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T08:43:02.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27135" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:55:37.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK community colleges are not part of the higher education system and the US equivalent of a small liberal arts colleges essentially do not exist. That means the vast majority of UK universities hire for &quot;research excellence&quot; and hiring committees are really only interested in if you can teach a needed module and that you will not be awful. The PGCE, unlike the PGCHE, would not satisfy any university requirements and therefore I don't think hiring committees would consider it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the PGCHE, while many universities require new members of academic staff to obtain one, The universities that I am familiar with offer the PGCHE curriculum in house via the School of Education. Since it is presented to new staff as a hoop to jump through, I know of no one outside of university administrators and schools of education that think the PGCHE, in any form, is of value. Further, while I have seen many job adverts where a PGCHE is a &quot;desirable&quot; qualification, I have never seen one where it is &quot;essential&quot;. During hiring, we briefly consider the presence/absence of a PGCHE, but never more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would say that the PGCE is useless for getting a job and the PGCHE is only marginally more valuable for being hired. As a PGCHE is. Requirement once you have the job, it may be beneficial in that it would make your first year, or two, easier since it is one less thing to do while you are drowning in new teaching, admin, and setting up a research agenda. The disadvantage of this is the PGCHE course was one place where I met new faculty members outside my school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T09:55:37.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27133" CreationDate="2014-08-13T10:14:47.320" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just report the GPA as it is listed on your report / certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T10:14:47.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27141" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-13T10:41:48.997" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T10:41:48.997" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T10:41:48.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27142" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-13T10:41:48.997" Score="0" Body="A professional association usually consists of a body of members drawn from a particular profession, and objectives is to promote the interests of its members. This may be by holding conferences or in wider public discussions. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T11:51:13.030" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T11:51:13.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27148" CreationDate="2014-08-13T12:53:29.353" Score="2" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many papers use numbered references (e.g.: [1], [2]). Is this considered a good style or even a rule or &lt;strong&gt;would it be acceptable to use abbreviated names of the authors and year of publication (e.g. [Smith09] for J. Smith, 2009)?&lt;/strong&gt; I find the abbreviated name reference style a lot more informative as after a while of reading papers on a given topic it’s usually easy to identify the cited publication without the need to look at the full bibliography.  I have seen this style used in books and some editorials but it is not common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20674" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T00:54:31.503" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T08:57:16.290" Title="Whether to use numbers or abbreviated names as a citation style?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27151" CreationDate="2014-08-13T12:54:25.637" Score="10" ViewCount="2560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found an error in a journal article which I believe to be a typo. It is minor but it does affect the technical aspects of the paper so it should ideally be corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct procedure in these cases? Should I contact the authors? Should I contact the editors? Does this vary on a case-by-case basis? If so, what should I consider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="10936" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T15:15:23.167" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T19:54:11.110" Title="What is the correct procedure to report typos or errors in journal articles?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;editors&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27146" CreationDate="2014-08-13T12:58:18.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two systems are equally good but used in different communities/journals etc. You therefore need to check what is normally used in your field and when submitting manuscripts, of course, check what the specific journal uses. The fact that you say &quot;most journals use&quot; indicates you are in a field that uses numbered or &lt;em&gt;Vancouver style&lt;/em&gt; (author-number) references. The author-date, or &lt;em&gt;Harvard-system&lt;/em&gt;, is used by &lt;em&gt;most journals&lt;/em&gt; in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T12:58:18.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27146" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:11:32.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You don't get to choose&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although as a reader I vastly prefer the name-year system, as I don't have to look up most of the references, the advantages are rather irrelevant - in almost all cases, you don't get to choose, as you'll have to comply with the citation standard of the publication.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal, conference or thesis standard generelly will list the citation style required, and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields one or the other style is more common, but in any case you may encounter a publication where a different style is required, so check first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T13:11:32.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27147" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:12:00.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an error is grave enough to change the results, conclusions, meaning of a published article, the journal and probably also the author is keen to publish an errata to rectify the problem. If there is an error at a point but which is not carried through to the conclusions, I doubt an errata will result. Given that we cannot see the example you are referring to, it is impossible to asses the gravity of the problem. But, since you mention a typo, I doubt that the article as a whole is affected but rather a sentence or a paragraph. So at best you approach the grey-zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it would never hurt to write a short mail to the editor to check if the problem is deemed serious enough for action. Depending on how you perceive the problem, a mail to the author to check that your perception of the error is correct may also be pertinent. Which action you take first is of less importance, you may even decide to send a mail to both at the same time. Without knowing the details the best or most appropriate way forward in detail is difficult to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T19:54:11.110" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T19:54:11.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27146" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:16:48.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name/year system is much better, and you should use it whenever possible.  In particular, if you work in a field with preprints your preprints should use name/year or initial/year even if the journal will later force you to change it.  The reason is that name/year communicates relevant information, while number communicates no information at all.  Just giving numbered references means many readers won't know anything about who did what work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T13:16:48.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:01:24.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, it helps to be specific:&#xA;- what kind of exchange program?&#xA;- what is oversea? USA? Canada? Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US for a PhD program generally TOEFL and GRE is required, and most cases cannot exchanged to other certificates. I don't know Master programs, but I would assume similar or same certificates are required. Since exchange programs are much more limited, and I saw a really wide range of people doing them, I am pretty sure that there are programs that do not require any certificates or very flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Far-East the universities are generally more flexible. Beside TOEFL, TOEIC is also a popular English test, but many have heard about IELTS, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:01:24.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:05:42.800" Score="20" ViewCount="2552" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I have some material to cover that is best presented in the form of take-home group projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some student groups manage to find a way to coordinate their work well and to complete the projects successfully, with every team member benefiting from the collaboration. Other groups do not do so well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some groups evenly divide the work, but still work in isolation, losing the benefits of working with peers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some groups push the work to one or two students, while the remaining students merely contribute their name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there are strategies or tools instructors use that can encourage more groups to operate successfully while they are working outside of class?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T15:01:34.923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:35:53.633" Title="How to make group work work?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27203" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:09:44.147" Score="6" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;The journal Science has two sections for submission, Research articles and Commentary.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info.xhtml&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info.xhtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under commentary, there is a section for 'Policy Forum'.  Unlike 'Education Forum' there is nothing explicit about research related to Policy.  If one submits (not invited) a manuscript to Policy Forum, is this considered peer reviewed publication? Is there a difference in citation both in format of a citation and if it is common to cite a manuscript published in Commentary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T18:45:01.120" Title="Are comments considered publications" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27104" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:35:38.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the closest thing to a system would be the objectives that were developed for the full curriculum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example from my area. In biology, &lt;a href=&quot;http://visionandchange.org/files/2011/03/Revised-Vision-and-Change-Final-Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a recent call&lt;/a&gt; encourages universities to be less focused on subdisciplines and more on core concepts and competencies. After many meetings, biologists settled on these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Core concepts:&lt;/strong&gt; evolution, structure and function, information flow, energy pathways, systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Competencies:&lt;/strong&gt; application of the scientific method, quantitative reasoning, modeling and simulation, interdisciplinary connections, effective communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were writing out my learning objectives for the lecture on photosynthesis, I might list that photosynthesis fits into structure/function and energy pathways core concepts, and I would be motivated to include a discussion of a classic experiment so students can practice the scientific method and some calculations for students to apply quantitative reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would imagine that history (or any other discipline) likely has a similar  list of important concepts plus important skills they want their students to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:35:38.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:00:03.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a free certificate (e.g., from &lt;a href=&quot;http://startssl.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StartSSL&lt;/a&gt;) and use it to digitally sign your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know PDFs and many other file formats support digital signatures. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/certificate-signatures.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this about signing a PDF with Adobe Reader&lt;/a&gt;; it appears Adobe even offers a free, easy-to-use service so you don't have to get a certificate from a third-party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digitally signing something proves that it is yours because no one could claim your work is theirs without knowing your private key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9425" LastEditorUserId="9425" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T15:13:55.593" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T15:13:55.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:47:33.530" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think first it may be worthwhile to accept that in any group work situation there is the possibility that people will worked siloed (or isolated from one another) or one or two people will push the work forward while others are relegated or chose to remain in a passive state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some good reasons for this. I recall being a student with a pretty solid GPA, group projects were a horror for me. If the project grade is based on the overall project and does not take into account individual contributions this meant that students who were less focused on their GPA would be willing to turn in something that was not up to my standards. This led both to situations where other students refused to do work on the project (knowing that the stronger students would carry them in order to avoid dings to their GPA) and to situations where stronger students would freeze out other students (ie the stronger students would choose to take all the work and not let other be involved) in order to maintain control over the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group projects are often used as an analogy for working in the 'real world' where working in groups is the norm. The fundamental difference is that in most cases if a peer is completely slacking or sending in subpar work there is a concrete structure to monitor and handle that issue (which doesn't always work of course but there's almost always more accountability than in academic group projects). You can mimic this behavior in an academic setting by splitting up the grades for the project. Don't give one 'group grade' to everyone, instead have students report on who did what (this is particularly effective if you can have them set this early in the project instead of during turn-in) and correlate the students grade to both their work and their work in the context of the project. Having this set up early can be a great way of preventing aggressive or strong students from freezing out what are perceived as the 'weak links'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally consider regular checkpoints on the project. This will let you get a feel for the interactions in the group and the content being produced while also minimizing the opportunity for a student to jeopardize the group by waiting until the last minute to work on their part (this will still happen to some extent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short - add more structure to the group project. This increases the workload on your end but it mitigates the most common issues you'll see in groups during group projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T17:17:06.893" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T17:17:06.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-13T16:14:29.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drop the flat hierarchy in group projects. Use and quality based hierarchy, assign the hard-working students as group leads. Not all of them have the same level of leading qualities, but ask from them not to take the whole responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Divide the project into tasks, and tasks into subtasks (if they don't know how to do it internally, but first give them time to try to do it, or ask for that explicitly). Otherwise, clearly assign subtasks to each group member and require each group member to spend certain amount of time per week on those tasks. Lets say each student has to spend 10 hours per week on the project related tasks. Ask  students to keep track of the time they spend on a spreadsheet document by marking down the start-end times and describing the solution, or if there is no solution why it didn't work. Require them to provide also references. This document preparation should not last longer than 15 - 30 min per week. Allow the document to be informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to protect your hard-working students. As @Nahkki has mentioned, group project are nightmare for good students, as they take all the workload and do everything just to ensure that the overall grade remains within their standards. However, such behaviour has long-term effects on the hard-working students, resulting in burnout. Protect them as they may show up being useful in the later stages of the project, or sometimes in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T16:14:29.037" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T19:47:20.823" Score="21" ViewCount="10340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to submit a paper, and I'm asked whether I want anybody to be excluded from consideration as a reviewer. I also need to state a reason. I briefly considered listing someone who - I have reasons to believe - once reviewed a paper of mine by listing criticisms that were unspecific enough that I spent a very large amount of time just trying to figure out what they meant. Of course my guess could be wrong, and it seems unfair to label someone as a suboptimal reviewer based on a hunch. Which led me to wonder - what are some good reasons for asking for exclusion of a reviewer? And additionally, what would polite wordings be for each of these reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T21:46:51.627" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T21:46:51.627" Title="Sound reasons for excluding a reviewer" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27160" CreationDate="2014-08-13T20:12:28.850" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should list reviewers (if any) that you think may be unfairly biased towards your science in some specific way. this includes persons with whom there may be a personal conflict that would shadow an objective review or people who have shown an unmitigated dislike for your science or the like. It is not intended to be used to list persons just because they may not agree with your science. In the specific case you list, I can see that such a reviewer may be unwanted but I do not think the reasons are strong enough to warrant signalling the reviewer as unwanted. The chances of the reviewer being asked may be small if there are many others that can be considered useful. Finally, if you were still to receive a review that is as unclear as the one you describe, you should ask the editor to clarify what you should read out from the review. After all, the editor must have read the review and used it to evaluate the degree of revisions necessary of your manuscript. So in short, you should save the nasty for listing as unwanted or non-preferred (whatever the journal terminology may be) reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T20:12:28.850" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27166" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:36:19.900" Score="3" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this paper:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://citpsite.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/oldsite-htdocs/pub/coldboot.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://citpsite.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/oldsite-htdocs/pub/coldboot.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very quick question about recreating the experiment, and this isn't for academic reasons, it's purely for personal reasons. This is a Princeton paper from 2008. Basically, the paper states that the experiment was performed after a computer component was made wet to reduce temperature. I want to ask if it's hazardous to the computer in any way to boot it while this component is still wet. Is it inappropriate to mail the paper's authors about this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20688" LastEditorUserId="19769" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T07:45:15.993" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T07:45:15.993" Title="Is it okay to email the authors of a paper questions not directly for research?" Tags="&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27086" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:47:56.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an experienced graduate student or post-grad (yet, to my great consternation), but here's my somewhat-educated guess to expand on Trylks point 2 above, and others, and create a short answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Do a 2-level review of Review Journals.  These are the literature that review the state-of-the-art research done in a prior period, such as the last year.  Do a high-level scan to get your bearings and then a deeper-level dig, as you might guess.  Here's one for your field, e.g., that was published up until 2011: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_Review_of_Information_Science_and_Technology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_Review_of_Information_Science_and_Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Combine that with the expert help of people senior to you in the field, as others have suggested, to find gaps in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. Pick an area in the gaps that interests you in which you can make a contribution appropriate to your level of expertise/skills, and go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20690" LastEditorUserId="20690" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T21:53:34.470" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:53:34.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:03:30.820" Score="3" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really related to this question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14173/creating-paper-on-software-tool&quot;&gt;Creating paper on software tool&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there was &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14173/creating-paper-on-software-tool#comment26332_14173&quot;&gt;this comment&lt;/a&gt; there which asked for more details about the software's domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created (still in beta stage) a software for Brain Tumor, but I would like to publish (if possible) about the software itself and not so much on the validation of it. (This would be eventually a later paper).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's is the best approach for publishing about this software &lt;em&gt;&quot;proposal&quot;&lt;/em&gt; for usage in medical clinics? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;My concern is that while it's being tested. It wasn't tested enough for a full paper, but I still want to publish it.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20691" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T18:36:21.783" Title="Paper for software tool - Medical Domain" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:06:58.437" Score="26" ViewCount="2932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that according the ethical rules, obtaining the funding does not automatically entitle the principal investigator &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(PI)&lt;/a&gt; for authorship. But I don't understand the unwritten rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was on a postdoc. During the postdoc, I was paid from a grant obtained by the PI. At the beginning, he told me to find a good research topic and write a paper (&quot;this will be your child&quot;). I spent some time on literature search and very preliminary computations. I presented my idea to the PI but he told he doesn't want me to continue this topic. He even repeated this several times, on different occasions. He said my idea was too losely connected to what his group was doing. So I gave up that topic and did not do it any longer. Finally, I published a paper on quite different topic, together with the group members, and the PI was also a co-author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day I talked to a colleague from that group and I mentioned my old research idea. I said I would like to develop it anyway, when I finish the current postdoc. He told me that the PI should still be a co-author because I spent some time working on this idea in his group and I was paid by his money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's been a couple of years since I finished that postdoc. I have independence and I can publish myself as the corresponding author. I would like to publish a paper on the idea I once had. Should I somehow credit the old PI? (And his grant? It's over already.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of the research is mine. The PI did not contribute whatsoever to it. I feel that crediting someone just for his funding is not ethical. The more so that he rejected my idea. But I understand the words of that colleague as a sort of a warning because he has been working with the PI for a long time and probably he knows his attitide. And that guy (the old PI) is quite well-known person in the community. Do you think I should somehow negotiate with him? Or stick at nothing and just publish the paper as entirely mine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20686" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T18:25:34.980" LastActivityDate="2021-03-16T15:24:08.503" Title="Old PI's coauthorship on a paper after finishing the postdoc, a preliminary idea developed then but rejected by him" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27162" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:10:46.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering the more general question, sure. A polite email will never hurt you, the worst case scenario is that they are too busy to reply, or that their contact information is no longer valid. The best possible outcome, you get a nice explanation, an interesting conversation, and perhaps a couple of anecdotes about the research. Just make sure that question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relevant to the research. Obviously, I don't email Linus Torvalds every time my linux computer doesn't boot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The information is not easy or obvious to find.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just liquid refrigeration of computer components doesn't really meet any criteria, but you could ask for the specifics. Just make sure to understand the basics first, if your question looks &quot;dumb&quot;, it will probably get lower priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading a paper for my own research, I found a somewhat old paper (about 10 years) explaining the analysis of some data. One of the key points is setting the noise threshold, that they set as the maximum of the histogram. The thing is that in my data the maximum of the histogram was at 0, following a very good power law. In short: the procedure would be invalid for my data; but actually irrelevant for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I commented it with my advisor and he said that I should email the author about it, and that it will probably start an interesting conversation. (I haven't gotten to it yet, but my bet is that modern instruments are quite different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T22:10:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27165" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:16:36.857" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot see why the former PI should have co-authorship on a paper they did not support or had any interest in. You are not a slave (or at least should not be) when on a post-doc (or any other position) and should retain the freedom to take own initiatives. As long as you fulfil any obligations within the position you are holding, no-one can prevent you from developing your own ideas. I can see an issue if you use materials that involve costs that you are not covering, for example, lab equipment or chemicals, electronic resources that removes capacity or resources otherwise used by the project. I do not count, for example, using a computer and printouts as such resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for me there is no question you can use the research as your own and you should add only authors that fulfil reasonable contributorship criteria, that is have contributed to the science of your work (see posts under the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/authorship&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;authorship&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;authorship&lt;/a&gt; tag for such criteria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T22:16:36.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27165" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:32:51.620" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In (pure) mathematics, if you began working on this project while supported by the PI's grant, but without or even against his advice, then your publication about it would ordinarily include a footnote on the first page, saying something like &quot;Partially supported by grant 314159 from the Munificent Funding Agency, John Doe principal investigator.&quot;  I actually often see such footnotes without the name of the PI, but I see nothing wrong with including the name if it helps to placate him.  CAUTION: Conventions may be different in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T22:32:51.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T23:13:42.993" Score="5" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I wrote a paper which included 2 algorithms A and B. Both of them were presented and fully explained. Moreover, B was built based on A, in other words, reader must know about A in order to understand B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I'm writing another paper which further expands B. However, it requires A to be presented (and explained) so that reader can understand. So, I wonder how to present an algorithm A in my new paper. So far, I have 3 solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present and fully explain A in a new paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present A and say that its explanation is included in an old paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State that an algorithm in a new paper in based on algorithm A in an old one, without presenting or explaining it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12635" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T23:20:50.477" Title="How to reuse algorithms from previous paper" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27171" CreationDate="2014-08-13T23:20:50.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a Preliminaries section, and include Algorithm A and its explanation there clearly citing it. That way, it is clear to the reader that the second contains necessary background information, and not new contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as how much to include, that really depends on how crucial it is for understanding of expansion of B, how much space you have available, whether the algorithm is published. Any other approaches you suggest are viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T23:20:50.477" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-14T01:22:50.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Splitting the grade is a very good way to encourage the participation of every one. However, it means you know how to split the grade. You can ask for each work to have an author contribution section, stating both who did work on which part and the overall participation of each student. You can also ask the group to tell you how to split the grade. It will encourage them to discuss the contribution of each one together. Most of time if they work fair together they will just split equally, but it will encourage to give less if one did slack which is just fair. Also for longer project (like semester long) I would have Q&amp;amp;A session with a teacher or teaching assistant. Clearly state the fair/unfair  work repartition is one of the subject that can be discussed in this occasion. I would definitely not recommend to do the spilt yourself if not equally. There will always be this guy who can talk more than speak that will trick you. If this guy tries to trick the other group member, then they need to learn how to deal with it. it's part of their training. Also some time they will decide to split and work separately, it is sometime the best way to get the thing done and they need to recognise those situation too. Example: they work with people they don't like and interact very badly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think letting the student assign their own group roles themselves is critically important for their training. You want them to be able to take decision as a group, as they might need to do when they will be working in a company. They will be natural leaders that will take the reins, but that is ok, not everyone is good in this position. They might enter confrontation, but this is something they will also face later in their career and they need to be prepared for that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T01:34:39.870" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T01:34:39.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-14T02:12:21.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Heller, who promotes a group-based approach for physics, uses a neat strategy to discourage slacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exams are divided into an individual part and subsequently a group part, but if a member ever failed (even once) to attend the group sessions the rest of his or her group votes to allow or not allow that person to participate in the group portion of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T02:12:21.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27165" CreationDate="2014-08-14T02:41:27.433" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most disciplines have either a &quot;Funding&quot;, &quot;Financial Support&quot;, or a general &quot;Acknowledgements&quot; section that people use to note the source of funding for the research in question. Since the initial research that led to this paper was supported by your previous PI, you should note that in the paper and thank the funding agency and your former advisor for their assistance and support as you developed the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the PI in question repeatedly decided to not support or become involved in the work when they had the chance, I don't see how there could be any reasonable expectation of co-authorship and it's very unlikely that they will be upset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T00:33:33.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T00:33:33.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-14T03:24:49.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an engineering teacher in high school who by far was the best (in my high school) at assigning group projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students have a tendency to want to work alone because that is the environment they are accustomed to. High school teaches kids how to work in a 20th century factory: stay in line, follow the rules, do your work and let other people do their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My engineering teacher wanted us to work as adults would: he assigned us brief guidelines, and our group was responsible for collaborating and producing something for him. For example, as the first project in the intro to engineering class, he started by showing us a lamp he made. Then he asked us how one could make 10,000 of them for as low cost and as easily as possible. We had to deliver an assembly process (to make the lamp), a parts lists, and a floor plan of the building we would theoretically have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what mostly made it so good was the lack of formatting. Many kids didn't like it, you had to actually listen when he talked because he didn't hand out sheets reiterating what he just said. You had to use your best judgement with regards to making the product look as nice as possible, as apposed to following some guidelines. The class made you think, you couldn't just go from one step to the next and get the correct answer, you had to think for yourself and make up your own steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grading was a struggle for him, especially because this was one of his first times teaching this class. You got a grade for the project (everyone in the group got the same grade), and you got a grades for small check ins to make sure you were actually doing stuff in your group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineering is mostly about problem solving, so when asked questions he would often respond &quot;That's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; problem&quot;. He did so if people complained they were doing too much of the work, or if their group wasn't listening to them, etc. You can't learn how to work in a group if some higher power solves your communication problems for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, sorry for rambling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20694" LastEditorUserId="20694" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T03:35:36.823" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T03:35:36.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27164" CreationDate="2014-08-14T06:49:52.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish software in a quality scientific journal it is usually required that it represents a significant advance over previously published software, which is usually demonstrated by direct comparison with available related software. There will be no way to get around this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend to put the code on github (&lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://github.com&lt;/a&gt;). Github is more and more recognized as THE resource for code hosting. It is a free service for public repositories, and it is widely accepted in the community, e.g. you can register your Github repos with Impactstory (&lt;a href=&quot;http://impactstory.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://impactstory.org&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Source Code for Biology and Medicine&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scfbm.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scfbm.org&lt;/a&gt;) might be an appropriate journal for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T06:49:52.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27146" CreationDate="2014-08-14T08:29:19.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In math/CS you mostly use &lt;code&gt;[1,2]&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;[Lot02,Zai04]&lt;/code&gt;. You can choose (unlike what most other answers impose) either of them, note for instance that both &lt;code&gt;amsplain&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;amsalpha&lt;/code&gt; exist and either of them can be used in AMS publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of habits which style the authors choose. The &lt;code&gt;alpha&lt;/code&gt;/&lt;code&gt;amsalpha&lt;/code&gt; &lt;code&gt;[Lot02]&lt;/code&gt; style is better in most cases. However, there are communities where a numerical style is strongly prefered, moreover with the bibliography sorted by the order of appearance, and with compression turned on, because they cite hundreds of articles. And well, you don't want your in-text citations look like &lt;code&gt;[ABC00a,ABC00b,ABC00c,ABC00d,ACE00a,ACE00b,ABC01a,BC00a,BC00b,BC01,BC02]&lt;/code&gt;, when it can be &lt;code&gt;[1--11]&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T08:29:19.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27182" CreationDate="2014-08-14T08:34:49.763" Score="0" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished writing my internship report for a master degree. Now I am writing its abstract. Is it possible to mention a statistic study on the abstract and reference it in the bibliography or is this something bad to do ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T09:20:03.200" Title="Can I reference the abstract?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-08-14T12:08:15.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T08:56:53.317" Score="23" ViewCount="2119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that in many cases, either a table or a plot will do an equally good job of presenting numeric information. Does anyone have any advice or even rules about when to prefer using a table over a plot and vice versa? I'm referring to tables and plots in the context of academic journal articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T09:01:01.350" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T17:49:37.417" Title="When to use a table vs. a plot to present numeric information?" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;tables&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27179" CreationDate="2014-08-14T09:20:03.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is just an internal document that will never be seen outside your own institution, it doesn't really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a document that will be distributed outside your institution, the abstract should be fully comprehensible even if that's all you see. It's quite common for databases to include only the abstract or for it to be much easier for people to see the abstract than the rest of the document. (For example, on ArXiv, each paper's &quot;home page&quot; includes the abstract but you'd have to download the whole paper to see the references.)  For these reasons, an abstract that says something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We build on the statistical analysis of [5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;isn't very useful.  This isn't so bad with a long reference style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We build on the statistical analysis of Smith and Jones (2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is better, especially if that is a well-known paper in the field but not everything builds on well-known papers and the reference is potentially vague if Smith and Jones wrote multiple papers together that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to do this is to give a full citation in the abstract itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We build on the statistical analysis of Smith and Jones (&lt;em&gt;J. Interest. Res.&lt;/em&gt;, 3(1):41&amp;ndash;59, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals forbid citations of any kind in the abstract but that seems to force people into the suboptimal &quot;Smith and Jones&quot; style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T09:20:03.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-14T09:29:26.120" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say: Use tables if the actual values are of importance and use plots if trends (or similar things) are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rationale is simply that one cannot extract actual values of a function at specific places from plot. Vice verse its much simpler to see linear growth or periodicity from a plot than from a table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T11:26:27.590" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T11:26:27.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T09:39:47.980" Score="1" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to pursue a Ph.D in Chemistry and the destinations of my choice are Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden. Can anyone please tell me the scholarships and fellowships available to which an Indian student can apply in these countries? (I know of a DAAD fellowship for Germany)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also love to know if there is any centralized admission process to these countries (similar to US)? &#xA;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T10:24:01.537" Title="Inquiry for Ph.D admissions in European countries" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-08-14T12:36:34.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-14T09:50:28.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Dirk says, it's often quite useful to preserve the numeric values - that's  the motivation for tabulating data. However, plots have the advantage of being able to easily visualize trends in data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a set grid of &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt; co-ordinates, with each pair of co-ordinates having a numeric value, you can sort of do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example. The trends in the data are made much clearer by plotting and colour-coding the data, but the numeric information is preserved. As a result the readability of the numbers isn't perfect, but (depending on your data) you can sometimes have the best of both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DUGHI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T10:04:55.863" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T10:04:55.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27184" CreationDate="2014-08-14T10:24:01.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD students in the Netherlands are usually employed by the university (these are AIO, or &quot;assistent in opleiding&quot;, positions). As far as I know, anyone can apply for these jobs and it doesn't matter where you're from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You apply directly to the faculty that is advertising the position, and after you are chosen for the position the university sponsors you through the visa process as a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ind.nl/EN/individuals/residence-wizard/work/highly-skilled-migrant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;knowledge migrant&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T10:24:01.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-14T12:39:33.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are able to do it, use plots, period. What little purpose tables used to have is currently best served by online supplementary material, either on the journal's website or your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have more than a couple of constants/data points (which would not require a table either), numbers are very difficult to read and (good) plots are much better for human consumption (I don't think this is merely a matter of taste; while I am not an expert there is quite a lot of research on this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; actual values are actually useful to someone, a table is in fact a very poor way to provide them as anybody wishing to use them must go through a time-consuming and error-prone data entry process. What should actually be done in this case is making the data themselves available electronically. A table is not a decent alternative to that, not anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T14:00:11.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T14:00:11.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-14T12:46:58.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find that in many cases, either a table or a plot will do an equally&#xA;  good job of presenting numeric information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, a plot does NOT present &lt;em&gt;numerical&lt;/em&gt; information because it is just a picture. The purpose of a plot is to show geometrical form of some dependence(s) when this form is important. It is impossible to recover &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; numerical information from such picture. The requirement of reproducibility of scientific results requires to provide all necessary information needed to reproduce the results described in the paper. Most journals do not allow publishing large tables of numerical data but they allow to publish &lt;em&gt;supplementary information&lt;/em&gt; online which can contain huge tables in TXT format. It is good idea to supply such information and it is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic of effective visual presentation of information is subject of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infographics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Visualizing-Data-Explaining-Processing-Environment/dp/0596514557&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ben Fry. Visualizing Data (2008)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Graphing-Data-W-S-Cleveland/dp/0963488414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleveland W.S. The Elements of Graphing Data (1985, 1994)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.bell-labs.com/doc/93.4.ps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleveland W.S. (1993): A Model for Studying Display Methods of&#xA;  Statistical Graphics. // Journal of Computational and Graphical&#xA;  Statistics, 2(4): 323-343.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/0961392142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tufte E.R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2001)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/statistics/computational+statistics/book/978-0-387-24544-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wilkinson L. The Grammar of Graphics (2005)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6255" LastEditorUserId="6255" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T17:49:37.417" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T17:49:37.417" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27192" CreationDate="2014-08-14T13:14:50.987" Score="11" ViewCount="4913" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical/lawful to recolor/scale the logos when importing them to presentation slides to make the logos meet the template standards and fit the theme colors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T07:29:17.660" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T07:29:17.660" Title="Is it ethical/lawful to recolor/scale the logos?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2014-08-14T13:29:55.637" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Logos are often trademarked, and therefore you are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; free to recolor them according to whatever color scheme your template happens to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many companies and universities do have multiple versions of their logo available, for precisely this reason. You should contact your university's (or organization's) press office (or similar office) to see what is available, before toying with it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T13:29:55.637" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27194" CreationDate="2014-08-14T14:31:26.280" Score="12" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working full time currently as a programmer in a summer internship.  In the fall I will be continuing school and working part-time as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that I want to be a professional programmer and someday a software engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am very interested in all the areas of computer science that I have been studying.  I hear occasionally about how some computer science majors end up being &quot;just programmers&quot; and not &quot;computer scientists.&quot;  There seems to be a common thought that becoming a programmer means that you give up the field as a whole and the possibility of contributing to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to be a professional programmer, but also a lifelong learner in the field of computer science.  Am I naive to think this is possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastEditorUserId="20342" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T14:47:34.083" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T19:02:36.973" Title="Am I naive to think I can focus on professional programming and still be active in the field of CS as a whole?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27193" CreationDate="2014-08-14T14:55:16.820" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professional programmer with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a colleague, who was working as a programmer and continued even publishing in his unrelated field (chemical engineering/textiles), so if you are dedicated, it is even easier for you to do, since your area might be related, but still it is not a light undertaking. But if you can find a more research heavy R&amp;amp;D position in the industry, of course that would make it easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am personally planning to teach adjunct classes, to keep me fresh about theoretical basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope my two cents helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:55:16.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:26:25.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most companies/institutions guard their branding very carefully.  Many companies spend thousands or even millions on developing a brand language, which includes fonts, colors, and other design elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the specifics of the legal ramifications of changing logo colors, but the owners of the logo are sure to be against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:26:25.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:34:01.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers, I think it depends on how much data you are trying to show.  Personally, I like to use tables when I can.  If you have only three data points, a figure wastes a lot of space and ink.  Tufte calls this the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/Data-Ink_Ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Data-ink ratio&lt;/a&gt;.  In his book, he recommends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Above all else, show the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have hundreds of data points, you would show a figure, unless the exact data values matter (in which case it is rather a reference table).  But if you have only a handful of points, it is more efficient to display the data in a table.  Unless, as other answers point out, you want to visualise a particular relation or trend — then a visualisation is again more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:34:01.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27154" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:35:53.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a class that involved group work.  The professor allowed groups to vote to fire a member, provided they gave sufficient reason to the professor.  This meant that everyone was held responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My group nearly fired someone who kept missing meetings and then lied about it.  However, he was sufficiently scared into working hard, so we let it slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying this allowing teams to &quot;fire&quot; people is the best way.  However, I think that finding a way to make team members accountable to each other is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:35:53.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27198" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:42:29.143" Score="12" ViewCount="3355" Body="&lt;p&gt;My paper was published and later on I found that two references were mistakenly included with the third reference, which is the correct.&#xA;My phrase looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am worried about this (Smith 2001; David 2006; Magnus 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this is the correct form that it had to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am worried about this (Smith 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so the references &quot;David 2006&quot; and &quot;Magnus 2007&quot; have nothing to do with the cited phrase and they never did that work; and were not meant to be included but maybe it was a problem with reference management software that I used at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this will cause a problem to my paper or even plagiarism/retraction.&#xA;I am really worried about this and any advice is more than welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20708" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T00:51:29.003" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T00:51:29.003" Title="What to do when you publish a paper that accidentally included a wrong or irrelevant citation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;retraction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27198" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:10:31.963" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously it would have been better not to commit such a silly blunder in a published paper, but I don't think it matters much. Such errors, especially when accidental, will inevitably occur, much as typographic errors. A slight embarrassment to you, yes, as any typos or errors in formulas would be, but not truly &quot;actionable&quot; by anyone, so far as I know. So, bottom line, &quot;forget about it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T16:10:31.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27198" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:13:30.820" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is the use of another author's ideas or words without proper credit.  You haven't done that, so there's no need to worry about it.  Also, people don't retract papers over trivial editing errors like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since it's something that might be confusing to a reader, it may be worth asking the journal about printing a correction.  Simply get in touch with the editor who originally handled your paper, or if they no longer work with the journal, contact the editor-in-chief.  They would typically publish a one-sentence note in some future issue of the journal, stating that the references were included by mistake and should be ignored.  Alternatively, they may decide the matter is too trivial to be worth the space to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you should post the correction on your web page, and any other place where the paper is publicly available (preprint servers, etc).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no big deal and happens all the time.  Just get it fixed, move on, and be more careful next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T16:13:30.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27165" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:24:24.380" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the PI does not qualify for authorship. However, there is nothing to be lost by a little civility. You could send him a note - something like this (fill in the blanks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;name&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I hope you are well. It has been &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;some time&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; since I moved from &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;old institution&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;your current institution&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, and I am settling in well. &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;some personal details about your life&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You may recall that we once discussed &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;the idea&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, but since it did not align with the research direction of &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;old group&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, we dropped it and instead I focused on &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;what you did in postdoc&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. Now that I am at &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;new institution&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; I have dusted off the old idea, and actually was able to turn it into a paper that shows &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;some salient details&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. I intend to publish it in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;journal, timeframe&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&#xA;  Now since the idea had originally been formed while I worked in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;old group&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, I thought it would be appropriate to make a mention of this in the acknowledgements; I hope that you agree that this is the correct way to indicate the link to &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;old group&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, given that we did no research on this topic while I was there.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I hope everyone is well. Please send my particular regards to &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;friends&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; - I miss &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;whatever you enjoyed&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. Best wishes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he thinks he ought to be included in the authorship list, such a note leaves the door open. It is usually not worth ending up in a fight with someone who is well established in your field - and it's their transgression, not yours, if they insist on being named a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said - I stand by my first sentence: what you describe does not qualify the former PI for co-authorship in this instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T16:24:24.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27229" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:47:17.803" Score="26" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to work in a company that has close ties with the academia.  One of the professors (&quot;Dr A&quot;) wasn't/isn't using his funding properly by hiring his long-time girlfriend as his research assistant.  He and his girlfriend showed up at company events as a couple so there's no doubt about their relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I left my previous company, one of the profs (&quot;Dr B&quot;) in the same area of research who works in a different university pointed out to me that the government's funding agency prohibited the researchers from hiring relatives and partners using the money.  At Dr B's department, a prof had been fired by the university for violating this rule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one from my previous workplace and the circle of researchers bothered to report to the funding agency about Dr A's violation.  I was temped to be the whistleblower after leaving that workplace, but was taken back because it's obvious who was the reporter: There were not that many of us in the circle.  Even if the funding agency had a whistleblower policy in place, I doubted if it could protected me as someone who worked in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not seeking any heroic stories about penalizing the profs.  Instead, I'm wondering if anyone has encountered a similar problem.  In addition, I'm also interested to know how the universities and the departments deal with this kind of issue as peacefully as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8661" LastEditorUserId="13560" LastEditDate="2017-12-23T14:32:44.427" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T14:32:44.427" Title="How to become a whistleblower?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;conflict-of-interest&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27155" CreationDate="2014-08-14T17:04:39.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general discussion for the Commentary section mentions this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Commentary material may be peer-reviewed at the Editors' discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look up a sample Policy Forum paper online, you can download the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/citmgr?gca=sci%3B296%2F5568%2F659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citation information&lt;/a&gt;. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;NUCLEAR WASTE  &#xA;Yucca Mountain  &#xA;Rodney C. Ewing and Allison Macfarlane &#xA;Science 26 April 2002:  296 (5568), 659-660. [DOI:10.1126/science.1071886]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then in various formats. Here's the BibTeX entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@article{Ewing26042002,&#xA;author = {Ewing, Rodney C. and Macfarlane, Allison}, &#xA;title = {Yucca Mountain},&#xA;volume = {296}, &#xA;number = {5568}, &#xA;pages = {659-660}, &#xA;year = {2002}, &#xA;doi = {10.1126/science.1071886}, &#xA;URL = {http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5568/659.short}, &#xA;eprint = {http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5568/659.full.pdf}, &#xA;journal = {Science} &#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T17:04:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2014-08-14T18:16:10.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is based on general copyright concepts and should apply to any reasonable copyright laws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any logo is created by somebody, be it a professional graphic-design company or the dean’s nephew, and &lt;strong&gt;without further ado&lt;/strong&gt; this person (or company) holds the copyright to that logo. This mostly means that you cannot do certain things with it (or an altered form of it), which usually include dissemination or using it for commercial purposes. Whether using the logo in a presentation shown to a small audience is included in this depends on your country’s copyright and other aspects. Using it in a publication would almost certainly be a breach of copyright, however. Anyway, let’s assume it would not be legal to use the logo for whatever you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it would be pretty pointless, if, e.g., members of a university were not allowed to use its logo (when representing that university), the creator will usually have authorised the university and its members to use the logo – but this authorisation can be bound to conditions. Furthermore the university itself may impose conditions onto its members regarding the usage of the logo. These conditions may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must not alter the logo (e.g., by recolouring it or changing its aspect ratio). I expect this to be a common condition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The logo must make up a certain percentage of your slides, pages or posters. This is a rather silly condition in my opinion, but I would be surprised, if there were no precedent for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The logo must not be resized. If sufficiently stupid people make the rules, this might happen, however it hardly makes any sense: The logo may not have any physical size to begin with (as many image formats do not contain this information) and how the logo is initially sized when imported in your software depends only on whatever the software’s creator chose to be the default. And even if it has physical dimensions, it does not make any sense to use the same size in print and on projected slides. Something similar holds for sizes in pixels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The word &lt;em&gt;penguin&lt;/em&gt; must be on any page or slide on which the logo appears. I am exaggerating here, but the only way to be sure that there are no silly conditions is to check.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you are lucky, there exists some document which states that members of the university or similar are authorised to use the logo and which contains conditions (if any exist) and requirements of logo usage. &lt;a href=&quot;https://brand.osu.edu/logo/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example thanks to Mkennedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the spectrum, you may have some institute’s logo, which was handrawn by the director’s niece 30 years ago and gone through several iterations of scanning and printing, because the original has been lost. You have no official authorisation to use the logo at all and the legal grey zone you are entering does not change much if you additionally alter the logo (in any remotely respectful manner). It is very likely that nobody will care, let alone sue you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where on this spectrum you are is something only you can decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I would recommend to use such a logo only on one or two slides, so it should not dramatically destroy your colour concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you might consider adapting your presentation’s colour scheme to the logo’s colour scheme, but beware that the latter is not necessarily a good choice for projectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T18:16:10.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27155" CreationDate="2014-08-14T18:45:01.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, a &quot;Comment&quot; is always a publication. However, your question is whether it should be listed in someone's publication list, presumably along side peer-reviewed articles. I believe the relevant criterion, as &lt;em&gt;mkennedy&lt;/em&gt; suggests, is if the comment has itself been peer-reviewed. When yes, it can go in the regular list; if not, then it should presumably be relegated to a &quot;additional publications&quot; list or something of that type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T18:45:01.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T19:37:14.850" Score="5" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in solving some mathematical combinatorial problems. Besides &lt;a href=&quot;http://polymathprojects.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Polymath project&lt;/a&gt;, are there some other online projects where I can state the problems, my approach towards a solution, and then to expect some people to help and collaborate in order to solve the problems and then together publish the solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15945" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T20:50:25.017" Title="How to start a collaborative online research project?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27206" CreationDate="2014-08-14T20:50:25.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the best collaborative mathematical websites is here on Stack Exchange; take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Mathematics on Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; to see how many different mathematical questions are posted with &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/tags&quot;&gt;various topics&lt;/a&gt; and many professionals and mathematicians also collaborate in this site so the user can easilly can learn many mathematical things, find many professional answers and become familiar with new mathematical topics as well. Even by just reading the questions and answers on that site, the user gets familiar with many mathematical topics. It is helpful indeed, at least for me. I strongly encourage you to take a look at that website and enjoy mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T20:50:25.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T21:57:09.850" Score="1" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 27 year old (ex-)physics graduate student and I am quitting this graduate program to enter a new PhD. program in theoretical CS. As for mathematics background - I have always been interested in geometry and have done graduate level courses in Riemannian/algebraic geometry and I have research experience of using harmonic analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my few months of experience of studying theoretical CS I have become increasingly drawn towards subjects like graph theory, spectral graph theory, unique games, complexity and especially quantum complexity theory.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I need to be cautious of while taking this plunge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good are the career prospects in this subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19497" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T22:08:44.267" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:10:14.193" Title="What are the career prospects of doing a theoretical computer science PhD.?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T22:17:48.053" Score="30" ViewCount="5823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry if this is not the right place to ask this sort of question, but I really need an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm from the middle-east and wants to apply for a master's degree in Russia, but lately people are discouraging me about the idea, for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Russian degree is not perceived as &amp;quot;very good&amp;quot; in other parts of Europe (western countries) &amp;amp; USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;difficult to get a job while (or even after) studying, since you are a foreigner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even if you get a job, incomes are LOW&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there have been several racism-related crimes against Black and Hispanic (etc) people, and all-in-all it's a dangerous country.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong, I love Russia and Russian culture, but I'm paying a big amount of money, so I'd love to get things in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: are my concerns reasonable, or are they just the product of American (Hollywood) propaganda? Would you advise me to study abroad in Russia or drop the idea and find somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean: is it worth the time/money/effort or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20715" LastEditorUserId="75368" LastEditDate="2020-09-04T10:36:27.223" LastActivityDate="2020-09-04T10:36:27.223" Title="Are concerns about studying in Russia reasonable?" Tags="&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;russia&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2014-08-15T02:10:15.827" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely waive access to your letters of recommendation.  If you don't, the people reading the letters have reason to suspect that the writers, knowing that you might see the letter, would omit (or at least soften) any negative information that they would otherwise have included. As a result, your failure (or refusal) to waive access can weaken the letters in the eyes of the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T02:10:15.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27216" CreationDate="2014-08-15T02:17:31.680" Score="5" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a paper accepted in a workshop that only publishes its proceedings on its website; one of these workshops that tell you that submitting to the workshop does not prevent you from submitting elsewhere. The paper proposed a new method A, and applied it to problems B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to write a conference version of the paper. The conference version will present method A, apply it to problems B and C with extended experiments, and additionally to problem D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I refer/cite the method A in the conference paper? Does the workshop count at all? In my field (CS), I have been told that the workshops do not count. Yet, it feels wrong to call it a novel method. Is the method A contribution of the conference paper or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T06:46:49.180" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T06:56:54.010" Title="How to refer to a method from a workshop in a conference paper?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26258" CreationDate="2014-08-15T03:27:58.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would check a few articles of the journal you publish in and look at what other author are putting in their biography. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly it will be about your degrees (BSc, MSc, PhD, when and where), the field of research you are interested in and what is your current occupation. In summary you can state anything that shows your experitise in the subject you are discussing in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no one but yourself paid you for the research, you can state it like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;beside a job as &lt;em&gt;your paying job&lt;/em&gt; he/she is working on &lt;em&gt;paper subject&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since &lt;em&gt;date&lt;/em&gt; has been working on &lt;em&gt;paper subject&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T03:27:58.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27193" CreationDate="2014-08-15T03:45:48.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was discussing your question with a software developer and here is what came out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development require some specific skills you will develop in the job, and you will surely not be able to be an expert in development as well as, algorithmic, cryptography, network, AI etc... But if you want to keep working on some other computer science subject, it depends where and which project you decide to work as software developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop an authentication server or an anti-virus you will still have to keep up in computer security, if you develop a network layer for a game you will have to know about how a network work etc... of course you should probably avoid to go to a company that design web sites or implement yet another client data base...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as always: what ever you are interested in you can continue to be interested outside of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2017-12-13T19:02:36.973" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T19:02:36.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2014-08-15T04:16:09.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your university is likely to have an institutional repository. This is probably the most important place to lodge an electronic copy of your dissertation and should definitely be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, but it won't hurt to lodge the manuscript in other places. As others have noted, there are various ad-hoc options here (e.g. commercial networks like Academia.Edu and ResearchGate, your personal webpage, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, there is no open access repository for the social sciences that has the same recognition as ArXiv. However, there are a few repositories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssoar.info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SSOAR&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssrn.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SSRN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econstor.eu/?langselector=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EconStor&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/index.php?langue=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HAL-SHS&lt;/a&gt; that are becoming more widely used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="178" LastEditorUserId="178" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T23:29:39.073" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T23:29:39.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27212" CreationDate="2014-08-15T06:56:54.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are mixing up a few different definitions of &quot;count&quot; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workshop papers typically &quot;count&quot; very little on your CV. That is, having a few workshop papers will not make you graduate much sooner, and they are pretty much useless when you start looking for e.g., a tenure track position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workshop papers, but only those with no formal proceedings, don't &quot;count&quot; as publications. That is, you can hand in the same material again at a conference or journal without being accused of self-plagiarism. The workshop paper on the website of the workshop is basically a preprint. Hence, formally, the work is still unpublished and you can submit it wherever you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workshop papers, no matter if they appeared in formal proceedings or not, can and should be cited. Clearly, if you use this citation to, e.g., support the validity of a statement, this carries less weight if the cited source is a workshop paper than if it is a well-known journal. However, if you want to apply method A, which you have already presented in a workshop, it seems correct to cite the workshop paper. Note that you will still need to describe the method, as you cannot assume the reader of your conference paper to go back and read the workshop paper first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T06:56:54.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2014-08-15T07:29:36.260" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; depend on the country and possibly on the field. The following is based on a European CS perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other answers have noted, asking for a publication within one year or within one semester is - at least for comparably inexperienced (pre-Master) students - a rather unrealistic or at least highly uncontrollable goal (because successful publication is dependent on a number of external factors, not the least of which is what else is submitted to the same venue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking for publications as a prerequisite for graduation, on the other hand, is partially a different topic, which depends highly on the degree aimed for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Master's degree is commonly thought of a certification for specific verifiable skills. Everyone who invests the necessary effort and fulfils the pre-defined requirements is supposed to be able to achieve that degree. As such, I agree it is ethically questionable to outsource the evaluation of a part of the preconditions for that degree to an external body rather than evaluating the work oneself in a somewhat stable manner (i.e. in a way that two students who did more or less the same work get more or less the same mark). Peer reviews wouldn't judge the work by its fulfilment of the rules imposed for the Master's degree, but based on its contribution, suitability to the venue, and its relative value to all other current contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A doctoral degree, in contrast, is not a degree you can reproducibly achieve for doing certain defined tasks. In a way, upon starting to work for a doctoral degree, one leaves the world of studying and doing things in order to fulfil pre-defined requirements, and one enters the world of being an active researcher who does things in order to find new knowledge - which of course means that the final result is partially outside of one's realm of influence. A doctoral degree is a degree that is granted as a result of &lt;em&gt;contributing to the body of knowledge&lt;/em&gt;. Hence, any particular work effort that served for someone to get their doctoral degree will not do for anyone else (because that particular contribution is not new any more), and in the hypothetical situation that all knowledge in the universe has been discovered, no-one can get a doctoral degree any more. This has rather nicely been illustrated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a webcomic&lt;/a&gt;. In this case, requiring peer-reviewed publications makes sense in several respects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer reviewers evaluate the work exactly by the desired criteria, i.e. whether the work is a contribution that is currently notable enough to warrant publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rather than being just an idea that someone uttered, the new finding is validated by the reviews and thus has reliably extended the overall amount of knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due to the aforementioned fact that the amount of knowledge that mankind is familiar with is constantly changing, what was a disadvantage in the case of the Master's degree is exactly the desired outcome here: By trying to make it a peer-reviewed publication, the work is evaluated in comparison to the current state of the art and all other work currently being done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Binding a &lt;strong&gt;Master's degree&lt;/strong&gt; to successful peer-reviewed publications is questionable as the degree should be granted whenever you prove your skills by completing a pre-defined set of conditions such as exams. Binding a &lt;strong&gt;doctoral degree&lt;/strong&gt; to successful peer-reviewed publications, on the other hand, is the entire point, because a doctoral degree says &lt;em&gt;This person has successfully expanded the knowledge available to mankind.&lt;/em&gt; These accomplishments are not measured by exams, but the same way as the quality of all research is measured: by peer reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastEditorUserId="14017" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T17:13:52.577" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T17:13:52.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2014-08-15T13:27:01.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add some argument to the existing answers, which I first give in distilled form for clarity and on whose details I will elaborate afterwards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main Argument&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As scientific publications are reports of research, requiring students to publish essentially requires them to successfully perform research. The essence of research is to explore the unknown and thus its results (and success) are not predictable. Relatedly, successful research requires amongst others luck. And luck is something that successfully finishing a course, degree, etc. should not depend on too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think publications which do not require original research such as reviews are not what we are talking about here. (It may be a way out though: I know somebody, who at some point strongly considered fulfilling the publication requirement of a PHD by publishing a review after many unpublishable research approaches.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While failed research idealistically is also worth reporting (as it has produced the knowledge that some approach does not work), it certainly is much more difficult to publish (leading to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;publication bias&lt;/a&gt;). This holds even more so, if the reason for failure is not that you have run into some long cul-de-sac but there are many short culs-de-sac.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is some research which is very straightforward (and thus has little luck involved) as it basically consists of applying some established method to a new object where no big surprises are to be expected. For example: &lt;em&gt;Determine the distributions of volumes of organ A of rats fed with diet B.&lt;/em&gt; Such research is however arguably better published in one big study going through a series of objects (e.g., organs and diets) instead of thousands of small publications, which all are essentially the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the impact of luck is sufficiently low that assessing students by publications can be considered fair depends on several factors such as the publication threshold of the field or the typical duration of experiments. Arguably this only happens at PHD level in most fields, if at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another related problem is that people being pressured to produce successful research are more likely to fake data, plagiarise or commit other types of fraud. Now, while this is a general and not totally unavoidable problem with students, requiring this to be published may also harm others who try to build upon the respective publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T13:27:01.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24556" CreationDate="2014-08-15T13:38:33.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your relation with your current advisor is not good, you probably don't want to cite him/her as reference or ask them for recommendation. Usually one ask recommendation only from people we are sure they have a good opinion. Maybe someone else from your Master can give a better opinion of you. Or colleagues/postdoc/teaching assistant in your current position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean you need to hide the current situation. It is better to introduce the problem when you say why you want to change position. And be super clear with the situation, if they ask you what was the problem, be open with it. If you are hesitant to speak, they will feel there is something shady and might become suspicious. Also you should not try to discredit your current supervisor, but you can try to explain why his/her expectations were not met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they still insist on contacting your current advisor, then let it be, there is not much more you can do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T13:38:33.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2014-08-15T15:52:19.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am converting &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27191/is-it-ethical-lawful-to-recolor-scale-the-logos#comment57539_27192&quot;&gt;my comment&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27192/15723&quot;&gt;aeismail's answer&lt;/a&gt; as the OP &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27191/is-it-ethical-lawful-to-recolor-scale-the-logos#comment57651_27192&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logotypes are typically covered by what's known as the &lt;em&gt;graphical profile&lt;/em&gt; of organisations like companies, universities and indeed even political parties or NGOs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A graphical profile usually contains things like (but not limited to) color(s), aspect ratio, font(s) and positioning of eventual text elements regarding a logotype in question. Depending on how &quot;complete&quot; or &quot;strict&quot; a graphical profile is, you can do varying degrees of manipulations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's typically not an issue to scale the image, given that the aspect ratio, or the width-height proportions are kept as the original. If the organisation in question has put some thought into their graphical profile, they should have the logotype in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vector-based format&lt;/a&gt;, which scales up/down without any quality loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that scaling up an image is usually not a good idea, if the image is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bitmap&lt;/a&gt; and not vectorised. It's also good to remember that there might be issues regarding readability, i.e. there might be a limit on how much you can scale down the logotype. Logotypes that have &lt;a href=&quot;http://oic.nccu.edu.tw/data/ss_logo/24689962047b2b27651919.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;text within the graphics&lt;/a&gt; tend to have such limitations. [Keen observer might notice how badly the text renders if one does not pay attention when converting vector graphics to raster graphics]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, even if you are allowed to crop a logo (due use as decoration on the edge of a slide or poster) exactly how you can crop the logo might be defined as well. For instance the logo I linked above has 4 predefined cropped versions, that you are allowed to use. Beyond those you are not allowed to crop/scale/change the logotype in any way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just exactly how that might be enforced is a whole different story however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T17:22:48.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27209" CreationDate="2014-08-15T18:43:33.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leading universities (Moscow, St Petersburg and the the state universities in the capitals of the former Soviet Republics) used to be very good during the times of the Soviet Union and the first decade afterwards, and it was possible to get a PhD position anywhere in Europe after finishing them (not a post doctoral position after doing PhD there, however). I am unsure about the most recent situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T18:43:33.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-15T18:46:57.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers and listeners tend to read without no more that 16 or about items on the figure during presentation, so a good table should not be larger that 4x4 or about. This is relatively small size. Use plots if you need to present more data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T18:46:57.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2014-08-15T18:56:57.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the post knowingly belongs to some well known researcher or otherwise a known, notable person, such post can be cited, because even &quot;personal communication&quot; at the end can be a reference. However it is not good as a proof that something questionable is true as this is not a peer reviewed article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author of the post is anonymous or not a scientist, such source is not trustworthy and is only suitable as a raw input data for analysis in social research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T18:56:57.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27002" CreationDate="2014-08-15T19:17:27.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By doing reasonable googling. As you didn't state your topic let me make an example when &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=30&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prmdo=1&amp;amp;q=registration+intitle%3Aconference+magnetism+|+magnetic+material+|+physics+inurl%3Aedu+|+inurl%3Auni+-filetype%3Apdf+-filetype%3Adoc+-filetype%3Appt+-filetype%3Aps+2014..2014&amp;amp;oq=registration+intitle%3Aconference+magnetism+|+magnetic+material+|+physics+inurl%3Aedu+|+inurl%3Auni+-filetype%3Apdf+-filetype%3Adoc+-filetype%3Appt+-filetype%3Aps+2014..2014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;searching for conferences on magnetism&lt;/a&gt;. The operators I use should be self-explaining. Most conferences will be announced on websites of universities or mentioned, to exclude old ones search only within &lt;code&gt;2014..2014&lt;/code&gt;, and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also my &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/455/213&quot;&gt;other answer&lt;/a&gt; which has some links how to use google properly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T19:17:27.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27209" CreationDate="2014-08-15T19:18:12.257" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try not to think of myself as a person influenced by the US propaganda (I am more acquainted with Soviet and late Russian propaganda, more likely). However, I can not really advise you to go for degrees in Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the STEM subjects were traditionally strong in the Soviet time due to the nuclear project. Unfortunately, the professorial level degraded significantly in the post-Soviet 90s, and did not fully recover yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you are probably aware that most of the universities in Russia teach courses in Russian. Unless your Russian is already fluent (or at least basic), be ready to spend a year or so mastering it before you will really address your subjects. Unless you plan to work in Russia afterwards, the knowledge of Russian (as opposed to English) is not something that increase your career progress dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, having summa cum laude BS and MS degrees, as well as a PhD (or Cand Sci as we call it) from strong Moscow Universities myself, I probably can confirm that many HR departments prefer to see something easily recognizable on your CV, e.g. the University of Oxford as a trademark impacts your progress much better than the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology that sounds almost like Inshallah Salam Alaikum University for someone who never heard of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the bright side, studying in Russia you most definitely will experience interesting adventures, befriend the best guys and hang around the most gorgeous young ladies. Also, if you can solve problems you face in Russia, you arguably are ready to solve them in any other place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T19:18:12.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2014-08-15T20:09:03.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To clarify the resizing issue discussed in the comments: for any length-based system of preparing a document, the concept of &quot;size&quot; is indeed a valid one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people who provide official University logos have done their job properly, the logo will be available in postscript and/or PDF formats that have a &lt;em&gt;defined size in centimetres&lt;/em&gt;. These original dimensions are probably intended for reproduction on A4 paper and in that case should not be changed (in the interest of consistency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the .eps logo of my University is defined as being 1.77 cm high. On official, printed A4 letters it is the exact same 1.77 cm in height. In most cases it would be inappropriate to rescale this logo when creating an A4 document. Consistency is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, the concept of measuring Powerpoint slides in pixels is wrong: it's a vectorized document. &lt;em&gt;There are no pixels&lt;/em&gt;. I don't have a copy of Microsoft Powerpoint, but Apple Keynote's default slide size is 1024x768 points (not pixels!). 1 pt = 1/72 inch. I suspect Microsoft's system is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A logical method of scaling to different media would be to scale based on the font size of your main body of text. Most A4 documents have 10pt font. So, if you're producing a poster or presentation with a main font size of 24pt, just make the logo 2.4 times wider and taller. This will keep the logo's size in proportion to the rest of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T07:43:03.333" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T07:43:03.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1301" CreationDate="2014-08-15T21:56:37.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I've not heard of a dedicated &quot;research notebook&quot; in my discipline history, as may be used in the sciences. Like Sylvain Peyronnet's answer it very much depends on how a person works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In history, as Samuel Russell's answer alludes to, most of a person's ideas or arguments are gleaned from primary documents. Because of this it becomes very important to be able to keep a track of the primary documents that may be relevant to your area of research. Personally I use Mendeley to keep track of everything and the notes/annotations I make in that go someway towards forming my research arguments later. I note though that even the use of software like Mendeley is not common in my department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe one of the advantages of the research notebook is that it can keep track of when work was conducted by date, something that I have never heard mentioned in the Humanities. The disadvantage of this is that there is no way of proving when you may have had an idea based on your readings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T21:56:37.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27243" CreationDate="2014-08-15T22:10:17.680" Score="1" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to start my PhD, unfortunately, I did not get any funding. I am thinking of taking a loan so that I could focus more on my PhD studies, but the loan will need to be repaid after PhD. Therefore my question is if my financial situation is likely to be better as a postdoc than as a PhD student. My reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student:&#xA;I have to pay academic fees,&#xA;I do not get funding or a salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a postdoc:&#xA;I do not have to pay academic fees or any other fees to a university (am I right?),&#xA;I may get a salary but may not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many postdocs do get paid? I looked at research groups I am interested in and they say, they do not have funding for postdocs and their postdocs usually are supported by some grant that they themselves have arranged before coming to the group. So is my financial situation going to depend on if I can secure a grant for my research as a postdoc or I should expect to receive a salary? How likely is the success in either ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8784" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T09:34:29.187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T11:27:42.140" Title="What are financial prospects for a postdoc as compared to a PhD student without funding?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27202" CreationDate="2014-08-15T22:31:35.650" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good things rarely come to whistleblowers. Most of the time, absolutely nothing happens [to the accused] and occasionally really bad things happen to the whistleblower in the forms of retribution, blacklisting, defamation/slander lawsuits, etc.  Laws protecting whistleblowers tend to be ineffectual at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to evaluate the benefit/risk ratio yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you were to whisteblow, there are several levels you can do it at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;University office of research integrity/ethics. For example:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.ubc.ca/ethics/british-columbia&quot;&gt;http://research.ubc.ca/ethics/british-columbia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** While this involves a private company, the PI may  also have an affiliation with a university &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;National office of research integrity. For example in the USA: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ori.hhs.gov/&quot;&gt;http://ori.hhs.gov/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**  In Canada: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acaho.org/?document&amp;amp;id=164&quot;&gt;http://www.acaho.org/?document&amp;amp;id=164&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Funding agency whistleblower hotline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Canada: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcr.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/framework-cadre/&quot;&gt;http://www.rcr.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/framework-cadre/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[That all being said: the situation you describe is likely to yield at most a   reprimand from the funding agency if the girlfriend  was actually  working while receiving a salary (and thus it wasn't embezzlement only nepotism). I'm assuming the company already knows -- private companies tend to be more lax about these things compared to public (and even private) universities which receive a majority of the funding from the state.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T00:26:31.630" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T00:26:31.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27233" CreationDate="2014-08-15T23:59:42.607" Score="42" ViewCount="2894" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a new semester of school approaches I have begun updating my syllabi for the classes I teach. I have lately used a clause in the syllabus about no children in the classroom as I feel it is a distraction to both me and the other students. Having been in classes both as a student and as an instructor where children are present, I find it necessary now to have such a written statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a few parents who dislike such a clause. Some of these young parents feel that they should be able to bring their children to class, as they otherwise would need to drop out of school because they do not have enough money to hire a sitter. I feel that this is just &quot;how it is,&quot; and is part of being a responsible adult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do other universities have policies about children in the classroom? How can I reach a happy medium of not coming across as a complete jerk, but still maintain a level of education in my classroom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added:&lt;/strong&gt; I am of the feeling that we many times need to make a rule because of that &quot;one person&quot; who ruins it for everyone. My stand as it is right now is that we need to come down firmly in writing, then adjust with leniency as people show they can handle having their child in class. I am not ridiculous about my classroom rules, but I prefer to give it straight, then relax the standard if needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a matter of scope, I teach at a conservative Christian university. Many of the students married young and have a child or two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14518" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T15:00:54.087" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:00:54.087" Title="Children in the Classroom" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27230" CreationDate="2014-08-16T01:43:26.587" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities I know have both a cultural understanding and formal regulations that the only people who are allowed in the classroom are those that are registered for the course, except where explicitly permitted by the instructor.  (Thus for instance one has the notion of &quot;auditing&quot; a course: this basically means that you are not signed up to take the course for a grade and will not complete the required coursework / take any exams, but you do have the instructor's permission to sit through the class meetings.)  This is a defensible regulation: without it, who knows who would show up for a course, taking up possibly limited space and occupying the attention of the instructor and/or the other students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children are people, right?  I would thus frame the discussion in that way: you're not discriminating against someone because they're a parent.  You're just not allowing people in the classroom who are not registered for the course.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am somewhat surprised that this is a problem for you at all, and I wonder where you are teaching and if the cultural mores and regulations are different there.  I don't know of any American university in which people would think they could bring children to class except in some truly exceptional/emergency situation in which they have received the instructor's permission.  In any case, I would advise you to look up your university's specific policy on &quot;unregistered attendees&quot;.  Assuming it is along the lines of what I am suggesting you should, at most, modify your syllabus to quote from and/or link to this general policy.  Don't make the issue about child care at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: I just looked at your profile and saw that you say you are in South Korea.  As I said, both cultural mores and regulations may well be different there, and if it is very common for students to bring children to class, that makes me much less confident that rules or customs are being violated.  So to adjust my answer for this: &quot;Do other universities have policies about children in the classroom?&quot; Not policies specific to children, but more general policies and also different expectations that mostly prevent the issue from coming up.  But I don't know what other South Korean universities do and anyway, your university is &lt;em&gt;your university&lt;/em&gt;: it is (I suppose!) allowed to do things its own way.  If you do not find written regulations of the sort I mentioned above, I would talk to your colleagues -- and especially, to tenured faculty; I also see that you are a master's student, which also may be relevant in terms of how much you are permitted to rock the boat -- and find out how they deal with the situation.  If several other faculty members have successful &quot;no children in the classroom&quot; policies, then you should be able to implement yours.  If you are the only one you know in your university who wants a &quot;no children in the classroom&quot; policy: because you are a graduate student instructor, I would advise against pursuing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Further Added&lt;/b&gt;: Please read the comments below about &quot;drop ins&quot;.  The policy I describe above is very standard in the United States.  It seems that in certain European universities the culture (and perhaps regulations) are quite different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T17:19:18.683" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T17:19:18.683" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27230" CreationDate="2014-08-16T01:57:31.263" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my years of teaching in Asia I have had one class session where a student brought a child with him. It was an exceptional case but I was surprised he did not ask for permission. The child was well behaved (maybe 7 years old) and sat in the back not disturbing the class in any way. For this reason, I let it slide and I might be willing to accept it happening in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However,  I do make it quite clear to my students, I am the captain of this airplane and I will not tolerate ANYTHING which negatively impacts the learning environment. This includes anyone who disturbs the learning process in any way. I agree with Pete L. Clark - &lt;strong&gt;it is not a childcare issue. You need to focus the students on it being a learning environment issue.&lt;/strong&gt; If a student does not turn off their ringing phone, out they go. If someone dresses in a way which distracts students or me, out they go. If anything exists which negatively impacts the learning process for even one of my students, out they go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty strict on this and I don't generally have problem because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your core question: How do you maintain a level of education while not being a jerk? You focus on the real issue. &lt;strong&gt;The real issue is not kids, the issue is disruptions.&lt;/strong&gt; While you can be forgiving and understanding, to do so in a way which negatively impacts your students should never be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T01:57:31.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27250" CreationDate="2014-08-16T04:02:10.517" Score="6" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some PhD programs offer students an opportunity to either pay for the PhD themselves or to take a teaching assistantship in exchange for a tuition waiver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from a lack of teaching duties, are the work requirements and responsibilities of a paid PhD student any different from those of the teaching assistantship students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T14:14:25.077" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T18:19:11.420" Title="How does the PhD experience differ for paying students?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27230" CreationDate="2014-08-16T04:12:43.193" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a parent and a college student is tough. Not everybody has good access to childcare and even if they do, things happen. Surely the mere presence of a child in class can't be much of a distraction except for a few moments at the start of class. If the child is quiet and well-behaved, why not allow it? (Your policy could say that distractions, including noisy children, are not allowed.) It'll make some of your students' lives just a bit easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12861" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T04:12:43.193" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T05:46:41.230" Score="1" ViewCount="1167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 3 year BS MS dual degree student (at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) in Physics and I want to learn computational skills for my future career needs because we don't have computational physics course till the 8th semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we have any provision of winter internship in India?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20751" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T08:30:58.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T19:53:34.970" Title="Winter internship for Indian students (computational physics)" Tags="&lt;students&gt;&lt;internship&gt;&lt;india&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27146" CreationDate="2014-08-16T08:57:16.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It surely depends on the field we are talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In medicine the number method now is the standard, probably because it improves overall readability of the text. Important references are often cited literally (&quot;Smith et al. demonstrated that... [58]&quot;) and general statements by a collection of other researchers (&quot;Many workgroups found...[23-27,57,89]). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in books and reviews where the citations go in the hundreds You appreciate if the text is not clutterd by parentheses with long names but has only small-print numbers in exponential style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T08:57:16.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T09:09:46.770" Score="3" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out which undergraduate colleges are most conducive to graduate school applications, but it seems to me that (with few notable exceptions) my two main criteria that lead to this sort of success are mutually exclusive. Are there any schools in the U.S. that have both an extensive mathematical curriculum and a focus on their undergraduates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schools known for being strong in math (such as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford), seem to be very heavily focused on their graduates, with comparatively less attention payed to their undergrads. I'd like to avoid classes taught be TAs and be able to learn from and get to know my professors, both for the improved learning experience and the improved graduate school recommendations that will inevitably eventually result. Perhaps even more importantly, it seems that research as an undergraduate tends to improve students' chances at graduate schools; thus, colleges that have significant research at the undergraduate level are most appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, schools with the above desirable criterion tend to be less mathematically rigorous, especially in pure math. I've found a handful of schools that will even keep a math major occupied for a whole four years if they've taken only introductory multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. I don't want to have to sacrifice an education for attention -- I also want to go to a school considered highly for graduate school that has extensive course options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the first criterion a fair voting system and the second a dictator? Is there any intersection of the above specifications? My own rudimentary research suggests a few options, but these hardly make a list even the best students can expect to be comfortable applying to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make sure I have the best options for graduate school in the future, both in being a qualified applicant with the opportunity for stellar recommendations and in having learned the extensive mathematics required to give me a head start for future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20756" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T08:18:23.273" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T08:19:17.897" Title="Criteria for choosing undergraduate school to prepare for graduate study: &quot;focus on undergrads&quot; &amp; &quot;extensive rigorous curriculum&quot; mutually exclusive?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27228" CreationDate="2014-08-16T09:33:58.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postdoc is a time limited academic job, a PhD is a research student position. The latter is usually financed but does not have to be. I have never heard of a Postdoc that did not involve payment. In your question you seem to indicate there would be a choice between the two but a postdoc, as the name implies, requires a PhD so one must go through a research education (and receive a PhD) before applying for a postdoc position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T09:33:58.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27228" CreationDate="2014-08-16T10:04:49.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is my financial situation going to depend on if I can secure a&#xA;  grant for my research as a postdoc or I should expect to receive a&#xA;  salary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not getting a grant or getting paid, it is getting paid by the institution you work for or getting your salary from a grant giving institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many postdocs do get paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As far as I know) All of them. Depending on the country you are talking about it may even be illegal to employ someone without pay.&#xA;However, (as @virmaior pointed out) there are some &quot;postdocs&quot; in Japan that are not paid and have no work requirements. At least in Europe and the US this is not common and in most cases this is probably a bad idea for someone looking for a regular postdoc position (see my comment below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How likely is the success in either ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on your field, the quality of your work, ... . We can not answer that but you can talk to your peers /supervisor about the job market to get an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[as a postdoc] I do not have to pay academic fees or any other fees to&#xA;  a university&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One general remark: If you are not not getting a (paid) postdoc position or a grant you should try to find a job in the industry anyway. Finding a more senior position is usually much harder than finding a postdoc position.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastEditorUserId="16086" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T11:27:42.140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T11:27:42.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T11:08:14.933" Score="0" ViewCount="1372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a phd position in stem cell biology and have been trying very hard for the last 6 months in Germany or any European country. I have  tried to contact many professors via mail but have nothing by way of a good response.&#xA;I have a good academic record and score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please help me out how to best proceed or where I may be lacking in my method so far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T11:19:24.047" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T12:38:19.050" Title="Is it difficult to get admission to a phd in stem cell biology in Europe?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;germany&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27254" CreationDate="2014-08-16T12:35:48.433" Score="11" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a coment, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27230/children-in-the-classroom/27232?noredirect=1#comment57722_27232&quot;&gt;David Richerby&lt;/a&gt; pointed out that in his university in the UK everybody was entitled to attend to any lectures, except for Medicine. I have also found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/home/en/about-hhu/further-links/staff-unit-equality-family-and-diversity/studying-diversity-whats-on-at-the-hhu/dual-orientation-internship-for-sixth-form-pupils.html&quot;&gt;Dusseldorf&lt;/a&gt; has the same policy, but no reasons are quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential missuse of the information in the class &quot;oh, I saw a rash like that the other day, it is nothing&quot;. (But no one has died because &quot;the condition number of that matrix is not SO bad...&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sensitive information, like some details about patients, necessary for the education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they don't seem too strong. They would both apply to med students, or just people that signed up for a few courses, but are not going to be doctors (think some biologist that may be interested in taking Pathology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of an official reason for this policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T12:53:13.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T20:45:00.413" Title="Why only medicine lectures are closed to the public?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;attendance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27252" CreationDate="2014-08-16T12:48:18.970" Score="9" ViewCount="2090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a few days from completion of an industrial internship that is required for my Masters degree.  I have had a bad experience with the supervisor of this internship, who has insulted me several times during my internship period. He is mean, he gets angry very easily, he is bad-tempered and most importantly he is ignorant: he never knew what I must do as a trainee, it is me who proposes the tasks to him. Finally, now that I have finished the main task of my internship, he says it is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completing the internship and the degree involves reporting on my internship to an academic jury.  Given this bad experience, how should I handle my report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not want to give an acknowledgement to my field supervisor in my report: is this a bad thing to do? I mean, will the jury ask me why I did not write an acknowledgement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the jury asks about my evaluation of the company where I did the internship, should I be honest in telling them what happened, or should I lie and tell them everything was fine?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20759" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T05:05:39.343" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T10:08:28.660" Title="How to report on an academically required internship with a bad supervisor relationship" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27241" CreationDate="2014-08-16T12:55:38.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to decide for yourself which sort of school is the best fit for you educationally (this is a highly personal decision, and a school that's a wonderful fit for one person might drive another crazy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't think a focus on undergraduates matters much regarding preparation and admission for graduate school.  Not even in the ways you'd think it should, like getting good letters of recommendation: there are disproportionate numbers of students in top graduate programs who attended institutions nobody would describe as focused on undergraduates, so this is clearly not keeping them from being admitted.  In particular, faculty at universities with strong math programs know what it takes to be admitted to top graduate schools, and they provide what's needed.  You might have to put in some effort to make sure you don't fall through the cracks, and this could be a hardship depending on your personality, but for many people it's not so difficult and in any case it's a valuable life skill to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to judge universities by how well they will prepare you for graduate school, the main factor I'd look at is how many students they send to graduate programs you might like to attend.  If the number is large (relative to the size of the undergraduate program, of course), then that's a very good sign.  Clearly they're doing something right, and you'll have the benefits of a strong peer group already as a undergraduate.  If the number is small, then you should worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T12:55:38.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27246" CreationDate="2014-08-16T13:58:23.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a better person than him. Write the acknowledgement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would think that telling your jury that he was a very hard man to work for is fine, but I wouldn't call him incompetent to people who are effectively his peers. I definitely wouldn't recommend him other students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T13:58:23.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27244" CreationDate="2014-08-16T14:14:14.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process is going to be very different from one country to the next. But from what I have seen so far, the three most common ways to start a PhD in Europe are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reacting to a job offer. If there is a specific position available and no local student that's been pre-selected for it, it's possible to come to a university to start a PhD. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coming in contact with a professor through a course (possibly while doing some preliminary research work with said professor). This would require (re)doing a master's degree in the same university, with an eye toward the PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coming with your own funding, very often a grand from a foreign government or possibly from a private company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know anybody who started a PhD by contacting a professor/research group out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T14:14:14.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2014-08-16T14:15:40.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are usually 4 ways to pay for a PhD in my experience in the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Out of pocket with your own money or with loans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a fellowship or scholarship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a Teaching Assistant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a Graduate Research Assistant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive. TA and GRAships usually come with a whole or partial tuition waiver or payment of tuition. Fellowships and scholarships may come from the university, another government entity (e.g. the US National Science Foundation or Department of Energy), or a private source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my estimation, a GRA or fully-funded private fellowship is the best way to pay for graduate school for those whose focus is research because there are no teaching or grading responsibilities to take time away from working on your research. If you intend to go on to a professorship, starting with a TA for the first few semesters or years may help you learn something about teaching, but I wouldn't have wanted the TA responsibilities during the time I was writing up my dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself, I had a GRA with my full tuition paid plus a small privately endowed fellowship administered by my university which supplemented my income. Also, at the time, having a GRA position gave me health insurance. TA and GRA jobs are usually limited to 20 hours a week during the long semesters in the US since you are likely to be in classes at the same time. My advisor frequently upped me to 40 hours per week during the summer and winter breaks to supplement my income further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paying your own way, whether with fellowships, loans, or your own personal savings means that you aren't being paid by the advisor. A GRA position may be required to focus on a particular research project that funds the existence of the position. If the money comes from their start-up package or a private source, then you may be given much more freedom in your choice of research work, but either way, the GRA position is a job that allows the advisor to direct your work much more than if you fund yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T18:19:11.420" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T18:19:11.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27246" CreationDate="2014-08-16T17:16:26.167" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the jury asks about my appreciation of the company where I did the internship: should I be honest in telling them what happened and that my advisor is too incompetent? Or should I lie and tell them everything was fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do the same as in any other case when a professional relationship goes wrong. You need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on the facts.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;The project was not going smoothly&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is a fact. &lt;em&gt;&quot;We had communication issues, so I ended up delivering not what they wanted&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  is also ok. &lt;em&gt;&quot;The project was going badly because the advisor is incompetent&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is you trying to assign blame. Stay clear of that. You do not need to lie to the committee and pretend that all was great, but try to refrain from presenting your own interpretation of the events. It is understandable that you will want to make sure that the committee understands that the issues were due to no fault of yours, but by badmouthing your advisor (no matter how warranted) you are likely to reach the opposite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take the high road.&lt;/strong&gt; If it is customary that students write an acknowledgement to their advisors, write a short, polite acknowledgement thanking him to allow you to  work in his team, if you can thank him for nothing else. Rocking the boat over something so minor seems unwise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whatever you do, &lt;strong&gt;stay professional.&lt;/strong&gt; Acting out of anger and a lust to &quot;get back&quot; on your advisor for his insults &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; backfire on you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your follow-up information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(retracted - some racist comments as well as statements about unduly long work hours)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth, maybe even more important point is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something really bad went on (like in your case), &lt;strong&gt;find out what the correct official action to take is&lt;/strong&gt;. File an official complaint with your university, or even talk to a lawyer and have him look into filing a law suite (racist comments in the workspace are certainly grounds for a civil law suite where I live). Don't take a placebo action that does not hurt and does not help, such as not including him in your acknowledgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other 3 points stay in place - even if something terrible went down, you need to stay professional and you need to focus on the facts, in your official reports as much as when you talk to your jury about the incident(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T11:32:18.710" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T11:32:18.710" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27310" CreationDate="2014-08-16T17:23:50.060" Score="10" ViewCount="12090" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have information about the standard salary packages for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action fellowships inside a Initial Training Network (ITN)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20194" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T13:26:38.640" Title="Salary of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowships" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27245" CreationDate="2014-08-16T18:55:47.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) greatly restricts who can see or discuss medical records. While most &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_rounds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;grand rounds&lt;/a&gt; tend to be obscure the patient's identity, there could be an abundance of caution. Note that there is an exemption from HIPAA for grand round presentations -- if the audience are only medical personnel (including students):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The HIPAA Privacy Rule allows physicians and staff to use and disclose PHI [private health information] without a patient's written authorization for purposes related to treatment, payment, and health care operations.  It further defines &amp;quot;heath care operations&amp;quot; to include &amp;quot;to conduct training programs in which students, trainees, or practitioners in areas of health care learn under supervision to practice or improve their skills as health care providers.&lt;a href=&quot;http://hipaa.bsd.uchicago.edu/PHI_In_Education.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt; [Cite]&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason in the United States that grand rounds are often closed is the prevalence of various types of protesters -- e.g. from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt; or from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-psychiatry&lt;/a&gt; movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[That all being said, at my university most of the grand rounds are open unless closed at the request of the speaker or for other reasons. However, they aren't advertised so you would have to be a department member or on the mailing list to know when and where to go. They are also behind the security umbrella of the university, so you would need an ID card to get past the guard at the front door of the building. So whether you call that 'open' is up to you.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T20:45:00.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2014-08-16T19:38:23.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind though that most such internships at places like IIT, IISc, ISI, TIFR etc. are likely to be unpaid and you will most probably have to bear costs on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to getting them is to email appropriate professors that you like and then ask them if you could, given their availability, work with them over winter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if there are &lt;em&gt;industrial&lt;/em&gt; research internships in India over winter. Most of them seem to be restricted to summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; When I was a graduate student in ISI, there were 2 students from IISER who worked in our lab for a couple of months over winter (Dec-Jan)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T19:38:23.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T20:03:52.907" Score="5" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a theoretical physics PhD student from France. I have no papers after 5 years of my PhD. The problem I am working on has hit many road blocks and even my supervisor has no clue how to proceed. The results I have obtained are valid only for some aspects of my problem. So I could probably publish a paper, but if I do, it will not be a high impact factor journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: can I apply for a post-doc without publishing any paper from my PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply in North America/Europe etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20768" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T20:17:18.590" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T21:03:45.390" Title="Can I apply for a post-doc in theoretical physics without publications?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27256" CreationDate="2014-08-16T20:53:48.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could &lt;em&gt;apply&lt;/em&gt; to a post-doc without a high-school degree -- an application only involves sending in the application package. No one is going to stop you from mailing it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That says nothing about whether or not you will &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; the post-doc, let alone if the secretary will just toss it in the recycling bin before it even gets seen by the faculty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the eligibility requirements of a post-doc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How competitive is the post-doc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first question, most post-docs require a PhD in hand or late-ABD status. Most do not require publications and if they do, they will state that clearly on the application page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is the real question. Post-docs are usually extremely competitive. In order to be a finalist, you have to be n+1 of whatever quality and quantity the faculty is looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your peer group has no publications (0) and you have 1 publication, you will stand out as the +1. Since it's not possible to have -1 publications, it's hard to stand out from a group  with 0 publications to your name. If your peers have 10 publications, you need to have either more in number or more in quality, or something else that your competitors don't have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some post-docs in some fields value other things than research publications. I occasionally read for post-docs in the humanities and there the quality of your dissertation and proposal is more important as most post-docs in those fields apparently have zero or near zero publications at the ABD stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, there are some post-docs that just aren't very competitive -- either because of geography or topic or paucity of funding or other reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the social/human factor. Many people get post-docs on the strength of their recommendation letters, as Pete Clark mentions. Strong recommendations attesting to your brilliance and to the problems you faced with your current project would go far in convincing a postdoc committee to take a chance with you. You could also try to ask your supervisor to use some of her/his social capital to try to persuade a colleague at another university to take you on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T21:03:45.390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T21:03:45.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17841" CreationDate="2014-08-17T04:40:03.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics, it is indeed &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to be accepted to a PhD program without a bachelor's degree, but only in special cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the person (the candidate) has to be exceptionally precocious and gifted with mathematical aptitude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the person has to apply to a very strong PhD program - the kind where the math faculty might have enough sway to convince the university to accept the person. At non-elite schools, the graduate college is likely to veto anything like this. And extremely strong letters of recommendation will be needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the person must have at least one strong faculty advocate at the destination university who is able to sway opinion to get the person accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can guess, this is not something that happens very often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is for the best. It is a serious risk for a school to accept someone to a PhD program who does not have a bachelor's degree - perhaps the person will fizzle out. Worse, perhaps the person would have been able to complete a PhD if they earned a bachelor's degree first, but they ended up not earning the PhD when they were accepted early to a PhD program. For these reasons, it takes a truly exceptional candidate - more than just &quot;seems able to get a PhD&quot; - to convince a school to accept them to a PhD program without a bachelors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T04:40:03.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27267" CreationDate="2014-08-17T07:37:30.217" Score="6" ViewCount="10917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have stumbled once again over the meanings of &quot;issue&quot; and &quot;volume&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12541-010-0035-y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which declares both fields. Now I used JabRef's &lt;code&gt;DOI to BibTeX&lt;/code&gt; to pull the info and it worked as expected. But it only pulled the volume number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes I noticed the DOI database only pulls the issue number for an article, more than only giving the volume number. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose one should prefer using the issue because there are (usually) issues of a journal (&quot;magazine&quot;) in a year... right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10635" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:15:42.390" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T07:48:29.490" Title="What is the purpose of &quot;issues&quot; and &quot;volumes&quot; in journal publications in relation to DOIs and citations?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;doi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2963" CreationDate="2014-08-17T08:02:22.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elsevier journals now offer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/about/content-innovation/audioslides-author-presentations-for-journal-articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AudioSlides&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;short, webcast-style presentations that are shown next to the online article on ScienceDirect. This format gives authors the opportunity to present their research in their own words, helping readers to quickly understand what a paper is about and appreciate its relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T08:02:22.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2963" CreationDate="2014-08-17T08:06:03.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With many, perhaps most)  journals it is possible to add materials,often referred to as &lt;em&gt;Supplementary Material&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Supporting Information&lt;/em&gt; or something similar. This can be word files, powerpoint files, excel files (or equivalents), media files (sound, movies, animations) containing material that support the article but cannot be accommodated within the usual journal format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am, however, not sure if a slide presentation of the article material would be permitted since it would not necessarily add anything new but rather be a simplification of the article content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T09:13:29.257" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T09:13:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27244" CreationDate="2014-08-17T08:08:16.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As aid before, the process is very different from country to country. I personally have experience in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More and more institutions move to PhD programs. Sometimes it is the only way to do a PhD, and Professors are discouraged to hire students without them going through the initial assessment of the PhD program committee. Usually, these programs are easily to find on the web. See e.g. here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vbcphdprogramme.at&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vbcphdprogramme.at&lt;/a&gt;, or here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/education/phd/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/education/phd/overview/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for job advertisements at dedicated portals like ResearchGate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.researchgate.net&lt;/a&gt;) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eth-gethired.ch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eth-gethired.ch&lt;/a&gt; in Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contacting Professors out of the blue might work in some cases/disciplines. In fields or countries were industry pays much, much more than academia, Professors have problems in recruiting talented PhD students, e.g. computer science or generally in Switzerland. They are glad if they can finally put a qualified person who does the work on the grant they already got month ago. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20529" LastEditorUserId="20529" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T12:29:09.787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T12:29:09.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27263" CreationDate="2014-08-17T08:52:20.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess your question is about citing an article. If the article you want to cite  is in a journal which have both volume and issue number (this is very often the case). Then you should write both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is the booklet number in which the article was published. They are grouped together to make a volume. Often one volume correspond to all the issues of one given year, but not always. Page numbers usually run sequentially through a volume (issue 2's first page will be numbered one higher than the last page of issue 1 and so on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the article in a (paper) library is easier if you have both the volume and issue number since you directly know which booklet you need to consult. While helpful, the issue number isn't strictly required in order to find a particular article. Indeed, libraries often bind all the issues of a single volume into a hard-backed book where the page number is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today with electronic paper those notions might have lost their meaning,  and in the end, the DOI is probably the best way to share a reference.  However,  it is still in the habit to provide both issue and volume number, and given what they mean, it does not really make sense to have only one of them. The last word will go to the editor of the journal you are publishing the reference in and the bibliography style may or may not include the issue number. So for your personal bibliography, it seems safer to have it for the day you publish in a journal which request issue numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this particular paper in jabref, I don't know why only one get pulled. Maybe it is a bug, or a database error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T08:27:52.073" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T08:27:52.073" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27246" CreationDate="2014-08-17T09:25:55.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if writing an acknowledgement is the norm in such a kind of report, acknowledgements remain a kind of gesture, which should have no impact on a professional evaluation. If such gestures have to be performed for their own sake, they become pointless and worthless¹: If literally everybody is being acknowledged, being acknowledged isn’t worth anything. Thus for acknowledgement having any point, there must be at least a small chance of, e.g., an advisor not being acknowledged, if this person really does not deserve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your advisor did everything to be not worthy of any acknowledgement (as it sounds like), the only reason to acknowledge him would be that he still has impact on your grade or career². Assuming that this isn’t the case, the jury should not ask you about this missing acknowledgement, as your relationship to your supervisor should (idealistically) not play into your evaluation. (I will come back to this in a moment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your defense (or interview with the jury), I second the already given advice: Avoid appearing to place blame on your supervisor, but focus on the facts instead. Depending on what the mode of the defense is, e.g., if you are mainly asked questions and do not have to freely report on big chunks, you might not even need to address the issues yourself, unless asked. If you are however asked, e.g., why you made some decision on your project and it was due to your advisor commanding this decision, clearly say so. This also applies to the acknowledgement: If you are asked why you did not include one, it is the jury who brings up this topic and not you, and you can thruthfully say that you felt that there was nothing to acknowledge – but never bring on this topic on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that you should be prepared for: If your internship was sufficiently long, the jury might hold the opinion that it was your responsibility to report severe problems to the university, such that it could assign you a new internship position or similar. Whether this opinion is justified depends on several factors, such as how much time this would have wasted and how high the risk would have been that such a complaint would have backfired at you and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if it’s not too late for this: Talk to your student body. They better know your specific situation than we do and might have experience with similar cases. Also, they have the means to drastically reduce the chances that this company ever gets an intern from your university again (I assume that they keep a list of good and bad companies for such internships).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, talk to the jury (or another appropriate person), after everything is over. They also will have means to drastically reduce the chances that this company ever gets an intern from your university again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ And you might enter some euphemism treadmill which ends up in a special acknowledgement language which has nothing to do with actual language anymore, as it is the case for employment reference letters in my country.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;² Be aware that there might be not-so-obvious ties between your advisor and members of your university.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T09:25:55.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27273" CreationDate="2014-08-17T11:37:05.120" Score="27" ViewCount="3815" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you do when you've sent a paper on your fancy new algorithm to a conference, and before the conference has replied to you, you spot a newly submitted paper on arXiv on the same algorithm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reactions I can imagine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You immediately submit your work to arXiv and/or open-source your code to &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot; you were working on it too (or at least as much as that might be worth at this point)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You just wait and see if the conference accepts it (but then what?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You withdraw your paper entirely -- you &amp;quot;lost&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You totally ignore it -- it's not &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; until it's peer-reviewed, so you might still be &amp;quot;first&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, who typically gets credit if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your paper is accepted, and is first to be published outside of arXiv&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your paper is declined, and is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; first to be published outside of arXiv&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading the other group's paper more carefully (I'd only had a chance to glance at it yesterday, and was alarmed because several of the key words and concepts were exactly the same as ours), and it seems like they might not have discovered the same algorithm after all -- it's difficult for me to tell because their notation and terminology varies considerably from ours, but there's a chance that we've found different algorithms, even though several key concepts are the same. I'll continue looking into it, but just thought I'd mention this to add more context. At least now I'm a little bit more hopeful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1201" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T01:47:07.193" Title="What to do when you spot a paper on arXiv with the same essential material as yours?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27271" CreationDate="2014-08-17T12:21:12.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your paper gets accepted in this conference, you win. The submission date is before the arxiv uploading and no one can claim you plagiarized the arxiv preprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your paper gets rejected, you probably lost. In subsequent submissions you have to cite the original arxiv preprint, make extra effort and experiments to differentiate your work from theirs (by augmenting your original work) and claim that both works have reached independently to those parallel findings. Still, this lowers your work's novelty and might lead to another rejection. In that case, the other side might lost too, because your original rejection might also signify that the algorithm is not that seminal or important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you should consider in what ways you can expand your work to actually provide novel content in comparison to the arxiv preprint, in case of rejection. In case of acceptance, you have nothing to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I really liked the other answers. Submitting to arxiv the OP's paper as soon as possible is probably the best thing to do. Also sharing co-authorship (in case of rejection) is of course the ethical / right thing to do and that is what the OP should do. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Case 1. There is some foul play on the other side. In that case, they do not want to share co-authorship but patent / steal the idea. In that case, co-operation is not likely to happen&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Case 2. No foul play involved and the OP's paper gets rejected. The other side has already patented those results by their arxiv preprint. They may even already submitted the paper to another conference (many times that is when you upload preprints). Why would they share co-authorship? Would the OP share co-authorship if his paper got accepted? Will he include the other paper in the related work section (of course he should) in his camera ready version (in&#xA;case of acceptance), when most of the results are identical? According to his comments he is not going to do that (when he has nothing to lose by that if his paper got accepted). Why does everyone assume that the other side will cooperate? These are serious questions that are easily answered on an ethical basis but the practical side is always more complicated. And what if the other side is more famous / established than the OP? Sometimes in that case they may even refuse co-authorship on that fact alone.  Co-operation and co-authorship usually happens between similar / equal parties but they are harder to achieve when the other side has more leverage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really hope things work for the OP. But if his paper gets accepted he should definitely cite the other work and explain the situation in his camera ready version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T22:55:45.630" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T22:55:45.630" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27271" CreationDate="2014-08-17T12:32:25.670" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the best answer is some combination of 1. and 2.  Because you submitted the paper for review before the other work -- call it paper X -- appeared on the arxiv, the community will readily believe that your work does not rely on paper X.  (At first I wrote &quot;completely clear that your work does not rely&quot;, but that's too strong: it's possible that you had some prior contact with the authors of paper X and learned about their work before it was published.  But from your description that didn't actually happen, so no problem there.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are in a fortunate situation: because you submitted the work to the conference before the arxiv posting, you have established your independent priority.  The fact that the report hasn't come back yet has nothing to do with that.  With respect to the submission, it would be reasonable to just wait for the report -- I am assuming that since it is a conference, it will come back within a month or so?  If your paper is accepted, then you should include in the published version and also in your conference talk the information that similar (or the same...) work was independently done in paper X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it would be a good idea to write immediately to the authors of paper X and let them know about your work.  If you are in a field where the conference paper will be supplemented by a later journal paper, then depending upon the degree of similarity you may want to consider a joint publication.  If not, then your journal papers should cocite each other: this establishes that &quot;you both have priority&quot;, which is certainly possible, and then both works should be publishable.  (But in my opinion a joint paper is the better option if the work is very similar: does the community need two versions of the same work?  Can everyone be counted on to know about and value the two works equally?  Better to join forces: that seals it.)  Depending upon the response you receive and the timing it might be a good idea to post your submission to the arxiv as well, with a note explaining the chronology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with both 3. and 4.  First, it does not matter who did the work chronologically first but rather that each work was done independently and before the other was &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;There does not need to be a &quot;winner&quot; and a &quot;loser&quot; here: you can both &quot;win&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;  It is good that research communities operate in this way, much better than your option 4.: no one has control over which referee report comes back first or which paper goes to press first or anything like that, so if this were the standard it would be at the very least quite unfair and in fact open to all kinds of ethical issues and abuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Note&lt;/b&gt;: One of the comments asks whether the work was stolen.  It seems that the only plausible way for this to happen is for there to be some collusion between the authors of paper X and either the conference organizers or the chosen referees of your paper.  This type of behavior is in my experience extremely rare, so I don't want to address it in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T21:12:19.587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T21:12:19.587" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14112" CreationDate="2014-08-17T13:32:10.503" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of University's Email Address or Personal Email varies on content being communicated in the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are communicating about your assignments or discussing something in the capacity of being a student, e.g., discussing topic or classes schedule, &lt;strong&gt;you should prefer your University's Email address to communicate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are inquiring something general, e.g., Admissions information, fee structure, etc., you can use your Email. However &lt;strong&gt;it would be better to use your University's Email.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20784" LastEditorUserId="20784" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T16:13:23.050" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T16:13:23.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27209" CreationDate="2014-08-17T14:00:46.130" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will extend Dmitry's great answer, to answer the later part of your question: &quot;Any alternative suggestions&quot; - part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teaching quality:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clearly stated (and pretty obvious from History) that Russia used to do a great job in terms of science, but things have changed after since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Living Prospects:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what is the real motivation behind your decision to pursue studies and possible career opportunities in Russia, but to me it Russia does not seem like calm waters. Overall, the country is facing political difficulties which may result in economic difficulties which in turn would affect the job market. Additionally, the country is now well known for its racist behaviour (as you have noted). I don't know how would that reflect to your assessment during studies, and living quality overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The propaganda consideration:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same way you assume that you might be biased by the Hollywood propaganda, you should expect the world to be biased by it as well. If we assume that you get a quality degree in Russia, it might not have the same value outside of Russia. What if you decide to switch from Russia to another country afterwards? That would put you immediately in an unfavourable position, especially if you move towards west.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternatives:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend you to have a look at European universities. It depends what your priorities are. If your priority is high quality teaching that you could start with Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavian countries etc. If you want a more laid back working atmosphere you could have a look at South or Eastern Europe: Spain, Czech Republic, Poland. However, if you want to have a strong scientific background, with considerably less living expenses than the other Western Europe countries have a look at Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As the other members have asked, it would be nice to add details about the amount of money you are going to invest, and the field of study you are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T14:00:46.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27280" CreationDate="2014-08-17T15:25:51.590" Score="9" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have coauthored two papers, which are strongly related. The younger paper is thus citing the first and the older paper is annoucing the second along the lines of “a study of aspect X will be published elsewhere“. As ArXiv enables you to update your papers, it would be possible to include a citation to the new paper in the old paper after the aforementioned sentence. This might save a reader of the old paper some time with finding the new paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this breaks some paradigms that were inherently fulfilled by any pre-internet citation, i.e., that you could not cite future work¹ and that there are no loops in citation graphs (i.e., there can be no papers A₁, …, such that A₁ cites A₂, which cites A₃, which cites …, which cites A₁). Thus I find it conceivable that such a citation into the future may cause some problems, for example some weird software behavior (ignoring for the example’s sake that this would arguably be the software’s fault).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any such issue, which would make the aforementioned citation into the future a problem?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ Of course, &lt;em&gt;will be published elswhere&lt;/em&gt; existed before, but it could not be accompanied by a regular citation.&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T01:20:37.600" Title="Citing into the future on ArXiv – good or bad idea?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2014-08-17T15:58:49.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, arXiv paper is on the same level as any other preprint. When a paper is on arXiv, it's somehow not quite different from you putting it on your personal website. Whence I don't see any problem here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T15:58:49.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2014-08-17T16:05:33.660" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally two related articles are published simultaneously and cite each other, so loops in the citation graph are OK. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40047/title/Simultaneous-Release/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; in The Scientist which describes two papers which do so. I was able to verify that they both cite each other through my university's library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T16:05:33.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27271" CreationDate="2014-08-17T18:04:40.193" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This actually happened with a paper I worked on. We handled it by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Immediately submitting our own version to arXiv, including a short mention of the other paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Informing the other authors of our result, and offering to write a joint journal paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitting your own version as soon as possible strongly suggests that it was an independent discovery, especially if the presentation is completely original. It also sends a signal that you're not trying to hide anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By writing a joint 'final' version, both parties can share the credit. In our case, the papers had been submitted to different conferences, so we thought a joint journal version would be the most appropriate. In the end, both papers were rejected from these conferences, but the other authors were able to strengthen the original result, while we generalized it. This meant that we were able to write a very strong merged paper, which was accepted to the most important conference in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8185" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T18:04:40.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T18:28:37.800" Score="2" ViewCount="5376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my MD. I am more interested in research than in clinical practice. I know there are post-doc positions available which accept post-MD candidates. Still I am thinking of doing a PhD in my specialty of interest. However I would like to know what are the benefits of pursuing a PhD after receiving an MD? Is it really necessary to obtain a Ph.D. degree for a research career? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15993" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T00:37:50.247" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T19:15:25.747" Title="Is a PhD needed after an MD or DO if one wants to pursue a research career?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T19:03:13.467" Score="1" ViewCount="2044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying computer science and I have money to pay for my university study, but I do not have money to spend on entertainment such as going to cinema with my friends in the weekend or upgrading my laptop. I have applied for a job at McDonald's. My shift is 4 days per week with 7 hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am scared this would affect my grades. How can I balance my studies with the part-time work I must do in order to improve my living standards or afford a social life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20788" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T20:46:58.107" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T12:57:59.477" Title="Does working while you are studying affect your GPA?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-08-18T13:21:47.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T20:32:43.807" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new in publishing, I have never published a paper, and nowaday there are too many online journals. That made me suspicious about their reputation, and it is not easy for me as a beginner in publishing to decide whether they are faithful about their impact factor or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me be precise, I wonder if anybody know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://recentscience.org/ijms-international-journal-of-mathematical-sciences/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; journal? it says it has impact factor 2.31, can anyone please confirm that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe this is not a correct place to ask this question can you please tell me where should I ask?       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20791" LastEditorUserId="20791" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T20:42:04.640" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T20:42:04.640" Title="How do I know the impact factor of a certain journal is true?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-18T13:47:01.190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27283" CreationDate="2014-08-17T21:21:55.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way; an MD says you are qualified to practice medicine, and a PhD says you are qualified to do research. In theory you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; practice medicine without an MD (it'd be illegal in many countries but not having an MD does not mean you don't have medical knowledge), and likewise you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do research, especially part-time, without a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving semantics aside, having that degree significantly increases your chances of pursuing a career in a particular field. If you intend on leaving the clinic and devoting your time and energy to research I'd say that a PhD would be expected, when you look for jobs. Whether or not you can bypass that expectation with other qualifications would be speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out an MD &amp;amp; PhD combination is... uhmmm how to put it delicately..  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlEXOzC6vqE#t=35&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;so money&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say you put your hat in front of you, figure what you want to do, and go for it. Many doctors here (in Sweden) go for a double degree and it is definitely not something that's frowned upon. On the contrary, in many cases it is an additional merit for future promotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="5674" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T07:29:09.203" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T07:29:09.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27284" CreationDate="2014-08-17T22:17:06.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w1742.pdf&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; suggests that employment outside the university (especially in excess of 25 hours per week) does have a negligible adverse effect on GPA, and a signigicant adverse effect on the probability of a student's continues enrollment. A second paper (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w14006.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)  suggests that hours worked &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have a significant negative effect on student grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...results show that an additional weekly work hour reduces current year GPA&#xA;  by about 0.011 points...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal anecdote: When I attended the mandatory freshman orientation seminar during my first semester as an undergrad, they recommended &lt;em&gt;no more than fifteen hours per week&lt;/em&gt;, suggesting that anything more than that would tend to have a negative impact on our grades. I do not now recall whether they also provided references to back up their claims...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is a general guideline, and an individual student may well be able to handle more. I know some students who were somehow able to juggle a full course load, a full-time job, AND major family responsibility, but those paragons are very rare!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T22:17:06.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2014-08-18T01:20:37.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that when you are &quot;updating&quot; your paper, you are creating a new version in the same way a new edition to a book or a republication of the article in another journal or event. If memory serves arxiv takes track of the version numbers. Does it not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is: a 2nd edition should be cited by its new publication date and location. The same way we do with books. When a republication happens on journals there is usually a note in the header informing the original publication date and location of the article. I do not think this is an internet related phenomena. Version tracking is common in books. Republications are not common in printed journals, but they do happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: I do not see any problem. You are actually citing the past on a new edition. I think a note in the header in the document explaining that this is always an good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20796" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T01:20:37.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T01:20:45.457" Score="12" ViewCount="1406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a collaborative scientific research group at a public university in the US.  Specifically, my lab has two graduate students: myself and another who is expected to graduate shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm told that once the &quot;senior&quot; graduate student stops working in the lab (to start writing dissertation) the remaining graduate student (myself, in this case) is expected to finish off the more senior graduate students' data-taking (whether it be for a month or a semester, has not been made clear).  The more senior graduate student would be the first author on the paper resulting from this data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been assured that the current senior graduate student did his fair share of data taking for the graduate student who preceded him.  I would like to talk to my advisor about this, but I have serious doubts about whether she would care about my opinion on this matter.  In  fact, I feel like by bringing it up I could only make things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this is the &quot;lab culture&quot;, it seems unfair to me.  Has anyone had success confronting their advisor about this sort of thing without being too hostile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I should mention that I spent the first 2.5 years of my research time supporting his (the previous grad students) project full time.  It is not until after he is gone (and 1-5 months more of me supporting his project) until I can even begin my project.  This is the primary concern: I will have spent over half of my graduate career supporting his project full time, meanwhile my advisor says she thinks I can graduate in five years--- that leaves between 2 to 2.5 years to complete my own project.  I will have spent more time on his proj than my own&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20797" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T08:25:12.637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T12:01:45.083" Title="How to confront advisor about the expectation that I will support another student's project for extended period of time?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27271" CreationDate="2014-08-18T01:39:14.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many theorems, algorithms, fundamental scientific ideas, etc bear the name of (or are attributed to) more than one person. This does not always happen because these persons worked together. Sometimes it happens because it is established that they worked on the same issue &lt;em&gt;approximately&lt;/em&gt; during the same period and/or published &lt;em&gt;approximately&lt;/em&gt; during the same period. An example that I can immediately give from Economics/Econometrics is in the sub-field of Stochastic Frontier Analysis: in 1977 two papers were published independently, laying the fundamentals of the field. Almost 40 years later, they are still mentioned together, when the author wants to refer to those that initiated the whole thing. These papers are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304407677900525&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aigner, D., Lovell, C. A. A., &amp;amp; Schmidt, P. (1977). Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. journal of Econometrics, 6(1), 21-37.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2525757&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meeusen, W., &amp;amp; Van den Broeck, J. (1977). Efficiency estimation from Cobb-Douglas production functions with composed error. International economic review, 435-444.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your algorithm and the other algorithm may be &quot;cousins&quot;, and the existence of both may have positive externalities on the research and professional paths of all involved, since it makes for a more vigorous &quot;look here!&quot; shout to the scientific world. I would even consider &lt;em&gt;promoting&lt;/em&gt;  the other paper alongside yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8575" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T01:47:07.193" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T01:47:07.193" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27283" CreationDate="2014-08-18T01:56:24.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very much depend on your country and research field. Technically speaking many medical doctors affiliated to hospitals do research and publishes the results, so it is definitely not impossible. However, you should ask yourself if you have enough technical knowledge in your field you want to go and if you have enough experience in setting up research programs, writing proposals and papers etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T01:56:24.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9924" CreationDate="2014-08-18T02:06:36.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely misrepresenting the situation, but I am not sure it is intentional. I met several (where several means a large number) researchers who were not aware that the &quot;et al.&quot; phrase can only be used with first authors, and they used it in the meaning of &quot;and his/her coworkers&quot;. If the given person's mother tongue is not English, I would say it is more of a mistake than intentional dischonesty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T02:06:36.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T03:41:43.800" Score="8" ViewCount="3178" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am reading papers, sometimes I see statements like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manuscript received October 29, 2012; accepted March 16, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this implies that the paper is directly accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20800" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T07:40:13.340" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T20:26:12.163" Title="If no revised date is mentioned in the paper, does this means the paper is directly accepted by the journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27298" CreationDate="2014-08-18T05:27:00.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it should mean the paper was accepted with no substantive changes.  Otherwise, it would say something like &quot;revised June 1, 2013&quot; in between the submission and acceptance dates.  If there were several revisions, then only the final revision date is recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, journals can be a little sloppy about this and allow small changes (such as typo fixes or minor rewording) without such an indication.  Perhaps they should be more careful, since following an unambiguous rule has its benefits.  However, this doesn't seem to be considered a big deal if the changes aren't substantive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be some journals that never indicate revision dates.  I think that would be pretty nonstandard, but there are a lot of journals out there and diverse practices in different fields, so it's hard to say for sure.  (There are certainly journals that don't even show submission dates in the first place, but that's a different issue.  The weird part would be highlighting the submission date while ignoring substantive revisions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard stories about journals asking authors to submit a revision as a new submission (see, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/tell-me-again-what-major-revisions-are/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;).  In that case, the &quot;manuscript received October 29, 2012&quot; might be disguising the fact that there was an even earlier version (to make it look like the journal handled the paper more quickly).  However, I've never seen any evidence of this myself, or heard these stories in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T05:27:00.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27293" CreationDate="2014-08-18T06:52:05.580" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has anyone had success confronting their advisor about this sort of thing without being too hostile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, I wouldn't view it as a confrontation.  If someone is doing something unethical or abusive, then confronting them could be appropriate, but it's not clear that that's the case here.  Instead, I'd approach it from the perspective that you'd like to learn what your advisor expects, his/her reasoning and motivation, and how much flexibility there is.  Right now, you are unsure whether the amount of work required would be a month or a semester.  That's a very reasonable thing to seek clarification for, and there are plenty of other natural questions.  For example, how should you deal with any interruption to your primary work?  Is there flexibility if you're at a particularly crucial or delicate point in your current project?  Will your advisor help make sure it doesn't derail your work or delay your graduation?  You could also ask about the motivation.  If doing this doesn't seem valuable to you, instead of starting with complaints about that you could ask about structuring things to ensure you got valuable skills or experience out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take this perspective, I don't think it will come across as hostile.  You're just asking reasonable questions about what's involved and how it can be handled smoothly and productively.  I hope the answers will be reassuring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this may be fruitless: your advisor could be a control freak or jerk who won't respond well to friendly questions.  However, if that's the case you've got worse problems than just this issue.  I certainly wouldn't start with the assumption that a confrontation is the first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth carefully thinking through why this arrangement seems unfair.  As a mathematician, I have no experience with this style of research, but it doesn't sound unreasonable for the sort of lab in which students are assigned projects.  You would be broadening your research experience, and your contributions would be recognized with authorship (but not first authorship since the senior student would have contributed much more to this paper, the same way you'll be first author on the paper that comes out of your main project).  This sounds potentially worthwhile, so you need to articulate more clearly what's wrong with the particular situation you face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is far outside the norms of your field, then I hope you'll be able to convince your advisor to do things differently.  Otherwise, I'd just accept that you and your advisor don't agree about everything and, within the overall constraint of how the lab is run, focus on fine-tuning things to fit you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, I feel like by bringing it up I could only make things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the part that bothers me the most.  Maybe you are just worrying too much, but it suggests something's wrong.  Perhaps with how you tend to bring things up, perhaps with how your advisor responds to reasonable concerns, perhaps with your overall relationship with your advisor.  Whatever the cause is, this is something worth trying to understand and fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In response to the &quot;update&quot; on the original question&quot;:&lt;/em&gt; I don't know enough about your research area to say how unusual or inappropriate that is, but it does sound worrisome. Do you have a mentor other than your advisor to discuss this with? That could be helpful for determining whether it's a major career danger or just a frustrating but manageable situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T12:01:45.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T12:01:45.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27298" CreationDate="2014-08-18T07:39:22.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. Some journals only state dates for submission and acceptance. In such cases dates for revisions are not mentioned. Since it is not uncommon, at least in fields with which I am familiar, for papers to go through two (or sometimes more) revisions, a date for revision usually refers to only one, the first set of revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also confirm Anonymous Mathematician's notion that some journals only accept papers that receive minor revision and reject those with major, but with the explicit understanding the paper should be resubmitted once revised. This will officially shorten the times from submission to accept but is of course a questionable action to manipulate such statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T07:39:22.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:04:10.430" Score="12" ViewCount="1622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a manuscript to a journal. As it was required, I included a list of suggested reviewers. Of course, I don't know who of them have been selected by the editor. I haven't received any reviews yet. Several weeks have passed since the submission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I forgot whom I suggested as a reviewer. These were some people from my field and I have alerts on Google Scholar that notify me about their new papers. Recently, I got such an alert about someone's new paper. I found it interesting (but not really related to the topic of my submitted manuscript) so I wrote an email to the author. (I only met him once at a conference.) I thought that he found something similar to what I saw in a paper of yet another author. We exchanged a few emails. The discussion was totally unrelated to my manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only after that discussion I realized he might have been a reviewer of my submitted manuscript. So I wonder whether it is OK to contact someone who may  be my reviewer? The review process is blind so I never know for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20686" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:17:13.620" Title="Is it OK to contact someone who is on my suggested reviewers list to discuss something unrelated?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:52:54.347" Score="4" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to do a biology/biotech related PhD in Germany, I have an MSc in the field and some good ideas about what I'd like to research (biofilms and/or synthetic biology, those really excite me) but in short I'm out of the academic environment from quite some time, I'm in my late 30s as matter of fact. For some reasons I couldn't follow my aspiration back in time but I want to follow it now and at my age you just leave all if you aren't motivated and don't really like what you're going to to, especially with a family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is therefore: &lt;strong&gt;how to approach a German group/PI in my situation?&lt;/strong&gt; Especially considering that I don't really know how the German system works and I couldn't obtain letters of recommendation as often the Graduate School there ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to enroll in a Graduate School(or the equivalent) mainly because I'm coming from outside but what I really need is someone who take care to bootstrap me to the thing and give me the opportunity to pursue some interdisciplinar approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20808" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T10:22:20.000" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:22:55.583" Title="How to contact a PI when I have been out of the system for a while?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27303" CreationDate="2014-08-18T10:17:13.620" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The world of academia is small enough so that you'll likely get to know most (or all!) reviewers for your work. You can't be expected to stop communicating with your colleagues, just because one of them &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be reviewing one of your papers right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, go and discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:17:13.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27304" CreationDate="2014-08-18T10:22:55.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The german system is rather diverse; every PI can do their own thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For structured PhD programs (i.e. international Max Planck Research Schools; IMPRS) you will need: one or more publications; and good letters from two or more of your formers PIs. Max Planck is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For individual PIs you'll be better off with a personal recommendation by your former supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your age will factor in as the time between your last contact with academia and now, not as ``age'' in itself. To be honest, this will make things complicated, especially &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; strong support from a Prof. on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:22:55.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10972" CreationDate="2014-08-18T12:45:58.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD students should complete all the coursework before becoming PhD Candidate. After completing all the coursework, PhD students have to pass the comprehensive written exam (and comprehensive oral exam) to become PhD Candidate. The amount of rigor of comprehensive exam depends on department to department. Some department requires that you pass the comprehensive exam on all the four (or five) seminar areas plus the methods that you have taken. Others require that you declare your major area and pass the comprehensive area on only that major area plus the methods.&#xA;Department may also require you to come up with a framework for your dissertation topic before they grant you the candidacy status. Again, the variation exists between department in how they grant the candidacy. &#xA;Once your status change from PhD Student to PhD Candidate, you are no longer required to take courseworks. However, you should be enrolled in the pre-dissertation and dissertation hours (normally 24 hrs; 6 hours per semester to maintain full-time status) to continue your dissertation. You work with your dissertation chair and committee after comprehensive exam. &#xA;PhD candidate are also called Doctoral candidate, and ABD - All But Dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20815" LastEditorUserId="20815" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T12:52:20.700" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T12:52:20.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27284" CreationDate="2014-08-18T12:57:59.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked full time for the first year and a half and part time for the remaining year and a half during my undergraduate career for Computer Science. It certainly meant that I had less time and flexibility but, ultimately, I think it made me more marketable and a bit better prepared for the working world than many of my peers. That's being said there's a fundamental difference between my work and your work - my work was within the realm of Computer Science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a job, any job, is a necessity for many students. I would recommend, though, trying to find a job that's going to benefit, even if in a small way, your studies. Many schools have IT departments that hire undergraduate students as part time help. Many schools have departments that have an independent IT department, separate from the main IT department. Research schools tend to have infrastructure related jobs and internships. University towns often have businesses that are happy to have future CS graduates working in their IT or programming departments. If you have been in school for a bit you should know some of your professors - there are often paid jobs in research labs all over campuses. They aren't advertised but good relationships with professors will open a lot of doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to get a job that's going to have long term benefit for you. Having a high level of confidence and comfort around IT business practices makes you a far more marketable computer scientist than someone who can code but is afraid to install an operating system(for example). Knowing the vocab and jargon will make you more marketable. Having a job, of any sort, with references will help when it comes time to start looking at what happens after you graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether a part time job will effect your grades... it will at least a little. Instead of spending 40 hours on some projects, sometimes I only had the time and energy, a finite resource to be sure, to spend 30 hours. I ended up graduating with a very good GPA(honestly I think being involved in research affected my GPA more than my job.) But having a job, especially a challenging job, in addition to being in school will mean you will have to be more organized than many of your peers. It means you'll have to be on top of your school work and that last minute all nighters will be pretty detrimental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's an all-inclusive answer for whether people should work during school. In my own hiring and looking-to-be-hired experience students who are employed during their schooling tend to be more reliable, more marketable and a more 'sure thing' than their counterparts who did not. But, as mentioned by J. Zimmerman in their excellent answer there are sacrifices involved. As a CS student I would be putting a lot of effort in moving beyond a 'mcjob' and into something at least slightly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T12:57:59.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27311" CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:25:20.877" Score="28" ViewCount="3416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across a paper published in a journal (IF &amp;lt; 2), which has used a couple of images without mentioning the source. This itself is not necessarily a problem. But they seem to be from a commercial software product I'm familiar with (they haven't mentioned even the name of the software, though it generated the image), and based on my experience with this software, the image looks to me like it has been tampered with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, it is an image where the software predicts properties of a compound which is used to verify the result. Now, let's say some parameter have a cutoff at 0.5% and they are getting 10.3%. To conform to their result they removed the '1', and it become '0.3%'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emails to the corresponding author came back empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I report that to the journal or leave it as it is (may ruin someone's career)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They have used the image to prove the result of the experiment.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19474" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T09:55:22.140" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T13:36:36.700" Title="What should I do when images in a publication appear to have been faked?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27253" CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:26:38.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am understanding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014_2015/main/h2020-wp1415-msca_en.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Work Programme 2014–2015&quot; of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions&lt;/a&gt; correct, then the amount of the living allowance is &lt;strong&gt;37,320 Euro for early-stage researchers&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;55,800 Euro for experienced researchers&lt;/strong&gt;. This sum is multiplied by a &quot;country correction coefficient&quot; (see the very end of the Work Programme).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T13:26:38.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2014-08-18T14:38:42.743" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be a big deal and something you should report and, alternatively, it might not be a big deal or reportable. The difference comes in the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the editted images presented as legitimate data or results that are the raw output of the experiments/research? By which do they say something like &quot;In image blah taken by an electron microscope you can see that the magical unicorn bonds have been created by our process.&quot; (Keeping in mind that I know nothing about bio-chem and 'magical unicorn bonds' is a stand in for some actual process). Or in CS something like &quot;Here you can see the robot we built&quot; Statements like this imply or outright state that the object or information in the image is not just representative data but actual results or output. Data like this should not be manipulated or edited except for clarity(circling a targeted area or adding minor labeling). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other kind of image is a bit rougher. These images can demonstrate what was expected to be seen, abstract output from the research, conceptual information. These kinds of images often are edited or manipulated. Sometimes as a demonstration of what was expected(&quot;We would expect magical unicorn bonds to appear after our procedure but instead....&quot;) or as an explanation of something more abstract(&quot;the robot should follow the optimal path as shown here when it uses the stairs instead of running repeatedly into a wall&quot;). These are things that are no reportable. They can be in poor taste and they absolutely should be caught by reviewers if they imply results beyond the scope of the actual research. But, in some fields, these are the best way to demonstrate expectations, abstract information or background information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said - when you say the image is from a &quot;commercial software&quot; that makes me wonder if you mean not that it was created with &quot;commercial software&quot; but is actually an image from some commercial source. In this case the image may be copyrighted and it may not be appropriate, at all, to use in this research. This will depend on the image, the source and the 'tampering'. As a counter example to this in the realm of computer vision every uses the standford bunny model in their publication. It's a thing. This is not inappropriate. Someone using an image from a text book, however, or a Google search that they do not own is inappropriate and should be first reported to the PI of the paper and, potentially, the publisher if no action is taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T14:38:42.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27314" CreationDate="2014-08-18T16:17:21.290" Score="8" ViewCount="7798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying this winter for graduate school and I will finish undergrad this winter as well. Would it be unethical to take a full-time position with the intention to quit soon until I know whether I got accepted for graduate school or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering this because if I didn't get accepted, I wouldn't have a gap until I start working, and the company would be a good brand which would certainly not harm my PhD application (but this shouldn't be a discussion on what prepares me good for graduate school). My plan is going back to industry after a PhD, so considering my reputation in the field or possible research jobs lateron in the same company, how could I reason my leave for getting a PhD? Or would you better decline the offer and wait for the admissions result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20106" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T16:48:57.443" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T18:55:40.873" Title="Would it be unethical to take a full time job and quit 8 months later if I get accepted for a PhD program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27313" CreationDate="2014-08-18T16:40:04.303" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be unethical for your boss to fire you 8 months after you take the job, if he wanted to. Labor is an exchange you and your employer enter into voluntarily. So, you shouldn't feel bad quitting after 8 months if you want to. It's not an ethical problem at all. It is more plausible to think there might be a &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; problem if this is a small industry that you would plan to re-enter after finishing the degree. Don't tell your boss up front that you might quit in 8 months, that isn't any of his business. If you do accept an offer to do a phd somewhere, then you should tell him promptly, just as a matter of courtesy. This is to allow the company adequate time to find a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T16:40:04.303" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27313" CreationDate="2014-08-18T16:54:51.037" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a counterpoint to Shane's answer, I would say it strongly depends on what you agree on (explicitly or implicitly) with the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are actively aware that you are looking into getting accepted for a PhD position (that is, you told them so), and they are ok with it, it is clearly fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are not aware of it, I would say it largely depends on which job you are supposed to be doing. If it is one where the company is investing a lot of money into training you (e.g., a management trainee program, or they are ramping you up to work on their terribly complex main product), quitting after 8 months is of course still &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt;, but you should not be surprised if this company is not keen on working with you ever again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they specifically tell you that they are expecting you to stay for the long haul and you lie to them (or, only very slightly better, don't tell them otherwise), the ethical question is pretty much undisputable in my book. Mind, you are still legally safe to quit, but I would argue it is definitely not ethical to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T16:54:51.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T17:53:57.650" Score="6" ViewCount="1426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got two papers accepted in a decent IEEE conference. My current organisation (an industrial R&amp;amp;D lab) says that the conference fees are way too high and they would consider approval of funds only if we get a rebate for publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it normal across the globe to ask for rebate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if I do so, would it be considered professional? (The conference already has a discounted price for the second paper since authors are common in both.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2823" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T18:55:29.440" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T18:55:29.440" Title="How professional it is to ask for rebate in conference registration fees?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27313" CreationDate="2014-08-18T18:18:58.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do work, you get paid. You owe your company what it says you owe in your contract. I very much assure you that your employer won't worry about going beyond their contractual obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T18:18:58.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27313" CreationDate="2014-08-18T18:55:40.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also try to find out if it's possible to do a PhD while working at the said company. This can be a much better option than going to a graduate school. Getting a proper salary while gaining work experience while completing a degree, it's pretty nice. The one downside is that you'll be probably doing a lot more than just the very specific stuff related to your degree. Well, it's not necessarily a bad thing..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20824" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T18:55:40.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2014-08-18T19:36:06.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;it may not be as bad as it seems. I often have to edit images from commercial software packages because the text is too small (or blurred) to read in the print version. Usually it's the axes that I have to fix because many packages make the fonts too small. The authors in this case may have simply overwritten with the same values, just in a larger text or (different/emphasizing font or color).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20828" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T19:36:06.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27344" CreationDate="2014-08-18T23:17:41.097" Score="6" ViewCount="3880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am beginning the process of applying to PhD programs in Neuroscience for a fall 2015 start. I will be graduating this December with a Bachelor's in biology and math. I have been working as a research assistant for the last year, and our lab focuses on the role of extracellular matrix proteins in the col11a1-related chondrodysplasias. Although pursuit of a career in neuroscience research has been my goal, the biology program at my institution lacks faculty in this area; thus, my research experience is of questionable relevance to the programs I am applying for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three questions related to writing the statement of purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that I am supposed to discuss my background in research. If my research isn't entirely relevant to neuroscience, should I restrict my discussion to the lab techniques I've learned, or can I speak in technical detail about my projects?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, my current university lacks faculty who do research in neuroscience. Should I mention this as justification for my choice to work in my current lab, or should I omit it, as it may reflect poorly on my readiness for neuroscience?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a 3.85 GPA and my GRE scores were in the 93rd and 95th percentile (verbal and quantitative, respectively). To what degree will the statement of purpose affect my application, given the weaknesses addressed above?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12439" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T14:49:40.577" Title="Speaking to experience in a statement of purpose for a PhD program." Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2014-08-19T01:26:01.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt; is an easy and free option. It is not field specific. It has an backup archiving system. Submitted work tends to get indexed by Google and Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T01:26:01.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2014-08-19T03:49:12.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One great way I have found to improve my writing, is to reread it side by side with someone not directly in the project (significant other, friend, ...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this person would read it while you are here and will directly ask you questions on what you meant or tell you this and that is not clear. Also you can propose better phrasing together, wondering if such formulation is clearer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supervisor comments are often great, but they most probably won't have time for such detailed discussion over your text. Having a &quot;live&quot; discussion is really so much more insightful on how your text is received. If you do it with someone you have a good relationship with, it can even be fun and motivating!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is a great burden to put on someone else, it can take hours, so you need to be ready to return the favour or find another way to make up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T13:23:41.967" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T13:23:41.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T05:21:41.337" Score="13" ViewCount="2017" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me summarize the complicated state of affairs, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This summer, I was cooperating with the other team in a spin off project, we decided to publish the results, so I prepared the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the authorship, I added my supervisor's name. I think it is usual because I am his student and whatever I've learned came from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when the other team's supervisor saw this, he asked me to drop my supervisor's name from the list. I sense that this is not only because he is not involved in the project, but also because of some political issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dropping my supervisor's name makes me feel bad, like betraying him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20837" LastEditorUserId="17534" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T06:08:20.747" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T20:11:48.530" Title="As a postgrad student, is it appropriate not to add my supervisor's name on publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2014-08-19T05:58:28.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two factors at play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is going to be the cheapest point in your life to get one. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you have it you've got it for life, like learning to ride a bike.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the chance to do the course and you have the intelligence to complete it then its a good idea. The extra year not working is nothing compared to the 40+ years you are going to be working afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MSc will make you stand out against a BSc for those jobs you actually want. Plus it should allow you to progress faster, not because you have it but because you are actually more capable and able to think with more depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15958" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T05:58:28.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27841" CreationDate="2014-08-19T06:13:19.640" Score="10" ViewCount="22784" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many contributions related to interviews in radio, TV, web magazines and print magazines, and would like to know the different ways it might be &quot;cited&quot; in a scientific CV. I was thinking about adding them at the end of my CV is some section called &quot;dissemination of research results&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T22:14:13.300" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T20:01:46.087" Title="How can I cite interviews for radio and TV on CV?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-dissemination&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27328" CreationDate="2014-08-19T06:32:04.363" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Since you haven't explicitly mentioned which academic discipline this concerns, and as EnergyNumbers mentioned in the comment, different disciplines may have different conventions, I'll answer in terms of my discipline, (Theoretical) Physics. I would be horrified if it so turns out that things are any different in any other scientific discipline (at least)&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever an article gets submitted for publication, one has to''accept'' a declaration that all those people who made significant contributions were (at least) offered co-authorship. If they decline to be an author, that's a different story. As PVAL mentioned above in a comment, it is academic dishonesty if someone is sitting in the author list without having contributed anything significant to the investigation. Even if you discount the ''&lt;em&gt;politics&lt;/em&gt;'', as you mentioned, the other team is frowning because your supervisor is ''&lt;em&gt;not involved in the project&lt;/em&gt;''. If that means that he only offered occasional advice, perhaps born out of his experience with doing similar things, (''&lt;em&gt;have you tried ...&lt;/em&gt;'' variety), then the right place for him is in the acknowledgements section. Just mention, ''&lt;em&gt;we thank [his name] for helpful discussion/ inputs&lt;/em&gt; ...'' etc. But if it means that you want to include his name only because ''&lt;em&gt;what I learned came from him&lt;/em&gt;'', I'm afraid I have to point out that authorship is not a Christmas card. (By the same token, why not include your parents, or your spouse, or your high school teachers - you owe a lot to them also :P). It is WRONG to include any person who didn't contribute TO THE INVESTIGATION, howsoever highly regarded he may be in your personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But having said that, here's some seasoned advice - Go and talk to your supervisor in private and explain the situation. Ask &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; whether or not you should include him in the list, fighting opposition from the other co-authors. It is possible that he may have been in this situation before (&lt;em&gt;whichever side&lt;/em&gt;), so he will show you the light. One-to-one dialogues go a long way in resolving these sort of harmless dilemmas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, that will serve another purpose - you will &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; him that you ''&lt;em&gt;respect&lt;/em&gt;'' him so much that you want to gift him authorship in an investigation that he hasn't contributed to at all :P. (I expect that any sensible man would decline in this situation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastEditorUserId="17534" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T06:51:36.280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T06:51:36.280" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27316" CreationDate="2014-08-19T07:15:44.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the commenters write, this is quite unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the conference fees were not published before the paper submission deadline, you could try it out &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you get the financial constraints imposed by your lab in writing. While strictly speaking, the organizers could consider this to be unprofessional, it is in that case still somewhat clear that the problem is not really your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T07:15:44.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27316" CreationDate="2014-08-19T09:38:49.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unusual and it is likely that the organizers would see it as unprofessional, especially if such request is coming from the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How valuable are these publication for your employer? You could try to speak with someone at a higher level and persuade them to pay the conference fees. Alternatively they can advise submitting the papers to another conference with fees they are willing to pay. Or if publishing benefits you more that the employer, you can perhaps cover the difference yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T09:38:49.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2014-08-19T10:26:37.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the specific values really, really meaningful and relevant? Do they have meaning outside of the sandbox? Are you, for example, publishing new measurements of fundamental constants? No? Then, most likely, the actual numbers have no business being in your &lt;del&gt;article&lt;/del&gt; extended abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rationale is: you are telling a story. Elements that don't serve to make a (major) plot point or at least support it have to go. Nobody will look at the numbers if their values are not relevant or support a point you are trying to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is data that does not lend itself well to the usual plots you can make (line plots, histogramms, bar charts, ...). Sometimes, a table is all you can do, especially if the data has no useful scale in at least one dimension. For example, assume we have investigated four methods in four scenarios and have collected some quality measure; the bigger the number, the better the method worked in that scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RaSPf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do we see in this table? Nothing, without really &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt; which may be a waste of time, given that the numbers may not mean anything on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; we want to tell? Maybe something like this: Methods one and three are complementary and excell in their respective strong scenarios; you should pick one of them if you know which category your application falls into. Method two is somewhat useable in all cases but worse than the specialists; use it if you don't know what you have at hand. Never use the fourth method, it's always bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can improve the table so that it supports that story at one glance by normalising the data (I assume a linear scale from 0 to 250 here) and giving visual indication of &quot;good&quot;, &quot;meh&quot; and &quot;bad&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nojeu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/akerbos/sesketches/blob/gh-pages/src/academia_27180.tex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[source]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the layout of the table can be improved and maybe you want to swap columns so that the complementary methods are neighbours. It is hard to show variances with this visualisation. Furthermore, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://colorbrewer2.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;choice of colors&lt;/a&gt; can be debated (red/green may have different meanings in different cultures; also they can not be distinguished by a sizable portion of all readers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I think the example serves to support &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; point: be creative when representing data, with a focus on supporting the narrative of the article and less on dumping data (there's other places for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of literature on visualising data but I'm not intimately familiar with any, so I'll just point you towards some blogs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://flowingdata.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FlowingData&lt;/a&gt; by Nathan Yau&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theusrus.de/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Statistical Graphics and more&lt;/a&gt; by Martin Theus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://visualisingdata.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visualising data&lt;/a&gt; by Andy Kirk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have plenty of inspiring examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One further TeXnical note: it's possible to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/29293/3213&quot;&gt;draw small inline-style plots&lt;/a&gt; (called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparklines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sparklines&lt;/a&gt;, apparently) with which you could potentially fill a table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T16:03:53.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27328" CreationDate="2014-08-19T10:45:01.547" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in many fields, it is very much expected that your supervisors' names will appear on papers written during your study, because in those fields, much of the substance of your work comes from your supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right that politics can be involved too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do bear in mind that different fields have very different conventions about what &quot;authorship&quot; means. Quite a few pharma trial papers have almost all their words written by ghost authors who do not appear at all in the list of authors. No doubt this will horrify some readers here who consider their own field's conventions to have some sort of objective purity, despite them being just as much a negotiated compromise as any other field's. In different academic disciplines, different types of contribution (data collection, analysis, writing, thinking, editing) may each earn co-authorship, acknowledgement, or money. Furthermore, the concepts of, meanings of and interpretations of &lt;em&gt;contributorship&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;attribution&lt;/em&gt; within scientific publishing are in flux at the moment, evolving and trying out new forms - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/04/22/when-a-scholar-is-one-among-500-what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-author/&quot;&gt;discussions&lt;/a&gt; at The Scholarly Kitchen and other places, .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't get too hung up about some people's ideas of what being a named author means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do discuss it with your supervisor(s). Find out what the conventions are for your field, and for your target journal in particular. And in general, don't add someone as author without having discussed it with them first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T10:45:01.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27330" CreationDate="2014-08-19T12:56:36.043" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Media Appearances&quot; sounds better to me. Then I think I'd cite each appearance as if it were a conference talk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How to Solve the Problem of Evil,&quot; &lt;em&gt;WFUV Radio,&lt;/em&gt; 29 February 1904.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why I am So Clever,&quot; &lt;em&gt;The Today Show,&lt;/em&gt; National Broadcasting Corporation, 9 August 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe insert some descriptive language if the citation is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T13:22:37.180" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T13:22:37.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7713" CreationDate="2014-08-19T14:00:22.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of problems with my writing (although I am a native English speaker), and was made to do a writing course by my PhD panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did this course, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/sciwrite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing in the Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, on coursera, and I can thoroughly recommend it. It took a few hours of my time over around 8 weeks, but you could easily pick and choose which bits you wanted to do if you wish. There are assignments to complete, which can lead to a certificate if that is something that interests you, but you don't have to do them. I actually did all the assignments as it helped me practice writing and editing my own work. I also got to practice editing other participant's work. Although the instructor is from the medical sciences field (as are most of her examples), everything she teaches is applicable to other sciences. I am from the atmospheric sciences field myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learnt some really good tips on how to go about the writing process itself (i.e. how much time to spend on each step in the process), but the majority of the course is about how to edit writing (either your own or someone else's) to make it more exciting and interesting to read. Many of the tips given already are included in the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12089" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T14:00:22.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27376" CreationDate="2014-08-19T14:06:23.157" Score="9" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is borderline trivial, but in my attempt to publish my work in a public repository, I've found badges at the top of my &lt;code&gt;README.md&lt;/code&gt; to be useful. For example, using &lt;a href=&quot;https://zenodo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zenodo&lt;/a&gt;, I can create a badge that points to a proper DOI that looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://zenodo.org/badge/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11304.png&quot; alt=&quot;DOI&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Encyclopedia of Finite Graphs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have a critical piece of code, I can publish &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.travis-ci.com/user/status-images/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;Travis.CL&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; badges or &lt;a href=&quot;https://coveralls.io/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;Coveralls&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for code coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the an equivalent badge or icon I can use to visually indicate that the work has been published on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;arXiv&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="253" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T03:26:52.183" Title="Flair/Badge for arXiv paper?" Tags="&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27323" CreationDate="2014-08-19T14:41:19.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that the statement of purpose is the right place to try to address deficiencies in your CV. Instead, let me suggest a different strategy. (I'll note in passing that I'm in Philosophy, in the USA--so take this with a grain of sand since you're in a different field. A second grain of sand if you are applying to programs in other countries.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use the Statement of Purpose to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; the committee what you are going to do in the future, not to &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; them why what you've done in the past isn't bad.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I mean by the past/future comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad: &quot;I did a lot of work that is relevant, even though I know my CV didn't look like it.&quot; or &quot;At my current lab job, I was taught techniques x, y, and z.&quot; Bad because it sounds like you are apologizing. It comes off weak, passive and submissive. You want to project confidence and competence, but not arrogance. Successful PhD students are people who are able to be self-motivated and don't have to have their hands held all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better: &quot;I plan to apply my experience in techniques x and y, to problem z because . . . &quot; This is better because it is active--it says what you are going to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; rather than what has happened to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second distinction that is important is the distinction between showing and telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling: &quot;While working on this project, I acquired knowledge of techniques x, y, and z.&quot; This is weak because it just sounds like a list of things. There's no story--I don't get anything about your personality or your interests or what is special or unique about you as a candidate.&#xA;Showing: &quot;We were interested in p, so I suggested we use technique x and we discovered r. A colleague who works in r suggested that we also apply technique y, which turned out to be the crucial step . . .&quot; Now there's kind of a story that I care about a little bit. And I've learned more than just that you know x and y. I've learned that you know how to suggest techniques, and you're not afraid to tell the PI what you think, and that you know how to collaborate, etc. These are all good things. The committee gets a more complete, detailed idea of who you are as a candidate if you can &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; who you are and what you are interested in than if you just &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most aspiring grad students (and newly minted PhDs!) are going to fall into the trap of telling rather than showing, so this is a good place for you to stick your neck out ahead of the pack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: Instead of using the SOP to say why you don't suck, use it to say why you want to go to this specific PhD program. Don't say, &quot;I am interested in Neuroscience.&quot; That's telling. Instead: &quot;I became particularly interested in question X after reading &quot;X: an intriguing problem&quot; by Prof Y.&quot; (where Y is somebody on faculty). You want to be specific about the strengths of each program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorDisplayName="user10636" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T14:49:40.577" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T14:49:40.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2014-08-19T14:48:41.987" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Manual alteration of figures aimed at deceiving readers (by fabricating, obfuscating, 'cherry picking' results, etc.) is a &lt;strong&gt;serious matter&lt;/strong&gt;. It surprises me that people still try because it's very often quite easy to spot (other types of data fabrication are harder to catch). But it's sadly not uncommon, even in highly regarded journals and from researchers from reputable institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For life sciences, according to one of pubpeer's moderators in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.pubpeer.com/?p=164#comment-1534840179&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a comment&lt;/a&gt;: 'Most of the life science reports involve image manipulation - a good majority are gels, with a bunch of duplicated specimen images as well. […] we see sometimes on PubPeer […] things like doctored NMR spectra in chemistry.' The latest seems to be related to your observation, although it's outside my area of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a sense of the type of things that are reported on PubPeer reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubpeer.com/publications/058CFA77EAF6D5E019D9902C6B3553&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; among many others. As an example, a close examination of this figure shows the use of copy paste to fabricate data: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZito.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;faked data 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this one, initially published, not in your average pay-for-publish shady 'open access' journal, but in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, that has a rather obvious copy-pasted middle panel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XpxUR.png&quot; alt=&quot;faked data 2&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(both the articles where retracted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your position, your first reaction is totally appropriate. Here is what I think is the best course of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contact the author(s)&lt;/strong&gt; it is a good way of showing that you are concerned but not necessarily interested in public shaming. If the authors do not react, then: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contact the publisher&lt;/strong&gt; (mentioning that you already contacted the authors to no avail) as suggested by @alarge in a comment. If it's a reputable publisher, the issue will be taken very seriously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If all fails, you are left with public reporting of the issue, anonymously or not, via social media or the website listed above. Note that you are always at risk of putting yourself in trouble when reporting misconduct, the same as in any other field, so weight this risk if you intend to associate your name with the complaint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I report that to the journal or leave it as it is (may ruin&#xA;  someone's career)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that, as a scientist, you have a responsibility to report that sort of misconduct when you see it. What &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; ruin someone's career is their sloppy ethics, not your concern for integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T12:55:50.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T12:55:50.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27350" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:06:59.993" Score="41" ViewCount="7962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a lecture course for this semester and I am planning to teach from slides. I will consider these slides my notes for the course. However, the following points may also apply to handwritten notes that a lecturer might use as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see several advantages and disadvantages associated with providing the students with the notes for a given lecture prior to that lecture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students have to write less (because the core of the material is already present), so more material can be covered;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may lose focus more easily when they have digital notes because they do not have to copy everything down (this was my experience as an undergrad);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may choose not to attend class because notes are available elsewhere (of course, they may choose to do so anyways...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One alternative I have considered is to distribute all of the notes relevant to an exam some suitable time period prior to that exam. However, this may reduce the effectiveness of the advantage, although it will mitigate to a certain extent the disadvantages. So, my question is as in the title: Is it common for professors to distribute digital notes to the class? If so, what methods are common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7346" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:04:18.623" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:37:51.753" Title="Is it common to provide digital notes (slides or handwritten) for students?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27355" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:07:55.523" Score="6" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to submit a PhD thesis by published work. The university guidelines states that &quot;&lt;em&gt;the content of the papers should be the result of original observations&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I would like to include a review article I wrote last year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review article does not report novel experimental data, but as a regular review article, it reports &quot;observations&quot; of the current state of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this view correct? Can I include it in my thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7767" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T16:57:24.090" Title="Are review articles the result of original observations?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:17:43.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is common, at least at the freshman and sophomore level. In my experience, few professors provide digital notes (or digital copies of lecture slides) in the upper levels of undergrad teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always appreciated those who did so, because I was usually able to take better notes due to not having to write as much. However, recall was usually not quite as good, for the same reason. (FWIW, I almost never skipped lecture, whether or not there were digital notes available). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what methods are common, I've seen three main methods, mostly differing as to &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the notes are made available to the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post all slides at the beginning of the course. This has obvious shortcomings if you change your lecture slides in any way--and good teachers almost always do!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post shortly before the class session in which the material is presented. Either immediately before (&amp;lt; 4 hours) or several sessions in advance. This seems to work best, because students have time to print them out to take notes on, if that's what they prefer. You can also tweak your slides as needed without confusing your students. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post lecture slides immediately after class. This seems to me the least optimal, in that students cannot read the slides ahead of the lecture or use them to take notes on, but could potentially still use this as an excuse to not come to lecture. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T21:18:11.987" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T21:18:11.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:22:17.610" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to distribute slides before class, and found that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.  I now distribute them shortly after each class.  I tell students to jot down important points during the class, but not to worry about things like lists because they'll have the slides available.  I also suggest that they merge their classroom notes onto the slides.  The ones who listen to me tend to do very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I base my decision on the premise that learning should be effortful.  I think, hope, and expect that providing slides after class is a compromise between no slides and slides before class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I also record my lectures and make the podcasts available.  I do that because I have students for whom English is a second language, and non-traditional students who are sometimes called away for work.  I'm a little torn about the recordings because some students &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; try to use those as a substitute for coming to class.  I console myself with the thought that they were destined to fail the course anyway and would do even without the recordings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T15:22:17.610" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27341" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:29:02.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there's any. As well, I think you want to make one visually matching the ones you already have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an XCF (GIMP) file for the arXiv community ad: &lt;br&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/a/11924/43247&quot;&gt;http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/a/11924/43247&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it could be helpful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T15:29:02.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26793" CreationDate="2014-08-19T16:23:51.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you give us some more detail about what the capstone project would entail? That seems pertinent to the question at hand. I'd say that you should try to get a perspective from people currently at work in the industry, rather than academics. My two cents worth is that a thesis would look good if it could showcase your written communication abilities and demonstrate an ability to do self-directed work. But consider the time involved and ask if the time spending acquiring/demonstrating these skills might be better used doing something else equally or more applicable to entering industry, such as networking, internships, or the like. The question isn't whether a thesis is good: it is. The question is whether it's the best use of your time, which we aren't going to be able to tell you a priori, I don't think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T16:23:51.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T16:31:49.173" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different students have different needs. If you make notes available, students who benefit from not having notes have the option of not using them. If you do not make notes available, students who need them have no option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write fairly slowly, and do not seem to be able to listen and think at the same time as writing. For me, needing to write notes during a lecture drastically reduces the benefit of being there - the only product is what I manage to write down of whatever was written on the board, with no gain in understanding until I study the notes and text book afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have a student in your class who is not hearing what you are saying whenever they are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10220" LastEditorUserId="10220" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T15:30:47.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T15:30:47.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26591" CreationDate="2014-08-19T16:50:16.560" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, just because your new supervisor offers you a PhD position does not mean that you are in any way obliged to take it. That said, don't hide the fact that you are going to consider sending applications out to a variety of programs. The thing that will cause hard feelings is if your advisor thinks you are going to join his or her group and turns other people away, only to have you leave. If your supervisor is a professional, he or she will recognize that you pursuing other opportunities is not personal. You have to do the best you can for your career, and if that means taking a better position elsewhere, then you should do so. (Note that you can also get outside offers and use these to negotiate better pay as a PhD student, but that's a different issue, and somewhat more complicated politically.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, don't under any circumstances work for a group that makes you be slow and do poor work. Academic hiring is cutthroat competitive, so if you want to actually get a job, you're going to have to produce a lot of very good work, and you're only going to do that if you're surrounded by other people who are trying to do the same who push one another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T16:50:16.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27348" CreationDate="2014-08-19T16:57:24.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that review articles can of course be original work, provided that they offer something like an &lt;em&gt;analysis&lt;/em&gt; of the current literature. A mere list of positions and the people who take them isn't going to count as a contribution to the literature. However, showing people that certain pieces of literature form families that have resemblences to one another, or that a certain piece has been cited a lot, although people have overlooked another important, but unknown piece that calls its thesis into question, etc. . .  those are all important, and indeed original contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that your article probably is analytical in this way, otherwise it wouldn't have been accepted for publication in the first place. I'd say that if it is a high-quality article, published somewhere respectable, then go on and include it in the thesis. Although obviously the usual caveats (&quot;Check with your advisor!&quot;) apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T16:57:24.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26398" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:05:24.293" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The few times I've seen this happen, usually the new advisor in your home department is willing to let one continue on with the same research project. Beware that you'll have less support from your advisor than you might have had otherwise, but if you have strong people in the field outside your university,  as it sounds like you do, then you should be ok. Another thing to beware is that your advisor's letter of recommendation is going to be crucial if you apply for postdocs or other academic positions down the line. Having your advisor not really know your field, or understand your work in depth is likely going to lead to a much shallower, less effective letter simply because your new advisor won't be able to speak with the same degree of knowledge about what exactly your contribution is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you're going to have to weight these two potential cons against the cost in time and effort of simply starting over from scratch with a new advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T17:05:24.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27128" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:11:25.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The crucial question is whether your academic transcript will indicate the expulsion/suspension. If not, then I don't think it should matter to your graduate applications at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the transcript does indicate this, then you are going to have to address the issue in your cover letter. You are going to have to say how sorry you are and how much you've learned your lesson. I, personally, wouldn't hold an undergrad mistake against you, as long as I saw that you weren't likely to do it again. Others might feel differently, however you can still try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T17:11:25.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:29:08.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen lecturers print out copies of the slides, which the students would pick up as they entered the room, so they could make notes on them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires the students to attend, but you could also say that you can collect copies in your office if people can't make it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People sometimes picked up copies for friends, but it generally meant that people attended the lectures. It's really useful to have the slides to make notes on directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kills a lot of trees though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14745" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T17:29:08.673" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:49:39.023" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the main question, yes it is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it's a matter of your personal idea of your role as a teacher. My approach is to do everything I can to make the material easily accessible to the students. Some students don't want/can't attend classes, they have their own priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course teachers are by no mean obliged to take these cases into consideration, and I'm perfectly fine with courses taught without anything else than the blackboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if &lt;em&gt;I create slides anyway&lt;/em&gt;, I see &lt;em&gt;no sane reason&lt;/em&gt; to restrict access to these before, during or after the courses are taught. I will also mention textbooks, articles and other sources I used to create the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T18:30:36.837" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T18:30:36.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27378" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:59:02.073" Score="17" ViewCount="5760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently signed a graduate student contract.  I had outside funding for some time but recently became a normal research assistant (RA) again, so must have missed a contradictory clause when I signed a similar contract a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a US citizen at a US university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the contract it explicitly states that graduate students &quot;shall not work more than 20 hours per week on duties given by the advisor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found similar language in other graduate student contracts at other universities, an example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gradschool.umd.edu/catalog/assistantship_policies.htm&quot;&gt;is here&lt;/a&gt; (scroll down to &lt;em&gt;Duties and Time Commitments&lt;/em&gt;).  This example, however, states that RAs &quot;shall not work on duties unrelated to research for more than 20 hours per week.&quot;  My contract seems to imply the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This certainly applies in the first 2-3 years of a Ph.D., since class loads typically require enough effort that RA's will not have enough time to work more than 20 hours per week on research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;after a graduate student has completed all class requirements, why is this clause still included?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is clearly contradictory, as I'm expected to work 40-50 hours per week on my research, especially when I have no more classes to take.  I have signed a legal document explicitly promising that I will not work the hours needed to finish my dissertation in a timely fashion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4572" LastEditorUserId="4572" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T23:03:45.240" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T09:56:58.637" Title="Why do graduate student contracts state &quot;RAs shall work no more than 20 hours per week?&quot;" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T18:18:23.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the university that I attend, almost all of our professors provide digital notes. I believe this is a good practice because many students can't keep notes and comprehend what the professor says at the same time. As a countermeasure for the second disadvantage you mention, professors often give some extra techniques and explanations that are not included in the digital notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20857" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T14:37:51.753" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:37:51.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T18:41:05.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I last taught big lecture classes, I would distribute pre-class and post-class versions of my slides.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pre-class versions would go online the night before.  They would have fewer steps worked out (I teach math), some solutions left blank for students to ponder in advance, and jokes subtracted.  They would be laid out three slideframes to a letter-sized page, with ample space for annotation.  So they could print them out and take them to class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post-class versions would be the complete slideshow from class, with worked-out solutions, jokes, and errata included.  They would go up at the end of the day of class (depending on how much I had to fix).  They were not laid out to be printed; it was just one slide per page of PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5701" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T18:41:05.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2014-08-19T18:54:36.730" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is just an issue of definition of &quot;what you must do to succeed in your academic program&quot; vs &quot;job duties&quot;. A research assistant is a job, and as such it does not always pay you to be doing what you'd be doing anyway. Sometimes you have to do work or help your adviser in a way that does not directly relate to your own program or research whatsoever - and that's what you are being hired to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get paid to be a research assistant and you end up working on your program and own actual research? This is awesome, and it's totally a bonus - but it's not what the agreement is designed to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the USA a research assistant is paid (often by hour or in a flat stipend), tuition remittance/assistance is sometimes provided, insurance might be paid for the student-worker, perks and opportunities can abound or be completely absent (sometimes you get paid to go to conferences or do your own home work, and sometimes it's basically your field's equivalent of cleaning out monkey cages), etc. In short, there is a compensation package that makes it worth your acceptance, and losing it would be unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the other extreme if you work too much time on your RA/TA job you will not have enough time in the day to spend on classes or your own personal research. When you have no classes, then that means more time for your research work - not more time to work for the University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion your agreement does not limit your collaboration with your adviser or on your research - it limits your &lt;strong&gt;legally employed position's hourly requirements&lt;/strong&gt;. Talk with your adviser, take his advice, work on research with them until the cows come home (though I suggest you get home before the cows because life's too short) - but if you are doing more than 20 hours of work a week to fulfill your RA/TA duties, something is wrong it needs to be addressed right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T19:28:59.150" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T19:28:59.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T19:28:35.037" Score="28" ViewCount="3229" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say, in a particular field of science, method A or equipment B are the standard. Now I have invented method X or equipment Y which cost much less than A or B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the necessary conditions, if any, that allow X and Y to be published as a journal paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This question of course is loaded with my own assumption that originality in an academic research &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; include cheaper price. I have long held this assumption from a simple fact that I have &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; encountered such thing as being cheaper being described in any background/introduction section in any journal articles I've read.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20861" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-07-13T18:02:11.757" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T18:02:11.757" Title="Is developing a cheaper method ever considered to be originality in academic research?" Tags="&lt;publishability&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2014-08-19T19:59:07.887" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you miss a point in the word &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt;: You have to present &lt;em&gt;original research&lt;/em&gt;, not necessarily &lt;em&gt;original results&lt;/em&gt;. If you found a cheaper method than anyone before, the research is obviously original, even if you didn't find out anything new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example from other sciences: In maths, a new proof of an old theorem is original. In CS, a new algorithm which is just 10% faster than an old one is original. In medicine, a new treatment for the same disease is original. And so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, even if your result is not better than the previous ones (slower algorithm, more expensive method), it can of course be original. It's just more questionable whether it's useful, sometimes it is, but you have to be quite convincing usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T10:37:57.283" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T10:37:57.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:15:16.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in life sciences, this could be publishable, depending on the details. In the end, what matters for publication is whether the paper is of interest to the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, cost can have huge consequences. For example, if you invent a method to easily sequence a human genome for 100 USD, that would greatly advance biomedical research and diagnostics, and you will get a very high-impact publication. You can read more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1,000_genome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T21:51:12.387" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T21:51:12.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:28:11.907" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the necessary conditions, if any, that allow X and Y to be published as a journal paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That the method or equipment is new and interesting. It is really as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is completely ok if the improvement or motivation of your technique mostly lies in cost savings - that is common in many research communities. If the way how you achieved these cost savings is by applying simple technical optimisations, you will have problems publishing your results. On the other hand, if you reduced costs by fundamentally changing the way how your technique approaches things, or if you manage to reduce costs by orders of magnitude, journals will presumably be interested in how you achieved these results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T20:28:11.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:48:26.437" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how common it is, but I can tell you that in the classes I teach (general chemistry), I use a combination of lecture slides and writing on the board. Here's a rough breakdown of my approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approximately one slide per major concept, with very limited text (mostly definitions) and images/graphs to explain the concept. I make these available online (they can print before class if they want to)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I write quick outline notes of major topics on the board before starting the section or chapter, then back-fill the details during the lecture, and give a review summary at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For problem-solving, I use one or more slides with an example and outlines of the steps, then demonstrate on the board using the same example. I follow that up with a different example, and finally have the students work through a problem on their own in class.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using slides in this way works well for me because it allows me to spend less time writing and drawing on the board, and more time engaging students with discussion and question/answers. I think it helps the students as well - they are free to pay attention to what I'm saying, rather than just trying to copy down everything I write. Once they realize that they only need to write down the extra details, the lectures become more fun and I think they get more out of them. Since the slides are always available online, they can print them out whenever they like, or just look at them on their computers/tablets/phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing the summary notes and outlines on the board helps me organize the lectures, keep things on track, and prepare the students to pay attention. It also gives those with less-well-developed note-taking skills a template to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By combining the two, I think this approach addresses both of the disadvantages you brought up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students may lose focus more easily when they have digital notes because they do not have to copy everything down (this was my experience as an undergrad)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the outline summary notes are on the board, students have something to write down, and I can use their tendency to automatically copy whatever I write as way of getting their attention if they seem to be &quot;zoning out&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students may choose not to attend class because notes are available elsewhere (of course, they may choose to do so anyways...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the slides are mostly graphical illustrations with limited text, there is still an advantage to coming to class. I do want to point out that I believe it's part of my job as a teacher to make coming to class valuable for reasons besides just getting a copy of the notes, but, I recognize that for some students who are good at self-study, that might not be the case. I try to follow the textbook pretty closely, so students who can't make it to class for some reason are still able to catch up pretty easily between the book, my slides, and notes copied from classmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20865" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T20:48:26.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-19T21:28:59.913" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background: In Finnish universities the mentality usually is* that student should have the responsibility for their studies and learning (from what and how many courses to take each year to how to study course material). For example, it is very uncommon that attendance at lectures is mandatory, and even mandatory weekly exercises are not very common. In that sense, providing lecture notes has several advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students have to write less (because the core of the material is already present), so more material can be covered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may focus [sic!] more easily when they have digital notes because they do not have to copy everything down (this was my experience as an undergrad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may choose not to attend class because notes are available elsewhere (of course, they may choose to do so anyways...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*or at least it has been in the recent past; some things seem to be changing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some lecturers provide the notes only after the lectures, because students are very good at pointing out typos and other mistakes in the material during the lectures. Some lecturers provide a preliminary version before the lectures, and a corrected version after the lectures. Some lecturers have completed the material on previous years and give everything at the start of the course. Some lecturers have completed the material on previous years and give material related to each lecture shortly before or after that lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, at least in Aalto University, the material is almost always provided as PDF files (or other relevant format) using a web service provided by the university. In the past there was a very complicated system where the lecturer provided the material to a certain company from which a student then ordered the printed material which was then distributed to a folder which was maintained by an association of the students in the degree programme of the student; but for some reason that system was abolished a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents of the material given by the lecturer varies from a complete set of notes that is almost like a book, to bullet points listing what parts of the course book were covered during that lecture. Nevertheless, I think I've never taken a course where you wouldn't be able to study the material without attending the lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One alternative I have considered is to distribute all of the notes relevant to an exam just prior to that exam. However, this may reduce the effectiveness of the advantage, although it will mitigate to a certain extent the disadvantages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen this happening. Some students have asked lecturers who don't provide extensive material during the course to do that before the exam, but most responses I have heard have the following points: Providing the lecture notes just before exam would encourage bulimic learning - that is, putting a lot of stuff in your head for a few days before the exam and quickly throwing it up during the exam without actually learning anything. Most students who don't want to attend lectures might still not attend if they know they will get the material anyway; by providing the notes so late you'd only harm their learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13404" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T21:28:59.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27230" CreationDate="2014-08-19T21:34:14.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now a student for 3 years in Germany (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). I tried to find anything &quot;official&quot; about children in lecture halls, but that was not successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only seen students with their children in a lecture about 3 times. (There might have been more children, but I probably didn't notice)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twice, the children were silent. Only once I've heard one of them. Then the mother went pretty quickly out of the lecture and came back (with the baby) about 15 minutes later. Nobody said anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What I think as a student&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as children don't make noise and as long as the lecture hall isn't crowded I can't see any reason for them not to be there. When the child is loud, then the parents should directly go out with him/her. Most lectures aren't that silent that it is bad when you hear a baby cry for a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when the child is distracting other students / the professor then the child has to leave the lecture hall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What I would do in your situation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two ways to deal with the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Opt-child-in&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could forbid children in your lectures. But if students really have problems, they might come to you and want to speak with you about it. Then you should make clear that you can make an exception, but only if it works. That means if the child is distracting you / other students, the parents have to search a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go for this solution if there are many children who don't know how to behave in a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Opt-child-out&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forbid children directly. When there are problems, you can speak with the parents. You can tell them that their child distracts other students and hence they should not bring it again to lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go for this solution if there are only occasionally children who distract lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More thoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask parents to take a seat in the back / close to the door. This way they can quickly go out when the child/baby is loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T21:34:14.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2014-08-20T00:02:20.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic answer is that as an RA or TA, you are still supposed to be a &lt;strong&gt;full-time student&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, the work contract for either specifically limits you to part-time work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to be confusing you about your RAship is that your RAship is actually just a funding method in the case of your department. An RAship can include assisting a professor with her research in which case, such responsibility is capped at 20 hours a week so that you have the remainder of the week to work on your own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies with a TAship whether that includes sole teaching responsibility or not. The point is that the TAship is secondary from the university's perspective to you working on your own research and coursework and finishing the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They care about completion rates and in most programs, you are no longer a fraction of a percentage point on that front but rather a single student failing to complete because of TAship or RAship will lower the numbers non-marginally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T00:02:20.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27341" CreationDate="2014-08-20T00:49:27.690" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a service that can create custom badges: &lt;a href=&quot;http://shields.io/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;shields.io&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Using the arXiv background color (Firebrick &lt;code&gt;#B31B1B&lt;/code&gt;) I was able to create a badge that looked more or less &quot;official&quot;. An example of their template and my specific use case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://img.shields.io/badge/&amp;lt;SUBJECT&amp;gt;-&amp;lt;STATUS&amp;gt;-&amp;lt;COLOR&amp;gt;.svg&#xA;http://img.shields.io/badge/math.CO-arXiv%3A1408.3644-B31B1B.svg&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After converting the svg to png for use on github, I got this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/abs/1408.3644&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L1baw.png&quot; alt=&quot;1408.3644&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="253" LastEditorUserId="253" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T03:26:52.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T03:26:52.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27379" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:13:14.963" Score="69" ViewCount="18737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been dragged into an argument with someone who can't understand why millions are being raised to fund &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis&quot;&gt;ALS&lt;/a&gt; research (that's the &quot;ice bucket challenge&quot;, love it or hate it). He doesn't get why research costs so much money because - and I genuinely quote - &quot;&lt;strong&gt;it only takes time and effort&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first instinct was to say &quot;Are you being serious or just trying to wind me up?&quot;. But then I realized that maybe from an outsider's perspective, this might actually be difficult to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am asking for points to make when explaining the cost of research to lay people, and how to articulate these points in a way they can identify with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20011" LastEditorUserId="20011" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T16:43:30.890" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T22:29:22.303" Title="Why does research cost so much money?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;research-dissemination&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:18:16.743" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working at a US University, they often do this in order to ensure that you are ineligible for benefits under the family and medical  leave act (fmla).  If you work over 1250 hours they have to provide you with additional benefits, which cost more than they are willing to pay for your labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/fmla.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/fmla.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20797" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T01:18:16.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:33:30.563" Score="78" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it only takes time and effort&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to the question is already there. It takes time and effort. So it means it takes at least the money to pay the people for a long time. And effort means you need a lot of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More precisely, for medical research, reagents, animal model, clinical test are really expensive. Many different drugs need to be developed to have only one working in the end. Finally when a drug seems promising, you have to do year-long clinical tests, just to ensure patients safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So time and effort == lot of money&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="15781" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T13:40:11.450" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T13:40:11.450" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:34:01.247" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;People's salaries cost money. Given the overheads of running a business or university, plus the cost of fringe benefits like retirement and health insurance, you can basically double someone's salary to get the full cost of employing them (whether the number is directly charged or comes in through a national healthcare/retirement scheme). If their talent's are in demand, then companies may bid up salaries in order to attract them away from universities in order to try to make a profit on their labors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STEM talents are in demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therfore, each PhDed person who works on a project costs somewhere between $150,000 and $400,000 (salary is half that, recall) in a broad range of fields relevant to solving problems like ALS or cancer or other diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is hard. Most drugs don't pan out, so you need lots of people trying lots of different ones in order to develop some that do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematics is cheaper to pursue. That can literally be one person reading and scribbling and talking to colleagues until she has a breakthrough. These folks often get paid primarily to teach, but if they're willing to work on algorithms for companies or the government, then they are worth a lot, so salaries also get bid up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T01:34:01.247" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:44:26.937" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends totally on the area of study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like everybody mentioned already, only the human costs are already relatively high, and equipment for bio sciences is crazy expensive as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's just make some estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An average neuroscience lab has at least one EEG machine, which for those levels cost between 30 and 70 thousand bucks. You need good computers, which usually range from 1500 to 2500 USD, at least one for each member, in a 5 person group. That is already ~100,000 USD only in basic equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You sometimes need to pay for your space in some universities, like a rent, having access to live animals to do experiments also costs about 2000 bucks per experiment for small animals, larger animals have all sorts of extra costs, I do not know, but having a chimpanzee should be costing a lab well over half a million bucks/ year to maintain and do experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want an MRA to do functional scanning of the brain, first get a University that has one, also crazy expensive, then pay the rent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conferences plus travel expenses is another sizeable chunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the ripoff that Academic publishing is, Universities pay hefty sums of money to get access to research journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these costs are not even taking into account salaries for Professors, PostDocs, Grad Students, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T01:44:26.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:48:31.320" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an experimenter, so in addition to the cost of some highly trained people's salaries and benefits and the cost of keeping the lights on and the white boards cleaned there is equipment and consumables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the equipment is precision kit. Lots of it are produced in small runs because only a few hundred sites in the whole world need that kind of stuff, so there is no economies of scale. Some of the consumables are pretty exotic and cost a whole heck of a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this applies perfectly well to the kind of research mentioned in the question, plus they have to deal with human subjects concerns and that doesn't come cheap either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just because I like to talk about my work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I'm in big science, when it come time to stop tinkering around with prototypes and testbeds and get really serious we usually build a &lt;em&gt;one-of-a-kind&lt;/em&gt; multi-ton detector with thousands or tens of thousands of instrumented channels. Giga-bytes per day data streams, massive computing infrastructure, hundreds of salaries and travel money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question isn't &lt;em&gt;&quot;Why does it cost so much?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but &lt;em&gt;&quot;How do you expect us to get it done with so little?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Then we go ahead and try because we're happy to have the chance to do it, even on a &quot;shoestring&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T01:48:31.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T04:21:25.800" Score="3" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make things simple, I am asking whether the rebuttal letter is starting with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Editor and Reviewers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Reviewers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20877" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T09:37:57.740" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T09:37:57.740" Title="Should the editor's name be included in a rebuttal letter?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13765" CreationDate="2014-08-20T05:02:24.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you could reasonably tell the editor now that (1) you think the reviewer's contributions warrant co-authorship, but (2) you realize that offering co-authorship to the reviewer before the review process is complete would improperly interfere with that process, and (3) you therefore ask the editor to wait until the review process is complete and only then forward your offer of co-authorship to the reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T05:02:24.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14036" CreationDate="2014-08-20T05:08:14.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your copy of the paper is in pdf format, then you can attach typed notes to it fairly easily. A program called Skim does that, and I think modern pdf viewers also have that capability. (It would be good for me if more people used that option, so that authors who get a referee report of that sort can't easily infer that I'm the referee. My own handwriting has become so lousy that handwritten notes are no longer an option.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T05:08:14.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19161" CreationDate="2014-08-20T05:10:46.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd rather say: it depends. The question can also be asked as: Is it appropriate for all professors to supervise PhD students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20879" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T05:10:46.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19120" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:23:06.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole point of a tenure track position is to show that someone can independently work and lead a laboratory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An academic career is extremely slow compared to most other careers. I don't know why anyone would automatically assume that people with ten to fifteen years of research experience, typically in their late thirties or early forties, cannot work independently or cannot supervise five to ten other people. The old system you mention typically degrade most assistant and associate professors to a low level administrator / secretary position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T14:37:25.037" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:37:25.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:23:41.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I was more focused when the professor had the slides behind him because the slides were just a summary and he had the details. I was more concentrated because I haven't had to write down every single word so the lesson was more fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14834" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T06:23:41.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14036" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:30:04.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received hand-marked manuscript review previously, and it did not raise an issue to neither the editor nor myself and my co-authors. However there is a point you should consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really a substantial and reliable paper if it needs such an extensive correction even in mathematical parts? I have been rejected on the basis of too many typos or too poor grammar, which I don't think should necessarily be a deciding factor. I will only reject people based on bad grammar only if it significantly hurts the understanding of the paper's material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Extensively erroneous mathematics sounds something like a substantial problem with the quality of the research and not only the quality of presentation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T14:37:48.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:37:48.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:32:39.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, an RA appointment is a job, in which you could be required to do what the phrase &quot;research assistant&quot; literally indicates --- assist a professor with his or her research. In the experimental sciences, that could include, for instance, maintenance work needed to keep the lab running properly.  In pure mathematics (my field), what it means in practice is that you do your own research.  So, officially, my Ph.D. students with RA appointments are assisting my research for up to 20 hours per week, even though in practice, what they're doing may have very little to do with my research and will mostly coincide with their thesis research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T06:32:39.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27385" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:38:33.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally you address all letters to the editor (she/he is the contact person!) and if any part of your letter is relevant to a review, than you address them, too. In practice generally t means that in the main header I address on the editor, and when I answer the reviewers, I address them there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T06:38:33.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27385" CreationDate="2014-08-20T07:11:48.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to do is to write two documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a short letter to the Editor, summarizing your rebuttal in a few sentences;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a detailed Answer to Reviewers, including line-by-line response to all comments and suggestions of the Referees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the Editor not necessarily has enough time to read through all the detailed response him/her-self, but the presence of this document re-assures that the discussion between Authors and Referees is going in the right direction. If you experience problems addressing Referees' questions, or disagree with them significantly, you should mention this in the letter to the Editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T07:11:48.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27385" CreationDate="2014-08-20T07:36:03.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually address the editor since I don't ever communicate with the reviewers. However, I thank them for the report in the first sentence of the letter. I think that this corresponds well to the way how reports are written, because they are impersonal as well (they don't begin with &lt;em&gt;Dear authors&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, In my opinion, while one should keep a good level of politeness, your paper won't be treated any better or worse if you write &lt;em&gt;Dear Editor and Reviewers&lt;/em&gt; or just &lt;em&gt;Dear Editor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T07:36:03.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2014-08-20T07:57:15.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Original, in this context, means significantly different. The motivation of your study can be to develop a cheaper method, no problem with that, but the question of originality nothing to do with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original research only means that you do a non-trivial root that hasn't been explored yet. If you manage to be cheaper because you use a different effect or some non-trivial different element, then it is perfect for publication. If you manage to be cheaper, because you ordered your o-rings and screws from a cheaper online shop, then maybe it is not interesting for publication. Anything between I would try to publish: something that seems trivial for you or a gradual improvement, may be surprising or insightful for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is a commercially viable method, you should really think about to &lt;strong&gt;patent it first before publication&lt;/strong&gt;. Even a provisional patent is much better than nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the day, if your method will be widely used (because it is cheaper and practical), this will be a highly cited publication, even if you think your improvement is not significant from scientific point of view. Some of the most cited papers of all times are publications on software used in X-ray crystallography. 99.9% of people do not read those papers, do not understand those papers, and it may be that they just announce the   implementation. Yet everyone who used them, cites them and do it rightly. So it is always better to publish, and then worry about if people like it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T19:59:43.890" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T19:59:43.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19584" CreationDate="2014-08-20T08:10:54.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since most people understand &quot;science&quot; as &quot;good&quot; and &quot;not science&quot; as &quot;a system of mystical thinking akin to Zoroastrianism&quot;, just questioning whether something that's called a science is &quot;really&quot; science is guaranteed to offend the people who practice it, contrary to your hope that no one will be offended by your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I somewhat sense that you don't know much about linguistics, and your image is of prescriptive linguistics, i.e. a bunch of guys sitting in an ivory tower and making pronouncements forbidding prepositions at the ends of sentences. This is not what linguists do; that sort of thing is usually found in English and modern languages departments. You similarly misunderstood computer science, as Ben Crowell addresses in his answer. If you look into things a little, you'll find that modern linguistics is &quot;scientific&quot; in lots of ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many linguists do field research. This involves living among the speakers of unrecorded languages, learning and describing these languages, and helping to analyze the impact these languages have on currently held theories. This is fully as scientific as what cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and behaviorists of all kinds do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But where do linguistic theories come from? Linguistic theories, for the most part, are either psychological theories, attempting to make sense of human language as an activity of the human mind, or mathematical theories, developing formalisms that describe the structure of language. Noam Chomsky's formal language hierarchy and generative grammar are mathematical formalisms that are also used in computer science, which you also malign as not a science. More recent theories, like lexical-functional grammar, are even more mathematical in character. These mathematical formalisms describe the syntax of human language, and books on them contain proofs, as do most books on computer science per se, and not programming. Set theory is also used in some corners of semantics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics is frequently applied in linguistics; see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://linguistics.ucdavis.edu/People/raranovi/papers-and-manuscripts/hdt_sht.pdf/view&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;. The answer to your question &quot;how do linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from historians'?&quot; is that linguists make use of statistical data, try to explain things within existing theories, and apply mathematical formalisms, similar to the way economists and physicists reach consensus. And linguistics continues to get more mathematical, by incorporating statistics, probability, and computer science into its theory and practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, have a look at historical linguistics and comparative linguistics. Modern linguists' painstaking reconstruction of the Proto-Indo European language, the common ancestor of languages as widely sundered as English, Latin, Armenian, Persian, and Hindi, cannot, in my opinion, be called anything other than a work of science. There were judgment calls; there were ambiguities to resolve; there are competing models; and there are some things we'll probably never know. But that's also true of paleontology, geology, and astronomy, and no one disputes that those are sciences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jangari says, there is no sharp dividing line between &quot;science&quot; and &quot;system of mystical thinking&quot;. Entire books have been written on this question. You can read them, and decide for yourself on the question of law. But if you believe that a field's methods and intentions make it scientific, and if you accept that cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, statistics, mathematics, computer science, paleontology, geology, wildlife biology, and physics are sciences, then linguistics is a science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I tried not to be offended, but as a computer science major / linguistics minor who considered law school, your apparent ignorance of computer science and linguistics touched a nerve.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12904" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T08:10:54.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2014-08-20T08:18:38.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the US, another possible contributing factor is that international students (who compose a large share of PhDs in many programs) are legally allowed to work at most 20 hours a week while enrolled as a full-time student (typically on a F-1 visa). Note that one is legally considered a full-time student even when one is a candidate who isn't taking any classes! (An exception is during the summer, when international students are then allowed to work up to 40 hours a week.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly this problem could be circumvented by having separate contracts for US citizens and non-US citizens. But then there'd be other problems (e.g. making things more complicated for the administrators, perceptions of inequality/discrimination). So perhaps it's just simpler for them to have one uniform contract, university-wide, for all the grad students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10885" LastEditorDisplayName="user10885" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T09:56:58.637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T09:56:58.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1193" CreationDate="2014-08-20T08:25:33.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of acknowledging him, you can dedicate the paper to him. I fully agree with @anonymous mathematician that acknowledgment has another purpose. Dedicating to a paper to a famous professor for her/his birthday, however, is not that uncommon and in spirit, I feel it closer to your intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T08:25:33.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19584" CreationDate="2014-08-20T09:13:59.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seeing how both Linguistics and Law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History, big part of philosophy, engineering, large part of chemistry deals with artificial/men created events and items&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not less than in history, astronomy, many parts of biology, archeology, anthropology, literary sciences..  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or to perhaps phrase the question in a less abstract way, how do the Linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from the methods of historians, which basically is &quot;just&quot; some majority of people agreeing on something based, ultimately, on their intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historians and linguists are actually creating models based on their intuitions and discuss the findings, proof or disproof, argue and counter argue, just like other scientists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs, &#xA;  Such formal proofs exist only in mathematics and related subjects (CS and such), but not in sciences like Physics or Chemistry. Proof in &quot;natural sciences&quot; are different in nature from Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or is it perhaps like with Computer Science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This remark, being rather belittling and offensive is not based on actual argument or knowledge about CS. Real CS is pretty much mathematics in most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope no one is be offended by this. It is a serious question and I'm genuinely interested in objective answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unloaded questions and actual knowledge about the subjects could greatly improve the quality of this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T09:13:59.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T09:55:07.527" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in purely theoretical fields or fields without expensive lab costs, research is expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the root of the problem is that your friend seems to be measuring 'cost per result (e.g. cost to cure ALS)'. Most lay people probably don't understand what it means to learn something &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; new about the world. Discovering something new is really, really, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard—even for very intelligent people (remember Einstein's 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration). Thus, whilst it may be true that &quot;it only takes time and effort&quot;, the amount of those things needed to achieve even minor progress is huge. To achieve a major breakthrough, like curing a disease or proving a major theorem, might take thousands of scholars working for years or even a century (see, e.g., the Poincaré conjecture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost to achieve one of these major 'results' is indeed large, but that is because they stand among the crowning achievements of mankind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6879" LastEditorUserId="6879" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T10:00:39.933" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T10:00:39.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-20T10:24:29.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, I am most comfortable and effective learning lecture notes that are provided in traditional book format (even if it isn't available on paper, but as a PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very strong bad feeling towards slides that double as lecture notes. I believe the requirements for these two are so different, that when people merge the concepts, the result is equally bad as a slideset as lecture notes. When the whole material is crammed into slide format, aiming to provide all information the student has to learn, it has several possible disadvantages (all first hand experience):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teacher reads the slides verbatim, rendering his/her presence meaningless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teacher doesn't feel obligated to prepare for the lecture, because everything is on the slides (in extreme cases the slides are made by someone else and the teacher never prepares for the whole course).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teacher doesn't feel obligated to put proper effort into making the slides, because &lt;em&gt;&quot;I'm just making supplementary material&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, resulting in quickly hacked together slides (examples include copy-pasted stuff alternating between first language and English, three complete courses with equations without defining any notations used, two complete courses with equations and no explanatory text at all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The slides are inherently not detailed enough to be a complete resource for the course, so students go to Google for additional resources, and sometimes what they find is completely wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teacher's line of thinking may be so different from the students, that his/her idea of what should be on a slide results in slidesets that are incomprehensible and of absolutely no information to the students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students are disengaged from the lecture because the slides are available online. Even committed students find it hard to pay attention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PowerPoint and similar software makes it easy to place randomly formatted random stuff at random places on the slide. A teacher with no visual/typographical sensitivity and/or proper knowledge of the software may easily create slides that are painful to even look at because of the messy and amateur layout and formatting. (Examples include a complete course in all caps, physics plots handdrawn in PowerPoint/MSPaint style, equations in plain text instead of the equation editor, source code listings in bullet points, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is, take the time needed to type proper lecture notes (maybe next summer) in proper sentences, with all the details etc., and let the slides contain only those pieces of information that you simply cannot present verbally or on the blackboard. An alternative to writing lecture notes is providing pointers to existing (text)books in which the material is already covered (maybe the very books you yourself use to prepare for the course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12724" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T10:24:29.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27409" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:17:14.707" Score="8" ViewCount="3381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which section of a research paper should be written first? When I finally finish my analysis I begin to write the Methods section and the Results section. That is the first &quot;block&quot; of my writing. After that, I discuss it with co-authors (they are of course involved in the analysis, but at this stage they have the real results, graphs, and tables) and co-workers. Only after that do I begin to write the Discussion section and the Introduction. Is that right or is it better to write it in a different order? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19803" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T05:59:12.283" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T18:12:35.707" Title="Which section to start with when writing a research paper" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27408" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:29:52.047" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no 'right' order. Starting where you feel able to do so is far better than not getting started. I usually write lots of sections concurrently, or start writing and work out what the sections are later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it will make your life somewhat easier if you can work roughly in order of dependencies, so you don't have to keep changing what you wrote earlier. From example, it might be helpful to write out some of your notation before you start using it. The introduction will often come late in the process for this reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T12:29:52.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27408" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:33:27.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This almost exclusively depends on the personal taste and habits of you and your co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different types of writers and different types of projects. The order of writing has to be suitable for these. If you and your co-authors are absolutely certain that what you did already makes a nice and complete paper story, then writing the methodology and results first makes sense - you can adapt the introduction accordingly then. However, if the final scope of the paper is not 100% fixed already, writing the introduction first makes sense, so you can check whether your project-so-far actually reads complete. The literature review may then have some impact on your methodology section, so that you can make the distinction to previous work very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit-as-you-go style writers may also want to write the introduction first so that what is written so far is always in a clean state. For others (&quot;binge writers&quot; and writers that iteratively refine detailed plans) it may not really matter again, so the properties of the project can dictate the order of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a plethora of literature on successful academic writing, and different books will advise different approaches, so there is probably no unique answer to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T12:33:27.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:36:19.867" Score="5" ViewCount="1204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that the Scimago Journal Rank make a rank of journals that cover different topics and classified them into quartiles. For what I know conferences also made their proceedings books, but I was dubious if they could be compared agains journals like Scimago does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this because I believe that journals have most ot the time a higher impact than conferences, and compare them side to side (journals and conference proceedings) it is not such a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that I have is if Scimago could be a good way to rank a conference impact, and also if there is another computer science conference ranking that uses the same quartile calculus as Scimago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="20048" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T11:25:56.837" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T11:25:56.837" Title="Is Scimago a good way to rank conference impact?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17577" CreationDate="2014-08-20T14:19:14.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I went through this, the thing that kept me most motivated was not doing it alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get through this, I joined a group of 4 of my peers who were studying for the same tests.  We met twice a week for several hours and planned out before each meeting which chapters we would discuss.  When someone felt they had a particular understanding of the subject matter for the chapter, they would lead the discussion on that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were several advantages to this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was motivated to attend because not doing so would affect the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was motivated to honestly read the chapter and not just skim it if I thought I knew the content already&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found that there were things that I thought I understood that I did not.  Explaining your understanding of something to someone else is a great way to find all of the holes in your understanding of it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In our case, the exams were based on courses we had taken already so we all had notes and previous exams from those courses and were able to share those resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, several of us had family.  A structured time to meet and discuss provided us a way to work with our already overloaded schedules.  We chose to meet on campus in the evenings as our department is open 24/7 to students by keycard.  This allowed other students studying for the same thing to drop in and out of our meetings when they were interested in particular topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20495" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:19:14.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27408" CreationDate="2014-08-20T14:28:28.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just like to address this comment from the TC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everything is OK, I just heard one conversation that without a written&#xA;  hypothesis and proper literature review no one should start to write&#xA;  an article. I thing that this part belongs to the Introduction but it&#xA;  is possible to have it only in mind when I actually writing a paper&#xA;  and put it on it later. I´ve been just curious, how other people&#xA;  writing their papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The order Method &gt; Results &gt; Discussion &gt; Introduction (let's call this the MRDI method) is extremely common in my field (biomedical). From what I can tell there is nothing wrong with it, though your comments are certainly worth discussing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's important to distinguish between conceptualizing and writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the path from concept to manuscript is not linear or singular. Some phenomenon, questions, or challenges might have sparked us to gather some evidence and perform a hypothesis test. At that stage we might not have writing an introduction, but we would have already known the big three in the introduction section: what is known, what is not, and how can our work help here. So, in a way, your quoted comment seems to have mixed up &quot;research&quot; and &quot;writing.&quot; Yes, we may not have the introduction written first, but the big picture is already conceptualized, and recorded in some form not necessarily as a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hypothesis integrated analysis plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the comment on written hypothesis. Again, I think the speaker mixed up &quot;research&quot; and &quot;writing&quot; or he/she was speaking to a group of very new science students. In my field, all analyses were based on hypotheses, and all procedures are predetermined. In a sense, if we come up with any results, it's already implied that hypothesis setting and analysis planning have already been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't fuss over the real &quot;order&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal experience: Don't sit down and think &quot;Okay, I am going to write the Discussion section and nothing else!&quot; When write, just let your thoughts flow, if later the materials deem more appropriate to be moved to Introduction, so be it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for Results section. Some people were very disciplinary about not to interpret any findings in the Results section. But I just write whatever I want in the draft, and then parse out the interpretive parts later. For me, thoughts are thoughts, they just come out like a chain of... sausages of different stuffing, for the lack of a better analogue. After I am done, I'll then go back to cut them up and categorize them. As time goes on I am getting better at churning out sausages of similar stuffing in one chain, but I have no desire to compartment my thought process like how writers compartment a research article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:28:28.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T14:43:02.090" Score="8" ViewCount="1790" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my Czech university where I study computer science (but I believe math and physics are organized the same way here), most courses have both lectures (professor presenting the topic to a large class) and &quot;seminars&quot; (TA giving exercises and homework to a smaller class).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe courses at US universities have different structure and that the term &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminar#Universities&quot;&gt;&quot;seminar&quot;&lt;/a&gt; has different meaning. But there has to be something like our &quot;seminars&quot;, right? What is it called? How does it look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="323" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T14:55:22.353" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T11:58:51.463" Title="What is the equivalent of European &quot;seminar&quot; in US universities?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2014-08-20T14:44:49.327" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is often called a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitation#Academic_recitation&quot;&gt;recitation section&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T14:47:22.877" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:47:22.877" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T14:47:56.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The research group that I've been fortunate enough to work with as part of my Masters dissertation (Microelectronics) have recently received funding of £400,000.  To me that sounded like an immense amount of money; but then I saw some invoices for how much it costs to repair and maintain the antiquated machinery they're forced to use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, does your friend really not understand that &quot;time and effort&quot; cost money in and of themselves before you even start thinking about equipment and whatnot?  Does he think that researchers don't need a salary because they are immune to starvation and the elements?  US$1million would pay the salaries of 5 research assistants for 4 years; and those salaries are not exactly generous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20892" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:47:56.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:11:40.060" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally these are referred to as &quot;labs&quot; or &quot;discussion&quot; sections, as opposed to the &quot;lecture&quot; session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving an example from computer science, it is not uncommon for there to be a lecture session where the instructor (such as the professor) talks about the material, takes questions, etc. Then there is often a lab session, often held in a computer lab, where students can work on hands-on assignments, homework, and course projects. These can be staffed by the instructor/professor or by student teaching assistants, or held as an open lab where the room is reserved but no one conducts the session - students come and go and work as they please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fields of communication, philosophy, and history, it is common that this lab session is replaced by a discussion session. The lecture is often of a mass variety, where the professor gives the talk to hundreds of students at a time. During the discussion session the professor or a student teaching assistant holds discussions, readings, gives out assignments, and various other similar tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In physics and biology, again there is often a lecture or mass lecture held by the professor, then sometimes both lab and discussion sessions may be held. Again the staffing and locations vary, but the general theme is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally experienced these in a number of institutions in the US in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, philosophy, history, communications, art, computer science, and psychology...so it certainly seems to be a very common pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These non-lecture sections are almost always of a less-populated variety as well. If the class only has 20-30 students total, then the lab sections are of the same size. If the class is over 30, I have usually experienced lab and discussion sessions to be smaller, with as little as 12-20 students maximum - but this usually varies by room and lab availability and subject, and thus will vary by University, department, and subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:11:40.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:11:53.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Uk at least there are often tutorials which sound similar to what you describe. They consist of a small group of approx. 4-5 students with one tutor (generally a professor/lecturer/post-doc). The aim is to do exercises and go through problems the students are having with the course. Also you are often set homework for the tutorials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how common this system is in other parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:11:53.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:27:40.297" Score="14" ViewCount="2332" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer&quot;&gt;How to improve myself as a lecturer?&lt;/a&gt;. However, being a PhD student, my main teaching obligation is leading recitations, i.e. sessions for groups of ~20 students that take place each week after a lecture and the content of the lecture should be revised mostly via exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not use the term &quot;recitation session&quot;, please see a related question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27415/what-is-the-equivalent-of-european-seminar-in-us-universities&quot;&gt;What is the equivalent of European &amp;quot;seminar&amp;quot; in US universities?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my university (Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Czech Republic), in the mathematics/theoretical computer science classes, usually you have a 90 minute class where the recitation teacher reminds students of what was said in the lecture, hands out or writes exercises, and then, in shorter blocks, students go through the exercises and one student shows the solutions on a blackboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not very fond of this structure and I would like to improve my classes with ideas that I cannot find at my university (where we usually do things the aforementioned way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas that I've had in my previous years, which you can judge effectiveness of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;handing out &quot;cheat sheets&quot; containing the entire course notes (with compact proofs) beforehand: usually useful, as lecturers rarely have such compact notes beforehand, but very time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;trying to ask each student how he is faring and offer personal advice: when I was a student, I preferred this model, but it takes a lot of time to go around 20 people and shortly talk to each one; my students (in an exit questionnaire) argued that they want more exercises done per class, so time is of the essence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;allow group work during a class -- this seems natural to me (science is mostly done in groups) but often results in people not being able to perform as well in final exams. Plus I am not yet sure how to allow groupwork so that groups don't delegate the work to the one enthusiastic student in the group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use text questionnaires through and after a session to find out what students would like; I am very happy with the information in those and will use those in the future but students of one university tend to suggest improvements which they have noticed at the same university (especially where it is expected to go to one university for the 3-year Bc. and 2-year Master's).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;filming yourself (as was suggested in the lecturer's question) is definitely a valid option but I feel it won't help me as much with recitations, especially since (I believe) there are not many great recitation sessions publicly available on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20891" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T01:02:58.173" Title="How to improve myself as a recitation (discussion,lab,tutorial) teacher?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:36:34.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would emphasize who's time and effort is involved, and how much of it is involved.  It isn't like we have a couple of undergrad research assistants working on the problem so we can pay them next to nothing.  ALS research occupies the time of teams of doctors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second they seem to be underestimating the type and length of the work involved.  It isn't like they can go over to CVS and say I have this prescription for this never before seen drug whip some up for me while I browse the magazine rack, or go to some medical supply store and order a never seen before medical device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, safety protocols, it isn't like they fabricate some new concoction in the lab then go jab it in some guy's arm like they do on TV.  It takes a long time because they are actively trying to not kill people, and exercise an abundance of caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20894" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:36:34.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:46:24.560" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To deal with this answer more generally, I would insist on using their own argument: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;nearly everything on earth is just a matter of time and effort.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes everything from The Great Pyramids to battleships to cars, books to research, farming to mining. They are all products of the application of effort and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason things cost money is not mostly because of the raw materials. With most things in life, the raw material is the easy part!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like farming/gardening as an example. Much of a garden or even a farm can be done with little to no raw materials. You need dirt, sure, but that stuff is everywhere! It isn't always good for growing, but you can fix that with time and effort to till, cultivate, amend with more cheap stuff (waste products and so on). Bugs? Squish them - time and effort. Seed? Harvest it wild, make your own selective cultivation to raise yield - time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike gardening, though, research isn't growing the same crops over and over again every season. With growing food, it often gets easier each year if you do it right - you learn what works and what doesn't, the soil can be made more fertile. But with research, once you have your product you don't get to just repeat the same process again and call it good. That wouldn't bring about a publishable result - no one cares if you &quot;discover electricity for the 40th time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When research is easy and quick, it gets done easily and quickly, and then there is no reason to do it again. The low hanging fruit gets picked, and it doesn't grow back!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, we can expect research to get harder as we as a society learn more - more time, more effort per discovery is required. This means research should only get more and more expensive, while making and growing stuff should get cheaper and cheaper. Economics (research!) is more complicated than this of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's talk about what else costs money. 'Stuff', raw materials, do cost money. Research needs labs and offices, electricity/fuel, and most need all sorts of special equipment and apparatus. Medical labs need stupid amounts of these, and everything costs so much money because research is picky - poisoning someone with an injection because you didn't spring for that stupidly expensive &quot;approved&quot; beaker instead of using a $1 drinking glass from the second-hand store that wasn't resistant to the chemical regents you used is generally frowned upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if a person thinks human time and effort should be free and people should not ask anything in exchange for their life dedication and work - why in blue blazes are you still talking with this person? Suddenly, a relevant XKCD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4pTBj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Unless that person is a Senator&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the Senator seriously thinks medical research - or any research - should be cheap or free...well, good luck to you in your noble fight, friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:46:24.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-20T16:00:12.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I provide my slides. I give them to the bookstore to print as a &quot;course pack&quot; sold for a nominal amount (none of which goes to me) and if I change them during the year, I put them online for download right before (or in some cases, immediately after) class. I typically have a separate small deck with comments and diagrams and such that arise from marking an assignment or test. I don't upload these ever. In the first class I explain all of this to the students along with the following important announcement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can and will test you on material that was only covered verbally in class and is not written on these slides. You can and will lose marks for not knowing something that was only talked about during a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I find myself putting the screen up to draw something on the blackboard, I take a note to add that diagram to the deck for next year. I find that drawing diagrams out is a great way to learn, but that most students will not do so - having a predrawn diagram helps them less than having one they drew, but more than having nothing, so I do it. Since I am teaching them how to make design decisions and record those decisions in the form of a diagram, the more examples they have the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In over a decade, no student has ever objected to what I'm doing, though there have been some who (wrongly) thought it meant they could pass without coming to class. I also had a few in the early days who objected to my file formats, giving me the extra work of exporting each deck to PDF or HTML or whatever they could handle; that seems to have stopped although I still ask each year if anyone needs a different format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T16:00:12.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36885" CreationDate="2014-08-20T17:22:56.300" Score="2" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, the MS and PhD programs in Computer Science have comprehensive exams.  The exams retest the student on topics from designated core courses.  The exams are separate from the course and may be written by a group of instructors instead of just the instructor who taught the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students are given a list of books to read.  Some of the books indicate selected chapters, others are expected to be read and understood cover to cover.  The scope of the exams is daunting and preparation for the exams is expected to be a major undertaking by the students taking months of preparation.  For full time students this is difficult.  For part time students like myself who work full-time and have family this effectively sidelines research during the preparation period.  If you do not pass the exams on your first try, it can be very demoralizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to stay motivated by following the strategy I described in a similar question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17577/how-to-make-a-one-year-study-plan-for-a-difficult-exam-and-remain-motivated-thro/27412#27412&quot;&gt;strategy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other strategies have people used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:26:16.690" Title="How can I remain motivated while studying for comprehensive exams?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T17:35:39.637" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond the cost of lab spaces, researchers, guinea pigs, machinery, and raw materials, I would like to add a few costs caused or worsened by the lack of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;open science&lt;/a&gt; (a great &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnWocYKqvhw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED video about open science&lt;/a&gt; if you aren't familiar with it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paid access to research articles&lt;/strong&gt;. In addition to preventing the general public from having easy access to and contributing, it has two main consequences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Universities must pay some insane amount of money to access publications, typically &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29923/452&quot;&gt;a few millions USD yearly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even the most highly-ranked universities don't have access to all articles (far from it), which mean researchers sometimes waste time to try to get access to some papers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data sets unavailability or price&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unavailability: researchers sometime have to create their own data sets or abandon project ideas due to the unwillingness of others to share their data sets, because sharing data set might mean wasting some publication opportunities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Price: some researchers do share their data set, but but not free. For example, in the natural language processing community some of the key data sets are only available on the Linguistic Data Consortium website, which charges download.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unreleased source code&lt;/strong&gt;. Many publications don't share their source code that was used for the article. A couple of reasons might explain the behavior: just like for data set, access to source code gives an edge over other researchers, who will have a harder time improving, amending, etc, the article. Also, the source code might be badly written and researchers can be embarrassed about it. It might be a way to avoid other people finding bugs in your code that invalidates some of your results. I asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/24490/452&quot;&gt;Are there any journals or conferences that take into account the availability and the quality of the source code when selecting the papers to publish?&lt;/a&gt; one day, even in 2014 it is hard to find... Also, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29137/452&quot;&gt;reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;in computer science systems, out of 410 papers that were analyzed, only 85 has a link to source in the paper&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too many articles due to overreliance on bibliometrics&lt;/strong&gt; to assess researchers (grants, promotions, etc.), which push researchers to over-publish. I sometimes feel that I am a documentalist, trying to navigate my way through myriads of papers that are written in some unnecessarily complicated way with barely any contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of good, widely-used platforms to publicly comments on existing articles&lt;/strong&gt;. E.g. if something is unclear in an article and a researcher spent his morning to understand, there is no good platform for him to leave a comment to help other future readers who will have the same understanding issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publication bias&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, which results from the fact that positive results have a much higher chance to be published than negative findings. This slows down research too: see the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Most Published Research Findings Are False&lt;/a&gt; or the TED video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ben Goldacre: What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe&lt;/a&gt; (really worth watching if you don't know the extent of the problem). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Page limit of the articles&lt;/strong&gt; inherited from the Middle age where articles were printed and distributed through paper form (and charged $30 per article, without any dime going to the authors' pockets). This forces authors to chop off some of the information they would have liked to convey. How many times did you wonder how the authors performed some mathematical derivation? How many times did you wonder which parameters did the experimentalists used?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these inefficiencies cost money too. E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001747&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Make More Published Research True&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, many published research findings are false or exaggerated,&#xA;  and &lt;strong&gt;an estimated 85% of research resources are wasted&lt;/strong&gt;. (in biomedical research)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/13/publication-bias.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;key points&lt;/a&gt; from the TED video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ben Goldacre: What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Former drug company researcher Glenn Begley looked at 53 papers in the&#xA;  world's top journals, and found that he and a team of scientists could&#xA;  NOT replicate 47 of the 53 published studies — all of which were&#xA;  considered important and valuable for the future of cancer treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Half of all clinical trials ever completed on the medical treatments&#xA;  currently in use have never been published in the medical literature.&#xA;  Trials with positive results for the test treatment are about twice as&#xA;  likely to be published, and this applies to both academic research and&#xA;  industry studies.&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010, three researchers from Harvard and Toronto identified all the&#xA;  published trials for five major classes of drugs, and then measured&#xA;  two key features: Were they positive, and were they funded by&#xA;  industry? Out of a total of 500 trials, 85 percent of the&#xA;  industry-funded studies were positive, compared to 50 percent of the&#xA;  government-funded trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a 2011 study in the Journal of Medical Ethics,4 nearly 32&#xA;  percent of retracted papers were not noted as having been retracted by&#xA;  the journal in question, leaving the readers completely in the dark&#xA;  about the inaccuracies in those studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T16:53:41.170" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27428" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:14:36.270" Score="44" ViewCount="28406" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am the TA for a class, what should I do if a student asks me a question which I can't answer? While &quot;tell the truth and say you don't know&quot; is one approach, are there other options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T14:36:21.373" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T15:22:17.087" Title="What should I do if I don't know the answer to a question posed by a student?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;answering-questions&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:16:50.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One part of the answer that was not mentioned so far is that &lt;strong&gt;highly skilled people want to get paid good&lt;/strong&gt;. Or to phrase it differently: You will not find people with the skills you need to do research without paying them accordingly. Especially for pharmacy / medical studies you need a lot of man-hours of people who probably made a PhD at university. They spend a lot of their money to get to this point and they want to get paid accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As those studies require - as already mentioned - a lot of time, you need to pay a lot of expensive man-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some numbers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The median education debt for indebted medical school graduates in 2012 was $170,000, and 86 percent of graduates report having education debt. Specifically the 2012 the median debt at graduation was $160,000 at public institutions and $190,000 at private institutions. (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gradschool.about.com/od/medicalschool/f/MedSchoolCost.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Much Does Medical School Cost?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T03:44:46.710" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T03:44:46.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27426" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:34:23.130" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that honesty is the best policy, and it's too bad if you're in a situation in which you feel worried about admitting you don't know the answer.  You shouldn't try to bluff, by pretending you know but don't have time to explain or by giving an intentionally vague answer.  However, there are ways of handling it more smoothly than just saying &quot;I don't know&quot; and leaving it at that.  Depending on the circumstances, you can say &quot;That's a really interesting question.  I haven't thought about it, so I'll have to look into it, but let's talk about it in office hours.&quot;  (Or you can promise to return to the topic in the next class meeting if it's really relevant to the course and everyone in the class will want to know the answer.)  Or &quot;These issues can be complicated.  I don't know the details off the top of my head, but the place I'd look them up is Reference Work X.  I'd be happy to show you where to find it after class.&quot;  Or &quot;That's a good question, but it's somewhat beyond the scope of this class.  I'd be happy to investigate it with you outside of class.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to respect the student's desire to learn.  If you avoid the question or give an answer you know is inadequate, then you're being deliberately unhelpful.  If you just give up and admit defeat, then at least you're being honest, but the student still isn't finding out what he/she wanted to know.  If you respond by pointing the student on the road to an answer, even if you can't supply it off the top of your head, then you've done everything that can be expected of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T18:34:23.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27432" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:39:34.683" Score="4" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a program that has a seminar class where the students are strongly encouraged to get people to come and present. I was wondering if anyone else ever had to find speakers and if so had a sample form letter. I ask because I can offer nothing in terms of compensations so I am not sure how to go about doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10097" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T19:13:48.240" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T19:31:24.993" Title="What is the proper etiquette for requesting speakers from industry for an academic seminar?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27434" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:25:41.367" Score="12" ViewCount="5097" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have thought the document and overall findings are to be a closely guarded secret until defense or publication, so you can imagine my horror that a hiring professor would ask if he can have a pdf of my dissertation. This is in the context of a job application, whilst he decides whether or not to invite me for an interview.  I have already sent them the other standard documentation that was requested in the advert.  Is his request as unorthodox as it seems to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8507" OwnerDisplayName="The Wonderer" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T18:43:13.043" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:58:45.810" Title="Is it commonplace for a recruiter to ask to see an unpublished PhD thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:43:26.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could put in perspective by comparing it to other ventures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, running Walmart &quot;cost&quot; around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart&quot;&gt;$450bn last year&lt;/a&gt;. Running IBM cost &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM&quot;&gt;$115bn last year&lt;/a&gt;. Running Pfizer cost around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer&quot;&gt;$20bn last year&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, compare this to the cost of finding the Higgs boson: around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/forbes-finding-higgs-boson-cost-1325-billion-721503&quot;&gt;~$13.25bn over the total time taken&lt;/a&gt;. Hubble: around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/499224main_JWST-ICRP_Report-FINAL.pdf&quot;&gt;$10bn up to 2010&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific research is not cheap, but it's way cheaper than running a business and has much wider reaching impacts. What sticks in people's minds is that the money comes from &quot;funding&quot; and &quot;charity&quot; and that strikes them as &quot;waste&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20830" LastEditorUserId="20830" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T19:10:06.003" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T19:10:06.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27429" CreationDate="2014-08-20T19:31:24.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think using or even adapting a sample form letter would be very helpful, just as a canned letter wouldn't be very successful in a job application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In cases like these, a good network definitely helps. If you know someone, even only slightly, that gives you a better starting position that just cold calling someone. Think through your network, and even if you don't know anyone you could meaningfully invite, maybe someone from your network knows someone she or he could introduce you to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you at least offer reimbursement of travel costs? If not, look for people working close to you. Budgets are tight, and your speaker may have a hard time getting reimbursed for such a talk from his company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just as for a job application: when you do contact someone, be brief and to the point. Introduce yourself (if necessary), briefly describe your class and ask whether your candidate would in principle be interested. Offer to follow up with details - don't include them in the first email. People in industry are busy (just as everyone else).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, you should definitely include a tidbit that (a) makes speaking interesting for your candidate and (b) helps him/her get permission/budget from the employer. Are your classmates close to graduation? Then the company can present itself as an interesting employer. Do you have any interesting projects? Are you working in a field that is related to your candidate's employer or even better to you candidate's own work? Are you perhaps potential customers? Any kind of motivation is good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Above all, don't worry overmuch. Everyone's ego is tickled at being invited to speak, even if they don't accept the invitation. And established people, whether in industry or in academia, often &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; happy to accept such invitations and help students out. The worst that could happen is a polite refusal (or no answer at all). The best would be a nice talk and an interesting contact for later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kind of wonder whether this question wouldn't be better at workplace.SE.com. You'll get more answers from industry there than at academia.SE.com. Perhaps you want to consider flagging it for migration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T19:31:24.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27430" CreationDate="2014-08-20T20:07:24.840" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might depend on the field, but it strikes me as pretty normal to ask for the PhD thesis in the context of an academic job application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your PhD thesis shows the quality of your research.  Your PhD thesis shows the quality of your ability to &lt;em&gt;communicate&lt;/em&gt; your research.  Both are essential skills in (academic) research.  Unless you already have many published papers — and it appears that you do not (or else why would it be secret?) — then your PhD thesis is the only document that can serve as evidence that you do possess those skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about results leaking, you can ask for the manuscript to be treated confidentially.  If you are worried about the recruiter stealing and abusing your results, you might want to reconsider if you want to work there in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T20:07:24.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27430" CreationDate="2014-08-20T20:12:10.653" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, yes.  It is very common for academic employers to want to know about a candidate's research in progress, and they often ask for research plans, unpublished manuscripts, reports on ongoing projects, etc.  From the employer's point of view, they want to know as much as possible about what the candidate is doing, so as to evaluate the promise of their research program and their productivity.  This is especially true for junior candidates who do not already have a large body of published work.  So a request for a draft of a PhD thesis would not be out of line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a candidate shares such material as part of their application, the hiring professor or committee has an ethical obligation to hold it in confidence.  They should not circulate it beyond those people within the department who are involved in the hiring decision.  Also, it would be ethically inappropriate for anyone with access to this material to exploit it for the gain of their own research program (e.g. by trying to solve the candidate's thesis problem before they do, or giving it to one of their own students).  As the candidate, you have the right to expect that this will not happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as a matter of practice, if you want the job, you don't have much choice but to give them what they ask.  But I wouldn't see such a request as unusual or unreasonable, and I don't think you need worry about them using it unfairly.  If you are still worried, you could send them the thesis along with a note saying &quot;since this is work in progress, I would ask that you keep it in confidence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would say it's an exaggeration to say a thesis should be a &quot;closely guarded secret&quot; or to react with &quot;horror&quot; to a request to share it.  It's generally prudent not to share unpublished work indiscriminately, but it's not as if it were missile launch codes.  If there is something to be gained by sharing it with someone (e.g. useful input from an expert, a potential collaborator, a job) then often that's a good idea.  It seems to be pretty common for people starting out in academia to overestimate the risks of people stealing their work: yes, there are horror stories, but in the long run, you usually have more to lose from excessive secrecy than from reasonable openness.  Paranoia is generally not a helpful trait for an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T20:12:10.653" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27437" CreationDate="2014-08-20T20:35:09.637" Score="9" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an incoming Ph.D. student I was asked to sign an intellectual property assignment agreement in addition to an employment contract as a condition for receiving a tuition reduction and a stipend.  The wording was rather vague, and contained 'legalese'. I have no experience with this. So, I do not know anything about it, and I do not know if the &quot;agreement&quot; I signed contains anything abnormal, because of the way it was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this normal practice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, what is contained in a standard intellectual property agreement?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11512" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T22:11:33.553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T02:17:38.320" Title="Intellectual Property Assignment Agreements for Ph.D. students - What is normal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;contract&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27435" CreationDate="2014-08-20T22:33:53.133" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very roughly, at the US universities I have worked for, the IP policies have been along these general lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you write a paper or book as part of your research, you get to keep the copyright and any royalties.  But the university gets permission to use the work internally, keep a copy in the library, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If, as part of your research, you invent something that's patentable, contact the university's IP office.  They will help you with the patent process.  You and the university will hold the patent together, or some similar arrangement. They have to agree on any licensing agreements, etc (where you sell some company the rights to use your patent), and they get a large share (perhaps half or so) of whatever royalties or fees are earned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm a pure mathematician, and we never invent anything patentable, so I always skim the patent part and may have got it wrong :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T22:33:53.133" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-21T01:43:59.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research does not necessarily cost a lot of money. Even today, some areas such as literature, philosophy and theoretical mathematics (non-computational) literally cost only as much as a desk, pen and paper. In theory. In practice, as many have already pointed out, even in these fields it can make sense to do a little cost-time trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about the other fields? Since the question is about ALS, I will focus on more technology-heavy fields. I will also try to explain more the barriers to making the same research cost less, rather than try to guess what that particular researcher's budget was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to be associated with a university or institute, and they take a big cut out of your funding.&lt;/strong&gt; A vast bulk of research is done by university professors. While on the face, you might think that such institute-affiliated researchers take a monthly salary, and then get money from the government on top to spend on their research, that isn't quite true. When you receive a grant, the university or institute takes a large amount of this, eg. 50% or even 80%. Part of this is probably just taken because the president wants a nice house. But it also pays for the electricity in your office, the electron microscope everyone gets to use, the salary of the janitor, the salary of the health and safety people whose approval is required by law for you to obtain restricted research chemicals, etc. You could save a lot of money by not being a university affiliated researcher, but you can't just up and go and do research from your garage - you must deal with a lot of bureaucracy unless you want to get fined or jailed, and you lose the very important benefit of easily being able to eat lunch with leading scientists and talk to them about science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Materials are expensive.&lt;/strong&gt; Others have explained in detail why consumables (chemicals, enzymes, single use sterile tools such as petri dishes) are expensive. A lot of these you could in theory make yourself. I know many biology labs who eschew modern kits and still use DIY methods from decades ago to save money - but it's a lot of work and introduces a lot of risk for error. Even then, some crucial reagents are simply impossible to manufacture if you don't have a large chemical plant. Think by analogy to computers: You can do a lot with DIY electronics, but nobody is going to be building an i7 out of scrap metal in their garage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Equipment is very expensive.&lt;/strong&gt; Even the simplest biological research equipment tends to run from thousands of dollars to hundred of thousands or even millions. Even something as basic as a centrifuge can run you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/cls6758?lang=en&amp;amp;region=US&quot;&gt;two grand&lt;/a&gt;, and you cannot do any molecular biology without one. If you want to do sequence based research (absolutely necessary for ALS), either you must buy a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.labx.com/v2/adsearch/detail3.cfm?adnumb=516494&quot;&gt;very expensive sequencer&lt;/a&gt; or you must pay someone to run samples on theirs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientists need to eat.&lt;/strong&gt; Research isn't a hobby, it's a full-time job. Perhaps the professor's salary gets paid by the university - but often grad students and postdocs are paid from the grant money. All these people must be paid a salary, otherwise their landlord will kick them out and they will starve. It would be ridiculous to expect someone with a 40-hour job to do a few hours of research every weekend and get somewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With ALS and biology in particular, there are also some &quot;soft&quot; factors contributing to research costs: Firstly &quot;big data&quot; and high-throughput studies are currently in vogue, and both require expensive, specialized systems. Second, it is getting harder and harder to find problems that aren't expensive to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many studies which can be done for a $10.000 in reagents (which isn't a lot, other costs notwithstanding) over 1-3 years. Many labs already do this. But not every lab is this lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if your disease has hundreds of variants which must be characterized by spending thousands on genotyping (it costs a few hundred per person, to cover things like cost of manufacturing the genotyping chip, cost of chemically preparing the sample, salary of people who do the specialized genotyping, and the profit margin of the genotyping company)? What happens if the protein that causes the disease must be purified using an extremely expensive chemical? What happens if the aberration that causes the disease is so microscopic, that you need a million dollar microscope to see it? What happens when the thing you study turns out to be so complex, that only a supercomputer (which are very expensive to have or use) can hope to make sense of the data? What happens when you are studying a very dangerous pathogen that will kill you unless you have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/4315093&quot;&gt;$100 million&lt;/a&gt; BSL-4 lab that takes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091111/full/462146a.html&quot;&gt;$2 million&lt;/a&gt; every year to maintain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's worse is that biology has been around for quite some time, and a lot of the questions that are &quot;cheap&quot; to answer have already been answered by someone else. Problems like ALS, which have stayed unsolved for decades, are unsolved for a reason: Sometimes it's just because nobody happened to be clever enough to come up with the right idea, but a lot of the time it's because the scale of research needed to attack them was prohibitively expensive. Now technology has advanced, and it is no longer prohibitive, but still expensive (meanwhile the technology affording that discount is itself not cheap).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it only takes time and effort&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly not. There is some research to which this applies in a trivial way, but a lot of important research is practically impossible without using the technological infrastructure built over the centuries of human history, and using that infrastructure is rarely free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why does research cost so much money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much does he think it should cost? Based on the quote, I suspect it is $0. That's not gonna happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It costs what it costs because that's what it costs. If you can come up with your own budget for a given study that is much smaller, yet still makes it feasible, go ahead. But just writing numbers on paper and asking why it doesn't cost this much is wishful thinking. You don't go to the car store and tell the guy you think his Ferrari &quot;ought&quot; to cost $32.27 because that's how much cash you happen to have in your pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;points to make when explaining the cost of research to lay people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The condensed version of the above is: Even smart people sometimes cannot solve a problem without buying expensive things. You cannot study moon rocks without buying an expensive rocket to go to the moon. You cannot study what's inside the atom without buying an expensive atom smasher. You cannot test a cancer drug if you don't have expensive cancer cell cultures to test it on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science is not just sitting around in a room and philosophizing. You must also do experiments. The experiment's set up can sometimes get involved and complicated. Observing the outcome of the experiment can require specialized sensors or measurement tools. Processing the data gathered can require state of the art supercomputers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how to articulate these points in a way that they can identify with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You get what you pay for.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T00:52:02.440" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T00:52:02.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T02:22:00.757" Score="79" ViewCount="9541" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems to be accepted wisdom in the business world that reference letters for former employees should be extremely terse.&lt;/strong&gt; They should confirm that the employee worked there, and essentially nothing else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To whom it may concern: Ellen Ripley was employed by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from June 2137 to September 2139.  Signed, C. Burke, manager.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard reasoning is that if the letter contains something unfavorable and the employee is turned down for a future job, they might sue their former company for libel, claiming the unfavorable statement was a lie which damaged their career.  In order to avoid the possibility of such a legal battle (which, the reasoning goes, could be very expensive, even if the company wins), the company tells its managers to write letters with no content, so that there's no chance of them containing something actionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question on Workplace Stack Exchange, &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/226/26826&quot;&gt;Is there any evidence that giving references for former employees is inherently risky?&lt;/a&gt;, attests to this practice, and the answers provide some suggestion that the company's fears are justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the other hand, in academia, detailed and informative recommendation letters are the norm.&lt;/strong&gt;  They often run to multiple pages, and contain specific information about the candidate's history and activities at the institution, as well as the writer's (supposedly honest) subjective assessment of the candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and potential.  This is not only common but effectively mandatory; a minimal recommendation letter of the kind described above would immediately consign the candidate's application to the nearest wastebasket.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would seem to be just the sort of thing that fills corporate counsel with horror, yet we do it every day.  No academic employer of mine has ever told me not to do so; for that matter, I can't say that I've ever received any official guidance, one way or the other, on writing recommendations.  Nobody in academia seems to be concerned that writing a letter that could be construed as less than favorable could result in legal consequences.  &lt;strong&gt;So how are we getting away with it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are universities treated differently under the law, making them less vulnerable to such threats?  Or do they willingly accept the legal risks in order to make the world a better place by providing actual information about their former students/employees?  Or is everyone ignorant of the risk of trouble?  Or is there something I have not thought of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To forestall a couple of objections: I know that academics usually try to write only positive letters, and decline to write if they have nothing good to say, but that's evidently not enough in the corporate world.  Anyway, candidates often end up damned by faint praise.  Also, I know that we send letters in confidence, with the understanding that they won't be shown to the candidate, and sometimes this is backed by having the candidate sign a waiver, but I have to believe that a sufficiently determined and litigious candidate could get access anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know this question may sound rhetorical, but I ask it in seriousness, and hope to learn something from the answers.  My context is the US, but if things are substantially different in other places, that would be interesting to know as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T04:02:31.920" Title="To avoid legal battle, in bussiness world reference letters are written extremely terse. How do academics get away with this?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-21T02:26:07.993" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, there is a major difference in how employees' and students' letters are handled. Applicants to US undergraduate and graduate programs are routinely asked to waive the right to see their letters of recommendation, and therefore the letter writers are free to speak in a much more candid manner and offer a frank appraisal of a candidate's positives and negatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that this is often &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the case outside the US, where students are often directly given letters of recommendation that are exactly of the bland and generic format you described above. These letters, as you can imagine, are essentially useless in describing a student's real qualifications, and consequently we give those letters very little weight in our deliberations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T02:26:07.993" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2014-08-21T04:36:16.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a variation on Bill Barth's answer, at my last institution, the local jargon was simply to refer to these class meetings as &lt;em&gt;section&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't solve this homework problem, I'll ask my TA about it in section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may have been short for &lt;em&gt;recitation section&lt;/em&gt; but I don't believe I ever heard the longer form.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T04:36:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-21T05:44:33.750" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, the recommendation letter is a 推薦状 [&lt;em&gt;suisenjyou&lt;/em&gt;] and it will in all but the most Westernized schools be given to the student such that they can read it and stamped with the seal of the professor and possibly an official seal from the school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this is slightly different than an American recommendation letter -- which is more of an appraisal of the student's abilities. By and large, the Japanese recommendation letter serves as an introduction / expression that the professor or teacher vouches for the student as someone trustworthy for the new job or school. It contains little information and not much detail on why the student would be recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was quite the pain getting letters of this format from some of the Americans less aware of the existence of what to us is such a bizarre practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe but cannot vouch that the practices are similar in Korea and China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T05:44:33.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27448" CreationDate="2014-08-21T05:48:47.543" Score="22" ViewCount="7338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently submitted a 40 pages paper to a journal, say (A). After about 6 months, the editor let me know that several reviewers have declined to review my paper, and so he decided to reject the paper. He suggested that I submit my paper to a more specialized journal. Journal (A) is already a specialized journal and I only know 1 journal more specialized than (A), let's call it journal (B). So, one of my options is to submit my paper to journal (B) and accept the risk of a similar feedback from the editors of journal (B), of course after several months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean while, I think the main reason several reviewers declined to review my paper is that (1) my paper is relatively long, (2) My paper consists of two parts and each part addresses a different subject. Therefore, the set of reviewers who have expertise in both subjects and are willing to read and review my paper is very small. Due to these facts, it is very likely the editors of journal (B) face the same problem. So, as the second option, I am thinking of splitting my paper into two shorter papers each consisting only one subject of my original paper. Regarding this option, I can think of the following pros and cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) There are a good number of experts in each subject and it is fairly easy to find a reviewer for each one of my shorter papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) This facilitates the referee process of each paper and hopefully reduces its time period .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(iii) Two papers (each approximately 20 pages) look better than one paper (approximately 40 pages) in my CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) The second part of my paper depends on the notations and results of the first part. So the reviewer of the second part may prefer to read and review the whole paper at once, or even worse he/she may call the paper containing the second part incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Part of the motivation of the developments in the first part of my paper comes from my work in the second part. By separating these two parts, the reviewer of the first part can complain about the lack of enough motivations and justifications for my results. In my opinion, it is not a serious problem because I will explain the application of my works which is going to appear in the second paper. But I am not the person who makes the final decision and the reviewer may blame this and reject the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) I can imagine that it would be a difficult path to follow the referee processes of two related papers simultaneously, because of the following reasons: It is possible that the opinions of reviewers of the shorter papers differ significantly. Or it is possible that these papers get refereed in two very different time periods. It is also possible that one of the papers gets accepted and the other one doesn't, which is a pretty ugly situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I have faced each of the above difficulties ((a), (b) and (c)) in my previous submissions and I know how they can ruin my papers. In fact, the main reason that I organized my results collectively in one paper was to avoid the above issues. But now that my paper has been rejected without any peer review, I am considering the option of splitting my results into two papers. So, I have the following questions to ask from people who have more experience and have been involved with similar situations (for instance as an editor or a referee):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) What do you think about the above pros and cons? Do you know any other pros and/or cons? And, is it a good idea to split my paper into two shorter papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) If it is advisable to split my paper into two papers, should I submit them to the same journal, (maybe same editor), or should I submit them to different journals according to the best editors who can handle my papers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4511" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T06:28:00.620" Title="Splitting a relatively long paper into two shorter papers" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T06:16:22.193" Score="15" ViewCount="1551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper (in applied mathematics) to a journal about a year and a half ago. I received the first feedback from the Editor in Chief about a year later (the reviewing process for this journal is usually long): the two reviewers were positive and suggest minor revisions (clarification, typos, etc.). At this point, the EIC wrote me that he would keep his comments for the next round of reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second feedback came 6 months later. The two reviewers replied very shortly, saying that their requests had been satisfied and one of them recommended publication overtly.&#xA;At this point, the EIC wrote a lengthy set of comments on the paper which can be roughly divided in two categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On one hand, revision of typos, clarification of some paragraphs, etc., that the reviewers had missed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, he commented on the theoretical framework used in the paper, saying that it was unnecessarily complicated and hoping there would be a simpler way to achieve the same goal. He suggested to cut most of the parts where this theory would be used and to rewrite the paper accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel being in a delicate situation, where I'd like to have this paper published, but not sacrifice its background and the main ideas it implies. For me, the theory which is proposed provides a very simple way to deal with the examples. I am considering writing to the EIC to essentially ask him if he's ok to keep the theoretical background (with justifications from parts of the paper) in which case I'm willing to make the revisions he requested for clarification (I'm considering withdrawing the submission in the other case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think would be the best way to handle this situation ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20917" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T21:45:34.347" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T13:00:46.377" Title="How to respond to an editor's post-review comments suggesting major changes I'm not willing to make?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T06:41:40.620" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have built a software that handles protein clustering data in specific format. It is able to draw several plots on that basis along with many other analyses. It has more options than its existing competitor. Should I just try to get it published as a software/technical issue, or try some&lt;br&gt;&#xA;case study data (research work on a logical data) produced by the software&lt;br&gt;&#xA;+&lt;br&gt;&#xA;the software,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   in a better journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6969" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T16:23:16.837" Title="Should I publish my software independently or publish it along with a case study in higher journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2014-08-21T06:42:53.140" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in my opinion, the following fragment of your question outweighs everything else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) My paper consists of two parts and each part addresses a different subject. Therefore, the set of reviewers who have expertise in both subjects and are willing to read and review my paper is very small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that you are able to imagine the problem that will be faced by the journal editors. So, splitting into two is certainly not a bad idea in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can mention some instances where this has been done in the past. In each of these cases, the problem wasn't as acute as yours (i.e. both could actually be reviewed by the same expert), but perhaps the authors chose to do this because of length considerations (or some other reason that I can't imagine). Also, in these cases, it wasn't a case of two different journals A and B - it was two sequential papers in the same journal. So, that creates an additional option for you, if you find it appropriate. &lt;em&gt;(The context here is Physics, but I'm sure this can be generalized to Maths, if &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4511/vahid-shirbisheh&quot;&gt;I'm right&lt;/a&gt;!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;R. P. Feynman&lt;/a&gt; was a charismatic Nobel Laureate (Nobel, 1965), as you probably know. Here are his two significant contributions to QED, appearing back to back in Physical Review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.76.749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paper1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.76.769&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paper2&lt;/a&gt; (both are free pdfs officially, given their landmark status.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, he began Paper 1 by writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the first of a set of papers dealing with the solution of problems in quantum electrodynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and started Paper 2 with the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper should be considered as a direct continuation of the preceding one ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had developed the formalism in the former and applied it to the problem in the latter. That makes a candidate for splitting into two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2&lt;/strong&gt; Here are two papers by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Coleman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sidney Coleman&lt;/a&gt; which form the backbone of phenomenological effective Lagrangian method in low-energy Nuclear Physics. (These aren't free and I'm not sure you will be able to get past the paywall here!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.177.2239&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paper 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.177.2247&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper 2&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice again, that they are consecutive papers in the same journal. The second paper also has an extra author, and that could be one reason for splitting into two. But once again, from the point of view of content, the general method was devised in paper 1 and applied to some context in paper 2. But here, the authors spent a section of paper 2 in explaining what they developed in Paper 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, long story cut short - it should be possible to go ahead and split into two parts. If they are consecutive, you can carry over everything directly, if not, spend a few sentences explaining your notation etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - Congratulations for doing this sort of work which could put the editors into this type of a fix. That smells like a significant contribution to Maths, having applications elsewhere (other branches?), which is probably why you insist that it would be rare to find a referee who can ably judge both! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T06:42:53.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2014-08-21T06:48:16.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This problem sounds either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad editorial choice and poorly structure paper or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;two papers that were not split in time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally a research program is not just growing like a blob, but follow some strategy, planing. If you split the two parts, you can briefly mention this strategy (even if it is retrospective) and the results of the other paper. It can be in the introduction and in discussion as well.  Most journals allow to cite manuscripts under revision. If not, you can try to describe without citation that you had this and this motivation, and the results will be published soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to split the paper, you can restructure it as one part to subordinate to the other. Eg. if you you have some important technical detail in the first part you use in the second, but boring in itself, you put the details in an appendix or SI. It is pretty common practice, especially in older paper, and it helps the reader orient themselves around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, I would consult with the editor at first place. They are busy, but generally nice people, so he may comment more in detail about your worries about size and structure. You may have completely different reasons of rejection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You always can try to send out another journal (not necessarily more specialist) without much re-editing. Different journals have different expectations for length, structure, scope. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T06:48:16.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2014-08-21T07:03:25.017" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to quote from the code of practice of a journal in my field, which (IMO) should apply everywhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fragmentation of research papers should be avoided. Authors who fragment their work into a series of papers must be able to justify doing so on the grounds that it enhances scientific communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of splitting papers up into &quot;publons&quot; (or minimum publishable unit) &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/pr0505291&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is a scourge&lt;/a&gt;. Get rid of the &quot;two papers looks better than one&quot; adage in your mind. It's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16985/should-i-publish-a-given-unit-of-work-in-more-smaller-papers-or-fewer-larger-pap&quot;&gt;not necessarily true&lt;/a&gt;, and can be detrimental to the science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it stands, you present no valid reason as to why splitting the papers up will improve how your work is communicated. Therefore, you shouldn't do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T07:03:25.017" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2014-08-21T08:47:58.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(b) could be a serious problem, because the referee reading the first paper does not know how legitimate the promised application in the second paper is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, one option is to just follow the editors' advice, resubmit to the more specialized journal, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T08:47:58.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27385" CreationDate="2014-08-21T09:29:10.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional review process is a communication between the editor, who have solicited reviewers to obtain critical peer review of the manuscript, and the author. As such you should respond to the editor and provide a response to the review comments by the reviewers. It is not likely the reviewers will see your response unless they agreed to re-review your revised version of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open review processes are gaining ground where the entire review process is open to the public. The Open Access publisher Copernicus has such a system where anyone can leave comments to the authors. The handling editor will also appoint official reviewers who's reviews will be posted publicly. In such a system the response to the reviewers (official reviewers as well as other who have left comments will also be posted publicly. In such a case the letter can be directed both to the editor and the reviewers since at least part of the review process has the form of a public discussion (Copernicus also calls their manuscript &quot;Discussions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the traditional sense all communications will be with the editor but in the case of public discussion format review processes, the letter can be directed also to reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T09:29:10.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27430" CreationDate="2014-08-21T09:29:29.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know at least one country where it's a general requirement that you send two copies of your thesis for any application for an academic position (in a particular field). Very few recruiters have the time and inclination to actually read it but that's still a requirement. Theses are also all archived (on microfiches!) and can be ordered from any university library in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all a bit silly now because online repositories are much more practical than either copying thousands of pages or reading microfiches on a bulky machine but it underlines the fact that in principle a PhD thesis is a public document and one that (academic) recruiters might want to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a (completed) PhD thesis is a form of publication, even if you haven't put it out in the form of a book. Depending on the field, it's not as well regarded as journal papers but it would certainly establish your priority claim in the extremely unlikely even that someone would try to publish something based on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T09:35:16.887" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T09:35:16.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14036" CreationDate="2014-08-21T09:36:41.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A hand written scanned review is acceptable, if readable. But, the time spent on typing it into LaTeX (or any other suitable format) to produce a pdf is strongly advised. The reason is that even the most neat hand-writing, can include letters, symbols, writing details, that can be ambiguous to others (particular of other nationalities). So although, such reviews are acceptable, providing it in digital format reduces the risk of misreading and misinterpretation. In addition, a scanned hand-written review may be conceived as the result of someone not caring too much (however wrong that conclusion may be). So in the interest of clarity, I would suggest spending the time typing the review in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T09:36:41.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24577" CreationDate="2014-08-21T10:16:55.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that 60 is too old to study for a doctorate - or anything else for that matter.  While I don't know your situation personally, I'd suggest that most 60 year olds are better placed in life to commit to a PhD than younger people are because generally a 60 year old is more likely to have the necessary financial wherewithal to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are unlikely to face ageism in most programs of study in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20892" LastEditorUserId="20892" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T10:39:22.833" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T10:39:22.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-21T10:55:57.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd guess part of the answer is that academics deal with the risk because they can't afford not to, because a reference serves a different purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In business, my understanding is that people are largely selected for jobs on things that can be measured and compared apart from references (such as formal qualifications, performance in aptitude tests, years of experience), and on things that the hiring committee is able to assess (such as answers at interview). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some of these play a part in academia, a large factor of hiring decisions is the applicant's research potential/demonstrated performance. This is sufficiently specialized and difficult to compare that the hiring committee cannot do that task entirely alone. They need additional experts to help make the judgements. Part of that can be done by sending papers to experts chosen by the panel, but part of it is done by receiving detailed references from people who are already familiar with the applicant's work (and so hopefully won't need to spend as much time to make a judgement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T10:55:57.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27430" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:17:52.323" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it's not unusual.&#xA;However, to answer those talking about paranoia; at my Uni, we used to have seminars where we discussed with other PhD students different aspects of our thesis. This was done with the explicit agreement that these discussion will remain in strict confidentiality, and we will not use each other's work. However, there were no written, signed documents to ensure this.&#xA;So after one such sessions where I was explaining a central point of my thesis, one of the fellow students, who was researching an entirely different subject, was quite interested and stayed on to discuss at length my thesis. I was flattered by the attention - only to find, a few months later, that he published a book containing, basically, all of my PhD thesis. I had to completely change my thesis, and although my tutor commented on the fact that the book contained what looked like my work, there was nothing I could do. The guy who stole my work is now a lecturer at the same University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20928" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T11:17:52.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:18:03.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had the pleasure of both systems, US and European. The simple fact is that the average PhD takes less time in Europe than in the US. This does not directly correlate to quality (Although I have a somewhat informed opinion about that which I'll offer later), merely time to completion. Most of this has to due with the differences in Bachelor degrees from the 2 regions, commonly only 3 years in Europe, 4 in the US. Masters are also treated differently in both locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue in my opinion is the lack of options for EU students. Both the US and Europe are experiencing a &quot;watering-down&quot; of the PhD, since they are all but required in so many places where they add no value other than haughty title. This is markedly worse in Europe, but the US is doing everything it can to &quot;catch-up.&quot; In the US, the better job market allows multiple paths to success if you'd like to forego the PhD, while avoiding an advanced degree in Europe condemns one to worse underemployment than is already seen there (read that a Masters(Europe) is a Bachelors(US)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, people want to believe their PhDs were exceptional and that by extension they endow their holders with exceptionality, but this is not true. A prerequisite PhD is a symptom of a sluggish, un-dynamic labor market, that sentences you to underpay for 3-5 years. If you really think you need one, the best advice is to find an advisor you can work with (a lot of them are amoral tyrants) finish it as quickly as possible, and move on. Contrary to statements above, what you get out is not linked exclusively to what you put in, and there are some very easy ones available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T11:18:03.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27447" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:51:20.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my discipline (political science), one would typically do both. Write an applied article that uses the software for an actual research project and submit that to a substantive journal. Then, separately, describe the software and write it up for a software journal (e.g., Journal of Statistical Software, R Journal, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T11:51:20.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:58:51.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the institutions I've attended and taught at, these have been called &quot;section&quot; (I've never heard &quot;recitation section&quot;), &quot;tutorial&quot;, &quot;discussion section&quot;, &quot;TA session&quot;/&quot;TA section&quot;, &quot;lab&quot;, &quot;small group&quot;, and &quot;studio&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these &quot;discussion section&quot; was the most common and, at my BA and PhD institutions, the official title for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T11:58:51.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27468" CreationDate="2014-08-21T13:14:39.690" Score="12" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate student in Mathematics and I think that I have discovered something significant in Mathematics. My friends and some professors to whom I have sent my ideas also confirmed its significance. They suggested me to write a paper on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem is that being an undergraduate student in Mathematics, I don't know how to write a paper. Besides, the professors to whom I have sent my ideas weren't experts in this field and they have asked me to send my works to some experts in the field. But unfortunately I don't know anyone such and I see no point in assuming that even if my work is significant, they would give time to read it without dismissing it beforehand as a work of some crank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should I do? Can some suggestions be provided? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20936" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T14:10:08.710" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:47:53.733" Title="Some advices regarding the first research paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14284" CreationDate="2014-08-21T13:17:47.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Open Channel Foundation publishes software created by academics. They have published one of my software programs that I created for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20937" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T13:17:47.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27465" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:25:11.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, Im not a mathematician but I am in a closely related field (CS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in the machine learning domain and sometimes I read mathematical papers to find hints of my problem so I think I may able to provide a little help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my experience, the most different part in Maths to the other domain is that, their main results, are always a collection of theorems or properties instead of experiments / methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most of the cases I saw people organize their paper in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Formulate the problem, provide some minimum facts that is nessasary for the readers to understand your contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List out your main results in layman terms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write all the necessary lemmas and theorems that finally lead to your main results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;QED!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If available, some application examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20939" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:25:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27465" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:32:15.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your professor to introduce you to a suitable expert.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some of your professors think that your work is of substantial quality and probably novel, then they are surely fine with introducing you to some suitable researchers in the field. Note that, for example, a postdoc in the respective field may suffice. They should be willing to give your work the &quot;badge&quot; that in their oppinion, your work seems to have potential by writing that to the suitable researcher themselves. This should get rid of the problem that you describe in your second-last sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;But unfortunately I don't know anyone such and I see no point in assuming that even if my work is significant, they would give time to read it without dismissing it beforehand as a work of some crank.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that an experienced academic in the respective field can add a lot of value to your paper, including improving the accessibility and providing a more comprehensive literature survey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastEditorUserId="7390" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T14:47:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:47:53.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:34:16.240" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;My impression is that the difference is largely cultural.  The academic community in the U.S. has developed a culture of relying on written letters of recommendation, and this practice has a lot of inherent stability.  Someone considering suing knows that a questionable lawsuit would permanently ruin their career, in a way that wouldn't necessarily happen in the business world.  (For one thing, academia is a much smaller, more tightly knit, and more philosophically coherent group.)  If a student or job applicant did sue frivolously, then it would probably be cheaper to settle, but the university would not do so: proving a point would be a higher priority than saving money.  (By contrast, for-profit businesses are less likely to make unnecessary expenditures to try to defend their principles.)  University attorneys know that if they advised faculty not to write or require letters, everyone would ignore them and it would just hurt the university's reputation.  The culture takes on a life of its own, regardless of the legal context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I believe U.S. legal precedents are actually pretty favorable for academic letters of recommendation.  The key phrase is &quot;academic deference,&quot; which as I understand it is the theory that academic judgments are not subject to legal review because the courts aren't even capable of evaluating these judgments.  (Of course I'm not a lawyer and so I'm probably at least overlooking subtleties.)  You can sue for reasons like discrimination, but you can't successfully sue someone who made a good faith effort to judge your academic performance or potential on the grounds that you think they judged it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The academic deference doctrine is based on a number of precedents, but it's somewhat controversial.  For example, people argue that it makes it too easy to get away with discrimination (since it makes courts reluctant to examine evidence), and that lots of non-academic judgments are equally difficult to evaluate but don't have a special doctrine protecting them from review by the courts.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&amp;amp;context=bjell&quot;&gt;this article by Moss&lt;/a&gt; for a review of the precedents and an argument against academic deference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the circumstances, there may also be other legal issues.  For example, it's much harder to sue someone for libel based on their evaluation of your published scholarly work.  In particular, you have to prove &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice&quot;&gt;actual malice&lt;/a&gt; since publishing the work makes you a public figure for this purpose.  In other words, it's not enough to prove that the evaluation was wrong; instead, you have to prove that they knew it was wrong or at least had reckless disregard for the truth. (See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectposner.org/case/1996/75F3d307&quot;&gt;Posner's wonderful opinion&lt;/a&gt; on whether calling someone a crank is defamatory.)  I believe this is much more clear cut and better established than academic deference is, but it is not relevant for unpublished work or other recommendation letter content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to the cultural theme, it's also worth thinking about psychological factors.  If I run a business, then my ex-employees could be applying for jobs at competitors, partners, or companies that are irrelevant to my interests.  Among these possibilities, partner companies I'm actively working with are only a small fraction.  The generic case is that I won't care about the new employer or will actively harbor ill will towards them.  If a lawyer advises me that it's best not to say anything, I may seize on that excuse even aside from the lawsuit potential.  By contrast, academia is a world in which we're all partners, and that feels very different.  Universities do compete against each other in some ways, of course, but there's a much greater feeling of good will and cooperation than you see between most for-profit companies.  It's no surprise that very different norms and practices have developed in a far less competitive environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:34:16.240" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:45:16.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers address the cost of actual research extensively enough, but there are, sadly, other aspects to consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic research is, for the majority, funded by the government. That means that, although I have a high opinion of some government funding agencies, &lt;strong&gt;the decisions on how to spend the money is often political&lt;/strong&gt;. As any other government organization, members of academia work in a loop to protect their interests and privileges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, in addition to the natural amount of effort and money spent on endeavors and projects that turn out to be dead ends (these are actually useful to research as they rule out possibilities), there is a tremendous amount of money lost in generating heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's frequent to see faculty being hired because they are the spouse of another faculty, or because they have social traits that contribute to the 'diversity', grants being attributed hoping that the awardee will return the favor, funding being attributed to people on the basis of the number of publications instead of the quality of them (even more so now with the open-access movement and the subsequent logarithmic raise in paper count), etc. Not to mention cases (e.g. in medicine, socio-economics, history) where funding goes to promote the political agenda of the governing majority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end I think at least a good third of academic research is either marginally incremental, frankly redundant or even completely bogus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that while these sums ('millions!') seem huge to us, the amount of money spent in academic research is typically a fraction of the government's budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T15:28:06.670" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T15:28:06.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:45:37.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students may lose focus more easily when they have digital notes&#xA;  because they do not have to copy everything down (this was my&#xA;  experience as an undergrad)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can either be writing down what you just said or I can be &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; about what you just said. Your choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to force students to scribble down everything while you're talking they're going to be thinking &quot;damn, where's my spare pen, this one is going dry&quot; not &quot;Hm. I wonder how that principle applies to....&quot; when you say something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're dealing with adults, if they fail because they're overconfident, have bad judgement and think they don't need to attend class then they made that choice with their eyes open. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, warn them and recommend against doing so but refusing to make slides, handouts or pdfs available is just devaluing your class for the students who do attend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16078" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:45:37.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28963" CreationDate="2014-08-21T14:53:18.847" Score="35" ViewCount="4549" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ­— perhaps many — academics seem to be very careful in keeping unpublished work secret.  It is not difficult to find anecdotes where academic ideas are stolen, such as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27460/1033&quot;&gt;this post by @Markus&lt;/a&gt;.  Others, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27434/1033&quot;&gt;@NateEldredge in this post&lt;/a&gt; write that &lt;em&gt;It seems to be pretty common for people starting out in academia to overestimate the risks of people stealing their work&lt;/em&gt;.  Personally, I'm rather at the other end of the spectrum, and I don't feel afraid that my ideas would be stolen.  Perhaps I'm naïve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research on the question: how common is academic theft, really?  Such as surveys of people having experienced (or committed!) such theft according to an appropriate definition, possibly compared to peoples' perception as to the risks.  It would be interesting to see if there are some facts to refer to.  Perhaps it is field dependent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(By academic theft, I am&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;talking about plagiarism, but rather about stealing research ideas before anything is published)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2020-09-11T14:54:46.027" Title="Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;research-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-21T15:44:23.143" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there is a very reasonable misunderstanding here - there is a difference in a &quot;verification of employment&quot;, being used as a &quot;reference&quot;, and a &quot;recommendation letter&quot;. These all have their common uses, but they are handled very, very differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Verification of Employment (present or past)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To whom it may concern: Ellen Ripley was employed by the&#xA;  Weyland-Yutani Corporation from June 2137 to September 2139. Signed,&#xA;  C. Burke, manager.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a perfect example of the proper, commonly accepted response to a request for a verification of employment. This sort of letter is useful in a wide-variety of circumstances, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proving your work/career history to an employer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verifying your job to a government agency or company (think insurance, banks, State benefits, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qualifying for corporate discount/membership arrangements (cell phones, computers, credit unions, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not at all to be construed as a letter of recommendation - it isn't one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases where more information is requested, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the employee eligible to be re-hired at the company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the employment end - were they fired, quit, laid off?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salary verification (this is not the most common, but it is not unheard of and more commonly requested by banks and government agencies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Serving as a Reference&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A employer or manager may be asked to serve as a reference, where a prospective employer might wish to call and speak with them personally and ask them various questions. What questions get asked, and any potential for legal action, depends upon what is said, documentation, and consequences. Most of the legal actions revolve around claims of libel or defamation. Note that in the US you are allowed to cherry pick your own reference to provide to a future/prospective employer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this is requested by email or fax, in which case it is common to just treat it as little more than a verification of employment request. However, sometimes this is much more important than a mere verification - it depends upon the position, industry, recruiter, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Letter of Recommendation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In industry a real letter of recommendation functions much more closely to how it is treated in academia. A person in a position to closely evaluate an employee is asked - almost exclusively by the employee - to provide such a letter. This is almost always requested from an immediate supervisor, manager, directory, or executive with a close working relationship with the employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the same rules apply. These are less common in industry, perhaps at least partly because they are rare and unexpected and because unsolicited opinions tend to be discounted and distrusted much more commonly than in academia. However, they can still come in handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear of torts really isn't that big of a factor as far as I've seen, because a letter of recommendation is expected solely to be positive. I'm not aware of any case of a company suing another company because &quot;you said this guy was great and it turns out he was useless!&quot; It just isn't done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an employee couldn't very successfully sue an employer for saying something nice about them; the USA may have a reputation for being litigious, but that's just ridiculous (not that it hasn't ever happened I'm sure, but it's obviously frivolous and very rare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To forestall a couple of objections: I know that academics usually try&#xA;  to write only positive letters, and decline to write if they have&#xA;  nothing good to say, but that's evidently not enough in the corporate&#xA;  world. Anyway, candidates often end up damned by faint praise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, in the corporate world this is almost exactly what happens. If an employer doesn't want to provide a real recommendation, they just provide a verification of employment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had recruiters contact previous/current bosses of mine (who I talked with in advance to ensure they would provide a useful reference rather than a mere verification of employment), and been told by the recruiter when such contacts were very positive. &quot;They really gave you a glowing review!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most good corporate bosses will be more than happy to say good things if they have a good opinion of you, and will accept any request of yours to share their opinion. If they get asked for a reference and they don't know you well or don't have a great opinion of you, they'll probably just not say very much - unless they hate you, in which case you really shouldn't have offered them as a reference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Does Academia Do It?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really much like the corporate world does it: they recognize that libel and defamation are in fact illegal, and so avoid even a potential appearance by avoiding saying negative things. They also realize that speaking poorly of others tends to reflect badly on you, too - so &quot;if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, you can be damned by faint praise. If you are looking for more than an entry-level job at a company and talk about what great work you did at your last place and how valuable you were, and then they talk to the reference you provided (probably your boss or a colleague) and all they'll say is you worked there, and maybe you were a nice person who was usually punctual? Yeah, that's not going to go well in any sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T18:10:11.173" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T18:10:11.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-21T16:58:26.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First think about all of the other challenging and expensive endeavors we do. Running a business, building a bridge (or writing a computer program)... these were all done before by someone else. And if you are looking to build a bridge you are probably reading a book titled something like &quot;how to build a bridge&quot; and written by the last person to attempt what you are wanting to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research involves solving problems that are open, there is no book to read because it has not been done before. Now, you can gather a lot of materials from this person over here that had one idea that helps you, and that person over there. But these scattered resources are harder to find (I.E. in academia) and at the end of the day &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the one who needs to put it all together and build the very first bridge in existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now do us all a favor and put a whole bunch more money into safety testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T16:58:26.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T17:54:38.523" Score="16" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most top graduate programs require at least 3 recommendation letters. Do students who apply to such programs (and have a reasonable chance to get in) typically have such extensive research experience that they know three professors who can write in detail about their research? Or is it more common for such students to have some recommendation letters from faculty who can confirm that the applicant is competent (for example because they did very well in their class, won an award, ...) but with whom they have not worked much personally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand it would be ideal to get all letters from faculty with whom you have worked closely on a research problem. But I wonder how commonly this actually happens, especially considering the fact that the final undergraduate year typically cannot be taken into account for applications in fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it depends much on the discipline, I'm in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15755" LastEditorUserId="15755" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T18:54:23.023" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T06:12:23.827" Title="From whom do prospective grad students get recommendation letters?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27475" CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:46:25.787" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I don't think all that many students have &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; unique reference letters, all of whom can vouch for research ability. Two is quite common, as most undergraduates who pursue graduate degrees (at least in the sciences) do have some research experience at their home universities. Many of them also pursue a summer research project separate from their main undergraduate research project (or projects), providing another reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I do agree that the third letter usually comes from a non-research source. I wouldn't even necessarily expect a third research letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T18:46:25.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27475" CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:47:49.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which field are you in? In the humanities and social sciences, we expect letters from faculty you've taken seminars in, not just your thesis advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T18:47:49.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:01:58.560" Score="11" ViewCount="1585" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does the salary system for faculty members in Canadian universities work? Is it usually 8- or 9-monthly based same as in the USA Or 12-monthly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what do they mean by Taxable Benefits in their salary database (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/pssd/orgs.php?pageNum_pssd=0&amp;amp;organization=universities&amp;amp;year=2013&quot;&gt;Ontario, Ministry of Finance; Public Sector Salary Disclosure for 2013: Universities&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20950" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T03:09:08.137" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T03:09:08.137" Title="How does the salary system for faculty in Canadian universities work?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;salary&gt;&lt;canada&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27483" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:46:19.773" Score="25" ViewCount="10603" Body="&lt;p&gt;This actually happened to my wife, but for the sake of simplicity I'll talk about it as if it happened to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a final exam for a university course last week, and a couple days ago I got my marks and the correct answers back. I disagreed with one of the questions I answered wrong, so I pulled out the textbook that was assigned to this course and found that it supports my answer. I sent an email to my prof with the page number and the exact quote from the textbook that supports my answer. His reply was (with slightly changed wording):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In class I said that &lt;em&gt;correct exam answer&lt;/em&gt;... This is an issue with any text and shows why class is so vital: Texts rapidly go out of date or (such as the broad text used for this course)  demonstrate a lack of depth. Lectures are usually much more up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that this is an Archaeology class, which in my unprofessional opinion really doesn't &quot;go out of date&quot; all that quickly. The textbook is the assigned textbook for this course by the university. The online lecture notes posted by the prof make no mention of the disagreement. I was not present at the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course? In my experience, when confronted with such a problem they typically go &quot;Ok, fair enough, I'll give you the mark&quot;, but are they just being nice or are they supposed to do this? He's not a senior prof (not even PhD yet), so do you think going to his superior would help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I get this one extra mark it will bump me up 0.4 GPA for the course because I'm right at the cut-off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;Since several people asked, the question was something like &quot;Which Aztec god is the god of war and is associated with water&quot;. The book said one god, Huitzilopochtli, was the god of war, while Tlaloc was the god of fertility and rain. When studying for the exam, Huitzilopochtli stuck in my head as the god of war, so I picked him. The prof said that in class he mentioned that Tlaloc also had militaristic aspects.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Note that I'm not saying the prof is wrong objectively, only that our book makes no mention of Tlaloc being war-like and instead makes emphasis on fertility and life, being a beneficial god, which seemed totally opposite to war. When I sent my email I explained that I picked Huitzilopochtli because the book lists only him as the war god, but that I recognize my answer is only half-right due to the water reference, and that I feel that Tlaloc is also only half-right since he's not a war god. &lt;p&gt; Also, the prof agreed with me that the book was misleading, but said that I should've come to the lecture. Hence my question here focusing on whether the book should have any authority without getting into the details of the question itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20954" LastEditorUserId="20954" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T22:50:22.780" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T17:46:17.447" Title="Prof disagrees with assigned textbook regarding an exam question" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="26" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:50:19.803" Score="10" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a bit of a predicament. I was awarded a small grant to pursue a research topic over this summer under the authority of a professor. I had worked with this professor previously (on a research topic that led to my summer research topic) and had great results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor had very specific ideas as to what he wanted me to do and what goals I should accomplish. I was fine with this as previously this method had worked well with us. This is important; I'll explain in a second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This summer, my professor (for lack of a better phrase) suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth. He stopped responding to my emails, and the few times he did respond (maybe twice in the span of three months) it was merely saying &quot;I'm very busy; we'll speak eventually; I'm working on other things that are much more important&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This put me in a very bad place. I had done what he asked me and had at that point committed a fair amount of time to the direction he had asked me to pursue. I didn't have enough direction to keep going unsupervised, and didn't have enough time to go in a new direction that I could manage by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to write up a summary that discusses what I did and my findings. What I have is a methodology that should solve a particular problem faster (in theory) than current methods (To be more specific, it's a faster implementation of an algorithm--unfortunately I couldn't improve the algorithm itself). I did not have enough guidance (or access to my funds for equipment) to actually test my theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of receiving the funds was a requirement that I present my findings in my school's undergraduate research journal. Is what I have really enough to present? I know it's an undergraduate journal so no one will actually read it, but I feel silly presenting something so small and trying to trump it up as an actual scientific accomplishment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I try to present the small amount I found? Will I look like a giant idiot if I present a methodology that is completely untested as findings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20953" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T14:42:37.480" Title="Presenting Barely Complete Results" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:19:57.260" Score="55" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, there is no such obligation.  It's a bad educational practice to choose a textbook that's seriously unreliable, but even good textbooks slowly go out of date, and they sometimes have a lack of detail or even outright errors as well.  It's important for professors to try to be clear about any deficiencies the textbook has, for example by highlighting them in class.  I provide a written list of any typos or other issues I am aware of (although I note that of course there may be others as well).  However, there is no obligation to accept the textbook's version as a correct answer, and there are no specific rules about how things must be brought to the students' attention.  It's entirely up to the lecturer's discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that many professors would be more flexible or accommodating than what happened in this instance, but not all of them.  At least in the sort of universities I'm familiar with (in the U.S.), there's no way an administrator will change the grade under these circumstances if the faculty member who assigned it is unwilling to do so.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it's not clear to me from what you say whether this person is a regular faculty member (due to the lack of a Ph.D.).  If you are dealing with a teaching assistant, it could be worth asking the professor in charge of the whole course.  This will probably upset the TA, but it might work (since the professor will want to maintain common policies among all the TAs assigning grades).  Other than that, I don't see any recourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added in light of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27483/&quot;&gt;Pete Clark's answer&lt;/a&gt;: I'm assuming your answer is definitely wrong.  I.e., either the textbook had an error in it or it's out of date regarding a clear scholarly consensus.  On the other hand, if you can make a case that your answer is actually correct or accepted by serious researchers (not just that the textbook says it, but that authoritative and up to date scholarly sources agree), then you've got more of a basis for disputing the grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T21:35:23.267" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:22:02.920" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion -- as a university teacher for four years pre-PhD and eleven years post -- is that your story is balanced precariously on the border between &quot;unfortunate&quot; and &quot;actionable&quot;.  What is to be done about this probably depends a lot on your national and local university culture, the culture of your department, and even on the judgment of your own instructor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some advice about how to best deal with the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sent an email to my prof with the page number and the exact quote from the textbook that supports my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is already not the ideal strategy.  This is a matter that requires some &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt;, and email -- especially email exchanged between people who don't know each other well -- is not conducive to discussion but rather to one-sided statements of position, often of a nature which is more definitive, defensive or combative than a person would be in a face-to-face meeting.  You should go to physically meet with your instructor.  It is not too late to try to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In class I said that correct exam answer... This is an issue with any text and shows why class is so vital: Texts rapidly go out of date or (such as the broad text used for this course) demonstrate a lack of depth. Lectures are usually much more up to date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a pretty good answer.  If the textbook is incorrect, superficial or out-of-date on the point which was covered in the lecture, and if you did not attend the lecture, then you are showing that you did not receive and learn the information you were tested on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that this is an Archaeology class, which in my unprofessional opinion really doesn't &quot;go out of date&quot; all that quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely don't say that again.  This sentiment is indeed unprofessional.  It is also ignorant and insulting: academia is about the progression of knowledge, not just keeping it preserved for posterity. Archaeology is no different from any other field in that manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The online lecture notes posted by the prof make no mention of the disagreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not definitive, but it makes me more sympathetic to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was not present at the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's bad.  You have every right to expect that when you miss lectures you miss critical information.  That's desirable, really: otherwise what's the point of lectures?  By any chance did you contact the instructor and ask to be updated on what you missed?  Did you get notes from some classmate that did not include this point?  Either of these would mitigate your absence (the first more than the second).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, of course not.  On the contrary, they have the obligation to correct the textbook when they feel it is helpful and/or necessary to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my experience, when confronted with such a problem they typically go &quot;Ok, fair enough, I'll give you the mark&quot;, but are they just being nice or are they supposed to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree; &quot;I'll give you the mark&quot; is the more typical, nicer reaction.  Not to do it is being a little callous, in my opinion.  But it is unlikely that &quot;they are supposed to do this&quot;, at least not officially.  The instructor of a course has a certain amount of authority.  This decision, although it may not be a &quot;nice&quot; one, seems to fall within that authority, at least in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's not a senior prof (not even PhD yet), so do you think going to his superior would help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At most universities I'm familiar with, someone who does not have a PhD is not a &quot;professor&quot; at all.  But that probably doesn't really matter: what matters whether he is the &quot;instructor of record&quot; or a &quot;teaching assistant&quot;.  (Probably: in some places, one does in practice have more or less classroom authority according to one's academic rank and seniority.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, going to his superior might help.  But you should think very carefully about this and have at least one face-to-face meeting with your instructor first.  Before you do that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out whether your answer was actually correct, or arguably correct.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is, you'll have much more of a leg to stand on.  If it isn't, if push comes to shove...well, we mark the right answers right and the wrong answers wrong, don't we?  Finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I get this one extra mark it will bump me up 0.4 GPA for the course because I'm right at the cut-off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the line that tipped me over a bit into recommending that you pursue the matter at least a little further.  It is one thing to mark a question wrong because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; wrong.  It is another thing to stand on this to the extent that it lowers your final course grade.  There's a proportionality issue here: yes, you were apparently wrong to go with your textbook rather than the instructor.  But were you &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely to me that some more senior personnel in the Archaeology department will feel the same way.  If you can find such a person, then maybe they can influence your instructor.  However, if you are very confrontational with your instructor then he may be inclined to stand on principle, even in the face of senior personnel.  You really want to make changing the grade the easier, more palatable option for all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T21:30:44.077" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T21:30:44.077" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:31:03.220" Score="29" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In class I said that correct exam answer... This is an issue with any text and shows why class is so vital: Texts rapidly go out of date or (such as the broad text used for this course) demonstrate a lack of depth. Lectures are usually much more up to date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, your lecturer is right. Text books are sometimes factually wrong. If he indeed pointed out the error in class and you were not aware because you did not go to class, you can hardly blame the lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, most lecturers would probably be open for a sensible argument, but you should certainly approach it as a nicety or concession of the lecturer, not something that you can force by applying to some sort of obligation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's not a senior prof (not even PhD yet), so do you think going to his superior would help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rank doesn't really have a lot to do with it. Going to his superior (if such a person exists, which may depend on how your university works) &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; help, or kill your cause entirely. In my home university, complaining to the department head was generally a horrible idea. Department heads &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; decide against a lecturer in a case that is not a clear-cut violation of university policy. All you would do in this case is make the lecturer much more unsympathetic towards your cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T21:31:03.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27475" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:33:11.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need every letter to give a first hand description of your research experience. If you don't have &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; who talks about it, it will be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want letters from people that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe your ability to do excellent research in the area or field you are applying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain how you are very smart, skilled, hardworking, generous, easy to work with, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrates enough history and experience with you that we can trust the opinions expressed in the letters to be informed and accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are from colleagues whose opinions the letter recipient will know and respect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody expects every letter to do all of these things. The  important that the entire package convinces the reader that they're not taking a risk by accepting the student. Do what you can. If no one person can say everything, it's totally OK to the fact that you're turning in multiple letters to give a more full picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T06:12:23.827" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T06:12:23.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:22:07.313" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Textbooks, even very good textbooks, can contain errors, even egregious errors.  When that happens, I try very hard to emphasize the error and explain why something else is correct and the textbook is not.  I'll probably mention it in two or more class sessions.  For one book, I have an online errata sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will not accept an incorrect answer on an exam, no matter what authority the examinee might bring forward.  (But I will also consider that I might be the one who is wrong!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are already several good answers to this question.  I'm writing because you bring up the effect of this answer on your GPA.  The goal of a university course is not a grade; the goal is mastery of the material.  Master the material and the grade will take care of itself.  You have your eye on the wrong goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless it's already luminously obvious, go to the professor (in some universities, everyone in charge of a class is called &quot;professor&quot; regardless of academic rank), apologize for the email, and ask for help in understanding why the book's answer is not appropriate.  That probably will not get you any slack on the exam in question, but you'll get at least one item right on the final exam!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T22:32:29.573" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T22:32:29.573" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:08:25.167" Score="9" ViewCount="978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since sept 2013, I have been doing a Masters in mathematical finance. Our course requires us to do an off-cycle internship of 5 months minimum (typically, from April to September). &#xA;During this internship, I'm supposed to do something that is at least remotely related to mathematics/finance, and at the end of the internship, I have to give a report of what I have done. The content of that report is supposed to contain actual mathematical researchs / developments / ideas, and is necessary for the obtention of my diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, since my internship started I have been given absolutely no work fitting the requirements. &#xA;What I've actually been tasked to do is repetitive work consisting in using a software to process tons of record from a database, generating new records as output, and making sure the generated data is consistent.  Whenever of these jobs fail I have to debug the software and propose a fix to make the job work. There is roughly ~50 millions records to be processed and the end goal is that all of them were processed correctly. As far as I can tell there is no way this will be done by the end of my internship, which is in 2 months.&#xA;What's worse is that the team I'm in is facing increasing pressure to have all these records processed soon, while the higher-ups are heavily implying that it is taking so long because we are slacking off. This is pretty annoying because I want to make a good impression and I'm working as good as possible, but at the same time I don't feel like it is worth the effort to work extra-hard on this, given how little recognition I get and given that I will leave before the positive consequences of my work can affect me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do in my situation ? I haven't started my internship report yet (I don't even know what subject I could do it on), and I know I will to do it on my own time. At the same time the repetitive nature of my work makes me pretty burned out and whenever I never feel like working on maths for several hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR: my 6 months internship that is supposed to be about mathematical finance is actually about doing extremely tedious work, and I have to complete a report by the end about all the mathematical research I'm supposed to have done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do in that situation ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20989" OwnerDisplayName="lezebulon" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:38:50.050" Title="6-months internship has nothing to do with what was promised" Tags="&lt;colleagues&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;internship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27487" CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:17:13.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two people who can help you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your immediate manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your advisor (or tutor if you don't have one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your manager first about the requirements stated by your university, and how to translate your work into a working paper or report worthy of submission in an academic institute. I am sure he will be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then try talking to your advisor/tutor on whatever was discussed with your manager. He/She can advise you on planning your report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had been into such a situation, and my advisor suggested a way to tweak my working to do some additional tests/work. That extra work made my work eligible for an academic report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11191" OwnerDisplayName="JuliandotNut" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T18:17:13.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27487" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:14:27.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to your manager about it again and then your adviser .  Perhaps your adviser can suggest to the company that if this doesn't resolve itself they will do what they can to suggest students no longer intern there thus no longer providing free labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PSU_Kardi" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T20:14:27.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:56:41.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For large lecture classes I usually present the material on an overhead projector.  I make the slides available to the students before the lecture, reduced to quarter size for convenience.  Most of my colleagues do something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that this may result in some students cutting lectures.  I am usually quite up-front about this, and tell students in the first lecture that while it is up to them, trying to learn the subject from the lecture notes alone is the best way I know for the average student to fail the course: for most students it will be necessary to attend lectures, consider extra comments, explanations and examples which I may give, and most importantly of all, ask questions and engage with the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &quot;force&quot; students to attend lectures by withholding the notes, or by leaving gaps in them.  I don't do this because I find it to be unacceptable behaviour: in effect, it treats students as children who must be manipulated &quot;for their own good&quot;.  I make it clear that I expect students to take a responsible, adult attitude towards their studies; the result is that most of them do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this is so important that I'm going to paraphrase it in bold type: &lt;strong&gt;the vital thing to realise about students is that most of them are extremely cooperative&lt;/strong&gt;.  They want to learn: if you make it clear what you expect of them, you will usually get it without pulling any tricks like issuing incomplete notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally we should ask (or perhaps we should have asked initially): what is the purpose of lectures and other classes?  It is for the students to learn the subject (of course!).  It is not an ego trip for the lecturer.  If my students learn the subject then the course has been successful, even if the lectures have been half empty.  (But if the lecturer demonstrates a concern for students and a dedication to teaching, then the lectures never will be half empty.)&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;BTW, I may soon have to find an alternative for the overhead projector.  Apparently my institution believes that such things are too old-fashioned to be tolerated in a modern, forward-thinking institution which never stands still, and is gradually withdrawing support for these ancient devices :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20473" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T22:56:41.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26947" CreationDate="2014-08-21T23:12:21.993" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They look like hexadecimal. So they may be the beginning of a hash or UUID. This would be similar to what git uses to refer to specific versions in a repository. If this is the case, they are effectively random and you aren't going to find any correlation with the outside world (which is the point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20956" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T23:12:21.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27472" CreationDate="2014-08-21T23:21:45.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a graduate student (Masters at one school and PhD at another) and I have never seen the sort of thing you are describing. I am afraid &lt;code&gt;The Social Network&lt;/code&gt; has made everyone paranoid about their ideas being stolen. The reality is that most ideas are difficult to steal, because implementing them might be time-consuming enough that the original person has a huge head start. The only time you should worry is if you think you have a GREAT idea that you think is easy to do once you think of it. You will probably know if this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality though, there are a lot of smart people out there and if you are thinking of it, at least 1 other person has probably considered it. Its much more likely that you are recreating (or attempting something that doesn't work), but that might just be in my field (Neuroscience/Imaging). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have found that it is pretty common for people to take credit for other peoples work, or use other peoples software without crediting, especially for grant applications. Again though, this might be unique to my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20956" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T23:21:45.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T23:55:21.020" Score="32" ViewCount="6207" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of their job, professors have to take care of getting funding, prepare classes, advise students, fulfill administrative tasks and attend to various meetings/conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much time do professors have to carry out research on their own (i.e. excluding the above-mentioned tasks)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially interested in the field of computer science &gt; machine learning, in the US, in an averaged-size university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly looking for studies that try to quantify how much time professors have to carry out research on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T19:22:29.187" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T19:22:29.187" Title="How much time do professors have to do research on their own?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27493" CreationDate="2014-08-22T00:25:24.320" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is going to vary greatly depending on whether the professor is in a tenure track, has already obtained tenure or is in a contingent/adjunct position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides these issues of rank, it also matters a great deal what kind of university/college we are talking about. If you're a tenure-track professor in the so-called &quot;R1&quot; institution, you will surely be spending significantly more time doing research than a non-tenure, contingent adjunct at a community college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The size of the university generally matters much less than individual and university rank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of all that, it often comes down to the individual professors' interests and ways they conceive of their career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20959" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T00:25:24.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27420" CreationDate="2014-08-22T01:59:01.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been leading tutorials (much like your recitation sessions) and studio based learning sessions for 7 years as a TA, and have been teaching as a professor for 2 years.  An effective way to improve teaching, at least for me, has been a keen interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning.  Through delving into research I've radically changed my own viewpoint of what it means to be a teacher, and deepened my understanding as to how learning works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own teaching, I try to structure my classes around student centred, active-learning principles.  I act more as a facilitator of learning, and have students actively discuss and work to achieve the objectives for a class.  Rather than overtly lecture on a principle, I'll prepare readings for the students ahead of time then in the session have students discuss and reinforce the key elements of a principle through a realistic application, usually in small groups.  They will all present their work and then discuss their approach and its merits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above example is only one small and, to be honest, quite vague example of more active learning.  The key is that the focus and effort should be on and from the student.  There are many, many more great examples and other evidence-based effective teaching methods out there.  One fantastic resource that I routinely read and recommend is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., &amp;amp; Lovett, M. C. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. [Link to this book on &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=gu5qpi5aFDkC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=How%20Learning%20Works%3A%20Seven%20Research-Based%20Principles%20for%20Smart%20Teaching&amp;amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470484101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20903" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T19:55:08.513" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T19:55:08.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27493" CreationDate="2014-08-22T02:29:58.510" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this small-scale, not randomly-sampled &lt;a href=&quot;https://thebluereview.org/faculty-time-allocation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boise_State_University&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Boise State University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All charts below are from TAWKS Phase 1 Stats, initial survey of 30&#xA;  higher ed faculty from Boise State University. While findings are&#xA;  highly suggestive, they do not represent a random sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer to question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 17 percent of the workweek was focused on research and 27 percent&#xA;  of weekend time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZRJy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pUwP8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2S754.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iznnx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T14:59:45.687" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T14:59:45.687" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27472" CreationDate="2014-08-22T02:45:56.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stealing ideas is difficult because you have a victim you have stolen from and presumably they know (or will know) that you stole from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fraud is much more common, much easier to do, and much harder to prove—unless you do something really stupid like re-use the same image multiple times in various unrelated papers, something the people who get caught always seem to do. (Note 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n&quot;&gt;Jan Hendrik Schön&lt;/a&gt; - Physics &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruko_Obokata&quot;&gt;Haruko Obokata&lt;/a&gt; - Biomedical sciences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also common, as Yiuin states, is people (notably PIs and supervisors) taking the credit for their underlings'/minions' work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Note 1: This means that the either all the frauds are stupid and re-use images and get caught, or that the frauds who don't re-use images are rarely caught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T03:54:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T03:54:23.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2014-08-22T02:54:38.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aluminum used to be more valuable than gold or platinum - it was used&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; to cap the Washington Monument partly because of the rarity and value of aluminum back then (it's worth about $50 today). European monarchs would put out aluminum tableware - silver was for the common rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hall–Héroult process changed all that and made aluminum one of the cheapest metals on the planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most everyone would agree that Hall and Héroult came up with something original, publishable and patentable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17246" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T02:54:38.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27504" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-22T09:58:25.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_%28information%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A {tag:table] is a means of arranging information in rows and columns. The use of tables is pervasive throughout all communication, research and data analysis. Tables appear in print media, handwritten notes, computer software, architectural ornamentation, traffic signs and many other places. The precise conventions and terminology for describing tables varies depending on the context. Further, tables differ significantly in variety, structure, flexibility, notation, representation and use. In books and technical articles, tables are typically presented apart from the main text in numbered and captioned floating blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T23:18:13.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:18:13.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27505" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-22T09:58:25.970" Score="0" Body="A {table] in academia is used to present information by arranging it in rows and columns." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T23:18:13.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:18:13.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27506" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:09:37.610" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T10:09:37.610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:09:37.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27507" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:09:37.610" Score="0" Body="An IRB (Institutional Review Board), also known as an independent ethics committee or ethical review board, is a group that reviews and monitors research involving human subjects." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T06:42:16.953" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T06:42:16.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27508" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:27:11.727" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T10:27:11.727" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:27:11.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27509" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:27:11.727" Score="0" Body="Recording relates to the process of capturing data to a recording format, such a audio or visual, that is stored on some storage medium for later playback." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T10:48:22.340" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:48:22.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:30:56.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own undergraduate degree, I noticed a distinct positive correlation between professors who didn't make their slides available deliberately (&quot;so that you don't just skip the lectures and read the slides at home&quot;) and professors whose teaching I would rate lower-than-average. One of these professors taught so badly that I skipped his lectures anyway and just read standard textbooks on the subject; I ended up with a top grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would speculate that teaching with the attidude that &quot;most students are here to learn with goodwill and I'm here to help them&quot; produces better teaching than the attitude that students are principally lazy and I'm here to force them to learn. I'm a researcher with occasional teaching duties myself now and I'm very strongly in favour of teaching materials always being available to download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two arguments in favour of making slides available. First, what if a student misses one of your lectures due to illness, injury or because their train broke down on the way? (This is not a lame excuse - we had a cluster of genuine cases one summer when the trains couldn't cope with a heatwave.) Would you rather they were able to revise the lecture themselves with the slides, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, my experience during revision for exams is that even with notes of my own, slide printouts are incredibly helpful. Partly this is because a printout of a slide is a visual aid to jog your memory and remember how the thing on the slide worked; partly it's because you have two sets of &quot;notes&quot; (your own and the slides) which is better than one, partly it's because making notes on a slide with arrows pointing to the relevant parts is so much more effective when diagrams or pictures are involved than having to copy down the relevant points as text alone. If you have a complex diagram on a slide that you're explaining, do you want your students to be spending your lecture trying to copy it down, or do you want them to be paying attention to your explanation, safe in the knowledge that they can print out the diagram (or have already done so, and can annotate it without having to draw it first)? A rhetorical question, I know, but I think this point is important. Finally, everyone sometimes makes mistakes in their notes and being able to cross-check against the slides is very reassuring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd summarise by saying that for a motivated and good student, having the slides available allows them to use their revision time more effectively, and will lead to better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's one caveat here though. As discused in [1] and just about every &quot;how to give an effective presentation&quot; book and talk, the worst kind of slide is simply a list of bullet points with text to copy down; a really effective slide to support your teaching will have very little text and so be of limited use on its own for someone who has not attended your lecture. Some of my best professors had slides like this and provided us with extra &quot;lecture notes&quot; handouts; it's a standard I aim for in my own teaching when time allows. I leave you with the thought that if your slides are this good, and support your own teaching rather than holding a lecture in parallel to yours, you won't need to worry too much about students opting to stay at home and just read your slides in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17933/good-slide-design-for-teaching&quot;&gt;Good slide design for teaching?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12937" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:30:56.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27511" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:32:29.287" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T10:32:29.287" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:32:29.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27512" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:32:29.287" Score="0" Body="Record keeping can be defined as the maintenance of a history of one's activities by entering data in journals or putting documents in files, etc. " OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T10:48:55.430" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:48:55.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27487" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:38:50.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The work you've done, while repetitive, &lt;em&gt;may well be relevant&lt;/em&gt; to mathematics/finance. In order to answer this, you need to understand what the purpose of the task was, where the input data came from, and how the output is used. Your manager (or work colleagues) should be able to explain this to you, but you need to take the initiative to find out! An internship is a learning experience for you; if you're not asking questions, you're not learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you still feel that this work is not relevant to maths/finance, talk to your advisor at the university. If they agree with your assessment, they will probably take steps to correct the problem. If it is too late to correct the problem, they can at least insure that this doesn't happen again, perhaps by speaking with the company, or even not allowing students to intern at that company again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:38:50.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-22T12:15:04.580" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing the following problem while writing a paper. I have a model which contains a function whose explicit form I derived empirically from the data presented in the paper itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would like to present the model during the introduction and thus before the result. However, to justify the shape of that function, I have no other way than to anticipate the result (saying something like: “Since in the result of the experiment we found X, we empirically assumed X in the model“). I am not completely happy with this, because I would like to present the result directly in the result session, not earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solution would be to move the explanation of the model &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the results. I do not like this either because I want to fit the real data with the model itself, and I don’t think it is wise to start fitting something without explaining it first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what it your advice in this matter? What would you do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, any papers with example of something similar are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20972" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T12:45:50.983" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T20:17:12.893" Title="How to present a model which is based on the result not yet discussed?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27472" CreationDate="2014-08-22T12:48:34.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not quite an answer, but too long for a comment. In order to quantify how common academic theft is, one needs to define theft. You attempt to define it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By academic theft, I am not talking about plagiarism, but rather about stealing research ideas before anything is published&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider the following scenario. Alice has been carrying out research on topic X on and off for years. She has a number of nice research findings that she hasn't gotten around to publishing and hasn't shared the findings with anyone. Alice finally decides to start focusing on topic X and publish her existing results. Unbeknownst to Alice, Bob has just started working on topic X as she begin trying to publish her results. I don't think anyone would argue that Alice has engaged in academic theft. The issue becomes what would have to change for Alice to have engaged in academic theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if Alice found out about Bob's intentions from Carol (or maybe Bob himself) and that changed Alice's research direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if Alice only starts doing the research after she hears about what Bob is doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if Bob presents a novel approach to topic X and Alice runs with the approach faster/further than Bob, but Alice is careful to always credit Bob with the new approach? What if Bob presented the new approach N years ago (choose your N)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to quantify how often academic theft occurs, one needs to define what theft is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T12:48:34.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27516" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-22T13:21:15.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The {tag:typesetting] tag concerns the process and work by professional typesetters to set material (text, tables and graphics) into a proper form for publication in journals or book form. Typesetting can be done on any computer but this tag concerns the process as used by professional typesetters as well as the interaction between authors and journal typesetters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details on typesetting on personal computers can be asked on, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;TeX.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T23:31:24.060" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:31:24.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27517" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-22T13:21:15.003" Score="0" Body="On the process of placing material (text, tables and graphics) into proper form for publication in journals or books." OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T08:19:40.320" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T08:19:40.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-22T16:08:06.313" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In class I said that correct exam answer... This is an issue with any text&#xA;  and shows why class is so vital: Texts rapidly go out of date or (such &#xA;  as the broad text used for this course) demonstrate a lack of depth. &#xA;  Lectures are usually much more up to date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to know is right there in the professor's response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor covered the correction in the lecture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You missed the lecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, you missed the question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes it officially, &quot;Your problem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lesson is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend the lectures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Textbooks are not the ultimate authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T16:08:06.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26947" CreationDate="2014-08-22T17:06:58.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Straight from the horse's mouth: there is no fix, but an update is on the list of things that &quot;will be done when they're done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may safely ignore the numbers after the text &quot;class mailing&quot; as&#xA;  they are used for internal audit code and essentially meaningless from&#xA;  a user perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We do have plans to update the mailing code at some stage, but the&#xA;  time-line is unclear due to limited developer time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T17:06:58.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2014-08-22T17:43:21.683" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually very surprised by the answers to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I think it's very bad form for a lecturer to deliberately include a question on an exam where the assigned textbook gets it wrong. I would certainly never do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if the lecturer thinks it's important that the students get the correct facts about this topic, (s)he should inform the students through a forum that all students are required to use (whether they use it or not), such as e-mail or a class website (I would do both, actually, just to make sure). Again, I think it's bad form and sloppy to think it suffices to just &quot;mention it in class&quot;, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if the lecturer intends to include it in the exam. All lecturers know that all students cannot make every single class, and I would think it's both unfair and childish to &quot;punish&quot; the students that didn't make that specific class in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T17:43:21.683" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-22T19:23:08.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia, publicly grading a student's performance is par for the course. After all, you get a GPA which is a very public (if often somewhat subjective) &quot;evaluation&quot; of your academic strength... Writing a few words that describe, in essence, where that grade came from, is a logical extension. From there, a full letter of recommendation is not much further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, employee evaluations are considered highly confidential; so from the outset, there are different approaches to the way a person's performance is evaluated and publicized. That difference seems to carry forward into the culture of recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been a manager of people &quot;in industry&quot; for years, and ran into this problem from time to time. On a handful of occasions I have agreed to be a reference for people who used to work for me. Typically I have done this only for people who had already left my organization, with whom I had remained in touch, and who I would not be afraid to give a good recommendation. Typically those things tend to go hand in hand... and I know that for at least one of them, my recommendation made the difference for him getting his &quot;dream job&quot; (I know this, because 10 minutes after hanging up the phone to the HR department of his future employer, he called me to say he had just received a verbal offer, and that they mentioned that my reference had tipped the scale). For me, doing the right thing on occasions like that is more important than following recommendations of corporate lawyers... call me reckless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update (quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaup.org/issues/academic-freedom/professors-and-institutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aaup.org/issues/academic-freedom/professors-and-institutions&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The professional standard of academic freedom is defined by the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was developed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. It is the fundamental statement on academic freedom for faculty in higher education. It has been endorsed by over 180 scholarly and professional organizations, and is incorporated into hundreds of college and university faculty handbooks. The 1940 Statement provides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.&#xA;    AAUP, Policy Documents &amp;amp; Reports 3-4 (9th ed. 2001) (hereafter &quot;Redbook&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further down this same (rather long) article, there are numerous instances of case law. I am quoting just one that seems to indicate that academic freedom and &quot;selection of faculty&quot; are intertwined - this would seem to give academics the freedom to write proper detailed references (protected by &quot;academic freedom&quot;) since such references are used &quot;for the selection of faculty&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State v. Schmid, 84 N.J. 535 (1980), appeal dismissed sub. nom., Princeton Univ. v. Schmid, 455 U.S. 100 (1982)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any direct governmental infringement of the freedom of teaching, learning, and investigation, is an assault upon the autonomy of institutions dedicated to academic freedom. In addition, &lt;strong&gt;universities perform functions, such as the selection of faculty, that are inexorably intertwined with the exercise of academic freedom.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that last sentence is the reason &quot;we are getting away with it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastEditorUserId="15062" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T18:57:37.857" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T18:57:37.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27530" CreationDate="2014-08-22T20:03:16.930" Score="4" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do students need books to learn in courses? For example, I found that books often contain some mistakes and therefore it is better for me to study those things on the Internet where I can concentrate on one thing, learn the best knows methods of that subject and then move to the next. Okay, that course wasn't really advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have to decide whether one should write a traditional book or editable lecture notes like in &lt;a href=&quot;http://stacks.math.columbia.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://stacks.math.columbia.edu/&lt;/a&gt;, which one would a lecturer choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20993" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T20:17:34.047" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T06:07:02.690" Title="Do students need traditional books?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27525" CreationDate="2014-08-23T01:09:04.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the class. I've been in classes where the handouts &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; a book -- a pre-publication version of a textbook that the professor was developing. In those cases, the handouts contained as much detail, and expressed it as clearly, as the final book would -- and luckily these were good instructors AND good writers, so the books were decent ones -- and the chapters were provided sufficiently far in advance of our needing them to permit reading ahead, so I didn't feel a need to consult other textbooks as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of those requirements is not met -- if the notes cover only the material addressed in the lecture and homework, or if they aren't clear and complete and correct, or if they aren't provided in a more-than-timely manner -- then you probably do need a textbook to back them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in any doubt, you need to specify an alternative textbook or textbooks that students may optionally want to consult (which is good practice even when you do specify a primary text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T01:09:04.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T02:24:46.623" Score="12" ViewCount="2687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in a social science field, and am on a teaching assistantship. My contract stipulates that TAs are to work no more than an average of 15 hours per week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my particular department, the past protocol was that 10 hours were devoted to teaching duties (class time, office hours, prepping, and grading), while the remaining five hours are devoted to research with an assigned faculty member. Overall, I do not think that is unreasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that setup was determined when the PhD students mostly taught undergraduate courses. I have been assigned a graduate course, and have been told to expect an enrollment of &quot;at least 30 students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never taught before, at any level. I am also still taking a full-time course load of my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this seem like an unreasonably high expectation from the Dean and program director? Or am I just being a wimp?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I definitely want to teach, and I want to make sure that my students receive the best quality education from me that I can provide. And I would like to do this without sacrificing my own academic progress, nor what is remaining of my sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just curious to know what other people's experiences in this area have been.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21000" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:12:22.993" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:12:22.993" Title="Is teaching a graduate course with 30 students an unreasonable expectation for a PhD student with a TA contract?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-23T03:51:37.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies but what you've described does not sound unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my social science department at a state research university, it's standard for graduate students without other support to have teaching and/or research responsibilities that include 20 hours a week of work and that can often involve teaching. This is in addition to taking classes on their own and/or doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own graduate studies at a business school, all students started with two years of full fellowship that meant no TA/RA requirements at all for the first two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T03:51:37.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27525" CreationDate="2014-08-23T04:34:48.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Students don't need a book. They DO need good resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe its an eBook or a PDF compiled from your teaching notes or outline/slides (Hopefully cited well) and things like short stories needed for a language class can often be found online in their entirity, for free legally, when copyright has expired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a language class, using a Sherlock Holmes story could prevent students from needing to buy a book as they're out of copyright. You can also look for material that is licensed as &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt; which allows for free use, such as material from MIT open courseware, Khan Academy, and P2P Univerity. You can learn more about &lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons for Education here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, make good content, and use it legally, either by using stuff people have given to the public, or under doctrines such as Fair Use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21001" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T04:34:48.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27525" CreationDate="2014-08-23T06:07:02.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your title question--&lt;strong&gt;Student do NOT need books, they just need quality resources.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best option for this will vary depending on the subject, class size and teaching style (the latter more than the former), and the students' learning ability. For example, in a undergrad intro course filled with students of average ability, a standard textbook may be the best option, perhaps supplemented with a few additional resources (links to videos, papers, etc). However, when you are teaching an advanced course, with students who both know how to learn on their own and have some experience with the subject matter, a textbook may still be a good option (depending on your institution's policy, you may be required to assign on for the course), but students will learn more and better if you provide them with primary sources, seminal papers in the field, and thought-provoking position papers, in addition to the textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for which a lecturer should do, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;write a traditional book or editable lecture notes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that will depend on all the above factors, as well as individual talent and motivation. Not all faculty members will necesarily want to write a textbook, though almost all will write lecture ntoes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T06:07:02.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-23T09:27:55.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also believe this is not unusual (depends on your discipline though). Moreover, graduate classes have certain advantages, other than the ones already mentioned in the comments (such as more disciplined and capable students). The first one is, that you encounter a new pool of possible collaborators. You are a PHD student and those are possibly MSc students, so they may need to write a MSc thesis. By teaching this class (and doing it well) some of the students will be interested to work with you (on their MSc thesis), so you get to have collaborators / workforce basically for free. So, if you have some spare ideas that you cannot work at the moment, perhaps proposing a new MSc thesis is the way to go. Also, some times graduate courses may be graded strictly based on assignments, so you may recommend assignments helpful to your work, such as proposing to your students to write detailed literature overviews on the subjects that interest you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other advantage of teaching in general, is this is something you need to master anyway if you want a job in Academia. So, the sooner the better. It is better to do it in a more protected environment (you are still a student so some mistakes due to inexperience are expected), instead of having to do it later. So, although the task assigned to you might seem overwhelming at first, it is best to do it, as soon as possible. Also you will realize that the second year you need to teach the same class (many times the same graduate student teaches the same course for more than one year) things will be much easier, since you will already have done the bulk of the work, in terms of preparation. Also, doing it while you still have course-work is a valuable learning experience, since you get to compare your teaching methods with the methods of the course you are enrolled in, so you may improve accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another subject that is not clear from your question is whether this course you are teaching is for one semester or an entire year. If it is for one semester and the next semester you do not get any other TA duties, it is very reasonable that for this semester you must devote more hours than the &quot;10 hours devoted to teaching&quot; that you are required to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T09:27:55.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T09:28:13.550" Score="14" ViewCount="1934" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do professors profit if a larger (rather than smaller) proportion of entering PhD students in their department complete their degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(At my department at least, it seems like the only benefit is &quot;warm-glow altruism&quot;. A professor gains no more from having more students at her department complete their PhDs than I do by having fewer stray dogs in my town getting killed by traffic. A professor's career prospects does not seem in any way affected by whether 80% rather than just 50% of PhD students complete their degree. Not surprisingly, the completion rate, at least at my department, is closer to the latter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  &lt;strong&gt;I am not asking whether it is a good idea to give professors stronger incentives to increase PhD completion rate.&lt;/strong&gt; Neither am I asking for suggestions as to how PhD completion rates can be increased. Rather, I am asking what the incentives at present are (granting of course that this varies from place to place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10885" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T08:08:57.000" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:44:02.443" Title="What incentives do professors have to increase the PhD completion rate in their department?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-23T11:18:57.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD is largely depend on the individual effort and skill of the graduate student, much more than the result of a student in lower educational levels. Therefore it is questionable how much credit should be given to the supervisor and the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indirect intensives of being a good mentor is numerous from tenure track level, as it is mentioned in the comments. A strong prof-grad students relationship is also a very strong basis of future research networks for both the students and the professors. I saw several examples how a successful former graduate student can raise the reputation of a prof, and help in new cooperation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct incentives (head money? ) to the teacher to improve that rate would be counterproductive. PhD is not elementary school: it is not like pass or fail. Just because someone passed it, the career prospects doesn't get much better if it is not coupled with actually skills, good publications etc. So just pushing someone to pass when it is not deserved doesn't do any good to students neither. Even if the reason of failure is beyond the student, or the prof is unreasonably demanding, changing the lab and / or institutional level of protection of the student is much better solution i believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine this scenario: top notch laboratories can (should) have really challenging research topics. Big part of the research is however carried out by graduate students. Do we offer direct intensives to the professor to lower the level and bet on safe projects, just to have higher pass rates for his graduate students? Easy trick, yet at the end the student ends up with poor publication record and the once-prestigious lab lower its quality, too. It is not good to anyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T11:18:57.160" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-23T13:15:26.963" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an advisee leaves without completing a Ph.D., then the advisor can end up feeling like the whole process was a waste of time, since the goal of strengthening the research area by training a future contributor was not achieved.  That's not fair or reasonable: the education and experience may be useful for the advisee despite not culminating in a Ph.D., and the opportunity to try was itself valuable regardless of how it worked out.  However, these feelings are relatively common, and the advisor's investment of time and effort becomes an incentive towards higher completion rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This personal investment begins only when the student chooses an advisor, so the corresponding incentive is not relevant before that stage.  On the other hand, spaces in graduate school are a limited and therefore valuable resource, so there is still an incentive for faculty not to waste them, even at the coursework stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes this issue tricky is that nobody can agree on what the ideal completion rate should be.  To a first approximation higher is better, but this isn't a universal principle, and a 100% completion rate would arguably mean you're doing something wrong.  Over the course of a difficult five-year program aimed at a narrow career, some people will legitimately discover that there's something else they'd rather do instead, and others will be prevented from finishing by factors beyond their or the university's control.  The only way to enforce a perfect completion rate would be to refuse to admit anyone who seemed like they might not finish and then bully all the students into finishing regardless of whether or how their circumstances had changed.  For example, you would never take a risk by admitting someone who seemed like they deserved a chance, and you would never gracefully accept a student's change of plans.  Ultimately, the fundamental difficulty is that we can't necessarily distinguish between reasonable attrition and inappropriate attrition caused by unsupportive practices, and this makes the whole issue contentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T13:15:26.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27551" CreationDate="2014-08-23T13:26:36.380" Score="2" ViewCount="1591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a masters degree in Computer Science &amp;amp; Engineering (and currently employed in s/w industry in India), but have no degree in physics. For long, I've been interested in doing research in physics, especially in astronomy, astrophysics or in particle physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there good institutes or universities in EU, US or India which accept students &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; any degree in physics to PhD program in astronomy or astrophysics? If so, do they also offer financial assistance or some form of scholarship to such students to meet at least one's tuition fee expenses?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I checked with an institute in Germany that offers PhD in physics but I was told that a masters degree in physics is a mandatory prerequisite. Does this apply to all leading German institutes? What about other leading institutes in EU or in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons, if any, between doing PhD in US versus in EU, especially in the field of physics (in the subdomains I mentioned, if that too matters)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T13:37:03.417" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T13:37:03.417" Title="Possibility of doing PhD in astronomy with only masters in CS" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27545" CreationDate="2014-08-23T15:05:31.340" Score="55" ViewCount="10294" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I saw that one of my students in the class was looking very sad. He sat down at the end of class and he looked like he was in a bad mood. After all the students left the classroom I called  him over. He told me that his mother has cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I told him be strong and try to not think about it too much. But honestly, this was a big lie. How can I try to get him to not think too much of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I have said to him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2016-12-03T02:41:57.523" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T06:49:47.843" Title="My student told me his mother has cancer, what do I do?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2014-08-23T15:47:06.423" Score="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an instructor, the best you can do is to offer your condolences and tell him to just ask you if he needs anything. For example, you could offer an extension on assignments. If he needs some time off from lectures, maybe a classmate who takes good lecture notes will agree to make a photocopy, or you could get the lectures to be recorded for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your university might also have a policy that allows students to withdraw from the course and receive a refund of fees without penalty to grades: it would be worth finding this out and advising your student if this is possible. Depending on the severity of the illness and how much it is affecting your student, he might wish to take fewer (or zero) courses for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the course is nearly finished, perhaps an aegrotat (compassionate consideration) will be applicable to the final exam. But neither an illness in the family, nor a bereavement or any personal physical or mental health issue can excuse a student from having to learn the material and complete assessments in order to pass a course. He will still have to demonstrate mastery of most of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be compassionate, and as flexible as you feasibly can. Nobody could ask for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T15:47:06.423" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26038" CreationDate="2014-08-23T15:59:50.090" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an interview question, I like this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's the most interesting discovery you have made in your research?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to this question can show what the researcher thinks is particularly interesting about their work, exposing some of their character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be useful to hear what they consider to be a &quot;discovery&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6915" LastEditorUserId="6915" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T21:18:14.570" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T21:18:14.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27347" CreationDate="2014-08-23T17:03:10.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first course I taught, about 15 years ago, was an advanced undergraduate introduction to General Relativity.  The way I taught that (and currently teach it again) worked for me and apparently for the students.  There are a variety of overlaps with points made in the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it goes is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've assembled detailed formal lecture notes, which have turned into a what I realise amounts to a short book! (feel free to &lt;a href=&quot;http://purl.org/nxg/text/general-relativity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;have a look&lt;/a&gt; if you're at all interested).  I distribute these in blocks before the relevant lectures.  I request/advise the students to read ahead in these notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lecture I give is somewhat more informal than the written notes.  It goes over the material in the same order, but skips some details, and says ‘it's a bit like...’ more often than the notes would.  That is, the lecture itself is significantly distinct from the notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't use powerpoint (or prepared acetate slides, before you ask), but I do use a document projector to display scribbled diagrams and mathematical derivations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I record the lectures, and make this available to the students as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they've got lots of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points that are relevant to the question here are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is well-known as a challenging course, but the students generally find the topic interesting and are motivated to work hard at it.  That is, they &lt;strong&gt;are cooperating and trying to learn&lt;/strong&gt;, and as others have pointed out, this is more important than anything else for the success of a course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a notationally intricate course, and I know from being on the opposite side of the lecturn that it's basically impossible to take accurate notes and actually pay attention to what's being said.  I still tell them to take notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I tell them that the topic only makes sense after the second time they do a course in it, but that the printed notes and the oral lecture count as two courses simultaneously! (to an educationalist I'd say something about ‘multi-modal learning ...&lt;em&gt;blah&lt;/em&gt;... different learning styles ...&lt;em&gt;wibble&lt;/em&gt;’).  That, plus the recorded audio, cues them &lt;strong&gt;to take charge of how they approach the material&lt;/strong&gt;, and to take a critical attitude to the available resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm aware (I don't check) they do all turn up to the lectures.  That's nice, as it suggests I do myself have a pedagogical function being in the room.  If they don't turn up then either they're going to fail the course, or else they're able enough that they can master it with their own resources – both are fine by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other course where I've used this approach was a pre-honours course, also regarded as somewhat challenging, but also with motivated students; also with a masters-level course which was a bit less interesting, but which could presume motivated students.  It &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; not work so well with a service course, or a more bread-and-butter course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point being said, I do have general sympathy with the insistence that undergraduates are adults, who can damn well be given responsibility for their own learning.  But that fine attitude might run into difficulties in a different institutional or course, or a different student body, or a different (pecuniary) relationship with the students.  There are important factors lurking there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10983" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T17:03:10.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2014-08-23T18:02:17.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always show a student (or colleague) the letter I've been asked to write - noting that although s/he has (almost always) waived the right to see the letter, I have not waived the right to show it. S/he can suggest edits, or even ask me not to send it (that's never happened).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7018" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T18:02:17.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27478" CreationDate="2014-08-23T18:15:00.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's actually very straightforward: the salary they list is the salary you get. No 8- or 9-month shenanigans, just what they quote. You might get extra money for teaching (extra) courses, but you don't have to find a way to pay yourself over the summer (indeed, research grant money never goes into the PI's pocket).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Taxable Benefits means non-monetary benefits, which might include free or subsidized stuff like memberships (e.g., to a University fitness centre). Senior administrative types (also appointed as professors in some department or other) might get all kinds of non-monetary benefits like a place to live or the use of a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21022" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T18:15:00.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27542" CreationDate="2014-08-23T18:52:28.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden there is no hard requirement. (In Spain, for that matter, there isn't either, but I don't recommend going for a PhD there). You &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; need to convince a professor that you are a good asset for the team. The way it works here (and in some other countries in Europe) is that the PI gets funding and hires whomever he wants, based on whatever criteria. Other countries make the decision at a department level, usually putting stress on the marks. Anyway, the difference is convincing one party or a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that all the people I know in the closest related department, are physicist, but they do a lot of programming and data analysis. Your strong points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can improve code quality. (I have seen code that gives me nightmares.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can implement new algorithms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can learn the physics along the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CS backgrounds are, by the way, quite common in Bioinformatics and, to a lesser degree, Biophysics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in Sweden working in Biophysics, and my girlfriend is doing a PhD in Astrophysics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T10:21:26.170" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T10:21:26.170" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27514" CreationDate="2014-08-23T20:17:12.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have data &lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;, and a model &lt;strong&gt;M={H, f(H), g(H)}&lt;/strong&gt;, where &lt;strong&gt;H&lt;/strong&gt; are the set of assumptions of the model, and &lt;strong&gt;{f(H), g(H)}&lt;/strong&gt; are components of the model that of course depend on the assumptions in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the data, you estimate a functional form for &lt;strong&gt;f(H)&lt;/strong&gt;, for lack of mathjax denote it &lt;strong&gt;empf(S,H)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you apply your model to the data and obtain a measure of fit, expressed here in abstract as a distance measure between model and data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;{M,S}-&gt;d(M,S)*   or **{[H, empf(S,H), g(H)], S}-&gt;d([H, empf(S,H), g(H)],S)&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One&lt;/em&gt; (not all) components of your model had a chance to &quot;fit with the data&quot;  &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to applying the whole model, and so it has increased the chances of your model &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; to fit the data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &quot;distance&quot; is not purely between model and data -it is a distance between a model that has already come &quot;closer to the data&quot;, through &lt;strong&gt;empf(S,H)&lt;/strong&gt;, and the data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a rather known dialect, &quot;you &lt;em&gt;trained&lt;/em&gt; (partly) your model, using the same data set on which you are going to &lt;em&gt;test&lt;/em&gt; it&quot;. I would not consider this as scientifically acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way out of course, is to estimate &lt;strong&gt;f&lt;/strong&gt; by using a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; data set, a data set that &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;, according to your theory, be able also to be represented by the same model. And this also guides you as to how you could go about writing your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T20:17:12.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T22:36:51.320" Score="18" ViewCount="1711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD candidate currently preparing a manuscript for journal submission in the environmental modelling and engineering field. One of my authors is from China, and contributed some data and ideas for the methodology that I found quite useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person wants to be the corresponding author for the study with the argument that being the corresponding author is the only way to secure future funding for the study in China/from Chinese sources. Yet he is no way in a position to explain and defend the study, as he wasn't really involved in modelling, analysis and writing, and has limited understanding regarding the main model functioning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have so far refused to let him be the corresponding author, but he is really putting pressure on me to be the corresponding author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone give me some pointers on why it is so important for a Chinese academic to be the corresponding author? Does his argument about funding generally hold true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastEditorUserId="92405" LastEditDate="2018-05-30T20:55:17.150" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T20:55:17.150" Title="In Chinese academia, what is the significance of the corresponding author, beyond 'public relation'?" Tags="&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;&lt;china&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T23:16:53.980" Score="3" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;When submitting papers, I often see some elaborate requirements for submission formats, but none pertaining to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.si.edu/Content/Accessibility/Publication-Guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;accessibility&lt;/a&gt;. Which journals or conferences have publication accessibility requirements? (put aside accessibility conferences)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly interested in the field of computer science &gt; machine learning, and English-speaking venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T13:22:49.317" Title="Which journals or conferences have publication accessibility requirements?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-24T01:51:56.690" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France, labs are assessed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agence_d&amp;#39;%C3%A9valuation_de_la_recherche_et_de_l&amp;#39;enseignement_sup%C3%A9rieur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AÉRES&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20170426234442/https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agence_d&amp;#39;%C3%A9valuation_de_la_recherche_et_de_l&amp;#39;enseignement_sup%C3%A9rieur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mirror&lt;/a&gt;)  (~= Department of Evaluation of Research and Higher Education).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeres-evaluation.fr/Actualites/Communiques-dossiers-de-presse/L-AERES-publie-son-referentiel-des-criteres-d-evaluation-des-entites-de-recherche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evaluation criteria&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160608103201/http://www.aeres-evaluation.fr:80/Actualites/Communiques-dossiers-de-presse/L-AERES-publie-son-referentiel-des-criteres-d-evaluation-des-entites-de-recherche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mirror&lt;/a&gt;)  show that the AÉRES prefer labs where PhD students don't drop out too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the AÉRES evaluation has an important impact, e.g. to get funding, professors have an incentive to increase the PhD completion rate (and they also have an incentive not to turn PhDs into some ever-lasting position: labs typically to try to graduate students in 3-4 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US - at least in my university - I'm not aware of any incentive, except that new PhD students will avoid professors who have the reputation of taking a while to graduate their students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T23:44:02.443" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:44:02.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-24T02:22:03.687" Score="11" ViewCount="1818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will defend my PhD thesis soon and I currently have a bunch of papers in a finalization phase. As first author of these papers, and as my work is funded with public money, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of giving my rights to a private editor, for ethical reasons. I would like to release my papers under a Creative Commons-like license or in the public domain (CC0?) but I want them to go through a peer-review process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do this? (And why do so few researchers seem to be concerned with these ethical problematics?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8457" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T09:00:29.317" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T20:07:20.800" Title="How to publish under a Creative Commons license?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;creative-commons&gt;&lt;public-domain&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-08-24T02:52:30.470" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A month after asking this question I randomly stumbled onto the type of solution which I was originally seeking -- open-market subscription based access to multiple journals and full-text article links from sources such as Google Scholar, PubMed, EconLit, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While searching for full text access to an article on Manufactured Environmental Toxins in umbilical cords I noticed that one of the full text options was through a service called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deepdyve.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DeepDyve&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims to be the &quot;Spotify of Academic articles&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.spotify.com/us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spotify&lt;/a&gt; is a popular Internet radio app that lets you download and play music at will if you subscribe). Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://library.osu.edu/blogs/techtips/2009/10/29/techtip-renting-scholarly-articles-through-deepdyve/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;somewhat dated review&lt;/a&gt; from Ohio State's TechTip a la 2009. It's a $40/mo subscription plan for non-students like the institutional access you get within academia. I'm on a 2-week trial of it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm still going to continue to make use of many of the other good suggestions and I'm on the lookout for other services like this to select from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USE WITH ADDITIONAL SOLUTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the service I found, I'm taking advantage of several other solutions offered. Even with the subscription-based service there are many papers and journals to which I do not have access and the follow suggestions remain vital:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many papers are freely available on authors' websites, and pre-print servers (use search engine to find those).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write to the authors, asking for copies. Majority of academics are happy when their work is read, and will send you a copy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your public library might subscribe to more than you suspect. Check it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many institutions grant library privileges to alumni, which might include remote access to the university's online subscriptions. You might get in touch with the librarian at your alma mater and ask if they offer such a thing. (In some cases you might be required to join the alumni association and pay dues, but this would probably be on the order of US$10-$100 per year.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many universities open their libraries to the public. If you live near any university or college that has appropriate subscriptions, you may be able to just walk into their library, sit down at a computer, and download the articles you want. Then just put them on a USB drive, upload them to a cloud storage account, or email them to yourself. For older articles that aren't online, the library may have them in bound volumes; they may not let you check them out, but you can photocopy or scan any article you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LIMITATIONS OF THIS SOLUTION&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subscription-based service isn't a perfect solution. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921/j-zimmerman&quot;&gt;@J.Zimmerman&lt;/a&gt; points out that, unlike institutional access, you do not have the right to print or download papers. It's &quot;read-only&quot; access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selection of journals is quite large, but still limited. My feeling is that it directly provides access to about the same selection you'd have with most universities, but unlike universities there's no inter-library loan or other work-around for when you do not have access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AFTERWORD&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I use this solution more over the course of the next few days I'll update this solution with further limitations and I'll better integrate it with the other useful solutions which have been posted. I will also take a suggestion from the comments to make this a Community Wiki solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I will also be on the look-out for any competing services like DeepDyve. Please update this solution if you know of any, so that we're not inadvertantly providing an advertisement for one arbitrary commercial service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T22:11:21.090" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T22:11:21.090" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-08-25T15:32:12.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2014-08-24T06:25:54.300" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imagine that most universities will have policy on this, and professionals who are trained to help. Apart from &quot;find out the policy&quot;, IMHO unless you know the student well personally &lt;em&gt;and are confident in your ability to deal with things like this&lt;/em&gt; (which the fact that you are asking this question suggests you are not) then all you should do is express sympathy and, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask whether they've told anybody else at the uni. If not, &lt;strong&gt;with their permission&lt;/strong&gt;, consider informing whoever has overall responsibility for their academic progress (eg head of dept, director of studies, etc) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure that the student is aware of whatever counseling services your institution offers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research for your own info what arrangements can be made for extensions to deadlines, or consideration of circumstances when exams are marked, both for the current situation and in the event that the parent dies. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make it clear to the student that allowances can be made (assuming this is the case), and that they should not be hesitant to speak to you if they feel that the situation is affecting their academic performance. No need to be specific for now - if the student is worried about this then just knowing that there are &quot;options&quot; may reduce the stress that they feel. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB I have no particular qualification to comment here; once again, your uni probably has people whose job it is. If in doubt, consult them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T06:25:54.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27554" CreationDate="2014-08-24T13:22:49.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working from the guidelines you linked: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.si.edu/Content/Accessibility/Publication-Guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.si.edu/Content/Accessibility/Publication-Guidelines.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, I think APA style (and probably many others) meet many of the requirements. Most of the accessibility recommendations relate to the final printing (e.g., matte paper) and not to the electronically submit manuscript. APA style recommends 12 pt Times to be used as the font with double spaced lines, 1 inch margins, and a ragged right margin, which seems to tick all the typesetting rules apart from the use of a non-recommended typeface (but as a translational typeface with high quality printing it might still be accessible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T13:22:49.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27568" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:01:31.927" Score="15" ViewCount="2275" Body="&lt;p&gt;While somewhat related to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27543/my-student-told-me-his-mother-has-cancer-what-do-i-do&quot;&gt;recent question&lt;/a&gt; but this situation is different in that my supervisor has over the recent months had unspecified health issues. It has not overly effected our relationship other than a bit of a delay in some of our emails. Without knowing exactly what is wrong it was conveyed at one of our meeting that it was not overly serious. In the last email I received it was noted by my advisor that their health was poorly over the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who has previously had a prolonged serious bout of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn%27s_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crohn's&lt;/a&gt;, I can understand how poor health can impact on someone's life and would like to be able to make our professional relationship work in a mutually beneficial way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a way my question is two-fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it appropriate for me to sympathize/empathize with my supervisor about their health issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I ask them how they best wish to proceed when they may be ill in relation to submitting work etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T18:58:41.577" Title="What should you do when your supervisor is ill?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27557" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:03:04.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will address two aspects of Creative-Commons licences seperately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open Access and not giving somewhat exclusive rights to a journal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why journals do not give everybody access to their articles and want some exclusive rights on the article is that they need to pay their expenses (typesetters, copy editors, printing, maintaining editorial managemetent system, …) and do so by selling articles and issues (mostly to university libraries and similar). You can change or circumvent this by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publishing in an open-access journal. In this case, it’s usually you and not the reader who pays for the journal’s expenses. Since there is no need for the journal to get exclusive rights, you can usually publish the article under a Creative-Commons licence. Note that some funding agencies give you money exclusively for publication costs, which you can spend on this. Be aware though that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17379/7734&quot;&gt;there are more black than white sheep&lt;/a&gt; in this field. Finally, the price of publication is debatable (but so is the price of pay-to-read journals).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, many journals offer pay-to-publish open-access options, which are like the above, just that your article is published in a classical journal instead of a pure open-access journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many journal allow the authors to disseminate preprints, e.g., via &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the ArXive&lt;/a&gt;. Though they still get some exclusive rights to the article and there may be some restrictions, there is de facto open access to your article. SHERPA maintains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an extensive database&lt;/a&gt; on what kind of preprint publication is allowed by which journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why researchers do not care more about this: The old publication system is an established structure which takes time to change. Theoretically, we could do with one central, globally funded open-access publication system (in particular by avoiding printing costs). Also note that in technologically inclined fields, publishing preprints is very common, so there already is open access to most publications and thus less incentive to change the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allowing others to build upon your work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This aspect of the Creative-Commons licence mainly makes sense for works of art or widely used texts (such as licences), which somebody would actually want to directly build a work upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building your work directly on a &lt;strong&gt;research article&lt;/strong&gt; would be a very unusual thing to do, as instead of modifying the original article, you would rather publish a comment or a new article citing this article. Do not forget that building upon the ideas of an article is allowed anyway (unless they are patented), it’s just building on the text or the figures, which would be changed by putting the article under a Creative-Commons licence. Finally, it would arguably be more harmful than useful, if anybody could publish an altered version of your paper, as this would lead to confusion for readers of work which cites your paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a &lt;strong&gt;review article&lt;/strong&gt; it makes more sense to allow others to edit your article, which is the idea behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholarpedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T14:03:04.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:05:32.917" Score="0" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sort of stuck in a quagmire. I am just starting out in a 2 yr bio-manufacturing program, which has a thesis component. I was looking to add a minor from an interdisciplinary department biotechnology, which requires a few classes and a person from this area must serve on my thesis committee. My problem arises from the fact that I want my thesis topic to leverage skills from both groups. As of now the projects offered to me are not really all that exciting and would not be as multifaceted as I would like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know part of the problem is that I am a masters student, so that limits the scope of what I can do which is a turn off for some. In my initial outreach to professors for the minor component, a common response was I do not have anything for MS students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is that since both areas are interdisciplinary, each area is made up of individuals from a number of departments (engineering, microbiology, biology, plant science, animal science, genetics). The dual appointment makes things  a challenge. I wanted to ask out there if anyone else needed to do more leg work to form a committee and secure a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some pitfall I could avoid? &#xA;What is the best way to engage professor who have no real vested interest?&#xA;Is it possible to generate a fusion project leverages skills from both programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10097" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T14:13:39.427" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T03:53:07.873" Title="How to engage interdisciplinary professors in forming an MS thesis committee and project?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;&lt;interdisciplinary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27565" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:16:10.790" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T14:16:10.790" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T14:16:10.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27566" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:16:10.790" Score="0" Body="On degree programs, research efforts, conferences, journals, etc. that involve the synthesis of multiple academic disciplines or fields of study. 'Interdisciplinary' differs from 'multidisciplinary' in its integrative nature; in an interdisciplinary approach, the fields do not remain clearly separated." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T05:30:53.143" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T05:30:53.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27562" CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:35:30.160" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since in a recent email your advisor has told you about the health issue, it is perfectly acceptable for you to sympathize/empathize with them and it would not be out of place to ask if you could do anything regarding your work to accommodate them. That said, if you feel uncomfortable raising the issue, you should be able to depend on your advisor being mature enough to tell you what he/she needs in terms of accommodations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor had not mentioned anything to you and you wish to sympathize/empathize with them, then you need to be more delicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T14:35:30.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2014-08-24T15:13:48.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might encourage him to reach out to other resources at the university. I imagine your university has counseling or psychological services, a chaplain, and the student may have an assigned advisor who can help the student understand their options, and provide professionally trained support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the comments about offering certain accommodations, as you think appropriate, is generous and reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6024" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T15:13:48.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-24T16:13:46.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer the opposite question. What disincentives do professors have to increase the PhD completion rate in their department? I'm looking at the opposite of what you asked because I feel it will give us insight into your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some fields, which I can only talk directly about the one I am familiar with - Compute Science, having students complete their PhD in a timely matter isn't a focus unfortunatly. Professors who are already established may already have a little army of PhD grads out there citing their work and growing their PhD empire. Which means that current or recent crops of PhD students under that professor sometimes get stuck. Why? Unfortunately one thing that PhD students are is cheap(ish), reliable labor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD student is going to work on the tasks or research set before them by their PI. They are going to do their best to complete that research - not just because it benefits their career but because failure in that arena may lead to disfavor or even being removed from their program. A professor can be assured that PhD students working under them will focus on their research of choice and will invariably cite or reference previous work done by the professor. Incidentally the PI is almost always an author on any paper that student publishes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a bit cynical, I'll admit. But even beyond the pure cynicism of authorship farms and indentured servitude is the basic truth that it takes time to train someone to do research work at a high level. If I have been researching creating artificial butterfly wings out of volatile polycarbonates(or whatever) then it's going to take at least a year, if not more, to get a student enough information, enough skill and enough confidence to wind them up and let them go on important research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now some of the other Academic posters are rolling their eyes. This sounds both incredibly cynical and a little bit tin foil hat ish. But the thing is... these are real problems that have been identified in at least a few schools I know of. You get some old, cranky, tenured professor who has dozens of students out in the world and who has gotten used to his or her status as king of the research mountain and all the sudden students start taking longer and longer to graduate. All the sudden that professor forgets what it was like to be a PhD student, trying to make a difference with your research and trying to get the heck out and graduate and only remembers that it's annoying and expensive to train a new PhD student and, btw, this student's producing pretty well and... well it would be more convenient if this trained student would stick around for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is done about this? Some programs tie tenure positions with completion rates and timelines. This is problematic and, to be honest, I've heard people talk about it but I've never seen or heard of it in action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some programs have a soft cap on the length of time a student can remain as a PhD student. I have seen this in action and I'm conflicted about it. On one hand, PhD students need to either graduate or leave the program eventually. But different fields can take different amounts of time to get results. Additionally, sometimes life just happens and the student who is moving along their degree runs into a snag(changes PIs, has a health emergency, just needs more time). The hope is that these soft caps are flexible enough to deal with these situations. The ways I have seen these soft caps(for lack of a better word) implemented is by having a fairly strict timelines for course work completion, having a deadline for committee selection(generally very early in the process) and having regular meetings between advisors(academic style advisors, not research advisors) and students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although your answer states that you're not interested in what could or should be done in these situations I think it's valuable to say that: I think low PhD graduation rates are signs of an unhealthy department and unhealthy academic culture. They should be taken very seriously and the fix should never be the 'warm fuzzy glow' of graduating someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T16:13:46.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27562" CreationDate="2014-08-24T17:05:04.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much it slows down your research, how far you are from graduation and how bad the illness is, a common solution is to get a temporary or permanent co-advisor. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27568/15723&quot;&gt;StrongBad said&lt;/a&gt;, your advisor should be mature enough to tell the students if it is necessary to do so (this actually happened a few weeks ago to a friend of mine), but illness can be treacherous (also happened during this summer...) so more risk-averse people might prefer to start looking for a co-advisor even before they are advised to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T18:58:41.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2014-08-24T18:35:22.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unhelpful to tell you the teacher what you &quot;should have said&quot; because there is no perfect recipe for what to say, if exactly the same situation should arise again which it won't. Your priority should be to acknowledge that your student gave you an answer which you understood. I advise not advising anything before you, or someone with time for closer discussion with the student, has identified an actual need. I would ask whether his mother is receiving treatment or tests. From the answer you will learn whether the student has good or uncertain information, without which you cannot know whether this is just an imaginary case of worry, an actual terminal cancer case or likely something in between. There are other good answers here aimed at helping the student complete or delay completing the class. An empathic response (that I learned from a doctor) to be used if and only if the student talks about his Mother's medical progress is &quot;Prepare for the worst and hope for the best&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21051" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T18:35:22.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-24T19:06:38.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is well explained by an American expression: &quot;Time is money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to pay &quot;people&quot; for their time. And these are not random people, but highly trained and paid researchers making salaries, typically in the top 20-30 per cent of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, such researchers normally have to be supported on most projects by &quot;advanced&quot; scientific equipment, which also costs a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T19:24:53.763" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T19:24:53.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-24T19:30:53.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is incredibly common for the number of hours devoted to teaching be woefully inadequate to deliver good instruction except possibly for highly seasoned instructors teaching the exact same course multiple times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't know any fair solution to this.  You'll probably spend two or three times longer than the expected number of hours in order to do even an adequate job.  From what I observe, people cope either by working far more than they're supposed to, or by delivering not-very-good instruction.  It's a difficult spot to be in.  (Alas, not the only difficult spot in academia.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bright side is that if you're really interested in teaching and put in way more time than you're &quot;supposed&quot; to, next time it won't be as bad (you'll only have to put in somewhat more than you're supposed to), and if you do well you will both help your students and be known as someone who is a good teacher (good if you want to do more teaching).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T19:30:53.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2014-08-24T19:49:45.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point to make is to realize that what is &quot;so much&quot; is a very relative term. If you see value in what is being produced then the cost may seem small and definitely &quot;worth it&quot;. If you do not see the value, then of course the result is the opposite. It would be possible to go through, for example, public expenditures in government budgets and argue for military costs, for social benefit schemes, public health, public schools etc. and find similar disagreements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is becoming popular in certain political circles to want research to be directly translated into profits within a short time span. Although there of course is nothing wrong with gaining profitable results many discoveries have only yielded such results long after the timing of the discovery. The spin-offs from discoveries are also often realized once the basic research has been done, for example  as a result from unexpected discoveries. As the saying goes, &quot;If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I think the view of &quot;cost so much&quot; is either a lack of perspective, or insight, or simply not finding the progress of any value. Having this view point is certainly valid but as many responses have already discussed, one must then argue what costs should or could be reduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To call research inefficient is not sufficient. We can see that certain problems can be solved if sufficient finances are supplied over a sufficient period, take the US space program to put a person on the moon as an example. But, was that a cheap project? Obviously for some but not to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no time or effort was spent on anything, life would remain simple but hardly bearable, provided our intellectual development would occur spontaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T19:49:45.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27595" CreationDate="2014-08-24T21:34:20.600" Score="5" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a particularly difficult scientific concept, which, with the use of an animation, I think I could make very clear. I have some experience making little movies from piecing together figure snapshots, but in this case I lack the skills (and time) to assemble a quality animation. Is anyone aware of a website, resource, or company that will assemble movies for academic purposes? I've looked around but haven't found anything reasonable (in price, or with experience producing scientific-quality movies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: an animation showing an EKG trace, and a diagram of a beating heart. Each beat moves the heart and shows up on the EKG, so you can see how the two are related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="14719" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T02:31:26.747" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T11:57:45.010" Title="Commission an animation to explain a scientific concept?" Tags="&lt;graphics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27907" CreationDate="2014-08-25T00:28:08.543" Score="1" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to improve my learning skills. Is there any advice or a good method for that? For example, I want to read an article or book and retain as much information possible. But sometimes I read and lose focus, or when I read I can't remember everything as well as I'd like to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21060" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T05:17:43.237" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T16:59:33.747" Title="Improve learning skills" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-25T03:13:07.200" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually kind of shocked by the other answers saying this is normal.  Maybe math and the social sciences are somehow different in this regard, but this sounds like an insane situation. I'm sure you're a wonderful person, and it sounds like you're trying your best, but it's totally unfair to the graduate students in your class to have them taught by someone with zero teaching experience.  To me this seems like an enormous red flag about your department that they would do this.  Where the hell are the faculty who should be teaching these courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'm not sure I have a course of action to suggest beyond doing your best in the assigned class (especially since it's presumably starting up quite soon), but I agree with you that it's unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T03:13:07.200" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27564" CreationDate="2014-08-25T03:21:37.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes have the stinking suspicion that &quot;interdisciplinary&quot; is a codeword for &quot;disorganized, incoherent, or train wreck&quot;. What you're encountering is precisely the problem man such programs face, there's no central management of what you are working towards or way to corral the cats into working with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to save the interdisciplinary until you've mastered one discipline. Otherwise, expect more of the same -- having to convince everyone to be on board and losing focus on a current research topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, you're an MS student -- focus on finishing that degree first. If you want to develop research skills outside of that, then take the courses without adding a &quot;minor&quot; to your MS. If after you finish, you want to pursue a PhD that bridges some of the knowledge fields you are working in, make sure that the place you go has a coherent program for bridging them rather than a dream that they can be bridged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19769" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T03:21:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14706" CreationDate="2014-08-25T03:35:18.167" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That a thesis advisor refuses to recommend a former student exposes the underlying tensions inherent during the supervisory process, or differences in what constitutes the core research question. The tensions are not exposed until after the student graduates. In my case, my supervisor used me as an &quot;unpaid research assistant for three years&quot; and sent my twenty texts to translate from a Southeast Asian language to English without even acknowledging my contribution to the research. He even stymied my PhD thesis submission by saying that my progress was marginal, even though I had finished 84% of the thesis six months before submission. I later realised that my supervisor was stymying my attempts to establish my credentials as a TA, soon after I would submit my thesis. He kept egging me to go back to India (he is incidentally Australian) and my thesis was undertaken in Australia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three weeks before I graduated my supervisor told me not to keep my hopes too high in the job market. I smelt that something was fishy and requested him to write a general letter of recommendation. My hair stood still on both ends when he commented adversely ion my social skills. I then decided not to solicit letters of recommendation from my primary supervisor. I instead, request letters from academics who are well-disposed to me. Of course, my supervisor's adversarial stance has affected my fortunes so far but I will never give up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21063" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T03:35:18.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27603" CreationDate="2014-08-25T06:02:47.643" Score="16" ViewCount="7436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is an unspoken question in academia: how do you factor in the effort put forth by a student before taking your class? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think  the answer to this question has several consequences:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it presents accurate reflection of your teaching, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it presents more accurate reflection of the quality of work of a student &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It also addresses a more profound question:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is good educational outcome measured by grades a product of privilege or a measure of intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal anecdote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my undergrad classes, I find for some courses the class will be divided into two camps - one who has done some work outside of the class (the ones who have a background), another who will try to learn the course material as the course progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results are vastly different. The ones who have done work outside of class will achieve higher grade across the board, are more motivated, ask extremely technical questions in classes, gets all the attention of the professor as the next &quot;rising star&quot;, etc., whereas the other students who haven't had as much experience prior coming to class will try his/her hardest with uncertain outcomes and will tend to struggle a great deal more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my own observation, a course taught by a lecturer who uses less conventional course material seems to even out the grade much better than a lecturer who uses standard material - since in these cases, the advanced students are less able to predict what will show up on the exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is most significant in computer science classes. Any computer, CS, programming classes will teach things in two folds: practical and theoretical. I find in many of my classes, a portion of the student will have a great deal of knowledge in the former, therefore significantly reducing his/her course load. How easy is it to ace an introduction to programming course if you already have years of experience in the language? These courses will always produce several students who go on doing interesting research or work at some big-name companies, and the lecturer will be praised as being effective at teaching. But it is so obvious to me, that the student - the one who has taken years of programming at middle to high school level, a summer course at another University... - is more advantaged in this area than a student who is just coming in to be acquainted with a field of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, what is the ethics of preparing yourself for a course before it begins given such uneven playing field in today's academic setting? Will this be a mark of a motivated student who is genuinely interested to learn a subject or a student who is just trying to get ahead and earn good grades? Why should or shouldn't a student prepare himself for all the courses he will take one or two years down the road?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20070" LastEditorUserId="20070" LastEditDate="2017-10-19T20:41:29.490" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T08:38:48.190" Title="The Ethics of Preparing for a Course Long Before Actually Taking it" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;preparation&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-25T06:16:04.827" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;A student takes a course to prove he learned the stuff in the syllabus. He/she passes the course, and then has official certification that he knows that stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who cares &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; he learned it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trickiest part is keeping the course interesting for the high-flyers, without alienating the less able (or less knowledgeable) class members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T06:16:04.827" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-25T07:57:23.943" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, the National Research Council (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/rdp/&quot;&gt;http://www.nap.edu/rdp/&lt;/a&gt;) regularly ranks university departments. One of the criteria by which departments (and thus universities) are ranked is the &quot;Average of Median Time to Degree&quot; with the presumption that lower is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my university, this results in the provost's office putting pressure on us to reduce our time to degree through a number of measures, some coercive and punitive. Most of the time, the coercion and punishment is directed towards the graduate students (i.e., after the sixth year they lose their rights to certain fellowships, they have to pay more for their gym and library memberships, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the department as a whole gets some attention. Our chair has been regularly sending out lists of our orphaned and missing ABD candidates (some now in their 12th year) and asking us to find and terminate them (either through graduating them, or formally asking them to leave the program). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also been putting some pressure on my peers through the admissions system by suggesting (since they are my colleagues, I have no power) that people with many students on the books should refrain from taking on new students until they clear their backlog more a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that I'm in anthropology where: 1) students tend to go into the field and disappear for quite sometime; 2) doctoral students are mostly useless to faculty for slave labor as most of us work individually and not in labs (with the exception of some of our archaeological / biological colleagues). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T23:54:23.700" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T23:54:23.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14706" CreationDate="2014-08-25T08:51:48.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations are a method for discrimination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason why recommendations exist is to discriminate potential candidates - to have some information that is correlated with the candidate being better or worse. If everyone gets a good recommendation, or even a recommendation as such, then the whole process would be useless, so everyone getting recommended is definitely not a reasonable goal. If an advisor sincerely believes that a candidate is weak, then the only ethical action is to give a clearly weak recommendation or no recommendation at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to do if you don't get good recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Become better - identify your weak spots and fix them. It depends on the field, but 1 paper during PhD and 0 papers in a few years after that sounds like a strong indicator that the candidate isn't doing solid independent research and thus can't be recommended. This can be fixed in the obvious way by doing such research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Communicate your good things - if you have done solid work, then it needs to be communicated and shown in order to be appreciated. If you've done anything useful and worthwile, then you should get that published. This, coincidentally, seems to be exactly what the advisor suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T13:47:00.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T13:47:00.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27598" CreationDate="2014-08-25T11:12:32.460" Score="2" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intro&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an upcoming project I have to get into a new topic of research which is not similar to anything I have worked so far. Furthermore, this project requires learning new programming language(s) and simulation environments. And in the end a software implementation and a final report has to be written&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About the topic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole topic is about wireless mobile communication, the basics of communication technologies which are used in this topic are the same with the usual mobile wireless technologies I've learned before. However, the dynamics of the mobility are fairly different. The clustering algorithms used are not typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The essential question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I tackle such a situation, where multiple new things have to be learned before the final results are delivered. I separate the things I have to learn into &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prerequisites: programming languages, simulation environment, relation between them and the topic basics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Main work: learning the essential elements of the topic and becoming fluent in them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past experiences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I have usually worked on research topics which I have fulfilled the prerequisites for. So, I would tackle the topic following these steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read broader literature: Surveys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read literature about the specific problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement if there is something to be done &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write final report&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I am a bit &lt;strong&gt;lost&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;I don't know where should I start from.&lt;/em&gt; That's why I need help from more experienced researchers. Compared to the list I provided above, step 3 is quite more complicated in this case, as I am not familiar with the programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I plan to do&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to follow the following steps in order to get into this topic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fulfill the prerequisites: get familiar with the required programming languages and simulation environments. Coupling between them etc. Do some exercises until I feel confident.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start reading broad literature: Surveys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on the specific problem: Read specific literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the final report&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure if these steps are OK. Sometimes I get confused and I want to move &lt;code&gt;4 -&amp;gt; 2&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;2 -&amp;gt; 3&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;3 -&amp;gt; 4&lt;/code&gt; and maybe parallelize something there with step &lt;code&gt;5&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I feel so overwhelmed by this topic and need urgent help :(.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T21:47:05.200" Title="Getting into a topic one is barely familiar with?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27601" CreationDate="2014-08-25T11:49:03.407" Score="26" ViewCount="2114" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my PhD it bothered me how much time my supervisor had to spend on writing proposals to get funding to do science, which in practice pretty much meant that he had no time to do science because he spent all that time in the time-consuming business of getting money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I was finishing my PhD and looked at postdoc opportunities, I wrote myself a project proposal for starting investigators in which I spent overall about one month (literature review, securing collaborators, writing itself, etc). This was very competitive and only one in every 100 applicants got funded - I did not get funding, although I made it to the interviews, which I was told meant I made it to the top 10%. I am not completely unsatisfied about the outcome because I gained experience and contacts, which eventually led me to being offered a postdoc position by one of the people I had included as collaborators. However, the whole process of putting the thing together meant I lost about one month that I could have spent doing science. It also made me realize that even writing a high quality proposal in which I had spent a lot of time working on the details would not necessarily lead to guaranteed success. If only 1% of applicants get funded it means that statistical noise alone is enough to push you out of the winners pool!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I am a postdoc I have to spend some time helping my new boss with his proposals and in the near future (maybe in the next year) I will have to start applying to some competitive project money myself. Again, this means that I will not be doing research during that time and will spend a considerable amount of time trying to get that research funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this loss of productivity be quantified? Are there studies on how much less research is carried out because of the time spent on competitive hard-to-win grant calls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T12:59:04.433" Title="How to quantify the loss in productivity due to time spent on writing proposals" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27580" CreationDate="2014-08-25T11:57:45.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With such a small budget (less than 1000 US dollars), you're unlikely to be able to commission professional work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have three options that I can see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to find someone who's just trying to get established as a provider of such services, who might be willing to do the work in exchange for publicity which you'd have to drum up. Your project, and your department, would have to be seen as endorsing this person's services. That can all be rather tricky. If you're lucky, one of your recently-finishing students might be trying to build their business in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to learn the skills yourself, or get someone in your team to do so. Some data analysis packages do have the means to create animations from sequences of charts - Matlab has this, and I'd expect its peers such as Mathematica to be able to do that too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The sort of thing that's been done in a department closely related to the one I work in, is to hold a competition, with the prize being the funds you've got available. It can be open to anyone, or to staff and students, or just to students: that choice may not make a big difference - most of your submissions might come from students anyway. Be careful with the competition terms and conditions: pay close attention to the ownership of the intellectual property of submissions (to ensure you can use submissions without restriction); and with how the prize is described (because of potential tax implications). Your library staff may be able to help with the first of those two issues, and the finance team should be able to help with the second.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're after - the skill of creating high-quality data visualisations - is just the sort of skill that we look to encourage and develop in our students, so I'd have no qualms in running this as a competition for the students. The tricky question is around extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation: should they be doing it for money, or for the intrinsic reward of developing excellent data visualisation. You might want to discuss that with the tutor who takes lead responsibility for the students' academic development. It will depend, to an extent, on how close your subject matter is to their areas of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T11:57:45.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27648" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:12:16.613" Score="22" ViewCount="1564" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earning a PhD help you learn tools and techniques in your field, and lets you become an expert in a very specific field of science. However, once you get your degree and try to enter the labor market, you're competing against people who are younger than you (i.e. recently graduated non-phd engineers) and may have actual work experience (i.e. non-phd engineers with a few years in the market).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, some positions in which they cannot compete, including research and teaching position. Those are the minority, though... in most other fields it seems that holding a PhD is not as important as (for example) work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is work experience more important than having a PhD in the many work environments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What skills can I acquire/demonstrate during my PhD to become more &quot;valuable&quot; than a non-PhD candidate for the same job?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8539" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T12:27:37.873" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:14:59.950" Title="What skills can I get during a PhD to be competitive on the job market against non-PhD holders?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26220" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:21:01.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two major types of advisor approaches which I've encountered during my studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hands-off, abstract guidance only. Hint at which areas are interesting or currently active, but do not throw yourself into your student's work. Usually such advisors will gladly proofread the student's work for errors, but they rarely know what to do if a student gets seriously stuck. Advisor sessions may be spent discussing current trends, future work of either the advisor or the student or, in some cases, simply &quot;life advice&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Co-worker approach. The advisor treats his student as an equal and tries to immerse himself into the student's work (or vice versa). By having a lot of exposure to the advisor's routine (how he goes around solving problems, how much time he spends doing research, how he prepares for lectures, etc.), the teacher aims to guide the student by example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two approaches are often seen in combination (while the student may be treated as a coworker, he still is usually the one to do the typesetting, the programming, and other time-consuming tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer the second approach, which is likely because I am not that settled in the &quot;theoretical research&quot; routine. Some of my friends, who have known since their Master's studies what they want to do, are very enthusiastic about having a well known professor with the hands-off approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question about either approach fostering independence, I believe the hands-off approach leads to much larger independence as a researcher, but the coworker approach may lead to a much better work ethic (mirroring the professor), which is tremendously important in science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that students have a harder time successfully completing research (asking the right question, having the right insights, etc.) than being independent. Therefore I believe that student/advisor relationship does not need to promote &quot;independence&quot; in any substantial way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20891" LastEditorUserId="20891" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T13:19:15.743" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T13:19:15.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27592" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:43:03.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While your concern is perfectly valid (been there myself more than a few times), you should probably consider and accept that this is the way you are going to learn new things for most professional endeavors. This is how things work out of college; e.g. think about this: are you able to foresee what technologies and concepts are going to be required for your next project? And even if you could name them, could you set aside enough time for mastering them to be prepared for the next assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, you already have a sound plan, I would stick to it. I would, however, recommend that you not get too engaged in just familiarizing yourself with the new environment. Sure, take some time to get some grip on it, but once you are got the basics, I suggest proceeding with your plan. One major asset of your assignment is going to be your new acquired skills, but that mastery will come in small portions along the whole road of the project. I find it unlikely (for students and professionals alike) to be able to learn a new paradigm in a reasonable time, without some means to guide the effort, e.g. class projects, so, instead of trying to get to the bottom immediately, get the basics and learn the rest along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, as I said before, your plan is sound, just don't let the fear of the unknown overwhelm you into panic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T12:43:03.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27594" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:44:09.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this questions presupposes that you could do more research if you didn't have to write the proposals to get the money to fund your time. The reality of the situation is that there are more people that want to do research than can possibly be funded, so some system must be in place to decide. Competing for grants is the least bad system that we've been able to come up with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt;. I think the bigger concern, however, is how much time is spent on report writing and other post-award administrative activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T12:44:09.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:55:36.000" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its good that the student shared the problem,the best thing to do is to let the student know that the parent is not the only one with cancer and he shouldn't over think about it,its normal,it happens and most of all it can be controlled by a series of medical procedures,the student has to accept the fact because its not the end of everything after all,Just try to encourage him or her that the doctors are under control and the parent will be ok&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21078" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T12:55:36.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27594" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:59:04.433" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question is barking up the wrong tree, to mix metaphors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you proceed through the researcher lifecycle (Ph.D. student -&gt; postdoc -&gt; professor), your responsibilities will change. For instance, one popular criterion for paper authorship in psychology is that one should have contributed to two out of the following four aspects of research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grant acquisition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data acquisition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manuscript preparation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Ph.D. student, you will mainly work on 2-4. The postdoc will spend less time in the lab (point 2), more on 3-4... and he will also start working on grants (point 1). Finally, the professor will mainly focus on points 1 and 4, to a degree on 3. However, the bottom line is that all four activities are &quot;doing research&quot;, since grants are just the way money is allocated to competing research groups nowadays. (Of course, one could argue that it would be better if funding were just distributed equally among researchers, but that seems to be a different question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, in industry you could wonder how much time, money and energy is spent on marketing, pre-sales and sales activities and how all these resources could be much better spent on R&amp;amp;D, production and actually serving customers. But this would miss the point that without salespeople, there would not be any customers, nor money to spend on all the things the non-salespeople like to do. (And frequently, the conversion rate on business proposals is similar to the 1% you quote.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: don't see writing grants as a drain on productivity. Writing (and getting) grants is how you get the money to do everything else in science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T12:59:04.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T13:05:08.093" Score="2" ViewCount="1691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just finished my fourth year (out of 5) of biology studies in one of European universities. I have some experience in research and my grades are quite ok (in US scale it would be 3.75, which means I'm in 5% of the best students in my university). This year I'm starting my master thesis and I expect it to be rather successful - I have interesting topic and good supervisor, with whom I have good contact. This year I'm also starting new studies in electrical engineering and I would love to work in biomedical engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several PhD programmes I would like to join abroad (mainly US, UK and Germany). However, I have just got my grade for a research project from spring semester, which is really bad (C+). It is my only grade lower than B, but since it's in research (actually, it's my only grade in research), I'm afraid that it might be a big obstacle in admission process. I'm not a kind of person who blames everyone for my failures, but this time I cannot explain it in any other way than bad supervisor who didn't like me. I've learnt many methods during this project and I've done the worst job for the research group. I've also learn a lot about research in general by seeing my supervisor's mistakes. That is why I'm really happy about this experience, but it doesn't change my grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is there anything I can do to make this grade seem less important or to explain it to admission committee? I'm pretty sure that &quot;Supervisor didn't like me&quot; is not what they want to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21080" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T15:49:25.530" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T08:53:00.920" Title="How to mitigate bad grade in research on PhD application?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-03-12T09:36:39.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-25T13:36:42.137" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, there is no ethical problem with students preparing for a course in advance.  As Moriarty notes in their answer, what matters is that the student learns the material, not &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are (at least) two actual problems that your question touches upon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the occasional problem of advanced (or self-taught) students taking beginner-level courses for &quot;easy credits&quot;, and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the practical problem of teaching a course for students with a highly variable baseline experience level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be considered unethical behavior in some circumstances.  For example, let's say I'm a math major who decides to minor in biology, and the university happens to offer an &quot;introductory math for biologists&quot; course.  If I was unscrupulous enough, and nothing specifically forbade me from doing so, I might be able to take that course and basically just show up for the exam, getting free biology credits for stuff I learned in first-year math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In fact, I freely admit to having done something similar myself on occasion.  For example, one of the last courses I took as an undergrad, to make up the credits I needed to graduate, was a first-year &quot;computer literacy&quot; class that basically consisted of learning how to use a web browser, e-mail and a word processor.  As I had already completed a minor in computer science, as well as worked for several years as a full-time software developer, I hardly need to mention I did not find it much of a challenge.  Still, it got me the three extra credit points of &quot;general studies&quot; that I needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also be argued that there is no problem: if you consider the credits to be awarded for knowing the material, then I clearly deserve them.  On the other hand, if you consider the credits to be earned for &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; something, then I clearly do not (as I &lt;em&gt;already got&lt;/em&gt; credited for learning the same material once, back when I first learned it in math class).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, issues like this can occur any time an institute offers multiple introductory-level courses covering essentially the same material (but possibly from a different angle) and does not specifically forbid students from taking more than one of them.  When that happens, a student can effectively learn the material once, but get credited for it &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; times, where &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; is the number of such overlapping courses they can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual solution here is simply to try to find and close any such loopholes.  Some possible methods for doing that include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;explicitly designating certain courses as equivalent to each other, so that a student can only receive credits for one of them, and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;restricting certain very basic introductory courses, like the &quot;math for biologists&quot; example I gave above, only to students actually majoring in the target field (here, biology).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; students are going to commit such shenanigans anyway, it can be argued that they should be allowed to demonstrate their competence in a separate exam, so that they don't need to waste time and classroom space, and skew the grade distribution, by actually sitting in a class they don't need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second problem I mentioned above, i.e. teaching a class where some students already know much more of the material than others, there are several distinct approaches that people may argue, depending on their general teaching philosophies.  My personal suggestion, which &lt;em&gt;I'd consider&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;moderate&quot; position, is to take a &quot;triage&quot; approach and mentally divide your students into distinct groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;advanced&lt;/strong&gt; group consists of the students who already know much of the material, and just want to show their competence and get the official certificate for it.  Some may be hoping to learn some interesting new tidbits, but they'll still pass the course even if they learn nothing new at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; group consists of those students who actually more or less match the intended level of the course: they know the prerequisites reasonably well, and are reasonably capable learners, but don't yet know the material you'll be covering.  In many (but not all) courses, this group will make up the majority of the students, and they're the ones you should adjust your teaching pace for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;struggling&lt;/strong&gt; group consists of the students who lack some of the prerequisite knowledge the course assumes, or who are otherwise falling behind the rest of the class.  They'll likely need remedial teaching to have any hope of passing the course.  You should not have many students in this group; if you do, it may be sign that you're going too fast, and some of the students that &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be in the &quot;learning&quot; group are falling behind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a temptation to focus on the &quot;star&quot; students in the advanced group, since they're the best in class, have the most interesting questions (if any), and generally appear to offer the most reward for the least effort.  They're also the ones most likely to end up as future grad students in your field, which makes focusing on them even more tempting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the advanced students are, by definition, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the ones the course is actually intended for, and they're not the ones you're really there to teach.  Rather, your main goal with the advanced students (insofar as they come to class at all, rather than just taking the exam directly) is simply to &lt;strong&gt;ensure that they're not bored&lt;/strong&gt;.  There are several ways you can achieve this, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;giving the advanced students additional bonus exercises or projects that go beyond the standard syllabus, or letting them pursue their own side projects;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;encouraging the more advanced students to help the less advanced ones;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;encouraging students to come see you outside class if they'd like to learn more about something that sparked their interest; and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you still cannot engage some students in class, letting them skip it if they already know the material.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the struggling students, there is an argument to be made that you, ideally, shouldn't have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt;, and that even a single student falling behind is a sign that you should slow down until they can catch up.  Essentially, this approach amounts to lumping the &quot;learning&quot; and &quot;struggling&quot; groups together, adjusting your pace to the tail end of that combined group, and treating any students who progress faster as &quot;advanced&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; some merit to this approach, it can also be taken too far.  Especially in higher education, it is often simply not possible to set the pace by the slowest students in class, and still have enough time to cover all the material in the allotted time.  Instead, as an alternative to simply letting these students fail, it may be more effective to set the in-class pace by the majority of the class, and to focus specific remedial efforts (such as individual tutoring, possibly by some of the more advanced students) on those that need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, even this won't always help, and sometimes you may simply have to let a student fail.  In particular, it's important to learn to distinguish students who'd &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to learn, but have a hard time doing so, from those who are simply too lazy or disinterested to learn.  The former group can be helped; the latter cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T13:36:42.137" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27608" CreationDate="2014-08-25T13:48:02.477" Score="22" ViewCount="3715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my master thesis on wireless networking. I am working on the source code, which the writer of one of the articles provided to me.&#xA;Initially, I sent him an email and I asked him to send me his C++ source code . So he did. But the problem is, there was no documentation for his code and he is the only one that knows anything about this codebase. As a result, I totally depend on him. Last night I sent him an email and I asked him a question about his code and he replied to me very quickly, only three hours later. Probably, I will need his help again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before my last night's email and after spending one month working on his code, I saw  minor progress to my work. But after  yesterday's mail and his guidance, my work was significantly accelerated. I will probably need his help again maybe another two or three emails in a week. But I am afraid he will become angry with me for sending him a lot of emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should I do? Assume you are the source code programmer. Do you think he will become angry about my emails? Or he will be willing to help (since I will cite his article)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T07:20:10.577" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T17:29:12.673" Title="What is the etiquette for repeatedly emailing questions to an author whose work I'm building on?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-25T14:10:39.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of a university course is education on a particular topic. Students who study before the class are educating themselves on that topic. Students who don't study before the class are, hopefully, being educated by the teacher on that topic. Both of these things achieve the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, if you have even the slightest suspicion that it is unethical for your students to educate themselves, you are in the wrong place. There is no such thing as &quot;too educated&quot; in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T14:10:39.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27481" CreationDate="2014-08-25T14:42:37.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is rather difficult to answer without more information, and I believe one needs to have more details to actually judge things. I will do my best to address several of your concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that &quot;a faster implementation of an algorithm&quot; is not something very remarkable by itself. There are two possible interpretations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your algorithm does the same thing as the previous algorithm, but you have either changed the insides of the algorithm or performed a better analysis and you have got a better time bound on the algorithm. In this case, I believe it should be okay to publish in an undergraduate journal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The algorithm is still the same, but you have discovered a flaw in some implementation of the algorithm and corrected this flaw, so the running time actually corresponds to what the original time complexity bound promises. This is more literally &quot;a faster implementation of an algorithm&quot;, and by itself is not a large contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual methodology in Computer Science for measuring complexity of algorithms is either worst-case complexity, average-case complexity or amortized complexity. You seem to suggest that you have some novel kind of methodology. If that methodology is more useful for some practical problem which you set out to solve, I believe this might be definitely something to include in the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult for me to estimate the amount of novel work that you actually have, but you seem to suggest that it was a requirement to submit to an undergraduate journal. Therefore, it makes sense to me that you should write up your work regardless and try to submit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the end of the world if a grant fails, but you should try and fulfill the requirements regardless. If you do submit, it may happen that your work does not get accepted, but if you fail to submit, this becomes a certainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20891" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T14:42:37.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27604" CreationDate="2014-08-25T14:49:02.000" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although your intentions are probably good, you seem to take advantage of the creator of the source code. He is not your personal debugger nor he must be the one writing the code for your thesis (especially for free). He has written a paper and he has given you his source code. That is all the information you need to know. Read his paper (or his paper slides if they are publicly available) a hundred times, till you know every little detail of it and then look at his code (another hundred times) until you correlate everything between the paper and the code. Of course this will be slower than sending him a couple of emails but it is YOUR thesis not his. Only when you do all this and still there are unanswered questions, then collect all the possible questions you might have (including queries about his code and his paper) and then send it him ONE email, with all your questions. Anything more than that is exploiting his kindness. This kind of back and forth emails with questions is one of the many reasons why many people are unwilling to share their codebase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since he is probably a nice guy, you should consider that in the future you might collaborate with him or need his help. Being pushy or lazy (and delegating your work to him because you do not want spend 1-3 weeks refactoring or studying his code more carefully) is a sure way to burn bridges with him. And you really do not want to do that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if after giving you access to his source code he understands (by your email) that you did everything humanly possible to understand his code and paper and just want some extra help, he will be willing to assist because: a) you seem to appreciate his work b) you seem to understand his time constraints c) you are also a smart, hard working guy worth collaborating with. And this is the message you need to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T17:29:12.673" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T17:29:12.673" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27611" CreationDate="2014-08-25T14:58:20.733" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of late I noticed that recent books or long articles tend to make a short summary before every set of paragraphs. For example, we might have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We so and so ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, so and so ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is so and so:&lt;/strong&gt; Let us consider ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Properties of so and so:&lt;/strong&gt; We notice that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where every boldfaced phrases is followed by a set of paragraphs. For a real example: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://modular.math.washington.edu/edu/2011/581g/misc/Darmon-Diamond-Taylor-Fermats_Last_Theorem.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://modular.math.washington.edu/edu/2011/581g/misc/Darmon-Diamond-Taylor-Fermats_Last_Theorem.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is this style of writing really a trend? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is it still a good idea if we are writing an article of moderate length such as a statement of purpose or a short report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, such style seems much more intelligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="18107" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T15:05:45.990" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T15:18:56.820" Title="Making a short summary before a set of paragraphs?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27609" CreationDate="2014-08-25T15:13:59.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably not a trend, but if you like the style, your are free to mimic it. There are millions of scientific articles written every year. Tracking or finding trends in style in these articles is probably not worth it. It almost certainly varies among scientific communities and among what journals and conferences prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T15:13:59.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27609" CreationDate="2014-08-25T15:18:56.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, it's just LateX's &lt;code&gt;\paragraph{}&lt;/code&gt; command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the most widespread style, but I think it's clearer, too, and I suggest you to go on using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What problems could there be? I can only foresee issues with journal articles, if you encounter overzealous copy-editors. A good card to play is &quot;if your house style contains &lt;code&gt;\paragraph{}&lt;/code&gt;, I am using it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T15:18:56.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27604" CreationDate="2014-08-25T16:44:26.830" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just ask him? He knows how busy he is, how interesting your project is for him, and how &lt;em&gt;dumb&lt;/em&gt; (if any) your questions are. You can also offer to pay him back by writing a (partial) manual on his code, as you go on understanding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was to receive this kind of email I would see that you are acknowledging my effort and trying to be respectful with my time. And maybe this will be good for me, forcing me to rethink aspects of the code, and make a mental note of doing better documentation in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in that situation, I would greatly appreciate to be kept in the loop about your project. Even if I can't or won't help, I would like to see the the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick answer is usually a good sign, it means that he finds your questions interesting and not something you should have been able to figure out by yourself. In any case, if you want to make sure, you can ask someone that is roughly familiar with that code (probably your advisor), and see if the questions are indeed something you should have been able to figure out by yourself; and if you are not, they should teach you the techniques you are missing to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, I have been given messy code to work with three times, and the three of them I ended up grabbing the paper and reimplementing it myself in a couple of days (and in two of them, the result was way better). Maybe your case is too big, but you should consider it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="705" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T21:49:10.597" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T21:49:10.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27592" CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:17:56.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my (albeit limited) experience, depending on where you are in your career, you may want to search for a collaborator. When I was graduating, I had a project on the backburner that I didn't know how to tackle, so when I had a certain audience in job talks I'd try to send out dog-whistles about certain aspects of the research project to see if they could give me something back or be interested by the remarks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I got a brand-new collaborator (an expert on what I wanted to do) who really started to enjoy the project and is finding new things about the technique in which he's an expert. And the results ended up better than I ever could have hoped! Perhaps your PI may have friends that she/he trusts not to scoop you that you can confide the project in and then consequently have a new collaborator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning this new topic &quot;on the street&quot; as it may be would make this the most efficient way for you to learn and retain what you need for your research. This way you don't have to learn everything from the ground up which would take forever and your collaborator can tell help you figure out what you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12656" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T18:17:56.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27592" CreationDate="2014-08-25T21:47:05.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning a new programming language is probably the most straightforward part of this. Unless it's a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; obscure language, there will be tutorials online and books to help you. If you already know one or two programming languages, learning a new one will usually not be difficult, and you can probably estimate for yourself how long it will take. However, if you're coming from a procedural programming background like C/C++, Java, Perl, PHP, VB, or most of the &quot;familiar&quot; languages, it will take more time to learn a functional programming language like Haskell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your learning is very focused. Don't try to learn the entire language (unless you want to), just learn enough to accomplish what you need to. I usually read a chapter or two of the book, then try to code up a bit of the functionality I need. When I get stuck, I read a bit more. Lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning about the simulation environment may be easy or hard, depending on how well documented it is. If there isn't much documentation, but you can get a sample bit of code or configuration, then you can try making tiny changes to see what effect they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for learning about mobile/wireless communication, have you considered talking to a company in this field? Large telecomms companies usually have some connection to academia. If what you're doing has business potential for them, they may fund your research, lend you equipment, or at least offer some mentoring. Or if your project isn't relevant to traditional cellular networks, maybe think about what sort of business might benefit from this technology, and then ask them for some support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T21:47:05.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T22:19:54.587" Score="13" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the question is the title: Why do some Universities give honorary degrees? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. the President of Indonesia, Sukarno, got 26 honorary doctorates, and Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has been awarded around a dozen honorary degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the benefit for the Universities? Donations? Political leverage? Genuine attempt to give to somebody the recognition he deserves? If last option, why calling it a degree instead of using a more general term like award/medal/etc, like some other Universities do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T00:20:55.353" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T14:24:06.127" Title="Why do some Universities give honorary degrees?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;awards&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28383" CreationDate="2014-08-25T23:38:48.670" Score="1" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;In May, I will graduate with a Master's Degree in Mathematics from a school ranked #201 in the U.S (for undergraduate education). It is unranked in graduate school rankings (for my program). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am excelling in my current program with research focus in mathematical biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My goal:&lt;/strong&gt; I would like to get my Ph.D. from a top-5 institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I don't succeed in my goal directly, is it advisable or even possible to pursue a second Master's degree in mathematical Biology, from a second-tier institution, and then apply for a Ph.D. at a top-tier institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8905" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T16:25:50.297" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:36:55.333" Title="Is it advisable (or even possible) to get a second masters in a similar field from a higher-ranked instution?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2014-08-26T00:25:18.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a bit of an inaccurate presumption in the question itself, or anyway ambiguous wording. That is, some assumption of causality...?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a mathematician, I do not think of PhD students individually or collectively as assisting my research program so much as doing teaching work that I don't have to do. Even my own PhD students, while stimulating to talk to, do not &quot;help&quot; my research program. Perhaps this is contrary to mythology. Although more-experienced TAs (teaching assistants, in the U.S.) are generally better at their job due to that experience, that level of proficiency is attained within a year or two of beginning the role. That is, in my sort of situation, there is absolutely no motivation for faculty to delay completion of PhDs. Indeed, as @roboKaren comments, there is some pressure from higher-ups to improve &quot;stats&quot;. (That is, in terms of TAs, we cycle them through at a certain rate, so there're always roughly the same number to do the TA work. Shortening or lengthening the cycle time would accomplish nothing, and we have no motivation to do so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the supposed issue about people leaving the program? This is a very complicated question, considering that it might be entirely reasonable to leave a program if/when one discovers it's not what one thought. Should we brow-beat people to stay? Bribe them? True, being nasty to try to &quot;drive out weaklings&quot; is incivil, but I don't address that possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is about the &quot;drop out rate&quot;, then it is probably impossible to answer usefully. If it is about time-to-completion, some useful things can be said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This simplifies the question to two very different ones: about my interest in &lt;em&gt;colleagues'&lt;/em&gt; students finishing faster/slower, and about my interest in &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; students finishing faster/slower. Apart from general humanitarian/professional-ethical concerns, I have no interest in the arc of other peoples' students, as it is really not my business. It is true that my perception (based substantially on two stints as Director of Grad Studies in Math) is that some PhD students and their advisors devolve into an unproductive, uncommunicative relationship, with &quot;blame&quot; not clearly assignable, but which creates enormous difficulties in completion. E.g., if either party is naturally non-verbal (despite the seeming ok-ness of this in math, ... which is not the case, actually), there is a potentially fatal problem. If there is a misunderstanding (from either side) about the context, origins, degree, and sense of the alleged &quot;novelty/progress&quot; of a thesis, this can be a huge obstacle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own students, I try to arrange a thesis project that will optimally &#xA;use the talent, energy, background, etc., in the time fully-funded by the department as TA (not counting on RAs (research assistantships), fellowships, etc). My thinking is that one's clock really, really starts once one is &quot;out the door&quot;, so taking a sixth year instead of just five may be well worth it. But if/when someone says they want to finish more quickly, a suitable project can be chosen, up to a point: usually, there is a misunderstanding, a misguided prior belief that, indeed, somehow, faculty or departments are conniving to delay degree completion. :) &quot;If only they'd get out of my way so I could do my research...!?!&quot; ... overlooking the point that all the &quot;required&quot; stuff is meant to assist that (nevermind the common stylizations and distortions and misunderstandings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: incentive for &lt;em&gt;quicker&lt;/em&gt; completion than the funded period? None, on scientific and educational grounds. On bureaucratic grounds, there's an ever-hardening soft cap on funding, which is a good reason to get people out the door... even though this soft funding cap is meant in practice primarily to avoid funding &quot;eternal grad students&quot; who make a bit of progress but either can't finish a PhD-worthy project or who are unhire-able for some reason (e.g., inability to speak in English, in the U.S.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while my experience as Dir Grad Studies in Math made me unhappily aware of others' foibles, I don't think there's much motivation in mathematics for faculty to &lt;em&gt;delay&lt;/em&gt; PhD graduations, and only a little to accelerate it. But faculty aren't the obstacle, in most cases. It's just that the U.S. undergrad system under-prepares people for grad school, so there're two or so years of basic coursework necessary to be even marginally literate, and then becoming aware of the basics of any fragment of modern mathematics can (obviously... though people in CompSci seem to have a radically different epistemological mythology) take a year or two. Unsurprisingly, quite a few people discover that &quot;math&quot; is not what they thought it was, given that U.S. coursework typically is at best very-early 20th century stuff, giving no inkling of mid-to-late 20th century stuff, apart from the not-really-contemporary-research, somewhat delusional (inevitably fairly contrived) &quot;REU&quot; (research experiences for undergrads) episodes. Given the popularity of REUs in the U.S., I'll not comment further on the alleged virtues-or-not... apart from agreeing that, yes, it is good to spend some time hanging out with other same-age kids who really like math, and not being in the usual stodgy classroom situation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if &quot;completion rate&quot; means completions-per-admission... well, that's a can-of-worms, all the more for programs (such as ours) which try to be imaginative in visualizing the success of some students who do not necessarily have the traditional trappings of &quot;success&quot;, but seem to have sufficient interest and talent. Gambles! If we'd be taken to task for not gambling on sure things... ?!? And a similar analysis applies to length of time to completion: pressuring people or limiting them to finish more quickly could induce more &quot;failures&quot;, rather than &quot;coerce&quot; faster success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I feel that the question itself is predicated on a misunderstanding of why it is not so easy to get a PhD... but maybe I'm just old-and-tired. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="980" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T00:31:37.163" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T00:31:37.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27420" CreationDate="2014-08-26T01:02:58.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've taught Biology discussion sections, and trained graduate students to teach. I'm a biology education researcher, so I am familiar with studies that measure student learning in different environments. I'd summarize good teaching as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find the student misconceptions.&#xA;If you are good at your subject, you likely have not struggled to learn it. Your biggest mystery is what do students not understand. Unfortunately, students don't have the meta-awareness to tell you, so you'll need to figure the misconceptions out together, at least for the first run-through of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show students their misconceptions.&#xA;Because students don't know what they don't know, they often feel like they understand material that they actually do not. When you show them they don't understand, they are more eager to fix the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give students an opportunity to learn.&#xA;Your class activities will indeed include a lot of group work, because discussing a problem, asking questions and answering them keeps everyone improving right at the sticky points. The big secret to group work so that everyone stays busy? Groups must be only 2 or 3 students. And you'll be walking around and asking the quiet students what they have figured out, so there is no slacking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of how to make this work. It's copied from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26219/what-to-do-in-recitation/26243#26243&quot;&gt;an earlier answer of mine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look over the problem set the night before, and determine the easy ones from the hard ones. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When students arrive, tell them to start work on a difficult problem. Plan on giving them 5-10 minutes -- whatever they need until many of them slow down. Walk around as they work and just see how they choose to work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After several are stuck, have them get into groups of three and compare their techniques and what they found difficult. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note: students hate group work because it is more painful than just listening. Most classes will try not getting into groups, or not really talking, just to see if they can get out of it. A cheerful forcefulness works well on American students)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Walk around again and ask questions like, &quot;Tell me how far you are. Can you show me a part that is difficult? Can you get out your lecture notes and find the section relevant to this problem?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually at this point you will see a sticky point that more than one student is wrestling with. Now is a great time to pull everyone's attention back to the front of the room and you can work through that problem (or one similar) and answer questions for 5-10 minutes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have students return to the problem and complete it. Then they can do a similar problem on their own to reinforce.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move on to the next topic and assign a new, difficult problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this process shows both you and the students what they don't understand, and provides space and motivation to fix the problem. Because you're visiting the groups, they must produce.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things I wouldn't recommend for a recitation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making course notes or a study guide. Students should be making their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More lecturing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questionnaires are fine, but again, students don't know what they don't know&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've actually posted an example of discussion work for biology here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/33801546&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vimeo.com/33801546&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13729" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T01:02:58.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-26T01:03:07.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question can be greatly simplified:&#xA;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Should credits be awarded for effort or for knowledge?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;The person who knows their stuff without having it picked up in class was obviously smart enough to pick up the stuff they needed to know on their own or before hand. Call that preparation, genius or whatever, if he or she knows their stuff, they deserve the credit, no matter how long, short, hard or easy they had to work to learn it.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Should you give credit to someone who does not know what their doing, just because they put a lot of effort and time into it? I hope not! I do not want to be operated on by a doctor that put many years of hard work into NOT KNOWING their stuff, I rather get an operation from a self taught autistic savant that spend 3 Month reading and watching videos, acing all tests, never sitting in a single class!&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Sure I admire people that put a lot of effort into learning something, because they can put that much effort into something, but when a job needs to be done, the only thing that counts is, who can do the job!&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;It's a shame that so many Universities require students to take nonsensical courses, which they have to pay a lot of money for, rather than giving them the option to just take the test. And why do Universities that allow you to just take the test want like 50% of the tuition from students that only come in once for the test. Quite an obscene payment for the time to take the test and correct it...&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, credit for effort is GREAT, ... in Kindergarten!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21093" LastEditorUserId="21093" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T01:15:51.770" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T01:15:51.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-26T01:35:29.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some parts of the implicit hypotheses of the question are misguided. First, courses are about the students, not about the teachers. The teachers may &lt;em&gt;give&lt;/em&gt; the students something, but if the students already &quot;have too much&quot;, this is the &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; of a &quot;problem&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a minor sociological problem to have highly motivated students in a room with unmotivated students. :) Hmmm. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a &quot;problem&quot; to have genuinely gifted students in a room with ... uh, maybe anyone who'll &quot;feel bad&quot; if they can't &quot;compete&quot;? But, wait, why is it a competition. Oh, yes, &quot;grades&quot;. Hm. Rewind. Don't punish kids who're talented and who've taken initiative, and don't punish kids who're just &quot;doing the class&quot;, either. Classes should not be a test of giftedness, (or else it's a rip-off), nor should they punish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that we can arrange to have student populations be homogeneous is ridiculous... btw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, the outcomes of inhomogeneity are inevitable. If the gifted kids, or kids who've read lotta books before, already know all the usual pranks, it's fine. Don't make up extra-perverse pranks to try to bring them down, and don't assign them extra classroom chores as &lt;em&gt;punishment&lt;/em&gt; for doing well. That is, don't add perversities to the accidents of nature and society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, I did often sign up for courses that I already felt I'd read about sufficiently to not feel at a disadvantage. Seemed reasonable to me. Not to mention that a sincere person might not feel constrained (as other answerers have mentioned) to wait to take a class to read the dang book. Srsly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should unambitious students feel intimidated by the few students who've already read all the stuff, know much more? Uh... yes. Not that they should fear that their deficit from that level will be fatal, but, yes, that that level of function is possible and reasonable and &lt;em&gt;desirable&lt;/em&gt;. Any program that makes precocity penalizable is criminally perverse: knowing more is good; knowing less is less good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One operational problem is that such stuff is not easily &quot;formalizable&quot; and &quot;institutionalizable&quot;, but that should not be allowed to be an obstacle. It's possible to teach &quot;typical&quot; kids, and not torment them, without hassling exceptional kids. Obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T01:35:29.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27655" CreationDate="2014-08-26T03:21:10.130" Score="6" ViewCount="6758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a paper on Mobile Screens in HCI, as phones are getting uncomfortably big for users, I want to provide some solution to the big screen phones or how logically state that how small screen phones are suitable for the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to question, for the above-mentioned reason, I was going to make a survey of big phone screen users, and I was going to mention it in my paper, is it okay to mention brand names of phones and their specific products with images?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21094" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T21:17:38.077" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:17:38.077" Title="Can I mention brand names and their products in my research/technical paper?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27630" CreationDate="2014-08-26T04:32:34.730" Score="11" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to conduct a workshop on my research work and for that I need to show how it is done on the software. I want to know,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it ok to display the proprietary software (through TeamViewer) from my university?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or Should I use screenshots?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19474" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T20:08:10.390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T20:08:10.390" Title="Using proprietary software to demonstrate work in conference" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-26T05:08:08.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whats the difference of the student (say, X) who studied long before taking the course and the student (say, Y) who failed the course the first time and have to retake it in the next year?&#xA;Seems to me that X is a better student than Y, because Y once failed the course. But in term of preparation before taking the course, both have them. And if any of them obtained an A grade in ethical way, that is, by doing their homework, and doing the tests correctly, I find there is no problem at all. We shouldn't discriminate either X,Y, or normal student in obtaining their credits/grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether credits should be awarded to effort or to knowledge, it is at the discretion of the professor/class, the professor might give grades partially on effort (homework, essay, or project) and partially on knowledge (test results). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21097" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T05:08:08.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27628" CreationDate="2014-08-26T05:11:34.463" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking it is totally fine to use or demonstrate publicly (at a conference or elsewhere) some proprietary software. Many presenters use Microsoft Windows along with Microsoft PowerPoint, and nobody ever gets into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you want to be 100% sure you need to peruse the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement&quot;&gt;end-user license agreement (EULA)&lt;/a&gt;, which is the contract that stipulates under which conditions the program might be used: this is the ultimate reference. For example, the EULA can prohibit researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in a benchmark. (Oracle is notorious for that, they sued David DeWitt following some benchmarks he had published that mentioned Oracle, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt&quot;&gt;the DeWitt Clause&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the EULA, one exception I can think of is if you have signed some confidentiality contract, which can happen when the software hasn't been released yet and the developers give you access to some pre-release version of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another exception is that if by &quot;show how it is done on the software&quot; you mean reverse engineer the software, then you might want to be careful: reverse engineering is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/&quot;&gt;borderline&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Reverse_engineering&quot;&gt;E.g.&lt;/a&gt; in the United States, EULA provisions can preempt the reverse engineering rights implied by fair use, c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Baystate_Technologies&quot;&gt;Bowers v. Baystate Technologies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last exception I can think of is video games: they can be seen as art, both for the graphic and the music. Just like you can't show a movie or broadcast music publicly in the general case (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitch.tv/&quot;&gt;Twitch&lt;/a&gt; mutes some screencasts), video game publishers might use some similar arguments in court. That's very theoretical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, if you're having some doubts, you might want to drop by the legal office in your University, because as any law 101 course says, the answer is always &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T19:07:39.370" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T19:07:39.370" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27627" CreationDate="2014-08-26T05:22:32.793" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about hardware, but in case you feel like mentioning some software (and hardware often comes with software...), beware that the EULA can prohibit researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oracle is notorious for that, they sued David DeWitt following some benchmarks he had published that mentioned Oracle, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt&quot;&gt;the DeWitt Clause&lt;/a&gt;. Luckily the University of Wisconsin supported him, but Oracle banned all Wisconsin alumni for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T06:01:45.893" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T06:01:45.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27634" CreationDate="2014-08-26T06:56:03.937" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been offered an engineering position from a reputed multinational corporation working broadly in Communications and Microprocessors. Meanwhile I am applying for a MS/PhD position in a different specialization but can still be broadly classified as Electrical Engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to mention a Placement Offer in a curriculum vitae? If so, will it be relevant in the above case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T08:15:53.043" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T08:19:37.777" Title="Mentioning placement offer in a curriculum vitae?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27632" CreationDate="2014-08-26T08:19:37.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working at the company &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; you are applying to schools, then it should definitely be mentioned. However, if you are choosing between the placement offer and graduate school (in other words, accepting the offer &lt;em&gt;instead of&lt;/em&gt; graduate school), then I would leave it out. This is because this may give the appearance that you're not really serious about applying to graduate schools, which may lessen your odds of getting an interview or an offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel it's absolutely essential to mention it, you should do so in your cover letter; however, for the most part, I would do so only if it became important for you to do so (because there's a deadline for accepting the offer, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T08:19:37.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27627" CreationDate="2014-08-26T08:26:44.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although in some fields, this may be a problem, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27631/15723&quot;&gt;Franck Dernoncourt has explained&lt;/a&gt;, in other fields, it is not only a good idea, but &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt;. For instance, in the laboratory sciences, you would normally list the vendors and suppliers who provided the &quot;raw materials&quot; being used, as well as, in many cases, the experimental apparatuses used to study them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T11:32:56.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:06:35.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to include &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of the proposed titles in your presentation.  They all come across as stilted and affected, and are entirely unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, if this is a public presentation, treat it as you would any other such presentation: indicate the title of your talk as you normally would have it, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the &quot;private&quot; presentation to the faculty, then you should give it a title representing your current and future research interests. You don't need to say &quot;what&quot; the presentation is for—again, the location of the talk should be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:06:35.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27643" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:25:41.950" Score="65" ViewCount="23049" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say for example you are a new PhD student and realize that you hate doing research in your free time but you are more than willing to spend several hours in the morning to do research. Was your decision to become a PhD student right for you or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking because people are suggesting that &quot;you have to be really passionate and curious about everything all the time&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what if you want to be curious during your work and just relax and have fun doing unrelated things when you have some free time in your hands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this indicates that you aren't really passionate, but what's the threshold for &quot;being passionate enough for a PhD&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These thoughts have really made me somewhat confused over my decision of going for a PhD. It's been a few weeks that I'm into this program and after reading a lot of stuff online addressing the question whether the PhD is right for you or not, I'm already starting to question my decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20979" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T18:05:10.867" Title="Is a PhD right for you if you hate doing research in your free time but love doing it as a job?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:31:25.280" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having to be passionate and curious about everything all the time is a great recipe—for exhaustion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be curious and interested in the research that you want to do, and be motivated enough to keep going even (or perhaps &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt;) on days when things just don't work the way you want to. More importantly, it should be interesting enough to you that you're willing to put up with the failure that is a necessary component of successful research. But it's not necessary, or even practical or desirable, to spend every waking hour thinking about or doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:31:25.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:43:57.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are limited to &quot;several hours of research in the morning&quot; this is going to make completing a PhD in a reasonable amount of time difficult. While part time students can and do finish PhDs, it is a long and difficult road. If your interest in the research wanes over time such that several hours becomes a few hours, it is going to become an even longer and more difficult road which may cause a downwards spiral. While many students fail to carve out personal time, completing a PhD does not require you to not relax and have fun. One can be passionate about research and still take a break and relax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:43:57.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T10:00:24.660" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is that I was so exhausted from learning new things at the beginning of my PhD, that I couldn't take more in at some point in the day. I would read light literature, watch silly sitcoms, go out, do things completely unrelated to work. And I also worried because I saw that my supervisor and other 'real' scientists seem immersed in their topic more of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the end of my PhD my fingers keep itching to write down ideas or look at data when I'm doing other stuff. It simply gets easier because there is less novelty to the work you're up against, and because you become more competent within your field. Once you feel that the knowledge you have can contribute to the field, it's a whole other ballgame. But that takes time, and it's really nothing to worry about when you're just beginning. Taking time off to do other things is still incredibly important of course - not only psychologically but also for work productivity - but the spontaneous, out of the blue research-related insights tend to increase in frequency over time. I don't think the number of hours you like to spend doing research right now can tell you all that much about what's to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T10:00:24.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T10:04:22.197" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers already explain that no, you shouldn't be doing research all the time, with no time for breaks, relaxation and other interests. All this is quite correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am a bit unsure whether the stark dichotomy &quot;all research all the time&quot; versus &quot;a few hours in the morning&quot; is really helpful here. Maybe an answer to the following question is more helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is doing a Ph.D. right for you if you plan on doing it as a 9-5 job, 40 hours per week?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there, I would be a bit more careful. Yes, there are people who can do a Ph.D. like a &quot;normal job&quot;, at their desk at 9am sharp and dropping their pencils at 5pm. It is &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;. However, my personal impression is that these people will avoid the typical Ph.D. burnout, but they will likely not be top performers. So my answer to the modified question above is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably do fine with a 40 hour workweek, if you make sure to stay self-motivated. However, you should think deeply about just &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want to do a Ph.D... because unless you are uncommonly brilliant, you will likely not be productive enough to stay in academia and compete with people who routinely put in 50-60 hours per week. You may want to think about leaving academe with the Ph.D. and going into industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not saying &quot;40 hour Ph.D. students&quot; are lazy. However, if you can't work up the level of passion and commitment to your topic that makes you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to put in 50-60 hours per week often, then there will likely be someone else, and that someone else will have more publications five or ten years down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T10:04:22.197" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T11:16:39.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're only a few weeks into your PhD programme I suspect you have a somewhat limited understanding of what research is and how varied it can be. I'll give you my perspective, as a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a lot depends on how excited you are about your topic. When I did my MSc, I was fortunate in being able to propose any topic I liked within a broad range of areas. So I ended up doing research developing some of my own ideas, with a lot of freedom to follow my own path. I got good results, and now I'm working on my PhD. I love it. I'm not sure how passionate I'd be about doing research based on or forking off of someone else's idea. But since it's my own &quot;baby&quot;, I'm very passionate about it, and would do it for fun even if there wasn't a PhD at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let me put this into perspective by pointing out that I'm not equally passionate about all parts of research. I actually enjoy writing, so I don't mind writing papers, but I wouldn't say I'm passionate about it. Sometimes I find paper writing tedious. I love thinking about my research, doing it, and talking about it. I do not love writing proposals; it gets easier over time, but it's not something I would do for fun. As for reading the literature, it depends on how well-written it is and how relevant it is to me. I don't mind it, and I recognise the value of it, but I'm not passionate about it. When I get home at the end of the day, I'm not tempted to read papers or write proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the first six months of my MSc to be a struggle, and I suspect most people do. I read papers, but found it very difficult to concentrate on what I was reading because the language was so stiff and formal. I spent too much time reading things that weren't that useful. I made false starts. Research is a skill that takes time to develop, and although others can help you, ultimately it's something you have to teach yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're in the PhD programme now, so unless you're truly miserable, I suggest not to worry if it's right for you until you're further along, and have a broader picture of what research really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T11:16:39.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:01:00.980" Score="22" ViewCount="7279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Organizing a conference is very &lt;strong&gt;difficult&lt;/strong&gt; for a scientist, you have to have the right collaborators, to find the right venue, to spread the word, to advertise it, to send the call for papers, to receive the papers, to check them, to organize the lunchs and dinners, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All these tasks are very time-consuming&lt;/strong&gt;, and stressful, and they will steal precious time to your scientific research activity, and also to your family/friends time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why do people decide to organize conferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the main benefits and advantages of running this complex and time-consuming activity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T00:52:39.960" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T20:14:54.737" Title="What are the benefits of organizing a conference?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27596" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:29:14.580" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is too broad, but I have a feeling it's a commonly asked one, so I'm going to try to answer it anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address (what used to be) your second question first: holding a PhD does not make a job candidate any more desirable for the vast majority of positions. Indeed, it can be a factor against the candidate, as they will be perceived as more expensive. For positions where a less-qualified candidate could also fill the role, being overqualified is rarely a good thing. Jobs that are specifically looking for a PhD will typically state that in the requirements. For example, &quot;Masters required, PhD preferred&quot; is a common one in certain parts of the banking sector. However, for entry-level positions (data entry, lower-level analyst roles, etc), you may be at a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your first question, though, you're being overly harsh on yourself. The process of earning a PhD is &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; work experience; indeed, that's your main selling point when looking for your first job. Depending on what you did, you will have some or all of the following experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying, clearly stating, and figuring out how to address a problem - this alone qualifies you to be a consultant at any large firm; this is all they do, all the time, for different clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advanced technical writing - your thesis, academic publications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication skills - working through the peer-review process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public speaking - presenting at conferences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experimental design - your research project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The art of researching - the simple knowledge of how to properly find articles, sources, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better, you've been doing all that for four years. You should be selling every single one of those points as hard as you can when you move to industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The above answer stands for the edited second question as well; as a graduate student, you will want to learn all of the above if you wish to enter the workforce. More specifically, though, almost industry positions seeking PhD candidates will apply to value the following three above most else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-starter&lt;/strong&gt; - shown in that you got your work done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collaborative&lt;/strong&gt; - demonstrated through &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; collaborations with other researchers (successful = researched together, published together)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good communication&lt;/strong&gt; - demonstrated through publications, public speaking, conference presentations, teaching, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the PhD, aim to do those things, and during your job search, emphasize all those traits in your resume and during interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T12:50:53.027" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T12:50:53.027" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:43:21.683" Score="15" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently trying to submit a comprehensive survey article I have been working on for a while as a journal paper. Some of the journals we're considering (I'm in Computer Science) require, for survey articles, submitting a 2-5 page &lt;em&gt;white paper&lt;/em&gt; to the Editor-in-Chief, in order to evaluate the relevance of the proposed survey (upon which the EiC would either discourage or encourage the submission of a full survey):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors interested in submitting overview articles are required to consult first with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of their Transactions of choice before submitting a white paper proposal. White papers are limited to 2-pages and should motivate the topic, justify the proposal, and include a list of relevant bibliography including any available tutorial or overview articles related to the subject matter. (...) The EiC solicits input from the Editorial Board on whether to encourage submission of a full paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(specific requirements example taken from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/overview-articles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/overview-articles/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11961/4249&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1597/4249&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10259/4249&quot;&gt;on the topic&lt;/a&gt; if white papers, but it looks to me like all of those are either concerning short standalone papers, or white papers for grants, which differs a bit from my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to summarize, this white paper (2-5 pages, depending on the journal) is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ment to ever be published, but rather to help the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board in deciding on the relevance of the proposed survey. So, for me as the author, the goal of this white paper is to motivate the EiC to invite me to submit the full survey manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is &lt;em&gt;how to structure and what information to include in a white paper, meant as a proposal for publishing a longer survey paper&lt;/em&gt;. Some specific questions I'm thinking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I divide it into sections, similar to a regular (short) paper (introduction, discussion, etc.) or should it have some different, (specific or not) structure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reqirements mention including a &lt;em&gt;&quot;list of relevant bibliography&quot;&lt;/em&gt;: as this is meant to be for an survey article, my complete list of bibliography is much larger that 2 pages. Do I just mention &quot;related work&quot; and omit the references used as sources for the survey from this white paper, or something similar to that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I repeat some parts of the survey, or just include the motivation and explanation of the survey topic in this white paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T22:09:49.637" Title="White paper justifying the publication of a survey paper" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-26T13:10:30.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say the main benefits are prestige and honor. To be able to organize a serious conference, you got to, as you pointed out, have a non-trivial amount of connections and be a respectable and accomplished member of the scientific community. At that point in ones life, some people may decide to use their status to promote their scientific community. In my experience, conferences are connected with the institution the leading scientist is from. So that also may be a significant amount of finances the institution will receive from organizing a conference on a regular basis. So, by contributing so much to the institution, the scientist will certainly hold a more favorable position among his colleagues and the institution itself. Besides, there might as well be a financial compensation for the scientist's efforts, which I (perhaps naively) think is a rare occurrence, since I know of only one such practice. Finally, many conferences are inclined to naming an award in honor of their founder, usually posthumously. Therefore, when/if the prestige of the conference rises, so does the importance of the award, and that is generally a nice way to be remembered and honored once you pass away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a way, you organize a conference, because you can/want do demonstrate your ability to do so, i.e. proving the influential collaborators and accomplishments you acquired during your career. As awards you expect to be remembered and honored and to get satisfaction by the fact that you contributed significantly to your community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T13:10:30.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T13:50:50.327" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will also give my perspective as someone who is almost 3 years into a PhD in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am one of the unusual students in my department who treats my PhD time like a full time job. I come in at the same time every day (9:30 approx.) and leave between 5pm and 6pm every day. I very rarely do any work at home, because I need the time to spend doing other things. My partner works full time, so we have a routine during the week and like to spend time together in the evenings and on weekends. The only times I actively work at home are when I have deadlines coming up (i.e. progress report due, presentation to finish). That said, I quite often discuss my work with my partner, which can help me think. My supervisor is very strict, so I certainly wouldn't get away with being away from my office without permission from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first few months of a PhD isn't really indicative of what the rest of the time will be like. You will likely spend most of your time initially reading up on your research topic, which can be incredibly dull! Annoyingly, much of the scientific literature is written in a way that makes it hard to read, so when you are spending most of your day reading, you will find it difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have settled into your PhD, you will spend most of your time doing other things. It does depend on your research area. I am in the climate field, so much of my time is spent doing data manipulation and analysis on large datasets. During my first 6 months, I was doing a lot of data collection and quality control. I was also learning a lot of programming skills that I required to be able to work with these datasets. I also took some time to go to skills courses offered to PhD students at my university. One course that was very useful in my first year was about literature searches - how to do effective searches and also how to record the information learnt while reading. I can go back to a paper I read 2 years ago, and not have to re-read it because of the notes I made every time I read a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different universities provide different experiences, so you may get the opportunity to do some teaching (unfortunately I don't have that option). Attending a conference in your first year is a great experience, and something to work towards. I presented a poster of my research at my first conference, which was also a new skill learnt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am trying to say is that you don't have to spend hundreds of hours per week working on your research to be a successful PhD researcher. On the other hand, you will need to do more than a couple of hours per day to be able to get your PhD in a reasonable amount of time. I am on course to finish mine in 3.5 years.&#xA;Don't let your experience in the first few months put you off, as it will get better. If you still aren't enjoying it after 6 months to a year, then maybe reassess your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12089" LastEditorUserId="12089" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T21:08:36.153" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:08:36.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-26T13:56:53.127" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If everyone refused to organize conferences, we would have no conferences.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's that obvious.  The same goes for editing journals, refereeing papers, and most other &lt;em&gt;service&lt;/em&gt; activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main result of a research conference is that it helps attendees do better research, to find and understand new ideas, and to disseminate their own research, etc.  By organizing the conference, you are the facilitator of all that.  Furthermore, you get to influence the direction of the conference -- what it will focus on, who the invited speakers will be, how it will be run, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I would argue that academics are paid to organize conferences in the same way that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7571/81&quot;&gt;we are paid to referee papers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are fringe benefits to you personally, including the prestige mentioned by @user3209815 -- you can list it on your CV under service activities.  Frankly, this is not going to make or break your career, and you probably shouldn't be doing it early in your career, since (as you point out) it takes time away from things that may be more essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T13:56:53.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:07:37.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It fills an acute need&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organizing a conference takes significant effort, but it also usually fills a need within a community.  New conferences generally arise when some subfield or a geographic community within a field has a critical mass of research that they want to exchange, but that is poorly served by the existing options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If ten years ago the FooBar conference occasionally got papers like &quot;FooBaz is a nice new thing&quot; but now there are many FooBaz papers that get rejected with reason &quot;The paper is okay but outside the scope of FooBar&quot; then everyone in the FooBaz community would benefit from a specialized conference on FooBaz - and if it is a success, then it often gets repeated and turns into a [semi]yearly tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make progress in an emerging field, you are motivated to invest personal effort in making the field a success, to advertise your research and the related research that's growing out of it. If it's an estabilished field, then often you form some organization that unites the relevant scientists and is able to get funding and administrative resources for the explicit purpose of advancing that field - which involves organizing conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It's a shared effort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually never seen &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; scientist organizing a conference. Usually it would get managed by some university, institute or other organization (though through active initiative of their scientists) - it would piggyback on their existing administrative capacity. Similarly, organizing the papers and organizing the event is usually split among separate people so that the workload is manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've seen many conferences that get 'rotated' among the community. If a conference makes sense, then multiple research centres are interested, otherwise you can just make a local seminar. If organizing a conference requires your [institution] involvement only, say, every 6 years, then it's not so tedious to make it intractable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T14:07:37.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:16:54.367" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arranging conferences is very hard work. You need to be prepared to organize a meeting place, be a &quot;travel agent&quot; for visitors seeking information on how to get there etc. and then make sure things runs smoothly during the meeting. Of course more individuals will be involved in arranging a meeting, how many depends on the size. So unless you are a despot and can order people to work for you, I would say that arranging a meeting is not for prestige and honour without being well-deserved through sweat and tears (I am assuming you want the guests to enjoy a productive and comfortable meeting atmosphere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arranging a meetings, from small workshops for tens of people to conferences for hundreds can be really rewarding. If you arrange for thousands you need to run things through a professional organizer, such as a conference centre. Even that can be rewarding but no less a lot of work. To be able to cope with the work load, which will likely start half a year to years before the meeting (depends on the size and format of the meeting), you need to have a good idea of what goals your meeting will have. For smaller meetings where all visitors are assembled for the entire meeting, you probably have a personal interest in the topics to be covered. In a larger meeting with many separate sessions, you and others in the organizing committee probably have invested interests in several different ones. In the end, successful meetings come from a deep interest from the organizers in having the meeting and its themes covered. At least in my field, I have never encountered anyone doing a conference just for glory and filling a CV. The benefits will definitely be there after a successful meeting but then, you have really deserved them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my experience, organising meetings is really rewarding, it is hard work, but pays of scientifically and socially if the organisation is done well and visitors return with a sense of value from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T14:16:54.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27627" CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:42:46.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For cases of the type you mention I would probably recommend not naming the brands. The reason for this is that the manufacturer is unlikely to be happy if you say that their equipment is not very good (and they can't all be good or there is nothing to write about). This is particularly important if they have given you samples/equipment to use for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lab I'm at has done several comparisons of various software and microscopes for surface metrology and in all cases the equipment/software is just referred to as A, B, C etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While from my point of view the reasons for doing this are purely maintaining good relations I expect there is a legal aspect too. I know we have received long loans/discounts on some instruments which presumably involves a contract saying we can't publish anything negative about the instrument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a company has provided some equipment used in this sort of thing you may wish to put them in the acknowledgements. Although be aware this may de-anomimise you data. If very few people make an instrument of a certain type saying thanks to company X makes it obvious what it is. On the other hand knowledgeable readers could probably make an educated guess anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T14:42:46.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-26T17:21:02.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually two good questions contained here but conflating the two would be a mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What to do about students who already have a lot of knowledge that would be covered in the course?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a socioeconomic problem with some people having more resources and therefor being more prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I split these questions is that it is entirely possible for a student to use public resources, or take classes in a way that they end up not challenged by a class. And depending on the motive there should be no problem with this. If I was interested in a topic I would probably do some amount of self study before enrolling in a college course (I have finished a B.S. and am working on a M.E.), I have also taken classes at the Master's level that were far less challenging for me simply because my Bachelor's was in Math. However, if I were to take a class that I knew all the material for just to get more credits or improve my grade there is an issue because I would be taking space and resources from people who would learn more from being there. So, there is no ethical problem for a student to self study because they love the material or so that they can maximize their return on the course... in fact we should encourage them. But taking a useless class in order to meet a metric is wasteful and denies resources to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the next part my view is that of someone living in the U.S. but it is applicable widely)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second question, I agree that there is a socioeconomic issue with some students having the resources to be more prepared, my question is how to we mitigate this? I would suggest a combination of more free computer and book access, better schools and more activities outside of school being available. Personally as a father I am making an investment in my son by using my wealth to enrich my child's mental abilities, and that is perfectly fine. As a people we need to do better about erasing economic gaps and realizing social gaps are not gaps at all but opportunities to grow. So ethical? On a personal level yes, on a societal level no. Who is to blame? All of us... but all of us is also the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T17:21:02.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T18:33:36.947" Score="22" ViewCount="7967" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm not sure that this is the right exchange for this question. It asks about the possibilities of research in mathematics and computer science.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Extended Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in mathematics and theoretical computer science. Over the past few years I've gained lots of experience from math competitions, programming competitions, software development internships, and talking to professors, and I've learned that I do not enjoy writing code; I enjoy writing &quot;beautiful&quot; and elegant code in practice, just as I enjoy beautiful and elegant proofs in mathematics, but I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; enjoy writing hundreds of trivial imperative lines of code to make some company money. I've learned that I like to think critically about problems, and I like finding the quickest, most efficient, most elegant solutions. I enjoy the mathematical (or theoretical) side of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, recently, after coding only with imperative languages my whole life, I discovered Haskell, a functional programming language. It is extremely close to mathematics: Everything is a function. Ideas are defined rather than executed; instead of giving a computer step-by-step instructions, the computer is given a definition. This discovery reaffirmed my passion for mathematics and the mathematical and theoretical side of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Minimal Background/Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also been frequenting a website called &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecteuler.net/&quot;&gt;Project Euler&lt;/a&gt;, which is filled with 450+ mathematics-based programming problems. This is essentially the epitome of my passion. I love solving these problems with Haskell (and sometimes, when I'm clever enough, with merely a pen and paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that many of the questions (if not all of them) have already been solved and researched in both the field of mathematics and the field of computer science, and hundreds of their variants have been as well. However, many of these problems were initially proposed and solved hundreds of years ago by mathematicians (such as Euler and Gauss), and most of the relatively newer problems were all proposed and solved by the 1980s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, are there still problems like this that I can think about for a living? If so, which field and sub-field is closest to this type of research? If not, would I be involved in these problems by teaching and then introducing them to students of mine, or hosting competitions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I solve problems like &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecteuler.net/problem=151&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; as a career?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this research isn't viable, would I be more involved with this type of problems by teaching and hosting competitions, etc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20284" LastEditorUserId="8509" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T05:59:29.463" LastActivityDate="2017-11-12T13:40:17.443" Title="Do mathematics researchers regularly solve problems like the ones from Project Euler?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27628" CreationDate="2014-08-26T19:25:13.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenshots are much better than a live demonstration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many things can go wrong with a live demonstration: Problems with the Internet connectivity at the conference, at your university, or anywhere between the two points. Servers being down for maintenance. Software crashing unexpectedly. Embarrassing user errors during the presentation. You cannot connect your own laptop to the video projector at the conference, and you need to resort to another computer that does not have the right software installed. Yearly software license expiring the same morning as you are supposed to give the talk. Wrong screen resolution for the software. Etc., etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these reasons are related to copyrights. Of course &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you can show screenshots you can also show the software itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T19:25:13.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2014-08-26T19:58:56.380" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a better question for Math.SE.  That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sorts of problems fall in the category of &lt;strong&gt;contest math&lt;/strong&gt;.  Sometimes they are related to active areas of mathematical research (most often number theory, combinatorics, and geometry), but more often, current research deals with problems that are considerably more complex and can't be solved (or even stated) in a page or two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that, at least in the US, there are very few people who get paid to do mathematics research full-time and exclusively.  Most professional mathematics researchers are professors at colleges and universities, and their duties also include teaching and administration (to varying degrees).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a recognized subculture of mathematicians interested in contest math.  They may get involved in creating problems, organizing contests, and coaching students.  At some universities, such activities may be considered a significant part of their research or &quot;scholarship&quot; duties, but they would normally be teaching regular math classes as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Actually, there is a category of careers I had forgotten: intelligence. The NSA and its counterparts (GCHQ, etc) employ many thousands of mathematicians. Of course, it's hard for an outsider to know what goes on there, but it could be that their activities have more of a problem-solving flavor. At least they are not bound by the requirement that their work be publishable! The NSA has a well-known (and highly competitive) summer internship program for undergrads, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nsa.gov/careers/opportunities_4_u/students/undergraduate/dsp.shtml&quot;&gt;Director's Summer Program&lt;/a&gt;, so that could be one way of testing those waters relatively early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T13:08:00.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T13:08:00.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9003" CreationDate="2014-08-26T20:07:39.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in this situation, too. I site my publications as they appear on PubMed, keeping the outdated last name where it is seen on the original aricles. I then underline my full name in each publication, whether it is the current or former last name, i.e. &quot;Jane M. Doe&quot; and &quot;Jane M. Smith&quot; would be underlined in the Publications section. I also have my full, current name at the top of my CV/Resume (i.e. Jane M. Smith) so it is clear that the underlined person (whether Doe or Smith) is me. I have had job coaches indicate they like this strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21122" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T20:07:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27638" CreationDate="2014-08-26T20:29:52.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure social science Ph.D. program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First weeks in a Ph.D. program... here's what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're in the hazing period of grad school. People are over-exagerating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your peers (cohort) are all hyper competitive with each other right now. There's still very much that need of many to show that they are the smartest person in the room. This usually comes from a place of insecurity (i.e., needing praise, not wanting to feel the impostor syndrome, etc.). Overtime, this will fade. Then it will become like most other working environments... there will be lots of honest water cooler talk, less competitiveness, etc. However, within your lab it will also mirror the corporate world, where your peers will agree with everything your boss says, fake knowing things they really don't know, and generally try and win favorability. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone needs to say how hard graduate school is and how much work it is in the beginning. It's a mantra that no one ever questions. You get the same kind of thing in corporate jobs. The truth is, I haven't found the work of it to be that hard at all! Sure, I've experienced lots of frustration in feeling held-up due to delays in feedback, new directions in the lab and a lack of face to face time with my advisor, but the work is quite easy. The people who do spend way too many hours of their life doing work I have found to be one of four types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Obsessed with perfection as a means for impressing. This is the typical OC type you surely have encountered through your entire life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Has no defining personal life that gives them sustenance outside of grad school. This is the student who will answer his/her's advisor's email 5 minutes after it arrives in his/her mailbox, as such sets the expectation that this is acceptable. Most students are like this their first year, but there will definitely be people around you that stay this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Not very competent. When I arrived in graduate school I was really surprised at the amount of incompetence I saw in my peers. I'm certainly of average intelligence, but have always been a self-doer, so I wasn't expecting everyone be a genius. However, there's just a lot of incompetent people in the programs. Ironically, these are the ones that seem to fare the best in terms of getting through the program. I still scratch my head with this one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Inefficient. This can involve having poor time-management skills, but I find it's more about workflows. My peers spend a lot of time every week doing repetitive tasks that they could streamline and automate in so many different ways. My favorite was a student who needed to run a series of descriptive and regression analysis on newly available data every a week. The task literally took this person over 10 hours every week because this person manually entered everything into SPSS (a point and click statistical software). In 2 hours of research on simple coding skills this student could have learned how to automate nearly the entire process, and had the task finished in seconds. The fact that the advisor thought this was a good use of time is a whole other issue! The point is, I find that what my lab mates finish in 20 hours a week literally takes me under 5 hours to finish. &lt;strong&gt;Just work smart!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question seems more about work-life balance. This applies in graduate school too. Let the program run your life, give up all the small things you do outside of school, and you'll be saying hello to depression in no time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can have a life while being a Ph.D. student. In fact, I'd say as soon as the Graduate Program becomes how you describe yourself to others it's time to reevaluate your life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T20:29:52.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2014-08-26T20:50:34.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think using dynamic documents is the only way to ensure your work is reproducible. Latex is an important tool in my workflow that helps me achieve this aim, and I view it as a necessity. Word documents are simply not reproducible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can read about the issues with Word &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Please_don&amp;#39;t_send_me_Microsoft_Word_documents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thewritelife.com/microsoft-word-just-say-no/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://factorgrad.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-latex-is-superior-to-ms-word.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://gribblelab.org/scicomp/07_Document_processing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you adopt latex you should also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt;, which I don't think anyone mentioned here. Pandoc allows you to convert a document to range of other document types with a simple line of code. I'm imagining the person who tries to cut and paste from the latex generated PDF into a Word document because that is what their advisor wants. Pandoc will make your life easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is also another nice option that will allow you to write in markdown, it converts to latex on the backend and then converts the latex to pdf. Scrivener is also a great companion for long-form writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the person that said:  &quot;You should prefer a tool that is used by your colleagues and supervisor to one that is slightly better intrinsically.&quot; I'd argue that you should use the tool that gets the work done most efficiently for you. Latex is going to save you so much time in terms of formatting the document. So, please explain to me why anyone expect that I use a tool that's going to require me to needlessly spend hours out of my productive schedule to tweak the formatting of the document over and over again? Your whole statement is anti-progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastEditorUserId="19610" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T21:04:20.400" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:04:20.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27596" CreationDate="2014-08-26T21:14:59.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer in large part depends on the kind of job you want to work when you have completed your degree. You mention that you do not know the kind of job that you want to work when you get out of a the program. This is unfortunate. A Ph.D. = specialization, a mistake many Ph.D. students make is to assume specialization = job. In fact, specialization can make it harder to find a job. If you're goal is to enter into industry than I think you have an interesting road to navigate. The job market will be kinder to you if you have a range of skills that you are really good at, the Ph.D. program is going to pull you in the opposite direction. You're wise to want to understand better what it is about getting a Ph.D. that will make you standout in the workforce, but you'd also be wise to look at some skills for your desired positions that you might not develop while in the Ph.D. program, and look to develop those too while you are in the program. For me these skills are computer science skills. For you these skills might be something different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, unless you are in the hard sciences, and even then specialization can be a demon, having a Ph.D. might not mean all that much when stacked against someone with a Master's, wider breadth of skills and more industry experience when looking for industry job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:14:59.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-26T21:35:31.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doesn't seem unusual to me. Did you sign a contract? More importantly did someone in your department sign the contract. I find the term &quot;contract&quot; to be kind of meaningless in graduate school. We aren't unionized, so we're in the unfortunate position of needing to take the term contract to mean &quot;loose policy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some students in my department were successful in the past in lobbying the chair for more pay due to more time spent working. Of course, this solution precludes that you'd be fine working that many hours for more pay. This doesn't seem to be the case? Therefore, the only reasonable thing to do is to adjust your mental and physical deliverables in accordance with the 15 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be more upset about the 15 hours. That seems like a nice way for the University to get cheaper labor in terms of teaching the courses and for your advisor also to throw money your way for 5 hours, which unfortunately means you have expectations to deliver on that front. 5 hours for research I would imagine ends up being more like 10 or 15, most unpaid? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:35:31.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27528" CreationDate="2014-08-26T21:59:52.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unusual, and probably disserves all parties, for a grad student to be assigned to teach a grad course, apart from considerations of alleged competence or not. For an advanced grad student to fill in for their advisor while the advisor goes to a conference is somewhat common in mathematics, in my experience, but that's not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a good sense of the situation for other disciplines, but in mathematics at my research university (and other places I've been) grad students might be assigned full responsibility for lower-division courses, but never for upper-division, much less graduate-level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not only the workload, and perhaps not even the issue of competence in the material, but of &lt;em&gt;mastery&lt;/em&gt; of the material, so that reasonable questions from students could be answered authoritatively, instantly, etc. A grad student's opinion might be harder to consider &quot;authoritative&quot;, not because one would presume that they don't know, but because they lack a track record and credentials to allow people to effortlessly trust their expertise. One &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be able to effortlessly trust the expertise of people giving graduate-level courses, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, yes, unfortunately, being &quot;on the faculty&quot;, being &quot;old&quot;, etc., are no guarantees of competence, much less expertise... I know...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:59:52.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27670" CreationDate="2014-08-26T22:52:53.563" Score="13" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually spent an incredible amount of time answering the questions raised by reviewers when submitting research manuscripts to a journal. The length of the response is often longer than the paper itself. Such a process, albeit time consuming, has significantly improved the quality of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there are many thoughts that can not be delivered in the paper, which are elaborated in the response of the reviewers, I am wondering whether it is good to upload the response online along with the paper? (e.g., research profile page) I think this will benefit the readers but am not sure what might be the consequences resulting from that? Do note that I don't have any clue as to the reviewers' identities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11444" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T00:28:18.640" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T06:27:57.707" Title="Should I post a response to reviewers online?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27669" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:05:03.343" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are free to post your response as you see fit, If you know who the reviewer(s) is/are then you may need to think twice about mentioning their name(s) since. I am not sure how you may be thinking of posting such comments but I assume you will rewrite them into some form of self-contained text. As such it would not be very different from a blog entry and so one suggestion would be to use a blog type web to add comments around your publications. You may also provide means for commenting on your papers and associated posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in short, no problem posting your own thoughts but stay clear of adding the thoughts of others that may be given in a context other than open posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:05:03.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:10:23.160" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @NateEldredge already explained, such easily-apprisable questions, most often arising in math contests, or as puzzles, are mostly not what could allow a person to make a living as an academic mathematician, except in cases of ultimate-extreme talent, perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least as idealized, academic mathematics aims to develop and validate viewpoints that clarify fundamental issues. &quot;Problem solving&quot; is significant, but is at the extreme end of the phenomenological aspects of the business. As Nate E. noted, most &quot;active&quot; questions in mathematics will not be easily understood by amateurs, or perhaps even by non-specialists. These questions are mostly not of the easily-apprisable sort... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:10:23.160" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27672" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:15:42.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/supporting-information&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;supporting-information&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;supporting-information&lt;/a&gt; tag concerns scientific material published alongside an article such as media files, additional data, methods descriptions etc. Such material have various names such as supporting information, Supplementary material, etc. depending on journal. Such material is commonplace in some fields and in many journals. Particularly the possibility to add multi-media files that would other wise be impossible to reproduce in a printed format can be mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T23:15:42.170" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:15:42.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27673" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:15:42.170" Score="0" Body="The [supporting-information] tag concerns material published alongside an article such as media files, additional data, or methods descriptions. This material may have various names such as: supporting information, supplementary material, etc." OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T18:28:12.327" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T18:28:12.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:52:27.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are cases in Academia where students are held to different standards based on preparation. At my university there were some classes in mid-level physics that were cross-listed as both undergraduate and graduate classes. Typically the students were graded on two curves, one curve for undergraduates biased by actual undergraduate scores, and a second curve for graduate students biased by actual grad student scores. I thought that this approach was both merciful and a decent solution to the &quot;different levels of preparation&quot; issue raised by Illegal Immigrant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the differences between students are not easily catagorized as above, it becomes difficult to divide students into groups. This is a practical matter, not an ethical one. Unfortunately, practicalities often trump ethics in American society since Americans place a high value on simplicity and equal treatment. It is a real problem, but usually there is no admissible (constitutional) mitigation for the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21126" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:52:27.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27411" CreationDate="2014-08-27T01:10:42.087" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on particular area. In some areas, proceedings of the best conferences are comparable with decent journals, while in others conferences are more social events. Computer Science in general is more a conference-oriented area, so proceedings usually have decent impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To check it in particular subarea, if you have access to Scopus (other services probably have similar features), try the Analyze Journals tool, to compare some conferences and journals in your field. In my case (Computer Vision), the top conferences are beaten only by the top journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more info on different habits in different subareas I recommend:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Wainer, Eckmann, Goldenstein, Rocha: How Productivity and Impact Differ Across Computer Science Subareas. Communications of the ACM, 2013.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: &lt;strong&gt;I just re-read your question and noticed your actual answer was about something else. There I can point you again to Scopus (which has both journals and top conferences) and their SJR/SNIP...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14066" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T01:10:42.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T01:51:14.750" Score="4" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing a Masters of Philosophy, with my key interests being ecology and evolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I enrolled earlier this year, I had an agreement with my professor that I would continue to a PhD. Unfortunately in the first two months, my first project fell through to lack of funding. My professor then showed me another project I could do. This project is very similar to my honours research...in fact, it is almost exactly the same, with very few new techniques included. I had a few weeks to think about if I wanted this project, but did feel a bit of pressure to make a decision. I decided to continue with this project despite my reservations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main issue now is that I have realised (at 5 months) that this project, while interesting, isn't going to get me a job when I finish. While I am doing some lab based work and doing some phylogenetic analyses, I'm not doing any of the field work or statistical experience that I need to be competitive for post-docs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered reworking my project, however I've had a number of concerns about it. First of all is that my supervisor doesn't seem keen to rework it to a large extent and doesn't seem to understand the time it takes for me to read and analyse papers to determine how to change my project.&#xA;The second issue is that no one in my lab is an ecologist, statistician or evolutionary biologist (primarily genetics and bioinformatics) and I will not be able to get the support I'll inevitably need down the track. The final issue is that I am getting no funding. My supervisor is paying for my labwork, but I am not able to conduct more field studies or more complex genetic analyses because we can't afford it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've sort of come to the realisation that this isn't what I want from a PhD. The only issue is I have a verbal agreement to change to a PhD at 1 year into my masters. I love my supervisor and the lab, so don't want to burn bridges by changing my mind on them. I also feel guilty as my supervisor is paying for my lab work, and I don't want to put him out. I am just stuck as to what to do in this situation, and how to bring this up with my professor without ruining my chances of working with them later or affecting my relationships with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this can be summarised as: I don't want to do this PhD project and would like to keep it as a masters, but am not sure how to go about discussing this with my supervisor, and am not sure how it would impact me if I decide to do a PhD in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone been in a similar situation and can offer advice? Is there a way to do this without impacting my career as a researcher, or my relationships with my lab mates and supervisor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love any advice you have on this because it's really distressing me! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21130" LastEditorUserId="21130" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T02:16:26.853" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:42:19.933" Title="verbal agreement to convert masters to PhD but reconsidering" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27677" CreationDate="2014-08-27T02:32:49.087" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to do this PhD project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to do this project, DON'T DO IT. PhD is not everyday fun and it is sometime harsh to keep motivation through the ups and downs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About your adviser, I will not be too worried for him/her burning bridge. How many PhD student actually drop during the PhD. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27677/verbal-agreement-to-convert-masters-to-phd-but-reconsidering#comment59009_27677&quot;&gt;Nate Eldredge said&lt;/a&gt;, It is quite bad for an adviser/group to have an unmotivated student. Moreover you haven't yet start the PhD. It will be much worse for you adviser if you start and quit after 2 years because you cannot stand it anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As often, you should just be frank with your adviser. Explain this is not the project you are ready to invest 4 years in your life and if he/she has a minimum understanding, it should be fine. If you are not at ease, do it in several discussions, where first you express your doubts on the current project. I think any adviser hearing that should actually advise you to not continue with a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:42:19.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T03:23:49.443" Score="3" ViewCount="822" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently an undergrad student, will complete it next 3 months, I was thinking that, what makes an undergrad profile different and stand out of crowd?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific: what does it take for an applicant for a Masters in Computer Science, for top 10 ranked departments in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is it that an undergrad must do which will elevate his/her profile. Is research or publications expected from undergrads?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21094" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T21:01:37.533" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T10:21:08.283" Title="What makes a standout profile for applying to a top-ten ranked CS masters in the US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T03:53:36.123" Score="5" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have a BSc. in Environmental Science and would like to go back for a biology focused PhD in the next few years. I keep seeing the recommendation that having a good research fit will be important to potentially being admitted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do I go about getting research experience in biology when my degree is in something unrelated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to the question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8106/how-to-gain-research-experience-after-master-program&quot;&gt;How to gain research experience after master program?&lt;/a&gt; suggest various possible research opportunities. I've looked at jobs and volunteer opportunities like those, but I'm not sure I'm qualified for them. Even when I find a job that says ‘no experience necessary’, they are still asking for a biology degree. Presumably anyone with one would have had some experience in a biology lab, whereas most of my lab experience is in geology labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand why they would take someone without a relevant degree or experience (even if it's in-class experience) over interns, under/grad students, various types of volunteers with relevant degrees. Without understanding that, I'm not sure how to approach people about these potential opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I identify research opportunities I am qualified for, and position myself as a competitive candidate for these positions, when I don't have a relevant degree or experience in the field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21131" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T11:34:49.147" Title="How can I identify research opportunities I am qualified for, and position myself as a competitive candidate, in a different field from my degree?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;biology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T04:37:02.737" Score="2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in undergraduate studies, and currently participating in computer related studies (mainly security focused). I wish to (as an end goal) pursue a MS and PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure exactly the experience in graduate level programs as far as focus. Is there a possible focus on Network Security/Infrastructure built into graduate programs or would curriculum be more of a wide range (albeit focused in the realm of computer science)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not is there a path which would end at a doctoral level involving information security?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21133" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T20:30:51.707" Title="Progression through Computer Science Path" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2014-08-27T06:10:29.587" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe @Mangara's comment is very relevant here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number theory, combinatorics and geometry (the areas Project Euler mainly draws from) actually have lots of accessible problems that are still unresolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accessible here means that the problem can be easily explained.  However, unresolved problems that anyone can understand tend to be &lt;strong&gt;extremely difficult&lt;/strong&gt;.  If they weren't, then someone would have solved them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a copy of Richard Guy's &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0387208607&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unsolved Problems in Number Theory&lt;/a&gt;.  There you can find some problems that constitute &quot;real mathematical research&quot; but are more or less in the vein you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can usually only (get paid to) do this research in a university, you have to be very talented to get a tenured job in these areas, and it's a long road.  Also, due to the highly interconnected nature of mathematics, the techniques used to solve these problems are often vastly different from what you might expect -- for a famous example, see the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem via algebraic curves.  So if you want to work in (say) number theory, you'll still need to learn deeply about and use other areas of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2017-11-12T13:40:17.443" LastActivityDate="2017-11-12T13:40:17.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27669" CreationDate="2014-08-27T06:27:57.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I request that this answer may be viewed as an addendum to Pete's nice answer here, in light of Nate's comment above.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Nate pointed out, most of the typical referee responses would be concerned with stuff that should enter the manuscript. So, assuming that all his useful suggestions were incorporated in the text itself, there isn't generally more meat from that conversation that could warrant a separate 'response log' to be uploaded anywhere (I'm assuming on arXiv, for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the impression that I get from the question is that, OP is inquiring about suggestions that go deeper than the above paragraph. In some cases, it is possible that referee queries stuff on the lines of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is &lt;em&gt;[a fact that you established on the basis of your calculation in the manuscript]&lt;/em&gt; consistent with &lt;em&gt;[a sacred tenet, or a well-established or experimentally verified result]&lt;/em&gt; ? Aren't the two incompatible because of &lt;em&gt;[some qualitative reasoning, devised by the referee]&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning looks valid to you, so you sit down and calculate the implications of your calculation on the established fact, and find that the two are indeed compatible. Then, you identify a weakness in the qualitative reasoning, and let the referee know about this. Now, all this isn't worthy of being included in the text of your manuscript, since it is off-track from the overall theme of the work. Yet, this is a valuable piece of information, and is likely to help future readers because they may also reason this apparent contradiction. Responses of this kind are worthy of being put up. Occasionally, one encounters those one-page or two-page ''Comment on [a paper]'' sort of things on arXiv, so these can definitely be put up too. It doesn't necessarily have to be journal article manuscript always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, regarding acknowledging the referee, there are two options - either take their permission (ref - Pete's answer), or you simply acknowledge ''the anonymous referee'' for pointing it out, in case option 1 doesn't work out. I know some instances where this has been done in my field, but one example that I can find is &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepja%2Fi2013-13072-1&quot;&gt;over here&lt;/a&gt;. Sorry, there isn't any corresponding arXiv version for this, so if you can't access it directly, here's the relevant excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author would like to thank the anonymous referee for making insightful comments which have been helpful in improving and updating the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But seriously, option 1 is the better option (why strip the poor guy of his due credit!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T06:27:57.707" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:40:20.857" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Admins please forgive me (and inform me so I can delete this) if this is too off-topic from the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not enjoy writing hundreds of trivial imperative lines of code to make some company money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Where I am now:&lt;/em&gt;  I'm in my mid-twenties, somewhat recently out of college with a B.S. in CS.  I work for a company that makes business software, (making them money, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Where I was a few years ago or so:&lt;/em&gt;  I got into a top-20 school (U.S.) and initially went there going for a B.A. in Math, fully intending on spending the rest of my life solving theoretical math problems and going on to get a PhD (that was actually my dream since middle school or early high school - can't remember exactly when).  Your sentiment reminded me of my own (which is why I'm writing this right now).  Well eventually I changed my mind, but to make a long story short - I'm glad I did - I make more money (as a software engineer than an entry PhD professor at a local public university according to the public salaries) and what I do now is insanely fun, definitely more so than I would have thought.  (Also walking into a room full of hundreds of people using something you helped create to make their lives easier is a cool feeling.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've learned that I like to think critically about problems, and I like finding the quickest, most efficient, most elegant solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're making a business money there is still plenty of opportunity to think critically about problems (at least where I work), and you can find still find quick, efficient and elegant solutions (I somewhat shudder about superlative evaluations of software engineering solutions - it's all trade offs and compromise in your solutions, which corner of the CAP theorem do you sacrifice in exchange for the other two, and why, etc.) to the problems; it's just one of your implicit constraints is money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My advice:&lt;/em&gt; Do what you enjoy, of course, and don't let others impose their dreams for you on you, be it your parents, friends or strangers on the internet, but do keep an open mind on what it is you do with your life. (And please excuse all the parenthesis :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:40:20.857" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:33:19.173" Score="8" ViewCount="13253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my masters in the UK and at final stage of my dissertation. First I will have to confess that I regret that I selected this dissertation as it is something which I failed to get a clear idea about. I don't know if it is because I cannot understand the ideas that my supervisor is trying to communicate with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First my target was to implement an algorithm (I was given only a specific field and asked me to select an algorithm) using a language that I had never used before. I used to meet  regularly and given research papers to read to clarify any doubt I had. There was no support in the implementation other than the research papers. Also no one to guide  on the computer language I needed to use for the implementation.  By June, I was stuck a little bit in the implementation and when I expressed some doubts, I was told there is not enough time for implementation now as I am not able to understand it so take an existing software which implemented the said algorithm and create some performance improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent a lot of time, more than a month for just setting up the work environment and understanding how that software works. I am not very confident to speak out so I thought I will eventually get a hang of it. After a thorough research I realised that the said software is widely used all over the world and has been optimised in all possible ways already. But it was already too late and at the end I am left with almost nothing but some failed trials. Now the deadline to submit my masters dissertation is in a week and when I spoke to my supervisor about the limitations of the software and why I cannot optimise it last week, I was given  a new research paper to read and asked  to try their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned a lot in this research, many algorithms, some new software, computer languages etc, but it was not focussed. I don't know what I will write in my report as the project is supposed to be a study with evaluation and testing to show as a proof to my conclusions. I have already written a literature review of 35 pages and about 10 pages about the software I am trying to optimise. I cannot submit just that and I don't think it is a good idea to continue new trials now as I may not be able to complete writing my report (which needs to be around 60-65 pages) with just one week left.  I have distinction from the marks for my course units and all of the effort I took for an year will go in vain if I fail the dissertation as it has 50% weighting. What can I do to make sure I will pass my dissertation? Please advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: I know it is a long question, sorry about that. I felt I need to write the context to explain my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Postscript:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I continued and completed my thesis with all the failed trials. Added some sections in the thesis comparing the different approaches I tried, findings based the trials and some suggestions for future work. Even though I was paranoid till the results came out, I passed with distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21141" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T09:31:27.120" Title="What to do if I cannot complete my Masters dissertation tasks?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:48:08.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Preamble&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having organized 3 different small-scale (~60 participants) events with international speakers on a variety of topics (one of which evolved into semi-annually workshop series), these are my personal rules of thumb for keeping it enjoyable (&lt;strong&gt;when done right it really is enjoyable!&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Separate the logistics from the contents&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the hard part, and you are right to be dreadful about it. The solution: ask for help! For anything beyond 100 participants, you should consider hiring a professional conference organizer and forming a multi-person programm committee etc. For small-scale stuff, this is what I usally try to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start &lt;strong&gt;on time&lt;/strong&gt;: 6-12 months is a good range. Remember that academic speakers have teaching loads they need to navigate in their schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Secure a &lt;strong&gt;budget&lt;/strong&gt; from your manager (professer of your research group, or dean of your department)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should cover speaker's travel reimbursements, catering and accomodation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;optionally: speaker's gifts (bottle of wine, book etc.), after-conference dinner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for my events, $2K turned to be plenty (and there was no admission fee for participants!), and typically management won't think twice about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find a good &lt;strong&gt;office manager&lt;/strong&gt; / secretary to take care of the practicalities:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beforehand: managing the mailinglist of participants, travel arrangements of speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during the day: name badges, coffee during breaks, drinks afterwards, printing handouts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find support in the &lt;strong&gt;IT department&lt;/strong&gt; for website related stuff:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;announcements, registration, publication of presentations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;live feed video is a whole different ball game (I have no experience with it, best left to the pros)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find at least &lt;strong&gt;one colleague&lt;/strong&gt; willing to share the burden with you:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this really helps to cover each other's workload peaks (teaching, papers etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, asking people for help with such events is usually enthusiastically supplied. Especially office managers relish at the chance to break their daily routine and they will work wonders to get things done. Make sure to properly and publicly praise them at the closing of the event (e.g. give them flowers / small gift in front of the audience. Also invite them to the after-conference dinner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Concentrate on the contents&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logistics out of the way (okay, you will need to periodically monitor people for their progress and potential hiccups, but that's no big deal), you can concentrate on what you do best: content!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find your &lt;strong&gt;niche&lt;/strong&gt;: which unique gap in the world of conferences (both geographically and topic-wise) does your event fill?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your &lt;strong&gt;audience&lt;/strong&gt;: which people should attend and with what knowledge would you like them to return afterwards?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find good &lt;strong&gt;speakers&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they should be &lt;strong&gt;familiar with&lt;/strong&gt; -but not necessarily known to- the niche/audience that you are targetting (this depends a bit on your goal: getting the state-of-the-art from a world expert is different from getting an interesting and intellectually stimulating view on a topic from a relative outsider)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should have &lt;strong&gt;witnessed them present at least once&lt;/strong&gt; (either on video or live)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you would like to &lt;strong&gt;pick their brains&lt;/strong&gt; afterwards (which is why after-conference dinners for speakers/organizers are so great: you get priviliged access to experts in the field, and they are usually in a great mood over a good meal / glass of wine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this is really the main benefit: &lt;strong&gt;close interaction with experts&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are professionally competent and nice to talk to, they will form a good opinion of you and this might give you career opportunities (speaking invitations, job offers based on word-of-mouth etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a good &lt;strong&gt;conference chair&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be &lt;strong&gt;knowledgeable&lt;/strong&gt; of the nice/audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be &lt;strong&gt;firm but not a dominant&lt;/strong&gt; personality so as to get a focussed but also lively discussion between audience and speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should have &lt;strong&gt;witnessed this person perform in that role&lt;/strong&gt; at least once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you yourself fit the bill on all three accounts above, just put yourself into that role. It will give you great exposure to an audience and will be a rewarding experience. But don't force yourself into it for the exposure alone (e.g. because you are too shy or too dominant to facilitate discussions).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mingle with the audience&lt;/strong&gt;: apart from the speakers, talking to people in the audience is also very rewarding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously you will have to check up some of the logistics but with good support there is usually enough time to talk to a few people during the coffee breaks or at the drinks afterwards. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you have no other role at the event, the fact that you are the organizer will register in people's minds and they will associate you to the topic of the day and this can lead to interesting future career opportunities (mostly small, like speaking invitations).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst two things that ever happened to me were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a disappointing speaker (great-looking resume, nice phone interview before, but I had never watched that person speak and it was terrible, so now that's on the checklist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a last-minute cancellation by a speaker (you cannot really plan against it because no-one would like to be a reserve-speaker, luckily the speaker enlisted a co-author as a substitute and that turned out to be a good experience)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18027" LastEditorUserId="18027" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T08:56:13.383" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T08:56:13.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27692" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:51:31.270" Score="2" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does it mean when a university has a program which title is &lt;strong&gt;'program name' MSc/Diploma (MScDiploma)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person graduates, does he/she get MSc or Diploma (MScDiploma). What is the difference between these two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also variations like &lt;strong&gt;MScDiplomaCertificate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Noticed that UK universities use such titles&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21142" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T13:29:01.380" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T13:29:01.380" Title="Explanation needed for university program titles (MScDiplomaCertificate)" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;titles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27647" CreationDate="2014-08-27T10:00:22.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One benefit that I haven't seen mentioned yet, and one of the major reasons I organised a conference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've organised one, for the next few years after that, you have a good way to defend yourself against substantial pressure from colleagues to organise the next conference, on the grounds of it not being your turn, because you did it recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long your immunity lasts will depend on the size and frequency of the conferences you usually attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T10:00:22.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27703" CreationDate="2014-08-27T10:25:39.443" Score="2" ViewCount="5496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a B.Tech. student in India, and am applying for Master's courses in the U.S. I took the GRE exam a week ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does having graduated from high school in the U.S., where English is the native language, count as certification that my English is good enough? Should I still take the TOEFL exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21147" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T15:44:55.237" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T21:05:03.927" Title="Should I take the TOEFL exam if I have graduated from a high school in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;toefl&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-03-21T08:41:57.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T10:48:19.530" Score="0" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research more than 3 years. I was admitted in a 3 years program, now in the last months of the program. I fell I have a long way in the field to be an independent researcher. But most of the post-docs in my department and in my group don't seem to be in the direction of a independent research. Many of us PhD students and post-docs look like more high level technical staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21146" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T07:17:29.347" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T07:36:01.510" Title="Can a 3 years PhD make an independent researcher ? Or how many post-docs after PhD to be an independent researcher?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-28T10:15:07.943" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27688" CreationDate="2014-08-27T10:50:07.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure it is consistent across all departments, but my UK Psychology department offers an MSc/Diploma in Psychology that can result in an MSc, a diploma, or a certificate. The course is designed to allow students who currently have a degree that does not meet the requirements for accreditation by the British Psychology Society, to get an accredited degree in one year of study. Many BSc degrees in Psychology are not accredited by the BPS since they lack, or don't require students to take or pass, a critical component (e.g., modules on statistics or biological aspects of Psychology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though all students take the same modules, due to differences in the requirements between the university and BPS, the final degree a student gets depends on how well they did. The course offers both undergraduate and graduate modules. If you pass everything, you get an MSc. If you pass enough credits, you may qualify for a certificate from the university, but not meet the BPS requirements depending on which combination of modules you failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T11:08:29.387" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T11:08:29.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27690" CreationDate="2014-08-27T11:17:46.773" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every school words the requirements, if any, for the TOEFL a little differently. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/prospective_students/application_instructions_and_information.php&quot;&gt;Harvard GSAS&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants whose native language is other than English and who do not hold the equivalent of a US Bachelor's degree from an institution at which English is the language of instruction must submit scores from the Internet based test (IBT) of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick look suggests that in general native language and the language of your Bachelor's degree is what matters and not the language of your high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T11:17:46.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2014-08-27T11:54:32.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the view from my vantage point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The kind of interesting problems you can solve in 30 minutes to 7 days each (as found in mathematics olympiads, competitive programming contests, and which, by the way, have tremendous value by being fun for whoever gets into them and being accessible to large numbers of high-school students, as well as developing their mental capacities and practical skills), are typically  not of interest to most professional mathematicians because they are considered too trivial. Research publications require more substance than a couple of observations and a direct application of some 100-year-old theorem. Also, you would drown in the task of citing the relevant literature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, as a professional research mathematician, if you want to keep your job, you will be effectively forced to find a frontier somewhere in some field and publish results which are very likely to be novel and well-received by journals. You can expect to meet lots of interesting sub-problems, but also lots of questions that frustratingly don't have easy answers. Also, the chances of this type of work making impact on some field external to mathematics are not great.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interesting sub-problems come up all the time in all sorts of other research, not just in mathematics. Even in programming jobs that are not considered research — sometimes a requirement says that certain aspects have to behave in a certain way and meet certain constraints, and naïve solutions turn out to not be good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Putting it all together&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To alter the question a bit, I think there is a wide selection of jobs where 10-30% of your time will be spent on solving interesting sub-problems. These are not restricted to research in mathematics. Very few jobs where this figure will be 100% (people do this on a volunteering basis, verifying problems for Codeforces, TopCoder, etc., not to mention actually competing just for the fun of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14516" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T11:54:32.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T11:55:49.020" Score="11" ViewCount="3894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a PhD program and I am in the process of choosing people for recommendation letters. Being someone in the final year of  master's program (and not been involved with many people in research), one of my potential referee is my internship guide. I had worked with him closely for 3 months and a paper came out of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience. Although he can write a good recommendation letter, will it carry weight considering his background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T17:30:41.040" Title="Recommendation Letter from a non-PhD referee" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27695" CreationDate="2014-08-27T12:38:37.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am evaluating prospective PhD students I am looking for evidence of research potential. While someone might write a postive letter, unless it provides evidence of research potential (or in rare situations addresses a weak aspect of your application) it is not going to be a helpful letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general admission committees are going to question the ability of someone who has never been involved in research to assess research potential. So even if the letter talks about you research potential it may be discounted. The more of an unknown quantity the letter writer is, the more effort he/she is going to have to spend explaining how he/she can evaluate the person. Is is almost independent of the actual experience. Admissions committees often have hundreds of applications to look through and don't always spend the time they should evaluating everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T17:30:41.040" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T17:30:41.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27704" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:47:06.743" Score="5" ViewCount="3691" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I go for Phd in USA, Canada, Australia or any other European country with my master's degree from a German &lt;em&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/em&gt;? I am planning to work for two years as a lecturer and researcher in my home country (Pakistan) and look for PhD fundings/admissions from there. I believe the experience gained during these two years will make my application stronger.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, is there something I should do before leaving Germany (extra courses for more CPs, degree recognition or any such thing)? I'm enrolled in 120 CP Master's degree with following division:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course work = 60 CP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mandatory internship = 30 CP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master Thesis = 30 CP  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do universities from these regions require more CPs? I've heard this is the case for German technical universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23774/are-masters-degrees-from-german-universities-of-applied-sciences-fachhochschule?rq=1&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; is related but it is about PhD in Germany only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21152" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T22:58:23.240" Title="PhD outside of Germany after a Master's from a German Fachhochschule" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;germany&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:53:00.140" Score="6" ViewCount="6565" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;M. Hama and T, Imahashi. Periodic β-expansions for certain classes of Pisot numbers. &lt;em&gt;Comment. Math. Univ. St. Paul.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;46&lt;/strong&gt;(2):103–116, 1997.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer citing the full names of the authors, however, I'm unable to find them. I tried googling their names, finding what is their affiliation, but I did not succeed. Is there any standard way how to find scientists' full names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T15:02:48.070" Title="How to know the full name of paper authors?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27700" CreationDate="2014-08-27T14:01:39.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First go to the original journal web page for the paper in question. That might have more information. It may have their full names, links to other papers by them, and will almost always have their affiliation at the time of submission of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also search the usual literature databases for other papers in the same field by the same author: other journals may have the author' full names; furthermore, more recent papers will have their most recent affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got their most recent affiliation, you can then search that institution's website for the authors' home pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, the paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110007696209/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listed here&lt;/a&gt;. By clicking on the author names, I find that &lt;a href=&quot;http://ci.nii.ac.jp/nrid/9000017197298&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hama Masaki&lt;/a&gt; is one of the names you are after: by using the distinctive &quot;Pisot&quot; from the paper title, I can narrow down to an individual. A bit of searching for the full name and Pisot gets me what I think is a different form of the same name: 浜, 正樹 ; searching for that with Pisot gets me what looks like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.u-bunkyo.ac.jp/faculty/staff/5308.html?id=5&amp;amp;category=10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;author's home page&lt;/a&gt;. This should be enough to enable you to contact that author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for goodness sake, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12391/96&quot;&gt;don't go directly citing a paper that you haven't read&lt;/a&gt;. I'm grateful to Peteris for the comment on the original question that deserves higher profile than a comment: indirect citations are one of the ways in which myths are born and are spread: see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312714535679&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent read on &quot;Academic urban legends&quot; from Ole Bjørn Rekdal&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sss.sagepub.com/content/44/4/638.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T15:02:48.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8246" CreationDate="2014-08-27T14:09:12.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a staff member at an American university.  Lecturers here don't take on graduate students (Research Assistants) to advise for their thesis, guiding their research, etc. which is a major component of a professor's duties and legacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21155" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:09:12.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27690" CreationDate="2014-08-27T14:23:36.990" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying as an international student, you need TOEFL. It does not depend on you high school education. For international students, you will be considered as a non-native english speaker, so toefl is necessary. If you are applying as a domestic student (meanign you have citizenship/greencard), you dont need toefl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, toefl is a very easy exam!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21156" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:23:36.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27699" CreationDate="2014-08-27T16:01:43.850" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, there's no formal obstacle to applying to a US program, since almost all of them require only a bachelor's degree for admission. I similarly don't see a major problem with admissions to Canadian or other European universities, since you would have a master's degree and therefore have an &quot;equivalent&quot; degree, so long as you're staying in the same discipline (electrical engineering to electrical engineering); rules may be different if you're moving between fields (e.g., computer science to materials science).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you may run into a problem in admissions is that as a &lt;em&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/em&gt;, your school may not have as strong an international profile as from &lt;em&gt;Hochschule&lt;/em&gt; and other schools of equivalent rank in Europe. Consequently, the school you're applying to may not have ever had applicants from your &lt;em&gt;Fachhochschule&lt;/em&gt;. Consequently, regardless of how good your profile and application are, you still represent an &quot;unknown&quot; quantity, and therefore there is a greater risk to the department by admitting you instead of someone from a school that is better familiar to the department to which you're applying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-European questions, the number of credit points aren't that important. For European admissions, there may be an issue regarding this, but that's really decided on a university-by-university basis, so you'll need to consult the individual schools you're interested in for guidance. However, taking additional credits beyond what is required for admission won't help you nearly as much as demonstrating research potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T17:59:36.770" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T17:59:36.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27695" CreationDate="2014-08-27T16:32:19.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think at least twice about getting a letter of recommendation for admission to a PhD program in X from someone who does not themselves have a PhD in X or some closely related field.  (No PhD at all is to my mind no worse than a PhD in a totally unrelated field.)  The reason is that a grad school admission letter makes an argument that you (i) are a strong candidate for the program compared to the stream of candidates known to both the recommender and the readers in the department and (ii) will succeed in the program.  Someone who does not have a PhD in a closely related field to X is simply much less convincing with regard to (ii) than the majority of people who do.  One also worries about (i).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &lt;em&gt;all the letters&lt;/em&gt; you get for admission to a PhD program should address (i) and (ii) and not too much else.  Thus getting a letter from someone who directed a corporate internship you did or non-academic job you had or volunteer experience you have is a poor choice &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; these experiences are directly, intimately related to (i) and (ii) above.  For instance if you are applying to a PhD program in chemical engineering then if you worked for a chemical engineering firm and did research that academic chemical engineers find significant (so especially if you published any academic papers), then great: get a letter from someone there, whether they have a PhD in that field or not.  Also, qualifications are correlated with credentials but not perfectly: everyone has their own example of a famous academic who happens not to have this or or that academic degree.  If you are interested in a program on the border of mathematics and philosophy and can get a recommendation letter from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kripke&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saul Kripke&lt;/a&gt;, do it!  Don't be deterred by the fact that he doesn't have a PhD: that would be ridiculous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your situation.  About your potential recommender, you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not sound like a good choice.  By &quot;not being involved in research in a big way&quot;, he cannot speak to your research potential as well as someone who is.  Since he does not have a PhD, the readers will probably wonder about how trustworthy he is (relative to other writers) when he insists that you will be successful in a PhD program.  Unless you have a good reason to believe that the faculty doing admissions will know this person personally and esteem him highly, I would avoid getting a letter from him.  However, if you feel like he is uniquely well qualified to speak to issues (i) and (ii), then it might be worth trying to have him give information to a more traditionally appropriate letter writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T17:14:20.333" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T17:14:20.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-27T17:39:27.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't directly apply, because it doesn't so come from prior prep work or experience, but during my doctoral program, there was a mandatory class that had two different groups in it - PhDs in that department, and PhDs outside it who, while fairly sophisticated, clearly lacked the same background in terms of coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How he handled this is to divide the course into &quot;tracks&quot;. There was a modest, &quot;shooting for a B&quot; track, and a much more challenging &quot;shooting for an A&quot; track, with a hard mode &quot;shooting for the A+ track&quot; that actually had little effect besides drawing a certain sort of student, since the + in a grade doesn't even exist at that institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department majors were required to be on the A or A+ track, everyone else could choose. You might similarly be able to ask students to self-rate their familiarity with the subject, and strongly encourage those who rate themselves well to consider a more challenging track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T17:39:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27686" CreationDate="2014-08-27T18:48:38.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The unpleasant reality is that it is entirely possible that you may not pass your dissertation. In fact, given what you've written here, I would be surprised if you did as of right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate level work is hard. I mean if research were easy everyone would be doing it right? And so some of the things Graduate students need to learn early in their career is time management, planning and asking for help as needed. In an ideal world your advisor would have caught your floundering much earlier in the process but academia, as life, isn't always ideal. A good rule of thumb is if, by the halfway point of your timeline(so 1 year into a 2 year Masters for example) you don't have a solid plan for accomplishing your goal that includes timelines, goalposts and a plan to catch up on additional material you need... then you have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By June, then, warning bells should have been going off in your head. I have some sympathy(everyone has to learn this stuff on their own at some point) but not too much. Part of graduate level Computer Science work, at least, means figuring out languages and implementations on your own. It sounds like you were looking for something a little more guided, more like undergraduate courses, but that's not how it works for Graduate level research. That you are a week out and just now casting about for a solution, that you, after running into the exact same problem when asking for help too late in June, just now found out that you could not implement improvements on a preexisting software suite... these are massively problematic. Ideally after the issues in June you should have chosen low hanging fruit for your last ditch effort of improving someone elses' suite. The first thing your lit review on that software suite should have contained is a list of potential pitfalls or limitations of the software and rough ideas on improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that's all rather negative. I've written it because, from what you've written, you seem to not &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; what the fundamental problem has been for your research experience. All that being said there may still be solutions but it's going to be hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like these implementations(different softwares) are focused on a particular field or topic. An option, a hard to do going to take overnights for the next week, option would be to do benchmarks and comparisons of currently available software. A study of the limitations and weaknesses(and strengths) of currently available software can be a viable topic. That it took you a month to set up the environment to run the software you were trying to improve means that this would potentially be very hard for you to do in a week. An option is to take the software you have now and run exhaustive benchmarks and analysis on that specific software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not suggesting this as a 'run out and do it now!' sort of thing. Honestly even the most on-the-ball student who has had no issues would be hard pressed to write a decent dissertation in a week. That's a student who has all of their data. But a passing dissertation is a possiblity. Your first step is to go talk to your advisor as soon as possible. Explain the current situation, explain a potential solution(exhaustive benchmarks on a particular software or comparative benchmarks between different software implementations) and, finally, explain what you are going to do to make sure that the day before the dissertation is due you won't have another emergency situation like you have right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T18:48:38.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27686" CreationDate="2014-08-27T19:02:19.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I fully agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27708/15723&quot;&gt;the points Nahkki made&lt;/a&gt; - take some time to reflect those points! &#xA;From a practical standpoint I see different options (some depending on your university's regulations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for an extension. But honestly, I would not expect a very good outcome. I would say you'd need at least 2-3 additional month to create something worthy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fail and restart. Sounds bad, but in most institutions you are having a second chance and you can start from scratch. Look for a topic which is better aligned to your interest and maybe look for a different advisor. It might be better to study a bit longer, but have a good thesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to get through with it. In my optinion the worst option, but if you just want to graduate quickly, it is an option. Make it a literature work, compare existing approaches, ... Many advisors are not willing to let their students fail (they fear legal issues, personal disappointment, bad reviews, ...), so it might work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one thought on option 1 &amp;amp; 3: When I employ someone, I just briefly read the marks and the general bla bla. I usually want to talk about their thesis, what they did and why it was great. This gives the best impression on the future performance of the person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10941" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T20:55:54.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27681" CreationDate="2014-08-27T20:30:51.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of a snarky answer to your question but... did you try Googling &quot;PhD in Computer Science Security&quot;? Perhaps even more useful have you looked at the offerings of your own university to see what a Masters or PhD entails? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be a bit less snarky in PhD programs, at least, it's less about what the degree is called and more about the research and lab you become involved with. If you are interested in focusing on security, which is a broad field, in Computer Science you will often get a degree in 'Computer Science' but you will work in a lab focused on security. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind my first recommendation to you is to do some research. Find out what folks are researching at your current institution, see if you find it interesting. If you can, get involved! This is probably the best way to find out what programs exist out there for your interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even beyond your local school - do some digging. I was about to do a quick Google search and find that there are a couple of schools that are considered to have the 'best'(subjectively of course) Security Information programs. You should be able to find this out as well! Start looking into other schools, see what they offer and also what their researchers are researching. See if anything seems interesting. Start reading papers. Do some research into what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what research is happening at your school. Try to get involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what are the 'best' programs for the topics you are interested in. Who is the 'big name' in the field? Read those papers! &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find 1 person who you want to be when you 'grow up'. In other words find one person whose job you want to have one day. Research how they got there! See if you can build a road map to your own success based on how they got to where they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T20:30:51.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T02:15:38.827" Score="29" ViewCount="8930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that salary inversion is a problem in academia, and it happens when Universities continue to hire new and highly qualified people at higher and higher salaries, but they don't increase the salaries of the existing faculty at the same rates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to ask - why is this actually a problem?  Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20776" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T02:30:19.530" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T23:54:05.757" Title="Why is salary inversion a problem?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27713" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:10:44.053" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are several issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might argue that salary &quot;should&quot; be based on merit and qualifications, but these are highly subjective and often evaluated by people within the university who have other vested interests, so there's a substantial risk that internal politics or other factors may not measure merit in a fair way.  Given this, existing faculty may prefer a system that puts more weight on objective measures like seniority, and faculty have a lot of say in the administration of a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, new hires are not really paid based on their merit and qualifications either: they're paid their market price.  The dean may not think that Assistant Professor A's qualifications really &quot;deserve&quot; a salary of $X, but if the job market is strong and that's what other institutions are paying similar candidates, she either pays him $X or she doesn't get to hire anyone this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, suppose &#xA;Assistant Professor B has been with the department for 3 years.  Her qualifications are comparable to those of A, but she was hired in a year when the job market was weak, so she accepted a low salary offer $Y &amp;lt; $X.  Since then has received a standard raise of a few percent per year, so her salary is still below A's.  She could probably go back on the job market and find a job paying $X, but here she is well on her way to tenure, she has settled in the city with her family, her spouse has a job in the area, and they are disinclined to make another (possibly long-distance) move.  Moreover, changing tenure-track jobs is always challenging (she would have to get letters from within her department, but if too many colleagues find out she is thinking about leaving, it will hurt her standing within the department).  So she has limited mobility and no real leverage to negotiate for a higher salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she finds out A is making more than her, despite being similarly qualified, she will not be happy.  Unhappy faculty who nonetheless have no interest in leaving is not a recipe for a well-functioning institution.  And a dean who's in favor of correcting salary inversions will probably get Professor B's vote.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T03:45:19.717" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T03:45:19.717" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27680" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:18:41.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, most undergraduate students (and new graduates) are under-qualified to do research in any field, including their own. For various &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12111/11365&quot;&gt;altruistic and non-altruistic reasons&lt;/a&gt;, we're often willing to take them on anyways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hire an undergraduate or M.S. student to work in my research group, I look for qualities that tell me they'll be train-able, and also a good investment for me. Things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motivation (as demonstrated by showing that they actually know what we are currently working on, have looked at our publications before asking for a job, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interest in pursuing graduate studies related to my field of research &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;soft skills (oral and written communication, organization, note-taking, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to learn new concepts and skills quickly and somewhat independently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;basic quantitative and technical ability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't expect &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; I hire at this level to have relevant experience or experimental skills specific to my lab, whether they have a degree in the field or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, keep pursuing opportunities &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8127/11365&quot;&gt;like these&lt;/a&gt;, be honest about your lack of a biology degree, but highlight your eagerness to learn and your &quot;transferable&quot; abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look for research opportunities in cross-disciplinary labs that combine your new interest (biology) with your previous degree (environmental science). For these opportunities, your degree might actually give you a competitive advantage over biology students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T03:18:41.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27713" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:32:07.887" Score="42" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to ask - why is this actually a problem? Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it should.  But consider what happens if I've been sitting at a desk for ten years, doing hard work and feeling good about it, and one day you arrive, take the next desk, and have a higher salary than I do.  It is hard for me not to feel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) That my employer is less than grateful for my ten years of desk sitting, given that I (apparently; as you point out this does not logically follow) am being paid less than if I hadn't done any of it whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) That maybe I have been sitting at the same desk for too long.  It gives me the idea to follow your lead and earn more money by starting fresh at a new desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus: although one can say that the market is the market and its invisible hand is totally amoral, in reality this amoral practice is bad for &lt;em&gt;morale&lt;/em&gt;.  And if you as an employer do happen to value the person who has been sitting there for ten years as much as the new guy you would hire -- or even if replacing the 10 year veteran would be disruptive to the workforce -- then you may have some interest in pushing back against this market force.  The desk-sitters certainly will, and depending on their mobility, you may want to take their feelings into account.  (In a sufficiently bad economy, maybe you can persuade them that they're looking at it wrong, and that instead they should be very happy about having ten years of steady employment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T13:42:40.787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T13:42:40.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:42:17.050" Score="17" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This question may be specific to US university systems.  Also, sorry it is long.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US universities usually have some provision for students to drop a course.  Within the first N weeks of the term, if they decide they don't want to continue with a course they are taking, they can drop out of it.  Their official transcript will show no record that they ever took it, and it will have no effect on their GPA.  If they are paying tuition per course or per credit, they may get a refund.  Usually they have to stay enrolled in some minimum number of courses, so this can probably only be done for one or two courses per term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students may have many reasons for dropping a course, but obviously one common reason is that they are not doing well in the course and are afraid they may fail it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There may be another option to withdraw from the course up to N+K weeks, but with a note on the transcript saying that they enrolled in the course and later withdrew, maybe listing the pseudo-grade of &quot;W&quot;.  This usually doesn't affect their GPA but may look bad to prospective employers, graduate schools, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized the other day that there is very wide variation between institutions in the value of N.  At Institution A, the medium-sized public university where I currently work, we have N=2.  At Institution B, the small private college where I got my bachelor's degree, we had N=11!  (I had vaguely remembered that N seemed to be larger at B, but I was still startled when I looked back at an old B calendar to check.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One significant difference: at A, students very often pay by the credit, and get a refund if they drop, so the university has a financial disincentive to let them go.  At B, most students paid a flat tuition fee per semester, and didn't get any refund if they dropped a course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it seems like this could have a rather profound effect on student outcomes.  When N is small, students have only a short time to commit to their schedule, and can more easily get in over their heads.  By the time they've had a midterm exam and realized they are in trouble, N weeks have already passed and they are stuck in a course.  Most likely, they end up with an F (or several, if the time they spent trying to pass the hard course hurts their work in their other classes).  Their GPA drops, hurting their eventual job prospects.  It may drop below the institution's minimum for continued enrollment, in which case they may quit college altogether.  I'd expect an overall negative effect on retention and graduation rates, job placement, and other common measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if N is large, then by the time the drop date approaches, students may be more than halfway through the course, and may have taken several exams.  If they are likely to fail the course, they probably know it by now, and the obvious course of action is to drop it.  In an extreme case, the result may be that students hardly ever get D's and F's (because they drop those courses), and grades may inflate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What factors do universities actually consider in choosing or changing their value of N?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research studying the effect of N on student outcomes?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T05:32:45.617" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T17:53:26.670" Title="Variation in drop dates, and effect on student outcomes" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27713" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:45:36.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main issue in that is that you will drive your talent away and keep the left over if you do not make the correction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the market is higher than a few years ago, if you do not correct the salaries, basically you encourage all the one that have salaries below market to look for new position. The best ones will succeed while the less good ones will fail. Results: you lose your best element and keeps the less good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since academia has very little 'fixed' position the phenomena is less striking, but in a company (particularly in country where laying off is frowned upon) you get a concentration of some 'that cannot go somewhere else'. This is definitely not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20371" LastEditorUserId="20371" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T23:54:05.757" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T23:54:05.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27719" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:33:26.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the formulation and application of formal rules and regulations by a university, instructor, or publisher on matters such as academic misconduct, recruiting, hiring, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T13:53:00.510" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T13:53:00.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27720" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:33:26.370" Score="0" Body="On the formulation and application of formal rules and regulations by a university, instructor, or publisher." OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T13:53:00.510" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T13:53:00.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27691" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:39:58.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student, I think you are doing an original research, so should be developing a new method, model, formulation, etc so that you can solve many other problems or cases by means of your own formulation. Even, by your model, you should be doing some verifications and find results others found in their publications. So, during your PhD you are being prepared to do independent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think becoming independent in every phase of life should be assessed based on the person's abilities and the outcome of his activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person can find/understand the things he has to do without help of others, consult his problems with others, does what he has to do to reach his goals and finally finish his jobs/projects and has an income; then he can be considered an independent person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic world, the case does not change so much. If the student can review literature, read books and papers and understand them, find a new problem to solve, start to work on the problem and consult his problems with another person; and finally submit and publish his paper in a journal; then he should be considered an independent researcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the thing in your question that you mentioned &lt;em&gt;how many post-docs is needed to become independent researcher?&lt;/em&gt;; I don't believe a person need many post-docs. Even, some researchers do not have any PhDs and they do perfect researches. The &lt;strong&gt;important part of doing independent research&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;the art of problem solving&lt;/strong&gt;. And this may be gained by no PhDs or by hundreds of post-docs! So, I encourage you to successfully finish your PhD, and try to learn how to solve your academic problems and how to get them published. After you graduate, you will be able to do research by your own too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T07:36:01.510" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T07:36:01.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23521" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:41:00.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You add an acknowledgement not only for your adviser but also for your family, friends, institution etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you yourself said he helped during first half – so do remember the starting is always the most difficult one. Moreover you should be thankful because I think you do not know how difficult it is to even get a PhD adviser in some places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just sit back and think – didn’t his “0% contribution” ultimately help you to learn so many things on your own, which you would not have learnt otherwise?&#xA;And the most important – your not adding the acknowledgement may show your un-thankful nature and in future (in your interviews etc) you may not always be able to defend against: “why you didn't added acknowledgement?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21179" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T20:00:17.660" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T20:00:17.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:46:35.327" Score="42" ViewCount="37509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked with my adviser for a few months as a graduate student. Everyone, including her other graduate students, seems to call her by her first name. She never expressed a preference to me, so I've been calling her &quot;Dr. Smith&quot;. She signs her emails with her first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried that I am being awkward. I don't mind calling her &quot;Dr. Smith&quot;, but during meetings where other students are present, it would be jarring to call her &quot;Dr. Smith&quot; while other students use her first name in the same conversation. So far, I have managed to avoid this issue by choosing my words very strategically to avoid directly addressing my adviser at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't wish my adviser to think that I am making some sort of statement by being unnecessarily formal. On the other hand, I don't wish to appear too informal either. Apart from that, once you've addressed someone by their title for several months, unceremoniously switching to their first name out of the blue seems like it would be very strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any tactful way of resolving this predicament, besides waiting and hoping for the adviser to express a preference? I am in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21178" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T10:18:05.083" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T10:18:05.083" Title="Should I call my adviser by her first name?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T07:14:44.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all her other grad students use her first name, you can too. It would be a very strange person who let some of her grad students use her first name and insisted on others using Dr Surname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T07:14:44.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-08-28T07:17:03.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all this mess you are suffering, I am trying to put myself at your position as I am also a researcher. As you said you don't want to cut the relationship so we will have to be polite as well as have to refuse his work also. Unfortunately I have to ask this - how much will it take to end up all his work? (Sorry to ask but what if, just be strong and complete it and end up with all mess). Next, can't you show you cannot do it efficiently now because you busy in your work. (You can do this by asking some questions about data analysis related to his work again and again and again and again.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if we can't do anything with him, do you have any friend/colleague who can help you with his work or what you can do is say your professor to provide you a helping source as you have your work also (say politely) and assign most of the work to source provided by guiding him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing actually working - than just do your work! Only your work will make your profile strong, once you done with the degree from there - nobody can do anything. If you had decided to be in this research field - you will occasionally come across these type of problems or worse. Don't worry! Just take it as a lesson for your future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the most important thing - when you are a professor never ever let anything like this happen to your student. I know it's not your problem's solution but this will help any other student in same trap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21179" LastEditorDisplayName="user24055" LastEditDate="2018-03-16T04:24:55.647" LastActivityDate="2018-03-16T04:24:55.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T07:28:54.640" Score="104" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excuse me, do you prefer me to call you Dr Smith or Ellen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A polite question will solve all your doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T07:28:54.640" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T07:46:36.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite I think that your question is already answered in the other two related questions in this site (&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10671/should-your-phd-students-call-you-by-your-first-name&quot;&gt;Should your PhD students call you by your first name?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25758/is-it-acceptable-for-me-an-undergrad-to-call-professors-and-other-research-pro/25761&quot;&gt;Is it acceptable for me (an undergrad) to call professors and other research professionals by their first names?&lt;/a&gt;); I am posting my answer as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go back to the culture of the country in which you are studying. In some cultures, it is very normal to call a professor (also a boss, teacher, someone who is older, etc) by his first name. For instance, in my culture, it is very odd to call a professor by his first name because even students are sometimes called by their last name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at other students of your advisor who are in your level and see how they call her. If they call her by her first name, you can also call her by her first name too. You are a student too. What's the difference? But I advice you to look at the students at your level. Perhaps post-docs or PhDs call their advisor another way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask her directly and politely. Try not to complicate things for yourself. Ask her politely the way she prefers to be called. I remember when I wanted to write a professor's surname in an email and I was not sure how should I spell his name correctly, I asked him and he was happy to tell me the correct way of his name spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T09:30:44.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27729" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:03:29.517" Score="2" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to submit my first article to a peer-reviewed journal.  I have basically already decided which one, but I have a shortlist and am still in principle considering my options.  One of the questions I have is about the timetable for eventual publication.  What should I expect?  (In the long run, it probably won't make a large difference, but for me, right now, it would be nice to get something out the door this side of New Year if it is at all possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am puzzled by the lack of information about timetables and deadlines on the sites of these journals.  I have looked at journals from related fields in the past and they all seem to be very secretive (or undecided?) about these things.  Is this on purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I can infer something from previous publication dates -- a biannual which was last published in May might be slated for a next issue in November and probably have a deadline several weeks before that, which I probably won't make (it is now late August and the review process would apparently take several months).  But why don't they simply put a date up front so authors won't have to fret?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be out of line to email the editor of the journal and ask about the planned deadlines for the next couple of issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20411" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T14:41:08.480" Title="Journal publishing timetables" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27728" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:12:50.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most fields and for most journals, there is no time-table because &lt;strong&gt;it takes as long as it takes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that after they receive your paper, they will send it out to a few referees, which have to be found first. How long finding referees takes is not under the control of the journal editors - they have to ask people until three of them said &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the referees have to write the review. Typically, they have about 3 months of time for that, and a request for extension is almost always granted. So think of it more like 6 months. Exceptions apply here (e.g., for the journal &quot;Science&quot;, who manage to enforce shorter reviewing times).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your paper maybe accepted only conditional to changes. You do the changes within a month or so, and then reviewing starts again. So there goes another 3-6  months in addition to the time that the editor needs for organizing the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that for most reputable journals, there is a long pipeline of papers in-progress and whenever they make a new issue that is not a special issue, they take some papers that already went through the process and publish them. There can be a substatial &quot;out-queue&quot; of these papers, which is why some publishers came up with the concept of already publishing &quot;done&quot; papers before the paper has a journal issue assigned (e.g., for Springer, this is called &quot;Online First&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, in computer science, an overall time span of 1-3 years is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bottom line, the time to publish can only be influenced by the journal editors up to a certain, small, degree, e.g., how swiftly the editor performs actions whenever there is something that she can do at the respective point in time. So publishing a time line would make little sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastEditorUserId="7390" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T08:31:22.900" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:31:22.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27728" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:30:55.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend significantly on what your field is. For me, there would be no way anything other than a very short (and preferably very significant) paper would appear this year. For others a paper will be bordering on out-of-date by then (I'm told).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:30:55.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T09:07:16.143" Score="8" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have realised that my performance improves when I make my progress publicly accountable. For example, my jogging times improve and I lose more weight when I enter myself onto a public rankings list. I would imagine that my academic progress would also improve if I make my progress publicly visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what online rankings or any other publicly visible progress reports might be available in academia? I've heard of impact factors, but is there anything else? I'm sure there are people against turning academia into a competition, but I find some sort of competitive element really improves my performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="21203" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T00:24:22.180" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T00:24:22.180" Title="Public accountability for academic work" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27731" CreationDate="2014-08-28T09:20:06.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always compare the length of publication lists, e.g., using &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/a&gt; or even your colleagues' homepages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summaries of publications and their impact are (attempted to be) provided by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;h-index&lt;/a&gt; and similar measures. (Impact factors really pertain to journals, not researchers... but indices for researchers may take into account whether the researcher publishes in a low- or high-impact journal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be, uh, &lt;em&gt;lively&lt;/em&gt; discussions about the merits or not of such measures, especially in the context of hiring and remuneration decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem with using such measures for short- and medium-term motivation as you propose is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27728/journal-publishing-timetables&quot;&gt;lag between the work and the publication&lt;/a&gt; - feedback is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; too slow. If you are looking for motivation, you may want to check &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions&quot;&gt;Productivity.SE.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.560" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:30:18.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27731" CreationDate="2014-08-28T10:31:30.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some more ideas to complement StephanKolassa's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible idea that crossed my mind multiple times in the past is making a &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; board showing my papers in different columns according to their progress status, with a scale such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0: preliminary idea, not clear if it will even work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1: some experiments or theoretical work done, seems promising; will likely lead to a publication but lots of work needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2: most of the experiments/proofs ready, still to write down in coherent form&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 draft mainly ready&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 published as preprint and submitted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 first round of positive reviews, awaits modifications or already resubmitted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 published; congratulations!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other random ideas: if you are writing a long document such as a thesis or a book, you may want to publish online a graph tracking the number of pages written vs. time. Similarly with lines of code. If you are using git you can gather lots of statistics using &lt;a href=&quot;http://gitstats.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitStats&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gitstats.sourceforge.net/examples/viewgit/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T10:31:30.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27746" CreationDate="2014-08-28T10:59:30.163" Score="4" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my graduation in electronics engineering from India, and an M.Sc. that concentrated on certain &quot;sub-specializations&quot; (communication, DSP and control engineering) from a UK university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading for a Ph.D. in the areas of machine learning and computer vision (also at a UK university), however due to a number of factors I was unable to complete it. These factors include health problems (addictions, hormonal imbalances, depression, etc.) and trying to work in a topic that was too mathematical for my background, in addition to having too much leeway (and consequently not enough support) in my research from my supervisors. (Evidently my supervisors thought me as sufficiently capable at the beginning of my research to let me do what I wanted, but eventually I proved them wrong! :P )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years have passed since I terminated my Ph.D. programme. I feel I have worked through most of my health problems now (not all the way there, but I feel better now than I remember being in a very long time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did develop an appreciation for &quot;pure&quot; mathematics during my time doing Ph.D. research (the lack of sufficient knowledge and skill notwithstanding). Nowadays I spend some time studying undergraduate-level mathematics textbooks on my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I'm examining options that would prepare me to do research in mathematics applied to the area of machine learning, preferably in a professional or academic context (rather than just at a personal level). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying on one's own is all very well, but I feel I need to impose more structure and have better focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently found out about GRE subject tests. I was wondering if preparing for (and taking) the GRE mathematics test might be helpful? I'm looking at it from these angles: (a) having a study &quot;syllabus&quot; to help concentrate my effort, rather than jumping about subjects and topics haphazardly (b) getting an idea of where I stand compared to other students, and (c) strengthening my case in case there's a possibility of going back to university (at the postgraduate level, that is; while I might seriously consider doing an M.Sc. or M.Phil in applied mathematics in the US or the UK, I don't think it's practical to start afresh at the undergraduate level now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is preparing for the GRE mathematics test a good idea? Any other suggestions (alternatively, or alongside)? And - so as not to put the cart before the horse - how likely is it for someone from my background to be considered for admission to a postgraduate mathematics programme (at a decent university) in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21187" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T13:53:59.680" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T15:34:30.397" Title="Will preparing for the mathematics GRE help me towards my goal of doing research in applied mathematics?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gre&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T11:36:15.577" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't think this is close to such a big issue as you seem to make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's really bothering me in your question is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So far, I have managed to avoid this issue by choosing my words very strategically to avoid directly addressing my adviser at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are investing &lt;strong&gt;way&lt;/strong&gt; too much effort into addressing this non-issue. As I see it, you have 3 options, all of them entirely valid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask her, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27726/15723&quot;&gt;Davidmh says&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silently switch to calling her by first name. Everybody does it, why wouldn't you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go on calling her by last name, until specifically prompted by her to go for first name instead. You don't mind, she apparently does not mind, so why bother?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literally all three are probably ok. Just decide for one option, and then start thinking about more important things (such as your research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T13:10:08.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:33:28.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about it.  If everyone else calls her by her first name, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; she signs her emails with her first name, then she clearly doesn't mind being called by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switching suddenly to calling her by her first name will be far less awkward than avoiding addressing her at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:33:28.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10588" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:46:19.900" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a Computer Science program at a school that has a heavy focus on engineering fields.  There are only a couple of girls in the program, but they are both excellent students.  I've spent a bit of time studying with both of them, and one in particular has been able to help me with understanding some difficult concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a programming class that we took, the professor noted that she was an excellent student.  When she went to his office after a test to discuss her grade, he began to preach on women in computer science.  He told her how supportive he was, and relayed a story about sexism, which he condemned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She expressed to me how uncomfortable it made her to be singled out like that.  She has told me several times that the professors want her to be a &quot;poster-child&quot; and &quot;become a leader&quot;.  This is all well meaning, but she simply wants to be a (very good) student, and fit in with the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the opinion that when a woman is in a mostly male field of study, she can have undue pressure put on her by well-meaning staff and peers.  It's almost as if they are told that if they are not a leader, then they are letting other women in their field down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until we stop treating women like a rarity in certain fields (even if they are), they will not feel comfortable there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20342" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:46:19.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27731" CreationDate="2014-08-28T13:07:33.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Academic Search&lt;/a&gt; maintains top-something lists of researchers in different fields (e.g., top-100 researchers in software engineering, top-20 researchers in WWW in the last 5 years, etc.). Clearly, you will only start showing up in these rankings after you already had some number of cited publications, so it is probably not useful for your PhD research. Also, as I have experienced myself, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16303/how-does-microsoft-academic-search-generate-its-rankings&quot;&gt;the ranking is weird&lt;/a&gt;, so I wouldn't say it is exactly a reliable way to measure your progress. Finally, it should be noted that the feedback achieved by these rankings is going to be &lt;strong&gt;very slow&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, you will (theoretically) see improvements in these rankings &lt;strong&gt;years&lt;/strong&gt; after you wrote high-impact papers. It is not exactly that you can use it to track how good your last week was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and compare your profile against profiles of other people of similar academic age or standing. The good thing here is that you should at least show up as soon as you have co-authored something. However, similar restrictions to above apply - progress will be very slow, and any comparison based on e.g., Google Scholar h-index will be a noisy heuristic at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T13:07:33.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27713" CreationDate="2014-08-28T14:12:47.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides all the other great answers here, there is another reason that merit does not entirely govern salaries. Many universities have an annual period for &quot;merit&quot; raises which require little justification, saving raises for &quot;equity&quot; reasons for special cases. Since everyone is eligible for these so-called merit raises, almost everyone gets one (management being what it is). As such, institutions impose caps on departments that may limit merit raises to 2-3% per year over the department. Coupling that to the public nature of government employee salaries, you can see how these raises become little more than cost-of-living adjustments. On the other hand, departments have to recruit new hires against a competitive background market that may cause a new salary to be higher than a 2% annually compounded salary from 10 years ago. Thus, an inversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T14:12:47.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T14:21:25.523" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;All other answers are correct.  One note to add is that if you are coming from different cultures, it is possible that your advisor does in fact feel awkward about it, but is not very comfortable with stating so explicitly.  So it's likely best to get this straightened out as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, this flowchart provides the answer ;-).  On a more serious note, you seem to be in the situation that the student in the comic is.  In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;avoiding to address him/her at all is worse than either being too formal or too informal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w9QQJ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Comic&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1153&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhD Comics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do not take seriously.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T14:21:25.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27728" CreationDate="2014-08-28T14:41:08.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally use the information given in published papers (i.e. Elsevier journals provide dates for submission/submission after revision/acceptance or publication ). This can be somehow indicative yet I've personally experienced both ends of the spectrum (later/earlier than the average turnaround). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9019" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T14:41:08.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27745" CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:18:20.837" Score="24" ViewCount="3082" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few months ago I reviewed my first paper. The authors submitted a major revision and I am asked to review the paper again. I received a long cover letter where my comments and the comments of two other anonymous reviewers have been answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is relatively long (40 pages) so I am trying to avoid unnecessary work. Should I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-review the &lt;strong&gt;entire paper&lt;/strong&gt; as if I saw it the first time,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just check if &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; comments have been addressed, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just check if &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; comments have been addressed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that if I just check the comments, it is possible that the authors have made some other changes, or that their changes might have broken the integrity of the paper as a whole. On the other hand if I re-review the entire paper it might be unfair to the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T19:49:43.847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T01:22:57.990" Title="How to review a major revision of a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27743" CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:24:44.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is difficult and, to some extent, a matter of opinion. So, my opinion is this: Your job as reviewer is to identify problems and make critical comments that will improve a paper. In the first round, hopefully this is what you did. The editor then looks at these comments to decide whether to offer an opportunity for revision. In many (most?) journals, an offer of revision is a 85%+ chance of the paper eventually being published. So, when the paper comes back to you, it has already received a round of review and has already been deemed nearly ready for publication. You need to check to make sure that your comments and concerns have been adequately address. Particularly with major revisions, you also need to make sure that no significant new errors have been introduced. This can be a lot of work, but that is precisely your job; you put in effort now in hopes that others reviewing your paper given the same level of effort. If a paper addresses your concerns and introduces no new errors, your job is to recommend to the editor to publish the paper (possibly with minimal additional revisions to address new or lingering concerns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6984" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T15:24:44.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27743" CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:27:56.780" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a major review has been requested, I think you really do need to go through the whole paper, for exactly the reasons you cite—the changes &lt;em&gt;you've&lt;/em&gt; requested may conflict with the changes another reviewer has requested, and therefore the authors may have had to exercise significant discretion on which one to formally include in their revisions. Similarly, there may have been other changes that arose from your comments or those of your fellow reviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor reviews require a lower level of commitment, unless the authors have indicated more substantial changes have been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T15:27:56.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27734" CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:34:30.397" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The mathematics subject GRE covers roughly the first half of the content that one would learn in a good undergraduate math program.  Much of it (calculus, linear algebra, differential equations) is material that an engineering student would likely be familiar with already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the only good reason to study for the GRE is if you need to take the GRE, i.e. if you want to apply to a school that requires it.  In that case, it is probably best to spend a limited amount of time studying in the few months or weeks before you take it.  Otherwise, I think your time would be better spent on more advanced topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T15:34:30.397" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-08-28T16:03:49.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practical question: How important is it to you that this paper be published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do it, will it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to the first is &quot;very&quot; and the answer to the second is 'no&quot;, you're sorta stuck. What's right, and what will achieve the desired outcome, are different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T16:03:49.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T16:10:46.637" Score="10" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following situation: a student has started a bachelor's/master's/PhD at a lesser-known university program but feels that he would benefit from a more prestigious institution with better professors, equipment, and learning environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He decides to apply for a bachelor's/master's/PhD (the same degree as his previous level) program at top schools, planning to abandon his current program if he is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this unusual or frowned upon? Is the fact that the applicant has already started a program likely to hurt the applicant's chances? (Do the answers to the above questions depend on the current level of the applicant?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15142" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T08:48:24.223" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T08:48:24.223" Title="Is it unusual to apply for a degree without finishing your current one?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27713" CreationDate="2014-08-28T16:17:21.040" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Salary inversions are mostly a problem at public schools, where the state budget situation and state legislature have some control over whether there will be any raises at all.  Due to inflation, this means that often all state employee salaries are shrinking in real terms.  So, the longer you have the job the less you're paid no matter how much merit your work has.  Hence salary inversions are not typically a result of younger profs having more merit, but rather the budget realities of working for a state government.  Of course, there are other affects that can counteract this: many schools have funds specifically intended for reversing inversions, and many schools have automatic raises at tenure and/or promotion so that there are at least some raises that the state can't block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: salary inversions are a problem &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; because &quot;salary [should] be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk.&quot;  Inversions happen because given equal qualifications the person who has been at the job &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; time will be paid &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T16:17:21.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T17:03:38.130" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine that someone who signs her e-mails to you with only her first name would object if you addressed her by her first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T17:03:38.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T17:24:03.447" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A person must never refer to there boss or somebody they work with who is in a higher position than you by their first name, if one of my employees called me by my first name, I would be deeply upset, it is unprofessional to use your bosses first name while talking to him/her, always use mr/dr/prof. [last name]!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21198" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T17:24:03.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27748" CreationDate="2014-08-28T17:47:01.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US this is generally known as &quot;transferring&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the undergraduate level it is very common, and institutions usually have standard procedures for admission, awarding credit for equivalent courses already taken, and so on.  Students may transfer for a variety of reasons: to attend a more prestigious place, or to find a program that's a better fit for their interests, or just because they'd rather live in a different city.  Transfer applicants are not necessarily advantaged or disadvantaged compared to new freshmen, though the applicant's record at their current institution will be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the graduate level, it is less common, and tends to happen when a student is actively unhappy with  their current program.  It tends to be handled on a more &lt;em&gt;ad hoc&lt;/em&gt; basis and it's hard to say whether such applicants are generally at an advantage or a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T17:47:01.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27748" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:24:15.763" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking strictly from the US, this is defined as a being a &quot;transfer student&quot; and is extremely common. How common? Well, it's a federally reported statistic called &quot;Transfer-Out Rate&quot;. I am fond of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegeresults.org/default.aspx&quot;&gt;CollegeResults.org&lt;/a&gt; tool, which defines this stat nicely (emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The percentage of students who began in the 2006 cohort of first-time,&#xA;  full-time, bachelor's or equivalent degree-seeking freshmen at the&#xA;  institution and transferred to another school without earning a degree&#xA;  at the initial institution. &lt;strong&gt;Reporting of transfer data is optional for&#xA;  colleges and universities that do not consider preparing students for&#xA;  transfer as part of their mission.&lt;/strong&gt; (IPEDS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegeresults.org/collegeprofile.aspx?institutionid=102094&quot;&gt;University of South Alabama&lt;/a&gt; is reported as having about 16% of students transfer out to another institution before receiving a degree. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collegeresults.org/collegeprofile.aspx?institutionid=196088&quot;&gt;University at Buffalo&lt;/a&gt; (New York) posts about a 20% transfer rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as the write-up for the statistic suggests, some schools even offer specific degree tracks designed to transfer. In the state of Wisconsin, the entire &quot;technical college&quot; offers such programs. In Florida, these are called &quot;junior colleges&quot; and offer similar tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even at Universities designed without this as their intent, there is always a percentage of people who transfer in and out at an undergraduate level. As Nate Eldredge points out, this is not nearly so common at higher levels, but it happens often enough and is hardly taboo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Upsides&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is desirable to plan to transfer, such as getting started at a nearby location while you make preparations/plans to go elsewhere (I did this myself, starting in a tech school and applying to my target University just the next semester once I had family/work preparations in place). Many people spend 2-3 years at such colleges, taking all the classes they can towards their higher target degree (usually called &quot;general degree requirements&quot;) - usually because it is more convenient and often vastly cheaper (a person can easily save tens of thousands of dollars in tuition this way). Class sizes are often smaller. The difficulty level of the material varies, but most &quot;introduction&quot; classes look a lot an awful lot alike after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Downsides&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to go onto higher degrees, especially to a PhD or competitive Masters program, recommendation letters and research experience (when possible) are highly desirable if not absolutely necessary. If you will only be at an institution for 2 years instead of 4-5, then you have a lot less time to find and build these connections! Surely you can do it, but I know I've personally found it took me about 2 years to find the right connections that seem to have &quot;stuck&quot; and suit me and what I want to do (after figuring out what I actually want to do, naturally). If I had completed most of the degree before coming to my present institution, this might mean I'd have missed out on such opportunities to do some real work with these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most institutions have requirements of &quot;credits done in residence&quot;, so you can't just do 4/5ths of a degree at Podunk Clown School Of Higher Learning and transfer into Harvard for a semester and get your diploma. Which is unfortunate, because that sounds like it would make for a great B-movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some administrative complications can come into play too. If you decide to retake a course you did poorly on or failed in a previous semester, the rules about how to do this and whether or not it's possible vary depending on where you took the class. Retaking a class you took originally at School A is not always possible or straight-forward once you are in School B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How GPA is calculated also differs in this same way, as some institutions only calculate grades earned in residence, others combine them, some don't transfer 0 credit classes (like if you failed a class) and others transfer all grades even if they don't give you credit for the course towards your degree! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complexity can be a real head-ache sometimes, but they are generally annoyances to be overcome rather than deal-breakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Big Warning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credits earned at one institution aren't automatically accepted anywhere else! Indeed, at some colleges they offer two versions of a class - one that is likely to transfer, and one that isn't; the one that can transfer costs more but is otherwise the same course! This can be a minefield, so if you want to make plans or consider transferring, talk with your target school's Admissions/Registration/Records and whoever would be in charge of a transcript evaluation first!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process varies hugely by US State and even between institutions within the state (even when they are State schools in the same system!), but suffice it to say that this is an extremely common problem in America and you have to be careful and plan accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Admissions Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you asked about how this might effect perceptions of you in terms of admissions or otherwise. The most important thing I've seen is that once you've had a semester or two at any college, most colleges no longer put much weight into your high school grades, SAT scores, etc - if they even require them at all. So it is very common that people will not do great in high school, go to a local or otherwise non-competitive college for a few semesters, get really get good grades, and then apply to more competitive institutions. Most Universities understand that proven experience in a college setting is a far better predictor of academic success than any high school transcript or standardized test can possibly be, and then put little weight into anything they have to say. This can backfire on you, of course, if you didn't do well at your last program but did better in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T18:24:15.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27767" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:33:30.760" Score="9" ViewCount="2471" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I mention that I have Bipolar disorder in my statement of purpose and ask my lecturers to mention it in their letters of recommendation(I am doubtful that they will) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bipolar disorder was a critical roadblock in my academic life man. When I was having maniac episode I was like &quot;I am God, I don't need to study, I can clear this test without studying&quot; or it just felt like I am overdosing on caffeine, I couldn't focus. When I was feeling depressed, I was just too withdrawn to study, I was almost suicidal. Either way, I was too emotional to do anything !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aggregate GPA of my undergrad courses is 3.216 and the simple average of my last 4 semesters GPA is 3.106. It was in the last two years that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I tell you its not easy managing meds and life. Most psychiatrists in India are idiots. Some of these psychiatrists even diagnosed me with adult ADD :| Its because of these drugs and incompetency of my shrinks that I feel my GPA dropped. Should I mention that too, cause in US I would even have access to better shrinks than here .. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GRE score is 322/340. I honestly feel I could have got a much better GPA and GRE score without this disorder man. I even got highest grades in all my practical exams too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15418" LastEditorUserId="21026" LastEditDate="2016-04-12T08:04:26.247" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T20:29:41.267" Title="Should I mention that I have a Bipolar disorder in my statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:04:48.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose this will have been dealt with in other threads, but the meanings of &quot;first&quot; and &quot;second&quot; authors do vary with discipline.  For instance, in theoretical CS it is most common for authors to be listed in strict alphabetical order by last name, regardless of level or type of contribution.  In the sciences it is more common for the &quot;senior author&quot; (who is primarily a mentor and may have conceived of the problem and the solution framework, but probably hasn't done as much hands-on work or writing) to be named last.  In engineering it can be a bit arbitrary, reflecting the authors' perceived order of importance or some other understanding.  (Though I work in engineering and applied CS, I personally follow the sciences' style, so I am almost always the last-named author in my papers, with my students or other junior co-author(s) being named first even if I have done a lot of hand-holding.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the main issue, I find it quite surprising that your professor wrote a conference paper which he now says has been extended, but you knew nothing about it.  How could you not have known?  In most cases the conference paper would be the first point of departure while extending for a journal, and I'm sure this is true across disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T19:04:48.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27743" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:49:10.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anytime you are asked to review a paper, that is what you should do. If the editor asks you to provide feedback on how your own comments have been dealt with, then that is what you do. As aeismail states, the comments from several reviewers have been considered by the authors which means the paper is at least partially new. An example: it is not uncommon that reviewers opinions differ, which means authors have to decide what they believe is their preferred direction forward, following all points proposed by all reviewers may be impossible. As a reviewer you may then need to re-argue your view point and possibly find other ways to make these view points count. There are hence good reasons for making a second thorough review of a paper that has been given a major revision by the editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T01:22:57.990" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T01:22:57.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27768" CreationDate="2014-08-28T20:21:41.573" Score="11" ViewCount="2205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year PhD student in computer science. I see other students craving to find new problems, read papers and it's like they are enjoying it and when they find a problem, they spend endless hours trying to come up with a publishable results about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked to some people and they said, many times you get to like what you do, it's not that you always end up doing what you like - implying that this kind of excitement and motivation is something that can develop in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you give me some practical strategies that help towards gaining and maintaining a high level of excitement and motivation about research? What keeps researchers like those I described constantly interested and excited to do research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14408" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T03:39:40.693" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T07:59:08.583" Title="Practical strategies for increasing one's passion and excitement about research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27731" CreationDate="2014-08-28T21:11:46.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many answers already pointed out, academic progress is slow. Changes in comprehensive rankings will take their time. I assume this is the reason why people say that a person in academia must endure frustration and have tons of patience. On the other hand, humans seem to usually need a much more frequent feedback in order to actually motivate yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I find one little trick particularly helpful: find colleagues that work on closely related topics. Share information and work together on the same project.&lt;/strong&gt; Seeing someone else having success on his or her share of the work will surely make you want to contribute as well (if not more). I must admit, that this will only work, if everyone involved aims toward the success of the project. There are various ways of measuring, publishing, and rewarding progress in this case: the tool can be as simple as a progress bar on an intranet's webpage that steps along as milestones are reached, money for visiting a conference on the condition of a publication, or the already mentioned Trello board that just visualizes how the contributions of different people in your group help a project advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharing information in a small study or work group breaks down the long-term progress into the small steps that academia actually enforces: idea, thinking, trial, and finally success or failure. Adding &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; at any state of this progress will help to uncover misunderstandings and sure failures faster than if you would work on your own. Linearizing your thoughts to actually tell them so someone enforces a clear picture in your head, again ruling out possibly overlooked details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, swapping ideas will help everyone in your group gain insight and see the same world with different eyes. To every topic (how old and worn out it may be) there is a perspective or context that has not been considered yet. Finding out about these is something I found particularly motivating during my time of study. Keeping the discussion with colleagues and friends alive will surely help you with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My approach to answer your question is: choose a method of feedback that suits you and try to shorten the intervals. The method of feedback does not matter as much as the time you have to spend without.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, a small excursus: We have some source code for numerical computations that we share among the PhDs in our work group. It is always a bit frustrating to find oneself spending hours of debugging someone else's mess.. Recently, we started offering bounties (you know those coconut-chocolate-bars?) for bugs someone would find in someone else's source code. Now one has one more reason to watch out bugs on your own (to avoid spending a &quot;bounty&quot;). Moreover, the frustration is somewhat mitigated in case a bug is found since one receives a (small) compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21203" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T21:11:46.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-28T22:35:41.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adults call other adults by their first names. You're an adult and she's an adult so you call her by her first name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Cultural conventions vary by country but certainly in the anglophone nations, this holds true pretty well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T22:35:41.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-29T00:04:07.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First criterion is &quot;fit in&quot;. Do what others do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another hand, from the opposite point, it may be worthwhile to think of whether you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to use honorific forms, however subtle, of address. One might not want to address one's grandmother exaggerately-familiarly, nor one's grandfather, nor father, nor mother, ... nor significant mentor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T00:04:07.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2014-08-29T00:24:59.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention if you had a union or not. If you do, go to the union's grievance officer. Bring all the evidence. Have a conference with the chair and the union rep.  It doesn't have to be hostile. The focus can be how you can be on par with other faculty members. Most grievance reps are good at building consensus. It will put the chair on notice that his decision making isn't to be arbitrary and capricious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21211" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T00:24:59.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27757" CreationDate="2014-08-29T03:38:26.237" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not put it in the statement of purpose as it is a forward looking document (what do you want to study, what qualifications do you have, why study at X university, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must include it, then the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32484/what-do-admission-committees-look-for-in-a-diversity-essay&quot;&gt;diversity statement&lt;/a&gt; is a good place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I would recommend that &lt;strong&gt;you do not include it.&lt;/strong&gt; You can mention that you “struggled with some health/personal issues” in college but are now prepared for university, but you do not need to give details beyond that. This is your health privacy at stake. You should talk to your letter writers to make sure they know they should  not disclose your personal history without your permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are accepted, you can inquire about student health services and reasonable accommodation for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2019-01-06T20:29:41.267" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T20:29:41.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27762" CreationDate="2014-08-29T03:44:18.323" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that a good way (for me) to get excited about my research is to work with some inexperienced research students - high school and undergraduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentoring these students reminds me of the things that excited me about research when I first started: mainly, that we can come up with some problem that we think is interesting, that hasn't previously been solved, and then go ahead and &lt;em&gt;solve it&lt;/em&gt;. I still think that is &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; cool, and seeing that reaction in my students reminds me all over again :) Also, I get to feel like an expert in this scenario, which helps makes me more excited about my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I find that spending time with others who are passionate and excited  encourages those feelings in me, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T03:49:47.460" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T03:49:47.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27773" CreationDate="2014-08-29T04:55:51.027" Score="4" ViewCount="11581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a paper in which we need to reference the meaning of english words as foundation for the analysis in the paper (we are categorizing situations using these words, and there is no method of categorizing these items, so no precedent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before internet, using the encyclopedia Britannica or merriam-webster dictionary was easy for referencing the book itself.  These days, words and meanings change and are sometimes updated.  Even more, looking online for a dictionary for finding a word returns many results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When searching for oxford dictionary there are three results&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oed.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merriam webster:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cambridge:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The online dictionary:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course wikipedia usually has some definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if we categorize something as 'multi-' , In this dictionary: &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/multi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/multi&lt;/a&gt; multi is &quot;More than one&quot;.  However, in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multi&lt;/a&gt; , multi is &quot;More than two&quot;.  That is a huge difference in terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an academic standard for the age of online dictionaries?  Have words just begun to mean different things and its futile to use dictionaries in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorDisplayName="user102" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T07:58:56.667" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T09:33:37.143" Title="Is there a standard dictionary for referencing English words?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27762" CreationDate="2014-08-29T06:16:01.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well. I think something really important is to work on a problem that you are excited about. &#xA;I find it more exciting when I can explain people what I am doing, but I have also seen people that get excited the more obscure the subject they are into, so it really depends on your personality. Still, it has to be something you are passionate about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not always possible to do that, especially on your first years when you are ramping up and are maybe following projects of more senior students or just working on whatever your advisor asked you to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, think on problems you consider important. Think of solutions, read papers you really liked. How could you do them better? Talk with your advisor about them. If you work on a problem that you just really enjoy talking about you will feel the passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the senior students, they have been through that. Many of them will be happy to give you examples related to your specific area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13916" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T06:16:01.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27762" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:09:41.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am allowed to go into lifestyle coaching more than academic coaching, I think you should find what makes &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; tick.  Academia is highly competitive and if you are feeling that you are not in the upper 50% now, perhaps you should take some time to consider your career choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the truth hurts.  Often, escaping the truth hurts more in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, my own experience is that taking a bit of a time-out and working in another field briefly helped my motivation to come back and be grateful for being in a place I enjoy and feel I can prosper in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'm not saying there are not other success vectors.  If you are top-notch at what you do and are just wondering how come another &lt;em&gt;mode&lt;/em&gt; of research makes your colleagues tick, that's fine, and quite possibly an important asset in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20411" LastEditorUserId="20411" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T07:14:43.067" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T07:14:43.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:48:05.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have asked and tried to answer this question before. Here is an ad-hoc list of resources relevant to your question, both print and online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). (2000). &lt;em&gt;Guide to publishing in psychology journals&lt;/em&gt;. Cambridge University. (field: psychology)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bem, D. J. (2003) Writing the empirical journal article. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/resources/handouts_apa/Bem-WritingArticle.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;url.&lt;/a&gt; (field: psychology)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Roediger III, H. L. (2007). Twelve tips for authors. &lt;em&gt;APS Observer, 20&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2007/june-july-07/twelve-tips-for-authors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;url.&lt;/a&gt; (field: psychology)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;King, G. (2006). Publication, publication. &lt;em&gt;PS: Political Science &amp;amp; Politics, 39&lt;/em&gt;, 119-125. doi:10.1017/S1049096506060252 (field: political science)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senturia, S. D. (2003). Guest editorial: How to avoid the reviewer's axe: One editor's view. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 12&lt;/em&gt;, 229-232. doi:10.1109/JMEMS.2003.814319 (field: mechanics)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejcr.org/teaching-sets/teachingsets.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manuscript review histories of the Journal of Consumer Research.&lt;/a&gt; One can track the whole review history of a couple of papers including the submissions, reviews, resubmissions, etc. (field: consumers)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21216" LastEditorUserId="21216" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T09:45:31.643" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T09:45:31.643" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-08-29T07:48:05.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27769" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:56:31.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.oed.com&lt;/a&gt; is the online version of the full, &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; Oxford English Dictionary. Requires a subscription (institutional or personal) to access. This is the site you should use whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com&lt;/a&gt; is an ad-supported version with some features cut. Avoid if you have subscription access to the full site (as any university should).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/&lt;/a&gt; is, clearly, for learners of the English language. Use it as a guide for learning, sure - but not as a guide for writing papers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OED is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; English dictionary to use. Other dictionaries are probably fine in all but the weirdest corner cases, but it helps to have some standardization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your journal probably specifies its own preferences in this regard. Every publisher's &quot;guide for authors&quot; that I have seen tells you to defer to the OED. Sometimes you'll see specific instructions to use either British or American spellings, and you may specifically be told how to spell words that don't have a British or American &quot;standard&quot; spelling, such as &lt;em&gt;parametrize&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T07:56:31.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T08:10:57.097" Score="5" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about the use and attribution of internal software tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a model in our group that is very popular and has formed the basis of many student projects and publications.  It was written about five years ago and has been published as a book chapter, but not a journal paper.  The model exists primarily as source code; there is no compiled version &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; although there is a user interface tool that generates new source based on the template of the original model.  As a result, new work tends to involve a mix of the original code and further modifications as appropriate for the study in question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, we don't want to release the underlying model as open-source.  Is there an appropriate license that people would recommend to clarify these usage principles?  The original model author now has a looser affiliation with our university and so it may become difficult to ask his opinion on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21221" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T13:04:13.487" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T13:15:35.993" Title="&quot;Internal&quot; license for group software?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;&lt;license&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2014-08-29T08:15:44.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one other option that hasn't been mentioned: call her either one, depending on the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've been calling her &quot;Dr. Smith,&quot; but, apparently, she has never said, &quot;Please, call me Linda.&quot; Therefore, she doesn't seem to mind being called Dr. Smith. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In meetings, everyone else calls her &quot;Linda,&quot; but she doesn't seem to bristle, nor has she said, &quot;Will you please show some respect and stop calling me Linda!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I interpret this to mean she is unfazed by either one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing says you need to flip a switch, and always use &quot;Dr. Smith,&quot; or always use &quot;Linda.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In meetings where everyone is calling her Linda, call her Linda. When you are in a one-on-one meeting in her office, call her Dr. Smith, if that's what you're more comfortable with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work alongside several people I have a &quot;part-time first-name&quot; relationship with. I might call them by their first name in some situations, and use their more formal title in others. It depends largely on their rank and position, my rank and position, the formality of the meeting, and who else is in the room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advisor seems to be someone who doesn't mind either name. Be glad you're working with such an adaptable professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T08:15:44.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27776" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T09:11:28.157" Score="5" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say we have a thesis/scientific paper with a sectioning depth of three [chapter, section, subsection]. I already often wondered: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it okay to have text outside of the lowest level, i. e. subsections?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance giving the introduction to / overview of a chapter is that done right after the chapters headline (or sections headline) or in the first subsection appearing in the same chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21225" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T06:30:23.483" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T06:30:23.483" Title="Is it okay to let body text follow immediately after intermediate level headings?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27776" CreationDate="2014-08-29T09:23:24.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, the answer to your question depends on the content that you refer to by &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;overview&lt;/em&gt; as well as the actual number of &lt;em&gt;sub-sections&lt;/em&gt; to a respective level. I consider a &lt;em&gt;sub-section&lt;/em&gt; to be an actual subsection as stated in your question as well as a section within a chapter.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The actual content should always be placed within the respective sub-section. Sectioning is supposed to help a reader finding content of interest fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kind of Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Depending what you aim to introduce (specialties of a method vs. a rather general field of study), the introduction should be placed within or outside of the sub-section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kind of Overview&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Usually, I would expect an overview to be outside of the specific sub-sections of content. One may say, that an &lt;em&gt;overview&lt;/em&gt; works out to be the same as an introduction to a rather general field of study, cf. &lt;em&gt;Kind of Introduction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of Sub-sections&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The more different sub-sections you have with regard to a level, the more important I find an overview to interrelate these. Since I do not know which sub-sections to read a-priori, I expected an overview that sketches and relates the entire content right after the chapter/section heading. Depending on how interrelated the topics in your sub-sections actually are, this introduction/overview may be longer or shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21203" LastEditorUserId="21203" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T09:37:08.993" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T09:37:08.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27769" CreationDate="2014-08-29T09:33:37.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onelook.com/?w=multi-&amp;amp;ls=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;onelook.com&lt;/a&gt; is a nice resource; it links to several online dictionaries from one convenient place. (Although it does not link to the OED, and I agree that the OED is both authoritative and reputable – more on that in a bit.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, words often have fuzzy meanings, and it's often good to cite a couple of reputable sources when establishing definitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;em&gt;multi-&lt;/em&gt; example is a good one. When you find dictionaries have conflicting meanings of a word, it might be best to provide multiple definitions, and then declare which meaning you intend to use throughout your paper or thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/multi-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collins&lt;/a&gt; has an interesting listing for &lt;em&gt;multi-&lt;/em&gt;, in that it lists both of the meanings you allude to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;multi-&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1 many or much   ⇒ &lt;em&gt;multiflorous&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;multimillion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2 more than one   ⇒ &lt;em&gt;multiparous&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;multistorey&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to know what kind of dictionary you are citing, and what that dictionary's goal is. For example, some dictionaries list what they deem as primary meanings first, while others order a word's definitions based on how the word evolved.  Others, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/american-english/multi?q=multi-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambridge Dictionary Online&lt;/a&gt;, are designed to be a learner's dictionary; CDO's definitions are relatively basic, and geared more toward those who are learning English as a second language. Some online dictionaries are wikis, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/multi-?rdfrom=Multi-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;, which might be good for finding the most up-to-date slang usages, but are probably not the best sources to cite in scholarly works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the OED is a comprehensive, exhaustive list of usages, starting from the very early usages, and going to more contemporary. For example, looking up &lt;em&gt;multi-&lt;/em&gt; in the OED yields 10 results; one of them begins with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Forming parasynthetic adjectives, with the sense ‘more than one, several, many’. From the adjectives are formed adverbs (e.g. &lt;em&gt;multiserially&lt;/em&gt;) and nouns (e.g. &lt;em&gt;multicellularity&lt;/em&gt;). Some formations of this kind acquire a noun sense, as &lt;em&gt;multicore&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;multiengine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then goes on to list dozens of examples, many of them rare or obsolete, along with references that stretch back as far as the 1700s, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;multinodal&lt;/strong&gt; adj. having many nodes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1839   J. Lindley Introd. Bot. (ed. 3) i. ii. 160   &lt;em&gt;The multinodal cyme offers no fixed rule in the spirals of its nodes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1902   Biometrika 1 264   &lt;em&gt;These maxima must arise from the mortality curve itself being multinodal&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1979   Cell &amp;amp; Tissue Res. 199 225   &lt;em&gt;Probit frequency analysis, a graphic method for determining whether a population is normally distributed, skewed, or multinodal&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;multinodate&lt;/strong&gt; adj. rare = multinodal adj.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1840   B. H. Smart Walker's Crit. Pronouncing Dict.,   &lt;em&gt;Multinodate, or Multinodous, many-knotted&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1979   Proc. Linn. Soc. New S. Wales 102 194   &lt;em&gt;Most often, on multinodate axes and particularly in large inflorescences, reduction in degree of branching does not occur alone&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;multinodous&lt;/strong&gt; adj.  [ &amp;lt; classical Latin multinōdus ( &amp;lt; multi-  multi- comb. form   + nōdus   knot: see node n.) + -ous suffix] Obs. rare—0 = multinodal adj.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1727   N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. II.,   &lt;em&gt;Multinodous, full of Knots&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1840   B. H. Smart Walker's Crit. Pronouncing Dict.,   &lt;em&gt;Multinodate, or Multinodous, many-knotted&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;multinodular&lt;/strong&gt; adj. Med. characterized by or composed of a number of nodules.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1900   W. A. N. Dorland Illustr. Med. Dict. 399/2   &lt;em&gt;Multinodular, composed of many nodules&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1924   F. de Quervain Goitre 33   &lt;em&gt;The fourth type is represented by the multinodular goitre with large nodules&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's one thing to say that the OED is the &quot;best&quot; dictionary to use, but it may be overkill in some instances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm active in some of the SE's English forums; I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/multi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Macmillan&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/multi-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collins&lt;/a&gt; to be reputable, and I would trust them for scholarly work. Miriam-Webster is often regarded as reputable, too, but I tend to avoid their online edition, owing to the number of ads they splash on a screen (my computer often starts running slower as soon as I go to one of their pages). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T09:33:37.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27784" CreationDate="2014-08-29T10:09:14.347" Score="36" ViewCount="48021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really frustrated, I have started my research for my master thesis 6 months ago and I have to submit the final draft after 2 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was interested in a specific topic and I looked for a supervisor with the same research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was looking for something related to internet security (Botnet Detection); luckily, my supervisor gave me a research plan exactly about what I wanted to do. However, a month later and after I submitted the proposal and started to read deeply about the topic; I found that exactly the same research had already done by another two PhD students and what I was supposed to do was 100% repeating what they already had done 2 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I directly contacted my supervisor explaining to him the situation. I discovered that my research plan is exactly the same (word by word, someone copied from other). Moreover, the topic itself is very specific and is not easy to build or modify on it, he said &quot;No problem, you just repeat it and we will try to slightly modify something.&quot;, then he added &quot;If you can not do that, it is enough to repeat it.&quot; and I just agreed (trying to be positive and avoiding problems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after I started my writing I found myself repeating the same ideas and the same experiments, the same statements and the same conclusions. Later on, I discovered that this research supposed to be done by adviser with the group who already published the work and for some reasons they excluded him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the supervisor did not mention that this work is already published and did not mention that he was team member with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I shall do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I feel this work is 100% not original and I will not add and contribute anything. I am not feeling happy by wasting my time doing something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shall I escalate the story to the general adviser for master's students? Should I change the topic or should I continue and defend others work claiming that this is my own work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not scared of rejecting my thesis, I am totally not satisfied about what I do write now. I am doing my masters to add something to my knowledge, experience and to feel really I will be one step a head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I work in industry field and I have no experience in academic and research fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21228" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T19:04:30.123" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T19:35:22.143" Title="I found out my master's thesis topic has already been done (exactly), and my advisor didn't mention this when suggesting it to me - how to proceed?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27783" CreationDate="2014-08-29T10:48:31.377" Score="11" ViewCount="4160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am scheduled to present part of my PhD research&#xA;at a conference in a few months.&#xA;This will be my first conference after graduating from my PhD.&#xA;I am now a postdoc at another university,&#xA;but my current adviser's policy is to fund conference travel&#xA;only for postdocs presenting research done by with him,&#xA;i.e. he would not fund my travel to this conference&#xA;to present research I had done during my PhD&#xA;which did not involve him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal for a PhD adviser&#xA;to fund conference travel for graduated students,&#xA;if the students are presenting work they have done during their PhD?&#xA;If the graduated student had tenure-track jobs&#xA;and their own source of funding for conference travel,&#xA;then clearly the graduated student&#xA;would be expected to use his/her own funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my case,&#xA;when I do not have funding for conference travel,&#xA;is it normal to expect my PhD adviser to provide funding?&#xA;I will ask my adviser about this directly,&#xA;but I was wondering if there is a standard expected behavior&#xA;for PhD advisers that generally applies in my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my PhD adviser is unable/unwilling to fund my travel,&#xA;is it unreasonable for me to say that I cannot attend the conference?&#xA;(I estimate the total cost of attending the conference to be ~$1K.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I asked my PhD adviser whether he could fund my conference travel,&#xA;and he said yes immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="8802" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T12:22:18.193" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T15:01:05.280" Title="As a postdoc, should I expect my PhD adviser to fund my conference travel to present my PhD work?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;travel&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T10:49:57.977" Score="16" ViewCount="2600" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a European student applying for a PhD in mathematics in the US. Browsing the internet, I have come across quite a lot of American PhD applicants claiming that they have several years of research experience, or even publications. I am rather astonished because in Europe first research attempts normally begin when a student is writing his or her Master's thesis. On the other hand the level of mathematics taught in European undergrad programmes is typically higher than in the US an normally involves courses which are classed as graduate courses in the US. Therefore I would like to ask the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;undergraduate research&quot; really mean in most cases? Original research, contribution to a senior mathematician's original research through some calculations/programming work, independent study of a difficult topic + a paper/report but without any original findings?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I right being skeptical that someone who has only taken some courses in linear algebra, real analysis, etc. is ready to do research?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;US PhD programmes typically involve 2 years of taught courses and a qualifying exam prior to beginning the work on one's thesis, i.e. research proper. Is undergraduate research really an important prerequisite in the eyes of the admissions committee?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How common is it to have publications as an undergraduate in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a student coming from Europe, where there is little opportunity for undergrad research and it is generally not encouraged, is my application at an disadvantage? While I have not done any &quot;undergrad research&quot;, I have done a lot of independent work. I have written a Bachelor's thesis, given talks at many seminars, and am now working on a Master's thesis which will hopefully contain some original results. Can this experience be regarded on a par with a US applicant's research experience?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21229" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T16:42:29.930" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T14:22:55.857" Title="Undergraduate research in mathematics" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T10:56:40.447" Score="20" ViewCount="2517" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could anyone kindly provide me with information about how &lt;em&gt;PhD international students&lt;/em&gt; can be covered by health insurance in the US? : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it often granted by the University? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much does it cost, on average (for the student and possibly spouse/children) and what does it cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;Obamacare&quot; reform affect it anyhow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any information. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21049" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T18:52:46.480" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T18:52:46.480" Title="How do international PhD students typically obtain health insurance in the United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27780" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:05:30.230" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should always figure out the funding issues before submitting an abstract to a conference. Presenters withdrawing from a conference are a major headache to the conference organizers and it is unreasonable to expect them to reorganize the conference program because you did not figure out your travel plans (either timing or funding) in advanced. There are cases where there is nothing you can do (e.g., having a child), but in general when you submit an abstract you are committing yourself to presenting the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to who should fund your travel, the best would have been to ask when you submitted to the conference. There really isn't a standard for who should pay. The first issue is to determine if your PhD advisor or Post Doc Advisor has money that could be used to pay for your travel. They would have to have money that could, if they desired, be used to fund your travel, and be willing to fund your travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask both people and see what they say. No one is going to be offended by you asking. I wouldn't be surprised if both said no, but nor would I be surprised if both said yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:05:30.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27779" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:14:14.960" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that there is no way anyone knows about your precise situation, except you and your advisor, so I am making some wild guesses on what actually happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your advisor is hoping to have an efficient implementation of the ideas / algorithms already expressed on the past paper, with the notion that he (or you and him) may later build on your implementation to create something new. In order to create anything new, you have to compare with existing approaches and therefore you still have to implement previous methods. He has given you two options a) Try to expand the ideas of the past paper b) If you cannot do that, just creating a NEW implementation of the original paper is enough for him. This is a MSc thesis and not all MSc theses lead to publishable results. But it still seems like an important project and as such, it seems it could still turn out to be a good MSc thesis and you will have a lot to learn from it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your main problem is that you think that you cannot expand the original paper to new directions. But if you want to do research this is exactly what you are going to have to do. You should find a topic that interests you (&quot;&lt;em&gt;my supervisor gave a research plan exactly about what i want to do&lt;/em&gt;&quot;), study previous literature (which you should have done before choosing the topic) and then expand on previous ideas. Note that since you have worked in industry, you may as well be a better programmer than those 2 PHD students and therefore your implementation might be much more efficient than theirs. This is still a significant contribution which may eventually be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your advisor and state your doubts and clarify the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement the paper's ideas as fast and efficient as possible &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare your implementation with the paper's results. You should at least aim for a more efficient implementation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check related literature that cites this paper. Is this paper, still state-of-the-art? &lt;strong&gt;Is this paper cited by anyone?&lt;/strong&gt; This will show if this project has been picked up by anyone. If it is not, it is reasonable that your advisor wants to build upon the previous paper to further expand it. If someone has extended it or applied it to other use-cases, your assumption that it cannot be improved is wrong and you should think what you can do to further expand it. Either way, you will have an answer about how to proceed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of any other possible improvements, what else could be done better, in a more efficient way or how this idea could be used in other use-cases.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you have learnt a valuable lesson. What you want to do in research should correlate with what is already been done. You should study previous research very carefully and exhaustively. If you believe that previous works have already done everything to perfection (which BTW is rarely the case) then you should choose a new topic. Otherwise you are the one that should think what can be improved. I think you pretty much expected that your advisor had a new research idea waiting just for you and all you needed to do was just to implement it. But this was really an unrealistic expectation on your part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T17:27:23.873" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T17:27:23.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27788" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:31:14.907" Score="1" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my undergraduate studies(B. Tech in Computer Science and Engineering) in 2012, and have been working in a tech start-up since then. I am planning to go for MS in Computer for fall 2015, I wanted to know what all material should I collect, before I start jolting down the initial draft(s) for my statement of purpose, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19544" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:48:47.530" Title="How to start writing my statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27776" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:34:43.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my view, it is perfectly acceptable&lt;/strong&gt;. It often helps readability, and logically it makes sense (a good example is the &quot;introduction before subsections&quot; that you cited).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;strong&gt;some people hate it&lt;/strong&gt;, and I have already encountered referees who wanted me to change it. I haven't been able to infer a reasonable motivation up to now, so I would be interested in reading arguments in its favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic papers typically have no table of contents, so there is even less motivation for enforcing a strict tree-like structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:34:43.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27785" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:48:47.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this will depend partly on the formal requirements of the course for which you are applying, here are some general things that I look for in reading these statements as admissions tutor for our department:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrated enthusiasm for the subject.  Your CV and transcript will provide basic factual information about your technical skills and ability to succeed in an academic environment, but the statement of purpose lets you round out that profile with memorable detail.  Be specific.  If you've worked at a tech start-up, how did that inform your decision to pursue further study?  What new skills did you learn, new challenges faced and overcome, etc?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrated awareness of the programme.  I've read essays that clearly had no understanding of what our programme covered and how we taught it.  Be familiar with the prospectus and don't be afraid to contact the admissions tutors to clarify anything.  How does the style of teaching at your target university relate to your interests?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ability to write coherently.  Regardless of the subject, you will need to be able to communicate clearly.  A poorly structured essay, full of grammar and spelling mistakes, is a sure-fire way to end up on the 'no' pile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21221" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:48:47.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27790" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:55:52.557" Score="4" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a formal process behind deciding who should be the members of a workshop committee? Or is it more about the organizers contacting people based on their experience within that particular field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T12:07:01.330" Title="How to become committee member of a conference workshop?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;workshop&gt;&lt;program-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-01T12:04:46.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27789" CreationDate="2014-08-29T12:07:01.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Organize that workshop&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be invited by the organizers to be on the commitee&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the organizers while the committee is still being formed (and be known and respected by them)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T12:07:01.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27782" CreationDate="2014-08-29T12:08:43.160" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very university-specific. My university pays the health insurance for students who are appointed to a graduate research assistantship or TA-ship at the half-time (20 hours/week) level. Half-time is the minimum to get the insurance paid, the maximum time allowed for a graduate student to work, and the usual appointment for the vast majority of graduate students. To add a spouse is about $450/mo. I do not know how much children cost to add. The coverage varies all over the map because insurance varies so much by state, institution, and plan in the US. The plan at my institution is for medical care only. Vision and dental are separate and funded entirely by the employee (though they're pretty cheap).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) may have changed this for some institutions which did not provide insurance options to grad students, but mine has for the last 20 years or so, so I don't really know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this information should be on the website of the university you want to attend. You may have to look in the section for employees rather than students, but it's usually there. Look for &quot;benefits&quot; as well as &quot;insurance&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T03:15:59.400" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T03:15:59.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27782" CreationDate="2014-08-29T12:13:08.013" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of universities do provide health insurance to enrolled students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/uhs/student-insurance/student-health-plan/&quot;&gt;Princeton University's student health plan&lt;/a&gt; is extended by default to all enrolled graduate students (the line about tuition payment is pro forma: if you are on a fellowship or on a teaching assistant/research assistant position your tuition is covered automatically and so the insurance costs you nothing out of pocket). One can also enroll dependents (spouse and children) as long as certain requirements are met. Dental insurance is not covered by default, as far as I know. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A similar provision is offered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/students/insurance/SHIPEnrollment.shtml&quot;&gt;UC Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coverage offered are specific to the insurance plans, and thus entirely dependent on the University. The Google search phrase &quot;&amp;lt; university name &gt; graduate student health insurance&quot; is pretty good at returning the results for the universities you are interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T12:13:08.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2014-08-29T12:50:45.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address a few of your points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no standard definition of undergraduate research. In many US universities one can graduate with a degree &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; doing an independent thesis, so in effect it is possible to obtain a bachelor's degree without having anything resembling &quot;research experience&quot;. Therefore some people would be generous and count the research for bachelor's theses as &quot;undergraduate research&quot;. For some people the phrase excludes theses but includes REU experiences, and for some only original research leading to publications count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not too unreasonable to expect that the work put into independent projects, even an undergraduate thesis that basically is just a review of existing results, can be beneficial to graduate research. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes; but where did you get the idea that undergraduates only learn some linear algebra and real analysis? Combinatorics is a field in which the barrier to entry is somewhat lower, and is especially approachable to the Math Olympiad types; and discrete mathematics is certainly on the rise in the past decade or so in terms of undergraduate education. And many undergraduates do have quite a bit more under their belt than you seem to believe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having worked in Europe for the past 5 years, I feel comfortable asserting that the claim &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the level of mathematics taught in European undergrad programmes is typically higher than in the US an normally involves courses which are classed as graduate courses in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is not quite true. What is true is that the mathematics in European undergraduate programs often &lt;em&gt;start out&lt;/em&gt; at a higher level and with more rigour, but at the advanced undergraduate level the US schools usually have caught up. (Note also that the US degrees are usually 4 years compared to 3 years in Europe, so they have a bit more time to build.) Couple that with the liberal arts tradition you'll often find elective classes at the top level of undergraduate education in the US which have no analogue at all in Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is certainly true that good European universities offer undergraduate courses that are at the level of graduate courses in mediocre US universities, the reverse swapping European/US is also true. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the answer to (1). The rare individual who actually did original research and obtained publishable results will likely get some bonus points when the admission committee deliberates, but it is certainly not a norm and one is not expected to have done such necessarily. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any statistics. Hearsay suggests that original research leading to something published in a research journal is somewhat rare. (Publications resulting from REU or similar programs, or publications in undergraduate journals are less rare.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your master's thesis contains original results, then you are likely more than on par with the typical applicant to US PhD programs, in terms of research experience. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T12:50:45.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2014-08-29T15:03:10.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to your question &quot;What is life as “Head of Department ____” like?&quot; in one word is: difficult. Other words I can think of include thankless and masochistic. Perhaps I am being too cynical (after having had the role for four years). It all depends on which country you are in, what type of institution, the stage at which you are in your career and your overall aspirations. You talk about money, but the reality is that the remuneration is unlikely to equate to the workload and pressure, so I would never do it for the money alone. If that is what you want, go into industry or commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Head of Dept. is the description used in the UK. In the UK system, it is a powerful role and you will have a lot of influence on the direction and strategy of the department. This can make it very rewarding, but it is also a potential minefield. Don't expect to be friends with everybody; getting a group of academics to agree is rather like herding cats. There is also the stress associated with all manner of problems, such as difficult student issues, difficult staff issues, dealing with higher and lower levels of admin, not to mention the time required for all of this and the countless meetings you have to attend. This is a job only for those with a thick skin, lots of stamina, a sense of humour, good management and diplomatic skills. Also bear in mind that unless you have a reasonably sized research team, you will find it hard to produce any research in reasonable volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, there are people who relish academic management, and if you are in the right place at the right time, it can be the first step on a career path in the university management system. Someone who is Head of Dept. in their late 40's, for example, might well spend the rest of their career in senior university management as long as they don't screw up. At the end of the day, someone has to manage the system and if you are OK with it, go for it. But as someone else said, think long and hard about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21237" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T15:03:10.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27779" CreationDate="2014-08-29T15:03:32.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics it's often OK to have a master's thesis be expository, of course as long as it is clearly indicated that it is expository, and it is (of course) written in one's own words, well-referenced, etc. Usually in this case it's better if the expository work provides either a new proof of a known result, or a new perspective on the old result.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry if this doesn't answer the academic honesty concerns, but is there any way you can take this spin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20776" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T15:03:32.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2014-08-29T15:52:44.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is undergraduate research really an important prerequisite in the eyes of the admissions committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly not mandatory: every US graduate program in mathematics is willing to admit students who have not done original research or published a paper.  On the other hand, having impressive accomplishments helps, and it's important to have letters of recommendation from faculty who have seen you engage deeply with something difficult.  It's easier to get such a letter from a supervisor on a substantial independent project, but it doesn't have to be a research project.  Your background as described in the question sounds strong, and I don't think you need to worry about a lack of research experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worrisome scenario is someone who has never focused on any question for more than a few hours.  This is entirely possible for an undergraduate who hasn't written a thesis or worked on any comparable project.  The problem is that doing mathematics on a long time scale is qualitatively different from short-term problem solving.  It's psychologically different: you need to be patient and flexible, while still maintaining focus over months or years.  Some people are effective and enthusiastic over short time scales but aren't temperamentally suited to research, and it can be a heavy blow to discover in graduate school that you don't enjoy this sort of work or have trouble focusing.  Other people are intimidated by the idea of research and assume they would be worse at it than at short-term problem solving, while in fact they might be much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the key advantage of undergraduate research is that it gives students a chance to discover their preferences and talents, with faculty mentors who can judge their performance and vouch for it.  On the other hand, there are other ways to achieve the same goals, and it's the goals that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, the initial push for undergraduate research in the US was actually as a recruiting tool.  The idea was that  encouraging students to do research would help uncover people who should go to graduate school but might not have realized it (either from being underconfident or from not having had the opportunity to shine).  REUs were not intended as a prerequisite for graduate school, but this view has become more common among applicants as the programs have become more popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does &quot;undergraduate research&quot; really mean in most cases? Original research, contribution to a senior mathematician's original research through some calculations/programming work, independent study of a difficult topic + a paper/report but without any original findings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preferably one of the first two, and ideally the first, but it is sometimes used to refer to the third as well.  Both applicants and supervisors have incentives to describe work as &quot;undergraduate research&quot; regardless of whether they intended or tried to do original research, in the hope that it will sound more impressive than just saying it was an independent project.  This broader usage gets on my nerves, so I'd recommend against it, but it's widespread enough that there's not much risk of standing out as being misleading or manipulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How common is it to have publications as an undergraduate in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's relatively common among those who attend an REU or similar research program, although the publications are not necessarily impressive in absolute terms (i.e., not taking into account that the authors are undergraduates).  Publishing is rare among undergraduate students who have not participated in such a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T15:52:44.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27780" CreationDate="2014-08-29T19:10:28.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself who gets the benefit? Will your previous instutition as it is work related to your time there, or your present instuitution, or just you. To fund they will want to know it's going to be advantageous to them. You will need to convice them.&#xA;Or, chat to someone else who is going to the confermce and arrange to sleep on their floor, cancel the hotel booking, miss the formal dinners and boldly wander into buffets to get them free. Still do the networking, present your paper and plan ahead next time.&#xA;But always remember that life can change overnight as it did for me, and ill health stopped both the conferences and my working - then who pays for a conference is a monor issue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21247" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T19:10:28.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19710" CreationDate="2014-08-29T20:51:35.427" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For completeness’ sake, I mention that another option would be to give your private address as an affiliation.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-247X(89)90081-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example for this. &lt;a href=&quot;https://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.5520.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is another one (affiliations are at the end of the paper)¹. &lt;a href=&quot;https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.01596&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; only lists the city and country part of the address².&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ Credits to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20036/jessica-b&quot;&gt;Jessica B&lt;/a&gt; for pointing this one out.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;² Credits to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/101067/cheersmate&quot;&gt;Cheersmate&lt;/a&gt; for pointing this one out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2020-07-31T19:01:54.723" LastActivityDate="2020-07-31T19:01:54.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27780" CreationDate="2014-08-29T22:56:43.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might see if there are other sources of funding available from your current university.  Commonly they do have some travel funding available for their researchers who don't have grant money, and you might be eligible.  It might not cover everything, or there might be some sort of competitive application process, but it is worth checking.  It may be administered through a unit called &quot;Office of Research&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field it's pretty common for postdocs to be allotted some funding of their very own from the university, that they can spend on travel, etc.  I assume if you had this, you wouldn't be asking the question, but it's just possible that if you didn't read fine print, you might have overlooked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T22:56:43.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2014-08-29T23:38:07.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provided you are cordial and tread cautiously, no, it won't. (I know this is a late answer, but since people think of doing this fairly often, I figured I might give my two cents. While I am not a professor, I figured it might help to have a current graduate student's perspective.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself have transferred between math graduate programs at different schools. Furthermore, I know three or four others who have transferred between math programs at different schools, two people who have transferred from a math program to a non-math program at a different school, and two people who have left math programs for a non-math program at the same university. (And no, these people weren't all transferring to or from the same university.) I know many others who have changed advisors or left graduate school entirely. And people often transfer for reasons other than the reputation of the schools, myself included. (Such reasons may include moving to be closer to significant others, dissatisfaction with the geographical location of the school, changing research interests, advisors switching schools and bringing their students with them, advisors ceasing to work with students, and interest in a specific advisor at a different school, among others.) As much as it would be ideal for all graduate students to arrive precisely where they belong and know exactly what they will do over the next four years, it's probably an understatement to say that this doesn't always happen. And many professors are sympathetic and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, however, caution you about the following. Keep in mind that if you don't get accepted into any transfer schools, you probably want to still get good funding and work with an advisor that fits you at your current school. You may indeed later find that you want to stay at your current school, even if you've been accepted to other places!  So, informing those who determine your funding that you're thinking of transferring before you actually have been accepted into another school doesn't necessarily seem like a good idea to me.  Depending on the perspective of the department, it can be like telling your romantic partner that you're thinking of breaking up well before you make the actual decision.  (On the other hand, they might appreciate being informed early and may be very kind and understanding. It's tough to judge, since it all depends on the people involved.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get accepted into a transfer institution and decide to go there, you should make sure to have a conversation with the heads of your current graduate program and department, to notify them that you are leaving, and to politely express why you are making this change. I'd recommend being brief (you don't need to tell them your life story), but clear, and always polite.  It may be a good idea not to hold off the decision until the last minute (i.e. the April 15th deadline) like I did.  Keep in mind that they need to find someone to replace you, and the closer to the deadline, the harder it is for the school to find qualified candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I agree that you should be sure not to denigrate your current institution in any of your applications, or when you tell people at your current institution why you're leaving. I also agree that when you apply to other institutions, you should very honestly express why you're making this switch (without denigration, of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Also, regarding Anonymous Mathematician's comment under the question: I transferred after my second year and it's worked out fine, but certainly it is best to be actively pursuing a backup plan for research at your current institution if you're attempting to transfer any later than your first year. That is, keep looking for possible advisors and research projects at your current university even after you've submitted your transfer applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21251" LastEditorUserId="21251" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T06:19:17.590" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T06:19:17.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27811" CreationDate="2014-08-29T23:59:21.163" Score="1" ViewCount="1790" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to finish up a BA in linguistics and am looking at some interdisciplinary options for grad school (specifically in cognitive science). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a competitive GPA in my last two academic years, though my first year was a bit of a wash to say the least. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking that it would be a good idea to go back for a second degree for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to boost my cumulative gpa (my academic performance in first year was a pretty big blow to my cgpa)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to gain a better understanding of my research interests. (There are certain science courses that I haven't taken that make me feel downright incompetent without, such as first year physics and math.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm acutely aware that I know nothing when it comes to grad school admissions, especially when it comes to interdisciplinary programs such as cognitive science. Is a second degree worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21254" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T08:48:20.750" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T08:48:20.750" Title="Is a second bachelors degree worth it?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;degree&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-30T20:49:16.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2014-08-30T01:02:26.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matt Might's advice page here&lt;/a&gt; provides some really useful tips of the kind you're looking for.  The three of his tips that I found really useful for when I applied to graduate school two years ago (that weren't mentioned above) are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;em&gt;emailing&lt;/em&gt; professors whose research interests you with a brief statement asking them about their work. As Might states on the linked page above,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tell them you were considering applying, and you're curious about the research opportunities available in the field. Comment intelligently on some research that faculty member has done. Attach any research you've done, and briefly summarize your research interests. That faculty member can then make sure your application receives a thorough review. Bear in mind that professors receive lots of form-letter spam from prospective students. It's painfully obvious when the email is form-letter spam, and most professors will summarily discard it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suggests to email a month before the application deadline, but I emailed maybe 2-3 weeks before and it was still fine. He also has tips on how to send professors emails &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-email/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider writing your essays in &lt;strong&gt;LaTeX&lt;/strong&gt;.  You'd need to learn how to use it in graduate school anyway, and it makes you look more like a mathematician, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In your essays, put really important words in &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt;.  I used this to emphasize the names of the faculty I was interested in working with, awards I had received, and my particular research interests (&lt;strong&gt;partial differential equations&lt;/strong&gt; for example).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21251" LastEditorUserId="21251" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T06:21:26.483" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T06:21:26.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27807" CreationDate="2014-08-30T02:30:26.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you have in mind a second degree in a completely different field, I think you'd be spinning your wheels.  You can probably take those physics and math courses in post-baccalaureate status; check with the institution from which you got your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are thinking of a second bachelor's degree in a field similar to your first, go for the master's degree in that field instead.  Your freshman year GPA will probably not keep you out of most programs since you have a solid record in your final years.  Presumably you'd get good recommendations from your upper division professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T02:30:26.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-30T09:38:06.297" Score="1" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this year I'm finishing my masters degree in Security of Information Systems, in a third world country University (best in my country but still) , and I might have a chance at a fully funded scholarship in a way better university abroad, I was thinking of getting a second masters degree in robotics, Artificial intelligence or Cognitive systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it ? with a bachelor degree in Computer science and a masters in SIS do I fulfil the requirements ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the matter that I'm going to be fully relying on the scholarship's funding, and of course I still can try to apply for a Ph.D scholarship abroad, but I heard it's more difficult to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a PhD in my country would be fairly easy, but that's not something I'm really interested in for several reasons, First the pace and level of research over here is not really that good. Second, I'm thinking an experience abroad might really help me at many levels. And here comes the point I'm not really sure about, does having 2 masters degrees give me a chance at a better job ? or a better chance at getting accepted for a PhD ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS : The graduation project I'm working on right now is a mix of Forensics, Security, massive parallel computing and artificial intelligence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT :&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Okay, I am to rephrase my question, I'm a passionate learner, I want to have the experience of studying abroad, I enjoy many fields in computer science, my question is, can this actually hurt my career ? personally I don't mind &quot;postponing&quot; its start, as long as it's harmless and I'm doing something I enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21267" LastEditorUserId="21267" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T15:33:33.480" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T14:14:39.337" Title="Second masters degree or PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-08-31T16:38:13.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27818" CreationDate="2014-08-30T13:05:05.160" Score="1" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to write a letter to Nature and a friend of mine said that Nature wants the Author to follow a very precise format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that the explanation of the structure of the format is an example of a letter in which: there were different colours for the different sections, it also explained what to write in each section and which words use/don't use etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know the link where I can find such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21270" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T05:14:19.073" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T05:14:19.073" Title="Link which explains how to format a letter to Nature" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27817" CreationDate="2014-08-30T13:23:15.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such information is invariably posted on a journal's website, and &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; is no exception. Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html&quot;&gt;Nature's current issue website&lt;/a&gt;, click &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/index.html&quot;&gt;For Authors&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/index.html&quot;&gt;Manuscript Formatting Guide&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Under &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/index.html#a1.2&quot;&gt;Letters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; there is an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2c_Summary_para.pdf&quot;&gt;annotated example&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which looks like what you are describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T13:45:27.150" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T13:45:27.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-30T14:03:46.343" Score="8" ViewCount="1371" Body="&lt;p&gt;How difficult is it to get an assistant professor position in a department (e.g., applied math) while you have a PhD degree from another area (e.g., electrical engineering)? Particularly, when you target only relatively good departments (top 20~30).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes any difference, I am particularly thinking of becoming professor of applied math with an EE degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know exactly what constitutes &lt;em&gt;mathematical research&lt;/em&gt; in the eyes of mathematicians, but I can say there are some really theoretical subjects needed in my research. For example random matrix theory and empirical processes are prevalent in my research area. However, in spite of my great interest, I haven't been able to (or prohibited from doing) work on purely theoretical part of the problems. So I mostly have applied the existing theoretical results. Developing optimization algorithms with provable convergence guarantees, perhaps in statistical sense of it, are also important in the area I worked in. However, I don't think optimization is considered an interesting area for mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21272" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T20:12:51.920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T20:12:51.920" Title="How difficult is it to get an academic position in applied mathematics when your PhD is in electrical engineering?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27819" CreationDate="2014-08-30T14:57:06.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;How difficult it is to get a position in another field depends enormously on your specific interests and background.  Moving from electrical engineering to applied mathematics may be pretty reasonable, since there are some research areas that are widely considered part of both fields, such as control theory.  If you already work in the intersection, then you'll have some flexibility in your job search.  You'll have a much tougher time if you're proposing to change your research interests, or if you work on a topic that is not commonly studied in applied math departments, even if it could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first test is whether you can find anyone with your background and interests in an applied math department.  If you can't find anyone, then it may be difficult to become the first.  (It could still be worth a try, but you shouldn't get your heart set on doing something unprecedented.)  If you can find such people, then you have role models.  At that point, you can start looking at the web pages and CVs of people who have made the transition.  Where do they publish?  How do they present themselves and their work?  Can you see any differences from people working in electrical engineering?  Of course you don't need to imitate these people too closely, but at least you'll have examples of what has been well received by applied math departments.  Some things can be adjusted on short notice, while others take time.  If you're a little further from fitting in, doing a postdoc in applied math may help bridge the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T14:57:06.520" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23947" CreationDate="2014-08-30T15:48:48.850" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Jukka Suomela has indicated in the comments, &lt;strong&gt;yes, you will&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant policy for IEEE (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8 . Electronic Preprints. Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post their manuscripts to their own web site, their &#xA;  employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to &#xA;  transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE &#xA;  copyright notice. Upon publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either &#xA;  (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore, or (2) the accepted version &#xA;  only (not the IEEE-published version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published article in IEEE Xplore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ACM, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) Furthermore, notwithstanding the exclusive &#xA;  rights the Owner has granted to ACM pursuant to Paragraph 2 (a), &#xA;  Owner shall have the right to do the following: [...] (v) Prior to commencement of the ACM &#xA;  peer review process, post the version of the Work as submitted to &#xA;  ACM (“Submitted Version”) to non-peer reviewed servers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is current as of August, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T14:01:31.393" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T14:01:31.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26404" CreationDate="2014-08-30T15:57:16.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a solution for arbitrary field and subject; I suspect none exists at present.  But in mathematics, you could at least easily check how many publications there are each year in a given AMS subject classification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/publications.html?pg4=AUCN&amp;amp;s4=&amp;amp;co4=AND&amp;amp;pg5=TI&amp;amp;s5=&amp;amp;co5=AND&amp;amp;pg6=PC&amp;amp;s6=05C30&amp;amp;co6=AND&amp;amp;pg7=ALLF&amp;amp;s7=&amp;amp;co7=AND&amp;amp;Submit=Search&amp;amp;dr=pubyear&amp;amp;yrop=eq&amp;amp;arg3=2005&amp;amp;yearRangeFirst=&amp;amp;yearRangeSecond=&amp;amp;pg8=ET&amp;amp;s8=All&amp;amp;review_format=html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this search result&lt;/a&gt; shows that 23 papers were published on &lt;em&gt;Enumeration in graph theory&lt;/em&gt; in 2005.  &lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: you may need a subscription to access that link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T15:57:16.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28067" CreationDate="2014-08-30T15:58:47.163" Score="3" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished writing one paper, but have not submitted it yet to a journal. I am working on a related but not identical subject, though many of the definitions and theorems are same (but they are true in a very different context compared to the first paper). Now, is it okay to use the same figures that I had used for illustrations in my first paper? What about the theorems and definitions? I feel like changing the theorem statements is not worth spending time on, but is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7004" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T13:42:42.073" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T13:42:42.073" Title="Is it OK to use the content of my own paper which is not yet submitted, in my other paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19696" CreationDate="2014-08-30T16:05:01.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comments contain very good information.  I think the only real alternative is to settle for access to the subset of those articles that happens to be freely available, either from authors' websites or the arXiv.  Note that authors can indicate on the arXiv version where a paper has been published, so you can avoid using papers that aren't peer reviewed if you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T16:05:01.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27826" CreationDate="2014-08-30T16:38:28.463" Score="10" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am soon to finish my PhD and would love to do postdoctoral research (UK). However, for reasons I shan't go into, it is not viable for me to travel outside of my city and so I am unable to attend conferences/workshops/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it feasible for me to obtain a postdoc position? Or do postdoc responsibilities necessarily entail travelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19470" LastEditorUserId="1084" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T17:03:58.087" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T21:36:18.733" Title="Is it possible to do a Postdoc without travelling?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27825" CreationDate="2014-08-30T17:01:39.130" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat field dependent, but your academic career could be much more challenging if your disability or other circumstances prevent you from traveling. You may need to travel to job interviews at the very least. Not attending conferences to present your research will reduce the visibility of your work, and so you will struggle to get your ideas well known in your field. This could reduce your job prospects. You will need to have your research products well-advertised on the web in order to have any name recognition. Your research may also have to be more ground-breaking in order to garner recognition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, you work in Computer Science, conference publications are typically the most prestigious, so the inability to travel to present your work may mean that it is not published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to be too discouraging, but I think you should reevaluate whether or not you can make 1 or 2 trips per year in order to present your work. It may do wonders for how hard your career is otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the plus side, you might also try talking to some conference organizers before you submit your work about presenting your results via video conference. I was at a workshop this week where a presenter couldn't make it due to a last-minute problem with his flight, and he gave a great presentation via Google Hangouts. He wasn't there to network, but at least his presentation happened. If your reasons for not traveling are due to disability (including mental disabilities like social anxiety, agoraphobia, etc.), the country where the conference happens may require that they try to accommodate your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T17:01:39.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27586" CreationDate="2014-08-30T17:14:11.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For our purposes, there are three types of students causing the concern: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Students who have taken similar, or comparable-level courses and are &quot;repeating&quot; this course for a &quot;cheap&quot; grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Students who have not taken comparable level courses but have &quot;boned up&quot; ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Students who have not done 1) or 2) but whose proficiency in computers give them a &quot;natural&quot; advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ones we should be most concerned about are the students in the first category, the &quot;repeaters.&quot; That is solved by establishing course levels, to say the students who have passed courses at an equal or higher level cannot take this course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students in category 2) don't provide much a worry. At one level, you want to applaud them for the &quot;eager beaver&quot; tactics, but at another level, it might not do them much good.That's because they are (probably) learning the book, or course, not the  material. As you pointed out, introducing new material dissipates their advantage most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students in the third category are the ones you want to encourage. They are those whose general computer efficiency at work or playing computer games gives them an advantage in computer science, even if they haven't seen the material before. Why should that not be the case? Someone who has worked with hammers and nails and other tools will have an advantage in physics over someone who hasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yale math professor Serge Lang would &quot;sort out&quot; his students on the first day of Calculus class, by giving an &lt;em&gt;algebra&lt;/em&gt; quiz.It was one that everyone would &quot;pass,&quot; but some would do so faster than others, and those were the likely &quot;A&quot; students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T17:14:11.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27779" CreationDate="2014-08-30T19:08:55.533" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a master's thesis it is nice but not completely essential to do something original.  I'm sorry that it feels like you're rediscovering what is already known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you're in that situation, though, the best option is likely to write your results as a &lt;em&gt;test&lt;/em&gt; of the published results or a &lt;em&gt;comparison&lt;/em&gt; between the published results and something else.  For example, you can use different data, compare some aspect that wasn't covered before (resource usage?), write more of a review or try to get different other partial/possible solutions running to compare against.  Is the other code open source?  If not, open-source yours (assuming your advisor is okay with it).  Are there missing steps that are important?  Describe them well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, although it feels like a waste of time to repeat the same stuff (and often it is), there is a benefit to thoroughly testing out and verifying what is supposedly known.  Just because something's published it isn't necessarily true or useful or accurate.  In this case from what you've said it sounds like it is--but if you believe this was useful work for someone to have done, it is also useful for it to be independently verified, which you have done.  I wish this were done more in academia, honestly.  Too much poorly-verified and over-hyped stuff gets through.  But it's hard to publish a paper saying, &quot;I checked important result X and yep!...it was right on target.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's harder to know what precisely to do about the academic honesty issue.  You may wish to discreetly contact whoever is in charge of administrative ethics at your school (preferably some sort of grad student ethics advisor, so they can advise &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; on whether this sounds like a big problem).  But if it's a problem it's a problem for your professor; I wouldn't let it derail your thesis unless absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T19:08:55.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27762" CreationDate="2014-08-30T22:39:58.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three answers above are all great ideas.  But I'd like to expand on two of these answers with a story from my own personal experience in finding what to do for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in the early stages of research but you're not that passionate about it, I would suggest looking for other research opportunities that inspire more passion.  You may not want to switch your current focus or advisor (and at first, I didn't either), but it may very well be useful for you to explore, just to see if there might be some other arrangement that better motivates you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you might try the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find some aspect of life that you're very passionate about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see if you can find some research project in your field that speaks to your passion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find an advisor who is willing to work with you on such a project, and who fits your personality well enough for you to work with this person in an effective manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While cloudraven suggests to look for specific problems, I'd take it a step  back from that and say that you should first look for a topic of study that speaks to a passion of yours, even if that topic is not itself within computer science. First, it may not be obvious if you can connect it with your current field of study.  However, you may be surprised at the ways people have studied this topic &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; computer science, or the ways in which people are &lt;em&gt;motivated&lt;/em&gt; to study some aspect of computer science because of this topic. Then, once you've linked that passion to your field of study, it may not immediately be obvious what problems are still open that you can attack.  This is fine - it will require some hard work to find a specific research path, and moreover formulating your own thesis problem will likely require a lot of help from an advisor.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I'm an applied math grad student, so admittedly I may very well have a wider range of possibilities for research than students in other fields.  Thus, taking a general life passion and researching it may well be easier for me than for you.  However, computer science and applied math share a substantial overlap, so this advice may be somewhat relevant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had been working on a project with a very interesting theoretical aspect, but the physical application did not quite excite me enough to provide the drive I needed to get anywhere on my research.  Also, I was working with a well-respected and talented advisor, but we didn't meet or communicate very often.  This was in part because that year he was teaching and researching at another university, but also because he had a lot of students and was otherwise busy with work.  In any case, I became his student under a mutual understanding between us that I would work in a very independent fashion.  While at first I thought that such an arrangement was perfect for me, it gradually became more obvious that I needed more frequent, in-person meetings to stay motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I took a class on applied and harmonic computational analysis, a topic which is very much related to the field of music technology.  I've always been a very musical person, and it's a really big passion for me.  But I didn't realize that I could connect this passion with my field of study until I did a small research project for that class.  People talk all the time about how music and math are related, but I never really heard much of people doing applied math projects that involved music until I actually went out myself and looked for these topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you want to hear what the problem was that motivated me, well... I wanted to make a remix of a song, but I couldn't separate out the vocal track as I wanted. Eventually, this led me to discover the topic of &lt;em&gt;source separation&lt;/em&gt;, which arises in not just music technology but also a surprising number of academic disciplines.  From there, I started discovering many other different topics that I find to be pretty cool.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, I've switched advisors and started some really fun, exciting projects.  And I'm no longer nearly as worried as I used to be about whether I'm making enough progress, not only because of my passion for my project, but also because I check in weekly with my advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21251" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T22:39:58.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27047" CreationDate="2014-08-30T23:16:35.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two options I am aware of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The electronics industry.  Sometimes they hire condensed matter theorists who can help them design better products.  I know one theorist at Segate who works on better hard drive designs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finance.  Most, but not all, jobs will require programming experience.  If you have not gotten any programming experience in a theory PhD I would consider your research strategy highly unusual.  Theorists probably lack experience with R and statistics, but if you understand basic computer science concepts it should not be hard to learn these things on your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider academic/education positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T23:16:35.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27047" CreationDate="2014-08-30T23:29:43.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding Finance, perhaps you should instead look for Quantitative/Mathematical Finance (quant) jobs. I think non-mathematical finance jobs do require different skills (though I don't imagine them being more difficult than QF jobs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many physicists become quants. You may want to try looking up Emanuel Derman to see his books if you might be interested in reading them and the Wiki pages on mathematical finance to see what kind of math is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a grad student of QF now and we are learning SAS, R, Brownian motion and Feynman-Kac theorem. (at least the latter 2 are) Basic for you (theoretical) Physics people, I presume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Regarding the mathemagician's comment, I've read some job openings for quants. There's no specific mention of having a degree in QF. They are just looking for master's/PhD's in quantitative disciplines. I recall one mentioning master's in Math, Physics or Engineering as a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finance is relatively easy to learn. You don't need a QF degree to be a quant. Try checking out Hull's Options, Futures and Other Derivatives or Bjork's Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time, but please be patient with the cute math you may see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sites to check out are the quant stackexchange (save it from beta please) and quantstart.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 1: Regarding guest's answer, why don't you work a technology company or something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2: teaching highschool/secondary school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My knowledge of Physics is only up to Vector Calculus (or Partial Differential Equations if you want) and basic Analytical Physics so that's all I got haha&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21026" LastEditorUserId="21026" LastEditDate="2021-02-01T14:21:35.363" LastActivityDate="2021-02-01T14:21:35.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-31T03:04:51.740" Score="12" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any good resource to figure out the track record of academic success of research lab’s alumni (e.g. how many of postdocs became a PI)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a grad student in the US who will finish PhD next spring, and I've just started to find a postdoc position. I realized it's crucial to find an postdoc advisor who has a good track record of alumni's getting job in academia, since I want to be a PI in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like many famous labs with big papers actually have too many postdocs and grad students so that not many of them have successful career. Productivity per person is diluted too much in those labs. I also doubt one's publication record is the only factor for success in getting a PI position as far as I hear from people around me. (Of course, I know that if you have a big paper in a big lab, that is the best way to get a position)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am open to go to any country for work if the working environment is good. My field is biophysics with some flavor of materials science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21286" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T06:36:36.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T08:06:12.777" Title="How to assess the proportion of post docs in a lab that go on to become PIs?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26404" CreationDate="2014-08-31T06:21:48.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;ISI Journal Citation Reports&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISI Journal citation reports might give you some useful information (your university may have a subscription).&#xA;It allows you to browse citation reports by subject category (i.e., discipline).  It includes things like impact factor, total counted citations, total articles in the focal year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then click &amp;quot;view journal summary list&amp;quot; which will give you an overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here is sample output for psychology in the 2013 JCR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ddKiD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this only includes articles in journals indexed by ISI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Publish or Perish Software&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, you might want to check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publish or Perish&lt;/a&gt;. It is free software for Windows and OSX that provides a way of searching Google Scholar particularly suited to bibliometric analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T06:27:19.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-31T06:55:35.343" Score="1" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing something to be read and scrutinized by academics, like a personal statement, will academics appreciate, respect, and value references to factual documentaries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'd like to write about how a documentary on the criminal justice system motivated my interest in law. I'll also cite books, but words fail to describe the influence of this audiovisual documentary on deciding to study law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13306" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T13:41:29.547" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T13:41:29.547" Title="Is it worthwhile to cite documentaries in personal statements?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27330" CreationDate="2014-08-31T12:28:17.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Interview section in your CV&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have significant amount of interviews or you want to bring them in your CV, I did not find any special tip to bring interviews in a separate section; but you can open a section like &lt;code&gt;media appearance/interviews&lt;/code&gt; and list your interviews in this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Citation style&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?&amp;amp;q=interview%20citation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;googling your question&lt;/a&gt;, I found many related links in which the citation of the interviews are clearly presented. I bring some of them here for you. One may find a good resource for citation of interviews in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bibme website&lt;/a&gt;. In this website, you will find the format, examples and notes on correct citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/MLA/interview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MLA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PUBLISHED/BROADCAST INTERVIEW:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Last Name, First Name. Interview by First Name Last Name. Publication Information. Medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PERSONALLY CONDUCTED INTERVIEW:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Last Name, First Name. Interview Type interview. Date Interviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/Chicago/interview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PUBLISHED INTERVIEW FROM PUBLICATION:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Last Name, First Name. Interview with First Name Last Name. Publication Title. Publication Information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PUBLISHED INTERVIEW FROM RADIO/TV PROGRAM:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Last Name, First Name. Interview with First Name  Last Name. Program Title. Network, Call letters, Date Interviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UNPUBLISHED INTERVIEW:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Last Name, First Name. Interview by First Name Last Name. Interview Type. Location, Date Interviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/Turabian/interview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Turabian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UNPUBLISHED INTERVIEW:&lt;/strong&gt;   Last Name, First Name. Interview by First Name Last Name. Interview Type. Location, Date Interviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/APA/interview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, in the above link, there is no guide for citing in APA format, as indicated &lt;code&gt;Interviews are not supported in bibliographies by APA. Please cite it as an in-text citation.&lt;/code&gt;, but I have found the following guide in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;apastyle&lt;/a&gt; website for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-interview.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;citation of interviews&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An interview is not considered recoverable data, so no reference to&#xA;  this is provided in the reference list. You may, however, cite the&#xA;  interview within the text as a personal communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to easily cite your documents?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I encourage you to use the softwares like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabref.sourceforge.net&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JabRef&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://endnote.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Endnote&lt;/a&gt; to prepare your citations and resources. Also you may use some online websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easybib.com/mla-format/interview-citation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;easybib&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://citethisforme.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;citethisforme&lt;/a&gt; for easier preparation of your citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T12:34:39.200" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T12:34:39.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27840" CreationDate="2014-08-31T13:18:56.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this may vary somewhat by discipline, I would think that the faculty would be more interested in what you took away from this source of inspiration and how it shaped your perspective/career interests, rather than the actual source itself. (This assumes the documentary is somewhat mainstream and not endorsing fringe ideas that would seem extreme to academics in your field.) Many students and professionals are drawn to study a particular field not because they read a brilliant academic book or paper, but because they read a lay book on the topic or saw a documentary or television program that introduced them to certain issues. These less formal forms of media can be excellent gateways to academic study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, it was Pete Earley's book &quot;Crazy&quot; that sparked my interest in mental health policy. I referenced this in my graduate school applications, describing how it helped me connect my macro-scale interests in health interventions with my micro-scale interests in the pathology and treatment of severe mental illness. When I interviewed with programs, several faculty discussed this, and they seemed more interested in how I had connected to the ideas in the book then the fact that it wasn't a formal academic text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with simply stating that &quot;X had a huge influence on me and made me want to study y or fight injustice&quot;; avoid generic statements. If you feel you are able to clearly state how the documentary impacted your career interests intellectually as well as emotionally, I see no reason not to include it. I also agree with the earlier comment - you might mention the name of the documentary or cite one particularly influential paper, but I'm not sure you need to cite works throughout the statement. (Of course, this may differ by discipline as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T13:18:56.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-08-31T15:54:41.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A masters degree is far superior. The study done at a graduate level far surpasses the study at an undergraduate level. Employers look at a masters degree with much more acclaim than they would 2 bachelor's degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21236" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T15:54:41.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-31T17:59:53.037" Score="12" ViewCount="2714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Art history is an established academic discipline and you can do degrees at all levels in it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this the case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why isn't it considered a sub-discipline of history?  It seems to stand separately as its own subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you get a BA in Music History, for example?  I am sure people study music history, but its much less well known as a discipline than art history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15788" LastEditorUserId="15788" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T13:52:31.417" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T22:50:07.143" Title="Why does art history exist as a distinct discipline separate from the discipline of history?" Tags="&lt;academic-history&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27852" CreationDate="2014-08-31T18:53:00.913" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is interesting that you assume Art History as a sub-discipline of History. I am aware of many joint Art and Art History departments (either formally in the name or where the courses are taught) and also joint Art History and Anthropology departments, but I am not aware of any universities where Art Hisotry is taught as a sub-discipline of History. This is probably rooted in the fact that the visual analysis techiques used by Art Historians is essentially completely unrelated to the techniques used by Historians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T18:53:00.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-31T19:39:21.247" Score="1" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing the references at the end of my internship report, I needed to cite all the information that needs to be said about the scientific articles that I used while writing the report. But these articles, most of the time, do not mention the conference or journals in which they were presented nor their publication date. Is there a website in which one can have access to this kind of information about any scientific aticle? BTW, I am talking about the field of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19986" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:03:58.640" Title="where to find the year and conference of a scientific article?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27852" CreationDate="2014-08-31T19:53:24.787" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Music History as an area of study certainly exists. Whether under that name or not will depend on how a particular school arranges its departments. Your not having heard of it says more about your areas of interest than about academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that: as @StrongBad said, different tools and different techniques and different priorities, hence different departments. History of science, if someone specialized in that, would probably also be different from a normal History degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T19:53:24.787" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27852" CreationDate="2014-08-31T20:09:28.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a complete outsider to this field, I might be completeley wrong, but I can guess one compelling reason: art history is the field one has to study to become a museum curator (other related jobs certainly exist): if one wants well curated collections in museums, then one needs to form curators and for this, specific research is certainly also needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T20:09:28.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2014-08-31T20:15:06.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mix up two things: &lt;strong&gt;Thesis introduction&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Chapter introduction&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I observe, every thesis has to have an introduction. It makes sense after all: You need to introduce the topic of the thesis etc. You can't simply start a math thesis by &lt;strong&gt;Theorem. For all X ...&lt;/strong&gt; -- you need to start somewhere, and that's the thesis introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chapter introduction is a nice thing to do, and there are more options. It can be a short text before the first section, a separate section, some people even provide short (3-or-so-sentence) abstracts to each chapter. However, this is mostly part of your writing style, and it can't be so much enforced (well, it can, but that is IMHO ridiculous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for references, there should be guidelines for them. If there's no, then I advise to include full list of references at the very end, since that's what people expect by default, but it's only an advice, not a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T20:15:06.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2014-08-31T20:54:32.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standards and common practices vary widely between fields, regions, and institutions.  There are no general rules or official guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is similar to what previous students have done, your advisor says it is okay, and it doesn't violate any style guide that your university may have, it is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This answer applies to a lot of the &quot;thesis style&quot; questions we've seen recently on this site.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T20:54:32.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2014-08-31T21:04:26.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scopus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elsevier's Scopus&lt;/a&gt; has pretty decent coverage and can also be used to create custom alerts that will email you when new manuscripts(s) matching a set of keywords (or authors) are found. With regards to proceedings it gets trickier as some times they do not get published by a source that gets captured by an aggregator (be it Google Scholar or Scopus or something else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13031" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T21:04:26.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27870" CreationDate="2014-08-31T22:39:59.527" Score="7" ViewCount="10946" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several sentences in a row that that cite the same source.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Here is question one [1].  Here is question two [1].  Here is question three [1][myOriginalWork].  Here is question four [1].&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the proper way to cite this using IEEE?  Do I cite my use of the source each time or do I cite it just once at the end of all my references to this source?  I don't think that citing each of my references to this one source is the way to go, but at the same time I have other sources mixed in and I want to make sure that credit is given where its due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat of an open ended question about citing the same source multiple times using IEEE.  I am just learning the style and want to make sure that I am using it correctly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21309" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T12:29:29.883" Title="How to cite the same source multiple times in a row IEEE" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27863" CreationDate="2014-09-01T02:58:58.950" Score="7" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to list my publications in my curriculum vitae. But, because I have publications in three fields &lt;em&gt;x, y, z&lt;/em&gt; of study such that &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; is my major and &lt;em&gt;y, z&lt;/em&gt; are not, I am looking for how to best display them so that it can be emphasized that I have works in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T13:09:52.600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T13:09:52.600" Title="How best to present publications in different areas on a CV?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27862" CreationDate="2014-09-01T05:08:51.830" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just make three lists of publications (one for each field) and place each with its own subheading under the general heading &quot;Publications&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Publications&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Biology&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pub 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pub 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Astronomy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pub 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mathematics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pub 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pub 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T05:08:51.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27819" CreationDate="2014-09-01T05:22:10.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comments and the other answer have mainly addressed whether your research area would be a fit in an applied math department.  Let's assume it is.  &lt;strong&gt;There's another, equally important side to the equation.  The willingness of a department to hire faculty with doctorates in other fields varies dramatically by the department and university&lt;/strong&gt;, at least in my limited experience.  This is more a question of culture than of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, at many universities applied math is just an unofficial group of faculty within a mathematics department.  I think that your chances of getting hired into a mathematics department are very slim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applied mathematics is a more interdisciplinary field, and is generally more open-minded culturally with respect to disciplinary boundaries, especially since many universities don't offer a degree in applied mathematics.  But applied math is a small field and it's still true that in many departments your application is likely to be tossed out because of the name of your degree.  I was a grad student during a faculty search at a prominent applied math department in the US, and I don't think they would ever have considered hiring someone with a degree outside of applied mathematics.  In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cemse.kaust.edu.sa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University where I work now&lt;/a&gt;, departmental boundaries are very thin and we have hired multiple faculty whose doctorate is in another field (though there was certainly resistance from some faculty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way you can help yourself a lot is to get a recommendation letter from someone who is on the inside of the applied mathematics community.  If, say, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://fellows.siam.org/index.php?sort=last&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIAM fellow&lt;/a&gt; says that you're truly an applied mathematician, you will immediately have street cred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T05:22:10.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27867" CreationDate="2014-09-01T05:29:08.203" Score="2" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question might be more suitable for they who are or were application reviewers of STEM ph.D. programs in U.S. universities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know what kinds of s.o.p. do catch reviewers' attention? Should I emphasize more at biography or more at research experience and intention or more at introducing past works? May I make my s.o.p. concentrated solely on research?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T07:11:30.930" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T07:11:30.930" Title="What should be emphasised in a statement of purpose when applying for STEM PhD programs in the United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;stem&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27835" CreationDate="2014-09-01T05:34:17.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an answer to your question, so feel free to downvote me.  But I'm going to answer the question you should have asked rather than the one you did ask.  The implicit question here is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I use a lab's track record of getting academic positions for its postdocs as a surrogate for what my own chances will be (if I take a postdoc in that lab)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the implied assumption is that if 50% of the postdocs from a given lab go on to get faculty positions, and if you go to that lab, then you will have a 50% chance of getting a faculty position.  I believe this is poor statistical reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Averages are not very useful in predicting the outcome of a single realization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some postdocs may not desire an academic position.  Therefore, their failure to get one has no bearing on what you are trying to assess -- but it will skew the measure you are using.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labs may not have had enough postdocs to provide a statistically significant sample.  For every PI, there was a &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; postdoc who got an academic position.  Unless she was the first postdoc that PI ever had, she went in with 0% odds by your measure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In deciding where to go, I think &lt;strong&gt;talking to the PI and to current and former postdocs&lt;/strong&gt; will be much more useful to you than computing this statistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T11:58:24.857" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T11:58:24.857" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27865" CreationDate="2014-09-01T06:26:03.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the name implies, a &lt;em&gt;statement of purpose&lt;/em&gt; should be forward-looking as much as possible. The &quot;biographical&quot; element of a statement of purpose should be included only to the extent that it helps to explain what you want to do as a graduate student. You most certainly do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; want to start off with recollections of early childhood and the first time you realized you want to be a researcher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, spend your efforts explaining why you want to be a graduate student &lt;em&gt;in the department to which you're applying&lt;/em&gt;. You should make specific reference to how your research will fit into the department's interests. (For instance, don't propose a project in area X if the department doesn't have a specialist in X.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a field where the advisor selection is made after matriculation, then you likely want to present a somewhat broader profile. If you show interest in only one professor's work, then you are dependent on the decision of that single advisor (who may or may not be on the admissions committee!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T06:26:03.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2014-09-01T09:04:24.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Master's for sure. I would rather be a master of something than a jack of many trades. Specialize. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comparative advantage&lt;/a&gt; and all that. Or perhaps you would rather be a jack? Then maybe 2 bachelor's is for you, but interdisciplinary doesn't imply jack/2 bachelor's I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: Econophysics, you can try out quantitative finance/mathematical finance. I am currently a grad student of QF, and we are learning stuff like Brownian motion and Feynman-Kac theorem. Basic for you Physics people, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the small difference of applying the stuff to finance (allocation of scarce resources over time) rather than economics (allocation of scarce resources), but hopefully that's not too far from your intention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get into QF/MF, you could take a master's in it or just get a master's in Physics and learn the Finance on your own. Finance is relatively easy to learn. Things to check out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quant Stackexchange (save it from beta please)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quantstart.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emanuel Derman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Mathematical Finance (the Finance is introductory while the Math is not):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hull's Options, Futures and Other Derivatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bjork's Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be patient with the cute math you may see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Economics (Basic-Math Basic-Economics book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N Gregory Mankiw's Principles of Economics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21026" LastEditorUserId="21026" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T10:39:37.047" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T10:39:37.047" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27861" CreationDate="2014-09-01T09:51:35.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141010050609/http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this guidance document&lt;/a&gt; (See page 7) on the IEEE website it appears that you do should the following when citing the same source multiple times in a row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References Within a Reference:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Check the reference list for ibid. or op. cit.&#xA;  These refer to a previous reference and should be eliminated from the reference section. In text, repeat the earlier reference number and renumber the  reference section accordingly. If the ibid. gives a new page number, or other information, use the following forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[3, Th. 1]; [3, Lemma 2]; [3, pp. 5-10]; [3, eq. (2)]; [3, Fig. 1]; [3, Appendix I]; [3, Sec. 4.5]; [3, Ch. 2, pp. 5-10]; [3, Algorithm 5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTE: Editing of references may entail careful renumbering of references, as well as the citations in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the same page (7) of the document in the section referring to references it states that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... they appear on the line, in square brackets &lt;em&gt;inside the punctuation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear from this guidance note that the example that gave is correct unless you are referring to different pages of the same document then you need to reference as per form above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the IEEE document says that you may refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;, published by the University of Chicago Press, for anything not covered in their own guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2018-10-02T12:29:29.883" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T12:29:29.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T09:59:10.593" Score="8" ViewCount="3392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently took an exam, and our professor told us that we should submit our question sheets since 2 other students in our class are going to take a make-up exam. We were also told that we were not allowed to talk about our exam while the other 2 are around. I presume this means that their exams are going to be identical to ours (For the sake of argument, let us assume that this is the case, and it is not in fact a strategy or something of our professor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our class is on weekdays (MWF for 1 section and TTh for another), but we had our exam on Saturday afternoon. Since we all have class on Saturday morning, it is okay to have an exam on Saturday afternoon since we would already be on campus. Apparently those doing the make-up exam have conflicts with their plans for Saturday afternoon which the professor accepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, we can't tell them the contents of the exam. Our professor claims that this is so as to not compromise the integrity of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my first question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it fair to the students taking the exam earlier that the make-up exams are identical to the original?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are grad students of mathematical finance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expansion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the fact that it is too easy for the two others to find out the exam questions should be reason enough for our professor to give a different and possibly even harder exam and that doing otherwise is in itself compromising the integrity of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not compromising the integrity of the exam, why not just have the same exam every year and collect the question sheet from students (which, cmiiw, actually doesn't really do anything since we can just copy the questions on a bond paper and bring the bond paper home)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27872/when-is-it-wrong-to-look-at-previous-exams&quot;&gt;See possibly related question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I seem to recall that department policy is that make-up exams are &quot;generally&quot; (exact word in undergrad syllabuses but not in our grad syllabuses which makes no mention of such) more difficult. If the answer to the first question above is yes, then does it follow that the &quot;generally&quot; should be removed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I truly cannot imagine how difficult it must be to a mathematician: research, teaching, consultation, conferences, etc. Thus, I am aware that it is no easy task for a teacher to just come up with a make-up exam, but nevertheless for the sake of maintaining the integrity (maintain is not compromise?) of exams, I believe this should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21026" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T11:11:10.790" Title="Are Identical Make-up Exams Fair?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T10:15:44.743" Score="13" ViewCount="6945" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clear that if I study for an exam in 2014, then it should be okay to look at previous exams from the previous semester of 2014, exams from 2013, 2012, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First question: Is it wrong, however, to look at previous exams within the same semester?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say there are two classes (9:30-10:30 MWF and 12-1:30 TTh) for a subject (S101). Say I am in the TTh class and I have a friend in the MWF class. My friend takes the S101 exam on Monday. I am to take the S101 exam on Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wrong for my friend and I to discuss the S101 exam after e takes the S101 exam and before I take the S101 exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I am thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should NOT be wrong because the S101 exam on Tuesday should be different from the S101 exam on Monday since professors should expect that students will discuss it among themselves. If the professor makes identical exams, then this is unfair to the MWF class who do not have as much information as the TTh class who easily obtain information from the ones in the MWF class who tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27871/are-identical-make-up-exams-fair&quot;&gt;See possibly related question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my friends say it is cheating while others do not. Our &quot;Code of Academic Integrity&quot; handbook makes no mention of such behavior or perhaps I misread it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the CoAI in fact fails to mention it while doing such is wrong, can students be faulted for doing such?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21026" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T14:31:50.447" Title="When is it wrong to look at previous exams?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27872" CreationDate="2014-09-01T10:33:13.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have access to the exam in question? If you can &quot;legally&quot;, e.g. download it from the subject's site, obtain it, then I see no reason why this would be wrong. On the other hand, you could have personal issues with it, i.e. personally consider it wrong, in which case you shouldn't look at it, even if you had the opportunity. I find this and similar kinds of dogmatically forced moral dilemmas in most cases very counterproductive, as I find it hard to believe that the staff would undermine the subject. So, if the staff is ok with it, i.e. makes it available and the CoAI makes no explicit mention of it, it isn't wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd like to advise you not to impose obstacles on yourself where none should exist by overthinking it, it wastes your time and energy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T10:33:13.120" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27871" CreationDate="2014-09-01T10:39:17.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your professor is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; going to put forward the same questions in the re-exam (which I doubt he will), he's only saving his labor. There is no way he can ensure that out of all people who took the exam, not even a single person will disclose the contents to the two gentlemen. That's why, most sensible people in this situation would prefer to have a different set of questions over for exam no. 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards the difficulty level, the reason why we have these kinds of exams is the following: suppose they missed on the original exam because of genuine medical circumstances - that can happen to anyone. There is generally a provision for this at most universities, i.e. show medical records and you can appear in a repeat exam. You might argue that if the record-demand (or the verification of record part) isn't too firm, there will always be people who will use this rule to buy some extra time to prepare. Assuming someone's not genuinely unwell, he would have gone half-prepared into the exam and would have fared badly. But because he 'bought' more time, he may be better prepared now, and therefore may fare better than what he would have originally. Perhaps, this reasoning prompts your comment, and I reckon you would expect your instructor to make the re-exam tougher than the original. But, you see, all possibilities need to be covered here. If someone was genuinely unwell, and hence missed out on the exam, there is a possibility that he may be well prepared for the exam, and would have done as well as you, if he could appear in the exam. But he couldn't, for reasons beyond his control. In this situation, if the instructor is deliberately increasing the difficulty level for the exam, it is unfair to the ill guy. Here, he certainly did not have the benefit of extra time, as the detractors were imagining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, sensible instructors will generally go for nearly the same difficulty level only - just to ensure that genuine cases don't get wronged. But of course, there has to be a different set of questions. Identical paper is absolutely wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T10:39:17.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16729" CreationDate="2014-09-01T10:44:17.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You just need to click on the author and it will take you to the author details page. There you will find the complete name of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bibliography you are exporting should be in the form as it is. While you can follow the above description for complete names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14747" LastEditorUserId="14747" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T12:58:04.523" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T12:58:04.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2014-09-01T11:27:36.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rather unusual that the final version of a published research paper does not display the publication venue prominently on the first page of the paper. If you can't find anything there, try to remember where you got the manuscript from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you download it from a website? The website should have contained all publication information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did someone give it to you directly? Ask that person for details on the publication information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it copied out of a book? Try to find that book again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't remember where it came from, you simply may want to try an internet search for the article's exact title and all authors - if there's anything to be found, that should come up among the top results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, you may have obtained a manuscript which is not formally published yet. After following the above steps to ensure that no published version is available in the meantime, these manuscripts can be cited as &quot;Unpublished&quot;, &quot;Technical report&quot;, or &quot;Preprint&quot;, together with the information how to find them (URL, University where they were prepared, or other) and the year they were written in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T11:27:36.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27872" CreationDate="2014-09-01T12:15:20.800" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;A major principle of academic integrity is &lt;strong&gt;when in doubt, ask the professor&lt;/strong&gt;.  Academic integrity codes cannot cover all possible cases, and it's expected that all parties will act reasonably and request clarification when it is needed.  You should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; assume that &quot;everything not explicitly forbidden is permitted&quot;, nor that &quot;it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.&quot;  The answer to your second question is &lt;strong&gt;absolutely yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case you describe in your first question is sufficiently questionable that I don't think you should proceed without explicitly checking.  There is certainly the potential for this to be unfair to the Monday students who don't have the option of talking to anyone before taking the exam.  If several of your friends consider that this may be cheating, that's a clear warning sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor hasn't thought of this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor has thought of it, and doesn't want students to do it, but is afraid that mentioning it will only encourage students who wouldn't otherwise have thought of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor has thought of it, but thinks it goes without saying that this is inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor has thought of it, and has taken other steps to ensure that students can discuss the exam without inequity (e.g. giving completely different exams).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 1, it would be inappropriate for you to take advantage of the professor's oversight.  If you ask her about it, you might suggest that she make a policy and announce it explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 2 is perhaps a questionable decision on the professor's part, but in any case, by asking, you protect yourself from inadvertently running afoul of integrity rules.  See also Case 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Case 3, you also protect yourself by asking.  Note that the university bodies that enforce academic integrity codes usually have no problem prosecuting students for doing things that they consider &quot;obviously&quot; inappropriate, even if no written rules explicitly forbid them.  And since they are usually composed in large part of professors, they are likely to have a similar sense of what is &quot;obvious&quot; to your professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 4, when you ask, you'll be told to go right ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own practice in such cases is to write on the Monday exam &quot;You may not discuss this exam with anyone, not even to say whether it was easy or hard, until Tuesday at 1:30&quot;.  (In some cases I might weaken this to &quot;anyone who has not yet taken it&quot;.)  I do this even if the exams will be significantly different, partly because I feel that any differential in available information is a potential inequity, and partly so as not to tip my hand as to whether the exams will be similar or not.  But as I said, you should not interpret the absence of such a warning as permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T12:15:20.800" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27862" CreationDate="2014-09-01T12:16:44.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27863/15723&quot;&gt;David Ketchesons answer&lt;/a&gt;.  One alternative is to keep a standard method such as by year, and create tags at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My Publication 1, Journal of Biology, 2013 &lt;strong&gt;[Biology]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My Publication 2, Journal of Mathematics, 2012 &lt;strong&gt;[Mathematics]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make it easy to see your publications and may give faster accessibility to your career.  For example, if you started in field X, and then went to field Y, and now you are at field Z, the chronological order will show tags at earlier publications with field X, and more recent at field Z.  In the same way, if you want to show how you publish in different fields throughout your career, it will show the mix of fields through the chronological order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T12:47:59.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T12:53:55.273" Score="17" ViewCount="7084" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a relevant PhD supervisor who refused to supervise my PhD project by saying that he has no open position in his research group. Is it OK to mail him again and request to accept me as a student, because the work he is doing in his research group is extremely relevant for my research interests. I have received funding and just need space in a research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21310" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T01:13:40.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T08:21:46.617" Title="A potential PhD supervisor declined to accept me as a student; can I ask a second time?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2014-09-01T13:07:25.077" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can always ask.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, be prepared that the answer may easily be still &quot;no&quot;. Direct funding is by no means the only resource that an advisor has to pour into a student. There is also the time investment of actually advising a student, assorted costs for overheads and utilities, as well as presumably some money to fund conference trips. This isn't even to speak of simple inter-personal matters, such as that the professor may feel that you are not a good fit for the lab culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T13:07:25.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2014-09-01T13:37:44.570" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; you had already obtained funding prior to the first request, and the professor was aware of this, you have to seriously question why you were refused a position. Possible reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor feels you won't fit in to the group or get along well with him as a supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor doesn't have enough time to supervise another student. You don't want a supervisor that has no time for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The professor doesn't want &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; student doing the stuff that you're doing. Maybe he wants to diversify into some different areas of your field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you could ask him again (and perhaps you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;, if you have only obtained funding after the first request). But you should also ask why you were rejected in the first place, because the answer to that question could tell you whether or not you are likely to enjoy your time in his research group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T13:37:44.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17659" CreationDate="2014-09-01T14:08:08.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm giving this answer from the point of view of philosophy, in the USA. I'd say that you should include a teaching statement in the packet, unless you are specifically directed to include only the materials they explicitly ask for. Don't bother with a research statement or some of the other junk that comes in a tenure-track packet. But this is a teaching job, and if I'm reading the above correctly, you don't have any experience as the instructor of record. So, what I would try to do is to write a short (1 page) statement that shows a committee looking at your packet that you are ready to walk into your own classroom and do your thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really hard to write a good teaching statement. It's going to be even harder without a lot of first-hand experience. Fortunately, there's no end of advice out there on the web. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Write-a-Statement-of/45133/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this,&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/09/16/thedreadedteachingstatement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; are both helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T14:08:08.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27871" CreationDate="2014-09-01T14:24:39.290" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether identical make-up exams are fair depends on the circumstances.  The key point is that you can't eliminate all potential for cheating: there are too many ways to cheat, and you can't even try to rule them all out without brutal and expensive oversight.  Ultimately, you have to make a trade-off, in which you take some anti-cheating steps but stop focusing on cheating once you reach the point of diminishing returns.  [For example, if you are really concerned about cheating, then you can't use take-home exams, and you'll have to police restroom visits very carefully for in-class exams.  These steps might be sensible under some circumstances, but counterproductive in others.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does this apply to identical make-up exams?  If you're teaching a required, low-level class to a large group of unenthusiastic students who desperately want good grades, then cheating sounds like a real worry, and giving the same exam twice would be a foolish decision.  If you're teaching an advanced class to a small group of students you know and trust, then there may be no issue at all.  Reasonable people could differ as to where to draw the line between these scenarios, and it depends on their judgment of the likelihood and consequences of cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more to this than laziness, although writing a second exam is certainly a pain.  Instead, there's a trade-off between several effects.  If you write a new exam, then you've eliminated the possibility of learning the questions from a classmate.  However, there's no way to calibrate the exams perfectly, so you've introduced the possibility that the make-up exam was inadvertently easier or harder, and the students may feel stress or bitterness over this.  Both the cheating and the differing difficulty are bad, and there's no way to completely eliminate them both, so you have to decide how much they worry you and balance between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also matters of educational philosophy.  I'm not fond of any approach that tells students I don't trust them or that challenges them to see if they can slip anything by me.  That doesn't mean I won't take countermeasures against cheating, but it means I consider the countermeasures to be problematic in and of themselves, so I try to use them as sparingly as I reasonably can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, how I design make-up exams differs from course to course.  Sometimes I write a new exam from scratch (while allowing some possibility of overlap with the previous exam, so students can't be sure something &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; be on the make-up just because it was on the original exam).  In other cases, I just fiddle with some of the details or replace a few questions, while warning students not to discuss the exam until after the make-up exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding outcomes, I find that students who take similar make-up exams rarely do surprisingly well, and on average they do a little worse than I would have expected.  Of course I don't know what's happening behind the scenes, and perhaps cheating saved them from scoring even lower.  However, I'm at least confident that students aren't using this as an opportunity to rack up lots of undeserved points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it's not compromising the integrity of the exam, why not just have the same exam every year and collect the question sheet from students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a matter of absolutes, but rather of how much the integrity is compromised and what the consequences are.  Re-using the same exams every year offers much more scope and temptation for cheating than a single make-up exam does.  The longer you re-use an exam, the more likely it is that unscrupulous students will piece together and circulate a list of questions, even if you collect the question sheets.  If you do this for all the exams in the course, then the potential benefits of cheating are quite a bit higher than in just one make-up exam.  (If I saw the same student repeatedly requesting make-up exams, I would wonder why and might become suspicious.)  If the ease of cheating in every exam is known, then the course will attract dishonest students who might never have taken it otherwise.  There's a big difference between possibly being able to learn about one exam if you convince someone else to help you cheat, and being able to learn about every exam by downloading a file from the internet.  It's reasonable to draw a distinction between these scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T14:24:39.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27889" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-01T16:38:36.087" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T16:38:36.087" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T16:38:36.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27890" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-01T16:38:36.087" Score="0" Body="On changing from one discipline, sub-discipline, or department to another during one's education, or mid-career." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T17:46:00.803" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T17:46:00.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27899" CreationDate="2014-09-01T19:13:55.440" Score="-3" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it 'a must' to state min/max values in addition to mean(+-std) when writing a publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15181" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T20:58:51.967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T23:07:28.417" Title="Must one state min/max values in addition to mean(+-std) when writing a publication?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27894" CreationDate="2014-09-01T19:15:10.623" Score="17" ViewCount="3437" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is translating an article (that could be found written in a popular science magazine or online in a science blog or personal webpage say) for a public newspaper or an online blog ...etc, requires permission from the author? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9547" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T19:41:21.017" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T11:19:22.823" Title="Does translating an article for a magazine require permission from the author?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27891" CreationDate="2014-09-01T19:22:30.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not a universal &quot;must.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics you should report in your publication depend on conventions in your discipline, the kind of data you are describing, your experimental methodology, and many, many other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult your advisor and/or similar publications in your discipline to find out more about what's expected for the kind of research &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T19:22:30.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27892" CreationDate="2014-09-01T19:36:12.130" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translations are considered a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot;&gt;derivative work&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Preparation of a derivative work is one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Exclusive_rights&quot;&gt;exclusive rights attached to the copyright holder&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article you wish to publish is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in the public domain or under a license that allows preparation of derivative work, you must get permission from the copyright holder to translate it. (Unless one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_copyright&quot;&gt;copyright exceptions&lt;/a&gt; applies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T19:36:12.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T21:50:11.057" Score="7" ViewCount="1622" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that most of the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ethics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ethics&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ethics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/plagiarism&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;plagiarism&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;plagiarism&lt;/a&gt; questions follow the same basic archetype:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: I think there's some plagiarism going on, and I don't really want to report it, but I think I should. Should I?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It'll be tricky, but yes, of course you should report it. Consult your institution for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;is there any case of academic dishonesty (including plagiarism) that a student/TA should almost certainly not report?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14910" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T22:03:27.390" Title="When should you not report plagiarism?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27895" CreationDate="2014-09-01T21:56:08.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're not sure is probably one situation. You're accusing someone of dishonesty so you'd better be able to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1201" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T21:56:08.250" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27912" CreationDate="2014-09-01T22:15:10.547" Score="3" ViewCount="2242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper on a board game, &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(board_game)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Labyrinth&lt;/a&gt;, and I need to use some parts of the rule book. How should I reference this? I'm using Harvard reference style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I hadn't notice this earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be found in the start of the rule book is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author: Max J. Kobbert&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in the end, this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;© 2007 Ravensburger Spieleverlag&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: I found a link to the rule book. The real one contains for several more languages but the content is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ravensburger.com/spielanleitungen/ecm/Spielanleitungen/Labyrinth_26448_GB.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to rule book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21336" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T13:43:11.530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T13:43:11.530" Title="Referencing a board game rule book" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27891" CreationDate="2014-09-01T23:07:28.417" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, SD and min/max are not bound to be reported together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the variable is &lt;em&gt;normally distributed&lt;/em&gt;, -3SD and 3SD will include about 99.7% of the readings, indirectly giving an approximate value for minimum and maximum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concerning bad habit is reporting mean and SD without carefully checking if the distribution is approximately normal. For instance, if the variable is highly skewed (long tailed to either end,) then that interesting feature of -3SD and 3SD will disappear. In those cases, reporting median and inter-quartile range may be better if &lt;em&gt;you want to describe the central tendency&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting minimum and maximum has its merit if you wish to highlight the presence or absence of extreme values. In most of the analytical scenarios, min and max don't share as much spot light as mean; whether to report them is really context-specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple situations in which reporting min and max may be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You reported mean and SD already, but the variable is not normally distributed. (or alternately, report non-parametric summary such as median.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You use a measurement tool that is rather unfamiliar to the readers. For instance, you developed a life quality scale and the mean and SD of the sample is 17.2 (+/- 3.6)... but out of what range? In that case, reporting both sample min/max (the min/max you actually observed) and possible min/max (the min/max score the instrument can actually give) will be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T23:07:28.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2014-09-02T00:58:17.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case I think it's best to first ask for permission to ask.  Now, I don't mean to break your request into multiple communications; that wastes everyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do start off with mentioning the additional funding and asking whether having funding makes any difference.  That way you don't show a lack of respect for his earlier refusal.  And if he can give you an answer just from that, he needn't waste his time reading further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Farther down you can lay out any other arguments, pleading, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T00:58:17.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27902" CreationDate="2014-09-02T02:10:41.570" Score="11" ViewCount="1926" Body="&lt;p&gt;In preparing my application to PhD programs I have the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have presented papers in two distinct large-scale local conferences. However, I am not sure how to list these on my CV in a verifiable way, since the conferences' websites and programs are not in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For journal papers I can simply provide the corresponding links, while for conference papers I have not come up with something helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty thus lies in: How to convince the reader of my vita that these papers are conference papers?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T02:29:31.980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T07:53:42.723" Title="How to prove that papers were presented when conference programs are not in English?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;language&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27901" CreationDate="2014-09-02T02:36:53.880" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not everything on your CV needs to be verifiable via an Internet link. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have many items on my CV that would require some interaction with a human to verify: degrees I've earned, summer research students I've mentored, seminar talks I've given, classes I've taught, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you can, on demand, provide contact information for someone who can confirm your presentation (e.g. conference organizer), I don't see why this is a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to provide a link to the non-English conference program, go ahead; someone who is sufficiently motivated can surely get it translated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm sure this goes without saying, but since I've seen a shocking number of CVs that say &quot;Presented at Conference X&quot; without further information I'll say it anyways: you must include the full details of each presentation, including its title, co-authors if there were any, full name of conference, date, and city.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T02:52:37.533" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T02:52:37.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T04:03:51.383" Score="5" ViewCount="2680" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &quot;list of publications&quot; (e.g. for a PhD thesis), should a conference paper which is published as &quot;proceedings&quot; in a peer-reviewed journal be categorized as a &quot;journal article&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm from Liquid Crystals field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21343" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T04:29:08.887" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T14:36:36.523" Title="In a publications list, how to categorize paper from conference whose proceedings are published in a peer-reviewed journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2014-09-02T04:52:56.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the funding is new information, I would ask for an appointment to discuss your situation and any concerns/hesitations the professor might have. Face-to-face meeting has advantage of a dialog that email lacks. You can ask for professor's concerns, express your enthusiasm, and perhaps come up with a partial solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some faculty is hesitant accepting students that they haven't worked with before (from a class), for example. If that is the case, you can either take a class, or ask to be admitted on a trial basis. Other times, faculty might not accept new students because they plan on leaving their current job or retiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution for you will depend on the specific circumstances that you can only find out through a face-to-face, honest discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T04:52:56.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27904" CreationDate="2014-09-02T05:07:30.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you don't say anything that is not true, and do not go against your university's regulations, you can use the layout that you like the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my thesis I categorized publications into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer-reviewed articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference talks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conference posters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Peer-reviewed articles&quot; I included any papers, including proceedings, that had been peer reviewed (i.e. I received an anonymous referee report for them). Anyone interested in reading my thesis will be familiar enough with the journals to know which ones are a conference proceedings venue. Certainly my thesis examiners were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T05:07:30.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2014-09-02T05:30:38.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt; Practice (smart)! The more time you spend being a student (studying, reading, summarizing, asking questions, taking notes, and pursuing answers) the better you will become at being a student. For more specific tips, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/03/25/how-to-ace-your-finals-without-studying/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by Scott Young. He focuses on methods that allow you to study smarter rather than harder. The key to this is to recognize that all knowledge is interrelated; everything connects to everything else,  and therefore no learning is wasted. I find his tips and hints to be useful, though I cannot learn quite as efficiently as Young claims one should be able to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T05:30:38.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27904" CreationDate="2014-09-02T06:42:35.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless I'm missing something here, you mean the conference proceedings were published in the &lt;em&gt;conference series&lt;/em&gt; of some journal. If this is the case, what is published is certainly peer-reviewed, but is certainly not a journal publication.  A classic example in my field (Physics) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/0954-3899&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. But there is a clear line of demarcation here - whenever the proceedings of any conference get published with J. Phys., they are in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Physics :Conference Proceedings&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. This leaves no ambiguity - what is published in the latter in certainly a conference proceeding and can't be classified as a journal article. (Actually, articles in the latter carry that identifier. e.g. have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/531/1/012001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate your concern - the only precaution that one has to take here is, not to mention an article in a manner that gives a wrong impression. This is because the rigor of reviewing process is different for a journal article and a conference proceeding (in general). For example, if the same article gets loosely mentioned as a ''Journal of Physics article'', it is inappropriate because it gives the impression that it is a journal article. That's why people divide generally divide into categories - journal articles, conference proceedings, conference talks, ''poster presented and abstract published'' sort of a thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, if you clearly mention/ the same gets clearly mentioned via some identifier that the article in question is a conference article, there is no harm in putting it under the heading of peer-reviewed articles. It certainly &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; peer-reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T06:42:35.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27901" CreationDate="2014-09-02T07:53:42.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a non-issue. Apart from anything else, almost none of the conference talks I've ever given is verifiable by following an internet link. The conference programmes invariably give the full author list of each paper and I don't recall any that has indicated which of them gave the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T07:53:42.723" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2014-09-02T08:21:46.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can and you should. Although the group may be full (which can be a good sign) showing persistence and motivation is a good sign for the group leader: they are often very much interested in a motivated student - after all, having groups from which no one finishes the PhD (as may happen with non-motivated students) is not a good thing for their personal results evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a recent story for you: Päivi Rissanen - a former &lt;em&gt;psychiatry closed ward inmate&lt;/em&gt; got finally, after a LOT of convincing a place under professor Antti Karisto (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.helsinki.fi/akaristo/in-english/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.helsinki.fi/akaristo/in-english/&lt;/a&gt;) in the Department of Social Policy in University of Helsinki and will soon be a PhD, according to Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong will may meld the world around it to its liking. Do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21348" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T08:21:46.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27904" CreationDate="2014-09-02T08:38:31.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As counter-intuitive as it sounds, there is no absolute rule for what is considered a &quot;journal&quot; and what is considered &quot;conference proceedings&quot;. In most cases the distinction is trivial. Most journals are not associated with a specific event, and paper submission and review  are entirely unrelated from any conference or meeting. Contrary, most events have dedicated proceedings, which contain all and only the accompanying papers to the presented talks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are curious cases where the line blurs. Some conference proceedings have self-styled themselves as &quot;journals&quot;, presumably in an attempt to make their publications seem more important. A slightly different case is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vldb.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VLDB&lt;/a&gt;, which basically does not do actual peer-review of conference submissions anymore. Instead, you submit to the VLDB journal, your submission gets the traditional journal peer-review process, and once a year the authors of all papers accepted in this year for the journal are invited to present their paper at the annual meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all to say that I think the &quot;clear line of demarcation&quot; isn't quite as clear as New_new_newbie says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a &quot;list of publications&quot; (e.g. for a PhD thesis), should a conference paper which is published as &quot;proceedings&quot; in a peer-reviewed journal be categorized as a &quot;journal article&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is called &quot;proceedings&quot;, I would put it to the other conference papers. However, to be on the safe side, you can always just check how other authors of this conference are referring to their paper. Are they treating it as a conference talk, or a journal submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T08:38:31.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2014-09-02T08:40:51.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of referencing is to allow others to determine what you've referenced and to look it up in turn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harvard has tools for &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/content.php?pid=43218&amp;amp;sid=318558&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citing multi-media formats&lt;/a&gt;, such as board games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inline: ([Rulebook] 1986). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biblio: [Rulebook] 1986 &lt;em&gt;Labyrinth&lt;/em&gt; (boardgame), Ravensburger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult a full style guide and model off the nearest multi media work, for example, album liners to a CD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure 2007 is really the date of the edition and not the printing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Kobbert 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kobbert, MJ 2007 '[Rulebook]' &lt;em&gt;Labyrinth&lt;/em&gt; (boardgame), Ravensburger Spieleverlag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4429" LastEditorUserId="4429" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T11:55:08.180" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T11:55:08.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27872" CreationDate="2014-09-02T09:28:07.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the prof. hasn't set any rules explicitly, I think it's safe to say you can use a past exam if and only if it has been graded and the grades have been released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was just a rule of thumb based on the premise that you won't see grades given until everyone has taken the exam. If your professor distributes grades before that then you need to wait until everyone has taken the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1201" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T14:31:50.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29929" CreationDate="2014-09-02T09:51:11.980" Score="6" ViewCount="2089" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a patent has been filed (or is in process of being filed) over the same research that is described in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does filing a patent application require disclosure in the paper publication process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what would be the expected format of disclosure during the paper publication process, regarding the patent pending status?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9738" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T19:32:45.490" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T00:48:11.210" Title="Does filing a patent application require disclosure in the paper publication process?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27892" CreationDate="2014-09-02T11:19:22.823" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the very good answer given by ff524 it's noteworthy that national laws apply and that those differ significantly. No matter what - it's always a good idea to get permission from the copyright holder (most likely the author or the publisher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example. German copyright law states the copyright as non transferable. So no matter how much the publisher would like to they cannot get the copyright from the author. However the publisher is usually granted an exclusive right of publication (at least for a limited amount of time). This license agreement between copyright holder and publisher might contain a clause concerning translations. So again the request for permission is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21166" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T11:19:22.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27904" CreationDate="2014-09-02T14:36:36.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to disagree with @xLeitix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No.  It's a conference paper.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper qualifies as a &quot;journal publication&quot; if (and only if) it passes through the standard peer-review process for the journal in which the paper is published.  If a paper is reviewed only by the program committee for a conference, it's a conference paper, even if the proceedings are published in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a particularly confusing example, consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siggraph.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIGGRAPH&lt;/a&gt;, the flagship conference in computer graphics.  For many many years, SIGGRAPH has published its proceedings as a standard issue of the journal &lt;em&gt;ACM Transactions on Graphics&lt;/em&gt; (aka &quot;&lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIGGRAPH accepts two types of papers: (1) direct submissions to the conference in response to the call for papers and (2) papers published in &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt; in the last 12 months.  Papers accepted from &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt; are clearly journal publications, because they went through the standard &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt; refereeing process.  (Those papers are not republished in the proceedings issue of &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt;, but they are listed in the &quot;table of contents&quot;.)  But direct submissions accepted by the program committee are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; journal publications, because they did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; go through the standard &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt; refereeing process, even though they are published in &lt;em&gt;TOG&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction is all the more confused by the facts that in the graphics community, &quot;SIGGRAPH paper&quot; is a &lt;em&gt;considerably&lt;/em&gt; more valuable label than &quot;journal paper&quot;, in part because the reviewing process for SIGGRAPH is (or has been historically) considered &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; rigorous than the refereeing process for graphics journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the rest of the world doesn't share this preference—or perhaps more accurately, doesn't believe that anyone sane could have such a preference—which is &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; why SIGGRAPH publishes their proceedings in a journal.  Put bluntly, the graphics community chose to defend itself against lazy scholars who value the imprimatur of a journal above the quality and impact of the work through deception.  Or if you prefer a slightly less inflammatory term: camouflage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/conference-proceedings-in-acm-journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM now explicitly forbids conferences from publishing proceedings in an ACM journal&lt;/a&gt;.  (SIGGRAPH's practice is grandfathered.)  But this doesn't stop non-ACM conferences like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~LEY/db/conf/vldb/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VLDB&lt;/a&gt; from wearing similar camouflage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T14:36:36.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28025" CreationDate="2014-09-02T15:20:01.050" Score="3" ViewCount="1439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an academic CV for a PhD application and they have asked for the standing of journals or conferences of published articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research publications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Include articles published or accepted for publication (with the three most significant marked with an asterisk).  Please specify the publication details, your contribution as an author to multi-authored publications, plus the standing of the journal or conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really not sure what they are looking for or how to express this. Is it the impact factor of the journal? And what about conference proceedings which don't have impact factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19543" LastEditorUserId="19543" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T09:44:11.780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T09:52:35.967" Title="How do I find the standing of a journal or conference for an academic CV?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;publications&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T15:42:53.740" Score="1" ViewCount="1920" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm from Iran and planning to apply for a master in CS in USA.  I'm trying to figure out how should I report my GPA, but I'm confused about courses that I have failed and repeated.  Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my GPA or just my last grade in that course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Iran&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Iranian grading system&lt;/a&gt; is based on a 20-point grading scale, the passing grade is 10 (for undergrads) and both failing and repeated grades are included in GPA calculation.  As it is mentioned in Wikipedia link, Iranian GPA is not directly converted to USA grading system: instead each course grade is converted individually and then GPA is recalculated for converted grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as I have researched online and offline I have found different answers about repeated grades when converting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21361" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:09:29.027" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T12:04:17.897" Title="Should repeated course grades be included in GPA calculations for reporting to institutions in the U.S.?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2014-09-02T15:55:53.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For applications to Australian universities, I suspect they want the ranking from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2010/archive/era_journal_list.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ranked Outlets list&lt;/a&gt; produced by the Australian Research Council.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T15:55:53.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27922" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:30:29.500" Score="53" ViewCount="13456" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intro:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; is a open-source software tool for statistical analyses and graphics, which is heavily used in different science disciplines and which is becoming more and more popular (although it is already quite popular in many areas). In addition to the base version, people from all over the place develop so-called packages, upload them, for example, to CRAN, where they can be freely downloaded to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; I am writing a manuscript for a peer-reviewed psychology journal and used a lot of &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; packages in my work. Of course, I want to and will cite &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; itself and the packages that I relied on heavily (e.g., to simulate or analyze data). However, I have also some packages, of which I used only a single, little function. For example, I used the &lt;code&gt;odd&lt;/code&gt; function from the &lt;code&gt;gtools&lt;/code&gt; package to determine whether an integer is odd or even. As far as I can see, the function is only a single line long, and I could have written it myself (but I didn't!). On the one hand, I want to give credit to these developers, on the other hand I don't want to blow up my reference list and confuse readers. So the question is, &lt;strong&gt;should I cite every single &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; package I used?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: Note that &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; has the nice function &lt;code&gt;citation(&quot;some package&quot;)&lt;/code&gt; to access citation information provided by the package authors; see also &lt;code&gt;citation()&lt;/code&gt; to cite &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21216" OwnerDisplayName="hplieninger" LastEditorUserId="21216" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T05:50:15.423" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T20:59:39.017" Title="Should I cite all R packages I used?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;&lt;psychology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27921" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:41:48.257" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would suggest you err on the side of rather citing too many packages (with version numbers, please!), although &lt;code&gt;odd&lt;/code&gt; quite probably is a borderline case. I'd rationalize this tendency as a bit of balance for all the people who use packages extensively but do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I would certainly cite anything that saved me a non-trivial amount of own work (as in, &quot;I could have done this myself, but it would likely have cost me half a day&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length of your literature list should not really be a concern in the days of PDF publishing. And &quot;we used R [3], packages foo [4] and bar [5] as well as multiple helper functions [6-10]&quot; should not be too confusing to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would possibly be more appropriate for &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions&quot;&gt;Academia.SE.com&lt;/a&gt;. Perhaps you want to edit your question (explaining what R is, so the question is understandable outside the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/r&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;r&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;r&lt;/a&gt; tag at SO) and flag it for migration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" OwnerDisplayName="Stephan Kolassa" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:41:48.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27933" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:31:07.973" Score="30" ViewCount="5098" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few months ago I attended a panel discussion on non-academic future careers for physics PhDs. The panel was made up of two senior physicists, a science communicator and freelance journalist, and a CEO of a finance corporation with a degree in physics. At some point I raised the question of whether the PhD program is functioning properly, and maybe we should do something about the PhD program before lecturing senior graduate students in theoretical physics on the importance of acquiring skills suitable for non-academic careers to get a job after grad school. To be more concrete, I referred to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7343/full/472259b.html&quot;&gt;a Nature article&lt;/a&gt; that I had come across a few years earlier. The two physicist panelists blatantly dodged my question. The CEO, who I suppose had received his degree in early 2000s, added a comment along the lines that it is better to have more highly educated people in the society rather than fewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are advisers hiring more graduate students to get more research done and compete better in getting grants, or there is an actual need for more PhDs, at least in natural sciences? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16184" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T16:52:23.350" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T18:00:44.117" Title="Do we actually need more PhDs?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27925" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:38:02.817" Score="10" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I wrote a paper and got it accepted in a journal. Can I then give a talk on that paper at a conference? What are the relevant factors here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11251" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T19:59:14.947" Title="Can one give a conference talk on a topic already published in a journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27924" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:47:47.460" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may depend on your field and its customs.  In mathematics, it's totally acceptable and happens constantly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the conference publishes proceedings (only a few math conferences do), you should not publish the same paper in the proceedings.  Some people use the proceedings paper to write a &quot;survey article&quot; intended to give the reader a broad view of their work and other related developments in the field, but they would usually not consider this to be an original research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other fields, where a conference talk is considered to be like a publication it its own right, this might not be acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T16:47:47.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27919" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:55:09.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my&#xA;  GPA or just my last grade in that course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all your failings and repeated courses are reported in your transcripts, then you should report them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should report all your official documents &lt;em&gt;as they are&lt;/em&gt; and the applicant should never edit them or report them partially (by his own favor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have your transcripts, your cGPA and also GPAs of each semester (including your passed, repeating and failed courses) is reported in the transcripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check whether the marks of your failed and repeating courses are calculated in your GPA or not. You should translate/report/recalculate your GPA exactly the same as they appear in your original transcripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as you can see in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27919/should-repeated-course-grades-be-included-in-gpa-calculations-for-reporting-to-i/27926#comment59732_27919&quot;&gt;one comment's liked question&lt;/a&gt;, the GPA calculation method differs from one country to another; so you don't need to re-calculate anything yourself (even, I think that by translating your GPA to another GPA-system by &lt;em&gt;mistake&lt;/em&gt; may disturb your admissions opportunities); just officially translate your transcripts and send it to the admission office of the university you are aiming to study in. The admission office will recalculate your GPA based on their methods or they may then ask you for more supporting documents. Read the following quotation from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9062/15723&quot;&gt;accepted answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9058/how-to-convert-from-one-grading-scheme-to-another&quot;&gt;How to convert from one grading scheme to another&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most countries have their own system which doesn't really make sense&#xA;  as you try to &quot;translate&quot; them to some other system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;even, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9061/15723&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; it is mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't convert between different grading schemes unless it is&#xA;  explicitly mentioned what minimum grades you need for your own&#xA;  country. Just apply and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T19:18:58.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:59:33.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to look into is style of learning. For example, I'm a haptic learner, which means I learn best through doing. 'Doing' in this case can be a simple as making flashcards. On the other hand, I can try and read a text book all day, and I won't retain much at all. Therefore, 30 minutes of making and drilling flashcards is a much more efficient use of my time instead of an hour spent reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone learns slightly differently. If you learn best when you hear something, try recording the lectures and playing them back. If you are a visual learner, maybe look into plotting out lecture points on a white board. Honestly this is just something that you need play around with, though you'll find many ideas to get you started on the internet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21131" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T16:59:33.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2014-09-02T17:16:56.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This answer doesn't address the question whether we need more PhDs. It's pretty clear we don't. Instead, it addresses the issue why faculty members are so reluctant to admit this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not surprised at the dodge. There are enormous social and professional pressures on faculty members in the US to never ever admit that there are problems with their PhD programs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/01/24/graduate-student-shrimps-on-the-doctoral-barbie-the-view-from-tenure-a-guest-post/&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; one such article explaining the reasoning from the point of view of a humanities department, but the issues seem comparable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastEditorDisplayName="user10636" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T18:14:24.197" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T18:14:24.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27929" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27930" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" Score="0" Body="(Do not use this tag) This tag is ambiguous (used for both &quot;changing-fields&quot; and &quot;transfer&quot; questions) and is being systematically removed (slowly, for minimal front-page disruption)." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:25:48.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2014-09-02T17:46:55.803" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've discussed this topic with my advisor on several occasions. His rather logical viewpoint was that if there were a serious glut of PhD's in a given field, you would see this because there would be a spike in the unemployment rate of PhD's in those fields. At least in the natural sciences and engineering, there does not seem to be any evidence that PhD graduates aren't finding jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly there is a glut of PhD's if the only possible destination were to remain in academia. However, especially for PhD's in so-called STEM fields, there are many other career options that do not involve staying in academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T17:46:55.803" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2014-09-02T19:04:42.403" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can make the same conversation for BSc or MSc degrees. There are probably many unemployed people with BSc degrees, as well. We cannot suggest that people should not go for higher education, because there are actually fewer jobs than university graduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to neglect an important, yet simple truth. That sometimes, certain people want to go for a higher degree, regardless of their job outcome. Education (PHD included) is more than filling resumes or getting a better job but a fulfillment in itself. In this sense, it is the same as learning to play the guitar. Does the world need a new guitar player? No it does not. But you do not learn the guitar to benefit society. You learn the guitar to benefit your soul. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the few lucky PHD holders manage to get the job they wanted that is fine. If they did not, at least they tried. Life is not linear and you cannot predict by your actions on what job you will land, even if you do everything perfectly. But at least, you must be provided with a chance to try. In that sense, it is better than there are actually more PHDs available than the available jobs for PHD holders. More people have access to an even higher education and that is (as aeismail said) a benefit in itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to directly answer your question: Do we need more PHDs? No, we don't. Would the world be a better place if you or I get a PHD? No, it won't. Would we get the job we want with a PHD? Probably not. But that does not mean that I must not have the right to do a PHD and try my chances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T19:04:42.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T19:10:29.230" Score="29" ViewCount="29230" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current strategy in my thesis and in papers is to write numbers less than 10 in words. For example, if I need to write the number 6, I write 'six'. Recently though, I've been thinking this strategy adds unnecessary complications. Is there any particular reason why numbers less than 10 should be written in words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T03:05:31.273" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T10:55:10.913" Title="When and why should you write numbers less than 10 in words?" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2014-09-02T19:45:58.617" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been taught, without justification, to write integer positive numbers from &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; up to and including &lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt; in words, and all the rest using numerical symbols.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this was a general rule, when I was learning my (native) language as a youngster. Nowadays, a sub-rule also appears somehow fitting to my eyes: the distinction between whether the number is used to count the cardinality of a collection, or to inform about the magnitude of an entity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write &quot;Let two firms engaged in oligopolistic competition&quot; rather than &quot;let &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; firms...&quot;  (this is &quot;counting the cardinality of a collection&quot;). I would also write &quot;Let fifty firms...&quot; rather then &quot;Let &lt;strong&gt;50&lt;/strong&gt; firms&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I would write &quot;the value of this parameter is set to &lt;strong&gt;6&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, rather than &quot;... is set to six&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T19:45:58.617" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27939" CreationDate="2014-09-02T19:48:40.773" Score="70" ViewCount="26751" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advisor always keeps pointing out that I should have publications and I should keep working and stuff like that. Recently he's been saying that not all student will finish Ph.D. and you should be careful not to be kicked out. He has this notion that Ph.D. students should work more than 80 hours per week on regular basis and near deadlines even they should cut off from their sleep time. I get the idea that he wants to encourage me and I also know that as a Ph.D student I need to have publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this type of behavior common among most advisors? Is it common for Ph.D. students to be expected to not have a life and just work? And finally do all advisors keep threatening their students like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a second year computer science student. I've been accepted by the department, not a specific faculty member. Also my funding is coming from TAship not his grant.  I'm not sure if I should start looking for another advisor, because I'm not sure whether the behavior I have described is normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14408" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T22:44:12.010" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T07:45:19.717" Title="Is it normal for an advisor to expect &gt;80 hour workweeks from PhD students, and threaten them with dismissal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="27" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2014-09-02T20:16:46.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write numbers as words when they are used descriptively as part of the narrative, and with digits when they related to technical constants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: I have two conclusions to make. First, the coefficient of 1 for reward is the best one to use. Second, the algorithm takes 34 iterations to converge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's just my personal rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21371" LastEditorUserId="19732" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T06:59:34.283" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T06:59:34.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-02T20:17:05.270" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that your question is mainly &lt;strong&gt;opinion-based&lt;/strong&gt;; because every faculty member has his own policy on advising PhD students and nothing seems to be correct/normal here. But, I answer your question from a student's perspective who is uncomfortable with his studying hours in his PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel uncomfortable with something in your studying program, you should solve it. The best solution is talking to your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if working more than 80 hours/week is too much for you, you should think about solving it &lt;em&gt;as soon as possible&lt;/em&gt;, because, you should work on your PhD project more than three years and when you are uncomfortable with that amount of work, after one or two years, you will face physical or even mental problems such as constant tiredness, depression, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your preferences, abilities and expectations and decide whether you want to work with that advisor or you can find another faculty member who has more flexible working expectations from his students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, expecting higher working hours from a PhD student is not a bad advising policy. But, the point here is that the student should think about his abilities and whether he can work under extreme expectations or not. Some students prefer working more and some students prefer less demanding and more flexible studying hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as you don't have any funding problem, before talking to your advisor; search carefully for another faculty member who's policies on advising PhD students meets your preferences. Talk to their students and when you have made your mind on changing to another advisor (after talking to them), talk to your current advisor and stop working with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T20:26:26.490" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T20:26:26.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-02T21:05:27.537" Score="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure some advisors do act this way.  I don't think it's very common, but it does happen.  It's more common for advisors to expect certain results than a particular hourly commitment, but all these things are a matter of extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in trying to figure out whether to switch advisors, I think you're asking yourself the wrong question.  The right question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What type of advising relationship works for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel energized, motivated, and happy under your current conditions, that's one thing.  If you feel overburdened and miserable, then you should probably look for a different advisor.  Even the most competitive Ph.D. programs have faculty who are not so demanding.  You have to figure out what type of style works best for you and try to find an advisor who is a good match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T21:05:27.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27942" CreationDate="2014-09-02T21:13:06.470" Score="15" ViewCount="3606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper, in which I must include a definition of a particular mathematical structure. It's a structure with which very few people would be familiar, thus I wish to include it verbatim, as opposed to citing it. Rewriting it in my own words would only obscure the meaning. Putting a long mathematical definition (perhaps half a page) in quotes looks bizarre and messes up the type setting. Is there a standard way to indicate the definition is cited, whilst avoiding any appearance of plagiarism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1202" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T00:26:21.170" Title="How do I cite a mathematical definition replicated verbatim?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2014-09-02T21:46:26.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is an unnecessary complication, as long as you remember to be consistent. But it may not necessarily be appropriate for the document you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English non-technical contexts, the style is often to write out numbers from one to nine as words, and then from 10 onwards as numbers (this is style used by the Associated Press and in some cases the Chicago Manual of Style). The Chicago Manual of Style also alternatively prescribes writing out numbers from one to one hundred as words. In both style guides, numbers that begin a sentence should be written out as words and Chicago specifies that, if this is an unwieldy solution, then the sentence can be rephrased. The webpage &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apvschicago.com/2011/05/numbers-spell-out-or-use-numerals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Numbers: Spell Out or Use Numerals? (Number Style 101)&lt;/a&gt; provides a useful guide, which goes into greater detail on good style for numbers in general documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're likely writing a technical document, and as such, the guidelines are different, suggesting that numbers should be written with digits much more, with David A. McMurrey, author of &lt;em&gt;Processes in Technical Writing&lt;/em&gt;, stating: 'You should use numerals, not words, when the number is a key value, an exact measurement value, or both. For example, in the sentence “Our computer backup system uses 4 mm tape” the numeral is in order.' The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/when-to-spell-out-numbers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; which was the source of this quote provides helpful guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9117" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T21:46:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27940" CreationDate="2014-09-02T21:48:15.540" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Immediately before the definition, you could say &quot;Quoting verbatim from [source], we define a [whatever-it-is] as follows:&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in general, thinking in terms of honesty/forthrightness is an excellent guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T21:48:15.540" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:08:24.187" Score="14" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most journals have a peer review process, where there are several rounds of reviews and modifications over a single paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my particular case, one of these reviews was, in my opinion, a bit over the top. In this case, the reviewer asked me to expand a set of equations that are explained in any undergrad numerical analysis book. It even has a very well described Wikipedia page. And the set of equations took an entire page of my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, my PI at the moment told me it was just better to comply and get the paper ready (it had already been accepted subject to these changes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My new PI told me it seemed wrong to him, since it is a very basic set of equations and the fact that one reviewer is not familiarized with it, is not an excuse to break the rhythm of the paper, since suddenly a whole page of equations can do that for you in a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He told me he would have fought it back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the overall opinion in different fields with respect to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2806" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T22:41:00.833" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T17:34:14.370" Title="When is it prudent to argue against a suggested revision to a journal paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:33:38.377" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the question of &quot;Is this expectation usual,&quot; I offer the current state of the following &lt;em&gt;completely unscientific&lt;/em&gt; survey from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2010/04/29/a-quick-question-for-the-scien/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adventures in Ethics and Science&lt;/a&gt; blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asked is, &quot;My graduate advisor expects or requires me to work...&quot;, and as of right now, 68/650 respondents (about 10.5%) report that they believe their advisor expects them to work more than 70 hours a week:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/df8LU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that regardless of what expectations are, the research suggests that the overwhelming majority of graduate students do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; work 80 hours a week. For example, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/.VAZAcaux3UY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2003 study of Australian PhD students&lt;/a&gt; found that 15.6% worked 50 or more hours per week. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.learning.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwadminoxacuk/localsites/oxfordlearninginstitute/documents/overview/rsv/The_Research_Experience.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey of research students at Oxford&lt;/a&gt; found that 28.8% worked 45 or more hours per week on research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T22:33:38.377" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:34:50.573" Score="4" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a web service that I can send a bibtex entry and receive an impact factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://magicalsite.com/query.php?json={MY_BIBTEX}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;returns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;{&#xA;'IF':37.65&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I figured it out...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.impactfactorsearch.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.impactfactorsearch.com&lt;/a&gt; which is proposed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28330/15723&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick and easy PHP script to get the impact factor of any journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;?php&#xA;$name        = &quot;Applied Ocean Research&quot;; //change to suit your needs&#xA;$journalName = urlencode($name);&#xA;&#xA;$cmd      = &quot;curl -s 'http://www.impactfactorsearch.com/test.php?json=true&amp;amp;input=$journalName'&quot;;&#xA;$result   = `$cmd`;&#xA;$ifObject = json_decode($result);&#xA;&#xA;$levDistances = array();&#xA;if (isset($ifObject-&amp;gt;results)) {&#xA;    if (is_array($ifObject-&amp;gt;results) &amp;amp;&amp;amp; (sizeof($ifObject-&amp;gt;results) &amp;gt; 0)) {&#xA;        foreach ($ifObject-&amp;gt;results as $journal) {&#xA;            $levDistances[$journal-&amp;gt;value] = array(&#xA;                'score' =&amp;gt; similar_text($journal-&amp;gt;value, $journalName),&#xA;                'if' =&amp;gt; $journal-&amp;gt;id&#xA;            );&#xA;        }&#xA;        arsort($levDistances);&#xA;        $keys         = array_keys($levDistances);&#xA;        $impactFactor = doubleval($levDistances[$keys[0]]['if']);&#xA;        echo &quot;journal: &quot; . $name . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;        echo &quot;if: &quot; . $impactFactor . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;    }&#xA;}&#xA;?&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21373" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T17:13:34.777" Title="Is there a web service that receives a reference and returns the impact factor?" Tags="&lt;website&gt;&lt;impact-factor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2014-09-03T00:11:08.317" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many style manuals will have specific requirements regarding when to express a number as numerals or in words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;APA Style&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA version 6 style manual has an entire section starting from 4.31 on how to present numbers in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manual does include a general rule that numbers 10 and above should be expressed as numerals, but there are a wide range of exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should be expressed as numerals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any number in an abstract &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any number immediately preceding a unit of measurement  (e.g. &lt;code&gt;3 kg&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any number representing a statistical operation (e.g., &lt;code&gt;4 times as many people&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;times, dates, ages, scores, and points, exact quantities of money, numerals as numerals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;numbers that indicate a place in a series (e.g., page numbers, Table 1, Table 2, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also further exceptions for when numbers should be expressed in words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbers at the start of a sentence or heading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common fractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where the usage is common&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why have the general rule to express numbers below 10 in words?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had 2 apples. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had two apples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had one-hundred and thirty-two choices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had 132 choices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few possible principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbers less than 10 are easy to read as words; Large numbers are difficult to read as words and easy to read as numerals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general, conventions make life easier for writer and reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may be a slight disruption to the look of and reading of prose when interspersing numbers with words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A few numbers, particularly &quot;1&quot; (which looks a bit like &quot;I&quot;) might introduce slight ambiguities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T00:11:08.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11760" CreationDate="2014-09-03T00:22:40.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have collected discouraging quotes from authorities, it is a good idea to find other authorities who have held the opposite point of view. I suggest that the arch-experimentalist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oliver Heaviside&lt;/a&gt; would be a good match for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is&#xA;  Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate&#xA;  rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical&#xA;  inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the&#xA;  mechanism of digestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalent idea of mathematical works is that you must&#xA;  understand the reason why first, before you proceed to practice.&#xA;  That is fudg e and fiddlesticks. I know mathematical processes&#xA;  that I have used with success for a very long time, of which&#xA;  neither I nor any one else understands the scholastic logic. I have&#xA;  grown into them, and so understand them that way .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5842" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T00:22:40.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27940" CreationDate="2014-09-03T00:25:53.363" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is common practice in mathematics.  Definitions are not normally thought of as containing creative content, and if you need to use exactly the same definition as the previous paper, you use the same words.  As far as I know, no mathematician considers this to be plagiarism of any kind, provided an appropriate citation is given.  Quotation marks or block quotes are not used, because, as you say, it would look weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some phrases you might use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We define, as in [4]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following definition is taken from [4]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow [4] by defining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use the definition from [4], which we include here for the reader's convenience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then format the definition as you normally would.  Minor paraphrases and spelling/grammar fixes that do not change the meaning are also fine.  If you fix a typo that makes a mathematical difference (e.g. the original author wrote 2 but from context obviously meant 4) then you should point it out explicitly, but this is more for mathematical correctness than citation practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you are publishing in a non-mathematics journal, standards might vary, and you might have to use quotes or otherwise format in some way that would look weird to a mathematician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T00:25:53.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-03T00:36:47.673" Score="10" ViewCount="987" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss is first author on several papers, and doesn't want to give a reprint to anyone unless he knows and approves the reason they want it. I know, I know. These reprint requests fall to me. How do I inquire why they want it, with an appearance of collegiality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: By &quot;reprint&quot;, I mean the PDF of a paper, requested from the author by someone who doesn't want to have to buy it at the journal website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21374" LastEditorUserId="21374" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T06:07:13.930" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:53:35.323" Title="How do you tactfully inquire why a person wants your reprint?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27949" CreationDate="2014-09-03T00:55:24.587" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the requester, you could say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For my records, may I ask why you are requesting a reprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; Though, I think a good follow-up question to ask here would be &quot;how do I tactfully tell my boss to field these reprint requests for themselves?&quot; :^) &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T00:55:24.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28251" CreationDate="2014-09-03T01:45:42.470" Score="5" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just completed the registration of my GRE account, and was going to schedule my test, when I read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/register/name_you_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guidelines on how to fill in the &quot;First name&quot; and &quot;Last Name&quot; fields&lt;/a&gt; and realized that I may have filled them incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've understood, if you have multiple surnames then you should fill in the &quot;Last name&quot; field &lt;strong&gt;with all of them&lt;/strong&gt;, without spaces in-between. So, if my name is Alberto Oliveira Castro Alves Saracaia, the &quot;Last name&quot; should be &quot;OliveiraCastroAlvesSaracaia&quot;. Is this correct? Or should the &quot;Last name&quot; be filled as &quot;Saracaia&quot; only (which is what I did).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried contacting ETS by e-mail, but got no response so far. Any help would be appreciated, thank's in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21375" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-10-19T23:11:19.893" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T19:04:26.677" Title="How to register for GRE if you have multiple surnames?" Tags="&lt;gre&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27940" CreationDate="2014-09-03T01:59:35.567" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you define terms in a &quot;Definition&quot; environment, then you may state the reference after the heading.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition 2&lt;/strong&gt; (Noche, 2014). A real number &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; is said to be &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; if 0 &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; &amp;lt; 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T00:26:21.170" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T00:26:21.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27967" CreationDate="2014-09-03T05:21:24.103" Score="4" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to increase my research experience in a field not very closely related to mine (I am a chemical engineer and want to pursue Tissue Engineering). I a currently a 4th year undergraduate. I have some research experience in the field. Do I have a shot a securing a research job in a european or american research Lab or a University? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:50:26.077" Title="Do research laboratories hire international students with a Bachelor's Degree?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27975" CreationDate="2014-09-03T05:22:46.543" Score="2" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interesting in publishing a Bioinformatics software as a paid access article in a journal where they have open access as well as paid access options (Oxford's &lt;em&gt;Bioinformatics&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it stated at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/bioinformatics/for_authors/general.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journal's website&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software&lt;/strong&gt; If the manuscript describes new software tools or the implementation of novel algorithms the software must be freely available to non-commercial users at the time of submission, and appropriate test data should be made available. Availability must be clearly stated in the article. Authors must also ensure that the software and test data is available for a full TWO YEARS following publication. The editors of Bioinformatics encourage authors to make their source code available and, if possible, to provide access through an open source license (see www.opensource.org for examples). Authors should make every effort to use URLs that will remain stable. At the minimum, authors must provide one of: webserver, source code or binary. The name of the software should be included in the title of the paper wherever possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean the article publishing that software must be an open access article?  or can it be a paid access article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6969" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T14:00:42.097" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T14:00:42.097" Title="If a journal publishing an article about a software tool requires the software to be freely available, must the article be open access?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2014-09-03T05:45:32.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow the style guide and the authors' guide for your publication&lt;/strong&gt;. Almost all such guides for academic publications include guidelines for spelling, presenting numbers, and referencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, quickly scan through recent documents from the same series (so, if it's a thesis, flick through some recent theses; if it's a paper in a particular journal, have a quick read of that journal), and reproduce their formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, if still in doubt, ask your supervisor, advisor or editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T05:45:32.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27961" CreationDate="2014-09-03T06:23:56.753" Score="5" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoc with slightly more than 1.5 out of 3 years left in my contract. Recently I have received an email about a postdoctoral position in another country, which interests me. The position is not yet formally advertised, but potential candidates are invited to submit a brief expression of interest, and to indicate the date they will be available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a common practice to submit an expression of interest although I will only be available 1.5 years from now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T08:35:25.327" Title="Should I submit an expression of interest for another position although I still have 1.5 years left in my current contract?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27960" CreationDate="2014-09-03T06:57:08.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a common practice to submit an expression of interest although I will only be available 1.5 years from now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say it is &quot;common practice&quot;, simply because it seems relatively pointless. While starting dates for academic jobs are usually flexible, 1.5 years of delay for a postdoc seems like a stretch. Many postdocs are hired on specific projects, and the project in question would be half-over before you even begin. Even for postdocs paid by some sort of fellowship, the start date usually isn't &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; flexible. Of course this does not stop you from asking, but I would not get my hopes up too high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T08:35:25.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T08:35:25.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27963" CreationDate="2014-09-03T07:50:04.277" Score="2" ViewCount="1020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had unofficially agreed to start working on my thesis during September, with no concrete date being mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are two factors which might delay this date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Me not being available due to travelling until the end of the month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't feel confident about the programming task that has to be done during the thesis, so I want to take a little bit more time to work on some exercises&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in case that I go there, they might request me to sign for the official thesis registration, which then will impose the deadline when I have to be completely done with all the thesis stuff. I don't want to do this, before being confident that I can proceed easily with the programming, because otherwise the period that I will spend doing some extra programming exercises will be eating from timeslot limited with the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I inform the adviser about these developments, or should I shut up until I come back (and use another 10 days to do some extra exercises) and then go to his office and talk about the official thesis start?&#xA;Which situation would reflect best on me? I'm afraid I am causing too much communication overhead unnecessarily and somehow not respecting the time-frames I have agreed myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason to go to the advisor: I have already verbally promised that I will be around once September comes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason not to go: They may require me to sign the official thesis start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T11:59:07.780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T12:34:24.157" Title="Should I inform my thesis adviser about current situation" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27962" CreationDate="2014-09-03T08:16:17.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, if you tell someone you'll be doing stuff with them at time X, and then change your mind, let them know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, I would recommend an email such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dear Advisor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we had planned for me to start my thesis in September, but because of REASONS I'll only be able to start on October. I apologize bla bla&#xA;In the meantime, I'm planning to do EXERCISES. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions on how to prepare.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a point in telling this to your advisor in person anyway, and this should keep you safe from being made to sign stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T08:16:17.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-03T08:29:09.037" Score="2" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started applying for Phd programs I had big dreams and goals on working on certain topics and spending lots of time in the field. I also had in mind some location and universities but I was flexible to some degrees on the university/location. It took me about 1 year to find a program I was (am) excited about and got accepted (top 10 US institution). Along the way I turned down possibilities with good funding because it was not my focus topic of interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now after a year at my current program there are no funds in place and I am considering moving to programs that have already funding in place but in topics that are not my main interest because there is generally more money in these other topics. I am wondering at this point if I should settle for any topic that fits my skills and falls somewhat in my interests or stay in this roulette situation not knowing when I can really start the research I am interested in. I want to get started on a project and work on my thesis but I also am concerned of doing something that might set me on the wrong track or compromise too much (less interesting research field, worse PhD program, less known university, no fieldwork).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given the current funding situation especially for certain fields, do PhD students these days have to lower their expectations on pursuing their topic of main interest?&lt;/strong&gt; . I mean these days people struggle to find a regular job. I would like to add that I am also flexible on the questions I want to pursue within my field, I have flexibility but the funded projects are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T18:27:49.633" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T04:24:43.477" Title="How long to wait for an optimal/good PhD thesis/program, should settle for less exciting topics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27969" CreationDate="2014-09-03T10:36:16.543" Score="15" ViewCount="5330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a life sciences Ph.D. student preparing over the next few months to begin applying for a postdoctoral fellowship. Several of my potential advisors are on the coasts--California, Boston, Seattle--where the cost of living is quite high. Others are in the Midwest where the cost of living is much lower. I've lived a lot of places myself, so for the sake of argument we can assume I'd be equally happy moving to any of these places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I don't want money to be a factor in this decision, I do have a wife and children and (insert salary here: $45,000 for example) allows a much different standard of living in the Midwest than Boston or Long Island. For those of you who received multiple postdoc offers--is this something that they take into account when setting your salary, or can I expect more or less flat offers across the nation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="154" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T10:45:57.287" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T03:07:29.537" Title="Are postdoc salaries in the USA adjusted for cost of living?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27956" CreationDate="2014-09-03T10:50:26.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure you can call it a job, but if somehow you put it nicely as a internship, or unpaid internship, you might be lucky enough to find someone that would like to invest some time on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that apart from your will, there must be some supervisor that would be willing to guide you along the process. For that to happen, either there must a be an open position, or you have to convince them that you are worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you could do is not to as for income, since you mention your main goal is to upgrade research experience. If you need income at any case, then you can as for student-job positions which are common in Europe (especially in Germany). But, still the Professor will need to spend some of his funds on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare a good motivation letter to convince the Professor, get quality recommendation letters, show some proof that you have the potential to conduct research &quot;independently&quot; (if you have some publications in the field that would help you), make sure you find a research group that fits you (more precisely you fit them, in the sense that you know the field they are working on, you know the tools they use for the specific research)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since you are a Bachelor student, and I assume you don't have much to offer you should keep your demands as low as possible. Alternately, check if your university has cooperation with other universities, maybe you can go to a university that could fit you as an exchange student?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:50:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27949" CreationDate="2014-09-03T10:53:35.323" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A longish comment with a bit of answer near the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the sharing of actual journal-produced PDFs of the article may fall under the constraints of the Copyright Transfer Notice that you guys signed when you published the paper. Now, publishers often do not like it when you post the &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; version on your website, though most seem to be okay if you e-mail it to a few people here and there. But it is possible that your boss has been burned by an experience before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I were to send the e-print that I got from the publisher, which is watermarked with &lt;em&gt;my name and institution on it&lt;/em&gt;, to a random Joe Schmoe, who then puts it into a BitTorrent collection and uploads to The Pirate Bay, whom do you think will be blamed by the Journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I think your boss maybe slightly paranoid, I do not see it as more so than the healthy kind of paranoia that keeps non-profits like the EFF functioning: somebody has to think about the worst case scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check your copyright transfer agreement to make sure that  you are allowed to share what the person is asking for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check with your boss to see whether his reservations about sending digital reprints also extends to a pre-print (original manuscript before peer-review) or a post-print (the accepted manuscript after the peer-review rounds but before the proofs were prepared). It is quite possible that his policy is based on a quite literal reading of the copyright transfer agreement, and he just wants to prevent commercial use of the reprint. (If yes, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27949/how-do-you-tactfully-inquire-why-a-person-wants-your-reprint#comment59805_27950&quot;&gt;go here&lt;/a&gt;.) If not....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... check whether the person sending the request is happy with a pre/post-print and if so, everyone is happy. If not, the ball is now in the court of the person making the request to explain why he or she wants the version of record and that only. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:53:35.323" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27965" CreationDate="2014-09-03T11:36:04.390" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a wide variety in the range of post-doc salaries. In the biomedical sciences, the NIH's salary guidelines hold sway, as the NIH is the largest source of funding for such positions. So there's relatively little cost-of-living adjustments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think many institutes set their own scale according to &quot;what the market will bear.&quot; Popular schools like MIT could pay somewhat less and still be competitive because of the &quot;prestige factor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T11:36:04.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27924" CreationDate="2014-09-03T12:17:46.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will depend very much on your field, and even the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As JeffE mentioned, some CS conferences will expressly forbid papers that are already published, because the conference is meant to disseminate new work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, some major medical conferences will have an embargo on the work until it is presented - this is often coordinated with the journal the work is being published in so that they go &quot;live&quot; the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, many conferences in public health have presentations expressly about previously published research, or on a study or topic for which multiple papers have been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T12:17:46.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27962" CreationDate="2014-09-03T12:27:15.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on the personal stance of the advisor. Does he or she readily accommodate wishes by students, especially if they are comparably insignificant (delaying the start date by some 10 days) and seldom (it's not a perfect start to bring such an issue up right at the beginning of the thesis already, but if you don't come up with such requests every week, that may be fine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely suggest contacting the advisor, as just ignoring him or her and disappearing for some 10 days does certainly not make a good initial impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;danger&quot; of being made to sign the start, I am not sure as to how realistic that is, given that you have concrete reasons (physical absence while travelling) for a (rather limited, less than two weeks!) delay - and I think it is unlikely the department or the advisor could be eager to force students that do not feel ready into starting their thesis (and thus provoke bad results). One issue &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be that they have a certain rule concerning the maximum duration of preparation time before the official start, but if that is the case, that is all the more reason to talk to your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside just telling the advisor about your wish for a slight delay, I suggest you go see him or her in person, as just writing an e-mail may express a rather lackadaisical attitude towards your thesis. At least, you could write an e-mail to the advisor, utter your wish to slightly delay the official start, and express that you're ready for a meeting where you can discuss that in detail. That should make it clear that you're not willing to sign the official start yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One extra thing you might do to make your advisor extra-receptive about your request is being concrete about what you want to do in the additional ten days. Do not just mention &quot;some extra programming exercises&quot;, but provide a concrete link or book title (or whatever else) that denotes a set of exercises you are planning to work through. Convey to your advisor that you really care, and that you don't just want 10 more days for idling, but that you have a concrete plan in mind, based upon which those 10 days would realistically make any difference concerning your current worries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-note, if we abstract your question to what you asked in the title, &quot;Should I inform my thesis adviser about current situation?&quot;, the answer should invariably be an unanimous &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14017" LastEditorUserId="14017" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T12:34:24.157" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T12:34:24.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27965" CreationDate="2014-09-03T12:33:35.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no fixed &quot;postdoc salary&quot;, so by extension there is no way to inherently adjust for cost of living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NIH postdoc salary level (which is probably the closest thing to a 'fixed' postdoc salary in the U.S.) is adjusted for years of experience, but isn't necessarily adjusted for cost of living. There are ways around this, for example institutions in very expensive parts of the country (New York comes to mind) may be able to provide subsidized housing to postdocs to help offset the expense of living there, but this is far from assured. They may also find additional &quot;pots&quot; of money, provided by the institution, non-NIH grants, etc. for which they can pay a postdoc more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not the only factor under consideration - the institution may know they're in a position to not pay much because of the prestige and perceived career benefits, or on the flip side may need to pay more because they know they're potentially competing against private industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T12:33:35.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27990" CreationDate="2014-09-03T13:27:00.780" Score="21" ViewCount="1770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my PhD about a year ago and every now and then I get asked to referee a paper (perhaps once every two months from a reputable journal). I tend to accept as many as possible (except from crappy so-called &quot;predatory&quot; publishers, which I decline immediately) because I find refereeing papers is a good way to force myself to learn new things. There is also the moral obligation to referee a peer's paper to compensate for the time your peers spend refereeing yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that, at this early stage in my career, I'm familiar with the work I did during my PhD and little else. Since I try to be as fair as possible (I hate it when I get a report from someone who has clearly not understood the paper or just skimmed through the text), this means I spend a lot of time reviewing literature and trying to understand a paper before submitting a report. For something very close to what I have done in the past, I could finish the report in half a day. For something further away, I could be looking at anywhere from one to three days, depending on how familiar I am with the methods used and the length of the manuscript. As everyone in the academic world knows, it sometimes gets &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; busy (just &quot;normal&quot; busy otherwise), and these breaks tend to disrupt my &quot;paid&quot; job routine (I understand reviewing is also part of my unpaid duties).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess reviewing will get easier and quicker as I gain experience, but is it usual to spend so much time refereeing papers? What would be an acceptable compromise between a rigorous review and reconciling it with your paid duties? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14695" LastEditorUserId="14695" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T07:31:40.657" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T07:31:40.657" Title="How much time should one spend refereeing a paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27957" CreationDate="2014-09-03T13:59:03.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two are entirely independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The journal does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; require you to make the software open source. It merely requires you to make it &lt;strong&gt;free for non-commercial use&lt;/strong&gt; for at least &lt;strong&gt;two full years&lt;/strong&gt; from the day of submission of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It however &lt;em&gt;recommends&lt;/em&gt; that you make the source available, &lt;em&gt;preferably&lt;/em&gt; via an open source license. But it states that it is even acceptable to simply provide the compiled binary to the editors. (Presumably to verify that the software does what you report it to do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The requirement is only applied to a software if you wish to publish a paper describing a new software tool or a new implementation or algorithm. (Which seems to be your case as you want to write about a new bioinformatics software.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The OA publishing option is something else entirely. The default publishing format in the journal is &lt;em&gt;subscriber pays&lt;/em&gt;. With payment of additional fees you can purchase the option to make your paper open access, but that is not a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I note that the condition described in point 1 would be evaluated at the time of submission by the editorial board, whereas the possibility of publishing the article open access will not generally be discussed at all until &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the paper is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T13:59:03.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27965" CreationDate="2014-09-03T15:48:14.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not the most direct answer, but you might find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glassdoor.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;glassdoor website&lt;/a&gt; useful. You can see salaries for postdocs by institution and see how locations you're considering might vary. It's hard to fix everything you might want while making the comparison, but I think it will be useful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21407" LastEditorUserId="21407" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T20:19:04.517" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T20:19:04.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-03T16:03:47.033" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, this depends on the country. In some places, PhD students are considered workers, and have the social rights that come with it. I still work a few more hours than what my contract says, because it goes in my own benefit, but it would be illegal for my advisor to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; me to work overtime (so, answering your question, no, here it is not normal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other places, they don't, so they may be in principle allowed to demand as much as they want. But here we have a problem: double the hours doen't mean double output. In general, it is not true that working more hours you will get more results!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best argument to show this is that big tech companies, like Google and Yahoo, that are probably the closest thing to Academia in the industrial world, go to lengths to limit the overtime their engineers put in. Their beans are in the quality of the output, so they have done extensive and careful research, and it has one of the highest quality assurances: lots-of-money-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, there are deadlines, and we have to put in extra hours; but then, you will get much better results if your team is not burned out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-hours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a study&lt;/a&gt; relating hours worked and productivity in a factory during the World War I. It appears that the productivity for this manual work scales linearly until it hits the roof at 50 h/week. It is remarkable that people working 72 h/week accomplished &lt;em&gt;exactly the same&lt;/em&gt; as people working just two thirds of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more data to support it, I conjecture that for intellectual creative work, the plateau is reached much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="12587" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T11:43:35.277" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T11:43:35.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-03T16:08:20.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've certainly known advisers do this. Whenever I've tried working with anyone that has this type of policy, they have fallen into one of 2 categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Advisers that expect a significant fraction of their students to land Tenure track faculty jobs in good institutions within about 2 years of graduating. Check the resume's of the groups prior alumni. If it is this sort of group, I'd likely suck it out and continue. If you have more prior students working as post-docs/adjuncts 4 years later than you do as tenure track faculty then the next category applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Advisers that are unable to get anything done during the day, usually because they simply don't know what they are doing. Unfortunately this is more common than the previous category in my experience. Change groups now, you will learn little, it will be unpleasant if you continue, and you won't even be in a good situation at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21409" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T16:08:20.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-03T16:45:39.147" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will go as far as saying that 80 hours/week is definitely too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;80 hours/week means 11.4 hours/day, working weekends or 16 hours/day working Monday-Friday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most contracts (and I assume you have one) state 35-40 hours/week (7-8/day not working weekends). However, this is generally just a &quot;placeholder&quot; when speaking of academic positions, where it is difficult to impose strict working hours. However, this does not mean that your supervisor can ask you to work an unreasonable amount of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003L0088:EN:HTML&quot;&gt;Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that, in&#xA;  keeping with the need to protect the safety and health of workers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) the period of weekly working time is limited by means of laws,&#xA;  regulations or administrative provisions or by collective agreements&#xA;  or agreements between the two sides of industry;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) the average working time for each seven-day period, including&#xA;  overtime, does not exceed 48 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is surely implemented &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/overview&quot;&gt;in the UK&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F1911.xhtml&quot;&gt;France&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inps.it/portale/default.aspx?itemdir=6441&quot;&gt;Italy&lt;/a&gt; (and I am sure most other EU states implemented the EU Directive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that, as a PhD student, there could be exceptional instances where you would need to work 80 hours/week (e.g. close to a deadline) but, for your own sake, that should NOT become a habit, but should instead be a very exceptional situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have known people who had the &quot;feeling guilty because I am not in the lab on a Sunday afternoon&quot; syndrome. This is not healthy, and I hope for you that you do not reach that point. Working 80 hours/week means you'll soon become stressed, tired and overall less productive (as you will be more likely to make errors and will have to redo things several times). I know several people (unfortunately more than I would like to) who have had serious health problems because of this type of unreasonable request from their bosses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can work 40 hours/week and publish good papers. There are plenty of good people in academia who publish in very good journals, but have a life, a family, and hobbies during their free time. Do not believe those who tell you that working 24/7 you will publish more, because they are just trying to exploit you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And always remember: just because you are passionate for your job that does not mean you should not have any right. You have the right to work reasonable hours, have the right to have holidays and you should be allowed to take them without having to beg or being considered lazy, and you should be reasonably paid. Just as in any other job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little edit on what to do :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak with your supervisor and explain the situation. Try to be reasonable and see if you can both work out a solution &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If no solution can be found, look for another supervisor. Try not to make a bad brake up with your old supervisor, just explain that you are not confortable with the situation and that you feel it's better for both of you if you change supervisor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If things get particularly bad, remember that the university has an HR office, that is there also to deal with these things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20926" LastEditorUserId="20926" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T17:30:29.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T17:30:29.603" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27943" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:12:15.290" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I know (I am a mathematician with some publishing experience), it is perfectly okay to argue against a referee's demand, as soon as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you do it politely, and you explain your arguments in a non-conflictual way;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are ready to delay the final acceptance of your paper;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are ready to either ultimately  accept the demand if the referee does not change her mind and the editor backs her up, or to get your paper ultimately rejected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case you describe, I do not think that explaining your point of view would have turn the editor's mind right away. In a similar situation (a referee asked for some terminology to be changed into something more standard), with my coauthor we argued with success (our argument was that to date, no terminology existed for what we discussed, let alone standard terminology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added in edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I forgot an important point; in many situation, including yours, you can find a middle ground that may be considered an acceptable answer to her query by the referee, and that avoid departing too much from your initial intention. For example, in your case, you can propose to add a precise reference giving the derivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T17:34:14.370" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T17:34:14.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27985" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:25:04.627" Score="3" ViewCount="1359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it good to apply for more than one PhD program and accept ( the best case, obviously ) the most interesting/best paid/best outlooks one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T17:38:32.830" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T17:40:46.723" Title="Is it advisable to apply to more than one PhD program?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27943" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:26:21.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience in this regard, being in Epidemiology as a field and having both successfully and unsuccessfully pushed back against reviewers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are best served arguing against a reviewers requests when you have clear, definitive case. This does not necessarily have to be &quot;the reviewer is wrong&quot; but can be &quot;This was done deliberately, and here is why...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, this appears mostly in either the generation or interpretation of results. Stylistic arguments, such as the one you're currently considering, have less of a defensible &quot;Here is why this was the way it was...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While you might think the expansion of the equations is trivial, at least one person who is both sufficiently qualified and interested to agree to review your paper thinks it is better served fully fleshed out. For most papers, this actually represents a fair fraction of the total lifetime number of readers of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A reader needing to expand your set of equations, and do so without error, also breaks the flow of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental question you should ask yourself is &quot;If I say 'No', and the editor replies with 'Thanks, but no thanks...' was it worth it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T17:26:21.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:36:43.900" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is common to send multiple PhD applications to multiple schools. I am doing this now, I would RECOMMEND it actually because getting into PhD programs is difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15789" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T17:40:46.723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T17:40:46.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2014-09-03T18:00:44.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle ages, if you wanted to do scientific research, you had to pay yourself the career, meaning no salary, just living on your savings, which meant only the wealthiest could afford to dedicate their life to scientific research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why there were so few inventions and discoveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the renaissance, people become aware that there was 1,000 years of dark ages, and that science had been forgotten. They studied old classics and were able to re-create science. It was continued refinement of ideas by carefully testing them. But only the wealthier could afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time the ideas of the illustration were born. Men should be free. Ideas should be free. People should be free to express their ideas. Science advanced so much in 200 years that vapor machines were invented. Then the american revolution happened. Ten years later the French revolution happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was thought at the time that democracies could not exist, because Plato wrote in &quot;Res Publicae - The Republic&quot; that democracies would convert into demagogic governments, which meant that governments would invent enemies in order to keep in power and destroy democracy. Because of that several european countries wanted to re-conquer the americas. Americans decided to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate their people for free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have everyone have guns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is that the USA has more than 200 years, but the education system is failing. The main reason is that sometime in the past it was decided to follow the &quot;no child left behind&quot; policy, which meant no selection in the public system, so the students are mingled, good and bad, and of course the good have no incentive to study, since the tests are dumbed down for the stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need more PhDs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that were the case, then PhDs would make a lot of money, at least following the economic theory. The only problem is that it is very hard to make money on science, and even if you do, it takes several decades of research, so it is a very expensive and very risky investment. No rational investor would invest in science. Only if the result of the research is already proven and you just need to produce the thing, sure, some investor would be interested. We can't call that science though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess the answer is no. If you pursue a PhD is not for the money, but because you are interested in learning more about a subject. If you study computer science, maybe you go work for Google, Yahoo, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter and the like, and recover your investment of time and money, but otherwise it is a rather risky investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21415" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T18:00:44.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:10:00.177" Score="2" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to decide whether I should continue with a PhD (in a field closely related to computer science) after my MS. I will be finishing my MS soon and have an opportunity to continue for a PhD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer? Are the opportunities for PhDs' only based on research? Even after a PhD will I still be able to compete with people with BSs and MSs for Software Engineering positions? Finally, during the PhD will I be able to apply for internships that deal with software development than pure research? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="884" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T02:01:15.503" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T02:01:15.503" Title="Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27989" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:28:33.920" Score="8" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some work as part of my final year undergraduate project and wrote a paper which has now been accepted at a conference. Though I am now working in the industry, I have listed my affiliation as my University because that is where I did my work as a student. So, for registering in the conference, do I have to pay the full registration fee (because I am currently not a student) or can I pay the student fee (because I did the work during my undergraduate days)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21420" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T22:13:48.903" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T22:13:48.903" Title="Student registration fee at conferences for ex-students for work done as a student" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27988" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:35:32.733" Score="20" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You're not a student now&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fees are based on the status of the participants, not the status of the papers. Often, organizers will require some evidence of student status (such as a current student ID) in order to be eligible for the reduced price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be reasonable to get the student fee if you're a student at the time of registration but graduate before the actual conference - as the process often takes multiple months, but if it's something earlier, then you're out of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T19:35:32.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27974" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:50:02.470" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The slightly unsatisfactory answer is &quot;enough time&quot;. You should provide a constructive review and that might take time. How much, depends on, for example, the quality of the paper, the complexity of the paper and, of course, your own experience. As new to reviewing, you probably spend longer than what you would with experience. Having said this, I would say that between close to a full workday to maybe two might be expected from an average research article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are a beginner, I would also recommend that you take your time. A common beginner's &quot;mistake&quot; is to focus on details more than the larger perspective. You need to focus on both. A paper may be poorly written but contain good science (and &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt;) so attending to all perspectives of an article is necessary, and that takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may all sound like a chore no-one would want to do but reviewing can be a really positive experience since you get to read a paper in such detail as you would probably not do otherwise, you see new science and you get to contribute to science with your expertise in ways other than producing your own papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T19:50:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29686" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:51:24.623" Score="15" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the field of &lt;strong&gt;Mechanical Engineering&lt;/strong&gt;, when doing a PhD in a University but in &lt;em&gt;partnership&lt;/em&gt; with a company, at some universities, an agreement is signed between the company and the university (or Laboratory) in which the company remains the owner of all files provided (e.g. geometries, meshes) as well as the results produced, but allows for publication of &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the results. The line drawn between what its supposed to be published and what remains strictly confidential is hard to draw and often depends on the company as well as the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, in order to preserve this confidentiality, researchers scale the figures to unknown values and do not provide geometries or mesh/material properties for example. I was wondering if this common practice in scientific publication can be applied when writing a PhD Thesis. Basically, are all results presented in a thesis supposed to be public and more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;is an independent/external researcher supposed to be able to reproduce all of the results ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9665" LastEditorUserId="9665" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T18:13:52.287" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T14:31:14.940" Title="Confidentiality of thesis data: PhD with industrial partner" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27924" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:59:14.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, this might depend on the field. In my field (linguistics), I would say it's very uncommon to give a talk at a conference about something you've already published (a possible exception being invited talks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say it's frowned upon, though - it just doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen for good reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the point of giving a talk on something you've already published? You can't use comments and suggestions from the audience to improve your work, and why would the audience even listen to your talk when they can read your paper in a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe people in other fields think differently about these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T19:59:14.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27921" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:11:22.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no definite answer to this, but here's what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I cite R itself and the packages I need to perform the actual analysis I report in my paper. I do not cite packages I consider to provide various tools (graphic tools, mathematical tools, etc.). The line between these can be difficult to draw sometimes, of course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always, always make your data and your code publicly available. You need to make sure that other people can replicate your result. Other people can also see there what packages you have used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11053" LastEditorUserId="37441" LastEditDate="2020-10-05T19:10:46.033" LastActivityDate="2020-10-05T19:10:46.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27996" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:29:59.163" Score="3" ViewCount="5765" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a book recently, I saw a reference to someone &quot;reading law&quot; at such and such a university in England.  But I thought &quot;reading law&quot; was a way to bypass law school and still enter the law profession (after passing the bar I presume).  Is that only in the United States?  Any other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does England have a similar way to become a lawyer without going to college?  Then what do they call it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, do persons who read law and then become lawyers get to put anything after their name?  Obviously they would not be permitted to put J.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21158" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T17:57:36.693" Title="Meaning of &quot;reading law&quot;" Tags="&lt;degree&gt;&lt;law&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27997" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:44:53.767" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have developed an algorithm/software that does a specific task. I want to let the algorithm compete in an academic competition, where the code is run on a password protected server on a secret test set by another researcher. I will describe my research vaguely in the few lines that each researcher must submit about their work to be able to compete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will any of this destroy my chances of acquiring a patent for the algorithm afterwards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T21:01:50.770" Title="Can participation in online academic competitions destroy patent rights?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;patents&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27994" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:54:41.570" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some rightpondian can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think &quot;reading&quot; in this context is British for &quot;studying&quot;, and it does usually imply university study.  The person in question is most likely attending the equivalent of law school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, lawyers typically write &quot;Esq.&quot; after their name, which doesn't really signify anything specific but is traditional.  This doesn't have anything to do with degrees they may or may not have.  (And even lawyers with a J.D. degree don't usually write J.D. after their names, nor use the title Dr.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T20:54:41.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27995" CreationDate="2014-09-03T21:01:50.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very well could. Talk to a patent attorney. If you can get the contest runner to sign a non-disclosure agreement, then you might be able to protect your patent rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, algorithms are not patentable in most jurisdictions, and software is quickly losing its patentability in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T21:01:50.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27988" CreationDate="2014-09-03T21:03:51.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conferences usually grant discounts to financially disadvantaged participants, such as students or attendees from developing countries, because they want to enable as many people as reasonably possible to attend the conference. From another point of view, discounts are a social redistribution of wealth, with the rich attendees supporting the poorer ones. In theory, the organisers could negotiate each of this discounts individually, as there usally are no constraints regarding this imposed by some higher authority¹. Of course, this would cost more time (and thus money) than it saves and thus you usually have discounts for certain groups, such as students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it’s up to the organisers whether they regard you as a student or not and to be really sure, you have to ask them. Given that falsely registering as a student could be considered fraud, you certainly should clarify the situation before doing this. However, you might want to take the reason behind those fees into account and just pay the undiscounted fee, if you are doing well financially, which also saves the organisers some time. On the other hand, if you aren’t, this might be worth mentioning when applying for a student discount, though you technically aren’t a student anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ apart from anti-discrimination laws and similar&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T21:03:51.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27921" CreationDate="2014-09-03T22:08:52.310" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! Citations are free, and they are a blessing to the creators of those packages.  Unless you're held to a strict page limit, there's no reason not to have a &quot;methods&quot; section in which you list all of the packages you used.  It can be a single sentence.  If you want to give pride of place to a few key packages that your work relied on, then give them a sentence each, but don't snub the others.  Some day, you'll be happy when others cite &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21413" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T22:08:52.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2014-09-04T00:26:16.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q: Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A: It depends on the position you are looking for.  Certain employers will not want to hire you because they may have the perception that hiring someone with a PhD will be more expensive than hiring someone with a bachelor's, and if someone with a bachelor's can do the job, they aren't going to want to pay extra for the PhD training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Are the opportunities for PhDs' only based on research?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A: No, there are a number of PhD graduates who go into industry and end up doing development-focused work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Even after a PhD will I still be able to compete with people with BSs and MSs for Software Engineering positions?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A: Yes and no.  If the job can be done by someone with a BS or an MS, then companies will not want to pay more to get a PhD to do the job.  On the other hand, there are development-focused positions where a PhD is beneficial.  Having a PhD opens those doors for you.  Some of this will be very dependent on what you spent your PhD doing.  For example, if you spent your PhD developing systems and publishing papers on those systems, that will be much more desirable for companies with software development positions than if you spent time doing non-implementation research.  At some software development companies, having a PhD is considered equal to some amount of experience, so you may enter at a higher position/pay scale than someone with a BS or MS and potentially get promoted more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Finally, during the PhD will I be able to apply for internships that deal with software development than pure research?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A: Absolutely.  This will be somewhat subject to your advisor, but there are a number of internships for CS graduate students that are very development-centric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different reasons for getting a PhD, for example, your own personal gratification, to do research, to teach, to get a job that you can't get without a PhD.  The question I think you should ask yourself is, &quot;What do I want to get out of doing a PhD?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to that is to make more money/make a bunch of money doing software development, you should stop at your MS and go into industry.  If you are doing it for other reasons (as listed above) then definitely go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4318" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T00:26:16.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T01:17:36.890" Score="17" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three years ago, I applied for and received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation in pure mathematics. Now I need to prepare a follow-up proposal for continued funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, of course much that I have to say that is new. However, I am interested in the same family of research problems, and it seems to make sense to repeat some of the text from my previous proposal, since I thought very carefully about how to describe the background and motivate my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it make a poor impression if I reuse some parts of my previous proposal verbatim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T02:13:12.230" Title="Is it unwise to repeat portions of a successful grant proposal?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28003" CreationDate="2014-09-04T01:59:12.903" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask the program officer (PO), because he/she will be able to back you up if the permission comes from him/her, should the reviewers criticize so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, slightly recast your question. For instance, ask if the proposal will be reviewed with your previous proposal side by side or by the same reviewers. Tell the PO that you ask because you intended to frame the background with some similar information you presented in the last version, but worried that it would create redundancy. And emphasize that you will be more than happy to transfer the background to the continual application if that would make the application process smoother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, evaluate the magnitude of the intended cutting and pasting and what information is being transferred. Historical findings are unlikely to change and can understandably be worded similarly; but if what you want to paste were things that you would set off to explain/learn, and after three years the unknowns remain, then it probably will not go too well. Also, critically review the literature. If the parts to be cut and pasted are more contemporary literature review, it's hard to believe nothing can be added in three years. Anyway, don't use them just because you don't have time to revise the background and the last one seems still pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T02:13:12.230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T02:13:12.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27965" CreationDate="2014-09-04T03:07:29.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stanford University, whose housing market is in the top 2 or 3 worst in the country, sets a &lt;a href=&quot;http://postdocs.stanford.edu/handbook/salary.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;minimum salary&quot;&gt;minimum salary&lt;/a&gt; for postdocs. Currently, a beginning postdoc is guaranteed $44,310, which rises over time (e.g. to $51,830 in one's fifth year). &lt;a href=&quot;http://postdocs.stanford.edu/handbook/costofliving.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;this page&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The San Francisco Bay Area is an expensive region. ... Postdocs who are considering offers of appointment at Stanford are encouraged to consider the cost of living in this area in light of their lifestyle, needs, and where applicable, financial obligations towards spouses or family. ... The minimum funding levels for postdoctoral scholars at Stanford are perhaps the highest in the country for trainees, and they are designed to support a stipend-level income for a single trainee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(We don't generally have postdocs in mathematics, so I can't say whether it's common for postdocs to be paid this minimum salary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, everyone in the administration is aware of, and concerned about, the problems that the housing market creates for postdocs. For example, a new program began two days ago through which postdocs are eligible to purchase highly-subsidized &lt;a href=&quot;http://transportation.stanford.edu/alt_transportation/gopass-pilot-eligibility.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Caltrain passes&quot;&gt;Caltrain passes&lt;/a&gt;; this program was designed specifically with the aim of mitigating the cost of living, by making it easier for postdocs to commute from more affordable towns in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T03:07:29.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14276" CreationDate="2014-09-04T03:16:23.003" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received my PhD in Mathematics 40+ years ago and considered getting a second PhD in Computer Science. Spoke to a professor at a University about my plans and the advice he gave me &quot;You have a PhD from an excellent University.  Take a sabbatical come here for a year, publish a few papers and join the club&quot;.  Ultimately I went into the medical instrumentation industry where I have been for the last 31 years and I am now planning to semi retire and start my own business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you, &lt;em&gt;why bother with the second PhD&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Get more focused on your goal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21429" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T06:16:50.113" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T06:16:50.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28046" CreationDate="2014-09-04T03:31:26.047" Score="4" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student from top university, I have the opportunity of having a minor called &quot;teaching minor&quot;. For me, I am personally mostly interested in mathematical application into material science while I am very interested in getting tenured faculty positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I am more interested in going to a lot of conference and trying to advertise or publicize the result of my research and I am worried that committed teaching during the teaching minor program would render me less experience in conference or slows down my research progress.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion on my situation? Shall I pursue the teaching minor, or minor in mathematics as it is my research and personal interest? Or shall I do exhaust myself trying to do both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21426" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T06:31:31.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T01:33:31.000" Title="Which is considered more valuable for faculty job applications, teaching experience or participation in conferences?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28014" CreationDate="2014-09-04T05:11:50.757" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; has a paper &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; published, and if &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; wants to write up a piece explaining the contents of &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;, then to what extent can &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; use the contents of &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;? Or, the person &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; has no right to mention the contents of &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if someone writes an article explaining the ideas in one of his published paper by rephrasing the published paper, then to what extent is such rephrasing legitimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T07:53:05.887" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T07:53:05.887" Title="To what extent may someone use the content of a published paper in an expository piece on that paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28009" CreationDate="2014-09-04T06:44:20.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be better to avoid the abbreviations 's' and 'p', which is probably why @ff524 was confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the question I think it will depend on what you want to do with the material and the copyright conditions of the paper. Sometimes the copyright belongs to the publishers and each journal has specific guidelines for reproducing some content (even some allow to download figures in powerpoint format to be used for presentations under some conditions). Other times (e.g. open access journals), the copyright belongs to the authors. Either way, if in doubt the best would be to get in contact with the appropriate person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, for journal club and similar activities, I use the material without asking. In conferences, when I want to highlight someone's else research, I may include a figure of their paper. In that case I always add the appropriate reference to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T06:44:20.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28015" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:50:00.587" Score="9" ViewCount="8510" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct salutation to use when writing to someone with a PhD whose academic title is Lecturer or Reader in the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15419/how-to-address-an-academic-without-a-phd&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt; addresses the case of a Lecturer &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; a PhD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9338" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T08:34:39.673" Title="What salutation to use for someone with a PhD who is a Lecturer or Reader in the UK?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28009" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:51:51.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an ethical point of view, you must cite your original source appropriately. Clearly indicate &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you are using ideas, words, or figures from another work by citing the source &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you use something verbatim (typically by putting it in quotation marks or blockquotes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you attribute your sources properly, there isn't really an ethical problem with excessive use of a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a legal perspective, it can be trickier. In summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copying large amounts of text verbatim: may violate copyright&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copying small amounts of text verbatim, for academic purposes: typically allowed under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt;, though like everything legal, this varies by jurisdiction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paraphrasing text: does not violate copyright. The intellectual content of a paper is not subject to copyright (as opposed to the words used to present it, which are). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reusing figures: may violate copyright. Check the policy of the source's publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &quot;best practices&quot; standpoint, work that involves an &lt;em&gt;excessive&lt;/em&gt; amount of paraphrasing is often lacking original intellectual content. Even if your work is expository, you're supposed to be adding some value for the reader, not just stating the content of the original source in other words. So be careful of this, too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T07:51:51.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28013" CreationDate="2014-09-04T08:15:41.810" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The person's title in this case is (almost always) Dr, so &quot;Dear Dr Last-name&quot; would be the standard salutation for a first correspondence.  If they sign their reply with their first name, then you can consider yourself welcome to write &quot;Dear First-name&quot; in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics in the UK are very used to receiving email addressing them as Professor, so it's not a big problem if you do this, but there is probably a slight increase in the chance that they might view your email as spam (I say this because the overwhelming majority of emails I get which address me as Professor are at least somewhat spammy).&#xA;If someone's title is Professor, this will always be listed on the university website, so if you've done your research and found out that they are not a professor, it's probably best to use Dr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T08:34:39.673" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T08:34:39.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T09:45:44.380" Score="17" ViewCount="3834" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an example of a vote of no confidence, recently, the academic world has been shocked by the Salaita case at the University of Illinois. I happen to be a UIUC alumnus, so I guess I'm more concerned about the current state of affairs in my Alma Mater. So I just read an article on the web about the case: &lt;a href=&quot;http://coreyrobin.com/2014/09/03/more-votes-of-no-confidence-a-weird-ad-and-a-declaration-of-a-non-emergency/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More Votes of No Confidence, a Weird Ad, and a Declaration of a Non-Emergency&lt;/a&gt;. The article states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tonight, the major news out of the University of Illinois is that two more departments have taken votes of no confidence in the leadership of the UIUC: the department of history (nearly unanimous, I’m told) and the department of Latino and Latina Studies. The latter’s announcement reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The faculty of the Department of Latina/Latino Studies (LLS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign met on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 to discuss the University’s revocation of an offer of employment to Dr. Steven Salaita. We concluded that this revocation and the subsequent public statements by Chancellor Phyllis Wise, President Robert Easter, and the Board of Trustees about Dr. Salaita’s appointment demonstrate a clear disregard for the principles of academic freedom, free speech, and shared governance, as well as for established protocols for hiring, tenure, and promotion. The faculty of LLS therefore declares that we have no confidence in the leadership of the current Chancellor, President, and Board of Trustees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that six departments have now voted no confidence, two of them fairly large departments, representing a significant number of faculty in the humanities. Word is that we should be expecting at least four more votes of no confidence by the end of the week, for a total of ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the best thing that can happen in the current state of affairs is that UIUC's own faculty boycott the Board of Trustees and Chancellor Phyllis Wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my general question is, what are the implications of such a vote? What does a &amp;quot;vote of no confidence&amp;quot; really mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As suggested by @MadJack, here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/education/illinois-university-prompts-outcry-for-revoking-job-offer-to-professor-in-wake-of-twitter-posts-on-israel.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article on the case of Salaita.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T04:05:20.177" Title="What are the repercussions of a &quot;vote of no confidence&quot; made by faculty?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;governance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28016" CreationDate="2014-09-04T10:46:33.480" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;vote of no confidence&quot; is much like a &quot;resolution&quot; passed by a parliamentary body—it's a statement of approved opinion, with very little legal impact. The only exception to this would occur if the voting body is in some way responsible for the appointment of the official in question, in which case such a vote could lead to removal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the departmental level, such a vote has very little impact on the university as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T10:46:33.480" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13" CreationDate="2014-09-04T10:57:47.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm against &quot;productivity-based measures&quot; like the &lt;em&gt;h&lt;/em&gt;-index, to the point that I wrote an article on an alternative measure. This measure is based on impact, and it tries to remove productivity as a factor for evaluating scientific work. The article is open, and you can find it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130411/srep01649/full/srep01649.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific Reports.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T10:57:47.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2014-09-04T11:01:40.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130411/srep01649/full/srep01649.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this open article&lt;/a&gt; in Scientific Reports for a measure that attempts to discard productivity as a factor in evaluating the output of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:01:40.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28016" CreationDate="2014-09-04T11:06:15.383" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A vote of no confidence is an entirely political move. It has no force on its own, but it may influence the opinion or behavior of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When used effectively, votes of no confidence can influence the person in question to apologize or change their ways, or influence more powerful people (e.g. the board of governors/regents) to address the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When used ineffectively, votes of no confidence have no effect at all. (Well, they can still allow the people who voted to express their opinion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:06:15.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-04T13:03:14.767" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes absolutely (advisors do expect 80+ hours a week).  It's a terrible situation to be in, but what they want to see is productivity, which is not the same as throwing more hours at it.  When I was in grad school I got that lecture constantly.  Most people find that more than 50 hours is unhealthy and unsustainable.  For a bit you can go 80 hours a week but not too long.  But remember he wants productivity, not hours.  He cares about publications, not about how long it takes you to generate the data and write it up.    Try to look to the other successful, older grad students and figure out how much to work based on that.  In grad school it's easy to get into a rythme and lose focus about what you are doing long term.  Develop weekly, monthly, and quarterly plan (start from the quarterly plan).  Grad school is all about time management and project management.  Too often I got stuck for long periods of time in some shit that ended up not mattering at all; we all (all of my colleagues/classmates) wasted years this way.  But just remember they care about the publication, not about you, not about your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21446" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T13:03:14.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28030" CreationDate="2014-09-04T13:08:42.687" Score="3" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the fact that at the moment I am working with no strict time frames and I can manage my time and other activities on my own, I wonder &lt;strong&gt;is it possible for someone to maintain the concentration during the Christmas period and keep working on important tasks? And what are some techniques to enable that?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this, because I want to plan my vacations during December, but I am not quite sure if it is a clever idea to do the vacation in the first half of the month (so I can save some flight costs, because prices go up as the end of the year approaches),  and keep the latter part to work, having in mind that everyone gets into the festive atmosphere and it is hard getting things done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T21:45:21.550" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T21:45:21.550" Title="What are some techniques to get some work done during the Christmas period?" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2014-09-04T13:17:51.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems it isn't actually that important. I sent them an email to clarify and they replied: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t worry too much about the standing of the journal or conference, as long as you list any publications and conferences that you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19543" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T13:17:51.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28061" CreationDate="2014-09-04T14:17:27.633" Score="24" ViewCount="6438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frequently bring my own equipment to the classroom for student use. Some students forget my announcements to bring certain items. Some items are infrequently used or kept ready on standby when time permits or need to be carefully prepared beforehand. For these reasons, I provide my own equipment, rather than requiring students to bring them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, the students are walking out the door with my stuff. By the end of the year, I must go out and buy everything again. Most items individually are cheap (~$1 each), so I do not think any administrator or security officer will pay attention when I complain, however, the quantities add up over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am surprised to find such behavior among college freshmen. How should I deal with these thefts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T14:01:28.190" LastActivityDate="2019-05-10T18:04:54.460" Title="How to handle students not returning borrowed equipment?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T14:41:43.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a tricky situation. The overhead that would come from noting every student what he took and whether it was returned is annoying and unnecessary. I think the easiest way to handle this would be to point out to classes beforehand that stealing equipment is inappropriate (obviously) and that you would take measures to discourage such behavior. Those measures might include that the class, from which someone stole something, would be required from then on to supply its own equipment, i.e. would be banned from using yours. If students don't have the appropriate equipment ready, they can't participate in the exercises or get their grade diminished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to relocate the burden to the collective, instead of carrying it yourself. Of course, in the end you will probably still have to pay for the missing equipment, since it is too small to pursue justice to great lengths, but I hope you'll get at least some small satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T14:41:43.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:17:45.667" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the students are stealing as much as forgetting to give back your supplies.  I'd suggest helping them remember by bringing a jar that each students puts a dollar in when the supplies are handed out.  In order to get their dollar back at the end of the class, they must return whatever they borrowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also get a label maker, and put something like &quot;If found, return to Prof -insert name and office here-.&quot;  Make sure its gaudy and hard to miss.  This will both discourage actual theft (which I do NOT think most of your students are doing), and provide bread-crumbs home if its found under a pizza box after 3 weeks (the more likely scenario).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastEditorUserId="14754" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T20:41:03.320" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T20:41:03.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28024" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:25:02.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A major perk of being an academic are the long breaks between terms, when we have the freedom to travel and make our own schedules.  However, this comes coupled with the responsibility to keep being productive during these breaks, and this is harder than it sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are wise to be thinking ahead about how to manage this.  I'm not sure exactly what you have planned, but I'm going to guess it may include extended visits to see friends and family.  Here are some things I have found useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain to them that, although you are glad to get to spend time with them, you're not on vacation from work the whole time.  (Non-academics often don't realize this and assume the entire break is free time for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look ahead to set aside specific times in your schedule for work.  Ask your hosts to check with you before planning any family activities, to make sure they don't conflict.  Again, they shouldn't assume that all your time is free.  (&quot;Oh, but you can't work on your paper tomorrow!  I've just arranged for us to go on a picnic with Uncle Jürgen!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider going somewhere else to work, such as a library or cafe.  Trying to work with relatives around is often distracting, especially if some are children.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set specific goals for what you want to accomplish during the trip.  If you share them with your family (and can convince them that they are exciting) they may be able to help encourage you to work toward them, and to arrange things so that you have the time to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T15:25:02.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:35:41.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make yourself a note to say something to your class, 10 minutes before the end of your part in it (lecture, etc). &quot;Remember, I have brought these XXX's for your use in case you needed them, I really need them returned by the end of class.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modify as needed (i.e. turn 'end of class' into 'now' if needed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14290" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T15:35:41.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:41:37.357" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I add an assignment in the grading system with a single point: &quot;returned all borrowed equipment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't actually use it in the calculations, but seeing it in the gradebook (which students can access) encourages compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T15:41:37.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:48:54.510" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see two solutions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Deter students from borrowing or walking away with equipment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If safety is not a concern&lt;/em&gt;, you could require a shoe as a deposit. No student will get very far after class without realizing what they're missing. It will save you having to remind your students to return said items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also take a tally of all loaned items and release the class only when all have been returned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution is for the replacement equipment to be clumsy, comical, or embarrassing. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baronbob.com/images/products/giantcalc.jpg&quot;&gt;Giant calculators&lt;/a&gt; might get the job done, but they won't be inadvertently taken out of class and you might not see many repeat customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, any deterrent besides loudly pronouncing at the end of the class &lt;em&gt;&quot;please return anything you have borrowed!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, or perhaps taking a tally, may be difficult to implement without giving a distinct &lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't trust you and am going to treat you all like children&quot;&lt;/em&gt; impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Stop lending out equipment they are supposed to have.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more cynical point of view is that university students should be intelligent, responsible, and well enough prepared to bring any equipment that is either listed as a course requirement to have, or is generally expected (e.g. a calculator, stationery).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your students are probably less likely to prepare properly for class &lt;em&gt;precisely because they know you have spare equipment&lt;/em&gt;. If they're supposed to have their own stuff, make it the students' own problem if they forgot. They will only learn if failure carries consequences. If you abolish your loaning policy, I suspect the fraction of students coming properly prepared will quickly, and significantly, improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T16:34:17.260" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T16:34:17.260" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28016" CreationDate="2014-09-04T16:22:44.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The repercussions of a department's vote of no confidence hold no legal authority. They simply publicly voice the majority opinion of the faculty of the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further analyze in the context of the example you gave: These votes of no confidence are likely to embarrass the departments who publicly supported hiring this man whose public discourse can most nicely only be described as unprofessorial and unacademic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-university-of-illinois-job-offer-tweet-israel-20140822-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chicago Tribune's take on the administration's position said:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In June and July, Salaita posted prolifically about the situation in&#xA;  Gaza, particularly about the children killed in the conflict. On June&#xA;  20, soon after three Israelis were kidnapped and killed, he wrote:&#xA;  &quot;You may be too refined to say it, but I'm not: I wish all the&#xA;  (expletive) West Bank settlers would go missing.&quot; On July 22 he wrote:&#xA;  &quot;#Israel kills civilians faster than the speed of 4G.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salaita's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/03/steven-salaita-more-than-just-an-obnoxious-tweeter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hateful words are not confined to Twitter&lt;/a&gt;. He has found it prudent to scrub some of his online works, but they are &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140904031712/https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/62164677&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;still available via the Wayback machine&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We grant that academic freedom means that one can take nearly any position so long as one is respectful of others who disagree. His manner of speech and disrespect would have been quite a distraction for the entire university. Would he be respectful to the students under his instruction? Given his public record, would you take responsibility for placing him in this position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These comments are certainly against our &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1160/what-does-the-offensive-flag-mean-to-you/1162#1162&quot;&gt;principles for allowed commentary on Academia StackExchange&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may disagree with the way the decision was made. Perhaps the decision could have reached out to more stakeholders for consensus. The administration apparently didn't do that. Many university administrations have come under fire by stakeholder groups in the past for similar actions. It would have been better if the administration had more support. But they had made the decision and moved forward with it, and I don't see how they could have taken another path in a timely fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These votes of no confidence reflect the indignation by these departments in not being included in the decision making process. However, most bystanders will also (correctly) interpret them as a disagreement with the conclusion of the decision. If the departments agreed with the conclusion, this issue would not be raised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think these votes are likely to lower the public's view of the departments just as much or more so than they lower the public's views on the administration. I also think the views of individuals will largely be colored by personal preferences in backing the interests of the parties that Salaita has been coarsely commenting on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:50:17.453" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T13:49:27.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T16:25:00.317" Score="4" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good books to read for people who have been in academia their entire career (regardless of length of that career) and now want to commercialise something from their research? I am looking for tips for people who have no education in law or business, including patent rights and the business side on how to start a research-company etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it is a broad question, but I hope and think that it could in fact be relevant to more researchers than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T01:55:20.410" Title="Literature for commercialisation of research" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27835" CreationDate="2014-09-04T18:28:06.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a suggestion regarding the assessment (the actual question), not saying if this is a good or bad idea, along the lines of what was done &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pipredictor.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write some code that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From a certain paper database, say, pubmed - gets all the papers in which your prospective PI is the last author. This is a pretty good estimate of all the papers from his lab (he might have joint work with other PIs in which he's not last, but let's ignore these).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gets all first-third authors as prospective graduate students from his lab. We can't really tell (automatically) if they were postdocs, and let's assume that papers in which you weren't on the first three authors don't mean much to your chances of becoming a PI. You also want to limit those papers to be a few years old (so we can assume that they finished their time in said lab).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for papers in which those prospective graduate students are last authors. This suggests that they've become PIs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can get an estimate of the number of PIs out of number of students that published papers for each lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are APIs to pubmed in many programming languages, and the researchers from the first link I posted have their &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/omanor/PIPredictor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;code in github&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T18:28:06.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28043" CreationDate="2014-09-04T19:16:42.970" Score="4" ViewCount="5165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background of person is: first year Phd student, no publications, no research grants, but I have received a fellowship for my first semester that paid my stipend and tuition, so should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend). Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: while RA's are common in the US and the fact that they pay stipend/tuition is well known, in other countries people might think that if I list it only as a job they might not realize it also paid my tuition, which for foreign students in the US can be quite high. I want to convey the importance of this achievement and monetary importance to a crowd outside the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T10:15:41.530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T20:55:13.557" Title="Should I list on my CV research assistantship positions under grants&amp;awards?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;awards&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2014-09-04T19:42:01.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, don't list this because it's irrelevant and sooner or later you'll remove it as your CV grows. You can just add it in the &lt;code&gt;Honors and Awards&lt;/code&gt; section of your CV, but don't put numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I would just put it under &lt;code&gt;Research Experience&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T19:42:01.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T20:36:24.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use accountability. Create a form with 2 identical halves, listing the name of the borrower and what they borrowed. When borrowing the item, they get half of the form, and you get half of the form. When returning the item, they give you their half of the form back with it, and you destroy both copies. Anyone who walks out without returning the item, place your half for safe keeping. If they need to borrow again and you have something with their name on it, deny them. There is an option to hold them financially liable, but IANAL. Make the policy clear in the syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an Army solution to a much more serious equipment accountability issue than classroom supplies, but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21468" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T20:36:24.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2014-09-04T20:51:51.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, one can include anything in a CV &lt;em&gt;as long as the &quot;target&quot; of the CV would be interested in it&lt;/em&gt;. This raises the question why exactly you are now compiling a CV in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you looking to change programs? Apply for a grant? Just wanting to show off on your web page?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the answer to this is, ask yourself the question whether whoever is supposed to read the CV would really care about your funding sources. In most cases, I would assume that the answer to this is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, unless the funding sources are particularly competitive and known outside your university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. If it's a RAship it's a RAship. That you got it earlier than others does not &quot;upgrade&quot; the prize in any way. Generally, resist the temptation to upsell your various prizes / grants / fellowships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T20:51:51.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2014-09-04T20:52:48.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although merit is certainly a factor in the hiring of research assistants,   most people don't consider assistantships as &quot;grants or awards&quot;. They are jobs. List them under &quot;Positions Held&quot; or &quot;Academic Appointments&quot; or the equivalent heading on your CV. Do not list your salary or the amount of your stipend - that's not anybody's business except you and your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fellowships might be considered awards. They would usually be explicitly competitive in nature, and given by outside agencies. &quot;Named&quot; fellowships from endowed funds might also count, even if awarded by your department. But a research assistantship is not a fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T20:52:48.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-04T21:19:43.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many professors who lend things to the students such as books, their thesis hard copies, compact disks, etc; and they have a very simple way to track all the students who have borrowed things from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare one or two A4 size papers, write &quot;Borrowers List&quot; on top of it and every time you lend something to a student; ask him/her to write his name, the date he/she has borrowed it from you, the date he/she will give it back to you, his email and phone number and his signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the student has returned the borrowed thing to the professor, the student and professor, both, can sign under this paper that the borrower has returned it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will have many benefits to the lender and the borrower, both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The borrower will remember that he has signed his name when he has got something from the lender; so he will try to give back that thing to the owner as soon as possible to avoid any difficulties in future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the professor asks for a signature from the student, he shows that he cares for his owning and it is important for him that the things he has borrowed should be brought back to the owner. Consequently, the student will do all his/her best to return that thing to the owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The professor will have a list of his owning which are lent to the students, so he will never forget what is borrowed to whom. If the borrower does not return the thing, the professor can simply send him/her an email or text message to ask the student to return the thing he has borrowed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T21:19:43.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-05T00:17:51.607" Score="5" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fifth year pure mathematics student and after this year I should get a Master degree (I'm from Europe). As you might know, this should be the time I decide (or at least seriously start thinking about) whether I should pursue a PhD or go work in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main problem with pursuing a PhD is that I haven't found any topic particularly interesting or passionate about, and I think I have quite a wide mathematical education. I can easily get into some area when I'm studying for exams and such, but nothing more than that. I have to admit that I'm indifferent regarding most stuff in my life. While I was in high school, I had interests in number theory and prime distribution, but that has slowly gone away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, I did somewhat enjoy tutoring/helping younger students and explaining stuff to them. I'd also like to think that I would enjoy doing research in mathematics, but not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is:&#xA;How should I find out what is the field of my interest (and whether it exists at all)? Is my lack of interest a red flag for pursuing a PhD? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21473" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T15:35:27.037" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T16:10:41.307" Title="Finding a field of interest for my PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28007" CreationDate="2014-09-05T00:50:38.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where do you want to work? Research universities want people who do research, publish, go to conferences,  and can tolerably teach, in that order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small liberal arts colleges want people who can teach and who do enough research to keep up with the field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are rough generalizations. There's no right answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T01:33:31.000" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T01:33:31.000" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-05T04:57:30.720" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is that you give out equipment to your students, but they have little incentive to bring it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said above, you can create an incentive by making their grade dependent on whether they return them. The drawback is that you will have to keep careful track of equipment given out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can minimize the bookkeeping somewhat by lending not on an ad hoc basis every class day, but only once at the beginning of the semester, and ask them to bring the items during or after the final. You can also print out little paper labels, and for every item lent to a student, write on the paper the item and name of the student. Keep the paper until item is returned. You can even make the students prepare these papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could &quot;lease&quot; the items to the students - sell them at cost, and offer to buy back when they are done. That way, you are fully insured against lost items. However, because of the money exchange involved, I suspect school administration will take issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use your attendance sheet: Require everyone to come to your desk and sign the sheet before leaving the class. Refuse to sign their row unless they produce all borrowed equipment, and consider them absent for that class if the items are not produced. The drawback is that end of class will become chaotic and take several minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best option is to not lend items at all. Simply tell the class that they will not be allowed to attend the class that day unless they bring the equipment. Emphasize that you intend to stringently enforce this rule. Everyone will always show up with the equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T04:57:30.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-05T05:07:41.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Do present/absent check at the end of your class session.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you lend something to your student, put a sign in front of his/her name in your student's names list. At the end of the class, when you read the student's names to see who is present and who is absent, when you see that s/he has a sign in front of his/her name; ask him/her to give that equipment back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he does not return your equipment, do not accept his presence; until he returns it to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allocate a significant amount of your final assessment to the students presence and absence in your classes and this will require them to not only appear constantly in class sessions, but also be required to give your owning back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your key is their exam papers/assignments!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of your exam/assignment papers, write the things that the student is borrowing from you. For instance, somewhere under his name or student ID. Even you can prepare a white block in which you can write the &lt;code&gt;borrowed:&lt;/code&gt; title and in front of it, you can always list the equipment you lend to your student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the exam/class session, when s/he gives the exam papers/copies back to you; check whether s/he has borrowed something from you or not and immediately ask him/her to return the borrowed equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If s/he is not returning the borrowed equipment, then you refuse to take his solved papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T05:26:26.910" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T05:26:26.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28045" CreationDate="2014-09-05T05:13:35.403" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is my lack of interest a red flag for pursuing a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think so.  PhD programs are for people who are so passionate about an academic subject that they are willing to endure the &lt;em&gt;certainty&lt;/em&gt; of a long, hard period of apprenticeship and training for the &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt; of a secure, moderately well-paid lifelong career in that subject.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some academic fields, there is a good shot at parlaying a PhD into a lucrative career in business or industry.  (In others, this is really not the case.)  However, in the current job market there are few if any fields in which a PhD is a guaranteed paycheck.  A student who knows that she wants to take her mathematical skills, for instance, to business/industry, would probably have an easier, more pleasant life by starting work with a bachelor's or a master's degree and building her career sooner rather than later.  There are exceptions, but they would be better planned in advance: e.g., if you have a specific job in mind for which you specifically know having a PhD would be necessary or beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking a subject and being good at it but not being passionate about it.  You should then find what it is that you are passionate about.  It need not be career-oriented: many, many people work to live rather than live to work.  Just because you have a master's degree in mathematics does not mean that you need to pursue a career in which you use mathematics in any way!  I hope you find your passion...whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: one option that you haven't mentioned is to &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt; mathematics at the pre-university level.  In the US, a master's degree in your subject area makes you competitive for very strong high school teaching jobs, e.g. at amazing public high schools in desirable cities or elite private institutions.  The difference that an excellent school teacher can make has got to be at least as much as most academics, business people or industrialists.  In the unlikely event that Europe has a glut of excellent high school teachers, please consider coming to the United States, as I assure you that we do not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T15:25:38.990" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T15:25:38.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-05T06:48:43.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from my experience as a student only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professors that were responsible for my courses as an engineering student varied in strictness, some were lending stuff to student who forgot to bring their own, some were very, very strict. The latter professors plainly stated that forgetting item x will make you unable to complete the laboration, and an uncompleted laboration meant failing the course until the next opportunity to do the laboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guess what, almost no student forgot to bring item x. Not only is this the right way because you won't have to bring item x, it also prepares student for the real world, were there won't be a professor doing your work, where stupid calculationg´errors because of negligence are as bad as not understanding the problem at all, etc. This principle should be applied across the board imo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21481" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T06:48:43.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27835" CreationDate="2014-09-05T08:06:12.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach is to simply ask the potential post doc supervisors. That said, if I received a random email from someone asking how many of my post docs have gone on to get academic positions, I would probably ignore it. If however, that email came from someone I had previously talked to about doing a post doc with me, I would be happy to tell them about my past post docs and where they went. You should then talk to former members of the lab and see if the PI's view of the world matches their views. While a single descriptive statistic like percentage of students who went on to get academic positions might seem like it is easier to interpret, it likely only provides a portion of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T08:06:12.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2014-09-05T08:16:27.773" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the other answers. At least in fields where a substantial number of students self fund their PhD, having any funding is a big deal. I think you should put the fellowships and their amounts, under &quot;grants and awards&quot;, although it might be reasonable to change the title to something like &quot;funding&quot; or &quot;fellowships, grants, and awards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a departmental fellowship (or funding from someone else's grant) is not particularly prestigious, it is important. For example, a student with guaranteed money from his/her department or advisor has little incentive to apply for external money (and in many cases might even be ineligible). In evaluating students as potential post docs, I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently from those who have had funding. That said, it is important that you do not make too much of a departmental fellowship as it is generally the least prestigious type of funding you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T20:55:13.557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T20:55:13.557" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28059" CreationDate="2014-09-05T09:35:28.407" Score="47" ViewCount="10935" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you respond to a reviewer who is very critical about your paper but from whose comments you can easily see that he/she has misunderstood the key concepts of the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, the first reviewer had no issues with the paper and suggested only a minor revision. But the second reviewer seems to have not spent too much time on understanding the paper. This reviewer's misunderstanding made the editor suggest a major revision of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my response to the reviewer (not sent yet), I used the sentence &quot;This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper.&quot; Is this too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I am glad to inform you all that after the second round of reviews, the paper was accepted with minor revisions. I followed the general advice given in the accepted answer for this post. Instead of being too defensive, I agreed in my response to the reviewer that the misunderstanding may be due to wording of certain sentences and changed them. Specifically, I used the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There seems to be a misunderstanding about the methodology, which we&#xA;  hope to clear through our responses below and by revising the text in&#xA;  the manuscript. Contrary to what the reviewer states, ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this update helps someone in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9104" LastEditorUserId="9104" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T12:24:26.593" LastActivityDate="2019-09-20T13:54:14.983" Title="Responding to a reviewer who misunderstood key concepts of a paper" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28058" CreationDate="2014-09-05T09:37:05.210" Score="13" ViewCount="1690" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have put into my paper a photo (available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apenusa.com/images/Apen_A3_DetailPage_06.jpg&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) that I have collected from the company's website available for free. There is no copyright note, except the one at the bottom of the website and product is available for sale (probably patented). I have contacted the company seeking permission, but they did not reply after a week and I cannot wait anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper will be published in an IEEE magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to make sure an online photo carries copyright?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is citing to their website sufficient to avoid copyright violation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If received copyright permission, how to use the permission in the paper? (I received permission from another company for another photo). Write it on the image or write &quot;courtesy of ...&quot; (I have seen this phrase quite a lot).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks all of you, referring to your answers, I decided to stay in the safe side by removing the photo from the paper. I did not criticize anything and did not admire it either (but it could be a free publicity for them which is ignored despite second email to the company). I just discussed its functionality as an encouraging innovation for particular domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, almost &lt;strong&gt;NO ONE&lt;/strong&gt; yet commented on &lt;strong&gt;3rd question&lt;/strong&gt;. Can any one help in this regard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="6393" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T02:31:07.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T22:30:48.510" Title="How to ensure that putting a product's photo in a paper does not violate copyright?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2014-09-05T09:52:35.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use something that the selection committee can easily verify. I would use &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?view_op=top_venues&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar Metrics&lt;/a&gt; and provide the h5-index and h5-median values. The good thing about Google Scholar is that it also automatically generates these numbers for most major conferences. Be sure to mention the following Google disclaimer in the footnote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Dates and citation counts are estimated and are determined automatically by a computer program.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9104" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T09:52:35.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28055" CreationDate="2014-09-05T09:57:00.143" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without reading the paper, are you sure that the photo is necessary? It looks to be purely decorative, so perhaps you could sidestep the whole issue and leave it out of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just because the owner does not reply to your request &lt;strong&gt;does not&lt;/strong&gt; give you implicit permission to use the content. &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/permissions/if-you-cannot-find-the-owner/&quot;&gt;These guidelines by Colombia University&lt;/a&gt; lay out the situation well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the licensing situation is not clear, &lt;em&gt;assume it is copyrighted&lt;/em&gt;. Private companies may get a little prickly if their products are conveyed in anything less than a glowingly positive light. Nevertheless, they usually can't do much if someone posts a bad review on a blog. I don't know for sure, but perhaps fair use will apply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is an attribution license, yes. For example, content posted on Stack Exchange has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&quot;&gt;CC license&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/&quot;&gt;attribution required&lt;/a&gt;. Otherwise, nope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whichever is common in your field, or specifically requested by the owner of the copyrighted content, should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T09:57:00.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28055" CreationDate="2014-09-05T10:01:12.413" Score="27" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Photography and other creations carry copyright by default&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to your part 1 - the exclusive copyright of a photo belongs to someone from the point of its creation, even if no explicit copyright note is attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; had made the photo of that product, then it would be an entirely different question, but redistributing a photo someone else made is legally almost exactly as redistributing a Hollywood movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Available for free doesn't imply a permission to redistribute&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something is freely distributed by it's owner, it doesn't come with an implied permission for you to do the same thing. Unless it comes with a licence that explicitly allows you to do so (e.g. the various Creative Commons licences), you don't have a permission to copy that image further. Citing the source doesn't change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lack of response means lack of permission&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have an explicit permission, then you don't have it regardless of reasons - if an author chooses not to communicate with you, then tough luck. It also may be that the company doesn't have free hands in licencing the image - it's quite possible that the copyright is owned by some photographer, and the company has a licence to use it in their website but not in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The journal may want clarifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal submission documents will likely include either a statement that all images are your own, or that you have licenced them appropriately. They may leave the licences as your responsibility or require you to send them the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="10730" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T10:10:04.580" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T10:10:04.580" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28054" CreationDate="2014-09-05T10:49:39.210" Score="57" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be technically correct, it is unnecessarily undiplomatic (at least all by itself), as it implicitly places blame on the reviewer for not correctly understanding your paper. Again, if the respective points were made unmistakably clear in the paper (which is something that you can easily overestimate), this blame may be justified, but still you risk unnecessarily disgruntling the reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to assume in good faith that the reviewer did not fail to understand your paper due to incompetence or laziness, but because you failed to clarify a certain aspects. Try to improve your paper regarding the explanation of everything that the reviewer misunderstood and reply with something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This comment seems to be based on the assumption that we were proposing a method to transmogrify apples. However, the goal of our method is the transmogrification of bananas – an aspect, which we have failed to make sufficiently clear. We have amended our manuscript accordingly and now write: […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not worry, if the respective revision turns out to be only minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be prepared if the reviewer insists on his or her misunderstandings, I suggest to explicitly state in your response letter that something different is the case. This way you hopefully have some good argument for the editor in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;I once had a similar experience with a reviewer who criticised that we made several claims which were not supported by our studies. However, we never made any of these claims. In a first revision we reformulated a few sentences that the reviewer had presumably misunderstood and explicitly stated in the response letter that we did not make those claims. The reviewer criticised again that some of the same claims were unsupported. We responded again that we never made those claims and reformulated a handful of sentences. Then either the reviewer finally understood or the editor was fed up with this and the paper was accepted. In both cases, major revisions were requested.&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T10:57:34.290" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T10:57:34.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28026" CreationDate="2014-09-05T11:15:02.627" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I do not have enough rep to write a comment on Moriarty's answer, but I think that it is most likely because of absent-mindedness in the part of the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to comment the following idea if you're lending out something like pens: &#xA;My mother used to work with students who would need to come in, go through a long document and sign it before leaving. She would go through an enormous number of pens, as the students often just popped them back into their pockets by accident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She came across the idea of flower pens (gluing a big fake fabric flower to the end of the pen) and implemented it on the pens in her office, and she said that suddenly her pens stopped disappearing - since they were now tricky for the students to mistake them for their own, or accidentally stuff them in their pockets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on equipment you could try other things (I imagine you could spray-paint some things in bright neon or shiny colours, attach big tags or tassles to the items) to make them stand out a little more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A sample pen: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideasforfrenchclass.blogspot.com/2010/09/flower-pens.html&quot;&gt;http://ideasforfrenchclass.blogspot.com/2010/09/flower-pens.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21486" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T11:15:02.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-05T11:59:31.127" Score="28" ViewCount="7372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how best to respond to queries from non-academics along the lines of &quot;Why should you be paid during the summer holidays?&quot; This is the sort of question I hear a lot in this economic climate here in Ireland, though I strongly suspect that one encounters similar questions and opinions elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a subtext that public money is scarce, that people in &quot;real&quot; jobs work themselves to the bone and pay high taxes, while some people get to spend a significant proportion of the year on a sun lounger at the tax payer's expense. I like to think that we academics do earn our crust, but as somebody paid public money I think it's a reasonable question, and one I would like to answer better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of obvious responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's nothing like nine months, especially when you factor in exam marking and processing, dealing with appeals, Autumn repeat exams, lecture preparation for the following year etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did I forget to mention research? That's a full-time job in itself! And there are secondary activities such as applying for grants, judging grant applications, and supervising (post-)graduate students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However these points don't apply to all academics. For example, I work in an Institute of Technology, possibly akin to a liberal arts college in the US, where there are typically 18 teaching hours per week in term time, but research is a bonus activity, and we have 10 weeks' summer holidays. So the core point seems to be that it's near-universal practice to have a teaching break during the summer months (exactly when this break is, and its length vary of course). But why is this? Are there good reasons that might satisfy somebody who is not already steeped in the academic life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's tempting to say that teaching is particularly intense, and this period of estivation is needed to avoid burnout. But is this true of teachers and academics more than, say, junior hospital doctors or care workers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably this question is tied to the question of why school teachers have summer holidays: I realise that this latter question may be off-topic for this site, but to the extent that answers to it have a bearing on my question, I would like to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I am aware that not all academics are paid during the summer months. Many have temporary contracts that don't span the summer vacation. I hope that this situation remains the (in my opinion, disgraceful) exception rather than the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Thanks to Oswald Veblen and Dave Clarke for pointing out the general practice in US academia of being paid for only 9/12 of the year. In Ireland, and I think in much of Europe, academics are usually paid for 12 months. So some of the motivation for this question (&quot;Why are we paying you academics during the summer?&quot;) may not apply in the US, although the basic question still stands (&quot;Why don't academics typically have to teach during the summer?&quot; or, in the more provocative (and inaccurate) terms that this is sometimes put: &quot;Why don't academics work during the summer?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8560" LastEditorUserId="8560" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T20:48:47.683" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:14:58.060" Title="Why do academics work only nine months of the year?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2014-09-05T12:23:56.247" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following applies to a previous version of the question: &quot;Why do academics get paid to work only nine months of the year?&quot;.  The question of whether academics &lt;em&gt;do work&lt;/em&gt; work in the summer, compared to whether they are &lt;em&gt;paid to&lt;/em&gt; work over the summer, is more difficult.  Most faculty in the U.S. have 9-month contracts, but in my experience most faculty nevertheless work on their research and teaching during the summer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, it is very common - nearly universal, in fact - for a standard academic contract to span 9 or 10 months. There are several reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It allows the university to pay less. The standard rule of thumb is that a 9 month contract pays 9/12 of what the corresponding annual contract would pay. Many (most?) faculty have their 9 months of pay split up into 12 months of paychecks -- but this is an accounting fiction, not a sign that they are paid for 12 months of work. If few students are around over the summer, there is less reason for universities to pay salary to their faculty for that time - having a break in the contract balances the university income and expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It allows faculty to be paid more. This is the flip side of paying 9/12 of an annual salary: the faculty member can, in principle, take another job during the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many grants, for example, are able to pay &quot;summer salary&quot;, which is really just extra income. But these grants do not allow the faculty member to take salary from the university at the same time they take salary from the grant. The &quot;9 month contract&quot; resolves this: the faculty member can state they are actually only paid for 9 months of university work, so the grant can pay 2 or 3 months of extra salary during the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, some universities pay extra to faculty who teach during the summer - that would not be possible if the summer was treated as part of the basic contract.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A smaller number of faculty use the summer for consulting work, or other jobs genuinely different from their university position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Faculty like to travel over the summer. During the academic year, it is hard to leave for personal reasons, because of class. By claiming that the summer is &quot;off contract&quot;, academics can travel however they like during that period of time, without having to justify their time.  So having the contract pause during the summer makes the job more attractive to job candidates, allowing the university to attract some people who might otherwise take higher-paying jobs elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I just cited are all purely economic - they can be justified solely in terms of saving money for the school, increasing pay for the faculty member, or attracting better candidates. There is also &quot;tradition&quot; as a reason for the summer break, as is also the case at lower levels of education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &quot;9 month contract&quot; is fictitious in a few ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most faculty still have access to their office, library, email, and other university resources even when they are technically not &quot;on contract&quot; over the summer. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research faculty usually continue to work on research during the summer, and travel to conferences (which may even be reimbursed by the university, even though the faculty member is technically not on contract!). This often happens even when the faculty don't have grants or other summer funding. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many faculty use some of their summer time to prepare for their classes, even though they are not being paid to teach over the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are other activities during the summer: committee meetings, advising, etc. Some faculty participate in these, for various reasons, even when they are off contract. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="16122" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T14:41:21.470" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T14:41:21.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2014-09-05T14:22:40.603" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who works in Asia (teaching for a British university), I get paid 11-12 months out of the year (depending on my yearly negotiations). I had one student ask me why I don't teach 40 hours a week since that is a full-time job. So, I took a moment to explain to the student that standing in front of students is only one part of my job. Yes, it is the most visible but there are many, many other things I do and my work does consume 12 months out of the year (even when I'm only paid for 11 of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always prep, which includes research (identifying what should be taught based on the latest literature). Of course, there is marking, resits, special classes, along with a host of general administrative tasks which need to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is possible for someone to work less than I do, it is only possible by producing lower quality, quickly outdated content for the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, I do not believe teachers work only 9 months out of the year. Those in the US might only work 9 months and take 3 months off but that is more related to the lack of appreciation (and sadly the lack of pay) for the efforts that go into properly educating the next generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T14:22:40.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28055" CreationDate="2014-09-05T15:04:37.703" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are technically correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you ought to think about it practically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every company wants to sell their products, and unless your article is saying bad things about the product or company, they're going to be happy for whatever publicity they get via your article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the company is run by morons (does happen sometimes), they are NOT going to sue you for helping them by giving them free publicity. Even tho they could, technically, if they wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just credit the source of the photo properly and you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21494" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T15:04:37.703" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27823" CreationDate="2014-09-05T15:51:11.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most journals require that the submitted manuscript has not been submitted total or partially to any other journal. Of course different policies apply to open access journals. If I were you I would check the journal's policy regarding this issue and contact the editors if necessary to get their opinion (probably they will require details on what will be duplicated). To the very least discuss this with your supervisor. You can find yourself in a very unpleasant position if you are not careful (not to mention having your papers rejected), as indicated by @Enthusiastic Student&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T15:51:11.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29685" CreationDate="2014-09-05T16:03:29.867" Score="10" ViewCount="2941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am putting together my application for a postdoctoral position in theoretical condensed matter physics. The position is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a &lt;em&gt;fellowship&lt;/em&gt; and is a regular postdoc position. If you have gone through the process of applying for such positions a number of times, or, even better, if you have reviewed such research statement letters, what are the main points that are sought/you seek in such letters? Specifically, should I put more emphasize on my PhD research to demonstrate my &quot;depth of knowledge&quot; on projects I have worked on (past research), or dwell more on things that I want/am capable to do (future research)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16184" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T22:48:25.943" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T22:48:25.943" Title="What do potential postdoc advisers seek in research statement letters?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28045" CreationDate="2014-09-05T16:10:41.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the comments and answers I see here are orthogonal to my experience.  Subject matter? Career path?  Both irrelevant.  I entered graduate school with the intention of getting a Master's degree in Computer Science and left with a Ph.D. in Algebraic Geometry.  That happened because I met an inspiring professor---he could have been doing almost anything technical and I would have chosen him, not the subject matter.  I find my inspiration in people: Number Theory, Fluid Dynamics, Adaptive Algorithms---ist mir wurst, as they would say in Germany (I'm American).  Working with a great professor trumps the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a strong technical education already.  If you are looking for direction, take a cue from it:  where is your life gradient pointing right now?  Mapping out a career path is great for some folks, for others it is the death of serendipity.  You never know.  I chose my graduate school because my girlfriend attended it.  The girlfriend didn't last, but the professor did.  And (serendipity) I met my wife there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T16:10:41.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27447" CreationDate="2014-09-05T16:23:16.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field (Bioinformatics) you would need to test that the software works as intended. Many researchers use simulated data to evaluate performance under controlled conditions, and then apply the method to a case study to demonstrate its validity with real data. Although not explicitly required for (most?) journals, if I was reviewing your paper I would most likely request that you demonstrate its utility with real data. That, however, does not require a lengthly study, any appropriate dataset would suffice. That being said, if you include some real data some referees may ask you that you demonstrate your software in a broader set of (real) conditions. That has happened to me before- referees are insatiable :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T16:23:16.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-05T18:22:42.743" Score="13" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our law school has (soon to be had) an endowed professorship that was awarded (on a 5-year rotating basis) to a faculty member with an outstanding record of research and scholarship, consistent with the traditional role of endowed professorships and chairs. The money in the endowed fund has grown sufficiently to transform it from a &quot;professorship&quot; into the law school's very first endowed &quot;chair.&quot; At the very same meeting that the faculty was informed of this positive development, we were also informed by the University's chief development officer that this new and first chair would be awarded to the dean, not to increase his salary but to augment his administrative line of funds for travel, fundraising, etc.--a move consistent with our university's persistent shift of more and more resources away from faculty and to administration. The endowed professorship--awarded to a faculty member--will expire as soon as the current holder's remaining term ends in two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDO maintained that it was usual to award the first chair to deans and not to faculty members, a statement that members of the faculty found to be ludicrous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it usual anywhere else for chairs to be used more often for administrative support of the dean rather than to recognize, encourage, and support faculty academic research and scholarship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21498" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T18:30:54.487" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T17:36:18.657" Title="Is it usual to use endowed chairs to support deans' administrative duties, rather than faculty's academic work?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28054" CreationDate="2014-09-05T18:54:39.220" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one ever seems to talk about this but sometimes... reviewers are terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not terrible like &quot;Ugh they made me revise my paper&quot; but terrible like &quot;Did this person even read the paper?&quot; I once had a paper where a reviewer made lengthy complaints about the terrible user studies and lack of clarity in user studies for an object. There were no user studies in our paper, there were several clear statements about how there were no user studies in the paper, the 'future work' section detailed the user study collaborations. It was a paper on the method of integrating physical and automated controls, not a paper on user studies. One of the reviewers just... lost the plot. I don't know if they read a different paper, I don't know if they wanted a different paper. The other two reviewers made some excellent revision suggestions which we followed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't the first time either. I can't speak for all fields or conferences, of course, but sometimes you just get a terrible review. Terrible not negative, terrible as in makes no sense. Sometimes you respond, sometimes you try to work it in and sometimes you just politely ignore the bits that make no sense. Some fields lend themselves to a wide variety of subject matter experts. Consider, for a moment, robotics. A submission to a robotics conference or journal could be about the mechanical engineering aspect, the automation(AI and Machine Learning) aspects, optimization, computer vision, sensor integration... No single person is going to be an expert in all of these things and some of the most interesting, to me, projects involve some blending of these subjects. It can be hard, then, to find a reviewer from the pool who best fits a submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the case in many subfields in Computer Science, this may be the case in the field you are working in. When you're talking about research on the bleeding edge sometimes you're talking about stuff that has a limited or restricted audience and, thus, a limited or restricted reviewer pool. There are a fair amount of similar questions about academic research reviewers and reviews here. Typically the benefit of the doubt is given that the reviewer is bringing up legitimate complaints and, to be honest, that is the best policy for everyone to have. But sometimes it's ok to accept that a reviewer is totally out there and the review is unhelpful or inappropriate(in that it does not apply.) In those cases I would respond to the other reviews as appropriate and respond, tactfully, to the review in question with statements directly reflecting how the review does not apply to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T18:54:39.220" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27936" CreationDate="2014-09-05T20:03:32.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, this varies by field and then it varies again by adviser. I am speaking from the perspective of biological sciences but I think what I have to say could apply in your circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my program, we are expected to teach (~7-8 hrs/wk), take classes (~8 hrs/wk), then spend the remaining time in the lab. This does not factor grading (easily 20 hrs/wk for lab classes unless you just do a bad job at it), studying for classes (~10 hrs/wk), and then attending meetings and seminars (~3 hrs/wk). Where does this leave time for research in the lab? My adviser expects me to spend 40 hours/wk in the lab which is difficult to do when you have so many other things to do as well and often not enough time to get it all done. The majority of my weeks end up being 60 hours of work during the Fall and Spring semesters because classes tend to mess up my planning for experiments. During the summer, I tend to average about 45-50 hours. But then the rest of my time is really spent in classes, teaching, grading, and studying. Bottom line - your weeks may be crazy because of other graduate school requirements making your work hours stretch as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have talked to others extensively on the program. Many of them do not need to teach and their advisers tend to ask them to spend about 50-60 hours a week working. The other very common situation is that the adviser does not care so long as they are productive. There are many different management styles and I have had personal experience with both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small percentage of advisers tend to ask for ridiculous hours and threaten their students but it's certainly not the norm. I know some people that enjoy or do not mind that lifestyle - research is their hobby and they love spending that much time on their work. Some advisers are the same way and have a hard time understanding others that do not share the same passion. If this lifestyle is not for you, I advise switching sooner than later. I switched advisers half-way through my PhD and I wish I had done it sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: It's not the norm but it's not exactly rare either. If you can't handle this kind of lifestyle you should change while you still can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T20:03:32.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28079" CreationDate="2014-09-05T20:32:19.707" Score="4" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am looking for a journal online, I have to do search for it in every electronic database one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an easy way to find which electronic databases provide that journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doing legal research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21504" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T16:22:46.780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T16:22:46.780" Title="How can I find out which digital libraries include a given journal?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2014-09-05T20:54:57.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Netherlands, I get paid 14 months (one of those is called “holiday allowance” and another one is called “end-of-year bonus”). One way or the other, it's a fiction, the most relevant comparison is between yearly income. Whether it's excessive or not is an entirely different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academics are not the only ones to have a regular salary, paid holidays or flexible time. What sets them apart is that there is relatively little oversight compared to many occupations. To some extent, you can show up, read, write, etc. whenever you decide. And you do get two to three months without many concrete obligations or schedule constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that at my university (and I guess at many places), you have to officially take holidays and you “only” get about 6 weeks (a couple weeks more than the mandatory legal minimum). During the rest of the summer, you are supposed to work and account for your time in the usual ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="9338" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T15:17:18.410" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:17:18.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28076" CreationDate="2014-09-05T21:37:59.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldcat.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Worldcat.org&lt;/a&gt; will give you this information. Search for the journal by name, click on it in search results, and look under &quot;Find a copy online&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;International Construction Law Review&quot; appears to be available in two digital libraries:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p8HUP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Worldcat screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T21:37:59.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2014-09-06T01:02:26.410" Score="8" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; &quot;Why do academics work only nine months of the year?&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out, we don't. I work year-round; for instance, this summer, I revised an online course that was introduced in Spring 2014 at my university. Without being paid. (However, the paycheck issues mentioned elsewhere might make this last sentence &quot;not quite true&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; &quot;Why don't you work 40 hours a week?&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working is not just teaching. There's also: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;preparation for class (&quot;what will I talk about today, and how will I do it?&quot;), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;creating preparation materials (the PPT Fairy doesn't create Powerpoint presentations), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;responding to emails (homework questions, excuses for absence, policy questions), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;choosing homework exercises (you can't use anything from a book that's a few years old, because all the solutions have been worked out and posted somewhere online), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;grading tests (at my university, we have graders for homework, but tests we have to do all by ourselves), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and probably a few other things I can't think of off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final note: I've always respected my high school teachers [well, the good ones; my Phys Ed teacher nicknamed &quot;Bobo&quot; is an obvious exception], but after realizing how much grading they do overnight for more classes than I teach, I have a new-found respect for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21509" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T01:02:26.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28083" CreationDate="2014-09-06T02:49:41.650" Score="12" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be on the job market this year for teaching positions at very small schools or lecturer positions at large schools. I took a class about two years ago now that was focused on teaching pedagogy. It was great, and I had good rapport with my teacher. After the semester, I asked her if she would mind writing a recommendation letter for me in advance, despite almost two years until I would be on the job market. The intent was that I could contact her when I was actually on the market, and she would already have something prepared from when I was in more regular contact with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor did write me the letter. However, she also let me know that she had recently received a diagnosis for a debilitating illness that would be demanding her time and attention, and sent me the letter she completed. She's still alive, although on leave indefinitely from the school to concentrate on her health and spending time with family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what the protocol is for whether I should use her letter or not, particularly given that many schools prefer to contact the letter writers directly. I come from a big research school, and while other professors would be a great testament to my character and research, none have any real awareness about my teaching. A few schools I'm considering applying to actually specifically ask for one letter that focuses on teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given how teaching-centric my job search is, I think her letter would be a great asset. But I'm not sure whether I should use it, and if so, the best way to get the letter to schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This is for the US academic system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21513" LastEditorUserId="21513" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T22:53:57.127" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T22:53:57.127" Title="Ill Recommender Gave Me Letter To Submit" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2014-09-06T04:40:32.277" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is always a very tough situation. Ideally if you had known of her sickness ahead of time, you could have asked her to use a dossier service (such as interfolio.com;  note that I have no connection with this service except being a user). She could send them a single letter and they would send this to other schools on your request. This way the contents of her letter would remain confidential from you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would have also been great if the letter contained language such as &quot;I apologize for not sending a personalized letter but my current health conditions preclude me from doing so, please do not take this as any indication of my high regard for this candidate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this would have been an ideal situation. If she's still healthy and you have good relations, you can ask her if you can set up something with a dossier service (your university might have one itself) with a letter with an apology for generic language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you could add a similar note to your list of references: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prof. John Doe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prof. Alice Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prof. Jane Roe&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prof Jane Roe apologies that due to medical issues she is unable to send personalized letters. A signed generic letter will be sent with her sincerest apologies to the search committee. Verification of the contents of the letter may be made by contacting the department chair, Prof. Bob Ajar, at xxxxx@xxxx.edu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[Aside: I have used letters with similar language when I have been engaged in field research and unable to write personalized letters for my students. So it's not just for sickness but for other conditions where letter writing is difficult.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T04:40:32.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28399" CreationDate="2014-09-06T05:23:43.063" Score="4" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to defend my proposal and I have a very inefficient professor as the chair of my committee. He keep adding and changing ideas consistently. I get the feeling that he doesn't really know the details of my work. During discussions with him, he picks up some elements and asks me to add ideas and tasks that aren't applicable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid that if I confront him (e.g. why his idea won't work, or what I don't like about it), he will take it personally. I spoke with one of his students and was told that he had picked a topic for her, which later on, an expert in that field deemed invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He seems to be more interested in new topics that sound fancy or complex. The good part is that he is not very interested in the work itself or the result. What I mean that if I just want to please him I can through some of his ideas somewhere without much effort and he will be happy. After all, the ideas he picks are not within his area of expertise and he doesn't know much about them. But I can't do this for my proposal because it is hard to explain them to the rest of the committee members.&#xA;Any advice, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21517" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T06:41:35.300" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T00:52:43.833" Title="Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23198" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:12:59.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the previous answers were focused on academic positions focused on research. However I know of colleges and some universities where the teaching load drops off dramatically in the summer and during certain summers it's possible to be off for at least 8 weeks without pay. To me this is very acceptable considering that you will also get 3 weeks around Christmas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also consider working remotely for some periods, if your research allows you to do so. I think also that traveling hard every year for 3-6 months might be hard to pull off, physically and mentally for many years. But if you could rent a house for 2 months on the beach of Fiji and work from there, that doesn't sound too bad :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastEditorUserId="4050" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T12:12:05.367" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T12:12:05.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T11:32:09.940" Score="45" ViewCount="6629" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two journals I am considering for my paper each demand that the paper be submitted exclusively to their journal for consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I win if I don’t keep this rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I get rejected by both, I will have found out earlier that the paper is not worthy of publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I get accepted by one of the journals, this is very good. I will have found out faster which of the two journals is willing to publish me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I get accepted by both, this is really a dream. I should probably find a reason (excuse) to withdraw the publication from one of them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case how can submitting to two journals negatively impact my reputation more than the gain by being actually accepted? (More so considering I will probably leave academia after my PhD dissertation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I lose if I don’t adhere to this rule? What sanctions, if any, can I expect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21523" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T21:43:43.200" LastActivityDate="2021-02-19T18:31:23.023" Title="How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28374" CreationDate="2014-09-06T11:43:16.120" Score="3" ViewCount="1196" Body="&lt;p&gt;My college separates theory and practical grades. I have poor grades in theory like I scores around 60 ~ 80 in most of my theory grades. But except two practical exams in which I scored between 80 to 90 I got above 90 in every single practical exam. Even in my Engineering thesis and cumulative viva I scored above 90. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying to grad schools is a costly process so I am thinking if I should choose colleges based on my practical grades or theory grades. I can only apply to 5 ~ 6 colleges at max. Maybe less too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical exams are given 2 credits and theory exams around 3 to 4. Engineering thesis was for 8 credits and cumulative viva 2 credits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I scored poorly in theory grades was cause 5% of marks is awarded based on the candidates attendance and I had below 40% all throughout my undergrad study. But its not mentioned in the grade cards though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am a computer science student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15418" LastEditorUserId="15418" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T12:31:28.750" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:36:41.127" Title="What matters most for Grad school admissions ? Practical grades or Theory grades?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-06T12:29:09.400" Score="98" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely that there is an overlap in who gets asked to referee the two submissions, which would lead to the double submission being detected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Double submission of papers is sufficient ground for retraction - even after the paper has been accepted for publication. As some journals publish submission dates with published papers, it is conceivable that your double submission is uncovered after publication - and that you end up with a retraction, ie no published paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academic misconduct (and double submission is such) typically is sufficient for dismissal from a PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T12:29:09.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-06T12:32:36.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To submit the same material to two journals simultaneously is against the ethics of publishing. When you submit to many journals, you will be specifically asked to verify that your work is not under consideration in another journal. This has to do with copyright. Your paper will be published somewhere and under a specific copyright. If the same paper then appears somewhere else, it will likely be subject to a different copyright. Journals and publisher's therefore look very seriously at such attempts. You may be rejected by both in the end and as was stated in other answers, your reputation will be ruined very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T12:32:36.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-06T13:00:52.370" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as a note which won't fit in a comment, the use of single submission is wide-spread in the western academy outside of law. Legal academics in the US, on the other hand, are expected to pursue a multiple-submission strategy where they shop their articles to many journals at the same time. There is all sorts of gamesmanship and politicking when it comes to finding one to publish it, which I see as a negative for their publishing environment. Some of their issues are probably also due to the fact that the vast majority of law journals are the so-called &quot;law reviews&quot; which are run and edited by second and third-year law students with little to no faculty input. There is no peer review or blind (single nor double) review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard accusation about this model is that articles are accepted based on author prestige not quality or correctness since third year law students are not experts and cannot evaluate quality. Furthermore, it is often asserted that authors choose their venue based on the highest prestige law review that makes them an offer. As such, there is some brinksmanship around who offers when and how long authors have to accept.  As a result of all this, many submitted articles by prestigious professors are not ready for publication and require substantial work with the student editors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to know what it's like to publish in such an environment, there's lots of blogging and literature on the state of legal academic publishing. I think you'd find that since peer review is volunteer and that acceptance happens after all the reviews are conducted, reviewers would dry up. I certainly wouldn't volunteer in an environment where I knew that the article could get yanked out of the journal I reviewed for because it got accepted by a more prestigious one. Single-submission helps prevent the volunteer peer-reviewing model from falling apart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T21:42:44.000" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T21:42:44.000" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-06T13:04:03.430" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simultaneous submission to more than one journal can be lethal to your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicationethics.org/case/repetitive-duplicate-submission-multiple-journals-and-redundant-publication&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics). In that case, the author(s) were effectively blacklisted by all the journals to which they had submitted simultaneously, and the information was made public. Even if you are planning to leave academia, you do not want a reputation of being willing to break the ethical norms in your field. And it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021155/&quot;&gt;taken seriously&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Editors take this so seriously that they may ban authors from submitting to their journal if they have broken the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Arno noted, double submission may be sufficient to get you dismissed from your PhD program--this is serious academic misconduct. Also, if the double submission is discovered after acceptance, you may well see your paper being retracted. You might thus end up with neither a publication or a doctorate! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answers have touched on the reasons &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you should not submit to more then one journal at once, including the non-trivial consideration of wasting reviewers' time with a submission that you will retract if another journal accepts first. In addition, simultaneous submission to multiple journals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021155/&quot;&gt;will increase the cost of publishing journals&lt;/a&gt;, thus increasing the subscription cost for every one of us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are multiple reasons to submit to only one journal at a time, from respect for others' time and effort to consideration of your reputation and future in the field.&lt;/strong&gt; As mentioned, the stigma of being perceived to have attempted to cheat the system is so severe that it may well follow you even outside academia. Just don't do it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T15:28:40.007" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:28:40.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28097" CreationDate="2014-09-06T14:48:29.253" Score="12" ViewCount="2836" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am a PhD student from material science and I wish to become a TT professor in the future. When submitting papers, we see an option to submit it in arxiv and it seems to me that the acceptance to the arxiv would probably be much faster than usual journal. I want to ask if publishing articles in arxiv instead of usual journals would make my career less promising or not.... thank you:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21426" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T15:39:22.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:46:12.930" Title="is it good for academic path if I publish too many papers in arxiv" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2014-09-06T14:59:44.470" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Submitting a paper to arXiv.org is not equivalent to publishing.  There is no peer-review process and no acceptance (well, apart from a lax moderation policy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arXiv is a preprint server.  It is not good practice to upload documents that you do not intend to submit (at least in my research area).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will look rather suspicious if you have only a string of arXiv papers in your CV that have not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal of good standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21527" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T15:46:12.930" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:46:12.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T15:23:42.723" Score="8" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a startup entrepreneur in Chattanooga TN.  A few days ago, I was approached by a representative of Chattanooga State community college to teach a community course and/or course series on 3D printing and product branding.  This will be a new course, unlike any other that they have taught before, so I am sure that there will be plenty of developmental work involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I asked about the compensation, the representative told me that the pay varied from instructor to instructor, and that I needed to come up with the amount.  I have never taught a course like this before, so I was wondering how I should gauge this amount.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I base it on hours taught in class, total hours material covered, students involved, or is there another standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21528" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:12:37.490" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:12:37.490" Title="How to determine compensation for developing new course for community college?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2014-09-06T15:24:20.900" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't just submit to the arXiv instead of journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles in the arXiv are not considered published in the traditional sense, and they are not peer reviewed.  In fields that use the arXiv, papers are typically submitted there and to a journal (but you can do this only if the journal's policies permit it, so you should check if you aren't sure).  The role of the arXiv is then to provide access to preprints before publication and &quot;green open access&quot; to published papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to submit an arXiv paper for publication, and occasionally people use it to distribute papers they don't intend to publish (and for which they aren't looking for publication credit).  But you should be careful to avoid getting a reputation for putting mediocre papers on the arXiv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a few high-profile cases of great arXiv papers that were never published, like Perelman's work on the Poincaré conjecture.  However, you can't get away with that when starting an academic career (unless you are revolutionizing your field).  If you just submit papers to the arXiv and not to journals or conferences, it will destroy your career.  They will count for far less than published papers, and search committees will wonder about all sorts of explanations.  Are you profoundly eccentric?  Do you have no idea how academic careers work?  Are your papers just not good enough for journals?  Is there something you are hoping nobody finds out via peer review (e.g., that you plagiarized or rediscovered something already known)?  Basically, everyone will make uncharitable negative assumptions, in addition to considering the papers themselves as worth less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you've asked is a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about, but I find it a little alarming that you've basically proposed career suicide with no indication that your advisor has warned you.  This suggests that talking with your advisor more about career issues could be helpful, or attempting to find another mentor if your advisor is not so helpful.  Academic career paths can be narrow and demanding, and good advice is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:24:20.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2014-09-06T15:38:17.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other posters have suggested, you should not rely exclusively on arXiv uploads as &quot;publications.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I understood your question correctly, the arXiv &quot;option&quot; is not an option to publish &lt;em&gt;instead of&lt;/em&gt;, but rather &lt;em&gt;in addition to&lt;/em&gt;, your submission. In effect, many journals allow you to upload to public repositories like arXiv while &lt;em&gt;simultaneously&lt;/em&gt; submitting the article for consideration to the journal. For example, all of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aps.org&quot;&gt;APS&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.aip.org&quot;&gt;AIP journals&lt;/a&gt; allow for this option. This allows you to reach readers who may be interested in your journal but who do not have access to those journals for whatever reason. This can be a very effective strategy for maximizing &quot;views&quot; of your article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:38:17.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28096" CreationDate="2014-09-06T15:41:27.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're going to find that they want to pay you their adjunct rate for teaching the course, which might be $3,000 or so.  If you want to be paid more, you will probably need to negotiate a list of deliverables, which would then allow someone else to teach the course next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there are two motivations for being an adjunct instructor.  Some people make a living at it by piecing together adjunct appointments from two or more institutions.  Others do it for the love of teaching; they have to have day jobs to support their teaching hobby.  I got paid about $2,500 to develop and teach a course in web applications in 1997.  Now I am retired from the day job I had then, have a full-time faculty appointment, an office at school, and everything!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: I missed that it is a community education course.  You might get a few bucks more for that, or extra pay for classes over a certain size.  It will still be a four-figure amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T15:51:20.667" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:51:20.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28055" CreationDate="2014-09-06T15:47:31.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick answer if you are subject to US law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1. How to make sure an online photo carries copyright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; online photos (and text, videos, etc.) &quot;carry copyright.&quot; That is, someone holds the copyright on anything you find online. You are not allowed to redistribute it unless the copyright holder &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; does something to grant you the right - for example, if they specify a license. (Though under certain circumstances the fair use defense allows you to &quot;get away with it.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. Is citing to their website sufficient to avoid copyright violation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, citation is completely irrelevant to copyright infringement. Copyright law says you cannot copy and redistribute the content, regardless of whether you cite its source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exception: if the content is under a license that makes citation relevant. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution licenses say something like &quot;You are allowed to copy this as long as you credit the author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3. If received copyright permission, how to use the permission in the paper? (I received permission from another company for another photo). Write it on the image or write &quot;courtesy of ...&quot; (I have seen this phrase quite a lot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the conventions of your field, of course, but the typical way is something like &quot;Figure from [source], used with permission.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26250/how-can-should-i-indicate-that-its-okay-to-use-open-access-content-in-a-paper&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; of mine addresses the case of open access content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T15:47:31.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T17:37:52.647" Score="8" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed a BA in philosophy, but then my interests changed and I did a BSc in mathematics. I am currently finishing my MSc in mathematics and applying for a PhD in maths. I have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the fact that my very first degree was in philosophy put me at a disadvantage in terms of applying for a PhD? Could it potentially be interpreted as a sign of indecision or inadequate motivation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I refer to my philosophy degree at all in my personal statement? Does my change of academic interests call for an explanation, or is it better to leave it out?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21229" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:34:48.437" Title="Applying for a PhD with two undergrad degrees in different subjects" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T17:43:34.607" Score="7" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone had any guidance on how to handle/manage the uneven skill sets and lack of customer service attitudes on the part of administrative units.  I'm talking about concrete issues, such as a person in the grants office who can't figure out research budgets and grants.gov and IT staff who can't keep email up and running.  Keep in mind, these are folks who are not directly under the supervision of my department, but who we are compelled to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T02:47:51.520" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T05:49:41.233" Title="Uneven skill set and customer service attitudes of University Support Services" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;administration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T17:50:09.890" Score="0" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Computer Science graduate living at a developing country and I have two options to choose,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option I:&#xA;Pursue CS masters at a reputable, but not leading, national university with a limited alumni, a few of whom in the past has CS Ph.D. admissions from top 40 US graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option II:&#xA;A very prestigious scholarship provides me an opportunity to pursue a one year master's in sociology at a well known UK university. Then I can still continue with Option I. This will have a positive impact on my career at work too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final goal is getting a CS Ph.D. from a US university, but option II allures me. Will Option II have a negative effect on my future career from the perspective of an CS admission committee member ? Is it viewed as a total waste of time ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21533" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T11:18:45.110" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T11:18:45.110" Title="How do CS graduate school admissions weigh an unrelated master?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28103" CreationDate="2014-09-06T17:50:50.723" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it (but I am not in any admissions committee), the career choice that you did being 18 should have very little impact now. At that age, most people are immature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, having those two degrees tells me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have had the persistence to finish the Philosophy degree, even knowing that that was not your cup of tea; and then pursue your real desire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the flexibility to work on very different intellectual environments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your experience is broader than most people that start their Maths degree at 18. Also, you are in Mathematics after a concious decision, and it was revalidated when you pursued a MSc, and now applying for a PhD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I think you should absolutely mention it, otherwise you would have a 3 years gap to explain. Having been studying is definitely better than doing nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T17:50:50.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28105" CreationDate="2014-09-06T18:01:23.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your final goal is to have a CS Ph.D., getting a masters in sociology first will in no way help you reach that goal.  Doing option II may be viewed as a &quot;waste of time&quot; by CS admissions committees, though it probably won't preclude you from getting into a masters program afterwards.  I'm guessing the net effect will be slightly negative from the point of view of a CS admissions committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do option II, especially if you think you'll enjoy it.  You might even find your career plans changing after getting a masters in sociology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T18:01:23.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28111" CreationDate="2014-09-06T18:50:21.237" Score="3" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28053/929&quot;&gt;answer of mine&lt;/a&gt;, in which I advocate listing internal funding of your PhD studies on your CV, is not well liked. When evaluating potential post docs for my lab, I am interested in if the applicant is going to be competitive for external funding. I take self funding a PhD as being an indication that the applicant was unable to obtain external funding. I give applicants who were funded internally by a department or someone else's grant a big pass since the need for external funding was absent. Is the no funding/internal funding distinction important for a potential post doc supervisor to know? If not why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T21:16:32.630" Title="How do you evaluate the potential for getting funding of post doc applicants?" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28103" CreationDate="2014-09-06T19:24:02.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add on to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28106/15723&quot;&gt;Davidmh's answer above&lt;/a&gt;. The major issue is that you're &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; switching from philosophy to mathematics at this stage; you already made the switch a long time ago. As far as the graduate schools are concerned, you will be evaluated &lt;em&gt;as a mathematics major would be&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe your study of philosophy will help make a case for your admission as a mathematics graduate student, then you should mention that in your statement of purpose. However, you need not obsess over it; no one will say that you're unable to pursue graduate studies in math just because you started out in philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T19:56:09.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28132" CreationDate="2014-09-06T19:51:39.307" Score="29" ViewCount="10706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in Europe and I am in the state of permanent crisis because of my PhD supervisor. He is a very nice person, who is very active with public engagement, very successful at grant applications and all that. But the problem is, it turns out he does not know the subject. Now I realize this is a very arrogant thing to say. However, for a very long time I refused to believe it and thought that there was some problem with me. Now all evidence (corroborated by others) shows that he really is incompetent. He somehow manages to pull it off, getting on other people's papers and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that this takes place in Europe is significant: I had to choose someone from the start of my PhD and the time is extremely limited. Also, I am not sure, but I have an impression that you will not be able to get funded, if you quit your PhD and start over. Is this so? Also, there is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; small number of people doing similar things around and none in the same institution. Additionally, it seems very likely, that no one would support a rebellion (i.e. switching a supervisor), because of politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very good track record, I finished at a top American university with very high grades, and most importantly I do want to do research. So this situation makes me very unhappy. I can't see any way out, but maybe there is someone who can? I will consider changing the field somewhat (but not too radically) and starting over, but it seems like the funding will most definitely not be available. Or maybe it will?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21538" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T12:04:45.000" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T06:50:13.870" Title="Is it possible to restart a PhD due to issues with supervisor (and should I do it)?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2014-09-06T20:06:22.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mean fellowships and other PhD-student only external awards, or are you OK with listing &quot;I helped write this larger project grant that covered lots of people but I was not listed by name in the application&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that in the last couple of years of a PhD, students should be helping to write the project proposals, but there are lots of reasons besides failure and lack of trying that might explain why they did not. Well-funded supervisors may, in my opinion misguidedly, shield their students from grant writing so that they can focus on the research. I think that this is a failure on the part of the supervisor to properly prepare a student for future research work, but it happens all the time. Some people don't get this training until the are a postdoc. You shouldn't hold the actions of the supervisor against the candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some applicants may believe that if they were &quot;only&quot; part of the writing team but not a co-PI or Senior Personnel (in NSF-speak) on an application, that they should not list it on their CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, even for external grants which only cover a single student (fellowships and the like), having not applied for one doesn't mean much. There are many, many more PhD students than there are fellowship opportunities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trashing CVs for any of these reasons, you may be missing out on good postdocs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to answer the question (sort of): I don't hire a lot of postdocs, but I have directly or indirectly hired 20-30 PhD-level research staff. Some of them are expected to participate in proposal writing. We gauge their ability to write proposals by looking for it on CVs, asking them about their experience when it's not on their CVs, and talking about it during interviews. Then, we throw them in the deep end and see what happens. In my organization, we have large-scale projects that fund people's time, but if they want to work on their personal research projects, they need to write proposals. Those who do, get to work on things besides the center-wide projects. Those who don't, don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T20:19:10.623" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T20:19:10.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-06T20:59:59.843" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a &quot;rebellion&quot;.  In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time.  (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.)  And switching advisors is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; easier than any form of &quot;starting over a PhD&quot;.  You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your claim that your advisor &quot;really is incompetent&quot; is disturbing.  I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge.  If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't.  But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers!  Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can be summoned at a moment's notice.  In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question.  I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say &quot;Never mind&quot; and move on to something else.  That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that there are levels of expertise.  Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on.  One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student.  Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students.  That sucks.  If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor.  But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job.  To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department.  Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Though switching to a different faculty member in your department is easiest, it need not be the best choice: there may or may not be another suitable advisor in your current department.  It's quite possible to transfer from one PhD program to another: doing so need not be (and probably will not be, unless you promote it this way yourself) a failure or rebellion.  If you have only been in your current program for a year or two, you could plausibly start fresh elsewhere.  If it's been more than that, you may want to look into the possibility of arriving at another program with advanced standing, up to &quot;ABD status&quot;.  Also, (especially) if you are American and studying in Europe, maybe consider coming back to the US, especially if that's part of your post-PhD plans.  I mention that because coming back to your native country provides a sort of implicit explanation for your change of programs: many fewer questions will be asked of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T23:39:52.420" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T23:39:52.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2014-09-06T21:16:32.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, our environments clearly vary. Personal grants are uncommon around here, and almost &lt;em&gt;every PhD student&lt;/em&gt; is funded by somebody else's grant. Nobody lists how they have been funded, and those who do are not regarded overly well (hence also my answer to the question you mention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your actual question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you evaluate the potential for getting funding of post doc applicants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not directly, really. We do not expect a track record in grant proposals for a fresh PhD gradudate. Hence, we try to infer from her/his research vision whether the graduate actually has enough ideas of sufficient scope to get some projects accepted. We assume that actually forging those ideas into grant proposals will require some help at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having some experience as co-writer of proposals is a plus, but frankly it's not something very important to us. Whether or not the candidate has written the state of the art section for somebody else's grant proposal is less interesting than whether he actually has ideas for proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T21:16:32.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-06T21:59:40.243" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding a student's perspective to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28112/15723&quot;&gt;Pete's answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor told me at the being of my master thesis, that soon I would know more about my particular area of research than him. At the time I didn't believe a word he said, but at our third meeting I was already explaining stuff to him and by the fifth I started to feel irritated that I had to explain stuff to him which I didn't have to explain to his PhD student whom I collaborated with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I realised that I worked on this topic all day every day, my collaborator worked on a related topic and discussed my research with me several times a week but my advisor only got to spend time on this topic every other week when we met with him, because he had plenty of other students to advise in the meantime and also had his own research, teaching and some administration to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the sixth meeting on it became a habit for me to open the meeting with a quick catch up on my topic and my progress before diving into the details. And from that meeting on I always got great advice from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to think about whether you have given your advisor a fair chance to help you when you were stuck and whether he has been able to help in that regard, because that's his job and knowing all the details about your current topic is your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13138" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T22:31:42.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28055" CreationDate="2014-09-06T22:30:48.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As there have been good and extensive answers to your first two questions and you explicitly asked for answers to your last question, I will only address question number 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you can use an image in a paper depends entirely on the type of license/permission you have received. Basically, you and the copyright holder are free to negotiate any type of attribution or none at all. But even if they do not explicitly mention attribution it is still a sign of good manners to include at least their name somewhere close to the image. In case you are unsure, ask the copyright holder how they would like to be attributed and suggest a manner which you think might be suitable for your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some images are available under free licenses, e.g. all the images on Wikipedia (with some fair use exceptions) and Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository. These licenses specify what you need to do when you want to use an image. Usually, they require that you attribute the author and name the license under which the image was used. Some licenses might also require that you release derivative works of the original image (i.e. when you edited the image in some way) under the same license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T22:30:48.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T22:58:51.927" Score="5" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about today's focus on external funding versus that of the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Mathematics anyway, it seems that the quality of a researcher is increasingly being measured in dollars of external funding rather than by some other, more idealistic measure. That means that pure mathematics, for instance, seems to be much less valued than &quot;fundable&quot; mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any veterans have any perspective on what seems like a changing climate? Are things really different today than they were 20 years ago with regard to the importance of obtaining funding for ones research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20776" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:44:36.807" Title="Why is the prospect of external funding driving hiring?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T23:09:13.013" Score="12" ViewCount="1521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often in a Calculus or Linear Algebra class, my students may ask - when am I ever going to use this?  The answer I try to give them is &quot;You're not. And that's totally OK. But you do need to learn how to think logically and solve problems. Mathematics provides a safe place to learn these thinking skills.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But increasingly, the focus of the students is still &quot;Is this going to be on the test?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They seem unhappy when questions they haven't seen before end up on the test. My thought is that if they learn the process for solving problems, then they should know how to approach a new (but similar) problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in seeing them regurgitate facts, but I want them to develop their thinking skills and use them to solve new problems.  This often causes backlash.  I get it - learning how to think is harder than memorizing facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I effectively communicate that it's not the individual questions or ideas that are important, but it's the learning and thinking processes that are key?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20776" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:48:35.153" Title="How do you convince students that it's OK to teach them &quot;how to think?&quot;" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T00:27:25.443" Score="5" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instructors can use reflective teaching to analyze their teaching, in the hope that they can improve their course for subsequent terms. If a teacher focused on insuring that all students earned A's, would that bring about unintended negative consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If some students did not earn an A because they failed to understand some material, the teacher would attempt try harder in the next term to explain this material more clearly and to also identify or correct the course readings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If some students did not earn an A because they were uninterested and unmotivated, the teacher should try harder to make the lessons more interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have achieved the course goals, the teacher never lowers their standards for what is an A, and students not made aware of this goal, would such an &quot;all A's from everyone&quot; focus create any intended problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T16:15:32.727" Title="Are there any negative consequences to an instructor attempting to achieve &quot;all A's from everyone&quot;?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28117" CreationDate="2014-09-07T01:08:08.970" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with your fundamental premise: that the concepts &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; be used, and therefore the main benefit of learning calculus is to hone a student's problem-solving skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many engineering problems &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; require an understanding of calculus. Perhaps not all your students are destined to be engineers or physicists, but, if you explain that there are people who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need and use this knowledge to advance in their career field and solve real-world problems, you might get them to sit up and realize they aren't trudging through their homework as a mere academic exercise. Fact is, some of these courses are taught to freshmen and sophomores because they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; need those problem-solving skills as juniors and seniors – not just to know how to solve a problem, but to also understand the underlying theory and mathematics. If all the students in a particular demographic will never use calculus in the future, then they probably don't need to take calculus now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd try to find some real-world problems that require the knowledge taught in your course to solve. Perhaps that might spark an interest and help students realize that the are not just solving integrals for integrals' sake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was at your university, and I taught an upper-level engineering course in heat transfer or thermodynamics, I'd be disappointed to learn that my students' calculus teacher thought the main reason to teach my engineers calculus was to provide a &quot;safe place&quot; for them to &quot;learn how to think logically and solve problems.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:08:08.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2014-09-07T01:14:58.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been in Academia in both the US and in the Netherlands, I can safely say that academics work the full 12 months and dedicate most of the summer to &quot;real work&quot; (i.e. research) when they are less distracted with teaching responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20424" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:14:58.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28116" CreationDate="2014-09-07T01:18:44.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in the Netherlands, a group at the university needed about 450,000 euros to fund a PhD student.  If the money is not coming from the university either indirectly from the government or other revenue sources, then the money needs to be secured by the faculty themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the story is similar, but the costs may vary.  In short, academia is not cheap and someone has to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20424" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:18:44.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28117" CreationDate="2014-09-07T01:48:35.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's indeed likely that many of your students will not extensively use the material they learn in your class, it may not be encouraging to them to hear that they won't use it.  And indeed, they do learn important critical thinking skills, but they may be wondering what is special about the sort of critical thinking in calculus and linear algebra that they couldn't get out of another course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this vein, one solution may be to present real-world examples of how calculus and linear algebra are used today, get the students involved as you present, and &lt;em&gt;relate the topic to the students' lives&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, after you present a basic optimization example (maximize fence perimeter given the area it contains) you might present a slightly more complicated problem &lt;a href=&quot;http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcI/MoreOptimization.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(building a window of a particular shape that maximizes the amount of light coming through with a fixed amount of building material, for instance)&lt;/a&gt;, and get the class involved in trying to solve the problem.  Ask them what's different about it, maybe have them briefly discuss a strategy with the person next to them.  (This is not usually done in a large class, but at least one very popular professor at my school does this in his large classes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing with the example of optimization, there's a great topic on matheducators.stackexchange about real-life optimization problems &lt;a href=&quot;https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/a/1561&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, I've linked to a problem that video-game players might find to be really cool and related to their everyday lives. Of course, it may also help to branch out and briefly discuss some current, advanced applications of calculus and linear algebra.  An excellent example where ideas from calculus and linear algebra are essential is the story of how &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sus-bus.com/ups-route-optimization/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UPS route optimization involves the minimization of left turns&lt;/a&gt;.  This last example might inspire a lively discussion in your classes, because it shows how calculus and linear algebra can trump everyday intuition... and how pushing beyond a basic understanding can lead to new, interesting ideas!  (I'm sure if you asked students in class, they could come up with reasons for why UPS's strategy might make sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some students might not be moved by industry applications and might benefit from seeing mathematics as the kind of &quot;safe place&quot; you suggest where perfect formulations lead to perfect results.  Strogatz has some interesting words &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/horizons/strogatz_feb14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in a Math Horizons article&lt;/a&gt; about the importance of enabling others to experience the beauty of math, and he provides a great example of why math is beautiful.  I also just found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/greg_lynn_on_organic_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED talk discussing the use of calculus in some parts of modern architecture&lt;/a&gt;. Though this last one is admittedly again an industry application, it at least sheds some light about how aesthetics and mathematics can interact in interesting ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:23.900" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:48:35.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:14:02.830" Score="6" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for a senior academic position, teaching experiences play a critical role in the application. We list the corses we used to teach but when assuming the position, we need to deliver some official documents to the human resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What should be this document? a letter from the last university listing the courses or a detailed set of documents for each course/semester including evaluations?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who should issue this document/letter? VP for Academics, Dean or Department Head?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it needed to get similar documents of teaching experiences from previous universities? or the last university is enough?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question for the case of a full professor coming from Asia to Europe or North America. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:20:12.380" Title="How to document teaching experiences?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28103" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:34:48.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must say I find this question quite odd in light of the two undergraduate degrees you have: philosophy and mathematics. They have been linked for thousands of years, and some of the most prominent mathematicians of the past two hundred years were philosophers. And some of the most prominent philosophers were also mathematicians. They have gone hand-in-hand for a really long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George Boolos, author of &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; textbook on mathematical logic, Computability and Logic (I'd be surprised if you hadn't used it during your undergraduate studies), started out with a degree in mathematics from Harvard, did a masters at Oxford in philosophy and mathematics, and particularly the philosophy of mathematics, and went on to do a PhD in philosophy at MIT. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People like Hilary Putnam, one of the most famous philosophers alive, have made major contributions to mathematics even &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; of the philosophy of mathematics. Putnam published major works on the Boolean satisfiability problem and Hilbert's tenth problem, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another prominent mathematician, Solomon Feferman, is also a philosopher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While certainly there are not a lot of Fields or Abel winners who are philosophers, there is no doubt that the two fields compliment each other immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More relevant is the fact that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there is &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; having an undergraduate degree in philosophy could somehow negatively impact your application. It can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; improve it in universities where they understand the links between the fields, and in departments where it doesn't, it's going to have no impact at all given you also have a masters in mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say that I am surprised, however, that someone considering doing a PhD in Mathematics would be so oblivious to the obvious, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15927" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:34:48.437" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:39:17.573" Score="5" ViewCount="2788" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the PhD transcript of a colleague graduated from a US university. There was no score for the &lt;code&gt;dissertation&lt;/code&gt;, just stated &lt;code&gt;Pass&lt;/code&gt; with no effect on the cumulative GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the dissetation quality controls the final GPA? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't the major academic credit (40 - 60%) of a PhD program its dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T02:52:09.477" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T12:59:37.720" Title="Why dissertation has no score in GPA in United States?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28116" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:44:36.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that there is more pressure nowadays to get funding in areas like pure math in which it's valuable but not mandatory for doing great work.  It's still entirely possible to make an argument along the lines of &quot;Sure, Alice doesn't get much funding, but look how wonderful her papers are,&quot; but it's slowly getting harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer as to why this is happening is World War II plus inertia.  Here's a longer answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to keep in mind is that grant funding is on average genuinely good for universities, because the overhead rate paid to the university is often higher than any extra costs imposed on the university.  All other things being equal, it makes sense to prefer to hire faculty who can get funding, because they are subsidizing the infrastructure for everyone else (e.g., libraries and internet access).  Of course, all other things are rarely truly equal, and I wouldn't advocate for giving grant funding much weight, but there's a reasonable argument for giving it nonzero weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a temptation to use funding as a simple numerical measure of popularity.  Universities should serve the public, and it's clear that people are much more eager to fund work in some topics than others.  It's not crazy to take that into account in university decisions.  However, if taken too far I feel it's an abdication of our responsibility for intellectual leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why do these things seem to be changing in recent decades?  Universities are generally conservative and slow to change, so it's always worth looking for an explanation of any movement, and in this case I think it's World War II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most funding agencies were set up in the aftermath of the war (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation dates back to 1950), and the whole tradition of large-scale government funding of research didn't even exist until then.  How academic leaders reacted to it was based on their personal history, and academic inertia meant the changes were slow in coming.  Some of the effects are still surfacing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's divide things up into academic generations since World War II, giving each generation a twenty year time span to displace the previous one.  Here are my impressions of what happened for cheap or theoretical areas in which funding is not essential to do good work (I'm sure things were very different in big science):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The senior faculty of Generation 1 (1945-1965) were strongly influenced by pre-war traditions.  They had never dreamt of making hiring decisions based on external funding and weren't about to start doing so now.  They were suspicious of how wisely the funding would be allocated, and they saw no reason to think these agencies were even going to continue indefinitely in their present form.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Those in Generation 2 (1965-1985) had still been brought up to be skeptical of paying more attention to funding track records than necessary.  However, they were getting more comfortable with the funding agencies and starting to wonder about how grants could or should be taken into account.  I believe this is the point at which listing grant funding on your CV became mainstream in pure mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The senior faculty in Generation 3 (1985-2005) went further and began taking funding information into account in ways that would have scandalized Generation 1.  If you didn't list grants on your CV, the dean might now complain about it.  But there was still a sense that this was somehow shallow and historically new.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generation 4 seems to be taking the trend still further and normalizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is all vastly oversimplified, and no serious history can be conveyed in a few paragraph-long sketches (even if I were an expert).  However, the key phenomenon is real: the funding landscape was revolutionized after World War II, and academic traditions have slowly been adapting to this fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:44:36.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28126" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:51:50.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How the dissertation quality controls the final GPA?&#xA;  Isn't the major academic credit (40 - 60%) of a PhD program its dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of the dissertation has no impact on the final GPA because &lt;strong&gt;nobody cares about the PhD GPA&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real indicator of the quality of a PhD student's work is the research he/she produced over the course of the PhD, which can't be reduced in a meaningful way to a single number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:51:50.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28126" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:52:42.647" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is near-universal in the United States.  Dissertations are not graded, and the GPA includes only course grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, people do not care about course grades in Ph.D. programs once you've completed your dissertation.  The GPA is understood to refer only to courses, so the GPA is also not considered important.  In particular, it is not viewed as a summary score for the whole program, but rather only for the initial coursework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dissertation quality is measured by reading it, gauging where it was published, or reading letters of recommendation.  For any job where the hiring committee cares how good the dissertation was, they will be reading recommendation letters, so there would be little benefit in having a numerical score in addition to the letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:52:42.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T04:53:51.660" Score="11" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the problem I am trying to solve,&#xA;I considered 2 base algorithms and devised about 30 variations on each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then threw about 2 CPU-years and ran a number of simulations to see how they went.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When that completed I drew alot of graphs and came to some conclusions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variations of the form &lt;code&gt;X&lt;/code&gt; do almost exactly as well as the control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variations of the &lt;code&gt;Y&lt;/code&gt; family can be predicted to have unpredictable (and thus useless) results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;code&gt;d[1,0*]&lt;/code&gt; variation is great under these conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;code&gt;d[0*]&lt;/code&gt; variation is great under these other conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took the last 2 and made a new algorithm and then tested that and found further useful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am going to write my findings up into a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 3 kind of results above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points 3,4 (and the subsequent improvements) are interesting and will be the main focus of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points 1, 2, are kind of nonresults. They are failures, they did not produce anything useful.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For most it isn't even surprising that they didn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For others they are a approach by taken on a similar problem in a paper that inspired me to try and solve this related problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So should I comment at all about algorithm variations that were tested and found to not be good?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why/why not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;Pros I can see:&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would help prevent others, not spend time trying them. I have read that it is a problem that in many disciplines (including this one) &amp;quot;negative results are not published&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;Cons I can see:&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Takes up space, may confuse reader as to which algorithm is the focus of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels abit weird that of the 2 CPU-years I spent testing these, and the considerable time I spent making the tests, I will only tell the rest of the world &lt;strong&gt;about 5% of my results&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T13:12:22.790" Title="Pros and Cons of including less interesting results" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28144" CreationDate="2014-09-07T05:09:03.080" Score="6" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spent sometime recently at a HR department of a government company (in the utilities) in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accidentally found a file that listed out interview outcomes for new applications for a technical position (spreadsheet jockey - nothing fancy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of the 10 applications, 2 of which had a PhD, 1 with a masters degree and the others unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the PhD (call him PhD A) had spent considerable time doing research at a university, the other (call him PhD B) just recently finished his PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments to the interview outcomes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD A:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;spent considerable time in university, have academic (not real world) experience&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;might have difficulty adjusting to a new environment  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;may contribute to discussions  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not likely to be followed up&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD B:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;fresh out of university, have less experience than PhD A&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;research is too narrow&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found funny is that very few people who actually works at the organization have PhDs (or masters for the junior staff), you'd think they would get a staff rotation just to improve upon their overall knowledge level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you also feel that people with higher degrees are not welcomed with open arm in the job market? Why do you think that is the case? Have you personally faced discrimination or prejudice when applying for a job that is not too academic in nature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20070" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T10:58:41.067" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T17:38:40.840" Title="Do academicians routinely face discrimination in industry job searches?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-07T06:52:20.217" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true that switching advisers might be difficult, especially within the same department. There are a few other options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make do and finish your PhD nonetheless. Remember a PhD is supposed to be an open-ended research work on a challenging topic. It means that many things are not going to work, that the end result cannot be perfect and, importantly, that your adviser cannot hold your hand and lead you to a guaranteed solution like instructors in bachelor or master courses. It's difficult to judge how serious the situation is from the outside but some level of frustration is quite common and you do need to manage your expectations (if your adviser has time for you and is happy to sign off on your work, you are in a better position than many PhD candidates…).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek a secondary adviser. For better or for worse, it's actually quite common for professors to oversee theses on a broad range of subjects and exercise only minimal supervision, relying on junior colleagues to deal with the details. In some cases, the secondary adviser can also be a full-professor at another university. Ideally, he or she should complement the first one and help deal with some specific aspect of the topic the latter knows less well. This could help you get guidance on some important aspect of your work you feel your current adviser is not competent to deal with. But do clear that first with him before approaching others. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Switch adviser. Yes, it's difficult and politics often make it almost impossible within the same institution but it's not unheard of. If things look very dire, think about switching country. I know someone from Germany who rescued her thesis that way. The way she explained it, things went very bad with her previous adviser and she would not have been able to defend at her university or to switch advisers. But a professor at my university thought the work was good and took over the thesis almost at the end, asking for about 6 months of work to correct and add various things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start over. It might be somewhat more difficult to get hired (or not) but it's not the case that it would be impossible to get funded Europe-wide. Here again, if some country-specific regulation regarding grants complicates things, consider going to another country. As noted by Pete, going back to the US is also an option and would be easier to explain later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also seek advice from other people at your university. There might be a research coordinator, a PhD “coach” or councilor or some HR person whose role is to help in those situations. But whatever you do, be very careful how you present things: “my adviser is incompetent” might not go well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11596" LastEditorUserId="11596" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T10:24:16.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:24:16.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28134" CreationDate="2014-09-07T06:55:48.790" Score="25" ViewCount="3977" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professor who knows me very well is currently on maternity leave (her baby arrived in late April).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This professor has known me for 4 years (since first semester of undergraduate career) and also advised my undergraduate thesis (2 semesters).  In addition I also did an independent study course with her, and she has provided me funding from her own grant money in the past in order to pay for me attending academic conferences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply to several master's programs, possibly PhD, in addition to other things that require such letters (Teach for America, Summer School, etc.).  All of these things require letters of recommendation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to ask her for letters of recommendation on her maternity leave, and if so, how should the request be phrased in email?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21069" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T07:04:46.737" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T04:05:50.490" Title="Is it appropriate to ask for letters of recommendation from professor on maternity leave?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28133" CreationDate="2014-09-07T07:26:03.463" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think It would be different if say, you took one or two of her classes. But it sounds like she advised you a great deal, and thus she should have some investment in your educational success. Especially if you have talked about graduate school before. What is important is you give her notice as soon as possible so she can find some time to do it: Having a newborn is no easy job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would phrase it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear X &lt;em&gt;(unless you call her professor, then Professor X, but my&#xA;  advisors I call by their first name)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is your newborn? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I realize you are very busy with your maternity leave, but I was&#xA;  hoping you might have some time to write me a strong letter of&#xA;  recommendation for graduate school. As you might know I am interested&#xA;  in ZQR, and your mentorship over my senior thesis has been essential&#xA;  to my education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;user&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to add that while I was applying to PhD programs, the professor who eventually became my advisor was on maternity leave while I was asking her questions about the lab. In confidence, she enjoyed my emails because having newborns, while a joy most of the time, often lacks the intellectual rigor that most people are accustomed to in their day to day conversations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is she will be very happy to do this, and somewhat expects you to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T12:02:38.343" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T12:02:38.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28130" CreationDate="2014-09-07T08:00:51.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could omit the uninteresting 95% in the peer-review journal version, but include them as an appendix in the arxiv.org version of the paper. That way they're available but you're not forcing anyone to read them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T08:00:51.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28131" CreationDate="2014-09-07T11:41:23.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of a PhD as &quot;vocational education for researchers&quot;, not as the &quot;highest level of education&quot;. So if a company is looking for a researcher then a PhD should be an advantage, but if a company is looking for a &quot;spreadsheet jockey&quot; as in your example then there is a mismatch between the education and the job and a company should take that into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that there are large cultural differences between companies and universities. Such differences can lead to frictions, and if you can hire someone without such frictions then that will be an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14471" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T11:41:23.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2014-09-07T14:48:29.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No, there are no negative consequences.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is this sentence right here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have&#xA;achieved the course goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being the case, grading becomes evaluating the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BDYUw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If everyone in the class is able to do everything that they &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be able to do... mission accomplished&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt;: I teach pilots how to land airplanes safely.  Students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have achieved course goals (they land the plane), and I never lower my standards for anyone (you don't get an A unless you land safely).  As for the third criteria, I don't make students explicitly aware of my goal, but let's face it, it's implicit in the training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My argument comes from seven years of personal experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any negative consequences of me making sure that all my students are able to land the plane safely?  No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any negative consequences of me &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; making sure that all of my students are able to land the plane safely?  Yes: flame and then newspaper headlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:34:29.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-07T15:07:54.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you are asking two different questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The supervisor is not good, for whatever reason. So how to change the supervisor, in a political oriented office environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The research area is and its potential contributions are all on you (few people are doing it around), and with addition to the 'bad' supervisor what can you do, such as large number of publications for better future in research (find a postdoc, academic, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here are my answer to that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you the benefit of the doubt. Some academics are in fact horrible mentors. Lets face it, being an academic means the person has large number of publications and good networking here and there. Also their job doesn't require to be 'nice'. They can close their doors and don't really supervise, act like crazy person, but as long as they have large number of publications, with the name of the university on the top of it; they will be praised. So here what I do: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your supervisor, and express your unhappiness. Tell him/her this is not what you are expecting. He does not supervise in the area of his/her expertise, and therefore not suitable for you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the head of research group, or the person in charge, and express your unhappiness about your supervisor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the universities have human resources. You go there and tell them, you need to change your supervisor; and you talked to him/her and the head of the group; but nothings seems to change. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the tricky one! Some supervisors get a PhD student, and want them to be a postdoc (independent researchers). Now that you already started your PhD, with some effort, you can change a little, the direction of the research; but stick to the same area. For example, if I'm doing a research about security in software systems, and all the other PhD students around me are doing research in the area of database; I can change the focus of my PhD to the security in the database systems, and write my thesis about it. Remember, you are the one that will defend your thesis, in whatever area you want it to be. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T15:51:11.163" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:51:11.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28124" CreationDate="2014-09-07T15:20:12.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think applicants in the US are ever required to prove that they taught particular courses on particular dates, so no system like official academic transcripts certified by the university has arisen. However, if there were some doubt that courses listed on a CV were not taught, it would be a simple matter of contacting the department to verify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:20:12.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28131" CreationDate="2014-09-07T15:44:36.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the type of job someone with a PhD is looking for outside of academia and how strong his or her preference is for &quot;pure&quot; research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academia, the focus is usually more on &quot;pure&quot; research where you just need to demonstrate that an idea is viable.  You don't need to bring it all the way through to a finished product.  In industry, the focus is usually more on development and/or &quot;applied&quot; research where ideas are converted into marketable products or services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a PhD and have a strong affinity for &quot;pure&quot; research and little experience / interest in applied research or development, and you are applying for a job in an organization that does very little pure research, then it will definitely be a disadvantage.  However, if you're applying for a position at a research lab in a big or niche company, then this is probably an advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I work for a company that develops software.  If during your PhD, all you did was hack together prototypes for your papers and are not very interested in the end application, then I'm not very interested in hiring you.  If, on the other hand, you like the end application and like good software development practices, then having a PhD is a big plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20424" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:44:36.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2014-09-07T15:51:29.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The potential disadvantage is that wanting every student to get the top grade results in the teacher spending all their time with the weaker students. The stronger students, who can get an&amp;nbsp;A without extra help, don't get stretched and find the course dull and unmotivating. Thus, the next generation of people who might take the subject farther, even to research level, get switched off and do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also assuming that every student is capable of getting the top grade, and they're not. However much time and effort you put in, you will not get the weakest students up to the level of the top grade. Your time and effort are valuable: it doesn't make sense to invest them beyond the point where they've stopped having any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what does it even mean for every student to get an&amp;nbsp;A? If your entire grading system is essentially a single binary decision of &quot;Can do&amp;nbsp;X&quot; versus &quot;Cannot do&amp;nbsp;X&quot;, wouldn't a pass/fail system make more sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T15:51:29.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2014-09-07T16:07:39.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me how a teacher would know whether students missed an A because they &quot;failed to understand some material&quot; or whether they were &quot;uninterested and unmotivated&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If most people are getting an acceptable mark then repeatedly changing the course to try and make it more interesting to a small portion of the class could lead to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actually making the course less interesting to a larger group of people - not everyone will find the same things interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making the teacher(s) less capable of teaching the course well since they're now less familiar with the outline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if a specific course gets a reputation for a high level of As being achieved, it could potentially attract people that want to take the course because they expect an easy A. I don't think that's really much of a problem though, and shouldn't put people off making an interesting and well explained course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: while there are probably no real disadvantages to aiming for all students to get an A, a poor implementation has potential disadvantages and if &quot;all students should get an A&quot; becomes some kind of department standard (or maybe even just a personal goal), it has potential to cause stress, annoyance, and low morale as it may be an unobtainable goal for staff to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15507" LastEditorUserId="15507" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T16:15:32.727" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T16:15:32.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28159" CreationDate="2014-09-07T17:08:20.013" Score="0" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing my MS thesis on wireless networking, I give the codes from the author of the paper, for some month, after reading his paper and also working on the some aspects of his codes (the implementation of his paper). Now it is the time to create the idea, Can I send him &quot;Do you have any idea which improve some aspects of your paper ?  &quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would you please give me some advises ? can I ask him or not? how to ask that ? what I should say to him ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: my reason for asking him is this: I am sure he knows his codes better than every body, also I am afraid in implementing any idea which do not lead to good result at the end. By the way I do not have lot of time to try and test another ways I mean try and implement one idea with bad result and after that switch to another idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: If I ask him, &quot;... , that is  my idea, what do think about my idea?&quot; what will happen? what is his possible respond?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE2: The meaning of idea in my question is &quot;HOW TO EXTEND HIS WORK&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T19:15:43.143" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:36:36.893" Title="Ask the author of paper about an idea" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28150" CreationDate="2014-09-07T17:39:19.140" Score="61" ViewCount="68713" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am nearing the end of my PhD and I would quite like to buy a &quot;thank you&quot; gift for my supervisor (although, she's the socially awkward type who I'm sure will be greatly embarrassed to receive one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just wondering whether a gift is the done thing? And if so, what sort of gift seems appropriate? I suppose a bottle of wine would be a safe choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19470" LastEditorUserId="19470" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T15:49:21.963" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T13:54:35.753" Title="Is it appropriate to buy a &quot;thank you&quot; gift for a PhD supervisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;&lt;gifts&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-07T17:57:12.010" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;After your defense, and final submission to the university; you can give the gift, with a thank you note. Right before your defense is a big no, in my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T19:03:56.243" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T19:03:56.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-07T17:57:57.447" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The appropriateness would depend on the culture. In Sweden it is customary for advisor and advisee to exchange presents. Usually, they consist on things like a fine vase of pottery. Personally, I would go for something that is somehow related to your research. For example, a pathologist expert in chimeric cells got custom made necklace and earrings with chimeras, and was greatly appreciated (and not only saying it because my mother made it!). In my opinion, originality is what counts most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can always do it privately to avoid her the embarrassment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T17:57:57.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2014-09-07T17:59:21.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It never hurts to politely ask!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T17:59:21.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-07T18:00:46.170" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be a location dependent question, but in NW Europe a bottle of wine is appropriate for such and even lesser events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many campus shops offer a standardized wine bottle in a gift wrap with the name of the university printed on it. They are the obvious choice, but there is plenty of room for creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21558" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T18:00:46.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28155" CreationDate="2014-09-07T19:14:58.543" Score="0" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I count on paper future work or not? in order to work on that for my master thesis. I have a paper and its implementation. and I work on that for some months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper belong to 2013 and the author work on another fields on 2014. I track his publications and I am not sure he goes back to his 2013's paper future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know and make sure if the idea will work or not? How can I make sure if it will work or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T19:41:00.963" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T19:49:50.853" Title="Can I count on &quot;future works&quot; ideas in a paper to work?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28154" CreationDate="2014-09-07T19:38:58.113" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to make sure if it will work or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why it's in the &quot;future work&quot; section is that no-one knows because it hasn't yet been done (and it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23720/should-i-include-future-work-in-a-paper-when-i-dont-intend-to-do-that-future&quot;&gt;easily possible&lt;/a&gt; the original authors never will try it). &quot;Future work&quot; ideas can range in feasibility from wild speculation to simple, &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt;-guaranteed-to-work extensions that just need a bit more manpower or computer power to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good topic to discuss with your supervisor as soon as possible. You should be asking questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How feasible might it be for these ideas to lead to some useful conclusions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if it doesn't work? How soon will we know, and what alternative paths are there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some ideas are much easier and more feasible than others.  There's no way to know for sure but to try the idea yourself (after making sure that the problem is not already solved in later literature). Because dead-ends &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/732/why-dont-people-publish-failures&quot;&gt;often go unpublished&lt;/a&gt;, it might even be worth contacting the relevant authors to ask if they attempted to follow up on their future ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a courteous thing to do especially if theirs is a recent publication: if the original authors are still working on the problem, publishing the solution first might annoy the other researchers. Though whether to proceed anyway (and give them notice that you're working on the idea as well), stay silent, or offer to collaborate, is a dilemma that's off-topic for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T19:49:50.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28157" CreationDate="2014-09-07T19:51:47.647" Score="3" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can journals share information about your submission or for that matter your entire submission at will? Is that fair game? Is this a varying practice based on who you submit to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the general idea that the implications of sharing the notes and related content is trivial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11187" LastEditorDisplayName="user11187" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T21:06:21.240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T21:06:21.240" Title="Can journals share information about your submission?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;privacy&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28156" CreationDate="2014-09-07T20:16:52.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, no, journals cannot arbitrarily share your submission with others—at least not before it's been accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; share your submission with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers, so that the peer-review process can be completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other staff members within the publisher, which can be useful when a paper is submitted to the &quot;wrong&quot; section of a journal, or to the wrong journal, but is otherwise acceptable for publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the paper has been accepted and appropriate copyrights assigned, though, they can do more or less whatever they normally do in their publication and advertising process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:16:52.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-07T20:18:44.860" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the defense, a small token of appreciation would not be inappropriate. However, this should not be a substantial gift, as even after the defense, it could be viewed as a &lt;em&gt;quid pro quo&lt;/em&gt; arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:18:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2014-09-07T20:36:36.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are now doing your MSc thesis, you are relatively new to research. Still, you have to learn a very valuable lesson. Good research ideas are hard to find, when thousands of smart people are competing for limited slots in journals or CS conferences. In this spirit, people do not want to share their good ideas or inform others about what they are planning to do, more than what they state in the future work section. In this SE community, there are many posts about supervisors or collaborators stealing idea from their students, or vice versa. If you cannot always trust your advisor or student, can you trust a stranger with your good research idea? The obvious answer is NO, unless you simply cannot implement the idea yourself without his help or you do not have the time to do it by yourself (which is solvable if you delegate this work to more collaborators, like undergraduate students or colleagues). &lt;strong&gt;Sharing ideas should be limited to people you absolutely trust.&lt;/strong&gt;. Do not get me wrong. By people you can trust, I do not necessarily mean people you interact socially with. It might be the person in your next office or another scientist 1000s of kms away. But trust in a necessary component before any type of sharing and &quot;brainstorming&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore suggest: Try to do it yourself. Extend his work the way you see fit and try to publish the results. If you succeed, then he will know that you are good enough and perhaps suggest collaboration himself. Of course you may find that your idea was not that good and you have wasted a significant amount of time. Or your idea was good but parallel to you and without him knowing what you were planning to do, he implemented it faster and got it published. In any case, you should base your option on what you want to do. Do you want to finish your MSc thesis as soon as possible and go to industry? Then by all means, share your idea and use his help. But if you want to continue in research, you must choose the hardest way and do it yourself with all the risks and time included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:36:36.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-07T20:44:12.407" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have already written, a gift is appropriate only after you are &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; done.  In my case, that was after the registrar had notified me that my application for degree had been approved by the program office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had asked my supervisor a couple of probably unsubtle questions after the defense, and sent (to his home, not to the university) two bottles of wine that would have been hard for him to find and a pretty nice decanter.  I also sent three small (very low three figures) checks to the university, one in honor of each committee member, so each should have gotten a letter stating that a gift had been made in his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm in the United States.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:44:12.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28941" CreationDate="2014-09-07T21:03:22.703" Score="22" ViewCount="52012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I accidentally created my advisor's Google scholar profile using my personal Gmail. Now I can't find a way to transfer the profile to him, nor can I delete his profile in my account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any idea what to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost a tech support question, but since it's so unique to academics I figure I should ask here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/en&quot;&gt;Google product forum&lt;/a&gt;, but there is no forum for Google Scholar. They don't have a support line for Google Scholar either. I have not found a way even after posting on the Google product forum. I'm truly stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11636" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T04:24:38.300" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T02:21:53.617" Title="How to transfer or delete a Google Scholar profile from my own account?" Tags="&lt;website&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53973" CreationDate="2014-09-07T21:05:12.793" Score="10" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the humanities, it seems to be fairly common for journals to publish book reviews. To be honest, I don't think I fully understand why many academics write them and why many journals publish them. I don't read them very often because I usually don't find them very enlightening. If I want to find out whether a book is worth looking at, it is usually easier to take a look at the table of contents or else to get it from a library and take a look rather than reading the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I could imagine the following incentives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reviewer thinks the book is particularly interesting and should be known to a greater audience, so they want to promote it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing book reviews is considered a service to the community, and authors would also like to get their own books reviewed in a journal later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers influence the community with their evaluation of a book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewers accrue prestige by publishing book reviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these reasons, if any, make academics write book reviews? If it does add to their prestige, how much? Is it, very roughly, possible to say that one research article equals x published book reviews in terms of added prestige (and increased prospects for promotion)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21144" LastEditorUserId="21144" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T18:30:42.363" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T16:40:53.507" Title="Why do academics write/publish book reviews for journals?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-07T22:21:35.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh wow! I've seen other MSc students in that situation - they arrived at college and felt the course wasn't what the were expecting. I've been in that exact same political situation in my PhD (one minute I was publishing papers and cruising across the edge of space like a SR-71, next minute I find myself shot down because someone else felt I had invaded their airspace). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your university should have a PhD course councilor. That's the first person to talk to, in order to explore your options. Many universities now require that each PhD student has two supervisors to make the thesis stronger, and to avoid any problems due to &quot;sudden departure&quot; by a single member of staff. Perhaps you can suggest this. You could also try to see if you can adjust the direction of your thesis to suit your needs. My supervisor had a preference for tried and tested technology - crufty bits of code out of 1970's coding cookbooks. I let him direct my work in this direction even though I could see the rest of the industry was moving onto cloud computing, parallel processing and GPU's. My external examiner then asked why I hadn't used any of those technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of completing a PhD is to demonstrate that you have creativity, can keep up with the rest of industry, see where things are going wrong, think up ways that they could be improved or fixed, evaluate them systematically, and convince others logically and tactfully that this is the correct direction to take. So if you have a feeling if something isn't going right, you have to tell someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T22:21:35.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T23:22:45.133" Score="19" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;For given papers A and B, I would like to search for all papers that cite both A and B. I guess one can generalize to papers {A,B,C,...} and find all papers that cite all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google Scholar and Web of Science search revealed nothing. Google Scholar has a &quot;cite=...&quot; thing in the URL, which I messed with a bit to no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21567" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T04:08:22.163" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T19:03:25.447" Title="How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;google-scholar&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28104" CreationDate="2014-09-07T23:51:28.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many excellent, competent, and dedicated staff and administrative people at universities, but there are also a visible percentage who are not. Universities face several hiring challenges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Salaries are low and opportunities for advancement are rare. Talented people could make more in industry. Those that remain are sometimes there because they don't have mobility (because of a faculty-spouse ties them to that location, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) many people are hired for reasons not related to their skill sets: second-body problems, hiring recently graduated students to reduce the appearance of post-graduate unemployment, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy solution to this problem. However, even second-body hires are not resistant to getting fired (or worse, transferred to the dining unit). Like all bureaucrats they are afraid of complaints and the additional paperwork this would cause.  Anonymous complaints can usually be made via the university ombudsman (if you have one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T05:49:41.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T05:49:41.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T01:13:56.247" Score="4" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently graduated and I was wondering whether, after submitting my thesis, there are any issues (legal or otherwise) if I publish parts of my thesis as a paper in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thesis was not published as book, as was the case in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2937/can-i-publish-parts-of-the-ph-d-thesis-as-a-paper-in-a-journal&quot;&gt;this related question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21568" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:26:17.243" Title="Are there any legal issues with publishing part of an unpublished thesis in a journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2014-09-08T01:38:08.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your thesis advisor!  In most cases, the answer will be, &quot;No.  Go for it!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schools &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; for their graduates to have publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some institutions, including the one at which I teach, the institution claims ownership in the intellectual property of student work, but even then, a derivative work that results in a publication is likely to be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T01:38:08.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2014-09-08T02:52:42.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some (many/all?) PhD programs you have to publish before being able to defend your thesis. Some PhD theses can even be composed of the published papers with some sort introduction/discussion (a colleague in the laboratory where I did my PhD did so). Of course, your PhD supervisor needs to approve it, but otherwise I think you can (and maybe you should) safely publish your results before writing your thesis. As an additional note, it is also OK to publish &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you have written your thesis, i.e. there should not be issues with self-plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T02:52:42.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7428" CreationDate="2014-09-08T03:00:39.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of an abstract with no results that was accepted for a conference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aacrmeetingabstracts.org/cgi/content/abstract/2004/1/254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluation of genetic susceptibility for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the InterLymph consortium&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) has steadily increased worldwide for many years and is still present after taking into account changing diagnostic patterns and HIV infection rates. Although most other important risk factors have yet to be identified, there is substantial evidence suggesting a relationship with conditions that alter the immune system. A consortium that includes essentially all case-control studies currently being carried out in Europe, North America and Australia has recently been formed (InterLymph) to help stimulate and coordinate etiologic studies of lymphoma. Studies are using the new WHO classification of lymphoproliferative disorders and have comparable questionnaire data for most key lifestyle and environmental exposures. InterLymph will have substantial power to study the main effects of less common SNPs, gene-environment interactions and rare sub-entities. Most studies with complete enrollment plan to carry out genotyping of an initial group of SNPs in genes that play a role in regulating the immune system, including IL1A, IL1RN, IL1B, IL2, IL6, IL10, TNF, LTA, and NOD2. The SNP list will be expanded based on interest and resources over the coming years. A set of DNA samples from 102 ethnically diverse individuals that have been sequenced and analyzed on one or more platforms as part of the SNP500Cancer project (&lt;a href=&quot;http://snp500cancer.nci.nih.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://snp500cancer.nci.nih.gov&lt;/a&gt;) will serve as gold standards. Further, a round-robin of sample exchange will assure genotyping consistency across participating laboratories. Initial results from the analysis of SNPs in the above genes will be presented and analytic issues will be discussed, including an approach that will help evaluate the probability that statistically significant associations are false positive findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T08:49:27.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T04:03:42.923" Score="9" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just spent a year preparing a set of course slides for an introductory course in engineering, and they now look really good.  In addition to posting them on my web page, what more can I do to get use out of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it would be nice to see if there's a MOOC that would be interested in them, but it doesn't seem like any of the major ones ever solicit such things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any examples of &quot;publishing&quot; slides either, so I'd be curious what more experienced users here have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21572" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T08:30:31.807" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T15:01:32.977" Title="Made some great course slides, now what?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mooc&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T05:32:06.417" Score="3" ViewCount="1530" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a professor stays in another university as a visiting professor during his sabbatical leave, his salary is partially paid by his home university. Then, he is not a regular employee of host university, but how is the official processing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, he needs lots of employment stuff such as ID, parking, etc. Thus, he should have a profile with the human resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is he hired by the university (HR) or directly by a department?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does he need to provide regular documents such as academic credentials (diploma, transcript) or an employment status from the home university is enough?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Following these questions, when he teaches a course or supervises a student, what is his employment reference in official records? I mean can a guest professor teach/supervise without official records in the university HR?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EXAMPLE:&lt;/strong&gt; A full professor goes to another university on sabbatical leave whether for teaching or research. He needs ID card, and normally HR or similar central unit issues the ID card, not individual departments. Shouldn't he have a record in the HR files as the reference for the ID card issued?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;em&gt;When the HR is creating a file for a visiting professor/scholar/researcher, what documents should be supplied?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T04:37:12.470" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T11:56:08.113" Title="Who hires a visiting professor?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;visiting&gt;&lt;recruiting&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28171" CreationDate="2014-09-08T05:59:28.400" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me clarify some terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Despite the language,  &lt;em&gt;Visiting Faculty&lt;/em&gt; are not usually faculty who are gainfully employed at one university who are just staying at another university during their research leave. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most visiting faculty are &quot;&lt;em&gt;Visiting Assistant Professors&lt;/em&gt;&quot; who are (usually recently graduated) scholars who do not yet have full-time employment and are hired as one-year (or two-year) replacements for professors who have gone on sabbaticals. This is different from an adjunct as the recipient university is hiring you full-time (not per course) for a term of one or two years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Visiting (Full or Associate) Professors&lt;/em&gt;: Only rarely would a tenured, senior faculty use their sabbatical year to go to another university solely to &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt;. Exceptions would be: 1) they aren't being paid during their sabbatical year and need the money; 2) the recipient university has resources that they would like access to (archives, etc.); 3) they  want to live in the recipient city for a year, etc. This last one is the most common -- especially with American faculty visiting European capitals (sigh... Paris...).  Some faculty are contractually forbidden to use their paid sabbaticals in outside teaching -- at my university, a sabbatical is a leave from teaching responsibilities but it is ultimately a time when I am supposed to be doing research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is also the category of &lt;em&gt;Visiting Researcher&lt;/em&gt; - this is the category which most visiting full faculty would use on sabbatical at another institution if they had no teaching responsibilities. It would not normally come with pay or any benefits except library/archive/gallery access, e-mail, and an office. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus if Prof. Smith@UniX goes on sabbatical, then Visiting Asst. Professor Jones@Unemployed is hired by UniX to replace Professor Smith.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions, UniX is entirely responsible for Prof. Jones' salary and benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring is usually done by the department who needs a replacement. Often a full search is not run and sometimes the hiring is done on the Chair's prerogative. While HR of course handles the details after the department makes their choice, it is rarely HR that runs the search from the very beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Credentials may not be checked as thoroughly since it is a temporary hire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visiting Faculty have appointments in their recipient universities and can serve as the instructors on record for courses. Depending on their term (and the rules of the institution) they can also serve as readers for senior essays, but usually they do not serve on doctoral dissertation committees. They are also usually exempt from most service work. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biographical note: After I received my PhD, I taught for a year as a visiting assistant professor, as a sabbatical replacement. This was before I received my first tenure-track job. [note: simplified version of a complex reality]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T11:56:08.113" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T11:56:08.113" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T06:39:01.410" Score="8" ViewCount="1603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about email etiquette. Dos and don'ts when you are sending mailing your professor. One of them was about email domain. I was wondering if it is a good idea to use personal website domain? (eg. email@sadafnoor.com) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Does the professor really look at those things? Seriously?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11488" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T18:35:35.043" Title="Is it a good idea to email to potential grad advisor with personal website email domain?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T06:49:39.417" Score="2" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just wondering when should we start contacting professor of grad school for admission. Does contacting professor too early cause any impact? like, professor gets irritated and never reply back again, blocks forever and things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11488" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T08:15:02.750" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:05:11.907" Title="Emailing professor too early has any impact?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28178" CreationDate="2014-09-08T07:09:19.843" Score="18" ViewCount="6356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in mathematics and I’d like to visit professor X (whom I don’t know personally), as he’s an expert in my field and could really help me with some passages in my research. I have quite a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to approach professor X to ask if I can visit him and what sort of information should I provide?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When PhD students visit academics, what happens usually? I mean, would professor X become a sort of supervisor for the time of the visit, or would it just be that me and professor X would mostly be in the same place at the same time and able to chat a bit if the opportunity arises?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How long do visits last, usually? Would I be a student at professor X’s university during the time of my visit? Would I have any academic requirements (e.g. to give talks at seminars, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professor X is in a different country than I am. Are professors based in a different country than a potential visiting student more reluctant to let students visit them? If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21581" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T07:14:32.910" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T07:38:59.420" Title="Arranging a visit to a professor you do not know yet" Tags="&lt;visiting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28176" CreationDate="2014-09-08T07:33:59.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic visits take all sorts of forms, so it really depends on the situation. There are however some general things that you should keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, it would be necessary to come into contact with the professor you want to work with. Just contacting him out of the blue might not be very successful. If your PhD advisor knows him, it is probably a good idea to let him make the initial contact. Another option would be to try to talk to him or his students at a conference of workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question is who will fund the visit (hotel, travel costs, etc.). If you would be able to attract funds yourself, that would be helpful. Especially since you say you will have to travel abroad, this could run up the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to what happens during the visit, that really depends. It is usual that the visitor gives a seminar or colloquium talk. What I usually do is to try to talk to as many people in the group as possible, to get some feeling about the kind of projects the people are working on. If you come there to solve a particular problem with the professor, then in-dept dicussion sessions with him make more sense. Finally, most groups have desks available for visitors, so that you can work on your own as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For longer visits, say more than a week or two, the professor might take more of an advisor role, but that really depends on the goal of the visit and on the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T07:33:59.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28176" CreationDate="2014-09-08T07:38:59.420" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no definite answer to any of your questions. All of these details depend a lot on the professor, the circumstances (e.g., funding), and you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to approach professor X to ask if I can visit him and what sort of information should I provide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume a mail is sufficient. However, if you don't know the prof personally, and you are not overly well-known in your community yet, it may be better to &lt;strong&gt;ask your advisor to establish contact&lt;/strong&gt;. Professors get many mails from prospective students on various levels, with various intends. Those mails tend to get discarded quickly and unceremoniously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what information would be required, initially probably almost none, except who you are and what you would like to work on with the professor. At a later point, &lt;strong&gt;details of how this visit would be funded may become an important discussion item&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., who pays your travel? who pays your hotel / apartment? if you are an university employee, who pays YOU during your visit?). Don't expect your host to arrange funding - this is something that you / your advisor will need to arrange, and just agree with the host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When PhD students visit academics, what happens usually? I mean, would professor X become a sort of supervisor for the time of the visit, or would it just be that me and professor X would mostly be in the same place at the same time and able to chat a bit if the opportunity arises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen both happen. Clearly, in the second case, the visit is often close to worthless. However, in most cases, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The prof meets a few times with the visitor, and &quot;appoints&quot; one or more of his own students with a matching profile /research interests as a contact point and collaborator for the visit. &lt;strong&gt;You should not have too high expectations of how much time your host can really invest into you&lt;/strong&gt; (and not into, say, his own students or his own research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How long do visits last, usually? Would I be a student at professor X’s university during the time of my visit? Would I have any academic requirements (e.g. to give talks at seminars, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depends.&lt;/strong&gt; I have so far done two research visits, one as a short as 2 weeks, one for 6 weeks. I know of others who have done visits for up to 6 months. You usually have little academic requirements, and you are not usually considered a student of the host institution (at least for visits that are shorter than one term). Giving a talk is sometimes necessary as part of your funding arrangements. For instance, in my second stay, my travel was funded by the host institution over the vehicle that they officially invited me as an expert speaker for their seminar series (so that they could formally pay for my travel, which they could not do for a visit). In my first visit, the expectation of the funding source was that at some point a paper would be published related to the visit (clearly not within those two weeks, but at some point). Further, I had to write a brief report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor X is in a different country than I am. Are professors based in a different country than a potential visiting student more reluctant to let students visit them? If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not typically, however, finding funding may be even more difficult. However, both of my visits have been cross-country, in one case cross-continents, so &lt;strong&gt;it definitely can be done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T07:38:59.420" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-08T07:59:21.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the ethical problems, I would think that trying to prepare the paper for two publishers simultaneously would be counterproductive, and that the quality of the paper would suffer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each journal has different requirements for article length, organization, style, abbreviations, and so forth. Journal requirements may overlap, but a paper prepared for one journal generally requires at least some revision before it's ready to submit to a different journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journals are more likely to publish papers that match the background and interests of their audience. Considering what the audience understands and what bits of knowledge need to be explained rather than assumed is best done for one audience at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most journals I've worked with require the authors to state (as part of the submission process or in a cover letter) that no part of the article has been published, and that the paper is not under consideration elsewhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21578" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T07:59:21.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28170" CreationDate="2014-09-08T08:29:30.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your university may have a digital institutional repository where you can post the slides together with related course materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T08:29:30.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2014-09-08T10:29:26.763" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, I really don't think it makes any difference whatsoever. You are free to use whatever domain you like, so long as it's not somehow offensive or insipid (for instance, if the choice would be considered a curse word or epithet). If there's something potentially offensive, your email could get blocked by a spam server or filter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, though, it really doesn't make a difference. I'm not going to judge a student more or less favorably because they use an email address that isn't a school-based address, or if it's a &quot;vanity address&quot; like the one you've listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T15:46:36.167" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T15:46:36.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2014-09-08T10:40:38.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody here can say whether there are issues with &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; thesis. Perhaps there is something different than usual about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common situation for students in the U.S. is that you can do what you like with the content of the thesis. You can submit the entire thing as a book, or you can divide it up and use it as several papers. This is not plagiarism, because the thesis is not viewed as &quot;published&quot;, even though it may be available from your school's library or from services like ProQuest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flip side of this situation is that, when we evaluate someone's vita, we don't count the thesis as a &quot;real&quot; publication. So if you are pursuing an academic career, you probably &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; publish the results of your thesis elsewhere, to develop your vita. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, some students have many copies of their thesis professionally printed, and distribute the hard copies. I don't know whether they view this as a formal publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:40:38.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28175" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:05:11.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any sensible professor would be happy to reply to a talented student with A+ results; and be more than happy to supervise one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only issue with the time is, sometimes the good professors at a university can't take more students to supervise; because they are supervising 5-8 students for their final year projects. So, as soon as you can contact the professor, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:05:11.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28171" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:12:27.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming a professor will teach at a temporary university during sabbatical, the official processing can be done several ways, depending on the situation and the specific institutions. Because the teaching is something extra, the professor would almost certainly expect the temporary institution to pay for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions just hire the visiting professor as normal, the way they would hire an adjunct. If the sabbatical already has some pay, the professor receives pay from both institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions would make a deal with the professor's home institution. In this type of deal, the temporary institution sends money to the home institution, which then continues to pay the professor's salary as normal, and the professor receives no direct pay from the temporary institution. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, setting up this type of visiting position during a sabbatical requires planning well in advance, so that both institutions can approve it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address some specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S. I am only aware of hiring by HR departments. I have never heard of someone hired &quot;directly by a department&quot;. The department will make an offer, with the approval of the dean, and then the actual employment is always done by the university HR department.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's likely the visiting institution will need to review his academic credentials, as part of their hiring policy, but that is really just a minor detail. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third question seems to be very university dependent. There will be &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; form of record keeping. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:12:27.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28130" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:18:47.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Negative results are as interesting, in my opinion, as positive ones. They allow future researches to know what won't work, and prevent them wasting their time (unless they thing you did something wrong- in which case they will try it anyway :-). However, the main paper should probably focus on the positive part, since most researchers have enough to read already and will not care much about the negative results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In biology at least, it is frequent to mention some negative result and then include &quot;(not shown)&quot;. But nowadays with the facilities to add supplementary material there is no reason to not include some proof. I would suggest to include negative results as supplementary material and just mention them in the main manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:18:47.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:20:36.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the professor's email is an university-based account (e.g., ends up with ac.uk), to make sure the email doesn't end up in the 'Junk' section (i.e., because of universities' firewall system), send your email through your university account. I had an incident through major free email providers, based on the username I chose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T11:20:36.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28194" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:49:48.620" Score="2" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to receive my PhD and would like to apply for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14582/nsf14582.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSF postdoctoral fellowship&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions about the eligibility requirements that I haven't been able to find the answers to online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I have already secured a postdoctoral position with a mentor.&lt;/strong&gt; I was offered a postdoctoral position and will start shortly after the fellowship application deadline. The NSF application materials seem designed for people who will start in the Summer or Fall in the year after the application. Does this affect my eligibility for the award?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I will technically receive my PhD after I begin my postdoc.&lt;/strong&gt; Due to scheduling problems I've had to postpone my official thesis defense until after I begin my postdoc. However, I will have defended by Spring 2015, well before the award would be distributed. Does this affect my eligibility?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21586" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T13:32:41.660" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T13:32:41.660" Title="NSF postdoctoral fellowship eligibility requirements" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28192" CreationDate="2014-09-08T13:30:45.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The eligibility requirements are stated in the solicitation.  It certainly sounds like you will be eligible.  If you defend in spring of 2015, then you can apply in falls of 2014,'15, or '16 to start the following summer (in fall 2017, it will be too late, since you will have had your Ph.D. for two years on Jan 1, 2018, and 2018 would the &quot;year of the award). The only things that can make you ineligible are: losing your US citizenship (presumably easy to avoid), serving as PI on an NSF grant (again, not a huge danger), and being offered the fellowship and turning it down.  (I think there is also some general stuff about drugs convictions, etc.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking any kind of job will not make you ineligible, though it's possible it could influence the way your application is looked at (for good or for ill, I can't really say).  You can apply with your current job as your site, or with a different one.  I don't know many examples of people getting the fellowship after they first graduated, though of course, 2015 will be when you first graduated, so maybe that's not an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a general comment: if you have questions about NSF awards, &lt;strong&gt;ask the program director&lt;/strong&gt;.  They'll be the ones who actually interpret the rules, so they know better than random people on the internet how they'll be interpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T13:30:45.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:56:43.060" Score="6" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm asking this question is that I've never used Web of Science before. My apologies if it is silly or irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm gathering materials for an application to a tenure-track job, and one of the things I have to submit is a list of my publications as indexed in WoS. This is an important thing for them, because they make it clear in the call for applications that those publications that are indexed in WoS are going to count more that those that don't (they do it this way because the call is division-wide, not department-specific, so they use WoS as a scholarship quality metric that doesn't require the members of the search committee to be experts in the specific fields of the candidates). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WoS behaves well in that, if I query my name and field, it returns all of my journal publications, including a couple of obscure book reviews I did in my first year of grad school. On the other hand, it also behaves badly in that it fails to return anything that is not a journal publication. This bothers me because I have a couple of book chapters with reputable presses (e.g., OUP) and proceedings of high-profile conferences that my peers and mentors acknowledge are as important (in terms of quality and contribution to the field) as any of my journal publications; but because they don't appear in WoS, the search committee will view them as second-rate publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, is there a way I can make WoS index these publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12314" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T00:46:59.647" Title="Coverage of Web of Science" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28170" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:01:32.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a video of yourself presenting the slides (either to a class, or just to the camera), and upload it to YouTube (or similar). Others have done this, and as a result there are some great free resources available for people who otherwise would not have the time or money to take the course. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXl0Zbk8_rvjyLwAR-Xh9pQ&quot;&gt;N J Wildberger&lt;/a&gt; has several maths courses online. If you don't want to be on the video, you can just have the slides, with your voice presenting them. (See the videos of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFsZ2CadKpAt_yInoTcVRnQ&quot;&gt;Bill Shillito&lt;/a&gt;, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the materials on your website, and spread the news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn the materials into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wikibooks.org/&quot;&gt;wikibook&lt;/a&gt;, where others can add to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the materials on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oercommons.org/&quot;&gt;OER Commons&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.curriki.org/&quot;&gt;Curriki&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myoer.org/&quot;&gt;MyOER&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharemylesson.com/&quot;&gt;Share My Lesson&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't used any of these myself (yet), so I don't know which would be most appropriate for university-level or postgraduate teaching materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T15:01:32.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28203" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:46:37.050" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cite a very old and well-known book which has multiple editions and reprints, various editors, facsimile reprints, and a recent paperback version, plus it's even available free online, again at more than one site. The text I want to cite is common to all of them so that's not an issue but I'd like to be able to give page numbers in the standard way. I don't know which edition to cite. The actual copy I've been using is a hardback 1970s reprint of a 1900s edition from the university library but it's not necessarily easy for others to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13539" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:06:47.737" Title="Which edition/version should I use for citations with page numbers" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28199" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:52:03.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you don't want to put the reader of your article, at the same position, where you are now; and want to highlight the important background and related works, the reader needs to know about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, cite the version you actually read and was part of the inspiration to your article/journal. This way, the reader knows exactly where to look, for further readings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T16:02:41.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:02:41.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28199" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:06:47.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things can occasionally get tricky, but most situations are handled by these guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite what you've seen.  If you have one edition, don't assume that another has the same numbering (for pages, chapters, sections, equations, or whatever) without checking.  It's always better to cite an out of date edition correctly than to risk giving an incorrect reference to another edition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you've seen several editions, try to cite the one that will be most useful to readers.  Recent editions are generally preferable, both because they are easier to find and because they may be more up to date in other ways.  (But if a book is out of copyright and reprinted by many publishers, then recency may not be salient.)  If you know that a recent edition is not useful (for example, because material was cut), then you should say so.  Translations may be preferable for readers who do not speak the original language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can't tell which edition would be most useful, then the decision probably doesn't really matter.  The most recent edition is generally a safe choice, if you can get your hands on it to check the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More detailed references can help disambiguate.  A quick numerical reference is efficient, but it becomes near useless if the numbering has changed, while adding more context can make it easier to figure out where it might have moved in another edition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:06:47.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28205" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:07:28.433" Score="3" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that colleges with sports programs will admit students with &quot;low end&quot; but not &quot;off the charts low&quot; grades if the respective sports teams want them. By this, I mean grades just above the &quot;cut-off&quot; for admissions, without having to make a special case or allowance for the athlete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose a certified athlete tried to get into a graduate program with similarly minimum grades. To take an example, suppose the Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter retired, went to college, and got something like a 3.3 GPA which is the cut-off for certain graduate school programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What constituencies (if any) might such a graduate applicant have (e.g. celebrity value)? Or are &quot;athlete&quot; slots open only to undergraduates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:27:41.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T12:55:02.540" Title="What, if any, roads are open to graduate schools for athletes with borderline grades?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;college-athletics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28204" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:23:40.820" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer based on the U.S. (which is where these issues are most relevant, I believe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no special consideration for athletes in graduate admissions.  Undergraduate admissions are handled by admissions officers who often use all sorts of non-academic criteria, and recruiting athletes to play for the university is a specific goal at many universities.  However, graduate admissions is done by departmental committees made up of faculty, and the non-academic criteria that play an important role for undergraduates (well roundedness, extracurricular activities, athletics, etc.) are irrelevant.  If anything, a continued desire to participate extensively in high-level athletics could be considered a disadvantage, since it would take time away from academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Derek Jeter wanted to go to graduate school, I'm sure some faculty would be impressed by his fame, but they would also be careful and skeptical in evaluating his qualifications.  In any case, there certainly wouldn't be a special admissions slot designated for an athlete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:23:40.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28222" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:32:32.030" Score="52" ViewCount="11335" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please read the bold text before answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague has shown me that one of his students has posted exam questions with answers , and prior assignments with answers to a commercial web site intended to communicate such material to other students.  Sadly, I am the chair of the university's Honor Council and the question of whether these actions rise to the level of academic misconduct has landed in my lap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also sadly, I am ill-equipped to have an opinion.  Almost every assignment I've given in the last ten years is available on the public web and I return assignments with critiques.  I give pen-and-paper tests and return them to the students, then go over the questions and give the correct answers in class.  There are thousands of copies of my old exams around, many of them with answers that were either correct to begin with or corrected &lt;em&gt;post facto.&lt;/em&gt;  I am sure there are fat binders in fraternity and sorority houses with that material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can get all legalistic and ask, &quot;Well... did you tell him not to do that?&quot;  In fact, I am in the process of finding that out.  I am pretty sure that widespread commercial distribution of questions with answers is bad.  My concern is whether contributing this information to such a web site rises to the level of academic misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is a question that has an answer rather than leading to discussion: &lt;strong&gt;Are there universities that prohibit students from contributing material created by the faculty, such as exams or assignments, to commercial web sites the purpose of which is supplying that material to other students?  If so, how is that prohibition worded and how is it enforced?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;September 10:&lt;/strong&gt; This has been edited by several people, and several people have added tags.  I've just edited it myself to remove the word &quot;cheaters&quot; from the description of the commercial web sites involved in this case, and which are in general the subject of the question.  I've also deleted most of the tags, leaving only &quot;ethics&quot; and &quot;policy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;November 15:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks for the responses.  After a certain amount of back and forth, my institution has adopted the following (voluntary) syllabus language: &quot;Some lecture slides, notes, or exercises used in this course may be the property of the textbook publisher or other third parties. All other course material, including but not limited to slides developed by the instructor(s), the syllabus, assignments, course notes, course recordings (whether audio or video) and examinations or quizzes are the property of the University or of the individual instructor who developed them. Students are free to use this material for study and learning, and for discussion with others, including those who may not be in this class, unless the instructor imposes more stringent requirements. Republishing or redistributing this material, including uploading it to web sites or linking to it through services like iTunes, violates the rights of the copyright holder and is prohibited. There are civil and criminal penalties for copyright violation. &lt;strong&gt;Publishing or redistributing this material in a way that might give others an unfair advantage in this or future courses may subject you to penalties for academic misconduct.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; [emphasis in the original]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;December 8, 2017:&lt;/strong&gt; I just received a request from someone at another institution to use the language above.  Although it was adopted by my institution, I wrote it, and I now contribute it to the public domain.  Use it as-is or modified, with no need to attribute it or otherwise give credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T21:32:31.653" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T21:32:31.653" Title="Are there universities that consider it academic misconduct for students to publish material created by faculty?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="22" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:48:03.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend against using a university e-mail account for this because you are presumably about to graduate and you will likely be about to lose access to your current university e-mail account when you do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any sensibly named personal account will be okay. But if your e-mail address is something like &quot;wolflord_mcflorin@hallofthegamerheroes.com&quot; or &quot;hotdickforsex347@slutfinder.com&quot; then take the time to get yourself a more sensible e-mail address (while those two aren't real examples you'd be surprised how often people use these kinds of e-mail addresses for serious correspondence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:48:03.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T17:35:23.927" Score="6" ViewCount="4515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if anyone can give me some advice about how a computer science graduate shifts career to mathematics? I'm currently doing a Master's degree in computer science and i was thinking about doing a PhD in pure mathematics? so I was thinking is this transition feasible? how can I make this leap of faith?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly note that currently -after graduation- I nearly don't do mathematics anymore, currently all what I am doing is writing software and administrating open source operating systems. In undergrad levels I took an introductory course in discrete mathematics and some calculus courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;someone told me: Yes, the transition is feasible but it requires I take some courses and attend some math classes even as a special student (no degrees, no exams). But I thought I can get other opinions and views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21602" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T17:44:59.337" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T14:24:25.137" Title="How to change to Mathematics PhD program following M.S. in Computer Science?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-08T17:47:50.163" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;First define the problem. &quot;It feels wrong&quot; isn't really an actionable reason right? Is the problem that the student published the exam with answers? Is the problem that the student removed the exam with answers when she/he was expected to return it to the instructor? Is the problem that the student published the exam with answers on a 'cheater' website? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To narrow this down a bit it might be useful to ask yourself and the professor: &quot;Would your feelings be different if the student published the exam with answers on their own website?&quot; As a student if an instructor returned an exam to me and I felt the information was worthwhile(aka not a 'multiple choice') I certainly published my exams, projects and some assignments on my personal website. I used this as a resource when I was tutoring students in the course and found it very useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student 'stole' the exam, by which I mean they took the exam and their answers when the instructor was expecting the exam to be returned, then you are in a different ballpark. Then you have something actionable but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's step back a moment to something you yourself said:&#xA;&quot;I am sure there are fat binders in fraternity and sorority houses with that material.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely the case and no matter what you or any of the other professors does this will continue to be the case. The question then becomes - is it fair to non-Greek students who don't have access to these binders? What do you gain by trying to prevent the 'publication' of exams? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of a couple of instructors who reuse the same exam year after year. I understand the rigors of teaching, I understand it can be hard to come up with new questions/new assignments/new exams every term. But, that being said, using the same exam over and over is just plain laziness. Even changing the order of the questions bypasses that issue - and if students are memorizing the 'correct' answer to a general question(instead of a multiple choice value or a number value) then aren't they essentially studying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end the question needs to be asked - WHY is it important than exams and their answers not be published? There are only a few answers to that and most of them are going to be fairly flimsy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of an Anecdote here about this. One of the most challenging instructors/courses during my undergraduate career was with an instructor that had every single exam he had given(since he started keeping copies in the 1980s) put up on his website. A handful had partially worked out answers / solutions. Students didn't even bother looking for the 'cheating' websites for these exams because they were on his website(sans answers of course) and because the exams showed that, although they were great for studying and practice, memorizing past exams was going to be completely worthless. If I were a professor at the moment I would probably take example from this - I would put all the exams(and probably homeworks) online. Drown them in information. All the sudden there's little value in going to a 'cheater' website about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T17:47:50.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28210" CreationDate="2014-09-08T18:33:58.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23935/is-it-easy-to-change-your-major-after-starting-your-phd-or-master-if-it-is-nece/23943#23943&quot;&gt;Is it easy to change your major after starting your PhD or masters, if it is necessary?&lt;/a&gt;, which is somewhat similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, unfortunately, it sounds like your current mathematics background is very far from what would be needed to enter a math PhD program - it's maybe 1/4 of the coursework that would be expected. You would need to have preparation equivalent to that of a BS in mathematics, and that sounds like it would be the equivalent of 2-3 more years of full time coursework for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I don't think that the coursework you describe can even have given you much of a sense of what pure mathematics is, much less what it is like to do research in the area.  One needs rigorous proof-based classes such as real analysis and abstract algebra.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not really advise you, or anyone, to even think about grad school in mathematics before they have enough of a background to reasonably understand what it involves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T18:33:58.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2014-09-08T18:35:35.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with other answers that assuming it's not obscene or childish, it won't make a huge difference either way. I just wanted to add that if you're sending it from a personal website, the domain may pique your potential supervisor's interest. Make sure that you have some information on there about your academic achievements, maybe a writing sample, things like that. Some personal stuff to make you a bit more memorable is good as well. It's not guaranteed to make any difference, but on the off chance they do type in the domain you want to make a bit of an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21606" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T18:35:35.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28215" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28220" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:04:25.353" Score="8" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wondered how professors and admission committees in the US think about international applicants for doctoral programs in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skills:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why are international applicants selected over (I believe sufficient) domestic applicants at all? Are there some skill differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Isn't it more expensive and risky to provide &gt;5 years funding to an international student than a domestic one? When do they think an international applicant trustworthy and appropriate for funding their studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering specifically about PhD programs (not Master etc) because some programs offer funding before even knowing the student in person which seems risky because if I were an advisor it would be difficult to evaluate a student's value for my lab before having actually worked with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20063" LastEditorUserId="26708" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T20:38:06.070" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T20:38:06.070" Title="How are international graduate applicants perceived by universities in the US?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29153" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:11:25.250" Score="1" ViewCount="3531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago I was studying with the Open University. During that time I bought a revision aid. The basic principle was that you wrote out all you knew about a topic immediately after learning it. The note pages were marked so that they could be referenced against a sort of calendar. The idea was that you read through your notes something like the next day, again a week later and again something like 4 weeks later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall that the thinking was that the frequency set coincided with the way your brain moves stuff from short- to long-term memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just about to start studying again and I wondered if anyone might know what the frequency for reviewing one's notes might have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21607" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T13:22:55.097" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:22:55.097" Title="How often should I review my notes?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:21:49.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One other thing to keep in mind is patent rights; a journal article would count as disclosure and invalidate a patent, whereas a thesis may or may not. Some universities have an IP office, and you should check with them if possible; they might have an ownership claim if they employed you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14412" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:21:49.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28218" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:23:38.087" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T21:23:38.087" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:23:38.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28219" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:23:38.087" Score="0" Body="On legal issues affecting academicians. Note that Academia.SE, like any SE site, cannot offer specific legal advice; consult a lawyer for such questions. Use [law], not [legal-issues], for questions on law as an academic discipline or field of study." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T02:35:34.747" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T02:35:34.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28215" CreationDate="2014-09-08T22:02:52.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions, schools are generally trying to admit the best applicants (who will choose to come), not just a group of people of the right size over a certain threshold.  So if an international student appears to be a stronger candidate (evaluated the same way any other applicant would be), the international applicant is likely to be preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate students are generally funded based on packages that don't take into account where the student's from, so it's not generally more expensive.  (International students may be less likely to accept because the funding is less likely to enough, but that's no reason not to admit them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, why would international applicants be any less trustworthy or appropriate than domestic ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T22:02:52.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28164" CreationDate="2014-09-08T22:03:56.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just get the citations of each document from the Scopus database, export the results into two files, and write a Python script that does a set intersection. You can generalize this to any files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can export the Scopus results to .csv files, and then use the &lt;code&gt;csv&lt;/code&gt; python module to read the files. You can then have the set operation based on the title of the articles (even though I would also export the DOI and use it). If you know how to program in Python, writing this script shouldn't take you more than one afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19409" LastEditorUserId="19409" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T22:15:11.803" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T22:15:11.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-08T22:04:44.170" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you asked for norms at other schools, here is one data point: UC Berkeley has an explicit policy on this subject.  At UC Berkeley, instructors own the copyright on their course materials and are allowed to specify the policy on dissemination.  In additional, dissemination for a commercial purpose is prohibited without express consent of the instructor.  If instructors specify a policy, students who violate this policy can be punished for academic misconduct -- and this is stated explicitly in the UC Berkeley policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more detail, UC Berkeley's &lt;a href=&quot;http://campuspol.chance.berkeley.edu/policies/coursenotes.pdf&quot;&gt;policy on Course Note-Taking and Materials&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individual instructors retain copyrights to [...] class materials they create.  Instructors may permit, limit, or prohibit the [..] further distribution of class materials created by an instructor (class notes, recordings, exams, and class materials, collectively referred to as “Class&#xA;  Materials”).  Instructors are encouraged to clearly communicate their preferences on recording and sharing Class Materials in their syllabi. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unauthorized use of Class Materials may subject an individual to legal proceedings brought by the instructor as well as disciplinary and legal proceedings by the University. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if an instructor states in the syllabus that dissemination of exams is not allowed, then a student who violates that restriction may be disciplined by the University for academic misconduct.  On the other hand, if the instructor does not state any policy, and the students shares the exam with others (for non-commercial purposes), there is no violation of University academic misconduct rules, though there might well be a violation of copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, UC Berkeley's &lt;a href=&quot;http://sa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/UCB-Code-of-Conduct-new%20Jan2012.pdf&quot;&gt;Code of Student Conduct&lt;/a&gt; has a section that deals specifically with this subject.  It states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;102.23 Course Materials&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Selling, preparing, or distributing for any commercial purpose course lecture notes or video or audio recordings of any course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor in writing. The unauthorized sale or commercial distribution of course notes or&#xA;  recordings by a student is a violation of these Policies whether or not it was the student or someone else who prepared the notes or recordings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copying for any commercial purpose handouts, readers or other course materials provided by an instructor as part of a University of California course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor or the copyright holder in writing (if the instructor is not the copyright holder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exams count as course materials and thus are covered by this policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal opinion: I think sites like CourseHero are scummy, sleazy sites: the worst of the worst.  They require students to submit additional course materials to view the ones that are on record there, and they make no attempt to validate that students have permission to share those course materials; indeed, they have every incentive not to validate whether the student has authorization, and every incentive to encourage unauthorized uploading.  Thus, their business model is based upon encouraging students to share stuff they might not have permission to -- and they profit off of this.  I find this business practice reprehensible and worth of condemnation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However...&lt;/em&gt; it is a separate question whether student use of those sites constitutes academic misconduct.  Personally, I would say that students have a due process right to be informed of their responsibilities, and to only be published for actions that are a clear violation of published policies.  Therefore, I believe it is the instructors' responsibility to establish clear policies -- either on a course-by-course basis, on course syllabi, or else by adopting clear policies at the campus level.  In the absence of such policies, I would be very hesitant to punish students who shared exams with others.  That does not feel fair to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T22:04:44.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28226" CreationDate="2014-09-09T00:27:09.663" Score="20" ViewCount="2579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope to receive my PhD in Mathematics in May of 2015, so I am currently applying for jobs.  Due to life circumstances, I'm fairly certain that I will only be staying at my next position for about 2 years.  Does this mean I shouldn't even try to apply for tenure-track positions?  Will a hiring committee not even consider me for the position if I'm not willing to commit to staying with them for a certain amount of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college), but as I look for openings, a lot of them are tenure-track assistant professor positions.  Should I go through the effort of sending in an application, or will that be a waste of my, and the committee's, time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any advice you have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (to address Nate's comment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife is currently applying for 2 year graduate degree programs in various cities in the US, so I'm applying for jobs in the same cities.  When she finishes her program, we plan to move outside of the US (Africa or Southeast Asia), where I do hope to remain in academia, teaching mathematics to college-aged students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21610" LastEditorUserId="21610" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T01:16:10.917" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T01:03:22.477" Title="Should I apply to tenure-track positions if I'm fairly certain I won't be staying?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T00:31:35.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;@D.W. highlighted Berkeley's policy which is a decent attempt at stopping people from reselling an instructors course materials.  However, even with clear cut legal verbiage the only real approach is to monitor those sites and issue &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DMCA takedown&lt;/a&gt; notices as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will lead to an incredible amount of lost time, possibly more than the material is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than play wack-a-mole, the better policy here would be for instructors to stop simply reissuing the exact same test from one year to the next.  Instead, do things like change the question order.  If multiple choice is used, substitute new options and rearrange them.  If written answers are required, change the questions subtly such that the prior year answers are completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the best course would be to ignore the actions of this student because the instructor and the university failed to give them clear guidelines ahead of time; and instead have a discussion with your department on how best to eliminate problems where a student just memorizes &quot;#14 is A, #15 is C&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are changing the tests each year, then review of prior year tests will only aid in the students understanding of types of questions you will be asking and therefore be limited to acting as a study guide as opposed to a one stop shop.  In this scenario there is no reason not to allow students to upload the tests..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11585" LastEditorUserId="11585" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T15:07:05.633" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T15:07:05.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28224" CreationDate="2014-09-09T00:57:36.100" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you accept a position, you are committed for the following year. Leaving after two years will disappoint people, but it happens fairly often, and the potential consequences of you not applying to these jobs are perhaps more serious than the potential consequences to the departments if you leave after two years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, I don't know what your circumstances are, but you are presumably not completely sure you won't stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T00:57:36.100" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T01:41:12.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nahkki's answer hits the nail on the head. However, there is another possible angle from which to consider this, which is the utilitarian perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this instructor did not have a clear policy, and your school does not have a clear policy, so the most that is going to come out of this is that they might now write clear policies. Suppose those policies said that it was an honor code violation to publish exam questions. What would be the outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome would be that there would be absolutely no effect on the prevalence of sharing exam questions, and no effect on the fairness of exams, i.e., no reduction in the unfair advantage gained by people who obtain old exam questions. Sites like Course Hero already allow people to contribute exam questions anonymously, so the contributor can't be punished. Students already have the option of waiting until they graduate before they post these materials online. Fraternities already have plausible deniability of the contents of the file cabinets sitting in their basements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a small amount of effort, instructors can make it a hassle for students to gain an unfair advantage through these means. The problem arises because some instructors are too lazy to expend this minimal effort. Changing policies will have no effect on this outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1482" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T01:41:12.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2014-09-09T01:41:36.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being honorable means striving to meet all the things that are expected of you. It would be dishonorable to game the system as you appear to be contemplating doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honorable. It's that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17890" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T01:41:36.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T02:00:19.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did the student sign a confidentiality policy before enrolling? If not, then no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for opinions on the matter... (yes, mine is smelly, too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's consider a few angles: Does it help other students cheat? Should it help other students cheat? Does it help other students learn? Should your students be helping other students learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheating is a funny subject. If your instructors are permitted to re-use prior year tests then you have more serious problems than the eternal issue of students &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to cheat. That some students will try to cheat is simply a part of human nature. It is impossible to control whether the urge exists, only whether a cursory assessment of difficulty against risk against payoff indicates that the attempt is worth it. If your instructors reuse prior year testing material consider that the assessment criteria is seriously weighted against honest students &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; (in my opinion, more importantly) your testing material &lt;em&gt;is not getting any better&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of students learning, which is supposed to be the point, after all...  I would circumvent the issue by encouraging students to discuss class material openly and often, even to the point of posting prior material. If they are so stupid as to post a key-value list of [question-number]:[answer] for tests, this is their own waste of time and not your problem. If, on the other hand, they are discussing their subject with other students or (especially) with real-world practitioners someplace like stackexchange (hey!) then you can expect that your students actually care about their subject, and if they care, even a little, then passing the class will be a happy side effect of having done some genuine learning in and out of class. This is the best possible outcome an educator could hope for, unless, of course, the educator in question is actually a professional bureaucrat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately I think the only way to encourage students to choose to actually commit themselves to study beyond just trying to get some paper after negotiating the academic bureaucracy is to foster an environment of active discussion. Any move toward censure is wrong-minded (if the RIAA is effectively powerless here, you certainly are) and will only serve to create an &quot;us VS them&quot; mentality in the students. Then the students are pouring their personal efforts into learning how to connive (a useful skill, indeed, but not the one intended!), and not into learning whatever the actual subject is. Don't let arbitrary notions of &quot;honor&quot; distract from concrete study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13156" LastEditorUserId="13156" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T16:14:43.487" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:14:43.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T02:19:05.797" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that many years ago I created a website to publish exams for my undergrad school: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annales-exam.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.annales-exam.com&lt;/a&gt; (in French). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EtWJF.png&quot; height=&quot;100&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contains many computer science exams of classes in my undergrad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethically&lt;/strong&gt;: I created this website because I was very annoyed by the fact that some students had access to the previous exams (e.g. the fat binders in the frats mentioned in the question), while other less connected, less GPA-focused, etc., did not. The website aimed at breaking this iniquitous situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legally&lt;/strong&gt;: Publishing exams of classes in my undergrad school is legal (by jurisprudence) due the status of my school (CNAM). Here is what the law in France &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnamien.fr/telecharger-annales-ue-examens/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le droit d’auteur protège toutes les créations originales. Mais on&#xA;  admet traditionnellement qu’aucun droit d’auteur ne peut être invoqué&#xA;  sur les textes législatifs et réglementaires, les rapports officiels&#xA;  ou les décisions de justice. La question de la protection des sujets&#xA;  d’examen par le droit d’auteur a été examinée par la jurisprudence. Le&#xA;  Tribunal de grande instance de Paris le 9 novembre 1988 et la Cour&#xA;  d’appel de Paris le 13 juin 1991 ont refusé la protection par le droit&#xA;  d’auteur à des Annales officielles du concours de l’Internat en&#xA;  médecine. Les sujets des épreuves, en permettant de connaître la&#xA;  pratique suivie, complètent et précisent les textes normatifs&#xA;  définissant les épreuves et sont donc des documents officiels dont la&#xA;  reproduction et la diffusion sont libres. L’accès aux sujets d’examen&#xA;  ne saurait être restreint par l’application des droits de propriété&#xA;  littéraire. Il faut donc considérer les sujets d’examen organisé par&#xA;  l’État comme des actes officiels et, à ce titre, non protégés par le&#xA;  droit d’auteur. Ce ne sont pas des œuvres protégées.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side story, the only feedback I received from the administrative folks in school was a legal threat due to the fact I had used the school logo on the website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;---------- Forwarded message ---------- &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  From: X [Cnam] &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Date: 2013-02-25 8:46 GMT-05:00&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Subject:&#xA;  Utilisation abusive de la marque Cnam&lt;br/&gt; To: francky@gmail.com&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bonjour, Sur votre site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annales-exam.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.annales-exam.com&lt;/a&gt;, vous faites, sans&#xA;  autorisation,  une utilisation abusive de l'ancien logo du Cnam, que&#xA;  vous avez, de plus, déformé. Pour toutes ces raisons, je vous demande&#xA;  de retirer au plus vite cette image, avant que le contentieux soit&#xA;  transmis à notre service juridique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cordialement, &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conservatoire national&#xA;  des arts et métiers&lt;br/&gt; Direction de la communication Communication&#xA;  Paris Cédex 03&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No professor complained to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T15:31:13.927" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T15:31:13.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28237" CreationDate="2014-09-09T02:21:03.593" Score="2" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a personal crisis and I thought maybe I should ask for some guidance in this forum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been in grad school in 4 years, failed qualifiers once passed at second attempt. I am dedicated to my math-intensive research area, queueing theory, yet I still feel I am far away of being an expert in it. I have only almost finished a paper, that requires feedback from my advisor but I feel I am a big failure. My advisor thinks that I am ready to propose my thesis (thus make an early presentation to committee) next month and possibly graduate next summer. The trouble is, although I respect his opinion, even if I do get my PhD I think I will feel like I don't deserve it. It is as if I hit the magic 4 year landmark and being allowed to graduate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, publication record may not be the only indicator as in my department people don't publish as much as in other fields. When I look at some good thesis's I feel that mine can be considered as masters (personal not confirmed opinion). In retrospect, all the proofs I stuggled seem so easy to me. Although I never considered acedemia as a career path and only consider industry, I more and more feel that I am a failure and will have achieved so little in the last years. I have been always aware of the challenges of grad school but I feel I messed up somewhere considering I work 10 hours each day, at most a day off weekends and having no time left to cultivate my interests, develop new friendships or develop other useful skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I should also mention that I am doing my studies in a top 20 US university, people mostly have the impression that I am smart, and I am aware that I have learnt so much during the last 4 years. I have read many books on productivity, learnt about Feynman's method, watched TED videos. I started going to gym to manage my stress and I think that smartness is a matter of knowledge and I have the capacity to be smart. I don't regret going for a PhD but on the other hand I can't stop feeling like I wasted my years in going grad school and maybe should have just gone to a mundane job where I'd have time to read about architecture, finance or philosopy and be a much more interesting person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone share or shared the same feelings? Any advice to people in my situation? Any help appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T07:24:41.000" Title="Restoring self confidence - possible?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-09T07:26:05.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28234" CreationDate="2014-09-09T04:07:05.033" Score="31" ViewCount="4858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a teaching assistant for the first time this semester. A couple of friends have asked how it is going, and I have used phrases like &quot;some of my students...&quot; or &quot;my students are ...&quot; when telling them my experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so concerned when talking to my friends, but in an academic setting (ex. talking to another professor) is it appropriate for me to say &quot;my students&quot; when referring to the students in the class which I am TA'ing for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm definitely leaning towards &quot;no&quot;, because I am not the one instructing the class, I am just &lt;em&gt;helping&lt;/em&gt; instruct the class, but I'd like to get SE's opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14556" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T17:06:51.137" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T17:06:51.137" Title="Is it appropriate for a TA to say &quot;My Students&quot;?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28204" CreationDate="2014-09-09T04:16:02.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Anonymous Mathematician's answer (i.e. no special treatment), I would add that the major reason to recruit athletes at the undergraduate level is &lt;em&gt;you want them to play for you&lt;/em&gt;, in intercollegiate sports.  The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the governing body for US college sports, and their rules would normally exclude graduate students from playing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NCAA eligibility rules are complex, but a general principle (as I understand it) is that each athlete may only play intercollegiate sports for at most four years in their life.  Moreover, all four of those years must normally come within 5 years of first enrolling in college (as an undergraduate).  A college athlete applying to graduate school would almost certainly have used up their eligibility and would not be able to play for the graduate institution; perhaps for a year at most.  Thus the institution would have no real interest in recruiting them for athletic reasons, since they wouldn't be able to play on the intercollegiate teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Derek Jeter, there's another reason he couldn't play: there is an amateurism requirement, and anyone who has played a sport professionally would likely be ineligible under that clause.  Indeed, athletic programs have suffered severe penalties merely for letting their athletes talk to agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T04:16:02.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28232" CreationDate="2014-09-09T04:16:24.743" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is perfectly appropriate to refer to students in a class you are TAing as &quot;my students.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are teaching them; hence, they are your students. It doesn't really matter whether or not you are the primary instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T04:16:24.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T04:46:59.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an instructor myself, I realize one aspect of studying involves learning material which may or may not be on the test.  Unless students are willing to take 10 page tests every time, there is some expectation or need for students to learn material which is not directly tested.  Of course well written tests will cover the majority of the material the student is expected to learn and sometimes on a specific topic there is only one or two very good relevant questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely the student's actions indirectly violated the idea that work is original from the student.&#xA;If the written policy includes a line about helping others cheat, then it would be a direct violation.  If the written policy includes a line about needing to report cheaters, then he failed to turn himself in.  In a justice system, consistency is essential- what has been done in similar cases by the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked for an online tutoring company whose official policy- we will not answer homework questions, but we could work similar questions, give general direction, correct mistakes, give ideas/hints etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal opinion, posting a previous test without the instructors direct permission is cheating.  Academic misconduct can mean several different things depending on the consequences.  If the university's written policy on this aspect is unclear, some minor consequences instinctively speed up would seem appropriate to me.  Perhaps, drop the student one letter grade in the course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A relevant analogy- A. people who see a yellow light &amp;amp; instinctively speed up vs. B. people who see a yellow light &amp;amp; instinctively slow down.  A. people are far more likely to get tickets or into accidents.  It's a question of do you want to live as close to the legal line as possible?&#xA;Also, going forward the policy needs to make a clear distinction between acceptable behavior &amp;amp; cheating in this area.  If a student plays in that gray area, don't be surprised if consequences occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a clear written policy on the topic agreeable to all professors is important.  Or better yet give the professors the freedom to set their own policy.  Ensure each professor is comfortable with their policy regarding groupwork, copying answers, kinds &amp;amp; level of help one can give or receive, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have seen a student google questions, find someone who had posted his questions &amp;amp; answers verbatim &amp;amp; simply copy the website's answers into his work.  The website he used had recently posted his questions verbatim so they most likely came from another student in his online class.  This student had no idea how to do the problems himself.  On the public school level, expecting teachers to create different assignments for every student every time is ludicrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to give different students different questions raises the question- is a 95 this semester worth the same as a 95 from two years ago?  70 now vs. 70 from five years ago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21611" LastEditorUserId="21611" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T08:25:34.700" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T08:25:34.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28231" CreationDate="2014-09-09T07:24:41.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had some similar experiences in the recent past.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I still feel I am far away of being an expert in it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can be an expert in a whole domain. Being expert/perfect is an ideal situation in my personal opinion. So in case you are not an expert, there is nothing bad in it. You admit that you are not an expert so this is a positive point, it means you are able and willing to improve yourself and your knowledge. It means that even if you get a PhD degree, you'll still try to get more knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;even if I do get my PhD I think I will feel like I don't deserve it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to be a perfectionist. But remember no one is actually perfect. Each one of us has some strengths as well as weaknesses. How can you measure perfection? This is not absolute in my personal opinion. Have you ever thought why relative grading system is mostly used for evaluation instead of absolute grading? Because we cannot live in isolation. We are living in a society,interacting with our fellow human beings. So we need to be evaluated relative to our fellows. If you don't deserve a PhD, what about your fellows? When your supervisor is sure that you have possess certain knowledge level at which you can present your work, it means it is relatively better than many others. If those others can get a PhD, you can also deserve it. (Even if you ACTUALLY don't deserve a PhD after some time when you'll get out of this phase of life, you'll start thinking this way).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In retrospect, all the proofs I stuggled seem so easy to me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you try to think yourself as an intelligent or genius person? The same proofs may be too difficult for someone else who is not actually interested in this domain. You may disagree but in my personal opinion, apart from the industry-academia discussion, you are interested in your research domain because without interest one can't achieve this level. However, you have been working too much on the same things for a long time that you have got bored from the same lifestyle and you need a break and a change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although I never considered acedemia as a career path and only consider industry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider industry-academia debate to be separate from the research-development debate. And i think you are getting confused between the two. Industry is incomplete without academia and vice versa. Similarly research and development support each other. Most of us consider one of them to be more important that the other and hence get confused. We can characterize them in two ways... 1. what we get, 2. what we give&#xA;&lt;br/&gt; Try to think seriously about choosing industry, academia or a combination of both and evaluate the pros-cons of each choice in terms of your time, energy, monetary benefits, work-life balance many other job motivational/demotivational factors. However, according to my personal experience and understanding, you are sick and tired of your routine in academia and you have been overloaded with work in the recent past which has disturbed your work-life balance. Considering industry as an alternative would only worsen the situation because job in industry can be more time and energy consuming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work 10 hours each day, at most a day off weekends and having no time left to cultivate my interests, develop new friendships or develop other useful skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take out some time for yourself. If you are able to afford, take some leave from your current job (atleast a month or so) and spend some time at home with your family and friends. Make sure that you are completely disconnected with the official/research work/supervisor and any relevant person who can give you relevant news. After spending around 15 days of your holiday, start working part time with some other faculty member of almost the same domain but with relatively different research interests as your supervisor. You'll probably automatically start comparing that faculty member with your supervisor and will most probably start missing your supervisor. You'll realize that you were taking him/her for-granted. Its just that you have been working with your supervisor for some time now and you know much about him/her technically so you don't find something new in this experience. As a result, you start thinking that their is nothing special in what you are doing. Hopefully at the end of your holidays,you'll be back fully energetic and enthusiastic to pursue your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21618" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T07:24:41.000" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28248" CreationDate="2014-09-09T07:36:45.580" Score="8" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is in continuation to the discussion from about a year ago, concerning &lt;em&gt;researcher digital identification&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/4791/12391&quot;&gt;Why use unique digital researcher ID?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that researchers, who would like to identify themselves within research community, today have two options: &lt;em&gt;ORCID&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/em&gt;. The former relies on &lt;strong&gt;open&lt;/strong&gt; source code and &lt;strong&gt;open&lt;/strong&gt; directory, while the latter is a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, a for-profit company. It seems to me that ResearcherID is essentially a &lt;em&gt;tool&lt;/em&gt; for Thomson Reuters for increasing &lt;em&gt;information flow&lt;/em&gt; to their &lt;strong&gt;commercial&lt;/strong&gt; systems &lt;em&gt;Web of Science&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Highly Cited Research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my observation is correct, then I'm interested about whether it makes sense to register with &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; directories (fortunately, &lt;em&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/em&gt; seem to be compatible with &lt;em&gt;ORCID&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12391" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2018-08-30T13:36:23.477" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T13:36:23.477" Title="Is there a benefit to registering digital identification via both ORCID and ResearcherID?" Tags="&lt;cv&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;digital-researcher-id&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28241" CreationDate="2014-09-09T08:27:07.760" Score="7" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any &lt;strong&gt;general&lt;/strong&gt; (not field-specific) &lt;em&gt;researcher digital identification&lt;/em&gt; services or directories, &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;ORCID&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12391" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T08:00:53.347" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:00:53.347" Title="Are there any researcher digital identification services or directories, similar to ORCID and ResearcherID?" Tags="&lt;digital-researcher-id&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28240" CreationDate="2014-09-09T09:01:58.160" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the obvious ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isni.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISNI&lt;/a&gt; initiative wants to assign unique identifiers to all &quot;creators&quot;. (They take authors in the broad sense of individuals generating copyrightable content or something like that, since they include musicians and others.) That is about as &quot;general&quot; as you can want. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to restrict to Academia, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/author_identifiers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv author identifier&lt;/a&gt; is not specifically field-specific, though it is limited to fields which have an arXiv presence. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you didn't specify what is required of a &quot;researcher digital identification service&quot;, social networks such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate which you &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28239/are-orcid-and-researchid-compatible-with-research-social-networking-sites&quot;&gt;mentioned in your other question&lt;/a&gt; can also serve the purpose of disambiguation of publishing records. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certain countries maintain their own databases of researchers residing there. The most comprehensive and successful seems to be that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surf.nl/en/themes/research/research-information/digital-author-identifier-dai/digital-author-identifier-dai.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Netherlands&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The American Mathematical Society has recently starting maintaining &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/help/getauth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;author profiles&lt;/a&gt; as part of their MathSciNet service (I know that the question asked for &quot;not field-specific&quot;; I'll weasel and say that the AMS profiles include also those working in related sciences to mathematics, such as physicists and computer scientists, and some engineers.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a list of some of the other services, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://repinf.pbworks.com/w/page/13779410/Author%20identification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Repositories Infrastructure Wiki&lt;/a&gt; has a slightly out-dated list of such services. Note however some of the items listed there have stalled and shutdown since the last edit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T09:07:04.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28224" CreationDate="2014-09-09T09:23:10.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on @Anonymous answer, even if you are certain &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; about what you plan to do in two years, you do not really know what life has waiting for your. In two years your certainties may be very different- and you may regret not having applied for those positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T09:23:10.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28224" CreationDate="2014-09-09T11:01:54.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Faculty come and go all the time at universities. Although we may hope a tenure-track hire will stick around for a decade or more, in practice we know many examples of people who have left voluntarily before getting tenure. So the disappointment that your departure might cause will probably not be very significant.  (My personal viewpoint is that it is much better to hire the &quot;best&quot; candidate who applies, even if she only may stay for a short time, than it is to hire someone else just because they will stay longer.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how long you plan to stay, when applying for a tenure-track university you are likely to need to write some sort of teaching statement and some sort of research statement. These will be scrutinized by the hiring committee and neither can credibly say &quot;I am leaving in two years&quot;. So you need to develop a plan &lt;em&gt;for the possibility&lt;/em&gt; that you will stay in the tenure track position indefinitely, and use that plan when applying.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger concern I have is when you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those three types of schools are very different, and they are looking for very different types of faculty (and there is a fourth type, &quot;non-research-intensive moderately large public university&quot;, with its own idiosyncrasies).  Very few candidates have a vita that is competitive for hiring at even two different kinds of institutions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not yet started thinking about which sort of institution you want to specialize in, now is a good time. I am in mathematics myself, and I have seen many candidates try an ineffective &quot;shotgun&quot; approach where they apply to huge numbers of schools for which they are not competitive. Remember that even a non-elite school is likely to receive hundreds of applications for a single tenure-track position in mathematics these days. A generic application is not likely to rise to the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T11:01:54.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2014-09-09T11:32:52.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing just on &quot;why is tuition so high&quot;, remember that not all schools are the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that elite private schools have so many candidates that, if they are willing to just admit anyone qualified who can pay, they can set tuition rates very high and still attract students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is very different for non-elite public schools in the U.S., e.g. the &quot;regional universities&quot; and &quot;directional schools&quot;.  These schools are controlled by states and have a primary mission to educate students from that state. These institutions do need to worry about raising tuition, because their student body is not able to absorb price increases so easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the 1970s-1980s, there has been a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/state-funding-a-race-to-the-bottom.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;significant reduction in state funding for higher education&lt;/a&gt; in the U.S. This is true even for elite public universities; here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/pa/key/understandingtuition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quote from the University of Michigan&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However in the 1960s, state funding made up 80 percent of the U-M’s general fund budget – the budget that pays for the university’s core academic programs. In the coming year, the state appropriation will be around 16 percent of the general fund budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first link above shows that quite a few states are on track, if the current pattern of funding cuts were to continue, to have no funding for public education by 2030-2040. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-elite public school are usually not in a position to obtain large amounts of grant funding, compared to elite public schools.  Other sources of income are also difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This does not mean that schools must raise tuition&lt;/strong&gt; - they could (and do) try to cut costs elsewhere. But at least one factor in rising tuition has been this reduction in state funds.  And the state legislators, who must budget for the entire state, are perfectly aware that the schools &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; raise tuition, which is sometimes mentioned to the universities as a partial justification for the budget cuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T11:32:52.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28252" CreationDate="2014-09-09T11:44:09.020" Score="10" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hypothetical question so no hard facts about conferences etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for example there is a conference at your own university that you get to present a paper at but you also get accepted at another university's conference to present a paper at as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this example we will say that both conferences/universities are of the same standing and there is no disadvantage to attend the other one such as cost etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would both look equally good on a CV or would there be a view that the presentation at your own institution would not carry as much weight when viewed by, for example, by a hiring committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-10-12T10:05:25.983" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T10:05:25.983" Title="What is the perception of doing a conference presentation at your own institution as opposed to another one?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28246" CreationDate="2014-09-09T11:47:04.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, think about your career in a long run. The outstanding CV shows high number of publications with high factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an opportunity to formally present your work at another university, do it; simply because you can discuss your work with new people at your field, and get their feedback about your work. You need these feedbacks to direct you, to an outstanding results, and ultimately great publications. You can talk to your colleagues, about your work/results at your university, at any occasion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T12:04:45.857" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T12:04:45.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28238" CreationDate="2014-09-09T12:13:53.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two reseacher identifications fill somewhat different purposes, beside the point that one is more open (Orcid) and one more controlled (both with regard to access and data). Below, I've highlighted the main diffences I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Orcid&lt;/strong&gt; provides a way to connect many different types of &quot;outputs&quot; with your profile, both by manually adding information or importing from a number of databases. Beside article publications you can also add posters, presentations, software, grants etc to construct a more full representation of your output, basically a full CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ResearcherID&lt;/strong&gt; is more focused on connecting published journal articles with your profile, and this is mostly geared towards importing data from Thomson's Web of Science. However, since ResearcherID is connected to a citation database it also provides citation metrics in your profile, and in that sense overlaps with a personal Google Scholar page. Orcid does not provide this functionality (at least not yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the two identification systems contain different types of information (at least for the time being), it can make sense to use them both, and as you've noted an Orcid profile can be linked from a ResearcherID profile. In terms of visibility it is probably also useful to use both, since their user bases are likely to differ. If you do not want to support ResearcherID because it is a closed Thomson Reuters product, Orcid + a Google Scholar citations page would provide basically the same information (but based on a different citation database), but with the drawback of two separate pages/profiles. I can also imagine that used exclusively, ResearcherID will probably be more useful for researchers from STEM fields compared to researchers in the humanities and social sciences, since the cover in Web of Science is known to be poorer in the latter fields.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastEditorUserId="7223" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T12:19:55.970" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T12:19:55.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28246" CreationDate="2014-09-09T14:01:23.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I think there is usually the perception that having papers accepted to conferences at your home institution is easier and, thus, carries less reputational weight. This &quot;home institution penalty&quot; is probably less severe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the higher your home institution ranks in the discipline, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the greater the perceived importance of the conference in the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21633" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T13:55:55.657" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T13:55:55.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27952" CreationDate="2014-09-09T14:22:03.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you made a mistake, because &quot;last name&quot; means surname or family name (sobrenome in Portuguese or apellido in Spanish). It is NOT the &lt;em&gt;last&lt;/em&gt; of your names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your question now is how to fix it. Have they answered your email yet? If not, call them. You can also call your testing center and ask if they'll allow you to take the test. If they say they are OK and understand that you made a mistake, then you have more time to fix the problem. If not, you need to fix it before your test date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do allow you to take the test before you fix the problem and you still have issues with ETS (and cannot fix your name), then you'll need to contact the universities you are applying to, and make sure they are aware of the problem and are able to find your test grades once ETS reports them to the University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of people from Spanish-speaking countries that have registered for the GRE using only their first surname and have had no issues during the test taking or the reporting of the grades. However, your problem is different because you are using the last of your surnames, and unless in your country that surname is considered your &quot;main&quot; surname, they may not let you take the test.  For the case of the people I know, in their countries the first surname is considered your &quot;main&quot; surname, so using the first or both of their surnames works, but using their last surname would probably have raised questions at the testing center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7978" LastEditorUserId="7978" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T14:28:05.317" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T14:28:05.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28246" CreationDate="2014-09-09T14:55:47.563" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rtisan is probably right about a local conference carrying somewhat less weight and prestige on a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some other benefits of presenting at a local conference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's usually free.  With the travel money you save, you can attend another conference far away later on.  Now you have two conference talks on your CV instead of just one.  (In other words, &quot;present locally&quot; versus &quot;present far away&quot; is probably a false dichotomy.  Even if the local conference conflicts with a faraway conference, there is very likely another faraway conference in the near future that's just as good.  And if the conflicting faraway conference is, like, the one and only awesomest conference in your field, then the organizers of your local conference probably shouldn't have scheduled theirs to conflict with it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Less travel: you get to save a day or two of travel time, sleep in your own bed, see your family, etc.  This may make the conference much more relaxing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being the attraction: People may be saying to themselves: &quot;Hey, there's a conference at Podunk University.  I think that's where gman works, so I'm sure he'll be there.  I was just reading his paper and it will be great to hear his talk and ask him questions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Networking: as a local at a conference, people are more likely to want to talk to you.  For instance, &quot;Hey gman, you live here, can you recommend a good restaurant in town?  Would you like to join us for dinner?&quot; The opportunity to talk to other researchers informally can be very valuable to a career.  Even fielding mundane questions like &quot;How do I connect to the wifi?  Where is Room NNN?  Can you help me turn on the projector?&quot; can start good conversations.  (Make sure you know the answers to these questions!)  It can be harder to initiate interactions like this when you are a stranger in a strange city.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Help organize: Try to join the organizing committee, or at least offer to help them out.  Organizing a local conference is a lot of work, and by contributing to this you will gain the appreciation of your colleagues.  It's also valuable experience, and &quot;conference co-organizer&quot; is a nice line to have on a CV.  Finally, conference organizers tend to have more contact with the visiting participants, contributing to Networking as above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T18:04:27.487" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:04:27.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27604" CreationDate="2014-09-09T15:00:43.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent I'm probably repeating what others have said here already. But in any case, here I go with my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the situation you describe is actually quite unusual. In most cases where code is used in a publication, the code is not published, and if it is not published, it is often unobtainable from the authors. If they do provide it, they are not very likely to answer questions about it. For example, often the code is written by some junior person like a grad student, and once that person has departed, the senior authors, who are also the corresponding author, don't know anything specific about the code, because they have not actually written any of it. They may also no longer have a copy of it, if they ever did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you are already in a good situation, that someone is responding to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to bear in mind is that academics like people to be interested in your work. Since your correspondent wrote the code, he is probably the main author of the work; people who write the code generally are. So, he may not mind answering questions about his work as long as they are not stupid. Avoid basic/general language-related questions which are not specific to the code, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone else said, if you want to know how he feels, why not ask him?&#xA;So, I'd suggest three concrete things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Express your appreciation for the time he is spending replying to&#xA;you. Don't go overboard; a sentence or two is enough. But it is&#xA;important to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you interested/willing to have him as a co-author, ask him if he&#xA;is interested in being a co-author. If he is not interested, or you&#xA;don't want him as a co-author, ask him permission to add him to the&#xA;acknowedgements. You should certainly add him, if he agrees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him if it is Ok to keep asking him occasional questions. Perhaps&#xA;outline what and how much you expect to be asking him, if you have&#xA;an idea, so he knows what to expect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is going above and beyond, in some sense, but since you say his&#xA;code is not documented, document it, perhaps checking with him first&#xA;about how to do so, in case he has preferences. Then, send the&#xA;documentation to him. That's a nice concrete way to show appreciation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T15:00:43.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T16:14:04.460" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be best practice in indicating the source of text samples used to illustrate some concept or analysis result in linguistics or computational linguistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I might want to use the sentence &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you had told someone in 2012 that in just two years hence, the eurozone would remain bonded together but the United Kingdom might not, they would have thought you insane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from a recent The New York Times article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/upshot/why-does-scotland-want-independence-its-culture-vs-economics.html?abt=0002&amp;amp;abg=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/upshot/why-does-scotland-want-independence-its-culture-vs-economics.html?abt=0002&amp;amp;abg=0&lt;/a&gt;), augmented with some annotation, in order to illustrate how different anaphora resolution methods would work or fail for this real life example. Copyright fair use policies allow to use such limited extracts without any permission, and using them is common practice, but the attribution and quoting seems unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How, and if, should I quote the source of that sentence within a paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would publication style (say, short paper vs. a dissertation) affect it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would density of examples (2 examples in whole paper vs 20 different examples in a single page) matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would indirect sources change it? E.g. if the sentences are taken from, say, British National Corpus - but, naturally, they originally come from some different publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Language utterance sources are different from other references&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references. There are various approaches seen in practice among respectable publications: no referencing at all, a footnote reference for the sentence, a mention in article text, a single reference to a whole corpus (by referencing not the source but some authoritative paper about the corpus), etc.  I'm wondering about those options, which would be preferable and which should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding the whole problem by using sentences made up by myself is not a good solution - artificial examples are biased towards using constructions that behave in the same way as you and your tools expect, so real life examples of natural language from domain-representative sources are strictly preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T20:18:33.590" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T20:18:33.590" Title="Should sources of sample sentences be shown in (computational) linguistics research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;best-practice&gt;&lt;quotation&gt;&lt;linguistics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T16:49:32.623" Score="36" ViewCount="9927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a first year PhD student (computer science), and I've felt that I lost this year up to now due to some life difficulties. I'm getting no financial support and I was forced to teach to get some money and pay my expenses. I have another personal problems that took me to a state of depression, where I've spent some months completely stuck in my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to &quot;be back on the rails&quot; and continue to work on this, but I'm feeling lost. I need to go back to the very beginning and find what a PhD is, and what I must do to advance the state of art with my current (weak) capabilities. At the same time I must to show some results to my advisor with what I already have in my hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that my &quot;question&quot; is pretty obscure, but I need some advices on how to proceed, from people with some experience in this situation. &lt;strong&gt;How can I overcome depression and 'get back on the rails' with my PhD?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMPORTANT EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some years later I finally got my PhD. I cannot believe I made it. At the time that I wrote this post it seemed utterly impossible to achieve this. If you are in the middle of a PhD you may try to endure and fight until the end. But if you are wondering about starting a PhD, please make sure YOU ABSOLUTELY LOVE your topic, otherwise you'll end like me when I wrote this. I didn't like my research area and the topic I choose. Everything else seemed to be way more interesting. I wanted to do everything instead of reading papers and conducting my own research. I felt unproductive and useless, and at some point my advisor started to complain about my lack of results. It was my fault since the beginning since I didn't followed a research area that I could have joy with it. I should have choose something that matched my abilities and preferences, for instance, I'm pretty good with programming, but my math skills aren't great, and yet I tried to enter a field that is dominated by math and advanced statistics. I couldn't do what I do the best, neither I was able to catch up with the involved math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21628" LastEditorUserId="21628" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T09:19:32.197" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T09:19:32.197" Title="Overcoming depression and getting back on rails with PhD work" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;&lt;emotional-responses&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="16" ClosedDate="2014-09-10T10:44:48.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-09T16:59:29.973" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depression is very common amongst graduate students and faculty. So know that you are not alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 60% of graduate students said that they felt overwhelmed, exhausted, hopeless, sad, or depressed nearly all the time. One in 10 said they had contemplated suicide in the previous year. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_02_04/caredit.a1400031&quot;&gt;--  AAS Science Careers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is very little that the community on SE can do to help you. We are not therapists and cannot provide a therapeutic relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know that there is no shame in seeking help. Your university almost always has a mental health clinic with free or subsidized service. Whether you prefer talk therapy or psychopharmaceuticals (or both) is up to you and your insurance plan -- but please do go seek help from specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T03:20:05.337" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T03:20:05.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:09:13.160" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overcoming depression and getting back on rails on PhD's work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to treat these as two separate problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you must tackle overcoming (or at least learning to cope) with depression ... which you say is due to personal problems. You should prioritise this. Only then can you aim to get back on the rails with your PhD work. In terms of coping with depression, this may involve lifestyle changes, seeking counselling, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are healthier, you can then prioritise pushing forward your PhD work. It's important to keep communicating with your supervisor what is going on with you. Their job is to advise you. Let them know what is going on. Likewise set yourself small achievable goals. Thinking about a PhD in its entirety is very daunting. Break up your work into little milestones (no longer than a week, say) and try to focus on one thing at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, there can be a pathogenic aspect to academia where working ridiculous hours and being depressed all the time is sort of implicitly tolerated, for students and staff alike. &lt;strong&gt;This is wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; If you find yourself in such an environment, try to improve it. If this doesn't work, just get out. Learning does not require suffering. Research does not require suffering. Depression should not be a side-effect of a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is your PhD that is an underlying cause or aggravator of depression, I think you need to ask yourself: Is getting a PhD really worth it? Can you take steps to improve your situation? Could you find another PhD position elsewhere? Maybe you could try find a job or just do something different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7746" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:09:13.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:09:14.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a past PhD student in the domain of software engineering, and having some personal problems during my PhD; I can totally relate to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, doing little/nothing (in your opinion) during the first year is pretty common. In fact there is a lesson in itself. That is, a year, is not a long time in a lifestyle of a researcher. So you can plan your years ahead more wisely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need to understand that, doing a research in computer science is sometimes is very hard; as many big successful companies are doing great things, and for marketing purposes, bragging about it publicly; and you need to sit and think about a contribution that is not tackled before, with limited resources (e.g., time, budget, etc.). Hopefully in near future you will find the purpose in your research, and will be happy about your role in the computer science domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you need to start exercising on a daily basis. Sitting long hours, and trying  doing a research in an office environment, sooner or later will effect your mental health. So plan a light workout at least 3 times a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, eat well. If you use any self medication (cigarets, alcohol), stop them. They will contribute to your moods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, work during reasonable hours. Do not work more than 8/9 hours a day. Do not work strange hours (late nights, midnights). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully by balancing your life, you will start feeling good and then great again and will continue your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still have the problem, contact the student union at your university, they can help you get some time off, so you can tackle this issue professionally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastEditorUserId="21552" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T17:15:36.127" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:15:36.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28255" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:18:43.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your field is doing itself a disservice by not citing the sources of language utterances. Particularly if direct quotes from published sources are used, the information about the source is important. Did the sentence come from the Los Angeles Times or the neighborhood community newspaper? From a novel written by a Novel Prize winner or a first-time novelist? From a book written in 1879 or 1979?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels like an archaeologist writing about a pot without including where it was found, what was found around it, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field is just not practicing good science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that your paper will not be accepted with more complete referencing of the language utterances, try to mitigate the issue by using examples from the fewest references possible or creating your own with the same structure or pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you've found a nice hole in the field--can research be done to show that omitting or not studying the sources of the language utterances changes results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5711" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:18:43.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28262" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28263" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" Score="0" Body="On standards or conventions specific to linguistics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:30:33.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28255" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:43:53.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that this general practice is just a sloppy practice. As other people suggested, treat language sources as any other source, and let the journal editor decide whether the reference section is too long and, in case, which action should be taken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: do what is mostly correct from a scientific point of view and let others decide whether there are any typographical or graphical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T17:43:53.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-09T17:58:13.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my country, no policy about disseminating exam material is enforced (or at least, I've never heard it happen or even threatened to be punished during my college years). As far as faculty-created study material goes, it didn't seem to happen much, but it was also not enforced, if there even was some kind of policy. In many cases, students would photocopy books (or the institution/professor would recommend doing so, or do it themselves) instead of getting them through distributors (which used to be funded by the government but seems to not be anymore :( - it was usually how faculty distributed their own study books though, instead of having to publish them - some uploaded them to the college database as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout my college life, me and all my fellow students used old exams, answers to old exams and other notes and materials (which we often found online through institution-related but unofficial forums) to study. Often, we tried to memorize the answers due to time constraints (more time to study harder material) but usually, it was because the professor was dreadfully bad at teaching, the textbook was terrible, the examination questions where unclear or the teacher was inconsistent in grading (there where multiple occasions where there where multiple, mutually exclusive answers taken to be correct and even then inconsistently, so you never knew what, according to the teacher, the &quot;correct&quot; answer was, so you just placed your bet on previous behavior).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me stress that this study environment was &lt;strong&gt;well known&lt;/strong&gt; by all faculty members. Some would attempt to actually &lt;strong&gt;punish&lt;/strong&gt; using old exams to study and memorizing by subtly changing the questions or through other underhanded means (such as grading the question differently). However, there was never any action taken based on institution policy. Overall, teachers that where not useless would work around this; they either allowed it to happen, leveraging it to reduce stress in students and increase attendance and interest, or put work into both teaching properly and constructing exams that where consistent in format but always different enough in content that studying and comprehension where necessary (and where loved by all, even when we failed those exams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question ends in a clear request for how other institutions handle this. However, it is also tagged with &lt;code&gt;ethics&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;cheating&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;policy&lt;/code&gt;. Pedantry aside, I think it is understandable when faced with such a question that so many of us feel strongly about how such policy is made, since it has a deep influence on what environment students live in. In short, it seems that any policy that prevents students from exchanging information in a university, no matter what information that is (in relation to subjects at least, if not entirely), seems to contradict the purpose of a university and reduces transparency. It would train students to think backwards. If cheating is a problem, then &lt;em&gt;make it impossible&lt;/em&gt; by crafting exams properly. My entire experience and that of others that has been relayed to me, clearly indicates that only the incompetence of educators makes cheating necessary and desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of what others have said. I'd like to end by saying, the question of how to handle &quot;cheating&quot; students feels a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; like DRM. Like DRM, it punishes those who don't break it - in this case, those who choose to follow institution policy will be at a disadvantage and/or will be forced to face the dilemma of snitching on other students and gaining a terrible reputation that will follow them throughout their university life. Don't do this to them. Bad students don't graduate - period. If a student is lazy or can't deal with the material in general, they won't make it. Extremely few students I knew that where terrible graduated - and those that did, managed to do it by brute-force memorization on at least some subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to track down the material will only push it underground. If the colleague in question feels that this dissemination of his exam material could invalidate his exams, he/she is a fool to believe it only happened now that they discovered it and is probably lazy or bad at creating exams. They may be a fine teacher, but there is no excuse for being so bad that a leaked exam invalidates your exam process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You yourself do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do this. You distribute your material and seem to do fine. Remember, this will create a precedent and &lt;em&gt;policy&lt;/em&gt;. Do you really want to place this gun in the hands of future faculty members so they can punish students for their own failings and bad performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;also, retroactively applying a rule that wasn't known to the perpetrator at the time is inherently immoral - you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; ask the colleague if they told the students, if they didn't want that to happen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;edit: I should add that I helped fellow students cheat many times. This was usually by telling them the answers during the exam. I never cheated. I used to finish my exams a lot sooner than them and would spend the rest of the period helping them with the material at the library. This was usually for weeks at a time, 3-4 times a year. I never regretted it and I did it because, to see others struggle without a chance, to be able to help and not do so, is also deeply immoral. Don't punish those that try to help fellow students manage. Many of those that disseminate material will be this sort of person - the lazy cheaters do not care about helping others.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21638" LastEditorUserId="21638" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T18:07:06.230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:07:06.230" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:26:02.673" Score="0" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I get into masters for theoretical physics without having a bachelors in physics or maths? I have a bachelors in electronics engineering, and I can get a recommendation from the physics department for the admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21643" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T18:48:12.407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:48:12.407" Title="Is it possible to get admission to masters for theoretical physics with a bachelors in electronics engineering?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;physics&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;&lt;electrical-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-10T10:45:07.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28232" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:41:23.057" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;My students&quot; is not a possessive. It's &quot;the students whom I am responsible for.&quot; As such, it's wholly appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:41:23.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28267" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:43:17.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. On a Masters course you will meet people from a wide range of backgrounds. In fact, one of my physics students has just been accepted onto a Masters course in computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you may struggle to get onto a good course if your grades are not strong. Since you will have a lot of catching up to do, those running the Masters programme will need to be persuaded that you're hard working with good potential. You will also probably need to demonstrate that you've already made an effort to study theoretical physics (e.g. discussing in some detail the topics that interest you in your application).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19470" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:43:17.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T20:43:02.457" Score="6" ViewCount="17091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to apply for following PhD studies in the Nordic countries, particularly in the field of Computer Science. The problem that I found is that it says in the admission procedure that &quot;before applying one should get a Professor or Researcher that agrees to supervise the applicant&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have checked up the personal webpages of the Professors and I have found their topics of interests, publications and so on. I like a lot of the topics in which they make research, but I do not really know how to address an email to them asking if they would agree to supervise me. Particularly I have the following doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I make a small research article putting my ideas about one research interest of them? The problem here is that I believe I would not have the enough time to go through a lot of papers made on their reseach groups. What can I do if do not have the enough background? Time is running fast for submitting the application and I do not believe I would have enough time to study in deep their research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I send my CV and ask to a specific Professor that I have interest in following PhD studies under their supervision, and if it would be possible if he or she to send me some open question or open research task so that they could see that I will manage to do it well on his or her research group?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will transcribe what the ad specifically says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must do your best to find a suitable supervisor at the department who agrees to supervise you. Please see the research pages&#xA;  of the department, and especially the descriptions of the research&#xA;  groups.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must agree on a study plan, a research plan and a financing plan together with your (found) supervisor,  and submit an application&#xA;  to the steering committee of the department's doctoral programme.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also about the supervisor it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A student who wants to become a PhD student should start the&#xA;  application process by finding a supervisor at the department, who&#xA;  works in the field of interest of the student and who is willing to&#xA;  supervise the student. If the student is unsure of which supervisor to&#xA;  contact, he or she may first contact the research coordinator of the&#xA;  department who will steer the student in the right direction.&#xA;  Generally, a supervisor is a professor and/or principal investigator&#xA;  employed by the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I read it seems, at least to me, that one should really have in mind a good research proposal before applying, am I wrong? or only with an email will suffice to contact the potential supervisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6144" LastEditorUserId="6144" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T12:54:00.740" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T18:15:23.643" Title="What to write in email to potential PhD advisor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-09T21:11:51.470" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, here is my (partial) take on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completed a PhD, also in Comp Sci, but in theory rather than software. In retrospect, I believe it may not even have been a good idea to do so. I'm not suggesting that you quit, though; nor am I going to write my long personal story since it is, well, personal and long. So let's just make some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself this: &quot;Is my self-esteem, my sense of self-worth, based on me succeeding academically? As a student and now as a researcher?&quot; If the answer is &quot;Yes&quot;, then you need to rewire your brain. Because even if you don't end up in a deep emotional crisis right now, you will at some point in the not-too-distant future, and until then you'll probably suffer most of the time. I was very afraid of asking myself that question, because I sort of knew the answer; but if it reaches your consciousness than you know you have to do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suppose your PhD tanks. You don't reach publishable results, you wander around in circles, you need money and there's nothing you can do on campus to make enough - it goes up in flames. You advisor frowns and is disappointed. Your parents wonder &quot;Gee, what's he going to do with his life now?&quot; Sounds terrible, right? Can you live with that? The answer is: Of course you can. What you can't live with is spending your time trying to avoid this possibility, or imagining it out of existence. It may happen. Don't start spending all your time on planning for PhD failure, but try to entertain it as a real possibility. Try to &quot;pre-accept&quot; this failure and thinking of your PhD prospects as a sort of a calculated bet. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people bypass their emotional issues by making research breakthroughs relatively quickly; they supposedly never have to deal with the kind of anguish we go through. For us, however, it's all the more exasperating to see them progress while we're stuck. If you spend &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; time trying to compare yourself to them: &quot;Why am I less successful/quick/able than that guy&quot; - again, you're in trouble. You're thinking of the PhD as a sort of rat race. Unfortunately, it's half-become that in some fields. Your PhD is supposed to be something unique, that you are pursuing for its own sake (or because you need to apply the research personally). Don't adopt the goal of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU6m5UqLx9M&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;getting ahead&quot;&lt;/a&gt; abstractly in your PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is my (non-universal) experience that many people around you, especially senior tenured staff, can be total &lt;em&gt;assholes&lt;/em&gt; about this kind of problem. It is so commonplace, so fundamental, so frustrating... and yet, they're just shuffling along untroubled. Even when all the signs tell them how you feel. And nobody prepares you for this. They make you think you're just, well, continuing your studies. Don't be afraid to develop a nice grudge :-)  and, on that note&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A PhD candidate is not a student. That is, you are also a student, and research is a kind of study, but in that sense a Professor is also a student. You now have something between a strange kind of &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt; and an also-strange kind of &lt;em&gt;contract work&lt;/em&gt; (perhaps half-unpaid). I know usual capitalist class divisions (hired labor / capitalist employer) don't apply very well to academia, but I think it's emotionally (and sometimes financially) useful to think of it that way. Of course, you should be very committed to your job and take it seriously, not slack around...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is your advisor actually advising you? Academically, at least? That is, does he provide guidance, suggestions on how to proceed research-wise and academic-life-wise? Clearly, you're not close with him, and he doesn't realize what you're going through. Do you think you could tell him? Or will he not 'get it' emotionally, and just end up thinking you're a weak person? I would say it's probably a good idea to share your situation with him even if he's expected to respond relatively poorly. Don't make excuses to him and try to hide what's going on. Better for him to think of you as a wuss who can't handle it than a dodgy person who can't be trusted to tell the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't believe how many people use psychotherapy, or take anti-depression medicine - in society in general and in grad school in particular. If you're, say, at the point of having trouble sleeping, or having other physical symptoms of depression or anxiety - talk to your GP (your doctor) and ask him/her to explain such possibilities to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching is part of the calling of being an academic. Researchers should teach, regardless of money. It's good for keeping in touch with the foundations of your discipline, and what's more - it can help your mood. At least, it did for me. Still, if you need to do a lot of it to make ends meet, that sucks. There are academic staff labor unions for these kinds of problems (and for wider concerns hopefully), but I'm not going to suggest to you as a single person that all the graduate teachers should go on strike for better pay etc. Although they generally should :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7319" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T20:28:51.293" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T20:28:51.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T21:24:19.827" Score="1" ViewCount="864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a post-doc and I would like to apply for a tenure-track position in a health-related discipline. As part of the application, the search committee requests a record of teaching excellence. My experience with teaching so far has been as a TA but never had a chance to teach a course or even part of a course. Just wondering what should I include in this section of the application? Do I submit a teaching philosophy with a brief summary of my TA experience? (they did not request a teaching philosophy)&#xA;I am looking forward to hearing from present and former research committees members (and for sure from anyone else would like to participate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21650" LastEditorUserId="21650" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T21:38:48.150" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T09:04:17.663" Title="How to go about &quot;record of teaching excellence&quot; as part of an application for an academic position when you don't have teaching experience?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;job&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-09T21:39:47.510" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depression is the root cause of why I didn't finish my Ph.D., so please take it seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First divide things into stuff that you can fix and stuff that you can't.  Things that you can't fix include lack of sufficient money to study without work and the difficulty of your subject.  Things that you can fix include exercise, diet, and sleep patterns (@badroit).  Also, there are extra things that you can do such as using the campus psych help and medications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is surprising how much a change to logical exercise, diet, and sleep can help.  The only problem is that those changes take a significant amount of effort which is the original problem.  Nevertheless, try a &quot;21 day challenge&quot;:  more than 7 hours of sleep a night (at night), no junk food nor soda, and at least light exercise (e.g. yoga, hiking).  Also, try to socialize, more than just drinking buddies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the medications, I have found most of the prescription stuff of little use.  Zoloft, etc. had only a marginal effect.  The single most effective thing has been wheatgrass juice.  I used up to 4 oz of freshly ground wheatgrass juice daily, and after about 10 days, I noticed an improvement.  Within about 2 weeks of starting, my depression was GONE.  I haven't been without depression since puberty (~20 years), and it took me awhile to get used to it.  At first, I felt fragile, like anything might break it.  Then, all of a sudden, I could finally do all of the things that I wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to bear in mind.  No matter what type of medication you take, your mental habits still remain from the depression.  Be aware that one of your first priorities should be to change your mental habits (e.g. always seeing the bad side, assuming everyone hates you / makes fun of you / holds you in contempt, assuming that you can't finish anything, assuming that you are a horrible person or stupid, etc.).  These are just artifacts.  You will finally be able to change them like changing your clothes.  I know that that statement sounds stupid, but once the depression stopped forcing my mental outlook, I actually could gain control of it.  Big change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you mentioned that you have weak capabilities.  That might be true or not, but that is FIXABLE.  That is the purpose of school.  You are in the process of improving those capabilities.  Where else would you expect someone to improve their academic capabilities.  So, don't worry about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12475" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T21:39:47.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T23:15:10.367" Score="2" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a professor, I am sometimes asked to help undergrads (I'm currently at the University of Michigan) find funding for math research during the summer. In the past I have seen some get funding from the NSF REU program. The only problem with this is that it is only 8 weeks (At least at my school). Are there any other research grants that are given to undergrads that could last the entire summer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18365" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T00:46:40.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T00:49:48.177" Title="Finding non-REU funding for my undergrad math students" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28149" CreationDate="2014-09-09T23:32:00.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case it was a bottle of cognac, of course after the defense. I brought it to my supervisor's home. It was in Russia 18 years ago, I believe nowadays it is still nice/appropriate gesture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21653" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T23:32:00.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-10T01:01:38.293" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The legendary physicist Richard Feynman struggled with a terrible bout of depression shortly after Hiroshima and was unable to work. He talks about it in  his book &lt;em&gt;Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman&lt;/em&gt;. In the end, he decided to go back to his roots and just work on things that interested him - rather than what he &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be working on. As it happens, while modelling the motion of a flying and oscillating plate (for fun), he inadvertently solved a quantum mechanical problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student who has also wrestled with depression for many years, I have adopted this same indulgent approach: find a problem or task that interests you and work on it &lt;em&gt;for fun&lt;/em&gt;. You'll be amazed with how often this leads to something publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19470" LastEditorUserId="19470" LastEditDate="2015-01-09T19:05:41.353" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T19:05:41.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28224" CreationDate="2014-09-10T01:03:22.477" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, this isn't really answering your question, but you should seriously discuss with your advisor or another trusted senior mathematician about what sort of jobs you should be applying for; even mentioning research universities as a new Ph.D. makes me wonder if you have been told the &quot;facts of life&quot; by someone.  It is much more likely that you'll be able to find a short-term position anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I don't think you should worry about the fact that you want to leave in  2 years.  I can speak from the experience of having left two TT jobs within 2 years of starting.  Of course, it's not something to be proud of, but it does happen pretty often, and I don't think it offends anybody's sensibilities too much.  Honestly, I don't think you need to worry about people asking you about your plans (as long as they don't read this question and follow the link back to your webpage); leaving to move to Africa is so far outside what most people will imagine that they won't even be considering it.  They assume that if you're applying for the job, you're at least thinking at the moment that you'll be in for the long haul.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you do mention your plan to anyone involved, it will hurt you a lot. No one actually wants to hire someone into a TT position who will leave in 2 years.  It's a huge amount of wasted work and money, so I think it's only worthwhile apply to TT jobs if you feel comfortable just not mentioning it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T01:03:22.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T01:07:57.640" Score="4" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;When applying for postdoc positions, one has the option to send out lots of applications, possibly get several offers, then choose the one that seems best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the applicant could contact the research group that looks the most relevant or best suited for him, and focus on getting a position there.  If the feedback is not positive, then (and only then) move on to the next best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in the USA it is accepted that people will shop around for positions, and not taking an offer is considered completely normal.  However, in some other places it is possible that if the applicant shows a lot of interest for a certain position, then gets an offer to be hired, and doesn't accept it anyway, it could be considered rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the usual or best way for applying in various countries?  I think it is very important to research this point to avoid any misunderstandings or bad feelings because of differences in attitudes towards the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21656" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T10:00:01.517" Title="Applying for posdtoc positions: is it okay to send out many applications?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-10T10:43:59.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27445" CreationDate="2014-09-10T02:23:36.857" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following thought experiment. Take a day (or at least a couple of hours), and fully embrace the editor's suggestions. Think about why h/she made them, and think about how you would revise your paper to fully incorporate his/her suggestions, and in what aspects it would make the paper better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep on it a couple of days. Then, if you decide you prefer not to take the editor's suggestions, you will be in an excellent state of mind to write a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I carefully considered suggestion X. As pointed out by the editor, this would have advantages Y and Z, and W. [It is especially helpful to not just say the same thing word-for-word, to show that you thought about the editor's suggestions carefully.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I feel that for the most part the paper is better as is, for the following reasons: ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T02:23:36.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28281" CreationDate="2014-09-10T05:30:08.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28281/applying-for-posdtoc-positions-is-it-okay-to-send-out-many-applications#comment60725_28281&quot;&gt;Pete's concern&lt;/a&gt; looks valid to me, even in this hypothetical situation, a polite declining letter/email should do fine. For a somewhat reliable account of how faculty generally thinks you should go about declining an offer, follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://science-professor.blogspot.in/2010/03/go-ahead-reject-me.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the above was written in the context of grad school applications, and post-doc is much more personal than that AFAIK. (You contact a person, not an institution - so if there's any possibility of declination being deemed rude, it is more likely to be the case in a post-doc application than in the grad school context, which necessitates it further). But the intent is the same, and content (of the email) could also follow suite! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But having said that, please bear in mind that the professor would've himself been in your position some time back. He/she would've himself declined offers in his days, and I don't he will consider it rude. (Unless of course, if your correspondence went to a very advanced stage, you assured him you would join, he told other applicants that he's full and has no vacancy, and now you insist on not joining! But if it is simply that you were considered and found good enough, and decide on not joining, go ahead with the advice to avoid rudeness concerns.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T08:04:39.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28281" CreationDate="2014-09-10T06:42:26.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should remember that universities are also looking at the resumes of many candidates for a given position. If it is not rude on their part to consider many applications and rejecting most of them, why will it be rude for a candidate to apply to many positions and reject some of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a many-to-many matching market between applicants and positions. You are trying to optimize your chances, they are trying to optimize their interest. If you look at it from this game theoretic perspective, you will not feel any qualm of conscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21663" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T06:42:26.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11617" CreationDate="2014-09-10T07:17:23.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides to very good advices posted in other answers to this question; I want to mention a few words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at&#xA;  another university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, you are asking about applying and then &lt;em&gt;studying&lt;/em&gt; for a second same masters degree. Because a student may be free to apply for a degree, but the admissions office will reject his profile as he is currently student else where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer to your question depends on the educational system of the country and universities policies too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, studying simultaneously in two universities and majors is prohibited and graduate students are only allowed to study in their own university. Also, I have seen many universities asking students whether they are currently students or not, because they seek full time students not part time ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have seen that some students with outstanding grades and educational background can apply a minor very close to their field in their own university but it was for bachelors level only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may find a university which accepts students seeking for double major; but the university in which you are currently studying may not agree to you to study a second major when you are their students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general advice, &lt;em&gt;double&lt;/em&gt; check the regulations of both universities and the countries in which you want to study simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T07:17:23.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28291" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:04:57.773" Score="5" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my bachelors and masters degree I have attended some brief talks called colloquiums in which a researcher was invited by a professor at the university and s/he gave a one-hour talk about a scientific topic most of which about his/her own research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These talks are a little different from normal conference presentations and seminars because the speaker is invited to give a talk and he is not presenting a specific paper; but in a conference, except from keynote speakers; people normally submit their papers to be peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what's the role of colloquiums in academia and what the speaker is seeking by giving such talks? Also, who can give such talks (a researcher, somebody from industry, an outstanding professor, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T14:30:44.007" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:37:13.163" Title="What's the role of colloquiums in academia?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;seminars&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28273" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:18:31.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Include what teaching you have done as a TA. Space permitting, I would also include some details of what your teaching comprised, e.g. setting and marking coursework, small group tutoring, class tutorials etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the application calls for a record of teaching excellence, try to identify aspects of what teaching you have done that meets some reasonable definition of &quot;excellence&quot;. Do you have evidence of positive student reviews? Any lecturer/tutor assessments?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not include a statement of teaching philosophy if it is not called for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T08:18:31.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:24:04.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to people&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Talk to your advisor, your professors, your TAs, your fellow students, your friends, your family, the people at your school's graduate office (often just waiting to help), or a counselor if you have access to one. People on the internet don't count. It might be tempting to get stuck in your own head and believe that you can figure everything out on your own if you just work hard enough, but clearly that isn't working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8796" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T08:24:04.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28288" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:47:05.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what the speaker is seeking by giving such small talks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word: &lt;strong&gt;exposition&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, the more senior a researcher gets, the less of her/his attention is devoted to writing single research papers. It becomes more central to be known for a specific niche, a specific topic where (s)he is the world's foremost expert. One does not become such a figurehead for a specific niche by writing good papers in the area &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt; (although, clearly, this is still required). One also needs to be an ambassador for the niche. This includes giving keynotes at conferences, as well as giving seminars and colloquia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, who can give such talks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody who gets invited by somebody. However, typically, one does not give keynote-level talks before senior postdoc or assistant professor level, simply because most PhD students do not have all too much of a vision going beyond their thesis yet. And, frankly, the keynotes of most postdocs also suck. Like most skills in academia, giving good exposition talks is also a skill that comes with training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(there are exceptions, of course - I can think of at least one outstanding PhD student in software engineering who was regularly invited to give keynote talks at conferences midway through her dissertation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T08:47:05.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2014-09-10T09:12:48.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not even completed MS so I can't predict the detailed experience of a PhD student but before changing your supervisor, please give it a second thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had to choose someone from the start of my PhD and the time is extremely limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You admit that you have limited time span for PhD completion and most it has already finished. Selecting some other supervisor, creating a mutual understanding and good working relationship, and completing your work atleast at the same pace at which you are working will most probably consume the time left and you may not be able to complete your thesis in the given duration. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Now lets assume, the time limit has exceeded, you'll have to face financial pressures as well in addition to the actual workload. You may get financial assistance (if you are lucky enough)  but what if you don't get it? You'll have to work for managing your finances. Obviously, you'll need some time for it, which means your concentration will be divided between your job for managing expenses and your research work. Feeling bored, tired and depressed is very common among graduate students so even if you think you are really happy and contended (which you don't seem to be), with the passage of time you'll get more and more frustrated with the time your PhD is taking to be completed. So in short things will most probably get worse. (At this point i can be called a pessimist :) but still all this is possible to happen)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is a very nice person, who is very active with public engagement, very successful at grant applications and all that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are actually satisfied with the non-technical/social side of your supervisor and the major (if not only) reason for dissatisfaction is his lack of technical expertise. Lets assume, you manage to somehow change your supervisor (even without facing any political issue). What if the new supervisor is technically very sound but is non-technically too rude, proud and arrogant; not very social, takes too much time to respond to your queries, is not very good at public engagements, not really good at grant applications and so on. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt; You'll most probably start comparing the two supervisors in each and every single thing that happens to you. There is a big chance that you'll start missing the old one and will find some other problems in the new one. You'll regret your decision and will want to go back but most probably you won't be able to due all those financial, time, ego and politics related issues. If you continue going on in the same nostalgic mood, you'll start comparing the students/researchers working under the two supervisors and you'll probably find the better ones working with your old supervisor. In short, chances are there that you'll feel more depressed and frustrated that you are right now.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the problem is, it turns out he does not know the subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be just a wrong assumption. I totally agree with the well explained response of @Sumyrda and @Pete L. Clark&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now all evidence (corroborated by others) shows that he really is incompetent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be misguided and confused. Every one has his own opinion about the same thing and can have different experience based on his/her mindset, psychology, behavior etc. Being a student, i can easily say that there are very few students in the whole world who'll proudly say that their supervisor is actually a good one. Most students are dissatisfied by their supervisor due to one reason or the other. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt; At this point, you must use your own  experience only to decided about your supervisor. Don't try to judge your supervisor in terms of the experience of &quot;OTHERS&quot;. He/she may not be considered a good supervisor by everyone else in the world but still there is a chance that he/she prove to be the best supervisor for you or vice versa. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt; I may be wrong but i think that when you started working with this supervisor you were happy. You started expecting a lot from your supervisor and he/she was unable to meet your expectations. In the meanwhile, you tried to convince yourself that everything is fine. If in case any thing is wrong, its with you. Then at a later stage, you started discussing it with your fellows. They shared their experiences with you and you started making opinions based on their stories. Please don't be judgmental about your supervisor. He/she may actually not be that bad. &#xA;Even if he/she is, no one in this world is perfect. Every one has some strengths as well as weaknesses and we need to accept this fact. Your new supervisor will not be perfect as well. Strengths and weaknesses may vary but they'll be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He somehow manages to pull it off, getting on other people's papers and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that he tries his best to satisfy (but may be unfortunately he is not successful in his efforts). What if he or your supposedly new supervisor is least bothered and does not even try? You'll have to live and work even in that situation. At the end of the day, its your work and your job. No one else can live your life.  &lt;em&gt;&quot;Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else&quot;&lt;/em&gt;- Les Brown&#xA;&lt;br/&gt; You are going to be a PhD soon and you should not expect spoon feeding from your supervisor like a FYP student. Its your field of specialization not you supervisor's so you should know more about it than him (and you'll definitely know more). Getting on other's papers is fine because no one is expert of everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, it seems very likely, that no one would support a rebellion (i.e. switching a supervisor), because of politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This part is actually serious (although most fellows here will probably won't take it seriously and ideally it shouldn't be). But lets assume you are right that your supervisor and department suffer from organizational politics etc. Changing your supervisor would really harm you. If you manage to change your supervisor (taking care of time limitations, financial, administrative and departmental issues) but your supervisor(both new and old one) are in the same department or even in same university. In such a case, you can't surely assume that you'll never see him again. If you'll have to interact with him, what level of interaction would it be? Based on this interaction, you can decide the consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Last but not the least&lt;/strong&gt;, have you actually considered alternate PhD supervisors available for switching? Does their research interest match exactly with what your work requires? What kind of guarantee can you provide yourself that your new supervisor would be technically more strong and overall better than the current one. Even if you have enough time, finance and every other relevant thing, you can't spend the whole life experiencing supervisors for PhD. Currently you are experiencing Mr. A, left him, went to Mr. B, worked with him and realized he is no better than Mr. A or is even worst than A, then what would you do? Coming back to A or finding some Mr. C would definitely be not possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21618" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T09:12:48.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T09:59:16.453" Score="38" ViewCount="4832" Body="&lt;p&gt;Around a month ago, I was requested to review a paper submitted to a well-known APS journal. The main idea introduced in the paper was nice and the experimental implementation had fairly good results. I therefore sent my approval with some minor revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week, I was shocked to find (through a poster presented at an international conference) that the idea in the work I refereed had been &lt;strong&gt;blatantly plagiarized&lt;/strong&gt; from another work published earlier this year. In fact, a few sentences had even been simply copy-pasted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the course of reviewing, I had checked all the references in the paper and not surprisingly, the original work had &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; been cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately sent a correspondence via the APS referee interface to revert my earlier decision and reject the paper outrightly. The editor later sent me a detailed reply saying that the paper has been rejected by the journal and the authors have been &lt;em&gt;made aware&lt;/em&gt; of the original work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyhow, the question I wish to raise here is: &lt;em&gt;whose responsibility should it be to find out if a work submitted for publication is an act of plagiarism&lt;/em&gt; ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I feel both referees and editors must work on this aspect, I think the primary onus should be on the editors/publishing team. They have far more resources to investigate plagiarism. Furthermore, in contrast to editors, referees do not get paid and are doing this job mainly because of their belief in the edifice of peer-review, to add to their CV, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the experts and experienced researchers can give their opinion here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18210" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T23:54:12.683" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T17:02:25.977" Title="Whose responsibility to detect plagiarism during peer review: editor or referee?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28281" CreationDate="2014-09-10T10:00:01.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a moment think about both ends: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want to find a postdoc position, to continue your research. Hopefully you will contribute a number of good journals, and move forward through your goal (an academic position). So you should be very careful where and with whom you will do your postdoc. In a long run playing the number game (i.e., sending your cv everywhere) does not pay off, because even if you find a position, it doesn't mean that much until you contribute great results. And that 'great' result is based on many factors out of your hand (e.g., supervisor, the team he/she made around him or herself, the city you will do your postdoc, etc.). So, do your search wisely and apply to ones that truly you think you will be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supervisors look for a postdoc position to ease their job to some extent in the first place (e.g., help them with proposals, help them in labs, etc.). Lets face it, they already have their permanent position, so if they pay for a postdoc, they want a helping hand in the first place. In some cases, publication comes second hand for them, they already publish papers/journals on regular basis without you anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want the situation be in your favor as a postdoc, you really need to look into these factors. Just don't send your CV some strange place, expect to be great situation. You might tie yourself to a nightmare (e.g., in the middle of project, and they don't care about your input). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T10:00:01.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2014-09-10T10:18:58.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be depressed! Always, Be hopeful! Posting this question means that you still have a lot of hope within yourself. You just need to get it recognized by yourself and acknowledged. Try to think, imagine and act in such a way, read, write and watch such stuff which provides you hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have mentioned about the first year that is some what about the course work. Let me tell you the fact that you have lost nothing, if you have passed the courses you took and, maybe, only something very little and not everything (of course, not a complete year) otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have no financial support is something that happens to many and you are not alone to be in such a situation. You are rather lucky that you have made it up by teaching. I personally know those who have had similar situations in grad schools and were forced to take odd jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to think about that personal problem much. Your too much mental involvement in that is not only harming you in your present, rather it would leave its marks on your mind and would also be destructive for your future. Remember not to think about the things too much which are not under your control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget about showing results to your adviser so far. He won't kick you out of the PhD program. Try to bring your problems in his knowledge, otherwise, it won't work this way for rest of the years during your PhD. Do not try to be a superman, just be realistic with your life, work and supervisor. Try to keep him in 'CC' about the challenges (not problems) of your life and work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your emotions under control and remember that: &quot;PhD is also a patience test&quot;. During the course emotions won't let you complete it at several occasions and they might even force you to quit. But, please! don't let your emotions hinder you work, your life will be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14747" LastEditorUserId="14747" LastEditDate="2015-12-08T14:37:25.630" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T14:37:25.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2014-09-10T10:25:18.263" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think the primary onus should be on the editors/publishing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think most editors would agree with you here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in contrast to editors, referees do not get paid &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither do most editors of scientific journals. Both are community service jobs taken up by academics. Many journals do (in addition) have copy editors and lectors, but those are typically not responsible for any content-based decisions. Those copy-editors are responsible for making sure that the layout is correct, that references etc. are in the right format, and (in some cases) improve the language, grammar, and spelling. They do not have the field knowledge to judge whether the document they are currently looking at is plagiarized, except for maybe the most blatant cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding plagiarism (both, in sentences and ideas) is the job of the refereeing team, which consists of  the reviewers, the responsible associated editor (if any), and the editor-in-chief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T10:25:18.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1316" CreationDate="2014-09-10T11:44:08.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academia.edu&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; offer built-in 'networking' facilities and mean that one doesn't have to learn anything technical, in using them as one's primary academic web presence one is handing over control of one's professional identity to a third party whose goals are far from guaranteed to be aligned with one's own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else there is the obvious threat that they may go out of business and leave one's web identity untethered, so to speak. They might also decide to run adverts against your profile, sell your data to other companies, and so on. With a personal website on one's own domain there is a level of control and security that can't be obtained from these other services. Convenience and ubiquity are benefits, but they should be weighed against other considerations, not taken as overriding reasons for action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question more directly: it is (certainly in my field, philosophy) perfectly normal and appropriate to have a personal website while still a graduate student, and there are numerous advantages to doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:58:55.567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:58:55.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28204" CreationDate="2014-09-10T12:55:02.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a partially parallel case, Imperial College readmitted &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brian May&lt;/a&gt; to complete his PhD in astrophysics after a 30 year gap.  They might not have done that for someone less famous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T12:55:02.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2014-09-10T13:56:31.400" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As referee I would say I never actively check for plagiarism- neither I have been asked to do so in the instructions for referees (my fields are life science and bioinformatics). The responsibility falls mostly on the editor's side. Indeed, many journals will pass your paper through plagiarism tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com&quot;&gt;iThenticate&lt;/a&gt; and they warn you during the submission process (indeed, you have to agree with this before being able to submit). I think all journals should do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if we find proof of plagiarism or self plagiarism we should report it to the editors, as you did. During my reviews I have found a couple of cases of limited self plagiarism when looking for information related to the manuscript and noted that to the editors in my review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T13:56:31.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28307" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:16:31.700" Score="2" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished writing my first paper to be published in a journal. My intent is to try to publish in a high-impact journal (there are two candidates from the IEEE Transactions class). However, my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process, which is in their experience particularly for first-time authors very prolonged. The argument is, that I would lose many months, perhaps even more than a year in the back and forward process of rejections and resubmitions, when all this could be cut significantly, if a l. All that seems a bit pessimistic to me, of course, I don't want to wait so long, but I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those considerations regarding first-time authors deemed accurate?&#xA;Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the field is computer science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T14:34:22.180" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:44:18.827" Title="Is it wise to contact the editor of a journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28288" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:27:48.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28291/15723&quot;&gt;@xLeitix answer&lt;/a&gt;, another reason comes from the inviting part point of view. For example, in my institute from now and then researchers (at the levels mentioned by &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28291/15723&quot;&gt;@xLeitix&lt;/a&gt;) are invited to give talks. The goal is that researchers in the institute get to know about other researchers vision, topics and approaches. The aim is mainly to broaden our knowledge in order to stimulate new ideas and collaborations between researches from different topics or even fields. This is why typically these presentations are not just about a specific paper (likely niche topic), and look more like keynote presentations in conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:28:53.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28305" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:34:58.713" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; 3-4 months would be, in my experience, &lt;strong&gt;extremely quickly&lt;/strong&gt; for Computer Science transactions. That would mean that your submission would get accepted without modifications in the first revision, which almost never happens (and even then 3 months would be very fast). 1 to 2 years for the entire process is more common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this has nothing to do with it being your first paper. It is the same for every submission. Those journals have pretty rigours peer review, which simply takes some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it will also be similar for other non-spam journals. I am not aware of any reputable CS journal that would suit your 3-4 months expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer would very likely be &quot;deal with it or submit somewhere else&quot;. Frankly, if a journal had a reasonable way to cut down on the time required for the review process &lt;em&gt;without hampering review quality&lt;/em&gt;, they would arguably do it anyway. They are not going to &quot;make an exception&quot; or anything of this ilk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume they meant not &quot;a lower ranked journal&quot;, but rather &quot;a conference&quot;. Review durations for conferences are indeed much more predictable (and, generally, shorter, in the 2-month range on average).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitting to a weaker journal to get your notification a little bit faster does not seem like overly good advice to me. If they indeed were speaking about a lower-ranked journal, you should consider the possibility that they were sugar-coating their judgement that your paper is not good enough for a very strong journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:34:58.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28288" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:37:13.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to other answers, a colloquium series is often used as a way to indirectly fund research collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the colloquium speaker is a collaborator of one of the institution's own faculty (call her X), or at least X is specifically interested in the speaker's work.  X may suggest that the speaker be invited.  The speaker will usually be on campus for a day or two (or more), during which he and X can have longer technical discussions.  The colloquium talk is for the benefit of the rest of the department: they can learn about the speaker's work at a higher, less technical level. (Colloquiua are usually meant to be pitched to an audience of faculty and grad students with a general background in the field, not necessarily the speaker's specific subfield; of course, that isn't always the way the talk turns out!)  The department pays for the speaker's travel expenses, and everybody is happy.  Next week, someone else's collaborator is invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:37:13.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28305" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:44:18.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is perfectly appropriate to contact the editors with whatever question you have regarding the submission process. But first check the information in the web site. If there is not explicit information about the time it takes to review the manuscripts in the journals' instructions for authors (or elsewhere) then you can of course contact the editors. Personally I have contacted the editors previous to submission in several occasions to inquire about different aspects of the submission process or the journal's policy or even status (e.g. IF, indexing in PubMed, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:44:18.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27002" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:45:35.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nature's website has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/natureevents/science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of scientific conferences and events (324 events are listed in September 2014), but may be biased towards certain fields. I think I saw similar lists in other journals as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:45:35.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26068" CreationDate="2014-09-10T15:08:18.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer by anonymous mathematician seems essentially correct to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to remember is that (in all math depts. I'm aware of, including Harvard's, and mine) grad admissions are reviewed by a faculty committee, who have nothing to do with imposing/collecting application fees and so on --- so there is certainly no correlation between department rules/guidelines and things like fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The committee members will do their best to assess candidates based on all the information they have available, using their best judgement as to how well the candidates will perform in their program.  At Harvard in particular, they have their pick of the very strongest candidates from all over the world.   GRE's are just one small component of their evaluation process, but are useful --- if someone doesn't do very well on the GRE, this is a flag.  Essentially all the students admitted by top programs such as Harvard will have gotten close to a perfect score on the GRE subject test, though, and so the GRE serves more as a negative indicator against admission (if a candidate didn't do we'll) than as a positive indicator that someone should be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course occasionally someone who is unquestionably very strong will have done poorly on the GRE, or not done it at all, and the department will want to have the option of being able to waive it as any kind of formal criterion.  Hence the slightly ambiguous wording on their website.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One thing to remember is the once the dept. committee makes its selection, there is a bureaucratic process within the university where the list of admitted candidates has to be given to/accepted by other university entities, such as the university's graduate school.  The department probably has to give some explanation/justification for its selection, and some discussion of the criteria it used.  The GRE is presumably one of these, but they don't want to put themselves in a straitjacket of not being able to ignore it in special cases, and hence --- as Anonymous Mathematician notes --- they have a slightly ambiguous, flexible, policy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21686" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T15:08:18.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28347" CreationDate="2014-09-10T15:45:41.927" Score="2" ViewCount="2337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen very reputable universities such as Georgia Tech and Berkley, to name a few, offering MSc degrees in Computer Science through distance learning. However, I'm not seeing the same distance learning opportunity available for PhD programs. After a Google search, I've found few well-known universities that take off-campus students - I only recall University of Florida - for PhD degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to earn a PhD because I would like to become a Professor after that, so I want to know if doing a distance learning PhD program would harm my  employment opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21687" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T03:17:35.823" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T03:44:29.813" Title="Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28317" CreationDate="2014-09-10T15:53:49.747" Score="5" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a PhD at a certain university that requires the student to provide and evidence of support from a potential supervisor before submitting the application. After mailing some professors, one of them agreed to support my application. It was a very brief email saying &quot;I am happy to support you&quot;. I immediately prepared a research proposal and sent it to her. She replied by saying &quot;Noted&quot;. I prepared my application and submitted it two months later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to email her as a reminder of myself? If so, what would be a good email? This university is very important to me and I want to do everything I can to increase my chances of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T05:03:55.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T05:03:55.253" Title="Should I email a potential supervisor who agreed to support me?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;supervision&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28316" CreationDate="2014-09-10T16:06:28.847" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in general it's entirely appropriate to remind faculty members about letters/recommendations/paperwork they've previously agreed to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact many faculty members I've known (and I cannot, alas, wholeheartedly exclude myself) rely on such reminders to a greater or lesser extent.  Faculty nowadays are faced with so much paperwork / routine correspondence (and are not necessarily trained or culturally aligned to regard such things as being important) that we start to believe also in the converse: what we have heard about once and never been reminded of must not be very important.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just now I got a second email from a secretary in my department about an annual inventory issue.  She sent the first email just a few days before and included a hard deadline in both emails. In other words, she knows all the tricks to get faculty to do things without causing resentment.  The keys: be polite but persistent, and make the convergence to the deadline clear by ramping up the email reminders accordingly.  It really works: pardon me while I run down to her office so she can tag my laptop! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T16:06:28.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28270" CreationDate="2014-09-10T17:13:21.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might read these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the student is unsure of which supervisor to contact, he or she may first contact the research coordinator of the department who will steer the student in the right direction. Generally, a supervisor is a professor and/or principal investigator employed by the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the research coordinator at first and kindly follow these steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare your research proposal and CV that state your research interest.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write an email that explains these points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State your intention to apply to his/her University. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why you apply to his/her University?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform them that his/her&#xA;publications caught your attention.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain your research plan, inform them that you attached your research proposals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State your appreciation if they give their guidance.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait for response from them. If their response is positive, they will be questioning you more detail about your research as part of the pre-selection process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10804" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T17:24:23.437" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T17:24:23.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28270" CreationDate="2014-09-10T18:02:43.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a specific potential advisor at a university, start by sending a brief (and polite, of course) email. Ask whether she would be willing to take a new student and say a few words about your background (what you did in your bachelor/master, where and with whom). Thus you can show that your background is compatible with the advisor's research. If you manage to add a few words about how you liked something specific about the advisor's recent work, that will certainly be a big plus. End by thanking the supervisor for her time and say that you are ready to provide more info if necessary. The advisor can then help you get through the formalities if she sees a potential in you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8164" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T18:02:43.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28339" CreationDate="2014-09-10T18:25:13.623" Score="109" ViewCount="32352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in a class in my major that meets for 50 minutes 3 times a week. Meanwhile, I'm a member of a campus club, unrelated to my major, which meets right after this class one day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor has decided that he should have the students stay an extra 30-45 minutes after class on the day of the meetings so that he can continue to teach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm the only one in the class who has voted against this, which makes me uncomfortable, because I'm what's forcing the class to have a faster pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right in being outraged? Is it not the professor's job to teach the necessary course material in the time allotted, as opposed to having students stay late for no credit? Should I cave in and just not go to the club meetings? They're not important for my major, and I'm not an officer, but I immensely enjoy them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've been asked in the comments why my professor is doing this.  It has to do with the pacing of the course--if we had to stick to 50 minutes 3 times a week, then the pace would have to be much faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21694" LastEditorUserId="21694" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T16:16:05.693" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T02:31:55.447" Title="Is it reasonable for a professor to ask students to stay 30-45 minutes past scheduled class time every week?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-10T18:40:20.193" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to SE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I right in being outraged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't think so. The professor offered to spend some of his personal time to teach you something more in depth. He offered it and you declined it and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it not the professor's job to teach the necessary course material&#xA;  in the time allotted, as opposed to having students stay late for no&#xA;  credit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just look at it in a different way: He is helping you to learn and therefore you are replacing learning at home with learning in class (with the help of the professor). I still think it is a great offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I cave in and just not go to math club meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't (and shouldn't) evaluate how important your math club meetings are. If you think they are more important than the better learning for your and your fellow students, go to your math club.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another note: isn't it possible to change the time of the math club by half an hour or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T18:40:20.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T19:01:44.737" Score="18" ViewCount="1905" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a tenure-track professor finishes their initial 6 year evaluatory period, I imagine their publication/teaching/grant record should pretty much speak for itself to a tenure committee.  Apparently, as I have recently found out, some departments additionally require a tenure defense talk at the end of this period.  It seems to me that this talk is something akin to a dissertation defense, only on a grander scale of all the research I've done over the initial 6 year period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my question is:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is it even necessary?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be expected from such a talk that wouldn't be readily and easily obtainable from the submitted tenure package?  Is it just a formality or  does it really hold an important weight in the tenure committee's final evaluation to keep me?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just rehash and summarize what is already in my tenure submission package?   Is there something more to it that I should emphasize in my tenure defense talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="931" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T21:05:39.113" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T00:42:21.743" Title="Why is a tenure defense talk necessary?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2014-09-10T19:10:49.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no legitimate reason for selling past exams. It seems a pretty clear case of collusion with the intent of giving another student an unfair advantage, albeit indirectly. The question, in my mind, is does your university policy allow for this particular type of misconduct to be penalised. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/academicservices/qualitymanual/assessmentandawards/academic-misconduct.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;policy at the University of Nottingham&lt;/a&gt; is sufficiently vague:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.1 The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples of academic misconduct which will be considered under these Regulations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically this means students cannot claim that we didn't tell them they couldn't do something. We reuse exams and essay and have had a number of cases in the past that we have followed up on. We have had enough of these cases that we have discussed the hypothetical situations to help us clarify our internal and somewhat private policy. The case we dread is when the materials are posted to a personal website to advertise the quality of the student's academic performance with appropriate disclaimers that the work should not be reused. This seems to us to be a legitimate reason to post the material and therefore probably not misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T19:10:49.753" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27945" CreationDate="2014-09-10T20:09:13.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to search the publisher of the impact factor's website which indexes the journals or even the journal's websites themselves in which their IF is written. However, if I want to answer your question; I found one website which may help you the way you want to search for impact factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched over the net and only found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.impactfactorsearch.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Impact Factor Search website&lt;/a&gt; in which you have to enter the journal's full title (seems simpler than uploading the bibtex information) and by clicking on the provided link, a search list will appear to you. You then have to choose the name of the journal you want to get information about and in the output's window you will have the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;JOURNAL NAME:&#xA;&#xA;ABBREVIATION:&#xA;&#xA;IMPACT FACTOR 2013:&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website currently prints the most up-to-date IF, for the year 2013, and is ready to support IF for the year 2014 too &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.impactfactorsearch.com/newdata.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as the latest data become available&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T15:21:28.077" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:21:28.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28316" CreationDate="2014-09-10T20:23:01.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As my experiences, you should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the tricky are, before you remind his/her about their &quot;promises&quot; to support you, in your email, inform him/her your little progress about your proposed research. This can be your opinion about some paper that you used as evidence. Better if you make something so called prototype. After it, change the discussion about your last email. Just ask about his/her opinion what should you do next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10804" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T20:23:01.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2014-09-10T21:20:01.710" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, we now have two opposing views, so I'll add a third: &lt;strong&gt;Neither.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that either the editor or the reviewer has a responsibility to try to detect plagiarism.  When I read a journal, I don't assume that anyone has taken explicit steps to check for plagiarism.  I don't see it as incumbent on either of them to take steps like matching against a database of previous papers (indeed I think such things cause more trouble than they are worth; see arXiv's &quot;textual overlap&quot; detector).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a plagiarized paper should make it into print, I blame the author, but I don't blame the editor or referee for not catching it.  They are victims of the plagiarist, along with the rest of the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referee is typically asked to judge the novelty of the paper, so they should be reasonably familiar with the existing literature (if not, they should decline to review the paper).  If the paper seems very reminiscent of a paper they've seen before, then they should certainly compare them, but not so much to check for plagiarism as to better understand the innovations of the new paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the referee certainly has a responsibility to &lt;em&gt;report&lt;/em&gt; plagiarism if they do notice it, and the editor has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate any reports or allegations of plagiarism, and take prompt and decisive action if warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T21:20:01.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28324" CreationDate="2014-09-10T22:55:03.087" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard of such a thing, which suggests a simple answer: an oral tenure defense is not necessary.  But regardless of whether it's necessary in some abstract sense, it might be a requirement wherever you end up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that your tenure defense would be a grueling affair, with the audience trying to poke holes in your research or dispute its significance, but I very much doubt it.  At worst you could expect the same treatment as an outside candidate giving an interview talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tenure defense is presumably intended to give you a chance to explain your research program, specifically what you have done and why it matters.  This is in principle redundant (your tenure file should already do this), but adding an oral presentation could help.  It's often inspiring to see someone present their own work, and it can be valuable to have a chance to ask questions.  In cases where tenure seems likely, the presentation could also play the role of an inaugural lecture, highlighting for the department the work of someone who is about to become a permanent colleague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This practice seems uncommon enough that I doubt there's a clear standard for exactly what it means.  Anyone considering taking a tenure-track job with a tenure defense presentation at the end should ask how it works at that particular institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I imagine their publication/teaching/grant record should pretty much speak for itself to a tenure committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publication records can speak surprisingly unclearly.  A non-expert reading through someone's papers won't necessarily appreciate their novelty or how they contribute to the big picture, and may not even understand clearly how they fit together into a coherent research program.  Keep in mind that most people evaluating a tenure case will be non-experts: even other department members will typically have different specialties, and that's not counting university-wide committees or administrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One crucial part of preparing a compelling tenure case is sorting out these issues and framing everything appropriately.  This is done partly by the candidate, partly by whoever is overseeing the case (typically the department head), and partly by the letter writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this perspective, something more than just a binder full of papers is definitely necessary.  However, the added context is typically supplied through written documents; if there is an oral presentation, then it is just to supplement the written file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T22:55:03.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28377" CreationDate="2014-09-10T23:34:55.833" Score="9" ViewCount="10610" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 2nd year graduate student in physics, at one of the top 20 universities in the US. This semester, I am supposed to start a research project with a professor who agreed already to be my thesis advisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I emailed her at the beginning of the semester -10 days ago- but I didn't get a response yet. Nothing. I emailed her again yesterday and I hope for a response. I tried to go to her office, but I couldn't find her. She comes to the university only to teach and then she disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really worried. Is this normal or is this a sign that the advisor doesn't care at all? Should I try and change advisor? She is a top scientist but I am very disappointed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21702" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T19:33:23.907" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T07:56:37.573" Title="My new advisor didn't reply to my email, is it a sign that she doesn't care?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28354" CreationDate="2014-09-11T00:17:58.043" Score="89" ViewCount="8389" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, here is a major issue I have with much of my work (which is experimental/computational research): I am a graduate student, and spend much of my day doing 5, 10, 20 and 30 minute experiments (both biological and computational), which require set up and monitoring, but result in small to medium size hunks of time when I'm really not doing much (essentially just checking every 1-2 minutes to make sure everything is still working). During these periods of time I either a) attempt to do other work or b) procrastinate. Both are not great, since either a) I'm constantly shifting my focus from the latter project and end up making mistakes in it or b) I'm procrastinate (usually by reading articles, twitter, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have advice for how to deal with these small, awkward period of times (&amp;lt; 30 minutes) - is there something which you find useful to do that you can also shift your focus from incessantly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/303/&quot;&gt;http://xkcd.com/303/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T03:34:56.787" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:03:30.687" Title="What productive academic work can you do with minimal attention in a small (&lt;30 minutes) block of time?" Tags="&lt;productivity&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="48" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28336" CreationDate="2014-09-11T00:32:05.150" Score="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that you can't do something that requires your full attention during this time, I would at least advise to follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/#procrastinate-productively&quot;&gt;Matt Might's advice&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;em&gt;procrastinate productively&lt;/em&gt; on meta-work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read articles (or answers on Academia.SE!) about how to be more productive as a grad student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a few pages of a book on data analysis, visualization, academic writing, or some other research skill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the time to review your schedule, make to-do lists, schedule a meeting, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try a relevant Coursera course that has video lectures broken into small bits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put some thought into a tiny bite-sized aspect of your research or research presentation: How should I organize this manuscript? What is the best way to visualize this data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unfocused literature search: check in on your favorite journals or conferences and identify interesting papers (to read later, when you can give them your full attention)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a favor for someone else: Even if you're not teaching or grading this semester, I'm sure &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; in your department is, and would be happy to give you a pile of quizzes to grade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update your CV and/or web page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start preparing a presentation on your current work. You'll present it to someone, somewhere sooner or later, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about your ultimate career goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the Internet to look for promising potential collaborators at other institutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try out a new programming trick, LaTeX package, or software tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T12:39:17.583" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T12:39:17.583" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28324" CreationDate="2014-09-11T00:42:21.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not seen any case (in my U.S. -based experience in mathematics) where the junior faculty person up for tenure had to present a summary of their own work, in effect &quot;defending&quot; it as one &quot;defends&quot; the Ph.D. thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have witnessed many cases where a more senior person with expertise in the tenure candidate's work was asked to describe/explain it, or, really, its significance, to the tenure committee (prior to having the full math faculty vote). But in all the cases I've seen, from both sides, the tone was informational, not confrontational or adversarial. And the candidate was absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The necessity of &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; sort of tenure-defense talk is exactly that the body of work itself is hard to understand, the letters of recommendation are inevitably severely tainted by political gamesmanship and circumlocution and conceivably bias, and, thus, in the end, a local opinion+explanation from someone trusted by the tenure committee is highly desirable... despite all the formal procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm inclined to wonder whether the question's premise is partly based on inaccurate gossip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T00:42:21.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-11T00:52:36.750" Score="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm going to be the contrary opinion here. I don't think your professor's request is reasonable at all. Class time is scheduled the way it is so that people can plan the rest of their lives around the schedule. In this case, nobody but you seems to have anything from 12:50 on, but that shouldn't encourage the prof to monopolize that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may think your extracurricular activity is trivial or that you should skip it, but that math club could easily have been another class or your job. The professor is in a position of power, and he should respect his position by not trying to compel you to work outside the system because it's convenient to him. Several of your peers may actually appreciate that you're the lone hold out even if they won't ever admit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have no problem with the prof offering extra sessions where no required material was covered. This could be extra practice working example problems or a Q&amp;amp;A session to clear up anything confusing from class. That being said, I think professors should be held to teaching the required stuff in the allotted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T00:52:36.750" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T01:12:21.160" Score="2" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had contacted a potential supervisor and got a positive response from him. He said that he is interested but he said we should do a skype interview first. He also stated that he is moving to another university in 4 weeks and explained a few conditions and asked if I am still interested. I had no issue with the place or university since I am interested to work with him so I replied and sent my skype id for interview. Its been a week and I haven't heard back from him. I think he might be busy as he said that he will be moving to some other university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shall I write him again and if yes how do I start the conversation again or shall I wait for his response?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21310" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T10:11:03.877" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T10:11:03.877" Title="What to do when haven't heard back from potential supervisor who is moving?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28340" CreationDate="2014-09-11T01:21:06.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wait a month before asking again, maybe longer because he is moving. Generally a month is a good time to wait even if he wasn't moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still plenty of time to get your application in and have a Skype interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The start of the semester is one of the busiest times in the year for an academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He probably gets a lot of emails from prospective students, plus he has to set everything else up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T01:21:06.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28340" CreationDate="2014-09-11T01:58:08.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot agree with Neo: one month is awful long time in any conversation, and I would take that long wait only if explicitly said to contact months later. Long time is a problem because 1) he forgets what was it about, 2) it can give the impression that OP is maybe not that enthusiastic about the opportunity, 3) in a month a lot of things can happen with an open position.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People can forget mails, or not answer even if they not forget them, especially if he is busy and not you are his first priority. Just send him a polite follow up email: remind him in the first sentence or two about your discussion and he was positive about you. Then ask about the Skype interview, how you can roll this etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are afraid that he is busy and you are too pushy, you can just state that you know he is busy so if he wants to postpone this conversation / scheduling the interview after his move, you are totally fine (are you? do you have any deadlines to care for?). If this latter happens, still ask that you will follow him up a month etc. later, if it is good for him. Busy people dont like to be pushed in a schedule, but if no one sets expectations for a schedule (any schedule that convenient for him), nothing will be done and also kind of unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I assume this story is about US. Different countries call for different level pushiness.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T01:58:08.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28345" CreationDate="2014-09-11T01:58:57.917" Score="26" ViewCount="75417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know, since I am not a native English speaker, whether or not it is appropriate to reply to a thank-you email from a professor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if every time you get an email from a professor saying &quot;Thanks,&quot; you reply &quot;no problem&quot; or &quot;you are welcome.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it turn out to be annoying or offending if one replies to every &quot;thank you&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized sometimes misunderstanding may unnecessarily arise because of cultural differences. If one does not reply to a thank-you email from a professor, then would the professor be accordingly offended? On the other hand, if one constantly reply &quot;you are welcome&quot; or something like this, would he be instead considered prudish? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="18107" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T02:46:37.030" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T08:36:21.407" Title="Is it appropriate to reply every time to a professor's &quot;thank you&quot; email?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2014-09-11T02:24:21.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Apparently, I'm wrong, and some professors write a lot more &quot;thank you&quot; emails than I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you mean &quot;Is it appropriate to send a thank-you email in response to every email from a professor,&quot; and I'm answering that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on the professor, but I think it's a reasonable approach toconsistently send a short reply to acknowledge emails from a professor.  It doesn't have to necessarily be a thank you (for example, if setting up a meeting, you can just write &quot;See you there.&quot;, but it's always helpful to receive a reply showing you an email was read.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T02:24:21.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2014-09-11T02:45:55.000" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Email exchanges need to end at some point.&#xA;If the professor's email is a simple receipt of correspondence, then I don't think there's a need to reply. However, if the professor has initiated a larger email then a reply is probably appropriate. See these examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Thanks sent as a form of receipt:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student&lt;/strong&gt;: Hi Professor Smith,&#xA;  I've run the analyses you have suggested (see attached),&#xA;  Cheers,&#xA;  Mike&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the professor replies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pofessor Smith:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks for that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think there is no need for the student to reply &quot;You're welcome&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be a big problem, but it would be mildly distracting for the professor. Email exchanges need to end. The professor's &quot;thank you email&quot; was already a confirmation email indicating receipt of your original message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Thanks sent by professor as part of a larger email initiated by the professor&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the professor sends you an email that provides detailed information that also includes a thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professor Smith:&lt;/strong&gt; Hi Mike, well done on your work in the lab the other day. You did a really good job of fixing that equipment. I really appreciate it.&#xA;  Cheers,&#xA;  Professor Smith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case it might be appropriate for the student to reply: &quot;you're welcome&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T02:45:55.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28346" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T03:05:50.053" Score="49" ViewCount="5071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a field that heavily uses arxiv.org and posts papers before submitting them to journals, so it's common for people to send a citation request when they see a preprint that they think has overlooked their work. I do this pretty rarely, because I think it's often abused by people looking to pad their citation count by asking for citations from work that's only marginally related. Still, when I see work that &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; closely resembles something I've done, I generally send an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what to do when a paper appears that is very closely related to my work, has not cited me, and it was clearly &lt;em&gt;intentional&lt;/em&gt;. In this case one of the authors had a previous paper that followed up on--and cited--one of my papers, so I know they were aware of my work in the past. Furthermore, in their current paper they use a technical term that I introduced. There is no possible way that they could have written their current paper without being aware of its close relationship to my work, but they haven't cited my papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, the usual email of the form &quot;I have read your interesting new paper and wanted to make you aware of my related work&quot; would be so disingenuous as to be ridiculous: they are clearly already aware of my related work. I can only conclude that they have intentionally chosen not to cite it. All of my encounters with these authors in the past have been friendly, at least from my perspective, so I can't imagine any interpersonal conflict that's behind the omission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar thing happened to me once before when some authors wrote a paper that had enormous overlap with one of my papers, which they cited, and they corrected, in passing, a minor technical mistake that didn't change any significant conclusions. Subsequently they built a minor industry on this work but never again referred to my previous work, with the result that their papers that were only a very minor improvement on mine have been cited several hundred times more than my paper has. So I may be overly touchy about this sort of possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm inclined to do nothing, because any message I could imagine sending them would come across as either disingenuous or combative. But I wonder if anyone has a suggestion for dealing with this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21707" LastActivityDate="2020-10-26T17:28:26.780" Title="How to respond to intentional lack of citation?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28315" CreationDate="2014-09-11T03:30:29.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it will make it harder to get a job as a professor of computer science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A distance learning PhD is not well suited for learning certain skills that one would learn in a traditional PhD, as described in more detail at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21672/are-there-any-aspects-of-phd-work-that-do-not-translate-well-to-distance-learnin&quot;&gt;Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?&lt;/a&gt;. Some of these skills are important for getting a job as a professor and/or doing the job of a professor. For example, you would not get any teaching experience in a distance learning course, and most faculty applicants are expected to have at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; teaching experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, by doing a PhD by distance learning, you miss out on a lot of the networking and exposure to other academics that happens in a good computer science PhD program. This plays a major role in getting a faculty job afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception to this is if you were to get a job where the PhD is necessary only as a formality. For example, if you are already so well known in your field that every university wants to hire you, but can't because their HR departments insist that faculty candidates must have a PhD, then a distance learning PhD might be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T03:44:29.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-11T05:15:38.853" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a strange situation: three out of the four answers so far express what is in my experience a very nonstandard view.  Admittedly Bill Barth's answer is by far the most highly upvoted.  But I think it is worth recording another opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as for so many questions on this site, context matters.  It sounds to me like the OP is an undergraduate at a North American college or university.  My answer will apply to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a university (and at all but the smallest colleges), scheduling classes is a major production.  It is done at least a semester and often a year (or more) in advance, and a lot of time and effort go into crafting a schedule which makes the best possible use of limited resources: classrooms, peak hours, people's time, and so forth.  Moreover the total amount of class time is also fixed in advance and has an official status as the number of &lt;strong&gt;credit hours&lt;/strong&gt; for the course.  The number of credit hours is meant to be correlated to the amount of material covered.  In practice this means little in an absolute sense and one course can certainly be much more or less ambitious than another, but carries a meaning across different sections of the same course and within the course offerings of a given department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I right in being outraged? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outraged is a strong word, but the OP is right to disapprove of the practice and perfectly within his rights to object to it. I do not find the professor's request reasonable.  In fact I find it very surprising that in an entire class of students, only one other student has an extra 30-45 minutes in their schedule on Friday afternoons at 1 pm: this is typically &quot;peak class time&quot;. (I wonder if there is some missing context here: e.g. maybe the other students form a cohort who are all taking the same courses scheduled at the same time.  That makes some difference, but not enough to change my answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP has made his schedule for the entire semester in advance and has signed up for the class assuming that it will meet at a certain time, which was fixed by the registrar in advance.  He has a legitimate conflict with staying an extra 30-45 minutes.  This conflict is academic in nature and it involves students other than those taking the professor's course.  (In my experience with academic culture, it is obnoxious to try to get someone else's academic event rescheduled because you want to change the schedule of your own academic event.  It is in the nature of a university that all of its participants are engaged in multiple events.  We schedule things well in advance precisely to avoid conflicts like this.)  However, even without a specific academic conflict the OP should feel free to veto the request: if e.g. he has made a schedule where he leaves campus at 1 pm, that would be reason enough to object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it not the professor's job to teach the necessary course material in the time allotted, as opposed to having students stay late for no credit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is!  I agree precisely.  Something is not adding up here: the course is a standard, required one for the major, so it has presumably been given many times before by other instructors and there is a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; standard expectation for its content, as detailed in e.g. an official course description.  Of course the instructor of a course should have some leeway in the choice of topics and even the intensity of the course....but not &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt; leeway.  This instructor is proposing to increase the class time by about 25%: why is this necessary?  If he is covering 25% more material than is standard, that's potentially problematic.  If he takes 25% more time to cover the material than is standard, that is also problematic.  Again some context is lacking, but as described the instructor seems to be having some serious problems &quot;coloring between the lines&quot;.  The OP should not have to adjust his schedule on account of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly think that almost any higher up university official -- the department head, the registrar, a dean -- would be chagrined to hear about what the instructor is proposing.  At least that's the case in the university culture I'm familiar with.  If the OP has a faculty contact (in any department) he is comfortable talking informally with, I would recommend broaching the issue and seeing what the faculty member has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T05:38:16.553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T05:38:16.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28346" CreationDate="2014-09-11T05:22:25.830" Score="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the details of your case, but in any case like this I tend to liberally apply &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon&amp;#39;s_razor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hanlon's Razor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does sound as if they know about your paper, but it seems to me entirely possible that they could have intended to cite it and accidentally omitted to actually do so.  I think you can contact them tactfully and point out that the original source for the technical term is your paper (give the complete reference).  They will probably reply with an apology for the oversight.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be even more circumspect, you could ask a colleague in your subfield to contact them. (&quot;I saw your preprint and it looks interesting.  The paper of Anonymous looks very relevant.  Do you think you should cite it?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been guilty of such an accident myself.  I use BiBTeX to manage citations. I have a large file containing an entry for every paper I've ever considered citing.  Then for each paper I write, I include inline citations where they belong, and BiBTeX automatically picks the papers I've cited and generates the list of references.  In the case in question, I wanted to cite paper X in two places: in the introduction (as background) and in a specific technical passage.  I neglected to cite it in the introduction, but since it was also cited in the technical passage, paper X still appeared in the list of references, so when I saw it there I thought to myself &quot;Good, I remembered to cite X.&quot;  Then in a later edit I changed the technical passage in such a way that X was no longer directly relevant there, so I removed that citation, thinking it was also cited elsewhere in the paper.  It wasn't, so BiBTeX accordingly removed it from the list of references, and it might certainly have looked to anyone as though I had intentionally failed to cite X (which was a well-known paper and clearly relevant).  The omission made it into a public preprint and was pointed out by a colleague (though not the author of paper X; he is long deceased), fortunately before the paper was submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was clearly my responsibility to have caught this and cited X correctly, and technical issues do not excuse my failure to do so, but I mention this as a specific example where such an error was due to stupidity rather than malice, and as evidence that the former could be an adequate explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="42498" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T14:13:39.483" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T14:13:39.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2014-09-11T05:54:51.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the entire content of response is &quot;&lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; there is absolutely no expectation that you will respond to those emails with &quot;&lt;em&gt;you're welcome&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;no problem&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or anything else. As I've used them, the point of the &quot;&lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt;&quot; email is usually just to acknowledge that the email being replied to you has been received and read. There is no need to acknowledge the acknowledgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, an email reply that consists only of &quot;&lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt;&quot; can be used as an invitation to end an email thread. Saying your &quot;&lt;em&gt;you're welcome&lt;/em&gt;&quot; will be read as polite but it might get annoying if it seems like you are always trying to get the last word on every thread. If it's really just &quot;&lt;em&gt;thank you&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, you can safely skip the reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T05:54:51.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28336" CreationDate="2014-09-11T07:05:43.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great deal of things we have already learnt are slowly being lost by our brains. &lt;strong&gt;Small chunks of time like this are ideal for a bit of memory consolidation&lt;/strong&gt;. I would suggest a quick revision session on things you want to know better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best to select knowledge that will be &lt;strong&gt;most useful if remembered&lt;/strong&gt;. Ignore any knowledge that is easier to just look up on Google (e.g. 5 Biggest Cities) and focus on knowledge that will help in your day-to-day (e.g. Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to create a summary of key information for learning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the 'bits' of information small and 'easily learnable'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a dot-point summary of a topic you wish to understand better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight favourite passages on your Kindle then download them from &lt;a href=&quot;https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights&quot;&gt;kindle.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look up book summaries from websites like getabstract.com&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Evernote to collect information you wish to learn in notebooks (their Web Clipper is  awesome)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you have a summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use small chunks of time to review the material&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't spend too long or your brain will switch off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Spaced Repetition methods&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Material you find &lt;strong&gt;hard&lt;/strong&gt; to learn should be repeated more often&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Material you find &lt;strong&gt;easy&lt;/strong&gt; should be repeated less&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to wait between sessions to allow it to sink in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer/Self-Promotion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the creator of &lt;a href=&quot;http://revisy.com/&quot;&gt;www.revisy.com&lt;/a&gt; - a tool that helps automate all of these steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21712" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T07:05:43.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28355" CreationDate="2014-09-11T08:33:18.743" Score="8" ViewCount="1989" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now working towards my PhD degree. In the very near future, I will have a citizenship change, which also leads to a name change. In detail, I am adding another given name to my current name with the original surname and given name untouched. So it's like going from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FirstName1 LastName&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FirstName2 FirstName1 LastName&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already have some publications under my current name, &lt;code&gt;FirstName1 LastName&lt;/code&gt;, which I do not wish to lose after my name change. At the very start of my PhD, my supervisor has advised me to stay consistent with the name for a better recognition in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to minimize my loss of recognition in the academia? Will the publication stats tools, such as Google Scholar, include my publications under my new profile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8079" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:00:30.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:00:30.697" Title="Name change during the course of PhD?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;personal-name&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-09-11T19:42:22.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28336" CreationDate="2014-09-11T09:09:29.727" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;ff524's answer is awesome as usual, but the core problem for you may be that most of these suggestions are not, or at least not directly, useful to your research. If, as you say, &lt;strong&gt;most of your day&lt;/strong&gt; is spent in this way, even &quot;productive procrastination&quot; may be too much procrastination and too little actual progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn how to get actual work done in those short chunks.&lt;/strong&gt; Being able to context-switch without getting thrown off completely is definitely a skill that can be learned. You will probably never get as efficient as when you can devote your full attention to the task, and you will likely need to double-check what you did while multi-tasking, but getting things done slower than usual is much better than not getting anything done at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automate better&lt;/strong&gt; (and, hence, increase the time between needing to check up on your results). In my experience, if you need to actually check every other minute or so what your experiments are doing, then your tooling is not good enough. Many things can be scripted so that they basically run from beginning to end on their own. Further, you can configure a system monitoring tool so that it (for instance) sends you an email when something abnormal happens. Of course this requires non-trivial IT skills, but in my experience most students working in experimental sciences are able to grok these things quite quickly if they devote a few days to it (believe me, the time necessary to learn how to automate pays off manifold in the long run).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, you probably want to go for a combination of both of these options. Try to increase the time your experiments are chugging along on their own. In parallel, train making the best use out of this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This question has been added by the OP in a comment. I think it is interesting, hence I added it to my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what can you do in the case of active code development? For example, when I am actively developing a piece of code to analyze data, that code may take a few minutes (up to 10) to run, after which I assess if it is working. How do you automate that process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has actually more to do with standard software engineering practices than the sciences, but I think it is a helpful concept nonetheless. When you are trying out different implementations, with a large possibility of error, make sure that your application &lt;strong&gt;fails fast&lt;/strong&gt;. That is, make it so that your application does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; take ten minutes to fail, but does the complex, error-prone stuff directly in the beginning. Two simple examples from my own research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Say you do research in Machine Learning. Your application first trains an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network&quot;&gt;artificial neural network&lt;/a&gt; (ANN) on your data (easy as you are using an external library, but takes ~15 minutes due to algorithmic complexity), after which you do some postprocessing (trivial, executes fast) and a statistical analysis of the results (executes fast as well, but relatively complex, error-prone code). If you now always run the entire application and have the code fail during the statistical analysis, you are always losing 15 minutes for every run for a step that you already know works. A better solution would be to train the model once, and store it to disk. Then write code that only loads the ANN from disk and &lt;em&gt;fails directly after that&lt;/em&gt;. Almost no dead time anymore. When the statistical analysis is working, you can revert to do everything in the expected order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You have written a complex, multi-threaded testbed, which is running distributed over multiple physical servers. You know you have a synchronization issue somewhere, as your application non-deterministically dies every couple of minutes. You have no idea where exactly. Hence, you repeatedly execute the entire application, wait for the error to happen, and then debug from there in different directions. Given that the error only happens every few minutes, you spend most of your time waiting. A better way is to take a page out of good software engineering practices. Make sure to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing&quot;&gt;unit test&lt;/a&gt; all components in isolation before throwing everything together. Specifically try to cover exceptional cases. Learn how to write good &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_object&quot;&gt;mock objects&lt;/a&gt;. Some amount of debugging of the integration system will still be necessary, but you will not spend hours debugging components that are fundamentally broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T19:18:26.037" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:18:26.037" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28353" CreationDate="2014-09-11T09:12:04.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend sticking with what you started using, since there is no real advantage not to. That said, if you really want to change I don't think a change in &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; name will affect you much. Depending on the citation style, the name change won't even be visible. I don't think this particular change is anywhere near a change of last name in terms of impact on your popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to Google Scholar: you can always add your new publications manually to your profile in the unlikely case that scholar borks, so that's not an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7173" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T09:12:04.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-11T10:14:26.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Courses and their timings will usually be organised so that students having to attend to multiple related courses can attend to all of them. Of course only the &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; time is organised that way, unofficial time can't be organised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what if some maths professor decides that his course on Friday from 11am to 11:50am should be an hour longer? Now the professor running the circuits class would be outraged if everyone comes late to his course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11873" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T10:14:26.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28346" CreationDate="2014-09-11T12:00:27.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like the best you can do is send them a note while it's still at the pre-publication stage. If it appears in a journal or you are asked to review it, you should note it to the editor. Given that you invented the terminology, I'd be surprised if you weren't asked to review it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T12:00:27.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28445" CreationDate="2014-09-11T12:01:16.303" Score="15" ViewCount="1595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was torn between workplace and here, but I think the question is better here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an assistant researcher that I have indirectly worked with for 3 months, and for the past month have hired directly for a research project full time (they are not taking classes for 6 months to work on my project).  Recently the student informed me they have narcolepsy, and feel it may interfere with their work but would 'like me to understand'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important aspect to this is, I do not need advice on legal matters in terms of workplace disabilities etc. (which is why I believe this is not appropriate for workplace), as I have already spoken with HR and I am in a country in which an employer has the power (ie. they told me I can just fire the student, in fact, they were a bit too keen on this, not that I agree with this system at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit different than a physical disability in terms of accessibility, and I don't think it is that comparable to a learning disability as they have no understanding or application hindrance with this one caveat of random extreme lethargic feelings or tiredness.  The closest I can think of is insomnia.  In that type of situation, I could encourage the student to work hours that benefit their sleep schedule as long as they are responsible with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had experience with a student researcher with this type of disability?  Are there strategies that can help the student perform well?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&#xA;The type of work is programming and algorithms.  There are no safety concerns relative to the lab work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T10:00:44.853" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T06:14:55.407" Title="How to help a student researcher with narcolepsy continue research" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;&lt;disability&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28379" CreationDate="2014-09-11T12:24:39.690" Score="4" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading the guidelines for authors on a research journal which is part of Wiley. In the guidelines for authors it is only mentioned it should be submitted in Word format but nothing about font, font size, and if it should be already in two-column format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it says figures should go at the end of the Word file, but I want to insert two figures in the same page to avoid paying twice the color page charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this supposed to be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4050" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:08:43.007" Title="Do manuscripts sent for submission in Word format need to be already in two column or a specific font?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;formatting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2014-09-11T12:51:40.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am from Africa. None of my degrees (Bachelors or Masters) were recognized in the UK, leaving me with no choice but to study for the same degrees again. Not sure if this applies to PhDs, but I can imagine a similar situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21730" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T13:49:50.370" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T13:49:50.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28359" CreationDate="2014-09-11T12:52:08.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be no direct help, but I knew a narcoleptic in high-school. This is a serious condition. Because of the main symptom, excessive daytime sleepiness, it is very hard for affected individuals to remain alert and direct their focus to tasks such is studying. reading, etc. For comparison, wikipedia says, that narcoleptics feel during the day &quot;comparable to how non-narcoleptics feel after 24 to 48 hours of sleep deprivation&quot; (try to imagine how it would feel like to perform under those circumstances). This is obviously a great hindrance to people in general, but perhaps even more so for academics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it is very important that affected individuals manage somehow to cope with the condition (which is very hard, serious lifestyle changes/adaptions are necessary), as an excessive use of stimulants may worsen the condition over time. I find this an important point, since people in academia are known to be subjects to stress, depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, imposter syndrome, etc, which all could push the student in question to increasingly use the therapeutic stimulants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my opinion, if the individual is responsible and has a relatively stable personality, I see no problem in supporting them in their endeavor, by trying to (reasonably) adjust their working environment to their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a strong proponent to inclusion of disabled individuals, so I suggest you should let the student finish the said project, so they might get a feel themselves, if that is really their future. A career in academia isn't for everyone, so there is no shame in quitting and moving on, regardless of any medical condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T12:52:08.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28363" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28364" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" Score="0" Body="On earning a second degree at the same level as a degree you already hold (i.e. a second bachelors, second masters, or second PhD)." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T13:14:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28360" CreationDate="2014-09-11T13:14:58.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The review formatting and the final, camera-ready formatting are often quite different. You will probably get a chance to reformat it for publication after it is reviewed. If you have any doubt about that, you should contact the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T13:14:58.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T13:15:49.517" Score="2" ViewCount="3801" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goal is to become a professor in neuroscience. At the moment I have a master's degree in computer science. During my studies, I did research in neuroscience but from a computational aspect. I succeeded in publishing two papers during the program. I am mostly interested in clinical neuroscience. Therefore, there are two questions I would need an answer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the degree MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) allow me work as a doctor? Treat patients? And, most importantly, &lt;em&gt;run clinical studies as the person in charge&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I get the medical degree before or after doing a science PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems there are some PhD/MD programs (I don't understand the difference between MD and MBBS) but they would take +9 years in most places. Doing a PhD and medical degree separately seems to be a faster route (3 year PhD and 4 year MBBS, if this MBBS is sufficient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate any help, there's a huge amount of variation in information I can find from the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21732" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T06:18:53.237" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:22:58.390" Title="Should I do an MBBS before/after taking a doctoral program in neuroscience?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;science&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;sweden&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12862" CreationDate="2014-09-11T14:10:44.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched for your question and found these content which may help you. I found that, in citation of web pages or online resources, it is &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; (not a must) to cite with the updated date and the date when the reader has accessed the online content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this web pages about &lt;a href=&quot;http://ia.juniata.edu/citation/apa/apa05.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ia.juniata.edu/citation/chicago_notes/chicago-online.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chigago&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ia.juniata.edu/citation/cse/cse05.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CSE&lt;/a&gt; styles, under the &lt;em&gt;update date&lt;/em&gt; it is written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This date is when the page was last changed. The last update date of a&#xA;  web page is usually given at the bottom or top of a page.  A posting&#xA;  date may also be given on the page one level higher (such as a page&#xA;  that is an index of articles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a recommendation I read the following content on &lt;a href=&quot;https://library.lafayette.edu/help/citing/webpages&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this webpage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date of publication or date of last revision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The date a Web document was created or last updated is frequently listed at the bottom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If a document includes both a date of creation and a date it was last updated, &lt;em&gt;use only the latter&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that as there is no general rule about the date included in online resources, the writer preferred the revised date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also checked the following book &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;sixteenth edition&lt;/strong&gt;; essential guide for writers, editors and publishers; ebook, The University of Chicago press,&#xA;2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in this section on the 1700th page of the PDF file, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;14: DOCUMENTATIONI: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Chapter Contents &amp;gt;&amp;gt;  &#xA;    Source Citations: An Overview &amp;gt;&amp;gt;  Considerations for Electronic Sources&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the following guide is presented; as we see in the index of the document, this guide applies to &lt;code&gt;websites and web pages&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;14.8 &quot;LAST MODIFIED&quot; AND OTHER REVISION DATES&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some electronic documents will include &lt;em&gt;a date on each page or screen indicating the last time the document was modified or revised&lt;/em&gt;. There are no accepted standards for this practice, and for formally published material the date of publication is generally more important. A revision date should be included, however, if it is presented as the de facto date of publication or is otherwise the only available date. Such dates may be particularly useful for citing wikis and other continuously updated works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary it seems that in the APA style, the preferred date is the update date rather than the publication date in the previous quoted text. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;apastyle website&lt;/a&gt; under a blog content about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/01/the-generic-reference-when.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Generic Reference: When?&lt;/a&gt; we read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Online Documents&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Online material can be tricky to date properly. If the date is not&#xA;  apparent at the beginning of the document you’re citing, look at the&#xA;  end (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/policy/provider-guidelines.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Guidelines for Providers of Psychological Services to Ethnic, Linguistic, and Culturally Diverse Populations&lt;/a&gt; was finalized&#xA;  in 1990, so that’s the date to use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But look out for a footer that says, “This page was last modified on&#xA;  [date].” This is not the date to use! It could be the date that the&#xA;  document was published, but it’s more likely to be the date it was put&#xA;  online or the date when the webmaster added code for a dancing Freud&#xA;  to the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some sites place a copyright date for the website at the bottom of&#xA;  every page. Check a few pages on the site; if the identical statement&#xA;  appears on every page, it’s a site-wide footer, so that’s not the date&#xA;  you’re looking for either. (See &quot;Zip, Zero, Zilch,&quot; below, for the&#xA;  best solution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a conclusion; I found that if you want to cite an online content, pay attention into two dates; the date when you visited the online content and the date the content is created. If you have the date when the content is edited and updated, use this newer date. However, I recommend you to read the instructions of the style which you are using, they may have specific recommendations and guides on this issue. Also, be aware, it happens sometimes that the online content is written on an older date when the website update date is globally mentioned in the footer of the website's pages, you should use the date the page you are referring to is created or edited, not the date all the website is updated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T14:25:54.740" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T14:25:54.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28162" CreationDate="2014-09-11T14:29:33.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, reviews are written at the request of journal editors and are typically not initiated by the person writing them.  My colleagues and I usually write several book reviews every year because our supervisor is on the editorial board of the journal and tells us to write them.  As reviewers, we do receive a free copy of the book, if you consider that an incentive. There is no prestige associated with writing one, and they don't count as publications in our annual performance reviews.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21678" LastEditorUserId="21678" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T23:17:01.267" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T23:17:01.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-11T14:59:52.000" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody's forcing you to stay in your seat. This is a university class, not prison. You are free to quietly pack up you material and walk out to attend to your other commitments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are responsible to cover the material you are missing. You can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to other students in your class to go over the material (this is actually a great way for the other student to reinforce their learning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see the professor during his regular office hours to go over the material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see if you can schedule time with your prof outside of his office hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn it from the textbook on your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to make a big deal out of this situation. Just assert your rights to your professor's published time (office hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21735" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T14:59:52.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28353" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:21:11.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go for the change. Firstly, you want it, so if you stick with the old it's always going to bug you. Secondly, if you don't, you're stuck with a professional and a personal name. Imagine, for instance, that a friend of yours meets a potential contributor and tells him to google you. If the friend doesn't know your professional name, you miss out on a possible network connection. The damage goes both ways. If you change, you only have to worry about past publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mitigate the damage by maintaining a well-curated list of publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sign up for things like a scholar profile, and Mendeley profile. These pages will be spidered by other services, and used to correct their databases. Just add the publications manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a curated database of publications for your field (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBLP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt;) and make sure that all your publications are linked to the same person in there. A decent database should be able to hold aliases for a person. Basically, if you make sure that the most authoritative source gets it right, the information should trickle down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you show some diligence in maintaining this data, and letting people know that some publications are known under a different name, it shouldn't impact your career noticeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6936" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:21:11.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28375" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:31:02.850" Score="4" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a tenure-track Assistant Professor who will be coming up for tenure shortly (5th year) applies for a tenure-track Associate Professor position at another institution, and the other institution is interested in making the hire, what is the relative likelihood of the following scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hired as tenure-track Assistant Professor with shortened tenure clock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hired as tenure-track Associate Professor without tenure, with tenure decision in a few years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hired as tenure-track Associate Professor with tenure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(assuming the candidate's record is tenure-worthy at either institution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T15:44:01.670" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:44:01.670" Title="What level would an assistant professor be hired at, if applying to associate professor position at another institution?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28087" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:36:41.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may be suggesting the obvious but it will depend on your program and your level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a course based masters program with a practical bent I would imagine they would look upon your grades favourably. These tend to include some sort of practical capstone project required to earn the degree. If it's thesis based, it would tend to imply some theoretical work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a PhD, expect theory. Really, why else would they be PhDs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, most of the applications I've seen (and submitted) tend to speak to a well rounded applicant profile. They want to know about the work you've done, volunteer experience, publications, and your academic history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps most importantly in your situation, they tend to want some form of personal statement outlining why you both want and deserve to be in a program. This would be your opportunity to convince them; much like a cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the western world however, and cant speak to institutions beyond that sphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21739" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:36:41.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28373" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:38:50.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on what I've heard and seen, most schools fall into the second pattern, with the first and third happening much less frequently. However, I've known all three possibilities to occur. Ultimately, there is no &quot;most likely&quot; or &quot;least likely&quot; option, as it really depends on the rules for tenure promotions at the individual school at which the applicant is being hired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:38:50.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28360" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:46:56.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common and universally acceptable formatting for scientific manuscripts is Times New Roman, 12 point, 1 inch margins all around, one column. Certainly don't attempt two-column format! That happens much later, during the typesetting process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding figure placement, that is also something to discuss with the editor or copy-editor much later, after the paper is accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now you are preparing the paper to be read by reviewers. They don't care what page your figures are on, and they certainly don't want to deal with two-column formatting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21734" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:46:56.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28335" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:49:14.510" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flippant version: It is normal AND it is a sign that the advisor doesn't care at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less flippant version: I would wait a couple more days. Then, if still no response, I would ask around to see if the professor is sick/having a major life crisis/etc. If not, then I would conclude that they do not meet a reasonable standard of availability, and I would choose to work with someone else. There are few things more depressing in academia than colleagues who drop the ball and ignore you, especially when they are senior to you and you rely on them to make progress on your work. Life is too short to be working with someone who is not interested in working with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21734" LastEditorUserId="21734" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T19:03:40.480" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T19:03:40.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28384" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:50:58.370" Score="7" ViewCount="1375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a masters student in Computer Science. I also work for a software development company which happens to sponsor a scholarship that I want to apply to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was concerned about the ethical aspect of applying to this scholarship, I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply. The answer did not state anything about the second part of my question - would it be unethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know that the CEO of my company will be the head of sponsorship committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just ignore this weird circumstance and write my motivation letter as if there was no connection between my employer and the scholarship? Or should I not even apply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; My initial question had 2 parts so I split it into separate questions. The other question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/33588/how-would-applying-for-a-scholarship-sponsored-by-employer-affect-my-employers&quot; title=&quot;How would applying for a scholarship sponsored by employer affect my employer&amp;#39;s perception of me?&quot;&gt;How would applying for a scholarship sponsored by employer affect my employer's perception of me?&lt;/a&gt;, is posted on Workplace.SE. It is a different question and I expect an answer from a different angle to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21737" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.573" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:47:42.813" Title="Is it ethical to apply to a scholarship sponsored by my employer?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28360" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:08:43.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals typically provides guidelines as to what formats are possible, for example, Word and/or LaTeX for text, eps, pdf, TIFF; JPG etc. for graphics. Wiley, for example, provides a &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guide line&lt;/a&gt; for graphics that is general in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorservices.wiley.com/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Author Services section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adhering to the requested file formats may be quite important although with Wiley, I have noted that they accept common formats for graphics although they are not specifically mentioned in the general guide line. As for formatting of text, I would (as editor for a journal) argue that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should keep it as simple as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not attempt fancy formatting, keep it tidy and readable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure your figures are of good quality and reproduced well in the files you provide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;follow any &lt;em&gt;instructions for authors&lt;/em&gt;, or equivalent, the journal may provide (if such IFAs do not exist, then use a standard font and make, for example headings clearly visible against the main text and check the journal for reference system and formatting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:08:43.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28392" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:14:43.930" Score="0" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've completed my Masters in Computer Science in India. Here we've had no specialization as such and the subjects assigned have been as per University rules. Now I feel the need to specialize in my area of interest and have found Universities in the US that will allow me to choose subjects that align with my interests. Am I eligible for applying to said universities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note - These subjects are still in the Computer Science department in these Universities :( &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the fact that they're in a different country be the exception wherein pursuing a second Masters isn't a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6451" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T04:06:01.700" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T06:45:34.680" Title="Is someone with a masters in CS eligible to apply to a CS masters program in another country?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;second-degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28378" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:20:13.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Companies funding their employee's studies is common and I believe not considered unethical. If you worry about whether employees will be given preferential treatment over non-employees, I'd say it's the scholarship committee's problem, not yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12864" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:20:13.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28378" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:28:17.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be unethical or surprising if, on receipt of the company's scholarship you were offered a work placement with them. For that reason, I don't think you should be concerned about applying &lt;em&gt;through the normal means&lt;/em&gt; as if you were any other applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; make this unethical, would be to turn up for work and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morning CEO! How's the wife and kids? I just got back from my holiday in Scotland, and I thought you might enjoy this whiskey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh -- by the way, I heard about the scholarship you're offering, I'm really interested in applying for that, so I just thought I'd drop off my application. I'll leave it over here with the whiskey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you just apply through the normal process, I do not think anyone can complain of any wrong-doing. I'm sure there's &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; one stage to get your application through before anyone even realises you work there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11896" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:28:17.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27619" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:36:55.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to get second masters degree in a similar or related field. Doing so might even help with getting into a top PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, where you did your master(s) degrees is not the key to the kingdom or even the most important thing in your PhD application. Demonstrating that you are smart, hardworking, and excellent at research should be your goal. Another masters from a &quot;better&quot; University &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; help toward that end but it's hardly the only or best way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on doing excellent research, publishing that work in excellent scholarly venues in your field, and getting excellent letters of recommendation from people that are known and respected in the field. If you do those things, and if you also have good grades and test scores, you'll be a strong candidate for any PhD program. I have seen people build that portfolio as an undergrad, in a masters program, as research staff at a university, or even in industry. What you do matters at least as much as where you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:36:55.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28378" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:42:10.640" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that answers the ethics about it as well. As long as you are open about the fact that you are a company employee, &lt;em&gt;there is no scope for you to violate any ethics&lt;/em&gt;. Any possible violation (which I don't think there are any) would be in the company's hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about this - why is the company offering a scholarship? They probably want the recipient to graduate and then work for the company. Thus by attracting top students to apply for an attractive scholarship, they gain a highly skilled and motivated employee. Sure, the fact that you already work for them might give you an advantage in the application process. But this is a private company giving out privately earned funding. They should be able to pay whomever they choose, for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, there is really little difference between this, and an internal hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:42:10.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28389" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:46:08.697" Score="8" ViewCount="7218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the situation that you get into only your undergrad school and a few much-lower ranked grad schools, what would be the better school to pursue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21743" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T16:47:08.293" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T20:19:59.743" Title="Which is preferable, to go to graduate school at same school as undergrad or to go to a lower-ranked school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28397" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:49:20.603" Score="9" ViewCount="11422" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a reasonable percentage salary increase for tenure and promotion from assistant to associate professor in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21741" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T16:49:43.153" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T16:27:33.313" Title="What is a reasonable percentage salary increase for tenure and promotion" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2014-09-11T17:15:17.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the underlying, and unmentioned, assumption on this statement is that you should not go to the same school as your undergrad, but rather you should go to a BETTER one. This would be consistent with my experience that many, possibly most, faculty at departments that consider themselves to be the best, do not often recommend their students to take a step down to study elsewhere (and if you consider yourself the best, everywhere else is lower).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, graduate school ranking, especially for PhD studies, is a little ridiculous. More important than the rank of your university, school, department, is the reputation of your primary advisor. But even that is not nearly as important as the quality of your research. While better ranked schools/departments/groups tend to have better faculty and resources there is considerable variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T17:15:17.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26068" CreationDate="2014-09-11T17:36:55.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one more option that (I think) has not been mentioned. I know of schools where exam scores are absolutely required, but students are sometimes accepted even though scores were not &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt; submitted. At these schools, the student can be given a &quot;conditional&quot; acceptance, and has one semester to submit the required scores. If the student still doesn't have scores on file at the end of that first semester, the graduate school will not allow them to continue attending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same sort of conditional acceptance is used for students who need to submit final transcripts after they graduate from their undergraduate program. In most graduate programs, all students are required to submit final transcripts, but students can be accepted conditionally before the transcripts are received. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of situation is suggested by language such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the admissions committee reviews all applications submitted by the deadline, missing math subject test scores are one less data point available to evaluate the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note &quot;submitted by the deadline&quot;. The school might decide that they will accept some students who don't submit GRE scores by the deadline, while still &lt;em&gt;requiring&lt;/em&gt; that the students must &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt; submit GRE scores.  This allows the department to use the scores for statistical purposes even if the scores were not always used for admissions purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of conditional admission is related to a scheduling issue with the fall subject GRE. This year (2014), the last exam date is October 25, and scores are estimated to be mailed &quot;approximately&quot; on December 5.  This is just &lt;em&gt;barely&lt;/em&gt; enough time for students who apply to schools with a January 1 deadline and send the scores from the October exam immediately. If a student delays sending scores to a school, the scores might not arrive in time for a Jan 1 deadline.  This is likely part of the meaning of the language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants should check on the ETS website for test dates in their area to insure the scores will be submitted before the application deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students who send their scores a little late would probably be worse off if their application was summarily denied than if it is reviewed with missing GRE scores. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T17:36:55.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2014-09-11T17:59:55.200" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;generally&quot; is commonly used in two rather different senses.  The first sense is &quot;typically&quot;, &quot;most often&quot;.  The second sense -- perhaps more common in mathematical and scientific writing -- is &quot;always&quot;, or &quot;in the largest possible scope which might be applied&quot;.  The quoted advice is valid if &quot;generally&quot; is construed in the former sense, not the latter.  To briefly explain: on the one hand, there are advantages to acquiring a diversity of experience.  &quot;Great University X&quot; will do its business in a way which is slightly different from &quot;Great University Y&quot;.  Experiencing this is very valuable, because if you stay in academia you will probably be affiliated with several more universities, different from each of these.  If all of your student experience is at a single place, you will have subconsciously internalized the universality of your experience, and you'll be in for a rude awakening when you learn that what is obviously best to you is not the practice in your new environment.  Then too, by going to different great universities, you meet different great people (many of whom will know each other and will be in transit to/from other great universities), both students and faculty.  This is also very valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are situations where it is most advantageous to stay where you are.  For instance there are sometimes personal, family or financial considerations.  Even neglecting these, there are times that the university you attended as an undergraduate is truly the uniquely best option for you to continue your studies, or the best option among those available to you.  If you are an undergraduate at UCLA, if you want to study analysis, and if you did not get admitted to Berkeley, MIT, Chicago, Princeton or Stanford, then staying where you are sounds like an excellent (perhaps optimal) choice academically.  If you've already done successful research with a top faculty member at your current program and you truly want to continue that research most of all: yes, think seriously about staying right where you are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answer says that graduate school rankings is &quot;a little ridiculous&quot;.  While I don't really disagree, let me try to put a finer point on that: grad school rankings are ridiculous if you take them &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; seriously, and especially if you regard them as a strict linear ranking.  It does not matter that US News and World Report currently thinks that MIT is the best mathematics department in the US whereas in past years it used to think it was some combination of Harvard / Princeton / Berkeley.  It would be more honest and more helpful if they simply recorded that these departments and several others (Chicago, Stanford,...) are in the &lt;strong&gt;uppermost echelon&lt;/strong&gt; of graduate programs in mathematics.  Asking whether Harvard is better than Stanford &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; ridiculous: it depends upon what you're studying.  (If you want to study analysis, don't go to Harvard unless you know you want to work with the one faculty member there who does that.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students should be thinking of departments in terms of echelons.  Within a given echelon, ranking is not helpful.  However, barring some truly exceptional circumstances you want to go to a program in the top echelon that accepts you.  As a corollary to this: if your undergraduate institution is in the top 10, and every other program you've gotten into isn't in the top 30, then &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, I think you should stay where you are, unless you have a very good reason to go to a lower-ranked department (best reason: there is a superstar there that has agreed to work with you).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally though I have to say that I find it slightly odd that the OP has apparently gone to a top department, been admitted as a student to that top department, but not at any other department of comparable quality.  That suggests to me that her application is not as strong as it could be, as those who know her in real life apparently value her more highly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T18:06:46.940" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T18:06:46.940" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T18:25:25.420" Score="7" ViewCount="3686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in month 5 of an extremely &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/26470/21&quot;&gt;unfulfilling post doc position&lt;/a&gt; in France. My sole responsibility is debugging 10k+ lines of spaghetti C++ code. I am a mechanical engineer and although I did my PhD with a focus on numerical simulations, debugging isn't what I envisioned myself doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current supervisor has been &quot;controlling my life&quot; by controlling when I leave from work by strategically placing meetings at such times. He has also suggested on numerous times, quite explicitly that I must not leave work until he does; and he is a workaholic - works 12 hours a day. This has continued for the last 4 months and this has severely affected my health. I am now depressed, balding and have lost 15 pounds of body mass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I had a conversation with the director of my research lab and he hinted that since things aren't working out, &quot;I may be given enough time to find employment&quot; and leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused, hurt and extremely displeased to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Losing my job would be very problematic for me, as I am an Indian citizen and it would affect my ongoing H1B processing for a faculty position in the US starting next fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current contract doesn't state what the &quot;rules of being let go&quot; are. All it says is that I am required to work 35 hours a week. I have consulted a lawyer &quot;friend&quot; and he tells me that most contracts are at will anyway and for foreign nationals, once your contract AND work status are revoked, you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; not be able to fight the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that I will be given a few weeks to a month or so perhaps, how do I behave towards my supervisor. Should I show up for work or just say screw it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:54:05.510" Title="On the verge of being &quot;fired&quot; from post-doc position, how to act towards supervisor?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;workplace&gt;&lt;international&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19952" CreationDate="2014-09-11T19:04:07.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also dont recommend talking to the prof, but if you do, I suggest being smart about how you tackle the subject by instead working from a constructive angle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, go in asking how to motivate someone to deliver their best work. Or ask how they (professor) handled working with people who cant pull their own weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21746" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:04:07.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28380" CreationDate="2014-09-11T20:16:19.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issues you mentioned in your question should be covered in your Statement of Purpose. That is, you should be willing and able (as you did), to explain why you want to &quot;repeat&quot; the degree (you're not really repeating the courses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, your schools of choice would consider you &quot;superprepared,&quot; having completed many courses, but not the ones you plan to take. The danger is if there are weaknesses in your test scores or your grades, it could work the other way by showing that you are a &quot;less good&quot; student who needs to repeat courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T20:16:19.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2014-09-11T20:19:59.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a forced choice, I'd go to the same, rather than inferior school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Diversity&quot; is a good idea when you can get into a comparably good school, or better than the one where you did your undergraduate degree. Then you will get a choice of viewpoints that will (hopefully) make you a broader, more qualified candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These advantages (mostly) disappear when your additional choices are all worse than what you have. This is what master investor Peter Lynch called &quot;diworsesification,&quot; which you might not want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T20:19:59.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23778" CreationDate="2014-09-11T21:14:58.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Found the answer now:  pay scale 10, step 8, 3381 euros monthly before taxes and other deductions.  Thanks for all the answers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17743" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T21:14:58.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28402" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:25:04.887" Score="9" ViewCount="764" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated with a BS in math about a year and a half ago from a not well known school and with a less than stellar academic record. I did not go to graduate school (I was not accepted). Since then, I have improved my mathematical ability considerably, but I have not kept in touch with my professors. I can demonstrate this improvement in many ways, the most obvious of which is by referring to my subject GRE score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I was a mediocre student, I assume that my professors' letters of recommendation did not paint me in as positive of a light as they would have if they knew me now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now interested in applying to graduate school again but this time I would like to secure stronger letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to ask a professor the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Is there any way I can demonstrate my current mathematical ability&#xA;and thereby improve your letter of recommendation for me?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how should I ask this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further Considerations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to the above question is &amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot;, then for at least two of the professors, I can suggest showing them my typed solutions to every question (save the trivial ones) in the textbook used for their class. These classes were both upper level classes (second level Linear Algebra and second level Real Analysis). With the last professor, I can demonstrate knowledge of Calculus of Variations (a subject that this professor is interested in) as well as Functional Analysis. Should this be my approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T21:45:07.837" Title="Is it appropriate to ask a professor how I may be able to improve my letter of recommendation?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28386" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:41:01.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Data on faculty salaries is available from the AAUP survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/2013-14-AAUP-Faculty-Salary/145679/#id=table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/2013-14-AAUP-Faculty-Salary/145679/#id=table&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associate professors make, very roughly speaking, 10% more than assistant professors.  However, since professors get a few percent raise a year, you can estimate that the difference between the most experienced assistant professor and the least experienced associate professor is about the typical annual raise.  So, I think the answer is &quot;not much.&quot;  However, it varies widely by institution, school, department, governance model, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T00:41:01.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:44:51.723" Score="3" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am rather disappointed by the existing research in my area of interest. There is a big disconnect between the solutions practitioners need and what researchers look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have read everything available on the subject in e-journals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have many ideas which I believe can solve some small problems in my field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also have ideas for paradigms (or major expansions of existing paradigms) which I believe can help the researchers and practitioners look at the problems in a different light.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not in a PhD program, so I lack the advice, time, resources, and know-how for setting up controlled experiments to validate these ideas, so I can only address them as thought experiments or identify the nearest related experiments not directly testing my ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I publish short here-is-an-idea paper (e.g. “Proposed Solution for X” or “(new) Model for Y”) well before having any means of providing some proof?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T00:02:21.683" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T00:02:21.683" Title="Can one publish ideas well before one has evidence proving the ideas work?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28084" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:52:43.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is that the dissertation, and therefore the proposal, are the student's work.  It is the student's responsibility to pick a topic and execute it.  Faculty are not usually trained in project management so the student may need to act to keep the faculty member on track.  For example, you can tell the faculty member that their ideas are very interesting, but you need to complete your current project first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific to your situation, a fourth year student should know more than their advisor about the student's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T00:52:43.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28398" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:54:42.493" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insights are a dime a dozen. Insights with &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; are how science (social and natural) proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proceeding through your bullets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mention e-journals. Have you read the &quot;literature&quot; in traditional journals/books/whatever the field's standard is? There's a lot of good reason to be suspicious of e-journals, so you may not have a full view of the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Belief in ideas doesn't make them true(r). Sorry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a reason that you think that these expansions of paradigms haven't been considered? Are you &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; that they really have never occurred before?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps that's the argument for obtaining a Ph.D. or research master's --- to demonstrate that ideas have empirical heft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to make a difference, you will have to offer evidence that your ideas work or have worked, beyond the logic you offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21751" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T00:54:42.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28398" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:58:59.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for a work to be scholarly, the content has to be reviewed by a group of experts in your field, tested by those peers for accuracy and then you have to find someone who is willing to publish your work. You don't have to have proof of your findings for them to be published, but the work wouldn't be considered a scholarly document. Just remember that theories aren't just ideas, but concepts that have been tried and tested to be logical and accurate. Whatever you do, make sure that your experiments can be repeated and that you get the same &quot;Proposed Solution for X&quot; every time. Remember that every revolution begins in the mind of one man, and that your &quot;proposed solution&quot; might possibly be the right one, with or without proof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21752" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T00:58:59.113" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28396" CreationDate="2014-09-12T01:12:11.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is okay to ask the question.  However, I do not think you should suggest that professors read your solutions since they are likely very busy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may do better to tell the professors what you have been working on, including your GRE score, and then ask them if there is anything else you can do to prepare yourself for graduate school.  Then follow their suggestions.  Essentially it is the same question, but I think it could show you are a &quot;deep learner&quot; rather than a &quot;strategic learner&quot; who only cares about the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T01:12:11.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28346" CreationDate="2014-09-12T01:45:53.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are right about the authors' behavior (like @NateEldredge, I am skeptical) then you have nothing to gain by bringing the subject up. However, if you inform the authors that you enjoyed reading their work, maybe they will be nicer to you in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I received a request for a citation, I would include the citation if it was relevant but my view of the requester's motivations would decline.  Collecting citations is not the goal of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T01:45:53.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27649" CreationDate="2014-09-12T02:49:37.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;White papers are a great way to get noticed. Many universities also offer them as resources for current students as a way to gain insight to popular concerns within the area of expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just look at:  &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/publications/white-papers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/publications/white-papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to make sure that the white paper gives insight or focus to the main thoughts of your subject, and that proper credits are given to any of the relevant discussion within your paper.  If you do decide to include the focus on your survey, that would be ok. However, discussion on what the highlights are and not giving the survey the main focus, may lead to offers to have the survey published or have you give more in depth discussion of your findings. Hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17281" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T02:49:37.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28426" CreationDate="2014-09-12T03:07:34.827" Score="8" ViewCount="2319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a psychology major. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucd.ie/artspgs/semantics/ConsequencesErudite.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;that shows that using erudite vocabulary will not do one good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes me want to ask here is a case study in the paper. Long story short, a bunch of admission officers, unaware of being tested, reviewed the application documents such as statements of purpose and were asked to rate them. It turned out that those documents using big, learned words instead got somewhat lower rating than those using simple, direct words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though this research seems convincing, my concern is: Is this phenomenon general enough to suggest one should avoid using erudite vocabulary if one does not use the erudite words in an affected way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are experienced admission reviewers, would you please throw some light or insights on this issue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T03:14:48.070" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T13:40:58.443" Title="Should one avoid erudite vocabulary in statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="19" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26180" CreationDate="2014-09-12T03:16:19.663" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to google for china and you can ask that it translate the page. You will find several articles related to the &quot;Excellent Foreign Scholar&quot; scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17281" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T03:16:19.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28439" CreationDate="2014-09-12T04:13:22.063" Score="8" ViewCount="22332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently an M. Phil student in Math and I failed a course last semester because I was not able to hand in a home work assignment (which was worth 40% of my grade) on time (I was 30 minutes late). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that I'd say I'm a fairly decent student, I got an upper second class honours bachelors degree, I have a B+ and A's for all my other courses in my current programme and I'm almost finished with my first paper to be published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've however been deeply worried about this failure as it would reflect poorly on my transcript if I were to apply to a Ph.D or another Master's programme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18330" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T05:16:50.743" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T20:07:18.733" Title="Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26180" CreationDate="2014-09-12T04:50:42.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Preamble: I am one of a few Chinese active participants on this site. There have been some questions about Chinese academics here. I always tried to not to answer them. For example, there was a question about the role of correspondence author in Chinese academia(the OP even offered a bounty for it). I did not answer them for two reasons: I am not an insider and I do not wish to give out information I am not absolutely certain about. However, I feel that I need to give some answer for this question because I just see some un-useful answer. Hopefully some Chinese scholars will answer them after they see this one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.access4.eu/_media/NSFC_4_new.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;document&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;The Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese Scholars and Scholars in Hong Kong and Macao is established by Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to encourage &lt;strong&gt;excellent&lt;/strong&gt; overseas Chinese scholars (including those with &lt;strong&gt;foreign&lt;/strong&gt; nationalities) under the age of 50 to conduct high-level joint research with researchers and organizations in mainland China.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect your colleague received this fund. Please note that the qualification is oversea Chinese scholar. &quot;Foreign&quot; here means he could be born in oversea but at least one of his parents is a Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="546" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T05:21:10.977" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T05:21:10.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28407" CreationDate="2014-09-12T05:46:32.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question reminds me of the days when I was a young schoolkid and had barely started composing articles, essays etc. I had a habit of picking up the dictionary and learning a new word every day, writing it down somewhere, and (embarrassingly) also revising my notes every weekend or so. Invariably, it got to a stage where these fancy words started entering the articles and I started getting appreciated for it. Since I wasn't the only one in my class doing it, soon it got to a competition of sorts - who can use more fancy language and impress the teacher and ''&lt;em&gt;awe&lt;/em&gt;'' the (misguided) audience. In the process, we got to a stage where we were bending sentences to accommodate our &lt;em&gt;sweat-and-blood&lt;/em&gt;, or worse still, writing sentences according to the new word. I'm sure this isn't too uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now we look back at this and think that we were stupid (of-course we were schoolkids). Why would anybody do that? The purpose of having a good vocabulary is to have at your disposal the most-appropriate word for the intended purpose. And nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, coming back to your question, the purpose of a statement-of-purpose is to convey certain information to the people on the other side of the table. They want you to convey this information using minimum clutter, and be as to-the-point as possible. Use the most appropriate words for the intended purpose - think over it and take your time in composing the SoP. It is extremely unlikely that any sensible person sitting on the other side would be so impressed on reading exotic, but inappropriate-as-per-the-context, words in the SoP that he will count that as an advantage over the others. However, it is more likely that if he will have the same impression of you as you get by reading my first paragraph. I don't think that's an advantage at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17534" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T05:46:32.360" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T06:55:11.770" Score="4" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am almost 30 years old. I got my bachelor's many years ago, and I've been enjoying myself while in the industry. I am a practical person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for some reasons, I felt my technical skills were regressing, so I decided to go back to school, to enhance and update my skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose a topic that is quite abstract, which is stressful to me. Also, I feel threatened by grades and such ... which sometimes make me regret having put myself in such a &quot;delicate&quot; situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be patient (there will be better days) ? Or should I go back to the industry and discover things myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21764" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T11:11:42.283" Title="Too old for school?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-09-12T11:42:36.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28412" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:41:01.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you should be patient because education is among the best investments you could ever make, in the sense that it is highly probable to pay off in the long run. Moreover, being (only!) 30 you are looking ahead at thirty years or so of a career, so some extra training will absolutely help in the long run; even though the picture may not be clear yet, education does open doors to new opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:41:01.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2014-09-12T08:15:13.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native speaker either but generally speaking &quot;thanks&quot; does not mean &quot;please waste another 2 minutes of my time&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21772" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T08:36:21.407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T08:36:21.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28421" CreationDate="2014-09-12T08:18:49.207" Score="6" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having obtained by PhD in Computer Science five years ago, I have been working in R&amp;amp;D projects for the last years. I want to pursue an academic career and I am currently considering moving to UK. As far as it concerns my academic qualifications, very roughly, I have 8 journal publications, an h-index of 8 by google scholar, and a little teaching experience in university education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The variety of titles in UK job openings is somewhat confusing: (Postdoctoral) Research Associate, (Senior) Lecturer, Research Fellow, etc. And then, there are open-ended and fixed-term contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: what kind of positions would it be best to aim for? In other words, what kind of position would correspond to my skill-set, given that I am interested in evolving academically (research and teaching)? And how could I improve my CV towards this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T18:15:42.527" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T06:41:00.037" Title="What position should a young researcher moving to a UK university apply for?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;united-kingdom&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28346" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:02:54.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;They overlooked it.&lt;/em&gt; Then it's fine to contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;They intentionally did not include it.&lt;/em&gt; Then they are deliberately obtuse and the mail can't change anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's only you who thinks that the citation is proper.&lt;/em&gt; I know you crossed out this option. Yet, since then the mail could hurt your relationships and reputation, I suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;first ask a 3rd party (your colleague) for their opinion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can IMHO &lt;strong&gt;simply contact the authors,&lt;/strong&gt; of course politely, maybe showing some passion, pointing out something interesting you found there etc. The level of politeness is up to you I'd say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1471" LastEditorUserId="1471" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T12:15:05.220" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T12:15:05.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28417" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:13:42.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is feasible to make a sure-fire estimation of what &quot;level&quot; you would be considered to be on without knowing many details (and then the question would likely become too localized for SE anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, job titles and positions are not standardized between universities or, in some cases, even between different labs within the same university. What's called a Research Fellow in one place could be a Research Associate in another, and simply a Postdoc in the third. However, there are (typically) some &quot;groups&quot; of jobs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PhD students (which you clearly don't fall into, given that you already have a PhD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-professoral, non-student researchers (postdocs, various soft-money research positions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Junior Professors and Professors (I'll lump into this everything from lecturers, senior lecturers, and actual professors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely fall into the second group, &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; you could also hunt for a lecturer position (i.e., the entry-level position of the third group). If you want to stay in research, you should aim to sooner or later get into the third group. However, typically, these jobs are significantly more competitive to get than postdoc jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And how could I improve my CV towards this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papers, papers, papers. I think your background in an R&amp;amp;D lab can be sold as a boon (&quot;I have industrial experience, while still not being out of touch with research!&quot;), but at the end of the day, papers are what people &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; look at. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T09:13:42.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28425" CreationDate="2014-09-12T10:08:33.917" Score="6" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I teach at different universities. This is the first year that we have run into a timetabling conflict that makes dropping our son off at school difficult. The conflict involves wife's 200+ person lecture that is centrally timetabled in a lecture hall that is in near constant use and my 30 person lab in a relatively unused computer lab. It is unlikely that any type of changes could be made to my wife's class that would help with the conflict. I teach one of 8 sections of the lab. While all the sections occur on the same day they happen in a number of computer labs which have some unused time on that day. I would like to see if I can reschedule, or adjust the schedule, of my teaching. The lab is scheduled to start at 9:00. My son's school starts at 9:00 and I could start teaching at 9:30. Who do I approach and what do I ask for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I could try and swap sections with someone else (mine is the only section that starts at 9:00) or I could also ask the organizer for the lab if I can move my section. Is there another option? What is the best way to approach this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T04:19:42.623" Title="Teaching timetable conflict" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;working-time&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28412" CreationDate="2014-09-12T11:11:42.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there are some great answers at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24577/i-want-to-do-research-but-im-too-old-for-a-phd&quot;&gt;I want to do research but I'm too old for a PHD&lt;/a&gt; as stated in the comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said I have followed somewhat a similar path to you. I went to college at 17 to do accounting and still work in the area. I returned to college when 29 to complete a BA part-time. This course was over four years and I think no amount of experience can prepare you for returning to the rigour of study. Grades can be an issue, but I always found professors to be very open to discussing ways to improve, and in fact many stated that they preferred teaching the part-time course as the class where a bit more mature. Since then I have started a masters and although it can be stressful doing research I have found there are more good days than bad ones. Again having good communication with those that supervise you is essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think only yourself can answer your question, I believe if you have a passion for your subject and use the supports that may be available at your institution (such as study support groups in your topic) it will may your decision easier. They best advise I can give is to talk to those in your course that may be able to assist and guide you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T11:11:42.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28423" CreationDate="2014-09-12T12:34:07.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can ask to move the start of your lab section. As in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28320/is-it-reasonable-for-a-professor-to-ask-students-to-stay-30-45-minutes-past-sche&quot;&gt;other related question about class times&lt;/a&gt;, those times are fixed by the university and not really movable without lots of notice. Your best bet is to get together (physically or virtually) with the other section teachers and find someone willing to switch with you. Then you can propose it to the lab organizer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside your university, you might see if there's a friend or neighbor you trust who can drop your kid at school or a way to arrange with the school to drop your child half an hour early. It can't hurt to ask them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T12:34:07.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28407" CreationDate="2014-09-12T12:39:39.493" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Erudition and eloquence are useful tools for academics to possess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, excessively erudite writing can become opaque. That's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; what you want to achieve in scholarly writing. Scholarly writing should be lucid, informative, and as direct as possible. Thus, using &quot;five-dollar&quot; vocabulary when &quot;fifty-cent&quot; words will do probably distracts from your writing overall. On the other hand, if that five-dollar word is &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the word you need in a given situation, don't be afraid to use it. It's better, in my opinion, to moderately challenge the reader in a concisely written text than to be long-winded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T12:39:39.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28407" CreationDate="2014-09-12T15:09:57.263" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the&#xA;  difference between lightning and a lightning bug. - &lt;em&gt;Mark Twain&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What You Shouldn't Do&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I explain below, the article does a good job of illustrating what you should not do: do not, under any circumstances, write out a statement of purpose and then have a computer blindly replace words with longer synonyms taken from the Microsoft Word Thesaurus. A word is not better merely because it is longer - but sometimes a longer word is the better word. Your goal is to communicate, and you should seek to impress with your message and communication skill - not your ability to find really long words and use them poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problems With Interpreting the Research Article&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I must say that I love the title of the article you linked: &quot;Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective&#xA;of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly&quot;. From a psychological/cognitive perspective, however, it is not sufficient - or even suitable - to use to draw a conclusion on how one might wish to write a statement of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excerpt from Experiment 1 I think will help to understand this. Which of these following sentences is best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I desire to go to Graduate School so that I can learn to recognize literature satisfactorily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I want to go to Graduate School so that I can learn to recognize literature well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I want to go to Graduate School so that I can learn to know literature well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the problem: these sentences, while similar, &lt;em&gt;do not convey the same precise meaning and attitude!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, the sentence gives the impression that a person wants to &quot;recognize&quot; literature &quot;satisfactorily&quot;. This sounds like a person aspires to be able to read something and say, &quot;Ah, this is definitely a kind of literature.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, they want to be satisfactory at this skill? If a person wrote a letter of reference for you that read, &quot;This student's skills in English Literature were satisfactory&quot; you'd be damned by faint praise! Here, satisfactory sounds an awful lot like &quot;average&quot; or &quot;met minimum expectations&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all for an essay to try to get into Stanford - by any measure a competitive school. You don't need to go to Stanford to be satisfactory at a minor skill. Next applicant!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next sentence is a little better, as a person wants to be able to do something &quot;well&quot;. This is a conservative, but still potentially ambitious, way to say that you want to be actually good at something - superior to the average. &quot;Well&quot; and &quot;satisfactory&quot; may be synonyms (and thus how the word was chosen), but they don't have the same precise meanings or connotations in every context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final example sentence says that they want to &quot;know literature well.&quot; Knowledge is a higher goal than mere recognition. Compare the phrases &quot;I recognize her&quot; with &quot;I know her&quot; and you get the idea - similar meaning, but not at all the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funny thing is, sentence 1 is marked as &quot;highly complex&quot;, 2 is &quot;medium-complexity&quot;, and 3 is &quot;original&quot; because word length was used as a proxy for complexity. The originals tended to be marked higher than their &quot;more complex&quot; counterparts, but in every case included in the appendix I found the originals were superior to their algorithmically-derived versions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in Experiment 1, the research shows that replacing words blindly with their longer synonyms results in a poorer quality product than that produced by an intelligent human writing a statement of purpose to try to gain admittance to a competitive University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I go on, I wish to point out that this article is good research and interesting, and helps to build the field, and I do not criticize the authors for trying something and reporting their findings; these findings are a step on the road to greater understanding. But this paper alone is not suitable for drawing conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How You Should Actually Write&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most fields the goal is actual, genuine communication. Most professors and admittance personnel aren't looking to recruit low-quality bullshitters - they surely think they work with enough of such people as it is! So you need to decide what you are: a brilliant bullshitter with an extraordinarily artful grasp of the language and rhetoric, or a genuine communicator. There is a demand for both sets of people (in some fields more than others -&lt;em&gt;cough&lt;/em&gt;-), but you need to decide: which extreme are you closer to fitting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to showcase your genuine communication skill and interests in your statement of purpose, write it out from the heart first, and then you can go in and agonize a bit more on word choice. Some things will inevitably need to be made simpler, while sometimes a few big-money words will suit just perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What always dominates an appraisal of writing is the &lt;em&gt;appropriate&lt;/em&gt; words. If I say &quot;I'm going to peruse your missive and aggrandize some terminal verbiage&quot; ... those are big words, but they are also supercilious, awkward, and downright poor choices. It would convey the meaning that I am trying to compensate for a lack of actual intelligence and understanding by trying to baffle you with more obscure parts of the lexicon. [Great, now I can't stop doing it...] Or I'm trying to be funny. Or I'm a bit of an ass... thanks in part to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias#Fundamental_attribution_error&quot;&gt;fundamental attribution error&lt;/a&gt;, such inappropriate word choices can doom an application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Get Advice and Feedback&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistically, only &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/703/&quot;&gt;1 out of 10 people are in the top 10% of ability&lt;/a&gt; in written communication skills. Even for those in the top 10, advice and feedback from others on their actual written work is invaluable and there is no perfect substitute. This applies equally to native and non-native speakers - don't stumble in the dark when you can just turn the light on! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking someone to review specific word-choice and phrasing is great, and some people have greater editing skills than others so you'll likely need more than one or two pairs of eyes. A good rule of thumb is if someone is willing to spend the time to write a letter of recommendation for you, they are probably willing to spend a little time going over a letter of purpose with you. After all, they wouldn't want their own words to fall on deaf ears, would they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Career centers, student-employment departments, English tutors/clubs/Professors, and college application workshops are all potentially great sources of help and review, and if you can bring a written draft of your statement with you then the time might prove extremely productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a parting word of advice, I find that busy people who only spend a few minutes with your writing can be very good sources of help on matters like this, because if they can't understand something or don't like the wording in such a quick read the people who actually read your application probably won't either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T15:09:57.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28431" CreationDate="2014-09-12T16:28:17.383" Score="9" ViewCount="2382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student, 2nd year, in a STEM field at a US university. I have passed my quals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to ask from a Professor who is not at your university to be your advisor?  Did anybody hear of a similar situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested in the research of a professor who is at a nearby university, I really want to work with him but I don't know if this is even possible. (Maybe I should also note that his university is not necessarily better than the one I am now.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21702" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T18:23:18.003" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T18:23:18.003" Title="Is it possible to have a PhD advisor from another university?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28409" CreationDate="2014-09-12T16:36:36.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately yes, this is quite possible and, at least in certain contexts, rather likely.  Most good graduate programs in mathematics (and presumably elsewhere) see very high grades in general from their applicants.  One or two imperfect grades can be easily dismissed (still, better is better...) but a &lt;strong&gt;failing grade&lt;/strong&gt; is a big red flag.  In many (American, I don't know how it is elsewhere) graduate programs, the minimum GPA required to maintain good standing is 3.0.  Thus a lackluster performance in a graduate course often results in something like a B/B+.  There is a lot of variation here and many problems make a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; distinction between lower level / core courses in which &quot;grades count&quot; and higher level / optional courses in which it may well be expected that everyone gets the highest possible grade more or less automatically.  Either way, a failing grade in a graduate course looks especially bad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more courses you take, the more one can discount any one grade.  But if as you say you will be applying for admission and/or scholarships with one out of four grades a failing grade: well, I'm sorry to say it, but that doesn't sound good at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do?  First I would look into the prospect of getting the grade changed (though of course it may not be possible and in certain circumstances it may not even be appropriate to ask).  If that's not possible, the matter becomes how to &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; the grade in a way which makes it minimally alarming to people who are evaluating your application.  In this regard I have to be honest again and say that your given explanation is not a great one: there was one problem set that was worth 40% of your grade, you didn't turn it in on time, and there was no way for you and/or the course instructor to rectify the situation?  Not good.  Your perspective may well be that the course instructor was an extremely unreasonable, ungenerous individual.  And you may be right, but that doesn't really fix the fact that you didn't meet the course requirements.  Maybe your entire program is somehow off...which is still not great.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to have at least one faculty recommendation letter explicitly address this situation and explain it in a way which somehow allays the above concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T16:36:36.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28429" CreationDate="2014-09-12T17:06:44.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extrapolating from the very few cases that I've seen, I think you'll need an official adviser at the school where you're actually enrolled.  If it's OK with that adviser, then you could also have a &quot;real&quot; adviser elsewhere, on an unofficial basis.  Your school may have some paperwork to be completed if your real adviser is to serve as a member of your official thesis committee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T17:06:44.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28429" CreationDate="2014-09-12T17:06:52.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of that except in the case where a prof left one university to go to another. During the long transition, some of his students physically moved with him but continued their PhD at the old school. I believe the professor retained some sort of appointment at the old university in order to make it fit within the University's rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, almost every PhD committee is required to have an external member. That's usually outside the department, but it is often outside the university. So, it might be possible to find an advisor at your current university to be the nominal head of your committee, but to include the other guy on the committee and have him be the de facto head. The biggest problem will probably come down to how your research is funded. If funding is not a problem, then you might be able to pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T17:06:52.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28437" CreationDate="2014-09-12T18:58:19.560" Score="14" ViewCount="19732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard about &quot;dissertation embargoes&quot;.  My institution recommends that every graduating student place an embargo on their dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a dissertation embargo, and what is its purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21802" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T06:10:26.507" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T11:18:38.710" Title="What is the purpose of dissertation embargo periods?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28608" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:02:19.013" Score="7" ViewCount="1989" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any unified platform that would list the deadlines (especially the submission deadlines) for conferences/journals? Ideally I would like to select a few conferences/journals I am interested in publishing to, and the website would give me the list of upcoming deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I have to check out each individual conference/journal website, which is pretty tedious and error-prone (all the more so as it is pretty common for deadline to be extended).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly interested in the field of computer science &gt; machine learning, and English-speaking venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T07:44:41.710" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T23:11:20.790" Title="Is there a unified platform that lists conference/journal deadlines?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;&lt;website&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28335" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:39:49.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is, unfortunately, a not too uncommon occurrence in my limited experience in top US graduate schools. Some professors are over committed;others might be having a real life emergency/crises - yet others are just not good at replying to emails. There are a number of different strategies that you could employ at this juncture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Email again, early next week:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few variations to this strategy. First, if the professor has just missed your email due to a veritable deluge of emails in her inbox then this could be a timely reminder. Second, if there is another collaborator, temporary graduate chair or other, initial faculty that you worked with (since you mention that you are a second year graduate student), then an email with such a person cc'ed is usually good incentive to get at least, an initial reply.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Meet with the department chair/other goto faculty:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every department will usually have one faculty who serves as a point of contact for students in any kind of a predicament. This is a predicament. You need to kickstart your research agenda with this professor (&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;) but have not been able to do so. In our department, we call them &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Director of Graduate Studies&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Your department might have a similar or different nomenclature for such a person. An email sent from this person (cc'ing you) is usually enough to get a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. If all fails, lie in wait to surprise them IRL:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out their office hours. If they teach, then they must have office hours and usually, a website for the course that they are teaching. Ask their TA's (if they have any) when the office hours are. If you see this faculty in the corridors then stop them and chat with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a fifth year graduate student and over the years, I have had to (unfortunately) employ most variations of the three broad strategies I mentioned.One reason why I chose the dissertation committee that I have is that these professors always make time for me if I want to chat with them about some academic (and sometimes non-academic) issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you succeed in your quest to locate said faculty. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T19:39:49.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28433" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:48:18.387" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;dissertation embargo&quot; means that access to the dissertation is restricted for a limited period of time (typically one or two years, but possibly longer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reasons to embargo a dissertation include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You would like to patent some of the work described in the dissertation. The published dissertation would constitute prior art.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dissertation includes data covered by a nondisclosure agreement for a limited period of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You intend to publish the dissertation as a book, with a publisher that restricts consideration of manuscripts based on publicly available dissertations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T19:48:18.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28433" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:52:48.027" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;An embargo effectively withholds your dissertation from being placed on your institution's open-access dissertation archive (from which anyone can view/download your dissertation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have placed an embargo on my dissertation so that I may attempt to get a few more papers published without my dissertation being searchable on the web. It is a common practice in the department where I did my PhD (though, I wondered sometimes if it was &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; necessary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more complete list of reasons why one would choose to place an embargo on their dissertation, I'm listing here an excerpt taken from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://grad.unm.edu/degree-completion/thesis-dissertations/thesisdissert-embargo.html&quot;&gt;University of New Mexico&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Embargos may be appropriate for authors &#xA;  1) who are seeking patents, &#xA;  2) who want to publish their work through a traditional press that considers open access publication to be equivalent to prior publication, &#xA;  3) who have published material from their work with a publisher that does not allow open access release for a certain period of time, or &#xA;  4) who need to protect sensitive data or information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T19:52:48.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28398" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:54:35.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, one can publish ideas before properly evaluating their value. But it depends. Your area of research might be different from mine, but I have written &quot;position papers&quot; papers in the past where the main purpose is to generate discussion. Then you usually have to go to the conference and workshop your ideas with other participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if there really is a big disconnect between practitioners and researchers, do some groundwork, maybe interview those practitioners so that you can back up your claims when you meet the researchers. Then propose improvements to current research so that you can work on your ideas and study them properly. You may also find help and advice and co-authors for the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21804" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T19:54:35.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28409" CreationDate="2014-09-12T19:57:38.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not a deal breaker.&lt;/strong&gt; I had awful grades in many courses but I got offers with TA/RA-ship/fellowships from a couple of top 25 US PhD programs in Math. The reason, I think, was that I had very high GRE scores, I had participated in undergraduate/masters &quot;research&quot; projects for a few years with professors at my schools, and I had pretty good recommendations. My research statement was normal and earnest. I didn't have any extraordinary ideas nor some well defined research agenda in it. I think that, overall, the rest of my portfolio made up for my awful grades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, it's just one course. That does not signal any systematic problem. If you feel particularly insecure, you can address it in your personal statement but don't talk about the professor in question negatively, instead you can focus on how you were tardy once but it does not reflect your work usual work ethic. I cannot speak for top 10 schools. They may have a sufficiently large pool of applicants who may beat you on every metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Math departments at large public Universities generally need lots of bodies to TA/grade their numerous remedial and baby-calc type undergraduate courses and generally do the culling at the qualifying exam stage. You may find their standards for an incoming PhD class to be more forgiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastEditorUserId="6674" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T20:07:18.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T20:07:18.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28336" CreationDate="2014-09-12T21:42:41.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a) Constantly shifting your focus from the latter project you overcharge your brain with additional tasks in the moment and possibly what your brain really needs from you is some rest, that's why you end up making mistakes because by the time you get to the lab projects your brain is already preoccupied with new tasks and have used up a lot of memory doing new operational memory tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;b) If you procrastinate by reading NY Times and Twitter you are also overloading your brain with new information that requires some analytical work(although it is of course incommensurate with the amount of work you need for academic journals, but precisely because the Times loves using such words as &lt;em&gt;incommensurate&lt;/em&gt; on its pages you have to constantly query your memory and thus, keep your brain busy), so here we are, getting back again to the same problem-you are using your operational memory, the brain gets tired and by the time you get back to the lab work it is nearly impossible to focus. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;c) I hate to suggest that...but...is there a possibility of a short nap or just sitting quietly in your office and not exposing your brain to any additional flow of information? Plus, Twitter, email checking, Facebook, are all good examples of instant stimulation but that's a topic for another conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;d) In a nutshell, trivial things like smells, sounds from the street, someone's voice etc. are all examples of additional information that you are exposing yourself to that inadvertently bombard our brains on a daily basis and they make it even harder to focus and get back to the actual projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21806" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T21:42:41.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28396" CreationDate="2014-09-12T21:45:07.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're thinking about the problem a little bit sideways, as do many students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, when you originally request a letter of recommendation, ask the person your asking to support you if they can write you a strong letter.  If they say no, they can write you a letter but they're not in a position to write a strong one, you can either move on to the next person (if there is one), or have a very mature conversation where you ask what's the best portrayal you can get.  For example, if you feel like there's a hole in your application portfolio that this person can help fill, ask about it.  Sometimes, if a student with average grade performance is a stand out in terms of writing, communication, leadership, I can focus on that and come out with an OK letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to new recommendations from your original references: If your original recommenders have had no interactions with you that would change their opinion, its probably already too late to get a better recommendation.  If there's something about your overall package that would change your likelihood to be admitted to a grad program, then you should be able to dig up a new reference to support your application.  Your personal statement should be carefully crafted, stating very clearly what's changed about your situation, why you're a better candidate than you were originally, and some evidence to support it that an admissions committee can understand.  A recommendation involving a recent interaction from a new person would be extremely helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what its worth, the admissions committee will be very interested in how you've spent your time since your BS.  They might expect you to be showing maturity not typical of recent graduates.  If you can show a solid understanding of why you are now seeking a graduate degree and how you expect it to impact your career in your application package, that will prove very helpful.  If you've been twiddling your thumbs since you graduated, and that's apparent in your package, that will not go over very well.  If that's the case, you might consider delaying your application until you can make your application package look right, and spend six months working very hard just to develop those good recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20457" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T21:45:07.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T22:26:39.813" Score="9" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;Browsing the internet, I found many professors, researchers and scientists that, in addition to their main affiliation to their main department, have also a &lt;strong&gt;second affiliation&lt;/strong&gt; to another department of their university (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://helix-web.stanford.edu/people/altman/&quot;&gt;Russ Altman&lt;/a&gt; at Stanford).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why so many scientists decide to have a second department affiliation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the main advantages and benefits?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T22:46:16.117" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T06:42:00.880" Title="In universities, what are the advantages of having a second department affiliation?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;affiliation&gt;&lt;joint-appointment&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28442" CreationDate="2014-09-12T23:08:03.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a second affiliation has real administrative meaning, for example if a professor's teaching duties are divided between two departments.  In other cases, a professor's duties are in just one department, and the second affiliation is either just an honorary matter (saying that the second department regards him as respectable in their field also) or possibly (depending on university rules) enables the professor to officially supervise dissertations in the second department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T23:08:03.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T01:31:56.833" Score="2" ViewCount="3006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes read in papers that &lt;em&gt;the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the [funding agency name]&lt;/em&gt; in the acknowledgments section. E.g. in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stanford.edu/~danqi/papers/emnlp2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanford University gratefully acknowledges the support of the Defense&#xA;  Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Deep Exploration and&#xA;  Filtering of Text (DEFT) Program under Air Force Research Laboratory&#xA;  (AFRL) contract no. FA8750-13-2-0040 and the Defense Threat Reduction&#xA;  Agency (DTRA) under Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract no.&#xA;  FA8650- 10-C-7020. &lt;strong&gt;Any opinions, findings, and conclusion or&#xA;  recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors&#xA;  and do not necessarily reflect the view of the DARPA, AFRL, or the US&#xA;  government&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to mention this? If the authors omit such statements, does this mean that the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper do reflect the view of the funding agency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T22:54:26.533" Title="Is it necessary to add mentions such as &quot;Any opinion expressed in the paper does not necessarily reflect the view of the funder&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;acknowledgement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28359" CreationDate="2014-09-13T02:34:53.373" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had Narcolepsy for ten years now. I am also currently an undergraduate at university. In my opinion, based on personal experience as a person with narcolepsy, there are a few things important to consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Firstly, the severity of narcolepsy is different for all those who suffer it so abilities vary&lt;/strong&gt;. I am at university full time and whilst I am offered accommodations to assist me, on the whole, I produce high quality work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Secondly, a person with narcolepsy may doubt themselves regardless of their abilities because others around them are quick to doubt them&lt;/strong&gt;. This is why, on most occasions, I have not disclosed my condition to employees. Once I am employed, the quality of my work speaks for itself and then I disclose it for safety reasons. This is an internal battle because I fear that I am being untruthful to start with. At the same time, I know the stigma narcolepsy brings and that given the choice between a candidate with narcolepsy and one without, I would lose. If this person has told you about their narcolepsy it means they trust you and respect you and feel compelled to be completely truthful with you. They probably don't want to let you down so they will probably downplay their abilities in fear of this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whilst narcolepsy is characterised by 'sudden uncontrollable bouts of sleepiness', it's usually brief and full alertness is resumed after a short nap.&lt;/strong&gt; Narcolepsy occurs because the hypocretin/orexin have been fought off by an autoimmune disease. This means sleep/wake cycles aren't regular. A person with their hypocretin intact do all their sleeping in one block, usually when the sun goes down. A person with narcolepsy sleeps in smaller blocks of time and stays alert for a shorter amount of time. Theoretically then, a person with narcolepsy can be awake and alert for the same number of hours a day as a non-narcoleptic but needs to do this by by breaking it up into smaller blocks. (You could liken this to differences in diet - some people eat three big meals a day while some people eat six smaller meals a day.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, yes narcolepsy makes my life more difficult. I wouldn't be able to succeed at university without the support and understanding I get from the staff. But life is full of challenges and it is the way in which we deal with them that sets us apart. If you have developed a good working relationship with this person, then they already fulfil one important aspect of those needed for the position. A person with narcolepsy is aware of their shortfalls and given the chance, will do what is needed to overcome them. Don't let a diagnosis change your perception - just because a person doesn't have a medical label attached to them, doesn't mean they don't have other relevant faults or issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to write down what is required to fulfil the needs of the research - do it in measurable terms. For example., how many hours a day/week is sufficient? Then sit down with this person and discuss it with them. Approach the requirements as you would anyone else. (For eg. Can you commit to these requirements? etc) If you were happy with their work previously tell them that. Also admit that you don't know much about narcolepsy but you know that everyone is different. Tell them you want them to succeed and you have faith in them. Tell them how important the work is to you and if you think you are a good team, say so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this has been helpful and thank you for not listening to your human resource department who clearly lack knowledge and empathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21816" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T02:34:53.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T03:00:36.793" Score="2" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have studied at a number of schools. Most graduate programs require &quot;transcripts from all previous schools&quot;. The last time I applied for a program, I spent a full day applying for transcript requests, as each school has different forms, Web systems, payment methods, etc. Is there a service that can hold all student transcripts and mail out official copies when one applies to a new program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T11:52:18.627" Title="Is there a service that can store and mail official transcripts from any school?" Tags="&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2014-09-13T03:19:29.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to mention this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If research is funded by a &quot;DoD component&quot; (as in your example), then typically&#xA;any conference or journal publication stemming from the research &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;must be cleared for public release,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;must carry an appropriate &lt;a href=&quot;http://dtic.mil/dtic/submit/guidance/distribstatement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;distribution statement&lt;/a&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;must carry a disclaimer similar to the one in your example (e.g. &quot;Any opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of ...&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, it is sometimes sufficient to satisfy items 1 and 3 above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the authors omit such statements, does this mean that the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper do reflect the view of the funding agency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, in the case of articles stemming from DoD component research funds: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manuscripts must first be submitted to the appropriate reviewing &quot;center&quot; for the particular DoD component funding body (such as the Public Release Center in the case of DARPA, etc.) to be reviewed for compliance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article does not contain the appropriate distribution statement and/or the required disclaimer, the reviewing center rejects the manuscript (it is not cleared for submission to a journal or conference), and the author must include the appropriate distribution statement and/or disclaimer before then resubmitting for clearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trivial contradiction to my answer includes those cases where authors are required to obtain clearance prior to publication, but don't do it for some reason (e.g. they forget to submit the paper for clearance). I'm not sure what happens to these authors, and I don't want to find out the hard way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: While my answer specifically addresses DoD funding per OP's example, as an author, it is important to follow the guidelines put forth by each particular funding body with respect to disclaimers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T14:21:05.340" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T14:21:05.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T03:21:56.373" Score="28" ViewCount="2670" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most instructors spend a large portion of the first period in a term talking about the syllabus. This seems to serve to pass responsibility onto students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students see the deadlines. No student can claim to not know about an assignment or deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students see the course rules. No student can claim they did not know they were breaking a rule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, some students have tried various methods, such as skipping lessons, then claiming to not know about requirements, in an attempt to get the support of the administrators to back their case of &quot;I didn't know&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have lots of material to cover within the term, so do not like to waste lots of time with talking about the course and would rather get started. Is &quot;here is the syllabus, read it&quot; sufficient for passing responsibilities onto students? If students do not read it (many won't) is the responsibility nevertheless still passed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T19:55:59.433" Title="Is &quot;read the syllabus&quot; a sufficient transfer of responsibility?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T03:53:48.713" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the students' perspective, this is similar to giving them a textbook and asking them to show up for the final exam. There are three reasons I see the need to start with discussing the syllabus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, talking about the syllabus is an opportunity to introduce yourself and the course, learn more about the students you will be teaching, and set the stage for the semester. It is a beginning of your semester-long relationship with the class after all. Skipping the overview is like taking a road trip without looking at the map first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it takes more than one repetition of same material, and preferably in different forms, for the material to be absorbed and comprehended. Thus, when the responsibility is passed to the students, their understanding of the syllabus will not be as good, no matter how diligently they read it. How important is it to you that they understand the syllabus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the students are denied opportunity to ask questions and discuss the syllabus and the course progression, if that is not covered in the class. Sure, they can email you, or ask during the office hours, but the entire class will not be on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="9518" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T02:12:59.963" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T02:12:59.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28423" CreationDate="2014-09-13T04:19:42.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume getting a baby sitter or a before-school childcare is not an option? In our case, we have the children signed up in the before and after-school program on as needed basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T04:19:42.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T04:23:24.343" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;sufficient&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufficient for passing the blame to students when they don't do what the syllabus says, and getting administrators to side with you in case of dispute?  Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufficient for actually getting the students to do what the syllabus says?  No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufficient for covering yourself?  Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufficient for a class that runs smoothly and that students find satisfactory?  No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T04:23:24.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T05:07:52.817" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a technical book that I like a lot and is widely respected in my field.  It has about 80 &quot;rules&quot; in it with example code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to create a series of videos to further explain and review each of the &quot;rules&quot;.  I will narrate the video in my own words.  My goal is for the video series to be like a tutor that is walking the viewer through the book.  I plan to fully credit the author and cite his work.  Some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I use code samples from the book if I give proper citation (title, author, page #)?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is creating a chapter-by-chapter review of a book and putting it on YouTube considered an ethical gray area?  To repeat: every video will fully credit the author of the book and it will be obvious that I am explaining ideas in my own words.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question here because of all the stackexchange sites, people here seem to be the most well versed in copyright and fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21818" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T07:16:00.827" Title="Copyright for creating a video that is a chapter-by-chapter Analysis of a Technical Book?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2014-09-13T06:35:42.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the grant that you receive to do your work. Most if not all grants require you to acknowledge the granting agency. Some grants give you very specific language that you must use in your acknowledgement (ranging from the request to include the grant number and use the full name of the agency to very pedantic requests for particular wording).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some grants do require you to specifically disclaim the granting agency from your conclusions and opinions. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf022/nsf0202_6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSF requires the following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An acknowledgment of NSF support and a disclaimer must appear in publications (including Web pages) of any material, whether copyrighted or not, based on or developed under NSF-supported projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (grantee must enter NSF grant number).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NSF support also must be orally acknowledged during all news media interviews, including popular media such as radio, television and news magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for articles or papers published in scientific, technical or professional journals, the following disclaimer must be included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NSF example is interesting because you don't need the disclaimer for academic journals -- presumably because the readers aren't presumed to be idiots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this is all part of the grant letter that you receive when you get a grant -- and part of the contract you sign when you agree to receive their money. There may be other terms inside the grant contract that are not visible (rights of first refusal in licensing technology, etc.) but by their very nature, acknowledgements are the most visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T22:54:26.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T06:40:40.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Nate Eldridge's answer, in project management it is important that all concerned really know what is supposed to be done. If you write an instruction and have others read it, you will likely have as many misinterpretations as people in the group. To run a successful project it is therefore vital not only to share such information but actually to make sure everyone is on the same page. If you think about it, you may have an idea, you write it so that it is clear to you, someone else reads it and they say it is clear to them, but there are at least three transfers, your thought to writing, your writing to someone's reading and read text to forming an opinion about what is written, so plenty of opportunities to go wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to cover yourself, you can claim you have done what is necessary by providing a text, but in reality and to provide the best transfer of knowledge, a written paper is far from enough. So the answer depends on what is important, that students really understand or if one (just) wants to fulfill the rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often think of courses as projects with myself as project leaders and students as project members. Despite much effort, it is of course still impossible to reach perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T16:13:27.180" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:13:27.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28442" CreationDate="2014-09-13T06:42:00.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are joint appointments (split FTEs) and courtesy appointments (0 FTE lines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joint appointments are when two departments equally (or not) contribute some of their dedicated faculty lines to a position. For example, Physics gives 0.5 FTE (half of a faculty slot) and Chemistry gives 0.5 FTE and they bring in a person who gains the title of &quot;Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics.&quot; Normally this person would have duties in both departments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are also courtesy appointments, also called 0 FTE appointments. If the above person was brought in 100% by Chemistry (1.0 FTE) but for various reasons wanted to occasionally teach a cross-listed course in physics, serve as a chair on a couple of doctoral committees, or other sundry reasons,  the Physics department could decide to add this person to their affiliate faculty list. It would not cost them any lines (which is why it is 0 FTE) and would solve some administrative requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some university programs are entirely consisted of 0 FTE positions and have no faculty lines of their own. Women's Studies is a good example of a program that on many campuses is entirely 0 FTE driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the example given by the OP, the person is &quot;Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, and Medicine (and Computer Science, by courtesy).&quot; This would seem to indicate that he has three 0.33 FTE lines (or 0.5 FTE, 0.25 FTE, 0.25 FTE; etc. etc.) and one 0 FTE courtesy appointment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T06:42:00.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28454" CreationDate="2014-09-13T07:16:00.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer 1: I am not a lawyer, I know sh*t about law, it is not a legal advice and you should consult with a professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer 2: ethics and law are two different question, this answer tries to give ideas about the law part (and you should not fully rely on it, as stated in D1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you using substantial amount of the book (its code, its ideas), especially blatantly copy its structure making it obvious what you copied, then you are way beyond fair use and you are in a gray or even red copyright area. Depending on publishers they generally put some short examples in their copyright session what constitute fair use, you can check those. What you describe here goes far beyond this. Also the whole purpose is to spread it to wide audience on youtube, so publisher can claim that they suffer significant loss of revenue, because the whole thing with all the details and secret sauce is on YouTube. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do about it?&#xA;You can try to get a permission from the publisher (most probably the author himself cannot give this). It may help if you have a reasonable discussion with the author / publisher about your idea and tune down the &quot;I will discuss every little details of your book and copy out all the codes&quot; part. For example it helps if you have your own intellectual effort in this whole stuff, e.g. analysing problems not presented in the book and show how the books method can be used, and not just reading/summarizing the book on video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T07:16:00.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T07:27:33.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management roles are much more than just passing down responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally / ethically one way or another may be sufficient to pass down responsibility, but your goal is not that you can punish students who do not obey the rule, your concern should be that the students are following those rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you goal is to have them proceed according to your rules, because it produces better learning experience for them and easier workflow for you, less headache for everyone involved. Students who do not submit assignment by deadline, do not follow formats, they look for you beyond your hours or emailing you with unnecessary questions etc are generating you extra work, extra problem you don't need. It is primarily not a liability issue, it is &quot;lets make things work!&quot; issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T07:27:33.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T12:11:11.060" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my take, since I my experience disagrees with Orion's and Nate's answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stopped handing out paper syllabi some 10 years ago. I put all my course information in the web page and on the first day of classes I spend less than 5 minutes at the beginning saying so, and maybe going quickly over the grading scheme and the assignment regime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the semester, the number of hits on the page is proportional to the number of students in the class, which shows me that most students look at the page a couple times a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last time I had an &quot;I didn't know&quot; issue was 12 years ago, and that same day I got an email from another student in the class saying that the &quot;misinformed&quot; student was cheating about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T12:11:11.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T12:20:03.637" Score="8" ViewCount="994" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.2951.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this excellent paper by Alexander Berkovich and Will Jagy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at the very bottom of the very first page it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first author was supported in part by NSA grant H98230-09-1-0051.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The NSA is the US National Security Agency.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean? What does a security agency have to do with distributing funds? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21825" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T16:32:44.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:32:44.497" Title="Why would a security agency distribute research funds?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28462" CreationDate="2014-09-13T13:21:22.407" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted, the NSA is the US National Security Agency. This department &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalgrantswire.com/national-security-agency-department-of-defense-federal-grants.html#.VBRB9PldVqU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;issues federal grants&lt;/a&gt; in the areas of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalgrantswire.com/information-security-grant-program.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information security&lt;/a&gt;, foreign language training &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalgrantswire.com/language-grant-program.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for Americans&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalgrantswire.com/mathematical-sciences-grants-program.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mathematical sciences&lt;/a&gt; (algebra, discrete mathematics, number theory, probability and statistics). These grants are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalgrantswire.com/writing-a-federal-grant-proposal.html#.VBRDXfldVqU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;highly sought after&lt;/a&gt;,and like all federal grants, require rigorous preparation. The authors of the paper which you read were successful applicants for a grant from the NSA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T15:09:06.260" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T15:09:06.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28359" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:16:42.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a doctoral student (and research assistant) with narcolepsy I will echo much of Stacey's answer. After outlining the responsibilities and expectations of the job, I recommend meeting with the student to discuss possible accommodations which may allow them to conduct research without creating undue burden on your lab and project. As you mentioned, a flexible work schedule that accommodates their sleep schedule is one option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've worked with my mentor (the PI) to create a very flexible work schedule and we focus more on the outcome of my work than the hours I spend working on it. There are rare times when (due to health insurance glitches) I can be without my medication for a few days up to 1 week. When this happens I make my mentor aware of how this is impacting my functioning; at times we've had to re-prioritize projects during those &quot;med gaps&quot; because I am unable to work as intensely as I normally would. Similarly, because narcolepsy medication can include stimulants, if I catch the flu my physician advises I skip my narcolepsy medication in order to allow my body to naturally rest. So, my mentor is also aware that if I catch the same flu bug as everyone else in the winter, it might knock me out of commission for a few days. Once I am back on my feet (or have received my meds from the insurance company) I make up the hours I missed in the following week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the other answers, narcolepsy has a range of severity and so the accommodations needed will vary as well; you will have to decide what works for your lab. One last note: as a graduate student there is often an emphasis on working excessive hours or going without sleep to meet the demands of research, classes, etc. This is not an option for me and at times my work output has been compared to classmates who sleep 5-6 hours a night to &quot;crunch&quot; large projects. I think sometimes with &quot;invisible&quot; disabilities or illnesses it is easy to forget the subtle or significant ways it can impact that person's life. The fact that you are seeking information on this topic and investigating ways to be supportive of your student is great.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15478" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T14:16:42.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28480" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:26:37.537" Score="76" ViewCount="12175" Body="&lt;p&gt;During writing my academic paper, I need to cite a definition in a scientific paper. The other part of the paper, is irrelevant to my work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been advised that if you will cite a paper, you need to read that paper entirely. But in this case, it seems useless to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also happened a few times when I wanted to cite from some books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21828" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:54:03.523" LastActivityDate="2021-03-12T15:56:31.123" Title="Do you need to read a whole article before citing it?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28466" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:33:16.303" Score="-7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes. Always read the whole article before citing.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't be sloppy. Don't take lazy shortcuts. Write responsibly. This is academia, not second-rate journalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cite something you don't understand, or which is riddled with nonsense, or is later retracted, and you show no sign that you were aware of it in your citation, then it &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; reflect badly on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, in any paper you cite, there will be things that are relevant, and things that are not. But that doesn't mean you can avoid reading the paper, and only cherry-pick reading the one sentence in it that is convenient for you to build your argument. If you don't read it all, you won't know everything in it that's relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building comprehensively on predecessors' work is how scholarship progresses.  Being lazy, omitting hte reading of your predecessors' work, and citing it blindly without reading it or understanding it, is how bad scholarship propagates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a large reference work such as a dictionary, then no, you aren't expected to read the whole thing: in such cases, you'll just have to get by with an appeal to authority, by using the most reputable dictionary you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T02:32:03.203" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T02:32:03.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28466" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:39:16.250" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to read and understand enough of the material to feel comfortable relying on it to be authoritative for the material you are citing. If you are using a dictionary to provide a definition of a word, you don't need to read the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; dictionary. If you are citing a journal article to provide a definition of a scientific concept, it's probably in your interest to read the whole thing to be sure that those authors give and correctly apply that definition. Even if they define it correctly, if their use is misleading, wrong, or otherwise dubious, you don't want to send your readers there for authoritative information on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got to consider the source and the purpose of your citation, but most of the time, you should read the whole thing. It's your reputation that's on the line, so it's best to make sure you understand your sources before you cite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2021-03-12T15:56:31.123" LastActivityDate="2021-03-12T15:56:31.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28475" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:48:05.000" Score="5" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a physics lab TA and I was recently informed that my engineering students will receive a lab final at the end of the semester worth 50 percent of their grade. The final exam is not personally created by me, but is decided amongst all of the lab TA's teaching the same course in the same semester. The meeting amongst the TA's will occur next week, however I am attempting to prepare for whatever will come, for better or worse for my students. I want my engineering students to succeed, and I want to give them all of my resources to give them the preparation to pass the final exam. I assume that I will not be allowed to tell my students what the lab final will be, or what types of questions will be asked. My students are required to complete 9 weekly lab worksheets corresponding to their specific lab of the week. All sum total of all lab worksheets are worth the other 50 percent of the lab grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One issue I am currently weighing in my head is how to grade the lab worksheets. Should I go easy on the grading to soften the blow of the final exam, or should I grade harshly to force them to correct every mistake they make in prepration for the final exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21829" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T07:23:09.090" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T09:14:29.083" Title="How to grade students' lab worksheets to prepare them for a final lab exam?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:49:15.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Nate Eldredge's analysis. The question of whether responsibility has been successfully transferred seems to have &quot;yes&quot; for an answer. However, I still want to point out some tips for making sure students are aware of their responsibilities and the course structure, which is presumably a desired outcome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending 10-20 minutes in the first lecture talking about the syllabus (which nowadays is normally distributed electronically) can be good to ease the students into the class, making the transition from the break a little smoother. I will often project the syllabus in front of the class so everyone can follow along. I also encourage online discussions (using Piazza) in my class, and many of these discussions turn out to be procedural. Very often a student will be confused about a policy and not know where to look for clarification, and another student will respond online with the correct information before I even know there was a question. You can also make announcements this way and remind students of exams and things. This will certainly &quot;transfer responsibility,&quot; since students who miss class will still have access to online posted announcements. Finally, I devote a few minutes every once in a while while lecturing to reminding students of policies and upcoming events. The human brain has a physical limit on how much new information it can process at once, so breaking up lecture to give some procedural explanations can give a needed break from the material, and perhaps even increase retention. You mention not having enough time to cover all of the material you want to, but making the lectures too information-dense may end up having the opposite from the intended effect, and students may end up retaining less. For courses like this, with a lot of material, I think it's fine to keep the lecture pace moderate and assign the students to read some of the material on their own. I'm not suggesting a dramatic change of pace, just a moderate slowdown, but anyway that's not really on topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9464" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T14:49:15.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-13T15:12:08.493" Score="1" ViewCount="954" Body="&lt;p&gt;To study in the USA, low grades can be supplemented by GRE or GMAT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do to supplement low grades to study in Europe (UK, Germany, France, Scandinavia), Oceania and South Africa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4271" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T23:13:26.940" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T03:17:00.203" Title="What can you do to supplement low grades for admission into masters programs that don't use GRE or GMAT?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28072" CreationDate="2014-09-13T16:25:18.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  What you're seeing is an example of academic politics.  An attempt to grab truth before anyone else can argue against it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people who attempt such reptilian measures tend to &quot;double-down&quot; whenever they are questioned.  Just persist and you'll see that they back off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take charge.  This is the kind of stuff that makes academia look ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19703" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T16:25:18.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28462" CreationDate="2014-09-13T17:08:54.017" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me just add a bit more context as a pure mathematician previously funded by the NSA, and in particular, respond to the question &quot;What does a security agency has to do with distributing funds?&quot;  The first point is, they actually farm out most of the decision making to the American Mathematical Society (as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://sam.msp.berkeley.edu/nsa-ams/about/program/guidelines.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  That still raises the question of why policy makers think routing the money through the NSA makes sense in the first place.  The cynic in me points out that though lots of this research could easily be funded through civilian agencies (for example, NSF), it's a lot easier to pass &quot;defense spending&quot; through congress, and you get fewer questions from ignorant congressmen who like to make fun of grants based on their titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, that still requires somebody in the NSA thinking that requesting this funding is worthwhile.  My reading (this is not based on any detailed knowledge of policy makers' thoughts, just general supposition) is this: the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the world, much larger than any university or scholarly society.  You would get an even more impressive number if you included other branches of the US Department of Defense, and contractors like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ida.org&quot;&gt;IDA&lt;/a&gt;.  They thus have a vested interest in making sure more Americans get advanced mathematical training (a lot of their jobs are in practice only open to US citizens, due to security clearances), and keep in mind the possibility of working for the NSA.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving grants to mathematicians is probably an inefficient method for this (some of the money goes to graduate students directly as salary or travel funding, some to universities as overhead, encouraging them to keep professors on their staff and run graduate programs), but it's also very cheap in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure they also do occasionally benefit from the mathematical results (while they have a reasonably broad program, they don't give grants in all areas of math).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also tons of other grants coming from the DOD: DARPA, the Army, Navy and Air Force all have their own research offices, and the DOD has its own &lt;a href=&quot;https://ndseg.asee.org&quot;&gt;graduate fellowship program&lt;/a&gt;.  In all cases, some of the research is directly connected to military needs, but quite a bit is just predicated on the idea that a strong a well-trained pool of scientists can be very important for national defense.  I think ultimately, this grew out the experience of World War II (and the Cold War) where this was undisputedly the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T17:08:54.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28469" CreationDate="2014-09-13T19:25:40.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I don't TA physics, but Geology, our labs tend to have the same structure. Luckily the labs are small enough that I can get to know the groups ect, So I can determine how hard they are working on the labs ect, so I generally grade 70% effort and 30% correctness. The difference is though, that you are teaching engineering majors, where I tend to teach non geology or STEM majors. Getting something in the lab 100% correct for my students isn't as important and following the scientific process, but, for a class of engineers, I would have higher expectations since the content they are learning is helpful for their careers later. IE, they should have a vested interest beyond the grade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with the Lab exams is that the students either do very well or very poorly. I would be somewhat lax on the labs, especially on first time mistakes. But there isn't much you can do if they aren't working hard and aren't completing the labs correctly and they will likely fail the test if thats the case anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastEditorUserId="6898" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T20:03:53.293" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T20:03:53.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-09-13T19:52:28.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that part of the reason courses are currently offered free is to gather data about how people use the material/how they study etc, and that's (partly) why they tend to have questionnaires about you at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a more cynical way of looking at it. Shortly after I first finished a course, I got an email saying lots of people had been asking about a course on a particular topic; there wasn't a free course available, but there was one you could do for $400.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T19:52:28.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28466" CreationDate="2014-09-13T20:13:48.793" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's important to read the whole paper before citing it, unless you are extending on that paper's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: A &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0504094.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent paper&lt;/a&gt; said that most of the citations are copied (&quot;when a scientist writes a manuscript, he picks up several random recent papers, cites them and also copies some of their references&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5820" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T20:13:48.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28466" CreationDate="2014-09-13T21:57:38.700" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you don't have to read the whole paper.&#xA;If you think you do, ask yourself this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;do you also have to read &lt;em&gt;all papers cited in&lt;/em&gt; the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I recently needed to know a certain function of &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;. Some computer experimentation suggested that it might be 3*2^n, let's say. Then I found a paper published in a reputable journal that claimed to prove exactly that. As the reasons why it was 3*2^n were probably rather unrelated to what I was trying to do, I cited them but did not check their proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On balance, I think that making every author read every paper they ever cite would slow down the progress of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat&lt;/strong&gt;: this may be field-dependent. For instance, if the paper can be thought of as consisting of just one long definition, then yes, one should read the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorUserId="11257" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T02:18:30.677" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T02:18:30.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28485" CreationDate="2014-09-14T00:28:07.133" Score="12" ViewCount="7167" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are applying for a faculty job in computer science in a US university, should your research statement have references to research papers in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="802" LastEditorUserId="27176" LastEditDate="2020-11-09T19:54:00.527" LastActivityDate="2020-11-10T02:55:58.300" Title="Should a research statement for a faculty job have references in it?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;research-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28501" CreationDate="2014-09-14T00:28:40.443" Score="4" ViewCount="2909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for a PhD and I am asked for 3 recommendation letters. I have 2 which I think are good letters. I am looking for someone to provide the third. I had 4 courses with a certain professor in my undergrad. I scored B+ (3.25/4) in two courses and an A (3.75/4) in the other two. Long story short, I know and the professor knows that I deserve a much higher grade in the two courses which I scored B+ in. I am thinking of asking him for his reference letter as I think they might help in making the effect of these two B+s less sever. I think I have gained a lot of respect from him in last year or two which made me think that his recommendation might be positive, but I am not sure about what he will write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it logical to ask him or should I ask someone else ? I don't have many other option; The other professors only taught me one or two courses and I am not sure if I can get good recommendations from them. Additionally, that professor was at the committee for my final project presentation in my undergrad. I scored very high in that too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am little confused on which is better, a recommendation from this professor, or from a professor who taught me one course and I scored an A+, or from a professional referee since my other two referees are academics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T21:06:19.333" Title="Asking for a recommendation from a professor who I did bad in his courses" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T00:48:52.203" Score="15" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall that as an undergraduate, very few of the older instructors ever presented basic details about themselves. While I can understand how most would not reveal much about their family life, I cannot understand why few told about their academic background, research interests, work history, or other details which seem connected to the course. This was not the case with the younger instructors and graduate student teachers. Now that I teach undergraduates, I wonder if these older instructors knew through experience that it is best to keep quiet about one's background. Is there a good reason for instructors to keep back such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T10:35:09.200" Title="Why do many instructors avoid giving personal introductions?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28482" CreationDate="2014-09-14T01:01:43.950" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes. Definitely.&lt;/strong&gt; This gives the reader an indication of how your work fits into the larger body of research in the  field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without references, it may appear that you are working in an area that is so obscure that nobody cares about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="87026" LastEditDate="2020-11-10T02:55:58.300" LastActivityDate="2020-11-10T02:55:58.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2014-09-14T04:11:18.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have occasionally bought books with NSF grant money. At the time, I was told, by the staff in charge of grant accounting, that books are an allowable expense provided they directly relate to the research being done under the grant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14506" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T04:11:18.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28489" CreationDate="2014-09-14T04:44:49.927" Score="10" ViewCount="2046" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a academic reference for application of a PhD program.&#xA;I believe this is the same as what is called a Letter of Recommendation, at other institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am getting one from my potential supervisor, and I need one other.&#xA;I thought through all the lecturers I had, and came up with a priorities list of people to approach. Taking into account (in rough order of priority): How likely they are to remember me, How relevant their units/expertise are to my intended course of study,  How well I did in their Unit/s, and How research/project focused the Unit/s I did under them were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person I found most suitable is currently lecturing me, and has done serveral times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured I would basically send him an email saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Looking at continuing my studies on X, that I mentioned to you&#xA;  before, with a PhD. For this I need a academic reference. I thought&#xA;  you might be suitable because of (reasons outlines above). Could we&#xA;  meet to discuss this some time in the next few weeks? I am free on&#xA;  Monday mornings, Tuesday afternoons ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought, fairly casual, not really a big deal kinda thing.&#xA;But then I got looking around the internet, and it seems like maybe it is a big deal.&#xA;There seems like there is lots of advice and template letters out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it actually worth worrying too much about?&#xA;Should I spend say a hour or so checking over my request email,&#xA;to make sure I am giving all the right information and that it is formatted nicely and perfectly grammatical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it more of a casual thing, the email serves its purpose to give the key points of information and to arrange a meeting. It will be a throw away communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it different because he is currently lecturing me, so it is not so much of a cold call?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is cultural depended I am in Australia. I am applying to the same institution I am currently doing my undergraduate/honours at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T10:15:13.813" Title="Should I be stressed about asking for an Academic Reference?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28487" CreationDate="2014-09-14T05:54:22.320" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the person who you're asking for a letter of reference knows you well enough to write a good letter of recommendation, you don't really need to be worried about the formality of the request. You should be able to ask: &quot;I would like to talk to you about writing a letter of recommendation for me. Could we set an appointment?&quot; or something similar to that, and it should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: writing letters of recommendation is one of the responsibilities of faculty members (and other instructors)! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T05:54:22.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28469" CreationDate="2014-09-14T07:18:41.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;People learn physics (and many other things) by making mistakes, and then trying to correct those mistakes. With that in mind, I would always grade activities in a way that was supposed to motivate my students to fix their mistakes. However, it's also useful not to penalize them too much for making mistakes when they are first learning the material. Usually what I wound up doing was grading in a way such that students had to basically know what they were doing to get a 90% or higher, and they would have to really get &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; right to get a 100% on an activity, but even if they didn't understand some concepts they would still get around 80%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this grading scheme was specified by the administrators I was working for, so I don't really have any data comparing this with alternate grading schemes. I can offer the anecdotal evidence that when I was taking physics classes as an undergraduate, it was understood among the physics students that the grading would be harsh and thus grades as low as 60% or so could still be taken as an indicator that you were basically getting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="236" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T07:18:41.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28469" CreationDate="2014-09-14T09:14:29.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my lab instructors would force us to correct the mistakes until the report was of sufficient quality. Sometimes, the problem would be forgotten units on a table, or a numerical error in a formula (fixable in a few minutes); others would be conceptual mistakes (requiring more work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another similar lab, the instructor would clearly indicate any errors and discuss them with us to make sure we understood them. There was then no need to rewrite the report, and the grade was only affected mildly. But, on the following reports, you better not make the same mistake, because it will then be penalised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the first option you can give them an opportunity to correct the mistakes without harming their grades, albeit at the cost of more work for all parties. On the second, you can make sure they learn from their mistakes, while being nice when they do it for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T09:14:29.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2014-09-14T10:28:49.940" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether this is in any way related to the age of the instructor, but the primary reason that most people I know don't do a &lt;em&gt;&quot;this is me and my vast experience and research results&quot;&lt;/em&gt; style introduction is that it is all too easy to come across as bragging. Even if you have the best intentions and just want to explain your background to the students, so that they can judge your qualifications for themselves, it may sound to them like you are really just showing off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most students &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; that the instructor knows what he's talking about, until they have solid evidence to the contrary. There is really no reason to explicitly talk about your experience beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you feel like a short introduction of yourself will add to the course, go ahead. In the grand scheme of things, I am sure whether you talk for 5 minutes about yourself in the beginning of a course is the tiniest of issues. What I would avoid is what one industrial lecturer in my alma mater did. This guy spent 5 - 10 minutes of the beginning of &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; lecture talking about himself and his company (and was ridiculed a fair bit for this by the students :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T10:35:09.200" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T10:35:09.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28498" CreationDate="2014-09-14T10:36:50.970" Score="0" ViewCount="1395" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I apply to a university for acceptance to their PhD program, I send my résumé with the application. When I want to apply for a job outside of academia, I also send my résumé to them. In both cases they also read my résumé at the interview stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am not sure whether it is advantageous to also upload my résumé to LinkedIn. Will people visit my LinkedIn profile and read it? Is it likely to help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19761" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T15:26:10.527" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T06:51:37.720" Title="Should I put my résumé on LinkedIn when applying for a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28499" CreationDate="2014-09-14T10:41:13.287" Score="5" ViewCount="1076" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of the current political situation, I cannot apply for a PhD in the USA. There is a very remarkable professor on a U.S. university and I want to ask him to suggest for me other universities that are good to be considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know your opinion about this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if you agree, how can I state my request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21852" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T13:32:37.780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T14:27:38.313" Title="What is the etiquette for asking a professor I don't know to suggest universities for me?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28495" CreationDate="2014-09-14T12:47:09.723" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it really makes any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admissions committees are not in the habit of doing social media searches for applicants.  In fact, I don't think I've ever heard an academic talk about using LinkedIn at all.  (Maybe it is more commonly used in certain fields that are more closely related to business.)  Even if they did, there's no particular reason they should come across your profile, and no particular reason why finding a resume there or not would influence anyone's decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible benefit of posting I can imagine is that if, somehow, one of the admissions committee happened to see it and form some favorable impression of you, that might help their opinion when they read your application.  But that seems like an unlikely coincidence to hope for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I can't imagine any possible way in which having your resume on LinkedIn could be a disadvantage in the application process.  So from that point of view, you probably might as well post it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, I would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; recommend trying to add LinkedIn connections to faculty members at the university where you are applying.  Since most probably don't use LinkedIn, this will just result in them getting annoying emails.  And you don't want them to read your application and think &quot;Hey, I remember that name - this is the guy who's sending me all that LinkedIn spam.  What a jerk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T12:47:09.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28496" CreationDate="2014-09-14T12:55:54.963" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think most people have in their heads a list of &quot;good universities in my field&quot;.  When advising students who they know on where to apply for grad school, they try to recommend schools based on everything they know about the student, their interests, talents, constraints, etc.  For a student who they don't know and have never met, this would be hard to do effectively, and I don't think most people would really be interested in trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you send such an email, I suspect you will either get no response, or a brief &quot;Sorry, I can't help&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would suggest that you talk to a faculty member in your field at your own university, someone who knows you well and whose opinion you respect.  They would be a much better source of advice for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T12:55:54.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28505" CreationDate="2014-09-14T14:09:44.447" Score="8" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;How are faculty job positions in a US university evaluated? Do the committee members get to view (and discuss) electronic copies of a candidate's application before the hiring meeting (and possibly filter out some applications before the formal meeting), or is everything done in the meeting? I am asking because I think one needs to prepare the application differently in the two circumstances. If electronic copy of the application is emailed to the faculty members, then one can insert hyperlinks in the research statement E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;blah blah blah [1]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where clicking on &quot;[1]&quot; would take you to a website.&#xA;But if a printout is given to the committee members, one needs to make sure all the info you want to convey is in the printout e.g. web addresses will need to be spelled out instead of being embedded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="802" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T22:07:22.013" Title="Are faculty job applications evaluated on a computer or on a paper?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28483" CreationDate="2014-09-14T14:25:13.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they were genuinely bad grades, I would advise against using this professor. But a B+ is not &quot;really&quot; a bad grade, even though you might have done better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professors are stricter than average, and a B+ from them is the equivalent of an A- or even an A from most others. This could well be the case here. One of my friends was told that he was in the &quot;top 5&quot; of his class. But there were only two A's, which explains his B+. If this is the case with you, this professor is in the best position to vouch for the quality of your work, and the fact that it would be worth an A elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I would schedule a meeting with the professor to find out how he feels about your work, and about recommending you.  It could be that you were one of his best students that he'd recommend above most others (one student on another post reported being the &quot;best student&quot; in a class where he got the highest grade, 90%). On the other hand, he may think that you are &quot;nothing special&quot; in which case you should go another way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to now, everything I've written is &quot;speculation,&quot; so you need to find out what the &quot;facts&quot; are before making a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="755" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T21:06:19.333" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T21:06:19.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10621" CreationDate="2014-09-14T14:35:46.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I would include a letter explaining the biopsy operation, the date of it, and its &quot;correlation&quot; with the &quot;creepy C.&quot; This letter should probably come from a professor familiar with the situation, if possible, or maybe a doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've come a long way since then. You've got several publications/presentations, and a cumulative GPA of 3.8  that includes the C. Most schools would be happy let you in. They'd wonder about the C, but would also be looking for an &quot;excuse&quot; to overlook it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something you don't want to let &quot;pass&quot; but you also don't want to make a &quot;big deal&quot; of it. A letter or two should be just about right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T14:35:46.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T14:53:44.487" Score="37" ViewCount="7242" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my writing courses, about 5% of students will come to me prior to deadlines asking for help with their paper. I see no problem advising students, as I often similarly came for help when I was an undergraduate. Recently, though, I found an increase in students who apparently just want to abuse this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students will bring me some plagiarized work, showing it to me early, as a sort of test if I will notice. It seems difficult to punish plagiarism when the paper is not yet submitted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students will bring in papers again and again, with little changes put in at each stage, hoping their minimal effort each time will be sufficient to reach their goal of a &quot;D&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried stopping students, but then they are angry when they see the &quot;F&quot; that they hoped I would help them get away from. While most of these students are probably just incredibly lazy, there is a chance that some among them are genuinely trying to improve, but just struggling a great deal, and I can't see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How might I go about blocking such abuses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T23:40:20.520" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T22:21:23.250" Title="What to do about students who ask for help too often?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28500" CreationDate="2014-09-14T15:01:07.523" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've had a variety of practices. Some of it depends on the computer literacy of the admin assistant doing the application file processing. We've had cases of electronic material (PDFs) being printed out and then rescanned back in as the staff person did not know how to collate multiple PDFs into a single document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[HEAD PALM] Sigh...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be entirely fair, some of our faculty are also very visual-tactile and will prefer print out the dossier and read it there, rather than online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you can't assume anything about how the files will be handled. You should be explicit in the URLs. If you have media files on disk or thumb drive (photographs, video, source code, simulations, etc.), then you should also post a visible link to an archive location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T15:01:07.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19181" CreationDate="2014-09-14T15:10:48.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are applying to a junior faculty line (your use of &quot;full professor&quot; would suggest senior faculty but this is belied by the rest of your post).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;After they make the short list, we commonly ask junior faculty who do not yet have a research monograph to submit their dissertations. We do this for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are ABD, it is an easy way to ascertain whether they will complete. If it is March and they say they are submitting in April and they only have 3 chapters, then we know to be cautious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are recent PhDs, then often the PhD is the only piece of research writing that they have in their dossier. It remains one of the best gauges of their research competence until they complete more publications. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After responding, I looked at your profile and it seems that you might indeed be applying to senior positions. In that case, I'd be puzzled too -- unless you don't have many publications and/or your dissertation was at a university that is not well known. Or, alternately, the institution you are applying to has not had much experience with senior hires, and is defaulting to the junior practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Personal Aside: I'm a tenured associate. If I applied for a full position and they asked for my dissertation,  I would be puzzled but not be offended &lt;strong&gt;IF&lt;/strong&gt; they had also asked for &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; on my CV. I would assume they are just being extremely meticulous in making my case to the Provost for the senior line. But if they asked for just a few of my publications &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; my dissertation, I might tend to becoming annoyed (by the insinuation that my PhD was suspect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T17:25:59.643" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T17:25:59.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T15:21:36.843" Score="4" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Mendeley to organize, highlight and to synchronize my references. I think a feature where you can see a list of annotations/highlight that you have made will be extremely useful during writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example one day you just remember, &quot;Oh I have seen this in some papers, I don't remember which one but I remember I highlighted it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I have to guess and open one by one the paper to look for the annotations that I meant and scrolling the screen to look for &quot;it&quot;, or by performing a search, both are not efficient enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindle has this feature. Everytime you make some annotations (on different books) they aggregate and put it as a list for you. When you click on that, it will go to the page on the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference manager that has this kind of functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21828" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T16:47:05.663" Title="What is the reference manager that can show the list of annotations?" Tags="&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28482" CreationDate="2014-09-14T15:45:32.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One very important function of a research statement is to demonstrate that you know what you want to do from day 1. No one wants to hire a new faculty who have only vague ideas about what to do, since everyone is supposed to be productive as soon as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that perspective, a research proposal without specifics can be a huge red flag, and evaluators may fear that you just made up something fast. On the other hand, you can give an impression that you already researched the literature, thought through details and specifics, i.e. have concrete details in your proposals with bibliography, people may have more confidence in you. Note, that majority of the people who filter and judge your CV have no clue about your field, so such superficial impressions can be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T15:45:32.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28336" CreationDate="2014-09-14T16:03:30.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a point of view from experimental science. I do spectroscopy of biological samples and I have experiments like that as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not underestimate how strenuous experiments can be: if done well they often require you to keep up a high level of concentration. This is exhausting, and particularly if awkward timing is involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide your priorities: do experiments only or start an experiment whenever that fits your other work schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that there are some people who cope with such situations relatively calmly: they vanish into the lab, do their experiments, don't go into fits because of the lost time, and reappear after the experiments are done. Other people (e.g. I) absolutely hate the situation, because tons of other stuff needs to be done, and don't get done while you are there waiting for the experiments in minute time chunks that don't relly let you do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I found 2 feasible ways of dealing with these situations, and the big idea is to decide beforehand where the priority is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experiments have high priority: In that case, I consider the time and concentration being reserved for the experiments. Any other things that happen to get done are a surplus. I find that most items from @ff's list shift my focus too much. Which in the end leads to chaos in the experimental data (e.g. slightly differing names of files which require manual adjusting afterwards etc.)&#xA;But setting up the measurement schedule for the next experiment, getting the notes and the samples ready for the next experiment, etc. is OK. (Though many of my experiments are in the dark, so preparations to be done in the same lab are not really feasible). Other than that, I do things like checking (e)mail, schedule meetings, preparing TODO lists and working off tiny tasks. If the waiting time is more like half an hour I may clean up my desk/the lab, but e.g.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I don't like reading papers or doing a literature search on an alarm-clock schedule. Such work I do only when     &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experiments have lower priority: I often have experiments where I need to change samples after measurements are finished after, say 30 min, but nothing really bad happens if I change the sample 30 min or 1 h later. In that case, I often decide to run the experiments on a lower priority, while reading or writing papers, doing literature search, etc. &#xA;So I do something, and when a natural break occurs after a chunk of work is done, I go and change samples before I start the next chunk of work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This way, I get maybe only a third or a quarter of the experiments done compared with the &quot;high priority&quot; experiment situation, but other work is possible as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, the first scenario is the more emotionally exhausting the more you dislike the breaks and fret about all the work that doesn't get done. It is the more feasible the better you can arrive also mentally in a state where you concentrate on the experiment &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;. Experiments are serious and exhausting work as well. One reason is that you have to be far more concentrated than at the computer*: If I make a typo, there's backspace. If I type an awkward sentence I can change it later. If I pipette wrong, I have to start from the beginning or even take out everything and clean my instrument. And this is the more strenuous if awkward schedules are involved. And weird little waiting times are in my experience as exhausting as an experimental schedule you can barely keep up with.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* most times: obviously, data analyses need to be set up correctly. But even there, e.g. literate programming allows to double-check later that everything was done correctly. This is not possible for the experiments - there I have to be concentrated so I'm sure afterwards that I did everything correctly even though I have at most very limited possibilties for double checking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to do your experiments in that way, then the best way to deal with it is to also mentally accept this and make it your task. Make sure that the experiments really stay top priority if you decided that way: don't read SX if you realize that this in fact leads to the experiment waiting for you when you decided that you should wait for the experiment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second way is of course only possible if if the experiments allow this. And if the lab has low enough use so your colleagues don't kill you for not making fullest use of the vaulable lab time you reserved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of automatization of (biological) lab experiments, I for example print out &quot;experiment forms&quot; that have a predefined structure for my note taking so don't forget any of the parameters. This helps me to make fewer mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases I even write custom measurement programs, but this effort is usually only worth while if you know that large series of experiments follow (for totally non-scientific and awkward reasons: the instrument software often allows only very restricted programmed interaction, and if there are not many experiments following, it is not worth while to go down to the low-level control the SDK offers - if there is an SDK available at all). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:03:30.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-14T16:20:08.240" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specify the level of changes the student needs to make before they can come back again.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request that the student shows you what changes have been made by comparing the old and new versions of the assignment.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If student has failed to reach the level suggested or fails to show you the differences, simply tell them to go away until they have made the requested changes. Simply state that your previous comments still apply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a time delay between when they ask and when you give feedback or when you give feedback and when they can come again might also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T19:20:25.600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T19:20:25.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T17:29:15.467" Score="29" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several commercial database vendors include an end-user license agreement provision, known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DeWitt Clause&lt;/a&gt;, that &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/27631/452&quot;&gt;prohibits&lt;/a&gt; researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the DeWitt Clause ever been successfully defended in court?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="7319" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T15:31:40.983" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T15:56:15.593" Title="Has the DeWitt Clause, which prevents publication of named DBMS benchmarks, ever been successfully defended in court?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28131" CreationDate="2014-09-14T17:32:28.387" Score="-1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've &lt;em&gt;worked&lt;/em&gt; in the private sector. They expect &lt;strong&gt;results&lt;/strong&gt;.  - &lt;em&gt;Dr Ray Stantz, &quot;Ghostbusters&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the discrimination is not against someone being an academician. The discrimination is against someone having zero industry job experience - and that includes intangible but important things like different priorities, balances and tradeoffs in academia vs the for-profit workplace. You can do research but produce no results in academia. You can research pretty much anything you want. Doesn't work that way in real company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, an academician who just got his PhD is treated exactly like a fresh BS graduate - nameley, like a guy with education but no industry exposure. &lt;sub&gt;(The difference being that BS analyst level fresh hire isn't paid a lot and doesn't have trust and responsibility in their first job that would have majors consequences because they are unused to &quot;real world&quot; and the needs of the business, so they pose a lot less risk)&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easy way to falsify your theory is to compare the employability and level of interest in someone who has a PhD vs. someone who has a MS or PhD &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; after that worked in the industry for at least a year. Personally, when I do hiring recommendations, no-experience person has no chance by comparison, all other qualifications being equal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In certain cases, having a PhD isn't of any help (doesn't hurt, but it isn't a research position, or even one requiring super-high-IQ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, a PhD would be a hindrance since PhD holder would expect to be compensated higher merely due to holding his degree (since on average, PhD does lend itself to higher pay if you look at labor market statistics). So, why would a company overpay someone for a useless skill/resume point?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20300" LastEditorUserId="20300" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T17:38:40.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T17:38:40.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-14T19:34:17.823" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you see something definitely plagiarized, you could try to get them to claim it as theirs when they consult you and fail them on the spot for making the claim whether it's in class or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28510/15723&quot;&gt;@DaveClarke&lt;/a&gt; that on this &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; the other issue, announcing a policy at the start of the term (no more than N consults per assignment/per term, and plagiarism is an automatic F and will also be referred to the school's academic conduct team) would help set expectations, cut down on abuse, and give you grounds to say &quot;No, it wouldn't be fair to others if I helped you again before you turn it in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T22:21:23.250" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19181" CreationDate="2014-09-14T19:36:46.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the field. What they generally want to see is a Terminal Degree, or exceptional achievement in lieu thereof. But in some fields no widely recognized PhD level really exists, and the Masters -- plus professional experience -- is as close to a terminal degree as it gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T19:36:46.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-14T21:29:48.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having taught in similar situations, I have to agree with Dave Clarke on requiring a demonstration of significant incremental improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't let plagiarism on the first draft pass silently, either. If you see evidence of such on the first draft, you need to report it to the proper authority as evidence that the student body needs better training on what plagiarism is and how to properly use other works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hold firm to standards. You should have a rubric distributed stating the qualities of a paper at each grade level. If a paper is clearly an F paper, you should be able to point to your rubric and tell them that if no clear improvement is made, an F will be the grade they receive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must grade them, the non-recursive definition of which, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as Merriam Webster puts it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to separate (things) into groups or classes according to a particular quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T06:23:00.917" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T06:23:00.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28500" CreationDate="2014-09-14T22:07:22.013" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was (twice) on a hiring committee for a tenure-track math professor. Applicants uploaded their applications via a central repository (MathJobs) and we evaluated them asynchronously. I read a lot of applications at 11:00 pm on my laptop; one of my colleagues printed everything out. We only met to discuss candidates we thought highly of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should write a self-contained research statement that does not require hyperlinks. It is probably harmless to include them; for example, your bibliography might be hyperlinked, or your research statement might say, e.g. &quot;A visual demonstration of this phenomenon can be found on my web site at [URL]&quot;, where [URL] gives the full URL and is a hyperlink. This probably won't help you, but it might, and I can't imagine it hurting you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should also do is to update your personal web page. Preprints of all of your publications, teaching materials (e.g. syllabi for past classes), slides for talks you've given, etc., etc. -- anything you hope a hiring committee might look at should be there. Ensure that googling your name, together with either the name of your university or of your subject area, will lead to the searcher finding these materials within three seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fields other than math might vary. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T22:07:22.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-14T23:09:04.367" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are some good answers here, I will just add a few thoughts from my own experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have plenty of students who try for minimal work just to get a pass. I used to explain to them what their grade would be and why but in the end, all they heard was what their grade would be. If it was pass they stopped listening. Of course, this is quite unhealthy for their longer-term success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since changed to not telling them what grade I would give them before they submit, partially because of JeffE's comment to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/25853/2692&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Now, I focus ONLY on showing the students how to judge their own papers&lt;/strong&gt;. I explain that I will mark when they submit but if they want to understand how to mark their own papers, I will help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not check for plagiarism on drafts (though some students do ask me to). If I see something which looks like plagiarism, like the level of English goes from very poor to perfect, I do let the students know that this looks like plagiarism and, if it is, they should fix it with proper citation before submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short, focus on teaching them how to grade their own papers.&lt;/strong&gt; This helps a lot if you provide a rubric. Do not tell them &amp;quot;I will give you a  'D' if you submit this.&amp;quot; Instead, tell them &amp;quot;Tell me what you think this paper deserves and explain to me why you believe that.&amp;quot; Then help them develop that skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should become independent learners, even if they don't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T23:09:04.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28276" CreationDate="2014-09-14T23:45:23.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably you are asking about programs, rather than grants.  Typically only faculty receive grants.  There are a variety of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/programs.asp?descriptorhub=SummerResearch_Summer%20Research%20Opportunity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;search tools&quot;&gt;search tools&lt;/a&gt; available for these programs.  Typically the most flexible situations undergrads can get come from the undergraduate's university office of undergraduate research or from a faculty member the student knows who is willing to hire undergraduates using grant money.  Most of the government research funding agencies offer a summer research program.  These typically range from 8 to 12 weeks in duration and are not usually flexible, though I have heard of accommodations being made for students whose classes end late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T23:45:23.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28276" CreationDate="2014-09-15T00:49:48.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd also ask around your department. Many universities have various summer research fellowships available. For example, one enterprising student in my lab found money through NASA that was administered through the physics department but also funded math, science, engineering, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most funding organizations are happy to &quot;pad&quot; a research grant with 1-2 undergrad research positions. I usually add these to my budget when submitting. While other areas get trimmed, the undergrad positions have never been a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21869" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T00:49:48.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T01:46:30.917" Score="13" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;For obvious reasons I will not be too specific, but I am aware of a situation (at a private research university) where a company with a somewhat less-than-stellar public reputation has endowed a chair professorship.  The concerned department and dean want one of their current professors to accept the chair (though some of the faculty would much prefer a new search to fill the position).  There is some reluctance to accept this offer, in large part because the professor being offered the chair balks at becoming a &quot;brand ambassador&quot; for the company making the endowment while getting no explicit benefit (the chair would cover only the salary that is paid anyway).  This professor (who is evidently preferred as having the best research profile in the department) and some colleagues also claim that an endowment named after some individual(s) would have been more acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it generally the norm that any academic offered a chair professorship will accept it, for collegiality?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it standard for such an endowment to cover only the professor's salary but not offer any grants, etc.?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, is there a real difference in perception between an endowment named after a person/family vs. one named after a company?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastEditorUserId="99421" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T00:59:09.330" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T15:36:56.420" Title="Corporate branding of chair professorship" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-15T02:49:21.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I have read in your question, it appears that you are &lt;strong&gt;enabling&lt;/strong&gt; the students. I have had the same issue and it happens not only in academia but in all professions. &#xA;Stick with the facts and the mechanics of writing, do not answer their questions directly, use an indirect method and point them to the source, allow the students to do the work. As an enabler you are in essence doing the work for your students(or so they hope).&#xA;When you are enabling &quot;people&quot; to take advantage of you, it is very difficult to see and hard to admit. Your students are adding monkeys on your back, they are smarter than you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stick to the facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give direction of where to find answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not provide answers, provide guidance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took a few semesters for students to push you along into this trap. It will take a few more for the message to circulate that you are no longer a mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21871" LastEditorUserId="8305" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T22:07:54.847" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:07:54.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28524" CreationDate="2014-09-15T03:20:06.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking too many questions in one post and most ask for opinion! Brief responses to each:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually faculty accept named professorships because of the increase in prestige (named-professorships are a scarce commodity and operate as such) as well as the increase in salary or research funds that usually attaches to these. Cynical people would say the latter is more important. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually (almost always?) the endowment would carry an increased salary at the very least and typically additional research funds  but I have not found any statistics on the average and sd of this delta. One way to explore this is to look at the public salary data available at state-run universities in the United States and compare named vs. non-named professors at the same rank in the same department. This is left as an exercise for the reader and doesn’t account for research fund deltas. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, in that most person-based named-professorships are named after a person who most people do not know  whereas corporate names are more familiar (for example:  Prof. Mark C. Elliott, the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard versus Prof Sheldon Garon, the Nissan Professor in Japanese Studies at Princeton). And thus while neither Mark Schwartz nor Nissan Motors influence the work of either faculty person, the perception is worse in the second in that we've heard of Nissan and can attribute ulterior motives to it. And as dmckee notes in the comments, humans are mortal -- while corporations are immortal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is a third category of alumn-class-named professorships: Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies. These are essentially crowdfunded by a class cohort. I should note that some named fellowships are also crowdfunded — they are named &lt;em&gt;in honor of&lt;/em&gt; so-and-so. Often the benefactor is the spouse or children, but occasionally the departure of a very-loved professor motivates students to donate. There is also a fourth category where a named professorship is created by the trustees of the university (or by the state or national government) in honor of or recognition of someone or something. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T15:36:56.420" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T15:36:56.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T03:44:35.053" Score="26" ViewCount="3607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a rejection for my paper that was submitted to a high impact journal;&#xA;after waiting 6 weeks instead of 4 normally it was rejected with only one referee comment 4 lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study seems to be well done and the results are properly and concisely described. But, the paper is also nothing more than that...It is just the determination of some basic  properties and a comparison of the calculated and measured ones. As such, the paper presents no new insights, new methodologies, or whatsoever... Hence, it must be concluded that the current study applies current measurement protocols in a correct way, but has no added value to the existing state of the art. Therefore, although I have hardly any small remarks on the paper, it does not meet the standards of the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should one react to such a review? Submit to another journal? The paper is about new material, so I don't agree the referee about the fact it has no added value to the existing state of art!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21874" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T04:11:37.243" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T04:11:37.243" Title="How should one interpret a rejection on the grounds that a paper &quot;has no added value to the existing state of the art&quot;?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;rejection&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28527" CreationDate="2014-09-15T04:04:54.170" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals and conferences tend to have a particular standard for novelty. Some (especially high-impact journals) have a very high bar for novelty, and will only accept papers that have exceptionally high significance and novelty. Others have a low standard for novelty; they'll accept most original papers, as long as they are within the scope of the journal and present solid work. And of course, there is a whole range in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this review, it sounds like you &quot;overshot&quot; a little bit; that is, your paper (as submitted) was not up to this particular journal's standards for novelty. This isn't an accusation that you didn't submit new material; it just means that it didn't contribute enough new insight, new techniques, etc. to meet this journal's standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it may be an application of an existing technique to a well-studied problem, that didn't offer any surprising findings - new, possibly valuable, but not very novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your choices are then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible: Make some major improvements to your paper. Highlight the novel and impactful aspects of it. Ask others in your field to read your revised paper and give you feedback on where they think it belongs. (&quot;What journal would you expect to see this paper published in?&quot;) If they suggest that this revised manuscript is suitable for a high-impact journal, then go ahead and submit to such a journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe you can't do much more than you already did, or the feedback you get suggests that this work isn't suitable for a journal with high standards for novelty. In that case, find a journal that publishes papers like yours, and submit your paper there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T04:11:04.480" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T04:11:04.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28531" CreationDate="2014-09-15T04:51:38.117" Score="18" ViewCount="7169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conference papers and special issues of Journals usually have deadlines for submission. However, it is sometimes not clearly stated what timezone the deadline is in. Is there any convention for this? Is it the location localtime, UTC or others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7237" LastEditorUserId="7237" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T08:12:42.400" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T08:12:42.400" Title="Is there any paper submission deadline timezone convention?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28539" CreationDate="2014-09-15T05:44:24.557" Score="2" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: I remember when I was still in college here in the Philippines, one of the member of the school thesis committee tries to hack my system by injecting some kind of code (&lt;em&gt;I am not sure but I think this is SQL injection&lt;/em&gt;). Now that I am working I realized that it is illegal to just hack and get inside of the system. This hacking includes breaking into the security of the system then extracting the datas (some are dummies only and some are original). He said that he do this to prove that our system has not enough security and therefore concluded that it is not safe to use, due to this my team has been subjected to re-defense. Also, there are no proper discussions whether he has the authority to get inside the system, I also don't know the privileges of the panelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please take note that the computer we are using is ours (students) then the panelist are obliged to test the system for certain minutes only (maybe 5 minutes). Also, we didn't use any ISP because it is only a system together with it's database and therefore can be use offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During that time we've been subjected to re-defense simply because our system is not secured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: Does hacking the system just to prove that it lacks security and therefore not safe to use, still ethical? Considering that we are on a thesis-defense and are still a learner. Our knowledge cannot be compared to a professional that is expert in system developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21710" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T06:17:29.950" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T06:17:29.950" Title="Is it ethical for an instructor to &quot;hack&quot; my system as part of the evaluation for my thesis defense?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28529" CreationDate="2014-09-15T06:05:07.757" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primarily, you should really try to find out what time zone a conference uses rather than assume a specific one. As ff524 says, even if it is not on the web site, the submission site will often tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, at least in my discipline, there are two conventions that are common:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Local time&lt;/strong&gt; at the conference location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AOE (anywhere on earth)&lt;/strong&gt;, more formally known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wtzresult.php?CiID=42242&quot;&gt;Howland Island time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is probably the more common one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Howland Island time is called &quot;Anywhere on Earth&quot; because it is the last time zone. That is, if you say that a deadline is friday, 24:00 AOE, the real deadline will nowhere be earlier than friday, 24:00, reducing the possibility of feel-bad moments when paper writers forgot about time zones and assumed their own time zone.)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T06:05:07.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28507" CreationDate="2014-09-15T07:44:25.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qiqqa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qiqqa&lt;/a&gt; will do this. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; will also do it, with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zotfile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotfile&lt;/a&gt; extension (which can extract annotations from a PDF into a note). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastEditorUserId="8394" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T11:46:10.240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T11:46:10.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28530" CreationDate="2014-09-15T08:00:21.180" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like as part of the defense, you gave the examiners access to the system for purposes of evaluating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you gave consent for them to evaluate the system, and didn't place any restrictions on what they can do with it, I don't see any problem with what they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are correct that is generally illegal to just &quot;hack&quot; into a system, but that refers to gaining &lt;em&gt;unauthorized&lt;/em&gt; access to a system. That doesn't seem to be what happened here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T08:00:21.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28530" CreationDate="2014-09-15T08:35:25.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether it is a reasonable expectation that your evaluators would test your work in this way. You don't give the details of what you have created, so it is hard to assess whether the assessor's actions were reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had created a database with an interface that could be accessible publicly, and that the majority of your work was on the creation and/or operation of that interface, then I think that security issues are indeed important, and an acid test of your work would be to attempt to hack in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the majority of your work was on looking at the inter-relationships between elements of the database - i.e. you were looking for correlations between database parameters - and not on the interface, then I don't think that the security of your system warrants a hacking attempt to test its security. In this case, a lack of security is indeed a concern, and one which you might have to address in a defence, but not one which justifies an attack on the system to test it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T08:35:25.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17727" CreationDate="2014-09-15T08:55:03.253" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to publish on &lt;code&gt;arXiv.org&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org&lt;/a&gt;). It's a very solid online publication outlet, free, &lt;strong&gt;open access&lt;/strong&gt; and especially popular in mathematics and other hard science disciplines. Liberal guidelines with no mentioning of restrictions in terms of color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12391" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T08:55:03.253" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28530" CreationDate="2014-09-15T13:26:20.827" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than discussing whether or not this is legal(which, as has been pointed out, is beyond the scope of the Academia board and would depend on your local laws) let's discuss whether it was right or expected or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by Nicholas, this, to some extent, depends on what you actually &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;. And, as I see it, this can be broken down into two categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work involved a database that is not manipulated by outsiders at any point then attempting to 'hack' it would be inappropriate. By this I mean if the database was secondary to the research you were presenting. An example might be a database of Face images used to train or test facial recognition algorithms. In such a case the database iteself is not the product or research being presented. It should be stable and reasonably secure(depending on the data it contains of course) but should not be the focus of 'testing' or inquiry in a defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if your work involved a database that is manipulated by the user or researcher, particularly as a primary focus of the research/work then yes, 'hacking' this database is a reasonable thing for someone to try to do. If the work presented is a complete project, a proposed solution to a real world problem or in another situation where, yes, you are proposing that the system you created could be placed in the real world then attempting to 'hack' the system is not only reasonable but expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a moment, though, to discuss what 'hack' might mean in this situation. You mentioned a SQL Injection. For some folks 'hacking' brings to mind serious people wearing sunglasses indoors yelling &quot;Hack the MAINFRAME!&quot; as they use telephones, bits of wire and evil to do nasty things to computers. But, especially in this particular case, this 'hacking' would have been something as innocent as entering something into a data field. In the early days of speed cameras some clever motorists found a way to do such an attack. The cameras 'read' the license plates and automatically submitted speeding tickets. Clever if unethical motorists could put a sql string on their bumper, the camera would 'read' the string and, since the string wasn't properly sanitized, it would cause nasty things like deleting the entire database. SQL Injections are something that you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be confused about what there are at graduation, that you are both unsure if that's what the instructor did AND indignant that they would do so would be a signal to me that you did need to re-defend your thesis. SQL (or just plain code) injection attacks are almost laughably easy to minimize, someone being able to 'hack' your database in the few minutes you described is a serious quality concern for a graduate in computer science perhaps especially in graduate level work(you are unclear about your level at the time of this issue). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally allow me to point out that all respectable software companies hire people whose job it is to attempt to hack into their own servers, software and, yes, databases. Additionally white hat hackers often attempt to hack software and environments and report it to said companies(black hat hackers will skip the reporting and go straight to exploiting.) No one wants to hear that their baby is ugly or that their code has a problem. I'm hearing a lot of indignation in your question related to that and I understand it but I'm going to respectfully advise you to both get over it and welcome such things - that is how you will become better at development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T13:26:20.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:19:21.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are looking for free online services, you should seek a free web hosting service as stated in this answer [&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3413/15723&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3416/15723&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] by which you can make your own website or you can make use of separate free services and make a free webpage to list all your accounts there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have visited &lt;a href=&quot;https://about.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about.me&lt;/a&gt; website and I really liked the domain, it's interface and it's services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Files Hosting:&lt;/strong&gt; host your files on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dropbox.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dropbox&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google drive&lt;/a&gt; or any other free hosting service;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publications List:&lt;/strong&gt; list your publications in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google scholar&lt;/a&gt; account or &lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free domain and URL:&lt;/strong&gt; build your page on &lt;a href=&quot;https://about.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about.me&lt;/a&gt; website;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Weblog:&lt;/strong&gt; If you like to write something; make a &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wordpress.com&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogger.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blogger&lt;/a&gt; weblog;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social Media:&lt;/strong&gt; You may have some &lt;a href=&quot;http://facebook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;facebook&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt; accounts too;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Present a short biography and list of those links above in a single &lt;a href=&quot;https://about.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about.me&lt;/a&gt; webpage. You can have this website anywhere and anytime; even if you change your affiliation, simply change your info on your about.me website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in your institute's page, you can easily put your &lt;a href=&quot;https://about.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about.me&lt;/a&gt; link and by opening it, the user will have access to you publications, files you want to share with, social media sites, personal weblog, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T14:19:21.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:48:11.577" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;DOIs are assigned by CrossRef on behalf of members. CrossRef is an association of scholarly publishers, so the members are therefore publishers rather than authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOIs were introduce because of &quot;link-rot&quot;: citing a paper by URL and within 6 months the URL doesn't work. When a publisher joins CrossRef they make a commitment to keep the DOI link metadata updated, so the DOI always points to the paper if, for example, the publisher is bought out and all the URLs change. This agreement is an important part of the DOI system and explains why publishers are members rather than authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning a DOI is normally done during the process of publication, and will normally be done automatically. That's not to say that DOIs can't be assigned after publication: DOI &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1672.0051&quot;&gt;10.1098/rstl.1672.0051&lt;/a&gt; is for a paper published in 1672. Publishers generally assign DOIs to new content but not to back files because new content is more likely to be cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not free to register a DOI, off the top of my head, around a dollar per DOI. It's normal (and cheaper) for publishers to deposit back-files, i.e. for publications older than 2 years (again, off the top of my head).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to get a DOI assigned you can go to the publisher and request that they register a CrossRef DOI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STM (Science Technology and Medicine) is a very fast-moving field with lots of papers published and cited. Humanities publishing tends to move at a different pace and tends to have different priorities. Therefore you may find STM publishers more likely to assign (and to need to assign) DOIs than in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is that you get a DOI from another organisation, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot;&gt;FigShare&lt;/a&gt;. There are examples of people registering FigShare DOIs for their publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CrossRef was created to solve the problems of assigning persistent identifiers (DOIs) and linking between papers (one DOI cites another DOI). CrossRef also has lots of other infrastructure, such as bibliographic metadata, FundRef, CrossMark, metadata API etc so it's the best place to register scholarly publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I work for CrossRef&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21890" LastEditorUserId="21890" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T17:01:43.357" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T17:01:43.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:57:18.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you have two different issues, it's easiest to discuss each of these separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students will bring me some plagiarized work, showing it to me early,&#xA;as a sort of test if I will notice. It seems difficult to punish&#xA;plagiarism when the paper is not yet submitted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is rough. You can't punish someone due to plagiarism before they submit work. The best policy, in my opinion, is twofold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - if a student brings plagiarized work then you should simply say &quot;I'm sorry, I cannot help you with work that is not your own.&quot; and point to you university's policy regarding academic dishonesty. Repeat offenders should be put on notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - If you grade the final assignments or are involved consider spending a bit more time plagiarize-checking these particular student's submissions. These students have shown that they were willing to claim other's work as their own, being a bit more stringent in checking their work for originality is, in my opinion, completely fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students will bring in papers again and again, with little changes&#xA;put in at each stage, hoping their minimal effort each time will be&#xA;sufficient to reach their goal of a &quot;D&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a communication problem. After meeting with a student there should be no confusion about what will improve the student's work. For something like a paper it should be &lt;em&gt;&quot;In order to improve this paper you should: extend the intro, go into more detail here, etc&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Students returning for additional assistance should have some sort of checklist that they should complete prior to returning for more assistance. Make this clear and obvious and, if there are multiple tutors a student could work with, something that is kept in some sort of notes system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T14:57:18.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:59:47.967" Score="2" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question&lt;/strong&gt;: Firstly, do I need to have a background in computing to be a research in human-computer interaction (HCI). Secondly, I need help with getting relevant work experiences which seem to be difficult because I live in a developing country (Nigeria) where there is basically no research in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The story&lt;/strong&gt;: I have a BSc in Mass Communication and MA in Communication and Media. I discovered this field while on my masters program and have since developed an interest in it. I'm more interested in human-technology (mobile) relationship than designing. I have tried to define my research plan to fall within this area. I intend to research on mobile phone and rural development in Sub-Saharan African countries. I would love to be a researcher and also lecture within this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering I took some  Microsoft professional courses (MCSA &amp;amp; MCSE), I can say that I have some networking/Computing qualification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if getting a masters (something like a MRES) in HCI will give me added advantage or if what I have is okay because for most job opportunities I see usually request for some one with a computing/HCI background which I don't have. I won't mind interning to get the needed experience because it seems like all the &#xA;vacancies are requesting experienced people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Career Goal&lt;/strong&gt;: To be a research/lecturer. I hope to be flexible enough to be able to indulge in other business such as running an NGO that is youth and women development inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Background&lt;/strong&gt; I am a 26 years old lady with no experience in this field. My education was split between my country (which is developing by the way) and UK. I really hope to do a PhD in a more advanced country and at the same time get some relevant work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21891" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T19:21:26.043" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T03:11:18.460" Title="Job Market in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T16:15:42.623" Score="7" ViewCount="6269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've contacted a potential PhD supervisor last month and gave him my PhD proposal. about a week after that I've got a response from the professor, acknowledging the receipt of my proposal and saying that he will respond as quickly as possible. I haven't received any other response since last month and I'm getting kind of anxious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I write him an email again or let him contact me first with a&#xA;reply?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How long does this process of proposal evaluation take?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21893" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T17:42:45.133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T17:42:45.133" Title="How long should it take a potential PhD supervisor to evaluate proposal?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;professors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28545" CreationDate="2014-09-15T16:24:50.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't run, Walk!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be your &lt;em&gt;as quick as possible&lt;/em&gt; is one month and his &lt;em&gt;as quick as possible&lt;/em&gt; is two months or more (who knows?).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors have their own personal/academic/career responsibilities and usually suffer from lack of time problem. Let him review your proposal and he will respond you when he is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion one month is not that much that you are becoming anxious, but it maybe a good idea if you don't receive any email from him in the following weeks, send him an email and remind your proposal politely. Also, if you are going very near to the university deadlines and it is affecting your application, it may worth it to include those deadlines in your reminder too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T16:24:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28545" CreationDate="2014-09-15T17:09:24.043" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many academics are flooded with email from students (undergraduate and graduate), administrators, coworkers, colleagues, editors, etc.  What you've asked him to do for you takes more than two minutes and he may not have available time to do it, or the energy to set aside the available time in the near future.  There are enough small things to deal with that they can can easily bury the larger things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one method of communication is not effective you can, after a suitable delay, try another.  A phone call or visit to office hours might bump your earlier email to the top of his mind.  He may already have some preliminary feedback, or he may apologetically say that he still hasn't gotten to it, but he does plan to do it soon.  Either way this can move the process towards resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you're considering this person for one of the most important roles of your academic career.  If he does not show enthusiasm about working with you, you may want to consider other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5701" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T17:09:24.043" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28567" CreationDate="2014-09-15T17:27:06.400" Score="1" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for a PhD in engineering and I was asked by the advisor I have chosen to write down a short program (~10 pages) about the &quot;research&quot; I will conduct if I get into the PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advisor provided ten choices where the future PhD program will lay. The topics are very large and well studied in the literature. Our &quot;task&quot; is to choose one of them, find out something &quot;new&quot; inside of this big sea and write it down. I did a lot of research on Scholar and downloaded more or less 20 free papers I found interesting. I collected data and results, thought a bit about the problem and found a ( maybe ) new application that fits my interests and past studies and I think it could bring some novelty in the field I'm applying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I start with the context of the research, point where previous studies went and what kind of results yielded and now focus on my brand new idea?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I skip 1) and start &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt; with the heart of the matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21411" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T20:41:16.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T01:50:59.423" Title="In a research statement for PhD admissions, should I start with the context, or directly with the idea for my research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28511" CreationDate="2014-09-15T18:28:18.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New York Attorney General &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leagle.com/decision/2003579195Misc2d384_1519.xml/PEOPLE%20v.%20NETWORK%20ASSOC.,%20INC.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;got a judge to ban&lt;/a&gt; Network Associates' licensing terms that prevented customers from reviewing their software without permission from NA. I think this started as a consumer protection suit by the AG's office instead of a customer defending themselves after violating such a licensing term. This was in New York state court, so who knows what would happen if a database vendor tried to sue someone in a different state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T18:28:18.063" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28320" CreationDate="2014-09-15T18:51:00.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers I have seen here are assuming that the professor is saying he can't teach the material in the official time slot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read the question it sounded like the professor was saying that he could teach this material in the normal manner but if the students had no commitments immediately afterward he could cover the material in more in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For intsance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In class coverage of textbook material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More example problems of the subject matter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time to cover questions in class&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what the professor is doing then he is not being unreasonable in asking if the students have extra time. It shows he actually cares if his students are learning, which can't always be assumed in a college environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I would suggest to the original poster that he see if he could arrange with the professor that he not cover any new material in the extra time period so he can be sure not to miss anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would let anyone else in the class who might want to spend more time on the subject to take advantage of the extra instruction the professor is offering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21896" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T18:51:00.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:04:45.227" Score="2" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an MLA format humanities essay, if you've quoted a long chunk of text at the beginning, do you need to provide page references when citing phrases from it later on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21897" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T07:04:26.863" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T07:18:52.877" Title="Are page references required when citing the same quote multiple times?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;citation-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:17:46.597" Score="8" ViewCount="1020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing a 3-year postdoc, and will be applying to many universities for positions, including teaching colleges and research universities. I have 4 good research letters, but none discuss my teaching. I had excellent teaching letters from my previous university where I received my PhD, but I am not as close to the professors in this university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be better to obtain a teaching letter of recommendation from my previous university that I know is very positive, or to obtain a potentially less positive letter from my current university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T18:15:16.537" Title="In mathematics in the USA, is it appropriate for your teaching letter of recommendation to be from a previous university?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:45:56.723" Score="2" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the initial peer review stage, most research fellowships (for example RCUK or ERC grants) have a final interview stage primarily assessing the qualities of the candidate. Alongside the interview it is typical to give a short talk around 10 minutes in length. What points should the talk focus on to give the best chances for success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T20:06:00.120" Title="How to structure a presentation for a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28552" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:48:16.397" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on what kind of job you are looking for.  For research universities, I suspect you can get away with it; I actually used a teaching letter based on recitation teaching from graduate school when applying for TT positions 4 years after graduating, because for a variety of reasons, there wasn't anyone else I felt comfortable asking for one from.  Honestly, I don't think job search committees put much stock in teaching letters just based on classroom observation.  Any value they had has been inflated away by the fact that they are always positive, and to be honest, most mathematicians at research universities don't worry very much about teaching skill when looking at hiring, beyond not wanting to hire someone notably incompetent.  If they do, they're much more likely to try to judge from your interview or from student evaluations rather than a teaching letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking into more teaching focused schools, it's harder for me to say.  Maybe I'll just leave that hanging and let someone else answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; To address the question of getting two letters, I agree with Noah.  I want to be clear that this advice only applies to research universities, but I think getting two teaching letters completely gets wrong the risk/reward calculus for teaching letters.  They cannot get you a job, they can only lose one for you.  Probably they won't even look at teaching letters until they get to the short list, but if they do, it will be to sort out bad teachers, not to separate competent and good.  By far the most important thing about a teaching letter is that it doesn't say anything bad.  By getting two, you are doubling this (small) probability for absolutely zero benefit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T18:15:16.537" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T18:15:16.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28553" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:55:13.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, your host institution might offer some advice on this, possibly also including the opportunity to practice your interview before a panel of people who have sat on grant assessment boards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, take the hint from the time allocated to you. There is little point in going into any details of your proposed research. When I went through the interview for a similar grant, I posed and answered the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Very briefly, and for a general audience, describe the proposed research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why You?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Express why you are the right person for the job. Your background, skills, networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Now?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why should this research be done now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why should you be doing the research at &lt;em&gt;insert host institution&lt;/em&gt;, in particular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T20:06:00.120" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T20:06:00.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28552" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:56:47.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether it's better, but you may have more opportunities for a teaching letter from your current institution that you realize.  Especially if your postdoc is in the US, there may be someone in the department (for instance, the deputy chair in charge of undergraduate teaching, whatever the position is called) who is supposed to help arrange the writing of such letters as part of their job.  You could ask this person to sit in, or ask someone to sit in, on your class and write a letter based on that and department data about your teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have excellent teaching letters from your PhD, you may even want to include that &lt;em&gt;as well as&lt;/em&gt; a more cursory letter from your current school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T19:56:47.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28511" CreationDate="2014-09-15T20:34:19.260" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several users have suggested &lt;em&gt;People of the State of New York vs. Network Associates&lt;/em&gt; as an instance of a DeWitt Clause being challenged, and struck down, in court. However, this case is &lt;em&gt;hugely&lt;/em&gt; misunderstood by the media, and so these answers have been very misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; an instance of a DeWitt Clause being challenged in court. However, the court's ruling did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; directly address the issue of whether such a clause is enforceable. The court ruled on the basis of the &lt;em&gt;specific wording&lt;/em&gt; of the Network Associates clause, and so did not generally rule on the enforceability of all such clauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Arguments of the Attorney General&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/press-releases/archived/memo_of_law.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Attorney General's Argument in People v. Network Associates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York, mentions two claims in his preliminary statement for this case. The first relates to the general enforceability of a DeWitt Clause, and the second does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Violation of free speech and fair use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under New York law, a restriction that broadly chills or restricts important rights -- here, of free speech and fair use -- without a legitimate purpose, will be struck down. This Censorship Clause restricts consumers and the media alike from reviewing the software or disclosing important design or product flaws. Yet it serves no legitimate purpose, such as protecting trade secrets or confidential material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Deception:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically, it misinforms consumers that the company’s prohibition&#xA;  against publication of reviews or benchmark tests (itself an illegal restriction) reflects existing “rules and regulations.” Of course, no “rules and regulations” actually exist, under federal or state law -- a fact that most attorneys, including those who drafted the Censorship Clause, surely&#xA;  know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, the Censorship Clause is also void and deceptive because it conflicts with the License Agreement contained with the company’s boxed software. The boxed License Agreement, which is by its own terms the “entire Agreement between the parties,” omits the Censorship Clause. Yet the company then places that very Clause on the face of the software diskette -- even though it is by the very terms of the License Agreement void and unenforceable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll elaborate a little bit on the latter point, regarding deception. The specific text that is the subject of the lawsuit is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Installing this software constitutes acceptance of the terms and conditions of the license agreement in the box. Please read the license agreement before installation. Other rules and regulations of installing the software are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. The product can not be rented, loaned, or leased—you are the sole owner of this product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. The customer shall not disclose the result of any benchmark test to any third party without Network Associates' prior written approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c. The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates, Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This text was &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; of the license agreement. The license agreement itself did not contain clauses (b) and (c). Furthermore, the license agreement contained a clause specifying that it (the license) constitutes the entire agreement between the consumer and Network Associates, and supersedes any prior communications related to the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major claim of the deception argument was as follows: Consumers - having read the license agreement, with its clause that the entire contract between parties is contained in that license agreement, and without the &quot;gag&quot; clauses - will then read this text. They may reasonably conclude that the restrictions on publishing reviews and benchmarks are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; part of the contractual agreement between the consumer and Network Associates, and are instead made and enforced by some other entity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, the text deceptively implies that the restrictions on reviews and benchmarking are imposed not by Network Associates, but by someone else - such as the state or federal government.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the clauses restricting publishing reviews and benchmarking are not enforceable at all in this case (regardless of the general enforceability or legality of such clauses), because they conflict with the actual license agreement. Thus, consumers are deceived into believing that they have no right to publish reviews and benchmarks, when in this case, because of the way it is written, these clauses are not a valid contractual agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Opinion of the Court&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leagle.com/decision/2003579195Misc2d384_1519.xml/PEOPLE%20v.%20NETWORK%20ASSOC.,%20INC.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PEOPLE v. NETWORK ASSOC., INC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court rules against Network Associates. However, the ruling states that the Attorney General's claims of &lt;em&gt;deception&lt;/em&gt; are valid. It does not directly address the first claim, of violation of free speech and fair use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the ruling explicitly states that Network Associates is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;enjoined from including any language restricting the right to publish the results of testing and review without notifying the Attorney General at least 30 days prior to such inclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which suggests that language restricting publishing of benchmarks is not necessarily prohibited. That is, Network Associates is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; generally forbidden from writing a license in the future that restricts consumers' rights to publish reviews and benchmarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T15:56:15.593" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T15:56:15.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T20:52:47.480" Score="2" ViewCount="7769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm transferring between two PhD programs, same program two different schools. I have done 4 years of study in the first school but have not (and will not) receive any degrees and I need to complete 1-2 years of study in the new school to get my PhD. Assume that the new school is more prestigious. I wrote this piece in my CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2010-Expected 2016 &lt;strong&gt;PhD in Compute Science&lt;/strong&gt; from New University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;PhD Student at Old University (2010-2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2007-2010 &lt;strong&gt;MS in Computer Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; from Another university&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the second line is kind of small and doesn't catch eye but if someone wants to read my CV it's there. The problem is I have not been student at New University since 2010 and I don't want to say that I'm a first year student. Also since I didn't get any degree from Old University I cannot have a separate entry for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21900" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T21:06:13.010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:10:02.703" Title="What to write in CV when transferring between schools?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;cv&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28562" CreationDate="2014-09-15T21:01:51.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;May this format help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;university major&quot; is the university which is going to give you your degree and &quot;university minor&quot; is the one in which you have studied about four years;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2010 - 2016 (expected) &lt;strong&gt;PhD in Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt;; university major&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[some space here] 2014 - 2016 university major&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[some space here] 2010 - 2014 university minor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think that as you are not receiving any degree from your minor university, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; its name is not going to be mentioned anywhere in your certificates; there is no need to bring it's name in your CV too, because you don't have any proof that you have studied there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:01:51.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28562" CreationDate="2014-09-15T21:10:02.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is I have not been student at New University since 2010 and I don't want to say that I'm a first year student. Also since I didn't get any degree from Old University I cannot have a separate entry for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it matter whether you got a degree from Old University?  There's no rule that says the education section of your CV can only be organized by degree.  You just need to be clear and honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you propose doesn't seem inappropriate, but I think this might be slightly clearer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2014-2016 (expected) &lt;strong&gt;PhD in Computer Science&lt;/strong&gt; from New University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2010-2014 PhD student at Old University (transferred to New University)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2007-2010 &lt;strong&gt;MS in Computer Engineering&lt;/strong&gt; from Another University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:10:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29255" CreationDate="2014-09-15T21:20:02.147" Score="4" ViewCount="2353" Body="&lt;p&gt;To satisfy my professional curiosity, I'm trying to find a reliable statistic as to the number of students that declare their major as computer science and graduate with a degree in 6 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if any organization compiled data on a per-major basis.  I'd like the info partly to satisfy my own curiosity, and possibly use to motivate students (i.e. you made it through a tough class).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastEditorUserId="14754" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T21:21:42.600" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:10:37.467" Title="Finding good statistics for computer science matriculation (drop-out) rate" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-09-15T21:33:48.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 3.5 GPA is a good, but from your post, it sounds like you may need to focus on your letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on my letters of recommendation.  Three good letters of recommendation will likely remedy a good (but not steller) GPA, and average GRE scores.  Especially if you are applying to the university you are currently attending, I'd focus on forging relationships with profs that you like, and getting as involved as possible in your department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already are involved, kudos.  Go to the profs that are your faculty contacts for the clubs/organizations you are involved in, and get 3 great letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in the US, you should also consider applying for a masters degree if you feel your application will not be strong enough.  This will give you extra years to build your PhD application, and will set the bar a little lower for acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14754" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T21:33:48.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2014-09-15T22:02:48.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different writers could balance these issues in different ways.  The key is moderation: you have to give enough context to make your proposal understandable, but you also shouldn't go overboard (it's a terrible idea to start a research proposal by saying &quot;Since the dawn of history, transportation has been one of humanity's greatest challenges. The wheel and axle were a great advance...&quot;).  If you never mention until page 5 that you even have new ideas, then readers may give up in disgust before reaching that point.  On the other hand, too little context can be just as bad, since the proposal will do you no good if it's not understandable.  Unfortunately, there's no universal rule to decide the right amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One strategy is to look at the introductions to the research papers you've found.  If your introduction is briefer or more abrupt, then it's not reasonable to expect anyone to follow it.  If anything, a research statement should generally be accessible to a broader audience, and that may mean somewhat more background and explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be useful to cycle between background and new material.  For example: brief introduction, brief description of your new idea, longer account of context, more details on new idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are writing this for a specific professor, it's worth asking him/her for more guidance.  If you phrase it too generally (&quot;How do I do this?&quot;) it might give a poor impression, but I think it would be safe to ask a question that shows you are seriously working on it.  For example, &quot;I'm thinking of organizing my proposal like this: [Insert one or two paragraphs about your topic and how you plan to arrange the proposal.] Does that sound like what you had in mind?  If not, I'd be happy to rethink the organization.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:02:48.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28570" CreationDate="2014-09-16T00:21:55.060" Score="8" ViewCount="2916" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the usual (North American) universities' practice on dealing with tenured professors who have been criminally charged?  I've encountered two scenarios indirectly that could make some professors in some legal trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the first scenario.  When I was an undergraduate student, a colleague told me that his ex-girlfriend called because she discovered a stalker near her home.  When he visited her to assess the situation, they bumped into the alleged stalker at the stairs of the apartment building.  She asked him to call the police.  He recognized that the alleged stalker was one of the professors in his department.  He did not report the alleged stalker to the police because he's afraid of repercussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward a few years.  Here the second scenario.  One of my friends dated a tenured professor.  The relation was abusive.  He (the professor) hit her badly that she called the police.  His mom begged my friend not to press charges because she's concerned about her son's future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/b&gt; In theory or practice, would universities fire the professor who have been criminally charged?  I've asked several tenured professors casually with at least one of the scenarios.  They all agreed that nothing bad would happened to those professors even if their wrongdoings were reported to the police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8661" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T00:39:41.333" LastActivityDate="2020-09-16T11:15:38.920" Title="Would tenured professors who are charged with a crime generally be fired?" Tags="&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28569" CreationDate="2014-09-16T00:43:23.343" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Criminal acts are certainly a reason to revoke tenure.  In fact, this is probably one of the most common reasons.  It is &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to terminate the employment of a tenured professor as soon as the university learns that they have been charged with or suspected of a criminal action.  (This happened at my university: it was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Zinkhan&quot;&gt;extreme case&lt;/a&gt;.)  Terminating employment because of a criminal &lt;em&gt;charge&lt;/em&gt; is obviously a quite precipitous act to take: I would be surprised if a university did this in any situation except one in which they are sure that the faculty member will/would be found guilty of the charge.  A tenured employee who was fired because of suspicion of criminal acts and was later found innocent of these acts would have, in many cases, a heck of a lawsuit against the university.  (Untenured employees might as well...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that &quot;you heard&quot; sound a little dopey to me, honestly.  Tenure offers some measure of job security.  It does not confer any defense against or immunity from criminal acts.  Getting convicted of domestic violence is &quot;something bad happening to the professor&quot;, right?  Not being able to carry out your duties because you are incarcerated is a sufficient reason to fire a tenured faculty member!  In the scenario with the &quot;stalker&quot; it is so unclear what happened or what was reported to whom that I would not be comfortable commenting on it.  Nevertheless, one can certainly imagine circumstances in which a tenured faculty member could be fired for stalking even without a criminal conviction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T15:00:40.060" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T15:00:40.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2014-09-16T01:50:59.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, choosing the right balance of deep background, more-contemporary context, and promotion of tentative new ideas is part of the &quot;test&quot; involved in peoples' appraisals of your proposal... incidentally testing your judgement about other peoples' contexts and professional criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, do not belabor anything which an experienced professional would take for granted... the problem is that you may not know, with certainty, what that would be... or you may not know the audience you're addressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, in any case, imitate the pedantic and long-winded tone of a textbook, no matter how much context you may imagine is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get endorsement from your sponsor-professor before &quot;going public&quot;, both because you don't want to (in effect) embarrass them, and because they should have a very good idea of &quot;the audience&quot; you're addressing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T01:50:59.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28574" CreationDate="2014-09-16T03:12:51.353" Score="5" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at the beginning of the research portion of my PhD program and as is standard in this department, I am to begin my research by writing a small literature review of some relevant papers in my field, chosen by me and approved by my advisor. This includes replicating and tweaking/improving the experiments ( which boils down to code ) in the chosen papers along with discussion in the results comparing mine to the original papers, etc. Note that this paper is not directly to be published; it is part of my qualifying exam. I am given about a month of time to do this (along with other research related things I must do...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When sitting down to write, I am constantly blocked by the fear that the work I am doing is not quite what my advisor wants. My advisor casts a wider net with his research interests than most professors I have seen, so his students seem to do projects in various areas within engineering. That said, the research summary I am doing is largely on clustering in machine learning, and I fear my advisor has little interest in this topic, or worse.... that I am, in a sense, &lt;em&gt;not doing what I'm supposed to be doing&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were doing this very same research or a class, a clustering report in machine learning, I feel I would have no problem at all just working contently and developing my ideas and trying to come up with as interesting an experiment as I could and generally adapting to wherever the project took me and doing what needed to be done to finish it, but the game is changed since I feel I am working on this problem &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; someone rather than just for myself. Additionally, in my undergraduate research, I was given very straightforward instructions so there was no ability for me to choose papers on my own ( e.g., &quot;Replicate the results in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; paper&quot;, &quot;Write an abstract mentioning X, Y, and Z&quot; ). The freedom I'm given in this research review experience is somewhat confusing, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this concern a normal feeling? What do I think/do about it? The reason I ask is that i precisely am afraid to be working on the wrong thing, and I am frozen in my writing and am struggling dearly. It is an incredibly nagging feeling to think that that my report isn't focused correctly. For the purpose of this literature review, should I just follow where the research takes me or should I change the focus of it and just try to please my advisor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, my question is of &lt;strong&gt;how to balance being independent and satisfying my supervisor?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T03:35:32.097" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T03:48:35.087" Title="At the beginning of PhD research, how to balance independence with satisfying my advisor's expectations?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;literature-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-16T03:27:55.477" Score="3" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been an international student in the US for quite a few years now (since 11th grade, 4 years to be exact), and I have always been interested in studying medicine in order to become a doctor. Since I am currently a college junior I feel the need to start preparing for the MCAT and Grad school. Alas, med school for international student in the US is pretty much impossible, every institution I've looked up required at least having the green card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I realistically aspire to become a doctor studying in the states as an international student ? or will I categorically need a green card ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way designed for someone involved in my academic pursuits to get a green card (excluding the lottery due to statistics)? I've heard of program such as the DREAM act?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21908" LastEditorUserId="32436" LastEditDate="2018-04-01T21:47:45.587" LastActivityDate="2018-04-01T21:47:45.587" Title="Can an international student gain admission to medical school in the USA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;medicine&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28572" CreationDate="2014-09-16T03:48:35.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this concern a normal feeling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the purpose of this literature review, should I just follow where the research takes me or should I change the focus of it and just try to please my advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is &lt;em&gt;neither&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this is the beginning of your PhD research, you haven't yet developed much of a collaborative relationship with your advisor. This is the time to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider your advisor's initial suggestions as you would any advice from someone more experienced than you. (Even if your advisor is not an expert in machine learning, he/she &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have more experience than you in developing promising research ideas that are suitable in scope for a qualifying exam - don't underestimate that expertise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you should definitely &lt;em&gt;start out&lt;/em&gt; along the path your advisor set out for you. (Unless you hate it - in which case, go set up a meeting with him RIGHT NOW and tell him your concerns.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, that doesn't mean you need to follow his instructions to the letter. If, somewhere along the way, you are inspired to follow up on a particular idea, don't reject it just because it's not exactly what your advisor told you to do. Part of what's expected of you is to come up with ideas of your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an idea you'd like to follow up on, do a little bit of work to verify that it's not a complete waste of time, and then &lt;em&gt;bring it to your advisor and ask for his advice&lt;/em&gt;. He/she may explain to you why it's not advisable to pursue it (e.g., maybe it's not appropriate in scope), or suggest pursuing it further after your qualifying exam, or maybe your advisor will be as excited about it as you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the end result, make sure to communicate honestly and often with your advisor. Especially at this early stage, it's a good idea to check in now and then with your progress and make sure you're on a path that's heading somewhere good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T03:48:35.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-16T04:12:03.267" Score="2" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an international student wants to study in a US degree program (AA, BA, MA, PhD, etc.), but entirely on-line while living in their home country, and without ever entering the US, can they skip all of the visa-related paperwork?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T04:18:13.677" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:32:36.357" Title="Can international students study via distance without applying for a visa?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;distance-learning&gt;&lt;visa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28575" CreationDate="2014-09-16T04:32:36.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distance learning students who will not enter the United States are not required to get a U.S. visa. In fact, by federal law, online-only students are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uc.edu/international/services/future/accepted.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not eligible&lt;/a&gt; for a student visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:32:36.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28903" CreationDate="2014-09-16T04:40:23.413" Score="21" ViewCount="10501" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious to hear whether there is general guidance on when and whether to submit a pre-submission inquiry to a high impact journal (field: biology). Our goal is to identify a journal that will send our paper out for review. I understand pre-submissions are best when there really is a question of appropriateness, e.g., you are submitting a software-oriented manuscript to an experimental biology journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am less clear on whether the current situation will benefit from a pre-submission inquiry. Consulting with my PI, and other faculty on the floor, there seems to be wide disagreements about the utility of pre-submission. Some argue these inquiries are more efficient than full submissions, since formatting a paper for each journal is usually time intensive. Others say they've had pre-submissions meet strong approval, then get editorially rejected. Any general thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 6.27.15.&#xA;I'd like to specifically highlight bitwise' comment below as that has proven to be the most useful advice. In the last 9 months I've submitted multiple articles not fulfilling the exact formatting requirements, length limits, supplement guidelines, and even figure guidelines, and this has not seemed to affect whether we get reviewed. One paper is currently under review at &lt;em&gt;Molecular Cell&lt;/em&gt; that is 4000 characters over limit and has a wildly incorrectly formatted supplement, and 1 figure over the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="14719" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T16:48:13.440" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T18:45:49.247" Title="When/whether to do pre-submission inquiry at high impact journals" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28366" CreationDate="2014-09-16T06:11:02.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The distinction between an MD and MBBS is the US versus the British system of medical training. Both allow you to practice medicine in countries that support each system. Confusingly, it appears the MD degree in the UK is also a post-MBBS research degree most similar to the US PhD, though you must have already obtained an MBBS to train for an MD (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Medicine#UK.2C_Ireland_and_some_Commonwealth_countries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google scholar search for MBBS reveals many published clinical trial studies where authors have MBBS degrees. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.22384/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article 1&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(97)00844-8/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article 2&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(13)70290-4/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article 3&lt;/a&gt; (in Lancet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your first question is yes. Perhaps the only thing to consider is &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; you ultimately want to practice. Ideally, you'll want to do your training in the same country. There are lots of crappy things about training in one country then moving to another--mainly, many places will make you retake the country-specific licensing boards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little skeptical of your proposed number of years of training. In the UK (where MBBS originates), training is 5 to 6 years in length, generally two years pre-clinical followed by 3-4 practicing in the hospital. As for the PhD, Europe and the US have different expectations. I encourage you to check out this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3503/is-it-true-that-it-is-easier-to-obtain-a-phd-in-europe-than-the-us-on-average&quot;&gt;concise comparison from a different post&lt;/a&gt;. Essentially.. time to get a PhD is often fixed in Europe, while more open ended here in the US. But, as is emphasized above, training should be about learning the key skills necessary to succeed in academia, which is your stated objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to which to obtain first.. I would argue for a PhD followed by medical training. Clinical skills are easily forgotten. I recommend once you've done medical training, it's best to start your clinical/research practice. This is especially important in any country with regular maintenance of licensure exams. This would be much harder if you primarily did your PhD rather than practice medicine in the intervening years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truly best order though is probably what is done in MD/PhD programs in the US. It is widely considered optimal to observe the following order (US medical system): 2 years didactic training (medical school), entire PhD (3-5 years), second two years of clinical training (medical school). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning behind this order is that the first two years of medical school are essentially pathology and basic science classes that will give you a broad introduction to how a body works at a gross and microscopic level. This will give you a biomedical background that &lt;em&gt;no PhD student gets&lt;/em&gt;. You also won't use 99% of what you learn in the lab... but in principle, you might draw connections outside your own field that others would have no background to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PhD training is much more focused on a particular field, with the emphasis being depth rather than breadth. In your PhD years, you will master a remote niche of science, hopefully while learning how to be a good scientist, how to write, and how to obtain funding for your ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empowered by this, you then return to the clinic, where you realize most everything we do in medicine is empirical! Ideally going through the clinic you think about all the biomedical questions for which we have no answer. After graduating, you continue on in residency training. In the US, there are research-oriented residency programs that cut out a year or two of training in place of pseudo-postdoctoral research fellowships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length at most US MD/PhD programs is 8 to 9 years, which is &lt;em&gt;definitely faster&lt;/em&gt; than obtaining an MD and PhD separately in the United States. The main reason is that the cross-training allows some MD courses to count towards the PhD, and because lab rotations are done in the summers before the first MD year, and between the first and second, when normal MD students are free to do what they like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14719" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:22:58.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28613" CreationDate="2014-09-16T08:37:44.033" Score="1" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;By reviewing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?&amp;amp;q=mba%20syllabus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;syllabus of a MBA course&lt;/a&gt;, and its entry requirements such as some years of industry job experience; it comes to mind that these type of management courses are designed only for the people seeking jobs in industry and studying management sciences does not have any positive impact on a person's career aiming to do research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, having knowledge of management, will help researchers in many aspects; such as if they are managing a laboratory, by having management knowledge, they will better manage their labs and be more effective in their scientific contracts, managing human resources, etc. Also, having project management knowledge may help the students or people in academia better organize their projects, whether academic or industry projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does studying management short-time courses or degrees help a researcher?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does these type of courses help research students improve their effectiveness in academia?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please focus your answers specifically on MBA, project-management courses and short time classes or workshops on management sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T09:08:16.810" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T12:55:26.447" Title="Effect of passing management courses on research career" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28582" CreationDate="2014-09-16T09:34:01.527" Score="39" ViewCount="1737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoctoral researcher in a university where undergraduates have to undertake a diploma thesis in order to finish their studies. My professor says we should put in our lab page some short descriptions of 2-3 topics and let interested undergraduates come to us, as it usually happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am expanding my horizons to promising technologies, following the buzz in my domain, and I am confident I will have some personal progress in the following weeks but at the time being I am still relatively a newcomer to these latest technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: should I put out there a diploma thesis description in these new fields, or should I be conservative and go for the things I know pretty deeply? How do you usually come up with diploma thesis topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T09:41:40.773" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T12:53:37.827" Title="How familiar should you be with a topic before assigning it as a thesis to an undergraduate?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28587" CreationDate="2014-09-16T12:01:43.013" Score="4" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked hard for my master thesis project to build a system that uses an already existing algorithm, just in a mobile setting, which hasn't been done before. Because the algorithm is complex, it required a client-server infrastructure. Now, as I said most, of my efforts until now went into building the system of already existing components rather than contributing to knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is, how can I use my system and efforts to go more in the direction of a scientific contribution? The problem is if I, for example, simulate data loss over the network, I could have done that without even building the system. So I somehow want to include my real system in the experiment rather than doing a simulation. What would be a good approach that justifies also the construction of my real system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20063" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T13:47:11.623" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T17:33:09.490" Title="How to develop experiment to justify construction of a prototype system?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;experiment-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28580" CreationDate="2014-09-16T12:53:37.827" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; rule of thumb: &lt;strong&gt;You should be sufficiently confident with the topic to be able to guide your student to success.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means in particular that you should know the topic in which the student is supposed to work in well enough such that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are certain that the workload is manageable in the time outlined by the examination regulations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know that there is enough low hanging fruit in the topic such that it is clear that even a mediocre student should be able to write a thesis that is good enough for the standards of your field and school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are some types of results that a student may obtain during the thesis work that would suffice for the student to write a great thesis, possibly leading to a subsequent publication (given interest by the student). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You think that you can advise the student with the problems that you expect to occur in the scope of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have sufficient time to actually advise the student and in particular have the time to read into the details of the subject in case the student needs some guidance on them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the field, it is debatable whether it is OK to hand out topics of which the advisor has comparably little knowledge, given that all requirements from the list above are fulfilled.&#xA;Also, the list above focuses on the minimum requirements. Again, it is debatable whether satisfying all points on the list is enough already (unless I forgot something important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as coming up with new thesis topics is concerned: probably everyone has their own approach for this. One way is to collect the ideas that you have in your own research into idea lists, and after some time filtering them by the criteria above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T12:53:37.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28583" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28586" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:17:49.917" Score="19" ViewCount="2409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about submission elsewhere and journal's &quot;consent&quot; of paper withdrawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have withdrawn a paper of mine from a journal, which I want to submit elsewhere. Since I knew that the journal had received my email (by read receipt device) on withdrawing the paper and since I am just in the stage of being notified that the paper has been accepted for publication, the problem is: In order to submit the paper elsewhere, do I have to wait for the journal to consent to the withdrawal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for some ethical advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T19:46:26.653" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:46:26.653" Title="Do I need to wait for a journal to &quot;consent&quot; to paper withdrawal before submitting elsewhere?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;withdraw&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28581" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:41:24.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would be a good approach that justifies also the construction of my real system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't say anything other than: in some fields, in addition to showing that your approach works well in a simulated environment, it is a &lt;em&gt;really good idea&lt;/em&gt; to also show that your approach works well in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your peers value such &quot;real world&quot; results, then you don't need to justify it any further than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T14:41:24.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28583" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:46:48.557" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, yes, if by consent you mean you have written to say you wish to withdraw the paper for further review. Doing so, is in my mind and field, not something you should do light-heartedly. Waiting for a reply is also a good strategy, or etiquette, since you then know that the paper has been formally withdrawn (usually a click away in electronic submission systems). It is better to be 100% clear on what is going on. A return receipt in an E-mail is to me not sufficient and it can also be considered a bit arrogant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a request, you may want to add a few words to describe the reason why you wish to do so although it is your right. It all boils down to being courteous to the journal editors and reviewers, depending on how much work they have put into the journal paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors seem to do this systematically just to get a sense of whether the manuscript will stand and to see if they can send it to a &quot;better&quot; journal. Such behaviour is of course not good etiquette and a slap in the face to those who do a fair amount of unpaid work on a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;requests for withdrawal should be easy and if you do not get a reply within, say, a couple of weeks, I think a reminder can be sent without hesitation. You may then also state that you will go along with the submission to another journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T14:46:48.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28583" CreationDate="2014-09-16T15:53:21.290" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend waiting a week or two to see whether you get a response to your withdrawal.  At this stage it can't be urgent to resubmit immediately, and having their reply would guarantee that they are aware that you have withdrawn the paper.  (By contrast, I don't think an e-mail read receipt means much.  For all you know, an administrative assistant opened the e-mail and then mistakenly deleted it without realizing what it said.)  I wouldn't go so far as to say you are required to wait for a response, but better safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you've got a much bigger issue to worry about, though, and that's why you withdrew the paper after acceptance.  At least in mathematics, withdrawing an accepted paper is extremely unusual.  To a first approximation, it typically means there's something seriously wrong with either the paper or the journal.  You can certainly do it, but given the effort that has gone into handling and refereeing the paper, you will cause offense if you don't have a very good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you inadvertently submitted the paper to a junk or predatory journal, then you don't need to worry about causing offense.  (Offending the editors of predatory journals is not a bad thing.)  In that case, withdrawing the paper is certainly the right decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you dreadfully screwed up in your choice of journal, for example by submitting a brilliant breakthrough to a respectable but not impressive journal without realizing how good the paper was, then you should apologize profusely for wasting everyone's time.  Hopefully they'll understand that it was a genuine mistake on your part, and they'll sympathize with the awkward position you are in and give their blessing to resubmitting elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the paper is seriously flawed, then that's a respectable reason to withdraw it.  You might look bad for having submitted it, but then again, the referee didn't find the mistake either.  But this isn't a compelling reason to submit elsewhere soon: if you don't check whether the original journal is willing to publish the revised paper, then it looks like the changes were just an excuse to withdraw the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under normal circumstances, it will cause offense if people think you are withdrawing an accepted paper just to try your luck at a more prestigious journal.  In particular, this is a dangerous impression to leave if you ever hope to submit to this journal again.  As an editor, I would certainly not be happy to see a new submission from an author who had previously withdrawn an accepted paper without a compelling excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this gives you another reason to move slowly and wait for a reply.  If you have a good reason for withdrawal, then it's worth making sure you have communicated it clearly.  In any case, you are doing something rather unusual and serious, and it's best not to give the impression you are treating it lightly or casually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T15:53:21.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28581" CreationDate="2014-09-16T15:58:51.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might think of it in terms of the research question(s), which might look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible/feasible to use algorithm X in a mobile setting? (Presumably the answer is yes, because you've already built it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What challenges are there in applying algorithm X in a mobile setting? How can those challenges be met?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does the efficiency/accuracy/data loss compare between the &quot;regular&quot; implementation of algorithm X and the implementation in a mobile setting?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the advantages &amp;amp; disadvantages of using your implementation over a simulation? I'm guessing that your implementation gives more realistic results than a simulation would.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I don't know your field, or how novel a contribution your implementation is. But in principle, I think that answering the kinds of questions I've listed above could lead to publishable papers, and could justify your having built this system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="10529" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T17:33:09.490" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T17:33:09.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28552" CreationDate="2014-09-16T16:30:37.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation (where you had serious teaching experience in grad school), I would probably get a letter from your old writer, but send that person and updated list of what you've taught and your student evaluations from your postdoc.  That way their letter can make it clear that your teaching continues to be strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Henry's point that you're probably overestimating how hard it is to get a letter from someone at your new place.  However, only consider two teaching letters &lt;em&gt;if and only if&lt;/em&gt; you're applying to a job with a strong teaching focus.  Don't send two teaching letters for a research-focused job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T16:30:37.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30149" CreationDate="2014-09-16T19:31:39.690" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently entering my third year at university, unfortunately my grades in the second year were lower second honours (which places me in the bottom 40 percentile) putting me at a disadvantage when picking my major subject module for this upcoming year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not asked to submit a CV or attend an interview for admission into major subjects for the third year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students who pick a specific major subject are also asked to pick a minor subject - selection for minors is usually not deemed to be competitive. However, it turns out the minor subject I have chosen (entrepreneurship) was actually over subscribed and thus allocation has been delayed for the course organisers to make a choice as to which students are selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the past two years at university I have spent a lot of time getting involved in, and reaching elected executive positions within entrepreneurship societies and groups (very rare for an undergraduate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like if the course organisers were to know about my additional interest, I would easily be accepted into the course. Every other student I know (in my academic year) does not show an active interest in entrepreneurship except for a few who only picked the course as a minor subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I believe the course organisers are forced to make their decision based on grades alone, this may result in my rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be acceptable for me to email the course organiser and explain my situation (and interest in his course) or would that be deemed as an unfair attempt to skew the decision making in my favour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As well as undergrads studying my subject the course is open to other undergraduates (in other subjects) MBA and Ph.D students. Making it difficult for the course organisers to make a decision based on grades alone (as many MBA or Ph.D students will have received their honours at a different university where the honours system cannot be objectively compared).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21920" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T03:36:38.077" Title="Improving chances of selection into a course at university" Tags="&lt;undergraduate&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28643" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:22:33.650" Score="6" ViewCount="1818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received a major task from my professor and I was wondering what approach is academic custom to take in such a case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor wrote an article on a certain topic (I prepared already some source material for him). Now he asked me to check which of the (mostly German or French) books in his list of literature are available in English. For those I can't find a translation, he asked for &quot;equivalents&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this my way round would be to check the major library catalogue (like WorldCat) for the authors. This is extremely time consuming even when limiting the languages of the works searched for and I have explicitly been forbidden to exceed the allotted time for my job (it's a financial issue of the university... I will exceed a bit for no payment, but I can't work like 50% over the limit, people would also notice at some point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything like a catalogue listing authors' works and their translated equivalents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20449" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T06:40:32.990" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T22:38:21.623" Title="How to find book titles in other languages?" Tags="&lt;language&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28579" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:38:52.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the management methodologies (e.g. PMP - Project Management Professional) have a strong process (think of it like an algorithm) for defining a vague task.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most research problems are, by definition, vague.  No one has ever done it before, and so no one knows exactly how to do it.  This leads to common problems like poorly defined scope, shifting requirements, and poor time-management.  Some of those things are actually desired; they are what give unexpectedly great research.  It's just you don't know when you are doing great research or just screwing around.  It's actually quite fast and easy to generate a basic list of requirements, scope, and timelines.  That way you know when you are done and can publish.  It doesn't mean that you can't go further, only that you now know that you did what you initially wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, business management techniques are not a perfect fit for academic work because they assume more clearly defined tasks and shorter time-frames.  Nevertheless, you can steal those techniques to give you some imprecise measures of what you want.  They are good, formalized ways of defining weird research tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare and contrast software development methodologies like Rational-Unified-Process vs. Agile.  The RUP is a very document-heavy, very formalized thing; meanwhile, Agile / SCRUM has virtually no documents.  Also check out the Project-Management-Professional body of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12475" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:38:52.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28621" CreationDate="2014-09-16T21:08:34.903" Score="15" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague and friend has been approached by another institution (a state university in the U.S.) seeking to fill a position. My friend, who is putting a package together, has asked me to review his teaching statement. Evidently, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8893/which-topics-should-be-covered-in-a-teaching-statement/9001#comment16033_9001&quot;&gt;this was a good idea&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the statement, and, quite frankly, I wasn't too impressed. He and I are quite candid with each other, so I'm not too worried about what might otherwise be a delicate issue: me telling him how much it needs to be polished.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'll admit: I have very little experience with teaching statements (either writing them, or reading them). I'm not usually on faculty hiring committees; I don't want to give him bad advice out of ignorance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What is an ideal length? (So far, I've narrowed it down to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14180/will-anybody-actually-read-your-research-and-teaching-statements/14193#14193&quot;&gt;half a page is too little, and three pages is too much&lt;/a&gt;.) Would a single page be considered too thin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How detailed should it be? My friend talked about different courses he has taught, even mentioning one course by its catalog number. I initially thought that generalities would be better. In other words, instead of saying something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teaching styles should be adaptable, based on the student demographics in the class. For example, in my Intro to Programming course at Urbandale College, I taught had mostly freshman, but the Programming Languages course I taught at Westerville University, CSCI 352, was a more advanced course with juniors and seniors...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my gut instinct tells me it would be better to say something more general, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teaching styles should be adaptable, based on the student demographics in the class. For example, I've taught some courses with mostly freshman, and other more advanced courses with juniors and seniors... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but perhaps I'd be dishing out out some bad advice if I recommended a more general wording; maybe applicants are expected to weave such details into their teaching statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:18:32.083" Title="What is the appropriate length and specificity for a teaching statement?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;teaching-statement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28595" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-16T21:46:09.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also known as a &quot;teaching philosophy&quot;, a &quot;teaching statement&quot; is commonly required as part of an application for a faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Resources&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Center for Research in Teaching and Learning at the University of Michigan has collected a number of helpful resources related to the teaching statement on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, including: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crlt.umich.edu/sites/default/files/resource_files/CRLT_no23.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CRLT Occasional Paper #23, Writing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy for the Academic Job Search, (O’Neal, Meizlish, and Kaplan, 2007)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Examples of Teaching Philosophies from U-M Graduate Students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cei.umn.edu/support-services/tutorials/writing-teaching-philosophy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Your Teaching Philosophy: Tutorial (University of Minnesota)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prolehre.tu-muenchen.de/cms/images/stories/tenure/vorlage_lehrportfolio.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A template for a teaching portfolio (including a philosophy section) from TU Munich (German language)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14180/will-anybody-actually-read-your-research-and-teaching-statements&quot;&gt;Will anybody actually read your research and teaching statements?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8893/which-topics-should-be-covered-in-a-teaching-statement&quot;&gt;Which topics should be covered in a teaching statement?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23429/how-to-write-a-teaching-statement-without-any-classroom-teaching-experience&quot;&gt;How to write a teaching statement without any classroom teaching experience?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17659/should-a-sessional-instructor-applicant-submit-a-teaching-statement&quot;&gt;Should a sessional instructor applicant submit a teaching statement?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T03:09:45.013" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T03:09:45.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28596" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-16T21:46:09.823" Score="0" Body="Also known as a &quot;teaching philosophy&quot;, a &quot;teaching statement&quot; is commonly required as part of an application for a faculty position. Questions with this tag ask about crafting a teaching statement and/or how these statements are used in hiring decisions." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:18:32.757" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:18:32.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28598" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28599" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" Score="0" Body="On trustworthiness or reliability, especially of materials cited as references in academic publications." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:32:11.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28600" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28601" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" Score="0" Body="(DO NOT USE: has been used very inconsistently, and should not be used until the community agrees on its scope and application on meta)" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:35:28.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T00:04:53.170" Score="2" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spend way too much time on homework. I find that I eventually get the material, but this goes after perhaps 7-8 hours wasted daily. I tend to get bogged down by the details of readings, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a way to stay consistently on track, moving quickly, and finishing homework ruthlessly and efficiently? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some people simply do not do homework that is not graded, and I don't see how it is possible to do well in a course if you don't keep up with the concepts presented in class and reinforced by the homework. Therefore, not doing it is not an option for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11629" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T02:46:00.643" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T15:08:14.610" Title="How to complete homework more efficiently?" Tags="&lt;homework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28594" CreationDate="2014-09-17T01:50:49.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A teaching statement should go into your personal experiences and ideas about teaching. But the included details need to be relevant to someone who is interested in your teaching experience and teaching philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I would venture that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning the course number is probably not interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning that the freshman course was called &quot;Intro to Programming&quot; is interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T01:50:49.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28602" CreationDate="2014-09-17T02:36:32.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree the first couple comments, &quot;7-8 hours wasted daily&quot; certainly does not sound normal. The amount of time is not necessarily an issue, but it is far longer than I ever spent on homework and if you feel that you are being inefficient you're most likely correct. It sounds to me like you are indeed getting bogged down in unnecessary things or (perhaps more likely) just struggling to piece all the little things together into the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A big part of higher education is learning how to learn efficiently. In your career and in life, this will most likely be much more useful than the actual material you cover in your courses.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are a few things you can do that might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When reading a textbook focus on items that are formatted in a way that stands out. Textbook authors format material to emphasize critical and major points. A good lecturer will also make an effort to highlight the big picture topics and build up the details around them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might try studying or reviewing notes with a classmate before starting homework assignments. Ask for their insights on what the most important things are and try to formulate your own judgments as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visit office hours. Ask conceptual questions about the topic at hand. You might also consider explaining to the TA or professor that you're having a hard time picking out the crucial material from the details and ask if they can help you focus in on the key topics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that many students get bogged down in peripheral details when learning new topics, not seeing the forest for the trees. It has always helped me to ask myself what the most critical concepts are and then be sure to understand the details as they support these concepts. Hopefully, with practice, you will soon improve at picking out the key concepts and building a mental framework around them rather than getting bogged down in all the details from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19615" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T02:36:32.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26427" CreationDate="2014-09-17T03:27:26.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the criteria used by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://vireo.cs.cityu.edu.hk/icmr2012/awards.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM 2012 International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR)&lt;/a&gt; for the &quot;best reviewer&quot; award:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The criteria are that the reviewer should have demonstrated the expertise to provide insightful and knowledgeable feedback, should have provided quality reviews which are helpful to the authors of papers, should have displayed collegiality and constructive feedback, and should have completed reviews on time. The award is selected after examining all of the 400+ reviews from the 101 reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conferences with an author response phase may use the authors' replies to help choose the best reviewer. For example, the CFP for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleconf.org/2014/CFP.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014 Conference on Software Language Engineering&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors will be given a brief opportunity for a reply to the reviews. The replies will be considered in the PC's discussions, and considered in the selection of the best reviewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T03:27:26.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28569" CreationDate="2014-09-17T03:32:33.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there have been. The case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/nyregion/former-yale-professor-gets-20-years-for-molesting-boy-he-mentored.html&quot;&gt;Prof. Lasaga at Yale&lt;/a&gt; is one of the more egregious examples of malfeasance on the part of a faculty member, but also a case where the person stepped down well  before being convicted (more background info &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvi/11.13.98/front.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). I am sure that even though the language was of voluntary termination (&quot;stepping down&quot;) that there was little choice for Lasaga otherwise. In lesser cases outside of the public eye, I am sure there are many professors who have also been asked to step down or to take an early retirement instead of being publicly fired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tenure only means our contracts don't have end-dates or renewal dates. It doesn't mean we cannot be fired for crimes, for being indicted for a crime, for other cause, or in some cases just simply being restructured out of our jobs due to the economic needs of our university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T11:53:05.880" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T11:53:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28434" CreationDate="2014-09-17T04:16:45.167" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikicfp.com/cfp/home&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikiCFP&lt;/a&gt; offers this. To use this feature, you are required to register and sign in to your account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are logged in, find the Calls for Papers (CFPs) you are interested in and choose &quot;Add to my list&quot;. (You can add multiple CFPs at a time if they appear in the same search results or &quot;recent CFPs&quot; list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, from the sidebar, choose &quot;My list&quot; or &quot;Timeline&quot; to see all the deadlines for the conferences you have selected in your preferred format. Timeline view is pretty nice; it shows you the registration, submission, notification, and camera-ready deadlines, as well as the dates of the actual conference. Here is a screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DBern.png&quot; alt=&quot;Wikicfp timeline view&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, WifiCFP relies on user-submitted content (for both original CFP submissions, and updates e.g., for deadline extensions). So the usefulness of this for you will depend on how active people in your field are on WikiCFP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T04:16:45.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28573" CreationDate="2014-09-17T04:39:59.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/2013factstable5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)&lt;/a&gt;, in 2013, 1,088 of 48,014 applicants to U.S. medical schools in 2013 were not residents of the U.S. Of these, 115 matriculated (10.6%, compared to 41.8% of applicants overall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to gain admission to medical school in the U.S. as an international student; however, it is more difficult since (as you have noted), there is a very small number of schools that will admit international students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions has an article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://portals.computility.com/Default.aspx?tabid=3312&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Medical School Admission Policies Towards Non-US Citizens&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, that lists all the medical schools in the United States and their policies on accepting international students, as well information on how many international students they have accepted historically. While it's a bit dated (from 2008), you should still find it helpful as a starting point. For example, it points out that George Washington University has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://smhs.gwu.edu/imp/medical-programs/international-scholars/undergraduate/international-md&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;M.D. program specifically for international students&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that international students are generally not eligible for federal aid, which can make it very expensive to pursue a medical degree in the United States. Many schools will require applicants to submit documentation showing that they will be able to fulfill their financial obligations to the school if they matriculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T04:47:42.297" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T04:47:42.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28616" CreationDate="2014-09-17T06:12:30.927" Score="17" ViewCount="2346" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several professors, including my former advisor and a senior member of my research community, have been encouraging me to apply for a faculty job. I am torn about it mostly because I am 40 years old. Leaving a job in a research lab to start as an assistant professor would in a way seem like a starting all over again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that my pre-PhD experience leading projects would lessen the learning curve that new tenured track faculty goes through. On the other hand, I am not sure if there would a be a stigma associated with my age. I would have gone for an academic position ten years ago in a heartbeat, for the research, freedom, and teaching. But I had personal reasons for not being able to pursue PhD sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it too late to do it now? Would the low academic rank to age ratio make my job harder, leading to possibly being prejudiced that I must not be successful to still be at the lowest branches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several threads here asking about pursing PhD later in life, but I do not recall any of them addressing starting an academic carrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T20:05:24.670" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T05:01:42.080" Title="Am I likely to be perceived as less successful if I start as an assistant professor at age 40?" Tags="&lt;job&gt;&lt;assistant-professor&gt;&lt;age&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28583" CreationDate="2014-09-17T06:16:31.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, one should wait to get the permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited:&#xA;Journal's editors may have spent significant time and energy to contact potential referees. The same for the referees. So it seems unfair to withdraw the paper without a permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12871" LastEditorUserId="12871" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T07:09:25.823" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T07:09:25.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28579" CreationDate="2014-09-17T08:26:37.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It clearly depends on what kind of future research you want to do but a lot of MBA content will not be relevant to anyone who will manage a non-profit lab, although it might help with the business of running a lab (e.g., a for-profit lab).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;business environment: Here you are going to learn about international trade, competition, etc. and how those impact competitiveness of a company. I don't see how this will help you run a lab unless your lab is operating in competition with other labs for customers (or other constrained resources).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accounting: Here you will learn about &lt;em&gt;creative&lt;/em&gt; ways to maximize your organization's profit leveraging tax law. I believe most labs are non-profit and, thus, I do not think creative accounting is an important skill (but I might be wrong here).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;business law: Here you will learn national and international laws which can impact trade. You would naturally learn about contracts, negligence, and other related topics. This might help you understand what makes a valid contract or what the impact is of leaking private data but I am not sure it will help you much other than avoiding being tricked when someone says 'I will fund you if you just sign here.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;human resource management: Here you will learn about how human resources add to a company's profitability and how to plan for them. The focus will generally be more strategic in nature and could help you do some strategic planning. One such issue is 'employer branding' and clearly you do want people to &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to come to work for you. This might help you but as you are smaller, the benefit will be smaller.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finance: Like other modules, the focus here will be on strategy. How do different funding sources, and different balances between sources, impact profitability by minimizing your cost of capital. Non-profits have a much more limited choice in their sources of capital so this will be of very limited use for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, MBA programs do include a thesis which includes research. This clearly can tell someone if they want to do more research and it will give them some research skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is (hopefully) going to be a change in the way the student thinks. That is, students should think more strategically. This skill (strategic thinking) should give you a benefit in most things you do in life by encouraging you to think more long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, if you want to start a for-profit venture which focuses on research (selling your output) then, yes, an MBA would be quite helpful. However, you should not think an MBA is about managing people better. It is about that but it is much more about how to maximize your profits through maximizing your revenue, minimizing your expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone is going to run an academic lab, I would encourage them not to take an entire MBA (unless they really want to think like business people) but rather take a class on a subject where they want to be stronger (e.g., human resource management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I think Edward's answer is good but to go a bit further about project management courses, this might actually help a researcher, especially if that research is managing a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In project management courses, you would learn about different topics than an MBA. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feasibility studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning, organizing, controlling (general management issues)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting progress on your project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leadership, motivation, human resource management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because most research is a project (has a start date and an end date, has resources including people and money, etc.) this could be much more suitable (than an MBA) to someone leading a lab. I would recommend starting with a single project management class (which will generally give you an overview of each topic) then, if you want to really dig into more detail, consider getting a master in project management or perhaps an industry certification like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="2692" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T12:55:26.447" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T12:55:26.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28618" CreationDate="2014-09-17T08:55:48.713" Score="3" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written one paper on mathematics and submitted it to 5 journals concurrently. Four of them accepted the paper and one asked to send the paper in their required format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper contains one theorem and two applications. There was two argument gaps in the proof of the theorem. Only one journal caught that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have communicated with that journal and updated the paper throughout as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changed the proof of the theorem entirely ,i.e. an alternative proof is provided, there is no similarity between the two proofs of the theorem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove one of the applications and add a new application of that theorem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changed the way of applying of the theorem for the other application i.e firstly there was case distinction for the application, but later I removed the case distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this paper is published in that journal and I have transferred the copyright agreement form to them and withdrawn the paper from other journals stating personal reasons. I am an amateur mathematician and I'm not pursuing any Phd degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is that what are the impacts may fall on the published paper in that journal as I have withdrawn all other manuscripts and they don't have the copy right agreement also, so is there any chances to claim the published article by them or they can force the editor of the journal which published the paper to retract the paper ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21936" LastEditorUserId="21936" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T11:10:42.067" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T09:00:39.127" Title="One of the multiple submitted paper is published and others are withdrawn" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28610" CreationDate="2014-09-17T09:24:26.533" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends. In the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23613/are-old-35-faculty-candidates-discriminated-against-all-over-the-world&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, JeffE resoundingly stated that age does not play into the decision whether to appoint somebody for an academic position. Yet, ETH Zurich (one of the world's premiere institutions in the technical sciences) even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facultyaffairs.ethz.ch/facultypositions/index_EN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;publicly states that they will rather not hire an assistant professor older than 35&lt;/a&gt; (see the information box on the right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically, you may be a bit out of the norm. This may give you a small edge in some cases, and may be a small disadvantage in others. For every academic that is concerned about your age, there will be another one that values your industrial experience. I would say, if age is the only thing holding you back, then go and apply for assistant professor positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leaving a job in a research lab to start as an associate professor would in a way seem like a starting all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assistant professor isn't the same as associate professor. Both are not the same as &quot;starting all over&quot;. In practice, in most places I have seen, professors on all levels are able to work quite independently, so none should be seen as an entry-level job. Assistant professor may be entry-level in terms of professorships, but it is actually a quite senior position in the wider context of academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T09:24:26.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28619" CreationDate="2014-09-17T09:25:22.943" Score="23" ViewCount="4610" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I came across a job posting for a (mathematics) tenure-track position that asks for both graduate and undergraduate transcripts to be submitted. While this is the first time I've had anyone ask to see my undergraduate transcript for such a position, from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/up-until-which-application-level-should-one-keep-supplying-a-bachelors-transcrip/11589#11589&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt; here, it appears to not quite be unheard of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I haven't seen addressed is the question of why, generally, would a hiring committee ask for undergraduate transcripts? Are they really going to judge my application based on an errant C in a course unrelated to my field, or do they simply want proof that I have the degree from University X that I claim to have obtained? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for my question is that I am hoping to gain insight into any issues that might appear in my own transcript in order to address them in the cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8633" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T20:50:34.277" Title="Why would a tenure-track job posting ask for an undergraduate transcript?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2014-09-17T10:00:57.017" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do in the future: do not submit the same manuscript to multiple (not even two) journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have managed to get the manuscript accepted in one journal you need to immediately withdraw &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; others. You state you have given &quot;personal reasons&quot; whereas in reality you should have provided a serious excuse to the journals for wasting their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have withdrawn all other manuscripts there should not be any further impact on the one accepted for publication. You should learn from the experience and perhaps acquaint yourself better with the publication process so as to avoid mistakes such as these again. If repeated, it may affect you adversely by gaining a bad reputation or possibly being &quot;banned&quot; from certain journals by their editors. So most negative impacts, if any, will fall on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T10:00:57.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28617" CreationDate="2014-09-17T10:17:00.320" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to submit undergraduate and graduate transcripts to several schools each time I applied for jobs in mathematics. I believe the main reason is simply to allow the school to verify that you really have the credentials you claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been examples where faculty and administrators were caught claiming credentials that they did not possess, so schools are more cautious about such things now. The same is true for background checks - many schools now run a background check before they make an official job offer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my institution, when we have a mathematics job search we don't really look at the grades on the transcripts. The cover letter, reference letters, teaching statement, and research statement are scrutinized, but the transcripts just get a cursory glance to make sure the person has the right coursework (e.g. if we want to hire someone in a specific subfield, we might check that they have coursework in that subfield). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T10:17:00.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30188" CreationDate="2014-09-17T11:46:12.433" Score="12" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I applied for an advertised post-doctoral position with a researcher in an well-known institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After two weeks of not getting a reply, I sent him a reminder, and he replied &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, thanks for getting in touch again, I hadn't seen your previous email. Can we have a chat on Skype tomorrow at X?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He never showed up for the chat, and has not contacted me since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be sensible to approach him again, or shall I write it off as a lost cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it would it be a bad idea anyway to work with someone who lacks the professional skills to keep up with email contact, and stick to commitments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20011" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T01:57:34.230" Title="How to approach someone who has stopped replying?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28594" CreationDate="2014-09-17T11:47:15.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer comes from Mathematics, but probably it's quite similar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) 1-2 pages is pretty typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) My general advice is to include details and concrete examples where possible (though course numbers are not necessary).  One problem with just being general is such statements feel very generic, and lack any real content in the sense that they don't distinguish you, in the same way many political speeches turn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19607" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T11:47:15.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T13:04:54.433" Score="5" ViewCount="1801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know where (a website) I can find anyone to publish some joint papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought such cooperation can be shaped as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We could share some ideas for papers through email or a web tool and ask the opinions about them (in fact if the person is an expert on a field who could transfer his knowledge and experience to me and direct me in the right way would be a plus :) )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would try to prepare a draft of the paper&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somethings that I wish the other one can guide or help me on are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know much journals to publish a paper in, in this regard one could send the article to the journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My English is not perfect and the other one could modify the paper or guide me for some modification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;it seems the way I wrote it, the relation could be like two keen researchers with common field of interest or like an expert who guide a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21885" LastEditorUserId="21885" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T17:26:59.630" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T13:57:14.677" Title="How to find someone online to collaborate on a joint paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28569" CreationDate="2014-09-17T13:56:26.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leon Shohet went to prison for some stuff he did with a federal grant, and U Wisc. didn't fire him; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpri.org/WIInterest/Lueders8.1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wpri.org/WIInterest/Lueders8.1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T13:56:26.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28623" CreationDate="2014-09-17T14:00:30.720" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The things you seek from a coauthor (advice on journal selection and English usage) are not in themselves a sufficient basis for coauthorship, but rather just being thanked in the acknowledgments.  A coauthor on a scholarly publication needs to make a substantial intellectual contribution by being seriously involved in the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know of any website designed for academics seeking coauthors, and I wouldn't recommend approaching it from the perspective of &quot;I'd like to publish a paper and am looking for someone to help clean it up and submit it.&quot;  That's not likely to find you the sort of intellectual connection that would lead to genuine coauthors.  Instead, you may get no responses, or you may get unscrupulous coauthors who just want an easy way to get their names on papers.  (And even if that doesn't bother you, think about it this way: if someone's willing to put their name on your ideas, could you really trust them not to add some plagiarized text to the paper?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, research collaboration should come before coauthorship, so the question becomes how to find collaborators.  That can come in all sorts of ways: you can talk with people at conferences about common interests, you can write to people whose papers are on similar topics, etc.  Sometimes collaborators meet through participation in websites where they discover a common interest.  (They aren't necessarily collaborating on the website, but they may start to correspond after interacting through the website, and the correspondence may turn into a collaboration.)  Once you are actively working on research with someone, writing a paper together will come naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T14:00:30.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28629" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:15:14.350" Score="8" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing my thesis (computer science), I was wondering how detailed citations have to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume I want to cite an article of a conference and have full information on author, editor, title, year, booktitle, subtitle, eventtitle, volume, location, DOI, ISBN, arXiv ID, ... you get the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do I actually provide every piece of information in the citation or are some left out? Does any style guide (like IEEE, APA, MLA) address this topic?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar questions [1] cover only URLs, but my question is more general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/include-url-for-journal-and-conference-articles-in-dissertation-bibliography-d&quot;&gt;Should I include a DOI/website URL for a publication in dissertation bibliography?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21942" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:35:25.963" Title="Should citations be as detailed as possible?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28626" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:23:02.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of the citation text (as opposed to citing in general) is to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find the works you cite. It cannot hurt to include as much information as you have. You are using a bibliography/citation management system like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibtex.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BibTeX&lt;/a&gt;, right? So, once you've put this into your database, the formatting and typing out of all the relevant information should be automated. If there are constraints or unwanted information, the formatting package should eliminate them from the text it produces making your document compliant with the standards of your publishing venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T15:23:02.227" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28626" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:40:15.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are style guides for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mla.org/style_faq1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLS (also known as MLA)&lt;/a&gt;, although IEEE style is slightly different from the others in that it is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago&lt;/a&gt; style guide. Many publishers provide information in their online citation downloads that are not required for the citation. In these cases you do not include the extra information. This seems a bit strange given that this extra information could be helpful, put most journals stick rigidly to their style guidelines and do not want extra information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most obvious example of excluding useful information is related to issue numbers and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/10/how-to-determine-whether-a-periodical-is-paginated-by-issue.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA sytle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Per APA Style, when formatting periodical references (which include journals, magazines, and newsletters), include the issue number (immediately following the volume number in parentheses) when the periodical is paginated by issue (i.e., begins each issue with page 1). Otherwise, include only the volume number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often easier to find an article on a publisher's website if you have the issue number, even if the journal is paginated continuously. That said, journals that stick to APA style will remove issue numbers if you include them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T15:40:15.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28626" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:43:12.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the citation styles for your field, and thus for your thesis, will dictate this. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)&lt;/a&gt; website is a nice and popular resource to refer to what the most possible information would be desired for APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian - but you ultimately should refer to the exact, up-to-date published version of the style guide itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, for APA when citing a Journal or Conference paper/article, you would at most provide (formatting stripped): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., Author, B. B., &amp;amp; Author, C. C. (Year). Title of&#xA;  article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something doesn't have a DOI, the style guides say how to cite each type of resource. A book might be cited by ISBN, and if there is no DOI you might cite the arXiv in place of the DOI website - but you are never citing all of these things! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cite only that which the style guide says you should&lt;/em&gt;, in keeping with the common tradition of papers in your field - no more, and no less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using reference management tools they often help do this for you, but they do not absolve the author of responsibility for ensuring that the citation matches the appropriate style of their field and that the data and style is followed accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When You Don't Know Your Style&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsure of what style applies to your field, a search for &quot;{field name} style&quot; can be helpful, but the Purdue OWL site linked above also provides further guidance on their &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/585/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Complete Discipline Listing&lt;/a&gt;. If you are unsure an adviser or your department office can provide further verification, and checking in with the department (whether that be the department office, chair, or secretary) is often a helpful technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Special Case: IEEE&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would note that the IEEE is somewhat of a special case (and is very common in computer, engineering, and various technology fields) in that there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Citation Reference&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/style_manual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Editorial Style Manual&lt;/a&gt;. However, they both specify that when the guides don't provide a specific answer to your question that you should consult the Chicago style guides. Thus the IEEE style may be considered a specialized version of Chicago style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the case of this style you should first consult the IEEE guides, and if and only if they do not provide sufficient guidance you can consult the far more comprehensive Chicago guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion: if you have 100 fields of information available, you don't include them all in the citation - just the ones that your field's style says you should. Any good style guide (all the ones I've had to read) gives rules of precedence and fall-back plans when certain information is unobtainable, with the information requested varying by the source being cited itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastEditorUserId="6787" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T19:29:41.927" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:29:41.927" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28631" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T17:15:21.260" Score="186" ViewCount="27809" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as an assistant at a university in Australia. I joined the team consisting of my current advisor and his two PhD students. The other group members are men and they have a co-worker-like relationship with him. At first it was good, my advisor was very helpful (I have worked there about ten months and I published two papers with him, both in journals with a high impact factor). But when we started to get to know each other better, it unfortunately changed. I am a young woman and am afraid that he wants me to become romantically involved with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to keep this relationship work-only, as it’s the most healthy way, in my opinion, but sometimes my advisor seems to think differently. Here are some of the things that have made me think my advisor wants a romantic relationship with me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He comes to my room very often with no research-related reason and wants to talk, talk, talk about everything but work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once, when I was busy working, he came to my room and asked if he could take a photo of me. I felt ashamed and did know what to say and then finally, he took the photo. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes I think he is mad at me that I want to keep this relationship work-only, and then does not answer my emails about our research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is very careful with all this, says those things only when we're together. A while ago I heard that his PhD student suggested to him that he spends too much time with me. He laughed and said it's not his business, and that we are working hard on some novel research method. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advisor has powerful connections here at the university and I'm afraid no one is able to do anything about it. I’m only interested in having a professional relationship with him. However, I’m afraid that if I don’t agree to be his “very close friend,” he will try to kick me out of the university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not move to a different city because of some family issues and can not change my advisor since he is the only person at the university who works on the research I’m interested in. What can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21946" LastEditorUserId="21026" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T12:34:36.957" LastActivityDate="2017-07-22T07:43:33.257" Title="How to deal with an advisor who wants a &quot;friendlier&quot; relationship with me than I do?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;gender&gt;&lt;harassment&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="28" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28641" CreationDate="2014-09-17T18:15:02.683" Score="3" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;My English is not perfect, moreover I am not familiar with the exact phrases for a topic of research or a technical term in the literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some ideas or projects done, if I knew the exact word for the topic to which my idea belongs I could search better and find more appropriate resources and write better papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example suppose I have done an image processing projects which detects damages of an equipment in a manufacture, I thought its belong to the fault detection area but then I found the &lt;strong&gt;fault detection&lt;/strong&gt; could be something more general or a different area ..... and &lt;strong&gt;defect detection&lt;/strong&gt; is more close to the topic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see I need a website where I can mention what I have done or what is my idea and get the research area where I can find the proper resources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21885" LastEditorUserId="21885" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T18:04:51.003" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:04:51.003" Title="How to find out the terms used for a topic, so that I can find the appropriate literature on it?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28634" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17815/what-to-do-if-assignment-is-against-students-religion&quot;&gt;What to do if assignment is against student's religion?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8639/are-employments-in-universities-affiliated-or-named-with-a-specific-religion-r&quot;&gt;Are employments in universities affiliated (or named) with a specific religion restricted to people with the same religion?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5358/what-is-the-academic-approach-when-the-supervisor-attacks-students-religion&quot;&gt;What is the academic approach when the supervisor attacks student's religion?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26979/what-do-instructors-need-to-know-to-accommodate-muslim-students&quot;&gt;What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21317/how-to-explain-to-college-that-religious-observance-precludes-me-from-living-on&quot;&gt;How to explain to college that religious observance precludes me from living on campus, as required?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28635" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" Score="0" Body="On issues that arise in an academic setting because of the religious beliefs held by an individual or institution." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:05:44.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28620" CreationDate="2014-09-17T19:22:03.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to give &lt;strong&gt;a phone call&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;International phone calls have become very cheap nowadays, you could use for example Skype, MegaVoip or Google Voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you have to be very polite, don't become angry or upset. &#xA;Explain clearly the situation and ask about news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G-Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:22:03.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8639" CreationDate="2014-09-17T19:41:37.280" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  You can get a job there even if you're of different faith or are not religious.  See page 14 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.siam.org/pdfs2/Gonnet_final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://history.siam.org/pdfs2/Gonnet_final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8661" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T19:41:37.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28617" CreationDate="2014-09-17T20:16:13.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think they ask for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Course requirements vary from university to university, and this will give them a good understanding of how well your formal education background aligns with what their own program offers.  i.e. did your core requirements match their own?  Will you have vastly different expectations of the students in their program from when you went to college?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It will also give them a good idea of what your GPA in your transcript really means. For example, if you took all advanced classes, and even dabbled in some upper-level courses in other subjects which were not required, your GPA may not be as high as someone who took all the easiest courses and very few advanced ones.  Also, some people have GPA's which are deceiving, i.e. they took many 'easy' classes in yoga and theater to even out C's in their major.  This makes their over-all GPA seem acceptable, but their GPA in their major is low.  This could be a red flag, for the hiring team, (not only is the candidate ill suited in this field, they are cunning)! This leads to point #2:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may be expected to teach some of those courses/subjects you took in undergrad/grad school.  They need to know that you have taken similar courses before and that you received acceptable grades in them.  Usually a department already has a general idea of what courses they want the person in this position to teach.  They need to know if that will be a problem, i.e. if you got a C in every Calculus class you ever took, and they are specifically looking for someone to teach that, you may not fit the bill in that regards.  But, if they really like your other skills, they might just end up having you teach a different subject, such as complex analysis, etc.  I do not think it would immediately disqualify you as a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would not be discouraged by a few low marks in your transcripts, if overall you have good ones that outweigh those.  Everyone has been through a time in their studies when they had a professor who they just could not learn from, or get a handle on their testing style... or had a semester when something personal interfered with their studies.  The most important point is to provide correct transcripts, and please know that the people reading them are human, are educators, and have seen it all already!  Personally, I do not think a person's transcripts will be the main factor in the decision making process.  But it is additional information that allows the job search committee to understand the candidate's educational background better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21950" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T20:16:13.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28633" CreationDate="2014-09-17T21:00:56.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can find a place where someone will tell you what you need to search for, i.e. you have to know what you want to find in order to find it. If you are not familiar with the terminology of your field, I suggest reading a couple of standard textbooks; while reading them, you will encounter most of the terms that are relevant to the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also keep in mind that many fields (fault detection being one of them) are quite broad, so you usually have to spend some time refining your search keywords in order to find what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the bottom line is that you have to master the terminology before reading and writing papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21951" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T21:00:56.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T21:38:25.007" Score="33" ViewCount="3237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently reviewed a manuscript for a journal I didn't know very well, but which was indexed on Pubmed and Scopus and seemed to be legitimate. In my review, I recommended rejection based on what I considered to be substantial flaws in methodology, data analysis, and interpretation. In addition, I had ethical concerns about the manuscript, including suspicions of self-plagiarism and possible copyright infringement. It seemed that the authors had inappropriately reused text, data, and figures from an article that they had previously published in another journal. I detailed all of these concerns in my report to the editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After an automated response from the editor acknowledging receipt of my review, I heard nothing from the journal for 3-4 months. Out of curiosity, I looked online and was surprised to find that the manuscript was already in print! In fact, it had been published less than 2 months after I submitted my review, and the published version is essentially identical to the draft version I reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since made multiple attempts to contact the editor, but have received no response. To be clear, I certainly understand that the editorial team may not agree with my review, but I have been quite disappointed to have received no response to address the scientific and ethical issues I raised. If nothing else, in my experience (and I realize this may be a niche-specific expectation) an editor for any reputable journal will keep reviewers apprised of the editorial progress of manuscripts they have reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers have asked whether this is an online open-access journal with article processing charges, but instead it is a subscription-based journal. Thus, the journal and publisher are not eligible for inclusion on Beall's List (scholarlyoa.com).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other steps I can or should take? Anyhow, if I continue to be ignored by the editor, I am considering sharing this information with the editorial board of the journal that published the original paper (the one that I think may have been self-plagiarized).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21952" LastEditorUserId="21952" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T12:15:44.670" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T12:15:44.670" Title="As a reviewer, what steps can I take after paper is published despite major scientific and ethical concerns, with no explanation from editor?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28633" CreationDate="2014-09-17T21:42:40.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Aleksandar says, you do need to learn the terminology in order to search effectively for articles. And in fact, you'll need to know the terminology in order to &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; those articles. When I'm exploring a new subject area, I don't start with the journal articles; I start with books, web tutorials, etc., to get the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For learning the terminology, I also suggest reading the relevant articles in Wikipedia or Scholarpedia. They will also have links to journal articles; get hold of &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; articles and see what keywords they use. Anytime you find a useful article, note the keywords, and what journal it's in. This will help you find other useful articles, and places where you might submit your own articles in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your college librarian may be able to help you figure out some of the keywords to use. They usually know a little about a wide variety of topics, at least enough to have some ideas of what search terms might be useful. If you set up an appointment, they may be able to spend some time with you, helping you find some sample articles and working with you to figure out a good search strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T21:42:40.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-17T21:46:23.213" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preliminaries&lt;/strong&gt;: &#xA;You are in a tough spot and I don't think that any course of action is ideal or without risk.  If you can accept this &quot;messiness&quot; and commit to a reasonable course of action, you'll probably come out OK. It's also important to understand that you can't control or determine his reactions, and you can't be responsible for his feelings, as long as you act responsibly and ethically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Call a meeting, set the agenda&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I suggest that you schedule a meeting with him to discuss your working relationship.  If it were me, I'd speak plainly and directly, without any tone or implication of blame or distress. I suggest that you make these two points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I just want to confirm that our relationship is about work only. I am completely focused on my research career, and that is the basis for our relationship.  I'm not here for friendship or anything else.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'd like to make changes in specific behavior patterns.  In these requests, I may be different than other PhD students, but I'm clear about what I need and what I'm comfortable with.&quot;  Then list the behaviors you'd like to see changed (e.g. no &quot;pop-in&quot; meetings with non-work discussions).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having a successful meeting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule this meeting.  Don't improvise.  Don't combine it with any other meeting or topic.  Allow for enough time (an hour is sufficient, though you may only need 5 minutes. By scheduling an hour, you are avoiding time pressure for everyone involved) without pressure to complete sooner or worries about starting on time. Plan what you are going to say ahead of time, and even rehearse it, by yourself or with a friend.  If you think it's necessary, have an ally with you at the meeting -- a woman friend, anyone you respect in any role in the University, or even someone from the outside.  Just say, &quot;This may be a difficult conversation, and having X here to support us gives me more confidence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you can imagine that you are asking for something innocuous -- e.g. changing the seating arrangement at a seminar, adding vegetarian options at a department meeting, etc. -- it will help you and it will help him immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; need to ask him how he feels about you, to discuss the past or what he was or was not thinking or intending at the past, or any of that.  You also don't need to explain how you feel (even though it would be justified).  Talking about your feelings in this setting is almost never effective to change behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to ask him if he's &quot;OK&quot; with your requests, or what he might want as an alternative. There are no alternatives. What he wants beyond your requests is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if he brings up &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; other subject, no matter how related or how reasonable, you say: &quot;I'm not here to discuss that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't picked up on this already: &lt;em&gt;you need to be the dominant person in this interaction&lt;/em&gt;. Not flamboyantly or even demonstrably.  Just set the agenda, run the conversation, and lead to the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you will be nervous.  Yes, you might feel uncomfortable.  Yes, you might be seeking his approval and affirmation during this meeting. Let go of all of that. All that matters is that you have this conversation -- short, to-the-point, and direct -- and get to the conclusion you are aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if he wants to talk about &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; needs or experience in the relationship, do that in a separate meeting. Be firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be prepared to set boundaries&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless how the meeting goes, it's likely that he'll continue some or all of the behaviors, if only out of habit or faint hope. For each setting and behavior, be prepared to set a boundary -- saying 'no', disengaging, leaving the room, reminding him that you are not 'OK' with this, or what ever you believe will be effective.  Not to put him down, but imagine that you are training a dog to not bark or to not jump on visitors.  It's just behavioral conditioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do all this in a way that doesn't publicly embarrass him or privately make him &quot;the Bad Guy&quot;, it's unlikely that he will kick you out of the department or university.  There's a chance that he might do something bad toward you (many women have experienced negative consequences in similar circumstances), but the odds are lower by taking this path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the other answers and comments have expressed the view that this direct approach is &quot;incredibly risky&quot; or &quot;likely to backfire&quot; and have suggested more subtle or indirect approaches, including being as &quot;nice&quot; as possible during the process to avoid negative reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer reflects my personal and professional values and also my work history (many decades in high tech industry). I'm not naive about power or politics in university departments or research labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it's very valuable and proper for less powerful people to stand up to people in power on issues such as morality, ethics, and even suggestions on fixing problems in the organization (e.g. workload imbalance).  'Standing up&quot; helps the organization as a whole and can be part of a culture change in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any professional relationship like this merits a one hour face-to-face meeting if the meeting is about improving the working relationship. Just because the topic might be uncomfortable to one or both doesn't change that. (Such a meeting need not be a &quot;trial&quot; or &quot;attack&quot; as some people have described it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem I have with indirect/subtle approaches in this setting is that they do not adequately empower OP, implying that she needs to be deferential to her adviser in this matter. I believe that, in the matter of relationship integrity, no one has to be deferential to anyone else.  We all have the right (and duty) to stand up for ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, &lt;em&gt;I don't assume that the adviser is a harasser or that he is doing anything that he considers inappropriate&lt;/em&gt;.  It all may be very innocent and even well-intentioned on his part. If he is well-intentioned, then he'll probably receive these direct communications positively, shift his behavior, and all will be well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="7269" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T21:41:05.197" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T21:41:05.197" CommentCount="36" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28591" CreationDate="2014-09-17T22:38:21.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably the most complete resource would be the UNESCO's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/&quot;&gt;Index Translationum&lt;/a&gt;, a database of translation from 1979 onward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There you should be able to search more easily, selecting desired language and inputting a keyword from the title or an author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a list of references hosted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/translations&quot;&gt;Michigan State University's Library Guides&lt;/a&gt;, which offers a few hard-copy guides for consultation, however these are more restricted by field (mostly having to do with works of literature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T22:38:21.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28640" CreationDate="2014-09-17T23:19:52.940" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may not be much you can do about the scientific issues.  A profoundly wrong paper should be retracted, and a correction should be issued for anything serious that's objectively wrong and correctable.  However, the problems you've identified (poor methodology and interpretation) may not definitively fall into these categories, depending on what exactly you mean.  There's no ethical reason why a journal can't have low standards or publish controversial papers.  The primary risk is that their reputation will suffer if they publish foolish papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would indeed by unethical if they claim to be a peer-reviewed journal but aren't taking the review process seriously at all, and that sounds like what's going on here.  However, it would be difficult to prove based on an outsider's view of one case.  I imagine that if pressed, the editor would claim he/she evaluated the paper and your review and decided the paper was more credible.  It would be hard to prove that there was an ethical problem, rather than just poor scientific judgment on the part of the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the allegations of copyright infringement and self-plagiarism are ethical issues that transcend journal standards or policies.  That might be a good place to begin, and perhaps more will come out during the investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your proposal to share this information with the editorial board of the previous journal sounds like a good idea.  I'd contact the publisher directly as well as the editorial board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There may be an ethics committee in a relevant professional or learned society.  They could conduct an impartial investigation, which might lead to public censure or a retraction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could report these papers to the authors' funding agency, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could report these papers to the authors' employers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could publicize your experience on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among these possibilities, #1 and #2 seem most likely to make a difference regarding the journal, #3 and #4 might lead somewhere with the authors but wouldn't address the problematic nature of the journal, and #5 could be a valuable public service but is unlikely to change much by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T23:19:52.940" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T01:59:06.013" Score="2" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a review article with a target journal in mind. The content focuses on a particular technique in biology, and in the paper I propose a data analysis approach to be used for future studies. To help explain the intuition behind the technique, I have produced some straight-forward simulated data, organized into a a handful of figures. The experimental results are not particularly novel, but they are most valuable to illustrate a point -- how different quantitative methods compare to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you suggest I write a review that includes primary (but not novel) results, in the framework of a review? My current organization is an extended introduction &gt; short methods &gt; results &gt; discussion and future perspectives. A trivial matter could be to move the methods to the end, but I wonder if having discrete results and discussion sections is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T02:24:05.900" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T18:13:25.983" Title="How best to organize a review paper that includes some of my own data?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;review-articles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28471" CreationDate="2014-09-18T03:17:00.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, such programs will consider your GPA, GRE (general and/or subject test) or some equivalent tests, letters of recommendation, research experience and personal statement, or a subset of this list. Thus, it is really more precise to say that all of these factors supplement each other, rather than simply saying that only GRE and GPA supplement each other. Unless your GPA is lower than the cut-off line, which some programs impose, then it follows that good letters of recommendation, research experience and personal statement will help with your application. This will especially be true if you have exceptional academic achievement that is not reflected by the GPA, in which case the admission committee will likely overlook the low GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16049" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T03:17:00.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T03:56:26.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;On top of @MrMeritology's answer and its comments, I suggest you to draft a plan B just in case nothing gets better after the meeting.  Since he's powerful connections, a formal complaint will just land you in a more difficult spot.  Such a complaint may not make him to feel sorry about what he's done.  Instead, he may desert you afterwards and leave you with no academic career and with no job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plan B: Get Out of the lab&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to work at the same university, you may consider switching fields &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; advisor altogether.  (I know it's almost impossible, but it's worth considering.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your field of study can lead you to a non-academic career in the same city, make some meaningful connections.  The people you know may be happy to help you to land a job in the industry.  The jobs in the industry may not be related directly to your academic studies or research work, but some transferable skills may not highly desirable in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8661" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T03:56:26.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28016" CreationDate="2014-09-18T03:58:14.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers noted that a vote of no confidence is generally not binding, but may have other outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to point out that even if an outcome that is desired by the faculty &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; achieved, it is generally impossible to show causality (i.e., that the outcome was a direct result of the vote).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the end of the 2012-2013 academic year saw a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2013/05/29/breaking-silver-school-of-social-work-shoots-down-no-confidence-vote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;series of no confidence votes&lt;/a&gt; by faculty against New York University President John Sexton. The outcomes were as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The College of Arts and Sciences; Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; Gallatin School of Individualized Study; Tisch Asia; and Tisch School of the Arts passed votes of no confidence against the president.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the Silver School of Social Work, a vote was held but not passed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The School of Law passed a vote of confidence in favor of the president&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few months later, in August 2013, the university's Board of Trustees &lt;a href=&quot;http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2013/08/14/sexton-to-depart-after-2016-nyu-backtracks-on-vacation-home-loans/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; that Sexton would not continue beyond the end of his current contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's impossible to tell whether this is the result of the no-confidence votes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120817/greenwich-village/washington-square-village-residents-sue-nyu-for-development-plan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120926/greenwich-village/greenwich-village-groups-sue-city-stop-nyu-expansion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lawsuits&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/nyregion/nyu-gives-stars-loans-for-summer-homes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;negative media articles&lt;/a&gt; about the university and its president, or (almost certainly) a combination of these and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T04:05:20.177" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T04:05:20.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T05:30:43.320" Score="8" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed my undergraduate (in engineering) earlier this year and I am working in a company now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My senior design project involved me developing a different and cost-effective method for something. So I decided to document everything in a research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ended up submitting the paper to a national level student engineering conference. The paper was accepted. I presented it. And in fact ended up getting the award for the 2nd best paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I was going over my paper the other day and I found out a mistake in my algorithm. My concept (discussed in the paper) and actual code are both correct. But since I didn't put the code in the paper and just the algorithm I made an error in converting my code to the algorithm for the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The error can be easily corrected however the algorithm in its current state will cause the device to not work properly. The paper also discusses 2 other algorithms for 2 other tasks; both of them are correct but everything is interdependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper hasn't been published (and can't be found online) but it is printed in the conference proceedings. I am also ashamed to have won the 2nd prize with an error in my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do I approach this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21962" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T05:53:05.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T06:02:37.070" Title="Found an error in a paper that I already presented at a student engineering conference; what should I do now?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29689" CreationDate="2014-09-18T06:02:32.773" Score="4" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background information: &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28652/found-an-error-in-a-paper-that-i-already-presented-at-a-student-engineering-conf&quot;&gt;Found an error in a paper that I already presented at a student engineering conference; what should I do now?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am inclined to talk about the paper because I was awarded the 2nd best paper. And although it isn't published (only printed in conference proceedings) and it was a student conference, I still made a big error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21962" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T23:14:31.907" Title="Found an error in a paper I presented at a student engineering conference. Should/can I talk about it in my MS applications?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28652" CreationDate="2014-09-18T06:02:37.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a paper published in a journal you would go for errata if the mistake is minor and does not invalidate the conclusions of the paper, or for retraction if the mistake invalidates the conclusions. In your case I would contact the organizers of the conference and ask what you should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may feel ashamed about making a mistake that goes into publication (I talk from experience) but acknowledging it and trying to fix it is laudable (not everyone does it), is the ethical alternative and it will give you some peace of mind afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T06:02:37.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T07:55:37.317" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the answers are fine. However all of them are related to the answerer’s personality and I assume the questioner can't replicate that exact personalities or some answers suggest to do something that the questioner doesn't want to perform like, skipping, changing field or research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, this question is a common among most employed women. However as per my experience, if you take any step to get confront the advisor by discussing about this problem directory would make him mad. Also even if you follow the professional protocol to follow this issue, the situation would cost even your career as you said. However the end result is based on person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be lot of ways to solve this. &#xA;However in here I'm suggesting an one method to &lt;strong&gt;neutrally stabilize&lt;/strong&gt; the situation. however this method is framed with some criteria.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tips to neutrally stabilize the situation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What if an annoying car seller tries to sell a car and calls you all the day? Without complain to any law authorities or whatever, the easiest thing that you could do is to show him what you currently own and you don't prefer a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you got a partner or just a boy friend, this can be solved very easily. Or if you are currently not up to any relationship just ask some help from a close male friend. (For now lets call this guy as your partner)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Safest play would be to show up some basic personal stuff over your social media, FB, instagram in very neutral manner. Like the dinner's you both gone out, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or ask your partner to take a visit at university, or you could introduce him to the advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the advisor is around, Ask your partner to pick-up you after work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also if you could show up a photo of your partner's or of your both on your working desk, noticeable wallet or on pendant would be another good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the advisor is talking about non-work related personal stuff, you could respond to those topics like , &quot;as my boy friend says like this, like that&quot;&#xA;He will indirectly know that you value your personal stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let him know that you are not your own and there are people around you to support, protect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to continue work with him as usual and eventually you could indirectly let him know that if he's up to a such a relationship, that you are not available and you are occupied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also he will eventually know that he doesn't have any chance and retreat without any hate. However this depends on the person's personality.&#xA;Expect the good side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21964" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T07:55:37.317" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T08:34:37.273" Score="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if a meeting at which you &quot;set the agenda&quot; would be particularly helpful at this stage. It might make him feel &quot;attacked&quot;, put him on the defensive, and he may retaliate against you in response. (I'm not suggesting that he would try to get you kicked out of the university or the department; there are many, many other small and large ways an advisor can make things difficult for a student. You already suggested that when he's mad at you, he deliberately ignores you emails, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly disagree with the advice to flaunt a (real or fake) relationship, to let your advisor know you're unavailable. I've seen people try this, and in my experience, when applied to someone who does not respect boundaries, the outcome is often that then he starts asking you a whole lot of very uncomfortable questions about your boyfriend and the relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, he's probably doing this because he enjoys it (flirting, the chase, whatever), not because he wants an actual committed relationship. So I'm not convinced that he would be dissuaded by your unavailability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I suggest you start using a variation on the following phrase to respond when he does something that makes you uncomfortable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want this. This makes me really uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want you to take my photo. Please don't ask again, it makes me really uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to talk about my personal life with you. It makes me really uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if he persists in whatever is making you uncomfortable,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need to go (get a cup of coffee/make a phone call/talk to another student before he leaves for the day/make some photocopies/etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then remove yourself from the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend practicing saying these words on your own, until they feel natural. This will help you feel less flustered when a situation comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also concur with StrongBad's suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would suggest the OP writes down every time she tells the advisor he made her feel uncomfortable. She should also keep track of times he makes her feel uncomfortable in which she was uncomfortable telling him he made her feel uncomfortable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I would add, also make a note of who else (if anyone) was there at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be able to tell if the situation is getting better or worse with time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do need to escalate at some point, you'll have some documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T03:12:55.220" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:12:55.220" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T11:32:20.020" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, please ignore the advice given by some people here to demonstrate your 'unavailability' to your advisor by talking about having a boyfriend, or having your boyfriend or some male friend come and pick you up from work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need any 'excuse' to be uninterested in having anything more than a professional relationship with your advisor, and to imply that the main reason you are uninterested is because you have a boyfriend might suggest that you would be open to the idea of a romantic relationship with him if you were 'available'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, I agree with most of ff524's answer, although I personally would be very uncomfortable with telling someone that they were making me feel uncomfortable, so I would be unlikely to use the suggested phrase.  What I would do is simply say 'No' to requests such as taking a photo of you.  You don't need to give any justification for denying an odd request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to address the issue directly with your advisor, just because it's going to keep making you feel uncomfortable, and most likely have a negative effect on your working relationship.  I don't know the best way to go about this, but your university probably has some kind of counselling service that could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T11:32:20.020" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4798" CreationDate="2014-09-18T11:51:33.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's approach this question from another direction: When is it ever a disadvantage to know more languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every translation is already an interpretation and beyond mathematics I don't see any field where interpretation would not matter. In other words: You are always closer to the original meaning when reading a paper in its original language than when reading a translation of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in philosophy and theology right now and it is for either a must to know English, German, French, Italian, Latin and Ancient Greek. The works of Plato, Nietzsche, Luther, Macchiavelli, Sueton, etc. are simply not the same anymore once you translate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an academic you should never wonder why you should put any effort into learning something new - learning new things is your daily job! That's what you chose to do. Therefore the need to learn a new language should be seen as a chance. Expand your horizon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20449" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T11:51:33.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T12:11:30.160" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several topics that I would like to publish. While I can get a paper, in technical terms, 100% of the way done I am not an English major. I don't do great at speaking human, or dotting my &quot;i&quot;'s. I could be much more productive if I had help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently not affiliated with a university or academic institution. I work and on the side I sometimes do some thinking or work on (statistically) fun problems. I would like to share the results in an approved and excellent forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one go about finding someone with that strength to help edit (or is it co-author) articles with the intention of publishing them in decent to great peer-reviewed publications? Are there any culture-known &quot;best known methods&quot;? Are there negative repercussions of having non-mathematical technical help? If so, what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21968" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T12:18:58.087" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:36:00.960" Title="How do I get editing help for technical (mathematic/statistic) paper publishing?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;proofreading&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T12:53:38.670" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a few varied points, and I assume that although not explicitly stated in the answer, the OP gave the usual more-and-less subtle hints but they did not work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic idea is to first arrive at a point that allows a calm decision how to go on, and that also allows you to get in the emotional/mental state of freedom that allows you to tackle the problem e.g. by the meeting @MrMeritology suggests.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One very practical step that may help to avoid/reduce the stressful situations: Can you move into another office where more people work (or have some fellow student move into your office) and thus basically limit the possibilities for him to catch you alone?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;On the one hand, others already suggested that this would mean witnesses. On the other hand, it may make him behave. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I fully agree with the say lots of plain &quot;no&quot;s advise by @ff24. I'd go for the shortest and plainest &quot;No&quot; And guess follow up questions (&quot;Why?&quot;) would best be answered by &quot;That's none of your business.&quot; - possibly re-enforcing &quot;The answer is no, and that has to be enough&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think super-clear boundaries are required here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can excercise/train these situations with some friends?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Somehow I think it likely that the problem cannot be solved with less drastic measures than the meeting (+ paper/electronic trail) MrMeritology suggests. I guess it would be good to prepare yourseld emotionally for that. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You state that for personal reasons you cannot move away. However, there may be other points where you can gain independence in the sense that you are less vulnerable to the attacks you fear, and more on equal terms for the totally sensible demand you have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E.g., if you are financially dependent on a work contract in his lab, it may be good to put together some savings that will make you independent (in that they'd allow you to bridge the time till you find something else to earn your living) either have a second job, or speak with your family about support in case of need, or do some superhard saving, or have someone trustworthy who'd give you a job immediately in case of need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get yourself connected with colleagues (from your as well as from other groups).&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the PhD student who spoke about him spending too much time with you trustworthy so you can talk to him about the problems? - this may be a valuable ally.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colleagues who &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; you (e.g. know that you are not starting rumours to discredit the supervisor without any base for that but that instead you are harrassed) are most valuable: in the example, they are your best insurance against him starting rumours about you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also they can help you with the emotional stress you're subject to. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing the local conditions, they may come up with solutions/help we cannot think of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And last but not least, being connected with other groups may also open other plan Bs, i.e. changing your research area in case you arrive at the conclusion that the situation is emotionally/personally unbearable and changing to another topic is the lesser evil (I'd actually suggest that there may be other interesting research topics). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get emotionally as independent as possible. Maybe family/friends can help you to get there. If you are religiously affiliated, such help may also be available as pastoral/spiritual care (obviously depending on denomination and personal relationship), or you can look for a professional coach.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is not a nice-to-have, but a basic requirement for the actions suggested: you'll need it to say NO, for the meeting, it is what allows your self-esteem to survive in the future if you decide to leave the lab, but also if you decide to stay. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T12:53:38.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2014-09-18T13:30:39.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'm not totally clear about the exact situation. Here's how I understand it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some experiments have been done and analysed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some conclustion &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be drawn &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some control experiment that would allow far more general conclusions is planned but has not yet been done.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is what the reviewer is worried about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Author point of view:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that the decision what to do depends on whether the conclusions that can be drawn are important enough to write a paper about them. Alternatively, the other way round: whether a paper written about both the already performed and the control experiments would be too long for a good paper.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these situations, I'd &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agree with the reviewer (in the answer to the reviewers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but point out that after careful consideration you decided that the control experiments are out of the scope of the present (preliminary? feasibility? case?) study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, I'd spell out the limitations of the present study very clearly &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;while outlining the follow-up experiment as a solution. This needs some care in order to convince readers (and reviewer) that the follow-up experiment is really taking place: the literature is full of ongoing experiments that never went on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the answer to the reviewers, state explicitly that you took care to clearly outline the limitatins of the present study due to the lack of control experiments. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this approach can only work if the lack of control experiments has some sensible reason and doesn't appear to be lazyness. Spell out the reasons  (careful with non-scientific reasons like feasibility [vs. laziness]). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reviewer point of view&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reviewing a paper, I find it quite OK if experiments have limitations* if the authors are clearly aware of these limitations. I tend to be worried if the conclusion that the world is rescued is based on 3 dead mice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Experiments will always have limitations. It is IMHO perfectly right to look at science as an iterative process of refining knowledge. It doesn't make sense to get thousands of patients for a preliminary study. But the preliminary study should spell out the limitations. And in practice, the preliminary study is (and should be) needed in order to get the thousands of patients, and/or better meta information, or other other labs joining the efforts etc. for follow-up studies. But also this will work only if the preliminary study is honest about limitations. Otherwise the topic will be perceived as &quot;solved&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:30:39.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23691" CreationDate="2014-09-18T13:36:00.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;OnlineSchools.org produces a list of various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlineschools.org/open-access-journals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;open access journals&lt;/a&gt;. While I can't say all are reputable, most look like they point to well established and credible organizations or educational institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21972" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T13:36:00.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28679" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:04:47.830" Score="93" ViewCount="11067" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, I am relatively new to my community. From my point of view, the best approach to get to know new people is randomly walking around and start conversations (with anyone, no matter what age or known/unknown). But is that appropriate at academic conferences? How do established researchers think about that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking because in my previous conference visits, I often felt that people are annoyed or not interested when I just walked up and started a conversation. What would be better approaches for getting to know the community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20063" LastEditorUserId="20063" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T12:22:11.077" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T12:22:11.077" Title="Walk up and talk to random people at academic conferences - is that appropriate?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;networking&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="42" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:29:00.977" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is appropriate to walk to random people at a conference.&#xA;(At least I do it often; all in all, conferences are to learn new people / network in the same field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you cannot expect everyone wanting to talk with you: there are personal preferences, some people are waiting to discuss with someone else (or just want to rest from talking :)), some want to &quot;climb&quot; and are more interested in talking with superiors, sometimes the conversations do not &quot;clicks&quot; for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:29:00.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:29:18.037" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, this is perfectly appropriate behavior at a conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, people differ. Not everybody wants to small-talk with people they do not know. Some people see no &quot;value&quot; in talking to younger students (clearly, this is a short-sighted view). As such, you should not take it personally if somebody does not want to talk to you. Maybe it is in fact them, and not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it also depends a bit on (a) what the person you are chatting up is currently doing, and (b) what you actually say after starting to talk. Most people will be annoyed when you interrupt them while doing something else. Also, clearly, most people will have little interest in talking to you when what you say isn't very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:29:18.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:29:24.483" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the conference is quite small, then accosting random strangers is probably appropriate. For larger conferences, I'd recommend a more targeted approach: have a specific question or reason why you're interested in talking with this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21952" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:29:24.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:43:21.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For public discussions on arXiv preprints there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://scirate.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SciRate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For general discussions, also private, there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://peerlibrary.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PeerLibrary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:43:21.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28724" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:46:40.227" Score="14" ViewCount="1284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching a new class next term and I need to choose a text book (or create a reading list) for it. The class is a hands on introduction to programming with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathworks.com&quot;&gt;MATLAB&lt;/a&gt;. A quick search of my library's catalogue returns nearly 300 titles, 100 of which are on-line books. When you are creating a new class from scratch how do you go about choose the text book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:19:28.083" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:33:02.570" Title="How do you choose a textbook for a new class" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28685" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:47:05.940" Score="7" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities have adopted open access policies, giving their employees an incentive to make their scholarly articles freely available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To enforce this policy, universities should ideally keep track of the research output of their employees, and remind them to upload their papers if they are not freely available yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a rather time-consuming task: I wonder whether there are tools to facilitate or automate this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such tools could perform some of the following tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track the published papers and match their authors with the employees list (probably using some bibliometric platform like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;crossref.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Locate freely available versions of these papers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run a repository where the papers can be uploaded (there are plenty of tools available for this task)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage waiver requests from researchers who want to opt out of the policy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide statistics about the publication practices within the institution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T20:46:01.213" Title="Are there tools to implement an institutional open access policy?" Tags="&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;policy&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:08:45.430" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not convinced that he wants a romantic relationship with you. Rather he is boosting his ego by flirting with you and actually enjoys flirting with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your response need to be adequate to the situation. You should respond to amateurism by professionalism&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think calling a general meeting of an hour to set things straight can backfire, because it will sound like a trial to almost anybody. And in a trial, the defendant defends itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, you need to cool him down over an extended period of time. Try not to over-think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He comes to my room very often with no research-related reason and&#xA;  wants to talk, talk, talk about everything but work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delay.&lt;/strong&gt; You are in the middle of something important, and he needs to know that. Just tell him that you need to round up with what you are currently doing and that you are willing to go full gossip at the coffee break. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set boundaries.&lt;/strong&gt; You haven't said what he is talking about. It is mostly about you? Then when it cross boundary you just say it is personal. Don't break under any &quot;Oh come on&quot; pressure tactic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be a good listener.&lt;/strong&gt; It may surprise you, but you also have the power to direct the &lt;strong&gt;conversation&lt;/strong&gt; to a subject of your liking. By listening well to what he said you can go deeper in a harmless topic, one which doesn't make you feel uncomfortable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop the break when your mug is empty, excuse yourself and go back to work&lt;/strong&gt;. It is important that all this chitchat happens far from your desk. Desk = work, coffee machine = small talk of at most x minutes.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Invite other staff to the break talk&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't do it systematically, but sometimes drop by someone's else desk and invite him\her too. It will obviously annoy the shit out of your advisor. Note: At least this works for me. That's where he will show his true color. Either he will invite you offsite, an invite that you can decline, or tell you not to invite other people. That's all you need to hit the ethic institution at your university. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once, when I was busy working, he came to my room and asked if he&#xA;  could take a photo of me. I felt ashamed and did know that to say and&#xA;  finally, he took the photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure the first thing which came to your mind was &quot;Why?&quot;. You should probably tell what's in your mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why do you need a photo? It is for the lab website, or a publication? Can we do that at the break or later? Thanks&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes I think he is mad at me that I want to keep this&#xA;  relationship work-only, and then does not answer my emails about our&#xA;  research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again we don't have much information about the context. But I will advise you to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0671027034&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Win Friends And Influence People&lt;/a&gt;. Don't get turned off by the title. It is not a guide to become a manipulative asshole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember that there is politics at the lab and the office. The other lab members are gradually building resentment towards you for your &quot;preferential treatment&quot;. You need to take this in account as well&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12196" LastEditorUserId="33097" LastEditDate="2017-06-30T23:08:35.987" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T23:08:35.987" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:32:28.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking to take your photo is truly creepy. I would consider talking to the person or office at your university responsible for sexual harassment charges. Typically universities have a very clear process for dealing with such situations, and it may be that he has done this before. You can discuss with their office how to proceed. They might have some good ideas, and they typically won't act in a way that you are uncomfortable with, if you are worried about repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I wanted to echo other people's discomfort with the &quot;call a meeting&quot; proposal. This strikes me as incredibly risky. I think it's better to get the appropriate office on your side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; A couple more ideas: &#xA;1) invite someone from HR to give a presentation on workplace ethics (including sexual harassment) to the lab. [Somewhat risky as it might embarrass him in front of the rest of the lab. Perhaps it can be arranged for it to seem like coincidence, not having been arranged by you.]&#xA;2) if there a campus pamphlet about this issue, you could leave it in his mailbox, perhaps with appropriate passages highlighted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9464" LastEditorUserId="9464" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T11:15:16.537" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T11:15:16.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28661" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:36:00.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest these four steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify your research community.&lt;/strong&gt; The problems you are working on should have some connections with previous works. If not, it will be hard to publish your work anywhere, because it is harder to draw the attention of other researchers on your topic. You can use search engines such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that the authors of these papers use the same notations, publish in the same journals and use a similar article structure to describe their work. &lt;strong&gt;Become familiar with the format&lt;/strong&gt; by reading related articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write down a draft&lt;/strong&gt;, following the usual format of your field. If your English is weak, you can ask someone to fix your mistakes (he/she should not need to be familiar with your work, but it is easier if he/she has some scientific background).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contact a researcher&lt;/strong&gt; working on close topics, asking him/her for feedback on your draft. If the feedback is positive, a collaboration might be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have followed these steps and this has lead me to my first research paper (co-authored with my &quot;mentor&quot;). It takes a lot of time but it is worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:36:00.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28680" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:37:13.603" Score="41" ViewCount="5643" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: I am a junior university staff member, and I will teach an introductory course in linear algebra for the first time in a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that many teachers devote time to writing lecture notes. To me, this looks odd. Whatever I can write will not be half as good as a well-written textbook. so my first choice would be looking for a good book, recommend it to the students, and stick with it as much as possible for my lectures. &quot;Everyone writes their own notes&quot; looks like a model in which there is a lot of needless duplication of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do people write detailed lecture notes for basic courses? What is the advantage with respect to following closely a textbook?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the two approaches really alternative, or am I misunderstanding the role of lecture notes? Should I do both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T15:38:45.310" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T15:11:23.650" Title="What is the benefit of writing lecture notes for an introductory course vs using a textbook?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;lecture-notes&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28681" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:50:05.433" Score="60" ViewCount="11711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was rather surprised that in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28648/929&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; which suggests that a supervisor giving a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_hug&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;side-hug&lt;/a&gt; to a research assistant is acceptable behaviour. I try and limit the physical contact with my students/postdocs/assistants to hand shakes and high fives, however if they initiate a hug I tend not to block it. What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student? I guess a follow up question would be do the genders of the supervisor or student matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T21:50:46.943" Title="What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student?" Tags="&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;gender&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28677" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28678" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" Score="0" Body="Relates to the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept." OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:51:04.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:54:04.233" Score="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. It helps, though, to be a little context sensitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've just come from an amazing presentation and want to talk about it to someone else, then &quot;did you just hear that great talk by/about X?&quot; is a good way to start the conversation, better than just &quot;Hello&quot; or &quot;Great conference, eh?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know who the person is (they're speaking, you recognize them, etc), then greeting them (&quot;Hi Kate,&quot; or &quot;good morning, Dr. Gregory,&quot; according to your industry norms) and introducing yourself with context (&quot;I'm Susan, I really enjoyed your book&quot;) is a fine first sentence but please, &lt;em&gt;have a second sentence ready.&lt;/em&gt; After the person says &quot;thankyou, that's very kind,&quot; what will happen next? A question is good here - perhaps there's something you've always wanted to ask - or you could go back to your opener for a complete stranger, &quot;did you just hear that great talk by/about X?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never open with something negative - &quot;were you in that stinker of a session? Wasn't it the most boring thing ever?&quot; - is right up there with the friend of mine who asked someone at a wedding &quot;who is that obnoxious fat woman in the flowered dress and why is she even here?&quot; only to be told &quot;that's my mother.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My biggest problem with conference conversations is when someone wants to have a conversation with me but doesn't actually have anything to say. That puts all the conversational effort on me and it's hard work. Should you find yourself in this situation, have a selection of questions you can ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is this your first time at [this conference]? (don't ask an industry luminary, or a speaker, this question)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are you enjoying the conference so far?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is your favourite talk so far? (not good the morning of Day 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there a particular session you're really looking forward to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little trickier to ask questions outside the scope of the conference, like &quot;where are you from&quot; or &quot;where do you work?&quot; because they often contain assumptions - you might assume someone is a student who has graduated, or is a prof when they aren't yet, or is in a lab when they are not, and it's possible to offend someone. So don't lead off with these. Often, stating your own circumstances is a way to prompt the other person to respond in kind: &quot;I flew here from just outside Toronto. You?&quot; or &quot;I'm doing/finishing a Ph.D/postdoc/intership at ABC. You?&quot; though again be careful if the person thinks you should know this thing about them, or if it's on their badge. You usually want to get a paragraph or two into conversation before discussing &quot;real life&quot; rather than the conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well chosen questions not only move the conversation along, they can meet your other goals. Maybe you'll decide to attend a session you hadn't planned to. Maybe you'll learn about a great book or other resource related to something you enjoyed. Maybe you'll be invited to something, or exchange business cards, or al those other benefits of networking at conferences. None of those things can happen if you just say &quot;hi&quot; and leave it at that, the other person says &quot;hi&quot; and then the two of you stand there awkwardly, wondering why you're not having a conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read and enjoyed a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062295349&quot;&gt;How to Work a Room&lt;/a&gt; that emphasizes knowing what you want from encounters like this. Are you trying to find a job? Hire someone? Learn more about something? Tell people what you've discovered? For every want you bring to that conference, someone else brings the matching one and if you two find each other you will both be happy - but only if you tell them what you're looking for and what you have to offer. This is a skill you can learn, and marching up to strangers and saying &quot;hi&quot; is only the first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:54:04.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:59:16.167" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who's tried to do both, there are some very valid reasons to prepare &quot;formal&quot; lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary reason why you'd want to create your own notes is that for many courses, a single good text is not available, and as a result, the instructor has to cobble together material from a number of different sources to produce a coherent set of lecture notes—or recommend that students work with multiple source texts. (Given the out-of-control nature of textbook prices, the latter alternative is unlikely to work out well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a single-text class, it may not be necessary to provide students an additional set of notes, provided your lectures stick to the main text material. However, if you bring in alternative or additional topics into your lectures, you may want to include notes for those topics, and refer students to the textbook for places where you follow the &quot;standard&quot; outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:59:16.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28676" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:05:40.830" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I refrain from &lt;em&gt;initiating&lt;/em&gt; any physical contact other than handshakes or &quot;congratulatory&quot; gestures such as high-fives or fist bumps. This allows the student to control the level of interaction if they so choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion about what would be considered &quot;acceptable&quot; is that it varies widely from country to country, depending on what is considered an &quot;acceptable&quot; level of contact between strangers or professional colleagues. For instance, in Muslim-dominated countries, the &quot;side-hug&quot; mentioned in the answer—or even &lt;em&gt;shaking of hands&lt;/em&gt;—between a male boss and a female subordinate, or vice versa, would likely be frowned upon! Similarly, in other countries, I could see how a &quot;side-hug&quot; could be within the realm of acceptable contacts (although still on the somewhat &quot;iffy&quot; side). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:05:40.830" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28682" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:06:02.207" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T16:06:02.207" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:06:02.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28683" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:06:02.207" Score="0" Body="A set of formally and systematically prepared notes on a subject, usually for distribution to others. Do not use this tag for questions on taking notes during a lecture or course (use 'note-taking' instead) or on the Springer &quot;Lecture Notes&quot; journals (use 'journals' instead)" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:05:33.133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:05:33.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:10:13.897" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are teaching linear algebra, I will use it as an example. Gilbert Strang teaches/taught linear algebra at MIT. He also wrote the textbook &lt;em&gt;Introduction to Linear Algebra&lt;/em&gt;. You might expect the course to follow along perfectly with the textbook. If you look at the syllabus from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/readings/&quot;&gt;when Strang was teaching the course&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/Fall14/course_info_syll_F14.pdf&quot;&gt;now&lt;/a&gt; what you will see is there are significant deviations. It goes section: 3.6, 8.2, 4.1-4.4, 8.5, 5.2-5.3, 6.1-6.2, 6.6, 8.3, 6.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author of the textbook cannot even happily follow his own ordering of the topic, it is not surprising that many teachers feel the need to create their own notes that go in the order and cover the material in the depth that they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:10:13.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28671" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:10:57.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope you checked with the library of your institution, since these are the people who are typically involved in that sort of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are softwares to create institution repository of articles (often pre-prints) to allow free access and comply with most government funding regulation. There are probably many options, but one of these softwares is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://help-infoscience.epfl.ch/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infoscience&lt;/a&gt; and is used by institutions like the CERN in Geneva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system allows researchers to have an up-to-date, automatically populated  publication list with links to the downloadable documents, enables keyword search, run stats, etc. It is useful as well if you are writing an annual report of your group/department, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T16:16:15.257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:16:15.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:11:07.330" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I have no experience with preparing a whole course, so I will leave this aspect to others.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vast majority, if not all, textbooks originated from lecture notes, usually from professors who held that course repeatedly and refined their notes over the years (often this is stated in the introduction of the textbook). Now, you might argue that these textbooks already exist¹ and there is no point in repeating this process as somebody already has done the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if everybody acted this way, there would not be any didactical improvement or adaption to current needs – which is very important for the future of science, as otherwise each new generation of scientists would take longer to reach the ever progressing forefront of knowledge. Just take a look at very old linear-algebra books: They are much more focussed on calculating stuff (which has become less important nowadays), have a more clumsy notation and leave out certain concepts that are considered relevant today. If some people in the past had not chosen to create their own lecture notes, which eventually turned into textbooks, you would probably have been learning linear algebra as taught in these books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if everybody wrote textbooks, we would drown in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, going only from this point of view: If you have a textbook you are perfectly happy with, stick to it. If, however, you have a didactical style and approach different from all existing textbooks, you might as well try it – and perhaps write a new textbook one day and advance the didactics of linear algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ and in the case of linear algebra: tons of them&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T16:17:37.393" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:17:37.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28965" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:43:48.263" Score="5" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is, I am an Adjunct Lecturer (Physics); however, to support myself, I work full-time as a high school teacher.  Essentially, the situation is that an Adjunct Lecturer is working amongst non-academic colleagues, who unfortunately see the research as nothing more than a 'hobby'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an effective means of helping these non-academic colleagues comprehend the importance and time-needed for the research involved with being an Adjunct Lecturer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastEditorDisplayName="user21984" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T16:51:00.803" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T19:08:47.060" Title="What is an effective means to educate non-academic colleagues of the importance and time needed for Adjunct Lecturing research?" Tags="&lt;independent-researcher&gt;&lt;adjunct-faculty&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:52:16.570" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Students often prefer lecture notes, for several reasons. They don't have to pay the cost of a textbook, and they don't have to worry about keeping a textbook in good condition for resale. This means that they are much more likely to be willing to make notes, highlights, underlinings etc on the notes themselves during the lectures. Providing printed lecture notes and letting them make notes on them creates a good balance: students are not frantically copying down everything without having time to think; nor are they likely to slip into a passive listening mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, having a PDF of the notes available for download is useful for those students (and lecturers) who prefer notes in electronic format for searching etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:52:16.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29280" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:12:59.870" Score="21" ViewCount="8302" Body="&lt;p&gt;After submitting a paper, receiving comments back from reviewers and revising, the paper manuscript may be longer than the given word limit due to the additional content added (even if it was at or below the word limit in the original submission). For the sake of argument, say the revised paper is 10% or 20% longer than the word limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortening the paper without loosing any information may be difficult. Moving some paragraphs into the Supplements may be possible, but may make it more difficult to find relevant information or be aesthetically displeasing, such as writing &quot;Additional discussions can be found in the Supplements.&quot; in the middle of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any guidelines on how willing journals might be to accept papers above the word limit after revisions? Is word length still strictly enforced or is this mainly checked upon initial submission? Would simply submitting and hoping for a quick response from the editor (in case this is unacceptable) be a good strategy? Or is this a bad idea since either it highly unlikely to be acceptable or has a risk of annoying the editor? Do you have any experience with this issue either from an author's or an editor's point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21985" LastEditorUserId="21985" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T17:27:23.737" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T07:11:20.633" Title="Word limit for paper after addressing reviewer's comments" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="113924" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:18:28.540" Score="45" ViewCount="3607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in a small department and have become the go-to person for statistics advice among the other students.  I enjoy this but am wondering at what point I should expect, or request, becoming a collaborator on the project.  Pointing someone towards a method, a paper or a book is definitely not worthy of any recognition, neither would a short one-off 15 minute conversation in the hallway.  But what if I help them understand a difficult statistical method or fix some computer code that otherwise might have taken them days or even weeks to achieve on their own?  What if our conversations helps clarify the questions they are asking either statistically and scientifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that if I became a co-author, I'd continue to contribute to the project, help write the statistical methods, comment on the full paper, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if I should set up ground rules that I tell people, like, &quot;the 1st 20 minutes are free, but after that, we'll have to talk about long-term collaboration.&quot;  Or I could come up with a list of services I can provide and what the expectations are.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://kbroman.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/thoughts-on-statistical-consulting/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; comments on these issues from the perspective of a full-time statistician.  This &lt;a href=&quot;http://kbroman.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/thoughts-on-statistical-consulting/&quot;&gt;StackExchange&lt;/a&gt; question addresses more general issues about co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20683" LastActivityDate="2020-04-26T06:38:14.983" Title="When does a statistical consultant become a co-author or collaborator?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;statistics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:33:08.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If anyone you know is also attending the conference, and has been there or otherwise interacted with the community before, ask them to introduce you to some other attendees. My advisor makes a point of doing this for new students at one of our biggest annual conferences, so that we recognize the big names of the field in person, and so that they have some idea who we are if we interact with them later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21987" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T17:33:08.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28676" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:50:36.840" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of this may depend on the age of the students, the relevant law of the country, and policies of the institution.  I'm replying from a USA-centric, adult, and parent viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a USA Swimming certified official.  Part of the required training is on their 'Athlete Protection Policy', dealing with allowable interactions between adults (coaches, officials, team representatives) and swimmers (age group or over 18). Shaking hands and fist bumps like @asismail list are acceptable.  Hugs initiated by the adults are not. Hugs initiated by the swimmer are also not really OK - they might happen once in the heat of the moment (winning Olympic gold), but should not be repeated.  This ensures there are clear boundaries between the adults and the swimmers (any age).  There should be no doubt to a neutral observer that there is nothing going on. If this sounds too 'politically correct' to you, tough. Sexual harassment and sexual abuse happen, and USA Swimming wants nothing to do with it.  Likely your institution has no desire for it to occur either, and has policies in place about it.  If the student feels uncomfortable, don't do it.  If somebody watching you is uncomfortable, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager of a research group, I have positional authority over my adult staff, and all the same issues apply.  You don't want anyone thinking that anything untoward is going on.  I would never hug a subordinate, male or female, and would not let them hug me under any normal work situations (I'll omit extreme cases such as us all getting out of a burning exploding building). It opens up too many questions.  Even a side hug seems unusual. Lightly and briefly touching a shoulder is OK, unless they seem uneasy.  I don't do it often. Perhaps that seems cold, but my observation is that even 'touchy-feely' folks don't really do much touching in a professional workplace environment. In an environment with students I'd stick to no actions that could be interpreted as remotely sexual by a third party observer.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15477" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T17:50:36.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:56:53.173" Score="4" ViewCount="2222" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the possible benefits or consequences of submitting my dissertation to ProQuest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university recommends submitting dissertations to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProQuest&lt;/a&gt;. I am wondering about the practices and academic reputation of this company, and whether or not it is in my best interests to follow the recommendation of my institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does ProQuest support academic work? Do they charge exorbitant fees to access their content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10885" LastEditorUserId="22520" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T11:49:33.387" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T15:31:58.273" Title="Is ProQuest a reputable company?" Tags="&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28689" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:08:09.640" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note — my answer is from an author's point of view with experience publishing in IEEE Transactions-type journals. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any guidelines on how willing journals might be to accept papers above the word limit after revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guidelines for revisions are the same as those for the initial submission; that is, there are no separate guidelines for revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is word length still strictly enforced or is this mainly checked upon initial submission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guidelines I've encountered on manuscript length have dealt with page count specifically, not &quot;word length.&quot; So, yes, the page count is strictly enforced on the initial submission and any subsequent revisions. In your case, there is probably a hard limit on word count for the journal you are submitting to regardless if it is a revision or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would simply submitting and hoping for a quick response from the editor (in case this is unacceptable) be a good strategy? Or is this a bad idea since either it highly unlikely to be acceptable or has a risk of annoying the editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can submit your over-length paper if it makes you feel better; however, the opportunity to annoy is always present when someone doesn't follow the rules. Having said that, the editors I've worked with in the past have been fairly quick to send back to me submissions that did not follow the guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one journal I submitted to had just changed it's maximum page count while a paper of mine was undergoing the last stages of an internal review. I had not checked the page limit prior to submitting as I was already familiar with what the guidelines said regarding this matter (after all, I structured my paper to be compliant with the guidelines). Sure enough, the editor sent it back within a couple of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, there is a balancing act of sorts that goes in to revising papers such that they address referee comments sufficiently while maintaining compliance with the journal's guidelines on manuscript length, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="11192" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T19:36:02.227" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T19:36:02.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28693" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:10:15.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think Proquest is really a publisher so much as just a repository.  They don't make any editorial choices about the material they host. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any information about their financials, but accessing dissertations through them is moderately difficult and expensive.  (I think getting a copy of a thesis from them is on the order of US$50.)  I think of them as the dissertation archive of last resort - I would only order from them after exhausting all other options (author's website, university's library, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that you might as well submit your thesis to them, since it is good to know that future researchers looking for your thesis would always have Proquest as a fallback option.    However, you should make an effort to make your thesis available through more convenient (and free) means as well.  Post it on your professional web page.  If your field uses arXiv or a similar open access repository, upload it there as well.  (Since you will presumably be publishing papers and/or books based on your thesis, check first that the relevant publishers are okay with having your thesis available for free online.  Probably the major journals/publishers in your field will have similar policies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:10:15.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28693" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:10:59.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proquest is not a traditional publisher. I would compare them more to a vanity press than a predatory journal, but since they do not do any binding or even ISBN registering, it is not even fair to call them a vanity press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is likely they make large profits, although I don't know, I would say they are fully reputable. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proquest.com/products-services/dissertations/submitting-dissertation-proquest.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copyright transfer&lt;/a&gt; is very permissive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors enter into a non-exclusive publishing agreement with ProQuest, where the author keeps the copyright in their graduate work. Authors are paid a 10% royalty for sales in all formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:10:59.910" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28671" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:14:20.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go for a simpler approach. Just ask the researchers to fill in a simple online form whenever they publish an article. Make it extremely simple: just the DOI (or alternative citation if not available) and a checkbox if it is open access with a link to it. Don't make it take more than a minute to submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a compensation, you can, for example, provide Natbib files free to download and a nice list of OA articles, so other researchers can find easy to cite and find your articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not much work if everybody does their part, and you just need to make it easy enough and worth to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:14:20.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:37:43.937" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written lecture notes for a couple of courses, and in one of those cases I assigned a textbook as well.  Here are some of my reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For a course in which I have some flexibility as to the content, I may find that no single textbook includes all the material I want to teach.  Asking students to buy three or four books is rather obnoxious, especially if for some of them I will only be referring to a few pages.  When I write lecture notes, I can include exactly the material that I want to include in the course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even when I am generally following a textbook, I often find places where I want to go off on a tangent, or discuss additional related material, or maybe just cover the same material with a different treatment.  I feel like me teaching a class should add value beyond the student reading the textbook, and one way to do that is to tell students how I personally think about and understand the material in question.  It can be helpful for the student to have that in writing.  In part this is probably arrogance, but I really do feel I have insights to offer that are not contained, or not as well expressed, in even the most &quot;well-written&quot; textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I am going to need fairly detailed and precise notes to lecture, I might as well type them - they'll be neater, easier to read, and I can refer to them next time I teach the course.  If I'm going to that trouble, I might as well make them available to the students.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find that writing lecture notes for an audience other than myself is a really effective way to teach myself material, and understand it at a deeper level.  It very often leads me to new insights on something that I thought I understood. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Written lecture notes that are posted on a website can be helpful to anyone in the world, not just the students in my course.  I've been able to answer questions on MathOverflow and Math.SE by pointing people at my lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For high-level courses (especially graduate topics courses), there may not be &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; textbook on the relevant material - I am assembling it from the research literature.  But in order to use material from a research paper in a course, I usually have to rewrite a lot of it - filling in background and omitted details, and so on.  So it becomes lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:37:43.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28690" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:53:21.167" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an easy question, as are many other questions about coauthorship. To an extent, all answers will be opinion-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a similar position. I work in industry but advise many of my wife's clinical &amp;amp; biological psychology students on statistical matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal cutoff point is somewhat later than yours seems to be. I'll happily invest three or four hours to help students clean up and understand their data, do some exploratory data analysis and plots and some simple models and release them into the wild with an initial R script. If that is the full extent of my engagement, I would be uncomfortable with coauthorship (but an acknowledgement would be appropriate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, things go further than this. After this initial session, I'll code up more complex analyses, more sophisticated graphics, maybe research special models or approaches and/or read up on stuff. This usually involves some work on my own, multiple email exchanges and more personal meetings. At this point, we usually agree that I get coauthorship, and as you write, this means that I'll be a lot more involved in the rest of the manuscript's lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll usually not write up the statistical methods section as you appear to do. My take is that the first author should have full ownership of the manuscript and should essentially understand everything in sufficient depth to describe even the statistics himself. After all, he will be the one to present it at conferences and/or thesis defenses. (It helps that psychologists get a lot of statistical training.) Of course, I'll go over and correct the methods sections, and I happily rarely find that the student fundamentally misunderstood the statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things have progressed far enough for me to be a coauthor, I'll usually be quite involved with the rest of the manuscript, too. I am rather anal-retentive and will happily nitpick the entire structure of the paper, the internal logic, grammer and punctuation. I don't know whether nitpickery is more generally a specific skill of statisticians, though... Of course, in maybe half of all submissions, reviewers ask about the statistics, and I often have to revisit the statistical analysis and/or at least its description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coauthorships arrived at in this way are actually pretty low-effort for me. Other people on the author list have spent weeks interviewing people in African refugee camps, juggling noxious chemicals in a lab and/or digging through prior publications. I, on the other hand, spend maybe one full work week altogether (sometimes more), sitting in a comfortable chair at my computer with a cup of coffee within reach. It's comparisons like these, and I'd guess that most statistical engagements are similar, that make me uncomfortable starting to discuss coauthorship after only one hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laying down ground rules early on, as you suggest, is an excellent idea. Part of these should be how much time you can afford before thinking about coauthorship, whether this is 20 minutes or four hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing, which the blog post you link to discusses, is that you as the statistician will need to understand the scientific context, so the researcher will have to spend some time explaining the situation to you. This time will need to come out of the initial &quot;budget&quot;, since time does not grow on trees. Your client will usually try to handwave this away and insist that he only has &quot;a little statistical question&quot;. This will usually not make much sense. If a client &lt;em&gt;insists&lt;/em&gt;, you can always point him to &lt;a href=&quot;https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions&quot;&gt;CrossValidated&lt;/a&gt; for his &quot;little question&quot;. If he gets a good answer there, great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4140" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:44:18.820" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:53:21.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:59:04.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, if this advisor has any stalker-like tendencies (insufficient information here to determine that conclusively, but my hackles have been raised by several things in the original question), bringing up another romantic relationship, real or ruse, will NOT make this person leave you alone and resume a more professional relationship. I know this goes against all the tropes of feminist empowerment, but you need to be prepared to lose this job and your &quot;career&quot; in order to protect your personal safety. No career is worth sacrificing that. Only the young and foolish live with such absolutes in their mind that their career will be permanently destroyed by one individual within an academic ivory tower or cloistered business community. Those who are hardworking and talented can generally find a new path to success. I know this from personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, I agree that you need to clear the air in a manner like MrMeritology and Tara B have suggested: openly discuss the matter in a non-threatening but direct manner, and meet any further incursions beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone with firm, unambiguous answers of &quot;No&quot;. I also believe ANY discussion of this matter with the advisor needs to be documented, and not just via written memos. If this person is merely socially inept or a garden-variety amateur stalker, a paper trail may be enough to damn him if he should mount a personal attack, as such people aren't often very good liars. If he is vindictive/manipulative in his daily dealings with people, you may be dealing with a person with sociopathic tendencies, and they are usually VERY convincing liars. I recommend the use of recording media, audio and/or video. People can play off the written word as being exaggerated, misinterpreted, or lacking context, but recordings which include inflection and tone (audio) and/or body language (video) are much harder to shrug off. I know that some may raise concerns about privacy and wiretapping laws, but unless you need to escalate and share such recordings with the appropriate authority, such concerns are trivial, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have gathered from the question, the advisor only engages in this behavior when he is alone with you, so no witnesses and we are left with a he said/she said situation. In such situations, a recording device becomes as close to an objective witness as you can get. If you take the route of recording the uncomfortable encounters or meetings to discuss this issue, make sure to get as clean a recording as possible, never share with this person that you have made or are making such recordings (though please keep a close friend or family member in the loop about this situation), and ONLY use such recordings with the AUTHORITIES (Academic, Civil, Criminal) as a last resort, to ensure your personal safety and to protect yourself from liability should he try to retaliate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I cannot overemphasize enough: if any tactic you take does not work after a few weeks/months, you need to reexamine the importance of this particular career path versus your personal emotional well-being and safety and determine which is more important. That may not be what you want to hear, and I hope I am over-reacting to the situation, but what you are describing has a fifty-fifty chance of being more than a harmless flirtation by a socially-inept academic. The only way to figure that one out is to take the bull by the horns and politely confront the advisor and his behavior, as has been suggested by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21995" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:59:04.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28676" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:31:28.557" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The things I want to say on this topic should possibly be comments really, since I think the only 'answer' is that it varies hugely between different cultures (as aeismail already said).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, like aeismail, I would not initiate physical contact with students, or indeed with colleagues (I'm still a postdoc myself).  This is probably a good policy to follow, especially with something like hugging, unless hugs are not only generally acceptable but even &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; in the local culture.  The exception might be if a student has finished their studies and is leaving the university.  I think I may have given my final-year project student a goodbye hug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This extends, in a sense, to students who I happen to be friends with outside work (there are a few of these, since I belong to a student dance society).  Even if I might hug someone frequently in a non-work context, I wouldn't hug them when we are in a teacher/student context.  On the other hand, if it would be normal to hug someone in the friendship context, I wouldn't refrain from doing so just because they are also my student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;As for the question about whether gender makes a difference: again this may be culturally dependant, but in the countries I have studied or worked in (the UK, Germany, New Zealand), any supervisor-student physical contact would be much more likely where at least one of the people involved is female, due to similar cultural expectations about physical contact between males to those mentioned by Pete Clark in his answer (though my impression is that this may be more extreme in (certain parts of?) the US than in the UK).  And high levels of discomfort are probably unlikely where both of the people involved are female, while more caution would be expected with opposite genders.  (This of course arises partly from these cultures being highly hetero-normative.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="5955" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T21:00:42.797" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T21:00:42.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28676" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:11:22.443" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm glad you asked the question, since I was very struck by the answer as well: as I indicated in a comment, I am rather confident that the sentiment expressed there that hugs are always okay is against the policy of my university.  As Tara B mentioned, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; physical contact between coworkers that is not explicitly part of the work done needs to be clearly acceptable to both parties.  There is no doubt that sometimes a hug is more contact than one wants.  When I first arrived at my current job a certain SO of a colleague reacted to meeting me for the first time by giving me an aggressive hug while I was seated, so I could not easily regulate or terminate it.  While certainly not &quot;traumatic&quot;, in the long years since then, whenever I see this person I instinctively track them closely enough so as not to &quot;get caught&quot; as I did that one time.  If it had been my colleague rather than my colleague's SO, it would have been worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other people have said, what is an acceptable level of physical contact must vary culturally to a large degree.  Here's what I've come up with in my years at an American university:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) When in doubt, err on the side of restraining yourself from what you think will most likely be okay.  Academics (okay, especially mathematicians) are not known for being the most touchy-feely people, and academic culture is more highly respective of personal boundaries than most other aspects of American culture, with the &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; exception of certain religious groups.  As an academic &quot;lifer&quot;,  I sometimes have to remind myself that people I meet in &quot;real life&quot; sometimes react negatively to a total lack of physical contact: in many situations it signals a lack of interest (and not only of romantic interest) and closeness.  In academia it is really always &lt;em&gt;acceptable&lt;/em&gt; to keep your hands to yourself.  Always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The academic hierarchy does have a role to play.  I can't think of a situation in which I would ever initiate contact with an undergraduate student.  If they offer to shake my hand, I do so. [For those outside American culture: not to shake someone's hand when they offer it is, from a core cultural perspective, amazingly rude.  In recent years the mysophobe fist-pounding movement has gained some momentum, but I'll bet that it still very often happens that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howie_Mandel&quot;&gt;Howie Mandell&lt;/a&gt; offends someone by refusing to shake their hand.  Actually the linked to article has interesting information about this: the things that Mandell does &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of shaking hands would be viewed by many academics as more intimate.  Also, I can't resist mentioning that I just learned that Mandell is not actually bald but shaves his head for mysophobic reasons.  Wow.] I would accept a hug from an undergraduate as a parting gesture: that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate students are a little older, and I also have more prolonged contact with them (both in the sense of multiple hours at a time and multiple years in succession).  This builds a little more intimacy.  Like @StrongBad I regard certain climactic moments of academic accomplishment -- e.g. solving your thesis problem -- as worthy of a high-five.  My thesis advisor patted me on the back as he told me that I passed my thesis defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;don't touch&quot; rule is still generally in force, but I can think of some exceptions.  Once I had an emotionally intense conversation with a graduate student -- a conversation entirely about her performance in the program!  During the course of this conversation the student showed me more of her own thoughts and feelings (about being a graduate student...) in that one sitting than in all the time I had known her.  It is not so easy to open up to an authority figure about these things, and I felt that as a human being I needed to let her know that she had gotten through to me, so I asked her if I could give her a hug, and I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[In fact I got the idea from an emergency room physician who had given me a hug about six months before.  She acknowledged that the hug was unusual but thought that I really needed it (she was right) and asked for permission to give it.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still feel that 99% of the time &quot;no touching&quot; is the right way to go, and if you think you might be in the 1%, take a step outside yourself and make sure that someone else would see it that way.  For instance it is unfortunately not unheard of that a student breaks into tears in my office [it happens every year or two; come to think of it, I am more than due for such an incident].  My standard reaction to this is to dash out to get some paper towels / tissues [and give themselves a chance to get recomposed] and come back and helpfully offer them.  Hugging them because calculus is hard seems like participating in a weird power dynamic.  If a student got a text that their mother died, I might offer a hug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Postdoctoral &quot;students&quot; feel a little different: I am still young enough (and young enough at heart) to identify more with the postdocs than the 20-year veteran faculty members.  I certainly don't hesitate to socialize with postdocs: they have been some of my closest friends in the department.  But for postdocs who are &lt;em&gt;working under me&lt;/em&gt; I want to set clear boundaries: if I've been working with someone closely for hours a day, then an occasional arm or shoulder touch to emphasize a point feels natural enough...but I would still think about it, watch the reaction, and not automatically assume it's okay.  Hugging it out is still not the order of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You ask whether genders matter.  I think the answer is that of course they do, in complicated ways.  I am conscious of the fact that while writing this answer I spent a while thinking over all the physical contact, however mild, I've had in a professional capacity...and almost every instance I could think of was with someone of the opposite gender.  Hmm!  In general I have an open-door policy in my office hours: literally.  Even when talking to a single student about their own coursework I would like the door to be open, even at the cost of passersby hearing some moderately confidential academic information.  If there is noise coming from the hall I might close the door....but I will absolutely never close the door &lt;em&gt;fully&lt;/em&gt; (which makes it lock) when I am accompanied by exactly one female student.  (With a male student I would still prefer not to, but I might say &quot;It's very noisy outside.  Would it be okay if I closed the door because of that?&quot;  With a female student: &lt;strong&gt;it is not okay&lt;/strong&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In American culture physical contact between men is countenanced in certain very specific situations [I'm think of certain locker room antics] and is quite taboo in many others.  I do hug male friends but less often: it is usually a profound gesture of intimacy.  [Many years ago as a graduate student, I was at a conference and shared a room with another student.  At the end of a couple of weeks he gave me a hug as we parted.  Well, he was Japanese, I was American and we were in Spain: my cultural rulebook does not cover that situation, so I went with it.]  Also, once I had a male student start crying in my office (about his performance in a calculus course).  This was a profoundly distressing event for both of us, beyond my ability to understand or explain, and the point is that I felt utterly unequipped to do anything about it, least of all by physically comforting him: it seems very likely that would have made things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T22:51:39.460" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T22:51:39.460" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23613" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:11:23.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer stems from a few comments I made to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28610/am-i-likely-to-be-perceived-as-less-successful-if-i-start-as-an-assistant-profes&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are old (&gt;35) faculty candidates discriminated against all over the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak to the worldwide aspect of the question. What follows will be specifically tailored based on my tenure-track job hunting experience in the U.S., although it may be applicable in other parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23613/are-old-35-faculty-candidates-discriminated-against-all-over-the-world/23632#23632&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of age in the United States. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think the more interesting question to ask/answer is:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Even though it is illegal to discriminate against someone due to their age, does that mean that age plays no role whatsoever in tenure-track faculty hiring decisions?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to get your hopes up: I don't have so much a concrete answer to this question; however, I offer an example of something an &quot;older&quot; candidate may face when seeking a tenure-track faculty position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an &quot;older&quot; candidate myself, I noticed on my unsuccessful interviews earlier this year that I seemed to get along just fine with tenured faculty; however, there was clearly some tension between myself and the &quot;younger&quot; tenure-track faculty at several places that I interviewed. If age did indeed play a role in this perceived tension, one may easily see why younger candidates would have an advantage. Furthermore, since most tenure-track candidates are from the same age group, the fact that an &quot;older&quot; candidate doesn't gel with his peers of the same academic rank for &quot;some reason&quot; makes you stick out like a sore thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I think that if age does play a discriminatory role in faculty hiring decisions, it may be that it is an indirect discrimination. That is, in a direct sense, nobody cares about your age or have been trained to think that way. But if you don't have similar personality characteristics of those tenure-track faculty already in the institution's employ, then there is still some likelihood that you will be marked as a bad fit for the job. How high that likelihood is I cannot say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:11:23.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:28:00.540" Score="9" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a company was building a product that uses methods designed and outlined in a published research paper, should credit be given? If crediting them would be a bad business decision, is it OK not to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am building a product that builds on research published by a university research group. The research outlines a quicker, cheaper and more efficient method of doing something that usually can cost much more. So it is basically just a small part of my overall project, although it allows me to cut costs drastically. The method is not patented, and the group most likely does not plan on getting a patent as they make it clear that their research is in no way related to any company or products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do believe in giving credit where due, but publicly disclosing the research method that is allowing me to cut costs and release an existing product a lot cheaper than competitors would be shooting myself in the foot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original idea was to make the hardware opensource, and then just sell prebuilt versions for a good price, although after seeing what is going on in the 3D printing industry - like MakerBot filing patents on their 3D printer and scanning - I am not sure if it is a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So without opensourcing the hardware, it puts me in a difficult situation. I would like to credit the researchers, but doing so would be a bad business decision. Would it be considered acceptable practice to use their method without crediting them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21993" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T01:51:09.367" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T03:28:44.703" Title="Must I credit others' published research when using it in a proprietary product, if doing so would be bad for business?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;intellectual-property&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28504" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:38:22.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another strategy is to provide more guidance about what sort of help you'll provide and how they should ask for it. Possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first time you bring your paper to my office [or during specific dates], we will focus only on whether you have answered the question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will be happy to discuss aspects X and Y, but never Z.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bring the rubric with you. Be prepared to explain which part of the&#xA;rubric you most need to address in your draft, and why. We'll focus on that part   of the rubric during our meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before you bring your paper to me, prepare a list of specific questions you would like me to answer. Bring two copies of the list, one for each of us.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before you bring your paper to me, show it to someone at the writing center. Bring with you your notes from that visit and the draft you showed to them, along with the draft where you implemented those suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Always bring two copies of your draft--one for each of us. Be prepared to write  detailed notes on your copy. (Then you can keep your copy and you'll be able to bring it out the next time and say--ok, what did you change? Or you can compare it to the draft they turn in to see if they made significant changes. And if they plagiarised it, you'll have a record.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each time you show me your paper, I will expect you to create a checklist of things you will address. The next visit, you need to demonstrate that you have completed those things by bringing a draft with changes marked and annotated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do is assign &quot;draft&quot; deadlines as well as final deadlines for everyone, then give the feedback you think is important on the drafts (maybe using a rubric) and not meet incessantly with a few students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do--particularly with very structured papers that you have assigned before--is provide to the class a list of the common problems students have. Then when a student shows you a draft, you can initiate a discussion about which common problem the student thinks it illustrates and what can the student do to address it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do is limit the number of times you will look at a draft, or the period of time during which you will look at a draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a similar problem with students wanting me to grade work before they turn it in for a grade--not just on writing, but with all kinds of assignments. Sometimes they are so lost they are completely stuck. Other times, they seem to be trying to minimize their workload by increasing mine. (&quot;Just tell me in exacting  detail what to do, I'll do that and no more, you'll give me an A.&quot;) But what I want is for them to learn how to assess their own writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever strategy you use, when you meet with students, try to elicit their comments. If you give a suggestion, and they nod, then ask them how they expect to apply it. What changes will they make to a particular sentence or paragraph? Are there any other places in the text they should also make that change to--which ones, and why? If they are to provide more evidence, ask them where they intend to search and how. Then you can better assess whether they understand what you've told them and whether they can actually do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often ask students about how they produced the draft. Which parts were the easiest and which parts were the hardest, and why? Which parts do they like best? Which parts do they think need the most revision? Sometimes I ask them to imagine a reader--if they were to show their paper to (mom, roommate, employer, etc.), which part would be the most controversial? What would need the most explanation? If their reader disagrees, what would that person likely argue back? The more they talk about their writing, the more opportunity you have to say, &quot;Yes! What you just said--write that down. Now do that!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another benefit of getting students to talk about their draft is that it is tough to talk about something you didn't write. If they let you know they copied passages, you can remind them (or explain how) to cite them properly. If they pretend they wrote every word, you have a different problem to address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19422" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:38:22.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28450" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:49:26.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't take up class meeting time with a discussion of the syllabus (though on day 1, I do highlight aspects of the course that might be different from what they expect). Instead, I give an online quiz about important policies from the syllabus. The quiz serves dual purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;demonstrates that they can use the online quiz system (if not, it's&#xA;early enough for them to solve the tech problem or drop the class)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;demonstrates that they have understood key parts of the syllabus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is not to transfer responsibility. As Nate said, I want them to follow the syllabus so that the class runs smoothly. Nothing a teacher does will ensure that every person always follows the directions, of course, but the more students understand what's expected of them, the easier it is to teach them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19422" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:49:26.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T21:09:02.973" Score="3" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for advice on applying for a Phd in Software Engineering/ Human-Computer Interaction. I am currently working as a software developer and interested in pursuing an academic career in Computing at university level. I have recently completed a Masters degree in Computing with a Pass last year, however I have a 2:1 undergraduate degree in Graphic Design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that the subject knowledge I have only gained on my Masters may be less adequate compared to a 3 year undergraduate degree to pursue a Phd. Would my current knowledge and experience be suitable to apply for a Phd in Computing or would it be beneficial to undertake another/ specific course before applying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21999" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T22:16:29.023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T22:16:29.023" Title="Is the knowledge gained from a masters conversion course suitable for pursuing a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28708" CreationDate="2014-09-18T21:21:28.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in Psychology and not CS, but what we find is that students with a three year BSc are rarely competitive for a funded PhD and most must do a MSc course first in order to be competitive. We ran a MSc conversion course last year for the first time. These students faired better than undergrads, but not as well as the students on our straight MSc course. A number have continued on to the regular MSc course with the hopes of getting a funded PhD the next year. I think you would probably need a distinction on a conversion course in order to be really competitive for a PhD. That said, you can always apply and see what happens. Some places might offer you a 1+3 type program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T21:21:28.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T22:44:07.467" Score="14" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated in 2007 with a mathematics degree and have since had multiple postdocs at R1 universities. While I have definitely enjoyed my experiences as a researcher, I am very interested in pursuing a career teaching at a small liberal arts institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is how to present my research-heavy resume in a way that is palatable to a college which may be wary of my credentials? Is it advisable to drop &quot;invited talks/conferences&quot; from my CV? Do I select only my favorite publications to include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I understand that it is inappropriate to give an overly detailed research statement. However, as a representation theorist, I think it is to my advantage that my research draws on a lot of different fields. Is it better to explain the broader relevance of my research, or do I ignore that in favor of what I can teach undergraduates to program on a computer? Does it make sense to write separate statements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11258" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T00:35:30.277" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T19:11:42.700" Title="How can I tailor my faculty application to maximize my chances at a liberal arts college?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28693" CreationDate="2014-09-18T23:06:37.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The role of ProQuest for dissertations is not a &quot;publisher&quot;. Even if you &quot;publish&quot; your dissertation with them, it is still considered &quot;unpublished&quot; work in many fields. And you can go on to publish exactly the same content in other forms, e.g. as a book or divided into papers.  In this sense, they are like a preprint server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For dissertations, ProQuest is a &lt;em&gt;repository&lt;/em&gt;. The main service they provide is giving access to dissertations that would otherwise be very difficult to locate.  Traditionally, they did this by keeping huge archives of microfilm; now I suspect it is more digital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there are only two long-term archive systems commonly used for unpublished theses in the U.S.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The institution itself usually keeps a copy in the library, perhaps on microfilm. More recently, institutions have begun moving to an electronic model, often called &quot;ETD&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) ProQuest, which has gone through many name changes but was founded in 1938.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal webpages are great, but they are not really a long-term solution: who can guarantee an academic's work will be available on a personal web page after they retire?  A few fields have sites such as arxiv.org which have a potential to be long-term repositories. But otherwise the options above are about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why send your thesis to ProQuest? It's a personal choice. But doing so does help ensure that the thesis will be available if someone wants to read it in 50 years' time, when you plan to be retired on a tropical island without email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T23:06:37.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T23:07:01.717" Score="4" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities normally (as far as I know) do not limit the number of PhD students a research-active professor can have as long as he secure the funding for his PhD students. For example, if a professor have enough research fund can get 10 PhD students (instead of research associates) and pay them directly. Then, they pay their tution fees, and university/department can increase its capacty for PhD enrolment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the university/department can increase its capacity as long as they are paying students, but I don't understand how this scheme works when PhD study is free (in some European countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case, the professor provide research funding for the PhD projects and their wages, but the university should invest for courseworks (pay more teachers for these unexpected students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What limits the number of PhD students in universities without PhD tution fee?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And when there is normal tution fee, isn't there any limitation for the number of PhD students as long as there are good candidates?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EXAMPLE:&lt;/strong&gt; A department arranges the admission of 10 PhD students (assigned appropriate professor for the courses). Now, a professor fund 10 more PhD students for himself. &lt;em&gt;Now, the department head should plan new classes/courses (this needs budget). He may need more resources, which is normally approved by the Dean.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that more PhD students fuels the engines of an academic unit, but the department head is not bothered with overload of PhD coursework. In other words, &lt;em&gt;does the department head encourage professor to get more funded PhD students, and saying &quot;don't worry, I will take care of coursework&quot;?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="13854" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T10:22:59.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T10:22:59.450" Title="What limits the number of PhD students in universities with and without PhD tution fee?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T23:32:49.227" Score="4" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a department enrolls x number of students based on the capacity of the department and its professors, the ideal desire is fair distribution of PhD students among faculty members. However, students are attracted to attractive professors (by different factors such as fame, personality, etc), and there should be less or no request for some faculty members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a student and advisor mutually agree that they would like to work together, but the department would rather have the student work with another faculty member who is short on PhD students. Can the department limit the number of students that may work with each faculty member, so that new PhD students will be distributed among faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a hypothetical situation, there are 10 PhD students, and 10 faculty members. Can the department set the limit of one PhD student per faculty to ideally distribute the students among faculty members? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; This question is not about the cases in which a candidate specifically apply for working under supervision of a specific professor (due to the admission system or funding source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T00:02:00.647" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T16:13:16.297" Title="Can a department disallow a student-advisor pairing in order to distribute PhD students evenly among faculty?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:14:05.380" Score="34" ViewCount="74686" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one call oneself a PhD ABD (All But Dissertation) after completing all of the course work and working on the dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22005" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T21:29:02.557" LastActivityDate="2018-07-08T00:12:13.403" Title="When can a person be called a PhD ABD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;titles&gt;&lt;all-but-dissertation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:23:18.877" Score="22" ViewCount="2762" Body="&lt;p&gt;The success of a research-active professor is related to his successful proposals for securing research funds. For this purpose, he should spend something like half of his time for writing proposals, but still he misses several possible calls for proposals due to the lack of time while the current proposals are not idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this problem, many people have this idea to hire a grant writer to perfectly and quickly write/re-write proposals. I personally heard this from many junior and senior professors, but in practice I have not seen any example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This plan seems reasonable (the salary of a grant writer should be less than a postdoc), &lt;strong&gt;but why it is not common?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers pay much more money to patent attorneys to have legally ideal text, then, why not investing on the text of proposals, which can directly enhance the chance of winning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T18:16:45.177" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:16:45.177" Title="Why do principal investigators not hire grant writers?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28717" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:31:07.587" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At many schools there's an official step of &quot;advancing to candidacy&quot; or something similar which is the last official hurdle before the dissertation.  Although ABD is an informal term, I would expect somone who described themself as ABD to have passed that step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T00:31:07.587" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28713" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:36:55.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What limits the number of PhD students in universities without PhD tution fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure countries exist without a PhD tuition fee. Rather there is a scholarship system in place to cover the cost of tuition. The limiting factor here is the number of scholarships allocated by the government. So the answer is the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And when there is normal tution fee, isn't there any limitation for the number of PhD students as long as there are good candidates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be dependant upon the institution. There may be a hard limit imposed by the faculty. Otherwise there is a soft limit in the number of students one professor can reasonably manage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T00:36:55.157" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:39:24.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions like this show the importance of understanding the perspective of faculty members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can&lt;/strong&gt; a department tell a student and advisor not to work together? Who knows. It will come down to the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is much more likely the other faculty would try (in private) to convince a &quot;greedy&quot; faculty member not to accept so many students. Faculty have a longer perspective than students - students graduate in a few years, but tenured faculty usually stay at their institution far longer, with the same colleagues. So there is usually more risk for a faculty member who harms their relationship with their colleagues, compared to just turning down possible students.  There will always be new PhD students next year... At the same time, if a faculty member &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wants to work with a particular student, no other faculty member is likely to want to &quot;steal&quot; the student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the hypothetical situation from the question? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It would be extremely unusual for a department with 10 PhD students and 10 faculty to tell the 10 faculty that they each have to find one student, and none of them can take 2 students.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It would also be unusual for one faculty member of the 10 to work with all 10 students. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens in most cases is that the students naturally gravitate towards faculty they like, and faculty who don't feel they have enough students will make more effort to be friendly and reach out to possible students. If a faculty member doesn't want to work with a student, or a student doesn't want to work with a faculty member, they don't work together. In the end, the students all find mentors, although it may take some students more than one attempt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is different, of course, when students are required to select an advisor while applying to the university, because then there is no doubt who each student will work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastEditorUserId="16122" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T00:44:24.557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T00:44:24.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28718" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:56:32.303" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most research staff and many students are paid by grants, but most grant terms do not allow for you to pay for administrative staff or proposal writing time. So the funding has to come from the universities or departments. Most of them don't have the funds to hire a grant writer, though some do. I think most departments would rather have half the funding for another professor than a grant writer. I also think your estimate of the salary of a good grant writer in the sciences is off by large margin. The good ones, employed by institutes with large enough institutional budgets make as much as full-time researchers or professors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T00:56:32.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28670" CreationDate="2014-09-19T00:59:45.510" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some criteria I usually use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Published within last 5-10 years, preferably in 2nd edition or beyond: This ensures the materials are reasonably up-to-date and major errors had been cleaned up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have physical and e-book versions: To tailor different types of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The e-book version should be freely available through the institute's subscription: This is to lower the barrier for acquiring the book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The titles have been commonly adopted by other syllabi: Perform a search using your course title or subject plus &quot;syllabus&quot; and &quot;filetype:pdf&quot; or &quot;filetype:doc&quot; will get some nice results. Sift through them and get some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For software book, I would also check if the publishers provide all codes and data sets online. In additions, I'd make sure the book's examples use the software with the same version that my institute has or the students have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience in teaching statistical software, I found that books are really not that popular. Online workshops and support websites seem to be a lot more welcomed by the students. If you can identify any of online resources, I'd at least suggest that as a secondary option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I elaborate to students in the first class on why I chose this particular title. When I teach a class with very diverse backgrounds I also suggest some secondary books that are more specific to their interests. For instance, if I have medical and veterinarian students in my class, I may pick one software book on medical data analysis and another one on analyzing zoological/ecological data, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I do to show that I am serious about the text: I often put footnotes on my notes or slides pointing students to the relevant section if they'd like to learn more and try that particular analysis/function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have found a few candidates, read the forewords. All else equal, I often prefer books that were written with a syllabus in mind. The authors usually explain that in the forewords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isolate the &quot;must learn&quot; techniques in your syllabus and make sure they are all included in the chosen text. That would make sure the texts and your teaching are coherent, and lower the chance of getting evaluation comments like &quot;the text has nothing related to what was covered in the class.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One format that always thrills me is inclusion of self-assessments and case studies. Even I don't end up using those titles, I often borrow the case studies to make all the codes that I teach relevant to the contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T01:37:08.007" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:37:08.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28670" CreationDate="2014-09-19T01:23:27.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with the learning outcomes, which should have been defined when the course was approved.  Write a rough time line of how you would approach those learning outcomes, &lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt; in what order would you teach things.  Then begin checking the tables of contents of books that look most promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Penguin_Knight's criteria, request evaluation copies of the three that look most promising, and pick one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T01:23:27.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28777" CreationDate="2014-09-19T01:32:04.200" Score="9" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted an abstract to a talk as a contributed paper. I was informed, through email, that the paper was scheduled to be presented &lt;em&gt;in person&lt;/em&gt; on XXX date. The email also said that I could look for my name on a link mentioned in the email; going to the link, I found that my name was not on the list at all. I checked it multiple times, but my name was simply not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that the time at which I was assigned to give my presentation was on the list, but with someone else's name and paper title. I assumed that this was a timing and/or update problem, and left it at that for some time. However, this was not resolved even after two days. Thus I sent an email regarding this situation to the email address that was in the email, saying that if I had any questions I could email that address. I still have not received any email, and the conference/talk is coming up in about a month. This is the very first presentation that I will be giving, and I am not sure what to do in this situation. My questions are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did I deal with this situation correctly, sending an email to the &quot;query'' email address?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What must I do if I do not receive an email in a few days?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; As it was inquired in the question, the conference that I submitted this to is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2214_program.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AMS Fall Sectional Meeting in San Francisco&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; It looks like the situation has been fixed and my name is now on the list. Thank you to all who offered me advice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11539" LastEditorDisplayName="user11539" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T22:54:22.880" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T06:07:01.800" Title="What must one do if the time at which a conference talk was to be presented is assigned to someone else?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28717" CreationDate="2014-09-19T02:24:11.137" Score="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people think it's ok to call yourself PhD ABD when in the Canadian or US system, you pass the qualifying exams and coursework, but haven't yet, or fail to ever, deliver the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But simply do not call yourself PhD ABD.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not attractive to advertise failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're either a PhD candidate, or you're a PhD, or there's nothing to say on the subject (bar a line on the CV filling in the black hole on your timeline with discreet mention of an aborted doctorate). PhD ABD is a ludicrous pseudo-title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PhD that's All But Dissertation is like an espresso that is All But Coffee. It's hot water with a bit of sugar, thus defeating the entire purpose of the exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T15:55:27.587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:55:27.587" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28731" CreationDate="2014-09-19T02:26:10.847" Score="14" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a letter of motivation to apply for a master degree scholarship. However, my marks in final years of study weren't the highest possible due to the effect of the ongoing crisis in my country, Syria, on me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18234/mentioning-my-country-situation-in-motivation-letter-to-demonstrate-dedication-f&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I asked whether I should mention this in my letter, and the answer was that I should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to know, what is the &lt;em&gt;best way&lt;/em&gt; to mention this in my letter? Is one paragraph about it too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11754" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T14:07:38.753" Title="How should I describe my country's volatile situation in a letter for a scholarship application?" Tags="&lt;application&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-19T04:02:16.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've taught many segments of the basic business curriculum. I did not write up lectures in advance. I used the textbook as an outline, and I delivered an extemporaneous interactive discussion of the entire material in the text. This involved lots of definitions, examples, and diagrams of relationships (all of which I would require the students to recall and/or recreate on exams). I merely kept track of each section's progress, and informed them that they were responsible for everything in the book (as much as I tried to ensure I would cover all exam material, I didn't want to guarantee it, and I did want them to read the books they had paid so much for.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This style worked well for me, but it seems not to be the tack most professors take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There would have been benefits to writing up notes for lectures. It would&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;force me to review all of the material more carefully prior to the lecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide an outline for material I knew would be justifiably testable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downsides were that it would :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase time required for preparation of materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;likely reduce the material covered, because it was my goal to cover the entire text (which we did successfully)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually even did find time to cover extra material outside the text. For example, we covered Michael Porter's Five Forces in the Marketing course (which I expected them to recreate for the final, having reviewed it nearly half a dozen times in class). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could do the same. It may depend on the materials you have to teach with (especially the textbook.) But you need to review your expectations with your department chair. It may be that they require a textbook that is impossible to follow as the order for your class, for whatever reason. It may be that you'll need to take notes to ensure that you cover any prerequisite materials, and in the correct order, because you'll be teaching linear algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T04:02:16.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2385" CreationDate="2014-09-19T04:15:24.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://i-librarian.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I, Librarian&lt;/a&gt;.  It is a reference manager, kind of like Mendeley but with a free option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have both a paid service option and a free self host option (like wordpress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be private and they have per paper discussion capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a private/semi-private group of collaborators I think it is quite decent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4572" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T04:15:24.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28728" CreationDate="2014-09-19T04:51:13.500" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something along the lines that you persisted and managed to graduate despite that the life as you know it was being destroyed in a war-torn county. The hardships of war, hunger, constant fear for safety (or whatever you feel like sharing) gave priority to the survival. As the result your grades in the final years suffered. You are eager to continue your education in the safety of whereever you are applying, and ready to give it your all without the distractions of the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point you want to make is that you graduated during the whole crisis, which is truly impressive. Congratulations on that. It shows the character and persistence. Grades you can fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T04:51:13.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-19T05:22:04.823" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prior answers are fine as far as they go, but maybe address substance as well as form? You are putting yourself out there for a reason and it is not for the small talk or facial recognition. You are there to network and protect your future or you would just soak up the academic content of the presentations and go back to planning your first IPO. This is a total package we are discussing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before approaching anyone, know what are you asking for and what you have to offer in return? When starting a career you are beginning a long-haul cold-calling sales job and the product is you. Times are tough and new grad working cash register to make ends meet (or even abandoning a career) has become a sick cliche now that technical jobs can be instantly exported to the lowest bidder overseas regardless of which continent you happen to be standing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your opening salvo is a crowbar to get your foot in the door. Your crowbar will be seen as such so keep it friendly and subtle. Be prepared with a business card and a thirty-second speech, or a C.V. (and maybe a thesis) on a USB stick for a good prospect, or a short discussion of your interests and the potential business venture you are considering, or the current football score if all else fails. You want them to have a good impression of your professionalism and you want them to relate their own experiences to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional conferences can be fun but not like the more casual atmosphere college students experience on campus, not even at an academic conference on campus. Professional decorum is mandatory (even in Silicon Valley).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you work the room, track your performance mentally in real time, or better yet, also in a notebook offline, and hone your networking tactics and strategy based on your results. If you are not paying attention you could repeat the same mistakes forever. For best results you want people to like, respect, and maybe fear you as a potential competitor a little in order to capture their attention, and what you want them to remember about you is how they can benefit from knowing you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this modern era of the revolving door through government and rampant legal corruption of politics with corporate money, the 'little guy' is a splat waiting to happen (even in academia). Be aware that powerful hidden forces are moving through the room. The higher up the ladder those you reach out to, the more powerful those forces, and they might not have your welfare at heart. Think Hollywood drama on steroids without the fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way people respond is highly dependent upon your personal appearance. This affects everyone regardless of sex or attractiveness. If your appearance has built-in clash due to poor sense of image, you will not be taken seriously no matter how good your pitch is or how much your clothes cost. Think frumpy little old lady in bright red lipstick and flowered hat with a bow versus sleek professional model. Tart yourself up appropriately and people will respond better to you. Your investment will pay off as you avoid wasting money on apparel that hang in your closet forever unused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can buy your way into a professional look with an image consultant, but you can also learn it for free from books. In this discipline people are classified by 'season' (spring, summer, fall, winter) according to bone structure, geometry, coloring, and personality etc. It is purely an abstract concept that has nothing to do with the weather but rather how people as products of nature tend to reflect the traits found in nature. Everyone has a unique set of colors, textures, shapes, patterns, and style that 'harmonize' with their body and personality. For example, a 'spring' has small symmetrical geometrical patters such as circles squares and triangles with small bone structure versus a 'fall' that has large irregular shapes and a strong bone structure and both tend toward greens and yellows as opposed to reds and blues. Image consultants are trained to recognize such characteristics and advise you on how to take advantage of your personal attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop a personal interest in someone, well, be careful. It could be the best time of your life or it could ruin you. Be sure you know the risks you are taking, and why, before committing yourself. Times change. Tomorrow your suspended sentence for drunk driving her home might force you out of your profession and your nude pictures on the Internet could ruin your life forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of no one who got anywhere without some rough patches. Dare to be bold and maybe it will pay off. Happy hunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22014" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T05:22:04.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T05:23:45.787" Score="9" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a paper that requires a comparison method to be implemented. The method of choice is not in my discipline. I asked a collaborator, who is an expert in the area and with whom I have several papers published, if he could implement it. It is about a week worth of work, most likely less. Both the collaborator and his professor would get an authorship on the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His professor said that the project can be only done if I had funding for him. The collaborator is already funded through an external fellowship. The project does not require any purchases. Is this an unusual request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T05:35:04.500" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T22:22:18.233" Title="Is it unusual for a collaborator to ask for funding for a very short project?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:12:32.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think this usual. How big is the conference? If it is small, it is possible that the organizers made a mistake without realizing it. Inquiring over the email was absolutely the right thing to do. I would follow up a week from your original inquiry if you don't hear back from them sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T06:12:32.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:23:40.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely call the Conference organizing committee three days after sending an e-mail. They have to clarify this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to have the e-mail in front of you when calling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your message could be lost in tons of those other complain emails from other members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have organized a few congresses myself and this is definitely a technical problem that the organizer has to address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T06:23:40.043" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28733" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:36:56.337" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to me like that's their way of saying &quot;no&quot;.  One week of work in exchange for authorship is a great deal -- and you'd give authorship to the professor, too, in exchange for nothing?  Why would the professor say no?  I'm guessing that the professor doesn't think your research will succeed, or get published, and therefore doesn't want to invest the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend just working with the student in his &quot;spare time&quot;.  I'm sure it's worth his time in exchange for authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21413" LastEditorUserId="21413" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T22:22:18.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T22:22:18.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:43:00.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't run! Walk!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that organizing conferences usually involves a huge amount of work including organizing the received abstracts and papers, managing their reviewers, managing the conference place and preparing packages, etc. They have to solve your problem but don't expect them to answer you instantly, they may have other emails to answer. Be patient for another two or three days (if this does not disturb your deadlines and schedules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did I deal with this situation correctly, sending an email to the&#xA;  &quot;query'' email address?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sending the email was your only way to contact the conference. Could you travel to the city of the conference sooner to ask your question? No! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What must I do if I do not receive an email in a few days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to do these things;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send them another email and ask your questions again;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search the website of the conference to see if there is another email address provided in the webpages and forward your email to them too;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have any fax number, send them a fax and ask your problem;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a phone number provided, call that number too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I usually do not trust a conference which does not answers it's emails and do not care about their participant's problems. At least, it's your right to contact them and consult them such problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once it happened to me that I had some questions about the conference deadlines and schedule and I sent an email to the conference's contact person's email address; but they did not answer my email. They did not even answered my phone calls or another emails too (even after one or two months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not send them my full paper and did not continue my application process for that conference. I simply brought out my paper from that conference. After that, I learn a very good lesson from this: I never send my papers to the conferences which are not well-known in my field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T06:07:01.800" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T06:07:01.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26654" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:53:41.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this solution will likely be only a drop in the bucket for your request, I did write a &lt;a href=&quot;http://albertkung.com/files/RP_IA_18Aug2013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper covering security issues related to health information and HIPAA&lt;/a&gt; while finishing up my Master's. Section 6 has a case study on Amazon Web Services as a &quot;HIPAA-compliant&quot; cloud storage solution, including both its positives and its negatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this was a review paper, I feel the need to point out that I don't have any personal experience with Amazon Web Services or with setting it up for HIPAA compliance, so don't take it as an endorsement either for or against its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to evaluate exactly what any proposed service you select actually provides. AWS, for example, supports basically the creation of the HIPAA-compliant environment. That being said, that's the creation of one, not one provided out of box. You'd have to implement a variety of features normally associated with data storage such as backing up data, auditing all changes, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you're asking what you need to do to satisfy the IRB, I guess. What you should probably be asking is what you can do to satisfy HIPAA regulations, and using that, justify that it is a viable solution to the IRB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really provide you a concrete example of an actual cloud data storage plan (the one I was involved in is non-disclosure and I'm also not an IS guy) but I might be able to answer some more conceptual questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22013" LastEditorUserId="22013" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T07:09:50.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T07:09:50.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28710" CreationDate="2014-09-19T07:20:50.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't advocate so much for the inclusion of your &quot;favourite&quot; articles -- but those that are most relevant to the position to which you are applying. Same for invited talks -- it'd be crazy to delete all of them. Suggestion:  &quot;Publications (selected)&quot; (perhaps indicate h-index here, too); &quot;Invited conferences (selected)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reviewer is interested in your academic output, s/he can just check google scholar for the more detailed overview anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19581" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T07:20:50.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28713" CreationDate="2014-09-19T08:06:46.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no hard limit. The soft limits are what you would expect: availability of funding, availability of excellent students who are interested in doing a PhD with you, how much time it takes to supervise a PhD student, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question seems to be based on the premise that more PhD students is somehow &quot;bad&quot; for the university in a system without tuition fees. However, this is not the case. (In this answer I will try to explain the system that we have here in Finland, but I do not think the situation is that different e.g. in other Scandinavian countries.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us compare two cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A professor gets a small research grant and hires 1 PhD student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A professor gets a large research grant and hires 10 PhD students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that all else is equal, these are excellent students, all of them finish their PhDs on time, each of them produces the same amount of high-quality research, and in both cases the professors still have enough time for their other duties (teaching, administration, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now case 2 is actually fairly attractive for the university and for the department. There are two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The basic funding of the university depends on how well the university does. This is measured with numerous indicators, but producing lots of PhD, producing lots of excellent research, and attracting large research grants are among the important indicators. Hence in the long run, the university will get more funding, and the university will also reward the department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research grants do not cover just the salary of the PhD student. All the money goes through the university budget, and the university always takes part of it for all kinds of &quot;overheads&quot;, which cover in part the costs of running the university (facilities, administration, IT, libraries, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, PhD students will also serve as teaching assistants (e.g., 5–10 % of their time is allocated for teaching activities), so a fraction of the grant also goes to support the teaching activities of the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That said, there are some corner cases that may be a bit more difficult. If the students are not hired by the professor but they fund their own studies with e.g. personal research grants, then it is not as clear that having lots of such PhD students is a win-win for everyone. The universities do not get their &quot;overhead&quot; share from the grants, yet the students would expect the universities to provide office space for them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T08:06:46.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28718" CreationDate="2014-09-19T08:19:05.103" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand a bit on my comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In central europe, proposal writing is one of the core jobs of &lt;strong&gt;postdocs&lt;/strong&gt;. In that sense, we do have &quot;professional grant writers&quot;. Postdocs write proposals sometimes in their own name,  but more often they actually do it in the name of their professor, so they actually come pretty close to what you envision above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I have never heard somebody talk in honesty about hiring an actual, dedicated full-time non-scientific employee for writing down grant proposals in the name of the professor. I would see the following problems with this model:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funding.&lt;/strong&gt; How do you pay for this guy? The university will likely not be overly happy if you hire somebody from their budget to basically do your job, and funding agencies certainly don't cover these posts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Qualifications.&lt;/strong&gt; Writing grant proposals is &lt;em&gt;damn hard&lt;/em&gt;. Even assuming that all the ideas come from the professor, you still need to be an experienced writer. You need to know the content field to write down things technically correctly. You need to stay up to date with funding agency policies and politics. You need to have connections in the field. And asking for all of that for, as you say, a salary less than a postdoc seems very ambitious, especially if combined with the next point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perspectives.&lt;/strong&gt; What is the career outlook of a professional grant writer? What can you offer her/him in compensation for a relatively meager salary? This is a general problem with these kinds of &quot;non-academic&quot; positions at universities - there is usually no career track at all for such people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incentives.&lt;/strong&gt; Junior professors or postdocs are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; motivated to write successful grant proposals, as quite literally their own professional well-being depends on them. This would be much less, or at least much less directly, the case for a professional grant writer. If you disconnect the process of writing the proposal from actually benefitting from an accepted proposal, I would assume the quality of the proposals to drop significantly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, none of these problems are unsolvable. Indeed, the big industrial players in the european funding circuit (FP7, now H2020) actually employ staff that are basically full-time proposal writers, similar to patent lawyers. However, those people are certainly not cheap clerks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T08:19:05.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28746" CreationDate="2014-09-19T08:44:06.050" Score="5" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to study Bachelor of Mathematics at university in Australia. While I was surfing the various courses, I came across something interesting. It was Bachelor of Mathematics and Bachelor of Computer Science at University pf Wollongong (which takes 4.5 years to complete). I was like wow how does this work, Same qualification, and two degrees for 4.5 years. A single degree alone takes 4 years. But then I started to think, wait a minute this seems too good to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that my intention is to study Mathematics and do a PhD in Mathematics, I don't want to get some limited mathematics knowledge if double degree has half of both. At the same time I would love if this is full of both, so in that case I will apply to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me on how this works , what are the limitations, will I get the same recognition and knowledge as students studying Math alone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22021" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T17:19:12.943" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T17:19:12.943" Title="Is a Double Degree equivalent to 2 single degrees?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28743" CreationDate="2014-09-19T09:16:03.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a double degree in Electronic Engineering and IT (Computer Science) from QUT. It required more time than either of the single degrees, and the course load was considerably higher per semester. At graduation, I received two separate degree certificates from QUT — I have two Bachelor degrees. There were some restrictions in the number of elective subjects we could take, since the core course load was higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you need to check the course content and course load (and duration — a Bachelors degree without honours in Australia is usually three years, not four), to be certain it's right for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19984" LastEditorUserId="19984" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T09:27:46.033" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T09:27:46.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-19T09:24:44.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are five possible ways of dealing with this situation. I think each has been addressed in separate answers, but no answer contrasts between the different approaches. It seems you could (1) contact the person or department responsible for dealing with claims of sexual harassment, (2) have a conversation with the supervisor about his past behaviour, (3) mention to the supervisor whenever he makes you feel uncomfortable in the future, (4) change your behaviour in a way that makes him harass you less, (5) ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. Contact the person or department responsible for dealing with claims of sexual harassment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think this is the best way to deal with sexual harassment, it puts considerable burden on the victim and puts the victim at further risk of harassment and retribution. The reason I think this is the best way to deal with harassment, is that if the university does not know about the harassment, they cannot change anything. The more harassment cases the university has to deal with, the more likely they will require supervisors to behave properly and provide support mechanisms to victims. The problem with this approach is universities tend to try and protect themselves and not their employees and students. If you do not have any documentation or evidence of the harassment it becomes a case of he-said/she-said and the university may initially ignore your claims and force you to sue the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. Have a conversation with the supervisor about his past behaviour&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no advantage of this course of action, despite the answer being highly voted. It is in essence alerting the supervisor to his behaviour and drawing a &quot;line in the sand&quot;. If he doesn't change his behaviour, then you have to escalate to reporting him to his superiors. If he cross the line and you do not report him, and as I mentioned reporting him puts you at risk, he will have effectively called your bluff and may feel even more empowered to harass you. The best case scenario for this approach is that he didn't realize you felt harassed and the conversation makes him change his behaviour. I think this, however, can be achieved with approach 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Mention to the supervisor whenever he makes you feel uncomfortable in the future&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By telling the supervisor whenever he makes you feel harassed/uncomfortable that his behaviour is inappropriate, this alerts him to change his behaviour. I would suggest to also email him afterwards to make it clear that you are documenting his behaviour. If he is unaware that his behaviour is unacceptable, then you will have accomplished the same thing as approach 2. If he continues to misbehave, you will be collecting evidence for if/when you decide to take approach 1. Most importantly, by not drawing the line in the sand, it will never appear that you are backing down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;4. Change your behaviour in a way that makes him harass you less&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't particularly like this approach as it puts all the burden on the victim. If he is harassing you because of the clothes you wear, the company you keep, or your beliefs, changing them may make him stop harassing you. While this is the most non-confrontational approach, and puts you at the least risk of retaliation, it requires the an unreasonable sacrifice by the victim. If you are willing to make that sacrifice, the approach can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;5. Ignore it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This again is a solution, but requires the victim to make an unreasonable sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T09:24:44.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28743" CreationDate="2014-09-19T09:33:55.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to understand how this can work is to look at a degree plan. Most schools publish plans outlining approximately which courses you will need to take each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many degrees are not simply comprised of just the departmental courses within your major. I cannot answer for Australian schools, but in the US at least, many students require students generally take approximately 40 courses to graduate, but quite a number of those courses might fall outside of the students' majors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A significant fraction of courses a student takes might be general education requirements, such as world history and English. Some schools require students to choose electrics that expose them to a wide range of topics outside of their major and help them to develop skills that the planners hope all college educated students can learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additionally, within the university, specific schools will require students to take  courses that may not fall within a students major.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some majors, this structure might mean that a student will take ~15 courses in their major, and another 25 courses outside of their major. So, it should not be difficult to see how one might be able to fit in an extra major, as one would have no need to repeat all of these electives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools permit students with a bachelors to transfer in, waiving a significant portion of the degree requirements, to quickly earn a second degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="600" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T09:46:43.637" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T09:46:43.637" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T12:32:04.300" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m a PhD student working in CS. My advisor does not understand the subject I’m working on as it’s a bit off-topic compared to the topics addressed in the lab. He does get the main idea, but does not have enough technical background to input valuable comments that could contribute to the project.&#xA;Plus, he does not seem to be that much interested in the topic: I barely see him, and he does not write any papers with me. He rather waits for me to finish the paper, then reads it lazily and comes up with one or two typos and advice about putting figures in a box and such. Quite disappointing and not the kind of contributions I’d expect from a co-author!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first time I submitted this paper, I put him as a co-author hoping that it would get him to at least try to grasp some of the technical subtleties.&#xA;Unfortunately, that didn't work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The paper got rejected eventually and I am now working on a new improved version. But I’m considering authoring it solo this time. When I hinted at it, my advisor told me that he pays for my PhD, and that my work belongs to his institution. So this is supposedly why he should be a co-author of this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any thoughts or advice about what to do? I'd also like to know if this is common in CS: Advisors neither participating in the research nor writing papers with students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22031" LastEditorUserId="285" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T22:15:51.277" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:15:51.277" Title="How to decide if an advisor should be considered as a co-author of a paper or not?" Tags="&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-19T20:26:16.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7523" CreationDate="2014-09-19T12:45:24.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;strong&gt;no slide&lt;/strong&gt; at all when I need to present a work closely in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many answers above have discussed this question deeply, I don't need to repeat again. For summary, most answers stand on the minimal slides side, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7536/14341&quot;&gt;answer of F'x &lt;/a&gt; is a good explanation of when using self-explanatory slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of slide presentation is for advertising your work. For example, in conference, most of your audience don't know what you are doing. (Yes, in the physics conference, you talk about physics, but most physicists on the room may not work on your field). But what if all of your audience work in your field, know all basic concept and need you to give a presentation in higher detail? Or particularly, your work is highly full of math and math transformation/calculation, which needed to have a close looking? Or when you present to your colleagues, who need to ask you in the middle of the talk, not after the talk like in conference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use slides, you need to condense sentences, break ideas into bullets and slides. Although it is good for getting the ideas, I don't think it's good for getting it fluently. If you have ever seen a long math proving by slides, you will get anxious. Every time an audience raises a question, the presenter needs to go back (and forth) several slides. That will disrupt your thinking. Instead, I just write all I need to say in a document and present it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I rather not to use slides, than use it with wrong purpose. Its purpose is on the presenting side, not explaining side. For explaining purpose, I make a document (.doc, .pdf) to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T12:45:24.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28710" CreationDate="2014-09-19T13:22:51.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't drop anything from your CV.  I might shift things around so that the &quot;List of Courses Taught&quot; (or that you could teach) is on page 1 or 2. Teachings awards and anything similar also up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover letter is key. Your research accomplishments should be one paragraph while discussion of your love of math, the fantastic students you interacted with at one of your postdocs, the courses you would like to teach at X, and your teaching style should be at least 2-3 paragraphs.  One thing that I did when I was applying to SLACs was to have a list of my courses in my cover letter followed by a very small print (all course syllabi listed here are available on my website: www.example.com). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course you should also include a separate teaching statement if they require one -- or even hint of wanting one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T19:11:42.700" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T19:11:42.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28775" CreationDate="2014-09-19T13:53:58.663" Score="5" ViewCount="19041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student in engineering. My supervisor would like to pay me to edit a colleague's thesis for grammar and form. He asked me to look around for the going rate and let him know, but I'm not really sure of what figure to go by. Some thesis editing services are run by people with PhDs in literature and charge a lot, and others are run by upper year undergraduates and only ask for a small fee. What would be a reasonable rate to charge for such service in North America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17916" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T20:52:57.487" LastActivityDate="2017-12-15T09:16:52.673" Title="What is a reasonable rate to charge for editing someone else's thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;copy-editing&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28754" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28755" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" Score="0" Body="Providing professional advice or expertise to outside clients for a fee" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:10:28.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:18:43.963" Score="7" ViewCount="6736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my final thesis and there's a lot of material I would like to reuse from my proposal -- introductions, motivations, etc. -- and it would be nice to just copy-paste (and update a bit) entire chapters from the proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I started to wonder what the technical status of a proposal really is. It's not archived anywhere, it's not &quot;published&quot; in any traditional sense. Is it a sort of first draft of the final thesis? Is it possible/legal/acceptable to reuse portions of it in the final thesis? Or is that plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3878" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T13:22:02.100" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T13:22:02.100" Title="Reusing material from thesis proposal in final thesis" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;&lt;self-plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28756" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:27:18.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your advisor should be able to provide you with the guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it is not plagiarism, and you can reuse the material. As you pointed out the proposal is not published. It is a confidential document outlining what you intended to do and is to be shared only with your committee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21371" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:27:18.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28670" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:33:02.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listed textbooks from other syllabus may be useful... Always check what other Prof.s have been using...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17573" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:33:02.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:47:41.397" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning on doing Bachelor of Computer Science - Bachelor of Mathematics at University of Wollongong, Australia. Do you think I will be able to do a phD in Mathematics by studying Mathematics as a double degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22021" LastEditorUserId="29342" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T15:12:19.583" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T18:46:32.433" Title="Graduate studies (phD &amp; Masters) after a double degree" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11737" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:53:54.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's deal with the 'easy' part first: hiring someone for ~100 hours of consulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How easy or difficult this will be is going to be based on what answers you need to the questions &quot;When can you start?&quot; and &quot;For how many hours are you available per week?&quot; If you need them to be available during set hours, this will also effect the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When can you start?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most busy/qualified/established professionals book their time out in advance, very often 3-6 months out or more. I'm not some super-in-demand expert or a professor, and yet I've turned down four offers in the last few months because I have already dedicated myself to things that would make my first availability to be summer of next year - unless it was just an amazing offer with triple the money, at which point I'd still only be available a fraction of the time for the next 3+ months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially with teaching, grants, budgets, and research schedules, finding someone who could dedicate more than a few hours a week within 3-12 months will not be common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only need someone for a few hours a week spread out over the next 3-4 months, you will likely have a much easier time of finding someone who is at least available and potentially interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sabbaticals, Summers, Internships, and Finding the Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the initial stages go well and you need hundreds of hours of consulting or extensive research, this will not fit into the schedule of a professor under normal circumstances. It's not to say it can't be done, but if the person is really interested - both by the project and by how much money they stand to make - there are a few ways to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is for academics who have flexibility in the summer. While senior faculty will often direct labs, summer research, and some even have teaching duties 4-5 days a week over the summer, there is still often more time that can be squeezed out for consulting than other times. If this has been arranged a year in advance, or if the person happens to have already arranged for a light/no summer load, they would potentially be available for consulting for this larger work load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start needing more than 20-40 hours a week of consulting, it is reasonable to start considering having more than one person. It would not be unheard of for a professor - especially in fields that are highly tied to industry like in technology/computer fields - to arrange for a summer internship/research project where they and their hand-chosen grad students might be available to do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of arrangement would allow sufficient time and expertise, and allow a faculty member to get a sufficient return for their invested time - teaching, helping students, conducting applied research/work, and bringing in some extra personal wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Approach a Prospect and Be Open, Honest, and Straightforward&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a situation where the industry lags behind the state of the art research, and you feel you have a great financial opportunity if you can close the gap - and need an expert to help you do it. That's great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professors and researchers are humans too, and are interested in things like making money (especially when it brings the potential for even more money), working on interesting problems, etc. If it is applying existing knowledge/research to a problem it might not result in interesting research, but this is very field-dependent as case-studies and applied techniques are standard in some fields and unpublishable in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people who have any experience in industry also understand the funding cycles are surprisingly similar to academics - you have a little bit of funding available to invest into exploration, and what happens from there depends on the results you get. So be open about this - if you know you have budget and money to pay them for the exploration phase, say so. If that phase doesn't work out then it will mean you don't expect to have any more immediate work - say so. And if it works out and you get the funding you are shooting for and will need a lot more work done - again, just say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start a conversation and see where it leads. As with most professional tasks, it is not uncommon to have an offer come across your desk that just isn't something you are interested in, but perhaps you know someone who you might refer the opportunity to. Perhaps you'll find the professor who wrote the papers that attracted you to them in the first place will say that they actually don't feel they are the expert, and that actually the student they were working with would be better able to help you. Maybe they'll insist they are a package deal - you hire them and their collaborator. Perhaps they just aren't interested. Perhaps they already had a sabbatical planned and haven't 100% decided what they wanted to do, but this would fit the bill nicely...etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a clear plan, seed funding in hand, and an open and honest discussion about your situation, goals, and what you can offer, most professors will be happy to take a meeting with you and discuss the matter! Few people are so busy as not to be able to talk about extra money, and most higher-level professors reserve a portion of their schedule for consulting gigs anyway (again though, this varies by field). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6787" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:53:54.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T16:31:08.143" Score="2" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most universities, PhD students are literally students similar to master students. Fellowships and scholarships only support them financially, but officially they are students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some European university advertise PhD open positions like a contract job (similar to research associates or postdoc). It is understandable that these funded PhD students provide some services for the university, but in the first case too, PhD students regularly provide TA and RA services, but they are still students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these two schemes different in action, or difference is only in words on paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do European PhD students (mentioned in the second case) have more rights or flexibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="6450" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T16:49:25.577" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:19:46.030" Title="Are PhD students enrolled or hired?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-19T16:38:26.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's appropriate, although you have to be a bit careful about how you go about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're junior, one way is to walk up to more senior people and let &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; start talking to you (instead of you to them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is &quot;not to change the subject.&quot; So if everyone is talking about the subject matter, you might not want to talk about the conference, and vice-versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you want to be a good &quot;audience&quot; until you are accepted into the group. Then you can start worrying about being a good &quot;talker,&quot; or about what to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T16:38:26.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T16:39:15.353" Score="2" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;In experimental fields, such as physics, chemistry, and engineering, every professor has their own lab/workshop, normally with several externally funded projects. A PhD student may work on currently funded projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;it is the responsibility of the university or department  to provide the cost of this PhD project&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;How and by whom is the budget of a PhD project set?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mentioned experimental fields, because the costs of these PhD projects are normally much higher than tuition fees (consider that the student has no research fellowship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T02:15:39.763" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T17:06:04.477" Title="How is a PhD project budget set?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;funding&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T16:49:37.323" Score="3" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done my Masters research in Microbial ecology. I am interested in stem cell research but I belong to a developing country where we don't have cutting edge research opportunities to gain hand-on experience. I have a good academic background but no research experience except undergraduate and postgraduate research. I am really willing to learn new techniques and want to change my research field to stem cell research. I am not good at convincing and presenting my point to convince a potential supervisor and show my motivation and interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have to explain all this to the supervisor I am about to contact to make a point or straight away show my interest? I have obtained a scholarship just need acceptance and secure admission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21310" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T20:18:46.410" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T20:18:46.410" Title="help needed for contacting a supervisor for PhD" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28761" CreationDate="2014-09-19T17:22:32.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the schemes are different in action. All law related to employment (e.g. taxes, eligibility for retirement and unemployment benefits) do depend on the actual status of a PhD student. It depends as well on a country, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: in my program (Spain) first two years are being a student and the second two - an employed researcher. Set of duties do not change (or the effective salary), but the official status (with respect to employment laws) - does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T17:22:32.660" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28718" CreationDate="2014-09-19T17:29:26.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of a few instances of people who have been hired to handle and facilitate the grant writing process but they are hired with the title and salary of postdocs. Despite their postdoctural role, they have very few laboratory roles but serve as super lab managers who handle the finances and long-term strategy of the lab. As mentioned, the sources of funding to pay for these non-laboratory staff are limited but for larger and wealthy labs, they can typically siphon enough funds to pay for these positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T17:29:26.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28761" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:19:46.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in Germany, doctoral candidates are either employed as &lt;em&gt;Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter&lt;/em&gt; (research assistants) or given stipends as &quot;doctoral fellows.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, regardless of how they are paid for their efforts, they must &quot;enroll&quot; as doctoral candidates with one of the faculties if they are to receive a degree. So, to a certain extent, they are treated like students as well, and have many of the same privileges (for instance, they are entitled to the same student benefits when they register).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to a certain extent, they are both; however, their employment contract, rather than student regulations, tends to be the &quot;controlling factor&quot; in their treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:19:46.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:24:30.650" Score="4" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read several documents about student/staff exchange of European Union, Erasmus, but I do not fully understand how it is in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an undergraduate student go from his university to a host university, who pays the fee? Home university or host university or European Commission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the limits are set? Many students are interested to go to Oxford or Cambridge (generally famous university), but a few wants to go to small universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:43:43.657" Title="How does Erasmus programme work?" Tags="&lt;europe&gt;&lt;student-exchange&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:38:01.207" Score="6" ViewCount="3674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student? In particular, how to think about stating a consulting business while in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential partner and I have skills that fill a market need. Both of us are adamant about pursuing non-academic work after the Ph.D. We both are wondering, what are we waiting for? In addition, both of us had has smaller consulting opportunities thus far (these fell in our lap), but would be looking to take this to the next level, and essentially replace our research assistantships with this work. Actually, there's no guarantee that either of us will have research assistantships next year, so it might even be a necessity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graduate school seems like a great time to start doing this work. Frankly, I'm unsure about how much a Ph.D. would change this opportunity for us down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would people go about navigating this while in graduate school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In advance of the &quot;check with your advisor or department&quot; responses I should add two more things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) There's nothing in our agreement with the department or student handbook that stipulates that we can't work outside of the department while a student. It's not encouraged when you are getting a research assistantship. This would replace the assistantship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) We both don't feel like our advisors are adequately preparing us for non-academic careers (frankly because they have never worked outside of academia) and are fine with what this might mean for those relationships. It's more likely that they would be supportive of us stepping out of the lab and taking an untraditional route to finishing the Ph.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19610" LastEditorUserId="19610" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T18:48:17.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T00:26:22.247" Title="How to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student?" Tags="&lt;consulting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28768" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:43:43.657" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: there should be an Erasmus coordinator in your home institution. He or she will be able to answer these questions in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer your questions. However, I am not an expert, so please somebody correct me if I got something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an undergraduate student go from his university to a host university, who pays the fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the Erasmus programme, that is, essentially the European Union. That being said, for you as participant it should make little practical difference who actually pays for your grant in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How the limits are set? Many students are interested to go to Oxford or Cambridge (generally famous university), but a few wants to go to small universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you misunderstand how Erasmus works. First of all, your home university needs to have a specific partnership with the host university. If your university does not have a partnership with Oxford, well, then you can't go there via Erasmus. Those partnerships are usually bi-directional, so if you are at a very bad university, there is a chance that Oxford has little interest in associating with (and, consequently, sending their students to) your place. Secondly, each of those partnership agreements defines quotas (in both directions). Not everybody can go to Oxford simply because there are only a finite number of places for Oxford available. Afaik, the host institution decides who can go if there are more interested students than places available for any given period. In most places, assignment of students to places seems to be more or less on a first-come-first-served basis. However, I heard that at least in my alma mater most partnerships had more places than interested students, so in the end everybody could go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, in reality it's not places like Oxford that end up being more popular. Generally speaking, most students don't seem to select host universities based on the esteem of their academics, but rather based on weather and perceived coolness of the country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:43:43.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:48:26.100" Score="8" ViewCount="720" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some publishers have a clause like the following in their author instructions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submission of a manuscript implies... that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijnngt.org/sub.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijrit.com/authors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;instances&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://advancedscienceresearchjournals.org/privacy-policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;of this&lt;/a&gt; among disreputable publishers. But I was surprised to also see this policy at more than one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/authors/manuscript+guidelines?SGWID=0-40162-6-795324-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Springer journal&lt;/a&gt; and a handful of other, reasonably reputable, venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was also surprised, because we occasionally get questions here about withdrawing a paper after acceptance. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28583/do-i-need-to-wait-for-a-journal-to-consent-to-paper-withdrawal-before-submitti#comment61565_28583&quot;&gt;first thing we ask them&lt;/a&gt; is generally, &quot;Have you signed a copyright transfer yet?&quot; with the implication that before signing anything, you still hold the copyright to the submitted work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what exactly &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the automatic transfer of copyright referred to above? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been enforced, traditionally? Is it even enforceable, generally speaking? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it just a clause that some sketchy publishers put in there to deceive authors into believing that they don't have the right to withdraw their paper from the journal after acceptance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T14:03:06.740" Title="Is an automatic copyright transfer clause in publisher's instructions to authors typically enforced/enforceable?" Tags="&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;disreputable-publishers&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28764" CreationDate="2014-09-19T18:56:26.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have funding, you might email him:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello Professor X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am interested in researching stem cells, and see you are an expert&#xA;  at researching stem cells. I am wondering if you are accepting new&#xA;  graduate student this application cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My background is QRS and also have some interests in TRV. Your paper&#xA;  on &quot;MMMMM&quot; is interesting, and wonder if your group is going to expand&#xA;  on that paper and if there are any opportunities in this field for&#xA;  graduate students if you are accepting students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also important to note that I have a scholarship that will fully&#xA;  fund my education, and thus, am looking for a place to spend this&#xA;  scholarship money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marviii&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your actual email should probably be more specific and formal, but keep it brief. You are essentially a free graduate student (except time), so potential supervisors should be interested in you. Don't be modest about mentioning it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6898" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T18:56:26.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28771" CreationDate="2014-09-19T19:06:30.663" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion only here.  It is a problem that has arisen in the last few years as publishers have started to realize that nobody reads printed journals.  They want to be able to charge for access to the online versions, and seem to think the only way to do this is by taking copyright from the authors. This is an issue at, e.g., US National Labs, where the US government owns the copyright and has no intention of signing it over to a publisher (US or not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I view it as a particularly irritating, but ultimately temporary, problem.  The moment any publisher goes after an author for hosting a copy of their own publication it will be widely known and the publisher will suffer.  But until the lawyers figure it all out we will have to fight back.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15477" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T19:06:30.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-19T19:34:47.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to meet people, one good approach is to go to the poster session and talk to poster authors.  Assuming it's a good conference for your specialization, you will likely find some posters that are interesting: then you can strike up a conversation with the poster author.  You can also talk to other people looking at the same poster, if they look interested in one you're also interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12346" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T19:34:47.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28753" CreationDate="2014-09-19T21:05:36.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a better estimate than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&lt;/a&gt; whose rates work out to about 2 cents a word for basic copy editing or about 40 dollars an hour. For a thesis which is going to be very technical, I would expect someone with relevant expertise to get more. Grammar and form, probably is close to basic copy editing, but is probably more involved than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T21:05:36.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5500" CreationDate="2014-09-19T21:11:21.937" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is interesting to see what Charles Darwin did in his scientific writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/3832&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Serendip Studio:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Darwin usually speaks in the first person plural when analyzing&#xA;  empirical evidence he has collected and only uses the first person&#xA;  singular when he is specifically speaking about his own actions, such&#xA;  as, &quot;..many special facts which I have collected,&quot; or when he is&#xA;  speaking about his own qualms, such as &quot;I am well aware that there are&#xA;  on, on this view, many cases of difficulty, some of which I am trying&#xA;  to investigate.&quot; However, when analyzing his evidence, he always uses&#xA;  &quot;we&quot;, such as &quot;we notice&quot;, or &quot;we understand&quot;(2).  Darwin's change in&#xA;  footing when he is explaining his theory places himself and the reader&#xA;  on the same level and makes him a more &quot;humble&quot; presenter, allowing us&#xA;  to suspend disbelief for at least the time being and trust him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Darwin is speaking as the scientist, he uses &lt;em&gt;&quot;we&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, and when he is speaking as the human being, he uses &lt;em&gt;&quot;I&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I really like that distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the forced use of &lt;em&gt;&quot;we&quot;&lt;/em&gt; when you mean &lt;em&gt;&quot;I&quot;&lt;/em&gt; misplaced. It is important to sound as natural as possible in your writing - just look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Feynman&lt;/a&gt;. You don't have to use convoluted language to win a Nobel prize. Clarity is king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T14:45:08.273" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T14:45:08.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2014-09-19T22:44:07.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that you've identified the conference as the AMS Western Section meeting in San Francisco, I looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2214_progfull.html&quot;&gt;the conference's program web site&lt;/a&gt; and your talk is definitely listed.  It's in the Session for Contributed Papers I, Saturday October 25 at 10:30 AM in Thorton Hall room 325.  (If you don't see it, try searching the web page for your name.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you overlooked it the first time?  Or else they originally omitted it, and it has since been fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T22:44:07.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28771" CreationDate="2014-09-19T23:09:58.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lawyer would be best suited to answer this, but as I have had several business law classes as part of my business education, I'll hold forth based on my understanding of intellectual property and contract law in an educational context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer would be yes, that it should be generally enforceable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laws vary by state even in the United States, but in general, qualities that can make a contract unenforceable are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of capacity of the parties (legal age, sound minds, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fraud or misrepresentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Violation of public policy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the above apply to our situation (unless, for example, we have a precocious or senile scholar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enforceable contracts also require:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consideration (exchange of something of value)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting of the Minds (mutual agreement of terms)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer and Acceptance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's analyze these requirements. Is there mutual exchange of value? The journal appears to offer that in exchange for copyright, the author gets to be published in a prestigious journal. Does the author agree at the time of offer and acceptance? Then we have an enforceable contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this brings to light a strategy for attempting to retain copyrights of your work. Insist by striking through such language in a contract and make a statement that you, the author, retain copyright, and put your initials by the alteration. If the contract is in electronic form, communicate this through email just prior to and just after submitting your request electronically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do not object, and rather, accept your submission, I would assert that you have established that any possible claim by them to your work is either completely unenforceable (certainly, in the case of a written contract) or (in either case) liable to cost them a great deal in legal fees to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T23:09:58.967" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-19T23:41:48.043" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some other advantages from my point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing lecture notes enables you to communicate to the students exactly what is examinable. Most textbooks are bloated with irrelevant material. See any first year textbook in economics or statistics, for example. That thing doesn't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to have 500 pages and colour pictures and a $150 price tag.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing lecture notes gives you valuable practice at academic writing and presenting your thoughts in a coherent manner. When you first try to write papers, it is tempting to try to intimidate the reader. Writing lecture notes helps to break this habit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good lecture notes might be used or cited by others if you put them on your website. This can be a good way of advertising yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to teach the course again, going through the pain of writing lecture notes the first time you teach it will make it much easier to teach it in subsequent years, because you will be teaching from your own notes and you know exactly what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students will be very happy if they find a mistake in your notes! So you get an army of free proofreaders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, your notes might be so good that you can one day publish them in book form. This has never happened to me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5842" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T23:41:48.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28769" CreationDate="2014-09-20T00:26:22.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I experienced working as a consultant during a year in a PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the upside, I earned more than my cohort was in our fully funded program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the downside, stepping out of a lecture to take a client's phone call was one of my experiences. Having to handle the fallout of another client's death during finals was another, when one client suddenly became several smaller ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found I was losing the support of the head of the department, and I didn't like my grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had confounding issues: one was that my clients and wife were in a town a 3 hour drive away from my program and another was that I was scrambling to catch up with the math required, as I underestimated the preparation required. I found the workload to be unsustainable and withdrew, enrolling in a local Masters program instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now likely earning more than the majority of my former cohort, while not facing the stress of the publish or perish monster or dealing with undergraduates trying to understand why you gave them an F for lazy slapdash work. However, I would consider mine a cautionary tale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you want to complete your degree. To do so, you'll want the support of your department. You may underestimate their desire to see you become a hugely successful academic eventually rising to tenure at an Ivy. They may become dismayed by your desire to work in consulting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are hugely successful academics who are also very entrepreneurial consultants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you don't want your advisor or department chair to think of you as a consultant, unless that's already expected of you. Ideally, you want them to think of you first and foremost as a successful academic. I would avoid loudly publicizing your services until you finish your dissertation (which you should probably finish sooner rather than better, in alignment with this strategy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you might profile your ideal client-type and ask your current clients that best fit that profile for introductions to similar ones, or at least to identify them for you. Then, like any sales pitch, you should do your homework on the potential clients, and go put yourself in front of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rule out the assistantship either. It likely means high quality time with a great scholar. That should align with your values, considering your current efforts at education. Don't be dishonest about your intentions, but do be discrete. I hope my advice helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T00:26:22.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-20T03:25:32.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to address just one point from the question. You write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever I can write will not be half as good as a well-written textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I have to say that while I can't write a better presentation than the text on everything or even many thing, its a rare semester course where there isn't &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; sections of the course for which I can prepare a better presentation for the students in front of me than the writer has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use Halliday and Resnick, I can present a terser and more insightful version of one section here and another one there. If instead I use Feynman, I may have to address some sections in more detail for the students at my small state school than the great man used for his at CalTech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as the other have said the exercise of preparing notes refreshes and clarifies the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a lazy man, and whenever the presentation in the book seems to be appropriate to my students (or nearly so), I simple re-express the books methods with only minor changes in emphasis, and adjustment to agree with the demos that I am actually going to do rather than the ones that I would want if I had the prep-room of my dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T03:25:32.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28796" CreationDate="2014-09-20T07:00:04.440" Score="4" ViewCount="1557" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how graduate schools like Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and MIT evaluate the GPA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you can boost your GPA by taking easy classes and in the application it only says enter your GPA. Do they consider classes students have taken? &#xA;Do they consider whether course are challenging or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20608" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T11:03:38.973" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T14:08:37.123" Title="How do graduate schools evaluate GPA?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T09:08:23.563" Score="7" ViewCount="3383" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Professor normally send his TA to conduct some sessions of his course (e.g., for problem solving).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to ask the TA to attend all sessions to keep the track of the course. This is helpful if the TA is responsible for reading the essays of students, as he can be aware of discussions in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How much the second scheme is popular?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it right to force a TA to stay and listen to the basic topics? When someone provide TA service for a course, he knows that topic well, and it is boring to sit and listen it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T17:17:39.820" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:35:01.370" Title="Is it popular to request TA presence in the classroom for all lectures &amp; is it right?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2014-09-20T09:33:43.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This unfortunately happens in many institutions, and not just to distribute students evenly among faculty (sometimes it may be to distribute students evenly among areas covered by the department, or to get enough students to run research projects/labs that are cash cows for the department).  I have known numerous cases of students leaving without a PhD because they could not work with the advisors they were assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One issue is funding: a professor with funding will automatically get a student if that funding is the (only) source of support for that student.  However, office politics and biases/preconceptions on the part of grad program administrators, department heads, or deans does play a part.  Another issue is that students' interests do evolve over time, but not every department/institution respects this.  Sometimes the policy is that a student is paired with an advisor early on (before the student is mature enough), with no scope for change later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it is good to ask of an institution or department if it has a formal and well-defined procedure for a change of advisor.  If not, the chances are that students are locked-in, probably from the beginning, possibly without their own wishes being considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T09:33:43.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T11:37:53.510" Score="6" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply to an MFA program in product design, and one of the admissions requirements is having at least 1 year of work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My office is structured pretty horizontally (so, nobody is nobody's boss and we're all equals). We also do all our work collaboratively, in the open. I'm wondering if submitting a letter of recommendation written collectively by my entire team would make a statement to the admissions committee of this type of program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of you seen this? If any of you have been in charge of admitting students, what's your reaction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22059" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T02:50:37.133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T11:32:29.210" Title="How would a collective recommendation letter from co-workers be perceived for admissions to MFA requiring work experience?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28717" CreationDate="2014-09-20T12:07:51.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I saw this, I would read it as someone that had passed a PhD in a subject of ABD then after I found out; discount them for any jobs for misleading me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“PhD candidate with publications” or “Withdraw from PhD but published” would be more meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9902" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T12:07:51.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28798" CreationDate="2014-09-20T12:30:53.043" Score="7" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about statement of purpose (s.o.p).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure that whether it is advisable to write exactly one s.o.p. for all the schools or to write for each school exactly one s.o.p.? Does this really matter? Would the reviewers of a school judge applicants by their understanding of the school? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really need judicious suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T15:07:44.527" Title="Statement of purpose: One-for-all or one-to-one?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T12:32:41.053" Score="4" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was quoting a paper from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/representationlearning2013/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICLR 13&lt;/a&gt; and noticed that I could not find any information about the publishing of the conference. So far I have only seen proceedings which published the papers of the conference in a book entitled &lt;em&gt;'proceedings of the xth international conference ...'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Is it possible for a conference not to be published, i.e. the papers can only be found online (or via a database, e.g. arXiv). Is this a common thing? Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21942" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T00:42:09.143" Title="Is it possible for a conference not to be published?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28787" CreationDate="2014-09-20T13:31:41.050" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, attending lectures or other class sessions is a reasonable duty for a TA. Of course, if your contract specifies a maximum number of weekly hours to work, time spent attending the lectures would count toward those hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that even though you may be familiar with the basic material, the professor may feel it would be helpful for you to see the same presentation that the students are getting, so that your teaching will be consistent with his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't agree that this is the best use of your time, and there are more productive ways you could spend that time, then you could certainly suggest to the professor that you try something else. (Be polite about it - I would avoid using the word &quot;force&quot;.) But ultimately it is his decision - he is the boss and you are being paid to work under his direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T13:31:41.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28771" CreationDate="2014-09-20T14:03:06.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, in the US, copyright transfers must be specific to the work in question and in writing in order to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html#204&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;legitimate&lt;/a&gt;. The hard part is whether the language covers your submission and is included in some terms of service to which you agreed. I have my doubts that a general statement saying that anything you submit automatically implies transfer would hold up in court. Such a statement doesn't properly identify the work being transferred, and &quot;I agree&quot; in this case probably doesn't count as a signature. I'm not saying that electronic signatures can't be done, but go look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Copyright Form (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; for an example of one that's been created in good faith by a professional society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T14:03:06.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28784" CreationDate="2014-09-20T14:08:37.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;As a filter.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main purpose of asking for GPA in grad school admissions is to quickly weed out people (like me) who have actually low GPAs. Nobody is admitted to top PhD programs solely on the basis of their GPA, or even primarily on the basis of their GPA.  Other factors, including which classes you took, are more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a high GPA, but no evidence of research potential, you will not be admitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T14:08:37.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T13:45:49.720" Score="9" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied a new method to a data set, which had already been analyzed in a research paper. My method is generally considered better, but it only slightly modifies the results and does not affect the conclusion of the paper aside from improving the accuracy of results by a small amount. The paper is about a classification problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write a research paper about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Daniel" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T19:01:26.117" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T19:01:26.117" Title="Same data, new method, same outcome – can I publish it?" Tags="&lt;data&gt;&lt;publishability&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28792" CreationDate="2014-09-20T15:07:44.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are talking about a document that is part of your application to universities (e.g. for a PhD), which would be called a research statement here in the UK. Then the answer is simple: you want to maximise your chances of each application. So invest the extra effort and make individual documents to maximise your chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different departments have different priorities, so you want to emphasise how your plans fit to the research agenda of each place you are applying to. While it may be convenient to send the same SOP to each place, you can show that you have researched the place you are applying to and at least modify the SOP to fit to the place you are applying to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21985" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T15:07:44.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28797" CreationDate="2014-09-20T15:12:43.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it is difficult to answer this question in general. You should ask yourself if you are contributing something significantly novel to the academic discussion. For example, if you reanalyse the dataset and get completely different or new results, then it is probably worth publishing. On the other hand, if you only slightly modify the statistical method and arrive at the same results, it is probably not worth it. Before beginning the analysis, you could ask yourself if this dataset is particularly big or of good quality or if there are other, better datasets out there (in which case a reanalysis of this particular one might be unproductive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, in the UK there have been many papers on the effectiveness of breast cancer screening that essentially analysed the same dataset using different methods. These methods were fairly complex and the various approaches have significantly advances our understanding of the advantages and possible detriments of breast cancer screening. In this case, publishing multiple papers was justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21985" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T15:12:43.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28869" CreationDate="2014-09-20T15:15:45.143" Score="4" ViewCount="853" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, as a subscriber of IEEE Security &amp;amp; Privacy, I was able to download the entire magazine as a single PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I started using IEEE Xplore from the university, however, I can only download an article at a time which is quite annoying. Is there a way to download a full magazine as a single PDF using an institutional subscription?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22062" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T16:13:22.533" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T06:29:13.847" Title="Is it possible to download magazines as single PDF in IEEE Xplore with an institutional subscription?" Tags="&lt;online-publication&gt;&lt;ieee&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28801" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-20T15:15:45.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Related questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28797/same-data-new-method-same-outcome-can-i-publish-it&quot;&gt;Same data, new method, same outcome – can I publish it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13903/can-i-publish-a-sum-up-paper&quot;&gt;Can I publish a sum up paper?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9285/can-i-publish-a-critique-of-an-experiment-in-a-field-in-which-i-am-not-an-expert&quot;&gt;Can I publish a critique of an experiment in a field in which I am not an expert?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21677/can-routine-in-r-be-published-on-academic-journals&quot;&gt;Can routine in R be published on academic journals?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T02:39:53.463" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T02:39:53.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28802" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-20T15:15:45.293" Score="0" Body="For questions about whether a piece of work is sufficient in significance, novelty, credibility, or scope to be publishable in an academic journal or conference." OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T02:39:53.463" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T02:39:53.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2014-09-20T16:13:16.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My graduate department had exactly such a policy. In part, this was because they had a few &quot;really big names&quot; who would be able to grab a number of students each year. The basic rule was that no advisor could take more than two sole-advised students in a given year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were some exceptions made to this rule. First, new faculty advisors could get three students, and co-advised students were exempted. From the students' perspective, faculty members could not formally commit to specific students. Instead, students submitted ranked lists of projects and advisors submitted ranked preferences of students. The department then tried to match people and projects within the above constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed to work well enough, as I never heard of anyone who got less than their second-ranked project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T16:13:16.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28797" CreationDate="2014-09-20T16:34:12.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the bioinformatics field, for example, it is perfectly acceptable to use the same dataset for a publication demonstrating the analysis using a different method. There are (at least) two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Both the dataset and the method are not novel, but applying the new method on the dataset results in novel insight about the studied system. An example could be two recent papers in PNAS. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/9/3507.abstract&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; a dataset and some statistical analysis approach was used to demonstrate divergent inflammatory responses in mouse and human. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/31/1401965111.abstract&quot;&gt;second&lt;/a&gt; paper other group used the same dataset with some other (not novel) methods to demonstrate the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dataset is not new but the method is novel. This case is very common in Bioinformatics and aims to use a dataset for which the outcome is relatively well known. It could also be used to demonstrate how the new method leads to novel insight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stress that in the first case the &lt;em&gt;new insight&lt;/em&gt; aspect has more weight as neither the dataset or the method are novel. In the second case this is not so important, as far as the new method results in some other advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T16:34:12.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-20T17:06:57.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer only involves the field of Computer Science, so other fields may not have the same benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote my own beginning C.S. course (programming) lecture notes (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/s/yc2tshnap8j8xec/lecturenotes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;). The benefits that I found are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not requiring a textbook. The textbooks in C.S. are very large and there are quite a few of them, so students/readers may not know which one to pick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not requiring a computer. Students/readers may not have current access to a computer (or any access), so they need to be viable for them too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plenty of examples. Success in programming is possible only through many examples, and not much of the theoretical aspects of programming. Therefore, my notes have many examples to get the concept across. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning the material from a different perspective than the one you originally had. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19685" LastEditorUserId="19685" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T15:22:20.617" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T15:22:20.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28787" CreationDate="2014-09-20T19:18:00.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the TAing as a time of apprenticeship and learning how to be a professional scholar. I require my TAs to attend all of my lectures -- and I also require them to visibly take notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The undergraduates often want to address issues raised in lecture. I do not go strictly by the book and on occasion deviate considerably into a tangential area.  Without knowing what is going on, how will the TAs handle the students' questions in section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the reason I require the TAs to take notes and not to noodle around on their computer is that they are setting an example of professional behavior in the classroom. If the undergrads see the TA wasting time on StackExchange the entire class period, the students will also feel free to go to FaceBook, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a TA has an issue with this, I would suggest that they talk with the department registrar and find another TA assignment more to their liking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T21:20:17.600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T21:20:17.600" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28787" CreationDate="2014-09-20T19:35:46.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's best to leave this to the TA's discretion in many cases. Professors ought to respect the fact that TAs may be deeply immersed in their thesis research, and really need to have enough time for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may depend a lot on the academic field, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorUserId="11257" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T19:41:27.570" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T19:41:27.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T21:46:25.900" Score="22" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;In nearly any field there is a number of important results which look obvious to experts &lt;em&gt;post factum&lt;/em&gt; but somehow are not that easy to come by in the first place (e.g. in mathematics some important definitions look exactly like this). Unfortunately, this apparent &lt;em&gt;post factum&lt;/em&gt; simplicity makes conveying the importance of the idea to expert audience (and in particular to the journals' editors and referees) very difficult. To make things worse, sometimes the author is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question is whether it is possible (and if yes, how) to mitigate this &lt;strong&gt;apparent post factum simplicity&lt;/strong&gt; in the talks and research articles, i.e., what can be done to &lt;em&gt;adequately&lt;/em&gt; convey the significance of &quot;post-factum-obvious&quot; results to the audience and, in particular, to get these results to the journals they truly deserve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly interested in the advice applicable to mathematics/mathematical physics but the suggestions suitable for other fields are very welcome too, as the situation in question does not seem to be all that field-specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T10:48:11.213" Title="Are there any good strategies for conveying the true significance of the results that look obvious post factum?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28665" CreationDate="2014-09-20T22:11:36.890" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As most of the others have said, talking to new faces is not only appropriate, it should even be encouraged. After all, that's one of the main reasons for holding and attending conferences: to network, mingle, and meet new people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you said that people you've talked to seem &quot;annoyed,&quot; which made me wonder if something else is at work here. I've never been to a conference that discouraged people from meeting new acquaintances or exchanging business cards, so why would you be having trouble?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do just about anything. Timing is key. I don't start conversations with &quot;random&quot; people, but I do initiate plenty of conversations with people I haven't met before. The difference is subtle; I left out the word &quot;random,&quot; because &quot;random&quot; could mean I'm not being receptive to when it's a good time or place to start a conversation, and when it might not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one good place to start a cold turkey conversation with a stranger is at a conference lunch. I often start conversations when I'm sitting at one of those round tables that seat about 10. Look for a table that doesn't have people who seem to be from the same university already engaged in a lively conversation. Instead, find a quieter table where people are just staring silently at the centerpiece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that should be said – this may not apply to you, but it may apply to someone in your same situation – is to practice good hygiene. Even the most amiable social butterflies at the conference may give you the cold shoulder if you have bad breath or body odor. (Take advantage of the vendors in the exhibit hall who are passing out mints for conference swag.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice good manners as well. Make a good first impression. Be positive, curious, polite, and friendly; don't come across as someone lonely in the field seeking a mentor. I'm not sure why you put this quote in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am not famous so there is no value for others in getting to know me&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it's not a very positive attitude for starting a conversation. (It also devalues the work of anyone at the conference who isn't famous – which is probably about 90% of the conferencegoers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, manage your expectations. Don't expect every conversation to go into a lot of depth. Some people may have other things on their mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:11:36.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-20T22:24:02.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a student, I hated professors not choosing a textbook and only giving (very  often badly written) lecture notes. I think following a single  textbook, suggesting optionally one or two more, plus some extra material here and there, is very convenient for the students since a good book is coherent, tested, well written and edited, with useful pictures, and often evolved through several years of lectures. You might lose some diversity, but you gain simplicity and coherence (and a more pleasant formatting). The best students will anyway look for additional texts on their own, either during the course or afterwards. Of course additional or very specific or innovative material can require lecture notes. &#xA;In my experience, lecture notes are often good for the teacher; not always for the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22070" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:24:02.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28809" CreationDate="2014-09-20T22:29:19.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To make things worse, sometimes the author is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this goes hand in hand with the problem you describe. You cannot expect an audience to evaluate the difficulty of the problem you have solved in a short time and often the same goes for reviewers and editors (unless of course, they are familiar with the problem). But you can show that you are addressing an important problem, which does not yet have a (satisfying) solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the latter is true, others should have thought about it before you. But as they have not come up with a solution, the problem could not actually have been that obvious. (Of course, it could have just been that nobody spotted the problem or the general approach you have taken – but then you can take credit for that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; I have attended some interdisciplinary conferences and observed a general tendency that participants from more theoretical fields failed at motivating what they are doing – which was one of the key issues that made their talks very difficult to sit through or their posters not interesting.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are standard approaches to your general type of problem, you could also shortly explain why these do not work. This way you can demonstrate that the problem required some thingking out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:29:19.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2014-09-20T22:34:55.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that a related survey was posted this week in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.plos.org/paleo/2014/09/18/paleontologists-access-non-open-access-literature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PLOS blog post on how paleontologists access the (non-open access) literature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/igChf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fbsfW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I put together an informal, non-scientific survey. The survey asked&#xA;  questions about how people access the literature, the kinds of&#xA;  journals they can access most easily, and basic demographics. I&#xA;  advertised the survey via Twitter and Facebook. I wouldn’t count it as&#xA;  a scientific sample by any means, but I do feel that I got reasonably&#xA;  good coverage of various types of paleontologists at various types of&#xA;  institutions (as well as non-paleontologists who follow the&#xA;  literature). 115 individuals responded, during the course of about a&#xA;  week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:34:55.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28787" CreationDate="2014-09-20T22:35:01.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is institution-dependent, at least in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a grad TA, it was written into our union contract that we would attend the lecture. Some people didn't, but it was generally expected that the TA's would go, and I went.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first occasion supervising TA's, at a different university, I asked them &quot;You'll be attending my lectures, right?&quot; I may as well have asked them to bring me coffee every morning and shine my shoes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend finding out what the norm is at your institution, and following it. In particular, don't try to require lecture attendance of your TA's if the graduate director won't back you up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T22:35:01.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-20T23:44:35.503" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of advice that people are giving is unwise.  While I am sure they wish to be helpful, I am not sure they are qualified.  I have been active in the women in technology community for 25 years, which does not give me all of the answers but does make me more aware of what can go wrong than some of the other respondents may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a support group of women in your field.  In computer&#xA;science, there is a great email list, Systers, whose members&#xA;frequently solicit and give advice &lt;em&gt;based on experience, not just&#xA;theories&lt;/em&gt;.  Find something like this in your field.  Ask someone to&#xA;post anonymously for you, since it would be unwise to let your&#xA;identity be known.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, as others have said, document everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out if your school has an ombudsperson, graduate women advisor, equal opportunity officer, or the Australian equivalent. (I'm American.)  Such people can often give useful advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to build ties with other graduate students and faculty in your department.  You may need allies.  The other faculty will know your advisor's history and how best to deal with him.  Tenured faculty will be more able to help than untenured or adjunct faculty.  While female faculty are your natural allies, don't overlook male faculty, especially ones with large numbers of female students who have not had problems with him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not recommend confrontation.  Backing someone into a corner is dangerous; allowing someone to save face is safer.  I think it's fine to ask why if he asks to take your photograph, but I wouldn't sit him down and demand that he stop treating you inappropriately.  Prepare remarks that you can say if needed, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I'd prefer that the office door be open.&quot;  (If asked why, say because you'd feel more comfortable.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The women's center advises female students not to socialize with their advisor without other students present, since someone might get the wrong idea.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="269" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T23:44:35.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28676" CreationDate="2014-09-21T01:19:59.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If both parties are adults, what is acceptable is whatever the two parties feel is acceptable in a workplace. There are laws that tell you exactly what is not acceptable. I fail to see how a side hug would be harmful, unless it was forced (directly or indirectly). I don't think it's anyone's business to decide what is acceptable or not between two intelligent adults, within the confines of the law and general etiquette of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22073" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T01:19:59.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28832" CreationDate="2014-09-21T01:44:07.680" Score="43" ViewCount="11829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm teaching an Introduction to Computer Science Course, where we mainly do C programming. I've been assigned a lab for teaching the course, but there are more students than available computers. Also, I have no control over those PCs there, and almost every student has admin rights to them. It is also common that students bring their laptop to the classroom and connect to campus Wi-Fi, which I don't have control at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exams are small algorithms to solve, and initially I was planning - as do other teachers in the course - to allow using a computer (from the lab or their own) for the students to verify the correctness of their algorithms. However, in the current state of things I think is pretty easy for students to cheat: They could use Facebook, e-mail, or any Internet tool to exchange source code or information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there software tools that can help to allow use of a computer but still prevent unauthorized collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21687" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T08:44:17.043" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T17:39:37.303" Title="Are there tools to prevent students from cheating on a programming exam administered on computers?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;exams&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;programming&gt;&lt;cheating&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28823" CreationDate="2014-09-21T01:45:08.197" Score="5" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate mathematics student who is looking to apply to a Statistics Phd program. I am published, however, my publication is in applied machine learning. While the paper does not contain any theoretical developments, the foundations of machine learning are very statistical in nature. I posed this question to a two professors the responses were the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact you are published is excellent, this shows ability to do research. This is an important factor when applying to a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They won't care at all. If someone is applying to a stat program, would I care if they have publication in say, History? or Literature? The publication will not hurt, but they likely won't even care. If it were in a statistics journal, they would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify both professors knew that the publication was in machine learning and that I am applying to a stat program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which answer seems more accurate? Would the publication be a big plus or just ignored?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22072" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T01:49:04.047" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:33:47.770" Title="Do publications in machine learning help for admissions into a statistics PhD program?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28846" CreationDate="2014-09-21T01:56:02.243" Score="6" ViewCount="4387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate mathematics student who is looking to apply to a Statistics PhD program. I asked a few professors how much letter of recommendation help a student get in to a PhD program and I was told the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not much. Often professors don't want to insult a student, so they write good letters. Lots of people get good letter, yours won't make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Letters of recommendation are everything. They practically &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; your  application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They help some, but it depends on who it is from. If it is from a stat professor that is good. A math professor is OK too, but stat would be preferred. If they are not stat or math, they won't care at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, I am now even less clear of how much a good letter helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true letters of practically make or break your application? Or are they simply a formality?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22072" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T16:08:59.223" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T16:57:49.117" Title="How much do letters of recommendation help in a statistics PhD program application?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28809" CreationDate="2014-09-21T03:11:05.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OP writes that &quot;experts&quot;, &quot;journals' editors&quot; and &quot;referees&quot; will &lt;em&gt;fail&lt;/em&gt;  to realize the &quot;importance&quot; of a result, if it looks &quot;obvious&quot; after statement.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I note that &quot;importance&quot; should have been somehow defined in the question, or at least be endowed with some operational meaning. But let's pretend we understand roughly the same things by reading the word, and let's assume that, indeed, all these people don't get this &quot;importance&quot;. Then &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; understands it?  The author? Namely, the one who &quot;is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples&quot;? In other words, the person who has labored deeply into the case, he, on the one hand cannot come up with &quot;striking examples&quot;, but at the same time &quot;knows&quot; that his result is &quot;important&quot;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; does he know, if he does not know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;  the result is important? And if he knows &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is important, how can it be that he cannot communicate, however imperfectly, these reasons why? He may be lousy regarding presentation skills, he may be a bad writer. But still, how come &lt;em&gt;nobody&lt;/em&gt; of those in the scientific community that know the field and the subject, realizes the importance of the result, in any form of communication, except the author?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important results are sometimes initially overlooked because they are stated in a very &lt;em&gt;specialized framework&lt;/em&gt; and their generality and wider applicability are not immediately, or even easily, evident. But &quot;obvious&quot; results, are, exactly, evident, and so their importance should either be evident, at least to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; individuals that are part of the populations of &quot;experts&quot;, &quot;journals' editors&quot;, and &quot;referees&quot;, or chances are, it does not exist. Difficulty of derivation or conceptualization are neither necessary nor sufficient for &quot;importance&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, I may be wrong -so I would really, honestly, appreciate it if someone could provide an actual example of such a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that the impression I got from the question is that the OP does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; refer to &quot;paradigm shifts&quot; and &quot;revolutionary ideas&quot; that may &quot;fall on deaf ears&quot; for sociological reasons. For such situations, it is a whole different, and largely theoretical, discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:11:05.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28820" CreationDate="2014-09-21T03:33:47.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is difficult to give a &quot;global&quot; answer to this question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very wide variety of PhD programs in statistics throughout the world, so much so that the overlap between two given programs can end up being surprisingly small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing to a short answer is: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, it helps.&lt;/strong&gt; (Or, should!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for some nuances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any scholarly peer-reviewed publication should be viewed favorably&lt;/strong&gt;. Obviously, the closer your publications are to the field that you're applying to, the more weight they are likely to receive. People &amp;ndash; even academics &amp;ndash; tend to go with what they know and are familiar with. If the journal/conference is recognizable to them, then that will help, but it's not a prerequisite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, you apply to any top-tier PhD programs in statistics, you'll mostly be competing against other applicants with undergraduate degrees in mathematics, so a publication in a reputable journal/conference can help set you apart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I disagree with your second professor: I'd be very happy to see a publication in history or literature (or whatever) &lt;em&gt;if accompanied by an otherwise strong application&lt;/em&gt;. But, I may also be in the minority there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the departments you apply to.&lt;/strong&gt; Many statistics departments in the US, e.g., have become increasingly attuned to the overlap in statistics, machine learning, and computer science, in general, over the last many years. Some have very active research groups in this area and regularly interact (and collaborate) with machine-learning researchers from other departments and publish in NIPS, ICML, JMLR and other like venues. And, some departments simply have more active research programs, generally speaking, than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying to departments that have focused research programs in statistical machine learning will improve the chance that your publication will be given greater weight, especially if it is published in a high-profile venue. Other departments that are either more traditional or have different research foci may weigh such a publication differently. In any event, you should try to be aware of how well aligned your interests are to those of the departments you're applying to, assuming your interests are at all well-defined at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk about your research&lt;/strong&gt;. If your application includes a personal research statement of some sort, discuss your work and describe the statistical content in a concise, matter-of-fact way. If it genuinely led to your interest in applying to PhD programs in statistics, then you can describe this as well, but it should be natural and not forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15855" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:33:47.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28821" CreationDate="2014-09-21T04:32:25.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others may have different views but for me, if you are about to admit someone you know nothing about for a long term commitment, you can only rely on some objective and subjective sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Academic record.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recommendation letters. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interview.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All are important. Letters tend to be &lt;em&gt;standard&lt;/em&gt; in the sense that everyone writes about how good the candidate is (even some supervisors make the future candidate write their own letters and then they will just sign it!). However, letters give you the opportunity to directly &lt;em&gt;contact&lt;/em&gt; the person recommending the candidate, and ask them about specific aspects you may be worried about. For example any character flaws that can be hidden in the interview and do not show in the academic record (and most likely where not included in the recommendation letter). Or some remarkable skill that was not highlighted enough in the recommendation letter but you consider very important. In summary, it is important to have the opinion of a third person that knows the candidate. Recommendation letters may be an important source of information when accepting a Ph.D. candidate in particular and when hiring someone in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastEditorUserId="21435" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T16:57:49.117" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T16:57:49.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T08:01:48.980" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider two things that are (almost) unique to computer science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;researching programming methods on the internet is standard practice, with stackexchange.com being the #1 hit for many searches. Requiring someone to memorize the details is not industry practice. I would not consider accepting a programming job anywhere that said &quot;no internet access&quot;. And I hit the function references 10 times a day to verify things like function_name vs. functionName or replace(needle, haystack) / replace(haystack, needle) headaches.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely that 10 students will return nearly-identical results for simple algorithms. There just aren't too many ways to answer &quot;write a function to average the values in an array&quot;. Lets see: loop, sum, count. vars i, s, c. If you taught standard code formatting it's quite possible you might get 8/10 absolutely identical responses yet zero cheating. This is a common problem for cheat/plagiarism processors that are not tweaked for CS.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, and do come back with whatever solution worked out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17246" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T08:01:48.980" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T08:12:57.003" Score="32" ViewCount="2779" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning my PhD and am applying to various labs and professors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am getting positive responses, but I am having trouble making a decision as to which lab to go for. How can I judge the quality of research of a group? What parameters shall be kept in mind while making a decision? I usually look for relevant research interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21310" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T20:56:43.170" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T03:07:57.897" Title="How to judge the reputation of a potential advisor or research group for good quality research for PhD?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;&lt;research-group&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T08:31:02.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there Software Tools that can help to use a Computer and avoid plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't answer the above question and I'd be surprised by the effectiveness of such a tool. So, I suggest another solution: do the exams on paper, scan the papers at the end of the exams, send the copies back to the students and give them a couple of days to debug their programs. The differences between the paper version and the working one can thus be taken into account to decide the final mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T08:31:02.260" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28827" CreationDate="2014-09-21T08:59:46.213" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of major factors to consider would be to research and read the research papers produced from each of the research groups, paying particular attention to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many articles are published, particularly in high quality journals relevant to the field of interest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a consistent strong track record of publishing new results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Their history of representation and contributions to conferences, workshops and the like&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider the availability of resources (physical and intellectual)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps arrange some visits to the labs, so that you can gauge how well the members work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastEditorDisplayName="user21984" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T09:04:59.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T09:04:59.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28790" CreationDate="2014-09-21T11:32:29.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a &quot;co-written&quot; letter of recommendation when I was applying to graduate schools. I thought it was fine, and it was also somewhat unique, as did the people reviewing the application. The interviewer for one of the programs to which I was applying said that in two decades, he had never gotten such a letter before. So your letter will definitely stand out. However, there was also the comment that the letter was a bit strange and came across a bit &quot;gimmicky.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might recommend instead that you have one of your colleagues &quot;officially&quot; write the letter, and have the letter state that his co-workers (and name them!) also contributed to the content of the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T11:32:29.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T11:54:06.857" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my programming subjects, we were allowed the class notes, our own solved exercises, and internet; but no communication with other students (email, facebook...). There was nothing really blocking them, just the lecturer wandering around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, it is not that difficult to check: a student should be most of the time working on the IDE, and only sporadically browsing. If anyone seems to browse too much, you can do a closer inspection. GMail or Facebook will blatantly shine on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can of course be more sneaky, like using Lynx to enter your mail. But really, if you can do that, you can probably write a simple algorithm without cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T11:54:06.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T12:30:07.657" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university in the UK we have two kinds of assessment for programming courses. Pass/fail 'practicals' where students are given programming tasks, and are explicitly allowed to discuss them with each other and search online. When the student is ready to submit their solution a demonstrator will look it over and ask questions etc to make sure the student understands why they wrote the code they wrote. Students don't get a grade for this that counts towards their overall mark for the year, but they are required to 'pass' the practicals in order to pass the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are written exams with no computer access. There are questions along the lines of 'write some code that will solve this problem', and also more conceptual 'why is this the case? When would you use that?' questions. For the 'write code' bits, the markers will deduct very few points for simple syntax errors and things like that. The question is not so much 'can the student write a program that will compile on the first try?' as 'can the student come up with a good algorithm which solves the problem and give a reasonable expression of it in code?'. Note that these courses (at my uni) are never for specific languages; they are courses like 'functional programming' or 'object oriented programming' or 'machine learning', which will each use a particular language, but we care more that the student understands the concepts than learns the intricacies of the course's language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also encourages students to learn ways of designing and writing provably correct programs: if they can reason about programs on a deeper level than intuition, then writing programs on paper is a better test of this than allowing them to experiment and test until the output 'looks right' for the inputs they've given it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like a good way to avoid cheating on grades that matter and encourage solid understanding of the important course material. That said, many students hate having to write code on paper without access to S.O. or a compiler!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21370" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T12:30:07.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T12:40:01.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Law schools have been solving this problem for many years by making students buy software for exams that locks their systems down and only allows them to use the exam-taking software during the examination time. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.101sports.com/2014/08/12/barmageddon-law-students-sue-when-software-fails/&quot;&gt;there have been problems&lt;/a&gt;. Also, law school exams are generally essays or other non-functional questions, whereas a programming exam could also require a compiler. I'm not aware of a version of this that exists to allow a text-editor, terminal, and compiler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T12:40:01.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T14:24:29.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The solution employed by my professor is to allow the textbook in the classroom (or any other sheet of paper), but no internet access; not even computer access. The whole exam was on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exam itself was to develop some algorithms, or maybe creating some classes; stuff for which the textbook is useless , but it still gives you the opportunity to look up names and basic concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student, I think there is nothing wrong with this method. Of course others may disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15995" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T14:24:29.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28827" CreationDate="2014-09-21T15:28:19.660" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;H index&lt;/em&gt; truly is the measure you're asking for.   Other considerations I'd throw in before you make such a key decision:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professor's background/age/culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the prof a hypomanic, and to what extreme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well you identify with the other students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how expediently are they finishing PhDs compared to your plans for life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22087" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T15:28:19.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T17:02:22.713" Score="0" ViewCount="5602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a second year part-time masters degree student at NYU, with a full time job. My life is pretty simple and boring in NY. I was looking for opportunities, and yesterday it happened. I was accepted as an &quot;intern&quot; for one of Hillary Clinton's organizations in some other state. And there is this other organization that will be financially supporting me for 6 month. Later, I am expected to get a part/full time job there. This is life time opportunity, big adventure, lots of sacrifice and commitment.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Can I take a year off during grad school in order to be able to work full time in some other state? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22090" LastEditorUserId="22090" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T01:15:08.170" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T01:21:27.217" Title="Can I take a year off during a masters program?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28840" CreationDate="2014-09-21T17:12:44.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Bill Barth suggests, you really need to check with your department and institutional policies. Every school, and often departments in the same school, can have very different policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you're a master's student, and therefore presumably enrolled in classes rather than actively conducting research, probably will make things easier, as leaves of absence are less disruptive during coursework than in research (for instance, it's harder to &quot;postpone&quot; a grant for a project to enable a student to take a semester or year off).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T17:12:44.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T17:39:45.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I haven't checked whether there are actual software tools for that, but I'll tell you what I used to do. The number of approaches to a correct solution are quite limited; if it's an exam-type problem, you should expect to receive many almost-identical, or even actually-identical, replies - as @Peter &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28826/7319&quot;&gt;points out&lt;/a&gt;. But &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the ingenuity of error is infinite, and the creativity of the misguided is boundless...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So mistakes + copying = easy to catch. If you want to mechanize, check for the same or similar parsing/compilation errors, or identical choices of identifiers of programs which fail to compile or run as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T17:39:45.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28827" CreationDate="2014-09-21T19:07:31.093" Score="40" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I judge the quality of research of a group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is the wrong question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should be asking is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;How can I judge which research group will best support my educational and career goals?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;  And yes, this is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different question.  And while lab productivity may be correlated with the future career prospects of its members, the two are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; identical.  Some great researchers are terrible advisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; happy?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; have a consistent strong track record of publishing new results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; strongly represented at conferences, workshops, and the like?  In particular: Are the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; given ample opportunity to present their research outside their home department?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; given ample mentoring and support, both in developing their own research agendas and in applying for external fellowships, lab exchanges, internships, postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, and so on?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the lab's &lt;strong&gt;students&lt;/strong&gt; given ample opportunity for &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; intellectual contributions to the lab's published research, or are they just lab/code monkeys?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the lab's research agenda closely match your own research interests and abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: &lt;strong&gt;Where do the lab's former students work now?&lt;/strong&gt;  (The worst possible answer is &quot;We don't know.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost none of these questions can be answered accurately without physically visiting the lab and talking directly to the students &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; the PI present.  If travel is impractical, use Skype / Google hangout / Facetime / whatever.  Or telephone.  Or, if all else fails, email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T10:23:17.303" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T10:23:17.303" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-21T20:22:03.867" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though you may not count this as a &lt;em&gt;software tool:&lt;/em&gt; A custom Linux live distribution, which is directly booted from a removable medium, and contains just the necessary development tools (no browser, maybe even remove the ethernet/wifi drivers) would do it; just make them boot that for the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If anyone is able – within the time limit and with the tools provided – to write the drivers and a browser he not only gets a passing grade but a job offer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22099" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T17:39:37.303" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T17:39:37.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28821" CreationDate="2014-09-21T20:42:29.953" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no direct experience with statistics programs, but I know of no reason to think they differ from math programs in this respect.  Assuming that's the case, letters of recommendation are absolutely critical, at least in U.S. universities.  I agree with the person who told you they practically &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; your application, and I'm mystified by how someone could tell you they make no difference.  (I wonder whether it's someone who has never served on an admissions committee or was educated in a very different system.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that just about everyone gets what might appear to be good letters.  The issue isn't whether they say bad things about you, but rather how strong they are and how compelling a case they make.  I've certainly seen many cases of letters written by the same person that differ enormously in their effect, even though they are all nominally positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third piece of advice you received in no way contradicts the second.  It's not enough for a letter just to include flattering comments about you.  It needs to make a compelling case for why you will be successful in statistics, written by someone who knows exactly what it takes to succeed in this field, has seen other strong students to whom you can be compared, and has a reputation to protect that will keep them from exaggerating or trying to manipulate the admissions committee.  A senior statistician is the best case, but a junior statistician or a mathematician may also be able to do a fine job.  A letter from a chemist will not be helpful, and a letter from a professor of literature, no matter how enthusiastic it is, will hurt your case (by demonstrating that you have no idea how the application process works or that you couldn't find anyone more relevant who thinks highly of you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what is required depends on where you are applying.  At the top departments, you need letters that make a very strong case indeed.  Even outstanding students will be rejected, and you need letters that set you apart from the others.  At much lower ranked departments, it might be possible to make a favorable impression based largely on grades and test scores, but even then you'll still need good enough letters.  (The bar will just be lower.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T20:42:29.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28847" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Sample questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14671/justifying-a-two-year-gap-after-masters-degree-in-statement-of-purpose&quot;&gt;Justifying a two year gap after Master's degree in Statement of Purpose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11320/what-is-the-perception-of-students-who-take-a-gap-year-between-their-graduation&quot;&gt;What is the perception of students who take a gap year between their graduation and starting graduate school?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28840/can-i-take-a-year-off-during-a-masters-program&quot;&gt;Can I take a year off during a masters program?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12024/are-there-benefits-to-taking-a-year-off-before-entering-academia-after-completio&quot;&gt;Are there benefits to taking a year off before entering academia after completion of the PhD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28848" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" Score="0" Body="On a period of time during one's education or career in which one is not formally involved in academic pursuits." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T21:26:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T23:21:55.060" Score="4" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if it is good to talk about your outstanding ranking in important courses in your statement of purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is it good to say I took &quot;Quantum physics&quot; in the second year and my rank was 1st out of 100 students? Or to mention a list of courses where my rank was 1st or 2nd among many students in the university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am asking is because your transcript does not give the complete story of how well you were doing in your courses. You might get an A, but so did 20 other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20608" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T04:07:22.460" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T04:55:18.613" Title="Should you mention your ranking in specific courses in statement of purpose?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;statement-of-purpose&gt;&lt;ranking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T23:27:15.740" Score="9" ViewCount="3845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will graduate in 6-8 months with a PhD in physics and am looking to contact potential postdoc advisers. I will be applying to positions without an advertisement or prior contact with the potential advisers. I have been told by my current PhD adviser that if I wait until I just a few months before graduation, he will make the initial contact for me. I am conflicted because I understand many postdoc positions are planned and filled up to a year in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to lose out on these positions, so I first want to make informal contact on my own. However, I don't want to jeopardize my chances of getting a position by sending out a poorly received informal email. I'm wondering specifically how informal emails are typically perceived in these situations. Are they liable to be perceived negatively by those professors expecting a more formal process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22105" LastEditorUserId="22105" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T19:51:59.177" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T19:47:43.923" Title="Are informal inquiries about postdoctoral positions liable to be perceived negatively?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28675" CreationDate="2014-09-22T00:27:48.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think many people write their own lecture notes because they want to present the subject as it is living in their own mind, not as someone else presents it.  You can really only ever try to convey your own perspective, and even in mathematics, this can be significantly different from anyone else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a very small example, if you look at most linear algebra texts at how the formula for multiplying matrices is presented, you will find one of two tactics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is just a definition, and you had better get used to it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Matrix multiplication is defined the way it is so it corresponds to composition of linear functions.  The proof of this is a computation which may involve a few too many summation signs for beginning students to follow fully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own perspective on the issue is the following:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  I introduce matrices as record keeping devices for linear maps:  the columns tell you where the basis vectors go&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.  I spend time thinking about covectors, (i.e. a matrix which is just a row), and how applying a row vector to a vector is the same as taking a dot product with the transpose of the covector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c.  Realize that for a matrix M, M_{ij} = e_j^\top M e_i, since by definition Me_i is the i^{th} row, and e_j^\top of a vector just selects the j^{th} column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d.  So to find the (AB)_{ij} we just need to compute e_j^\top AB e_i =  (e_j^\top A)(B e_i), which is the j^{th} row of A dotted with the i^{th} column of B.  This is the standard formula, but it has been &quot;chunked&quot; in such a way that it makes it understandable (at least to me!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sequence a - d really represents thinking about a matrix as representing a bilinear form, and it is through this lens that the formula for matrix multiplication makes the most sense to me.  You do not have to mention this to the students at this stage to make the sequence a-d understandable and memorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that this kind of thing occurs constantly.  When I read a textbook, I usually find that I have no idea what is going on, and I have to develop some sort of narrative structure which makes sense of it.  This becomes my understanding of the material.  If I am teaching something, I must teach my perspective.  So I often end up writing lecture notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12612" LastEditorUserId="9488" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T00:40:06.357" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T00:40:06.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28840" CreationDate="2014-09-22T01:01:11.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask, then trust but verify.  There are schools, including mine, that assume you've &quot;dropped out&quot; if you fail to register for a relatively small number of consecutive terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are two considerations.  The program has to be willing to let you take the time off &lt;em&gt;and also&lt;/em&gt; you have to fulfill the policies of the institution with regard to consecutive terms in residence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get it all in writing.  (For the latter consideration, it's probably in the catalog.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T01:01:11.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28840" CreationDate="2014-09-22T01:21:27.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;em&gt;should you&lt;/em&gt; that Moriarty stated, what is the likelihood that you'll return should you take the year off? If this great opportunity that you are talking extends into the next school year, your chances of returning to school diminish greatly. It is likely that more, and perhaps better opportunities will await you once you complete your degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question to ask is does this experience with this opportunity outweigh the benefits of your master's degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem like an inviting opportunity now, but ask yourself if it is risking your education over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21972" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T01:21:27.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T01:45:54.463" Score="11" ViewCount="2059" Body="&lt;p&gt;[See title.] It seems ok, but one might consider it unfair in some sense? I just wanted to make sure this is acceptable. (I am specifically talking about graduate school applications.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I apologize for previously withholding some information. Here are some more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am majoring in math and will have two letters from math professors at my undergrad institution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also have a letter from a professor in a different department (&quot;probability/statistics&quot;) in the same institution and am applying to this department's graduate program.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6737" LastEditorUserId="6737" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T13:57:20.493" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T21:24:16.050" Title="Is it ok for one of your letters of recommendation to come from someone in the department/program to which you are applying?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28854" CreationDate="2014-09-22T02:22:42.920" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is fine.  On the whole, a letter from someone in the department is better than a random one, in that the writer is well-known to the people on the committee.  So, certainly this isn't something you should go to trouble to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: It seems from comments that the OP is applying to their own undergraduate institution.  That's it's own can of worms (many schools heavily discourage this, for good reasons, I think), but I think there's no question that you must get at least one letter from the institution you attended as an undergraduate.  It would look really problematic if you didn't (committees would assume no one there would write you a good recommendation, and thus wonder what you did to ruin your reputation).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Just to comment further, given that the OP &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; left out that they are changing to a different department from their undergraduate degree.  In that case, having a letter from someone in the department is a big help.  I don't think the jump from math to statistics is so big, but generally it's very good to have letters from someone who knows the program and what it takes to succeed in it well, which is always tricky when shifting between fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T21:24:16.050" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T21:24:16.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28854" CreationDate="2014-09-22T02:47:35.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, although there are some caveats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best letters come from people who know you for an extended period of time under a variety of circumstances that would reflect the entirety of the qualifications you'd need in graduate school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presuming that you weren't an undergraduate at that university, then how well would the letter writer know you? One scenario would be that the letter writer  had been a faculty member at your previous college and who had transferred to the new one. In this case, they could make a strong argument for why you would be a good candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the letter writer simply knew you from a summer program or other short relationship, then their letter would not be as strong as someone who knew you for four years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;: The OP clarified that he is applying to the same institution that he graduated from as an undergraduate. In this instance, I agree with Ben Webster that it is critical that at least one of his letters should be from a faculty member at that institution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T13:48:51.493" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T13:48:51.493" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28859" CreationDate="2014-09-22T05:34:36.980" Score="47" ViewCount="12080" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my master thesis last year and recently I found out that a group of four faculty members in my department, including my thesis advisor, have published an ACM paper based on that. (A publish subscribe system based on SDN) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be honest. The problem statement was put forward by the faculty. The implementation (design of algorithms and coding) was completely done by me in my thesis. Then they further extended it to a distributed SDN controller environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper, an entire section is devoted to the algorithms and implementation. Where they have almost ripped off from my thesis. The sentence structures have been changed and some beautification done to the algorithms to make it look concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have not been given any acknowledgement or citation. Anyone who'll read that paper will have an impression that the authors were the only brains behind the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The university holds the copyright of my thesis. So I am not sure if this qualifies for plagiarism. But certainly, I feel it is not fair to brush someone's contribution under the carpet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do about it ? Or am I mistaken and they have every right to do how they feel as I am no longer a student there and the copyright is with them ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22111" LastEditorUserId="22118" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T08:53:55.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T18:10:00.990" Title="Is it plagiarism for my thesis advisor to publish a paper using content from my thesis without citation?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;plagiarism&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T05:43:58.270" Score="8" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;In majority of universities around the world, the PhD examining committee should meet and allow PhD student to defend his/her thesis. Based on the thesis content and student performance in the viva, the committee decides whether to grant PhD to the candidate or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most of the cases that I have seen, there are 4 types of decisions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept as it is (Distinction in some universities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept with Minor Revisions (without re-examination of thesis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept with Major Revisions (without re-examination of thesis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major Revisions with re-examination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reject (No PhD; some universities grant MSc instead of PhD if the work is fine but its contribution is small).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now my questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do employers ask for PhD examination Committee decision report at the time of application/interview?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considering the PhD requirement by almost all universities for the professorship positions, how the decision by the committee members impacts employment. My main concern is about the first three decisions of &quot;accept.&quot; Can a PhD graduate who has &quot;accept with major revision&quot; never gets job in good places&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T22:17:24.740" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T22:17:24.740" Title="How does the PhD thesis examination result impact academic job success?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;thesis-committee&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T05:57:52.240" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the department holds the copyright to your thesis is irrelevant. Using someone else's ideas without appropriate attribution is plagiarism, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your advisor used &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; original, non-trivial scientific ideas (or your non-trivial description of those ideas) in his paper without attributing them to you, then he has committed misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be questionable is whether or not your original intellectual ideas were actually used in the paper. &lt;strong&gt;What you describe definitely sounds pretty damning&lt;/strong&gt;, and the more information you add, the worse it sounds; but as strangers on the Internet, we don't have the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Given that the idea for the thesis was the advisor's, and the paper describes a non-trivial extension, it's possible (though perhaps not likely, depending on the scope of the work) that your advisor was working on the extended version himself independently of your thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also possible that he considers your work to be a straightforward implementation of his idea, and not an intellectual contribution - that is, he believes you were doing the work of a staff programmer, not a scientist or engineer. In which case, an acknowledgement would probably have been appropriate, but it's not necessarily plagiarism to omit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree to which your work constitutes an intellectual contribution to your advisor's paper is impossible for strangers on the Internet to judge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you email your former thesis advisor, tell him you've seen the paper, and ask (in a non-confrontational way) how it relates to your thesis work. Then decide how to proceed from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that pursuing the matter beyond that (i.e. formally accusing him of plagiarism) may involve some serious negative consequences for you, so consider this carefully before proceeding. The morally just course of action may or may not actually be in your best interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T06:28:40.927" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T06:28:40.927" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T05:58:59.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many possible explanations. It might be that they considered the algorithm to be easy to find and that they just didn't think of citing you.  On the other hand, if they were quite surprised by your algorithm, it's surprising that they would neglect to mention your contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I would try asking them, in a friendly way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T05:58:59.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T06:01:45.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The plagiarism in any type would be discouraged and you can claim that plagiarism. The journal will investigate it and will find if it is plagiarism or not.&#xA;The theses is not the property of your supervisor as it's your effort and you may publish with or without your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IEEE Introduction to the Guidelines for Handling Plagiarism&#xA;  Complaints. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2014, from&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/plagiarism.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/plagiarism.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22112" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T06:49:10.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T06:49:10.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28866" CreationDate="2014-09-22T06:19:10.380" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you know any way to get the complete proceedings for ACM conferences? I know that I can go to the ACM digital library and see the table of contents for a conference and then get the pdf for individual papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there a way to get the whole proceedings for a conference in a single pdf?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14408" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T06:29:37.757" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T07:10:55.760" Title="Is there a way to get the complete proceedings for an ACM conference?" Tags="&lt;acm&gt;&lt;digital-libraries&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T06:38:20.173" Score="4" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I have been living in Pakistan for the past 6 years (completed my Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from here), I find myself not eligible for most academic scholarships in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For international students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should not be a British Citizen  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For British students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should have been nominally residing in the UK to be eligible for the scholarship or even for standard UK/EU student fees&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am at the worst of both ends! What do I do?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an opportunity preferably in the UK but would be willing to go elsewhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22113" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T22:31:31.210" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T22:31:31.210" Title="What are the masters funded opportunities for a British citizen living abroad?" Tags="&lt;masters&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T06:44:39.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the whole story in detail, I would just say that if you contributed &lt;em&gt;significantly&lt;/em&gt; to the work that has been published then you should be a co-author. If you are not, this may count as plagiarism (look at misleading attribution at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/reports/decoding-plagiarism-and-attribution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iThenticate&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be wise, however, to contact them to subtly enquire about the issue before throwing any accusations. Throwing false accusations can be more harmful to your future career than losing credit for some work you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T07:19:39.947" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T07:19:39.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2014-09-22T06:59:06.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen the decision asked for in job applications. I don't know whether it is something that could reasonably be asked for (that might depend on what country you are in, or what subject). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I suspect there might be more of an indirect effect. Minor revisions I would expect to be pretty much the same as no revisions, but a request of major revisions might indicate that the thesis isn't so good, which could correlate with chances in job applications. On the other hand, it may well be that the meaning of 'major revisions' varies considerably by university, so no meaningful comparison could be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20036" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T06:59:06.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28862" CreationDate="2014-09-22T07:10:55.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, NO. In the ACM conferences I have attended, I got one USB stick that has a single html file (page) that links to the individual PDFs of the papers of the conference. It is not like a conference with Springer proceedings, that provides a single PDF with the entire proceedings grouped together as a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as far as I know, there is not a official book-PDF with the entire conference papers for an ACM conference. I do not know if this applies to all ACM conferences, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T07:10:55.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28819" CreationDate="2014-09-22T08:32:05.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two such programs are MOSS and JPlag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moss (for a Measure Of Software Similarity) is an automatic system for determining the similarity of programs. To date, the main application of Moss has been in detecting plagiarism in programming classes. Since its development in 1994, Moss has been very effective in this role. The algorithm behind moss is a significant improvement over other cheating detection algorithms (at least, over those known to us).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jplag.ipd.kit.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jplag.ipd.kit.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JPlag is a system that finds similarities among multiple sets of source code files. This way it can detect software plagiarism. JPlag does not merely compare bytes of text, but is aware of programming language syntax and program structure and hence is robust against many kinds of attempts to disguise similarities between plagiarized files. JPlag currently supports Java, C#, C, C++, Scheme and natural language text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools similar to these (not sure exactly which) were used at both the schools I've been to. Students were caught and penalized even after they had renamed variables and changed order of functions in the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22116" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T08:32:05.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28880" CreationDate="2014-09-22T08:38:43.913" Score="13" ViewCount="3931" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a graph of points from a set of experiments,&#xA;that I want to present on a slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important information in the graph is both the values of the points,&#xA;and more significantly, that the green points are above the blue points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9geYe.png&quot; alt=&quot;scatter&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quick and easy to get my plotting framework (matplotlib)&#xA;to connect each point to the next:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/s6sbL.png&quot; alt=&quot;connected scatter&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be fairly clear to anyone that the relationship between points is not expected to be linear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I could want to put the line in to make it clear that one is below the other. It can be hard to see the point markers on the projector screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a good idea?&#xA;Does showing plots this way enhance the visibility of the them for presenting, or does the fact the that lines themselves are fairly meaningless distract too much?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Audience  concerns:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole presentation is for graduating engineering students and must be simple. While they would normally have the capacity to deal with complicated plots, the content of the presentation is complicated enough that I don’t want to distract them with anything that might waste thought time. I have already rejected the box-and-whiskers plot as too complicated; this is a plot of the mean values of that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T08:08:34.077" Title="Is it a good idea to connect data points on a plot to increase readability in slides?" Tags="&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;graphics&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;slides&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28800" CreationDate="2014-09-22T08:39:20.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this is not possible, at least not with IEEE Xplore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, they explicitly disallow this. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp&lt;/a&gt; (Point 4 of the &quot;Do Not&quot;s for Institutional Subscribers). So it is not surprising that there is no technical support for doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an individual former subscriber of &quot;IEEE Security &amp;amp; Privacy&quot;, they may have granted you that right. Interestingly, under the &quot;Do Not&quot;s for IEEE Member access to IEEE Xplore, the point about downloading whole issues is missing. So that may be part of the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T08:39:20.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-22T08:47:34.487" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drawing the lines implies a continuous relationship between the parameters. So if you can expect continuity, then connecting the points is fine. A second point to make is to avoid colours that are as similar as the green and blue you have chosen. One reason the difference is hard to see in the first scatter plot is due to colour. Try to experiment with colours that contrast better and your problem may be solved by just altering colours for one or both of the data sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T08:47:34.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T08:59:22.413" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;What college did you go to? Your thesis was done at a University/College under the instruction of your School. They have a clause in all Universities in England which states that any ideas you come up with/Develop at University belongs to the university itself. This is how the vast majority of Uni's make money by selling patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the University will publish ideas/sell patents with the student in partnership. However if its for a small publication (Which no money is received its for the good of the general public) then there is no need to notify the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up the clauses of your university faculty before making wild allegations of Plagiarism. Having done a Masters you should know to carry out research before coming to a conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind Regards &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22119" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T08:59:22.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28877" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:06:24.980" Score="14" ViewCount="4580" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about inquiring regarding paper status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had submitted a paper, and recently I just discovered that the manuscript tracking system shows that the editorial committee has received the referee's report. But, this status has remained for over a week and I still have not heard from the editor handling my paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I then email the editor as a reminder? Would this act instead be taken as urging? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T09:10:31.550" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T16:06:29.350" Title="Is it bad to ask the editor about the status of a submission on seeing that referees' reports were submitted a week ago?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;paper-submission&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:16:13.133" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is absolutely no need to send a reminder after one week. The editor might be busy or on vacation or whatever or, maybe, he is deciding that he needs further reviews to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T09:16:13.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:16:32.777" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;A week is not a long time for an editor to take a decision. He might need to go through the paper in more detail than previously, in order to check on the reviewers' criticism. It might even be that the reviewers have diverging opinions or brought up some points that need further clarification, so that the editor needs to seek further advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the overall time since the paper has been submitted is still reasonable, I wouldn't inquire at all for the moment. If the paper has also been under review for a long time already, it may be reasonable to wait for another week or two and then inquire about the status of the submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An inquiry might be perceived as urging by the editor if he has the feeling that everything is in time with the paper. If the paper has been in review relatively long and you make a general inquiry, it shouldn't leave any bad feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In professionally managed journals, the professional editorial staff would take care of such inquiries without involving the scientific editor at all, so you don't need to really worry in these cases. Just make sure to address the contact point where you got the submission receipt from, and not the editor from the general journal information page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T14:06:28.310" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T14:06:28.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:29:12.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When thinking about contacting an editor you need to consider the costs and benefits. In all but the most extreme circumstances (where the editor has completely lost track of your submission), the the editor is not going to be happy about a request for a status update. Responding to status update requests are in general not a huge deal, but they essentially are saying &quot;you are behind and my time is more important than yours&quot;. In terms of the benefit, a few more days delay until publication usually has little cost (accept the anxiety knowing a decision is coming). In rare circumstances, a few days can matter a lot. For example, a resubmission where there is a high likelihood that it will be accepted and therefore &quot;in press&quot; and you have a grant deadline (or job application) in the next few days, would have a potentially large payoff. Similarly, a submission that has been stuck in the same state for too long (whatever that means), and there is real worry that the manuscript has gotten lost. It is not unheard of for electronic systems to have bugs or editors to leave or get sick. I would say a week in the final decision stage does not qualify as anywhere near &quot;too long&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T09:29:12.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17739" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:45:34.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, teachers (including both professors and TAs) should absolutely intervene in such an instance.  As everyone else has said, non-discrimination policies would most likely prohibit such offensive misogynistic expression in a &lt;em&gt;classroom&lt;/em&gt; environment, and these are policies with which I would recommend all teachers familiarize themselves before they enter the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me mention one more reason that you should not just overlook such an incident: &lt;strong&gt;to prevent such things from happening in the future.&lt;/strong&gt; Not all students are completely familiar with what constitutes improper behavior in a classroom.  If nobody does anything, what's to stop that student from doing the same thing again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a related story from my own experience.  One time, when I was a TA for an engineering calculus course, I got an in-class group assignment back from a pair of students, where one student circled the other student's name and wrote &quot;is gay&quot; as a joke. Being gay myself, &lt;em&gt;I was pissed.&lt;/em&gt; (I had also hoped that the idea that &quot;gay&quot; could be used an insult had gone out of acceptance by that time, in 2012. Guess not.) At the time, I didn't know who did it; it could've been someone outside the pair, but it certainly wasn't the student whose name was circled due to the handwriting being different.  I also didn't want to falsely accuse anyone, or put anyone on the spot.  I didn't quite frankly care who did it; I just wanted to make sure my students knew that this behavior was unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the next class, I read the university non-discrimination policy to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; my classes and I told them what had happened, without naming anyone (or the class it happened in).  I said that I didn't care what anyone said or did in their free time, but in my class, I wouldn't stand for people doing things like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first class, I couldn't hide my tension or my anger when I was saying all of this.  The second class, which was the one with these two students, I did the same thing, but I was much calmer because I had already done this with the first class.  The two students ended up apologizing to me when I handed back the paper, and I (calmly) said that I wasn't accusing anyone of doing anything, but I just needed to make sure that everyone understood that this wasn't acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospect, the only thing I would have done differently in my case is &lt;em&gt;practice my speech beforehand&lt;/em&gt; so I could convey the seriousness of what I was saying without the tension and anger I had during the first class.  (Some people don't react as well to tension and anger.)  That aside, I did feel good affirming for my students, some of whom were likely LGBT themselves, that my classroom was not a place where I would accept any such inappropriate or discriminatory behavior.  And finally, &lt;em&gt;I made it way less likely for anything similar to happen in the future on my watch&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your case is different, because it involves quite the open display of inappropriateness. In your particular case, I would walk up to the student and tell this person that wearing such a shirt in the class is inappropriate and goes against school policies, and that he needs to leave and change into something else before he returns to your class.  The students who are concerned about the shirt will most likely notice your action and feel relieved that you are addressing it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so sure that you should call him out from the front of the classroom, although you certainly have the right to do so.  The student might find it humiliating to be called out in front of the entire class (especially in a large lecture), and moreover it's a little impersonal.  (Although I addressed my situation with the entire class, keep in mind that I didn't know who had done what and I didn't name anyone.  Also, if you just read the non-discrimination policy out loud in your case, it will be pretty obvious to everyone who you're addressing.)  I think the best outcome would be with a private or semi-private, direct conversation as I suggested above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're intimidated and worried about possible physical violence, then you could opt to ask this person to leave in a semi-private manner but &lt;em&gt;with a reasonable physical distance between the two of you, while many other students are around&lt;/em&gt;.  This allows for witnesses in case anything goes awry.  (This does seem like an unlikely scenario, but your safety is paramount.)  If this option is not safe enough to you, then as Pete L. Clark has suggested, you should call campus security and wait until they arrive before starting your class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21251" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T09:45:34.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-22T09:53:02.720" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once reviewers reports have been returned, the editor has to assess the reviews in light of the paper and provide the author with indications on how to proceed. Exactly how this come through will differ between fields and editors. The main point, however, is that a certain amount of work is usually needed to process the reviews before passing the manuscript with comments back to the author. Since editors also handle, sometimes, quite large volumes of papers in parallel, your manuscript will be placed in a queue and the editor will likely take each manuscript in order. In addition, many, if not most, editors do their editing in parallel to ordinary faculty jobs which may at times further limit their available time. It is thus reasonable that this process may take several weeks. In &quot;my&quot; journal we as editors have three weeks for this process before being reminded by the electronic submission system that the manuscript is &quot;due&quot;. We often make this deadline, but not always depending n workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one week is definitely too short a time to expect a response. Three weeks seems to be reasonable in my field but I would maybe allow even additional time to pass. It is probably good to talk to your peers who may have experience with the particular journal and also your field to get feedback on what is considered reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added to clarify a comment: it is never &quot;bad&quot; to contact anyone, but it is only fair to allow a a &quot;reasonable&quot; (in the sense of the field and specific journal) amount of time to pass since the early contact will not likely yield anything productive. What, on the other hand, is bad is rather the attitude with which some contacts are made. Insights into appropriate time frames will help to keep communications as fruitful as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T11:05:45.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T11:05:45.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T10:44:22.193" Score="3" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know is there any format or things have to be aware when writing a support letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letter is to support the application of a student to an award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22126" LastEditorUserId="22126" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T10:50:56.027" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T16:37:24.160" Title="What should be included in a support letter?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-22T10:53:15.880" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you want to compare your data sets &lt;em&gt;qualitatively&lt;/em&gt;, that is make clear which is &quot;better&quot;. Since they seem to follow similar functions and are close together, &lt;em&gt;normalisation&lt;/em&gt; can be a good tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for instance, this plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/154hH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how the defaults of Mathematica 10 end up creating a far clearer plot.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing both functions are basically 1/√n you can multiply the value by, say, n:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hv6Mz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the &quot;winner&quot; is more clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar effects can be achieved by (other) axis transformations, cut-offs, zooms, etc. You have to be transparent about what transformations you apply, though, because you can easily end up with a plot that says &quot;A is thrice as good as B!&quot; even though the real difference was miniscule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T10:53:15.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-22T11:18:39.917" Score="12" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Concerning the general question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is acceptable to connect points, even if only discrete data points exist in theory and there is no continuum. If there is reason to expect that somebody misinterpretes your visualisation due to this or if you can expect the audience to be picky about this, add the sentence (on the slide or spoken):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lines are for eye guidance only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Concerning your special diagram&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As already remarked, the colours are not well chosen (and will probably look even worse when projected). I recommend to use colours with a strong contrast, for example a white or almost white background and for the data 1) black or almost black, 2) pure red. (Be careful about pure green though, since most projectors will screw it up – dark green is better.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on how important you consider certain things:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a logarithmic scale (or similar) for the abscissa (&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;-axis). This way points do not cluster that much for small &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; and will be easier to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a logarithmic scale for the ordinate (&lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;-axis). This way, the exponential relationship you mentioned becomes apparent immediately. However, the points for small &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; will get even closer to each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T11:18:39.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28878" CreationDate="2014-09-22T11:40:24.450" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you work with them, write about how good they were in the office, how they did work and how it helped the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22125" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T11:40:24.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T11:48:05.587" Score="2" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a question asking how to write recommendation letters and I wonder why this is so important? Why are recommendation letters crucial for scholarship applications for studying in Masters or research ? They should be more interested in the student willing to work hard and be loyal to the studies, not cheat, or plagarise or use unfair means to win. What will a recommendation do instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22125" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T19:22:09.223" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T17:48:26.647" Title="Why are recommendation letters crucial for scholarships or graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17368" CreationDate="2014-09-22T12:04:15.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can use any CC license with such a publishing agreement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 4 allows you to post the article to preprint servers. This covers the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-exclusive distribution license&lt;/a&gt; that Mangara mentioned in a comment: You permit arxiv.org to reproduce the article on their website. Importantly, you don't grant any rights to anybody else with this license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put your article under a CC license, you would grant &lt;strong&gt;anybody&lt;/strong&gt; the right to reproduce it (under conditions depending on the exact type of the license). Whether it is published on arxiv.org or not doesn't really matter here – arxiv.org will just be one of the potentially many users of this license. Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/license&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arxiv help page&lt;/a&gt;, this is hidden behind the specific wording they use. For the non-exclusive distribution license:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which makes it clear that you are giving permission to arxiv.org and &lt;em&gt;not anybody else&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the CC license, they say instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;certify that the work is available under either the Creative Commons Attribution license, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that is, you don't give a license to arxiv.org specifically, but to the general public, and arxiv.org is just going to make use of that general license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your publishing agreement allows you to issue a CC license, even the noncommercial one. The publisher does not allow you to grant a license to anybody, just specifically to &quot;free-access e-print servers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3890" LastEditorUserId="3890" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T13:59:41.447" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T13:59:41.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28878" CreationDate="2014-09-22T12:57:20.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great letter of support for a student will include the standard elements of a recommendation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your relation to the student (lecturer, lab supervisor, academic mentor, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student's significant contributions to the school, the community, and the specific program.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The student's academic excellence&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other important factors. (Why are you being asked for this letter of support? What do you know about this student that supports their suitability for this award?) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of these, be specific. Don't just say &quot;X is an excellent student&quot;. Say &quot;X is an excellent student, as evidenced by their insightful participation in class, their strong paper (won an award at [student conference in field]), and their continued dedication to learning. I was impressed most by x, y and z.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T16:37:24.160" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T16:37:24.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29763" CreationDate="2014-09-22T12:57:53.983" Score="15" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am nearly finished with my master's degree. Recently, I enrolled in a required course that is a terrible mess. I'd like to wait another year, and take it again with an instructor who has their stuff together and will actually answer student questions and prepare lessons that match the exams. Delaying graduation seems preferable to wasting more time on this course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some classmates gave the teacher what I believe are reasonable suggestions, but the instructor just gave excuses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I looked all through the course catalog, but only see policies that assume students are the problem-makers. For instance, after one week into the term, students get no tuition refunds and a &quot;W&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd rather not create problems for the instructor, who is new to this job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any steps I can take to clear myself of this mess?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T11:23:38.520" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T16:13:19.307" Title="What should I do if I've enrolled in a badly organized course?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2014-09-22T13:36:36.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you should discuss the matter with a trusted colleague or two to check that they agree with you.  This is a heavy accusation and before doing anything you should check that you haven't missed anything and that there aren't other plausible explanations.  You may very well be right, but it's also easy for one person to make an error without outside feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T13:36:36.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T13:42:40.263" Score="28" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the debate of whether science should move to an Open Access / CC-license scheme, or remain with a more traditional scheme where the authors transfer copyright to the publisher, one argument that gets made relatively often is that the latter provides a better defence against copyright breaches. I would like to know how much this argument actually works in favour of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good example of this argument is made in the position paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stm-assoc.org/2007_10_01_Copyright_Assignment_Benefits.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publishers seek copyright transfers (or transfers or licenses of exclusive rights) to ensure proper administration &amp;amp; enforcement of author rights&lt;/a&gt;, by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stm-assoc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;STM Association&lt;/a&gt;, which states among other points that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, publishers in the field of science, technology and medicine (STM) prefer assignments over licences, mainly because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;authors are rarely in a position to defend themselves against infringers, plagiarists, pirates and free-riders, partly due to financial considerations; [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, an assignment enables the publisher: [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to react more rapidly to copyright infringements, unauthorised derivatives and plagiarism;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This position is endorsed, for example, by the IOP, in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://cms.iopscience.org/c3f1a434-8d66-11e2-bd23-e50acbc9fd86/copyright-works.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Introduction to Copyright&lt;/a&gt; leaflet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this argument only works in as much as the interests of the publisher and the author are aligned, which is not necessarily the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For one, it may be in the publisher's interest to stop copyright violations agreed to, or initiated, by the author, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/posting-your-latest-article-you-might-have-to-take-it-down/48865&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Elsevier takedown notices to academia.edu last december&lt;/a&gt;. (Note, though, that I am not claiming these are wrong or that it is right for authors to violate agreements they have signed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if a copyright violation occurs and the author objects to it, it may or may not be a good business case for the publisher to take legal action against it, and the sort of outcomes that will be acceptable to the publisher may not be in line with what the author needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with bad-faith copyright violations is definitely a problem and Open Access is not ideally equipped to deal with them. (That is: if someone brazenly republishes in violation of a CC license (i.e. lack of attribution, unendorsed+unlabelled modifications, commercial use of a CC-BY-NC article, or such), how can the author sue?) However, it's not clear to me that the alternative does work in the interest of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: do any scientific publishers have stated policies about their actions in the case of copyright violations, or stated commitments to authors regarding this? It would seem a fair counterpart of the publishing contract, where the author hands over the rights of the text in return for a commitment to disseminate and defend it, but this is not usually how the scientific publishing business works in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, I would be interested in evidence, either public, statistical or anecdotal, about publishers' behaviour in such cases, though I know these are not easy to come by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T13:33:08.430" Title="Do any scientific publishers have a stated commitment to authors regarding copyright infringement?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;open-access&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17368" CreationDate="2014-09-22T14:26:47.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;CC licences are incompatible with arbitrary restrictions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 2. of the copyright transfer agreement that you cite allows you &quot;... to give permission to third parties to republish [...] provided the APS-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not republished in another journal, and the third party does not charge a fee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offering the content under a CC licence means that you're giving permission to third parties to republish that content, period. Even if they would republish it in another journal or charge a fee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't give those permissions according to the APS agreement; and you can't require those restrictions under a CC licence; so that doesn't work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T14:26:47.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T14:36:36.167" Score="3" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;A TA normally has a hourly contract for working with a professor. Who pays for this contract? The professor's external funding is for research, not education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the department pays for that, how the budget is distributed among professors, as every professor (almost any) would appreciate having TA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T19:21:11.763" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:55:41.267" Title="Who pays for TAs?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28892" CreationDate="2014-09-22T14:48:13.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the schools with which I am familiar,the &lt;em&gt;department&lt;/em&gt; pays for all teaching activities, including Teaching Assistants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="440" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T18:34:00.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T18:34:00.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28892" CreationDate="2014-09-22T14:50:34.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question makes assumptions that are not necessarily valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the US (where I studied), the contracts for TA's are normally paid for at the departmental level. The department gets a budget from the university to cover a certain amount of TA's, which it allocates to the different courses taught in the department, usually based on the expected enrollment. Courses that have traditionally enrolled more students (usually intro classes) as well as lab courses tend to have more TA's than smaller, more specialized courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, in Germany, the expectation is that the individual professors' research groups are responsible for providing the funding for teaching assistants. In part, this is done through the contribution of faculty-wide teaching resources, as well as having permanent positions called &lt;em&gt;Planstelle&lt;/em&gt; which have teaching duties associated with them. So the money in large part still comes from the faculty, but the organization process is at the scale of an individual group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T14:50:34.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28884" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:05:56.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to present the use of letters of recommendation as being orthogonal to the goals of selecting hard-working and dedicated students. &lt;strong&gt;This is simply a false assumption.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of letters of recommendation is to ensure the person making the selections that they are choosing qualified candidates who will satisfy the needs of the program. Anybody can claim to be hard-working, but how do you know this is &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; the case? If you have several people, well-versed in the needs of research or advanced study in a given topic, telling you that candidate X has all the prerequisites and character traits needed to ensure success, you're a lot more likely to believe it than just to take someone's word about himself or herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T15:05:56.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29927" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:16:04.940" Score="3" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to apply for studying abroad (writing my M.Sc. thesis) I need to write a research plan. However, I only know the approximate research field, e.g. &quot;program analysis for concurrent software&quot;, but I was not assigned an actual topic or specific goal yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How am I supposed to write a research plan without knowing any more details? I'm completely inexperienced regarding such paperwork (never had to do it before), therefore I relied on templates and guides I found on the internet, but they all assume you already know a specific goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I supposed to write in this case? Is there some outline I can use as an orientation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22141" LastEditorUserId="22141" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T15:44:05.770" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T00:32:12.947" Title="Research plan without a specific goal?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:56:48.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take enough time to find most (~80%) of the important strengths and weaknesses of the paper and to describe and explain the weaknesses thoroughly and clearly &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; if you encounter one particular non-core aspect or section of the paper that would take excessively long to do this, just skip it and be frank: &lt;em&gt;&quot;I have not reviewed ((aspect X)) thoroughly, because my expertise in this area is too shallow.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the editor is worth her salt, this will actually &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; her confidence in the rest of your review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of your reviews should be careful but none of them need to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22144" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T15:56:48.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28922" CreationDate="2014-09-22T18:08:03.523" Score="5" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelors degree in Computer Science &amp;amp; Engineering and have specific experience in geographic information systems (GIS). I am planning to enroll in a GIS PhD program and have searched for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/geographic-information-systems/doctorate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;United States universities with GIS PhD programs&lt;/a&gt;. However, none of these PhD programs are offered from a Computer Science department: all programs are in either a Geography department or Civil Engineering department or Earth Science department. Should I apply to these other departments even though I come from a Computer Science background? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can a student complete his PhD program in a university department other then the department of his undergraduate work?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8533" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T16:23:46.533" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T10:51:33.977" Title="PhD in GIS after Bachelor Degree in Computer Science" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-22T19:47:02.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grids are an obsolete fossil that should no longer be used. Back in the days, they helped to make the plots, and also made easier to manually retrieve the data from the graph. Nowadays, it is no longer necessary, as tables with the data are available elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if and when they are necessary, they should be as little intrusive as possible. Your grey-blue background is just too heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0K80f.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iy6d5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that is out of the way, you can try a log scale for the x axis, as many points are accumulated near 0:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hS3OR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think here is pretty clear that blue is always greater than green. Whether adding a line or not is good, is a matter of taste:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V6IZH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, and as a general rule, I would say that the lines are acceptable as long as the &quot;wiggling&quot; is due to the actual shape of the function, and not due to noise. That is, when adding more points (taking more measurements) will not change significantly the shape of said curve (or we don't expect it to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T19:47:02.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28577" CreationDate="2014-09-22T20:17:27.800" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never found a pre-submission inquiry to be useful, and was always advised against it. The main argument is that it does not increase your chances of acceptance and just adds another hurdle to pass. Additionally, assuming you use a reference manager the difference in formatting between journals is usually minimal (or you can ignore some of the rules on your first submission).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I always submitted to journals that I know and read before, so I knew that the topic is generally appropriate. I would only consider a pre-submission inquiry if I am not sure whether the general topic is appropriate for the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T20:17:27.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T22:29:35.893" Score="7" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied at two different PhD positions at universities X &amp;amp; Y a while back (both in EU, I prefer not to disclose identity for specific reasons, sorry). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got into X and have been here for about 2 months, and I heard from Y a few days ago inviting me to interview with them. Y is more prestigious, and also many of my friends are there. (Note: Both positions had different starting dates, X was more of a start-earliest program, Y is for 2015 admits)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering I am more interested in studying at University of Y, would it be unethical for me to take up the interview with Y, after I am here for 2 months? &#xA;(I am at X as a RA presently)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22160" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T22:55:30.227" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T01:52:12.577" Title="Is it unethical to interview at a more prestigious program while currently enrolled in a PhD somewhere else?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-22T23:03:49.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For display purposes, a smooth curve is the most logical thing to use. There are some nice spline fitting routines that allow you to create a fit that can be constrained to minimize curvature (in the process missing points that don't quite lie on the smooth curve), or you can simply eyeball the data and come up with a reasonable fit (for display - not for analysis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent just a couple of minutes on this, but came up with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/15Sgm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically an overlay of an Excel plot that I created (making the axes invisible) - using a simple 4 parameter model:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/80HWp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the blue and green curves, I found parameters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    blue  green&#xA;A    0.8    0.8&#xA;B    1.0    1.0 &#xA;C    1.0    0.5&#xA;D    .05    .03&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously since you have the raw data and matplotlib, you must know how to do a better fit, but this works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I like to show only as much information as is needed on a plot. If the point is &quot;this is a rapidly decaying curve and green is above blue&quot;, then I would definitely leave off the grid, and maybe even most of the numbers (run the X axis from 0 to 100, with just two labels, and the Y axis from 0 to 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that your data probably doesn't go negative - so I would definitely want to fix that X axis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to further make the point &quot;we measured this data&quot;, then leaving the points on the graph as well as the smooth fit is an OK thing to do. I would consider adding error bars to show that the fit is good - and that the points are bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again - you want to make it so that the information is &quot;only what you need&quot;. My personal preference would be like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FOLZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So fewer ticks on the axes, but do add a legend (I call them &quot;blue&quot; and &quot;green&quot;, but you should use a more meaningful name) and do label the axes - numbers alone are not enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T23:35:30.783" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T23:35:30.783" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-22T23:30:58.387" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to check your university's policies on the faculty/student authorship question: your professor/s may have every right to use your work in this way, which used to be standard academic practice. Standard copyright/intellectual property rules may be waived or not applicable to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22162" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T23:30:58.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28904" CreationDate="2014-09-23T00:06:37.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there are no ethical issues.&lt;/strong&gt; There is nothing unethical neither in keeping it confidential until you are officially admitted at University Y (and I think it's advisable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only not-so-good thing could be that if you built a relationship of trust with your current supervisor (but I suspect you haven't since it hasn't been long), this person might get disappointed to hear you leave. But generally, people understand the argument of higher reputation of the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider however, that University X might not reimburse the tuition you already paid and that you might encounter other administrative inconveniences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T01:52:12.577" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T01:52:12.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-23T00:12:08.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to bring particle physics practice to the table and say &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; connect-the-dots. Nor should you run splines through data. Run &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; fits through the data or nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These rules reflect the understanding in that discipline that individual points can have significant error or uncertainty associated with them, and the reader needs to see the data &lt;em&gt;in toto&lt;/em&gt; without focusing on individual anomalies. If you know the data can't have these issues then relaxing these rules probably doesn't cause a lot of harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use more visually distinguished markers. A combination of shape, fill and color (with as color-blind friendly a palette as you can of course) gives the reader several ways to hook into the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a different plotting (normalized, anomaly from theory, linearization of power-laws, etc). This is what &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28879/440&quot;&gt;Raphael suggested&lt;/a&gt;. Finding these can be a bit of an art.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a well justified theory (or even a good seat of the pants model), draw fit lines: those automatically reflect the whole data set (good!).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some points on the basic drawing of your figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ditch the gray background. It only makes the data harder to read &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; makes Tufte cry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using filled circles for both series is a way to cause maximum visual confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="440" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T12:56:19.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-23T00:17:56.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternate approach to connecting the dots: insert a line between the datasets to illustrate that one set of points is above the line and the other below.  If it is not inappropriate to the data, use a log scale for X to gain some space between the packed points at the left to improve visibility.  Use of higher contrast colors and marker shapes was previously suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22164" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T00:17:56.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28884" CreationDate="2014-09-23T00:37:08.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They should be [more] interested in the student willing to work hard&#xA;  and be loyal to the studies, not cheat, or plagiarize or use unfair&#xA;  means to win.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True enough. But letters of recommendation are the best way to &quot;find out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades and test scores certainly count, but they do not &quot;testify&quot; to a student's ethics or his/her ability to &quot;game&quot; the system. Only human beings know what was really behind someone's record. The way to get that kind of information is to have students submit letters of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What people &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; say is often has important as what people say. In a litigious American society, not everyone will point out someone's negatives. But a letter to the effect of &quot;s/he did okay in my class as far as I remember&quot; is not exactly a ringing endorsement but rather a red flag, especially if that person has a high grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic example of &quot;damning with faint praise&quot; was cited by my father, a retired professor. &quot;If you knew him as well as we do, you would appreciate him as much.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T17:48:26.647" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T17:48:26.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28888" CreationDate="2014-09-23T01:53:51.153" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen cases where the instructor is given a module just two weeks before it starts, has no time to prepare, and might not have the proper background to teach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider that the instructor is doing his/her best with what they have to work with. You might consider talking with the instructor to see what they believe you should be doing in order to succeed in the course. If they say &quot;read the book&quot; then you should read the book and study with little support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all instructor are good and some are good but in a bad situation (that is, a situation not of their own making but rather one forced upon them). Either way, talk with them and find out what you can do to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T01:53:51.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28705" CreationDate="2014-09-23T02:55:42.400" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;absolutely:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;so your coworkers can recreate your work...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;more importantly: because its the right thing to do...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;proprietary typically never opens the hood, so don't let &quot;bad for business&quot; ward you off...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;on that note: if you are worried about shooting yourself in the foot, etc., how do you think the authors of the work that you built yours on feel?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;there are trade secrets, and there's being honest and open: make a judgement call where to stop revealing facts, but don't withhold information because of the unwarranted fear that it'll be bad for business......openness is good for business. and the betterment of all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12412" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T02:55:42.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28705" CreationDate="2014-09-23T03:07:38.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since business is on your mind, before ethics, you should first check whether there are any legal restrictions on the use of the published research, or obligations arising from such use, issues that may depend on the applicable laws of some specific country. For example, it may be the case that you may not need consent to use the research results, since they have been openly published, but you may have some financial obligations if you are to use it for profit (and not necessarily towards only the research team), patent or no patent. So make certain where you stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for ethics: it is rare for businesses to credit researchers. Instead they usually contract them either for royalties or to secure further development, if there is such potential, and not leave it to fall into the hands of competitors. &quot;Credit due&quot; may be one of the currencies in academia, but &quot;money&quot; is the currency that businesses understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contacting and maybe contracting the research team (&lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; doing your legal due diligence first), you may even be able to secure such exclusive use of their results, or some even more efficient version of them. Again, this will depend on the legal framework applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8575" LastEditorUserId="8575" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T03:28:44.703" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T03:28:44.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28857" CreationDate="2014-09-23T04:40:31.653" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing I haven't heard mentioned in this discussion is the fact that, in many universities, accepted theses and dissertations are at least self-published by the university, and are made available in some form to the public.  This would make it citable even if it wasn't actually published in a journal.  This, I should think, would add weight to the claim of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22168" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T04:40:31.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28900" CreationDate="2014-09-23T05:18:21.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Should I apply to these other departments even though I come from a Computer Science background?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! Degree programs vary per institution in scope and means, but the ends are often the same, after completing the program you will have a PhD in GIS. You can use this to your advantage to tailor a degree to your strengths, providing its offered at the institution(s) of your choice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can a student complete his PhD program in a university department&#xA;  other then the department of his undergraduate work?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a student accepted to a GIS PhD program could complete it in a department other than Computer Science, provided the institution attending offered such a degree program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure some schools want certain backgrounds, similar to how most seek out a certain GPA. This will vary for each university you are interested in as each university is unique and offers unique programs and opportunities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open data driven via GIS maps is going to rise in demand astronomically. As well as the rest of the tenets of openness shall; but in your case, I think you are tailored for a gig in open journalism, and you should focus on web development while not pursuing your PhD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn web development with your GIS PhD. Your Computer Science background should make learning web development relatively effortless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a great answer in terms of a definitive answer, but your possibilities are endless: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further resources:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.directionsmag.com/podcasts/the-gis-phd-dilemma/125077&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GIS PHD Dilemma podcast&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gisdoctor.com/site/gis-graduate-programs-ph-d-programs-and-certificate-programs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of gis programs and certifications&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080911115640AAfdJlR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12412" LastEditorUserId="17275" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T17:58:49.200" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T17:58:49.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16770" CreationDate="2014-09-23T05:31:01.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;eventually the web will be internationalized and yes, by all means, no worries...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;unfortunately we still have work to do, so yes, by all means, be yourself...but be wary of compatibility issues: be they server, browser, ua, country-specific, etc., you're more than likely to run into an issue here or there trying to implement a non-english character in your name across the web...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one example: i'm fairly sure that while approved for urls, the double german s in your name is not supported by iso-159, which unfortunately, seems to be the charset flavor of the month...i bet you can't have it in a twitter handle, per se; and even this example is going to widely vary, as each service is going to have its own details, and implementations....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12412" LastEditorUserId="12412" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T13:52:30.897" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T13:52:30.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18357" CreationDate="2014-09-23T05:45:06.017" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recommended way, according to the International System of Units (SI), is to write &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;/s (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/section5-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SI brochure, §5.3&lt;/a&gt;; see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-si-chapter-7-rules-and-style-conventions-expressing-values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this guide, §7.1&lt;/a&gt;). And the SI is the only system of units that should be used to report experimental results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rationale behind this notation is the following: a quantity is the product of a numerical value and a unit, so that the ratio of a quantity (e.g. time) and the corresponding unit (e.g second) is a numerical value (a pure number), which can be used to label axes, tables, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, don't use brackets around the unit, like in &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; [s]&amp;quot;. The reason is that in quantity calculus brackets represent an operator which means &amp;quot;unit of&amp;quot; (not &amp;quot;dimension of&amp;quot;) and should only be used around quantities, not around units. So, for instance, you can write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;] = s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but not [s]. For completeness, I also mention that braces are also used to denote the numerical value of a quantity. So, in &lt;em&gt;L&lt;/em&gt; = 5 m, we have [&lt;em&gt;L&lt;/em&gt;] = m and {&lt;em&gt;L&lt;/em&gt;} = 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those interested in learning more about quantities, units, their typographical conventions, and quantity calculus, here is a list of references with a few notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J C Maxwell, &amp;quot;A treatise on electricity and magnetism&amp;quot;, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Here Maxwell introduces the concept of quantity and the bracket notation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International Vocabulary of Metrology - Basic and general concepts and associated terms VIM, 3rd edition, JCGM 200:2008. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/vim.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This is the official dictionary of metrological terms where it is possible to find definition for terms like quantity, system of quantities, system of units, etc. On p. 13 there is note which explains the bracket/braces notation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I M Mills, &amp;quot;The language of science&amp;quot;, Metrologia 34, pp. 101-109, 1997.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B W Petley, The fundamental physical constants and the frontier of measurement, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1988.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I M Mills, &amp;quot;Physical quantities and units&amp;quot; in Recent advances in metrology and fundamental constants, Proceedings of the International School of Physics E. Fermi, Varenna, 2000. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.it/books?id=WE22Fez60EcC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;pg=PA30#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J de Boer, &amp;quot;On the history of quantity calculus and the International System&amp;quot;, Metrologia 31, pp. 405-429, 1995.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M J ten Hoor, &amp;quot;Quantity calculus for chemists&amp;quot;, Chemistry in action n. 57, 1999. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cerg.ul.ie/Chemistry%20in%20Action/Issue%2057.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M L McGlashan, &amp;quot;Physicochemical quantities and units: The grammar and spelling of physical chemistry&amp;quot;, Royal Institute of Chemistry, London, 1971.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E R Cohen &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, &amp;quot;Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry&amp;quot;, IUPAC Green Book, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, IUPAC &amp;amp; RSC Publishing, Cambridge, 2008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iupac.org/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/e-resources/ONLINE-IUPAC-GB3-2ndPrinting-Online-Sep2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nayuki, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nayuki.io/page/handling-physical-quantities-in-math-formulas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Handling physical quantities in math formulas&lt;/a&gt;. This article is a lively little gem on quantity calculus with lots of practical examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2021-03-28T08:20:57.760" LastActivityDate="2021-03-28T08:20:57.760" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28577" CreationDate="2014-09-23T08:44:15.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know about your field (I'm in Computer Science), but from my recent attempts in submitting, I have found one situation where pre-submission is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by some journals: &lt;strong&gt;submission of a survey or overview article&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors interested in submitting overview articles are &lt;strong&gt;required to consult first with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC)&lt;/strong&gt; of their Transactions of choice before &lt;strong&gt;submitting a white paper proposal&lt;/strong&gt;. White papers are limited to 2-pages and should motivate the topic, justify the proposal, and include a list of relevant bibliography including any available tutorial or overview articles related to the subject matter. (...) White paper proposals should be submitted directly to the EiC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/overview-articles/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Transactions on Image Processing&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals &lt;strong&gt;interested in submitting a survey/tutorial&lt;/strong&gt; article (not part of a Special Issue) &lt;strong&gt;should submit a white paper&lt;/strong&gt; outlining the content of the proposed article &lt;strong&gt;to the Area Editor for Feature Articles&lt;/strong&gt; (refer to the Editorial page) via the Manuscript Central Web submission system. A white paper is usually no more than five (5) pages long&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/periodicals/spm/spm-author-info/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Signal Processing Magazine&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, when we were considering where to submit (and, in which order, in case of rejection) (among 2-3 journals with the appropriate topic) , we &lt;em&gt;opted for the journal pre-submission first&lt;/em&gt;, since, well, in a real review process, the paper can always get rejected. Pre-submission allows a chance of getting some kind of response sooner -- if it is a reject, we can re-submit sooner, and if it is an accept, it is a good sign even tho we know the reviewing is a standalone process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point my supervisors pointed out: &lt;em&gt;even if it is a journal that you read, and you think your submission fits the topic -- the &quot;journal&quot; might not think so, so it is a good thing to check how the EiC and the Editorial Board &quot;breathes&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. my subfield has a hard time getting rid of reputation as using very slow methods, because they were slow in the past but have gotten much more efficient lately, so there is sometimes difficulties publishing in main-stream, general, non-subfield-specific venues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;: while the first part of my answer is dealing with a specific case, I think the second part is applicable generally. Yes, it is possible to get rejected by the reviewers after the EiC accepts your pre-submission, but it is also possible to speed up the process in case of rejection. Ultimately, it is yours and your supervisors decision as which approach is best and most efficient for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T08:44:15.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28900" CreationDate="2014-09-23T09:43:21.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you go to a mainly geographic department, you will have to study courses for projections, spatial databases, geo-servers and mapping frameworks, which you already probably know through your job. Geographic departments have people without a programming background and therefore these people have to be trained almost from scratch, so they can do this type of research. On the other hand, many of these departments have some relatively young professors with a CS background who are really looking forward to work with CS people like you (instead of geographers) to mainly progress their research. In that sense, I am sure you can be accepted at such a program but prepare to have to take courses on things you are already familiar with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are many &quot;pure&quot; CS professors, working on &quot;pure&quot; CS departments, who also do GIS related research. If you look at more CS focused GIS conferences, like ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS you will find many papers by mainly CS people on GIS related subjects. So, you can search for possible advisors there, by looking at the papers that get published in such venues in the last 2-3 years. If you find some papers that deal with subjects that you are interested in, you can find out in what universities the authors work, perhaps contact them (advice on how to approach potential advisors is scattered everywhere on this site) and take it from there. It does not always matter the &quot;title&quot; of the PHD (if it says GIS or not) but IHMO it is more important to work with people that do interesting things, close to your interests. So, do not exclude the possibility to do GIS research on a pure CS department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T09:43:21.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12255" CreationDate="2014-09-23T09:57:11.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lead the semantic technologies and cultural heritage research line at Incipit CSIC (www.incipit.csic.es) in Spain. We are right in the cross between software engineering, philosophy of language and cultural heritage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, we &lt;em&gt;desperately&lt;/em&gt; seek people with a profile like yours. We just had a vacancy for a PhD position and it was (as usually is) extremely difficult to find suitable candidates. When we find them, we treat them with much care and respect, and our aim is to have tenured positions in the future for these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I must admit that this is a quite uncommon situation. Most research institutes in Spainand Europe tend to align their research lines along more conventional paths, and recruit people with more conventional backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess your will need to work hard to find a place that needs people with your hybrid profile. There are few, but you will be gold to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T09:57:11.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28926" CreationDate="2014-09-23T10:56:49.653" Score="3" ViewCount="3288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder can I ask a lecturer who I took his course and I did amazing in his class for a letter of recommendation?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The reason why I am asking is because lecturers are not usually doing research and might be permanent faculty member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20608" LastActivityDate="2020-11-22T16:42:41.080" Title="Can I ask a lecturer for letter of recommendation" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28925" CreationDate="2014-09-23T11:10:13.407" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're applying for a research-based position, it is almost always better to have letters of recommendation from people who know you and can comment on your research skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do not have enough letters of recommendation that can come from such people, then a letter of recommendation from someone who knows your work well and can comment on your strengths and weaknesses is also acceptable—even if it is not a &quot;permanent faculty member.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T11:10:13.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28888" CreationDate="2014-09-23T11:54:27.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warning:&lt;/em&gt; my answer might be out of focus for you because it takes into account only the information on your question, while some of your comments complement that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, some instructor do waste students' time by doing a very poor job; I'll assume this is the case here (but note that sometimes students feel that a course is done very badly but realize later that they learned more than they expected: student need not know better than instructors what they really need).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is basically  what I told to students complaining that their instructor made the course impossible to follow when I was responsible for a 500 students, 20 instructors course (they were not the first to complain about these instructors, and I had other evidence preventing me to blame them for the problem): I know your teacher is not the teacher you would have wanted, but I cannot do anything beside reporting the issue to him, which will certainly not solve the problem instantly. We have the same issue as teachers, having some students that often do not know the prerequisites for the course, are not willing to learn them as we tell, and/or do not believe us when we say that the course needs a fair amount of personal work. &lt;em&gt;Both teachers and students should do their best in the situation they are given,&lt;/em&gt; which means that you can and should try to talk with your teacher to mitigate the issues you have, but at the same time be prepared for the issue not to be solved before the end of term, and find a way to learn what you have to learn. There are books, there are other students with whom to work, etc. If you think it is best, don't waste time with the instructor's course and learn by yourself while keeping in touch with the important information (homework, exam dates, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to state this again in fewer words, it seems much more efficient for you to make your best to master the course content, judging this content from the syllabus and what related books discuss, rather than expecting next year's instructor to be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the expected outcomes of such an attitude should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you learn valuable things and pass the exam, because ultimately it tested what you learned,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you learn valuable things and pass the exam, because your institution realizes that there is an issue and makes it right somehow,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you learn valuable things and fail the exam, which turns out to be indeed impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in the last case, you get more from this attitude than dropping the course altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; this answer was written under the assumption that the class is mandatory, as I (mis-?)understood the question. Of course, for a class that is not needed or that can be switched with another, then these would be options to consider seriously. If the course can be delayed without losing the benefit of the other courses, this would also be an option to consider. So my answer is really about what to do if dropping or failing the course implies one has to take the whole year again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastEditorUserId="946" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T10:36:44.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T10:36:44.233" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2014-09-23T14:11:12.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most faculty know that dissertation defenses can be capricious. A single holdout can ask for unreasonable changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's any doubt in my mind (as a member of a search committee) as to the quality of the dissertation, I'll read the dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T14:11:12.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28933" CreationDate="2014-09-23T14:50:38.333" Score="1" ViewCount="3075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am filling out a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Consent to Publish&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; form and I need to fill out the &lt;strong&gt;Volume Editor(s) field&lt;/strong&gt;. I tried to find out who these editors are, but all I found was the &lt;strong&gt;series editors&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;main editor&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/series/558&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lecture Notes In Computer Science&lt;/a&gt; there are 12 series editors. I doubt that I should list all 12 of them. Are the volume editors a subset of series editors, or are these two concepts unrelated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T19:56:28.390" Title="What is the difference between volume editors and series editors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T15:11:06.303" Score="21" ViewCount="4247" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of whether writing/editing &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt; merits authorship is already addressed &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21251/is-it-common-to-claim-co-authorship-by-helping-writing-a-paper-without-doing-any&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This question is about writing and editing &lt;em&gt;with the possibility of minor scientific contributions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to review a draft paper written by a colleague (a more senior PhD student in the same research group), whose native language is not English. The main purpose is to improve the style and grammar of the paper, rather than make substantial comments to the scientific content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that I will be able to contribute some science to the paper, however not likely of the &quot;pedagogical oversight&quot; variety that is normally the domain of the last several authors on a ten-author paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I approach my colleague with the request that I be placed on the author list, &lt;em&gt;only if&lt;/em&gt; I can make a reasonable contribution to the science (by way of some substantial comments or extra data analysis)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.093" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T16:05:05.743" Title="Does significant editing of a paper with the possibility of minor contributions to its scientific content warrant co-authorship?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28930" CreationDate="2014-09-23T15:34:01.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the feeling this may be field dependent. In my field/experience (biological science/bioinformatics) people that are asked to help with English do not get co-authorship. Indeed, in many journals where the contribution to the manuscript has to be stated, editing of manuscripts is not considered as enough contribution to warrant co-authorship. Most of the time the person that edited the manuscript ends up in the acknowledgements. That being said, I know also of cases in this field where the person editing the English would get systematically a place in the list of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if I ask someone to check the English, I would not feel comfortable if the changes are substantial. The manuscript writing is critical for the work to stand a chance of being published and in such case I would most likely offer co-authorship. If the changes are minor then I will just include him/her in the acknowledgements section. At any rate, it is an important thing to discuss with your colleague before accepting the task of editing the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T15:34:01.317" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28930" CreationDate="2014-09-23T15:42:49.543" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: it should not. But the reality is some think it should. Since there is no law that dictates authorship the closest to an answer is to look at the Vancouver Protocol and derivatives here exemplified by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot;&gt;ICMJE (Internationa l Committee of Medical Journal Editors)&lt;/a&gt; which defines an &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt; as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Final approval of the version to be published; AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these guidelines in mind many co-authorships would disappear but it becomes quite clear that help with language simply is not enough for co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T15:42:49.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28929" CreationDate="2014-09-23T15:48:32.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a paper in conference proceedings that are published in the LNCS series?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually volume editors = programme committee chairs (or at least the PC chairs are a subset of volume editors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just put the names of the PC chairs; it is close enough. The series editors are something completely different (related to the entire LNCS series, not this particular volume).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T15:48:32.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28929" CreationDate="2014-09-23T19:56:28.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask the person who sent you this form (PC chair?) what to write there. Springer does advise them to send the form pre-filled. Volume editors are people preparing proceedings for the publications - but essentially, it is up to the conference organizers who will be listed there (e.g., whether to include BIG-SHOT-WHO-IS-EMERITUS-PCCHAIR and/or POOR-PHD-STUDENT-WHO-PROOFREAD-EVERY-PAPER). Thus, it is not easy for you as an author to guess... &#xA;P.S. Or may be you googled for LncS copyright form?;)&#xA;P.P.S. Series editors supervise the series - i.e., they approve the proposals for publication in the series. They should not be listed in the copyright form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5963" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T19:56:28.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-23T23:08:06.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editor has to decipher what the reviewers mean.  Few publications use a check-list system, which the most comprehensive and clearest way to handle reviews, so the editor has to figure out whether the reviewers are saying &quot;publish&quot;, &quot;modify and resubmit&quot; or &quot;reject completely - unsalavageable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't hear anything in another week then email the editor saying that you apologise for the intrusion but you've been having problems with your email system and were wondering if an email to you has gone missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22185" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T23:08:06.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28939" CreationDate="2014-09-23T23:27:40.153" Score="0" ViewCount="3240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am  writing a paper that is using APA Citation and I'm confused on how the in text citations are supposed to go. Do you italizize the name of the website, book, article in which you are citing? Or can it be left normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22186" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T00:28:41.063" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T01:22:48.153" Title="When do you italicize the name of a book, article or website in APA style citations and references?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28938" CreationDate="2014-09-24T01:22:48.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;APA style does not include the website, book, or article title in the in-text citations. You would use the  (Author, year) format. The only exception is when there is no author listed. In that case, you include enough of the title to enable to reader to find the relevant entry in the references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your article by an anonymous author is titled &lt;em&gt;Evidence of influences of Eurasian mythology in Charles Darwin's unpublished works&lt;/em&gt;, published in 2010, your in-text citation might look like this; (Evidence of..., 2010). &lt;strong&gt;You do not italicize the in-text citation, even when using a title which is [correctly] italicized in your reference list.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on the correct use of APA style, consult the &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/em&gt;, Sixth edition, (2010), or check online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://apa.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the APA website.&lt;/a&gt;  For quick reference, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA blog&lt;/a&gt; is also useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T01:22:48.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2014-09-24T03:45:10.747" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the US context, I've never heard of such a report being asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in the case of my own PhD (at &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu&quot;&gt;MIT&lt;/a&gt;) no report ever existed. In the major US research universities I've been at, PhDs are  ungraded. You either get one or you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure, the outcomes on your list are all possible. Where I've been though, there is a sheet of paper that has to be signed by the faculty committee members saying that the thesis was successfully defended and accepted. The details of what needed to happen to convince the faculty that the thesis or its defense was good enough were the criteria that the committee used to decided when to sign the sheet (your cases #1-4) or when to tell a student that they never would (your case #5) but they were never part of a formal report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps in countries where the specifics of the examination process are more clear, this might be asked for? It's still hard for me to imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going into academic jobs, the letters from the committee members, and the dissertation itself, will tell folks much more than any formal report on the first draft of a dissertation will. If you're heading into academia, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be asked for those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T21:55:13.067" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T21:55:13.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28161" CreationDate="2014-09-24T04:25:29.590" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Scholar profiles are not transferable. But you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; delete the Google Scholar profile from your own account. Then create a new profile while signed in to your advisor's account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To delete the Scholar profile from your own account, go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and click on &quot;Settings&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aTAwE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then click on &quot;Account&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yGVZv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then click on &quot;Delete or recover your Scholar account.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There, you'll have to affirm that you are sure you'd like to delete the account, and that you understand you have 30 days to change your mind. Check all the boxes, then click &quot;Delete account&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VsCAt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T04:25:29.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T04:30:49.887" Score="1" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in Business with an emphasis in Political Marketing and a Masters in Linguistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now due to some personal and life circumstances, I would like to start collaborating in research about Linguistics and second language acquisition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I initiate or collaborate on research and publish my work in a completely different field than my PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22191" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T04:34:33.023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T22:46:41.750" Title="Can I research and publish in my Masters field when my PhD is in an unrelated field?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;changing-fields&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28930" CreationDate="2014-09-24T05:47:48.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't say (here) what field you're in.  I suppose that by doing this you intend to invite answers from different fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own field of mathematics, it would be quite strange for someone to be added as a coauthor primarily for their editing work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless I had a situation recently where I did substantially edit and rewrite a paper in which I was not an author.  (I think this is already a bit unusual, but it's hard to know for sure.)  In addition to the writing I included a small amount of content: &quot;minor scientific contributions&quot; covers it rather well, actually.  Towards the end of the process I was offered coauthorship on the paper.  I appreciated the offer but turned it down immediately: though I had contributed to the writing of the paper and contributed &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; mathematical content, the amount of mathematical content I had contributed was much less than that of the named authors.  My perspective was, honestly, that they had already done the work but were having trouble writing it up in a way that would make it publishable in a good journal in a reasonable amount of time.  To me, a good rule of thumb is that if subtracting your contribution would result in a paper which (i) still exists and (ii) could -- with additional routine work -- be submitted to the same journal, then your contribution was not sufficiently substantial to warrant coauthorship.  In the case at hand, a description my contributions to the paper appears in the acknowledgments...written by me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another way to look at it that in my case made me even more convinced that I did the right thing.  When contemplating adding an author, ask yourself what that person would gain by being added versus what the other authors would lose.  In my case I would gain at most one more publication -- in fact, the third of a series in which I was a coauthor (the most senior one) on the first two.  The two student coauthors would lose the prestige of having written a nice paper which does not have a faculty coauthor....as they deserve, because they did more than 95% of the mathematics of the paper on their own, without any guidance or direction from me.  Adding myself as a coauthor would be undermining my own future plans, as I have and will again in the future talk about this work when recommending these students.  But even if I was just a postdoc or a more senior grad student, fundamentally speaking how much credit can I get by being an author of a paper when as soon as anyone asks me about it I will feel honorbound to describe the minimal nature of my contributions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that by the end I have waded back into a point which is relevant to your question.  Academics should not be in the business of maximizing the number of papers which appear with our name on them.  I don't know of any academic field where this is really the route to substantial academic success: you get hired for the actual strength of your work, not the number of your papers.  Adding yourself as an author to a paper that you mostly just copyedited and then made some minor comments from a position of lesser insight/expertise than some of the named authors: in so doing you're not &lt;strong&gt;actually&lt;/strong&gt; adding strength to you research program, are you?  Anyone who might have been impressed with the paper is going to be distinctly disappointed when they learn what you actually did, right?  I know that in some fields (much more than mine...) the quantitative standards for publication are very high: in some branches of engineering and the sciences you most certainly want to ensure that you are writing a lot of papers rapidly.  But then you want to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; be involved in the work of those papers, right?  We've seen on this site how easy it is to publish papers in the absence of actual academic content.  It's &lt;strong&gt;too easy&lt;/strong&gt; to be a plausible route to legitimate academic success in most parts of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned in a comment, you said that the one coauthor who is a native English speaker is the most junior author on the paper (a master's student).  Well, that confluence of &lt;em&gt;lightness&lt;/em&gt; of intellectual contribution and superior skill in this other domain makes that student the perfect person to do the copyediting, it seems to me.  If their understanding is so limited that they can't even be trusted to edit the paper for non-content related issues, then I am worried about their being listed as an author at all: what could they have done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T05:47:48.720" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29770" CreationDate="2014-09-24T06:17:44.060" Score="1" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my PhD thesis (physics in a European university) and wonder how to order the &quot;meta-data&quot; chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university gives very few formal regulations and my adviser wasn't sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have come up with till now is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frontmatter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titlepage (position fixed by University)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statement page that I wrote this (position fixed by University)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disclaimer that part of this work is subject to publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledgements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Table of content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Table of figures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mainmatter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;meat&quot; - the real work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backmatter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appendix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glossary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this question might come off as opinion based but I believe there are reasons for certain orderings which are based on facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17542" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T06:22:04.097" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T03:02:49.170" Title="Are there general guidelines for order of front and back matter sections in a thesis?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;writing-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T07:16:34.487" Score="4" ViewCount="1517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in US and I am applying to graduate school.I wonder if it is a good idea to send an email to graduate school professors and mention that you like their research and would like to join their research labs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20608" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T13:55:23.757" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T16:04:26.603" Title="When applying to graduate school, is it a good idea to email professors to express interest in joining their research labs?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T06:17:16.210" Score="4" ViewCount="2175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research in text mining. For that I need a dataset which contain full text PDFs of research paper articles, and all articles should be related with each other in terms of citing. There are citation network datasets available which contain only metadata of papers, but with this I also want those full text articles in PDF format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do to get such dataset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22232" OwnerDisplayName="Parvez Kazi" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T09:47:04.887" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T14:23:51.633" Title="How do I get a citation dataset with full text articles in PDF format?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;network-analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28631" CreationDate="2014-09-24T08:30:17.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really think @espertus 's answer should be the top voted.  In addition to what she says, I would say this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult with a lawyer (at least an initial consultation).  I'm not sure I would trust whatever your institution provides to you as a student (free onsite legal counsel or whatever), because they might be under pressure to encourage people to not make waves (although that question might be worth researching in parallel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research law firms in your area.  See if there are any that have particular expertise or experience in academia.  Don't think about the price--you're just going to ask them if they will give you a free consultation to find out whether you need representation and what you should be doing in case you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What specific behavior crosses a legal line &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of&#xA;documentation constitutes legal proof of those lines having been&#xA;crossed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could find out similar things about the university's ethics code without making a formal complaint.  Just ask what behavior, exactly, crosses the line, and what documentation is required to prove that this behavior has taken place.  You can say you &quot;know someone&quot; who is in a difficult situation and scared of retaliation (you don't have to tell them that you are the person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not have to initiate legal proceedings or lodge a formal complaint or anything--I just think you need to, as soon as possible, start collecting the kind of documentation that a lawyer has told you will carry weight in court, &lt;strong&gt;just in case it ever comes to that&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing from this discussion that you are an attractive, intelligent woman in a technical field.  That is going to generate (sometimes intense) interest in you from many men in your field.  I'm not saying this as anything other than an observed fact--a reality that you need to be aware of.  These men are going to be all over the spectrum--really a two dimensional &quot;spectrum&quot;, where you have an axis of social awkwardness where people sincerely don't know that what they are doing constitutes an inappropriate advance (yes, some of us really are that clueless), and an axis of just plain evil where there are some people that deliberately use their positions of power to take advantage of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the fact that people will be attracted to you, some will be threatened by you because you're a woman with rival superpowers that they associate with their manhood (pathetically sad, I know, but true).  Some will be neither attracted nor threatened themselves, but jealous of the attention paid to you by those who are attracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject to consulting with a network of women (I'm referring again to espertus ' &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28631/how-to-deal-with-an-advisor-who-wants-a-friendlier-relationship-with-me-than-i/28815#28815&quot;&gt;advice&lt;/a&gt;) to see if anything I suggest below makes sense or matches their experience, it seems to me that you need to make sure that you recognize a few facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your working relationship has already been damaged.  It's not that you're worried you might damage the relationship.  Your advisor's actions have damaged it.  You are looking to mitigate that damage.  It is not possible to avoid it.  The reason I'm saying this is that you might be afraid to take any action lest you &quot;break something&quot;.  I don't think you will make good decisions if you have &quot;fear of messing up the relationship&quot; topmost in your mind.  You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a messed up relationship now, you are trying to salvage what you can of it without making it worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to be your own best defender and advocate.  You are in school to learn.  It is unfortunate that you are also having to learn this.  But you are likely to need it in situations after school (again, check with knowledgeable tech women before believing me, but I believe women in tech widely experience this).  Right now, start learning how you intelligently defend yourself in apparently impossible situations where someone else has all the power.  Note how espertus balances the fact that you have an absolute right not to be victimized with the fact that anything you do that looks like an attack to your advisor could be dangerous to you.  That does highlight how difficult your situation is, but if this were an easy situation, you'd already have figured it out. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because of point 1 and some of point 2, you need to manage your own expectations.  You are probably not going to find a magical solution that simply lets you get everything you should be able to (professionally given academic guidance) from your advisor and nothing you shouldn't (unwanted advances).  Quit even thinking about there being a perfect way out and figure out what makes the most sense for you in your situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even though it is not your fault, and you should not be the one that has to change your behavior to accommodate his bad behavior, I think you have to look at ways to manipulate space and time in such a way that your advisor simply has fewer opportunities to do the bad things he is doing.  Change either the hours that you are there or the place where you work.  This is not optimal, but the combination of his position of power and bad actions have created a sub optimal situation that you need some kind of practical response to.  Consider whether there might be a way to arrange your schedule or workspace to make it really hard for him to &quot;casually drop by&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I'm really, really hesitant to suggest this, but it seems possible to me that your co-advisees, &lt;em&gt;if you know they can be trusted&lt;/em&gt;, could be natural allies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A while ago I heard that his PhD student suggested to him that he&#xA;  spends too much time with me. He laughed and said it's not his&#xA;  business, and that we are working hard on some novel research method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know this student?  Were they possibly trying to helpfully intervene on your behalf or were they jealous of the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you are natural competitors for your advisor's time, you are also natural allies in that it's best for all of you if the advisor is as professional as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you working on similar enough things that it would make sense for you to have a study group of some sort with the other advisees?  I'm guessing that it's an every-man-for-himself-trying-to-outshine-the-others kind of environment, but if it's not, developing a closer working relationship with them might give you allies in this other battle.  And, unlike the &quot;get a fake boyfriend&quot; suggestion, having a good relationship with these people actually makes real sense since they are in your field and people you could gain advantage from being able to network with later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I had better suggestions.  Possibly if you look for solutions that emphasize only the things you both agree on.  You both want your academic work to be successful.  So, if you need to make excuses not to spend time in pointless (to you) chit-chat, make every excuse be about your work.  &quot;I don't want to be rude [note: this is true!  It would be so much easier if he wasn't making you do this], but I need to get back to working on the miniaturized earthworm defibrillator test results [also true!  You do need to get to work on those!  And, theoretically, something he agrees you should be doing.].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another strategy in the same vein--if he is forcing you to have conversations, you work to force the conversation back to work.  He has decided he is going to be in your space.  You decide that you are going to use that to your advantage by picking his brains about your project.  Have a list of questions ready at all times, on your phone or in your desk or on a whiteboard.  &quot;That reminds me, I wanted to ask you about X.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe time tracking software could be of use.  There is stuff out there that lets you click something saying you're working on task 1, then if you switch to task 2, you select that task and it starts tracking your time as applying to that (people like lawyers or freelancers will use these to know who to bill for what amount of time when they have multiple projects going).  Have actual tasks that apply to your project, and an array of non-project stuff: &quot;at gym&quot;, &quot;eating&quot;, &quot;water cooler talk&quot;.  Don't even mention it, just start tracking all your time like that and looking at the results.  Once you have a good body of data from a couple of weeks, you can set goals of reducing your &quot;water cooler talk&quot; time--strictly because you want to increase your productivity--and then use that as a way to say you need to get back to work or you will miss your target [again--a real target, that is really about your project.  No pretense to maintain, simply an effort to get more work done].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me re-emphasize the fact that you should not have to do this.  I am not suggesting that bad things are happening because you aren't being assertive enough.  It is not your fault that he is making you come up with these strategies.  But I think it will be best for you, in both the short term as as a precedent that you set for yourself for the future, that you always assert whatever control you can, even when the power structure in a relationship is highly asymmetrical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.323" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T08:30:17.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2014-09-24T08:51:10.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason why not. Consider this - you have already qualified in the field of linguistics to a Masters level, and presumably passed final examination/defense, therefore have already shown that you have knowledge and experience in that particular field - this can potentially help in generating research projects and collaborations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a very similar situation, my PhD is in Physics, my Masters is in Digital Education - I have been able to contribute published research to both - the published research in both has been the most assistance in my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is to contribute robust and new research to the field, this is the main way that research collaborations can be initiated and generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastEditorDisplayName="user21984" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T09:56:45.100" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T09:56:45.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15504" CreationDate="2014-09-24T09:35:19.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;NB: My answer does not differentiate between open and closed sourced projects and I have not used any of the seemingly big list of solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/3523416/2787723&quot;&gt;SO answer&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the 2010 London Dev8D meeting, whatever that is, ran a contest for meta data extraction and resulted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/pdfssa4met/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdfssa4met&lt;/a&gt;. I cannot find any documentation on the meeting and anything else that came out of it. The JISC ConnectedWorks project produced a &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bmVV89ZozeYsboSTTebKXv3u2vUDAmY3rG2tr5IIl0I/preview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;review document&lt;/a&gt; that considered Zotero, Mendeley, Google Scholar, CB2BIB, Metadata Extraction Tool, pdfssa4met, pdfmeat, GNU libextractor, FITS, Apache Tika, XPDF, PDFTOHTML, pdf2xml, CiteSeerX, and Paperpile. This list seems to leave out some other solutions, although it is possible that they rely on the same underlying technology. This answers to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/42361/is-there-a-citation-manager-which-plays-nicely-with-bibtex-and-has-automatic-met&quot;&gt;TeX.SX question&lt;/a&gt; suggests BibDesk and JabRef do metadata extraction. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.papersapp.com/mac/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Papers&lt;/a&gt; also seems to do metadata extraction. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/extracting-metadata-from-pdfs-comparing.html#.VCKGOuK5NFE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; reviews the metadata extraction performance of WizFolio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://docear.org/papers/Mr.%20dLib%20-%20A%20Machine%20Readable%20Digital%20Library%20--%20preprint.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mr. dLib&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/CrossRef/pdfextract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdfextract&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july12/kern/07kern.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TeamBeam&lt;/a&gt; which seem to have scholarly papers associated with them and therefore seem to be misssed by the JISC review (or developed afterwards). I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://rossmounce.co.uk/2013/01/06/pdf-metadata-using-exiftool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;exiftool&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:37:02.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T09:35:19.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15504" CreationDate="2014-09-24T09:50:06.700" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your entire question, but may be useful (for example, you might have got the papers from a list of DOIs in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming these are PDFs with CrossRef DOIs, if you can extract the DOI from the PDF, you can get citation directly from CrossRef's API. For the DOI &lt;code&gt;10.5555/12345678&lt;/code&gt;, the query:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://api.crossref.org/works/10.5555/12345678/transform/application/x-bibtex&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;returns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@article{Carberry_2008,&#xA;    doi = {10.5555/12345678},&#xA;    url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5555/12345678},&#xA;    year = 2008,&#xA;    month = {aug},&#xA;    publisher = {{CrossRef}},&#xA;    volume = {5},&#xA;    number = {11},&#xA;    pages = {1--3},&#xA;    author = {Josiah Carberry},&#xA;    title = {Toward a Unified Theory of High-Energy Metaphysics: Silly String Theory},&#xA;    journal = {Journal of Psychoceramics}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write a very small script to scan a list of DOIs and download the citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21890" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T09:50:06.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2014-09-24T10:06:37.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can perform some research and write it up with the result that a journal wants to publish it, then it doesn't matter what qualifications you have, if any at all! Many journals do blind reviews which means their reviewers don't know the qualifications of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of the papers they review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21773" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T10:06:37.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28946" CreationDate="2014-09-24T10:09:03.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt; in the US, you didn't specify whether you are applying to schools only in the US. And the answer depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outside the US, especially Europe&lt;/strong&gt;, quite frequently PhD positions are funded by individual professors. In these cases the hiring/admission decisions are made almost entirely by the professor in charge of the &quot;group&quot;, and so the answer to your question is an &quot;Of course!&quot; There simply is no way to get your foot in the door otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the US, or in countries where a US-style system is the norm&lt;/strong&gt;, the admission of graduate students are made in committee, and it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; necessary to contact specific professors in the application process. This, however, is not to say that establishing a faculty contact won't help: sometimes it will at least earn your application a more detailed look, and sometimes you will find a person willing to advocate on your behalf during the committee meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, &lt;strong&gt;be thoughtful when you craft your e-mail&lt;/strong&gt;. In the US and elsewhere alike, professors often get e-mails exploring the possibility of doing a PhD. So make sure to do your homework! If you write a letter to Professor X asking about studying Subject A with him, and he has in fact left Subject A and had been working on Project B for the past 5 years, at best he would politely decline and at worst you may have created a bad first impression. Same thing goes for a bland letter stating &quot;I like your research&quot;. By default academics are suspicious of empty platitudes: make sure to discuss your background (to show that you are making a somewhat informed judgment) and state what it is particularly that you like about her research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, note that in some/many US schools, incoming graduate students for PhD programs do not formally choose an advisor until one or two years into the program. This has to do in part with the belief that the students should be allowed to see all the opportunities available to them, and the professors have some time to assess the students, to mutually make educated decisions about their partnerships. So you should also &lt;strong&gt;weigh your own feelings&lt;/strong&gt;: are they strong enough that you absolutely must work with this one professor? Or do you have broad enough interests that you may want to hold off deciding until you learn more about the subjects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if geography is not a barrier, instead of just an e-mail expressing interest, you can also consider writing and asking to schedule a face-to-face appointment. Even if you end up not working with the professors, more often than not you will learn something and get some very good advice from the discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T10:09:03.560" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2014-09-24T10:50:13.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are an already recognized person in a given field (to which you write this paper), reviewers don't care what is your main field. (Of course, you need to meet the same standards to the quality of research and writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You affiliation &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; bias reviewers (but I would guess that people would be more biased by prestige of the univ./institute/department than other factors). Moreover, it is not uncommon to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have people working in more than one field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;official names of affiliation being not directly related to their actual specialization,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I don't think it is a big factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T10:50:13.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T14:33:00.917" Score="32" ViewCount="142404" Body="&lt;p&gt;My teacher's teaching style isn't working for me, and he asked for feedback about the class and how he could teach it better.  He teaches with powerpoint and gives quizzes that are all about rote memorization of the slides.  Most of the class finds these quizzes to be of little help in understanding the information, but nobody knows what to say to the teacher about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22204" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T20:54:58.727" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T12:32:04.460" Title="How do you respectfully give a teacher feedback about their teaching?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;students&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28947" CreationDate="2014-09-24T14:36:00.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://arXiv.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;, where you can find  973,256 full-text papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/robots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;may not bulk-download them directly&lt;/a&gt; from arXiv.org, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/bulk_data&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other methods&lt;/a&gt; are available.  In particular, you can download every PDF hosted by arXiv via Amazon S3, by paying a bandwidth charge of USD 0.12 per gigabyte.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/help/bulk_data_s3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these instructions&lt;/a&gt;.  Metadata in various formats is also available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to DTCLib's assertion that &quot;nobody could provide you with such a data set without violating copyright laws&quot;, it is perfectly legal for arXiv to do this, since each author submitting a paper to the repository gives arXiv the right to redistribute the paper to anyone.  Note, however, that does not in general give &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; the right to redistribute them further.  (Some papers on arXiv are released under Creative Commons licenses, or even are in the public domain, but most are not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T14:36:00.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:00:39.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly can. Just consider the example of Professor Scott E. Page (University of Michigan) who has published in the following fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Economics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Political science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public health&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Computer science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has an MA in Math, MS in Business, and a PhD Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can not only publish in the area of your masters but even in areas unrelated to either your masters or PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T15:00:39.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28955" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:01:00.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the quizzes are of little help to everyone, and the teacher is asking for feedback on his teaching style, and nobody says anything, then the blame is on the students. If the teacher is sincerely asking for feedback he will not be offended by your comments (given you express them in a polite way). Tell him politely (and directly) what the problem is. He will surely appreciate the feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I am teaching programming to some students with little programming experience. They are struggling and I know some of the concepts are difficult to understand. At the end of every two classes I ask if the explanations and exercises are being helpful, if they are helping them to understand the topic. I always get positive feedback. That makes me a little nervous- if they are failing to communicate their difficulties I will fail to make them understand the topic. I would prefer constructive criticism than misunderstood politeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T15:01:00.360" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28955" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:01:37.727" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, I agree that what xLeitix said is the gist of if: &lt;strong&gt;as long as you are respectful, you should be fine&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate a little, my only experience with giving feedback back to the professor is a bit specific: a fairly young professor, that just got the course for the first time and was trying to improve it. Like in your case, he also said that he would appreciate feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to give some specific advice, with a specific example of my situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;again, &lt;strong&gt;be very respectful&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In my situation, this meant that I didn't start loudly complaining in class as the reading material quality (made by the prof) steadily degraded during the year. Rather, when I found enough time, I passed by the professors office during the office hours and asked him if he would be interested in my feedback on his reading materials.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;be as informed as you can about the coursework&lt;/strong&gt; for which you disagree with the teaching approach &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Basically, why would I take your advice on how to teach X if you don't even have a rudimentary understanding of X?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;be &lt;strong&gt;specific&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;give argumented reasons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For me, this meant, when he agreed to listen to my feedback -- he actually scheduled a meeting outside of his office hours for that class suspecting it will take some time -- I didn't just come and said the materials were getting worse. I had specific examples of pages and exercises that I had trouble solving, marked in the script. I also offered information like &quot;it took me X hours to finish and understand the first script (good quality), while it took me 4*X hours to finish the second one (worse quality), and they are supposed to cover approximately the same amount of coursework&quot;. For you, it might mean explaining how and why you don't think the feedback you're getting from quizzes is not helpful.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;make specific recommendations or suggestion&lt;/strong&gt; (but don't demand anything)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Again, in my case, alongside some of the things I marked, like exercises and definitions I had trouble with, sometimes I had my own versions of definitions, or I would re-phrase the examples in a way that made it easier for me to understand. It also help pointing out the ambiguities in the original and saying why you think your formulation resolves it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;be &lt;strong&gt;committed&lt;/strong&gt;. The bigger the change you want to make, the more committed your will need to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As you can see form the above, making a &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; change, at least according to me, will probably require you do to a substantial amount of work on your own -- without the professor's help -- to be able to give suggestions well supported by arguments. Of course, you don't have to take all the points super-seriously if you just opt for a short 5-minute chat giving some suggestions and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in my case, where I &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; the course, I thought it was important, I thought the prof was great and trying really hard, and I had a (young and naive) wish to make a change for future generations, I took a few days to prepare my notes, I came to Uni a few days after the summer break has started in order to have time to give all my comments in as much detail as the professor wanted, and it did help that the prof actually knew and remembered me from the courses and valued my opinion at least a little.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4249" LastEditorUserId="14558" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T23:29:56.673" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T23:29:56.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28946" CreationDate="2014-09-24T16:04:26.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its a very good idea to write to the professor you are interested in working with. However, its very important to do your research and find out everything about them. Do use formal language. And show some insight into their work... &quot;I read your research paper on..., I think it has many applications, and we can expand the research to include.... and my background in... will be helpful&quot;. But don't be critical of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22206" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T16:04:26.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28872" CreationDate="2014-09-24T16:06:29.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echoing other responses, one week is really not all that much time for a paper to be sitting on an editor's desk, and it's not worth sending a query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception to this is if the paper is expressly on a fast-track publication schedule or some sort of deadline that might matter to the journal is rapidly approaching (for example, the publication of an article on the same day the results are presented at a major conference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T16:06:29.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27472" CreationDate="2014-09-24T16:10:08.243" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any research on the question: how common is academic theft, really? Such as surveys of people having experienced (or committed!) such theft according to an appropriate definition, possibly compared to peoples perception as to the risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the related articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;De Vries, Raymond, Melissa S. Anderson, and Brian C. Martinson. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483899/&quot;&gt;Normal misbehavior: Scientists talk about the ethics of research.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of empirical research on human research ethics: JERHRE&lt;/em&gt; 1.1 (2006): 43.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Martinson, Brian C., Melissa S. Anderson, and Raymond De Vries. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043/full/435737a.html&quot;&gt;Scientists behaving badly.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; 435.7043 (2005): 737-738.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among a sample of 3,247 NIH-funded scientists in the United States, asked about the behavior &quot;Using another's ideas without permission or giving due credit&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.4% said they themselves have engaged in this behavior within the last three years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;45.7% agreed with the statement, &quot;I have observed or had other direct evidence of this behavior among my professional colleagues including postdoctoral associates, within the last three years.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please read the article for methodology, limitations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T16:10:08.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28892" CreationDate="2014-09-24T18:55:41.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden, PhD students and Post docs are paid with the PI research money for doing research. Teaching is optional (but in some departments it is expected or strongly encouraged), in which case it is paid from the department's teaching budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:55:41.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28687" CreationDate="2014-09-24T19:01:57.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @NateEldredge mentioned, technically research is probably not part of the duties of an Adjunct Lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you could explain that as an adjunct it is natural for you to develop your CV further so that you may be considered for teaching higher-level courses, increase in rank, service on interesting committees, etc., in which case research will be important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorUserId="11257" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T19:08:47.060" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T19:08:47.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T19:45:38.443" Score="14" ViewCount="3322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had a university student (my ex) expelled from my undergrad university when he was found responsible for physical abuse and sexual misconduct. How would this expulsion affect his future educational career? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would the expulsion affect him if he tried to apply to law school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T17:32:12.190" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T21:53:07.770" Title="How will expulsion for physical abuse and sexual misconduct affect a student's future educational career?" Tags="&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;sexual-misconduct&gt;&lt;abuse&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28966" CreationDate="2014-09-24T20:17:11.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Extremely, overwhelmingly negatively if it is found out. Nobody wants such a person as part of their program and rightfully so. Most universities do not do background checks or anything, but it is going to be difficult for the person to get letters of recommendation from professors who know why he was expelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10636" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T20:17:11.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28966" CreationDate="2014-09-24T20:38:01.667" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer assumes the person in question has been &lt;em&gt;convicted&lt;/em&gt; of those crimes. If he has not, things will be easier (but not a cakewalk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conviction and expulsion will affect him quite significantly, given that some universities require applicants to declare both certain criminal convictions (usually sex, violence, or drug convictions) and any previous expulsions. Trying to hide convictions is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you can find a university who does not require a declaration (or will admit the applicant anyway, if the university is sufficiently satisfied that the student has reformed) - the likelihood of such probably varies by country. I suspect life as a graduate student would be very difficult (getting teaching positions may be hard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question reminds me of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&amp;amp;objectid=11191628&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; I read a while ago. This man was a convicted murderer, and has turned his life around and obtained a PhD in psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any specific advice would be subject to the laws of his country, the policies of the universities, and more specific details of the conviction (read: off-topic for StackExchange).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be roadblocks, especially with sex and abuse convictions. Repentance and perseverance may clear enough to find a path through, but it wouldn't be easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T06:03:15.700" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T06:03:15.700" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6170" CreationDate="2014-09-24T20:49:34.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Students who don't put much effort in, do so usually because the material does not interest them. If you can make the material interesting enough to get them excited about it, they will begin to put in more effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer your question, should you tell them the answer? In most cases, no, you should not. No one learns by being told the answer. People only learn by coming to an answer using their own mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if YOU don't know the answer, then you should first find the answer yourself, and THEN still don't tell them the answer but use the fact you now know the answer to help them reach the same conclusion (without telling them the answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22218" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T20:49:34.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28966" CreationDate="2014-09-24T20:54:47.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If convicted of these crimes, the student's entire career will be in jeopardy. Additionally, it will be next to impossible to achieve any sort of security clearance (especially in the US), and many jobs will not hire them due to their criminal past that comes up in a background check. It may also exclude the student from being accepted into many other undergraduate and graduate schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2014/02/12/news/20local_02-12-14.txt#.VCMxPdy-2G4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At LCCC, the school also looks into incidents that involve students,&#xA;  vice president of student services Judy Hay said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If the incident would affect the college environment, like a sex&#xA;  offense, we would absolutely look into that,” she said. “If it’s an&#xA;  alcohol offense and they’re underage, we’d look at that as well.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dean of students generally decides if an incident needs to be&#xA;  evaluated, she said. But the college looks for violations of student&#xA;  policy or code of conduct, not at the crime.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Penalties students could face can range from making an apology to being expelled [again], Hay said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curtis, Aerin. 'Students Facing Legal Trouble May See Penalties From College | Wyomingnews.Com'. Wyomingnews.Com. Last modified 2014. Accessed September 24, 2014. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2014/02/12/news/20local_02-12-14.txt#.VCNFKxLTQl9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2014/02/12/news/20local_02-12-14.txt#.VCNFKxLTQl9&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22218" LastEditorUserId="22218" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T21:56:50.523" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T21:56:50.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28955" CreationDate="2014-09-24T20:58:57.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I would leave an anonymous typed note that cannot trace back to me. No one responds to emotional feedback (that only makes a person defensive and even more resistant to improvement), but make sure the feedback is highly constructive, and entirely unemotional and not accusatory in any fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in school, I did confront bad teachers. I can confirm that direct, accusatory methods do not work. Now that I am older, I can say with certainty that the most unemotional and constructive methods will work best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to, first write the note when you are emotional, and then come back some time later when you are no longer emotional and rewrite the note, and then, only then, give it to the teacher. Try to give it to them anonymously, because if it's really a bad teacher, they might single you out, and that's the last thing you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you have built a strong relationship with the teacher, then you can use your relationship to try to help them and give them valuable feedback, as a friend. People usually listen to their friends who speak out of a kind heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22218" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T20:58:57.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T22:43:55.200" Score="12" ViewCount="728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm on the job market this fall (will earn my Ph.D. this spring), and have culled a list of open positions I would like to apply for. I'd like to talk to my advisor about this soon in regards to recommendation letters, as well as for their own information. I'm at a big US research university with an untenured advisor who would also like us all to be at an R1 school or doing research in industry when we graduate. However, my preference is for small teaching schools or lecturing positions, and my list reflects that. Additionally, I have a spouse with a Ph.D., and we will be prioritizing my spouse's job for personal reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm among the first to graduate from my group this year. We've all been vague about our job aspirations in previous years, since we've learned that our preferences would often be discounted and it wasn't worth the argument. I don't anticipate anything drastic in this discussion, but I would like to be respectful in conveying the information while still getting across my point that I won't be applying to anywhere my advisor would be happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any recommendations on how to approach this discussion?&lt;/strong&gt; Tips on how much to share on what's influencing my/our decisions would be helpful too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21513" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T01:48:00.677" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T01:48:00.677" Title="How to discuss job search with your advisor when your career plans differ from what your advisor wants you to do?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;&lt;two-body-problem&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28966" CreationDate="2014-09-24T23:31:41.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A criminal conviction could affect eligibility for financial aid.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://studentaid.ed.gov/eligibility/criminal-convictions#other-convictions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the US&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;What other convictions might affect my aid?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have been convicted of a forcible or nonforcible sexual offense, and you are subject to an involuntary civil commitment upon completion of a period of incarceration for that offense, you cannot receive a Federal Pell Grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22223" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T23:31:41.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28983" CreationDate="2014-09-25T01:43:55.840" Score="14" ViewCount="2347" Body="&lt;p&gt;What databases allow free, programmatic access to cited-by counts for papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Scholar doesn't have an API, and they block crawling attempts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCOPUS only seems to allows you to retrieve a branded, watermarked image of the number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21546" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T08:08:20.287" LastActivityDate="2020-10-31T21:39:52.887" Title="How to get free programmatic access to citations counts for a given paper?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;databases&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T02:33:24.867" Score="16" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spent most of my professional life writing proposals for improving the living and studying conditions of the constituents I served (community members, students, curricula and higher education institutions). Well, after 25 years serving as a teacher, professor, dean, and chancellor I find myself looking for a job in academia as an education professor and my publication count is extremely low compared to the number of successful grant proposals that I have in my credentials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I count successful grant proposals, which actually changed the lives of thousands of people, as part of my publication or research record?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22229" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T08:07:13.653" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:25:02.837" Title="Can a successful grant application be considered a publication in academia?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;application&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2014-09-25T03:08:04.853" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  Count them as part of your funding record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you have said of your record, people will expect you to look for a job in research administration.  E.G. Vice President of Research, or Director of Research Facilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go back to teaching, the usual strategy I hear about in the news is to get an admin/leadership job and then demote yourself after a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T03:08:04.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29029" CreationDate="2014-09-25T04:26:32.570" Score="12" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am based at a southern European university where little local research funding is available. Other than Horizon 2020, how can I find out about programs designed to sponsor research in any country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:55:44.567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T12:50:27.973" Title="Find information about research grant calls from around the world" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;europe&gt;&lt;announcements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28978" CreationDate="2014-09-25T04:41:43.273" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt; user, you can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/scholar/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scholar&lt;/a&gt; package. This package allows you to analyze data from Google Scholar and obtain citations, publication list and even perform predictions of the h-index. An example R code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;library(scholar)&#xA;id = &quot;xJaxiEEAAAAJ&quot; # Isaac Newton's id&#xA;cit=get_citation_history(id)&#xA;barplot(cit[,2],names.arg = cit[,1])&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5TtLT.png&quot; alt=&quot;Isaac Newton&amp;#39;s citation history&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastEditorUserId="21435" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T05:17:42.687" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T05:17:42.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2022" CreationDate="2014-09-25T06:57:21.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the paper will appear soon (it's been accepted!) and it is not essential for the &lt;em&gt;present&lt;/em&gt; article, why not follow StrongBads' advice, namely submit your article as is, and add the citation in the proofs. Discussing the future with your collaborator can wait a couple of weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you sound in a big hurry, I will elaborate in another direction now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always been very adamant about keeping reviewer information confidential. Other people... not: in my discipline (theoretical physics) people have told me that they reviewed my paper or (worse) the paper of somebody else. In short, it is not unheard of to reveal such information, especially when the outcome is acceptance. Is it good for the trade? That's another topic for discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are in a HUGE hurry to discuss with your colleague you may follow Suresh above: if your colleague is not in a different city and you trust each other, you may decide to share the confidential information &lt;em&gt;confidentially&lt;/em&gt;, which is to say, just show them the article which you in fact judged positively, discuss it, destroy the evidence. (I've seen that too, and without the destruction-of-the-evidence part.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I personally would just wait... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22231" LastEditorUserId="22231" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T02:31:10.853" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T02:31:10.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2014-09-25T07:45:21.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to @guest's answer: employers will generally not count them as publications, but that does not mean you cannot publish them.  There is a growing trend of &quot;publishing&quot; grant proposals, usually by non-traditional means.  For instance, I have put some of mine on &lt;a href=&quot;http://figshare.com/&quot;&gt;Figshare&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.639182&quot;&gt;Wave Propagation for Next-Generation Supercomputers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.639184&quot;&gt;Positive Numerical Solution of Differential Equations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.639183&quot;&gt;High Performance Computing and High-Level Programming Concepts for Hyperbolic PDE Codes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T07:45:21.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2014-09-25T07:58:51.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it is kind of reviewed and you definitely can mention successful grant applications on your CV. However they are normally not counted as publications. Usually it is possible to have publications describing scientific results obtained using the grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T07:58:51.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28868" CreationDate="2014-09-25T08:08:34.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally it is better to use some kind of curve fitting (splines, etc), as we are not assuming that the measurements are absolutely accurate and the connecting lines should go from point to point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However measurement points must also be present and very clearly visible, as they are our results and the line is our hypothesis, interpretation. Ideally showing error bars (confidence intervals) would be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T08:08:34.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2014-09-25T10:39:30.700" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Successful grant proposals should certainly be part of your CV as you search for a teaching job. &lt;strong&gt;However, grants are NOT considered publications in academia.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://racc.edu/Faculty/lawlor/pdf/vita.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this CV&lt;/a&gt;, where a friend of mine details his publications, and follows that with a section of successful grant proposals. This is the correct way to present them on your CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to put the grants front and center on your CV, to highlight your expertise at bringing in funding, which few institutions will count as a negative!  You may also want to follow @guest's advice and look for a job in research/leadership/administration, and then demote yourself to a teaching position after a few years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T14:25:02.837" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:25:02.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T11:49:37.713" Score="1" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would love to pursue Maths teaching but I am unsure whether I would be accepted onto the programmes and whether I should complete an A Level in Maths with a view to apply for PGCE or Schools Direct Route in 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will getting my A Levels in Maths help to get admitted to a PGCE program?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As background: I'm 26 and hold a 2.2 degree in Biomedical Science from a British university. I took my A Levels in Biology and Chemistry but only got an AS Level in Maths and Art. My work background is that I have been a carer for family members for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22239" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:52:43.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T01:52:43.733" Title="A level as entry requirement to PGCE program" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28990" CreationDate="2014-09-25T11:57:50.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, where. If you just want to teach very young children, that much of Maths probably everybody knows. However you may need to complete the minimum required pedagogical education. How much is required, is largely country and often school dependent. Normally it may be additional courses during studies, or independent studies lasting for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10920" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T11:57:50.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28947" CreationDate="2014-09-25T12:18:01.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to arXiv mentioned in another response could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/a&gt;, specially if you are interested on text mining of papers in biomedical and life sciences research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T12:18:01.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T12:21:41.123" Score="2" ViewCount="971" Body="&lt;p&gt;some years ago (2007) I have published a  paper in a conference as a poster paper. Now I want to send it to a journal and change the affiliation, or maybe some minor changes. I didn't see any policy about a previous published paper in a conference, however there is a policy as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before&#xA;  another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided&#xA;  in Comments to the Editor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I send my paper to this journal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a normal thing to first publish a paper in  a conference and then trying to send it to a journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21885" LastEditorUserId="21885" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T12:31:42.313" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T15:10:08.947" Title="publishing a conference paper in a journal" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-25T16:02:05.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28982" CreationDate="2014-09-25T12:26:02.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible resource is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EURAXESS&lt;/a&gt;. I know this agency because they run the EURAXESS-japan network to promote exchange between European countries and Japan. In their bulletins there is always plenty of information on grant opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;Services&quot; section there is various information, including a section for funding. In this section there are links to several funding agencies. Well, there is a lot of information in this portal but this may be a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T12:26:02.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28993" CreationDate="2014-09-25T13:01:15.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my field this would be not only acceptable, but expected, as the review process for conferences is less stringent and the submitted abstracts are substantially less detailed than a full manuscript. A conference presentation is viewed almost as a necessary step to publication: present the first interpretation of the results, get feedback from colleagues, and incorporate changes into the full-length manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only concern would be if the conference paper was closer to a full manuscript, both in length and in the rigorousness of the review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21952" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T13:01:15.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28997" CreationDate="2014-09-25T14:21:10.943" Score="19" ViewCount="2540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28981/stuck-on-proving-the-optimality-of-a-greedy-algorithm&quot;&gt;stuck&lt;/a&gt; on the proof of a major theorem in my forthcoming paper for about two weeks. Since offline help is limited, I'm trying to see if there is more help online. But I have two concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am the author of the paper and am supposed to work out the heavy-lift proof. I want to see if someone has worked on similar proofs who may point me in the right direction. What if someone comes up with the complete proof, rather than just suggestions/comments? Should I &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26934/what-are-the-ethics-of-getting-help-from-online-forums&quot;&gt;offer co-authorship&lt;/a&gt; or just appreciate their help in the acknowledgement? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For others to offer concrete help, I may have to disclose the proposed algorithm as they &lt;a href=&quot;https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/30284/stuck-on-proving-the-optimality-of-a-greedy-algorithm#comment61918_30284&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt;. So there is the risk, even remote, that someone just uses it for their publication purpose before my paper is submitted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed, keep grinding hard on the proof offline, or solicit help online with the still-to-be-published algorithm, or something in between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13081" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.753" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T22:28:42.113" Title="Is it appropriate/safe to ask for help on major theorem proof of my paper online?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28996" CreationDate="2014-09-25T14:43:42.947" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is meant to apply to graduate students (like the OP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to your advisor.&lt;/strong&gt; She is the designated person to help you with your research.  You should do so because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Your advisor will probably have some help to offer.  Give them more than one chance to do so, and be clear in communicating how much help you want/need at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I believe you said earlier that you talked to your advisor and got some but not enough help, because she only thought about your problem when you were there.  To me that is the opposite of strange: being a thesis advisor myself, I recognize it as the classic tension inherent in the job.  How much help do you give the student?  How much time you do spend thinking about the student's problem so as to be able to give help? &lt;em&gt;There are usually no easy answers to these questions.&lt;/em&gt;  Even in dealing with the same student, over time I often find myself: giving too much help; giving too little help; being put in a situation where the question they ask is too hard for me to give an answer on the spot and then having to try to find time for outside thoughts about their question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you talk to your advisor, make sure she understands that you feel &lt;strong&gt;so&lt;/strong&gt; stuck in your research that you are considering seeking outside help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) If you get outside help without telling your advisor about it, it could be embarrassing to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be tough to ask the same person for help on the same thing more than once.  But it is part of the advisor/advisee relationship.  If my students showed up on SE sites asking questions that I feel that I could have answered, I would not feel great about it.  (Most of my negative feelings would be directed to myself rather than at them, but still: not great.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) If you are truly stuck, your advisor needs to know.  It very often happens that the best thing to do is to switch to working on a different aspect of the problem, or perhaps a different problem entirely.  Your advisor is the one to help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me also say that in the realm of mathematically-related research, two weeks is a fairly short amount of time to be working on something.  If after two weeks you are completely out of ideas and don't even know what else to try, then you should address that.  If you simply haven't proved the &quot;major theorem&quot; yet: join the club.  To prove a major theorem usually takes me &lt;strong&gt;at least&lt;/strong&gt; two months; two years is not at all unheard of, and is not a maximum.  As long as you're making some progress thinking about the problem, I don't necessarily see anything wrong here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: The lack of directness of my answer was intentional, but let me add one comment.  In my opinion the greatest risk in asking in the internet community for help in solving your mathematical research problem is....that someone will solve your mathematical research problem.  As mentioned above, your advisor is optimally briefed in the matter of how much help to give you / how any one question fits into the larger scheme of your research program, and &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; advising a student is a matter of successive errors and corrections (i.e., helping too much and too little).  Being a PhD student has a highly egoistic aspect to it: you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just trying to find solutions to problems; you are trying to find them &lt;strong&gt;yourself&lt;/strong&gt;.  There is a real risk that the right expert will simply leave you without a problem to be working on.  This is why talking your advisor is so critical: she may in fact decide at some point that asking for help is best, but in that case she will know exactly what and whom to ask in such a way that the rug is least likely to get pulled out from under you.  This is very important!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T22:28:42.113" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T22:28:42.113" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28993" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:10:08.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A conference poster is a publication. At the very least, it is most likely in the Conference programme. It is unethical to publish the same material twice - and if the editor of the journal finds out, it is likely you'll be blacklisted. However, if you make changes to the poster - improvements, generalisations, etc. - then it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; count as a new publication. Of course, you'll have referenced the poster in the new publication so the referees (and editor) will be able to tell if it's new material and suitable for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22245" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T15:10:08.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28990" CreationDate="2014-09-25T16:22:29.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK it should definitely be possible for you to become a maths teacher with your background, but I'm not completely sure whether you would need to do A-level maths first.  I would expect that most maths teachers would actually have a degree in maths or a very closely related subject, but I don't know this for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find helpful information on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/teacher-training/entry-requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UCAS website&lt;/a&gt; (the link is to the page about entry requirements for teaching).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obviously, you'll also need a strong understanding of the subject you&#xA;  want to teach before you start training. If your degree subject&#xA;  doesn't link closely to your chosen teaching subject, we'd advise you&#xA;  to take a subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) course before starting&#xA;  teacher training. You can only do these in England and in certain&#xA;  subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5955" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T20:17:53.740" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T20:17:53.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T16:35:17.163" Score="2" ViewCount="2806" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my school for a PhD I am required to complete a minimum of 72 credit hours of study(around 4 years of study). Of this ~42 are to be course work and ~30 is to be dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I know what a dissertation is but not in the context of &quot;30 dissertation hours.&quot; For students and professors what has been your experience and what is actually done each semester while you are taking the dissertation hours. Do you go to class or is it a one on one basis with a selected professor or maybe just your adviser. Is there no class/group time, and I just do research into the area I have proposed for my dissertation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will be asking my adviser and graduate school dean about this but was also interested in the dynamic that other schools have in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7705" LastEditorUserId="7705" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T16:57:55.623" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T18:32:45.213" Title="What are dissertation hours in the scope of degree requirements for PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29253" CreationDate="2014-09-25T16:36:27.027" Score="6" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;The research group that I am associated with organizes a conference that will take place next month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the students asked if there is something that he can volunteer and help in the organization of the conference. He has not any scientific work to present, but rather offers some logistic and technical help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you think of any &quot;volunteering position&quot; and tasks that can be given to a young student? Is this of any benefit to him, or is that just a timeloss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T16:09:47.667" Title="Is there a non-scientific related activity for students in a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29000" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:02:24.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my PhD program, I was required to register for various research and dissertation related courses to fill the required 9 credit hours to be a full-time student. Those course ranged from 3 to 5 credit hours depending on what I needed. Those courses never met, and I did not receive a letter grade for them. They seemed to have two purposes: 1. existing to fill my schedule after my actual coursework was done (so that I was listed as being enrolled as a full-time student and so that they had something to charge me for), and 2. giving my advisor credit with the department for supervising a research or dissertation student. The mostly seem to be a bureaucratic slight of hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: I was also paid 20 hours per week to work as a Graduate Research Assistant, but I basically worked about 40-50 hours per week on going to class (until I was done with my required hours) and working on my research. Towards the end, when I was writing my dissertation, it was more. The hours I was officially paid and the credit hours I took, never really aligned with much, except that a 3-credit hour actual course (like &quot;Functional Analysis&quot;) met for 3 hours every week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T18:32:45.213" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T18:32:45.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:25:44.297" Score="18" ViewCount="6095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was traumatized by an abusive relationship. While in the relationship, my grades were affected. Out of the relationship, I chose to stay in school and struggle with my studies instead of medically withdrawing. I attended therapy and completed psychiatric care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm back to being a straight A student, but what will graduate school say in reference to those 2 years on my transcript? Should I explain it to them? Will I be granted an interview even? My GRE scores are great, but my major is competitive. What can I do? Should I include a letter that certifies what occurred in those two years from a professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22214" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:44:09.580" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T14:24:15.743" Title="Trauma affected my grades while in undergrad, how will it affect me getting into graduate school?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;abuse&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28996" CreationDate="2014-09-25T18:21:38.903" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you hope to become an expert at mastering the kind of difficulty you're facing with the proof?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;: Then go ahead and work it out on your own. &lt;em&gt;(In particular if you're a grad student and this is your thesis problem... and in this case also consult your adviser as @PeteL.Clark advised.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, I usually focus on a different subarea, and I realistically expect to keep it that way&lt;/strong&gt;: Then it may be a good idea to ask online: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_Working_Example&quot;&gt;minimal working example&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. That is, don't describe your entire project but reduce your difficulty to a simple to state problem that you feel is far away from your own specialty. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Offer co-authorship to whomever helps you out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorUserId="11257" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T18:46:49.477" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T18:46:49.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29034" CreationDate="2014-09-25T18:27:20.933" Score="4" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been digitally signing (and encrypting, whenever possible) my official emails for sometime. While I am not extremely paranoid (but serious, certainly) about cryptographic security, I also think signing the email is a signature [pun intended] that I take such aspects seriously. On a like-minded recipient, this &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; therefore make a good impression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if seeing the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hash: SHA1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;header has a high likelihood of annoying or confusing the person (to the point of them simply deleting my email), then I certainly do not mind sending an unsigned message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently started applying for jobs (in the area of quantum information/communication to be precise) and was wondering &lt;strong&gt;if I should, in my first email contact with a potential employer or (postdoc) supervisor, also sign that email&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18210" LastEditorUserId="18210" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T14:31:11.853" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:31:11.853" Title="Sending a *digitally signed* email to prospective employer/supervisor" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;correspondence&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="705" CreationDate="2014-09-25T19:29:16.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's some insight on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://inverseprobability.com/2014/09/13/nips-decision-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;behind-the-scenes at NIPS&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inverse Probability. 'NIPS: Decision Time'. Last modified 2014. Accessed September 27, 2014. &lt;a href=&quot;http://inverseprobability.com/2014/09/13/nips-decision-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://inverseprobability.com/2014/09/13/nips-decision-time/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So the decisions have been out for a few days now, and of course we have had some queries about our processes. Every one has been pretty reasonable, and their frustration is understandable when three reviewers have argued for accept but the final decision is to reject. This is an issue with ‘space-constrained’ conferences. Whether a paper gets through in the end can depend on subjective judgements about the paper’s qualities. In particular, we’ve been looking for three components to this: novelty, clarity and utility. Papers with borderline scores (and borderline here might be that the average score is in the weak accept range) are examined closely. The decision about whether the paper is accepted at this point necessarily must come down to judgement, because for a paper to get scores this high the reviewers won’t have identified a particular problem with the paper. The things that come through are how novel the paper is, how useful the idea is, and how clearly it’s presented. Several authors seem to think that the latter should be downplayed. As program chairs, we don’t necessarily agree. It’s true that it is a great shame when a great idea is buried in poor presentation, but it’s also true that the objective of a conference is communication, and therefore clarity of presentation definitely plays a role. However, it’s clear that all these three criteria are a matter of academic judgement: that of the reviewers, the area chair and the quad groups in the teleconferences. All the evidence we’ve seen is that reviewers and area chairs did weigh these aspects carefully, but that doesn’t mean that all their decisions can be shown to be right, because they are often a matter of perspective. Naturally authors are upset when what feels like a perfectly good paper is rejected on more subjective grounds. Most of the queries are on papers where this is felt to be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also has some other articles that are relevant, such as on &lt;a href=&quot;http://inverseprobability.com/2014/07/24/nips-reviewer-recruitment-and-experience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIPS Reviewer Recruitment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1079" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-27T07:18:33.690" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T07:18:33.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T20:36:53.857" Score="18" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a teaching statement and want to include quotes from student evaluations. How much can/should I edit these (for grammar)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11258" LastEditorUserId="1010" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T21:43:07.623" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:43:07.623" Title="How much can/should quotes from student evaluations be edited when preparing a teaching statement?" Tags="&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;teaching-statement&gt;&lt;course-evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29003" CreationDate="2014-09-25T20:56:54.390" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to make this an answer rather than a comment; I hope others will react to it, especially if I'm wrong.  (I'm a teacher, not an admissions officer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, you had good grades at the start of your college career.  Your grades declined for external reasons.  Your life is back under control and your grades are back up.  You have a little more than a year to gather good grades on your transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for it.  Apply to the schools you'd like to attend, but apply to a couple of Plan B schools as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the part that may be controversial:  You might want to include in your cover letter something like &quot;You may notice that there was a slump in my grades during my time as an undergraduate.  That was due to a difficult personal situation, now resolved.&quot;  (Thanks, Nate Eldridge, for the fine phrase.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other choice would be to mention the grade slump not at all.  In any case, don't make a big deal of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2015-12-05T10:30:29.177" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T10:30:29.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29007" CreationDate="2014-09-25T21:00:51.173" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, quotes should always be edited &lt;strong&gt;as little as possible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only changes you should make are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Truncations&lt;/em&gt; to remove sections of quotes that aren't relevant for your purposes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edits to &lt;em&gt;fit the grammatical structure&lt;/em&gt; of the existing sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correcting small errors in the original text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, any changes to the quotation &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be clearly indicated. Truncations should be marked with an ellipsis (&quot; . . . &quot;), while all other changes should be indicated using square brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T21:00:51.173" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="72218" CreationDate="2014-09-25T21:16:37.517" Score="3" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a postrgraduate project report on a system I've built. It is not designed with the user in mind, it is a backend system to a simple web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to separate the Design chapter from the Implementation chapter in my report, as I didn't so much design the system as build it as I went, changing how it was built depending on issues I encountered during implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to add all design and implementation information under one chapter, as they are fairly intertwined, or is it necessary to separate them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have solved my problem; the Design chapter is the idea and outline you had in the beginning of what you would like to create, with the various components you think you'll use, and the Implementation chapter includes all the issues that cropped up along the way, creating the need to change the original design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all your input! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22253" LastEditorUserId="22253" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T18:38:46.153" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T09:01:00.807" Title="Can Design &amp; Implementation sections be combined in a project report?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29007" CreationDate="2014-09-25T23:20:10.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quotation is, by definition, explicitly &lt;em&gt;what someone else said or wrote&lt;/em&gt;. If you modify a quotation so that it's no longer what someone else said or wrote then you are deceiving your audience. On this basis you should edit as little as possible and if you do need to edit you should make it clear to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable to truncate if it does not change the sense of the quote. If you omit parts in the middle of a quote you should indicate this with ellipses '&lt;strong&gt;...&lt;/strong&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay to correct minor spelling errors &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they're not relevant to the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add in a missing word, but it's usually best to indicate where you've done so, if the student said &quot;the lecturer overpaid fool&quot; you could quote as &quot;the lecturer is an overpaid fool&quot; but it would be preferable to quote as &quot;the lecturer [is an] overpaid fool&quot; so it is clear you have edited the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add context but should indicate where you've done so, for example if asked the question &quot;Did you like the lecturer?&quot; the answer you're quoting is &quot;He is an overpaid fool&quot; you could quote it as &quot;He [the lecturer] is an overpaid fool&quot; or &quot;[The lecturer] is an overpaid fool&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add emphasis but you should indicate where you've done so. For example: &quot;I'm writing a teaching statement and want to include quotes from student evaluations. How much can/should I edit these (&lt;strong&gt;for grammar&lt;/strong&gt;)?&quot; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T23:20:10.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29003" CreationDate="2014-09-25T23:51:01.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem appears to be one of grade &quot;blemish(es),&quot; rather than a &quot;pattern&quot; of bad grades. It's a bit troubling that they are in your core courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be &quot;admittable,&quot; to many programs, although there is also a chance that the bad grades will keep you out of some programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, your personal essay (and corroborating letters of recommendation from professors), take on heightened importance. Basically, you'll have to &quot;explain away&quot; your worst grades due to &quot;extenuating circumstances,&quot; how you've risen above those circumstances, and why those bad grades aren't likely to be repeated. It would also help if there were sympathetic people, particularly women, on the admissions committees of the schools of your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a long shot, but if you can get a letter of explanation/recommendation from the professor(s) that gave you the worst grade(s), it might help clear up matters. As an undergraduate, I once had a professor tell me, &quot;If I had know what you were going through during that semester, I might have given you a better grade in my course.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T23:51:01.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29003" CreationDate="2014-09-25T23:51:28.123" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the opportunity, use the diversity statement to briefly allude to the medical / personal issue in your life at the time that is now resolved and that you don't think will reoccur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't not mention it. The admin committee will see a slump in your grades. But we're also interested in your overall trajectory. So as long as it doesn't represent something that will reoccur in grad school, we can be convinced to take a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other option if your discipline allows it is to do a Master's degree in the same field. That way we can see that you're capable of doing graduate work in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T23:51:28.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T23:58:24.663" Score="6" ViewCount="1343" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example: I have a document containing 1,000 abstracts of research articles from different publishers. Am I allowed to distribute this document for free online? If not, has anyone being sued for doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:44:39.347" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T01:44:39.347" Title="Am I allowed to republish / distribute abstracts?" Tags="&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;abstract&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T01:48:00.087" Score="9" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious how different universities evaluate their performance.  I am curious to know if there is a standardized (or even just generally accepted) set of metrics that universities use to rate their performance or to determine if their college is succeeding (&quot;succeed&quot; being a very open term here and likely varying between institutions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does it mean for a university to perform well? (High graduation rates?  Low dropout rates?  High endowment?  High fill rates for their classes?)  Is this even a well defined question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What sort of metrics do universities typically use to evaluate themselves?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep mentioning universities but knowing how two year colleges approach the problem is also interesting (I'm less interested in the primary/secondary schools).  The question is also not location specific and might even be more intriguing to see how non-US universities measure themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6980" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T11:39:52.557" Title="What metrics do universities use to evaluate their performance?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29015" CreationDate="2014-09-26T01:48:31.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to distribute this document for free online? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt it.  Copyright certainly applies, but you might be able to argue that this falls under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt;, depending on what you are doing with the abstracts.  As I understand it, some things are definitively covered by fair use, while others may fall in a grey area.  If this matters to you, then you should consult a lawyer, because no one else can give you a definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, has anyone being sued for doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., I doubt you'd have to worry about being sued or facing criminal charges for this sort of copyright violation in practice (although I repeat that I am not a lawyer).  The most likely scenario is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi&quot;&gt;DMCA takedown notice&lt;/a&gt;.  If your university or ISP receives such a notice from a publisher, they will remove the file from your web site.  You could try to convince your university to take a stand based on fair use, but it's not at all clear that you would succeed.  Even aside from whether it really is fair use, universities can be risk averse and may well decide it's not worth the effort to contest the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could restrict your attention to papers with a suitable &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons License&lt;/a&gt;.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plos.org/&quot;&gt;PLOS&lt;/a&gt; journals use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/&quot;&gt;CC BY&lt;/a&gt; license, which allows this sort of reuse (with attribution).  If you just need some collection of abstracts, for example as a test case for text processing or data mining algorithms, then this might work fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you may want to use very specific abstracts.  For example, you might want to compile the abstracts of all the papers you can find in your subfield.  This seems riskier, since big commercial publishers typically don't want competition for their search tools.  You could always try asking the publisher for permission (I have no idea how likely they would be to grant it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T01:48:31.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29052" CreationDate="2014-09-26T02:09:58.730" Score="33" ViewCount="1676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I overheard some professors discussing the next round of hiring at my university and several were concerned about gender bias possibly playing an issue in the hiring process.  An initial thought is to just go through CV's and black out an applicant's name.  However, an academic job search makes it much more difficult to do this.  Not only do applicants have CV's, but there are also typically 3 letters of recommendations as well as publication lists (which might reveal the identity of an individual if the paper is known by some of the hiring panel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions that were thrown out involve trying to find a way to scan through 2-300 applicant materials and black out/replace gender pronouns and names.  From browsing StackOverflow, there is apparently quite a bit of difficulty with this from a programming perspective.  Still, it seems the most efficient way to remove as much gender bias as possible in the process but doesn't seem to be widely used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are some of the best ways a hiring panel can remove gender bias from the application process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question could also potentially extend to ways to generally remove other forms of bias, such as ethnic bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6980" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T06:33:06.840" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T16:29:34.607" Title="How to remove gender bias from an academic job search?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T03:46:18.697" Score="2" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that many mathematics departments (a little over half of the public and private Group I departments) follow the name@math.univ.edu format. Does anyone know of a reference to a discussion in Notices of the American Mathematical Society or elsewhere about this common practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:49:22.960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T12:42:35.693" Title="Reference for use of name@math.univ.edu for mathematics department email addresses?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29010" CreationDate="2014-09-26T09:31:19.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you were given an assignment to &lt;strong&gt;design and build a system&lt;/strong&gt; and then write a report to document your work. However, you decided not to do that assignment and instead you decided to &lt;strong&gt;build a system skipping the design step&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect the person marking your report would see it as you did not complete the task as assigned. As JeffE's comment implies, there is a reason why you were given a task that included designing first then building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should ask your lecturer if what you have done is acceptable or if you must restart your assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T09:31:19.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29026" CreationDate="2014-09-26T10:38:14.980" Score="31" ViewCount="55722" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, is a grad student who is being funded by an NSF grant considered to be &quot;employed by the U.S. government&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because I'm submitting a paper, and I have to state whether or not all authors are &quot;employed by the U.S. government&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21100" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T21:40:17.317" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T17:21:37.357" Title="Are professors at a public university in the U.S. considered to be &quot;employed by the U.S. government&quot;?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;professors&gt;&lt;funding&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-26T10:53:51.707" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, grad students and faculty with NSF funding are not employed by the U.S. government. NSF funding is sent directly to the school. The school then employs the researchers itself and pays them using those funds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T10:53:51.707" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-26T11:22:44.233" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is really asking about employees of the &lt;em&gt;federal&lt;/em&gt; government. At least, whenever I've seen a question like this, that is what they wanted to know; and this is the usual meaning of the words &quot;U.S. government&quot; in the American context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, if you don't know whether you're a U.S. government employee - then you're probably not. An easy way to find out if your coauthors are government employees is to ask them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The federal government does operate a handful of academic institutions (e.g., the Naval Postgraduate School) and there are other federal employees who publish regularly (e.g., scientists at NASA). There are lots of U.S. institutions which are run or chartered by &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; governments, and this category represents the majority of &quot;public universities&quot; in the country. Whether or not professors there are considered employees of the &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; - in most cases they probably are - they are still not &lt;em&gt;federal&lt;/em&gt; employees. (Well, unless they happen to be on temporary assignment to NSF as a program director, or something.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated in the sibling answer by Oswald Veblen, receiving money through a federal grant does not make you a federal employee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T11:22:44.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11536" CreationDate="2014-09-26T11:48:21.723" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sherpa Romeo, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/&lt;/a&gt;, might be helpful to you, as well.  I think you'd still have to do your cross-check against the JCR, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21678" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T11:48:21.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-26T12:01:16.817" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason this question is asked by journals is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government&quot;&gt;except in some limited cases&lt;/a&gt;, the US government may not, by law, hold the US copyright in a work created by its employees, and, therefore, cannot transfer it to the publisher of the journal as is traditionally done in most academic publishing agreements. As such, the journal can't ask those authors who are US government employees to sign the copyright transfer and must use a different agreement. If one or more of the authors is not a US government employee, then those authors will still need to make the transfer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employees of US state governments, which includes most public university employees in the US, do not have this limitation, and can make the copyright transfer or other licensing arrangement that the publisher requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T12:01:16.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28990" CreationDate="2014-09-26T12:08:57.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe taking A level maths will help you gain admittance to a PGCE program. The entry requirements for Goldsmiths PGCE program in Mathematics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extent of mathematical understanding you bring to the programme is important. You should have a degree in Mathematics or a related subject. Engineers can generally offer enough Mathematics, as can actuaries and physicists. Those with qualifications in Business, Accounting or Computing need to be able to show a substantial amount of Mathematics in their degree. It is also important that you have some knowledge and experience of UK secondary schools. Some applicants may be referred to a TDA subject enhancement course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of mathematics in a Biomedical Science degree can vary substantially, however, even the most mathematically rigours biomedical science course, probably is not enough. Further, many PGCE programs also require you to have obtained a 2.1 or higher. I think the combination of those two factors will put you at a substantial disadvantage. I think a Mathematics Enhancement Course would serve you much better, in terms of gaining admissions to a PGCE program, than A level maths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T12:08:57.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-26T13:17:25.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear that public university/college employees are officially considered state employees by the respective states. In Minnesota, for example, the University of Minnesota faculty are, apparently, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; considered to be state employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among other aspects that make this seem reasonable, the fact that the state supplies only a small fraction of the funding contributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T13:17:25.677" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28982" CreationDate="2014-09-26T13:56:57.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are several options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchraven.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research Raven&lt;/a&gt;. This site focuses on calls for papers and conferences, some of which include funding. Most of the listings relate to medical and healthcare related opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scangrants.com/About.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScanGrants&lt;/a&gt;. This is a sister site to Research Raven, and is &quot;designed to facilitate the search for funding sources to enhance individual and community health....&#xA;Funding sources most frequently listed here include those of private foundations, corporations, businesses, and not-for profit organizations. Finding and listing less traditional funding opportunities is also a priority. Federal and state funding sources are typically not included on ScanGrants™ because they are readily available on other sites.&quot; Their listing are somewhat US-centric, though. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://erc.europa.eu/apply-funding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European Research Council&lt;/a&gt;. I am not very familiar with ERC.  The website states &quot;ERC grants are open to researchers of any nationality in the world, any scientific field, any age. &quot;. It seems well worth checking out. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wennergren.org/programs/international-collaborative-research-grants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wenner-Gran Foundation&lt;/a&gt; suppports collaborative research with a focus on anthropology. You have not specified your field, but depending on your circumstance this may be worth looking at. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conferencealerts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conference Alerts&lt;/a&gt; will provide you with a free alert system for conferences in your field, for any or all countries. Although this is not a grant-finding/listing service, the individual conferences may have funding available to you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=international+grant+funding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Google search&lt;/a&gt; may bring some useful results. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T13:56:57.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29016" CreationDate="2014-09-26T14:03:50.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The strategy of my UK university seems to be to improve on all available metrics that do not require them to spend more money. At our most recent faculty meeting we were told that we needed to simultaneously increase our student numbers, increase our admissions standards, increase the number of contact hours, and decrease our average class size. They also pointed out that we should also strive to increase our grant capture and publication rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think from an inward facing perspective universities evaluate academic staff on on whatever makes them look the weakest, while from an outward facing perspective they evaluate themselves on whatever makes them look strongest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:03:50.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29018" CreationDate="2014-09-26T14:11:13.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two approaches. The approach your question focuses on is blinding of the panel to the gender of the applicant. Doing this, may actually increase gender bias.  By blinding the search panel to the gender of the applicant, it becomes very difficult for things like maternity leave to be taken into consideration.  The better way to remove, or limit gender bias, is to provide training to the search panel about gender bias in academia and help them become aware of any biases they might have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="6980" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T18:08:37.263" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T18:08:37.263" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29039" CreationDate="2014-09-26T14:14:59.950" Score="84" ViewCount="9347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several years ago, my colleagues and I attempted to get a small paper published, it was rejected and we ran out of time - and as it was a 'side-project' type of paper, we left it at that.  We thought that was the end of it - this was not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reviewers who made themselves known to us wrote some pretty terse messages to us about his disagreement with what was a relatively minor point.  We graciously took his feedback as he is an established (published) researcher in that field. We moved on to different fields - which this reviewer has no published work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What has been happening since is that he will write an email questioning every single paper that I get published, not deliberately being insulting - but not offering anything constructive nor asking for clarification of the content etc.  He has admitted that what I research is beyond his area of expertise - examples of his questions are (&lt;em&gt;remember, these papers are collaborative and peer reviewed&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you sure you know how to use (equipment)?&quot; - when the paper stated a previously published (by a separate author) protocol has been followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you sure you did enough trials?&quot; - this would be fine as criticism, except the next email stated &quot;That many trials seems like overkill&quot; referring to the same paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One particularly unhelpful comment from him was &quot;Did you actually pass high school English?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticism is fine, and is sought for any and all work that we do, but when the statements do not offer anything substantial, are contradictory or just rude - this is not criticism, it is unhelpful noise -especially when it is posted publicly where we display links to the work (he deletes his comments soon after most of the time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I deal with this persistent 'academic stalking' while at the same time, not make a 'fuss'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:09:24.520" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T15:18:53.530" Title="How to deal with an academic 'stalker'?" Tags="&lt;interpersonal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29005" CreationDate="2014-09-26T14:25:34.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot imagine anyone being too put off by the digital signature, although I would probably go with a detached signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you are going to digitally sign your emails, you may want to make sure you understand what you are doing. This would definitely be the type of thing I might bring up as a &quot;safe&quot; small talk topic during a campus visit. Often the small talk conversations can influence a decision in a tight job search since the search committee is not only looking for someone who can teach the required classes and do great research, but also someone they want to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:25:34.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29036" CreationDate="2014-09-26T15:25:01.803" Score="2" ViewCount="1834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking at a document describing setting arrangements for a ceremony and ran into the phrase: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The president of the Student Guild shall sit in the front row, with&#xA;  the Vice-chancellor, the Chancellor, and the &lt;strong&gt;Pro-Chancellor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a Pro-chancellor?&#xA;I've never heard of one before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-case this is a regional term, I am at a Australian university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T21:46:02.883" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T21:46:02.883" Title="What is a Pro-Chancellor?" Tags="&lt;titles&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29035" CreationDate="2014-09-26T15:29:44.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;pro-chancellor&quot; (or similarly a &quot;pro-rector,&quot; which we have in Germany), is a deputy to a chancellor (or rector), who handles certain duties on behalf of the chancellor (or rector). In the particular case of Commonwealth countries from which you hail, the pro-chancellor is the person who heads the university's executive council on behalf of the chancellor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T15:29:44.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T15:37:36.620" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;After asking &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29035/what-is-a-pro-chancellor&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;I've realised I don't really have a good grasp on what exactly &#xA;the Chancellor does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the Vice-Chancellor runs the university, but what does the Chancellor do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told it is something like:&#xA;If the Vice-Chancellor was the Prime-minister, then the the Chancellor would be the Queen.&#xA;Though that doesn't really say all that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it also similar to the corporate analogy of: the CEO and the Chairperson of the Board of Directors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T15:40:33.490" Title="What are the duties of the Chancellor" Tags="&lt;titles&gt;&lt;administration&gt;&lt;job&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29037" CreationDate="2014-09-26T15:40:33.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The analogy you postulated is a good one: the commonwealth Chancellor in such systems is pretty much a figurehead and PR person for the university, if he or she so chooses. He or she may or may not also run the executive council meetings; if not, such a duty devolves to the &quot;pro-Chancellor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T15:40:33.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29032" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:10:09.800" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;A general strategy you can try here is &quot;respond to amateurism with professionalism&quot;.  Even if it looks like he's being unreasonable (as it currently seems to you that he is), just suspend disbelief, and, in a completely non-confrontational manner, engage his questions as if they were serious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I always appreciate constructive criticism [&lt;em&gt;true statement!  you don't&#xA;  have to say that his was constructive, let him think what he&#xA;  wants...maybe he actually did think it was&lt;/em&gt;].  I didn't quite&#xA;  understand what led you to wonder whether I did enough testing of X. &#xA;  Did you see something in the results that made you suspect this&#xA;  specifically?  Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for your input!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat it exactly as if it were a sincere attempt to help, that you had a question about.  It's possible (though I'm thinking you think it unlikely) that he really is sincere and has something to offer you.  If so, wonderful!  You get useful feedback from someone smart!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't actually have a real question, this technique may make that obvious in a relatively non-confrontational way.  Part of the value of it is that you are not simply being the victim of stalker-y behavior, but professionally and politely holding your ground.  It is to be hoped that this will lessen the feeling of exasperation that would otherwise normally accompany this kind of childish bullying, if that is indeed what it turns out to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very intelligent and successful people in academia who are nevertheless  woefully underdeveloped emotionally; one way this will be manifest is in the need to tear down other people who seem to be having success, or demonstrating skill, or garnering attention comparable to their own. This can catch one off guard when it's coming from a successful and respected person, because you would think that their success would be all they need to feel good about themselves.  That, alas, does not turn out to be true.  If it's a chronic emotional problem, you are unlikely to get him to change his behavior; hence the advice to concentrate specifically on blunting his ability to make his problem your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the cerebral approach doesn't work or becomes too time consuming, you can always set up a filter to send email from that address straight to trash....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Escalation&lt;/strong&gt; (adding this section after your clarified and expanded examples indicate that mere polite discussion may not work here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Fuss level: zero] Gather evidence.  You don't have to do anything with it yet.  Later steps I will describe will talk about possible uses.  It's just good to have in case you ever get into a he said/she said situation and need to be able to back yourself up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is already a &quot;fuss&quot;, to some extent.  Not your doing.  You can't choose to have this situation be &quot;fussless&quot;, because the behavior is happening in public.  The question is to what extent you wish to participate in the fuss.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Fuss level: low] A body of evidence might be useful for you to have handy if you wanted to petition a site administrator to block him from contributing comments.  The sites hosting your research results and facilitating discussion don't want their work compromised by trolls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Fuss level: medium] Does he work at an institution with a published policy regarding academic ethics?  Spuriously calling into question the validity of your results seems like it would violate ethical standards.  It might be enough for you to obtain a copy of the institution's standards, highlight the part that you consider him to be violating, and send that information to him, asking for him to comment on whether he agrees his behavior violates those standards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Fuss level: high] Same as 4, but with more fuss.  Contact the institution.  Ask to speak to someone about the fact that you feel that one of their employees is violating academic ethics.  Do they have a published policy?  Can they send you a copy?  Can you send them some redacted examples and have them confirm that they would consider that in violation?  You would like to resolve the matter with the individual privately if possible, but you want to be sure that you are interpreting their standards correctly.  Then, email the stalker and tell them that you've been in contact with the ethics office, not having mentioned any names of course, we can resolve this between ourselves, can we not?, and they agreed that the behavior is in violation of standards.  Would he be willing to simply stop commenting on your work altogether in the future?  It seems it would be better for both of you if he did.  You don't have to threaten exposure--you should be careful &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to threaten, actually (to avoid any possibility that you could be charged with blackmail or whatever)--just state facts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Fuss level: nuclear]  Put all the evidence on the web, unredacted, and send a copy to his boss, his wife, and his students.  Let them know you really hate to bother them, but you need to ask them if they can contact his psychiatrist because he apparently needs his meds adjusted.  (&amp;lt;-- not a serious suggestion, but it was cathartic to type!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Serenity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflecting on others' answers and comments, I feel that one more section should be added here, because there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; practical things you can do to help the situation, from your side only, with zero direct interaction.  Although I would still gather evidence in any case (since it might be of value later should a dispute come to the surface), it is possible for you to improve your experience here by improving yourself.  It's easy and natural to focus on the fact that he is the aggressor and by rights he should be changing his behavior, and to forget that, &lt;em&gt;completely independent of whether he stops or not&lt;/em&gt; you can choose to become better at not being affected by baseless criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give yourself a mental picture of a small child attempting to attack an adult who calmly holds himself out of harm's way by virtue of having arms twice as long as his attacker.  Your stalker has mastered the art of playing the flailing child--you can grow long arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentally rearranging your perspective on the whole situation can help.  You can say &quot;I am going to end up better for this by learning the valuable skill of ignoring trolls.  Think what I would have had to pay a trainer for this, and he's providing me all this learning experience for free.&quot;  It is, after all, entirely possible that you are going to run into other situations in life where the ability to be calm in the face of baseless or childish criticism helps you out immensely, and this is an opportunity to learn that skill in a relatively risk-free environment (as the stalker really has no actual power over you in this situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you have, effectively, been focusing on the question &quot;How can I get him to stop this behavior, without making a fuss?&quot;  But you can get an excellent result by instead asking the question &quot;How can I get this behavior to stop bothering me?&quot;.  The second question can be pretty much entirely in your own hands, and the things you do to work on it will help you in other aspects of your life, even enabling you to help others deal with similar issues, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more than just ignoring (which, I think it should be said, is fantastic advice if you can do it--I haven't gotten to that point yet personally)--it's a conscious decision to rise above the behavior of the other party.  Rather than &quot;he's attacking me and I feel powerless to stop it without escalations that I am not comfortable getting into&quot; it can be &quot;he's attacking me, but I am using this as an opportunity to practice, and therefore develop the power, to not be affected by this behavior&quot;.  From the outside it may look the same, but mentally, this kind of approach can make all the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is both the best option and the hardest to execute on.  In the times when I have implemented such measures myself, I've found it to be incredibly empowering, and even in some cases ended up with unexpectedly good relationships with people that at one point had occasion (they felt, at the time, at least) to attack me, simply because I consciously decided that I didn't need to fight back.  I don't think I've faced exactly the same situation as you are here, but I believe this might help you and sincerely hope it does--best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastEditorUserId="12746" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T05:49:32.577" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T05:49:32.577" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:26:30.447" Score="18" ViewCount="13554" Body="&lt;p&gt;What (if any) is the general consensus out there regarding publishing in  one of these journals vs the other? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a mechanical engineer, specialising in fluid flow and heat transfer, so would it be better to publish my findings in a relevant Elsevier journal or equivalent Springer journal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is one or the other viewed by the academic community as more prestigious, or does one offer greater exposure for my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15650" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T04:54:01.137" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T02:16:50.407" Title="Is there any general consensus that either Elsevier or Springer is viewed as more prestigious for publishing in engineering?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;engineering&gt;&lt;reputation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29045" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:29:55.470" Score="75" ViewCount="72401" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is, honestly speaking, probably somewhat opinion-based, but I still want to give a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor acceded to my invitation of writing a reference letter for me. Nevertheless, unlike the other professors who also acceded to write a reference letter for me, he asked me to draft it on my own. Originally I did not feel anything &quot;wrong&quot;, and I just felt embarrassed to recommend myself. But yesterday a friend told me that a professor would ask you to write her reference letter for you when she does not actually think that you are &quot;worthy&quot; enough for her to write you one on her own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the probability that such viewpoint is true? Any opinion is greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18107" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T12:48:00.863" Title="What does it mean if a professor asks you to draft his reference letter for you?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;application&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29041" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:48:39.627" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason that often occurs, is that the person is not familiar with your accomplishments and would need a quick refresher by having you draft the letter, since they are usually supposed to illustrate with examples as they list your qualities. Another reason is that certain scholarship and university applications want these letters to have a specific format and include specific details about your potential as a researcher. Your reference may just be too busy to study up on the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they didn't think you were worthy of admission for a PhD program they could just write a letter themselves saying &quot;don't accept this guy, he is a terrible incompetent jerk&quot;, without you ever finding out about it, rather than ask you to draft it first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17916" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T16:48:39.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-26T17:12:50.397" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand that the quality of journals is not bijectively related to the company that publishes it. Elsevier and Springer are &lt;em&gt;publishers&lt;/em&gt;, they have a portfolio of journals and are sometimes hired by professional or academic societies to provide publishing services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of the journal depends on other factors, mostly the editorial strategy which is the job of the editorial board, who are independent from the publisher. As a result, even though both the company that you listed are reputable publishers, there are large variations of quality within their respective portfolios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to know which are the good journals in your field is to &lt;strong&gt;ask your colleagues&lt;/strong&gt; in particular your adviser. You can also &lt;strong&gt;ask the scientific librarian(s)&lt;/strong&gt; of your institution. This is a typical task that they do. Another clue is which journals publish &lt;strong&gt;the good papers you read and intend to cite&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are in the biomedical sciences, the &lt;strong&gt;impact factor&lt;/strong&gt; is a useful metric, although like everything, it's not perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also limiting factors to consider, it might be that your institution or your funding agency have requirements regarding the public archival of preprints. One example is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicaccess.nih.gov&quot;&gt;NIH Public Access Policy&lt;/a&gt;, which requires that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;all investigators funded by NIH submit an electronic copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts of articles that have been accepted for publication. Submission is to take place “upon acceptance,” and the article must be made available in the PubMed Central database within one year of publication.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(All the medicine-related Elsevier journals I know about comply with this requirements, but it's best to check).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="10643" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:54:49.977" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:54:49.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26793" CreationDate="2014-09-26T17:15:19.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the only time your academic credentials matter very much (if you go to work in industry, which I did) is at the very beginning of your career.  At that point, it's more or less all the company has to go on.  One or two jobs in, they are only looking at your past experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider, though, is for those first jobs, it is quite possible that the person doing the interviewing/screening is going to be knowledgable in your academic field, and they will know the difference between a project and a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider is that a thesis is a real commitment with a bunch of picky requirements and you should be sure you really believe in its value before deciding on that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, at the very least, talk to some people in industry who hire people with master's degrees like the one you are considering and see if it matters to them (this would help inform the decision that shane describes regarding whether your time might be better spent focusing on finding a good internship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tim's comment on your original post is a good thing to consider, and I've heard other people say things along that line as well--completing a thesis is proof that you can actually complete a substantial project.  If they are looking at a dozen recent master's' resumes, that could make yours stand out and be a selling point for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T17:15:19.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29041" CreationDate="2014-09-26T17:29:16.980" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, it means two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am really busy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know anything about the job you're applying to and what you want to emphasize about yourself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the first draft you write is something I can't sign, I'll edit it or I won't sign it. If it's not braggy enough, I might add some emphasis. But metaphorically handing me a piece of blank paper and asking me to recommend you is actually asking me to put in quite a lot of work. Do these people you're applying to value initiative? Creativity? Willingness to work long hard hours? Cheerfullness? A driven nature? A gentle spirit? Is the fact you write great software relevant to them? How about your careful bench work? For all I know you want to do less of one thing and more of another. So now I need to ask you a zillion questions about what you want to emphasize, and maybe go research the job too, and then ask you if what I've written is ok - frankly, it's &lt;strong&gt;way easier&lt;/strong&gt; to ask you to write the first draft. And some days, I take the easy route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I intend to sign words I didn't write. I will write the final draft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's ok for you to make up strengths you don't have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll know what I send in the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't write a simple letter without help from a student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first draft doesn't even have to be a letter, it can be point form. But tell me you're choosing me as a reference so I can confirm your amazing Xness, Yabilty and Zation. If I can, I will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I wish I could find the idiot who started the theory that it means I don't think well of you and want you to retract your request. Several students have retracted their requests after I asked for a first draft, and that's a shame, because I would have cheerfully signed a glowing recommendation for them. I just didn't have time to write it all from scratch myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12693" LastEditorUserId="12693" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:01:35.120" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:01:35.120" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-26T17:34:14.853" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prestige of a journal and the exposure it will offer your ideas are not determined by the publisher.  Sure, some publishers are better than others on average, but differences between individual journals are overwhelmingly larger than systematic differences between publishers, so there's no way to give a remotely useful answer based solely on the publisher.  It's like asking &quot;Would I be happier living in France or Germany?&quot;  Someone must have gathered statistics on average national levels of happiness, but individual circumstances and the particular opportunities available in each country are vastly more important for answering this question.  (And the issues and opportunities vary so much between people that there's no hope of compiling a comprehensive answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start on finding your own answer, you can look at the journals that publish papers you care about or consider related or comparable with yours.  If more come from one publisher than the other, then that may give you an answer for your particular research topic, but again you should pay far more attention to the journal than the publisher.  And why restrict your attention to Elsevier and Springer?  It doesn't make sense to cut down your options dramatically until you have a pretty detailed idea of what's out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know what sort of papers a journal publishes (not just topic, but also importance, prestige, etc.) and can't even form an opinion by browsing, then it's probably not a sensible place for you to submit your paper.  If you are just starting to publish, then you may not have a lot of opinions already, but now is a good time to start forming them.  You could also ask your advisor or another mentor for advice on this topic, to get insights aimed at you specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there may be other considerations besides prestige and exposure.  For example, some people &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com/&quot;&gt;boycott Elsevier&lt;/a&gt;.  On the other hand, Springer is also a big commercial publisher that could be considered problematic for similar reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T17:34:14.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-26T17:56:30.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say that the journals are &quot;equivalent&quot; I'm assuming that they have similar impact factor/eigenscore/snip/sjr and any other metric of journal &quot;quality&quot; or &quot;influence&quot; or &quot;popularity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it comes down to Elsevier versus Springer versus any other publisher. Regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which would be viewed by the academic community as more &quot;prestigious&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it matters. Prestige is usually per journal, not per publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which would offer greater exposure for my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also doesn't depend much on the publisher. However, I will give you some points that you might want to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to publish in open access. Most publishers offer this option. This will allow people who do not have a personal or institutional subscription to the journal to view the final version of your article. This usually requires a fee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time from submission to acceptance. This usually varies by journal and does not depend on publisher. Some journals take even a year while other boast on their web pages that it takes several dozens of days. If the journal does not disclose this information, you can take a look at some of the recent published articles in that journal. They usually mention the submitted and accepted date. Note that this varies a lot between papers, so take a look at more than one or two to get a feeling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time it takes for the journal to publish the article after it was accepted. This usually has two phases. The first is when the article appears in an online only form. The article is not assigned to a volume yet, but it is fully accessible and citable. This is the &quot;in press&quot; stage. The next phase is when the article appears &quot;in print&quot;. This is when the journal assigns the article to a physical volume, and the final citation is available. In most of the cases, you wouldn't care because the article is already available in the &quot;in press&quot; phase. However, not all journals offer their articles in this phase so this is something you want to look out for. Also, when articles are still &quot;in press&quot;, some databases do not index it fully (Scopus is one that comes into mind) and your article is less &quot;discoverable&quot; than it can be. So you might want to check that articles in that journal do not hang out in the &quot;in press limbo&quot; for too long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I personally think it doesn't matter too much. The main thing that affects how well received is your paper, is the paper. If it's a good one, all the nit-picking is not that important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22213" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T17:56:30.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-26T19:24:06.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In almost all cases, no, they are not. The vast majority of public universities in the U.S. are owned and operated by the individual state governments, not the U.S. federal government. Within the U.S., the state governments are considered to be entirely separate legal entities. In most (but apparently not all) cases, employees of state-owned universities are considered employees of that particular state. The exceptions where a public university professor actually would be a U.S. federal government employee are professors at the handful of universities actually owned by the federal government, such as the various military academies, as well as dual-employees of both a university and some part of the federal government, such as a federal government research institution. One of my advisors, for instance, is an employee both of my university and of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, so he's an employee both of the State of Tennessee as well as of the U.S. federal government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12999" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T19:24:06.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29018" CreationDate="2014-09-26T21:44:18.347" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bias exists at many points of the hiring process. You suggested blinding the search committee to applicant gender but, as you point out, this is extremely difficult to do perfectly and completely broken by even small failures. For obvious reasons, blinding will also not be particularly relevant after you start interviewing candidates. I like the other suggestions to provide training to sensitize the committee to issues of gender bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that — and if your university policies allow it — you might also decide now (i.e., before the search) to interview at least one male and at least one female candidate. This way, you will give the best male and female candidates a full chance to convince you that they are right for your department. This ensures that at the top person of each gender makes it through the earlier stages of the process where gender bias may very well play its biggest role. At the interview stage, blinding would not have worked anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of policy is unusual but not unheard of. The most famous example I know if is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule&quot;&gt;Rooney Rule&lt;/a&gt; in the US National Football League which requires that all teams interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. Although this is sometimes cited as an example of affirmative action, it does not mandate any preference or quota to candidates within the pool of those being interviewed. If you're doing it right, it does mean that the very best candidates from under-represented groups will always have an opportunity to show their stuff at the final round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you found out that  best person from the under-represented groups is really not as good as the best person from the over-represented group, at least you'll know that you gave the best member from each group a full hearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I will point out that this answer basically assumes that all of your candidates will present as either male or female. As a result, is it very limited in the case of non-gender conforming candidates. These candidates may also be subject to even greater discrimination and this approach will not solve (and could even aggravate) those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T18:22:35.667" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T18:22:35.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T22:53:02.807" Score="2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any website or other places that give some publication statistics (e.g. number of published papers, number of citations, etc.) per company? Ideally I would like to have those statistics computed for some time period, e.g. for every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am talking about industrial research organizations here, not publishing companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T09:18:40.913" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T16:26:49.207" Title="Publication statistics per research company" Tags="&lt;industry&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-26T22:56:33.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to expand upon something that Anonymous Mathematician wrote: Elsevier is the subject of an ongoing &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecostofknowledge.com/&quot;&gt;boycott&lt;/a&gt;. As of now, 14,784 researchers have pledged to not submit, referee, and/or perform editorial work for Elsevier journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion the boycott is completely justified: not only are they selling our own golden eggs back to us at exorbitant prices, but they engage in shady practices such as &quot;bundling&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people disagree with and don't support the boycott. But whether you agree with it or not, the fact that 14,000 researchers are refusing to deal with Elsevier bodes ill in the long term for the quality of their publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T22:56:33.737" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T23:10:49.157" Score="16" ViewCount="2322" Body="&lt;p&gt;How might a professor approach a student who comes to class and/or office hours wearing perfume or cologne that is distractingly or overwhelmingly powerful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, different people have different thresholds for this sort of thing. Lets say that in this case it is unclear the extent to which this is distracting other students in class but it is clear to the teacher that it is strong enough to distract the teacher. Of course, it might be affecting other students as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="8562" LastEditDate="2014-09-27T00:05:07.980" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T14:16:47.780" Title="How should a teacher approach a student with distractingly strong perfume?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;social-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29056" CreationDate="2014-09-26T23:27:50.970" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might ask quietly and privately to speak to the student immediately after class. At that point, when no one else is present, I would politely say, &quot;I am sensitive to the strength of your perfume&quot;. After that, I would let the conversation unfold. When the student would be defensive, I would just politely repeat the one statement &quot;I am sensitive to the strength of your perfume&quot;. I might add &quot;This is a health-related issue for me, as much as an allergy might be. It could eventually affect how I could continue to teach in the class&quot;. I would NOT ask or even suggest the student should NOT wear the perfume or take any action. I would hope the student would volunteer that step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22283" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T23:27:50.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29056" CreationDate="2014-09-27T00:36:50.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that this could be treated differently depending on if the student is spending a lot of time at the department during business hours, or if the student is only going to a class. If you are only seeing the student in one class you may want to endure? I could easily see a student complaining about a teacher that is having opinions about his/hers perfume. If you are to complain I would open the conversation with &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am terribly sorry to bring this up but I have an allergy and..&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. It doesn't matter if it is true or not but it is a smooth way of handling it, which would save the student any embarrassment, and settle the issue effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastEditorUserId="20704" LastEditDate="2014-09-27T00:44:20.043" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T00:44:20.043" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29032" CreationDate="2014-09-27T02:15:34.217" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignore the emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common justification for these kind of situations is a need for attention from that person. By answering his calls you are only reinforcing this need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T02:15:34.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2014-09-27T07:20:17.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goal when giving a talk is to convey information in a way none have presented or expressed before. The constraints being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easy to understand for complete novices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interesting for experts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mindset is also to aim for 10-12 minutes when allocated 15 minutes. It is always better to finish early than it is to go over your time. It &lt;strong&gt;ALWAYS&lt;/strong&gt; leaves a bad taste in my mouth when a speaker exceeds their allotted time. It's disrespectful and inconsiderate of other people's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also subscribe to the &lt;em&gt;1 slide per 1 minute MAX&lt;/em&gt; philosophy. In terms of time per section (borrowing from @eykanal's reply), but whichever section has your contribution then the time spent there should be doubled (e.g., I assume in the Methods section):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 min &lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 min &lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 min &lt;strong&gt;Evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 min &lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 min &lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 min &lt;strong&gt;Future Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1079" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T07:20:17.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T08:08:50.563" Score="6" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; ranking countries based on amount of funding and GDP.  Is there a list that breaks this down further by funding agencies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the wiki list says US funding, but I imagine it's not so simple or clear where it comes from.  For example, it's not clear how much comes from NSF, NIH, and DARPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I find out the largest funding agnecies in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:13:26.233" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T17:03:58.980" Title="Is there a list of research funding agencies worldwide, ordered by money spent?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;international&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-27T16:15:21.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask people you work with.   See where they're publishing and ask around.  What holds for one field may not hold for others.  Prestige of journals is subjective and based on the opinions of a relatively small group of researchers.  Asking here will get you many useless opinions, because the only opinions that matter are those of your potential readers in you field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look at each journal's practices and policies to see you feel personally comfortable supporting them.  It's 2014 and many people do not even look at the &quot;journal,&quot; they simply search google for your paper.  Your aim should be to increase visibility to your work and not hide it behind, e.g. needless paywalls.  Choose a journal that will allow you to do this in a reasonable manner.   Consider journals that let you additionally post preprints on your personal website or arxiv.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20312" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T16:15:21.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T16:17:02.607" Score="2" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just took the GRE Mathematics exam and I think I didn't do very well. I answered only 39 of the 66 questions due to lack of time (I knew I could answer a lot more but it would take some time to do the calculations so I left them for the end and never managed to return-I didn't even get to question 60). What I want to say is that I know I can do better but I am not that fast. I tried to register for the October exam but it is impossible-everywhere in my country! So I want to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will my score be sufficient to at least have a chance in good PhD programs (my goals were UCLA, UIUC, Berkley, Stanford...)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think that these universities could accept my application if I say I will retake the test in April?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22301" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:20:58.830" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T02:20:58.830" Title="Will US graduate schools accept me retaking a GRE subject test in the spring?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;deadlines&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29068" CreationDate="2014-09-27T16:29:16.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A poor test score is not disqualifying if the rest of your application is strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an April test date &lt;strong&gt;will not work&lt;/strong&gt; for admission next fall. The reason for this is that the US admissions cycle requires acceptance decisions around mid-April. Since the test is in mid-April, and scores won't be available until mid-May, they would have to accept you &quot;blind,&quot; without knowing what your scores would be. So you're essentially &quot;stuck&quot; with the scores you have, at least for admission for the upcoming fall semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T16:29:16.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29071" CreationDate="2014-09-27T17:48:28.433" Score="43" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an instructor in a medium-sized state school in the USA. The price for the textbook to the introductory math course that I teach just increased. Again. A new, paperback copy costs 170 USD. I want to put pressure on the publishers to reduce their price, but I am not sure what the best strategy is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had any success in such an endeavour? Any ideas? A strongly worded letter, signed by the faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22304" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T09:58:40.107" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:49:32.887" Title="Is there any way to pressure textbook publishers to reduce price?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-27T18:15:26.357" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the authority to change the textbook on your own, at least for your own section, then your target should be, not the publisher, but the person or committee that &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have that happy power.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show them this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://aimath.org/textbooks/approved-textbooks/&quot;&gt;http://aimath.org/textbooks/approved-textbooks/&lt;/a&gt; and propose that you teach a section of your course using the appropriate open access textbook.  (Edited to add: Pick out the appropriate book and an alternate before you talk to the committee or coordinator and be prepared to defend your choice vs. the approved text.) In the following semester, compare how well your students did in the next course in sequence vs. those who used the standard text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your secret weapon: work like hell to be sure your students are well prepared for the next course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments, Ben Crowell has said: &quot;Here is a catalog I maintain of free books, including many open-source textbooks: &lt;a href=&quot;http://theassayer.org&quot;&gt;http://theassayer.org&lt;/a&gt;&quot;  I've edited it into my answer so it doesn't get lost.  Thank you, Ben.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* &lt;sub&gt;Hat tip to Professor Severus Snape for &quot;happy power.&quot;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16183" LastEditorUserId="16183" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T08:17:13.377" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T08:17:13.377" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29100" CreationDate="2014-09-27T18:55:52.103" Score="5" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in my final year of undergraduate study, and will be applying to physics PhD programs (for condensed matter theory) soon. Without going into details, I am convinced that deferring my admission for a year, i.e. taking a &quot;gap year&quot;, would be beneficial for me personally, and it is my understanding that most schools permit a one-year deferral. I would most likely work in the tech industry for this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; worried about my physics/math abilities atrophying; I plan on actively keeping up with my studies independently during this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I am permitted to defer for a year, are there any negative perceptions related to time off before graduate school that might affect my future academic career, after the PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will some people in the community look down on me for taking time away from academia, or is this considered a fine thing to do? Could this hinder me in the future when applying for postdocs (both the year away from academia and the fact that I am probably finishing my PhD a year later than I otherwise would)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking about the general perception of a gap year as it pertains to and affects a career path, not about how a gap year impacts a PhD application (which is addressed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11320/what-is-the-perception-of-students-who-take-a-gap-year-between-their-graduation&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22306" OwnerDisplayName="user59979" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.840" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T11:05:47.567" Title="Does deferring admissions to PhD affect future (post-PhD) career path?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;time-off&gt;&lt;deferral&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-27T18:58:41.127" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect—although I don't have actual proof for this—that the number of textbooks being sold has been rapidly declining, forcing upwards pressure on prices as publishers try to maintain their profit margins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I fully understand why teachers are reluctant to ask students to spend hundreds of dollars on a textbook. (Books that I spent $50 on as an undergraduate less than two decades ago now regularly sell for $150-$200!) I think this has also led to more and more instructors providing alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having departments order limited quantities of texts, and depositing them as &quot;restricted reference&quot; materials in the university library.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Producing their own reference materials, either by making lecture notes and slides available online, or producing &quot;prepared&quot; materials closer in style to a textbook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing the reliance on &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; textbooks, so that students can choose whichever appropriate reference they wish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know from personal experience that all three approaches are useful (and I've used them in different classes, depending on the nature and structure of the course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T18:58:41.127" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29040" CreationDate="2014-09-27T19:14:18.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said before, when it comes to prestige the publisher does not have much weight, the journal does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have to disagree slightly with other answers when it comes to exposure: some publishers have their journals available by many more universities in the world than others, thus bringing some more exposure to the work they publish (exposure is not only availability, but availability is the first logical component of exposure). Now that large commercial publishers bundle a lot, sometimes selling all their journals to a whole country, all their journals (however obscure they sometimes are) are widely accessible. However, this does not make a big difference between Springer and Elsevier, who are both big commercial publisher with mostly convergent commercial strategies. Note that open-access journals are of course even better for availability; but the fact that SpringerLink and ScienceDirect (the platforms used to access Springer and Elsevier journals) gather so many titles under one roof makes it more likely that someone will easily find a given article (an open-access buried into the depth of the internet might be available but difficult to find).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another difference between publishers you didn't asked for but that matters is the quality of publishing work (copy-editing, assistance to editorial boards, etc.) For an author, the work done on the articles themselves is important. If you think it doesn't matter much, then think about the difference between &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. a publisher that sends you galley proofs to be checked in one week, without any indication of what has been changed from your own manuscript (but many tiny and not-so-tiny changes having been made), and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. a publisher that sends you an annotated version of your manuscript, showing all modifications made to it, together with the galley proof that resulted from this process, so that you can check each modification easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is in hours of work, unless you blindly trust copy-editors. And this would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be wise. Unfortunately for you, from my experience and all the testimony I gathered about various publishers, Elsevier and Springer are pretty similar when it comes to service to the authors: they do a pretty bad job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, I would say that publishers do matter to authors even when they do not want to take any political stance like the Cost of knowledge pledge. But it is hard to find a strong difference between Springer and Elsevier (if you want names of publishers that do a great job, I know a few but for mathematics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T19:14:18.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-27T19:24:01.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my institution, we asked a publisher to make us a &quot;custom edition&quot; of one of their expensive texts. The content wasn't really any different (I think we had them omit a chapter or two that wasn't in our curriculum) but they printed it in black and white, and it was somewhat cheaper than the four-color standard edition and still perfectly adequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did encounter some difficulty in communicating to the bookstore what exactly they were supposed to order and stock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the publishers like doing this because (a) it makes them feel more responsive to the needs of their customers and (b) it further fragments the used market. So I couldn't really say it turns the tables; maybe just wobbles them a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T19:24:01.833" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T20:47:40.293" Score="7" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some teachers decide to release all lecture materials (e.g. prepared lecture notes, slides for presentations) at once at the beginning of the term, while some others release their materials gradually (i.e. releasing the lecture materials a few hours/days before the corresponding lecture), even though all materials are the same as the previous year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pedagogical advantages of not releasing all lecture materials at once at the beginning of the term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially interested in graduate-level computer science (machine learning) education in the US, in case the answer is country, field or level dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:26:24.587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T10:54:32.353" Title="Releasing all lecture materials at once vs. releasing materials lecture by lecture" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;slides&gt;&lt;lecture-notes&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29076" CreationDate="2014-09-27T21:32:14.723" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a CS student, I experienced both types. In my opinion, there are many practical disadvantages and psychological effects to consider when releasing everything at the beginning of the semester. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However, it is very nice to be able to view the materials from previous years in full, and almost none of the disadvantages listed below apply for this case.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If everything is available at the beginning of semester, students might deem it not necessary to check the course website during the semester, as they already know that &quot;everything is there&quot;. They will miss announcements and updates to the website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the lecture materials are changed or revised during the semester, students might miss these updates if they downloaded everything at the beginning of the semester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychological effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information overload: Students may think that the course will be too difficult if they take a look at later slides at the beginning of the semester and thus might drop the course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frustration: Eager students may try to understand the contents of later slides (e.g. a few weeks in advance), but get frustrated if the slides are not completely self-contained and there is information missing (that would have been given in the lectures).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lazyness: If everything is there at the beginning of the semester, students may not feel the need to keep up with homework/reading week by week, as there is less of a weekly reminder that things have changed (the page is static and does not change every week). If the materials are released weekly, there is more of a motivation to not fall too far behind, as students are reminded every week of how far behind they are. Also, students might not be motivated to go to the lecture if they already know that all the material has been released.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inattentiveness: Students that have already read the slides of the coming weeks may be bored or inattentive during the lectures. This may be important if the slides &quot;give away&quot; too much of the thought process if students read ahead. In some lectures, homework is only mentally stimulating if the slides of next weeks' lecture are not available in advance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students may also get the impression that the professor is just &quot;phoning it in&quot; for this year, even if that is not the case. If slides are released every week, this gives more of an impression that the lecture was tailored to this specific year, and to the questions asked during this year's lectures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8998" LastEditorUserId="8998" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T10:54:32.353" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T10:54:32.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T21:42:22.387" Score="6" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be teaching a class in my university's evening degree program. The students are undergraduates but are what I've heard referred to as &quot;non-traditional&quot; students. Basically, the students are all older than the 18-22 year range common in undergraduate programs and most of them have full time jobs. I have taught older students before, but only in the context of masters programs targeted mostly at students with professional experience (e.g., a part-time executive MBA program).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for advice, or links to resources with advice that you have found useful, on teaching older working students. In particular, I am interested in techniques, approaches, or things to keep in mind that &lt;em&gt;are different&lt;/em&gt; from teaching (a) traditional undergraduate students (i.e., ~18-22 year-old) students and (b) working professional master students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T22:05:40.020" Title="Advice for teaching older &quot;non-traditional&quot; undergraduate students" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;students&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T21:52:01.453" Score="30" ViewCount="3283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many academics with an active research program, I am asked to review many papers. Borrowing an idea from peer-to-peer file sharing companies, I try to keep a rough sense of my recent &quot;ratio&quot; of &lt;strong&gt;reviews I have done on other's papers&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;reviews my papers have received&lt;/strong&gt;. I try to make sure I have a ratio that is consistently above 1:1. Since many of my papers (and presumably the papers I review) are co-authored, this seems very generous to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many reviews should I be doing? How many is normal? Is a ratio an effective way to keep track of one's reviews? Is a minimum 1:1 ratio appropriate and defensible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T07:44:07.710" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T19:22:02.750" Title="How many papers should I be reviewing as a referee?" Tags="&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29079" CreationDate="2014-09-27T22:00:53.887" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could count each n-author paper you are on as 1/n of a paper. Thus each time you submit for publication a 2-author paper, a 3-author paper and a 6-author paper, it's time to referee another paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the journal uses more than one referee per paper, adjust up accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some sense this must be what most people do, on average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; One could ask the editors how many referees they use per paper. Better yet, the editors should volunteer that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastEditorUserId="11257" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T01:13:06.180" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T01:13:06.180" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29078" CreationDate="2014-09-27T22:05:40.020" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, you will find four things happen to various degrees. One is, non-traditional students are less distracted by issues that we know overwhelm the minds of 18-22 year olds. This means, they can bring more focus to their studies. The second thing is, non-traditional students are less inclined to believe they are entitled to something easy from you with no responsibility from them. This means, they can bring a stronger sense of mutual respect to the class room. The third thing is, non-traditional students have some lag or lack of knowledge in pre-requisite information for the course. This means, you may have to spend time to help them remember the missing background information. Finally, non-traditional students are more involved in higher-level and higher-intensity demands in their lives. This means, they can have less time to study during your course as though that responsibility is supposed to be ingrained in their full-time career path for the coming semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might plan in general how to balance these changes during your course presentation and curriculum development. Then, consider how, because you know these changes are coming, you will make specific changes in such things as the pace of your lecture presentations, the number of or time scales of your assignments, and the options you will offer for off-line tutoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, teaching non-traditional students is a different experience that can end up being a far more rewarding one than teaching traditional students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards, and have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22283" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T22:05:40.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T23:24:49.553" Score="3" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I graduated high school in the United States and I have a bachelors degree from an accredited university in the United States as well.  Would I need to keep my high school transcripts for any purpose?  For example, Grad school in the US or abroad or any other need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22310" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T23:44:40.020" Title="Do I need to keep my high school transcripts?" Tags="&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29082" CreationDate="2014-09-27T23:44:40.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grad school applications typically only want your undergraduate transcript since that is your highest level of education (and most recent). This is the system in Canada, and I can't think of a reason it would be different in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user479" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T23:44:40.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29079" CreationDate="2014-09-28T00:31:20.273" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have wondered about the same question.  One thing that I've noticed is that there is an incredible amount of variation in the amount of reviewing done.  I have two good friends who are strong, active mathematicians.  The last time I spoke to them they were each at least six years past their PhD and had never reviewed a single paper.  This seems bad, but it's not their fault: they are not being asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the lack of coordination among journals in the same field causes the same small number of people to be asked to referee papers over and over again.  I am not a journal editor, but I have begun to wonder how editors choose referees: I am someone who is getting (what I think is!) a large number of referee requests.  I submit maybe 2-4 papers per year.  Not so long ago I used to get that number of referee requests per year, and they were all from people who knew me directly and pertained to topics related to my thesis work or to the areas in which I have written multiple papers.  Now I get at least a dozen referee requests a year, and in addition to the above I get some very strange-looking ones.  Not so long ago I got asked to referee a paper in (what I think is!) control theory.  This was so baffling that I assumed it was some kind of email crossed wires situation and asked the editor about it.  It turned out that the paper on real analytic solutions to Bezout equations had been sent to me because of a question on math.SE that I answered, in which I explained why the ring of analytic functions on the complex plane is a Bezout domain.  This is distressing: I can see why google would make a connection like this, but in the realm of academic experts, is it not obvious that we are on different sides of mathematics?  Experiences like this make me wonder who is refereeing papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that counting papers is the right way to gauge whether you are pulling your weight referee-wise.  As I mentioned in a comment to another answer, many -- I think most -- papers are refereed by more than one person, either simultaneously for the same journal or sequentially, as many (most?) papers are submitted to more than one journal before they are accepted.  Here are some things that I have thought about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It cannot be appropriate for everyone to referee the same number of papers.  More experienced people should referee more papers, but also should referee more important / difficult papers.  People who have permanent / senior positions in academia (especially: tenure) should have more obligations than those who are struggling to stay in the profession.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Not all papers take the same amount of time to referee: not even close, actually.  I try to make a point of quickly processing especially short and simple papers: I probably do 3-5 of those each year, and I often process them in a week or even a day.  But it would be silly to equate this kind of referee work with the long, difficult papers that you spend weeks or months &lt;em&gt;working on&lt;/em&gt;, perhaps having to do considerable outside reading in order to adequately evaluate.  Doing 2-3 substantial papers a year is what really keeps me busy as a referee.  I suppose I try to keep my eye on the total amount of &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; I've spent refereeing rather than on the number of papers, although I admit that I don't do this in any formalized way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Unless a paper is clearly of the &quot;one day&quot; variety as above, I try not to let my queue exceed 2 papers.  This is also out of respect to the authors: if I have to read two papers &lt;em&gt;before I get to yours&lt;/em&gt;, then you'll be waiting for at least six months, probably more.  If at any given time every sufficiently experienced/qualified academic had either 0 or 1 papers to referee and made a point of processing papers faster than they submit them, then things would work relatively smoothly, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T00:31:20.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T01:16:42.247" Score="4" ViewCount="3772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a 3rd year undergrad majoring in math/physics. I was admitted to my university through an honors program due to outstanding high school achievement (my university is a large public one, moderately well known in the US) with several scholarships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after my first semester, I fell back into a recurring bout of severe depression, and did not get help. My grades ended up tanking that next semester (C average). I thought I had overcome it by my second year, but soon developed psychosis and could no longer focus on studying; I neglected my health and hygiene, and I couldn't even get up some mornings to get to class. None of my professors are aware of my situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally sought help last spring and I've been doing better (keeping up with work, getting better grades, etc), but I feel like nothing will ever make up for those two years of mediocre grades. My overall GPA right now is sitting around a 2.5. I feel like while this is possible to explain away, I'm reluctant to divulge information about my severe mental illness to admissions because there is still a lot of stigma associated with it. I've seen mixed answers as to whether or not it's a good idea to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there still a way for me to pursue applied mathematics in graduate school? Is graduate school aiming too high? And if so, do I talk about my limitations as far as my health is concerned? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love math, and love learning. I've done a few practice Math Subject GRE exams, and they were fairly easy (as long as I study for the parts I'm not 100% on, of course). I've also done a few small math projects with grad students and I've worked in a lab since I was a freshman; I feel like I'm passionate enough about the subject to succeed but I'm afraid admission committees will not look past my GPA to see that and wouldn't risk having someone like me in their program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9915" LastEditorUserId="9915" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:39:17.410" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T03:49:03.020" Title="Applying to grad school for mathematics with low GPA, but reluctant to bring up the health issues that caused it" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29032" CreationDate="2014-09-28T02:37:54.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You provide your best answer in your final question:&#xA;&quot;How do I deal with this persistent 'academic stalking' while at the same time, not make a 'fuss'?&quot;  Don't deal with him and don't make a fuss.  You might be interested in the following 2 links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Troll (Internet). (2014, September 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 07:37, September 28, 2014, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Troll_(Internet)&amp;amp;oldid=627020408&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Troll_(Internet)&amp;amp;oldid=627020408&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoy, A. (2014). slash7 with Amy Hoy » Blog Archive » Help Vampires: A Spotter’s Guide. Slash7.com. Retrieved 28 September 2014, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/&quot;&gt;http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't waste your time with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22316" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T07:41:25.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T07:41:25.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29103" CreationDate="2014-09-28T03:17:46.183" Score="5" ViewCount="2510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginning researcher trying to write a research paper , so please bear with some of the really basic questions I might have. I've already looked around for some help online, but the websites I found were vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My program is written in perl. Should I include my code in the paper? If so, is there a maximum number of lines? Will people expect me to include all of it in the paper (either in the appendix or in the body) or can I just write out in text the general idea of what it does? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22319" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T03:29:47.290" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:57:18.987" Title="Are there general guidelines for including code in a research paper?" Tags="&lt;writing-style&gt;&lt;code&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29085" CreationDate="2014-09-28T03:49:03.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly have no obligation to mention your depression when applying.  You can say nothing about the subject and let your recently improved work stand for itself, or you can allude to personal issues and reassure the committee that they are no longer troubling you.  If you do well in your last two years of college, then difficulties in your first two will matter far less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I think it could be worth mentioning.  In mathematics there's less stigma surrounding depression than you might expect (at least in the U.S.).  Compared with the rest of society, the mathematical community is unusually tolerant of various forms of psychological variation, provided that you can do good mathematics.  A number of famous mathematicians have suffered from depression, so it would be foolish to dismiss an applicant for that reason, and many mathematicians know colleagues who have been depressed.  The key question is whether you have found treatment that keeps it under control.  If you leave your situation vague, then you leave open the possibility that whatever was causing the bad grades might return.  If you explain that you sought treatment for depression and found it successful, then that will reassure the committee that your recent improvements are likely to be long lasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do mention this issue, I'd keep it brief.  A single sentence in your personal statement would be enough (the committee doesn't need or want any details about your health or treatment).  And, as I said above, there's no need to say anything at all if you aren't comfortable with it.  However, I don't believe doing so could hurt your application, and it might help explain your grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T03:49:03.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29132" CreationDate="2014-09-28T03:52:37.393" Score="4" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;It comes as known that some experimenters have died or suffered other ill effects because of consequences of their experiments, such as Marie Curie.  What is the distribution by gender/sex of those who perform potentially hazardous experiments in academia?  How does their compensation for their work in terms of salaries or other benefits compare to other academics who have less physically hazardous jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like research with supporting citations if available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7158" LastEditorUserId="7158" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T23:59:56.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T19:41:45.817" Title="What is the gender distribution of those who perform potentially hazardous scientific experiments?" Tags="&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;gender&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T06:00:10.810" Score="3" ViewCount="749" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have contacted a potential PhD supervisor and currently he is reviewing my work, however this evaluation process seems to be taking too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to give my research proposal to another professor (another university) while he is reviewing my work? Will this reflect negatively on me if he finds out about it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is a good chance that these two professors are in contact with each other ( though I can't be sure!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is the foremost expert in my field and I would prefer to have him as supervisor. I just don't want to lose my other opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note : I have already secured funding for my PhD. I am only looking for a reputable school (and supervisor). I am considering two institutions in Europe, in Netherlands and Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21893" LastEditorUserId="21893" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T12:25:48.867" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:51:17.553" Title="Is it considered unethical/bad etiquette to contact another potential PhD supervisor while waiting for a response from my first choice?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29089" CreationDate="2014-09-28T07:36:02.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academia is unusual (in some countries possibly unique) in that it typically does not need to offer additional reward for exposure to hazards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because of academia's fairly unusual characteristics: the people who expose themselves to the hazards are very well-informed about them, and uniquely positioned to mitigate them. And academia is not a profession that the unskilled and economically vulnerable are forced into by hardship: instead, it is very often an active choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, several countries, including Britain, have pay structures that do not, and have never needed to, incorporate risk as part of compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in Britain at least, there is no &quot;danger money&quot; or other compensation for exposure to risk: the market doesn't require it, and employees are far more empowered than most to handle the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of exposure by gender, STEM fields continue to have a problem with entrenched sexism (predominantly inherited from the 20th century), being very male-dominated at the top levels, where the power and money concentrates. Even today, STEM is still majority male at the level of undergraduate admissions in many countries at many universities: in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11874-eng.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Canada&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/20/stem-fields-and-the-gender-gap-where-are-the-women/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://felixonline.co.uk/news/3199/looking-into-the-gender-balance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Britain and globally&lt;/a&gt;, men dominate STEM subjects. And the risk exposure concentrates in STEM subjects- no physical risks in maths; but science, technology, engineering are where the physical risks concentrate; and those that expose themselves to them, do so with knowledge of what they are doing, and the ability to mitigate those risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T07:36:02.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T07:38:35.093" Score="4" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it worthwhile to spend some time as reviewer of journals which are not JCR-indexed? I do not know in the rest of the world, but in Spain all that matters are those listed in JCR.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I am a robotics PhD student yet, and I probably should focus on my research now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21805" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T12:09:43.067" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T18:10:51.997" Title="Is paper reviewing for journals that are not JCR-listed worth the time?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;bibliometrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29092" CreationDate="2014-09-28T09:23:09.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general answer would be yes. Doing reviews provides several benefits, first, you will see manuscripts before they are published. You will spend time reading new research in detail in a way you probably would not otherwise. You can use the experience to learn about how to write (or how not to write) a manuscript. You will contribute to your field as is expected from all scientists. Being appointed to review also signals someone has identified you as a possible expert in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, some possible caveats. You should not spend time on manuscripts from disreputable journals. One way to gain insight into this is to ask your advisor about the journal if you do not feel you have the insight yourself. If the manuscript is far removed from your own work, you should probably also decline with the comment that it is not within your expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that this will take time off from your PhD work to some extent but you will be able to learn from the experience if you consider the process of evaluating work and assessing the standard in which manuscripts are submitted. Of course, one review, will not give you all insights, but given that you do a few during your PhD time, you will gain new insights into the publishing world other than submitting and revising your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final point: reviewing for a JCR journal or a journal that is not listed should not differ. The review work is equally important for all publications. A journal that is not listed can become listed if published work is of high quality and thereby referenced sufficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T09:23:09.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T09:47:25.463" Score="6" ViewCount="1108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following dilemma: I am finishing my Master's degree in pure mathematics this academic year (summer 2015) and I hoped to apply to a PhD program (US schools) starting from September 2015. Therefore, I have to apply this fall (till December 2014 in most places).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have the following problem - my first article has just been completed and I have to go through a painful publication process which will not be finished in time (surely not till December). Second problem is that I have not particularly high GRE Math results (around 750 I guess, still waiting for results); the exam can be retaken only in April 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the only strengths I have are high GPA and solid letters of recommendation. I guess I could send the article to Arxiv.org, but I am not sure if that is acceptable to admissions committee and I am not familiar with the process of placing the article there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to apply this fall and in case I am not accepted to the desired program, reapply next year, in the fall of 2015?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or there is some kind of cooldown like the one you have in industry jobs and it is wiser to skip this year's admissions and apply in 2015 with a solid application profile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22327" LastEditorUserId="22327" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T05:54:09.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T05:54:09.193" Title="Are there any restrictions on applying to the same graduate school in two consecutive years?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29090" CreationDate="2014-09-28T11:51:40.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you are a normal student, i.e. you don't have single-author papers in science or something similar. If you have, contact your only choice again, if he has money he should hire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are a normal student, then yes, contact other Professors and programs as well. This is normal (at least in the natural sciences) and increases your chances of actually having a position in the future. Don't worry about this reflecting negatively. If someone does, you maybe wouldn't want to work with this person anyway. Honestly, however, there are many applicants that individual withdrawels don't bother us too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider being less picky. If your choice of Prof. is indeed the foremost expect the (prior) probability of him actually hiring you is rather low. To increase the (posterior) probability of being hired, you need to stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T11:51:40.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29097" CreationDate="2014-09-28T11:53:19.297" Score="2" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote my bachelor thesis about a topic that recently deserved a lot of attention because of global media and geopolitical development (See Title below [1]). Therefore I know would like to publish it. But because I changed my research field from &lt;em&gt;European Studies&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Sustainable Development&lt;/em&gt;, I am not in the right networks anymore to get official assistance with the publication and I am not really aiming for a peer-reviewed paper either. But I still would like my finding to be &amp;quot;out there&amp;quot;. Therefore &lt;strong&gt;reach&lt;/strong&gt; is also my priority. If possible I would of course not be upset, if I could be financially &lt;strong&gt;reward&lt;/strong&gt;-ed for each download, but that is rather a minor priority and bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have found and considered platforms like &lt;em&gt;StackExchange&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Scribd&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;reddit&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Academia&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/em&gt;. And now I would like to get some insights from practitioners or experienced academics what to do. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;I have decided to go with GRIN now. Thanks for all people commenting and taking time. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &amp;quot;Theories of Democracy in Comparison: The Russian Case - Output-oriented Legitimacy, Defect Democracy, Political Culture, Path Dependence and Public Opinion&amp;quot; - Why would Russians, interested in democracy, vote for Putin, while being aware that he is not beneficial for a democratic future of the country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.grin.com/document/281667&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Theories of Democracy in Comparison: The Russian Case. Output-oriented Legitimacy, Defect Democracy, Political Culture, Path Dependence and Public Opinion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Bachelor Thesis, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12668" LastEditorUserId="62311" LastEditDate="2021-01-02T17:01:34.613" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T17:01:34.613" Title="How to increase the reach of my bachelor thesis with little effort?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;online-publication&gt;&lt;bachelor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="29097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29096" CreationDate="2014-09-28T12:41:14.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the following, I will assume your thesis is indeed of excellent quality, and brings interesting new insight into the field.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, your goals: you say you are primarily interested in &lt;strong&gt;reach&lt;/strong&gt;, with potential for (I am assuming financial) rewards being a nice-to-have. The options you have proposed were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;StackExchange&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Academia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the right place. More or less by definition, Stack Exchange sites do not want to have original research. Your research would also definitely be out of scope here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scribd&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No personal experience. Maybe somebody can edit this in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ResearchGate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time&quot;&gt;and others here&lt;/a&gt; have experienced, ResearchGate is a terrible place to communicate ideas. Honestly, this one is probably just a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience this is similar to ResearchGate, but, for academic topics, even worse. I do not know anybody who uses LinkedIn to discover interesting content. Probably also a waste of time,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;reddit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be an idea, but not to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; the content on, but as a means to advertise the content you have hosted elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;I think&lt;/em&gt; you should try is make a blog. First, start off by summarising your main theses and results in a poignant way (and linking to your full thesis for those interested in details). Keep the blog up-to-date by following recent events (in your topic, there are new events almost daily at the moment). If you get questions, address them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advertise your blog heavily, on Reddit, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on other suitable platforms. In terms of monetization, you can either get your own server going, host the blog yourself, and make some modest money via ads, or use a free Wordpress (or similar) account. In the latter case, all ad money will go to Wordpress, but you will have very low setup effort and do not need any upfront investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To wrap this up, one word of warning - having a blog, or really any widely known published material, on such a sensitive topic may well be &lt;em&gt;actually, physically dangerous to you&lt;/em&gt;. People have certainly been threatened and harassed for less than publishing unpopular opinions about Russia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T12:41:14.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29019" CreationDate="2014-09-28T12:42:35.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a reference about this. The split in email addresses is often because mathematics departments were among the early adopters of computing. I don't know whether this applies to your own institution, but it applies to several I have been at, of different sizes from 5,000 to 50,000 students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When computing technology began to be available, mathematics departments were among the first adopters. Computers and mathematics go together. At quite a few schools, the computer science department is still part of the department of mathematics; at others, the two departments started together (when the math department began to hire computer scientists), and split apart later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the period before PCs became ubiquitous in the 1990s, mathematics departments often found funds (often via grants) to operate computer labs, web servers, and email servers on their own. At this time, especially in the 1980s, university-wide computing services were often quite primitive, and often consisted of terminal servers instead of PCs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, as computing became ubiquitous, universities hired their own IT staff, and began to run their own web servers and email. This is how, at several institutions I have been at, I had two different email addresses (one for the university and one for the math department) and two web pages (same split)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that email and web servers are viewed as a basic service that the university provides to faculty, it is more difficult for mathematics departments to justify having their independent systems. Administrators correctly look at the separation as an inefficiency, asking why the department can't use the same system as everyone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, math departments that want to continue to have separate systems will need to present a very strong case for why the separate systems are necessary, beyond the historical developments that led to the separate systems coming into existence. As email and web services become more and more of a staple commodity, this argument gets more and more difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T12:42:35.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29072" CreationDate="2014-09-28T13:20:09.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, there is very little effect from taking a year off between undergraduate and doctoral studies, so long as you complete your graduate studies in a &quot;normal&quot; manner. The primary concern is how you did as a graduate student on your particular project; after you've received the PhD, the particulars of how you got there are much less important in determining your future career path. There may be some people who are prejudiced against people who deviated from what they consider a &quot;normal&quot; trajectory, but I wouldn't expect this to be a major fraction of potential employers. (And more to the point, you probably wouldn't want to work for such an individual anyways.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:20:09.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29094" CreationDate="2014-09-28T13:25:08.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A solid GPA and letters of recommendation is nothing to sneeze at—particularly if one of the people who wrote your letter of recommendation is a co-author on the publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to publish the paper on arXiv if you and your co-authors don't feel it is appropriate; however, you can mention that you have a manuscript available, and submit it along with your application (if the department to which you're applying permits it!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't wait an extra year just to &quot;improve your odds.&quot; Apply this year—if you don't like the results, try again next year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:25:08.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29090" CreationDate="2014-09-28T13:51:17.553" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding a PhD advisor, like finding a job, is not a serial process. You can—and &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt;—have multiple applications out simultaneously. If you get an offer you find acceptable, then you should take it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about missing out on an opportunity with your first-choice advisor if someone else makes you an offer, then you can send a polite email informing the first-choice advisor something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would really like to work with you, but I am starting to receive offers of admission from other advisors. They would like to have an answer by &amp;lt;&lt;em&gt;date&lt;/em&gt;&gt;. While I understand you need time to make a decision, would it be possible for you to give me an answer by then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're serious about having you as a PhD student, they'll respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:51:17.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29087" CreationDate="2014-09-28T13:57:18.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; include code in the &quot;main&quot; paper outside of computer science or applied mathematics. There are very few cases where listing code explicitly would actually improve the quality and readability of the paper. If it is necessary to include the code, I would do so as part of the &quot;Supporting Information&quot; which many journals allow you to include alongside the main publication. I would then describe the features of the code as words in the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in CS and math papers, I would still only put &lt;em&gt;pseudocode&lt;/em&gt; in the main article, and would save any listings of actual code for the Supporting Information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T13:57:18.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29108" CreationDate="2014-09-28T14:17:35.453" Score="1" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the most reliable way of finding the most relevant publications in scientific field and particularly a specific topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Google Scholar citing results suffice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9401" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T16:08:53.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T16:08:53.233" Title="How to find the most relevant publications in field/topic" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;literature-search&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29104" CreationDate="2014-09-28T15:37:48.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, it is difficult to say which search strategy is most reliable. The Google Scholar (as well as Web of Science, Scopus, etc.) citations are a good place to start but they definitely should not be your &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another item to look at are survey papers and research monographs in your field of interest (and, nowadays, Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, etc.; note also that sometimes plain Google search instead of Google Scholar search brings more helpful results) and the references therein. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are least two reasons to do so: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sometimes an important result makes it straight into surveys and monographs which get cited instead of the original paper(s);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a paper with an important &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; result (e.g. one which closes certain research avenues) is sometimes not particularly well cited just because people move on to other research directions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another way to find relevant references is the so-called snowballing method a good description of which is given at &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5074/10483&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; (without using the term &lt;em&gt;snowballing&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, it is a good idea to ask your colleagues, especially after you've already done some searching on your own and just want to make sure that the search results you have are reasonably complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10483" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T15:48:28.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T16:25:40.437" Score="9" ViewCount="4269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a well organized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt; library, but due to full text PDF search, web clipping and basic bibliography management, I decided to move to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can import .bib records easily, but is there a way to have them linked with corresponding PDFs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22335" LastEditorUserId="81" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T16:53:25.697" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T22:35:49.147" Title="How can I migrate a library from Calibre to Zotero?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;reference-managers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29022" CreationDate="2014-09-28T16:58:34.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The department secretary or perhaps a grants officer at your university should be able to give you guidance on these sorts of things. Aside from the particular problem of federal employment, you might have to credit grants and authors in a way that the journal doesn't require or track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a graduate student, the department secretary should be your best friend. They know how everything works where the academic staff might not (because they rely on the administrative staff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18375" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T16:58:34.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29094" CreationDate="2014-09-28T17:17:17.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From context, I'm going to assume your field is mathematics and you are applying in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason why you shouldn't apply this year.  In particular, don't worry about your paper not being accepted in time.  Just having a paper submitted is already pretty good for a PhD applicant.  People in mathematics are well aware that the peer review process takes a long time, and will not fault you for the fact that it isn't finished.  And many applicants are accepted without any completed papers at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would be a good idea to make sure at least one of your letter writers is familiar with your paper and can give a credible assessment of its quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting to arXiv is really orthogonal to the publication proces.  Most people post to arXiv &lt;em&gt;at the same time as&lt;/em&gt; they submit to a journal (not &quot;instead of&quot;).  It's a convenient way to distribute a paper that has not yet been published, but it isn't at all the same as publication itself, because arXiv doesn't do any peer review.  So it's perfectly fine to upload your paper to arXiv.  I think an admissions committee will see that as a sign that you (and your coauthors, if any) are sufficiently satisfied with the paper that you are willing to share it with the public, but in itself it doesn't signify much more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer your title question: yes, if you do not get accepted to any place you like this year, you can certainly reapply next year, typically without prejudice.  Of course, it will help if your application next year is significantly stronger, so the committee can think &quot;Wow, look at all the progress this person has made since applying last year.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But often a better alternative is to apply to a variety of places this year, so that you have a better chance of being accepted at somewhere that's reasonably good.  If you are rejected by your first choice but accepted somewhere that's decent, it's probably a better idea to go to the decent place rather than waiting another year to try again.  The grad school process is long enough without delaying it by a year to try to go to a slightly more prestigious place (which you might not get next year into anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T17:17:17.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13831" CreationDate="2014-09-28T18:19:33.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a couple of thoughts on this (not so recent) question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first (selfish) goal is to develop a reputation for being a intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone went into a workshop or conference talk with the primary goal of &quot;developing a reputation for being an intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments&quot;, then...yikes.  Chaos would ensue.  Luckily I've never seen this; the closest I have seen is in faculty meetings, where often I feel that being a good colleague requires me to say something from time to time just to be heard, rather than because I think I am contributing something absolutely essential to the discussion.  It is, frankly, one of my worse habits: I shudder to imagine what would happen if all of my colleagues behaved the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should speak up in a talk because you think that something you say will be directly helpful to the speaker or to others, or because you didn't fully understand something the speaker said &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; you have reason to believe that a quick question and answer could set you back on track.  I don't think that you should aim to make yourself heard specifically to impress your colleagues: that seems too likely to backfire, &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; because what you say is not as insightful as you think or because the speaker and the audience will not appreciate your commandeering more than your fair share of the speaker's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second goal is to effectively communicate my concerns to help others improve their research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's a good reason to speak up.  What you say about &quot;too soft&quot; questions getting brushed off by speakers sounds like a &quot;local phenomenon&quot; rather than a general truth about such talks.  Where I come from, too-pointed questioning is more likely not to have the desired effect: a speaker either becomes flustered and the entire talk becomes (at least!) temporarily derailed, or to avoid that they say &quot;I don't know&quot; and move on without really thinking about the question.  For several years this type of thing happened often in response to questions of mine that I didn't even realize were so pointed, so I have (somewhat) learned to correct in the opposite direction: by trying to ensure that my questions are friendly and do not come off as quizzing or challenging the speaker.  But mine is not a universal truth either: I think it just depends on the local culture involved, maybe even the specific group of people in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gently communicate the problems I see with the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you see a &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt; -- rather than just asking a question about something that you may not properly understand -- then pointing this out during the talk itself may not be ideal.  The following &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; in my experience a universal truth: people don't like being told they're wrong.  Do you want them to stop short and try to &quot;fix&quot; their work on the spot?  I think that if you really have something to say which vitiates a substantial part of the talk, it will be better for all involved if you wait until after the talk and speak solely to the speaker about it.  (Admittedly, &lt;em&gt;j'accuse&lt;/em&gt; moments in talks can be pretty entertaining for the spectators: see e.g. the beginning of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&amp;amp;story_id=118&amp;amp;part=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this wonderful story&lt;/a&gt;.  Spoiler alert: as amazing as this beginning event is, yet more amazing is that it is not what the story is really about at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might go so far as to say that it is not really &quot;fair&quot; to raise a serious objection during a fixed-duration talk.  The speaker has other things on her mind and plate besides understanding and addressing your specific concern.  Often in a talk it turns out that the brilliant professor's lightning-quick refutation of the speaker's work is not actually a refutation of the speaker's work: it was based on some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication (e.g. people using terminology in subtly different ways or elided technical hypotheses).  When this happens the majority of the audience cannot really follow what happened and goes away with a vague impression that something was wrong with the speaker's work.  That's not really fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T18:19:33.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T18:33:39.130" Score="10" ViewCount="5576" Body="&lt;p&gt;Warning: Extremely long post. Not really even the full story but one must stop somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a pure mathematics PhD student in (a remote part of) Europe and am part of a Doctoral Programme, which means that financially I am in a good position (relative to other grad students anyway). This is the same university in which I completed my undergraduate education. I was chosen together with a handful of other applicants from a pool of over hundred candidates (all natural scientists, not just mathematicians). I'm on my first year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my stay I have struggled to find a suitable problem (In fact I have overheard graduate students leave work early in my university because the feel that they didn't have much to work on). Basically my supervisor suggested some problems, I didn't like them, I tried desperately to invent my own problems to fill the void and to find something in the intersection of my interests and my supervisor's interests (and expertise). I realize now that with many of those problems neither I or my supervisor could really judge whether the problem was good or not (or whether it was known or not). During the summer the possibility that this arrangement is nonsensical started to dawn on me and I started to wonder if I should just consider moving to another university in another country to do a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interests have sharpened and shifted somewhat during my stay as I got a better understanding of the current state of the field. On a couple of occasions I tried to tell him about my interests. Quite recently my supervisor told me that I need to start working on something and offered some problems that I didn't care about. Inspired by some advice of Sir Michael Atiyah (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.utah.edu/~zzhu/Advice_to_a_Young_Mathematician.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Advice to a young mathematician&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) and AMS blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2014/08/29/tips-grad-students/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=tips-grad-students#sthash.cMEdMTAn.dpbs&quot;&gt;&quot;Tips for New Grad Students&quot;&lt;/a&gt; I brought up the possibility of changing supervisor/university/country. He was certainly not relieved, and was concerned about the reputation of his research group, among other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed my concerns with doctoral programme coordinator and the person in charge of the PhD studies in our faculty. I am considered extremely fortunate to be part of the doctoral programme and losing a student would be unfortunate for the faculty. Changing supervisors or universities is something that doesn't generally happen here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To an outsider the differences between my interests and my supervisor's would probably appear like splitting hairs. Indeed this is the position of my supervisor. The topics are likely to be outside of his expertise. He has offered to study together some of the subjects that I am interested in and to later study abroad with a more knowledgeable professor (the supervisor does have connections). He claims he will eventually find suitable problems if we study the topic together. Basically I envy students who get to study in a big active university or get to work with a guru who dispenses expertise and problems matching students' interests. I would be glad if I was offered even a low hanging fruit problem if it at least would teach me something in a modern and interesting field. It seems backwards to me that to learn a field together &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the supervisor, instead of learning the stuff &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our relationship has suffered as a result of this debacle. I think he is frustrated about my doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I:&#xA;Go seek the frontier where the actions seems to be (I believe the things that interest me are being actively studied):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: Potentially more efficient and stimulating PhD experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: Potentially more prestigious university and/or supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: Changing universities is risky, the fact that I got funding in one  university doesn't mean I will get it elsewhere, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay where I am and try to make it work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: Safe in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: Uncertain if I will get suitable problems and sufficient knowledge to tackle such problems and continue a career in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: I have learned that people doing their undergraduate and graduate studies in the same university do less well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: The track record of the supervisor to get PhDs to good places is not great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22341" LastEditorUserId="10685" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T14:13:27.017" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T13:03:27.227" Title="Should I leave my current PhD if I don't like the research problems my advisor suggests?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-topic&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29018" CreationDate="2014-09-28T18:46:14.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a former programmer, I can confirm that it would be quite difficult to do this purely in a programmatic way.  Take my name, for example.  From my name, you can probably guess that I am male.  If you had a computer program looking at my resume, how would you remove the word &quot;Evan&quot;?  Keep in mind that it's easy for a human to know that that's my name, but difficult for a computer to know.  Computers are very fast, but also dumb - they'll do exactly what you tell them to do, no more, and no less.  Sometimes this is problematical with programming when whet you're telling them isn't what you think you're telling them, but that's another discussion entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a truly blind resume / cover letter / letter of recommendation review, you'd need either a manual approach needing humans who aren't involved with the hiring committee and won't report what they saw to black out the names and the pronouns used in all of these documents.  Ideally, they'd be retyped with gender neutral terms such as &quot;that person&quot; instead of &quot;he / she&quot;, so you won't have someone trying to squint under a blacked out ink trying to read it.  People are curious - it'll happen if you let them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a hybrid approach: use computers do to the easy part, and people do the hard part.  The easy part would be getting rid of all the he / she / him / her words in documents and replacing them with a gender neutral word / phrase of your choosing.  The hard part would be doing the same thing with names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this is hard for computer is simple: how does the computer program doing the parsing know that what it's seeing is a name?  It doesn't, unless you have some way of telling it.  In an ideal world, word documents or PDFs would have metadata with a  field clearly identifying that this is a name, but I doubt such a feature exists - at least in Word.  PDFs probably do support this, but again, whether or not Adobe Acrobat supports this isn't the issue, but rather the issue is whether or not the appropriate metadata is embedded in the document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22338" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T18:46:14.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29117" CreationDate="2014-09-28T18:57:47.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't really know your situation, so this is just a first impression but: slow down.  Take a breath.  You're describing frustrations with things not working out...but you're still in your &lt;em&gt;first year of the PhD program&lt;/em&gt;.  Where I come from, students find advisors and problems much more gradually than this.  If you were given problems &quot;quite recently&quot;, then how do you know you don't care about them?  If you don't care about the problems suggested to you because you have your own problems that you want to work on: find out if your own problems are viable, and if so find out who can help you with them.  But if you don't have anything else you're dying to work on, I'm tempted to say: spend at least a month or two working on every problem your advisor gives you before you decide it's not for you.  Why be so picky?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you feel sure that you are not interested in anything your advisor is doing, then...sure, go study with someone else. The &quot;reputation of the research group&quot; is not really a sensible thing to be worrying about at this stage.  Look, I went to (what is, along with a few others) the top PhD program in mathematics in the US.  Nevertheless in the five years that I was there I watched students: (i) drop out of graduate school entirely, (ii) switch to a math PhD program in a different university and/or country, (iii) switch to a different department at my university, (iv) switch fields and/or advisors within my math PhD program.  I never heard a peep about any of this damaging the reputation of the department or the university.  People change programs &lt;em&gt;all the time&lt;/em&gt;.  Someone who is telling you otherwise may not be looking out for your best interests... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Added&lt;/b&gt;: Maybe my answer is US-centric.  Other questions and answers on this site have suggested that European academia may be less flexible on these matters.  If so: maybe consider going to school in the US.  In every US PhD program in mathematics I know about, you apply to the program as a whole rather than to any research group or to officially work under any one faculty member.  Then you have a period of 1-3 years to find your footing, pass some general qualifying exams and decide who you want to work with and then more time to decide what you want to do for your thesis.  The whole process can take longer than in Europe, but in your case it sounds like you would find it more pleasant than your current situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T19:14:29.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T19:14:29.617" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29117" CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:34:50.923" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I agree with @Pete L. Clack's answer. Changing supervisors is not the end of the world, it happens all the time and it is your right to do so. But the question you should ask yourself is why should you change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that your supervisor is an expert on the &quot;great&quot; math area you want to focus on, otherwise you would not have chosen him. By that assumption, expecting your supervisor to spoon-feed you a specific problem that you will like 100% and all you have to do is just solve it and get a PHD is an unrealistic goal in any PHD program. Supervisors suggest possible problems or usually specific scientific areas to focus on, close to their expertise. Then the problem is gradually refined as time goes by, as the student works intensively on the suggested area. This is a gradual process that does not happen magically overtime. In that sense, you cannot simply dismiss ideas (ideas are hard to come by) without sufficient knowledge of the research area (&quot;could not really judge whether the problem was good or not&quot;) for some vague idea on what you want to do, without actually be able to judge if the problem you are suggesting has any merit or not. Choosing a problem is something that needs research maturity which frankly you do not have. At least in your first year of a PHD, you should trust others (your supervisor) to &quot;show&quot; you the way. You should at least start by his suggestions, do the required research literature search, get a firm grasp on the problems he is suggesting and not just &quot;brush them off&quot;, because &quot;you do not like them&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that your supervisor also seems like a nice guy, who is willing to study more on a area he is not familiar with, to help you. Not many professors a) admit their lack of knowledge on a subject b) go this far to help an inexperienced student like you. And believe me, this is an important quality for any supervisor. Also, lack of knowledge on a tiny area now, does not mean that when he actually does his &quot;homework&quot;, he will not be able to guide you towards the new area. Professors and researchers change directions and progressively expand to areas less familiar to them when they &quot;run out&quot; of problems on their main expertise and this also something that happens quite a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suggest caution. Your funding is good, your supervisor seems nice, your university / department is reputable. Do not blow them all away for a mislead ambition on what problem you consider important or not. You can always walk away but you do not need to do it now, before you examine your options carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastEditorUserId="10042" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:06:39.557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:06:39.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29094" CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:36:01.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you meet the minimum requirements otherwise, go ahead an apply as often as you want. You may be able to have your application put forward to the next review cycle if it is rejected in the first. In all cases, acceptance of your application would be helped when you have a faculty member who knows of you and wants to take you as their graduate student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22283" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T19:36:01.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28850" CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:48:10.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Informal inquiries are not liable to be perceived negatively:&lt;/strong&gt; An informal inquiry is a very good way to make first contact before sending over more formal items such as a CV, letters of recommendation and proposed research ideas. A thoughtful email with some very brief and basic information about yourself and your interest in the potential lab is more likely to be read and replied to (no information overload). After initial contact is made, the more formal process will then be more directed as information about timing and funding may be provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22105" LastEditorUserId="22105" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T17:32:31.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T17:32:31.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28850" CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:51:23.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Informal inquiries are liable to be perceived negatively&lt;/strong&gt; The process should be  formal from first contact, and initial inquiries should include proposed research, letters of recommendation and a CV. Sending a hard copy of these items can create a strong impression that is essential to getting hired. Formality is especially important for countries like Germany where it is expected at each step, and also for big-time researchers who receive a flood of inquiries each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22105" LastEditorUserId="22105" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T19:47:43.923" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T19:47:43.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29128" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:02:39.627" Score="5" ViewCount="1759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a rough draft of my PhD dissertation, on which I was working on and off for about a year, but mostly I was doing other coursework. I have about 90 pages so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dissertation advisor tells me that what I should do is pretty much make sure it is well-written and apply the theory to a few examples. By my estimates, if I go berserk on this, I can finish all that in under one month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the dissertation advisor says that usually, it takes about 3 years to complete a dissertation in my department, and I should not expect to complete it soon. Also, he says that the level of my draft was intermediate (some time ago) and not yet advanced (but he hasn't reviewed the current one yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I ask or suggest about expanding the scope of the dissertation / adding additional chapters, the dissertation advisor says he does not think it is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it appears that the dissertation is almost complete, but I should not expect to complete it soon. How should I interpret this apparent contradiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21222" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T01:40:24.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T20:22:04.657" Title="Advisor says I shouldn't expect to finish thesis soon, but won't offer specific feedback on what is missing; how to react?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:03:44.820" Score="2" ViewCount="2209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not yet received my academic transcripts from my University and the application deadline for a PhD program that I am interested in is already near, and I won't be receiving my transcripts before it. Can I submit my mark sheets to the University? If yes, then should I mention it somewhere that I am submitting my mark sheets instead? And where should I mention it? They have asked for a CV and a cover letter, so those are the two other documents I'll be sending. Or should I first contact the University and find out if it is okay to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22343" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T20:06:32.590" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T20:52:57.033" Title="Can I submit my mark sheets as academic transcripts?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;transcript-of-records&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:35:40.883" Score="2" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is anyone perhaps aware of an application, or ideally a website (always accessible) to keep track of personal notes on ones research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be similar to a physical personal research journal (e.g. a simple hardcover book with ones notes), but in electronic format. I'm looking for something a bit more structured and standardised than an MS Word or Excel document, although if there's no alternative, that will have to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17324" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T20:35:40.883" Title="Personal research journal/notes - an electronic solution?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;&lt;note-taking&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-28T20:42:06.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29125" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:48:22.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PhD advisor once told me that one aspect he considers when rating a thesis is how much the candidate did try to go beyond the initial idea or goal. If they are like &quot;I solved the initial problem, here's the thesis, I just want to finish a fast as possible&quot; then they will earn an intermediate grade at the end. Only if they try to go beyond the initial problem, try to at least estimate the further implications or steps or apply the outcome of the initial problem to further problems, they really can earn a top grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my experience, to successfully finish a physics PhD within roughly a year, you have to have had really great luck to find something really excitingly new that provided a huge progress to your specific field. In most cases after one year you can't even tell for sure what the final focus of the thesis will be. Those applications of the theory to some example cases can easily take up more time than the whole development of the theory as there might come up issues and flaws that you were not expecting. Also their importance is not necessarily reflected in the number of pages they make up in the final thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore it seems to me, that you are somewhat belonging to the first type of people mentioned above who are just heading to leave before really having understood the implications of what they were working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10039" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T20:48:22.013" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29126" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:52:57.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities realize final grades aren't available, and will usually accept an partial transcript showing what's been completed up until that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all programs will be willing to accept &quot;unofficial&quot; transcripts such as grade sheets and printouts from the registrar's office. If there's a concern on this point, you should contact the specific departments and programs to which you're  applying and ask them for guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T20:52:57.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29125" CreationDate="2014-09-28T21:07:34.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to get a PhD in a year or two is a bad idea, because employers will not take such a degree seriously. The only exception is if you're a once-in-a-generation talent (and the odds are you're not the next Albert Einstein or Lev Landau), in which case you'd already have a number of publications to your credit and enough work to justify a PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would echo Benedikt Bauer's advice and not try to rush through things. Instead, focus on the &lt;strong&gt;quality&lt;/strong&gt; of your thesis project. Have you completed publications? Have you personally explored the ramifications of the work you've already done? What else have you done &quot;beyond the basics&quot; of the original problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T21:07:34.230" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29125" CreationDate="2014-09-28T23:38:02.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Science is really a publication driven field, not a dissertation driven one. I would &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; encourage to you to put your time in to turning your research into peer-reviewed scientific publication, instead of doing just enough for a dissertation. If you can publish 2-4 papers out of what you have written in established journals your adviser will most likely graduate you. However, I imagine, since this was my experience too, that as you start to write your papers you will find holes that need to be fixed, etc., and fixing those holes will be a substantial part of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: focus on doing publishable research and getting published first! After you've done that, the dissertation will be easy and you'll graduate without a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T23:38:02.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29089" CreationDate="2014-09-29T00:33:54.473" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'm not aware of any research on employees &lt;em&gt;exposed&lt;/em&gt; to safety risks in the academic workplace, there are statistics on actual workplace injuries in a variety of occupations, including scientific occupations.  &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; the incidence of injury is uniform across gender among those exposed to safety risks (I don't know if it is), then you can take this as a proxy for the gender distribution of those exposed to risk in the scientific workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.bls.gov/gqt/InitialPage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;United States Bureau of Labor Statistics&lt;/a&gt; collects information on workplace injuries, which you can query at will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to their statistics, here are the numbers of nonfatal occupational injuries involving days away from work among employees whose occupation is classified as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes190000.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FrMIj.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FrMIj.png&quot; alt=&quot;count of occupational injuries by gender&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was also interested in the ratio of the number of injuries to the number of thousands of people of each gender employed, again in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes190000.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHtnb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHtnb.png&quot; alt=&quot;ratio of injuries to thousands employed by gender&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/help/def/gqt_profile.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visit the BLS website&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how they collect these statistics and what they mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can query their dataset yourself if you're interested in getting numbers specific to one area of science or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T19:41:45.817" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T19:41:45.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T02:27:09.600" Score="9" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;In graduate school I have found that along with being a producer of good research, fellowships/post-doctoral advisers/faculty search committee are also often interested in what one has done &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; of research (or teaching/TA-ing) as well. Examples of such activities include (but are not limited to) volunteering with younger students in science, organizing a journal club, mentoring undergraduate researchers, etc. In some cases, the importance of these activities is immense: for the NSF CAREER award, for example, having outreach is a substantial part of the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, clearly, spending all of one's time on these activities is not the best idea, since then no research gets done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the optimal fraction/amount of time to spend on &quot;outreach&quot; activities like those mentioned above, which are explicitly not research or teaching activities, for someone looking to pursue a career at a research university?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T02:48:43.873" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T13:53:28.200" Title="What is the optimal balance of time spent on research vs. volunteering/leadership/organizing in grad school and beyond?" Tags="&lt;career-path&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;mentoring&gt;&lt;outreach&gt;&lt;service-activities&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29134" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-29T02:46:14.057" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T02:46:14.057" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T02:46:14.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29135" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-29T02:46:14.057" Score="0" Body="On engaging in activities that are considered a service to a university or academic community. These can include, but are not limited to, serving on administrative or curriculum development committees, organizing a conference or seminar series, and volunteering editorial or peer review services for an academic publication." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T03:01:16.160" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:01:16.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-29T03:08:21.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many publishers will publish the same book at a much cheaper price for sale in markets in the developing world. These copies will be exactly the same (even down to the typesetting and graphic design) except that the paper, printing and binding will be of inferior quality, and the cover will be a generic design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've bought the South Asian editions of third year physics textbooks for $20 from various sellers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abebooks.com&quot;&gt;AbeBooks&lt;/a&gt;, whereas these textbooks would retail for over $150 in my university bookshop. I've only done this on AbeBooks, but this might be possible on other websites as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could search online to see whether cheaper editions of your text are available, and if so, recommend that students purchase their copies there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastEditorUserId="22348" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T06:52:44.433" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T06:52:44.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29192" CreationDate="2014-09-29T03:15:27.210" Score="19" ViewCount="3108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several questions related to open-sourcing the source code used for a research article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research/study that addresses any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of research articles are provided with their source code? (i.e. the source code is made available somewhere online)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of research articles provide the source code at or before the publication date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of research articles who promised they will release the source code actually do so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of research articles provided the source code at some point but then the latter disappeared?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly interested in the field of computer science &gt; machine learning, and English-speaking venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T18:46:53.630" LastActivityDate="2018-02-16T22:11:56.733" Title="Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles?" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18816" CreationDate="2014-09-29T03:16:01.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My class sessions each had a lecture and a period of time devoted to discussion. As a result, I ended up using a Google form with the the following four questions each followed by a text box:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any feedback on the readings?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., was it rewarding, challenging, about right, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any feedback about the case and/or the other class discussion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any feedback on the lecture?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g., about the right length, too dense, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any other comments, ideas, questions, concerns, or reflections?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent a link to the survey every week after class and kept it online so that students could fill it whenever they liked. All answers were anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About half the class filled it out the first week and there was decreasing numbers who did so in subsequent weeks. Since I used feedback to make adjustments to the class over the quarter, this worked out just fine. I felt that the survey was successful enough that I plan to ask it again, in exactly this form, in my class this quarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T03:16:01.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29117" CreationDate="2014-09-29T04:04:36.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; important thing is to have great communication with your supervisor.   More than just &quot;we talk respectfully to each other&quot; - you need to feel backed up and supported and understood by your supervisor.    You need rapport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have this, even at the beginning when everything is easy, then you are on a trip for disaster later as things get harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading between the lines, my sense is that this important rapport is not there.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it seems hard to change now, wait till 2 years down the track when you discover just how poorly understood you are by your supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, before you decide if this means you should change &lt;strong&gt;supervisor&lt;/strong&gt;, you need to assess where the gap is.  Maybe you need to change &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your statements are a little worrying.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems backwards to me that to learn a field together with the&#xA;  supervisor, instead of learning the stuff from the supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is is that you think you will be learning?  In your PhD you are learning &lt;em&gt;how to do research&lt;/em&gt;.   It is an apprenticeship, not a life work.   It's your first, not your last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be learning &lt;strong&gt;from&lt;/strong&gt; your supervisor &lt;em&gt;how to do research.&lt;/em&gt;  Together &lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; your supervisor, you will be learning about some &lt;em&gt;small new element&lt;/em&gt; in a field of interest, in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has offered to study together some of the subjects that I am&#xA;  interested in and to later study abroad with a more knowledgeable&#xA;  professor (the supervisor does have connections).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, this is a generous offer.  Can you look back at it and see if this generous person might actually be a good partner ... or whether in fact he's making this offer only to try to save face from losing you?     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the crux of it, in a way.   If you can appraise the difference, you will be able to make the right decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basically I envy students who get to study in a big active university&#xA;  or get to work with a guru who dispenses expertise and problems&#xA;  matching students' interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a bad reason to change.   The grass is always greener on the other side - you have no idea what debarcles all those folk are dealing with!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Priority #1: establish whether you can have rapport with your supervisor, take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11468" LastEditorUserId="11468" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T04:53:25.570" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:53:25.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11633" CreationDate="2014-09-29T04:07:25.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to your specific questions, yes, it is significant that the disclosure occurred more than a year before the patent was filed. In the U.S., there is a one-year &quot;bar-date&quot; after public disclosure of the invention covered by a patent. Most of the rest of the world does not allow any period between disclosure and patenting; once you've disclosed, the invention is no longer patentable in those countries (though it may still be patented in the U.S. for up to a year.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted by F'x, sabotaging your employer's patent claims is a sure way to make a lot of trouble for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22350" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:07:25.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29142" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Sample Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21700/how-to-find-relevant-and-new-open-research-topics&quot;&gt;How to find relevant and new open research topics?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13368/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-choosing-my-own-research-topic&quot;&gt;What are the pros and cons of choosing my own research topic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16436/how-to-advise-a-student-looking-for-an-under-grad-thesis-topic&quot;&gt;How to advise a student looking for an under-grad thesis topic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29143" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" Score="0" Body="On identifying, evaluating suitability, or sharing a topic or focused direction for research." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:21:20.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28390" CreationDate="2014-09-29T04:54:05.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two problems here. An academic dilemma and a legal issue. The latter is specific to country's immigration, workplace rules, your residency status, etc., therefore I will politely keep the focus to the first one. There are also good comments to your post, so keep them in mind as well. Needless to say, the legal problem could be more intimate to your situation but you will find actual support from a legal authority as you yourself have stated. Now, to the academic dilemma at hand: first of all, I suggest talking with your supervisor and make your position clear in an honest sober way. Your problem is a practical one and need not to be emotional. Here, I would suggest and stress on keeping the best of relations with your supervisor (even if you decide to leave or they decide to let you go), especially if this is your first ever post-doc position. This is important for two reasons: first, you want to leave on good terms even if it didn't work out for you and so you don't need to give an impression of personal grudge. Second, there might be opportunities in future where you will have to work/collaborate with the said supervisor or the university. You also don't want to ruin the possibility of good references for your own future work from this university - hope things will work out for you, and my two cents help. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T04:54:05.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14992" CreationDate="2014-09-29T05:15:46.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be quite unusual to write a survey article in a field where you have not already made significant original contributions yourself.  Indeed, I would suggest that &lt;strong&gt;if you have not worked in an area already for several years, you probably do not have the perspective and depth of knowledge to write an influential review paper&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's not impossible, of course, especially if you have more experienced co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get a post-doc or assistant professor position, you will need to have made significant original research contributions to your field.  Writing an influential review article is often most beneficial later on (e.g., when you're evaluated for tenure) because such papers tend to be highly cited and administrators who don't know your field will give a lot of weight to citation counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T05:15:46.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T07:54:19.877" Score="10" ViewCount="6616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted a paper to the ArXiv, but after it has already been announced, I realized that there is a typo in the title (nothing catastrophic, but still..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any idea how to slightly modify the title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22352" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T13:01:20.000" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:32:08.230" Title="How do I modify the title of a paper I submitted to ArXiv?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;arxiv&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2014-09-29T08:26:54.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Going to the second interview:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain: insight about the other position, experience, networking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lose: time, energy, your reputation, especially if it is a small field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Declining the second interview:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain: energy, integrity, &quot;you play nice&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lose: you don't know what you miss, experience, networking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People usually recommend to &quot;not to lose reputation&quot;, and therefore decline the second job interview, after you accepted a job offer already. This what I would do, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: &lt;strong&gt;you only really got the job on the first day after the probation period.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until then, anything can happen. They can cancel your application before you sign the contract (happens many times) for many reasons: budget cuts, change in management, change in priorities, etc. Or they decide during the probation period that they don't want you (happens also).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I recommend not burning  all your bridges! There are different ways of saying no - how about doing it in a way that shows professionalism, and keeps some doors open for you for the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a letter to the other employer saying that&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have already accepted a job offer that fits your expertise. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, you truly appreciate that they considered you for an interview, seriously like their organization, could have imagined working for them, and would like to be in touch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If for whatever reason your current offering doesn't realize, you will contact them again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also offer to keep in touch for professional reasons, and/or offer to forward their job announcement in your network. If it's a small field, and people are hard to get with the right expertise, they will appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happened to a friend of mine that during the probation period, it turned out that the position was not as advertised, and he quit. He re-contacted the previous parallel interview offering. The company was happy to call him in again - the original position was not available, but they offered him a similar one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just simply say &quot;No&quot;, they won't know that you would have been interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22353" LastEditorUserId="22353" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T08:51:58.903" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T08:51:58.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29146" CreationDate="2014-09-29T09:19:20.213" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Short answer&lt;/em&gt;: I believe the only way is to submit a revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Long answer&lt;/em&gt;: As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.arxiv.org/help/replace&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;It is not possible to make changes without generating a new version&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? To allow authors to make changes to the comments and other metadata fields of publicly announced articles without generating a new version, and hence date stamp, would effectively mean that all changes would be backdated to the time the last version was submitted. This is open to abuse and thus not allowed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;exceptions to this rule are the addition of journal reference and DOI information&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The journal reference field may contain only full publication information for the article; the DOI field may contain only a DOI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My suggestion&lt;/em&gt;: Although this replacement process would not be time consuming, it would be quite redundant and generate a new version of the paper. Since that would anyway happen whenever you revise your paper (say, after you incorporate the comments of referees), I would suggest -- &lt;em&gt;under the assumption that the typo does not look &lt;strong&gt;glaringly bad&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; -- to wait until you have a next version ready. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18210" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T13:32:08.230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:32:08.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T10:06:43.403" Score="17" ViewCount="2272" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past term, my teaching evaluations were full of complaints that I assign too much homework. To solve this, I've scaled back the assigned workload and threw several assignments into extra credit. This seems to make many student happy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students just passing through complete the basic coursework and meeting the course objectives, without feeling the course is harder than other courses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students who enter the course finding the material is too difficult can complete the extra work to offset their poor mid-term exam grade while getting additional practice for the final.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students eager to learn the material are happy with the extra work and feel they can get more out of the course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next term, I hope to offer much more extra credit, equal to 20-30 hours of work, to meet the needs of those top 20% eager learners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the work aligns with the course objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The point values are kept low, to discourage students from skipping regular work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen a course instructor ever give more than a little amount of extra credit. Is there any reason why it would be a poor choice to offer a great deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T05:18:07.060" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T00:24:49.463" Title="Is there any problem with giving lots of extra credit?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;grading&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-29T10:41:34.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there isn't too much of a difference, or if the differences aren't relevant, use the previous edition. This is always cheaper, and will be available second-hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T10:41:34.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29156" CreationDate="2014-09-29T10:52:21.790" Score="20" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a lab class that is only constrained by some broad learning objectives. I have been using the same project now for 5 years. It now runs very smoothly and I know what difficulties the students are likely to have. I think that is an advantage, but teaching the class is beginning to feel stale and I am worried that hurts the students. Given I could easily chose a brand new project and still deliver the learning objectives, how do I know when it is the right time to change topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:38:10.483" Title="How to know when you should change what is taught during a lab classes" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T11:23:38.350" Score="21" ViewCount="6755" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had two advisors for my master thesis. One, as my first advisor would take the theoretical part to guide me. I have been meeting with my first advisor once every two week and he has been examining each part of the text. During these meetings, he continued to tell me how good I am doing and I should keep writing in this way. There were never real feedback, which could be pointing out my mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I developed a full confident in myself and in the work. He offered me that I should consider starting a PhD with him.  In short, during the time I have been writing my masters thesis, he gave me all signs that he approves and likes my work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My presentation took place a week ago, and was pretty much successful in my opinion and in the opinions of other people who came to listen. But at the end of the presentation, I received a totally different attitude from my first advisor. He started to criticize the work in a way he has never done in our meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was shocked about how my first advisor could not defend me and his own ideas in front of the committee and I am incredibly disappointed. Not only have I lost my belief in him and his judgments but also, I am now doubting my own skill of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to meet my first advisor next week and planning to talk about his twist of judgment and criticism. In this talk, I will question the PhD idea. I'm not sure though, how to put my anger, disappointment in right words, without making him feel that I am attacking to his personality. Also, when I asked him if we can meet earlier than next week, he refused. I have the feeling that he knows what i am going to say and now trying to construct a distance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that trust is a very important issue in between the advisor and the advisee. If we will continue work together, I have to ask him an explanation but as I said, I'm afraid of my own frustration and if I cannot express myself in a right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, would it be wise to express my disappointment in him, especially now that we will start to focus on my PhD? On the other hand, I need him to justify his inconsistency, which is quite crucial for me to keep working with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22358" LastEditorUserId="47985" LastEditDate="2018-01-16T14:38:05.137" LastActivityDate="2020-12-24T02:58:51.053" Title="Why did my advisor criticize my work for the first time at my Master's Thesis defense?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;&lt;defense&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ClosedDate="2020-12-29T06:30:30.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28216" CreationDate="2014-09-29T12:33:16.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several algorithms for scheduled repetition of information on flash cards. It's possible that the software you liked uses one of these. This Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spaced repetiton&lt;/a&gt; discusses Pimsleur's graduated-interval recall and Leitner system, among others. This isn't the easiest topic to search for, but the Wikipedia article calls it &quot;spaced repetition&quot;, and includes a list of alternative names. That should help you do further research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T12:33:16.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29117" CreationDate="2014-09-29T12:38:19.807" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thing, when you find a job, it is not always exactly what you wanted to do. It is difficult to find a job where you are happy all the time. I imagine as a post doc, you get to work with problems that you are not super excited about. Is it realistic to find a job where you are super happy and everything is fine? I doubt that? Life will always be like this; you will work with things you are not really interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22360" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T12:38:19.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T12:50:53.103" Score="8" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that some scholars in my field are best known for their earliest writing, even if their ideas were later found incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book in my area of interest and hope to publish within a year. The target audience is not academics, but practitioners, although I suspect academics would be the first to seek out a book of this kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Year by year, my understanding of the subject matter grows, through reading and experience. It is highly likely that in a few years time I will realize I made many mistakes in the book. Perhaps, for example, I was not aware that some of my described solutions to problems in the field did not actually work as well as I thought they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I later started a PhD in the same area, would such a past publication create problems for an academic career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T13:26:48.510" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T13:40:13.707" Title="Could publishing a book on a subject prior to a PhD reflect negatively on me later if it has errors?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29151" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:01:39.113" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The interesting question is, does the project feel stale for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; or for the students? The students are, after all, only doing the project once, so there is in principle no harm in using the same project year after year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is the possibility that the project that was cutting-edge when you defined it is now an old relic, using methods and technologies that nobody actually cares about anymore. In this case, you should of course move on, but if this is not the case, I see no inherent value in changing the project (especially since any change also means that the first iteration of the new project will be a bit rough around the edges).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:01:39.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:05:56.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never &lt;em&gt;had to&lt;/em&gt; buy a book for a course¹. All the lectures were absolutely self contained, and I only used the books when I needed a clarification or a different explanation on a particular thing, in which case I borrowed it for a few days from the library. I did buy a few books, but only these that I though would be useful as a reference beyond the particular course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to reduce the impact on the student's pockets is not to require purchasing the book at all. The library should have a bunch of copies of different books, so the students can compare and choose what suits them best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ Actually, once I did. It was not &lt;em&gt;compulsory&lt;/em&gt; per se, but the professor was referring to &lt;em&gt;his book&lt;/em&gt; every day. He was a bad lecturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:05:56.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29155" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:07:05.303" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything you write places you at risk of being wrong somehow. Certainly a book of this kind is asking for a wider audience that then might be aware of those mistakes. Alexandros points out in a comment that you certainly need to do your due diligence now to assure that what you write is as correct as it can be. No one is going to blame you if you suggest a response to a certain legal framework which is overhauled in three years but if you describe a chemical solution that could never react in the way you claim that one is on you. So how certain you can be that your work will remain correct/useful is somewhat field dependent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big question is about this hurting your ability to start and pursue a PhD after writing such a book. I don't think it would. Except in the rather extreme case of your book becoming well enough known and wrong/controversial enough to annoy members of a PhD admissions committee. For the most part I would suggest that already being an active member of a practical field (read: has published work discussing the field) would be a very helpful piece of an application for a PhD program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7561" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:07:05.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29700" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:22:20.390" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is a site or something where I can find announcements for all (most of) the special issues of journals (upcoming and past) . For example of Springer, IEEE, Elsevier, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I search for this now, I find scattered call for papers. Also, I can't seem to find this on wikicfp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9236" LastEditorUserId="40592" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:42:51.737" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:47:49.223" Title="Is there any website for announcements of journal's special issues?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;website&gt;&lt;announcements&gt;&lt;special-issue&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-11-29T21:23:02.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29125" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:30:31.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all the programs I am familiar with, &lt;strong&gt;you become a &quot;doctoral candidate&quot; (or something similar) only after having successfully proposed a topic for your dissertation&lt;/strong&gt;.  Usually that proposal includes several pages of detail regarding &lt;strong&gt;what will be accepted by your committee as successful completion&lt;/strong&gt;.  Of course, research is uncertain and there must be some flexibility, but your proposal can be viewed as the basis for deciding when you are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have such a document, you should reference it specifically in discussions with your advisor.  If you do not, perhaps you should create one and iterate with your advisor until he/she is willing to agree to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:30:31.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29151" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:38:10.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My high school Physics teacher changed his course every two years. The reason was that after that time, he would start thinking that what he was teaching was way easier than what it actually was, and he wanted to remind himself of that. Of course, the content was almost the same, but the notes and the preparations were brand new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lab is of course very different, and having a rock solid set up is very useful (better than spending an hour just to find out that one of the cables was broken inside, happened to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could take advantage of your knowledge of the instrumentation by using the same machinery, but slightly changing and improving the experiment. For example, instead of reading values from the LCD screen of a multimeter, you could upgrade to a USB one and get the full stream of values (budget allowing). Then, one could try to do a finer analysis of the data. Another option is to look into the residuals of your data from the theoretical curve, and see if there are any patterns beyond noise, and try to figure out why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:38:10.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29152" CreationDate="2014-09-29T15:38:07.073" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot go after him for asking questions, that's his prerogative. You can choose to work on your PhD with him, or without him. That's what the conversation ought to be about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Crucial Confrontations:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frumi.com/images/uploads/CrucialConfrontations.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.frumi.com/images/uploads/CrucialConfrontations.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a crucial discussions like that, it is always good to give yourself a pep talk and imagine why would a rational being do something like that. Was is really that bad? Were you his first student, and was he nervous? Could he have had some personal issues to deal with? Perhaps he feels embarrassed for his behavior? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will help you develop compassion and temper your anger (regardless how justifiable it might be). The goal is really to channel your emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you are ready to develop a focus for your discussion. You can pose it as the discussion about your concerns about doing PhD with that advisor. Let's face it, you were not going to do PhD with him, there wouldn't be need for the conversation. Ask questions, at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was surprised with the level of question received during the defense. I was left doubting the quality of my work, and now I am concerned about proceeding with PhD because my work is not as good as I thought it would be. What is your take? That should be enough to start the conversation without accusations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, they are supposed to ask you hard questions at the defense, it is an exam. It might even be a compliment - he wouldn't have asked you these questions, if he didn't think you can handle them.  My advsor holds practice defenses. The labmates and the adviser ask hard questions then. For my defense practice, I was answering questions for an hour! If it wasn't for the practice, these questions would have come at the defense time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21371" LastEditorUserId="21371" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:58:21.680" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:58:21.680" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29152" CreationDate="2014-09-29T16:27:34.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concurring with the comments above, I would suggest you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calm down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider (on your own, at first) whether you want to do the PhD with this supervisor given how the defence went (do you feel that the questions were valid and having them asked earlier would have made your research MUCH stronger and hence your PI should have asked them before, or were they more tough questions to show how good a student you really are). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare for a polite but emotionally challenging meeting. DO NOT criticize or in any way express your &quot;disappointment&quot; in your supervisor - ask him why the questions he brought up were not asked during practice runs. Then consider (again) whether you want to commit to a PhD with him/her, depending on the answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly - understand that a Masters (and &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; a PhD) is YOUR project, it's not your supervisors job to defend your ideas and results - it's YOURS...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22372" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T16:27:34.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T16:31:40.047" Score="4" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is someone aware of software that can help me create certain goals and research (sub)questions (digitally) and connect these questions in an organized way with the secondary literature on my computer, as well with my own notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have over 2000 pdf files on my computer. The problem is that I don't want to create a new folder (and copy of the file) every time I come up with a new question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, but not necessary, the software should also keep track of edit history and I should be able to make notes on files. It would also be nice if I could access my research organizer from everywhere, though this is not a necessary requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked into some software to manage bibliographies, but the main goal of this kind of software is to export the bibliography, rather than organize my research-questions, computer files, and own notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose I want to create some kind of database/tree with the following structure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WEEK 1 (&amp;quot;short title comes here&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- more detailed description of research question; goal/workplan/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- literature to read this week (software links correct files on my pc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- book 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- book 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- article 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- output&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- version (monday)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------- version (friday)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software, ideally, must have a &amp;quot;search function&amp;quot; which redirects me to the correct node of the tree (i.e. &amp;quot;WEEK 1&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;this-pdf-contains-the-string.pdf&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22371" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T16:29:47.983" Title="software to organize (1) research questions (2) secondary literature (3) own notes" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29133" CreationDate="2014-09-29T16:54:05.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: You should spend &quot;some&quot; time on volunteering and leadership activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike an undergraduate student, a graduate student is primarily focused on research, so you don't want to spend &quot;a lot&quot; of time elswhere. Even so, proficiency in other activities is something of a &quot;tiebreaker&quot; against another candidate with comparable research activities that doesn't have &quot;outside&quot; activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in contrast to undergraduate work, where &quot;leadership&quot; is the &quot;whole game&quot; for some students (for later life)--provided they pass their courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="755" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T16:54:05.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29149" CreationDate="2014-09-29T17:38:58.293" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question is &quot;No one knows, but you are about to find out.&quot;  The only thing that can be guaranteed is that there will be some unexpected consequences, because the nature of human interaction--and the diversity of things like motivation and preparation--is such that it's too complex a system for us to know what the introduction of a novel approach is going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are attempting to transfer power to the students which is traditionally vested almost exclusively in the instructor.  I feel that this is a good thing, but that it is difficult to predict what people will do when given power that they previously did not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an example (which I don't think will happen in your case, but there could be some analogous effect), I know of an instructor that tried dispensing with grade pressure altogether by announcing on the first day that everyone in the class had an A for the course [the highest rating possible, for those not familiar with common practice in the US].  The consequence that surprised him was that at the end of (or perhaps during as well, I don't remember) the course, students expressed resentment toward the policy.  The realities of time pressures put on them by other courses meant that they ended up spending little to no time on the gradeless class, because they knew ultimately that it would not affect their record.  The resentment came from the fact that they wanted to learn the material, but with nothing to force them to spend time on it, they ended up not giving it any time but instead allowing the other demands on their time to crowd it out completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I think you've covered your bases as well as you can (in particular, it's not a wild shot in the dark, but a further change to a previous, successful modification), and all there is for you to do is observe the effects and see what student feedback is.  The most interesting question in my mind is whether the most talented students will do as well (in terms of &quot;total learning outcome&quot;) under this system as they did under your original one.  For similar reasons as the example I gave, they may just make a decision not to put as much effort in because of time pressures from other classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T17:38:58.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14156" CreationDate="2014-09-29T17:40:58.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An easier way would be to &quot;request to merge&quot;.&#xA;Let's say that both 2 and 3 in the attached screenshots are you. Just mark the checkmark and click the &quot;Request to merge&quot; link.&#xA;You might want to click &quot;Show Profile Matches with One Document&quot; before you look up all of your entries.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1K2gu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22213" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T17:40:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29149" CreationDate="2014-09-29T17:43:06.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of points in your question that I don't quite understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're proposing to offer &quot;much more extra credit&quot; but &quot;keep the point values low&quot;: don't those two things work against each other?  In my experience, students don't do much extra credit when they do not in fact feel that it will lead to a higher course grade.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You speak of using extra credit to offset poor midterm grades and also speak of meeting the needs of the &quot;top 20% eager learners&quot;.  Those are different pools of students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience, the second bullet point is a major point of tension for extra credit.  Students would like extra credit to be routine work that they can do to improve their grade, possibly even to offset more challenging or time-consuming course tasks at which they didn't excel.  But instructors usually see extra credit as a way to reach the &quot;eager learners&quot; at the top of the class and end up giving extra credit that is &lt;em&gt;harder&lt;/em&gt; than the normal material.  For instance, when I teach freshman calculus if I assign extra credit it's usually the less routine and more theoretical problems.  Most students (correctly!) perceive that just doing the standard work would be a more efficient route to a good grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have never seen a course instructor ever give more than a little amount of extra credit. Is there any reason why it would be a poor choice to offer a great deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that most instructors feel that students who get bad grades on exams and then make it up with ancillary work should not get similar final grades to students who do well on exams.  In other words, since many (most, maybe; certainly not all) courses have &quot;mastering the material, as shown in exam performance&quot; as the primary goal, giving too much extra credit works against this goal.  Most extra credit is a kind of &quot;homework&quot;: I hope that people know that in 2014 it is all but prohibitively difficult to ensure that homework is being done by the student.  In an earlier question you asked about assigning &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon Mechanical Turk&lt;/a&gt;-type questions to the students as extra credit.  That very terminology raises the objection: maybe the students will use the MTurk website to get others to do their work for them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is no absolute right or wrong answer here: you do get to decide what works best for you.  Honestly, I think you're essentially proposing &quot;rebranding&quot; some of the course work as extra credit in an attempt to make the students more excited about it.  Could that work?  Yes, it could!  You are certainly entitled to give it a try.  However, since most students do substantial amounts of extra credit only when they are trying to increase their grade, if you repackage too much &quot;normal credit&quot; into &quot;extra credit&quot;, then you risk decreasing the amount of work done by the typical student in your course.  So you should analyze the incentives carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, speaking of the mind games that get played out in a classroom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past term, my teaching evaluations were full of complaints that I assign too much homework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This need not imply that you are assigning too much homework!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T22:51:25.387" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T22:51:25.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28850" CreationDate="2014-09-29T18:06:59.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were contacting me, the degree of formality wouldn't matter (so long as the salutation isn't &quot;wassup, dude!&quot;)  Two things would matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your email demonstrate clearly that you have put some thought into working in my group, and you're not just mass-mailing a form letter?  If you fail this test, I may not open the attachments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have strong qualifications for the job?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're reasonably polite and your writing is not atrocious, everything else is relatively unimportant at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor has a good relationship with the person in question, his/her involvement can help considerably.  But you making contact first generally won't do any harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T18:06:59.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T18:19:45.767" Score="8" ViewCount="993" Body="&lt;p&gt;On mathjobs.org, a few jobs request a research statement of no more than 3 pages. Are reference pages typically counted for such requirements in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4455" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T01:35:42.333" Title="When a research statement of a fixed page length is required, are references counted in the page length?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29188" CreationDate="2014-09-29T19:30:13.187" Score="-1" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the features of an advanced graduate mathematics course:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;24 hours of optional lectures over the course of the term;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No homework, labs, guided assignments, quizzes, tests, previous year exams, or sample solutions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A concise syllabus;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of recommended reading with about 5 items, with titles such as a Harvard University Press textbook;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The final exam lasts three hours and consists of several problems with sub-items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be an advisable way to properly prepare for the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21222" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T05:20:57.787" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T05:20:57.787" Title="How to prepare for a math exam in a course without homework or tests?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2014-09-29T19:31:27.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Borrow a professional looking bag or briefcase. I borrowed a nice black (synthetic material) shoulder bag for my interviews that looked better than my Chrome bag I use for commuting on my bike. Even as they say it should not matter, other answers suggests that faculty remember how professional or non-professional the bag a interviewee brought was for long periods of time afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a job interview, you are trying to communicate that (a) you are professional and competent, (b) that you are taking the interview process seriously, and (c) that you the kind of person that faculty can imagine as their colleague (as opposed to their student).  Looking professional and professorial is one way you can do all three things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the way you appear is a sort of a package deal. If you have an less than professional backpack that looks like something a student would bring, it's probably not going to tip the scale either way, but it's not going to help and it probably will be noticed. If you are a student or a post-doc, people understand that you don't have the cash for a fancy bag. That said, if there's any way you can borrow a nicer looking bag from somebody for your interviews, the downside is low enough that I don't see why you wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T23:59:42.733" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T23:59:42.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29175" CreationDate="2014-09-29T19:43:41.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you went to lecture - in my experience, in courses like this, the best you can hope for is that the professor draws questions directly from the lectures notes/questions that he raised during lecture. You can attempt to read the books, but there's probably too much material there. Focus on the lectures notes, and hope the prof is just trying to test &quot;how smart you are&quot;, i.e., just doesn't give you a bunch of hard questions tangentially related to any material discussed in class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T19:43:41.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T20:41:12.143" Score="2" ViewCount="1975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I met a  professor last year through an online search and expressed my interests to his research and his advanced lab technique, in which I lack of experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also asked for a PhD opportunity from him, he says that he has no money or limited funding now, so I agreed to work for 3 months for free. Would be practical that this volunteer experience could lead to a PhD after this 3 months? On one side I am not happy with working for free, as I had employment for 1 year as a research assistant. On the other side, this potential professor appears nice to employees around and keeps his words, and has good tracks of papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But am I just wasting of time, what actions should I take to figure this out before too late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supplementary information: He said that he was on travel, so I was off for a while. He did not contact me till I found him. Is this normal or just my altitude should be changed? I feel not well, maybe he does not really want me as a fellow at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really frustrated, should I go further or not, is he just being polite to accept me to practice the techniques in his lab for 3 months? Am I wasting of time to even practice these test methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20582" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T20:59:31.573" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T18:34:38.417" Title="Is volunteer lab work a good practice?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T20:59:09.913" Score="4" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make the long story short, at the end of my PhD (Just 3 months before my viva), I realized that my PhD supervisor is liar and totally dishonest, probably he has his own reasons, but this is what I realized. I talked to the head of the department to quit my PhD and I was told it is better to finish it, as it is too late. He asked why I did not report the problem sooner and I replied that even I could not imagine this situation one year ago. My supervisor and I are from same country, but he is a professor at a European university.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to talk to my supervisor, but the discussion was too strong and I told him he is not eligible to be a teacher (professor), because he is not an honest person; the most important criterion for being a teacher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way, he did not support me to get a reasonable postdoctoral position and as a result, I ended up finding myself in one of the very well developed East Asian countries. The PI was a young scientist without proper experience (we were his first group members). He assigned me a computational project and when I asked him what we are looking for, he said just do what I have asked you, run the simulation and at the end you will realize. Repeatedly I talked to him and told him there is nothing special in this simulation and we should carefully know what we are looking for before pushing the enter key and running the simulation, but he insisted to running the simulation. I asked him to change the project, but he refused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have finished the extremely heavy simulation, which took 1 year, analyzed the data and extracted what I could extract from the simulation. I presented the results and it was clear that there was nothing interesting in the simulation. He said “you are postdoc and you should think about what you are going to do”. I was aware of the fact that in East Asian culture I should not criticize my PI, but I believe in science community we can and we must do that. Science means working with the facts and reality. After a couple of more wrong information and recommendations that he gave me, I eventually told him he was wrong. It triggered a personal war between us and he fired me – after two years of hard work without any publications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was lucky enough to a new position in Southern hemisphere. Now whenever I look for a new job, I am asked for 2–3 letters of recommendation and specially some of them asking for letter from my PhD supervisor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle this situation? What should I say when I apply for a job? Should I mention the conflicts or does it make the situation worse? Should I say that I only have one letter of recommendation? What should I say about my low number of publications?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should mention that at each stage I have changed my research field; my PhD and the postdocs all are different topics in physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22382" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T05:22:01.630" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T19:57:52.723" Title="How to apply with past postdoc or PhD positions which did not result in publications or recommendation letters due to conflict with supervisor?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29178" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:21:28.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;WANT&lt;/em&gt; to volunteer in the lab as a learning opportunity, it can be a great practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to, decline the offer and either look elsewhere or come back when his budget can handle bringing someone else in... and hope that he hasn't already found someone who was pleased to work as a volunteer and delighted to be paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world is what it is, not what we wish it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T21:21:28.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:32:29.577" Score="16" ViewCount="1555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many organizing committees set aside time and space at the conference for &lt;em&gt;special sessions&lt;/em&gt;, which are often planned and organized by select individuals that have been invited to highlight a particular subject or scientific direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you work in computer science and you're specializing in deep learning, you might propose (or be asked) to organize a deep learning special session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your proposal has been accepted, you have to spread the word to interested researchers, issue a call for papers, collect papers, invite an important speaker, and make sure the event runs smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you that already had this experience, &lt;em&gt;what are your suggestions and advice for organizing a good special session?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, should you get in touch with potential participants before the session is announced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="379" LastEditorUserId="22520" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T18:51:57.357" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T01:36:10.380" Title="How to organize a good &quot;special session&quot; at a conference?" Tags="&lt;conference&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29181" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:44:38.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A useful start is to try to get some well-known researchers to commit to providing talks to a session. It could be one person or maybe a few more depending on the size of the conference and the session. The point of doing this is basically two-fold. First, you gain interest from others when they see names they recognize. Second, by having someone well-established involved, the session gains a certain amount of credibility. People who may be very selective in choosing how they spend their time are likely less inclined to go to a session filled with people they do not know than one where they at least know one or a couple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have established a core for the session, the rest might solve itself. You do of course have to consider the main direction of the conference so that the session theme does not deviate to the extent that any person interested in the session finds the rest of the conference of marginal interest. So chose the venue with some care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the ball rolling is the hard bit. An invitation is usually not enough. It may involve pulling strings left and right to entice a core of attendees to show. In one meeting I co-organized, we managed to get an international group to attend that were looking to also run a project meeting at the same time. This meant the meeting gained a wider interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T21:44:38.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29179" CreationDate="2014-09-29T22:00:18.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you may realise, telling the story as outlined here to people asking for references may not be sufficient to convince them. If you know an area in physics where you will be applying for jobs, you can make contact with professors in this area and offer your help in some small project (2-4 weeks). Make sure you do a good job and have a good interaction with them. After you are finished, ask them if they could be your reference. If this area in physics is very close to the tasks in the job it should be a more relevant reference, and therefore it will not be too strange that they are your reference instead of your supervisor from the PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T22:00:18.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29187" CreationDate="2014-09-29T22:49:24.420" Score="6" ViewCount="1184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a masters physics student and doing my master thesis abroad during an exchange. At the moment my master thesis will be graded by my home university, but I have the option to enroll on the exchange university, thus being a master student there (and my master thesis will be graded there, too). Furthermore I will get a master degree from this university, and not from my home one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is: Is it theoretically possible to use this master thesis for graduating at my home university, too (getting me two master degrees)? If not, should I still enroll on the exchange university and only get my masters degree there (it would not result in a loss of time; I would finish as I would have finished my masters degree at my home university)? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22378" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T05:21:11.770" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T05:21:11.770" Title="Is it possible to use one thesis for two degrees?" Tags="&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;degree&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29185" CreationDate="2014-09-29T23:53:06.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is theoretically possible that a university accepts a thesis that has been used to acquire another degree (I even know cases where this happened for two different fields). Usually, the only way to find out is to ask the responsible people at your home university &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your exchange university. The latter matters because it might cause trouble if they have some regulations about you “reusing” your thesis. I can imagine that some universities have existing regulations for this matter, so you might check them first to avoid annoying people by asking something that you could have looked up easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not possible, I can think of some factors to consider as to which university’s degree you want to get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One university’s degree might have a generally higher prestige.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relatedly, a foreign degree might not be accepted or be less valued by potential future employers (be they academic or not). This might even hold, if there are international regulations to make degrees comparable (I know somebody who did a second thesis partly due to this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finishing the degree at a foreign university while not completing the degree you originally set out to achieve might be regarded as unfinished studies by some bureaucrats, which is more likely to be negative than positve. Even worse, this may ring title-mill alerts to some. And yes, this would all be rather silly but unfortunately very real.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if this is any realistic, make as much decisions about your future as possible and ask potential employers as to whether they have any preference regarding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T23:53:06.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29175" CreationDate="2014-09-30T00:05:10.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a study method in this case would include the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be present at all lectures if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is especially important to be present at the first and last lectures, where key information about the course and the exam is likely to be conveyed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good idea in such a case is to record the lectures in audio or audio and video format, to have a reference to every detail; an alternative would be to write everything down verbatim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the textbook, if the course has one, or at least the one or two of the items from the reading list, cross-referencing the material with the syllabus. Some relevant material may be skipped with careful discretion without substantial decrease in quality of exam preparation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a notebook, which summarizes all important items from the lectures and the literature, such as all major theorems, formulas, concepts, and other items that can be expected on exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find problem sets, which fit well the course syllabus. For example, those can be end-of-section problems in the items from the reading list or problem sets from a similar course offered elsewhere. Also, students that took the same course before might still have exam problem statements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you work through lecture notes, reading list, problem statements, and problem solutions, highlight and annotate the items of relevance to the exam (to the extent of that being possible), so you can quickly go over it later and recall auxiliary information that is not in the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add all concepts and patterns from problem solutions, as well as, preferably, all concepts and patters from the relevant material in the reading list, to the notebook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the instructor if there are any questions in regards to preparation for the exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before the exam, go over the lecture notes, reading list items, and especially the notebook. In particular, reread the entire notebook several times the day before the exam and several times about one hour before the exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21222" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T00:05:10.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29149" CreationDate="2014-09-30T01:32:09.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak for your institution, students, or department, so take this with the usual grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a highly competitive and stressful institution like Columbia, many courses are graded on curves based on the final overall grade. Particularly as a result, anything offered as extra credit becomes de facto mandatory. When the extra credit simply gets added into the numerator of the grade it's pretty irrelevant whether those 15 extra points came from a &quot;midterm&quot; or &quot;extra credit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there MIGHT be ways of constructing a syllabus such that the extra credit was less distortionary, but I can't come up with one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6024" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T01:32:09.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-30T05:05:14.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two comments here ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a professor who once wrote a popular textbook. When he wrote the next one, which was expected to be equally successful, he asked several publishers who could promise him the &lt;em&gt;lowest&lt;/em&gt; sticker price. It might even have been a smart business move, because the next textbook was another bestseller by textbook standards. The author had bargaining power and used it for the benefit of his students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I know that some textbooks have relatively low print runs and complicated layout/typesetting. Computers can only do so much, a good textbook needs manual attention. These overheads have to be divided over the print run in order to make &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; profits, and they might dwarf the costs of paper, print, and binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22389" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T05:05:14.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29137" CreationDate="2014-09-30T05:51:36.603" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a relevant study on computer science systems research that addresses your first question, &quot;What percentage of research articles are provided with their source code?&quot;. The study is described in a tech report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/v1/tr.pdf&quot;&gt;Measuring Reproducibility in Computer Systems Research&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Christian Collberg, Todd Proebsting, Gina Moraila, Akash Shankaran, Zuoming Shi, Alex M Warren. March 21, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of this study observed the following protocol to determine code availability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We downloaded 613 papers from the latest incarnations of eight ACM conferences (ASPLOS’12, CCS’12, OOPSLA’12, OSDI’12, PLDI’12, SIGMOD’12, SOSP’11, VLDB’12) and five journals (TACO’9, TISSEC’15, TOCS’30, TODS’37, TOPLAS’34), all with a practical orientation. For each paper we determined whether the published results appeared to be backed by source code or whether they were purely theoretical. Next, we examined each non-theoretical paper to see whether it contained a link to downloadable code. If not, we examined the authors’ websites, did a web search, examined popular code repositories such as &lt;code&gt;github&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;sourceforge&lt;/code&gt;, to see if the relevant code could be found. In a final&#xA;  attempt, we emailed the authors of each paper for which code could not be found, asking them to direct us to the location of the source. In cases when code was eventually recovered, we also attempted to build and execute it. At this point we stopped — we did not go as far as to attempt&#xA;  to verify the correctness of the published results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a summary of their findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total papers examined: &lt;strong&gt;613&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers that appeared to be backed by source code (not purely theoretical): &lt;strong&gt;515&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these 515 papers, 105 were excluded from consideration so that the resulting set of papers had no overlapping author lists. That leaves 410 papers, with results as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers with link to source in the paper: &lt;strong&gt;85&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers not in above category, where source was found via web search: &lt;strong&gt;65&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers where author shared source following email request: &lt;strong&gt;81&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers where author declined to share source following email request: &lt;strong&gt;149&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers where author did not respond to email requests for source:  &lt;strong&gt;30&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details of methodology and results, as well as all the data and other materials used in this study, may be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/&quot;&gt;this web site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &quot;Anecdotes&quot; section appended to this tech report, which I think you may find very interesting, as it relates to some of the other points in your question. It documents the author's struggles to get authors to give up their source code :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T05:51:36.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29178" CreationDate="2014-09-30T06:18:11.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the decision is based on what you feel comfortable doing and at the same time, is consistent with what you want to achieve in research.  The fact that you have mentioned that you are feeling frustrated and are having doubts that the volunteer work will even eventuate are not good signs at all - especially as you have indicated that you are not comfortable working for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How important is learning and practicing this lab technique for your future goals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to ask to collaborate on any research that will also allow you to learn the test method?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you checked any other similar labs?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is a new aspect of research that uses the test method that you could offer as a PhD project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at other opportunities while you are waiting to hear back from the researcher (do not pester them).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Best not to second-guess the researcher's intentions, give them the benefit of the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the researcher's papers and at least master the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, to take on a volunteer may require permission from the researcher's Dean/Human Resources, and may involve aspects such as safety induction (for the lab) etc (and as Moriarty said in his comment, taking on a volunteer may be forbidden).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastEditorDisplayName="user21984" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T06:29:33.317" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T06:29:33.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29155" CreationDate="2014-09-30T07:40:54.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, publishing a book full of inaccuracies will make people consider you as a person that publishes inaccuracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If  you read a book by someone that wasn't even a PhD yet and their book was full of errors, wouldn't you think less of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22395" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T07:40:54.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29206" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:10:34.850" Score="23" ViewCount="4555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a postdoctoral researcher in a lab, having person (e.g.) X as a colleague, also a postdoctoral researcher like me, having obtained a PhD two years after me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the problem: In the last two years, I have taken initiatives that have led to a number of publications. My collaboration with X was not so close, since I ended up doing 80% of the work, in addition to having the original ideas, and he/she was only helping by e.g. writing a Section, having general discussions, or giving general comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried &quot;pushing&quot; (with frequent emails, meetings etc.) but it did not have a good result, as I understand that he/she does not feel motivated by me: the result has included some &quot;ugly&quot; emails, not an oral though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been doing this, waiting that in exchange, X would include me as a coauthor in one of the papers that would occur from his/her research (none so far and nothing in-progress from their part, as far as I know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to treat this person, given that he/she will not leave, as the professor seems to have some special interest in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my domain, the order of the authors in publications matters, so in our &quot;joint&quot; publications I am the first author, but is this enough? I am thinking that if we both continue independently we would both lose, but do not know how to motivate him/her. I suppose the pressure has to come from the professor, who let's say that cares but has other more important priorities. I have mentioned the problem to the professor, he/she just told to X that they should produce more, and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T08:19:26.743" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T10:33:34.557" Title="How to treat an under-performing coauthor?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:44:07.540" Score="9" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reviewing is time-demanding. It makes huge sense to re-review if comments and changes are submitted. While first review takes a lot of time, the second can be very quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If authors provide a version that shows the changes - this makes re-review very fast. They also don't have to spend too much time on resonse-to-reviews letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I simply reject to re-review if such changes-highlighted version is not provided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="4394" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T09:17:03.310" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:12:14.380" Title="When reviewing a resubmission, can I request a version with changes highlighted if the journal does not require it?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;peer-review&gt;&lt;editors&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29178" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:51:23.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing I would work out is what do you want to gain for this opportunity? From your question it sounds like you would like to get a PhD afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say the professor has no/little money at the moment. You need to work out if this is likely to change in 3 months. The best way to do this is probably just to ask him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a role may still be useful even if it doesn't lead directly to a PhD position with this professor. He may provide a good reference or may result in a publication. However, you must way up these benefits against the cost of working for free for three months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to consider are what is the reputation of the professor/how much do you want to work with him? What is the likelihood of you getting a similar (paid) role in reasonable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, before taking unpaid work it is important to consider how you will support yourself financially. If you can't afford to eat you may need to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T08:51:23.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:54:17.213" Score="26" ViewCount="3813" Body="&lt;p&gt;(There is a similar question but not exactly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write a paper, you need various views. So you invite collaborators and it often works well. But assume that out of 5 invited, for example, one or two, don't contribute to the paper much but are kept on the email thread with updated versions of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you politely remove them from the author list (paper) and how do you say that politely in email. Do you just send them a separate email or a general &quot;authorship rules&quot; email to everybody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="21435" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T13:26:01.720" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T11:36:07.187" Title="Best way to politely remove someone from paper authorship who planned to contribute but did not?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;authorship&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29201" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:09:36.950" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Removing people late in the preparation stage of a manuscript is always prone to bad feelings. It is of course unfortunate that this is a fact. This is why it is always a good idea to try to set up some ground rules for authorship (or contributorship). There are many posts under the authorship tag that discusses the Vancouver Protocol which is a set of rules under which authorship/contributorship is determined. I usually provide the link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt; as an example. The basic idea is that to be listed as author you need to fulfil certain criteria. Some have even devised a point system to calculate if a person is worthy of authorship/contributorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, to answer the question when you face the fact. There is no easy answer. You could decide to be strict and simply state that no sufficient contribution has been made (quoting the Vancouver Protocol list). How badly this is received is something only you can evaluate. And, only you can assess if you think it is worth it if the consequences are in some way &quot;high cost&quot;. You can also decide to let this one slip through and make sure you have a clear arrangement around the next manuscript you write. I also think it is a good idea to start introducing ideas around authorship/contributorship in your research environment. I am sure many will dislike the topic but you are on safe grounds. Remember, many, maybe I should say more and more, journals request lists of contributorship and provide a basis for evaluating them (usually following the Vancouver Protocol list)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:09:36.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29197" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:16:17.563" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly ask for it but if the journal does not require authors to provide such files, you are not likely to get one. So why ask? Well, by asking you provide the editors with the wish from reviewers to see this as a permanent feature and in the end such changes may be made by the journal in their instructions for authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I think it is unlikely your request will be immediately heard is that editors usually handle many articles and may work under severe time constraints (often on their free time outside of work). Communicating back and forth with authors of varying background requesting new versions of manuscripts is usually a time consuming venture that could delay the process by weeks, depending on the responsiveness of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there may be a good reason to make a request but I would not expect the wish to be heard in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:16:17.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29195" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:28:32.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe one possible solution is to bring in understanding of what the scientific community puts in the terms authorship and contributorship. Note that the term contributorship is gaining interest because it focusses on the entire research process, not just the authoring, which can be misread as writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vancouver Protocol (exemplified here by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICMJE&lt;/a&gt; version; you may find it worthwhile to do a search on &quot;contributorship&quot;, &quot;vancouver protocol&quot; and &quot;authorship&quot;) provided a first stated criteria for accepting someone as author. Putting this on the table for discussion is always a good idea. Many will probably not like the quite strict rules but when one considers them they do provide a good framework for accepting someone as author. Defining what you or the group within you work sees as acceptable grounds for being listed on papers should definitely help avoid discussions in the future. Anyone disagreeing will have to set their contribution in the light of the rules and convincingly show they fulfil them. Of course some may have a very inflated view of their own contribution but within a group such discrepancies will be harder to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting idea for establishing is also provided by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorder.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=frontpage&amp;amp;Itemid=53&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;authororder.com&lt;/a&gt; (I am not in any way associated) site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:28:32.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:48:26.083" Score="9" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I regularly teach an undergraduate course in which students are expected to complete projects that involve writing code. I also supervise undergraduates in other project and thesis work that involve writing code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering requiring future students to publicly release their project code, and any other materials needed to reproduce their work, under an open source license. (This would, of course, be stated up front in the syllabus, or before I agree to supervise a thesis student.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Fortunately, the research platform on which my students work is very well suited for reproducible research, having been designed specifically with that goal in mind.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, I have this vague idea that it's to the students' benefit to practice participating in open, reproducible science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, students may feel reluctant to release their code (for all of the reasons documented &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10247/why-are-cs-researchers-reluctant-to-share-code-and-what-techniques-can-i-use-to&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Furthermore, I want to avoid things that distract too much from the main goals of the course, which don't directly involve reproducible research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any specific pedagogical arguments for or against instituting this requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that I'm asking about the pedagogical impact on my students, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the benefit to the broader research community of having my students do open science.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.723" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T21:35:27.627" Title="Pedagogical pros and cons of requiring undergraduate students to follow open/reproducible research practices?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;undergraduate&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;&lt;reproducible-research&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29195" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:53:10.660" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might simply consider that the current situation is fine: you say that you do get help from your collaborator, so there is little reason to stop working with him or her; you lead the collaboration and, for this, get first authorship. This will earn you much (well deserved) better opportunities; by comparison, your collaborator will have a hard time, because no recent first-author publications will look bad on his or her CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have wanted a more active collaborator, and it is a good idea to try to help him or her do better, but you just cannot push someone against their will. It is possible that he or she does not have what it takes to handle more core tasks, or that so he or she believes. In this case, pushing too hard would amount to cornering him or her into an impossible situation, no good would happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to change what you can (e.g., if you have the option to start another collaboration with someone else it might be a very good idea; if you have another job available with potentially better co-worker, you might want to try it, etc.) and do with what you cannot change. Ultimately, you have the upper hand on your own work, and that is how it is supposed to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ho, and about getting co-authorship in exchange for your work: no one is supposed to &lt;em&gt;give you co-authorship&lt;/em&gt; in exchange for anything; you can rather be &lt;em&gt;invited to work on a project&lt;/em&gt;, and then this work is what grants co-authorship. I am not sure how you meant it, but giving co-authorship as a mere reward for something unrelated to the publication is a serious academic misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="946" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:53:10.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29195" CreationDate="2014-09-30T10:09:44.850" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Peter Jansson's answer is interesting, and I personally do like the idea of documenting contributions more explicitly than is currently fashionable.  But I think it is fair to say that this more like tomorrow's solution than today's: though people like us would like to see these protocols followed, at the moment those who follow them assiduously seem to be in the minority, so it will probably not be effective in the short term to try to hold a &quot;lagging&quot; collaborator to this standard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion there is relatively little you can do to force your colleague to pull his own weight on your current and past projects, but on the other hand your situation is not so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here is the problem: In the last two years, I have taken initiatives that have led to a number of publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is certainly not the problem!  Rather, that sounds great for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My collaboration with X was not so close, since I ended up doing 80% of the work, in addition to having the original ideas, and he/she was only helping by e.g. writing a Section, having general discussions, or giving general comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least X did 20% of the work; that's a lot better than nothing.  Seriously, a lot of people on this site are complaining about being pressured or forced to add coauthors who have literally done nothing helpful on the paper, or who have even dragged them down / wasted their time.  I think that in most academic fields, 20% contribution is certainly sufficient for coauthorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my domain, the order of the authors in publications matters, so in our &quot;joint&quot; publications I am the first author, but is this enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's really the good news: by consistently appearing as first author, you are getting the lion's share of the credit.  If it makes you feel better: I work in a field in which author order is alphabetical, and in my experience it is relatively common for some coauthors to have contributed less than 20%.  So cheer up.  By the way, your quotation marks around joint look a little uncollegial: your coauthor did some of the work, so it is joint work.  This and other clues make me think that you may be overly worried about this and perhaps pushing a little too hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; you do in the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you don't value someone's contribution, don't pressure them to include you on their own projects.  Moreover, if you feel like someone is not pulling their own weight on a project, adding a project where you don't pull your own weight may seem just with respect to the two of you, but from the perspective of the larger academic world you're each trying to take credit for more work than you actually did.  It would be easy for most of us to multiply our apparent productivity simply by &quot;exchanging more papers&quot; with our collaborators.  We must resist that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are, or perceive yourself to be, a more productive / serious / insightful researcher than Dr. X.  If so, the story you want to tell is that Dr. X did some work with you but that his contribution is not a major part of your research program.  You accomplish that by doing your own work, not letting your interactions slow you down, and making sure that in your joint work the primacy of your contribution gets documented (as it has been).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Make sure that your supervisor knows the situation and can speak and write accurately about your respective contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are getting first authorship every time and your supervisor has told Dr. X that he needs to work harder, then you are laying groundwork for him to describe you as being the prime mover in your collaborative work with Dr. X.  It would be a good idea to speak to him explicitly about this.  Assuming he agrees, he is then ethically obligated not to try to characterize Dr. X's contribution as equal to your own.  If you are in doubt that he might not see it that way, I would suggest erring on the side of showing (not telling) your supervisor how capable and productive you are.  You do this not by complaining about Dr. X -- just get the facts across; don't rub it in or be bitter about it -- but by going on to do more and better work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If you don't want to collaborate with Dr. X in the future unless he does at least X% of the work -- you can choose a specific value of X, at least up to 50 -- hash that out with him now, before you work on any new projects.  You are more than within your right to do so.  Indeed, as Peter Jansson indicates, that is a best practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T10:33:34.557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T10:33:34.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11149" CreationDate="2014-09-30T11:40:07.370" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IMHO I believe the answer to this question is “it depends.”&lt;/strong&gt; In industry, the answer will always be around demonstrating what value you can bring to the table, and accordingly, why a customer should pay a premium for that. I would highly recommend talking to professionals in the field(s) that you want to eventually leverage your PhD into, and get their opinions on the value of their PhD’s to help you understand how you can flourish in your chosen specialty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me caveat this however by saying the following: I do not have a PhD, but I find the endeavour personally and, depending on how well you can translate your PhD into economic value, professionally, very worthwhile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am an Engineering and Project manager in the oil and gas industry, and have nearly 12 years’ experience in the production and management of engineering for projects greater than $US 1Bn. My largest project was over $US 40Bn, and I have worked with, and been served by, many engineers, scientists, and other technologists of many disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered many people with PhD’s in that time, most of whom were good people to work with. Almost to an individual, no one ever cared to emphasise their PhD, and in many cases, most chose to suppress it in favour of demonstrating the value delivered on previous projects and engagements that mattered to my needs as a manager or client. Most of the professionals with PhDs who we were paying real money for were not actually delivering any services or products that was connected to their PhDs. However, they were specialists in their fields, and their PhDs were almost always related to their chosen specialty. So if you had studied a PhD in geology or civil engineering (very common), then it would make sense for you to leverage your PhD into a geotechnical engineering firm where you would often be marketed to your client as, eventually, a Principal Geotechnical engineer or similar. This is a specialised role, with a narrow scope (same applies for any discipline), and if you are actually good at your job, you will be high in demand around town. Clients, whilst not necessarily paying an above-market rate for you, will likely insist that they “want you” as part of the delivery team because you are known to be credible at what you do. The PhD itself will have very little to do with that, but you will be rewarded if you are able to translate what you learnt from the PhD into delivering a service your clients will pay real money for. I have had these kinds of people work for me before, and I would seek them out again, but they never emphasised their PhD to me. In fact, I’ve worked with people who were exceptional at what they did, very highly regarded not just in my country but in others around the world, who didn’t have a skerrick of post-graduate education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to study a PhD (in Psychology say) and tried to leverage that into a non-related field (like management consulting), then the question of value will be even more poignant for you. In this instance, you would likely be relying on the “general” skills that a PhD would afford you (not that they are trivial by any means), and again, you would need to demonstrate to a buyer of your skills that your PhD provides greater value than someone else who may have more direct industry/ field related experience. Firms and industries where these generalised PhD-related skills might be valued (e.g. some investment banks, blue chip corporate strategy companies) are open to candidates with PhD’s but again, you would be required to demonstrate how your PhD translates into products and services your customers want to buy, and even pay a premium for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can appreciate the dilemma of someone contemplating the study of a PhD as it is, indeed, difficult to truly understand what kind of value you can demonstrate to a buyer at the end of it. Brian Rushton’s narrative is a fine account of the individual kinds of skill that a PhD can develop, but in industry, I would treat such skills as a given. Moreover, Brian’s description over emphasises the individual skill component, and is notably silent on other critical individual, team, and other “corporate” attributes that are necessary for success in industry. Brian mentions time management: again, this is something that I would expect a graduate engineer to be well on top of by their first or second year in work, so why, as either your manager or your client, should I expect this to be a differentiator for you? Especially given that you’ve invested some three or more years of your life developing this skill! Likewise, Brian also mentions being able to see many possible solutions. Creativity is a valuable thing, but in my industry, this must be executed with discipline, and applied with the necessary soft (emotional intelligence) skills to translate ideas into solutions that can be implemented successfully within a corporate risk and financial framework. I have often come across so-called “experts”, some with PhDs, who waste a lot of peoples’ time and money with ideas that are insensitive to the corporate, political, project and commercial realities surrounding them, and this often harms their reputations.  Understandably, their ideas are not implemented, and these kinds of insensitive people are not hired again. Finally, the other skills that Brian mentions (project and cost management, business skills) are fine but these are carried out on a small scale. My question is: clients will pay for demonstrable experience, so how are you going to convince your future employer or client that they should pay good money to entrust you with a project or business that may exceed your PhD undertakings by a factor of thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: why should I, either as your manager or your client, be prepared to pay a premium for your skills from a PhD when they can be honed by someone else working “at the coal face” in a demonstrable way over the same amount of time as your PhD? This question will vary depending on your industry. In my industry, real value comes not with the PhD, but your demonstrated experience in delivering valuable services and products, over a sustained time, to real customers. In other, very highly specialised industries, the PhD may serve as an entry point, after which your work performance will likely prevail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve really emphasised the “economic” aspect of the PhD in my response, and I tender it not to discourage you, but to help you to think very deeply about why you wish to do one before you decide to take the plunge. If you do decide to do one, then I wish you to do so with your eyes open, and, most importantly, sincerely wish you the very best of success with it, both personally and professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22399" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T11:40:07.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29231" CreationDate="2014-09-30T11:50:09.913" Score="12" ViewCount="13528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am completing a master's by research (in Humanities), and thus shall be writing a thesis with no class work. I am using both a mixture of primary and secondary source but one item that has me a bit unsure is the use of other master's theses. Is there an expectation at the master's level that you would only consult documents at a higher level (PhD and up)? I know the simple answer would be to ask your advisor, which I intend to do, but I wondering it their any accepted academic practice or principle on the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should or can I refer to (and cite) other master's thesis as source material or should I be only using material that would be considered above the master's level, such as PhD theses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T18:11:46.937" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T18:30:03.927" Title="Can you cite other master's theses when writing your own?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;masters&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29209" CreationDate="2014-09-30T11:56:13.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I would ask your supervisor/advisor for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, generally speaking this should be fine, as Masters thesis are examples of completed and verified research (in that they have either undergone defense or are peer reviewed - as was my case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you could do though, is to use the thesis almost like a well-referenced Wikipedia page - in that you find the main referenced points that are relevant to your research and seek and peruse the paper that was used - chances are, you may find more information to assist in your specific research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T11:56:13.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T12:39:08.037" Score="23" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friends, family, and partner often mention that they worry about my life as an researcher/academic mentioning how I work too much (I love my job!) am never satisfied (I want to go great work, and great work is hard to do!), and that I'm often distracted (I think about my research a lot!). I've tried to explain these facets of academic life to them, but I have trouble completely communicating each of these feelings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any good articles or stories that you have found particularly useful in helping others understand your lifestyle as an academic?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For people outside of academia who you feel understand your passion and drive, how did they come to do so?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T08:46:30.417" Title="How to explain a life as a researcher to friends, family and partners who aren't?" Tags="&lt;academic-life&gt;&lt;work-life-balance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29222" CreationDate="2014-09-30T12:46:13.050" Score="34" ViewCount="2972" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume, for the sake of example, that I have found a new figure of merit which is of the same complexity as the one currently used, but is much more justified from a mathematical and physical standpoint. However, the whole development barely goes over one paragraph (maybe two), as the &quot;proof&quot; is extremely simple and straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I was planning on saving this smaller result for a bigger paper on the same topic, where I'd introduce this new figure of merit along with other results, but the future of this other paper has become quite uncertain lately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way I could still present this new (small) result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8001" LastEditorUserId="8001" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T19:58:51.710" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T17:19:49.467" Title="What to do with a result too small to be publishable, but interesting nonetheless?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29212" CreationDate="2014-09-30T12:57:39.543" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can think of publishing it as a &lt;em&gt;short communication&lt;/em&gt;, many journals accept this kind of contribution (they can be designated in different ways, depending on the journal). As I recall, the shortest article ever published was of about 3 lines [1] ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] F. Lenz, &quot;The Ratio of Proton and Electron Masses&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Phys. Rev.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;82&lt;/strong&gt;, 554, 1951.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T13:25:21.977" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T13:25:21.977" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29218" CreationDate="2014-09-30T13:21:49.803" Score="1" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have in project to write an essay on the Special Theory of Relativity. My idea is then to publish it as an ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if I can freely write about this topic or I need to take into account some problems related to royalties or copyright. Can I write about a topic like that without any problems of this kind? Can I include quotes and information about Einstein's life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22406" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T19:43:19.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:43:19.840" Title="Am I allowed to write an essay about a scientific theory without violating the copyright?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;copyright&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29212" CreationDate="2014-09-30T13:25:30.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would submit the manuscript as a short paper, or even a poster in a workshop. Workshop papers and posters in my domain (computer science) usually demonstrate more early results of ongoing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T13:25:30.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29214" CreationDate="2014-09-30T14:30:22.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Yes.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific principles are &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; subject to copyright—you cannot copyright a scientific idea, theory, equation, or concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have to worry about copyright if you extensively quote from copyrighted primary or secondary resources as part of your text. If you are not directly using their language, then you need only cite the works, and no royalty or copyright issues should arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that in the particular case of the special theory of relativity, it is more than 95 years old (as it was announced in 1905), and thus &lt;a href=&quot;https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is no longer under US copyright protection&lt;/a&gt; in any event, so you could in principle reuse or even reprint the entire text of his article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T15:53:07.570" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T15:53:07.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29223" CreationDate="2014-09-30T14:34:14.077" Score="32" ViewCount="5566" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; paper published in 2000 currently has around 400 citations, but there is a mistake in the paper and surprisingly, still it gets citations. The mistake affects the result of the paper in a way that half of the arguments in the paper are invalid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I warned the authors two years ago and they confirmed the mistake. I expected them to put some announcement that there is a mistake in the paper to avoid misleading researchers, but unfortunately they have not done so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we address these situations? Should we send a comment and report it to the editor? Is it rude? Or should we simply dismiss it because it is an old paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22382" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T16:13:32.837" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T19:28:45.520" Title="How to address a mistake in an old paper in a very prestigious scientific journal?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;errors-erratum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29178" CreationDate="2014-09-30T14:43:05.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides all that has been mentioned, the liability issues stand foremost. Imagine that you work for free and get injured while on that job. The university has no obligation to pay you any compensation. Imagine that you damage a major piece of research equipment. You and the faculty member could be personally sued by the university for the repair costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other side is, what do you get from this? Sure, experience is a great thing, but it only goes so far. Suppose you work for free and have no achievement from the work. What exactly are you going to put on your CV? Do you believe that a future job interviewer will really care to discuss what you &quot;experienced&quot; in your own &quot;free time&quot; versus what you have a valid record of doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first reason, I do not accept students that offer to work for free in my labs. For the second reason, I always attach credit hours for either formal research or a special topics course to the transcript of students who work for me doing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22283" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T14:43:05.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29212" CreationDate="2014-09-30T15:24:56.287" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason why you're publishing is because you think you have a new way of doing things that is better than the old way of doing things. Simply publishing a derivation of the new way isn't sufficient to convince people of that fact. You need to &lt;strong&gt;convince&lt;/strong&gt; people that your new way is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, your derivation is a simple one to two paragraphs, but in addition to that you should spend several paragraphs explaining why your new way is better. Why was the old way used? Why weren't the deficiencies not considered a problem until now? (Or if they were, how were they addressed with the old way, and why is your way better?) What are some of the objections that the people used to doing it the old way will raise? Why might they not want to switch to your new way? What do you say to those potential objections? Are there possible use cases might your new way not be appropriate for, and if so, how do you choose between the old way and the new way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably also want to spend several paragraphs in an introduction, explaining how the field got to the old way, and outlining the deficiencies. You probably also want to include and example of using your new way, comparing it to the old way, illustrating why the new way is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you think your paper is too short because you're planning on just presenting the derivation and assuming its merits are obvious to others. They won't be. In all likelihood you'd be chewed up in review - not because your paper is too short, but because you won't have convinced the reviewers that your new method is worthwhile. Fleshing out the paper with necessary background and discussion to presents a coherent argument for your new method can easily take you into the 1-2 page range which is the typical size of &quot;brief communications&quot; (depending on field, journal, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't pad your article just to increase its size, but don't omit things which will bolster the arguments in favor of your new method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: In response to comments, here's an attempt at clarification: An academic paper is not &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; about presenting results. It's also about presenting a story and an argument. How does this result change the field? How should it change how the readers think about the topic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that the original questioner thinks their paper is only one to two paragraphs because they were anticipating presenting just the short proof/derivation of the new figure of merit. My point was that the proof itself is insufficient for a decent paper. In addition to the proof you also need to convince the reader that the new figure of merit is better than the old one - and to do so for people who may be unaware that there was anything wrong with the existing way in the first place. Doing this properly can easily extend the paper from 1-2 paragraphs into a size which is more typical for a standard journal article. Write a proper paper, and it's no longer &quot;too small to be publishable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastEditorUserId="22409" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T17:19:49.467" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T17:19:49.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29219" CreationDate="2014-09-30T16:10:45.017" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals accept a type of short correspondence or comment in which objections to some published material can be submitted. If you can articulate your objections in a scientific way suitable for publishing you may try this approach. For example, imagine the original analysis has some error. Reanalyzing the data gives different results and invalidates the previous publication. Conversely in this approach the authors of the original study have the opportunity to reply to your complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n7/full/ng0707-807.html&quot;&gt;commentary&lt;/a&gt; published in &lt;em&gt;Nature Genetics&lt;/em&gt;, where the authors highlight important deficiencies in the design of the experiments in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n2/full/ng1955.html&quot;&gt;an earlier publication&lt;/a&gt; that can lead to incorrect conclusions. Of course, the authors of the original paper are allowed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n7/full/ng0707-808.html&quot;&gt;respond to the comments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correspondences have the advantage that can be very short. I am not sure at this moment if &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; also accepts this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the material that demonstrates the error in the original publication is substantial it may grant an additional publication. This is for example what happened with the paper that demonstrated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/9/3507.abstract&quot;&gt;the divergence between human and mice inflammatory responses&lt;/a&gt;, which led to a response paper analyzing the same data, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/31/1401965111.abstract&quot;&gt;arriving at the opposite results&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21435" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T16:16:45.807" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T16:16:45.807" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29259" CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:12:15.400" Score="3" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the term &quot;Least Publishable Unit&quot; used to describe the amount of scientific information that holds enough merit for a publication. From my understanding, there are two sides to publishing with this term in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The positive aspect of this concept is the fact that the article remains focused on the research question and tends to be concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The downside, at least for me, is this notion of only obtaining enough data simply to produce publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else heard of this term used when discussing publications? If so, is my interpretation of it correct?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22408" LastEditorUserId="22408" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T19:05:59.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T06:57:23.757" Title="Writing articles based on the &quot;Least Publishable Unit&quot;" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29041" CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:33:28.117" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this point I feel I should leave an answer which records a differing opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let me provide context.  My advice is for students applying the STEM PhD programs in the United States (like the OP).  I was admitted to the top three math PhD programs in the United States and graduated from one of them in 2003.  Since 2006 I have been tenured-track at UGA; I am now a tenured associate professor.  I spent four years on the Graduate Committee reading applications, and though I am now on a different committee, because I am co-PI on a large NSF grant I read a stack of applications last year and will probably continue to do so for several years to come.  I have also read thousands of academic recommendation letters for faculty positions.  (This is, unfortunately for me, not an exaggeration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accepted answer gives what I think is not good advice for the OP's situation.  I think it might be good advice for non-academic recommendation letters, and I suspect that it was in fact not written to be targeted at PhD applications.  Going over the entire answer point-by-point feels unnecessarily confrontational, but let me differ in some key points, all of which I think could lead a student astray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the best recommendation letters for STEM PhD programs in the US are written by those who have substantial experience in this area.  In my field of mathematics, a letter written by someone who does not have a PhD in mathematics or a closely related field is likely to be simply skipped over.  (I have learned on this site that in some other STEM fields, good letters can be written by those who have substantial industrial experience.  But such people still have to have a lot of experience with PhDs in the relevant fields.)  The best letters are written by those who have faculty experience as well, have seen many academic recommendation letters, and who are known by the faculty doing admissions, at least by reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this description somewhat elitist and exclusionary of younger, non-tenure track and liberal arts faculty?  Yes, it is.  But it is also honest.  If we get a letter from a small liberal arts college that says &quot;Ms. X is the best student I have ever seen&quot; and then doesn't display a familiarity with the type of students that succeed in programs like ours, it's hard to know what to make of it.  If the recommender is not an active researcher: well, that's just not as good as someone whose name we all know and trust.  How could it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a comment it was suggested that the above situation is impossible because everyone starts out with less experience than the above.  Most letters we get are not written by people who are just starting out.  If you spend a few years in a faculty position you'll see a deluge of academic recommendation letters and absorb the format.  If you are a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; junior person who is nevertheless a good choice to write a letter (which certainly does happen), you should get help and advice from someone more experienced.  You should not rely on someone who is much less experienced, and still less on an undergraduate, and yet less on that undergraduate for whom you are writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any reasonably good letter contains components that almost no student could write. For instance such letters should &lt;strong&gt;include information about the credentials and experience of the writer&lt;/strong&gt;, enough to explain why their endorsement of the student is to be relied upon.  Such letters should &lt;strong&gt;compare the student generally to other students in the recommender's program, to the generic student in the target PhD program, and ideally to past specific students that the writer and the reader will both know&lt;/strong&gt;.  Even the one in a million student who has preternatural access to this information cannot give it: it has to come from writer, in the writer's voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of room in such an application for a student to provide information about her strengths, goals and interests.  A good faculty letter makes contact with that student information and reinforces it, but such information does not form nearly enough of a letter for it to make sense for a student to write it up as though it could be the basis of the faculty letter: at best, doing this would waste everyone's time, not save it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing academic letters is not a &quot;favor&quot;: it is part of what faculty are paid to do.  More precisely, it is part of what permanent, full-time faculty are paid to do.  I've spent about eight hours over the last few days writing letters for current and former UGA math department personnel, and I will spend at least that much time on the task in the next few weeks.  I spend so much time on these tasks because (i) it's important -- the difference between an effective letter and ineffective one may play out as a difference in some young person's life; and (ii) I have a stake in it as well: when one of our undergraduates goes to a top ten PhD program or one of our PhD students gets an NSF postdoc, my entire department benefits and in so doing &lt;strong&gt;I benefit&lt;/strong&gt;.   If I were a temporary, adjunct or part-time faculty member, I strongly suspect that I would not feel the same way, and I certainly would not expect such a faculty member to devote such time and effort.  Someone who thinks of recommendation letters as a favor is someone you don't want to write for you and, I feel, someone who shouldn't have to. Also, &lt;strong&gt;no one&lt;/strong&gt; is required to write a letter for any given student: if you feel like you can't write an effective letter, say so and don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A letter which is written first by a student and then touched up by the faculty signee is a potentially serious academic honesty situation.  I have spoken about this at length elsewhere on this site.  I respect that some others do not feel this way and that in many situations there is nothing immoral or suboptimal going on here.  However you need to know that many -- I suspect most -- American academics share my qualms.  Even the fact that the student must not see the letter is regarded as sacrosanct by many.  I am very dismayed when people try to say that they are not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; just signing their students' letters -- or only if they &quot;actually endorse everything that is written&quot;!! -- but are just getting this writing sample as step one of a final product that is not in any way problematic.  To that I say: if you know how to write a reasonable specimen of an academic letter you will know that a &quot;student draft&quot; is at best helpful only as a source of information about the student, so what is being gained by not just asking for the information outside of a letter format?  By soliciting a student draft &lt;strong&gt;you are inviting the student to be complicit in a possible academic dishonesty whose final outcome is unknown to them&lt;/strong&gt;.  If later in their graduate career it comes up that they &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they wrote their own letter it could still go or at least look very badly for them, even if it turns out that nothing so terrible actually transpired.  Then there are the deceptive habits you are implicitly conveying to the student as being part of normal academic business.  If you don't think you are teaching the student to be deceptive, ask yourself this: would you be willing to submit a letter that was signed jointly by you and the student, or even in which it is explicitly mentioned that it was written based on an early draft of the student?  If you are not willing to put that in the letter, then yes, you are being unethically deceptive and encouraging the student to do the same.  If on the other hand you are willing to put that in the letter: &lt;strong&gt;please try it&lt;/strong&gt;, and see what happens.  I think you'll get some interesting feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="938" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T03:32:50.640" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T03:32:50.640" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29209" CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:39:30.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can cite another master's thesis. You also should, if it is relevant to the work. And no, don't just pillage that other thesis for sources and ignore it. That would negate the benefit of access to that thesis, which you should make available to future readers of your own thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, don't think like a student. Think like a writer, which is what you are. Your work, and those of other writers, should be treated with due consideration no matter the pedigree of the writers. Stop thinking of academia like some sort of sacred place where &quot;students&quot; are lesser beings. There are no gods here; only flawed men and women with nary a grasp of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18207" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T18:30:03.927" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T18:30:03.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:50:41.803" Score="3" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the circumstances surrounding my graduation and other factors, I didn't apply in the Fall of 2013 for any jobs. I did happen to see an opening that was still posted in February and applied on a whim. In a short period of time I was asked to do a phone interview followed by campus interview followed by request for more info from my references. At this point it was summer and quite a bit of time went by before I was asked for some start up costs (nothing substantial for my field) at which point the dean said it shouldn't be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward 2 months and all I've heard is &quot;you'll hear from us soon&quot; and that the process is moving slowly. Every time I think they must have filled the position they tell me just enough to make me think I am still in the running. At this point we are way off of the normal hiring schedule so I do not know what to think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any thoughts--is it likely that they have offered the position to someone else and are in negotiations? Why bother getting all of my startup details? Has anyone else had any experiences with a super long, off-schedule hiring timetable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22413" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T18:08:40.247" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T20:05:06.987" Title="Very odd interview/hiring timeline for physical science field" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29209" CreationDate="2014-09-30T18:13:49.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, there is no such widespread requirement or expectation anywhere in academia. (Perhaps a particularly unusual advisor might have such an expectation, but even then, I doubt it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you note the citations of research papers, a decent number of them will cite master's theses—some of my papers certainly do! And if I can submit a paper to a major journal that cites a master's thesis, why wouldn't another student's master's thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T18:13:49.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29230" CreationDate="2014-09-30T18:16:55.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All I can say is that different universities can take different amounts of time to process things. The process can take even longer when the process drags out over the summer, as many of the key people who need to approve such a hire (and usually there are several) are often out on vacation, which can drag the process out even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, for instance, that there was nearly a five-month gap between the time I had my interview and was told I'd be getting an offer and actually receiving it. So delays are possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may also be possible that you were not the top-ranked candidate after the search, and they are currently waiting to hear back from &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; candidate before deciding whether or not to make you an offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T18:16:55.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T18:46:12.267" Score="3" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any research/study/survey/... that looked at how much time it takes for the authors of a research article to release the source code? Ideally I'm looking for an approximation distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is a follow-up of &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29137/452&quot;&gt;Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T18:20:10.170" Title="Reference on the time it takes for a source code used for a research article to be released" Tags="&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;open-science&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29197" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:01:51.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What format for such &quot;changes-highlighted version&quot; would you like? Maybe you could just use a tool like DiffPDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem with your original intent is that you're going to re-review by looking only at the &quot;changes highlighted&quot;. What if there are other changes, not highlighted by the author? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6626" LastEditorUserId="6626" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T21:12:14.380" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:12:14.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29219" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:05:12.250" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent suggestions above, I'd also suggest blogging about it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://peerj.com/articles/313/&quot;&gt;A recent study&lt;/a&gt; found that corrections to the literature were 8x as likely to occur if blogged about, as opposed to corrections that had gone the traditional route (contacting editors, authors, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13715" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:05:12.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28863" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:26:04.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an EU citizen, you are eligible for free education in Sweden:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://studyinsweden.se&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://studyinsweden.se&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7428" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:26:04.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29247" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:40:03.800" Score="6" ViewCount="11087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a citation that is at the end of a sentence with dual punctuation. What I mean is that I have a sentence of the following form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the proper way to include the citation in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al[##].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.[##]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.[##].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22418" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T20:23:55.663" LastActivityDate="2020-04-06T08:03:48.233" Title="Placement of period in sentence that ends with &quot;et al.&quot; followed by reference number?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;grammar&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29239" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:44:04.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on the publisher's style guide. If the style calls for the use of periods after &quot;et al.&quot; or other such expressions, then you should use them, independent of whether the reference forces an additional period. if the guidelines don't ask for one, don't use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:44:04.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29239" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:50:21.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other possibilities are the followings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4a. &quot;Blah blah blah is mentioned in [##]&quot;. This is ok since you are using numeric citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4b. &quot;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; in [##]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:50:21.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29239" CreationDate="2014-09-30T20:21:19.993" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another &lt;em&gt;other:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned in Ref. [##].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least this is what is used by all journals using a numeric citation style that I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7734" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T20:21:19.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29246" CreationDate="2014-09-30T20:31:10.777" Score="4" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been out of school since May now, and I am considering applying for graduate school. I currently live nowhere near the university I attended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate for me to ask for a letter of recommendation via e-mail? If not, what would be the best option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Suggestions as to how I should approach such a communication would be appreciated as well.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17476" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T20:52:43.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T20:52:43.183" Title="Is it appropriate to ask a professor via e-mail for a letter of recommendation?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29239" CreationDate="2014-09-30T20:43:40.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al. [##].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note the space before the brackets; whether there is &quot;et al.&quot; or not makes no difference here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T20:43:40.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29244" CreationDate="2014-09-30T20:52:26.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In-person requests are always the best route, because you can gauge willingness and eagerness to write the letters much more directly than via telephone or email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can't be there, because you've moved away, then it is of course appropriate to ask for letters by email. Whether or not the professor will grant the request or not is of course a question. However, I would mention that you've moved (and where you currently are) as part of your request, so that the professor knows why you're not able to come in for a meeting if asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T20:52:26.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29239" CreationDate="2014-09-30T21:00:44.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;et al.&quot; is an abbreviation of the latin &lt;em&gt;et alii&lt;/em&gt; meaning &quot;and others&quot; the period in &quot;et al.&quot; should be treated as periods in any other abbreviation such as &quot;cf.&quot;, &quot;Op. Cit.&quot;, &quot;conf.&quot;, &quot;c.&quot;. In most cases of which I am aware periods are shown after abbreviations but I am not a stranger to styles where the period after abbreviations are ignored. So my bet is that &quot;et al. [##].&quot; or &quot;et al. [##]&quot;, depending on where the preferred location of the numbered references are, in a majority of cases. If you are uncertain you need to consult the journal style sheet (if any exists) or simply check other recent papers published by the journal in order to see how they prefer to have things set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T21:00:44.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29070" CreationDate="2014-09-30T22:49:32.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One &quot;easy&quot; way to pressure textbook publishers to reduce price for a textbook about a given topic you know a lot about is by writing a textbook yourself and giving it away for free. So you become the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did so for a German lecture about Geometry and Topology. I am a student and the professor did not provide a textbook. So I create one from my lecture notes (he prepared the lectures very well; but it still was a lot of work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the result: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/MartinThoma/LaTeX-examples/tree/master/documents/GeoTopo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub repository&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/MartinThoma/LaTeX-examples/blob/master/documents/GeoTopo/GeoTopo.pdf?raw=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A5 - rendered PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students now have something that fits exactly what is taught in lecture (plus some very small extras I've added) together with training material. They can print it for &lt;strong&gt;less than 10 Euro&lt;/strong&gt;. If they build groups / if the institute would decided to print 200 (which should not be a problem) I guess the price could go down to &lt;strong&gt;5-7 Euro&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage of this OpenSource / science / education approach is that it gets easy to create derivates. In my case, another student asked me if it would be possible to create index cards for definitions. It turned out that it was quite easy to do so (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/MartinThoma/LaTeX-examples/blob/master/documents/GeoTopo/definitions/definitionen.pdf?raw=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;index cards for this project&lt;/a&gt;). I could imagine that students or other teachers could come up with other variations of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:49:32.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29254" CreationDate="2014-10-01T00:36:42.713" Score="9" ViewCount="17897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reconsidering whether I want a professor's (call him X) letter of recommendation for a PhD program. The basic facts are these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I took Dr. X's class and did well. He encouraged me to apply to a PhD program in his field, and I took his advice. At that time, he offered to write me a strong letter of recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More recently, I requested via email a letter of recommendation from X. I'm certain that he expected this request, and we are on good terms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He did not respond to my request. I managed to find him in person to ask; he said that he's already responded to my email and agreed to write it, and brushed me off in a somewhat impatient manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this interaction off putting and certainly unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my rationalization for what happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;X is very busy and does not want to write me a letter. But he promised in the past and I remained in contact with him since. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I already have stronger recommendation letters that I can use.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my current plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will see professor X at least one more time to give him materials for the recommendation. I plan to see his reaction then, and how to proceed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: Is there a polite way for me to ask whether he wants to write the letter, and possibly &quot;let him off the hook&quot;? (I don't even know whether this is the right question to ask, because honestly I don't what the right thing to do is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I don't want to second-guess him, but I don't want a negative letter either. Additionally, if he's already written a letter, I don't want to waste his time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am based in the US, if that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21561" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T22:09:30.737" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T23:39:33.880" Title="Is there a polite way to rescind a request for recommendation letter?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29269" CreationDate="2014-10-01T01:33:00.773" Score="3" ViewCount="43577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course in college writing. My students must learn to write papers for college following APA format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall that, as a student, my instructors were never very consistent in their requirements for the format. For example, some instructors required a cover page if the paper exceeded 5 pages or so, but otherwise preferred a heading like this, even if they said they requested APA format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;name&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;date&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;course&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;assignment&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encountered other instructors who required a complete cover page, abstract, introduction, and conclusion, in 500 word essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does APA have any special specification for shorter essays? If so, at what point is the paper short enough to do away with these extra parts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T20:51:04.430" Title="Does APA style have a simplified short-paper format?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29001" CreationDate="2014-10-01T02:57:47.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lifted shamelessly from &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21691/11365&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, here are volunteer tasks that the student can do during the conference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check attendees in at the registration desk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take minutes in meetings (if there are any)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mic shuttler (the person that carries the mic around to people who have questions during the Q&amp;amp;A after each talk)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These offer the following benefit to the student: exposure and opportunities to network with attendees at the conference in a normal way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some additional tasks that weren't in that other answer because they're often done by students at the host institution. They also may or may not be necessary, depending on available facilities and services at your conference location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done these tasks for conferences hosted by my own group:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design and proofread conference program (before conference, obviously)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up poster boards, hand out thumbtacks, and show presenters which board to go to for poster/demo session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print, hang up, and rotate signs showing people where to go/which session is going on in a room at any given time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give VIPs a VIP tour around the lab, if conference is held &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; your institution :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T02:57:47.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29250" CreationDate="2014-10-01T03:38:14.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key thing here is that you say that you have stronger letters already. If you no longer need him to write a letter, just reply to your own email to him saying you don't need one anymore. Something like this should do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you so much for agreeing to the write the letter. Another professor just got back to me about writing a letter so I should be all set for letters in this round of applications. I really appreciate your offer and I will be in touch in the future if I need one though. Thanks again!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that most people won't write a letter until they have a deadline in front of them. That said,  it is certainly more polite to let any potential letter writer know as soon as you know you won't need it just as it is polite to let them know well advance of when you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You frame this question as about &quot;rescinding&quot; a request and seem to be worried that the professor is going to be upset. You should understand that for professors, writing letters of recommendations is &lt;em&gt;a thankless chore.&lt;/em&gt; Although this is generally the case, it is particularly the case for undergraduates that we only know through a single class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing these letters takes hours on aggregate. Worst of all, because we also sit on the committees that read these applications, we are also all deeply aware that the letters will be read by a few people on a graduate admission committee &lt;em&gt;if we are lucky&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though, he is not going to hold it against you. By agreeing to write a letter in the first place, he was offering to do you a favor. By letting him off the hook, you are doing him one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's not part of your question, I think you are spending too much time trying to unpack and interpret what &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; happened. Maybe he was busy or in a bad mood? Maybe he was emailing with somebody else and was confused? You say that you don't want to second guess him but that is exactly what you're doing. If he encouraged you to apply for a PhD program and said he will write a letter, it seems extremely unlikely that he's trying to sabotage you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="5962" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:48:51.577" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:48:51.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28565" CreationDate="2014-10-01T04:10:37.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/bps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Center for Education Statistics&lt;/a&gt; in the United States surveys cohorts of first-time, beginning students at the end of their first year in post-secondary education, and then three and six years after first starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per their official &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2014001rev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;, 59% of beginning bachelor's degree students in computer and information science in 2003-04 had either left post-secondary education without a degree (31%), or switched to a non-STEM field (28%) by 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this number doesn't identify those who switch from computer science to a different STEM field as drop-outs. It also doesn't differentiate between &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students who persisted in computer science and earned a bachelor's degree by 2009, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students who persisted in computer science but were still enrolled in 2009, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;students who persisted in computer science but earned an associate's degree or certificate by 2009.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, the NCES also allows you to create custom tables from this dataset using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/datalab/powerstats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PowerStats&lt;/a&gt; tool on their website. (You have to create an account to use the tool.) This is a valuable tool if you're interested in exploring these statistics further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using PowerStats, I found out that among those who enrolled in a bachelor's degree program with a computer/information science major in 2003-04:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;51.3% had earned a bachelor's degree by 2009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of these students that earned a bachelor's degree by 2009, 67.6% said that their major when last enrolled was computer/information science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, 34.7% of beginning bachelor's degree students in computer and information science in 2003-04 earned a bachelor's degree in computer and information science by 2009 and 65.3% did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's part of the data table I generated for this answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kmRis.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:10:37.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T04:13:45.833" Score="6" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an international student from Korea and I have a very serious question while I am preparing for graduate school admissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated from two years college with 2.8 GPA. After that, I went to a 4 year institution but got dismissed within three semesters due to insufficient GPA. (I was taking more than 18 credits hours because of my greed and exhausted). After the dismissal experience, I went to another 4 years institution without transferring the classes that I took from the 2nd school bur 1st school and graduated from there with 3.87 GPA. In total, I spent two years in two years college, three semesters in the 2nd institution, and 2 years in the third institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after some teaching experience while and after my undergraduate degree, I decided to continue and develop my academic career in order for more experience and more effective teaching in a graduate school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that as I alluded to above, I have a dismissal record from my past school, and this makes me quite scared. What can I do to be wise on my application regarding this fact? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please, don't say that I must lie or hide my record because I don't want to take that risk, also that was part of myself and moment that I could learn a lot.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22430" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T04:17:16.440" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:48:53.060" Title="How to overcome a much earlier academic dismissal from undergraduate program in graduate admissions?" Tags="&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29201" CreationDate="2014-10-01T04:37:57.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, Peter Jansson is correct to define the rules ahead of time.  If you have not, and from your question it is hard to know if you already have authorship order in mind (if this is appropriate for the field), then you could ask to receive contribution statements from each person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it is hard to gauge others idea of how much they contributed or how other collaborators feel about the others.  Instead of making a direct decision without warning, you could email everyone asking for a contribution statement (as Peter Jansson mentions, some journals will require it).  From there, everyone can see the contributions from the eyes of your collaborators, and some collaborators may willingly mention to take them off as they had little input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:37:57.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29227" CreationDate="2014-10-01T06:57:23.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To summarise what's in some of the comments... this term is usually used in a cynical, sardonic or derogatory fashion, to describe the practise of &quot;salami-slicing&quot; research into lots of papers, each of which has the minimum amount of content necessary to get published. The aim of this approach is to maximise the number of publications that can be obtained from a given piece of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some believe that this approach is encouraged by hiring practises in universities that depend upon the number of publications a researcher has, rather than their quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8394" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T06:57:23.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29415" CreationDate="2014-10-01T07:58:49.470" Score="3" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm getting ready to enter graduate school, and I would like to do PhD-level research in computational linguistics and natural language processing. I know that these two fields are very interdisciplinary and draw on various subfields of linguistics, computer science, math, and statistics. I also know that research in comp ling and NLP is done in different departments at different schools, with some schools having it in the CS department, and some in the linguistics department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, what background knowledge should someone have in order to do research in computational linguistics or natural language processing? Which areas of linguistics, computer science, math, and statistics are necessary or helpful in studying comp ling and NLP, and is there one field among those four which is overall more necessary than the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: per &lt;a href=&quot;https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/1802/what-are-the-fundamental-differences-between-natural-language-processing-and-com&quot;&gt;this question from Linguistics.SE&lt;/a&gt;, the distinction between comp ling and NLP is pretty blurry, which is why I mention both in my question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12904" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:12.360" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:39:33.433" Title="What background is necessary to do research in computational linguistics?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;computer-science&gt;&lt;linguistics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T08:24:10.577" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know is it bad and unethical if I do not waive my right to see the letter of recommendation written by the professors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I talk to the professor before to see whether they are OK with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20608" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T09:37:54.660" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T09:37:54.660" Title="Not waiving the right to see letter of recommendation" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-10-01T09:46:23.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T08:26:48.610" Score="4" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I collect bibliographic material, I seem to get grossly inconsistent information.&#xA;Papers from the same journal are often linked to different publishers, the same journal or publisher is often stylized differently (e.g. &lt;code&gt;Wiley&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Wiley-Liss&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Wiley &amp;amp; Sons&lt;/code&gt;), location information about the same publisher is different (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25703/what-address-to-put-in-bibliography-for-springer-and-others&quot;&gt;What address to put in bibliography for Springer (and others)?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm a bit obsessive, but I would like to be consistent when citing papers from the same journal/publisher, especially in my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any source for authoritative information about journals and publishers?&#xA;Also: Is there a good guide for the semantics of the different &lt;code&gt;fields&lt;/code&gt; in a bib entry?  If I knew, for example, that what goes into the publisher field should be the registered trademark or the trade name, I could work out some of these on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW: I'm using Citeulike's mechanism for getting bibliographic info for most of the papers I cite.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10633" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T00:14:45.637" Title="How to get authoritative bibliographic information about journals" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29251" CreationDate="2014-10-01T10:41:21.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an on-line search of APA style guides it appears that the APA style-guide is set up for research papers that would include a title page and abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears though that most universities that I searched either had a defined page count before an abstract page was needed or said to check with the course instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a sample of some;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.sullivan.edu/apa/papersections&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this private college&lt;/a&gt; the exceptions from an abstract are where,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smaller essays (3 pages or less)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Informal writings (in almost all instances, the paper will be 3 pages or less).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Papers over 3 pages in length that are formatted in APA style but do not contain a citation or reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.wou.edu/c.php?g=551299&amp;amp;p=3785047&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Western Oregon University&lt;/a&gt; they have two sample papers, one for a short paper (without abstract) and one for a formal paper (with abstract)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly ,as an example, these two colleges &lt;a href=&quot;http://capital.libguides.com/c.php?g=76089&amp;amp;p=492119&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Capital Community College&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www8.esc.edu/esconline/across_esc/WritingResources.nsf/frames/Guide+to+Writing+Research+Papers+in+the+APA+Style?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Empire State College&lt;/a&gt; state that the student should check if an abstract is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Connecticut&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Check with your instructor to see if an abstract and/or keywords are required elements of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Empire State&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Be sure to ask your mentor whether or not s/he requires an abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it appears that APA does not have any special short paper format it appears , from samples above, that institutions either have a formal policy or leave it to the discretion of the instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12454" LastEditorUserId="12454" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T20:51:04.430" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T20:51:04.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2014-10-01T12:03:58.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; Many researchers put their articles for download on their personal web pages. As most publishers insist on not allowing the researcher to put the &quot;official&quot; version there, but rather only the self-made PDF, this leads to articles often not having the journal/conference information on the first page (as this would require changing the article a bit, which is a bit of work to be done). Also, self-archived versions often appear before the conference, so that page numbers can only be missing, and might not be updated later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; For CS, a good strategy is to just type &quot;DBLP &quot; into your favorite search engine. Many papers nowadays are listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DBLP&lt;/a&gt; page, which also allows you to just download the bibliographic information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a paper is not listed on DBLP, just searching for the paper title often yields the publisher's page of the article, which should have the information available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If searching for the title does not yield any results, then the paper could be a limited circulation pre-print, which is stricly speaking not citeble. However, in such (hopefully few) cases, it makes sense to ask the person who gave you the article for bibliographic information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:03:58.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29274" CreationDate="2014-10-01T12:57:54.800" Score="30" ViewCount="17587" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PhD student in a US university, my tuition fees are ~44,000 USD per year, despite the fact that I don't take any class: only 6 classes are required during the PhD program, and I've completed them during the first two years. Why are tuition fees so high? (tuition is paid by fellowship / RA / TA / ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T15:26:40.930" LastActivityDate="2020-01-08T05:41:14.357" Title="Why are tuition fees for PhD students so high in the USA, despite not taking any class?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tuition&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26001" CreationDate="2014-10-01T12:59:46.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are several differences between a traditional course and an independent study course, for tuition and credit accounting, they are considered to be the same. If you receive credit for the course, you will also be expected to pay tuition for the course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience as a student who did an independent study (as an undergrad, it may be different in higher level courses), I designed the course and decided on the number of credit hours based on the amount of time I expected to spend on it. For example, a 1-credit course is expected to meet for one hour per week, plus 2-4 hours of homework/study out of class, for a total of approximately 4 hours per week. A student is therefore expected to put in approximately 12 hours per week for a 3-credit course. Tuition is then based in the credit hours that the student and instructor together have assigned to the independent study course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;With independent study courses, where there are no fixed contact hours, is it common for institutions to have some expectation of how much time a student is supposed to spend on the course, per credit hour? For instance, that a 1-credit course expects about N hours a week from the student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, as I indicated above, there are usually some expectations as to how much time you are expected to put in to earn a certain number of credit hours. However, as we all know, not all students &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to put in the 2-4 hours of out-of-class study time to learn the same amount of material. In an independent study, this is also true. If a student in motivated to pursue an independent study, I will expect that you are also motivated to put in the number of hours needed to achieve your objectives for the course. I will also expect that you will put in &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; hours than you might in a traditional course because of your enthusiasm and desire to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:59:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29271" CreationDate="2014-10-01T13:20:38.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are costs to you being on campus and using university resources whether you sit in a lecture or not. True, my non-lecture years were a lot cheaper for the university, but that doesn't mean the costs were zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university required me to register for place-holder Research and Dissertation courses which never met so that they would have some way to account for how much to charge me. My real courses and these fake courses had the same per-credit-hour charge (more or less). Imagine if you only had to pay for the real classes that actually met. Your tuition bill for the first couple of semesters would have been $100,000 to $150,000 and then your later semesters maybe only a few thousand. This is pretty imbalanced and hard to justify to some people, so many universities average the costs across all their students rather than piling it on the ones that have lectures. It's not the only model (see Aru Ray's comment about Rice), but it mostly works out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T13:20:38.513" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29271" CreationDate="2014-10-01T13:39:34.560" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is essentially a scam. There are essentially 3 types of students (1) self funded, (2) departmentally funded, (3) externally funded. For departmentally funded students the tuition fees are essentially meaningless and just represent money being shifted around internally. Self funded students can be really hurt by large tuition fees, but departments can offset these fees by partial departmental funding (again just internally transferring money around). The scam comes when students are funded externally and the external funder is required to pay the full fee (and potentially even indirect costs on the tuition fees). Things get messy when the funding has a cap on tuition fees. For example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-14-046.html&quot;&gt;NIH NRSA&lt;/a&gt; pays 60% of the tuition up to $16,000 plus a $4,200 &quot;institutional&quot; allowance. Most departments I am aware of offer a tuition subsidy to individuals who get an NRSA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that high fees not only puts PIs at expensive universities at a disadvantage (okay to be fair, it reduces their advantage) in that their research is more expensive than someone at a cheaper university, but it also puts them in an ethical dilemma. When tuition fees make hiring a PhD student more expensive than a post doc, it is hard for a PI to justify hiring a PhD student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T13:39:34.560" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29278" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:35:10.057" Score="16" ViewCount="5572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had my math paper rejected for publication. From the referee report,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[M]y opinion is to reject this paper. In order to save its positive aspects, I propose: 1) either reduce the length of the paper eliminating superfluous parts, and presenting it as a note (not a research paper), or 2) add new material, so that it becomes a true research paper, and present it again as a new work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused. Is a note a paper that lacks content or simply one that is short? In what way does a note differ from a research paper, or &quot;a true research paper&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would one consider John Nash's famous 2 pages paper &lt;em&gt;Equilibrium points in n-person games&lt;/em&gt; &lt;s&gt;and Watson and Crick's Nobel-Prize-winning 2 pages paper &lt;em&gt;A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/s&gt; a note or a research paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, how does publishing a note vs a research paper affect a scholar, e.g. prestige and/or income?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22267" LastEditorUserId="22267" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T04:42:50.123" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:12:06.703" Title="A note vs a &quot;research paper&quot;" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29271" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:55:20.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because, as you mentioned, they are paid for by someone other than you. This happens in any subsidized industry/system. Interestingly, the subsidies grow over time instead of shrink -- the reasons beyond that are something you should ask an economics professor; it is a distinct trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find folks who say this is the way things should be as much as you'll find folks who think its a scam. It is a logical outcome of the current academic system, may be a leading indicator of its eventual demise, and at the moment is something you should probably not dwell on unless you happen to actually be an economics postgrad (in which case I doubt you would have posed the question in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13156" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T14:55:20.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29276" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:34:24.787" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The mathematical community often considers a very short, highly focused paper to be a note.  A few journals officially categorize the papers they publish into notes and full papers, but usually no formal distinction is made.  There is no clear dividing line between these cases in general.  Typically it comes down to the author's intent: a note is just meant to record some observation in the literature, even though it may not be important enough to justify a lengthy or detailed paper, while anything else is a full paper.  Nash's paper would probably not be considered a note, even though it's short and focused, because it's too important (and arguably wouldn't have benefited from being longer).  The Watson and Crick paper is not so relevant, since papers from other scientific fields have completely different length distributions from mathematics papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not fond of the term &quot;true research paper&quot; in the referee report, since it suggests that there's a clearer distinction between notes and papers.  But what the referee means is simple: you have found something worth recording as a note, but not yet enough to justify the length of your paper (in the referee's opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lastly, how does publishing a note vs a research paper affect a scholar, e.g. prestige and/or income?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prestige depends on the note/paper.  The ceiling is vastly higher for papers: the world's best papers are far more impressive than the world's best notes.  If you are looking for a job at a major research university, then publishing a note might help a little, but ultimately you will need to have really good papers.  On the other hand, there are plenty of mediocre papers out there, and a good note can be better than a not so good paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for income, the relationship between publishing and income is tricky.  To the extent your publications help get you a job, promotion, or raise, they can make a real difference for your income.  Aside from that, you won't make any money from them.  In any case, it's difficult to quantify their effect on income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T15:34:24.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29284" CreationDate="2014-10-01T16:00:40.517" Score="19" ViewCount="3110" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does academic community think of anglicising foreign names in their research? For example, saying Istanbul rather than İstanbul (with capital &quot;İ&quot;), or, author's name, Tasan, instead of Taşan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13112" LastEditorUserId="13112" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T13:18:40.860" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T13:18:40.860" Title="Should I anglicise foreign names of people/places/organizations in my research?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;translations&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28689" CreationDate="2014-10-01T16:12:52.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can now provide an answer to my own question (I hope this is alright): I recently submitted a revised article that was about 15% longer than the word limit to a small biomedical journal. The original version of the article kept to the word limit. In the rebuttal letter, I explained that the article had become longer due to the reviewers' question. This article was accepted without further comment from the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that at least some editors do not see a problems with longer articles, as long as the original submission keeps to the limit. I suspect that the rules may vary greatly between disciplines and journals and that no journal will ever explicitly state &quot;we do not care about length for revised submissions&quot;. My PI was very confident that the article would be accepted, so it may be advisable to ask an experienced colleague in the field for their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21985" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T16:12:52.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29279" CreationDate="2014-10-01T16:50:04.327" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED&lt;/strong&gt; to clarify the type of spelling changes I'm referring to, and to address other types of spelling changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone with an 'é' in my name, I'd say that it depends on whether or not there's a good reason to leave off the diacritical marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that you may not know how to type special characters, or your keyboard may make it difficult to do so. So if you send me an email, I wouldn't be offended if you leave off the diacritical marks, spelling 'é' as 'e', for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that computer file systems and programming languages sometimes don't deal elegantly with non-ASCII characters. So if you name a module in a computer program after me, I wouldn't be offended if you leave off the diacritical marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But if you publish something&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. an academic paper), &lt;em&gt;there's no good reason not to spell my name correctly&lt;/em&gt;. (You can cut and paste, can't you?) I would be annoyed if you didn't take the trouble to do so. Not only have you been lazy, but you've made it more difficult for others to know the correct spelling of my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As for names that aren't written in the Latin alphabet, I agree with David Richerby that it makes sense to transliterate them. Unless the name is extremely well-known, the first time I use the name I would probably add the original name in parenthesis. That way, the reader can search for additional information under both names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if Владимир Путин chooses to go by Vladimir Putin, I would respect that. I wouldn't insist on writing Владимир Путин.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="10529" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T11:10:44.143" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T11:10:44.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29279" CreationDate="2014-10-01T17:03:44.263" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;For anything that's not written in the Latin alphabet, use the standard transliteration from the relevant alphabet (e.g., &quot;Vladimir Putin&quot;, not &quot;Владимир Путин&quot;). For people's names written in the Latin alphabet, keep the accents if possible. For place names, if there is a standard Anglicization, use that (e.g., &quot;Cologne&quot; rather than &quot;K&amp;ouml;ln&quot;, &quot;Istanbul&quot; rather than &quot;İstanbul&quot;); otherwise, keep the accents (e.g., &quot;L&amp;uuml;beck&quot; and &quot;Şanlıurfa&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10685" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T17:03:44.263" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29289" CreationDate="2014-10-01T19:11:09.923" Score="18" ViewCount="3224" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PhD is supposed to be an &quot;original contribution to knowledge&quot;. In my own PhD (in an area of Earth Science) I have so far focused on developing a particular method of computer modeling that will hopefully have a range of applications in my field. In short, my question is: Is the development of an original/novel &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; a contribution to knowledge worthy of a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for asking this is that my supervisor seems concerned that I am drifting away from the 'pure science questions' in my field - i.e I ought to be trying to address a fundamental research question with this new model, rather than spending most of my time developing and testing a new method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct says that it should be just as valid, and browsing some of the other PhD theses from the department suggests that a few others have gone down this route. I also see plenty of papers published that are more 'methods-focused' than 'fundamental-question-addressing'. Personally, I get a lot more satisfaction from pursuing the former kind of research, even though I accept I am not directly answering 'the big questions' as my supervisor puts it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I don't predict an entirely healthy academic relationship down the line if our opinion on what constitutes an interesting PhD thesis differs so fundamentally, and I also consider the possibility that I could just be plain wrong in my interpretation of &quot;original contribution to knowledge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22454" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:29:54.570" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T03:25:24.347" Title="Is the development of an original/novel method a contribution to knowledge worthy of a PhD?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;thesis&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29286" CreationDate="2014-10-01T19:16:40.730" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;While developing a method has merit within science, that method needs to be useful to answer a question which is not currently answerable. I too have worked primarily on methods development in graduate school, and got stung by this in some of my early work. So, while it's good to focus on the method, always have the question in front of you: &quot;what do we want to know, that we can't know yet, that my method will be able to tell us?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastEditorUserId="21704" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:38:10.527" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:38:10.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29286" CreationDate="2014-10-01T20:05:14.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  This was the basis of my successfully completed PhD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific methods must be able to solve something that can not yet be solved, or be (as was my case) an innovative improvement on an existing methodology that is more accurate, more accessible and if possible, more inexpensive.  The latter requires considerable validation of the data produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is critical that the method be able to be scrutinized scientifically for repeatability and reliability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:05:14.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29286" CreationDate="2014-10-01T20:15:07.990" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the development of an original/novel method a contribution to knowledge worthy of a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends largely on what you mean with &quot;method&quot;. Coming up with a theoretically sound way to tackle a specific class of research problems better than currently possible is likely a good contribution (with potential for very high impact). If &quot;method&quot; means a technical improvement of an existing approach or tool, the contribution may be too technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you indicate yourself, this really isn't the important practical question in your case. Even if we all here agree that a new method is a solid research outcome for a PhD student, what good is this to you if your advisor disagrees? At the end of the day, your research needs to make both, you and your advisor happy. Doing something that your advisor does not think is PhD-worthy will lead to no ends of trouble, no matter what we random people on the internet have said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:15:07.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T20:17:52.057" Score="4" ViewCount="1231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying for Master's degree and I am being asked to make a research proposal. I am having some trouble with this since I don't have any research experience at all. The University I attended was a &quot;No Thesis&quot; University and there are no advisors for research there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought about wanting to do my research about Multiculturalism in Japan: how it is denied, how they say they are a homogeneous society and how this affects international minorities living there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... that's as far as I have gotten, I don't know how to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22459" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:27:40.650" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T06:42:18.907" Title="How should a student with no research background write a research proposal?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29290" CreationDate="2014-10-01T21:05:27.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know how to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there's a lot to do, actually. For example, you can structure your research proposal in the following sections (other points can be added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction and background information.&lt;/strong&gt; Here you should clearly state the goal(s) of your research and give supporting information. For example, since you claim that multiculturalism is denied in Japan, in this first section you shall report this claim and provide supporting references; then, you shall explain that this phenomenon is not well studied and why it would be a good thing to investigate it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methodology.&lt;/strong&gt; How do you plan to carry out your research? Anonymous questionnaires? Interviewing people? What kind of questions do you want to ask? How do you choose the population sample? How do you plan to carry out the interviews or distribute the questionnaires? Especially, whatever methodology you choose, explain clearly why the chosen methodology is suitable for reaching the goals of your research. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data analysis.&lt;/strong&gt; Here you have to describe in which way you plan to analyze the data you have collected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schedule.&lt;/strong&gt; Subdivide your research in different tasks and describe the time allotted to each one (Gantt charts are common these days).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientific outcome.&lt;/strong&gt; Original research is typically published on journals and presented at conferences. Can you name a journal and/or a conference suitable for your research topic? Can you think of other possible outcomes? For example, if the subject of your investigation constitute a social issue, can you think of writing a recommendation suggesting ways to improve the situation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible issues.&lt;/strong&gt; Describe what can go wrong in your plans and how you intend to mitigate possible problems (e.g. people not answering to questionnaires).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resources and costs.&lt;/strong&gt; Every kind of research needs money and resources. For example, if you plan to realize an online questionnaire you might need to hire a developer. So, try to figure out what can be the amount of money needed to make your research and write down a small budget. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've added a couple of points. That said, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20058" LastEditorUserId="20058" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T06:42:18.907" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T06:42:18.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T23:45:27.550" Score="3" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard customary timeline for applying for IRB&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; approval with an industry-funded project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you apply for IRB approval first, then accept the funding for the project, or accept the funding for the project and then apply for IRB approval?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the latter could be dangerous if IRB approval is not granted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; An IRB (Institutional Review Board), also known as an independent ethics committee or ethical review board, is a group that reviews and monitors research involving human subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12718" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T23:53:49.860" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T13:59:33.920" Title="For an industry-sponsored project, should one apply for IRB approval before or after accepting the funding?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;industry&gt;&lt;irb&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29300" CreationDate="2014-10-02T00:32:40.280" Score="10" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that a famous mathematician E (long deceased) made a conjecture (C), but no written record of this can be found (either because none exists, or because it exists in a very obscure source). Then, a senior mathematician S, who knows for a fact that (C) was conjectured by E, tells another mathematician X about this problem, and indeed X manages to prove (C). Just to clarify: S is sure about the conjecture, but does not have a publicly available source for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a problem: one of the reasons for X's interest in the problem was the question asked by E. Without context, the problem is still interesting, but less so, and it would be better to include a reference to the conjecture whenever communicating the result. Presumably, in verbal communication this is not a problem, since one can simply explain how things are. But what about publishing the result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the following options. Which of these are most widely accepted? Is there any better alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not mention E at all, simply state the result as is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention that (C) was conjectured by E but not make effort to justify this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention that (C) was conjectured by E, try to use elaborately justify that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep digging for a reference (the real question here is - for how long.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The question is most natural in mathematics, but I suppose it makes some sense in other disciplines. Feel free to post non-mathematics based answers/comments.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7328" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T15:18:49.307" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T15:18:49.307" Title="How should I cite a conjecture to which no written record can be found?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;writing&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T00:46:13.613" Score="11" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways to find online scientists that cited one of your papers (Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science, etc). Recently, however, I ran into a scenario in which I wanted to find authors that cited a specific subset of my papers. To clarify, I don't mean that these citations have to be in the same paper - they could be in different papers by the same author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option would be to export the citation data for each of my papers and write some script that parses and extracts the answer. Does anyone know of a simpler/online method of doing this sort of complex query?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T06:01:25.467" Title="How to find scientists that cited several of my papers?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;citations&gt;&lt;online-resource&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29293" CreationDate="2014-10-02T01:05:55.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First note that it's a question of institutional policy whether human subjects research that is not federally funded requires IRB review.  The common rule requires that federally sponsored research receive IRB approval but does not require institutions to do IRB review for research not funded by the government.  However, many universities require that all research involving human subjects receive IRB approval whether or not it is funded by the federal government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that IRB review is required, it is critical that you not begin the actual research until after IRB approval has been obtained- starting without approval is a big no no.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, IRB approval must be obtained before your institution enters into a contract with the funder or the grant is awarded.  For example, at our institution, the restricted funds accounting office won't do the paperwork for a research contract involving human subjects research until the IRB approval has been granted.  We are also not allowed to submit a proposal to a funding agency without (edited to clarify this) submitting the proposal to the IRB for approval.   There's a good chance that your institution has a similar policy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your institution doesn't have a specific policy about this, you should not try to get your institution to enter into a contract before the IRB approval is granted.  If for whatever reason the IRB approval is denied, then you would have gotten your institution into a contract that it can't fulfill.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was asked to take on a research contract involving human subjects and wanted to accept the funding, I would tell the funder, &quot;Yes, I would like to accept this funding.  However, I will have to get IRB approval (as well as other approvals) before the institution will enter into a formal contract.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastEditorUserId="4453" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T13:59:33.920" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T13:59:33.920" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29298" CreationDate="2014-10-02T03:14:07.567" Score="4" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD student in a physical science major. I finished ALL of my required courses. Assume my current GPA is 3.5. Currently, I am taking 'extra' courses from another engineering department. Some of these courses are indirectly related to my research, but some are completely unrelated (am taking them for pure personal interests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, say I got less than 3.5 in these course. My official University Transcripts will include these courses and report a GPA of less than 3.5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my CV, I plan not to do so and exclude these courses, and report 3.5, nothing less. My stand is that these were not required in the first place, and some of them are even not relevant at all. It is not fair for me to have them included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any problem with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T04:49:24.003" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T04:49:24.003" Title="Is it OK to exclude 'extra courses' from the GPA reported in my CV?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;cv&gt;&lt;gpa&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29297" CreationDate="2014-10-02T03:19:21.410" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GPA: 3.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in your CV, this implies that your official cumulative GPA as per university records is a 3.5. So to write this is misleading, and unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to list your GPA only for courses in your own department, you can write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Major GPA: 3.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5 GPA in physical science courses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T03:19:21.410" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29294" CreationDate="2014-10-02T03:42:23.593" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Which of these are most widely accepted?&quot; sounds like you're asking a poll-type question, which is not quite kosher for this site.  I believe that the situation is sufficiently unusual that there is no &quot;standard&quot; answer.  Nevertheless I will say what I think.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all I want to express some skepticism of the premise that the information that Conjecture (C) was made by famous, long-deceased professor E is an important to the extent that the work of the paper would be less interesting without it.  If Conjecture (C) had been well known to the community and many other people had worked on it and/or written about it, then its provenance would be key information: those who knew about the conjecture would make a clear audience for the paper and would vouch for the prestige and value of the work.  But if no one  -- or almost no one -- except S has prior familiarity with Conjecture (C), then the information that it is due to professor E becomes more of a piece of trivia / personal motivation for professor X.  If the provenance of the conjecture had really been a key motivation for X, then one wonders why X did not verify this before working on the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second I want to say that I think you are using &quot;knows for a fact&quot; in a way different from the way I would use it.  If S is &quot;sure&quot; about the provenance of the conjecture because he saw it in print once but now cannot locate that printed source -- then actually he is not sure, I would say.  Often someone thinks they saw a certain piece of information in print, but when they go back to check it turns out they did not remember it accurately.  In fact probably every working academic has had this experience more than once.  I'm sure S is great, but &quot;S says it, and S can be relied upon&quot; is not really convincing to me no matter who S is.  In a professional context, the things that one is &quot;sure&quot; about should be verifiable: if E is a famous mathematician, then it should be possible to get a comprehensive list of their publications, and then with sufficient effort one can look through all of them, including &quot;obscure conference proceedings&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I would handle the situation is by first corresponding with S and making sure that S is completely comfortable with being attributed the claim that Conjecture (C) was first made by E: if this gets published, then S may get asked some questions about this.  If they are not comfortable I would go with something more mild like mentioning S in the acknowledgments.  If on the other hand S really insists that Conjecture (C) is due to E, then that is what X knows and X can put that in the paper in that form, i.e., something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conjecture (C) was conveyed to me by S.  According to Professor S, the Conjecture was first made in a paper of E.  Unfortunately we have not been able to track down a reference.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be prepared to get some questions about this from the editor or referee when you submit the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: have you asked about this on MathOverflow?  This would be a very appropriate question on that site: if the paper exists then &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; ought to know how to find it, though you may not know nor even know how to find that person.  Even if the question does not get answered in this way, you (or X) can still point to it as proof of your due diligence in the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T03:42:23.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T09:05:53.540" Score="1" ViewCount="10949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my masters in English Literature from India and now want to do my PhD from the US. Should I take both the tests, i.e. TOEFL and GRE? Or only TOEFL will be enough? And if I need to take the GRE, then is it a must to take the subject test as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22478" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T15:45:37.953" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T07:34:21.103" Title="Are both GRE and TOEFL a must for a PhD program in the US? Or only TOEFL will suffice?" Tags="&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;gre&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;toefl&gt;&lt;language-exams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29279" CreationDate="2014-10-02T09:51:16.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with so many questions in life &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;. In Irish there's one major accent, known as a síneadh fada (pronounced sheena fa-da, meaning &lt;em&gt;length accent&lt;/em&gt;, usually abbreviated to &lt;em&gt;fada&lt;/em&gt;). It occurs over vowels only i.e. á, é, í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels a, e, i, o, u and it dramatically changes the sound (and as I'll illustrate below, the meaning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The canonical example that I use here is the word &quot;sean&quot; pronounced in the Munster dialect as &quot;shan&quot;; this means &lt;em&gt;old&lt;/em&gt;. Put a fada over the a and it becomes the name Seán (Irish for John, pronounced &lt;em&gt;Shawn&lt;/em&gt;); put it over the e and and it becomes a verb meaning to &lt;em&gt;disavow&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;repudiate&lt;/em&gt;, pronounced &lt;em&gt;shane&lt;/em&gt;. So with ostensibly the same word, the accents create three different words which you can construct a sentence from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Séan sean Seán [Disavow old John]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one example why you might want to spell words as they are originally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason, and this is purely opinion, is that it feels somewhat arrogant to me to insist that your pronunciation and spelling is so much better than the people who live there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summing up I'd exhort you to focus on the impact of your message rather than the intent; IOW tailor it for your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22480" LastEditorUserId="22480" LastEditDate="2015-03-31T13:07:26.990" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T13:07:26.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29301" CreationDate="2014-10-02T11:55:06.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no general rule here. The only solution is to look up the requirements of each program you are interested in applying to. Some schools may require both, others the TOEFL but not the GRE, or vice versa. (As for the subject test, it will most likely be required of all applicants or not required for all students. Domestic versus international likely won't matter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T11:55:06.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29301" CreationDate="2014-10-02T13:38:34.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The TOEFL and the GRE are quite different. The 'point' -- in as much as standardized tests have one -- of the TOEFL is to figure out if you have sufficient mastery of English to study (and potentially be a Teaching Assistant/Instructor) in an English-speaking environment. The TOEFL is generally required of all non-native English speakers. Graduate programs often waive this requirement if the student is enrolled in and about to complete a degree from a US institution (or did so recently). It's possible that they might waive the requirement for a similar student from a university in other English-speaking countries such as the UK, Australia/NZ, etc. but I am not sure (I don't know anyone who has tried.) Sometimes graduate programs will state that they will waive the TOEFL requirement for a student from a bachelors/masters program with English as a language of instruction. Most Indian colleges/universities I know of are English-medium, but I've never heard of an Indian student applying from India who has had the TOEFL requirement waived this way. (I am an international student from India. I was an undergraduate in the US, and the TOEFL requirement was waived for me by all the graduate programs I applied to.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GRE on the other hand is generally required for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; applicants, domestic and international. Wikipedia says that it aims to measure ''verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are not related to any specific field of study.'' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The TOEFL is more of a checkbox - programs just want all their international students to have some minimal mastery of English so they can perform the usual duties of a graduate student. The GRE is more of an actual comparative tool for all the candidates which can actually affect an admission decision. The two tests are quite different in content and questions --- the TOEFL might contain a question which will play an audio clip of a 'usual' conversation between a student and a professor and ask you whether you can understand what was said; whereas GRE questions might ask you to critique the logic of an argument or perform some high-school level problem-solving task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably the TOEFL obviously does not have a quantitative section whereas the GRE does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in the US, I believe there are very few graduate programs that do not require at least the general GRE of all its applicants. Subject tests are not as widely required, but in my experience the better programs require them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: you will probably need to take both the GRE (general) and the TOEFL. Look into the programs you want to apply to to figure out whether you should take the GRE subject test.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="948" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T13:38:34.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29309" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:11:13.770" Score="5" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to mathematics tenure track positions after a postdoc. I have three research letters from professors at Research 1 universities, and each are AMS fellows. One is my PhD supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My postdoc department is a midrange mathematics department; its on the rise, but doesn't have a big reputation. My supervisor is only familiar with half of my work, while my other letter writers are familiar with all of my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate to use those three letters from other departments, or would it be a warning sign to search committees if no letters come from my current department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22488" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T15:18:59.927" Title="Is it acceptable to only use refererences from other universities?" Tags="&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29308" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:18:59.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly acceptable to not have references from your current institution, but it could raise questions, implying that something went wrong in the current position. Having trustworthy, high-quality researchers, as you've indicated, can overcome this problem, though the question still will remain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your references do not necessarily need to be familiar with all of your work, just enough of it, and more importantly, how you are as a researcher and person. Having a more recent reference letter would give a better description of how you are performing now, in particular, after you left the safety of a PhD position. That is, how you are performing now that you've gone out into the world on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My inclination would be to include a local reference for these reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T15:18:59.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29324" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:29:49.310" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am passionate about working on a particular problem and domain, and have an opportunity to complete a PhD that does not require department/university subsidy. However, the problem I am interested in is outside of the domain of the research faculty. I have been encouraged to find a small part of my problem space that fits with the research of available advisors. However, I feel like conducting my research at another institution, where the research faculty are actively working in the same domain as myself, may be a better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits and drawbacks may be to work with advisors directly related to one's own area of research, rather than trying to just fit one's research into the scope of available advisors' research interests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5934/must-a-masters-thesis-fall-within-ones-advisors-area-of-expertise&quot;&gt;There is some discussion of this regarding the master's thesis&lt;/a&gt;, but I feel that the doctoral level is a little different, in that the advisor/advisee relationship is perhaps more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6711" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:51.510" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:55:05.427" Title="What are the benefits and drawbacks of fitting one's problem within an advisor's research?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;advisor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T16:40:00.183" Score="9" ViewCount="1198" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the pedagogical benefits of assessing students with closed-book exams for graduate-level courses (vs. open-book exams)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm mostly interested in computer science and math education in the USA, if the answer is field- or country-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T19:22:02.070" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T21:37:48.327" Title="Pedagogical reasons for closed-book exams in graduate-level courses?" Tags="&lt;exams&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29313" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-10-02T16:55:00.330" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T16:55:00.330" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T16:55:00.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29314" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-10-02T16:55:00.330" Score="0" Body="On the syntax and formatting of citations and reference lists according to a particular style guide (e.g., Chicago, MLA, IEEE, APA) or in general." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2017-12-19T10:07:08.253" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T10:07:08.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29316" CreationDate="2014-10-02T17:00:47.440" Score="5" ViewCount="1111" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is doing her MBA at a state university, and they have a requirement that she purchases health insurance from a specific provider (which has a pricing agreement with the university, but that is still very expensive). We have been able to find insurance from other providers at a much lower cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This restriction does not apply to local students: they can choose whatever health insurance provider they want. Can the university legally impose this on us, or are they just trying to take advantage of us being foreign? Is there anything we can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22490" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T17:13:22.033" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T17:59:00.527" Title="Can a US university force a foreign student to obtain health insurance from a specific provider?" Tags="&lt;university&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;international-students&gt;&lt;legal-issues&gt;&lt;health&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29315" CreationDate="2014-10-02T17:35:17.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://shbp.mines.edu/SHBP-InternationalStudents&quot;&gt;international student health insurance page&lt;/a&gt; at the Colorado School of Mines, which also requires international students to enroll in the school insurance plan, it is legal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; rationale they offer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not considered discrimination to have different policies for U.S. citizen vs. international students, so long as the requirements are the same for all international students regardless of country of origin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The University may impose such a requirement on all students who are not United States citizens. Such a requirement is not regarded as discrimination on the basis of national origin by the courts. See Espinoza vs. Farah, 6 FEP 931 (November 19, 1973). This is true so long as no distinction is made between citizens of different foreign countries” (Joseph Goldhammer, Resident Legal Counsel, Office of the Attorney General, Dept. of Law, State of Colorado, regarding Foreign Student Health Insurance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Federal immigration law itself imposes certain health insurance or other requirements on foreign students: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most students come to U.S. institutions under an “F” visa. Federal immigration law requires that this subclass of non-immigrants provide proof of their financial ability to support themselves and the cost of their education. These requirements have not been found to violate the equal protection amendment to the constitution. (Anwo vs. Immigration and Naturalization Service., 607 F.2d 435 D.C. Cir 1979). Colorado School of Mines considers medical insurance an integral part of the students ability to support themselves. Federal immigration law also requires that exchange visitors and their accompanying spouse/dependent(s) coming to the United States on a &quot;J&quot; visa carry medical insurance. ( 22 CFR 515.14)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that J-1 visa holders are required to have health insurance meeting certain minimum requirements, not just any health insurance.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Courts have recognized that specifically mandating health insurance for foreign students is not discriminatory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Equal Protection Analysis/14th Amendment to the Constitution: The U.S. constitution requires that &quot;no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.&quot; Is requiring health insurance of international students discriminatory? Does it violate those students' constitutional equal protection rights? Case law differentiates the legal rights of U.S. citizens and permanent residents from the legal rights of non-immigrant aliens, those persons who are in the United States for a short period of time and for a particular purpose. Courts have recognized that requiring health insurance protects the students' ability to exist in the community, realizing the high costs of health care in this country (Ahmed v. University of Toledo, 822 F.2d 26 6th Cir. 1987). Further, courts have acknowledged that requiring health insurance is consistent with, and supports the purposes of, federal immigration law. “International students do not have a constitutional right to attend American universities without complying with the institutions' reasonable regulations.” (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 1982).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T17:59:00.527" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T17:59:00.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36884" CreationDate="2014-10-02T18:34:09.557" Score="26" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various research articles&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; have been published on the prevalence of stimulant medicine (Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin) abuse among undergraduate students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;abuse of stimulant medicine,&quot; I am referring to the practice of students taking prescription medication that is prescribed to someone else (or, that is prescribed to them under false pretenses) in order to improve their focus and concentration while studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/popping-pills-a-popular-way-to-boost-brain-power/&quot;&gt;anecdotal evidence&lt;/a&gt; of university faculty taking Adderall and related medications to enhance academic performance (and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to treat an attention disorder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference to research&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; on the prevalance of stimulant medicine abuse among university faculty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Here is a review article that covers some of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Varga, Matthew D. &quot;Adderall abuse on college campuses: a comprehensive literature review.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of evidence-based social work&lt;/em&gt; 9.3 (2012): 293-313.&#xA;  DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15433714.2010.525402&quot;&gt;10.1080/15433714.2010.525402&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; I am looking for answers that are a reference to such a study. I am not looking for answers from anecdotal evidence not supported by a study or citation. I am also not looking for answers explaining why such a study is unlikely to exist, or why it should not be trusted if it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T20:04:05.490" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T20:04:05.490" Title="Reference on abuse of stimulant medications among professors to enhance academic performance?" Tags="&lt;professors&gt;&lt;reference-request&gt;&lt;health&gt;&lt;drugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29319" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-10-02T18:36:37.120" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T18:36:37.120" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T18:36:37.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29320" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-10-02T18:36:37.120" Score="0" Body="Cruel and/or violent mistreatment of a person or animal in researches or academic places." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T09:45:21.660" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T09:45:21.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23360" CreationDate="2014-10-02T19:16:40.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;no: all schools of reasonably well-known merit require a GRE&lt;/strong&gt;. Shopping for schools that don't is only harmful. I am guessing your mindset is simply wondering if within, say, the top 100 programs there might be exceptions, perhaps because the test is a financial burden, but no, the GRE is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; standard for admission. It's not the only important factor, but every school will require it. I've heard it described as a &quot;sanity check&quot; to make sure the student's abilities pass a check relative to what the recommendation letters and transcript advertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To flip the coin, imagine a school that &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; require the GRE. Why not: what's wrong with it? Does it let students in who would have performed terribly, and risk a remedial first year? Does it let students in who are likely to drop out and simply don't fund them? Is it just really lacking merit? I would be &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; leery of such a school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the TOEFL, the situation is simple. It would be foolish for a university to not make sure incoming students speak English. Even if you are sure of your ability and don't have the time to study or the money for the test, you should be leery of going to a school where there's a pretty good chance your classmates will include German, French, Japanese and Mexican students who don't actually speak English and went to the only school that admitted them after they failed the TOEFL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand it is of course very important that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can pass. It would be miserable to marginally fail but not be able to teach a course effectively (which is how you pay for grad school in part) or collaborate with peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18072" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T19:16:40.400" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:24:18.497" Score="49" ViewCount="12136" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my university, most lecturers and professors use slides in teaching. This is true for most engineering, mathematics and science courses. I am more comfortable with doing the board work and then sharing my hand-written lecture notes with the students. From my personal experience, I feel that the latter is a better way of teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are the advantages of using slides? Why do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; use slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, does the answer to the above question change if you were teaching graduate students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9104" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T02:56:08.437" Title="In teaching, what are the advantages of using slides over doing board work?" Tags="&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;presentation&gt;&lt;lecture-notes&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17294" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:29:11.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered converting your presentation to a poster? If the conference organisers have accepted your presentation as a talk, then they should - I expect - accept a poster from you on the same topic, even if you can't attend owing to your visa difficulties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit a poster, your contribution will at least be on record. Additionally, you might be able to convince someone at the conference - via your network of collaborators - to spend a few precious minutes of their presentation talk to advertise your poster, adding, perhaps, that but for your visa difficulties, you would have been in attendance to present your work orally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:29:11.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29310" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:55:05.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With regard to choosing to do your PhD research with a group working in your field of interest:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In-depth subject specific knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;, meaning that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get started faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your early mistakes and false leads identified and corrected earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get a faster entree into the best collaborative networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get noticed by the community faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be associated with experts in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the supervisor, you might get rail-roaded into doing the science his/her &quot;way&quot;, leaving less opportunity for you to strike out on your own path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are dealing with a new advisor, and that relationship takes time to cultivate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your situation, it seems that you will have to get a source of funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1424" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:55:05.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-02T21:22:36.713" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student and I much prefer lecturers who write on the board than the ones who use slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Profs using slides generally go into loop mode where they have the objective of going through all the slides before the end of the class. As such, profs tend to go in a very fast pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing on the board brings some dynamism to the lectures. The lecturer tends to pace himself much better, and students are then more encouraged to ask questions as they go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, having students write notes help them become more active and aware during the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience I've seen lots of profs who just read the stuff from their slides without elaborating any further. The students then tend to fall asleep since they know the lectures are basically in the slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I have the impression that profs using slides are lazier in their teaching, in the sense that they don't even review the slides they are about to present before the lectures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22495" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T21:22:36.713" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29328" CreationDate="2014-10-02T22:31:39.437" Score="28" ViewCount="5894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to a tenure-track assistant professor job in an applied math department,&#xA;for which the job posting states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Applicants should state their current and expected salary in the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why does the department ask for &quot;expected salary&quot;?&#xA;Is it because they are trying to exploit my naiveté?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What number should I state in my application?&#xA;If I state a number that is on the low side,&#xA;will they use that to offer me a lower salary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I am thinking of just stating my estimate of the mean salary&#xA;for new assistant professors at math departments,&#xA;which according to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24&quot;&gt;Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Salaries Survey&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is $71,412.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastEditorUserId="323" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T15:23:40.077" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T02:49:36.987" Title="What should I state for &quot;expected salary&quot; in a tenure-track job application?" Tags="&lt;job-search&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;&lt;salary&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-02T22:41:42.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to take the safe approach, it may help to choose the mean assistant professor salary for the kind of school you are applying to, and where the school is: a state school in Wyoming will have a lower average assistant professor salary than a private research-level school in Cambridge, MA, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, although I haven't been on the job market, I know (from discussion with my adviser about this question) that while this may be a factor, others are more important: how much does the department want you and what your other offers are, being two of the biggest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T22:41:42.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-02T23:42:57.150" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel it's kind of obnoxious to ask for an expected salary, and it does raise issues of whether the answer could be used to lower the initial offer (or decrease the applicant's negotiating power).  I don't see anything wrong with giving a vague answer or just saying you are flexible.  If you specify a number, you should try to choose one that's representative of the type of school you are applying to, as Danny W. suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why they do it, one reason is that salaries vary enormously.  A regional liberal arts college may pay less than half as much as a leading research university.  Some U.S. states scandalously underfund their state universities, so there can be dramatic salary differences between what you'd think are comparable institutions.  The net effect is that schools that aren't able to pay a lot worry about attracting candidates who have no idea how little they pay.  They don't want to waste time trying to hire someone who will never accept any amount they could plausibly offer.  One way to get around that is to announce a salary range.  However, some departments are hesitant to do that, perhaps because they don't want to publicly emphasize how little money they get (and thereby humiliate themselves or discourage applicants).  Instead, they ask for an expected salary and filter out anyone who names a figure far out of their range.  I don't like it, but it seems to work well enough that departments keep doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T23:42:57.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-02T23:43:56.477" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slides can be great to force you structure your lectures before class and actually stick to them, and they are always more legible than writing on a board (plus less messy if you have to deal with chalk rather than a whiteboard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the slides remove some of the dynamism from the course in that they have students think less critically than when watching you work with a board. Part of this disengagement simply comes from lighting, but another part comes from the way that slides can't easily be amended during a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most fun aspect that I've noticed when I use boards is that the students who are taking notes write down &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that I write on the board. Those notes are much less structured than what I could produce with slides that they would later download, but the actual process of writing out the notes keeps students mentally engaged as well as promoting a discussion rather than just a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22498" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T23:43:56.477" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29333" CreationDate="2014-10-03T00:59:33.997" Score="0" ViewCount="2071" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I open a graduate text (on pretty much everything), I'm instantly overwhelmed as most topics are not well motivated, book reads like an encyclopedia and extremely high level topics maybe mixed in with an introduction to a specific topic. Oh, the text also tends to be printed in a horrendous font that does not at all induce eagerness of reading!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of Springer series on mathematics if you want to know exactly what I'm referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are graduate texts written that way? Why isn't there a plethora of classic texts at the graduate level? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just out of curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22501" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T02:24:13.573" Title="What is the actual difference between Graduate and Undergraduate texts?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29331" CreationDate="2014-10-03T01:25:27.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The font aspect is a rant, not a question; take that up with the publishers. (I don't think I've especially noticed it, but I have a wide tolerance range. It could be worse, it could be dot-matrix.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest: &quot;Graduate texts&quot; are written with the assumption that the reader already has a fairly sophisticated understanding of the subject and the symbology/shorthands/jargon it uses. They're also often intended to be reference material that supplements a class, rather than tutorial material readable by itself... &quot;prescriptive rather than descriptive&quot;. Different audience, different needs, different focus, more context is assumed so informational density can be higher and presented more rigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10225" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T01:25:27.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29331" CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:24:13.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The differences between undergraduate and graduate texts seem to me to be no more dramatic than those between high school and undergraduate texts, and I don't consider it especially problematic.  But there are some differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are graduate texts written that way? Why isn't there a plethora of classic texts at the graduate level? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There certainly is, but there are also plenty of mediocre books.  There's nothing special about graduate texts in this respect. Classic examples of anything will always be rare and noteworthy, more or less by definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep in mind that graduate texts cover an enormous breadth of material (far beyond the undergraduate curriculum), and the upper limits of their depth can be impressive.  Some books are written for very advanced courses aimed at senior graduate students specializing in a certain area.  Of course they won't be easily accessible, since the research community barely understands this material.  With luck, fifty years from now we'll have clearer expositions.  In the meantime, we should be grateful that the author at least managed to distill the research literature into a coherent textbook, even if it is not yet easy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other graduate texts are intended for introductory grad courses.  Certainly there are some bad books out there, but in my experience there are plenty of beautiful introductions that are accessible to students with a strong undergraduate background.  It may still take more effort to read them than a typical undergraduate textbook, the same way an advanced undergraduate book may be tougher than one aimed at first-year students, but that's not a bad thing.  The increased difficulty comes with corresponding rewards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find especially accessible textbooks.  For example, some graduate texts are written specifically to ease the transition to graduate school for students with weaker backgrounds.  They aren't necessarily advertised that way (to avoid putting off readers), but some books are pretty widely known to be less demanding than others.  They can be a great way to fill in any missing background or just get used to graduate texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's worth having many different texts available for the same material.  Undergraduate courses can sometimes be fairly regimented, with clear expectations regarding exactly what students should already know and what they need to learn now.  Graduate school is much more diverse.  One book may be entirely appropriate for someone with certain preparation, but utterly inappropriate for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a subject you'd like to learn about, the best approach is often to ask for reading advice from someone who knows your background and tastes.  If you can't get personalized advice, you can always take a look at lists &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/21344/what-should-be-in-every-grad-students-library&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt;.  Once you have some candidate books in mind, it's worth going to the library and gathering copies of them as well as any similar books that catch your eye on the shelf.  Then you can spend an hour or two comparing them to see which might best serve your needs.  It's going to take you far longer to actually master the contents, so a couple of hours is nothing if it helps you find the right book for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:23.813" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T02:24:13.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:11:39.017" Score="6" ViewCount="10495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a PhD program in mathematics, and I am in my last year in the program. This is the last year that they will fund me for. If I need more time, I will either need to pay the tuition on my own, or not complete my degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that my advisor and department do not support me well. I am not going to go into the details, but if I had known better, I should have left with a Master's three years ago and applied for another PhD program. &lt;strong&gt;I was wondering how feasible it would be to re-apply into a PhD program at another institution.&lt;/strong&gt; Keep in mind that I am entering my sixth year into the program, and I've already passed to candidacy. I realize that this may look bad on my part, that I've stayed at my own institution and at the last moment decided to leave. I am looking for advice and thoughts on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the reasonable thing to do would be to stick it out in my own program and try to finish, and if that doesn't work, then possibly try to apply somewhere else. One of my professors told me that it may be just as hard for me to get a postdoc as it is for me to be accepted into another PhD program. So I am curious if anyone has any experience with a similar situation. The reason why I am considering re-applying to grad school is that I feel that I may thrive at a different institution and have a better possibility of landing a postdoc or an academic job if I started all over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22503" LastEditorUserId="53" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T04:49:44.390" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T08:30:57.170" Title="Can a PhD student transfer to another graduate school after advancing to candidacy?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;transfer-student&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:26:12.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a public university, look up the local/regional salary website that covers it (like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://salaries.texastribune.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Texas Tribune site&lt;/a&gt;). Record the names and salaries for all of the Assistant Professors in that department. Estimate via Google search when each of them started at the university in question. Add a year (since the salary sites are usually a year out of date). Assume 2%/year annual raise. Work backwards to their starting salaries. Decide where you think you would rank among the tenure-track professors if you were all starting at the same time, and pick that percentile among the salaries and submit it. If public data isn't available for the university you are applying to, model a similar university in a similar town that does have data available, and then adjust for cost of living. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an applied math problem &lt;em&gt;par excellence&lt;/em&gt;. You best option is to use your skills to predict a reliable answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastEditorUserId="11600" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T03:52:47.590" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T03:52:47.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29336" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29337" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" Score="0" Body="On starting a degree program at one university, then moving to another university to complete the degree." OwnerUserId="11365" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T03:45:22.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-03T04:30:45.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking the numbers from higheredjobs.com, you'll see that there is considerable variation across types of institutions- the number you quoted was for &quot;research universities&quot;, while &quot;doctoral universities&quot; was a separate classification with a lower average salary.  The survey also didn't distinguish between private universities and public universities (salaries at top private universities are considerably higher.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Mathematical Society also publishes an annual salary survey that I'd encourage you to examine.  The AMS numbers actually show higher starting salaries at the most prestigious research universities (over $80K), but also show much smaller starting salaries at the bachelors and masters level institutions where most of the jobs are.  I think this AMS survey is more reflective of the variation in salaries than the CUPA survey that higheredjobs.com reports.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also searched AMS's web site for job ads that featured this requirement.  There were five such ads, Two were for positions outside of the US (where these salary surveys aren't meaningful.)  One position is for a department chair (an administrative job that these salary surveys don't cover.)  One position is for a postdoc.  The last ad is for a named associate professorship (an endowed chair) where the department will be looking to hire talent away from other departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking candidates for a more senior level position (department chair or the named professorship) what their salary demands are is a reasonable thing to do- you don't want to waste everyone's time interviewing someone who is already much better paid than you can afford.  It makes a lot less sense when you're talking about an entry level tenure track position where most of your candidates are applying from temporary positions (VAP or postdoc.)     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastEditorUserId="4453" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T04:44:27.893" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T04:44:27.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29334" CreationDate="2014-10-03T04:35:22.553" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it's probably not feasible to start over elsewhere in the near future.  You can certainly try applying, and it might work out, especially if you have a really compelling explanation.  However, I think the chances are slim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic question is how much progress towards a thesis you have made during your six years in grad school.  If you're close to finishing, then nobody will think it makes sense to start over from scratch in the same subfield (or even a related one).  At that point, you're not genuinely starting over, but just extending your time in grad school beyond six years.  In particular, continuing in a similar area will come across as a request for another school to provide the additional funding your current university won't give you, and that won't sound like a good use of money.  Most schools wouldn't give their own students a seventh year of funding, so why would they give it to a student from another university?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you aren't close to finishing after six years, then starting over might make sense, but your track record will look bad.  You'll need to present a powerful argument for why you'll do much better the second time around.  In particular, there are people who have strong backgrounds and excellent grades but somehow don't end up succeeding at research, and the admissions committee will worry that you may fall into that category.  Taking a chance on a fresh graduate student will seem like a much better bet than admitting someone who has already spent six years in graduate school but been unable to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically you're stuck.  Either you are too far along for starting over to make sense, or you have a track record of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's difficult to say without knowing more about your specific situation, but I'd guess your best chances lie in two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't get admitted now, you might fare better in a few years.  As your previous time in graduate school fades into the past, you can try to make a case that you have increased perspective and maturity and a renewed desire to get a Ph.D. in math.  I don't know how likely this is to work, but at least it gives you a chance to explain that you have changed since your first attempt at grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could try radically changing your research area.  For example, from algebraic geometry to bioinformatics.  Of course this depends on being able to make a good argument for your change of interests.  You have to really demonstrate that you've finally figured out what you want to do, in the face of skepticism (many people will assume you are just flailing about looking for any chance to try something new).  However, it gives you a ready-made explanation for what went wrong the first time: you were trying to do something that in the end just wasn't suited to your interests and talents, but you've discovered that this new topic is a much better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever approach you take, I expect it will be difficult to get admitted.  It can't hurt to try, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.  My gut feeling is that it would be easier to try to finish your Ph.D. and then salvage your career (but of course I don't know enough about your situation to say that with any confidence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T04:35:22.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29348" CreationDate="2014-10-03T06:21:54.953" Score="5" ViewCount="1287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to do a graduate course in computer science in the US and was particularly attracted to several non-terminal MS CS programs, which you'd enroll as a PhD student, but acquire the MS en route. Some of these MS-PhD programs have better financial support by the institution compared to the terminal MS program. &#xA;For example Harvard offers all of its PhD students full financial support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&#xA;If I'm enrolled into say Harvard's or any other PhD program looking to get MS en route. &#xA;After acquiring the Masters Will I be able to have the flexibility to not progress towards after PhD for whatever reason, without any consequences like having to pay back the financial aid or something? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T18:42:05.267" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T16:56:51.283" Title="If enrolled in Ms-PhD, do I have flexibility not to progress beyond MS?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;graduate-admissions&gt;&lt;graduate-school&gt;&lt;masters&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T06:24:30.167" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let me say that I think that there are lectures that are better taught with slides (e.g. more applied lectures) and lectures that are better taught on the board (e.g. most math lectures).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what are the advantages of using slides? Why do you use slides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common (but imho the worst) reason is probably: because it is easier and less work in the long run. You can concentrate on what you want to say and you can easily reuse your slides from last year. You can also just upload your slides which is less work than writing down everything that you have written on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easier to implement pictures/sound/videos/... what ever media works in your context. For example you can show data, output or interface of a program, how a plant looks like, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students don't have to copy everything from the board and have more time to concentrate on the lecture and just make their own notes on the slides and fill out the blanks you left for them to fill. In addition there are no handwriting issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do more material in less time which is, when used incorrectly, a disadvantage but can be extremely useful if the material is very easy or if you just want to show some interesting applications/examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And ,you can still use the board for things that have to be done slowly, e.g. proofs, and to keep things less static, e.g. if there is a question you can just switch to the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Secondly, does the answer to the above question change if you were&#xA;  teaching graduate students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Graduate lectures are more often in the category that I personally would present at the board (more proofs and complicated things) but that has nothing to do with the students, just the things I want to cover in the lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T06:24:30.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29365" CreationDate="2014-10-03T06:39:42.147" Score="3" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary: I am a STEM graduate student taking a soon-ending class that was divided into 3 parts each under different professors, Alice, Bob and Carol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a conflict in the grading schemes set forth by the different professors' syllabuses (plural).  Omitting most of the details as being too specific, the result is that one syllabus will grade more harshly than the other, and that is the syllabus that they are proposing to use for the final grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given my current grade, I will pass the course either way. That said, I believe I can make a case that the professors should follow the more generous grading scheme, which would benefit me significantly. Is conflicting grading schemes across different syllabi generally considered a valid reason to challenge a grade?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22511" LastEditorUserId="73" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T13:04:25.567" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T13:04:25.567" Title="If co-instructors gave different syllabi with different grading schemes, is this generally considered a valid reason to challenge grade?" Tags="&lt;coursework&gt;&lt;grades&gt;&lt;grading&gt;&lt;syllabus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T06:39:51.513" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use slides as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm more likely to get the details correct on slides than when I'm trying to explain &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; write at the same time (e.g., writing out a moderately large matrix example);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I much prefer heavy use of figures in explanations, but I can't draw to save my life;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm often teaching courses on numerical methods, and if I can't show how it could be done on a computer &quot;for real&quot; then I'd feel I was cheating the students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my personal preference for any &quot;proof&quot; sections of the course is never to &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; use slides, but to use both slides and board. The slides hold the statement and maybe a key step or detail that's a pain to write down. The steps of the calculation are done on the board. This can be a pain in rooms where the projected slide overlaps with the board, but can be made to work in my cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the same approach for UG and PG teaching without change: concepts and figures on slides, details on the board. The only difference I find, as a rule of thumb, is that in the graduate case it's tempting to give more details on the board as the concepts are harder and the steps involved longer. Using the slides helps me resist this and keep focused on the big picture, but the slides still tend to be shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22000" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T06:39:51.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T07:04:21.710" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advantages of slides over boardwork? Laziness, clean hands, digitally distributable product that represents all the work you didn't actually demonstrate in class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And... those are also the disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Board work is usually more engaging, and at least the classes I've taken and given, board-based classes kept the students (&lt;em&gt;and the instructor!&lt;/em&gt;) mentally and verbally engaged in the material. Its naturally more exciting to watch an animated instructor write things out, check himself mentally for a moment, subconsciously sharpshoot him yourself as he moves along, etc. than to just listen to what may as well have been a recorded session flashing by on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who write on boards tend to &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; write the important bits on the board, and have prose handouts full of other details for reading and reference later. The constraints of live board work perform a magically precise editorial function which &lt;em&gt;forces&lt;/em&gt; the instructor to either be concise or fail. Handouts retain every benefit of the slides but without exposing the instructor to the temptation of drifting into a passive or mentally absent teaching mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly important in graduate or corporate classes where the material may be new, originated by the person teaching and not yet fully baked (a wonderful situation where the gallery's questions actively deepen the instructor/researcher's knowledge &lt;em&gt;right then&lt;/em&gt; -- is there any greater ideal?). People who write on boards usually have either rehearsed their material or know it intimately enough to pace through an essentially hands-on class as they go -- even (or especially) in the case of new research. This is as good as it gets for live instruction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this leads me to the worst thing about slides...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laziness permitted by slides is paradoxically compounded by the temptation to be verbose in the slides themselves. This is the worst form of detached instruction and often devolves to the point that the &quot;instruction&quot; consists of an underprepared instructor who feels prepared (he's got his slides, right!) essentially reading whatever is written on the slides to the class. In these cases equal time spent with a book in a quiet place benefits a student more than having suffered through the presentation. Such sessions are a sad satire on modern pedagogy; but satire is not what your students came for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points above also happen to be relevant in organizational briefings. The cardinal rule is that the person doing the talking &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the class, not the board or slides or other AV assistance. Someone with something to say who knows how to say it doesn't require anything but his energy and voice -- the other stuff is either enhancement or distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13156" LastEditorUserId="13156" LastEditDate="2015-09-13T22:30:19.463" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T22:30:19.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29334" CreationDate="2014-10-03T08:30:57.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this does not answer your stated question, I think it is important to point out that &lt;strong&gt;the end of the normal enrollment period is not the end of the road&lt;/strong&gt;. At a research university, it is often accepted that some students will, for reasons possibly beyond their control, require longer time to finish a degree than typically envisioned. And schools are often willing to accommodate this by offering special enrollment status to these &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_but_dissertation&quot;&gt;ABD&lt;/a&gt; candidates, often at reduced tuition rates, and at effectively part-time or in absentia physical presence, which would allow you to continue towards finishing your graduate degree while at the same time holding on to an external job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how close you are toward finishing your dissertation, but I will assume here that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have completed all coursework requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are well into the process of writing your dissertation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By &quot;last year in the program&quot; you meant the last year in the standard program length and not the last year in the standard program length + any additional special terminal status. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under such assumptions you may want to contact the graduate school of your university to see if they offer anything similar to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gradschool.princeton.edu/academics/statuses/degree-seeking-statuses/dissertation-completion-enrollment-dce&quot;&gt;Princeton's DCE status&lt;/a&gt; which gives up to two years of additional enrollment past the regular period at a heavily discounted tuition rate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gradschool.princeton.edu/academics/statuses/degree-seeking-statuses/enrollment-terminateddegree-candidacy-continues-etdcc&quot;&gt;Princeton's ET/DCC status&lt;/a&gt; where you are actually not enrolled as a graduate student. But you get a little extra time during which you are expected to keep in touch with your advisor and finish your dissertation on your own. In particular, you will not get charged tuition at all. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/special-graduate-status&quot;&gt;Stanford's TGR status&lt;/a&gt; in which you remain enrolled but at a reduce tuition rate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also remark that while the job market has not yet rebounded entirely to the pre-2008 glory, it has improved sufficiently that this year I saw some advertisements for teaching positions that are willing to take ABD students if will complete their dissertation within one year of the start date. So if you are really close to finishing, but just need a little bit more time, you should consider that as an option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T08:30:57.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29341" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:22:29.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Copied from my comments)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some cases the terminal MS program costs you more because you are expected to only do coursework, whereas in the MS-PhD program you are expected to service the department as a research or teaching assistant. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that if a school offers both options they would frown upon your entering the PhD track with the intention of quitting after the MS &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, this is something that you can and should ask the administrators at the schools you are looking at. There's a good chance that the policy is different school to school. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question, it depends on what you mean by consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you meant only financial ones: I've known many cases (not in CS) where students quit after the masters, and in none of those cases were they asked to pay the school back. Mostly because of point (1) above. In fact, some departments offering the MS-PhD program seem to take it as a given that some students will drop out. But depends on what you want to do, there could be non-financial consequences: People who've invested time in you may be reluctant to write you recommendation letters etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T09:22:29.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16970" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:24:29.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't cite page numbers, &lt;strong&gt;cite chapter and section numbers&lt;/strong&gt;. They won't change irrespective of the translation. Also they are less likely to change after small corrections in reprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T09:24:29.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:57:39.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of a student, I have seen good and bad teachers, irrelevant what method they used (board or slides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I never liked boards. You need to copy everything from the board. That is, you concentrate pretty all of your brain time on copying (depending on the teacher's writing speed which is usually quite high). This might be a good practice in your early school life, but in higher levels of education we can assume that students know how to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of using slides is that students can spend a small amount of their time on writing (additional notes) and most of their time thinking about the content. Hence, allowing them to connect and understand the information they hear and ask interesting questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, that's the critical and important advantage. If I want to read, I read a book. If I go to a lecture, it should be interactive. I should be able to ask questions. And answer questions posted by the teacher to the class!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it does not depend on the level of education. You should learn how to think and ask questions early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22508" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T09:57:39.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29419" CreationDate="2014-10-03T10:11:07.070" Score="3" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing any kind of paper or homework at the university I am supposed to give references for my citations. At the same time, sources like Wikipedia are not considered good for university level. Now let's say I am writing about malware, and I want to give definition about virus. Wikipedia has a good explanation, but I obviously cannot just copy without references (right?), and to give reference to Wikipedia is considered unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how am I supposed to give reference to such an item? Am I supposed to change the sentence in such a way that it cannot be tracked where I took it from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22509" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T20:56:14.913" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T20:56:14.913" Title="How to cite simple definitions when writing university papers?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;&lt;wikipedia&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29429" CreationDate="2014-10-03T10:49:55.487" Score="6" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to make a poster of my work, I search for tips on the internet and books and I meet two opinions that conflict with each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell a story:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do we choose this (Objective)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do we do? (Experiment, simulation, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do we find? (Result/Conclusion)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can we do more? (Future work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important first:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Result/Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experiment, simulation, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Future work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I will choose &lt;em&gt;tell a story&lt;/em&gt; if the audience is not in my field, and &lt;em&gt;important first&lt;/em&gt; if the audience has a good knowledge on what I do. But I am still confused if this is right. And should I apply this to my paper work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorUserId="7734" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T15:22:56.303" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:36:27.287" Title="Which is the better scheme for a poster: “tell a story” or “important first”?" Tags="&lt;writing&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29356" CreationDate="2014-10-03T11:30:54.513" Score="4" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student and I prepared a poster for a conference. Do you think I should send the poster file to all the co-authors? The list is quite long so I mailed the draft only to a few of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14155" LastEditorUserId="10094" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T12:25:18.427" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T00:42:11.373" Title="Poster - should I send the file to all my collaborators?" Tags="&lt;phd&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;poster&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T11:31:24.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not huge, you have more freedom to respond to students responses and questions with board work while slides tend to have a better structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the class is looking a little lost it's easy to expand on something on the board but you can't make more slides on the fly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do choose board work please do provide handouts or similar with the actual material you'll be scribbling up on the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when I was a student I could either be writing down what you just said or I could be thinking about what you just said. Your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to force students to scribble down everything while you're talking they're going to be thinking &quot;damn, where's my spare pen, this one is going dry&quot; not &quot;Hm. I wonder how that principle applies to....&quot; when you say something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16078" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T11:31:24.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29352" CreationDate="2014-10-03T12:13:39.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be field dependent, but anyway, I'll tell you my (hopefully educated) opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion should be at the end. It's sometimes criticized that some research starts with a conclusion and then start doing some p-fishing and other unethical practices to support that conclusion. You may present the question that you are trying to answer and as a &quot;spoiler&quot; the answer to that question, as it is not infrequent in the abstract, but that doesn't eliminate the need to present the conclusion in the end, explaining how do you get to that conclusion from everything else, in a very (straight)forward way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, wrt to your question, you may (or may not) introduce the results at the beginning, but the conclusion should be at the end in any case, explaining how do you get to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally to your question, it's nice (not required, but definitively good) to explain why the objective set in the first place is important. This may not be needed in some cases, e.g. curing cancer, obviously everybody thinks finding a cure for cancer is important. However, if your objective is deciding whether plastic bottles should be taller or wider then maybe you should explain the impact that a shape change could imply in terms of sustainability, before explaining what are you trying to do (e.g. reduce the amount of plastic needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7571" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T12:13:39.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29353" CreationDate="2014-10-03T12:25:08.720" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Everybody who is listed as an author should see and be able to contribute to the poster. You wouldn't want to be listed as an author of a work that you have never seen either, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10094" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T12:25:08.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29166" CreationDate="2014-10-03T12:25:55.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there exists an all-in-one solution as you would like, however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docear.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Docear&lt;/a&gt; is pretty close to what you want and allows you to organize your thoughts/files and connecting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the meta level, I use a bare-bones website from Google Sites (free), set to private, to record daily thoughts and progress (searchable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22513" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T12:25:55.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T13:29:56.383" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach courses written by other people. Thousands of trainers around the world teach the same courses. Using slides generated by the courseware authors gives us consistency and repeatability. Our courses prepare students for certification exams, so the course content must be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do, however, also use whiteboards, mostly for scribbled quick diagrams. If the diagram is complicated I'll create and make it available electronically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8335" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T13:29:56.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T16:11:24.993" Score="6" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume we have a paper published in a conference or journal. Should I mention my co-authors while posting some content of the paper (or just paper's link) on Twitter or Facebook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume I am aware of their Twitter or Facebook accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5644" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T16:53:33.700" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T18:45:59.587" Title="Should I mention my co-authors while tweeting about our publications?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;social-media&gt;&lt;facebook&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29360" CreationDate="2014-10-03T16:15:56.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be a polite thing to do to at least link the co-authors, for example, something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paper title, paper link, #co-author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the amount of space available in your tweet - their names will be written on the paper itself in any case. At the very least, let them know that you are tweeting/posting the link/paper, which would give them an opportunity to retweet/share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21984" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T16:15:56.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29369" CreationDate="2014-10-03T16:20:53.693" Score="28" ViewCount="1802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software engineer, but I used to have to read a lot of papers about neurology. I am slightly disappointed by the high price for access to the full text of research papers. I can understand a pharmaceutical company could pay that amount of money, but I don't think private people can afford to pay $30 for reading a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the money from article sales go to the researchers, the journals or somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13702" LastEditorUserId="11365" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T22:31:09.517" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T05:18:12.830" Title="Who is earning money when users buy access to a research article?" Tags="&lt;journals&gt;&lt;publishers&gt;&lt;fees&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:07:26.203" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;What efforts have there been to promote research commercialization (e.g. connecting researchers with investors interested in commercializing the researchers' research) and how are these done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22487" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T18:22:23.757" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T04:11:14.447" Title="How to promote research commercialization?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29343" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:12:50.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The majority of the question's text concerns minutiae about syllabi and percentages that are unlikely to be of interest to anyone except the OP.  The question would be significantly improved by eliding / summarizing this information and concentrating on the core question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens when multiple, conflicting syllabi are given out for the same course?  Does the student have a legitimate grievance when one syllabus is being followed but not the other, at the expense of his grade?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these are reasonable questions for our site.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to the first question is: &lt;strong&gt;yikes&lt;/strong&gt;.  Three different instructors for the same course, three different syllabi, and one of the instructors (the chair!) does not even know about both of the other syllabi?  What a mess.  In general having courses taught by more than one faculty member makes things harder and necessitates much more explicit, advanced planning.  This course does not sound well-planned.  As soon as you get talk about which syllabus is more &quot;official&quot; than the others, things are not going well.  I don't think there is a standard, easy answer to this question, and I don't see any coherent answer which does not admit mistakes on the part of the faculty.  On the other hand I wonder why this issue did not come up earlier in the course: on the first day of class every student was in possession of two contradictory syllabi and no one noticed?  I find that curious and am not sure what to make of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to the second question is: &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, I think so.  If you show up to some higher administrative official with two syllabi in hand and say that you want to be held to the standard of the syllabus you were given first, you have a good shot at getting some traction on this.  However I would encourage you to try to resolve the matter as non-combatively as possible: if you are a graduate student in the program, getting the chair chewed out by (say) her dean &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; likely to have some effect on your course grade, but it may have other, less pleasant effects down the line.  I would begin by doing what you have already done: clearly pointing out the discrepancy between the two syllabi and the significant effect it may/will have on your course grade.  You should indicate that you proceeded in the course with an understanding based on the first syllabus that you received and that you would like this to be taken into account in the course grade.  Give them a chance to do this for you before you escalate the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the business about the 75 belonging to two grade ranges: in my opinion you look petty by bringing that up at all (look at the reaction your question has received).  The purpose of the grading system being spelled out in advance is for students to be sure they are treated fairly and to be able to have some rough means of predicting what kind of performance will lead to what kind of grade.  There is nothing that you or any student would have done differently if 75 belongs to one grade range rather than the other.  I agree with other commenters who said that the time you spent complaining about that would be better spent learning the material and improving your performance in the course.  Mixing legitimate, serious grading concerns with &quot;grade-grubbing&quot; is not a good strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T17:12:50.297" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29360" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:17:08.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would mention your co-authors, but check with them about how they want to be &quot;linked&quot;. Even if they have a Twitter or Facebook account, they may no longer use it, or they may use it for personal contacts only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10529" LastEditorUserId="10529" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T17:32:41.470" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T17:32:41.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29360" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:18:42.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with Omen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you shorten the URL of your work (using bitly.com or something similar) and &quot;twitterfy&quot; the title (perhaps make a hashtag combining a few select words from your title and the subject e.g. #semweb_info_integration_newway), you should be able to cite at least 5 or 6 twitter handles easily. I am not sure facebook is a good idea, considering (IMHO) for a lot of people it is more of a personal medium. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22516" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T17:18:42.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:20:34.240" Score="3" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;What must a researcher know or understand about another researcher to confidently conclude that he or she can become a good partner in collaboration? Specific opinions will be appreciated, e.g. the researcher must understand how his or her potential collaborator's skill set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22487" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T18:43:44.263" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:17:09.083" Title="What must a researcher know or understand about another researcher to ensure successful research collaboration?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;&lt;soft-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29363" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:21:04.207" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of political considerations, the answer to your question is that &lt;strong&gt;publishing companies&lt;/strong&gt; are collecting the revenue from subscriptions and individual article sales. Some publishers are commercial operations, some are non-profit (such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://publishing.aip.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Institute of Physics&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The price you pay at this time is related only to the publishing process (organization of submission process and peer-review, typesetting, archival strategies, printing, administration, etc.) and all other aspects of a commercial company including, of course, a margin. Some people have strong opinions about what this margin should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;actual research&lt;/em&gt; is paid for by other means, including government grants, university salaries, non-profit and foundation grants, funding from commercial companies, etc. If you had to pay for the actual research behind a given paper, chances are it would cost you something closer to 30k $.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various other business models for publishing, some where the whole process is paid for by an institution, and is thus free for both authors and readers, some where authors have to pay to publish, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are important aspects in keeping money out of the editorial board - publisher - reviewers - authors relationship, because it reduces the risk of conflicts of interest (although author-pay open-access advocates think otherwise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options to obtain scientific papers without paying (yourself) include: going to the library of your local institution, checking out &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pre-print servers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;government-sponsored repositories&lt;/a&gt; or ultimately, contacting the authors to obtain electronic copies. More on that subject in &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/26235/10643&quot;&gt;this useful thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:50.023" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T05:18:12.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:26:10.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy for me to say this, since I'm not applying, but I simply wouldn't list anything.  There's always some risk when leaving out a part of the application that someone is very bureaucratically minded, but I think in this case, the chance is pretty small.  It's very hard for me to imagine the conversation in the hiring meeting going: &quot;This application looks very promising.&quot;  &quot;But it doesn't list his/her current salary.  Well, in the trash it goes!&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be trickier if someone directly contacts you, points out that you missed this and asks you to clarify.  At some point, if you decide getting the job is more important than optimizing your salary, you may have to just tell them.  I personally find this a pretty insane request, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T17:26:10.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29353" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:38:57.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely agree with xLeitix's answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everybody who is listed as an author should see and be able to contribute to the poster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if it is a big file (assuming your poster is heavy on graphics) perhaps it is best to upload it to dropbox or a similar service and then send the link to all the authors. Depending on their (and your) digital fluency, the team can refine the document right from dropbox without having to send email back and forth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22516" LastEditorUserId="7921" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T00:42:11.373" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T00:42:11.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:51:34.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use slides when I teach because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It forces me to prepare for class in advance. (This is usually not a problem for me, but I had a professor in undergrad who only wrote on the board because he didn't have a lesson plan or anything prepared for the day. I vowed to never ever teach like that!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have time to articulate my thoughts on my slides.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The information that I want the students to know is on the slides. That means that EVEN IF I was lecturing too fast or a student couldn't take notes fast enough or the student couldn't read my handwriting or a student couldn't come to class, it doesn't matter. Because all the information is on the slides and I provide them with digital copies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I get way more joke opportunities with slides and I can keep the students engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21458" LastEditorUserId="21458" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T17:58:44.260" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T17:58:44.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29375" CreationDate="2014-10-03T18:00:14.380" Score="15" ViewCount="7406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in Math, specifically pure Math, in the USA. I will be on the job market soon for a tenure track position and mathjobs ads usually do not specify the teaching load. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the average teaching load of tenured faculty (in pure math say) at a research university? (and let's say we are talking about faculty members who are still very much research active)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've met faculty who teaches 1+1 (or even 0+0...), 2+1 or even 2+2. But I don't have a good general picture of how much teaching is done (partly because I haven't studied in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22522" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T13:05:32.330" Title="What is the average teaching load for tenure faculty in mathematics?" Tags="&lt;teaching&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;united-states&gt;&lt;tenure-track&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29373" CreationDate="2014-10-03T18:26:24.363" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mathematics departments at U.S. research universities, typical teaching loads are 1+2 or 2+2, with 1+2 being common at fancier or better funded schools.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.utk.edu/Dept/AppIII.pdf&quot;&gt;this chart&lt;/a&gt; for some data; I don't know how accurate it is, but it looks approximately right to me.  1+1 is not absolutely unheard of, but it is very rare.  Of course what counts as a &quot;research university&quot; is unclear, and some places that consider themselves research universities may have 2+3 loads, but I don't think any of the more prestigious research universities have 2+3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are a lot of other factors that come into teaching load.  How much flexibility is there in the course assignments?  How does the teaching credit differ between huge lecture courses and small graduate seminars?  How many people (if any) get a reduced teaching load?  Does the department allow faculty to buy out of teaching using grant funds?  Without answers to questions like these, a numerical comparison of teaching loads only tells you so much.  What I'd recommend is that you apply for every job you might plausibly want, and then once you start to get interviews or offers you can look into the teaching conditions at these schools in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T18:26:24.363" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T18:34:35.603" Score="1" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a manuscript for a scientific paper that alters/adds onto what another study found over 20 years ago. This old study is highly cited and the graphs are reproduced in a lot of textbooks, but my study says that the old data isn't the whole story. In part of my manuscript I compare my data to that in the old study and I'd like to include a graphical comparison. How do I contact the authors of the old study and ask for permission to reproduce their graph? Do I tell them about my study? Do I let them read my manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21458" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T19:42:47.980" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T19:42:47.980" Title="How to contact author whose work I built off of?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;etiquette&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29360" CreationDate="2014-10-03T18:45:59.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having trouble &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16759/is-there-an-inflation-in-the-number-of-authors-per-paper&quot;&gt;considering so many coauthors&lt;/a&gt; with 140 characters? Link to the paper, which lists the coauthors. #winningatacademia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.923" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T18:45:59.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T18:53:24.750" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advantages of using slides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students get insufficient sleep, and a slideshow presentation allows them to catch up on their sleep hours somewhat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slides decrease student-teacher interaction, and we are all introverts nowadays, so less interaction is a good thing!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slides make it less likely that a student will take notes in class, thus saving on ink.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The presumption that slides or video will be posted disincentivizes students from attending class, thus allowing for smaller classrooms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slides are good for ignorance, and as we all know, ignorance is bliss!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22526" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T18:53:24.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29376" CreationDate="2014-10-03T19:17:08.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's appropriate to contact the authors, particularly if they are still active researchers. Before sending them the manuscript or telling the entire story, perhaps ask if they would be willing to keep your results confidential until publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as formal permission to reproduce their graph, it's very likely that the authors don't hold the copyright. Most authors sign over copyright to the publisher, so you may have to query them. Even so, it would be polite and advisable to notify the authors that you are planning to reproduce a piece of their work for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22525" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T19:17:08.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29382" CreationDate="2014-10-03T19:23:38.260" Score="3" ViewCount="3134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a community college student in Computer Science field who likes to have good resume when I want to transfer to university, I found out this is very useful if I start to work in particular area in my field like Machine Learning, Security, Algorithm, ...and start to work with other professors in this field area like they who publish paper and conference, I couldn't find any professor in community college who works and researches in a serious field, I found out research and research assistant is not part of community college and you have to look for that in university then I started to send emails to other professors in different universities like UC and CSU and ask for volunteer research assistant but I didn't receive any useful response, some of them told me they will let me know if something shows up and other didn't answer me. Now I am getting disappointment because they don't want to give a chance to a college student because I am studying in community college but I want to know is this a common way I am doing if yes how is the correct way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22527" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:14:41.640" Title="How To Volunteer Research Assistant?" Tags="&lt;research-process&gt;&lt;university&gt;&lt;research-assistantship&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-03T20:04:57.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is, of course, possible to use slides in good ways and bad ways, just as it is possible to use blackboards/whiteboards in good ways and bad ways.  I hardly ever use slides for reasons I document here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://okasaki.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-i-dont-use-powerpoint-for-teaching.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://okasaki.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-i-dont-use-powerpoint-for-teaching.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you asked for ADVANTAGES of slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is for showing pictures.  For example, if you wanted to talk about brush strokes in the Mona Lisa, you probably wouldn't try to duplicate those brush strokes on a blackboard.  Many fields have plenty of pictures to show.  (But note that I'm not talking about gratuitous pictures like 99% of clipart and stock photos.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second advantage can be when the presenter has a terrible memory or otherwise gets confused easily.  The slides can be helpful reminders that keep you on track (but written notes might work as well).  One place where I run into this situation is if I have to give the same lesson more than twice in quick succession, when it can be easy to become confused about whether you've made a particular comment during THIS session, as opposed the same presentation an hour ago, or the one an hour before that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third &quot;advantage&quot; is that slides made by somebody else can be a great timesaver for a lazy teacher.  For example, some textbook publishers offer slides to go along with the textbook.  So if you are a teacher who wants to put very little time into a class, using the premade slides can seem like a great choice.  As a less perjorative example, I have sometimes provided slides to somebody that I was asking to fill in for me when I was sick or on a trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13752" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:04:57.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29380" CreationDate="2014-10-03T20:14:41.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: The opinions I'm about to express are based on my experience in mechanical engineering, as an undergraduate research assistant, a master's student, and currently a PhD student. I'm quite confident that what I'm about to say should apply to Computer Science as well, but if I am incorrect, then I apologize in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, it is good to see that you are motivated about research. You seem to be interested in fields that are very active today (I know quite a few colleagues that are working on machine learning for instance). Your curiosity and interest in advanced fields are admirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what you need to know, is that most professors (in my experience), hire undergraduate level research assistants with the prospect that they'll pursue graduate studies afterwards. The reason being, most fields of research are far fetched compared to the knowledge typically available at 2nd - 3rd year level, so you have to spend quite a bit of time reading literature, and your supervising professor will need to dedicate a lot of his time guiding you through it. Moreover, research methodology is very heuristic, and requires experience, because you have to solve open-ended problems. That means there is no solution in a book somewhere that you can look up. So the whole exercise is to train your mind to see a possible path to a solution that you might arrive at after months of work, with occasional milestones that tell you that you're on the right track. So this means that after months, your supervisor may have dedicated long hours of his time supervising you and have nothing to show for in return. The only consolation is if a student plans to stick around for a master's, then it makes sense to invest the time required, because you will have learnt a lot out of this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a community college student, it may not be clear to the people you're contacting that this is your aim. This is due to the fact that most people view community college training as job training, not so much education that could lead to a field of research. As a matter of fact not even undergraduate studies train you for research, which would make the prospective supervisor even more hesitant. You may need to prove to them that you have a path in mind such that you can satisfy the university's admissions requirements for graduate students if it comes to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you've said in your OP, I can infer that you feel insulted because you are offering free work, and yet nobody seems to be interested. That is noble of you, but for the reasons I stated above, as far as they're concerned, statistically speaking you're likely to be more effort that benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect that I'd like to touch on is the fact that your grammar is not adequate based on what is expected in academia. I'm making this assumption based on your original post, so I may be wrong if you simply wrote it in a hurry, but if your contact e-mails with the researchers were anything like it, it suggests that they'll have a difficult time communicating with you, and that is another headache for them. A big part of research is being able to communicate your work to people who are from your field, from other fields, and requires nuanced language to express subtleties that exist in most advanced scientific and technological fields. I know it doesn't seem important, but it truly is. You're expected to leave some sort of record of your methodology, present it at conferences, submit to scientific journals, and write grant proposals for which grammar and format is an easy way to dismiss applications at a time when research budgets are getting tighter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17916" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:14:41.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-03T20:37:34.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q.1: The dept wants to know whether you have realistic expectations about compensation for this position. Trying for &gt;$20k over median for entry level position for institution of this type/location may raise eyebrows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are also trying to exploit an applicant's naiveté (although obviously this should not be taken personally). In particular, a reasonably low figure might suggest to them that salary will be a non-issue. If their resources and room for negotiation for this position are tight, it might tell them which applicant may be worth their time and which might not be worth a significant investment of time if their offer is likely to be out-matched by another institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q.2: If the number was not used at all, it would likely not have been part of the application. So most likely, a very low &quot;self-appraisal&quot; might yield a lower offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it does not necessarily mean you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be modest in your self-appraisal. It is unlikely that your final decision will be solely based on salary. Money only matters when you don't have any. As soon as you have a sufficient amount, other things kick in and shape the quality of life. Friendly colleagues in the department. Overall budget situation at the university and on the state level, and projections for the next 5-10 years. Location, amenities, recreation opportunities, and cost of living in the area. How long you plan to stick around at this institution (keep in mind the likelihood of raises, which over 5 years can lift a salary to a level higher than what you may be shooting for now, risking rejecting offers that might not be quite up there from yr1). Good luck and hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:37:34.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29389" CreationDate="2014-10-03T21:05:37.350" Score="11" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing an NSF grant proposal in mathematics. I am requesting summer salary and a travel budget (and not much else), and after I compute the total I have to add an extra 50% of it and add it as the &quot;indirect costs&quot; of my proposed research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This feels absurd to me (although it is the same, sometimes with an even higher rate, everywhere in the United States) -- especially since I do not require any special facilities or equipment to conduct my work. Is there a convincing argument to be made that this is reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11565" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T21:09:18.403" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T23:31:39.197" Title="Why are grant indirect costs so high?" Tags="&lt;funding&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29384" CreationDate="2014-10-03T21:16:31.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a convincing argument to be made that this is reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One answer is no, it's not based on any real accounting.  Indirect cost rates were negotiated individually by universities in the early days of federal research funding in the U.S., and they are very difficult to change now (because many funding agencies have to coordinate on these rates).  Some universities genuinely have different costs, for example due to location, while others just negotiated more aggressively.  There's little rational basis to it, so you can't hope for a detailed breakdown that indicates exactly why it should cost this amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the indirect costs are not meant to cover just special facilities or equipment (in fact, those would be direct costs).  They are meant to cover office space, library access, computer infrastructure, administrative support, etc.  These are all rather expensive, and taking these costs into account could very plausibly increase the total by more than 50%.  So even though the numbers aren't arrived at by adding up actual costs, they really aren't crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T21:16:31.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29384" CreationDate="2014-10-03T21:16:57.257" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The indirect costs help to pay for all of the other resources you have access to which are not directly paid for by other costs. For instance, these indirect costs help to pay for administrative assistants, information technology, library subscriptions, utilities, and other costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can also go to pay for the costs of administrators (including the fine folks in your university grants and contracts office who actually submit your NSF proposal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the rate is reasonable for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; university is hard to judge, but a 50% overhead rate overall is not that excessive. Compare that to industry or the US national laboratories, where the overhead rate can exceed &lt;strong&gt;200%&lt;/strong&gt;, and things don't look so bad in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="53" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T21:16:57.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29211" CreationDate="2014-10-03T22:19:04.767" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might not help you in communicating your thoughts, but will certainly help in understanding what it is you are engaged in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serres &quot;The Troubadour of Knowledge&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22529" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T22:19:04.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26178" CreationDate="2014-10-03T22:38:30.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way would be to do a Web of Science search using the '&lt;em&gt;Address&lt;/em&gt;' field, with the university name or institution name as query. This will most likely return lots of results, and you will maybe need to go through them manually to do some quality checking. You can also refine search results by '&lt;em&gt;Countries/Territories&lt;/em&gt;' to filter irrelevant results (e.g. similarly named institutions in different countries). You can also use the '&lt;em&gt;Address&lt;/em&gt;' field to search for individual department names while also including city and country for some good results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can ofcourse do similar searches in Scopus etc. as well, but if you are specifically after ISI-indexed papers you should use Web of Science (maybe even restricting yourself to only the &lt;em&gt;Web of Science Core Collection&lt;/em&gt; database).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7223" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T22:38:30.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29384" CreationDate="2014-10-03T23:31:39.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can take a more birds-eye view of the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recall that the main purpose of the NSF is to support part of the public policy interests of the U.S. government. Here is a quote from &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/about/glance.jsp&quot;&gt;NSF at a glance&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NSF's goals--discovery, learning, research infrastructure and stewardship--provide an integrated strategy to advance the frontiers of knowledge, cultivate a world-class, broadly inclusive science and engineering workforce and expand the scientific literacy of all citizens, build the nation's research capability through investments in advanced instrumentation and facilities, and support excellence in science and engineering research and education through a capable and responsive organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the NSF says on the same page, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We fulfill our mission chiefly by issuing limited-term grants -- currently about 11,000 new awards per year, with an average duration of three years -- to fund specific research proposals that have been judged the most promising by a rigorous and objective merit-review system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that indirect costs on a grant don't directly support costs of research - that's why they're &quot;indirect costs&quot;. But they do support the national research &lt;em&gt;infrastructure&lt;/em&gt; by passing additional funding to institutions that show merit by winning competitive grant funding. The indirect funding helps these institutions provide a research environment not only to the researchers who are awarded grants, but also to other researchers and students.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supporting the overall national research infrastructure is certainly a reasonable part of the public policy goals of the NSF, and the indirect costs system is not the worst way I can think of to decide which institutions will receive such funding. Of course, there are also equipment grants and other specialized NSF grants, which also help support the national research capacity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T23:31:39.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20940" CreationDate="2014-10-04T00:18:32.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I uploaded a file to wikisend (free and no sign-up file hosting service) with the correlation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikisend.com/download/470842/usnwr_unitid.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US News and IPEDS ID&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually pastebin never expires so here's a link to it on pastebin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/FNEaJ1vC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pastebin.com/FNEaJ1vC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21926" LastEditorUserId="21926" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T00:28:13.037" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T00:28:13.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29326" CreationDate="2014-10-04T02:49:36.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write negotiable. That's it. Then negotiate when the time comes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, I avoid salary discussions before an offer. If asked, I answer that I'm flexible and I'm confident we could come up with a mutually agreeable figure. Then I move on and start asking questions about the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T02:49:36.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29411" CreationDate="2014-10-04T03:24:52.247" Score="2" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NSF postdoctoral application is due in less than 2 weeks and I am trying to send out invitations for my reference letters.  However, for the past week (on fastlane.gov) I have gotten the same error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A database error occured while performing fastlane.pdoc.ProcessReferenceLetter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I contacted the NSF by email and by phone and haven't gotten any response by either format.  Is there anyone getting this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22534" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T00:32:07.810" Title="Error on FastLane (NSF) letter of Reference System for the NSFPF" Tags="&lt;postdocs&gt;&lt;nsf&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29373" CreationDate="2014-10-04T06:00:00.793" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teaching loads of 1+2 or 2+2 (where the courses are 3 credit hour semester courses) are typical of the better research universities.  Some institutions do weird things like the quarter system or semester courses that are 4 credit hours, but there are ways to adjust for this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching loads of 3+3 or even 4+4 are quite common at regional comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges.  Keep in mind that most tenure track faculty positions are going to have those kinds of higher teaching loads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were looking at teaching loads and comparing positions, I'd also be looking at the types of courses that I'd have to teach and the size/format of the classes.  For example, I have a 2+3 teaching load, but I get to teach small junior/senior/graduate level courses for science/engineering/math majors in my areas of interest.  I'd rather have this teaching load than a 2+2 load where 3 courses per year were  large sections of freshmen calculus for business majors and I only got to teach one upper division course per year in my area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4453" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T06:00:00.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-04T07:12:11.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach math - mostly to undergrads. As of late I have started using slides more and more. The reasons (and my rants):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our sciences building is being renovated, so the math department is &quot;temporarily&quot; relocated in social sciences building. Thus we need to use whatever sorry excuses for lecture halls they, the nearby law school, and the adjacent educational sciences building have to offer. In a metrosexual climax those had largely opted to &quot;modernize&quot; and only equip their auditoriums with video projectors and stamp sized whiteboards, whereas I used to fill up a set of 8 blackboards of total area 6ft x 30ft every 45 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students have been complaining about the legibility of my handwriting for quite some time. Moving to the whiteboards made the problem worse. Also, the standard of cursive taught in our schools has changed a number of times since I did time in grade school. Thus my handwriting is a twice removed cousin to what the students expect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try as I may, my 3D-sketches suck, which makes it a bit more difficult to explain my points in, say, multivariable calculus. When I leave rendering to Mathematica I have extra tools at my disposal. Such as full control of the perspective and color - colored chalk has always been hard to find (when the need springs up), and some colors are hard to see on a whiteboard. Also animations become feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have always been complaining about how the students concentrate on frantically taking notes instead of trying to follow my thought process. Thus it is simply intellectually honest to provide them with copyable documents about those examples that I really want them to spend time on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have not observed noticeable dips in the attendance as a consequence of me using slides. Some freshmen are intoxicated about their newly achieved &quot;academic freedom&quot;, and cut a class or three. Quite irrespective of whether I use slides or a blackboard. The choice of method of learning the material is their responsibility. My role is to provide them with various ways of achieving that goal. They are free to pick and choose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, is there a significant difference to copying the notes from the course web page as opposed to from a &quot;designated writer&quot; class mate? If anything, the quality of the copy I provide is probably better. If somebody missed a class for family reasons or illness, they have a sporting chance of keeping up, when the lecture slides are available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Having said all that I do agree with the point of another answerer that it is easy to make the slides too polished, and only present the end product - a solution, a proof, whatever. This may be a problem on those occasions when the journey is more important than the destination. I am trying to learn how to capture that on the slides, too. At least the most scenic points. Also, I still like to give the students who do show up something extra. In those auditoriums, where the video projector's screen won't roll down in front of the whiteboard/blackboard I can do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17484" LastEditorUserId="17484" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T07:44:38.833" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T07:44:38.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29428" CreationDate="2014-10-04T07:38:19.503" Score="3" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teacher assistant, I am always thinking about preparing my students with up-to-dated teaching materials and examples; however, I can see many TAs in my department who teach the content they used to teach in the past semesters and now it is obvious that because the students have access to the previous year's pamphlets and handouts, they are not encouraged to attend these TAs classes. Even some of these students just copy and paste the problems and assignments from the past homeworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a teacher assistant, how can I avoid being stuck in repetitive&#xA;  teaching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, changing the problems each semester seems really a hard work and is almost impossible because the TA has to revise more than a hundred question or even find such quantity of new problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the techniques you use to keep your teaching material up-to-dated and&#xA;  alluring to the interested student; also to avoid lazy student to copy&#xA;  the paste semester materials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As asked in one of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29401/as-a-teaching-assistant-how-can-i-avoid-repetitive-teaching#comment64120_29401&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courses I do teaching assistantship is engineering mathematics for masters students consisting solution of partial differential equations and also ordinary differential equations for bachelors students of engineering or one or two other subjects related to my major; (each semester I may have only one of these classes, I don't take simultaneous teaching assistantship classes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have regular classes each week for instance having two hours a week teaching assistant class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually prepare some problems and after a brief review on the methods, formulas and concept; I solve those problems for students. I usually photocopy my problems for my students. Also, at the end of each topic, I assign them some problems to solve and ask their questions if they have any. Also, I give them two exams, one at the middle of the term and one at the end of each term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:53.733" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T08:38:48.890" Title="As a teaching-assistant, how can I avoid repetitive teaching?" Tags="&lt;teaching-assistant&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-04T07:45:08.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite controversial whether slides are better than a board, and I think this also depends very much on what and how you are teaching. But you have asked specifically for advantages, so I will try to focus on those. I will, however, mention caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Shawn says, slides can work as a very nice conceptual map of where you want your lecture to go, compared to just going up to an empty board with a chalk. The caveat is that you can simply prepare a few sheets of handwritten notes, and use these to accomplish the same goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is much easier to pace yourself, both because the slides serve as a detailed outline and also because you can use the number of slides as an estimate of how long you will take. (but this can also be done by preparing notes, counting the pages or doing a practice lecture with a stopwatch)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can return to previous slides easily or peek ahead as needed without having to erase the board and re-write everything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no risk of students having trouble reading your script (unless your slides are truly pathological), everything is clear. Of course, you could just write legibly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Typing is faster/less tiring than writing for many people. Perhaps it takes you 50 minutes to type up everything on the slides you will use, but it would take you 70 minutes of lecture time to write it all out in class. Plus, all the time is invested before the lecture, so you can devote all your lecture time to lecturing, instead of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On that note, with slides you can focus on your lecture without being distracted by writing (eg. which part of the board to write the next bit on, how big to write, how to lay it out, whether to erase some parts first). This may sound silly, but for instance my script is beautiful on paper but hideous on a board - every time I must use a board, I always feel very insecure with how ugly and not-neat my writing and drawings look, and this is very distracting to me because it makes the usual public speaking anxiety that much worse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the maximum speed you can write legibly at is not guaranteed to be greater than the optimal speed of covering the material. With slides, there is less danger of having to spend a long time writing out lengthy material that can be understood very quickly, but only once all of it is displayed/written. But conversely, if you are lecturing faster than you can write, how will students keep up with their notes?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You only need to prepare slides once, and can reuse them with minor updates. If you tend to write on the blackboard, you will have to write all of the material again and again every time you teach the class (although you can reuse your notes).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can (and should) speak information which is related, but not identical, to what's on the slides. Often slides have more basic, fundamental points as you develop more complex ideas verbally. In this way, students can easily solve problems like &quot;what does that new term that the lecturer just used mean again?&quot; and follow more easily. You can essentially have 2 parallel threads running simultaneously, and students can switch back and forth between them depending on which one is easier to follow. Imagine you are teaching archeometry to a class that is half chemists and half historians. During the chemistry slides, the chemists can listen to you talking about the intricacies of the chemistry, while the historians focus on the basics from the slides. Then during the history part (eg. metallurgical developments), vice versa. But it can be argued that such heterogeneous teaching is not a good idea in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The slides can be given out to students for study in their own time. (but so can scanned notes, photos of the board, video recordings of lectures, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If slides are given ahead of time, students can print out slides, and significantly reduce how much writing they need to take by writing down only things which you say that are not on the slides (because they are better explained verbally, or because they came up after a question, etc). The caveat is that writing helps retention, so this may actually impair students' ability to learn the material on the slides.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With slides, you can display arbitrary images. For instance, complex patterns that would take time to draw on a board, plots that are hard to draw just right, photographs (both ordinary and technical such as micrographs), busy figures with many intricate features (sometimes the figure simply cannot be any simpler). &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;, you can just print handouts with the pictures, or use a good old fashioned slide projector.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can include things like animations, video and audio. Animations are useless 99% of the time (although they may help at times). Video and audio can be invaluable in some classes, for instance videos of behavioral psychology experiments or audio in a music theory class. But then again, you can still teach your class on a board and only go to slides for the audio/video.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A bright rectangle of light in the middle of a dark room will focus everyone's attention on it. But on the other hand, it also makes it very easy to zone out and catch up on some quality Z time. (plus, if you darken the room it will be hard to write notes)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to name many advantages of using slides, especially if you don't mind very specific advantages. However, most aren't real advantages, in the sense that you can have a lecture that's as good, and probably better, by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing paper notes for yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practicing the lecture before class and timing yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking about your learning objectives for the lecture and being mindful of them to stay on track and not get derailed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing handouts if you must show many images that are hard to draw or many equations that take too long to write out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the computer only to show video clips and so on, and then returning to your usual lecture after the video is over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow these, there are very few real advantages of slides, and many disadvantages (distraction, restricts your freedom of drawing and writing to PowerPoint's formatting options, not effective for learning). This is, of course, if your goal is to have a very effective lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, often people aim instead to spend as little time and effort as possible on the lecture. In that case, PowerPoint will produce a mediocre lecture, while writing on the board will produce an awful one. Too often people take the idea that &quot;old fashioned teaching on the board is better than slides&quot; and then think they can do a good job with inadequate preparation by just teaching from the board instead of using slides. They end up rambling on and on, and after the lecture all the students say to each other, &quot;What the hell was he going on about up there? I didn't understand a single thing!&quot; (unless this happens to be an extremely talented teacher)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is impossible to lecture from slides with zero preparation (since you do have to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; the slides at least) so it forces some semblance of coherence on you, although not much. So, if you are going to do your students a disservice by not preparing adequately, you are better off with PowerPoint (but only in the sense that you are better off losing a hand than losing your arm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="244" LastEditorUserId="244" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T07:56:49.653" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T07:56:49.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-04T09:25:00.547" Score="5" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the year 2000, someone probed the 3 dimensional quantum dots using a new condition which is important in semi conductor physics. But they basically solved the Schrodinger equation for ground state and discussed the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have extended their work for general case , i.e, one can calculate &quot;higher&quot; state energy using those calculations. Also, I have pictured how the wave function looks like at higher states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think that I have done just Math &amp;amp; some computations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My query is : Is this result publishable owing to the fact that I am a Junior year student and I did this work without any adviser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22537" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T15:20:37.853" Title="Should I publish this?" Tags="&lt;publications&gt;&lt;journals&gt;&lt;mathematics&gt;&lt;research-undergraduate&gt;&lt;physics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-10-04T16:02:41.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29403" CreationDate="2014-10-04T10:06:51.447" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it is mentioned in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29403/should-i-publish-this/29404#comment64085_29403&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;, we have no access to your paper to determine whether it is a perfect paper to be published or the content is of value to be published. Also, reviewing papers are off-topic to this website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you are looking for answers regarding &lt;code&gt;[you are] a Junior year student and I did this work without any adviser&lt;/code&gt;; my answer will be &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no obligation for anybody to send his paper for a journal to be peer-reviewed or even to publish his research. The content of the paper is more important than the education level of their writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would recommend you to show your research paper to a faculty member. He will review your paper scientifically besides to the review he will do on the academic writing of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you want to apply for a masters or PhD program or even if you are seeking for a job; you will need recommendation letters from the faculty members (and showing your paper to a professor is one way to show that you are eligible to get one). The professor whom you will show your paper to may be so glad to write one for his smart student who has worked upon Schrödinger's equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.863" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T15:20:37.853" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29408" CreationDate="2014-10-04T12:45:58.790" Score="0" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/10775/5645&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; it is a feature that BibTeX converts all characters to lower case for titles in the bibliography. This is confusing for me. What characters in the titles I cite should be upper case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a screenshot were I marked all characters that I would have written uppercase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3WH8m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The first 'r' in recognition was a mistake)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think I should write everything in capital that I would write in capital in a normal English sentence. Is that correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:31.020" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T13:28:28.153" Title="What should have capital cases in the title of works in the bibliography?" Tags="&lt;citations&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29373" CreationDate="2014-10-04T13:05:32.330" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't have a good general picture of how much teaching is done (partly because I haven't studied in the US&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of teaching is done. It is easy to get the impression, when talking with faculty from the relatively small number of research institutions, that there is little teaching. But most institutions in the U.S. are not research institutions, and most institutions have teaching as their primary mission.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A two-course-per-semester load would be viewed as extremely light at most institutions; three to four courses per semester is common in mathematics departments at the university level. Higher loads are common at the community college level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying for positions, one of the easiest &lt;em&gt;faux pas&lt;/em&gt; to make is to try to negotiate an unrealistically low teaching load. It is unlikely that a school will give a new tenure-track professor a load significantly different than the existing ones have. But they will view the request as as a sign the applicant hasn't done their research, or a sign the applicant will not be a good fit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you want to know the typical load at a school as soon as possible in the interview process, preferably before you apply. When investigating the typical teaching load at a school, there are several important things to ask about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do they count courses, or do they count hours?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;N + M&quot; system of counting loads is not universal. Many schools count loads by the credit hour. In these schools, a 12-hour-per semester load is viewed as high, and not compatible with much research -- essentially a 4+4 load. But if the school has courses that are more than 3 credit hours, a 12-hour load might be a 3+3 load. In mathematics, the three calculus courses are often 4-hour (or even 5-hour) courses, and sometimes so is differential equations or linear algebra. You have to research this on a school-by-school basis.   Schools with loads higher than 12 hours per semester are unlikely to require any research, but I have heard of some teaching-only schools with 15-hour (or higher) loads (e.g. community colleges).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find out the &quot;real&quot; teaching load, look up the schedule of classes for the fall and spring and count how many courses the existing tenure track faculty are teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do they have &quot;research releases&quot; to reduce teaching loads?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the best research schools will guarantee a light teaching load. Many schools have a uniform, heavy load for everyone - but then give &quot;research release time&quot; to reduce the teaching load of faculty who are active in research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was true even at the highly ranked institution where I did my PhD - the default load was used mainly for older faculty who were no longer active in research, while the lighter load was used for research active faculty. Research releases have become common even at non-research-intensive schools that want to increase their research profile. In almost all cases, they are not written into the contract, and are handled by a separate policy. So you also have to investigate these on a school-by-school basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, at my institution the default load is 12 hours per semester, which is typical for this type of institution. But research active faculty receive a reduction to 8-9 hours per semester. Several freshman and sophomore level classes, including precalculus, calculus, and others are 4-hour or 5-hour classes. So, depending on the way the course schedules turn out, the 12-hour load is often a 3+3 load, and the 8-9 hour load can be a 2-2, 2-3, or 3-3 load. For me, this is a quite reasonable load which allows me to publish regularly as well as teach several courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some schools that otherwise have a high teaching load give a research release for first-year faculty, to give them a chance to write up the results of their dissertation and publish those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How often do you get a sabbatical?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sabbatical is a semester or year of modified duties, typically with no teaching.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some institutions guarantee a sabbatical before tenure, which can help offset a higher teaching load. The main examples I've seen of this are small liberal arts colleges. At other institutions, you will never get a sabbatical before tenure (e.g. regional public universities). So you need to investigate the sabbatical policy, as well, because a semester or year of no teaching significantly affects your average teaching load in the surrounding years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is there a good balance?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final question about teaching load is whether there is a balance between the amount of teaching and research you would like to do, the amount of teaching and research you are expected to do, and the amount of teaching and research you are able to do with the teaching load at the institution.  Low teaching loads, on their own, are not a guarantee of happiness! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16122" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T13:05:32.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29405" CreationDate="2014-10-04T13:12:01.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some journals use capital letters for All The Words In The Title. Some others (thinking about legacy systems) may put it ALL IN UPPERCASE or all in lowercase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, the case of the letters is completely irrelevant for the reference itself, so it is understandable that BibTeX wants to give it all a coherent format. All in all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Einstein, The Foundations of General Relativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. EINSTEIN, THE FOUNDATIONS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Einstein, The foundations of General Relativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are equally easy to find and unequivocally point to the same reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in the comments to the linked question it is stated that the style may override this behaviour, using a different convention, or leaving it as written on the bib.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, general rules for English grammar apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proper names should be capitalised, so Markov is capital.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acronyms, like NPEN++, ought to be in all upercase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic disciplines (like Physics or Biology) should be. It is debatable if &amp;quot;pattern recognition&amp;quot; should be or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12587" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T14:12:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T13:12:01.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29405" CreationDate="2014-10-04T13:22:07.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the citation style. Basically there are two possibilities: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Title_case&quot;&gt;title case&lt;/a&gt;, or normal English sentence style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for a journal, it surely has a citation style that you should adhere to. In practice, however, the style of citations won't really matter until the time your paper is accepted, so you do not need to worry about it when writing.&#xA;If you are writing for yourself, you are free to decide as you prefer, as long as you are consistent. If you are writing a thesis, be sure to inquire  because some OCD university committee might have imposed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bibtex is essentially a program to abstract out citation styles and apply them programmatically, separating content (in the &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; file) from formatting. Using a properly formatted &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; file, you just need the command &lt;code&gt;\bibliographystyle{}&lt;/code&gt; to change from a style to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how should the title field be formatted in a properly-written &lt;code&gt;.bib&lt;/code&gt; file? Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;title = {Handwriting Recognition with Hidden {M}arkov models and Grammatical Constraints}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you use title case and embed into a pair of braces the characters that should stay in capital even if the text is converted to sentence case. Bibtex can convert automatically title case to sentence case (but not vice versa). Commands for diacritics and special characters (such as &lt;code&gt;\&quot;a&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;\c{c}&lt;/code&gt;) and dollar-delimited formulas should also go inside an extra pair of braces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, another tricky aspect of Bibtex syntax is author name formatting. Authors should be in the format&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;author = {von Lastname1, Firstname1 Middle and Lastname2 jr., Firstname2}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if full given names are not available,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;author = {von Lastname1, F. M. and Lastname2 jr., F.}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that 90% of the bibtex files that you will find on the internet, even the ones from the publishers' websites, are badly formatted. Bibtex's syntax is quirky and complicated to get right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="958" LastEditorUserId="958" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T13:28:28.153" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T13:28:28.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29322" CreationDate="2014-10-04T16:00:24.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Powerpoint corrupts absolutely ... but you can write slides that help students memorize what is the main point you are talking about.&#xA;Then I use lot of board space to illustrate what I am saying.&#xA;I taught once in Sweden and was very happy: there were boards all around the room so I could keep important drawings and assertions still alive and well!&#xA;(I teach programming and programming is an art and what you say should be tailored to your students way of thinking so pre-cooked slides are not extremely detailed but often show images intended to illustrate a problem and help students memorize a path to their own re-engineering of the topic)..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22546" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T16:00:24.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29392" CreationDate="2014-10-04T16:11:55.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screen shot and date stamp every attempt to do this operation until it works. Call the helpdesk &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/contacts/contact_fl.jsp&quot;&gt;800 number&lt;/a&gt; back every hour during business hours until someone answers the phone, but don't just leave message after message if it goes to voicemail. If you haven't already, send invites via email personally to each of your references so that they know the request from FastLane will be coming eventually. Tell each of your references about the problem so that they'll be prepared to take alternative action if NSF gives you a workaround. Keep good records of all your attempts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can figure out who the cognizant program officer is for the specific fellowship you are applying for, write them an email Monday after you have tried to get in touch with the FastLane user support folks again with a short explanation of your problem and ask them for options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FastLane being down on broken is usually a great reason for NSF to give you an exception to a deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted in the comments, there is some upcoming Fastlane downtime due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14083/nsf14083.jsp&quot;&gt;NSF financial system upgrade&lt;/a&gt;, but that shouldn't be the problem today or for the rest of the week. The FastLane user support team is usually very responsive, but with the financial system update going on, they may be swamped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might also try talking to the Sponsored Research Office/Office of Sponsored Projects/etc. at your current university. They work with staff at NSF all the time, and may have contacts that can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11600" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T16:11:55.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19298" CreationDate="2014-10-04T16:37:03.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never sat on a tenure case at either Harvard or MIT, so my answer is purely conjecture. While it is possible the first thing the tenure committee does is look at where the PhD is from and throws out everyone not from Harvard/MIT, that seems very unlikely. Tenure decisions are about teaching, service, and research. At the point of tenure decisions, the school your PhD is from is essentially meaningless although there may be some correlation between research productivity and where your PhD is from any longer term causative effects are probably pretty limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the PhD is from plays some role on initial hiring at all universities and if you don't have a TT position it is much harder to get tenure. Additionally, where you work probably has some causative effect on research productivity giving Harvard and MIT PhDs additional advantages (or at least preventing disadvantages). Therefore it is not surprising that lots of tenured faculty have PhDs from Harvard and MIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T16:37:03.670" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29437" CreationDate="2014-10-04T17:40:28.007" Score="3" ViewCount="78210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in several courses and I need to do a job also to support myself financially. I would like to ask;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between Part-Time and Full-Time study in Postgraduate courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and which suits me well with a private job in Scotland or Netherlands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22549" LastEditorUserId="9482" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T11:15:14.393" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T11:15:14.393" Title="What is the difference between part-time and full-time study in postgraduate courses?" Tags="&lt;part-time&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29261" CreationDate="2014-10-04T20:39:33.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Linguistics Ph.D. admissions is unusual in that no particular background is necessarily required.  The reason is that many institutions do not offer a linguistics major, so the pool of linguistics majors is small.  In addition, linguistics is highly interdisciplinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question more specifically, if you want to enter computational linguistics, some programming ability is essential.  A bachelor's degree in any of the disciplines you mention may be sufficient.  I would also add psychology, anthropology, and foreign language backgrounds as potential entry points for a linguistics Ph.D.  You must also be prepared to learn statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:39:33.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29256" CreationDate="2014-10-04T20:48:53.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;American perspective:  Your question shows that you made a mistake, but you corrected it.  Your mistake will probably be forgiven if you explain clearly what happened, how you learned from it, and how you will prevent it from occurring again.  Include this as a brief statement in your application letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:48:53.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29174" CreationDate="2014-10-04T20:55:02.033" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, no.  Two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nobody reads the references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is unethical to penalize the author for giving credit where it is due.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, an HR staffer may not know about academic practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T20:55:02.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29111" CreationDate="2014-10-04T21:00:56.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; suggests that you can export a Calibre catalog as BibTeX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;click the arrow next to convert books and create a catalog in bibtex format.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  (you have to select at least 3 [books])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then import the BibTeX into Zotero. Whether that transfers PDFs, comments, and tags depends on the ability of Calibre to export that metadata (all of it is supported by BibTeX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/25023/calibre-to-import-metadata-to-zotero-bibliographies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A thread on Zotero forums&lt;/a&gt; indicates that Calibre may sometimes assign &quot;silly dates&quot;, so you may want to look over your library after import.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have identified the origin of these silly publication dates (Jan. 1st, year 101): that's the metadata I have in my calibre database for some e-books, probably a default value assigned by calibre when a specific date isn't available in the imported document and designed to stand out when sorted in ascending or descending order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you want Zotero to try and find the metadata for your books, you can just drag and drop the PDFs into Zotero and use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Retrieve Metadata function&lt;/a&gt; to look up metadata. May even want to combine both approaches and merge duplicates at the end (by selecting the best metadata from both software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22551" LastEditorUserId="22551" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T22:35:49.147" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T22:35:49.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29351" CreationDate="2014-10-04T21:29:06.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standards for papers and homework is not the same as for publications. Moreover, there is nothing fundamentally right or wrong about a definition as long as you introduce it as such ! (in University words mean what you decide they mean -- within reason, that is). You can definitely write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper I will use the definition of a &lt;em&gt;virus&lt;/em&gt; as a '...' (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and refer to a footnote that says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) definition taken from Wikipedia article &lt;em&gt;Virus&lt;/em&gt;, retrieved on&#xA;  2014-10-04&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if Wikipedia's definition is taken from a printed reference, use the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be extra-cautious you can have a look at the change log and discussion of the Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T21:29:06.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29430" CreationDate="2014-10-04T22:04:43.567" Score="11" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a tenure-track position in 5-6 years and I am applying to positions in other universities, including tenured positions. For the list of references, should I include my former PhD advisor? I have some other good names to include and also I have a good relationship with the former advisor. I was wondering the pros and cons of including/excluding the former advisor in the list of reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T14:05:47.593" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T17:20:44.847" Title="Should a mid-career faculty application include a letter from the former PhD advisor?" Tags="&lt;recommendation-letter&gt;&lt;faculty-application&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29420" CreationDate="2014-10-05T00:44:38.567" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases it seems a good idea to include the former adviser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose an exception would be if you are now much more &quot;established/senior&quot; than your adviser, or if there is some serious problem with your adviser's professional reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11257" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T00:44:38.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29425" CreationDate="2014-10-05T01:50:05.577" Score="4" ViewCount="3862" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very high profile Prof. A recommended me to another high profile Prof. B to do some work for him.  While normally as a graduate I should be very thankful and jump on this, I simply cannot do the work asked due to time and I also believe there would be a more suitable candidate for the work.  Prof A's recommendations hold very high weight in the field I work in (his previous recommendation got me a job as an undergraduate).  I feel that Prof A may have misunderstood my skills (he confused Java programming with Java web programming essentially).  Prof A knows me somewhat well (I work for him currently), so perhaps this is why he recommended me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I turn down Prof B's request in a polite manner without losing any face to myself or Prof A?  In my response, should I also forward candidates whom I think would be able to do the work (e.g. cc them in the email)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21069" LastEditorUserId="21069" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:25:50.800" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T05:37:03.370" Title="How to politely reject a professor's request for work that I was recommended for?" Tags="&lt;etiquette&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29351" CreationDate="2014-10-05T02:08:47.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two points to remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Always give a reference for anything which is not your own! Changing the sentence in such a way that it cannot be tracked is NOT an acceptable substitute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) For as long as you are a student, the university sets the rules for what is considered an acceptable source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your university, like many others which I am familiar, does not consider Wikipedia to be an acceptable academic resource, you should not cite Wikipedia in papers/homework. (When writing for an audience other than your professor(s), you be the judge. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19083/7921&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; provides a nice overview of the pros and cons of citing Wikipedia.) &lt;strong&gt;For the example you've given, the relevant Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; has many linked references. The usual workaround is to follow those references, find one which contains the definition you need, and cite that reference rather than Wikipedia.&lt;/strong&gt; Of course, as JeffE noted, be sure you've actually read the source you are citing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.603" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T02:08:47.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29423" CreationDate="2014-10-05T02:45:03.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;While normally as a graduate I should be very thankful and jump on this, I simply cannot do the work asked due to time and I believe there would be a more suitable candidate for the work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is more or less exactly what you should say. Express your gratitude to Professor A. If you have a major academic obligation taking up your time, like comprehensive exams or something, mention that. Do NOT CC the candidates you have in mind, but do mention to Professor B that you can recommend someone else who you think would be a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9298" LastEditorUserId="9298" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T05:37:03.370" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T05:37:03.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29423" CreationDate="2014-10-05T04:51:02.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't bother going in the detail about Java, just tell both professors that you do not have the available time to commit to prof B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they mention changing your schedule with prof A, then recommend your alternative candidate (which hopefully you do anyways), and express your concern that taking on prof B's project may take more time than you have available, even if prof A gives you time off from working for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility (though I don't know how well this would work, since you don't provide any project details), would be to say that prof B's project is going in a different direction than you see your future heading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22555" LastEditorUserId="546" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T08:28:00.203" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T08:28:00.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2014-10-05T05:02:54.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether this female teacher actually had a bad experience with an intimidating student or it was just all in her head, is an irrelevant point. If your interactions with her were just as you stated (and no subtle context was left out, like you standing with your &quot;guns&quot; across your chest, or worse), then you were blatantly discriminated against. The reason that I say her past experience is irrelevant is because had she had a bad experience with a school athlete or body builder, she is still basing her opinion of you on that experience, which is prejudicial, also known as discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if a professor told me they would rather talk in class, my response would be that you do not discuss other peoples academic status in front of others, so, either 1, you allow me to bring a friend in to the meeting whom I feel comfortable with, or 2 you have another professor or a student aid present, or 3 you call campus security and have them present at the meeting ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, actually, this is the best possible scenario, especially if she already has preconceived notions, because it would protect you from false accusations, and other lies, like when she claimed you never approached her before. I dont know how or why she was able to get away with this lie, when you stated you were with friends at the time you approached her about your grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22555" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:02:54.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29401" CreationDate="2014-10-05T05:31:26.680" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer looking at the bigger picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop teaching the same class all the time!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've taught the same class so often that you can reuse your material without thinking about it much, then it's time to branch out next semester and teach something else.  Teaching a variety of classes is more fun and rewarding (as they say, the best way to learn a subject is to teach it, so this way you learn more subjects).  It is valuable experience for an academic or teaching career, and showing a breadth of teaching experience can be helpful in a job search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your department just keeps assigning you this course and you assume you have no choice.  Try just asking to be assigned something else - contact whoever is in charge of those assignments and ask what else might be available.  Of course you might not get what you want, since making teaching assignments is always complicated and requires many constraints to be satisfied, but there's a good chance of having your preferences at least taken into account.  If you don't get what you want this semester, you might have a better chance in a future semester as they try to make it up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:31:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29352" CreationDate="2014-10-05T05:36:27.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posters are hard to get right. They require design skills and knowing what the core message of your paper is. Presenting them requires people skills. Aside from this, different areas seem to have different criteria and norms when it comes to this so if you want to fit in you should try to follow those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, most scientific posters I've seen are really terrible in terms of tools for communication: they have far too much text and get into far too much technical detail. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://betterposters.blogspot.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on this site&lt;/a&gt; posted in the comments on the question, there's some nice visuals but all of the posters have, in my opinion, far too much text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One excuse for a lot of text on a poster I often hear is that people will can read them on their own between sessions or whatever. &lt;em&gt;In my own area and experience&lt;/em&gt;, I don't buy this argument: that's what the paper is for and I rarely see anyone reading these literal walls of text in their spare time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice you've gotten from the internet seems to follow that thinking: the thinking of printing a full paper on a poster in bullet form. An A0/A1 wall of text is not the best way to sell your work, nor is a boring traditional narrative of introduction, methodology, results, related work, conclusion or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this from the perspective of someone who's gone to too many poster sessions and gotten trapped at a poster where someone for some reason decided I would be interested in spending 20 minutes silently listening to them recite the slightly abridged version of the paper that they had for some reason decided to printed on their poster. One guy even seemed to expect me to leave after he was done. After he had finished reading the conclusions at me he had a look on his face that said &quot;who's next?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay so that's one extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the secret to a good poster presentation is two-fold: the poster and the person in front of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of a poster session, people will probably have some food with them, people might even have some drinks, you should not assume to take more than 5 minutes of their time, they're probably not going to get all the technical details and they're definitely not going to read a wall of text. At least one would hope that they wouldn't read it because that would imply that you'd be talking to yourself since they cannot read text and listen to you at the same time (unless you're reading aloud the text that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was working w